Reinventing the wheel
By Adil Jussawalla

I RECENTLY read a poem called How to turn into a girl. It’s by Jeet Thayil. More recently I read a poem called Instructions on how to wind a watch. It’s by Julio Cortazar. Still more recently I read an anecdote about Norman Vincent Peale, the author of that famous how-to book The Power of Positive Thinking. He thrust his hand out to a soldier in a hospital ward in Vietnam — presumably the soldier still had a hand which could be grasped — and in his positive way said, "Hello there, I’m Dr Norman Vincent Peale from New York." The soldier replied, "Glad to meet you sir but I’m happy with the doctor I have now."

The author of the anecdote wasn’t trying to make us laugh so much as he was making a point about American soldiers in Vietnam. Namely, that at a time when Norman Vincent Peale was a household name in middle-class America, there were other Americans, working-class, black, illiterate or almost illiterate, who hadn’t heard of him. The majority of the soldiers in Vietnam were from that unprivileged class.

The target audience of how-to books which have been with us since the 50s, following Dale Carnegie’s best-seller How to Win Friends and Influence People, is predominantly middle-class — the aspiring middle class. Any aspiring class below the middle must at least have enough hatred in it to aspire to anything and be literate enough to get something out of the books. I got nothing out of How to Win Friends and Influence People. I was a teenager when I tried to read it, once and once only. I found it nonsensical. The book’s a complete blank to me now which perhaps explains my extraordinary success in not making friends and in influencing the people I meet in quite the wrong way.

Despite this setback I thrive on how-to books. Thank God for children. If there weren’t any there wouldn’t be any how-to books for them. I’m no longer ashamed of confessing that if I pick up a how-to books these days I normally choose one which is meant for children. And the reason I’m not ashamed is that I‘ve discovered that there are many of us out here, many, many of us, all past 50, who harbour a secret passion for how-to books for children. CD-Roms of the same kind too, I imagine, for the more advancedly senile.

My how-to blanket is large and copious. It covers pictorial encyclopaedias, dictionaries for the under-eights, the entire Dorling-Kindersley range of amazing stuff —Amazing Buildings, Amazing Paint-Stippers, Amazing Nails Etc — Dalip Salvi’s science books for tiny tots and any pop-up book. I am happy to report that with the help of these elementary aids, I’am trying to reinvent wheel.

A non-destructive wheel. That’s it. Non-destructive. But can I? With the beginning of the wheel came the tank, the cog in the Bofors, the micro-chip circuit which, through the Internet, can show even an idiot like me how to make a bomb. The world rolls on such wheels while I try to reinvent another. It’s absurd. How can I when there’s no how-to book to tell me how to?

The project’s impossible. What’s Krishna with a non-destructive Sudarshanchakra in his hand? Mincemeat for the Kauravas. Not wanting to be mincemeat, I change sides. I’ll give up my project, follow the Internet’s how-to, and fashion a nuclear device. If only to trash the friends I never made or had. God spare me from such thoughts but they’re there! I really should have taken Dale Carnegie more seriously.

On the other hand, haven’t non-violent wheels been with us all the time? Don’t we chuck them about, sometimes to one another, doing no physical harm, unlike Krishna’s frisbee? No physical harm, other harms and healings come with those wheels. And don’t we have to reinvent them all the time too, you, me and everyone else? And aren’t they called poems? — ANF