Kafkaesque goes places

These are some articles of mine published at Passionforcinema.com , a website where the authors include a lot of eminent personalities associated with Indian cinema , like Anurag Kashyap, Santosh Sivan, Sudhir Mishra, Revathy and many others.......... If you are a movie buff, this is your one-stop destination !!

1. Road To Perdition: A Modern Classic
2. Bookworms and Movie Maniacs: Literary Adaptations in Cinema

Orbis Terrarum : One World

Reading challenges aren't usually as much fun as this. I mean, there is only much so much Russian stuff or so much medieval literature you can digest at one go. But this is one challenge which is worth taking. This is the Orbis Terrarum challenge hosted by the lit-blog B&b Ex Libris.(By the way,the blog is beyond cool!) The rules are pretty simple- you have to choose nine books written by authors belonging to nine different nationalities. If this doesn't already satisfy your taste for variety, it gets better and better- you can change your list at any point in the duration of the challenge- which is for 9 months starting from April 2008 to December 2008. Just post about the challenge on your blog along with your list and join in the fun.

This is my list

1) Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra (India)
2) American Pastoral by Philip Roth(USA)
3) Identity by Milan Kundera(France)
4) The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass(Germany)
5) Ring by Koji Suzuki(Japan)
6) Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee(South Africa)
7) Amsterdam by Ian McEwan(England)
8) The Day The Leader Was Killed by Naguib Mahfouz(Egypt)
9) Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt(Ireland)

Affortlessly Rhythmatic Commentraitors

Scenes from a commentary box during the recent IPL:

Dramatis personae: Aamir Sohail and Waqar Younis(With guest appearances from Wasim Akram and Rameez Raja)

Ishant Sharma charges in to bowl another snorter at the Kings XI batsman Shaun Marsh. Promptly, Sohail notices something hitherto unknown about the young Indian speedster.

Sohail: Waqar, I think the reason that Ashant(yeah, that's the way he says it, but I'll come to that in a minute) is getting all that extra bounce is that he is a big lanky lad.

(The sagely Waqar mulls over these musings and comes up with his own carefully-thought out analysis)
Waqar: Another reason could be that he's also very tall.
(Aamir is clearly impressed, this little nugget had escaped his attention)

Welcome to the Aamir Sohail-Waqar Younis school of cricket commentary for dummies.(Featuring such eminent guest lecturers like Rameez Raja and Wasim Akram)
Lesson 1: Linguistic Creativity
Come up with alternate pronunciations, alternate phraseology, hell even an alternate language.

Reference Text: Aamir Sohail and Waqar Younis in action during the recent India-Sri Lanka match at Karachi

Rudra Pratap Singh delivers another accurate over. The centre of attention is the UP pacer's bowling action
Sohail: His action is so smooth, so Affortless.Younis: Yes, I think the key here is that his run-up is quite rhythmatic.
(Call me old-fashioned, guys, but whatever happened to good old "rhythmic" ??)

Lesson 2 : What's in a name?
Good commentators know their Shakespeare from their.....um...Sidhu. Names are your playground, people. Kick them, smash them to pulp by the sheer force of your oratory.

Reference Text: Sohail, Rameez, Wasim or Younis in any match featuring India in the past year

Yuvraj Singh thumps one over the midwicket region. Promptly, Sohail, that astute observer of mankind, chips in.

Sohail: OH THAT'S ANOTHER ONE!!!!!! YOVRAJ !!

Younis: YOvraj ....he is really on fire today. Mister Six!!!
(With this slightly questionable epithet given to Yuvraj, Younis again relapses into an anecdote about how he chased Abdul Qadir's cat around the Karachi stadium with a pad. Or something.)
Ishant Sharma has, meanwhile begun to tear out a significant portion of his lion's mane, patiently explaining to Waqar and co. that his name is in fact, Ishant and not Ashant. Wasim reminds Ishant/Ashant that young pacers ought to focus on cricket alone.

Lesson 3: Keep an eye on your articles
What chance does the trio of "A, an , the" have when you have the deadly trio of Sohail and the two W's? Verbal anarchy is let loose. Go forth, ye dogs of war!

Reference Text: The above mentioned gentlemen in anything remotely resembling a studio or a commentary box.
India are chasing 309 under lights. Gautam Gambhir drives one towards the cover boundary only to find a sweeper already stationed. This foresight impresses Waqar to no end.

Waqar: Oh.....he is a smart bowler! He has got A Protection there.

Sohail: Whenever you are with these batsmen, you have got to be with A Protection. Otherwise, he'll(motioning towards Sehwag) hit you all night.
Waqar: The Virender Sehwag is really on the rampage tonight.

Epilogue: Admissions are open now. If you want to make it big as a commentator or better still, realise your dream of being in a commentary box with these august gentlemen, look no further. Parting lesson: Come up with jewels borne entirely of your own device. Always,always, ALWAYS call your fellow commentators funny names in a fake Irish accent.

