Gogol Effect.

I read two short stories (The Overcoat and The Nose) by Russian author, Nikolai Gogol and part one of his masterpiece novel, Dead Souls. I am severely under Gogol effect and I should write it off. I will jot down some of my random observations.



Gogol's Naming Conventions

I am really intrigued by Gogol's Naming Conventions, they are lyrical and based on ample use of alliteration and thus obtusely or rather tangentially signify the repetitive nature of his weird characters who according to Gogol are not conventional heroes but just some person ignored to be chosen to lead a story or a novel for a painfully long time. In his celebrated short story, The Overcoat, the full second paragraph is devoted to the baptism of our hero Akaky Akakyevich and Gogol, without referring to the obvious redundancy in his name, just tells the readers that it is the only name for him, and he was not named so by chance or choice but by his fate to be so. Our hero moves in his pursuit of repeatedness and redundancies in his life and work. Gogol gives an amusing account of his day at work and night at home and echoes that duplicating effect that his name resonates with.

Anyway, we can say that what's there in the name, but in Gogol's world baptism is a big event which he immensely enjoys and which he uses for infinite effect ranging from the unimportance of a peasant in a society, or the smugness of a outwardly dear but a filthy character. Here the names assumes utmost priority whether it is some Uncle Mityay and Minyay who try in vain to get Chichikov's troika up from tangle or the officers at provincial office named Ivan Grigoryevich, Ivan Antonovich, Ivan Andreyevich, probably to show their sameness in spite of their different parentage or Captain Kopeikin, who by his name itself doesn't sound like a great hero, or the magnificent Greek name, Themistocleus, of one of the child of a meek land lord, Manilov or in one of funniest episodes he refuses to name the two agreeable ladies because he laments that nowadays people of all ranks and classes in our country are so sensitive that they think everything in a book refers to them personally and he goes on to positively insult the whole breeds of ladies agreeable in all respects and also those who are just simply agreeable!

Even Nabokov was under Gogol-effect, when he named his characters Pnin (To get the "pn" right, try the combination "Up North", or still better "Up, Nina!", leaving out the initial "u". Pnorth, Pnina, Pmn...), Lo-le-ita (the first syllable should be as in "lollipop", the "L" liquid and delicate, the "lee" not too sharp, the suffix "-ita" has a lot of Latin tenderness) or rhythmic Humbert Humbert. After thinking about the Gogol's Naming Conventions, I managed to understand some of Nabokov's lament of not writing in Russian. See yourself, which sounds better John Johnson or Akaky Akakyevich ? There are also some more meaning to these name, the syllable kak means “like” in Russian which corresponds to the sameness of his name and sameness of act of copying. A person who knows Russian must get amusing, lyrical and meaningful depths out of those names.

Gogol's Style

I feel too stooped to write anything about Gogol's style, but here are some frivolous observations.

Lot of authors don't give clues about writing or why they are writing or what should or shouldn't be written but Gogol does that especially in Dead souls. There are passages devoted to Gogol's justification for talking devilish Chichikov as his hero, and how authors have written and written about the virtuous man that there is hardly any virtue left in him. One more striking facet of Gogol's style, as I saw it, is his composition of sceneries from start to finish, mildly moving from some romantic idealism to a practical distortion and searching beauty in both the extremes. This passages traces a river from loftiness of mountains to the hurdles of the bridges and dams.

The river, true to its banks, twisted and turned with them, sometimes leaving them for the meadows and sometimes, after taking several serpentine turns, flashing like fire in the sun and then disappearing in a copse of birch trees, aspens and alders and running out of it in triumph accompanied by bridges, mills and dams which seem to be pursuing it at every turn.

Gogol at times, makes you gape after reading and pushes you into a fabricated world and then make you understand it and allows you to laugh at your silly gapes and in all this business of gaping and ungaping while you see weird characters and sublime descriptions you are never ever overwhelmed by what you have read and you actively think of what unwritten text Gogol is pointing to and what written text he is fabricating for that and that's how an ultimate comedy and satire points to the rampant tragedy of our times and lives.

In The Overcoat, we never know whether to laugh at or not and if at all to laugh at it, whom to laugh at, the characters, the situations or ourselves. At one point we tend to stress our cheek muscles to prepare ourselves for a grin which we feel is well-deserved for the well-written text, the other moment we are allowed to think before we can proceed to consummate a smile, we anyway almost oblige by giving a smirk but with broken heart that the overcoat, that spoilt a lovely monotonous live, is robbed off. There is a satisfaction that its gone now but their is pain too, that the poor soul is robbed of it. I don't know whether to laugh at it or feel sad, but an intelligent and a sophisticated reader can let it go, I can't ! The point is Gogol's mastery of juxtaposing comic episodes with the moving ones with blurred lines that are almost non-existent.

