In the memory of Karna, and an afternoon on Prakash Jha's Rajneeti

The first thing that struck me when the movie began was that this film will be about the prodigal and proverbial Karna. Even if the role of Suraj, essayed by Ajay Devgn, did not enjoy as much space in the screenplay, at the end of the film, just as at the end of every translation of the Great War, Karna emerges as the one more sinned against than sinning. Somehow the story is always about that one character, one that stays with you much after the everything else about it had faded away.

<*Spoiler alert*>

Prakash Jha's film promises a power-packed cast with performances by some of Jha's usuals. Jha tries to step out of the mould of earlier Bihar-centered films like Apaharan and Gangajal. At the very outset, I must admit that it is easy to be disappointed at the lack of precision and originality that is usually the hallmark of Jha's films. This film is caught somewhere between the rajneeti of the Mahabharata and the Corleones of The Godfather, a modern technological rendition. It hits out at dynasty politics (especially with relevance to the current political scene), calling into question, undermining and subordinating family, relationships, trust, loyalty and love to the quest for power, gaddi, paisa.

Nana Patekar, as the willful and cunning Krsna (or Tom Hagen), guides the fortunes and misfortunes of the Pratap clan (who could just as well be Shakuni mama). Arjun Rampal is the hot-headed, unscrupulous political leader, who like the blood-thirsty Bhima (with a heart of gold) or the short-tempered and careless Sonny meets defeat and an unfortunate end. Though, Rampal's acting leaves much to be desired, his diction and dialogue delivery lacking the power and conviction of his contemporaries in the film, especially the seasoned Manoj Bajpayee. But the film belongs to Ranbir Kapoor, ably supported by Katrina Kaif. She has certainly put in alot of effort into the role, especiallu with her accent. Kapoor is almost a revelation, exuding poise, control and a calculating demeanor (of the kind that reminds one of the scheming Iago, and its more recent avatar - Langda Tyagi). But somewhere his PhD persona is lost - the scholar studying the 'subtextual politics of the 19th C Victorian poetry'!) to the machinations of satta.

Two scenes stand out in particular reference to The Godfather - one, where Babulal the loyalist wakes up with his partner murdered next to him and his body covered with his blood. This is reminiscent of the severed horse's head which is used to convince Woltz for a part in the movie. Second, the car blast that kills Rampal's and Ranbir's fiancee's characters.

The film, however, pays only lip service to political struggles, which exist as subtexts. For instance, Devgn's character as the Dalit spokesperson has implications within the field of characterization in the film but does not address any real concerns. Nasseruddin Shah is wasted at the beginning of the film with only one speech (and one kiss) of worth, as he sets the turning tide of destiny into motion. The jhola politics of the left clearly have no place in contemporary politics.

All in all, I would see the film for Ranbir, if for nothing else. And of course to add another tale to the already burgeoning compendium on the versions of Karna.

An ode to my tired legs

I'm out of breath
didn't do the customary warm-up
just started running
braked suddenly to let the path clear
and then kept on

I know I should have paused to stop and stare
let some breeze ruffle my hair
debated whether to take the dirt track
I know I lack the stamina
so why don't I rest my shoes?

I ran into a wall of smoke
sputtered through the haze
carried on, like a mule
who knows only the straight way
and wandered further on

they say they know where I go
the usual bend, the safest route
running's the only way they say
the fore-st plays
the cure for the deadness that lies under

My chest hurts, I cannot sleep
my hair is white, I cannot weep
the marathon idea was mine
blinkered vision is all i have
oh, must not forget the smelly laundry stack

my knees will give away soon
as the last of my will will be written
through all the curves there will come
the cliff or the ditch
and then I'll step over.

Selfish love
or self-ish love
love for the self, 
or love like the self?
love that you hoard for your benefit
or love which is like the love you have for self?
can you love outside the self without having loved the self?
does selfless love mean love without the self or love beyond the self? 
Is this oxymoronic hair-splitting even necessary for one who loves to just love?

"The story of you never begins with you..."

