Apart from that though....

...the weekend was a resounding success. A dream came true. I met someone with the same name as I. I met someone I'm connected to in perfect synchronicity and when she sang, she left me reeling, unbalanced, my soul trying to find its feet and right itself within this new perspective. She revealed me, stripped me naked to the core in a four line verse more beautiful than life itself. She threw a switch in my head that day and all the lights came on and everything was suddenly clear. I believe she sang to me.

Back in the stinky city....

...after 72 hours of...

...and its attendant lifestyle benefits.

Ford gets an ambassador

The Zee Marathi news channel has it that Abhishek Bachhan has been appointed the brand ambassador for the new Ford Fiesta. Abhishek rushed in from a busy shooting schedule in Switzerland in time for the photo shoot. 'It's very simple,' he said, 'the first time I saw this car I thought I'd really like to associate my name with that product.' Granted the Ford Fiesta isn't exactly designed to arouse emotion, but even so.

Brand ambassador. What a great job! So I take it that the brand ambassador is supposed to reflect the values of the brand he is representing, which I suppose also includes the product at some point. Given that, what can we expect from the Ford Fiesta? Let us see.

A comfortable acceleration, for one. This car is in no rush to get into the fast lane. Gentlemen never hurry. At times it will seem to gain momentum but this is invariably just an illusion. This must be due to faults in the delivery for it certainly is no fault of the engine. The engine, as we all know, generates the power which pushes the vehicle, and what an engine it is! It simply refuses to quit. Truly remarkable.

Then there's the question of looks and appeal, the je ne sais quois that is the hallmark of great cars. Looking at the Fiesta one might conclude that it looks like any other family sedan, however something about this car says that it is different. Everybody agrees that the Indian market has never seen a car like this before. Although it essays a fairly straightforward role, it is the treatment that is special in each Fiesta. The Fiesta will be available in two colours - Peat and Rust. Will this car make a dent in the Santro's market share? Some say that it might while others say damn! those dimples on that Santro sure are cute.

Its get bad in France

Dinner was at the Ravine that night, which is good because atleast I had enough to occupy myself while my dinner companions discussed French politics. It is not for this reason alone though, that the methi mutter malai seemed so interesting - the chef at the Ravine is a true genius. And thus it was that I was contemplating the sublime consistency of the malai and the farm-freshness of the mutter when Antoine turned to me and said by way of translation - Its get bad in France. What happened?, I thought. Did they increase the working week by fifteen minutes? Did they find that the '63 Cheval Blanc all went bad in last year's summer? Or God forbid, did they lose to Samoa again? No explanation was forthcoming though, as the conversation carried on to discussions of police brutality. 'Boom boom', Christophe said, pumping his fist. Ah, I scoffed, what do they know about police brutality? They don't have jokes that end in 'bol tu suar hai!' in France. What, the copper didn't call you 'monsieur'? Shocking. It was later in the tent that Antoine offered an elaboration. 'It's get really bad in France' he said and shook his head. 'Phwoah', said Christophe, backslapping his palm. I was ready for another first-world story but I must confess, after Antoine's tale, I found myself a little worried and in a contemplative mood. It was not a happy story. I know Antoine from Millau, the same Millau where Jose Bove stood up bravely for French cheese, home of vol-libre and rocquefort, the same Millau that I thought was just like a big hippie commune, and Antoine tells me all has change. Apparently the police have gone from being protectors of the citizens to being a powerful weapon in the hands of a totalitarian state. Antoine told me he got arrested - means arrested, booff! against the car, cuffs on the harms, arrest means arrest - four times last year. Christophe corroborated this with a story of his own. Christophe is from Grenoble where the book Perfume is set, an awesomely filthy place by all accounts. The change took place over a period of time, but the people only realised it suddenly one day. Like crime in London. I remember London in the nineties, when it was the safest city on planet Earth. One could see young girls walking on the pavements until late into the night. One could pass out in taxicabs. One could go to Brixton. And then suddenly, a few years later I'm standing in Whiteleys, surrounded by black kids, a knife against my belly, hands - someone else's hands - in my pockets stealing not only my 20 pound note but also the skunk I had managed to score just five minutes earlier. Ah, it was shitty stuff anyway. And only the previous week a white guy, poster boy for drug-addiction, had accosted me at the cash machine. I had to bash his head with my squash racket and run like the wind to save myself. A few weeks later I'm at some station on the Picadilly line, burping mango-pickle flavourd burps, and Elvira calls and says 'Can you come over? I've just been mugged.' And so, London had become unsafe. Old people stay home now after dark. But I digress, we were talking about France. So, at about the time that Antoine was telling me all this, the first of the Molotov Cocktails was being prepared in Clichy-sous-Bois. Over the days to follow, many cars would be burned. It's civil war, no fatalities yet. Tonight will be the twelfth night. People will be home well before nightfall tonight. They will lock their homes, shutter the windows and turn on the television. This is the end of the siecle luminaire. The end of the world as we know it. What is Europe to do? The welfare state is under severe pressure, the population is ageing. The sexual freedoms ushered in during WW II have atomised society to the point where the traditional family is increasingly the exception to the rule. More than half of marriages end in divorce, some 40% of children are illegitimate. It is not too hard to conclude that such big changes in such a small time are bound to cause societal imbalances. Add the problem of the immigrants in an area of low economic growth and you have all the ingredients for a good revolution. The situation is desperate. There will be war again, this time between the people and their government. The people will lose. The government will impose totalitarian controls on its citizens. The world will stand on its head. While rapacious robber barons turn Russia into the freest place on Earth and bicycles are banned from Shanghai, the West will fall victim to its moral confusion. Oligarchs will rule a third of the world, heaping misery on the majority. A third of the world will be engulfed in its second Dark Age. The third that remains will not remain for long. Its get bad in France.

