Category Biopic

A scraggly looking Newt Scamander with his magical suitcase packed with fantastical creatures captured our imagination after Harry Potter. But did you know J.K. Rowling based the character partly on the British naturalist and writer, Gerald Durrell? The wildlife conservationist strove to turn zoos into sanctuaries for endangered species giving a new direction to conservation.

A magical childhood

Childhood, it is said, is a magical time that shapes us into our future selves. And Durrell was lucky to spend a part of his childhood surrounded by books and a part of his childhood surrounded by books and animals on the Corfu island in Greece. From catching the glittering purple-and-orange agamas lounging on the gypsum cliffs and watching dung beetles in action to getting a ringside view of the dragonfly larvae hatching. Durrell could witness the most intimate and magical moments of the animal world. Later, he recounted his childhood fascination with the animal kingdom in his delightful autobiographical account The Corfu Trilogy – My Family and Other Animals; Birds and Relatives; and the Garden of the Gods.

Born in Jamshedpur in India on January 7, 1925, Durrell had moved to Corfu with his family when he was 10, after his father’s death. On Corfu, he met Theodore Stephanides, a Greek-British scientist, who mentored the curious Durrell. The brilliant scientist who played a huge role in Durrell’s development features in the Corfu Trilogy.

Pursuit of a dream

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Durrell was forced to move in England. Without a formal education, he found it difficult to find work in England. So he followed his passion and started working as a helper in aquariums and pet stores.

Durrell yearned to go on wildlife expeditions to explore the animal world. His lack of experience, however, threw very few opportunities his way. Finally, he got his lucky break in 1947. He travelled to the British Cameroon) with the acclaimed ornithologist John Yealland. He returned home with a collection of exceptional animals, which he sold to prominent zoos including the London zoo. But Durrell was unhappy with how the zoos treated animals. He dreamed of turning the zoos into breeding grounds and sanctuaries for endangered species, instead of merely places where animals are kept in captivity for public environment.

Writing for conservation

That’s when Durrell started writing humorous autobiographical accounts to raise money for conservation as well as more expeditions. The success of his books The Overloaded Ark and My Family and Other Animals helped him travel and acquire an enviable collection of wild and endangered animals. But instead of giving them away to other zoos, where he wasn’t sure how they would be treated. Durrell set up his own menagerie. And the Jersey Zoo opened its doors in 1959. He dedicated it to ‘saving species from extinction.’ Through Durrell’s vision, the zoo has today become the home of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust. It runs breeding programmes and rehabilitates endangered species such as gorillas, lemurs and tortoises before releasing them into the wild.

Legacy

Durrell believed that the wiping out of an animal species should be considered “a criminal offence.” In 1988, a time capsule was buried in his park, with a letter to future generations written by Durrell, “We hope that there will be fireflies and glow-worms at night to guide you and butterflies in hedges and forests to greet you. We hope that your dawns will have an orchestra of birdsong and that the sound of their wings and the opalescence of their colouring will dazzle you. We hope that there will still be the extraordinary varieties of creatures sharing the land of the planet with you to enchant you and enrich your lives as they have done for us. We hope that you will be grateful for having been born into such a magical extinction today, the world truly needs another Durrell!

Oh Really?

• Durrell attended St. Joseph’s (North Point) School, Darjeeling. His father worked as an engineer in the British Raj. His older brother, Lawrence was a popular British poet and travel writer.
• The Durrell Wildlife Conservation List comes out with the “Red List of Endangered Species.” The ploughshare tortoise, Madagascar big-headed turtle, mountain chicken, and pygmy hog are some of the endangered species that feature on this list.

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Widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of all time, Court Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, better known as Leo Tolstoy, was born on September 9, 1828. His ideas on non-violence had a profound impact on Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Early Life

Born on his family estate, Yasnaya Polyana in the Tula province of Russia, Tolstoy belonged to an affluent family. Unfortunately, he lost his parents at a young age and lived with different relatives over the years.

