Sleeping in the Sun

Chance Dissolution of Comfy Bohemia

2011-02-16T05:46:00.000-08:00

He walks in with a swagger. I own you now. Everyone in the room bursts out laughing. What is that again. Slowly around the room, smiles get wiped. As everyone pauses to notice. His blood shot eyes boring in to her. They wait and don’t blink. He grips her hair. Flashes his knife and drags her away. The chatter hangs frozen. Half eaten cupcakes remain tightly clasped. A lone fly navigates carefully quirky outfits. The ice lazily melts in the lemonade. A cry. Someone rush out.

The Girl Who Ran Out of Luck

2011-02-01T19:27:00.000-08:00

Things were different when she was younger. When she woke up, her dreams had already fallen in to place. She found them neatly laid out, waiting for her to step in. Yet, everytime it happened, she was a bit more wary. Could never shake off the nagging feeling. It was inevitable. It was bound to catch up with her. She was almost waiting for that moment.

It was strange then that she missed the moment. Or maybe it was the grand introductory gesture. She often tried very hard to remember. But all she could remember now were her dreams. Every night and in every desultory moment, they emerged to describe to her, in lucid detail and fluorescent color, the happiness she was destined to not have.

He let out a sigh for his ruined experiment. She was never going to see the truth. So caught up was she in the brilliance of her dreams. She had an infinite supply of luck. He had designed it that way. But luck had worldly limitations. Her imagination didn’t. He had rather carelessly overlooked how incessant thinking could turn one’s imagination prodigious.

Half of a Yellow Sun: Review

2011-01-23T17:39:00.000-08:00

Beware. Text contains a few spoilers.

For one so young (as Chimamanda Adiche was when she wrote this), this novel, is Herculean in ambition. The story tackles a family’s fortunes across a tumultuous period in the history of a very young Nigeria. Her genius is in her ability to tell the travails of a nation and of smaller personal issues and not erode the significance and import of each struggle. How do you make sense of a mother carrying her child’s head and place it in context with a husband’s infidelity? This is where she succeeds brilliantly.

She is able to get you in to the climate of the region, the subtle divides in people that are aggravated and exploited by various political forces, the euphoria of creating one's own country, the tragedy of a massacre, the shifts in political power, the uncertainties, the humiliation of defeat. She effortlessly manages the flow of the story and the integrity of her characters through the change in fortunes and the modulation of their roles brought about the war: Olanna moving from a life of luxury to attempting the clamor for baby food in aid camps, Kainene, changing from a ruthless industrialist to running an aid center. It touches in on how society here is a tightly packed non-cohesive unit. Differences abound and are not neatly distilled away into non-intersecting strata of people, like maybe here in the US. Everyday, people subconsciously learn to manage/deal with these differences. Ugwu’s little struggles in correlating his Master’s life with his life in the village. The intellectual Odenigbo, hating and at the same time tolerating his mother from the village who believes his wife to be a witch.

Probably the misstep in her novel is her brief depiction of the horror of war. Her attempt to show the casual cruelty (Pretty sure I borrowed that phrase from some where else) it brings, rings a bit hollow. There is this incident where she shows Ugwu easily joining a gang-rape and then providing a counterpoint when his sister gets raped. The attempt seems half-hearted and discordant with his character.

However, the book has a multitude of compelling characters and some lovely flourishes. The musicality of “Mama Ola”, how beauty lets you be the cornerstone of someone’s memory: “You were that beautiful woman who calmed her at the airport”. Even with its limitations, the book is a rich read in to the essence of a people and the anguish of a struggle.

Helping to Reconcile

2010-08-25T06:13:00.000-07:00

From The Wire (Season I)

Everything just dissipiates in the end sometimes.
Best intentions do not lead anywhere.
Everyone plays cards.
No one ever has the best cards
Everyone has widely varying ambitions
If every single person didn't bother about their career/ ambition, things would be right because some one would do the right thing
Not anyone is in a perfect place for too long or anytime actually
Look at that detective who ended up in the pawn shop office for ten years
Its hopeless and not all that hopeless, he got to work on a real important case in the eleventh year
Sometime you have to rise up and stand for what you want to be.
Life is not fair or perfect
Much of life involves figuring out, making peace, forgiving yourself, moving on, standing still, standing tall, trying to stand for something
Getting clean is easy, living is difficult
Living is a lifelong challenge with no known well-defined goals, no well-defined period, no clear-cut failures or successes.

