The Wanderer Speaks

300: The Review

2007-03-19T22:08:00.000+05:30

Y' know, unlike many of my peers I wasn't as pissed at the movie adaptation of 300 as I was genuinely amused by the slaughter of history, stretching the fantasy element, larding up the "Good versus Evil" visual aspect and dishonoring the unwritten Graphic-Novel code. (If there was anything annoying, it was the army of Pretty Young Things in the theater me going "Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" whenever a Calvin-Klein underwear model jumps nine feet into the air and chops up a stupid Sand N*gger. "So gripping and emotional!", I heard one choke. It's true that the Battle of Thermopylae is one of the most inspiring stories of human steadfastness..... but can't they see the oodles of psy-ops of the movie?! Even making allowances for the "entertaining" aspect that movies are supposed to deliver, the extra-spicy masala and the pompous psy-ops in it leaves such a bad taste in one's mouth. If the viewer knew World History 101 and can ID right-wing Hollywood propaganda, I feel nobody would cheer for these so-called "last hope of free men fighting the barbarian East".
Sighhhhh, that's the new Mall-Rat DCH generation for you. Anyway ................

I had read Frank Miller's original Graphic Novel about a year ago and was pretty impressed by the colors and the truly rousing dialogs. The artistic liberties Miller had taken, the subliminal messaging and the implicit (and sometimes in-your-face) racism did not deter me from enjoying the experience...... after all he was the one who changed the campy Adam West-esque Batman into the dark, brooding Knight so excellently portrayed by Michael Keaton and Christian Bale. And he did that even before the God of Pop-Art, Alan Moore, brought out the excellent "Killing Joke". He was the one that brought back the Film Noir genre with his Sin City nearly two decades after Roman Polanski's Chinatown ended that genre with a bang. He maybe excused for a bit of pride in his Anglo-Saxon heritage (which has effectively claimed Green and Roman culture as their own.... now that the real Greeks and Romans have fallen so low in the pecking order). Well, to be fair he himself had said that he was influenced by the Cold war propaganda film "The 300 Spartans".
Anyway, my beef with the movie is the jarring discordance whenever extraneous scenes and dialogs are woven into Miller's core work. Lemme try to explain the discordance...... it's something like remixing Rufus Wainwright's emotional "Hallelujah" to Baba Sehgal's inhuman, grotesque, fly-honey flashing "Tora Tora". On such a dark daaaark note, let me begin my rather haphazard rant-review of the movie (and the the graphic novel). Oh, and as usual..... SPOILERS FOLLOW!

Before the battle:

The militaristic, eugenics-high, macho spirit of Sparta is established right from the beginning itself...... Mommy dearest and an old Doc inspects a baby for any deformities. If the baby had any deformity, the voice over illuminates us viewers, he would be thrown down a cliff where the bleached skulls of the less-than-perfect infants grin in eternity. The coming of age scenes would have given Herr GeneralFeldsMarschall of the Nazi Youth an instant hard-on...... and it can't get any farther from the actual initiations of Spartans! As Nathan Lee noted in his hilarious, punishing review of 300, the rest of the movie has a Copper/Wheat Brown hue. Maybe Director Zack Snyder watched the "Elysium" scene from Gladiator one too many times.... there's even the cute kid running through the wheat fields at the end. The approaching danger is well conveyed and the on-screen adaptation of this 1st part of the five part novel is quite okay. Things go totally Kaput when Queen Gorgo (played by a Lena Headey who apparently has a three foot pole stuck up her a$$) and Theron, the stock traitor-politician (played by Dom West) is pounded into the original storyline with the finesse of a pile-driver. I understand Ms. Heady was trying to do the "noble, spirited queen" routine but she hams it to the high heavens...... with her head always tilted 23.5 degrees up! You want "I'll kick-your-Candy Ass" attitude, nobility and class oozing out of every pore, Ms. Heady? Try Angelina Jolie from Alexander, try Cate Blanchett from Elizabeth, try the great Irene Papas from The Message! Coupled with her tussles and "compromise" (for her husband onlee!) with the sleazy councilor Theron (who shall be here forth called Ummeron for he's the best on-screen weasel sleazebag since the legendary K.P. Ummer lustily drooled so; "Sharade, njaan oru Vikaara Jeeviyanu...."), the respectable Graphic Novel is turned into one of Kanti Shah's flicks. All that was missing was King Leonidas's sister (Meghna Naidu in a yellow churidar) raped and killed by Ummeron in the Bazaar in broad daylight.
Another gross misrepresentation is the institution of the Ephors..... a governing council that was more than chummy with the King (except this one time when the King himself apparently betrayed Sparta) The movie as well as the novel portray them to be inbred, corrupt and lecherous lepers who select the winner of the Annual Miami Beach Wet T-Shirt Contest as their "seer". So far it was Ladies Night with all those hunks in speedos and thongs and a nude shot of Gerard Mian himself, now the male audience is given their pound of flesh. Dudes can get an ishmaall show of a transparent negligee clad Miss. Dakini, probably Ms. Mandakini's (yeah, she of Ram Teri Ganga Maili fame) long lost daughter, going into a trance under the influence of some really potent Pakistani Opium.

I feel the Queen's character was expanded to beef up the "fair, democratic, liberated West" image as against the chauvinistic Asian envoy who is angered when a woman speaks directly to him. Oh wait, the messenger is a big, bad, black Afro Bro' from the Krips Gang chapter of Babylon........ not a Semitic as shown in the novel. Oh don't worry.... Emperor Xerxes, nee Badshah Kshehyarshah (who in all probability was a typical Irani dude), is not an eight foot tall Black monster as portrayed in the book. Thank God for small favors. He's a very "confused" eight foot tall dandy Latino homeboy (who shivers in orgasmic ecstasy as he touches the Hero), who's got more gold on (and in) his body than seven Mallu brides. And check this out.... he meets the Greek's Spandex Speedo challenge with a ridiculous golden thong! Well here's a fr1ggin new tagline for you; "They were 300 black Speedos against one golden Thong".
And our new Ummeron character? It helps to add in an element that tips the odds against the doomed protagonist..... it kinda magnifies the sacrifice and hence increases the "Heroic Halo". Given the subliminal messaging against Iran (and Iraq) in the current contest, this may also be to flip the bird to the fringe Pacifists/Anti-War folks and win over the anglophone audiences. The traitor is conveniently dispatched off and the treachery is discovered..... the supposedly crafty councilor kept Persian gold coins hidden (where in his Speedo he kept them beats me) when he came to the council. But he didn't die in vain my viewers...... he died after porking the noble Queen the night before. Yes, the noble Yavania Nari sacrificed her honor in vain to save her husband the hero and make him look more tragic.....
{PS: In the original novel she says just a few lines, including one of the best lines ever (which have been preserved through history). Check it out....

Leonidas sets out to meet the enemy....
Gorgo: "SPARTAN!"
Leonidas: "Yes, my Lady?"
Gorgo: "Come back with your shield or on it."

In the movie, she gives him the "Heart of the Ocean"...... oh wait, that was in Titanic! She gives him something eerily like the "Nail of a Tiger" (Pulinakaham), prolly borrowed from Sathyan's Thacholi Otheynan costume and dramatically looks away as her hunk king swaggers into the sunset. :D }

In contrast to Ummeron and the "Fairy" Xerxes is the noble martyr, King Leonidas of Sparta, ably played by Gerard Butler, an undeniably talented actor. Usually known for his well etched roles in movies like the breathtaking "Beowulf and Grendel", Butler sheds all his cerebral image as well as most of his clothes, dons a crimson cape and becomes a powerful and imposing warrior. He delivers his lines pretty good, carries himself well and apparently has packed a few pounds of muscle for the role...... all's well except for the part where he shouts out "Spartans, tonight we dine in hell" at the climax. Nothing wrong as such, it's just that he sounded like a drunk Scottish fisherman then. Overall I must say he did much, much better than that pretender Colin Ferell's sounding like an Irish bartender in Stone's Alexander.
Some of the best lines in the graphic novel are the thoughts of Leonidas. The stoic and laconic nature of Sparta is fleshed out in the King's astute observations.... The grim realization of the impossible situation he is in, the fate he's leading his loyal men into, his self-composure and farsightedness even when the rest of his band lose their head and of course his final thoughts are presented as a voice-over. This takes a little shine off the Hero..... was avoidable IMO. They could have done it like Kevin Spacey's touching voice over in American Beauty.
Another place where Gerard Butler falls into "filminess" is when he meets Xerxes for the first time. The original novel conveyed a sense of chilling dread and razor-sharp wariness from both sides..... but here the delivery is mocking. The original had Leonidas mocking Xerxes as well, but there was an edge to it..... here it's like Rajnikant threatening one of his hapless undermenschen foes. I wish it was dealt better.... something like the "Sicilian Scene" from True Romance which I feel is THE benchmark for a confrontation.

Rodrigo Santoro plays the cartoon character Znyder and Co turned Xerxes into. The novel (though mis-representing Xerxes) shows him as a dangerous opponent...... out here he's shown as a strutting peacock who whines like a 17 year old drama queen. He does not arouse fear, respect or awe...... first time I saw him on-screen I almost went "Hey, thats Big Gay Al"! Now Miller's Xerxes had a voice that is "As smooth as warm oil on well-worn leather --and as deep as rolling thunder". I must say they got THAT right in the movie..... I wonder if they had James Earl Jones do the dubbing for Xerxes. (Well, it's almost Darth Vader minus the heavy breathing!) . The deformity of Evil vis-a-vis the beauty of Good is a commonly used visual art M.O.... but normally graphic novels do not adopt this method. It's more grey rather than black and white, but then Miller as well as other writers like Garth Ennis are known for heroes high on absolutism. Still, they took it too far. Way too far.... AFAIK Iranis are mighty p1ssed. There was a Persian couple ( prolly students from People's Republic of JNU ) a few seats away who went through 2 hours of incessant abuse heaped on Persia with stoicism that would make Leonidas proud. I wish I knew what they were thinking.....

Other notables include David Wenham (Faramir from LOTR) who plays the stock "bard". He doesn't have the look of other psychopathic Spartans out to kill and die in a blaze.... it's a bit like Faramir who fights just because he has to. If Sanjay Gupta ever decides to be "inspired" by this movie, he would prolly cast the Bollywood icon of the honest young Indian, Madhavan in the role. He does the entire voice over..... and not a quite good one at that. There's the voice modulation and emoting through the voice aspect that Wenham doesn't quite get right. Pity.
Then there is Vince Regan who dons the sword and sandal to play yet another trusty 2nd in Command..... yeah, he played Achilles's Secong in Troy too. He can act, no doubt.... and he's given ample screen time too. The novel portrayed him as a grim drill sergeant who gets passing mention..... here he and his son are given more screen time.
The character Stelios is changed too..... in the novel he was a stumbling greenhorn who's potential is recognized by Leonidas himself. Here he's a more psycho version of Achilles seeking everlasting glory of a warrior's death. I wonder what Yossarian or Doc Daneeka would have to say to that.
(PS: The grim reality of death as against all that stock yarn of Valhalla, Veeraswarga, Jannat and whatever is best shown in the witch-burning scene in Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" and Gerard Butler's own "Beowulf and Grendel". In the latter, King Hrothgar (played by the great Stellan Skaarsgard) remarks "He is feasting with the Gods in Valhalla now" when he finds the body of a soldier killed by Grendel. Beowulf looks closely at the dead man's face, warped by horror and agony and asks "Does he look like a man who's going to a banquet"?)

The traitor Ephialtes can't be more demonised..... in antiquity he was not a disfigured Spartan, just another Mir Jaffar or Shah Waliullah. Even Miller who committed the original sin cast him as a character we could sympathize with. However, Snyder and Co. would have none of that! Just a miff from the King is enough to set the monster against his own people. Unlike the novel where Leonidas deliberately tries to talk this sad Spartan to death (which Ephiatles tries but unsuccessfully), the goody goody film King offers a menial job to the cripple but the oh-so-evil traitor immediately sets off to the enemy camp. Get a load of this..... he warns the King of severe repercussions too but the noble king decides to guard the secret path with amateur Greeks instead. Oh, I forgot to mention..... there were 27000 Greeks from other city states in the battle.Only 300 Spartans and 7000 Thespians made the last stand at Thermopylae.

Now........ someone please tell me WHO THE BLAZING F**K wrote in all that extra stuff? I sincerely hope he/she/they get trampled to death by fat Soccer Moms at a Walmart Shopping Stampede! It's like the ghost of Ed Wood teamed up with Bashir Babbar and Brad Armstrong to deliver some of the most corny scenes of film history. Alan Moore publicly distanced himself from the film adaptations of his "From Hell" and "LXG" when he saw how much these lesser souls mutilated his babies..... what the hell was Frank Miller thinking when he read the final script?

The Battle:

An awesome (honest!) CGI heavy battle follows....... grillions of Persians, human/semi human and beast, fall to the Greek spears. Copious amounts of blood and guts splatter in all directions.... Spears are shaken, shields are splintered, it is a red day and heads fly like Frisbees as the Persians get a PWNED seven ways to Severnaya. There is enough blood to send Dungeon Master Mel 'Mad Max' Gibson into instant rapture..... apparently even the war elephants brought from Africa slip off the precipice 'coz "The Persian dead are slippery". Miller and Snyder push the envelope with uvaachas like "... and even the birds were complaining though they feasted on thousands of rotting human corpses". Howzzat?
While Stone's Alexander had battle scenes sticking close to what really happened back then, 300 is a Sword-Kata/bullet time/Spear-Fu extravaganza that makes Ultraviolet look like As you Like It. Even here you can see the dudes doing the "flying spear-stab" that Achilles did in Troy..... talk about "inspiration"! The swords look like Scimitars pinched from the Rudolf Valentino Memorial Museum..... nothing like the Greek short-sword they used those days. The Greek Hoplite was an armored infantry man who fought with a 9m long spear called Doru and a thick shield. He had a helmet that covered most of his face and a breastplate that can take a lot of punishment. Our heroes however believe in traveling light..... all they have is a black Speedo (armored too by the looks of it), Superman's cape and the helmet ( 'coz it's kinda killer cool). Perhaps the oiled, rippling abs on lavish display can tiltilate or scare away the mighty Achaemenid empire.
I must say the battle scenes began by closely following the Phalanx M.O. The men close ranks, lock their shields and rest their spears through the gaps of the shield wall.... each man protecting the man to his left with his shield and using the spear (held in his right hand) to do the killing. The Persian shock troops ram against the steel wall, they apparently were trained at this by the DYFI (who has considerable experience in rushing at barricades and asking for a beating). The Greeks hold firm and push them back and when the enemy's formation is broken, the Greek front lines break ranks, envelop the enemy and start scything into the enemy. Well and good from military history's POV so far..... they keep the faith even when the Persian cavalry charges into them. Cavalry as well as War Elephants of those days had no chance against long spears UNLESS led by a very able General like Subotai, Khalid ibn Walid or Alp Arslan. The Spartan shields protect them from the showers of arrows released by whole battalions of Persian Archers. Now this was during the era preceding the Composite Bow/Double Recurved Bow which was used to deadly effect by the Parthian Archer Cavalry against Rome. Due to a multitude of reasons, the archers and artillery were not of any use in that bottleneck and Xerxes had to do it the long, hard way. Anyway, there's a cool scene where the Persian arrows blot out the sun. This treatment was promised by a Persian general well before the war to which Stelios cooly replied, "Then we shall fight in the shade."

{PS: Here's a bit of Gyaan about the Phalanx aided by Peltasts (skirmishers)...... this strategy had worked so well for 500 years and like the Trench Deadlock of WW1, the one with best armor, hordes of troops, ample maneuver room and coolest head won. Quite a problem it was in those times. Then a Roman General named Gaius Marius, uncle (by marriage into the family) of a boy named Gaius Julius Caesar, revolutionized the Roman Army. He invented the Pilum, a one-shot javelin that is constructed so that it's shaped head would pierce the shield if thrown at a certain range AND the 5 foot shaft of the spear would bend due to it's heavy weight. The effect on the Phalanx was horrendous..... the Roman Pilum would slice into locked shields and bend making them useless in combat. The Phalanx desperately try to pry the spears off their shields while the Roman legionaries charge with the feared Gladius (short sword) and rout the Phalanx. It must be noted that the flexibility of the Roman legion against the ponderous Greek Phalanx led to Roman annexation of fair ol' Greece after the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC..... Still the Phalanx continued to be in vogue for another 100 years (in Barbarian, Egyptian, Semitic and Numidian nations) till Gaius Marius and later Gaius Julius Caesar put an end to it.

Source: Caesar's Legion by Stephen Dando-Collins. Highly Recommended!}

After this the movie enters the Twilight Zone. It was bad enough that the Persian elite force, The Immortals (a.k.a "Apple Bearers") was shown as Ninjas with grimacing silver masks in the original novel...... here you have a LOTRish Cave Troll of a human chained by immortals, a bunch of unbelievable fly-honeys straight out off a Timbaland and Magoo video, a mean war Rhino, a troop of fr1ggin dumb Grenadiers (yes, in 480 BC!) dressed in Burkhas with silver veils, barbarians who look suspiciously like Zulu Impis and a humanoid executioner with axeblades for his arms. Pshawwwww........ I almost expected to see an Imperial AT-AT blast the fair Greeks with it's Laser Cannons! The ordered Hoplite S.O.P (Standard Operating Procedures) changes into mano-a-mano Matrix ishtyle Kung-Fu. I have read that even gutted soldiers would gather their intestines in their hands and push it into the wound and get back into formation..... for if the weak flank is breached, the entire Phalanx falls. Heck, Leonidas shooed away the crippled Ephiatles 'coz his weak left arm cannot lift his shield to neck level and hence protect the exposed Hoplite to his left..... and now they all break formation and perform Tai Chi?
Well, I guess it's okay if all this is just meant to depict a fantasy element. {After all, Hartigan and Marv of Sin City were shot multiple times and they didn't even feel it! Dwight jumps down a skyscraper and sprints off without as much as an "Ouch!"! Kevin, who looks like an evil Harry Potter, moves like a cobra and devours his victims! List goes on..... but get my point on Frank Miller? Probably he himself wrote in these stuff into the movie to sex it up.}

Now the battle comes to a climax with the traitor leading the Persians down the secret path and surrounding the Spartans. The movie doesn't show the 7000 strong Thespian citizen militia who died defending that path. There's no mention of the traitor pleading (in vain) for mercy for the amateur Thespians... and certainly doesn't show the intense pain and suffering of the wretched traitor at that point. The part where Leonidas lets loose his own "Parthian Shaft" is handled pretty well...... but still not half as good as that rousing scene in Braveheart where Hamish Campbell throws Wallace's sword at the British Army. Even here the added masala element almost chokes you..... Miller's original version of final thoughts of Leonidas is poignant, short, clear and wholly at peace. It is made implicitly clear (in the novel) that Leonidas was sacrificing himself and his men so that rest of Greece would get over their bickering, unite and drive out the invader. In the movie it sadly turns into something like the Black Knight challenging King Arthur in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". Here you have Stelios holding the King's hand and cooing sweet nothings before dying (Sean Bean's Boromir did MUCH better in LOTR), the Captain drawing the Persian who speared him closer (by thrusting the spear deeper into his own body) so that he could kill his killer...... and meanwhile the Persian army apparently sits by twiddling their thumbs. I must say the Persian arrows violate all laws of common sense and aerodynamics.... you got arrowheads shaped like scorpions, swastikas, pentagrams and what not! I would trust those fancy "scary" arrows to kill a pig at 30 feet. The final volley which 'blots out the sun' (again) and kills the last standing man (Leonidas of course) is a direct lift-off from the climax of Jet Li's memorable Wu-Xia classic, Hero. Of course, the master craftsman Zhang Zimou doesn't show the gory arrow-riddled corpse of the Hero in a very 'heroic death pose'..... please watch the movie to see how Zimou conveys a more powerful image (through an image that is an 'inversion' of that last shot of Toshiro Mifune's (Macbeth equivalent) Washizu in Throne of Blood).

Themes and Psy-Ops:

In many cultures there used to be a quasi-religious rite where the faith of 'faithfuls' is cemented by encouraging hate against another community. In Kerala of late 19th cent-1921 there were the fiery Friday noon sermons which sent the (so far) peaceful Moplah community into frenzied communal hate and a few dozen would go out and kill a Hindu Janmi (Zamindar) or a British Collector till the army is called in. Apparently this was a spillover of Ahmed Barelvi's call for Jihad (in 1831) and the embers lay there till the British put it out for good in the 1921 Moplah Rebellion. Mallus perhaps have heard of the term "Haalilakkam" which is today used to describe frenzy. Well, this is the etymology of that word. Similar to this is the old Norse "Berserkergang" and the Self-Flagellates and Passion Plays of the Medieval Church. This sort of this crops up whenever a war is to be waged in the near future or if the community is under some sort of pressure. The 1962 movie "The 300 Spartans" had obvious Cold War undertones and oodles of smug over-confidence.... the chauvinist movies of the GI and Baby Boomer generations, ably matched by the umpteen Osterns and Red Westerns churned out by the Soviets.
300 comes at a time when the "inheritors" of Greek Culture are poised against Iran, a continuation of Eternal Persia. Right now Persia might be under the heel of the clerics, but it has tremendous civilizational power of six millennia. There is of course and underlying "war cry" element in the movie..... one can make out subliminal messages like "The Army NEEDS you!", "Chickening out will destroy our nation!" and "Support our forces serving in the East!". Zack Snyder & Co. do their bit and blasts the audience with their own grating and in-your-face Propaganda via Ms. Lena 'I need a Laxative now' Heady and other characters. Here's somethign else...... the war-cry of the Spartans "Aaaah Hooo Aaah Hoooo" is the US Rangers war cry "Hooo Aahhhh Hooo Aahhh" in reverse. Coincidence?
But then, I look at it this way...... it's a Hollywood Movie and by God they OUGHT to play for their home team. Nothing p1sses me off more than our own deracinated leftist pseudo-secular Mehras and Dholakias and 'Pornographers of the Poor' like Deepa Mehta. (Of course I ain't the "My Country! Right or Wrong!" type..... but you got to be objective! Not a self-loathing Macaulay's Child with pretensions of "internationalism") . So, it would be quite improper if someone like me whine too much and spit curses on some American's chauvinism, right? Andaaz Apna Apna, no? Again, what rubs me the wrong way is Snyder & Co video-game they turned the original slick flick into.

Valerio Manfredi, author of Aish's much awaited "The Last Legion" and the Alexander Trilogy (on which Oliver Stone's movie is partly based) had written this novel called "The Spartan" long before Miller penned 300. This book, though fictionalized gives an apparently honest account of the lopsided Spartan society, the false pretenses of "democracy" and "free will" of the Greek City States and the complex relations between Persia and the Greek States ..... and it's set in the period of Xerxes's invasion too! The real Sparta was a bunch of militaristic roughnecks who were despised by the more cultured states like Athens and Ionia. Though once in a while they showed flashes of Laconic brilliance, they were quite wanting when it boiled down to brains. The lorded over a community of slaves called Helots, descendants of cultures Sparta conquered long time back. Strict order was kept by the use of a secret police who kept the Helots on a tight leash. Finally, with the rise of Rome and explosion of Helot population, Sparta declined and met an ignoble end at that hands of the Roman. One need not even go into the encouraged homosexuality and misogyny of Sparta...... that is a well known fact and it does nothing but divert attention away from the more relevant topics. {PS: In my opinion, personal preferences or norms of an ancient society cannot be judged by a rank outsider who enjoys the benefit of hindsight an 2500 years of progress from that point..... }
Given all this, the depiction of Sparta as a fr1ggin' beacon of FREEEEEDOMMMMMMMM is simply plain old snake-oil. Any attempt at drawing a smug parallel with the present day self-appointed 'World Polic'e fighting soul-less coons in the desert should be met with the disdain it deserves. Any argument touting "fair West" standing up against the lecherous, inhuman tyrant of Asia must be fought..... with history as our ally. Any attempt at Historical Revisionism ("White Man's Burden" type) must be discredited at every opportunity. Oliver Stone tried to do the same Fetid stuff with his "Alexander"..... but since it was more cerebral than this video game-movie, even the shallow ones pry their minds off the "action" and see through the "Propagandu" (as a pal calls this sort of psy-ops). Snyder is smarter than that..... he cashes on Miller's Sin City laurels and touches up the comic book gore-fest, adds a lot of gratuitous violence and other masala ingredients. The result is a slick hi-octane war movie which makes the lay viewer dangerously oblivious to the base "message" of the movie.

