Hanya Yanagihara’s
debut novel titled, The People in the
Trees, which I chanced upon at Starmark, Chennai, has been sleeping for
long on my bookstacks, unattended! Now, when I was working on Italo Calvino’s Baron in the Trees, in a trice I was quite reminded of Hanya’s The People in
the Trees, written almost 56 years after Calvino’s Cosimo came to have a
permanent literary existence and a literary abode in our little hearts!
Well, for the 1970’s
born mighty ones out there, Hanya herself is a 70’s kid! Ketto! ;-)
Hanya Yanagihara, ‘a
writer to marvel at’, is a popular travel writer, novelist and editor! This, her
People in the Trees is then, her
debut novel.
The novel contains for
the most part the fictional memoirs of Dr. Norton Perina, in such a beautiful
narrative style.
Norton Perina, tells us
through this, his fictional memoir that his great fascination and curiosity for
science was aroused by his paternal aunt, Ms Sybil, a doctor herself!
While Norton Perina is
in medical school, he gets an offer to be the medical doctor on board an
anthropological team that was to go on an expedition to an island by name, U’ivu.
This anthropological team is led by a person called Paul Tallent. Although the
expedition is considered a dangerous mission, Dr. Norton Perina accepts the
offer to be part of the team.
Under the leadership
of Tallet, Norton Perina reaches the great island of Ivu’ivu. [Oh please, for
heaven’s sake, forget Ghosh and his Gun
Island, for now! will you? ;-)] From there they enter a still smaller island by
name Ivu’ivu. [Hanya’s Hawaii connect could be gauged here, ain’t it? Well, she
grew up in Hawaii!] Once they are led inside the deep recesses of the island,
into the jungle, with the help of three hunters who double up as guides,
Tallent tells Norton about the famous legend of the U’ivu people.
The legend
goes that, there was a lost tribe amongst them who had been gifted with eternal
life along with deep stupidity on them. Quite soon they spot a woman, who is
totally naked and not able to perform her functions as a regular human being.
They call her ‘Eve’ and soon discover a horde of a similar tribes folk whom
they call, ‘Dreamers’. One curious case about them all is that, all of them,
tribesfolk sported the mark of a turtle on them all, which was an indicator
that they had turned 60, although all of them were in reality, more than 100 years
of age!
They notice then, the chief
of the village celebrating a ritual. And in this particular ritual, he is seen
celebrating his 60th birthday, during which time, he eats up a
turtle. Norton Perina’s intuition starts working overtime by now. He quickly starts
connecting on the dots, adds up two and two, and surmises a curious connect of
sorts between the eating up of the turtle and the ‘eternal life’ of the tribes
folk!
Well, that, then,
happened to be his ‘Eureka’ moment of sorts, and meant to be a teaser to the story! Nothing more!
Coming back to what’s at stake on this post for us all! Norton Perina’s take on his lab routine has some points worth a ponder for this, our post!
Coming back to what’s at stake on this post for us all! Norton Perina’s take on his lab routine has some points worth a ponder for this, our post!
That takes us to the part in the storyline, where Norton Perina
describes his tryst with the lab in which he works, and his drudge of a routine!
Well, on this part in
especial, one particularly weirdy sentence attracted my attention! And hence this post! ;-) I began focusing
on it over and over, highlighted it with my yellow highlighter, and pored over its import again and again
and again!
And that’s the part,
reproduced below, where he says that, ‘In those days science considered itself
the realm of gentlemen’.
In a nutshell, Dr. Norton Perina observes
here that, people of science in those good ol’ days were people of genius! And being
a man of genius back then did not mean they should lack social skills, and be unfriendly
with the lay! Men of genius back then, had amazing skills and were very cordial
and amiable with the lay, he observes! Then he contrasts this quality of a ‘gentleman’
with the present day ‘gentlemen’ of science, who according to him, present a social
ineptitude, and a certain refusal to acquire the most basic social skills,
along with an inability to dress properly or to feed oneself! The ‘gentlemen’
of science of today’s ‘strongly’ feel that, ‘lacking’ social skills, and
dressing up like a ‘nerd’, and being callous, slatternly and slovenly in their habits,
is the chief ‘evidence’ of one’s intellectual purity and ‘commitment’ to the
life of the mind!
