Binoy's End

It's a bad life being a bad writer. You know the goal, but seem unable to achieve it. I wrote the following for a story last night. Then I thought about it, and it didn't work with the overall logic of the plot. So, I had to delete the following portion and rewrite (and introduce a new character to lead it to its logical end...)

...Binoy wasn’t sure if Parikshit himself came up with the plan, but it was a brilliant one – to boost the image of the government and cripple the organisation. It was a tempting proposal to save himself from his current predicament. But his choice was already made. He wouldn’t repeat Badan’s mistake. He wouldn’t betray his organisation, not at any cost.

No, he said, “Parikshit, you are nothing more than a stray dog.

The other man smiled. He had become a proper politician. “And, don’t worry. I will come for my piece of meat when it’s time.”

The next day he cast was removed he was taken back to the empty room. The plan was simple to make Binoy agree to surrender, one way or another. This time they worked on his legs. They would heat a cane rod on an electric heater and hit his naked buttocks till the skin peeled off. Then they’d target the legs. Binoy had the feeling that his faceless tormentors were beginning to enjoy those torture sessions, which made the whole thing more painful.

“You know, I can tell them to finish you off, in an encounter, like they did to your friend, what was his name?” Parikshit said in his second or third visit, Binoy had lost count.

“Why don’t you?”

“Because you are my friend. And I want someone like you to help me. You remember those pieces you wrote in Ajir Batori, very moving. I actually memorized few of those lines, to use in my speeches. You can help me, and I can help you.”

No, Binoy did not need Parikshit’s help. That opportunist was never his friend. He was his minion, at best.

Binoy was still hopeful. He imagined that they’d leave Pradeep alone and the later would tell Manjit about the situation, and Manjit would find a way to get him out of here, the way Binoy. It was daring plan, to rescue Manjit from the Barpeta district court on his way to meet the magistrate, in the middle of the day. Binoy hoped that Manjit would try to return their favour.

But it was difficult to survive on hope alone, especially when they stated to mess around with the insides of his body. “Let’s fuck him,” one of them said after he was back into the torture chamber for the four of fifth time. He was already a wreck. He could no longer stand. He could no longer keep his hands loose or keep his head straight. He imagined rape to be a welcome change, but did not imagine what to happen next.

It happened in one swift coordinated movement. Two of them spread his legs, he was already naked, and the third picked up the cane rod and thrust it inside his rectum. He screamed like the sacrificial goat. He felt as if someone had cut him into half. He started to shit blood.

They were back once the bleeding stopped and continued with the exercise. Slowly, be begun to withstand the pain. He promised to himself that he’d live and he wouldn’t betray. He was at the end of the trial. What more could they do to him?

He had no idea that they had more innovative options in their arsenal. As he continued to refuse – it had become a pattern, Parikshit would visit him in the hospital and like a film director explain to him the role he must play and he would refuse – the tortures would go on. They would break him, then heal him, and then break him again. Binoy would withstand the pain with the memories of the three men who shaped his life – Badan Chandra Barphukan, Che Guevara and Kalitada. He may not win, but he was not ready to lose. No. not until the last punishment.

That evening, Parikshit was really pissed. He had an alternative plan. “At least help me find someone as big as you are. A top leader. I am sure I will be able to convince him. Then, I will tell them to kill you, or let you go. Whatever you want.”

“Why don’t you ask that sniffer dog who informed you about me?”

“He’s useless. He knew your friend Pradeep, who told him about you. And Pradeep was no help. Oh, did I tell you, you friend died. It’s more than a month now. You’d be happy to know that his body was given back to his family.

At the end of his tether, with all his hopes gone, that night back in the torture chamber, Binoy was in for a treat. There was a crate of beer on the floor and he was forced to finish the bottles, one after another. When he couldn’t gulp it anymore, they held his mouth open and empty the bottle, all of it. Then they asked him if he was feeling like peeing. When he said yes, they make him stand in front of the electric heater, its coils bright red, and ordered him to pee. It was too late when he understood the trick. He bladder was full and as his urine touched the coils, the electricity hit his groin and testicles. Before he passed out a second later, the only thing he could think was that he had no idea paid could be that painful. There was no metaphor to describe that surge of pain that enveloped his body like a bad adour.

When he came to senses, Binoy had decided, he would do what it takes, but first he must get out of this place. He told Parikshit that he’d surrender, even if it meant that his colleagues would hunt him down. But he couldn’t appear before the crowd like this, a broken skeleton? He needed treatment. And not in an army hospital. It was the only condition.

This was one secret Binoy had never revealed to anyone, not to Sarbeshwar Basumatary, not to Padum. It was an event Binoy had forced himself erase from his consciousness. But the time he had reached Gosaigaon, he had forgotten about it, that he had to die to remain alive. He lay there on the cold slab of the morgue for two hours, then killed the poor conservancy worker on the second shift, wore his clothes and limped out of the GMC hospital. It was a long walk then to the railway station, then a train to Gosaigaon, and another very, very long walk to Basumatary’s village, till a Good Samaritan offer to drop him in his cycle. By the time he had reached there, he was almost dead for a second time.

“So, what now?” Basumatary had asked after Binoy had recuperated, thanks to the former’s care and the herbal remedies of the village medicine man.

“I don’t know. What you did after you left your organisation, apart from coming here to hide?”

“I did not come here to hide. This is my ancestral home. This is where I was born. This is where I had buried my parents, and their parents. I had come home.”

(A Work in Progress.)

Take This Waltz

The song I mumble. Today, it's Canadian singer Leonard Cohen's 'Take This Waltz'.

Songwriters: COHEN, LEONARD / LORCA, GARCIA
(after Lorca)
Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows
There's a tree where the doves go to die
There's a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on it's jaws
Oh I want you, I want you, I want you
On a chair with a dead magazine
In the cave at the tip of the lily
In some hallways where love's never been
On a bed where the moon has been sweating
In a cry filled with footsteps and sand
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take it's broken waist in your hand
This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With it's very own breath of brandy and Death
Dragging it's tail in the sea
There's a concert hall in Vienna
Where your mouth had a thousand reviews
There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking
They've been sentenced to death by the blues
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
With a garland of freshly cut tears?
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz it's been dying for years
There's an attic where children are playing
Where I've got to lie down with you soon
In a dream of Hungarian lanterns
In the mist of some sweet afternoon
And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow
All your sheep and your lilies of snow
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
With it's "I'll never forget you, you know!"
This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz ...
And I'll dance with you in Vienna
I'll be wearing a river's disguise
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder,
My mouth on the dew of your thighs
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
With the photographs there, and the moss
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty
My cheap violin and my cross
And you'll carry me down on your dancing
To the pools that you lift on your wrist
Oh my love, Oh my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz
It's yours now. It's all that there is

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The song here.

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"Take This Waltz" is a song by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, originally released as part of his 1988 studio album I'm Your Man. The song's lyrics are a loose translation, into English, of the poem "Pequeño vals vienés" by the famous Spanish poet Federico García Lorca (one of Cohen's favorite poets). The poem was first published in Lorca's seminal book Poeta en Nueva York.

More here.

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Cohen on 'Take the Waltz': Here of all places I don’t have to explain how I fell in love with the poet Federico Garcia Lorca. I was 15 years old and I was wandering through the bookstores of Montreal and I fell upon one of his books,and I opened it,and my eyes saw those lines “I want to pass through the Arches of Elvira,to see her thighs and begin weeping”. I thought “This is where I want to be”… I read alone “Green I want you green “I turned another page “The morning through fistfuls of ants in your face” I turned another page “Her thighs slipped away like school of silver minnows”. I knew that I had come home. So it is with a great sense of gratitude that I am able to repay my debt to Federico Garcia, at least a corner, a fragment, a crumb, a hair, an electron of my debt by dedicating this song, this translation of his great poem “Little Viennese Waltz”, “Take This Waltz”.

More here.

