The flutter of a butterfly…

The butterfly effect is a common trope in popular science and fiction that attempts to convey a hard-to-grasp scientific fact: a very small change in the initial conditions can create a significantly different outcome. The phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of tornado a large distance away. 

A small twist of fate can alter a lot for one person but I have always suspected the impact of  one event on the course of the entire world. Can one person, one event, one random turn, truly alter the course of history? Aren't we all just pieces in one gigantic puzzle linked together in a million tiny ways but unable to influence the picture as a whole. But then, once in a while, I encounter examples where one person does manage to alter the entire course of history - unintentionally perhaps, but irreversibly altered nevertheless. 

In many ways, the story below - laced with irony, rebellion, intrigue and love - symbolizes the Economist's law of unintended consequences. Ever since I first heard the story, I have been trying to reconcile the monumental impact of this one man, Gavrillo Princip and this one chance event on the world as it exists today. The thing that caught my attention in this story was not the action of men because they failed in their own ways. But it was the role of chance, randomness or luck that truly stood out for me. 

Gavrillo Princip (1894-1918), was a Bosnian Serb who was responsible for the assassination of Prince Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenburg. Princip was born in a family of serfs at a time when Serbia was in a tumultuous state of transition. 

In 1878, under the Treaty of Berlin, Austria-Hungary received the mandate to occupy and administer the Bosnia while the Ottoman empire retained official sovereignty. As part of the same treaty, Serbia was accorded the status of a sovereign state which soon transformed into a kingdom under Prince Obrenovic who ruled within the borders set by the treaty. However, this peaceful state of existence changed when as part of a military coup, the king and the queen of Serbia were violently murdered and Peter I was installed as the new king. This new dynasty was friendlier to Russia than to Austria-Hungary and over the next decade, disputes erupted as Serbia moved to reclaim its former fourteenth century empire. Serbia's military successes in these campaigns further emboldened the nationalistic elements in Serbia and the serbs in Austria-Hungary who were irked by the Austro-Hungarian rule. 

As a christian serb (serf) family living in northwestern Bosnia, the Princips (and other serbs) were often oppressed by their muslim landlords and forced to live off the little land they owned. This led to large scale discontent against the Austro-Hungrian empire. At the age of 13, Princip's brother moved him to Sarajevo and this gave him more opportunities for protest. In 1911, Princip joined the Young Bosnia, a society that wanted to separate Bosnia from Austria-Hungary and to unite it with the rising kingdom of Serbia. The following year, Princip was expelled from school for being involved in demonstrations against the Austro-Hungarian authorities. Coincidentally, after the Balkan wars in 1912-1913 the Austro-Hungarian administration in Bosnia and Herzegovina became extremely serbophobic and declared a state of emergency as the governor closed many schools and Serb societies and inflamed the historic anti-serb rhetoric. All this further fueled the young Princip and he left Sarajevo to arrive in Belgrade. He then volunteered to join Serbian Guerrilla bands fighting under the leadership of Major Vojin Tankosic, who was a member of the Black Hand - the leading terrorist organization in Serbia at the time. Three young men, including Gavrillo Princip at the age of 19, were thus trained, armed and tasked with the assassination of Prince archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary by Major Tankosic. These young men were a product of their times as they sought freedom from the Austro-Hungarain empire to unite with the serbs, in hope of a better future. 

Gavrillo Princip, PC: Wikipedia 

Franz Ferdinand's life too is a charming story in itself. He was born in Austria to the younger brother of the emperor Franz Joseph, Archduke Karl Ludwig and was thus not the direct heir to the throne. However, in 1889, his cousin, Crown Prince Rudolf committed suicide and this left emperor Franz Joseph's younger brother (and Franz Ferdinand's father) next in line to the throne. When his father, Archduke Karl Ludwig, died of typhoid fever in 1896, Franz Ferdinand became the prince and heir to the throne. 

            

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, PC: Wikipedia    Duchess Sophie, PC: Wikipedia 

As a young man, Franz Ferdinand had met Countess Sophie Chotek at a ball in Prague but was forbidden to marry her as she was not a member of one of the reigning dynasties of Europe. Sophie and Prince Franz stayed in touch through letters and their relationship blossomed, away from the eyes of the court. Deeply in love, Franz Ferdinand refused to marry anyone else and after numerous appeals from him and his royal friends (Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, German emperor Wilhelm II and Pope Leo XIII all appealed his case), emperor Franz Joseph finally permitted the prince to marry Sophie. He however imposed a condition that the marriage would be morganatic and that their children would have no succession rights to the throne. Sophie was further forbidden from sharing her husband's rank, title, precedence or privileges and could normally not appear in public with him. Despite these brutal restrictions, the two married in 1900 and stayed together for the rest of the lives (and even deaths).  

In 1913, in the midst of the crisis in Serbia, Emperor Franz Joseph commanded the archduke to observe military maneuvers that were scheduled for June 1914 in Bosnia.  June was also a time of great unrest in Serbia as it commemorates the 1389 Battle of Kosovo against the Ottomans when the Sultan was assassinated by a Serb. This was a time for serbian patriotism and military observances. Although, Duchess Sophie could never share the archduke's rank and splendors as the prince; she would not let him travel alone as she feared for his safety amidst all this turmoil. In fact, if you were to believe historian AJP Taylor, love was the reason they met their deaths on this fateful day in June - "[Sophie] could never share Franz Ferdinand's] rank… could never share his splendors, could never even sit by his side on any public occasion. There was one loophole… his wife could enjoy the recognition of his rank when he was acting in a military capacity. Hence, he decided in 1914, to inspect the army in Bosnia. There at its capital Sarajevo, the Archduke and his wife could ride in an open carriage side by side…Thus, for love, did the Archduke go to his death".

On the fateful morning of June 28, 1914, The Archduke and his wife arrived in Sarajevo by train and the entire motorcade including the governor of Sarajevo began its journey as per a pre-announced program. Six armed assassins including Princip were positioned along the motorcade route with a single target in mind - Austria's heir apparent, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. 

