Chance Dissolution of Comfy Bohemia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.