An Ode to Pain

It was a glorious world a long time ago. There were summers and springs and colours falling gently in a soothing breeze. There were smiling faces and happy thoughts and loads of cheerful things to talk about. There were merry sounds circling in the wind; but of course that was a long long time ago. Now there is only a perpetual winter and no warmth even to relieve the pain of a dead, cold monotony. But atleast the wall does not move. It is a thing of white layered over with the ashes of a hundred memories. A projector into the past and the future. A reminder of things that blur in the brain, of all the nothingness that awaits in the future. A brick wall. A wall of burnt clay. And I can stare at it and know I still am, as it is. Not much more to do now.

I am alive. I eat, breathe, sleep, shit and do all those vulgar things that make up everyday life. Or is it the daily death. And I breed maggots near the window too where the sun glances in occassionally. Of course I was not always like this. I used to believe too in movement and the frustration of hopes. I used to run and jump and conjure ideas to change the world. I remember vividly picking up my first yellow banana peel lying on the gray, cold cobblestones in a far away city and dumping it into a cold, gray dustbin on the busy corner so nobody slipped on it in their hurry to get to where they were going. It was a Sunday and I think now it was odd there were no carnivals that day. Sundays seem to remind me now of carnivals when people danced merry jigs on the streets and traipsed home jolly. But maybe I do not have a good memory. Or they just stayed in to rest from their Creations.

There were rats where I live now. Rats. Now I. Living off the refuse of the daily drones. And before the rats, there was a nightclub where people used to dance Friday nights and Saturdays too. Shows how things change. The worm that eats the king that eats the fish that eats the worm. Full circle. Men in between so things go their sweet way in a hurry. The rats were chased off of course when I still had the mind to. Now I just sit and stare.

Someone once told me I was destined for great things. He made me what I am. Not that he knew I would end up this way but still. Maybe I should just get up now and walk away. Only I have forgotten how to. Not to walk but to walk away. He taught me that too. You just don't walk away from things. You take them on. And I am still fighting the good fight, am I not? Waiting. Sitting. Refusing to walk out through the tempting door that brings in voices every now and then, voices that make me want to shout out loud sometimes, "Help" maybe, or "Save yourselves". There is no knowing what I would shout. Not when I know I will not.

I see her face often these days. A pity. I couldn't when she was near and now she will never be here. To see what I see. Those eyes in the first days were always lighted with some pretty fire. And her hands used to dance. Strange ways hands have of calling you near and pushing you away. And then slowly the light died from the eyes and the hands couldn't move any more. They could not even hold mine for support as she fell away. But there was no time then as there is now. Let the lost bury the lost. It was a time to strive, to seek and to find. And now I find her here. Strange.

Words too come to mind. Pretty poems and pointless rhymes. And the Moonlight Sonata blaring from the icecream vendor's moving cart. Painted red and blue with shades of white and gold, he used to be a favorite after school. After playtime. Before homework. I went to his funeral too. By chance. Was on the grounds for a friend's and they brought him in. Recognized the Beethoven and couldn't stop crying for a while. Red eyes. Good after a friend's funeral. Leaves an impression of trustworthiness.

The lizards on the wall make funny sounds. Not like the ones back home. They used to hide from mother. Came out only when it was really dark and I the only one to spot them. Mother was always one for order. The lizards their due and the milkman his. Cried a lot when I went off to college. Cost her a lot of second jobs. And early breakfasts. She was always there to see me off. To school, to college, to work. Had to see her off myself when the complications came. Heart troubles they said. A fist's worth of a life's pain.

Father took it pretty well considering. He had second jobs too and sometimes a third. Never was around long enough to see movies with. Friends are for seeing movies with. Fathers bring in the money to get popcorn and tickets. There were sounds at night of doors opening and the wood creaking but not much to recall from the early days. Later, he used to hold hands with Mother when the train was leaving, waving after it was out of sight. But he is out of sight now. Has been a long time since I did not see him.

There were a lot of friends in school and lots more in college. Fun to spend time and money with. Laze around, fool around, do fun things with, and then it is time to leave. Some stayed but not many. I still talked to them until it was time to move up or down - depends on who was on which elevator. And a few of them will come too if I send out invitations to my own funeral. Have to do it and see how many do come. Like Mark Twain or Huck Finn.

Then work. Lots of it. More than anything else. The great race and the big dreams. Offices all shiny and money crisp like cardboard or plastic. Thing you buy things with to do things with. Had lots of it in my time and lots of them too. Now no place to keep them. So dumped it all outside a friend's house. Might be of help to him. No use to me any more.

I came here quite by accident. Don't remember exactly when or how but I do remember not looking for this place. One of those things that strike your fancy at first sight. Draw you in and you don't want to leave. A symbol. Of what you are, what you have been, what you want to be. An old, failing place where worms breed. Eating away slowly what was once a nightclub, a dump. A memory of things that have been. I don't have much now, don't see much, don't eat much and consequently don't shit much. But I am alive. And there is the wall. In front of me. All the time.

Questions

Two questions keep plaguing me: What has life given me that I did not pry out of unreluctant hands for myself? What have I done for myself that was not given me by helping hands and friendly hearts? The first makes me despair of life, making me the centre(and everything) of my world, erasing all meaning out of life; the second makes me despair of ever doing anything that could not have been done by anybody else in the same position. Every so often I feel glad of having accomplished something and then I realise that either I merely am a parasite feeding off others, or horribly worse, it is all merely another short respite from a meaningless trudge towards the top of a hill knowing the rock will roll down any minute. The life of Sisyphus on one hand and that of a swaddled baby on the other. Which do I choose for my greater glory? What ring of thorns do I devise for myself to get out of all this holy mess? Who will I forgive and by whom forgiven? That makes more questions but they do not plague me.

Encyclopedia Satyrica Vol 33: Tragedy to Travesty

Just figured this one out: When people talk of a tragedy, what they actually mean is that things did not go as they expected; or, more strongly, what happened was completely unexpected. Sounds more like the definition of a surprise or a mishap, but I guess the difference is one of degree and what we are ready to condone as a minor mishap is but the seed of what could have been a modern Rape of the Lock. What is good about my definition of a tragedy is that it is neat and carries all the way from the minor tragedies in the life mundane - as when the neighbour's cat frolics all over the patterned India tablecloth minutes before the guests arrive - to the more elaborate ones involving Denmark and something rotting in it.

No tragedy is expected except by the front-seat bore, who was force-fed Shakespeare while his brothers were out painting the town red, and takes it out on his bored-and-snoring neighbour with all the vengeance of an enthusiastic pedant. Nor is any forgiven for the inconvenience it causes mice and men whose plans go all awry. The only sensible difference is in perception of, and reaction to them. The simple tragedies are almost all similar and involve, in their resolution, merely the shaking of the head and muttered disbelief; the complex ones, like unhappy families, are each tragedies in their own special way. Would have been much better had it been the other way - then every tsunami or earthquake would be handled professionally by men in white aprons and yellow batons.

Nothing can quite rubbish the amount of feeling that spouts out of the lachrymal glands of stone-faced men and powdered women when the earth quakes and indulges in postprandial eruptions - indeed they are all minor miracles, what with all the lack of exercise, in decades, of the delicate muscles that have atrophied past their expiry date - but is man so much the centre of his small microcosm that he is all that matters. Silly question that. Of course man is all that matters and whatever happens without man's consent is unacceptable. We will train ourselves to expect certain things like rain in the first week of Wimbledon and a quake every year in the Japanese archipelago but that does not mean we are fine with finding the neighbour's laundry in our basket or water bodies rising at will against our express instructions. We will label them all tragedies and file them in our drawers, wet ourselves in the right places according to the magnitude of the tragedy, console oursleves and others involved directly and indirectly, enquire after the families of friends who might have been forced to take part in the unfolding, take stock of market movements and our weatherbeaten lives, shrug, pray, perform, converse, and act, and so acting, add to our stock of life.

The Economics of Corruption

Just wondering about the effects of corruption. The aim of money in society, it seems to me, is the redistribution of wealth, originally in the form of natural resources, among its members according to certain criteria. In the past physical might seems to have been the primary factor deciding property. Then it was innovation and cunning. Now intelligence and popularity are high on the list. Whatever be the criteria(and they change with time, which is to say they are arbitrary), if somebody is good(or bad?) enough to bend the rules of society in their favour, which is what corruption is essentially, the end of redistribution is achieved though according to a more radical means. People who are not entitled to much, as per the standard rules of society, get more than their fair share. The main problem is not that there is not enough for others or even that it goes against our sense of fairplay and rightness, but, more fundamentally, this creates an instability. The rules of organized society are undermined and the money, though in circulation, which is good in the immediate sense for the economic structure, works against itself. The rules of society give value to the means of exchange of resources within society - money - and now the value of these rules is brought down by money itself. In an anarchy money will lose much of its value and it is towards this form of arbitrariness that corruption leads. By making money all-important, corruption leads us on to a society where money is not important. This alone should make corruption bad. But, in another sense, corruption might just make us re-evaluate our ideals and principles, creating a new meaning and value for money. It was a corruption of the chivalric code of conduct that led to the upsurge of the mercantile class in the medieval period and now, all but the most dreamy-eyed, decidedly laugh down as absurd the ideas of Ivanhoe and his band of knights. Now, we have the software engineer and the Wall Street broker. We might just see corruption change our way of evaluating success and well-deserved prosperity.

Baasha-bashing?

Another late night/early morning repeat movie. This time Baasha. Stylish and totally Rajnikanth-esque. One of my favourite scenes is the 'Unmaiya sonnen' - 'I told the truth' - dialogue, when the lecherous medical college owner takes back the indecent proposal he offers Rajni's sister, on coming to know that the auto-driver Manickam was the underworld don Baasha a few years before. The movie is littered with dialogues and snippets of populist messages. Not too bad an idea though, considering people whistled their happiness through more than a 100 days when the movie was released.

