Social Responsibility of a Film-Maker

[NOTE: One from the archives. I wrote this on Friday the 12th of November, 2010. The slight evolution in my writing style is perceptible to me when I compare this huge article to those I have written more recently, more 'offhandedly'.] 

It is never an artist’s ambition to accommodate the expectations of his audience into his art form. The visual art of filmmaking is hardly any different. Commercial cinema, as it has been so branded today, is not only a sham, a façade, but also a very audacious and wounding ignominy to art forms in totality.
The first rule, as Tyler Durden oh-so famously bellowed, of Fight Club is that you do not talk about Fight Club. Extending this pop-culture referencing analogy to the topic of my (self proclaimed) rant, what I mean to say here is that real, lauded, hard-hitting cinema is never for its own sake. It has the power, the boldness, and the smugness to step up, be judge and provide solutions to the very problems it poses in its 120 minutes timeframe. It can never be utterly a disconnected world of its own; in its basic emotions such as greed, happiness, joy and envy, it is very much a social statement, because no artist can undo the constant sculpting of their thoughts at the hands of their circumstances and milieu, however badly they might try to.
Let’s take A Clockwork Orange for instance. It is a film laden with ideas, brimming and at times spilling over with passionate expression and honest brutality. A visual, mental and auditory ‘kick’. A running social commentary and darkly satirical undertones is what makes the film meaningful. It is not for art for the heck of it, or for the lately much-in-use (or more aptly, abuse) ‘entertainment’ value of it.
It is hence inherent that cinema carries the responsibility of shaping up the ideas of an entire generation, given that a proper, concerted solution is also provided as an epilogue, because a satire is incomplete without providing a way out of the situation it parodies. If otherwise, then it is a satire of itself, it parodies its own impotence and futility.
They say that a pen is mightier than the sword. I propose a rather contemporary overhaul to this age-old adage. The camera has replaced the pen, and the sword is well, anything that helps impose one’s beliefs over another, be it an AK-47, be it a nuclear weapon, or be it hard cash.
We live in times dubbed as the ‘ghor kalyug’, translated to English as the clichéd ‘bad times’. In any given era we look back into, we’ve always have had that one, looming, impending danger ahead of us that hangs like the sword of Damocles overhead, a danger to humanity as a whole. In the middle 20th century, it was the fear of human race being wiped out at the hands of a third, final world-war, with big-wiggies like USA and Russia threatening to tear each other to shreds with their mammoth arsenal of nuclear warheads. As the USSR disintegrated into a dozen countries, and North Korea grew weak economically, this once-pounding fear went dormant, and is now almost unheard of. It has been, however, duly replaced by the next big impending peril, what we term as ‘global warming’.
And so, every period of humanity has its own idiosyncrasies, its own icing-on-the-cake, its own perception of lifestyle and its own whitewashed sense of sensibilities. This, in part, gets reflected in our cinema. At the time when the USA-Russia cold war was underway, we saw a dramatic shift of our cinema to subjects like espionage, double-crossing spies, and undercover secret agents, what with Ethan Hunt and James Bond leading the pack. So, in a way, a majority of movies cash in on the fear housed inside the audience’s hearts, and also inside the filmmaker’s own.
But then, there is another crop of movies, a la Fight Club, Memento, Dark City, and The Matrix that expend their own ideas rather than borrowing it from actual events. Of course, they can never be completely disconnected to our world; in fact they are more in sync with our lives’ pertinent issues than outlandish, society-borrowing films. Therefore, in order to being about a change in the society, in the social skeleton, it is a duty of the film maker to mould a film that not only is a result of its environment, but also very much a solution in itself. A problem left unsolved is merely stating the obvious, it is hence said that cinema is not just a reflection; it is how-to guide to self improvement.
It is also questionable as to what intelligence level the filmmaker holds. In times when a Hi-definition camcorder is as ubiquitous as a cell phone, any idiot armed with this device can go one making their own movies. This is exponentially dangerous when these self proclaimed flag bearers of intelligent cinema pass them off as ‘art’ films. Art cinema certainly is the ideal playfield for these pseudo-filmmakers to try and mould the minds of people they cater to. A few close-ups here, a few serious shots there, and lo, you have your average artsy film that the critics love and the audience love to hate. Hence, a film being an art film alone can never be a cent percent assurance of it being socially relevant and essential.
The audience should be as good as non-existent for a filmmaker when he’s shooting a movie. For it to be hard hitting and powerful, a film has to be no-holds-barred and relentless, without as much of a hint of cringing and whining at sensitive issues or controversial topics. Filmmaking (excellent filmmaking, that is) is always and always has been, very much a personal project, never with the accommodation of how the audience will react to it. One of the most glimmering examples to this claim is the entire career of auteur Guru Dutt, who made timeless, impeccable and not to forget, very personal films.
Many people opine that moviemaking has its own limitations when juxtaposed against book reading, which is, the pen has no precincts, no confining boundaries of the physical world. Whereas, the camera does have these confines, it is captive to the three dimensional world, with the damned Laws of Physics limiting its freedom. In today’s times, however, this once-seemingly unassailable advantage that writing a book had over making a film has, to an extent, been overcome. With cutting edge technology and a gazillion dollars at your disposal, making a movie is no longer bound to a camera shooting images. It is a computer producing these images, choreographing spectacular, out-of-the-world (literally, in some cases) scenarios and scenes. The boundaries in filmmaking have receded back in fear; the daunting fear of technology and the sinew resolution of man’s wild creativity. Truly, filmmaking has stood the test of time, and has not allowed time to bind it down just to a camera shooting movies. It has evolved from a solely optical viewing to a whole experience, a treat to all the senses, what with 3D and even 4D (as they call it) movies being made.
Also, films have a direct connect to a large bracket of audience, be it rich or poor (I myself once saw a film in a multiplex and paid in all, Rs. 30), old or young, even literate or illiterate. It thus has more power than any other medium to bring about the done to death ‘change’ we have been talking about. A film that is permanent, timeless in its portrayal, goes down into the pages of history and inspires not only one generation, but multitudes of generations to come, and I exemplify this with Charlie Chaplin’s magnum opus ‘The Great Dictator’, which released over half-a-century ago, but refuses to wither out of film lovers’ memories, standing rock-strong of the fact that one man had the guts to parody a dictator who had the whole of Europe gasping and running amok with sheer fear. And there are multiple examples to back this idea of mine, the most recent being Fahrenheit 9/11, a resounding slap at the George Bush regime and its outlook towards the War in Afghanistan.
We have arrived at a time when creativity can never touch the limitations of cinema. If you can dream it, you can film it. Therefore, in order to make a social impact, we must keep a level head and make movies with a certain responsibility, in fact as a repayment of people’s trust in you that has made you competent enough to film it in the first place. Of course, the most easily affected audience is the teenage bracket, which gets swayed by the apparent ‘coolness’ with which the actors smoke cigarette after cigarette on-screen, or how intoxicatingly beautiful does the intake of drugs look in films like Trainspotting or Requiem For A Dream. Of course, to a sensible, mature audience, these activities are see-through and they can actually read between the lines to get the real message of the film, but it the adolescent, young-adults who have this ardent desire to look cool at all times, and movies being so easily stylised, they get wooed into ill habits very easily.
But then again, this is an impediment of the audience and not the filmmaker. This is just the dormant monstrosity of our young adults, which begs to come out, and eventually does come out under the sheath of movies and cinema. It is only the fickle minded that get infatuated by every bad thing that is put to exhibition in the movies, hence the blame is not as much of the moviemaker as it is of the audience.
To conclude my ramble, I would say that films and filmmakers have quite much of a responsibility, and the first and foremost of them is, making movies to the best of their intelligence. To cheat your own self and lowering the level of intelligence (or even elevating it beyond your level of intelligence) of your films is, by my books, the biggest ‘artistic’ crime that can ever be committed. Cinema that is pretentious is the most hateable of all insults to filmmaking. Even if a film is bad, callously terrible in its execution, but completely honest in its level of interpretation of the subject, it is infinitely better than a film that is very well made but dishonest and showy.
In the end, I would like to quote the poet Vladimir Mayakovski, whose poems were as tragic as the story of his life:
 “Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to shape it.”