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Leonard Norman Cohen, CC GOQ (born 21 September 1934) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet, and novelist. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality, and interpersonal relationships. Cohen has been inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and both the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. He is also a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. While giving the speech at Cohen's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 10 March 2008, Lou Reed described Cohen as belonging to the "highest and most influential echelon of songwriters." The critic Bruce Elder wrote an assessment of Cohen's overall career in popular music, writing, "[Cohen is] one of the most fascinating and enigmatic. . .singer/songwriters of the late '60s. . . [and] has retained an audience across four decades of music-making. . . Second only to Bob Dylan (and perhaps Paul Simon) [in terms of influence], he commands the attention of critics and younger musicians more firmly than any other musical figure from the 1960s who is still working at the outset of the 21st century." The Academy of American Poets has commented more broadly on Cohen's overall career in the arts, including his work as a poet, novelist, and songwriter, stating that "[Cohen's] successful blending of poetry, fiction, and music is made most clear in Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs, published in 1993, which gathered more than two hundred of Cohen's poems . . .several novel excerpts, and almost sixty song lyrics. . .While it may seem to some that Leonard Cohen departed from the literary in pursuit of the musical, his fans continue to embrace him as a Renaissance man who straddles the elusive artistic borderlines."

More here.

The Dark Knight Rises

“Do you feel in charge?” asks the supervillain Bane in a gruff, mechanised-sounding voice, and trust me when I say this, it is the highlight of the new Batman film. Just before this question, the supervillain, played by very handsome Tom Hardy, wearing a mask that doesn’t reveal anything but his eyes and part of his shaven head, strangles a greedy corporate honcho, who screams: “You are pure evil.” Bane replies indulgently: “I’m necessary evil.”

This exchange sits alongside the now-almost-mythical “Why So Serious?” dialogue uttered by Heath Ledger’s Joker in the previous film in the trilogy, ‘The Dark Knight’. That film was a pop-culture legend, and after that, anything else would fall short.

To conclude the popular Christopher Nolan Batman saga, ‘The Dark Knight Rises’, and how! He takes his own sweet time, and no one is complaining, especially you are seeing the film in theatre and your mobile phone is switched off.

There was a time when movies were in danger from television; if you can see it on TV in the comforts of your home, why go to a theatre and pay. A film like TDKR dispels this notion. You must see this film in the theatre to appreciate its sprawling canvas. It’s huge, not only in length, but also in scope and character. Beginning with a vertigo-inducing aerial action set-piece, reminiscent of the hotel shaft scene in ‘Inception’, to introduce the supervillain, the film takes to the streets of Gotham city, and its underground tunnels, and the Wayne mansion and the batcave, and a mythical well-like prison (where the Dark Knight “rises”, literally and metaphorically), which people are saying was shot/set in Udaipur in Rajasthan.

And let’s not forget the roll call of characters, old and new — Bruce Wayne/Batman, Alfred, his father-figure butler, the police chief Jim Gordon, another father figure, Lucien Fox, the super inventor, another father-like figure (Batman is after all is the story of an orphan finding his place in the world), Catwoman (Ann Hathaway, dazzling), a Robin-like rookie policeman, Blake, (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, strong), and a mysterious Miranda Tate, all I can say is that she is not what she is (and lovely Marion Cotillard does whatever she can).

Now, does anyone cares about the plot-slot. Not really. It’s a Chris Nolan picture. So, you expect a logical storytelling, everything precise, everything is accounted for. It does.

The film was destined to be a blockbuster even before it was released, and it is, despite the controversy (the tragic killings at Colorado, US). If my information is right, the first major critic to pen the film was given a death threat via the web. Such is the zeal among fanboys!

Speaking for myself, I really don’t give a damn. There are better things to do in life than root for Batman. But, I couldn’t resist the temptation to ride the bandwagon, and to put my two-penny opinion, unlike the major critics who found Tom Hardy as Bane lacklustre, I found his performance, and also his accent, quite adequate for the narrative. It’s another thing that the print I saw had subtitles.

e e cummings

Memories by association. For some weird reason, last night, I remembered my friend during my university days — Sijan Baral, and all I can remember is him reading the e e cummings poem ‘Buffalo Bill’s’... We had discovered cummings together in a musty bookcase in the poorly-lit library of the University of Pune. Like always, I was struggling with my death wish, and he too was fascinated by it. No wonder, this was his favourite poem, especially the last two lines: ...”How do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mister Death?”

Buffalo Bill's

defunct

        who used to

        ride a watersmooth-silver

                                  stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

                                                  Jesus



he was a handsome man

                      and what i want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death

Kumaré

Synopsis from the film's site:

Sri Kumaré is an enlightened guru from the East who has come to America to spread his teachings. After three months in Phoenix, Kumaré has found a group of devoted students who embrace him as a true spiritual teacher. But beneath his long beard, deep penetrating eyes, and his endless smile, Kumaré has a secret he is about to unveil to his disciples: he is not real. Kumaré is really Vikram Gandhi, an American filmmaker from New Jersey who wanted to see if he could transform himself into a guru and build a following of real people. Now, he is conflicted -- can he unveil the truth to these disciples with whom he has spent so much time, and who now look to him for guidance?

Vikram takes us back to where his story began. From an early age, he questioned the meaning of religion and spirituality. Was it all just make believe, or was there something real beyond the realm of our understanding? As a young adult, Vikram found himself perplexed that, just as he was leaving his Hindu faith behind, America was embracing Indian spirituality in the form of yoga studios and gurus who claimed to be on a higher spiritual plane. When he began filming these gurus for a documentary, he discovered there was nothing special about who they were or what they did -- they were no more holy than anyone else. In order to prove this, Vikram decides to transform himself into one of them: Sri Kumaré, a guru of his own creation. If he can build a following as Kumaré, wouldn’t it demonstrate that spiritual authenticity is just an illusion that wecreate? So he grows out his hair and beard, acquires the bells and whistles of Indian mystics, affects an accent, and transforms himself into the wise Indian Guru Kumaré.

Kumaré sets off to Phoenix, Arizona to build a following. He takes with him two disciples -- Kristen to teach yoga and Purva to book events -- who will become Kumaré’s first followers and greatest public messengers. At first it is easier than he imagined -- everywhere he goes, people revere him because of how he looks and behaves, despite his lack of a substantive teaching. When people ask to be blessed, Vikram invents a blessing and starts to deliver it: a blue light that he imagines in his head and shoots out onto people, with their foreheads pressed against his. Then something amazing happens. People really start to feel the blue light. It might be something Vikram made up, but it’s very real to those who experience it.

More and more people begin showing up to his events, and soon a core group of devoted students emerge. The powers and temptations of being a Guru soon become clear to Vikram. But it is all fun and games until people start to put serious faith in him -- and pour their hearts out to him. Vikram finds that if he isn't careful, he might just overstep his bounds and significantly change the course of his disciples' lives in ways that are beyond his control. What can he say when a woman comes to him for advice about whether to leave her husband, or when a former drug addict begins to look to upon him as a role model? Would they feel the same way about Vikram that they do about Kumare?

If Vikram is really going to push Kumaré to his infinite potential, he’ll need to teach something he believes with his entire being. He builds his teaching around the one thing he feels strongly about: that his disciples don’t need a guru -- that the guru is inside each of us. He calls his teaching The Mirror -- Kumaré is only a mirror that people can use to gaze upon their own infinite potential, which is already deep inside themselves. Kumaré begins to proclaim this message, and all who hear it are receptive. At the same time, something happens which Vikram could never have anticipated: for the first time he starts to feel the blue light himself.

Vikram forms deep attachments to many of these students, but all the while he wonders why he had to take on this other persona just to connect with people? Vikram makes a promise to himself: soon he will unveil his true identity to his disciples in order to prove his point. He spends more time with his disciples relating to them one-on-one and teaching them to embrace their gurus within. He asks them each to make promises to themselves -- whether it’s following through on promises to a loved one, committing to a healthier diet, or learning how to respect themselves. Vikram is awed when his students take his guidance very seriously, and he starts to see them making the first steps towards positive changes in their lives.

By the time he is to unveil, Vikram realizes why other gurus don't unveil themselves: he cares too much for his disciples who have now made serious and substantial changes to improve their lives, and they claim it is all because of Kumaré. When Kumaré reveals his greatest teaching of all: his true self, the reaction will shock, surprise, and even inspire all who see it.

