The first film I remember
watching was 1942: A love Story in a shabby single screen theatre called Payal
in Siliguri, and ever since have been watching movies with a great religious
zeal and a spiritual fervor. I think, this mania can be attributed to a genetic
fault, as every family member were ardent moviegoers, with my father frequently
sporting Bachhan haircuts and my mother wearing that same Devdas sarees in
marriages. Nevertheless, cinema was always considered entertainment, a pass
time with no acknowledgement of its trans-formative power and magic. It was a
strange dialectic, with movies always being part of a live oral national discourse, yet
remotely significant. Cinema is an important aspect of the cultural landscape,
yet has been consciously ignored/subsided/censored/poisoned.
With the injection of progressive Jesuit Education, and passion for movies and quizzing in my life, the edge of
horizon of perception and understanding was ever expanding. The addiction of
movies as a past time with consumption of kitsch Bollywoodish garbage, metamorphosed
into the quest of the science, language and art of cinema. However, there were
two problems, accessibility and lone viewing. The accessibility problem was
mitigated to a certain extent with the great piracy boom in the early 2000’s and
with torrents and Internet, the accessibility question remains a non issue.
However, the other problem was a serious one. In a small town like Darjeeling, of
which I am sure applies to a number of other places in the country is that
cinema is not serious/art/meaningful; I remember this teacher telling me to
take real life more seriously than reel life. I did not understand this remark
then, but when I think today, about the remark, I strongly feel that Indian cinema and its flag bearers are
themselves responsible for films being perceived
as something which is non cerebral/jokish/frivolous and rather trivial.
However, coming back to the question of cinema as art, I find the insight by
the great Satyajit Ray very helpful, “Cinema is often not perceived as art, as
many argue it lacks the purity of a painting, abstract qualities of music, analytical
scope of the novel and the intensity of the theater.” However, with an ever
expansion in cinematic geography and landscape, it has the scope of all the
above virtues, and moreover, in a synthesis of all leads to the ability of
cinema being most powerful and profound of
all art forms.
My first dialogue
with cinema began with a film called Black Friday, which I saw on a pirated
print with Chintoo Candy ads scattered all over, and then, years later when it
was released, I saw it on a big screen with another 6 people in the audience,
and I was transformed. As I sit down to
write this post, after a stint of liberal education at Stephens, where a group
of us in smokey rooms and empty stomachs, cultivated a taste for the language
and idiom of cinema. The aesthetic poetry of WKW, the pathological edginess of
Scorsese, the genius of Kauffman and the visions of Satoshi Kon were considered
important landmarks/inventions/discoveries in the history of the mind and the
mankind. However, on this rainy day when I type, I feel a strong remorse at the
state of the Indian cinema multiverse. Though I do not deny that there have
been some good films but being the largest producer and consumer of cinema, the
number is too minuscule and microscopic. The apathy towards cinema being
art/serious/meaningful/relevance is similar to politics being
distant/impersonal/non participatory in the collective consciousness of the
majority population in our country. In the long process of self delusion and
maintenance of the existent cultural and psychological status quo, I can
safely say we have become ‘harmonious schizophrenics’.
Using the
revolutionary rhetoric, this era whether to be considered archaic/medieval/modern
or post modern, where surfing and torrents mean different things altogether, we
are heading towards a crucial stage in human evolution/development/progress and
this will extend to the domain of Indian cinema. The Director’s rare will
become prominent; the breed of movie makers belonging to parallel cinema will
continue its profound quest for art/language/science in cinema and other
frivolous mainstream in its race for ascent of 100/500/1000 and so on crore
mark will be forever afflicted by the Sisyphean curse. The contours of cultural
landscape are changing, and will get a head start with one of the most
important films of our times, The Ship of Theseus, and I guarantee new
paradigms will emerge. Like the Theseus’s paradox, the parts of the old ship
are being replaced, with new ones, and Indian cinema will change forever.
I belong to a Marwari family, some prefer to call it Baniya,
makhichoos, kaiyaan, etc all designated as a metaphor/hyperbole/exaggeration of
the world famous lust of a Marwari householder to earn more and spend less.
What may be the credence to this assertion or myth, is mysterious and
unanswerable. Another stereotype which goes with such households are ladies
post marriage can be seen only in saris. I have seen many women now turning to
salwaar kameez, which mind you is considered a very radical garment by the
older generations, as it has less scope for a bye gone practice of covering
your head and sometimes even the entire face with the garment; especially in
front of the masculine gender and elders. Though I did not belong to such
medieval times, my mother along with other ladies in my family wore a sari by
choice and occasionally Salwaar Kameez but were not instructed to cover their
head all the times, other than religious or family gatherings. I personally do
not have any problems with a sari, it is actually quite an elegant piece of
garment if wore properly and also, its multipurpose usages are quite admirable.
