Dance Me To The End Of Love: Leonard Cohen

"So, that music, "Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin," meaning the beauty there of being the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation. But, it is the same language that we use for surrender to the beloved, so that the song -- it's not important that anybody knows the genesis of it, because if the language comes from that passionate resource, it will be able to embrace all passionate activity."
Leonard Cohen (Poet, Zen Monk and Singer)


"Dance Me To The End Of Love"

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Sound of Silence :Simon & Garfunkel

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence


In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence


And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence


"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence


And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence


by Simon & Garfunkel

Dewarist :'Maaya' Indian Ocean and Mohit Chauhan

Dewarist : Brilliant Musical Series

Music transcends boundaries and makes itself intelligible and accessible with just a pull of the string. I just came to know today about this brilliant musical initiative where these talented two musicians /groups collaborate to produce an original musical score. Film and independent musician Vishal (Vishal -Shekhar) quite succinctly captures the idea of the series 'that sometimes idea needs some sort of sound and sometimes sound becomes an idea' (Watch his wonderful collaboration with British musician Imogen Heap where they render a beautiful composition to one of the most powerful poems by Tagore 'Mind without Fear').
Watching the production of such earthly sound and music was a riveting experience for a music lover like me. In the clip above, we see that music clearly transcends boundaries and illustrates a great case about its universality. The collaboration in the above series is between the Indian musicians Shantanu Moitra and Swanand Kirkire and Pakistani musicians Zeb and Haniya. 

Sexual Revolution - Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis

Martin Amis , one of my favourite novelists, has written this interesting new novel on the 'sexual revolution' titled Pregnant Widow of 1970's England. It is written in the usual Martin Amis style being satirical, prose driven coupled with unconventional jargons. The novel is about the 'sexual egalitarianism' that started in the 70's in the backdrop of the hippie movement along with other movements which lead to sort of overthrowing the conventional sexual mores in which  female 'freedom' was restrained. The revolution started in a sense with the basic tenet of loosing 'virginity' before marriage to show sort of 50/50 equality between both the sexes. The story which revolves around Keith Nearing and his adventures with a group of females in the early 1970's at an Italian Mansion, depicts sort of 'female evolution'  and the 'sexual freedom' that female protagonist were into.
I was thinking whether there has been a sort of 'sexual revolution' in India, where sort of 50/50 exists.Frankly, I don't think so, apart from 'hush hush' college mating in certain parts of urban India (mainly the metros), things have definitely not reached 50/50. I realize movies such as 'monsoon wedding' sort of still define most of  the urban educated landscape and feminism is nowhere much to be seen apart from academic rhetoric. Amis in Pregnant Widow showed that Brit females pushed the boundaries to attain egalitarianism but I realize Indian females due to complex social structures that still prevail in India (due to parental control) but also due to lack of 'experimentation' on their part  have a long was to go to  even come out of the 'conventional ' mores to even come close to 50/50 which Amis argues about and even thinks that Europeans have also still not attained that equality.

Nayak: Another Gem of Satyajit Ray

After watching the recent Bengali movie 'Autograph', I got curious to watch Satyajit Ray's ' Nayak', from which Autograph has been inspired.
The level of discrimination expands widely once we enter into the realm of Satyajit Ray’s films and other movies (read Autograph) seem banal and artificial. Nayak is another of Satyajit Ray’s brilliant movies.

Nayak seems to be a great psychological drama and to be precise a Freudian drama peeling the personality of the protagonist with implicit psychoanalysis (seen in the interview) and the sequence of dreams. In all departments the movie seems to be near perfect. The acting is brilliant , especially Uttam Kumar who  seemed so spontaneous and natural. After watching the likes of Uttam Kumar and Soumitra Chatterji, most of the new actors seem to be artificial and unnatural.

The movie may have been sort of inspired by Fellini’s masterpiece ‘8 ½’ where the protagonist was a director whereas here it is the actor. In the Zizekian sense every great filmmaker is a good psychologist which Satyajit Ray confirms in this film. The gradual development of the human ego and the dilemma surrounding it, has been brought out masterly.  The interview that the actor gives shows the psychological unburdening of the actor, which in a sense is a sort of a psychoanalysis with a wise interviewer asking deep penetrating questions. The dream sequences are sort of his 'unfulfilled desires' and sort of signs showing the dilemma confronting most of his some major decisions. The actors unsuccessful affair with a married woman is also shown by a dream sequence, where she entices him but he can’t catch her and ends up having a brawl with her husband. It is sort of a case study of the different behaviour patterns that a person indulges in. Satyajit Ray like other great filmmakers is very particular regarding details.  This can be especially seen in the different dream sequences and the behaviour peculiarities of every character in the movie.
The density that we find in every sequence or shot, which lays bare the particular human emotion, making the audience also feels the uncertainty at a certain level characterizes the greatness of Satyajit Ray's film making. One of things that fascinates me in the movies of Satyajit Ray is the secular evolution of the characters. How the uncertain events of life leads to the evolution of a personality, from the dilution of the character to its wavering idealism is brilliantly portrayed by Satyajit Ray in his films.

