A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

By Xiaolu Guo

Publishers Vintage, 2007

Pages: 354 Price: $ 13.95

"Sorry of my english" is the scanned hand-written script pasted on the first page of this novel with a strange name, giving you a taste of what is to follow.

A casual reading of the first few pages occupies your attention so fully that you find it hard to put down what turns out to be a brilliant work of fiction. Even though the language remains broken and grammatically incorrect till the end, the story of love narrated by the 24 year old Chinese girl, a first time visitor to England, becomes a metaphor of life and the complexities it entails.

Xialolu Guo, the young Chinese novelist, has very intelligently used the tool of language to deal with some pertinent issues of culture and identity in the 'globalised' modern world. While the book offers a great opportunity to learn about the possibility of 'misunderstandings' between cultures and genders, and to correct them somehow, it concludes with a parting of ways between the two main characters, but not before they have learnt much more about life and each other's world.

The contrast between her small town home in China and London begins for Zhuang Xiao Qiao, the narrator, as soon as she lands at Heathrow Airport where she has been sent by her parents to learn English to improve her chances of employment back home. She finds the city cold and unwelcoming, the food obnoxious, the language unfamiliar and the weather unpredictable. Worst of all she experiences loneliness for the first time in her life.

Luckily what helps her escape her loneliness is a relationship she enters into with a much older man who is an ex-anarchist, a bisexual, a sculptor, an environmentalist and a drifter. The whole book is a year's account of her days in London in the format of a dictionary, which is how the West unfolds its ways to her, word by word.

The book is all about some interesting paradoxes; about a traditional society trying to modernise, retaining some essential cultural values while losing certain others in the process. Thus Zhuang realising her name was too long and too difficult to pronounce for a Westerner introduces herself as Z -- a compromise she is ready to make to adjust to the new reality.

But Z from China is not the only one symbolising this paradox. The man she falls in love with, who remains unnamed till the very end, combines within himself certain quintessential Western values and their antidotes. He likes freedom, privacy, individualism and free sex and yet shirks the central Western value i.e. consumerism. A well-read, well-travelled man who has come to the conclusion that physical work is far superior than intellectual work; it makes people happier. A sculptor who refuses to sell his sculptures, he explains to Z, "An intellectual can have a big brain, but a very small heart."

The paradox runs all through with Z looking for permanence in love, ready to settle down, have family and children and yet learning English language alongside, thus nurturing her ambition. Her lover from the West does not want to commit himself to an uncertain future with her and yet is ready to forego the comforts of city life and go back to the country to start off his life as a peasant.

At times the simple comments contain intense political message. In one of the conversations, the lover explains why he stopped being an anarchist that he once was. "Most anarchists are in fact bourgeois. They don't really want to give up any advantages. They can be very selfish," Or when Z says: "We don't have much the individuality concept in China. We are collective, and we believe in collectivism. Collective Farm, Collective Leadership… When I was in the middle school, we studied Group Dancing…with 200 students…we have to dance exactly the same pace and the same movement…Maybe that's why I never feel lonely in China."

The possibilities of miscommunication through language, essentially meant to communicate, have been adequately explored in the story. To say that you would like tea in a manner "I would love to have a cup of tea, please" utterly confuses Z who retorts by asking: "How you use word "love" on tea?" A point comes where she is frustrated to the extent that she pours down her feelings in Chinese which are thus translated by the editor on the following page: "I am sick of speaking English like this…I am scared that I have become a person who is always very aware of talking, speaking, and I have become so small, so tiny, while the English culture surrounding me becomes enormous. It swallows me, and it rapes me. …I wish I could just forget about all this vocabulary…and…just go back to my own language now… Why do we have to study languages? Why do we have to force ourselves to communicate with people? Why is the process of communication so troubled and painful?"

Above all, the novel excels in creating a woman's world alongside a man's, parallel, at times parasitic, but parallel at the end. The woman may not be too happy with the arrangement, the man's side we don't get to know. But the novel affirms that these two worlds cut across countries and cultures and exist separately no matter where you are.

Ninety years old British orientalist Ralph Russell died in London last month where he was living all alone, surrounded by his books, audio tapes and souvenirs which he had brought from India during the World War II. He had been working on his autobiography for the past few years. He had envisaged to write the story of his life in three volumes but death curtailed his project and he could only complete the second volume. The first part was published under the title Findings Keepings which was translated into Urdu by an Indian scholar Arjmand Ara. It also contains an epilogue by the Urdu translator who translated the book under the supervision of Ralph Russell in London.

