Paico Classics 5 - Time Machine (Tamil) - கால யந்திரம்

 ஹெச்.ஜி.வெல்ஸ். விஞ்ஞான புதினத்தின் தந்தை. நான் படித்த முதல் வெல்ஸ் நாவல் இது. சுஜாதாவின் விஞ்ஞான கதைகள் மட்டுமே தெரிந்திருந்த நாட்களில் ('என் இனிய இயந்திரா' ஆ.வியில் தொடராக வந்து முடிந்திருந்த நேரம்)  ஹெச்.ஜி.வெல்ஸ் ஒரு புதிய உலகை காட்டினார். உலக இலக்கியத்தை அறிமுகப்படுத்திய ஒரு காரணமே இந்த புத்தகங்களை இத்துனை நாட்கள் வைத்திருக்க செய்தது.

cbr ஆக படிக்க இங்கே சொடுக்கவும்.

Time Machine - கால யந்திரம் - Paico Classics (Tamil) 

Paico Classics 4 - Ivan Hoe (Tamil) - ஐவன் ஹோ

ஐவன் ஹோ. சர் வால்ட்டர் ஸ்காட்டின் இந்த நாவல் முதலில் பைகோ கிளாச்சிக்கில்தான் படித்தேன். கிளாச்சிகில் படிக்கும் போது அவ்வளவு ஈர்ப்பு ஏற்படுத்தாத கதை முழுவதாக 'unabridged'ஆக படிக்கும் போது ஏற்படுத்திய தாக்கம் அதிகம். ஸ்காட்டின் 'கெனில்வொர்த்' நான் ஏற்கனவே படித்து இருந்தேன். ஆனால் ஐவன் ஹோவின் ரொவெனாவும் ரெபேக்காவும் ஈர்த்த அளவிற்கு யாரும் ஈர்க்கவில்லை. 'Romance' எழுதுபவர்கள் ஸ்காட்டை தாண்டி எழுத முடியாது என்பது எனது கருத்து. இன்றும் 'Kenilworth'தும் 'Ivan Hoe'வும் படிக்க ஆரம்பித்தால் முடிக்காமல் கீழே வைப்பது முடியாது.

cbr போர்மட்டில் படிக்க இங்கே செல்லவும்.

Ivan Hoe 

Paico Classics 3 - Twelfth Night (Tamil) - பன்னிரண்டாவது இரவு

'பன்னிரண்டாவது இரவு' - ஷேக்ஸ்பியரின் உலகின் முதல் அறிமுகம். அதுவரை சில கதைகள் படித்திருந்தாலும், முழுவதுமாக படித்த கதை. பன்னிரண்டாம் வகுப்பு விடுமுறையில் ஷேக்ஸ்பியரை முழுதுமாக நேரடியாக படிக்க தூண்டியது இதிலிருந்துதான்.

cbr வடிவில் படிக்க இங்கே கிளிக்கவும்.

Twelfth Night (Tamil) - Paico Classics - பன்னிரண்டாவது இரவு by Muthuprakash Ravindran

Two Heroines

It is not often that one gets to read on the two heroines of the Indian epics side-by-side.

"Sita : An Illustrated Retelling Of The Ramayana" by Devdutt Pattanaik, tells the story of Ramayana from Sita's perspective. The story starts with the birth of Sita and ends with her entering Mother Earth and leaving this world. There were large foot notes in the form of boxes on almost every other page, referring to the different ramayanas and how every situation was handled in each of these.

"To Sleep" a translation of the Malayalam novel "Ini njan urangatte" by P.K.Balakrishnan starts at the end of the eighteen days of war in Mahabharatha. Draupadi, emerging victorious and satisfied in her revenge, lies down to a good sleep. Her peace is shattered when Aswatama kills her sons, thinking them to be the Pandavas. In the aftermath, Kunti reveals to Yudhistar to do the proper cremation for their elder brother, Karna. This devastates Yudhistar and brings forth a reminiscence of the story of Karna. Both lose sleep over the perceived justice and injustice of what has transpired.

There cannot be two more contrasting personalities than Sita and Draupadi. And more than the individual merits of these books, it is what was going on in my mind. I was trying to look at the responses of these ladies to the misfortunes of their life. It is easy to put it as a docile Sita vs a vengeful Draupadi comparison, but it is not so.

Devdutt approaches Ramayana with a clinical precision and it is full of information that you need to read and process while reading the story in between. This kind of distracts the focus from Sita and the tidbits seem to be more interesting. But given that this is how his book is structured, the book is more interesting on the variations of Ramayana in depicting Sita and the other dramatis personae of Ramayana and somewhere, the story of Sita takes a back seat. This is sad because as much as the research he has done, he has woven a more interesting story on Sita with slight variations on the narrative.

