I finally found the description of the girl I have been looking for.
The only qualifications I seek are :
A) She should not be ugly AND
B) She should be a member of the following subsubsubsubsubsubcult (I am becoming ultraultraultraultraultralenient):
{
Cinema lover - She should like at least half of them: Jane bhi do yaaron, Pulp Fiction, Cidade de Deus, Pyasa, Satya, Maqbool, Kill Bill 2, Pan’s Labyrinth, Muhafiz, Ed Wood, Kung Fu Hustle, Amores Perros.
OR
Music Lover: At least one of the following: Should like Pink Floyd, Strong roots in 60’s rock music and The Grunge Movement, Strong interest in Indian Fusion Music especially in Rock, SD Burman fan.
OR
Literature Lover: Should like some of them: Crime and Punishment, Neuromancer, The Catcher in the Rye, The First Circle.
OR
Be a huge fan of Dostoyevsky or Nirmal Verma.
}
I think it’s easier to find a girl this way than by going your caste, sub caste, subsubcaste, subsubsubcaste………(think cult, sub cult, subsubcut, subsubsubcult…)
The only human who satisfies the rigid criteria cited above is Somnath Pal. Thankfully, he is ugly also.
PS: The above is a post intended for totally satirical purposes and has no resemblance to any such list factual or fictional. However, it is true that Somnath Pal is ugly.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Brahma-Muhurta Blues
I want to spend some quality time with myself. "Main aur meri tanhayi"-that kind of solitude. I know it might begin to suck after some time all alone. Haven't I felt only too strongly, the chasm that separates what I want to do from what I end up doing? Or the innate contradiction that plagues every thought that I care to think and every action that I intend to take? But truly, even though I begin losing it when I am alone (hence my automatic, ingrained fear/suspicion of the same), that is probably the best time I have whenever I have it. I can feel truly free and easy then, as I carry along my love-hate relationship with myself.
In fact, given a chance, I'd probably be alone most of the time with the backdrop of human inhabitation serving as an instrument of relaxation/merger into the cacophony/running away from self.
But probably given an actual chance I might blow it all, simply because I love it so much that way.
In fact, given a chance, I'd probably be alone most of the time with the backdrop of human inhabitation serving as an instrument of relaxation/merger into the cacophony/running away from self.
But probably given an actual chance I might blow it all, simply because I love it so much that way.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Against Ayn Rand
This piece is against Ayn Rand as a writer and is based on "The Fountainhead" and the first 130 pages of "Atlas Shrugged".
I will deliberately not talk about her philosophy even though it is highly controversial and its merits, debateable. I do this simply because I don't want to digress and simply want to focus on her artistic skills (or the lack of the same).
There is a huge fan base of hers in NIT S'kal (as elsewhere in South India) and I was therefore partially biased against her even before I read any of her works. This is not new to me as I am intensely suspicious of lit wannabes spouting polysyllabic words/jargon and showering praise upon X. This habit also led me to have a pejorative view of "The Catcher in the Rye" but in this case I realised at first, that it WAS a brilliant book and more slowly, that it was probably one of the greatest ever written. So, simply invoking this tendency of mine as the motivation for this (critical) article will probably not be correct.
The first thing that comes across to a layman average reader like me is that the book seems to be an embittered rant rather than a coherent, well guided chain of thoughts. She scarce feigns sympathy when talking about her bad characters and doesn't spare long winded superlative adjectives for her heroes and heroines.
For her the world is black or white. Mostly black with a tinge of intense, painfully bright white scattered here and there. The Black can't tolerate this and tries to stub out the White ruthlessly. There you have it-the quintessential Randian theme.
Now I am but a stupid kid, but this seems to me to be a very immature way of writing a great novel-great and epic being words routinely used to describe her works. I agree with epic, but great? Nah...(In fact, "The Foutainhead" was introduced to me with the words that meant that the four main characters of the book were four basis vectors, the linear combination of which would form the character of any arbitrary human ever conceived! Talk about tall praise!)
A great novel doesn't despise its characters. It treats them with sympathy, no matter how bad they are. Dostoyevsky wrote about Nihilists and buffoons all his life. In particular, he intensly disliked Nihilists and berated them in 'A Writer's Diary'-his non-fiction (some stories were published in them too. So technically, it's not all non fiction) collection of essays. But one look at the description of a Nihilist in any of his works dispels the notion that he took sides when he wrote. In fact, his description of these people is most moving, giving a rare insight into how much he empathised with them. A good writer doesn't contrive to defame a character. He understands the bad guy's punyness, his helpless evil. That, in my view, is a hallmark of a great novel-not girth of the work.
However if Ayn Rand had decided to write a graphic novel or a comic book, she would have been the greatest exponent of the genre for her characters are black or white, good or bad, superheroes or supervillains. "The Fountainhead" reads like an atrociously fat comic book. The hero fights all his life. He is blessed with superhuman powers that he uses to find his way out of troubles. He doesn't care a fuck about anybody and is supremely good looking and RomanGodesque in his features. And so on and so forth...Howard Roark could as well have been Batman. It would have been the greatest comic book ever written.
