it should be a blog about J.

If only a journey over three flights can be called an ordeal or better an odyssey. To be six hours late and be greeted by so nice a person as J. , can be a treat of sorts. One comes with zero expectations and finds nice people. The subject of this blog should not be an incessant narcissism about my imaginary travails I guess - there were none (i slept through them ), it should be a blog about J..

J. seems to be a fantastic guy : with so many nice people , J. would still be the pick of the week . Had my best conversation of the week too with him as he told me about how he thought a referee's decision in a football match mirrored the ambiguties in postmodern ideas (as I sat embarrased by the way I negotiated a mustard draped sandwich of which i was making a bad mess - thanks to my timidity). J. has a cute face by any standards, a much cuter mind, has no qualms about being labelled a geek in a good way of course. (his glasses and those intonations which seem to break as he concentrates on a thought before he spells it out add to the effect). Is genuinely curious and finds time to help people inspite of having a tough schedule. He also seems quite intuitive in grasping what the other person is thinking.

J.'s wife T. has a more assured voice, a more matter-of-factly tone. She has a better handwriting. Their cat Senora seems characteristically attentive, is flawlessly soft-pawed and quite un-naturally 'not pampered'.

kafka's idiom - space left for communication

Through the various interpretations of the parable that the priest and K. discuss in the course of ninth chapter (Kafka, Franz – The Trial, Picador, 2001 ) one understands the limitations of words and communication itself as a strategy. Kafka through the insertion of this parable in the story alludes implicitly that there is a passage to Justice, to law, to truth but in the act of taking permission, in this thought that he ought to take permission the countryman finds the doorkeeper ordering him not to. The doorkeeper, the priest stresses, does it because it is his duty and he may not be actually suggesting that but language plays the trick or as this following interpretation from a Kafka scholar elucidates - it is the inefficiency of the language or its ambiguity because each word can be subjected to multiple interpretations, can hold multiple meanings.

“This seeming contradiction, between a door intended solely for one person and that person's inability to use the door, is decided by the prison chaplain as common, to be expected, even natural. According to the chaplain's reading, which is also one of Kafka's readings, a proper passage (e.g., meaningful communication) is always subjected to certain torments of its logic (e.g., polysemia, overdetermination, etc.). On this reading, the law, due to the very fact that it leaves the borders to its logic open, will always drift to a degree. And its borders cannot but be open, at least so long as it is being read.”
(‘Kafka, Language, Pain’ by Colin Koopman, part of the Kafka Project).

The real communication would be a passage which will lead to truth, which will give an understanding of the meaning of one’s existence, one’s purpose, one’s responsibilities, the knowledge systems in life but such a passage or space for communication shrinks on its own account, it suffers from its own inability. As long as K. waits asking for permission, trying to see whether he can get through, he goes on waiting not asking the important questions to himself nor the others he runs into. In his tortuous ruminations also he never ponders over his guilt and as to why the court is not addressing that openly. He does not seem to be bothered about that. He wants to escape it, keep it ensconced somewhere, resisting it, still trying to dabble outside the realm of real understanding and communication.

A short excerpt from my paper, do have a look at Das Schloss's site on Kafka and also the essential Kafka project website.

repetition is seductive - What causes this repetition?

Rajnikant's film opened in Pondicherry in the Ram Cinema Hall, Anna Salai Rd. The last Hindi film which opened in Pondicherry in the same hall was 'KANK' and I was told, before that had come 'Fanah'. For consuming Bollywood stuff, we depend on trips to Chennai and Bangalore. During other times, a compromise follows with personal laptops acting as halls playing the un-original DVDs picked up from roadside sellers of the Sunday evening bazaar.

My Bengali colleague S. who also speaks Tamil cajoled me into coming to see the BOSS film - first day third show. I was interested but apprehensive, not sure how much I will understand it. After work, as we checked out of the ICICI ATM and hailed an auto-rickshaw, discussion with the driver immediately centered on 'Shivaji'.

He said the tickets are running 700 rupees. S. reassured me, he will handle the sellers, we will get the tickets in black cheaper. By the time we had reached the hall, the same driver was of the opinion that tickets are now 300 rupees. We finally got them for 120, only to find out they had no seat numbers printed on them. We were told to take our seats in the passageway. There were many like us seated alongside, grateful to catch the star on the very first day. The air-conditioner was thankfully working.

