Alma Speaks...

Its the closing monologue by 'Alma' in Bergman's Hour of the Wolf. Its simple and sensitive. I really liked it. Here she directly talks to the audience and asks some questions.

Well, there is one thing I've wondered. Are you in a hurry...? I'd like to ask you something. Its like this. Isn't it true that when a woman has lived a long time with a man, isn't it true she finally becomes like that man ? Since she loves him and tries to think like him and see like him. They say that it can change a person. Was that's why I began to see those ghosts? or were they there anyway? I mean, if I'd loved him less and not bothered about everything there around him... could I have protected him better then ? or was it that I didn't love him enough that made me so jealous ? Was that why those 'cannibal' as he called them... was that why we came to such a grief ? I thought I was so close to him. Sometimes he said he was also close to me. One time he said it with certainty. If only I could have followed him, all the time. There is so much to keep pondering.. so many questions, sometimes I don't know which way is which, and I get completely....

A Day Dream

Last weekend I went to Bombay. There were usual beer and bakar sessions. It was sometime back that I did something, which I wanted to repeat with almost similar, if not enhanced effect. For this to duplicate, it required, above all, some friends that make my definition of drinking. Without them its not worth to get drunk or even to pose like one. For this we went to Bombay, seems stupid, but it is not so in the mildest sense. The effort is worth the hardship we faced to reach Bombay, we are inflicted with Bollywood cheapos in the bus, that too back to back, we cannot even listen to the music we carried in our iPods and Walkies. After getting to Bombay, first thing was not to waste another minute as sun started glowing and to stuff our stomachs with something heavy enough to gratify our mind that we are not hungry anymore and light enough to leave room for forthcoming rushes of chills. Once we prepared ourselves, all breathed deeply and saw the world around us, as it will not be the same.

Drinking is a pleasure as we cannot afford to do it daily. Over it, when ever we arrange these drinking session, they are all at night and we tend to amalgamate them with loud music, insensitive talks and some pelvic movements. So this effect of highness and aloneness is created out of a mixed effect, the core isn't neat, to mix it with all this, deeply undervalues the mystic powers of alcohol, and that hurts. Therefore the smart ones invented the refined art of drinking under sun and making hay. But drinking at day is an act of perseverance and for that you need a reliable and like-minded company and the sole goal of getting drunk. With no other distraction, day-light-drinking robs you of your senses slowly so that any honest drinker will not even find it out to resist . All this starts with very normal talks like what I did in my University and who is a bigger asshole, Salman or Shahrukh or where to invest in share market, and moves to more interesting topics like why we still don't have a girlfriend and I don't like my job and there is same shit everywhere and the more matured like when are you planning to get married. The rise is so deceptive that you will miss the very point that you are getting drunk.

To be drunk at afternoon is a amazing feeling, there is no worry as you can get fit for a second dip at night too. Those who haven't tried it, hurry up, take one afternoon off, get drunk, office seems like perforated enclosure and you can flatter out as a wordless humming bird. There are more benefits of drinking during day. One that comes fast to my mind is that there are no hangovers of such orgies. Other pleasure include watching sun through almost-closed eyes. Not only sun, but anything high, looks higher, when you are high. This is the best time to be with friends as nobody bothers a drunkard. Actually the best part is nothing knows exactly that others are drunk, although they all have dim perceptions but not too strong to confirm this in public. On the other hand its the worst part to be the only one in fake-senses, when every one is enjoying the lightness of heart and mind, then you tend to take the role of an over-caring mother or a over-whining girl-friend/wife, both needs to checked at any cost. Drinking at night does give us the arms of sleep in loud music but day light doesn't offer any such respite to abase or cut the highs and lows of an influenced man. A man should be allowed to take pleasure of his deeds, good or bad, that's inconsequential.

The effect of alcohol is slightly reduced by the cacophony of day and brightness of air but you hopefully wait for a good dusk of good booze. Once you get the twilight of day and night, it just reflects your state, seems to resonate with nature. This is the moment we fantasized while boarding the bus to Bombay, a perfect blend of nature with us. Such moments are rare, should be preserved in memory like a youthful rose or like lush green leaves of monsoon trees, very fresh, very lively, should be handled with care, with respect, with deep sense of pleasure of living.

