Smitten II

We wake each morning. I see a dreamy twinkle in your eye reflect soft rays of the sun and burst in the tempest of a joyous smile to see me stare at you listlessly.

We sit by the window, hearing the clatter of raindrops speak the silent language of our tender touches.

We walk by the sea whilst a thousand waves crash and cause a tumult of union, surrendering to the timelessness of rocks.

We hold hands in a crowd and feel affection bathe multitudes in the warmth of quaint understanding, alacrity and peace.

We come home at dusk and sit by a lone candlelight which drowns the noises of the day in silent silhouettes of each other’s shadows, only to realise the true beauty of darkness.

The sun, the rain, the sea, humanity and even darkness are but a fragment of your self that lives within the infinite of my imagination and breaks forth in a thousand flowers that I offer to the Lord and pray everyday, that you be real.

___________

Early in the day it was whispered that we should sail in a boat, only I and you, and never a soul in the world would know of this; our pilgrimage to no country and to no end.
In that shore-less ocean, at thy silent listening smile, my songs would swell into melodies, free as waves, free from all bondage of words.
Is the time not yet come? Are there works still to do? Lo, the evening has come down upon the shore and in the fading light the sea birds come flying to their nests.
Who knows when the chains would be off and the boat, like the last glimmer of sunset, will vanish into the night.

__________

Amen…

Smitten

Contrary to everyday existence, the evening was one of those when I again got smitten thru my bones by a seraphic apparition resembling a woman’s whose booming laughter sent eclectic tremors through the foundations of my imagination…beautiful, wheatish, simple…the fact that our roving eyes met not once, not a meagre twice but three whole times only lent a luminous hue to an otherwise cloudy evening…but alas! I couldn’t go up to her or even smile back and that is the reason I sit here and record another small, sweet and unsuccessful glimpse into a magical world of smiles, bob-cuts and an eloquent nose…ah! The nose…the olfactory organ that stood out like a beacon of subliminal poise whilst eyes roved about and around to meet and lock and kiss…but the kiss that strangers share can be and often is what transcends into the musty ruins of memory or the freshly printed pages of books written for an audience who have had no first hand knowledge of the experience itself…Coming back, standing by the counter with a head dying to jut slightly around the pillar that blocked my view, I realised that I was already being looked-back at, for the pillar was no pillar because the waiter who was standing there had ceased to stand. And how do I know this? Because I looked straight at her. Her face was impassive. If her lip quivered under the weight of my gaze, my eyes were too fondly locked into hers to have noticed.
I withdrew. Broke the lock and turned my face away. Her expressionless face looking me straight into the eye still floated in my head. To make sure that the image that had frozen in my mind was accurate enough for long term perspective, I turned and looked back.
O! Hungry flames that battle to burn each other to smithereens…
O! Nature’s immovable objects that are struck by nature’s irresistible forces to bring about ultimate cataclysms…
O! Avalanches of a thousand peaks that tumble down in eternal fury into the lap of their own tumultuous fall…
It was the second time. Impassive face meets exploring eyes. Bob-cut hair stood still whilst tall, lanky guy looked on. A pendent, the shape of a solitary, white sea shell hung about her throat. And it shuddered as she swallowed. The eloquent nose still held its poise whilst the eyes played a deadly duel. Had there been a smile, or a semblance of positive societal gesture, the moment would have faded into the crass banality of the Age; into the second-handed wallpapers and coffee mugs of the place. But it didn’t.
Walking now, across her table to the exit, I decided to, or rather impulsively looked back. All I could catch was the sight of her head turning towards me. Our eyes met once again but that was in the midst of our heads turning towards and away from each other. I looked away and walked out the gates…

