Second-hand Time

A very sad, emotionally draining book.

I had bought this a couple of years ago, after Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel for Literature. But I couldn't get too far in it. That is until I watched the movie, "The Death of Stalin" a few weeks ago. I felt it was a satire. But you read the book, and you realize that it was not. The movie set the background, the context. I haven't read Russian history in detail and most of the Russian authors that I read are from over a century ago: Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Pushkin. Their Russia is different. Then there are Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn, who talk of the last century. Or from more recent times, Brodsky, or for that matter, even the Russia recalled by Nabokov. Still, amongst all these, the movie was the best departure point for this book.

Second-hand Time begins where the movie ends. This is about Russia after Stalin, more recent, now; in eighties, in nineties, and until a decade ago.

What do I feel?  Emotionally drained. Sad. Angry. This is not an uplifting or feel-good read. It is about reality. And to that, a gory reality. Saddening. And I don't like it for that.

One wonders why does the world keep going to war or strife, at the global level or these pockets spread out across the world. Or what the solution is? So many, so many lives ravaged across the world in different civil wars. How come we as human beings have not been able to win over the demons of our own making? It is as if we have not found a way of living with each other still. What is the reason? Revenge? For something someone else did? What causes trouble?  Having too much? Having too little? We keep stepping on each other's toes? Or that greed has no end? Or we don't like people who don't look the same? Or we don't like people who don't think the same? Intolerance? And to think that we live in 21st century. Wouldn't evolution mean that after living together for centuries, people will realize that generosity of spirit, generosity in tolerance is what makes life livable. People need faith. They don't need any religion which makes you wish to change the world or converts out of others. It needs faith that lets you contemplate, look inside and conquer your inner mountains. And come out victorious, more generous, more tolerant, more peaceful.  But what if life gives no opportunity to even generate that faith?

What about the unwitting participants in strife? The exploited and the one exploiting, unwillingly following orders. Those who would happily have stayed away but who get unwittingly pulled in just by the accident of being born in that ravaged place; get scathed, burnt by their life in such torn places. It is not easy for anyone. There is no choice for them. No choice to get away, say no.

It is as if somebody just clipped the saddest stories for days and days on end and put them all together in a book form. And to think that this is the way people get forced into living. It is all very, very unfair, and wrong. And on one's fairness scale, one recoils and finds it tough to understand that how can we all go on living our normal lives when the world is full of this much insanity. We do. As I know I do.

The book becomes darker and darker as it progresses. There is one thing to be poor, and not have enough, but it is completely another to have lives destroyed, people killed, families broken, and people psychologically becoming inadept to live, to love. There is little that life holds after that.

While reading about Ivan Denisovich (Solzhenitsyn), I at least felt a root of love, hope, joy, or being able to find the life spark in the most difficult of circumstances. Some ray of sunshine. But here, no, it is just a lot and lot of sad bits. And that is what is the difference, it is reporting,  journalism, as is. No value judgments. Where journalism reports, literature goes on the meta level, or a level deeper and raises the more basic question of existence and all its paradigms and what all it means and perhaps tell a story to an end. Here, there is no end. Just strife everywhere.

And that affects me. When there is no author to show that ray of sunshine, you need to create it yourself. How? To remind myself that wherever and however one lives, the thoughts and the outlook is perhaps something that no-one can take from you. However bleak it is - the one luxury, the freedom of mind is individual and personal. And that can perhaps never be taken away. And that is perhaps your choice. Perhaps. And maybe, there lies the power of human thought. That what you choose to do and think is you. To never be a victim.

I am nobody to say anything in all this. May be, all this to just arrive at a personal manifesto. It is just a way to find that ray of sunshine. Else, if you look down, there'll always be a reason that you cannot look up. Unless you choose to. And that choice is not easy. We are fortunate enough to have it. This is a reminder to not squander it.