Of sexual pleasure, emancipation and God

In orgasm lies a bizarre epiphany, a realization of the burlesque of emotions that we ostentatiously want to exhibit and be offended at the lack of from others. In the split second of having an ejaculation, one can clearly see how his or her emotions are merely skin-deep and paper thin, while at the core of the human bosom lies unadulterated nothingness: an unexpected apathy and lack of inward sensitivity towards anyone but its own self. It is in the succeeding moments of the ultimate activity of pleasure that we can see how superficial our motivations and self-justifications have been. It is akin to the moment of weightlessness and void one experiences on bungee-jumping from atop a sky-scraping cliff, where the immensely downcast feeling of void immediately follows that of paramount pleasure, only to be replaced the next second by the latter. I believe it is this split-second void of worldly emotions and awareness of one's own shallowness of idealistic rationale and moral uprightness that people refer to as 'Godliness'.

Matrimony: A Blind Acceptance of Antiquity

[Foreword: this marks my return to sermonizing by means of an article. I request you not to drop dead of boredom while you're reading this. All the best, and may you reach the bottom!]

 “Whatever was to be said has been said. It is only in expression and eloquence that writing evolves, not in fabric.”

Man has been one to forge relationships and bondages for itself since time immemorial, which is why it is not very much off the bull’s eye to call it a social being: a product of nature incapable of sustenance without community and group dwelling.

Even when in one of our initial psychology lessons the heading ‘Psychology As A Social Science’ came up, our teacher started off by establishing  and taking for granted that human existence is impossible in isolation; that the whole purpose of humanity is to collaborate and then go on to observe other duties. Bombarded with such univocal ideas, I set out to ponder on the lines of ‘Why is a social obligation, say matrimony, a social obligation?’ Why is it that at every level, as humans we are expected to take part in social ties and bind ourselves down in accordance with a set of ancient rules laid down by wizened old men in their time of leisure?

Has ‘societal evolution’ hit a proverbial full stop in this sense, and any effort to expose this fallacy is looked down with a wince and a clicking of the tongue, all in the name of demolition of our age-old culture and old school of thought? Why is it that religion is so influential a force in our times that it assumes the role of social restriction and clouds the way we would otherwise have behaved and functioned socially? Why is there a Paigambar Mohammed, Confucius, or Mahabharat to remind me how to live my life in a social setup? Why can I not be a believer unless I have to accept a certain ‘way of life’ that defines my actions and dominates my thinking? Why does an institution such as matrimony exist, wherein one has to have legal and social sanction in order to raise a legitimate offspring? I am afraid my questions will remain unanswered as long as they are, well, unanswered.

Many a men (and women, before you jump the gun to label me male-chauvinistic) have been attackingly vocal in their notion that marriage is a pointless and character-diminishing social commitment, which the sooner is done away with, the better will it be for all of humanity.  Franz Kafka, one of the founding avant-garde writers of 20^th Century, has famously and in my view, very rightly said, “I must be alone a great deal. What I accomplished was only the result of being alone.”

 I can quote many others in this regard who further my and Kafka’s point, but I will not delve into their wise words for the retention of my own way of expression, something I have touched upon in the opening quotation.

Matrimony is considered an institution of deep reverence and fidelity, something that to me is a red herring in the masquerade of which people fornicate, or, in keeping with the parlance of our times, fuck the individual of their choice and legitimize it in the eye of the society and its constituting persons by calling it a pact. What is even more disarming is how matrimony in its status quo continues to be an open, socially boisterous and publicly exhorting event. Of course, it is but a choice of the one being hitched to decide whether the event has to be public or not, but for me, marriage remains a queer notion that I am yet to come to terms with (if that is what you call adolescence, I am your perfect specimen).

Individuality is a trait that is (in a flipside to community living) inextinguishably basic and primeval in humans (I am afraid my very limited biological knowledge will not let me safely extend this assumption to all living beings). Wherever there breeds man, breeds in it the urge to be free, unrestrained in thought and action, elusive of any contact with another human: in short, individuality. While fifth grade moral science taught all of us that an extreme of any and everything is undesirable, sometimes this bottled, pent-up, dormant individuality spurts out in one-off cases.

One worthy example of my claim would be Christopher McCandless, famously known under his self-conferred pseudonym Alex Supertramp, who gave up a financially and socially secure life to run off (literally) and live in the company of nothing except the greens, all in a desperate search of himself. Even though he met a tragic end in the hinterlands of Alaska due to acute starvation, his gleaming beacon-of-an-example provide us with profound insight into the dormant and blazingly individual nature of man, raring and restless to come to the hilt, bustling to be expressed and lived with. To douse this streak of the inherent human emotion would be akin to an assault on the very substance of the human soul, akin to asphyxiating to death a full-fledged personificated individual that is individuality. Matrimony does exactly this.

In what I see as a very patriarchal social set-up, marriage is another nail in the coffin for all proponents of individualism in humans in general and the women in particular. In the Indian society, it is an accepted norm that the representative of the fairer sex in matrimony is subject to numerous negatives as opposed to what I will call the ‘unfairer’ sex. However noble and well intentioned may have been the initial ideas behind their inception, the marital code we have given to ourselves has been interpreted grotesquely and ignobly in ways more than one of late. My explaining the ills of dowry, property inheritance laws (post-marriage) and the general sense of entitlement that the family of the groom expects to have over the bride will be entirely futile, for they are widely and ubiquitously known. Also, in my convoluted view, to have even a fraction of feeling of prerogative over another individual requires the complete willingness of the individual over which this liberty is being shrouded. It is in entirety the choice of the bride to not be a bride and never have an eye raised over her raising a child with someone who is not what society would call her husband; the same stands true for a male, in case you take me for a feminist and not a humanist.

It enrages me to see a man or woman being called promiscuous and characterless if they have been in and out of relationships like one would switch between morning and evening attires. Of course, I am not one to support what we call ‘double timing’, for that would be clubbed under cheating and treachery in general, something I try not to indulge in myself and despise to any given extent. However, when it comes to being in a live-in relationship, the society tends to label those in it to be commitment-phobic and emotionally incapable of maintaining a happy and fulfilling association, something that I again disregard and sideline as social bullshit. Forging ties and cutting them off is an inalienable right of man, it is not anyone else’s business to monitor and police a couple’s intermingling and look down to their relationship merely because they choose not to give it social sanction by calling it marriage. I am dead against the notion that a healthy marriage is reflective of the mental stability and normalcy of its constituents.