Sohail: It's over to my fellow Commentraitor now, Waqar Younis, and with him is Danny "Denzongpa" Morrison.
Younis: Thank you Aamir. Yes, Dhoni has got a beautiful head on his shoulders.....

The Quick Ones

(That's me!)


There is no such thing as a fixed reading speed, I believe. Some books just rush past more quickly than others. This does not mean that a particular book is more interesting more than others, it's just that it demands less in the way of attention from the readers. Yesterday I started and finished "The Colour Purple" by Alice Walker, which was admittedly a not-so-long novel, but still it is longer than Amit Chaudhuri's "Afternoon Raag" , which barely qualifies as a novella. Still, the serpentine nature of Chaudhuri's elaborate prose, his loving detailed descriptions of his subjects and their surroundings and, his penchant for atmospherics meant that I had to devote 2 days of intense reading to get through it.Alice Walker, on the other hand uses the informal, Afro-American working-class dialect and slangs so well that one tends to get the net import of scenes so much faster. Moreover, the whole novel is written in an epistolary format, which is much easier on the reader anyway.



Then of course, there is the factor of anticipation. I remember when I first read "Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows", I did so in one marathon session, from six in the morning to five in the evening. I couldn't remember many of the side-plots afterwards, so recently I have given it another go. Now this sort of feverish reading, I think is familiar, not only to Pottermaniacs but devoted fans of other writers as well. "Haroun and the Sea of Stories" was the first Rushdie novel I had got my hands on after I was enthralled by his groundbreaking "Midnight's Children". I absolutely devoured it in less than a day.



But this can sometmes work the other way,as well. For instance, when you are aware of a certain writer's reputation for being dense or "difficult" , you might give him or her a wider berth than usual.This was in play when I read Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49" recently. Aware of his massive, labyrinthine post-modern antics, his wide-ranging cultural allusions, frequent references to esoteric topics in both science and arts, I was on my guard constantly. Actually, the novel turned out to be a great deal more accessible than what many friends say about his work, Gravity's Rainbow in particular. Anyway, a relatively slim volume took rather more time than it should have.



So it's really up to the reader to decide what a "quick" read is. In this respect, my suggestions for a "quick" yet satisfying read would be(these are pretty random- off the top of my head)



1. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (my post about it here)


2. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury


3. Animal Farm by George Orwell


4. Everything ever written by P.G.Wodehouse


5. Foundation series by Isaac Asimov


6. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome


7. Our Gang by Philip Roth

Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay"

Michael Chabon,45, is every bit the modern writer. He started early(his first novel The Mysteries of Pittsburgh was sent to a publisher, unknown to him, by his English professor , to whom he had submitted his manuscript as his graduation thesis.), has had his brush with cinema(he has written part of the screenplay for the Spiderman sequel, and an X-Men screenplay which was turned down by the Hollywood moguls), and has a fan-following consisting of youngsters(he wrote a fantasy novel Summerland aimed at teenagers and young adults) and barmy old critics alike. Chabon was once even due to appear in People magazine's list of the Most Beautiful People in the world, a la Arundhati Roy, but turned it down , retorting, "It was like, we want to give you a prize because the weather is so nice where you live!"

But what really matters is that Chabon is a consummate storyteller, a supreme prose stylist, and a writer with a finely nuanced sense of irony and compassion. And all these qualities are in abundant display in his 2001 Pulitzer-winning masterpiece "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", a huge, sprawling epic which deals with a host of issues like Nazi atrocities, the rise of the American comic-book industry, McCarthyism, the relationship between art and real-life, and above all the nature of love and loss......

The story begins in 1939, when fleeing the horrors of Nazi aggression, Josef Kavalier , artist and apprentice magician, flees his native Prague, to New York, where his American cousin Sam Clay lives.His daring escape as well as his training as an escape artist inspires him and his cousin Sam to create a Nazi-busting superhero The Escapist, a Superman-like character modelled upon the Jewish myth of the Golem, a mythical clay figure designated to protect Jewish ghettos all around the world. The rise of the cousins coincides with the boom in the comic-book industry of America with its increasing cultural and economic influence. Reading the novel,it is apparent that this is the product of extensive research and study, as is indicated by Chabon at the end(there is an extensive bibliography in addition to the usual acknowledgemens). Chabon talked to many greats of the American comic-book industry like Stan Lee, Will Eisner(whose quote provides the epigraph to the novel), Gil Kane as well as other writers, illustrators and everyone associated in churning out comic-books.

But as it so often happens, the cousins only get a small share of the wealth they create, the majority of it going to the smart and ruthless head honchos of the comic-book companies. But Kavalier is not overly worried about this- his real worries lie in getting his family out of Prague and in the USA to join him. So he carries on a shadow war with Hitler through the pages of The Escapist.