Devdutt's Sita comes out as a intelligent girl with a complete balance of  emotions and controlling not just Rama but also Ravana towards the logical conclusion of the tale. She narrates, guides and take the story forward. There are places where she loses her emotional balance, like when she goads Lakshman to go search for the golden-deer chasing Rama. But these come out as a means to take the story forward. She never gets afraid of Ravana but builds rapport with her captors and advises Ravana to surrender whenever she gets a chance. She waits for Rama with a confidence that is beyond a normal person and when Hanuman reaches Lanka, she reacts very matter-of-factually to that.

Sita even teaches the Lankan ladies on the recipes from 'Sita ki Rasoi' and Ravana has to shut it down to send his soldiers to the battlefront. This way, she indulges in a little subversion herself. She takes to the fire looking at Rama's ordeal in accepting her after the captivity and goes to the forest when Rama cannot let her continue as the queen. She reforms Valmiki, raises her children and finally goes into Mother Earth, after handing over the kids to Rama.

Draupadi is quite the opposite. May be she is not a 'God on Earth' and that might be the reason. She is full of doubts. At the moment of victory, it tastes bitter. The elusive sleep she has been searching for years remains elusive. She is not sure of her decision to leave her kids and wander the forests with her husbands. Not sure of the love of her husbands, who in their righteous ways, let her be disrobed. Karna's story evokes in her emotions (not romantic) which makes her wonder about Yudhistar's guilt in the killing of him.

Draupadi comes out as much more human in her quest to find peace in life and Sita's quest seems to be following her Husband's righteous ways. Draupadi questions them. For all the complexities of Sita, I've always wondered why she didn't talk back when asked to get into fire the second time (at least). But in the overall narration of her story, it comes out that it was not in her nature to do so. As the 'patni' of the 'Maryada Purushothaman' she is not supposed to. That ideal is hard to emulate.

Whereas Draupadi strikes a cord when after all the struggles and a horrible war, she tries to re-think her decisions and questioning them altogether. She is not sure which is right. The greyness of life terrifies her. Unable to see life as a black and white reality, she loses her sleep. Haven't we all done that? Life's path is the which is full of doubts about the decisions you've made and many of us lose sleep over it. 

Book Name - 'To Sleep' 
Author - P.K. Balakrishnan
Publisher DC Books
Buy it here or here

Book Name - 'Sita : An illustrated retelling of Ramayana'
Author - Devdutt Pattanaik
Publisher - Penguin
Buy it here or here

Paico Classics 2 - Don Quixote (Tamil) - டான் குவிசாட்

டான் குவிசாட் - உலகின் புகழ் பெற்ற அங்கத நாயகன். கேள்வியே பட்டிராத நாயகர்களை எல்லாம் மதுரையின் ஒரு ஓரத்தில் இருந்த என் போன்றவர்களுக்கு அறிமுகப் படுத்திய புத்தகம். இப்போதும் படிக்கும் போது ஒரு சிரிப்பு வருவதை தவிர்க்க முடியவில்லை. 

Paico Classics - 2 - Don Quixote (in Tamil) - டான் குவிசாட் 

Paico Classics 1 - Prisoner of Zenda (Tamil)

I have a small collection of Tamil Comics which I collected from my school days. The most important one in this collection is the Paico classics series published by the Paico group during the late 1980's. They also published a children's magazine called 'Poonthalir'. This series which came for some time introduced me to the world literature and pushed me to get the books in original, first in abridged forms and then in the unabridged formats. Today, this collection of mine is quite a large one and it all started from these little, 64 page Tamil comics. I wanted to share some of the titles I still have. 

Here is the first one in the list 'The prisoner of Zenda' by Anthony Hope. A romance, this is one of my favorite titles and I read the book in English shortly after from my mother's collection. Later I got to read the full book and found and read a lesser known sequel as well.

என் பள்ளி நாட்களில் இருந்து நான் சேர்த்து வைத்திருக்கும் காமிக்ஸ் புத்தகங்களில் எனக்கு மிகவும் பிடித்தது மற்றும் முக்கியமானதாக நான் கருதுவது பைக்கோ நிறுவனத்தால் வெளியிடப்பட்ட பைக்கோ கிளாசிக்ஸ் வரிசை. உலக இலக்கியத்தின் அறிமுகம் இதன் மூலமே கிடைத்தது. இதில் படித்த புத்தகங்கள் எல்லாவற்றையும் மீண்டும் ஆங்கிலத்தில் முழுமையாக படித்தேன். அதற்கு தேவையான உந்துதலை கொடுத்தது இந்த புத்தகங்கள். என்னிடம் இருக்கும் இந்த புத்தகங்களை இங்கே பகிரப் போகிறேன்.