Sigh

All the Right Reasons

Oh my God! Look how they protest! Look how they come on the streets with their placards painted in middle-class anger to shout out the second-handed slogans against a ‘callow, careless’ State. How they stop trains, disrupt buses and show their impotent angst by howling at the ‘solitary soul’ doing an ounce of honest work on the day of National Bandh. At one level, I feel sad; almost sympathetic towards the stupid, stupid common man and his eternal conquests with the daily-dom of routine existence-struggling to pay the electricity bill in long lines bathed in sweat, struggling to get a gas connection, struggling to save and save and save for the next generation, struggling to hold on to their gloriously banal 9 to 5s, and struggling more so to have a decent orgasm at the end of tired, harrowing day! Sad…

But place this against his complacency at seeing 82 CRPF jawans man slaughtered, or the daily rape occurring in the capital, or the sloth of the modern day Judiciary pronouncing sentences for murderers and rapists after decades of debating; and you’d see the how pathetic, myopic and narrow the stupid, stupid common man and his sphere of concerns really are! That social, ethical or moral obligations do not even figure in the A-list of the collective’s concerns is not only noteworthy, but beckons a sarcastic sneer as well! But then Black Gold is a tricky bitch. Somewhat like the modern day incarnation of Cleopatra! If she could hypnotize Uncle Sam to kill a few million Iraqis in its megalomaniacal whim to conquer her, guess a hundred thousand Indians going berserk over her is understandable!





Maybe at the heyday of philosophizing, Marx would be the only one, whose ghost would be roaming about our protest-impregnated streets and laugh the mocking laughter of a true fortune teller at what is happening! The dynamics of economics, of demand and supply and resource and limitedness is what drives Man then…the tri-murti of roti, kapda, makan or jar, joru and jameen …no glory there!

But after all, Marx was whom the Existentialist Sartre had turned to when the meaninglessness of existence had given way to ‘finding meaning’ in the paying of electricity bills, taking the yearly vacation to Manali, Shimla or Goa, watching the evening news and probably breaking windows and burning BEST buses to register hollow protest too.

But maybe there is a catch to this situation: the same age old scenario wherein the faceless, direction-less collective and the power of its numbers has been tapped in by the purveyors of impious ideologies; the ones who realise the awesome strength of number and the flavour of their ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ and use it to implicate their own private agendas, the background of which are very much banally political in nature. So when I realised that most of the states wherein a thorough breakdown of state machinery did take place, where there were bandhs and demonstrations and slogan shouting and tear gas and lathi charges and political shenanigans courting arrest and bus burning and train stopping it reminded me of the ‘Lotus-followers’; the saffron-clad youth belonging to a sect whose growling reminds us of the loud sound of a chocked lavatory just when it is in the process of being flushed! Awe-inspiring it is to realise of how much their growling can really absorb! Almost sixteen states lie marred in the predicament of inconvenience; probably this one single day of (supposed) protest (instigated by a saffron-clad, top-heavy organization constituting the drinkers of their own hypocrisy-flavoured urine,) is a good enough reason for another ten million ‘normal’ people to protest! To come out on the streets and protest against the inconvenience caused, buses burnt, trains halted, flights delayed, shops closed, businesses suffered, hospitals rendered dysfunctional etc etc etc.






But unfortunately they never learn! They are like cattle, like clouds, like hollow pebbles waiting for the tumult of saffron-coloured vomit to come and carry them away into the horizon of irrational protest! After all that has happened too many times to refer to it as a mistake.




True, there has been a price-hike; true the stupid common man’s struggles will only get steeper from here on, true! Inflation has sky rocketed to Andromeda! But to vindicate one’s own lack of direction by being allowed to be lead into a protest whose agendas from with out seem noble, but whose implications from with in stink of the age-old, Great Indian Political manoeuvrings practiced since the days of Nehru and Patel is a sorry, sorry picture!



Point here is not that the “masses” on the streets are protesting. That’s a good thing, right? Else the Government is likely to shit in our backyards, grow poppy out of it, and tax us for smoking weed! Point is, protest is a good thing. But the idea that it is not really protest but cheap political manoeuvrings; which is not only adding to the woes of the fabled and celebrated Common Man, but also exploiting him, in an age old way to score over the exiting set up, is what adds shades of ‘ugly’ to the picture of a burnt bus or an unattended patient!