Now there is also a personal reason why I cannot stand Rand. She makes me feel like a piece of shit. Not just me but most of humanity. She hates mediocrity, so much so that the reader (if he is aware of his mediocrity, which sadly I am only too well aware of) might want to question his purpose of existence in this world. She is too fiercely opinionated on this topic (as with other topics) to even try to think on what the poor soul who is reading her high and mighty book might be feeling. She has places reserved in her books for Supermen and Superwomen, Supervillains and Supervamps, but not for ordinary folks with their failings and their humble efforts to correct them. She deals in extremes, not means.
GOOD THINGS ABOUT RAND
Not everything is bad about her though. She is brilliant in patches. Too brilliant! Examples can be that paragraph about burning suttas being the manifestations of deep thought in "Atlas Shrugged" and that paragraph in which Peter Keating makes a bad painting and asks Howard Roark if it is any good. They are brilliant pieces of writing that would make any writer proud. Also notable is her use of extremely strong, brilliant, beautiful (read RomanGoddessesque) and intelligent females who are extremely proud and unyielding. I like them!
However, the problem with the works of this hopelessly popular writer would be a lack of feeling a reader will have for the protagonists. They are so fucking sure of themselves that I want to kill them! "Howard, I slept with X", "I know". "When I slept last with you, I didn't tell you I had AIDS. But I guess you knew it", "Yes I did". Yeah whatever! This went on to such extents that I wouldn't have been surprised if Howard Roark had collaborated with Saddam Hussain to blow away the housing complex. A pained grunt would have been my reaction, that's it!
Anyway, enough of Anti Rand rant. Any more of this and I would be accused of plagiarising from Ayn Rand herself.
I will deliberately not talk about her philosophy even though it is highly controversial and its merits, debateable. I do this simply because I don't want to digress and simply want to focus on her artistic skills (or the lack of the same).
There is a huge fan base of hers in NIT S'kal (as elsewhere in South India) and I was therefore partially biased against her even before I read any of her works. This is not new to me as I am intensely suspicious of lit wannabes spouting polysyllabic words/jargon and showering praise upon X. This habit also led me to have a pejorative view of "The Catcher in the Rye" but in this case I realised at first, that it WAS a brilliant book and more slowly, that it was probably one of the greatest ever written. So, simply invoking this tendency of mine as the motivation for this (critical) article will probably not be correct.
The first thing that comes across to a layman average reader like me is that the book seems to be an embittered rant rather than a coherent, well guided chain of thoughts. She scarce feigns sympathy when talking about her bad characters and doesn't spare long winded superlative adjectives for her heroes and heroines.
For her the world is black or white. Mostly black with a tinge of intense, painfully bright white scattered here and there. The Black can't tolerate this and tries to stub out the White ruthlessly. There you have it-the quintessential Randian theme.
Now I am but a stupid kid, but this seems to me to be a very immature way of writing a great novel-great and epic being words routinely used to describe her works. I agree with epic, but great? Nah...(In fact, "The Foutainhead" was introduced to me with the words that meant that the four main characters of the book were four basis vectors, the linear combination of which would form the character of any arbitrary human ever conceived! Talk about tall praise!)
A great novel doesn't despise its characters. It treats them with sympathy, no matter how bad they are. Dostoyevsky wrote about Nihilists and buffoons all his life. In particular, he intensly disliked Nihilists and berated them in 'A Writer's Diary'-his non-fiction (some stories were published in them too. So technically, it's not all non fiction) collection of essays. But one look at the description of a Nihilist in any of his works dispels the notion that he took sides when he wrote. In fact, his description of these people is most moving, giving a rare insight into how much he empathised with them. A good writer doesn't contrive to defame a character. He understands the bad guy's punyness, his helpless evil. That, in my view, is a hallmark of a great novel-not girth of the work.
However if Ayn Rand had decided to write a graphic novel or a comic book, she would have been the greatest exponent of the genre for her characters are black or white, good or bad, superheroes or supervillains. "The Fountainhead" reads like an atrociously fat comic book. The hero fights all his life. He is blessed with superhuman powers that he uses to find his way out of troubles. He doesn't care a fuck about anybody and is supremely good looking and RomanGodesque in his features. And so on and so forth...Howard Roark could as well have been Batman. It would have been the greatest comic book ever written.
Now there is also a personal reason why I cannot stand Rand. She makes me feel like a piece of shit. Not just me but most of humanity. She hates mediocrity, so much so that the reader (if he is aware of his mediocrity, which sadly I am only too well aware of) might want to question his purpose of existence in this world. She is too fiercely opinionated on this topic (as with other topics) to even try to think on what the poor soul who is reading her high and mighty book might be feeling. She has places reserved in her books for Supermen and Superwomen, Supervillains and Supervamps, but not for ordinary folks with their failings and their humble efforts to correct them. She deals in extremes, not means.
GOOD THINGS ABOUT RAND
Not everything is bad about her though. She is brilliant in patches. Too brilliant! Examples can be that paragraph about burning suttas being the manifestations of deep thought in "Atlas Shrugged" and that paragraph in which Peter Keating makes a bad painting and asks Howard Roark if it is any good. They are brilliant pieces of writing that would make any writer proud. Also notable is her use of extremely strong, brilliant, beautiful (read RomanGoddessesque) and intelligent females who are extremely proud and unyielding. I like them!
However, the problem with the works of this hopelessly popular writer would be a lack of feeling a reader will have for the protagonists. They are so fucking sure of themselves that I want to kill them! "Howard, I slept with X", "I know". "When I slept last with you, I didn't tell you I had AIDS. But I guess you knew it", "Yes I did". Yeah whatever! This went on to such extents that I wouldn't have been surprised if Howard Roark had collaborated with Saddam Hussain to blow away the housing complex. A pained grunt would have been my reaction, that's it!
