Life Changing + It's All In Your Head, M + Lupin

I’ve been meaning to send this out for weeks now, but I kept getting distracted with a new bit of binge-reading and the next thing you know, it’s Republic Day. This is a public holiday whose celebration has always mystified me because I am yet to understand how a military parade communicates the idea of a republic (“a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president”). This year, though, the disconnect was at a whole new level, with Delhi Police lobbing tear gas peacefully-protesting farmers and then the protestors gatecrashing the Red Fort.

That said, citizens climbing a flagpole at a public monument because they want to be seen (rather than lathicharged) is probably closer to the idea of a republic than a government that figures winning elections means it need not explain or take responsibility for oppressive measures like teargassing citizens, internet shutdown in parts of the national capital, and shutting down the Delhi Metro.

So given the state of the nation, I figured I’d write the newsletter by way of distraction. It was either that or looking up kittens on Instagram and I’m quite proud of myself for sticking with option a when option b contained possibilities like this:

So. January.

It’s been a good month for reading and the standout for me was Helen Pilcher’s Life Changing: How Humans Are Altering Life on Earth. Pilcher takes on the task of examining approximately 300,000 years of our history, keeping an eye out for the interventions that humankind has made in an effort to design the planet to meet human needs. The results includes some good things, like genetically-modified wolves (aka dogs), but most are regrettable. Pilcher doesn’t say this in as many words, but it’s clear that humans are the worst. Fortunately, among our redeeming traits are curiosity and inventive thinking. These might just help make up for the damage our species has wrought upon the world.  

There’s some great trivia in Life Changing, like the fact that male mosquitoes don’t bite; or that a pizzly is a cross between a polar and a grizzly bear; and that the mineral tinnunculite is formed when droppings of the European kestrel mix with hot gas from coal fires. “This is one of my favourite facts,” writes Pilcher, “not least because it begs so many questions, including, ‘HOW did they find that out?’, ‘Does it have to be kestrel poo?’ and ‘Can I get a brooch made of that?’” Pilcher is a wonderful storyteller and she does a great job of showing how human decisions have influenced evolution and the alarming speed at which changes are taking place in the world around us.

Science writing is horribly difficult to get right. Most of the time, if it gets a tick from scientists, then it reads like gobbledygook to regular humans. Make it comprehensible to us unscientific mortals, and the scientists despair at how their findings have been simplified. Pilcher belongs to that rare breed of science writers who can actually break down complicated ideas so that they seem easy to understand. For instance, talking about how humans have brought together species that wouldn’t have interbred otherwise, she writes, “we have become unwitting evolutionary matchmakers”, which tells you everything you need to know about what we’ve done to animals and the planet.

In addition to being rigorously-researched and funny, Life Changing also tries its damnedest to be optimistic, which few can manage while talking about the environmental catastrophe that is our present. However, from Pilcher’s perspective, there are faint glimmers of hope. While gene editing gives most of us nightmares of monstrous, genetically-modified babies, Pilcher points out scientists have successfully used gene editing to help species that are vulnerable. Also, efforts like rewilding and innovative methods of reviving animal populations have worked surprisingly well, like with the kakapos (thanks to which Pilcher could throw in the phrase, “now, he no longer mates with people’s heads”). In Life Changing, Pilcher doesn’t downplay how bad things are in terms of the damage to the environment, but she sees in humans the potential to negotiate the challenges of the future.

Around the time that I read Life Changing, I came across this essay by Michael McCarthy, which says that in the first six months of 2020, there was a drop of more than 1.5 billion tonnes of CO2, which is staggering. McCarthy’s essay is a beautiful and pragmatic reminder that for all the cities that we may build, we’re still wired to think of nature as our home. As he points out, we’ve been farmers and citizens for about 500 generations, but before that, we were hunter-gatherers and part of the wildlife for 50,000 generations or more.

Also from the non-fiction shelf: It’s All in Your Head, M by Manjiri Indurkar. When I finished reading this book, I found myself wondering how I would describe it because I do want to recommend it. To say this is a memoir about mental health and trauma hardly sounds inviting. Neither does it do It’s All in Your Head, M justice. This is a slice of a woman’s life, with its messy and beautiful bits spilling out artfully.

Indurkar’s book reminded me of a patua painting being unrolled by an expert storyteller. When you look at these scroll paintings, they seem to be a jumbled collection of images. Once the storyteller starts speaking, the painting reveals how those images are ingeniously and carefully arranged on the canvas. The weeping grandmother; the passive-aggressive boyfriend; the boy next door who is also a sexual predator; the phobias and manias that take over the body — these are just a few of the motifs in Indurkar’s memoir. It doesn’t matter whether or not you relate to her life. She makes you, the reader, a part of it through this book as she examines her past. Like the patua painting, the story becomes memorable because of the way the storyteller opens it up. It’s All in Your Head, M holds readers’ attention because of how skilfully Indurkar recreates worlds like her childhood in Jabalpur and experiences like her falling horribly sick while stuck in a relationship that’s past its expiry date.