Anyways, hope O! kind reader that you enjoyed your one extra holiday; and if you were on the streets pelting stones at policemen, you were doing it for all the right reasons…

Peace

Riding Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino

It would be misunderstood if I were to say that I was left with a lump in my throat and a heavy heart after watching Clint Eastwood's masterpiece, Gran Torino. Yes! the movie, akin to the Marlowesque school of drama, centers around one man; so much so that almost 90 of the 116 minutes seem to have been devoted to Walt Kowalski(Clint Eastwood); his disdain, his cynicism, his morbid self-deprecation, his compassion and even his brand of love. But then one thinks, of how inept an endeavour it would be, had the director or the script tried to encompass the totality of events, and the multitude of effects they have on human nature. But these 116 minutes stand testimony to the fact that at times, Man, and by that I mean a single, solitary Man, can become an anthem of reflections that represent not only the tragedy of living-dead, but even the beauty of a dying-life. Rushdie, in the voice of Salim Sinai had once remarked, 'all of us owe a death to life'; Walt's life and thereafter his death had a deeper connection than this. For though, his life and thereafter his Death, wasn't the psycho-philosophical bliss akin to Kate Winslet's as Iris, nor was it a metaphor of cruelly twisted irony that was to become of Kate at the hands of her Reader. Rather, Walt Kowalski lived a life carrying a burden that quite literally weighed him to the annals of self-deprecatory scorn and hellish cynicism. 'I want to be left alone', were what we started with; that the end would be of a man paving the way for his own salvation, albeit absolutely unknowingly, is what overwhelms us with sense of profound realization. And which is this: Death is what brings a limiting factor to the infinity of life. And yet, Life is what gets us there. In effect, Life and Death aren't 'Cause' and 'Effect', but it is the other way round; 'Death' is the 'Cause', and 'Life' is the 'Effect'. Do think about it, O! kind reader.
I would not refrain from acceding that our protagonist hadn't been the morbid, edgy, grumpy Old man through out! Through his own ministrations we get to know how much he loved his wife; through his confessions we realise how much the human in him repents at not being able to foster a 'normal father-son relationship'! But 'Korea', or precisely, the Korean War is what left its indelible mark in him. After all, what are Wars for?! Let Homer's Chariots and Valmiki's Bed-of-Arrows rest in peace in the musty pages where they sleep immortalized! The fact remains that there is absolutely no glory in killing another man for State, Borders or Constitution! It is redundant, it is supercilious and most of all, it just reflects as to how insecure Humanity really is! Not one man, but the whole breathing, living, thriving multitude of uniqueness-in-sameness humanity! Even the 'Rhetorical Justice' of the 'Blind Statue' standing with her scales is symbolic of how restrictive and 'blind' we really have to turn ourselves to bring ourselves to co-exist! And this is another one of the schisms that the protagonist addresses! Giving the impression of finally being 'the avenger', he avenges the follies of lesser beings by sacrificing himself. And yet, even though, the trickle of a tear from the audience's eye is testimony of how much glory we seek in his martyrdom, the fact remains that for this man, his death was simply a way of giving back to Life.
It wouldn't be inappropriate to accede that the film was in some way, an excoriation and an antithesis of Modern Christian dogma. On one hand, we see how much Walt's 'troubled soul' initially shrugs at the notion of 'Confession'. The fact that his 'confessions' are totally devoid of the flavours of 'juicy sin' carries a quasi-ironic, quasi-dark humoured flavour. For we know, as he remarks, 'I am at peace, now!', that for a Man such as him, Peace certainly means a sort of End while still being alive. Thus we arrive at the antecedent that to attain Salvation whilst we live shall only drive us to death, or better still, 'Suicide', for there isn't a higher state of existence that one may achieve! It’s the Idealistic! And yet, as happens with Walt, he some how does achieve it. But since, to attain the 'Perfect Calm' of elemental proportions would transcend Man to a height wherein there is no more room to evolve, to change, to twist and turn, and thus he has no other option but to kill himself! And probably, that’s what he does in the end. The Glory, as Aristotle would have remarked, is a cause of Accidence. Death, however, I daresay, is Incidence.

