WRESTLERS, PIGEON FANCIERS AND KITE FLIERS

http://pique.pk/wrestlers-pigeon-fanciers-and-kite-flyers/

Traditional sports and pastimes in Lahore by Jurgen Wasim Frembgen and Paul Rollier

The particular version of ‘Islam’ gaining ground in Pakistan today discourages communal life by denouncing laughter and recreation, and those who indulge in them. As a result the people of Pakistan are increasingly divested of communal activities and ties, and overwhelmed by financial and other pressures. The country is therefore more and more divided along religious, sectarian and ethnic lines. These divisions were never as deep, nor were they ever as raw and exposed.

The two authors of this slim hardbound publication by Oxford University Press Pakistan, 2014, came to the same conclusion when they studied these particular recreational activities (wrestling, pigeon keeping and kite flying) and their status today. These sports may be counted as the three of the most popular recreational pastimes specifically in Lahore’s Walled City which lies at the heart of the city of Lahore.

The authors observe that ‘within the contemporary stream of conservative, and often rigid, scriptural Islam, the passion, pleasure, enjoyment and happiness of a worldly pastime, such as kite flying, is seen…at best…with suspicion and disregard.’ It mentions the maulvi of a mosque near Lahore who said, ‘Basant is a bakvas and un-Islamic activity that has come down to us from Hindus. We must get rid of this curse.’

It was not always this way. Poets have waxed lyrical about these sports and painters have painted them. Said Amir Khusrau: ‘Why are you sleeping, sleepyhead? Your fate does not slumber Celebrate Basant today, O beautiful wife, celebrate Basant today!’

Much earlier in the sixteenth century the Lahori saint Shah Husain invoked this image in his poetry: ‘The Beloved holds the string in his hand, (and) I am his kite.’

The book is an overview rather than an in-depth study, and is extensively researched and includes meticulous references, citations and notes, many photographs and interesting information about these popular sports that one knows little about. Did you know for example that those high tower-like cages made of bamboo and wire built on top of residential houses are actually bird catchers and not the aviaries favoured by pigeon fanciers. The aviaries are spread horizontally and rarely exceed six feet in height. ‘The architecture of the cage therefore indicates whether one keeps pigeons as a hobby or for making a profit.’

We know that Basant heralds a short season of joy before the long hot summer, that it was originally held in Sufi shrines, and that Mirza Ghalib was an avid kite flyer. But then the book covers a variety of kite and string making information, and kite flying techniques which you may not be aware of.

About wrestling one learns that the head (khalifa) of a traditional wrestling gymnasium (akhara) and his students are ‘organised very similarly to the Sufi orders and guilds of craftsmen.’ That before the twentieth century, before the ‘Kalashnikov culture’, the khalifa wielded authority over his area as a local strongman, and often the head of the village who settled disputes. He was respected for his justice, character and skill in wrestling. Members of the akhara were mostly unmarried men, who married once they reached their mid thirties and gave up their active careers.

Recently, the International Olympic Committee ‘revised the rules and Pakistan failed to qualify for the event in the past two Olympics (sic).’ The reason is primarily the failure to adapt to the rules under which wrestling takes place in the Olympics.

Sadly it seems that the ability to adapt has been a problem for each of these sports. In the case of kite flying the baby has been thrown out with the bath water. This is because the string used to fly the kite is at times coated with glass, or wire is used instead, and these have caused many fatalities. People have also died when they lost their balance jumping from rooftop to rooftop in pursuit of a kite. Rather than making arrangements for safer venues and regulating the string used in this sport the celebration of basant has been declared illegal in Pakistan. This book is of value in understanding these issues; at the least it provides an awareness of a rich cultural heritage, at best perhaps solutions to sports which have lost their luster and are threatened with extinction.

About the authors of the book

Jurgen Wasim Frembgen Islamist, anthropologist, writer and Senior Curator of the Islamic Collection at the Munich State Museum of Ethnology is a Professor of History of Religion and Culture of Islam and a visiting Professor in Lahore, and the USA.

Paul Rollier Frembgenan, a PhD in Social Anthropology from SOAS in London was at the time of printing a post doctoral research associate in Social Anthropology at University College, London.

