Ladhak & Kashmir 2010 - Day 7 - Westwards - Likir

6th July 2010

We were done with the East. It was now time to head west. Some monasteries on the way and then to Kargil, Zanskar, and then Srinagar.

Srinagar. That brings me to the endless contemplation we, nay, my dad made regarding our impending visit to Srinagar.
To go or not to go.

When we had made our plan (which means the return tickets from Srinagar), the valley was in peace.
A day or two before we started our tour, they was an explosion, curfew, and the media making the most of it.
Did you see, said father. And he kept saying it every day.

He kept making alternate plans. Head to Manali from Leh, via road, take a bus to Delhi, and flying to Bangalore.
He was making these all to himself, because I was not interested and did not bother to be discreet about it. Come rain, storm, bomb, police, fire or curfew, I would not return without going to Srinagar.

People kept assuring us. There were tourists going to Srinagar at that time. All was well. The media always exaggerated. Nobody ever did anything to tourists.

But dad, a big NO man had a counter.
May be they didn’t intentionally hurt the tourists, but when there was police firing, the bullet would not stop for some tourist who came in the way.

At last we were heading west.

Spitok was the first gompa we sighted soon after leaving Leh, Spitok being only 8 kms from Leh. We passed it by and continued.

We stopped at the magnetic hill, where gravity was defied in a particular spot.
We had to move our vehicle at a spot indicated by white paint and the vehicle would move on its own, though the road was slightly uphill.

The next attraction was the confluence of the Indus and the Zanskar rivers, calm clear green and aggressive muddy brown respectively.

Green fields with yellow flowers. The chief compensation for cloudy skies that turned all the scenery beneath into black and white.

Hills covered in reddish-brown-clumpy-earth were a sign we were approaching the Basgo fort. A few pictures from a distance and move on...

We stopped at Likir where the open air Maitreya was. There was a cafe close to the entrance of the monastery. My parents rested there while I went in.

Drizzle

A stolen glance
A meeting by chance
Brush of fingers
Handshake that lingers
A hint of love
A searching look

Six feet tall
Some Greek God
A few feet from sight
Miles away to the touch
Framed in a picture
Claspt to the bosom.

But...
Far from the grudges of a drizzling destiny
Is a secret world of flooding fantasy.
A cosy tent atop a blue-green hill...
Where two lovers pretend its chill...
That stolen glance...
And brush of hands...
Grow mysteriously
Into night long trance...
Imploring embrace...
Hands cup the face...
Soft is the glow of dawn...
Hushed are the blue white clouds...
Words are a whisper...
Souls meet with a thunder...

When the dream is over,
So the embrace and the lover,
Wistful is the eye
Long is the sigh
For all that could have been
And all that isn’t.
The Greek God is now nowhere
The moving finger does not care

For all life’s bounty and all its magic
Some lives are meant to be tragic
They have to make do with a few drops
They never get to drink the full glass.

Liza of Lambeth - Somerset Maugham

This one was recommended to me. I don’t know why. It’s a slim volume as well as an easy read fortunately. That should summarize my review.

Anyway...

I have read much better works of Maugham.
This was his first novel.

Liza, a jolly young girl lives with her mother in London. Liza works in a factory and her mother goes charing to add to their income. Liza’s mother suffers from headaches, rheumatics, drinks spirits and complains constantly that her daughter isn’t dutiful enough.

Tom, a young boy loves Liza sincerely but she ignores him thinking him a bore.
She finds herself thinking about Jim instead, a big man with a beard who one day lifted her up to him and gave her two resounding kisses as she ran into his arm while she was escaping a gang of urchins chasing her on the street.

Jim is a married man with many children, the eldest of whom is almost Liza’s age.

Yet, Liza and Jim are attracted to each other. They start an innocent affair of secret meetings, kisses and cuddling that lead to more secret meetings. Word gets around and before long everyone knows. The two in love of course, think no one knows and try their defiant best to deny those who tease them.

Tom, hurt, distances himself from her.

One day, Jim’s wife, a burly woman confronts Liza on the street and attacks her with abuse and beatings. Liza fights back but the big woman is too much for her.
Jim arrives after sometime and stops his wife but Liza is already hurt; she is greasy and bleeding. No one in the crowd is sympathetic towards Liza, especially so the women who almost loathe her thinking that one day Liza might mess about with their husband.
Among all those gathered to watch the brawl, Tom takes a weeping Liza away from the scene and walks her home.
While nursing her, he reiterates his love for her.
She wishes she had accepted Tom earlier but she is reluctant to accept him now after all that has happened thinking it wouldn’t be fair to Tom since she might be on the family way now.
Tom assures her that it does not really matter to him.

