“Today I wear these chains, and am here! Tomorrow I shall be fetterless! —but where?”
Closing lines of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Imp of the Perverse”. Just thought they’d look good on the blog, and I don’t have a separate “Quotes” section so...
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Friday, February 25, 2005
‘Oops Delhi Times Did it Again’ of the day
From a Q&A with Mark Knopfler on page 1 of today’s DT:
Q. Has India ever inspired your music?
A. I spent the first six years of my life in Scotland. Then I went to Newcastle-on-Tyne in northeast England...so I heard a lot of that music. I heard my uncle Kingsley playing boogie-woogie on the piano when I was 8, and I thought those three chords were among the most magnificent things in the world. I still do. Among my inspirations are the early Elvis, the Everly Brothers with Chet Atkins on guitar, and Bob Dylan.
What, no Vande Mataram?!
For anyone who doesn’t know how these things work, this is what probably happened here: the interview was almost certainly conducted on email (because if it wasn’t, it becomes very difficult to explain this blooper - not that I want to throw my back out trying to justify anything Delhi Times does). DT probably prepared a template of questions, mailed them to Knopfler’s promotions people, and in return got a pre-fabricated template of answers. I suspect this template thing works on a keyword system, so that a question that includes words like “inspired” and “music” will throw up an earnest pre-written answer about the artiste’s musical inspirations. And so it goes...
Naturally, it would have been asking too much to expect the hallowed city supplement to rewrite its question so that it fits the proffered answer. Oh well, so long as we get our daily dose of inadvertent humour...
Q. Has India ever inspired your music?
A. I spent the first six years of my life in Scotland. Then I went to Newcastle-on-Tyne in northeast England...so I heard a lot of that music. I heard my uncle Kingsley playing boogie-woogie on the piano when I was 8, and I thought those three chords were among the most magnificent things in the world. I still do. Among my inspirations are the early Elvis, the Everly Brothers with Chet Atkins on guitar, and Bob Dylan.
What, no Vande Mataram?!
For anyone who doesn’t know how these things work, this is what probably happened here: the interview was almost certainly conducted on email (because if it wasn’t, it becomes very difficult to explain this blooper - not that I want to throw my back out trying to justify anything Delhi Times does). DT probably prepared a template of questions, mailed them to Knopfler’s promotions people, and in return got a pre-fabricated template of answers. I suspect this template thing works on a keyword system, so that a question that includes words like “inspired” and “music” will throw up an earnest pre-written answer about the artiste’s musical inspirations. And so it goes...
Naturally, it would have been asking too much to expect the hallowed city supplement to rewrite its question so that it fits the proffered answer. Oh well, so long as we get our daily dose of inadvertent humour...
Thursday, February 24, 2005
The Seventh Seal
I’ve often been uncharitable to Ingmar Bergman, holding him up as an example of a director who appeals more to the cerebra than to the emotions, and who therefore gets more critical praise than cinema’s great visual artistes - but each viewing of The Seventh Seal reminds me of what an injustice that is. Watched my DVD of Bergman’s hypnotic 1957 film again last night and was once again sucked into its very particular world. There are other films that reach the same heights as The Seventh Seal but this is a rarity - a one-of-a-kind masterpiece that can’t quite be compared with anything else. (Offhand the only other films I can think of in that vein are Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Tod Browning’s Freaks. Maybe Citizen Kane too, but then that’s a stand-alone in so many other ways.)
How does one begin to speak of the first five minutes of The Seventh Seal? Few images anywhere - film, painting, photographs - convey desolation and spiritual emptiness better than the face of the great Max Von Sydow (playing the knight Antonius Block) in the opening scene. Lying on his back, gazing up at the sky, he sighs to himself, then slowly gets up, washes his face, falls to his knees and prays, the briefest glimmer of hope (faith?) crossing his sallow face. Then he walks back to gather his equipment, waves splashing on the beach in the background, the chess set in the foreground; there’s a brief dissolve, and then the iconic shot of Death standing on the beach, half court jester half Grim Reaper, gazing at Antonius and at us.
In one of the most famous movie scenes ever, Death and the knight begin a game of chess that will span the film’s duration. Of course, other things happen: the knight and his squire (played by the wonderful Gunnar Björnstrand) continue their travels (this is the 13th century and they’re returning from the Crusades); visit a church with depressing murals; meet and pick up people on the way (“my road movie”, Bergman called this film!); witness scenes of flagellation. They see a young “witch” being burnt at the stake - a scene that provides the most searing commentary on the film’s key theme, the impossibility of maintaining faith (and the impossibility of not maintaining faith) in a world where Death is the only certainty (“Look at her eyes!” the squire shouts to his knight, “What does she see? No God or Satan, only emptiness!”)
And placed right in the middle of all this bleakness is one of the most beautiful, simple and graceful scenes I’ve ever watched. During a rare interlude, the knight and his squire sit with Josef and Maria, a young couple who perform in a troupe together, and they all share strawberries and milk. “I will remember this moment of quietude,” says the knight. “The sound of our voices murmuring in the stillness, your faces in the evening light, the gentle sounds of Josef’s lute playing. I will try to remember what we talked about this day.” It’s the strongest defence he has against the horror of approaching emptiness.
One of the reasons for my fascination with The Seventh Seal is that, on paper, this never seemed the sort of film I’d have any sort of fondness for. Too heavy-handed, too self-consciously full of imagery and metaphors. And yet, it doesn’t work that way when you watch it. What you see is a movie that carries such strong conviction that it makes you believe too. And for all the apparent weightiness of its subject matter, it’s so simple and direct in its execution that it takes your breath away.
How does one begin to speak of the first five minutes of The Seventh Seal? Few images anywhere - film, painting, photographs - convey desolation and spiritual emptiness better than the face of the great Max Von Sydow (playing the knight Antonius Block) in the opening scene. Lying on his back, gazing up at the sky, he sighs to himself, then slowly gets up, washes his face, falls to his knees and prays, the briefest glimmer of hope (faith?) crossing his sallow face. Then he walks back to gather his equipment, waves splashing on the beach in the background, the chess set in the foreground; there’s a brief dissolve, and then the iconic shot of Death standing on the beach, half court jester half Grim Reaper, gazing at Antonius and at us.
In one of the most famous movie scenes ever, Death and the knight begin a game of chess that will span the film’s duration. Of course, other things happen: the knight and his squire (played by the wonderful Gunnar Björnstrand) continue their travels (this is the 13th century and they’re returning from the Crusades); visit a church with depressing murals; meet and pick up people on the way (“my road movie”, Bergman called this film!); witness scenes of flagellation. They see a young “witch” being burnt at the stake - a scene that provides the most searing commentary on the film’s key theme, the impossibility of maintaining faith (and the impossibility of not maintaining faith) in a world where Death is the only certainty (“Look at her eyes!” the squire shouts to his knight, “What does she see? No God or Satan, only emptiness!”)
And placed right in the middle of all this bleakness is one of the most beautiful, simple and graceful scenes I’ve ever watched. During a rare interlude, the knight and his squire sit with Josef and Maria, a young couple who perform in a troupe together, and they all share strawberries and milk. “I will remember this moment of quietude,” says the knight. “The sound of our voices murmuring in the stillness, your faces in the evening light, the gentle sounds of Josef’s lute playing. I will try to remember what we talked about this day.” It’s the strongest defence he has against the horror of approaching emptiness.
One of the reasons for my fascination with The Seventh Seal is that, on paper, this never seemed the sort of film I’d have any sort of fondness for. Too heavy-handed, too self-consciously full of imagery and metaphors. And yet, it doesn’t work that way when you watch it. What you see is a movie that carries such strong conviction that it makes you believe too. And for all the apparent weightiness of its subject matter, it’s so simple and direct in its execution that it takes your breath away.
But madam, I’m only playing Snake
Damn you, MMS scandals! Whenever I take my cellphone out of my pocket now - which is often, for how else to tell the time? - every woman in the vicinity turns to look at me askance. Mothers shield their daughters. And here I was thinking I had an open, trustworthy face.