For a student of film and media studies, it was a lesson on fan culture, on audience reception theory. The film was every bit entertaining. It was both a Rajni as well as a Shankar film. I had last catched up on Shankar's Nayak and found a similarity of structure in the screenplay. Problem 1 is wholly or partly solved with Solution 1 to encounter a transformed problem requiring a different solution . A sequence of such problem-solution series follows...song-dance sequences fascinate as do Rajni's acts...the film proves once again that repetition is seductive

What causes this repetition? - the star says he has a responsibility towards his fans. S.V. Srinivas has through a series of articles taken the facade out of the belief that 'fans are passive - they are controlled, they do not control'. By throwing light on the activities of Fan Associations (FAs) both political and apolitical , Srinivas has partly reversed the case. Fans play perhaps the key role in the star's film turning out the way it does. Their role in the commercial success of the film too is pivotal as through their control of public spaces like halls, cinema toilets, wall graffiti...through their acts of hyperbole, exaggeration and excess they often govern the popular perception of a forthcoming or just released film. So at the end of the day, whose film is it?, is a tricky question...

confront the dream within anxiety

Stressed out he lies, on a bed deep in thought, about nothing

When subjective answers decide one’s choice, the choice being a black or white 'objective', a binary flip flop

The unfairness of the system, the final judgment : A make or break, leaving one with an 'ah' or rather an 'oh' with exclamations

Lying, he keeps lying. What will he do, getting up?

Another day in that place where one looks into a screen, involved in a maddening fetish where
one finds those objects facing each other who just cannot stand each other’s face

He will be late for the bus, He will have to rush through a hurried breakfast, The auto rickshaw would make haste, He will be denied a look at that school girl, at that 9’o’clock rose

Even the summer sunlight has found its way through the curtains so early, Even in its morning softness, glaring at you, as you wake up

Living that shipwrecked dream, The dream to start all dreams, The dream to end all dreams
Still unfulfilled, uncertain the dream

The dream which causes the anxiety, The dream infected by pathogenic schizophrenic anxiety
a part of you - this anxiety, it came , stuck and stayed creating an anthill, a spider's web, a viral network

A whole new day that dream and that anxiety, eating and filling the time in the mind, within and between its perspiration, broccoli food, scampering feet watching out for the dog poodle, the noise of wordy people car horns, and dizzying bikes

goes to bed again, hearing a lullaby on a Windows Media Player to confront the dream within anxiety and the anxiety within dream yet again

the story of his false starts and promises

----

he has little intuition for birds

leave alone the butterflies

is blind to a cat’s stealth

and the sad look in a dog’s eyes

---

he is an interior person

opens the door of his house

only on steamy summer evenings

for the breeze from the sea to waft in

---

ever since he has taken up

this broadband connection

he has left the idiot box

and watches only buffered news

---

he is an unapologetic bachelor

with a lot of false starts and promises

goes for lonely walks and writes poetry

imitating bukowski without a typewriter

---

reading the Myth of Sisyphus

he asks himself an existential question

why does he not contemplate suicide

living a nothing life as he is

---

he dreams up a reason that

he wants to marry one day and

he wants to tell his daughter someday

the story of his false starts and promises

----

For Charles Bukowski

they have smelled nothing, felt everything

A town with no cloud cover in the night

The breeze blowing in streets perpendicular to the sea

Sweeping ladies with their Jhadus making swishes

accompanying the barking of dogs

An old man finds himself being looked at

by me as he raises his dhoti to do ablutions

Among cobbled stones as I walk past a French boulevard

I feel the color of crayon yellow on the buildings, I smell urine

I look at a couple seated on a bench,

sitting, it seems for a long time

All by themselves,

shadow of her fingers on his forehead

touching the Vibhuti, my imagination

eclipsed by her withered jasmine caressed plait

they have smelled nothing, felt everything

taking stock

a guilty walk-through of some books read in the last four months or so, assuming time as space

Characters invariably confer, and ask existential questions

Lem’s science fiction writing as also Huxley’s, is essentially a novel of ideas. To create an imagined futuristic situation of an extreme kind, and then let characters introspect. Having come to see the whole world and outside, the characters search themselves within themselves. Characters invariably confer, and ask existential questions (with others and within themselves). Sometimes these questions strike as moral questions thrown at events propelled by desired freedoms. But different science fictions become popular too if not survive which appeal to those popular myths of outsider, nationalism, anticipated fears….

Truffaut character in Kanchipuram and education

Francois Truffaut gave his vote of interest for ‘people behind ideas’ rather than ‘ideas in themselves’.