A few points. Of course the movie is silly and no point indicating isolated bloopers. But some tickle whatever makes you smile the wry one on lean days. The auto-driving population has to be humoured but parading a pregnant lady to convey a dubious message in the first song did not make much sense. Also noticed that old mothers in Tamil movie have to mouth the 'Nalla pasanga pa' dialogue, with an affectionate smile, at her breed of youngsters, atleast once a movie or we know the father made a wrong choice in his second bride. Near the climax, the Inspector calls for the control room to trace a call after the line gets cut (Purists will say the receiver is left dangling off the hook and so a trace is possible but whatever). The funny thing here is the attempt to be perfectly logical. And then of course the brother knows just whose records to look up after seeing Rajni pointing his index finger up against henchman Janakaraj's objections. The hand-kissing part in the Baasha scenes are awesome and what is with humble heroes bearing unjust blows with broad smiles? And the windshield-shattering-with-a-log idea to stop a car is surely borrowed from movies with more equestrian participation! One final note: Isn't 'Nee pesum Thamizh azhagu' - 'The tamil you speak is beautiful' - going way too overboard?

Kannathil Muthamittal

Saw Kannathil Muthamittal again. It is, in my opinion, one of the best movies I have ever seen, possessing beauty in form and content. The music and the lyrics, the dialogues, the characters well-etched and portrayed, the direction and the editing, indeed just about everything is nice. A couple of thoughts are in order now that I have spent nearly 3 more hours on it, having seen the movie a few times already.

When Amudha runs away from school the first time, she is found in the Perambur Railway Station. Peculiar, Mani Ratnam's attachment to the railways and trains: quite a few of his movies include an important scene on a train or in a railway station. A few movies that come to mind immediately are: Agni Nakshathiram(the song), Dhalapathi(the child abandoned in a train), Nayakan(the girl asking Kamal about her mother), Dil Se(the song and the opening sequence), Alaipayuthe(lots of scenes), Thiruda Thiruda(the premise itself), AE(Meera Jasmine and Siddharth have scenes on trains), Kannathil Muthamittal(see above) etc. I do not think it is exhaustive and maybe I am taking a piece of coincidental observation too far but..

The central theme in the movie is expressed of course in the beautiful Vellai Pookal song(a song for peace to dawn in a world torn in pieces by conflict), with each of the other songs providing variations or minor themes. For example, Vidai Kodu catches the effects of social displacement; Kannathil Muthamittal, the love-hate relationship between the child and the parents; the short ditty when Madhavan and Simran open their hearts, the idealistic couple; the other two major songs are intros to Amudha's character and to Sri Lanka itself. All fine songs and beautiful sequences though the songs I have not named are not favourites of mine.

The script is also a mixed bag of many ideas. It raises issues about adoption, terrorism, war, idealism, adjustment etc. One thing that matters a lot these days is terrorism and that will be the subject of my next long post.

Small change

He held up the rupee coin in the light of the dying streetlamp. The light that danced off the tarnished metal in the silent gloom made him flinch but he kept looking, eyes half-closed buddha-like. No, not in greed or in triumph but in wonder; that this was all one got for braving the merciless sun overhead and underfoot, running in rags passed as heirlooms from generation to generation, begging of glum men wandering lost in the park or at the railway station in words that made little sense. There was magic in it, he understood. And those who knew how to use it, when they had drained all the magic off it, threw it away to kids like him: worthless; but it helped live. One day, he told himself, I'll get a new coin, and then I will not need to run ever in the night when the police constable comes among us drunk, venting his fury on our bare bones; and I will throw the used coin on the face of that filthy rat from the opposite bank who stole from me the red car at the traffic signal yesterday.

He held up the rupee coin in the light of the dying streetlamp. He saw in the light that danced around the edges of the coin, the laughter of the young girl in the coffeeshop. Frayed and bright, nervous, waiting to please, so sure yet so unsure. This was what she too was worth, to be held in his hand against the light. Protecting him from the light and her eyes from the ugly leer. The coin in his hand gave him the right to say so. Hadn't he earned it, with the sweat of his brow and with the work of his hands? This, finally, was the meaning of life: to hold in one's hand one's worth, honest and hard-earned, and if it be slippery, to hold it firm and feel happy in the glow of possession.

He held up the rupee coin in the light of the dying streetlamp. Not much in it, this piece of metal that sold itself, bought itself. Besides he had the job now and his new set of credit cards. The coin clattered away into a gutter, leaving in its tinkling wake the sound of a wasted silence.

Lines without tails - 2

It was always the same old thing, the routine never changed, flat, dull and boring. Today he will take the subway.

Lines without tails - 1

Round and round they went, hand in hand, smiling, happy, winking every now and then. And then the rain started.

Darknight

I have walked down these alleys before. Each corner has known me at the midnight hour, alone and brooding, hands in pockets, head bowed, deep in thought, trudging from home or towards. A solitary streetlamp illuminates some and some are dark but that does not mean much. Light is essential when people are around or the threat of them. In silence, one finds darkness the better companion. The mind is free to ignore objects that arrest its flight, bringing it down to earth, making it the slave of ponderous, transitory phrases. What in the brightness of the noon-sun gleams, glitters, causes the eye to waver, in darkness ceases to exist, swallowed up in the oblivion to which all things unseen by human eye are condemned. This state of affairs I prefer in my midnight rambles, far from the madding press of people and things in the daily world. Aimless, the senses silenced, the mind wanders at will as do the feet, looking for nothing and finding it near the edge of existence. Yet not all who wander are lost; but come back in time to where they left from, refreshed from encounters with remoteness. I return too to the cycle that bred me, that feeds me, that will throw me away, in time, for something better; and I want to return too. For the absence of meaning tires as much as too much of it does. A night is only so long and, at daybreak, I have to take my place in the ranks. I will not be missed but I cannot have my hands in my pockets nor head bowed when the sun finds me. It ill affords me to let go the dire moment that separates me from non-existence and I do not. Dark alleys are better visited when it is dark.

Hillel - If not now, when?

Sprawled on the rock, he puffed breath after breath of dense nicotine smoke into the stale air. A gloom as of centuries of neglect enveloped the two grizzled men as what was left of life fled into the darkness obscuring the work of an army of ambitious hands. Not much to be done now, he said, shaking his head. Very little, corrected his friend. Very little, yes, not much; only a few more months and then back to where it had all begun. Hopefully. Decaying in dignified desperation, he called it. Vegetating in the stillness of meaninglessness. A play in seven acts winding down and not much to cheer for. Not that there had not been cheerful moments but still. One always tends to ask for more. The work, his friend said, is not done yet. Yes, the work. Always the work. One can never get too far away from it. So they got up, dusting their bottoms, freeing themselves from the oppression of the rock that overlooked the sea waiting for the mountain to crumble as wave after wave crashed, hoping its way through what was to become sea, what had been sea, what was now land, and a few more hoots into the desert air that had learnt to remove itself from the haunts of men, ungrateful wretches, puffing away what was good, what was bad, desecrating, despoiling what was theirs, what was never theirs, and then, a blank nothingness settling in as sweetness corrupted itself cloying, a few more puffs now and then off to work. The midnight siren is muffled but is heard more readily. Old men dotting the flat no-land of the beach, dotty, into their dotage, doing deeds unnecessary, in the desert light, dry, dead, disappearing. But is it midnight yet? When stars twinkle out the life of men, slurring their pure light in the beams of man-eyes, stressing last syllables strong, sparking out life, sparkling with life. The wife will know, when he returns at day, of the time she waited, waiting at turn of the clock to where it had been already. And the child will know too who slept with monsters under the bed, no magic for him, no none, he was at the beach then. Tired. Sweating. Cold and shivering. Back limping to a bed that is warm in the light of a noisy sun. Only a few more months of this. Hopefully.

The Road

The night was long, dark and dreary. Not much light about and the way was not one he was accustomed to. Every now and then he would stumble, catch himself and curse; every now and then he would see something that lightened the heavy mood that hung about him. Will-o'the-wisps sometimes or sometimes a flower lingering on, at the edge of the trodden path, after the last human eye had passed over it, unmolesting, into the darkness that beckoned. Not an easy task on the brightest of days, this was turning out to be really difficult in the unrelenting, heavy gloom. And all this all alone! Of course there were others on the road but they were all either much slower or much faster than he was. All contact was a mere brush. A few words and a little time. Then pass on as polite as can. Nobody to travel the whole long road with. Difficult under the circumstances! Really very difficult!

But he had to keep to the path. Hadn't he been warned? Hadn't they told him of all that lay lurking in the murk ready to snap up the unwary or the adventurous? Not that anybody knew what exactly lurked but there were some who had heard of people who weren't heard of after crossing into the unlighted realm. Not much light on the road for that matter, just enough to know if one was on it or not. And the insects. Ah! the insects that buzzed fables of a Land beyond the darkness, beyond the confines of the road. So much trouble keeping them off one in the darkness.

Some kept to the road because it was easier; some because it was the more difficult proposition. One could always despair and wander off while it took all the reserves of the human intelligence to keep to it. Or it is always easy to make one's own the nightmares of the old, or was it the young, and the unimaginative, or was it the imaginative, learnt in the cradle. One never will know what exactly made him keep to the path. There were more stones on the path now, assuredly, than there were before. And if only there were some light one could catch sight of every now and then. Something to stick fast to. A thought, even a hallucination. But then how was one ever to know one had not wandered from the road? Where will the mind stop that has let itself roam free? Where will the questions end and where the answers begin? It wasn't easy. No; even if there were people who seemed to do it easily. People always did go on this road every night. And only by night as if nobody knew what it was to take the road by day. Or maybe people did that too and only were not heard of after.