The Classy Satire :TOBA TEK SINGH

After reading the fascinating snippy letter by Manto to Pandit Nehru, eagerness nudged me to read one of his short stories, who is considered by many as the greatest Urdu short story writer. Thanks to the internet I got hold of his some short stories and read arguably one of his best partition short story, ‘Toba Tek Singh’ which was in both English and Hindi translation. To get the rustic juiciness feel of the Urdu text as much as possible  I chose to read the Hindi translation.

‘Toba Tek Singh’ is a brilliant short satire on partition. Most stories of partition that I have seen and read from Tamas to Train to Pakistan are sort of agonising to read. This is where I think master story tellers differ. Giants like Premchand , Marquez, Bulgakov to Manto use the sharp weapon of satire and humour to illustrate the irony of the situation.
Toba Tek Singh’s story starts about the mad people in a Pakistan prison during partition. The story revolves around a madman Bishan Singh who is going to be shifted to an Indian prison from Pakistani Prison.  It sort of resembles Samuel Beckett’s world where behind the repetitive absurdity that we encounter there lies some sort of a profound sense.
Bhishan Singh leitmotiv in the story was...
"Oper di, good good di, annexe the, bedhyana di, mung di dal of the laltain..."
"Oper the good good the annexe the bedhyana the mung di dal of the Pakistan government".
"Oper di, good good di, annexe the, bedhyana di, mung di dal of wahe guruji da khalsa and wahe guruji di fatah jo boley so nihal sat sri akal". ......

The satire sort of goes into the idea of ‘my place’ and ‘home’. It tosses the idea of the boundary and partition.

The end beautifully portrays the whole essence,

"Before sunrise, without any movement, a sky-piercing scream came out of Bishen Singh's throat. Many officers came running from here and there and they saw that the man who had stood, days and nights, on his legs for fifteen years, was lying collapsed on the ground, face down.

There, beyond the barbed wires, lay India, and here, behind similar wires, Pakistan.

In the middle, on that piece of land which had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh."

One of the interesting things that struck me after reading Manto was that great writers who bring in ‘politics of the day’ use satire as a powerful instrument in enhancing there narrative. Premchand, Marquez, Bulgakov, Salman Rushdie, V S Naipaul, Martin Amis, R K Narayan, Ian McEwan etc are some examples that comes to my mind. 

Writers such as Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh etc have somewhat not used this instrument of satire effectively which makes there fiction just good but not great.

Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen has produced a fascinating work that has the depth  and inventiveness that tastes as a fine vintage wine. Suppose you are a budding novelist and art lover, and you are transported to an era where you suddenly find yourself in the group of legends such Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Picasso , Faulkner and Bunuel etc.. It would be a dreamlike situation where the thoughts would be tossed to another level when encountered by the minds which has mesmerized every true lover of art and fiction. This living in the 'memorabilia' has been captured by Woody Allen in this surrealist movie. It is a also a tribute to the great city of Paris which has attracted great artists to settle there and produce great works. One of the best movies to watch this year. Watch it with some fine wine and cheese to enjoy it more as I did.  

Three Meetings

From Three Meetings by Vladimir Soloviev

" What is, what was, what shall forever be --
All, all was held here in one steady gaze...
The seas and rivers blue beneath me,
Distant woods, snow-capped peaks.

I saw all, and all was one --
A single image of womanly beauty...
Pregnant with vastnesses!
Before me, in me -- only You.

Radiant One! You can't fool me:
I saw all of you there in the desert.
In my soul those roses won't wither,
Whichever way the day may whirl.

Yet but an instant! And the vision veiled.
The sun climbed the sky's dome.
Silence, desert silence. And so my soul prayed;
While within: an endless celebration of bells!

Full, my spirit filled with strength! But empty, I hadn't eaten for two days,
And my far seeing faded.
Alas! However sensitive the soul,
Famine is no friend, as they say.

