My best friend and wife (I’m talking of the same person, here), is participating in the Rare Acts of Political Engagement, (R. A. P. E.) show, to be held in New Delhi from the 10 – 30 of April at Art Bull Gallery.
The show is curated by the well-known Johnny ML.
Location:
Art Bull, Art Gallery & Auction House
F-213 C, First Floor SIS House
Lado Sarai, New Delhi – 110030
Phone: +91-11-6568 3083
You are all invited!
I’m a filmophile. Or a moviophile. You choose.
I love movies. I love the wonder and the world that they belong to – that is just an inch away that you can touch and be a part of it – yet is a million miles away where we can hardly find a connection. Like people get passionate about football (I mean soccer) and cricket, I feel the same about movies. I am the one who watches movies that are known to be bad films. How else will you ever know what good films are about? And yet, I have not found a (useful) rubric that defines good films, other than the sermons of a handful of critics. And most of these critics talk on an a very elusive technical plane.
Emotional appeal is lost to them. Well, I lose it sometimes, too.
The Filmfare Awards are the equivalent of the Oscars, in India. They are a bit younger than the Oscars, but in spite of many other awards, they seem to carry some weight unlike the others. You will hear many complain that we do not have the finesse of presenting an award show. It’s usually not well planned, its offensive sometimes, and more often than not – garish. I have a theory about that, which I will promulgate in another post. I have other concerns at this time.
I was devastated when the best actor award went to Ranbir Kapoor when you had nominations for Irrfan Khan (Paan Singh Tomar) and Manoj Bajpai (Gangs of Wasseypur). If the Filmfare Awards were purely a people’s choice award, I would have let go; they aren’t – they are dual. If some kind of statistics has come into play – weight-age, summation, mean, median, mode, that’s fine; there’s no way I can argue with that. But there’s no way, people who have seen all the five films thought that Ranbir Kapoor was better than the other nominees.
As far as I am concerned, Ranbir Kapoor is Bollywwod’s answer to Harrison Ford. Both of them have a “permanently bewildered” expression for any emotion. Some actors, just cannot be The Last King of Scotland.
Blue corner redefines its ethos.
Some messages are very easy to expect: festival greetings or other congratulatory messages, for example. Convention and empirical evidence inform us of the promise of their occurrence. There is calculated taking-for-granted in such messages. Some other messages are different: especially if they are a response to questions. There is not much in terms of surety that can be said of the content of the response; for that matter, there is no surety whether there will be a response.
Silence.
Now, that’s a form of response that is the most difficult for us to make sense of. Even more so if a festive or congratulatory promise exists. If you think hard enough, however, silence is easy to decode. You can make meaning of silence through the context and the circumstance. The onus of interpretation is now on you – that’s the implicit message of silence. The explicit, in this case, are just forms of excuses.
And of all possible meanings that we may discover, we learn that when we see beyond the excuses, the message is loud and clear.
Wishing you all a very Happy New Year, full of meaning, conversations, and great times with friends and family!
It’s seems quite impossible that the reason for not writing would be the lack of thoughts. We think all the time. And therefore, it seems equally impossible that we do not write because we cannot put our thoughts together. To be able to come to the conclusion that we cannot write because we cannot put our thoughts together is a process of putting thoughts together.
Most things that I ever want to blog about are like a dollop of cold butter in a hot pan. In a while, it loses shape and form. If I don’t pay attention to it – it burns. Once in a while I pay attention and watch the butter, as it shows me the promise of a wonderful meal. I reduce the heat; simmer the flame. I add other potential ingredients to it – to bring out the full flavour.
Get the right mix in.
I decide who will play nice in the pan, and even though they come from different places – in the end – become one wonderful dish. I say no to some of them, give a chance to a few and willingly agree with the rest – of their claim to the pan. Like a tentative immigrant phrase or just that one darling adjective, but not that disruptive exclamation. Often, I will taste it – and make corrections – a bit of salt here, a bit of coconut milk perhaps – to perhaps dilute the sharp, possibly stinging taste.
Ingredients may have a personality, but a cook gives them character.
But most of the time, I let the butter burn. I forget about what’s in the pan and I move out of the kitchen. Obviously, there is no eating the burnt butter, so it goes straight in the sink. And like the mass of pungent carbon on that pan, the idea is lost forever – and with it – the promise of a beautiful expression.