It’s even worse with the coalition of the willing though. Like a couple of days ago I was sitting at a dhaba in McLeodganj not far from the Dalai Lama’s residence, awaiting my pork chowmein and innocently playing a game on the cell when perchance I looked up to see this (middle-aged) lady at the table opposite preening herself and generally behaving like I was Helmut Newton with full camera kit. She may even have winked at me, either that or it was my imagination.
Strange are the ways of the modern age. A few days ago I blogged about cellphones making nonsense of our memories of ancient, ponderous-dial Graham Bell instruments. Now they’ve taken all the old-world charm out of being a Peeping Tom. The binoculars, the strategically located rented flat, the careful preparation, all gone!
It’s even worse with the coalition of the willing though. Like a couple of days ago I was sitting at a dhaba in McLeodganj not far from the Dalai Lama’s residence, awaiting my pork chowmein and innocently playing a game on the cell when perchance I looked up to see this (middle-aged) lady at the table opposite preening herself and generally behaving like I was Helmut Newton with full camera kit. She may even have winked at me, either that or it was my imagination.
Strange are the ways of the modern age. A few days ago I blogged about cellphones making nonsense of our memories of ancient, ponderous-dial Graham Bell instruments. Now they’ve taken all the old-world charm out of being a Peeping Tom. The binoculars, the strategically located rented flat, the careful preparation, all gone!
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Losing Neverland
Back from Bir, ended up going to McLeodganj as well. Too lazy to blog about it right now, might just put up the article I write instead. [Quick note to people who have never encountered snow before: it’s surprisingly slippery. Makes you fall down in the path of oncoming vehicles on those already-dicey mountain roads. Also usually dirty and mud-ridden, not at all like in the Shammi Kapoor song, which was a studio-manufactured soap-fest anyway. You’re more likely to say Yuck than Yahoo. Snow as you see it in Archie comics and Calvin and Hobbes is but a figment of cartoonists’ imagination.]
Anyway, a quick word about Finding Neverland, which I saw on Sunday at PVR, partly to kill time, partly because I knew I wouldn’t see it for a few years otherwise (not being into the VCD thing). Okay, here’s what I never expected to say about this film: I was disappointed. While it was engrossing enough to keep me awake throughout, the experience left me cold overall. This isn’t easy to admit, because I was so sure I’d love it (maybe high expectations were part of the problem) and I’ve heard only good things about it from all over - international reviews, friends’ recommendations (check Black Muddy River’s take here).
Can’t exactly put my finger on why it didn’t work for me and since this isn’t a formal review, I don’t really have to. But first let’s tick off the good bits. Johnny Depp - excellent, though the standards he’s set are so high that that’s par for the course. Didn’t allow the Scottish accent to become the point of the performance. Production design, very very good as it would need to be for the film to be any kind of success. Supporting cast solid enough, though I couldn’t figure out what Dustin Hoffman was doing in there (unless it was a wink at his performance as Captain Hook in Spielberg’s Hook).
In fact, from a formal “checklist” perspective, it was a fine film in many respects. But somehow it didn’t move me the way it should have. Maybe that’s because the theme of the eccentric author unable to relate to anyone else, sealed off in his own world, has been done so many times before (incidentally, it was done just last year in another Depp film, the underrated Secret Window - a movie that I thought captured very well the madness and solitariness of the writing process). Or maybe it’s because I tend to be underwhelmed by the Peter Pan story and the simplistic way in which it deals with its main theme -- children growing up too fast and the things one loses on the path to adulthood.
Or possibly Finding Neverland was just a little too slow-paced for my liking; trying too hard to prove that it was a movie concerned with weightier issues than circus bears, fairies and flying childen. Also, there were just too many Oscar-targetting moments, not least that semi-surreal climactic scene with the Winslet character walking out into “Neverland”, accompanied by a John Williams-style musical crescendo. It’s probably a combination of all these things.
Anyway, a quick word about Finding Neverland, which I saw on Sunday at PVR, partly to kill time, partly because I knew I wouldn’t see it for a few years otherwise (not being into the VCD thing). Okay, here’s what I never expected to say about this film: I was disappointed. While it was engrossing enough to keep me awake throughout, the experience left me cold overall. This isn’t easy to admit, because I was so sure I’d love it (maybe high expectations were part of the problem) and I’ve heard only good things about it from all over - international reviews, friends’ recommendations (check Black Muddy River’s take here).
Can’t exactly put my finger on why it didn’t work for me and since this isn’t a formal review, I don’t really have to. But first let’s tick off the good bits. Johnny Depp - excellent, though the standards he’s set are so high that that’s par for the course. Didn’t allow the Scottish accent to become the point of the performance. Production design, very very good as it would need to be for the film to be any kind of success. Supporting cast solid enough, though I couldn’t figure out what Dustin Hoffman was doing in there (unless it was a wink at his performance as Captain Hook in Spielberg’s Hook).
In fact, from a formal “checklist” perspective, it was a fine film in many respects. But somehow it didn’t move me the way it should have. Maybe that’s because the theme of the eccentric author unable to relate to anyone else, sealed off in his own world, has been done so many times before (incidentally, it was done just last year in another Depp film, the underrated Secret Window - a movie that I thought captured very well the madness and solitariness of the writing process). Or maybe it’s because I tend to be underwhelmed by the Peter Pan story and the simplistic way in which it deals with its main theme -- children growing up too fast and the things one loses on the path to adulthood.
Or possibly Finding Neverland was just a little too slow-paced for my liking; trying too hard to prove that it was a movie concerned with weightier issues than circus bears, fairies and flying childen. Also, there were just too many Oscar-targetting moments, not least that semi-surreal climactic scene with the Winslet character walking out into “Neverland”, accompanied by a John Williams-style musical crescendo. It’s probably a combination of all these things.
Sunday, February 20, 2005
The monks will help me
That I have these irrational homicidal fantasies each time I’m in a barbershop is no secret (or if it was, it isn’t any longer) but the dark thoughts that entered my mind today were wholly justified. What happened was this: the man getting his hair cut in the chair next to mine perched his little kid (2 or 3 years tops) alongside him and then, for a good 15 minutes, kept up an incessant chatter for the child’s benefit. It ran along the lines “Dekho baby, sheeshe mein kaun hai? Dadu hai? Kya ho raha hai? Dadu ka baal kaat raha hai?” etc. This sort of thing might be tolerable in very small doses but he went on and on and on without stopping. The chap cutting his hair couldn’t do his work properly, and frankly even the kid looked very annoyed.
Anyway, just around the time this man leant over to show the child the bits of hair scattered on the floor and said “Dekho baby – woh kya hai? Baal hai?” – just around that time, I entered a blissful parallel universe where I seized the nearest pair of scissors and plunged it deep into the man’s head. It was gorgeousness and gorgeosity. But it was just a parallel universe. Now, 20 minutes later, I’m blogging about this while the man, doubtless still alive, is probably walking around the PVR complex, pointing at people and telling his kid, “Woh kya hai? Ladka hai? Ladki hai?” Anyway, thank heaven for psychopathic fantasies, they keep us sane.
This evening I’m off for Palampur, where I’ll spend a day or two frolicking with gentle monks and learning all about peace on earth. Should be back Wednesday. Till then…
Anyway, just around the time this man leant over to show the child the bits of hair scattered on the floor and said “Dekho baby – woh kya hai? Baal hai?” – just around that time, I entered a blissful parallel universe where I seized the nearest pair of scissors and plunged it deep into the man’s head. It was gorgeousness and gorgeosity. But it was just a parallel universe. Now, 20 minutes later, I’m blogging about this while the man, doubtless still alive, is probably walking around the PVR complex, pointing at people and telling his kid, “Woh kya hai? Ladka hai? Ladki hai?” Anyway, thank heaven for psychopathic fantasies, they keep us sane.