Escapism is a recurring motif in this novel- whether it is Josef's escape to New York, or the innately "escapist" nature of the comic-book stories, or later on in the novel( SPOILER ALERT) when Josef leaves his pregnant girlfriend Rosa, grieving over his dead younger brother. Sam Clay too has several things to escape from-his polio-ravaged body, his poverty , his repressed homosexuality.......... In a particularly moving passage , Josef reflects upon the futilty of his efforts to bring his family to the USA, and thinks "Escapism, they call it. Why wouldn't he be escaping? When you are confronted with all of this, with the crushing certainty that you would never again see your family again, what could one do but escape from it all?" In this respect, Harry Houdini is repeatedly referred to, as Josef's childhood hero, the ultimate escape artist(in the opening line of the novel, Sam too invokes Houdini.)

Sam Clay's story, too, is alternately funny and sad. Brought up by a nagging, neurotic mother and a vagabond, absentee father, he suffered polio as a child, an experience which he later writes into the Escapist character(the Escapist's alter-ego Tom Mayflower uses a crutch). He proves to be the perfect foil for his austere, solemn immigrant cousin, with his careless humour and his reckless bravado. His story takes a decisive twist when he has an affair with a radio actor Tracy Bacon, at a time when homosexuals where ruthlessly persecuted. This can only end badly and Clay is prepared for the consequences.

The novel is choc-a-bloc with superbly funny set-pieces, remarkable minor characters in addition to the formidable main cast, and some unforgettably touching passages whether it is Josef yearning for his family, Sam reflecting on his doomed affair, or Rosa's guilt about inadvertently causing the death of Josef's beloved younger brother, Chabon effortlessly takes the reader under the skin of the characters.This is thoughtful, well-written and yes, literary fiction, but with all the pace and vitality of a comic-book caper not unlike the ones Kavalier and Clay devise.(By the way, Chabon hates pigeon-holing fiction in genres, he said so in an interview).Chabon's incredible ability to depict a place in a particular time-frame is right up there with some of the most memorable works of modern times, whether it is the Bombay of Midnight's Children, the "Jewish" America of Philip Roth's books, or the Kerala of "The God of Small Things".The immense research also culminates in delightful cameos by comic-book gurus Will Eisner, Bob Kane, Stan Lee and other legendary figures like Salvador Dali and Orson Welles(Citizen Kane is in fact used as a significant plot device)

Prior to this, the only Chabon book I had read was a novella The Final Solution, also set in the 1940's ,also with Nazi Europe as its back-story, but with a twist- it resurrected(in brilliant fashion, I may add)probably the most remarkable characters ever created- Sherlock Holmes, albeit a crumbling, 89-year old Holmes, who is still in possession of his most important faculties. In a charming, slim special editionit also featured extensive interviews with Chabon himself and lists of his favourite books. The Final Solution was a minor classic, but with Kavalier and Clay, Chabon had already announced his arrival as one of the foremost writers of fiction in the world.

You can check out the NY Times Page on Michael Chabon here.
P.S. Michael Chabon went on to launch his own comic-book strip which included some of the plot-lines featuring the Escapist discussed in Kavalier and Clay.

Going once....going twice......

You gotta be kidding me. Foot-in-mouth disease in Americans was something I was starting to take for granted, what with their commander-in-chief , a long-time patient, leading the way, but something I read in the newspaper today takes the cake.

It has been 24 years since a leaked container of methyl isocyanate scarred an entire generation in Bhopal, but Dow Chemical, the group that now owns Union Carbide, the offending company has mulishly refused to see the light. Sample this shocker from Kathy Hunt, the public affairs specialist from Dow Chemical.(This quote is from 2002)

"$500 compensation is plenty good for an Indian."

Even if you overlook the obvious bigotry, condescension, and Third-World antipathy on display here, this statement has further damage to do when you consider the history associated with this company.In 2000, Dursban, an insecticide manufactured by Dow Chemicals was banned by the US after it caused brain damage in a child. In this case, Dow Chemicals were happy to cough up $10 million in compensation. What is even more shocking is that Dursban, the same pesticide is still "aggresively marketed" in India! A high-level official of Dow even boasted about bribing government officers to allow the pesticide to be sold in India.

Activist and author Indra Sinha is one of about 300 people worldwide who are on a hunger strike to protest the government's dilly-dallying over the issue of victim compensation.His novel Animal's People which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, has the Bhopal Gas Tragedy as its focus.According to him, there is more to this than meets the eye. The government has for years now allowed this rogue company to flourish in our country, putting at risk the health of our own people, all the while turning a blind eye towards the plight of survivors and victims, most of whom do not have access to even rudimentary medical services, let alone compensation.