I am a dus hazaar ki maala

So fuck you! You puny little anaars and rockets, struggling to achieve some kind of respectability. I spit upon you. You are weak. You are only concerned about wishy-washy stuff. You make bright lights, but no noise. No noise? What kind of patriot are you? Life is struggle. Life is bleak. Life is war. We have no space in our box of crackers for those unwilling to join in the struggle. And I am not alone. I am one of millions. We will win. The revolution will succeed. I have many worthy allies - the atom bomb, the rocket bomb, the humble apat-bar. Striped Bijli, RDX, Mr India, King of Kango, the Bullet....who can prevail against us? I say this to you phuska phatakaas. I know it is not your fault that you are like this. You are made because there are still people who will buy you. This is the real problem, the bourgeoisie, the class enemy. We must struggle against those who would prefer pretty, superficial displays over a deafening blast. I am power. Lay me out on your street, and I will rain your vengeance upon those who would attempt to cross your house. Rule your neighbourhood. Ten of me will make you king. A hundred - emperor. Are you the kind of person who shrinks from the responsibility of power? Be a man.

Project Carpool 1.0 and taking a break

So I figure we can safely call this Project Carpool 1.0. It's open for all to play with and can be found here: http://patang.org/projects/ajaxcarpool/carpool.php Bug reports welcome as usual. The project is now on the backburner, so future feature upgrades only on request (or as and when the fancy strikes me), so actually nothing really has changed except perhaps my blog might not be as monotonous as it had become while I was obsessing over this. Thanks to everyone who chipped in with words of encouragement and bug reports. A shout out to Rajan for pointing me in the direction of XmlHttpRequest and making my life very interesting indeed. Special thanks also to Anoop, Anannya and Fadereu for helping test the application and for their insightful comments ('Dude, the colours suck!').

I don't see what his problem is

I don't see what his problem is....

Carpool Beta Release

I released the Mumbai Carpool site to a limited audience on C**S**F on Saturday. I think it is safe to call this a beta release. If all goes well and people start adopting it, I'm planning to take it to the mainstream media in a couple of weeks. Here's the url: http://patang.org/projects/carpool4 and a screenshot. Why did I write this? It was during August 2003 that I found myself involved quite heavily in a debate about something that shouldn't have been a matter of debate at all. The Pune authorities wanted to break up a mountain so that they could shove a road through it. To me, it seemed like a no-brainer. Of course you can't take away one of the last remaining green spaces in Pune and replace it with tar and concrete and Ford Endeavours. To my horror though, there were enough people, educated people, well-meaning people, to whom that fifteen minutes saved on their commute was more precious. I found myself engaged in endless debates about this issue, and so to educate myself more, I started doing some research. This is when I stumbled upon Enrique Peñalosa, the incredible Mayor of Bogota. What he has to say is much better said by him. Suffice to say that his ideas brought tears to my eyes, for example

One common measure of how clean a mountain stream is is to look for trout. If you find the trout, the habitat is healthy. It’s the same way with children in a city. Children are a kind of indicator species. If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people.

or

If we in the Third World measure our success or failure as a society in terms of income, we would have to classify ourselves as losers until the end of time. Given our limited resources, we have to invent other ways to measure success, and that could be in terms of happiness. It may be in how much time children spend with their grandparents, or the ways in which we are able to enjoy our friendships, or how many times people smile during the week. A city is successful not when it’s rich but when its people are happy. Public space is one way to lead us to a society that is not only more equal but also much happier.

Here are some links definitely worth following. The Politics of Happiness Bogota-A City Transformed A Tale of Two Mayors:The improbable story of how Bogota, Colombia, became somewhere you might actually want to live Academic Turns City Into A Social Experiment Yes, I recognise it for the childish idealism that it is...:-) but I figure if it can be done in Bogota, it sure can happen anywhere. Wouldn't you like to be able to ride a bike in your hometown if you wanted to?

CSS Imagemaps

Demo here: http://patang.org. View page source for code.