This evening I’m off for Palampur, where I’ll spend a day or two frolicking with gentle monks and learning all about peace on earth. Should be back Wednesday. Till then…
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Just a BlogPatrol update
Some of the Google searches that have lately lead the unsuspecting to my site:
- "Rupa Bajwa Putu the Cat" [I've never mentioned the two of them in the same post, but remind me to tell you a story Putu the Cat's hindbrain recounted once about Ms Bajwa and a certain People Profiler from The Times of India]
- "Orson Welles The Tragedy Of Julius Caesar, Abridged lyrics" [Huh?]
- "Aishwarya Rai is overrated" [Well, that may be, but I don't think I've ever discussed her on any of my posts, so this is weird]
- "In Hindi how check hast Rekha" [Double huh. There are some seriously disturbed people out there, googling away while the rest of us sleep.]
- "Navjot Singh Sidhu idiom" [I may have used the word 'idiot' in the Sidhu context, but 'idiom' never]
- "Nikhat Kazmi plagiarism" [Yawn!]
- "Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi birthday" [Hey, I'd like to know myself. Will send him the "Kennel Boy's Manual on Keeping it Simple"]
- "Rupa Bajwa Putu the Cat" [I've never mentioned the two of them in the same post, but remind me to tell you a story Putu the Cat's hindbrain recounted once about Ms Bajwa and a certain People Profiler from The Times of India]
- "Orson Welles The Tragedy Of Julius Caesar, Abridged lyrics" [Huh?]
- "Aishwarya Rai is overrated" [Well, that may be, but I don't think I've ever discussed her on any of my posts, so this is weird]
- "In Hindi how check hast Rekha" [Double huh. There are some seriously disturbed people out there, googling away while the rest of us sleep.]
- "Navjot Singh Sidhu idiom" [I may have used the word 'idiot' in the Sidhu context, but 'idiom' never]
- "Nikhat Kazmi plagiarism" [Yawn!]
- "Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi birthday" [Hey, I'd like to know myself. Will send him the "Kennel Boy's Manual on Keeping it Simple"]
Friday, February 18, 2005
Blind bloggers’ meet, and we’re NOT just virtual
First blogging "blind date" of sorts yesterday. Met Yazad Jal of AnarCapLib, a blog I first came across through a link on India Uncut. Yazad was in Delhi for a few days so he called and we met at the American Diner after office for what turned into an early dinner. Nice conversation, nothing specific discussed at great length but we covered: (inevitably) the many differences between Mumbai and Delhi (though at the end of it I’m not sure there are any, because every time I mentioned something negative about my city Yazad said it was probably worse in Mumbai. Jaded urban jungle denizens, we all); family pets and how they tend to die, causing grief; Agatha Christie mysteries (I startled myself by remembering details of a book I hadn’t thought about for something like 15 years; amazing what’s floating around in untapped corners of one’s mind); and, surprise, blogging communities in the two cities. Yazad has of course been part of the Bombay bloggers meets starring Amit Varma and Dina Mehta among others. (I can attest to the truth of what Amit says in this post about Yazad being a finicky orderer; he spent good time with the waiter monitoring every scoop of ice-cream that went into his banana split.)
I’m not usually one for these types of blind meetings, but yesterday was fun and, if not quite like catching up with an old friend, still provided a sense of time well spent, something productive done. And this despite the fact that Yazad and I aren’t really similar types of bloggers. (Have to admit he’s read more of my blog than I have his, though he kindly supplied me an excuse by pointing out that lit-bloggers tend to find very little time to read other stuff!)
Anyway, the meeting again brought home the unfairness of those who dismiss blogging as being on the same level as those chatroom encounters from the Internet’s paleolithic age. Of course, there ARE vermin who set up "blogs" for no better reason than to post rude comments on other people’s sites; but then vermin can be found everywhere, and easily sifted out. It’s very different with dedicated bloggers. When, over a period of weeks or months, you read entries posted by an active blogger who has something to say, you get a real sense of the person behind the screen; bloggers might use pseudonyms, but there isn’t much scope for dissembling when it comes to the really important things (like: am I an axe-wielding, human-skin-wearing psychopath?) It’s difficult to keep a mask on when you’re blogging often enough about things you feel passionately about. And so it certainly isn’t the same thing as meeting HornyGirl007 for 15 minutes in a chatroom and wondering whether she’s even female (no, this isn’t personal experience, though I did encounter a SexySally the one time I was in a chatroom, in the long-forgotten summer of 1997).
Not that one should malign chatting outright. I was impressed when Yazad told me that of the 100-odd people on his Yahoo chat list, he’s met all but 15 of them (and those are mainly people located in other cities). Seems some of us Net junkies do have non-virtual lives too.
I’m not usually one for these types of blind meetings, but yesterday was fun and, if not quite like catching up with an old friend, still provided a sense of time well spent, something productive done. And this despite the fact that Yazad and I aren’t really similar types of bloggers. (Have to admit he’s read more of my blog than I have his, though he kindly supplied me an excuse by pointing out that lit-bloggers tend to find very little time to read other stuff!)
Anyway, the meeting again brought home the unfairness of those who dismiss blogging as being on the same level as those chatroom encounters from the Internet’s paleolithic age. Of course, there ARE vermin who set up "blogs" for no better reason than to post rude comments on other people’s sites; but then vermin can be found everywhere, and easily sifted out. It’s very different with dedicated bloggers. When, over a period of weeks or months, you read entries posted by an active blogger who has something to say, you get a real sense of the person behind the screen; bloggers might use pseudonyms, but there isn’t much scope for dissembling when it comes to the really important things (like: am I an axe-wielding, human-skin-wearing psychopath?) It’s difficult to keep a mask on when you’re blogging often enough about things you feel passionately about. And so it certainly isn’t the same thing as meeting HornyGirl007 for 15 minutes in a chatroom and wondering whether she’s even female (no, this isn’t personal experience, though I did encounter a SexySally the one time I was in a chatroom, in the long-forgotten summer of 1997).
Not that one should malign chatting outright. I was impressed when Yazad told me that of the 100-odd people on his Yahoo chat list, he’s met all but 15 of them (and those are mainly people located in other cities). Seems some of us Net junkies do have non-virtual lives too.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
The Hungry Tide
Finished Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide a few days ago. Ghosh’s large fan following is divided between those who love his fiction (especially The Shadow Lines, which has a cult following) and those who prefer his travelogues/essays, but this book comes close to uniting the two forms with its story of the changing personal equations between three people who meet on the Sunderbans -- the archipelago of islands that lies east of Bengal, and about which little has been written before, certainly in popular fiction. I loved the first three-fourths but was marginally less impressed by a climax that overdoes the disaster-movie mood (though that might seem an inappropriate thing to say in the aftermath of the real-life tsunami, which made Ghosh’s descriptions of hungry tides seem tame by comparison). Still, there’s so much here to appreciate in this book that one feels silly quibbling.
Not doing a review or anything but here’s a quick primer on the three protagonists: there’s Kanai Dutt, a disenchanted businessman visiting the island of Lusibari on an aunt’s request, to collect a diary his late uncle had left for him; Piyali Roy, a US-raised cetologist on the trail of the river dolphin; and Fokir, an illiterate fisherman (whose final sacrifice will remind many Ghosh fans of The Shadow Lines’ Tridib Sen, who became something of a folk hero to many youngsters who read the book at an impressionable time in ther lives).
The author continues to enhance his reputation as one of India’s most elegant writers. If you’re fastidious to a fault, you might suggest that his writing is sometimes too mannered (especially in the conversations between his characters) but it would have to be a very quiet suggestion. Incidentally, one things I find interesting about Ghosh’s style is the way he switches between direct and indirect speech to illuminate a point during a conversation. For instance, Character A and Character B are talking:
A: “So what you’re saying is_______?”
B: “Yes, to an extent.”
And this is followed by a paragraph of reported speech where Character B elaborates the point. And then back to direct speech and so on, with the author alternating between a comfortable conversational style and a historical perspective. This occurs most frequently in the exchanges between Kanai and Piya, where she has to explain certain scientific phenomena to him. The device is occasionally annoying, but often very charming, and I can’t offhand think of another writer who does this in quite the same way.