They part for the evening.
Liza’s mother only knows that her daughter has had a fight with a woman on the street and consoles her by way of offering her spirits that Liza accepts and drinks, apparently for the first time in her life. She feels better soon after but the night that follows turns out to be miserable for her.
She feels very cold and very hot by turns. Her mother, too drunk to be conscious, does not wake up to help Liza. When she does, she summons Mrs Hodges, a midwife, living upstairs to help her with Liza. Mrs. Hodges announces that Liza has had an abortion.

Her mother is surprised as she never thought Liza to be of ‘that kind’.
Liza’s condition is really bad as she is very weak and pale.

Mrs Hodges is sure Liza will not survive. Liza’s mother begins discussing with Mrs Hodges, her daughter’s funeral preparations, hiring the services of the best undertaker and so on, while Mrs Hodges gives her generous suggestions and offering of help, even as Liza lies on the bed, still breathing, though her last.

And soon enough, the presence of death in the room pervades them all.

While the story itself did not seem remarkable to me, surely, the setting of the story must give it a distinct flavour.
Ladies wear dressy hats full of feathers. The street, at any time, is brimming with women who have many young ones and are expecting another. When the organ player arrives, men and women gather around him in the street and dance to his tunes. They go on picnics on horse driven carriages. The women going to the factory have to arrive before the gong is sounded or they will not be able to collect the token and will miss a day’s wages. Many married women have wife beating husbands. They speak in a distinct accent and perhaps their colloquial is distinct, both of which the author has tried his best to reproduce.
Perhaps, at the time, the story was published, there were elements respecting the story or the characters that were novel.
--------------------------------------------------------------

Lines that I caught my interest and attention for various reasons...

They began fooling, in reminiscence of a melodrama they had lately seen together.

'Is that yer new dress, Liza?'
'Well, it don't look like my old one, do it?' said Liza.
'Where did yer git it?' asked another friend, rather enviously.
'Picked it up in the street, of course,' scornfully answered Liza.
'I believe it's the same one as I saw in the pawnbroker's dahn the road,' said one of the men, to tease her.
'Thet's it; but wot was you doin' in there? Pledgin' yer shirt, or was it yer trousers?'

...the innuendo of French farce is not so unknown to the upright, honest Englishmanas might be supposed...

...gooseberry-tarts, cherry-tarts, butter, bread, more sausages, and yet again pork-pies! They devoured the provisions like ravening beasts, stolidly, silently, earnestly, in large mouthfuls
which they shoved down their throats unmasticated. The intelligent foreigner seeing them thus dispose of their food would have understood why England is a great nation. He would have
understood why Britons never, never will be slaves.

'Strikes me you got aht of bed the wrong way this mornin', she said to him.

..many were broken, but they had been mended with glue, and it is well known that pottery in the eyes of the connoisseur loses none of its value by a crack or two.

...she immediately dropped Jim's arm, and they both cast their eyes to the ground as the men passed, like ostriches, expecting that if they did not look they would not be seen.

'Liza 'as all the pleasures of a 'usband an' none of the trouble.'

...they hated the people perpetually coming in and out, opening the doors and letting in a blast of cold air...

...It was a Saturday night, the time when women in Vere Street weep.(husbands beating wives)

'Yus,' went on Mrs. Kemp, 'I've 'ad thirteen children an' I'm proud of it. As your poor dear father used ter sy, it shows as 'ow one's got the blood of a Briton in one...your father 'e used ter sy, "None of your small families for me, I don't approve of them,"..."when a man can 'ave a family risin' into double figures, it shows 'e's got the backbone of a Briton in 'im. That's the stuff as 'as built up England's nime and glory! When one thinks of the mighty British Hempire," says 'e, "on which the
sun never sets from mornin' till night, one 'as ter be proud of 'isself, an' one 'as ter do one's duty in thet walk of life in which it 'as pleased Providence ter set one—an' every man's fust duty
is ter get as many children as 'e bloomin' well can."...

She shouted out the tunes, beating time on the table,...

...said Mrs. Kemp—'wotever yer do when they're alive, an' we all know as children is very tryin'
sometimes, you should give them a good funeral when they dies. Thet's my motto, an' I've always acted up to it.'
---------------------------------------------------------------------

A few lines from the Preface follow.

I was forced to stick to the facts by the miserable poverty of my imagination...

