Children

I was just done with a cuppa and some muesli for breakfast this morning. yes, It's a late morning after a heavy night's sleep, and I have a class awaiting Ich. Anyway, I decided to write something before getting on with my day's work. I've been reseaching on children for a while now. I'm just in my twenties, and I've already got only faint memories of what it felt like as a child. (I think i can now sympathise with all those adults who supposedly don't understand their children, or the so called generation gap), and research is sort of helping me recollect.

I think I love children now, the fact that they are beings who haven't yet learnt to wear a mask.
The other day, a dance competition saw me seated next to three children, on a raincoat trying to ignore the annoying occasional droplet on their heads while paying attention to the dance. The audience grew  and the amphitheatre grew cramped, so I seated one on my lap.
Very honest, very harsh. They were supremely practical, and I could see a slew of politics playing out with the deftness of masters, only, they didn't have to mince their words.
One was the sweet best friend, trying to be the life and soul of the party and trying to be accommodating, obviously she was the older of the lot, and the second, a slightly disgruntled girl who came and went, and the third, a pretty little thing with a mouth like a whip, virtually ordering the other two around, while one had a bright smile, the other was silent.
They switched sides with the performers easily, and gave some of the most direct critique I heard that night.
Children are harsh. 

Another block

The only time I feel like writing something is in full company where there is something interesting being said and I have no notebook.
Seven empty paper cups of tea testify to a long night of unwritten conversation, and fially, a worthwhile pen to write with turns up and the will to write comes back.
I am in the middle of a huge block, the inability to do anything, put anything on paper. Not work not info gathering, not thoughts, not what I've seen, heard,....
I don't even have a way of making this post look interesting.
There are these magical old papers from long done assignments that had a lot of love invested in them, which I tore up to write on today.
And with a flutter of wings, the angel returns.
And i decide it is absolutely annoying to try and edit a post and make it more readable, so i let it go, and move on.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: a Movie Review

 A lazy Saturday afternoon beckoned some sort of entertainment, and I, having gone long enough without movies, decided to plunge right into a search for a good movie. Some hunting later, I ended up with a film version of "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd", by BBC. With David Suchet as the venerable Hercule Poirot, the movie is an adaptation of Agatha Christie's supposed masterpiece. Being an avid reader of Agatha Christie's books, I looked forward to the movie versions, but somewhere, they dull down for those who know the story. But I was never able to track down Roger Ackroyd, so I was more excited than usual to watch this one. 

I won't summarize the movie, as that would constitute a crime in the world of detective fiction. However, thank fully, I am glad that they have not distorted or played around with the stories or characters in these as they have with Miss Marple's movie adaptations, and the glimpse of the original is recognized. 

The movie is decently made with Christie's trademark ensemble: a group of people, all with their own skeletons in the closet and lots of strings attached. Two murders and the suspicion of blackmail hovers in the air.  Unfortunately, we see Poirot as a retired gentleman, now dedicated to the cultivation and improvement of vegetable marrows, a single masterpiece of which he smashes down in disappointment.  We see a similar departure in the movie, where the truth emerges from confession, not detection. Although similar means of explanation have been used in other Christie stories, Poirot's train of thought has always gotten us there. One misses his little grey cells here. 

 The movie moves at the pace of a leisurely bicycle ride on a fine morning on a muddy road. The gravity of the loss of valuable human life rarely comes through ( an overdose of the British Stiff upper lip?), rather, it is merely a matter of logic, perhaps, with murder being Christie's recurring theme , the topic has reached a level of redundancy (should the director also approach murder thus?), the logic of the killer and the ingenuity of the detective assumes greater importance.  

However, I'm sure, it would be of much greater literary pleasure to read through the book, since it offers something that the movie does not, a first hand exploration of the storytelling mind of the murderer. In which respect, the mystery stands, but the movie fails. 

A Review: "Snow" by Orhan Pamuk

I was sent on a ten day trip to Hyderabad by my firm, and while waiting in the airport, I decided the wait, the trip and the stay would definitely be sweeter n the company of a book. I had an hour to kill, so I started browsing. WHSmith has nice books. Normally, I'm picky when it comes to buying books, since it had better be worth the money, and also something not easily available in a library, or something utterly worth owning. This time, I chose to pick up Orhan Pamuk's "Snow". A lot of people had recommended Orhan Pamuk's work to me, in different contexts , so naturally, I was curious.

