Reading blog – experiences, pros & cons

Never again!

This was my first thought after having finished the last tasks on my reading (b)log. I spent so much time with it and sat in front of my pc during hours and hours, in the one hand my book, the other hand trying to tip in correctly in the little window what I wanted to post. Great difficulty in this case- not only me and a few of my classmates can read it, like it would be in a normal reading log (hand written) but the whole world is able to enter my blog and to (in some cases) make fun of what I wrote in the so much time-consuming process. But I must say that somehow that isn’t that bad.  If all of the viewers would leave a comment correcting my English or just the context of my entries I’d be able to improve my English in only a few weeks… but sincerely.. no one does, or only some few ones who have to

-to be continued later-

Film review: Heat and Dust

And now… The Film!

A little bit too long to remember all the equal or different details, but in general it represents the book in a good way. Certainly in the movie there is missing a lot of information which is given in the book, but that’s normal- if it’s well chosen. In this case the director left some important scenes, I think, and on the opposite showed some parts which mustn’t have been mentioned. Best example for that: the importance of Maji for the narrator in the book, telling her about her pregnancy and helping her to aid a poor beggar woman to die in peace. This scenes totally missed in the movie. Furthermore, the attitude of the British towards the Indian doesn’t play such an important role and is only presented in parts.
Nevertheless, the actors for most of the characters are well chosen.

Olivia is a beautiful actress, young and a little bit naive, like she also appears in the book. Douglas, her husband represents too the same character I imagined, in general. He is a proper and correct Englishman, who cares sometimes more for his job than for Olivia, but still is very affectioned to her. Also the outer appearance fits, as far as he isn’t that attractive, what we can guess from Marcia’s comment, that she didn’t knew why Olivia had married him. But regrettably her name isn’t even really mentioned in the film.
Furthermore, we have the Nawab, very acceptable in his outer appearance. His role is well played, but I wished him to be a little bit more authoritative than he was presented. In the book he really behaved sometimes like a ruler and here not. In addition, his change at the end of the story isn’t illustrated in the movie.
About the other characters like the Begum and the British society is only to say that they’re well presented, despite of Harry, who I didn’t even recongnized at first, as he was described as fat man in the book.

Coming to the 1970’s there is this absence of Maji which I have to refer to. Somehow I think that in the book she appeared as a key character, what did not become clear in the movie.
Anne, the no name narrator, maybe could have been a little bit more weird, like she was depicted in the novel.
Moreover, I liked Inder lal and his family very much, Chid a little bit less, because his relation to Anne was almost eclipsed.

It is a pity that this story was transformed so much in a love story. All the important aspects concerning India, the landscape, the life, the dangers and good things more or less lost their importance. For example the arrival scene of Anne is demonstrated on so many pages in the book, and here it wasn’t even shot. Surely, some scenes showed some details given in the real story, but the problem with Olivia, Douglas and the Nawab attracted so much attention that other facts were eclipsed.

The appearing of Baba Firdaus shire was a disgrace for me. In the book it was described as a holy place and as a grove with a cold source nearby, but in the movie it seemed to be something like a hut and nothing special, a deserted place.

All in all I can conclude that the movie in general is not a bad one and the characters are very well chosen but some of the real sense of the book gets lost and it’s just another boring love story.

A new ending….

When Olivia left the hospital she felt relieved but did not exactly know where to go now. Now that there wasn’t anymore the child in her, her ideas about who to stay with were more clear, not having anymore the pressure to decide in a certain time. But she had not the power to return to stay with the Nawab anymore. he baby now had gone and with it the dream of a more amicable partner who had more time than Douglas. In the end she recognized that the Nawab only used her to revenge against the British society. Maybe he did even know about the abortion because the Begum betrayed her to the Nawab. In the end the life in the Palace wasn’t the one she wanted. Their lifestyle was simply too different, e.g. as she wanted a man of her own, who was not married with another wife. Furthermore, the love to Douglas was so deep-rooted that she couldn’t leave him.
She returned to stay with Douglas in Satipur. Not a year later could be recognized a slight rotundity of her belly.

