Unconsoled - Experiencing what one is reading

While in the hospital, I was reading a section where the narrator in Unconsoled gets angrier over trivia - mainly because it somehow reminds him of the past and the same thing happened to me. I wonder if it was the impact of the novel or a coincidence.

I lost my temper over nothing and it was an unpleasant surprise/experience for me. It had more to do with some vague irritation from a past experience or an anxiety about a future possibility.

Need to take up yoga to stay calm :)

Unconsoled - Strange but very powerful

Kazuo Ishiguro's Unconsoled is probably the strangest book I have ever read. It was a remarkable experience. The impact of reading this book was similar to having a very vivid dream. I wake up and the dream is ridiculous and absurd. However, the emotional experience of the dream is profound and lingers.

This reading of a short story by Ishiguro can give a reasonable idea of the strangeness of the novel:
http://huffduffer.com/Clampants/53964

The impact of the book may have been greater as the environment in which I read it was abnormal. One of the threads of the book is the expectation of parents and children from each other. Here I was in a hospital room near my mother, who had had a severe stroke and was in a semi-conscious state. And I was frequently interrupting my reading, waiting and looking for little signs of recovery.

Complexity issue? - Deadlock at a crossroads.

I made the mistake of showing a little courtesy to the car which had taken half a turn to complete it. This would have cleared my lane so I would not have to abruptly risk switching lanes to go around that car.

Another car noticed that I had stopped and rushed to take the empty space. Now, no one could move at the crossroads - each car was being blocked by another!

For once, I was calm and amused. It was my passenger who got very upset. Anyway, a minute or more later, a police man came around. Forced the idiot to back up and cleared my lane. I am surprised at how often such deadlocks occur - can't people reason about the implications of their actions? Is it that complex?

If the turning is so bad, I would have just taken a left and taken a U-turn around a large circle. It might have added a kilometer to the distance but should have been faster. Is the cost of driving one kilometer so high that few seem to do it?

Discourteous, Callous or Just Simply Stupid

I have been trying hard to ignore minor irritants in India. With so many people, perhaps, such irritants are inevitable. However, it pained me when my mother was to be taken to her room on the 6th floor of the hospital in a stretcher. It was visiting hours and the visitors rushed into to the elevator. The attendants had to request and push them to make space for my mother.

Aside from the sheer discourtesy shown to an ill patient in a hospital, I was particularly bugged by a group of people who had rushed in first. They had to go to the first floor and pushed their way out. They were younger than me and healthy - so why on earth did they insist on using the elevator.

Driving and teaching on a virtual holiday

Diwali is an important festival and the day after it, people must be relaxing. It was  a pleasure driving to Ropar today morning. I could drive comfortably and safely as there was very little traffic on the road.

I had decided not to cancel the class but discuss a topic outside the course content. The number of students who had not gone home was only 6. I had expected more but it did not matter.

It was an opportunity to sit around in a circle and explore a topic even if I did most of the talking. I wish I could experiment with sitting with a group of 10 students once a week instead of teaching 40 students for 3 hours.

I am convinced that meeting the students even once a week for 1 hour will be more effective as long as we do not have all the sessions on the same day. That is because I as an instructor would get thoroughly bored.

I suspect that this is not something I will ever get a chance to try :(

Be Somewhat Safer, Break the Law

 The following extract from "Be Safe, Break the Law" definitely resonates with my experience of driving in India:

Higher speed limits are often safer because what is worse than speed is variable speed, some people driving fast and some driving slow. When the speed limit is set too low you get lots of people who safely break the law and a few law-abiders who make the roads more dangerous.

I find myself driving faster in order to be consistent with what others are doing. The tendency of impatient drivers to overtake dangerously increases sharply the slower one is driving.

The difference for India though is that our traffic is inherently variable. A slow truck or a tractor is tolerated, though with minimal patience, as the slow speed is expected from them and they are too big to squeeze through on a two lane highway with oncoming traffic.

However, a modern car going too slow - Nah!

Thanks to the irritation with the commercial channels, I have found that there are very interesting conversations on Lok Sabha television. Today, I was listening, unfortunately, to the tail end of a conversation with an MP talking about how important the question hour used to be and these days, it is the one which is routinely disrupted. I recall in my younger days going through the column on questions in the parliament.

By  a coincidence, I saw a TED talk on media should pay attention to non-violent movements in Palestine. It struck me that may be the loss of question hour is related to the same reason. Disruption of the house is exciting news. The commercial channels cover it in great depth. However, questions and answers are not exciting television - unless it is in Kaun Banega Crorepati format.

So, I now have one more grouse against our commercial media. A very unfortunate side effect of commercialisation - the loss of serious discussion in the parliaments.