Big Brother Is Watching…
Last night slept at 3am. Read till about 12:30 am, then turned off the light and retired to bed. Had to hit the gym by 7:30 in the morn.
But I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned and shifted positions to find a comfortable one, but instead of sound sleep and sweet dreams, lacklustre visions of a world devoid of emotion, colour and creativity kept recurring in my mind’s eye.
My eyes kept darting towards the huge window before me, half expecting a row of faces with demonic eyes and pursed lips to appear. These would belong to a bunch of fanatics who had come to ‘vapourize’ ( meaning to exterminate in 1984 language) me. That’s what the ruling party did in the George Orwell classic Nineteen Eighty Four, to anyone who thought, felt and was who they were meant to be…
Animal Farm provoked exactly the same reaction within me, even though it was no horror story. I experienced a recurring vision of white pigs sporting gum boots, standing tall ( a la humans) and marching about in perfect file, while reading that book. It was absolutely eerie. To understand the significance of the walking pigs you need to read the book and I absolutely recommend reading it. Actually it’s about the Russian Revolution, but if you didn’t know that already, you might guess during the course of the book.
Shashi Tharoor has tried something similar, yet different with The Great Indian Novel which draws analogies between The Mahabharata and the Indian Freedom Struggle. He’s crafted a masterpice of course, but that’s where the comparison ends. TGTN makes for a very amusing and insightful read while Animal Farm and 1984 depress, agitate and horrify by and by.
1984 is not just a book but a concept just like Animal Farm. They open the cockles of your mind to world where the law of the land is twisted, fanatic and in fact perverse. As the book progresses and events unravel, one is filled with a growing sense of horror, and impending doom.
You empathize with the protagonist who is fighting a losing battle within his own mind. How do people exist under tyrannical regimes? It’s a scary thought.
BTW Big Brother is the menacing leader of the ruling party in 1984. He has hawk like eyes that follow you as you walk through the town square, as you toil on your work desk, as you masturbate in the loo…
