Two Lives

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Elder hasn't lived an interesting enough life to write a compelling autobiography. If he has, he does not want to write about such matters, which might be refreshing if it didn't feel like he is nonetheless attempting to communicate something here--about himself, his father or his socio-political views. He spent eight hours in jail...because he mouthed-off to a cop after being rightfully accused of jaywalking. Not exactly Hurricane territory, and this doesn’t go anywhere.

Book Genre: Asian Literature, Autobiography, Biography, Biography Memoir, Cultural, Germany, History, Holocaust, India, Indian Literature, Memoir, Nonfiction, War, World War IIDear Father, Dear Son is a personal memoir of Elder's troubled ― one might even say tortured ― relationship with his father, and the astonishing outcome that develops when Elder, at long last, confronts him. My experience with the first, Reading Turgenev, was exactly as I described above and how I associate my best times with this (usually reliable for me) author and I would rate that one a 4.5! What intrigued me most about Shanti that he never talked about the aggressive bigotry and rise of Nazism while he was in Germany. This impressed me as well as annoyed me. Impressed me because this mass maddening hysteria did not make him a bitter man, he continued with his life and work; it annoyed me because I wondered how could he remain so silent when everything around him was rotting. I also thought of the author that he did not probe deeper into Shanti's thoughts about what had happened in Germany and had it affected him. He alluded to them but not in any direct manner. The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde" (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 28-June 2). This extraordinary show presents paintings collected in the early twentieth century by Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo and Michael, and Michael's wife Sarah and displayed at their weekly salon at 27 rue de Fleurus. Visually demonstrating the family's significant effect on modern art, the curators have astonishingly managed to convey on multiple levels the compelling concept of how art -- collecting, promoting, and creating it -- is used to seek power within a family. Shanti Behari Seth was born and brought up in India in the late years of the Raj, and was sent by his family in the 1930s to Berlin to study medicine and dentistry. It was here that Shanti’s path first crossed that of his future wife, as a lodger in her father’s house. Henny Gerda Caro was born in Berlin, to a Jewish family, cultured, patriotic and intensely German. A friendship flowered between them, and when Henny fled Hitler’s Germany for England, just a month before the war broke out, she was met at Victoria Station by the only person she knew in that country: Shanti.

We can find lots of information about these Teachers in the works by Helena and Nicholas Roerich in which their cooperation with the Great Teachers is also reflected. The same Teachers were the guardians of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky – the author of “The Secret Doctrine” and founder of the Theosophical Society in 19th century. However, before the Nazi raised their ugly heads and he moved to England, we got a glimpse of Shanti's life in Berlin such as what sorts of things interested him, how he coped with his life in that period, who were his friends and how he lived. Somehow we tend to believe that it is only in the present times that people have become more open-minded than they have ever been in the past. In the novel, we see that human nature does not change with a change unleashed by man-made ideologies. He had many friends in Berlin and in fact, he lived in a nice neighborhood in Berlin and later went on to marry his landlord's daughter, Henny. However, this unusual couple goes through many tribulations before they finally settle down and establish themselves as a successful couple in England. Which doesn't mean that I'll read it, mind. Books that large are only used for squishing spiders at my place. Hero of the Fleet: Two World Wars, One Extraordinary Life - The Memoirs of Centenarian William StoneHenny, initially, doesn’t want him staying with them because he’s not German. However, she’s soon charmed by his warm and friendly manner, his kindness, and his humor. Henny is engaged to Hans, a young German, and so she’s not looking for a relationship. Still, she enjoys Shanti’s company. Even if she had wanted Shanti for a partner, the rise of Hitler puts an end to any hopes of romance. Researching Gertrude Stein is my current rabbit hole: she is a huge and mystifying presence from the 20th century whose legacy and influence are hotly debated. Spurred by the disappointing but legendary “Autobiography of Alice B Toklas,” I’ve spent the past few weeks madly reading about the couple. Janet Malcolm’s “Two Lives” (a riff on Stein’s own “Three Lives”) seemed like a great place to start, give the author’s reputation as an incisive writer (publishing frequently in The New Yorker). Two Lives is a homage to two people(Shanti and Henny) and to a whole generation which despite being separated Then one day he sits down with his father as an adult. 8 hours he spends with him. The veil lifts. It lifts between the son's understanding of the father, and between the father's understanding of the son. There is an new, intriguing appreciation of his father. A sense that despite behavior that seems strange to a young boy there was a method, a reason and a goal in it. That in the end it was (imperfectly) enacted towards the goal of raising a productive person... a productive citizen.