Bhay ho!

You did say you would vote for change didn’t you?

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”

“Who will watch the Watchmen?” Well now i can answer my friends and me were one amongst the thousands that did. Only to come out less than happy and more than disappointed. This after going in with no expectations or fanboy attitudes.
Oh ok, so your counter will be that this is a film and it should be judged on its own merit....well, in that case whatever merit it had would disappear – because for some one who hasn’t read Watchmen the graphic novel, this movie would makes less than sense. Technically it is sound, a brilliant title sequence, the CGs nice, (almost) everything thought of, but if it ever was true that the whole is less than the sum of its parts, it is with this movie And i’m not even complaining about a certain missing cephalopod!! Full points for trying, Zack ‘visionary director’ Snyder, close but no cigarette even. For a book that was written intentionally in a way as to be un-filmable, it still is. Ha!

No help at all

There once lived a boy. The cat was red. And the river overflowed. The disco lights lit up the dawn while the dope peddlers went after stray dogs and unicorns. The water tasted sweet he said. Let there be lightness, and war. The green unripe apple stayed suspended in mid air just below the bowler hat. The arrows sped toward each other. Illumination comes so hard. Rock on. Emotionally dyslexic nurses not welcome. Making small talking about dwarves and midgets. Once upon a time was how it began. He stayed in school till the last terminal stage in the green room. And the bionic automata started bleeding. The drums sang their tune. Itinerant insects were splattered all over. The temperature kept rising. Fighting the urge to go out killing leopards. And road signs were abused.

Aches old enough to be our own...

We've seen the past best times, and these
Will ne'er return ; we see the seas,
And moons to wane,
But they fill up their ebbs again;
But vanish'd man,
Like to a lily lost, ne'er can,
Ne'er can repullulate, or bring
His days to see a second spring.

But on we must,
and thither tend,
Where Anchus and rich Tullus
Their sacred seed:
Thus has infernal Jove decreed
We must be made,
Ere long a song, ere long a shade.
Why then, since life to us is short,
Let's make it full up by our sport......

In all its glory it is known as HIS AGE, DEDICATED TO HIS PECULIAR FRIEND,M. JOHN WICKES, UNDER THE NAME OF POSTHUMUS by Robert Herrick So gather ye rosebuds while ye may.

speak to me

At last count i can speak gibberish, hindi, roughly about two dialects of kannada, ditto for konkani, tulu, nonsense, a smattering of tamil and jargon, and one foreign language, english. Now pray tell me, how does this make you insecure and inferior and feed your combative impulses?

Unusual Suspect(s)

All sorts of Holmes-ian deductions have been fruitless. Poirot-style moustache twirling even more so. Discrete calls and otherwise Sam Spade-style to possible suspects have been to no avail. It’s going to be almost a month now and i still have yet to figure out who sent me these:

Two great books.
Alan Moore’s Hypothetical Lizard limited edition hardcover
The Thakeray T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases.
Why in the world would anyone want to keep this great gift a secret????
Some day i will know, and on that day, Anonymous Books-Gifter, you will now too that i know, if you didn’t already know i knew or made it b known to me that you were the one....umm....who be you by the way?

what is Real?

Who do we (really) mourn for? Why do we (really) mourn?

He chose not to be God. He was just about adjusting to his new role as a god, but God? No! He was clear about that. Let others fight over it. It had taken a lot to convince him to join the pantheon and to be one of the beneficiaries of countless sacrifices, but to be God? That wasn’t as much beyond him as it was beneath. Leave me to myself, he told the bothersome deities. You’ve already set my name on the path of abuse and of obligations and prayers I cannot always meet. I will have nothing more to do. Whatever i have earned till now you can take and do whatever you want in my name, and to my name. And politely retreated into solitude next to the nearest pyre he could find. But pyres have a way of cooling down.

