tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-242396302024-03-05T23:54:30.803+05:30t h i n k o p o t a m u sTHINKING
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DOINGTHINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.comBlogger79125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-27532426608448504902015-12-12T07:23:00.001+05:302015-12-12T07:23:26.635+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: orange; font-size: large;">yesterday on the terrace as night fed small but sparkling stars,</span></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-size: large;">a mighty cloud formation of lush lips parted in a sigh;</span></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-size: large;">but even as i looked they transformed, mutated,</span></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-size: large;">the upper lip became an eagle with spreading wings,</span></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-size: large;">the lower, a struggling tiger clutched in its talons.</span></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-size: large;">i watched in wonder, believing my eyes this time</span></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-size: large;">only because, after the floods last week, i know</span></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-size: large;">these clouds are capable of anything.</span></div>
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THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-17679850116085874572015-11-14T18:26:00.000+05:302015-11-14T18:26:14.828+05:30P A R I S<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>lovers threw passion to the winds</b></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>and artists snatched colours from the seine</b></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>drowning unhurried lives in love and fame;</b></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>remember then those stories you weaved</b></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>rise, paris, and regain what you lived for then...</b></span></div>
THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-71748850126628554302015-07-17T10:46:00.001+05:302015-07-17T10:46:02.897+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: red;">and this post. </span><br />
<span style="color: red;">last week's literary review for the sunday herald (deccan herald):</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvcAJmAJtEB1nHTU9BBuKF6fVDHiaTgSh0HO6osnS1psEsBfpiNjbKC44K37ZamK4-C9tUWbl368bsA42KGrGJ8LmCw5IydHV2R6pSvZ-AgwM42p1RYb8MsrZQoPX45xgqb3vc9g/s1600/modiano+pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvcAJmAJtEB1nHTU9BBuKF6fVDHiaTgSh0HO6osnS1psEsBfpiNjbKC44K37ZamK4-C9tUWbl368bsA42KGrGJ8LmCw5IydHV2R6pSvZ-AgwM42p1RYb8MsrZQoPX45xgqb3vc9g/s1600/modiano+pic.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: orange;">Parisian war saga</span></h1>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span style="color: yellow;">SHREEKUMAR VARMA, July 12, 2015</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: orange;">Lead review</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><strong style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Modiano has been called the poet of the Occupation. Both these novellas (part of an Occupation trilogy) are set during the Second World War when Paris was occupied and life was on the edge — a dizzy whirl of danger, booze, languor and apathetic sex; and teetering on the middle rungs of a dubious social ladder the characters are trying to climb, not always with an idea of where they’re going or in what condition they’ll reach. The line of the law is thin and ambiguous. Prostitution, gun-running, drugs and sordid power games are the norm.</strong><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Now that he’s Nobel Laureate 2014, Modiano is accessible enough to show the world why he should be viewed as a voice to be heard beyond French literature. Aptly translated, the books could do with another stint of proofreading.</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Originally published in 1969, The Night Watch is about a man who steps nimbly on both sides of the divide — the Resistance as well as the French Gestapo. Until he sort of oversteps. He is the enfant terrible of the Resistance hunted by the police, and in a Modiano overturn, is set to become his own hunter.</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">The book begins with a typical (now that I’ve read both the books) Modiano scene of putrid decadence, men with sunken cheeks and “puff bloated” bags under the eyes, women whose make-up “begins to crack”. Members of the police are planning a crackdown on the Resistance even as the garishly dressed bitterati around them drink, dance and flirt with vapid disenchantment.</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">And pathetically talk of trying to palm off their black market wares. Outside their walls, everything is scarce and expensive, life is a struggle. Listening to them, we know why. Our protagonist is already on the crest of his double game. As these men and women drag on with their sticky enjoyments, corrupt members of the Gestapo are seeking crucial names from him. Brutality meets bored promiscuity. Everything happens in the same place, the bizarre is woven into Modiano’s poetry of loss and memory. </span><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">The narrator has sent his mother to safety in Lausanne, there’s no saying what awaits him. He plans to join her for a better life, though changing tracks at this stage doesn’t look likely. He talks of protecting two people, a red-haired giant and a “tiny little slip of a girl” (who could also be an old lady). He imagines leaving them on their own, betraying their trust. “But nothing compares to the infinite relief you feel as the body goes limp and slowly sinks. This is as true of water torture as it is of the kind of betrayal that involves abandoning someone in the night when you have promised to return.”</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">What’s the point of such a life? You’re neither here nor there, belong to no one, follow a relentless path of inevitability that gives you no joy at all. The true depth of existential angst! “...you have gained nothing in this life but the whirlwind you let yourself be caught up in.” He doesn’t really know the truth of people around him. Or of himself either. Is he double agent? Triple agent? There’s a trick of presenting images, facts and memories that blow away like bubbles or fade out to reappear elsewhere in barely recognisable form. The final drive through Paris is departure in many ways.</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">In a sense the second book, Ring Roads, balances out the overall rootlessness of the first. Here, the protagonist searches for and finds his father among a group of (once again decadent) people surviving on the ills of society, steeped in anti-Semitism, people who make use of his father, abuse him openly and would like to see him ultimately destroyed.</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">The son doesn’t disclose his identity but follows him like a shadow, watching as his father gets closer to people who want him destroyed. (“I cannot remember a single word we said…A father and son probably have little to say to each other.”) And this is the same father who once tried (or didn’t) to push him under a speeding train!</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Nevertheless, the son is prepared to give up his life for him. When the man is beaten up, he rushes forward, disclosing his identity when he could have quietly walked away. This steadfastness is probably a given in both protagonists, though one emerges as a hero to our jaded reader’s eye because of his stated filial goal, and the other falls because of the amoral place he inhabits. </span><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">The straightforward descriptions are sometimes more surreal than images that have you blinking through the mist. This is Modiano. He works like an illusionist only to bring you an abstract truth, to give you the essence of time, character. Morality surfaces in the most immoral soil. Happiness is never where you think it is. Vivid descriptions turn out to be the woodwork of an impermanent structure. All that you think is simple narrative in Modiano is thus grist for your imagination long after you’ve set aside the books.</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><strong style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />The Night Watch, Ring Roads<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Patrick Modiano<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Bloomsbury<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />2015, pp 130, 146, Rs 299 each</strong></span></div>
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THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-9206818971294870832015-07-17T10:33:00.001+05:302015-07-17T10:36:43.318+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="color: red;">friday children's story for young world, the hindu, july 17, 2015</span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq-VBZGijPCoW8tLl8_ahkMwE14Wu-YTy_fGe2ny4VvNnrJ0CMuQqzWYHURUNUDuf2ghUdjKqKTnE_2Fhl3Dc73CDJsnSnWUMp-duFWt3479KUBpqVSzhkaweDwl61Hnlk8hrzWg/s1600/witchboard+pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq-VBZGijPCoW8tLl8_ahkMwE14Wu-YTy_fGe2ny4VvNnrJ0CMuQqzWYHURUNUDuf2ghUdjKqKTnE_2Fhl3Dc73CDJsnSnWUMp-duFWt3479KUBpqVSzhkaweDwl61Hnlk8hrzWg/s320/witchboard+pic.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: lime;">Holiday with witch No. 16</span></h1>
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<ul style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 18px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">
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<span style="background-color: black; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="color: white;">(</span><span style="color: #3b3a39;">(</span><span style="color: white;">PLEASE CLICK ON MY NAME TO READ OTHER STORIES IN THE HINDU'S YOUNG WORLD)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">It was dark when they reached the traveller’s bungalow. Hamsini’s mother looked glum. Hamsini had grumbled throughout the drive that her butter biscuits were missing. And her father kept complaining because she hadn’t packed his favourite green T-shirt.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> “We only go for a holiday once a year,” her mother pleaded, “at least let’s be happy now.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">The traveller’s bungalow was old and falling to pieces. There was nothing else for miles around. Hamsini and her father complained in chorus. The caretaker was equally old.</span></div>
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<b style="outline: 0px;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Time to unwind</span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">“Nice to see human beings in this place,” he said. He switched on the lights. “It’s as bright as sunlight!” said her mother happily.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Later, Hamsini sat reading her favourite book, <i style="outline: 0px;">The Day The Painting Came Alive</i>. Suddenly she felt the lights getting even brighter!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Curiously, she got up and examined the switchboard. All the plug-holes had plugs that went nowhere at all.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">“Strange!” she said. As she was about to pull out a plug, the old caretaker appeared from nowhere at all. “Please don’t do that! Never pull a plug in this house!”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">That made Hamsini even more determined. When he’d left, she started pulling at it. The plug was stuck hard. She began to sweat. Finally, it came out in her hand. There was a terrific <i style="outline: 0px;">Whoosh! </i>Thick blue smoke rushed from the plug-hole. Hamsini moved back in horror. The smoke curled and twisted itself into weird shapes. It became thicker and thicker until finally a large blue woman, old, bent and dried-up, stood before her. Her nose was half the size of her face. Hamsini stifled a scream.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">She took a huge breath and said, “Who-who-who are you-you-you---”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">The old blue woman said, “I’m the lady from Witchboard No. 16.” Her voice sounded exactly like the wind that whistled through the window blinds in her father’s study.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">“You can call me Witch No. 16.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Hamsini stared at her in a daze.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">The old woman said urgently, “Let’s go out for a while. I want to feel the fresh air! I’ve only half an hour before getting back.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">The little girl and the old woman slipped out through the front door. There was a happy cackle.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">“I’m free! I’m free!” Witch No. 16 jumped and gamboled like a young lamb.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">“You don’t look so old now,” said Hamsini.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">“Because I’m fully charged!” the witch screeched.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">She said there were 130 witches in the house, all living in plug-holes. “This house is the Witchboard Headquarters,” she explained. “It’s lonely and far away from TV satellite dishes and mobile phone towers, so we are left undisturbed by all those foul things in our air-waves. Every time someone visits, the caretaker allows one witch at a time to come out and taste the fresh air.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Hamsini said, “But the old man said not to pull the plugs!”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">“And did you listen?” chortled the witch. “He knows little girls!”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">After a while, Hamsini said, “I’m feeling cold. I want to go back inside.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">“Aww, please! I come out only once a year. Don’t spoil it for me!”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">“You sound just like my mother,” grumbled Hamsini. “She too keeps saying that.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">“Then you should probably listen to her,” said Witch No. 16. “Some people work hard for other people. But when they want to have a good time, everyone shuts them up. Is your mother like that?”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">“This is her holiday,” said Hamsini. She suddenly felt sorry for her mother. “We—my father and I—we keep grumbling.”</span></div>
<div class="body" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">“See?” said Witch No. 16 sternly. “She does everything for you. And when she wants to enjoy herself, you grumble-grumble-grumble! Let this be a lesson to you. From an old blue witch who knows what it is to be shut up for a year.” Hamsini had tears in her eyes. She nodded silently.</span></div>
<div class="body" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">In half an hour the witch had finished her fun and her energy as well. She looked tired and was almost turning into blue smoke once again. “My charge is gone, let’s go back,” she said weakly. “It’s time for the plug-hole.”</span></div>
<div class="body" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px;">
<b style="outline: 0px;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">The morning after</span></b></div>
<div class="body" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Next morning they got up early and were ready to go.</span></div>
<div class="body" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">As they drove away from the traveller’s bungalow, Hamsini said, “I had the best time in the world. Thanks, Mom!”</span></div>
<div class="body" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Her father said, “I like that! I do all the work and you thank her!”</span></div>
<div class="body" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Hamsini replied, “Have you heard of Witch No. 16 from the plug-hole?”</span></div>
<div class="body" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">“Are you crazy?” asked her father.</span></div>
<div class="body" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">“No, I’m not. But you should really get to know her. Then you’ll understand.”</span></div>
</div>
THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-64030259170033902012015-06-18T15:16:00.000+05:302015-06-18T15:16:00.884+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i><span style="color: white;">this is a piece written for a "little book"</span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: white;">called <b>Serendipity</b> brought out by artist Anuradha Nalapat</span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: white;">a couple of years ago</span></i><br />
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">Writing events to life</span><br />
