Déjà vu

   Movies  2 Responses »
Sep 112005
 

...It had rained all week in Salem — an inces­sant driz­zle that looked like it would let-up in a few min­utes, but had gone on for days. It was still rain­ing when we took a bus that week­end to town to catch the new Illa­yaraja movie.

As we started walk­ing towards the the­ater, we noticed a crowd of very wet peo­ple walk­ing towards us. The rela­tion­ship between the wet­ness of their clothes and the mag­ni­tude of the rain was puz­zling (I thought it was expo­nen­tial, Manoj thought it was strange), more so when you con­sider that the wet­ness was unevenly dis­trib­uted across the length of their bod­ies. We walked over to some­one, and politely enquired, “Umm.. how come you wet your pants?”

The guy didn’t get the joke — he told us earnestly that a storm sewer had bro­ken, and that there was knee-deep water on the roads lead­ing to where we were going.

With­out hes­i­ta­tion, we took our shoes off, folded up our jeans and started walk­ing. (towards, of course). In a cou­ple of min­utes, we were wad­ing through murky water (“It doesn’t look like a storm water sewer, man”), that got higher and higher. Peo­ple kept squeal­ing, as unknown objects whose spe­cific grav­ity was just right floated below the sur­face of the water and kept strik­ing them at incon­ve­nient places.

By the time we reached the the­ater, shoes in one hand, wal­let in the other, our shirts were wet, and it was not from the rain. Around the same time, real­iza­tion dawned on us: the guy that didn’t get the joke meant ass when he said knee.

I headed straight to the bath­room, which was filled with a few hun­dred peo­ple in var­i­ous states of undress, pour­ing water over them­selves from a com­mu­nal bucket. It was quite enter­tain­ing, and I would have stayed there for some more time if not for the clang­ing of the bell that announced the start of the movie.

The movie was hor­ri­ble; and the audi­ence filled with squirm­ing wet bod­ies (heh!) hated it. It was the same old overweight-hero-rescues-a-callgirl-who-is-still-a-virgin plot with a twist: the girl was over­weight too. I thanked the storm sewer guys for the dis­trac­tion of won­der­ing if the water would do bad things to me as I squirmed — it saved me from los­ing my mind com­pletely. In case you want to know, the movie was called Kolan­gal. All said and done, Kolan­gal was the worst movie I’ve watched in my life.

Last week, I had been to a movie called Oru Naal Oru Kanavu (A Dream A Day). In hind­sight, the par­al­lels were obvi­ous — rainy day, directed by an acclaimed movie maker from Ker­ala, music by Illa­yaraja. After the movie, I couldn’t help telling myself, ” You know what, Kolan­gal wasn’t all that bad.”

 Posted by Karthik at 9:33 am

Leaps Never Made

    Life,    Lit, Etc.  13 Responses »
Sep 072005
 

Every­one knew every­thing about every­one else in the neigh­bor­hood — this was your typ­i­cal mid­dle income neigh­bor­hood in India, you see. The kids could go into any house they pleased, and get lots of good food and free advice. Every adult (loosely defined as any­one five years older than you) was encour­aged (even expected) to dis­ci­pline you — stop play­ing, start study­ing, don’t ride your bike too fast – it was like liv­ing in a prep school with a teacher-student ratio that would make the left­ies delirious.

The whole colony (for that’s what neigh­bor­hoods were called then) laughed when Pushpamma’s son sent a money order back to him­self; cried when Kumar Mami’s hus­band passed away, and clicked tongues in dis­gust when Jayarani akka “love” mar­ried. It sym­pa­thized when Karikarar got scammed out of his money, pitied me on the street when I flunked a paper in col­lege, lis­tened as I angrily explained that it was NOT my fault, and demurred when I demanded to know how it knew.

So, yes, we all knew a lot about each other.

And that’s how I knew that peo­ple bought a lot of mag­a­zines. Every house­hold I went to (eat, play, wan­der about) bought at least two a week – in addi­tion to the daily news­pa­per. Kumu­dam and Vikatan, Kungu­mam and Idhayam, Saavi and Rani, one or the other. Draw­ing Mas­ter had the Illus­trated Weekly deliv­ered weekly (“to improve Babykka’s Eng­lish”) and only stopped it when they pub­lished some pic­tures of naked women (Later he switched over to The Week, and always had the post­man deliver it to his school address).

