HARUKI MURAKAMI

DIVE INTO THE PHENOMENON

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer who either you fall in love with or end up simply hating. But once you pick a Murakami book you will not escape untouched.

He has a quality that draws you into his books, gradually making you a part of his world. A world which is full of detachment, love, loneliness and longing. It draws on elements of magical realism and sometimes dystopian themes. They feel surreal and melancholic. He at times dabbles in science fiction and alternate reality. 

His books are usually very smooth and easy to follow. What is difficult to fathom is the complexity of themes and plots.

He started a coffee house and Jazz bar in Tokyo before he dabbled in writing. No wonder his books are sputtered with references to music and his artistic tastes.

If I’ve piqued your interest and you’ve never ventured into the Murukami world, now is the time.

But where to start? There are tons of reviews, videos and fan clubs who have analysed his works. It is a wonder in itself. He is a rockstar writer!

But for a start you can pick up his classics. Not in any particular order, but they will introduce you to his world.

1. Norwegian Woods: His claim to stardom. It’s hauntingly beautiful and melancholic. A movie based on it is also worth a watch. (After you have read the book.)
2. Kafka on the shore: A complex and psychologically thrilling plot. Two story lines run in parallel. Don’t start with this one. A bit complex to understand.
3. Killing Commendatore: His latest and his ode to The Great Gatsby. Super read!
4. Wind-Up Bird Chronicles: Elements of realism and fanaticism dwelling into the issues of physical violence. A brain twisting experience.
5. IQ84: His magnum opus. Initially published in three volumes in Japanese, is one of the most critically acclaimed work. His take on the Orwellian world! These should be enough to get you started. Most of his books are fairly voluminous. IQ94 runs into 1200 pages. But many are manageable. Like Norwegian Woods.

If you like his work, I would love to mention that his hard copies are worth spend your bucks on. Lovingly crafted and unique ideas. Like his new one Killing Commendatore. Do give it a try.

This is just a starting point. The Murakami world is big, diverse and rich. Happy diving.

Brahmatal Summit

Brahmatal Summit

The joy of winter trekking

Mt Trishul from Jhandi Top

“It is always the same with mountains. Once you have lived with them for any length of time, you belong to them. There is no escape.”

Ruskin Bond so aptly said those words. Having stayed for a significant amount of time due my profession in mountains, staying away from them makes me go back to them. Away from them, I develop a craving for them. I feel those pangs coming back to me, drawing me towards them. A magical call of the wild mountains.

Those who dance are considered insane

By those who do not hear the music.

To those who are enthralled by mountains,

They’re wonders beyond all disputes.

To those who are not

They are always a kind of madness.

Yes, it was considered madness, when I booked those tickets and I headed for a trek organized by India-Hikes. It was just a week before the actual departure that I did it. I was in doubt, thinking if I was doing the right thing . . . .

It was  after a gap of twenty-one years that I was embarking on such an adventure. I had done such treks way back when I was young and in college. It was a long time back. I have seen a lot of things in these long years and I’ve witnessed some of the most thrilling places in the Himalayas—at extreme temperatures and at very high altitudes. But it was in a different setting and situation.

This was something new. But I was sure I wanted to do it. And did I repent it? 

Not a bit. Read on as I unfold the adventure.

The adventure started at Rishikesh as I travelled all by myself. I decided to stay in a hostel, frequented by back packers. This was to be a new experience, as I had always stayed in the conventional touristy hotels.

The comfort and the style these comfy low budget hostels offered, really impressed me. Catering to a largely foreign crowd, this is a very affordable way to travel. All the modern amenities you expect from a decent hotel are packed in a format of hostel. 

Fine linen, comfortable beds, clean washrooms and ample storage space—everything you require is thoughtfully provided. Add to this the yuppie and hep ambience, and it definitely becomes  a heady cocktail!

Our trek members assembled at Rishikesh Zostel at six o'clock  in the morning, where we all met for the first time. It was to be our assembly point. From here we set out on our long and arduous journey to Lohajung Base Camp. We travelled 300 km in a Tempo Traveler absorbing the holy sights of Karna Prayag and Rudra Prayag on the way. 

The team started getting to know each other and gelling together, as we talked, exchanged notes and lunched together. By the time we reached Lohajung we already felt like old friends!

Lohajung at 7,600 ft above msl is an idyllic village. The ascent was very steep and the meandering road very narrow, as it made its way through a dense forest cover. 

As we stepped out of our vehicle the intense cold hit us, making us shiver down to the bones. It was an indication of the things to come. We parked ourselves in the guest house with basic facilities. This was the last taste of modern amenities as we would head off into the wilderness the next morning.