Ideas, like food, need to be treated with respect, love, patience and care.
I don’t want to forget this.
We are in Kashedi Ghat. Climbing. It’s the afternoon of 18th April in 2012. A few trucks pass us by, carrying various types of loads. Some are empty. My niece who is keeping a watchful eye on the surroundings and taking the beautiful drive in Konkan, has a question for me.
“You know these trucks, they carry stuff from here to there?”
“Yes,” I say, “what about them?”
“These truck drivers, who drive them?”
“Yes?”
“Do they ever get curious to know what’s inside? Do they ever stop and look at what they are carrying?”
I laughed.
I don’t think I ever asked this question, but I know that this question had occurred to me, many years ago. I explain to her, how it works. They are already aware what they carry. The person who asks them to carry the cargo usually tells them what’s inside.
This is curiosity at two levels. First, her own curiosity about whether the drivers are curious, and then about the drivers’ curiosity itself. This curiosity possibly spans another level – the third – her own curiosity about what’s inside the trucks.
It’s meta-curiosity.
It started with The Shawshank Redemption. I am sure.
A friend proudly spoke of a movie that he had seen and I had not. He seemed to enjoy the tone of blasphemy that he was able to incorporate. “You haven’t seen The Shawshank Redemption?” My life was suddenly not worth all the years I had spent living it. Lately, I usually get very upset when people express their utter surprise and shock when I say – nope, never heard of them. This fellow – I was willing to forgive. He is on no social network other then email. People who are addicted to reading everything that is shared, usually suffer from this affliction of blasphemous spit out.
A few weeks later, DVD in my hand I walked back home that Friday evening with a promise of a pale ale paired with a prison break.
Since then, The Shawshank Redemption (TSR) has been on the top of my favourite movies. It has been a while that a few movies starring Sean Penn, Daniel Day Lewis, Geoffery Rush and Jeff Bridges, have tried dethroning TSR, they have not succeeded. It may have something to do with an education I received via TSR.
[Potential spoiler ahead]
Andy Dufresne, in a scene in the movie, plays a song from Le Nozze Di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro). According to Wikipedia:
Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) defies Warden Sam Norton (Bob Gunton) by playing the duettino over the prison’s loudspeakers. Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman) remarks in his voice-over narration that, “I’d like to think [the singers] were singing about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it.”
It is an opera composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It was my first introduction to opera – and I am glad for it. The song that is played in the movie is from Act 3 and is called Che Soave Zeffiretto (What a gentle little Zephyr.)
Since this basic introduction to opera, I have been fortunate to attend an opera (Il trovatore - The Troubadour; an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi). Interestingly, this visit to the opera was due to another friend, who shuns social media. And I have been blessed, since.
Recently, Mahendra started a very interesting series on his blog about Western Classical Music. Call it WCM 101, if you will. I am just glad that I have friends around me who enrich me, every time I get to know them better. I have been trying hard to understand opera in the same way – using clues from Mahendra’s series.
I am failing.
My relationship with music has been necessarily of association and emotional recalls. In the Wikipedia link above, you will find the translation of Che Soave Zeffiretto – there is hardly any body to the ‘content’ of the song – you will notice. And, I wonder if that is the beauty of it. Low on content; high on emotion. But it does mention Zephyr – a soft gentle breeze, blowing from the west. There’s romance in that. That it blows from the west is a technicality, but the soft gentle breeze is what I am talking about. It does me in.
A couple of days ago, this word – Zephyr – came up, in some other context.
And I tried, with significant effort to talk of this song (I am not sure even, if I should be referring to it as a “song.”)
I gave up, explaining. I promised, I’d play the song, someday.
Red (a character from TSR, said it well enough for me):
I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.
Enough, enough now.
She must have been eleven or twelve years old. Cyan-ish salwar and a short, but bright red Kurta. She carried an uneven pole to help her balance on the tightrope walk. I watched for a while, as I was leaving.
*
One of the great events that Mumbai is proud of, is the annual arts festival held at Kalaghoda, every year. My best friend is an artist, so we usually make it a point to visit the festival at least once while it is on. It is an amazing smorgasbord of art. Very smart and creative people from various places come there, every year. These are sensitive, aware, and emotional artists. The Kalaghoda Art Festival (KAF) features “burning” issues – environment, child-abuse, over-consumption, religion, support for local artisans, fusion music and the like.
