Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Kindness and hope: not worth the bother


I was immediately intrigued when I heard Adam Phillips, one of the authors of On Kindness (with Barbara Taylor), talk about his book on BBC Radio 4's Start The Week. Phillips suggested that we might actually limit our kindness to each other to make it more valuable and to keep our lives more manageable--being kind to everybody implies an intimate connection to everyone that would be impossible to maintain. But it became a perfect radio moment when Phillips put a question to Vikas Swarup, who wrote the book C&A upon which the current phenom film Slumdog Millionaire is based. The story, as you probably know by now, is flashbacked biography of a boy from the slums who, through his life's adventures, comes to know the answers to the questions on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

"It is optimistic," said Swarup of the book/film. "What it shows is is that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that hope and love can even take you across the most difficult barriers and that a flower can survive, even in a slum."

Phillips jumped in with: "Do you think that hope can be poisonous?...It offers people something to look forward to that can only turn into cynicism and bitterness. Hope is like cocaine. It lasts a very very short time and the very very long time afterwards is truly terrible."

Swarup stuck by hope.

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