After dinner, we spent time packing and arranging our rucksacks for the trek. Getting the right equipment and stuff was so crucial. We scurried to the store to rent or buy our missing stuff—a pair of socks or a woolen cap or may be a pocho!

A pre-trek briefing and medical was done by the extremely professional trek organisers.

We started our trek early in the morning with high spirits. The trail was moderately difficult as it ascended from the base camp. Enroute we appreciated the flora and fauna of the Chamoli hills. The white & red oaks, the rhodendrons and the firs.

The trail was snow clad in its last stretch as we approached the Bekaltal campsite. The first sight and touch of snow was full of wonder and amazement. For some, it was the first time—a brush with the snow. And no wonder they were filled with a child-like glee!

The Bekaltal camp site was at Khopadalia perched at 9689 ft and was partially covered  with snow. Everywhere we looked, it looked white. The little tents we were provided were crampy but comfortable. Being surrounded by snow and slush made it very difficult to get in and out of the tent. 

The simple, sumptuous and hot food we consumed in the dining tent was an experience in itself. The food simply tasted so much better after our long and tiring day. And thereafter the stories, jokes, games and experiences shared made it very memorable. More than anything, we already felt like a team. And mind you, all of us had barely met thirty-six hours before!

Next morning our Trek leader made us do warming up exercises before we started for the next camp. This was to be a steep climb through three to four feet of snow. We put on micro-spikes on our shoes and were ready to plod through the snow trail.

We stopped at the temple of Bekaltal. Legend has it that Brahma had done penance at Brahmatal lake and had hidden himself in Bekaltal.

The adjoining lake was completely frozen. It was indeed a very pretty site to watch it surrounded by alpine trees on all sides. 

Bekaltal has a mythological background. It is believed that it houses the Kali Nag which has been blessed by Vishnu and has his abode here. His venom has no effect on the water and is safe for consumption.

Next day we set out for our next camp, which was located on the ridge-line leading to the Jhandi top. We trudged on heavy snow to gradually gain height. After about two hours we reached the ridge which allowed us to have views on both the sides of the ridgeline. The majestic views of Mt Nanda Ghunti and Mt Trishul in front and the views of the famous meadows of Ali and Bedni Bugyals of the Roopkund trail.

Pic Credit : Sudeep Shyamal

The campsite itself was on the open ridge and was extremely cold and windy. The setting sun gave us ample opportunities for capturing exotic photo frames. 

The temperatures drastically dropped to sub-zero as the sun set. The weather deteriorated in the night and we witnessed heavy snowfall all through the night.

We delayed our climb to Jhandi top the next day. Once the snowfall eased a bit and weather  partially cleared, we  made our move.

The climb to Jhandi top was steep and through knee deep snow. It was extremely windy and the chill made the progress very slow and difficult. But the effort was worth while.

Mt Trishul : Up and Close

The view from Jhandi Top is mesmerizing as we witnessed Mt Trishul in its full glory. It felt so close. Close to the might of the mountain and also to the holiness it signified. It felt that we were really in Dev Bhoomi now.

But it again started snowing and became very windy. We debated if we should proceed and attempt the summit of Brahmatal. We succumbed to the allure of the summit and forged ahead.

We hurried towards the summit of Brahmatal in such difficult conditions. The ascent was made difficult by the constant snow hitting us hard on our face.  Visibility was down to a few meters. In such blizzard like condition we finally made it to the Brahmatal summit. It was the siren song of the summit that did not let us quit, as we unanimously  carried on . . . .

What is this strange force that draws us upwards?

This siren song. . . Of the summit.

The joy of summiting Brahmatal

We scurried back and made our descent back to the warmth of  our last campsite at Khorurai, which was an extremely beautiful location. Surrounded by the forests of Khoru trees, it was very serene, peaceful and mesmerising. The joy of  successfully summiting Brahmatal  was fresh in our minds. Now we wanted to rest and relax.  It again snowed heavily all through the night.

The next day the descent to Lohajung base camp was fast, fun and easy. We realised how much altitude we had actually gained in the preceding two days. One doesn’t realise it because you are constantly looking at the ground beneath your feet. While descending you have a better view!

Khorurai campsite

The Base camp at Lohajung appeared  tamed, civilised and artificial contrasting against the wilderness which we had just experienced. It reminded us that we were to go back to our life in the urban jungles which we’ve created. 

And somehow it felt sad and painful.

“You are not in the mountains. The mountains are in you.”  

— John Muir

 The mountains will beckon as time will pass. And I am sure the call of the wild will be irresistible. 

Till then . . . . Chio.

Happy trekking.

Check out the Video of the trek for a bird's eye view. 