The depiction of Xerxes court as as a 'den of vice' harks back to Medieval views of Ottoman Turkey, Safavid Persia and Sultanate/Mughal India. The Orientals were thought to be a libidinous, godless people engaging in vile acts that excited as well as repelled Puritan Europe. The art galleries are chock full of their impressions of the Oriental Courts, i.e Emperor conducting his business with his pet Leopard on one thigh and a fiercer Mistress on his other, Sultan's harems looking like the Playboy Mansion, a vile Arab inspecting a female slave's teeth as if she were a beast of burden. A lot of it was true, I must say..... but definitely not in the degree imagined by the Medieval West. Behind all this "disdain" was perhaps the realisation that there's a good chance the West would be overwhelmed by the numerically superior and quite older Orientals. Numerous times have this sort of fearful backlash adversely affect Global Geopolitics.
It's sad to see Khshyarshah's (Xerxes) military camp made out to be a bubblegum-pimp bordello with disfigured Lesbians, transsexuals and assorted pornstars and playmates. This was a man who made an able woman named Artemisia the Admiral of the Persian Fleet in the Battle of Salamis, an Emperor who married Esther the Jewess, a King was praised in the Old Testament for his wisdom and tolerance and a king who followed his forefathers dictum of respecting all religions. He might have had notions of invincibility and had an arrogant streak (hey, he was the absolute ruler of the greatest empire of his time!), but surely he doesn't deserve all this abuse heaped on him.
{PS: Talk about Judaism..... isn't Yahweh called "The Lord of Hosts" by Jews? In the movie you have a Persian general address Senor Golden Thong by this title! Anybody got a theory? I wish to think this was simply unintentional and not in any way an anti-Semitic expression.}

Finally,
One thing we Indians have to keep in mind is that the movers and shakers of America have a powerful force-multiplier in the form of the Anglophone Media. One adverse effect of Liberalisation is the deluge of this sort of KulturKampf into the Indian's mind. For example, programs showcasing military prowess of the US makes one feel the Americans are simply indomitable and they possess 23rd century technology. BBC South Asia desk spins the Kashmir Story into a spineless cheerleading for Pakistani interests..... a certain Indian news channel is trying to sabotage indigenous research and development of defense systems by whipping out "instant success stories" of the west. The convergence of POVs of the Indian public (especially the upper middle-class and up) and the Anglophones creeps into the red zone. Our trade and commerce show some signs of being too controlled by the American leverage over Energy and Technology transfer. Nope, I ain't one of those Bajrangis/Knickerwaalahs 'outraged' at Bharatiya Naris wearing jeans and skirts and preferring basketball to a wholly 'Desi' Gili-Danda. Attire and personal life/choices are private matters which, in my opinion, can be chosen even from alien cultures...... but it's when you ideologically 'submit' (maybe even unintentionally) to an alien culture/POV that the country faces grave danger.
Movies like 300 do their bit in nudging the average Indian towards accepting a wholly Western viewpoint and abandoning our immediate neighbors and business partners (Maybe the makers of the book/movie have no such explicit aim.... still, the damage would be done). All this just because Hollywood production values are quite impressive! The change would not come overnight...... but I cringe when I hear the "Khoobsurat Log" fr1ggin' parotting American views on the World Order in "We the People" ( leave alone teen aged PYTs cheering the Spartan 300). Whatever happened to an INDIAN world view and INDIAN interests? It's either the extremely pro-west 'Main Bhi Madonnas' or their compatriots from the other end of the spectrum, viz. Commies (again a transplanted ideology now worn on the sleeve by a psychotic enemy state) who take up all the sound bytes.

Conclusion:

The movie earns a six in a scale of ten...... that's like three stars.
Points are earned for impressive CGI, conforming to the original to a good degree, eye candy and production values, and a couple of good perfomances. This movie earns the thumbs down for blatant racism, added masala, retarded (non Miller) dialogs, 'historicide' and bias.
You wanna enjoy a mindless action flick, go for this. But if you are touchy/knowledgeable on History/of Persian ethnicity kind, stay at home and watch Jason Statham's 'Crank' instead. Trust me, you'll lavv this flick!
Ciao!

Children of Men: The Review

2007-02-27T22:44:00.000+05:30

"Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves,
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!"

So goes that famous "Rule Britannia" rhyme, THE marching song of arrogant Victorian imperialism.... The smug mantra that drove the sons of greatest empire the world has ever seen,confident that the sun will never set on their rule. Well, the sun did set indeed when a saint from India and later on an evil psycho from Germany challenged Britain, each in his own unique way. And now, the UK is a pitiful poodle state to the United States, a "has-been", an "Aunty" to Uncle Sam, floundering and imploding due to it's three hundred years of bad Karma. (Tsst. This post ain't gonna talk about "Perfidious Albion" or bore you folks with my tirade against them Brits, who I have a MUCHO GRANDE GIGANTIC problem with...... just let me make an introduction on a personal note, wokay?). Given their glorious history and all that jazz, it amuses me, sometimes in a surreal way, whenever I encounter any work of art (movies/music/literature) which portrays a dystopian or even an ugly, defeated England. The first time I enjoyed the perverse delight was when I watched Ian McKellan's Richard III eleven years ago.... I got further doses with Orwell's incomparable "1984", Robert Harris's "Fatherland", Michael Caine's gangster movie "Get Carter", Alan Moore's epic graphic novel "V for Vendetta", Christian Bale's fantasy sci-fi "Reign of Fire"and Alan Moore's recent work, "Albion".
Now a few hours ago I watched Alfonso Cuaron's latest movie, "Children of Men" which came highly recommended by a pal of mine. This film is set in a dystopic Britain (yaaaaaaaaaay!) in a bleak near future where a pandemic obliterates every last child and render mankind totally infertile. Now this is where the similarities to Ms. Phyllis James's original novel effectively ends..... Curaon's contribution is in converting this run of the mill sci-fi into a deep, layered and sensitive work of art. A movie where each shot make us think, if not shock one outright. This time the picture of a bleak, chaotic Britain didn't make me feel ummmmm, delighted; the themes were too painfully obvious, the "possible near future" too close for comfort, the threats and violence depicted too close to home and the shade of the whole world a tad too grey...................

{PS: Possible spoilers and give-aways ahead}

Themes:

Britain is shown as the "last surviving state" in a world that has fallen apart on Govt. propaganda..... this is actually a tribute to the tyrants of Moore's "V for Vendetta" parotting "England Prevails" in a world that has gone to shit! The hounding up of refugees, derisively called "Fugees", is also similar to Alan Moore's racist Norsefire Govt. in V for Vendetta rounding up every single non-caucasian and sexual-deviants (LGBTs) in Britain into death camps and silently eliminating them all (some of the most disturbing scenes in visual pop-art are found in V for Vendetta, set in the Larkhill death camp). Apparently the rest of world has gone mad with despair and violence and apparently, "Only England stands". Now the image of a Britain standing ALONE in the face of great odds will strike a chord in hearts worldwide given their stoic defiance in the face of seemingly unstoppable German juggernaut...... those two tense years where neither the US nor the USSR was around to fight the Nazis. This epic defense was maintained by a very caring, concerned, efficient and courageous British Government who actively supported and involved their own citizens. Curaon imaginatively twists this motif by depicting a UK which "stands alone" but maintains order by "stamping an iron-heeled boot into the human face.... forever", (as O' Brian puts it in 1984). While that Britain of past acted as a rock of security for the refugees from the French revolution, the Jacobin terror and the German threat, Cuaron's England rounds up anyone who "doesn't have papers" in a manner that would give Yezhov's and Beria's NKVD a complex. He underlines the point by having illegal immigrants packed tight in steel cages and even inserts a surrealy brilliant device by having an old German lady pleading piteously in her cage...... the Holocaust in reverse, anyone? :)

Before I go any further, please don't get me wrong..... I ain't one of those professional bleeding-heart peaceniks/Wagah Candle-Kissers/Indo-Paki bhai-bhai ultraliberal types croaking "make love not war" .......... nor am I an extreme right-winger bitching at Senor Cuaron for "scaremongering" and deriding "homeland security". As I understand it, Cuaron wants his movie to be a mirror of today's societies by extrapolating the fears and the threats faced now, into the near future. Richard Kelly, the talented Trojan who made the ABSOLUTELY MYSTIFYING Donnie Darko tried to do this with "Southland Tales", but falls short in the process (sigh!). Cuaron walks the tightrope between the two extremes with aplomb, presenting a honest take on today's clear and present dangers, viz. Islamic Extremism, the retaliatory extremism it gives birth to and illegal immigration. The sci-fi aspect of loss of infertility and the race to "Shangri-La" is but a McGuffin. I believe that all the race for the cure, the "Human Project" techno-myth is the last thing in Cuaron's mind while making the movie..... What is subtly stressed all throughout the movieare the individual and societal aspects/themes like hope, faith, chance, loyalty, redemption, demagogy, extremism and false messiahs.
Anyway, the film ostensibly points to a future where Enoch Powell's nightmare, an England run over by illegal/legal aliens who have set up a million Bradfordistans have probably "forced" the Govt to crack down on them with extreme prejudice. Mirroring the Brazilian Death-Squad cops method of liquidating EVERY undesirable (including orphan children so that they wouldn't grow up to be another Red Brigade. Anyone seen the true story "City of God"?) or the more famous Neocon/Chickenhawk dictum of "Kill them ALL, and let Allah sort them out later", they descend upon the immigrants mercilessly, kill them or strip, hose, pack them into carts/armored buses and put them in a city that has been converted to a concentration camp. Now, a whole city as a jail ain't no new concept.... Kurt Russel's "Escape from New York" and "Escape from LA" have already fleshed out the ultimate WASP fear-fantasy of minority-crime ridden cities. The morbidly funny thing here is that Curaon chooses a quiet, popular British resort viz. Bexhill-on-Sea as the death-camp city! He turns that beautiful city into a grim, run down, blood-splattered and pock-marked hell-hole reminiscent of Gaza Strip or Sarajevo. To top it all he has an Intifada like uprising in that city with crazed immigrant mobs lustily shouting "Allah Ho Akbar", shooting AK-47s into the air and a British Army and RAF that does obliterates them all a-la Sabra-Shatila..... the final destruction shown on screen as a silent, distant flash of light.

Unlike Moore's "V for Vendetta" there is no hero, no Robin Hood who fights the tyranny. The "liberators" are as scheming, opportunistic and merciless as the ones they are trying to overthrow. Cuaron's message with respect to violent resistance/insurgency/terrorism "to rid their own people from the evil oppressor" cannot be more clear. The peaceful, diplomatic and (rather) non-violent path to emancipation is shown to exist in these groups as just a tiny majority...... a POV that will be silenced by it's own (impatient) "friends" who WILL disagree. A cursory look at all insurgencies around the world shows this to be true.... be it Palestine, Tamil Eelam, Ireland or whatever. (PS: This once again reinforces my understanding (and gratitude) of the grand plan of the Indian National Movement and why we Indians are right here, right now while other similar nations simply laid down and died). Also depicted in the movie are corrupt, profiteers who takes advantage of people's dire misfortunes and great tragedies, be it his/her own people for narrow interests. James Clavell's "King Rat" and Art Spiegelman's "Maus" has excellent specimens from this loathsome genus, the profiteers featured here are as amusing as revoltingly evil.

In spite of all this filth and darkness, there is that last, timid entity Pandora released into this world..... hope. While this is a hope for humanity as a whole, a chance to reboot society without repeating old mistakes, the theme of that sliver of goodness in the individual human heart is conveyed quite touchingly.

{Note: Major Spoilers ahead...}
In the climactic "Bexhill Intifada" battle scene with high-caliber bullets and RPGs flying all around, the long missed cry of an infant draws fighter, traitor and cowering bystander together in a trance. Not minding the bullets cutting into their bodies and felling their near and dear right next to them, the doomed ones reverently adore the first child born in twenty years. Even the hardened soldiers who have stormed the building to kill every living thing on sight stops in their tracks surprised (and relieved) in hearing a baby cry. Former enemies give way so that this symbol of new hope can escape all this carnage; a communications officer ignores the frantic orders in his walkie-talkie, a few soldiers fall to knees praying and a grim Sergeant almost goes into tears.

At this point I was beginning to wonder if Cuaron was stretching the point.... ruining a perfectly good movie at the climax. (Like Mani Ratnam's "Bombay" ending cheesily with rioters across the city hugging and doing a "Hands across India"..... an artificial saccharine-sweet sermon and make-believe that offends history as well as one's intelligence! The cynic and "man of the world" that I am, I almost booed in the theater! What next, Dawood Ibrahim giving a sensuous Thai massage (with "happy ending") to Bal Thackeray as the end credits roll? WTF?!)
Not Alfonso Cuaron! No folks.... definitely not! Just as the protagonists walk away with the baby as the masses numbers of soldiers and insurgents part like the Red Sea before Moses, an RPG rams into the group of soldiers followed by heavy gunfire from the insurgent holdout (where the lead characters had been hiding moments ago)..... Hey, it's business as usual! The soldiers return fire as the protagonists escape and the former use their overwhelming firepower to flatten the building (which contained many women and children by the way). For added insurance, they call in an air strike which is witnessed by the protagonists as they escape. Oh "escape"?! Did I just say escape? Well.... n what did I tell you about hope? :)

Loyalty to one's friends or a higher ideal, courage in the face of the greatest dangers and unbeatable will are the other themes. I have seen some pretty touching death scenes on screen.... from Rakesh Khanna in Namak Haram to Donnie Darko's sacrifice (to the tunes of “Mad World”) to that BEAUTIFUL "Sicilian Scene" in Tarantino's True Romance where Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper palaver to the lifting tunes of the Flower Duet from "Lakme". Yet, Michael Caine's defiant and yet wholly-at-peace sacrifice, the doomed soldiers and insurgents who "adore the baby" in the holdout just before the final carnage resumes, the guide who refuse to accompany the protagonists lest she slow them down.... and finally the last and most redemptive sacrifice of them all are quite inspiring.

As Curaon himself points out, the "seeking yourself road movie" aspect (like his previous, well known Y Tu Mama Tambien) and the Christian Nativity theme are also quite apparent, yet these are not the overriding themes of the movie. The total loss of faith in everything (due to a personal tragedy) is what characterizes the hero while loss of faith in the traditional church depicted by the rising Hindu/Neo-Pagan rituals (some of the main protagonists always chant Sanskrit Mantras and the final credits end with the "Om Shanti... Shanti.... Shanti" mantra). This is contrasted to the self-flagellations of the extremist "hellfire" churches. I expected to see a march of the self-flagellates a-la Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" but Curaon must have deliberately chosen to avoid that iconic and well-known visual. Given the Opus Dei, Tablighi Jamaat and assorted types running around even in these relatively peaceful times, one wouldn't fault Cuaron if he showed something stronger and in-your-face. Yet he wisely decides to concentrate on the more important messages of the movie. (This facet depicts which way human faith could turn if mankind faces a mortal threat.... some lose faith, some dig in deeper while others seek alternate answers. Judaism during the exile and the holocaust is an excellent base reference, but I probably shouldn't go deeper into it here..... maybe another day!)

The performances:

Clive Owen plays the lead character Theo, a former activist turned weary bureaucrat and former husband of Julian (played by Julianne Moore), who is a wanted "enemy of the state". She happens to be the leader of an insurgent group called the "Five Fishes", fighting for immigrant rights among other aims. Moore has only a cameo appearance, but being the veteran actor she is, the character is handled quite competently. Owen is an excellent actor and like George Clooney he sincerely tries to subdue his rugged coolness while playing harried, defeated characters. I must say he does succeed in this attempt! I knew he had it in him when he played the middle class dad hounded by a blackmailer in "Derailed" (now remade in Tamil as "Pachakkili Muttham" by Gautam Menon)... he hasn't let us down this time while playing a lost man in a dark world, trying to redeem himself. The sheer will displayed by his (otherwise "don't give a shit") character on knowing the nature of the task entrusted by his wife and realizing whole humanity's stake in it is laudable. The "ordinary man made into a hero by extraordinary situations" theme is treated competently by both Cuaron and Owen.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is another vastly talented actor roped in by Cuaron.... now this man has one of the kindest faces I have ever seen. The role of a most wronged character in "Dirty Pretty Things" for instance could not be better portrayed by any other actor. However, he has shown his brilliance in playing supremely evil characters... his portrayal of the sadistic Detroit gangland boss in the gritty "Four Brothers" and the fanatical Govt hit man in "Serenity" were quite a revelation. This time he plays Luke, the 2nd in Command of the "Fishes" who ascends to power after Julian goes out of the picture. While Julian is guided by humanistic notions and ideals which transcend politics, Luke is the militant... perhaps an anarchist or an opportunist who who wishes to use the "grail of mankind" for his own political purposes. He disposes off the voices in his organization which call for diplomacy and non-violence and relies on the gun to settle things. The cold, scheming "villainous" nature is hid by a mask of idealism, sincere loyalty and kindness. And perhaps he is not a villain at all, he may have felt the ahimsa marg will not work this time in a Britain gone rabid. Perhaps the people would rally only under his new banner and overthrow the reigning tyranny...... Since a good number from the insurgent group (long time compatriots of Julian) supports his conspiracy, perhaps Luke was right all along. The decision he made with respect to his former leader doesn't entitle him to the "evil usurper" tag methinks..... I for one dunno what turmoil might have reigned in the Mahatma's or Nehru's mind as they led fellow satyagrahis into possible death during the many Satyagrahas.... or for that matter what was going on inside Mian Osama Bin Laden's mind when he decided to assassinate his guru and mentor Abdullah Azam. It's lonely at the top and you have to make such tough decisions all the time.... Luke's final conversation with Theo and the last shot of a wounded Luke fighting the troops makes you wonder what to really think of him. No Karmic retribution for the "villains" nor any gruesome death..... even the murdering albino-psycho (one of the only two true villains in the movie) who hangs out with Luke is not shown getting cut down by Karma's unforgiving scythe. His end is shown as a part of the general climactic carnage, not even an afterthought is given.

A newcomer named Claire-Hope Ashitey plays the young refugee Carribean who carries the "grail of humanity" in her womb. Her portrayal of the foulmouthed, guttural Kee who is quite uncomfortable with the burden which fate cast on her is indicative of serious talent..... the accent she picks up for her role is authentic BTW. Kee's streetwise intelligence and dry humor and the trust she places on Julian and Theo would make her perhaps the best person to look after humanity's last hope in a dystopia like this one.

The incomparable Michael Caine turns away from his established image and plays Jasper, a neo-hippie who was once a celebrated political cartoonist. That phase of life was till Britain ceased being a democracy and turned the state into an oppressor of the people. In fact the IB equivalent of Britain, MI-5 had tortured his wife (once a famous photo-journalist) and turned her into a catatonic wreck...... perhaps for stumbling into some skeletons in the the Govt's closet. Michael Caine played the lead role in the cult 1976 gangster movie "Get Carter", a movie which was pilloried by the lay public and most British critics for it portrayed crime and poverty-ridden East London. the dark side of Britain was perhaps first shown in this movie... remember that the stiffs are very sensitive to this kind of portrayals. Case in point; Brighton Rock, Braveheart, The Patriot, Lagaan and Elizabeth. Each of these were severely criticized by Brits for it showed a side of England they didn't (or could not) accept. Children of Men is shot mostly in East London for this very reason..... Cuaron himself says that this was perhaps the only part of London which ain't a Potemkin Village and is devoid of any "glamor". I wish he had been able to use the "Pakistani Emirate" of Bradford as his chief location instead... I've heard that lawless place is Mullah Omar's wetdream, a real "High Noon in Dodge City". But it wouldn't be politically correct to say that in public.... and British Pakis ain't exactly the Salt of the Earth! Anyway, good ol' Caine is reliable as usual! His portrayal of a man whose services and inputs are not wanted anymore by the current state system (parallels to Orwell's 1984 with Rutherford, the disgraced cartoonist who had ushered in the great revolution?) reduced to peddling narcotics and looking after his catatonic wife is.... bittersweet.

The supporting cast has done a great job...... the murdering young "Fish", the endlessly blabbering Gypsy guide who turns into a real lifesaver, the corrupt cop 'running' the Concentration Camp, the Minister for the Ark of Arts and Miriam, the former OBGYN who escorts Kee are all well etched characters played competently by the ensemble cast. The Minister is an especially amusing and thought provoking character; was that cynicism at it's pinnacle or was it some kind of suppressed, warped hope..... or was it a fond wish that humanity's greatest creations would survive all the death and madness?

The overall movie:

The soundtrack is perhaps the best, well at least the most apt one I have seen in recent times. Some of the tunes are quite familiar and progressive rock is used liberally. I recognized some popular classical compositions too..... there is no underlying theme to the soundtracks like you have in "Donnie Darko", LOTR" or "Walk the Line" but it perfectly mirrors the many themes and threads in the story. The original score refers to the nativity theme of Mary-Joseph and Jesus, and it was apparently made so following Cuaron's explicit request.
Cinematography, costumes and editing is remarkable..... it IS a Britain gone to shit! Britain is a fascist tyranny down to the immigration officers brandishing truncheons, fearsome hunting dogs and assault rifles! This world ain't the antiseptic, plastic dystopia of V for Vendetta and it closely follows the imagery of "Blade Runner", "Brazil" and "Soylent Green". The sad, grim atmosphere is reminiscent to the dust bowls of Soylent Green, the merciless British Govt is somewhat modelled on the surreal nightmare that was depicted in Gilliam's "Brazil", while the futuristic aspects are influenced by Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" and the amazing "Gattaca". Unlike "Paradise Now" which has trace amounts of psy-ops showing Israelis as distant, emotionless phanatsms who lord over 'untermenschen' Palestinians, the "enemy" here is shown as all too human. Be it insurgent or British soldier, the human aspect is brought out pretty well.... starts off with long distance shots of human figures approaching to kill but they are "made human" in that climactic scene I talked about earlier.

Conclusion:

This is a must watch! "Phull 400% excellent onlee", as our Jarnail Mian Pervez Musharraf would say. Most people would be familiar with Alfonso Cuaron through his "Great expectations" and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" if not the classic "Y Tu Mama Tambien" starring Maribel Verdu..... however, this would be the movie Cuaron should be (and would be) known for. Fellow Sci-Fi heads, please cast aside the dystopic-futurism facet for a while and concentrate on the other themes of the movie. If you want a dystopia where a whole section of humanity is wiped off (save one "grail") I suggest you should try the continuing graphic novel series "Y: The Last Man" instead. Everyone, please try to pick out what's being said through this film. The messages are subtle, but they ain't that cryptic. Nor does it have any pseudo-intellectual/pseudo-secular subliminal messaging like Parzania or Rang de Basanti. I believe this would be an enjoyable experience for the viewers.... I personally loved it so much that I came back to blogging after 4 months of self-imposed exile!

And The Wanderer's grade?
Well.... I think this film truly deserves a 9 in a scale of 10 from moi. And that's five stars (rounded off ;-) ).
Cheers!

The Story Must Go On....

2006-10-27T01:09:00.000+05:30

I have posted the second chapter... well, a section of the second chapter.... of my Voldemort saga in my wordpress blog. Been away from blogging and blog trawling for a long time..... I just got into a new job in hardcore tech and life's been sorta hectic since then. My free time, which there seems to be less and less of these days are hogged by South Park episodes or cult novels in CDisplay format. Yet I did some reading on the finer points of dramatic writing and chiseled off the rough edges of my story... or so I think. I guess those serious works on fiction writing has helped me a bit.... of course you can't learn to write a novel/short story/poem from a "Dummies" type book or an MA level tome on dramatic fiction, but it sure helps you take your first steps,chart a safe course and sharpen those tools the storytellers are born with. Anywayz, there will be a steady stream of posts which would take you readers down my Voldemort story now that I have a good idea on where this is all going.

So here's the pulp I just coughed up. Reader, you have been warned! ;)

Chapter-II: A Clash of Interests

Transition?

2006-09-23T00:30:00.000+05:30

Bhaiyon aur Behenon,

Long time no blog, eh? I apologize..... was pretty wrapped up in a zillion things. Hope to make it up to you all soon.
Phirst of all, I am just experimenting with WordPress blog (free version) and I have hosted my latest post there. I wanna see how it works out and get the feel of things before I purchase some serious real estate on the internet and get a cool blog template like GreatBong's. I am told WordPress goes along with BlueHost servicing (which Arnab Guru uses) best.
Well, parkalaam.... parkalaam. As of now it's all fluid.