Mumbai/Bombay is an
incident that happens to you. I came here to the city after my graduation, to
work with the schools in the slums. One of my schools is an Urdu School by the
name of Shahji nagar which is located in the Trombay area of the city which is
considered notorious for both its crime rates as well as incredibly pathetic
living conditions of the marginalized sections of the society. My work is
challenging, exhilarating, adventurous and spiritual if I can call it so. But
this is not about my work nor is it
about Bombay. It is about that one day under the grey sky when the sun hid
behind the clouds, when something so peculiar yet not so extra ordinary, so
every day but still once in forever happened.
The day was Friday,
when all the Urdu Schools of the city have a half day. The attendance which is
different from enrolment (for those not acquainted with Government School
terminology) was low as usual, and the children who came were not there to
study and the teachers invariably were also not there to teach. A government
school especially a school under construction does not look or resemble like a
teaching learning centre, instead it is actually quite like a kaleidoscope or a
montage of our country, teachers drinking chai and gossiping over soaps and
serials, offices with files biting dust, children fighting and biting each
other’s toes, government aided supply of shitty food being trampled, toilets
stinking like chemistry labs, guards abusing like butchers, no electricity,
undrinkable water, noise, cacophony...promise of Education in Shining India
being betrayed, raped; everything happening simultaneously, is scary, absurd
and worrisome. My job, if not to clean the mess, is to not add to it, and then
maybe reduce it (a far distant dream). Though the above picture/description is
not true for everyone and everywhere, and my description may be a slight
exaggeration if not a hyperbole.
Ms. Nilufar was a MA
B.Ed from Baroda, and had taken to teaching in government schools since 1992,
the year also when my sister was born. She was married to a government servant
and had a child who studied in a Special School because he suffered from ADSD.
Ms. Nilufar had taught various classes in elementary school and was an
exceptional teacher, gaining her quite a recognition in the Ward as compared to
her peers who were only cogs in a machine, completely lacking the human element
in teaching. Watching her teach Social Sciences in elementary classes was a
delight, a performance, an innovation which could easily surpass any teacher
from the country. My first encounter with her was, when she was teaching the
Freedom Movement in Standard 4, her lesson jumped from the meaning of
independence to equality to concept of rights was ...was...I was speechless! I
had never seen something like that. It was a religious revelation of sorts,
meaning/purpose of education at display. Every visit to that school would be
incomplete without a conversation with Ms. Nilufar, where I shared what I knew
and she would listen attentively and then give me a completely different
perspective on education which I was unaware or maybe had never even thought about. She had about 36
children in her class, and all of them enjoyed Ms. Nilufar’s presence and performance.
Meanwhile that Friday (remember), the kaleidoscope/montage...Bombay
now called Mumbai was sticky and humid, the day was grey and sun hid behind the
clouds. The city was restless and less vibrant than usual, Sachin had retired
from One Day Internationals, Bal Thackeray was dead, many and also, Yash Chopra
died of Dengue, more slums were being demolished to give way to bigger enclaves
and housing societies, food prices were on a rise and more and more Bahiyyas
and Undu Pundus landed on the island. After the morning shift was over, Ms.
Nilufar and I had planned to go to Dadar to buy various Teacher Learning and
Teaching Aid Materials. We left the school around 1, when the sound of the
Azaan could be still heard from the speakers of the mosque.
Before leaving the school she wore the burkha. This was the
first time I would walk with a lady who wore a burkha. My house in Darjeeling
is in a Muslim neighborhood but one wearing a burkha is a rare sight. A burkha
and a sarei both wore by females, are something which is understood and is very
different. Only the face is visible, the feet and hands, and everything else is
covered. A sight of the eye or the lips is tremendously, profoundly, intensely;
powerful. And the blackness of the garment, makes it extremely difficult to
ignore. It was my first time, it was special and also strange. I have walked
with females wearing different garments but never a burkha. It was a funny
feeling I must say. It was not a provocative attire nor an intimidating one,
and Ms. Nilufar seemed quite at ease in it. I saw the way some men looked at
the lipstick on her mouth and the kajaal around her eyes. It did remind of many
a lot women who I had seen covering their faces and head with the sarei in the presence
of men. We bought the learning aids, stopped by for a soda, had a vada pav, and
had endless conversations regarding school, education, children, books, Ghalib,
Manto, etc, etc.