All said and done, I must make the confession that I do not have a plausible hypothetical set-up of the society that would alternate the one we have today. The idea of a family itself would not have been cradled and given shape, were it not for the institution I so strongly rally against in this write-up. I propose nothing in place of the nuclear family skeleton that we base our life on. I might not have all the answers but I do get the satiation one gets on asking pertinent questions and raising sustainable doubts over the way things exist today. I am but a fragment of the time I live in, no more no less, but still willing to be time-independent and society-independent in terms of ideology and existence. Alas, there are none (in general knowledge, anyway) who have escaped their affixed places in time and space physically, but to be an escapee in thought and mental awareness is the trait of the great. The condescending eye within me that longs for this escape and enlightenment sees (or at least pretends to see) matrimony as a damnable social evil, something which I do not have the answer to, but over which I can raise many a doubt and question.

“All the world's a stage, And all men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances…”

-William Shakespeare

How i interpret Inception

[Originally published and hosted at http://passionforcinema.com/.]

Christopher Nolan has been (since his initial college short-film Doodlebug), apart from all other things that he has been, a talented film maker endowed with the mastery to produce art which is open to endless interpretations and discussions. It has been his track record to amaze and at many places, outwit his audience with twist endings, blink-and-you-miss-it direction, and the consistency that even someone as great as Steven Spielberg cannot offer. His work is not comparable to what stuff like Michael Gondry and Charlie Kaufman produce, but more likely to, say, Stanley Kubrick’s body of work.
What comes as a latest (and disputably, the best) addition to this list is the Leonardo Dicaprio-starrer ‘Inception’. Within the opening minutes of the film, you can see the signature ‘Nolan’ style taking over: grand location, a hard-to-follow story, and a staggeringly original plot. Cutting without a moment’s delay to the chase, let me reach the central motive of my writing this piece.
Many film pundits have presented utterly outlandish explanations of the movie, which to the best of my knowledge, are merely results of over analysis. What I got out of the movie was not technical plot details and crooked metaphors, instead the basic, emotional message that the filmmaker has tried to voice. It is, at many places, a taunt to the smart-alecs who believe it is their responsibility to act as a mouthpiece for the whole human race. What I present in the following paragraphs is not a definitive, quintessential guide to unlocking the genius of Inception; it is not the final word. It is just a straightforward, personal explanation of what I gather out of the film’s proceedings. In an age where the critic is more ubiquitous than the audience, what I want to write is a non-critical, rather appreciative perspective of the film.

Nolan has always been fond of setting up and establishing an environment with his own set of rules in the two-and-a-half hours of the movie. Be it the bleak, sleety, chilly landscape of Alaska where the sun never sets in Insomnia, or be it the dark, brooding city of Gotham with lawlessness and corruption at an unending fist-fight with the heroic vigilantism of the ‘Masked Crusader’ in Batman Begins and Dark Knight, Nolan loves to set up boundaries and challenges for himself as a filmmaker. And so it is with Inception; you have an entirely imagined world of dreams and artificiality, what with its own sets of defining laws and precincts, limiting factors and demarcated boundaries of play. Nolan is a very angular artist, one who, instead of focusing more on the emotional and flawed aspects of humanity, wants to have rational and rule-bound storytelling, something at once unequivocal and yet open to several interpretations.
Whenever we think of dreams, what comes to our mind are vague recollections of vivid imagery, half-remembered and half-forgotten, but never as well-formed and constructed and detailed as portrayed in the film in reckoning. To see it in a structured, skeletal form is tad incredible, and this is where many critics believe Inception has failed: in its very basic assumption of seeing dreams as a taut, technical, rule-based dimension.
But then, my point is, to the kind of crafty, shrewd and thoroughly professional characters portrayed in the movie, whose very bread thrives on the interception and manipulation of dreams and dreamers, it cannot be afforded that dreams be set up without any rules. These men and women are trained, practiced fabricators and architects of dreams; they have set up these laws because without them, their very profession is at risk of being thwarted by a vague but powerful counter-thought. There is no margin for any kind of ambiguity in the kind of occupation they are engaged in, they need to have a preset network of defining conditions in their dream space. It can be compared to a bunch of real-life conmen who plan their con to the last detail, but the moment they get on with it, earth loses its gravity and they start floating in the air like balloons, all plans of a con thwarted. Hence, the dreams we dream are very different from the chiseled, mechanical dreams of the architects in Inception, and hence we cannot complain Nolan of portraying dreams unrealistically (pun intended).
Coming to my last point, I found the ambiguity of the climactic sequence the USP of the film: the overcooked, feel-good track, the inspirational music (which is perhaps the best song in the soundtrack, ‘Time’) overlaying the perfect-frame close up of Leonardo Dicaprio as he regains consciousness in slow motion, the equivocal stance of the immigration agent, and finally the wobbly top, all make for the ideal finish. Where many interpreters (movie-coroners, I call them) believe that this overly-jovial final track is indicative of and furthers the idea that the movie is still being played out in a dream, I neither agree nor disagree on that point.

Time by Hans Zimmer

On Wikipedia, Nolan is quoted saying that Cobb walking away from the top, indifferent of it collapsing or continuing its spin is the main thing, and not its actual fall or prolonged rotation. I believe the same so too; even if the top did keep spinning, it is of little consequence for Cobb. It is just like he’s given up on what’s illusion and what’s real, because what he has today is something he had always wished for (that is, his being united with his family), so it doesn’t really make a difference even if he were in a dream. It could be that he is dreaming all this up like the attic-full of old men Yousef takes him too, but Cobb is ignorant of everything, and still is very much in bliss.
In a way, Cobb no longer cares. And through this little trick, Nolan wants to tell us audience to give the analysis a rest and let the film be a film for its sake. He slips in this feathery rap-on-the-back-of-the-head for those very smart-alecs I talked of in the beginning, as if snubbing them off saying, ‘even Cobb’s happy with it being/not being a dream, why’re you guys so damn prying?’
Then again, it’s just my opinion. All said and done, Inception is Christopher Nolan’s stand-out masterpiece, one which had been long overdue after the flawless Memento. I salute and immensely revere this auteur of a film-maker who keeps a level head and churns out one great film after another, each better than the last.

निशाचर

[I don't want much of a foreword for this, its just an impulsive piece without any pre-planning whatsoever. Just the night and me and a pen and a paper.]

काली इस रात की कालिख जैसा, 

धुंआ उड़ाता जाता हूँ|

या है ये किसी आईने जैसा, 

खुद में ही जो मैं झांकता हूँ||

ये निशा का जादू सर चढ़ता, 

मैं झूम-झूम आवारा हूँ|

जो सुबह सुनहरा सपना था,

इस अंधियारे में समा गया||

हूँ मैं, बस मैं, सब बिछड़ गए, 

सारा जग-जग है सोया|

सब छोड़-छाड़, विधियाँ-विधान, 

मैं आशिक अंधियारे का||

ना मधुशाला, ना प्रेम किया,

है नहीं कोई अब साथी|

इकलौता मैं, इकलौता पथ, 

दोनों की मंजिल अनजानी||

टिकती यहाँ है दुनियादारी,

है लगन यहाँ एक बीमारी|

जो एक बार दिल की करे, 

बन जाता है वो भिखारी||

इस रात में, बस अंधाधुंध, 

कुछ खुद से ही गुनगुनाता हूँ|

दुनिया चले या दुनिया थमे,

बस धुंआ उड़ाता जाता हूँ...

The Short Existence of Time Travel

[My first sci-fi short, and probably not my last, there's more science fiction coming from my pen. Maybe its too short, maybe its too wannabe-ish, but an artist can only create their type of art. Art which is for the public is not art, its a business commodity. Enough said already...]