(Hell, I sound like a Wren and Martin.)
If you haven’t read The Hungry Tide yet, give it a go. It’s a much easier read than the subject matter might suggest (and I remain eternally grateful to any author who gives us short chapters, the way Ghosh does here).
Not doing a review or anything but here’s a quick primer on the three protagonists: there’s Kanai Dutt, a disenchanted businessman visiting the island of Lusibari on an aunt’s request, to collect a diary his late uncle had left for him; Piyali Roy, a US-raised cetologist on the trail of the river dolphin; and Fokir, an illiterate fisherman (whose final sacrifice will remind many Ghosh fans of The Shadow Lines’ Tridib Sen, who became something of a folk hero to many youngsters who read the book at an impressionable time in ther lives).
The author continues to enhance his reputation as one of India’s most elegant writers. If you’re fastidious to a fault, you might suggest that his writing is sometimes too mannered (especially in the conversations between his characters) but it would have to be a very quiet suggestion. Incidentally, one things I find interesting about Ghosh’s style is the way he switches between direct and indirect speech to illuminate a point during a conversation. For instance, Character A and Character B are talking:
A: “So what you’re saying is_______?”
B: “Yes, to an extent.”
And this is followed by a paragraph of reported speech where Character B elaborates the point. And then back to direct speech and so on, with the author alternating between a comfortable conversational style and a historical perspective. This occurs most frequently in the exchanges between Kanai and Piya, where she has to explain certain scientific phenomena to him. The device is occasionally annoying, but often very charming, and I can’t offhand think of another writer who does this in quite the same way.
(Hell, I sound like a Wren and Martin.)
If you haven’t read The Hungry Tide yet, give it a go. It’s a much easier read than the subject matter might suggest (and I remain eternally grateful to any author who gives us short chapters, the way Ghosh does here).
Bad traveller brushes up on Buddhism
Am off to Palampur and Bir this Sunday for a couple of days - mainly to visit a monastic university, the Dzongsar Chokyi Lodro College of Dialectics, which was inaugurated a couple of months ago and which can accommodate 4,000 monks. Should result in a feature story for the paper, plus a possible travel piece for the magazine if the trip isn’t too rushed. Am feeling a little more confident after getting some basic background information on the various sects of Tibetan Buddhism from a disciple who I met today. Some of it was a refresher course: was reminded that the great university at Nalanda was burnt down in the 12th century, resulting in the destruction of valuable papers dating back 1,700 years; and that much precious learning would have been lost forever if Tibetan Buddhists hadn’t taken copies of some scriptures back to their country before the university was destroyed. Made me think of the final, apocalyptic passages of The Name of the Rose. "Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus". All that remains of the rose is its name, and all that jazz. This has nothing to do with anything. I’m sorry.
Anyway, looking forward to the sojourn except for the usual travelling hitches, principally my motion sickness which should come into play during the 4-hour cab journey that’s part of the trip (am taking the overnight train from Delhi to Pathankot, and a cab from there onwards). As the current planning goes, I’ll get just a little over a day in Palampur (Monday morning-Tuesday afternoon) but might just extend my stay if I need more time to look around the monastery or the general region. My last three trips out of Delhi were very rushed: to Chandigarh/Mohali for a software park story, to Shimla for a friend’s wedding (both trips in August, 10 days apart), and then a general outing to Neemrana a couple of months ago. Actually, "very rushed" is a misleading description, because on each of these trips I did get at least one vast expanse of free time that even made me a tad restless (the pleasantest of these expanses being the 5-hour toy train ride from Kalka to Shimla, the worst by far being a prolonged barfing session during one of the cab rides in the hills).
But the trips were rushed in the sense that (with the longest of them being just two days) there was a lot of travel planning to do, last-minute decisions, sleeplessness brought on by the knowledge that there’s a very early morning ahead (I sometimes turn insomniac when I go to bed knowing that I only have four or five hours to sleep; it’s exactly like Chandler in that Friends episode going "Then I thought to myself, now there’s only five hours to sleep; and then after some time I thought, now there’s only four hours left" etc etc) Oh well, hopefully I’ll get some sleep on the overnight train ride, and maybe some reading time too. Haven’t done much of either in the past few days.
Anyway, looking forward to the sojourn except for the usual travelling hitches, principally my motion sickness which should come into play during the 4-hour cab journey that’s part of the trip (am taking the overnight train from Delhi to Pathankot, and a cab from there onwards). As the current planning goes, I’ll get just a little over a day in Palampur (Monday morning-Tuesday afternoon) but might just extend my stay if I need more time to look around the monastery or the general region. My last three trips out of Delhi were very rushed: to Chandigarh/Mohali for a software park story, to Shimla for a friend’s wedding (both trips in August, 10 days apart), and then a general outing to Neemrana a couple of months ago. Actually, "very rushed" is a misleading description, because on each of these trips I did get at least one vast expanse of free time that even made me a tad restless (the pleasantest of these expanses being the 5-hour toy train ride from Kalka to Shimla, the worst by far being a prolonged barfing session during one of the cab rides in the hills).
But the trips were rushed in the sense that (with the longest of them being just two days) there was a lot of travel planning to do, last-minute decisions, sleeplessness brought on by the knowledge that there’s a very early morning ahead (I sometimes turn insomniac when I go to bed knowing that I only have four or five hours to sleep; it’s exactly like Chandler in that Friends episode going "Then I thought to myself, now there’s only five hours to sleep; and then after some time I thought, now there’s only four hours left" etc etc) Oh well, hopefully I’ll get some sleep on the overnight train ride, and maybe some reading time too. Haven’t done much of either in the past few days.
A-KHOND of S-WAT!!!
At last! Lit journalist par excellence Nilanjana S Roy has finally ended the shrinking violet routine and started a blog in her own name (wink wink), where she'll post her writings: the reviews she's done for many publications over the years, her excellent weekly column in the Business Standard - Speaking Volumes, now in its 10th year - and hopefully much else. For anyone who doesn't know NSR, she's one of the most dedicated books journos in the country and a better writer than most of the people she writes about.
She's also a friend, and many who read this blog will know that, so I don't want to overdo the fawning and turn this into a Shameless Plug (or a mutual admiration society, since I see Nilanjana has already linked to one of my posts on her blog). Much better that you see her writings for yourselves.
Ladies and gentlemen, presenting Akhond of Swat.
She's also a friend, and many who read this blog will know that, so I don't want to overdo the fawning and turn this into a Shameless Plug (or a mutual admiration society, since I see Nilanjana has already linked to one of my posts on her blog). Much better that you see her writings for yourselves.
Ladies and gentlemen, presenting Akhond of Swat.
Monday, February 14, 2005
Virtual history
Weekend homework included watching a couple of VCDs sent to our office by the Discovery Channel, with footage from its soon-to-be-aired “Virtual History” series, which (in the words of the press release) “recreates important moments in world history...with the latest in CGI technology, little-known historical documents and the knowledge of leading historians and film experts to recreate events from history never originally captured on camera”.
The first episode in this series is the two-part The Secret Plot to Kill Hitler, which will be aired on March 12th and 13th. I watched some of this - it’s principally about the failed assassination attempt (by his own men) on the Fuhrer on July 20, 1944, but the cross-cutting structure provides us glimpses of what the four world leaders at the centre of events - Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin - were each doing on that day. Roosevelt, already in ill-health, has a heart attack on a train and might easily have died. Churchill stays curmudgeonly in bed for several hours after waking, while London suffers aerial strikes. A haggard-looking Stalin tells his closest confidantes his fears that Britain and the US might enter a separate deal with Nazi Germany against the USSR. In his bunker, a depressed Hitler tells his physician he can’t sleep because of bad dreams and the sound of the housecleaner’s broom. One is struck instantly by how tired, how weak, how melancholy and hopeless all these men look; and by how old they all are. (A voiceover comments that the personal health, and even mood-swings, of each of these leaders towards the end of the war had an enormous bearing on decisions that affected most of humanity.)