The Beginning

2010-07-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

I was perched on the bar stool at the counter of the counter-culture diner. Brij sat next to me. We had stumbled in to this place. I would have in another time loved to be pat of the inner circle here. Now I am just uncomfortable to be perched on a high chair. Would have liked the normal low tables. I glance behind at them frequently. Would have been nice to be comfortable seated next to that window, legs rolled up, infront of those hundred records. Coming to that, the music was nice, rock, a little unrecognizable, personal to someone behind that door. The kitchen was busy. The clothes frayed, the hair matted, the tattoos sneaking up from underneath collars and t-shirts and braids. Someone sauntered in the door. Tired.
"Is that seat taken".
I self-consiously look at the seat next to me. Turn and say "Nope". Hmm. I certainly would like that table now. Its so close. Am I supposed to start a conversation with him? What's the norm here? Do I just simply ignore the stranger though seated in such close proximity. I glance and give him a half-smile. More a half non-smile. "I would like to have nothing to do with you". I can feel Brij turn to look at me. I fix my eyes on a bust of elvis(??) stuck and forgotten on the bar shelves behind the counter. "Excuse me". I turn to face him. "Sorry, nothing."
"But were you talking to me?"
"Nope, I didn't say anything"
"I just heard you say something. Hey didn't you man"
"Nope I didn't say anything. Maybe I just thought out aloud. Its nothing. It wasn't to you anyways."
"ok, ok."

It was hot. Brunch is always confusing. I can never decide between the sweet and the savoury. So end up wholly unsatisifed, ordering one, wishing for the other, ordering sides to satiate, all these dishes staring at me and always overstuffed. Brij hurried out behind me.
"What was that?"
"Yeah, I know, I don't know what happenned. I just burted that out"
"You are so weird. What is wrong with you?"
I scream "Nothing is wrong with me!!! This happens to people soemtimes. Nothing has to be wrong! Ahh..."
I trudge in to the car.

The Crazie Spiel: The Crazies (2010) Review

2010-03-25T12:49:00.000-07:00

Think, I should start with a listing of the positives to offset the rest of the review. This has me racking my brain. Even something akin to what Ellen DeGeneres said about an "American Idol" contestant's shoes being nice, seems hard. Ok, so maybe the scene where the wife discovers that people who had been separated were also ruthlessly killed to contain the disease, in some way might actually be illustrating that evil might be a necessity in the bigger picture. Maybe also the movie says there is not much fairness in the world. Even if it wasn't the town people's fault, no one can protect them from or compensate them for the destruction. Maybe, but I doubt it. Even a prefunctory nod at these issues could have redeemed the producers to an extent. However, that could have been if they hadn't been expending all their energy trying to resurrrect or replay every cliche ever seen in a disaster/gore/ slasher/ zombie movie. There is the courageous Sheriff trying to save his equally courageous wife, who is also the town doctor, and (completing the loving potrait with a flourish) their unborn child. The hero also has a loyal sidekick, his deputy, who is made to eventually succumb to the disease and martyr himself to save the Sheriff. The events are liberally embellished with images, the berseck saw, the screech of a rake against the floor, mutilated corpses, scarlet eyes, all of which would have evoked violent fear if they had not been borrowed from previous gore fests that we have been over-exposed to. The whole time I was watching, I was hoping for one instance that would not be how I could listlessly predict it to be. But that would take courage and personality. And who ever said zombies had either?

P.S: This is suppossedly a remake of the 1973 movie of the same name. Even just the synopsis of the older movie has more bite and potency than the almost 2 hrs of this one.

The Ghost Writer: Review

2010-03-25T06:20:00.000-07:00

Pretty recently, I read, that the most exciting thing about new movies by auteurs is that each release does not stand just for itself but also charts the personal trajectory of the auteurs art. Having watched just one previous movie by Roman Polanski, "Rosemary's Baby", I couldn't have traced any evolutionary arc. However, I could still recognize in it, the elegance, finesse and effortlessness that stems from the cumulative experience of creating everything before.

The movie starts with a young writer being commissioned to be the ghost-writer for an autobiography of a former British Prime-minister. Though initially reluctant, having no political background and also given the fact that his predecessor on the job supossedly committed suicide, the deal is lucrative enough for him to make his way from England to a remote location in the US of A where the former PM now stays with a small number of aides. On his arrival, a political scandal breaks loose. The PM is trying to salvage his image and escape a conviction. His marraige is strained and his wife makes you uncomfortable. In the midst, through a series of convenient, almost naively constructed, circumstances, the writer uncovers secrets his predecessor had found. The movie barely conceals its inspiration: Tony Blair and his wide-eyed acceptance of US tenets. And it also spells out the current world view, where the suppossed perpetrators of all political under-dealings have changed hemishpheres.