Gogol has a mastery of social satire. Here goes one of very fine observation about human nature that Gogol makes.

If he did acquire a superficial knowledge of one branch of science, he would afterwards, as soon as he occupied a prominent position, make those who really knew something of that branch of science feel it. And may be he would say afterwards: "Let me just show them the stuff I'm made of!", and invent so wise a regulation that many people would be sorry they were ever born...

Or a more funny observation

The governor, who was at that moment standing beside some ladies, holding a raffle ticket in one hand and a lap dog in the other, dropped both the ticket and lap dog on to the floor on seeing him, the dog yelping piteously; in short Chichikov spread an atmosphere of joy and quite extraordinary gaiety.

Here a excellent satire on authors and characters alike.

I cannot reproduce governor's wife's word with any accuracy but something extremely polite was said in the manner in which ladies and gentlemen converse in the words of our society novelists who are so eager to describe drawing rooms and boast of their knowledge of aristocratic manners, something in the style of: 'Have they so taken possession of your heart that there's no longer any place in it, not even the tiniest corner, for those you have so mercilessly forgotten?'

And this one:

But the simply agreeable lady could think of nothing to say. She only knew how to be alarmed, but did not possess enough reasoning power to form any sensible idea as to what it was all about, and that was why she more than any one else was in need of tender friendship and advice.

Apart from these small doses of satire and humor, there are glorious long passages about man made garden taken over by wilds of nature, about our hero taking nap on a 'highway', postman's hilarious short story about an invalid captain and lot more, all done with a unique Gogol-style.

Being Chichikov

When you read about a characters vividly drawn on paper, his each contour inscribed by words, his each emotional high and low reported on print, you are damned to connect to it, some of the greatest characters sketches are like that, but Gogol delays the so-called character sketch of the hero, Pavlovskoe Chichikov, to the last chapter of part one of Dead Souls, by the time reader have seen enough of him and probably made some serious opinions (good, bad, ugly, and for some as always ok-types) for him, Gogol unfolds the life history of Chichikov and all those who have formed some opinion about it feel bad about him or themselves, which is actually one or the same entity. Gogol miraculously proves that we are all in this secret quest to acquire phoney dead souls.

Given my weakness on fixating too much on characters, (the last time I found out that my office is full of Gregors peeping from every nook and corner with Squealers trying to hunt them down, and Gregors trying to turn the table by sometimes metamorphosing themselves to Travis Bickles while they are cheating on lots of Cabirias, who try to be Charlottes but there are no full-time Werthers left now !), now I am seeing a Chichikov in everybody including myself. I too had a discussion with one of my friends where I told the Dead Soul "story" to him and he joyously exclaimed what a go-getter he is, what a fantastic, fast and furious achiever. I felt that if some self-help guru ever has the time to read the first 10 chapters he can even write about the "10 ways to acquire Dead Souls and be a winner". And this is all the travesty of our Chichikovian times. As pointed out in the character sketch, Chichikov try to make a quick fortune by his marvelous dressing sense and callous hind designs, but it doesn't turn out to be that quick, given our hero's bad fortune to run into carefully uninvited troubles, it do points about the Chichikovian mirage we live in, we become more careful, more artful, more masterful in all our eloquent foreground and virtuoso background patterns as we move for our own quests.

I wish Gogol may have completed and published his next two full volumes, his grandiose ambition, where he projected to somehow bring his scoundrel hero, to what he called , a spiritual regeneration and where he claimed that his work will give some genuine answers to the abyssal mystery of abominable existence, but I am afraid that there could be any easy answers and any art cannot put any morality into dead souls, the best it can do is to point to the the aberration or rather claim that there is one which we cannot see using our unaided eyes, and can help someone to know himself better or to say it grandiosely, can help him move closer to truth, or may be just give a direction, right or wrong, he is only to decide.

The picture above shows Gogol's statue at St. Petersburg, the location of his short stories.

The Kids must Die !