Katrina

I cannot believe what I am seeing on the television. This is the response of the world's most powerful country to an anticipated natural disaster in a major city? Appalling. In India, where some place or the other gets flooded every year, we are well used to seeing footage of planes and helicopters air-dropping food, water and sundry relief materials. Never have I seen the army with guns, police with guns, refugees with guns like in New Orleans. The administration says "law and order" is priority number one. People are being asked to board up their houses against looters. And why are all the people we see all black? This is a major disaster. I cannot believe it. From the coverage, America sure seems like a spiritual wasteland. Where you expect to hear words like "relief", "aid", "medical supplies", we hear "snipers", "firefight", "security systems". Hell on earth.

Mangal Pandey The Rising - Movie Review

All I can say is that had Mangal Pandey known that such atrocities would be committed in his name, he would probably have thought twice before pulling that trigger.

Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas - Movie Review

I remember being struck by director Terry Gilliam's intense vision while watching Brazil a few weeks ago. I remember thinking that one should only watch films like this. So it was with some trepidation that I brought home the Fear and Loathing DVD, because watching something with high expectations inevitably leads to disappointment. I needn't have worried. The film is absolutely incredible. It is so funny to begin with, Raoul Duke and his attorney Gonzo on their way to Vegas to cover a motorcycle derby with an incredible arsenal of drugs. Johnny's incredibly stylistic portrayal of Duke is pure magic. Benicio is simply incredible as Gonzo. The two are so good, after a while you can't even see Johnny or Benicio any more, just two mad guys going crazy. And then, the humour starts to turn into this dark, uncomfortable vibe, the laughs are still there but by now you're suffering extreme discomfort. The script is a winner all the way, constantly surprising with such amazing lines as "At last we found our way back to the hotel room. The key wouldn't open the door." Anyone who's been to Amsterdam will surely relate to that feeling. The great thing about the whole thing is the ludicrousness of the situation. These two guys walking around doing large quantities of drugs and no one seems to mind. There are no obstacles in the path of our heroes except their own madness. The whole production of this movie was so cool. Listening to Gilliam's commentary later, I realised that so much of this movie was improvised. Gilliam likes to set up the scene and then let it play itself out, which is when one realises, I suppose, what truly gifted actors the leading pair are. I cannot recommend this movie highly enough.

The Assasination of Richard Nixon - Movie Review

Ah well, another day another movie. I have a friend who would call this movie subversive not because the protagonist tries to kill richard Nixon, but because the protagonist fails. She says that movies like this are the ones that prop up the system. They lead you to believe that they're against the system but really, they are just all about how you cannot beat it. She's right as well. In the end, one has neither sympathy for Sam Bicke nor his cause, driven as it is by rage rather than any moral stance. Who wants to support a total loser, even when his cause is to kill the president of the United States. A political film with superficial politics and superior production. That's all. Give this one a miss.

The Man Who Wasn't There - Movie Review

The perfect antidote to an intellectual thriller like '21 grams'. A movie with more soul per second than anything else I've seen from the Coen brothers, and a treatise on restraint. When the Coen brothers make wooden, two-dimemsional cardboards they make them that way not so they can escape from their acting or writing responsibilities, when the make them say their lines deadpan it's not because they're looking for some sort of 'quirkyness', it's because these characters are really beaten down by life, really tired, bored beyond belief and unable to express any of it. Ed Crane is a barber who does something one day because he thinks it might help him escape from his life as a barber, the same life that he finds no meaning in. The consequences of his actions however, are far more serious than he bargained for. Yes, he did something wrong in order to get some money together, but as he says, nothing that wasn't fair. And yet, the people who pay the price pay a price far beyond their crimes to Ed, and just when it seems like everything is going to be okay, Ed's pigeon's come home to roost. And yet, as he says, 'I feel sorry for all the people I hurt. But I don't regret any of it. I used to. I used to regret being a barber.' Possibly the most understated movie on taking the chances that one is likely to come across. I'm of the opinion that when one takes a decision, it cannot be taken as to what might change in the future. The future is unknowable, and there's no point trying to chart the course of one's life from point A to point B. Instead, a decision should stand on the grounds of what it will change in your life today. If years down the line it turns out to be the wrong decision, well, that's just life, but atleast you can say you tried. Atleast you get hanged for some crime that you actually did commit. All the actors were so good and it's nice to know that Frances McDormand can even be hot, when required. Billy rocks! Even the minor characters were stunning. The photography was scintillating black and white, pure poetry. The dialogue was as racy as a great crime thriller, the best of the noir tradition is on display here but with a real twist. and really, where else can someone see a frame like this one?

And let us not even get into what might have been if Creighton Tolliver had done what he needed to. Stunning! In other news: Saif Ali Khan finally managed to win the Rajat Kamal: he bagged the best actor award for his "sheer ease, subtlety and spontaneity in portraying a complex and demanding role" in Hum Tum. (from The Hindu) Given that Sudhir Mishra is the chairperson of the jury for the national awards this year, I think it's safe to assume that Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi will win the best film award next year.