Anyway, enough of Anti Rand rant. Any more of this and I would be accused of plagiarising from Ayn Rand herself.
The Indian-Western Music fusion scene -- Bhayanak Maut??? Not quite
There is a rich, diverse and vibrant fusion that is already rocking the underground music circles. An esoteric mix of the Indian with the western is being experimented with, leading to brilliantly interesting results. Not just that, the Indian bands that play hardcore rock without any overtones of Indian influences are pretty good by themselves (examples being Demonic Resurrection and Zero among others).
Its overly repeated and therefore has become somewhat of a cliche but I repeat it anyway. This kind of experimentation in particular and the fusion of cultures in general, is good, not bad.
This post on Indian rock scene is one of the many that I am planning to write in an attempt to explore the current musical experimentation that is going on in India especially in Bangalore, Mumbai, Kolkata, New Delhi and the North East.
I'll go meet the Dean now. Will come back to write more perhaps.
PS : The "Bhayanak Maut" referred to in the title is an Indian metal band. It kicks ass and has one of the best names you could have for a band! Jai Hind!
Its overly repeated and therefore has become somewhat of a cliche but I repeat it anyway. This kind of experimentation in particular and the fusion of cultures in general, is good, not bad.
This post on Indian rock scene is one of the many that I am planning to write in an attempt to explore the current musical experimentation that is going on in India especially in Bangalore, Mumbai, Kolkata, New Delhi and the North East.
I'll go meet the Dean now. Will come back to write more perhaps.
PS : The "Bhayanak Maut" referred to in the title is an Indian metal band. It kicks ass and has one of the best names you could have for a band! Jai Hind!
Monday, March 12, 2007
Bonus Vacation Post Four Year Vacation
After a four year vacation called Engineering in which I unlearnt everything technical sounding, we get a final post four year vacation bonus vacation for a tad more than three months.
Having realised recently that inspite of my impossibly terrible laziness, I somehow like to travel, I have been making plans of travelling whenever I can find some money to do so. Time has never been a problem since I am basically jobless.
This post vacations bonus vacation will be used by Somnath and I to travel around the mountainous Uttaranchal, Himachal Pradesh and, if things go right, Leh-Ladakh.
This trip is also essential because this will be the first official collaboration between myself and Somnath. The fusion of two creative geniuses has to be set in some picturesque backdrop to ensure respect by the artsy posterity. The collaboration is supposed to be a graphic novel whose hero's tentative sketch is as shown. The artwork chief is Somnath and the story chief is myself. A tentative theme is a post-apocalyptic dystopian science fiction universe (could it have been anything other than this?) but is open to changes and I wouldn't be surprised if by the end the story we get hold of is about Bhakt Prahlad and Santoshi Mata. We're ready to experiment, ready to hypothesise, ready to kick ass.
Having realised recently that inspite of my impossibly terrible laziness, I somehow like to travel, I have been making plans of travelling whenever I can find some money to do so. Time has never been a problem since I am basically jobless.
This post vacations bonus vacation will be used by Somnath and I to travel around the mountainous Uttaranchal, Himachal Pradesh and, if things go right, Leh-Ladakh.
This trip is also essential because this will be the first official collaboration between myself and Somnath. The fusion of two creative geniuses has to be set in some picturesque backdrop to ensure respect by the artsy posterity. The collaboration is supposed to be a graphic novel whose hero's tentative sketch is as shown. The artwork chief is Somnath and the story chief is myself. A tentative theme is a post-apocalyptic dystopian science fiction universe (could it have been anything other than this?) but is open to changes and I wouldn't be surprised if by the end the story we get hold of is about Bhakt Prahlad and Santoshi Mata. We're ready to experiment, ready to hypothesise, ready to kick ass.
Ek Tamanna
That I write a book in which I distill whatever I know about what I have known and experienced. And that at least a hundred people read it before I die.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Things to do when high
1)Read Nirmal Verma,
2)Listen to Dave Matthews Band, Pink Floyd, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Shakti etc,
3)Take 'trippy' random walks,
4)Explore the region between 'empathy' and 'realisation',
5)Kick ass in general.
2)Listen to Dave Matthews Band, Pink Floyd, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Shakti etc,
3)Take 'trippy' random walks,
4)Explore the region between 'empathy' and 'realisation',
5)Kick ass in general.
Books read in vacations and eighth sem
1) Sarjana Path ke Sahyatri - Nirmal Verma
2) Raat ka Reporter - Nirmal Verma
3) Count Zero - William Gibson
4) Monalisa Overdrive - William Gibson
5) Eldest - Christopher Paolini
6) Ravi Paar - Gulzar
7) Luminous - Greg Egan
8) The Eternal Husband and Other Stories - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
9) The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
10) Future Shock - Alvin Toffler
11) Ek Chithda Sukh - Nirmal Verma
12) Freakonomics - Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
13) Next - Michael Crichton
14) Dune -- Frank Herbert
15)Atlas Shrugged -- Ayn Rand
16)Childhood's End -- Arthur C Clarke
2) Raat ka Reporter - Nirmal Verma
3) Count Zero - William Gibson
4) Monalisa Overdrive - William Gibson
5) Eldest - Christopher Paolini
6) Ravi Paar - Gulzar
7) Luminous - Greg Egan
8) The Eternal Husband and Other Stories - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
9) The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
10) Future Shock - Alvin Toffler
11) Ek Chithda Sukh - Nirmal Verma
12) Freakonomics - Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
13) Next - Michael Crichton
14) Dune -- Frank Herbert
15)Atlas Shrugged -- Ayn Rand
16)Childhood's End -- Arthur C Clarke
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
The genre of fantasy
I've always liked fantasy but I have never known that I had liked it so much. I have been casually interested in fairy tales (Chandamama freak) and fantasy and out of the normal stories. But usually I linked it to my generally voracious reading appetite and not to any specific love for the genre as such.
