Sleepy Hollow

“A dead guy, a mental patient, and a time traveller from the Revolution…” “That’s our team…”

And this is the season 1 of Sleepy Hollow, a maddeningly entertaining TV series, if tad over the top.

As you can guess, the story is a rip-off from Washington Irving’s beloved story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, about a headless horseman and a bumbling suitor, Icabod Crane. And this re-imagines the whole thing in our time, and does it better than the Tim Burton movie starring Johnny Depp.

The time is now and apparently, some guy called Moloch, the guardian of the purgatory, wants to occupy our world with the help of the Biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. So, the headless horseman rides again, and so is Icabod, who too comes to life after more than 200 years, thanks to his wife Katrina, who was a witch and now a prisoner in purgatory. Icabod teams up with a plucky police officer in the shape of Nichole Behari, and it is soon revealed that they are the two witnesses of the Bible who must stop the four horsemen. So, the mayhem begins.

The whole premise is absurd, but it is so much fun, especially when Icabod criticizes the modern world and how he subverts the known history, and how the writers of the show include well known myths and legends and twist them to suit their purpose.

It’s brilliant in a very silly way.

The book is out. Out somewhere at a printer's place in Mumbai. Finally, after four agonising years, I am finally free of them, my lines. Another book of poems after 14 years. Can't wait to lay my hands on the actual books... Thank to Mahesh, they look absolutely stunning.

The book is published from small press started by a friend. As I am convinced that people do not buy and read poetry anymore, the book is meant for private circulation. No plans for marketing so far. However, my publisher wants to make it available online. Fingers crossed.

By the way, the book is called, Pages from an Unfinished Autobiography.

The House of Fear

Ibn-e-Safi (also spelled as Ibne Safi) (Urdu: ابنِ صفی‎) was the pen name of Asrar Ahmad (Urdu: اسرار احمد‎), a best-selling and prolific fiction writer, novelist and poet of Urdu from Pakistan. The word Ibn-e-Safi is an Arabian expression which literally means Son of Safi, where the word Safi means chaste or righteous. He wrote from the 1940s in India, and later Pakistan after the independence of British India in 1947. His main works were the 125-book series Jasoosi Dunya (The Spy World) and the 120-book Imran Series, with a small canon of satirical works and poetry. His novels were characterised by a blend of mystery, adventure, suspense, violence, romance and comedy, achieving massive popularity across a broad readership in South Asia.

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FiftySevenByEight

I picked up this book, Fifty Seven by Eight by Samira Gupta, at the book fair because of its picture, and because I was getting it really cheap. I liked the book, and how the author achieves a quirky modulation in combining the pictures and the words that accompany it.

The books tell a personal story of girl, who left her joint family in Kolkata, run by a patriarchal grandfather to Bangalore to find her own footing and then returns home to a nostalgia, which is at once real and imaginary.

I liked how the pictures are arranged and how the authors trusts the pictures, mostly buildings and objects, as opposed to the human face (when there is a human face appears, its mostly the author’s own; the other people are shown in parts, hands, feet…), and how the words are used (very sparingly, I must say), to heightened the sense of conflict.

Yet, I was not convinced if the book is genuine or just a vanity project. I gave it away to a friend, a poet and photographer as a gift and the next day, he wrote to me, saying that the book was a masterpiece. He couldn’t sleep the whole night getting immersed in the book. There you have it, the best possible blurb.

In her Linkedin profile, Gupta writes about Fifty Seven by Eight: “Sometimes when I think back, maybe it was just easier to be answerable to my grandfather.

Or rather to be answerable to anyone but myself.”

57/8 is a story about a personal search for identity, faith and clarity in an environment where everything is provided for and yet nothing is given. Where one man’s word is law and new laws are made everyday. Where three generations of women live, pray and laugh together, yet, will only fend for themselves. And where God is sacred only when someone decides how sacred he must be.

It is about living together and living alone. It is about wanting space and then not needing it. It is about not knowing what you want. It is about new roads and old lanes.

And it is about home, everyone’s safe haven.

And this is from publisher, Westland/Tranquebar: In this stunning debut novel, Samira Gupta explores what it is to grow up in an oppressive, patriarchal environment, where one man's word is law. With powerful black-and-white phtographs, she tells a story about a personal search for identity, faith and clarity in an environment where everything is provided for and yet nothing is given. Where three generations of women live, pray and laugh together, and yet each fends only for herself. With humour and great insight, Gupta paints a poignant picture of a girl trying to find herself, veering between wanting space and not needing it, between self-doubt and resilient confidence. Is the rambling 57/8 her home and safe haven, or a place that will splinter away all her individuality? Taking the reader through new roads and old lanes with perception, sensitivity, originality and wit, Gupta's is an exciting new voice to watch out for.

In the old capital of a brand new state, night out with an old friend at Lakdi Ka Pul, then on the next morning, a trip to the charming Char Minar and the gullies surrounding it, and a drive to the other side of the town admiring the views of the Hussain Sagar lake, and a hearty meal of mutton biryani at Paradise, a day to treasure. In Hyderabad on September 21, 2014.

From being a ‘deskie’ in a half-lit corner of a run-down office nights after night, it was quite a change to be on the other end of the spectrum, witnessing bigwigs from the Indian newspaper industry discuss the realities of the business, from printing presses to new sources of ad revenue to new ways to disperse news, at the Wan-Ifra (World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers) Annual Conference, 17-18 September, New Delhi

The Holy Mountain

The Alchemist speaks. The ultimate example of myth-making.

Alejandro Jodorowsky in The Holy Mountain (1973)

La montaña sagrada (The Holy Mountain, reissued as The Sacred Mountain) is a 1973 Mexican-American avant-garde drama film directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, who also participated as an actor, composer, set designer and costume designer on the film. The film was produced by Beatles manager Allen Klein of ABKCO Music and Records, after Jodorowsky scored an underground phenomenon with El Topo and the acclaim of both John Lennon and George Harrison (Lennon and Yoko Ono put up production money). It was shown at various international film festivals in 1973, including Cannes, and limited screenings in New York and San Francisco.

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Divergent

Ship on Land, or another view of dystopian American, according to Hollywood Blockbuster tradition, in Divergent (2014), sad that the film failed to create the ripples like The Hunger Games.