AN INVINCIBLE MEGALOMANIA

http://pique.pk/an-invincible-megalomania/

In his book ‘Orangi Pilot Project: Reminiscences and Reflections,’ Dr Akhtar Hameed Khan says that one of our foremost traits as a nation is orthodoxy, and explains the repercussions: Orthodoxy makes many segments of life sacred; once something becomes sacred, it seems profane to subject it to critical inquiry and reason, and critical inquiry and reason are therefore employed only to uphold the sacred.

History, and our religious figures and heroes are amongst those things that are now sacred, says Dr Khan, and therefore no longer subject to critical analysis. ‘We worship our imperial past,’ he says, ‘and are constantly told that in the past we were the greatest and the best. Therefore logically, we are still the best even if we do not appear to be so. And we can become the greatest again if we take the trouble to follow the example of our ancestors. This ceaseless trumpeting of our greatness,’ says Dr Khan ‘has given us an invincible megalomania.’

A decade and a half after Dr Khan’s death innumerable incidents illustrate his point, especially the case of the Christian couple burnt to death in Kasur, probably the most direct and worst result of national megalomania and delusions of greatness.

The second case  is the JI’s determination to ‘rectify mistakes’ in school curricula in KP, and the third the Higher Education Commission’s instructions to all universities to ‘ ”remain vigilant” against any activity that challenges the ideology and principles of Pakistan and/or the perspective of the government of Pakistan.’

The last two examples stem from and help create further delusion.

The Christian couple (she was pregnant) who worked as bonded labour in Kasur, allegedly made a blasphemous remark. Matters never reached the point of arrest and trial under that other creation of orthodoxy the blasphemy law, another sacred cow which is above criticism, and which would (unfortunately) have applied in this case.  The couple was hounded, tortured by an enraged mob, and burnt to death, possibly while still alive. Horrifyingly, this happened as a result of announcements from mosques urging people to act.

Zeeshan Hasan (who holds a Masters degree in Theological studies), discusses blasphemy and the death penalty in a recent article and says that ‘Hadith does not provide support for the death penalty to be applied to a non-Muslim who is guilty of blasphemy,’ he says, ‘nor is what might constitute such blasphemy even defined.’

If Islam is a peaceful, compassionate, reasonable religion, one can only conclude that the reason for the bestiality that resulted in Shama and Shahzad’s death lies in flawed teaching in schools and other places of learning, where as Dr Khan says enquiry and reason are inhibited and restricted  producing an ‘invincible megalomania’ that in turn feeds upon and is fed by laws such as the law against blasphemy.

In Pakistan, education is provided by government schools and madrasahs. Private schools cater to the very few. Madrasahs, once teaching religious as well as secular subjects now teach religious subjects alone.  An estimate in 2008 put the number of madrasahs in Pakistan at over 40,000.

Madrasahs and their orthodox teachings are fertile ground for militants, although in itself a madrasah if regulated is a benign entity. In fact, in a place like Pakistan the contribution of madrasahs even as they are cannot be disregarded because they are the only source of education for many children whose numbers far outweigh the number of militants produced.  Orthodoxy of course has other major social repercussions, but these are not under discussion here.

Without going into the low standard of our books and curricula (once again not under discussion here), it is enough to note the presence of orthodoxy and absence of critical inquiry in books meant for young readers and in government curricula. Below are just a few examples.

A Pakistan studies text book for students of Class nine states that a major result of the 1965 War between Pakistan and India was that ‘Pakistan got international fame and it elevated its dignity’ (sic). Another major result was apparently that ‘Pakistan learned that America and Europeans had two face characters’ (sic).

When speaking of the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971, the book says that the Mukti Bahini killed numerous Pakistani soldiers and ordinary citizens. Thousands of Bengalis also massacred, are not mentioned.

‘The negative role of Hindu teachers’ in Bengal is given as a major reason for the separation of Pakistan’s eastern wing. Apparently they ‘tarnished the minds of new Bengali generation with the idea of Bengali nationalism and prepared them to rebel against the ideology of Pakistan’ (sic)’.