At 16, Tolstoy began studying law and Oriental languages at Kazan University, but since he was home-schooled, he struggled to cope. Frustrated, he dropped out of the university and started looking for a non-academic career.

Sowing the seeds

Intent on taking up farming, Tolstoy moved to the family’s estate and began managing serfs and farmhands. Though he enjoyed the toil, he had to give up farming as he wanted to return to Moscow, which he missed. On his brother’s insistence, he joined the Russian Army. Tolstoy fought in the Crimean War, between Russia, and Britain and France. The violence and bloodshed he witnessed during the war scared him for life. He left the Army as soon as the war ended.

A new religion

Seeking solace in religion, he tried to evolve his own views on religion wherein he rejected the authority of the church and promoted ahimsa or non-violence. He believed in leading a morally and physically ascetic life. His followers moved onto the author’s estate to be near him and came to be known as Tolstayans. Many of these communes are operational even today.

Among those influenced by Tolstoy’s social beliefs were Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Gandhi established a cooperative colony named after Tolstoy in South Africa and corresponded with the author, crediting him with his own spiritual and philosophical evolution, particularly with regard to Tolstoy’s teachings on peaceful non-resistance to evil.

Tolstoy died on November 20, 1910, a few months after a few months after embarking on a pilgrimage with his daughter.

About war and peace

Written by the author over a period of six years, War and Peace cemented Tolstoy’s position as one of the greatest writers in the world. While it is a tale about the French invasion of Russia and its impact on everyday lives, it also perfectly captures the ethos of the time we live in today.

Oh Really?

• A Bombay High Court Judge asked an accused civil activist to explain why he had a copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace at home. The comment has drawn criticism from people across the world.
• Tolstoy maintained a journal throughout his life in which he kept a detailed record of all his activities. In the diary, he jotted down a list of rules he aspired to live by. This included sleeping by 10 p.m. and with no more than a two-hour nap in the afternoon; eating moderately and avoiding sweets.
• Tolstoy’s wife helped him in finishing War and Peace on time. After completing the first draft in 1865, Tolstoy kept revising it over and over again. His wife, Sophia, patiently wrote out each version by hand – sometimes she even used a magnifying glass to decipher his scribbles. Over the next seven years, she rewrote the complete manuscript at least eight times.
• While fighting in the Army, Tolstoy wrote Childhood, an autobiographical novel, followed by Boyhood and Youth. His other works include Anna Karenina, Resurrection, Family Happiness and The Death of Ivan Illyich.  

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If you had lived in New York nearly a century ago, you would surely have bumped into a tall, thin man with deep-set eyes and a moustache, curved around the edges. The curious man probably observing you from a distance would have seemed intimidating till he came up and talked to you. His courteous ways would have impressed you so much that you would have started sharing your life story with him before long.

For that’s what William Sydney Porter, better known by his pen name O. Henry, loved to do. He loved observing people, speaking to them and collecting their stories. That’s how he met Soapy, the inspiration behind the character of the homeless man who desperately wants to be arrested in The Cop and the Anthem, the loving couple who give secret Christmas gift to each other despite falling on hard times (The Gift of the Magi), and other characters, whom he immortalized through his short stories.

Porter’s own life story was as fascinating as any of his characters. Did you know he worked as a ranch-hand, pharmacist, bank teller and even served time in prison, before he found fame as a storyteller?

The Pharmacist

Born September 11, 1862 in North Carolina, Porter lost his mother at a young age. His aunt Lina raised him. The only formal education the master storyteller received was at the school where his aunt was a teacher. It was here that he developed a life-long love of books.

He spent his youth serving as an assistant in his uncle’s pharmacy, where he was quick to pick up potion-making skills. At the age of 19, he became a licensed pharmacist. But he soon realised that it was not where his calling lay. Instead, amidst bottles of medicines and pills, his creativity unleashed through art. Besides filling up their prescriptions, he drew sketches of the customers who visited frequently. Needless to say, such gestures endeared him to everyone in the town.