This was all very interesting from a history-enthusiast’s perspective but I’m always uncomfortable with these attempts to “exactly recreate” what happened. Discovery’s (admittedly ambitious) venture involves, among other things, making plaster casts of the faces of the historical figures involved, using CGI to create digital copies of these, recording and processing the facial movements and dialogue of living actors and then transposing these to the “CGI faces” so that you have the “real” Stalin, the “real” Roosevelt etc moving and speaking in coloured footage presented in a slightly grainy documentary style to make it seem more authentic. It’s an intriguing idea alright, but I’m not sure it’s worth it. More to the point, it feels a little too much to me like an attempt at appropriating the “truth” - like telling the world “okay, this is it, we’ve researched and uncovered everything that really happened on that day, how and why it happened, and what you’re seeing now is Completely Authentic.” Don’t want to get into Rashomon talk here but I think it’s obvious that, with all the best researchers and historians and computer-generated effects in the world, there’s still no foolproof way of knowing the Absolute Truth about that time, about what the people concerned were really thinking and doing at every moment. And this might amount to a pretence to that effect. (Before Discovery sues me, I’m not sure about that; will probably conduct an email interview with a couple of the people behind the films, discuss the ethics and so on.)
Sidenote: I found these films very interesting and well-done in their own right but somehow this business of insisting on “authenticity” reminds me of those goddawful Disease of the Week made-for-TV movies that are still so popular on American cable TV. The ones that are always preceded by the words “Based on a true story”, which alone is apparently enough to make them respectable, never mind their actual quality.
The first episode in this series is the two-part The Secret Plot to Kill Hitler, which will be aired on March 12th and 13th. I watched some of this - it’s principally about the failed assassination attempt (by his own men) on the Fuhrer on July 20, 1944, but the cross-cutting structure provides us glimpses of what the four world leaders at the centre of events - Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin - were each doing on that day. Roosevelt, already in ill-health, has a heart attack on a train and might easily have died. Churchill stays curmudgeonly in bed for several hours after waking, while London suffers aerial strikes. A haggard-looking Stalin tells his closest confidantes his fears that Britain and the US might enter a separate deal with Nazi Germany against the USSR. In his bunker, a depressed Hitler tells his physician he can’t sleep because of bad dreams and the sound of the housecleaner’s broom. One is struck instantly by how tired, how weak, how melancholy and hopeless all these men look; and by how old they all are. (A voiceover comments that the personal health, and even mood-swings, of each of these leaders towards the end of the war had an enormous bearing on decisions that affected most of humanity.)
This was all very interesting from a history-enthusiast’s perspective but I’m always uncomfortable with these attempts to “exactly recreate” what happened. Discovery’s (admittedly ambitious) venture involves, among other things, making plaster casts of the faces of the historical figures involved, using CGI to create digital copies of these, recording and processing the facial movements and dialogue of living actors and then transposing these to the “CGI faces” so that you have the “real” Stalin, the “real” Roosevelt etc moving and speaking in coloured footage presented in a slightly grainy documentary style to make it seem more authentic. It’s an intriguing idea alright, but I’m not sure it’s worth it. More to the point, it feels a little too much to me like an attempt at appropriating the “truth” - like telling the world “okay, this is it, we’ve researched and uncovered everything that really happened on that day, how and why it happened, and what you’re seeing now is Completely Authentic.” Don’t want to get into Rashomon talk here but I think it’s obvious that, with all the best researchers and historians and computer-generated effects in the world, there’s still no foolproof way of knowing the Absolute Truth about that time, about what the people concerned were really thinking and doing at every moment. And this might amount to a pretence to that effect. (Before Discovery sues me, I’m not sure about that; will probably conduct an email interview with a couple of the people behind the films, discuss the ethics and so on.)
Sidenote: I found these films very interesting and well-done in their own right but somehow this business of insisting on “authenticity” reminds me of those goddawful Disease of the Week made-for-TV movies that are still so popular on American cable TV. The ones that are always preceded by the words “Based on a true story”, which alone is apparently enough to make them respectable, never mind their actual quality.
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Call me books editor
Blogging’s been tapering off...have been busy with other things, including other types of writing, which I might elaborate on sometime (no Samit, not writing a novel). But a quick update. There’s been a promising professional development - I’ve become the books-in-charge for our newspaper. One of our longest-serving senior editors left recently and one of her side-responsibilities was handling the book reviews that go on the weekday Oped pages. Everyone here knows I’m a dedicated “bookie” so my name must’ve come up when tasks were being re-assigned.
It’s a prestigious job - one gets to prepare weekly lists, hound publishers for the latest titles, allocate books to senior people (cabin-dweller types), wag a finger at them and speak sentences like “I need 950 words on this by the 22nd, and where the hell’s that short you were supposed to give me today?” I’ve been handling the books section for our lifestyle magazine Gateway for over a year now, but this is definitely more weighty. Whether it’ll be as much fun though remains to be seen. I doubt it, for a couple of reasons. One, attractive (and megalomania-inducing) as the prospect of receiving 4-5 couriered books in your name every day is, around 80 per cent of these are business/economy/politics-related, given the profile of our newspaper. So all I have to do is pass them around, get suggestions on who I should send them to for review, fix deadline dates etc. And of the general-interest books that make up the remaining 20 per cent, a large number are trash. Lots and lots of sifting required.
Two, naturally I don’t have the luxury of going overboard and featuring reviews only of the kind of books I like, because there has to be a reasonable balance of topics. So if one features a full-length review of, let’s say, Romantic Short Stories Penned by Incarcerated Serial Killers Who Think They’re Jesus, one must repent by carrying reviews of titles like Analysis of Policies for Developing Countries over the next three days.
Three, and this is what worries me most, experience tells me that once you take over a job like this, you tend to have very little time to do reviews yourself. That was certainly the case with the senior editor who’s just left - she’s a fine reviewer and a (seriously) voracious reader but I don’t think I saw her byline in that space more than a couple of times in the past year.
But lest it should seem I’m complaining as ever, I am enthusiastic about this on the whole - it’s easily one of the better things to have happened in the last few weeks and, well, it could facilitate more interesting developments on this beat. Now I’m off to read Andrea Levy’s Small Island, which I’ve just finger-waggingly allocated to myself with a two-week deadline.
It’s a prestigious job - one gets to prepare weekly lists, hound publishers for the latest titles, allocate books to senior people (cabin-dweller types), wag a finger at them and speak sentences like “I need 950 words on this by the 22nd, and where the hell’s that short you were supposed to give me today?” I’ve been handling the books section for our lifestyle magazine Gateway for over a year now, but this is definitely more weighty. Whether it’ll be as much fun though remains to be seen. I doubt it, for a couple of reasons. One, attractive (and megalomania-inducing) as the prospect of receiving 4-5 couriered books in your name every day is, around 80 per cent of these are business/economy/politics-related, given the profile of our newspaper. So all I have to do is pass them around, get suggestions on who I should send them to for review, fix deadline dates etc. And of the general-interest books that make up the remaining 20 per cent, a large number are trash. Lots and lots of sifting required.
Two, naturally I don’t have the luxury of going overboard and featuring reviews only of the kind of books I like, because there has to be a reasonable balance of topics. So if one features a full-length review of, let’s say, Romantic Short Stories Penned by Incarcerated Serial Killers Who Think They’re Jesus, one must repent by carrying reviews of titles like Analysis of Policies for Developing Countries over the next three days.
Three, and this is what worries me most, experience tells me that once you take over a job like this, you tend to have very little time to do reviews yourself. That was certainly the case with the senior editor who’s just left - she’s a fine reviewer and a (seriously) voracious reader but I don’t think I saw her byline in that space more than a couple of times in the past year.
But lest it should seem I’m complaining as ever, I am enthusiastic about this on the whole - it’s easily one of the better things to have happened in the last few weeks and, well, it could facilitate more interesting developments on this beat. Now I’m off to read Andrea Levy’s Small Island, which I’ve just finger-waggingly allocated to myself with a two-week deadline.