Divergent is a 2014 American science fiction action film directed by Neil Burger, based on the novel of the same name by Veronica Roth. The film is the first installment in The Divergent Series and was produced by Lucy Fisher, Pouya Shabazian, and Douglas Wick, with a screenplay by Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor. It stars Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Ashley Judd, Jai Courtney, Ray Stevenson, Zoë Kravitz, Miles Teller, Tony Goldwyn, Maggie Q and Kate Winslet. The story takes place in a dystopian post-apocalyptic version of Chicago where people are divided into distinct factions based on human virtues. Beatrice Prior is warned that she is Divergent and thus will never fit into any one of the factions and soon learns that a sinister plot is brewing in her seemingly perfect society.

More Here.

Delhi Book Fair

The best thing about the 20th annual Delhi Book Fair, which was held from 23 to 31 August, at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi, was the fact that people still visited a show dedicated solely to books, and office stationery items. While the footfall was noticeably low during weekdays, it was more than satisfactory during the weekends.

However, the usual concerns regarding the business of books remained the same. The stalls owners claimed that most visitors came to the book fair to browse, not to buy. Probably, they would later order the books on an e-commerce site, which offers massive discounts, if he doesn’t prefer an ebook, said a stall owner who did not want to be named. Another stall owner said most visitors come to the exhibition looking for special books, especially dictionaries, at a discounted rate. They are not interested in picking up a random book off the shelf, he said. He bemoaned that most visitors seem to be interested in picking up an educational CD for their kids than pick up a book.

The event, jointly organised by the India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) and the Federation of Indian Publishers (FIP), saw more than 225 publishers and distributors are participating. This year, the theme of the nine-day event was Literature in Cinema. To mark this, there was a small exhibition, delineating the journey of a story from written words to the celluloid. There were titles like Devdas, based on Sarat Charandra Chattopadhyay’s bestseller, Junoon, based on Ruskin Bond’s A Flight of Pigeons, and Samskara, a 1970 Kannada film based on the epoch-making novel by UR Ananthamurthy, who passed away recently.

The complaints of the exhibitors may be true to a certain extent, but things are not so black-and-white. Unlike the other book fair organised in Delhi in February every year by the National Book Trust, the New Delhi World Book Fair, the current exhibition was markedly smaller in scope, both in terms of stalls by publishers and bookshop owners and business expectations.

While most major English-language publishing houses based in India had their stalls, it was the Hindi-language publishing houses that attracted more visitors, both young and all. All major Hindi-language publishers, including Pustak Mahal, Rajkamal, Kitab Ghar, Gita Press and Vani Prakashan, which recently completed 50 years of its existence, saw encouraging footfalls. There were visitors ranging from young college students to housewives to office-goes to retired persons who showed a kin interest not only original Hindi works, but also bestselling international titles translated into Hindi. There were also stalls displaying books in other regional languages, including Tamil, Malayalam, Bengali and Assamese.

Visitors also thronged to exhibitors of specialty book, such as books on computer sciences, medicine and most importantly, spirituality. Another interesting feature of the exhibition was the stalls selling second-hand and used books in Rs 100 or less per copy. Some stalls even sold three books for Rs 100. There were also stalls selling rare books, which also attracted people looking for the first edition of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and such.

Graphic novels, a relatively new genre that seems to merge a reader’s interest in visuals with written words, also found their takers. There was a big crowd at the stall of Raj Comics, the largest comic book distributor and publisher in India, known for, among other titles, Super Commando Dhruva series of comics.

There was also a big interest in the Chacha Chaudhary comics by the inimitable Pran, who passed away recently at the age of 75. Since his passing, the publisher, Diamond Comics, has reissued all Pran comics since 1971, including titles involving the antics of Pinki, Billoo, and of course, the grand old man Chacha Chaudhary, with his dramatic white mustache and his red turban, and his sidekick from the planet Jupiter, Sabu, fighting evil. The publisher said the books are doing quite well, especially among the adult readership, who is buying entire Cacha Choudhary collections in bulk for its nostalgic value.

In terms of technology, this year, the organisers developed a mobile app to facilitate visitors navigate venues and stalls. The idea was to offer visitors a hassle-free experience, said the organisers.

Another Internet address/:
academia.edu/:
https://independent.academia.edu/SarmaDibyajyoti

10/Movies

Time for another list in Facebook. This time 10 favourite films. Maneesha Singh tagged me and I did the list dutifully. I am loving it…/

Here is what I wrote in Facebook/

Thanks for the tag, Maneesha. Now, it would be difficult task indeed. As everyone in Pune knows, I am mad about movies. Sam and Anoop would vouch for it. Where do you start? With the film, the DVD of which is still with you? The Rituporno Ghosh film? Or, should I mention Amores Perros; I gave you the DVD, you did not even watch it, or those Ray films? Anyways, here is my list, as I remember:

1. Trikal (Hindi, dir. Shyam Bengal) I can mention any Bengal film for that matter; Kalyug, Junoon, even Bharat Ek Khoj, if you can call it a movie, but Trikal is something else, with Leela Naidu, and Goa. I saw the film after my first visit to Goa, and the film illuminated the place for me.
2. Pyaasa (Hindi, dir. Guru Dutt) Was there ever anyone else? Or anything else? And when he sings, ‘Jinhe naaz hai Hind par, woh kahan hai…”
3. Jait Re Jait (Marathi, dir. Jabbar Patel) Later, he made great films like Umbartha and Sinhasan, but this film, with a young Mohan Agashe and smouldering Smita Patil is time capsule. And those songs… “Mi raat takli…”
4. Pratidhwani (Asomiya/Khasi, dir. Bhupen Hazarika) Another time capsule of a movie. The songs, the doomed romance between a shepherd and the beauty married to the Khasi siem, the scenery. “…khublei shibun, shibun tomakai…”
5. Sri 420 (Hindi, dir. Raj Kapur) Because it’s Raj Kapur, the original showman, and the song, “Ramaya vastavayya, main ne dil tujhko diya…”
6. Solaris (Russian, dir. Andrei Takosvsky) What if you got to relive your lost love all over again, would you make the same demands? Would you make the same mistakes? Some questions have no answers.
7. Baraka (No Language. dir. Ron Fricke) This is the world, man, and this is the film for this world, and it’s a blessing.
8. The Holy Mountain (Spanish, dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky) This is a fever dream, spiritual madness, where turd can turn to gold.
9. Pan’s Labyrinth (Spanish, dir. Guillermo De Torro) This is where myths and realities merge. If you don’t believe in fairy tales, you don’t believe in anything.
10. Happy Together (Mandarin, dir. Wong Kar-wai) A doomed romance unlike anything else. When he says, all unhappy people are the same, you tend to agree.