A Word About the Technique:

The dialogues, for their part, and the heavy silences punctuated by Walt’s silent shrieks and grumps play as much an instrument to understand the character as does the screenplay and camera. The strength of this film lies primarily in its script, which stands on the strength of its central character. All that happens in the story, even a ghastly Rape, only enrich and bring out the different shades and manifold depths of Walt’s character. There has been an intertwining of different cultural milieu wherein the Orient has again been represented though its traditions, customs and ‘witch-doctors’, whilst, the West has found face as fractured Father-Son relationships, a conscience wounded by the Korean war, and the final attainment of Meaning through a meaningful death, that makes a fruitless life worthwhile. Ironically, it’s the Orient Witch-doctor who tells Walt the truth about himself! The plot in itself follows the unities of Space, Time and Place; although all of this is relegated to the background as most of the story is told through Walt by his self-impressions, silences and overpoweringly expressive eyes.

Anyways, I shall stop here. For I have a habit to wander off to unknown territories; though most of them are the mothballed, shadowy precincts of my own wandering Mind…

PS. Ironically, if you’d notice, there has been absolutely no mention of a 1952 Green Gran Torino…As they say, Presence maybe Incidence. Absence is always Accidence.

Cheers...

Waking Sickness

This Age that differs amidst
Old and New,
Whispers the self-same words;
That fate was as inconsistent then
As Life anew yearns!
Time speaks another language now, that
Doesn’t seem of Old;
You and I fall out of Love
Our hearts are used being cold.
Kasab kills, and yet lives
To tell his story stylized;
To the Gospels who
Write of future ills,
Amongst nations too soft to decide!
Courtrooms exist, and
Lawyers do bicker, a
Man’s fate, as ‘FOR’ or ‘AGAINST’;
Alas! His conscience lies
Maimed and dead,
Satiated by inhumane,
un-Godly tastes!

The Confessional booths in
Churches lie empty,
For Sins seems to have vanished;
Whilst the order of the day
Marred by bustling activity
Are corruption, fun and frolic.
Sad it feels, yet you and I
Comprise the stupid
Common Man!
A Man who has voices in plenty
But not the courage to stand.
Tomorrow, we may
Look evil in the eye,
Our voices shrill and hoarse;
Yet the Martyr’s blood still upon our skins
Feels dry, cold and coarse!

This Age that differs amidst
Old and New,
Whispers the self-same words;
That fate was as inconsistent then
As Life anew yearns!

Sartre once spoke, but
Silently rests
And so do Byron and Shelley
Laden too has done his bit
And sleeps the sleep of yore!

Waiting for sleep, has made
One commit, the
Gravest folly in bed, but
Realize they not in this waking state,
Life itself
Is many a morning rough;
When karma, bomb blasts
And infidelities
Making waking unworthy, unfruitful,
Tough.

Amen

To a Fairy Godess

No ruffled flowers,no selfmade memory
Brings me close to a sweet friend'o mine,
The whiff of your hair,the smell of your neck,
Please care to be my Valentine...

The day dies,yet to your voice in dusk
Seeks my heart a solitary sign
Your touch is fresh,your smile the air
Please care to be my Valentine...

Seen have I other fairies; flirting laughing-
Rising as my thoughts entwine
To your aspect, a shape of eternal sunsets
Please care to be my Valentine...

Worship, I will and care I shall
To keep you away from mortal strife
If only a Godess as such as you,
Be willing to be my Valentine...

Promise I not,yon heavenly pleasures
For mortal he made me,who made u too
In his image,I shall give you my counted moments
Please care to be my Valentine...

