Japanese Cat Stories: An Appreciation

The Japanese tell the best, most convincing cat stories. I think it is in parts because of how much they seem to know cat behaviour from observation and obvious adoration. 

I also like how with Japanese stories, it’s never black and white. Not even black OR white. When they tell a story it is just... a story. You think people have agendas that are good or evil. But sometimes they’re just agendas. Like in real life too. It’s all about how hunger can look like evil from the wrong end of the fork. Sometimes people just are. And it’s just timing that reveals them to be good or bad in our eyes and in our lives. Barring psychopaths, perhaps.

Fiction usually makes sense. Fiction usually ties up loose ends. But Japanese fiction isn’t always, or even often, structured that way. They make sense in parts but then you move the story along and then you get to the end of it and you get asked what it was about and all you can say is: well, it’s about this person. If they ask, what about this person? Sometimes the most you can say is, well things happened to the person. It’s weird, you think to yourself, because at a point, their story had made so much sense to me but now I can’t really recall anything specific. 

Just like in real life.

Memories work that way often. At one point life made so much sense. But then time flows and life moves along. After you cross a certain amount of checkpoints, that clarity starts to blur. You start to wonder: what was that epiphany? Sometimes you can recall a faint trace of that dazzling, magnificent pellucidity. But it’s not the same. You are different now and your memory is all you have; if you’re lucky, you might turn into a story. But that really is about It.

The Japanese seem to understand how this works. Their stories often start not at the beginning but more like the middle. If a backstory is important, it is added later, almost as an afterthought. You are simply immersed in the story from the first scene. And the funny part is, the story never really moves very much. The climax is often less than orgasmic. But you’re left with how the story made you feel – loss, warmth, love, pain, whatever it was about. And the story often doesn’t even end. The Story-Teller just stops telling the story. 

Like a memory.

Perhaps that’s why they write such brilliant cat stories, after all. Cats have their own logic. They operate on their own schedules and their own business. The Japanese don’t fit cats to the stories. They just tell the story around the cat. So while Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman cat was amazing, it was very much an anthropomorphic cat, despite it never taking human shape. Madara/Nyanko Sensei from Natsume Yujinchou, the Mask Seller from A Whisker Away, all the cats from The Cat Returns, the black cat from Kafka By The Shore... very decidedly cats, even when some of them took on human forms at one point or the other.

The morals of a cat aren't built on the same standards as the human's. Which makes it amusing but also makes sense in a weird way.

So yes, the Japs tell the most brilliant cat stories. Although why is the fat male cat always a calico?

It Is What It Is

I wrote about murder for my first Creative Writing class. Ms Anita, my English teacher, gave me an A. Then she said she had not expected such a grim tale from a simple picture of a sad young boy looking back over his shoulders. I didn’t understand it then but maybe now in retrospect, the undertone might have been: ‘Are you OK, child?’ Ms Anita was a nice, kind, gentle soul. I was thirteen. She might have been concerned.

But it was not like I dwelt in dark thoughts. The boy in the picture just looked guilty to me and Ms Anita had said: Be imaginative. So I got to imagining. It was just what it was.

I don’t know if my love for fiction fuelled my interest in Sociology but I strongly suspect it. Sociology likes to think it fills up blanks left by fiction by science-ing things up: pick up an ideal, tear it apart, put it back together again but this time, propose a hypothesis. But fiction does this too in a similar but different way: pick up an idea, create a scenario around it, tear the idea apart and then put it back together to resolve it. I love both. It is interesting to me that Sociology dealing with real life is vague but fiction dealing with imagined life is definitive. Strong juxtaposition. I learned that word from Sociology.

Both have taught me this: it is what it is.

I it-is-what-it-is my way through life. What’s the point hurting over something you can’t control? Grieve for what you lost; then heal. Be angry if you must; then get over it. Laugh, but remember it can’t last. It is little mystique that my favourite book in the Bible is Ecclesiastes.

In adult life, you find so many things that make you want to maim some people just a tiny bit. I can honestly say I don’t have murderous thoughts but a little laceration and emotional damage thoughts? Those I have plenty. People are fake. It is what humans learn to do to get along with society. Some people overdo it, though, and other people judge them. I judge a lot of people. I hope when people judge me and find me wanting, they call me egotistic than cowardly. Vice for vice, I’d hate to be called spineless more than most negative judgments. Call me a Leo!

Here’s my parting observation: when children get caught red-handed doing wrong, they often try to save themselves by saying they ‘didn’t do it’. Some adults never grow out of this habit except in adult life, people don’t often get accused directly of wrong-doings. So just listen to what a lot of people brag (and humble-brag) about the things they don’t do, and you might see that that it is exactly what it is they do do.