A big question is why the kids died. Some obvious answers will be because we don't want to see the film for another half an hour or because its an Indian commercial film or it must be true to the story it emulates. But the kids must die in the end to put a logical end to their insolvable problems or to justify their situation or to just become more sacred as dead. The kids should also die to wash off their unintentional wrong doings or to balance the zero-sum game. Anyway death is inevitable for the the poor bunch because they can't just be wild at heart and get away in a Hindi film. Also they should die giving some hope to others but with a despair in their eyes speaking volumes of the hope that has extinguished in the darkness of death. They must die because death immortalize a man and more so if death is shown more of as a martyrdom.

The bigger question seems is there no other way to end a film but the easy way out to kill the kids. Here in some way, the story also deviates with the original story (story of Bhagat Singh and his friends) because they died knowing that they are going to die and that's where the narrator refers to them as the people of the third kind. But Karan and friends did not kiss death with smile, they actually wanted to live, if the director had given them some living space. But then our director turned to the audience who are ready for their death and to drop a tear or two.

I think this break of similarity between the two stories tells us more about the state of film making than about the film itself. Our films drives audiences to the theaters just to feel for the characters but not to think for them or rather think with them. I am not against what is shown in the film, as I myself enjoyed the movie but in the end it overwhelms you which is bad for any sincere effort, it should make you think rather than make you feel just sad for the characters. I couldn't help but draw parallel between Rang de Basanti and Taxi driver, although they are different movies with very different motives. What if our gang of heroes in Rang de Basanti were acquitted somehow, will the audience be able to 'relate' to them as they do it now. As in my case it took me some time to understand Travis Bickle and found that everyone is Travis to some extend when it comes to find purpose to our nothingness, would the director of Rang De Basanti ready to give us that time of appreciation of a movie, No, he wants us to feel what ever we can in the cinema hall itself and let it go. Had the kids escaped the AIR building, can our director be able to gather that much sympathy for them in the given duration of the movie. No... absolutely no. and so with no other feasible option available, the kids are killed but I must say they are not of the third kind.

The Sorrows of Young Werther

Last week, I read a great book, a hopeless love story of a young man and his journey to death. Its a very intimate account of a doomed love affair and it is really delightful (if I may say so) how passionately Goethe handles our hero's longing for his love, how beautifully and meticulously the graceful picture of his lover is painted. In a semi autobiographical novel told in a series of letters, Goethe dissects romantic love, social clichés and at times raises questions about love, life, death and passion.



As you all must be knowing the plot by now, since I termed it as a tragic love story. As a customary here is a brief plot. A young man, Werther falls in love with lovely Charlotte, who is already engaged to Albert. Since Albert is away for some assignment, Werther spends a delightful time with Charlotte. After Albert's return, Werther soon realizes that he has to break all the ties with Charlotte, he tries not to meet her, in order to put an end to his daily trauma of seeing her, wanting her but a hopeless certainty of not getting her. After a last brief encounter with Charlotte, where she showers her love treasure on Werther's lips, Werther takes his life away to wait to meet her after death. The story has by now became a cliché, but as a real work of art The Sorrows of Young Werther lives in his youth till date.

The Sorrows of Young Werther was supposedly the first bestseller in European history and its success led to a flurry of artistic creativity in Europe but most famously it resulted in young men emulating Werther by wearing blue jackets and yellow vests and committing Werther-style suicides. The question is whether the novel champions suicide. In a way, it does, but than lots of work of art dear death than life at least in concept. In an extremely enlightening tirade our young hero, Werther, tells Albert about the similarities about physical and mental trauma and how everything is allowed in passion but the novel is not about suicide or dying, its more about love and that classic romanticism we often talk about. Then comes the eternal question that I have asked for long, why all the famous love stories are tragic, as of now, we shall leave this question for a rainy day.

There are several things about the novel that I loved apart from it being tragic and a love story. The one thing is Goethe's use of nature, which is used to a dual effect here. Firstly as a portal of external beauty and a testimonial of rampant beauty in the world lying in every landscape and the creativity galore by the creator of all these mesmerizing scenic images. This use of nature is explored in the early part of the book where young Werther is happy and trying to see nature as a piece of art, and he dabbles with poetry and painting. Actually at one point Werther remarks "Can we never take pleasure in nature without having recourse to art?" The second use of nature is to depict the condition of our hero as he climbs down the stairs of melancholy. Although here the nature serves as a backdrop to the despair of Young Werther, Goethe goes a step further to show that we ourselves make an illusion of nature (or rather any surroundings) to mirror our state of heart. Werther sees gloom in the same landscapes which showered pure delight when he was with Charlotte and exclaims why he was so happy and light then and now those pillars of happiness seems so hopelessly haunting as the beautiful face of dearest Charlotte. Goethe's use of nature as a backdrop of Werther's broken heart is exemplary and creates much of foundation for the unrequited love and longing.

