And this part of my life is called … reading books

Since childhood, I've always been driven, like those characters in pulp paperbacks by Jeffrey Archer, et al. The only difference is that in contrast to those glorious heroes who have been driven singly by a sense of adventure or a sense of patriotism since 'as far back as they can remember'; I'm driven by different things on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes the urge to get out and do something is a little stronger, and lasts about a week. A week of smoldering tensions and plans and initiatives that never leave the drafting table.

I've also been fascinated by the act of collecting stuff, from 'as far back as I can remember'. When I was a kid, I was a stamp collector, like so many others. Ever the intellectual, I quickly reasoned that philately would be the easiest occupation for me, given that both my parents used to collect stamps when they were young, and had preserved their collections for posterity (and me). So, one day I decided that I would collect stamps, and the next day I had ~3000 of them. Some collection that! I think the seeds of the decline of this wonderful hobby of mine were laid when I visited a stamp exhibition at Nehru Center (which is what connoisseurs did, someone I prided myself on being). Much to my dismay, the exhibition also had an area where budding collectors could buy a packet of 1000 stamps for a very reasonable price. Not reasonable enough for me though (I had a very Spartan childhood, without any pocket money). I'd gone to this exhibition with a pal and his grand-dad. I enjoyed hanging out with this friend, as he had also just begun, and had a princely collection of 10 stamps. Our favorite occupation during our summer holidays was to pore over our collections. I would run through each one of my stamps and say, "Have you seen this one?" or "Guess which country this is from". After a couple of hours, he would say, "Let's look at my collection now." And 2 minutes later, he would go home. Much fun! People might wonder as to the relevance of this aside here, given that we were at the exciting juncture of my discovery that I didn't have money to buy stamps. Well, unlike yours truly, the friend used to receive pocket money. And approximately 10 minutes after my discovery, he had more stamps than me. His grand-dad offered to buy me a pack too, which I reluctantly refused because much though I adored stamps, I didn't care much for the beatings I would receive at home sweet home for accepting money from people. However, one shouldn't look at my parents in an unkind light. After all, they could have easily offered me pocket money to see if I accept it, and then proceeded to beat me; but they were clearly never that malicious.

Afternoons were not that much fun anymore, as he also had a (positively) boring collection now. Soon, I gave it up, and rummaging through my parents' old stuff, I became a veteran numismatist. Then, moving from coins to MP3s to E-books to movies over the years, I am now firmly a book collector. And over the past few months, I have taken up reading with a renewed vigor. The past week was exceptionally exceptional (what's this figure of speech called? Have I invented a new one?), as I am now 'driven' to read. Since last Sunday, I've read The Great Gatsby, William Golding's Lord of the Flies, The Little Prince (shouldn't really count, as this excellent book has probably fewer words than this post will end up containing), Umberto Eco's Faith in Fakes (another grueling chapter in my seemingly ill-fated and arduous struggle to become a stoic European erudite) and Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. While I thought that The Great Gatsby was overrated, the others were definitely worth the read. And I would assume that my less-than-ebullient response to the former is quite possibly a function of the different time and place for which it was penned, given that the book does count among the best ones written in the last century.

Both Slaughterhouse 5 and Lord of the Flies (similarity to Lord of the Rings begins and ends with the title) are excellent reads, and are both about war. They are also similar in that they both enjoy pride of place in TIME's list of best English novels since 1923, a pride they share, incidentally, with The Great Gatsby. In an event of pure chance, I was lucky to read these two not necessarily divergent but slightly dissimilar takes on war and human nature, within a short span of time. While Lord of the Flies was written in a dark, allegorical fashion, Vonnegut's book was a satire, intermingled with good-old 'aliens!' science fiction – two genres not often blended, I dare say. Vonnegut's protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, is sent to the war as a chaplain's assistant (a chaplain played a stellar role in Joseph Heller's Catch 22 as well, I seem to recall). There, stumbling from one misfortune to another, he ultimately reaches Dresden, a scene of one of the most equally horrific and ridiculous massacres at the hands of the US during World War II. The story is not linear, as Billy has 'come unstuck in time', i.e., without any control, he keeps meandering from one stage of his life to another. At some point in the interim, he believes he was abducted by aliens as well, from the planet Tralfamadore. While the author never says outright whether the alien abduction is a figment of Billy's imagination or not (he broadly hints that Billy is imagining it), the overall point he makes is about the lack of free will. While describing how absolutely unneeded the aerial attack on Dresden was (it killed almost double the number of people annihilated at Hiroshima), he also says that history would not have had it any other way. As one of his aliens puts it, Tralfamadorians have visited many planets across the breadth of the universe, but it is only on Earth that anyone believes in 'free will'. As the author and these incredibly gifted aliens would condescendingly say, "So it goes."

William Golding, in Lord of the Flies, talks about a group of kids (oldest being 12 years old) stranded on a remote island, with no escape. He describes starkly their descent into savagery, as lack of any societal encumbrances stimulates the surfacing of the baser instincts in children who were otherwise 'propah' English schoolboys. As the struggle for authority and survival continues, violent clashes of steadily increasing ferocity begin to take place among the children. How the book concludes is something that readers should find out for themselves. This storyline is an incredibly far cry from pre-war style; in James Barrie's Peter Pan stories of 1904, the Lost Boys engage in vivid adventures of many kinds, in a land where they never really lose their innocence – a startling example of the effects of the bloody unfolding of the 20^th century on the psyches of those who had the misfortune of partaking in the harrowing experience.