The book follows the time of the exiled Turkish poet, Ka, in the city of Kars in Turkey, which is quiet under the  heavy blanket of snow and poverty, as he seems to work on an assignment with a newspaper to uncover the cause behind the suicides of a number of young girls there. in the beginning, this is what he sets out for, quite determinedly following up with the bereaved families of the girls, and eventually brings out the underlying conflict in the town, between Secular, Leftist ideals that Ataturk had promoted, with the surging Islamist , religious ideals. the Kurds and their rebellion are thrown in for some drama. And at this stage, we meet many important characters of the story. We meet Serdar Bey, the prophetic newspaperman, Turgut Bey, a secular father proud of his outspoken daughters Ipek, (KA's love interest) and Kadife ( a young woman with staunch Islamist ideals), Muhtar, Ipek's ex, and now a fleeting character, Necip, the young Islamist student, who grows close to Ka, and his best friend Fazil, Blue, the Islamist leader and militant, Sunay Zaim and Funda Eser theatre actors with a dramatic political agenda, and the author himself, or maybe a namesake character who buries the poet, the book and he story.

The poet starts with journalist work, but increasingly becomes tangled with the politics of the area, and with Ipek, while struggling with his ideological position, as an exiled Turk ,a known figure,  as a so-called atheist, as someone who came from the "godless" West,  and his journalistic assignment is lost in the mess here. Becoming caught up as a mediator in a political, diplomatic triangle as someone with no political experience, we naturally see a swaying character, and this swaying has produced more poetry than the character recollects to have come up with in a stretch of time. These poems constitute the now missing book "Snow".
 His interaction with Ipek revolves around their relationship, her beauty and her exes, and with Kadife, around Islam, the issue of the Headscarf (is it called the Hijab?) which she refuses to remove, and her friends who killed themselves for the same issue, only to be condemned by Islamists, since suicide is unethical in their religion.
Kadife, her relationship with Blue, and a coup de etat by an Ataturk worshipping Sunay Zaim and his people during theatre, and with Necip, who he grows to like , around religion, love and writing, are all central characters to giving the book its breadth.

As loved ones and powerful ones get killed, following a statement, and Ka is accused of betrayal, and is forced to part from the town and people he was around, and returns to Frankfurt, only to be assassinated there. His friend Orhan concludes the story for us, hunting for his friend's poetry book, and hoping to reconstruct his final years.

 I  liked Orhan's writing style, as something both poetic and crisp, and good to keep readers gripped. He manages to maintain a good pace, and  the novel does not feel Western, or patronising, nor so Turkish that the rest of the world couldn't connect.

The character of Ka himself, in views and character, the author has maintained a degree of ambiguity and indecision, but since we are seeing the Turkish world through this character's eyes, it was probably necessary to keep him fluid to give us a balanced and unbiased glimpse of Turkey. However, the real flavour of the character was the fact that he was a poet, yet we see none of his poems, nor does the narrative become infused with his poetic thought. The same tone is used with every character, so one misses the poet, and therefore, Ka the person.
Ipek is not as well drawn out, since she merely becomes an object of desire with a past, and Kadife, possibly because of the position she holds and the people she is surrounded by, assumes a powerful and assertive personality.
Sunay Zaim and his wife make the story rather eccentric and off centre (A political coup de etat by a performers' group? Really?)  that for a moment, I really wondered where he was taking this story.
But the ending seemed a little surprising, since, out of the blue, you hear the voice of a different character, while, so far, you've been inside the head of only one.

I really enjoyed reading the story, and could connect to it in some ways, being from India, and being able to witness similar changes in my country. The sensitivity with which he portrayed these issues was well done. However, probably, the reality in Turkey feels different, but being from a multicultural country, and having encountered atheism, the idea of being Non-islamist as being equal to atheist did not convince me, since, we have come into an age where spirituality and religion can be treated separately. since, coming from a multi cultural country.
On the whole, I enjoyed the book, and would love to discover more of the author's work.

Photograph

I have a photography assignment that I have to finish, I'm done with taking the pictures, and the tough part comes in here, when you need to sift through the good ones, and select them for a final collection.
Photography is amazing, and photographers are an interesting breed. They can be intimidating sometimes, with their huge cameras, expensive equipment and business-like air.
There are probably many people, who can philosophically say, " It's not about the equipment" . But people would still pay an arm and a leg for a good photograph. and for a lot of people, a good photograph is possible only with good equipment. But I personally believe that , no matter what your image making device is, if you've caught what you want to catch, you're a photographer. This confidence I got from a teacher, who felt that rather than just using the tool, it was necessary for us to understand the subject, the frame and essentially, develop the eye for them.