*
Her father wore a bright blue lungi and kept an even beat going. I imagined, it helped her focus, in the din that this city is. I almost imagined her telling herself, just one more step, and then, again, just one more step. The rhythm of dad’s even beta resonated well with the girls chant, I thought. I played it in a few regional languages I know. It seemed to be in sync.
*
It is quite endearing to see artists represent their emotions of the socio-political issues that affect them. Large, scalar installations that demand of us, to make discrete sense of the abstractions of an already discrete problem. I am amused, sometimes, but I maintain the perspective. The taller and garishly-attention-seeking these installations are, I see lesser of art and I see more of personal, shrieking statements seeking recognition.
*
She and her father aren’t allowed in the conclave that exhibits registered and learned artists. Socially-acceptable art requires a certificate: institutional or commercial. Unfortunately they have neither. To my mind, every person in this city would be more appreciative of her tightrope walk: she epitomises the struggle of every man and woman in this city. In a single action she makes their abstract life discrete; in a single action from one end of the rope to the other she presents a performing art. Yet they are all blind to this abstraction.
*
Tomorrow’s blog and news had flowery reviews of the installation art about child abuse. I read it. I smiled. I put the paper away here and closed a tab there.
*
She asked of me, who had apparently noticed the presence of master art in her performance that was bereft of any intention except one – to survive for tonight’s dinner – what did you do? I told her, I am no different. I took your photograph, I also wrote a post (for what it is worth, it was about you). Beyond that, I did not do anything. Success, to me, unlike you is not about “just one more step” – my success is measured in the like count and positive graph on page view statistics.
*
Unfortunately, for both of us, I have become one of those that I criticise.
*
PS: Please resist the temptation for Mumbai-bashing.
I was in Goa, a couple of weekends ago – with Mahendra. As one thing led to another, we talked of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZAMM). That is one book I never bought. I inherited it – one amongst a treasure that was bequeathed to me; one that I cherish. I did buy Mr. Prisig’s other book – Lila – and read it – even. So, while we were talking of ZAMM, I was at loss in the conversation.
Elements of that conversation made me want to access the treasure that was bestowed; and I picked up the book as soon as I returned. The book has more personal meaning for me, than its content. As I moved through the pages, I realised that I had started reading it long ago. And it struck me, why I had never crossed the first few pages. While the book isn’t about motorcycles, as such – it did make a case against cars. It was a strong statement – about the joy of travelling in a car vis-à-vis a motorcycle.
Indigestible.
Then, and now.
The last three years have been beautiful with her. Today is her birthday. We have been on many adventures together. Most of them have been pleasant and enjoyable; some risky and dangerous, even. Many friends and acquaintances have come and gone and we have been places. Some chose to look out the window; some chose to sleep all through. We have been on mountains and along the sea. We have been on the best roads and – believe me – worst roads. Mostly, I have been with my angel and my artist friend – and we have painted wonderful pictures using thoughts, ideas, and experiences for palettes, brushes, and paint.
I do not have a specific memory of every inch on the road with her; I have a collective memory, though, of my experiences and my dreams becoming real. And she has helped me — see. In a way that I could never have, otherwise.
The road is a lover
You never recover
Not now or any time soon
My head starts to spin
When I think where I’ve been
Playin’ twin to an old fiddle tune, oh
As the wind chases after the moon
Through the kindness
Shown me that day
I gave him this melody
And we sang in duet
`Neath the stars in the sky
And the shadows of dancing trees
~ The Road Is A Lover; Alison Krauss & Union Station
She has opened my eyes to the world. And, now, she is all mine!
She posted this photo to Facebook.
I was worried.
Bhimbetka was a cover up, I have to admit now.
But a cover-up that we were supposed to cover-up.
I cannot hold it any longer. For long, I have held the secret within me – and now it needs to come out in the open. We were surfing the surface of the blue sea — maneuvering through rocky reefs. Perhaps we seemed like an unsuspecting couple and were approached by a two men in black suits – no tie (else I would have known who they were) – who said that they needed us to do something. They injected a very viscous fluid; my left biceps. Suddenly I felt strong – I glanced at her, if this had impressed her in any way. I did not see a positive response. Perhaps, she knew that it was the effect of the viscous injection.