Ralph Russell, a suave British without colonial arrogance, visited Pakistan and India many a times to meet his old friends and to complete his joint literary ventures. He was a committed and proud communist who remained engaged in dissemination of communist ideology even during his military service in India. Russell does not give any metaphysical or emotional reasons for writing his autobiography. He writes that each individual is important in this universe and lives a life in his own way.

Ralph Russell was born in 1918 in Homerton. He was raised in a workhouse where his father worked. He received his early education in small towns and from 1937 to 1940 went to Saint John's College, Cambridge to study geography. In 1940 he was called up for military service. Out of six years in the army, Russell remained in India for three years.

He became a communist at the age of 16. He read book on politics, social development and particularly Marxism other than literature. In his autobiography he gives a detailed account of the British Communist party and his active participation in the political activities. After the end of the war, he went back to England having no design to become a scholar or a literary critic. His stayed in India and his political ideology catalysed his mind. Back in England, he joined School of Oriental and African Studies thereafter becoming a lecturer in the same school.

His critical work and translation of classical Urdu poetry is an important literary output. In collaboration with Indian scholar Khursheed ul Islam ,he published a book entitled Three Mughal Poet which is a translation of selected poetry of Mir Taqi Mir, Mir Hasan and Ghalib. It was followed by another book Ghalib: Life and Letters. His last book on the subject was In pursuit of Urdu Literature containing his diverse articles on Ghazal, Iqbal, Faiz Ahmad Faiz and others. He is objective and unsparing in his assessment of these poets. He is critical of those writers (including Deputy Nazir Ahmad) who wrote under the Western influence and abdicated from their tradition. It is hard to agree with him on this point because cross currents of literary influences are a part of global literary history.

Russell's autobiography provides insight into the life of a scholar, a communist, a colonial British Army officer and a teacher. The self-portrait is interesting giving some intimate details besides his political leanings. His description of his childhood in the English provincial towns reminds the reader of Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens. His observations of life around are quite insightful and his prose is fluent. During his posting in India he was posted in Kakool, Murree, Delhi and many other cities and observed the harsh treatment of the colonists meted out to the local blacks who were born to serve. Russell has given interesting account of everyday life during the colonial period.

The Last Lecture

By Randy Pausch

Published by Barnes and Noble

Pages: 207

Price: $ 21.95

Professor Randy Pausch's book The Last Lecture may well deserve to be ranked as the best book of the year. Pausch was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon who had been diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer. At Carnegie Mellon, Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters to them most and give a hypothetical talk. When Pausch was asked to deliver such a lecture he did not have to think much and chose to speak on 'Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.' An hour long lecture to his former students and colleagues was literally his last lecture. Pausch died on 25 July, 2008. Jeffery Zaslow, a journalist covered it for a Wall Street Journal article which became an internet sensation viewed by millions online. His lectures reminded me of my younger brother who died of cancer at the age of 47 last year. He too, while in his last stage delivered last lecture as an expression of ever lasting love for his students.

As an educator I understand and believe in the value The Last Lecture book presents. Pausch, being an American middle class professional, portrays values which may have an underlying lesson for Pakistani families. Dismissal or rejection of these values by painting them Americans and not adaptable in our society will be a mere naivety or over simplistic statement. "The lecture was for my kids, but if others are finding value in it, that is wonderful. But rest assured I'm hardly unique," wrote Pausch. The book leaped to the top of the non-fiction best-seller lists after its publication in April and remains there till this week. Pausch dictated this book to Zaslow during fifty-three long bike rides on his cell-phone headset and he called them fifty-three lectures.

The reasons Pausch gives for accepting the Carnegie Mellon's invitation to deliver the last lecture is grounded in his old fashioned values: how to teach his children what he would have taught them over the next twenty years was his foremost concern. Undoubtedly, Pausch emerges as a brave man who knows that his end is near. Rather than being sad or mellowed, he is cheerful and appears normal which leaves his audience spellbound. In The Last Lecture Pausch picks up enough courage with humour, wit and immediacy to tell his kids how to remember him.

It is not hard to understand the sensibilities lay hidden in this message if we take a closer look at the fragmented world around us. Pausch had lived out his dreams, in great measure, because of the things he was taught by all sorts of extraordinary people along the way. After reading the book one can not but appreciate the author for having spent an accomplished life and his lecture might help others find a path to fulfilling their own dreams. He fulfilled all his childhood dreams -- being in zero gravity, writing an article in the World Book Encyclopedia and working with the Walt Disney Co.

Pausch's father was a World War II medic who served in the Battle of the Bulge. He founded a nonprofit group to help immigrant's kids learn English. His mother was a tough, old-school English, enduring those parents who complained that she expected too much from kids. He grew up in the comfortably middle class area of Columbia, Maryland. "The instinct in our house was never to sit around like slobs. We knew a better way: Open the encyclopedia, Open the dictionary. Open your mind." He recalls his parents fondly and narrates various anecdotes highlighting the ways the children of middle class families were raised.