I am a big fan of subplots and some times I feel more intrigued by the subplot than the main story. A sub-plot, in my opinion, should not be a tool to push the story forward or a tool to provide respite from the plot itself. A subplot should bring some universality to the story being told ( I don't mean to say that it should strengthen the main plot, but it might do that). Here in The Sorrows of Young Werther there are two subplots that interested me. First is the story of a young man, secretary to Charlotte's father, who too cherished passion for her and was dismissed and now he has turned mad. Werther meets him, when he was looking for summer flowers in chilling winter for his princess. To his delusion, Werther reacts " You were happy !, as gay and contented as a man can be! God of heaven! and is this the destiny of man? Is he only happy before he has acquired his reason, or after he has lost it? Unfortunate being! And yet I envy your fate: I envy the delusion to which you are a victim. You go forth with joy to gather flowers for your princess,-- in winter, -- and grieve when you can find none, and cannot understand why they do not grow. But I wander forth without joy, without hope, without design ". The second plot is more involved, where Werther favors for a servant who had been formerly attached to a widow, and has killed the other servant who replaced him after his dismissal from service of widow. Werther fights vehemently for him to gather some pity for him and to save him from the impending danger, Later he retorts " You cannot be saved, unfortunate man, I see clearly that we can't be saved". All these situations brings Werther to realize that he is going in the same path and probably same woes wait for him too. Thematically, these episodes resonate with the feeling that in society, love should get its approval and the passion of love is universally misunderstood and only those who are in same situation can grasp the misery and anxiety of the people trapped there. Also the episode with murderous servant brings about how the the noblest feelings of love and attachment for loved one can convert themselves to jealousy, hate and violence for others. Even Werther starts rearing a seemingly irrational jealously for Albert and questions himself "What is the use of my continually repeating that he is a good and estimable man? He is an inward torment to me, and I am incapable of being just toward him."

While building an ultimate figure of a romantic hero, Goethe shows utmost respect to every minute feeling of his hero, Werther's every idea and observation is captured with intense intimacy, china-like vulnerability and truth. How true is the feeling when Werther says " Heaven reward him for it!" observing that Albert always refrains from kissing Charlotte in his presence or the episode where Charlotte kisses and plays with a canary and our hero turns his face away so as not to excite his imagination or when Werther describes death as "One lifts up the curtain, and passes to the other side, -- that is all! And why all these doubts and delays? Because we know not what is behind -- because there is no returning -- and because our mind infers that all is darkness and confusion, where we have nothing but uncertainty." or how artistically he describes his end to Charlotte "For the last, last time I open these eyes. Alas! they will behold the sun no more. It is covered by a thick, impenetrable cloud.Yes, Nature! put on mourning: your child, your friend, your lover, draws near his end!". In all these tiny moments we come closer to Werther's agony and his passion for Charlotte.

The famous episode of Werther's last meeting with Charlotte where Werther reads out an Ossian (Werther starts enjoying this imaginary poet over Homer as his obsession deepens) poem to Charlotte, moved by poem that resonated Werther's trauma and passion, in a stroke of trembling passion, Charlotte covers his lips with a thousand kisses and the world seems to disappear from their eyes, the last happy moment in poor Werther's life. This episode must have been enacted a thousand times on stages, films and operas but still Goethe's words have not lost their charm.

In the preface Goethe writes "And thou, good soul, who sufferest the same distress as he endured once, draw comfort from his sorrows" and that is true for any great work of art. How much depressing or bitter they may get, but they always provide solace to the soul by giving a better understanding of life. Here Goethe carves a figure of a tragic romantic hero and the idea of fatalistic romanticism that centuries have emulated and will continue to do so.

The Old Man and the Sea

I read Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea this week. Some of the passages were great, especially where the old man, the fish and the themes of the novel (as I perceive them) came in unison and tend to go beyond the simple tale of an old man's quest in an inhospitable sea, trying to kill the biggest fish, he has ever seen. It is quite satisfying once we start to feel for the fish the same way, we felt for the old man -a virile and heroic character fighting to survival. Their tussle, a sense of understanding of each others situation and the dignity shown towords each other signify about the man-nature balance left in mercy of each other . I found this passage quite moving and somehow it left me longing for more such simple magics throughout the novel.