And the heavy burden. It bit into one's shoulder long before the end seemed near. For sometimes one felt the end nearing. With trepidation sometimes and sometimes with joy too. But it wasn't an inerrant faculty driving the thought. Often it was just a thin blue reed of light, the kind that wavers for an instant showing everything in its macabre glow, and vanishing into the black of the night when it is done mocking the burden-carriers. Yes, that was what they were: burden-carriers. Doomed to an existence not of their asking, not of their choosing. Born into a free servitude where all was allowed as long as one stuck to the road.

And those who returned from the beyond had temples sometimes too. But the apotheosis was a strange affair. There was a general stoning and only a few survived that to be condemned forever to a worship in stagnating stasis by the mass. And they never spoke of what lay in the beyond, or weren't listened to maybe. Anyway the prodigals were not of the people any more. They were below them or above depending on where they stood. And sometimes it did not matter. They did not matter.

It was all tiring and he wilted. A few more steps and he knew he would be done. But then the insects flew away, and when there was no more temptation, he was at last free to be tempted. And he stepped off the road. To be never heard of! What a notion! What bliss to rub one's back when one felt like it! But to run away when the end was near! Or was it? A few steps only and then maybe he could turn back to the road. Or could he? Did it matter any more after a journey so long and painful? But should it not, for that very reason? Anyway, he went his way and so another was lost to the road. But another night dawns and another traveller, wearied and confounded, lost in sense and intellect, numbed with his heavy burden walks this way. The night again is long, dark and dreary.

Journalism and the Free Society

In a free society, everybody is allowed everything. But, of course, we are not all good nor charitable. Hence the need for a watchdog that restricts social freedoms by taking some to itself. The three branches of government have been the traditional watchdogs, but increasingly, especially in this information age, the media is taking up the role too. So there is bound to be a problem, as there is with the police, as to what the ideal freedom-restriction ratio is: always a moot point how much freedom is allowed the watchdog. Only, in the case of journalists, the freedom they take away from people is the freedom to prosecute wrongdoers-by-law, offering them anonymity for information. Judgement comes into play and sometimes you use small fry to catch big fish. In this context, this judgement on the journalists who refused to divulge their sources in the matter of the leak of a CIA agent's identity is bound to raise some hackles. While the law has to be upheld, as indicated in the NYT Chairman's statement, there ought to be some kind of federal shield legislation to let the Fourth Estate function independently. It is all in the grey and Gopalan's interviews with Veerappan were exasperating agreed, but I feel we ought to sacrifice some rights to those who keep us informed(I am not talking of the papparazzi of course). And just when Deep Throat came into the open to remind people of the golden days of journalism(although that was by the way), Judith Miller's stand in court assures us its not just all papparazzi values in journalism now.

Dreams..Promises: Spring

I dreamt today of tomorrow's flower
Waiting to spring on my wearied eyes
A fresh memory of a promise stale.
The air and the earth stir with notions of her:
All awash with light, life, relenting to kiss
With grudging grace a nature's fool.

The roses drip their thorny red
And my heart gathers up her lies all true.
She is not here but I wait in hope
For tomorrow's treacherous flower to bloom.

(She lied to me, with dimpled smile
And, lying, loved me, as I her.
But now I lie here alone, and she elsewhere.)

--Shyam.

Cold, Dead: Winter

Death comes swirling in fairy forms
And dark white bright masses swamp the sun.
No light, no life, all hard and cold, stone and snow:
No heart hers that sold mine to the howling winds.
The passing cars splash slush; nothing moves
Except to wound, to smart, to shiver its rusted bones.

Rugged barks, naked, drooping in the withering storm,
Stand monuments to despair; and I learn to freeze
What she wove into my dreams with her cruel charms.
Dead, dying, ready to die, I bear my coffin in my heart.

(I warmed her eye and fed her heart
And she let me bask in her summer love.
But now all is cold and dead, where is she?)

--Shyam.

Too much out o'the sun

Summer has been around quite a while now but nothing much done to savour the sun before the Notre Dame winter creeps in. Bound to my work, I haven't had much time to move around except for the odd couple of days off. Tennis has been a welcome respite each day and I have come to consider the two hours of sweat and slow dehydration the highlights of my daily schedule.

I seriously am missing home, Indian movies, cricket and loafing around in the Madras summer with friends. Missing the NatWest Series final hurt and am crying over not being able to watch what promises to be the most competitive Ashes in a long time. Federer though made my day today. Woke up late due to my chronic inability to understand timezones and TV schedules, so had to rub my eyes hard before I could register the statistics of the first 2 sets: 33 winners and 3 unforced errors for Federer. Of course the women's final provided enough entertainment so the men's final could be about class and the distance between the best and the rest in grass-court tennis.

Also watched a couple of movies the last couple of weeks: The War of the Worlds and Anniyan. The War of the Worlds was disappointing to say the least. The movie aside, what is with our portrayals of aliens? I hope alien science fiction writers don't imagine me as being slimy and green and oozing slush in their novels. The other movie was better but somehow Vikram seemed to have overdone all his parts. And of course there was not much in the story line to speak of. Anyways that was perhaps the one break from the monotony of my sad life as a grad student the last couple of weeks. Hope things change soon and I get to do something real and actual before the summer leaves start falling off leading into the next semester.

Lonely Times: Fall

I know of a place near my house
Where colours dance on leaves floating in the wind.
The tall trees though are proud and silent
Bearing her absence with dignity.
They were not always so: in summer they laughed with her
But now she comes no more.

The roads are full of forgotten leaves:
Trampling over them to reach my home
I think of her; of the brown waves that danced
Their dainty way into my miserable heart.

(It was beautiful to fall for her
I was full of her and she, of me.
But now I am lonely, where is she?)

--Shyam.

Holy Monopoly

Picutre a monopoly board with squares marked Jerusalem, Vaikuntham, Paathalam, Jahannu, Jannat, Earth, Limbo etc. And picture a game with an invisible opponent with invisible dice where you move to where you are asked to, when you are asked to. Picture too that Jail is the most probable position you might end up at in simple Monopoly, and here, you have nothing but Earth that you know anything of. If it doesn't frighten you, okay; but if it does, Welcome to the Holy Monopoly, Or: How I learned to stop worrying and listen to the Voice of Religion.

I have always been confused about religion. There are people who claim it releases our latent potentialities and others who say its just an opiate for the masses. I was even troubled when I decided I was an agnostic and discovered Yann Martel roaring against the "hypocrisy" of agnostics. Religion is a difficult and thorny issue and I don't even want to start on my views on it; suffice to say, I persist in my agnosticism without affiliations to any religion, borrowing sometimes from the mystics, sometimes from the scholastics, for my ideas; and lean heavily on the Hindu Vaishnavism of my parents' for form. And while I doubt that religion (any religion at all) can be useful(forget necessity), I think people who believe otherwise have the right to persist in their ways(folly or otherwise). But whether this includes even those who indulge in publishing fatwas and carrying them out, burning up kids inside cars because their fathers preach another creed, condemning people they dont like to death on the Cross, burning alive people they don't trust etc etc, I leave to each person's conscience and understanding. The more important thing to note is that religion has always controlled social responses even where secular law purports to hold sway. I was horrified after reading this news article on rediff.com yesterday. Not just that religion controls all life, denying the heart while claiming for it reasons that the head does not understand; worse, people are ready to suffer for it even when they get nothing in return. Perhaps conformism is 'useful' to live in society; perhaps there is another world. But what price will we pay for our beliefs in this world? Does it not matter at all? Then why all the hooplah about a better world and a better life on earth?

Semper Fi: Summer

She's not here and oh the difference to me!

A thirst it sometimes takes me now
To remember summer thoughts of her:
Her eyes dripping the cool blue of happiness
Into my parched heart.
I see her now in every long womanleg
Striding from me; why did she have to go?

Ice cold this desert heart of mine
I left her cool breeze a year behind.
Summer nights I now spend sweating on my sheets
Wondering what happened to immortality.

(A breeze, she came, then left, blowing off
The candle I held to her face.
And now it is dark, where is she?)

--Shyam.

Tags and Itches

A new day and a new tag, or more poetically, in German, "Neuer Tag, neues 'tag'". Again by arethusa. And this is a real tough one :-).

Three Names I go By
Shyam
Shyamu
Shyami ... this was easy

Three Screen Names
shyam_iitm
madatadam
shyam

Three Physical Things I Like about myself
My arms
My legs
My eyes(?) ... this was a really difficult question

Three Physical Things I dont like about myself
My tummy :-)
My nose - its an Indian map if u know what I mean
My ears - elephants have winnows for ears not men

Three Parts of my Heritage
Madras
Notre Dame
Kumbakonam (my mother says so)

Three Things that scare me
Nothing scares me really though some things frighten me at times.. Anyways 3 of these:

Life & Relationships (read People & Society :-))
A purposeless life
Not doing/getting what I am supposed/want to do/get & the possibility of there being no point anyways

Three things I want in a relationship
Fun - lots of it
Honesty & Understanding/Empathy - helps :-)
A middle ground - neither too close as to smother nor too far as to be indistinguishable from someone else

Three physical things about the opposite sex that appeal to me

A beautiful face
The Goldilocks figure (neither too tall nor too short, neither too fat nor too slim etc)
A nice smile

Three Things I want to do badly right now
Go Home and read a nice book (im at work now :-()
Get away to India/Europe for a long vacation
Put my head in a sack and hide myself (u know why)

Three Places I want to go on vacation
The Highlands and most of Britain
Italy - esp Rome, Florence and Venice
Paris

Three Things to do before I die
Resolve all the problems I have/face (would hate to die saying, "Houston we have a problem")
Read all that is written & understand all that is said (yeah right)
Experience all I can... and of course the usual help as many as I can

Three of my everyday essentials
My computer
Books
Tennis/Food/Sleep - really guys none of the 3 is an everyday essential though tennis would come close

Three Things I am wearing right now
Three huh... would hv been tough if I were at home :P
My watch
Old jeans
Torn slippers... i'll leave out the other items of clothing and my poonal :)

Three Reasons I am posting this
I am a masochist
I am a good liar
I love high adrenaline stuff & bungee-jumping :-)

Of course I have taken out the stuff Shy herself took out. Also I can't think of anybody to tag and continue this. But if anybody who reads this would like to, why dont u just drop me a line and i'll edit this post:)

Too Many Books ....