I just finished reading Manreet Sodhi Someshwar's The Long Walk Home, and it's been a long time since I have felt a connection with a story so much. My regret: this is like the story i wanted to write, or had begun to write and left midway due to lack of inspiration, and now someone else has beaten me to it! (I almost felt the same wth Unaccustomed Earth) I am to blame - I don't take my writing seriously, or take it way too seriously. I'm a bundle of contradictions..

The book is centred around an ordinary Sikh family living in a border town in Punjab, tracing their history within the larger history of the Punjab. For a writer or reader in the 21st century, Punjab's history begins at the moment of partition. It is ridden with angst at a world forcibly cut off from their being.. "Jinne Lahore ni vekheya au jameya hi ni" - but the hostile border has ensured that at least two generations of Punjabis have been deprived of the fervour of life. This book deftly takes the reader, who is present in the narrative as a silent witness-observer, through the Nehruvian years of territorial betrayal, land fortification and agrarian reform, to the profits of the Green Revolution and the emigration flux. It deliberates on the ideological contingencies that plague Punjab to this day, especially as it tries to represent the cause and effect of militancy in the region. It records instances, especially of violence and hints at the pogrom, of the like which go unaccounted for in the regular or mainstream representations. As Bitta remarks in the text: "You children can write an essay on the Holocaust. But on your own history you come up short. Why?". To which Noor retorts: "No Sikh producers in Hollywood?" But Neymat offers a better answer: "Noone really speaks about it...reluctant to talk"(213). This exchange to me sums up the problem of dissemination of information, the apathy even among the university educated, and the general glossing over of political stance in favour of a single-minded pursuit of prosperity. The last part of this exchange, however, raises greater issues of expression - can there be a suitable vocabulary to talk about painful incidents, trauma? Why do people choose not to engage with uncomfortable questions? Why are future generations shielded from the baggage of both personal and political history?

The narrative is sensuous - you can touch, feel, smell, taste and hear the elements that ooze out. And most of all you can visualize - the narrative functions with a cinematic consistency, almost as if the writer has consciously constructed it as a film's screenplay. In no way does it take away from the "aura" of the written text since the influence of one form of representation over another can be taken as a given, especially since film as a medium dominates the postmodern consciousness. The language reads as if affected in many places, in a harried and beaten expression, but the essence it seeks to capture is fairly fresh. It falls into the Rushdie-an trap of "magic bilingualism" (or multilingualism) as it tries to seamlessly fit proverbial phrases into the idiom of English. It works, as in Rushdie's case, but for a non-native readership.

The title is inspired by Tagore's translation of "Ekla chalo re", "Walk Alone", which serves as the latent motif through the text. The blurb also carries a sher by Gulzar especially written for the novel..."ye faasle  teri galiyon ke humse tey na hue..."

All in all, a definite read. Especially for those who engage silence and unknowability. But don't conceive of the text as a lesson in history. It is not. It is a novel written with care for context, as it spills out of the ramifications of its own literary intertexts.

Of crushes and petit amours

I need a bigger drive. Or a penseive. My memory may be leaking, or it may be blocking some things out and overwriting many others. I had to jog it today (quite literally, at 9.2km/h) to reveal a 9-year old turn of events. Nothing catastrophic, thankfully, that did not alter the course of my life (at least not adversely). But it sure got me thinking about the function of memory in the narrative of our lives. There we were navpurush and I recounting moments and incidents, desires and aspirations over glasses of cold coffee (or in my case sparkling water with green apple flavour). It is incredible to witness thoughts spilling out in conversation. Somehow time and distance make memories more palatable, not to mention enjoyable.

That's what I'd like to do on no work, or out-of-work Friday afternoons. String together lost or forgotten bits of information.

Or may be I'm just growing old.

P.S. Sometimes there are records (as Anne Frank would have you know) to hasten the "it's all coming back to me" moment. Round 1 to you, mister.

Mein tainu pher milangi (I will meet you yet again)

I will meet you yet again
How and where? I know not.
Perhaps I will become a
figment of your imagination
and maybe, spreading myself
in a mysterious line
on your canvas,
I will keep gazing at you.

Perhaps I will become a ray
of sunshine, to be
embraced by your colours.
I will paint myself on your canvas
I know not how and where –
but I will meet you for sure.