The problem with the free Wordpress blog template is that you can't add cool tools like Statcounter or Clustermaps in the sidebar.... You can't add profile pics and theme pics for sidebar window etc. For all that, one needs to get the upgraded version for 25$ a year apparently. So I am going to make my next cpl of posts on Wordpress and announce them out here with a link. Thus I could still feed my ego ;) by checking out statcounters and similar tools .... and keep my blogspot name from being recycled. So all those who have honored me by linking to my blog, pleej don't edit your existing links/favorites to this blog.... not yet. If I don't like Wordpress and I can't get my own space I will come back to this blog. And in the meantime you can get to my new posts in Wordpress blog from the posts here.
Okay? Pretty pretty please? :)

So..... here's my new, super looong and insufferable post;

Ciao,
Anand K.

Death Eater: Part - 1 : The Horcrux

2006-08-26T10:26:00.000+05:30

Folks, this is my first real attempt at fiction. Fan fiction it may be, yet I am finally taking that step into writing fiction..... a very, very difficult task if I may say so. Friends of mine and a few teachers had long asked me to try a hand at fiction.... I couldn't go beyond some "inspired" stories or the trivial fiction one churns out in English Literature papers, yet they might have seen something in me.
As a tribute to these good folk, I have chosen the mysterious Lord Voldemort, born Tom Marvolo Riddle, from Harry Potter universe and I attempt to give him a backstory and more depth. It may not be the finest work of English fiction, but please see it as a attempt to hone my story writing skills (well, my url is a take on "The Storyteller", right? ;) ) . I may continue this particular saga if the feedback is good and I feel it is worth the electrons it is consuming.

Wokay?

Hoping not to have landed an absolute turkey,

Anand K.
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Chapter I
The Quest

1950.

Varanasi the ancient, the place of atonement for man and god, the cleanser of spirits..... the path to the other side. The hordes of tourists, hawkers, wannabes, faux "holy men", the Ganga turned into a veritable Vaitarini by the avarice of man, the dirt-ash-garbage and feces stained gullies of the city couldn't hide the true nature of Varanasi to the sensitive ones. Those few sentient beings, human and otherwise, who could hear the sounds and see the colors normal beings cannot have always felt the surging power at Varanasi... despite her appearance they recognized her for what she was. Varanasi is older than history, older than legend, older even than myth. The power existed even before the first altars were built by sons of Manu, it existed even before Lord Shiva himself came to atone for his sin of Brahmahatya epochs ago. Very few places in this world still function as doorways to the higher and nether planes, only these spots still have residues of the "magic" of those ancient ages; the ages where gods and demons walked the Earth. Varanasi was a veritable Motherlode for all those interested and steeped into the philosophic and the esoteric. Yet, Tom Marvolo Riddle had never been more afraid in his life.

Unlike most denizens of the wizarding world, Riddle was rather well acquainted with the ways and the arts of the mud-bloods. Once, during his childhood in the orphanage he had stumbled upon the works of a budding writer named J.R.R.Tolkien.... those books belonged to a literature student working as a part time apprentice at the orphanage. The fantasy world woven by the master storyteller Tolkien had offered respite from the dreary modern world; the grey, mechanical world little Riddle somehow realized he had *no* place in. In these works he read about Valinor, the undying lands of the Gods and appreciated that concept. Now, immortality and the prospect of godhead appealed to the blood of Salazar Slytherin.... as much as it was disturbed by the “unknown” that awaited mere mortals. Tolkien suggested that the immortal Elves (and even the gods) viewed death as a gift by the Supreme Godhead, Eru Illuvatar, to his favorite children. Even the first, uncorrupted mortals welcomed death at the end of their time as a last adventure……… but Riddle was afraid of the unknown. The prospects of being consigned into the “nothingness and oblivion” as he perceived it had disturbed him no end. It was no “childish” trifles like spiders or the dark or bullying older kids which terrified little Tom Riddle, it was death.

And in Varanasi, death was everywhere….. death was all around him. He could feel the souls and voices of thousands if not millions drift into the unknowns, he saw throngs of elderly pray earnestly for death in the doorways of the endless stone cut temples….. he even saw countless thirsty spirits hover over the tranquil Ganga waiting intently for their living loved ones and descendants to release them from limbo. Some of these spirits had immense bellies and hungry, lustful eyes but mouths the size of a pin’s head, some had the content look of a person at the end of the journey while the eyes of some spirits were unfathomable pools of regret. The malevolent ones on the other hand wandered around the forsaken “disgraced” cremation ghats and the forests on the banks of the rivers of Varanasi.
Death and transition to the beyond did not feel like the cold scythe of the Grim Reaper as commonly thought in the west, it was not even that painful and terrifying experience birth is.... Riddle could see it now. Yet, Riddle was afraid. Like all those scurrying, vain tyrants who fear what awaits them in the beyond, that great equaliser where one is no different from his vanquished victim from the mortal plane, Riddle was afraid. His august predecessors who harbored the same fears tried to cheat death and postpone their punishment or "ordinary" existence or obliteration in the beyond.... in vain. And here he was, in Varanasi the citadel to the other worlds, beholden to the splendor of death, salvation and Karma.

Still, he HAD to stay. Even evil has to face its tremendous fears and supreme loneliness. He had come to the city of death precisely to do the impossible task. He was there to cheat if not defeat death….. the mysterious power various cultures depicted variously as a dark lady in red, the grim reaper, the dark god on his terrible buffalo or more “conveniently” as psychopomps like Charon, the raven and even St. Peter. Attempts by the puny human mind to understand this phenomenon by casting death into easily digestible anthropomorphic forms…

His quest for invinciblity, if not true immortality, had taken him to the ancient lands where magic and the occult had been a way of life; the groves and stone circles of his homeland and Ireland, the necropolises and pyramids of Egypt, the catacombs of East Europe, the dark alleys of Istanbul, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Persia and now India. Till now, all his efforts had been in vain, the old religions and the arcane knowledge of those lands had been all but obliterated by the new faiths. The prophets and seers massacred, the books of the dead burned, the runes scraped off, the metal plates melted.... all by the ravaging Jihads, reconquistas, crusades and inquistions. Even the wizarding world of those lands were not spared. The new faiths that seeped into the sequestered wizarding community had made them forsake the occult and the dark. The demons and the Jinns were trapped in crystals and hidden away for eternity... if not destroyed; the dark tomes burned by holy fires; the Golems returned to clay and rock; the black eggs of the phoenixes destroyed by powerful incantations.... it was a merciless massacre. Priceless knowledge, "good" and "bad"collected through millenia of efforts had been destroyed at the exhorting of a few priests who were terrified of what they couldn't comprehend. An aged Dervish in Isfahan advised him that it is perhaps only in the ancient land of India (where every juggernaut had ground to a screeching halt) that he would find his answers. Yes, India with her unbroken tradition and arcane teachings might have something to give him.... hadn't she blessed so many knowledge seekers from all corners of the globe? Didn't she still hide the magical realms, the ancient sages, the Nine and their arcane knowledge, the immortals from the earlier age? Didn't she stay away from the so-called international wizarding community with their ridiculous "ministers of magic"? This is perhaps the only land where the powers keep to themselves, unhindered, immutable and magnificient..... Yes, he would find his answers here.

Tom Riddle's mind was buoyant as he walked to a cremation ghat and settled near the burning pyre of what once used to be a man. His thoughts raced back to that last year at Hogwarts, to the chain of events that led him into his dark quest and pilgrimage....

*

It was not that sixteen year old Tom Riddle was a stranger to darkness.... hadn't he killed his own father and his grandparents, hadn't he framed his own slow-witted uncle and did he not release the terrible Basilisk and killed a filthy mudblood? Most importantly, did he not pour a part of his self, his malice and his wisdom into an ordinary diary which could outlast even his mortal self.... long before he actually killed? Riddle himself not knew exactly know how he achieved it, people would later say "Riddle sealed a part of his 16 year old self in the diary", but one wonders even if HE knew what he was doing. Was he trying to emulate his old hero, Sauron who poured his entire self into the "indestructible" One Ring? Sauron was a powerful Maiar, a Demigod.... and he was fictional too! Tom Riddle on the other hand was real, he was still human... well, atleast for the moment he was. However, Riddle had sensed something; a palpable sundering of his being when he killed his father (and such a likeness of his father he was) and his grandparents a year later. The sundering of the soul actually started when he opened the chamber and started cleansing Hogwarts of the Mudbloods.... The death of innocent Myrtle, though not by his own hand had caused the first gash in the fabric of his soul. The warping of his soul amused Tom Riddle more than anything... the chaos and the distort of the being that would have driven any lesser person insane was embraced wholeheartedly. It was like a challenge, a new dimension had opened.... he was not just Tom Marvolo Riddle anymore.
It was actually the weak sundered part of his self that he manifested into the diary. He still did not know how he was able to do that, all he did was listen to the voices of the generations of Slytherins surging through his veins.... quite serendipitous that episode was. Riddle himself began to understand the nature of his diary only in bits and pieces.... it took hours of introspection and experimentation before he realised that the diary indeed contained that sundered part of his soul. Now that his horizons were further expanded with his multiple murders, Tom Riddle needed to understand what was happening to him. He HAD to know if he could go further.....

The Hogwarts Library turned out to be useless in his quest for a greater understanding of the phenomenon...... it was woefully stocked when it came to tomes of the Dark Arts. Probably it had something to do with the official policy of Hogwarts which stresses teaching *defense* against the dark arts..... or maybe Dumbledore's cliche might have succeeded in keeping the resources out of bounds of curious students. It was a chance encounter with a grizzled wizard at The Hog' Head pub that same year where he stumbled on a possible answer to his questions. The said wizard, a decorated veteran from the Great War of the wizarding realm was totally sloshed and bloated with alcohol that fateful night. In the course of Riddle's toadying and innocuous questions on the finer aspects of the Great War, the veteran boasted on being on "a part of this super secret mission with Dumbledore to the forests of Saxony to locate something called the Horcrux..... a demonic talisman that was the source of Grindelwald's immense powers". Apparently, they were briefed only that destroying the talisman would hasten the defeat the of the dark wizard who was causing untold mayhem in the wizarding as well as the muggle world. Riddle had questioned the wizard endlessly, to increasing frustration..... the wizard-soldier knew nothing more than the grunt work he was assigned to. He did not know who or what this Horcrux thing was, he did not even see it. It was seen only by Dumbledore who went right through that terrible door or fire and returned in about an hour, his face flush with victory and relief... while the rest of the team stood guard against any devices of the Grindelwaldist Ahnenerbe and the Thule Society.

Contacting Dumbledore was out of the question, he had been wary of Riddle since the day he first laid eyes on him. The Head Master was aloof and quite unaccessible, he was close to Dumbledore and Riddle did not enjoy a personal relationship with the headmaster either. But Professor Slughorn might know something......

Riddle snapped back to the present at the sounds of a group of ascetics chanting lustily to... whichever power they were invoking. A wild, ash smeared and naked ascetic was foraging the still warm embers of the pyre while the rest gathered in a circle around the pyre and called to the heavens in a primeval voices.
"This land was so strange, the conventions so different, the occult more unbridled and developed..... no statist Ministry of Magic peeking over your shoulder either", mused Riddle once again. He was certain the quest for power over death, the quest that took a definite form in Horace Slughorn's office so many years ago will be successfull here.
"I already possess receptables to hold a soul like mine and I have done what is required to go further than any wizard ever had.... " said Tom Riddle to himself, "..... but I do not know the way. I have traced the footsteps of my predecessors and I have finally come to the land that holds the answer. I swear on the name of Salazar Slyther, my quest shall come to fruition here!"

Riddle solemnly rose up from the stone cut steps that led to the river and walked into the night, apparently yet another white man who had come to India seeking answers to esoteric questions. The ordinary locals, the beat police, the false priests and the faux "sages" paid no attention to him... yet there were some in Varanasi who sensed the Black-Hole that was Tom Marvolo Riddle.
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Omkara: The Review

2006-08-02T22:02:00.000+05:30

There's this wise saying in Arabic, "Never ever let your dog go hungry"..... "dogs" might be loyal but the strands of loyalty (at the basic level) are mostly built on implict understandings of give and take. Strands which might strain and even break if the equation is kept unbalanced. Only in the rarest of spheres will sentient links like love and loyalty be absolute and total, but these are exceptions rather than the rule. The tragedy of Omkara is in the cardinal mistake of taking his loyal lieutenant, Ishwar 'Langda' Tyagi for granted. This master-lieutenant equation is one instance where Vishal Bharadwaj's Omkara departs from Shakespeare's Othello and it's adaptations by talented artists like Oliver Parker, Orson Welles, Tim Blake Nelson and our own Jayaraj. Though Omkara is an adaptation of Othello, a product of one of the greatest minds of Humanity viz. Shakespeare, it does exhibit distinctive features and provides even more depth to the original characters. This is no mean feat in itself.... not everyone can improve on the Bard of Avon, but Vishal Bharadwaj does it with aplomb.

Shakespear's Era of Tragedy is a reflection of the post Elizabethean England.... a darker period which could showcase his true genius, viz. his understanding of human nature. The original Iago was a jealous malcontent who hates his master Othello, the Moorish general of Venice. The reaons for this demonic hatred is not explicitly explained, but the reader can gather that it is a mix of racism, jealousy of Othello's talent and his fairy tale love story, hatred of Othello's second in command Cassio and his confidence in his own resourcefullness and intellect which is obviously higher than his superiors. He is no different from Cassius of the Bard's Julius Caesar play who is "lean and hungry" by Caesar's own astute observation. However, Caesar trusted his compatriot who once saved him from death by drowning in Hispania and refused to take heed of warnings from those close to him. The original Othello trusted Iago, even let him poison his ears against his trusted 2nd in command and his wife.... trusted him to the point of the audience's disbelief! Maybe there's a backstory to back up this trust but Shakespeare doesn't tell us.

While Shakespeare chose to put up Iago as the bigoted, crafty and slimy malcontent who has no "just cause" other adaptations of Othello have given more depth to Iago. Tim Blake Nelson, a very very talented actor/director had made this movie title 'O' which is a high school sports drama take on Othello. 'O' is Odin, a black basketball star of his high school while Iago character played competently by Josh Hartnett is his team-mate. This Iago resents O 'coz his own father, the coach, shows affection towards the vastly talented O. Iago goes on a steroid course to increase his prowess and earn the respect of his dad, only to descend further into rage fuelled insanity. Jayaraj's Iago, Paniyan, played by Lal is closer to the original as he harbors hatred for Perumalayan from the very beginning..... though he claims it is compounded by Perumalayan choosing Kaanthan over the much senior Paniyan for the coveted Theyyam title. However, the Othello character Perumalayan Kannan is more insecure owing to his smallpox stricken face and low caste origins.... he himself acknowledges his temerity in whisking off the beautiful high-caste daughter of the feudal lord and rues his deformity on more than one occassion. The original Othello only expresses a doubt that Desdemona desires Cassio for Othello is a swarthy moor and much older than she is. However, he is not wracked by insecurity and childish possessiveness like Perumalayan Kannan.

Coming to Omkara the movie, our Iago, Ishwar 'Langda' Tyagi is perhaps the most capable and dangerous person in the whole gang. Omkara himself needs to empty whole magazines to kill his enemies while Tyagi, a DEAD shot needs just one bullet per person. His sniping skills are extraordinary.... as depicted in a scene where he picks off an entire enemy gang one by one *while they are fighting a hand to hand battle with his comrades*. He is intelligent, strong, determined and is a team player but he is slightly lame (hence the nickname 'Langda' ) and a boorish rustic. Omkara, aiming higher (state level politics in this movie) probably sees the future in Kesu, a capable student leader and a recent entry to his band. He chooses the kid over Langda Tyagi in a dramatic fashion...... in a somewhat cruel manner to Tyagi. At least a word beforehand might have ameliorated Tyagi's pain and sense of betrayal, but Omkara rather chose to surprise everyone in public. Maybe the Chief has to use his own discretion and make independent, hard choices without confiding with anyone else.... but hello, he is your *trusted advisor* and friend, right?! Perhaps it's because the suave, smooth talking but tough kid who holds the key to the foreseeable future rather than an illiterate, battle-scarred Langda who is only streetwise and good for wetworks. The "Duke of Venice" character played by Naseeruddin Shah, who knows human nature better than anyone else asks Omkara "What about Tyagi?". For a Bhai of the UP badlands, Omkara makes the surprising and apparently naive assertion that "He is my *brother* and would understand!".
Now this Omkara is not so trusting of anyone like Shakespeare's or Nelson's or Jayaraj's versions.... he demands concrete Proof of Infidelity before his wedding (the "proof" which was brilliantly staged by Tyagi at very short notice) against Tyagi's life. Other Othellos didn't make this "do or die" demand if I remember correctly. However, Omkara does respect Tyagi's opinions and analysis, his neutrality as an observer and his experience in the "dhanda". Tyagi's machinations are not much craftier than the run-of-the-mill Narads in TV soap operas, but he senses correctly that when it comes to Dolly (our Desdemona), Omkara's passion and love clouds his judgement. Couple it with Dolly's father's cold Parthian Barb that "she who has betrayed his father can betray ANYBODY" which resonates in his mind, the fact that Kesu is a natural charmer when it comes to the lay-dees and Dolly is the most gorgeous woman in that corner of the globe..... one can't blame anyone for taking leave of his senses.
As wise people have observed, "Men who are otherwise brilliant and rational beings can be utter dorks when it comes to women" and of course the other famous (sometimes derogatory) uvaacha, "God has given man a brain and a penis, but unfortunately enough blood to operate only one of these at a time". When it boils down to basics on suspicion of infidelity, the echoing self-judgement in his mind is "He (the third man) is a better *man* than I am..... He is a better *man* than I am...." Now when your wife's father and your closest pal imply that she is insulting you (after all, infidelity is the worst insult one can give his spouse) it probably becomes very difficult to let go of that sliver of doubt. Compounding circumstancial "proof", self-goals by Dolly and Tyagi's coup-de-grace weighed against sage advice from truly well-meaning friends and the repeated implorations of the bewildered Dolly finally snapped Omkara..... which leads to the Greek tragedy.

Konkona Sen Sharma is an amazing actress. Period! It's a pleasure watching a great actress who ain't a plastic!
She plays Indu/Emilia, the well meaning and capable wife of Iago/Langda Tyagi. She simply becomes the simple, rustic, large-hearted and yet strong character she's supposed to play. Her character is the third character who has been given more depth in this movie, and boy how does she do it! She's the big sister and mother to all the bad boys in that Daaku world (including her Husband's boss) , wise to the ways of the world, possessing the unfailing rustic common-sense and always ready to lend a shoulder to cry upon. Her sole character flaw is perhaps in not understanding her husband's rage at being superceded and not sensing the scheming monster within. She thinks her hubby is just another sleazy, gross and gruff person who should be treated like a little unruly rascal but doesn't sense the bad vibesand everyone pays for it at the bitter end. Tyagi is an Anthony Hopkins quality actor and even fools someone like Omkara who's been seeing him for 15 years..... yet wives, espeically the tough-n-nice ones like Indu, are supposed to be more intutive, right? :)
This brings us to another theory on Tyagi-Iago..... he was INDEED a good man, loyal friend and good husband till that moment when his mind snapped and was forever set against his former friends. There is also a warped sense of loyalty to Omkara despite all this as proven in a chaotic fight scene where Tyagi saves Omkara with his skills as a shooter (or maybe is it just my flawed reading..... or maybe he was fattening the pig for the slaughter?). Makes me wonder, will ordinary folks you or I break and go into the dark side when our greatest dreams are shattered directly or indirectly by those whom you love?

Another character worth mention is Roderigo/Rajju character played by newcomer Deepak Dobriyal. He stands out as the jilted bridegroom of Dolly who still can't let it go. He is consumed with jealousy and rage but is meekly subservient to Omkara (while planning his destruction at the same time) for the time being. His dad is a financier to Omkara's operations, you see..... and he has the misfortune to occasionally watch HIS Dolly being intimate with the usurper. He reminds me of a salivating, scheming but outwardly earnest Gollum who helps Frodo.... only because Frodo holds the One Ring, Gollum's "Preciousssss". But in this case, Samwise Gamgee(Tyagi) who is supposed to protect Frodo (Omkara) is actually in collusion with the slimy, treacherous Gollum. And as we know, Frodo wouldn't have gone far without Sam.
Unlike the spineless puppet portrayal of Roderigo in other versions of Othello, this one is a force to reckon with. It is his haunting chant of "Tyagi.... Bahubali, Tyagi.... Bahubali" (Bahubali is the title Tyagi was jockeying for) which first sparks the glitter of ambition in Tyagi's eyes. The way the "innocuous" comical relief/sleazeball crashes into the idyllic world of the soon-to-be-fallen-hero is portrayed in an eerie (and hilarious at the same time) scene. It is this Roderigo who wickedly rubs salt into Tyagi's wounded heart and sets him into the vortex of evil...... not the other way round as in other adaptations. One can't help but notice how this weasel "comes of age" in his own way from a chicken-hearted, spindly legged groom riding a ridiculous moped and a perpetually sobbing buffoon to a gun-wielding avenger bent on reaching his manzil.

Other characters aren't much to write about.... except for Shah's interesting portrayal of the "Duke". Here he is a bald Bhaisaab (**who does looks a bit like Mahatma Gandhi gone evil, as Raja Sen observed in his review**), an MP who's one of those smooth players in Brahmin-Rajput politics of UP. He has some good one-liners and his drawling matter-of-fact voice is a pleasure to hear.
Brabantio, here known as Vakeelsaab, is Dolly's dad. Unlike the heartbroken curse of original Brabantio and Narendra Prasad's portrayal in Kaliyattam, the way this daddy tells Omkara that his own daughter will one day betray him is quite chilling. It sounded rather like a pissed ex-boyfriend "warning" his replacement (to plant seeds of doubt and strife); "Just between us grown-up men..... do watch out, boss! She's a whore!"
Dolly/Desdemona is kept rather unaltered, the archetype self-sacrificing doomed lady (that's what her name means BTW) and a symbol of purity, love and innocence. Only one thing stands out in the movie, the way she subtly let's Omkara know her liking for Omkara is no mere infatuation/ puppy-love. One thing that does stand out is Dolly does the cardinal sin of bringing another man to their marital bed. (Not in the literal sense..... what were you pervs thinking? :P ) This was following a chweet romantic moment in bed and she tries to curry favor for Kesu who was her classmate in college and who's presently in the doghouse. Now I ain't married, but even a Vogon like me knows some things should not have a price-tag .... some things must not be implied or demanded in moments like these. Of course, it was just a chaste request for helping out her friend now that Omkara was in a good mood, but bringing up that topic in such a situation sours the mood. I guess most men might think "Oh, was this all services rendered against a collateral payement? Is that it?!" ( Omkara had already sown the dragon seeds of suspicion unbeknownst to her. He becomes royally pissed and more suspicious when she brings Kesu's matter)
Lesser can be said on for Cassio (Kesu) and Bianca (Billo Chamanbahar), the latter played by Bipasha Basu. They are pretty much the same as the original characters and only have weakly supporting roles in the scheme of things. I must say the only eyesore in the movie is Bipasha's *second* item number.....she's HOT, but it's heresy pasting a skin show a needless second item-number in a serious movie like this! However the wedge created between Kesu and Billo as a collateral damage to Tyagi's machinations is not as grating as the eyecandy-teen romance angle.
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Now coming to the performances, music etc and the movie as a whole:

Overall
Othello was set in the tense surroundings of Venice and Cyprus which were under the threat of Ottoman invasion. Most of the action is set on the wind swept isle of Cyprus with it's fortification and grim atmosphere. The adaptations have always kept a somewhat similar background, "Kaliyattam" had the rural dust-bowls and forests with the gaudy colors, the strange local deities and structures of Theyyam.... an art form which depicts paths of heroes and gory wars. One major Theyyam theme was "The legend of Kathivanoor Veeran" a folk hero and his lover Chemparuthi. They also met their doom due to treachery of another kind. "O" on the other hand had the battle-front of the American high school basketball court. Given the life-n-death image issues of teenagers in issues like this, this battle-front is as grim and dangerous as the forts of Cyprus. "Omkara" is set in THE dust-bowls..... the "cow-belt" of UP. Crushing poverty, caste politics, fallow lands, ope spaces, shanties, rival gangs, violence, politician-pandu-criminal nexus are staple features of these badlands. The settig is IMO more dangerous and foreboding than that of Omkara's counterparts.Now our Vishal has a good eye for backdrops. The way he transformed Macbeth from the fogs, Birnam forest and the rolling hills of Scotland to the modern Mumbai underworld is sheer genius. Kurosawa had it much easier with Throne of Blood 'coz he could easily supplant it to the feudal strife period of Japan. A period mirroring medieval Scotland.... down to the fog, the witches, the castles and the dense forest (Cobweb Forest). Vishal has again shown his genius by adapting it to the UP backdrop. There's almost a sepia filter as in "Kaante" plus the natural gaudy colors of the North, he doesn't overdo the color thing as Palekar did in Paheli. The cinematography, photography and choreography do justice to the story. All these have the stamp of the no-nonsense, thinking director Vishal.... no question about it. There are no perfectly sync extras dancing to the item-songs as in movies like Dum, Shool.... it is pure, raw fun, frolic, freesytle gyrations, nasha and lust. The scene of senior cops and ordinary pandus dancing to Bipasha jhatkas (Bipasha snatches the cap of an IPS officer and dances wearing that Topi) in the second item number is very.... believable.