Parts of the story, the PM's scandal, the uproar and the possibility of having to stay away from parts of the world in fear of being imprisoned, almost miror Polanski's own drama. And it makes you wonder about coincidence and fate. The movie is the most alive in its carefully crafted grey lansdcape. Everything else, its plots points and its characters, seem incidental in comparison. The beating rain, the fog, the wild sea, the cold sandwiches, the concrete house, the relentless wind, futile attempts at raking leaves. Despite, minimilistic strokes in colors and expression, the landscape makes each frame surge with with story and atmosphere. Each shot is stylized, up to the ending, which though seems to have been created specifically for punch, achieves its objective beautifully. Sheets of flying paper, across a grey urban roadscape. The movie seems made by a master: it is fluent but just a tad careless.

Upstairs

2010-01-08T13:59:00.000-08:00

He heard her immediately. He had just put down his bags and was checking the light switches. The footsteps were unusually heavy and he would have never realized it was a girl unless he had not met her a day later. She was on the elevator, going to the floor above his. She had looked past him. He had instinctively known. She kept him company. He was new, didn't know a soul and didn't go out much except to interview for gigs. Excepting the afternoons, she was always home. They both had their little rituals. She woke up at 9.00. He woke up slightly earlier to hear her wake. He would then start the coffee machine. While she showered, he smoked on the balcony. And then she would swirl around on the bedroom floor, dancing, to the same song everyday. He had his breakfast in bed. Evenings she would busy herself in the kitchen for half an hour maybe. He brought in take-out and ate it perched on his kitchen counter. And then he would get out his guitar and play. She was usually silent then. Sprawled on the bed reading a book maybe. He went to bed around 12.00, about the time she would start pacing upstairs. He would wake up some nights, disoriented, drenched in sweat, the world he had known still haunting him. Her steady pacing above would lull him back into familiarity. He would hear faint rhythmic thuds sometimes. A typewriter? Really.

He met her once more before the "incident". In the elevator again. Peeping out of her bag were flowers and a loaf of bread. She wore dark glasses. He knew she still looked straight past him. She started early in the kitchen that day. By seven, the noises started to lighten and he heard the shower. Then he heard her pace next to the door. For five straight hours. Up until the time he was ready to go to bed. And then she was silent. He couldn't sleep. He didn't like the misstep. He wanted to be home again.

He woke up with the sun in his eyes. And then he heard her shower. He springed up, smiled and stepped out on the balcony with his smokes. It was all alright. A week passed. He was hurrying up the stairs. She never left the apartment now. He had been finding more gigs and had to be out more. He didn't accepted free drink offers anymore and always rushed back home.
"Hey man, did u hear?"
"Hey"
"The girls upstairs. They found her body today."
He gasped.
"Dead for a week, they say"

They carried him to his bed. He had regained consciousness, but lay staring at the quiet ceiling. He finally dozed off sometime near dawn. Woke up again, with the sun in his eyes. She stepped in between him and the window, looked him in the eye and slightly winked when she said.
"So you know."
"I would have missed you". He smiled and let out an indulgent sigh.

2009-10-28T12:09:00.000-07:00

The book occupied, in time and space, for so long that after I finished it I was enveloped in withdrawal misery. The book, at its roots, tells the tale of two very talented and creative people, mired in their past and their present, whose art anchors their sanity. It creates such a fascinating fantasy of purpose for the characters that I desperately wanted to emulate and belong to it. The story is set forth and very neatly interposed with an era, an art movement, with pop culture, with a war. In the beginning, you almost gush at Chabon’s intelligence as a story teller. The lives he creates are so magical and yet messy and real at the same time that one easily falls in love and once the book is finished, just as easily identifies with the deep unrequited yearnings that fill its pages.

The book is a grand gesture. It tries to cohesively piece together the big and small tragedies and unclear motivations of the lives of two people, of an industry, of a war, the Jews, of magicians, of a child, of a woman, of solitude. It sweeps us all in this world, with its sounds and scenes and in to the mired and sticky thought waves in everyone’s head. And some of the lines are just so poignant and beautiful: where Kavalier thinks about how he always felt that his past and his family were somehow just waiting for him at the breakfast table. That he could, just naturally, be a part of it again. It was an error that had forced its way and he was waiting for it to correct itself. How the winter air suddenly envelops him like plastic warp shrinking up on fish.