Strangely though, no one bought books.1

Hours were spent read­ing seri­al­ized fic­tion from mag­a­zines, and hours more were spent dis­cussing what hap­pened and what might hap­pen, but that was it. The occa­sional mav­er­ick would buy a “monthly,” — sen­sa­tion­al­ized mur­der mys­ter­ies that a clue­less moron churned out every month, but that was it.

There was a lot of patience exhib­ited for seri­al­ized fic­tion — read a few pages, wait for next week’s issue; read, wait; read, wait… but the patience never extended to buy­ing a good book, and read­ing it a few pages at a time. Dense ver­nac­u­lar fic­tion was lapped up when pre­sented in mag­a­zines, the light­est novel was ignored when pub­lished. Por­ing over The Hindu for a long time was a sign of intel­lec­tual accom­plish­ment (or a way to get there), but spend­ing a few min­utes read­ing Sher­lock Holmes or Huck­le­berry Finn was wast­ing time.

No won­der the Tamil pub­lish­ing indus­try lan­guishes, with a 5000 copy run con­sid­ered out­stand­ing. No won­der every writer wants to become the clue­less moron churn­ing out sen­sa­tion­al­ized mur­der mys­ter­ies. No won­der the one guy (with skin thin­ner than Antara Mali2) that sells a few more books than the oth­ers is dei­fied, and (iron­i­cally enough) all the mag­a­zines want him to write seri­al­ized nov­els for them. No won­der there hasn’t been a book of note for the last twenty years, and no won­der all the good writ­ers out of India want to write in English.

But why?

[1] Rapi­dex Eng­lish Course, Guide to Get Gov­ern­ment Jobs, Lifco Eng­lish to Tamil Dic­tio­nary etc. don’t count.

[2] Not count­ing extra­ne­ous appendages.

 Posted by Karthik at 5:56 am  Tagged with:

Master of Spices

    Lit  3 Responses »
Sep 062005
 

A suc­cess­ful Bol­ly­wood masala depends on things hap­pen­ing at speeds quick enough to oblit­er­ate any doubts that might arise in you — Before you can go, “But thats ridi…,” that is over. This has started, and despite a series of vague ques­tions lurk­ing in the recesses of your left brain, that and this are fun to watch. When a lit­tle bit of melo­drama over­whelms you, a comic break is right around the cor­ner; when you feel like turn­ing off the (small) part of your mind thats still awake, you get just that with a pretty girl gyrat­ing to a great song.

There is no bet­ter vehi­cle for a cre­ator brim­ming with ideas than an Indian Movie: clever digres­sions are wel­come and appre­ci­ated; and no one will crib if the “creator’s brain is the most impor­tant pres­ence on the frame.” Col­lec­tions of dis­joint ideas strung together on 35mm film can make a movie, and depend­ing on how good the ideas are, the movie might even do well. For any­one that thinks in vignettes, this is the right place.

Shashi Tha­roor is from this school of thought. The Great Indian Novel and Show Busi­ness, two of his bet­ter known books, are the most Bol­ly­woodic books I’ve read — hec­tic and hyper­ac­tive; pages filled with word­play and alle­gory; aver­age sto­ries held up by smart screen­plays. And to com­plete the metaphor, the books break out into poetry on a whim. (Skimpy attire, cour­tesy your over­ac­tive imag­i­na­tion). I got to re-read both of these books last week, and they were exactly what I remem­bered them to be — light, easy, enter­tain­ing reads.

The Great Indian Novel is a con­tem­po­rary retelling of the Mahab­harata . Tha­roor clev­erly (again, clever is the word for it) weaves char­ac­ters and events from mod­ern Indian his­tory with the Mahab­harata, mak­ing for a riotous, enjoy­able polit­i­cal satire. Mix­ing pol­i­tics and the puranas makes an intrigu­ing premise, and the writ­ing takes care of the rest. I laughed out loud at a lot of places, (and cringed at a few), but here’s an excerpt that I liked a lot.

Pandu (in a dual role as Sub­hash Chan­dra Bose), shar­ing his deathbed on a plane with his pretty, lisp­ing wife Madri:

‘Oh Madri!’ He took her in his arms
And kissed her long and wetly,
Till, attri­tioned by her charms,
His will col­lapsed completely.

‘No Pandu don’t!’ his loved one cried.
As his hands explored her but­tons,
’Remem­ber the doc­tor when you nearly died
Let’th kith, but not be gluttonth’

…

‘Oh, yes!’ he breathed back in pneu­matic bliss.
’Onward! Thats my immor­tal credo!‘
But then his lips, after a pul­sat­ing kiss,
Turned blue, and exhaled a croak­ing ‘O…O…’

Poetic.