Lord of the Rings somehow made me conscious of this (or should it be Harry Potter 1?). The changes were felt earlier when I went to see this first Harry Potter movie. I had generally a neagative impression of the book just because it had got so popular all of a sudden. But I went to the movie anyway (with Utsav (Tommy), Man and perhaps Sheri, though I don't remember it very well). I kind of liked the movie. Then came the books which I finished as soon as I could. By the time I attended college, I had read all five (or maybe four) books that were out in the market. I wouldn't say I became a huge fan the way some people were, but I loved the books, in particular books 2 and 3. Later instalments looked like a lot of mature, political fundas crammed into an already oversized kid's story which is not bad per se but nothing great either.
In the second semester I read The Lord of the Rings. Having seen the 1st movie before attending college, I had become a semi fan. Needless to say, I was blown over. I read it thrice fully and at one point of time, was trying to write in Elvish and Entish. Then came Eragon (and after a year, The Eldest). I also got to see the work of Tim Burton, Peter Jackson, Terry Gilliam and others. Obviously, I became a huge fan of their works. Tim Burton in particular is probably among the greatest I have seen. Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Batman and Robin, Corpse Bride, Vincent (his early five minute movie), Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (what a great picture) among others. Others random fantasy movies include Mirrormask (random movie), a regular Neil Gaiman scripted dream dominated movie.
But the movie that made me sit back and take notice was El Laberinto Del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth). A masterful movie, it has probably transcended the genre of Fantasy and Realism both. And no, the conventional name of magic realism is something I wouldn't encourage being invoked. It is gritty, brutal, gruesome and fantastic all together. Definitely not for kids, it still keeps intact the innocence that evil cannot imagine.
Lord of the Rings somehow made me conscious of this (or should it be Harry Potter 1?). The changes were felt earlier when I went to see this first Harry Potter movie. I had generally a neagative impression of the book just because it had got so popular all of a sudden. But I went to the movie anyway (with Utsav (Tommy), Man and perhaps Sheri, though I don't remember it very well). I kind of liked the movie. Then came the books which I finished as soon as I could. By the time I attended college, I had read all five (or maybe four) books that were out in the market. I wouldn't say I became a huge fan the way some people were, but I loved the books, in particular books 2 and 3. Later instalments looked like a lot of mature, political fundas crammed into an already oversized kid's story which is not bad per se but nothing great either.
In the second semester I read The Lord of the Rings. Having seen the 1st movie before attending college, I had become a semi fan. Needless to say, I was blown over. I read it thrice fully and at one point of time, was trying to write in Elvish and Entish. Then came Eragon (and after a year, The Eldest). I also got to see the work of Tim Burton, Peter Jackson, Terry Gilliam and others. Obviously, I became a huge fan of their works. Tim Burton in particular is probably among the greatest I have seen. Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Batman and Robin, Corpse Bride, Vincent (his early five minute movie), Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (what a great picture) among others. Others random fantasy movies include Mirrormask (random movie), a regular Neil Gaiman scripted dream dominated movie.
But the movie that made me sit back and take notice was El Laberinto Del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth). A masterful movie, it has probably transcended the genre of Fantasy and Realism both. And no, the conventional name of magic realism is something I wouldn't encourage being invoked. It is gritty, brutal, gruesome and fantastic all together. Definitely not for kids, it still keeps intact the innocence that evil cannot imagine.
Monday, March 05, 2007
The Raghu Dixit Project
This is the band that seems to me is the successor of the well known fusion band "Indian Ocean", now that they have become reasonably successful and have moved over in mainstream music. This also means that Indian Ocean do not need me as a die hard fan anymore willing to take up fights with philistines who did not like it. They have a sufficiently large fan following now and others can do this for them. I have moved over, ever cheering the underdog-this time, The Raghu Dixit Project (I know there isn't a 'The' anywhere in the name of the band but I will not resist the temptation).
This band is intensely melodious and rhythmic-things I personally love. I thought their performance in SAC was supremely brilliant and they seem to be some kind of ultra combination of Phish, Dave Matthews Band and Indian Ocean. Kickass to say the least, these guys come in dhotis and ghunghroos and the eponymous front man dances to the tune of his own brilliant danceable and groovy music. Enormously talented!
This guy has to his credit, a Hindustani Classical rendition of "Cocaine", another Indianised (read 'Classicalised') English song "I still love you" and other equally brilliant numbers. The stuff they pulled in Inci is surely going to be circulated by all junta here wherever they can. The Raghu Dixit Project certainly has the following they deserve in NIT S'kal. I recommend this band to anyone even remotely interested in Fusion or music in general.
