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.