The Year of the Flood (Book Review)

In this book, Margaret Atwood draws attention to the destruction wrought by man’s rapacity, proclivity for violence and his perceived superiority over other life forms. Humans were created to share the earth with other creatures. According to the covenant with God, the creator of all life forms, human beings were to co-exist peacefully with nature. Man was to be steward of the earth and all that it contained. But avarice, pride and the unremitting pursuit of hedonistic pleasures turned humans into ogres who embarked on the wanton slaughter of all other species and the plunder of natural resources. In this narrative, our forbears were fruitivores, who subsisted entirely on a vegetarian diet. And ever since man first picked up the spear, other species have suffered. The author often compares meat-eating with debauchery. By describing the paltry wages and the abhorrent working conditions at SecretBurgers, the author lampoons the fast-food industry where the lure of lucre smothers all regulations and ethics. The illegal trade in the skins of endangered species is also highlighted wherein a shop which purportedly sells Halloween costumes slaughters exotic animals and cures their skins in the basement. Toby, a protagonist of this novel is terrified by the cries and shrieks of the animals suffering their grisly ends. In our world, trade in endangered species is an increasingly profitable business in which the financial benefits far outweigh the associated risks. In many African and Asian countries, the rules are lax and venal officials collaborate with poachers and smugglers in this illicit trade. Often our perceptions about a country are shaped by tourism brochures and travel-guide websites. For eg., the image of Thailand is one of pristine beaches (Phuket), the throbbing nightclubs of Chiang-Mai or the tiger-temple at Kanchanaburi. The fact that Bangkok is one of the largest transit hubs for endangered wildlife and wildlife-products is known only to a few people. Many a time, grim truths lie buried in glitz and pomp. The chapters are interspersed with poems which the author refers to as hymns of the God’s gardeners. These poems are pithy and poignant. Through them, the author shares her intense grief at the misery caused by reckless human activities such as the abuse of nature and the decimation of animals and trees. In the poems, Atwood illustrates the halycon days on earth when animals and birds, full of trust in their human siblings, frolicked and thrived without fear. The oceans which once teemed with whales, sharks, dolphins and countless marine creatures have been irreparably polluted and their denizens hunted to near-extinction. Atwood’s portrayal of the plight of such magnificent non-human species elicits pathos in the reader. We find that the “most-intelligent and civilized” animal has become a grave threat to all other species on earth. Blanco, a perverted libertine symbolizes the way humans behave towards the environment. Blanco delights in dominating his female slaves. For him, sexual intercourse is not about love, trust and bonding. Blanco treats sex as his weapon of choice: an impersonal, humiliating torment for his victim. Any girl who falls afoul of him suffers a horrendous death. As individuals and as nations we have treated other life-forms as tools to satisfy our selfish needs, however reprehensible they be. With scant regard for the future, we have devoured all that the earth contains. Dominating nature with technology and tools has been a feature of human progress.
Natural catastrophes such as earth-quakes, tsunamis, floods and failing rains are constant reminders that Mother Nature wields insuperable power.
In this work, Atwood criticizes human hubris that stems from his intellectual superiority over other creatures. She elegantly states that religion offers a Shadow of God instead of God. Our intellect coerces us to find disparate ways to buttress our understanding of the self and the world around. Faiths are a result of such endeavours. Striving to find the meaning of life has spawned myriad beliefs. Unfortunately, different dogmatic, bigoted faiths bolstered by fanatics has become the cause of much bloodshed and suffering across the world.
Atwood points out that humans should acquire the wisdom of the snake. When the snake sloughs off its skin, it renews itself. Likewise, we should jettison ossified ideologies and antiquated beliefs. The snakes knows God (in other words, the world around it) by sensing the vibrations of Mother Earth. We humans are exhorted by Atwood to imbue ourselves with compassion and love for other life-forms and pursue a sustainable lifestyle which is devoid of base feelings such as greed, anger and pride. Unless we mend our ways, comeuppance will follow soon, as the author admonishes. Though the writing style is desultory and the characters seem disconnected, the author has encapsulated a pertinent message in a work of fiction.

Date: 2013-10-26

The Tunnels of Cu Chi : Vietnam’s Subterranean Battlefield

A book which I had recently read on the Vietnam War is “The Tunnels of Cu Chi” by Tom Mangold and John Penycate. The book sheds light on a lesser known facet of the conflict – the massive tunnel network developed by the VietCong (VC) at Cu Chi, the American soldiers sent down the tunnels to flush out the VC, and the ensuing triumphs and tribulations on both sides. As the authors rightly describe, “this is a book about heroes on both sides”.

