d.é.j.à. v.u.

Moving...

2008-07-17T03:34:00.004+01:00

After months of deliberations, laziness, and arcane interventions of the postmodern universe finally moving here. A million thanks to all those who lent a helpful hand despite pulled everywhere by commitments, esp. V. Still a lot has to be built, but the basics has been done, and, as I wanted.

And

2008-07-15T20:26:00.008+01:00

who be the Samuel Johnson?

Hey you Godot,

2008-07-15T00:05:00.002+01:00

iwait is iover.

Where the Mountains meet the Sea...

2008-07-14T07:32:00.008+01:00

One of the most significant things about Barrow-in-Furness is that only the most hapless, dazed orienteer could possibly visit by accident- you have to have a purpose to get there. I had just such a purpose. The purpose was Barrow.

~Pies and Prejudice, Stuart Maconie

Barrow and Piel at the far tip on your left.

Ever since I read that book last year I have been yearning to visit this dreamy intrigue of a place at the far tip of the Cumbrian Coast. But somehow, as in the times we live in, it didnt happen. Only until now.

They said no one goes to Barrow. Well, I did.

Here's the shot of the legendary Piel Castle.

And the story .

And the Aerial view of the Island by Simon Ledingham.

PS Next would be Robin Hood's Bay , but that has to go with the Coast-to-Coast, I suppose.

But, Ladies and Gentlemen

2008-07-11T00:44:00.000+01:00

dah di-dit dah-dah dit

Di-dit di-di-dit

Dah-dah dah-dah-dah dah-dit dit dah-di-dah-dah

The Best in Business

2008-07-09T13:32:00.007+01:00

Mysore Palace

Mysore Palace (click for larger view), Perhaps the best palace in the world.
Mysore, South India.

First Picture: Courtesy Amith, Thanks.

Truths and Gods

2008-07-06T23:37:00.006+01:00

To become a writer, that noble thing, I had thought it necessary to leave. Actually to write. It was necessary to go back. It was the beginning of self knowledge.

VS Naipaul

Hampi

2008-07-05T14:58:00.000+01:00

Indian Colours

2008-07-02T23:32:00.006+01:00

It is impossible to express India's particular beauty in black-and-white. Black-and-white might be a good medium to convey Europe's fear and alienation, but colour is natural for an Indian, and more appropriate for the extraordinary diversity of India. Unlike European art, Indian art did not have the tradition of independent black-and-white sketches and drawing. If any line drawings were made, they were for being filled out in colour. Colour is the fountain of India. Colour is the basis of the entire rasa theory, that governs Indian painting, dance, music, and literature.

~Raghubir Singh

Snap: Women section at the Flag Lowering Ceremony, Wagah, India-Pakistan Border, 2006

Foibles

2008-07-01T20:45:00.004+01:00

Mylapore Kaapi and heavenly heavenly pongal

Trying a Terrence

2008-06-30T01:06:00.000+01:00

Crocodile Bank, enroute Mahabalipuram, Northern Tamil Nadu, India

Theory of Eternal Recurrence

2008-06-29T14:53:00.002+01:00

Appraisal

2008-06-26T17:26:00.003+01:00

During a time when I was so hopelessly disillusioned and alienated by mentalities, attitudes and thoughts, I found enormous support and faith in these words which articulated the depths of my being to an extent that I could not sleep for three nights.

I see now how people who are/were afraid have become so closed that it would be hard to say that they are alive.

So here, at this moment of my life, I pause to reaffirm again, for I know that - I and I alone shall be responsible for me.

I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too.

~ James Joyce, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.

Indian Journeys

2008-06-20T17:54:00.001+01:00

Just left Hampi. Currently jaunting across reading The Penguin book of Indian Journeys, eclectic and brilliant, couldnt be better put than the HT missive on the book - `A wonderful synecdoche for India: heterogeneous, contrary, suddenly seductive' — Hindustan Times.

Among other things: I cannot imagine the level of functioning of a mind which derives soem sort of pleasure by peeking into a moving autorick to see if there is some gorgeous woman travelling in. But far worse, I cant bring myself to forgive those minds which think such a heinous mind can be fought by writing blog after blog after blog. Such pedestrian minds have to be dealt with one and only one thing. Sheer. Brute. Power. Any other online effort is sadmitting your inabilities in public.

It's Bloomsday

2008-06-16T10:34:00.006+01:00

May be you couldnt find a gorgonzola sandwich in Bangalore but still reading out a section of Ulysses to your mates in a resturant on Bloomsday was as much tastier. Happy Bloomsday all. Love loves to love love to you all.

Gobbledigook

2008-06-08T12:42:00.006+01:00

Sigur Rós is like opera, you listen to without understanding a word of the lyrics. Fans,( I know there are a few here and there in Blore, Bombay) can download the song gobbledigook from the album With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly which is due to release later this month. Also check out the video of the song available here. Quite of a kind , to say the least. Jesus Alanis Morrissette Christ.

And one another favourite scene of mine for all time. From the classic noir humour Man bites Dog. This is what annoying people should get.

Ricochets 0506

2008-06-05T12:48:00.008+01:00

Nothing special to write about.

I suppose the Obama nomination rejuvenates Americans a bit . But one cant trust Americans. Historically, if there isn’t money involved they have always found faith in the conservative or traditional. Not that Obama is expected to work wonders in the capital recession. He is just a symbol of part credibility and part integration for history books. Anyway some change in America means more change in the world. So good. But the bad bit is the end of all Hillary feminist jokes. Ah, ll miss em.

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Have started another Simenon and the omnibus Naipaul biography by Patrick French. But given all the other commitments over next couple of months , I expect to hang round with these folks for a while.

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One of my habits to conserve time is that I tear off interesting articles from my subscriptions/ newspapers and read them at traffic signals. Sounds weird I know, but isnt time money? It takes a bit of practice but you would be surprised to find how much you would be able to cover. Especially during peak hour morning because the mind is at its freshest and you wouldn’t want to waste it looking at the cars lined as caterpillars.

So, yes, last week I found an old article on Martin Amis lying on the back seat. He makes an interesting point about decadence of masculine psyche in old age as against the feminine. This is something I have often thought about. I think the masculine psyche is at its agile best during middle years when the societal expectation is to provide and support with the self desire to achieve, while the similar period of life in woman is often used only to strive and consolidate ( nowadays, shop and write idiotic blogs).
But the roles are reversed in the later stages of life when men often turn introspective and seek company and assurance while women seem to carry themselves wonderfully with minimal or no support. It is interesting. Amis even cites the example of his close friend Saul Bellow who, apparently asked most of the visitors to his hospital bed that how they reckon the society would remember him? This, after the Nobel, mind you.

As I write this , other noted examples that cross my mind are that of Orhan Pamuk and VS Naipaul, two wonderful writers, who started their careers with the weight of their own expectations and well acknowledged fathers’ influence. But they seem to deteriorate ( at least as I see it) after their prized accomplishments ie Stockholm. And some other men like Walcott are singing in the streets about being bitten by tropical mosquitos or mongooses.

But women on the other hand seem to enter a golden age later in the life. Doris Lessing and Wislawa Szymborska would be relevant examples for the Nobel. Even in many other spheres like women tend to be more self assured and confident as they pass their fifty.

I need more time to think and write about it.

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India second or third week, havent confirmed yet, which means I have to cop put a fortune for the flight ticket. Well.

Happy Bloomsday in advance.

Video from last year, Bloomsday reading by Joyceans from all over the world at James Joyce Convention , Dublin. Last year's celebrations were special with all the ambassadors to Ireland participating in the readings. Hha ! will surely miss it this year.

Hmm nothing more. You can try this old interesting one if you have nothing to do.

1. As you are sitting in front of your computer, lift your left foot off the floor and make circles in clockwise directions.
2. Now as you are doing the above try drawing a number six in the air with your right hand.

You will see that beyond your control the foot changes its directions to anticlockwise.

There is a neurological explanation for this. If you are nice to me I’ll tell you someday. Ok drop the nice bit, five quid each.

so long.

Civilization

2008-06-02T00:16:00.001+01:00

and its discantents

Wishlist

2008-05-30T17:10:00.002+01:00

The First Edition

PBF vs XKCD

2008-05-29T15:40:00.002+01:00

Perry Bible vs XKCD?

Perry Bible always.

XKCD is linear

limited

and

boring.

Bibiliothèque

2008-05-29T13:08:00.001+01:00

booked here.

Stain on the Snow

2008-05-28T14:00:00.002+01:00

Absolutely brilliant; Simenon is a combination of Dostoevsky, Herzog with shades of Joyce. It makes you feel so good to pause reading a book in between and mull over the psyche of the character. Hadnt happened for a while. Now I gotto finish up all his eighty four novels. Allotted time twenty four months, so lad organise, organise.

PS- If things go well, in India for a week or so in June.

Das Auto

2008-05-28T12:38:00.003+01:00

Germany, with its heterogeneous pockets of urbanity amongst diverse divides of rural folk reminds me of a bit of India in late eighties ; In the post cold war time, it seems there is a undercurrent of mild confusion amongst Germans with its first generation out of the apologies of WW2 but yet unable identify a personal affect or meaning with their own nation and culture in the wake of seeping in capitalization.

Quite Hegelian all.

For instance, at this moment they are not totally comfortable with the 3 million odd Turkish immigrants in Germany but yet an average german seems it difficult to maintain a neutral position after a few drinks. And still I must say there isn’t a distinct negative undertone, and even if there is one, it is being let go of slowly. A confluence of post modern confusion, akin Britain in the sixties- seventies.

All aside, Germans are the most organised of the lot. They would make my mom proud. Cruising through the autobahn with its no speed limit is an experience of a kind, lanes all around you would be swarming in its speeding efficiency of German auto industry- the BMWS, VWs, Audis, Mercs driven by people in total control of a their car - cars zigging zagging the lanes with such a smooth ease, is almost like an animation sequence. I dont remember a single driver who appeared burdened or was struggling with the buzzing engines. It is a culture than a skill.

My German baby found its fast furious mode, drinking up fuel like a case of Heineken. Ja!

The font situation:

2008-05-28T11:23:00.001+01:00

Anyone know howcome there is a verdana option in the font button on Firefox, but not on Internet explorer?

Vaudeville women

2008-05-27T22:22:00.009+01:00

Basically pissed off.

The only thing I don’t tolerate apart from stupids not accepting their stupidity is stupids being unprofessional.

Over the last ten days much of my resources have been devoted to troubleshooting problems brought about by, well, though hate to point out but simply cant ignore - ahem - women.

Before some silly feminist unhooks her bra crying she-wolf, I would like to put up my hands and say that some women I have come across in my professional life have been brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. But only some mind you. Most are not ; they get by doing religiously what has been delegated to them. It is when they try to play something that they are not that the ecosystem gets disturbed.

The point is that we all as species are defined by our strengths and limitations.The entire idea of coming to adulthood is to be prepared to accept and work with it. Like - it would be absolutely hilarious to imagine me beating the 9 ½ seconds mark for hundred metres.

Ditto the charecters unique to men and women.. Some things are forte of women whilst some others are the domain of men. Accept and move on. But some don’t. And having used all the resources, and all the structure of the set-up a round them , all they can produce is this

A load of shit. Before eventually being theatrical, womanly and begging others to clean it all up.

As much as I hate to use my power, I was compelled to use it many a times over the last week - including once to coldly point out the absolute stupidity with which a particular plan was being pursued in a meeting at 2 am in the morning. As it happens often under such circumstances the lady colleague had no corner to cover herself with. Only people who can look at themselves objectively can work in horizontal professional relationships, most others would be asking to be a part of hierarchical work set up where they would want others to tell them off. Go become a software engineer or something where you chase a deadline from your cosy-cubicle, why take up jobs where you should be thinking on your toes?

In the context check this link that S sent me following discussions on Indian women bloggers.

To make up for all the negativity, here's an interesting poem called Mal in a brilliant format by Kevin Oberlin.