The scientist gaped at his close-ended creation, what he preferred calling the magnum opus of life. What the gravitation laws had been for Newton and what the light bulb had been for Edison, the scientist wanted the time machine to be for him. All the toil and sweat and blood that he had spilt in his six year-long study had finally taken material shape.

It was tough to describe the oddly angular compartment-of-a-contraption, the brain-child of one of the most gifted minds of the world. It had intermittent pieces of metal roughly conjoined to it, giving it the appearance of a giant scaly fish with a circular base to keep it standing erect. And then there was a doorway (partly for the dramatics), that made that romantic, creaky sound reminiscent of ancient wooden doors featured in every other yellowing novel from good old times. 

All that there was left to do was to connect the machine to the power outlet. The scientist knew how all his research in particle physics and molecular electronics had come down to this very moment, as if all that had happened in his life till now was meant for the conception of this gadget.

He picked up the fat, black wire that plugged to the power outlet. The comforting, sonorous click of the plug sliding into the grooves of the outlet soothed him somewhat. He switched on the machine with the eagerness of an infant playing with his brand new toy, and it whirred to life, complying with its creator’s wish.

And at this very moment of unthinkable joy and mad furore, the creaky door opened with the promptness of a bullet, emitting a short, loud squeak of the door unhinging. Out descended a man, as if appearing out of thin air, with obscenely long and untidy hair on his head, face and chest, and being almost as tall as the scientist.  Before the scientist could have comprehended and registered this sudden arrival, the man from time unknown brandished a futuristic revolver from the depths of his coat, and punctured the scientist’s temple with a neat, direct bullet shot. Before the scientist could fall to the ground, the man turned his weapon towards the contraption he had only just alighted from, and emptied the revolver at the mainframe of the machine, each bullet choking the life out of it. Just as he was doing so, another human form had started appearing inside the machine, but before it could take complete shape, the machine had fizzed and cracked, dying an instant death.

The scientist, the man from time unknown, the revolver, and the incomplete human figure fell to the ground at the same moment, the gun with a clank and the bodies with a subdued thud. Time travel was no longer heard of in human history.

END.

Dead in Her Sleep

Through the panes of my bedroom window does,

the freckled, weak moonlight falls across,

Alighting my fair facial features,

Outlining harshly, its crevices and traps.

With my frail eyes do I gaze far out,

And down in the horizon, the fiery apple,

 Appears with a glint of hope for me,

Surrounded by tumult, that makes the two of us.

As the redness cuts across the sky,

It shies away the once-bustling white,

And with as subtle a stroke as the faintest of painters,

Emerges my sphere, my friend, my peer.

Its time but ripe for the two of us,

To die out, wither, from one horizon,

And hop on, without wait, into another,

And keeping our tryst thus with future.

I’m impatiently raring to be gone now,

And set abound onto another pedestal,

Of my very own eternal soul-quest,

Just like the blazing apple of my eye.

The saffron gleam fans right inside,

To fall onto my failing face,

My eyes are emptily open,

Only minutes to go for my day to break.

And right through the open panes of my window,

I fly away like a free, flying bird,

Into the immortal blue sky,

And bound I am no more, to flesh.

-B.M

The Summer Stand

[FOREWORD: Now this poem is as vague and half-baked as they get. I know I've lost all my touch and skill, but I am an artist who refuses to believe that he's through his prime. Bear with my put-offing flamboyance, if its possible. And as an afterthought, I'd just like to declare, all the poems I have ever written to date have the same basic message, or the proverbial 'essence'. Ahem, then...]

As I traverse down so far and wide,
To this rickety path my steps do abide,
Meanwhile the unrelenting, summer sun-flair,
Blazes and roasts down my jet black hair.

I have had an option to be airlifted,
I could have never rather, taken up the walk.
But what I am is not what I brood,
instead I am what I decide to do.

Sure, the going I strive is not exactly clean,
And my gait itself is unsure of itself,
At least I do, I make a path,
And not languish like my fair peers.

It's an impulsive exploit in the sun,
blaring red, anguishing, ablaze, the sun.
And while my friends wait for the hoot,
I take off, but, in the wrong direction.

The pearls of my ardency do,
upon my droopy eyelids fall.
But have I complained, oh never,
I walk and walk into oblivion.

I know the path is full of thorns,
It might be that I end up cold,
On this infernal day the sun,
embellishes my hike more than it hurts.

Paint Me Colourless

I went about my daily chores,

Some trivial destination-bound,

When I found some colours, lying around,

All from which I had to pick just one.

At first, when I chose the colour green,

They told me I was pro-Muslim,

They told me I was not Indian,

And taken aback, I retraced my steps,

And zeroed in on blue this time.

But they said that blue was inhuman,

It did signify the lifeless numbness,

Of a lonely corpse in a chilly morgue.

Perplexed, by now, I chose saffron,

But still they said, they were insulted,

For orange signified violence and wrath,

And Hindu faith in its extremity.

Now I, baffled, did pick yellow,

But this didn’t do any better to them,

They complained it was filth that I,

had advocated by choosing this colour.

So I went back, with trembling hands,

And decided on the colour red,

But no, they weren’t pleased at all,

For in their contrived, twisted eyes,

All that red hue could ever mean,

Was blood, thick blood, spilt without reason,

And passion so vast, it destroyed lives,

‘Oh no’, they said, ‘unacceptable’.

And now they warned me, one last time,

To pick a colour of their sanction.

Out of ideas and out of luck,

I went ahead and chose all colours.

But lo, behold, they did not budge,

They put their heads together once more,

And after maybe, a moment’s thought,

They opposed me, unanimously.

They said I was too diplomatic,

I’d tried to act smart, to wiggle through.

They accused me of appeasement,

And condemned me to punishment.

-Bharat M.

Brooding of an Escapist Teenager: Random scribble

[I think this piece of garbled notes hardly pass for poetry, but this is something I've written at my heart's calling. Forgive the pathetic over usage of certain words, my vocabulary isn't very vast at this time of the day (night, to be precise). I begin then, ahem...]

Inertia holds on to my muscles and fibres,

I’m wearing no jeans, just this sorry face,

Yes I’m wrinkled, withered, but not in thought,

Numbers do matter, the world does remind.

I’m an old, old man,

With a grand old beard,

With antique notions, do I face this world,

Like a minimal twig in the harsh winter gust.

My ma taught me this a tad long ago,

No, it’s not as if it’s just yesterday,

To be an uptight, young man when I be a grown up,

I am all that but young, and the world’s in denial.

I’ve had my time, they say, down here,

The material world for the fast runners,

Where wisdom is rather learnt the strenuous way,

Than being handed down from generations past.

Where monetary worth exceeds scruples,

And the head acts where the heart should have,

Where impulse is downed and pragmatism reigns,

Such a place they crawl over, calling it home.

My home’s out there somewhere,

In the profound pathways of time long gone,

What’s flexibility any good when conscience is lost?

And then they call me a grand old man.

Try to read between the lines, they say,

All in good time, good humor, they say,

But now I can see the real irony here,

I impose this hood of ancientness upon me myself.

And time passes me, one second at a time,

Constituting as it does to the lump down my throat,

And to brand myself as a grand old man,

I strive on and on in my very own tune.

-B.M

My Blue Bare Bedroom Wall

[FOREWORD: People, I know I'm getting progressively repetitive with my newest poem, and I sincerely apologize for such lack of imagination. Having said that, however, I feel it safe that this assures a level of consistency to my work, a certain 'type' of writing style that, I hope, will define me. So while I have this acerbic realization of the amount of recurring themes in my poem, there is still a silver lining. I'd just like to thank you for all the support and appreciation, and my respects to my elders, who frequent this blog and find time out to comment. To work, now then, misters and missies!] 