The preface to a popular Urdu series of books for children claims that (translated): ‘this series highlights the great and golden achievements of our heritage so that our children who will control our  future may be mentally well nurtured and informed.’ The preface goes on to say that the publishers feel it their duty to lay before their readers those achievements of our heritage that astound the world.’ One of the books in this series deals with the great achievements of the Mughal emperor Alamgir, who, the book claims, was a great and a true Muslim. It cites his virtues, among which was that he did  not tolerate non-Muslims at all, although he never did any non-Muslim who rightly deserved it out of a promotion in his government. Bravo. Especially since this is the same Aurangzeb who kept his father confined until his death and brutally murdered two of his own brothers to prevent their accession to the throne, who is now being cited as a role model for the future generation of Pakistanis.

Therefore we have a country where non Muslims are not tolerated, where mistakes in the curricula have been ‘rectified’ to project an ideology and a set of principles that may not be examined or criticised, producing a generation disinclined to examine and criticise its past or present because, among other reasons it is unaware of what the past contains that may contradict the said ideology or set of principles.

Is it any wonder then that in Pakistan minorities live in fear of their lives, education is scant and questionable, time is shrouded…the past changed or obliterated, the future in uncertainty, and people live amidst serious concerns for peace, stability and their lives?

NAWAZISH...AND THE CHAI PANI ROUTINE

http://pique.pk/nawazishand-the-chai-pani-routine/

Every year in the British Houses of Parliament a gentleman called ‘The Black Rod’ carrying an ebony stick (engraved with a motto: Shame be to him who evil thinks), wearing black buckled shoes, silk stockings and black breeches marches up to the door of the Commons chamber.

His job is to summon the Members of Parliament to the House of Lords to hear the Queen’s speech at the traditional State Opening of Parliament ceremony. Well, the door of the chamber opens only to be slammed shut in the Black Rod’s face and is not re-opened until the Rod has knocked on it thrice with his stick.

The above is a re-enactment of an incident that occurred in 1641 when King Charles I entered the House of Commons accompanied by armed guards to arrest five members of Parliament. The King believed that these men were plotting against him and he tried to arrest them on a charge of treason.

This set off a chain of events that resulted in the Civil War, and in King Charles l losing his head, literally. The re-enactment symbolises the Commons’ refusal to be pushed around by the Monarch or any member of the House of Lords, it symbolises in short the independence of the House of Commons. This independence is underlined by the members of that House of Commons making their noisy way in a disorderly group to the House of Lords to hear the monarch’s speech.

Do you suppose the day will ever come when our traditions will reflect (in such humorous, interesting ways) our independence from whatever it is we need to be free from now, something we need to commemorate?  Let’s take it province wise.

In the KP, many, years from now on a declared public holiday, the following ritual might possibly take place: starting in Karak all the way to Peshawar, a group of women, and women alone will march boldly through streets and bazaars decorated with buntings and flags for this occasion.  Heads held high, the women will push away any man who tries to stop them, and several will try to bar their way, but only ritualistically.  New groups of women will join the procession along the way and those who are tired will stop, to be elaborately feted by onlookers. Until at the main gate to the Peshawar University, the gatekeeper, a man with a long beard tries one last time to bar their entrance.  The women surround him will laugh as a body, whereupon he covers his face with a wail, and stands aside to let them in. This will be a symbolic reference to the time, perhaps a hundred years earlier when the elders and scholars of the community dared to stop women from leaving their homes without a man, or from getting an education. The day will be called Malala day. It will also be a national holiday.

In Baluchistan, years from now, will be a sort of pantomime in which young men are wrestled to the ground by others dressed in what looks suspiciously like military uniforms. Accompanied by boos and dodging the occasional tomato from spectators, the attackers will take the young men, now hooded, away with them. The crowd re-assembles that same evening to watch the same young men spring out at their captors and take them away to jail where everyone eventually gets together for a celebration. This day will be called Recovered Person’s day.  It will of course celebrate a time when persons no longer go missing in Baluchistan

In Sindh will be ceremonies in which shops and other businesses will have their doors knocked on by men, who when the door is opened stick out their hand, obviously demanding money. In a gesture strikingly like the Black Rod re-enactment, each shop keeper slams his door in the man’s face, leaving him to face a rain of squishy tomatoes from the crowd. This day will be calledBhatta day, to commemorate freedom from the time businesses were forced to pay ‘protection money’ and there was no official protection from this extortion.