When Sinha brought the issue to the attention of the British media in 1993 via a massive two-page ad in The Guardian, there was much posturing and righteous outrage, but the bottomline is that the status quo was maintained.And now that some of the victims who were born after the tragedy have joined themovement, the question they are asking the government is "What have we done to deserve this ?"But I doubt that the government is listening. Botched nuclear deals and blood-thirsty hypocritical allies merit more attention than the simple matter of thousands of human lives, most of them mutilated for ever.

There you have it then, good people. All that remains is the auction itself.The first item up for grabs is the average deplorable Indian life. What bids shall I have, then? $500.....come now, surely.......Oh all right then.Going once , going twice.....SOLD! To the lady in the red,white and blue for $500!

Classics 2: "Yojimbo" and "12 Angry Men"

Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo

Akira Kurosawa was one of the acknowledged masters of world cinema, making movies watched and admired the world over like Seven Samurai, Ikiru, Throne of Blood and many others. Last week I had the opportunity of watching one of his classics via a Kurosawa festival all this month on Zee Studio.Yojimbo is a homage to the great cowboy westerns of the 40's and 50's. Perhaps fittingly, it was remade in Hollywood as the Dollars trilogy, featuring Clint Eastwood as "The Man With No Name" in the role which was, ironically, to make him a household name.

Yojimbo stars Kurosawa favourite Toshiro Mifune(who also starred in Seven Samurai and Throne of Blood) as a wandering ronin, or masterless samurai warrior. Mifune lights up the screen with his imposing presence, wry laconic wit, and an unmistakeable swagger. Watch out for the scene in the beginning where he decides to go in the direction offered by a falling twig. He lands up in a small town ravaged by two warring ganglords, battling it out for stakes in the local gambling racket. He takes refuge with an elderly coffin-maker, whose business is booming because of the ongoing gangwars.But things change when the battle gets too hot ,as he puts it "When the battle goes too far, neither side bother with cofffins anyway...."

Yojimbo is a gripping story exceptionally well-told with stellar performances toplined with the awesome Mifune, in a performance which launched the template for a thousand imitators in Hollywood and Bollywood alike.Kurosawa raises the simplest of scenes to an altogether different level with devices like overly theatric, even comical music.In a particularly memorable scene,the samurai, calling himself Sanjiro(meaning thirtysomething) causes battle between the two rival dons. He then pulls out of the battle, selects a vantage point high above the battlefield, and sits there watching the cowardly troops in action.There is much posturing, a lot of battle-cries and and sword-swishing, but neither side is willing or daring enough to actually charge forward and fight. They go one step forwards and two steps back.Sanjuro watches all this, amused at the spineless behaviour of the "hardened" gangsters.

It is moments like these that make Yojimbo an enduring classic and a must-watch for all lovers of cinema.

Sidney Lumet's "12 Angry Men"
What would you say to a movie that is shot almost entirely indoors(the only outdoor shot is the last one which shows two of the characters talking outside the courtroom),has no major plot twists and all that ever happens is 12 middle-aged to old men talking, seated around a table? You couldn't be blamed for dismissing this as just another futile attempt at being "avant-garde" which falls flat on its face, right?

Instead, Sidney Lumet's 1957 film "12 Angry Men" is an engrossing film, tense and taut in its suspense helped along the way by superb performances by an ensemble cast headed by Henry Fonda and featuring some of the prominent actors of the time like Joseph Sweeney, Lee Cobb and Ed Begley. The 12 men as implied in the title are jurors in a murder trial where the accused is an 18 year old who has supposedly stabbed his father to death following an argument between them earlier in the evening.

Initially, only Fonda even considers the boy's innocence, because of the overwhelming circumstantial evidence against the kid, and inconsistencies in his own testimony to the police.Because this is a murder trial, nothing short of a unanimous verdict will do.Much to the anger of some of the other jurors,this means that they have to sit at the table longer(Jack Warden, playing a working class average Joe, wants to get this over and done with as he has tickets for that night's baseball game).It is then that the deep-rooted prejudices of many of the jurors spill over.

Whether it's Lee J. Cobb playing a man whose son has ran away from home or Ed Begley as the bigoted loudmouth who hates slum-dwellers and minorities, the performances in this film speak for themselves.

Talk about intensity.....

Henry Fonda is superbly economical as the thoughtful juror who coaxes the others to look beyond the bare bones of the case. But this proves to be a tricky job as some of the men are shockingly blood-thirsty towards the boy owing to their own rigid predispositions and biases. The underlying air of tension and unease is masterfully sustained by the director throughout the 90-minute duration of thefilm.The enduring popularity of the film can be ascertained by the fact that it remains #11 on the IMDB all-time ratings chart, with a rating of 8.8/10

This is a taut and terrific film, cinema stripped down to its basics and rigorously put through its paces.Go watch it to rediscover the meaning of the word "drama".