Litany of a Lonely God

Book Review:On Beauty by Zadie Smith

What can be said about this except that it is immensely entertaining, very simple and of all the things, real. Language, unlike the Rushdies and Rands of this world has been relegated to the background whilst a truly beautiful panorama of human lives in a human world is painted by the author. Let us take it one at a time:

The characterization is the first strong point of the book. Without the various members of the Belsey and Kipps household and their distinct eccentricities, the storyline would have fallen into the mundane category of other American novels, with its share of heartbreaks and infidelities and Conservative-Liberal debates. But alas! The characters, and the way the author serves them to the world definitely lends a sort of authenticity to the novel. The characterization being such that neither of the characters are exaggerated, nor are they under sketched. Rather, they sway and move appropriately to their own natures lent to them by the author, and according to the various ups and downs in the real-life tale of human beings as it happens. There are no magically born Midnight’s Children, nor are the intellectuals hell-bent on sticking onto their ‘individualistic’ beliefs and strive for a new world. For instance, Howard Belsey, the most typical middle-aged man and by en far the ‘most judgemental Liberal’ one can come across, cheats on his wife, twice, and yet one can’t help sympathise and frown at his ‘weak’ arguments and far-fetched intellectual mumbo-jumbo whenever it comes to sitting by the table and quietly discuss the ‘problem at hand’. And then, there is Monty Kipps, the other half of the Liberal-Conservative dipole; just as flawed, but slightly less brittle than his polar counterpart, Howard. Guess, since the author is a woman, the female characters in the book, namely Kiki Belsey, Howard’s wife, Zora, his daughter, and Carlene and Victoria, the Kipps-women, are more substantial, better sketched, and garner far more awe and empathy than the brittle, floating, indecisive males, who have a way of succumbing to situations that is common amongst the ‘common-men’ of the world. Kiki, by en far, is sympathetic, thoughtful, sensitive, and more than anything else, strong. Sort of, the ideal 21st woman who’d be best suited for the uncertainties of this Age. Zora, probably, seems to be the author’s self-image of her childhood; or maybe a reflection of what girls go through in that volatile 16-19 year age bracket! As the author sketches a pen-picture of Zora, “And yet in college, she knew she was famed for being opinionated, a ‘personality’-the truth was she didn’t take these public passions home, or even out of the room, in any serious way. She didn’t feel the she had any real opinions, or at least not in a way other people seemed to have them. Once the class was finished she saw at once how she might have argued the thing just as viciously and successfully the other way round. Was anyone ever genuinely attached to anything? She had no idea…”
Another interesting excerpt: “…it was either only Zora who experienced this odd impersonality or it was everybody, and they were all play-acting, as she was…and nervously rumbled through possible topics of conversation, a ragbag of weighty ideas she carried around in her brain to lend herself the appearance of substance…”, she makes her sound more like a human being than just a girl. Kudos! To Ms. Smith for rising above the gender-bracket for once!