Hey, Sam, Anoop, give it try at this please.
How about you, Ankit? Want to make one? I would love to see your list.

how to be both

How to be Both
Ali Smith
Hamish Hamilton

Elizabeth Day reviews Ali Smith's How to be Both: How to Be Both is not a multi-choice narrative, but the textual order depends on an element of chance. The book has two interconnected stories. There is a teenage girl called George whose mother has just died and who is left struggling to make sense of her death with her younger brother and her emotionally disconnected father. And then there is an Italian renaissance artist, Francesco del Cossa, a real-life figure responsible for a series of striking frescoes in the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, Italy.

Depending on which copy you pick up at random, you will either be presented with George's story first or with Francesco's. The two narratives twist around each other like complicated vines – one of George's last trips with her mother was to see the Ferrara frescoes and del Cossa is haunted by strange visions of a teenage girl who uses "a votive tablet" and holds it to heaven "like a priest raising the bread". The fact that this votive tablet is an iPad and that the reader is in on the joke while Francesco isn't, is just one of the witty touches with which Smith splices the novel.

At its heart, How to Be Both, which has already been longlisted for the Man Booker prize, is an eloquent challenge to the binary notions governing our existence. Why, Smith seems to ask, should we expect a book to run from A to B, by way of a recognisable plot and subplot, peopled by characters who are easily understood to be one thing or another?

Smith's characters revel in surprising us – George has a boy's name but is a girl whose sexuality is only just being explored; Francesco is born a girl but binds her chest and lives as a man. When Francesco is taken to a brothel by a male friend, the artist declines to sleep with the prostitute but draws her instead. When, centuries later, George and her mother study del Cossa's frescoes they cannot tell who is male and who is female. In the end, they decide it doesn't matter. And when Francesco sees George for the first time, she assumes George is a boy, only to discover later that she had been mistaken.
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Jan Dalley reviews Ali Smith's How to be Both: For a writer, it can be perilous to have a superperceptive adolescent as your primary narrator — that way cutesiness lies — yet Smith gives herself two of them. And the broken-backed structure of a novel in two halves, their time frames separated by centuries, is overfamiliar, and courts the risk that readers will spend the second half of the book picking up on clever parallels, rather like a sixth-form English class.

Undaunted, in her latest book Smith walks boldly into each of these danger areas, but skilfully makes the territory her own, skirting every pitfall and adding so much unexpected richness that we forgive the occasional stumble into the expected.

In the modern half of the book George, short for Georgia, is named to alert us to the gender-bending that beats like a pulse through both narratives. After her mother’s death, George lives in the family home with her younger brother and a father who uses alcohol "like wearing a whole fat woolly sheep between me and the world". There is school, and cooking Henry’s supper, and therapy sessions with Mrs Rock.

But George’s more vivid life is lived in flashback conversations with her mother, in bunking off school to gaze at the only Del Cossa in the National Gallery, and in two unusual relationships.

One, with an older schoolfriend, is typical of clever girls testing out their first romantic feelings. It’s a loose mirror of a mysterious, almost-sapphic liaison of her mother’s, but while "H" shyly suggests she is "a bit more hands-on than hypothetical", George prefers to send texts in Latin. The other, much stranger bond is virtual, with an underage girl who is the victim of a piece of nasty pornography that George discovers by chance online.

The book’s other half transports us to Italy in the 1460s, where the odd and talented child of a mason-brickmaker has also suffered the loss of a young and vibrant mother. In the throes of grief, the child wanders the house dreamily decked in the mother’s clothes until the father, in desperation, strikes a deal: to adopt a new name and dress "like your brothers", in return for lessons in drawing and colours.

So Francescho the jobbing painter is born, and learns to be artisan and artist. We gradually discover, as his narrative develops, that Francescho is also both in his own time and out of it, both living and not, in an oblique commentary on the reach and durability of art.

As she delves into the medieval world, savouring its rumbustious textures as well as the intimacies and rigours of the artist’s life, Smith’s writing really catches fire. In this section all of her rich stylistic inventiveness, as well as her imaginative range, come into play.
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Tolstoy

As Google honours the great Leo Tolstoy, I remember his works. During those days, when I would read only Asomiya, there was a whole lot of his works available in my mother tongue, in nice hard cover books, published by Raduga Publishers, Moscow. Those days, socialist India had very good ties with USSR, and Tolstoy was one of the prime targets of cultural exchange. Then, he was also an acknowledged teacher of Mahatma Gandhi. That helped.

Later, at the university, Anna Karenina was prescribed for the syllabus. It was a fat book and I was not interested in the book, not just because of the bulk, but because it was prescribed. You know, when you are young, you don’t want to follow rules. Anyway, we had a good teacher, who took just two classes on Anna Karenina, and spoke about trains, the train from where Anna gets down and meets Vronsky and later, the same train where she flings herself to death. I finally manager to work my way through the novel, and the only person I liked there was Dmitri Levin. And, Kitty too, I guess.

I haven’t managed the courage to tackle the might heft of War and Peace though the novel has a pride place in the library at my home. But I have seen the film, with Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn several times, and I think it is a very good adaptation.

I think I have read the Life and Death of Ivan Ilych, but I don’t remember anything about it.

What distills the Leo Tolstoy experience for me are the short stories. There are just a handful of them, but all of them are gems. The story about a man who is so worried about his pumpkins that when he visits the shrine he only sees pumpkins. The story about the man who runs and runs for land and eventually dies (How Much Land Does a Man Need?). And finally, the story about the angel who falls down on earth and works for a cobbler (What Men Live By). Oh, I love that last story.

In film, I loved The Last Station, despite the fact that I had some strong reservations. But Christopher Plummer was great as the maestro. Wikipedia says: A 2009 film about Tolstoy's final year, The Last Station, based on the novel by Jay Parini, was made by director Michael Hoffman with Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as Sofya Tolstoya. Both performers were nominated for Oscars for their roles. There have been other films about the writer, including Departure of a Grand Old Man, made in 1912 just two years after his death, How Fine, How Fresh the Roses Were (1913), and Leo Tolstoy, directed by and starring Sergei Gerasimov in 1984.

More on Leo Tolstoy Here.

At the mosque named after a Sufi saint and an unknown person, Jamali-Kamali, hyphenated, like they do with the names of doomed lovers, in Mehrauli, a mystical place, full of queer possibilities, away from the touristy hustle-bustle of Qutub Minar some distance away…

The Prisoner of Zenda

Some books are pleasant memories, not because of their so called quality, but because how you responded to it when you read it for the first time.