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Writes STEPHEN HOLDEN in The New York Times:

“Faith begins as an experiment and ends as an experience.” That quotation from the Anglican priest William Ralph Inge, which begins the documentary “Kumaré: The True Story of a False Prophet,” evokes the film’s ambiguous exploration of religion, teaching and spiritual leadership.
Vikram Gandhi talks about how he came to make his documentary “Kumaré,” about his alter ego, a yoga teacher from a fictional place.

When Vikram Gandhi — the movie’s New Jersey-born director, protagonist and narrator — grows a beard and flowing hair and dons Indian robes to make a film in which he poses as a swami, you anticipate a cruel, “Borat”-like stunt. Cynics will expect a nasty chortle when this glib charlatan finally pulls the rug out from under his credulous followers.

But the outcome is much more complicated.

Disturbed by the yoga craze in the United States, Mr. Gandhi, a self-described first-generation immigrant from a Hindu background, travels to India and discovers that the swamis desperately trying to “outguru” one another are, he says, “just as phony as those I met in America.”

After returning to the United States, he transforms himself into Sri Kumaré and travels to Phoenix, where he gathers a circle of disciples. Imitating his grandmother’s voice, he imparts mystical truisms in halting, broken English. With his soulful brown eyes and soft, androgynous voice, he is a very convincing wise man.

Initially, Mr. Gandhi recalls, “I wanted to see how far I could push it.” He is shown presiding at one gathering with a picture of himself between portraits of Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden. But his earnest followers, including a death-row lawyer, a recovering cocaine addict and a morbidly obese young woman, are sympathetic, highly stressed Americans who pour out their troubles.

As Mr. Gandhi warms to these people, who demonstrate an unalloyed faith in his wisdom, the film becomes a deeper, more problematic exploration of identity and the power of suggestion, and its initially sour taste turns to honey. The meditations, mantras and yoga moves he invents, however bogus, transform lives, as his followers discover their inner gurus and gain a self-mastery.

More here.

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Writes Vikram Gandhi in Huffingtonpost.com: Kumare: The Time I Became A Guru

Six years ago, I filmed a gang of sadhus (spiritual ascetics) smoking weed on the banks of the Holy Ganga in Northern India. Their guru stepped away from a young European woman meditating under a banyan tree, and approached me, machete in hand. "You want to know about gurus?" He popped a squat, and lit up a bidi. "All those big gurus you see, they are not spiritual people. All they want is money. It's not that easy man... Living a spiritual life is very difficult." That night, they swapped the pot for heroin.

Back home in New York City, I filmed the world around me embracing the "spiritual life," or at least one packaged into a healthful 90-minute alternative to aerobics class. The modern definition of yoga is convoluted as the postures yogis aspire to. Symbols, smells, words, icons, and religions of the East became an easy aesthetic for branding and marketing. Was the culture I grew up in becoming just a marketing scheme for a flourishing industry? In yoga class, was I the only one who wasn't feeling the vibe of getting enlightened? And why were people all of a sudden bowing down to people in robes with expensive philosophies and the promises of happiness? I became skeptical of anyone who sold a spiritual product, anyone who claimed to be holier than anyone else, anyone who said they had the answer.

Since those days as one-man crew, my answers and strong opinions have turned more into questions. As a documentarian on the edge of a subculture for years, the lives of the characters I met have come full circle -- almost repeating the same plot lines as the teachers that fell decades before them. I've tried Iyengar, Ashtanga, Jivamukti, Kundalini, Anusara, and met the founders, inventors, entrepreneurs, and gurus in many traditions. I've also chanted (reluctantly and enthusiastically), set intentions, retained breath, hugged a saint -- or rather got hugged by one, received blessings, blessed, fasted, veg'd out, finished a first series, kriya-ed, flossed my nose, taken pilgrimages, avoided dysentery, bathed in the royal baths, found moments of deep tranquility, gave in to temptation, restrained it, fluctuated mentally, and even saw a most surreal event called an International Yoga Competition. I've said 'No, it's Vikram with a V' more than any other phrase these past few years. I learned from this, that practice never makes anyone perfect. We are all the same -- flawed, yet capable of greatness.

More Here.

Elephant Bathing

...And yet the thought of getting there is not unlike
A great lone tusker taking the plunge
His vast grey bulk sinking below the riverline
Against a clear black sky,
Till there is no more of him to see
Than a single tusk,
White as a quarter-moon in mid-July,
Before the coming of a cloud.” (‘Elephant Bathing’, ‘page 18)

... I think of all those promises I made to my ears
Which my tongue did not keep,
And even now, as I speak,
My words begin to smart,
Their echoes deepening, as if these walls were closing in,
And no space large enough… (‘Wind Chime,’ page 49)

Elephant Bathing, Poems by Anand Thakore, Poetrywala, Mumbai, 2012, Pp 80, Rs 150

Life of Pi

Life of Pi is an upcoming 3D adventure film based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Yann Martel. The film is directed by Ang Lee based on an adapted screenplay by David Magee. Suraj Sharma will play Pi. Life of Pi is scheduled to be released on November 21, 2012.

More Here.

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Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure novel by Yann Martel published in 2001. The protagonist, Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck, while stranded on a boat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger.

The novel was rejected by at least five London publishing houses[1] before being accepted by Knopf Canada, which published it in September 2001. The UK edition won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction the following year.

It was also chosen for CBC Radio's Canada Reads 2003, where it was championed by author Nancy Lee. The French translation, L'histoire de Pi, was chosen in the French version of the contest, Le combat des livres, where it was championed by Louise Forestier. The novel won the 2003 Boeke Prize, a South African novel award. In 2004, it won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in Best Adult Fiction for years 2001–2003.

More Here.

Here

Measurement and orientation break down in a dramatic, landscape-obsessed road movie that chronicles a brief but intense romantic relationship between an American satellite-mapping engineer and an expatriate Armenian photographer who impulsively decide to travel together into uncharted territory – both literally and metaphorically.

Will Shepard is an American satellite-mapping engineer contracted to create a new, more accurate survey of the country of Armenia. Within the industry, his solitary work – land-surveying satellite images to check for accuracy and resolve anomalies – is called “ground-truthing”. He’s been doing it on his own, for years, all over the world, but on this trip, his measurements are not adding up.

Will meets Gadarine Najarian at a rural hotel. Tough and intriguing, she’s an expatriate Armenian art photographer on her first trip back in ages, passionately trying to figure out what kind of relationship – if any – she still has with her home country and culture. Fiercely independent, Gadarine is struggling to resolve the life she’s led in Canada and Europe with the Armenian roots that run so deeply, if unconsciously, through her.

There is an almost instant, unconscious bond between these two lone travelers; they impulsively decide to continue together. HERE tells the story of their unique journey and the dramatic personal transformations it leads each of them through.

Will and Gadarine move through Armenia and its remarkable landscape photographing measuring, and experiencing the trip in their own individual ways and, ultimately, through each other’s eyes. Their journey takes them across the length of the country, from the Lori region in the north to the Iranian border in the south, and finally into the diplomatically undefined Nagorno-Karabagh region. It is here that they are forced to confront their intensifying relationship and the difficult questions it raises.

Along the way, Will is continually challenged with erroneous data as his trip descends toward failure, while Gadarine encounters much more personal static: nationality, culture, family, old friends. As she starts to discover a new relationship with her homeland, Will begins to question the solitary life he has chosen.

The two become deeply connected as their sense of themselves – and their worlds – expands. As their trip comes to an end, each must deal with the conclusions to which their journey has led them – and each must decide where to go from HERE.

More here.

Mr. X in Bombay

If there’s one song that has haunted me all my life, this is the song — ‘Mere Mehboob Qayamat Hogi’ from the film ‘Mr X in Bombay’ [1964]. I haven’t seen the film, and I don’t know anything about it, but every time I hear the song, a part of me disintegrates, something dies and something comes alive.

[‘Mr. X in Bombay’ is a Hindi film directed by Shantilal Soni, starring Kishore Kumar, Kumkum, Randhir and Madan Puri. Music was by Laxmikant Pyarelal and lyrics by Anand Bakshi and Asad Bhopali.]

Following is the song, followed by an English translation:

Mere Mehboob Qayamat Hogi
Aaj Rusva Teri Galiyon Mein Mohabbat Hogi
Meri Nazrein To Gila Karti Hain
Tere Dil Ko Bhi Sanam Tujhse Shikayat Hogi
Mere Mehboob...