Songs to look out for:
1) Gudgudiyo Sedi Na Da (Kandu song about Hookah)
2) Mysore Se Aayi (Dhinchak desi gaana)
3) He Bhagwan
4) I Still Love You
5) In Mumbai, Waiting for a Miracle
6) Har Dhadkan Mein ho Tum
7) Khidki
Log on to their website www.raghudixit.com and listen to them. Now!
El Laberinto Del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth)
This has got to be probably the best movie I have seen in 2006. The only picture that I have not seen and have missed out on is probably "Little Miss Sunshine" that AK keeps bugging me to see. Still, I think I can assert with a fair degree of truthfulness that it should be among the top three movies of 2006.
Roger Ebert says it is a fairy tale for adults. A very fitting one line description. However, it scarce does justice to the great picture that it is. Del Toro has created a veritable masterpiece. Brilliant direction, wonderful performances, tight screenplay and obviously Ivana Baquero as the little Ofelia (what a sweet kid!) make this a truly great picture.
I was once remarking something like this to Pandu: "For some movies/books (or any artform in general) you use the words like 'powerful', 'strong' etc, examples being NEUROMANCER (William Gibson) etc; for others you use words like 'beautiful', 'beautiiifoooooool' etc, examples being SIDEWAYS (Alexander Payne) and the APU TRILOGY (Ray) and yet others for which you use words like 'great' examples being EL LABERINTO DEL FAUNO (Guillermo Del Toro). I do not have either the time or the energy to write a complete review and detail the cinematic triumph that I find this movie to be. This post is supposed to be a brief hosanna from a crazed fan, not an astute cinematic dissection by a critic.
Given that many kids (my wingies say one thousand) auditioned for the role and the filmmakers narrowed down their search to one of them, it was pretty certain that the kid will be kickass. But I wasn't prepared for this. Totally brilliant. This kid seems to have an overbearing presense in the movie, even in scenes where she isn't there. That quiet smile of wonderment, that nuanced "Ola" and gentle grief she exudes in the picture is something Meryl Streep will be proud of. Accept a fan's praise!
Also brilliant is the wonderful role of Captain Vidal. The guy looks evil. Real evil.
It is a must for people of all ages, and also for children, even though the picture seems gruesome at points to say the least. It could be an adult fantasy if you are an imaginative adult (oxymoron?), a (diseased?) kid's brilliant imaginative take on events in War ridden Spain or just plain part fantasy, part arbit Director's cut or whatever you might want it to. But it is truly "What a Picture".
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Things to do on blog
Write about on blog:
1) The Ecological food chain in room 188 final block,
2) Small town movies in Hindi cinema in the recent past: Hasil, Saher, Omkara, Main Meri Patni aur Woh, Iqbal, Dor, Bunty aur Babli,
3) Gulzar on Raaga.com,
4) Shutter -- The horror masterpiece,
5) The anime magnificence Samurai Champloo and Schinichiro Watanabe.
Will this too turn into a list that lies useless at my table every second day? I wish it were not.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
The Defintion of a NewsWagoner (As told by an (ex?) Con)
A good way to describe a(n) (ideal?) Newswagoner is somebody who has been too idealistic once and in anticipation/actual smashing of his ideals (given contact with the real world) has made him disillusioned with the world, thereby turning him into a cynical bastard. His negative energies are then pushed outwards towards the college junta on whom he vents his anger and exposes their miniature intellects. His is nearly always brilliant and likes to exhibit it on a platter. Incredibly conceited and vain, he is one of the most confused entities on earth and resorts to satire to exhale his frustration. He is anonymous and resents and loves it simultaneously-loves it because it provides him solitude as and when it is required (trust me, he requires it often) and hates it because his brilliance wants to be showcased to the world. And yes, most, most importantly, he does have a fucking good sense of humour-a developed sense of humour that is cynical, perverted, caustic, bitter, vitriolic, scathing, satirical and irreverent. Not like the wimps' (read 'Wimps=Those who like pink bunnies') who go to the toilet and cry their hearts out when their name appears in Newswagon. And yes, because his ideals have not still been erased from his head completely, he is either fanatically moral or fanatically immoral, (sometimes at the same time). So he can have very, very high standards from himself-most of them quite ridiculous, considering his track-record.
