He replied "Saddam"

At Tanjore, we admired the Bhadisvara temple in a way that architecture illiterates are expected to do. We could see people around who did exactly the same thing. They were very eager like us to capture the temple and more so their visit in photographs and videos which they themselves were producing. While leaving, just at the temple gate, we were accosted by a sweet little bright boy, selling incense sticks. When asked about the price, he said "ten for the sticks and two my commission". "Please take the sticks" my mother said and I took them and gave him a ten rupee note. He repeated "ten for the sticks and two my commission", mildly complaining to my mother about her stingy son, it appeared. We could not help but smile.My mother gave his ruffled hair a maternal toss as he smiled taking in a breath and showing those broken newly growing incisors. Mother asked "what is your name".
He replied "Saddam".

Out came a butterfly, from another tree full of leaves

Too sweet, the tea today morning, an irritation as P. looked up from his crossword to complain to the bare tree overlooking us. Out came a butterfly, from another tree full of leaves, the winter wind so slight in morning sun, and soon in his eyes a doubt of whether it was a fly or the leaf itself flown by the wind.

That small incident, that ambiguity, was enough to create the mood swing as P. drank the rest of the tea and solved his crossword.

too much of it, now lets progress

After the erasure of ‘graffiti from the walls’ in the last Assembly elections, another quintessentially symbolic trait of West Bengal politics and everyday life of Kolkata – ‘the STRIKES’ it is felt need be engraved in fleeting nostalgia. People of the city seem to be saying or the purported mediated political rhetoric is – “too much of it, now lets progress”. The historical phantom of counter-cultural kitsch and the political satire of limericks and caricatures might yet again be a part of city walls, due to an amendment legalizing graffiti passed by the State Assembly lately, ‘the STRIKES’ however, seem to be an insignificant drone around the defiant hunger-strike of Mamata Banerjee.

sifted from them the one dream of dreams and interpreted it

I said...

I looked at your dreams, sifted from them the one dream of dreams and interpreted it. it was about you wanting to have a choco-dip. I wanted to laugh at you and then felt so sorry for myself, I was laughing at your innocence, that you were a small girl.

You said...

I looked at your dreams, sifted from them the one dream of dreams and interpreted it.it was about you interpreting my dream of having a choco-dip. I wanted to laugh at you and then felt so sorry for myself, I was laughing at your innocence, that you were an old man.

Imagination of a Disaster

The responses to the Bhopal Gas "Disaster" have been recurrent and multiple, sufficing it to be finally labeled a "Tragedy", with resistance against perpetrators brought in forth by empathy, imagination and crucially so, "bare need". A professor of mine recently recalled," how strange we have not been able to do better", considering "all Indians are Activists", I told him a bit stubbornly i believe "at least we are getting better and better". "Ah"...he said..."but its not enough"... and became lost and I left him to come with an "Imagination of a Disaster"

Woody Allen would make a film on us.

thought, really did, that
I will go to that small beach we discovered together

thought, really did, that
You will come today there in the morning at 5

thought, really did, that
I will come with my laptop and play you the tune of the sea kissing the rocks

thought, really did, that
You will come with your hair over your ears and listen to it

thought, really did, that
We will lie over the fisherman's raft and talk about Virginia Woolf's Lighthouse

thought, really did, that
Woody Allen would make a film on us.

act of aping

A fragmented screen. The visuals interpreting the text written between the communicators in its own hyper-real space with the text occupying half the screen. The screen had a de-centering effect. You were neither in the text nor in the screen and you knew it was not real. You enjoyed sometimes maybe trying to be puppetted by the visuals, in the parodying act itself you wanted to make fun of it, avenge your disgrace. You wrote the text as if you were the scriptwriter manipulating the visuals. Sometimes nobody cared. Nobody actually should get so psyched up; it is just a friendly tongue and cheek. Still, you did ask for it when it was offered. The rebellion of the powerless against the powerful - act of aping.