I've seen many breeds of photographers, and each of them with their set of idiosyncrasies, and perhaps, in India, the whole affair of taking a photograph is quite a memorable one. Back when pictures were expensive to take (I think this was in the fifties, but this is not such a general thing in India) a lot of people would not bother to have one taken unless on important occasions like Marriages, because you saw your daughter for the last time as part of your family, events in the village,  and deaths, because they needed some sort of memorabilia. My English teacher in high school remembered how, in his village, once the person has died, they'd employ a photographer , huddle around the dead person and try to make the body sit straight, as if alive, for a  family photograph. The more affluent had greater access ,and would get pictures taken at every possible occasion.  A lot of other cultures would resist pictures, since they felt they'd call upon them the evil eye, while in places like Gujarat, the very sight of a camera would draw crowds to you, enthusiastically waiting in line to be captured.

My good friend Harish , a filmmaker, talked of this one incident, when, he'd worked as a journalist, and had to go into the rural heartlands of a place (I've forgotten which).  They had some work with the local residents there, and somehow, happened to be around when a fight erupted in the community. The situation had come to blows, when they chose to start taking pictures. The crowds would immediately snap to attention and smile and pose for the picture, and after the snap, they'd get back to the fight. This would happen repeatedly, since Harish and his friend were trying to catch the fight in progress, but the crowd would interrupt the fight and snap to attention and smile each time, grumbling.

Photographers have it tough. There is great emphasis on the "defining moment", a moment that supposedly "makes" the photograph, and for that, they need to become invisible to the people at that spot. I don't know how exactly a lot of photographers achieve this, what with their outlandishly expensive and huge equipment and the obvious air of someone who doesn't belong there, blend in. I suppose each person has his technique. I for one, had to get a ton of permissions first, and second, had to use a camera that is hardly noticeable, (gasps in horror!) a digicam. The other time, I was in a public space, and I generally smile a bit when I encounter people, so people would find me nonthreatening and not bother when I click in the vicinity.

How important though, is capturing a moment to someone using a camera? I believe half the market in India uses the services of photographers who hardly subscribe to the term. A few years after I left my town to study, when I came back for the holidays, my mother really wanted a formal family photograph. So we went to the local photographer's studio wearing nice clothes and asked him to click a few pictures. A few days later, I left for college. I returned to find a set of framed and laminated photographs that the photographer had distorted across a larger frame, so my mother was covering half of it, looking much larger than she really is (imagine her rage) , and others, where the well-meaning photographer with the best of his aesthetic sense, had eliminated the background I and my sister had stood before, and photo shopped a large artificial flower into the frame, almost the size of our faces. I lost my faith in regular studio photographers after that. But he only meant well ,and was only doing what his contemporaries across the country were doing.

And indeed, I started paying greater attention to their antics after this, and a large number of people really wanted that stuff. You'd have a newly married couple in full wedding finery standing on a table in the Titanic pose, and the photographer would Photoshop them onto a ship, or a sunset, or a moonlit night backdrop. There would be a photograph of a couple in the wedding pandal,  and the backdrop around them would be erased and they'd be placed in Swiss mountains doing the Homa. A lot of pilgrimage centres would have booths with devotional concept art  backdrops that the pilgrims would pose in front of  and get pictures of . This brings me to the wedding photographer . He was a real species  unto himself, and his job involved bringing a hot heavy flash into the wedding area, interrupting the wedding, irritating  the priest, pushing the well-wishers and the guests away to get a better view of the couple's faces( Imagine their discomfort, smiling into a hot yellow flash, under all that makeup and finery) and generally stepping on the cake, only to produce a video of unrealistic proportions, with sentimental film songs as the soundtrack, to be given to the families as a memory of their kids' wedding. The ones these days, thankfully, are not that irritating or disruptive.

A recently held lecture happened in a gallery full of precious pieces of design (with a lot of  furniture) and the lecture was held by a certain veteran furniture designer , and attended by a prominent Museum curator, a historian, design students and a magazine editor. Since it was a rare opportunity, a lot of photographers had come, and while the talk was going on, one photographer very casually settled his bag and his bulky equipment onto a precious chair on display (despite it being on a pedestal) , and went around clicking pictures of the lecture, while the rest of us looked on, scandalised. We couldn't stop him, since it would mean interrupting the lecture, which was being video-recorded, and the man , once he had the shots he wanted, picked it up and moved away. The things that happen for the sake of the frame are really surprising.
I remember Stephen Leacock's short story, the Photographer, that talks of his experience with this enthusiastic photographer, who, for the sake of a good picture, distorts the author's face, until it resembles him no more, and I feel that things haven't changed much even today.  The Photographer's journey is a unique one, and their work for the frame is often justified for them.

