Several Things

Saw Eric Rohmer’s A Tale of Springtime. He's very reliable – you will meet young, attractive, fairly prosperous people, who haven't fully settled into their lives. They meet, make friends, talk intelligently, part. Nothing much happens, yet you feel that you have been guided expertly through a story with a beginning and an end. You leave with the glow of beautiful French landscapes, rooms that have real fireplaces with tall gold-framed mirrors over them, and lots of books. My DVD library has a small shelf only for Rohmer's films, and I noticed with pleasure that there are still several that I haven't seen. Since my choices so far this year have been pretty much gloomy, horrible, or over the top (Man Bites Dog, Illuminata, Irreversible, Character), with only a few gems (Loves of a Blonde, The Tin Drum, Good-bye Lenin, Wild Strawberries), I'm longing for more of Rohmer's golden world.

Now that I have installed the extension forecastfox on my Firefox browser (why are only 22% of the people who read this blog using Firefox? Isn’t it time to leave Internet Explorer forever yet?), nice graphics of big round suns and the temperature rise up on my desktop from time to time, and then silently sink again. Yesterday the temperature was in the nineties for the first time. Yes, the dreaded veyilkkalam – the season of blinding sunlight -- is really on its way.

Since I can't get the idea of large waves quite out of my mind yet, here's another snippet from Jonathan Raban's Passage to Juneau (I’m almost finished with it, getting ready to move on to March's book: Orhan Pamuk's Snow; though I'm also dipping into John Bubsy's Drawing Birds, a lovely book recommended by someone on the Everyday Matters group, on the side):

According to Mircea Eliade, the earliest known form of decoration, the zigzag pattern rimming a Neolithic pot, represented a wave train in profile. On this coast, the undulating line of the waves, their interminable cycle of growth and collapse, ran through the art of the Indians as the essential shape of life itself. Waves chase each other around woven hats and baskets. Beautifully chiselled waves edge a goathorn ladle, a wooden feasting bowl, a maple-wood mortar. The swooping calligraphic brushstroke, as it defines the outlines of an extended composition, mimics the curve of the wave, from trough to crest and down to trough again.

Waves have always been emblems, full of sombre meaning. "I hear the waves!" cries out the six-year-old Paul Dombey in his delirium, a few moments before his death. Philip Larkin, at the seaside, meditates on "the small hushed waves' repeated fresh collapse", conjuring a multitude of small hushed lives going to their deaths. Shakespeare, in Sonnet 60, sees in the waves the futile brevity of life:

Like as the waves make to the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end,
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forward do contend...

The wave's urgent and dramatic expenditure of energy to no significant effect makes it a natural symbol of human self-importance and mortality. ...

Testing flickr

In my study

On the ECR

On Thursday we drove down the East Coast Road for the first time after the tsunami, and went to lunch at Temple Bay, a resort near Mahabalipuram. After you get out of the ugliness of urban sprawl, much of the road is flanked by the most typical scenery of this part of India: open land dotted with areca palms, cashew trees, casuarinas. If you continue south beyond Mahabalipuram, you begin to pass incredibly beautiful green paddy fields. On the ECR the ocean is visible most of the time – a long peaceful strip of blue in the near distance. Before the tsunami, from time to time you would pass a tiny cluster of thatched huts near the beach. Now we passed neat grids of tents and thatched tent-shapes, right up against the road. In one place where the village was larger, built around a clump of trees, and apparently intact, the tent-grids are still there by the road. The whole population seems to have moved back, away from the sea.

Twice we passed logs peeled and shaped for making new catamarans. Once there was a gathering of people under a cloth pandal, from which jutted out three new, brightly painted mechanised fishing boats, presumably being handed over to the fishermen.

Temple Bay itself was lush and beautiful, perfectly maintained. A conference was going on, Scientific Atlanta; people with southern American accents, presumably Atlantan, lounged by the pool. We had an excellent lunch, and didn’t want to return.

So I guess things are pretty much back to normal. But I was sorry to see those artificially tidy, fearful grids still pulled up as close to the road as possible. I hope they won’t be necessary much longer.

The pool at Temple Bay, and the ocean

What I've Been Doing

I've decided to put my efforts at making art into a separate blog, so that this one remains roughly India-themed:

fire star arts

The trouble is that I'm spending most of my time over there nowadays.