I quote Norton Perina –
But what does it mean
to be successful or talented in a lab? For your work there is not truly your
own; you are chosen because of your mind and then asked, to varying degrees, to
cease thinking for yourself and begin doing so for another. For some people
this is easier than for others; they are the ones who remain. And so although
you gain fraternity, you forsake your independence.
They are all of them
patient, though; I, however, knew by the end of my first term with Smythe’s lab
that I could never be that patient, nor that pliable.
Part of this certainty
was attributable to the discomfort I felt with the culture of the lab itself.
there was at work a kind of conservatism, a fixation on neatness, that I found
difficult
and dispiriting. In those days science considered itself the realm of gentlemen.
This was the era, after all, of Linus Pauling and J. Robert Oppenheimer, both
of them exceptional, of course, but not exempt from having to dress a certain
way, or from being able to perform at cocktail parties, or from pursuing
romance. Genius was no excuse for social ineptitude, the way it is today, when
a certain refusal to acquire the most basic social skills or an inability to
dress properly or feed oneself is generously perceived as evidence of one’s
intellectual purity and commitment to the life of the mind.
Ain’t there a little
connect here between the ‘Lucky Jim’ saga [in this past post,] and the ‘highbrow’
gentlemen of the University presented therein, in which a lower-middle class
young man – Jim Dixon by name, becomes a professor in medieval history at the
University and he finds himself surrounded by despicable ‘high brow’ colleagues
from the higher echelons of society, who have such high airs on them, and whom
he loathes and despises very much.
Well, Jim was averse
to their ilk because of their pretensions and snobbishness and their ‘high
brow’ attitude towards other faculty and students! Those snobbish pretensions
only tended to show them in bad light, says the angry young man, Jim aka Jim
Dixon! Hence Jim decides to be antiestablishment - loathing to the core - the
precepts of ‘gentlemanliness’ practised at his place of work!
Something akin to the
gentlemen of the University, we find here, practiced amongst the ‘science’ folk
too! Reminds of me of my all-time favvy writer Atwood, and her take on the ‘mad-scientist’
archetype, which we’d discussed back here, in our past post. Has got some real
interesting connects with this post, as well!
One reason why, Hanya
rips through their snobbishness and pretensions headlong!
Now, me thought of
ending this post, on a grand note, to the malady that’s been plaguing the
scientific community, too! The malady and the peril of ‘snobbishness’ and ‘pretensions’
that make the scientist assume that they are UFOs with some weird horns on
them, not quite fit to associate with pavapetta
mortals in general and the lay in particular!
Dr. Abdul Kalam, when
he was President of our Nation, visited our grand, old Madras Christian
College, way back in the year 2007.
I personally feel
that, his talk on ‘Scientific Magnanimity’ at MCC, on 26 February 2007, [which
I had reproduced in full on our blog, back then, on this past post,] would be a
fitting and dignified retort to these science ‘gentlemen’ types whom Hanya here
refers to with disdain and scorn!
Well, Dr. APJ stole
our hearts on that eventful day, when he spoke from three great scientist- gentlemen
from India, who have set us a paradigm worth emulating!
Over to APJ Sir, from
his speech to us all, at MCC –
Since I am in the
midst students, I thought of sharing with you an incident about Sir CV Raman – a
Nobel Laureate in Physics for discovering Raman Effect. Raman gives the view
that the color of sky is blue due to molecular diffraction which determines the
observed luminosity and in great measures also its color. This led to the birth
of the Raman Effect.