In the Punjab there will be a street event like an obstacle race open to all citizens. Participants will be required to bypass various large transport containers and plaster lions to reach certain nominated tandoors, where the winners receive halwa poori on the house. Nothing galvanises a Lahori as much as the prospect of halwa poori and they almost all get around the containers one way or another.  The provincial government initially objected to the prize, saying that to feed so many people was exorbitantly expensive, but nothing else would satisfy the public; the government had to give in and agree to feed practically the entire city because by the time these events take place you see, governments in this country will be more representative than they are now, and particularly in matters such as these they will knew where their duty lies. We all know what this is meant to commemorate. Let’s just wait for the story to complete itself.

Meantime in Islamabad an annual tradition, the oldest of all, occurs just prior to the Budget speech. Just as the Prime Minister reaches out to pick up the papers on which his speech is written, a man dressed as The Common Man marches up to the podium and pours a cup of oil all over the Prime Minister’s palm. This is meant to recall the time when government officials were used to having their palms greased. The tradition is that when the oil is poured over his palm the Prime Minister must strike himself on the forehead with his dirty hand in eternal penance on behalf of his office, bow to The Common Man, and say, ‘Nawazish!’ After this he is free to proceed with details of the budget, his dripping oily forehead a reminder for him to be honest with the nation’s funds. Oh and this event will be called the ‘Chai Pani routine’. By the time all this happens, no one will know exactly why this name sounds so right, but it just will.

THE MUSICAL WORLD OF S.D BURMAN

http://pique.pk/an-immortal-musician/

By Rabia Ahmed - 

SUN MERE BANDHU RAY: The Musical World of S.D Burman by Sathya Saran

Sachin Dev Burman … we know him as S.D Burman … is the singer and composer who gave us ‘jalte hain jiske liye’ and other such memorable music almost until the day he died in 1976. This is his biography, published this year by Harper Collins India. The author is Sathya Saran, an Indian journalist, herself a consulting editor for Harper Collins India. The book takes its name from another of Burman’s songs, composed and sung in 1959 by Burman himself for the movie Sujata.

Burman was born in 1906 in Comilla to a royal family of Bengal. His father wanted him to be a lawyer, but Burman dropped out of University while doing his Masters to train as a singer.  He started by teaching music, composing for plays and films, and singing both classical, and songs for films.

In a decision for which it must never have stopped kicking itself, Burman and K.L Saigal were both rejected by His Master’s Voice (HMV) and were both signed on by its competitor, Hindustan Musical Products. 

K.C Dey, Manna Dey’s uncle, was one of Burman’s music teachers. Saran’s description of the most important lesson Burman learnt from Dey is striking. One evening, she said, he decided to sing in the dark. He shut the doors and windows and let the dark take hold of him. He covered his eyes to ensure that no light fell upon the closed lids. Then, sitting cross legged with his tanpura, he shut his eyes and started to sing.

‘He had never sung like this before. He could feel every note vibrating in his body, swirling through his arteries and coursing through his veins, clear and separate, then welding in the other to form the raga.’ The exercise helped him understand how his teacher sang the way he did, because of course, K.C Dey was blind. ‘He gave his music what eyes could not have given it, emotion. He sang with his heart.’ 

Burman remembered this lesson all his life; he did give his music his heart, and his undoubted talent brought early recognition.  He had a distinctive singing voice which has been described as nasal, but can also be described as ‘haunting’. It had the simple carrying quality of a fisherman’s song that floats across the water to the river bank. 

Burman married his student Mira Dasgupta, herself a talented musician. Saran wonders why her singing talents were never used by her husband: ‘Was it a classic case of not seeing a gem so close to home due to creative short sightedness, or a question of market preferences?’

Burman also wrote about himself in a slim volume called Sargamer Nikhad, but the book is in Bengali, and he was a musician, not a writer.  Neither, unfortunately is the author of this book.  She is however a successful editor and journalist, and has received several awards for her journalism, which is how she manages to convey a certain atmosphere in this book, and does tell you all of the above and more about Burman’s life, about his family and childhood, the influences on his talent, his marriage and career.  She also provides interesting details about many of the songs sung and composed by this phenomenal man, making it one of the few books a reader sings his way through.