Show Busi­ness, is a “this is what Bol­ly­wood is really like” book nar­rated by Amitabh, I mean Ashok Ban­jara, a age­ing super­star who failed in pol­i­tics (no men­tion of KBC, this was before that), and despite the trade­mark infec­tious Tha­roor energy and wit, this one isn’t in the same league as TGIN. (A few more words start­ing with K in the title, and you never know.…). Quite often, you can’t help feel­ing you’ve read this before, plus halfway through the book, I was angry that I was stuck read­ing this and not Never Let Me Go. So maybe it is in the same league. But you know what, that doesn’t really mat­ter: Just the four plot sum­maries in Show Busi­ness make it worth a read.

 Posted by Karthik at 2:06 pm  Tagged with:

Meanwhile, in the Blogosphere…

 Etc.  Comments Off
Sep 032005
 

Amardeep Singh writes poignantly about Kat­rina, quot­ing Frost and pro­vid­ing a link to an older event that this reminds peo­ple of — the Mis­sis­sippi river floods of 1927. When hur­ri­canes miss Florida, we feel happy — but not this one. No. Florida could’ve taken this one on better.

Amardeep’s post is about fallen build­ings, but Veena has a lovely post about build­ings still stand­ing. If there was a bet­ter post on the Blo­gos­phere in the last few weeks, I haven’t read it.

And here’s a link to a classy lit­tle blog that I came across on Blog Day. Fal­staff.

 Posted by Karthik at 7:58 am

On Beauty

    Lit  1 Response »
Sep 032005
 

The point of Zadie (Smith) is looks.. ahem, books, says the Guardian, in a pro­file titled (dis­con­cert­ingly enough) Learn­ing curve.

Appar­ently, Zadie woke up one day, and On Beauty was there, fully formed in her head. (If you are inter­ested in this kind of thing, you should prob­a­bly know that I wake up most days with More Sleep on my mind. It’s just not that fully formed yet, but maybe by the next Booker longlist.) The pro­file is writ­ten by Aida Ede­mariam, with a lot of help from Hari Kun­zru, who con­tributed “the point of Zadie” line. Flip­pancy apart, it is a good pro­file that dis­cusses her influ­ences, inspirations(“I’m so eas­ily influ­enced. I read some­body, and then I just write their book again”), and beliefs. And yes looks too.

Talk­ing about Zadie’s (obvi­ous) good looks, Kun­zru describes the seem­ing dis­con­nect between her anger at dis­cus­sions of attire as “another way to belit­tle women” and the plea­sure she derives from “being able to play a movie star” as an “odd con­tra­dic­tion between tra­di­tion and flamboyance”

[…] and yet, says Kun­zru, “Zadie does turn up in pub­lic look­ing fab­u­lous.” She knows a ‘wor­ry­ing amount’ about old Hol­ly­wood, and I think the plea­sure she takes out of being a pub­lic nov­el­ist is being able to play a movie star. It’s a piece of fun.” She’s an “odd con­tra­dic­tion between pri­vacy and flam­boy­ance,” and has, he thinks, “become a phe­nom­e­non despite herself”.

Zadie is full of grace and humil­ity, describ­ing her­self as “a begin­ner, an appren­tice”, an old fash­ioned moral­ist who believes that the novel is an “eth­i­cal enter­prise,” a life sim­u­la­tor if you will.

On Beauty is also a sus­tained attempt to enact ideas she’s been mulling over for a few years: that the novel — writ­ing a novel, read­ing a novel — is an eth­i­cal enter­prise, a prac­tice place for morals where we watch, in safety, peo­ple choos­ing what they must do, and what they lose when they choose wrongly; that it is the clos­est pos­si­ble rehearsal for the real thing, which is the most impor­tant thing of all. “Good writ­ing requires — demands — good being,” she wrote a cou­ple of years ago, intro­duc­ing a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries, The Burned Chil­dren of Amer­ica. “I’m absolutely adamant on this point.”

Guardian Unlim­ited Books | Review | Learn­ing curve

Update: The Observer’s review of On Beauty is up here, and it is very, very com­pli­men­tary — call­ing it “excep­tion­ally accom­plished” and “won­der­fully funny.”

