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.