Spring Thunder

This man makes me want to learn Malayalam just so i can read him in the original. Agreed, he himself has translated most of his work into English, but knowing as i do the ‘lost in translation’ business that has happened with some of the books in Kannada that i have read in English also, it would be fair to assume that the same has happened with OV Vijayan’s books. As OV (do i dare call them this?) himself said, “...translation is an act of shifting eggs from one nest to another. In the process the yolk and white are separated, and what you have left with is broken shells.” And this from a man who translated his own work into some fabulous English. Who better then?

The reason for this post? After The Hanging and Other Stories by OV Vijayan. Finished it over the course of a packed weekend. From the surreal to the heartbreaking, from allegories to little seeds of thoughts, it was more than just a good read. A good read ensures you enjoy the good while you are reading it. Not after the last page has been turned. A classic like this sticks with you, much after you have finished reading it. It happened with me with Khasakkinte Itihasam, then with Dharmapuranam, and now with After the Hanging...the search is on now for Gurusagaram. If any of you reading this blog regularly (five at the last count) happen to chance upon it, let me know ASAP!

OV Vijayan. This man now firmly occupies the #2 spot in my personal list of ‘Best Indian Writers in English’. If only by virtue of having translated his books himself, and even with that he is leagues ahead of those just out to prove that their vocabulary is as good, if not better than the whites themselves (or that they have a good dictionary/thesaurus). Most are just writing about things we all know and are part of us – making the banal and the commonplace – seem exotic for the white man’s consumption, and the confused rootless generation of today. Not so Vijayan. He wrote, yes, about things here and now and of what could be....but ever in a way so as to give us from here a new perspective, a new way of looking and of thought. Not just through his novels and stories. As an acerbic and unforgiving cartoonist, OV also occupies the #2 spot in my ‘Best Indian Cartoonists’ list.

PS: The #1 spot in the list of ‘Best Indian Writers in English’ was, is and will always be RK Narayan with his ‘Common Man’ brother the #1Indian cartoonist.

PPS: A quick flash back to this, a previous post concerning OV

We all need a Love Day

Reproducing here a quick and hurried response written by yours truly to a mail about Love Day, briefly explaining the history of Love Day. Here you go.

The fin de siècle ideas of the 19th century were a harbinger of what was to come in the 20th. In the late 1890s, Hallmark decided that after ‘holidays’ like Second Cousin’s Day, Third Ex-Wife’s Day, the ever-popular Secretary’s Day, Celebrate Stepping on Dog Poo Day and other such, they decided they didn’t still have what developers would call ‘a killer app’. The International Consortium of Florists also were thinking along the same lines. And chocolate manufacturers, who wanted to expand beyond their kiddies & sweet tooth market. They decided to join forces and on the suggestion of a certain Mrs.Gaskell - who had read a lot of Geoffrey Chaucer – decided to have a Love Day.

Love Day was promoted hither and thither, helter and skelter. Love Day was everywhere. And soon Love Day was a runaway success, and an established holiday of sorts. It was to hit a slight road block in the second decade of the 20th century when this ‘tradition’ hit Indian shores and it was also during this time that enterprising Indians were spreading across the world, bangalore-ing people even before the term was invented.

It first came to light when Edward Frederick Lindley Wood – more popularly known as Lord Halifax, the then Viceroy Of India – announced to a large gathering of eminent people (the page 3 crowd of that time) from across the country – in a rare exception when Indians and dogs were allowed in.

In his broken hindi, Lord Halifax declared to the assemblage, “Kaal ham log saab milekar Love Day ka Ball karengey. Full India hamara Love Day ka Ball dekhega, sunega.” He of course meant a Ball Dance, as in dancing/gathering. But the remark, understandably created a furore when the Indians objected to such shameless exhibitionism. They had to be calmed down as they were under the (mis)understanding that there would be an orgy – especially since the Viceroy had said that everybody had to karo-fy the grand Love Day ka Ball. Incidents like this were reported from across the Raj. Once the language issues were sorted out and the truth about Love Day the term came to light, people started cogitating on a solution for Love Day (the nomenclature of the ‘tradition’, not the anatomical part).