Another important feature of the book is its treatment of marriage. Not the version of marriage that half the love-sick bachelors and spinsters long to get to; I mean, not the romantic extravaganza full of surprises and exotic adventures and ideal coexistence! Ha! Rather, Zadie chooses to deal with the most difficult version of it all: the middle-age period of their lives, when neither are couples gung-ho about practicing new positions from the KS, nor are they old enough to recline in their rocking chairs over dreamy fireplaces. Rather, it the age of transition; the age wherein the mind is desperately trying to believe in the shadow of ‘youth’ one last time and the body inches towards the portals of decay. Plus, their children too are undergoing the transition of youth. Where does the average middle-aged man and average middle-aged woman find solace?
In each other’s company. Or are they too bored of that as well!
And that is the author’s point. Wherein, the crises doesn’t lie on the outside, like in many-a young relationship. The crises, or rather the lack of it makes the ‘insides’ so utterly predictable and mundane that try as they might, but a couple just cannot analyse what is it that has gone missing between the both of them. Some of them resign to it and continue to live life as it happens! Other, the likes of Howard Belsey helplessly try to rebel and end up having clumsy sex with girls more than half his age. Alas! the beauty of the book lies in the fact that not only does the author splendidly pose the possibility of a healthy marriage, but answers it as well with her vivid, surprising storyline that is sure to dazzle and shock the readers. The strength of the author and the whole narrative here lies in the fact that she strikes splendid balance between social responsibility and individual choice, between the ‘strength-of-the-human-will’ and ‘the strength-of-situational-fallacies’ that bend them.
A point worth mentioning is the treatment of various kinds of ‘love’ that the author engenders in her characters and makes am attempt to show what exactly is it to love and feel loved. The sort of understanding that Kiki shares with her sons, Jerome and Levi, in spite of the generation gap and their relative aloofness is heart-warming. So is the bond between Kiki and Carlene Kipps garnering so much goodwill and faith, amidst their constantly warring husbands! In essence, the author has tried to make various portholes into the way life moves from point to point, as seen flittingly through the way of the heart and the way of the mind. Interesting point being, that both the heart and mind know how to love, albeit in their different ways.
There are certain parts where a man by the name of Jean Paul Sartre is quoted here. His “We don’t know what we want, and yet we can’t help being who we are…”, from his Critique of Dialectical Reason makes us view the whole book from an existentialistic dimension. And so, this book too, reflects the characteristic uncertainty that looms at the centre of the ‘solitary’ man’s life. He may be married(Howard), widowed(Monty), in his teens(Jerome and Levi), greying(Harold, Howard’s father), in love(Jerome), in lust(Howard), two-faced(Erskine) or anything else that man is supposed to be, but the reason, and this gets tough, of his being what he is, still remains a mystery, to solve which he makes one choice after another, only to end up with the same sort of question in the end, as to what exactly was the essence of existence? Smith tries and succeeds in almost answering that question; that the essence of existence lies in loving and being loved, in giving and forgiving, in truthfully being whoever we are, and striving to be more than what we were yesterday. And yet, it’s not that simple; as Sartre wasn’t that simple. If being ‘good’ could have answered his query, probably a few pages of the Bible would have done the trick. But alas! Choice, as understood in the realm of existence, is the motif that binds him and frees him at the same time. What he chooses, and this applies to all the characters in the book, ultimately gets him closer or farther than the ‘truth’, which again, according to Sartre, is an emptiness lurking at the centre of his existence. The question is a circle, and unfortunately this is where Smith fails, like many others, in making her characters break through it!

Anyway, happy reading! If not for anything else, then for its strong, youthful flavour, sensitive characters and some real-time story-telling…

Cheers and Godspeed

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An Elegy (Undated)

I would run that extra mile;
I would write that extra line;
I would waketh that extra hour,
and fight sweet memories-
from turning sour...
In the brine of time.
Sweet memory pickled sublime
Until! Not a single mitten left
Or sour, diminished, totally bereft!

So then,
Let some questions unanswered remain,
And saveth us from complexities profane.
Whilst we walk our seperate ways,
For nights together and countless days;
And not a single strand of it
Be caught in banality or witty wit.
For let it sleep its peaceful sleep,
And may it not smile, sigh or weep,
And may it ne'er turn in its grave
As on its tombstone, I sit-humble and brave!
Protecting it from the brine of time,
While outside, jealousy and temptation entwine.

Amen

Kieslowski vs Kubrick: Exploring the K-Factor

Watching Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange recently reminded me of another similar masterpiece by the name of, 'A Short Film About Killing' by Kieslowski. Both the films are in their way a profound commentary on the quintessential relation between the individual and the state, and to what extent can and should the state play the puppet-master to the individual, especially when the individual himself turns into an anarchist. Technically, both films are made in polar halves; the first half shows the individual as the wanton, vulpine progeny hell-bent on hurting and antagonizing his surroundings, through rape, arson, looting, murder and generic plunder. Kubrick, it ought to be mentioned becomes excessively verbose and illustrative by incorporating his scene sequences with vivid imagery. On the other hand, Kieslowski's strength lies in the subtleness with which he pulls the strings in the background and lets the characters flow deeper and deeper into the plot. Ultimately, while viewing either of the films, the viewer experiences a sort of revulsion at what each protagonist does in the name of a wanton, albeit free willing nature.