Then he began to pity the great fish that he had hooked. He is wonderful and strange and who knows how old he is, he thought. Never have I had such a strong fish nor one who acted so strangely. Perhaps he is too wise to jump. he could ruin me by jumping or by a wild rush. But perhaps he has been hooked many times before and he knows that this is how he should make his fight. He cannot know that it is only one man against him, nor that it is an old man. But what a great fish he is and what he will bring in the market if the flesh is good. He took the bait like a male and he pulls like a male and his fight has no panic in it. I wonder if he has any plans or if he is just as desperate as I am ?
[...]
His choice had been to to stay in the deep dark water far out beyond all the snares and traps and treacheries. My choice was to go there to find him beyond all people. Beyond all people in the world. Now we are joined together and have been since noon. And no one to help either of us.

The Return

Tumbled like an infant, with closed eyes,
Fists holding the blanket, oh so tightly.

Curled in pain, like a maimed knot,
Sailors of dark sea, overturning surfs.

We return, from overgrown fields,
Years of sick unused me, behind.

A task, a struggle, a judgment, a job,
Lots of arrows to learn to shoot from.

Life smelling like fumes from dead remains,
Still burning, as fresh as we left before.

The Film Year !

Without doubt, this was the film-year for me, although I was not able to see as much films as I intended to. My target was an astounding 200 movies this year, but I finished somewhere around 170 movies. But, I am more than satisfied and the quality of films was nothing short than amazing. I covered more or less all the directors that I wanted to watch and I will cover others (Werner Herzog, Douglous Sirk, Roberto Rossellini, Alain Resnais, Fritz lang, Mikio Naruse) shortly. Now I want to take on a much more difficult task, to compile a list of ten best movies, I saw this year. Also I will like to thank my friend Alok for guiding me in my movie choices. This type of guidance is very essential when you are just starting out.

This list will also be the list of my all-time favorite films as I came in touch of most of the excellent cinema this year only. One more thing, these types of lists are very dynamic, films keep falling off the list and some new ones push hard to secure a place, but I feel quite sure that most of the films in this list have a very stable place and some are extremely difficult to move. Lastly, as a usual customary, I am taking only one film per director. Here the list goes.

10. In the Mood for Love



In the Mood for love is a masterpiece in several ways. First and foremost, it creates a mood which only few films can aspire for and probably a fewer can even attain. Secondly, it touches the most dear theme of Wong Kar-wai, love-longing-and-lingering pain, in a way that is visually/thematically opposite of his other fast-paced films like Chungking Express and Fallen Angels. While Chunking express shakes on the music of California dreamin', In the Mood for Love just amorously sighs at every passing musical note. Thirdly, In the Mood for Love is an extremely big achievement when we talk of style in movies, and this style is so unique that even Kar-wai will flinch with a thought of copying it. This is one of those films that I would like to watch on big screen and allow myself to flow into that mood all over again.

9. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant



I am not putting this film here because there should be one by Fassbinder, there are other profound reasons for that. Bitter Tears breaks clichés while its characters speaks them. While the characters fake love, loyalty and friendship, each and every nobler emotion is let bare in all its harrowing nakedness and the insult inflicted to these emotions by the people who practice them and invariably use (or misuse) them. Stylistically this film is a marvel of film making, set in a claustrophobic apartment of a fashion designer, Fassbinder looks for a made-up world in every nook and corner, revealing the ugliness in all its beauty.

8. Naked Lunch



Cronenberg's Naked Lunch is a meditation on insanity we live in and live by. We need it and at the same time we abhor it. Naked Lunch struck the right note when it went over my head and started questioning my rationality. While the characters are drawn from one mystery to other, and put in 'bizarrest' of situations and commit same horrible mistakes again to get into unending cycles, at a point the film seemed to suggest that sanity is overrated, human rationality is cannot cope with its irrationality when put in such situations. In a true Cronenbergian style, without going over the top, the film invites you to a horrible world, which is probably the world we live in.

7. A Taste of Cherry



Earlier I was fan of Abbas Kiarostami's Close-up, which is an excellent movie, but after seeing A Taste of Cherry, and after contemplation of both the movies, I got hooked up to the later more. It might be the theme of the movie that drew me closer to it. A Taste of Cherry talks about life and death, but unlike a Bergman film, here all the philosophy comes out quite naturally though common man uttering the words of wisdom. As always, Kiarostami reduces all the style and acting tricks, the films focuses on a man's journey to search for a helping hand to put some soil on his grave. His interactions with people from different strata of society, although don't reveal much about the man in question but they give profound insights on how people view life and death and that's where it gets a big nod from me.