So what happened is arethusa, you know, tagged me, and here I am, all tagged and confused. I have to say something about books and all that you know. And I like books and, really, a lot of books too. And they also like me you know. And so, here you see, these are some things I want to say about

1. Books I own:
Books are Absolutely Indispensable. I could almost say I have lived more of my time with books than with people. And so I have a few books though the library and the net have always been the prime sources for my reading material. This is the list of books that I cherish most among the ones I own:
Ulysses & Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Joyce, The Portable Nietzsche, Dialogues of Plato, Complete Poems of Donne, Complete Works of Shakespeare, The Rubaiyat, The Portable Milton, The Stranger by Camus, Moby Dick and The Bhagavad Gita.

2. Books I recently bought:
I keep buying books on and off. When the eBay bug bites me usually. In the last month or two, these are the books I bought: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson and The Tragedies of Shakespeare.

3. Books I am reading now:
Books for light reading I finish off quickly and in that section I am reading 'India Wins Freedom' by Maulana Azad and Jane Eyre. Some books I read slowly, and in this section I am reading 'A Kierkegaard Anthology', Buber's 'I and Thou', some Schopenhauer, assorted stuff on Indian History and some Aristotle. There are a few books, however, that I read and re-read often and again, sometimes in parts and sometimes in the whole. In this section are Joyce, Milton, Donne, Shakespeare, the Gita and Cioran.

4. My Favorites:
This should take a long time. I usually read as much for the author as for the book. So most favs will be authors rather than books.

Literature: Joyce - The Dubliners and The Portrait are by themselves guarantee to fame and the 2 most unreadably bold wonderful books ever are also his. Ulysses, my all-time fav. Shakespeare- enough has been said about him. Dostoevsky - Haunting. And Beautiful. Hardy, Dickens - Beautiful. And Haunting. Huxley, Orwell - Nice. Sometimes Daunting. Rushdie, Marquez - Magical. Realism. India. Latin America. Hot! Also for poetry, Donne, the Sufis, Dickinson, the Romantics, some Browning, TS Eliot and some snatches from the moderns. Others - Pride&Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, much of Scott and Wodehouse - fun and perennial favs for lighter reading.

Fantasy/Sci-Fi: Robert Jordan - The Wheel of Time turns! Tolkien - He didnt write only LOTR! Douglas Adams - In Parts. Asimov - Theres too much I havent read but really good. AC Clarke - Of Course.

Philosophy: Plato - kickstarting Science and Philosophy as we know it, and open and sublime as we don't know how(with the eternal crowd-puller The Gadfly). Hume - No miracles here! Kant - Just cant read him. Schopenhauer - For the sheer weight of his studied Pessimism. Kierkegaard - Positive Religious Existentialism - I am searching too for "an idea that I could live and die for". Nietzsche- no one writes more lyrical philospohy - not even his mentor Plato. Cioran- Worthy successor to Nietzsche. I can just see the little blue light at the end of the tunnel too.(Plus he was insomniac when young :-)). Russell - Philiosophy for the layman. Math and Logic for the Scientist. And Literature for the Nobel Committee. Camus, Sartre - Lit/Phil - take ur pick. But they should be going out of fashion now, no?!. Every now and then, pick up Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius or the Gita for comfort.

I am sure I have missed a few but thats the way it is. And of course, I tag Cue, Sudheer and Varath to post on their fav books etc.

Madras Pettai Wiki

The wikipedia has been around too long for me to talk much about it. But this one has really been illuminating. For all those who have been exposed to the colourful & pure pettai baashai of singaara chennai.

A Hard Night's Day

As the sun starts reaching out, feeling around, with its first tentative rays, the empty blue sky stolen off a Renaissance artist's canvas, I am tempted to say with Theoden, "And so it begins." Another night has passed me by and I am still trying to configure the SuSE installed on my computer to perform at its best. And all the work that I have neglected the last couple of days glares at me from a corner, promising, with a malignant smile, headaches for days to come. But it has been nice and I have had fun tweaking my notebook and learning to write shell scripts and other silly things. Not to forget enjoying a special screening of Amadeus at 4am, sparing no thought for the other three poor souls who inhabit my house and, unlike me, sleep during the night.

As a movie, Amadeus is quite a treat. I had seen the second half of the movie before and wanted to see the whole movie. The colour of late 18th century Vienna and the music of Mozart: what more can a movie ask for? The actors have done their parts well too and no wonder the movie won so many Oscars(though Titanic has made the awards largely meaningless). Anyways, good company for 3 hours(nearly) though the version I saw seemed to me edited.

Also spent some time on the Advani controversy. It seems funny to me that there should be an argument at all whether Jinnah was 'communal'. He wanted a Muslim 'quam' and that by definition makes him communal. The word 'communal' has been mauled so badly that it has become a petty gaali now. But Israel is 'communal' and most of the countries in the Middle-East are theocratic and we have no problems maintaining good relations with them. So why does it matter only so close to home? It is an ugly thing and I wouldn't want it sneaking into my home but a foreign state is welcome to do what it wills as long as it doesn't (interfere with)/(tend to affect) my stuff. That, I know everyone knows, is the core principle of sovereignity of nations. And, if you do steal my toothbrush, it doesn't make sense for me to just yell at you,"You lousy St.Patrick's School ruffian". Strong typecasting is useful only in so many scenarios and international relations, I think, is not one of them.

On the other hand, if at all we need to consider Jinnah's career, let us place him on par with the other leaders of the Freedom Struggle, and, for every Chauri Chaura that we excuse, strike off a Lahore or a Punjab on his side. Not to absolve him of his short-sightedness but to understand that he was a man with limitations as was every person who extracted his/her pound of salt. And since the history of our freedom struggle is too close by us to analyse it critically, without bias, let us instead ask other, more important questions regarding our future relations with our estranged cousin Pakistan. A couple of good reads in rediff.com were satisfying but the question lingers. And so the show does go on, it seems, in India. Oh, by the way, it was 'Hindustan' last I heard.

It has been a long, dark tea-time for me, this vacation from reality, this day of darkness, but now that it is getting lighter and brighter, I must sneak back into my coffin, so adios all and auf wiedersehen.

Off the line musings on online friendships

Man, says the sage, is a social animal and Agent Smith assures us he is a virus. Both ideas seem agreeable and we often see man aspiring towards that characteristic peculiar to a virus, 'immortality in culture'. Another aspect both man and the virus share is the tendency to cluster close together, creating unforeseaable affinities. 'Friends', my friends, is the name of the game, and making and keeping as many as you can is what it is all about.

In my schooldays, friendships were made only in playgrounds and backyards. Sure there was an occassional friend made out of a fellow-sufferer at the dentist's, but the more modern innovation of the penpal was something one in his real senses just frowned at. A friend, by definition, is someone who is there for you, someone you share the details of your life with; and a letter can get only so far in real life unlike in movies. The friend across the seas, a person after your own nature, someone to lean on in times of trouble and the first to rejoice on a happy occassion, was only a mythical beast the lonely had dreamed up. But all this was destined to change with the arrival of the internet and yahoo, among other things. Myth became legend, then history, and finally seeped into everyday life, as messengers carrying friendship-tokens became ubiquitous and smiles and tears alike were simulated and the mythical beast realised in a jumble of wires and machines. And people were hooked.

It was not entirely surprising given the near universal reach of the internet; but what beggars belief is the number of adherents the internet has found in all classes and ages. Kids who can't spell 'connectivity', and grandfathers who obstinately refused to give in to modern innovations like the vacuum cleaner or the washing machine, were alike into it and the net just grew wider and wider. The internet itself is a much huger proposition, but friendship got a new meaning within this context. People found new 'thingies' like the yahoo messenger and hotmail to make friends with and get to speed with others they had lost touch with. And it was a boon for all those who couldn't get to know their neighbours better as it was easy as a click to add another friend.

The latest craze, at least in circles I move in, are the make-a-pal-online sites like orkut, which are exclusively devoted to friend-making. These sites allow people to get to know others and keep tabs on what is happening with one's friends and acquaintances. They also foster in some people a new fever for number-of-friends and promote vicarious relationships where login-name and login-name share intimacies. The trouble, and this without malice aforethought I say, is that this new development weakens as much as it strengthens our friend-making abilities. For an old-timer like me, it is economical to have a few friends to offload my emotional surplus on(and receive that of others), but as the numbers grow bigger, it becomes difficult to maintain and cherish an unseen friend(though I indeed have many valuable friends because of the internet).

It is hard, I say again, not impossible; and often a flesh-and-blood friendship seems more 'real'. This is reflected in the logically sequent occurrence of online friends attempting to meet in real-life and continue from where they left off in the world wide web: a consummation, so to say, of the ritual began online, miles away from each other. Here the friendship-sites play to their strength as facilitators and catalysts to friendship. They function as forums where like-minded people meet and get to know each other - friendship is facilitated as people are encouraged by initial exchanges to meet and understand one another. And then a friendship is supposed to have begun; at least so it says in my ancient handbook.

