Sharing,
Of deeds done
And things felt
Are more important
Than the deeds done
And the things felt;
Alone.
Fighting the Good Fight,
Is more important,
Than staying alive;
And feasting over the verdant;
Triumphant.
Sitting by the shores,
Of your imagination
And dreaming about
What She is telling you
Is more valuable…
Than all the things,
You may have learnt,
Or felt
Alone.
Have you ever wondered how apparent failure can sometimes be liberating? It makes you sit back and wonder what you were chasing in the first place. It fills you with a cold anger, and recharges you for the next surge. And this time, maybe you learn to adapt, to not rush headlong, or simply to be patient. And not let the outcome of something be the sole determinator or reflection of your life.
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Sometimes, I feel like all of us are suffering from some neurosis, from which there is no relief. My first recollections of political conciousness are those of a need for more justice and equity. Growing up in a bipolar township where from a very early age servant quarter’s and “outhouses” gave us, the blessed ones, windows into the other India, I grew increasingly angry about the disadvantages some individuals start out with and the vectors thier lives take as a result. Some of the boys I have played with, some of the daughters who worked part time in our house.
But the world isn’t Gotham City, and my naive reductions of crime & deviance being either a result of economic and social disadvantages or childhood abuse have not endured. I am now mostly left dazed. By the sheer ferocity and complexity of the issues the world faces today.
I feel it is all going to implode very soon, and the cacaphony of jingoistic and alarmist media all around doesn’t help. I don’t even know what exapmle to cite or what to talk about anymore.
The world has gone mad. And there are no saving graces, except individual lives and joys, escapes into children, films about love and longing, or books about God.
It feels so strange to know that I have not written here for over a month. And possibly indicative of the alienation that comes from not knowing where one day ends and the next one begins…but such thoughts are for another place.
This is a scattered post; an attempt to reassure myself that I have not stopped looking at or thinking about what is important.
I found myself sharing living space with someone who was mentally challenged, for a while. And it got me thinking about a lot of things, but mostly about the difference between true and false compassion. At what point do our platitudes or mental click-click’s actually start to mean something to us? At what point do we start knowing we have a sense of what a mentally challenged person goes through everyday. How she feels when people keep repeating something, and thier mouths move, but she cannot understand? What she goes through when her jerks and fidgets and the grimaces she has no control over are not understood. What is she thinking when she spends hours looking vacously into space? Can she feel my cold-blooded detachment from her predicament? And is my cold-blooded detachement a lie, a wall?
I began to wonder what moods meant, and how they change people.
I spent a lot of time, at another point, in a lonely cubicle with large screens all around me, editing something frame by frame, endlessly, for what seemed like weeks. And I got to wondering about perfection. And how far it really was from anything. No matter how hard we try. No matter who we are. For we can only see so many things, or stay awake so many hours, or stay interested for so long. No matter who we are. What then, is perfection?
And I came to think about trajectories. Life trajectories. I know they don’t mean anything. Just like the dew on a leaf in the morning doesn’t mean anything. But what is the meaning of a trajectory in a meaningless world? And does not having an over-arching purpose mean that something does not have…meaning?
And I thought a lot about alientation that results from trajectories. Alientation from a constant need to catch up, no matter how ordinary our attempts.
And I am quiet. For now, I am too tired to seek any answers. I am as always, just full of questions.
———————————–!Spoiler Alert!——————————————-
It was one of those rare days when I actually picked up a newspaper. Of course its the Times Of India, what did you think? And then, strangely I actually got to the op-ed page. It was about Mr. Husain giving up his Indian citizenship for a Qatar one. A good article, well argued and essentially saying that if you do not like something, don’t see/hear/touch it. Its a free country and no-one is forcing anything down your throat.
True, but maybe easier said than done. Its true, I opted to go see Love Sex & Dhoka at a screen near home. True, being a free country, I walked out a quarter of the way into the film. You see, its more about having the choice to do so than the heady power of rejecting someone’s creation. But even then, even then, the editor I mentioned above assumes that I would have full information as to the nature of what I will be exposed to. That isn’t the case, and it shouldn’t be either because otherwise the experience would suffer too much.
Undoubtedly Mr. Banerjee created something he thinks is cinema; something that he thinks is pushing the existing boundaries of what is accepted and what is not; and also, without having any choice over it, telling us he thinks it is good cinema. I do not think these are unreal assumptions to make.
Having said that, when I left, all I could think of the utter ridiculousness of believing a certain kind of voyuerism a.k.a sexual intimacy is not acceptable for public viewing (So we have lyrics, yes lyrics of a film changed so that it does promote vulgarity and eve-teasing). But on the other hand, it is perfectly acceptable to let an “adult” audience sit through a meticulous, and this is the tipping point, “how dare you” hacking to dead with a hockey stick of a young couple who ran way and got married.