Excerpts from my unpublished novel.

thought again today why

real good Wine and yet I shall be a bit dissapointed with them . After those scent-filled sips and the sea so beautiful, they talked about work, brought it to dinner table after 5, then told me to eat it too with wine, it did not taste well, could it have?

A weekend so dreaded because of the boredom it brings, came and is passing by. A trip to Chennai cancelled, a plan for Mahabalipuram dropped in mid-air. sunday morning left with newspapers, cut a few of them across bylines, read a few lines in the literary review twice over coffee ( the only thing i made today), invented an idea for an article, lost it after having lost myself in Vanilla Sky...

thought again today why i read books? and then looked up the two paragraphs above this one...

comparative aspect - urban migration

the yearning for the lights and life(style) of a metropolis.

For Mahashewta Devi, it could be the yearning of a civil servant stuck in the tribal land of Palamu for Ranchi.

In Tamil cinema, it could be the idea of Chennai for a rural Tamilian.

In a Chekhov play, the secret desire of a pilgrimage to cities like St.Petersburg.

Ritwik Ghatak's Kolkata sucking refugees into its growing suburbia.

The city of Mumbai portrayed in Indian mainstream and parallel cinema.

The enchantment with the city, the migration to it, the ineluctable love-hate relationship of the dwellers with the city here.

and with it the call of the village , its nostalgia.

two things come out clear even in this muddled putting down of things.

The comparative aspect involved in the idea of a city - the migration of a person based in Palamu to Ranchi and migration of an inhabitant of Ranchi to Mumbai.

Secondly, initiation of this process of migration and resettling has long begun,
looking for greener pastures in concrete land is an age-old phenomenon.

throw their hands into the air in exasperation

It is strange how many people do it, scan a thing, summarize it and reproduce it down. Maybe they put in a something of theirs into it as well. Pollute it and also beautify it in equal measure. Then, another person does it, adds in something of his. When it comes to me, and as I read, see, hear and smell it, I am supposed to think about IT, try to make sense of IT. what an illusion and the absurdity of IT ? - All people throw their hands into the air in exasperation when this thought comes to them....

thus spoke R.

"Saw a cat, remembered a friend of mine who had the same eyes. i did not like him, had a reason then, to not like the cat. Do i make up these reasons for not loving pets? Why can i not relate to them? Have i made an effort? Why am i so concerned only with the human? the 'human' takes up my entire day? am i making that transition from nature to culture? can''t i have both?"
thus spoke R.

men went on dying, women were left pregnant and widowed

something happened to a tribe at a certain point in history, then they were inducted into the big thing, they could not relate to it, they were told - drinking alcohol is bad habit, they were told - wearing animal bones is a bad habit... they were educated.........

they rebelled but were confused, did not know whose side to take, men went on dying, women were left pregnant and widowed

a writer went there and told their story, he had a man and woman falling in love for his story to be read and within it he captured a moment in history, endowed it with the permanence of art

dislodging the utopia

The "blogosphere" is prognosticated to become the "public sphere". bloggers shall leave their petulant and sentimental personal diary reports and start talking about political and judicial issues in and around them. An exchange of views and couter-views will occur. Links will be there, comments will be left posted which will again be counter-commented upon, such is the new evolvment of public sphere and yet there are challanges of rank, inclusivity and accessibility -- issues which help in dislodging the utopia of a perfect ideal of "public sphere" into the too rational too modern now a history.

levi and pakeezah - life sailing in poetry

to read periodic table and see pakezaah, one cannot complain of a dissonance, for both are life sailing in poetry - the former takes us to a life having lived an experience which still resonates in Europe, the other is a sad fable about the vulnerability of dreams, the sad demise of the unbreakable --- levi makes me remember the smells of my chemistry lab, also instructs me about characters, passing on the wisdom that the genius lies in finding the majestic in the trivial, pakeezah raises her fingers towards the sky, my eyes follow, asking me to search destiny in clouds, weather, sun and the moon...