Where the economics of money and time hinders an actual meeting, of course, these sites are the ultimate sanctuary. They open up vistas that are hidden deep in the mad superstructure of our world and connect people who cannot afford a 'real' friendship. They redefine friendship and make people like me sit up and notice that we inhabit a changing world: a world where the old dog has to learn new tricks. And in learning to adapt ourselves, we learn too that life takes its meaning through change.

Anyways, it is a fun thing and new(read cool). After the bubble burst, something had to come out of it all and I guess this is one direction that it was always predictable the net would take. Let what comes next try to be as successful.

PS : As a technical aside, I have been wondering if these sites actually tend to work towards their own destruction. Promoting the creation of a fully-connected set of friends, the records in the site databases must tend to grow as the square of the number of users if everyone tries to become everyone else's friend. This is only vaguely possible but a super-linear growth in space required to connect everybody seems a distinct possibilty. And I suppose the designers of these sites will have only a linear growth in space with users for reasons of economics, which means there has to come a point in time when there are more records to handle and not enough space. (A friend says space-constraints are no longer critical in the computing world, but I persist, as space and time constraints are interlinked and the scenario I predict is bound to occur as an asymptote with high probability).

Who said only cockroaches are nocturnal?

It is official now: I have become completely nocturnal these days and no joking. There were forebodings of my predilection for the darker half of the diurnal span even in my high-school days; but never has it been so regular nor persistent. It is a rare sun these days that finds me asleep when it rises, or awake when it is at its zenith. And, very often, when I have some work to do in the day, my body-clock adjusts itself so that I revert back to my nightly life as efficiently as possible. A party animal's body I possess maybe, or maybe an ascetic's, but neither shoe fits me anyways. And the best I can hope for is that I possess a certain(unrealized) greatness of character(though most people who know me would discount the possibility), for Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita,

yaa nishaa sarvabhootanaam tasyaam jaagarti samyamee|
yasyaam jaagrati bhootaani saa nishaa pashyatho muneh||

which, in the vulgar tongue, translates to "The sage(who controls his whole being) is awake when it is night to all creatures; and when all creatures are awake, then is it night to the sage who sees(understands all)."

Pretty neat huh! Only I hope I can withstand the pressure that my father says I am burdening my body with, not letting it lead a normal life :-).

Mackinac Island - II

The next day we woke up bright and early around 7am, which meant we were missing the earliest ferry to the Island. After a light breakfast that the motel provided and a few snaps of the lake in the early morning sun, we got out of the motel to catch the ferry at 9. There are quite a few companies offering ferry services for $18 or so the round-trip. The ferryboat was quite cool as they had an observation deck high up, standing on which we got a spectacular view of the lake and small humps of islands dotting it all round. Snap-time again and we braved a light drizzle, cold air and swarms of insects to admire the small infinity in space and time that the lake in its calm expansiveness portrayed.

It took us about 20 minutes to reach the Island and even as we landed there was this cabby with a Lincoln-beard on a 3-horse carriage. Talk of a quaint island! And there weren't any motor vehicles on the island and the only means of transport was the horse-carriage or the bicycle. Maps are freely available at the Tourist Information Center and the lady manning the desk was quite helpful as she pointed out a few of her favorite spots and marked a route for us to take.

Bicycles are as easy to obtain as fudge on the island and come in as many flavors; we got the 7-geared cycles that sit low and have a basket attached to the handle-bar, making you feel like a spinster going to church on Sunday. Anyways we pedalled out of the docks with a plan of going along the Shoreline Road to either Arch Rock or Fort Mackinac. The houses on the road were quaint(did I use the word again?) and the shoreline simply breathtaking. There is an old forlorn lighthouse standing out a small distance out to sea and a few projections of land jutting out of the lake on all sides. And if we but ignore the small piece of land we were standing on, borrowed from the lake in some prehistoric period when man was still learning to balance himself on two legs in a remote corner in Africa, a sense of the all-swallowing nature of water and its wilfulness teaches us the first lessons in futility. But it is beautiful too with its green and blue and the haze that settles every now and then, sometimes obscuring, at other times revealing, the content of our dreams.

The road leading to the Fort and Arch Rock is a real strain and leads up a steep hill. An elderly gentleman living in the island offered that it became harder each passing year and we weren't making much more headway than him. Then an alley of colonial or late 19th century houses with mock columns and colonnades and spacious patios looking towards the sea(). Trails crisscross the whole island and after an eyeful of the pretty houses and the far-out sea, it was getting late so we hit a few that seemed to take us to the Fort quicker.

Going is tough in this stretch as the road and the trails go up and down. But we reached Skull Cave in one piece without much adventure. This Cave is where an English fur-trader is supposed to have hidden when the Indian Wars erupted in the Island. There is not much to it as the Skull seems to have been chipped away by time and the elements and we climbed a few flights of rough wooden stairs to reach Fort Holmes. The Fort is a rough stockaded enclosure that the English wrested from and held against the American troops in the War of 1812. Not much but enough to provide some fun to kids playing Indians and Cowboys with plastic darts and guns. The place affords yet another view of a vast portion of the lake and a plaque provided us with the history of the Lake Algonquin and the breaking of the land and the surfacing of these islands. Indians native to these parts won't agree but we heard their story only when we got to Arch Rock, where some great God had breathed life into the world.

Fort Mackinac is only a little way from Skull Cave and Fort Holmes. It is grand though no castle but the entry fee was forbidding enough at $10 or so for us to witness a demonstration of the firing of a real cannon and a guided tour of the rooms where the quartermasters hid their young girls. Cycle back and we reach Arch Rock: I had assumed all this time that it was 'Arch' as in 'First' as some God is supposed to have created life here. But as all deductions from internal evidence go, it is superficial and a rock in the shape of a huge arch a hundred or two feet high loomed up in our sights. More pictures and more sea and more awe and then back to the Main Road for lunch.

Lunch was pizza again for me and a few glasses of wine and we basked in the afternoon sun on the lakefront. Then fudge-shopping and fudge-eating on the green meadows with a few more snaps of some old bloke in bronze hiding our view of the whitewashed fort entrance. A few calm minutes, fudge in mouth, grass under feet, brooding over the lake splashing its waters in disquieting calm, and back to business. This time we take the shoreline road going the other way round the island and a few minutes into it, stop at a stretch of pebbly beach, tossing stones into the lake and feeling the cold wash up from afar on waves. There is a Devil's Kitchen here too and a few charred boulders hanging on. Some fine words written about this being an ancient burial ground and a keynote in the geographical history of the area; we pass on.

Trails again and I run into the forest in search of the source of a brook. After a few falls and a few more snaps(we really took only snaps of ourselves all the time), we decide that trails are fun. So, after reaching the British Landing Point, where they have a cannon pointing at the lake for no apparent reason, we decided to split up, with Srinath and Mahesh taking the shoreline Road while I, Ganti and Sheetal plotted our way through Swamp Trail and Tranquil Bluff and what-else-not, promising to meet the others at the Tourist Information Center.

This was supposed to be fun but we found out soon that Swamp Trail actually led us through a swamp and we got through brambles and missed trail junctions and after huffing and puffing through the best part of an hour reached a beautiful avenue. The Grand Hotel is situated here and there are a few mansions too but mostly it is meadows and quaint(not again!) roads that transported us downhill at breakneck speeds and earned for us the snorts of disapproving horses. There is a museum on our way and a roadsign indicates a blacksmith working nearby but it was getting dark and we hurried past cabs and bikes moving peacefully, gawking at unearthly sights, and so back to the crowds on Main Street. The cycles are duly handed over and some sludge and cola partaken of. The crowd seems to have swelled and there are lots of Indians(the Asian kind), apparently on honeymoons or a quiet vacation and with the least disturbance, we return on a ferryboat back to Mackinaw City.

It was already 8pm by now and so we decided to stay back and start off early for home the next day. Before crashing, however, we went across to St.Ignace on the Mackinac Bridge, the third longest bridge in the world, passing on our way the historic Fort Michilimackinac, founded in 1715. There was also a beach for celebrities to frolic on but time, as they say, was dear.

St.Ignace itself was a boring, sleepy town and costly too compared to our motel of last night. A dinner of subs in St.Ignace and we hastened back to Mackinaw City. Other places were either costlier or rooms were not available so we went back to our cheap motel spending another $49 on a night's rent.

Not much to plan for the next day and a long road home with me as the navigator. I plot a way through some 'scenic routes' but all we get is a county jailhouse and lots of biker babes. Anyways Detroit is only a few hours away and we all have fun on the road, each in his own way. Detroit itself, we don't get to see much of as it is dark by the time we reach Sheetal's hotel and we book a ticket from Toledo, Ohio to Notre Dame on Amtrak. A light dinner at Chili's and a failed attempt to visit a nightclub, and it is time to start off for the Toledo railway station. Its about an hour and a half's drive from Warren, Sheetal's place, but only 35 minutes from downtown Detroit, and a few missed turns don't matter as the train is only at 4:50 in the morning.

Toledo seems like an interesting town with a nice bridge across a river and a fine skyline. There seems to have been some problem in the area as we pass quite a few police cars on our way to the railway station. But the cops are helpful and we reach the station at around 4am. The train is late as usual but Sheetal takes his leave and we curl up for a light nap.

Finally, around 5:30am, the train chugs in and we are home by 8. We take a cab home and then its back home again. A fine vacation it has been and a long break from the drudgery that is life in research but everything can wait as we take a long, peaceful day of rest and sleep.

Mackinac Island - 1

I have always been accused of being a sedentary creature and have borne out its truth too, often enough. So when summer came around and I was still home not venturing into the beautiful days that were dawning in and around Notre Dame, not many were surprised. Work is good and sleep better and all comforts are available inside my small room north of campus so why bother? Anyway, I was quite contented with occassional glimpses of the sun from my bedroom window until the Wanderlust gripped me when Sheetal Kiran, a friend from India, who had come to Detroit on official business, visited us in his SUV and suggested we take a road-trip to some nice place in Michigan for the Memorial Day long weekend.