Teri Gali Maein Aata Sanam
Nagma Wafa Ka Gaata Sanam
Tujhse Suna Na Jaata Sanam
Phir Aaj Idhar Aaya Hoon Magar Yeh Kehne Maein Deewana
Khatm Bas Aaj Yeh Vehshat Hogi
Aaj Rusva Teri Galiyon Mein Mohabbat Hogi
Mere Mehboob...

Meri Tarah Tu Aahen Bhare
Tu Bhi Kisise Pyar Kare
Aur Rahe Voh Tujhse Parey
Toone O Sanam Dhaye Hain Sitam To Yeh Tu Bhool Na Jaana
Ki Na Tujhse Bhi Inayat Hogi
Aaj Rusva Teri Galiyon Mein Mohabbat Hogi
Mere Mehboob...

Mere Mehboob Qayamat Hogi
Aaj Rusva Teri Galiyon Mein Mohabbat Hogi
Naam Niklega Tera Hi Lab Se
Jaan Jab Iss Dil-E-Nakam Se Rukhsat Hogi
Mere Mehboob...

(Mere Sanam Ke Dar Se Agar
Baad-E-Saba Ho Tera Guzar
Kehna Sitamgar Kuchh Hai Khabar
Tera Naam Liya Jab Tak Bhi Jiya Ae Shama Tera Parwana
Jisse Tujhe Aaj Bhi Nafrat Hogi
Aaj Rusva Teri Galiyon Mein Mohabbat Hogi
Mere Mehboob...)

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The Song Here. Or Here.

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Tonight, my beloved, would be the Judgement Day
Tonight, outside your house, my love would go astray
My eyes do reveal the discontent, and
Your heart, oh dear one, would complain about you
My beloved...

I visit the lane where you live, oh my dear one
I sing the tune of trust, oh my dear one
You cannot bear to listen, oh my dear one
Yet, have returned to this place, to tell you this “Deewana”
Tonight, this saga of destruction will finally end
Tonight, outside your house, my love would go astray
My beloved...

You too will heave a sigh just like me
Like me, you too will fall in love
And, let him dismiss you the way you did to me
You, oh my dear one, who tortured me, don’t you forget
That you will suffer the same fate
Tonight, outside your house, my love would go astray
My beloved...

Tonight, my beloved, would be the Judgement Day
Tonight, outside your house, my love would go astray
My name would be uttered by your lips
When life would leave from this impotent-heart
My beloved...

......... .... ....
...... ..... .....
(I was struck in the last verse as I don’t know what “Baad-E-Saba”.)

Hide & Seek

Pankaj was 39. Exactly. Today was his birthday, and he did not have any idea till Prajakta called, first thing in the morning. Pankaj was still asleep; he had come home very late last night. Since he was out for a week at least, he needed to wind up a number of things. To top that there was a murder suspect in the station. It was an open and shut case, and he was just a poor labourer, still it’s a murder case. Gaikwad said he’ll handle it, no problem, but Pankaj wanted to make sure. He did not trust anybody. It was an old habit.

Prajakta, like always, was matter-of-fact. “Happy birthday,” she said after Pankaj had picked up the phone and said hello, still half asleep. What? He asked. “Happy birthday,” his wife repeated. Today’s your birthday, didn’t you know?” Pankaj did not. If Firoze was here, he’d have reminded him, one week in advance. But, he was not here and Pankaj couldn’t be excited about the day. What’s the plan? Prajakta asked. Pankaj was sure she really did not want to know. She moved on to the next question before he could muster a reply: “When do you reach here?”

Pankaj was awake now. Today, he was supposed to go home, and then to his wife’s home, on his routine tri-monthly trip. Now, hearing his wife’s voice, his enthusiasm evaporated. In the last two years, it has become increasingly difficult for him to be with his wife, even for three days, even after every three months. And after what happened in January, he had to be with her, in this very house, for more than a month. It was a torture. But, what hurt him most was the end result, him losing Firoze. Pankaj wished if Firoze would call him instead of Prajakta. It’s seven and a half month now, and Firoze had disappeared. Pankaj was left with the shards of a broken mobile phone, and nothing else.

Firoze. Pankaj blinked. He needed to find Firoze. It was more important than visiting his useless wife, or his mother. “Prajakta,” he said. “Here’s the thing. I wanted to call you last night. I’m not coming this time. There’s a murder case. Important.” Prajakta did not ask for details. It was the thing he liked about her. She did not care about his job. She was far too busy with her own work. Being the head of the village council wasn’t easy. “Okay,” she said, “Give Rutuja a call later. She’d want to wish you.”

Rutuja was their daughter. Prajakta’s daughter, actually. Even after 11 years, Pankaj could not figure out who may be the father. He certainly was not. She was born seven months to their marriage, and in these seven months they did not have proper intercourse. Pankaj was really grateful that Prajakta had a problem with sex. She was the opposite of what he was; he wanted sex, all the time, till he met Firoze, but not from the people he knew, not from the same person twice. It helped Pankaj from going though the charade that he had prepared himself for when he agreed to this wedding. That was the reason why he never bothered to ask her about Rutuja. If he had his secrets, so did she. Pankaj was in fact more than happy for this marriage of convenience; he couldn’t thank Shinde sir more. Not only his wife did not expect him to do his husbandly duties, she also refused to set up a home with him. Her father was the head of Pimple Budruk village and she was the only offspring. All her three brothers died young. It was just matter of time that she became the sarpanch, and it was what she wanted. So, she stayed put at the paternal home even after marriage. Pankaj’s mother had a grumbled about the arrangement, saying that the whole village was laughing at her, that her son had become a ghar-jamai. But, for Pankaj, it was the best solution his could find to his problem.

And, the problem was Pankaj himself.

After Prajakta hung up the phone, Pankaj climbed down from the bed. If Firoze were here, sleeping next to him, he’d have turned and caress his slender body, his smooth skin and go back to sleep again. But, Firoze was not here, and this bed reminded him of Firoze more than everything else. In fact, everything in this house, every object, the mirror, fuchsia towels in the bathroom, the huge TV set, the indoor plants on the drawing room, everything, reminded him of Firoze. Firoze was gone, yet his spirit haunted the house.

Pankaj had brought the house for Firoze. Prajakta had been asking him to invest in real estate for years, but he was not interested. Instead he helped Bhau, his brother, acquire properties in Koregaon-Akhed, his village. Prajakta wasn’t too pleased. She said they should have a house in Pune; so that she could visit him sometimes. But, Pankaj knew, she had no plans to visit him, Pune or elsewhere. In the last 11 years, he had travelled to five different districts, nine different police station and not once Prajakta had come to visit him, until in January, and that too, to destroy the life he had finally decided to build for himself, after years of guilt and desperation, shame and hiding. He was finally ready to claim a glimmer of happiness for himself, and his wife appeared out of nowhere and trampled all over it.

Pankaj sat on the corner of the bed and dialled Firoze’s number on his touchscreen phone. Firoze had insisted that he get this fancy model, even though Pankaj wasn’t really a gadget-friendly person. A picture popped up on the screen, a smiling face, bright eyes, chocolate-coloured skin and a hint of mustache above his ripen lips. Firoze. Then a mechanized female voice announced: The number you have dialled is switched off. Of course. His phone, same as this one, was broken into pieces, and Pankaj still had the pieces on the drawer of his cupboard, the last of Firoze.

He did not know what to do with the memories. It was more difficult to miss somebody then to live in denial. It was easier when he decided that he did not belong in his father’s house anymore. It was easier when he decided that he wouldn’t remember Balasaheb anymore. It was easier when he decided that he’d find his release in the embrace of an unknown person, in a seedy hotel room, for an hour or so. It was easier when he decided that was alone, and would always remain so. It was easier when he was in hiding.

Pankaj had been in hiding all his life – from his family, his friends, the few of them he had, his wife, daughter, his colleagues, even the criminals he dealt with, everybody, lest they find out his secret.

He had a terrible secret.

