For all who would not know – Cat’s Cradle are twisted representation’s’ of a loop of thread moms might display to kids to fascinate them. My mum did it too and I admit I thought it was a feat when I learned how to do one of the arrangements as well (cannot already wait to confuse/ fascinate my would be hypothetical child).
It is also the title of a brilliant book written by Kurt Vonnegut.
I call this piece not a review but an interpretation because
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1. I am very sure excellent or accurately critically reviews have already been written on it. I do not want to add to the ill-fitting vague ones.
2. This book and a peculiar connection to Kurt Vonnegut came to me at a time when I needed it most.
3. I love writing in first person.
Cat’s Cradle written in 1963 is a classic black satire on madness of modern men. On a larger picture its madness ensuing around us growing to a point where it will engulf humanity – read innumerable headless conflicts corroding generations in the name of oil, religion and ego.
On a personal perspective its the obsession, the fear, the reluctance of expression gripping the entire humanity. Pulling us down inch by inch until we trod our fragile self with guilt and regrets.
The catch of course remaining that everything will turn into nothing – sooner than later.
As the plot of Cat’s Cradle evolved, I encountered the foma (lies in Bokonon) of my existence and the futile effort I put in finding meaning and reason after every action I take in a human impulsive instinct. Oh! The stress of it all. The waste of it all.
Cat’s Cradle revolves around an unfinished book on bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fictitious characters of the bomb creator, his family and the people of their karass (people with whom we find our lives entangled for no particular reason in Bokonon) which includes our writer.
While researching for the book, the writer meets the dead ‘Father of the Bomb’ (Felix Hoenikker’s) family and by chance of fate finds his lost socially repulsive son Frank Hoenikker in the fictitious banana republic of San Lorenzo – a place which is a classic symbol of the human mind invaded by dualism of ideas and how we seldom can live wholesome lives while believing one thing and living in pretense of the very other – social order alas is which bounds us.
Bokononism (an invented theology by the brilliant Vonnegut) and the looming end by attack of ice-nine (which ‘by the way‘ could have been used to preserve things, just like atom-bomb could have been used to only save lives) makes the book a perfect adaptation to portray the ever recklessness but reality human mind.
The book did not force me to think. It fluidly made me travel through conflicting emotions. It did not transport me into fantasy. It made me accept few realities, realize reservations, recover from what I categorized as pain to only remember that there is always “a heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality and a heartbreaking impossibility of lying about it” and the test of my time is to strike the balance between the two. Though, isn’t it the test of time always? – To strike perfect balance where perfectionism is only but a bunch of foma.
After finishing the book, I woke up the next day from a disturbed slumber with a panic attack. I remembered my list of things to do are never-ending and time is short. I remembered that I don’t need just ‘a’ plan but I need many plans to tackle the next few weeks… I remembered to recognize limitations – of love, lies, lopsided emotions and the disturbing dullness of lull.
And then I remembered I just need to write. Again and again. To preserve my truth and cause no pain. Write away.
Transformative Dialog 