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white;"><b><u><span style="font-size: x-large;">w</span></u></b>e had a guru in the family during my middle school days. His legacy was a sense of preparedness. It left me aware of and open to the fact that everything is possible in life. Armed with the spirituality and wonder of life that he exposed us to I soon realized most of us live as partial human beings. We undermine ourselves. We either ignore or reject our potential. Actually, nothing is impossible. We just have to learn to connect with the universe we’re part of.</span><br />
<span style="color: white;">Years later, sitting at home with my family during power failures, I entranced my children by making them count to three and, lo! There’d be light. It soon became an accepted fact that I could do this, and</span><br />
<span style="color: white;">I was wise enough to attempt the feat only when I felt ‘sure,’ rather than make it a habitual display. I had a vague idea that it was this connectedness with the universe that made such things possible. You think of a person and he calls or lands up at your door. You meet someone who’s been out of your life for years, and then keep bumping into him again and again as if by design. A niece of mine dreamed every night for an entire week in vivid detail, and every single one of her dreams came true the following day! A serial dreamer, okay. But projecting your dreams into life? Well...</span><br />
<span style="color: white;">Sensitivity and a sense of self does strange things to you sometimes. You are aware that you- this being on two legs, seeing the world through two small pin- holes in your face-are living an entire life,</span><br />
<span style="color: white;">making things happen and impinging on other people’s lives. One day, you’ll close those eyes forever, and life as you know it will end. You look around and see the grand memorials, sky-scrapers, beautiful gardens and massive business empires and admire the sheer guts of people who could envisage and make such things happen during their lifetimes.</span><br />
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white;">Is there a Grand Plan? Are you an invaluable part of that plan?</span><br />
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white;">When I wrote my first novel, Lament of Mohini (Penguin,2000), there was a scene where</span><br />
<span style="color: white;">a member of a royal family goes into a Namboodiri home (or illam) and makes love to a beautiful married woman there. On the face of it, this is impossible. Namboodiri women (during the times I was talking of) entered a house as a bride and left it as a corpse. If ever they went out, they were</span><br />
<span style="color: white;">hidden by yards of cloth and an ubiquitous umbrella. So how would my hero meet my heroine? There was no way a stranger could meet a woman in an illam, much less make love to her! I thought about it and hatched a plan. There would be a Kathakali performance in the illam and the royal family members would be invited.</span><br />
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white;">During the performance, my protagonist would have a headache and return to his room in the guest- house. There’d be a storm that night. Our man would fall sleep, get up after some time, venture out into the night to catch the rest of the performance, and lose his way. He’d wander into a bath-house where the woman was enjoying a wild, nocturnal swim. And they meet!</span><br />
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white;">Months after the book was launched, I watched a travel programme on a Malayalam channel and they were talking of a true-life encounter between a woman in an illam and an outsider. The venue was a bath-house! Even the name of the woman was the same as my heroine’s. It left me stunned. I had never entered an illam before I wrote the book. I based my descriptions on a four-volume memoir of my wife’s great-uncle. When I actually visited an illam after the book was in the press, I found that my descriptions were eerily accurate, down to the last detail.</span><br />
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white;">In the same book, there’s a scene of someone break- ing into a temple at night and making away with an idol. A couple of months later, in two separate incidents, temples were broken into and the idols stolen. One was in the temple in my father’s ancestral home, and the other in my wife’s family temple, both models for my fictional landscape!</span><br />
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white;">After Lament of Mohini, I started writing Maria’s Room, though it was published (by Harper Collins) almost a decade later. There’s an incident in the police station in Goa where my protagonist had travelled on a writing holiday. He finds the corpse of his beloved among the grave-stones in an old</span><br />
<span style="color: white;">cemetery and rushes to the station to convince a sceptical inspector to accompany him there.</span><br />
<span style="color: white;"></span><br />
<span style="color: white;">Two days later, I found myself sitting in a police station talking to an inspector about the body of my young niece who had drowned in the sea near their house. It was as if a momentary darkness from the book had seeped inexorably into my own life.</span><br />
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white;">My wife says that I get so involved in my writing that I reflect every emotion I write about. She’s wary about my subjects and gets jittery when I write dark events. Invariably, some of it seeps into real life. My third play, Platform, lay waiting for some months before a director picked it up. The play was appreciated and drew some brilliant performances. During the cast party at the director’s house one rainy afternoon, the male lead (who’s now gone on to do feature films) took me aside. He said, “I’ve been wanting to tell you this for some time. It’s amazing, there’s such a marked resemblance between my life and that of the character you wrote for me. No one knows that part of me, but you’ve been so accurate!”</span><br />
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white;">I patiently explained to him that I hadn’t written the character for him. I hadn’t even known who was go- ing to direct the play, much less who was going to act in it!</span><br />
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white;">I have now got used to the fact that my writing may precipitate or reflect events without any help from me. I’ve come across people who’ve lived the lives and moments that I’ve described while sitting in the privacy of my room. I think creativity is a link between ourselves and the universe. What awakens in us might have gone to sleep in some part of the universe, or vice-versa.</span><br />
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span>
<i><b><span style="color: white;">Shreekumar Varma</span></b></i><br />
<i><b><span style="color: white;">Author, playwright, columnist and poet</span></b></i></div>
THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-57403720886049105492014-11-19T10:21:00.000+05:302014-11-19T10:30:14.959+05:30The Mendicant- Avatar 3<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">this is a story i wrote in the 80s for Chandamama's <i>The Heritage</i>. noted Oriya writer Manoj Das was the editor. those days i would go and sit in the Chandamama office to edit a Rotary magazine. i met many great and interesting people in the office of Chandamama's editor and dear friend Viswanatha Reddi, Nagi Reddi's son. that also being the site of cinema's greatest triumphs, Vijaya-Vauhini studios and the breath of creativity still coating the air, it was a magical time. i wrote a couple of articles and one more story for <i>The Heritage</i>.</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">the mendicant got so many positive responses that when The Hindu and The Madras Players announced an all-India competition for plays, i wrote a play based on this old story of mine. it won first prize and got me seriously interested in writing for theatre. the play was <i>Bow of Rama</i>. it was directed by <b>Noshir Ratnagar</b>, a noble, wonderful director who passed away recently.</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">third time unlucky, though! when Manu Dash, editor of the <i>Dhauli Review</i> asked me to send him a story for its 5th edition, i sent him this one with a note about its previous avatars. he wrote back saying he has preserved all copies of The Heritage and he remembers reading this story: "30 years back. Old memories."</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">so i sent him an unpublished story, <i>In The Name Of The Father</i>.</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">this is <i>the mendicant</i>, avatar 3 as blog:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: x-large;">The Mendicant</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">A mendicant appeared in our temple one day.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">He was dark and emaciated, and looked substantial only because of his long matted hair and beard. He held a trident in one hand and a begging bowl in the other. He wore a loin-cloth and his face and body were covered with ash.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">I was reclining in the rickshaw waiting for the children to come out from school. It was a bright afternoon and I could hear the scream of the train passing four kilometers away. A hot breeze blew dust and bits of paper along the road. I sighed and wiped the sweat off my face. The entire village was sitting and waiting for rain.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">People were commenting on the sadhu. “Now where has he come from? All sorts of people walk into our village nowadays!”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“He must be a holy man with powers. You remember that one who came two years ago?”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“All fraud! Come to fill his belly at the expense of our gullible fellows.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“Great-uncle says he’s an avatar of Shiva.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“Your great-uncle is like that. He thinks everyone is an avatar. That day he was showing me some large footprints behind his house saying they’re Shiva’s. Tell me, does Shiva have nowhere else to go? Does he think Shiva is a giant? I told him it’s only Kandan, that wrestler from Pandi, but will he listen?”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">I lay back lazily listening to all this talk. I could hear the children playing and shouting beyond the school wall. Those two would soon be here. If they hadn’t been regulars I would have arranged another rickshaw for them. Chandran the fat one was all ready and waiting for anyone he could get. But it was a question of my daily bread.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">I took out a bidi from behind my ear and lit it. My mouth was dry and the smoke felt sharp and bitter. Before I could finish the bidi there was a roar and the children were rushing out. I threw it away and sat up. Finally they came up holding their school-bags, Arun the plump little boy and his elder sister Baby who was in the fourth.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">They seemed shy and slow in the midst of the noisy battalion. I helped the boy up and then we were off.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">Their father Panikkar lived in a large ancestral house half a mile away. His wife’s family had lived in the village for hundreds of years and now Panikkar looked after their landed property and wealth. He was also the managing trustee of the school. As the children jumped off, their mother Revathy Amma appeared in the nalukettu. </span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“Come, Chellappan, stop by and have some buttermilk,” she said and called out to a servant.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">I dismounted, untied the towel from my head and wiped my arms and face. Revathy Amma disappeared inside with her children. She was a quiet gentle woman unlike her husband who had a nasty temper and a lot of power. Nobody in the village dared to cross him. His brother was the District Collector and lived fifteen miles away in Kottayam. Panikkar’s favourite threat was: “I’ll send word to my brother and then you’ve had it.” </span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">As a result of this the entire village looked upon the Collector as some sort of demon who could be unleashed at a word from Panikkar. Only a few had ever seen the Collector, but there grew a legend around him. “He’s six feet tall and bald-headed. His arms are like columns of iron.” Someone else said, “He has a one-foot moustache that sticks out like wings. His eyes are terrible. One look, and you’re paralysed.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">But there was one man in the village who had more contempt than fear for Panikkar. That was the timberman. I don’t know his real name, but everybody called him Mudalali, the Boss. He had a saw mill and a couple of lorries and was believed to be one of the wealthiest men in the area. The saw mill was the noisiest thing in our village and sometimes the high-pitched whine continued late into the night. Some people tried to get him to shift the site, but the only effect this had was the appearance of yet another shed next to it equipped with a similar machine.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">Mudalali and Panikkar were always at loggerheads. There must have been some previous enmity. I have heard that they were actually brothers, Panikkar being the legitimate son, but I can’t say if this is true. Another story had it that Mudalali had been in love with Revathy Amma from the time they were children and he resented this man from outside who came and took her away. Anyway, the village was divided into three: Panikkar’s supporters, Mudalali’s supporters and those who remained neutral like me. I drove Panikkar’s children to school and back every day, and every week when the theatre on the road to Mankavu village changed shows, I took Mudalali’s wife and her sister and their children for the evening show. I suppose no-one felt I was important enough to be exclusively won over.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">Seethakutty came down with the buttermilk. She laughed and said, “How’re you keeping, Chellappan?” as if she were my grandmother. Seethakutty was only fourteen and always laughing.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">It was a large glass. I took my time and then handed it back to her. As I turned to go, she frowned and shook her head and said gravely, “Terrible things are going to happen here.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“And what would they be, Madam?” I bowed my head in mock servility.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">She jerked her head towards the house. “He and Mudalali are fighting in the school committee. Mudalali is also standing this year. God knows what will happen.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“What will happen? One of them will win, that’s all.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“Yes, but there’ll be a fight before that. Both are strong. No-one has ever opposed him before. Raghu chettan of Thekke Muttam says there’ll be a war. I’m really scared.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“Nothing for you to be scared about. They won’t come after little girls like you! And just what are you up to with Raghu of Thekke Muttam?”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">Seethakutty blushed and ran. But there was some truth in her prediction. Each side was sharpening its knives and discussing strategies and looking very important. When two members of the rival groups met, they snorted and spat contemptuously on the ground and walked away, or called each other names which, of course, was a prelude to a fight. </span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">Over the next two weeks tension mounted though there were no serious fights as far as I know. I didn’t bother too much about these rivalries because I like to keep sane as much as possible. There was no question of justice or rights involved here, just the whims and fancies of two stubborn men.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">Two days later, I was sitting in the rickshaw waiting for the Kottayam bus to come when Chandran the fat one said, “That swami in the temple is no ordinary one, you know. He doesn’t speak or eat.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“Doesn’t eat? Then how does he live?”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“I don’t know. Some of these holy men are like that. They come down from the Himalayas and they don’t eat at all.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“I don’t believe it. Who told you?”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“Everybody’s talking about him. He stays in the temple all day and night.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">The swami was indeed turning out to be a mystery. As days passed, no one could get a word out of him and he would touch nothing that was offered to him. If anyone persisted in questioning him, his eyeballs vanished upwards and he made deep sounds in his throat. “He’s burping,” a young man said. “He must be filling his stomach after nightfall.