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Meeting Dogri’s First Poetess
Had an unusual experience a couple of days ago -- unusual in the context of my being a books journo who frequently meets authors -- and I wasn’t sure whether to blog about it, because there didn’t seem anything meaningful I could say. But then I reflected that of my previous posts, the ones that seem to attract the most attention are almost invariably the ones I didn’t think were substantial. So here goes...
Am working on a possible story about a literary fest being organised by the Sahitya Akademi - it doesn’t look too promising at this stage but perhaps a short could come out of it - and for this story I went across to the C R Park residence of Padma Sachdev, a poet who writes in the Dogri language. That’s the unusual part: the authors I’ve met before for profiles/interviews have all been English-language writers, and I always make it a point to read as much of their stuff as possible before the meeting (something I’m - infamously - proud of, given the general slumming that passes for lit journalism in most of our newspapers and magazines). But here was someone who has achieved recognition writing in a language that, too be honest, I’d only vaguely heard of before. And I hadn’t heard of Ms Sachdev herself before the appointment was fixed and I doubt I’ll ever read any of the English translations of her poems.
Which is why, as I mentioned before, I don’t have anything meaningful to say on this blog. Meaningful as in, no insights into her writing or even what kind of person she is. I spent an awkward 20 minutes with her (awkward not for want of hospitality on her part, but because I was self-conscious about being there with no prior knowledge of her or her work), got the predictable quotes about why this seminar was relevant (“Each language has a fragrance all its own, when you bring them together they make the most beautiful bouquet”) - and that’s about it.
I can tell you the other things - for instance, that the house had a definite ring of Punju-ness to it, from the querulous but vastly overfed pomeranian that made my mother’s dog seem like the Kate Moss of the animal world, to the way Mrs Sachdev reacted when she discovered I was Sikh (punching me on the shoulder, breaking out into bucolic Punjabi, introducing me to her Sikh husband with a “Dekhiye, yeh angrez ka aulaad sardar nikla!”) That she tried to be modest about being regarded the first poetess in the Dogri language (“I don’t agree with that, I have great respect for those who came before me”) but that the pride in her voice came through when she mentioned the Sahitya Akademi award given her in 1970. That one entire wall of her room was lined, from top to bottom, with books in languages other than English - what a start that gave me! That though she started by talking about the seminar, as per the brief I’d given her, she eventually lapsed into reminisces of her own work, the accolades she had got in the past, etc though she knew very well I wouldn’t be able to incorporate any of that in the story. That she told me she’d talk in Hindi because her English was no good, but a few seconds later mentioned that she’d translated poems from English to Dogri.
Does any of the above count? I have no idea.
Am working on a possible story about a literary fest being organised by the Sahitya Akademi - it doesn’t look too promising at this stage but perhaps a short could come out of it - and for this story I went across to the C R Park residence of Padma Sachdev, a poet who writes in the Dogri language. That’s the unusual part: the authors I’ve met before for profiles/interviews have all been English-language writers, and I always make it a point to read as much of their stuff as possible before the meeting (something I’m - infamously - proud of, given the general slumming that passes for lit journalism in most of our newspapers and magazines). But here was someone who has achieved recognition writing in a language that, too be honest, I’d only vaguely heard of before. And I hadn’t heard of Ms Sachdev herself before the appointment was fixed and I doubt I’ll ever read any of the English translations of her poems.
Which is why, as I mentioned before, I don’t have anything meaningful to say on this blog. Meaningful as in, no insights into her writing or even what kind of person she is. I spent an awkward 20 minutes with her (awkward not for want of hospitality on her part, but because I was self-conscious about being there with no prior knowledge of her or her work), got the predictable quotes about why this seminar was relevant (“Each language has a fragrance all its own, when you bring them together they make the most beautiful bouquet”) - and that’s about it.
I can tell you the other things - for instance, that the house had a definite ring of Punju-ness to it, from the querulous but vastly overfed pomeranian that made my mother’s dog seem like the Kate Moss of the animal world, to the way Mrs Sachdev reacted when she discovered I was Sikh (punching me on the shoulder, breaking out into bucolic Punjabi, introducing me to her Sikh husband with a “Dekhiye, yeh angrez ka aulaad sardar nikla!”) That she tried to be modest about being regarded the first poetess in the Dogri language (“I don’t agree with that, I have great respect for those who came before me”) but that the pride in her voice came through when she mentioned the Sahitya Akademi award given her in 1970. That one entire wall of her room was lined, from top to bottom, with books in languages other than English - what a start that gave me! That though she started by talking about the seminar, as per the brief I’d given her, she eventually lapsed into reminisces of her own work, the accolades she had got in the past, etc though she knew very well I wouldn’t be able to incorporate any of that in the story. That she told me she’d talk in Hindi because her English was no good, but a few seconds later mentioned that she’d translated poems from English to Dogri.
Does any of the above count? I have no idea.
So where's my Beatrice??
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Fifth Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
| Level | Score |
|---|---|
| Purgatory (Repenting Believers) | Very Low |
| Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers) | Very Low |
| Level 2 (Lustful) | Very High |
| Level 3 (Gluttonous) | High |
| Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious) | Moderate |
| Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy) | Extreme |
| Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics) | Very High |
| Level 7 (Violent) | Very High |
| Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers) | Extreme |
| Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous) | Very High |
Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test
Monday, February 07, 2005
When we weren't connected
From a news report yesterday on the Delhi Govt banning cellphones in govt-aided schools:
...students are not amused. "How do I call and tell my mother when to pick me up?" says one... "I gave my son a phone so he could contact me in need," wails a mother.
Schoolkids who get panic attacks when deprived of cellphones. Their stricken parents. Can the world really have changed so much in such little time? I’ve blogged on these lines elsewhere but it’s worth repeating for anyone born after, say, 1984, who grew up with this sort of thing. (Incidentally, wouldn’t Orwell have been bemused by this unforeseen corruption of "Big Brother is Watching" into "Mama is Listening, my Baby"?) Anyhow, here’s some The Way We Were reminiscing from someone who passed out of school a decade ago.
I travelled by school bus for most of my schooling years. When the last bell for the day sounded, we streamed out of the gates and there, waiting for us in single formation, were the numbered vehicles. Except maybe once every 3 or 4 months when a bus was late, for whatever reason - at such times the lot of us would wait near the school gates under the supervision of a teacher/senior. A delay of up to, say, 20 minutes, was manageable, it was understood that parents wouldn’t fly into a panic at home. But if the bus was going to be delayed for longer (we rarely knew for sure, bus drivers didn’t have cellphones in those days either), we would be permitted to go to the phone in the hallway outside the headmaster’s office and make a reassuring call home.
The phone, in one corner of the spacious hall, was an archaic instrument once used by Graham Bell to contact his assistant in the next room; one spoke into the upper mouthpiece and then quickly put one’s ear to the same part of the instrument. I’m sure there were other, more modern-looking instruments elsewhere in the building, but this is the only memory I retain of a phone in school, and its very archaicness, its otherworldness, still represents the idea that one wasn’t meant to use a phone during one’s time there. That for those few hours you were to be completely cut off from your home. (One of my most distinctly unsettling early memories is the sound of my mother’s voice filtering through that ancient phone into a hall that was never supposed to be touched by a family member’s presence.)
That phone’s dial, by the way, was incredibly unwieldy and difficult to operate, which was again symptomatic of what a strange thing you were doing, calling home from school; a lot of effort had to be put in if you wanted to accomplish something like this. Today’s kids by contrast yank out a tiny rectangular object and press exactly two keys to make a call (assuming they have their parents on speed-dial).
Anyway, thus speaks a 27-year-old who, incidentally, is as addicted to his own cellphone today as any youngster who’s never known a world without one. As Shamya says in this post, in some ways there’s a greater disconnect between our generation (the mid-to-late 1970s born) of urban Indians and those who are 6-7 years younger, than there was between us and the generation that preceded us. Normally I’d be wary of that theory, since every generation probably feels the same way, but in this case there’s certainly something to it. It’s an indisputable fact, for instance, that cellphones and the Internet have widely become part of our lives only in the last 7-8 years. And how much of a difference have they made!