Writing Down Water

I've been reading Jonathan Raban's Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings – part of my resolve to read at least one complete book a month, instead of jumping from book to article to website. He's sailing up the Northwest coast from Seattle to Juneau, and talking about earlier visitors, Native American art, among other things, along the way. It's amazing, how he can write in so many ways about water. Here are two paragraphs which occur within a page of each other:

... Off Big Bay, great curds of yeasty scum marked the sites of rips and whirlpools that were now nearly extinct. A few logs and uprooted kelp stems continued to revolve in patches of broken water. But the surviving eddies were flaccid, and there was no real heart in their attempts to wrench the steering from my hands. The boat sauntered, at eight knots going on nine, through Gillard Passage and Dent Rapids – a scene of spent turmoil, like the tumbled sheets of an empty bed, with an appropriately salty, post-coital smell of bladderwrack drying on the rocks..

... The only motion was that of the incoming tide, stealing smoothly through the forest at one knot. Where fallen branches obstructed the current near the shore, they sprouted whiskers of turbulence that were steadily maturing into braided beards. The water was moving just fast enough to feel the abrasion of the air against it, and its surface was altering from glassy to stippled with the strengthening flood. Soon the false wind, brushing against the tide, created a trellis-like pattern of interlocked wavelets, their raised edges only a millimetre or two high; just deep enough to catch, and shape, a scoop of light.

Twinkletoes

my Bahawalpuri shoes (for the Everyday Matters group shoe challenge)

Several Small Things

I have so little to tell these days, it has taken me a week to find a few paragraphs.

The days are still balmy, the evenings breezy, but veyil kalam, the hot season, is sending out warnings: the sharp beam of light that gets between the curtains somehow just after sunrise in the hot season has found the bottom of the bed, and is creeping up toward my eyes. Long twigs have begun to fall on the badminton court: the crows are getting ready to nest again. It’s all so inexorable.

My gardener, who lived in a slum called Thideer Nagar ('thideer' means sudden, or instant, so the name means something like Sudden Town. I assume that it refers to the way slums can come up overnight on empty ground, like a crop of mushrooms) near the Lighthouse, has been shifted along with thousands of his neighbours to a new, government-built slum clearance project in Thoraipakkam, south of the city. He hasn’t turned up for work for two days. Mary, whose son was also shifted, says that the housing is better there. Instead of palm-leaf huts, there are four-story buildings of one-room flats, with electricity and toilets attached (but no water connections indoors). But residents must pay Rs. 250 a month rent, and must take long bus rides to get to work.

Several Things

I haven't seen the new film Alexander; to me, Alexander will always look like Prithviraj Kapoor (founder of a Bollywood dynasty which still continues, in its third generation), who played him in the film Sikandar (1941) -- Sikandar being the Indian version of Alexander. The legs may not be in style today, but look at that face!

It's Spring again, at least theoretically, and time for the Basant festival in North India and Pakistan. Chapati Mystery is celebrating Basant Week: "A bit of history today. String preparation and type of kites tomorrow. Next, rules of engagement..."

(my Basant post from 2003 is here: Kati Patang)

Via Wood s Lot: Edward Burtynsky - Shipbreaking images: wonderful photographs of shipbreaking in Chittagong, Bangladesh:

(See also an article about shipbreaking in the Indian state of Gujarat by Dilip D'Souza)

(forgot where I saw it) -- on BBC's Asian Network, vote for the top 40 Hindi film soundtracks of all time -- with clips of all the songs

From The Hindu: Fading notes: an article about the making of reeds for the south Indian relative of the oboe (and the north Indian shehnai), the nadaswaram. As with most traditional crafts, the reed-makers hardly earn enough to live on. The painstaking process of preparing the reeds was fascinating to me.

Father of Handmade Matches

"We invite all on the occasion of honouring our Founder
Sri. KAKA. A. SHUNMUGA NADAR
on his Centenary Birth Anniversary by releasing a
Commemorative postal cover at
Sivakasi Master Printers Association Hall,
Sivakasi on 29-1-2005

There's so much wonderful writing around, and today I don't feel that I can write at all, and even if I did, what? Talk about fiddling while Rome burns: eating peppercorns while the world convulses. I can hardly bestir myself to put titles to these word-bites. So here are two places I have found recently, where people are writing beautifully, in very different ways:

BridalBeer - about living in Calcutta, foreign-returned, under pressure to get married. Quotes old Hindi film songs (with translation). Is vivid and funny.

Her Little Bird - just read it, and find out for yourself.

Speaking of the convulsing world, two recent Google referrals made all those pathetic requests for "pron" look wholesome:

Pictures of Tibetan Women Torture Equipment
pictures of indian women urinating

Sometimes I think I shouldn't even look at them.

via moleskinerie: I spent a good chunk of the day looking at this amazing sketchbook: Carnets de digestion. This page expresses a lot about the way I've been feeling lately, especially after reading this Seymour Hersh interview (via Cassandra Pages and Laughing Knees)

Taste

I went to Suriya Greens, and bought tomatoes, big white onions in a small net bag, potatoes, zucchini, yellow peppers, carrots, black eggplants, strawberries. I gave up non-vegetarian food for the New Year (assuming that eggs are honorary vegetables), and since then vegetable shapes and colours have appeared more sensuous, colourful, inviting, than ever before.

