Very short Movie Reviews

(1) Rock On
About a young rock band and how its members take different directions in life before getting together for one final concert. Easy for the mind and heart and worth watching when one wants to get encouraged.
(2) Kung Fu Panda
Animation with a moral behind it: Looks don't matter much, a fat panda saves a village from evil chaps. Worth watching if you have small kids.
(3) Changeling
True story about a single widow whose only child is kidnapped and then police apathy results in a wrong child being returned to her. Extremely gripping movie with a lot of heavy and raw emotion. Worth watching if you want to remove your thoughts from everything else for more than 2 hours.

(4) Slum Dog Millionaires

A celebration of the life of residents living in the slums of Mumbai. Very interesting story, well directed, realistic to a large degree and presents Mumbai in a neat way. Worth watching if you are a middle class Indian chap or someone well off.

Books and Other things

I have realized that I liked Michael Crichton more than Salman Rushdie. I have not been able to summon the courage to read Naipaul. Yes, I liked Harry Potter a whole lot and I didn't and don't have a clue about what was happening in "The life of Pi".

Rushdie depressed me or I read Rushdie when I used to be depressed. Depressed not in the light two hour sense, but in the complete absolute sense. Perhaps even in the clinical sense. I still remember getting up at mid noon having missed all my morning classes with the scorching sun raging through the window and the sheets on me sweating with my sweat and the foul of the mouth ,uncleaned by a toothpaste, staying the whole day with me. I would curb my bladder's demand to urinate, because I wouldn't want to face people and the breeze and then I would turn into the bed, lay on my stomach and stare at the floor. There used to lie Rushdie, with all his 100 midnight's children and I would turn page after page. Something would pierce slowly and piecemeal into my head and the numbness of my head would add more elements into it to increase its intensity. Time would crawl and I would turn the alarm clock and shut the window to ignore time. The numbness would increase, forcing me to droop my eyes. I would rub my crotch, against the bed and its sweaty crumpled sheets, and the crotch would respond in a few moments and I would go to sleep and attain peace for sometime. The panic would return when I would wake up again in an hour or two. I would turn the clock towards me and turn it back again and I would return to Rushdie. So this was how I read Rushdie and Martel. I don't know how those novels ended or what they were saying. An unsatisfied feeling, the same as I had after putting some Bs and Cs.

Not to say that only simple thrillers can be enjoyable. I liked the lawyer book, narrated by the little girl and I don't remember its name. I didn't understand the catcher in the rye. I read Seth's long book for the sake of completing it. I loved Harry Potter, top to bottom. I liked " The hakawati" and the last mughal.

Question is: Can I ever like a literary masterpiece which has won some literary prize or is all the hoopla surrounding them just for the literary refined who get degrees in English literature or History.

Book suggestions are welcome.

A Biographical Morning

It was an irritating disturbance. His hands moved without any aim, trying to make sense of what was happening. The shrill seemed to increase and increase and forced his consciousness out of its comfort zone and he woke up confused. He turned off the alarm ringing on the cell phone. He gave himself time to re sleep before the worry of getting late forced him to get out. Enveloped in a sweat shirt and shuddering in his shorts he reached for the basin. There it was, the mirror, staring at him. The night had randomized his long hair and caused them to stack one over another. One more wrinkle added he thought. He had resolved to get his stomach clean today. The cold toilet seat made him tremble for a moment before his body made it warm. His drowsiness helped  his thoughts wander. He pictured the girl he had seen on the bus stand the previous day. She had stood outside the parlor, stretching herself and breathing the last waffles of the warm October air. He had eyed her and she looked vaguely interested before the bus came. Nothing was coming out. He had already wasted 5 minutes. He grudgingly got up, put his shorts on and put the brush in this mouth. The flavour of the toothpaste helped him think of the girl in the red coat, who sometimes took the bus a stop after his stop. She didn't seem beautiful at first, she had an asymmetric face, and he had seen her return back in the bus with a guy once. But for some reason she looked better after 2 more rides in the same bus. He gargled his mouth with water and started feeling fresh. During the extremely difficult task of adjusting the shower water temperature, in order to take a warm shower he thought about the girl who used to smile at him, a girl with long lustrous ebony hair, before he saw her with a guy, and stopped noticing her smiles. After drying himself with a towel and getting dressed he started walking towards the bus stop. 