Dialogues are not shuddh Kanyakabujh/Hindi Sabha Hindi for a change..... they are in purely local lingo which is a bit difficult to follow at times. The opening Tarantinoesque dialogue by Tyagi starts with "Chutiy*" for one thing...... it sets the tone for the whole bare-naked rural criminal India movie. Of course, outlaws don't speak in classical Urdu and Hindi, do they? Now, words are to be very carefully used when you are in Bhai world, where a simple nod can be a death-warrant for some poor bugger. And if you are going to make your boss, comrade-at-arms and family to be the puppets in your demonic grand plan you better use your words wisely. The wors of Tyagi are precise but loaded, reeking with flase concern, making infra-digs and designed in such a way so that Omkara is blinded to the possibly flawed/dubious premise and thrust into Tyagi's foregone conclusion. Kudos for Vishal who has written the screenplay and dialogues himself.

Performances.
Ajay Devgan as Omkara delivers a good performance. But I feel something's missing...... I felt more for Abhishek Bachan's Lallan (in Yuva) when he went downhill, for Suresh Gopi's epic descent into rabid insanity and jealousy in Kaliyattam and even Lawrence Fishburn's festering pain in Oliver Parker's Othello. Maybe it's the dark surroundings favored by Omkara and his ever present shades..... but you don't see the kind of anger and pain that drives one to destroy the love of your life.

Saif Ali Khan as Langda Tyagi is a relevation! He showed he has the "darkness" in him in Ek Haseena Thi and now he has indeed oudone himself. Come to the Dark Side, Saif..... you belong here! :)
Unlike his pink-undies metrosexual image, the Langda Tyagi we see is every bit the raw, untamed and earthy crook. Unlike a Hritik Roshan who insisted on wearing designer dhotis and Pahadi bunyans to display his rippling muscles to maximum effect, or a Salman Khan sporting a tanned-bronzed body and a cool Marine cut in Tere Naam (as against a Vikram who starved and sunburnt himself in preparation for Sethu), Saif Ali Khan does a commendable job in booting the "image factor" and insistence on "looking cool" even if beaten to an inch of his life ( a la SRK). He fits in..... easily. His performance is excellent...... matches other portrayals by heavyweights like Ian McKellen, Josh Hartnett and Kenneth Branaugh. The way his expression changes as he is cheered by Rajju the weasel, when he sees Omkara choosing Kesu over him when he is taunted by Rajju and finally when his house of cards collapse around him are indicative of some serious talent. I always believed he didn't deserve his award for Hum Tum, but in Omkara hindsight I agree that the *recognition* is well deserved. You have come a long way from "Ole Ole" Saif Mian, congratulations!

I've already spoken about Konkona Sen Sharma's performance. Where's the hem of your skirt, Oh Most Magnificent Muse? Let this wannabe artist kiss it and attain Kaivalyajnana! :)

And Deepak Dobrival? Guys, we have a new gun in town! Move over Raghubir Yadav, you are beginning to tire us. Here's someone who can do what you can..... and more.

***ADDED LATER***
I somehow missed Kareena Kapoor while speaking of the performances. Sorry Ji :)

Kareena for all her spoilt brat image is a quite capable actress. Her method acting in Chameli was quite a revelation.... IMO the only reason it failed to click was it's difficult to imagine someone "peaches-n-cream" pretty like Lolo as a streetwalker. Her Dolly has few lines but she stands her ground with a wide range of expressions, the betrayed/bewildered look alone when Omkara accuses her of infidelity on their wedding night vindicates her presence amongst the stalwarts in this cast. She's no Konkona but she sure has delivered her bit.
***

Vivek Oberoi and Bipasha delivers what's asked of them. Nothing earthshaking..... understandable given the standing of their characters. Naseeruddin Shah's again done well.... his role is nothing like that smooth-talking and dangerous cop (an adaptation of The Three Witches) in Maqbool which was Vishal's adaptation of Macbeth. Still, he has enoromous screen presence. Dolly's dad (dunno the artist'sname) has also done a good job as i mentioned before.

Music
The music composed by Vishal Bharadwaj is ek dum first class. "Beedi" is of course the raging favorite, but I prefer the soothing tunes of "O Saathi Re" and "Jag Ja". "O Sathi Re" is a great piece.... lifting tunes set to Omkara's and Dolly's romance. Ajay Devgan's recitation of "Jag Ja" in bed sort of tugs at your heart-strings..... but when he comes to the part where he promises a "Dashrath Boon" and tells her to ask anything she desires, Dolly butts in and demands Kesu's reinstation. (Some sense of timing, eh?) The sweetness of these songs plus the foreknowledge that everyone is doomed just adds to the appreciation. Yes, I think bittersweet would be a correct term for these two songs.
Rahat Fateh Ali Khan is one of my favorite artists. I fell temporarily in love with Paap's Udita Goswami via his unbelievably mellifluous tunes of "Mann Ki Lagan". His rendering of "Jiya Dhadak hadak" in Kalyug is something I listen to almost every day before going to sleep. Khan's "Naina" OST from this movie sets the backdrop of Dolly's and Omkara's first meeting and budding love....... great lyrics and Khan's unique voice makes a great listening. "Lakkad" is yet another beautiful song and it's in true bittersweet yearning-pathos mode. This song not featured in the movie, but obviously designed for Indu as she watches a ruthless Bhai like Omkara treating Dolly tenderly and lovingly (as against her own husband who's "quite an animal"). Hated the "Namak" item-number.... it doesn't belong here. Another song of note is "Omkara" by Sukhwindra Singh; I loved it when I listened to it standalone but in the movie it's played in a fight scene with Omkara walking away triumphantly after the dust settles. Obviously this is to highlight the heroism of Omkara, but I felt it wasn't necessary for a director like Vishal. Shaji Kailas showing Mohanlal lifting a road-roller is understandable.... but does Vishal need this? Could have done it more subtly. Bad Vishal. :p
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In short this movie gets a full 80% from yours truly. Highly recommended. Not quite Kurosawa standard (anybody seen his Shakespeare adaptations, "Ran" and "Throne of Blood"? The spirit's voice in "Throne of Blood", the eternal fog, the violent deaths and the whole Noh-theatre movie adaptation of Macbeth still gives me the jitters. The climax alone is worth the money). ***The ending could have been improved I guess, a bit too abrupt and comes crashind down on your heads. I loved the ending in Kaliyattam where Perumalayan immolates himself.... he turns into fire, he becomes fire and finally fades to nothingness.
(Spoilers follow:) However I must say the scene where a pained Omkara dismisses off Tyagi even after knowing the enormity of his crime and Tyagi's treachery was quite novel. I am reminded of that scene in Saving Private Ryan where the German paratrooper who walks down the stairs after knifing Private Mellish (Adam Goldberg) looks at the cringing Corporal Upham (who couldn't muster courage to help his comrade who was calling out to him) like he's an insignifant worm. That was the ultimate insult - "You don't matter to me". Omkara, in dismissing Tyagi shows no trace of malice or anger..... just resignation to his fate, accepting his own crime and stupidity, a warped mask of pain and peace, and that "you don't matter to me anymore" look.
Vishal also falls prey to audience's prediliction towards karmic retribution for all evil and shows Tyagi getting his throat cut by his shatterd wife who is then shown contemplating suicide by jumping into a well. The latter scene is something like Tarantino's trademark Trunk Shots. The dishevelled and EXTREMELY pissed Konkona Sen Sharma in her red sari and sickle in hand is made to look like a Durga Devi who cleanses the world and eases the burden of Mother Earth by dispatching off Asuras and Rakshasas. I guess this scene could have been handled a bit differently.... was this pandering to the lay audiences who luvv the heroine destroying the evil ones? (Spoilers end here)***

Overall, a very commendable effort by Vishal Bharadwaj. Keep up the good work Vishal, I sincerely hope you will adapt Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus next time. It would be interesting to see what's your take on this supremely gory tragedy.

Peace.

On naming da-Puttars and di-Kudis

2006-07-23T21:32:00.000+05:30

Late 1949.
Kanyakumari district, Travancore.
Subrahmanya Kovil, Takkala.

The couple walked into the hallowed grounds of the famous Temple.... they were brimming with anticipation and excitement. Understandable, 'coz the naming ceremony of the first born sure is one of the greatest moments in one's life. Of course not as cherished as the first time the little tyke yelled "EMMMMBBBUWWWMMMMAAAAAA" {translation: Hey waitress, where the hell's my Farex?!"} and mommy went "Chettaaaaaaaa, look look! Our chakkarakuttan just said AMMA!" or not as memorable as the time when the Kindergarten teacher hauled you in and demanded where he learned that kind of filthy language from. Still.... it's a pretty mushy chweet moment. Anyway, the woman was carrying their first bundle of joy, only 28 days old but predictable and "stable" enough to sit through things like these.
The daddy walked up to one of the harried junior priests and asked, "INFANT. STOP. NEED NAME. STOP. LIKE SREEKUMAR. STOP. SEE PRIEST? STOP."
"Roger. You have clearance.. Will relay message ASAP. Assume positions at Grotto No 3, Hallway No 4 till priest ingress. ETA at 30 minutes. Over and out." the junior priest managed toshout before he was swamped by an army of bald, vermillion smeared pilgrims just back from Palani. He had no chance, they were armed with Archana reciepts, coconuts and flower n incense baskets....
"What was that?" asks the wife, "You ain't in that communications room in that British Oil Company in godforsaken Brunei now! You've been hanging out with those radio heads for way too long! By the way, I specifically wanted my kid to be called Sreekumar... and you said "like Sreekumar"?!!
"Honey, I want my first born to have any name of Lord Murugan..... thought I would give them a little leeway in that!", counters the husband.
"Oh really? What do you think of THESE names of Lord Subrahmanya?", cries the mother gesticulating at the crowd of devotees from Palani.
"Andavaaaaa!", "Vadivelaaaa", "Muruhhhhaaaaaaa", "Kathirvelaaaaaa", "Padayappaaaaaaa" went the lusty and delirious cries of the devotees.... (If you wanna see REAL devotion, see how Tams pray!)
"Oops!", said daddy, " but I bet I heard a Kumaraaaa somewhere!", and grins sheepishly.
"If my baby gets a Paandi name like those I swear I'm gonna give you hell for the rest of your life", said the lady with a quiet menacing voice that would curdle the blood of the tiger (as the saying goes in the jungle...... and in Mithun Chakraborty movies)

The Priest soon arrived with the necessary parphernalia for the ceremony, executes them with aplomb and puts the baby in his lap for the coup-de-grace. Looking at the parents and then at the child he whispered softly, "Karthikeyan".
"Wooooo, that was close!" says the proud dad and winks at his very relieved wife.

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Fast forward to 1955,
Tiruvalla, Travancore.
The home of two soon to be ex-commies.

"Long live the revolution, Comrade Husband. Isn't it time we gave our daughter a proper revolutionary name?", asked the young mom, a teacher.
"Errrrr, long live the revolution and all that, Comrade Wife. Look, isn't it the convention that kids are named on the 28th day....", replied the husband, a soldier. " Maybe we should wait until she's 28 days old. She's only a cpl of week old now, right?!"
"What? Confirm to the defeatist, superstitious, artificial norm imposed upon the toiling masses by a class of faux "godmen" and priests with vested interests?", charges the daughter of the revolution with a fervor dear departed Comrade Stalin would surely approve!
<"Oh darn, I wish I was back fighting those peaceful Japanese in the Arakan jungles!", thought the poor soldier, "This communism fad is sort of wearing off now..... seen enough of those assholes in China. ">
"OK, OK..... you are right! What names are on your mind, darling?"
" How about Suslov?"
"Huh? Who the hell is Suslov? Oh never mind...... but isn't that a guy's name? Oh yes, like that Mikhail Suslov!"
"Errrrrr, yes. But who's gonna complain, doesn't it sound a bit like Susie?"
<"Oh No you won't. My daughter's gonna get a real Indian name!">
"Doesn't the revolution have any women heroes?", asked the wily hubby, <"Ahh.... that should do the trick!">
Sure enough, the flummoxed mom thought for a minute and said, "Seems like we need to change the approach. Comrade Trotsky had always advised this.... he put it to good use while fighting Kolchak's White Army. This was before he fell into disgrace, mind it! I'm not giving the name of any goddess or heroines of backward looking, counter-revolutionary "epics" or such...... let's think of a secular, progressive name".
"Make that an Indian name!".
"Hmmmm, Okay. I like it when my students have a good handwriting. How about Sulekha?"
" Done."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Faaaaaaaaaaast forward to 1981
Trivandrum, Kerala.
A run-of-the-mill marathon debate in a middle-class household.

Dad: " ...... Okay, we have run through the list of past presidents of my party, leaders of the national movement and we have yet to arrive at a feasible name for our firstborn agreed to by both parties, viz Myself and my honourable wife".
Mom: " {Ithiyan still is in the vakil/parliamentarian mode..... Sighhh, what am I going to do with him?!} I don't think a name like Pattabhi Sitaramayya or Khudiram Bose or Kamalapathi Tripadi or Gopal Krishna Gokhale or Jawaharlal Nehru would suit my little angel! He ain't a Gultu or Bong or Gosayin or Pandit for one thing..."
Dad: "Well, we can snip the regional sounding last names and use..."
Mom: "No! Nyet! Nahin! Illa! Nein! I execute my veto power in this matter"
Me: Goooo goooo gaaaaa daddaaa gaaa Ghaaanabbdu gapppakaaaa mubbbbbwwwaaaaa chhhoowwmmmma. Nennnnnissssan Gupppaaaaattaaa Gooo Mmmmmwwwaaaaa nennieee jmmmpaa gaaaaaa? {Translation: "Hey, scroll back. I kinda like the Khan Abdul Gaffer Khan name..... sure will impress the lay-dees. Kinda rolls on the tounge too! And Nellie Sen Gupta sounds exotic, but is Nellie a girl's name? "}
Dad: "Hullo...... what's this? My son''s started to talk already?!"
Mom: "Nope. I guess he's hungry AGAIN. He's always charming and articulate when he's hungry. Quite some avataram we got as our firstbon! Here's your bottle son." (tries to put the formula filled feeding-bottle in my mouth)
Me: (Furiously writhing my limbs and spitting out the bottle's teat) {Translation: "I shall NOT let my opinion be stifled by these acts of incompetence and official high-handedness! This is communication breakdown at it's most terrible form! I demand an audience RIGHT NOW...."}
Mom: (shaking her head) "Oh right, now YOU give me attitude! "
Dad: "Coming back to the discussion at hand, I now propose to name him after a favourite folk hero of mine...... the true King's Commander-in-Chiet in our epic Marthandavarma."
Mom: "Hey, that's a good one..... but didn't he act totally fruitcake for half the course of the epic?"

They both look at my extremely pissed self performing crazy callisthenics on the mattress and then at each other....

Dad: "Well.....?"
Mom: "Touche. {Sighs} At least that's also the name of the presiding deity of this city..... so Ananthapadmanabhan it is! Let my little cherub grow up to be a total badass or a God like his namesakes and rule the desert sands to the polar ice-caps one day. Amen, Inshallah and Swaha!"
Me: {Translation:"Uh ohhhhh..."}
Dad: "The surname as per our understanding recorded in 1981-03-29 18:30 Minute #26 would be Karthikeyan-Sulekha. Motion is hereby declared passed with no dissent. All rise."
Me: {Translation:"Oh CRAP! This name is long-ass GAY!"}

**********************************

These anecdotes are just ejjambles of what happens 24/7 in our little corner of the globe. Naming your offspring gives the parents this total Godlike power. A power probably they (well at least the dad in most cases) last tasted when momma-poppa dumped the pics of a few dozen members-of-the-opposite-gender-of-marriagable-age and asked him/her to choose any one as the spouse. It's the poor kids who are often hapless prey to the vagaries of their parent's beliefs/personal history/fundaes/pet peeves/pop culture. Sure, it's the right of the parents to name their kids with whatever that comes to their minds, but the kids gotta grow up in this cruel, hostile world na? Especially guys whose names are a factor when it comes to social life..... i.e gals. Don't believe me? Well..... take a look at this link!

Personally, I myself has never truly 400% reconciled with my long name...... I was the butt of jokes and prey of spelling/pronounciation challenged humans for as long as I remember. Late Fr Pulickal fired the first shot and started calling me "Puppy".... a butchery of a few syllables of my first name. Though he bestowed me that name with affection, the creatures I was saddled with in school had a field time with my new name. Even today, much to my consternation, the Loyola guys call me Puppy. Now what do you expect will happen if one of those guys descend down on you addressing you as "Puppyyyyyyyyyyy" while you are intently trying to impress the local beauty-queen? Darn..... those searing, raw wounds of youth! Leave alone things like these, I got into trouble with the INS when I went to do my MS in Amreeika Bahadur..... my 18 alphabet first name exceeded the fields alloted to the first names in the INS system and according to them I hadn't arrived in the US! It took me a month and half a dozen visits to the authorities to sort this out..... I HAD to pull that off so that some trigger happy cop/Feeb doesn't pop a cap in me when I fail to provide positive identification at some seedy airport. Fellow Mallus could pronounce my phull name, albeit with some effort..... but no such luck with the other Desis and the Goras and Chinese and all. Desis cut it down to Anand (which I always preferred) but the non-desis butchered even that simple name. Finally, I was forced to cut my name short to "Andy" (for non-desi use only) till my Mallu pals found out. They promptly made that phonetic stress at the end and converted it to "Andeee" which of course is the Mallu slang for the family jewels. I finally settled on a universal moniker, Anand K. The K part is cool, right? Like Tommy Lee Jones in MIB and something like Franz Kafka's characters in The Castle and The Trial.
PS: It's not that I have a BIG problem with my real name, but I prefer a bit shorter and simpler name.....

Now naming conventions are totally hilarious/lovable (depending on the way you see it) when it comes to Punjabis. There's that famous joke of a Sardarji jawan who insisted that his CO named his children with authentic Fauji names whenever he recieved a stork delivery. Soon, he had two sons who were duly named "Karnail Singh" (Punjabification of Colonel) and "Jarnail Singh" (ditto with General). His next child happened to be a girl and this put the CO in a fix..... but he solved it soon by naming the girl "Armoured Kaur"!
Maybe it's the natural heartiness and joviality of the Punjabis that lead them to this "nomenclature standard"..... at least in most cases it's limited to pet names. I remember a pal telling me of a visit to a Punjabi home and the lady calls out "Oye Lovely, idharrrr aaaaa" and he was expecting a lovely Punjabi lass to glide into the room. What came into the room was a 6'7", 250 pound fully bearded young Sardarji dude going "Maaaaaaaaaaaaaa....." in true Dharmendra accent and metre. I sure would like to *appreciate* why some are given names like Ladoo Singh, Fullpower Singh, Dollar Singh and his sister Penny Kaur etc etc...... and I am saying this with no malice! Really vunderful, no? ;)

PS: There's a urban legend on these lines which explains why we named our new all terrain light armoured vehicle "Tuffy"...... the serving Army chief was a Sardarji you see! Tuffy..... cho chweet name na? Imagine it striking terror in the hearts of Pakis or Chaptas!
Chew on this scene; "Oye Abu Hamza, Tuffy inbound at 2 o' clock! Bhaago.... let's get the hell out of here!" :D

PPS: BTW, Another EME vehicle was named "Hunky" about the same time! ;)

So, what's the point of this rant?
Well, let me make this a formal request to please take a moment and consider your child's "future" in this cruel world before you give him/her an outlandish name. MISA Yadav might make a good political statement for Lalloo Prasad Yadav but what does the name boil down to? Maintenance of Internal Security Act! I wonder if she ever took up this issue with the Lion of Bihar. Similarly, hardcore commies in Kannur name their kid Khruschev..... only to get snide casteist barbs like "Krush-Chovan" from his friends. (For the uninitiated, Chovan is a sometimes denigrating term used at Ezhavas of Kerala). Friends, Parents to be, sometimes portmanteaus of your names might not be a very good idea.... sometimes it does work like the case of a fellow blogger (now who could that be? :) ), but you arrive at very strange/exotic names in most cases!

My funda is that the name should fit your vision for your child (in this light names like Stalin or Lincoln or Ananthapadmanabhan are OK), mix with the normal naming "standards" of the society and the name should *mean* something! It should fit into what you actually are, like your religious, community and larger linguistic identities ( in this light even names like Nanjunda Swamy are fine..... no matter what that internet meme I linked to says). But it shouldn't go to the degree that it's DELIBERATELY over the top or wannabe cute/cool or outlandish so that "it stands out" or shows how cool and smart and terndy the parents are. IMO, this smacks of showboy attitude/narcissism rather than any true feeling for your child. What really prompted me to make this post was the snippet I just read that our old friend "Doctor" Arindam Chaudhary of IIPM has named his kid Che Kabir.... so that "he would be a revolutionary like Che but peaceful and spiritual like Kabir". Maybe it's just me.... but HOW ON FR1GGIN' EARTH WOULD ONE MIX CHE AND KABIR ??!!! It would be like say, taking the most sanctified 6th Pativratha Devi Shrimati Sushma Swaraj and the amazing Mary Carey in the same breath! Jeez..... I sincerely hope this is not another manifestation of the his uber-showman character.

Okay, I've been on the high horse, on the soapbox for quite a while with something that's none of my business..... and even apparently contradicting myself sometimes. Still, thought I should pen a few random thoughts on this thingie.
Yeah what? What would I name *my* kids if and when I have 'em critters? Well, I've answered it in an earlier tag; being the staunch "Kangressi" and an "a$$-wipe of the establishment" (as some of my "revolutionary" friends of mine have accused me) I am, I think I'm gonna name my firstborn Indira or Rajiv (depending on gender, of course). Yeah, the now much maligned leaders of old.... 'coz for all their faults they have done really great things for the nation. Things that casual observers and hyperventilating "brave new Indians" miss...... but we wouldn't be right here right now in one piece if it weren't for some of their correct decisions at critical junctures!
But then I have to get the permission of my wud-be Home Minister/Supreme HQ/High Command in that expedition, right? What if she turns out to be from the fr1ggin' RJD or the Likud Party or somethin?

Peace.

PS: The anecdotes and the persons mentioned in this post are purely partly phictional. Any resemblances or even explicit identifications by the author himself is purely Maya.

Notice: No animals were harmed in the making of this post, save 11 fat mosquitoes and one supersonic fly which at various points of time in the past hour tried to take advantage of my train of thoughts.

Tasveerein

2006-07-04T01:47:00.000+05:30

I've been tagged again.... this time by Silverine. Now I wanted to do another topic this time but this tag's quite different and it's doing the rounds in blogosphere. Guess I shall do it when it's still fresh and hot.

1. Most Desired Celebrity

This is Enya, birthname Eithnee Ni Bhraonain . THE Queen of New Age and Celtic Music.... my fave genres. Classic tall, emerald eyed, true-blood Irish beauty, not like those ever-drunk Anglo-Saxon pretenders who later infested the Emerald Isle. As I mentioned in an earlier post, she was my first crush...... her silken voice, the ambience and her looks (plus that beautiful Orinoco Flow video I first saw her in) just bowled me over way back in 1993. She ain't drop dead gorgeous and right now she has visibly aged a bit, but her voice and the whole Celtic thing sure compensates it hundred-fold! (Yeah, I got a thing for girls who can sing)
BTW, she has 20 years on me, she's richer by about 200 million dollars, she's jealously guards her privacy and lives an almost secluded life in Mandarlay Castle..... Still, hope springs eternal. Since my "awakening" other celebrities have come and gone out of my lecherous "span of attention", viz. Urmila Matondkar, Sharon Stone (the full version, not the abomination with Alexis's head on :P ), Aishwarya Rai, Winona Ryder, Preeti Jhangiani, Udita Goswami etc etc right upto Angelina Jolie now...... but this Irish lady has always held a special place (say about 143 cubic centimetre in volume :P) in my heart.
So I guess she's the one who fits this "most desired celebrity" bill. :)
Love You, Eithnee.