The first two assassins along the route failed to act but the third assassin, Nedeljko Cabrinovic, who was armed with a bomb decided to take action. He threw his bomb on the motorcade but unfortunately the bomb bounced off the convertible and exploded under the next car in the motorcade. This blast caused a major furore as 16-20 people were wounded. The assassin Cabrinovic swallowed his cyanide pill and jumped into the nearby river to evade the police. Unfortunately for him though, the river was running dry and only 6 inches deep and the cyanide pill did not quite work.  He was thus taken into custody and severely beaten. A disaster seemed to have been averted as the assassination attempt appeared to have been foiled. The motorcade sped away to arrive at the town hall for the scheduled reception where the Archduke (understandably) complained about the reception accorded to him - "Mr. Mayor, I come here on a visit and I get bombs thrown at me. It is outrageous." After a few soothing words from Sophie, he finally thanked the people of Sarajevo for their ovations "as I see in them an expression of their joy at the failure of the attempt at assassination." 

After the commotion of the explosion and the rally, Franz Ferdinand and Sophie gave up their planned program and decided to visit the wounded from the bombing at the nearby hospital. The remaining assassins had all dispersed to avoid capture and it seemed that the  plot was indeed foiled. 

Now, this is where fate makes an unlikely entry and alters the course of events. 

Once the Archduke and Duchess board the motorcade, the accompanying general orders that the royal car be  taken to the Hospital through a route that avoids the city center. However, the driver of this motorcade, Leopold Lojka did not get the order and took a wrong turn into the Franz Josef street which had a cafe. Fortuitously enough, after the failed assassination attempt, Gavrillo Princip had wandered to a nearby food shop - Schiller's Delicatessen on the same street. As the universe conspired, it was at this point that the Archduke's motorcade made the wrong turn. The driver, upon being told about the changed route was trying to reverse the car when the engine stalled and the gears locked giving Princip an unexpected opportunity. Taking the chance, Princip stepped forward and fired two shots from a distance of about 5 feet. The first bullet wounded the Archduke in the jugular and the second inflicted an abdominal wound on the Duchess (who some reports say was pregnant at this time). Both victims remained seated upright but died while being driven to the Governor's residence for medical treatment. As reported by Count Harrach who was with the motorcade, Franz Ferdinand's last words were "Sophie, Sophie! Don't die! Live for our children!" followed by six or seven utterances of "It's nothing" in response to questions about his pain. 



Princip and the other assassins were meanwhile caught and imprisoned for high treason. At his sentencing, Princip stated that his second shot was aimed at Governor Potiorek than the Duchess. Princip was 19 years old at the time of the assassinations and was thus too young to receive the death penalty. In fact, he was 27 days short of his twentieth birthday which would have made him eligible for death penalty under the Habsburg law. Instead, he received the maximum sentence of twenty years in prison where he contracted tuberculosis and died on 28 April 1918. Princip had stated under cross-examination: "I am a yugoslav nationalist and I believe in unification of all South Slavs in whatever form of state and that it be free of Austria." Princip, was a young terrorist who wished for nothing but the betterment of his people. 

Assassination illustrated in the Italian newspaper Domenica del Corriere, 12 July 1914 by Achille Beltrame.

As fate conspired, this single event - the assassination of the Archduke, triggered a chain of events that resulted in the first world war within a month. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia and dragged Germany into the war. Russia responded and France got involved leading finally to the entry of Great Britain. The war began one month after this assassination and continued for 4 years leading to one of the bloodiest wars in world history that spanned almost the entire world in one way or another. The first world war, of course, was directly responsible for the Second world war which ultimately shaped the world as it exists today. And so, one can extrapolate that the gun shot that was intended to start a local protest by killing the Archduke actually triggered a whole lot more than that. 

Ironically, Princip was saved from the death sentence by his young age but he only lived long enough to witness the horrors of the first world war and the millions of deaths that directly resulted from his actions. I cannot be certain but I am fairly sure that given the benefit of hindsight and knowing the consequences of his actions, Princip might have chosen to not fire his gun on that fateful day. Because if you extend the chains of causation - the current middle east crisis, the Israel-Palentinian conflict, the cold war, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Pearl Harbor, The third Reich, the treaty of Versailles, the first world war - they all occur at the other end of that one gunshot! 

I have long suspected the impact of individual agency on the course of world history because it often seems that our actions are often drowned by those of the multitudes around us, especially when it comes to changing the world. And yet, when I come across examples like this, I am forced to believe in the agency of one - for better or for worse. The agency of one, aided by the randomness and chaos that drives us is sometimes just as powerful as the flap of that butterfly's wings. 

Post-Script: 
My journey into understanding the first world war began through a podcast (Hardcore History by Dan Carlin) but it soon led me to dig deeper in books by John Keegan (The First World War) and Barbara Tuchman (The guns of August). This story has particularly captured my fascination even as I have dug-deeper and read more about it in wikipedia and other media outlets. 

Reference Sources: 
1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria
2) G. J. Meyer (2007). A world undone: The story of the great war, Bantam Dell.
3) John Keegan (2000). The First World War.

4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria
5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip
6) http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/princip.htm
7) http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/27/gavrilo-princip-sarajevo-divided-archduke-franz-ferdinand-assassination
8) http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/27/guardian-1914-analysis-archduke-franz-ferdinand-shooting

Cities…

Cities - these densely populated clusters of humanity guzzling resources and energy. These eclectic ensembles of people from disparate regions and origins. Different in their hues and shades and yet painted with similar strokes.

I grew up in cities but they remain an enigma to me when I think about them.

Are they man's victory over Nature or our last stand before complete retreat? 

Are they resource efficient, well organized settlements or are they resource intensive, haphazard clusters?
Are they a melting pot of cultures or merely a single malignant culture? 

Are they a sign of man's victory or a sign of our surrendering the rest to nature? 

Are they a sign of hubris that we keep building them over and over despite every assault from the elements? 

Are they a sign of human prosperity and endeavor or are they merely nature's tolerance of human whimsy?  

Are they a source of pride and joy or a mission gone awry?

I return to cities, over and over, like the ocean bluffs finding their way to the shore - almost as if I had no where else to go. Why? 

Things to remember…

"Our travels give us sights to behold, but it is the stillness that helps us gain insights."

"Making a living and making a life can sometimes point in opposite directions."

Paraphrased from Pico Iyer

So very true…

The unsolvable problems…

These days my mind is preoccupied by one thought, or rather one question.
What do you do when you are the biggest obstacle in the happiness of your dearest people? What do you do when there is no right choice - when life is messy, twisted and confusing? Who gives up their happiness when everyone cannot be happy with the same choice? Philosophers have thought that "greatest good" is a good thing to strive for… but is chronic sorrow for one better than acute sorrow for many?
Can these questions of justice, happiness, fairness ever be really resolved?