It was a new day and he was looking forward to it.

For the sake of keeping this blog alive

Link

For those who haven't already seen, The Last Lecture on achieving Childhood Dreams by Randy Pausch

***********************************************************************************

Book recommendation

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam translated by Edward Fitzgerald

Sip upon the Rubaiyat slowly and over a long period of time and let its beauty soak into every small corner of your senses.

Short Review:

You can find numerous reviews of this collection of poems all over the internet and here is my take. For background purposes a Rubaiyat means, a quartet ( a 4 line poem) where the first, second and last line rhyme. The poems were written in the 10th century by Omar Khayyam in Persia and were translated into English by Fitzgerald in the 1800s. The translation is extremely beautiful, preserves the rhyming scheme of the Rubaiyats and is a feat in itself.

The poems mull upon the transcendental nature of this world and the mortality of every being. They emphasize the importance of enjoying every bit of time we have in this one life. The theme of the poems is derived from Sufi Mysticism which to some degree is similar to Hindu philosophy. But the words are cast so very beautifully and the ideas presented are so rustic that these poems are a treat to read. Make these poems your companion on a beautiful sunset or a fragrant lonely evening and I assure you, you won't be disappointed. A few Rubaiyats to end this post:

*******************************
Here with a Loaf of Bread
beneath the Bough
A Flask of Wine, a Book of
Verse---And Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness
And Wilderness is Paradise
enow
[Bough= Big tree branch, enow= enough]
********************************

********************************
Ah make the most of what
we yet may spend,
Before we too into the
Dust descend
Dust into Dust, and under
Dust, to lie
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans
Singer, and ---sans End.
*********************************

*********************************
For in and out, above,
about, below,
Tis nothing but a Magic
Shadow-show
Play'd in a Box whose
Candle is the Sun
Round which we Phantom
Figures come and go
*********************************

Whats the big deal about Joker!

This has to do with "The Dark Knight". I along with another friend attempted to watch this movie on the very day it was released. Needless to say because of the extremely favorable reviews and the death of the actor who played the role of Joker, it was extremely difficult to get a ticket. We reached the theater at 6 PM but found out the tickets had all sold out. Then we faced the difficult decision to either watch some other movie or to try some other theater. I convinced my friend to do the later, and after reaching this new theater, we found it full too. After idling in a park for about an hour we returned to the theater we started from. It was already 8:30 -9:00 PM by then and in a moment of madness we bought tickets for a show which would begin at 12:30 AM. Idled away 3 more hours with great difficulty and by the time we were in our seats, I was exhausted, dehydrated, irritated and half dead. . And after all this we had to endure at least 30 minutes of long, boring and useless trailers. By the time the movie began I had myself been transformed to a cynical Joker.

I found nothing great or darkly philosophical about the movie as reviewers had described it. The story was very very ordinary and didn't have the tiniest of the twists. Of course Batman chose to save " The Good Mayor" over his ex girl friend. But then, didn't he do it so that his dead ex would approve what he did. I didn't find Joker to be unusual, nor his performance to be powerful. Things were easy for him because he was under a mask, so he didn't have to change expressions on his face. The only modulation in expression came through the variation in the tone of his speech, which I concede was good. But the credit for that should go to the dialogue/script writer as well. Joker's character was built around the proposition that this world is full of people who are empty, that he stands out of them all and that Batman is one more empty guy who is just trying to showcase himself as non empty.