At the same time on the other end(s) of the world, the diaspora indians also were perplexed by Love Day wondering why somebody would celebrate their privates. A pubic holiday if you will. They were more so horrified when the firangs around them asked them to do the Love Day. ??

So all across the world there was a major confusion. Hallmark realised that the suckers in the Third World would not easily take to it. Luckily for them Times of India had started publication (or should i say pubication?) by that time, and TOI was roped in to repair the damage. Many alternate names were rejected. Those that did not make it included St. Nimmajjiloafer Day and Loose Emotion Day.

At this point there occurred an incident that would change the face of Love Day forever. Al Capone (the world-famous tax evader) and his gang were involved in a shootout that came to be known across America as the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. The date was February 14th – Love Day. Since the name was getting famous already, Hallmark and company decided to rename Love Day as St. Valentines Day (and in ‘social interest’ to spread the message of love, not hate...copulation not killing....making out, not massacring).

And thus with the greeting card companies, florists, page 3 crowds, and other interested parties, love came o exist on that day. The other 364 days (365 on leap years) were not the days to show love, but only on Valentines Day (formerly known as Love Day). The rest of the year you would anyway e busy with Bullock Cart Day, Drink Beer Mixed With Sugar Day, Third Month Anniversary Day and other such. There you go.

Naaviruva taanave gandhada gudi

Art. Architecture. Temples. Wildlife. Hills. Treks & Trails. Rafting. Beaches. Sand (if you count Talakadu). Forests. Rivers and Falls. History. You want it? You got it!Am glad I was born in this particular part of this great land.
Idu yaara tapasina phalavo? Ee kannugalu maadida punyavo?

There is nothing more disappointing than when you make a Grade A pun or a joke, and no one around gets it. Well fine. Ok. There are a few more things more disappointing than when you make a Grade A pun or a joke, and no one around gets it.

That scream you just heard was Sir Arthur’s

Meet Sherlock Holmes. A chaser, shooter and pummeler of criminals. A bare-knuckle boxer, a crack shot and an expert swordsman. Yeah. And a ‘man of action’ like James Bond in 1891. Bah!
“It wasn’t my idea of Sherlock Holmes”, the bugger says. Wasn’t his idea. Bah!
And i always thought Doyle worked alone in creating this immortal character.
Funny how hollywood mandarins think they own something just because they have the rights to make a movie.
So what now? Wigram’s Holmes? How about some underwear outside the pants and a cape? And a big ‘S’ on his exquisitely tailored shirt? Wait. One of the USP’s of this travesty is we see Holmes shirtless. Yippe!!! So how about a big ‘S’ tattoo on his chest? How’s that for ‘imagining’? eh? Wait! How about Madonna as Dr. Watson? That’ll get the people flocking in! Bah.

It must’ve been the soup. They hadn’t progressed to the main course yet. It couldn’t have been the appetisers because she’d personally tasted the appetisers before serving the. Had to be the soup. A room full of dead people can’t be wrong. Damn. That too on a Friday. But looking on the brighter side, she’d watered the lawn in the evening. At least the earth would still be wet. Thank god for small mercies.

Cursing Christian

Christian Bale. Who don’t like the guy?
And if you thought all he does is act awesomely, wait till you hear him curse. Berating some poor DP on the sets of Terminator Salvation. Finally we heard the famous Christian cursing born from the temper he has. But then, that’s old news. It’s been on the net for some time now. What is new though, is that the tirade has been mixed up and mashed up to the sounds of a nice beat. No pun intended. Watch it.

And. Um. Ah. Just in case you haven’t heard the original tirade as it was recorded, here’s the mp3.

