On a reading spree - On the Beach

The extreme temperatures during the days, as well as nights, kept me inside over the weekend. Further, heat and a slight quirk of health kept me mostly in bed. So, I went on to a reading spree, and cleared up a part of my to-read list :-)

I read 'A River Sutra' by Gita Mehta, that my brother had gifted me last week. I had started it the last week itself, as it was indicated as a collection of stories )though interlinked), rather than a novel. If I start reading a novel, I find it difficult to put it down, making it hard to go the office the next day. I finished it late night on Friday. On Saturday, I picked up 'The Life of Pi' that I started reading a month or two back, but put it down somewhere in between, and could not start again. Another late night ensued. On Sunday afternoon, having nothing else to do, I opened 'On the Beach' by Nevil Shute, and didn't do anything else till I finished it in the evening. And yes, that night we went to dinner at a friend's place - yet another late night, and I was no good for anything on Monday ;-)

Of the three books that I read, I first want to write about the one that had the greatest impact on me - On the Beach [The world after nuclear war]. One of the editorial reviews described it as 'the most shocking fiction in recent years'. I quite agree with the assessment - it left me somewhat shaken too. As indicated by the tagline of the title, the story is set in the context of the aftermath of a nuclear war. A nuclear war takes place, arising out of selfishness and misunderstanding, destroying all life in the northern hemisphere. The novel does not describe the nuclear war itself, but starts about two years after the war is over, in the southern parts of Australia, as the last of the humanity waits for the approaching death, as radioactive particles are propelled to their part of the world by elements of nature.

Lieutenant Commander Peter Holmes, of Australian Navy, has not had an assignment for close to a year, and is asked to join as the liasion officer of a US submarine docked in Australia. Almost all the ships and airplanes that are left, are out of commission due to lack of fuel. The submarine runs on nuclear fuel, and is in the charge of Commander Dwight Towers. Although it is known that there is no possibility of life anywhere else, the submarine is sent on a fact-finding mission, first to north of Australia, and later to the USA. As Holmes prepares to leave for a long journey to USA, he tries to prepare his wife for what to do for herself and their little daughter, in case he is not able to return before (or ever) the deathly winds reach them. When the submarine is in USA, it reaches a port town, which is (or rather was) the home of one of the men - against the Commander's orders, he escapes from the sub, chosing to die in his home in a few days, rather than few weeks later in the alien lands of Australia. Moments and incidents like these, are rather heart-rending. The book beautifully describes the psychology of people under such unavoidable cicumstances - some people are in the denial mode, some are at peace with the fate, others chose to make the best of whatever time they have left. As months change to weeks, and to days, as towns fall one after another, helpless people ["innocent victims of an accidental war" as described by another review] continue to work and live as normal, planning for the coming years, even though they are aware that this is not going to materialize. People do not panic and rush south, knowing that they cannot escape the fate - they chose to die peacefully in their homes, terminating the agony of radiation sickness with cyanide. But even though they have accepted their fate, they cannot but help ask, why did it have to happen.

Perhaps all of us understand the futility of wars, but they keep on happening, on different scales of magnitude. This book was perhaps an extrapolation in extreme, of the desctruction resulting from avoidable conflicts, but given the times we live in, this might just actually happen.