I and three other friends at Notre Dame, Ganti, Mahesh and Srinath, were quite happy to accept the offer but none of us had a license nor were confident of driving an SUV. But Sheetal said he could drive on the whole trip by himself and we set about planning the trip. After initial discussions we settled on Grand Rapids and Mackinac Island but people were uncomfortable about spending too much time away from research(yeah right!). Finally we decided to just pass through the town of Grand Rapids on our way to Mackinac Island, stay overnight at Mackinaw City in the mainland, take a ferry the next day to the Island itself and see how things went from there.

Packing for the trip was minimal and we were ready to start early the next afternoon. Ganti volunteered to be the navigator and I just lay back on the backseat of the SUV for a contented sleep. We had a DVD player on board and had picked up our Lord of the Rings DVDs but everyone tired of seeing it for the nth time. My Simon&Garfunkel CDs were also not agreeable to some and we fell back upon the default Indian film music CD everyone was OK with.

Mackinac Island is near the northern border of Michigan with Canada and Notre Dame is very close to the Indiana-Michigan border. The entire distance, as the crow flies, to use a favourite expression of Mahesh's, was about 300 miles. We could have done the trip in 6-7 hours flat but since Sheetal was to be the only driver, we decided to take it slow and rest every now and then in various cities. The first leg to Holland, MI, was north-westerly and we got really close to Lake Michigan's shoreline. After losing ourselves in Holland for quite sometime, trying to figure out the way to downtown Holland, we had a lunch of pizzas in what was advertised to be the best pizzeria in Michigan or something like that. The food was not really satisfying but we picked up some coffee and got out of Holland at about 2:30pm. The plan to pass through Grand Rapids was dropped as we were already looking at something like 10 or 11pm when we would hit Mackinaw City and we charted a new route direct to the City taking the State Highway at M-... and joining I-... near Lake City. Again we lost our way trying to get onto I-..., and went all across Holland. We ventured into some residential areas and there was quite some ogling of pretty girls and teasing of each other as we behaved like teenagers. I even suggested we continue along the road and hit Lake Michigan for a small beach-party in the afternoon but sanity prevailed and, inspite of and with the help of Srinath's constant interjections, we managed to hit the road to Mackinaw City.

The traffic on I-... was quite heavy with lots of people hitting the road for the long weekend and soon we were forced to a crawl. I was already feeling the effects of the sun and lunch, lying comfortably on the backseat with only Mahesh's laptop for company and dozed off. After an hour or so, I was woken up when we stopped at a gas station at Cedar Springs to fill gas and get some coffee. It might have been the lurching of the SUV or my disaffection towards travel but I had a big headache and dozed on and off till we reached Mackinaw City. The stop at the gas-station was short and when we had bought some goodies to munch, took to the road again.

The next stretch was perhaps the best in the whole trip as we got to see the Land of Lakes in all its glory in the late afternoon sun. The sky was a little overcast and there was a chill breeze but the beauty of a vast land, in long stretches untamed by man or shaped only so much as to reflect its natural beauty, took our breath away. A cool breeze and thankfully only intermittent traffic now and signs of civilization provided us all the opportunity to click away and enjoy "nature."

We stopped for a bit at Lake City after a few wrong turns and serendipitous visits to scenic inland lakes to stretch our legs and get some stuff. A few more clicks of us at the lakeshore and a few cans of Mountain Dew and a packet of potato chips and we were back on our way. It was near 8pm now and already getting dark and so we made some haste on this part of the journey. The only other stop was at a rest area very close to Mackinaw City, where there was an observation point high up and a stunning view across the land in the setting sun. And an hour after that we were in Mackinaw City.

Mackinaw City itself is a historical place with Fort Michilimackinac, a French/British post of old and a few other attractions. The Mackinac Bridge linking it to St.Ignace across Lake Huron is the third longest bridge in the world and we proposed to go across it once atleast for photos. But it was 10 by the time we reached Mackinaw City and so our first concern was for a place to stay the night and get some dinner. There was a cheap motel on the lakeside that offered breakfast in the morning and after unloading our stuff in the room, we went into the town.

Most shops were closed but there was an old-world charm to the place even without people. There was only pizza to be had and we decided to explore the place till pizza arrived. But all we did was have some fun in a video-games parlor and soon it was time for another round of unappetizing pizza. After the unsatisfying dinner, Ganti and Srinath decided to fold up at around 12 while the other 3 of us went on a walk that took us through the beach and into Mackinaw City, and after some useless observations concerning the number of tourists and the seasonal business of the few bed and breakfast places about the place, we headed back to sleep. The plan was to get up early and catch the 7:30 ferry to the Island but that is another story.

Cinderella Man

Forget Rocky and Raging Bull. Forget Seabiscuit and Million Dollar Baby. Forget even the old Tamil flick with Prabhu in the lead whose name I have already forgotten. For if you don't, you might just not enjoy Cinderella Man, the latest inspirational movie directed by Ron Howard. The movie is a biopic on the 1920-30's boxer James J. Braddock, and has elements liberally sprinkled that might just want you to compare it with those other movies where the hero is a washed-up has-been, who holds firm to his principles and family and, just when everyone has forgotten him, pushes himself to the top against all odds and the best of the next generation.

Russell Crowe stars as the boxer, legendary for his right hook, and Renee Zellwegger is the typical homemaker of the 30's, quiet, loving, the mother of 3 kids and fearing for her husband's health in the ring. The movie starts off in 1928 with Braddock KOing his opponent and carrying a hefty wad of greenbills to his pretty wife. But disaster strikes soon and he is left with injuries to his right hand and heavy losses in failed speculations as the Depression rolls in. In 1933, we see him struggling to get work at the docks, and soon his boxing license revoked by the local commission chief Johnston, played well by Bruce Mcgill.

The times are harsh and the family finds it hard to get food and milk on the table. Electricity is lost to mounting unpaid arrears and Braddock finds himself all 'prayed up' as God seems to punch him hard and fast where it hurts. He is forced to apply for assistance from the government and even begs from his boxing associates but manages to keep his family together.

Here, luck favours him as his old manager Joe Gould(Paul Giamatti of Sideways fame) finds a bout that nobody is ready to take on at short notice and the Commission agrees for a single bout comeback. Everyone is agreed that he is in the ring to lose but, in spite of being starved and injured, he manages to KO Corn Griffin, and becomes an instant sensation. Joe persuades Johnston to let him take on the challengers for the heavyweight title and goes to the extent of selling off the last of his possessions to let Braddock practise. The gamble pays off and Braddock keeps winning and gets to fight Max Baer(Craig Bierko), a bear of a man, who has already killed 2 people in the ring, for the title. Baer is flamboyant and promises to kill him but our man holds his cool, and egged on by the millions down on their luck, who find a reason to cheer for one of their kind and to whom he is the 'Cinderella Man,' the living fairy tale, he manages to hold his own against Baer through fifteen gruelling rounds to emerge champion.

The movie is well-directed and though we know what to expect, there are a few surprises even in the real story. Paddy Considine, as Braddock's friend from the docks, who dies trying to organize and unionize Hooverville, manages to impress with a neat portrayal. As the manager, Paul Giamatti is impressive with his snappy comebacks that irritate Johnston and the scene where he lets Renee Zellwegger into his barely furnished apartment and explains his situation is great. And the church scene where Renee walks in and finds it filled with people praying for her husband and waiting for the live commentary to begin on the radio is amusing and touching.

The actors have done their job well and Russell Crowe must find it easy by now to do heroes who are quiet and manage to 'do the thing.' Renee Zellwegger plays the role of a loving wife who has to support her husband through a crisis, waiting patiently for her man to get them out of all the mess around her. The supporting cast too have played their parts and Bierko as Baer and McGill as Johnston are especially convincing in their roles.

The script is well-written and the direction and cinematography is superb. The boxing scenes are gory but manage to get you to the seat's edge as the boxers sway and hook and dance and jab through their bouts. The director manages to explore all the 'senti' he can but stops short of making it all mushy. The dialogues are crisp and the editing reminds one of 'The Gladiator' in parts as flashbacks and imagined sequences sometimes crowd Braddock's thoughts.

Overall, a nice movie to watch and inspirational too, if you go for that kind of fare. But, simply for the acting and the director's sticking to the real-life plot, its interesting. And, as the CNN reviewer points out, its a movie that symbolizes the 1930's when America had to pull itself up from a deep trench, and also for the current world where heroes who fight hard and honest are in short supply.

No French for Federer!!!

It seemed like the Australian Open would be the only one to escape his grip this year but Roger Federer has lost in another Grand Slam semifinals and I am reminded of the English newspaper headline proclaiming the Don's failure, when in a tour match he fell after only a century. He has seemed as invincible as the great Don and as prolific in collecting records the past year that his defeats (this is only his 3rd this year) are so disappointing. Federer, seeking to fill the empty space in his trophy cabinet where a Paris souvenir should be, stumbled and fell today at the French Open, to the hard-hitting teenager from Mallorca, Rafael Nadal. It was like deja vu, as Federer, who had lost the Australian Open semis to birthday boy Safin, found in Nadal a spirited customer on clay on his 19th birthday. The 6-3,4-6,6-4,6-3 win meant Nadal entered the finals with the chance of being the first man in 23 years since the Swede Mats Wilander to win the French Open on debut. It also meant that the Federer Express had halted once again in the sluggish red clay of Paris and would have to wait a year before another attempt at a career slam.