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“No, no,” said another. “He’s chanting Om, Om, Om. He’s taken a vow to say nothing else.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">I posted myself inconspicuously at the temple to test these theories. After about three hours I was thoroughly bored. He sat immobile and I heard him utter nothing more than those rumbling indecipherable sounds. I thought, perhaps these Himalayan swamis are different from our local ones.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">Nothing seemed to affect him. In the evening, quite a few of the devotees who came to pray at the temple gathered around him and sang bhajans and chanted the Lord’s name. Several elderly people and women poured out their problems to him. He remained silent, staring unblinkingly at them. A retired schoolmaster said, “He doesn’t say a word, but there’s something strong and impressive about his posture.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">A sharp-tongued old lady circumambulating the sanctum caught sight of him and cried out: “It’s disgraceful, you can’t allow people to come naked into the temple!”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">And in the afternoon, a crowd of young unemployed men whiled away their time making fun of him. But our sadhu might as well have been deaf. He sat like a stone statue, paying no heed to them. Only once did he falter. A young man said, “Show me your snake and the poison in your throat. Where is Ganga? Loosen your hair and let’s see! They say you’re Shiva.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“Oh, he’s quarrelled with Ganga. That’s why he’s come down here.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“Better be careful of him. Could be a cannibal. That’s why he refuses fruit and rice. No-one’s safe with him around!”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">At that instant I noticed a pained look in his eyes, of a creature tormented beyond tolerance. Does he understand Malayalam, I thought-- or perhaps, there’s nothing he doesn’t understand.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">As I said, two weeks passed in this way, with minor quarrels which were for the most part verbal, and the swami attracted a larger crowd every day. On the day of the election more than half the village gathered in front of the school. Baby and Arun sat on one side of the verandah dispassionately licking ice-creams while Revathy Amma hid herself in a corner. On the other side sat Mudalali’s family looking triumphant and confident of a win. I heard that some of the supporters had even sought the blessings of the swami.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">A six-year old boy with a cloth bag ran nimbly through the crowd selling peanuts. A stall had sprung up selling lime-juice. It was a terrible day to be locked up in a crowd. Everyone was sweating. Many were fanning themselves with sheets of paper. I hoped the heat wouldn’t trigger off anyone’s temper. An important looking man with glasses walked around peering intently at people’s faces. “That’s a reporter from Kottayam,” Chandran told me. This challenge to the long-held post in the school committee was attracting a lot of outside attention as well.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">Suddenly someone shouted, “The Collector’s coming!” There was a hush and then the cry was taken up. And sure enough, a jeep tumbled down the stony path followed by an Ambassador. A uniformed policeman jumped out of the jeep and ran to open the door of the car. Everyone waited impatiently to see this man of legend, the Collector, the brother of Panikkar.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">A small harmless looking man in a cotton jubba and dark glasses came out of the car and waded through the crowd without looking at anyone. The policeman followed, shaking his stick at the curious onlookers pressing in. A schoolboy’s voice rang out loudly in the silence: “This is not the Collector. They’ve sent someone else by mistake.” The crowd murmured agreement, equally disappointed, then burst into laughter to let out their tension. The Collector walked straight into the school building, nodded briefly at his sister-in-law and rushed inside. The policeman followed, shutting the door behind him.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">It was a long wait for the results though there were only ten or twelve people on the committee. By five, half the crowd had melted away. I found a cool spot under a tree and spread my towel and sat down with Chandran. At 5.30, one of Panikkar’s men burst open the door and shouted, “He has won! Long live Panikkar saar!” A section of the crowd cheered robustly while others began to boo and jeer.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">In the melee that followed one of Mudalali’s men approached me. “You have to take Amma and the children home. Quickly.” Mudalali’s wife, a fat lady with a grim expression, and her children were standing behind him. I hurried away to get the rickshaw.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">The ride to Mudalali’s house was in utter silence. Only once did I hear a small voice: “Why did Father lose, Ammey?” This was followed by a pregnant pause and then the small voice began to whimper. I pedalled on diligently. When I got back to the school it was completely dark. The sky was growling ominously and there were flashes of lightning. There were a few people still standing around. I found Chandran. “Any trouble?”</span><br />
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<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“No, but there will be. Now they say Panikkar brought a man from somewhere to cast a spell on Mudalali. That’s why he lost. And not only that, Mudalali’s son is ill because of his evil influence.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">I laughed. “He lost because he couldn’t bribe the members as much as Panikkar did. And the boy has a running stomach because he was stuffing himself with jackfruit yesterday. I know, I saw him.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“That’s what they say.”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“They mean the mendicant in the temple?”</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“Yes, I think so,” Chandran said.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">“I must see if he’s all right.” I got back into the rickshaw. I don’t think I’ve driven the rickshaw so fast in my entire life.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">The rain began as I rushed into the temple. The pooja was over and the people coming out scattered for shelter. The sadhu was nowhere to be found. Even the priest couldn’t tell me anything.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">Finally, after searching for nearly forty-five minutes, I came upon him under a tree not far from the school wall. He was bleeding into a puddle of water and lay as if dead. I shook him and called out. His eyes opened and from his throat there came that familiar rumbling sound, emerging from the pit of his stomach. Turning my face away from the beating rain I pulled him up and said, “Please come with me.” But he could hardly walk. I propped him up and half-dragged, half-carried him to the rickshaw. For a skinny man he weighed a lot. I took him home.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">For three days and three nights he lay in a stupor. When he regained consciousness I tried to talk to him, but there was no indication that he’d ever been initiated into human conversation. I disregarded his Himalayan habits and fed him rice gruel and tapioca.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">On the fifth day, as I lifted his head on to my lap and fed him steaming gruel, uttering soothing words when he moaned in pain, he suddenly looked up at me and smiled. The smile shone through all that dirty unkempt hair and lit up his eyes. It was his sole expression of gratitude and then it vanished.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: large;">But that evening when I returned home I found him gone. I never saw him again.</span><br />
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THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-53832123207177174862014-10-19T09:36:00.002+05:302014-10-19T09:40:15.966+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: large;">In my opinion...</span></h1>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: large;">Oct 19, 2014 :</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: large;">On the Blindside</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: large;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">There’s a war out there, a war of words, where everyone feels they have to voice</strong><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">an opinion about an opinion. Innocuous statements being misconstrued is commonplace now. Seems like if there’s </strong>one right that we all love to exercise,<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">it is the right to take offence, writes SHREEKUMAR VARMA.</strong><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />There was a time people resettling or moving to Kerala did it on the sly. You’d arrive at night and quietly get your own people to unload your furniture and arrange it in the house. For there was always a zealous group of loaders waiting to get their hands on your things, whether you wanted their help or not. And they’d have to be paid, whether they actually loaded or not. They belonged to associations, and acted as if it was their right to load other people’s things for them. And if they weren’t allowed this right, they had the right to take offence and retaliate.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Sadly, despite your quietest moves, they still found you out!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: large;">Some of their ilk still lurk around.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Today, it’s the same when you want to voice an opinion. Not just in Kerala, but in the whole country. Not just in this country, but throughout the world. Perhaps the social media is to blame. Like in most cases. Everyone feels they have to voice an opinion about your opinion. It’s no more a question of counting the number of likes you secured for a Facebook post. You have to contend with hate, sarcasm and blistering personal prejudice along with the approval. You have to face that unbearable tightness of being when a casual passerby peers into your personal jottings and feels he’ll burst if he doesn’t unburden himself of a pompous, witty or wounded comment. You find yourself suddenly raised from an ordinary social media junkie to the purveyor of “that” opinion, the guy who posted “that”. <br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />The Isms are strong and always ready to go.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />The Airtel ad which had the husband’s boss cooking his meal and waiting for him to return home let loose a storm of protest. The cloak of patriarchy is back, they chorused in horrified contentment. It reminded me of a British Council seminar years ago. I’d just read out my take on Raja Rao’s Kanthapura. Most of the other delegates were women. In fact, let me see, I was the only male. One of the things I mentioned in my paper was about the “stridency” of today’s feminists. “Strident? Strident! Strident!??!!” I went pale as an army of offended women fell upon me with claws-out cacophony. My wife watched helplessly in the audience. The uproar lasted until another woman, stronger and louder, drowned out their voices, saying, “So what? <br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />That’s his opinion, why should he take it back?”<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />This necessity to take offence is upon us like an angry red rash, an epidemic that will spread if not contained.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />What’s new is the availability of a forum when we want to express ourselves. A forum that will allow us to share our ideas and whims, to get responses, to see where we stand and to, admittedly, give us our moment of fame. There are hundreds of thoughts and responses running around in our heads all the time. In the old days, we simply let them be. Or spilled them out on the pages of a diary. Or confided in those who were close to us. Today when we find ready options like Facebook, Twitter and message boards before us, we express them without thought, just as our forefathers would spit out their paan juice into readily available spittoons or on walls. And just as the red stain stayed on those walls, once we’ve expressed ourselves it’s there, often inerasably, for the world to see. Whether we like it or not.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Which leads to the next step: the offended response. <br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Waiting to be heard</strong><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />There’s a pithy description in Malayalam. It pinpoints the circumstance of an offended person as “a coconut falling on the head of a dog waiting to howl”. It’s like a coterie of otherwise unemployed persons watching for an unfortunate comment from an unsuspecting offender. Take the instance of singer Jesudas speaking out against women in jeans. At the most, it reflects the type of person he is. Or the state of mind he was in when he made the comment. Or it was a contextual comment to be read with other things. Whatever it was, it was his opinion, like everyone else has their opinion. There’s no reason to condemn the singer’s entire career or appear to be kind by saying, “He’s a great singer, but talks shit.” Which is the sort of thing you now hear. As if people with poised fingers are dying to click hate.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />If everyone has an opinion but cannot voice it, what is freedom and democracy for?<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /> Like the wise man says: Your freedom ends where my nose begins. So, if someone says something that doesn’t actually hurt you, then what’s all the hullabaloo about?<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /> The reply (for instance): He’s a celebrated singer. People with such clout should make responsible statements. So, if you are influential (even unknowingly), then you’re supposed to mask your feelings and march with the majority or the delicately correct political opinion?<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Because someone will be offended? <br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Because there are groups of finely gradated philosophical, political or ethnic distinctions, and they’ll all be waiting to see whose opinion can be pounced upon?<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />So, if you have a brand to sell, you tell your agency to fashion the blandest advertisement that no one could possibly take offence to?<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />If you are offended by so-and-so’s opinion, you do have a saner remedy. Put out your own opinion. Not grapple the poor so-and-so to the ground and trample all over him. If you are offended, hang out your own version for the “offender” to see, but don’t weaken him and yourself by turning personal and aiming for the gut. It’s when reason fails you that you flail out.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Look around you. Lurking beyond the shadows is a bitter voice. It will slither out the moment you make your opinion public. Twitter, Facebook, opinion polls, TV get-togethers. It’s all there, red carpeted for you to voice your opinion. But it’s like a spider’s trap. Do it, and the barrage will be upon you. Like that dog with the waiting howl. And since there are different groups on the prowl, you can never be completely right or wrong. Technology has made it possible for our nasty side to be nudged into view. Technology that encourages you to let it all hang out and then pounces on you for doing so!<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Which is why most people stick to harmless comments and posts: Today I got up feeling good with the world. Today my bowel movements were pretty average. Today is hot and therefore it must rain. Today I love chocolate. Or they post pictures of half-eaten meals. Or repost stock statements of goodwill with standard cheerful pictures or mildly shocking declarations that will evaporate as soon as they’re seen. Things that can’t go wrong, you see. Because opinions are dangerous.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Finally, individuality will count for nothing. There’ll just be the politically correct, middle-path, smiley statement. And you’ll have to hold on to that, come what may, believe it or not.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />When Sankaracharya found Hinduism being subdued beneath other popular religions like Jainism and Buddhism, he didn’t hire a gladiator to chop off the heads of rivals. He travelled through the land, using argument, debate and philosophical acumen till Hinduism regained its lost glory. And that was the measure of his success. That he could do so without sword or fire. He believed everyone was entitled to his own opinion, and he’d have his say too if they gave him a chance. When you get the better of people through debate, where’s the question of offending anyone?