I meander through these questions weighed by a sense of guilt and sadness unable to make the choices because I am hopeful that the future will change the circumstances. But who knows what the future brings? I try to train myself for a future where the people I care most for will not longer be there and I will be faced with a burden of guilt. A guilt for not doing everything I could to ensure their happiness. I weigh my responsibilities to me with my responsibilities to others. Who wins in the end and who loses?

We all seem to be losers in this zero sum game where only the future seems to have all the answers.

Chance musings…

Words, I now realize, can be capricious and perfidious. They can be hollow and meaningless at some times and at others, they can encompass the entirety of our existence - the known and the unknown. I have used them on various occasions to various ends - intentionally, unintentionally, on request, as a challenge, to help myself, to help others, for mirth and to chastise. 

Chance musings led me to some random excerpts I had written over the years and since this blog was meant to be a collage in text, I decided to post them here, for another chance encounter… 

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This was the Nature Future's segment where they had asked for a short paragraph (200 words, I think) on how our future might look like. I didn't end up sending it so don't know how it would have fared among the other entries. 

"My dear Maya, 

It is that time in my life that parents dread because they have to finally let go of their children. It is time for me to pass on from here, to whatever lies beyond. 

When I was in your place decades ago, I cherished my parents' memory through their books, their photographs, and through this house. The physical world held for me the essence of my parents in the form of their belongings. But now that the State owns my physical world and will take everything of mine from you upon my passing - I thought I should leave something behind for you. Something for you to hold onto and to revisit at a later time. In this portable memcore you will find my thoughts, memories and reflections over the years. I hope my mistakes, miscalculations, oversights and dilemmas will serve a purpose and help you navigate through this ever changing world.

Lots of love,

Mom"

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Hope is a dangerous ally. 

Something I have always felt and yet never managed to convey so succinctly… The right words just happened to fall in place while on a text chat. Strange are some days.

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There is a fine line separating chivalry and chauvinism. 

Another of those glimpses from a random conversation that tend to grow on you… 

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A dear friend asked me to try and write something for a public awareness campaign about giving the right of way to ambulances. It seems fairly obvious to many but somehow, in reality, ambulances are still stranded in rush hour traffic in India. And people still lose their lives, stranded in a traffic jam. It is a great initiative and while I can never be sure of how much of a difference these campaigns can make, I certainly would want someone to try. And I was glad to be given an opportunity to be a part of it. 

  

"This time last year I was training for a marathon. I was a healthy, 35 year old successful executive who was running 20 kilometers at lunch and then heading back to work. Today, I sit here waiting for someone to push me out of your way. I need assistance to exist. 

A lot can happen in a year, you'd think. 

I can tell you, a lot can happen in a few minutes. 

It started as fatigue that I attributed to the training but it was a stroke of terrible luck - a life-altering event. Within a couple of hours of that cloudy , foggy afternoon, I knew this was not just fatigue. There was more happening here as words failed me and I felt like I was drowning into a deep, cavernous silence. What I realized later was that my brain was drowning in its own life-blood. A tiny blood vessel somewhere had ripped at the seams and was leaking blood. It was a stroke. 

A stroke of misfortune that will stay with me throughout my life. 

It need not have been so bad because the doctors later told me that I could have recovered full function if I had been attended to within the first four hours of that leak. 

And… DON'T you think I waited too long because when I called for help, I was still only two hours into that disastrous leak. The ambulances arrived on time too - in half an hour. I could hear the eerily shrill sirens roaring down the streets as they picked me up and transported me. But what I did not know then was that I had not chosen a good day to have a stroke. 

The streets were crowded with scurrying diwali shoppers driving to and from places, in a hurry to make merry.  No one cared for our ambulance blaring its sirens because everyone was in a hurry to get somewhere - a theater, a mall, a school, a market or even just home. They all had promises to keep, deadlines to meet, festivities to begin. And stuck behind them all, was the white ambulance - blaring its siren and its red lights - that carried me in a daze. We stayed there immobile, stranded. Waiting for tiny spaces to open up in rush hour traffic. 

Even as the ambulance was stuck unable to move; my blood was flowing freely into my own brain. Choking parts of it and drowning my life with it. 

If only they had given us some room to get through to the hospital. Those shoppers would have been a few minutes late or even an hour late. They would have missed a meeting or been late for a dinner. But I, I missed my whole life in those few hours. As the blood leaked, it overwhelmed areas of my brain, and drowned parts of me never to be found again. If only they had given way to the ambulance. If only they had cleared the roads. 

If only I had reached in the first four hours, the doctors say as they shrug helplessly. You could have made a full recovery but, now, you are too late…. 

I am too late. 

And today, I sit here in a wheelchair, waiting for someone to help me clean the spittle off my face. I look at you people and I wonder constantly, how many of you were on the road that day. How many of you could have saved my life… by not doing anything heroic or dramatic. By just getting out of the way. How many? I sit and wonder… 

Never did I think, this would be my fate, perhaps at 80 but certainly not at 35. I hope you never have to experience this, but tomorrow, when you are stuck in traffic, cursing the blaring sirens behind you and refusing to budge - stop for a second and think of me.  Think of the person inside that white ambulance and the few minutes that you could give him. They could just as well make all the difference in the world." 

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Everyone comes with their share of troubles in the form of idiosyncratic quirks and annoyances, some people just seem worth the trouble. 

Hoping for a fair and logical world builds up expectations which only set you up for failure and disappointment. 

Do all you can so that you don’t have any regrets and then prepare yourself to accept the outcome - good or bad. The universe is not a fair place that works according to what we want or deserve… 

In one of those moods… 

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Rediscovering a gastronome…

One thing that I have often complained about but now accepted is my severe inability to remember stuff… A glaring manifestation of that happened just now as I was browsing through my computer's search records looking for a file. Happenstance however, I ended up finding something else I had written. I am fairly certain this was in the last four years but for what end, I really cannot even imagine. 

Nonetheless, I thought I will post it here for another day when another memory lapse might lead me to yet another rediscovery. 