I bought a bag of fresh peppercorns, clustered thickly on their stems like beads. We make it into a simple pickle: corns still on the stem, lemon juice, turmeric, salt. I chewed a green sphere and submitted to its explosion of dark heat and flavour. Fifteen minutes later the right side of my mouth, where I bit down on it, still burned; but softly, just to remind me.

Raincoat; and spikes

Yesterday and the day before, we saw (twice) one of the best Indian movies ever. It was certainly no less than the great films of Adoor Gopalakrishna, Benegal, Ray, etc.: Raincoat, by the Bengali director Rituparno Ghosh (I love Bengali names – Rituparno is such a pleasure to say). During most of the film there are only two characters on screen, both of them played by mainstream Bollywood actors who are here just very good actors: Aishwarya Rai, who, in mainstream films, often looks doll-like and shallow – but who can also be bruised and fragile; and Ajay Devgan, who started out as an "action hero", but who has been getting better and better, and who doesn’t put a foot wrong here.

According to Ramesh, the story comes out of a Bengali romantic tradition, in which two people love each other, perhaps even from childhood, but the girl is married to someone else, and the boy never marries at all. In the most popular version of this paradigm, Devdas, the hero quickly drinks himself to death. In this version, the two characters have both failed, or been failed by, life, but they go on, as people actually do. One afternoon they meet again, talk for a few hours, and part. That's most of the story. It was quiet, delicate, intimate.

There were so many small, perfect things in this film. Some humour, no melodrama. Most of the film is set in a musty room full of dark furniture, on a dark, rainy Calcutta day with the windows closed. The sound of rain, and street noises, form the soundtrack much of the time, with some haunting semi-classical songs in the background at other times. Flashbacks are golden, bright, full of colour. Annu Kapoor has a small but vivid role as the landlord, which reminded me again what a good actor he is. The screenplay was so carefully written that everything is explained, loose ends are tied up. The plot twist, inspired by O. Henry, is made believable, because you are prepared for it...

Go see this film! Or get the DVD. Everyone should see it!

Listen to Songs from Raincoat (the song Mathura Nagarpati, a hymn about Krishna, sung in the background by Shubha Mudgal is haunting and beautiful)
A (fairly dull) interview with Rituparno Ghosh (not his fault – silly questions)
A review

Since I started writing this blog, I have had three spikes in the number of visitors (modest spikes -- this is a very small establishment): first, when I linked to articles about the suicide of poet Reetika Vazirani; then, after the tsunami (which was comforting, because at least some of those people were wondering what had happened to me); and now, courtesy of the recently-departed actress, Parveen Babi. Death and disaster. Sex would do it too, obviously, if that were on offer here: how many desires I have failed to satisfy, for pictures of 'Aishwarya Rai without chaddi (underwear)' and such…!

More Fear

My staff ran in a panic yesterday afternoon, but toward the ocean, to find out whether their houses and families were safe. How long will it take for the aftershocks to stop?

Panic in Chennai, Nagapattinam

CHENNAI, JAN. 24 . An earthquake of the magnitude of 6.5 on the Richter scale was recorded this morning off the West Coast of the Great Nicobar Island.

This was the 140th aftershock since the Sumatra earthquake of December 26, 2004 including the 58 tremors in January. ...

... the impact of the earthquake was felt in many parts of Chennai such as St. Thomas Mount and Santhome.

This morning's tremor triggered panic among some people in the city who feared that another tsunami might strike Chennai. ...

Potholes

I got a good, rueful laugh from this -- from Selective Amnesia:

Madras [i.e. Chennai] is famous, as most people will know, for its potholes. There's even a joke in which a man asks another man "where does this pothole lead to?"

More on Implicit Assumptions and Biases

I had earlier linked to an online test for implicit assumptons and biases. There's an extremely interesting article in Sunday's Washington Post about how the test came to be devised: See no Bias: "Many Americans believe they are not prejudiced. Now a new test provides powerful evidence that a majority of us really are. Assuming we accept the results, what can we do about it?"

It should be obvious that many or most or all of one's assumptions are strongly conditioned by one's culture; but the article contained a wonderful image of that idea: "The Implicit Association Test measures the thumbprint of the culture on our minds," says Banaji, one of three researchers who developed the test..."

(Thanks, Julianna.)

Parveen Babi

Parveen Babi, one of the most beautiful, and notoriously troubled, Hindi film stars of the seventies (coincidentally, one of the stars of Amar Akbar Anthony, which I mentioned yesterday) has died.