Maybe I will turn into a spring,
and rub the foaming
drops of water on your body,
and rest my coolness on
your burning chest.
I know nothing else
but that this life
will walk along with me.

When the body perishes,
all perishes;
but the threads of memory
are woven with enduring specks.
I will pick these particles,
weave the threads,
and I will meet you yet again.

--Amrita Pritam

Palimpsestic

I’ll have to admit, this current impetus has come from two sources: I saw Julie and Julia, and from the pragmatic and wise mahapurush who incited me to watch it (“it’s about you”). So this then turns out to be an intertextual meandering. There is no “original” text, everything has been said or done before, and I’m choosing a new combination from the paradigmatic system, putting “new” cultural transformations together. Rather, it’s all a palimpsest. Oh, I love the word.

[There I’ve done it again. Please note: I will not solicit any comments or queries on the validity of my theoretical assumptions or statements. This is not a paper.]

This entry is supposed to be about the film.

I liked it, though I had to watch it in two parts (its over 2 hrs long).  I haven’t seen a feel good, all’s well film in ages. And the best part was that this wasn’t pretentiously so. Meryl Streep was of course brilliant. But I just adore Stanley Tucci – I’ve seen him play only supporting parts in such films and he’s oh so good. The men in the film are saints and Amy’s character a total wreck. What I wouldn’t do for such support (hint hint)! But as Julie realizes it can be so annoying to be with someone who is so perfect and understanding and accommodating, with no hang ups of his own, while she is confused, conflicted and obsessed about her private self.

This doesn’t make sense, or it makes too much sense. I don’t care. I’m logging off. It’s late.

Me Against Myself

The trouble with being scholarly is that one is wont to self-scrutiny. Ah, this word, “self” has been short-circuiting my brain since at least last August if not longer. I do not even want to attempt a definition or a justification; I just want to rid myself off it. Alas, that will not be.

I have just concluded a course on autobiography, and might I say its been all-consuming. There is nothing else I see around me just shades and shapes clamouring for self-(re)presentation. Edward Said has written that writers and intellectuals “represent something to the audiences, and in so doing represent themselves to themselves”. While striving to be a Saidian intellectual I have embarked on a trip to understand modes of self-writing, life writing, representation and such like. Endowed with “a faculty for representing, embodying, articulating a message, a view, an attitude, philosophy or opinion to, as well as for, a public”, in the process of “scouring alternative sources, exhuming buried documents, reviving forgotten (or abandoned) histories and people”, I know I am searching for a means to represent something to myself.

Write my own “autobiography”?

Isn’t that what I am doing right now? Isn’t blogging, social networking necessarily narcissistic?

Maybe I should just put the theoretical questions aside, and just write for now. As someone has told me: over-thinking is more injurious to health than smoking. Just be.  

On comebacks

Writing has been the hardest thing for me in the last four years. I was coaxed into starting a blog, and as is quite evident, hardly managed to keep it up. Then I started another on a theme, and then another on midnight bored lonely musings. Nothing came out of them. I have always called myself a "writer", but haven't written seriously in at least four years...can I still call myself that? I no longer maintain a journal. I no longer scribble on margins and last pages. I hardly ever write personalized cards with bits of poetry. I hardly ever mentally create...

I have always had a fear of exposure. What if someone read and commented...can I really give something so dear to me up for public scrutiny? It is like my most intimate thoughts for my perusal only. Worse, what if someone stole them?

Besides, there were no new ideas, no new adversities to drive me in to the comfort of words, no real "inspiration". And I had stopped reading (well not completely 'cause after all I'm a literature student and a young academic...reading is what I do; and well, writing too...) I stopped reading contemporary stuff, purely for pleasure, only for myself. My literary training made be incapable of objectivity; everything after all was a "text" to be "read" and got something out of. I had made the profession out of my passion, and killed it.

But I learnt alot. A lot. And most times, I have no regrets. I couldn't have done anything else. I could have done things differently, but not else.

Well, here I am on a full moon night, under a cloudy sky, welcome breeze in the scorching heat of summer, smelling the rain and filling myself with anticipation, beginning a new chapter...

Hiatus

Reason?
lack of inspiration
no dedication
hardly any motivation

Reason?
lack
remedy
and location