I am not going to ask for a point or purpose. That would be idiotic. Bu I remember seeing another film, 8MM (1999) which was pretty gruesome and shocking. Its not about how unpalettable it was. It was more like watching, or trying to watch that famous scene from Irreversible (2002). One is never quite sure what Mr. Banerjee expects of us. To be revulsed? To be afraid? To think a little more about the symbolism of a hockey stick as a murder weapon in post-1984 India where riots are a part of our sub-conscious guilt? Or that of the handy-cam as a new form of narrative ? (it isn’t). Does he want to warn a generation which is already fighting centuries of patriarchy and bigotry and a city (his city), where for the ordinary man on the street, women are not human but holes in the wall?
Were the hat-ke take on the running between the trees and writing on them, or the romantic moments and references to a cult film an inside joke? Or just in bad taste?
Or is he, like he seemed to suggest in the opening moments of the film – just sharing his revulsion for contemporary television. Being of course, an aborted viewing, I am unable to form a final conclusion. But the fact that television would never show that scene makes me doubtful as to the possibility of that one.
But I am tempted to believe Mr. Dasgupta’s review because somewhere deep inside, what I saw made me very angry. Because if I am seeing through the director’s eyes, all I really want is that he should not seem to represent people insensitive to context and meaning.
I want,
To sit in a hall,
Discussing Frost
Sleep at the back,
And dream of Picasso.
“Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists.” Marcel Proust
I have often wondered why my post titles are so monosyllabic. It reminds of those Hindi posters I saw growing up. You know? Like Deewar with the letters hewn from rock and crumbling.
But in my head its more like a small word spoken into the Infinite, and I am happy in the knowledge that a few heard it and recognised it. And some more heard something faint, like when you aren’t sure if someone has called out your name? And to the rest, its as if I didn’t exist. Which I don’t.
This post seems to be a reponse to something I read, a long telephone conversation and a visit to Singapore. Stream of conciousness isn’t as easy and quality-neutral as it seems at first. 
But it does have something to do with voices, voices inside my head, like a lot of people talking. Most of them are familiar, and like a horror film, they take on the voices I am familiar with, just so that I don’t get alarmed. So some are Ma’s. Some are Dad’. Some are even me when I was little.
Feet, unsure of where to land but moving forward anyway. Feet, landing steadily, going somewhere; always going somewhere. I can hear Dadu now, talking about bravery. Patter, patter, thud, thud. The wind whistling against my ears, rustling; my hand swooping down as I hold out a flat rigid surface against the wind. As the car moves forward, my hand jerks back the minute I arch my fingers upwards. Dad’s voice now, talking of Physics and drag. Hands, which I am aware of suddenly. Sweat so much sweat. Non-AC hall. S’s voice, shrill…and my hands so…clammy. Sofa, soft sofa, and the smell of my old book…and that sickening feeling of my eyes welling up and my throat constricting. Please don’t die, please don’t die. Grass, burnt grass, stepped-on grass, yellow, almost white, happy happy grass connecting homes. Trees, growing poems and nurturing love, trees. Abandoned trees full of abandon. I hear voices again, but they are gone before I can place them. Road dividers, to step on and race on, to test balance, and point at and say yellow! Shounak’s voice, talking of dogs, and kennel clubs. Corridors, so many corridors, with large brown doors at the end, and cool, cool concrete steps. Kisses, so many kisses. I breathe skin, and feel the flash of a delicate gold necklace. Football, racing across grass, grey blur, heart pounding, war-cries. My voice, babbling, bouncing. Idols, incense and sagging flesh. Hushed, hushed voices and chants. Mosques, and white marble; Palaces and amber coloured forts everywhere. I hear a voice from long ago, standing by the river and talking of Brahma. Water buffalows, elephants, and smelly Marine Drive horses. I hear Minu Aunty’s voice: “Oh my God, it was in the middle of the street. I didnt mean to run over it.” Goats, and visions of blood. Streets, with prostitutes and auto rickshaws; streets forever milling, always always milling; streets, dirty, potholed, alive. Sorsher maach, served on a banana leaf, bhoog and rasam. All mixing together on my tongue. And my brain can think of nothing else. Women, and thier beautifully flawed bodies and minds. Voices, when they turn away to talk in thier native tongues. So many many tongues. So many lilting voices. Violence, in bold black ink on thin, thin paper. Picked up from the gate in front and wedged into the doorknob.
I hear Nehru, in the tinny voice recorded on radio and stored in Encarta, on my Windows 98 PC:
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.
~Jawaharlal Nehru, 15th August 1947
And I can feel the tears welling up again. And feel my throat constrict.
Dust, everywhere, through every pore, like those people bathing in mud in Asterix and the Magic Carpet.
Sometimes we take the simplest things for granted. And forget that it is the fabric of everything.
A Boundless Moment
He halted in the wind, and — what was that
Far in the maples, pale, but not a ghost?