6. Winter Light



When we think of a filmmaker busy with god, arguing about his absence and the suffering of people due to that, we picture Ingmar Bergman instantly. Bergman, who had a strict religious upbringing, became more skeptical about god as he grew up. Winter Light, thus seems to be his story of struggle with god and faith. This film, perhaps the best outcome of Bergman's tussle with god, almost perfectly explores the man-god relationship. It lacks the sweet optimism of Wild Strawberries, the grand set up of The Seventh Seal, the easy solution (Love is God and God is Love) of otherwise brilliant Through a Glass Darkly or the modernism of Persona, but Winter Light stands on its own where its characters look at each other with desperation and help and Bergman scrutinizes them. According to Bergman, his best, Winter Light, is masterfully crafted film with a stark black and white set up which brings out coldness of emotional isolation and distances between his characters and god.

5. Red



The final film by the Polish master contains all the thematic and stylistic flourishes he is known for, and works wonders as a final chapter. When I talk of optimism and goodness and how they both are essential to existence, I think of Red. Red talks about optimism in a very dark way, here optimistic outcomes are just a matter of probability, a coincidence, your goodness probably don't play a role in you being happy. But it may play a role in you being content. So its not that you can expect that things will go right if you are, but if you are good, you might feel satisfied that things probably will not go wrong because of you. Actually its complex to determine the reason for we being good and helping but what Kieslowski wants to say is that this complexity of life should not deter us from being good and helping to others. This is a theme which can fall in the mushy category by even a single mistake, but Kieslowski deftly brings the point of human connectedness and life's unexpectedness so tangentially that we see a rather cliched ending with awe and wonder.

4. Blue Velvet



Blue Velvet kicked out my long-time favorite movie, American Beauty off the list. Though based on similar themes, Blue velvet explores the subject matter much more deftly and darkly where evil lurks in everything which is possibly harmless and the Lynch-patented red curtains swing sonorously to the sound of Blue velvet, creating a hysterical atmosphere where anything dark is possible. All this surrealistic set up bring out the vast realm of unknown and the hidden and break apart the mush and goodness that the films shows in its fairy tale starting and the ending. Blue Velvet creates a everyday mystery of moral rot which is as shocking as it can get.

3. Nights of Cabiria



Fellini's direction, Masina's acting and a sublime climax makes Nights of Cabiria a ultimate experience for any cinephile. It was one of the films that takes you to character and hold you here and in the end makes you smile through tears as the character do. In a way Nights of Cabiria brings together two of Felini's other masterpieces together, it looks to be set up in the world near that of La Dolce Vita's with Cabiria in foreground, who might be thought of as the lost elder sister of La Strada's Gelsomina. This films has a very special place for me for some unexplainable reasons, it has that magic that penetrates the soul.

2. Breaking the Waves



A deeply depressing fairy tale is what it is, it shakes your faith and bends your idea of love and sacrifice to the limit that even seem illogical. Although I watched Breaking the Waves long time back, I only realized how great a film it is quite later when I saw its mastery of cold dissection of idea of love, romance, sacrifice and faith that the viewer is almost baffled in the end whether Lars von Trier is for or against these concepts. The last scene of bell ringing irritated me first since it bought a element of unknown spirituality in the film, but later I released the vast idea of that scene, which can be understood the either way, to believe in cause for which Bess sacrificed her life or just a mockery of the idea of eternal romance by a mortal. Breaking the waves, by no means is an easy watch and not particularly entertaining but everything is paid off when this masterpiece provide you transcendent moments and undiluted food for thought that you can chew long after last reels have rolled off.

1. Tokyo Story



Ozu's Tokyo story is the best film I watched this year, and I am quite sure it will remain so in years to come. I have watched Tokyo story five times this year and every time I watched it I found it deeply profound with all emotions understated and always pointing to the universal truth in the simplest of ways. At times this films looks like a preservation of past moments without the overabundance of sentimentality, at times it directs to the fact that everything is bound to change and at other times it shows the vicious cycle in which we are locked in. Every time we come close to Tokyo story we see the mastery of simple compositions where even the smallest of details is exactly right, generation break down with Ozu's extreme compassion to all his characters and small thoughtful moments, all done without any pretense or preaching. At this point I would like to go to the extreme to say that if you want to watch only one film in your lifetime, let it be Tokyo Story, others will surely follow.

Low on Reading !

This is a dumb post and I already feel stupid in doing so, but I will do it for the sake of showing to myself that if there is need for any new year resolution, it has to be reading more books. Here is a list of literature, I read in 2005.