Books I read in the recent past
6th Sem
1) A Scanner Darkly (SF) -- Philip K Dick
2) Rendezvous with Rama (SF) -- Arthur C Clarke
3) Neuromancer (SF) -- William Gibson
4) Stranger in a Strange Land (SF) -- Robert A Heinlein
5) Demons -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6) Clans of the Alphane Moon (SF) -- Philip K Dick
7) Moon is a Harsh Mistress (SF) -- Robert A Heinlein
8) Notes from Underground -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
9) Man in the High Castle (SF) -- Philip K Dick
10) The Guide -- R K Narayan
11) The Best of Robert Heinlein (SF) -- Robert Heinlein
12) The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (SF) -- Douglas Adams
13) Dostoyevsky - The Mantle of the Prophet -- Joseph Frank
14) The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (SF) -- Douglas Adams
15) Life, the Universe and Everything (SF) -- Douglas Adams
16) Shantaram -- David Gregory Roberts
17) 1984 (Revision) (SF) -- George Orwell
18) The Catcher in the Rye -- J D Salinger
19) The Historian -- Elizabeth Kostova
Chchuttiyon Mein
1) The Story of My Experiments With Truth – Mahatma Gandhi
2) The Adolescent – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3) Sooraj Ka Saatwan Ghoda – Dharmveer Bharti
4) The Foundation Trilogy – Isaac Asimov
5) Minority Report and Other Stories – Philip K Dick
6) Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
7) Har Barish Mein – Nirmal Verma
8) Laal Teen Ki Chchat – Nirmal Verma
9) Pratinidhi Kahaniyan – Nirmal Verma
10) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S Thompson
11) The Double – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
12) Cheeron Pe Chandni – Nirmal Verma
13) Sookha tatha anya Kahaniyan – Nirmal Verma
14) The Ballad of Beta 2 and Empire Star – Samuel R Delany
15) The Wall and other Stories – Jean Paul Sartre
16) The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and other Classic Stories – Philip K Dick
17) Nova – Samuel R Delany
7th Sem
1)A Saucerful of Secrets : A Pink Floyd Odyssey – Nicholas Schaffner
2)Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
3)Doosri Duniya - Nirmal Verma
4)Shekhar:Ek Jeevani (Vol 1) - Agyeya
5)Shekhar:Ek Jeevani (Vol 2) - Agyeya
1) A Scanner Darkly (SF) -- Philip K Dick
2) Rendezvous with Rama (SF) -- Arthur C Clarke
3) Neuromancer (SF) -- William Gibson
4) Stranger in a Strange Land (SF) -- Robert A Heinlein
5) Demons -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6) Clans of the Alphane Moon (SF) -- Philip K Dick
7) Moon is a Harsh Mistress (SF) -- Robert A Heinlein
8) Notes from Underground -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
9) Man in the High Castle (SF) -- Philip K Dick
10) The Guide -- R K Narayan
11) The Best of Robert Heinlein (SF) -- Robert Heinlein
12) The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (SF) -- Douglas Adams
13) Dostoyevsky - The Mantle of the Prophet -- Joseph Frank
14) The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (SF) -- Douglas Adams
15) Life, the Universe and Everything (SF) -- Douglas Adams
16) Shantaram -- David Gregory Roberts
17) 1984 (Revision) (SF) -- George Orwell
18) The Catcher in the Rye -- J D Salinger
19) The Historian -- Elizabeth Kostova
Chchuttiyon Mein
1) The Story of My Experiments With Truth – Mahatma Gandhi
2) The Adolescent – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3) Sooraj Ka Saatwan Ghoda – Dharmveer Bharti
4) The Foundation Trilogy – Isaac Asimov
5) Minority Report and Other Stories – Philip K Dick
6) Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
7) Har Barish Mein – Nirmal Verma
8) Laal Teen Ki Chchat – Nirmal Verma
9) Pratinidhi Kahaniyan – Nirmal Verma
10) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S Thompson
11) The Double – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
12) Cheeron Pe Chandni – Nirmal Verma
13) Sookha tatha anya Kahaniyan – Nirmal Verma
14) The Ballad of Beta 2 and Empire Star – Samuel R Delany
15) The Wall and other Stories – Jean Paul Sartre
16) The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and other Classic Stories – Philip K Dick
17) Nova – Samuel R Delany
7th Sem
1)A Saucerful of Secrets : A Pink Floyd Odyssey – Nicholas Schaffner
2)Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
3)Doosri Duniya - Nirmal Verma
4)Shekhar:Ek Jeevani (Vol 1) - Agyeya
5)Shekhar:Ek Jeevani (Vol 2) - Agyeya
Monday, July 31, 2006
Movie Review : Omkara
Again the team of Gulzar and Vishal Bharadwaj huddle up and produce a masterpiece of sorts. Let's see how many times they've teamed up: 1) Jungle Book (Gulzar: Lyrics; Vishal: Music), 2)Maachis (Gulzar: Direction, Lyrics; Vishal: Music), 3)Makdi (Gulzar: Lyrics; Vishal: Direction, Music), 4)Maqbool (Gulzar: Lyrics; Vishal: Direction, Music), 5)Ishqa-Ishqa (Music Album), (Gulzar: Lyrics; Vishal: Music), 6)Omkara (Gulzar: Lyrics; Vishal: Direction, Music). This is all I recall I mean. There must be more to it. There's got to be more to it.
This is the second part in a trilogy of Shakesperean Tragedies that Vishal is adapting to fit in the Indian context. The third installment of the trilogy will take some time make, he says.
Anybody who has seen Maqbool will realise that it is nearly an unsurmountable task to make a better movie than that. And whoever has seen Omkara will realise that Vishal comes dangerously close to that. Very dangerously close. This post will have a separate section which will compare Maqbool with Omkara because the key to understanding the Director's approach in the latter lies in the former.
First Half of the Movie
The opening of the movie is one of the most brilliant openings you'll see in Hindi cinema. The opening scene shows Saif (more about him in later sections) and the newcomer Himanshu (I think this was the name, but if I am wrong, apologies) and the gun Saif wields throughout the movie (effectively I mean). With the characteristic bawdy rustic Bhojpuri/Hindi/Haryanvi language showcased in this movie, he explains why the marriage procession will not proceed. The movie then goes on to push the viewer into the plunge that the characters take themselves.