The blank blue wall that overlooks,

Is but a mirror to me.

Reflects it not my face, my skin,

In it my heart, I see.

Scatters it not just blue figments,

Of light hither and thither,

But malice and nefarious intent,

Has it to offer sufficient.

Has it been rightly said by one,

‘An idle mind is the Devil’s workshop’,

The blue blank wall personifies,

This adage in its stark blankness.

They tell me not to drown myself,

Into deep chasms of indulgence,

For the drowsy eyes can’t differentiate,

An empty pond from a brimming rivulet.

What’s better than the blue blank wall, I say,

Is a paan-smeared, red-blotted partition,

That stands with smugness, head held high,

At least has a view, an independent cry.

So unlike my bare bedroom wall,

That stares at me expressionlessly,

And waits and broods so silently,

With eyes on me, and thoughts elsewhere.

Inaction breeds where boldness stops,

Imagination suffers while stagnation tops,

Is but a mirror to my soul,

My blank blue bare azure wall.

-Bharat M.

A Portrait Of Dilapidation

I'm propped up in the busy roundabout,
Not mere sweat and blood soaked up in my formation,
Its the repulsive reek of unreasonably notched up pride,
that emanates from me, endlessly.

Multitudes connected with me their bloated vanity ,
with noses held higher than the infinite sky,
and then there came the wage laborers,
who erected me with their ceaseless toil.

But the jovial spring has come and long-gone,
and days of glory reduced to a mass of ruin,
And I, ironically, lie propped up in a changing world,
unchanged, unwatched, deserted, withered.

And the despicably bitter autumn sky,
With its cold winds and spells of rusting rain,
Out to corrode me, rape me, inside out.
And I, with my ironical existence, stand and grieve.

My innards yearning for life and company,
and my outsides in the harsh outdoors,
though weak like the bonds of urban lovers,
still do dream of occupation and cover.

But why-o-why do I care to lament,
My song's unheard, my presence overlooked,
In spite of my towering stature and built,
I am merely, a hollow shell without a pearl.

Standing, stagnating, smelling of rust,
My organs, my limbs, all covered in dust,
But I, with my self-mocking farce of grandeur,
Continue to be a prop, a forlorn relic of days better off.

While the world has moved on in stride with time,
I, with the burden of a heavy heart, stay rooted,
With my life condensed to a mere message,
Its better to change with a flaw, than to stagnate with perfection.

-B.M

A Few Good Men: just another poem

What, oh, is man, when inspired,
the truth upon him transpired.
The world has seen some true-blue gems,
walk its length-breadth with passion immense.

Shackled in flesh and bone, they are.
In their time, understood, never.
Defiant, adamant, stubborn, they strive;
inundated in romance, widened by pride.

When such few men do come to be,
the world finds in the mirror, falsity.
Offended, insulted, defied beyond belief,
men seek vengeance for profanity.

There have been men, there will be men,
walk miles did one, on foot, for a cause,
another did hang, laughing throughout,
going down fighting, enemies they rout.

Slaughtered in their present, revered in future,
subtly, slowly, the world they conquer.
Their ideas go while their bodies rot.
Captivate one's limbs, but how to chain one's thought?

These men cease to be mere animals,
not only do they live, change they incur.
And hence, to emphasize on, I'm never tired,
What, oh, is man, when inspired!

-B.M.

O dog, how poetic art thou!

O dog, how poetic art thou?

You may not roar like the king of the jungle,

You might not have the elephant's rumble.

For ages have you been poetically denounced,

Your life, your ways, all famously downed.

Your patchy skin and filthy dwelling,

Those dirty paws and repugnant reeking,

Seems to have disgusted the said 'civilized',

Your worth undermined, your life criticized.

They don't know that beauty lies in attitude,

Your gait is quivery, but mind is shrewd.

O how hath thee come to inspire me,

You, in the true sense are born free.

You have no reputation, let alone a good one,

You lie there, sidelined, ignored, dismal.

But for once in your eyes do I see contentment,

Because you have no dignity, no such mindly bent.

Your ultimate gift is that of survival,

All else just qualifies simply as trivial,

You, my friend, are the best at that,

Leave behind the elephant, and the mighty big cat.

The 'developed', 'advanced' world has you to hate,

Your barks neither thunder nor intimidate.

To many, you may just pass off as a villain,

But to me, my dog, you're the truest bohemian.

Indifference: A Poem

I stand,
As the continuous stream of water flows by,
And gallops of wind slap my face as they fly,

I stand,
undaunted, untamed, rigidly unmoved,
all fear of erosion from my heart removed,
clouded by the vision of perfection, I brood.

People tell me,
these are the winds of change that blow,
these are the waters afresh that flow,
ride them, for they will help you as they go.

And then there are others,
Who contradictorily claim,
Only dead fish flow along the stream,
Only fallen leaves fly away with the breeze.

I stand,
having heard both sides of the rift,
torn in a Herculean mental conflict,
whether to move ahead or go with the drift.

I make up my mind not to move an inch,
in neither direction do I make a twitch.
I stand, regardless of the opinions and views,
I stand, indifferent of all conflicting hues.

I neither ride nor fully resist,
I neither move nor let be moved,
I feel heroic, as I stand and bear.
But now I know,
I stand, and that is my biggest err. 

-BM

 

डंका: एक कविता

[FOREWORD: The title of this post would till now have mystified all the non-English admirers of this blog (I believe there are none), but if you are stumped, then I regret I'll have to leave you at that. This is my first dab at Hindi poetry, and bear with me if some words or phrases seem out of place. Without further agonising ado, I commence...]


देखो रे देखो साथियों,
आया ये कैसा समय.
जो हो गया सो हो गया,
अब जीत लो ये भय.

हो ना शहीद जो युद्ध में,
वह है बड़ा बदकिस्मत.
यह हाँथ-पैर हैं कुछ नहीं,
जो है सो वो है हिम्मत.

कर दो अगर जी जान से,
यह एक बार की खिदमत,
तो यह खुदा भी मान जाए,
अपना जूनून है बेहद!

कट जायेंगे सर भी अगर,
मुड़ने ना पाएं कदम.
चोटें तो खा लेंगे मगर,
पीठों को ना हो भनक.

यह तीर ताकतवर नहीं,
कर ना सका है असर.
इंसान तो मर जायेंगे,
पर हौंसला है अमर.

-रामधारी सिंह 'दिनकर' द्वारा रचित 'रश्मिरथी' से प्रेरित

Great Man's Dilemma: A Poem

[Not much seems to be rhyming in my very first and modest try at poetry. I hope this sudden upsurge of thoughts moves the reader as much as the writer]


I stand on the head of the hillock today,
It splits my past and future;
I stand in such a wary stance,
that I face none of the either.

On my left, have I, a gleaming past,
where the sun beams down at me;
but the right side has a day overcast,
only haze it has to offer.

I take a step towards my right,
and my limbs don't seem to waver,
I know it'll be an uncertain path,
but pray, do I have a choice?

Sooner or later, my grave awaits,
my corpse draped in white cotton.
But that shouldn't make me change my mind,
Because time I have in ample.

If my one step does change my fate,
and that of a million others,
I care not what is uncertain,
I care not what is fear.

Because change is change,
whether good or bad,
It happens for the better.
And so I plunge from the top-most point,
into my hazy future.