<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />(It was rather different in the case of the Kauravas who were laughed at by Draupadi, took offence and sowed the seeds of the Mahabharata war. Because offence can also burgeon in silence, then rise up and destroy.)Let’s now turn the coin to look at the other side.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />On Facebook, there’s a slightly different take on taking offence. Some people feel the closer they are to you, the more critical, candid and crude they can be. And if you react with a grimace, they say Ha-Ha-Ha, and fiddle with your feelings even further. So, here we’re on the other side, as offence-takers. In my case, I grin and bear it till I feel I don’t need to any more. Then I un-friend the person. I think that’s the best of three choices: the other two being to tolerate him forever or take an eye for an eye, repaying crude with crass. When you un-friend such people, it’s only the cyber equivalent of switching channels, where you gracefully glide away from a brash channel by pressing the Next button. (Okay, maybe slightly more drastic than that.) I’ve had experiences where the unfriended friend was escorted back and we bonded better than before!<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">It’s a small world</strong><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />It’s a delicate path to tread, and it’s probably happening because the world has become smaller and distances get destroyed through daily interaction between you, your family and friends. Strangers are welcomed into your close-knit group till they too feel they have a right over your life. A merry little interactive group. Until things start getting out of hand.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />So we find there are two sides to taking offence. Our side and their side.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />I remember some decades ago when this paper published a Sunday short story and all hell broke loose. Vandals poured in and did every damage they could. The funny thing about it was that the story was an English translation of a story that had already been carried in a magazine in another state without much ado. No one had bothered about its nuances (if there were any), and it was quietly read and appreciated. The same story, when translated, caused reverberations.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />What is it about these people? Is it the politics or some inherent stridency?<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Today, Feminism, Secularism, Ecology, Animal Welfare, Human Rights are all subjects of explosive delicacy. Holding inherent merit in themselves, they are mutated into esoteric concepts that will burn you wherever you touch them. They become hurlable weapons in the hands of battle-scarred activists. Whatever you do or say flouts some provision in their tattered rule book. They are like bullies perched on the fence, preventing you from climbing over, taunting you for every difference between you and them.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />There are three types of offence-takers: the individual, the group and the compulsive victim. In the first, the individual may be sensitive, touchy or genuinely hurt. There’s a lot to be said for getting off your high horse and investigating the damage you may have caused, to check if it’s a real grievance. In the second case, the issue may be valid but the priority is an ulterior dividend, generally political. An offended protest is orchestrated and ruthlessly pursued. This can turn deadly with the vagaries of mob psychology and the possibility of violence hanging in the air, persuasion ending in shove and push. In the third case, the “victim” is like a dog on the street barking randomly at the odd passer-by. It’s the pleasure of barking that rules here.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Three years ago, when I was in north Kerala, my cousin who was then HOD in a women’s college said the staff and the local police were concerned about students being lured away by radical elements, forsaking home and college. That was the first time I heard the term “Love Jihad”. It was then a law and order problem in the academic world, a problem that needed to be delicately handled. Today, the term has resurfaced. A general sense of hurt and offence has been created with politics edging out the socio-legal and human aspect. Politics has that Midas-like ability to turn sensitive issues into mould.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Everyone takes offence. It’s the way it’s expressed that matters.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />The Internet makes for impulsive expression and instant regret. Politics has armies waiting like wary watchdogs ready to pounce on the opposite view. People in positions of power (whether politicians, policemen, teachers, judges or actors) often remain in states of self-deluded divinity, defensive and aggressive to protect their power. You and I are pedestrians who get caught in the crossfire.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />So I’ll now quietly leave you with these thoughts. Who knows who’s waiting out there to take offence.</span></div>
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THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-81934407028556506722014-08-31T17:48:00.001+05:302014-08-31T17:48:22.097+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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India's saving grace</h1>
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<span style="color: yellow;">Aug 31, 2014 :</span></div>
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<span style="color: yellow;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">We Indians save. And it’s not just for our immediate pleasure. We feel gravely responsible for ourchildren and their lives. We tend to store for the next couple of generations if we can. In fact,saving money — or indeed, saving anything at all — has been written into our DNAs, writes SHREEKUMAR VARMA.</strong><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />We have a designated spending timetable, we Indians. Right from birth until the time we stop remembering the dead, we spend. Our rituals are sacrosanct. Everything has been written down.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />And we can’t cock a snook at The Written without being termed rebellious and so edged out of the society that we belong to and are comfortable with. Along with the highway, we also have bylanes and cut-paths and overnight detours. Which means to say, we have The Written, and then we have guidelines in every community, sub-sect and stratum. Not to mention individual eccentricities.</span></div>
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<span style="color: yellow;">So, when the guidelines become rules and the rules become unavoidable, we find ourselves straitjacketed by habit and ritual. Which is a madness that turns deadly if not attended to sensitively.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Rituals cost money.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Especially when we have to keep up with the Boses. Before a birth, we celebrate its coming. Then we celebrate the birth itself. We bring up our child better than our poor neighbours brought up theirs. We send them to a better school, a better college and try to bribe them into better jobs. We marry off the child with money-drenched celebrations even if we don’t have the money for it. If it’s a girl child, we huff and we puff and conjure up a suitable dowry. Death has its own grim ceremonies. If it’s a conscientious or cautious offspring we’re talking about, then the parent’s death surfaces in his diary every year afterwards, ceremonies, ceremonies, ceremonies.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />And there are the social and religious festivals and celebrations.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />All this costs money.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Another important commandment in The Written is: Thou shalt be Home.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />From a society that sprang up from a typical joint family ambience when everyone lived together — and like my father used to say, “there were some children and there were some parents, they just ran into a home whenever they were hungry, hurt or happy, and were tended with equal affection or indifference” — it was traumatic to go nuclear. In the early shake-up years following Independence, Indians trawled the country looking for jobs.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />When the dust settled, we were going the other way.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />From joint family to living for oneself is a rough journey (of Me, by Me, for Me). So then we need a house. Even though we have our ancestral home in ten acres of land in the back of nowhere and we have servants, supervisors and labourers to keep it going, we do need that flat in the city. Even though we are dirt-poor in the village and relocated to the city only to improve our life, we must get that flat and that needs money, so we have to forego other things to afford the flat and, finally, here we are, living as wretchedly as before (except for that nice little flat of our own) and slaving our noses off to afford the flat. Since we don’t have money to buy/ rent it, we borrow.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />We don’t have no money, so we’ll blow it all away.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />That ought to have been our anthem!<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Besides respecting the old, we also amass the new. So whatever comes out in the market, be it electronics, household wonders, private transport, holiday offers, eating outings — well, we have to have them too. The best TV, the best mobile phone, the best laptop, the best dinner in town. As long as there’s money with us — present or future money, that is — we buy NOW.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />It’s all about ritual. Either esoteric, traditional things we’re afraid to dispense with. Or merry, material things we feel will give clear, beautiful meaning to our otherwise, well, esoteric lives.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Frankly, there are too many of us.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />And we are always scrambling to be the first to pick up things. Watch that traffic. Find an inch of space and you’ve nudged your vehicle in; or squeezed yourself through it. You are like that airline passenger instructed to look after himself before tending to others. You have to stand up and be counted in the crowd. The crowd will drag on, stolid, stubborn and self-centred. If you’re not in the first queue, your chance will disappear.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />We need money. All the time. Not just to live and breathe, or to enjoy and holiday. We need money to follow The Written. To look after our people and our perceived needs. To hold up a wad of notes and say, ‘See? This is me!’<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Put these two together — the concern for survival and the perceived shortage of money — and you have the first simple reason why Indians save. And it’s not just for our immediate pleasure. We feel gravely responsible for our children and their lives. We tend to store for the next couple of generations if we can.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />So then we made a virtue of saving. We inculcated it as a principle our children could follow.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />There was a popular article, replete with charts, tables and anxious projections, on the Internet a couple of years ago. It said America spent, while the rest of the world saved to keep America spending. The charts showed the alarming fall the US would take if every country were to withdraw its funds and sought some degree of economic independence. Imagine a new scenario where the dollar is no longer dada.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />It’s probably a reflection on the respective psyches. Cautious Asia, Aggressive America. One built up actuals and then worked on them. The other spent notional amounts and then worked to earn them. Was it surprising then that an entire economy grew up based on the Future: trading, buying, spending, saving, all in the future! You looked at “trends” and predicted what would happen, and then spent your money to reap a harvest from that future. I remember spending almost an entire night with my friend, his consultant and a computer, trying to grasp the elements of futures trading. That was nearly 15 years ago. Now, the groping has yielded assurances (and in some cases, bad spills).<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />And yet. This is India!<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Borrowed glory</strong><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />I also remember when the credit card was introduced in our country. It was so difficult to dig into a treasure that wasn’t ours. Happy advertisements showing families splurging spectacularly on borrowed funds spread the fallacy that a piece of plastic meant disposable income. The magic card was a boon to those who had no relatives abroad or expandable incomes. The magic card was magic until the spending grew alarmingly and unconsciously and you were, for the first time, introduced to a species called the collection agent. Slightly boated, frightfully couldn’t-care-less, they were rumoured to treat defaulters the way a cat treated a rat. And that was that.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Indians were a different breed. We were both protected and bled by the Government. We were conservative, and believed in doing the done thing. We slaved and we saved. Our calendar is full of rainy days, both expected and unexpected. We have to be able to rise up to the occasion. Whatever the occasion.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Saving is not just an item on our personal economy list.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />It’s an item on our Soul & Spiritual list as well. Those who take the most basic bites at our spiritual legacy (or believe the western interpretation of Karma is the right one) look at life and action as a savings bank where you deposit good deeds and withdraw a bonanza later. Or sow your bad seeds and reap a horrible harvest. Also, frugality is always seen as virtue. So when you earn well, you save for the future, yours and the next generation’s.The tradition is safe and trusted: You earn well by working hard. You live frugally, without pride or pomp. You keep something by so that you can give to charity or be hospitable to guests, both known and unknown. And you save what you don’t immediately need. Your children will not only inherit the money you saved, but also the good habits you demonstrated so diligently.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Tradition. That’s what the good guys are supposed to follow.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />But today’s turned topsy-turvy.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />You are bombarded with greed images, of wickedly magnificent ways to live with things you don’t need. There is a counterpoint, indeed stark contrast, to that old frugality pitch at every second step. And it’s called Advertising. That’s the old sexy siren, the devil in silken garb, the temptation for the road less taken.Advertising is the new temptress!<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Counting chickens before they’re hatched<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></strong>There’s the story of an old Brahmin couple who expected riches from the king. To cut a long story short, the wife disregarded her husband’s caution to wait for his return before pinning her hopes on a new future. She first made a bonfire of all her clothes, including the ones she was wearing. And then, consumed by joyous expectation, she burnt her husband’s clothes as well. Well, to cut it even shorter, things didn’t go all that well at the palace, and the old Brahmin returned home with nothing at all.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />His wife wouldn’t open the door. “Come on!” pleaded the husband. “I’m tired and hungry.” And she replied: “I can’t! Just throw out one of the silk sarees from the palace and I’ll open the door and walk out in style.” But there was nothing to throw. The poor old man had just one set of clothing left, and his wife had not even that!<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />It’s a simple story to demonstrate the true face of greed. Otherwise, if you’re a good man on a good day, you don’t expect anything from others, and rely on yourself and your honesty. That will not only carry you through to the next level of spiritual living, it will secure your children’s future, raise you high in the eyes of your guests and extend your fame for the benefit of an even better future.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Saving money — or indeed, saving anything at all — has been written into our DNAs. When the old head of the house dies and the children come home from abroad to clean up and, perhaps, sell the house, they are confronted by a mountain of undisposed things.