I read Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda in an abridged Asomiya translation when I was in high school (The school, Nagaon Govt Boys Higher Secondary School in Asom, was next to the imposing district library building, and I had a library card and every other day during lunch break, I would run to the children’s section of the library and borrow two books, because only two books were allowed in one time. Those were glorious days.), and I was in thrall. This was before I had read Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities.

We were all aware of the phenomenon of double-acting. We all grow up with these silly 1980s Hindi movies. So, we were aware of the silly plotline and it did not bother us. Instead it made us appreciate the book more.

Anyway, recently I saw this new copy of Prisoner of Zenda, beautifully printed as part of the Collins Classics series and I had to get a copy. Since those school days, I never got a chance to read the book in English. So I got a copy.

There is a new introduction to the book, and as I read it, I was flummoxed. To put is simply, while introducing the book and its author, the writer of the introduction simply butchers Hope’s legacy. The introduction presents Hope as a second-rate writer and the book a second rate potboiler, especially in the context of the entire doppelganger sub-genre. I was surprised how the introduction also compared Hope to a writer like Geoffrey Archer, of course, not as praise.

And I am thinking, what’s wrong is Archer, and pray, what wrong with Prisoner of Zenda?

I still think it’s a lovely story, and a beautiful piece of my childhood.

Jamali Kamali

Jamali Kamali Mosque and Tomb, located in the Archeological Village complex in Mehrauli, Delhi, India, comprise two monuments adjacent to each other; one is the mosque and the other is the tomb of two persons with the names Jamali and Kamali. The name "Jamali" is Urdu, though originates from "Jamal" which means "beauty". "Jamali" was the alias given to Shaikh Fazlu'llah, also known as Shaikh Jamali Kamboh or Jalal Khan, a renowned Sufi saint who lived during the pre-Mughal dynasty rule of the Lodi's, a period from the rule of Sikander Lodi to the Mughal Dynasty rule of Babur and Humayun. Jamali was greatly regarded. Kamali was an unknown person but associated with Jamali and his antecedents have not been established. Their names are tagged together as "Jamali Kamali" for the mosque as well as the tomb since they are buried adjacent to each other. The mosque and the tomb were constructed in 1528-1529, and Jamali was buried in the tomb after his death in 1535.
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So who were Jamali and Kamali?

Jamali was pseudonym of Sheikh Hamid bin Fazlu’llah who was also known as Sheikh Jamal-ud-din Kamboh Dehlawi aka Jalal Khan. He was a Sufi saint known for his poetry and came to India during the reign of Sultan Sikendar Lodi [ruled 1489-1517 AD] and settled in Delhi. He was already known by 3 different names but people, impressed by his poetry and seeing the beauty in the words, gave him his fourth name Jamali. Jamali comes from Urdu word Jamal which means beauty and positive aura. He was a disciple of another Sufi poet Sheikh Sama-ud-din and the mosque that now hosts his tomb was his place of chilla-nashini. It is said that such was the beauty of Jamali’s poems that even Sikendar Lodi who himself was a renowned poet used to get his works corrected by Jamali. After Mughals conquered India, Jamali was offered a place in their court and remained there during the reign of Babar and Humayun, until his death. It is also said that it was Humayun himself who had the tomb built after Jamali’s death.

“Kamal” in Urdu means miracle. Who Kamali was, however, remains a complete mystery. Whether he was a disciple of Jamali, or another Sufi poet or maybe just a servant, no one knows. We don’t even know if that was his real name or if he just took that name because it rhymed with Jamali. There are several stories around his identity one of which is that it was actually his works, his poems that Jamali took credit for. Another story is that they were brothers who travelled together to India. Jamali got famous because he was an excellent poet while Kamali had no such talent but he too was a Sufi saint. An even more interesting story is actually described by an American author Karen Chase in her book “Jamali- Kamali, A Tale of Passion in Mughal India” where she mentions that they were both homosexual partners.

A more believable story however, that even I am inclined to believe, is that Kamali was actually Jamali’s wife, a woman who is now, after centuries, believed to be a man because of the name Kamali which sounds a little masculine. Kamali died first and Jamali, who had an important place in the royal court at that time, built a tomb for his beloved life. After Jamali’s own death, Emperor Humayun had him buried right next to his wife in the tomb that Jamali had himself built during his life.
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King Solomon's Mines

This book!

I was so happy when a friend of mine mentioned this book during the Facebook BookBucket challenge. This book has been a big part of my childhood, this, and the Phantom comics defined adventure for me, and it was all about Africa.

I read the book first time in Asomiya retelling, and then in an abridged version. Finally, I read the whole thing, in detail, the adventures of Allan Quatermain, and his friends, the lost brother, Good and his love affair, the evil witch Gagool, Umbopa, the rightful king, and the desert and the lost city and the treasures, and the escape. Such adventures!

This book opened for me a whole new world, which included She Who Must Not Be Named. The story of Ayesha was equally fascinating, and this is how I discovered how an Asomiya writer had copied the entire plotline of She and transferred into Ladakh in a popular series of novels called Mahasweta.

And this is why I went to see that gawd-awful movie starring Sharon Stone, which could not do event an ounce of justice to the story. This is why years later I downloaded the movie, She, starring Ursula Andress. That is why I am such a fan of Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Superhero

My father had a good job, technically, and technically, we were a small family of five people. Yet, he had more expenses than he could afford and during the growing up years, our living conditions were frugal. We loved books. So we had the library card. We loved comics as well. So we were allowed to buy one comic a month. This would have been okay, if our neighbourhood friend Tubloo did not have a huge collection of comics…

Believe you in me when I say that he had a trunk-full of comics, of all the superheroes, especially Superman. He was a nice kid and my best friend, and of course, he shared his comics with me, and even allowed me to borrow them. Yet, I was not fully satisfied. I not only wanted to read them, I wanted to own them. My own. My precious. That would not happen.

Now, years later, I am fulfilling my superhero dreams, via different medium. I have seen and own all the superhero movies that came in the recent years and, since I moved to Delhi, I am living this second childhood through these superhero t-shirts. I buy them not just to wear, but to own them, as a compensation for not being able to own my own comics all those years ago.

Olivier

Among other things, Sir Laurence Olivier was the greatest Shakespearean actor of his generation, perhaps of all time. And, he is perhaps one of the few actors who successfully transitioned from London stage to Hollywood effortlessly, winning an Oscar for Hamlet, winning acclaim for Wuthering Heights and Rebecca and winning ridicule for directing Marilyn Monroe in The Prince and the Showgirl.