21 grams - Movie Review

First things first - watch this movie. I don't know how much of my enjoyment came from my not knowing anything about this film, but if you know nothing about this film, go watch it first and then read on. The direction/editing is the first thing that hits you. The film starts with a series of chronologically jumbled episodes from the lives of the characters, just tiny slices following each other with the rhythmic relentlessness of a locomotive. You try and piece together the lives of these people and the order in which these events might have happened given these tiny clues. Throughout the movie, each frame and each line offer some new information, some new meaning to try and piece into the puzzle. When you finally find out what the titular 21 grams refers to, it is goose-bump central. Then you find out who made this movie and you say "Man, I was wondering how this one came out of Hollywood." You sometimes notice how difficult it might have been to make this film because a lot of the clues are almost subliminal. The colour of the sky on a particular day. The grain of the film. The expression on the actors face. At the start, there are a million possibilities, but as one starts to piece them together, one slowly unfolds the horror that lies in wait. If you need a bit of space to deal with the intensity of the stories, the director gives none. He is merciless to the point that one of my friends asked that the movie be paused because "I need another drink, and I don't like to cry in front of other people". I am somehow glad that I didn't watch this movie in a theater even though there is no doubt that it might have been the most cathartic and disturbing cinematic experience of my life. This is a keeper, definitely. A masterclass in film making.

Garden State - Movie Review

If a movie must be quirky, let it be like this. The jokes were of the highest quality, even if they were few and far between, making one laugh out loud quite unexpectedly. The story was sweetly sentimental but made with such affection that one cannot but help be taken in by the characters, especially the vivacious and slightly-nuts Sam (Natalie Portman). It's a film that one might describe as peculiar, but never crossing the line into bizarre. The emotional scenes are played with amazing restraint. The music is noteworthy and the crew seems to have been mighty competent. This was writer-director-actor Zach Braff (from TV's Scrubs) first feature and it is definitely an auspicious debut. What amazes me about indie cinema these days is the production values. Everything is tight as a drum, the attention to detail is striking and the end result is pure quality. Quite unlike our veteran film makers like Sudhir Mishra who won't even take the trouble to stick a guy's beard on properly. Ah well.

Oh Jerry, Jerry...

It's been well known for some time that MBAs shouldn't really be writing anything apart from reports or presentations. Senior ones should limit themselves to signing checks and filling golf score cards. So why does this continue to happen. Well, alright, he started well with his sweet pieces on Mysorean cooking and RK Narayan, and I thought it was a minor blip when he wrote a pointless (yet thought provoking) piece on Macaulay, but really Jerry, this isn't the Times of India. If you want to talk about randomness, faith and a philosophical approach to the same, there are far better ways of doing it than this nonsense. Chaldeans?

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou - Movie Review

Funky title, funky film, boring as hell. Like watching a Hyundai Santro with "Racing America" stickers and a rear spoiler chunder down the expressway at 65 kmph. Wes Anderson has made a career out of 'quirky', and while in a perfect world there should be space for a voice like this, I'd be far happier I think, if he found something coherent to say, or even a coherent way of saying whatever it is that he wants to. Style is one thing, substance is another - any MBA (or post-modernist) will tell you that. If Wes'd been a corporate executive, he'd probably be responsible for Vanilla Coke. Good for Owen Wilson though, he's managed to overcome the handicap of his nose, which can only be a good thing. And this isn't just because I used to idolise Cousteau. I even know not just his his middle name (Yves) but also how it is pronounced.

Irreversible - Movie Review

Irreviewable, more like. Shot in reverse-chronological order, this film deals with a brutal rape and murder and the events that lead up to it, or so the blurb on the jacket will have you believe. In reality, this is an irreparable waste of time. Let us take a moment to count all the absolutely pointless cinematic techniques used - the 'drunken monkey' camera work, the one shot per scene wank, the story told in reverse - and the terrible effect that they have when combined in such a pointless way. The dialogue is rambling, pointless, telling us nothing about the people involved except for their total imbecility. Why this strange camera work? So the director could conveniently point it at a dark corner where he can insert the cut for the next (previous) scene. Why one shot per take? Pure wank. Why in reverse? To prevent the audience from walking out once Monica Belucci's nude scenes were over. This is a gratuitously violent film with all the intellectual content of a porn movie. Some might call it visceral and gut-wrenching, which is true. I did feel a distinct wrenching in my gut as my viscera tried to tie itself into a knot and die. If this film shocks you, you're probably not watching enough TV. The opening credits say "Musique: Beethoven". What arrogance. Written, edited and directed by: Noe. Such hubris. This is the Hazaaron Khwaishein of France. What is it about the French these days? I thought they made good movies. If I had a rupee for every shitty, pretentious and mind numbingly dull French film I've seen in the past few months, I'd have quite a few rupees. Garde a Vue? Rubbish. A Very Long Engagement? Absolute bollocks. Manu Chau Giro Mundial 2002? Gag, puke...and so on.