Situation	Automatic Thought	Physical Response	Emotional Response	Cognitive Distortion	Changed Thought
back on Shadow, but that was before the war	no longer my world	press my forehead to the margins, fly low	silence where survival’s concerned	and faith in ownership	lots of rocks look like home
a sack of money for a crate of goods, an exchange of containers	where we keep our bodies and what it felt like to inhabit them	I would most certainly like you to touch me	maybe with nostalgia	the package travels because we carry it	exchange is not change, but constant motion
what you break down, what you build	a family	your own quarters, your own bunk, your own cut	except when I conjure otherwise	a thing with roots can’t be moved, that’s the point	and I am in constant motion
fog and fuck sound mighty similar to my ear	maybe you should see what it feels like	I’ve kept some of your things in a trunk	not knowing you’re in love, a stronger thing by far	but why admit it?	skin, only a middle layer
shot in the shoulder again	take a bullet, you take someone’s burden off	also, it hurts	if I recover, expect me to get a few things off my chest	the tight pants improve my range of motion, asshole	don’t make me turn this ship around
bar fight	careful what you say next	a brown shirt, a brown coat	patience isn’t a virtue, she’s a bitch	fighting keeps the dust down	with my shoulder blades I know if I’ve got help behind me
in the black, what don’t matter comes clear	we’ll stop for supplies and make what repairs we can afford	to keep flying	like a crate buoyed by its cargo	life makes its own self interesting, bullet by burning bullet	you take the battle with you

PS - I see The Class was a last minute surpirse at festival de cannes , have been told Paris has been rejoicing in streets - félicitations, buggerers.

Ricochets 2.0

2008-05-19T00:26:00.017+01:00

Been awfully busy the whole week, which made me lust after the Sunday. Not only the day but also its concept. Spent the whole day staying in, lazing around and catching up on some reading. The glorious summer day that it was, refreshed my memories of being totally devoted to sloth and anomie during my youth.

Speaking of reading, have finished the Quirke series by Benjamin Black aka John Banville. Quite alright. Lately I am noticing a lot of reviewers make a mountain of a molehill of a book review. Being the Muhammad that I am, allow me to break the mountains into molehills.

Christine Falls is a wonderful piece of work in noir-crime. Very few books written on this side of the cold war have been as masterly both in its narration and its plot as this one. I particularly liked the protagonist Quirke - a desolate, brooding, alcoholic, a hapless intense widower who simply can't help not pursuing trouble. Though the plot lacks in any great surprise or suspense it makes up in the complex layers of its characters - each of them. They all seem so unbearably, painfully realistic for a crime novel. In the case of Quirke, starting from very trivial - like no one knowing his second name to the very central - his extremely complex way of relating to others esp. with his layered family, it is all quite rare in popular literature. There is no sense of grand heroism or an undercurrent of righteousness; It just is the story of a few dysfunctional people living around a crime.

The follow-up The Silver Swan is comme ci comme ca. I found it less delicate and more linear than Christine Falls, as if Banville had penned it down forcefully under a spell of obligation. Somehow it felt terribly incomplete. I paid £16.99 for the book and thought wasn't definitely worth a penny more than £ 3.99. [ L and K, If you folks are in no hurry to get to it, I can lend it to you ]

The only new thing I learnt from the story was that the household refrigeration was in use in 1950s when I earlier believed it was introduced only in the 60s.

However, regardless of all that I suggest you read both the books:

1. If you are a fan of beautifully constructed English sentence ( though it is too sophisticated for a crime novel)
2. If you love Dear Dirty Dublin. (In which both the books are set)

Prompted by Banville, who reportedly was inspired to become Benjamin Black by reading Georges Simenon I took up Stain on the Snow which I am presently enjoying reading. Stripped off all the unnecessary decorations of pretentious language, typical of a shallow writing mind the narration makes me feel quite at home. I gather Simenon was a kick-writer who churned out a novel in an average time of ten days. That's amazing. Also I went through his biography , which makes me envy him. His experience and insight of life is first hand, as evident in that interview in Paris Review.

The other current read is the hilarious riot by John O' Farrell - An Utterly Impartial History of Britain or 2000 years of Upper Class Idiots In Charge. The title is self- explanatory. It is quite an entertaining read.

Here are few picks from the book in the timeline of Great Moments in British History:

60 AD Boudicaa burns down Colchester, St Albans, London. Roman Governor regrets asking her if it's her 'funny week'.
1191 AD Richard I joins Third crusade, convinced Saladin has weapons of mass destruction
1944 AD D-Day Only time in history the Brits get to the beach before the Germans.

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This is rather embarrassing. Had wished mom on Mother's day a couple of months back when she thanked me and called me a couple of days later and gently told me it was only Women's day and NOT Mother's day and it was the thought that mattered. Blimey! That's four ands in a sentence.
At that time I made a point to look up the Mother's day and put it on the reminder list but to add to further shame had called a day later than the actual Mother's day. Well what can I say, some days are just not your days. Mother's days especially.Interesting content of the further conversation with Mom was the acceptable difference of age between the groom and the bride. She kept on insisting that anything lesser than five years was appropriate whilst I said the rule of the thumb was to half the man's age and add seven. Concluded in amicable disagreement. Not that either of us believe in what we argued for.

+++

Ah yes, more on the Apprentice: readers might remember sometime time back I had written about benevolent geeks. Here is another wonderful example. A feller named wahwah has most graciously uploaded all the episodes of the first two seasons of the UK Apprentice, along with the ongoing season four on YouTube. Further He has also promised to upload season three. God Bless his soul. Acts like these reaffirms your faith in humanity. The moral of the story is that there are many ways to reach both heaven and the handsome target of seventy two virgins without the need to blow yourself to pieces.

Anyway, virgin-suicides apart (quite a shit movie that was), check out all the videos at leisure. Yes I Know, it is a reality show, but it reflects a fair deal of ethos and rationale of UK Business structure. Also gives you a flavour of variety of personalities in the world. Which I think is lot more useful than many other things, say, for instance watching Indiana Jones and the arcane tribe of golden testes or whatever the recent one is called.

Speaking of business and infrastructure, it's gladdening to see that cricket has been finally given the much deserved league shape and form. I haven't been able to watch any match yet, and unfortunately not likely to catch any this season but I reckon it is going to be a huge success, especially in the next couple of years when there would be, hopefully more international players representing the teams a la football. Already the competition is being well covered in the media in different parts of the world. Also, if backed with a sound strategy by the dormant ICC this version might help to push the game to the heart of America and who knows may be even China? so that in around ten years time we can satisfy ourselves on a Sunday evening by watching the Chinese Cricket Team comprehensively smash a motley team of vegetarian, overweight, so called spinners, asians.

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Shameless feral woman, aka greenmamba aka atonement butter naaan.

This year's Cannes shall go down for offering one of the most cringing moments in history. If you haven't known yet, day before this anonymous feral woman who looked like having jumped out of a Russian circus in an ancient Tarkovsky movie,
was noticed to be walking around confusedly by the Cannes red carpet. It is yet to be confirmed if she was actually begging. But seriously. Just because you once upon a time acted in a movie called Munni or Guddi or whatever the right nickname was, it doesn't mean you actually ought to turn up dressed like THAT. Did no one- her husband, son, daughter in law tell her before she left the hotel? All the bleeding four of those waste-of-oxygen Bacchans should be banned from Cannes for the rest of their lives. Such a absolute disgrace.

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Photography is a domain which I am yet to make peace with as an art form. I have shared some thoughts on this before. Thinking further, the main drawback with Photography I suppose is the lack of active and dynamic role of the imagination in the creative process. Often it is overridden by aesthetics of the subject or the technical aspect of the camera or at times a complex interaction between the two. Because of these reasons the degree of control of imagination is rendered minimal - reducing the process to no more than a skill. People might disagree about this but those who do often lack a reasonable explanation why it can be regarded as art.

Schels' sample

That regardless, I still find the whole idea and the process of photography quite an interesting exercise. All said, the minimum amount of imagination accessible in the procedure can be used to expand the possibilities beyond the technical and the aesthetic significance. Two wonderful examples of such an endeavour that I have come across are Walter Schels and Cindy Sherman bus riders. Schels explores the meaning of death through the eyes of time and Sherman examines individual identity in society. The former is a series of photographs of faces of terminally ill patients before and after their death while latter is a series of photographs of people posing in postures whilst they are travelling in a bus.

Sherman's Bus riders

Watched Days of Heaven after I have come to acquaint myself with the works of Edward hopper. Mallick meditates on the Americana so tantalisingly captured in hopper’s paintings. See below one of Hopperian painting House by a Rail Road and the Mugshot of Days of heaven.

This reminds me of this Edward Hirsh poem

House by the Railroad

Out here in the exact middle of the day,
This strange, gawky house has the expression
Of someone being stared at, someone holding
His breath underwater, hushed and expectant;

This house is ashamed of itself, ashamed
Of its fantastic mansard rooftop
And its pseudo-Gothic porch, ashamed
of its shoulders and large, awkward hands.

But the man behind the easel is relentless.
He is as brutal as sunlight, and believes
The house must have done something horrible
To the people who once lived here

Because now it is so desperately empty,
It must have done something to the sky
Because the sky, too, is utterly vacant
And devoid of meaning. There are no

Trees or shrubs anywhere--the house
Must have done something against the earth.
All that is present is a single pair of tracks
Straightening into the distance. No trains pass.

Now the stranger returns to this place daily
Until the house begins to suspect
That the man, too, is desolate, desolate
And even ashamed. Soon the house starts

To stare frankly at the man. And somehow
The empty white canvas slowly takes on
The expression of someone who is unnerved,
Someone holding his breath underwater.

And then one day the man simply disappears.
He is a last afternoon shadow moving
Across the tracks, making its way
Through the vast, darkening fields.

This man will paint other abandoned mansions,
And faded cafeteria windows, and poorly lettered
Storefronts on the edges of small towns.
Always they will have this same expression,

The utterly naked look of someone
Being stared at, someone American and gawky.
Someone who is about to be left alone
Again, and can no longer stand it.

~Edward Hirsh

+++

Have to go now, anyway, bear in mind these useful things:

Culture is no substitute for sex though people wish to tell you so.

And

If you want to shoot, shoot the message. Don't laugh. But make sure you fuck the messenger. Always.

The do

2008-05-16T17:14:00.002+01:00

Here.

Memories of Capital Wedding

2008-05-13T20:14:00.007+01:00

There are certain gifts that have their name written all over a particular ceremony. A digital photo-frame for instance. It is the perfect gift for a wedding, especially when you would say you know the couple not all that well. (which in my book is defined as seeing less than 12 times /year). So the digital photo-frame, the seven inch version has become sort of an instant gift that one can buy without much thought going into it yet please the couple. Who surely shall be more pleased when they are visited by guests.

Over the last six months have dispensed 5 pieces . Have to stop now, the conversations around them are growing painfully monotonous. But its no fault of the digital photo-frame, which is a decent invention but marriage itself which renders brilliant people boring in no time. Truly, marriages ought to be banned, because inside a marriage there isnt anything exciting save the possibility of an affair.Which the linguists exclude from the marriage itself.

Back to basics, boys.

2008-05-12T19:43:00.001+01:00

Cheesy but brilliant, the daily sport advert.

Congratulations on your Marriage...

2008-05-12T15:47:00.003+01:00

Perhaps this is one of the brilliant poems I have read in a while. It’s penned by Finny for Y, congratulating on her marriage. I fucking wish I had written it. Here are some of the terms of trade for putting it up here, negotiations are still on.

a year's subscription to TLS
a certain maths book from Waterstones/a selection of books frm your collection?
a bag of new de wolf decor i left behind in my room in bruss
a packet of queen fabiola bulbs (for planting) i left behind
a rosemary plant in a pot
a thyme plant in a pot

Some typos you may find are purely incidental, I am afraid you have to bear them. And, Yes, the poem’s copyrighted. Don’t get yourself into trouble.

© Poet.

To Light An Answer

2008-05-08T01:14:00.003+01:00

Dear Diary,

Driving back home on this absolute gorgeous day I remembered Keith Althaus; for writing such a gorgeous line. May be poetry is the memory of the universe, how it wants to remember itself.

I am crossing years tonight
to light an answer.

~Keith Althaus, POEM

Know thy People, Tehelka

2008-05-05T20:43:00.005+01:00

One of the most valued skills of the twenty first century is to manage people. And to manage people, with all the variety of temperaments and attitudes available, one can never emphasise enough the need to understand them before actually going about managing them.