"As I sit here almost 8000 miles away from home, trying to pen down an article on request, there are many things that are flooding my mind. But since I have been asked to talk about food, I am going to try and restrict myself to it. I am not a connoisseur or a gastronome. I am a simple person who eats to live (and not the lives to eat kind) and who believes in cooking well to eat well. I have very few preferences in terms of food and as Phoebe once said, I can eat almost anything without a face (being brought up as a vegetarian does leave you a little disadvantaged in that one arena that faces become unappetising…). I have also almost always had a very high threshold for taste and smell perceptions and that just means that I need a lot of salt to taste the saltiness, a lot of spice to taste the spiciness, a lot of sugar to get the sweetness, I am sure you get the drift by now which is that, I basically needed a lot of anything to sense it, one way or another. I was a survivor in some sense. Quite unlike the gourmet friends of mine, I could eat almost any food and not complain – be it the mess food or the food at some other unmentionable places (unmentionable because I am still not rich enough to spend money on libel cases, you see!).

My introduction to food as an art and an experience happened after my introduction to IISc and a few people (unmentionable now, because of privacy issues than the fear of libel) who surrounded me and who kept talking about the texture of food, the smells, the looks, the subtle tastes and a whole lot of such stuff which was completely unpalatable (pun intended) to someone like me. More often than not, I was left amazed at the sensory acuity of my friends… (one of them could actually smell food and tell if the salt was right.. !!! (Wowo… and at this point you should imagine me staring at her with my not so very well-known “jaw-dropping look”)

But that was the beginning and from that shaky beginning I have now evolved to see the very many pleasures of food. I have started to explore diverse cuisines and to note the finer points of the entire culinary expedition. I find it fascinating to now eat a morsel of food and to try and discern the components that built it… I mean, the spices, the herbs, the vegetables that went in… The subtle flavour of oregano or pepper, salt or mustard, basil or cumin, garlic or ginger etc etc…. I find it fascinating that people can actually do that !! I have also started noticing the kind of food that I like more than a few others, I have started paying attention to the texture of food, the amount of oil, the possible variations etc (the fact that I didn’t have an on-going PhD to pay attention to did help enormously). I assure you that it would have seemed like a lot of indulgence and vanity to me too perhaps a few years ago but now I can see the art and the craft underneath. I have started to appreciate the view of the connoisseurs. Afterall no pursuit can be trivial and while books interest me, food could interest someone else. And more often than not having food could kill you while not having a book will only upset you a little.

I also realize now that my unbridled spirit in dealing with ingredients was kind of kept in check by the fear that I could have others consuming (and perhaps commenting) on the fruits of my labour. A physical distance from such daunting responsibility and a solitary existence in distant lands, has now  truly liberated me from the bonds of tradition and cuilinary shows. I now cook for myself knowing fully well that I will still love myself no matter how the food turns out and I experiment with gay abandon. I mix ingredients just because they appeal to me and I match recipes. The fact that I have to cook for myself has only opened up a new journey and I am loving it so far. Cooking can be therapeutic in some ways. Coming back from a crazy day at work with a disastrous experiments, pushy bosses and dumb colleagues, cooking can be a relaxing activity. One atleast gets a good meal at the end of the day and the joy of creating something new is an added bonus. It is an experience that I treasure and look forward to. I am exploring a whole new world and as McDonalds says it “I’m lovin it”. 

But then through all these years, there has been one thing that has been a constant in my life – my sweet tooth (I didn’t lose it when I lost my milk teeth and grew the permanent set !!). While, I was quite unaffected by most food and not really choosy about what I put in my mouth (well, there is a child in me still ;)); there was one thing which really got me dreaming and drooling. Desserts!!! Oooo wonderful desserts!! Through the more physiological endorphin and dopamine release the desserts – cakes, pastries, cheesecakes, mousse, muffins, chocolates… have made many a rotten day feel better. I have often craved for some simple sugar and chocolate combination when things have been going far from good and my friends have pampered me through. From a cheesecake at Amma’s to the ganashe tart at Freska’s to sometimes the Tiramisu at Miller’s, I have relished many a fine desserts. I have also realised that my weakness lies in the combination of a bitter-sweet taste of dark chocolate or coffee and sugar, like life as it is (well… I knew there was a philosopher in me all along). I love the chocolate melting in my mouth even as the nuts give me something to chew upon. I love the warmth of the molten chocolate as it seeps through the cold vanilla ice cream and I love the sweet mascarpone cheese even as the coffee soaked sponge cake crumbles in my mouth. If there were a heaven, I would say that I have seen glimpses of it and I am very happy with it too… J

But then, here lies the challenge for the future, through my culinary explorations, I have still not ventured into the land of desserts, simply because it sounds like a sacrilege to me!!! But one day I do hope to make a leap of faith and try my hand at some of these bits of heaven accessible to ordinary mortals like us… Till then I console myself saying that there should be something in man’s reach but just out of his grasp. After all it gives us something to look forward to. So as I prepare myself for my giant leap (sometime in the future) I continue to dabble with smells, textures, colours and tastes as I explore the world of culinary perfection though my own humble means. 

As a sincere advice, I would say “the devil lies in the details” and one must watch out for what one puts into their mouth… it is a rewarding experience…

Happy eating and happier cooking to you all!!

Evanescent me....

We march through this world thinking we are making it a part of our life.
The people, the places, the books, the pictures, the stories - we live each day believing that we are making them all - a part of our life.  Our singularly precious, never-to-be-repeated life.

But when you think about it, the truth is actually staring at us in the mirror - the exact opposite.

We pass through a world that has held its own for billions of years and shall continue to do so for billions more - in one form or another. We pass through the houses and the places as they continuoulsy change, evolve or remain the same. Our chattels pass on from one to another - as belongings, memorabilia, treasures and relics. Our stories pass on from one to another - long after we are gone.

The world continues to exist even when 'we' are gone. Through the miraculously strange laws of nature, they make us a part of their life for a little while and then they move on - in one form or another.

We, on the other hand, live in our self-involved, self-deluded haze and think that we are building our life and making everything a part of it.

Doesn't that seem ridiculously self-indulgent and deluded? 

Remember to remember...

It was R's graduation day - a big occasion. One to be remembered for life but all she could feel was relief at having made it through the day and the excitement to move onto the next thing. But L knew better. Her years had taught her to pause, to reflect and celebrate before moving on; and so, she made R stop on the banisters of the school and to take it all in. She reminded R that within a span of a two years, this scary place with gargoyles, columns, and banisters had transformed from something alien, distant and scary into something familiar. It was a moment to remember for life. A feeling to cherish. 

L and R are fictional characters but that is the lesson I need to learn. 