Dream of being, trickling life !

Beautiful Dialogue from Bergman's Persona:

I understand, all right. The hopeless dream of being--not seeming, but being. At every waking moment, alert. The gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone. The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace. Suicide? No, too vulgar. But you can refuse to move, refuse to talk, so that you don't have to lie. You can shut yourself in. Then you needn't play any parts or make wrong gestures. Or so you thought. But reality is diabolical. Your hiding place isn't watertight. Life trickles in from the outside, and you're forced to react. No one asks if it is true or false, if you're genuine or just a sham. Such things matter only in the theatre, and hardly there either. I understand why you don't speak, why you don't move, why you've created a part for yourself out of apathy. I understand. I admire. You should go on with this part until it is played out, until it loses interest for you. Then you can leave it, just as you've left your other parts one by one.

Persona

There are times when I want to write about a movie and feel deterred by very thought of it. Needless to say that the movie in question was an intense experience but apart from it, its an experience which I am not able to understand in entirety, and there lies a certain beauty in all this obtuseness of the art. This film is true art in that sense, you can get lot of things out of this movie, every time you expose yourself to it, sometimes you feel bare-all feeling after seeing it and the other times the fear of claustrophobia, a very personal intensity is what Persona delivers.

Bergman's films are not about plot or external details. They revolve round characters, or more so around the close-ups of their faces, the faces that are dissected thread by thread, till they they show all their hidden fears, all the ugliness, all the obscure beauty. Every contour is traversed, and every line of the face is read over and over again. Camera stops at the face, almost gets trapped in the eye-contact and shamelessly undresses it.

The plot details are rather simple. A distressed actress, Elisabet (Liv Ullman), who has inexplicably stopped communicating, comes to a hospital and a nurse named Alma (Bibi Anderson) is assigned to her. On the advice of hospital psychiatrist, they both move to a remote and tranquil seaside cottage. While taking care of and helping the patient, Alma tries to open up with her, telling her some secret and strange stories but finds that the actress' persona is meddling with her own and revolts to this intrusion or rather imprisonment. So with this story that seems more a tale of identity crisis, what Bergman actually want to say or more precisely what we are supposed to infer. Some pondering on this takes us into the two main characters, their persona, an intriguing minimalist character study and study of their imbuing.

To understand this, we can look into like this. Sometimes when we watch a movie or read a novel, we get involved with the characters and almost experience their pain or pleasure. Their Persona takes hold of us. Like wise in a dream, we transpose to someone else, something imaginary but really ourselves, find ourselves in some odd situation and want to get out it. The real self want to get out of something imaginary. Persona also starts with dreams like images and the images which say, Hey its a movie, beware!

If we just extrapolate it to come to real life, Persona shows the horrors of opening up, the fear of being emotionally naked in front of someone and probably give the other person an opportunity to point at the our dark secrets. Fear of losing ourselves to some stranger and probably the expectation of same warmth and frankness from the other side. Persona also hints at the malleable nature of human personality, the illusion of existence and the film image itself.

Persona works on a rather visceral level, to rationalize it will not result in anything substantial and tangible. The increasing focus on images and less on dialogues, as the movie progresses, do suggest about the ethereal elements of the movie. Those who want to 'understand' the movie may dismiss Persona as Bergman himself never gives his images any clear end, they are left as unfinished portraits or rather slightly blurred ones, giving us no definite lines to walk on, which may seem strange or distracting at times. Therefore Persona demands repeated viewing which it deserves and duly rewards too.

Persona has some almost perfect sequences, the one where Elisabet and Alma sit next to each other and the same story is told two times, once with Elisabet's face in frame and other with Alma's, and you see the purpose and the mastery of the scene at the same time. The second scene is the famous 'over-lapping merger' scene. Its horrifyingly complex. And the one where Alma tells the story about the boys on the beach. Liv Ullman has done a great pantomime without a single dialogue and not much action. Bibi Andersson is equally good who may look a well-balanced woman from the exteriors but has fears and secrets embedded inside just like Elisabet has.