Brahmatal Winter Trek Video

Video Credits : Ritesh Ranjan

The Tibetan Book Of Living And Dying

More than two decades ago I had first picked up ‘Tibetan Book Of Dead’ and ended up reading it almost completely. Yes, I did not complete it! Because it left me a little scared when it talked of all the things about death and afterlife. Maybe at that time I was too young to comprehend it or was not prepared to understand what it talked about. Although I grasped the essence of what it said, I left it at that and never dwelled or looked back at the wealth of teachings it offered.

It was only a couple of weeks back that I chanced upon this book which goes a step further and guides us through the wealth of knowledge the original book offers. But this one is much simpler and easier to grasp. It simplifies all the teachings in an much more user-friendly way.

The profound impact this book has on your psyche and the way you look at life and death is hard to describe in words. It is an experience in itself.

The teachings about various ‘Bardos’ of life and how to go about in each phase of life is eye opening. It’s like opening a new window to a vast vista that lay in front of us but we never bothered to check or acknowledge its existence.

The author Sogyal Rinpoche, a great master himself, guides you and prods you to take steps towards realizing the true nature of your mind and find the Grand Luminosity of your mind that exists within yourself, but of which you are totally unaware!

To understand the impact and the change it can bring in all of us, let me paraphrase from one of the great master Nyoshul Khenpo quoted in the book:

An effortless compassion can arise for all the beings who have not realised their true nature. So limitless is it that if tears could express it, you would cry to no end. Not only compassion, but tremendous skilful means can be born when you realise the nature of mind. Also you are naturally liberated from all suffering and fear, such as the fear of birth, death, and the intermediate state. Then if you were to speak of the joy and bliss that arise from this realization, it is said by the buddhas that if you were to gather all the glory, enjoyment, pleasure, and happiness of the world and put it all together, it would not approach one tiny fraction of the bliss that you experience upon realising the nature of mind.

This is a book that can help you take on the spiritual journey in a confident way. It guides in a very clear way how to deal with death and how to help the dying. It is something which the medical fraternity should be trained in and sensitized. It is a treasure trove of information for those who constantly deal with life and death situations. A book that can be and should be read—again and again!

Democracy Mocked

DEMOCRACY MOCKED

TIME TO HAVE PROPORTIONATE POWER

What we witnessed in Maharashtra for the last one month, and earlier in Karnataka, is nothing short of taking the voters of this country for a ride. It is murder of democracy in the truest sense.

Just imagine how horrible it is that all the losers have come together and formed a government! Isn’t it ridiculous? Then what is the purpose of having elections in the first place? If the party getting majority cannot form a government, then there is something seriously wrong with the constitutional provisions. It is time to amend them.

If  an organisation  conducts interviews for a CEO, would a candidate who is down in the merit be ever appointed? If the same logic holds good, then why should someone who has lost out on the competition be allowed to form the government. It is a flaw which needs to be amended and corrected.

Now the situation in Maharashtra is such that all the losing parties have come together in the form of an alliance and taken away the right to rule by force. This is morally and ethically wrong. It is violation of the mandate and the will of the people. 

In this era of multi-party systems, which is healthy for representation of people, it is becoming difficult to garner a majority. Rarely do we find it, like in the present Central government. But it is not a consistent proposition. There has to be an alternative mechanism to form government. The rag tag stich up of alliances and horse trading is uncouth and disgusting. It should stop!

What if we have a system, wherein—if there is no majority—power is shared proportionately between all the parties? Let them get portfolios and assignments, based on the strength they enjoy in the assembly/parliament. There would be no ruling or opposition party. They all would be in power. Nobody in opposition. And they can be held responsible by other arms of the system—the lower house, the judiciary, monitoring agencies—and most importantly the voters.

A culture would set in where the best possible candidates would be fielded and perhaps in some distant future the best and honest minds would flock to politics. It would become a meritocracy. At least an effort to move in that direction should be made. That is the least the voter can hope for!

Beyond Words

Beyond Words

What response does this title invoke in you? 

Does it make you think of emotions which cannot be expressed by words, or does it imply love which you find is beyond words. Or does it mean to you that there are certain meanings which are hidden between the lines? Do you think of pain, anguish , despair or joy and happiness which is beyond words? 

Well don’t be surprised… that’s how a writer in you would think. But by any chance, did it invoke in you another thought process? Like – formatting, PDFs, typesetting, e-books, Scrivener, Ulysses? No…?

Then you are reading the right article. If you are already familiar with all these things, then maybe you should have been writing this article… just joking. It may be of not much use to you. But still if you want to brush up on certain aspects, then read on.

There is more to the process of writing than just putting it on paper, or now in Word. If you have ventured beyond writing short stories or articles, you would understand what I am saying. So let’s start without further ado.