Suttee and the reaction by it from the British society and Olivia

First of all, the word suttee or sati means faithful wife in India.

Suttee is a funeral practise in which the widowed women follow their dead husbands by burning themselves together with their husbands.

Not all women do it voluntarily and often are constrained to do it. Therefore, it was much disputed. It is stated that a widow could expect little of life after her husband’s death, especially if she had no children.  Her death can be seen as an ending of the marriage.

Most of accounts describe the woman sitting or lying down on the funeral pyre beside her dead husband. Many other accounts describe women walking or jumping into the flames after the fire had been lit, and some even lighted up themselves.

The total figure of known procedures during the years 1813 to 1828 is 8135, another source gives a comparable number of 7941 from 1815 to 1828.

British society: The British mostly are disgusted by this „act“. They don’t regard it as religion, but a form of suicide, although they first spoke even about the sanctity of religious practices. „It’s savagery, like everything else in this country is savagery and barbarism.“ (P.60, ll. 3-4) Here again can be recongnized the attitude of the British society towards the Indian. They regard them as barbaric people who are not on the same level with them and don’t accept other religions than their own, which seems to be the best and the only right one.

Olivia: Olivia sees it as a part of the religion in India to be burned together with the husband. If a woman remains without her husband it should be her own decision to leave with him or not, and no one should try to bias her or prevent the burning. “ And quite apart from religion, it is their culture and who are we to interfere with anyone’s culture especially an ancient one like theirs.“(P. 59, ll. 11-13) Besides she thinks it to be a noble act, to follow ones husband.“ I mean, to want to go with the person you care for most in the world. Not to want to be alive any more if he wasn’t.“(P.60 ll. 1-2). In the moment she says this, she doesn’t dare to look into Douglas eyes because she feels too embarrassed, but shortly after they look at each other with enormous affection. So mainly she sees it as a decision of love if to go with him, or not. She even would die for Douglas.

Satipur or the mountains- which location is better?

Is there really a change in the life of Olivia? Is she happier now that she has eloped with the Nawab, who bought her a house in the town of X in the mountains? Or did the situation remain the old one?
Well, I think that actually she has reached no real change.

Olivia didn’t like Satipur very much. She had not a real friend between the English women. Certainly, she knew all of them and spent much time with Beth Crawford, but actually she was alone all the time. While she visited the Begum with Beth Crawford she was the one to be silent all the time, not knowing the language. And because of their late arrival all the English women already had chosen a kind of best friend for them, so that she was not so much integrated as the others. She spent many hours alone in the house, playing the piano and reading, or simply expecting the heat to go. Douglas, her husband, was at work all day long, and often in the evening returned so late that they had not much time for conversation.

A new „time“ started during the initial period, when she began to visit the Nawab. She often stayed with Harry and found someone to talk with in him. And the Nawab was the first one to really donate her attention. They made trips together, visited the shrine and he showed her the whole Palace, which for most of the inhabitants remained unseen for their whole life.
As they fall in love a big problem becomes the centre of her life and attention: the choice between the Nawab, who was already married and her husband Douglas. Then she even got pregnant and both of them thought to be the father of the child.

After having aborted it she’s not capable to look into Douglas eyes, so she immediately goes to the Palace and leaves Kathm without having seen Douglas anymore.

And then the same situation from the beginning returns. She lives alone in the house the Nawab has bought for her and he only sometimes comes to visit her. The letters to Marcia begin to get shorter and finally disappear completely. She is alone, plays piano and passes her time maybe by reading. So finally, she returned to be in the same way of living as she was before in Satipur with Douglas. She didn’t gain anything.

P. 39-43 Olivia’s and Douglas’ relationship

Thinking longer about their relationship I realized that it isn’t really as good as it seems at first. Douglas, who works like a Trojan doesn’t involve Olivia in any way in his work, so that she does almost never know what he’s doing currently. Nonetheless, she admires his way of speaking about it towards the men he’s working with. As he backbites over them she tries to protest against it, but he doesn’t even realize what she meant and switches off the pipe, instead. Even as she asks him about his work and his growing knowledge of Hindu, which she wants to gain too, he’s not interested and says that these are a men’s problems. Her wishes doesn’t seem to interest him, and in fact he doesn’t even notice her outer appearance, not recognizing the dress she wore so often.
Concerning the trip to Simla he already arranged everything with Beth Crawford, without asking her before if she wants to go or not. In fact, she doesn’t want to. As he says, „It’s the way it has to be.“. The only thing remaining is to implore him to let her stay with him.