I will not say its the best of Bergman, as I liked Winter light, Wild Strawberries and Cries and Whispers better than this, but I will say its most poetic work of the few I have seen and works with a dreamlike surrealism, a visceral flow of complex images and emotions which are at times not meant to understand but to experience.

Love-2

It was summer. Everything good and bad is out, people sense you, you sense them, there are contacts, senses are at all time best, mind behave erratic, heat gets us out of us like sweat, people can 'see' us, smell us, almost taste us, all human senses are put to good use. They celebrate their existence. He was just another human being, a homosapiens evolved to feel like this yet trained not to show it, but good summer is a great leveler, its brings out the best in you. With all his senses hyperactive, in this frenzy of sweet chaos, he happily submitted to fantasize heat to warmth, touches to closeness, eye contacts to longings. Climate acts as catalyst in love reactions.

He saw in her eyes and almost calculated the state of her heart. He tried to be static and rational, but golden rays of sun donot spare anyone. She looked like a goddess, a graceful golden goddess, those big eyes longing for him, its road to moonlit alleys. The spell is all over. Nature has done its homework, and it has ages of relevant experience too. What he can do is happily fall for the trap, smile at his stupidity, wonder at her gazes, see everything tainted red and green.

There are doubts, big self-doubts, he is not afraid of the moment, but of moments to come. He almost thought years ahead, months passed by, but the moment stayed. He thought of all the mushy things he had come across, and thought of the feeling which his friends talked about with bright eyes but he never felt, he sensed the smell of uplifting happiness, he was happy because he didn't cared for anything, the moment he was trapped was too sweet to leave for anything but her.

His face glowed red as a new born child and he searched for love inside, its a oscillating feeling of strength and loss, and the state of mind had never been better, it stopped working, something inside his chest is thumping heavily to take control of him and he of her and she of herself, all messed up so beautifully in love, all erratic in perfect sense, all so brilliantly sparky and all too stupidly senseless. Probably, he was expecting all this, but in a very different way. Imagination is seldom perfect, like reality. Senses numbed and intensified themselves as the moments desired, all is so systematic, probably God took care of the affairs.

Love-1

She ran like a child. She smelt him. She ran as if a child finds her mother in darkness, touches her and feels warmth of comforting love instantly, love that is waiting for her in every gloomy corner. She ran in the spark of light, in light of finding him. She touched him and felt something she could only explain. It was not darkness of night, it was the darkness of crowd that makes us see hazily and lets us loose the contacts. This darkness blinds us to love.

The corners of heart may still be unlighted by love but she knew for sure that it exists, it must exist deep inside, this faith in the surety of existence is what draw her closer to him. She could even smell the same feelings in him, at least she thought so. Something resonated, she thought she even heard it.

Love may not be rational or logical and it is great not to be so. She again felt the same stroke of pleasure just by touching him, almost a tremor. This happened again, yet again and probably these tremors kept her going. Love must be some electricity or quake but she never realized it. She never thought that this running may be just another run-of-the-mill thing. She sure was in love.

On Life Lived

The Summer of Love may find itself too dry ,
The Winters and Springs either aint too great.
The Seasons of love will all be the same ,
Probably its love's only trait.

The haze-maze of life seems too difficult to follow,
The regularities of life are just same to endure.
The Lust for life is blood for we-vampires ,
The surety of death is the only cure.

The Elixir of life, the pleasure of pain ,
The Touch of Truth, the deep flights onto highs.
The misery of existence and the triumphs of spirit ,
All engraved in our experiences, rest all dies.

Summer Trip

This visit to home will be unique because I didn't go home but went lots of places where I felt home at. I almost thought of staying there at times but as always a bit of rational thinking ruled out the entire idea. I also thought that if I want to write anything substantial I need to be at any of these places to do so but again rational thinking spoiled the romance.