It took him years, but slowly and meticulously he had invented an image for himself – that of a ruthless police office. It was the easier façade to hide behind. Everything changed when he met Firoze, and though he tried his best to avoid it, nothing was same anymore. That image of himself, that mask that he wore so perfectly all these years started to disintegrate. He did not mind it as long as Firoze was with him. Now, Firoze was gone, and he, the person behind the mask, wasn’t the same person anymore. The accumulate fear and guilt of all these years had turned into something else, a sense of hopelessness and resignation. He had given up.

Yet, the memories lingered. The memories wouldn’t let him be in peace. And at 39, Pankaj knew, he was in love. And, he did not believe it. He did not believe anyone other than himself, especially since Balasaheb died, and today, he found it difficult to even believe in himself.

He walked up to the bathroom. Now that he cancelled his trip, he needed to plan his day. He knew what he must do, and he dreaded it. The last thing he wanted to do was to visit Firoze’s mother.

As he walked towards the bathroom, he caught his reflection on the life-size mirror in the corner. This was another thing Firoze insisted that he should buy. Here he was. 39 years old. Inspector Pankaj Sonawane. He stood there, transfixed. Was it really him? In his mind he was still the 15-year-old village boy, mortified with his desires that engulfed his imagination. That kid on the run.

Pankaj removed the banyan he was wearing, then the underwear, and stared at his naked body. Is it really him? This body.

The body. This body. He murmured. It all started with this body, when he was 15 year old.

(Part of a short story I am working on, tentatively titled 'Hide & Seek')

Frank Ocean

Frank Ocean: the most talked-about man in music: The Guardian Talks to Frank Ocean:

Frank Ocean has had quite the week. "Yes," he says, smiling, with a barely perceptible shake of the head, as if in mild disbelief. Then he nods: "Yes. But also awesome." Two things have contributed to making his week awesome. There's the surprise release of his second album Channel Orange, a week before it was officially planned, which met with rabidly enthusiastic reviews comparing his idiosyncratic, narrative-heavy reimagining of soul and R&B to Prince and Stevie Wonder. Then there was the post on Tumblr in which he told, beautifully, the story of falling in love for the first time, with a man. "I don't know what happens now, and that's alrite," he wrote.

Tell us what you think: Rate and review this albumYou can understand why Ocean might be feeling a little stunned. He's suddenly the most talked-about man in music, though he hasn't yet done much of the talking himself. He shuffles into a dressing room behind Vancouver's Commodore Ballroom nursing a herbal tea, and plays with it nervously, a hoodie wrapped around his neck like a scarf, before politely shaking my hand, all the time avoiding eye contact. He's 24, relatively new to all of this, and suddenly the world wants to know his business.

Right now the old formula holds true: the less you know about him, the more you want to know. He's managed to maintain a rare air of pop star mystery. "It's not formulaic," he says. "It's not me necessarily trying to preserve mystique. It's who I am. It's how I prefer to move. I really don't think that deeply about it at all, I swear I don't. I'm just existing."

'Sure, evil exists, extremism exists. Somebody could commit a hate crime and hurt me … but they could do the same just because I'm black. Do you just not go outside your house?'

There's a sense that impulse has driven Frank Ocean's career so far. He emerged from two worlds: he was a successful songwriter for the likes of Brandy, Justin Bieber and Beyoncé; and he ran with Odd Future, though always seemed more mature than their mouthier shock tactics. It could be argued with conviction that he's already eclipsed them. Packing up, broke, and driving away from his hometown of New Orleans, post-Katrina, to give it a shot as a songwriter in LA was a risk. Giving away his first album Nostalgia, Ultra for free was a risk (he put it online in 2011 without the knowledge of his label, Def Jam). Coming out was a risk.

"I won't touch on risky, because that's subjective," he says. "People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don't necessarily merit fear. Me putting Nostalgia out … what's physically going to happen? Me saying what I said on my Tumblr last week? Sure, evil exists, extremism exists. Somebody could commit a hate crime and hurt me. But they could do the same just because I'm black. They could do the same just because I'm American. Do you just not go outside your house? Do you not drive your car because of the statistics? How else are you limiting your life for fear?"

Read the complete interview by Rebecca Nicholson here.

The Dark Knight Rises

David Hudson Collects 'The Dark Knight Rises' REVIEWS:

Now that the dam has broken, here come the flash floods, so let’s get right to it: “The real world threats of terrorism, political anarchy and economic instability make deep incursions into the cinematic comic book domain in The Dark Knight Rises,” begins Todd McCarthy in the Hollywood Reporter. “Big-time Hollywood filmmaking at its most massively accomplished, this last installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy makes everything in the rival Marvel universe look thoroughly silly and childish. Entirely enveloping and at times unnerving in a relevant way one would never have imagined, as a cohesive whole this ranks as the best of Nolan’s trio, even if it lacks—how could it not?—an element as unique as Heath Ledger’s immortal turn in The Dark Knight. It’s a blockbuster by any standard.”

“If viewers were wanting a corrective to the jumpsuit antics of The Avengers, or the noodling high-school angst of The Amazing Spider-Man, then rest assured that Batman delivers in spades,” writes the Guardian‘s Xan Brooks. “Here is a film of granite, monolithic intensity; a superhero romp so serious that it borders on the comical, like a children’s fancy-dress party scripted by Victor Hugo and scored by Wagner…. ‘I’m still a believer in the Batman,’ murmurs Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s rookie cop at one point. Arm-twisted, senses reeling, I am forced to concede that I am too.”

“Running an exhilarating, exhausting 164 minutes, Nolan’s trilogy-capping epic sends Batman to a literal pit of despair, restoring him to the core of a legend that questions, and powerfully affirms, the need for heroism in a fallen world,” writes Variety‘s Justin Chang. “If it never quite matches the brilliance of 2008′s The Dark Knight, this hugely ambitious action-drama nonetheless retains the moral urgency and serious-minded pulp instincts that have made the Warners franchise a beacon of integrity in an increasingly comicbook-driven Hollywood universe.”

“Eight years after the events of The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has become a recluse, limping around his estate because of injuries sustained as Batman, while the public speculates about his sanity.” Todd Gilchrist for the Playlist: “But when a masked, monolithic terrorist named Bane (Tom Hardy) empties the Wayne coffers and launches a populist uprising using an underworld of thieves and criminals, Bruce is forced to don the cape and cowl again to try and restore order… Looking piecemeal at The Dark Knight Rises, it feels like a movie of profound disillusionment about America that could only be objectively told by someone who’s not a native: Nolan dissects our current financial woes, our clash of cultures, even one-percent-versus-99-percent-style class warfare with a scalpel, assigning culpability to all involved and condemning the whole system as a sort of demagogue-exchange program. From the corporate fat cats to the mouth breathers scraping by on pennies, everyone aspires to change their situation, to triumph over the forces of (sometimes rightful) opposition, or to wipe the slate clean and start again, and their motives are almost unilaterally unclean – either in origin or execution. The film should have its own Faustian bargain counter in the corner of the screen, ticking off bad decisions and foolhardy expectations.”

“Anne Hathaway’s interpretation of Selina Kyle, known best as Catwoman to most fans, is indelible, a strong and savvy match for Bruce Wayne,” writes Drew McWeeney at HitFix. “Nolan uses her as one part of the thesis of the movie, with Bane, the strange terrorist played by Tom Hardy, as the blunt instrument that drives the point home. Bane’s plan to bring Gotham to its knees is elaborate and, once revealed, somewhat horrifying. He is not simply a rehash of the Joker, who was more of a force of chaos than anything. Bane is evil. He is unrelenting, unquestioning, destructive evil…. Whoever Warner Bros hires to reboot the Batman films a few years from now, I wish you luck. The bar is as high as it could possibly be.”


For More, and for the links to the original reviews, visit FANDOR.

Cocktail

After my friend returned from the morning show of ‘Cocktail’ on the second day of its release, the first thing I asked was, who died. I was convinced in a story like this, with a love-triangle, menage-a-trois if you like, between friends, who would eventually turn to lovers, in the context of a Bollywood film, someone must die. Then, I was told that Randeep Hooda has a special role in the film. Okay then, he gets one of the girl. Problem solved. Was it? I couldn’t sit through the film till the end!

And, I was thinking about how much we expect from a mainstream, Bollywood film. Absolutely nothing, as long as the lead players look good, wear nice, trendy clothes, do some song and dance number, and then get married. There’s is just one ending to all Bollywood films. The wedding. And then, they lived happily ever after.