a cultural performance - la sa ra

saw a south-indian classical performer with a French artist dancing together to tunes from both countries, eyes flitting from one to the other sometimes it became difficult to follow both their movements together, as they played and fought one another, waited for their men, envied each other, their reactions varying one found one of the inevitable ways in which cultures coalesce people together, touch them unawares, the fuzzy boundaries of nations, and the beat of the inter-national or rather cross-national, if left to "la sa ra", at times during the performance, it felt god came and touched you

sarat babur golpo

S.C Chatterjee's writings have very powerful woman characters. Chatterjee has his men flitting around from here to there, engaging in a directionless meandering, seeking anchorages in places inhabited by women.The man is a wanderer, in his roaming around, in his journey one finds ambitions, also a mental quest for finding answers to questions, also perhaps a journey to understand, make sense of the mystery and depth of a woman.

"talk to her" it said and he stopped thinking about his loneliness, if not only for tonight

he felt lonely, took out the mobile from his pocket and tried his three friends - 2 males, 1 female -cold statistics. Unable to get to them - some did not connect, others kept ringing - matter of factly, he went for a walk, realized he was tired, felt his sweat and entered a conditioned library, went through a book on a "Subaltern Studies" - to be precise, and then took leave from books to roam a little further, meditated on loneliness - to have remembered, till he saw a tamil family clustered around the verandah, and then thought further about family, till he came to the sea, then he thought about gazing at the sea, singing a few songs to himself, but, there was no space, all around were couples, it was weekend time. He thought about eco-tourism, then finally he did find a place to squeeze himself, started singing, and then got up, then he took a walk back home, and saw a almodovar movie,"talk to her" it said and he stopped thinking about his loneliness, if not only for tonight

objective points through a power point presentation

Creation becomes secondary in an industry where market rules, your creation looses its subjectivity, it is reduced to objective points through a power point presentation and then it is sold as an idea, dissenting voices, voices which still try to listen to their inner voice, are silenced by efficient and smart marketeers, to say it happens in capitalism is another reductionsim

contours of imperatives a novel will try to rise upto

The novel surely engages in interrogating the individual pulse, giving it a form. In making characters reflect on what has occurred, what they have experienced, sometimes a melancholic nostalgia is associated, during other times, important realizations concomitant with a theory also get realized. At other times, contrary to held perceptions or ideologies, events and thought-processes unfold. In a world of changing trends, fashions, and technologies and post prefixed phenomena, characters think whether they are happy to be duped by the advertising market, are they actually duped into consuming, do they feel they are resigned to participate in such a consumption process, or are they happy being part of the consumer lifestyle that gets defined for them by presumably invisible forces? Does “sterility of real actions” in the face of imploding images really bother people or are they actually indifferent to it all?

One tries to chalk out the contours of imperatives a novel will try to rise upto

would also sound like an anachronism

Staying encrusted in a small town in India, reading and then interpreting Baudrillard, his despairing vision of hyper-reality, seems foreign. A distance gets created, and yet a few years of exposure to ICT, the consequent debates regarding AI, Virtual Reality, and Simulation, growing also in an India where both (pre- and post-) industrialization is simultaneously taking place, placing ones’ ideas for a not so quite distant science-fiction in India, would also sound like an anachronism, for don’t cities like Mumbai have potentials of burgeoning Simcities, attaining the status of a “Post-Metropolis”, like Los Angeles or New York, soon, very soon?

setting the goal

The frustration of youth, such a driving force, gives one an ability to fight and be the one (s)he wants

The stubborness of youth, to not hear anything except the call of ego and desires, sometimes also the super-ego, to fantasize the last image and run after it