In short I went to two places, Hill and Desert. If it had been a movie by Antonioni, he must have used them as a backdrops for my mental picture but life is no movie, it is far more bland. First, I went to a place called Naahan (HP), near Chandigarh (Haryana/Punjab). It is the occasion of marriage of two of my friends, Divya and Chaitanya, and I attended a marriage after a long time. And I need to tell people that I am not a Telugu but a north Indian, don't know it is compliment or otherwise. I was seeing 'real' hills after a long time and I sort of traveled back to my fun-loving self till I found out an autobiography by Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo. I really found it intriguing. All the external peace went away and I again turned to the something internal. I was not able to complete it but is surely in the hit list. Apart for this I went for trekking to a fort in Naahan; it was really a nice experience as we (I and my friend Kiran) took the most adventurous route through the hills and risked our life at least twice. Risking life is a fantastic experience when seen in perspective. After we came from the trek, I and Kiran were talking and we found out the biggest fear we both had while doing this adventure, the fear that what will we tell back at Naahan, if the other person dies. It's a quite profound finding that we care at the time of risk too.

The next destination was Bahal where my sister lives; it is small place near Bhiwani (Haryana). It's near Rajasthan and looks like a desert. It's a difficult destination. From Naahan, I went to Shahabad, Shahabad to Panipat, Panipat to Rohtak, Rohtak to Bhiwaani, and Bhiwani to Bahal, took almost 10 hrs of journey by bus to reach there and this experience was compounded by the youthful sun of north. When I met my sister, there were long rounds of stupid discussions, and we told all sort of told and untold trivia to each other, as usual. I stayed in Bahal for 3 days. My sisters' house had a small balcony where I wrote this post, there were some 2 peacocks dancing and cheering me up. I again thought that this is the place you can write freely and nature can entertain you at times.

Going to home and coming back to work seems to give a good perspective on what crap you do and what crap other do. I usually don't like this idea of change (from Hyderabad to Home and back) but once I do it, I really like to think about it in several different ways and try to draw some more knowledge about how am I changing!

Classic Crap

People say I have stopped appreciating good movies and that's what happened when I declared the oft-celebrated prison drama 'The Shawshank Redemption' a classic crap. I may have walked out of the theater but I was not watching it on DVD, I registered my protest by yawning every now and then.

Now the question may be why I hated it but the more interesting question is why everyone (well almost) like it. There are many theories. Lets go one by one:

SOLUTION 1: If you like one man army destroying hundreds of men, you will like it.

SOLUTION 2: If you like the concept of hope in its most cliched form, you will endear it.

SOLUTION 3: If you have ever liked a movie where a woman is raped and she takes revenge, you are going to enjoy it fully.

SOLUTION 4: If you like zero-sum games, bad must be punished and the good must prevail at any cost, you will appreciate it.

SOLUTION 5: If you are strongly religious and believe in Jesus Philosophy, you will revere it.

SOLUTION 6: If you haven't seen wide range of cinematic art, you will fall for its mediocrity.

SOLUTION 7: If you like whatever others like, you will have to like it anyway.

It may look I am going too far to detest this reformist testimonial on pink-colored prison life, let me say I liked some of the sub-plots of movie but Shawshank Redemption never give enough space to the potential topics like the trauma of being falsely accused, the problems of prison, adapting to hostile environments and the bonding at such times. But this movie concentrates on the overtly optimistic journey of Andy from accusation to redemption. He changes the prison to a tax filling office, he punishes 'The Sisters' for their mean act, he makes everyone respect him, forces everyone to listen to Mr. Mozart, he often finds time to eat baked cakes and run a school and a library and above all dig a tunnel and what not just like a GOD in midst of stupid followers. Yes, that where I want to reach, he behaves like a god and shows all the patience in book, and emerges from the ashes somewhere near the beaches of Mexico and his followers are saved to see him there, very godlike. very hopeful, very unrealistic, a classic crap. And in the end, all what he set for has been done and he emerges as a scented lotus from a hole of shit. If this is redemption, it stinks.