I’m reading William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, which arrived from Amazon.com yesterday, along with Mappings (which I ordered because it was cited in an excellent novel set in Karachi, Kartography), while Ramesh surfs the television.
He stops at a Hindi soap. As is often the case, the characters onscreen are women. As is often the case, they are having an argument. They are probably related - sisters-in-law in a joint family household. One says to the other, "How could you make a false accusation against me?" The other one, as is often the case, is venomous. She sneers. Ramesh changes the channel.
A Hindi movie; an American movie with Michael Caine; a Russian program without subtitles; Tamil film songs; Bengali something; a Gujarati soap. As is often the case, two women are arguing...
I love William Gibson, but doesn’t Pattern Recognition have too many commas? And what do you look like, if you look like Tom Cruise fed on virgins' blood and chocolates? Never mind...
Enter the Dragon is playing on HBO. Praying mantises fight on a boat in Hong Kong, watched by Bruce Lee and John Saxon. Men are betting on the outcome. This film has not aged well at all.
After a while we’ll see a DVD from the new library. In the last three days we've seen The Last Métro, and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (what was the big deal about that, anyway?), and a beautiful, perfect Iranian film, Baran. It was so moving, the last scene - the hero looks at the heroine's shoe-print, in thick mud, as it fills up with rain. They have never even spoken to each other, and her father has just taken her away, probably forever. But the sight makes him happy. The intensity of suppressed feeling.
It is so often like this: printed words, sounds, talk, moving images, all overlapping. Former cricket star Kapil Dev is advertising a motorcycle. (There's a Test match going on in Ahmedabad. Dravid has hit a double century. Yay!) It's hard to remember that there is such a thing as silence.
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