I had put a night-out to watch the match, touted as the match of the season already, given the incredible form the two players have been in this year. Nadal was coming in on a 22 match streak with 5 clay titles and a 46-6 record, while Federer was on a 11 match, 28 set streak, with a 46-2 record. The previous meeting in Hamburg had been a close call for Federer, who was just two points away from losing the Masters Series Title, before he shifted gears and zoomed past a tired Nadal. The two men were also paired up nicely in their skills and strengths with booming forehands and lightning racket-speeds and were the most exciting players in the Tour.

Anyways I was quite excited about the match-up in spite of it being on the boring, slow clay when the beautiful, fast grass of Wimbledon was my favourite. NBC were telecasting the match at 10ET according to the TV schedule but I had no clue as to whether we were on ET or CT (yeah even after 2 years here :(). At 10 though(the correct time!), there was still the earlier semifinal going on owing to a 90 minute delay due to rain. This match (Davydenko vs Puerta) dragged on into the 5th set while I managed to catch a good half-hour's sleep and then the stage was set.

The very first point was awesome with Nadal hitting a looping forehand winner down the line on the slide to a lazy but precise Federer approach shot. It was as if the players had been on court for a couple of hours, both finding their groove so early. But that was only the beginning. From then on, the match oscillated between the sublime and the ridiculous with both players coming up with some beautiful shots and some outrageous errors. Federer was not his usual serving self, with only around 65% 1st serves in, in the first set, and was broken 4 times while Nadal himself was broken once. But after about 45 minutes of huffing and puffing interspersed with a few imperious forehand winners on either side, Nadal took the set 6-3.

Federer was expected to fight back and fight back he did, racing to a 5-1 lead in the second, with quite a few winners and a higher 1st serve pct of ~80. Nadal put up some resistance but it was too late and Federer took the set 6-4. Nadal seemed to have lost it in the middle of the set when a slight drizzle forced a short delay and Federer got his act together with 10 winners and fewer errors.

Now the contest was heating up and a fight-to-the-death was what the crowd had paid for. Honors were even with a break traded apiece until 5-4 when Nadal came up with a great defensive lob on the stretch that Federer could only bat down into play after some backpedaling, setting Nadal up for a great forehand after a couple of shots. Set: Nadal. Score: 2 sets to 1 Nadal.

It was all Nadal now and Federer was just fighting to stay in the match. It was getting dark and if Federer won the set, McEnroe predicted that the final set would be played tomorrow. Federer struggled to stay on serve with Nadal and was constantly looking at the chair umpire to get out of the darkening court. He had lost his serve completely with only about 20% 1st serves in and was trying his best to put up a decent fight. The crowd was now fully behind Nadal and a fan's heckling caused a momentary lapse in concentration as Federer double-faulted in the 8th game to give Nadal the crucial break. After that, it was all over and Nadal wrapped up the set in the next game on his 2nd matchpoint, to enter the finals, a strong contender for the crown against the unseeded Argentine Mariano Puerta.

I was disappointed that the projected heavyweight showdown turned out to be a damp squib as there was lots of spraying the ball around, especially by Federer who compensated for the 40-odd winners he hit with 40-odd unforced errors. Nadal was consistent most of the time, forcing Federer to hit 2 or 3 winners often to get one point: conceding nothing and playing for his life literally. Federer was unlucky too a few times when the ball clipped the net, once surprising him in his volley and a couple of times setting up Nadal for a winner. The match was scrappy and in the dog-fight-dog competition, Nadal proved more tenacious and deserved to be the winner. He is also bound to win the final against unsung Puerta, unless many planets go awfully out of orbit, and that will be one match I won't lose sleep for.

Appogiatura

It is not easy to notice that I have mis-spelt the word "appoggiatura" in the title of the blog. If you are not into music theory or are not named Anurag Kashyap, chances are you don't know to spell the word. This word meaning "an embellishing note, usually one step above or below the note it precedes and indicated by a small note or special sign," was what finally decided the winner in the 78th Scripps Spelling Bee this year. The event was interesting as ever and provided for a lot of the suspense and nail-biting moments that a standard thriller does. And it threw up a very pertinent question at me: what is the point of these Spelling Bees anyway?

Granted the final 3 competitors were all of Indian origin, which made me feel proud and embark on another of my mera-bharat-mahan moods, I still felt a little queasy that 11 year-old kids like Samir Patel spend lots of their time trying to know how a word like 'Roscian,' which in all probability they wouldn't ever be hearing again in their lives, is spelt. Kids like him have special talents, agreed; but why test them on skills that are not really essential in life?

Don't jump on me saying how important good spelling is and how verbal skills are a good indicator of intellectual ability; what I am cribbing about here is the point to which people take the whole thing. And this leads to the more controversial question: is competition really good? For it is clear that the Bees go to these lengths only because there are people who can go these lengths.

People have different talents and want to display them to the world. In a media-oriented world where the ordinary man can get his 5 minutes of fame using his 'special' talents in any of the hundreds of talent hunts or reality shows quite easily, it often becomes a rat-race to the telephone trying to get into some show or the other. While I have nothing against the shows as such where they are concerned with the development and promotion of talent (which, incidentally, is an overused word nowadays in my opinion), they also give the common man a taste for the uncommon. What this means to the kid, whose father has always dreamed of being a rocket-scientist or cricket captain, is that, from an early age he/she is forced to try and be the best and grab all possible attention. Brats are created and worse, children who have rarely experienced the freedom that childhood offers. Even as I felt a wistful envy towards Swami and Friends when I was younger, I am afraid the next generation might not hear of him (except of course those whose fathers are into quizzing and literature).

Single-mindedness is, I believe, an attribute desirable among older people, if among any at all; and to make a kid do the whole hog from early morning painting classes to school to evening chess coaching to weekend football training and piano lessons with tuitions liberally spread all over, is simply not fair. The world can go round as fast as it wants to and seats in the IITs and Stanford and MIT get as rare as they can but a child's mind is more stunted by the mad urge to compete all the time. I would have liked to take piano lessons as a kid too but to apply evolution theory and to fit me up for survival anticipating this might just have killed the fun in it for me. And fun is all childhood is about: its fun to play, fun to learn new things, fun to do cool stuff and fun to grow up into a more mature life where you work hard and try and set out to realize your dreams.

Kids need to be encouraged and their talents brought out but to make it the focus of their entire life and make them celebrities too early might make them really brittle soon. I understand that the 3 Spelling Bee kids I started off with are having fun in their lives but the problem is that, in the driveway to Success, there are lots of other kids and not-so-kids-anymore and many of these are left broken and bruised by what they dont understand and a sobering influence is sometimes helpful where people are patted on the shoulder and told "You are doing great. Just try your best and have fun." Success is a dearly desired thing and working hard for it often exhilarating but it pays to remember that an OD of anything kills real fast and bad.

Anyways I am blogging fast and furious now hoping to kill time till 10am when the Federer-Nadal clash starts. Just salivating at the thought of watching two of the best players in the circuit pairing off once again. Bound to be a cracker if ever there was one!!

The Way I Write

Following on the resolve to blog regularly, I next have to resolve on the style that I will use in the writing of my blogs (as also my general writing style) . This is an important aspect for me as content alone cannot suffice: I have promised myself to learn to use language; as I feel language is as much a process as it is a medium. What I write is important but the way I write it is not much less so: a good deal of time is wasted in writing and reading interesting stuff in an unilluminating manner.

In the course of my writing career, I am bound to explore diverse vistas and I know I oughtn't to prescribe to a uniform style for all occassions. This blog, and the one before it, being in the main reminders and pointers to myself, I have chosen to write in a didactic style, heavy, stilted and reeking of a Milton or a Carlyle ever so often. This style is odious to most but useful in situations where the ordered cadence of a sequence of sentences provides inspiration to the ordering of thoughts in the mind. Where I write about an incident or an amusing anecdote, I will assume a more bantering note designed to evoke participation in the merriment from the reader. Each occassion has as its prime concern a particular emotion or state of mind and my writing should reflect it in the highest degree possible; but in this blog I intend to provide general pointers to myself on the way I will carry my subject through.

I have to write spontaneously and extemporaneously often, as long thought may modify the pregnant impression an incident leaves in my mind - pregnant, for the impression achieves fruition only in expression. The style has to reflect the nature of the impression and convey much of my mood when I felt it. Words, malleable and suggestive in their import, and providing insight by means of their connection to certain phrases and occassions, will afford the reader burrowing into the warren of sentences I write, a certain pleasure, both on account of the industry and achievement of the reader and the use of language to suggest beyond the mere surface of things. Every now and then, even a slip is advisable, and, in hindsight, I will declare my errors to be volitional, and pass on as the brook that babbles on leaving stones unturned on its way to the ocean.

Flowery language has been my besetting sin and I will work on scrupulously avoiding the style that I have used in these last two blog, viz., embellishing little content with much adornment. I will paint on the canvas the virgin impression as I felt it and let the reader make of it what he will, myself paring my fingernails in the background and asserting every now and then an unvoiced assent or dissent at an independent interpretation. I will foist on the reader the burden of drawing conclusions as often as I can, and, even in the conclusions I seem to draw myself, often hide another possibilty. I will use the parchment I write on as a palimpsest, overlaying one idea over another and obscuring in the brightness of a conclusion a hidden and more luminous flame. I will portray but never caricature; illuminate but never delineate; assert but never to justify; and learn more than I venture to illustrate.

In all, I will learn to write so I may write to learn more than I know and achieve a synthesis in my writing of the thoughts, the perceptions and the acts that define my relation to the external world.

Why I Blog

As I set myself down to serious blogging, I wonder what really makes me want to blog. I know this thought has been around since I wrote my first blog but now I have decided to frame for myself a manifesto, a creed, so to say, that I will follow through the rest of my blogging days as strictly as possible. A manifesto, of course, sounds grand and impressive but it is useful too, in the sense that I get a clear idea as to what I expect of myself through blogging; and, as a bonus, I get a nice, easy and well-set path to follow and fall back on all through the long journeys that I perceive myself as taking in the future.