This is Saran’s second book. She has also written a biography of Guru Dutt.  When she came to write this one, she says she ‘put aside everything I had read as notes and interviews. I listened to the songs, I let myself listen to the world around me as someone who heard only the music in every sound, and the book began to take shape in my mind.’  She had decided, she said, ‘on a new approach to the narrative altogether.’

Unfortunately that approach results in a haphazard narrative that includes odd unrelated interludes, and switches narrator with little warning. The appendix however contains quotes, snippets of interviews, opinions of Burman and his music, recollections and anecdotes, all of which would have been better incorporated into the main body of the text.  But never mind.  You will, if you read this book, learn a fair bit about a wonderful singer, and will as mentioned before sing your way through the entire book.  How often can you say that about a book? Not often at all.

THE SUNSHINE VITAMIN, WHY WE NEED IT, HOW TO GET IT

http://pique.pk/the-sunshine-vitamin-why-we-need-it-how-to-get-it/

Soranus, a Greek physician practising in Rome in the 2nd century AD wrote about patients presenting with soft bones and terrible deformities. Frustratingly, he didn’t know what caused this. The patients he observed had ‘rickets’; the name first appeared in 1634 in a record of deaths and casualties among the people of London.

In the 20th century a deficiency of Vitamin D, and therefore low calcium absorption was identified as the cause, since Vitamin D enables the absorption of calcium. Rickets, a childhood disease, is the severe form of this deficiency.

Vitamin D also keeps the immune system working, therefore a deficiency of Vitamin D could be a contributing factor towards other diseases as well such osteoporosis, dementia, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, several autoimmune diseases, cancer, psychiatric disorders, obesity, fibromyalgia, psoriasis, chronic fatigue syndrome, asthma and other pulmonary dysfunctions.

It was also discovered in the twentieth century that an adequate exposure to sunlight, which is easily absorbed by the skin and contains abundant Vitamin D, is a free and simple cure for this deficiency. Startlingly, Vitamin D deficiency is very common in Pakistan.  In this sun drenched region this is like running out of ice in the Arctic Circle.

Prevention and cure are unfortunately not simply a matter of improving the diet. Food as a source of Vitamin D is relatively less important because Vitamin D occurs naturally in very few foods. Cod liver oil contains high but still insufficient levels. Other foods such as egg yolks, certain fresh fish and mushrooms also contain Vitamin D but you would need for example more than ten eggs from un-caged hens daily for your requirements. In some countries Vitamin D is added to cereals, margarine and orange juice, but not in Pakistan.  In this country the bulk of the population lives below the poverty line and few people have access to healthy or sufficient food.  To expect them to afford, say, cod liver oil is like Marie Antoinette’s suggestion of cake for the poverty stricken French masses.

Luckily Pakistan is blessed with abundant sunshine. The best way and free way to get Vitamin D therefore, is for every man, woman and child with an average skin colour to expose as much skin as possible to the sun for several minutes a day.  The amount of sun required for persons with fairer skin is less, because fair skin absorbs the sun more easily and is prone to serious damage as a result of over exposure to the sun. For both though, the requisite Vitamin D in the blood is a minimum of around 20 (ng)/mL.  The ideal winter level is approximately 35-40 (ng)/mL.

Treatment is of course at the discretion of a physician who can explore the reliability of a blood test result in the presence of other factors. However, broad new guidelines indicate that the average Vitamin D requirement is 1000 IU per day.

Many Pakistanis have no choice except to toil in the sun, still, acquiring fair skin appears to be a national obsession, one that even respected public figures capitalise on.  People resorting to bleach and skin whitening creams and soaps are unlikely to expose themselves to the sun.

There is also the cultural taboo against women baring much skin. Therefore:

Doctor to a patient who is severely deficient in Vitamin D: ‘Which part of your house receives the most sun?’

Patient: ‘The roof.’

Doctor: ‘Well then, I want you to sit on the roof with your shalwar pulled up to the knees and your sleeves above your elbows for some time every day. It’s better if you do this in the morning because morning sunlight is most beneficial.’

By his own reckoning the doctor had dealt rather well with the matter, because the woman, covered from head to toe in a black burka could hardly be advised to don short sleeves in public.  But, the patient laughing mirthlessly reminded the doctor that he reckoned without the testosterone filled head of the household.  She was, she said, never allowed on the roof which is overlooked by three neighbouring houses.