And without warning, they attached a cylindrical gadget to my nose.
“We need you to smell what’s on the rock”, they said. I asked them what rock they were speaking of. The guy on the left with two silver-capped teeth just smiled, as if demonstrating the only wealth he had ever accumulated.
“Of course, if you ever publish this, we will deny it. But we may not have to, actually”, they said, “because you have no idea who we are”. I was dazed. I did not have time to think – as they dropped me in the ocean. I sunk down graciously – smoothly. I’ll admit, fear gripped me like a friend who bear-hugs you – when he sees you after sixteen hours.
Having seen “The Abyss” and many such films of that genre – I wondered how I would survive – in my jeans and my iPod-enabled-Nike. But it was probably that viscous liquid which that helped sub-marine and enabled me to withstand the pressure under deep-water. But as I made my way to bottom of the sea, and wedged myself in this crevice, there I was – smelling the rocks with a smelloscope that they had attached to my nose. It was the sweet smell of being in an exotic place with friends. It doesn’t happen any more. Friends have got busy.
I think the men on the surface could also see the blue-white light, which washed over that deep rock. People on the surface seemed shocked. But I not only smelled, that rock, I discovered great meaning — which thankfully I did not require to report to them.
And I am being tracked by that white light at the bottom of the ocean. I never saw that light (it was behind me, as you can see), but I am glad she took this photograph. Perhaps those that I call my friends will know what it means to be deep down there, being alone, and knowing it all.
A follow-up post to Tea in 1732kms.
The one thing that you cannot escape on a long drive, is people. No matter what secluded place you drive to, you will encounter them. Sometimes a few, sometimes many. But you will always see them.
They come in various shapes, sizes, colour, accents and moods.
They sit at toll booths and pass out the exact same ticket for the exact same fare for the duration of their shift. They are walking by to a village close by, and you duck your head out of the window to confirm the right turn – usually after you have taken that turn. They might offer directions with a nod of their head, sometimes they will want to give you more details than you care for – sometimes they ask you to drop them on the way for offering you directions. They might make tea for you, serve food, or help you get to your designated room for the night. They smile at you: sometimes a fake trained smile like the one we see in airlines or hotels; sometimes the smile is genuine, for no other reason than just to have met you. Sometimes they stare at you – because city folk in a village usually stand out like, well, city folk in a village; sometimes they ignore you. Usually, folks I have met on my way are helpful; a few times, they didn’t bother. As we go into the interiors we see them wear very colourful clothes, which often hurts our overly sensitised sense of bland attire. They become gaudy sometimes, and we are quick to be sarcastically humorous. We see labourers on the highway, levelling it out for us in the heat and dust, while we are quick to roll-up our windows and switch on the AC.
We forget almost all of these people when the drive is done. We usually never take these portraits to remind us of these people when we upload photographs or blog about them. One wayfarer’s face in over seventeen hundred kilometres, however, has stayed with me like a photographic impression.
We had just left Dhar, off Indore, on our way to Surat. The road up to Dahod is in a very bad condition, with very small smooth patches in between. Where I could, I was speeding, to make up for lost time. As one smooth patch was coming to an end, I slowed down. Green fields on my right, with tall hills somewhere far watched me with patience. In the foreground, close to my car, I saw him. He wore a light blue soiled kurta that still saturated itself well against the blue sky. His back was turned to me. As I came to an almost halt to go through a deep pothole, he turned – he wore a tightly wrapped white turban and a white dhoti, wrapped in a way I have never seen before. As I surveyed him from his bare feet to his face, I think, that’s when the mental shutter released. It was a face, lush with character and marked by deep, confident wrinkles for the years. The thick regal moustache ended somewhere, but was hidden by where the sideburns waved towards his ears; the facial hair a sharp contrast to his sun-worn dark skin. I’d like to think and even say, that our eyes met, but I was too mesmerised by what stood there, to remember. Yet, I remember those big, dark, sunken eyes, which were the source of the hypnosis of that brief moment. As if to complete this vision that I was beholden to, he moved his right hand slightly for me to see the most beautiful axe in his big hands.
The car moved on having climbed out of the pothole and found a semblance of a road. Both of us were speechless for a few minutes.