2. Want to do this one day

Now we are talking! If there's anything better than Carmaggedon with a monster truck (which I will call Christine after Stephen King's demonic Thunderbird '68), it's a murderous cross country spree with a fully armed Main Battle Tank with 1500HP engine, 125mm smoothbore autoloader cannon, 25 mm machine-cannon, 2 co-axial 7.62mm MMGs, Phosphorous smoke grenades and full electronic warfare array. I'm going to call her Gogo after that kick-ass Japanese chick from Kill Bill. Quake in your boots mere mortals....... Gogo and I are coming.

3. Want to visit this place

The Moon. And beyond.
One day....... one day.

4. Random Favorite

Don't ask me!

OK OK..... I'll tell ya. First of all this ain't a gag. Honest!
This freak incident occured in the greatest, purest, fairest, tightest, most enlightened country in the world, Pakistan. A prisoner in one of their jails complained to the resident Doc that he has "ishtomak trauwble"...... the Doc takes an X-ray and finds this. The guy says he has no idea how it got inside his nether cavity.
Yeah right! Check out the popular patriotic Desi fora like BRF, Frontier India etc, they are going gaga at this episode. We are officially entering this into Ripley's Believe It Or Not and The Jerry Springer Show. :D

5. I was tagged by Silverine

It's not every day you meet a dudette who has a zany sense of humor plus an engaging writing style. In all my blog-trawls in desi blogosphere I have found only those three crazy females from Sepia Mutiny, Aashraya(Crystal Blur) and zis very Silverine who fits the bill.
So..... here's lookin' at you, Silverine! May your tribe increase.
PS: I will have my revenge-i-tag soon, Madamji. :P

6. Who's being tagged next.

Hmmmm....... I'm a Johnny-Come-Lately in this particular tag, most of my pals have already been tagged. So I'm leaving this one open.
Interested folks, knock yourselves out....

Shalom.
Rice and Rum for 2008.

Ze Heart of Darkness

2006-06-25T10:37:00.000+05:30

I'm taking this cool (open) tag from Jiby's latest post. This confession will take you folks into the depths of my mind, the darkness of my being......... a journey that would make J-Lo's "descent into hell" from The Cell look like a Disneyland outing.

RSVP. Bring your popcorn, barf-bags and all that jazz.

My Accent

Amrikkan-Hinglish-Mallu mongrel..... but I can pull off a pretty decent Bheshtern accent when I deliver seminars and presentations, when I wanna talk my way out of trouble or go to impress ze lay-dees (a little more, that is. :P ). Always wanted to master exotic accents like British, Jive, Russian, French plus languages like Sanskrit, French, Farsi, Arabic, Chinese Mandarin..... and I am working on Arabic and Farsi now.
May I end this section with a tribute to the master Amir Khusrau and quote a tounge-in-cheek (literally) couplet of his. It's relevant to this particular subject......

My beloved speaks Turkish but I do not,
Oh how I wish her tounge was in my mouth.

Booze

Nope. Nyet. Indulge in lotz of other more unforgivable sins..... thought I should leave this one out for you ordinary mortals. I'm not even into popular beverages like tea, coffee, Coke etc..... but I lavv juice cocktails, Sharjahs n shakes.
BTW, ring me when someone has invented a Biryani shake.... I'll show thee what TRUE INULGENCE is!

Chores I Hate

Cleaning the toilet, scrubbing the tub and waxing the bathroom floor. My prime motivation for getting hitched sometime in the future.

Dog or Cat

I just discovered my love for dogs. Mebbe it's their loyalty..... cats on the other hand are the vain, cocky and flamboyant gangstas of the animal kingdom.

Essential Electronics

Dell Inspiron 9300 Laptop. Myyyyy preciousssssssssssss........
W-88 type 450 kT thermonuclear warhead. Just for a horror!
My Angelina Jolie look alike android from Cyberdene Corporation. Fully functional.

Perfume

Denim Silver for Deodorant. I normally keep off deos but one can't do without them in the tandoor that's Delhi summer.
Nivea Extra Soothing Shaving Balm. Doubles as perfume too. My fave!

Gold or Silver

Silver. Definitly!
Gold's for them gals. Silver looks cool and it keeps off vampires n werewolves. :P

Home

Secret underground lair somewhere in India.
Built by the coven of the Nine Unknown Men in the year 277 BC and upgraded down the ages. Now includes an Olympic size swimming pool, a KSRTC bus stand and a 24/7 KFC outlet.

Insomnia

Hell no!
Devout Kumbhakarna devotee here!

Job Titles

Oberstgruppenfuhrer in the Bavarian Illuminati
Maha Atharvan, Propaganda Department in The Nine.

Living Arrangements

5m by 7m room, modelled on a Tihar Jail cell. Balcony with a majestic view of the surrounding evergrey concrete jungle. 1.5m by 4.5m bathroom.

Most Admirable Traits

400% harmless individual onlee.
My positive outlook. I am at peace with the world and all that is in it.
Sense of humor. I make people laugh with me..... and sometimes laugh at me.
Ceaseless quest for knowledge. Oh well, in other words I'm a bookworm.

Number of Sexual Partners

420 Humans
18 Demons
24 Yakshis
69 Houris (loaned three to Al Zarqawi. They got a virgin crisis over there.... so many Shaheeds coming in nowadays, na?)
7 Apsaras
Baba Yaga
3 Sirens
Xena, Warrior Princess
9 Nymphs
The Ice Queen
The Valkyries
8 Betazeds including Commander Deanna Troi
4 Klingnons
She
1 Wookie
22 Androids

PS: All these are females ( even the androids have Programmed Female Personality)...... in case some smarta$$e$ were thinking otherwise.

Number of Times in Hospital

Hmmm, let's see..... Born in a hospital in the previous millenium :P , high fever when I was 9, bad sprain right before my CEE exam, TB scare in 2001, high fever right before my 6th sem exams in 2002 and this *raging* fever in 2004. That's a total of six times.
Not bad, huh?

Phobias

Commitment-phobia
Claustrophobia
Ophidiophobia

Quote

"A wise warrior carries a second sword".
"Security through Obscurity".

Siblings

One little brotherji...... little by years only. The cat's two inches taller and outweighs me by 30 pounds. He's the nice kid of our little family while I am the certified black sheep and the bekaar beta all rolled into one.

Time I Wake Up

When the sun goes down and my kind can safely venture into the world of mortals....... to feed.

Unusual Talent or Skill

X-ray vision.

Worst Habit

Nail-biting.
Just a little. Only when I am thinking hard.

X-Rays

Thrice a day, after meals. Followed by UV ray irradiation and Strontium-90 capsules.

Yummy Food I Make

Crow Soup.
Ek Dum phirst class quality. For all ze insufferable untermenschen who takez Panga wit ze Anandmeister.

Zodiac Sign

Gemini-Cancer cusp.
But I am a true-blue Geminian by nature.

People I Tag

First of all...... Poooojaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Yoooooo Hooooooo.......
You know I take a certain demonic glee in saddling thee with all these tags. Especially after you asked me not to .

And who would the other three unfortunate folks be? Ahhhh..... Pink Berry (first time I'm tagging you), Lord Poison and Herr MC! Perfekt!

Phunctional Phiction: The CET Chronicles, Folio - II

2006-06-02T07:40:00.000+05:30

The CGPU

Founded by Prof. Felip Varkhovsky in 1937 as a sister concern of the Ob'edinennoe Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie (OGPU, predecessor of the KGB), the Career Guidance and Placement Unit, the CGPU, strives to select the vilest knaves CET has to offer and release them into the shady world of crime and IT… i.e International Terrorism.

What?! The name doesn’t strike fear into your mortal hearts? You know, we borrowed this very useful concept from Orwell’s seminal classic, 1984. Here the most brutal organs of the tyrannical police state are given innocuous or even benevolent sounding portmanteaus or nicknames. For instance, death camps are called JoyCamps, the War Ministry (note, it ain’t *Defense* Ministry) is called MinPeace (from Ministry of Peace), the ministry that fabricates lies, propaganda and obfuscates everything is called MinTruth! The funda is explained by real world terms like Gestapo and Comintern. While the term COMmunist INTERNational evokes obvious images of fear and repression in most people with those thousands of red flags, lusty slogans, demagogy par excellence, goose stepping soldiers, Triumph of the Will vibes…… the contraction term doesn’t do the same. Ditto for Hitler's GEheime STAatsPOlizei, which means “Secret State Police”. Parallels can be drawn to the milquetoast term RAW, Research and Analysis Wing, which sounds like some department of the Planning Commission but the title hides the true nature of the efficient, ruthless and professional spy force.

Oh, here I go rambling AGAIN! But get my drift? :P

Our founding father, former Director Lord Prof. Varkhovsky is blessed with a Sarumanesque talent for selling ANYTHING to even the smartest prey…. the veritable Archsalesman who could sell a shipload of ice to the Eskimos. It was due to his sterling efforts and cultivation of contacts in the InjiNeering and above said IT realms that put CET on the global map, with CETians earning packages from 1.5 lakhs per annum plus two second-hand camels on incarceration to 25 Lakhs plus 72 houris on “termination”. The companies and the organizations and the brotherhoods/sisterhoods started to trickle in at first and then tuned into a torrent by the mid 90s…. the word soon spread into international circles. In the bylanes of Gaza, the gullies of Heera Mandi, the slums of Bradford, the piers of Corsica, the badlands of Bihar and the Ghettos of America, hushed whispers and secret scraps spoke-“There’s a new gun in town!”. So much that the perennial enemies of our shady trade,viz. 007, Inspector Vijay, Gigastar Balayya from Guntur, Vaijayanthi IPS, Padayappa, Captain Prabhakaran, Sunny Paaji and Gunmaster G9 have turned their malevolent gaze towards us. But fear not, our sleeper acolytes toiling endlessly for global domination in entities like Ghengisys, Tamerlane Consultancy Services, Galactic Empire of Emperor Palpatine, General Ecclestic, The Illuminati, Asian Born Bovineannie, Vaallmart, Wipe-Off RAW, Jihadman Suxxx, The Borg Collective, Asathyam, D Company etc cannot fail to bring us to final victory!

To understand and appreciate the recruitment process, let me give a few examples of the no-quarters-given interviews that take place in every season.

Case 1:

Bull Klinten Corporation, Arkansas (K) on the desk.

Ms. Incontinentia Balconi , IQ = 38+24+36, S-7 Civil Engineering (B) in the hot seat.

K: Ms. Balconi, explain with a simple example how recurrence relations simplify algorithms.

B: Urrrmmmmm….. errrrrr….. duhhhhh.
(Idea strikes) Ohhhhh….veree zimble onlee Saar. As the name suggeshts… (drops her pen).. Ooops! (bends down to get it, stops abruptly and looks sheepishly and coyly at the boss.... as his eyes focus and go glazed and beady into that-which-must-not-be-stared-at-by-true-gentlemen.

K: (whispers hoarsely) Monicaaaaaaaaaa! (Regains composure.) By Kenneth Starr! This one's an all-rounder!

B: Shirrr? Shomething wraang shirr?

K: Oh, nothing….. go ahead, go ahead! Do take your time. (Makes big tick mark across this candidates name)

Eight hours later, results are out. She's in.

Bystander 1 (scratching his head): “Aliyo, how the hell did *she* get in?! She’s got 2 supplees (supplimentaries) and just 64% uluva!”

Bystander 2: “Hush, a$$hole! Look ….. she’s bending down to pick up her shoes and her books. Golden chance machan!

(Their eyes focus and go glazed and beady into that-which-must-not-be-stared-at-by-true-gentlemen. The world is true. Cycle of Karma is the ultimate truth. Neti. Neti. )

Case 2:

Half-A$$ Techie(H1) and braindead HR dork(H2) from KlaxonNet on the desk.

A Thampuran (Lord) of Thallu(“Snow technique”/Bullshit) from S-7 Applied Electronics(A) in the hot seat.

H2: So, what are your career objectives in the long run? Where do you see yourself in the system…..

A: Wait, wait, wait! You see, the whole country of the system is juxtapositioned by the haemoglobin in the atmospher because you are a sophisticated rhetorician intoxicated by the exuberance of your own verbosity!

H2 and H1 rise up and applaud: “Wah, Wah, Wah!”

H2 whispers to H1: Such munificent, bodacious, magnacartacious, gnathonic, goobledeegookian effluvia of verbosity! I bet his IQ and EQ must be somewhere in the Troposphere! You know, Troposphere…. the highest layer of the atmosphere?

H1: (Grins sheepishly) Oh yesh, yesh, yesh… but now we got to check his technical knowledge.

H1: Wokay, what is your perspective on the errrr… ummmmm….Viterbi Algorithm.

A: Oh, you mean the Siffredi Algorithm? By the famed mathematician Rocco Siffredi of University of Tuscanny….{Sucker!}

H1 (Looking unsure, speaking to himself): {Hey, wasn’t that the name I read in Outlook? Or was it in The Hindu? Damn, was it Viterbi or Siffredi?}

A (thinking): {Hah hah, I knew I could get away with it! This loser doesn’t watch thundu!}

H2: (Wakes up from dozing) Hey, even I have heard that name somewhere before…… it was sooo long ago. Now where was it….

H1 (looking for a way out): Yes, my mistake. Heh heh. I mean, Siffredi algorithm!

A(thinking): {Heavens! For a moment I thought the HR guy might call my bluff… Anyway, which orifice shall I now pull out a grand new algorithm from?}….

Results out in 24 hrs, A gets into KlaxonNet beating 99 colleagues to a 4 lakh per annum package. Rumor is, he made a HUGE impression on the interview board…

Case 3:

Grizzled veteran from Albert ‘Al’ Zawahri Assosciates (A) on the desk.

Biker Demon from S-7, ME. (B) in the hot seat.

B: ….. and that was the time Tom and I crashed this Enfield into a Paandi Lorry full of cows, and got away with it! The driver had a cow! You get it? He had a cow! He had a cow! NJAHAHAHAHAHAHA…..

A: Interesting. Interesting. {Son of a mangy dog... spawn of a molting vulture, won’t you ever stop yapping?!}

B: You know dude, there was this time I was high on brake-fluid and arrack cocktail and….

A: Wait, wait, wait, my son. Patience is a virtue and heaven awaits those who are patient.

B: You da boss, dawg! Whatever you say!

A: You like SPEEEED? (Voice rising to shrill levels)

B: Does J-Lo have a killer bo*ty?

A: Eh? Oh ok…. I get it. But I would prefer my goat Pakeezah (Zah Zah) though! Anyway. (Husky voice now) You like to CRAAAASSSSHHHH into things?

B: Rev me up, Megadeath on my iPod, juice my ride, lemme crank up the speed and I’ll wreck friggin’ Planet Jupiter and his Aunt Sarah!

A: (Dials a number on his secure satellite phone) Pervez, Osama, Li Peng, We have a winner! Alhamdulillah!

The ones that make it through the gruelling process which seperated the wheat from the chaff, the men from the boys, the FLUTES (subject matter for another folio) from the Mexxx, the women from the Ladies Hostelites and the awkardly feminine from the possibly Civilian (i.e Civil Engineering).........(with due respets to Dodgeball movie), have to pay a Hafta of approx 10000 (Nepal) rupees. Sher's share of this Hafta goes into the bulk orders for Rapidex English speaking course booklets for the teaching staff in charge of the CGPU, always selected for his command over Parassala dialect of Malayalam (think Rajamanickam times 10)...... another chunk into our clandestine bio-weapons program at the Ladies Hostel and the rest into the "relief" fund for the CGPU student representatives from each branch.
In my days, we had Sid, Harry, EP and K..... two guys and two gals(?) respectively from E1 and E2 divisions of my branch. Equal equal for political correctness, "just for a horror" as the wogs say! Grrrrrrrr. (PS: One of these is an on-off blogger of no mean skill). Poor things did a good job, including successfully threatening a globetrotting IT giant to admit students with one supplee, dusting the cobwebs, sweeping the CGPU floor, fix the plumbing, hauling the furniture around, getting 440V shocks from the Edison era equipment...... and at the end of the day gets pummelled by their own classmates for the tiniest shortcomings. You see, we are an organisation that does NOT tolerate the smallest infraction. After the recruitment season, most reps become wrecks of human beings and walk around with a glazed look, dive for cover and yells for fire-support whenever they hear a sudden noise, goes into convulsions if they see anyone in formal wear.... tch, tch. Suchapity. Here's looking at you, brave martyrs for our cause..... you shall always live in our minds! :P

This, my friends, is my brief intro to our eternal, glorious opera that is the CGPU.... and her dramatis personae. May she live a thousand lifetimes!

Footnote: As for my personal experience with CGPU, I invoke the 5th Amendment of the US Constitution- "I refuse to answer on the ground that the answer may tend to incriminate me". Let me just tell you that the techie who had the misfortune to inteview me abandoned all worldly life and now teaches orthodox Shunyavada at a Tibetan monsatery...... the HR guy was last seen "gone junglee" and swinging creeper to creeper a la Tarzan, by a Serbian mercenary in Zaire.
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PS: Civilians and Mexxx and assorted effluvia who have been mentioned here, Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar.....

Ten

2006-05-20T12:47:00.000+05:30

Long time no post, eh?
I took a long break from blogging and blog trawling as my exams were right at my doorstep. Had to let go of many a "diversion" temporarily due to this fateful examination. For one thing, not being online every 3-4 hours sure hurt.... I hope I am not addicted to the computer like some Jap schoolboy game freak! Anywayz, my creative cortex has atrophied down these days and it might take a while to regenerate them. Oh yes, MY brain-cells can regenerate...... unlike yours, little pesky mortals! I guess I will take up this rather light tag hoisted on me by Ms Quills till I heal up and find work out some real crazy, weird stuff like my old tag!
The tag's simple, list your favorite simple pleasures of life. Ten of them would do..... and try to make it original and creative(Ahhh, NOW we are talking. NJAHAHAHAHA).

Oh BTW, the exams went pretty well and I expect a call this time (crossing my fingers now).......... but as the late, great Kamraj Nadar always quipped when someone quizzed him about eventualities, "Parkalaam, Parkalaam" ! One never knows, eh?
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1. Toppling Banana Republics in South America.

Sun. Sand. Sea. Jungle. Coke. Latinas.
Liveried flunkies. Personal Nicaraguan Death Squads. CIA "advisors". "Uncle" Escobar and Mr. Pablo from Colombia.
Accounts in the Caymans. International Immunity. Wall Street Cat's Paws. Gulfstream private jets. 300 Ft yachts.
Sendero Luminoso. Mosquito Coast. Mosquitos. DEA. United Nations.

South of the Rio Grande, life's a real cool box of chocolates for a mover n shaker! Carpe Diem.

2. Horse-trading in the Indian Cow-Belt Legislatures.

Sun. Dust. Ganga. Coal Mines. Ganja. Rabris and Ranis.
RJD/JDU MLAs. Ranvir Sena. Sadhu Yadav and Taslimuddin bhai from Bihar.
Etheral accounts in the Hawala. Caste-Politics shield. South Block Fixers. Scorpios. 2-Bull Power carts.
CP(Maoist). Jhumritalayya. Cows. CBI. IB.

Down the banks of poor ol' Gangaji, life's an ekdum jhakas maalgaadi. Aur Kya?

3. Strip-mining Earth.

May 20, 2006

Dear Diary, I did a grrrrreeeeaaaaaaat job with 16000 sq.kms of Amazonian rain-forests near Manaus. More than 5000 untermenschen tribals sent to our slave barges at Belem and 1767 flora and fauna species makes it to the extinct list. Ahhhhhh, joy! Let the fires of Isengard burn! Lord Emperor Cheney will be pleased. Still, I wish I found some oil there!
Next stop, Silent Valley.

4. Nukular Profileration.

Just the thing to warm the cockles of my ice cold heart and rev up a slow week. From yellow Cake of Niger to weapons grade Uranium from Pakistan to ring laser gyros from China, contact Uncle K's Nuke-Mart. 31 branches worldwide. HQ at Chawri Bazar, New Delhi.

PS: We ale a whorry owned subsidialy of Uncle Jiang's Takeout, HQ at Zhongnanhai.
Oul motto, "We Plorifelate whire you wait!" (Engrish tlansration flom Pinyin standald. Coultesy Ludladev).

5. Playing with my new Ring.

It came to us, oh yesss it did. It came to USSSS, my Preciousssss. Yesssss....... lovely, lovely Precious. My Precious. MYYY Precioussssss!

6. Threesome with Frau Farbissina and Xenia Onatopp.

No further comments. Thank You.

7. Monster Truck Carmageddon

Tired of your wives' nagging? Your daughters' teen angst? Your son's bail plea? The paternity suit? Confederate defeat in the Civil War/Pillorying of Modi by the pseudo-secular media? Neighbour's dog is "blessing" your lawn?
Do you want to make SOMEONE pay for all this?

Rejoice, for great joy and satisfaction awaits you!
Go Postal with the new Grave Digger Redneck Edition-2007 monster truck! Fully armed with 155 cm alloy wheels with protruding serrated knife-axles, 100mm rifled cannon, two .50 caliber Bushmaster MMGs, battering ram bumpers, 20 X 75mm Hydra rocket pods and 1800mm Reactive Heavy Armor!

-The Wanderer,
proud and satisified owner of the new Redneck Edition Grave Digger.

8. Sthree serial.

This 10000 "epidose" saccharine fest that charts the life of THE 400% Indian (Pati-Parameswar mantra/Karva Chauth-Monday Fasting/Sindoor tattooed/ "convented" and homely/trained in the 18 kitchen arts/"Chettaaaaa, dha chaaya!") wonder woman from her first days in Trivandrum General Hospital incubator to (probably) her victorious ascent into Godhood and beyond....... what, you thought Truman Show was original?! Watch her fight evil in-laws, lecherous "uncles", alien invasions, the Chinese army, save her family from sinking cruisers and hijacked airplanes and win the love and respect of her megadork husband. All in the finest traditions of Bharatiya Narihood.

Nothing better to rekindle hope in (Generation X/Y) women and marriage and love after you come home following a major scourging from the evil meanqueen HR boss, ze She-Wolf of ze Third Reich..... or another round of extortion by your evil bloodsucking girlfriend. One of these days I'm gonna.....

9. Prank Calls.

A carry over from those sylvan school and college days. This was a favorite past time of all boys down here, cutting across school lines. I still get kicks calling up my pals and givin them absolute shockers or sending them on wild-goose chases. Evil, huh? :P

BTW, here's the transcript of a prank call made (but sadly not by moi) 10 long years ago...... to ze domicile of a reigning Queen of Dreams. However, it was her dad who picked up the phone. Observe...... (Note: PG-13 rating)

"Helloooooooooooooooooo?"
"Yesssshhhhh......"
"Evangelical Bible Society alle?"
"Allello. Ithoru veedu aanu."
"Oho, enkil pinne P****kku phone koduthe!"
"Phaaaaaa choole! Athra tharikkunnengil poyi vello paarayil kondu oraykkeda!" SLAM!

(Whoa! They sure didn't expect ol' Mr. C to be so spunky...... that was a really original Parthian Shot. Hats off boss!)

10. Oz

No, *this* ain't shorthand for Australia. This is that slang in Mallu lingo...... a unique word like the F-word. A term that can be used as a noun, verb, preposition, adjective, adverb and conjunction, depending on the situation. For the uninitiated, Oz is zimbly the art of living off other's "graces". Ahhhhh.... now you get it! People may call it leeching, freeloading, siphoning etc but Oz much much more noble than that! It's an expression of your unblemished love, respect and regard for your "source". This funda stems from timeless uvaachas like "The best things in life are free" and Lao Tse's "Foolish is the man who doesn't take what is offered to him".
Anyone disagree? Come over and buy me a working lunch... we'll discuss it over some nice chow.
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These are a few of my faaavorite things....

Spring, Summer.

2006-05-03T18:58:00.001+05:30

Joy! Found a couple of albums that were evading my most vigorous combing operations.... albums that featured memorable events of yours truly's life before the Liberalisation Era and fall of the USSR. These include me breaking down a part of the Berlin Wall with a sledgehammer, shooting Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife with a .45 Makarov; counselling Prince Charles and Lady Diana in Lincoln Cathedral; shaking hands with Saddam Hussein after he invaded Kuwait; with Adnan Khashyogi, Pamela Bourdes and Quattrochi in the French Riviera in 1987 and in questionable circumstances with starlet Mandakini (of Ram Teri Ganga Maili fame) during a Sharjah Cup series at Dubai.... among other no less classic moments that is. Now you must be realising why I find this album very valuable.
Today I'm gonna post a few of those (less controversial) pics; ones that capture a few stages of my rather chequered life as a schoolboy. Spring and start of Summer of my life.