He sets forth to illustrate an epic. Glorious, ambitious, strokes are unfurled one instant, intricate, immensely magical sketches the next. But it’s the filling in, in between these moments, that Chabon falters on. The pace is spluttery at times. At inopportune times, his need to establish some history of comics takes over the story. The final chapters of the story are straddled together a little haphazardly. He at times of loses the thread of his characters and their actions. But maybe that messiness just adds to the feeling the book leaves you with. That in the end, it is not a pretty neat picture, which is life. It isn’t tidy and no one has any answers. There are no real conclusions. It is just a multitude of scattered reasons and events from which one tries to decipher any coherent theme.

*In on the proceedings: “All of a sudden I miss everyone” Album by Explosions in the Sky

and Genesis..

2009-10-23T10:29:00.001-07:00

The at once undesired
Instantly undeniable
Loud booming of the truth
A multitude of silent words
Escape gaping eyes
Mercilessly
Clinically
Separating
Till that which is left
Is a thousand headless
Souls
Mercilessly
Clinically
Separating
The sounds
They Die
Eventually
The smog gives
A soot specked
Orange sky
Silently looms

Untitled

2009-10-23T10:24:00.000-07:00

Amid the tangle of the railway lines
I run,
Fast enough to not comprehend
The intonation of broken conversation
Hammering my heels
On the tracks
My toes scathed,
By visions,
Grandiose enough
To never have a chance
Till murmured thoughts,
Melt beyond,
Into a mushrooming swathe
Of luscious
Silver sooted
Blood

Stay

2009-06-03T10:21:00.000-07:00

So what is that you do,
Coming up the slate stairs,
The stranger with wild grey hair
And a worn, washed, dapper suit
The grill warped around,
I look in to his eyes
A pink neon explosion from a waterball
The screeching, sashaying down
Pouring into the hall
The passers by
Now standing still
Now vacant eyed
Seeing their souls
Floating by
On the grey tar
A red engine halts
Bells tinker down
Firemen rush in
Water in waves crashing down.
Sweeping away.

Another Sunny Afternoon

2009-03-19T17:43:00.000-07:00

An Indian tent atop her head: the knot of hair around two sticks. He couldn’t take his eyes of it the entire morning. That the presentation was quite worthless, his presence of no consequence, was a saver. She walked out. He hurried out behind her. The wobbly tent inches below his chin. “Hey”. “Hey”, she said absentmindedly without looking up. “Lunch?”. “Haven’t thought about it”. “So then lunch, Yes?!” She slanted sideways, gave a incredulous half-smile, paused, followed it with a shake of her head, grinned this time and said “ok!”.

He had abruptly noticed the tent again after three years. He looked at her face, indulgently smiled and thought he should make an attempt to listen. She suddenly paused mid-sentence. She let a minute pass. Then she leaned in over the iced tea and said, “I’ve met someone else”.

At large

2009-02-02T17:33:00.000-08:00

Everyday, I wake up and think of the person I am going to be. Think thru repercussions. Think thru places, episodes. Think of reactions. Think of arguments. Of laughter. Of the turn of a phrase. Of the length of a smile. Think of meeting people known. Unknown. Think of a touch that was. That may be. I think of a reason for happiness. For a smile. For beauty. Think of being bored, getting old, staying drunk. Think of vacuum. Of enveloping darkness. Of grappling with the past. The future. Of overlaying memories. Think of the screech of ink on paper. Of friends . Of making them. Losing them. Of reconciliation. Of the road. Of music. Of signing off. Of sighing. Everyday, I wake up and think me out of my life.

Victory is ours*!!

2009-01-19T15:54:00.000-08:00

The pyre is lit.
You cannot protest anymore
Cannot contradict yourself
Cannot scream and sulk at being misunderstood
We'll put together the pieces now,
In straight neat lines
And remember you as we please.

