Passé | & the Passage of Time ⏳
10 July 2001 💜
#memoriesfromdiaries
Those were the days when terms like ‘browsing’ or ‘emails’ were very new and exciting for all of us!
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| Definition of Passé |
We had to spend Rs. 45 for an hour’s browsing, at some Sify or Dishnet browsing outlets!
On this particular day, after classes got over, (all eager and excited at having ‘explored’ the basics of browsing and ‘searching’ just the previous day), I set out delighted, to teach the basics of browsing for my classmate Sakthi as well!
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| 10 July 2001 |
Those were also the heydays of Yahoo!
Days when Yahoo was literally all over the World Wide Web!
Be it your Yahoo Chat, or Yahoo Messenger, or Yahoo Q & A, or Yahoo Mail, or Yahoo Search Engine (Yahoo Search), it was Yahoo all the way - of the likes of Google - today!
And there was an equally excited mad rush to create email ids for ourselves [using the Yahoo domain], those email ids you created - more out of curiosity rather than as a necessity! 😄
I had just created a mail id on yahoo the previous day with my friend Wesley! So on this day, I took Sakthivel with me to ‘explain’ what browsing is all about, and also helped him create an email id!
Please don’t ask me for his password. Only thing I can divulge is that, his favourite pet dog’s name is Walsh! Avlo than! 😋
Well, he loved Courtney Walsh – the Jamaican fast bowler a lot! Being a cricketer himself, (and a fast bowler too) his style was mostly of the Walsh type! Suchmuch was his admiration for Walsh!
After helping my buddy with the nuances of browsing, we proceeded to the Railway Junction, to buy a copy of the Railway Time Table Book which cost Rs. 20/-, [yet another Book that has become quite redundant and anachronistic, today!]
These two entries from twenty years ago, quite prompted me to have a look into literary parallels of the anachronistic type, drawn from two novels!
Both novels were published in the year 2002!
The first one is Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters, and the second one is Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist!
Now please allow me to take you, dear reader, to the first page of Rohinton Mistry's third novel titled, Family Matters 📖 -
It opens this way –
A SPLASH OF LIGHT from the late-afternoon sun lingered at the foot of Nariman’s bed as he ended his nap and looked towards the clock.
It was almost six.
He glanced down where the warm patch had lured his toes.
Knurled and twisted, rendered birdlike by age, they luxuriated in the sun’s comfort.
His eyes fell shut again.
By and by, the scrap of sunshine drifted from his feet, and he felt a vague pang of abandonment.
He looked at the clock again: gone past six now.
With some difficulty he rose to prepare for his evening walk.
In the bathroom, while he slapped cold water on his face and gargled, he heard his stepson and stepdaughter over the sound of the tap.
“Please don’t go, Pappa, we beseech you,” said Jal through the door, then grimaced and adjusted his hearing aid, for the words had echoed deafeningly in his own ear.
Our focus of attention is on the word, ‘beseech’!
How come the word ‘beseech’, which is an archaic word for ‘request’, is used by Mistry here? And what purpose does it serve here?
The word ‘beseech’ here becomes an anachronism, which has been used for a very specific ‘literary’ feel to it!
Like unto the word ‘beseech’ which feels anachronistic in Jal’s request to his father, the old Nariman also feels in like fashion – out of place – and out of time!
In short, he feels like an anachronism!
Here, the word beseech doubles up as a literary device - a ഉപകരണം – a युक्ति – or a உபாயம் that enhances the ‘literary feel’ of the text!
Mistry’s tale, filled with misery and mystery, makes clever use of such ‘devices’ to enhance the literary appeal of his texts!
Gerard Genette calls them “narrative anachronies!”
Added, such use of anachronisms are also part of postmodern narrative strategies!
Now, moving on to the second novel of our discussion, (and the debut novel) of Hari Kunzru titled, The Impressionist! 📖
In this novel, Jonathan, aka Pran Nath, aka Pretty Bobby feels a disconnect with his time and place!
Quoting from the novel –
He can smell kerosene on the air. Bridgeman, the actual physical Jonathan Bridgeman, is already fading.
Someone known for a few hours only.
Emptied and reinhabited.
He grins.
How easy it is to slough off one life and take up another!
Easy when there is nothing to anchor you.
He marvels at the existence of people who can know themselves by kneeling down and picking up a handful of soil.
Man was created out of dust, says the Reverend. But if men and women are made of dust, then he is not one of them.
If they feel a pulse through their bare feet and call it home, if they look out on a familiar landscape and see themselves reflected back, he is not one of them.
Man out of earth, says the Reverend.
Earth out of man, say the Vedas, like the sun and the moon and all other creation, born out of the body of the Primal Man.
But he feels he has nothing of the earth in him at all.
When he moves across it, his feet do not touch the surface.
So he must have come from somewhere else, some other element.
Here again, the protagonist feels a disconnect with his time!
In short, he too feels like an anachronism!
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