Two pointless films...

...and on the same day too! The first was a French film called "A Very Long Engagement" about a girl (Audrey Tatou from Amelie) who goes looking for her fiance, presumed dead during the first world war. As a take on the suffering of the common man during war time, it was lukewarm and bearable. On all other counts, it fared pretty poorly. I'm getting a bit tired of this too-clever-by-half movie making. The second was About Schmidt, which had a far deeper message but dragged from start to finish and said what it had to very inelegantly. This is the movie Alexander Payne made before 'Sideways', so atleast he's going in the right direction. Did I mention that 'Sideways' was just wonderful?

At last!

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=73519 I say, get rid of all of them. At $60 a barrel, they're far more trouble than they're worth anyway. I've long been of the opinion that car charges are far too low in this country. From taxes to parking, users generally do not pay the true cost of owning a car. There are certain things that I hold as the hallmark of a civilised urban society and for me the most important things are parks, wide sidewalks and good public transport. It is these things that tell how egalitarian a society is. Of course, car lovers will plump for the 'individual freedom' argument, but lets not forget that in an open society people are free to the extent that they're not causing harm to anyone else. When the number of cars means that school children are not free to ride their bicycles, then something needs to be done. Those who see this as a conflict would do well to read the initiatives that Enrique Penalosa got going in Bogota. India has ridiculously few cars per person compared to the developed world, and already the lane where we played galli cricket is like a parking lot. I shudder to think what'll happen when we go from 6 cars/1000 people to 60 or 600. End it now. Besides, I cannot understand how people can still drive with the way traffic and parking are. I suppose it is okay if four people take one car, but for one person to drive a Ford Endeavour....how does he do it? Doesn't he go mad with frustration? I used to drive, enjoyed it for a while, but now the thought just raises bile to my throat. Get a bike! Has anyone noticed how awesome the Indian Express has become of late? Their local coverage is really stunning. And they seem to know my mind. Today, they trashed the IMD and the IITM too! When I started the weathermap project, I slowly became convinced that our Met Department was a piece of shit. And today, this -> http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=73523

Sideways - Movie Review

Redemption through wine, words and love. What a great film. Two ex-college roommates meet after years to go on a wine tasting trip through California. Miles is a serious wine aficionado. His friend Jack is a struggling actor about to be married to a rich and beautiful girl and who just wants to get his rocks off before his big day. The first half of the film is a rich tribute to wine. At first we're presented with the technical details, what to look for, how to smell it, how to drink it, and then Maya asks Miles why he's so into Pinot. The conversation that follows seemed like I wrote it. Miles sys he likes Pinot because it's a hard grape to grow which needs constant love and affection and only the best vintners can make it. Maya says she loves wine because of what it makes her think about. The stories of the people behind the wine, and if it's an old one.... Such soul! The Spanish word for hobby is 'aficion', but 'hobby' is such a poor translation for a word that implies such a depth of passion, and while this film might be about wine and wine 'hobbyists', it is really a take on art of any sort. Some reviewers have complained about the 'specialist audience' viewpoint of this film, but anyone who has studied anything in great detail, detail enough to see the wonder of things, will relate without much trouble. Maya says that wine is like a living, breathing thing, always different, ephemeral. Like music. Woven into this is the stories of the two guys and their women. Miles is a cerebral man still in love with his ex-wife. Jack wants to bone the sexy Stephanie before he gets married and has no trouble lying about his situation. The movie never stoops to moralising about their personal philosophies though, and it ends happily for all concerned. Technically too, this movie was superb. It's been made with such love and affection. The actors have all (well, almost) done superb jobs, with Paul Giamatti and Virginia Madsen (so beautiful) being the pick of the lot. The music by Rolfe Kent (with some help from Tarrega) was to die for! Watch this film.

This movie....

I am speechless. I laughed so hard I started crying and then at some point, I started to cry for real. When Om Puri says "...to not be scared of cancer...." I saw it again immediately, just to be sure. And I'm not going to complain about happy endings.

All The Names by Jose Saramago

I know I said I wouldn't write any more reviews, so its good that this is not a review but awe-struck, gushing adulation. What a book! Senhor Jose works in the Central Registry and passes his time collecting namecards and details of famous people. One day, an unknown woman's card enters his collection by mistake and thus does Senhor Jose's obsession start. Of course this book and the story are many things - a short treatise on the State, on chance, on identity and happiness, on obsession, on life and death and of course, on talking ceilings. I don't know why Saramago isn't better known. Perhaps its because he writes in Portugese and not Spanish. At any rate, this is first class writing. Makes me want to go out and buy all the Saramago(e?)s. The writing is incredibly dense and incredibly sparse at the same time. The words are all bunched together with little punctuation and the dialogue all mixed up with the other words, but it works incredibly well in the hands of a master. It's like reading a creme-brulee. The texture of the pages make it look like it's going to be hard, but what you get is delicious prose that slides down your throat like caramel. As a kid I was taught that short sentences make for good writing. While this may generally be true, it seems no one told Saramago that. He writes like people speak, with little more than a comma to indicate that he's now going to go off at a tangent and talk about something else. And yet totally absorbing, clearly delineated and deeply philosophical in the sense that the book leaves you with many questions which you would ask if only you could find the words. Saramago lived 68 years in Portugese-induced obscurity until he was discovered. Ten years later, they gave him the Nobel Prize.