* with due thanks to stewie

Snapping my fingers

2008-12-19T15:05:00.000-08:00

So where do we start here. She was silent. It was just the facts now. She had extricated herself. Looked at the person sitting in front of her. He was just a face she could read. There was a small hollow of sadness for that wasted comfort they shared. For how he knew her and how it would break him. But she did not care. Did not care enough even to give him anything but the facts. Not the regret, the guilt, the betrayal. None of those emotions that she knew he wanted, deserved. Couldn't help looking at her watch. Wondered if it would take more than an hour. She couldn't wait to be taken in, in those arms. A smile almost made its way out. She flinched and focussed back to the table, the coffee mug, at him. His eyes, that had a hundred regrets. She softened. Wanted to console. There wasn't anything he could have done different. Cliched, but it was her, not him. It really was her. She had looked up at that smile and she had lost herself. She was alive in the words he had wrapped around her. She couldn't shake him away. She couldn't forget and then she forgot. It would have happened. Even if he cared for her more than he did now. Now again, where were the facts. Where were the dates, the incidents, the reason. She opened her mouth and drew a blank. Why do his eyes search me. She wanted to go home. She wasn't here anymore. This was over.

Everyone looked around. She was sobbing.

Anonymity

2008-12-17T18:55:00.000-08:00

Chapter:1

A parched throat is what I first feel. Slowly blink an eyelid open. And then the other. See skin. Cannot make out the room. It's a bed alright. Sit up. There's a slight chill. Tug at the bedsheets. Search for a clock. Hope it isn't too early. See my handbag. Totter to it. Pull out the cell phone. 6:37. The comfort of no voice-mails and a hundred frantic missed calls. The bathroom door. The mirror. Swollen eyes. Find my clothes. Find water. Find the front door.

The early morning chill, strangely refreshing. Bury deeper in to the muffler. A tree-lined pavement. Don't recognize it. Walk to the lights. "oak lane". Search my mind. Turn back. Look at the house. A vague sigh for the memory that will eventually get lost. Wave down the taxi and ask for the train station. Cup the coffee a little tighter and stub that cigarette as I see the train pull in. Empty blue seats. Move away from the stain. Why aren't they plastic. The crowded hills roll away. The mist hangs. (like a chandelier?). The familiar city slowly pulls in.

Turn the key. Turn up the heat. Switch on the crackle in the TV. Change into thick pajamas. Put some milk in the microwave. Slide into the seat by the window and watch the world steadily speed up. Time to pick at it with short neat phrases.

...

2008-12-15T19:27:00.000-08:00

Extend myself
In the grey smog,
Touch cheeks
And taste salt.

In defense of hypocrisy*

2008-08-29T08:36:00.000-07:00

The eye wash is important
It is what still reminds us of the right.
Without the subterfuge,
Aren't we replacing the wrong with the right completely.
We need to know, it isn't right.
It isn't to be in the open, because it isn't right.
Doing it doesn't make it right.
The guilt needs to be sustained.
Enough guilt and maybe someone will do the right thing.
Removing the eyewash, removes that possibility.

p.s: *or with reference to Lin Miaoke, why the rest of the world is justified.

Helas!

2008-08-05T20:20:00.000-07:00

Would have been, should have been the best thing to have happened to superhero movies. The menace: demented, real, brilliant, complicated, un-marooned, deliciously evil. Dark and good boldly playing off each other, until the rules were smudged. Of circumstance, defining morality.

There were of course moments, moments of exhilarating evil, like the joker waving his machine gun in a careening car, framed against a rushing new-york night. But the story was lost in its episodes, its platitudes, in protecting that stiff upper lip. Somewhere along, the script lost its joy, its ambition. It nudged the envelope, but didn’t break loose the riot.

A swaying madman, unhinged, unrelenting, vicious, the belief in the breaking point of every person's morality, the treatise on blurring right from wrong, Heath Ledger's blaze of glory.

radiohead junkie

2008-07-01T20:05:00.001-07:00

Its crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXyyTKGGWtM&feature=related
Flaying my limbs all over right now.

Azure

2008-06-27T18:25:00.000-07:00

Beneath the expanse of the blue skies,
The fly catches my fancy

An artist of the floating world

2008-06-21T10:52:00.000-07:00

The name is love at first read. Though the book is not as fantastical or tempestuous as what the name promises, being set in a

Japan

, fresh from the war but still strongly tied and held back by its formal traditions. The book patiently follows the desultory reminiscings of an artist, trying to make his peace with his life, work and beliefs in a drastically altered world. It is a very interesting commentary on how the final outcome of an event changes social perceptions and replaces prejudices. Of how beliefs and ideologies of people, however rational and free thinking, are primarily determined by the social environment at the time. Of how depending on time and circumstance, people very similar in intellect and reasoning can find themselves in opposite courts. Of the basis of the generation gap. Of how time can subvert the validity of choices.