Nowadays, however, his legacy seems to have come down to a few things, yes, there is Rebecca, there is his tumultuous love affair with Vivien Leigh who was losing her mind at the time, his last great role with Michael Cain in Sleuth, and most importantly, whether he was a poof (British slang for gay or effeminate men).

The last one is a prickly issue. To begin with, he was married thrice and his widow Joan Plowright is a celebrated actor by her own right, and everybody he was close to says he was not homosexual or bisexual, like say Noel Coward. Yes, there are his mannerisms, his brooding look, the way he addressed everyone, darling … the contest is on.

In his exhaustive biography, culled from achieved material, Olivier’s own writings, and from interviews with people in the know, Terry Coleman addresses the issue in a short last chapter, calling him an androgynous actor, claiming that Olivier had both the male and female sides to his persona, being an actor.

Yet, Coleman would neither confirm nor refute the claims of Olivier’s homosexual dalliance. He says, perhaps Olivier experimented with it during his youth, but not later, as another biography of him, published in 1991, seems to claim. According to Coleman, that previous biography distorts facts to give readers a salacious view of Olivier’s life, even when there was no evident.

Coleman goes by evidence in his biography, and he does not find anything about Olivier’s queer sexuality.

Nevertheless, it is a very good, if a little exhaustive and academic biography of a man who was undoubtedly a great actor and a charismatic personality and a tortured individual to boot.

Bhupen Hazarika: Personal & Universal

I wrote this, two years back, as a person obituary for a magazine. I am not sure it was published. So, here it is, again, on the occasion of the maestro’s birthday today/

/ Dr. Bhupen Hazarika (ড.ভূপেন হাজৰিকা) Born 8 September 1926 (Sadiya, Assam) Died 5 November 2011 (Mumbai, Maharashtra)/

My father is not a crowd person. He does not even attend weddings. On the day of music maestro Bhupen Hazarika’s last rites, on November 8, 2011, however, he had decided to take a walk, even as the streets were filled with people. The ground, where Hazarika was to be cremated, was just a half-an-hour’s walk. That afternoon, my father could not even reach the place; it was a sea of people. Everyone was there to bid the iconic personality the final goodbye. It was an extraordinary sight, unprecedented, even in a place which has seen its fair share of public gatherings. It was a momentous display of how Bhupen Hazarika’s music had touched each and every one in Guwahati, and in turn, in Assam. For the Assamese people, he was Bhupenda. A generation had lost its elder brother.

There are limits to how popular a single person can become. For every fan of every personality, there may be dozen others who do not care about him. But to be loved by an entire generation, an entire population, is something else? There is only a handful who could achieve this feat. Perhaps Gandhi was one. Perhaps Michael Jackson, Rabindranath Tagore in Bengal, Amitabh Bachchan among the living. In Assam, Hazarika wasn’t a person. He was, to use a cliché, a living legend, an epitome and a testament of the Assamese culture. He defined Assam to the world, and every Assamese person basked in his glory, in his almost god-like talent. There isn’t a single Assamese person, in Assam or elsewhere who hasn’t heard about Bhupenda or know at least one of his songs by heart.

Personally, I owe my love for Bhupenmama to my mother. She knows all Bhupen Hazarika songs, even the obscure ones, courtesy the radio. She doesn’t sing, she recites the lines of the songs, and she has a song for every possible occasion, whether it’s happiness, sorrow, love, patriotism, life’s lessons, anything. You mention a subject, and there’s a Bhupen Hazarika song about it, and my mother can recite it. His are not songs, but poetry. They are epigrams. They are quotable quotes. They are life’s lessons. They are part of a community’s cultural history.

I have 431 Bhupen Hazarika songs on the hard drive of my computer. This is by no means a complete collection. I have no idea how many songs he had composed and sung in an illustrious career spanning half-a-century, from his debut as a child artiste (he was born in 1926) in the second Assamese feature film, ‘Indramalati’ (1939), to being a singer of protests, attending public functions, to being a high-profile filmmaker and music director, who crossed over to Bangla and then to Hindi, and yet retained his roots. For the Assamese, he was the bridge between the past and the present. He was tutored by the luminaries like Jyoti Prasad Agarwala and Bishnu Rabha in the pre-independent India, fought for the rights of the oppressed and then, introduced the state to the world.

And, imagine, the man wrote all those songs, composed the tunes and performed, relentlessly, for more than half-a-century. The only comparison comes to mind is Bob Dylan. Like Dylan, Hazarika himself was the music. He was the voice. He did not need anything else, other than perhaps a harmonium. He just needed to sing, and sing he did, to last a lifetime, to last an eternity.

But, what is this enduring appeal of Bhupen Hazarika? I cannot answer this question. But, I can identify with his songs, the same way my mother does, despite the fact that we are two generations apart. Hazarika sings about the people, the farmer, the fisherman, the worker, the office-goes, the idealist, the patriot. Even his abstract love songs are populated with people we know. His songs breathe the same air I inhale.

I cannot sing, but I know at least 50 Bhupen Hazarika songs by heart. It has been a part of my growing up. No, he’s not my favourite musician; Jim Morrison is, and these days, Green Day. But, Hazarika’s music throbs in my being. He is not just a singer. He is part of the Assamese consciousness. He is part of the Assamese identity. He defines Assam, and in turn, the Assamese people. All I can say is that I am proud to be born in the same land where Bhupen Hazarika was born.

It’s true, with his passing, a glorious chapter of Assamese history comes to an end. It’s also true Bhupen Hazarika continues to live on, in me, in every Assamese.

Dibyajyoti Sarma

The Case of the Drowning Duck

Octopussy

Fleming, Ian. Octopussy. 1966, London: Pan Books, 1967.

Octopussy is the first James Bond film I ever saw, way back when I was in fifth standard, when we were not allowed to watch English movies, for, they were obscene. There were obscenity quotients in this film as well, which was mighty exciting (when Maud Adams jumps from the balcony and her sari unwinds…), but the real excitement was the action sequences, the Indian locale and the authorickshaw chase near the end…

The film is very close to Indian audiences, for the representation of Udaipur and the appearances of Kabir Bedi and Vijay Amritraj. Nobody really cares about Roger Moore, do they?

I started reading the slim volume of Octopussy because of my love for the hazy memory about the film. Octopussy is not a typical bond novel, but a very short story, which I finished in half a day. But where is Octopussy as a woman, where is Udaipur, where are the jewels, where is James Bond to start with? There is, however, a reference to Faberge Egg, in another story in the collection, Property of a Lady, which is also a very quaint tale, full of pathos about cold war era politics, and it involves a auction scenes as exciting as the opening scenes of Fleming’s Casino Royale. (The slim volume contains three stories, Octopussy, Property of a Lady and The Living Daylights; the latter being the title of another 007 film).

