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SOME
time ago, I wrote about Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, which
remained on the top of the world’s Eleven Minutes is
an intriguing title. Half-way through the novel, the reader learns
that, according to Coelho, sexual intercourse lasts just about that
time. And they are the most crucial minutes in the lives of adult
males and females. So the most important ingredient in cooking a best
seller is sex. Next, comes religion, and the third, violence. The
three make a heady cocktail; the most important ingredient being sex
— the more, the better. But before sex, there has to be a build-up
love, courtship and romance. Coelho starts his tale with a quotation
from the scriptures, then he introduces his main character,
11-year-old Maria, daughter of a poor peasant living in a remote
village in Brazil. Her first crush is on a schoolmate who asks her to
lend him her pencil. She can see he has one in his pocket. She is too
shy to respond to his overture, but hopes he will repeat it. At 19,
she is a well-rounded, dusky Brazilian beauty. She has her second
heartbreak but decides to first try her luck as a model or a Samba
dancer in the capital Rio de Janerio. She is picked up by a Swiss
procurer to work in a dance hall in Geneva. She accepts the offer and
arrives in Switzerland only to discover that she is meant to be a
prostitute. Her first client is a rich Arab who gives her more money
than she has ever seen. Then she gets a regular job in a
nightclub-cum-pick-up joint called Copacabana. There are over two
dozen girls — Europeans, Fillipinos, Spanish and Italian working
there. It has also a regular clientele of whore-mongers. The drill is
set— first ask for a fruit cocktail, then dance with the client who
then pays the tavern-keeper his commission and takes the girl to his
hotel and pays her for her services. Maria is quick to fall in line.
She services three clients every night and earns a lot of money. But
there is no love or romance. In her months in Geneva, she has only two
affairs which she finds fulfilling. One is with a sado-masochist who
whips her. The second, with an artist, comes closest to what she has
been looking for in life.
The novel revolves round sex at its rawest form. "Eleven minutes. The world revolved around something that only took eleven minutes. And because of those eleven minutes in any one twentyfour-hour day (assuming that they all made love to their wives everyday, which is patently absurd and a complete lie), they got married, supported a family, put up with screaming kids, thought up ridiculous excuses to justify getting home late, ogled dozens, if not hundreds, of other women with whom they would like to go for a walk around Lake Geneva, bought expensive clothes for themselves and even more expensive clothes for their wives, paid prostitutes to try to give them what they were missing, and thus sustained a vast industry of cosmetics, diet foods, exercise, pornography and power, and yet when they got together with other men, contrary to popular belief, they never talked about women. They talked about jobs, money and sport. "Something was very wrong with civilisation, and it wasn’t the destruction of the Amazon rainforest or the ozone layer, the death of the panda, cigarettes, carcinogenic foodstuffs or prison conditions, as the newspapers would have it. "It was precisely the thing she was working with: Sex." In another passage Coelho writes about Maria’s notion of love: "Everyone knows how to love, because we are all born with that gift. Some people have a natural talent for it, but the majority of us have to re-learn, to remember how to love, and everyone, without exception, needs to burn on the bonfire of past emotions, to relive certain joys and griefs, certain ups and downs, until they can see the connecting thread that exists behind each new encounter; because there is a connecting thread. "And then, our bodies learn to speak the language of the soul, known as sex, and that is what I can give to the man who gave me back my soul, even though he has no idea how important he is to my life. That is what he asked me for and that is what he will have; I want him to be very happy". The only concession he makes to love is to admit that "making love is more than just an encounter, it is a genital embrace". Spurious drug Sometime ago, in a weak moment, Disgusted with aimless strife I tried to embrace peaceful death And end my sad, miserable life. I went to a reputed medical store And purchased a potent poisonous pill. This effective deadly device I hoped Gap between pain and peace would instantly fill. I consumed the drug and fell asleep But death is death, not a fun. Next day I got up as usual. Alas: the drug was a spurious one; Courtesy: G.C. Bhandari,
Meerut Tax exemptions A businessman known for his honesty was never questioned by Income-Tax officers on the returns he filed. Once a new tax commissioner, scanning his returns, found some expense item baffling. They included expenditure on elephants, horses and donkeys. The commissioner summoned the businessman to his office and asked him to explain these items, particularly as he did not have elephants, horses or donkeys. Before entering the commissioner’s office, the businessman gave a tip of Rs 10 to his chaprasi sitting outside the commissioner’s room. Then he explained the items on his expense list. "When some minister or politician comes to this city, I have to spend large sums of money on their hospitality and give donations for election campaigns. This I put under the heading ‘expenditure on elephants’. I also have to keep babus happy and pay them regularly to ward off their wrath: this expenditure I put under the head ‘expenditure on horses’. Before being allowed to enter your room, I had to tip your chaprasi. This expenditure is shown as ‘expenditure on donkeys’. Contributed by S.R.
Rakheja, Delhi |
THIS ABOVE ALL
bestsellers’ lists for many
months and sold over 20 million copies. I tried to analyse why it
became such a phenomenal success. It is written in very simple,
lucid
prose and had a message of hope. I was somewhat grudging and
condescending in my appraisal. So my friend Zakir Ansari who is the
Sales Manager of HarperCollins sent me another of Coelho’s novels Eleven
Minutes, also published by them. The jacket claims that Coelho is
one of "the most widely read authors in the world today."He
has sold more than 43 million books and has been translated in 56
languages that would probably make him the world’s richest
pen-pusher.