The first half is a kind of introduction to the characters and the rural settings that the movie exploits. The recreation of the settings of Uttar Pradesh are brilliantly authentic to say the least. The walk, the talk, posture, the ambience is beautifully rendered in the movie, maybe because Vishal has added personal touches here and there of his own experiences of UP. The movie is wonderfully supported by the cast of actors about whom a lot will be said later.
The bawdy language, the caste politics, the marriage processions, the 'item numbers' etc all of them are deeply rooted in the traditional context that the film manipulates. It is an adaptation in a true sense because only the central idea of Othello is taken-that of slow poisoning due to jealousy-and it is interpreted in a completely indigenous rural Indian context. The fact of Othello being a Moor in Venice is reflected in Omkara being a half Brahmin in a Brahmin dominated factional UP political/underworld scenario. The isomorphism is complete.
The Second Half of the Movie
The key to the second half lies in having seen the second half of Maqbool. One cannot but experience the second half to be exactly, and I mean exactly the same as that of Maqbool. The stylistic techniques (the slow darkening of a scene on a crucial point and then its opening in an indolent way someplace else), the narrative style, the climax-you name it and the chances are that they are the same as those in Maqbool. Some people might call it self plagiarism but I would rather think that it was Vishal's idea of taking his previous movie Maqbool to a larger audience in a more commercial form. However, the influences must be dealt with separately.
Maqbool and Omkara
The name Maqbool is the name of the protagonist in the movie, much in the same way it is in the play by Shakespeare. Similarly the name Omkara is the name of the hero the way it is in the play. Both are tragedies and are supposed to be followed by another Shakespearean tragedy that will form the trilogy that Vishal has wanted to direct since long. Although the star cast of Maqbool is one of the greatest of all times-just have a look: Pankaj Kapur, Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Irfan Khan, Tabu etc, the best possible star line from the commercial world is lined up in Omkara. Ajay Devgan, Naseeruddin Shah, Saif Ali Khan (he has become 'What a man' finally in this movie. He was giving indications of this metamorphosis for a long time), Konkana Sen Sharma, 'Viveik' Oberoi (witness the Ekta Kapoor phenomenon), Kareena Kapoor and Himanshu (what a brilliant debut!).
The stylistic techniques that the director employs in Maqbool can be seen pervading the entire space of Omkara too. The language becomes even coarser, though, in the latter movie, keeping with the spirits of the loactions of rural eastern UP that Vishal focusses on. I know that this sort of language is pretty authentically recreated in the movie because I hail from those regions and have had personally seen such apparently 'uncivlised' language used in day to day conversations by both men and women with a matter of factness that is hard to believe until you've seen it for yourself. The previous movie was set in Mumbai underworld while this one goes into the Hindi heartlands. This can be taken to be another proof of the versatility of the director. Telling stories in a similar fashion in different settings is the hallmark of a truly great artiste and Vishal is proving again and again that he belongs to the 'great' and not just the 'good' or 'very good'.
There is one jarring note in this beautiful melody though. Though the setting is east UP, the language used by everyone has major Hariyanvi influences. This is not true if you actually visit these places in East UP but I think because hardcore Bhojpuri would have been incomprehensible to most audiences, the director took this route to make the language understandable to a larger number of people.
The next section will try to analyse the performance of some of the actors in the movie:
Ajay Devgan:
He has proved himself again and again. And he does this once more. Remarkably restrained and intense at the same time, he is Omkara, the great and the gullible. Brilliant, just like himself.
Saif Ali Khan:
Well, initially to be short, I had planned to write just about him in this blog and through him comment generally about the merit of the movie. So incredible he is in the movie! This however comes as no surprise to me personally at least. He has been showing wonderful promise ever since Dil Chahta Hai and this was but expected sometime or the other.
Saif conjures up images of suave metrosexuality and 'heart-throb ness'. He is the eligible bachelor that everybody thought was good in mushy, romantic comedies etc-in a word movies that I generally hate (unless they are immaculate sublimities like As Good as it Gets). But the yellow toothed, foul mouthed, rustic henchman that grows and colours his little finger red is the farthest from what Saif reminds one of. I personally believe that this role is going down in Indian cinema as one of the best ever. It will rank with roles Bhikhu Mhatre's portrayal by Manoj Bajpai in Satya and Sadashiv Amrapurkar in Ardhsatya. Bravo Saif! You have become 'What a Man'.
Naseeruddin Shah:
I will not insult the reader's intelligence by commenting anything about Naseer. He is firmly established in my personal pantheon and even if he fucks something up (can he really ever fuck anything up? I don't think so), I am so biased in his favour that I will find something great in that too.
"Viveik" Oberoi
If people think Ekta Kapoor has something in her numerological fundas, they might just have something to cheer about. Because Mr 'Viveik' does not fuck this one up. Infact he is what he's supposed to be in this movie:Kesu. Not bad at all. Much better than his previous performances, I'd say.
But just what happened to him. The Chandu of Company definitely has lost his way. He drifted off to 'Home Delivery' and 'Kyun Ho Gaya Na?' and other stuff I don't want to recall. But I sure am glad that he seems to be coming back in form.
Konkana Sen Sharma
Wonderfully rustic-and very east UP type rustic, something that wouldn't have been easy at all. She gives a couple of brilliant scenes especially towards the end when she finally quietens Iago. Brilliantly original! Wah ustad wah!
Kareena Kapoor
She doesn't fuck it up. Maybe because she doesn't get a chance to. But if this is the general trend and not just an odd exception, in her filmography, I am ready to forgive her for things like 'Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum', where acting is something that she even isn't supposed to do.