Deconstructing Deconstruction

So I figure I've written enough reviews to figure that I need not write another. Was it worth it? Definitely. At first, deconstructing everything is really painful. When I started, I could not watch or read anything without constantly thinking what I'm going to write about in my review. Whole sentences would be forming in my head as I saw a movie. I'd think of suitable adjectives as I read my book. I'd exhort myself to remember things to write in the review that would inevitably follow. I didn't like it at all. But slowly, as the conscious act of deconstructing became more natural, it ceased to be a conscious act at all. All the very many movies I'd seen with one eye on the review have, it seems, greatly enhanced my appreciation of movies of general. I enjoy what I read now much more simply because I spent so much time obsessing about the essences, the details, the many layers of meaning. I guess writing all those reviews taught me to pay more attention, to see a new way of seeing. It taught me to recognise techniques, and recognise their application in variouses guises. How does one develop space in a story? How does one develop space in a song? If Tom Hanks is on a raft in the middle of the ocean and he's tuning the radio, why did the writer choose that he tune into an old pop song? If a number is written on a wall in the hypercube, why does it start with 1111? One learns a lot when one pays attention. But, even so, I feel I've written my last review for the time being. It's getting harder and harder to whip up the enthusiasm for them. I'm running out of adjectives too :-) Sometimes I read reviews in the Sunday papers and thank my stars I don't have to do it for a living. Besides, some things - and I believe that the best of art is like this - defy deconstruction. They frustrate any attempts at imposing order, or cliched sentences on them. They say more than you can put into words. With some things, it is better to just let them be. Where deconstruction ends, poetry can start.

Star Wars III The Revenge of the Sith - Movie Review

Very impressive! A wonderful story told in magnificent fashion. After the disappointment of the first two episodes, I was all set for further crap from George Lucas but he blew me away quite unequivocally. Well, not quite so unequivocally. The start was pretty pathetic in terms of writing, acting etc. Everyone seemed so wooden to start with that I decided to just concentrate on the special effects, which were magnificent. Each frame in this movie was something special. The attention to detail that ILM has put into the effects in this movie was something else. After a few minutes, I slowly found myself getting totally absorbed in the story, in the Chancellor's powerlust, in Anakin's doubt and greed, in Padme's hopeless situation. I loved the politics of the movie - the Republic, the emergency powers of the Chancellor, the conversion of the Federation into Empire! So this is how liberty is lost, says Padme. With thundering applause. I'm halfway through Karl Popper's "The Open Society and it's Enemies" and this movie was so much a reflection of all that he's been saying so far. It was a nice coincidence for me. Did I mention that the special effects were simply mindblowing. Even the scenes where they have the city as a backdrop were stunning. The fights were riveting. Everything was simply a visual feast. And in the end, we get Lord Vader! We get Lord Vader and the Emperor looking out at the half constructed Death Star and we get Owen and Beru Lars looking at the young Luke and the twin suns of Tatooine. What a movie! Fantastic! I really liked the fact that the sets in the end of the movie looked so much like the original star wars trilogy. In the scene where the emperor and Lord Vader are overseeing the construction of the death star, it looks exactly like a shot from Return of the Jedi, the continuity was amazing. While there were many many things that were wrong with this movie, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed watching it.

Life of Pi by Yann Martell

What a great book! It started of a bit iffy though. The writing was poor, but fresh and somehow innocently charming. It made me laugh, but even so I couldn't seem to look beyond Martell's "orange Thumbs Up" and his Sufi Mr. Kumar. I thought it was a poorly researched piece of writing. A foreigner using India for exotica. I still think that, since the start of the book could have been set anywhere for all the difference it made to the rest of the book. The rest of the book is a pure pleasure to read though. When he ends up on the lifeboat, I expected the worst of magic realism to spew forth from the author but he wrote with remarkable restraint. I like books with very stark settings. A lifeboat, a tiger and the Pacific does that quite well. And without the help of a single fantasy element, Yann Martell tells a wonderful story with many levels. Pi is alone on a lifeboat with a tiger, but instead of despairing he learns to control his elements. He uses all his ingenuity to keep himself and the tiger alive. He walks a fine tightrope between providing the tiger with food and being food himself. Out there in the middle of the Pacific, he trains a tiger to obey him. There has been no finer setting for a story in recent years, I say! One day, he goes blind and his lifeboat bumps into the lifeboat of another person, also blind, in the middle of the Pacific. Richard Parker eats him. Yann Martell waited till well into the second half of the book to spring what is perhaps the book's only wildly fantastic story. It was very nicely done. The start of the book talked a lot about God, but the end doesn't speak much about him. When Pi becomes all four religions in the start I thought it might lead to some heavy-hitting theology later on in the book, but fortunately for me, that never happens. It would have been boring. All in all a very satisfying book. Leaves one with a gentle smile, though somehow I doubt we'll see much more from Yann Martell.