When I started writing a little while ago, both books seemed to be similar only insofar as both of them spoke of human nature, etc. But as I went on, I realized (and this is something I should have known all along) that they are not that different after all, the style of writing, the characters and even the complete stories notwithstanding. While one spoke of the absolute lack of free will, the other lends to an extrapolation that awarding anyone free will (which now seems like the Holy Grail, given my incessant harping on it) will inevitably result in complete loss and anarchy, an outcome not dissimilar to a Pyrrhic war.

There, I think I'm done. What was meant to be a decent comment on two more-than-decent books has turned out to be a narcissistic monotone, with the aforesaid objective relegated to an epilogue. Anyway, hope the future makes me less self-indulgent, for my stories of childhood and friends et al are bound to run out sometime. And a friend, who has begun blogging in recent times, is fast proving to be a far more able chronicler of funny goings-on in my circle of friends. The next book I'll read is a collection of Anthony Burgess' (author of A Clockwork Orange) writings. I'll be sure to write how that goes.

For people who haven't been distracted by my random rambling from the strong sense of déjà vu that the title inspired but have still not quite figured out why, let me help out a bit (another instance of the magnanimity which is clearly visible in how I let my philatelist friend enjoy my riches). For the next few weeks, I'll be arranging to pay my taxes for the first time. While the utter lack of connection with the previous statement may move some to dismiss this as work of a deranged maniac, rest assured that the previous statement holds within it the solution to the sleepless nights you will doubtless endure in attempting to uncover the reason for the strange familiarity of the title (if you think it is familiar, of course). May you succeed!

Catch - 22

I have read a lot of books that haven't made an iota of difference to my life. These books have made me happy, sure, but only because I was done with them and wouldn't have to read them again. Catch 22, by Joseph Heller, isn't one of them. An incredible satire on the foolishness of war and the attached bureaucracy, it has been widely acknowledged as one of the most powerful books of the previous century. It was also the origin of the famous phrase (its name), and means a situation where there is no possible solution with a positive impact. One is, figuratively (and sometimes literally), stuck.

So what makes this book so great? The hero of the book, Yossarian, is a bombardier for the US Army in the War, and is stationed at the island of Pianosa. In describing his travails, the author makes a compelling point about the stupidity of war, and how all military actions are motivated by personal wishes of those in power, which are almost always silly. I read somewhere that the author himself was a bombardier during the war, so one can presume that the character is autobiographical, or the author's ideal of himself at the very least.

The character of Yossarian is best summed up by one of his exchanges with his camp doctor Doc Daneeka. He says that he doesn't want to fly missions anymore, because he didn't want to get killed. The doc (who was slightly more patriotic, given that he never had to fly) asked him what he thought would happen if everyone thought that way. To which Yossarian replies, 'Then I'd be a damned fool to want to fly, wouldn't I?' The character of Yossarian captured the imagination of millions of people, who always wondered whether or not he survived the war (doing my best to maintain ambivalence regarding the end of the book). Well, he did, which was confirmed by a later novel by the same author, Closing Time, which spoke of Yossarian's life after the war. This novel was clearly motivated by the public's strong interest in the hero, epitomized by some placard that the author saw someone holding somewhere, (I have absolutely no specific idea, as you no doubt guessed) saying 'Yossarian Lives!'.

But let me speak a bit more about the title. Readers come across catch 22 situations many times in the book. But the one situation that best exemplifies the title is the rule which says that an insane person need not fly missions. However, if an insane person were to come up to a military doctor and say that he was insane, such an action would be motivated by an urge to protect oneself, which is a highly rational and sane wish. In short, an insane person need not fly, but pointing this out would mean that the person is sane, as only sane people would have a strong desire not to fly. Being proven sane, the person would have to continue flying. Pretty impressive, huh! Yossarian thought so too, when he first heard it.

This kind of catch 22 is fairly similar to a problem in economics that we call The Prisoner's Dilemma. Consider two people, who have been captured by the police, and whom the police are attempting to get a confession out of. If neither confesses, both get a jail term of 2 years. If one of them confesses, however, the other gets a jail term of 10 years, while the confessor gets only 1 year. If both confess, they each get 5 years. The optimal solution here, for both prisoners, is for neither to confess. However, this will not happen, as there is a fear of the other prisoner betraying you. What always happens, (and there are economic terms for this of course, all of which sound really sophisticated) is that both prisoners confess, and get a jail term of 5 years. Thus, while this is clearly not the best combined decision, no other decision will ever be made, because the best independent decision for either prisoner is to confess. Kapish?

So please read the book, if you can. Or see the movie; it's an exhaustive take on the book. You won't regret it at all. However, there's another very hilarious character, whom I must mention. The mess officer of the camp, Milo Minderbinder, hits upon a fantastic plan to make money off the war. He uses restocking the mess as an excuse to fly around all over Europe, buying and selling stuff to collect margins for a 'syndicate', which no one knows whether one is a member of. Milo, of course, insists that 'everyone has a share'. Well, so Milo ends up with the entire cotton crop of Egypt, which he then tries to include in mess food (but he isn't a domineering tyrant, so he coats the cotton balls with chocolate syrup). In another absolutely ROFL moment, he and his accomplices take off in the camp's own planes, off the camp's own runway, to bombard the very same runway. Obviously, everyone on camp had a share in the contract which Milo entered into … with the Germans! Anyway, read this book, and tell me what you think.