The years have taught me many a things, but one thing I am yet to learn well is to remember the good things in life. The need to pause, reflect and to will something good, into memory. To store it safely, ensconced away in a special corner, far from the corrupting influences of daily living. 

We spend our days and years in constant motion, as an act of survival and before we know years have passed and we are at the end of the journey. It is then that we need these memories. The happy memories of a time gone by, of a life well lived. Of birthdays, of graduations, of celebrations, of successes and of milestones. The pictures, the letters and the notes give you a snapshot of it all but what breathes life into these memorabilia is the feeling you choose to remember them with. 

Hours fade into days, days into months and months into years. With sufficient time, years becomes numbers and what remains from all of those many hours are a few memories. One needs to make these memories sharp and bright else what remains is a fuzzy outline that has little color.  

I wish I had L in my life. To make me pause, and to remind me to make those memories before they are buried under the shifting sands of time; because now when I look back, I remember so little. 

In my efforts to forget the bad and to move on, I have also forgotten the good and life feels a little too uneventful right now. 

And so, I try, to take a moment every now and then - to stop. To wait and to remember what it was like... 

I had people who used to make me do that, but not any more. Now, I need to make my own memories...

Compressing time...

Our lives are often like a river charting its course through ever changing terrain guided by a host of factors. We change the terrain, even as it is changing us. It is usually a process of constant assimilation as thoughts and ideas find their way to us, like the sediments that muddy a river - either passively like the specs of dust that float in or through active effort. 

As we drift through our lives, there accumulate in us layers of memories. Memories that modify, distort and bury each other - revealing a little more of some things and a little less of some others. 

I realize now that I am often passing through life, in its grips, unaware of all my thoughts and feelings at the very moment, I am living it. Things then come back to me as versions of a story. A construct of my own mind. With every passing day, my memories are being altered, my stories morphing from what was to what I think was. What I see as my life today is probably a mix of some fact and some fiction. A melange of how I see the world and how the world sees me - colored by feelings, events, words and randomness. The stories of my life are perhaps written, not for accuracy or factual truths but for rational sense from only one perspective - mine. 

Over the years, these stories and memories have congealed into newer, more resilient layers, that now form the foundation of my being. These are the stories that I base my life and its choices on. But they are just stories, stories I tell myself (and others upon intense prodding). 

What I am often searching for is a way to reverse this process briefly and calmly. To unsettle the deepest parts of my being, with a hope to make sense of the journey so far. With the hope of shifting my perspective from what is staring me in the face, right at that instance, to what I will see with the benefit of time - an extrapolation as some might say. 

I want to unsettle the clearing waters with a hope that it will help me make sense of my life. With a hope to see the end of the story - my story. To visualize the incidents and the coincidences that shaped my life and the choices I made. To follow the thread from there to now - to see what I have survived and what I have not. This usually is difficult  because with every telling and re-telling, the story I know, is probably a little bit different from the truth that was. 

It is perhaps this quest for resolution that drives my love for stories of others - in the form of books, plays and movies. They magically help me live many lives over, many personalities over - in a span of a few hours, days or months. In their words, I have found my own. Through them, I have uncovered questions, thoughts, ruminations and answers that I have dwelt on over the years. I have searched for characters that resonate with me, that think like me, that have similar strengths, whims and weaknesses. I skim on the surface of their stories as I  drift through my own. I see glimpses of my life through them and that shift in perspective makes a difference. 

Over the years, there have been quite a few instances where I have cried my eyes out with a book, a character, a story or a movie. But with age and time, I have become a little more impervious and a little more resilient (happy about one, not about the other) and It now takes a powerful idea or a story to unsettle those calm waters. 

This bout of introspection and realization comes due to a movie called Boyhood. A movie, that stirred in me a whole horde of questions - questions that had lingered for so long that I had forgotten about them. They had become that unseen part of my life's fabric like the dust that stealthily creeps in. It took the musings of the young man to jolt me back to myself and to see the dust for what it is. 

Filmed over twelve years with the same individuals, the movie has a magical influence. It shifts your perspective such that you learn to watch the entirety of your life in a million tiny little moments as they lead up to the present. Somehow that takes you away from the myopic view of life - and shows a bigger, brighter picture. Made me realize that at some point, one has to 'choose' to focus on the bigger questions of life itself. 

Like what kind of lives are we leading? Are our lives built around what we wanted or around what was expected of us? How much of our actions are influenced by what we want and what others tell us we want? How much of our actions are a result of our desires and not just someone else's? How much power can and should the society have over us? How does one sever the umbilical cord and move away from the friends, family and society that have nurtured us? Should one? Do our choices make any difference? What matters more - how people see us or how we see ourselves? Do we really change over time? Can we decide to change ourselves? Or is free will an illusion? Do we seize moments or do moments seize us?

What is the purpose of our lives? Does anyone have all the answers? Do we ever find them? Do you even need them? 
What is the point of it all?

“‘What’s the point? I sure as shit don’t know,’ ‘We’re all just winging it,’”
"You don't want the bumpers. Life doesn't give you bumpers".
"I just thought there'd be more!"

Reflections within and without....

Relationships come in many different flavors and there is no denying that but even in the closest of my friendships, one difference I have always noted is the extent of 'privacy or space' we have afforded each other. I have some relationships that are based on this tacit, implicit acceptance of each other - where words are often insufficient and superfluous. We know how much we care and we let it be. We don't question, proclaim, pick and choose words - we just are. 

And then there are other relationships where there is an abundance of words, where arguments are dissected, hashed out, said aloud, as are reconciliations. Where saying everything, somehow holds the key to being close and staying together. Words are a big part of these relationships and my ineptitude with them often works to my disadvantage. 

I have learnt and grown with both these kind of friendships. While the former was my refuge on days when I did not want to talk and there are many like that. The latter, were the ones that pulled me out of my cocoon and helped me externalize my angst and frustrations - and I have had plenty of those too. 

In my reflections on these two kinds of relationships, I have found a state of ambivalence to both modes of operation and yet I exhibit a preference to holding onto my thoughts, my own state of mind, my own feelings about things - up till the point where there is no ambiguity about what the events are actually going to be. And yet, over the years, my friends have cajoled me into emptying my mind to an extent that, now, I find venting out to them a relief. But this is always a game of thresholds for me because to me - on an ideological level, talking seems futile, while reflections and musings seem to hold the key to most problems. 

Incomprehensible as it may seem to most - this worked the best for me... 