In the world that is flat, even a slight lack of clarity of purpose or goal would end up making you look like a fool. Like Tarun Tejpal of Tehelka. It is such a pity to see Tehelka continue to run their campaign against Gujarat in their whimpering sidebar almost begging someone , as a matter of fact anyone to see the injustice that has been meted out against Tehelka (not Gujurat mind you) by the world which so disrespectfully ignored their socialist pinhole cameras.

Any other media-corporate in the world would have sacked the entire editorial team in no time for having single-handedly cocked up the unbelievable evidence - a killer confessing to the killing - caught on movable film like never ever before in the history of the criminal world, which, in my view deserved nothing short of a Pulitzer.

The middle-aged editorial team, who imaginably would have eaten so much samosas around their university campuses in the sixties, now with their dangerous cholesterol levels clogging the blood to their brains couldn’t simply know what stance to take as regards the evidence. The press conference was almost like an in-house antakshari competition with every editor snatching the microphone to answer questions randomly, where in the incessant and perpetually repetitive Tarun Tejpal said that being the media he wouldn’t want to be associated with politics(check the video below) but eventually ended up contradicting himself and spilling so much red ink on the website, blaming the congress for inaction that one felt sorry for him. Really.

The moral is the imperative of clarity of thought and purpose in the times we live in. Media is an important axle to judge information , not a browser that passes through all information. But naturally he simply is too old to learn. Last week he ran a cover story about the rise of new generation Tibetans who are hyper-articulate [sic], modern etc. and how they are going to save Tibet , when in reality the last one of them are scattering far away into the world as soon as they can afford.

Never in recent times have we seen so blatant a misjudgement of people as this. You can accuse Bennett and Coleman of sensationalism but never of misjudgement. I am glad that Tejpal and his menopausal-minded friends actually own their publication, else, for the profundity of understanding they reflect of their people they couldn’t even be employed for a substandard Men’s magazine.

Know your people gentlemen, not your ideals. At least you could get the exit-poll right.

Wisdom

2008-05-05T01:39:00.003+01:00

Haunting Book Covers

2008-04-29T00:28:00.007+01:00

Some book covers haunt you like anything. A few months back when Finny put up Lempicka’s The Telephone, I was left with that so very familiar feeling of I’ve seen it somewhere before. I even subconsciously associated the soft cubist painting style with The Great Gatsby. I was almost sure I had seen it on the cover of one its editions. But even after a quick 10 minute search-affair with google going through various covers of the Gatsby book I wasn’t much lucky. I eventually gave up. But almost unexpectedly today I came across the original painting that was haunting me. Google kindly pointed out that the mentally elusive Young Girl in Green was indeed the cover of The Great Gatsby of the Oxford world Classics Edition. Green after all. So there. Sorted.

But my favourite Gatsby cover is the Divers (below) , photographed by George Hoyningen-Huene for the Swimwear by Izod of London ( 1930). I think it captures both complex relationship with Jay and Daisy from a quite hypontic distance.

May be the covers of Ulysses sometime?

Hands on at the Photocopier

2008-04-27T19:17:00.001+01:00

Ricochets - Apprentice thoughts:

2008-04-18T11:50:00.010+01:00

The Swedes as usual with their utterly all-in-the-world-leisurely- time have proved what was well known for a long time. That drummers are brains. Now I suspect the Prof is going to play his favourite symphony and go and kill himself.

Among other things this season's Apprentice is quite unusual because it is so blatant. Almost bordering on the US of Amreeka attitude. During discussion with B, she told me that how she finds it all revolting. Of course she is French , but I suppose most of the Brits here watch it to judge the candidates. I know, half the women on the island rave about Alex, but I reckon he is one cunning smartfox. I think it would be an injustice if he wins eventually, which is very very likely at this stage of the competition( but that said I dont think Sir yaaaalan you aaaare faaaayaad likes him a lot, and also that Marks and Spencer girl Margaret scolded Alex like she was his aunt in the boardroom. Alexxxxx, I was there.

Alex not only openly declined to take responsibility delegated to him after having accepted Simon's leadership, but also, sensing a kill in the boardroom leapt up against Claire, who as obnoxious ugly fat Rembrandt painting that she is , didnt deserve to go for this task. As Margaret said Alex is playing a game.
Come Now Margaret, finally someone. Otherwise it would have been a Nickelodeon show.

Like everyone else on the isles we've been talking quite a lot about the Apprentice aspirees. Thought I'll just jot down my first impressions of them. People outside the UK interested in show can find the four episodes of season four that have been broadcast so far on youtube. Make sure you dont mistake it with the US version featuring Donald Trump which I am told is a waste of time.

Raef Bjyou nicknamed Lawrence of Araefia already , made an impressive leader in the laundry task. Good head on the shoulders but carries a buff of hair on the head. Can do well initially but very suspect against stronger contenders, would love him pitted against Claire or Jenny in the boardroom.

Jenny Celerier infamously called the lady Macbeth serpent, Pan-chinned, wears an hideous scarf all the times. Feisty, articulate and brutal. Has already had a few women for breakfast. I know most of the country hates her but I want her to stay as long as possible for the entertainment.

Nicholas de lacy Brown. Fired. Twat in plain english. A fool spoilt by easy money. Anyone who defends himself with class and culture superiority deserves to be fired.

Sara Dada To me she is the Superfit amongst all the girls. A natural born follower, but ambitious. Can do well in easily comprehensible tasks but weak in asserting control during uncertainties especially against a more dominating member like Claire or Jenny. Can make a good apprentice material for Sugar’s moulding though, provided she can see through some backstabbing due in the show over next few episodes.

Lucinda Ledgerwood a creature waiting to be fired. Anyone can see it as clear as daylight. How dare I say that eh Lucinda? Also, I don’t like her gaudy dressing sense.

Lee Mcqueen quite macho looking and easily women’s favourite. But has remained in the shadows so far. Doesn’t come across as very shrewd, but we haven’t seen much of him yet. Have we?

Lindi Mngaza the brain behind idea of the century ie to run a 24 hr hotline for the laundry service. Obviously shall go soon. I thought she should have been fired for pitching to do the laundry for £ 5000. Thats easily one of the stupidest ideas Ive ever heard.

Kevin Shaw Hmm. Looks quite a character doesnt he? but was quite impressive with that janus faced idea of pep talking the team which he used as an armour in the boardroom. I thought thatw as quite clever. I don’t reckon he would be the winner but may be able to last a few episodes.

Simon Smith Fired. The lovely simple bloke. Very good in taking orders. Obviously army life has destroyed him. Was sorry to see him go but obviously he was at tethers. Nice feller though, wouldn’t mind buying him a drink.

Michael Sophocles soft, looks very gay? and tactfully clever or so he projects himself. But I don’t think he can handle high pressure tasks and wire edge boardroom meetings. We have already seen him making fool out of himself with the pizza episode. He has to overturn some negative impressions he has made already to actually go on to win the show. Already infamous for the most ridiculous dance ever. Check here :

Helene Speight looks solid. Reminds me a bit of Christina from last season. I would like to see more of her, so far she has been impressive both in values and business acumen. Should keep an eye on her. Negative : too old to be changed, hence to be employed?

Jennifer Maguire hot colleen, but definitely not an exceptionally impressive mind. Shamelessly called herself the best sales person in Europe and ended up embarrassing herself by pitching the insane £5000 Laundry works along with Lindi. Have to be ruthlessly competitive to really win the competition.

Ian Stringer Fired very unremarkable. Failed to defend himself soundly. I thought Kevin ate him in the boardroom. There is no way he could have stay after he lied about the peptalk.

Shazia Wahab Fired. Poor girl. Undeservedly fired, had done okay till then. Her only mistake was being tongue tied in the Boardroom before the meany meany motor mouth Jenny.Big lesson for people who are easily undermined, are try to be nice to people even when they aren’t wrong.

Alex Wotherspoon: Ha ! resembles my uncle when he was in his twenties. Apparently the heartthrob of the nation for the moment. Very shrewd. Adaptable and very cunning as he showed in the fourth episode. Has to really screw it up if he gets fired in very next few episodes.

Claire Young over confident , big mouth, clever but lacks tact. But otherwise quite solid. Can defend herself to her last bone; Already has rubbed sugar the wrong way. I suppose she would go far in the programme but surely wouldn’t win.

Lateral: But my all time favourite is the one and only Tre from last season. Great sense of humour, open swearer, dedicated, talented glib tongue with ridiculously unbearable clarity of thought . Did the man knew his mind or what? Check this video from last year where he gives a piece of his mind about the women.

BBC Basics :

2008-04-14T23:28:00.002+01:00

Nietzsche Primer: Check out all six, if you havent before.

Double Take:

2008-04-14T00:04:00.002+01:00

Check out the observer article on my most respected film reviewer Philip French listing his favourite movies and also the sight and sound article about one of my most respected directors Mike Leigh talking about his works, mostly focussed on his latest Happy-go-Lucky at the recent Berlinale.

I subscribe, so am not sure if the full articles are available online.

Among other things have shamelessly lost my favourite pair of spectacles on a windy English west coast. Totally my fault , took out while using the binoculars and have carelessly lost it, hence I deserve the pain. Have notified the dealer to look for a replica , but not very positive.

Which one?

2008-04-11T23:44:00.000+01:00

I am always amused by people who ask which book to start with about a particular writer.

Boom boody Boom boody

2008-04-09T18:31:00.003+01:00

The master Peter Sellers and hot Sophia Loren, not the best video but hey its Boom boody.

On Beijing Olympics

2008-04-06T23:27:00.003+01:00

Lately a lot of noise has been made about the Beijing Olympics and how the event gives an opportunity to voice your protest against China. Not very surprising for a shallow mind that is out of perspective of human history.

I thought this through last year after coming across one such early protest last summer in Dublin. Now after hearing all the hues and cries from all over the heres, theres and everywheres of the suddenly conscientious world , it is almost funny see insane attempts to extinguish the Olympic torch.

Near St Stephen's Green Shopping complex, Dublin, Republic of Ireland, 2007

Such protests are only self serving and if the case is against china self defeating. Firstly what are the protests against exactly? There is not a consensus in any city. While Spielberg and Mia Farrow are whining about one thing, Clooney is busy clamouring with another. For some it is Burma while for others it is Tibet. And for few other’s it is environment or the human rights in general. So far the Chinese have dealt with all such dissents like they deal with any of stupid barking dogs. Which is to cook them and eat with boiled rice and carry on with business.

Attributing issues like Darfur to China alone is an international joke and amnesia for the events of the world in the last couple of decades. It would be a gross overlooking of the involvement of about half a dozen of nations that brought about the crisis. And also bear in mind the UN arms treaty is not signed by USA and is only abstained by China along with twenty three other countries. And of course Kyoto is yet to be ratified by the US. Imagine if the Olympics was to be held in Washington , surely there would have not been a single noise anywhere about environment or arms deal etc.
Why ? Because US is a democracy while China isn’t? If at all anything that world ought to have learnt in the post cold war era is that how overrated democracy is both in its functioning and as a concept. In the times of numbers and economies, it has failed to elect responsible governments in established democracies whose functioning have not been largely any different from sensible regimes in the world, China inclusive. A truth Napoleon and Nietzsche spelt out long back. At the end of the day many people have to be governed by some people. Whatever works for you and keeps your country happy should be fine and as we are seeing China is by no means displaying any signs of civil unrest.

That brings us to issues like Tibet and Burma. If Tibetans are fighting for their freedom, I wonder how running away from their home country and winning awards for peace and divinity make them earn freedom. It is clear that they are anything but fighting; more like squeaking to bring attention and aid. The old rules apply: take a leaf out of Gandhi, if you believe you are fighting for a just cause, you fight for what you believe or you die. And when you fight, you do relentlessly, concertedly and expose the injustice than to hurt or punish. Running away and making noises on the streets once in a blue moon is invalidating your own fight. Any struggle has to earn its worth.

Highlighting issues like human rights and other such issues is to make a pretext of your own case, while implying such issues does not exist elsewhere. A study of history of CIA would be more surprising.

