War and Peace

My childhood days saw Mishkas, and my prize books were Russian folk tales, tales of prince and princess and czars, thanks to the friendship between Nehru and Soviet Union and mom being a central government employee and me studying in Kendriya Vidyalaya. My sister and I tried so many times to get this czar/tsar pronunciation clumsily back then. I distinctly remember the collection of short stories on the friendship between wolf and man, Siberia tiger and a child, a tiger that ate sausages every time. I remember reading Anna Karenina, but that was a looooooong time ago. So with nothing else left to do, am just reading BBC’s top 100 novels, some of which, I have already read. I started with the bottom and War and Peace came up. It was absolutely unintentional that I picked this up just after reading Les Misérables.

Princess Mary Bolkonski’s character was the first to impress me, for it distinctly reminded me a girl in college. She had the same attitude of attributing everything to god. German, French and English peppered throughout this book initially made me wonder about polyglots in India who know minimum 4 languages.

As the war progressed between Russia and France, 150 thousand French men and 40 K Russian (Kutuzov’s) men, I was thinking, why that is the size of a software company. Hiroshima. Nagasaki. One man at the top playing with the lives of so many people made me painfully aware of the cruelties of a war. Cheiro mentions that the palm lines of 2 soldiers were not there just 2 days before they died in the war. I have been trying in vain to see the palm lines of corpses to confirm this.
With the war in the background, Mary sees Prince Vasili’s son’s blatant behavior with her friend Bourienne and still deals with her in her own pristine way.
“Said Prince Andrew; ‘ on the contrary one must try to make one’s life as pleasant as possible. I am alive, that is not my fault, so I must live out my life as best as I can without hurting others”


Then again came the scene where Natasha begs Nicholas to take her for hunting. This immediately brought in images of a young girl whom I had interviewed. She had cat eyes. She had this way of looking outside while talking anything. She described driving big racing cars was her passion and I was wondering how, until my partner asked if it was because of her elder brother.

“Natasha had too much of something and because of this she would not be happy… “ and the story’s twist to make her so made me sad as well. Tolstoy’s ploy of not giving everything to everyone. The generous Rostovs were lacking in riches. The Bezukovs in morality. The Bolonski’s in happiness and moderation of temper. Julia let Boris marry her because of flattery and Boris married her for her fortune. How very true as always.

“…because only Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract notion-science, that is, the supposed knowledge of the absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing does not want to know anything since he does not believe that anything can be known. “


I still remember my 7th standard history half early examination. It was scheduled in the afternoon session and I was leafing through the history text book pages in the last minute and out of exasperation of not being able to remember the dates and events, I threw the book towards the door around noon, a fact I sincerely regret now. During childhood history bored me because of the teachers, now history rather the lives of people in history interests me the most. In vain, am trying to find that of Indira Gandhi after reading Dom Moraes’, hope someone lends me Aandhi some day.

Slaughter of 80k men at Borodino…as I read this, I was shocked, rather I should not be any longer. I wonder, how people managed to bomb Japan even after this, persecute jews even after this. None of Napolean’s orders were executed Tolstoy says, common will… well…hmmm.

Hugo had a nice way of describing to the minutest detail possible, setting things up to a climax and resolving thereafter, (that was not precisely history, but fiction). And Tolstoy like me, put the end results first and there after went on explaining about Napolean’s cold and all trivia, at times rather mostly sarcastically.
Why on earth do they call Peter Kirilovich as Pierre? These Russian names and different forms of their names and pet names and their being addressed by different persons in different ways never ceased to amuse me. Pierre being accepted amongst the soldiers and everyone around him in earlier chapters, reminded me of my brother who is 120 kgs, always smiling, intending no harm to anyone, being the object of somebody’s soft raillery.

When everywhere, there were reports of gruesome death and horrors, I was wondering, how come Tolstoy spared the princes and then came Andrew and Anatole Kuragin’s saga. It is quite sad, that we need such misery and intense pain and torture to experience happiness and boundless love even for the worst of enemies.
The mathematical tinge in Tolstoy’s explanation reminded me of my professor. Tortoise and Achilles problem. Infinite collective force vs. one strong individual will. The laws of History! Is it the actions of the kings and the important men or the path. Latter on it reminded me of the course we had Corporate Strategy and Environment, where our professor would describe Bhopal Gas Tragedy or Nile Perch, and other such issues, point out all issues and say no solution is possible finally satisfying all criteria and constraints.

Guess, Tolstoy likes lilac, Natasha wore a lilac and black dress while going to the church and Count Rostov came out in lilac dressing gown the day of departure from Moscow. Rostovs generosity of letting all their carts for the wounded though seemed chivalrous on one side, seemed so sacrificing too on the other hand. I have all my clothes and things strewn in 3 places, Trichy, Bangalore and Chennai and am at times aching that they are not within reach, when I need them. For Rostovs to leave the packed things for outright looting seemed too magnanimous.

“A town captured by the enemy is like the maid who has lost her honour,” I always wonder, why such honour is never attributed to a guy. Girls like flattery, dolls and flimsy material possessions and guys indulge in girls, taking it all, supplementing with larger material possessions.
“Moscow being empty as a dying queenless hive is empty. …..”
Rostopchin ordering Vereshchagin’s death and later repenting it, mentally preparing to address Kutozov….
Monkey getting trapped with hands grabbing nuts inside a narrow necked jug…thus the French soldiers became marauders and disappeared with their loot.

“love of clodhoppers” for Helene and” love of simpletons” for Natasha vs. L’amour which the Frenchmen worshipped consisted principally in the unnaturalness of the relation to the woman and in a combination of incongruities giving chief charm to the feeling.” Well so much for the French love.

When I read about Moscow burning, I wondered, what victory were the Russians celebrating, when they let Moscow burn, losing their capital for looting that too without fight. Strange victory indeed.

Andrew’s death reminded me of the deaths I had to witness. I could never cry in any of them, later I cried in solitude thinking they were no more, occasionally when thoughts about them came.

“The mining of the Kremlin only helped toward fulfilling Napolean’s wish that is should be blown up when he left Moscow- as a child wants the floor on which he has hurt himself to be beaten.” I started liking Tolstoy’s way of story-telling. Wish he was my grandfather to tell me bed time stories.

I am here resting on a comfortable bed, with proper shelter and eating food which I like and I have inner peace. I go out and see a beggar or some invalid, I feel bad that she has to suffer so at such an old age. Now Pierre finds “peace and inner harmony only through horror of death, through privation, and through what he recognized in Karataev. “ Does man have to experience peace only through privation? Well different things for different people. There is no panacea for inner peace. What might seem the antidote at one time may turn out to be the poison few years down the line. Pierre’s ability to sit still and think without doing anything reminded me of my Vipasanna days. It was tranquil back then.

Pierre being rescued by Dolokov and Denisov, was bound to happen, especially since Tolstoy made Pierre shoot Dolokov in a duel. Irony of fate. Especially since Tolstoy made Andrew and his brother-in-law see each other after being wounded.
“While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity.”
“Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one’s sufferings, in innocent sufferings.”

“The activity of Alexander or of Napolean cannot be called useful or harmful, for it is impossible to say for what it was useful or harmful. If that activity displeases somebody, this is only because it does not agree with his limited understanding of what is good.”

“It is true that we do not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrives at laws, ‘ so also in history the new view says: It is true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws.” Interdependence others would say now.

War and Peace, between nations, between people, between entities eternally happens like waves forever beating against the shores, now resolving, now again arising, and then finally dissolving into the mighty ocean. Hiranyagarbha should I say?