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /> From old photographs to a rusty screw from the first radiogram, they are all there. We don’t like to throw away things. The old Brahmin lady from that story was perhaps an exception, or a victim of psychotic expectation. Having “money in hand” is worth everything else.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />But it also, of course, depends on the sort of person you are.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Life’s little surprises</strong><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Take the beggar (or beggars, because you keep reading this all the time) in your morning newspaper who was found as a corpse on the street and turned out to have bank deposits worth millions of rupees. The wretched lifestyle may not have suited his riches, but it certainly did support it. Even a beggar’s life is an earning one like everyone else’s. And even he must save for a rainy day. We don’t know if he went out on secret holidays to the Bahamas or had a hidey-hole to hoard his hedonistic habits away from the sympathetic eyes of his poor patrons, but money in hand must have fuelled his dreams of the future.And then take Ayyappan.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Ayyappan A is a much-feted poet of Kerala. Most of the feting took place, however, after he was found unconscious on the road near the Trivandrum Central Railway Station and died soon after in hospital. At 61, he was addicted to drink, drugs and poetry. In two days’ time, he was to have been in Chennai to receive the prestigious Asan Award. I was the chief guest at a memorial event soon after, and prepared for it by reading him, about him, and watching several YouTube clips featuring him.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /> It was clear this wasn’t a man who’d save anything. Not even his poetry, perhaps. His body wasted away, pain his constant companion, and he wouldn’t say salaam to fame even if it begged him to.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Ayyappan could have been a child of celebrity, cuddled in the lap of mass adulation. Ayyappan could have amassed money. He could have become influential. All that happens in Kerala. Artists have a way of getting into committees and deciding the fate of other artists. The videos I watched showed he was of different design. He scoffed, but he was compassionate. He needed appreciation, but he wouldn’t clown, smile or bend for it. He’d rather sleep on the street or in some slum-dweller’s hut than rise to someone else’s idea of a Poet.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />So, when he died, all he had in his pocket, and thus his world, was a scrap of paper with a scrap of poetry, and Rs 375 in cash!</span></div>
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THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-13993824324575403572014-02-16T10:04:00.001+05:302014-02-16T10:09:36.961+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Flying the flag of patriotism</span></h1>
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<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">Shreekumar Varma, Feb 16, 2014:</span></div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Patriotism is a multi-hued emotion that never fails to evoke in us that red-hot feeling while talking about our country. But, what defines patriotism today? What are its boundaries? Is it burnt into our DNA, or does it have to be learnt? Shreekumar Varma attempts to find answers.</span></strong><br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In my early schooldays, my father took me to see a rousing black and white film called Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani. He was that sort of man. He had grown up heady with nationalism and patriotic fervour. He’d almost named me Subhash Chandra Bose, and then Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. Stunned, my mother quickly gave me my present name. He learnt and taught Hindi, flaunting ‘our national language’ like a proud flag-bearer.</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"> Speaking it like another dialect of Malayalam, he forcefully pronounced all the silent dots of the Hindi script till he achieved a merry marriage of languages. As a schoolboy, during my grandmother’s reign in Travancore, he took down her official portrait from the wall and replaced it with one of Bose (little knowing he’d end up as her son-in-law). It was an influence hard to ignore. His strong, almost overbearing, advocacy of national pride lasted well beyond my student days.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">On the one side was a tradition encompassed by the glory of ‘golden’ Travancore, the beauty and literature of Kerala, the goose-bumps brought on by the Travancore national anthem, Vanchi bhoomi pathe!; on the other, the pride of being Indian. Manoj ‘Bharat’ Kumar was a harbinger. Bharathi, Pradeep, (Shyamlal Gupt) Parshad and Iqbal unfurled our spirit like a flag and made it soar like a bird. Poetry, in Malayalam, Hindi and Tamil, was a timely reminder, a repository of the meaning of the ideal life. Music roused. Cinema triggered. Life was one big salute to the motherland.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So what defined patriotism? Was it the marching boots that kept our country secure? Was it the man on the street who faced all odds to fight injustice? Was it a blanket irritation with anything ‘foreign’? Was it homage to dead leaders? Or, was it simply that red-hot feeling while talking about your country, like the proprietary blush of a true lover?</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">Anyway, Dr Kotnis went to China and helped to heal victims of the Japanese invasion — a true doctor, a true humanist. The film was based on the real-life story of five medical men sent to China in the late 30s. Four returned to India, the fifth stayed on, married a Chinese nurse, had a son, contracted the plague, and then died of epilepsy. V Shantaram not only made the film, he also acted in it along with his wife Jayshree (made-up to look Chinese). I saw this film again recently, a curtailed version that still touched me. New questions sprouted, and most of them had to do with patriotism. Dr Kotnis (the real one) obeyed Subhash Chandra Bose’s appeal and travelled to China to treat wounded soldiers and civilians. He stayed on, his humanism expanding beyond the call of duty. Love and marriage rooted him further. He was only 32 when he died in China, routed by disease and exhaustion.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">Was Dr Kotnis a patriot? He obeyed an Indian nationalist’s call, right. He was doing everything for the glory of his motherland, at least in the film. (The real Dr Kotnis also joined the Chinese Communist Party.) But, patriotism and all, he laid down his life for the Chinese!</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">Is patriotism a stand-alone emotion? Or is it just an ingredient of a greater love? Was a doctor’s care (in this case) translated into the love of humanity? Or vice-versa? Does patriotism confine your passion to a geographical space? In which case, if you are an Indian working in New Zealand, who do you cheer for? Or if you are an American-born Indian, which place touches you more? Is patriotism burnt into your DNA, or does it have to be learnt?</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">And then: How confined is patriotism? Within how many concentric circles does the patriot stand? My home, my village, my district, my state, my quarter of India (south/north/east/west), my India, my Asia, my world, my universe — my language, my tradition, my culture, my people, my ancestral people, my archetypal people.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">Which is why Dr Kotnis illustrates my questions. Patriotism on foreign soil! The heart can melt any which way?</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">There’s been a season of patriotism.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">January always is. After Republic Day, we had Beating The Retreat. Can you think of any two events more impressive than these to give you that red-hot feeling we spoke about? The creative precision, the dignified pageantry, the focused magic of co-ordination! It isn’t rare to find all that audio-visual grandeur doing something to a special chamber of the heart that triggers patriotism.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">Actually, the season of patriotism has been with us for some time now. Maybe not named as such, maybe not palpably as in earlier times. But it did begin a couple of years ago. A cry for emancipation, a fist up for justice. The wave of humanity that flooded the roads, shouting slogans of dissatisfaction and hope, clutching issues with dogged determination, ready to be punished...</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">Yes, the uprising began a couple of years ago. Of course, this isn’t the stuff of our freedom struggle. That was different.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">That took centuries to build up. The slow dawn of realisation that things could be different, waking to a leader’s call and then marching towards a closure, ready to do or die. The enemy was alien, the leaders were full-hearted, the road to freedom was paved with martyrs. Today, we are 66 years older. And wiser. All-knowing. The process is probably the same. The spirit appears to be similar. The Lok Pal Bill, the Nirbhaya rising, the passion of the Delhi elections. Ordinary people fighting for change. Ordinary people expressing anger against a decadent system. Ordinary people repressed and fighting to break out.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">But there’s a difference, the times are different. This is the age of communication and nakedness. Secrets are rare. Information reaches you in seconds, wherever you are. The wariest hero and his baggage of surprises can be dragged into your living room. Truth is truth and lies are lies, though at times you can never tell ’tween the twain. Leaders and history-makers are exposed, over-exposed. When I tell the story of a great leader, when I wish to inspire you with it, to instill that same patriotism in you, I need to make that leader larger than life. Like a god. Today, even iconic leaders from history books are dragged down from their pedestals and exposed for the human beings they were.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"> Today, there are so many sides to an argument, so many faces to the democratic common man, so many schools of a single thought (and many of them with tools of militant persuasion), that there isn’t one single truth. Patriotism is a splintered picture and people see what they want to see.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">Gone are those goose-bump days.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">Back to reality</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">If something touches you, there’s always someone around to reach out and pinch you awake! Children, schooled in the art of singing patriotic songs, soon develop a veneer of cynicism. They start young. Macho films spread the virus of scepticism. Along with social media and video games, they scorn the believer and instill the mantra that might is right. Look at the internet. Anyone can say anything! Nothing is sacred. But a moment of somber self-expression, and you could fetch yourself a hail of vicious comments. Self-expression can be self-defeating. Unless you’re armed with a pliable mob to force people to take you seriously. Naturally, that mob will be in someone else’s service tomorrow.In such a soil, how do you plant purity?</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">How can honest intent survive?</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">Whether it is journalism or the law, academics or literature, Truth comes with a price tag. ‘Truth will triumph’ is a hopeful slogan. Truth will triumph only if you pay for it. And that’s how cynicism is born. Truth, of course, is relative. It is relative to what you believe in.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"> Besides a few unshakeable pillars of moral and social conduct, perspective rules the truth. But if Truth is what you believe in, and you stand by what you believe in, you can safely build your world. If your spirit is strong and you can brook pain and insult, if your will is as strong as your truth, then it’s time you joined the army of believers, the young army of today’s patriots.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">For, as I said, they’re already on the roads. People have shaken off their lethargy and looked around, they have marched and tasted success. The new leaders may change, they may descend into comic eccentricity, they may renege on their potential, but they have done their bit, they’ve played their role, and now it’s time for the baton to reach the right hands.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">And that’s why this is the time.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">The march has begun. Before the marchers start floundering like a rudderless vessel, we need that greatest rousing call, the song of patriotism. We need a conch-shell awakening to remind us of our recharged destiny. We need men like my father to march, icons like Dr Kotnis to inspire, and artists like V Shantaram to tell their story. It’s time to stop those close-ups of leaders, warts and all, and get a cinemascope sweep of their vision.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">Only leadership can achieve that. Not someone who greases himself into a party position, buys votes and then lords it over his voters. We need leadership that brings on the goose-bumps. Leadership that kindles heroism. Leadership that creates followers without paying for them. Leadership that’s as enthusiastic as it is mature. A young leadership with old eyes. We need the wisdom of humour, the patience of experience.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"> We need hands that can fashion today with the touch of tomorrow. A leadership rich with knowledge. That takes days to think, but is capable of acting on the spur of the moment. That can repose regally on a pedestal, at the same time mingle with the crowds, touching them, yet looking after them. Leadership has to be earned.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">Our country has had a long and hoary history, it has earned its patriots. Now let our patriots earn their country.</span></span></div>
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THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-25165349936375359252013-08-04T00:47:00.000+05:302013-08-04T00:50:30.444+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Ghosts of wrath</span></h1>
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<span style="color: yellow;">Shreekumar Varma<span style="font-size: 12px;">, Aug 4, 2013, DHNS:</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">Lead review</span></div>
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<figure class="floatLeftImg" style="float: left; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: yellow;"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://www.deccanherald.com/page_images/thumb/2013/08/03/348901_thump.gif" style="margin: 0px 10px 3px 0px; padding: 0px;" /></span></figure><br />
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">A tale where the haunting past coexists with the violent present, Aruni Kashyap’s debut novel, set in Assam, sees the author at the height of his powers with a sensitive yet strong narrative, writes Shreekumar Varma</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">The background is the violent insurgency that has seeped into the ordinary life of Assam. The four corners of the reddening rectangle are the ULFA, the SULFA (surrendered elements who swagger around, fattened and emboldened by Govt largesse), the army and the scared, scarred common man. The first is more or less accepted by the last, they’re radicals with a common cause. The second is well-fed, landed and armed, their violence mostly vindictive. The most feared is the army, who can stomp into any house, kill, rape and leave permanent psychological scars.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">Aruni Kashyap does well to see that all this stays in the background, an eerie backdrop of terrible possibility. It reaches us in the form of residue, memory, consequence, and more than anything, fear. For the foreground is chaotic enough. As protagonist Pablo’s cousin and best friend Mridul puts it: “If you go out, it is the army’s fear. If you stay in, it is Oholya-jethai’s terror.” There’s enough and more happening in this house with “seventeen windows but no ventilators.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: yellow;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=24239630" name="top" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></span>