In his review in Pune Mirror, Karan Anshuman succinctly explain what ‘Cocktail’ could have been, if it was not a Bollywood film:

If you distill it down to its component cores, Cocktail is essentially an experiment to see how far the idea of a threesome can be pushed given the prudish framework of Hindi commercial cinema. If Cocktail was an honest film, it would be a story of a sex addict with a corporate job who falls in (what seems like) love with a pole dancer in a strip club he frequents to wallow in selfpity and satiate his urge. The dancer, in her own benevolent way atones for her past and her troubled childhood by sheltering a victim of domestic abuse in her house. This is followed by a three way and every straight and gay combination possible with lots of nudity and maybe (if the characters remain indecisive for most part) a murder thrown in before the film ends unexpectedly and certainly not happily. This really is a cracking story for an East Coast indie, a style of filmmaking I’d imagine director Homi Adajania is well familiar with and perhaps a starting point for his own Cocktail. But writer Imtiaz Ali dilutes this vision and goes on to self-censor, Indianise, romanticise, emotionalise, ergo commercialise the experience and give us a one part alcohol and 10 part water cocktail, an exercise in pointlessness.

Then he concludes:

Deepika Padukone is the star here: with her lion hair, smashing figure and a performance to match. It’s too bad Imtiaz Ali messes with Veronica the way he does, taking a moral stand with his words, deciding for her that no matter who you are the salwar- suit-wearing, biryani-cooking, home-making wife is the answer.

Good for Deepika Padukone; bad for movies in general. But, these progressive ideals that the current crop of Bollywood filmmakers are experimenting with their heroines seem to suffer from the same issues, the loss of momentum.

Look at ‘The Dirty Picture’. You have Silk, who lives her life on her own terms, and then, she dies a tragic death, as if to atone for her attitudes. Same is the case with ‘Ishaqzaade’. Zoya, the firebrand Juliet of the film, is gagged, both literally and figuratively before the film ends, and reduced to just another woman, to follow the demands of the patriarchy.

Bollywood is changing. But, this change is just skin deep, or a cocktail without the punch.

The Complete Karan Anshuman Review Here.

channel ORANGE

channel ORANGE (song by song) Album Review/Analysis by April W.

Track 2: Thinkin Bout You

The first full length song on the album is, perhaps, Mr. Ocean’s most well-known, most covered, and most downloaded song, THINKIN BOUT YOU. This song has been circulating for months but the Channel Orange version starts off with some nice new instrumentals, and slight background changes. It tells the honest and universally relatable tale of missing and wanting to be with someone. It’s an ambiguous love letter to a first love that conveys “we’ll go down this road til it turns from color to black and white.”

Track 4: Sierra Leone

SIERRA LEONE. I must admit, this is one of my favorite songs on the record. It has 300+ plays on my iTunes account. It’s a very sexy and sultry slow jam with a “Neptunes” vibe spilling from every angle of it, and I’m not even sure if Pharrell co-produced this track or not. It is filled with wordplay and metaphors that can easily fly over the listener’s head. It basically tells the story of a poor, young couple who have unprotected sex, get pregnant, [“Spending too much time alone/and I just ran out of Trojans/ Horses gallop to her throne”] have a baby, and ends with Frank singing his baby daughter a lullaby about the reality of life. “Baby girl, if you knew what I know”.

Track 5: Sweet Life and Track 7: Super Rich Kids

SWEET LIFE and SUPER RICH KIDS have two very different sounds to them, but basically throw hints at the same subject of mocking people who live a wealthy life. SWEET LIFE, however displays the joys of the luxury life, while SUPER RICH KIDS, by contrast, conveys the dark side of it all. SWEET LIFE was co-produced by the very accomplished and influential Pharrell Williams alongside Ocean himself, whereas SUPER RICH KIDS samples melodies from the Elton John classic “Bennie and the Jetts,” and the soulful RnB hit “Real Love,” that is performed by Mary J Blige. Earl Sweatshirt makes an appearance in SUPER RICH KIDS, and if you listen closely enough to his blurred and mumbled lyrics it can be understood that his verse has quite a relevant meaning. Many Frank Ocean fans were not looking forward to Earl’s verse in the song. Personally, I had no idea was to expect of it, and when I finally heard it I was quite satisfied.

Track 8: Pilot Jones

PILOT JONES is another one of my personal favorites. It has a smooth and sexy vibe to it, similar to SIERRA LEONE. Frank Ocean starts it off by speaking and graduating into falsettos, telling the story of how he was in love with a woman addicted to drugs. The two lovers started out with plenty of things in common. But now, the woman he sings about is only and constantly searching for highs; he won’t get high with her any more. [“We once had things in common/…/You’re out there flying high/Go head, fly that thing/…/But fly alone”]. Although this woman is clearly and deeply addicted to the sale and use of drugs, Frank Ocean continues trying to make her sober [“I just don’t know why I keep on trying to keep a grown woman sober”], but regardless of his failure he will continue to love her. She’s addicted to drugs, but he’s addicted to her. “You’re the dealer and the stoner, with the sweetest kiss around.”

Track 9: Crack Rock

CRACK ROCK. Track 9 on Channel Orange is also a story of drug addiction. It isn’t about love or attraction, unlike PILOT JONES; it simply tells the unbiased story of a man addicted to crack cocaine. It is a mid tempo piece of work with subtle piano melodies that set the serious tone of the subject at hand. The lyrics tell of how this addiction is unbreakable, although the main character may want to stop drug use. Drugs have caused him to lose all thing of importance. [“You hit them stones and you broke your home/Crack rock crack rock”]. He will do anything to get his high. Now he’s living on the street, stealing, his family doesn’t trust him, he is too strung out for anyone to be attracted to him sexually, but most importantly he is alone now. “You’re shucking and jiving/Stealing and robbing/To get the fixing that you’re itching for/Your family stopped inviting you to things/Won’t let you hold their infant/You used to get a little cut-up from time to time/But the freaks aint trying to sleep with Cracky.”

Track 10: Pyramids

PYRAMIDS is the first officially released single from Channel Orange, and the one that Frank Ocean will have the most fun performing at shows (or so he said via his Twitter account). It’s the peak of the album, a ten minute joint that has both futuristic and classic appeal. The first half of the song makes references to the legendary story of Cleopatra and even the bible. Contrarily, the second half is extremely modern, referring to strippers, pimps, and prostitutes.

In its first half, up tempo and groovy, Frank Ocean and his woman are ancient Egyptian royalty. His queen, Cleopatra, has run away from him, as he was fooled into believing she was stolen by a thief. He will do anything to get her back. [“Set the cheetahs on the loose/There’s a thief out on the move/…/They have taken Cleopatra/…/Come back for my glory/Bring her back to me”]. Turns out, Cleopatra was having an affair and when the Pharaoh finds this out, she kills herself. [“Found you laying down with Samson/…/Bad dreams Cleopatra/Send the cheetahs to the tomb/Our queen has met her doom/No more she lives/…/It has killed Cleopatra”]. In the latter half, a bit more slow and sexy, Frank Ocean and his woman are reincarnated into individuals far, far from royalty. He is an unemployed pimp living in a motel, and Cleopatra is a stripper/hooker that keeps his bills paid by working at a club called The Pyramid. Apparently Frank is falling in love with Cleopatra again but “your love aint free no more.”

Track 11: Lost

LOST. Track 11 is also an up tempo, groovy track. It is the story of a woman who gets caught up in a superficial world of drugs, sex, materials, and excitement. She’s constantly thrill searching, she’s stopped going to work [“And I just wanna know/Why you aint been going to work”], but a regular nine to five job can’t give her the things she wants for herself [“Boss aint working you like this/He can’t take care of you like this”]. Eventually this woman has become caught up and overwhelmed in thrill searching, and now she’s lost in the heat of drugs, sex, materials, and excitement. “Now you’re lost/Lost in the heat of it all/Girl you know you’re lost/Lost in the thrill of it all.”

Track 13: Monks

Yet another up tempo, groovy and funky record from the album with very heavy percussions. MONKS is a song about a young groupie he met while he was on tour. In this song he is a wild rock star and this young groupie falls in love and wants to run away with him. The couple eventually does run away although her father is traveling close behind them. There are a lot of troubles in this relationship.