Youth is a lovely thing, it has a promptness of fancy, a liveliness, a freshness of outlook, a directness, which in some fortunate instances counterbalance the lack of skill and knowledge, which the author of twenty books brings to the composition of his later works. Sometimes of course youth is the author's only talent and when that leaves him he has nothing to fall back on. That is why so many young persons write one or two charming books that seem to have not only promise, but a delightful fulfilment, and then sink into a lamentable mediocrity. But if a writer is conscious that in his maturity he has produced works that are not without merit, he is wise to leave out from an edition like this such of his writings as were published before he was in full possession of his powers.

In the first 25 years of his life, the youth has gathered a multitude of impressions; if he has the novelist’s instinct, he will probably have felt them more vividly than he will ever feel anything again; and the persons he has known with an intimacy that in the turmoil and the hurry of afterlifehe never will achieve again. Whoever has known anyone later in such minute detail as a boy has known his relations, their friends and servants? People unconsciously reveal themselves to a child, a lad, with a freedom they guard against in their dealings with their contemporaries or elders. The advice to give a young writer is to write only about the things he knows. His imagination, unrooted in experience, is fantastical; his invention is indigent; surely he does best to stick very closely to reality such as he sees it. I should have thought on the other hand that it was impossible to write a historical novel without great knowledge of a period and a large fund of general information to back it up; and I do not see how a writer is going to give historical characters and ease without a very wide acquaintance with mankind. The historical novel needs not only force of imagination(for how else can you recreate the past?) but a science of human nature enable which may enable you to clothe with flesh and quicken with blood the dead bones of history.

It had struck me for some time that the novelist’s usual practice of taking two or three persons and treating them as though the world moved round them, bringing in others only in so far as the protagonists were concerned with them, gave a very false impression of the multifariousness of life. I am not alone in the world with the girl I love and the rival who is disturbing the course of my passion. All sorts of thrilling adventures are occurring to the people all round me and to them they are just as important as mine are to me. But the novelist writes as though his hero and heroine dwelt in a vaccum. I thought could give a much fuller effect of life by taking a number of people loosely connected as people are who live in the same world and giving all their stories with equal fullness, and telling all I knew about all of them. I chose the necessary number of persons and devised 4 series of events that occurred simultaneously. I saw my novel like one of those huge frescoes in an Italian cloister in which all manner of people are engaged in all manner of activities, but which the eye embraces in a single look. The scheme was too ambitious for my powers. I had not realised that one set of characters would prove more interesting than the rest and that the reader, wanting to know about them, would be impatient of the others. The books suffered also from the pernicious influence on me at the time of the writings of the aesthetes. The men were inanely handsome and the women peerlessly lovely. I wrote with affectation. My attitude was precious. I was afraid to let myself go. But still I think there was something in Idea. Perhaps it could be carried out successfully if the intertwined stories and the persons who acted them were seen rigidly through the eyes of one of the characters in the book. The interest of this character in the various events he was concerned in might give them unity and the dramatic value of his reactions towards the other persons of the novel hold the reader’s attention by giving him the illusion of a single theme.

Books to read – Rasselas – Dr Johnson

Ladhak & Kashmir 2010 - Day 6 - Back to Leh

5th July 2010

We returned to Leh. Most sights were familiar, some were unfamiliar.
The thing that looks like a wooden palace is a hotel very close to where we were staying.
The Gompa on the hill top would have to be a destination for the next visit.

We had completed what was to the east of Leh. Tomorrow, we would head left. With our bags and all, towards our new head quarters, wherever that was to be.

The Firm - John Grisham

Liked it. Liked it enough to want to read another John Grisham.
Unlike most of the literature in the genre of mystery or thriller that leaves me in the end feeling certain things were not explained, that some questions/riddles are not answered, that the novel was too fast paced or the plot too intricate to grasp, this one turned out to be consummate.

There aren’t too many characters – or I could say the central characters are a few and that helps. The protagonist is a brilliant fellow and it would require brilliance on the part an author to create such a character and a plot that serves as an instrument for bringing out a character’s brilliance.

Mitchelle McDeere, a lawyer from Harvard, gets recruited into a law firm in Memphis – Bendini, Lambert & Locke - that makes an incredibly lucrative offer – salary, bonus, car – BMW, house, perks, yearly vacation in the Grand Cayman (Carribean) and more.
He accepts the offer, moves to the city with his wife Abby and begins working for 18 hours a day. He is assigned to a senior partner who gives him clients and files to work on and has an efficient secretary Nina.

