The Pain

Let the pain drown you to the depths

Depriving you of any oxygen

And let you be there in peace forever

Because bouncing back and going through cycle

Again and again is not much fun

Is it?

The Bridges of West Kochi

I’d first heard about The Bridges of Madison County from Barry Norman who used to review movies for BBC TV. Those days I’d just begun self-education about Hollywood films so I hardly knew who Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep were, but, I remembered the title as I felt it was important by the way Barry spoke about it and time and again mentioned the lead players (though I don’t remember what his opinion of this film was). Robert James Waller novel (from which the film is adapted) is one of the first e-books I read after getting a PC at home in early 2000s and saw the movie after learning to use the torrents and downloading films.

The film has stayed with me ever since. But, the real significance of it came to the fore when I got a camera and started thinking of projects to do with the new gadget. That was the time I started thinking about the bridges on this side of the town (obviously not the oft clicked and filmed Thoppumpady bridge). I talked about the project with my dad, auto wallah and cabbie friends, but it didn’t materialise and they all seemed to say unison “these places have filth flowing under them and the stench will be unbearable.”

Yet my dream of being like Robert Kincaid (the nomadic National Geographic photographer played by Eastwood in the film) did not go away. At last I told about the project to my ‘ever ready to help’ friend Raju, he too warned me about the stench factor, still he was game for the adventure. It was decided that we will cover the Kalvathy area in the first leg. “And, no need for an auto, we’ll reach there in 15-20 minutes walking and you can start clicking pictures on the way itself”, Raju’s wise words.

The fun part happened when we thought we’d covered 90% of the distance, we realised that we were heading towards Cherlai Kadavu instead of Kalvathy. “I’ve seen a bridge ahead and thought it was the same,” Raju said.

“I meant the one near the State Bank.”

“I think that is the other end and I don’t think that we can reach there walking.”

This in a way proved to blessing for us as we discovered an unexplored and virgin part of the town and it proved to be exotic in every sense of the term with bridges to be found at every few steps and life lulling around on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

A petty shop as we approach the bridge

From the centre

This is where the friends bond

Those friends put me on the footpath

A mansion across the bridge

They aren't amused

A place to worship across the bridge

Ranjith etta bless me

The sight on my Right side

What would the world be without The Mother?

And, of course Raju - My Friend. A 1000 Danks.

Wannabe Robert Kincaid telling bye until he visits another Bridge.

A Strange Place Other Than Earlobes

No, no... This isn’t a post about my fetish for earlobes (one of the softest and smoothest part of the body). In fact it is the title of anthology of corporeal poems by five contemporary poets that includes my good friend Binu Karunakaran. The book was formally launched on the 19th of this month at a function in the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014.

Here are a few pictures that I could click of the function:

Leena Manimekalai - the Chief Guest, a few moments spent together before the function

Dr. Sreelatha - one of the five poets featured in the book, giving a brief introduction of the book

Riyas Komu - initiating the proceedings

It takes mammoth effort to unravel a book

Ra Sh & Binu seem to be wondering if they will get a chance to speak

Meditating Riyas

Star of the Biennale & a fan

His moment did come

A sign of Arrival - Amol Palekar asking you to sign his copy of your book

You don't get Amol Palekar seated next to you everyday. So, just freeze the moment

Age and wisdom: residue of a review – a strange connection between Chattakari and Run Baby Run

Read it here.

Two Men Two Videos

There are two men I admire the most in films; one is   Clint Eastwood, after watching Million Dollar Baby I started digging his material, mostly the films he has directed rather than acted and I'd say that I haven't felt disappointed once. The other is Anurag Kashyap, we are of same age and I always felt that we shared a brotherhood of struggle (or whatever you may call it), he has surpassed that phase now but I'm still stuck there. And, the other thing we share is our dislike for Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Black.

And, if you're wondering what makes these two eminent men to share space here, it is just that I saw  two videos with these two guys in the last few days:

The first video is of Eastwood's speech at the Republican National Convention in Florida a few days back.

I don't have much knowledge of American Elections, so, can't really gauge the impact of this show but it brought into my mind the Malayalam saying 'however old the squirrel may be it never forgets the skill of climbing trees' (the Hindi equivalent of this borders on being an insult, so not mentioning here), same way Eastwood never stops being macho. Here is Roger Ebert's take on the whole  thing.