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<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">The only time the blood-tide approaches Pablo is when a surrendered militant Hiren’s family is gunned down by masked men. Hiren is doing well in his silk business; it proves no one can take anything for granted. They run across the village, but Mridul doesn’t allow Pablo to go in. “It’s too bloody. There’s blood on the walls, on the chairs, on the courtyard, on the bed….” There’s no one to cry for them. “Did they think if they cried someone would come and gun them down too?” The paralysed grandfather is the sole survivor. “Why did the killers leave him to witness all this? What sins the old man must have committed in the last birth!” It’s the survivor who gets the raw deal. Which is precisely the thought that finally turns celebration into tragedy.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: yellow;"><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></span>
<span style="color: yellow;">Oholya is the curmudgeon with a back-story. Back-stories, like the unnerving background, always rattle the present. It’s Pablo’s second time in his father’s village Mayong in rural Assam. The first was for a funeral, this time it’s a wedding. The trouble is their shadows intermingle, joy looks back in fear and finds death. The ghosts from Pablo’s earlier visit are always hovering, ghosts of wrath and deprivation. Oholya with her sharp tongue conducts the show until her own past catches up. Everyone has a seed of vulnerability. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">It’s those who keep the most distance from the village (like Pablo’s family) that can survive. Every generation has a rebel that tries to flee the stifling cocoon of tradition. In the milieu of ritual and acceptance, there’s always this secret lump in the throat, too sweet to spit, too dangerous to swallow. Even young Pablo has his secret pleasure, fulfilment that will lead to its own gut-wrenching tragedy.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">The “thousand” stories are perhaps less important than the way they’re told, the way they stain everything and everyone. Response to good fiction takes many forms.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">Amazing talent from one so young! Or, if it’s a ripe old writer we’re discussing: Here he is at the height of his powers!</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">I’d argue that “one so young” is generally at the height of his powers. The fresh observation, the impassioned reading, unselfconscious inspiration and unfettered imagination all bring about heightened awareness and expression. This may be honed in later years depending on talent and experience, but youth is a time of passionate freedom of expression.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">Aruni Kashyap is below thirty. One could say (not being able to see the future) that he’s at the height of his powers.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">The quick associations, sensual physical descriptions and the pervading earth-scent enrich his writing. His editor has done well not to use a fine-tooth comb. Aruni’s images and episodes often get into a loop, recurring and reminding, his words are like the dust or leaves he keeps describing, rising breathlessly to redraw the same scene afresh. His metaphors and phrasings, especially the evocative allusions to nature, are loose and unwieldy at times, perhaps transplanted in the raw from Assamese usage. It’s sorely tempting for the average editor to swoop down. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen here. We are left with a curious blend of technical savvy and creative brilliance bordering on wildness with an almost childlike wonder at the possibilities of language and construction, a viewable experiment in progress.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: yellow;"><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></span>
<span style="color: yellow;">His inspirations haunt story and telling, the most prominent ghost rising from The God of Small Things, whether it’s the lovemaking reiterated in the end, the tragedy of love, the forbidden relationship or the wordplay and the dangling strands of reminders, mirror-images, premonitions and clever mischief.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">His linkages, like veins, run beneath the story’s skin between home and outside, past and present. Rumour destroys happiness in weddings, he says. But given the situation in the state, “rumours became verdicts, alternate realities, faceless voices turned real.” It’s just such a rumour that begins the book and ends the happiness.</span></span></div>
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THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-82387367137618450442013-07-09T19:44:00.001+05:302013-07-09T19:44:02.289+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>swimming lazily through my <b><a href="http://shreevarma.homestead.com/presswritings7.html" target="_blank">website</a></b>, i came upon this article from a February 25, 2006, issue of the indian express when my column WORDPLAY was alive and kicking.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Warriors of wit</span><br />
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In these days of enforced transparency when our ruling class can be closely monitored but rarely pinned down, it is difficult to imagine a scenario where powerful kings and emperors used to appoint critics who were licensed to laugh at them. Famous examples are Birbal and Tenali Raman.<br />
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Critics, whether independent or rebellious, hold up a mirror to their society. Their most effective cleansing mechanism is laughter.<br />
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In Kerala, the chakyar koothu was a dance form that told mythological stories embellished with music and dance, but it also made fun of aberrations and pomposity in the existing social system. The chakyars belonged to a higher caste generally associated with service to the temples. The performer was dressed and made-up in a unique manner. His only accompaniment was a drum known as the mizhavu. He told mythological stories and, during the explanatory narrative, added caustic comments on society and various individuals. The audience was never too sure when the chakyar’s attention would turn to them. The chakyar was licensed to mock. If anyone protested, he would remove his headgear and the performance was over. Even rulers and VIPs were not spared, and had to listen, silent and red-faced.<br />
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The audience was almost always on tenterhooks. Even their physical characteristics and modes of dress were made fun of, often bitingly. The chakyar would look around, and woe unto the members of the audience who had peculiar physical characteristics or mannerisms! He even picked on their known peccadilloes.<br />
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There is one such instance when a chakyar was singing of Hanuman’s flying visit to Ravana’s court in Lanka. Hanuman leapt over the ocean, completed his mission of meeting Sita, was tied up and brought before Ravana where he gave as good as he got and then, for good measure, set fire to the island as well! At this point, an old gentleman seated in the audience felt a sudden need to visit the toilet. The ideal time to slink away was while the verse was being sung. Which he did. God knows what compulsions delayed him, but as he returned the verse got over and the chakyar started on his commentary. He looked directly at the unfortunate old man and said: “Ah, what a smart creature we have here! He goes away on one mission, accomplishes two, and now he returns without even having touched water!”<br />
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Even royalty wasn’t spared. There is a story about how the Maharaja of Travancore, Ayilyam Tirunal, once became the butt of a chakyar’s wit. Despite the artistic immunity enjoyed by the performers, he was ordered to be arrested. The chakyar fled, fearing for his life. To trim a long tale, he was traced and brought in disgrace to the king’s court. From his position of superiority, the king looked down at the wretched man and thundered, “So how do you feel now?” The chakyar, looking appropriately chastened, replied: “Your majesty, I feel like a mouse in front of a cat!” There was stunned silence in the court. Everyone knew that the Maharaja had cat’s eyes! The answer had been so swift, accurate and unexpected that the Maharaja let out a guffaw and pardoned him right there.<br />
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More than 200 years ago, a chakyar koothu was in progress. Everything was going well when the man who played the mizhavu dozed off, producing a rather quirky, trailing-off percussion sound. The chakyar turned to him and made severe, mocking fun of him. The drummer felt terribly humiliated, but he held his peace. However, he closeted himself in his room and didn’t surface for an entire night and day.<br />
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The next day, when the chakyar commenced his act, he was disconcerted to find a second performance happening nearby. The performer was dressed differently and the language was the native Malayalam rather than the traditional Sanskrit. One by one, the chakyar’s audience stood up and started defecting towards the newcomer. Only then did he realise that he was being challenged by his former drummer.<br />
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And thus began the saga of one of Kerala’s proudest sons, Kunjan Nambiar, the poet with an acid tongue and giant wit. His contribution to the arts was the thullal performance, using an old poetic form in a new manner. His satire was unmatchable and his contribution includes over forty thullal compositions. Of these, Kalyana Saugandhikam is probably the most popular. Here, the proud Bhima sets out to fetch a rare flower for his wife Draupadi. On the way, he finds a large aged monkey blocking his path. Not realising that this is none other than his own half-brother, the mighty Hanuman, Bhima orders him to move. The resultant banter and Bhima’s final chastisement are depicted with typical artistry, humorous and poignant at the same time.<br />
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Nambiar, with a sharp tongue lodged firmly in his cheek, feared no one. When a local ruler built a giant temple lamp-post and invited poets to praise it for a prize, Nambiar, amused by the king’s pride, responded characteristically: Deepasthambham mahascharyam, namukkum kittanam panam!” (“What a wonder of a lamp, and I too want the money!”) Of course, he got it.<br />
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Today, cartoonists and columnists have appropriated the role of the court wit. They do reach the people, who laugh quietly, but it would take much more artistry to touch the conscience of our new ruling class.<br />
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<i>Shreekumar Varma</i><br />
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<i>The New Indian Express, Sunday February 25, 2006 </i></div>
THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-41621275667551894342012-02-05T11:22:00.000+05:302012-02-05T11:29:26.721+05:30in swing....<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>d</u></b></span><span style="font-size: large;">uring my nepal trip, before and afterwards, i'd scarcely heard anything about what was happening with my play Cast Party. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: large;">a couple of days ago, near midnight, i found this flier in my inbox.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUCVNWaDw_h37_BaO3DawcFJXKP9pAlVO3wkFPmdp-ANUimJuTIi-QFOvhYSj6eTeyRATtU3y7BT4nT1qiOS7TsSdJInYXSpfhqiBTR52YtpIT-efjPnwG9_r3xLJ050DsATDyjw/s1600/CAST+PARTY+flier.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUCVNWaDw_h37_BaO3DawcFJXKP9pAlVO3wkFPmdp-ANUimJuTIi-QFOvhYSj6eTeyRATtU3y7BT4nT1qiOS7TsSdJInYXSpfhqiBTR52YtpIT-efjPnwG9_r3xLJ050DsATDyjw/s320/CAST+PARTY+flier.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnCx3eHfKPXZAin0dGo7S4DDsNpUCHuKVkT7_KaYlVTnL39L4SUca94MoC15ou88aUcOChifrEFsnfPWEI5JoZS2AAYnaGSzFqzX4wCE2Wpy-MQiEJbEd4GW3oeVsdszkTqQUcpw/s1600/CAST+PARTY+flier2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnCx3eHfKPXZAin0dGo7S4DDsNpUCHuKVkT7_KaYlVTnL39L4SUca94MoC15ou88aUcOChifrEFsnfPWEI5JoZS2AAYnaGSzFqzX4wCE2Wpy-MQiEJbEd4GW3oeVsdszkTqQUcpw/s320/CAST+PARTY+flier2.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
<br /></div>THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-17181897932136767122012-01-26T20:00:00.000+05:302012-01-26T20:54:18.565+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">on top of it all...</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u><b>A</b></u></span><span style="font-size: large;">nd so it came to pass that we left the plains and came to the mountains during their coldest month.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;">We return in a couple of days. So far, it has been a mesmerizing time, and the sights and sounds and the laughter and affection of the Nepalese have us in thrall.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;">Here are a few pictures. There are many more. But this gives an idea of what it was like to everest.....</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;">click on one & you can see them all in a row, bigger, one by one.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhG2X00rsr_tMgWPNHStJWn7GgnmnfVsxo22bhcTCXAgzM7guNLWaoKR4Y8mCJegS9Qm4OtOiGolhaiDl7xTwo7Zt1r55bR8nLZ41VpmIIOoe15DuziOCej-VLMF6VnY0fjBD07A/s1600/DSC_0326.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhG2X00rsr_tMgWPNHStJWn7GgnmnfVsxo22bhcTCXAgzM7guNLWaoKR4Y8mCJegS9Qm4OtOiGolhaiDl7xTwo7Zt1r55bR8nLZ41VpmIIOoe15DuziOCej-VLMF6VnY0fjBD07A/s320/DSC_0326.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
on the mountain flight from kathmandu...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG_XiXWmEJWAYD_BxLY7xwAOK2fWouhaJBQ1z2yNqOtAaLsOwUyY1ikM_J4NlqKkE38dpyZwlvwSk5KetG1V_rR-n7hZ3iggPRmdI8BcoEo4wuZPLfFnepK8nGfQOca3vqrXlMlA/s1600/DSC_0331.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG_XiXWmEJWAYD_BxLY7xwAOK2fWouhaJBQ1z2yNqOtAaLsOwUyY1ikM_J4NlqKkE38dpyZwlvwSk5KetG1V_rR-n7hZ3iggPRmdI8BcoEo4wuZPLfFnepK8nGfQOca3vqrXlMlA/s320/DSC_0331.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
these are more eerie and mysterious than the snow-capped giants.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoj53g1_sIIQQ6uAvcMnAw2Tp9apYjrXSe0VD0NmecwYXMAikF3dlPPooHamkRVPukIzpypwdW6R0m_T8ywAKKO2IJC20UVwSn28sIPzahTpYdMIfOM80HLG4KHUSZpCoJjp14gg/s1600/DSC_0341.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoj53g1_sIIQQ6uAvcMnAw2Tp9apYjrXSe0VD0NmecwYXMAikF3dlPPooHamkRVPukIzpypwdW6R0m_T8ywAKKO2IJC20UVwSn28sIPzahTpYdMIfOM80HLG4KHUSZpCoJjp14gg/s320/DSC_0341.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
clouds? mountains? mountain-clouds? cloud-mountains?<br />
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the sweet attendant on the flight.<br />
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birds apart.... roof of our pokhara hotel.<br />
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pokhara hotel room<br />
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a bridge built by the chinese. below that is an underground river that can generate hydro power during strong monsoons. (the couple are indian)<br />
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devi's falls. geeta thought it was THE devi, but it's named after a swiss lady who was martyred by the waters.<br />
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this little monk said he's nine. monks start very early in life, much, much younger than him.<br />
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as we left the tibetan monastery in pokhara, this gentleman smiled at me. our guide said tibetans get the sympathy and money of the world. but we found them pure.<br />
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when the sun started calling it a day at the phewa lake in pokhara.<br />
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the barahi temple in the middle of the phewa lake. the female form of vishnu when he took his varaha avatar. they sacrifice birds, since it's a chore bringing animals there by boat. geeta recoiled from the scent of blood.<br />
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around the bend on this lake is the palace where the nepalese king used to stay during his visits here. phewa lake was created by melting glaciers.<br />
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this is the beautiful girl whose boat rammed into ours and then moved away as if it was nothing at all.<br />
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the sun dropped something into the lake as it hurried away.<br />
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one of the lite-flights seen from pokhara airport as we waited for our kathmandu return flight.<br />
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still at the airport. when flights are delayed as they usually are, they're really delayed. there are compensations.<br />
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AAAAAaaaahhhh....<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #e69138; font-size: large;">God lives somewhere in these mountains.</span><br />
<span style="color: #e69138; font-size: large;">and when we went close, we realized something in us</span><br />
<span style="color: #e69138; font-size: large;">was connecting with something out there.....</span><br />