Negative energy sets the goal for positives to act upon, and when the positives fall flacid, become lazy, they are there to give them a kick in their behind

shaved in the morning, and thought i had it all wrong yesterday

I was happy, I talked of the -isms in life, deconstructing all those thinkers, what was good and bad about them, she listened, all the time thinking me a rut and intoning the hmms...hmms...and she looked at me with her eyes so big, her signature smile conveying to me that i was so splendid and i came back crushed my pillow and thought what lovers would think, after a dream , shaved in the morning, and thought i had it all wrong yesterday because she was not there and that i could play the fool again when she would look at me with those eyes ... confessions of loverlorn lover should perhaps be relegated to a diary or should they not, a pastry filled mills & boons romantic confession can never be a blog entry, blogs are serious business, but the last three sentences make blogs self-critical, each form looks inward at itself...thats an -ism, take a guess...

love, a short process

the look in her eyes, the look in mine as i look at them, the pouting of her lips, her smile, the invisible something in the tone of my voice as i tell her an idea, we comunicate in signs, our misinterpretations, our deliberate misleading of signs --- love, a short process,

life lived between breaks

Mass Media looks for breaks in everyday life, therefore it covers life when events become a breaking news, diligently capturing the spectacle of the fight between a Narayana Murthy and Deve Gowda, it then runs the tape of repeated simulation of the captured spectacle for a few days together, then forgets, looking for some other breaks, at times remembering some spectacular breaks in the form of anniversaries. The shocks through the breaking stories are essential, they come up as stock taking situations after years of neglect but the question comes up - Who will connect the life lived between those breaks? Who will track the mercury of the silent indignation of a local as he sees his old city destroyed by rising prices, traffic jams and rowdy nightlife given vent finally as an outburst including the indifference, vulnerability and failure of the software engineer to see those signs? Can fiction be the answer?

poets do...their words make people cry and fight, remember and forget

Poets are very fond of history because they too are people who cannot forget. So when a dictatorial government comes up with its scriptwriters and tells them to write a certain kind of history for its subjects, two kinds of poets emerge - one poet who writes about the history he cannot forget, the past as he knew it, the names of streets and places that remained imprinted in his memory in a language he remembers, ...the other poet is the poet of the ruler...he writes hymns in the system's praise, he eulogises, he compares the leader with some great historical god of the past, he makes a whole nation forget, spells a charm of collective amnesia over them...what do poets do...through their words they make people cry and fight, remember and forget

antonioni , melancholy and innocence

Antonioni's films have a sense of gravitating poetry about them, the poetry is in the gaze that he offers, the innocence of the medium of cinema, its breaking from the narrative of cause and effect, the new images, new shots, lots of silences, strange characters with their adventurous foibles,their attempts to find desire and satisfaction, their melancholy, their squeamishness, their emptiness among arificial plenitude, the sheer amount of pontification over a decision which at the end is relegated to a mere instinct, and in the end an eclipse, one's hand on another's hair, brushing it , consolation and forgiving, a giving in to making love out of pity or clarity no one knows, a tiring for nothing, the characters feel it, you as a viewer feel it ....the exercise of the spectator and a discerning audience...connecting dots

Others

"oTHERS" , everybody talks about them and still they remain where they are. They are talked about everywhere especially in cinema, literature and art - how far do they possibly help the others...can they?

every entry into this blog must be a question, after all every work of art is also a question, is it?

translation of "lived-experience"

Software engineers are the best subjects to chronicle the times of post-liberalization of India. The story should have a proustian flavor, also something what anthropologists call the translation of "lived experience". The rancounteuring should essentially encompass more of software engineers, rather than about stalwart CEOs.

read kafka, see goddard

When people say that they go to see a film for suspense and get pissed off when they are told about the ending, I wonder why it should have so much bearing on the question of whether to see it or not, the challenge perhaps is to tell a story where you tell the ending right at the start, and yet make everybody watch the story till the end. how to do it -- ??--read kafka, see goddard.....did they do a similar thing in their work --- maybe not....but they are the champions of nothingness...

the gamble of lived experience

can u bet a story with no dramatic moment, no ending , just plain unfolding of life, the gamble of lived experience...

how to begin

tutorials tell u how to begin, a good amount tutoring starts off the affair.