Along the Nile I followed the sun's way west
And by evening come home to Cairo.
My soul held tracings of your rose smiles,
While my boots couldn't hide their many holes.

Friends called me fool.
(The vision kept secret, though facts were fessed).
Wordlessly, the general, his soup now finished,
Fixed me with a look, then grandly declared:

“Fellow, reason gives you the right to be a fool.
But best not abuse your birthright.
Neither skilled nor stupid
Can skillfully sort a way through stupidity.

“So, if you're offended
To be thought an idiot --
Then in regard to this whole idiotic incident
Say no more.”

Oh, he was generous with his jibes, but before me
The blue ether still shone bright
And, dispelled by that mysterious splendor,
The sea of troubles drew far away.

---

Still the slave of the vain world's mind,
But beneath rough matter's rind,
I've clearly seen eternal violet, rich royal purple,
And felt the warm touch of divine light!

Triumphing over death in wisdom's light,
Stilling the dream of time from its unyielding flight,
Eternal Beloved, your name is held hid by my utmost plight,
And forgive my timorous song!

Vladimir Soloviev (Russian Poet and Philosopher )

Sigur Ros

What is a Novelist by Kundera

"To the lyric poet. The content of lyric poetry, Hegel says, is the poet himself. Lyricism is not limited to a branch of literature, but, rather, designates a certain way of being…from this standpoint, the lyric poet is only the most exemplary indication of a man dazzled by his own soul. I have long seen youth as the lyrical age. To pass from immaturity to maturity is to move beyond the lyrical attitude. The novelist is born out of the ruins of his lyrical world… Discusses Flaubert's comment that “Bovary bores me, Bovary irritates me…” Complaining that his characters are mediocre is the tribute he is paying to what has become his passion: the art of the novel and the territory it explores, the prose of life…. 

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/09/061009fa_fact_kundera#ixzz1dwXaKiNk

Solitude

There is a wilderness in the air
Which the usual minds cannot bear.
There is a silence which speaks ,
Releasing the joys that peaks.

A conventional mind like a bee ,
Wallows in the vicissitudes of the society.
Getting its spatters of joy  from relations/people,
Which has a tendency to fade with the time.
A real ambitious mind does not settle for such spatters,
He craves for more than happiness,
But where is the holy grail of ‘joy’ to be found.

Not really  in the relations that the world adheres,

Not even in the affairs of the heart that is nice to partake,
Not definitely in the blabbering that the mouth indulges
Not in the glitters of the materialistic world
But only it endears in  the  solitude that few experience.
The real joy  is enjoyed without human interference.
Peak joy for a poet is when the prose speaks to the poet
or when the music  presents itself to the musician.
A state when the mind gets dissolved in the silence
When the  music is not heard
But only when it is.

Desire

There is life of love
and there is a life of the mind
And there are these lives of thousand desires that we find.
Some life sustains and some it maims
Without any  rational that we can claim
Where were you born?  
Maybe as a nascent thought one sunny morn..
The life on earth was not the same again
With infinite you rising again and again.
Every desire has a time of its own
Breathing every moment the possibility of being blown

There is uncertainty and hope that comes with you  
With every beat of heart racing as it confronts you.

Like a thousand beloved to be attained
You break the heart more then the life can sustain
But then  like a loyal lover you never leave me with disdain.

Is Not Life Like a Moment

There is an innocuous laugh that glances at me
There is some hidden unbridled emotions that lashes at me
There is a look that has stirred something
There is a word which have changed everything

There is an emotion ready to get ignited
There is a feeling ready to be born

There is an old desire to be gone

There is something ready to get burst

And something to get lost
There lurks somewhere a passion which is wild
Making the mind operate like a child


There is a door that I may enter for the last time
There is a emotion that may never return


There is a eye that I may embrace for the last time
There is some memory ready to be erased
There is a moment I don’t wanna loose
There may be a while to capture this moment 

There is a noise that is melody to someone
There is a melody that hurts someone


Is not life like a moment
A moment is where we are born
A moment is where emotions churn
A moment is where everything can be known
A moment is where life may be blown

Indelible Impressions !!

Nobody knows the faces a lifetime passes through.

Or the myriad faces of the many lives that we may live through.
Like a wave, countless faces pass by but impressions are imparted only by some.
There are faces within a face that may penetrate unconsciously without being reckoned.
A face which enlightened a speck of one's life, may mysteriously vanish in the other.
And a  face that once intensified the beat of your heart may become a blurring monotone.