Further, all the issues have no relevance to Olympics, and, in fact it only taints the case. Olympics is not a Chinese property; to make an issue of it is to acknowledge that there is no means to fight any of the above issues against China. If that is true, then there is no point fighting. And if it had to be fought, then the fundamental question is why is China hosting the Olympics? A question that has to be answered from outside China. But all you hear is an international political silence. Even countries like India have smartened up. So making schoolboy noises and interrupting the torch run would at the most amount to good willed but mindless theatrics and only strengthen China's resolve. If China has to be homogenised with the ethos and abstract notions of the west then the world has to be willing to pay for it and more importantly it should be worth it. Even if it is, which I supsect in this apolitical economic globe, then it has to be done in a systematised way and over a period of time- like how the influence of the church was dismantled over the period of twentieth century.

Ignoring that and clamouring for incentives from China is disrespecting Olympics as well as trivializing the worth of the issues. China may not be the perfect country to host the Olympics but , as we need in these times, it is stable and prosperous and though slow, progressive, which is what all countries aspire for. They might not have had either the renaissance or the democracy, but man, while the rest of the world is brandishing its material goodies, only they seem to have the infrastructure to make the cuckoo clocks these days.

Vayu

2008-04-06T16:05:00.005+01:00

1. BEAUTIFUL Vayu, come, for thee these Soma drops have been prepared:
Drink of them, hearken to our call.
2. Knowing the days, with Soma juice poured forth, the singers glorify
Thee, Vayu, with their hymns of praise.
3. Vayu, thy penetrating stream goes forth unto the worshipper,
Far-spreading for the Soma draught.
4. These, Indra-Vayu, have been shed; come for our offered dainties' sake:
The drops are yearning for you both.
5. Well do ye mark libations, ye Vayu and Indra, rich in spoil
So come ye swiftly hitherward.
6. Vayu and Indra, come to what the Soma. presser hath prepared:
Soon, Heroes, thus I make my prayer.
7. Mitra, of holy strength, I call, and foe-destroying Varuna,
Who make the oil-fed rite complete.
8. Mitra and Varuna, through Law, lovers and cherishers of Law,
Have ye obtained your might power.
9. Our Sages, Mitra-Varuna, wide dominion, strong by birth,
Vouchsafe us strength that worketh well.

The Rig Veda, Mandala1, Hymn 2,
The Hymn to Vayu, the Hindu God of Air

Sea wind displacing the sand, into its famous ever changing dunes at Anthony Gormley‘s Another Place, Crosby, Merseyside.

TP Kailasam

2008-04-03T11:00:00.001+01:00

TP Kailasam is a sort of South Indian Spike Milligan if you like. Apparently, like all great souls, he ran away from home sometime during his childhood just for the fun of it. Upon return , the father who was a strict south Indian Brahmin ( and therefore naturally would have wanted his son to become a doctor or a engineer ) note: not an engineer, scorned upon his son and asked what exactly did he learn by running away?

The son answered , “ Well Dad , even if there is a storm on the beach, I can manage to light a cigarette with just one match.’’

Token

2008-04-02T20:05:00.004+01:00

Back in business: Summer

Properties of Rational Soul

2008-04-02T00:42:00.002+01:00

These are the properties of the rational soul: it sees itself, analyses itself, and makes itself such as it chooses; the fruit which it bears itself enjoys- for the fruits of plants and that in animals which corresponds to fruits others enjoy- it obtains its own end, wherever the limit of life may be fixed. Not as in a dance and in a play and in such like things, where the whole action is incomplete, if anything cuts it short; but in every part and wherever it may be stopped, it makes what has been set before it full and complete, so that it can say, I have what is my own. And further it traverses the whole universe, and the surrounding vacuum, and surveys its form, and it extends itself into the infinity of time, and embraces and comprehends the periodical renovation of all things, and it comprehends that those who come after us will see nothing new, nor have those before us seen anything more, but in a manner he who is forty years old, if he has any understanding at all, has seen by virtue of the uniformity that prevails all things which have been and all that will be. This too is a property of the rational soul, love of one's neighbour, and truth and modesty, and to value nothing more more than itself, which is also the property of Law. Thus then right reason differs not at all from the reason of justice.

~ Marcus Aurelius , Meditations, Book Eleven
Tr. George Long. I would recommend Martin Hammond though.

A380

2008-04-01T17:48:00.003+01:00

Beauty. Im just imagining how it would feel while bringing the big baby down to hit the tarmac. Aww.

Peace - Dina Rabinovitch

2008-04-01T17:07:00.008+01:00

Last year when Guardian Writer, Dina Rabinovtich succumbed to her cancer, I had asked Prat of the Purple Breeze to do a fictional writing exercise about her. It is only my fault that I had half-forgotten the piece she had wrote. My sincere apologies for the shameless delay but now with no further ado I am posting her piece as a guest-post on this blog.

But before moving onto the post, I suggest it would very helpful, especially for those who dont know Dina, to check how a brave woman she was here. Onto Prat:

She had liked him the minute she walked into his office. He was dressed in crisp black suit and smiled like a child. She’d just turned forty that week, and decided that it was time she got that small little lump in her breast examined. She’d neglected it for a while, thinking it was a bite and then a rash and then a reaction to the cold.

Just a routine check up and then work through the afternoon- coffee maybe with some friends. Now his face was solemn yet caring- he told her to erase the ifs and if nots of the past. Her mind raced through the craziness of the last few weeks, when she finally realised that time was catching up with her. The little lump led to some tests, a monogram, and before she knew it she was in the hospital bed. She saw the nurse walk towards her with the famed cold cap- so her hair wouldn’t fall off immediately. While she felt like giant mammoth being frozen to death, that’s when the tear drops began.

+++

The record hummed slowly in the background, with those little barely noticeable screeches thrown in. She’d dug the record a few days ago- on one of those rare balmy afternoons when the air is nostalgic and makes you look for old melodies. Rare, yes, not because it was balmy, but because her legs could stand her weight while she rummaged through forgotten boxes in the basement.

She is lying on her side now, on the cream coloured sofa facing the large French windows covered in a cashmere shawl. Her sister was in the other room taking a nap, having left a bell a few centimetres from her.

You see, all this felt just like a bad nightmare. Through the strength she had left to bat her eyelids, she sometimes thought that another wink and it will all be over. Even a mere twitch would give her a dimension of the wastage her body has had to take post chemo. Two more weeks of radiation and will be as good a new, she remembered Dr. Morrision saying that morning with his gentle father-like smile.

+++

She begged her body that morning. I am tired today and I finally have to admit that I am. I do not have the strength to fight on. Death of an only child, a bitter divorce, loss of a parent- isn’t that enough pain for me?

She was tired that day, she really was. Not with just what chemo does. But she was tired from the inside, she felt tired in her head. She felt as if even a bat of an eyelid, that most precious system with which she measured time between anything- meals, trip to the loo, sips of water- even that seemed so futile.

For what really is the point of such a battle? Once the generous showers of grey begin to appear in your hair, and your bones seem to creak more at the gym, what is it that you truly look forward to? Once the tumult of adolescence and the turmoil of teenage are over, once you’ve had all your phases including that time when you dressed in black, all Goth, and loaded your arm with a tonne of bracelets- what?

+++

The sun filtered through the windows, and shone on her hands. She moved a finger to feel some life, and a tear drop accompanied. The battle has gone on long enough. She’s been fighting for two years now, using all her strength and prayers of the staff at the hospital. They were trying some experimental medication on her to decide what the best combination of chemo and radiation. How much before, how much after?

But she could feel it today. Very distinct. Almost like a colour floating by itself in a room. For the first time in a very long time, she was afraid.

Despite the love we gather, and the humility battles such as these seem to put into us, we are still afraid to ask for the smallest things that really matter. All she wanted that morning was to look at the kind face of someone she loved. She wanted someone to hold her wasted body. She wanted to feel the warmth of another person- where do you go looking for that, and how do you ask?

I am afraid to fall asleep tonight. The fear of an unending tomorrow keeps me up. I am just plain afraid. Will you come and hold me? But then it didn’t matter, she let go of all that she ever had and she had ever known and that was it. Unbelievably simple.

Peace.

The Witt -Welsh Situation

2008-04-01T14:01:00.004+01:00

One of my all time favourite scenes in cinema. Sean Penn so absofuckinglutely expanding the definition of acting under the able lead of Terrence Malick. I might have watched The Thin Red Line about 25 times, yet every time this one scene unfailingly moves me, perhaps because it is so so true for what I know it.

To see the world...

2008-03-27T22:53:00.003Z

Ole painting i did when i was 20 i suppose, dug it after S asked for my early paintings. bottom right is the blake poem.

Moonlighting

2008-03-26T10:27:00.006Z

Too much information floating about on my mind. Even a seven hour sleep session, the longest of the year so far hasnt helped much to drown the weariness. So, basically nothing significant to write about. Hmm except may be couple of things I enjoy whilst being online.

Goodreads is a well structured online cataloguing which allows a variety of options for interface with friends and fellow readers. Apart from the user-friendly structure , the most it has helped me is to jot these quick snippets of reviews of the books recently read. Im finding myself jotting down things - more than before and in many a perspectives as I read the book and pulling all the thoughts together at the end. Thanks.

The second is indispensible. I think some of you might know my love for the Perry Bible Fellowship, which fits like a glove to the humour I appreciate and adore. It manages to achieve the delicate balance of dark gore and novelty of hilarity in it. From sex, history, underworld, plant-life, to space exploration, school, family it deals with a huge passell of subjects, wrapping the huge underbelly of the dark and seemingly socially unacceptable in a subtle air of dismissiveness.- Here is an example:

I suppose thats a fairly average instance, here's something that drifts in dangerously close to favourite territory. It says nothing more than the misery of the poor turtle. Yet you are compelled to see the wickedness in it.

PS- I know i ought write back to some of you. Soon people, soon.

Random Richochets

2008-03-20T09:46:00.011Z

Been busy and going to be as well. So random ricochets:

Yes, So many winters have been passed idly in the promise of the summers. Well now, spring is here, almost - which means more travelling, more sports and less online time.Personally speaking it's marvellous because this winter has been an enlightenment of sorts: Buddha under the bandwidth tree.

We were told that information is a commodity of our times and hence an invaluable tool of transaction/interaction rendering the internet a priceless infinity. But the more time one spends on the internet the more one realises the grand futility of it all. While I shall put up my hand first and say internet has most definitely made information more accessible, I suppose it is but only in terms of the means and the ease of finding it than anything else. What needed a bit of digging and jouly smiles and take cares to the grumpy librarians before has been transformed into just typing into sacred search space of Google. Good. And that’s about it. Nothing more.

Coming to the much hyped user generated content - I must say it is almost terrifying. As we speak millions of snaps are uploaded on the flickr and garage video uploaded on youtube with a million comments that follow representing the culture of our times. Fine, but it makes you wonder if all these are really a substitute for the real? What it has achieved is only to make pockets of populations reinforcing extant attitudes and mentalities, the danger of which I think is that it would hardly let you come to realise your own position in the real holistic world.

The same applies to blogging. We were told it would herald a generation of new democracy. That the culture would grow exponentially subsequent to the blogging interaction. All such prophecies much as I had predicted have been unfounded. Real journalism continues to be as strong as ever. Blogging has settled into a hackney of a dynamic: you post something which means a penny more to you than other trivia and it would be admired or discussed by a group of select bloggers who are or become your group. And such groups exchange banalities endlessly.
Any differences of opinion from outside is scorned upon and fiercely crushed down. So where exactly is the democracy? It has brought forth easy access to other’s stupidities. As I mentioned before, the lack of meaningful exchange makes you firmer in your beliefs depriving you of your knowledge in the realistic world. Feminists just seek out feminists blogs and bloggers, while the technology enthusiasts continue to be engrossed in their technology discussions. Status Quo.

Plus there are some insecure noises made about saving your identity while blogging. That’s a whine from a person too much in love with his/her opinion. Anonymity is going to be history soon. And Handles would be frowned upon in less than ten years. Hmmm.

On the positive side here are some interesting status messages I found on gtalk:

..wants to grow up and become Bill Murray.
..happened, he cant be reduced to a set of influences.
..MTV presents Stephen Hawking unplugged.
..Haat baaais enge?
..Love is never having to say sorry. Bitch.
..making pills for poverty.
..busy fuck off.