FabMall

So since I've often praised FabMall in my previous posts, it's time for more honest appraisal of the online store. In one word: "What the..." Fabmall used to be so cool! They have lots and lots of books, the site worked well and their delivery was blazing fast. Not the prettiest site in the world, but it was basic and robust and there was no fuss involved. Over the past few weeks though, things have gone totally down the drain. Logins fail, the shopping cart continuosly forgets what was put into it, the connection with the bank fails. It has become impossible to buy a book on fabmall. And if you manage to get the shopping cart to work, then you find that the site's security certificate is invalid. I suppose some people might disclose their credit card numbers on such a site, but I'm not one of them. And of course, despite repeatedly emailing "Customer Support", there has been no reply. So, if you're having problems with FabMall, you probably should let them know. In the meantime, I'm using First and Second, which seems to work much better.

The Abolition of Work - A Short How-To

I just finished reading Bob Black's essay The abolition of work. It's a wonderful essay, and having read it I felt compelled to write this: There is no doubt that work, as it is carried out today, is a terrible thing. It fills one's day with mostly useless tasks and leaves one too tired to do anything useful with the time one has left. It invades and envelopes every aspect of one's existence. And many times, the more time one spends working, the more deeply one gets enmeshed in this pointless to-and-froing that we call a "job".

Bob Black's agenda is a little over the top in my opinion, and I think deliberately so. I'm not of the opinion that work should be "abolished". Neither do I want to look back with nostalgia at our idyllic hunter-gatherer existence because I'm not so sure that it was as nice as all that. However, with all the advances that the human race has made, it is about time that we abolish work, once and for all. For those that don't want it.

While we would all like to believe that everyone is smart enough to hate work, I'm almost certain that there are people for whom it is a good thing, or at least the lesser of two evils. Even if one were to assume a world in which everyone can survive without working for money, work would still have a place in the lives of some people. Some people like the illusory "security" of a job, like prisoners who feel safe on the inside. It's called institutionalisation. Some need a nice title on an embossed visiting-card to boost their self-esteem. Like prisoners obsessing over their shiny handcuffs, they proudly show off the trappings of their position in life - their ties, their leather shoes, their briefcases. Some people are too stupid to be left to their own devices.

There is no doubt in my mind the people are unequal. Where one draws the line between intelligence and stupidity is a personal matter but if nothing else, it would be overly autocratic to assume that abolishing work completely ("No one should ever work") is the correct thing to do. Instead of abolishing work for all, it might be worthwhile to consider how to abolish work for those who don't want it, and if my experience is anything to go by, there are far fewer of us than you might imagine. In the rest of the essay I will try and present the best way for abolishing work from your life. I have managed to do this myself and hope the experience might be helpful to others. Believe me, it is well worth it.

If one takes a look around, one would quite easily surmise that we have all the useful things we need. The vast majority of places on the face of the earth are accessible today, either physically or via a telecommunications medium. Enough things have been invented for us to lead comfortable lives. A lifetime is not enough to read all those great books and listen to all that wonderful music. Yes there are areas where we fall behind, but like the ancient Greeks did, I too believe that all useful things have been made and that it is now time to work on the more important issues - for them it was philosophy. If I were smarter, I would like to make that same claim, but at any rate I can still say that the marginal improvement in our lives from further obsession with baubles like cars and IKEA furniture is diminishing at an alarming rate. On a similar note, let me also say that there are many many things that we have too much off. Take cola for example. What is cola? Sugar, water, gas and a "secret ingredient". What does cola do? It neither quenches one's thirst, nor is the taste particularly appealing. It's value as a mixer for rum is also suspect. Why then, is my question, are the Cola companies so big? Why is it that when the Berlin wall comes down, there is a cola truck waiting to liberate those behind the wall? How is it that a company that makes cola's can pollute groundwater with the impunity that comes with great power? How can a company that makes sugared water pay Aishwarya Rai millions to be on its billboards? I say, enough cola. And in this simple manifesto, we can find the secret to abolishing work.

Just like the reason for buying cola is not the cola itself, most people spend too much time buying things for the wrong reasons. A flashy cell phone to show off. New threads to wear on Saturday night. The new Rabbi CD. These are the people who deserve to work. Let them. They help to maintain a system of mediocrity and unimaginativeness without which it would be much more difficult for us to lead lives of quiet contemplation. For the rest of us then, abolishing work becomes more or less a matter purely of choice. Or is it?