Put it this way: how many 27-year-olds in previous decades would, with complete conviction, have been able to tell 20-year-olds "It was so, so different in my time"?
...students are not amused. "How do I call and tell my mother when to pick me up?" says one... "I gave my son a phone so he could contact me in need," wails a mother.
Schoolkids who get panic attacks when deprived of cellphones. Their stricken parents. Can the world really have changed so much in such little time? I’ve blogged on these lines elsewhere but it’s worth repeating for anyone born after, say, 1984, who grew up with this sort of thing. (Incidentally, wouldn’t Orwell have been bemused by this unforeseen corruption of "Big Brother is Watching" into "Mama is Listening, my Baby"?) Anyhow, here’s some The Way We Were reminiscing from someone who passed out of school a decade ago.
I travelled by school bus for most of my schooling years. When the last bell for the day sounded, we streamed out of the gates and there, waiting for us in single formation, were the numbered vehicles. Except maybe once every 3 or 4 months when a bus was late, for whatever reason - at such times the lot of us would wait near the school gates under the supervision of a teacher/senior. A delay of up to, say, 20 minutes, was manageable, it was understood that parents wouldn’t fly into a panic at home. But if the bus was going to be delayed for longer (we rarely knew for sure, bus drivers didn’t have cellphones in those days either), we would be permitted to go to the phone in the hallway outside the headmaster’s office and make a reassuring call home.
The phone, in one corner of the spacious hall, was an archaic instrument once used by Graham Bell to contact his assistant in the next room; one spoke into the upper mouthpiece and then quickly put one’s ear to the same part of the instrument. I’m sure there were other, more modern-looking instruments elsewhere in the building, but this is the only memory I retain of a phone in school, and its very archaicness, its otherworldness, still represents the idea that one wasn’t meant to use a phone during one’s time there. That for those few hours you were to be completely cut off from your home. (One of my most distinctly unsettling early memories is the sound of my mother’s voice filtering through that ancient phone into a hall that was never supposed to be touched by a family member’s presence.)
That phone’s dial, by the way, was incredibly unwieldy and difficult to operate, which was again symptomatic of what a strange thing you were doing, calling home from school; a lot of effort had to be put in if you wanted to accomplish something like this. Today’s kids by contrast yank out a tiny rectangular object and press exactly two keys to make a call (assuming they have their parents on speed-dial).
Anyway, thus speaks a 27-year-old who, incidentally, is as addicted to his own cellphone today as any youngster who’s never known a world without one. As Shamya says in this post, in some ways there’s a greater disconnect between our generation (the mid-to-late 1970s born) of urban Indians and those who are 6-7 years younger, than there was between us and the generation that preceded us. Normally I’d be wary of that theory, since every generation probably feels the same way, but in this case there’s certainly something to it. It’s an indisputable fact, for instance, that cellphones and the Internet have widely become part of our lives only in the last 7-8 years. And how much of a difference have they made!
Put it this way: how many 27-year-olds in previous decades would, with complete conviction, have been able to tell 20-year-olds "It was so, so different in my time"?
Friday, February 04, 2005
Renoir and Kurosawa do Gorky
The Criterion Collection has released a double-DVD set featuring two film adaptations of Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths by two screen masters - Jean Renoir and Akira Kurosawa. Don't know when/if this DVD will be available in India. I've seen the Kurosawa version and while I agree that it's one of his lesser works, in some ways it's more interesting for that reason. (Mifune rocks as the peasant!) And I'm very surprised by Ian Johnson's assertion, in this Bright Lights Journal article, that Renoir is "an immeasurably greater director" than Kurosawa.
Thursday, February 03, 2005
Sleeper, Fight Club, Ghost World
(summary post contd.)
Seen lately (all on DVD)
-Woody Allen’s Sleeper. Superb bit of slapstick that just predates Allen’s more serious relationship-themed films - Annie Hall, Manhattan etc. Given how much he enjoys playing with words, it’s surprising what a good physical comedy this is. It’s full of great sight gags and references to almost all the major silent comedians - Langdon, Lloyd, Chaplin (I didn’t see any really obvious Buster Keaton reference but that could be an oversight on my part). There was also, I thought, an allusion to Groucho Marx’s painted-on cigar in the opening scene where the Allen character is woken from his 200-year-long cryogenic sleep and it turns out he still has his glasses on.
Loved the incompetent robots, including the dog one. (“Woof! I’m Ruff!”) And the pudding that gets out of control (sic).
- Fight Club. The DVD was well worth it; it has four audio commentary tracks, including one with writer Chuck Palahniuk and another by the cast and director David Fincher.
Though I enjoyed the film, I don’t think it’s the masterpiece it has been hailed as in cult circles. The first 45 minutes or so are about as good as anything I’ve seen recently, but the rest of the movie didn’t quite measure up. It was interesting enough all the way, no question about that, but it got too clever for its own good. (SPOILER ALERT!) I was a little put off by the way in which the climactic twist was revealed. I mean, this is supposed to be a film where the twist is incidental to the deeper themes of self-realisation and dealing with a consumerist world. But in the scene where Edward Norton realises that he and Brad Pitt are the same person, the movie goes overboard giving us flashes of earlier scenes that we can now gratefully look at from an enlightened perspective, having learnt the truth. I thought it would have worked much better if the film had understated the surprise element (like in that early scene, Pitt’s first proper appearance in the movie, when he passes Norton on the level escalator and Norton’s voiceover goes “If you wake up at a different time and a different place, could you wake up as a different person?” Now THAT worked).
Am still a big fan of David Fincher though, especially The Game, which was so underappreciated.
- Ghost World. An absolute gem from three or four years ago, and a movie that had me thinking well of Thora Birch - big, big achievement. Based on the graphic novel by Daniel Clowes about two young girls who consider themselves non-conformists and everyone else in their high school geeks and losers. That wonderful actor Steve Buscemi plays a loner who falls victim to one of their pranks.
The opening credit sequence of the movie, by the way, is the “Jaan Pehchan Ho” song from the 1960s film Gumnaam (which I used to have on videocassette; it’s based on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and has a great cast, including the young, self-conscious Manoj Kumar with curled lip. Excellent.) - the Birch character freaks out on “old Indian rock videos”!
Seen lately (all on DVD)
-Woody Allen’s Sleeper. Superb bit of slapstick that just predates Allen’s more serious relationship-themed films - Annie Hall, Manhattan etc. Given how much he enjoys playing with words, it’s surprising what a good physical comedy this is. It’s full of great sight gags and references to almost all the major silent comedians - Langdon, Lloyd, Chaplin (I didn’t see any really obvious Buster Keaton reference but that could be an oversight on my part). There was also, I thought, an allusion to Groucho Marx’s painted-on cigar in the opening scene where the Allen character is woken from his 200-year-long cryogenic sleep and it turns out he still has his glasses on.
Loved the incompetent robots, including the dog one. (“Woof! I’m Ruff!”) And the pudding that gets out of control (sic).
- Fight Club. The DVD was well worth it; it has four audio commentary tracks, including one with writer Chuck Palahniuk and another by the cast and director David Fincher.
Though I enjoyed the film, I don’t think it’s the masterpiece it has been hailed as in cult circles. The first 45 minutes or so are about as good as anything I’ve seen recently, but the rest of the movie didn’t quite measure up. It was interesting enough all the way, no question about that, but it got too clever for its own good. (SPOILER ALERT!) I was a little put off by the way in which the climactic twist was revealed. I mean, this is supposed to be a film where the twist is incidental to the deeper themes of self-realisation and dealing with a consumerist world. But in the scene where Edward Norton realises that he and Brad Pitt are the same person, the movie goes overboard giving us flashes of earlier scenes that we can now gratefully look at from an enlightened perspective, having learnt the truth. I thought it would have worked much better if the film had understated the surprise element (like in that early scene, Pitt’s first proper appearance in the movie, when he passes Norton on the level escalator and Norton’s voiceover goes “If you wake up at a different time and a different place, could you wake up as a different person?” Now THAT worked).