 
Then there may be a face that may have skipped the beat of your heart and may still provide a sound punch whenever it resurfaces.
And there may be a face that may surface for a while but stamp an indelible imprint in the deepest core of your mind.
There may be a face that may recall a bygone era,
And there may be a face that may erase the essence of time.
Some faces seem to be part of you for more than a lifetime and some exist for a lifetime without a trace.

Is  every destined face that we reckon lived by us through in some lifetime,
With installments distributed in the lives to be lived.

Is the specter of destiny responsible for the faces that a life passes through?
With a particular face destined to be seen a particular number of times.
But the impression it creates may decide its destiny in the other lives that we may live.

Is there a logic behind the embracing of a particular face
or is it that certain faces are meant to be embraced.
What is the symbolism behind these meeting of faces?
Is it meant in a way to repeat itself infinitely to loose its essence
To know that this meeting is also a play of the illusion called ‘life’.

Three Vintage American Novels

Recently I read three vintage American novels ( American Pastoral, The New York Trilogy and Invisible) by two great American novelists, who have been pioneers and influential figures for making the American novel prominent in the world of fiction in the last quarter of a century. The first novelist, Philip Roth is considered the greatest living American novelist and the other, Paul Auster is considered a pioneer who has reinvented the genre of ‘mystery’ novels.

Roth’s ‘American Pastoral’ can be considered a vintage ‘American novel’ portraying the construction of an American identity with its dilemmas. The story is a critique of the so called ‘American Dream’. The novel revolves around Swede Levov, who in a sense epitomizes the American Dream. He is an accomplished sportsman,  has a very beautiful wife ‘Miss New Jersey’, is rich with his own business and is still a humble person and a devoting son. He has been a sort of a poster boy for many kids around, including Nathan Zuckerman, who is also the narrator of the novel. Nathan is sort of an alter ego of Roth.

American Pastoral illustrates that cliched phrase 'all that glitters is not gold.' The novel shows the crumbling of the American pastoral of Swede Levov due to the disastrous actions of American political class in Vietnam. It is a sharp metaphorical portrayal enunciating that by  destroying others joyful pastoral, the Americans would also have to face the repercussions.  Here the Levov’s become  one of the victims. The American Dream crumbles.
The end which is not conclusive, poignantly states “'And what is wrong with their life? What on earth is less reprehensible than the life of the Levovs?”

American Pastoral is considered Roth’s masterpiece and deservedly is also in every list of top novels of this century.

The other vintage American novelist I read was Paul Auster, who  comes as the avant garde, postmodernist, mystery writer but surprisingly also a compulsive page turner. It might seem inconsistent, that a writer who applies the postmodernist concept of blurring the writer and the text would be a lucid narrator. This is where the charm of Auster comes, the text, the author, narrator, story and realism are also subverted to such an extent that the potpourri that arises is something truly post-modern.

I read his two quite interesting works- The New York Trilogy and The Invisible.
The New York Trilogy which is also hailed by the critics as his best work was a great treat to read.
One defining character that can be found in New York Trilogy is the fluidity in the identity of characters and the only constant character in all the three stories is the city of New York. The postmodern character in his novels, takes us into a new class of mystery novels. We find a baffling interplay of fact and fiction, but this doesn’t make it abstruse such as Nabokov’s ‘Pale Fire’, rather what makes Paul Auster special is the usage of this seemingly complicated techniques but providing us a lucid real page turner.

Invisible- It is not that easy to review Auster where many shells are there to be uncovered. So I will just provide some excerpts from a review from the New York Times ,

“Invisible” is his 15th novel, and I was afraid that this would be, as I felt with his recent work, another instance of Auster playing Auster — a kind of arch exercise in the clever but cloying metaphysics of textual irony, a cat-and-mouse toying with the fiction and the reader reminiscent of German Romanticism and falling victim to what both Hegel and Kierkegaard called “infinite absolute negativity” (this attack on the German Romantics was one of the few times those two were ever in agreement). One leaves the text and feels that one has been left with nothing. The irony vacuums out the content and, with it, our interest. Like the ouroboros, the ancient symbol of a dragon swallowing its own tail, the book consumes itself, and disappears. But “Invisible” — however the title might threaten the contrary — suggests a new Auster.

It’s a love story, or a series of intertwined love stories, with one young man, Adam Walker, at the center of them all...