1) Metamorphosis by Kafka (Re-Read)
2) In the Penal Colony by Kafka
3) A Hunger Artist by Kafka
4) Crime and Punishment by Dostoevski (Re-Read)
5) Ecce Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche
6) The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
7) Animal Farm by George Orwell
8) Short stories by Saki

This is all I read in 365 days and I feel sorry for myself.

How to write a Self-help book.

I recently read some self-help books just to find out why people everywhere are happily becoming slaves to them. Here I would like to find out how self-help gurus do the job of making people numb to facilitate injection of self-help gyan into their veins. Not that it is a difficult job to create self-help but if there exists any method of breaking the self-help code, people can just find out that it is a easy assembly of distorted common sense that they could generate by themselves. By the end of this chapter you should be able to write one for yourself :)

There are some basic pillars on which any self-help is based. One of the pillars is to attack the rationality or to attack on the ability to think, because the manipulator always knows that if there is rationality left, he can't succeed in selling the shit. For this to be more effective, we need to bring a factor of unknown, black-box-tried-and-tested experience. This is like to support your argument that god is there by saying that you have met him, although no one has seen you both together. Ok, there is nothing wrong that you believe god because you say (true or false) that you had breakfast with him the other day. The problem comes when the manipulator generalize it to say believe in god because HE has met him. There is sure a broken link but since anything said with conviction in self help books require one more thing namely faith or power (or weakness) of believing, which is invariably baseless, makes most of the self-help logic work. Here comes extrapolation of rendezvous with god. There can be two logic here. I met god so I believe in god, or I believed in God so I met him. The second one is likely to be used by a successful manipulator because it's least susceptible to any checks and here faith comes priori. The first one will be considered a skeptic's approach and the concerned person will be given doses of faith till he becomes numb to come to the second logic or he will be deemed worthy of lacking in faith or humanity or whatever. So the point here is a manipulator proves using solid assumptions, here result come first and it can be easily explained with minor manipulations.

Since we are on this my-experience you-follow thing, there are interesting bits to observe. Some of the manipulators claim things which can't be verified like living in Himalayas or going for a long spiritual journey. The key is to quote the most unverifiable and the most mysterious experiences one can possibly have or just think of. This experience domain also involves using experience of others (preferably dead or mythological characters) and interpret them with your own dead logic which is indeed based on weak astrology or Feng shui or numerology or just faith. Now when you find Aristotle or Einstein being quoted by the manipulator, take a deep breath and cling to your own faith :)

A related thing is cause and effect, which can be used very effectively by a manipulator. For this we can take a random example. "A hungry child happily ate a loaf of bread". Now coming to self help domain, we can play with cause and effect with almost infinite possibilities. This simple sentence will be twisted as follows "If you give a loaf of bread to a child who is hungry from two days, it makes him happy and that positive energy in turn makes you happy and helps you to shine in the world of stress and competition". Effectually I can fight stress by a loaf of bread. Now this can be further extrapolated with special effects of faith. This becomes "If you believe that giving a loaf of bread to a crying homeless child who is hungry for several days , makes the child happy, and that happiness in turn will radiate back to make you happy and content then this belief with lead you to bear any stress and competition in the world and will eventually make you successful". See this is even better as now we don't spare a loaf of bread, belief and faith can do wonders.

Since all this need to be dumped to people, an able manipulator will direct it to the masses. For doing so, try to find out what people want, they want instant relief from the problems they are facing or if they are not facing any tangible problem the poor souls just want to be happy or happier in any given scenario. Self help can be for two different segments, one who feel they are ill and the one who are potential patients. Lets cover only potential patient here, not only its more interesting, but its takes care of the currently ill people also. Now try to fabricate a recipe to make people happy. For this a manipulator will make a stereotype and break it by making another stereotype which he will vehemently claim, is better suited for happiness based on some statistics, or research or personal experience or just faith. First make people believe that the problem is universal so that they can take any general remedy. It is even better to let the people believe that if they don't think about the problem, it will die its natural death. By now, in 50% cases problem will not even exist, it must have taken form of some other problem or left to die in darkness, for those people who are too dumb to still look for some solution, give them a dumber solution, like think positive, inhale positive energy, keep positive attitude, choose the right person and do the right thing and while doing all this don't forget to believe in yourself and follow your dreams and be happy till the there is love and insatiable positive energy floating in this universe.