The artistic Romantic Lady Killer Man finds the perfect solution

From being just laid to being laid low. Things had changed for him for a while. Irene – The One That Got Away. Almost. Sigh. Such beauty. The kind of immortal beauty that will never fade. The epitome of art. She truly walked in beauty like the night. He had thought that he had found his one true love, only to have his heart broken. She’d accused him of being a philanderer. That cut deep. He’d truly loved her. Bought her gifts, wined, dined and serenaded her. Bought her stuffed toys and pink cards. Helped her baby sit her nephew. Cared for her cat when she was away. He’d put his life on hold for her. No. Not on hold. She had been his entire life when they were together. And he would not have it any other way. Yes, she was demanding. But she had been worth it. It was meant to be – him and her. Together. All was going smoothly till the day she found the keys to the closet where he’d kept all his skeletons, metaphorically speaking of course. The skeletons were all either dissolved in acid and poured down drains or buried in various graves across the city, and if they weren’t skeletons going out, they sure would be skeletons now. But he’d given it all up for Irene. But she wouldn’t understand. She had found his previous relationships too ‘freaked out’ to handle. She’d walked out on him. Like Frank Zappa, he believed that broken hearts are for assholes. He wasn’t one. He’d moved on. It was tough. Her pretty eyes stared at him from the faces of the many women around town. He’d thrown himself into whirlwind affairs just to get over her. But he just couldn’t. He’d gone to sleep only to be awakened by the scent of her perfume wafting in on the first rays of the dawning sun. Her voice kept him awake at night. He’d decided that the only truth was that they should be together. For as long as he was alive. He’d gone back to her. To have her for himself. Things have a way of working out. And now they were together. They would be together. Oh! How he loved her. She was a lot less demanding now. She even didn’t mind the little affairs he would have every so often when that crazy little thing called love got the better of him. She didn’t mind when he brought women over. His perfect woman. Irene. His perfect love. Hers now was truly the beauty that would never fade. The solution was in the solution. Who could now see the physical impossibility of love in the heart of someone obdurate. He could drop in on her whenever he wanted to. Well, I think I will he thought. He could visit her now whenever he wished. And as he started walking to go down and see Irene, he thought he heard the far-off strains of David Byrne’s ‘My fair lady’...

♪♪ But forever you'll remain
And you have time because you will live forever
Never age and never tire
In my sleep and in my dreams at night♪

Nice song he thought, as he flicked on the switch in the basement and gazed on as the light sparkled off the crystal on and around her and illuminated the radiant beauty of his immortal Irene.
♪Calls to me a strange attraction
With your beauty and your passion
You are art and art will never change.....♪♪

He went close to her and through the looking glass said, “You know Irene, Damien Hirst would be proud of me.”

Bharat ki aakhri Chai ki Dukaan

Make your way to Badrinath. Walk three kilometres to the last inhabited Indian village, Mana. If there are no panchayat elections happening on the day, you might just be lucky enough to hop on a local bus or jeep. I wasn’t.

Beyond this village there is nothing but snow-capped mountains. No habitation, just no-man’s land and then the china border. Walk through the village, up towards Vyas Gufa (the cave where Vyasa is supposed to have dictated the Mahabharata to Ganesha). And there, at the edge of Mana you will see one of the most memorable places I visited – and one of the more interesting people I met – during my month-and-a-half sojourn.

Meet Chandra Singh Barhwal. Proud owner of India’s Last Tea Shop, and a brewer of one mean cup of chai.

Cricket. Films. Serials. Opeth concert. Just a few things have been keeping me nicely occupied. Too lazy to type too much. Or tell too much. So here are a just a few thousand words worth in pictures me has been up to....why tell.

Nomad out of nowhere

Not the best, but amongst the better photographs I have taken during my various travels.

Somewhere amidst the barren beauty of the Tibetan plateau, between Saga and Paryang. Date: Late September, 2008. Camera: Canon EOS300 Analog SLR.

Quote. Misqoute.

No Van Vogt. No Adam Roberts or Robert J. Sawyer. And where's the Amar Chithra Katha?!!! Contractual obligation page filler it looks like this is.

Pattern Recognition

Somehow, patterns have their own way of forming. Three weekends ago, it was classic Film Noir (Sunset Blvd, Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, etc.), two weekends ago courtroom dramas (Anatomy of a Murder, Judgment at Nuremberg, The Verdict….), last weekend was coming-of-age films (Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire), and this weekend too a pattern developed all on its own.