The second video is of Anurag speaking about his film Black Friday in Brazil last year.

Here is my short take on Black Friday the book from which the movie is adapted.

PS: As Anurag mentions in the video I too had seen the film on DVD sourced from roadside vendor in New Delhi, when my brother had gone there.

PPS: Special thanks to my Facebook friend Binu Narayan who'd posted Anurag's video there on the tenth (Arurag birthday).

Dichotomy

Dichotomy was one of my favourite words when I started learning this language seriously in my mid or late teens. I used look at it in the dictionary without really being able to grasp the essence of it. So, this word never came into my (don’t know everyone who aspires to write may be having a wish to use a new word he/she comes across) writing.


Recently, it struck me again; I was talking to a friend and out of the blue he asked ‘how do you sustain your cheer?’ (people dealing with me closely do know that I’m not always cheerful, I become sad, depressed, angry and even vicious sometimes), I just said ‘it is my normal state, I don’t do anything special for it.’ Still, the look of enquiry was in tact on his face, so I continued ‘look at the bigger picture, be grateful for what you have, be focussed, try not to think of things that are beyond your control etc. etc.’


Then ‘dichotomy’ resurfaced from somewhere inside, whatever I said was opposite to what we are conditioned to think ‘live in this moment, here and now’. In fact, we reverse the thought process of ‘here and now’ when the individual moments become miserable, fooling ourselves that everything will be hunky-dory once these miserable moments pass. Basically, we are just expected to carry on even if we are miserable in this moment or the future looks bleak.


Isn’t this the real essence of ‘dichotomy’? Which no dictionary can explain...


A similar post is here


I wrote the poem Lost to use the word oblivion.

Does this make you curious?

The beginning, middle, end or whatever…

The Noose

If she had imagined in her mind's eye how grotesque she looked hanging dead from the ceiling, she may have backed out of the idea of killing herself like that. But, obviously the pain or whatever it was must have been so overbearing in that moment to faze every other thought or vision out into some deeper recess of her brain. I wasn't feeling sad enough or even perplexed by her action. I was experiencing a sense of deja vu, as if I'd seen it coming. A strange kind of calmness had enveloped me, about which I'd have argued with her for hours if she had made a prophecy about it as my reaction to her death.

I’d written the above passage after reading how Ian McEwan starts to write something new:

Sometimes I experimentally write out a first paragraph – or middle paragraph, even – of a novel which I feel no obligation to write. Those kind of dabblings I always set down in a green, ring-bound A4 notebook. It’s full of paragraphs from novels I will never complete, or hardly start. But sooner or later, one of those paragraphs will snag my attention, and I’ll come back to it asking: why does that interest me so much, why does that seem to offer a peculiar kind of mental freedom? And so I might find myself adding a page or two. It was with a complete free hand, for example, that I once wrote what turned out to be the opening of Atonement – with no clear sense that I was committed to anything at all, I was just playing with narrative positions, with tone of voice, with a certain descriptive moment. Or I might decide that what I’ve written belongs to the middle of a novel, and then I’ll spend some idle time tracing out a beginning. Then abandoning it. It’s a way of tricking myself into writing novels.

Here is the full interview.

I’d this image of a female hanging dead from the ceiling in mind for a few days when I was thinking of writing something new. Without really having a clue how to convey it or even the story behind it. The first line came in two-three days. And, it took a few more days (with my legendary typing speed and lethargy) to add words to make into a paragraph.

Numb but not down

Sometimes you think you have given your best and sit expectantly with excitement rumbling in your tummy that good times are just round the corner. Then slowly it dawns on you that you have turned the corner and nothing much has changed so your best wasn't good enough to change things.

I'm going through a similar situation now, where my energy is sapped and nothing new is happening. I spend time watching films and games and even religiously read newspapers (which I’d stopped doing for a while now). But, surprisingly it hasn't effected me in negative way, I don't feel low, life is going on as normal (I can talk, smile and laugh effortlessly); this would have been unimaginable a few years ago. I'd have become silent, mulling over what would have gone wrong. Maybe, I have stopped caring or I’ve realised that there is something beyond my effort that guides the result of things.