One lesson which Pausch learnt at football ground remained etched in his memory forever: Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. This one lesson, he says, the kids ignore even to their detriment. "It is not something you can give; it's something they have to build." Something highly appropriate in our society.

Pausch was never short of humour. When he and his wife went on their honeymoon they wanted to be left alone but on the insistence of his boss he came up with the perfect message, "if you can convince my new in-laws that their emergency merits are interrupting their only daughter's honeymoon, they have our number."The result was obvious he didn't get any calls.

One incident he narrates about his father is particularly impressive. His father died in 2006 and while going through his papers he found from the stack of papers a citation issued in 1945 from the Commanding general of the 75th Infantry Division for "heroic achievement." In recognition of his services he was awarded the Bronze Star for valour. The author was unaware of any such episode and it was only after his death he learnt the the meaning of sacrifice and the power of humility.

The last part of the book 'It's About How to Live Your Life' provides practical and excellent advices on how to be a successful person? Pausch got tenure at the University a year earlier than people usually do and that seemed to impress other faculty members. When they asked him the secret of his accelerated promotion he said, "It's pretty simple. Call me any Friday night in my office at ten o'clock and I will tell you."

Not only did Pausch inspire millions suffering from incurable diseases but he has shown how to lead a fulfilled life till the end. This highly acclaimed book combined with humour, inspiration and intelligence must be read by teachers, parents and students alike.

PEN is a worldwide association of writers aimed at promoting friendship and intellectual cooperation among men of letters all over the globe regardless of their political views. It upholds freedom of expression and defends writers suffering under dictatorial regimes.

The Pakistan centre of PEN was established under the leadership of English language poet Syeda Henna Babar Ali three years ago. The centre brings out a literary journal offers two annual PEN Awards for the best 'First Book' in prose or poetry, in Urdu English or any other regional language of the country. It also organises poetry competitions in schools all over the country. The center plans to hold regular literary sittings in Lahore. Its first event was recently held at Ali Institute of Education conducted by Dr. Khalid Hamid Sheikh, former vice-chancellor of the Punjab University.

The highlight of the meeting was a paper read by Dr. Ghazala Irfan, secretary general of the all Pakistan Music Conference and a teacher of philosophy at Lahore University of Management Science. She raised the question of the nature of language we speak; is it Urdu mixed with English or is it Urdunised English?

Analysing the impact of Urdu and other Pakistani languages on the English we speak, Ghazala Irfan said that the English we speak reflects our society and culture. One of the examples she gave to illustrate her point was that the group oriented, rather than individual centred, Pakistani society is depicted in a small example where singular becomes plural: the pronoun you is substituted with the plural they as in aap when elders are adressed for example when we sayChacha Ashraf aye they although we are referring to one person. According to her, we live in an authoritarian society where we are unable to distinguish between ability and permission. Consequently, even when we are capable of doing something we do it only when someone tells us to do it, or allows us.

The second part of the PEN sitting was devoted to poetry. Syeda Henna Babar Ali read out three poems from her latest collection The Luminous Path. Next came Joselyne Saeed who has two collection of poetry to he credit. I first met her many years back at the philosophy department of the Punjab University where she came to see Dr. C.A. Qadir, then president of the Pakistan Philosophical Conferences and Professor Khawaja Ghulam Sadiq who then headed the department. She was requested to recite her poetry and she obliged with one of her best poems 'Where no road goes.'

At the PEN meeting, I found that Joselyne Saeed had managed to retain the magic of her style when she presented three of her poems. Fictionist and poet Bushra Naqi presented her seven poems including the one she composed in Montreal during her her recent visit there.

There are many admires of Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi in Lahore who regularly arrange lectures or seminars on his death anniversaries. But Maulana's 63th death anniversary passed in silence recently. Sindhi Abadi Board, nonetheless, arranged an event to pay tribute to Maulana who was born to a Sikh family of Sialkot, embraced Islam and loved Sindh so much that he is now remembered as 'the Maulana of Sindh.'

The Sindhi Adabi Board's meeting, held under the chair of Sheikh Aziz, was addressed by some noted Sindhi scholar and intellectuals including Nafees Ahmad Nashad, Professor Zawar Hussain Naqvi, Abdul Hafeez Qureshi and Abdul Ghafoor Siddiqui.

My friend and president of the Sindh Sagar group, Maulana Azizullah Bohio, who is widely respected as an author, also payed tribute to the scholar and freedom fighter of the early decades of the past century. His group arranged a meeting in Naushahro Feroze to commemorate Maulana Sindhi's 63rd death anniversary.