He stood there bringing March against his thought,
And yet too ready to believe the most.“Oh, that’s the Paradise-in-bloom,” I said;
And truly it was fair enough for flowers
had we but in us to assume in march
Such white luxuriance of May for ours.We stood a moment so in a strange world,
Myself as one his own pretense deceives;
And then I said the truth (and we moved on).
A young beech clinging to its last year’s leaves.~ Robert Frost
“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
~Genesis 3:19
I locked them up,
In a corner of my heart
After running up the stairs,
That night.
Told the Whispers
That no longer could I live…
With thier chains.
Banished them,
For I was Launcelot.
But whispers are whispers.
And sometimes they return
Making me check the chinks
Within and without.
Then I think of the moon,
And remember that I am small.
So small.
And I find peace in that,
Somehow.
It has been a year since the 2009 Gaza “war” by Israel on Palestine.
Critics of the campaign have focused, justifiably, on the high number of civilian casualties and the disproportionate use of force. But the results are indisputable: since the war, the number of rocket attacks from Gaza has dropped by 90 percent.
The stability, in turn, has helped Israel’s economy. While the global recession plunged other countries into crisis in the past year, nearly all of Israel’s indicators have held steady. Tourism, a good gauge of overall welfare, hit a 10-year high in 2008. Astonishingly, the IMF projected recently that Israel’s GDP will grow faster in 2010 than that of most other developed countries.
In short, Israelis are enjoying a peace dividend without a peace agreement. Clearly, that can’t last. Without a resolution to its conflict, Israel will always face the prospect of international isolation and challenges to its very legitimacy. But the tendency toward short-term thinking is reinforced by another somewhat skewed cost-benefit analysis that Israelis are inclined to embrace: while the absence of peace is exacting a very low price, Israeli attempts to forge a peace deal have exacted a very high one.
Guns, bombs, explosives
Expletives
Tears, from pain, ripped skin
Shredded hearts and minds
Fragmented souls
Children dead at your feet
Your memories altered forever
Your beliefs altered forever
Pain,
Searing pain
Because you are better than me.
And my children dead because of you.
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Update:
I had a long weekend. And I used it to clock approximately 24 hours of Assassin’s Creed 2. I was glued. And hooked. And completely blown away.
The History books will prove that with the coming of the PS3, PC gaming officially crossed the tipping point which would lead to its rapid demise. It is still an expensive machine, but by becoming a platform and not just a console, the PlayStation (and also the XBox 360) has made that critical leap which will lead to an explosion in adoption, usage and evolution. The PC made a similar leap when it went from Win 3.2 to Windows 95.
Catalyst 1: Table Stakes
It used to be that a fully modded gaming PC had graphics & processing power which just couldn’t be outdone by any console sold on the mass market. With the Cell Processor, that is no longer true and games like MGS 4, Assassin’s Creed2 and GTA 4 are out there to prove every PC enthusiast shouting from the rooftops about invincibility, horribly wrong.
Catalyst 2: Online Everywhere
Some of the most important technological inflexion points have come when the best of two or more worlds have been combined. Convergence became a buzz word in the 90′s with people predicting micro devices which packed in everything possible. But this utopian(?) dream faced the road-block of human preferences for devices which did a few things brilliantly and more importantly, simply.
With instantly online wireless abilities, consoles have become true gaming platforms. Online applications are focussed, but the few that they do, like online gaming, content downloads & updates, customisable player profiles and avatars, they do really well.
Catalyst 3: Developers, developers, developers
It’s still early days, but the actions hotting up with flagship franchises launching with motion sensitive controls, console controller friendly features and UIs.
Catalyst 4: Is my PC good enough?
With a PC you are always wondering if its got what it takes to run the games you are drooling over, but mentally you know it probably does not. Yes, if you have previous generation console you are pretty sure you cannot play the games you are drooling over. But since this comparison is about the best PCs out there and the latest consoles: programs for consoles are written with every square inch of the configuration and capabilities known by the developer. The games therefore perform at peak performace. And you know they will play. You just have to insert the disc. With even a slightly old PC, the latest games are merciless. You are always playing catch up. Eventually, a new console upgrade is far more expensive, but it takes a while for that to be needed.
Catalyst 5: Owning the TV
The TV have evolved form the good old CRT to fabulous LEDs. But it’s still the good old TV and remains the best way to view stuff at home. It has become a true hub which a whole gamut of modern devices hooking into it. With the latest disc-reading technologies, consoles are better placed to become the dominant entertainment hubs of any home. True, a PC can hook into the TV just as easily (the Mac Mini’s a brilliant example, but its more expensive to assemble a fully kitted PC which has Blu-Ray, and graphic cards and good enough processors.
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I know a lot of you will be saying that complete with a hard disc, the new consoles are nothing but PCs in disguise which do the entertainment functions of the traditional PC really, really well. But think about it: The PC started off as modifications on the main-frame architecture which did basic computing functions really, really well.