People matter more than ideas. The debate could go on and on, rankling few, obsessing others.

Ordinary people matter – they do, they do not do?? Another ‘point of no consequence’ debate but delights from an observation by ordinary people could be extraordinary.

One keeps coming across them and falling back on the last part of the statement, somewhat an aphorism now.

SA. came across this flower-seller in Kanchipuram. She addressed him in Tamil inquiring about whether he would be having some flowers.
SA. said “Tamil Ille”.
She started speaking in broken but sound English about her aspirations for her two children – one needs to go on to be IPS , the other should become an IAS.
Ostensibly intrigued, SA. probed further to find she was a 12th standard pass and had been married for a long time. She regretted not having studied further and therefore wanted her sons to have the very best of education.
When she asked SA. “What about you, married or not?”
He replied rather coyly ‘No girl for me so far’.

She chuckled and said “Human Beings are married to the world”. A Truffaut fan would like to have a character like her in his future films. The other striking factor is the value of education and service cutting across economic disparities in an Indian individual’s mind. Maybe, one gets pointers about interrogating the questions of status and service also.

P.S.: Picture and story courtesy SA., who btw is an aesthetically intuitive photographer. Do contemplate his silent musical compositions on http://www.flickr.com/photos/visio.

it is arational..not irrational...but arational

What is poetry which does not save
Nations or people?
A connivance with official lies,
A song of drunkards whose throats will be cut in a moment,
Readings for sophomore girls.
That I wanted good poetry without knowing it,
That I discovered, late, its salutary aim,
In this and only this I find salvation

Czeslaw Milosz, lines from dedication

heres S. arguing with me that east european poetry might have its own individual characteristics but reading the poems from that region you feel as you feel while reading any other good poem...a quivering of sorts...he then turned to talk a little about czeslaw milosz as an exemplar

"sample this..i think milosz is good...his writings have that incisive quality...his prose especially....reading captive mind was like reading a textbook of logic..his talking about things in that manner..and then you approach his poetry..he no longer operates within the confines of logic..it is arational..not irrational...but arational....not bound by reason that can be located in space and time..in the way the most beautiful things are...no longer burdened by the signs and the symbolisms..it acquires a universal character...that is no longer east european..or post world war 2.. or communist-era..in fact it is outside history...totally untouched by the vagaries of history..yet it can not be anything but a product of his personal history..that is what makes it all the more fascinating..

but in the end..milosz is good.." (S. in a conversation with me, 2007)

fragments of stucco works, pavilions, arches supported on columns communicating with us

Certainly not one of the pictures which could do justice to Thirumalai Nayak Palace. We look for information boards and knowledgeable visitors to garner information - the palace was divided into two major parts, namely Swargavilasa and Rangavilasa. We try to make out the royal residence, the theater, shrine, royal bandstand, quarters, palanquin place - my sister remarks one of the songs from the film 'Guru' was shot here. She is ready to step into a dance when I have an urge to find out where the king would watch dance performances., hear musical evenings and literary discourses. Is it the same place where today people come to watch evening dance programs - maybe not. An interior palace museum opens up and I feel it is a more befitting place for the same. It was also a place where the wives lived with concubines - or did they not?

One cannot but think more about those individual construction workers who built it. More than the king, more than the architect he employed for the purpose. That during those days they shifted palaces My mother gives me snippets of vital information as we ruminate on them immersed in the palace - its fragments of stucco works, pavilions, arches supported on columns communicating with us - The harem and the queen's place has gone. The grandson of the king Thirumalai Nayak, Chokkanatha Nayak broke down the palace and took materials for building another palace in Tiruchirapalli.

I start remembering lines from Marquez's "the autumn of the patriarch" and again note india might have a different magic reality to present.

capture the fact that CMBT bus stand was ISO certified

Somebody recently told me he looked like Ajay Devgan. I said to her he was more of an Irfan Khan - equally intense but more handsome. ( all this when he grows a beard over this picture) . This is in Chennai's local train, we are on our way to City Center Mall , Mylapore near Marina Beach. After too many days of calm and sea in Pondicherry, one likes a day of seeing the city fare of multiplexes and shopping malls. Saw a forgettable movie that day and brought home a brilliantly absurd play by Ionesco. Landmark is turning out to be the best place for finding fictional treasures. To top it all, we had a lovely biryani in the evening and were caught by a policeman trying to capture the fact that CMBT bus stand was ISO certified.