Love is always invisible, and in our world of hard-nosed materialists it’s important to remember that our highest good is something we can never really see or grab hold of, much less understand by passing enough people through an f.M.R.I. machine to look at their brainwaves. What we take as the real world is not the world that matters most to us: the substance of our lives takes place in an invisible realm.

For years now there have been two Austers waiting to embrace: the psychologist/­storyteller of novels like “Leviathan,” and the metatextual trickster of “The New York Trilogy.” Freud once claimed that our greatest frustration was that we could never kiss ourselves — well, Auster has knotted the pretzel, he has brought his two loves together (it is, after all, a novel about incest). So if, like me, part of why you read is the great pleasure of falling in love with a novel, then read “Invisible.” It is the finest novel Paul Auster has ever written.”

Norwegian Wood

I recently saw this movie which is a good adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s ‘Norwegian Wood’. Norwegian Wood was the first novel of Murakami that I had read, and after having read his four other novels, I realize that this was the most lucid and synchronous . The density and postmodern touch that we find in his other novels is missing in this novel, but still it was a delicious treat to gulp and this really had made me switch into the mystical world of Murakami. This novel made Murakami a sort of a rock star in Japan which eventually made him to leave the country for some years.

The title of the novel has been taken from a Beatles song. The song in a way perfectly portrays the dilemma surrounding the characters..”I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me”. The novel is about the quandary of love and the madness surrounding it. Being the most elusive thing, it seems so close in a moment and then in another moment, it is the farthest. It seems to be like entering heaven (or rather here is where heaven gets defined) bewitched by  its incipient enthralling emotional trance without any anticipation of the vicious vortex inside it , which cripples one of any understanding of life. And once you are sucked into that whirlpool ,nobody knows what type of a  new person one becomes when emerging out of it. 
 The major difference between the movie and novel is the  starting, the novel starts from the recollection of Toru’s  experiences of the 1960’s whereas the movie is just about this period.

This novel is a lucid portrayal of the puzzles surrounding love or in a sense the tragedy of love. The story is about Toru Watanabe, who falls in love with his late best friend’s(Kizuki)  girlfriend Naoko. The relation starts from consolation to love, but complication arises. The novel is sort of a metaphor for the complications and illogical-ness of love.

Toru falls in love with Naoko, but she is still strongly attached to Kizuki. In one corner of her rational mind she wants to forget Kizuki and get on with Toru, but she and Toru both realise slowly and painfully that love is not rational.  The novel shows the illogicality's that surrounds in falling in love and hence the pain that it infuses. The novel when I had first  read was addictive, whereas the movie somewhat slowly absorbs you into it. In the movie the portrayal of pain is heightened by the music, mainly by the twanging of violins.

The photography of the movie is exquisite and visually striking as it is done by the ace photographer Ping Bin Lee (who also did Wong Kar Wai’s ‘In the mood for love’). 

Music : My First Love

On this eve of Holi, after being soaked in music for a while, I thought of writing a poetic post on music. This is just the first part embracing Rock, I will pour more thoughts on Classical in other posts.

Music : My First Love 

An art that touches my heart 

Which I may never think to depart

Whenever it pierces through my ear,

My mind is always up with a cheer.

A paradox for the mind 

But an art without a bind

The intricacies make it the least intelligible

But the paradox is, its the most accessible.

An art-form which bonds Apollonian with Dionysian

Prose has to be filtered and deciphered 

But music filters through without being dissected

Words inspire, but music uplifts the spirit

A sane mind cannot always deduce its merit

I have been in awe since I discovered it

and realize that I have still not recovered from it,

When the first sound of rock pierced my mind,

giving solace to quick emotions that spurred during that time.

Pumped up emotions with high dose of sentimentality embraces the college years,

the strings of guitar and thumping beats I still endear.

My undergrad days and nights were infused with 'the summer of 69',

some memories still lurk behind that winter of 99.

Rock has an element of noise which portrays aggression,

The youthful symbolism in it displays non-conformism.

The music of Rock makes the mind high when a dilemma or ambiguity besets it,

the restlessness is massaged by the strings winding out of it.

The 60's was the time when it was born,
Existentialist angst spiced it during one morn.

Dylan's 'Like a Rolling Stone' epitomized the generation,
Hendrix theatrics and Pink Floyd's spatial rock garnered veneration.
The Zeppelin's upped the ante by inventing a new genre,

It was that generation that produced most of the gems of the rock oeuvre.