This dilemma about my preferred mode of operation has lingered with me long enough so that I recognized shades of it in the article from New Yorker when I came across it today. My idea of self, the foundations of my relationships, my need for words and my complete ineptitude with them at times, all resonate deeply with this conflict between our private, inner self and our need to connect. 

At that point, I just had to share it here... 

After all, most reading is a process of uncovering someone else's work in finding better words to describe your thoughts... 

Here are some excerpts from the article that seemed most pertinent to me but the whole of it is beautifully written. 

Woolf often conceives of life this way: as a gift that you’ve been given, which you must hold onto and treasure but never open. Opening it would dispel the atmosphere, ruin the radiance—and the radiance of life is what makes it worth living. It’s hard to say just what holding onto life without looking at it might mean; that’s one of the puzzles of her books. But it has something to do with preserving life’s mystery; with leaving certain things undescribed, unspecified, and unknown; with savoring certain emotions, such as curiosity, surprise, desire, and anticipation. It depends on an intensified sense of life’s preciousness and fragility, and on a Heisenberg-like notion that, when it comes to our most abstract and spiritual intuitions, looking too closely changes what we feel. It has to do, in other words, with a kind of inner privacy, by means of which you shield yourself not just from others’ prying eyes, but from your own. Call it an artist’s sense of privacy.

“The compensation of growing old,” he thinks, is that “the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained—at last!—the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence,—the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it around, slowly, in the light.” By learning to leave your inner life alone, you learn to cultivate and appreciate it.

And you gain another, strangely spiritual power: the power to regard yourself abstractly. Instead of getting lost in the details of your life, you hold onto the feelings, the patterns, the tones. You learn to treasure those aspects of life without communicating them, and without ruining them, for yourself, by analyzing them too much.

And you gain another, strangely spiritual power: the power to regard yourself abstractly. Instead of getting lost in the details of your life, you hold onto the feelings, the patterns, the tones. You learn to treasure those aspects of life without communicating them, and without ruining them, for yourself, by analyzing them too much. Woolf suggests that those treasured feelings might be the source of charisma: when Peter, seeing Clarissa at her party, asks himself, “What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? … What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?,” the answer might be that it’s Clarissa’s radiance, never seen directly, but burning through. Clarissa, meanwhile, lets her spiritual intuitions lift her a little above the moment. Wandering through her lamp-lit garden, she sees her party guests: “She didn’t know their names, but friends she knew they were, friends without names, songs without words, always the best.” That’s the power of artist’s privacy. It preserves the melodies otherwise drowned out by words, stories, information.

“Sharing” is, in fact, the opposite of what we do: like one of Woolf’s hostesses, we rehearse a limited openness so that we can feel the solidity of our own private selves.

Every now and then, too, you come across some artwork that expresses Woolf’s sensibility in an altogether different idiom, refreshing it. Since I first stumbled across it a few years ago, I’ve watched Lucinda Williams’s 1989 performance of “Side of the Road” hundreds of times. The song is built around a simple metaphor: Williams is driving down the road with a loved one, and happy to be driving. Still, she wants to pull over to the side of the road and stand there by herself. “I want to know you’re there, but I want to be alone,” she sings.

If only for a minute or two, I want to see what it feels like to be without you. 

I want to know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind.
I walked out in a field, the grass was high, it brushed against my legs.
I just stood and looked out at the open space, and a farmhouse out a ways.
And I wondered about the people who lived in it,
And I wondered if they were happy and content.
Were there children, and a man and a wife?
Did she love him and take her hair down at night?

If I stray away too far from you, don’t go and try to find me.
It doesn’t mean I don’t love you, it doesn’t mean I
won’t come back and stay beside you.
It only means I need a little time
To follow that unbroken line,
To a place where the wild things grow,
To a place where I used to always go.

From an entirely different angle, Williams has captured the same idea that we find in Woolf’s novels: that there is no final, satisfying way to balance our need to be known with our need to be alone. The balance is always uncertain and provisional; it’s always a matter of dissatisfaction, give-and-take, and sacrifice. Because an artist’s privacy is a state of mind, rather than a matter of law, there are no rules to help us master it. It’s up to each of us to balance the risks and rewards—to trade, in right proportion, loneliness for freedom, explicability for mystery, and the knowable for the unknown within ourselves.

VIRGINIA WOOLF’S IDEA OF PRIVACY
POSTED BY JOSHUA ROTHMAN

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/joshuarothman/2014/07/virginia-woolf-idea-of-privacy.html?utm_source=tny&utm_campaign=generalsocial&utm_medium=facebook&mbid=social_facebook 

Incredible India!

India, many say, is like an addiction. I agree, because I need my fix every year or two. Else, it leaves me miserable, strung-over and frustrated, teetering on the edge of a collapse. There is something about the air that slows my pace and my pulse down. Time there seems to move at a pace more manageable. People are more personable, even perfect strangers. The days do not leave me feeling rushed, dazed and exhausted like they do back ‘here’. I become my own person, not some harried, do-it-all who is unable to do it all. 

This year’s trip, after two long years, came differently though and I didn't have any expectations. Friends were all too busy, family – close and far, ranged from disinterest and skepticism to occasional excitement. I wasn’t looking to get anywhere, only trying to get away and this has usually never been the case with me. I came on a vacation laden with fatigue, anxiety, trepidation, anger, skepticism and very little of hope for anything wonderful.

There was a surgery planned but no vacation. There was a hospital stay planned, but no hotel stay. There were tests planned, no get-togethers. I was prepared for nothing and yet, this time, I couldn’t care. I was above and beyond caring and needed the space and the time.

Surprisingly though, it was not a bad trip. It wasn't all that I had imagined because I didn't manage to visit all my haunts; the get-together’s have been different, have felt a little incomplete; home has felt different but reassuringly same; and people have changed – aged, some in ways favorable, but some in ways sad and unexpected; some places which were defined by their people have changed and become a little more alien. But despite the lack of expectations or plans, I must say things have not been bad. I wonder if it is because of the lack of expectations or because of that deep-seated fear of something terrible about to happen - whose mere absence is reassuring enough… 

After two years of a never-ending maze, I finally feel empty, peaceful, quiet. I can now sense the person I used to be – emerging from the haze. The camera, the books, the places and the people - are slowly becoming appealing. I think I am an addict and need my fix of this country held-together by nothing but its people and ‘jugaad’. 