they say 'money'....'money' ...'money'

Somebody told me - he could look at this picture and keep looking at it. Dhanushkoti for me was a place one could keep walking, on sand, straining to look at the sea on both sides amidst an old church, an old temple, some hamlets all in ruins. a whole village lived ( no thrived) we are told by the guide till 1964 - a cyclone came. My father tries to find his own people in the historical imprints of this place pointing to a narrow gauge railway track, barely visible covered by sand. He tells me grandfather came here on a train...I wander, hopping broken windows, wiping sand from my fingers as i support myself on rocks to come to smiling children engaged in a game. I take out the camera for a pic. they laugh, i think of taking another pic, end up taking three more, they pose for me in wrestling positions, they are in a battle in the next, and peep through a tyre for the third, when I am about to leave, they say 'money'....'money' ...'money'

sent us mesmerized and maybe rocking as well

After a month or so, a time to look back at some musical experiences.

Four weeks back on a weekend like this, a Sushila Raman concert at Dunes. A different world of black magic rendered not only in the richness of Tamil Voodo music but the symbolically rich attire of singers and accompanying musicians so central in creating the effect. A trip to Mumbai last week made it impossible to attend her next one at the Dunes, this one again bringing a fusion of sorts with Baul singers.

Three weeks back was Freedom Jam. A treat to watch if you are in Pondicherry. On the beach road five concerts happening together. A south indian violin jamming with western guitar, a Rajasthani musical cum folk play, American country music with a guitar and mandolin, a bangalore band desperately trying to get a 'Doors' song right. We finally settled for a French rock band. A French rock band looked like any other rock band except for the brilliance of a pipe instrument player. He played the flute, clarinet, horn, basson and what not that day and sent us mesmerized and maybe rocking as well.

regurgitated thoughts, or just impulses

Two cities in one – the cliché of a statement about Mumbai

You gape, what stops them from running with their crockery as weapons

From the adjoining slums to those concrete structures, the buildings

Banging the air-conditioned people out and taking their money away

What stops them –

Civilization, honesty, integrity, humanity…

Politicians, Media, NGO, Police, State

Du Mont, Gramsci, Gandhi…

Maybe “Absence of Realization that they can do it”

People who call them out to do it, their intentions

Such interrogation of intentions ends up in a confession

Solving the personal problem through political means

Sad, Sad, Sad, Sad…

Revolution, Mediation, compromise…regurgitated thoughts, or just impulses…

I could only tell about them, their problems

Wrapping up our field studies

We met her, almost by chance

Somebody said, she cooked for flood victims

It’s a walkable distance, another suggested

A Sunday afternoon,

Third Day of

Heat and Pollution in Mumbai

We crossed a garbage pool

And then came drains choked by plastics

Undulating pathways, cesspools greeted us

We negotiated them, also an oath from an elder ragpicker

We came to her settlement made on earth

Separated from a similar settlement by plastic, polythene and tarpaulin sheets

A lotus in bloom she was

Arms folded

She smiled

She offered us water

She told us to mind the ceiling fan

‘It is low, you might have an accident’, she said

‘Tell us a bit about yourself’

I am Lakshmi Mote

I do not believe in Hindu-Muslim divide

I am a Muslim married to a Hindu

Of my two children, one has a Hindu name, the other a Muslim one

My basti people are a smart lot, they also do not believe in such divides

We are poor, we cannot afford it

We do not have cards but does that mean we do not have a right to live

‘How she cooked food,’ we asked, ‘during those hard times’

As cooking always is

We got clean water, We got firewood, We borrowed cylinders

We got money, We got the vegetables, We cut them and We boiled rice, We had food

Somebody asked ‘any new design or technology solution

That might have helped you then’

She is pensive for a minute

Somebody else says 'our unity is enough'

She replies

People said we could put some things underground

Flood will come and go,

The things will remain; they will not be washed away

As she cooks tea for us,

Somebody tells her to narrate to us her WSF experience

She smiles, and then sighs

I notice the golden ring on her ear lobe and on her nose

She says

I went to Nairobi to tell them about us, our problems

Seeing the condition there,

I could only tell about them, their problems

Communication problems

I would argue that Priyadarshan has relentlessly brought out and addressed the problem of communication in our society. This problem of mis-communication or a lack of communication happens due to different reasons. In the latest ‘Bhagam Bhag’ the small mis-interpretation of ‘heroin’ for ‘heroine’ (due to a trick of hearing and the incomprehension of a ‘Dehati’ played by Govinda for the word ‘heroin’) leads two innocent guys into a mad world of deception and merry-go-around chase. In ‘Malamal Weekly’ greed and fear involving intertwined ‘murder and lottery prize’ become the reason for people ‘to lie’ and then ‘lie over a lie’ and so all three – ‘greed, fear and lies’ multiply and proliferate. It is the same fear which leads Paresh Rawal’s character in 'Hulchul' to go on lying in a comedy-of-errors manner to hide the fact that he is married.