Until the matter is dealt with on other fronts therefore these recommendations can only be reiterated, that a person with Vitamin D deficiency should eat foods rich in Vitamin D, but more important, he or she should expose as much skin as possible to sunlight every day as mentioned earlier. Male patients should be able to comply easily; women must find a spot not overlooked by another house, out of bounds to male servants, inaccessible to male visitors and then comply with these crucial instructions if so permitted by the resident testosterone.

The following advice should be taken ONLY following professional medical guidance: As per current guidelines, in addition to exposure to sunlight persons with Vitamin D deficiency should take a 50,000 IU tablet of Vitamin D plus the regular requirement of Calcium once a week for four to six weeks, and then drop the dose to 50,000 IU every eight weeks for as long as supported by continuing blood tests.

As an alternative to the expensive tablets a vial of Vitamin D meant to be injected may be taken orally if the vial is broken with care and the liquid strained.

Women in purdah should use light coloured fabric, in as light a weave as possible to permit some sunlight through the layers of cloth to the skin.  Given their many constraints the people of Pakistan obviously need to work on their religio-social priorities and then manage as well as they can. In most countries the government would help, but perhaps it’s best not to go there for now.

HYPERBOLE AND A HALF by Allie Brosh

http://pique.pk/hyperbole-and-a-half-humorous-but-not-ridiculous/

I don’t seem to have reviewed a single humorous book unless you count ‘Happy Things in Sorrow Times’ as such, and that was ridiculous, not humorous, a kind of foolish, mirthless third cousin. This month therefore I’ve chosen ‘Hyperbole and a Half,’ a book by Allie Brosh.  Actually, its full name is: ‘Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened.’ If I didn’t review it now, the name alone should tell you something.

Brosh decided in 2009 to become an internet blogger. ‘This was a horrible idea for too many reasons,’ she writes, ‘but the decision wasn’t really based on logic.’ So Allie started her blog which you may find at hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com.  ‘Things sort of spiralled from there,’ said Allie, which means that the blog, with its combination of humour and primitive MS Paint illustrations, became a huge success. When in 2011 she went offline for more than a year thousands of fans agonised over the reason and were delighted when she resurfaced in 2013, to announce that she was putting together a book, and this is that book, a graphic novel, published in October 2013 by Simon and Schuster.

A book however was only one reason for Brosh’s disappearance. The other was a severe bout of depression.

Several well known persons have struggled with depression; you’d know Kurt Cobain was depressed by his lyrics, you can imagine Dostoyevsky with depression, and definitely Edgar Allen Poe.  Many have employed humour so effectively that depression is not evident, Douglas Adams who wrote the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, for example, and Stephen Fry of Jeeves fame, and Mark Twain.  Allie Brosh writes about her depression and discusses her suicidal urges and feelings of despair.  ‘I just woke up one day feeling sad and helpless for absolutely no reason,’ she writes.

This candour is one reason for the popularity of her blog and this book. Psychologists have called it the ‘most insightful depiction of depression to date’. Readers who suffer from depression, and there are many, relate closely to her writing.  She speaks of her adulthood and her childhood, of panic, of motivating herself to action by means of fear and shame, and about the times she cannot bring herself to do simple tasks.  She tells how returning a movie once became an insurmountable challenge: ‘surely I have more control over my life than this. Surely I wouldn’t allow myself to NEVER return the movie.’ But that’s exactly what happened. ‘After thirty five days, I decided to just never go back to Blockbuster again.’

‘Most people can simply motivate themselves to do things,’ she says, ‘but not me. For me motivation is this horrible, scary game where I try to make myself do something while I actively avoid doing it…I never know whether I’m going to win or lose until the last second.’

In spite of this she is hilarious, and her crude illustrations extremely expressive. In an incident where her mother baked a cake for her grandmother, Allie describes how she tried to get at the cake by every means at her disposal, until finally her mother locked it into a room. Allie managed to break in and eat the entire cake then spent the entire evening in a hyperglycaemic fit.