Very soon he is approached by an FBI agent Wayne Tarrance, who warns him about the dangerous situation in which the lawyer is, that his car is bugged, that his house is bugged, that his office is bugged, that two lawyers working in the firm who had reportedly died in a boat accident in the Carribean, had actually been eliminated, that he was being watched very closely by the firm and was to be careful.

Mitch unable to decide whom to trust – the firm or the FBI agent, relates the incident to the senior partners of the firm, keeping certain details to himself.
The firm which indeed is a dubious one, becomes alert at once and increases its vigilance of Mitch.

Mitch has an elder brother Ray, who is in prison. During one of their meetings, Ray mentions a co-prisoner and friend of his, Eddie Lomax, now free and working as a private detective in Memphis and tells Mitch to avail his help in need.

Mitch approaches Eddie with his doubts and fears and sets him on the job. Eddie finds out that the two lawyers who die, died very mysteriously and so did the other lawyers working in the firm in the past.
In a few days, Eddie is killed. His secretary Tammy, who is to be most useful to Mitch in days to come leaves the city for a while.

The firm becomes worried when one of their men following Mitch reports having seen him meeting Tarrance again.
DeVasher arranges for Mitch to be sent to the Grand Cayman with a senior partner Avery Tolleson, where he is solicited by prostitutes arranged by the firm. Mitch, a married man in love with Abby, tells one of them off.
But having consumed alcohol, he gets carried away by another woman to a secluded beach and after much resisting, gives into her coquettish charms. A photographer hidden behind a tree at a distance takes pictures.

Once back in Memphis, DeVasher meets with Mitch, shows him the pictures and threatens to post the pictures to Abby if he is ever seen having anything to do with the FBI.

What DeVasher does not know is that while in Grand Cayman, Mitch has met with Larry Abanks, the local who had rented his boat to the two lawyers who had been eliminated in a mysterious looking accident in the sea, in which Abanks’ son too had died. Mitch had spoken to Abanks in detail, let him know his suspicions that it wasn’t really an accident; this acquaintance was to be a great help to Mitch one day.

During Mitch’s training in Washington DC, the FBI arranges to discreetly take him to a secluded place where the FBI director himself, Denton Voyles meets Mitch and tells him the complete story. The law firm is actually owned by the Morolto family of Chicago, the underworld. The new recruits are given clean files and legitimate clients to work on while the partners and senior lawyers do all the dirty work – money laundering – taking black money of the underworld out of the nation to Grand Cayman, depositing it in banks there, bringing that money into the US as clean money, investing it in property, companies in the US, doing all the law work – partnerships, tax work, among others for these companies, helping other clients to evade taxes legally...
There is the fifth floor and DeVasher there is monitoring and tracking the output of all the bugs in the cars, offices and homes of all the lawyers, meeting with the underworld family members, reporting to them...
The FBI had smelled all this and had approached two lawyers, the insiders to help them collect evidence. These two had died mysteriously days later.
Nobody ever left the firm alive. Except senior partners who retired. To become a senior partner, a lawyer worked for years, and at some point was made part of the crime, let in on the secret and by that time, the lawyer was so involved in the conspiracy that he gave up thoughts of leaving, stifled all inner voices and joined the gang.
All others who thought of leaving were eliminated.

The FBI has now chosen Mitch to get their evidence. If he chooses to cooperate, he will get life-long protection from the FBI, a new identity, a new passport, a job in any location of his preference, any number of relocations, a million dollars.
If he does not, then the FBI will find another way of getting its evidence, bust the firm, jail all its lawyers and partners, cancel their licence to practise and it indict all of them.

Mitch knows he has no escape. Because the mafia never forgets. It will get back. After ten or twenty years. Until then, they will have to live in perpetual fear. They will have to undergo surgery to get a different face, live under pseudonyms for the rest of their lives, live in remote locations to remain inconspicuous, be on the run most of the time... it will never be the same again.

Mitch agrees to cooperate with the FBI.
He is a brilliant guy. When FBI offers him 1 million dollars, he asks for 2 million and asks also for the release of his brother Ray from the prison.

He starts work.
He smuggles in his briefcase all the files, some clean and some dirty, that he is able to lay his hands on, to a small rented place a few paces from his office where Tammy is carefully copying all the files on a sophisticated copier that’s been arranged by Mitch.
Tammy becomes his assistant and a brilliant one at that.

Mitch delivers the first set of files and has the first million dollars deposited into a bank and account number of his choice.