+++

Among other things, a quick peek at the Daily mail yesterday ( No I don’t read just picked up at the lounge) showed that, included in the £25 Million-McCartney-Mills divorce settlement was £30000 for flowers and chocolates. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot bitch? Not a single frigging tongue of a Feminist would want to speak about it.

+++

And picture this: You worked hard all your life and saved a bit of money for your old age. Gave a good bit of your young life to fight a big war so your future generation might enjoy a free life. And when you are old you happened to have Alzheimer’s Dementia and your savings exceeded £ 22000 then the UK government would pay for your care in a desolate nursing or care home and confiscate all your belongings inc. the savings. That’s a negative about socialist medicine. But I’m not against it, works for most of the folks. Contrast that against a famous writer, diagnosed with a rare variant of Alzheimer's at an early stage because he couldnt type the word -else and being able to not only pay for his treatment but also donate a chunk to charity. But what itches me about people like Terry Pratchett who made a fortune by telling fantasy tales is not being able to just shut up and face the reality, keep their private affairs private. Why shouldn’t I talk? is the rhetoric he uses. Because Mr Pratchett,
1. If your next book sales hit a high we wouldn’t know if it is sympathy?
2. You got to have a look around to see how common people with real Alzheimer’s cope ( not the mild type in early stage)?
3. It is terribly terribly unforgivably unbritish.

+++

And we knew about this financial roll down to come as far as in october, the Americans though seem to be in denial. I still wonder how raising money for a huge election, funding a war outside, and cutting interest rates in response to Market having a panic attack everytime going to solve this?
God bless 2008.

+++

Does anyone know who was the genius of the babu who has handled the Taslima Nasreen send off, its a smooth stroke of genius.

+++

Lastly, A380 finally made the Heathrow call amidst much fan-fare reminiscent of glorious kingdoms. Its as much as a marvel of a machine as the ipod, but, only at the other end. I saw it last year and it is humungous. But hang on even after 100 odd years of flying we still cant have sex on air? Shame really.

Cheers

Graysweet Mother

2008-03-16T18:41:00.003Z

Formby Beach, Liverpool

Reel 12

2008-03-12T22:36:00.006Z

Michael Clayton is a wrongly told joke that you had heard before. Seriously.

Die Fälscher: Best Foreign Language Oscar, was okay. Can we just ban Holocaust art for about 10 years? and after that forever?

The Counterfeiters.

On Sir Vidia, some thoughts

2008-03-09T22:01:00.020Z

Usually I manage to resist reading a review before I read any book. But when it is reviewed as the main article at the London Review of Books, it becomes incredibly hard to ignore. And impossible, either due to the reaction to it or because of my admiration for the writer, if it is a Naipaul book. So, through such travails of reading the book after having read about it, and, amidst reverberating echoes of such canon-shots booming between the pages, I finished Naipaul's latest book Writer’s people -Ways of looking and Feeling, last week.

It deals with one of the expansive and original subjects one can read about in the post-modern world. Naipaul typically, with no allegiance to anyone and no belongingness anywhere writes about writing and the writers - whom he had read or come across in his lifetime; and how, with their ways of looking and seeing, they helped to shape his own way of seeing.

Admittedly, the book is quite airily written and lacks the eye for detail that one usually associates with Naipaul. Given the vastness of the domain chosen for the book, it is at best a selective summary. It is fragmented, flaky and even in the best of its pieces surprisingly incomplete. Also, I must add, for anyone who has keenly followed Naipaul’s works, it would not be a subject entirely unfamiliar. At least I wasn't when I read the book.

Though there are liberal transplants of sentiments from his earlier books ( we all know about the influence of Huxley’s Jesting Pilate and Vidia's positive takes on Gandhi and RK Narayan), still The Writer's People doesn’t fail to give you a clearer understanding of his perspective. Yet, somewhere while translating the cynicism into criticism, in a passage here and there, one finds his shameless malice unmasking itself . Many pages on Anthony Powell have little relevance and are presumably prompted by his personal differences that existed between them. ( Naipaul briefly alludes to how Powell stopped seeing him before his death even while he continued to see others). The chapter was, as Naipaul claims himself at the very beginning - difficult to write - making the reader who has read it wonder, what exactly was the need to go through such hardship? More so, at a premise when it is least pertinent? Difficulty or malice, whatever it is, the sentiment has been given the treatment it deserves by many a critics. However, that shouldn’t make us overlook other segments of the book: there are wonderful observations and assertive judgements on others which, as hard as they are to digest, cannot be reasonably refuted: The takes on Vinoba Bhave and Flaubert for instance. I haven’t read any Salvon so I cant make a valid personal judgement. And the well-known Walcott-Naipaul bitching duel that's been running on for a while also finds it's share in the book. Pity really.

In all, personally the book was a welcome, coming during the hackneys and baloneys I have been letting myself read over the last few months. From a larger view, it wasn't an incredibly outstanding book but neither was it a dull put-aside. Which other writer would research to tell you that an Indian Bullock-cart did 24 miles a day in 1890s? And going back to the reviews, after having read the book was - sort of irony of relevance – because the book is all about ways of looking.

It’s always amazing to see how reviews on Naipaul often aid to propagate their own perception of him; the most commonest transference that goes into his reviews are that he is an arrogant, provocative prude who defines himself by criticism. But readers, who are able not to let themselves carried away by their own prejudices and loyalties often, if not eventually, bring themselves to admire his work - fiction and otherwise. But, for almost repeating his own old material and the apparent offence he has wrapped it in, I am not sure if that would happen with this book.

That regardless, a larger audience, as often as it is seen, continue to draw a great consolation by running a Naipaul work down the drain of their perspective ignorance. Here is one such insalubrious effort related to the book in question.

Half-way through the review, I had to go back to check who was able to write with so much self pity. Must admit though, if I was asked a year back about Dalrymple I could have convinced you that it’s a rare Belgian dish. It was only during my last visit to India I found he was a Scot writing about Delhi's history while living in Delhi! ( God save him). The only bit I have read of anything by Mr Dalrymple is a small essay while glancing through one of his book in a library; it was about the protests against the Miss-World competition that was to be held in Bangalore sometime last decade.

It was a typical western-modern eye looking down confusedly - about the Indian fundamentalists threatened by the erosion of their value, culture etc. To cut the long trauma short, nothing was placed in perspective-- Whys were blatantly ignored for the Hows and the Whats? The running sentiment was of sympathy and hopelessness for people who were opposing a beauty pageant; There was no effort made to really understand the underbelly of the emotions involved, no history was palpable; as if it was all read in readily available books: Kali, Kamasutra, Khajuraho? The impression was as much shallow as the oremise it was made from. After reading that piece, naturally, even the strongest recommendation of his work went into my fourth waiting list. The unread City of Djinns, sitting somewhere in my attic, must be as old and as sarsenic brown as a Delhi Minaret. May be someday when they cleanup Delhi, perhaps?

It is a similar sentiment he entertains here in the review: For the first five paragraphs in his review Mr Darlymple takes upon himself to introduce to the Sunday Times reader, Mr Naipaul, a Nobel laureate. The biased account of a perceived deterioration is so well articulated it conveniently ignores his Booker in 1971 and The Nobel in 2001. Perhaps the only thing the summary lacks is his obituary. Further, in the latter part Mr.Dalrymple contests equally in malice with Naipaul and completes the travesty of the review by making a grocery list of all the negative adjectives in the book. Not surprisingly there is no perspective, not even judgement of why Naipaul is or may be wrong. The defense is based on the irrefutable reputations of the people, Naipaul seemed to have challenged in the book. It might as well have been called a gospel and the writers apostles. The Naipaul dynamic, that so often has become to define his work and the response to it is thus complete. It is no wonder Mr Dalrymple writes about courtesans and Moghul jewellery - things that cant even beseech a judgement by a post-modern reader.

In areas where he reluctantly does offer some judgement ie Gandhi, he comes across as in grave need of reason. Kathryn Tidricks’s Biography of Gandhi is available on Google; anyone can make out it is far from the bounds of brilliance forget relevance, in fact is a curriculum vitae of Gandhi a la carte. What Mr Darymple terms as dull and superficial of Naipaul's judgement of Gandhi is perhaps one of Naipaul’s brilliant insights in retrospect ( not for the first time though) of Gandhi’s battle with reverse-culture-shock, a phenomenon now not unfamiliar to the Indian Diaspora and undoubtedly beyond the realms of Mr Dalrymple’s imagination.

Naipaul’s statement on the lack of autonomous intelligentsia in India is a fact; any average Indian blog has it written all over its template. Mr Dalrymple’s Indian universities - buzzing with the same vibrancy of commerce - is either at its best a rush to be recruited for a plum post in the farthest MNC or at its worst, the bass of some local wannabe ( invariably somehow they would never be) rock-band covering the ancient 80s Guns and Roses number. If that is autonomous, India might as well claim Rudyard Kipling as her literary masthead.

As I have said, its often hilarious to see why people who don’t know a penny about what Naipaul writes about, have an urge to put him down. This isn’t first time people have found it hard to figure him. A chunk of the criticisms railed against him is a confused literary babbling of a response obligated to say something mean, often about him rather than something valid against his work.

Part of the confusion I have always supposed, arises from people’s lack of understanding his place. Whenever I think of his position I am reminded of Archimedes saying that if given him an appropriate place to stand out and a suitable lever, he would move the earth. Naipaul, not belonging anywhere and no influences from his background, holds that enviable position which makes it possible for him to see the cultures and civilizations as crystal as sunrise : what he himself described as..' looking through multiplicity of impressions to central human narrative'.

His Area of Darkness is a mirror representation, a testimonial of the so called socialist state that was India. His judgement on half-formed African societies are as true today as much as they were when it was said. And it took twenty years for the world to understand what Naipaul had written - on his own, without any influence or motive - about Islam, what Edward Said had dismissed as 'Intellectual catastrophe' and what Mr Darlymple still calls in his review: persistent negative assessment of Islam is turning out to be a prophecy of sorts. But thankfully, it took less than a month after 9/11 for the Nobel committee to endorse Naipaul's views. This ability to see things - as they are, were and going to be - was more loftily put by the Nobel committee as : having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories.

I remember in his Nobel acceptance speech Naipaul had said - He is the sum of his books. I dont think many of us can actually comprehend the meaning of the phrase. It is an accurate self-judgment, a rubric which in my opinion can only be accorded to two other writers of the twentieth century: Joyce and Kafka. This unique position is also reflected in Naipaul’s unwillingness to have any children as they would come between him and his work. For what is incomprehensible for many a writers or critics, that is just a symbol of how unique his position is and the possible layers it conceals.

I always believe, a reviewer who is reflecting on a writer; who cant stand in where the writer has stood should take special care to separate the works from the person. Unfortunately in Naipaul’s case, either by his own doing or as a package of consequence beyond him, people carry around his negative image wanting to fit him into it somehow. As said before, there is almost a palpable negative precept and a compulsion to offer an opinion on him, rather than his writing.

Here is one, dare I say Indian version that I found while scouring the Indian blogosphere. Admittedly the chap hasn’t read Naipaul recently, and in the event mentioned in the post, found him uninteresting and thought he looked liked a constipated Walrus. Further, much to his disappointment, he found Naipaul deaf (wow) and ERGO Naipaul is everything that he was told about. Well, there goes your autonomous intelligence. If you are not nice enough to me, you are bad or wrong. Or boring! You simply must be. The absurdity, is unbearable even for any humour. The only acknowledged interesting writer of the last fifty years, (apart from the oulipo) being dismissed as uninteresting. If people want to read beautiful, tender sentiments why dont they just go and read Neruda? It reminds me of what Naipaul had written about long back - The absurdity of India can be total, it appears to ridicule analysis. It takes the onlooker from anger beyond despair to neutrality.

Perhaps it was this neutrality that made him ask to repeat the question again. It’s not all that hard to imagine - someone getting up and asking in his or her best haryanvinglish in one go, “Sirrrviddiyyaa, whatdoyouthink of the Hindunaaationalist move-menntt?” (Just like on Ibnlive)

Of course, you are bound not to hear and not understand the question. It's just courteous to ask to repeat again. I couldn’t tell in the Delhi airport if the PAS was in English or Welsh or Urdu. Thankfully, Naipaul is deaf only in Delhi; when he was elsewhere he was just as fine as a fiddler - as Finny told me once when Naipaul was asked by another nincompoop - What do you think of Indian Roads? He had answered " Well, You deserve it." I bet it cant get any more interesting than that.

