Closing the night, sweet slow lullaby, singing to myself
Finding an alibi, messing the life, talking to myself
Making sea in sink, hoisting the flag, raising to myself
Painting hands on walls, every line clear, waving to myself
Making memory of today, thinking slow, creating by myself
Keeping the silence, thinking aloud, living by myself
Making castle of mud, washing hands, all by myself
Hiding the sweat, showing the disguise, all by myself
I don't write about social, political or religious issues. Here also I will not write about it but will just draw the attention. There are basically two reasons I want to do this.
1) This incident is a classic example of victimizing the victim and brings out the horrors of religion in this so-called civilized world.
2) This incident happened in my hometown, otherwise famous for kidnaps and killings.
The question here is who raped Imrana, her father-in-law or religious heads.
Read the Hindu editorial on the issue here.
This is one of the dialogue from Chekhov's play Seagull, that I saw during my Bombay visit. The following part comes in Act 2, where an accomplished writer, Trigorin talks about being a writer when asked by our heroine, Nina about the pleasure and beauty of being a writer.TRIGORIN. I see nothing especially lovely about it. [He looks at his watch] Excuse me, I must go at once, and begin writing again. I am in a hurry. [He laughs] You have stepped on my pet corn, as they say, and I am getting excited, and a little cross. Let us discuss this bright and beautiful life of mine, though. [After a few moments' thought] Violent obsessions sometimes lay hold of a man: he may, for instance, think day and night of nothing but the moon. I have such a moon. Day and night I am held in the grip of one besetting thought, to write, write, write! Hardly have I finished one book than something urges me to write another, and then a third, and then a fourth--I write ceaselessly. I am, as it were, on a treadmill. I hurry for ever from one story to another, and can't help myself. Do you see anything bright and beautiful in that? Oh, it is a wild life! Even now, thrilled as I am by talking to you, I do not forget for an instant that an unfinished story is awaiting me. My eye falls on that cloud there, which has the shape of a grand piano; I instantly make a mental note that I must remember to mention in my story a cloud floating by that looked like a grand piano. I smell heliotrope; I mutter to myself: a sickly smell, the colour worn by widows; I must remember that in writing my next description of a summer evening. I catch an idea in every sentence of yours or of my own, and hasten to lock all these treasures in my literary store-room, thinking that some day they may be useful to me. As soon as I stop working I rush off to the theatre or go fishing, in the hope that I may find oblivion there, but no! Some new subject for a story is sure to come rolling through my brain like an iron cannonball. I hear my desk calling, and have to go back to it and begin to write, write, write, once more. And so it goes for everlasting. I cannot escape myself, though I feel that I am consuming my life. To prepare the honey I feed to unknown crowds, I am doomed to brush the bloom from my dearest flowers, to tear them from their stems, and trample the roots that bore them under foot. Am I not a madman? Should I not be treated by those who know me as one mentally diseased? Yet it is always the same, same old story, till I begin to think that all this praise and admiration must be a deception, that I am being hoodwinked because they know I am crazy, and I sometimes tremble lest I should be grabbed from behind and whisked off to a lunatic asylum. The best years of my youth were made one continual agony for me by my writing. A young author, especially if at first he does not make a success, feels clumsy, ill-at-ease, and superfluous in the world. His nerves are all on edge and stretched to the point of breaking; he is irresistibly attracted to literary and artistic people, and hovers about them unknown and unnoticed, fearing to look them bravely in the eye, like a man with a passion for gambling, whose money is all gone. I did not know my readers, but for some reason I imagined they were distrustful and unfriendly; I was mortally afraid of the public, and when my first play appeared, it seemed to me as if all the dark eyes in the audience were looking at it with enmity, and all the blue ones with cold indifference. Oh, how terrible it was! What agony!
It was almost ten summers they have met, they still remember the first summer they spent together. Both of them felt that summers have gone bitter since then. It is probably the only thing they will agree now. Both have tried their best to get over that summer in their own furtive ways. A decade of bitterness and distance seemed to fall short to wash off their first touches. It pained now to the level it soothed then but they have moved on in their lives, better to say in their careers, trying to forget the little life has offered to them. Love is hard to pursue, even harder than to forget. This must have given both of them some respite, they were in the easiest of the two most difficult worlds. Everything changes once you touch the fire, pure and white fire.
She was not very sure why she decided to meet him, she even called him but cannot utter a word as she sensed the same bitterness in his voice. She didn't want to open up old wounds, also deep in her little heart she dread that some may heal too fast, the last bit of him may disappear. She doesn't want to look back at that summer too, for she is almost bored by doing so. The same situation, the same analysis, the same conclusion, the same insult, the same guilt.
When he called her, it was not for sake of curtsey or something to level things up, its because he still loved her, although he in this lifetime will not agree to it because his heart doesn't say that anymore with enough force. With time the loudness of love decreases but frequency increases. It just cuts you mildly but vitally.
The day after the meeting, they both decided never to do that stupidity again and not to hinder their sole goal of moving on and out of it. But that night they realized that nobody is perfect and love is not about finding and expecting perfection. Probably imperfections keeping it going. Perfection and any attempt to be so spoils everything. They both talked little, rather very little, just searched their little corners in each others hearts, trying to see if even their frequency of pain resonate or not. There were very conscious efforts to avoid any eye contact, leave alone the contacts. It was painful for both of them. Seemed those two hours just refused to past. It is more painful sitting near a dying dog than a dead one. You wish he could die soon, stop clinging to life. There is nothing horrible than the sights of dying lives.