Mitch and the FBI arrange to have clandestine meetings in various places at various times. The firm follow his trail closely but with the help of the FBI, he manages to get away. The firm however, smells something fishy and begins its verification. The mafia begins to investigate on its own and in the end begins plans to eliminate him.

Mitch has to continue meanwhile: copy the highly guarded dirty files. And this is a brilliant plan too.
Avery flies to Grand Cayman on business. Abby and Tammy are already waiting for him there. Tammy poses as a prostitute and lures Avery. They both get into the condominium where Tammy prepares a drink for him with sleep inducing pills mixed in it. She takes his key-bunch and opens a room in which are hidden many dirty documents and files. She fills as many as she can into suitcases and walks to a room nearby in which Abby is ready to make copies. They have purchased a sophisticated copier and arranged for it to be delivered to their room. Abby hands the copying task to Tammy for a while and leaves to a smith with the key bunch and gets duplicates made in the dead of night.

They spend the whole night making trips to the condominium where Avery is sound asleep, returning copied files to their place and loading new files into the suitcase.

They put the copied files to suitcases and fly them into the US.
There is a small room in Memphis that Mitch and Tammy have rented to serve as a storehouse for all the copied files.
Tammy makes many more trips to Grand Cayman equipped with the duplicate keys and manages to get all the files so the FBI will have all the indictments they want.

The time has come for the FBI to keep its promise and release his brother Ray from the prison. One night, it is arranged for Ray to walk out of his prison, climb the high wall of the prison using a ladder kept in place for him, jump down, meet an escort to be taken to his car and drive away.

Mitch sends Abby away to be safe; she is to wait for his next message.

He knows he cannot trust the FBI. He knows he has to run from the firm. And from the FBI.
Through the copies, Mitch learns of the various banks, account numbers, money transfers done, etc., in detail.
He transfers 9 to 10 million dollars from these bank accounts owned by the firm to his own account, his in-law’s account, his mother’s account and Tammy’s account. Once the run begins, they will not meet anyone – family or friend.

Through an FBI agent that the mafia knows, Mitch’s involvement with the FBI is confirmed. It is arranged for him to fly to the Grand Cayman in the private plane owned by the firm which will blow up in mid air. He will fly alone, so Avery is arranged to be hospitalized for heart attack.

The FBI agent who is a traitor is found out and the FBI knows Mitch is in danger.

When there are 3 more hours to go before the flight to Grand Cayman, Mitch gets a call from Tarrance and the code word for ‘Danger, Run’.
And the run begins.

When the FBI expects Mitch to run away from the firm and towards them, Mitch tells the FBI he does not trust them and runs from them too.
Mitch communicates to Abby and Ray who are all in different places through Tammy.
Abby is being followed by a woman.
She meets Ray in a designated place and they both manage to gag the woman in her room and run.

FBI begins chasing Micth, Abby and Ray. So is the firm.
Mitch meets Abby and Ray and they drive from place to place in a van loaded with all the copies of files. Their fake passports and other ID documents reach them in time, thanks to Tammy.

In a motel room on the East Coast, Mitch sits before a camera and makes 16 hours of tape explaining all the neatly stacked copies of files, telling as if a story – how the firm operates, who the clients are, which banks are owned by the firm, the various bank accounts, transactions, amounts...

The FBI as well as the mafia knows his trail by now and are within a few hundred meters of him. All the partners of Bendini, Lambert & Locke are on the beach looking for the three.

All airports, roads, toll gates are blocked. The sea is full of boats looking out for the three.

He keeps his promise and arranges, through Tammy, for the tapes to reach the FBI.

One night, the three of them set out separately and linger at the beach within a few metres of each other. Abby walks to the edge of pier, holds a torch before her and flashes green light out to the sea. A goon from the mafia sees it, knows there is only one explanation and rushes to Abby. Mitch and Ray kill him and toss him into the sea. The three of them descend to the rail under the pier and wait there, flashing the green light.

A boat arrives and Larry Abanks helps them to descend to it and they sail away. They are introduced to Larry’s friend and accomplice who has been living incognito for years now. Mitch, Abby and Ray, with millions of dollars in a bank, sail to the quiet unknown island which is the abode of their new friend and begin their life of seclusion unseen by anyone in the outside world.

Many other things apart, one things that stands out in this work is the most important, all consuming American preoccupation with money – get rich, quick money, easy money, wealth, the multiplying of it, never ending thirst for more and more money, money, money. The protagonist and the antagonist are the same in this...

But as I said, it’s a well narrated story and I am going to pick up another John Grisham. Its thrill that comes with its supply of information – about how people, things, and institutions work in America.