<br /></div>THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-34755020063741548692011-11-07T18:16:00.001+05:302011-11-07T18:17:32.242+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/article2410029.ece" target="_blank">Launching THE BUZZ</a><br />
<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><u><b>A</b></u></span> couple of months ago, I made a one-day trip to Coimbatore at the behest of Archana Dange, a dynamic and sensitive person who is doing great things in the field of children's education. If you agree that education covers more than sitting in class and staring at the teacher, then you'll probably also agree that there are worlds to be discovered, and each new discovery is an essential part of a child's necessary education.<br />
<br />
Archana brings together organisations to do what she does. The Helen O'Grady International Drama Academy and Eurokids are two outfits she's involved with. The Academy, in association with <a href="http://www.longlongago.in/" target="_blank">Long Long Ago</a>, an online lending library for kids, has started a book and theatre club for children named Buzz. and that is what I was in Coimbatore to inaugurate. It was a fun evening, and <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/article2410029.ece" target="_blank">this report from The Hindu</a> will give you an idea of how it went.<br />
<br />
In the morning, I held a literary workshop in a thatched terrace above Archana's office. The participants were from the Helen O'Grady Academy and Archana's friends, and probably a couple of others. Archana also participated, as did Shobhana Jayaraman, a wonderful girl with an amazing capability to connect with children. I enjoyed every moment of the workshop, and I think they did too. We had theatre too, instant skits that were imaginatively and enthusiastically performed.<br />
<br />
I still don't know what Archana and Shobhana thought of the whole thing, though!</div>THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-26124430796214747202011-09-28T15:47:00.000+05:302011-09-28T15:47:05.367+05:30The work<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The work that has happened.</span></i><br />
<br />
First, the play. It went on day and night,<br />
not continuously, but it struggled through<br />
uneasy dark hours, and often I went to sleep past<br />
three a. m. When the subject is about a social aberration<br />
and the genre is murder mystery, night-time writing can be<br />
eerie as well as immensely effective. And thus was born<br />
CAST PARTY. It's with the Madras Players now, and they'll<br />
arrange its upbringing.<br />
<br />
Next, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">The Axe of Parashurama. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">[</span>That had to be in red! You'll understand once you read it.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">]</span><br />
First, I'll have to finish writing it and they've to publish it<br />
and I'll be fortunate enough to hold<br />
it in my hands and then I'll sign a copy for you.<br />
:-D</div>
THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-68627747395569591222011-09-28T14:25:00.000+05:302011-09-28T14:25:43.837+05:30Surfacing....<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizKaP9JmBPzK3P6jyzO268bp2Ja8HI6doBjW2H5ckdOcILwrPSMQDyF9Q4khoOMYdOTORTBQEPlazMCLTcVfSy8S2F2lz_4LnZP34gJLeSj4qBwsVpix0OwyQ1A3edvq1gdWwzwg/s1600/landmark2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizKaP9JmBPzK3P6jyzO268bp2Ja8HI6doBjW2H5ckdOcILwrPSMQDyF9Q4khoOMYdOTORTBQEPlazMCLTcVfSy8S2F2lz_4LnZP34gJLeSj4qBwsVpix0OwyQ1A3edvq1gdWwzwg/s320/landmark2.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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So what are these two pictures all about?<br />
Amish Tripathi & Ashwin Sanghi.<br />
They are two of the hottest bestsellers today.<br />
Simple narratives, new perspectives and reinvented marketing initiatives.<br />
That's what has made them tick.<br />
I moderated a discussion on myths with them at Landmark a couple<br />
of months ago.<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cfe2f3; font-size: large;"><b>Please take a long and careful look at both photographs.</b></span><br />
In the first, I am seriously participating in the proceedings.<br />
In the second, I've made a breakthrough. That's me pointing out (to myself, mostly)<br />
that I've been launching, discussing and<br />
promoting other people's books for far too long!<br />
After this moment of enlightenment, I rallied around and the result was<br />
a completed play, nonsense pieces for an anthology, and renewed input and energy<br />
for my novel, which is now finally beginning to make sense.<br />
<br />
So there. The epiphany triggered an epic high like epic feni and the result<br />
is some long-awaited industry.<br />
<a name='more'></a>I also rediscovered an old hobby.<br />
<br />
A couple of results:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqiUjcwbjWvj25kITYJbf3IVpqWx8J43GnPXacc59GBp4Uba7YB4gq-Kow69SMm9U8CTbMppCdNCB7B7l82Zl-q9D-se9Q0PxdDHQ19FgQC4ZEp7DIOrgCwmntFI8yH7FKn6pEYw/s1600/DSC_0024.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqiUjcwbjWvj25kITYJbf3IVpqWx8J43GnPXacc59GBp4Uba7YB4gq-Kow69SMm9U8CTbMppCdNCB7B7l82Zl-q9D-se9Q0PxdDHQ19FgQC4ZEp7DIOrgCwmntFI8yH7FKn6pEYw/s320/DSC_0024.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<br />
However much I go around and look at people, spaces and atmosphere, I always end up with my little white friend with the sooty face. All the staf call him "sahib" because of his red nose and redder eyes and white colour. He now is accommodative of everything everyone calls him. That's him rubbing his soot on the watchman. The man in green is, of course, the gardener.<br />
<br />
</div>THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-51818020460410887542011-04-25T23:06:00.001+05:302011-04-25T23:08:37.412+05:30Just remembered this that happened many months ago...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH5hS36fFrCAiIyjVkDFm4qUV06nPuRuc4FLvkNa9wUFGX7b-qdJ-NTNlpcHRpdabx6AQrsCbFPSqpebckdcAeb5nKkIuVk4l_LW01GOH6OyLx3LF09I2FDTZ_Orn8_wB6M_T5tA/s1600/09NXG_WALL_SREEKUMA_177651g.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH5hS36fFrCAiIyjVkDFm4qUV06nPuRuc4FLvkNa9wUFGX7b-qdJ-NTNlpcHRpdabx6AQrsCbFPSqpebckdcAeb5nKkIuVk4l_LW01GOH6OyLx3LF09I2FDTZ_Orn8_wB6M_T5tA/s320/09NXG_WALL_SREEKUMA_177651g.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span id="imgdsc0">Author Shreekumar Varma, buys new books to donate for Aviva Great Wall of Education presented by The Hindu in Chennai on Monday. Photo: S.S. Kumar</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">PLEASE CLICK ON THE TITLE FOR THE LINK</div></div>THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-44912808246867207472011-04-25T21:51:00.000+05:302011-04-25T21:51:10.482+05:30AHAAA....<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOMFzrQK5j0ynpydlm_fbFFpGcf9k2Tyfc4jKOZO5jSV1qiz5s2NY5lHBv0pq3IhCKnChPZsdNdxEA4iXkZnY88juASQkXBFPIpL7Ube2I-rRMV8zBg_xl0YpUfXQLqlelpa87IA/s1600/Taj+Reception+1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOMFzrQK5j0ynpydlm_fbFFpGcf9k2Tyfc4jKOZO5jSV1qiz5s2NY5lHBv0pq3IhCKnChPZsdNdxEA4iXkZnY88juASQkXBFPIpL7Ube2I-rRMV8zBg_xl0YpUfXQLqlelpa87IA/s320/Taj+Reception+1.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<br />
We will not look at the chronological order.<br />
The <b>first pic </b>happened when my MA classmate Namasivayam's son got married and we had a grand reunion of dear friends, including Bobby from Bombay and Chengu from Thrissur. It was one of those scintillating moments that happen once in a very long while.<br />
<br />
The <b>second pic</b> was taken when my college professor George K. Mathew's debut novel was released. It was once again a roomful of nostalgia, and everyone spoke about GKM who more than a month earlier had held the first copy of his book in his hand and died the next day--- as though he'd been waiting only for that. 20 years ago, he'd called me one day and said I'm retiring from college and I would like you to take my place for a year until a professor who's on a sabbatical returns. And that was how I taught Literature at MCC. This time the publisher of Helios Books, Gitanjali, called me and said I wanted GKM to read from his book. Now that he's no more, will you take his place? And I did. <i>For the second time.</i> CPI (M) Gen Sec Prakash Karat, one of GKM's old students, released the book, and I co-ordinated and read from the novel. It was a great evening.<br />
<br />
The <b>third pic</b> was---you won't believe this!-- again full of nostalgia and classmates. This time it was a slice of school life. Thirty years after we left school we'd had a reunion where we released a CD. The songs were written in Tamil, English, Malayalam and Hindi by me. Music was by a classmate and songs were sung by all of us. I sang the Malayalam song. Now, <u>this</u> one was forty years after passing out, and we again released a CD, with even more songs--- other songs in Kannada and Telugu were written by others and also translated from my lyrics in English. It was great fun. The photo shows an aside during the meet in the school auditorium.<br />
<br />
At a meeting at the University of Madras' Malayalam and Hindi Depts, I released a book of poet A. Ayyappan's poems translated into Hindi from the Malayalam by Santosh Alex, who's a gifted and prolific translator. That's <b>pic no 4</b>. Somehow, I have been involved for the past three or four months in both literary as well academic events. So I've been able to meet several interesting people.<br />
<br />
Like Sangeetha Shinde Tee, for instance. Who's with me in the <b>fifth pic</b>. I released her book of short stories, <i>A Moral Murder & Other Stories</i>. The stories are set in the Nilgiris, Coonoor to be exact, and cover many subjects including love, mystery and ordinary life. Sitting with her in the pic and reading from her book is Jamie who I met for the first time at a dinner when he walked all the way from Mandaveli to Boat Club Road after arriving in Chennai on a train from Bangalore. It was his second day in India! Sangeetha and her husband David are a dear couple.<br />
<br />
And, finally, <b>the sixth pic</b>. Chronologically too, that's the latest one. It was at the showing of a short film in Malayalam where I was part of a panel discussion. The leader of the panel was famous Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi director K. S. Sethumadhavan. He made memorable films like <i>Odayil Ninnu</i>, <i>Julie</i>, <i>Marupakkam</i> and <i>Jeevikkan Marannupoya Sthree</i>. The moment I came up he said: Do you remember the last time we met in the Chandamama office? Did anyone make a film out of your story? I thought he'd forgotten! It had been more than 20 years ago. I'd just published a story for The Heritage, published by the Chandamama group and edited by noted writer Manoj Das. Mr Sethumadhavan had wanted to film the story then. My friend Viswanatha Reddi was the publisher. Time passed, and we'd gone our separate ways, as it often happens. Well, this pic too unleashed a mini typhoon of nostalgia.<br />
<br />
Which probably is the basic characteristic of this post. Wouldn't you say?<br />
<br />
You might have wondered at the significance of the title. It's just a way of telling you that I haven't abandoned my blog, and I'm back again. <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ahaaa!</span></b><br />
<br />
</div>THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-45882775261837144062010-11-02T02:16:00.000+05:302010-11-02T02:16:31.610+05:30Manu Joseph's Serious Men gets The Hindu Fiction Award<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZL4MI5xAabKGm1Cj7W4YRR6hzo-6-BatyPTthnrzjaPdJTLkDljlLUb60IGJsmy-mNikRo_wFPUFtK_eFxcFvAT6CQKDq_5-TQixmde-_RA4BvVCmCMuTQFlu7tNhSXMwLAuodw/s1600/manu+joseph.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" nx="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZL4MI5xAabKGm1Cj7W4YRR6hzo-6-BatyPTthnrzjaPdJTLkDljlLUb60IGJsmy-mNikRo_wFPUFtK_eFxcFvAT6CQKDq_5-TQixmde-_RA4BvVCmCMuTQFlu7tNhSXMwLAuodw/s320/manu+joseph.jpg" width="222" /></a></div><br />
<br />
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CHENNAI: Manu Joseph has bagged TheHindu Best Fiction Award 2010 for his debut novel Serious Men.<br />
<br />
Writer and historian Nayantara Sahgal presented the award, which carries a cash prize of Rs.5 lakh and a plaque, to Mr. Joseph, who is the Deputy Editor of the Open magazine.<br />
<br />
The award was instituted by TheHindu Literary Review as a prelude to celebrating its 20th year in 2011.<br />
<br />
The winner was chosen from the 11 works shortlisted from 75 entries of Indian fiction writing in English.<br />
<br />
Shashi Deshpande, novelist and juror for the award, said the jury decision was unanimous.<br />
<br />
Serious Men was an “original and surprising novel” that ventured into the unusual area of science and institutional research, Ms. Deshpande said.<br />
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The book was a “wonderful read” and the author had avoided literary gimmicks in a narrative style where “everything is subordinated to the telling of the story,” she said.<br />
<br />
In his acceptance speech, Mr. Joseph said “an award is only as good as its shortlist,” and that it was an honour for his book to be judged alongside the works of good writers.<br />
<br />
The jury also comprised Mukul Kesavan, author and essayist, Brinda Bose, academic and critic, and Jai Arjun Singh, literary critic.<br />
<br />
The shortlist was finalised by a panel of Chennai-based judges comprising Shreekumar Varma, novelist, K. Srilata, poet-academic, Parvathi Nayar, artist-critic, and Ranvir Shah, founder of the Prakiriti Foundation.THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-59107701080214479282010-10-19T00:29:00.001+05:302010-10-19T00:31:10.419+05:30Favourite Books<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq5HIcokUPKEKuA8WlG2UnpKYtkHF0DUdVSi5ZNSrC9goVbqmtcid8ZxzSUxsraCt9rv9vgTsaZUFqeZFVuCQcgzxYlE5Kzf2-AP3w3wBXF-nt9Ggfb4zlmIGClukZbXFAh5xtDw/s1600/scan0002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ex="true" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq5HIcokUPKEKuA8WlG2UnpKYtkHF0DUdVSi5ZNSrC9goVbqmtcid8ZxzSUxsraCt9rv9vgTsaZUFqeZFVuCQcgzxYlE5Kzf2-AP3w3wBXF-nt9Ggfb4zlmIGClukZbXFAh5xtDw/s320/scan0002.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">what would you say if someone suddenly stopped you and asked what your favourite books/ films/ cities/ moments are? this is what i had to say to <em>Times of India's M'Zyme</em> about books. take the spellings with abundant caution, though.</span>THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-57049011048482259562010-10-10T00:13:00.000+05:302010-10-10T00:13:17.679+05:30SPECTACLE OF HISTORY<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWi6SwFdX_tFaBtptxs_nN3DRvMUAc3WEfdCrJDEghYIKYLPIIseHa1vwuNF8o8WYsXPQR4BVn2XIh5lKUGATVwuwMwJOEAN8Po3i-CqTCtyG-qy8qV1Z0PJqU4wZMqSc_c6qSIw/s1600/pazhassi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" ex="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWi6SwFdX_tFaBtptxs_nN3DRvMUAc3WEfdCrJDEghYIKYLPIIseHa1vwuNF8o8WYsXPQR4BVn2XIh5lKUGATVwuwMwJOEAN8Po3i-CqTCtyG-qy8qV1Z0PJqU4wZMqSc_c6qSIw/s320/pazhassi.jpg" width="192" /></a></div><br />
