A Year Is Just a Number: As 2025 Comes to an End

As the year winds down, I feel immensely thankful for what I've learned. A year is nothing but a calculation. In itself, it makes no difference. Days move on, waiting for what we need or do not need to do. All the same, meaning-making is a process of engaging with time productively. I stopped making resolutions for important occasions because I find it disheartening to know that I failed miserably at keeping them. On entering 2025, I had no particular resolution, save that to complete my PhD at the earliest. As I am an expert at failing to keep resolutions, this year too, on hindsight, my resolution to complete most of my research work remains incomplete! There is a happy side to it. I began reading, besides works related to my research and some magazine stuff, books that I picked up by chance or on recommendation. If you are still reading this scribbling, it is not a recommendation list on book-reading! I found them engaging, transforming, challenging, and, at times, sad-making. Here is the list – of course, there are a few books that I read in Tamil that I intend to write in Tamil:

1. Why Do you Fear my way so much? by Professor G. N. Saibaba

In a world of indifference and self-pity, here is Professor G.N. Saibaba, a wheelchair-bound man suffering 90% paralysis, besides a cardiac condition, who refused to stay silent on the face of injustice and deprivation suffered by millions of the oppressed. The book contains the poems and letters written from prison to his beloved life-partner, friends and students. Incarcerated, humiliated, set on media-trial, suffering intense physical pain and mental agony, Professor Saibaba refuses to give up, to lose hope. Published in 2022 by Speaking Tiger Books, the book is one of the unputdownables. Besides exposing the deep rot in society, the book is a testament to the commitment of a single man who refuses to stay silent and bow down to the dictatorship in disguise. There are several poems that I find worth quoting. Here are a few lines:
“Foul language defines
the sacred games of democracy.”
“The monks howl and prowl
shitting along the holy riverbanks
preaching cleansing of democracy.”
“The naked emperor
wears nuclear clothes dazzling cyber arms.”
“I still stubbornly refuse to die. The sad thing is that they don’t know how to kill me.”
Fascism breeds on ignorance and injustice. Hope reading such books does not attract sedition hereafter! Must say, Professor Saibaba made a lasting impact on me.

2. To Kill a Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism by Debasish Roy Chowdhury and John Keane

After reading Professor Saibaba’s book, I set out to understand the state of our democracy, which is fast disappearing in the face of fascism. Debasish, a journalist by profession and Keane, Professor of Political Science, reflect on the state of democracy in India, presenting a historical overview. Published by Macmillan in 2021, the book has not garnered the attention it deserves. I read it, must say, by coincidence, and I’m glad for it. It helped to understand democracy better. “Democracy is freedom from hunger, humiliation, and violence… Democracy is saying no to brazen arrogance.” We cannot reduce democracy to roadshows, deceptive speeches and voting. The book takes on themes such as the state of media in India, the level of corruption in all spheres, the rise of fascism in the country, hate-spewing machinery that helps win elections, intellectual dishonesty and the sorry state of the economy, especially the lives of the underprivileged.

3. White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Having read back-to-back serious stuff, I wished to read something rather soothing. Dostoyevsky needs no introduction. I’ve read his novels “Crime and Punishment” and “Brothers Karamazov.” When I bought “White Nights,” I didn’t plan to complete it in a day, yet the story so compelled me to read it in a day. Nastenka and the nameless hero took me on a tour of happy imagination. Loneliness can be devastating, and the cure is to find someone who is loving and deeply caring. “I don’t know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.” What a fantastic read it was!

4. Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Some years ago, I started reading this novella, but put it down because of what I found objectionable. Looking back, I laugh at how naïve I was! Perhaps we mature as we age – be careful, there is no guarantee we do! After reading the story, I felt sorry for Sierva Maria, and I wrote on the last page that I would one day rewrite this story ending on a happy note! “No medicine cures what happiness cannot.” Pity those children who are born in unhappy families! Maria’s story is such one! There is no dearth of material prosperity, yet her own mother, recoiling in physical pain and mental agony, hates her. The Marquis family has everything except love. When superstition throws Maria into the convent dungeon, she discovers love, while a loveless priest discovers his passion. Torn between his call to be a priest and his heart pounding with love, Cayetano and Maria are briefly united only to be separated forever.

5. Hope: The Autobiography by Pope Francis

The first-ever memoir by a reigning pope, Hope reveals the humane side of Pope Francis. In a world where religious men and women whip up hatred to climb the ladder of power and prestige, here is Pope Francis, who lays bare his life, holding back nothing. It is the story of a man who does not disown his roots, does not shy away from admitting his faults, and does not shy away from speaking truth to power. Pope Francis despises war, stands in solidarity with the migrants, victims of injustice and violence. He is no religious bigot, that's all that I can say! Bigotry is no religion is the conviction of Pope Francis. Reading the autobiography of Pope Francis is uplifting and inspiring! “Don’t forget the poor” is the advice that he got from Cardinal Hummes when he was elected as the Pope. Pope Francis never forgot the advice till the end!

6. Letters from Gaza by the People, from the Year that has Been by Mohammed and Mahmoud

Gaza is the scar on humanity, and to this day, it haunts us for our collective indifference towards the innocent people of Gaza! What is the best way to overcome one’s tragedies except to document them and commit them to memory? This book is a collection of writings by those who have suffered and continue to suffer in the inhuman conditions of an open prison. Reading this book is not like reading any other. It makes me question humanity! The words are written in blood, the blood of the innocent children and wailing parents! “What memory will I carry after survival? To whom will I tell everything that’s happening now? I’ll say we survived! What survival is this?” Collective punishment and setting up a narrative in favour of the oppressor are not bygone crimes; they continue to happen, and Gaza is the example of that.

7. Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy

Experience is not what happens to a person, but what one does with all that one goes through. Honestly, it is the hard times that we’ve been through that turn out to be the fuel of our creativity. My first acquaintance with Roy’s works began when I read her novel The God of Small Things. To this day, it remains one of the best novels on my list. The memoir is a tribute to her mother, Mary Roy, whom Arundhati describes as “my shelter and my storm.” There is no self-made person; it is society, even when it is unfavourable to us, that makes what we are. “Even writers were children once,” and they, too, have a story about themselves, a story of struggle, desperation, humiliation and triumph, to share. I used to wonder at the way Arundhati Roy used to take a stance on issues where most ‘writers’ would not dare to say a word. Be it Kashmir or Naxalites or communal hatred spreading like cancer in the society, there is Arundhati Roy to stand with the victims and the marginalised, fearing not the consequences. Intellectual honesty is not only evident in her writings but also in her life. Her own mother, Mary Roy, was a fighter and a feminist to the extreme! Writing is not a profession to make a living, it is rather a passion to correct the wrongs!

As I mentioned at the outset, this is not a list of reading recommendations. Perhaps I’m late to reading most of these. These works helped me pause a little, look around, savour life, be angry about the way things are, put myself in others' shoes, laugh, and silently shed tears for those far away. Thank you, 2025, for teaching me valuable lessons!