I know the odds are ten to one,
I know success is bleak.
O God I know that I might fail,
But jumping is what matters!


-B.M.

Sanitary sense: a missing link?

India is undeniably a country of filth and dirt, but as always, my cribbing won't change it. So, this time, I've decided to curb my cynicism and speak in a rather calm and chilled out fashion, something that doesn't come naturally to me. As an average Indian, my listening skills fall way short of what is allowed as per an 'international' decorum of things. Anyway, as always, I don't think I'm making much sense, so lets just start afresh.

Okay; the other day, my school held some sort of function in which financial backing was provided to a few short-listed research topics selected by students of the school. By research topics, I don't mean a full-blown scientific research or behavioural research, that's too technical for high schoolers. What students were supposed to choose were 'social research' topics. Many of the students did come up with very innovative and potent subjects on which they chose to conduct their study. Some chose 'Women Empowerment', some 'Politics and Transparency', and others did 'Say No to Drugs', or something like that. The study branch that thrilled me the most, however, was 'Sanitation and Cleanliness' (again, my memory is not the most reliable thing in the world, so my apologies to my fellow students if I named their topics wrong). This was perhaps because I had more strong feelings on this particular topic than on the others.

The students came up with their demonstration and explained to the raptly attentive listener in me, all the activities that they held during their research. They had went to a rural neighbourhood to hold a seminar of sorts, handing out pamphlets about maintaining a basic civic and social sense of hygiene. They also detested the filthy habit of indifferent people who shamelessly, and maybe out of helplessness, excrete on the streets without restraints. This proved to be the premise of the topic I deal with in the coming paragraphs.

Campaigns of 'Safe Sex' or 'Prevention of HIV Aids', which have been, of late, a sort of taboo for people in our country, especially in the areas which we are focusing on in this discussion, have ignited in me a somewhat radical idea for which people have still not opened up completely. The idea which I propose is not a new innovation or discovery; its just that I feel, we in India are alienated to such a thought process. What I put forward is the free and unrestrained usage of adult diaper in the masses of our nation.

Now, for anyone who's been trained and groomed in the 'Indian' style of growing up, will most probably laugh this thing off, or get offended by it. I can't help the latter demarcation of people, because someone who seriously gets offended by the line won't read a word after this, implication being that their offence is, well, genuine. Anyhow, when you're done laughing or smirking or sighing at my childish thought, please have the kindness and regard to look at it in a rather practical light.

We have a very dire need of teaching our people basic civic sense, and I guess everybody would agree with me on that. People, not only villagers, but educated and urban people, on long drives and lazy sunday road trips, stop their SUVs midway to step out on highways and attend to nature's call in overlooking lush green fields. Now the best alternative to prevent such shameless acts of selfishness and indifference, can be of creating free, hygienic, toilets by the highways at intervals of, say, every 30 kilometers.

If even this is also an 'infrastructural drawback' for the government, the next best thing would be easily accessible and affordably cheap adult diapers.

Why not? If only we leave out the awkwardness and apprehension felt by people, and a sign of low self-control among your social circle of acquaintanceships, this is the perfect way out for such a dodgy and general civic problem. If we simply ignore the nasty social remarks and taunts poked at us, then maybe one day a clean, hygienic world can be imagined of. If each and every individual successfully and completely detaches themselves from the society, the society itself will prosper and be a better social milieu.

The advantages of defecating at the very moment of discomfort are innumerable. It, most importantly, increases the output and production value of humans manifolds. By and large, it eliminates bondages of frequent visits to wash rooms and prevents causing dissolution of focus and break concentration at the designated task. In a nutshell, if talking on a very productive and evaluative level, these garments would help humans deliver their best to their chosen fields of work.

To end this, I advocate people to open themselves to this filth crisis of sorts, and spread awareness about what all can be /should not be done regarding the matter.

Mass mis-communication

I need not remind you, but Indian media is, to say it in a rather undressed manner, pornographic. It derives a somewhat sadistic pleasure out of blowing trivial occurrences out of proportions. Its based wholly on guilty pleasures, to put it more aptly.

Conventionally, a particular happening creates a media ripple, and subsequently forces the people to think about it. But here in India, we can see media as catalysts of events that subsequently change the way people think! My point is, is media really that important?

News channels should confine themselves to just express a particular event in the most neutral fashion possible, and let the people decide what's right and what's not. They should function on a very unemotional and, let's say, robotic level. If you do want to shower your opinion on people, do it in editorial sections or weblog posts, why corrupt the prime-time slot with your incessant and irrelevant ramblings, or endless astrological bullshit? I don't want to know what to eat for breakfast so as to keep my luck ticking. I don't want to visit the gateway to the heavens! (would you believe that last one?!)

Why can't we guys censor news channels instead of cutting off vital chunks from unsuspecting films and DVD features? Why do sensible acts in movies get scissored off under the pretext of 'vulgarity' and 'profanity' and 'excessive violence', when news channels don't get prosecuted for their insanely stupid and half-baked notions? There should be a parameter for censorship, just like vulgarity, under which films and TV programs must be prosecuted, and that is, retardation. Yes, that would be the angelic solution to chuck off the rubbish that we face through Aaj Tak and India TV, etcetera, every single day!

I am almost beginning to sound like the stereotypical angry-young-man, but its actually we guys who are to blame. We watch these channels for the fun of it, for the sheer lunacy of it.We are the breeding ground for these news channels. Our attitude should be of indifference. The more we talk about it, the more we unintentionally popularise it. So, my appeal would be, to ignore what you just read, and keep mum. It was a mistake on my part to even write this, but now that realisation hit me a bit late, and the fact that I am a selfish loser, I'm not deleting this post.

Let's just keep the media to themselves. For pleasure or comedy, go watch Great Indian Laughter Challenge, or CID, for its lunacy and unintentional comedy. Don't poke fun at the news channels, leave them alone. Let the TRPs drop and see the change sweep its way in. Till then, I'd prefer CNN-ibn or NDTV.

The blinfold

[FOREWORD: after a long, long void of a few months, I come back with a bang with my first love, story-writing. Yes guys, here's presenting you with my second short story, which is really more like an article, mainly due to its very short length. Its also a "spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions", as Mr. Woodsworth would put it for me, and rightly so. I smell some hard-boiled criticism guys! On to work now...]

 The city was engulfed in emotions, as the winds brew invitingly, and brought in the monsoon clouds. Even the Gods had been overcome by a strong feeling of excitement, as the giant water-drops of precipitation falling euphorically on the earth suggested. The once-sunny day had now took a turn for the wetter and the clouds were being ripped apart by lustrous streaks of lightning strikes. New Delhi was in for a hell of a day.

The semi-wet earth smelt delicious, almost edible, as the zany motorcycles zipped their way through heavy traffic, water-puddles, and hordes of on-footers. Horns honking, and people chatting away, were the most prominent sounds that morning. Every one seemed engrossed in their designated job, not waiting a jiffy to appreciate the seductive beauty that nature had to offer.

But the rains cared not if its seductions found few takers. Quite the contrary, the rain symbolized selfless submission in the service and entertainment of earthlings. Somewhere in the forest, a peacock was at least acknowledging the presence of the down-pour by using it as an assistance to woo her girl  its love. But the humans, they were unmoved by the music of the monsoon, inept and incapable of being able to feel any deep emotions other than envy, greed, and competition. The great human blindfold was doing its work flawlessly, suppressing any human desire for real love and compassion for fellow beings, let alone inanimate bodies.