I am a man, who is sexually
different from a female. I am also aware and at times also scared of my carnal
desires. An act of copulation/reproduction/procreation is the basis of life in
this world. It is a determinant factor in the way human beings are what they
are. Wasn't it Freud who completely based his psychoanalytic theory of the mind
on sex. Or are those ascetics who in their reach for enlightenment and
knowledge have to pass the most challenging of obstacles kama/lust/desire.
Pornography and Rape are on an exponential high growth rate. Have men not
evolved from their beastly state of their forefathers and still are largely under
its spell. And are we men not aware of it? Yes, Fuck We are. But what worries
me today is this carnal desire which is inevitable is being exploited and deliberately
made perverse contrary to its sacred, aesthetic and natural inception.
Advertising, Billboards, Xnxx, Twilight, Pornography, etc and etc with rapes
and pedophilia ..Man/Human/or An-ANIMAL. Men are probably with little
historical or sociological research, have been a sort of guiding force of
development, evolution and civilization. These same men deigned the burkha, the
custom of women covering their faces and so on, a defense mechanism from one of
the most powerful impulses in a man. Fear of one’s own desires. The danger that
lay in looking. The powerlessness of that MAN...and That Pornographic Ugly Propaganda....
Pornography is the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction. What would be the reaction to the pornographic reality of the world? Does it turn me on? Or does it make me disgusted/guilty? Why has art been created? To stimulate imagination, to transform everyday human intervention, or to reflect the ordinary human experience or maybe related to it. Over the past three days, I have been indulgent in the pornographic reality of the world. And I am disturbed, shocked, helpless and maybe now even more aware of the finite condition of the human body and the infinite suffering of the human experience.
What is suffering? The first noble truth according to Buddha, Dukkha. Thus, translated would mean; to live is to suffer. I hope we all are on the same understanding as to how it is far more of a magnanimous concept compared to pain. During our lives, we inevitably have to endure physical suffering such as pain, sickness, injury, tiredness, old age, and eventually death; and we have to endure psychological suffering like sadness, fear, frustration, disappointment, and depression. Although there are different degrees and variations of suffering and there are also positive experiences in life that we perceive as the opposite of suffering, such as ease, comfort and happiness, but nevertheless life in its totality is imperfect and incomplete, because our world is subject to impermanence. But the question is why am I writing all this, is it just one of those nihilist outbursts in one’s life or did someone mug me or did my girlfriend leave me or am I broke. I guess these reasons would be too trivial for me to write on Suffering, which you and I have been inflicted from, the time we were inducted in the human species.
My work in the slums and the municipality education system had been exhilarating but at the same time has been an exposure to certain emotions that existed but I was indifferent to and one of them being the permanent existence of suffering. These past few days have been strange of sorts for me, ironic to the fact that it was the first time we had an extended weekend vacation, which innumerably meant some time to reflect, read and watch. However, at the end of these days, I feel sad, disturbed and helpless, and the 64th Republic Day has particularly been not so joyous for me. The reason being “Suffering”.
A philosophical novel of about 100 odd pages by a Nobel Prize Winner, a story about a young man’s quest and pursuit of enlightenment. I flowed with the story as if flowing with a peaceful river. As a man of this ‘Sansara’, perfectly stuck in its vagaries and uncertainties...Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha is an interesting and enlightening text in one’s fantasy, search and quest for bliss, enlightenment and nirvana. And accepting or at least being aware of the inevitability of SUFFERING.
Amour is an extraordinary movie, it is not at all enjoyable nor is it entertaining. Though after the two hours of torment, you would have never regretted watching something like this. Michael Haneke famous for raping the audience, in the literal sense of the word, hits the bull’s eye actually, with this immensely sad, depressing, melancholic tale of death and suffering. Georges and Anne are in their eighties. They are cultivated, retired music teachers. Anne becomes ill, and the two hours is a meditation of this blissful couple’s embracing of separation, old age, death, sickness, pain and SUFFERING. The film is not for the faint hearted nor is for the strong hearted, because the voyeuristic peep into the old couple’s tragedy, consumes you, torments you; and makes you feel guilty and hopeless of the finite inevitability of life. All of us have this really lofty romantic idea, of being with someone and growing old and dying together. This is your fantasy in the most visceral and profound ways ever portrayed on cinema. It will reassure you on the idea and importance of love and life, but more importantly will make you scared of the horrific fact of life, that one day all of us will have to die and our bodies will decompose, whether you die of an accident or starvation or in a bomb blast. I would certainly say old age isn't easy, or indeed it is a joke on our mortal creation. This is what Ebert had to say about the film, “This is now. We are filled with optimism and expectation. Why would we want to see such a film, however brilliantly it has been made? I think it's because a film like "Amour" has a lesson for us that only the cinema can teach: the cinema, with its heedless ability to leap across time and transcend lives and dramatize what it means to be a member of humankind's eternal audience.”
