apocalypse

What do you know of terrible loneliness? The one that eats you from within. That feeling when you get as you desperately wait for the crumbs from other people's free time?

I can say something of it. Of nights like this, when unending wait is the rule. Of the nights when you slip into sleep, fully dressed, expectant of certain footfalls on the corridor. Nights like this, when you make a frantic phone call, hope to get some reassurance.

Nights like this, when you know you are loved, but don't know how much or by who all.

This loneliness, eating me from within, a moth of dejection growing on the walls of hope. They keep coming back.

The dampness and damnation of all relations.

Forget it. Let the pages burn as you read this. Let no shreds remain.

Apocalypse is born out of God's dejection. Of all that humans know. So He decides to erase everything out, of all pages of human annal.

Desperation.Apocalypse. Silence.

And the need to begin everything afresh.

of rains, the forlorn traveller and some remainders

Rain. The drops of pearl from the sky. A forlorn traveller.

Every time I try to remember the years gone by (the years before I came to Hyderabad), this is the picture which comes into my mind.

It is amazing how the weather crystallizes for us the images we have of others. For a long time (and even now the predominant) image when I think of North India is that of a copper red sun and barren land. Ganga and Yamuna never figure there at all. Funny.

Rain has been associated with all which invokes nostalgia in me. May be that is why many of my entries in this blog have been on rains. Of monsoons back home, of the gravel in the courtyard, of the stories told in the powercuts of a blissful monsoon...

There are many more stories -of the floods which never happened, of the black ants which lined our walls in the monsoon in an unending procession, of the long rains which lasted for days which happened forever in the past, of canals which were made into roads and were reclaimed by nature in every monsoon, of the time we innocently devoured many a bunds blaming our ignorance of the etiquettes of training to swim...

Everything good were connected to rain. Like how the latin American football, unlike the European one, is like a rain, with its moments of uncertainity, of downpour, of retreat, of pleasant surprises in the abnormally big drops, of bountiful offerings and unexpected thunders...

Rains, the metaphor for all the pleasant surprises, like the song I am listening to now -"Ek Meeta Marz Dene" from Welcome to Sajjanpur, like the movie about a couple, old and till in love, and each wishing that the other die before him/her for the other then doesn't have to endure a lonely life -Oru Cheru Punjiri

But there is a difference of the picture I told you I get when I think of my past. The dominant theme is of the forlorn traveller, me. But now, an old friend of mine has put up in facebook some photos from that time. It shows that after all I was not alone.

These are photos towards the end of my class X. Courtesy: Jasim C P

Genelia + CPD = Genelia

Long before Om Shanti Om, a Malayalam movie sought to narrate for us the film industry in all its humour. There have been films dealing with the industry before, but their tone were grave, as dark as the dark underbelly they sought to expose (e.g. Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback). But Udayananu Taram, with Srinivasan as its scriptwriter, decided to make us laugh rather than sit back in disgust/shock. A wannabe actor (played by Srinivasan)steals a script from a wannabe director. The script is a sure hit. The wannabe actor trades it for the role of the hero. He makes it big in the industry while the wannabe director is till languishing in the dark, now even more painful as his actor wife has left him. The movie ends with the time proving that Udayan, the wannabe director, is the real star.

What makes this a Srinivasan movie is the ridicule to which he subjects the actor (himself) to. Rather than caught in the enigma of the world of glamour, we are laughing at its pompousness and absurdity.

As usual, Bollywood doesn't have a Srinivasan. The movies are therefore all about the stress of the celebrity life, the difficulties of getting in, the ethical baggage which keeps on haunting and stuff. Om Shanti Om is different, I should say. But what Om Shanti Om opened the gates for for not as hilarious. I still like Khoya Khoya Chand for its elegance, Luck By Chance was also not bad. But Halla Bol was just an old movie, the old Bollywood, forgotten the slighest of the bheja fry lingo.

Why Kaatib recounts all this is because, I's been a week past and Kaatib still can't explain why Chance Pe Dance was a good movie. Friends know that Kaatib likes most movies, and more so after two days of the watching. Kaatib will find reasons to like it. Like how the bit about break up was enough for him to rate Love Aajkal a good movie. Kaatib is still mulling over, but apart from Genelia and her crooked smile (which doesn't have to be in a movie to be liked) Kaatib doesn't know why he should like Chance Pe Dance

watching TZP in the age of student suicides

if suicides offer a scope to study the society as having a mind of its own, there is no better time to study the students' suicides. In the last two weeks, around 25 students committed suicide in Maharashtra alone. What can student suicides tell us of the society that we are living in?

The immediate answers are: parental pressures, unsympathetic teachers, superfast lifestyle...

In our university, against a specific background of such discussions, a group of students screened Taare Zameen Par. One cannot think of a better movie if one has to speak about the issue and the misrepresentation of it.



Most of the reviews of TZP was lamenting that the movie is undoing its own message by ending it with a competition in which the differently0abled child grabs the first prize. True, if the message of the movie is against pressurizing the children to be 'first' all the time, it was pointless to show that the child ends up as first. This is like "i heard it works even if i don't believe in it" joke. "Of course you should think that your child should be first. Just Don't pressurize your ward to be first, and then he will be first." And then what if he doesn't urn out to be a topper?
That is indeed the problem. The film doesn't question us.

I will say that, contrary to what the critics might have wished for, the ideological casting of TZP could allow only such an ending. Why?

First, the question of victim. The victim here is a differently-abled person. This is a very convenient technique to draw imaginary faultlines in the society. It means, the specific form of handicap is not representative in nature. Rather, it is specific. It creates an imaginary other of able-bodied. In other words, by representing handicap as medical, it is erasing the social dimension of handicap -caste, class, etc.

Second, the question of the mentor. The mentor, played by Aamir Khan, if you remember, has his entry in a clown's outfit. He is the fool that Zizek refers to. A fool is someone who, when he says the truth, undermines it by the very status by his identity. Aamir Khan is never the ideal teacher. Instead he is an aberration, someone who failed to occupy the symbolic space.

This in itself is revolutionary. But not here. why? In other words, why do we have a competition in the end?

there is a need for competition in the end, a competition in which the differently abled wins. The ideological process which leads up to this is two:
1)Oh, that is a poor handicapped boy. Our sympathies lie with him. He should come up in life. Oh, we, each one of us is equal. So among us the fittest can survive. But he is handicapped and so he needs help.
2) This teacher is just a clown. He is not the authority to decide. So we need a real authority, the law of the father. Therefore there should be a "fair" examination.

a political film on the other hand should go with the law of the fool. Aamir Khan should be the judge rather than a mere competitor.


Taare Zameen Par (2007, Aamir Khan; Hindi)