 Posted by Karthik at 7:02 am  Tagged with:

Here, there, and everywhere in between

    Lit  Comments Off
Sep 022005
 

Like most good Rushdie books, Shal­i­mar the Clown draws reviews that span the whole spec­trum from ter­ri­ble to terrific.

John Updike is decid­edly luke­warm in his New Yorker review, but one does get the feel­ing his grouse is with the author’s style. Rushdie’s writes in an over-the-top, hec­tic man­ner and Updike obvi­ously dis­likes it (“James Joyce and T. S. Eliot estab­lished brainy allu­sions as part of modernity’s lit­er­ary tex­ture, but at the risk of mak­ing the author’s brain the most vital pres­ence on the page.”) — he never quite gets over his issues with style to review the book substantively.

Why has Rushdie attached a gaudy celebrity name to a dif­fer­ent sort of celebrity, pre­vent­ing the Ambas­sador from com­ing into sharp, liv­ing focus on his own? It is partly, per­haps, char­ac­ter­is­tic Rushdiean over­flow. His nov­els pour by in a sparkling, vora­cious onrush, each wave topped with foam, each para­graph lux­u­ri­ous and deli­cious, but the net effect per­ilously close to stul­ti­fi­ca­tion. His prose hops with dropped names, com­pul­sive puns, learned allu­sions, winks at the reader, and repeated bows to pop­u­lar cul­ture. His plots pro­ceed by ver­bal con­nec­tion and elab­o­ra­tion as much as by char­ac­ter interaction.

Rushdie as a lit­er­ary per­former suf­fers, I think, from being not just an author but a cause célèbre and a free-speech mar­tyr, thanks to the fatwa issued by Aya­tol­lah Khome­ini in the wake of “The Satanic Verses” (1988), a play­ful work that pre­cip­i­tated riots in India and Pak­istan, and gave Amer­i­can and Eng­lish pub­lish­ers and book­sellers an early taste of height­ened secu­rity. The fatwa, which invited any good Mus­lim to kill Rushdie, was with­drawn in 1998, but a decade of liv­ing in hid­ing deep­ened this pre­vi­ously gre­gar­i­ous author’s exper­tise on two sub­jects: celebrity and human cru­elty. His fas­ci­na­tion with fame and the­atri­cal­ity, movies and rock music pre­dated the fatwa, and gives his fic­tion a dis­tract­ing glit­ter, like shaken tinsel.

In the Detroit Free Press, Marta Salij gushes: (link through Prufrock).

Bet­ter? It will have to be, because I have no more. Pre­pare for magic when read­ing “Shal­i­mar the Clown,” the kind of magic that comes from a nov­el­ist weav­ing a story wor­thy of his genius — and the kind of magic that comes from a novel that opens you to see­ing the world as you never sup­posed. I have warned you.

Jus­tine Hardy, writ­ing for the Times, starts his review off with,

THE PUPPET MASTER IS BACK. He was absent for a while, busy with re-invention, polemic and courtship. The inter­ven­ing years have per­haps soft­ened him to the extent that he almost allows us to believe that we are inde­pen­dently able to grasp his art. But no, with a snap, he reminds us that he holds the strings. We just get to dance around beneath his ele­vated acro­bat­ics, brag­ging to our friends that yes, indeed we under­stand how the tightrope tricks are done.

before pulling back a lit­tle bit at the end:

This is an impor­tant book, a won­der­ful revers­ing story with a cast of char­ac­ters with names that are not their names, and ideals that have been thrust upon them, but this is not a real study of the anatomy of ter­ror­ist war­fare or its per­pe­tra­tors. Remem­ber this as you read this vast story set in a splin­ter­ing world reflected in lakes.

I can’t wait for Sep­tem­ber 6 (although where I am, it’ll prob­a­bly be Sep­tem­ber 6, 2006).

 Posted by Karthik at 10:21 am  Tagged with:

Humiliation In Brief

 Etc.  4 Responses »
Sep 022005
 

This could be fic­tion, ‘cept it hap­pened to a friend.

Proud soft­ware engi­neer lis­tens to aunts talk­ing on a visit to India.

“My son’s a wastrel, I don’t think he’ll fin­ish college.”

“If he is that bad at stud­ies, you should ask him to attend a few com­puter courses. He can become a soft­ware engineer.”

Proud soft­ware engi­neer makes hur­ried exit.

My last 55-word-thingie, I swear. At least for today.

 Posted by Karthik at 6:56 am
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