The original story is a moving tale of WWII crime, guilt and redemption, not on the level of Dostoevsky, of course, but quite a little, interesting yarn, full of telling details, especially about scorpion fishes and octopuses and post-war Jamaica and post-war Germany. You can imagine how close Fleming was to his Jamaican landscape. And, Bond appears just for a faction in the tale, and he is not important at all.

This is a tale of Major Smythes, who may be dying of alcoholism, who loves his fishes and his octopus, whom he calls Octopussy, than the real people and he has a terrible past, about a cold blooded murder and Nazi gold, and when past catches up with him, there is an accident…

Intriguing.

10

There is this thing going on in Facebook. They call it #BookBucket challenge, where a friend posts a list of 10 books which has stayed with him/her on his/her wall and ‘tags’ a few of his friends, who in turn posts his/her own list and tags some more friends. The idea is to make the chain grow. The idea is to keep the love for books alive. Whatever.

But, I wanted to this. Just to show off probably, or to see, how the list turn up if I really have to draw a list of just 10 books. Finally, my friend Arjun Chaudhuri tagged me, and made a list…

I wrote before the list… Of course, your favourite books never always stay with you. They leave and come back again, and at times, they are replaced by others. As Roger Ebert said a list is valid only for the occasion, it is never absolute.

Once I had posted the list (I did receive some likes. Whatever again.), I was thinking of books which have stayed with me and which did not make to the list. Following Roger Ebert again, the next day, I decided to make other alternative lists, four of them.

Now, here they are all together, the original and the alternatives…


The Original List/
1. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Not surprising, I guess
2. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. A cornucopia of a continent of a book
3. Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg. “I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.” I have
4. Our Lady of Flowers by Jean Genet. “My heart’s in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand’s in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught.”
5. Anuradhar Desh (Anuradha’s Country), a novel in Asomiya by Phanindra Kumar Dev Choudhury. The epic love story of our generation. “Anuradha does not have a country. She is the woman of this country.”
6. Kothopokothan (Conversations) by Purnendu Patri, especially the poems translated into Asomiya from original Bangla by Homen Borgohain. Modern love
7. Majhe Vidyapeeth (My University) by Narayan Surve. A Marathi poet from Bombay for working class India
8. The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s elementary, Watson
9. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman. Will and Lyra and the subtle knife and the witches and the Iorek Byrnison the bear and everyone else
10. The Complete Sandman by Neil Gaiman. This is how dreams are made

Alternative List 1/
1. The Mahabharata. Several translations, both in Asomiya and English, including works of C Rajagopalachari and RK Narayan and even Devdutta Pattanaik; because this is the story of Bharat
2. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. Because a friend gifted it to me; because a friend stole it from me; because another friend gifted it to me; because I have several different editions; because it is the greatest fantasy novel ever
3. Jejuri by Arun Kolhatkar. A series of poems as geography, history, mythology; Indian modernism at its best; because I have been to the place several times
4. The Dasyu Bhaskar Series by Rongmon. A series of detective/adventure thrillers in Asomiya published in 1960s-70s, now rare in print; because it fuelled my sense of adventure during childhood, because of the memory of my dead friend Bhai, now lost
5. Jangam by Debendranath Acharya. A great novel on the impact of WWII on India and Myanmar, in Asomiya; because I want to translate the book into English
6. Another Country by James Baldwin. Because everyone else loves Giovanni’s Room; I think Baldwin is more political and more hard-hitting here than anywhere else
7. The complete poems of TS Eliot. Because he inspired me to write poetry, read poetry, because his poems tell stories
8. The ghost stories of Sharadindu Bandopadhya. Because they are unique, out of this world
9. Agamemnon by Aeschylus. Various translations; because this is the first major Greek tragedy available; because I am translating it into Asomiya; because “men has to suffer to be wise…”
10. The complete poems of Hiren Bhattracharya. The greatest Asomiya poet of his generation, period

Alternative List 2/
1. The complete poems of Nabakanta Barua. Because he gave me an autograph when I was in school; because he is a great poet and a great translator; because I translated his works
2. The Pa-Fu series by Prem Narayan Dutta. A series of detective/crime-thriller with a very positive patriotic anti-British slant, written in the 1940s, very popular during the time, now rare in print; because he was our Conan Doyle, our Poe
3. Sanglot Fenla by Parag Kumar Das. Because it’s a document of a revolution lost written during the time when it was on the way down, a prophetic voice full of compassion and understand, written by a talent silenced by bullets
4. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Because of the unfathomed possibilities of Florentino Ariza’s love
5. Shame by Salman Rushdie. The controversial, influential author’s best work, how a country losses it
6. Delhi is not Far by Ruskin Bond. Because it’s Ruskin Bond, the chronicle of small town India, as if he is on a treasure hunt and found all his treasures
7. The Harry Potter Series by JK Rowling. I guess, it was inevitable; but it was Damboldore’s sexual orientation that clinched it
8. The complete works of Pablo Neruda. Because it’s him; this guy
9. Bhok (Hunger) by Dr Dhrubajyoti Bora>. This is the guy who wrote classic Asomiya novels like Katha Ratnakar and Kalantoror Gadya trilogy, but this early novel about a daily wage labour is a real gem
10. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. Because it’s Oedipus, because its fate

Alternative List 3/
1. Kalpurush by Davendranath Acharya. Story of a spy during the Ahom rule, a historical masterpiece, down to every word he has written; classic
2. Bai Saheba by Dhirendranath Borthakur. The life and death of the queen of Jhansi though the eyes of a common soldier; a classic historical novel in Asomiya
3. Samiran Barua Aahi Aase by Manoj Kumar Goswami. The classic short story collection in Asomiya
4. The early poems of Nilim Kumar. He who inspired a whole generation of Asomiya youths read and write poems, this poor fellow included, because he started writing non-poems
5. The Night of January the 16th by Ayan Rand. No, not Fountainhead, no Howard Roark but this slim book
6. Ka by Roberto Calasso. The best modern retelling of India origin myth, written in Italian by an Italian, and it is astonishing in its scope and imagination
7. The Indian Poems of Octavio Paz. Especially Muthra, I did not see it when I went to Mathura, but I see Mathura in the poem, through his eyes
8. The Boyfriend by R Raj Rao. Because I typed the manuscript and got paid for it; because I know the real story behind the fiction and I am not telling
9. Thief’s Journal by Jean Genet. Because its Genet, you want to emulate his adventure but it’s a dangerous proposition
10. Same Sex Love in India by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai. Because a friend send a Xerox copy to me from Germany before the book was available in India, because the book helped me get a Ph.D. degree