An old, frail woman of 88 years, blinded partially by age and erosion, struggled to cross the road with only her walking stick to guide her, which almost looked as ancient as herself. The speeding vehicles dodged her and zipped away, but none stopped their machines and stepped out to ferry her across the road safely. In fact, they completely ignored her very presence, and continued on with their daily chores, blinded by the great blindfold. The blindfold was unavoidable, and only the fewest of the few had been successful in getting rid of it. One of those few was a young, energetic lass who stood on the street overlooking the road where the old woman tried in vain to cross the inferno of the road crossing.

The young woman looked at the woman out of pure concern, doing so because she was yet to be corrupted by the blidfold of indifference, she was yet to be qualified a human. Her eyes showed a genuine urge to help her out, but the indifferent gaze of everyone on the street wavered he reflexive actions. As the old, ailing woman struggled helplessly to get to the other side, fighting off cars, bikes, buses and what-nots, the young, unnamed woman took one small step and broke away momentarily from the blindfold. But the blindfold was not giving up. A radio lay by the street in a pan shop, which chucked out random garbage meant to tighten the knot of the blindfold around the listeners eyes, a blindfold not only of indifference, but that of idiocy and lethargy too.

Suddenly, the instant that the young woman protruded her toes to walk towards the old woman-in-distress, the national anthem of India started playing on the radio. Ah, the final blow! The woman stopped in her tracks, having been transfixed by the hypnotism of the beautiful chant. She took her step back, and all her attention diverted from the struggling woman to the melodious verses of the anthem. Even the rains seem to be momentarily taken in by the blindfold, even they seemed to slow down and salute the song. She stood in full attention position, eyes closed religiously (or maybe out of respect), and fingers tucked in tightly by the waist. The blindfold of indifference engulfed her too, this time in the disguise of patriotism. She lost her conscience, her indulgence, he concern, her every emotion. All that remained was indifference. She finally became human.

The conflicting woman wandered aimlessly on the road, waiting to be guided. A bus, driven by another blind man, tied down with the blindfold, raced down the street at an insanely high speed, not even honking the horn to warn the woman. As the song bellowed on the radio, and the woman, grew increasingly hypnotized by the fake patriotism, the bus hit the old piece of human tissue and organ squarely in the chest, and the frail old body was lunged across the road, with intestines sprawled all over the path. A sprinkle of blood landed on the woman's face, but it created no effect on her, and it seemed to her no different than falling water-drops. All patriotism drained out of her by now, she could very well be an epitome of indifference, but no, as per the code, she had dutifully respected the holy anthem of a great nation. So what if someone has lost their already-miserable life due to her inaction? She had obeyed the national guidelines, that's all. The blidfold was wound around her tightly, and when the song ended, she shrugged the blood droplets off her face, and joined the crowd, literally as well as figuratively.

I believe in imperfection

“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a part of the continent, a part of the man.”

-John Donne

Perfection is an enticing pay-off, which we as humans always hope, and strive to work for. Nevertheless, a not-so-very profound observation will be enough to tell us that practically, perfection is something that cannot be achieved at all. To some, my words would seem dejecting and discouraging, but a pragmatist might be able to relate with what I say.

Therefore, if we hope for a perfect society, or a perfect, corruption-free country, it will bring us nothing but disappointment. However, as artists, we have the liberty to venture out from practicality, and talk of a theoretical society, that acts for us as an ideal situation by exemplifying perfection itself!

In such a society, or to put it more aptly, in an artist’s impression of such a perfect society, humanity is no longer humanity as we know it. People are indistinguishable from machines. That is because, in the pursuit of the so-called ‘distilled society’, we are mere clones of each other. Everyone works on a predefined protocol and our actions are cold and calculated. An individual’s specified work-field solely decides their personality. ‘To each his own’ is the mantra with which people live and die by.

I might be able to express myself better with the universal example of an anthill. Ants dwell in a perfectly synchronized milieu, with each individual containing only fragmented intelligence of the whole society. If we take up a single ant specimen, we will find its intelligence to be subpar and its actions, mechanical. However, an anthill as a whole acts as an individual too. It works, grows, excretes, and even shelters itself. This tells us that even though a unit of the anthill, that is, the ant, has no understanding of the ‘bigger picture’, it does constitute to the overall intelligence of the anthill.

If there is to be a perfect human society, chances are that it will resemble an anthill. The society will work, not individuals. People will be merely a tool, and the society will build itself. There will be no space for emotions, relations, and individual greatness or heroics. Just plain society. My question is, are we ready for this kind of perfection? Don’t you think some things are best left imperfect?

Random chakallas: films, career, and chemical locha

I just finished watching this beautiful film called 'Luck By Chance'. Though flimsily titled, the film carries enough power to set one pondering. In my case, more than it moved me with its self-hilarity and endearing characterisation, it inspired me. It fuelled and supported my gradually subsiding fire of pursuing a career in film-direction and script-writing. Now, I'm not going to trespass any further on the plot, lest it spoils your own experience of watching he film.

What I realised was, when the film ended, my mother, with whom I was watching the film, though having been touched by the film, stood up and went about on her day-today work, without even waiting for the credits to start rolling in. This put another useless but engrossing thought in my mind: How can a movie, a good, meaningful movie, not scintillate you enough to chain you down till atleast we have the credits? I know that some guys would waste no time to point out that in my very last post, I had proclaimed that those who take films seriously, are fools. And now I'm saying the exact opposite of that! My answer is, I don't want you to take a movie seriously, but something must be in a good film, that made you feel a part of it, that enabled you to escape your already boring life and belong to the universe of the film. At least that very success of the film is worthy of some kind of acknowledgement.

With me, a good film, or even a fairly good one for that matter, does make me think as to what the film-maker had in mind. I tend to be over-analytical, and still, at the end of all my analysis and thought-process, I end up with nothing but the face value of the film.

I also tend to stay in the film for days, months even, if I find it good, but for my parents, my family, and my friends, films are just films. There is a sort of casualness and non-seriousness attached to even the best of movies. 'Its good, its great, but lets face it, it is just a movie. It brings not a hair-width of a difference to your life' they say. And hell, they are right. Maybe I am wrong, not the people. And this is how I learnt about humility and tolerance in various tastes and habits.

In our country, there are just too many stereotypes. That's because 90% of our population is still grappling with a chronic disease called mediocrity. In the midst of all the mediocre people whom we tolerate and deal with every other day, there are some few honest guys who work their arses up to earn a square meal for themselves, but eventually fall trap to these stereotypes. One such big stereotype is the famous 'nerd'. Yes, I am referring to guys who get admitted like herds of goats every bloody year in prestigious institutes like IIT, SRCC, and what-not.

Interestingly, some of these guys are actually those who romance with subjects like Physics or Economics, who derive passion out of their studies. Volumes of thick books written on droopy subjects actually are a drug for them. Their motivation is more than just a heavy paycheck and a coveted position in the society, but genuine interest. And these few people appear as nerdy muggers to laymen like me and millions of others. Maybe, for these irrational and genuine guys, people like me, who are inclined towards obscure, non-conventional and insecure interests, might seem like bunch of fags (please forgive me for my increasingly blasphemous writing). But the crux of the matter is, no profession in its pure form is bad. I know I am stating the obvious, but the obvious is true in this case!

What I want to justify in this post is the reason why I get so immersed in films, I get so carried away with cinema. That is because of my own unique chemical locha, or faulty brain wiring, that made me a film-fanatic and a gullible guy at the same time. We humans are unique because of these irregular interests which, at the first glance, might seem unrelated, but form an interesting combo which add up to our personality. That is the very essence of being human. You are, even if you don't have any apparent talent, one in a zillion.