So it was with a heavy heart that he left town when he was 20 years old. The move was prompted by health concerns over a persistent cough, which he hoped would be cured once he had a change of air. And that’s when he arrived in Austin’s Texas, a place he called home for the rest of his life.

The cowboy and his ways

For the next three years, he lived in Austin and held several jobs from a ranch-hand and a draftsman to a journalist and a banker. Porter was convicted of embezzlement by an Austin bank where he worked as a teller. But he was released after serving three years of a five-year prison sentence on account of good behaviour. While he was at Ohio Penitentiary, which was known for being a harsh prison, he was given special treatment because of his potion-making skills. He was even granted more free time than his fellow prisoners. He spent it writing some of his most famous short stories.

From this low-point in life, Porter made a remarkable comeback. Three years and about a dozen short stories later, he emerged from prison as “O. Henry” which helped him hide his true identity. He moved to New York City, where over the next nine years before his death in 1910, he published nearly 600 stories and gained worldwide acclaim as a master storyteller.

Movies inspired by his books

Henry’s short stories with their plot twists and surprise endings easily lend themselves to the screen. It’s not surprising therefore, that many of his stories have been adapted into films:

• Lootera (2013): A film by Vikramaditya Motwane starring Ranveer Singh and Sonakshi Sinha, it is inspired by the short story ‘The Last Leaf’.
• Raincoat (2204): Rituparno Ghosh’s first Hindi film is an adaptation of O. Henry ‘s “The Gift of the Magi”.
• Khatta Meetha (1998): Remade in Hindi by Priyadarshan, the film about the ethics to be followed in life, is based on “After Twenty Years”.

Oh Henry!

• O. Henry was the pen name of author William Sydney Porter. He even wrote under other pseudonyms such as S.H. Peters, James L. Bliss, T.B. Dowd, and Howard Clark.
• Porter’s pen name is said to have been derived from the way he addressed his cat – “Oh Henry!” – or it could be a tribute to a French pharmacist named Eteinne-Ossian Henry.
• He wrote nearly 600 stories about life in the U.S., especially New York. One of his best stores was rejected at least 12 times. But he did not lose heart.
• The O. Henry Award is a prestigious annual prize named after Porter and given to outstanding short stories.
• O. Henry’s love of language inspired the O. Henry Pun-Off, an annual spoken word competition which began in 1978 and takes place every year at the O. Henry House in Austin, Texas.

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With his white beard, pointed nose and large glasses, Salman Rushdie cuts a stem, intimidating figure. Neither his television appearances for his inventions give away any sign of pressure or fear. It’s hard to imagine that for over 10 years, the author was living under the shadow of a fatwa, a death sentence, and was on the hit list of the terrorist group, Al-Qaeda.

Writing satires which blends fiction with reality, Rushdie has often been thrown into the midst of controversies. But the novelist’s work speaks for itself. With his new book, Quichotte shortlisted for the Booker Prize for fiction, here’s a look at his amazing literacy journey.

Early life

When Rushdie was just 10, he wrote his first story. It was a dozen pages long, and its protagonist was a boy who lived in Bombay and found the beginning of a rainbow, as broad and wide as a staircase. Though Rushdie never managed to finish this story, he went on to write 12 critically acclaimed novels, children’s books, essays and a whole lot more.

Rushdie was born on June 19, 1947 in Bombay in a Muslim family of Kashmiri descent. His mother was a teacher, while his father worked as a lawyer and a businessman. Rushdie attended the Cathedral and John Connon School, a repute school in Mumbai, where he impressed his classmates and teachers with his exemplary vocabulary and flair for writing. When he was offered a scholarship by the prestigious Balliol College, Oxford, Rushdie turned it down, choosing to attend Cambridge University, his father’s alma mater instead.

Advertising success

Before becoming a full-time writer, Rushdie tried his hand at acting and production, but without success. He took up a job with an advertising firm in London. His slogan Aero chocolate bars “irresistible” earned him praise from the advertising industry. However Rushdie wanted to focus on writing and so he quit his job to write a novel. The endeavor failed and he went back to writing advertising copy.