Alternative List 4/
1. How Green was My Valley and The Lost World respectively by Richard Llewellyn and Arthur Conan Doyal. In Assamese first, translation done to the perfection by Dr Raihan Shah; a gift of my childhood
2. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Because of the memory of Bhaskar who is now gone, among other things
3. The complete stories of Roald Dahl. Because it is Dahl
4. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas. Oh, Father Faria and Mercedes
5. The Godfather by Mario Puzo. Because the book is equally rivetting
6. Gora by Rabindranath Tagore. Because it’s the only Tagore work I could really connect to
7. Mahakabyor Pratham Paat by Bipuljyoti Saikia. A great poet, not just because he made that internet site on Assomiya literature, why did he stop writing poetry? I hope he did not
8. The complete poems of Sananta Tanty. Because I am translating it into English
9. Wuthering Height by Emily Bronte. Because you cannot claim to have studied Eng Lit without this book, Heathcliff
10. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Because Pip’s story it could have been mine; otherwise I would have chosen A Tale of Two Cities

PS. As I finish writing this, I know missed several other books. I did not mention The Hobbit, none of Shakespeare, no Robin Cook, no Nirupama Borgohain, no Homen Borgohain…

Birdman

"Birdman" offers by far the most fascinating meta-deconstruction of an actor's ego since "Being John Malkovich," and one that leaves no room for vanity. From the moment Keaton first removes his wig to the sight of him wrapped in Batman-like facial bandages, his performance reveals itself in layers. The role demands that he appear superficial and stiff onstage, while behaving anything but as the character's personal troubles mount and his priorities begin to align -- at which point, he appears in a dual role, donning the ridiculous Birdman costume to hover, seen only by Riggan, like a cracked-out version of Broadway's own "Harvey."

Judged by Howard Hawks' quality standard -- "three great scenes, no bad ones" -- "Birdman" features at least a dozen of the year's most electrifying onscreen moments (scrambled, so as to avoid spoilers): the levitation, the hallucination, the accident, the fitting, the daughter, the critic, the ex-wife, the erection, the kiss, the shot, the end and Times Square. Most films would be lucky to have one scene as indelible as any of these, and frankly, it's a thrill to see Inarritu back from whatever dark, dreary place begat "21 Grams," "Babel" and "Biutiful," three phony, contrived melodramas engineered to manipulate, while posing as gritty commentaries on the harsh world we inhabit.

With "Birdman," the director has broken from his rut of relying on shaky handheld camerawork to suggest "realism," or an invasive Gustavo Santaolalla score to force the desired reactions, instead finding fresh ways to delve into the human condition. (He has even altered his onscreen credit, condensing "Gonzalez" to a mere "G.," as if to acknowledge this new chapter.) Yes, the film is preoccupied with an aging actor's psyche, but it also addresses fatherhood, marriage, personal integrity and the enduring question of the legacy we leave behind -- as in an amusing scene in which Riggan imagines being upstaged by "Batman and Robin" star George Clooney in his obituary. Above all, it is an extremely clever adaptation of Carver's short story, simultaneously postmodern (ironically, a rather retro label) in its meta self-parody and cutting-edge, owing to the dynamism of its style.

Circling shark-like around Keaton, then darting off to stalk other actors, Lubezki's camera is alert and engaged at all times, an active participant in the nervous backstage drama. Taking a cue from Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope," the meticulously blocked shoot cleverly finds ways to mask cuts, using invisible visual effects to stitch together various scenes so it appears that the entire film is one continuous take, even though the events take place over several weeks and in various uptown Gotham locations -- primarily Broadway's St. James Theater, but venturing out anywhere that Riggan can walk or Birdman can fly.
MORE HERE.

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Keaton — wrinkled, greying and bubbling with passion at every turn — rises to the challenge with fascinating determination on par with his character. The role feels heavy and veers dangerously close to becoming heavy-handed, but it also acknowledges that very challenge. Riggan meets his match when he casts obnoxious egomaniac Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) in the play, regularly coping with the actor's freewheeling willingness to screw things up onstage at every moment.

Norton, in his most enjoyably high-spirited turn since "Fight Club," relishes the opportunity to play the smarmy foe to Keaton's scowling demeanor. A battle between the two men, as Keaton whips Norton with a rolled-up New York Times featuring coverage of the play, oscillates between silly and energizing in one fell swoop. It might be the best physical achievement in both of their careers.

But Norton's wily temperament is matched by Stone, as Riggan's cynical daughter, who delivers a darker role than anything suggested in her earlier roles. Even Zach Galifianakis, as Riggan's hyperactive producer and best friend, manages to each beyond his goofy standards with a zany performance closer in form to Jeremy Piven's fast-talking agent on "Entourage."

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Within the opening minutes, Iñarritu's script name-drops Michael Fassbender, Woody Harrelson and Jeremy Renner in the context of superhero franchise mania; later, Keaton glares in the mirror as the gruff voice of the costumed avenger he played decades earlier intones, "We're the real thing. We handed these posers the keys to the kingdom." His ex-wife assails him for "that ridiculous comedy you did with Goldie Hawn." His daughter puts it bluntly: "You aren't doing this for the sake of art." A steely-eyed critic at the local watering hole (Lindsay Duncan) says he's "a celebrity, not an actor." At every turn, Riggan is trapped by industrial forces that have moved on without him.

While the number of cheeky references to real-life actors and events pile up to an extreme degree, the exaggerated feel fits this canny satire, which is firmly rooted in the present. In a frantic monologue, Riggan's daughter assails her dad's old-school sensibilities: "You don't even have a Facebook page!" she exclaims. "It's like you don't exist." The looming threat of social media forms a compelling juxtaposition with the free-flowing camerawork: Riggan fights to keep track of his life even as everything around him grows increasingly fragmented.
MORE HERE>

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Michael Keaton, best remembered for his role as Batman, plays Riggan Thomson, best remembered for his role as Birdman. Riggan is a vain, ageing Hollywood actor, his blockbuster days behind him, who is seeking redemption via a Broadway production of a Raymond Carver short story. But the boundaries are blurring. The walls are closing in, his personal life is in tatters. “The play is starting to feel like a deranged, deformed version of myself,” he wails at one stage.