With so much of memories in her big bold eyes, he expected that she will at least weep alone in her home, just to wash everything away. This may be the only thing that their love deserve now. She did weep the whole night and expected he will call her to say the last bye, the last words. He never called her since. They never met since then. They both moved to pursue their goals, also trying to find some easier relationship, although not that deeply felt. Something mild should do.
Be quiet when I am talking to you, her eyes said that
see me when I am listening to you, her eyes saw mine
Hold my hands when I am walking with you, we walked
close your eyes when you kiss me, its all fine
Don't see that, don't speak this, she spoke lightly
don't touch this, don't hear that, said all in a line
Be with me as no one was, see me as no one has,
I was no one in a moment, was it just another sign
Love must be tender, touches sweet, she silkily rustled
Whispers of warmth or shrills of distance, must I resign.
Dancing with bent knees, she realized she could have done better
Keeping her pain to herself, she felt she could have gone wetter
Days and nights may loose limits, weeks may pass like this
Time goes by, all she dreamt is to be burnt by a kiss
A flash of light, a peck on the cheek is what you may give
But how long it will last and how long you will live
Full submission is loss and no one will love to lose
Who dare show commitment and let him open to abuse
She wants the things that people usually trade for money
She dreams she could find someone, but its not too sunny
She deserves nothing as her demands are insanely high
She needs to learn to live in a world of hi and bye !
The senselessness of being numb, numb to highly incisive personal pains and laughing to the pleasures that don't belong to you, keeping eyes, as they are seeing the world that has tormented you for long, not touching the torment a bit, always trying to get into the darkness of shivering bodies, never able to get into the shiver, catching up with the race of being and losing the sense of being, always flirting with life, never making love to it passionately, always searching for an illusive silver lining, never the enormous cloud, searching something to be happy about, to smile at, to open your heart with, to smell the flowers of past, to dream about the ones that will never bloom !
I entered the world of Ozu this week. His world is like my world and your world, ordinary people, daily-life, same suffering and same everyday sadness. Like Fassbinder, Ozu is blamed many a times for repeating the themes and even the same stories. He actually made a remake of his own film since he liked the idea too much. Ozu is also blamed to be a minimalist, which is again very disturbing as Ozu's art is very detailed and very complicated if anyone has the right senses. In a very prolific career, Ozu made some 54 films (only 36 of them exist today), out of them lots were in silent era and he was torchbearer of silent cinema till late 40s and all this love for images and the composition of rich frames shows in his talkies too.
Although the pet theme of Ozu's Cinema is about family life, he himself never got married. Also Ozu is not much interested in plot details, most of plot details are not shown directly but through some references, most of the screen time is reserved for 'greater good'. The most celebrated masterpiece of Ozu's career is a movie called Tokyo Story which invariably figures in top 10 lists of critics across the globe. Tokyo story is the only Ozu Movie I have seen, and which had a great impact on me and all the recognition received by this movie is deserved to the last decimal place. I will write about this movie in detail later but for now I will continue about Ozu and some of the observations that I gained by watching the masterpiece.
The popularity of Ozu's work in Japan is well known; it came to the wider world audience as late as 70s. Other notion about Ozu's work was that they are too Japanese, that is as baseless as saying Bergman's work is only for philosophers as it is too philosophical. Any work of art ought to have the smell of region where it comes from, isn't Ray's work talk about Bengali sensibilities. It is more beautiful and soulful that way. One more thing that make Ozu's work very dear and approachable are the themes they deal with, if you are living you are sure to have experienced them, and Ozu handles these seemingly simple situations and plots with soft yet incisive acumen, never going melodramatic but always baring the right emotion and hitting the most fragile nerve with remarkable insight to it. And then there is camera-work, which is done with very small tripods to give a low angle and full view of the scene as characters move in haze-maze of Japanese houses, the compositions are like frame into frame into frame, very theatrical. The images of contrasts show the ever widening generation gaps, the visual of ordinary countryside juxtaposed with fuming chimneys of Tokyo. But all this cannot work if there is nothing that touch the heart in a true sense, not that we are looking for any emotional extravaganza or any commandments on morality, or for the matter, any commentary on society. Ozu's cinema is a cinema of change and the people and how people cope with it and can they ever cope up with this race.
Here Ozu seems like a soft pessimist, not complaining, not rationalizing, not moralizing and not even creating any bias or fake-sympathy. Ozu just looks at people sufferings in this world and shows it with no pretensions, with aloofness, with a sense of certainty those things and people change and how nothing is as pretty as it seems. With all the loneliness, goodness and evil in society, we are sure to fall on every side of it, its inevitable, we will simply succumb to it. Although Ozu's work revolves around families and social rules and the common man trapped in them, they make a big statement against them, all this commonsense pragmatism and worldly-wise wisdom is ridiculed in the simplest of ways. The art of Ozu is smooth, deeply pensive, devastatingly incisive and over all universally true. Ozu is must-dope for any cinephile. Go enter the world of Ozu and meet yourself.
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....