Classmates came and went down the years. There were reshufflings, folk were weeded out for want of academics on some occasions, some just went away...... You'll find out that only few of the "originals" slogged the whole 13 years if you just glance through the pics.(BTW, do remember we had two divisions till Class X, and I was in Divison B throughout. Our batch, THE batch "settled" in Class VIII after a slew of eliminations and uphevals. But I'll explain all that as we go further.) I would have written a whole corpus on the colorful characters you see in these pics. But for want of space and lack of time, and inability to migrate to wordexpress now (where I can blog better), I am going to be painfully brief. Pleej bear with moi!

Hokay, I am the little bloke in 2nd to the right, top row of the following pic. Try to find me in the other pics.... that is if you don't have ANYTHING better to do! Oh, while you are at it, find out the ones who ran the whole 13 yards. ;)
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I joined Loyola after storming half a dozen schools all over the city 'coz my folks moved around a lot those days. It was in the second term of UKG that I came to Loyola.... the following pic is from Class I though. If I remember correctly, it was the same team from UKG... except for Philip and Manish. Yes, Manish was definitely new then.
The lady in this pic is Grace Ma'am.... a no nonsense type who scared the living daylights off some of the kids. I found her nice though... maybe because I never caused any trouble in class, had kinda OK academics and teachers felt I was intently listening in class (from my still posture in class)....... actually I was on one of my daydreams. Never got caught then! :D

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Now we come to Class III. This time we had the one and only, the legendary Maithri Ma'am! We visit her everytime we go to school. I still remember how much fun her classes were...... She was very capable, affectionate and really knew how to handle little devils like us. MM was the one who finally found out that the cogs of my mind weren't working out the finer details of Class III English Grammar behind my intense stare and still posture..... she somehow found out I was probably rewinding the Mayavi story I read in Balarama that morning and trying to find out a way to help poor Kuttoosan and Dakini..... and poor poor Luttappi! (Even back then, I liked the bad guys!) Perhaps it was my sketch of Puttalu, the arch-demon and ill tempered uncle of Luttappi devouring Raju and Radha which implicated me that fateful day. And was I punished? Yea.... she gave me this nickname "Mulgeri Lal" after that famous TV character, a name which stuck for another 5 yrs till I was knighted with another unfourtunate name! Sigh..... those wounds of childhood! ;)

Look at the pic below. By this time, I was a four eyes but I didn't put them on. They sucked! Just look at the little windowpanes Alexander is wearing to get what i'm saying.... I won't be caught dead looking uncool!

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Ahhhh, Class IV. Elaine Ma'am. This is one lady you DO NOT WANT TO CROSS! Her face comes in mind whenever I read of Prof. Minerva McGongall! Vinay, Kuppi and I got into major trouble that year for "practising" the latest martial arts styles (from some Jackie Chan movie) on poor little Shenoy for ratting us out. I remember using Tiger Style that would make Pai Mei proud, Vinay attempting a Dragon Fist from Wong Fei school and Kuppi trying out the Crane Style of the Northern School. But Shenoy wriggled free, executed the Flying Snake Style (literally!) and fled into the staff room before we could fell him with the Manchu Silver Spear Style. Needless to say, Elaine Ma'am worked her deadly Shaolin Wooden Staff Style on our (now innocent and peaceful) Buddha's Palms. Yeowwwww!
Well, Sheni was something of a wallflower back then..... how he changed! (You reading this, Sheni? You and I have unfinished buisness! :P)

BTW, this time I am wearing specs.

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Class IV results showed nearly a quarter of the class failing to make it to the Junior-High School. Some stayed back to repeat.... some went to "lesser" schools so that they won't lose a year. The vacanies meant a lot of new faces. Those initial awkard phase when you adjust to the "outlanders"..... know what I am speaking off? :) We all hit off pretty quick though.....

Now, color pics were the vogue. See the boyz in 70mm technicolor!
Our unfortunate lady this time is Radha Ma'am. Now, I must say I am very indebted to this teacher. Till then, I was an also-ran, quite Average (capital A) type, always in awe of the "villains" like Prajit, Vinay and the Jayant-Basant twins..... even studious ones like Bipin aka Turkey, Jacob aka JaRu aka Yakub Khan, Sreekanth etc. But I had one thing noone else had, an inhumanly voracious appetite for books. Darn, I knew about Robespierre even before I got to know Giant Robot.... and in all humility I was pretty much a walking encyclopaedia in many matters. It was through Fr Pulickal and my parents that Radha Ma'am came to know about this.
There was this high-stakes pre-senior level school level quiz held by Nestle.... it was THE quiz in those times and Ma'am had to choose two kids to rep the school. Well, she chose me (surprising the entire civilised world) and Jaru. We won handsomely. I became a permanent fixure in the Quiz team (through school and college) and this tunred out to be a field I was REALLY good at. Had victories even in national levels..... I started to get real recognition and that much craved applause (atleast in those nerd circles) from that point on. My secret, intimidating fears of "worthlessness" were gone. Something even the soothing assurances and promises of my parents couldn't achieve. This was my "first awakening". Seems some of my higer brain functions started working after this incident. It was then that I discovered I had decent writing skills too....

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Warning: Insanely long and self-indulgent section! :)

Class VIII.
Now we are 13. We got to wear pants after 8 years in black Daisy Dukes, showing more leg than an Ecstasy charged Mallika Sherawat ever would! Good timing too, the Chewbaccas in our batch were staring to get embarrased. In fact the biggest bear in our batch, Vinu aka CD Pothan started wearing pants since Class VII. Folks, you DON'T want to see his 6'2" frame in shorts! The all-knowing school authorities wisely passed Amendment 66 enabling him to dress up in fr1ggin' chain mail armor if he feels so..... in Class VII itself. You know, just in case the pants ain't enough.... :P
(Thats it. I am SO dead!)

That's Manorama Ma'am in the pic. Taught us science subjects till Class X. She sometimes took english classes as she had an MA in English too. Even headed, wise and capable. We luv you, Ma'am!

The blokes you see in this pic continues to the end of school days.
There was a final elimination wherein the top 45 from Class VII divisions A and B (strength 45+ each) were to be taken into the ICSE/ISC stream and the rest into the "untermenschen" SSLC stream. This was a sort of prestige exam as it was percieved this would make a lot of difference in our life.... which it did. I got selected, surprising 637 sentient races across the Galaxy and half of my teachers who immediately renounced faith in humanity..... and went to Kashi/Rameshwaram/Jerusalem/Mecca. I got the message when we were on that unforgettable South India trip I mentioned in an earlier. I still remember, it was right before we went into Tanjavur temple.
Errrr God....... The promises I made then; the ones about always staying a good boy, becoming a Sanyasi etc..... remember? Of course you do! Heh, heh.... those were kind of "on the spur of the moment" bablings, ya know? Please don't take those too seriously!

Ok..... it gets weird from here. Something major happened to me that year you see:-

A "Get-out!" from the computer class for discrediting the sacrosanct BASIC language and being an affront to human logic triggered another "awakening" in me. Till then, I never got the "feel" of science , i.e I used to study science in "Take a Beaker. Take a beaker. Full of water. Full of water. Add the salt. Add the salt." mode. i.e Learning by pure rote! I didn't know what Maths exactly was, I didn't know what the hell a Math proof implied..... you know what i'm saying? In short, "I didn't have the logic" as S sir said once in class. That 1/2 hour spent leaning on the railing, computer notebook in hand, thinking were am I going with this half-brain of mine, somehow took me to the Twilight Zone. Honest to God I dunno what happened then, I only remember this huge rushing feeling...... a feel of KaivalyaJnana! I took a look at the program question, a (now looking simple) counter-decision loop thingie.... and everything made sense. I wrote the program in no time, verified the output and ran back to class to show it to S sir. I promise you he was very surprised! (PS: You know guys, I found that Computer Science class in Koi Mil Gaya to be too close for comfort.)

I found out that this "awakening" extended to other branches to science too..... I soon realised I won't be needing those half a dozen tutions to stay afloat anymore. Nobody knew then, but I had been going to 4-6 tutions for years, just to pass the exams! Six tutions! I convinced my parents to cut all tutions except one Math tution...... and that too was because of ze nice gals in that batch. ;)
I'm not saying I became a genius or the ultimate topper or something, but I began to "get things" faster, "see the picture" clearer since that day. Upgraded from the "Just Pass/Average" levels to "Well above Average" in a flash. I still had to take tutions in high school and never made earthshaking discoveries in science and tech or anything, but compared to what I was.... I came a long long way in that magic hour.
What happened to me that day? Blessed? Wished upon a star I couldn't see? Deal with the devil..... and he'll come to collect my soul soon? Jadoo's magic rays when his starship cruised by on a recce and took pity on this loser? I hit my head against the railing and closed the "switch" in my brain? I dunno. !

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This pic was taken just before our ICSE Class X exams, during the farewell week. Our school had Class XI and XII for ISC but you won't be admitted unless you get distinction. That's why they held this "farewell"..... some might not make it to High School. Well, all except one made it to Class XI, including some folks from the SSLC divison on account of their high marks. There was a new arrival too.
And the priest with the blokes? That's the late Fr Mathew Pulickal S.J. I believe I have introduced you folks to this man in a previous Loyola post. He deserves a FULL post and undivided attention ..... so I'm not giving any "synopsis" or salient points right now.
RIP Fr......

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Class XI. High school. In America dudes of our age would have beeing racing in T-Birds with dates riding shotgun, high on pot..... here all we had was Paili's Moped held together by bubble gums, rubber band and the will of the force. Heck, we didn't even have those scooters.... ummm, except for KP.
And "social life"? Does Apna Haath Jaganath count? :P The chota stalls selling all those "educational books" had a field day, we slobbered whole rivers in front of co-ed schools and our soul-mate school (Holy Angels, they were Girls only school you see!) and we broke nearly every attitude-adjustment regulation and sugestion put forward by the elders and teachers. The only thing that kept us from falling to pieces in those years was the spectre of Engineering/Medical and other career exams looking over the horizon. Paah, you all know what I am speaking about. All desis (atleast Mallus) have been through this grindhouse. But when I sang the story of these sad teen years to my American pals, you won't believe the level of "awe and sympathy factor" I earned! Ohhh, some yeevil yankees from that circle did give me hell, BTW......

The lady in the pic?
(flourish) DP.
(more flourish) Comrade at Arms. Accomplice in crime. Silent partner to our evil enterprises. Harried mother hen to countless sithspawn who defiled the hallowed halls of Loyola. Cooler than Fonzie. Sharper than the blade of Elendil. A mind more fecund than the black soils of the Ukraine. A patience vaster than the great void. A persistance more dogged and singleminded than the Borg collective. (flourish)

PS: Oh no, she wasn't our classmate! Not technically. ;)
She taught us English Grammar and Composition from X to XII .

Here's lookin' at you, Ma'am. You da boss!

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School days were over in flash. Off we went into different colleges, different streams, different states. Most of us became Engineers, some became docs, a vet, a bloodsucking lawyer, two architects, some went into business careers, two engineers are trying to enter Babudom..... there's even a Armywaalah!
That would be our Thomman...... a being from the deepest depths of the void. An avatar of still indeterminate mission. A Captain in the Indian Army no less! Claimed he can shoot a running Chapta at 250 metres and a stationary Chapta at 400 OR a running Paki at 300 metres and a stationary Paki at 500 (Chinese are smaller and therefore harder to shoot, he says). So we entrusted him to take snaps when one of us was getting engaged. The pics turned out pretty crappy.... all of them showed massive shaking, he never captured the intended targets too! The bridgegroom looked like the billowing sail of a schooner (with his white and white clothes) and the bride looked something like a giant orange (you guessed it, golden sari and her jewellry). We asked " WTF?! Nee evidathe soldier aaneda? You can't even take a pic and you claim you can shoot Mushy's tushy from the LoC?! "
This is what he said: "Aliyo, you know what happened? I made corrections for recoil as I always do when I shoot with my rifle. Enthu cheyyan..... sheelam aayippoi! Enna recoil aanennariyamo ee INSAS rifleinu....."
Ahhhhh..... now I am sure the borders of India are in good hands! Jai Jawan. ;)

Anyway, here's a pic from one of our regular meets we always hold in our school. Good turnout that day.... almost half of us made it. Kids have become men now, eh? I am the middle aged one with the beard and resigned expression, getting the horns from those bhais in blue.... Peri to my right and Ammavan aka Kathanaar to my left. The soldier doesn't want his pic taken as Ayman Al-Zawahiri himself has put a price on his head.... It seems our brave Jawan RoganJoshed the Al Qaeda No.2's betrothed when they captured her near Kandahar. Thomman apparently showed no mercy even as she bleated piteously for mercy. Tch Tch. Bad call, dude! These cameljockeys Laaaavvv what they eat...... and I mean it literally!
Here he's camouflaged in blue, dug in deep and taking cover behind Ammavan's extended arm.

PS: See the guy in that dark green shirt on the right? Well, that is the infamous Sheikh Jibr Ibn Yohanna-Al-KhattaKhayam, scourge of the blogosphere, axe to the creeper of the Reservation Raj, a burning fever to the King of Churhat (Arjun Singh) and a plague to the caravan of this poor Wanderer.

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Here endeth this wee part of my storyeth....
Here goeth I to learneth Basel Norms and the economic critiqueth of the Britisheth.

Ciaoeth.

Karma. Always.

2006-04-26T18:24:00.000+05:30

1. When chased, a serpent escapes into a well, an elephant to the trunk (to which it can be tethered); a mouse to its hole............... but who can fly from karma which is quicker than all these?

Garuda Purana.

****

2. There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions. In a little while the servant came back, pale and shivering, and said, "Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd. When I turned I saw it was Death herself that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture! I pray you lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will flee to Samarra and Death will not find me there".
The merchant gave him his horse, and the servant mounted it. He dug his spurs in furiously and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. The merchant then went down to the market and he saw Death standing in the crowd. He came to Death and asked," Why did you make a threating getsture to my servant when you saw him this morning?" "That was no threatening gesture...", Death said, ".....it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra".

Appointment in Samarra.
Babylonian folktale, popularised by Somerset Maugham.

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Duryodhana and his vulnerable thigh.
Gandhari's one-shot Yogic power, gained through a lifetime of devotion would have made her firstborn impervious to anything the Pandavas could muster, and carried the day for the Kurus. But it took Lord Krishna's briefest taunt to sow a dragon seed of unnecessary shame in the mind of Duryodhana..... the Kuru prince signed his own death certificate that night.

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The very virtuous, but doomed (by his own vanity) Emperor Pareekshith in his "secure" fortress...... vainly trying to hide from Takshak, the instrument of his Karma.

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The mighty Achilles with his vulnerable heel.
The Goddess Styx herself becomes the unwtting instrument of her son's Karma.

****

Sinnerman where you gunna run to,
Sinnerman where you gunna run to,
Where you gunna run to,
All on that day?.....

Sinnerman, by Nina Simone

****

Hoichi was a blind mistrel in medieval Japan, a man so gifted in the arts of the Biwa ( Japanese Lute) that even the demons couldn't refrain from tears. He was particularly skilled at playing the Tale of the Heike, the saga of the fall of the Antoku Emperor and the Taira clan..... the Emperor being buried in the Amidaji shrine cemetery where Hoichi lived.
One night a Samurai visits him and asks Hoichi to play for his master, a powerful lord. Hoichi agrees and follows the Samurai to the palace of the nobleman, a realm of much splendour and gaiety (from the sound of things) where the assembled guests asked him to play the Tale of the Heike. The performance moved the audience to tears and amidst thunderous applause the nobleman requested Hoichi to make a follow up performance the next night. Before the retainer returned him to his temple, Hoichi was warned not to speak of the evening's events as his master was travelling incognito.

The following evening, the samurai returned to Hoichi's quarters and led him back to the nobleman..... and this continued for a few days. However, Hoichi's absences were soon discovered by his friend, the priest of the Temple. The priest grew suspicious and instructed his servants to keep an eye on Hoichi. It was not just his bouts of absence, Hoichi seemed to be turning weaker, paler and drained these days..... it seemed he was being slowly erased out of existence. When they saw him leaving the temple the servants followed and eventually found Hoichi playing his biwa in the middle of the cemetery! The servants dragged him back to the temple and Hoichi explained the previous night's events to the priest.

Realizing that Hoichi had been marked and bound by the restless Hungry Ghosts who tried to relive their mortal days and listen to their own tale.... and (perhaps unwittingly) were draining Hoichi of his life-force, the priest vowed to save his friend from further harm. He painted Hoichi's whole body with the sacred text of the Heart Sutra and instructed him to remain silent and motionless when he is called upon by his ghostly escort. But the priest forgot something.......

That evening the ghost of the samurai retainer called for Hoichi as before, and was angered when he received no response. The ghostly samurai approached Hoichi but was unable to see anything but his ears. The holy sutra had rendered the rest of Hoichi's body invisible to the retainer but the priest had forgotten Hoichi's ears! Attempting to comply with his orders, the samurai ripped Hoichi's ears off as proof that they had been the only portion of the lute player that was available.

The Legend of Hoichi the Earless,
Japanese Folklore

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It always gets you, right?
In Eastern, non-semitic religions, Karma is the perhaps the greatest cosmic truth. IMO, it is the measure of what you have done if your lifetimes........ plus what's "ordained" for you. Yea, the latter is a factor too. Some cultures say karma is entirely tangible..... like the Ancient Egyptian funda where your heart is weighed against an ostrich feather by Anubis. It binds both humans and Gods, even if the intent was "noble".... from Lord Shiva himself doing intense penance for Brahmahatya to the King of Qin paying for his "tyranny" at the bitter end. It will visit you and/or your progeny...... and anyone or anything can be an insrument of this cosmic force. You might attempt to deflect it or escape it altogether, but it *always* comes around. Wise are the ways of Karma.

Notice how the religions of the world try to tackle this CORE issue? Some seek an attenuation of bad Karma through life-cycles among other paths, some promise offsetting it through various means..... sometimes even corporal mortification, some apparently "skirt" the whole issue by providing grace based relief and salvation.... with a simple leap of faith and some provide eternal, but material bounties in return for simple, unwavering assosciation and adherence.
This might sound too simplistic and somewhat reductionist, but don't they ALL boil down to Karma-Causality?

PS: Extremely tangential and spin-off thoughts after seeing (for the nth time) that scene where a dying Captain Miller says "Earn This!" to Private Ryan. In a rare philosphical mode.... damn! Don't worry, tiger...... it's nothing that can't be cured by any one of the seven sins you are so familiar with! I think I'll do some gluttony and envy today. ;)

PPS: I don't exactly remember how I reached Karmic concepts from that point.... maybe I should reconstruct it sometime later. Some train of thought, eh? Now you know why I chose the title, The Wanderer? :P

Guten Tag

2006-04-17T14:28:00.000+05:30

Arrrrrrrrrrrrgggghhhhhhhhhhh! I have been tagged by this vial of venom
Here goes anyway.....

1.Grab the book nearest to you, turn on page 18 and find line 4.

.... Afghans. Jayapal's army is estimated at 12000 cavalry, 30000 foot...

2. Stretch your left arm as far as you can

The girl sitting in the PC station next to mine slaps me..... Ayyo!
M'scuse, Cherie!

3. What is the last thing you watched on TV?

That Ashiqui Meri video from 36 Chinatown.

4.Without looking, guess what time it is?

2:40 PM?

5. Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?

2: 36 PM.

6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?

The above mentioned girl putting a supari on my head through her mobile phone.

7. When did you last step outside? What were you doing?

Cursing the cablewallahs for not fixing my net connection and dashing off to the cafe.

8. Before you started this survey, what did you look at?

My orkut scrapbook.

9. What are you wearing?

Prem Nazir era Psychedelic pattern dark lungi and cotton shirt.

10. Did you dream last night?

Yes.

11. When did you last laugh?

Outlook's year end special issue with a cartoon on our own Fraud-i-Jahan-i-Maulvi-ul-Management, "Doctor" Arindam Chaudhari. It was hilarious..... showed the Ponytail with the seat of his pants bitten off by a webpage (Refers to the major asskicking he got from desi blogosphere from gurus like Greatbong and Gaurav Sabnis. Too bad I missed it!). Exclusive expose of his pink floral undies too.....

12. What is on the walls of the room you are in?

The cafe walls? Lots of ads...... lots. Some interior decoator they got!

13. Seen anything weird lately?

Yea....... Comrade V.S. Achuthanandanov is going by the moniker "Vikas purush".
Yea right.... and I am Bolshoi Ballerina Anna Pavlova!

14. What do you think of this quiz?

Needs more of ze Weird Factor.

15. What is the last film you saw?

Der Untergang (Downfall)
PS: I could write poems on this piece of art....... great movie! Haunting!
Bruno Ganz is amazing! I never thought I would feel even a sliver of sympathy for Hitler.

16. If you became a multimillionaire overnight, what would you buy?

A 6000 sq ft seaside villa in Malibu county.... on a 5 acre walled grounds.
A castle in Ireland.
A Gulfstream Jet.
A 1000 acre farmhouse near Delhi.
Kawdiar Palace, Trivandrum. (They BETTER sell it when I ask them!)

17. Tell me something about you that I dunno.

I am claustrophobic.

18. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?

Teleport our friendly neighbours viz Pakis, Chinese, BDs etc to a barely habitable planet atleast 347,897,000 parsecs away and replace them with blondes from Sweden.

19. Do you like to dance?

Yes!
Sunny Deol takes his dancing lessons from me. See him do my steps in Yaara O Yaara song in Jeet?

20. George Bush.

He's no village idiot. Don't fall for that old parlor trick.....
PS: You know guys, I am Republican!

21. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?

Indira

22. Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?

Rajiv

23. Would you ever consider living abroad?

Maybe.......

24. What do you want GOD to say to you when you reach the pearly gates?

Welcome, my son! Your 72 Houris are waiting by the poolside.

25. 4 people who must also do this meme in their journal.

Pooja.
Sorry. Everyone else I know has done zis!

The Wanderer Tags.....

2006-04-08T03:51:00.000+05:30

Shalom!

Nobody has tagged me yet....... bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah and boo-fr1ggin-hoo. Therefore, I decided to start a chain myself. This potpourri is somewhat weird, snoopy and spooky I guess..... consider this as a punishment for not tagging me yet! NJAHAHAHAHAHA.

I have chosen da following Lords of Blogistan Khanates in this initiative. The are, Jiby, MindCurry, Silverine, Quills, Deepa, Poison, and Pooja .
Kripya indulge moi and yourself. Spread my message, ye lesser mortals.

PS: You may choose to invoke the 5th Amendment (US) principle. ;)

And now, let me give MY take......

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5 people who top your sh1t list..... and why:

a) Velupillai Prabhakaran: Reason, the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.

b) Mallika Sherawat: For being a blot on the fair name of the vamp. Vamps have class!

c) Arundhati Roy: For being a bloviating banshee and an obfusticating, pseudo-secular, pseudo-socialist fraud.

d) Brinda Karat and Prakash Karat: A very dangerous and high-profile duo.....

e) Hafeez Mohammed Sayeed: Don't you just love these kind of critters?

Close brushes with death/danger:

a) I-15 highway, Spring Break 2005: Trip to Vegas and Grand Canyon. GC swung the Ford sharply into the bushes to avoid being fodder for that eighteen-wheel truck...... Some drunk bums who were tailing us tried to "coax" us to play Chicken in that godforsaken stretch. I swear I had an epiphany of a tall, mace-armed dark figure on a water-buffalo beckoning me...

b) Trivandrum, 1997: Hitched a ride with S, after tution classes. He sees his longtime crush coming out of a bakery and instantly forgets he's on a bike, in the busiest junction in Trivandrum..... with a valuable person like me riding pillion. He didn't change gears, he didn't slow down, no signals..... just swung into the wrong side and almost into the pavement to say Hi to her. I still dunno how we escaped that KSRTC bus........ I could almost smell the drivers chappals.