I will start off with various options available for your word processing requirements.

MS-Word 

Word is your first go-to option. Or a default option. Almost everyone starts of with Word. What can one do with it? Well, most of the things, but not all the things.

It can:-

·      Format and edit your document

·      Do a grammar and spell check for you

·      Do reference work and build a bibliography for you

·      Help you in reviewing the document (with comments)

·      Export to a PDF format

·      Navigate through the document

That’s most of the functions. What it is not good at is navigating through the document. Moving and rearranging the scenes, chapters or parts of your document. It can do it, but not in the best possible way. You will be using cut, copy and paste a lot.

It does not have facilities for storing your reference work, character sketches and other things which you will require for building a large project, like a novel or a textbook.

Another thing which it cannot do is generating an e-book. You will have to use other methods. It may not be the best option for generating a print ready PDF file for your print edition.

Ok. Now you know there is a world beyond Word and let’s see what it offers.

Scrivener

If you are a serious writer and writing large projects, at some point of time you will migrate to it, or at least give it a try. It’s the mother of all softwares used for writing.

It is a premium application which can be used across all platforms—Windows, Mac and Linux. It is specially designed for writing novels and scripts. It is not good for textbooks and scientific literature.

It offers a unique way of handling the entire document. You can break the entire document into Chapters, Parts, Scenes and write it piece by piece and then rearrange it at will. You can  compile it and see the entire project (say novel)  in a print format (WYSIWYG).

Scrivener has dedicated templates for character sketches, front and back matter, dedication, Title pages and so on… It can help you in organizing the document using a corkboard. You can save and see all research files and look at them while you work.

And most importantly, it lets you export the completed project in all possible formats for print as well as e-book.

Having said all this, it means that it can practically do everything you want to do. But, it has a steep learning curve. It is a bit complicated and requires you to learn nuances to actually generate a solid and professional output. But it’s worth the trouble.

And lastly, it’s not free. Rather, it’s expensive. More about it later.

Vellum

Vellum is exclusively available for the Mac. It carries the same philosophy of the Apple ecosystem–simplicity, efficiency and beauty.

Vellum is very easy to use vis-à-vis Scrivener or Ulysses. But you will be surprised with the end results. They are professional and beautiful.

It does not have all the functions like others, it is more like a stripped-down version. But it is damn good. It is easy to master and it generates the best print and e-books for all platforms. It also has a real time WYSIWYG pane, that lets you see the output of your book on the go.

It you want to put up a book or self-publish a book without spending too much, this is the one to go for. 

These are the three daddies out there. All of them are professional and will let you make and publish a book without the need for outside help.

There are certain others which are open source (free for download). You can try them. I’ll list them, but I cannot vouch for them, as I’ve not used them personally except for Scribus and Gimp.

Ulysses

If you are a true born writer and want to stay away from the formatting and other elements of it, what you need is Markup Language. Ulysses offers that.

It is meant for concentrating on just writing. You just put labels to identify what you intend to do with the text. A block, quote, emphasis etc.. using the special identifiers. Confusing? It is if you are new to it. How does it help? – It simplifies the process of exporting the final document in a format you choose. It will make necessary arrangements to it, whether it be doc, pdf, blog or an e-book. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

It’s for concentrating on the writing process and eliminating all the clutter. Try it out!

Costs

The costs involved in getting a licensed copy of these software are mentioned below. Most of them give a trial before you can buy. Vellum is free to download. It will not let you export till you buy it. There are other methods if you are ingenious enough to get hold of the software (I don’t recommend it though!)

Word as Office 365	INR 5299/year
Scrivener	INR 3850
Ulysses	INR 319/month
Vellum	$ 249 onetime
Open Source	Free

 

Other Options

Then there are the conventional alternative word processors which you can try out. But they are more in line with Word.

·      Google Docs : Simple, efficient and useful for collaborative work

·      OneNote : Good for taking notes and filing your research work

·      MS-Publisher : very useful DTP application, alternative to Adobe InDesign

·      Pages on Mac: easy to use word processor and lot of built in DTP capabilities

·      Ever-Note : again good for taking notes, not for large projects

Open Source 

There are a host of softwares which you can freely download and use. Prominent amongst them are:

·      Manuskript

·      Bibisco

·      Scribus

·      oStorybook

·      Open Office

These are just some of the few. They are all functional, but do not have the same sophistication of the premium paid apps. I’ve used Scribus and it is more of a Desk Top publishing software which can do a lot of heavy duty work. (We will review them all some other day!)

So go ahead and try all these things out, if you have not already; taking your craft of writing to a new level. Let me know what you think...

#WritingTools series