Characters in his films speak a lot; they seem deeply perturbed, talking very little sense and giving vent to their frustration. Also, they are very bad listeners. Priyadarshan brings out the absurdity of over-communication as a lack of communication brilliantly. Rajpal Yadav playing Bandya is a luckless servant bound to Gundya (Paresh Rawal), an equally luckless master in ‘Chup Chup Ke’. He seems to be complaining all the time about his condition and ends up worsening it. Through all his garrulous talks, he only invites further wrath from the family of Prabhat Singh Chauhan (played by Om Puri) and their servants, the silent Jeetu (Shahid Kapoor) however gets away. Bandya’s dilemma is that nobody is prepared to listen to him, he just cannot communicate his suspicion about Jeetu or his observations about him, and he gets mixed up.

In Priyadarshan’s films, the supporting cast is important because through them he creates a world of total chaos. Films like, ‘Chup Chup Ke’, ‘Malamal Weekly’ are undoubtedly inspired form other flicks but they also show a director who has an eye for an ironically grotesque world - a world where people are driven by the weight of such compulsions that mis-communication becomes inevitable – a son thinks that by killing himself his father can use the money from his life insurance and pay off his debts, a poor person earning a rupee a day suddenly sees the possibilities of one crore rupees and ostensibly looses his head.

His side-kicks recall parodists like clowns in circus or cross-talk comedians in a music hall, and by showing the fact that they always keep getting kicked, Priyadarshan also symbolically poses the problem of the ‘Others’. The hero’s friend ironically named ‘Lucky’ played by Arshad Warsi in ‘Hulchul’, an incredulous guy who with great commitment helps his friend in carrying out pranks, always bears the brunt of people while mistakes are done by somebody else, many a times notably by the hero himself. The character of Gullu executed yet again by Rajpal Yadav has the same story to tell. An Indian taxi-driver in U.K., Gullu wants to help Indian guests coming to London but ends up getting cursed and beaten again and again.

Ivan Klima - Moments when love pops out unexpectedly

Chekov's short stories have travelled continents, inspired writers speaking, thinking , dreaming and writing in different languages. If the Chinese writer Gao Xingjian takes a leaf of minimalism from him, another genius, the Czech writer Ivan Klima is equally sparse and equally concerned about the brilliance dimly perceptible in banality.

He has a strategy in those collection of short stories "Lovers for a Day". When the two lovers fall in love, they seem so unlikely a match and their falling for each other happens in such uncertain circumstances, and yet, they do, then love flies away as quickly as it had come. Some compromise and stay, others get up from the bedside, leave the dim room and are gone into their early lives, there is a compromise here too. Through all this Klima gives hope too, a slight one.

He seems to be the asking the question - "Why do we talk about love all the time, when do we start talking about it, can it be the point where it has ended, can there be sympathy between two people after love between them has gone, can there be love-filled moments when we take calculated risks and then discover them to be blunders"

Elegant and he does not write even an extra irrelevant alphabet. Much less political than his earlier published novels, a lovely read.

biting sadness and happiness engulf you at the same time

It is surprising how I forget she has an impairment of sorts. It has been thirteen years since she got hurt and it stuck to her. We were shocked , traumatized and dismayed, then slowly with time, it left us for most of the time, revealed itself to us only in moments. During these times, I have been jealous, loving, condescending, arrogant and tender towards her. How should I react to her impairment?, has been a question I have asked myself. "Normalize Things" is what people say. Recently she has come to terms with her impairment and when she tells it very matter-of-factly, I miss a beat each time. I feel very proud of her then. When she told me recently, she has had it verified from the doctor that she has no vision in one eye and then asked me how does she look today draped in madurai silk, I told beautiful and she said the greatest moments in life are those when both biting sadness and happiness engulf you at the same time. I could only say yes -- sibling affection as we paired together to cross the traffic and have Biryani.

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".