There is nothing novel about this proposition and most of us believe that very few people in this world are intelligent. So we are all Jokers and we can all at least act how Joker acted. The actress was beautiful, the stunts were fancy and Batman had an accent which was difficult to comprehend. But that was about it. I always fail to understand why deeper meanings and philosophical motives are ascribed to science fiction tales or comic book stories like this. Sure, they are inspired from the ups and downs of real time stories, but doesn't that make real stories more well...true and real. I am rambling already and should perhaps shut down before I try to debunk this whole business of deconstruction and interpretation of tales. Matrix(I) was an exception though.

To Neo I cheer, not to the most ordinary of jokers!

Ghalib 101

I recently finished reading this book on Ghalib's life by Gulzar, titled very straight forwardly as:

Mirza Ghalib, A Biographical scenario.

I remember scurrying through this book at some stall on MG road in Bangalore 3 years back, when I was at IISc for the summer. Three years of nothingness!!. Or may be a whole life of nothingness!!. But let me not digress. So 3 years back, I remember scrawling quickly on a piece of paper ( in the small telephone diary, I have) a sher ( 2 rhyming lines also called a couplet) from the last page of the book. I still find it beautiful and here it is:

ना था कुछ तो खुदा था, होता ना कुछ तो खुदा होता
डुबोया मुझको होने ने, ना होता मैं तो क्या होता!

Deserves a wah-wah, doesn't it! At that time the book seemed costly to me (~400 Rs). I am still not economically well off, but the book seemed affordable to me now and so I got it . After this long prelude let me talk about the book a bit.

Well as a treatise on life, the book treats Ghalib with reverence, which biographies should ideally not. I would call this book an extended epitaph rather than a complete biography. It is interspersed with his shers and ghazals ( longer poems) in accordance with the phase of his life which it is describing. The shers and ghazals are in chaste Urdu (transliterated in English) and can be hard to understand for a person familiar with contemporary Indian Hindi. The translation of the verses is really bad ( its not Gulzar's own translation, Gulzar's original version is in Hindi/Urdu) but the verses which Gulzar chose to present are interesting. Some of them are Ghalib's more famous ones like:

हमको मालूम है जन्नत की हकीकत लेकिन
दिल के खुश रखने को घालिब ये ख्याल अच्छा है

and this:

उनके देखे से जो आ जाती है मुहँ पर रौनक
वो समझते हैं बीमार का हाल अच्छा है

Despite the "hard" Urdu and the bad translation there are moments and verses which make one smile and elicit a wah wah. Like this one where a courtesan (कोठे वाली ) is rummaging about her unrequited love for Ghalib:

इश्क मुझको नही, वहशत ही सही!
मेरी वहशत, तेरी शोहरत ही सही

हम भी दुश्मन तो नही हैं अपने,
गैर को तुझसे मुहब्बत ही सही

हम कोई तर्क ऐ वफ़ा नही करते हैं
ना सही इश्क, मुसीबत ही सही

[वहशत = madness, तर्क ऐ वफ़ा = giving up my love]

And then there are the sad ones. The emotions of loss, sadness and irony are the ones which create great poets. Don't they? This one after the death of another one of his little sons,

जाते हुए कहते हो, क़यामत के दिन मिलेंगे
क्या खूब! क़यामत का है गोया कोई दिन और

[क़यामत = Doomsday, गोया = as if]

And another brilliant gem:

जला है जिस्म जहाँ, दिल भी जल गया होगा
कुरेदते हो जो अब राख, जुस्तजू क्या है

[कुरेदना = digging, जुस्तजू = intention, purpose]

A sketchy story and ghazals compliment each other all the way in the book. An only Ghazal or poem collection would perhaps be boring. I am sure there are more accurate and complete translations of Ghalib's poetry and more real biographies. But my first tryst with Ghalib was through this book and I enjoyed it despite all the shortcomings.
I will keep looking for more Ghalib and will end this post with a couplet which Ghalib has gifted to posterity looking for suitable words to conclude any kind of tribute to his writing.

हुई मुद्दत की घालिब मर गया, पर याद आता है
वो हर एक बात पर कहना, की यूँ होता तो क्या होता!!