The strength of both the films lies during the final moments, wherein the 'State' strikes back and teaches these vampiresque individuals a lesson, thereby bringing their story of debauchery and hooliganism full circle.

Kieslowski's finishes the circle of fate in his last scene wherein Tomek is executed by hanging till death. By en far, its one of the most powerful scenes in cinema due to the raw play of energy with which Tomek is shown to resist the noose, breathing his last whilst wriggling incessantly and grasping for air. The power of the film lies in this one scene as it is here that we find ourselves overwhelmed by pity for the protagonist and his pathetic state. Eventhough, he has done irretrievable damage to many, including committing murder just for the heck of it, and other smaller crimes, but we find ourselves question the whole idea of capital punishment, and why should the state reserve the right to 'push the button' on anybody. We find ourselves revolted by such a nihilistic approach of a chosen authority towards the 'rotten apples' of society. We are driven to ask again and again about 'reform' and ‘rehabilitation’ and other such softer alternatives to curb and improve the dark horses. But alas! The softer tones of our concerns quickly dissolve in Tomek's screams whilst the noose tightens around his neck and chokes the living hell out of him. Period.

Interestingly, Kubrick explores the other side of the coin; Reform. Herein, the protagonist, Alex, is given a choice between serving a life sentence or undergoing a series of mysterious experiments after which he would be free to go. Obviously, he chooses the latter. The point of schism being that the 'mysterious experimental programme' is the 'Government's new, untested hypnotic, psychological, brain-washing technique' through which the psyche of the individual is thoroughly ruptured, and incapable of acting on its own. After which, he is constantly burdened by some unexplainable guilt, which forbids him to commit any act of lust or aggression. Alex too becomes one such 'cabbage', who is brought on stage after the ‘tests’ are done, as a prized experimental rat, and made to lick the soul of a gentleman's boot dutifully. A topless damsel is then paraded in front of him. He struggles to reach out for her breasts, but is overcome by revulsion and falls on the ground, howling for pity and absolution (for your information, o! kind reader, he had raped a woman in the beginning of the film.). In effect, the once aggressive-rapist-murderer-arsonist is now a meek, helpless, defenseless turnip being pushed from one edge of society to another. If we had despised the earlier version of Alex for gruesomely raping a middle-aged woman, we now pity him for his temerity at being punched by a tramp he had once bullied. During the final stages of his despair, he tries to commit suicide, but breaks a few bones and lands in a hospital bed. A greasy minister comes and coaxes him to 'strike a deal' with him for a government job and salary, in return for keeping his mouth shut about the 'programme'. What else? He readily agrees and the movie closes with the two of them smiling 32-out at the shutterbugs. Its by en far, appalling, if not infuriating to watch the end.

I don't know who committed more damage to society, but in the end both Alex and Tomek compete for the 'Most Wretched Fate' Award. Abhinandan and Mou(my dearest friends from film-school), please correct me if i make any technical misjudgments here; but the fact of the matter is that both films are like a corollary to one another. If one shows subtle damage building-up into a vast explosion through its limited, matter-of-factly camera work, then the other assaults the senses through-and-through with its sets from the Korova-Milk-Bar to the hospital scene in the end. If one is a litany, the other is heavy metal. If one is about killing a criminal's body, the other is about killing his soul.

And both films are subtle tragic surmise of the modern epoch. I say this because after viewing each of the films at least twice, I realized the connotation of what either of the K-Dudes implied. Which was to concern themselves, and their audiences with ‘truth’, because that’s what has been the most ancient concern of ‘good tragedy’. Plato refers to this ‘truth’ as Catharsis, or Sublimation. Wherein, Alex’s meekness and Tomek’s fateful end arises pity and fear, but ultimately sublimates both and raises the spectator to a state of understanding. This state of Understanding is a subjective reality. And so, I would refrain from commenting on it any further.


