The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - a Review

Once in a while you read a book that scrapes a raw nerve right in the centre of  your heart and leaves it exposed and bleeding… for all times to come.The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne is one such book. Filed under ‘a-book-for-keeps’ category, it’s a book that is dramatic in its simplicity, mature in its innocence and heartrending in its factual tone and manner.

There are enough books, reports, films and recordings of the gruesomeness of war but not many take the unique perspective that this one takes. Set in the time of the second world war, it’s a look at Germany from the viewpoint of innocence – through the eyes of a nine-year old boy Bruno.

As the family moves to another location, the import of which import Bruno does not understand right till the very end, Bruno struggles with the curiosity and loneliness of a boy his age and over a period of time makes friends with a boy ‘across the fence’ who shares the same birthday as his. How much different could they be, he wonders, and yet his new friend is on the other side of the fence and they cannot really play together.

What the book brings out in its stark innocence is the horrors of the war, the unsaid atrocities of the Holocaust and the simple truth that sometimes the ones who get caught in the crossfire of an adult issue are children.

For a nine-year-old boy who lives in the midst of a warring nation – being shielded from the gruesome aspects of war is the very reason why he himself becomes the victim of it. The end is almost anti-climactic in its simplicity. The naivete of the two boys as they promise to remain ‘friends for life’ pulls violently at the heartstrings as darkness descends.

The book in its sheer simplicity ends with these telling words, “Of course all this happened a long time ago. And nothing like this can ever happen again. Not in this day and age.”

Yes may be. Not on this scale but if you come down to warring adults and innocent children, it does continue.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a must-read for every adult. It’s a must-reflect-on, must-think-about, must-not-ever-forget kind of a book. Like I said in the beginning, it exposes a raw nerve and leaves it like that. But I am glad I own a copy. Thanks NB.

I like the rain

I like the rain.

The June-July-August rain. When it has set into the season in its full glory. The monsoons. The monsoon. Rainy season. Whatever you call it. Unlike a lot of people I know, I like the rain in Mumbai.

It took me two hours to get to work today. But I like the rain. And just about everything associated with it.

It pounded on the roof of my car, splashed at me from oncoming traffic, got swept away by my efficient wipers and relentlessly blocked my vision, I smiled and thought to myself – I like the rain.

I like the rain as it washes away the dirt and grime of this city. I like the muddied water as it runs down in thick rivulets across and by the side of the roads. It’s almost like the rain is frantically trying to clean up the mess that city has made in the past 8 months and has been given a short span of 3-4 months (with dry spells thrown in) to make it all better. And as hopeless as it seems I like that the rain is doing its utmost to bring the city back to its clean self again.

But I know in a city like Mumbai, the rain shields so much, covers so much, blinds so much. And if anything understands this city it’s the rain. The rain sees through the dark side of the city, empathizes with the painful side, equalizes the inequality with one heavy shower and pounds on rich or poor alike.

Overcast, cloudy, grey, black, dull and dreary, the rain is witness to all the city’s dark, dingy misdoings. It creeps its way through dimly lit alleyways and runs through the murky menagerie of human existence. It settles in patches of the underworld, treating the dons and underdogs alike, all covered with the same muddy splashes, all stepping into the same morass of morality, or immorality. I like the rain in all its darkness.

On the outside, someone is crying. But the rain sends a wet protective cover and cries along - with the woman who has lost her house, the man who has lost his job and the brutalized young girl who has lost her faith in humanity. I like the rain as it cries with us.

In the relentless pounding , you don’t hear the cries of the wronged woman or the abused child. It’s all part of the dinning sound that helps this city move on heartlessly to its next destination, next job, next day.

And here comes the rain again. It still tries to do good. Brings new leaf, new colour, to the dust-covered smoke-filled, smog-inhaling trees, unveiling the clear tropical green in the few patches that they still survive. Against a mundane grey backdrop of rain-soaked high rises the glisten of the green gives me new hope. I like the hope of rain.

And then the skies darken again. There’s a deafening peal of thunder and it starts pounding relentlessly on my roof, making silent the music that’s playing in my car, almost insisting I listen to its own drum roll instead. The car fogs up again shielding me from what the rain is shielding from the city – and I watch as the dirt and the grime and the dark, dingy underworld, gets yet another washing.

I do like the rain.

The culture wall. Time to break it!

When you are entrenched in a global marketplace you can’t but help meet, interact and work closely with people of different countries. But does working across boundaries mean a global mindset?

But what we look at as geographical boundaries are actually huge cultural walls. Breaking through these walls with the right awareness, understanding and communication skills is the trick to a truly global mindset.

I am increasingly getting steeped in culture, cultural differences, challenges and the issues culture brings to the workplace. It’s the elephant in the room – looming large as the world becomes a smaller place. And now the elephant has begun to raise its trunk and people are sitting up and taking notice. However taking notice does not tell anyone what to do about it.

The bricks of miscommunication

It’s important at the outset to even acknowledge that there are going to be cultural differences. The second important thing to note is that while it’s called a cultural difference the manifestation is not an outward gesture, it occurs largely in communication – or rather miscommunication. And that’s what builds a wall. It’s built with bricks of misinterpretation, miscommunication and misunderstanding.

Indeed, India is at a huge disadvantage here. Look at the young English-speaking, pizza-eating, mobile-toting crowd and you’ll find that they can be largely compared to the youth of the west. And yet our cultural traits are such that we are at a huge variance from the rest of the world, creating a hotbed of communication conflict. All, unfortunately in the same language.

You speak English?

Let’s look only at English as a language here. English is a second language for most Indians. We have done our entire education in English. For a large number of urban Indians, English is more a native language than our respective mother tongues. For instance, how many of us can read or write our Indian mother tongue and the accompanying script? How many of us speak our mother tongue more than we speak English? And finally, how many of us even think in our own language? We speak, read, write, think and even dream in English. But how close are we to, forget the rest of the Europeans, even the English? Probably as far apart as we are geographically.

Because we speak English our culture is mistaken to be like the English culture. But our DNA does not change because of a deeply entrenched foreign language. Nor does the 5000-year old cultural nuance. Our social norms remain the same. Our mindset unchanged. In that respect the Asian and European nations that speak a different language are at an advantage here. People ‘expect’ them to behave differently.  And also ‘accept’ the difference. Indians who speak English however are mostly misunderstood. We speak pure English, then go on to behave in a purely Indian manner. And this is the stuff that makes the wall bigger, taller, wider.

Breaking the wall

It’s time to take it down. But it’s not enough to want to. What is an absolute must is first to accept that there exists one, second to know that we are on two opposite sides of the wall and the third is the willingness to create a doorway through the wall – a passage so to speak – for the two cultures to come halfway to accepting and acknowledging differences and ready to work with them. That will be the essential first step to the crumbling of the wall. And the first glimpse of what is truly a global mindset.

(And you’ll hear more of this from me.)