Track 14: Bad Religion

BAD RELIGION is Channel Orange’s breakout song. It is the most emotional song on the album. It’s the heart wrenching story of an unrequited love. Brought me to tears. Frank Ocean made history performing this on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, this is the first time a popular/Rnb Black male singer has sung about having love for a person of the same sex on national television for everyone to see. This song goes hand in hand with Frank Ocean’s “Thank You” letter that he posted to his Tumblr blog on July 3, 2012, a few hours before American Independence Day. In this letter he revealed to us that his first love didn’t love him back (or at least admit to it).

Many people confuse Frank Ocean’s choice of example and the title of the song as a diss towards Islam because he sings “Allahu Akbar,” which is Arabic for “God is great,” and then goes on to sing “but don’t curse me,” in reply to the Taxi driver that is praying an Islamic prayer for him. What he’s really saying is that his sexuality isn’t accepted by Islamic religion, or many other religions, he just chose to use Islam as an example. What he’s really titling a “Bad Religion” is his love for someone who doesn’t love him back; unrequited love. “It’s a bad religion/to be in love with someone/Who could never love you/I know/Only bad religion/Could have me feeling the way I do.”

Track 15: Pink Matter

PINK MATTER has been much anticipated since Frank premiered it himself at shows from his previous tour. Track 15 from Channel Orange is extremely sexy and can be played on repeat for hours at a time. The song begins with an internal conflict between Frank and his internal conscience which refers to as Sensei (figure of guidance/teacher). This Sensei is teaching him that his woman is there for more than physical pleasure and benefit, but also for love. He goes on to explain and glorify the woman’s reproductive organ. I won’t get to explicit, but he compares it to cotton candy, meaning it’s sweet and delightful, but also compares it to Majin Buu (a plump pink villain from the Dragon Ball Z series), meaning it can also cause a lot of trouble ;). After Frank is done with his pointless internal conflicts he concludes that his woman is his pleasure [“Nothing mattered/cotton candy Majin Buu”]. For his woman is nothing more than her reproductive organs and the pleasure that she gives. Her heart, or anything else about her doesn’t matter. “Pleasure of matter.” Andre 3000 is featured on the track and ends it with a verse or two that Frank harmonizes with. He also plays guitar in song.

Track 16: Forrest Gump

Frank Ocean first sang FORREST GUMP in his set at Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in April, 2012. Now, this song is very broad, and can be interpreted in a million ways, but it’s much more than just the homosexual love story that too many people believe it to be. If you have seen the movie Forrest Gump it is completely obvious that the song makes blunt and frank references to one of Tom Hanks’ breakthrough movies Forrest Gump. It also has many direct audio clips from the movie that play underneath the lyrics and tunes. Many believe that it’s written from the character Jenny’s perspective. I personally interpret it as being a song glorifying the specialness of a first love and saying that they will never be forgotten. “Forrest Green/Forrest Blue/I’m remembering/If this is love/I know it’s true/I won’t forget you”.

Read the complete track descriptions at the Original Tumblr post Here.

Original Post Here.

Those Magnificent Men & Their Flying Machines

Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, Or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes is a 1965 British comedy film starring Stuart Whitman and directed and co-written by Ken Annakin. Based on a screenplay titled Flying Crazy, the story is set in 1910, when Lord Rawnsley, an English press magnate, offers £10,000 to the winner of the Daily Post air race from London to Paris, to prove that Britain is "number one in the air".

Director Ken Annakin had been interested in aviation from his early years when Sir Alan Cobham gave him a flight in a biplane. With co-writer Jack Davies, Annakin had been working on an adventure film about transatlantic flights when the producer's bankruptcy aborted the production. Fresh from his role as director of the British exterior segments in The Longest Day (1962), Annakin suggested an event from early aviation to Darryl F. Zanuck, his producer on The Longest Day.

Zanuck paid for an epic faithful to the era, deciding the name Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines after Elmo Williams, managing director of 20th Century Fox in Europe, told him his wife had written an opening for a song that Annakin complained would "seal the fate of the movie":

Those magnificent men in their flying machines,
They go up diddley up-up, they go down diddley down-down!

However, after being put to music by Ron Goodwin, the Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines song went on to a life of its own, released in singles and on the soundtrack record.

Annakin was born in 1914, just as the era of aviation depicted in this movie was ending, and though the movie is a farce, the behaviour of the various aviators depicts the tensions between the European countries prior to the First World War. This sense of civility between European nationalities is remembered as the Entente cordiale.

More Here.

Lawless

Lawless is a 2012 Western crime film directed by John Hillcoat and starring Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska and Guy Pearce. The Nick Cave screenplay is based on the novel The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant. The film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

Three brothers find their bootlegging business under threat in Prohibition-era Franklin County, Virginia. The story is based on Matt Bondurant's grandfather and great-uncles.

More here.

>>>>

The Wettest County in the World is a 2008 historical novel by Matt Bondurant, grandson of one of the main characters in the novel. The book tells the story of a family of three brothers during the Depression in rural Virginia, who made a living bootlegging moonshine. The novel is told from both the perspectives of the three Bondurant brothers, mainly focusing on the youngest, Jack, as well as the separate perspective of Sherwood Anderson, who christened Franklin County, Virginia, the "wettest county in the world" while there.

More here.

The Matrix

Morpheus: Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.


Morpheus: I imagine that right now, you're feeling a bit like Alice. Hmm? Tumbling down the rabbit hole?
Neo: You could say that.
Morpheus: I see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. Ironically, that's not far from the truth. Do you believe in fate, Neo?
Neo: No.
Morpheus: Why not?
Neo: Because I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life.
Morpheus: I know *exactly* what you mean. Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Neo: The Matrix.
Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is?
Neo: Yes.
Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.

Bad Religion

Taxi driver, you're my shrink for the hour
Leave the meter running, its rush hour
So take the streets if you wanna
Just outrun the demons, could you?
Allah-hu-akbar, I told him don’t curse me
But boy you need prayer, I guess it couldn’t hurt me
If it brings me to my knees, it’s a bad religion
Undying love, To me it’s nothing but a one man cult
With cyanide in a Styrofoam cup
I can never make him love me,
Never make him love me, no, no
Taxi driver, I swear I’ve got three lives
Balanced on my head like steak knives
I can’t tell you the truth about my disguise
I can’t trust no one
You say, Allah-hu-akbar, I told him don’t curse me
But boy you need prayer, I guess it couldn’t hurt me
If it brings me to my knees, it’s a bad religion
Unrequited love, To me it’s nothing but a one man cult
With cyanide in a Styrofoam cup
I can never make him love me
Never make him love me, no, no
It’s a, it’s a bad religion
To be in love with someone who can never love you
A bad, only bad religion
Could have me the feeling the way I do

Frank Ocean, Bad Religion (from the album Channel Orange, 2012)

The Song Here.

Reading Hour

Two of my stories, 'The Scent of Guava' and 'Decision', published in the wonderful magazine 'Reading Hour.'

Any Day Now

Any Day Now is a drama directed by Travis Fine from a script he based on George Arthur Bloom’s script written over 30 years ago.

The film was shot in the late summer of 2011. Set in 1979, it tells the story of a gay couple, played by Garret and Alan Cumming, who take in an abandoned boy with Down Syndrome.

Garret plays Paul Fleiger, a closeted Deputy District Attorney, and Alan Cumming portrays Rudy Donatello, a drag performer. Isaac Leyva plays their adopted son Marco and Frances Fisher appears as the family court judge tasked with rendering a decision in the adoption case.

More Here.

Salmon Fishing In The Yemen

Writes Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian: There's a high level of machine-tooled quirkiness in this quirky-feelgood British comedy, written by Simon Beaufoy, directed by Lasse Hallström and based on the 2006 bestseller by Paul Torday. And yet it feels as if you've seen it many times before. Bill Nighy isn't in it, for example, and yet afterwards I had an intense memory of Bill Nighy being in it, the way amputees can feel their toes itching. Ewan McGregor is Dr Fred Jones, the uptight fisheries scientist who finds himself dragged into a wild scheme to introduce salmon fishing to the Yemen, dreamed up by a fishing-crazed sheikh (Amr Waked). Grumpy Dr Jones is pretty testy at first with the sheikh's beautiful English aide, Harriet (Emily Blunt). But as the desert is irrigated, so romance blooms, and the salmon of love leaps in the river of emotion. The weakest part of this film is the ferocious government PR chief, played by Kristin Scott Thomas, with much lip-pursing and eye-rolling, but nothing funny or believable in the script for her to say. For an audience used to The Thick of It, this spin-doctor really does sound feeble. The comedy's farmed, not wild.