This I believe to be important for I often wander along unknown alleys in my thoughts, and get lost in the mad jumble that arises out of an inability on my part to control and order the way my mind turns. Often ideas slip through my mind that I would like to set down on paper but they are pushed on and out of my mind by others too impatient to wait their turn. A well-defined manifesto and a conscientious setting-down of all I would like preserved of my thoughts is in order and hence this attempt.

I believe that nothing is new under the sun except perceptions. All the nice quotes one frames, all the marvellous ideas one hits upon are not original in the sense that they could not have been the quotes or the ideas of someone else in the past. As Emerson says, we hear reflected back to us our own thoughts in the mouth of genius, bold enough to publish them. What is new in every creative enterprise is not the potential of the creator but the actual, created object or idea. It is the venture itself that is new and not the possibility of it and so what needs to be recorded with great understanding is the realisation of a potential and not a wonder at its being possible. What is important and interesting is the phenomenon itself and what is new is our perception of it.

I believe that phenomena and their observations need to be recorded so they may be understood; and they need to be understood not so we may wonder at their beauty or felicity but that we may know that much is possible for each one of us and so set ourselves to the accomplishment of our potential. Every man is capable of certain things and though all may not have the same potential, all may realise their particular potential and so be rewarded by the accomplishment itself; every other reward is secondary. Man's purpose or destiny is not visible to him but he may strive to attain it and in thus striving, he is encouraged by the proofs of other such endeavours.

I believe that in the realisation of my potential, I need to learn and use language as a means to the expression of ideas that flow through me and suggest the possibility of my establishing an outpost in the dense thickets that surround the world around my perceptions. I need to find answers to questions that trouble me and I need to test the validity of the answers I come up with in the world I experience. To achieve this, I need to express my perceptions and frame my questions and answers in black and white and receive feedback from the world I conduct my conversations with.

I believe all social interaction is a great conversation tending in some sense towards the resolution of primal questions many are troubled with in the course of their existence. I believe the way to realise my potential is to participate in this conversation and record it and this I can achieve only by constantly rejuvenating my thoughts by observing them.

Finally, I believe blogging is ideal for me to reach my ends. A regular and spontaneous recording of my particular thoughts and a constant review of the opinions that others have regarding what interests me will be an easy and entertaining method of self-improvement.

And, of course, I can take out some of my frustrations and anger on my writing and freak out in a controlled manner(?!) :D.

Reality Bites

The village always wore a colourful look in summer. Reds and bright greens and plastic bangles that showered the hundred hot hues of the midday sun were seen on every mud road by day. At night the lanterns were shaded with coloured paper and painted each street in their light: hence the names of the streets - Red Street, Blue Street and so on.

Electricity was not unheard of but not always available at the flipping of a switch and most other amenities that are taken for granted in a big city were not even luxuries here. There was a hospital that took in the sick and those wounded attending to their laborious tasks in the fields, the outlying mines or the household work; but it was ill-equipped and the villagers usually preferred country medicine. There was also a school that taught kids until they were old enough to work their fathers' trade or be married to some lusty young farmer or labourer. Sewage and drinking water both mingled at the local lake that was dry seven months a year on average. There were scores of troubles to be settled everyday and just three policemen and the trusted village elders, who lived in the adjacent town and met on weekends under the huge banyan tree, to resolve them. But life went on and except for the odd disorderly young man who went to the big city with his pockets full of dreams, people were contented with making kids, neighbourly gossip, monthly cinemas and the traditional festivals.

This year though there was unrest on an unheard of scale and the panchayats started meeting every other evening and the police station was full of bustling men and women who had landed in the village on big jeeps and vans from the city. A big filmmaker had heard of the village and had decided to base his next film in the colourful village. A host of top movie stars and 'extras' had come overnight with the panchayat chiefs and had persuaded the villagers gently to move out of their houses for a month so the shooting could be conducted in a smooth manner. The villagers were addicted to obedience and left with the few things they possessed on their backs to the tents outside the village that had been erected for them by the producer.

The first few days went by quickly as the villagers were treated to special dinners and special screenings of their favourite movies in the old cinema-tent. They also got to see their favourite idols in person and some were lucky enough to talk to them. The peculiarities of the movie-making business also awed them to an extent.

The director was one of those modern types who had studied abroad and wanted to make a movie steeped in reality. He was not one to be satisfied with sets and had persuaded his producer to rent the entire village for a month or two. He had also wanted a whole truckload of 'extras' for the villager parts and had conducted an audition all round the country to get the right people for the parts. The producer was the old fox who had made loads of money in real estate and hotels and had jumped into the film business at the right moment. He had a few hits behind him already and was now experimenting with serious cinema. He understood the workings of inner country villages and had obtained the whole village for the director for next to nothing.

Given the number of stars and the characters of the producer and the director, it was inevitable that fights should start and the days dragged on and the movie was nowhere near getting complete. People kept stepping on exposed nerves and whole days were lost to mysterious illnesses. The villagers were initially out of this all as they resumed their daily routine after the first few days of an embarrassing courtship. Slowly, however, the movie-makers started infiltrating the village camps. The extras came first, complaining to the womenfolk about how they were being treated and regaled them with accounts of stars getting it all from the director. The girls of the village were excited by tales of what this hero or that heroine did on their last birthdays, and the kids, whose school was being used to house the equipment, played with the kids who had come to play the parts of village urchins. City fashions moved in slowly as the womenfolk learnt to question what their husbands had done after work that day and asked the tired-out men to help with the cooking. The men too learnt to say big words like 'enlightenment', 'democracy', and smoke costly beedis with big brand names from the male extras who caught them on their way back from work for small talk. The 'stars' too came to the tents with the director and the producer to learn how village people behaved normally. They were of course gawked at and in spite of the director's strict orders and the producer's pleas that they continue with their routine work, large crowds of women and kids surrounded the entourage photographing them with their eyes.

After two months had passed the shooting was still not done and the extras were leaving in small groups. The producer was getting more and more anxious but the director assured him that he needed only a week and then a final 'surprise' scene which would make the film complete. The theme, he explained, of a village's slow urbanization leading to its losing the powerful roots of tradition due to the influx of foreign ideas unsuited for an undeveloped soil and the subsequent annihilation of the entire superstructures on which life in poverty is based, viz., need and immediate satisfaction, hope and resignation, had to be handled carefully. He assured him the climax was near and the final scene will be etched into the history of film-making. The producer was sceptical but he was satified with the promise of a week.

That week was the worst in the village's history. Nights were growing warmer and the children were crying more often as tempers frayed along the long lines of underclad villagers jostling each other to watch their favourite movie stars in action. The men had stopped working completely as soon as they heard the 'stars' were leaving in a week; and the women just kept badgering them for being irresponsible. The tents were now shabby and the rains were due very soon. A lot of mischief was happening that people did not really like and the 'extras' were no longer allowed near the tents. Old disputes were remembered when children fought for tops and the elders only egged termagants on. Blows that had not been seen and words that had not been heard were exchanged and panchayats were beginning to be shouted down. The farms were left to the winds and the mines had started recruiting men from other villages. Food was scarce and water rarely available. The one doctor in the old hospital had left the village when his warnings were not heeded by the villagers and the schoolmaster was anyway an old fart. The sick were left to their own devices and births and deaths were treated as irritants by the respective families. All emotions were tied up in their village houses where they had lived forever and which were now sanctified by the occupation of the filmstars. And so it went on for fifteen days, beyond what the director had promised the producer and beyond all that simple men from a simple village could bear.

On the sixteenth day from the director's promise, he started his last scene. He had brought in special technicians from the city a couple of days earlier and had made rubber dummies of all the actors in the film. Nobody knew what the final scene was supposed to be but the actors and villagers were all asked to keep some distance. Even the people in the film were bemused but the crowd of villagers thronging the outskirts of their village watched on in a mixture of agony and ecstasy as the final act unfolded. There were no sharp words now; they were beyond all that. Each man of the village hated every other man and the women didn't even care any more. The kids were now really urchins and could pull a few sly tricks. The panchayat chiefs were back from the city for today and had made a grand speech everyone had slept through, in the morning.

At noon, there was a roar from somewhere and the director was seen shooting from the top of a hillock some distance away. Dust was everywhere and as the spate of coughs ended and the dust cleared, the villagers heard an unfamiliar sound. Bulldozers were moving in and as they watched, their houses were demolished one by one. The school was lost to rubbish but when they saw their god in the temple losing his hold on eternity, they started running in. Just then the bulldozer stopped and the men in it ran away towards the other end of the city. There were lots of shouts and screams and in that moment all enmities of the past week were forgotten as the prospect of a collective loss loomed. People hugged each other and there were tears and smiles; there was wrath too but now they wanted to first get together. Then the earth rumbled and a deafening roar split the sky. A few more shocks followed and then smoke and fire and the debris of a ruined dream showered on those who had been living a moment ago. A few cries were heard by the stunned movie-people, who were still standing outside village limits on the director's orders, and then there was nothing. A small child grasping in her little arms the sooty doll with a disfigured nose mourned her untimely end as reality was summed up in a few edgy takes.

The movie opened to great applause and a new hero was seen in the director who took realism to great heights. People claimed they had heard of such a village in the north or the west or the south of the country and a few doubters claimed the movie could not have been made except by really slaughtering a whole village. Many awards were won and the director signed several autographs and a few new movies. People wrote in saying they were touched by the movie and as the final feather on its crown, the film won the National Award and was selected to be sent as the official representative at the Oscars. And the producer hanged himself a few days later.

Much is lost but much retained.