Clapton,Floyd,Morrison and Zeppelin were my daily diet,

Dire Straits and Others also gave me some delight.

Than a few years back the sound of Western Classical touched my heart,

My new beloved bestows pleasure in the remote corners of my brainy part

This is a huge genre  which would require a new entry,

Let me stop this post which was basically elementary.

A Heart in Winter

It seems sort of a  coincidence or say destiny that I have been watching an array of french movies on the variations of  love. In the earlier post I had scribbled about the subtle beautiful movie 'Mademoiselle Chambon'.

 The movie that I just saw yesterday was 'Un Coeur en Hiver' (A Heart in Winter). This seems at first a love triangle between a philanderer, a musical diva and monastic urban guy but it illustrates much more shades.

First half of the movie  goes in the predictable mode  of a love triangle. Stephane (monastic guy) who is a violin maker seems to be a good friend of Maxime( Philanderer) who is the owner of this violin shop. Maxime falls in love with the gorgeous Camille (Emmanuelle Beart). Then things change n Camille falls in love to Stephanne.

It is the love between Camille and Stephane that takes us to a different psychological level. I would rather say this is movie of a man with a cold heart (A heart in winter)

Let me put this complex and intense movie in lighter prose. In a story telling mode-

There was a man with a heart in winter.
He lived in the world of music, producing an instrument of music.
He knew music but considered it a stuff of dreams.
Dreams bcos he built a reasoned wall where feelings cannot touch his heart.
But, there came this beautiful mademoiselle !
A musical Diva, a gifted violinist (Camille).
She  is having this cold affair with Stephanne's friend (Maxime)
But then her musical heart is pierced by the mystical gaze of Stephanne,
the cold hearted man !
There is reciprocity of love in gaze but not in words.
There is emotional turbulence in both,
Camille leaves her ex-lover for Stephanne,
And the day when she is ready to pronounce her love to him
She plays the violin in love for him,
A performance of a woman enraptured by love with emotions pouring through the strings of violin.
A woman completely stung by his love. But the cold hearted guy denies it. The gorgeous violinist is shattered that the  love of her life denies her.
The rejection seems incredulous at first and we are also mystified by Stephane.
It was not that he didn't love her but he didn't understand his own feeling, as he lived in denial of it.
But there was some internal upheaval  happening inside him, 
Dizzying him out and piercing him,
This upheaval was love!
Which he came to realise late through the understanding that man is mortal.

The lightness of the prose above doesn't mean to undermine this complex pychological movie on love. The performance of Stephanne is intense and brilliant. The gorgeous French actress Emmanuelle Béart's performance is exquisite. 

A small clip from the movie

Just One Word Subtle

A sublime idea in a subtle movie on love. Can music be the conduit that could kindle the heart of two persons?
 A touch , a look and silence can change the matured desires and shatter the conventionality nurtured.No materialistic magnets that attract the frail in this confused age but just raw human emotions that have driven relations for ages. There are upheavals that arise from unexpected quarters that can change and break the brittle socially constructed identity. And there can be the music that could tear apart the wall of conformism. But then circumstances subvert passion to make way for reason.

Mademoiselle Chambon illustrates this concept. There is not much action nor words required to get each other charged but just some sublime music of Vecsey-Valse Triste.

A beautiful subtle movie on love

'Biutiful' is Beautiful !

Biutiful' is beautiful and powerful film as a cinematic experience. Biutiful was a film I had been waiting to watch for a long time. The Film was different from other Innaritu's movies where multiple narratives and multiple stories intertwine with each other. This was a linear movie, taking us into a  journey of  the crumbling world of a man named Uxbal (Javier Bardem). He is a multifaceted person, a sort of a vintage urban survivor who is  a devoted father, tormented lover,mystified son, a ghost seeker, underground business man etc.To appreciate this movie we have to wear an objective hat and throw away subjectivity to the fullest extent possible otherwise it would just seem as a depressing saga. The narration in the trailer below provides us the gist of the movie. "Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. ...
An you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. "

 Fate is a more than a small sandstorm and it cannot be escaped. Uxbal tries to fight with fate, but fighting with fate is like fighting with a shadow with only hurt in return. Life doesn't turn out like a popular flick or fiction where fate can be twisted to your own favor. Uxbal implicitly understands the inevitability of fate and tries to undertake things with atmost caution but trouble is chasing him all the time. The ardous journey that Uxbal has to undergo cannot be shortened and his life is going down a steep road without friction.