The calmness of the book, much like that of its characters belies the turbulence, quietly but strongly sheathed in. The book is also able to lead an outsider in into the lives of its characters, in a world, clothed in its intricate conventions and very distant from our own, without their actions all becoming incongruous. It opened up to me a part of the history of a country I barely knew apart from the notion that it has the coolest and craziest people in the world. I am also amazed of how Ishiguro keeps track of the character he reveals admist the almost compulsively tangential thoughts of his character.

Laughter

2008-02-09T17:09:00.000-08:00

My head is a boring place. I decide to step out. Candied lips and charcoaled eyes. Blush, pasted right. Smile hung sideways. Doors swung open. Blue curtains with lace. People rush in. Chatter and spirits. Sparkly wine. Music winding. Ribbons twirling. Me twirling. Smiling into his eyes. Twirling, cozying, smiling. Sunlight streaming into the bed. In his eyes. Warm. Its time.

To nowhere and back

2007-02-13T21:50:00.000-08:00

The bottle of water and the latte
The suit that still seems creased
There are two parts to my research
The white board swept clean
Do you have any questions
Salad for lunch
The ride down the elevator
The goodbyes that I replay in my head
And Thanks
We are very impressed,
But unfortunately.

There's someone in my head and its not me

2006-09-06T22:12:00.000-07:00

So, I had this sprain on my calf and was limping the whole of the day. Then I get into the bus, get out four stops before mine and limp the rest of the way home...

Animation

2006-09-04T13:11:00.000-07:00

Silence. Knuckles on the glass pane. Repeat. Pull my feet closer inside the blanket. A slight rustle and footsteps on the porch. Maybe he’ll try a window next. Theres one right in front. Close my eyes tight and wish me invisible. Knuckles, incessantly, for 23 minutes. Footsteps. The engine revs up. Knuckles softly tap my head. I turn and blush. I wince. Wish he’d walk away from my head ...

Kafka on the Shore

2006-08-26T10:28:00.000-07:00

The shortest time I took to read a book by at least a couple of months. Was quite lost at the end of the three days: partly because I had not prepared myself to be searching for reading options that soon. A plane full of people and I had a neat little world I had encased myself in. I even forgot to observe the proverbially much-awaited take-offs and landings. A few scatterred thoughts and notes here.

The book builds a parallel universe in which the characters live and which they react to. Logic and cause and effect are all reined in this universe. Their reactions are not to the real world around them but to this universe in their minds. And throughout u r very worried that not everyone would understand it, someone from outside the realm, within the story and maybe from even from within our world, would think it too fantastic and not understand. U, yourself, want people to buy the world which the writer has so successfully sold to you.

But somehow, they are all still a step ahead of the real world. And by the time the real world catches up with them, they have fulfilled all that was the longings from their inner worlds. For instance, the kid, whose name I have already forgotten, can still get back and start from where he left, can go to school. Very lucky and very different from what happens. Either the actual world catches up much faster or the inner world really never lets go of you. And then you end up a disappointment to everyone around you who could never comprehend and to yourself, cause eventually you do not get to stay in your world, have become a disappointment to everyone in the real world whom you have cared about and might achieve nothing of import in either world. The kid goes back to school to complete his education. Makes plans to come back to the library after that. His inner turmoil having been taken to fruition.

Apathy and the war

2006-07-31T12:29:00.000-07:00

Before, there was a sense of security. Of fairness. Of someone taking responsibility for actions. The human right commissions. The UN. There were curtains that hid things away. Was possible for it all to appear meaningful. Now there isn’t even subterfuge. There are no hidden motives, no speculation. Its all laid out on the table: the disintegration of our collective morality.

Apathy and the war

2006-07-28T09:28:00.000-07:00

So, this absolute beauty of an event happened today. Israel said in their parliament yesterday that they had been encouraged to go on with the offensive in Lebanon since none of the important global powers had stopped them from doing so which, needless to say, is very true. Today US expressed “outrage” over Israeli claims (reports BBC). This hands down has to be the funniest incident ever. Do not know what is more tragic: that the robbers publicly reveal the ill-concealed fact that they had bribed the (self-appointed) police or that it takes a verbal revelation by the robbers rather than the rather thinly veiled public knowledge of the bribery itself for the police to feign outrage. And do they take us and future terrorists, to be so undiscerning as to reject what we see and replace it with what we hear.