Most of your memories can be captured with a camera. Some memories, however, you are meant to capture and preserve in your heart.
Forever.
There are a training self-development programmes out there that help us discover ourselves. We attend such programmes and come rejuvenated with a new-found zest for life, having discovered our true selves.
Interestingly most of these programmes have a set pattern: we pay money for them, usually go out of the environment and the surrounding that we live in, for a short period that is usually inadequate to internalise what we discover. Mostly, the proof of having successfully attended these programmes is the language of the participant. These people are usually: in touch with their inner selves, they are suddenly one with the universe, they sense cosmic intervention and such things. Other choice phrase combinations will use: sharing, bonding, one-ness, peace, simple, growth, and of course love. A spattering of these words mixed with other choice phrases, is a mark of a person just out of a training self-development programme.
Very few of these people ever really get around to knowing themselves. The ones that do, rarely ever choose to use vaguely exotic vocabulary to explain everything that they feel. There is a sense of strength about them that is usually evident.
Mostly, you do not need to pay anyone to know yourself. And being out of the environment and the surrounding that influences who you are – getting out of that the environment – seems almost self-defeating.
Often it is the otherwise innocent remarks, signs and gestures, which we tend to ignore, that provide the insight that you need to know thyself. All our tribulations for self-discovery amount to nothing, if we ignore the signals that people around us keep sending. We’ll of course have to allow ourselves to be open to receive those signals. If we continue to insist on maintaining the belief about who we are, chances are, these signals will only bounce off us. And these signals will always be from the people around you – neglect the signs at your own peril.
Det-Res, recently wrote in her New Year post: “I also hope for our sake that we realize old habits will not get new results.“
For those of you who still haven’t remembered, Temet Nosce, is the plaque at the Oracle’s place, in The Matrix. Apparently, it’s non-traditional Latin, and translates to: “thine own self thou must know.”
I’ll leave you with this thought that my friend sent in reply to an email I once wrote to her:
I think people are actually like modelling clay – we assume and blatantly accept our three-dimensionalism, when the truth is that we are multi-dimensional – and every passing year is just proof of our ever-changing-ness.
Someday, we will have to wonder what the “Like” button across social media, did to us.
Recently, I was reading a post regarding comments on our blogs. It was a post titled, Are You Making It Hard for People to Comment? by Joanna Paterson on the Confident Writing blog. Some interesting points there, if you wonder why the interaction on the blog isn’t what you expect. If not, don’t bother.
I had a thought about it. I wrote:
I am not sure about this, but I wonder whether all the “sharing links” and the “liking links” are equal culprits. If the end of the post is pretty busy with sharing buttons, folks would rather share (or just *like* the post) rather than adding a comment.
The reader acknowledges your post, but does not leave a footprint on the blog.
Recently, I have been adding quite a few photos on Facebook, and while I am glad that people “Like” my photos, I do get irritated by the constant notifications of people who like stuff that I post. When you think hard about it, a like doesn’t mean much! I am searching for a way that Facebook doesn’t notify me of the likes. Hopefully, I’ll find it.
And even if I cannot do that on Facebook, I am definitely doing it on my blog. The ratings, the shares, the like buttons – will all go away. One thing about blogging that I have enjoyed for a long time, is the interaction — the conversation (though, nothing beats a talk over a coffee or a beer). I have little, but I hope this will rekindle some conversation on my blog. Of course, this doesn’t stop the reader from sharing my posts.
I think, the like and share buttons have become replacements for good expression. They have also become the means of being lazy without sounding so. Clicking these buttons allows us to make our presence felt. But it ends there. And like Amit says, it has become “too commonplace” — too commonplace to mean anything meaningful.
So, therefore.
The earliest definition that I ever knew of assertiveness was a dictionary extract in a book:
– to assert is to state positively with great confidence but with no objective proof.
This meaning was taken from the Websters dictionary, I have been searching online to find this meaning on Websters Online, but haven’t. The meaning has been edited. They have probably revised it (the book in which I read this, is a ’75 edition)
This meaning has bothered me for a while; especially as I came to discover, that in this world there is little difference between being assertive and being aggressive. In most of the searches in dictionaries and thesauri, I found that aggressive is a synonym for assertive. Yet, for some reason assertiveness has a positive quality, while aggression is usually the darker disliked cousin.
