Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is a book that neatly conforms to the phrase ‘poetry in motion’. Set in the times of the Chinese cultural revolution, when every educated youth was sent to the villages to get “re-educated” by the peasants, this book unfolds magically and just as youthfully as its protagonists.

Luo and Ma are two lads from the city whose parents have been classified as “enemies of the people” solely because they were educated doctors. Banished from the city, Luo and Ma find themselves in a village in the mountainous district of Yongjing. The book opens with a beautiful frame of the two kids being inspected by a crowd of peasants led by the village headman. I use the word frame because this book paints pictures very well in your mind. After all that is the quality of literary excellence – to tear away from the boundaries of prose and instead sketch moments in the reader’s mind.

One such moment is during the inspection when the peasants discover that these two kids possess a violin – clearly a Western instrument and hence blasphemous. Luo decides that Ma should play the violin and this act might make the peasants happy. He announces that Ma will play a Mozart sonata. To this, the village headman warily asks what is a sonata. Ma replies that it is a Western song. This raises the vigilante mode of the headman and he insists on knowing the name of the song. “Mozart….,” Ma manages to mutter and the headman snaps at him in anger asking him to name the song. At this crucial juncture, Luo calmly slips in and says that the song’s name is “Mozart Is Thinking of Chairman Mao”. Relief sets in all around, the headman smiles, nods to himself and replies, “Mozart is thinking of Chairman Mao all the time.” With that sweeping sentence he has just answered all questions about Mozart’s loyalty.

As Luo and Ma settle down to work in the fields, they discover and befriend another young boy from the city who has been sent to be “re-educated” to one of their neighbouring villages. This young boy, nicknamed Four-Eyes, has a secret – he is carrying with him a suitcase full of Western books. Through him, Luo and Ma are exposed to the French writer Balzac’s Ursule Mirouet. Luo and Ma read this book through the night and are fascinated about how it exposes them to worlds far away, to thoughts and emotions completely alien to them. Luo and Ma are now addicted – they want all the books from Four-Eyes. At around the same time, they meet the village tailor’s daughter – the beautiful little Chinese seamstress. A country girl, Luo and Ma both fall in love and take it upon themselves to “educate” her via the works of Balzac. Luo’s natural flair for story-telling is put to good use and she takes to Balzac like the proverbial fish does to water. Then one day, when Four-Eyes earned the permission to return to the city, Luo, Ma and the seamstress decide to steal the suitcase of books. After all, they couldn’t think of a life without Balzac!

Their lives become intertwined around works of Flaubert, Gogol, Melville, Romain Rolland and Alexander Dumas. The works of these master writers influence the three to such a large extent that their lives get changed forever.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is a breezy little book that talks about the importance of dreaming, the futility of oppression and, perhaps directly so, the influence of literature on a society. While Balzac may have influenced many of the greatest writers of world literature (including Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Kerouac among others), Dai Sijie’s book is also a wonderful piece of writing and is perhaps a fitting tribute to Balzac.

A couple of links pertaining to the Naxalism issue, the government’s role in it and the impact being created.

Annie Zaidi, of Known Turf, jots down excerpts in her post “Some questions, some stories”
One of the excerpts:

‘My name is Lingaram, from Sameli, Dantewada. I am a driver and my family has a car, in which I can ferry people. We have some land on which we farm. I am not very literate.I was watching TV at home, around September last year. Five motorcycles came, with 10 people, who were holding AK 47s. They took me to Kokunda. They asked me questions such as “where did you get the bike from? How do you go about in style?” My family is fairly comfortably off, but they accused me of being a Naxalite.

The Open Magazine carries an article by Rahul Pandita, “The War Nobody Can Ever Win“, that details out ground realities in the deep forests of Gadchiroli. Horrifying? Yes.

A popular radio channel hosted a “coffee cup reader” on its morning show yesterday. While listening to the show I managed to figure out that a “coffee cup reader” is some sort of a soothsayer.

Out of the many people who call up to know about what lies ahead in their lives, Karan Singhvi is one. This lad of 18 years loves playing cricket and wanted to know when he would make it to the national team.

Nawal Gani, the lady who reads coffee cups (and she takes about half an hour to do so per cup per person), announces that Karan will be in the team within 4 to 5 years. She also adds the apt disclaimer that in order to make it happen Karan will have to ‘persist with his dream’ and put in the hardwork required.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you manage to see a Karan Singhvi play in the national team within the next 5 years, do let me know. I would like to be the first one to visit Ms. Gani. With my coffee cup in tow.

In other notes, here is one of India’s premier physicists Jayant Narlikar talking about “The Scientific Case against Astrology“

P. Chidambaram has released this official statement in response to yesterday’s Naxalite attack which led to 76 CRPF personnel losing their lives. Couple of paragraphs:

The State has a legitimate right to deploy its security forces to resist, apprehend and, if necessary, neutralise militants who are determined to strike at the very roots of our nation.

It is the Naxalites who have described the State as the ‘enemy’ and the conflict as a ‘war’. If this is a war – and I wish to say that we have never used that word – it is a war that has been thrust upon the State by those who do not have a legitimate right to carry weapons or to kill. The State – the Central Government and the affected State Governments – are discharging their legal and Constitutional duty to protect the people.

What do you think of that?