'செண்டாவின் கைதி' என்னும் இந்த முதல் புத்தகம் ஒரு முழு நீள காதல் மற்றும் அதிரடி திருப்பங்கள் நிறைந்த நாவல். தமிழில் அக்காலத்தில் எடுக்கப்பட்ட பல சரித்திர திரைப்படங்களின் கதை இந்த நாவலை ஒட்டியே இருக்கிறது ('நாடோடி மன்னன்').

Prisoner of Zenda (In Tamil) - செண்டாவின் கைதி

The Strangest man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius

There are scientists whom we revere. Like Newton or Einstein or Feynman, who seem to be extra-ordinarily intelligent and also at the same time, incredibly human. There are those who exist only as names, connected to equations and particle names etc. It is even difficult to imagine them as humans. Paul Dirac comes under the second category.

I came to know about the Dirac notations before I even realized that Dirac is the name of a person rather than an acronym. It was in one of those very interesting books on Quantum Physics written by George Gamow, the eminent Soviet Astronomer/physicist, that I came to know of someone named Dirac. 
Those books were published by the erstwhile Soviet publishers for a pittance in the good old days. I got my introduction into Quantum physics through them.

While Einstein is clearly the leader of the Physicists of the twentieth century, he was just instrumental in starting the movement that ended up creating a new branch of Physics and innumerable discoveries, both theoretically and experimentally, that the list of the Physicists of the first 30 years of the past century is a list of Nobel laureates who were awared the prize as late as the 1980s. 

No wonder,Gamow chose to name his book "Thirty years that shook physics".In the sixth chapter of that book, Gamow discusses Dirac and the way he integrated Quantum physics with the Theory of relativity. In that chapter Dirac emerges as the quintessential British professor, with enough eccentricity to earn Nobel prizes and also discover exciting things like anti-particles. Never thought Gamow could've been so misleading there.

'The Strangest man:The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius' by Graham Farmelo looks at the man behind the eccentric professor and tries to figure how an electrical engineer by training ended up being the youngest Physicist with a Nobel medal. It looks at the complexities of growing up in a dual-language household with a tyrannical father enforcing the rules and the effects it had on Paul Dirac.

Paul Dirac's life starts in pre-WW1 Bristol and ends in Reagan's morning in America. He studies hard, shows his intellect early to be recognized, gets the scholarships that are available and ends up in Cambridge at the right time to start a career in Physics. It was the late 1910s and the war has ended and Einstein has been proven right. The Quantum arm of the Physics was never better and there were exciting theories and experiments going all around. Ernest Rutherford in Cambridge and Neils Bohr in Copanhagen rule the Physics world like a couple of dictators. It was the best of times to be a scientist.

Dirac enters Cambridge with an unusual personality (even for Cambridge) with complete reservedness, a lack of empathy, a complete disdain for protocols and a complete literal-mindedness which is absolutely amusing. Beneath all that facade, Farmelo explores the human lurking inside Dirac. He tries to humanize Dirac from all that comic episodes and de-humanizing anecdotes and sees the little boy terrorized by his father's antics at the dining table that he developed a digestive problem which was not fixed until his last days.

Much of the biography is an effort to bring on this human side of Dirac, with sufficient emphasis on his eccentricities as well. This balancing creates an unlikely hero, who was considered the second-best physicist, only next to Einstein but was all at sea in negotiating the real world much like Einstein did.
Dirac, for all his faults (if they can be called so), developed life-long friendships with a multitude of scientists (Kapitsa, Gamow, Heisenberg) and also rivalries with Pauli. His marriage with Manci ("Wigner's sister") was stable and she provided the space he needed for developing his theories.

Dirac's achievements in Quantum physics are well known (his Positrons, Hole theory, monopoles, string theory etc) and if anything, he deserves more than one Nobel he was awarded. The book also explores his quirkiness by suggesting that it might've been indicative of him being an autistic. There is no proof for it either way. 

The book makes for interesting reading, although by reading about Dirac alone, we are only reading one side of the story of those exciting 30 years. All the names mentioned above, every one of them has won the Nobel for Physics for their work during these years. That just makes the list of books to buy that much longer.

A must-read book if you are remotely interested in science and physics. I would like to quote Pauli on Dirac - "Well, our friend Dirac has got a religion and its guiding principle is 'There is no God and Paul Dirac is His prophet.'"