Javier Bardem was spellbinding in this hard hitting role and he has given the performance of his lifetime. Bardem gets into the skin of Uxbal and his intensity can be felt by us. A film in which the actor and the role really merges and produce an outstanding performance. A great work of art tries to portray its subject in such a manner that the observer  can feels the subject. If misery is portrayed then the audience should feel the misery. This is where Biutiful does well.  The film is minimalistic in terms of narrative technique unlike other innovative movies of Alejandro Innaritu.  But we get absorbed in the miserable life of Uxbal. The camerawork is  also quite  impressive. The movie conveys that fate is inevitable and we cannot fight it and death is a smooth passage. "When you come out of the storm your life would not be the same, it would be beautiful".

Pleasant Surprise !! (DG Revisited)

PS : Major changes from the first posting
I was not expecting much from the movie 'Dhobi Ghat (DG)' and was expecting it to be a pretentious dab on art house cinema. But it turned out to be pleasant surprise with themes inspired from  Alejandro Innaritu's movies especially Babel. The movie is about emotional dilemma's that people face in everyday existence. It shows the different emotional layers of eclectic people in the city of Mumbai.There are some good takers from the movie. 

DG revolved around three stories working simultaneously on relations but somewhat intertwined with each other. The first interesting feature that I liked about the movie was the use of silence and music. Emotions are better portrayed without words and this technique has not been effectively used in 'Hindi' cinema much. DG was able to somewhat effectively  use it in conjunction with music. Satyajit Ray was the master of this technique in India which can be clearly seen in movies such as Pather Panchali and Charulata, whereas in World Cinema Kieslowski was the master of this supreme narrative form without words.The stories were intertwined in subtle ways and showed an eclectic array of characters. Another interesting part was the simultaneous linear flow of these stories in a slow absorbing manner. The first story or theme portrays the case of Arun who cherishes his privacy and solitude.  His sense of solace comes from a vicarious experience (which can be considered  the third or another story in the movie) than from tangible human beings . The second story is about a typical 'Mumbai' struggler who aspires to become an actor one day. He seemed to me to be the central character of the movie. He finds this NRI girl who becomes his friend by chance and kindles his heart. But the girl is fond of Arun. These inconsistencies in relations and the emotional churning across different class characters has been portrayed nicely .The third story which has an vicarious emotional link to the first story and is about a simple and naive girl. She is like a adoring sister to her brother and loyal and servile wife to her husband. But her husband's infidelity she is not able to withstand and plans to commit suicide. The movie portrays in a basic sense the illogicality of life. But the end is kept open. There are movies with certain clear statements and predictablity which makes it singular in interpretation. But certainity in art form makes  it boring. Emotions are not predictable nor life is. 

Dhobi Ghat seems to be  a metaphor for life where it acts like a drainer or cleanser of emotions to make a person humble and more humane or maybe the opposite.

What is the 'Idea of India' ?

What is the 'idea behind India or Idea of India'. The idea that defines the identity of India. The thought that comes to my mind is that of a pluralistic jamboree where all revel and survive with the eclectic languages along with the sub-cultures. Or it may be said as a mega culture where many sub cultures flourish. If we start thinking behind the creation of this mega identity called India we realize that this is a sort of phantasmagoria or a metaphor for diversity.In a thoughtful article, Historian Ramchandra Guha articulates this idea as " articulated by Tagore, Gandhi and the Indian Constitution, the idea of India contains within its capacious borders more social diversity than any other nation. It privileges no particular religion, does not enforce a common language, and does not promote patriotism by identifying or demonising a common external (or internal) enemy." This concept of pluralism or Indian unity was basically a product of medieval India. This fact was shared by both Gandhi and Tagore.