Now we know how problems are fabricated and all-purpose answers are assigned to them. Here comes the part which is automatic, implementation of the solution. The best solution in self help is one which need not be implemented, just reading it should do. Lets see some classic implemented solutions. You must have seen people uttering such lines on the back pages of the best selling self-help books. "After reading this book, I felt that there is so much happiness in this world, we just have to reach out for it" or "This inspirational tour-de-force brilliantly manages to capture the truth of life and the basics of happiness" or "I found real spiritual pleasure in reading this enlightened discourse which is recommended to every one who want to know the little secrets of success" or 'Upon Reading this book I realized all the hidden potential within me and a deep feeling that refuse to be a victim". I can go on and on. The crux here to make the recipes feel-good two-minute cheesy tricks and their implementation just another way of restating the problem itself, which the crazy-to-be-happy-people will happily play on themselves.

You must have got it by now, self help starts with a premise that every problem has a solution. Then they go to the extreme to say that there are some generic solutions. But the worst part of all this crap is it stops us from thinking for ourselves and acting according to it. We start to work on some shitty so-called tried and tested formulae, and stop our top floor processing just for day-dreams of happiness and comfort. A manipulator is a guy who can make fortune out of mediocrity and we let him do that, trying to climb ladders of success by feeling good, trying to work out a relationship with fitting in the self help guru proclaimed stereotypes or by using Feng Shui scented paper roses, or trying to fight world hunger by having a balanced diet. The next time you catch hold of a self-help book, tear every even numbered page, it will make the same stupid sense as it made before. You can use these torn pages to clean racks to stack some real books.

While my TV gently weeps...

I haven't posted for quite some time mainly because I have nothing to post, although I may give many tangible reasons such as I was on leave and went to my hometown or I was not feeling well. Anyway, in this duration I watched lots of television, and I must say that the idiot box has came a long long way. Earlier TV was just a bitter-sweet tiny bitch but now, in its new incarnation, is a compelling whore, who is master of all those tricks for which she is eternally known for. TV now can get on your nerves, more often than before, and is trying 'real' hard to capture 'real' people in 'reality' shows and every news channels have their 'self generated' news, trying to find so-called truth. Gone are the days when news was about happenings and events, now its about anything that you can fabricate. News and entertainment are so mixed together that sometimes I am baffled whether to believe or just get amused. The systematic injection of self-help is also put into TV veins where all the winner invariably proclaim that they believed in themselves and preach the same too. They also give wet-eye-oscar-speeches thanking their whole family tree, one of them has gone far enough to thank her unborn child, now that's pretty far-sighted.



Now there is a new category of people in TV, they are the reality show judges and game show hosts. They may not be perfect but they all thrive for perfection and scold and shout at each other and the poor participants and that's where my sadistic instincts kicks in and I get hooked to their gross exchanges. The time is near when we will have awards for 'Most Fierce Judge' and 'Most Emotional Host'. The other day I was seeing some of the judges sobbing when some participants where thrown out of the show, that reminded me of the fact that unless until every one in the show and those who are watching the show have not dropped a tear or two, the purpose is not fulfilled. These funny weeping shots are now part and parcel of any TV channel, turn on the TV and it will start weeping in all its capacity. Either the participants who lost will cry or those who win will and there are some special purpose people on the show who will weep every time someone else in the world will laugh, just to keep the emotional balance intact. They are usually kept as a contingency plan, but they seem to work full-time. If these tears are not able to satiate the producers and viewers some of the game show hosts will try their best to tickle the tear glands and the directors will simultaneously pass orders to play the saddest of the music of the world to indicate the participants that time has come to show their emotional talent. Tears are the ultimate criteria of the reality we witness in our bedrooms. Sometimes I see the full show without a tear and I notice a fall in the TRP ratings the next day. Gone are the days of Saas and Bahu, they look pretty harmless and meek now. Shortly those serials will be named classics, I already feel so.

As the tears go by, we see how easily we are manipulated whenever possible by any Tom Dick and Harry and how happily (of course with tears) we do so. To do so, now every show has the 'junta' deciding who will be the winner apart from the sore judges. We the people, at last, have the right to vote and decide. One of my relatives has a huge SMS bill and she believes that she has played a major part in the crowning the Indian Idol, now she is busy buying CDs of the same, I think she was relatively harmless in the past when she used to record her favorite serials to watch them till eternity. I don't know where all this will end, if at all. Last week I found a dubbed Japanese show on Pogo, called Takeshi's Castle where people are hit hard but they never weep or cry, I think I will stick to it. You know now what I meant when I said I have nothing to post.