I still don’t feel ready to pack up and leave forever.

Explore India…

to become aware of the vastness of space.
to encounter history in every day life.
to become aware of the smallness of your being.
to learn that wealth has little to do with happiness.
to learn to find your identity in a mass of humanity
to find a nation that is bursting at the seams but manages to hold together because of its people.
to find order in perfect chaos.
to find harmony from noise.
to find a nation that encompasses the climes of the world.
to learn to cherish diversity.
to become aware of the forces of nature.
to become aware of the eternities that lie before and after you.

Explore India….
For it tests your limits and grows them one step at a time.
For it reveals unsuspected abilities.
For it highlights the weaknesses that you have successfully ignored.
For it let’s you live happily with very little.
For a digital detox.
For the chai-coffee and gup-shup.
For the scenes of gully-cricket that beats with a pulse of its own.

Explore India….
to remind yourself of the better side of human nature as perfect strangers come out to help you.
to also learn that people have a dark side.
to learn to watch out for yourself.
to learn to enjoy the world with caution.
to communicate without words.
to stop and smile, to feel the wind in your hair.
to watch butterflies crash into your windshields.
to watch majestic elephants roam the wild.
to understand the language of horns, sirens, blinkers and reflectors.

Explore India….
to expand your palate.
to notice the sunrise and the sunset.
to slow down your pace of life because time here does set a different pace.
to float above the clouds.
to feel the wind in your hair and to feel the rhythm in your pulse.
to tickle your senses.
to meet new people.
to sing new songs.

In short, visit India if you really want to live your life... and that is why I need my dose of India to function sanely.

Anna Karenina

Some books have a way of parsing through your thoughts and framing them precisely and exquisitely in ways that you couldn't even dream of. 

Anna Karenina, by Tolstoy is one such book and deserves all the acclaim it has been bestowed with. It is by no means an easy book - not because of labored writing or a flawed plot, but because of the deep and dark themes that lace the story. It is a tale of fatalism, plagued with uncertainty and unknowability. 

I have been procrastinating on picking up the book for a very long time but reading the following excerpt from an article in the New Yorker and an upcoming break were the last nails that hooked me to the story. 

"In “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Isaiah Berlin writes that, for Tolstoy, wisdom consists in the ability “to grasp what human will and human reason can do, and what they cannot.” The only way to find those limits is to struggle against them, but gently, with the goal of finding and accepting them. You can’t think your way to the limits. You have to feel your way, learning through experience and suffering. And there is a risk in experimenting with what will and will not work in life, which is that it might not work. You might move to New York to pursue your dreams, and end up with no career to speak of. You might think you can wait to find the perfect spouse, but wait too long, and end up alone. You might think you can have that affair and still have the love of your spouse and children—but you may be mistaken about what’s possible, and lose everything.

There’s a deep conservatism to this way of thinking. It’s fatalistic, in an off-putting way, since it suggests that the limits of what’s possible are just not knowable in advance, and that experience and tradition are probably our best guides."

And despite its many dark themes, the story is unforgettable as it explores life from the perspectives of so many characters with great finesse and perception. Here are some of the many wonderful phrases and instances where the sentiments echoed with me and in that resonance, I caught a faint glimmer of hope. 

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“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.” 

“I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.”

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”

“Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?”

“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed. ”

“Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!”

“Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand."

“I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly”

“I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly”

“They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us--there is no life.”

“it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.”

“But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”

“Something magical has happened to me: like a dream when one feels frightened and creepy, and suddenly wakes up to the knowledge that no such terrors exist. I have wakened up.”

“I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's ashamed, but he's not unhappy.”

“He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires.”

“And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.”

“There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.”

“All that day she had had the feeling that she was playing in the theatre with actors better than herself and that her poor playing spoiled the whole thing.”

“He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out of his heart; but now when as at that moment it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what bound him to her could not be broken.”

“He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation.”

"Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the search for truth, not in the finding it."

"No one is satisfied with his fortune, and everyone is satisfied with his wit.'"

"I think… of so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love."

"I often think men have no understanding of what's not honorable though they're always talking of it,"

How splendid it is! This is how I should like to live!" "Why, who prevents you?" said Levin, smiling. "No, you're a lucky man! You've got everything you like. You like horses— and you have them; dogs— you have them; shooting— you have it; farming— you have it." "Perhaps because I rejoice in what I have, and don't fret for what I haven't," said Levin, thinking of Kitty.

Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn. And for him, living in a certain society —owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity— to have views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many of his circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but from its being in closer accordance with his manner of life.

"With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better."

He was so far from conceiving of love for woman apart from marriage that he positively pictured to himself first the family, and only secondarily the woman who would give him a family. His ideas of marriage were, consequently, quite unlike those of the great majority of his acquaintances, for whom getting married was one of the numerous facts of social life. For Levin it was the chief affair of life, on which its whole happiness turned.

The study was slowly lit up as the candle was brought in. The familiar details came out: the stag's horns, the bookshelves, the looking-glass, the stove with its ventilator, which had long wanted mending, his father's sofa, a large table, on the table an open book, a broken ash tray, a manuscript book with his handwriting. As he saw all this, there came over him for an instant a doubt of the possibility of arranging the new life, of which he had been dreaming on the road. All these traces of his life seemed to clutch him, and to say to him: "No, you're not going to get away from us, and you're not going to be different, but you're going to be the same as you've always been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a happiness which you won't get, and which isn't possible for you." This the things said to him, but another voice in his heart was telling him that he must not fall under the sway of the past, and that one can do anything with oneself.

Anna Arkadyevna read and understood , but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech, she longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised everyone by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the same. But there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the smooth paper knife in her little hands, she forced herself to read.

"The most utterly loathsome and coarse : I can't tell you. It's not unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse. As though everything that was good in me was all hidden away, and nothing was left but the most loathsome. Come, how am I to tell you ?" she went on, seeing the puzzled look in her sister's eyes. "Father began saying something to me just now…. It seems to me he thinks all I want is to be married. Mother takes me to a ball: it seems to me she only takes me to get me married off as soon as may be, and be rid of me. I know it's not the truth, but I can't drive away such thoughts. Eligible suitors, as they call them— I can't bear to see them. It seems to me they're taking stock of me and summing me up. In old days to go anywhere in a ball dress was a simple joy to me, I admired myself; now I feel ashamed and awkward. 