Raman was in the first
batch of Bharat Ratna Award winners. The award ceremony was to take place in
the last week of January, soon after the Republic Day celebrations of 1954. The
then President Dr. Rajendra Prasad wrote to Raman inviting him to be the
personal guest in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, when Raman came to Delhi for the
award ceremony. Sir CV Raman wrote a polite letter, regretting his inability to
go.
Raman had a noble
reason for his inability to attend the investiture ceremony. He explained to
the President that he was guiding a Ph.D. student and that thesis was
positively due by the last day of January. The student was valiantly trying to
wrap it all up and Raman felt, he had to be by the side of the research
student, see that the thesis was finished, sign the thesis as the guide and
then have it submitted.
Here was a scientist
who gave up the pomp of a glittering ceremony associated with the highest
honour, because he felt that his duty required him to be by the side of the
student. It is this unique trait of giving value to science that builds science.
Scientific
Magnanimity:
Now, I would like to
narrate an incident which took place during a function conferring Nobel
Laureate Prof. Norman E Borlaug, a well known agricultural scientist and a
partner in India’s first Green revolution, with Dr. M S Swaminathan Award, at
Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi on the 15th of March 2005.
Prof. Borlaug, at the
age of 91, was in the midst of all the praise showered on him from everybody
gathered there. When his turn came, he got up and highlighted India’s
advancement in the agricultural science and production and said that the
political visionary Shri C. Subramaniam and Dr. M S Swaminathan, pioneer in
agricultural science were the prime architects of First Green Revolution in
India.
Even though Prof
Norman Borlaug was himself a partner in the first green revolution, he did not
make a point on this. He recalled with pride, Dr. Verghese Kurien who ushered
White Revolution in India.
Then the surprise
came. He turned to scientists sitting in the third row, fifth row and eighth
row of the audience. He identified Dr. Raja Ram, a wheat specialist, Dr S K
Vasal, a maize specialist, Dr. B. R. Barwale, a seed specialist. He said, all
these scientists had contributed for India’s and Asia’s agricultural science.
Dr. Borlaug introduced them to the audience by asking them to stand and ensured
that the audience cheered and greeted the scientists with great enthusiasm.
This action of Dr.
Norman Borlaug, I call it as “Scientific Magnanimity”.
Friends, if we aspire
to achieve great things in life, we need Scientific Magnanimity to focus on the
young achievers.
It is my experience
that great mind and great heart go together. This Scientific Magnanimity will
motivate the scientific community and nurture team spirit.
With this background
of unique traits of great minds, dear young friends, now it is time for all of
you to have a great dream in life, dream transforms into thoughts and thoughts
result into action. Now I would like to administer an oath on courage:
COURAGE
Courage to think
different,
Courage to invent,
Courage to discover
the impossible,
Courage to travel into
an unexplored path,
Courage to share the
knowledge
Courage to remove the
pain
Courage to reach the
unreached
Courage to combat the
problems And Succeed,
Are the unique
qualities of the youth.
As a youth of my
nation, I will work and work with courage to achieve success in all my
missions.
My congratulations to
all the graduates who are passing out from Madras Christian College. My best
wishes to all the members of Madras Christian College in their mission of
providing quality education and capacity building among the youth of Chennai
and the adjoining districts.
May God bless you.
Well, me thought these above lines that present the mind and the heart of one of the best visionaries that the world has ever
produced thus far, - Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, - would be a befitting grand finale
for our series on gentlemen and gentlewomen!
You may also want to
read my little, respectful homage to this noblest gentleman that our planet has
ever seen thus far, on our past post here.
So with this ablest
and noblest gentleman’s words, we come to an end on this gentle series, ladies
and gentlemen!
Adieu & Love,
Dr. Rufus
images: this blogger's! PS: Well, none of us, was allowed to take into the convocation shed our cell phones, when the President was present! - a welcome move at that! and so we had to rest content with this snap taken after the sweetest President had gotten down the dais!
images: this blogger's! PS: Well, none of us, was allowed to take into the convocation shed our cell phones, when the President was present! - a welcome move at that! and so we had to rest content with this snap taken after the sweetest President had gotten down the dais!