American Throwback
The pattern this weekend was ‘America as it used to be’. Lots of smoking. A peek into the social mores of ye olde Land of Dreams. In Revolutionary Road, that dream is still-born. In Changeling, dreams crash and burn amidst crime and corruption. And false dreams are created, in Mad Men season 1. As is advertising’s wont. And lots of smoking.

I recommend all three. Because beneath the veneer of Americana, all three have so much in common with us, and mutatis mutandis, something we all can relate to, in the here and now. Be it the couple in Revolutionary Road with its theme of settling for what is, in the ‘comfort of the familiar’. The truth that man always convinces that ‘there is always hope’ in everything, a Changeling would have us believe. Good stories, well told.

'>Chirp chhirp.

The Bored of Evam

I know, I know. Silly forced pun. But gets the point across.
Was in the audience yesterday for Evam’s ‘Always look on the bright side of life’. And through it all was wondering if these guys are paying any royalty to the Pythons, considering the whole act was a total repeat performance of classic Python sketches, slightly diluted versions minus the classy acting, and sometimes the timing. All points for effort and ripping off Python, all in the name of ‘tribute’. Evam is lucky that Monty Python isn’t really part of popular culture here, or easily accessible/available in these parts.
The only time the ‘play’ held any interest was when the three dancing girls were on stage groovin’ and gyrating. But the ‘actors’ kept interrupting them regularly!!! Guess that’s my main grouse….

a quick passing thought

Rachel Dawes dead. Joker dead.* Harvey Dent/Two Face dead. Batman is now the hunted, with everyone after him. Wonder what awaits the Dark Knight in Nolanverse.....
*For all practical matters.

Signs of Life (or, a world of paradox and contradiction)

It is the best of times, it is worst of times,
the age of wisdom, the age of foolishness,
it's the epoch of belief, it's the epoch of incredulity,
the season of light, the season of darkness....
the spirit of hope, the winter of despair.
we have everything before us, we have nothing before us,
we are all going direct to heaven, we are all going direct the other way.
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
“It is a far, far better thing that i do, than i have ever done; it is a far, far better dream that I sleep to, than i have ever known.”

with all due respect and humble apologies to mr.dickens

the sleep of reason produces monsters…..or, au contraire!

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

Thus begins William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence. Wonderful. But from this beginning Blake goes on to 120-odd lines that speak of good and evil, innocence and experience, corruption and clarity. All at once and then some. Contrasting one with the other. Talking of things to the contrary. Ah! William Blake.

A friend of mine liked the first four lines so much she went and read out the rest of the poem (“…after the elation that the first four lines gave me…” in her words). From elation she went to saying, “[I] didn’t expect the poem to leave me feeling disturbed….made me shift in my seat…”. But that was the genius of Blake. To show experience in the light of innocence and look at innocence through the eyes of experience.

For Blake, Innocence and Experience were two states that had to be each given its own due and acknowledged. Putting things forth as they were however disturbing they were. Innocence is not a vacuum, it exists in the world of experience. In Experience there is the vestige and hope of innocence. But while others would tell us one part of the story, hold out only hope, Blake would tell it as it is hoping his readers would go through his larger body of work to get to what he wanted to get at.

So in Blake’s worlds, and in his words, for every Clod which sang….
“Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives it ease,
And builds a heaven in hell's despair.”

…there was a Pebble that sang back,
“Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven's despite.”

In fact the sub-title to Blake’s most-beloved work is “Showing the Two Contrary States of The Human Soul”. But this relationship of Innocence and Experience, this inter-play of these contrary states, is not one of direct, static contrasts, but with ever-shifting perspectives and thoughts and tensions. But what about the Soul? If these be the Contrary States, what about the Soul itself?