Suspended

2006-05-14T19:40:00.000-07:00

Forced away what conscience said,
Closed my eyes, angled my head
Pursed my lips and crimson blushed,
But all the fuss, to what fruitless end
Cause just as I his breadth could smell,
Welcomed he, my exiled friend.

The inevitable day after

2006-05-07T20:46:00.000-07:00

Cradled in the dull ache,
The images spin by
Of the night before
And of all the resultant days to be
And broken tears form
That moan the futility of reproach
Wishing them all away,
Parched eyes try to open.

My window at home

2006-04-29T16:25:00.000-07:00

and the reason I hate going to lab...

Being Cyrus

2006-04-23T22:22:00.000-07:00

Was sure even before I started to watch the movie that there wasn’t a way in the world I wasn’t going to like it. Have been obsessing about the director, respect Naseeruddin Shah, like Saif and love Boman Irani !! It is a little scary, how letting a person into your circle could potentially unhinge your life (the perfectly apt byline for the movie --- “who you let in can change your life”). Cyrus comes in as an apprentice to Shah who is a sculptor lost in pot and his dreamt up reality. His bored and neglected wife sees Cyrus as a cog in her dreamt up scheme and he forever changes their troubled but quiet existence.

The movie has some beautifully crafted moments, my favorite being where Dimple is overcome by tenderness when she listens to why Naseeruddin was in the well, but the next moment, his careless hand breaks the reverie and she cannot help but scream at him. Happens so often in our lives; we are left reacting to peripheral actions and never get around to expressing or appreciating people for anything deeper or intent. But I guess things happen too fast and patience is scarce. The movie is slightly disappointing further on because it simply tells a story but then it does tell it well. Dimple is pretty amazing in the scene in which she goes hysterical with helplessness. Was really happy when I knew that this deviant low-budget tale was a mild success at the box-office :).

A much nicer review to be found here.

Borrowing Phrases

2006-04-20T12:41:00.000-07:00

What happens between us
Happens in darkness, vanishes
Easy and often as each breath.

Obviating Misery

2006-04-18T12:14:00.000-07:00

Bending thoughts,
To ignore
Ignoring will make it go
It does, it does
I shake you up
There's this vaccum to replace, I say
How much do you think it'll cost?

Rumor has it

2006-04-14T12:50:00.000-07:00

I overwhelmed a cloud once,
She flooded my senses,
Drowned my sanity
And then lighthearted,
Sped away from me.

Conversations

2006-04-10T16:42:00.000-07:00

Eyes that dart to oblivion
Meaningless phrases in repeated sequences
That replace thoughts I cannot share
A mind that cannot focus,
On the only object that isn't a blurr
Terrified of silence
Isn't it nice then,
That we have to do this no more.

Borrowing phrases

2006-04-10T13:08:00.000-07:00

Poor Wisdom's chance
Against a glance
Is now as weak as ever.

6ft of water

2006-04-09T21:08:00.000-07:00

and I am drowning.

International street fair

2006-04-09T19:38:00.000-07:00

Drowning in a sea of people on a sunny sunny day with just that tad bit of chill in the air in a quaint college downtown with music in the background, priceless.

Borrowing phrases

2006-04-08T17:10:00.000-07:00

I feel stupid and contagious...

Edward Munch

2006-04-08T12:26:00.000-07:00

Munch is my favorite painter and his paintings, I feel, speak volumes. But I was very apprehensive of watching a biopic (Edward Munch - Directed by Peter Watkins) of his life. I believe, the task of revealing a person to you is quite onerous, requires a huge amount of responsibility and skill. No matter how careful you are, your own biases might make you inadvertently play up something that was inconsequential to him or otherwise. Plus how people actually behave might be very different from the art they create. And I have always liked to keep the exact lives of the artists I really like in a fuzz, because the details of their life might reveal personas and imperfections, which I am scared might take away from or maybe dilute my perspective of the beauty of their work. And, not to forget to mention, the movie runs to about 3 hours and there is not too much patience in me that I can draw on.

In the end, I am glad I added the movie to my queue, glad I moved it to the top of the queue and glad I overcame all of the above thoughts to decide to watch it before I returned it back. The movie focuses not on detailing the story of his life but detailing the influences on him that shape his work. Much like his paintings, it brings to the fore these influences and the confusion and nervousness that surround him and blurs away the superficial nitty-gritty which might take away from the theme. It gives depth and understanding to his paintings. And though I do agree it might not be the most accurate description, it is an interpretation that preserves the impression of Munch one get from his paintings. The movie is pieced together like a stream of consciousness. For the most part, this worked admirably well in creating an image in one’s mind. The movie also incidentally sheds light on the society and the radical ideas that were germinating in Europe at the turn of the last century. And though some of these ideas were pompous and preposterous, it made me sort of lament the absence of such intellectual and creative fervor in the present age. But then maybe, I am just not at the right watering-holes at the right times...;).