5 Preferable modes of suicide, in descending order:

You never know. In case you ever need to.....ummmmm, heh heh. Nothing.
Anyway, I remember this discussion I had with a cpl of classmates in CET. I never knew those dudes and dudettes were so warped. Cool!

a) Slitting yer veins in a hot tub:
Fave method of disgraced Roman Patricians. Painless, dreamlike and clean.... as long as you don't slice the wrist tendons instead. Gives you *some* time to reconsider what you are doing. In case you can't afford a tub, a bucket of water wud do

b) Sleeping Pills:
At least 40 barbituaries it seems.... not yet expired, pleej. Not unless you wanna die of Diarrhea instead! Use it only if someone can find you before you start to stink.

c) Gunshot:
It is said that the classic filmi shot to the temple is not very reliable as the bullet might travel on the inside edge of the thick cranium.... and leave you a vegetable. Try shooting inside your mouth, barrel directed to the spine. Or from under your chin, barrel upwards.

d) The Jump: 100% guarentee if you take atleast the 15th floor..... but causes a bad mess. You either get splattered or land on your legs, driving them into your torso or something.

e) Hanging: The upside, you can do it almost anywhere...... with anything. The downside, brown pants..... always. Moreover, a very slow, messy and painful Tyburn Jig if your neck doesn't break when the chair is kicked off.

Wicked, eh? :P

5 Guilty pleasures:

a) Blaxploitation movies..... luvvvvv Pam Grier.

b) Midnight Masala of local TV channels. A salute to my schoolboy years..... somehow it looks cheesy now.

c) 80's era Rajnikanth films.... the ones where he grabs a rocket mid-flight and directs it back to the villain saying "Ithu Unakku"! (Tams, please don't pounce on me!)

d) Mithunda's B-movies...... all except Jallad, which was a kinda OK remake of Satyaraj's Amaithi Padai, a surprisingly good movie. Cool performances by both Mithunda and especially the Lollu Mannan, Satyaraj.

e) Bollywood "action" flicks from the early 90s. Anyone remember those flicks like Mr.Bond, Suraksha and Zaalim?

5 things you never want to forget:

a) Dad, Mom, Bro and I, 1993 .......... South India pilgrimage trip. We've had so many trips, but this one is my fave. Especially the Tanjavur leg of the trip.

b) When she gave me that hilarious "love-note" ....... even though it was in jest and I had to laugh with everyone.

c) Winning my first Quiz..... 1990, Bishop's Hall, Trivandrum.

d) Loyola years, letting those sweet, creamy "jam-cakes" melt in my mouth.........

e) The first view of my university from the freeway.

5 things you wish to forget:

a) Our Pettai Rap in the school assembly...... at the farewell to our seniors function. Fr Manimala was too shocked and numbed to launch the verbal firestorm he's notorious for.

b) Trying to mix Tequila, bare bones Vodka, Gin and Pizza in ONE sitting..... and "redecorating" Bala's room and a couple of his friends. I was later told they had to call the Federal Emergency Management Agency to decontaminate the county. It was my first time you see.... and I never drank again after that. (I mean, nothing stronger than champagne).

c) That major traffic jam I caused in Pattom when I inexplicably forgot all my driving lessons in a flash...... The upside, learned a lot of imaginative Gaalis from the friendly traffic cop who came to aid me.

d) That goddamned cop costume they made we wear for GG House tableau for the Youth Festival...... gave me the worst case of rashes! I strongly suspect it was last used by some Kurd lab-rat in one of Saddam Hussein's bio-war labs.

e) OJ convincing me to sing Hotel California (Mallu-Mix Unlimited version) along with him in Deer Park venue of Sarang 2001. Think Lolakutty/Sister Stella/Ludakrishna-MC Vikram accents....... Gawd, I still remember this minx tying her duppatta to a low branch, making a noose at the other end and doing a mock suicide right in front of our "perfomance".

"Whalekome to dhee Hwottelll Kaaaaaliphorniyaaa,
Suchhyya Lowwwleeeee Playzzz...."

5 really exotic dishes you have tried:

a) Thousand Year Egg
b) Ox Lengua
c) Kimjang Kimchi
d) Murg Musallam
e) Chapli Kebab

5 crushes/loves in your life... in chronological order (even initials or nicknames wud do. Oh, no ID attempts or requests pleez):

a) Enya
b) Urmila Matondkar
c) SC
d) LS
e) Udita Goswami (Pre-skank version....... Saw her in that nun's habit in Paap? Sighhh!)

Strangest dream you ever had:

One dream a long time ago;
I'm in a rather rickety bus which is making a night trip...... can't see nothing outside, no lights, no stars, no vehicles and the road seems like an endless stretch. There seems to be no driver and there's just another passenger besides me. This passenger is a dementor like figure, only a pair of almost death-white forearms can be seen and it is sitting next to me. The voice is however rather soothing...... I think it was a female voice and quite impishly inquisitive. It was making me talk endlessly about Gulmohars, Lucky Ali songs, the apocrypha, Celtic mythos, wanderlust, ...... plus a host of other topics. Endless is the word!

The thing that makes this dream quite creepy is, I forget ALL my dreams as soon as I wake up.... but in this case I remember almost every single word exchanged, the motion of the hands, the way the spectre connected these assorted topics seamlessly..... right down to the bus stopping beside by my bed lying by the highway and it telling me "Now this is where we part.... for now". Seemed soooooo real!

Out of body experience? Acid trip? I need professional help?
Whaddya think?

5 most valued personal possessions:

My awards and certificates
Those hundreds of photos...
My diaries and logs..... and assorted mementos. Been backing up the older logs and diaries into my computer since '98.
My Laptop and External Hard Disk
My movie collection

5 favorite superheroes..... and why:

a) The Punisher: No superpowers, just demonic rage and hate. Darkest of the lot.
b) V: The true revolutionary. The one who knows "Why" and "How".
c) Spiderman: The Everyman Superhero.
d) Rorschach: Moral absolutism, his conviction, attitude..... and tragic fate.
e) Batman: The tech, the measured steps to combat crime, Christian Bale's and Michael Keaton's portrayals.
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Uh Oh.
In hindsight....... shouldn't have made this crazy post. :P

Loyola! Loyola! Loyola!

2006-03-30T22:24:00.000+05:30

Loyola School, somewhere in South India, India.
My alma-mater. UKG to Class XII.
Made me what I am.
(PS: But please don't hold the school entirely responsible for any of my..... ummmmm "anomalies", like being two chappatis short of a full Thaali as one of my friends described it so succinctly. Wokay?)

Run by the Jesuit Order as you might be aware.... perhaps the best organisation that can handle a difficult task like teaching little devils. Centuries as the Catholic Church's vanguard in exorcisms and demon-busting and paranormal phenomena have made the Jesuit Order the best educationists in the whole universe...... Yeah, they'll really need all that experience. :)

Now, this place is boys only.
Pros: Male Bonding. Lifelong friendships..... nee, brotherhood! Industrial strength "skin" and Untamed tounges. First names basis with the local cops and crooks alike.
Cons: Ask the girls of St. Thomas, Sarvodaya, KV and Holy Angels.

That would do for a short intro..... for now. I guess I'll be telling you a lot more on life in Loyola soon. But first, I need you to familiarise yourself with the terrain.
How about a photo tour into the greatest school in the world? Hold on Totos, we're leaving Kansas now..........
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Enter, stranger!
These gates you see below were made with the very bones of the hills...... Vulcan himself spent eons fashioning the irons that hold the demons within, sparing the world of the horrors that lie beyond the runes. MUHUHUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA....

Errrrrr.........on second thoughts, no! I'll save the Bela Lugosi voiceover and the Gothic horror ishtyle for something else. ;)

OK, let's start again.
Here's the main gate to our little heaven.... If I remember correctly, the gate has been around for a long time. But that globe's new.... a bit corny, eh? Now the grills you see in the centre of the pic enclose the tennis court. Nobody played tennis in my time..... but since the advent of Ms. Mirza, I hear a lot of besotted, hopefull "suitors" are now really sweating it out there. Good luck to you, boys! Beyond the tennis court lies our dear football ground. They call it the football ground..... but you can see people playing cricket, track and field, no rules combat and dodgeball, simultaneously. Yeah, you have guessed right, we have therefore deviced strict (and violent) policies against run-out batsmen and clumsy fielders who claim they were distracted by the football (or the flying shoe, glasses, lunchboxes and undies from the friendly Muay-Thai melee nearby) out of the blue. There's a better view of this ground down the post....

Moving on, this pic right below shows the main block. The offices, computer labs, Audio-Video rooms, the SBT branch, most of the senior school classes, the library, are located in this block. The pic following this one shows the view from the second entrance, i.e via the Jesuit residence, chapel-auditorium and College road. In my case Classes IX to XII were held here. The well stocked library at the top floor provides a Zen like experience. There's the cool breeze from the hills, the view, the very gentle and pleasant Susheela Ma'am who runs the library and her assistant, the one and only Lazar Uncle. (The non-teaching staff were really kind Uncles to us...... we didn't address them so for nothing. All of them were good men... the Jesuit management really knows how to pick their staff. I can't even imagine a life in Loyola without colorful characters like Joseph Uncle, Lazar Uncle and D'Cruz Uncle, the speed demon bus-driver. Here's looking at you, folks!) The Library was personally my favorite place in the whole school.... gave me this love for libraries I carried over into college and life after college.

See the building partially hidden by the tree and with the words Loyola School in the pic above? Well, that is the annexure to the main block and holds the enoromous exam halls, arts practice rooms at lower levels, some senior school classes etc. Classes V to VIII was held here in those days..... and there was always the cool wind from the hills and the lake of the resort nearby. Lovely view too.

The main block, the annexure and a third, older building (not shown in this post) forms the quadrangle. Here's the quadrangle, as seen from the old building. The stairs lead to the main block...... we hold our weekly assemblies here. A sea of boys in black and white (no ties or tuck-in shirts or polished shoes or walking in files-holding hands or such stupid rules here, BTW) throng the stairs, the Principal sits alone on a chair at the edge of the main basketball court and there's that 7 foot adjustable mic connected to the Public Address System. Every assembly, one kid (out of 45 per division, two divisions per class = 1170 boys totally in my time) per division from the senior school HAS to give a speech/song/poetry recitation. Like the Fight Club, everyone HAS to make a go. Let me tell you this thingie cured me of my stage fright..... and helped me face the world. And thousands of other kids like me.
No public caning, report-card reading or apology in the assembly or any of that shit...... and we never had corporal punishment here! Except for late Fr. Mathew Pulickal descending on the rioting masses of naughty kids, waving his cane and hectoring them to behave like gentlemen should. I bet my immortal soul he's up there at the right side of God's throne, winking at us and promising us another thrashing with that bamboo cane when he sees us up there. (See, that ad with Big B as a priest, tagging school kids who don't have clean uniforms? That's a much watered-down version of the loving, incorrigible and impossible Fr Pulickal...... I owe him a whole post. Soon!)

Coming back to the school terrain, the pic below shows the view from the main block. What you see is the football court I told you about. That red brick structure is the so-called "Pavillion", another multipurpose edifice. Sports day fest organising, PT for kids, close-quarters football with stones, review of the latest D.B.Nair(Debonair) magazine..... this is the place. That door you see leads to the sports locker..... ahhhhh, a kids dream! We luvved to raid the place for that sweet, musty smell of old football and basketball bladders, willows, nets, tug-of-war ropes and that abdomen-groin pad. This object has never been touched since a wonderous humanoid lifeform named Bijoy (one yr senior to me) used it the very day they purchased it. AFAIK, it is an object of shamanistic awe now and legends have grown around it's etheral photoluminscense and aroma. It now occupies a place of honor at a corner of the sports room, respected, worshipped and undisturbed by all.
Right next to this room, hidden by the portico is our snack canteen. Gawwwwd...... the moments of absolute Nirvana and KaivalyaJnana I have attained here munching those snacks. Especially if I convinced someone else to pay for it! They don't make that kind of "butter-buns", "jam-cakes" and "sip-ups" anymore, sighhhhh.....What? Why are you cackling? They ARE suggestive names, but I assure you they are nothing more than snacks. Ohhh grow up, for fcuk's sake! :)

Hmmm..... now we have a view of the Junior school playplace(see that big boat thingie and the building to the left of the pic, behind the grill?) and a portion of the renovated Junior School. As you probably realise, this flatland is the football ground, as seen from the Pavillion.

The Chapel and Auditorium complex is the coolest structure in the campus. Designed by Laurie Baker, this exhibits his style of affordable and enviornment friendly architecture. The auditorium is huuuuge, accoustics are excellent and there's a large balcony section for the "criminally" inclined. Visit the backenches of the balcony during festival time to know what a Pepsi, spittle and popcorn shower is like! Been in sooo many auditoriums, but nothing ever measures upto this one. The cheers, catcalls, whistles and the curses still ring in my mind..... so clearly. After class hours, Karate classes were held in the auditorium. I used to be a little Bruce Lee for a couple of years you know, though you wouldn't tell if you saw my "chiselled" body now. ;) We had to clear the chairs off first to make the Dojo.... and arrange them back after the 90 minute class. Our sinews, fists, knuckles, shins and knees hurt like a million hells, but still we had to do it in 5 minutes sharp...... lest Sensei's thick Black Belt descended on our butts or thighs to "encourage" us.
The chapel is quite an experience, even for an "idolatorous heathen" like me. ;) The design is such that the light enters through some strategically placed windows and converges at the altar.... giving it an out-of-world glow. Trust me, it's some light-show! Add to it the rich, booming voice of Fr Thayyil or the so-sensible and paternal voice of Fr Thomas or the earnest and pointed voice of Fr Pulickal or even the metallic, no-nonsense voice of Fr Manimala, this chapel provides a very mystical experience. I have spent so many hours sitting here, praying to every God that came to my mind, before exams or for my house to win the cup (while the festival was going in the auditorium, seperated from the chapel by a wall).... or simply to be at peace. Life was so simple then, we were rather innocent, the Gods were simpler, theology more black and white and we weren't yet exposed to the shenanigans and spin-off effects of religion-politics or caste-politics. Anyway......
The grottos and the 12 passions, staple features of every catholic church, are quite unique. The passions are represented by simple outlines wrought in iron. No grand mosaic glass panel, icons and Biblical verses in huge Gothic scripts..... simple outlines. My favorite one is the passion showing Jesus carrying the cross, it's a simple metal outline..... says so much, with so little. Just like that famous three swoosh pencil-sketch representing Gandhiji.
Here's Apu (Peri) and Mathew(Ichaayan) at the spiral stairs leading to the balcony of the auditorium. We were just finished with a game of basketball..... One door to the auditorium can be seen at extreme left of the pic. That was my least favorite door, you land right into the midst of the teachers and judges who occupy the front rows. Definitely no place for exhibiting your true self!

Wowww! The "Hockey Ground"! But Hockey was last played here during the time of Dhyan Chand..... this has long been taken over by the warlords of cricket. See the trees lining up on the side, they were the "wickets". The first gang to reach the ground possessed the middle tree, the prized location for obvious reasons. We made bats out of coconut leaf stems (till we were "old enough" to ask for proper bats from the sports-room) and played with tennis balls.... took turns in buying the ball you know. Sometimes, we pooled resources from "sip-up" money for buying a ball. God help the wretch who loses it before it wears away into an amorphous piece of pulp! Even worse fate awaits those who hit the ball into the thick bushes beyond the ground.
BTW, the number of times I've scraped my knees and elbows in the hard, unforgiving ground! Something abou the place..... the ground is so unnaturally hard.

Here's another view from the main block..... this one shows the second basketball court. Can you make it out from this pic? Whenever they had exams for other classes in the quad buildings, or during free periods or when the school team was practicing, this is where we little scamps headed off to. I've been to the Thar and Mojhave deserts..... but I've never seen so much fr1ggin dust as this piece of Mother Earth. It was lovely though..... all that dust just adds to the feel and the thrill of the battle. Until Apu charges from the Khamsin and rams his knee into your family jewels before proceeding to score while you writhe on the ground and eat the dust. Ouch!

Another view of the Junior school down here.... the buses were just filing in as I took the pics. They tore down my old junior school... the brick-red, single story, horse-shoe shaped Laurie Baker style structure and built this green monstrosity in its place. Damn! And I have no pics of that beautiful old place...... the central quad, the "port-holes" we shot passers-by with paper pellets, Rajappan uncle's lair, Fr Thomas's room, the comfy infirmary.
Sighhhh. Nothing lasts forever......

Ok..... some of my greatest memories in school was the jolly little forest and that deep "trench" which once existed right where they are building the new stadium. See that in the background of the pic below? We were so pissed when they erased those woods ...... we had so much fun there. The terrain was so much like the alpine and semi-forest terrain of Fauji serial. Had loads of fun playing commandos and Pakistanis out there, imaginations fired to max till that shrill bell at 12:40 sharp. The parents were glad though.... they always thought the "enchanted woods" were dangerous. After all, our school "muscot" and showpiece Python (passed away a few years ago) was captured there. I used to spend hours staring at the Python, waiting for it to sit up and hiss and scare me like those nasty Nagas in those Prem Nazir movies. No dice...... it rarely moved. I guess he was too lonely, bored and sad. He spent almost his entire life in that little improvised cage beneath the stairs you see. NOW I feel so ashamed for not letting him out back then.

All thats left of our original terrain are the slides you see in the following pic. They seemed so menacing and steep back then. The ultimate test of "manhood" was sliding down these wearing those nylon socks for added mobility and danger..... or better, during the rains when it gets slippery! There used to be a shicking red merry-go-round, two see-saws and two pairs of swings in the empty space you see. I wasn't scared of the merry-g-round and the swings..... used to cling on even when the merry-go-round was spun at maximum speeds and my friends had jumped out screaming. I just loved that feeling in my stomach and the wind in my hair. I could swing to the maximum heights and jump off too...... somehow managed to land on my feet all the time. The see-saw was another matter though. I was scared to death of Vinay or Kiran jumping off the other end at my maximum ascent, sending my ass crashing into the ground at terminal speeds........ along with my end of the see-saw. How my spine and rib-cage jangled after impact! These two used to do that all the time....... the thrill was in the mind-game and guessing when he's going to jump off. However, I could never muster up enough courage to return the favor...... jumping off a see-saw when I was on maximum ascent seemed so suicidal. The fulcrum thingie messed up my calculations in statics, projecticle theory, aerodynamics, wind velocity and thrust to weight rations..... for all I know, I could end up with my chin mashed into my mouth . So I sat there and took it like the pu$$y I was. :P

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I guess that will do for today.............. already this is a loooooong-ass post. I doubt if the page would ever load for all ye mere mortals with slow connections. All the pics are approx 150KB each! Resized from their original 1 MB High-Quality versions onlee. I only hope the blog software doesn't distort the pics too much.

Lots of things I haven't included..... partly its b'coz of space considerations, partly because I don't have the pics. Perhaps I SHOULD make more posts on my school, the people and all the anecdotes..... I feel I haven't done enoigh justice to Loyola. Lots of things still clanging inside my head, waiting to be put down on black and white before time erases them. Thank God I have a rather good memory..... and I am a compulsive record-keeper (personal diaries, mementos, catalogues, pics etc). Ever fear about a time when you start forgetting things you never should? Ooops, here I go on tangent again..... (Note to self: never read short stories like Orma or see movies like Thanmatra or even Bubba-Ho-Tep!)

Better get outta here. Till next time, Bye!

Phunctional Phiction: The CET Chronicles, Folio - I

2006-03-19T13:53:00.000+05:30

Introduction

"cold be heart and hand and bone,
cold be travellers far from home. "
(Inscription on the granite sacrophagus where we interred our last Principal... alive)

Two hundred plus acres packed with rolling hills, deep gorges, barren spaces, thick bushes and dark Acacia forests, the College of Engineering Trivandrum or CET is an apt candidate for a national biodiversity park. This land of ceaseless wonders is ringed by a three metre high wall topped with barb-wire and jagged glass pieces for assisting students attempting to sneak in/out of the campus. Those walls were painted bleak stone-grey till someone mistook the institute for a maximum security prison and dumped a busload of hardcore female crooks into the Ladies Jail...oops Hostel, about 7 years ago. This mistake was never rectified and sadly, 17 of these anti-social elements formed the core of women's wing of EEE 2003 batch. The British Empire which created this institute in 1939 (in their continuing quest for world domination) had fled India in horror when they realised the true nature of their creation.... Since then they have been pleading in vain with the Govt of India to let them nuke the damned place off the map as a redemption for their cardinal sin. The reasons for the Govt's refusal remain explained.

The archviles who grace this noble institute are supported from outside by the Sreekaryam-Ulloor-Karyavattom hinterland which boasts of notable humanitarians like Mahesh Karuna and Malayan Dillepan not to mention generations of RSS acolytes.... the latter tradition is so strong that male babies in this area are born fully attired in Khaki shorts, white shirts and black caps and refuse to let go of the umbilical cord till someone gives them a 9" wooden staff. The Govt has bestowed due recognition to the influence of this landmark by permanently stationing a battalion of battle-hardened Paracommandos and Military Police units in the Southern AirCommand HQ built right next to the college. The Kerala Police was found seriously lacking after an incident in 1992 where a band of armed personnel and concerned citizens were chased off with high casualities by mutated lifeforms from the depths of D-block, Men's Hostel. The 24/7 Close Air Support missions by IAF jets were somewhat effective till someone put up a Hi-Fi stereo system up the water-tower and played Balashankar's Judas Priest/Rage Against the Machine/Black Sabbath CDs at full blast. This brilliant act of asymmetrical warfare scrambled aircraft comms and navigation, effectively putting the mighty air-force out off the grid. A hapless pilot who bailed out in dazed confusion instead of dashing blindly back to Madurai Airbase on full afterburner was last seen descending into the bushes behind the Power Lab. It is believed that the abovesaid wretch fell into the hands of the 8th year "veteran" undergrads who stalk the badlands beyond the Labs.

The main building and the Electronics block are built in a Crucifix-Spanner layout as this design was found very effective in the St. Petersburg Crucifix Prison. The main block is a dismal 4 storey edifice who commands a view over the entire perimeter.... The sniper nests in the corners cover the roads radiating from the building and the potholes in these roads act as murder holes in case they try an armored assault. Never the ones to hedge bets, promising young CETians have fashioned an RPG launcher from the exhaust pipe of Nitin George's bike . Jacob's Engineering works furnish the armor penetrating casings and the Ladies Hostel Kitchen provides a steady supply of high-explosive material. Human bombs are in plentifull supply given the number of zombies who populate the SFI and ABVP ranks. In short, we are Qazba-i-Zameen, Secure Ground!

Chapter 1: The Electrical Department

The Electrical Dept , my old Ilaka, is embedded within the main block since the funds extorted from the harassed Govt for building a new block were diverted to our Cold fusion project..... an endeavour which took the lives of half the research students and two professors in a freak accident. (Oh, almost forgot.... it created a 700 metre wide crater and obliterated Chaavadimukku junction along with 143 of it's residents). Stragglers runts from the Civil Engineering and Computer Engg Dept hold court in this building otherwise monopolised by pillaging hordes of EEE jocks and the odd salivating tourist from the Mexxx dept. The classrooms themselves ain't very remarkable, except for what happens inside them..... dark stories I can't disclose for reasons of personal and national security. Maybe I'll tell you another day. What takes the cakes are the organs attached to the Dept, the labs. Ohhh, the laaaaaaaabbbbbbsssssssss........the laaabbbbbbs! Yes, I will tell you about the labs today.