So is there a difference between the two? Even if subtle? And are they twins, really separated only by the positive and negative connotations that have come to be associated with them over time? Or are they inherently different by lineage? Assert’s origins lie in Latin, meaning a claim, whereas aggression’s lineage (also in Latin) is a derivative of attack. Assertion has always got the good press and has come to mean something that most people understand as something to emulate, imbibe and reflect. Aggression and hostility, therefore became intimate.
I have however, yet to experience assertiveness as defined in a textbook. It does not exist, perhaps, because it is probably a guideline that cannot be productised. The equation that defines assertion also changes with context; Gender Mathematics, for example. Most “assertive” people are usually trying to please most people. (See note below). One interpretation of assertion is: firm, but polite (implying that aggression is necessarily impolite or hostile; I’d agree). When you start looking at the degree in which a person asserts, the gradient usually darkens towards aggression, unless of course the person is willing to let go of the firmness. This isn’t a case against assertion or a case for aggression. It’s just that it seems that beyond dictionary definitions and human interpretations, assertion has little meaning.
Assertion, then, is possibly a defence against aggression. And when assertion does not work, aggression, possibly its only escape
Note: I have stricken out that line, since it was out of context. That’s my mistake in presentation. It was in reference to aggression, where the aggressor does not care about the person facing the aggression.
Exercise.
Whatever you do, wherever you go, that is one word that chases you to the far reaches where you choose to hide. On my blogs, that’s one thing that I am not doing. If my blogs could sing, right now they’d be singing “Sparrow in the Storm”, by Labi Siffre.
In the beginning lives the end
Can the foe become your friend?
Easy answers there are none, though
Frightened grown-ups search for one
In these broken bloody times
We need more than TV smiles
Behind the eyes the door is tight shut
Behind the makeup, just more makeup
It seems, often, what might be important to me may not be of much importance to those who read. Or, I make such a mess of a simple idea, that I complicate it beyond comprehension. Or, it is so important that it cannot be trivialised by putting it up on the blog.
It could be about travel – and that is what this blog was really supposed to be about – physical travel, but it has turned out, I am a really bad travel writer. I think it’s about writing about How to get there and what to do there, but there is enough of pedia-kind-of-sites out there for those sort of things. In some ways, however, this blog is about travel: a different kind.
I wrote about issues. Things that affect us at large, but then, it was vitriolic and spewing rancour at best. It didn’t quite help since I usually felt even more helpless after those posts. It’s not that I am not concerned, but I seem to be less bothered writing about them.
I have written a lot about friends and conversations. Those are the things that I enjoy the most. And it is funny that I haven’t written about meeting two new people in recent times. Each of them deserves a post (at least), so I shall refrain from writing more about that here. But it is quite impossible to write about friends and conversations, because in these days, friends are far and conversations are few.
Perhaps I could write about that.
This time the words aren’t as treacherous as the thoughts that refuse to slide down my hand and make the creative dance with my fingers on the keyboard.
As the birthdays come and go
The more I understand, the less I know
As the birthdays come and go
Only one thing I know
That, write I must, I realise now. Especially after I read this note from Robert Genn.
I should be writing my lines, if I want to build myelin.
I remember those days.
I used to torment everyone I knew who could blog, to blog. I have been even called a bully, in that sense. About three years ago. Now, I cajole, very rarely, not to friends, however.
But blogging, as we knew it then, doesn’t really exist. It’s called publishing now. It is called publishing now because we only transmit on to a medium that has expanded enormously. And we transmit at a very high frequency. And, perhaps, because we transmit with such high frequency, we transmit in very small amounts. We micro-blog, we update statuses. In essence, we publish. We publish without context and we publish with mistakes. We publish abstract and we use SMSese (Text-speak for those outside India).
If the blog dies, does the blogger die with it? Are their lives interdependent? I don’t think so. Bloggers immigrate. They become law-abiding citizens of another world, where their ambitions and skills can be put to some use. And the blog had to die. Anything that is difficult is easily overcome by that which is simple. That is the truth by which this world has evolved.