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="color: white;"><em>In filming a biopic, the director’s truth is reflected in how he selects from history, points out shreekumar varma</em> </span></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">Exactly 12 years ago, I wrote a small book for children entitled Pazhassi Raja: The Royal Rebel. It was the story of a brave king and his trusted followers who fought the British deep in the jungles of Wyanad in northern Kerala.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"></span></span><br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">Pazhassi Raja Kerala Varma was among our first freedom fighters. Like a closely guarded secret, the world was yet to hear of him. My book was a tiny disclosure. Today, a major Malayalam film has managed to do the full monty. Loaded with hand-picked talent and powered by the biggest budget in Kerala’s film history, the Pazhassi film is a feast. It not only throws open a page of history, it does so in style.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"></span></span><br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">As a chronicler of that period in history, how do I evaluate this new version, embedded in state-of-the-art technology?</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"></span></span><br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">Cinema is today’s medium, and among the most complete ones we have. Almost all experience can be conveyed through it. And yet, when we think of a biopic or slice of history filmed, each viewer searches for his own personal satisfactions. Which is to be expected since popular cinema is a mass medium. Individuals, groups and schools of thought expect to find their own piece of the democratic pie.</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"></span></span><br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">When I finish writing a play, I understand the director must take over, and the final product is a creature of our combined truths. Cinema too involves two stages of interpretation, writing and filming. In filming a biopic, the director’s truth is reflected in how he selects from history.</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"></span></span><br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">My earliest biopics, spectacular at the time (Todd Ao, stereo and all the rest of it), were El Cid and Lawrence of Arabia. Since I’d no idea of the actual history of their protagonists, they remained just that to me: spectacular. Later, the list burgeoned, including subjects as varied as Dr Kotnis, Michelangelo, Ayn Rand, Subrahmanya Bharati, Bose, Shankaracharya, Gandhi and even my own ancestors, Swati Tirunal and Raja Ravi Varma!</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">When filmmakers appropriated the last two, they focussed on exaggerated romantic episodes and relegated everything else in their lives to the background, apparently to satisfy prurient audience expectations. I was personally (but of course!) outraged. But then, theoretically, everyone owns a historical figure, so anyone can forward an opinion. The film-maker is, thus, never 100 per cent right or wrong.</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">The difference between filming fiction and history is that, while both are prone to interpretation, fiction is more verifiable (against the written word, which is generally a single source) while history may depend on a hundred perspectives. That’s catch number one. The second is the appropriation of the film-maker. Here we come to the process of selection. This depends primarily on the kind of film that’s contemplated. A biopic for The History Channel, for instance, is more faithful to sources than a film meant for a wider release. The latter may add a few extras to keep the audience engrossed. It may also change history in small ways to become acceptable!</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"></span></span><br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">In my above list, the Michelangelo film (The Agony and The Ecstasy) was a more or less typical Hollywood film about the famed artist while Shantaram’s Dr Kotnis ki Amar Kahani was a no-nonsense film about a selfless Indian doctor in wartime Japan. Both stretched out their themes, though, to depict and study human qualities and emotions. The biopic, besides its role as chronicler, also showcases human qualities in order to suggest the ideal ones. Similarly, the other films: Bharati (patriotic, social, political), Bose (patriotic, political), Rand (intellectual, emotional) and Shankaracharya (spiritual-philosophical). The biopic is rarely a stand-alone offering. It rests on the unfolding of a thesis.</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">As for the present film on Pazhassi, Director Hariharan has said he altered the ending to give it a suitably cinematic finale. This can be argued, especially when we’re dealing with a historical subject.</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"></span></span><br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">In the preface to my Pazhassi book, I wrote: “I have taken the help of props like plays, legends, stories passed on from mother to son — anything that could breathe life into the musty pages of official records. The story only grows stronger because of these props.”</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">There's no other way of handling this. On one side are pages of official (mainly revenue-related) records. On the other, romance and legend — generations keep adding to this storehouse of stories until the protagonist becomes a prototype of everything heroic. The creative interpreter has to steer his steed through both these extremes and come out into an area of imaginative plausibility. In the absence of solid proof, this is the only way left: to be true to the dictates of your medium, whether book or film.</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"></span></span><br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">That’s why when Hariharan made Pazhassi Raja confront his opponent Baber’s army on a hilltop and end his life in mortal combat, I had nothing to say. Because when history has already been touched with legend, anything can be made to happen. And because another version suggests that Pazhassi took his own life rather than surrender. In my book, straight from the present Pazhassi family’s mouth and those musty records provided by Baber himself, the Raja comes down to a mountain stream to perform rituals for his mother’s death anniversary. The British army catches him there. His men surround him protectively but, in the scuffle that follows, Pazhassi is felled by a bullet. This is probably not dramatic enough for the grandeur of the present film.</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">Being a long-time observer of cinema, I personally feel that any moment in history can be rendered dramatic with the available technical and story-telling tools; you don’t have to manufacture moments to suit cinema. The director, being a long-time practitioner of cinema, probably had other ideas </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;">(published in the Sunday Herald, Bangalore, in 2009)</span><span style="color: yellow;"></span></span>THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-49764574288790685832010-09-10T14:41:00.001+05:302010-09-10T15:09:07.156+05:30T M T (the moment of truth)<span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>T</u></span>he NCPA looked large, grand and gorgeous. it was filling with people, celebrities, socialites, readers and passionate invitees. it was good to see <em>the magic store of nu-cham-vu</em> on the panels, and blown up and prominently displayed. i wished vinayak, my son, was there to see his illustrations being made so accessible. <br />
<br />
It was, of course, a moment of happiness as well as nervousness. <br />
<br />
when the book was nominated, i felt okay. when it was shortlisted, i was happy. but now, on the brink of it, i felt rather prickly! ruskin bond was the chief guest. he spoke beautifully and simply, and narrated events during a time when the book business was but a fraction of its present size and scope. he used to do exactly the sort of thing i did--- go to a book store and secretly place my book at an advantage! of course, your books are <u>always </u>behind someone else's. so this is a nice, neat trick to reinforce your concern for your own book. nowadays, because of media coverage, you might be noticed by people in the shop, and they'd say, look at this writer, he's moving his own book around to give it prominence!<br />
<br />
there was violin playing by some wonderful little kids, and it kept up the dirty, rotten suspense in a nice sort of way. a string of kids would play, they'd be joined by another, then another, and finally the stage was almost filled with wonderful youngsters blessed with talent. the comperes for the evening were arundhati subramaniam and ranjit hoskote. arundhati is my friend and theatre-person the late bhagyam's niece, and i'd communicated with her when i was leaving for scotland for the charles wallace residency in 2004. arundhati had gone the previous year. <br />
<br />
they'd said the children's prize would be announced first. actually, it was the last to be announced! you can imagine my condition. earlier, i'd met my competitors, young siddhartha sarma and rupa pai. before the event i'd had coffee and a nice, relaxed conversation with siddhartha, who's a gem of a guy. <br />
<br />
only one of the children's judges had turned up in mumbai that evening. she climbed up on stage and smiled down at the audience and said breathlessly that it had been very difficult to judge this one because there were books for young adults as well as for little children in the reckoning. "but then we came to a solution, we decided we'd look at the best in each category and then make our choice." <br />
<br />
<em>which means, if she'd been given <u>all</u> the books in fiction, non-fiction, translation and children's books to judge, she'd still have looked for the best and made a choice.</em> <br />
<br />
"a little child's picture book" was being judged against "stories for young adults"--- in her own words. and she had chosen the best.<br />
<br />
siddhartha sarma's <em>the grasshopper's run</em> got the children's prize, and later siddhartha told me: i needed that money for a project i've planned. he's a very earnest young chap with a talented pen. but his book is young adult fiction, not children's writing. the distinction should have been made much earlier in the competition.<br />
<br />
later, when i thought about the lady's breathless admission on stage, and this multi-category aspect of the judging, i thought: why am i feeling this way? is it simply a case of sour grapes? <br />
<br />
no, it wasn't. it was a case of wine and whisky being placed under one category. and judged as the same thing.THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-78459523622173370372010-09-10T13:44:00.002+05:302010-09-10T13:49:50.212+05:30T M T (the mumbai trip)<span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>I</u></span>t was a wonderful trip, sponsored by the Vodaphone Crossword Prize people. and Mumbai, of course, was Mumbai. the hospitality was great, and there was this event management group and a girl named meghann d'sa who took good care of us, and when geeta (my wife) was late coming back from lunch with an old classmate and i was getting worried, meghann became the first professional i met who could be caring, efficient and effective all at the same time. she called geeta and then called me back and said with a smile in her voice, she's safe and coming back!<br />
<br />
we went to my friend bobby's house, spent time with his lovely daughters, met his wife lata in the evening, and this was a highlight of the trip. one evening we all enjoyed ourselves at the leopold cafe where they're busy pointing out to everyone that this is where the terrorists struck. each violent mark is marked and preserved for a prying posterity. every foreign visitor to india was at leopold's that night. jam-packed! and cacophonic.<br />
<br />
the first evening, we had a little event at one of the crossword stores. writers gurcharan das, kalpana swaminathan (who finally got the fiction award), salma and i debated the topic: will e-books ease out books? even though i was the only one whose book was now an e-book (lament of mohini) and whose books (the magic store of nu-cham-vu and maria's room) are also available as digital "talking books" for the blind and the dyslexic, i said books will never die out. gurcharan on the panel and bobby from the audience, as well as another youngster, said: you're just being nostalgic, books will soon be replaced by e-books. it was a good time out for us, and we enjoyed ourselves. two mornings later, geeta and i had breakfast with salma, the writer of the tamil book, the hour past midnight.<br />
<br />
it rained almost throughout the trip. i'd forgotten my phone at home, so i was relatively free and untied. there was, of course, the nervous thread leading up to the awards function on the 20th. the venue was the ncpa, where i used to listen to music and also watch many of those "art movies", late70s and 80, when i was working for the indian express across the road.<br />
<br />
in fact, there was so much that was familiar in spite of the way the city has grown. and it was wonderful to drive through on the sea-link. on my last visit, i'd seen it being built. this was truly enchanting, the spreading wings of the bridge trailing over the ocean froth. <br />
<br />
and then the evening, and the awards function....THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-21820549892505257292010-09-03T20:41:00.000+05:302010-09-03T20:41:21.018+05:30The Hindu : Life & Style / Metroplus : Books bridge the gap<a href="http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/metroplus/article611519.ece?sms_ss=blogger">The Hindu : Life & Style / Metroplus : Books bridge the gap</a>THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24239630.post-20042083829855760262010-06-27T21:06:00.001+05:302010-06-27T21:07:09.437+05:30A Fresh New Review!<span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: large;"><strong>Whispers from the past</strong></span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: large;"><strong></strong></span><br />
<br />
from <a href="http://folks.co.in/">FOLKS MAGAZINE</a><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipyQFuyye5RstauX-uYeH1bN-fueavuhUMeUREukghYpU_oZbOd7YfB6aG9IssGhDQEa5tcn9wx582xWVAhowvToy8QL1TsAvXqPHGhqmBSrpSICt1Du6t-BOFxpMoyVOmoItBLA/s1600/MariasRoom-204x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" ru="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipyQFuyye5RstauX-uYeH1bN-fueavuhUMeUREukghYpU_oZbOd7YfB6aG9IssGhDQEa5tcn9wx582xWVAhowvToy8QL1TsAvXqPHGhqmBSrpSICt1Du6t-BOFxpMoyVOmoItBLA/s320/MariasRoom-204x300.jpg" /></a></div><span style="color: red;">Maria’s Room </span><br />
<span style="color: red;">Author: Shreekumar Varma </span><br />
<span style="color: red;">Publisher: HarperCollins </span><br />
<span style="color: red;">Price:Rs 299</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Award-winning poet of Dark Lord and Bow of Rama, Shreekumar Varma, has penned another gripping volume, Maria’s Room, a novel longlisted for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize. Set against the backdrop of Goa, with flashes of the past from Chennai and Kerala that present the reader with a kaleidoscope of memories to choose from, Maria’s Room depicts Raja Prasad’s journey from the present to the past and back.</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At the commencement of the novel, one gets the sense of moving along a slow, winding river but as one progresses further into the novel, the current of the stream picks up. Tactically divided into three parts, each part gives the reader vital information to solidify one’s understanding of the central character, Raja. Overall, the rain-lashed, dreary and dark setting provides a very somber atmosphere through the novel, correlating with the protagonist’s mood.</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The first part is the foundation of Raja’s history which becomes a vital link in solving the mystery behind Maria. The second and third parts are where the actual action takes place. The complicated relationship between the guilt-ridden Raja and the “delectable” Lorna comes into play from the second part onwards where we see the past clash with the present. Raja’s bizarre companionship with Fritz at the Capo’ Sun seems intriguing yet aggravating at times, its importance revealed to us only in the last part. The third part is like a fast-paced thriller where the mystery of Maria’s past and Raja’s existing predicament come together in a frenzied embrace to spring the most unbelievable surprise at the reader.</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“What did Goa have to offer? Its beaches and its old-world, Portuguese-driven culture, its charming Konkan tradition, its music and good cheer, feni and drugs, a couldn’t-care-less attitude, its hospitality, churches and temples, and the gift of slow time.” This beautifully languorous description of Goa’s beaches, churches, villages and people creates a hypnotic effect upon the reader. It is as if we are absorbed into the novel, along with Raja, trying to find the missing puzzle pieces that lead to uncovering the scandal behind Maria. The obscurity surrounding “The Other Thing” and the hesitancy of Mrs Pereira and Milton in divulging any information about Maria’s death adds to the element of curiosity. Throughout the book one feels as if there is an invisible force guiding Raja towards Maria, as if they are somehow connected despite being spatially separated by decades.</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Raja reconciles two aspects of a writer — creator and imitator. For him, the moving power of the past is rooted in images of unfulfilled love and deception, with emphasis on what ought to be. Well into the third part of the novel, we see an explicit manifesto of his literary intentions: The genesis of the story, how he turned to writing to escape reality, the problems of inspiration, the creative process and the role of his untamed imagination. So often in the course of the novel Raja tries to understand what makes for a good story which, to him, is like a word picture or a speaking picture. There are whispers from the past that help guide him through his literary dilemma, but the effect of these “whispers” is nothing short of incredible. Not just Raja, the reader too is dazed by the discoveries he or she makes.</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The primary theme deals with the inner conflicts that romance precipitates in a man. Raja is viewed from many angles — literary artist, creative genius, guilty husband, anxious lover and detached son. Dramatic and intense, Maria’s Room has the ability to make the reader grasp the book and not part with it till the last piece of the puzzle of this mental jigsaw is assembled satisfactorily. The final chapter of the book is the most attention-grabbing, so I suggest pick up Maria’s Room and get started in order to find out just how the psyche can play games with us when we least expect it</span>THINKOPOTAMUShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296033681698372256noreply@blogger.com5