"The one comfort is like that prayer, which I always liked: 'Forgive me not according to my unworthiness, but according to Thy lovingkindness.' That's the only way she can forgive me."

In his Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed classes. One, the lower class , vulgar, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people, who believe that one husband ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent, a woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one ought to bring up one's children, earn one's bread, and pay one's debts; and various similar absurdities. This was the class of old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another class of people, the real people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous, plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything else.

The old prince , like all fathers indeed, was exceedingly punctilious on the score of the honor and reputation of his daughters. He was irrationally jealous over his daughters, especially over Kitty, who was his favorite. At every turn he had scenes with the princess for compromising her daughter. The princess had grown accustomed to this already with her other daughters, but now she felt that there was more ground for the prince's touchiness. She saw that of late years much was changed in the manners of society, that a mother's duties had become still more difficult. She saw that girls of Kitty's age formed some sort of clubs, went to some sort of lectures, mixed freely in men's society; drove about the streets alone, many of them did not curtsey, and, what was the most important thing, all the girls were firmly convinced that to choose their husbands was their own affair , and not their parents'. "Marriages aren't made nowadays as they used to be," was thought and said by all these young girls, and even by their elders. But how marriages were made now, the princess could not learn from any one. The French fashion— of the parents arranging their children's future— was not accepted; it was condemned. The English fashion of the complete independence of girls was also not accepted, and not possible in Russian society. The Russian fashion of match-making by the offices of intermediate persons was for some reason considered unseemly; it was ridiculed by every one, and by the princess herself. But how girls were to be married, and how parents were to marry them, no one knew. Everyone with whom the princess had chanced to discuss the matter said the same thing: "Mercy on us, it's high time in our day to cast off all that old-fashioned business. It's the young people have to marry; and not their parents; and so we ought to leave the young people to arrange it as they choose." It was very easy for anyone to say that who had no daughters, but the princess realized that in the process of getting to know each other, her daughter might fall in love, and fall in love with someone who did not care to marry her or who was quite unfit to be her husband . And, however much it was instilled into the princess that in our times young people ought to arrange their lives for themselves, she was unable to believe it, just as she would have been unable to believe that, at any time whatever, the most suitable playthings for children five years old ought to be loaded pistols. And so the princess was more uneasy over Kitty than she had been over her elder sisters.

Alexey Alexandrovitch was not jealous. Jealousy according to his notions was an insult to one's wife, and one ought to have confidence in one's wife. Why one ought to have confidence— that is to say, complete conviction that his young wife would always love him— he did not ask himself. But he had no experience of lack of confidence, because he had confidence in her, and told himself that he ought to have it. Now, though his conviction that jealousy was a shameful feeling and that one ought to feel confidence, had not broken down, he felt that he was standing face to face with something illogical and irrational, and did not know what was to be done. Alexey Alexandrovitch was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of his wife's loving someone other than himself, and this seemed to him very irrational and incomprehensible because it was life itself. All his life Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived and worked in official spheres, having to do with the reflection of life. And every time he had stumbled against life itself he had shrunk away from it. Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a man who, while calmly crossing a precipice by a bridge, should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself, the bridge that artificial life in which Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived. For the first time the question presented itself to him of the possibility of his wife's loving someone else, and he was horrified at it.

At Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got out, the first person that attracted her attention was her husband. "Oh, mercy! why do his ears look like that?" she thought, looking at his frigid and imposing figure, and especially the ears that struck her at the moment as propping up the brim of his round hat. Catching sight of her, he came to meet her, his lips falling into their habitual sarcastic smile, and his big, tired eyes looking straight at her. An unpleasant sensation gripped at her heart when she met his obstinate and weary glance, as though she had expected to see him different. She was especially struck by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself that she experienced on meeting him. That feeling was an intimate, familiar feeling, like a consciousness of hypocrisy, which she experienced in her relations with her husband. But hitherto she had not taken note of the feeling, now she was clearly and painfully aware of it.

In the first place he resolved that from that day he would give up hoping for any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage must have given him, and consequently he would not so disdain what he really had. Secondly, he would never again let himself give way to low passion, the memory of which had so tortured him when he had been making up his mind to make an offer.

Anna. "I remember, and I know that blue haze like the mist on the mountains in Switzerland. That mist which covers everything in that blissful time when childhood is just ending, and out of that vast circle, happy and gay, there is a path growing narrower and narrower, and it is delightful and alarming to enter the ballroom, bright and splendid as it is…. Who has not been through it?"

There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in what , are at once disposed to turn their backs on everything good in him, and to see only what is bad. There are people, on the other hand, who desire above all to find in that lucky rival the qualities by which he has outstripped them, and seek with a throbbing ache at heart only what is good.

There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day— that is, forget oneself .

"It's this, don't you see," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, "you're very much all of a piece. That's your strong point and your failing. You have a character that's all of a piece, and you want the whole of life to be of a piece too— but that's not how it is. You despise public official work because you want the reality to be invariably corresponding all the while with the aim— and that's not how it is. You want a man's work, too, always to have a defined aim, and love and family life always to be undivided— and that's not how it is. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow."

In life, we sometimes relinquish our freedom too easily, while, at other times, we struggle unwisely against laws that will not change. Give in too easily, and you drift through life; struggle too much, and you suffer for it.

The thing about Levin is that, through some accident of temperament and circumstances, he ends up figuring things out. He struggles and shapes his own destiny just enough to be happy, while never going out of bounds, and ending up like Anna, or like his brother Nikolai, a political radical, who dies impoverished and angry. Somehow, over the course of the book, Levin achieves everything he wants: he is married to Kitty, and they have a beautiful family. And yet, he senses, he has not really improved himself in his soul, and he has done nothing to deserve his happiness. He still feels powerless, pointless, useless. “Happy in his family life,” Tolstoy writes, “a healthy man, Levin was several times so close to suicide that he hid a rope lest he hang himself with it, and was afraid to go about with a rifle lest he shoot himself.” In the end, he is carried along by the flow of life, and keeps on living. He finds his way to a diffuse kind of faith. There will be no radical transformations, he realizes, either romantic or religious. What is, is. He will try his best to be a good person, within the constraints that his circumstances and nature have placed upon him, and that will be good enough:

I’ll get angry in the same way with the coachman Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my mind inappropriately, there will be the same wall between my soul’s holy of holies and other people, even my wife, I’ll accuse her in the same way of my own fear and then regret it, I’ll fail in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray—but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!