I'm a political fence-sitter, never sure whether my thought process is right or wrong. Initially I wished to write about Anna Hazare's hunger strike. But as it enters the seventh day I’m confused and doubtful about where it is heading. Somehow, I feel that it is hijacked by TV channels that are pulling it to the extremes from both sides. One seeing it as the beginning of a corruption-less utopia and other as it is holding the democracy on ransom. I don't naively believe that every problem can be solved just by casting a vote once in five years. And, I even know that being corrupt has seeped into our bloodstream because being corrupt is convenient and bribing is equivalent to paying tips in a restaurant as we wish everything should be hassle-free, be it renewing our driving licences or getting a gas cylinder. I just hope something positive comes out of this churning.

Now a song from the film Aarakshan. I always thought Prasoon Joshi to be the true inheritor of Gulzar's legacy as a lyricist. This song seems to be the final stamp of that fact:

Finally, the new TV commercial of Airtel mobile Har Ek Friend Zaroori Hota Hai I got hooked to while channel surfing a couple of days back.

While searching for behind the scenes people for this ad I got back to Rashmi Bansal's blog Youth Curry. I don't exactly remember when and how it got pushed out of my browsing list.

PS. This post was just an exercise to flex my writerly muscles. So, please bear if you feel cohesiveness has flown out of the proverbial window.

Miracles

Miracles do occur

I sms the person

Sitting next to me

Whom I’m meeting for the first time

Fearing he may not follow my strained voice

With all the buzz around

He replies casually as if I’ve actually spoken to him

Putting me at ease to continue the conversation verbally.

Magic Realism

Read about it here.

Time too had waited

Time too had waited with me

Watching life move on, from a corner.

For you to come along

Hold my palm

And help me continue my journey

Wonder why…

Wonder why some mysteries remain unresolved

Some truths never unraveled

Questions go unanswered

If they add charm to life

I could do with little less of that charm.

Practice

A few days back I made a long face in front of an online friend using emoticon saying that I wasn't getting a sentence as good as I wished. She reassuringly said: “you'll get it, just keep trying.” Next she typed something like “you don't practice, if you practice daily it'd be lot easier for you.” She meant writing (or should I say typing), I know every writing manual or 'How to write' book says: “put away a few words daily – Practice.”

But, I never paid heed to it. Being lazy to type, my excuse being, writing is just an extension of thinking. So, as long as I can think I can write. And, thoughts are rumbling in my head throughout the day or to be precise until this laptop comes in front of me, then more important things sprout up seeking my attention, checking emails is the foremost. Then looking for friends online and telling Hi to few of them. The list goes on like this, and the actual writing rarely happens, sacrificing the thoughts that glowed during the day in the subconscious as being mundane or pedestrian not deserving the effort to be typed out and shared by the night.

Here is a glimpse of the Master Writer Marquez's take on practice in the beginning of his book Strange Pilgrims.

When I began Chronicles of Death Foretold, in 1979, I confirmed the fact that in pauses between books I tended to lose the habit of writing and it was becoming more and more difficult for me to begin again. That is why between October 1980 and March 1984, I set myself the task of writing a weekly opinion column for newspapers in several countries, a s a kind of discipline for keeping my arm in shape. Then it occurred to me that my struggle with the material in the notebook was still a problem of literary genres and they should really be newspaper pieces, not stories. Except after publishing five columns based on the notebook, I changed my mind again: They would be better as films. That was how five movies and a television serial were made.

My friend BG sharing similar thoughts on his blog here.

Rudderless

Rudderless drifter

Flowing with the current

Wishing to be caught in the whirl

And disappear in the depths

But thrown out all the while

To continue flowing.

Write

Letters trickle to form words. Words queue up and make sentences. Sentences creep along to become paragraphs. Creating something new or reliving old memories. Do they make sense? Very hard to guess. They project my mood or change it while at work... making me nauseous or exhilarated by the end.

The naked soul being vulnerable for the world to see.

I wish to believe…

I wish to believe that:

Prayers are answered

Faith is unshaken

Love remains undiminished

Something will fill the hollow heart

There is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow

And that belief isn’t misplaced.