Am still a big fan of David Fincher though, especially The Game, which was so underappreciated.
- Ghost World. An absolute gem from three or four years ago, and a movie that had me thinking well of Thora Birch - big, big achievement. Based on the graphic novel by Daniel Clowes about two young girls who consider themselves non-conformists and everyone else in their high school geeks and losers. That wonderful actor Steve Buscemi plays a loner who falls victim to one of their pranks.
The opening credit sequence of the movie, by the way, is the “Jaan Pehchan Ho” song from the 1960s film Gumnaam (which I used to have on videocassette; it’s based on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and has a great cast, including the young, self-conscious Manoj Kumar with curled lip. Excellent.) - the Birch character freaks out on “old Indian rock videos”!
Ghosh, Murakami etc
(Too lazy for lengthy blogs so here go a couple of “summary” posts)
Currently reading:
Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide. Long overdue I know, so feed me to the tigers and croccies of the Sunderbans. Also shamefacedly admit to only getting started because the man just won the Hutch-Crossword award and I might be profiling him sometime soon. Having started though (am up to page 220) I’m surprised by how easy a read it is, had expected something that would require ploughing through. Completely engrossing, even if you’re not obsessed with the migration habits of river dolphins. The chapters are mercifully short (why don't more writers do this??)
Books in queue:
- Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore
- Colm Tóibín’s The Master and, to complement it, Henry James’s The Wings of the Dove which I recently picked up
- Ian McEwan’s latest, Saturday
- Alan Moore’s graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (yes, the same that inspired the terrible film), which is unexpectedly available in a bookshop I frequent.
- Andrea Levy's Small Island
- Whatever else suddenly comes up for review. Never know how these things work.
Currently reading:
Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide. Long overdue I know, so feed me to the tigers and croccies of the Sunderbans. Also shamefacedly admit to only getting started because the man just won the Hutch-Crossword award and I might be profiling him sometime soon. Having started though (am up to page 220) I’m surprised by how easy a read it is, had expected something that would require ploughing through. Completely engrossing, even if you’re not obsessed with the migration habits of river dolphins. The chapters are mercifully short (why don't more writers do this??)
Books in queue:
- Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore
- Colm Tóibín’s The Master and, to complement it, Henry James’s The Wings of the Dove which I recently picked up
- Ian McEwan’s latest, Saturday
- Alan Moore’s graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (yes, the same that inspired the terrible film), which is unexpectedly available in a bookshop I frequent.
- Andrea Levy's Small Island
- Whatever else suddenly comes up for review. Never know how these things work.
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Code voracity
Just one more time! If I read just once more a P3 celebrity quoted in a newspaper as saying “I’m a voracious reader! Just now I’m reading Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code” ... well, I’ll be forced to write a short story based on Mad magazine’s recent discovery that there are 12 hidden cellphones in Leonardo’s The Last Supper, which the apostles are using to fix crucifixion bets.
(The latest celeb quote by the way was from Mandira Bedi, in one of those supplementey things which inform readers on a weekly basis that so-and-so celebrity thinks Winnie the Pooh is the best erotic novel and Milan Kundera the best Indian author.)
But “voracious”, people, is a word with a meaning, not just a necessary accompaniment to the word “reader”. The Da Vinci Code was published a year and a half ago. It’s been a publishing phenomenon for at least a year. It’s essential reading for P3P. So if you’re really a “voracious reader”, what were you doing the whole of the past year, finishing the complete prose of Balzac?
I’ve learnt to hate the word “voracious”. Which is why I was more relieved than amused when, at a recent movie preview, a high-soc type earnestly confessed to being a “vicious reader”. “Oooh!” he went, when I fearfully mentioned I was an aspiring lit-journo, “I read viciously myself. I’ve just finished The Da Vinci Code.” Beats of silence, followed by the next, inevitable, couple of sentences. “Suggest me a nice book. Any nice book.” (Both nices are always emphasized, as the italics should make clear.)
Years of practice - dating back to friends entering my room for the first time and gawping at the shelves - have not taught me how to deal properly with this request. It’s been marginally easier the past few months, since one can always say Angels and Demons. But the movie preview encounter gave me another idea. Now I simply step out of the way, saying, “I’m so sorry, I’m only a vicarious reader, I wouldn’t know what the nice books are unless someone else reads them first.”
(The latest celeb quote by the way was from Mandira Bedi, in one of those supplementey things which inform readers on a weekly basis that so-and-so celebrity thinks Winnie the Pooh is the best erotic novel and Milan Kundera the best Indian author.)
But “voracious”, people, is a word with a meaning, not just a necessary accompaniment to the word “reader”. The Da Vinci Code was published a year and a half ago. It’s been a publishing phenomenon for at least a year. It’s essential reading for P3P. So if you’re really a “voracious reader”, what were you doing the whole of the past year, finishing the complete prose of Balzac?
I’ve learnt to hate the word “voracious”. Which is why I was more relieved than amused when, at a recent movie preview, a high-soc type earnestly confessed to being a “vicious reader”. “Oooh!” he went, when I fearfully mentioned I was an aspiring lit-journo, “I read viciously myself. I’ve just finished The Da Vinci Code.” Beats of silence, followed by the next, inevitable, couple of sentences. “Suggest me a nice book. Any nice book.” (Both nices are always emphasized, as the italics should make clear.)
Years of practice - dating back to friends entering my room for the first time and gawping at the shelves - have not taught me how to deal properly with this request. It’s been marginally easier the past few months, since one can always say Angels and Demons. But the movie preview encounter gave me another idea. Now I simply step out of the way, saying, “I’m so sorry, I’m only a vicarious reader, I wouldn’t know what the nice books are unless someone else reads them first.”
Recipe for a breakdown
Having just come off an hour on the road, I believe I have the procedure to induce a nervous breakdown in an average Delhi driver. It’s very simple and should help improve the traffic situation in the city.
1) Take one Average Delhi Driver - you’ll get these on the roads but some of them can be found in houses when they’re not driving. (At such times they look and behave like normal human beings, which is deceptive.)
2) Place driver in a car - pay attention now, for this is the key - that has had its horn disabled!!!
3) Instruct him to drive this disabled car from starting point A to a specified point B. For best results the distance between points A and B should be at least 2 km. This experiment doesn’t have to be conducted during rush hour but it shouldn’t be 3 AM either - that would be cheating.
4) Meet car at point B. Keep help handy, for you’ll probably have to extricate the poor man from the car yourself. He’ll be incoherent, frothing perhaps. His hands will be making reflexive horn-blowing gestures. Pour cold water on him (this doesn’t help in any way, but it’s fun).
If the above process is repeated with a significant enough number of Average Delhi Drivers, the roadworks department will be able to cut down on the flyovers and divert resources to building madh...sorry, institutions for the mentally disadvantaged. Then we’ll all have to walk, but at least we’ll be happy, safe and fit.
1) Take one Average Delhi Driver - you’ll get these on the roads but some of them can be found in houses when they’re not driving. (At such times they look and behave like normal human beings, which is deceptive.)
2) Place driver in a car - pay attention now, for this is the key - that has had its horn disabled!!!
3) Instruct him to drive this disabled car from starting point A to a specified point B. For best results the distance between points A and B should be at least 2 km. This experiment doesn’t have to be conducted during rush hour but it shouldn’t be 3 AM either - that would be cheating.
4) Meet car at point B. Keep help handy, for you’ll probably have to extricate the poor man from the car yourself. He’ll be incoherent, frothing perhaps. His hands will be making reflexive horn-blowing gestures. Pour cold water on him (this doesn’t help in any way, but it’s fun).
If the above process is repeated with a significant enough number of Average Delhi Drivers, the roadworks department will be able to cut down on the flyovers and divert resources to building madh...sorry, institutions for the mentally disadvantaged. Then we’ll all have to walk, but at least we’ll be happy, safe and fit.
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