If you look at it in toto, it is a very interesting dynamic: Given his incorrigible inclination, Naipaul can see only cultures and societies as accurate as numbers. These in turn, just like the reviewers above, would just go on to validate what he had said. The thing speaks for itself, as it has been for the last fifty years. Well, what can one say? While Naipaul would want us to believe that he is the kind of writer that people think other people are reading, the world, with all its blemishes and glories, is what it is. Men who are nothing, men who allow themselves to become nothing have no place in it. Men who want to tell other people what other people are not reading and still want to find a place in the world for that.

Ficcione: Love is Gambling

2008-03-09T14:33:00.001Z

Perhaps it is the inexplicable layers that lay between the ex-lovers which makes it an impossibility to describe the tumult of the their feelings. It somehow even appears beyond the bound of the metaphors. But they were far too near now to be dealing with metaphors. Amidst all, she held her gaze and managed to whisper 'There is still time for this not to happen'. But she was fully aware of the utter futility of her words, as much as he was. All, as ever before and ever will after would come to this one moment. The air was still and the warmth too delinquent to be ignored. Smile, Wink, Laughter, Power - all the currencies that the world interacts everyday vanished. Time dissipated folding itself into infinite layers of energy. The setting had made up its mind and no light from outside would disturb its purpose.
All love is gambling. But the splendid metaphor, perhaps, a trifle late.

Trivia if unknown: Currency, windows, clocks arent permitted in Gambling houses.

Rain On Glass

2008-03-05T22:20:00.002Z

The night was having a character of its own: bit sullen but being diplomatic about it. I was called to work to deal with a situation; I started half whining for having my reading interrupted and half curious about the challenge. I stepped out to find it was raining - a subtle drizzle - a sort of a pixar version running at <2x speed.
As usual I drove to gates and punched in the keys. They have this elaborate Mission-Impossible-type security systems; the keys have to verified and then further codes have to be activated simultaneously by two separate guards at different locations, all after they have had a good look at your car via CCTV and ascertained that you are not Tom Cruise. The process usually takes somewhere about 8-10 minutes. I thought I could utilize the time to complete the ending chapter I had left unfinished.

As I opened the book, I saw this memorable view: Rain drops slowly falling and slithering down the windscreen , leaving behind their halogen shadows on the book. I briefly mused how centuries of civilization had eventually come to this interface: vapours compressed at miles above in the sky meeting high-compressed silica. So graceful, so brief, yet so incomprehensibly important.
But before I could drift away too much with such thoughts, the barrier opened with a screech. So there went another poem, I said to myself and revved up the engine.

So long, Down Under

2008-03-04T22:01:00.004Z

Whiskey
Tango
Foxtrot
would
christ
do
now
Mr. Hayden?

Who's afraid of Amy Walker?

2008-03-04T11:19:00.000Z

I am.

First of sorts

2008-03-01T23:08:00.008Z

See what first thing of this sort I did threw up?

You're Ulysses!
by James Joyce

Most people are convinced that you don't make any sense, but compared to what else you could say, what you're saying now makes tons of sense. What people do understand about you is your vulgarity, which has convinced people that you are at once brilliant and repugnant. Meanwhile you are content to wander around aimlessly, taking in the sights and sounds of the city. What you see is vast, almost limitless, and brings you additional fame. When no one is looking, you dream of being a Greek folk hero.

Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

PS Thanks M

Banville meri John

2008-02-29T13:56:00.004Z

I would like to live forever . I find the prospect of leaving this exquisite world, I find it devastating. I find it infuriating.

I keep thinking what kind of day would I like to die on? Would it be as beautiful, would it be one of those beautiful pearl grey , slightly mauve days in June? Would it be one of those days in September, one of those puissant skies? Would it be depths of winter, you know, those bleak mid-winter days?

None of them suits me. I don’t want to go on any day. I want to stay forever.

Who else thinks that's almost like Doestovesky's words spoken by Brando in The Last Tango in Paris ?

888

2008-02-28T22:49:00.002Z

Anyone up for this?

PS - Thanks J.

Reading ole Love Letters,

2008-02-28T11:00:00.005Z

Where is the Gentleman?

2008-02-28T11:00:00.003Z

Idiots + Bullies + Slaves + Prisoners + Money = Cricket.

Can we add this seeming gentleman to the playing eleven in the ring? That would keep things quiet for a decent while.

Some World Music

2008-02-25T22:14:00.005Z

Weeping Meadow, Eleni Karaindrou, Greece

But It Rained, Parikrama, India

Lane Moje,Željko Joksimović Serbia

Tijuana Dream, All India Radio, Australia

Love Will Tear us Apart

2008-02-20T20:14:00.005Z

Nouvelle vague, the French band famous for their song In the manner of speaking , doing a cover of Love will tear us apart. Is okay.

But here's the original. Out of this goddamn world.

Why Banville is Word God?

2008-02-19T10:04:00.010Z

A few days back in an online group, a debate was opened about the personal significance of John Banville's writing. Here is a Fellow-Banville-Lover writing why he is important to her: He articulates a feeling that you thought couldnt be articulated. The following is an extract from The Newton Letter, why I agree with her- fond memory of a feeling, when I was young and discovering United Kingdom jaunting all across on trains. He captures the very pulse of the moment, and it is why I have to return to Banville again and again.

I WAS BORN DOWN THERE, in the south, you knew that. The memories I have of the place are of departures from it.I am thinking of Christmas trips to Dublin when I was a child, boarding the train in the dark and watching through the mist of my breath on the window the frost-bound landscape assembling as the dawn came up. At a certain spot every time, I can see it still, day would at last achieve itself. The place was a river bend, where the train slowed down to cross a red metal bridge. Beyond the river a flat field ran to the edge of a wooded hill, and at foot of the hill there was a house, not very big, solitary and square, with a steep roof. I would gaze at that silent house and wonder, in a hunger of curiosity, what lives were lived there. Who stacked that firewood, hung that holly wreath, left those tracks in the hoarfrost on the hill? I can't express the odd aching pleasure of that moment. I knew, of course, that those hidden lives wouldn’t be much different from my own. But that was the point. It wasn't the exotic I was after, but the ordinary, that strangest and most elusive of enigmas.

Timeline

2008-02-17T21:05:00.000Z

Crossing Over

2008-02-15T13:47:00.004Z

And dying to watch my man in this.

Supposedly, only for ten minutes on screen, but thank god for that. Before the mysterious Milk.

Stroszek

2008-02-15T13:42:00.003Z

Stroszek is the proof why Herzog is a visionary.

Omega Minor

2008-02-13T23:09:00.003Z

R, Eventually managed to get the hot copy; expect yours soon.

Préparez vos mouchoirs

2008-02-11T20:20:00.000Z

Quasi delusional, hopelessly absurd, psychotically comic, Blier product; oscar winner 1978.

There will be Blood....

2008-02-10T21:25:00.002Z

The Kubrickesque meditation of the first fifteen odd minutes of the movie is a prelude to the opera that follows - There will be Blood. It’s hard to regard it as a movie; it’s a performance of just one man, Daniel day Lewis. For, he reduces other actors around in the world to almost CGIs.

The only two other things that stand a chance to make any impression in the movie are: Oil, which defines the backdrop- Daniel’s drive and a stand in for typical love interest. And, two: The music which forms the background, stepping in as a substitute for Daniel’s emotions.

The rest of the cast are reduced to numbers, in presence and dynamics.

You can already see how it is distinctly different from any other Hollywood product in recent memory. The movie doesn’t have a story or even an intent to narrate one. It is just a reflection of the being of one man - and as it goes in most of such cases - an upcoming American venture capitalist, ruthless and willing to let his drive consume him and turn him into an enigma. But unlike Hearst, Hughes etc. Daniel isn’t bound to anything or anyone - he comes into the movie fully-formed, without a past( No q-u-a-r-a-n-t-i-n-e) without a destiny to claim as success(rosebud). He knows of no love or belonging. We watch him totally dominate a movie for three hours and still we walk out not being able to tell if we really know him. But yet when we see him talk and walk during those scenes, we feel as if we know him - the cunning in his response and the uncompromising crookedness in his being. But then there are sudden surprises of poignancy and tenderness, which we get taken over by, even when we know it is a put-over; like, Daniel smiling at his baby boy on a train, or when he so convincingly claims to be a father, a family man. Though you suspect him, you cant help but be charmed. And soon when, in one of brilliant scenes in the movie- he leaves his hurt, pleading and impaired son to rush back to the Oil-well, for some reason, you arent as surprised as you naturally would be.

That is the beauty of the movie; without any doubt it has in it one of the most enigmatic charecters ever to come out of Hollywood.

For Anderson ( not the promising one from Darjeeling Limited), I am not sure if the movie is a really conscious effort. But if it is, he has done a superb job; Watching the movie I shuddered at those decisions : when and where to take the camera off Daniel’s dickensy face. More importantly, all the credit should go to him for not spoiling it with banalities; one love interest would have royally damaged the movie and pulled it on par C grade flick. I haven’t read the book nor know anyone who has, but I felt the brother(?in law), a mcguffin to side narrate Daniel’s psyche could have been handled better.

Other members of the cast are almost reduced to extras, except at times Paul Dano, who though refreshing is unfortunately asked to act opposite a behemoth out-of-the-world performance in a very unsupportive narration to his role. He is promising though, reminds me of Ed Norton in early days.

The only other thing in the movie that truly justifies the enigma of Daniel is the absolute wonder of Greenwood background score. Its not just the choices of the scores ( Brahms to build it up- remember Scorsese using Bach’s Toccata and Fugue for Hughes in The Aviator) but also the use of music to reflect Daniel’s mind. For instance, in the Oil-Gush scene the music alternates between muffled heaviness and the bustle of the gush depicting the failing hearing of HW (Daniel’s son) and the chaos of the incident following hitting the oil bed respectively - two possible conflicts within Daniel, a man, to whose emotions we hardly have any access on screen.( dont know about book)

It is easy to see how it is not a typical American movie; it isn't about tapping oil or making profit out of it or about religion versus money; it is about your nihilistic devotion to your narcissism, all the while well aware of its pathos. And, like all such things in nature, stronger beats the slower and the powerful destroys the meek. You see, there has to be blood always.

I can easily see why people might not get it or even hate it. Yes, Its different. To an extent that it might take a while to register its value; in the process I fear it might lose out the Oscar to another wonderful effort by the Coens. I think No Country conforms more to the American definition of a movie.

As for acting and Oscars go this year, well, firstly I have seen better of Javier Bardam than in No Country ( eg Mar Adentro ). I think it is easier to play a powerful author backed role like Antoine. On the other hand, Daniel's charecter could have been easily spoiled by a lesser actor. Plus, Daniel has two veins which pop up on his forehead when he is at his best: well, one won an Oscar long back and the other I reckon should get one soon.

One hundred hours of solitude

2008-02-07T11:49:00.000Z

Granta's one hundred! Damn neat. That should take care of a few evenings.

Promise of Innocence

2008-02-04T22:31:00.001Z

Childhood is the sleep of reason.
~Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Boys @ Beach Mangalore, Karnataka, India

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
~ee cummings

Boys@ Derwent waters, Lake District Cumbria, England.

Also this one here.

There will be Music...

2008-02-04T11:50:00.000Z

Radiohead Jonny Greenwood’s score for There will be Blood is the best score for a cinema in recent years. Innovative, multidimensional, and very moving. The last time I was so ensorcelled by the notes was perhaps Mullick’s The Thin Red Line. Have downloaded the stuff and listening on repeat.

The Joyce of Writing

2008-02-02T12:44:00.000Z

Both Joyce and Ulysses were born on this day, without whom and which English litearature would have been an individual nightmare of a collective neurosis.

What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier returning to the range, admire?

Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator's projection: its umplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8,000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the independence of its units: the variability of states of sea: its hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides: its subsidence after devastation: its sterility in the circumpolar icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and commercial significance: its preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of the globe: its indisputable hegemony extending in square leagues over all the region below the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn: the multisecular stability of its primeval basin: its luteofulvous bed: Its capacity to dissolve and hold in solution all soluble substances including billions of tons of the most precious metals: its slow erosions of peninsulas and downwardtending promontories: its alluvial deposits: its weight and volume and density: its imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns: its gradation of colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones: its vehicular ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and confluent oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic currents: gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence in seaquakes, waterspouts, artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies, freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers, cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its vast circumterrestrial ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs, and latent humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and exemplified by the hole in the wall at Ashtown gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of its composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent part of oxygen: its healing virtues: its buoyancy in the waters of the Dead Sea: its persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies, inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard: its properties for cleansing, quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation: its infallibility as paradigm and paragon: its metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes: its docility in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills: its utility in canals, rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe) numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90% of the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning moon.

~ James Joyce, Ulysses

Gastronomic Trivia

2008-02-01T12:19:00.000Z

Petits pains aux legumes is Pav Bhaji.

Following the Equator

2008-01-30T16:40:00.000Z

Would someone put this man on a section 136 please? ;)

Parenting Harbhajan...

2008-01-29T22:37:00.000Z

Now that the Dog's letter has been erased off Harbhajan, could Kumble do us all a favour by doing him some telling behind closed door?

Behaving like an idiot on cricket field, celebrating a wicket by ridiculously rolling all over the grass as if it was his wheat field in Punjab, bringing a national flag onto a sporting field for nothing, trying to dance like a drunk while on live international stream and succeeding! Patently, he has been disgusting too often to be ignored as a sudden rise of blood to his empty-head. Worst of all, what sort of thoughtless smartass would want to sledge in his own mother tongue and expect people in a totally different clime to understand it?

If I were Kumble, I would give him an ultimatum that If he cant maintain some dignity in the future, he would be standing in some crowded corner in Jallandar, ogling at women and giving wrong directions to visitors.

New slang

2008-01-29T00:16:00.000Z

Sort of music,that commands me to just shut off everything and strumm. Everytime. And the video, floods memories of small town childhood making the heart heavy.

World without End....

2008-01-25T09:00:00.000Z

The particles are broken;the waves are transculent, laving roiling with beauty like sharks.The present is the wave that explodes over my head, flinging the air with particles at the height of its breathless unroll; it is the live water and the light that bears from undisclosed sources the freshest news, renewed and renewing, world without end.

~Annie Dillard

Physiognomy

2008-01-19T14:52:00.000Z

glumbert - Women in Film

Nicotine Notes Update:

2008-01-13T22:08:00.000Z

You know how strange it feels when the consciousness to quit smoking arrives? No , I am not referring to the version which often comes and goes away. This is different and feels so unique, as though it was someone alien and not me who was feeling it. And worst of all, it makes you feel helpless when you realise, almost against yourself that it is here to stay.

Yes, have packed it in. Nothing to do with any of new year’s resolution. But yes, had been thinking of cutting down and slung it around the event. Well, first thought I should smoke not more than 20 a year, mostly as occasional pleasures. However the third day was ambivalent. Couldn’t resist buying a pack at Sainsbury’s, the same old lady who on seeing me immediately pulled out a pack. So couldn’t escape. And then had the first one which soon ushered in the second and I have to tell you I did not feel any good about it. Not at all. In fact, was quite angry with myself. And soon the second was beckoning the third. I thought it’s about time . Thought about it for a good 15 minutes and then emptied the pack in the toilet and flushed them away for good. Or so I think. Presently am fighting everything. Even the fucking thought of having quit it.
One heartening aspect though is I have learnt to say no. At times, I spend my time imagining myself being offered a stick by so many smokers I know and practice mentally to say no to them. But its going to be quite a challenge.

The weak moments I have identified are: when I am on my own and become stimulated by a thought or any other interesting stimulus from outside. Second post coitus. Fuck it. Feel like lunatic. Then there are times when you watch a perfect stranger light up and slowly draw a puff as if it was the very purpose of his life . I feel running amok. But so far haven’t given in.

I suppose it is more or less like a bereavement. Even everyone around is slowly readjusting themselves to the loss. The other day, during a conversation, J lit a cigarette and reflexly out of habit extended the arm to light mine , only to find a smile on my lips. It was a difficult silent moment. Unique. Then he slowly withdrew his hand and continued with the talk as if nothing happened.I think he was feeling as if he had offended me and I felt almost apologetic for having putting him through such times.

Thats for now, as they say, lets see.

£1300 Car

2008-01-10T13:44:00.000Z

I have memories of years and years of the so called Indian Left making a life and political career out of refuting everything in the world, leftish professors poisioning the minds of vulnerable uni students that they can remove the stupidity of the human nature by chanting slogans, all only ended up in making us borrow food.

Finally a day has come to see an Indian launch-Tata Nano being featured in International media first page. And deservingly. All talk all day has been Nano, £1300, $2500 er.

Yes, yes I know one or the other of stupid lady professors in JNU might soon publish a whining thesis about carbon levels of the world, all when her daughters might be driving one each to the PVR.She can take a test drive to hell. Going by the past decade of election results, Indians in the street are fairly knowledgable, than Americans, or even Indians who went universities.

Third gear now.

Withnail and I

2008-01-10T12:19:00.001Z

I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promotory; this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this mighty o'rehanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire; why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, how like an angel in aprehension, how like a God! The beauty of the world, paragon of animals; and yet tome, what is this quintessence of dusk. Man delights not me, no, nor women neither, nor women neither.

Thanks Finny.

Monkeys and Bastards

2008-01-09T20:18:00.000Z

Monkey is the father of man.
~ Charles Bobby Darwin, Loafer and Subverter

Yeaah! Man is the bastard (in chorus)
~Man is the Bastard, Loafers and wannabe subverters

Which of you bastards give three monkeys?

Salford Quay

2008-01-08T23:09:00.000Z

Quay, including the Lowry, from View Point.

Salford, Manchester

On Ricky Ponting and his boys

2008-01-08T13:32:00.000Z

I do not give a damn who won or lost but these are my contentions with Ricky Ponting from New Year’s test match at Sydney 2008 and some related issues:

My primary and personal objection is the disgusting manner in which he presided over the last two sessions of an international test cricket. The ambience was more hostile even for a Liverpool fan in a Man U pub. Clearly Ponting was blinded by vanity. It was not hard and fair, but foul and sick.

Ricky Ponting’s on field behaviour was undignified for any test captain, forget a champion side. He looked like a juvenile boy desperately wanting to stick it in to someone. In the process he has ended up losing any credibility and respect he had before. Firstly I believe not walking or staying while having nicked, should be a personal decision and not a Team Policy. That is how a cricketer’s moral worth is measured by the viewers. I have before stated that by claiming it as a team policy and Australia are eroding cricketing values.
Considering that he endorsed such a policy, he stayed and batted after nicking before the world, defending he was not given out by the umpire. Fair enough. But far worse when given a wrong LBW, he swore at the umpire muttered and threw up his bat while at return.Is that in the policy? If he continues to do that often, Clarke, nurtured at the future skipper would convert it into the team policy just like how he stood like a moron after caught at first slip. Ricky Ponting has become a danger of an example.

The worst is Ricky Ponting’s credibility as a player is lost forever. Claming a catch he has grassed and continuing to claim integrity when the replays show otherwise is assassinating your own character on live television. In plain English it is called lying and cheating. In one word: imbecile.
Exploitation of the trust: he made mockery of the trust of the catching pact which was Kumble's naivety. Well aware that controversial low catches are his responsibility he was trying to convert every potential catch into a controversial one. He did well. To use a popular Australian phrase -- one hundred percent.

Handling difficult behaviour: He has totally failed as a captain to handle difficult behaviour. Aussies bring a lot more baggage into the game that just good cricket is a well known fact. Calling it mental disintegration is their attempt to look up to the Brits. I have no qualms about sledging; we all know it has more or less become a part of international cricket. Got to give, got to take. Saying no to taking while dishing out is baby behaviour. Stuff that cartoons are made of.

Here I need to say a bit on the monkey business. Personally, out of context it isn’t racist, may be its name-calling and at worst an abuse. But it can be seen that in Symonds context i how it could be racist. We all know better about Australians; Symonds hadn’t come up to Harbhajan to talk about the weather. But if in the process his sensibilities were offended which is a sort of irony, Ricky Ponting should have known better.

Here he has faltered:

1. He has assumed it to be racist, a reflection of his thinking. Besides, no one knows if it was said. We dont have evidence for the allegation, what we have for though in two separate videos is Ponting is a Liar. Also, Jayasurya has publicly acknowledged that the reason why he began demolishing the cricket Ball like he did in 96-77 was triggered by taunts of Black Monkey by Australians, an allegation they havent till date denied. It was also a favourite among Australians to ask about the smell of fish while he came to bat, apparently aimed at his roots of being a Fisherman at Motera. These are racial compliments of course.
2. Far more graver: if it was racist , given the nature of the offence, first thing Ponting should have done is to call on Kumble after the game before lodging the complaint. That he has run to Papa Procter with a motive to get rid off Singh who has grown to be a nightmare to his batting average from a nemesis just shows How Ponting has lost his marbles.I think that is perhaps the most irresponsible thing a cricketing captain has done in recent times. Remember Steve Waugh frowning upon Lara for reporting McGrath who spat at the batsman. I think at that time Waugh said Lara shouldn’t have reported it to the match referee which resulted in heavy fines for McGrath.

Gamesmanship: Nil. As I said, like a Caesar he has been too preoccupied with himself and his winning, he hardly acknowledged India who for everyone to see have been at the receiving end of the amazing cricketing videos at SCG. (Do not forget 2003-04). Grassed catches claimed, umpires being morons when not miles away etc. any sensible captain would have taken a moment to commend the opposition. All Ponting could muster was ‘We won! What a win what a win!’ Gilchrist his deputy soon joined him to tease Tony Greig about the declaration while live on telly. That has become the state of Australian cricket; Boorish and uncouth.

General lack of perception: I alluded to it yesterday. Ponting pounced on a journalist to make a fool of himself and his country, and even after three days after he has gained his illustrative record, which surely shall be unforgettable, he simply lacks capacity to comprehend what has happened.

Not taking away the credit for the Australian win, which I thought was to do with the business of luck, there was no customary ceremony, no congratulations from many test players and commentators. The game has been marked as an umpiring debacle, the opposition captain, a well admired player all over has stated in press conference that Australia lacked cricketing spirit, an international tour is suspended, opposition players are unwilling to play to anymore injustice.
Also, Ponting himself, after celebrations said he cant comment on umpiring decisions because he will be in hot water, chided Tony Grieg for criticising his declaration, attacked a journalist unnecessarily and as we all know foolishly, went and gave deposition for hours at a racial hearing and came back to say that the second test was lot of fun and enjoyment.

It would be for sure, if you are willing to pick up a grassed ball and call it your sixteenth win.
History knows many a great people have stood at that point and always gone in one direction. Down.
Ponting having a laugh, stating for the record there was no way he grounded the Ball. God Bless JL Baird.

Addendum:

In many ways, Ponting has done great favour for cricket and its matter of time Australian legacy shall be broken. It would be very interesting to see How Aussies would play a match against Bangladesh with their mouth shut. Oh ! Ricky You dont know what you have done!

Secondly, Australian cricketers are too blind to see all that happened , because as we all know they are in a culture in a warp syndrome; which is the heart of what the world accuses them of double standards. They quite simply are not aware of a world outside and are unable to appreciate a opposing perspective. It has been there for a while: Remember McGrath threatening to slit Sarwan’s throat on cricket field when Sarwan replied ‘Ask your wife’ when McGrath had sledged him ‘ How does Brian Lara’s dick taste’? it is for the same reason Symonds who commented that Indians were overboard with T20 win has no comments on celebrations now. Based on similar sentiments most Australian newspapers Just forgot to report Australian loss to Pakistan in T20. (Unbelievable! but true). It is for such warp they do not understand that world doesnt know what exactly is a 95% sure catch. Finally, it is for the same reason mental disintegration didn’t have a definition till now.

Not anymore.

Dirty Down Under:

2008-01-07T18:33:00.000Z

A sweetly timed red cricket ball running in tiny jumps to the cover boundary is one of beautiful sights we live for. After the wins and losses have worn out I suppose it is the memory of such images is what makes cricket what it is. Sublime.