PS. I intended speaking about a few other issues related to the jingbang, but shall refrain till the time i discuss Aamir and his cinema.

Anthem n Enigma
I

The ochre of skies had turned to violets, the once dark mane of the tiger had gone thin and pale with age, but the joy of leaving a place mixed with the anticipation of his onward journeys was still a part of nachiketa s travels. He wandered irremediably, just like the mythological satan who had been cursed with having no ground under his feet. But alas!our wanderer of yore did have his feet firmly on the ground, else how was he to feel the pulse of humanity running all around him. How was he to gauge the sparkle in the eye of the ragpiker child when he had casually given away his burger and fries to her at the signal, or how was he to touch the flame within the being of an ancient-lighthouse-caretaker seeing him live the same day of switching on n swithching off the huge light since as long as memory could stretch.He surely could'nt have,had he been a creature of the floating world;and so his feet were firmly on the ground looking for edges and cliffs from where he'd take flight and soar into the horizon of human possibilities and freedom and feeling, unhindered by prejudice,presumption or malice. Such was the nature of each cliff he stood on, before leaving an old dwelling place and travellng to the next. His journeys alas!were limitless mysteries unfolding into visions that made him see faces,eyes,colours and incidents as beautiful, surreal blotches on the fabric of an ever-moving, ever-changing humanity. But at times (in those visions) he also managed to distance himself far enough to be able to see the 'face' of an infinite human spirit. And that was the point.
'What is your name?',asked Kala, the mahout, glancing at our protagonist, sitting at Bumba's back, the tusker with pink teeth and heart-shaped patches on his ears. Bumba had been born with wings in the valley of Khyal, but the day he crossed over to the town of Dil, his wings had been clinged on by a million dust particles, turned brittle and broke. Those heart-shaped patches on his ears were an undying legacy that Akriti had left to him, her love songs whispered into his ears once upon a time, but alas! the fastidiousness of Dil had swallowed away her beauty into its belly of circuses n zoos and what not. In the end, her voice had ended up as heart-shaped patches on Bumba z ears, whilst her famished body been abandoned in the sleepy swamps of Majnu-ka-tilla around the northern pretincts of Dil.
Even before, Nachiketa was done pronouncing his name, the mahout tricked Bumba to kneel before our protagonist, in anticipation for a few green notes. Nachi obviously mistook it for some sort of beastly outburst, dropped his shutterbug at Bumba's feet and fled for life. In the midst of such mayhem, he rammed right into the blind hawker of black roses, breaking the biggest black bud and spillling a whole lot of ambrosia all around the walls of the old city. In an instant, the elixir of youth wafted all around those graffiti-ridden walls, bringing to life one painful graffiti after another. And there danced in front of him all the romeo-juliets and laila-majnums who had once tried to immortalize their names by etching them on the belly of this immortal wall. Nachi, lost in the midst of so many formless, floating couples whispering sweet nothings to eachother, suddenly realized that not all of them spoke of love, or poetry, or consummation in our typical-hooded style. Rather some of them quarreled, others shoved and jostled eachother, and others still damned the gift of immortality they had granted to themselves. One such formless couple quickly made their way into Nachi's rucksack.
Wasting no time on these sundry trivialities, Nachiketa quickly plucked a few petals from a nascent black rose-bud, hopped upon Bumba z back and pleaded Kala to take them away.
"Stop!", yelled Nachi, for his shutterbug still lay on the ground, and its reel recorded the bizarre quagmire that the whole bazaar had sunk into. But the tusker only took orders from his master, who was too busy counting the notes in Nachi z wallet. The elephant was fast, and even before Nachi let go off the last strands of hope of rescuing his life z works, Bumba had entered Pathardil, the swanky, concrete portion of Dil. Nachi sighed and looked at a million tiny lights of the city move whilst Bumba soared into limitless horizons, and the formless couple made silent love amongst the bed of black rose petals inside Nachi z rucksack. .....................................