This is from The Telegraph, Calcutta:

Parveen Babi lived on screen as the face of the bohemian Indian woman and died the ultimate lonely star behind locked doors.

One of Hindi cinema’s first glamour girls, who starred in some of the biggest hits of the 70s and 80s — often opposite Amitabh Bachchan, as in Deewar and Amar Akbar Anthony — was found in her Juhu flat today, probably two days after she died.

Parveen Babi, who lived alone — not allowing in visitors or even a servant — had not opened the door of her flat for three days. Noticing newspapers and milk bottles piling up, the secretary of the building, Riviera, called police. The cops opened the door with a duplicate key to find her dead.

The police ruled out foul play or suicide. “The post-mortem report is yet to come out, but it seems she died a natural death. It appears she died 40 hours before her body was found,”

...

The svelte and sophisticated actress, who was unafraid to smoke or drink on camera when these were taboo, led the life of an absolute recluse because she was afraid people were trying to kill her.

Rarely seen in public since she suddenly left the country in the early nineties to return three years ago, Parveen Babi’s last appearance was at a media conference in 2002 when she said she had evidence against Sunjay Dutt in the 1993 blasts case. But she did not appear in court to give evidence. Parveen Babi also claimed that many people, including Bachchan, were trying to kill her. She denied the charge later and the case was dismissed .... (more)

And from The Hindustan Times, Controversies Surrounding Parveen Babi:

Early 70s: Parveen Babi first became controversial with her sensational interviews. She was the first heroine to openly take drugs and talk about it. Like many in her generation, Babi openly advocated free love. She gave candid quotes about her affairs with married men like Danny Denzongpa, Mahesh Bhatt and Kabir Bedi, whom she even ran away to Italy with. However, it is alleged that she was madly in love with superstar Amitabh Bachchan and unable to bear him rejecting her advances, she fell into a vicious circle of unsatisfactory relationships.

Mid 70's: Bizarre stories about Babi began making the rounds in film glossies. She was allegedly suffering from Schizophrenia and believed that there was a giant conspiracy against her and that people wanted her dead. She was involved in an intense and destructive relationship with Mahesh Bhatt and suffered a nervous breakdown.

1979: Babi sought mental and spiritual solace through alternative contemporary spirituality. She followed Osho the Indian "Love Guru" for a few years and became involved with the teachings of UG Krishnamurti. Meanwhile, the relationship with Bhatt ended and he made Arth, a semi-autobiographical look at his extramarital relationship with Babi...(more)

Legs

No spindly legs here! They are organic, bulbous as the outgrowths of pipal trees -- on the left, a faux-village coffee table (!?!); on the right, a cane settee

From The Hindu: Reservations keep fishermen from sea

...It has almost been a month since the tsunami struck. Not all boats, especially in Chennai, were destroyed or damaged by the giant waves. Ministers and officials have been trying to encourage fishermen to resume their operations. But there seems to be reservations among them about resuming their livelihood, for a variety of reasons. ...

"The waters are not clear. People do not want to eat fish. They think it will be infected. What is the use of going out to sea now? ...

On another front, officials, non-governmental organisations and veterinarians are trying to drive home the message: "Fish are safe for eating." Some organisations are planning to conduct fish-eating demonstrations to infuse confidence in the people that fish have not been infected in the wake of the tsunami.

The Chennai Corporation launched a "eat fish" campaign with a special buffet for corporators.(more)

Some Links

Dilip D'Souza's blog, Death Ends Fun, has a charming piece about a visit to his grandfather's abandoned house, on Montieth Road in Chennai: Swishing my bat.

And his latest entry, about jazz in Bollywood, links to a fascinating article: Remembering Anthony Gonsalves. One of the first Hindi films I saw was Amar Akbar Anthony. No one who saw it could forget Amitabh Bachchan singing 'My Name is Anthony Gonsalves,' but I'm sure few people knew that there was a real Anthony, a Goanese musician, arranger and composer who worked in the film studios of Bollywood. The article is about Anthony Gonsalves and other musicians who brought jazz influences into Bollywood film music.

(For those who don't know it, Amar Akbar Anthony had one of the most ridiculous plots of all time: three brothers, separated at birth and raised by foster parents in three different religions. Grown up and reunited through a series of improbable coincidences, they end up lying side by side in hospital beds around their injured mother, also recently rediscovered, all donating blood to her at the same time, with the blood-filled tubes flowing direcly from their bodies to hers! It was a triumph!)

Another link: Still Waters Run Deep - watercolour paintings by Indian contemporary artists.

Okay, one more: Another Subcontinent: South Asian Society and Culture