An escapist's fixation: cinema post-mortem

Like with all things close to one's heart, I too do not seem to remember the exact moment in my life that I started to get inclined towards films. But yeah, keeping in view my rather strange abstract indulgences, this too did not come as a surprise to those close to me (don't you think my recent articles tend to talk minimally about me, but more of those close and near to me, mentally or physically?). Just like my few other apparently harmless addictions (?) like chocolate, Hide and Seek cookies (no, its not a paid advert), Hitman games, and a bunch of similarly useless and time-killing, pleasure inducing stuff, watching movies has, over a period of 14 years of my fruitful existence, also achieved a somewhat fanatical value for me.

As I have famously stated on my Orkut and Facebook page, movies act as a sort of 'portal' for me to escape into a parallel universe full of stuff that is not affected by this world we dwell, and if used potently, has the potential to affect our present world in a most effective and reformatory manner. As clichéd as it maybe, but films are utterly useless for those who take them seriously. I mean, yes, I agree that some films are serious in their sensitive premise or treatment, but they show only the tip of the iceberg. Let me express myself more soundly with the help of a few examples.

Lets study one of my all-time favourite films, the best psychological thriller of all-time,Memento, to strengthen my view point. Its psychological approach might sound really incredible to a film-junkie or a wannabe like me, even if it takes itself very seriously. And yes, it pitches out some awesome topics that one can debate hours on. But the point is, to a psychology guru, or someone who is an expert in that field, it might sound as a gimmick that is being blown out of proportions. Though to the average person it could garner a hell lot of psychological interest, butif this 'average person' would really have been interested in playing it forward, he would go to a specialist, not the cinema-hall to watch Memento.

In summation, great movies are those which talk of high-fi topics in layman's terms. Which are insightful on film-making as an art in itself, and not specialised technical themes like medical sciences, engineering, psychology, etc. For example, the highlight of Memento, was not the pseudo-psychological babble, but the other film-making technicalities like a taut screenplay, amazing editing, near-perfect direction and a deeply-involved storytelling. Of course, the psychological angle was intiguing, but that did not attribute to the greatness of the film.

Another illuminating example on the subject at hand would be the parallels I have drawn between two very critically-acclaimed films in modern Indian cinema, both on a somewhat (mind the 'somewhat') similar topic: Aamir, starring television starlet Rajeev Khandelwal, and A Wednesday, starring theatre maestro Naseeruddin Shah. Many would prefer watching the latter than the former, largely because of its in-your-face treatment and the no-nonsense direction. But if you ask me, I'd anyday rate Aamir higher than Wednesday in terms of pure film-making (mind the italics, they're there for a reason). Again, you guys would allege me of going with the less popular choice just to be different and make this post 'unique'. That's right guys, there might be some of it that's actually valid to some extent. However, first just hear me out and then judge my ingenuity of thought.

I saw Wednesday and my mind started racing. The message was clear, thought out, and vented out in the simplest way possible (don't replace 'simplest' with 'best'). Nevertheless, I though, heck man, had I seen this film on paper, I mean if I had read the script of the film rather than watching it, it would have created more or less a similar effect on my psyche. It would have moved me just as much as a novel with a same storyline would. It didn't harness the power of cinema, did not redeem the full magnitude and potential of moving images. It failed to create the thump, the goosebumps that only a film can give. It was way too spoon-fed, atleast too much for my liking.

However, on the other side of the table, was this neat little film Aamir, which I felt, was right at all the places Wednesday was wrong, and went awry at those where Wednesday was spot on. Unlike Wednesday, it didn't have that much a clear message, and was much abstract in its solution. Its core was very confused and entangled around a couple of other side-messages that the ambitious director wanted to eke in (actually, that's my kind of storytelling, there's not much attention of discipline as compared to substance). However, the film came out victorious because of its subtlety and its profound and vivid use of 'moving images'. Had I read the film instead of watching it, as I did with Wednesday, it would easily be successful in putting me to sleep. But no, the director had 'vision up his butts' (dialogue copied from School of Rock), and the power of cinema transformed the storyline into an amazingly watchable experience.

Well, that's enough dissecting films for awhile. Its just that anyone in my place would have done the same due to the inherently boring life of mine. Anyway, this post is a tribute to the cinema that I've grown up with (and still am), and my bizarre way of paying homage to the greats of film-making as seen through the eyes of a 21st centurion.

Catching me in an introspective mood...

Every passing day sees me getting more and more personal towards this blog. I Jai Ganeshed it as a medium for me to post away some of my stories. However, I got slightly more involved in it in the coming days(thanks to my idleness), and my second post was an article which was written for the sole purpose of showing-off some intellectual crap. But down the line, I found myself incessantly absorbed into writing random garble just for the goddamn heck of it. What was I trying to prove? That I was some one-in-a-gazillion child-prodigy who knew just too much English to not belong to the crowd of students he studies and is growing up with? While I was at it, I realized that I was a victim of severe superiority complex. The other day, I was reading some column in the Times Life supplement of The Times of India, which, through a dozen of simple binary questions, claimed to determine the 'personality stereotype' of the answerer. One of the questions (infact, the only one my memory retains) was: 'Do you spend hours admiring yourself in the mirror?' My answer was a sure-shot yes. Later, when I was done with an array of similar questions, I turned to look at the answers, eager to see what the result had to say about me and my personality. I very convincingly belonged to the personality stereotype 'narcissistic'. I looked at the word as if it was Greek. It was the first time I had come across this word. I wiki-ed it, Googled it, and even Yahoo Answer-ed it, thus conducting my very own brief research on the topic. Though the details of the informative wikipedia article elude me, but I do recall the basic gist of it. Narcissism is essentially a personality-disorder in which a person is egotistical, self-centered and carries a very unsympathetic approach to anyone except their own self. I could not believe it. Was I just another cold, self-righteous and selfish bastard (mind you, no spelling mistakes!)? I had, till then been endlessly reminded by my dear ones that I very easy fell for others' influences and what opinion others had about me. My actions, (they said), were heavily affected and influenced by what people thought about me, and that I did care about what people opined regarding me, something which I myself preach strongly against, and work my very best to practice too in my life. In this case too, I was shocked by what my 'dear ones' said about me (Ironically, this only strengthened what they had said, that I easily get affected by others' opinions about me). Anyway, after reading the article on narcissism, I was conveniently reminded of the fact that I took opinions very hard on myself. The fact that my 'dear ones' had pointed out to me this drawback in my personality, actually eased me! I persuaded myself that it was just another feel-good newspaper crap, written by a struggling writer, who added the do-it-yourself personality test as a space-filler, in fear that his boss would fire him for not coming up with something creative in a deadline of a week. Nobody other than me was going to tell me that I was a narcissistic. All it took me was two seconds to rubbish the newspaper aside, close the wikipedia article tab, and shrug off the guilt. And thus, an hour of mine had peacefully and hedonistically passed, with me feeling better than ever. They are always right when they say that happiness comes in small packages. My moment of happiness had come in the form of an article, which could have proved to be the most depressing thing for the day for some people (including myself), but for me, it was a breath of fresh air, a refresher, another feather in my cap. And thus, after being proclaimed a narcissistic by the well-meant newspaper column, I ignorantly became one. I might not have given my personality a disorderly dimension. I would have peacefully remained myself, unique, before the society typecasted me forever (another of my narcissistic rantings).