Library recognition

It was with his second book midnight’s children in 1981 that his writing career took off. Written in the magic realism style, the book follows the life of a child, born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, who is endowed with special powers and a connection to other children born on the same historic occasion. Midnight’s children won the Booker prize. In 1993, the book won the Booker of bookers which was a special award given on the 25th anniversary of the price. Nearly 15 years later, Rushdie was also awarded the Best of the Booker’s, which mark the 40th birthday of the Booker in 2008. But his fourth book, Satanic verses, embroiled him in a controversy which almost cost him his life

Life threatened

The book was banned in 13 countries, including India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. In 1989, this spiritual leader of Iran Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on Radio Tehran for Rushdie’s execution. Violence and riots erupted around the world, people burnt copies of the book and took out rallies. There were even several failed assassination attempts on his life, forcing Rushdie to live under police protection for 10 years with the help of the British government.

Writing for children

Even while he was in hiding, Rushdie didn’t stop writing. He forayed into the realm of children’s literature with his book Haroun and the Sea of stories in 1990. He dedicated the book to his elder son Zafar, who was 10 then. The book is believed to be autobiographical, a representation of his thoughts and feelings when he was in hiding. In 2010 he wrote another children’s book, Luka and Fire of life for his younger son, Milan. Both books revolve around a family headed by a storyteller Rashid Khalifa, living in the city of Alif Bat: a city so sad that it has forgotten its own name.

Free at last

Finally in 1998, Iran partially lifted the fatwa against Rushdie. He declared that he would stop living in hiding and was granted a visa to finally visit India in 1999. Despite this, it was reported in 2006 that the fatwa cannot be withdrawn fully as Khoemeini, who had issued it was dead.

Magic realism and satire

Rushdie is known for his magic realism style of writing. Magic realism is a literacy technique in which the story take place in the real world, but it has a magical element. Other authors who use this technique include Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Orhan Pamuk. Rushdie’s works are also heavily satirical. Satire is a form of writing which ridiculous and criticises a government or an institution.

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Growing up is hard enough, but being a middle child can make it all the more difficult. Elder siblings tend to pick on you, while the younger ones can get away with anything. No one knows it better than author Jeff Kinney, whose words-and-cartoons exploration of the trials of a middle school misfit, written in the form of a journal, has been a colossal success.

Drawing from life

Born in Maryland in the United States, Kinney was caught between four siblings – elder brother Rodrick, his sister, and his younger brother, Patrick. Needless to say, multiple scuffles and fights were an unavoidable part of his childhood. Later, drawing on to these memories helped him create the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.

But did you know Kinney didn’t grow up wanting to be a children’s author? In fact, his dream was to become a newspaper cartoonist, but he wasn’t able to get his comic strips published. So, he spent eight years writing the first book in the series.

Right from childhood, Kinney loved to draw, but he wasn’t very good at it. So he developed his own drawing style – with stick figures and bug-eyed characters. Using his surroundings as an inspiration, he created comics strips about the life around him. One such comic strip was Igdoof, which Kinney ran in his college newspaper at the University of Maryland. However, his work looked too juvenile and so he never received any efforts from big newspapers.

A love for computers

Besides drawing, Kinney was equally fond of computers. When his parents bought their first computer, Kinney was so interested in it that he even learned to write his own computer programmes. It was hard for his parents to keep him away from his new hobby. His computer skills helped him land a job after college.

Kinney started working as a content creator for a children’s website. After receiving multiple rejection letters for his comic strip, Kinney published his first book online in daily installments on funbrain.com, which offers free educational games for kids. Within a year, he had 12 million readers. To date, the online version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid has more than 80 million visits, and is typically read by more than 70,000 kids a day.

He continues to pioneer new Internet content as the full-time design director of Poptropica, which he helped set up in 2007. The website uses educational games to create a love for reading among children.