Iñárritu’s film, we come to realise, is nothing less than an extended actor’s nightmare of disputatious colleagues, snooty critics and boisterous fans who still love him as Birdman. The camera hounds us from the dressing-room to the wings to the stage and then out into the din of Times Square, where Keaton parades in his pants during the tale’s comic highlight. En-route Riggan runs up against Edward Norton’s strutting co-star, an impotent diva who finds he can only perform when the lights are on and the house is full.

He squabbles with his acerbic daughter (Emma Stone), fresh out of rehab, and receives visits from his ex-wife and current girlfriend, who may just be figments. The acting is clamorous verging on the indulgent. But the script cuts like a knife even when the editor does not, gleefully flaming everyone from Meg Ryan to Justin Bieber to Robert Downey Jr, the star of the Iron Man films. “That clown doesn’t have half your talent,” growls the voice of Riggan’s demon. “And he’s making a fortune in that tin-man get-up.”

Do we care about Riggan? I’m not sure that we do; I’m not convinced that we’re meant to. His torments are framed as sour satire, hotwired by gaudy flights of fancy. At times Birdman reminded me of Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, a more melancholy riff on a similar theme; at others of Alexander Mackendrick’s sublime The Sweet Smell of Success, with its restless, prowling tour of nocturnal midtown Manhattan. There’s no doubt it makes for a jubilant ride, a galvanic first blast. But it remains a film which feels deeply thought rather than deeply felt; a brilliant technical exercise as opposed to a flesh-and-blood story.
MORE HERE>

Birdman

Is this the movie of 2014? Like Gravity was the movie of 2013? Here is another Mexican maestro, Iñárritu of Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel, with his new picture, Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance. The early reviews are ecstatic.

Writes Patrick Z. McGavin: Iñárritu is a great orchestrator, and the pieces just flow together. "Birdman" is a work of many layers, in ferreting out how closely Keaton’s own career parallels that of the character, the volatile interplay of the performers and the desire to reconcile the thrilling technical and formal ideas to a more direct and pure emotional response.

The excitement is also about the talented Iñárritu at last striking the perfect balance of sensibility and technique. After the early promise of his debut, "Amores Perros," Iñárritu gave way to a lingering sense of being trapped, like Keaton, painting himself into a corner with elliptical, nonlinear stories that felt increasingly closed and mechanically constructed and turned on strained coincidences and psychologically implausible actions.

With a lesser director, "Birdman" would appear too much, like the syncopated and often electrifying jazz drum work of Antonio Sanchez that punctuates most of the film. The film has a lift and tremendous lyric freedom. This feels like a work of the moment, of the kind of freedom, style and energy that only the cinema is capable of.
More Here.

Me: Stories of My Life

Hepburn, Katherine. Me: Stories of My Life. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992.

I was so damn happy to find this book, the memoirs of Katherine Hepburn, Me: Stories of My Life, at the recent book fair for Rs 20. More than the price, I always wanted to read the book. She is the on-screen idol I have always admired, from Bringing Up Baby to The Philadelphia Story to A Lion in Winter to On Golden Pond, and those movies she did with Spencer Tracy, Woman of the Year, Adam’s Rib. She was strong and funny, and opinionated and individualistic, a true feminist icon even before feminism was a discipline. She lived her life on her own terms and without apology. And her love affair with Spencer Tracy is the stuff of Hollywood lore. You cannot not love Katherine Hepburn!

On screen, she was played with wonderful empathy by another great actor Kate Blanchet, in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, the bio-pic of Howard Hughes, one of her suitors. But, how was she in real life?

This book, which is not really an autobiography, but memoirs, gives up a window to her exciting life, where she took control of it and ran with it.

What I liked about the book is that it is a real thing, written by her, not by a ghost, carefully chronicling a life lived. The details are scanty, and the author meanders in her telling and repeats what she has said before, but it’s all fun, because it is told by Hepburn herself, as she remembers. It’s as if she is sitting before you and telling the story of her life. At some point, perhaps, you want to ask the details of certain events. But you cannot. Because she is on the flow, and she knows what she is doing, and she will tell you the way she wants to.

What I like most about the book, more than her stories, is how, for a big star like her, she is so accommodating to the helps in her life. In a celebrity autobiography/biography, it’s all about the big people they have hobnobbed with, all the parities, travels, the big events they attended. There is very little about how these celebrities lived, what kind of house they had, what they ate and so on. But not Hepburn. She goes in detail about George Cukor’s house, as it continued to grow as he continued to find success in Hollywood. She also describes the house she shared with Tracy, with loving details, including a rocking chair she bought from a Chinese trader for Tracy. And most, importantly, she remembers her helps, her English driver David, and her personal secretary Phyllis. She actually dedicates a whole chapter on her; it is albeit small, but it speaks volumes.

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Talking about the invisibility of domestic help in our lives, I am reminded of a great story by Asomiya author, Chradra Prasad Saikia, where a prospective bridegroom visits the house of a prospective bride and refuses the alliance. Because, the bride’s mother is unkind to their domestic help, something the bridegroom finds wrong, considering how his own mother is so loving to their domestic help.

Captain America

The best thing about the second Captain America movie, ‘The Winter Soldier’ is not the hunky, morally sound cap, neither the long-hair Winter Soldier with a mask and a metallic hand, but an unassuming veteran who can turn into a mechanised angel with retractable wings, Falcon, played with easy-going charm by Anthony Meckie. He is not a superhero, but an ordinary soldier, who just happens to be helping the cap. It’s sad that he did not get much screen time, not even in the final action sequence as his contraption is destroyed by the mysterious and tortured Winter Soldier. We are hoping to see him more in the next outing of Captain America, as they go a-hunting the Soldier. Or, will they?

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Captain American Writes: As some who has just woken up from cryonic sleep under the sea since the World War II, Steve Rogers AKA Captain America needs to do some serious learning and fast. And he is doing it, with bravado, keeping notes on things he needs to experience. These include, the television serial I Love Lucy, Moon Landing (oh my!), Berlin Wall (up and down), really, the wall was erected and then demolished all the while he was asleep, man, Steve Jobs (a must I guess), Disco (why?), Thai Food (ok), Star Wars/Trek, Nirvana (not the philosophy, but the band,) Rocky (Rocky II), Troubleman Soundtrack by Marvin Gaye. That’s whole lot of pop culture, cap!

Captain America Reads: The captain needs to read too, to keep up. He does it by reading two volumes of the history of Second World War, and a biography of George W H Bush. He is also reading a book called Madam President, and on his shelf, there is also a book called Never Surrender. I wonder if it is a real book!