Veni, Vidi and Annegato

I Came, I Saw and I Drowned. If you so badly wanted to read tolkien for some reason (which could range from "just want to check what all this hype is about" to " sheesh, elrond and aragorn have common ascendants") and you saw the silmarillion and you had this inkling of "hey, now __that__ looks like a small book to read" and you picked it up, Congrats, you just won yourself a life membership in the Fools' Guild.

The Silmarillion is small, and LOTR is huge. But that would be like saying "Sanjay Bangar is a much-feared bowler than Shane Warne because he bowls faster". To put things in perspective, LOTR has three important battles (Helm's Deep, Pelennor Fields and Isengard) and one great war (The one in front of the Black Gate). Silmarillion has five great wars, numerous important battles and countless minor scuffles (that you could rate alongside the tom bombadil part or shelob).

If that wasn't enough the big-bad-ass villain turns out to the boss of Sauron, and he is not as lame as sauron to have just a bunch of sun-fearing Orcs. Our man has goblins, werewolves, an array of balrogs (LOTR had just the one doing a catwalk in khazad-dum, while here we have them whipping up some serious smoke), a whole family of dragons and, guess what, the great grand-mother of shelob. And you have the easterlings, the dwarves, the eagles, the valar (the god of the gods) and the maiar (demi-gods), and by the looks of it a sword in your hand to cut me up. Whoops, point taken.

The Silmarillion has a mind-boggling collection of names which sound absolutely nutty when read but have some inner-meaning when broken up and translated. I cant seem to remember a time when remembering names was a problem. Sounds strange ?? Check this out: "finrod, feanor, fingon, fingolfin and finarfin". I am sure on first read, they all sounded the same. No, they arent. And that is 5 of the zillion names out there which sound very similar too. Would it have been easier if the characters were named in a more-understandable way, like "Chellamuthu" and "Thangapandi" and "Mannick Basha" ?? Hmm, Nah. That would've reduced JRR to the levels of Rama. Narayanan, and that would be sacrilege.

One person, by virtue of their existence in middle-earth with its strange customs, has more than one name by rule of thumb. His/her parents give him/her a name which usually has something to do with "everlasting light" or "sweet scent of victory". Our man grows up and one day runs into a dwarf and befriends a whole horde of them. They get so impressed by his "songs" and they call him something in the dwarvish tongue, something like "the steadfast" or "rock-solid". Our man doesnt stop there, goes into elf-land, falls in love with an elf-maiden and along with the maiden, gets a whole list of elven names, "swordking" or "orcslayer". After all this, as if names werent enough, our man fights lot of orcs, ends up losing his hand or fingers and gets names like "One-handed" or "Nine-fingered". Phew. His ration card would've looked certainly strange.

Silmarillion answers most questions that one might have, and it answers more than that at times. If one thought multiple names to people was a problem, swords, horses, towers, plains, seas, caves and forests have more than one name too. Thankfully, Tolkien didnt know any other geographical phenomenon.

Timelines are not respected in the Silmarillion. Tolkien runs through 300 years in two pages and a few generations of people in a couple of paragraphs. If he had been around to do a LOTR-ish expanded writing of The Silmarillion, even a cat with all its nine lives intact wouldnt have been able to finish it on time.

The book deals a heavy blow to your ego with its intricate details, gives you feeling that you have alzheimer's with a spate of family-trees of great houses of middle-earth, and challenges your reading ability with the first two chapters which are an exercise that would leave you with a feeling if this is the language you studied since kindergarten. But like an Old Trafford pitch in english summer, which makes you work hard early in the morning and eases out as the day progresses, it opens out to be another tale of friendship, love, betrayal, loyalty and honor. All in all, Two Thumbs Up from me to The Silmarillion. If you liked LOTR for the details, you going to love The Silmarillion. Five family trees, Three maps, A complete character/name index and A Tolkien fans' delight, an elvish dictionary, come with the book. Howz that for "details".

PS: If you happen to know Italian and Annegato happens to be some sleazy word, blame it on google.

PS2: If you have any questions on Akkalabeth or the War of The Third Age, dont ask me. I havent come there yet. I just read the part which says "This is the end of The Silmarillion" and i am still yapping in my own personal sunshine of gloating, even though there is 1/6th of the book to be completed.

PS3: The "Unfinished Tales" would remain Unfinished with me. Until i am done with PGW and Pratchett atleast. So long JRR, for making all the train journeys worth it.