Occasionally, the writing in It’s All in Your Head, M feels overwrought rather than poetic and I’m not persuaded by all of Indurkar’s interpretations/ explanations, but when it became obvious she was wrapping up the book, I found myself wishing she’d pause instead of rushing to finish. Irrespective of whether the ending is strong, a surefire indicator of a good read is when you wish it would slow down instead of winding up.  

While the book doesn’t have a trigger warning, survivors of child sexual abuse should know that It’s All in Your Head, M contains descriptions of traumatic episodes that may be difficult to read. Indurkar deals with very intimate, personal subjects and as a narrator, she finds a delicate balance between describing her remembered emotions and maintaining the perspective of hindsight. That she’s able to maintain this equanimity while talking about child sexual abuse is particularly remarkable.  

On the fiction front, I’ve had a cracker of a time re-reading Maurice Leblanc’s Arsene Lupin stories after watching Lupin on Netflix. Yes, it helps that Omar Sy is playing the role of the fictional gentleman thief, but leaving aside his considerable charm, the adaptation by George Kay and François Uzan is excellent. There are fragments from Leblanc’s short stories in Lupin, which is what led to me unearthing Leblanc’s stories and devouring them.

The first Arsene Lupin story was published in 1905 and he quickly became a sensation in France. Leblanc came up with this gentleman thief when his magazine-publisher friend asked Leblanc to write a set of adventure stories starring a Sherlock Holmes-like character. There’s no doubt Holmes casts a long shadow on Leblanc’s Lupin, but at around the time that he got down to writing the first Arsene Lupin story, France was buzzing with the spectacular case of Alexandre Jacob, a genuine gentleman burglar who led a 40-member gang of thieves (named Les Travailleurs de Nuit, or The Night Workers) and was accused of committing more than 100 robberies. I’ve no idea whether Jacob was an actual inspiration for Leblanc, but it seems likely. Leblanc’s Arsene Lupin is an unabashed criminal, but he frequently adopts the function of a detective as he carefully explains to a gathering how the spectacular crimes were pulled off. He can blend into any crowd and yet his brilliance makes him one in a million. He uses everything from gossip to newspaper columns as his weapon, and you only realise he’s made a move after he’s left you in shreds. Every time you think you’ve pinned Arsene Lupin down, there’s a twist in his tale and he’s slipped out of reach. (Well, almost every time. There is one story in which poor Lupin ends up being the patsy.)    

Re-reading the books now — particularly after seeing Lupin — the character is still tremendously entertaining, but the novels feel a bit dated, particularly with their fondness for kidnapping people. However, the short stories are still good fun and in most cases, the mystery at the heart of adventure is beautifully crafted. Many contain a critique of the class divide in French society, with the aristocratic set frequently coming across as liars and shallow hypocrites. In “The Queen’s Necklace”, Arsene Lupin actually returns to the scene of a crime after six years, just so that he can tell his aristocratic targets how rudely they’d behaved with someone they considered a servant.

In the series, Kay and Uzan fold in a critique of race and class in contemporary French society. The lead character, Assane Diop, is the son of an immigrant and he latches on to Arsene Lupin because this master impersonator is held up as the epitome of Frenchness. Another Arsene Lupin fan as is one of the detectives chasing Assane, Yossef Guedira. Assane’s conversations are peppered with references to Arsene Lupin’s adventures and some of these are deliberately nerdy, like when Assane argues about which is the best Arsene Lupin story. Others are more central, like when Youssef notices similarities between one of Arsene Lupin’s escapades and how a priceless necklace is stolen from the Louvre.

A comparison between how Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat modernised Sherlock Holmes and Lupin is inevitable, but it’s also fitting since Leblanc’s Lupin did have a chip on his shoulder about Holmes. In Leblanc’s stories, barely disguised versions of Sherlock Holmes try to catch Arsene Lupin on numerous occasions, and each time Lupin wins. Fun as Leblanc’s stories are, I don’t think they hold a candle to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries. However, between the two adaptations, based on the first season, I’m leaning towards Lupin. If there is a god, I hope they’re doing whatever needs to be done to make Sherlock Holmes and Arsene Lupin’s worlds collide in a Netflix series. My brain might have melted a little just imagining Sy and Benedict Cumberbatch in a single frame with Martin Freeman and Soufiane Guerrab.

There’s more that I read this month, but I think I’ve rambled on enough. I did want to vent about Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series, which has been adapted into a staggeringly popular Netflix series that my mother loves so much that I ended up coughing up an absurd amount of money to import the hard copy of The Duke and I for her reading pleasure.

The most amusing part of Bridgerton existing has to be my mother and aunt discussing the sex scenes in the show, “just to be sure we’ve actually understood what’s going on”. Unfortunately, my family being adorable does not improve either the series or the books (or, for that matter, the sex scenes which are a travesty of the female gaze). I read the first four Bridgerton books in two days, which should give you some idea of how much complexity they contain. As historical romances go, they’re not particularly memorable, but they aren’t awful either. The Duke and I has some pleasant banter, which sadly didn’t survive the transition to screen and I have a number of thoughts about the adaptation, but maybe I’ll delve into those in an Instagram live one of these days.

Wait, did I mention Dear Reader is on Instagram? Well, it is.      

And on that note, I will sign off. Thank you for reading and Dear Reader will be back soon.