The Nawab’s last years

Obviously, the Nawab seems to have used Olivia all the time, as a symbol of revenge.
About his last years we know that Harry left him and returned to England. As they meet again the Nawab seems to have changed completely. He is not living in the Palace anymore, because his money problems in the end overwhelmed him. Therefore, he never brought Olivia with him, because he couldn’t afford it. He bought her a house far away in the mountains and lived there with her sometimes. He never speaks about her openly, she has become as secret as his mother.
Furthermore, he returned to spent more time with his wife Sandy and her family.

In addition, his outer appearance has changed very much. As he visits Harry he has become an old man of 50 years and enormously fat, looking almost like a woman. Also his problems have converted to little domestic ones, so that he seemed softer and milder. Surely he is still the ruler of the state, but as he hasn’t the right to decide about things going on in Kathm anymore, he is no longer interested in it. But still he has great financial problems ans feels ashamed about not being able to keep his inheritance in the same state as he got it.

One time he visited Marcia in London and she too said that he is a more interesting person than Douglas, but not her type.

Finally he dies in the arms of his old mother, the Begum, in New York, Park Avenue, some 15 years later.

The various facets of Maji’s character

First of all, there is the „normal“ Maji:
A wife who has many children who life in different places, coming to visit her every now and then. Her husband, regrettably, has died. Earlier she has been a midwife but now left her job because of her age.

Then there is the part of Maji which has something like a sixth sense.

She knows about the narrator being pregnant just by looking at her. Often she is in the state of samadhi, what means that she’s reached a higher level of consciousness and doesn’t realize what’s going on around her. She’s able to abort a child only by touching a woman’s waist, so she has to have a sort of supernatural power.

Paralells between “Heat and Dust” and “A Passage to India”

Between our book and the film, I think can be seen many parallels, but also differences.

First of all has to be said that both of them play at the beginning of the 1920s in India. Like Olivia, also Mrs. Quested and Mrs. Moore travel to India to get to know better the country, without knowing nothing at all about it. In fact, both arrivals are bound to several difficulties.

In the film, the British live in a kind of ghetto, separated from the Indians and not wanting them in their clubs. In comparison to that, the British in the book live also somehow separate, but in the same town as the Indians. The English mostly maintain their way of life or, for example, take with them their English furnishing. Many of them e.g. Mrs. Saunders treat the “normal” Indians bad and take them as servants. But in difference to “A Passage to India” there are also some royal Indians, the Nawab and his mother. These ones are esteemed very highly. All the English women try to get friends with the Begum and to appeal to her play little roles during the meetings. Such relationships don’t exist in the film. The only one who sees the Indian from an other point of view is Richard Fielding.

The further action differentiates only a bit, but the outcome is totally different. Mrs. Quested expresses the wish to get to knew better the landscape, so a trip to the holes nearby the town is planned. At the same time, in the book, both Olivia and the narrator go to visit the shrine. There nothing happens, in the holes, however, Mrs. Quested gets panicked and has an accident saying later that Dr. Aziz has followed her.

In Heat and Dust no one really gets in trouble like that, the gap between Indians and British isn’t that big.

The only parallel between those visits is maybe, that Dr. Aziz and also the Nawab or Inder Lal arrange the visit very extensively to awake the interest of Mrs. Quested, Olivia, or the narrator.

In the end, Adela returns to England, Richard marries the daughter of Mrs. Moore and also Dr. Aziz has two children. That stands in an absolute contradiction with Heat and Dust. There Olivia escapes with the Nawab and lives in a house in the mountains in India, where the climate is much more comfortable that in town. Also the narrator, who is getting a child from an Indian goes there, to bear her child.