 To understand this idea of India, we have to understand its differences with the European idea of 'nationalism' which was rejected fervently by Gandhi and Tagore. Gandhi and Tagore seemed united in thwarting the concept of nationalism but they were heterodox thinkers in many issues.  Here a basic distinction between nationalism and patriotism  has to be made clear. Patriotism is a sort of a sentiment whereas nationalism is an ideology. As Nandy has argued that patriotism doesn't define any specific territoriality (sort of a naturalism) whereas nationalism "is more specific, ideologically tinged, ardent form of “love of one’s own kind” that is essentially ego-defensive and overlies some degree of fearful dislike or positive hostility to “outsiders”. It is egodefensive because it is often a reaction to the inner, unacknowledged fears of atomisation or psychological homelessness induced by the weakening or dissolution of primordial ties and growing individuation, alienating work and the death of vocations, in turn brought about by technocratic capitalism, urbanisation and industrialisation."
Gandhi's idea of India or view of nation was/is considered utopian by many as he talked about an 'enlightened anarchy'. Gandhi was a firm believer of universal equality and considered armed nationalism as a sort of imperialism. Nandy in one of his brilliant essays 'Gandhi after Gandhi' dissects the idea behind Gandhism. Of the four distinct Gandhi's that he describes the first one is an avowed anarchist and anti-modern who doesn't believe in the concept of the nation state. He is patriotic and doesn't subscribe to the nationalist boundaries of private vs public, religious vs secular etc.
"After Independence, the political presence of the Father of the Nation, his memory and his writings were proving very problematic to the functionaries of the young Indian state and to intellectuals who had already begun to specialise in hovering, like so many flies, over the State’s patronage-structure. Not merely the strong anarchist strand in his ideology, but even his peculiar denial of clear-cut divisions between the private and the public, the religious and the secular, and the past and the present, were proving to be a real headache. These intellectuals were as disturbed by him as his assassin was. Nathuram Godse, a self avowed rationalist and modernist, in his last statement in the court that sentenced him to death explicitly claimed he had committed a patricide to save the nascent Indian State from an anti-modern, political neophyte and a lunatic. After independence, Gandhi’s own associates would have liked to bury Gandhi six feet under the ground, while keeping his image intact as an icon of the Indian nation-state. Not because they disliked Gandhi, but because he looked such an anachronism in the post-World War II atmosphere of centralised states, social engineering and ‘realist’ international politics.Since then, Indian statists of both the right and the left have never acknowledged their enormous debt to Mr Nathuram Godse for imposing on the Father of the Nation a premature martyrdom that straightaway gave him a saintly status and effectively finished him off as a live political presence. Their brainchildren still hold it against Gandhi that he has occasionally refused to oblige them and has defied the saintliness imposed on him, presumably as a strategic means of neutralising him. "
In another excellent essay in EPW,   "Nationalism, Genuine and Spurious' Ashis Nandy scrutinizes the Tagorian view against nationalism. Tagore was against the masculine European nationalism. It might seem paradoxical that a person who wrote and composed India and Bangladesh's national anthem and also scored Srilanka's national anthem disgusted the idea of nation state. This dislike was powerfully put by Tagore in his novels. As Nandy argues " In Gora, Tagore gives a powerful psychological definition of nationalism where nationalism becomes a defence against recognising the permeable or porous boundaries of one’s self that the cultures in his part of the world sanction. He in effect argues that the idea of nationalism is intrinsically non- Indian or anti-Indian, an offence against Indian civilisation and its principles of religious and cultural plurality. Ghare Baire is a story of how nationalism dismantles community life and releases the demon of ethnoreligious violence. It destroys the “home” by tinkering with the moral basis of social and cultural reciprocity and hospitality in the Indic civilisation."
Nationalism is in a sense against the idea of freedom of the 'self'. These two great thinkers understood the fallacy behind it and provided an idea of India which was unique and sound. But we are now living in an age where there are forces which are trying to redefine and eliminate the multicultural 'Idea of India'. Ram Guha suggests that we are facing three enemies against this pluralistic idea of India.  The first he argues are the domestic nationalists. As Guha puts "To the “theoretically untidy, improvising, pluralist approach” of Gandhi and Nehru, Khilnani wrote, the Sangh parivar offered the alternative of “a culturally and ethnically cleaned-up homogeneous community with a singular Indian citizenship, defended by a state that had both God and nuclear warheads on its side”. In another piece Nandy also has argued "The various brands of religious and ethnic nationalists have done one better. Modelling themselves on European nationalists, they have actually tried to subvert the organisational frame of the Indian heritage and reconstruct it according to the needs of a modern nationality. If the record of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh looks abysmal in the matter of India’s freedom struggle, it is because Hindu nationalism discovered early that silence, if not direct collaboration with colonialism, paid handsome political dividends. Such collaboration left it free to pursue its agenda against the minorities on the one hand and non-modern and non-modernisable Hinduism on the other."  The second challenge that he poses is the Maoist issue and the third is the separatist movements.

There are myriads of other forces also operating against this 'idea of India' such as corruption, economic inequality and criminalization of politics etc.  It requires a rethink on our side the common folks to preserve the 'unique' pluralistic idea of India that our founding fathers had given and nurtured.