You may disagree. I say: it is what it is.

Not As Much As Lord Voldemort

I made my dad stand in line for the sixth Harry Potter book. It was from a bookstore in Sarojini Nagar market in Delhi, before it was all swanky and shit. It was my first completely new Harry Potter book; all my first five copies had been bought second-hand. I don’t remember but I wouldn’t be surprised if dad had bought me the book as a reward for having gotten good grades; that had always been our way.

My parents have never understood my fascination for fiction. My dad lives in a world of responsibility, always taking it just a little bit too seriously. My mum has not a superstitious bone in her body, despite being deeply spiritual, which is a paradox (which she doesn’t find to be so). Neither of them takes time out of their hands to indulge in fiction and imagination and the fanciful world of paranormal fiction. Except for a couple of ghost stories, of course – my dad with his ‘I once gave a ride to an Old Lady Ghost’ and my mum’s ‘I once saw a chhawihfa when I was working in Durtlang hospital but it was probably methane’ stories.

Be that as it may, they’ve always said: If she is reading, it is better than not reading. There has never been a ban on any material. My mum did show signs of concern back when people said Harry Potter promoted witchcraft or some such bull. But even then, she never banned it. I read whatever fiction I could find. My first full-blown novel was The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas which might explain my fascination for gruff men who are far too brilliant for their own good. I might have been ten; I’d say that was a bit young for The Count but like I said, there were no rules. As long as I was reading, it was A-OK.

I read Enid Blyton after Sidney Sheldon, Doctor Faustus and Mills & Boon novels! That was not right. But it still worked. I liked the stories. Whatever I didn’t understand, I simply glossed over.

I never thought I’d be done with comics because I devoured any I could lay my hands on: Archies, Asterix, Biker Mice From Mars, Cartoon Network comics, Chacha Chaodhury, DC, Marvel, Phantom, Photoromances, Richie Rich, Tinkle, Tintin... any and everything. But lately, I can’t seem to bring myself to be engaged in them. Maybe I am getting old. This is new.

In 2011, my mum mused aloud that I read so many books yet never seemed to finish reading the Bible. That got me thinking. I said I’d give it a go. She bought me a small, pocket-friendly, leather-bound NIV Bible and I read it everywhere. It starts out nice with magical stories, gets a bit slow going after a point, but then with the songs and poems in the middle, it finds its ground again, ending with a bang. I’ve been re-reading it annually ever since. I am partial to some parts; not a big fan of some parts.

There are a few other books I continually re-read; January is for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. I have re-read a lot of my old books; I consider it catching up with old, dear friends.

And every September, without fail, I return to Hogwarts, as we Potterheads say; via re-reading the books, basically. I remember my first time reading Philosopher’s Stone. It was in the girls’ hostel of SDA Inter-College Roorkee. My friend Meenu got sent the first two books by her grandfather (I think?) and she lent them to me. I was hooked from the line, “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” Yes, thank you very much.

I snuck out of the Lady Shri Ram Residence Hall for the seventh book with a few friends from college who I remain friends with to this day. There was that whole Midnight Release which because it was simultaneous across the globe, meant about 6:30AM for us in India. Actually, Harry Potter helped me make my first friends in college. We were a group of Freshers standing outside the LSR Auditorium and someone mentioned Harry Potter and a bunch of us just gravitated toward each other. These were the peeps I broke hostel rules with and standing in line with at that bookshop in GK-II that morning. Thanks, Potter.

Addiction is not always a good thing. But as Daniel Radcliffe said, it could be drugs. So I’m still doing OK, I guess. There’s just something so comforting about books, especially fiction.

I’m not the biggest fan of non-fiction but I’m trying out memoirs, biographies, travel and science books. They can be fun. I’d like to one day brag about some heavy literature I can quote offhand as a party trick. For now, I don’t really gravitate to literature that teaches you things. I’ve always preferred something ‘to enjoy’ rather than ‘to accumulate’, as in knowledge. Any wisdom I gain from my reading is ever only incidental.

Fiction works for me because in fiction, things make sense. Which is not always the case in real life. It is an escape, yes. But it can also be a way to learn many of life’s lessons without having to personally make many mistakes. Of course, some mistakes in life you make on your own because they are delicious. Wink wink.

I’ve always been interested in fiction. Some might even call it an obsession. I do not deny it. I’ve made my peace with it and I think it is okay. It is not as much as Lord Voldemort with Harry Potter anyway.