Wisdom from kukku

2006-04-04T21:55:00.000-07:00

...interests are a part of life not life itself...

My current crush :)

2006-04-03T20:24:00.000-07:00

Homi Adajania

Dying to see the movie.

Arbit rants

2006-04-03T18:04:00.000-07:00

A tiny tiny line separates sanity and insanity... can't be too careful... Like this person on my floor, whom I hardly know, who suddenly came up to me to ask if I thought there was a drop of water on the top of his nose...Like obscuring out events and behaving as if nothing happenned, for the (thousand and one)th time.

Match Point

2006-03-30T19:30:00.000-08:00

Slight spoilers ahead.

To make something interesting out from a story so mundane, requires belief, a tonne of talent and I guess, the confidence one derives from experience. I really liked the way he plays with you towards the end, the way he leads you on to make a conclusion, the way he lets you believe that that’s the way it should end, makes you accept it though you have also been made to sympathize with the character earlier, and then completely throws you off. Maybe you could have second guessed him, if it was a book, quite certainly. But maybe this is one of the ways movies, as an artist’s medium, varies from written literature; the compulsory short ingestion period doesn’t give the audience the time to over-analyze or be too suspecting of the artist’s motives and hence gives the artist the luxury of a more vulnerable mind. Well, left me quite entertained at the end of the evening. Opera was used exceedingly well, I thought and the movie is beautifully shot.

A Full Confession Ain't for Us, Mortals

2006-03-28T14:53:00.000-08:00

So, I tell my story
Don't miss a detail
All the thoughts that prompted every action,
I painfully describe each.
And its over now. The end.
But why has it changed something in you?

Ahaha...

2006-03-27T17:32:00.000-08:00

...He sets the rules in opposition. It's the goof of all time. Look but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow. Ahaha....

Your untouchable face

2006-03-26T10:03:00.000-08:00

I gotta divide my emotions
into wrong and right
then i get to see how close i can get to it
without giving in
then i get to rub up against it
till i break the skin
rub up against it
till i break the skin

Maugham

2006-03-22T19:59:00.000-08:00

I knew the answers alright. My hobby: reading fiction, my favorite authors: Asimov, Dahl and Maugham. And I’d repeat a hundred times why I liked three, so different from each. Kept repeating, until I was overwhelmed by the emotional cacophony that was my undergrad and which drowned everything out from my life before. I got a chance to revisit and with joy discovered Maugham back I read volume 3 of his collected short stories. Each story is written in the words and senses of a writer deployed as a spy who travels around Europe during the war. The premise offers detachment from his characters yet compels detailed studies of their behavior, their interactions and their motivations. Several of the stories have a decidedly tragic end, come to think of it, I think, all of them do. But the beauty of the way the book is written is that unless you were really paying attention you wouldn’t notice what happened. The picture of the person has so surrounded you that the story seems irrelevant. The story never weighs you down because you are always made aware of the distance, that you are but a spectator who would never be affected by the unfolding events, that you could just walk away from what happened and maybe whistle on the next turn. It is like letting you delectably sample a person, not letting you gorge on the dish, but giving you just enough to let you ruminate on its flavor and decipher the spices maybe:).

fishie wishie

2006-03-22T12:08:00.000-08:00

Let me float with eyes closed,
Let the water flow over, twirl me around.
Let the streaming smiling rays caress me,
Let the bubbles trickle by,
slowly, till there are no more.
Let me float,
Please, would you let me?

Grey afternoon

2006-03-21T20:11:00.000-08:00

Scrambled thoughts,
Veiled logic.
Splattering rain,
Rummaging intentions,
Blurring significance...

Crib #1

2006-03-20T16:11:00.000-08:00

Conversations with suspended ends,
Beauty that a million poems celebrate.
Why is it still that when they happen,
I so ache to turn them mundane.

Vapid Eyes

2006-03-17T22:39:00.000-08:00

Water swirling thoughts away from a carefully inked ego,
Maybe punching them thru could have made me see.

Testing waters...

2006-03-16T09:34:00.000-08:00

So, calmly I illustrate the space inside. Empty but lucid.