[मुद्दत = ages]

The lease of life

It had been dying. It lay in the same state for days and months and years and decades and centuries and millenniums and yugas and so on and so forth. And just when it was almost dead, and just when the last puff of the last breath was about to whiff out of its rugged lungs, there appeared the black crow from the colony of the white swans.
The crow's eyes twinkled, just like those of Dumbeldore's and it tapped its claws and fluttered its wings. Its beak quivered and sprinkled over some droplets of water that held life and more.
And so it arose slowly and in a state of disbelief, wiping from itself, the dust of the ages gone by, as the air slowly gurgled inside its lungs, and its eyelids fluttered again and its pupils adjusted to the mild sunlight.
The crow chuckled and cawed and celebrated and swooned and shrieked and then cleaned its bowels. Then it thundered in human voice!! From the four corners of the four worlds I bring you four listeners who lent you four droplets of life. Please you must, these listeners of tales. For if you don't , you perish yet again.

It trembled and shivered and breathed and sighed and thus it so began:

Long Long ago when the sun rose from the east and the ice existed on the polar caps, when a year had 52 weeks and a week had 7 days and a day had 24 hours and a hour had 60 minutes and a minute had 60 seconds and so on and so forth, there lived a guy who had been waiting for too long. And this was a dark night, when this all happened and so I four masters tell you this tale.

************************************************************
Tonight was the night. Even Gods would not be permitted to get in his way, he resolved. A gentle breeze ruffled his hair and made contact with his soul. He felt his heart throb, his muscles tighten and his teeth clench. There was the scent of jasmine flowers in the air, pouring in through his nostrils, entering his whole self, and spreading into every bit of him. He shivered with a tinge of excitement. The blood was rushing in already. He closed his fists to control himself. The moon shone in half, letting the stars bloom. A dog howled in distance and another yelped. He reached the door, gasped for some air and knocked.

खुशी की खोज

सबका खुशी से फासला बस एक कदम है
सबका खुशी से फासला बस एक कदम है
हर घर में कमरा बस एक ही कम है


- जावेद अख्तर

Something

He could barely smell anything. As he hummed songs to himself and kicked pebbles along the track, he carefully avoided the pieces of human excreta which lay littered all along , many a times resembling fine modern artistic mosaics. This was his ritual, his game, his way to engage himself as he returned from the middle school he attended. The classes made him drool but strict parents made him do good. As he walked along the tracks, he did not notice the naked children playing in the mud and sewage water, the colorful and ugly polythene bags strewn all around, the huts with tin metal roofs, men smoking cheap local tobacco which was chewing their lungs off or women sitting on the street, their hands in wet flour preparing meals over makeshift ovens full of smoke while their little children harassed them.
Mornings were a bit different. His right hand would be across his nose at that time . Children would be asleep then, ovens unlit and people would be seeking the heights of the railway tracks for cleaning their stomachs.

Nor could he. As he skid down the walkway with punctually lined black trash cans, thinking about the meal he would savor in the afternoon and remembering hushed conversations about girls with his friends he avoided the melee of cars and people. As he walked along, people middle aged and old clad in smart suits walked in some sort of an order, buildings 20 floors or more appeared and reappeared, children fat and plump, dressed colorfully, played in neat parks while they patted their healthy fat dogs, an occasional man and woman smoked a cigarette and women got their nails polished in spas as they read fashion magazines. He didn't notice anything.
Mornings were a bit different. There would be no cars and so it would be quiet, the parks would be empty and early morning commuters would be rushing towards subway stations.

Ah, childhood memories. Don't they linger around all the time. The plane jolted a bit driving him and him out of their slumber. They yawned and thought it appropriate to talk to each other. They soon found out that they had traded places. He now lived in He's place, helping it remain neat and was returning for a short visit. He also lived now in He's place and was trying to help the naked children and clean up the railway tracks.

Both had been trying to seek Something.