But simple and trivial aren’t the same things. But now, they are often mistaken for one and the same. I have a list of an A-list of bloggers on my RSS feed, which over a period has become the folder with least number of bloggers. And like Paul Simon said, it applies to this list:
Some have died
Some have fled from themselves
Or struggled from here to get there
I made a very strong case (read excuse) of a writers’ block today to a friend and a fellow-blogger. I was reminded, creatively, that there isn’t such a thing – she asked – which other profession has a block?
It was interesting to think about that. A policemen’s’ block. Or perhaps a soldiers’ block. It would be real fun for the kids if they experienced a teachers’ block. A pilots’ block would be real dangerous. You get the point. It all really boils down to impatience. We deny context to what we write, we wring the entire message to a limit of characters; play to a comment and like count; post a photo to substitute a thousand words; and enslave ourselves to URL shortening statistics.
And, continuing with Paul’s Obvious Child:
Well I’m accustomed to a smoother ride
Maybe I’m a dog that’s lost his bite
The blog is dead, long live the blog.
Like every year, it came and it went. It filled the heart with many thoughts, made it swell and a few tears were forced out, to make space for that final thought that wanted to belong.
Like every year it was a reflection of the last year.
This time, however, it played young. Quite.
All’s well. As always.
The greater gift to humankind is the ability to remember. But, the greatest gift to humankind is the ability forget.
We live our life surrounded by memories. Good ones, bad ones, and some really ugly ones.
There is something about the melancholy nature in us that often denies us the forgetting of bad memories. We somehow become slave to them. They keep popping up at the most inopportune times, moving us from a state of low-spirits to dejection.
At that precise moment however, the good memories that will alleviate the feeling of despair, never seem to surface. They remain submerged, blurred, like under the uniform blue of a deep ocean.
Maybe it is a lesson for us in life, we have to be able to string together the good ones, on a very short string too, and keep them on the top of the stack. Keep them accesible. Because the more bad and ugly things that you remember about someone or something or someplace, the more concrete your perception about it. In recent time I have found it amusing, how we use the negative memories as evidence in our arguments that are against. They are almost like facts. Memories aren’t algebraic in that, a good memory does not cancel a bad one. Even if you assume that you have equal number of good and bad memories, the bad ones seem to float better.
Pain, caused by a bad memory, possibly leaves a deeper and pronounced scar that is difficult to ignore. Perhaps it is about letting go, perhaps it is about forgiving. I do not know. But I know this: it is definitely about forgetting – the bad ones.
The greater gift to humankind is the ability to remember. But, the greatest gift to humankind is the ability forget.
We need to remember to forget, to live a better life.
It was a lazy Saturday evening, a few years ago, when my father said, “God entered his being and made him write this, this is not a human act.” He was his usual relaxed Saturday-self, pacing slowly around the house listening to Geet Ramayan, written by G. D. Madgulkar, and composed and rendered by Sudhir Phadke.
I was old enough to understand that this was an exaggeration of sorts and I told him so. (Not that I was old enough, but that I understand he meant that this is a divine composition). He did not relent, he insisted that he meant it literally. I relented — the sceptic that I was. The message was important to take note of, I said to myself. Very soon, I was to be a convert to that sort thinking.
Years passed, and my love for Simon & Garfunkel and Paul Simon compositions grew and assumed a near-fanatico-religious status. My musical journey meandered through many valleys.
Yesterday, a smallish Twitter conversation ensued about the concept of divinity in music.
Amit links to his post about “Touch of Divinity” based on this couplet:
दिव्यत्वाची जेथे प्रचिती
तेथे कर माझे जुळती… [YouTube]
He has a different take than the intended meaning of this couplet and is a recommended read (actually, his entire blog is a recommended read, if you don’t already). For me, however, in context of our Twitter talk, this took on a different meaning. I accessed my Marathi encyclopaedia (also known as Mom), about the song and it’s meaning.
Music that make a direct connection to God (and where I use the word God in this post, I do not mean a religious connotation, to what I say here, I mean it as a divine entity – something beyond the known self) is always beautiful. It is beyond human composition. As Paul Simon says in an interview, echoing, what my father said a few years ago, you make a direct connection and you get it. It is your expression, but someone is helping you form it. Does that reduce an artist to just a medium of communication for God? I doubt. If that be true, then any one of could be the divine cellphone. There is more to being the divine cellphone — and I suspect it has to do with your need to express and an inherent skill to communicate.