The funniest sections of her book prose and graphic are those that deal with her two dogs, simple dog, and helper dog. Allie and her husband got ‘helper dog’ to make life more interesting for ‘simple dog’ and ended up making life challenging for them all, if you can imagine a dog crouching in the corner of your room at night, rigid as a block of wood, just staring at you all night long. The helper dog moreover, as far as Brosh can tell, believes firmly that other dogs should not exist. That they do fill her ‘with uncontrollable, psychotic rage,’ and throws her into a hysterical fit of ‘scream barking,’ (I love that term and have lost count of the times I have been able to apply it since).  But ‘’she can’t do anything to prevent the world from containing dogs, so instead, she is determined to make sure that no other dogs enjoy existing.’’

Hyperbole and a Half: the book became a New York Times bestseller and remained on the NPR Non-fiction Bestseller list for twenty nine weeks.

THE SILKWORM: a book review

http://pique.pk/the-silkworm/

Following on ‘Cuckoo’s Calling’, the first book in the Cormoran Strike series by J K Rowling aka Robert Galbraith is ‘The Silkworm’, so called because it is English for ‘Bombyx Mori,’ which in turn is the name of a novel written by Quine, one of the characters in the book, the plot of which has a bearing on the story. A Bombyx Mori is the larva of a silk moth cultivated for the silk of the cocoon it spins. The larva must be destroyed before it becomes a pupa, or the silk is ruined by a chemical the pupa secretes.

I mentioned, when I reviewed Cuckoo’s Calling a year ago, that to pass the acid test Galbraith/Rowling must exorcise the ghost of Harry Potter. Well, Cormoran Strike, the private investigator central to this series, a flawed hero carrying over two stone of excess weight now stands with both feet firmly planted on the ground, which is quite an achievement since he’s missing a leg below the knee.
Having said that it’s worth noting that half the characters in this book, all writers or publishers, would be quite at home in Knockturn Alley, a street in Potter’s London devoted to the Dark Arts.

Strike is not a great reader, or a man who has patience with celebrities, but after being hired to investigate the disappearance of Owen Quine the writer, he finds himself breathing the rarefied air of celebrities belonging to writing circles. Most of these people appear in some shape or form in Quine’s book: Leonara, Quine’s wife, as a demon, Quine’s girlfriend as a harpy, another friend as a slave to the harpy, and yet another as a parasitic woman who leeches off Quine; other people, all of them writers or publishers, feature as trolls, murderers, and torturers… which explains the observation regarding Knockturn Alley and makes you wonder if Rowling’s relationship with her publishers has been entirely amicable.

The characters are drawn with Rowling’s usual attention to detail from the forlorn Leonora, to the overbearing author Kathryn Kent who specialises in erotica, to Robin, Strike’s assistant who aspires to become an investigator herself. Strike, a meticulous man, has his emotions and experiences with his ex fiancée, his famous father, family and friends explored with ruthless accuracy. Strike wouldn’t like that if he knew it. He is the man on your bus ‘scowling, effortlessly and silently repelling anyone who might consider sitting on the seat beside him’… an endearing man in spite of that, and he would hate to hear that too.

Rowling’s disdain for the privileged classes comes through in this book as in her others, in for example her description of Strike and Robin’s visit to the home of Daniel Chard, a massive oblong, skeletal house without walls, constructed entirely of glass and metal, and the description of Chard’s manners. Chard is the president of Roper Chard, a London publishing house specialising in modern literature.
Her empathy for the less fortunate is also obvious. It is a trait that Strike shares, taking on Leonora’s case as he did with little regard for payment, the chance of which appeared slim at the time.

Rowling is still too descriptive. There are times when you wonder if a particular detail has any bearing on the story, and if not why it’s mentioned so carefully. She misses nothing, not even a cat walking on the edge of a balcony; the cat actually reappears, very briefly and is acknowledged as ‘the same cat’ at another visit to the same house. On the flip side if she did not visualise her stories in such minute detail she could never have given us this new series with its intricate twists of plot and subplot. Unlike with some other writers these descriptions are only sometimes irksome. Because of them London comes alive, a London that Rowling obviously knows very well, both its underbelly and its supercilious side.

All told, my only real problem with this book is that it has left me feeling rather uneasy about publishers in general, which is unfair, it’ll go away, Pique. I’m hoping there’ll be another book in the series. I want to know what happens to Strike and to the other people in his life.