What led me to this book is another book which I had read a couple of years ago. It was the novel ‘Avenger’ by Frederick Forsyth. In Avenger, I came across the term ‘Tunnel Rats’ special soldiers in the U.S Army who went down the VC tunnels. Armed with only  a pistol, knife and torch , the Tunnel Rats engaged the VC  in brutal one-on-one combat. Many Rats emerged victorious from the tunnels while others perished. The hero in Avenger is a retired Tunnel Rat named Cal Dexter. He is extremely fit, operates independently and is a loner. Forsyth’s creative talent evinces itself in the way he has moulded Cal Dexter – affixing the qualities of a special breed of soldiers to his protagonist in the most apposite manner. Being a person enamoured of the U.S Army and its operations, getting to know the Tunnel Rats became top priority for me. The search ended at  ‘The Tunnels of Cu Chi’.

Cu Chi is a Vietnamese village outside Saigon (then the capital of South Vietnam). The tunnel system in the areas around Cu Chi outside Saigon had been used even during the times of  Ho Chi Min’s resistance to French rule. The tunnels extended to three levels in many places and had storage depots, ammunition caches, field hospitals and kitchens. Water traps and specially constructed trapdoors prevented any poisonous gases pumped in at the tunnel entrance from permeating the network. Concealed ventilation enabled the inhabitants to spend months and even years within the tunnels. The VC used booby traps to deadly effect inside the tunnels. The punji stakes (sharp bamboo stakes often smeared with human excrement to ensure that infection sets in on the wound rapidly)  accounted for many wounded tunnel rats. Another lethal technique was to spear the Tunnel Rat emerging through a trap door to the next level in the tunnel network. It was a nasty way to die with the body stuck in the trapdoor and impaled on a spear.

The technological superiority and the heavy weapons of the U.S Army were inappropriate tools to destroy the VC living and fighting within the tunnels. Numerous reconnaissance patrols were ambushed by VC  emerging from a tunnel, inflicting heavy causalities and disappearing into the tunnel network. The U.S infantry soldiers were frustrated by an enemy who seemed to vanish without a trace after a firefight. The VC were so meticulous in concealing the tunnel entrances that many a time, those were discovered fortuitously. The authors recount an incident where an exhausted soldier sits on a mound of grass, only to jump up in pain. He had been pricked by a nail protruding from a trapdoor leading to  a VC tunnel. The hard soil of Cu Chi mad it difficult for the armoured vehicles to crush the tunnels and bombing raids lacked the precise intelligence about tunnel locations to be effective. The U.S infantry soon realized that they needed to go down the tunnels and seek out the VC.

The first Tunnel Rats were infantry soldiers who volunteered for these dangerous missions. Fighting in the steamy,rain-sodden jungles was posing immense hardships for the infantry. But at least they did so in platoons and battalions, had air cover,heavy weapons,field communications and could be medevaced in case of emergency. The Tunnel Rats fought alone in the claustrophobic, clammy tunnels where death lurked in each step. Booby traps,poisonous snakes and kalashnikov wielding VC lay waiting in the darkness. The nature of the underground war was antithetical to that being waged above the ground – a primeval duel using knives and pistols. The tunnel system was designed for the lightly built Vietnamese: brawny American soldiers found it impossible to crawl through the narrow passages or negotiate bends. The Tunnel Rats were short,wiry,disdained the use of newfangled weapons and communication devices inside the tunnels and relied on determination,agility and raw courage to defeat their enemy. In a way they were replicating the VC tactics – the best way to fight the tunnel war. As the Tunnel Rats notched up successes against the VC tunnels, they were designated as a special group within the infantry, could organize their own training and were allowed to have their own insignia.

On the VC  side there were legendary guerrillas who had lived and fought in the tunnels for months on end. For them it was a cause of honour and freedom – fighting to live freely in the land of their forefathers. It was this conviction that enabled them to endure privations and sustain hope in desperate situations.

In the novel Avenger, in the concluding pages, an investigative officer who had been Cal Dexter’s buddy in Vietnam is conversing with his subordinate. The junior officer notices the tattoo on his arm and aks the relevance of that tattoo. That tatoo depicts ‘a snarling rat holding a smoking pistol and a torch light”, which was the insignia of the real-life Tunnel Rats. The scene which I recounted here brings a stunning twist to the novel.

The book on Tunnel Rats revealed to me the ruthlessness and innovative tactics employed by both sides. The analysis of the Vietnam War often seems to be distorted by hindsight and ideological passion. To me , what transpired during the conflict is best conveyed in Henry Kissinger’s sententious observation on the War

“We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process, we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla warfare:the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.”

Auschwitz – A liminal place

Here I share my feelings on the book ‘Auschwitz’ by Laurence Rees ,published by BBC Books.