I have been struggling with my own meaning of art and it’s relationship with artists, trying to understand what role does an artist play in the creation itself.
C. G. Jung defines two modes of artistic creation: psychological and visionary. For the visionary mode he says:
“The experience that furnishes the material for artistic expression is no longer familiar. It is something strange that derives its existence from the hinterland of man’s mind, as it it had emerged from the abyss of prehuman ages, or from a super-human world of contrasting light and darkness. It is a primordial experience which surpasses man’s understanding and to which in his weakness he may easily succumb.”
Is this how beauty comes to being?
Consider:
संधीकाली या अशा, धुंदल्या दिशा दिशा, चांद येई अंबरी
चांद राती रम्य या, संगती सखी प्रिया, प्रीत होई बावरी.
For me, there can be never a better way to express love than this song. My apologies, I dare not translate it. This is a very refined song, an epitome of romantic expression. But refinement is not the characteristic of divine intervention — it can be crude — but it has to be heartfelt and pure, like A Beautiful Prayer.
Oddly enough, where divinity interferes, social morality isn’t a determining factor and even alcohol becomes the metaphor for expressing passion, as in Madhushala. Grossly misinterpreted, though, how does a human compose such a beautiful statement of passion drawing only available experiences from reality?
It may seem that the divine intervention takes away everything from the artist. It is not so. Divine intervention is not like lightening and does not strike randomly. It waits for the right person and the right time.
And if I am wrong, why is beauty and divine art so uncommon?
Update: This Twitter conversation was extended to blogs, with Amit’s post about The Musical Language and Mahendra’s post about What the Hell is Divinity?
Notes & Links:
I saw a few films in this lifetime, and I will see more.
I liked some and and I didn’t some. I never, however, understood, how films are made. Then, along comes a spider. Well, not a spider, but Shaurya, really. But, underestimate not, his web of thought.
He talks of movies with such passion that it is impossible to ignore. I have usually loved movies for what they were. But when he and I get into “discussions” about movies, I see all the films in a different light.
Friends do that to you.
Friends do a lot of things to you. They change the way you look at life. They stand with and behind you when difficult questions come up. They sit in front of you, look into you eyes and speak their heart out.
I live my life with an artist and I am a reluctant artist myself. But, the mind — the mind of an artist is such a complex world — it needs a signature, a triplicate clearance, which includes a retina-scan, to permeate this world. I am the audience who is an artist himself. And, I have endlessly struggled to know if the art and the artist have a relationship that is true and consistent in thought and how art is peceived.
I saw, Before the Rains, e.g. And I thought, that here was an artist, showing off only one art form that he is capable of. Cinematography.
What is good storytelling? Ask the grandmother. She was the best storyteller, ever. And if I ever make films, I will tell stories that she would. She’d rapture you with her oration. You would enter a world that transcended time, geography and space. How did she achieve it? It was not technique, nor presentation.
She had the x that tele-ported us worlds apart. She never gave the details on backgrounds or the social composition of the characters in the story. She didn’t paint a picture with colours, lines and fills. She ignited the fire in imagination that we were willing as grandchildren.
Back to the artist.
Anant Mane, a director of yore, has recently captured my imagination. He has made quite a few Marathi films, so, if you haven’t seen some of his work, that’s fine. I haven’t seen all of his movies, either. Of the ones I have seen, he seems to use backgrounds to good effect, amazing effect, in fact, given the context of the story.
Question.
Is this a deliberate use of backgrounds to define the story or is it default? I am talking of co-incidences here. How far is a co-incidence a co-incidence? My friend Shaurya, says that it is always a deliberate act.
What does an artist’s deliberation mean? How does she define what she does — what is the signature that defines her? Subhash Ghai, for example, uses a very crude signature — he makes a minute appearance in all his films. Significantly so, how do you identify an artist’s “signature” in an artwork, unless he uses it consistently and without variation? Subhash Ghai signatures are so obvious, it is one thing.
Then, the question arises: is your signature obvious? What is the Clint Eastwood directorial signature, for example? If I didn’t tell you about it, would you be able to identify a Clint Eastwood film?
Why?
How?
What basis?
I have come to love this almost sneaking quality of an artist. Sneaking in a way that they may never tell you the intent, yet present to you a story that touches your heart. It is a tease.
Make your own meaning, for you shall never know what I really meant.