It is for this reason that I returned to telly at an unearthly hour, half pissed, half expectant to catch some decent test cricket for a couple of sessions. Thankfully sleep beckoned and saved me an unpleasant experience.

In the morning we woke up to see a deeply disturbed Kumble, who seemed ready to break into a sob with a slight tap on the shoulder put on a brave face before the mike. India had lost. Well, nothing shocking. Been there lost that I thought and went out to make the most of a capitalistic Sunday.

Came back to find story after interesting story unravel: contentious decisions, unsportly behaviour, spirit of the game, integrity of the team etc and the eventual ban of Harbhajan Singh for racism.

It is then I put on the video which I had recorded last night.

Here I must state that I have admired Australia for their pride and their hunger for victory. I do that the same way I have admired Michael Schumacher. Valued friends often have disagreed with me on my views about their behaviours.
I suppose its just to do with my personality.

Also I must note here that I am too old to be jingoistic, too capital to side with the underdog, too messed up to support a single team. But having watched the fifth day’s play, I think there is no one who can convince me that Australia, played cricket hard and fair. The last two sessions were perhaps the most disgraceful and shameless cricket on display by the Australians, even by their own standards.

In span of two sessions Australians successfully managed to reduce the proceedings at the famed strip of scg into a local pub. Nasty looks, choice stares, liberal mouthing, bullying the umpires, extreme muttering, undue sighing, and everything uncivil to gain a victory and a record that has made them love themselves so much that even after 48 hours after the result I don’t think a single member of their team has been able fully comprehend the enormity of what they have lost.

I have never seen a sadder moment in cricket in my time than Kumble slowly walking back, shocked while the Australians gathered their huddle and the sought after record not even been able to remember they played against a team. That is inexcusable; yes, we have seen close exciting finishes too. I was there at Edgbaston on that august Sunday, perhaps one of the greatest test matches ever. I had seen Freddie flintoff for all his worth , break away from his celebrating partners to go back to Brett lee.

As Kumble walked back, for a moment I wished it was England who had beaten India.

The sole responsibility for such a blind , mad, shameless, venture of a game for personal glory has to go to the Caesar. Rick Ponting. Thus, begins the decline and fall of imperium cricket australium.

Have more to say, laters.

Isabelle Allende @TED

2008-01-04T14:49:00.000Z

Almost bordering on standup, but nevertheless, enjoyable.

Manderlay

2008-01-04T14:31:00.000Z

Watched finally, after 6 months from borrowing it; Lars Von Trier ,another day in the office.

Notes on Human Condition

2008-01-04T13:23:00.000Z

The beauty of man is in his being; in his mysterious ability to implicitly identify the totemic value before the need to appropriate it takes over. The need to be awed always precedes the need to analyze and improve. Thus, man first recognises the art before proceeding to the science of any evaluation.

It is only a departure from this state of being that leads to the discontent among individual and societies. A degree of dissatisfaction, however, is what motivates an enquiry; so in a sense the condition of human life is an acknowledgement of this incompleteness that furthers an attempt to fulfill it. But however, the identity of man by its definition is a bias - a limitation which cannot comprehend its objective destiny during this journey. This would mean that by the process of life and consciousness man tries to sublimate the search and return to this very desired yet unknown state in as many means as his imagination permits.

Two such powerful avenues would be, thought and emotion- symbolized from without, by Science and Art respectively. But they are concerted identities exclusive of humanity, a bridge to cover the distance, on which a few, if at all, are allowed to pass through. For others, life is not conscious and creative but a mean of passive sublimation of the search.

Speech is sublimation, Sense is sublimation, Sex is sublimation, the whole society is an elaborate sublimation of this search. To what end? The question props instantly.

For man though, the destiny, notwithstanding the success and failure of its value, can only be momentary while the strife remains eternal. At any given time any man can only be part of a certain journey and only a part of a certain destiny, he cannot claim witness or ownership of the entire journey and the goal. Human Life, for any one who has known it, by living it would tell you is all about half-measures and over-shoots. All that sublimates and returns to itself. Resources may vary and desires may take different form and shape; but the process is sustained regardless of nature, value and the conscience of the participants.

In comprehending this -- That in the transciency of his participation lies the glory and the terror of being a man. That he is not allowed to forget to balance all the loves, the passions and the values so dear and true to him, with his insignificance in the grande scheme of the universe to which he is only an evolutionary minutiae.

Painting: La Conditione Humaine, Rene Magritte, National Gallery Of Art, Washington

The Song of the Sydney Opera

2008-01-03T13:55:00.000Z

Vangiparappu
Venkatasai
Laxman

You beauty. A Class of your own.

we had marked our schedules to see you sing at sydney and you didnt disappoint. Now sachin owes one big, big ouevre.

The ways of memory

2008-01-03T10:04:00.000Z

So its like this. Happened twice in almost two months. Before that the last time it happened was when Shilpa Shetty was riding the sine wave of media hotness and generally being lusted after by the British public. A conversation with K reminded me of the only thing I could remember Shilpa till that time, this absolutely zing bollywood song with Akshay Kumar where both of them were dancing to the supple tunes of market liberalization. For all my bread and bollywood I couldn’t get it out, while C whose only bollywood knowledge is Lagaan which she had managed to watch, apparently mesmerised in crowded halls of Jaipur while backpacking India. She kept on singing radaaaa kaisa na jaale, a Hindu song written, composed and performed by all Muslims. But all my efforts to get out the song stopped at the tip of the tongue and finally after much it was forgotten until some fine day it came perfectly like an orgasm and as joyous when some smug advert mentioned about stolen hearts. Yes Churake dil mera.

Of late the experiences have been slightly but not wholly different. Last month of the last month , while discussing Islam with C, he happened to quote a lot of books, Rajmohan’s Understanding the Muslim Mind , Vidia Bhai’s Islam journey and also, in the context Invading the sacred, a book, a defence by Hindu scholars against the attack on Hindu scriptures by American academicians.
He reserved much of his scorn for Wendy Doninger often referring to her as a kid. Then I thought I had heard the name somewhere and finally when I caught up, it came to me , she was the first girlfriend of Francis Ford Coppola , this scholar at Chicago. Her fame being the first girl Francis kissed. What fun! History will record that first.

Next, was catching up with Alan Bennett’s what I did not do in 2007 on LRB where one of his entries referred to Denis Brogan, an authority on USA who had claimed to have fucked in 46 of 50 states in USA. Brogan and the associative --scholar on USA sounded vaguely familiar , so I had to had to validate the recesses of memory , hence woke up troubling a few others and waded through my book racks to eventually find the Penguin history of USA by Hugh Brogan. But couldn’t find the connection though and finally at mane wiki did the favour that Hugh was the son of Denis. The question now is in whichof the 46 states was Hugh conceived?

Starters...

2008-01-03T09:48:00.000Z

Moolaadé

Moments of Reprieve

Who's bollox is it?

2008-01-02T13:06:00.000Z

This is interesting. Really. At the end of this post, after you have completely read it.

Not Nicotines...

2008-01-01T21:54:00.000Z

Not more than 20 cigarettes/ cigars this year.

RIP

2007-12-27T18:01:00.000Z

It was Time back in May which first let out the whispers of Benazir Bhutto’s possible power sharing alliance with Pervez Musharraf and their secret meetings in Abu Dhabi.
Right then we knew.

We knew , each and every one of us, that she was walking back not to her country but to her grave. And deep down, I suppose she had known as well, yet one cant be sure whether it was patriotism or power or a combination of both that compelled her to go back. But whatever it might be, no one can take away that she was brave. Something her killers arent.

Now, Pakistan would be in shards, and soon in splinters when Musharraf would be a victim of his inevitable fate. If things don’t resolve quickly ie if Pakistan doesnt accept it as an inevitable event without much bloodshed, as they have done before we might be looking at the first UN troops deployment there in the future. The year's not over yet. Not in Pakistan. It must be feeling like being in a videogame there.

Reminded me this extract from Micromegas by Voltaire ; this is a conversation between a Man, a gigantic inhabitant of planet Sirius who is visiting the earth and a tellurian philosopher. Although it does apply in many contexts, it has never been more apt.

“O ye intelligent atoms, in whom the supreme being has been pleased to manifest his omniscience and power, without doubt your joys on this earth must be pure and exquisite; for being unencumbered with matter, and--to all appearance-- little else than soul, you must spend your lives in the delights of pleasure and reflection, which are the true enjoyments of a perfect spirit. True happiness I have nowhere found; but certainly here it dwells.”

“We have matter enough,” answered one of the philosophers, “to do abundance of mischief…. You must know, for example, that at this very moment, while I am speaking, there are hundred thousand animals of our own species covered with hats, slaying an equal number of their fellow-creatures, who wear turbans; at least they are either slaying or being slain; and this has usually been the case all the earth from time immemorial.”

“Miscreants!” cried the indignant Sirian; “I have a good mind to take two or three steps, and trample the whole nest of such ridiculous assassins under my feet.”

“Don’t give yourself the trouble,” replied the philosopher; “they are industrious enough In securing their own destruction. At the end of ten years the hundredth part of these wretches were not survive…. Besides, the punishment should not be inflicted upon them, but upon those sedentary and slothful barbarians who, from their palaces, give orders for murdering one million of men and then solemnly thank God for their success.”

~ Micromegas, Voltaire

Taare Zameen Par- Shaandaar

2007-12-26T14:48:00.000Z

Between meals, gifts and other festive things somehow managed to watch Taare Zameen Par.
In terms of art per se it isn’t as good as it is extolled to be but given the context, the subject of the movie, the endemic attitude where in it was made, it is exceptional. The sincerity of the effort is evident in every frame. Acting is superlative and can hold on its own on any level. The music works well with the story but during the first half I thought it was used a bit liberally, esp. the background scores, when silence would have been more powerful. Overall could have done with a bit of polishing but thats just a cringe by someone who has watched too many movies for his age. More importantly the bar has been raised high from the screens of bollywood and high enough to be a flagship of cinema for an international projector .

The movie reached its glorious peak, to me, when aamir and ishaan exchange their paintings and nod at each other, both of them moved from their depths to reach a sense of mutual regard and understanding which I am sure even the greatest of the cinema reviewers cant be able to reflect on paper. And that dear friends is what makes cinema, well at least to me. Undoubtedly, it is one of the most powerful scenes in world cinema I have seen for a while.

And finally, in terms of child or child centred cinema, probably, Taare Zameen Par might not sweep the world into a hanky as Cinema Paradiso did in late 80s but the story is not just of any typical child or childhood, it is a special story of a special boy. And for that effort all credit should go to the man who deserves every molecule of it.

Ladies and gentleman, please take off your hats for Mr Aamir Khan.
May be there are better cinema-men in India , but I have not seen one.

PS :

I might have troubled a few of you for the Urdu word for splendid-- it is ali-shaan or more popularly shaandaar.
Sometime back I had put up the post Cinema Child, this would the newer, edited version.

Cinema Children

Byproduct of a movie conversation….

8 must watch movies on childhood, in this particular order…

~Les quatre cents coups, (400 blows)
François Truffaut, France

~Nuovo cinema Paradiso
Giuseppe Tornatore, Italy

~Pather Panchali (The song of the road)
Satyajit ray, India

~Zamani barayé masti asbha (The time for the Drunken horses)
Bahman Ghobadi, Iran

~Taare Zameen Par (Stars on Earth)
Aamir Khan, India

~Mitt liv som hund (My life as a dog)
Lasse Hallström, Sweden

~Fanny och Alexander (Fanny and Alexander)
Ingmar Bergman, Sweden

~Ivanovo detstvo (Ivan’s childhood)
Andrei Tarkovsky, Russia

The latter two are not exclusively childhood movies, but still make for child centred cinema.

TZP

2007-12-20T19:51:00.000Z

Quite long back, we had returned from the premier of Lagaan , one of the only three bollywood movies I have watched in a cinema. A casual conversation in the campus made me jot down how we are witness to a monumental change in the history of bollywood thought. The scrap of paper found its way onto the canteen wall and subsequently, thanks to a friend into a magazine, earning me quite a sum. All I said in essence was to watch this Man.

After almost decade the time has arrived . Never have I hoped for the success of any movie like today. Good luck My Man!

PS- The intial responses have been promising. One of them, from someone valued being an easy academy nomination?