More Here.

A Prayer For Wishes Unfulfilled

It’s good to be a human, Partha, preferably, a man.
You know that, being a prince, and being loved, and being safe
In the knowledge that you have this life, and this one life alone.
It’s good to be a god too, Madhusudhan, you know that,
You remember nothing since you forget nothing, you
Do not live since you do not die, and the demands of flesh
Cannot distract you. You were here before, and will forever be.

Consider me, then, in this body of flesh and bone I do not recognise.
And this mind, and those memories, which this body cannot
Comprehend. You say, I’m a warrior, but I’m not a man. You
Say I’m my father’s son, but I remember another father, in another lifetime,
Who called me a daughter. You say, he’s just an old man, the Pitamaha,
But I see the young, proud archer, uncouth, and heartless, who’d
Listen to none but his own voice. I blink, and I’m someone else.

(A work in progress...)

My Winnipeg

Writes Roger Ebert: If you love movies in the very sinews of your imagination, you should experience the work of Guy Maddin. If you have never heard of him, I am not surprised. Now you have. A new Maddin movie doesn't play in every multiplex, city or state. If you hear of one opening, seize the day. Or search where obscure films can be found. You will be plunged into the mind of a man who thinks in the images of old silent films, disreputable documentaries, movies that never were, from eras beyond comprehension. His imagination frees the lurid possibilities of the banal. He rewrites history; when that fails, he creates it.

First, a paragraph of dry fact. Maddin makes films that use the dated editing devices of old movies: iris shots, breathless titles, shock cutting, staged poses, melodramatic acting, recycled footage, camera angles not merely dramatic but startling. He uses these devices to tell stories that begin with the improbable and march boldly into the inconceivable. My paragraph is ending now, and you have seen how difficult it is to describe his work. I will end with two more statements: (1) Shot for shot, Maddin can be as surprising and delightful as any filmmaker has ever been, and (2) he is an acquired taste, but please, sir, may I have some more?

Consider his film "My Winnipeg." The city fathers commissioned it as a documentary, to be made by "the mad poet of Manitoba," as a Canadian magazine termed him. Maddin has never left his hometown, although judging by this film, it has left him. It has abandoned its retail landmarks, its sports traditions, and even the daily local soap opera, "Ledge Man," which ran for 50 years and starred Maddin's mother. As every episode opened, a man was found standing on a ledge and threatening to jump, and Maddin's mother talked him out of it.

The Complete Review Here.

The Saddest Music In the World

Writes Roger Ebert: So many movies travel the same weary roads. So few imagine entirely original worlds. Guy Maddin's "The Saddest Music in the World" exists in a time and place we have never seen before, although it claims to be set in Winnipeg in 1933. The city, we learn, has been chosen by the London Times, for the fourth year in a row, as "the world capital of sorrow." Here Lady Port-Huntly (Isabella Rossellini) has summoned entries for a contest which will award $25,000 "in Depression Era dollars" to the performer of the saddest music.

This plot suggests no doubt some kind of camp musical, a sub-Monty Python comedy. What Maddin makes of it is a comedy, yes, but also an eerie fantasy that suggests a silent film like "Metropolis" crossed with a musical starring Nelson Eddy and Jeannette McDonald, and then left to marinate for long forgotten years in an enchanted vault. The Canadian filmmaker has devised a style that evokes old films from an alternate timeline; "The Saddest Music" is not silent and not entirely in black and white, but it looks like a long-lost classic from decades ago, grainy and sometimes faded; he shoots on 8mm film and video and blows it up to look like a memory from cinema's distant past.

The effect is strange and delightful; somehow the style lends quasi-credibility to a story that is entirely preposterous. Because we have to focus a little more intently, we're drawn into the film, surrounded by it. There is the sensation of a new world being created around us. The screenplay, by Maddin and George Toles, is based on a work by the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, who wrote the very different Remains of the Day. Here he creates, for Maddin's visual style, a fable that's "Canadian Idol" crossed with troubled dreams.

The Complete Review here.

Keyhole

Writes A O Scott in The New York Times: There has been a lot of talk lately about the cinema of nostalgia, inspired by “The Artist” and “Hugo” and “Midnight in Paris,” among others. Mr. Maddin’s obsession with the movie past long predates those efforts. His black-and-white, silent films (including the features “Dracula, Pages From a Virgin’s Diary,” “Cowards Bend the Knee” and “Brand Upon the Brain!” and a bouquet of marvelously kinetic shorts) are more radical and more rigorously authentic than “The Artist.” He uses old styles and technologies not as a cute retro gimmick but rather to explore persistent themes of memory and loss.

In “Keyhole” a gangster named Ulysses (Jason Patric) returns to a home that is haunted by regret and threatened by the prospect of revenge. His minions, bracing for a police raid, pass the time conspiring, complaining, flirting with the boss’s mistress and dabbling in interior decoration. Ulysses arrives carrying a young woman named Denny (Brooke Palsson), whom he has apparently saved from drowning. He is preoccupied with caring for her and also with a young man, gagged and bound with ropes, who turns out to be his son, Manners (David Wontner).

Manners’s mother, Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini), is somewhere on the upper floors, attended by her lover and the specter of her father. Like his Homeric namesake Ulysses is seeking a way back to his wife, though there is not much evidence of love or loyalty between them. Nor is “Keyhole,” narratively speaking, a reimagined “Odyssey” any more than it is a ’30s crime drama. It’s more like a dusty attic full of battered, evocative cultural references. You might detect the shades of Ibsen’s “Ghosts” and Henry James’s spooky Victorian tales or find other echoes and glimmerings to parse with your friends after the movie.

The Complete Review Here.

Brave

Writes Roger Ebert: "Brave" is the latest animated film from Pixar, and therefore becomes the film the parents of the world will be dragged to by their kids. The good news is that the kids will probably love it, and the bad news is that parents will be disappointed if they're hoping for another Pixar groundbreaker. Unlike such brightly original films as "Toy Story," "Finding Nemo," "WALL-E" and "Up," this one finds Pixar poaching on traditional territory of Disney, its corporate partner. We get a spunky princess; her mum, the queen; her dad, the gruff king, an old witch who lives in the woods, and so on.

The princess is Merida (voice of Kelly Macdonald), seen in an action-packed prologue as a flame-haired Scottish tomboy whose life is changed by an early birthday gift of a bow, which quickly inspires her to become the best archer in the kingdom. Then we flash forward to Merida as a young lady of marriageable age, who is startled by request from Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson) to choose among three possible husbands chosen by her clan.

Nothing doing, especially since all three candidates are doofuses. Merida leaps upon her trusty steed and flees into the forest, where her friends the will-o-the-wisps lead her to the cottage of a gnarled old witch (Julie Walters). She begs for a magic spell that will change Queen Elinor's mind, but it changes more than that: It turns Elinor into a bear. Witches never know how to stop when they're ahead.

The Complete Review Here.

I Wish

Writes Roger Ebert: During his entire career, Kore-eda, 49, has been invested in sympathetic stories about people we warmly identify with. His frequent theme is parents and children. You may remember his well-received "After Life" (1998), about people asked after death to film one chosen event in their lives. Or the more painful "Nobody Knows" (2004), about a family of children left in an apartment to fend for themselves in their mother's absence. I was much moved by "Maborosi" (1995), about a young widow and her son who move to a coastal village where they know no one.

In "I Wish," he enters easily into the lives of Koichi (Koki Maeda), a fourth grader, and Ryunosuke (Ohshiro Maeda), a few years younger. These are blessed children. You can't just tell actors, especially young ones, to "act happy" and expect them to do it. They must in some essential way be happy. Here they're filled with the energy and hopes of childhood, their smiles are quick and open, laughter comes easily, and they seem to run everywhere, as if they never learned to walk.

The Complete Review Here.