The difficulty in trying to get the whole import (if one can ever get to it, or to the best of one’s ability) of Songs of Innocence and Experience is that the States are so intertwined that it is difficult to see the Hope in experience and the fear in Innocence. Later on in his illustrious career, Blake would be more clear….showing the separation of the States from the Individual. The Individual being real and eternal, with the illusory States being temporary conditions through which the Individual would pass. The Body and the States just a ‘clothing for the soul divine’ (see below). That’s what it says in the immortal Gita. With broad strokes, reminds one of the eternal philosophy of Advaita, from which we know that once you that ‘Thou art That’ and cast away the subjective reality of Maya, and uncloak yourself from avidya and agjana, will you realise that ‘Thou art Bhraman’. It’s a long way to go, seemingly impossible. But there’s still the hope. The knowledge. But coming back to Blake, why wait to read the later works, when this same message is there in ‘Auguries of Innocence.’

"Man was made for joy & woe,
And when this we rightly know
Thro' the world we safely go.
Joy & woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the Soul divine…"

But why not then make it apparent from the beginning? There’s a reason. It’s called progression. In Blake’s own words (selectively selected from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)

“…As a new heaven is begun…the Eternal Hell revives……
…..
…..Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.”

Without Contraries, there is no progression. And another interesting point to note is that Blake refers to ‘a new heaven’ while hell is eternal. Hmmm….is it because Joy is rare and ephemeral, but misery and sorrow is ever present. Is it because Joy and Happiness come in small portions but Misery and Sorrow do not? Like Shakespeare wrote, “When sorrow comes, they come not single spies, but in battalions.”. Or is it because each Joy is Joy, but not every sorrow the same? Leo Tolstoy I think got it right when he started Anna Karenina with this of-quoted line, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Well. Too much thought. One can think and think and write and write. Sigh.
Well, one can but barely scratch the surface, knowing that the answer and the explanation may never be within reach. But one can try. And spew it out from his onto his blog, for no particular reason except that one cannot help but think. Keep thinking. Sharks need to keep moving. If they stop, they sink. Similarly I guess if I need to stay afloat, I must keep moving, thinking. Even if it be to no end, to serve no purpose, and for no one but myself. But thinking has its own evils.

But some thoughts get to you. Some thoughts are like monsters. Restless. Eating into you, till you show them the light of day. Let them escape, and set them free from the caverns of your mind. You need to get them out somewhere. You need to grapple with thine demons. And thinking helps it not. Like that other great man in my pantheon realised, ‘the sleep of reason produces monsters…”. At face value, works just fine for me. And thus i guess I am left with some reason to put an end to this post with this image from Goya, called The Sleep of Reason produces Monsters...

“La fantasia abandonada de la razon, produce monstruos imposibles: unida con ella, es madre de las artes y origen de sus marabillas.”

Bharat ka Ratan

Thanks Mr. Ratan Tata. For making us proud again. For showing us that there are still more people left in this country we can look up to. For showing us how promises are meant to be kept, for kept they should. You did it again. Congratulations. And thanks.

Let's take a trip together

Let's take a trip together
Headlong into the irresistible orbit
Breathing the cold black space
With the glistening edges
Let's take a trip, me and you…

Let's go the scenic route
Get to finally
Get to finally
Get to know each other
Just to be
to be alone with thee…

Somewhere there's no distracting breeze of information
Leaking through the windows, dripping from the trees
Somewhere there's no earthquakes
Of other people's anxious questions…….
...............Let's take a trip together
Mark Sandman

And thus she’s mine forever

I felt her eyes on me. I looked sideways towards the fireplace. And true enough, I found her eyes turned in my direction. Those lovely eyes, limpid pools and all that. How they would dance with life! Sigh. Once upon a time this simple act and fact would’ve made me the most happiest man alive. To know she was looking at me. And I wanted that feeling to be mine forever. I tried. But it just wasn’t the same. Once upon a time I would have been the happiest man alive just knowing she was near me. No longer. It’s all over. It’s time to move on. It’s time to get back to life. And to find a place in the basement for the formaldehyde jar that contain her eyeballs. Closer to the rest of her. Can’t think I can take it no more….with their gaze on me all the time.

bhava Shankara desika me saranam...