An author’s dream

In the Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Wrecking Ball, the Heffleys embark on major home improvements thanks to a surprise windfall. Kinney, who recently opened a bookstore in Massachusetts, draws from his own experience to regale us with a humorous tale of a family tackling renovations and all the problems that come with it from rotten wood and toxic mould to sinister creatures. As a child, Kinney spent a lot of time in bookshops. That’s why they hold a special place in his heart. When the local bookshop in his hometown went out of business, Kinney felt a sense of irreparable loss. So now years later, after establishing himself as a successful author, he decided to open a bookshop in his adopted hometown of Plainville, Massachusetts. He called it ‘An Unlikely Story’.

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Age is just a number and no one can prove it better than John Bannister Goodenough. Chances are that most of us never heard of this 97-year-old scientist before he became the oldest Nobel laureate, but his invention has became an irreplaceable part of our lives.

Goodenough, a professor at the University of Texas, came up with lithium cobalt oxide, a key material that led to doubling the potential of the lithium-ion battery, widely used in mobile phones, laptops and electric cars.

Early life

Growing up in Connecticut, near Yale University, where his father was a professor of the History of Religion, Goodenough learned to enjoy the quiet countryside and nature. Exploring the neighbourhood on his childhood catching butterflies and trapping rodents-especially woodchucks, a species of large squirrels.

Along with his siblings, Goodenough attended a boarding school in Massachusetts. The future Nobel laureate had a hard time mastering reading and writing; eventually he earned a place at the respected Yale University. After trying out a smorgasbord of courses including liberal arts, he turned his focus on mathematics.

The college fee was $900 per annum and Goodenough’s father could contribute a mere $35. So Goodenough started tutoring students from wealthy homes to be able to pay the rest of the fee.

Adventures in meteorology

Halfway through his education,. Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, a U.S. Navy base near Hawaii. Goodenough volunteered to join the Army as a meteorologists on the advice of his maths professor. Stationed in the Azores archipelago off the coast of Portugal, he helped predict the best time to move troops and planes.

While in the Army, Goodenough took a liking to Physics. So after the war ended, he pursued his further education in his subject. Since he was a returning officer, the Army supported his higher studies, and Goodenough joined the University of Chicago, which was doing pioneering work in the field.

The Physics department at the university was headed by none other than the nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi, who created the world’s first nuclear reactor. A tough taskmaster, Fermi set the bar high for his students with a qualifying exam of 32 hours, stretched over eight hours a day for four days. The exam was so tough that Goodenough could get through only on his second attempt.

Battery-powered

Goodenough was offered a position at MIT’s Lincoln Lab, which was a research centre for the U.S. Department of Defense. He developed technology for national security applications. After decades of work on electric and magnetic properties of solids, he moved to another prestigious academic institution, the University of Oxford in England, as the head of the inorganic chemistry lab.

The next few years would become the most defining of his career. Goodenough immersed himself in battery research and came up with lithium cobalt oxide, a material that could be sustainably and safely used in lithium-ion batteries. Stanley Whittingham, one of the three awardees of the 2019 Nobel Chemistry Prize, had developed the first-ever functional lithium battery in the 1970s, but it ran the risk of exploding. The discoveries of Goodenough and Akira Yoshino, who was the part of the trio to share the Nobel, helped in making the battery safer and viable for use.

While the lithium-ion batteries became a commercial success, Goodenough did not make any money out of it. He did not patent the battery technology and signed over the royalty rights to the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, a U.K. government lab near Oxford. After being tipped for the Nobel Prize for many years, Goodenough finally received the honour on October 9, 2019. When the prize was announced, he was in London to receive the prestigious Copley medal at the Royal Society of London. He slept through the announcement of the Nobel and learned of his win from a fellow scientist.

97 and going strong

Goodenough, who is now just three years shy of 100, goes to the office, his lab, every day. He is vehemently opposed to retirement and never wishes to hang up his boots. Well, that’s Goodenough for us!

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