I finally managed to get the hang of handling this atrociously heavy camera, and took some pictures for my assignment, and lo behold, half the ones I thought would be good were shaky. And I'd shot them on the spur of the moment outside, where you can't really set things up for your convenience, maybe go again with the camera.
I'd borrowed the camera, so it wasn't possible again, but I'd lost some of the good ones, and I have to sigh and get on with what I have. My faculty would have pursed his lips at them, but I can say that I enjoy taking pictures. It allowed me to notice things I wouldn't pay attention to, and I started paying attention to how I saw things, even without a camera. the politics of the frame , the semiotics of the things a Photographer would include within it, all fascinate me, and essentially, I wonder, how a simple piece of image making equipment has manifested itself in its possibilities , on one hand, becoming an art, and on the other, an expression of memory and a will to preserve , all the while reflecting the choices made by a society regarding the way things are captured , and its eventual visual culture.

A long time

As I wrote the title of this post, I misspelled the word time. That somehow sparked off the thought.. what happens if we allow our spelling mistakes to remain? How does a sentence read? How does the topic make sense? Does it make sense ?  This brings to my mind, two instances. One, being Mrs Malapropp, from Sheridan's The Rivals, and her constant tendency to misinterpret and misinform. The second,  the sms lingo flourishing today. Many of  the people that use English in sms lingo can hardly spell properly to save their lives in normal circumstances. Spellings are a-changing and sms lingo seems to go the same way as the linguistic revolution Bernard Shaw wanted to see, where the language is simplified and represented only in terms of maybe the sounds they make, a much more phonetically driven script.
In the writing of the above passage, I must confess that I corrected my own spellings at least ten times over the course of fast typing. Thank goodness , though, that the Spell-check option while I'm typing is off. Mr Bill Bryson hilariously pointed out in one of his delightful essays, (This is an essay from the book: Notes From a Big Country) the dangers of allowing one's computer to check your spellings for you. Not recognising British spellings, or replacing so-called incorrect words based on what it deems appropriate . The results are comical, the author's role obscure, and the message is lost in correction.
 I also have a rather personal grudge against spell checks in the English language, which is, being Asian, the nouns I use would also be Asian, yet, every one of these is immediately marked and underlined in wavy red as though they're  mistakes, while the usage of a noun from European origins is left well alone. How do they put these names together, aside from the usual Smith and Jones? I wonder what policy they follow while creating and installing dictionaries in computer memories. It would be nice if they were much more inclusive in their word-pool of nouns, and considered the vast numbers of Non-native English speaking computer users they have.

And yes, the title of this post is "a long time ", which is what I took to post again following my previous one. That's just an arbitrary title with no real meaning. I love the word arbitrary, don't you? It captures the essence of a randomness and unpredictability that  sms everything up in a way, so much for the logical and organisational tendencies of the Human mind. This very evening, over a cup of chai, I was exchanging literary trivia with a friend who puffed away on cigarettes (whose smoke I tried to blow away from my face, and ended up with cold and neglected tea with a layer of malai on it) who asked me to look at an essay that Deleuze had written, analysing Alice in Wonderland.
He drew attention to a certain poem that a knight sings, where the name of the poem is one thing, the poem itself is another, and the poem refers to somethign else altogether. I'm still looking for this. If I find it, I will let you all know.

And yes, I finished  reading Devdutt Pattnaik's  " Myth =Mithya: A Handbook of Hindu Mythology" one of the most worthwhile  reads explaining the Hindu divine pantheon, in one of the most neutral, non-judgemental voices I've come across yet. If anything, that 's Mr Pattnaik's greatest merit, being able to write with neither attachment, detachment nor judgement, while exploring and understanding the reasons for Hinduism's many forms, interpretations, practises and meanings, and doing justice to the topic at hand. A voice I would not hesitate to trust.

So, readers; I shall try to be a bit more punctual with my writing, and please bear with me.
Love,
Sumedha

SOUP

A soup between two people
The food is not to share
But to be made to
Two tastes of which
A third can be proud
And so the ingredients
Of two opinions try
To get along
The soup has water
But nothing else
Adds up
The bowl is empty.
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