Bipasha Basu
Not bad at all.
Himanshu
If I am getting his name right (I think I am), then this guy has given a brilliant debut. He is as pathetic as he is supposed to be. Thin, awkward and pathetically funny and unfortunate at the same time, the ostensibly servile yet vengeful lover, Himanshu is able to translate all complex emotions his character feels onto the celluloid wonderfully well. Brilliant!
On a parting note, I must say that I did not expect the censor board of India to have acted as maturely as they did. Congratulations! We finally saw an uncensored, uncut bawdy and ribaldry filled tragedy of epic proportions.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Plans for the Eighth Sem
Since only twenty odd credits are left for me to become an "Engineer" (unfortunately this reminds one of the tech fest and the various other manifestations of the word--like Vitruvian--that abound in n number of contexts in our institute), I kept thinking what is it that I would like to do with the Eighth Sem (which has only Design Thesis which doesn't require classroom interaction). I came across a brilliant plan. I would travel around India, in particular in Benaras, Meghalaya and go work with my guru Shree Kumar in Jaduguda. Plus maybe skip around a bit and attend Inci and Engineer and then skirt off to unknown territories.
And yes, maybe come back to college a couple of weeks before the thesis submission and copy-paste it from somewhere. Really, what a commitment to engineering in general the last statement conveys! But apathy is what I feel, if not outright hostility. Just one sem to go! Just one! Uncharted waters, here I come!
And yes, maybe come back to college a couple of weeks before the thesis submission and copy-paste it from somewhere. Really, what a commitment to engineering in general the last statement conveys! But apathy is what I feel, if not outright hostility. Just one sem to go! Just one! Uncharted waters, here I come!
Sunday, July 09, 2006
NIRMAL VERMA-1
This is to pay homage to one of the greatest writers I have had the honour of reading.
It's too bad that I began reading Nirmal Verma's works just after his death (barring "Ve Din" (English translation called 'Days of Longing')). The possible reasons could be many, ranging from my initial dislike of the modern Hindi writers (of the kind published in leading magazines) because of its affected and pretentious (as I thought then) abstractness, to my father's love for them which, given that I am a purposeless rebel, I was bound to find fault with. Now the only emotion left in here is that of a missed opportunity.
I still haven't finished his major novels like "Raat ka Reporter", "Ek Chcheetda Sukh", "Antim Aranya" etc but his greatness has been firmly imprinted on my mind by simply reading his minor novel "Laal Teen Ki Chchat" (Red Tin Roof). I am not even counting his first and apparently more celebrated "Ve Din" which is needless to say, brilliant. And I am not even considering his short stories that changed the way stories were written in Modern Hindi literature. Discounting the story collection of "Parinde", "Kavve aur Kala Pani" (for which he won the coveted Sahitya Akademi), I am simply submitting that had the writer not done anything but written "Laal Teen ki Chchat", he would have become my lit icon, which though isn't a great thing in iteself still bears testimony to the great talent of the writer.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Yet Again !
There was a dog. Fate threw him a bone. But the dog did not respond (for you see even a gloomy, mangy and insulted dog has his dignity). But the bone was juicy, white and nutritious. And the dog was hungry and malnourished. He waited and made up his mind to gobble it up 'respectfully' at a 'respectable' enough time lag. As soon as the 'respectable' time came the dog got into position to pounce at the bone respectfully (so as to maintain his 'd(o)gnity'). As he was in mid air, thinking about the juicy bone in his hungry mouth, Fate pulled the bone away. Fate laughed a cruel laugh. The non existent vanity and self respect of the dog had been violated again. Fate had achieved its aim.
I am the hungry dog.
Ah, and what is good Phaedrus
And what is not good
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
I am the hungry dog.
Ah, and what is good Phaedrus
And what is not good
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Clogged Blog
What I mean by clogged blog is that though blogging can be a fruitful, interesting, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, experience for some, it turns out to be pretty arbit like most things in the world as far as I am concerned.
Now an interesting question can be that why do things that would seem meaningful to other sensible humans do not seem sensible to some. Example: Taking an eight hour sleep in the night. The answer is that such a minority is formed of the utterly jobless crackpots like me whose head has frontal lobe elongation anomaly syndrome that causes them to laze around for an infinite period of time. In fact, this notion of infinity is so precisely rigorous that George Cantor was initially planning to use this as a definition of infinity. However, as usual, the journals wouldn't accept this as a valid argument citing Chinese Professor Soo Soo's argument regarding the dead chimpanzee's soulmate being the wife of George Cantor as the more rigorous defintion.
Fart Fart Fart Fart Fart...................
Now an interesting question can be that why do things that would seem meaningful to other sensible humans do not seem sensible to some. Example: Taking an eight hour sleep in the night. The answer is that such a minority is formed of the utterly jobless crackpots like me whose head has frontal lobe elongation anomaly syndrome that causes them to laze around for an infinite period of time. In fact, this notion of infinity is so precisely rigorous that George Cantor was initially planning to use this as a definition of infinity. However, as usual, the journals wouldn't accept this as a valid argument citing Chinese Professor Soo Soo's argument regarding the dead chimpanzee's soulmate being the wife of George Cantor as the more rigorous defintion.
Fart Fart Fart Fart Fart...................
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