Countless books continue to be churned out about the Second World War and its protagonists, though half a century has passed since the great tragedy was enacted on earth.  Episodes of gallantry and resourcefulness  in the face of insurmountable odds, military fiascos, refulgent exemplars of technological innovations (the code breakers at Bletchley Park, B-29 bombers, T-34 tanks etc), boundless human tenacity and above all the wanton carnage suffuse those volumes and pages. Amidst this melee lies the world’s first instance of industrial genocide. The extermination of approx. 6 million Jews with the efficiency of an automobile assembly-line mocks the very notions of culture and civilization and cocks a snook at our own purported definition as ‘human’. This book by Laurence Rees distinguishes itself with its lucid narrative and attention to detail regarding the construction, establishment, quotidian events and final liberation of Auschwitz.

A nation that suffered ineffable persecution and bloodshed in Europe though never being a warmonger is Poland (Aushwitz lies at a distance of approx 65 kms from the Polish city of Krakow). Poland featured prominently in the Nazi crosshairs – it abounded in Jews. Here was a place where the Final Solution to the Jewish Question could be implemented with impunity. Rudolf  Hoess, an officer in the SS was given the assignment of setting up the concentration camp and running it. Auschwitz was envisaged as a concentration camp and  not a death camp like Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec (all three in Poland).  Through grisly incidents Rees delineates the diabolic nature of the SS officers/soldiers who ensure that the Reich reaps the maximum benefit from the slave labour (prisoners) available to them. Starvation,violence, exhaustion through manual labour – all take a heavy toll on the inmates. The SS tactic of assigning German convicts previously imprisoned within the Reich as ‘Work Kommando’ to persecute the prisoners is particularly abhorrent. By creating paucity of food and warm clothing the SS engendered  a barter economy within the camp where the sick/senescent  and starving traded their jewellery/cash (which they had  hidden from the camp guards) for a piece of bread or a woollen rug. Each chapter offers a slice of hell as the conditions in the camp deteriorate and the Nazis embark on their offensive against the Soviet Union.

The Soviet prisoners – the much reviled ‘Slavs’ in the eyes of the Nazis are singled out for mistreatment and abuse. With their arrival, construction of the Birkenu camp near Auschwitz is initiated. The Nazi modus operandi was to work the Red Army POWs to death. The venality and avarice of the camp guards who are the professed paladins of a superior race reveals the vacuousness of the Nazi racial theory. The SS were essentially no different from the ‘subhumans’  whom they were determined to obliterate.

With the arrival of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi with a visceral odium for Jews, killings at the camp are accelerated. How the camp authorities develop efficient methods of killing and disposing off bodies on a massive scale is expounded upon. As the killings intensify, bodies could not longer be buried in mass graves. Hence the SS devise crematoria on floors below the gas chambers.

In a few years of its existence, Auschwitz had consumed more than 1 million lives,with the majority of the killings taking place from 1942 to 1944. All prisoners were ushered in under the enthusing banner that embellishes the gates of Auschwitz, “Arbeit Macht Frei” – “Work Liberates”. Unsuspectingly tens of thousands entered a world of perennial suffering where the grave was the only escape.  The aged and the infirm, young girls, mothers, even children were not spared. We can only shudder at the scene of people being  disgorged by cattle trains, families split into queues of the expendables ( the aged,sick,handicapped and children) and the useful (able-bodied men) – the former coerced and at times wheedled into ‘gas chambers’ while latter perished by inordinate physical labour and starvation.

The spirit of the book is emblazoned in the words of a survivor of Auschwitz whom Rees  had interviewed – ” The level of human depravity is unfathomable”.

Rees concludes with a note of admonition that it would be folly to regard Hitler and his acolytes as ghouls or aberrations. They are grotesque portrayals of what ordinary human beings can do under extraordinary circumstances. Hitler and the Nazi zealots were human: as human as each of us are. What they did was to tap into the wellspring of envy and loathing towards Jews that permeated large swathes of European society. How else can we elucidate the perverted logic of the Hungarian government who paid the Nazis 500 Reichmarks for each Hungarian Jew transported to the death camps in Poland from Hungary or a member of the French Vichy government requesting the Nazis to include children in the deportation of Jews from France ? That the Holocaust was perpetrated by a people renowned for their culture, learning and technological prowess should sound the tocsin for the world. The ogre is extant in each of us – Given the right conditions all of us can fill the ranks of the ‘Einsatzgruppen’  to prey on our  detested foes. We need to be ever vigilant – setting right wrongs , perceived and otherwise and guarding against paranoia, bigotry and chimerical notions of superiority lest we become the janitors of a new Auschwitz