The ones that came before wisely built the EEE labs far away from human habitation.... The Basic Electrical Lab is run by Bela Lugosi characters right off Marvel Comics and Pokemon manga, and the lab itself was the inspiration behind Buffalo Bill's lair from Silence of the Lambs. Unearthly sounds of metal spikes driven into wooden boards (via God knows what), electric arcs and discharges and occasional bloodcurdling shrieks fills the air..... quite a foreboding place.
Instrumentation Lab can be accessed only by humanoids of high pain and electric-shock tolerance and ability to wade through seas of metallic junk and coils of high-tension wires . Experience in wood-chopping, knife-fighting and training in Samurai sword arts is a must..... the wire insulations are very thick you see. Dozens of signboards shrieking "440 Volts: Certain Painful Death" with grinning skull-n-bones embossed above only increase your sense of security and pride in this pleasant ambience. The safety record is however exemplary.... past sixty years have seen only 7 fried balls, 11 mangled knockers, 16 amputated fingers, 23 instant hair-loss incidents, 14 third degree burns...... and just one tragic death, from an Eveready pentorch battery. (Shit happens, right?)
The High tech Robotics Lab was shut down by the Govt somtime the 80s when a final year project termed T-800 went renegade, brutally terminated its creators and the Head of the Dept, escaped to the United States posing as a Phelwan and became the Governor of California. Every Feb 27 around noon time, one can still hear muffled sobs, welding and cutting sounds, gunshots, screams and a chilling German accented voice saying "I'll Be Back" from inside the barricaded doors.
Electronics Lab is a rather euphemistic term for the national Cathode Ray Oscilloscope graveyard. It is perhaps the only realm where Kirchoff's Laws (and thus the Law of Conservation of Energy) and Laws of Thermodynamics do not hold..... It has therefore been postulated that there is a flaw in The Matrix program at this location. How else can one explain CROs showing sinusoidal , wait triangular..... no square.... no Kaledoscopic waveforms, even before we connect the goddamn circuit leads to it's steel titties (i.e terminals)?
The Microprocessor Lab is one of the two saving graces in our Freakshow. Four/five person teams per experiment and only three wooden stools per station. WTF, three stools for five asses?! Jolly Good, 'coz I was the only guy in my team....... and let me confess that I recieved my first (unintentional) lapdances in this holy place (long before I came to sincity LA). Oh my sweet, virtuous, unsuspecting, focused-on-experiment teammates who might be reading this.... now you realise what a pig I was? Now please don't send your husbands or parents or brothers or boyfriends after my scalp, for I am phully reformed now. Honest! :P
Software Lab, ummmm.... that was evil! Perhaps the only air-conditioned location in CET, carpeted floors, cushy chairs, that sweet musty smell and the pyshedelic atmosphere of those seedy Mumai pubs. Windows (Linux is for useless geeks), ACDSee 4.0, fully catalogued Desibaba galleries, Pam Anderson screensavers and Mysore Mallige installed on every system... this was our temple. Sighhhh, I miss you, ol' girl.
Electrical Machines Lab is perhaps the most hated place in the good college.... well, right after the Pricipal's office atleast. Its not just for us EEE freaks, but hapless Injineers from Tele, Applied Electronics and Mech dept also were cursed with this lab. Run by a person of notorious repute as a taskmaster and an unforgiving martinet, aided by a pack of freshly minted demons, this hellhole still scares the living daylights out of generations of CETians. The perennial smell of grease, oil, short circuited boards, rusted wires and the blood and sweat of countless students before permeates every pore in your body, rapes your nostrils and assaults your higher brain functions. The only respite for us EEE folks is watching clueless Tele or Applied students blow up one machine after another.... these pitiful mortals being used only to microvoltages and ICs, they run into hysterics when someone tells them there really something called 220V. I fondly remember one of them pouring a bucket of water INTO the fr1ggin machine innards and blowing half the lab to kingdom come when the Prof told her to cool the machine drum...... You know, there's a slot for pouring in water to cool the belt and the drum, which our poor protagonist was unaware of. The student (who survived miraculously) is still serving her 7th year in Coimbatore Jail for multiple charges of destruction of government property, arson and manslaughter.
Now we come to the Power Electronics Lab which is the least fun. Yuck! All you have to do is run the slider up and down the Rheostat like a DJ and occasionally check if the circuit devices are glowing, smoking and pulsating. If so, the best course of action is pile your partners around you as a human shield and hope that God loves you despite all the terrible sins you have committed..... Or, you can flick a last birdie at the hated lab instructor and run like hell before the God of electric fire comes visiting in a thunderous flourish.
Power Lab was out of bounds for mere undergrads like me...... rumors are afloat on the Chinese opium den operating inside and the heady cocktails brewed inside the deep bowels of this Barad-dûr. Yessss, concotions rumored to be made from innocuous ingredients like transformer oil, brake fluid and Neelabhringadi Hair Oil..... Ambrosias which give you intense Xanaduesque hallucinations. The carcass of one cocky undergrad who attempted to recce the lab and raid the barrels was found floating in Vembanad Lake with rolls of midterm answer-sheets stuffed into his orifices. There have been no further attempts.

To be continued......

Those tunes that ring in your mind...

2006-03-07T09:06:00.000+05:30

I just saw this little known but quite charming movie called The River King..... It's a mystery/crime movie based on Alice Hoffman's bestselling novel by the same name, starring Ed Burns (remember the assault-rifle wielding, handsome Ranger in Saving Private Ryan?) and Jennifer Ehle (who bears a good resemblance to the the exquisite, great Meryl Streep) plus an excellent supporting cast. What struck me most while I was watching this movie was Simon Boswell's refreshing mandolin score in the background.
There are some sounds, smells and sights that hit a spot somewhere deep inside you, awaken memories or strong feelings..... things you had buried so deep in your psyche. The mandolin score in this movie (plus the whole setting and theme of the movie) reminded me of someone who failed to "see" me a long time ago. The music somehow strikes resonance with the vibrations of your heart (corny, huh! ). I get a somewhat stronger reaction when I listen to "Never Tear Us Apart" from Inxs (see my previous post for more on this)..... especially the poignant flourish which accompanies the lines
"I was standing..... you were there,
Two Worlds collided"

Today I would like to share with you some tunes that have stayed with me for a long time.... have almost become a part of me.
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I bet every Malayalee has seen Padmarajan's immortal movie Thoovanathumpikal .... a love triangle movie way ahead of it's time, which sports some of the most multidimensional characters in film history. There's this central theme which we fans call "When It Rained" or "Clara's Theme"..... a most soothing and melodious violin and piano piece lasting about 90 seconds. This music evokes bittersweet feelings and subtley warns that the love is doomed even before it began... even before Jayakrishnan meets the enigmatic Clara. Whenever it rains and the smell of fresh, moist earth (what we call Puthu Mannu or 'New Earth') hits me..... this song rings inside my head. Love it.....

Dil Chahta Hai...... remember that scene where a smitten Sidd is talking to Tara? He suddenly blurts out "I want to paint you" to which a pleasantly surprised Tara doubles up in laughter and agrees. There is this music piece termed "Sidd's theme" which plays as he first walks , then jogs and finally sprints to his home to collect the canvas and brushes.... stuffs them in his jhola and races back to Tara's house. Notice that adoring expression turning to moonstruck impatience and desperation as he picks up his speed? The music piece is so haunting..... It is the bedrock to the "Kaise He ye" song by Srinivas, but this short piece is sheer poetry. It's something that grows on you as you analyse the most cerebral story of that 3 segment movie again and again....

Remember the whistling 'hook' in "Always look on the bright side of life" in Monty Python's The Life of Brian. (Spoilers Follow........)
The classic satire on bigotry, organised religion and the stream of Bible thumping movies from Hollywood is a real piece of art. Period. The highlight is the finale, the mass crucifiction scene parody with a hapless Brian(Graham Chapman) being let down by his lover, his compatriots, his very Jewish mom and the dumbest suicide squad ever. The movie ends with a fellow condemned (played by Eric Idle) cheering up Brian with his astute poetical observations on some Nihilist truths of life, spiced up with that oh so catchy whistling 'hook'. Black humor at it's best! The movie ends with most of the ensemble cast plus Brian singing the song cheerily while they wait a slow death on the cross. This song captured public imagination as a testament to human fortitude in the 80s and has been called the second national anthem of Britian.... even the drowning sailors of HMS Sheffield, sunk by Argentine exocet missiles, were heard singing this song in the icy South Atlantic waters. I first listened to this song way back in IIT-Mumbai festival Mood Indigo, 2000.... ever since it has been a sort of anthem during my dark hours.

There's this short and sweet "Wind of My Soul" by Cat Stevens, now Yusuf-ul-Islam, now a fundamentalist Muslim convert, recently imprisoned for funding the Al Qaeda. The soothing guitar and Steven's soulful voice mouthing some simple yet deeply philosophical and autobiographical lines is some experience. The guitar strikes that resonance I told you about...... I dunno, there's something with stringed instruments that takes me places. Wish I could get some time to learn to play them.

Every English speaking music lover has listened to Elvis Presley's stirring "I can't help falling in love with you"..... probably you have heard every other artist make a personal version of this song. From Britney Spears to U2, many have tried a hand with this cult song (the remake craze is second only to "Leaving on a jetplane" from John Denver). However, nobody has been able to measure up to the UB40 version set to the Sharon Stone's thriller flick Sliver. Remember that slick black and white video, brilliantly edited to scenes from the movie....with the entire UB40 troupe doing their thing in a brightly lit, narrow hallway with all those closed-circuit cameras swinging ominously? ( I bet you pervs were more interested in that peek-a-boo shot of a nude Sharon Stone strategically covered by an errant bedsheet edge! Well, it was kinda tastefull though...). UB40 pulls it off through the judicious mix of the reggae beat they are famous for and trumpets and saxophones. The streched vocals and the deliberate (with almost Shakespearean sighs) phrasing of
"Taaayke myyyyy haaaaaand,
Taaayke myy whhhholle life tooooo...
Eyeee caaaaan't help..... faaalling in laavv weeeth you"
gives you the picture of a man well aware of the forbidden, illict love....but can't just fr1ggin help falling for her magic. The whole effect is mindblowing; the soothing Elvis paean is transformed into a classic confessional anthem..... an anthem of "dangerous love". This song stayed in the charts for a looong time and was played over and over again in channels and radios.... something like that "My Heart will go on" craze.

Speaking of Titanic anthem "My heart will go on"..... strangely, that piece doesn't affect someone so "sensitive" like me. But there's this flute and bagpipes theme, an instrumental version of the same song, titled 'Hymn to the Ocean". It's the piece they play in the last scene..... when Rose finally rejoins Jack to the applause of all those who died with the ship. It's beautiful.

Coming to my favourite genre.... Celtic and New Age. I could write pages on my favourites, there are a lot of them.... but I guess I should stop with one or two best of tha best.
Guys and gals, I am making a confession. Enya was my teenage crush.... and I still am pretty struck by her looks and talent. I was 13 when I first heard "Anywhere it is" and "Orinoco Flow" you know..... her exquisite pure Irish features and silken voice bowled me over big time.
Anyway, there's this rather recent song from Enya called "Only Time"..... it's set to that bittersweet movie Sweet November starring Keanu Reeves smitten by a gorgeous and tantalizing Charlize Theron. The original video featuring dreamlike settings remniscent of Heaven in Robin William's "What dreams may come"and the best portrayals of passage of time, was an instant hit. The condolence ceremony to the fallen in 9/11 featured this song set to scenes of worldwide support for the victims and America. Again, this is one track that struck a deep chord in me.... for the same reasons as Thoovanathumpikal and The River King.
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Whew, got it off my chest! Wanted to put it into black and white so many times...... you know, I talked about these fundaes, like which pieces stay with me and why to somepeople closest to me. But I guess I failed to convey it through just words.... maybe its because I went on tangent everytime and they couldn't catch up with my feverish brain. Perhaps I have done a better job now...... I hope.

Chhhalll...... Bye for now. Thank you for listening to me.

The Donnie Darko Experience

2006-02-19T18:04:00.000+05:30

I remember picking this rather obscure movie October Sky from the video library about six summers ago, I remember that day pretty vividly. My "quota" of 3 movies per weekend was almost up with A Bridge Too Far (which I was borrowing for the 5th time) and The Black Cauldron. I was about to pick up The Other Side of the Midnight cassette when I noticed this new arrival right next to it. The cover said starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper...... and hello, Laura Dern! Based on a true story? Okay.... let me try this one. That movie simply blew me away and clinched my aspirations for moving into the Aerospace realm after my undergrad in Electrical. The movie, the storyline and the entire cast was excellent but it was the lead actor playing his age (rather than some late 20s dude playing highschooler) with consumate ease and conviction that caught my eye. This boy, Jake Gyllenhaal literally brought to life the teen Homer Hickam who is inspired by the Cold War shock that was the Sputnik launch to go for a life in rocket science, via college and all that jazz..... a life beyond the wildest dreams of a coal miner's son.

I heard no more of this promising young actor for about a couple of years till I stumbled upon a "top seeded" movie in KaZaA, something titled Donnie Darko. The synopsis on the internet read "Troubled adolescent Donnie Darko, receives a disturbing vision from a a 6 foot demonic-looking rabbit that the world will end in 28 days, 12 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds. With the help of various characters, including the rabbit who calls itself Frank, he slowly discovers the mysterious physical and metaphysical laws that govern his life and that will lead up to the destruction of the universe." Wooooooooooo........... this is going to be quite some ride!
Cable internet had just arrived in my home state, but the infrastructure and bandwidth was extremely limited. The Mars probe had a steady stream of 11 kbps from the fr1ggin red planet to Earth, I counted myself lucky if I got 4 Kbps from the hub next door! Moreover, due to the lack of adequate electrical security measures, the sensitive modems just lay down and died *everytime* there was a spike. A couple of days and 144 phone calls after, the tech support comes in and replaces the modem.... you had a 1 yr guarentee. Thank God for small favors! Finally, 8 days after setting the download task, the 800 MB file was on my computer in finished form. Hallelujah!

The movie opens with Donnie waking up at dawn..... in the middle of the road straddling the a mountain ridge, his bike collapsed next to him. As he cycles down the road, the unforgettable "Never Tear Us Apart" track by INXS plays. The effect of that haunting, hearbreaking track rings in your ears as Donnie takes us to his affluent small-n-happy American family living in a white suburban neighbourhood is, pretty rankling to say the least. The lyrics and the overall feel of that song somehow warns us of the fate of the protagonist and all around him. The foreboding atmosphere created by the 30 yr old Richard Kelly reminds us of David Lynch's menacing "netherworld" that hides behind pleasant Anytown, America. We are introduced to his dad, a cool one like Eugene Levy of American Pie canon at that... not the abusive/negligent/beer soaked/psycho/mid-life crisis stereotype of Hollywood. His mom is a loving and understanding mom, much like the Maaaas of Bollywood, his elder sis is on her way to the Ivies (she shares a rather endearing sibling rivalry with Donnie) and his cute-as-a-button kid sister all of ten. A far from dysfunctional family! But we learn that Donnie is a troubled young man and has a history of mental problems after an out of hand prank turned arson. Now, he's on the Prosac and psychoanalyst diet at the grand old age of sixteen. He is in an uppity private school, uniformed kids, vigilant teachers, spotless hallways..... in short nothing like the Gangsta's Paradises of Harlem. This is Donnie's world, at first glance something not so different from Archie's sylvan Riverdale.

Other characters are Gretchen Ross, a new student who has a traumatic history and is living in an assumed identity with her mother. There is an instantaneous chemistry between Donnie and Gretchen...... the powers that manipulate the living and the dead seem to thrust these two people into each other's life. There is a rookie out-of-grad-school english teacher played very competently by Drew Barrymoore, one of the two teachers in the school who understands the trounbles, angst and disconnects that plague her students. The reading assignments she gives out and her pointed talks with her students tells us she is very well tuned with the kids and concerned of the all-round well being of her students. Rather than squeeze out results pertaining solely to their narrow "brief" like her most of the school staff. Something like Coach Carter who shuts down the court till his students get passing grades, but with less leeway as she's on probation..... and stacked against the dinosaurs of "scientific education of children".

Patrick Swayze has a cameo as Jim Cunningham, one of those charismatic Gurus who try to dumb down things, make you take reductionist approaches to life and it's problems and take the easy, painless way rather than meeting things head on. There's the physical education teacher Mrs. Farmer who is the absolute opposite of Drew's character, sports a very narrow-minded outlook and totally taken in by Cunningham's simplistic brand of thought. Plus a host of minor characters each tightly woven into the storyline, all etched out perfectly by the ensemble cast.

However, the most engaging character is the 6 foot tall "entity" in the furry suit with the grotesque and demonic bunny face. This enigmatic entity only Donnie could see (obviously a wicked take on Harvey, the friendly invisible giant rabbit) leads him to create havoc that is both destructive and creative. There's this ancient and spooky woman Roberta Sparrow, nicknamed Grandma Death...... a character who might hold the key to the doom thats closing in on your heels. All the calculated acts of "destruction" and his interactions with the other characters has something to do with the prophecised destruction of the universe..... The viewer is guided by cryptic title cards on "The Philosophy of Time Travel", "Wormhole Phenomenon" etc as the movie progresses, a luxury available in the recent prints. It somehow diminishes the mystery of the movie by offering a canonic explanation..... people like me who watched the first drafts had a slew of theories on Donnieverse. Anyway, I am not complaining, at least I am glad that Donnie's world would find it's "peace".
There was a whole corpus on DD Apocrypha and this word-of-mouth buildup led to the movie re-releasing in 2004, three years after it's first release. This time it found it's much deserved success in the DVD and re-run segments. On it's first release it was pulled out pretty fast 'coz the lay viewer was quite confused and angry at the movie. A similar fate met Guy Ritchie's recent movie "Revolver.... but I am confident Revolver will be a much appreciated and studied movie in the near future. )

The mystery sci-fi aspect aside, this movie appealed to me on other fronts. The disconnect Donnie feels to the world around him, the inability of his family to reach out to the troubled teen, the system that tries down to water down or disregard existential issues faced by adolescents are powerful messages in the film. The shrink diagnoses after a few sessions that Donnie might be developing schizophrenia but attributes to him not being able to cope up to the world around him. However, she misses the woods for the trees as the real issue was the inability of the world around him to see Donnie and his problems within. American law and society which stipulates compulsory psychoanalyst sessions and "one size fits all" solutions to individual juvenille issues sometimes sends the hapless youngster into a downward spiral of instability. In Donnie's case, the prank turned arson created this guilty-disturbed individual tag which forever colored the way even his family views him, let alone Donnie's image of himself. His inability to percieve the nature of Frank (if the ridiculous and terrifying at the same time rabbit is real or a just a manifestation of his increasing instability) at the begining leads him to try and destroy Frank in the next "meeting". This however only succeeds in wounding Frank and the wound itself is a pointer and at the same time a "multiplier"to the mystery...... something that becomes very apparent when Frank appears again and unmasks himself when Donnie is watching Evil Dead with Gretchen asleep at his side.

Donnie tries to leave subtle distress signals like "They are making me do it" when he is commanded by Frank to carry out the first act of destruction... a red flag of the Schizo types so that someone would note his "history" and approach him. He tries to save himself and others around him. There's a play on the possible overlap between madness and the ability to perceive the supernatural...... messages from the highest power in most religions always start with a bona-fide certificate like "The message is directly from God, there is no need to be afraid. Sonny, you ain't dreaming and no, you certainly aren't mad".However, Donnie slowly unravels the mystery further with encounters with Frank, Gretchen, the young science teacher and Grandma Death and finds the truth of the his mental state and the reason for Frank's appearance. Following this (slow and subtle) discovery, we see Donnie carry out his tasks with the maniacal glee and conviction of a Fedayeen... while at the same time crushed and heartbroken by the implications of his action and the subconscious understanding of his own fate. The scene in which he almost curls to foetal position, clutching a teddy bear and spells out his feelings and fears to the shrink is almost a giveaway on "what is required of Donnie's life". Nevertheless, he is convinced that the forces that manipulate everthing makes no mistake and lately he is made aware of what he should do(what he IS going to do).... this is done by very effective CGI. This foreboding of doom and the aura of self-destruction around the lhero, one who ain't very likeable at that..... so well LIVED out by Jake Gyllenhaal's expressive face and body language is the USP of the movie.

One is also struck by the pointlessness of our actions; no matter how earthshaking the results are or how deep the emotion that guided the acion is, the people who you intended to benefit may be oblivious to your suffering and mental turmoil. The existential question-"For whom? What's in it for me? Am I even in the picture?" is blasted into our face after the dust settles in the storyline. The last scenes which convey a message of the end beneficiaries being oblivious to the enoromity of Donnie's actions and his life is quite distressing..... I would like to say more about this but I won't be able to do it without doing a spoiler. The sole comfort is the fact that *some* of the characters do feel Donnie's "touch" on their lives...... the feeling rushes in as extreme regret, sorrow, gratitude and self-awakening without even knowing where it came from. And this beautiful, epiphany-like cutscene is set to the haunting and philosophical "Mad World" track by Gary Jules and Michael Andrews.

Still, the feeling of futility of sacrifice and thanklessness towards Donnie does burn a hole in your heart....... I remember being morose for a number of days, pondering over existentialist issues and looking up the masters of this genre, O.V.Vijayan to Satre. Donnie Darko has that effect on the perceptive viewer..... watch it. An unforgettable experience.

The First Post

2006-02-14T14:06:00.000+05:30

New Delhi, India.
Valentine's Day,
16:30 Hours.

"First dates are always interviews" ........ thus spoke the all-knowing Van Wilder in the classic camp movie by the same name. Ergo, what should the *first* blog post be?
Heck, you are on a monologue here, right? And even monologues need some sort of a beginning. Mebbe I should start blogging with the kind of "Myself" essay they make you write in Std II. Yeah, that would be prudent, let the audience get an intro on the entity behind the words.

Here ........ get a load of some narcisstic drivel.
Reader, you have been warned.

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I'm your average Desi bloke, single, 25, hails from the deep south and a Gemini cusp.
Dad's in politics, Mom is in academics and my kid bro is what these wogs call DOO, i.e Desi Oracle Operator. (A disparaging term for the fresh-out-of-college kids who start out as low level grunts in the IT Grindhouses. He's on his MBA after a little work ex anyway. You go, bro!)

Thirteen years of my life, i.e Kindergarten to Class XII were well spent in a Jesuit school. Oh Yeah, one of the Loyolas. Folks, I owe a lot to that place! I did my undergrad in Electrical Engineering and grad in Aerospace Engineering.... I don't think I am much of an engineer though. Trying to change my track now..... yours truly is presently aspiring to be a member of the elite world of Babudom. Hey, they ain't so bad! We'll talk about this later.

Interests: Ranges from religion and politics down to Star Wars canon. I'm retty well read and well informed for my age I guess. Used to be an avid quizzer in my school and undergrad days you know..... started quizzing at the age of 9 actually. Perhaps the only field I excelled (sad, sad me!). That spirit sorta died out during my grad days in the United States of Archie. Over there, Quiz alludes to an ancient BDSM ritual I do not wish to talk about...... and traditional quizzing is called "Trivia". (Yeah, good luck with American Trivia! How the hell am I supposed to know the etymology of "Elvis has left the building" phrase and the minutiae of Bruin-Trojan rivalry in Football?!).

Passions: Food, movies, music and girls..... and I have considerable expertise and arcane knowledge of the first three realms. No further comments. Thank You.

Political affiliation: Right-off-Centre, selectively liberal, jingoistic outlook...... lifelong Congresswaalah. A bit of a tightrope walk, but I manage. Swung into both ends of the spectrum.... dabbled in shades of extreme right down to candle-kisser-pinko during my "eventful" life. But I have I attained equilibrium Nirvana after years of religiously following the greatest discussion board in cyberspace.

Persona: I consider myself to be devilishly handsome and dashing, but other descriptions strangely range from "Oh, kinda OK" to "Fugly, Butt ugly!". Bollocks to them! In true Yodaesque manner, "Pataoed have I successfully for 10 years. Keep my own counsel, I will". The fact that I am like 25 lbs overweight doesn't even matter here..... Hey, judge me by my size, do you?.
BTW, I'm just 5'10", despite my sincerest prayers to all seeing, all powerful God. I soooo wanted to be 6'7" you see.... ever since I saw an ultracool Clint Eastwood looming down on that wretched Mexican gunman in his greatest western flick 16 yrs ago. The only people I am envious of are guys taller than I am....... insanely envious in fact. The kind of envy that makes one eat human liver with fava beans and a nice chianti. Worst of all, that once-runt bro of mine is now a looming Leviathan at a full 6 foot and 220 lbs. Now he exacts revenge for all the thrashings I gave him in our first 14 yrs of no-rules Backyard Sumo wrestling. :(
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Well, I think that will do for a first post.
I have all the time in the world and the right to pen down my thoughts later on, right? The Blog is a pretty good place to indulge your ego, blow your horn, run your propaganda and psy-ops, let off the steam, share the exciting story of your life, speak your mind and you know, just talk! I guess I am going to do a bit of all these in this Blog. One has to ride his favourite pony, eh?

O Fortuna, Velut Luna is Latin for "Oh Fortune, Changing like the Moon"..... a cosmic truth sometimes invoked as a curse. At least, this funda finds strong resonance in my life so far. It's also the catchy refrain from the Gravity of Love song by Enigma. It's a personal favorite of mine and a good example of my kind of music,i.e New Age. Moreover, it connects to the astrological explanation for what I am - "Moon in the 12th house. His mind will wander.... he will not be satisfied with mere continuity (thats a nice way of telling I won't stick to one field/job) , his love and his interests will be fleeting". Well, that oracle got it 400% right. I am a believer. I thought of using this phrase as the blog title..... but I think "The Wanderer" defines me more accurately. Amen.

I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.......... shall I begin blogging?
Cheers.