Khuki wants to live, wants to go to the hills, wants to get married, wants to play with children...but she cannot. She cannot because she has to look after her family. She is Durga, her father loves Yeats and Wordsworth...and Khuki lives in this planet of ours, where dreams and aspirations fall secondary to survival. But we are not alone...lonesome souls floating in the universe of existence, we are interconnected to the agencies and environment around us, and are in a symbiotic relationship. What if this symbiotic relationship is parasitic, the host destroyed by the virus. One of the most profoundly made Indian films, called Meghe Dhaka Tara by the master Ritwik Ghatak...shows a hauntingly musical portrait of a seamless endless universe, and a claustrophobic human existence. Meghe Dhaka Tara translated as The Cloud Capped Star is arguably Ghatak’s (a confirmed alcoholic) finest films,The Cloud-Capped Star is a dark melodrama set in late Fifties Calcutta about a refugee family and the struggle of Nita, the oldest daughter, to keep them afloat and together. It is a bitter critique of the family as institution and also of the harsh social and economic conditions arising from Partition - the trauma that defined Ghatak as an artist. With its sparse script, audacious expressionist soundtrack and a startling cinematic elegance, The Cloud-Capped Star is undoubtedly a modern masterpiece - infinitely compassionate and humane while remaining resolutely unsentimental. It is that cry of Khuki in the hills, “I want to live” which echoed in my mind for quite some time after being witness to such a film. Death and suffering are inevitable, I hope or assume that concept is crystal clear.
Back to Buddha, I came across this wonderfully created manga on Buddha by the Japanese artist Osamu Tezuka. Go to your nearest bookstore, and you can see the beautiful and peculiar interpretation of Buddha by Tezuka. I am not much of a graphic novel person but intend to read some in the future. However, an anime was made based on Tezuka’s creation called Buddha: The Grand Departure. What fascinated me was the gritty humane treatment of Buddha. The animation feature covers the early phase of Buddha’s life, from his birth to his onset of the journey of enlightenment. The questions which grappled Buddha in his early years, are indeed profound but also timeless. The question of Suffering, Life and Death. What is remarkable about Tezuka’s manga is the imaginative retelling of Buddha’s life, where one does not only explore Buddha but also many other fictional creations and characters who are bound by the futility of birth, destiny, fate, death and the futility of violence. It is deeply moral but never ventures out to be moralistic. It is serious but playfully serious, Tezuka adopts the middle path.
What we may need maybe some divine help, some benediction.
Benediction, Patti Smith, Dancing Barefoot....
She is benediction
She is addicted to thee
She is the root connection
She is connecting with he
(oh God I fell for you ...)
The plot of our life sweats in the dark like a face
The mystery of childbirth, of childhood itself
Grave visitations
What is it that calls to us?
Why must we pray screaming?
Why must not death be redefined?
We shut our eyes we stretch out our arms
And whirl on a pane of glass
An afixiation a fix on anything the line of life the limb of a tree
The hands of he and the promise that s/he is blessed among women.
Sushi can rightly be called the top most designer food in the word, it is a Japanese food consisting of cooked vinegared rice (shari) combined with other ingredients (neta), usually raw fish or other seafood. I had the pleasure of eating Sushi first time at an upscale Japanese restaurant in Delhi, and the taste was something quite unique and peculiar than what my palate had ever experienced before. It was one of my good friend cum mentor and his girlfriend, who are obsessively inclined towards the Orient, who introduced me to such a delight to relish.
This post is not about sushi but the art of sushi, which I came to appreciate and was mesmerized by in this beautiful documentary called Jiro Dreams of Sushi, directed by David Gelb. The story focusses around Jiro, a 85 year old world class and proclaimed as the greatest Sushi chef and his art of making sushi. David Gelb's Jiro Dreams of Sushi is indeed a definitive work of art on food and food making. This 81 minute documentary focuses on the daily ebb and flow of work in Sukiyabashi Jiro: a minuscule, ten-seat, three-Michelin-star sushi restaurant in the Ginza district of Chuo, Tokyo. The place is run by father and son pair Jiro Ono and Yoshikazu Ono. To sum up the movie, it is basically Jiro lives to make sushi, and sushi exists to be made by Jiro. Jiro comes across as a Master Musician and an opera conductor working on his piece and his artistic and creative genius no less as compared to Mozart or Vivaldi.
