J by Howard Jacobson: Book Review

A catastrophe has broken out in the past which has somehow transformed the society and culture.  With that in the background in a distant memory, the novel begins when the lead characters, Kevern Cohen, a young paranoid male and Ailinn Solomons, a young female from the orphanage and adopted later, meet each other and fall in love. The story is like driving in an unknown territory in a dense fog with no clues as to where or to what the author is driving. The story progresses slowly with melodramatic and emotional reactions of the couple with a few references to the forefathers of Kevern Cohen. Sometimes the author narrates through the eyes of a professor who vacillates between like and dislike for the couple. And then there at the heart of the plot is Esme Nussbaum who is seeing the chinks and faulted lines in the new world.

The story becomes more and more intriguing as it is revealed that it was not a mere coincidence that the couple met, that there are forces that throw the two into each other’s arms.

Such is the brilliance of the author Howard Jacobson that at times you will feel like shelving the book without finishing it but you will read it to the end and once you have finished reading it you will want to read it again.

In a scale of 10 we give it 8.5, a must read book which was short-listed for the Man- Booker Prize of 2014.

The Hidden Enemy Part VI: Ego & Meditation

Continued from Part V 
The Sages of Ancient India, after years and years of meditation found out that Ego is nothing but one’s image on oneself or in simple words what one thinks one is. They established that the birth of Ego was the result of living in society. It is the by product of interaction with people. It is born when people around us start telling us what they think we are, directly through words and indirectly through their behaviour towards us, i.e. how they treat us. It may however be noted that we too are doing the same thing to others through our speech and behaviour. We too are contributing in creation of Ego in others.

The Ego comes into force only when you see a person and then as you grow up, even when you might be alone with no one around, Ego still remains there because now people have entered your thoughts. Every thought passing or hovering in your mind is always with respect to someone or the other. Ego has now become a permanent force within you. You have now reached a state where a people less universe seems meaningless to you, where you think that everything is only about people, everything is people centric and thus you lose all the connection you had initially with reality. People mean the world to you and it is only about people or with respect to people that you can think.

The individual as a consequence is launched into a spiralling trap in which the Ego grows within and soon usurps the self and assumes full command. We no longer behave rationally and are always doing our level best to be as irrational and stupid as we can be and as a consequence, we are constantly hurting ourselves and placing ourselves in a state of quandary ending up feeling miserable. The most surprising thing is that we never realise that we are putting ourselves in the hands of misfortune and are always looking out into the world to blame something or the other for our state of misery. But blaming has never yielded results. It has only been substantial in strengthening Ego.

The life becomes full of sorrow, misery, grief compelling the individual to be restless, impatient and attracted towards the useless things in the world, running about arbitrarily and randomly and always driven by mood swings. They concluded that this is what the Ego does once it has assumed full command over the individual.

They likened Ego to the mythical ghost that enters inside one’s body and possesses the individual taking full command and control of the individual. It is no doubt that Ego is in itself a false apparition just like a ghost and controls the brain.

The Sages of Ancient India asserted that unless and until one rids oneself of this deep malaise one has got oneself into, one cannot live life the way nature had intended one to live it and the purpose of life will never be known to the individual who dies struggling.

They insisted that it is the prime responsibility of every individual to first rid oneself of the Ego before all else for without getting rid of the false apparition which has taken over, the life will be full of troubles and tragedies.                                                             

The first step in this direction starts with realisation that all our sufferings are coming from the Ego that is well entrenched within us. We should see that it is the centre that commands us and that we are now ruled by the Ego and not by our self. We should realise that the source of all our miseries is the Ego within us. The image of ourselves on us is the real trouble maker.

The process of realisation starts with meditation. To meditate simply means to think. You just have to sit in a peaceful place in a posture in which you feel comfortable and close your eyes. Once you start meditating, various thoughts will cross your mind. All you have to do is just ignore those thoughts and try to look within for the source of your sufferings, your miseries and your misfortunes. You will see how your self-image has made a simple life so complicated for you.

It is advisable that you should meditate for an hour each in the morning and in the evening and also when you are not meditating, you should retain this thought throughout the day about the hidden enemy within. Every time you will feel bad or miserable in the day, you should close your eyes for a few moments and again try to locate the source of misery within you.
It will help if you start your meditation with a silent prayer that the source of all your miseries is your Ego and that you want to get rid of it.

After being continuously vigilant of your sufferings and miseries and carefully locating the sources tracing them to the Ego, you will eventually internalise this realisation that your self-image is the culprit and by and by you will see your true self emerge and take over.

                                        ......  To be concluded

The Wondrous Youth

The Wondrous Youth

We walked
In the town of our youth 

In endless circumambulations

On the periphery of the lake
Watching its shades
Changing colours 
From silvery to blue
From green to asphalt

From dawn to dusk

For as long as

The lights allowed.

There were

Many a walking breaks

Hither & thither

While shaking hands

Failing yet again

In conjuring a witty

Humorous and piquant

Original reply to every

How are you

Where have you been

How was your day

Or a long time no see

Greeting

Those known faces

But not known

Otherwise

To where they lived

Who they were

How they lived.

Sometimes chancing upon

The self made elders

Patting keep it ups

Love your attitude

On the lucky achievers

And to the timorous

Struggling within like me

Slapping innuendos

In quivering smile

In disparaging

Sympathy of lost hope.

And the occasional breaks

At tea and coffee joints

Listening to

Who thought what
And fiery debates

On news articles

On movies

On politics of war
On love of fashion

On the decreasing

Standards and values

Reaching dead end

Stifling yawn

And we move out

Some of us

To The Billiards Room

The Club, The Library.

And rest of us

Looking for someone to love

Who'd love back

The same way

As we thought we’d love

For the beauty that

Walked the grace

Of the greyish winter Oaks

Of the auburn autumn maples

In hope to find her

In the evening crowd

With stirred heart storms

Left to be dissolved

Into thin air

Blowing from the lake

Across the years

Across the youth

In the beating

Umbrella-less showers

In the soaked socks

Through the film

Of smouldering smoke

From fallen brown leaves

Crushing below the shoe

Of desolate abandoned walks

Jumping those sprightly steps

Trying to find desperately

 Something to weave through

The dark grey winters

Looking up at stars

That faded too quick

Into shards of emptiness

Wishing to one day

To stumble upon the dream

In a silent promise

To find her

This time round come spring.

                                           poem by Ramakant Pande