The movie is a meditation on art, artistic genius and yearning for perfection seen through the prism of a master chef a relentless man, who is totally immersed in his art and yearns for constant improvement with his every next work. The detailing, strategy, repetition, focus, passion and energy, the man devotes is inspirational, admirable and also, painstaking difficult. What percentage of a genius is comprised of intuition and experience, is one of the important question which the film throws up. A man at such an age enjoying his work or art is a delight to watch. One of the important sub text of the film that constantly hovers is that one day the reins of power will have to change and the restaurant will be taken over by Yoshikazu, his eldest son. The relationship between the father and the son transcends boundaries of kinship into a relationship of master and apprentice, artist and admirer and even competitive rivals.
I have never been an avid follower of Cookery Shows and never indulge myself in the food porn of Master Chef and TLC shows, but this sweet little insightful documentary was indeed a revelation in the art of food and food making. I would suggest anybody who enjoys eating or cooking, has to watch this gem. Here is the entire film...Watch the Bruce Lee of Chefs!
This movie is one of those movies, which make you realize how the magic of cinema enthralls us and how the fascination of reel life allows us a portal of sorts from the perils of everyday lives. Superman of Malegaon like Scorsese's Hugo, celebrates cinema.
P.S.Here are fifty reasons why you should watch the movie.
I lived for almost
three and a half years in a ghetto, a truly urban, modern Indian ghetto in the
capital of our country. My life in Stephens along with the Kafkaesque
experience in the ghetto of Vijaynagar helped me shape my world view and become
smarter, I mean street smart. I was in Double Storey which was the impoverished
and the most marginalized part of the neighbourhood. And don’t get fooled by
the name Double Storey, because it was not planned in an urban sense of the
word where all the landscape was planned to have the buildings only two storeys
high, instead it was one of the most horrible and absurd architectural
failures. Anyone who has stepped into Vijaynagar will attest to this. The flats
are designed like a railway coach and the buildings have no space between them,
and the narrow passageways are home to the cows and buffaloes, which make
passing through them an adventure of sorts.
The area was
inhabited and owned mainly by Sardars, who had migrated after the great Exodus
of 1947. It is funny how such a caravan can affect one’s consciousness and
ideas of morality. Because the men and women in Vijaynagar whom I met and
engaged with, were one of the most corrupt as well as alienated souls in the
world. Every second man in the ghetto is a broker, a pimp for flats. The
locality boasts of many men who drink abundant and many families who fight
frequent. The eateries and food joints are pathetic, serving you the shittiest
food at almost unbelievably high prices. Moreover, it is only in Vijaynagar you
will find a joint named Thapa Eating Corner, owned by a lisping and stammering
Punjabi who probably does not know that Sikkim or Darjeeling are in India. There
are numerous Nepalese young boys vending paneer momos and listening to Nepali
songs, and cursing Indians in their native language.
The flipside of the
ghetto is the vibrant and noisy student and campus life. Owing to its proximity
to the University, it houses a larger number of students who otherwise have not
got hostels or cannot afford expensive localities. So, on any day in the ghetto
one can see a large number of students who are studying graduation or post-graduation
in colleges at the University or are simply, there after numerous attempts to
even cross the FYear mark. The ethnography of the students are mainly from the
North Eastern States, almost like a harlem or a China town in USA; a distinct
flavour cut out from the common topography of the city. There are innumerable
fights between different groups, colleges or ones with different preferences. I
was also part of one GREAT fight which was dubbed by many as ASSAM Vs Darjeeling,
which included quite a blood spilling and other things. Pretty Funny, Ain’t it?
It is only in this
ghetto where you will find girls dressed in their best clothes and vanity to
buy vegetables. A tea stall near the toilet where young IAS aspirants and other
highly educated men, talking about nation building schemes, over tea which
tastes like cow piss. A park which is filled with young boys and girls in the
middle of the night, to the haziness of the smoke of their joint in their
hands. A shop which sells more cigarettes than rice in a day. A swine,
disguised as a man to sell cigarettes and water in the night at prices,
unimaginable. A drunk man as fat as three Old Adnan Samis to sell the only food
available in the night. Cops who are more interested to get a girl through you
than to check you for drugs. Flats designed in the worst way possible but rents
to make you shit in your pants. A place where an evening walk would mean a
visit to Outram Lines or Majnu Ka Tila, which could be compared to religious
pilgrimages. An area where one can see the cows in a trance returning back to
their cow sheds, without any assistance routinely every night. A place where
visitors can be easily marked and ogled at. And Holi being the favourite
festival, where everyone eats an ice cream. And a visit to buy liquor, is a
test whether you can retain your cell phone.
This was my ghetto…The Vijaynagar…The Legend Lives On….Nostalgia, The Crack, Baby!
P.S. Patel Chest is the nearest tourist attraction.
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