It is true that to not have to work is a privilege, and privileges have to be earned. In this instance, there are two necessary but individually insufficient ways to achieve freedom. The first is the internal (enough cola!) and the second is the external. First, the internal.

Given the clear relationship between a job and its remuneration, one needs to accept the abolition of one if one is to achieve the abolition of the other. Therefore, it comes down to whether you value cola more than freedom. If you're worried that you might never have enough money to own a house in Bombay, then you have to keep working. If you couldn't care less if the entire city gets swallowed up by garbage, then you're on your way. Wanting less is always a good way of needing less money, and therefore a good way of starting to rid yourself of employment. Of course there are those for whom it would be very difficult to want less, but they're not going to be reading this are they? If you can speak English and use the Internet, you will never have to worry about starvation, atleast in India. That much is sure. Whether you're willing to settle for the alternative is a different discussion, but to think that there is no alternative is to blind oneself. People will malign this as a neo-Gandhian, pseudo-Buddhist, adjective-adjective philosophy. You are free to do so. Once you're done with "things", you can start with habits. Alcohol habits, smoking tobacco or dope, ideally all of this should go. (A short note on quitting alcohol - quit your job first. Once you drop the misery, you can quite easily drop the booze as well).

Besides, owning too many things is such a problem. If you own a house, you're stuck in the city where the house is. If you have a lot of things, you get weighed down. Rooted. Not a good way to abolish work from your life because the trick of being able to work when one wants is to be flexible. Things tie you down, so not only does one have to work to acquire them but each acquisition is like one more brick in the prison wall. Sell everything. Enough Cola! Why live and struggle like rats in Bombay when you can have a perfectly decent life in more pleasant places like Pune, or Belgaum or Nainital? Or all those three places. But you can only do that if you own nothing but the bare minimum.

The second thing to do is to acquire a relevant skill. A skill is the moral opposite of a posession. It frees you. Perhaps this is easier said than done, but even so it is certainly easier to do this today than it was even a few years ago. If you have a relevant skill today, like being able to program a computer, and you are still stuck behind a monitor at a cube-farm like Infosys, then you probably deserve to work. I am all for paying one's dues when one is young, but to continue paying them because you have a mortgage on a pigeon-hole in an urban hell is, quite frankly, stupid. If you do not have a relevant skill, the best way to acquire it is by pursuing a hobby seriously.

I do not count "reading" and "watching TV" amongst hobbies. Infact, the single best way to get a hobby going is by getting rid of the TV set. All they do all day is try to get you to buy stuff by showing you stuff that they think you want to see. So just don't bother. I've checked time and again and there is never anything good on TV. Apart from these things though, there are many, many things you can do. A friend of mine used to be Bobo the Clown and organiser of children's parties in his spare time. You can do anything, it doesn't matter, as long as you do it well and with love. You might claim that the amount of time one spends at work and the way the work seeps into every waking and sleeping hour makes it hard to maintain a hobby. This however, is again a personal decision.

And besides, the finest skill one can have in an age where all knowledge is a google away, is curiosity, and surely that can be practiced anywhere. Asking questions leads to answers, and answers are valuable. Socrates said that the truly wise one is the one who is aware that he knows nothing, for it is only from acknowledging this that the quest for knowledge can start. We live in a "knowledge economy". It is time for everyone to upgrade.

Having skills allows us to get to step three of the process in abolishing work. Step three is - cooperate. Competition is for saps who want more cola. Once you decide that you have all the cola you could possibly want, then you're not going to feel bad if someone else gets more cola than you do. You won't worry about giving away cola to someone who needs it more than you do. There is no better way to abolish work for those who want it than to get all of them to cooperate. Bob Black's essay was written in the days before the Internet. With Orkut and Ryze and God-knows-what-else, the tools for cooperation are already there. If they are being used in a different spirit, I blame cola.

Step three, if it's ever achieved on a mass scale should then lead to step four - How to help the maximum number of people to escape? The answer lies in our schools, for it is nowhere else that children are set inexorably in motion to a life of quiet servitude. According to me, a school should have two basic functions - the imparting of basic skills and the arousal of curiosity. Let the clerks and accountants have their way, but shouldn't there also be a place for those who don't measure everything in numbers? It is for this that it is shameful (but by no means surprising) that our schools have become academies of indoctrination providing plenty of fodder for the machine. Where in the old days it was loyalty to a country or patriotism (an equally flawed concept), we now have loyalty to a whole new system of "world trade" or "global financial markets" and "conspicuous consumption" with the added advantage that most people believe they've chosen this life themselves. And even though I know that you and I can do nothing about this, it is still important to say it because even if we can't do anything it is still better to have the right attitude than the wrong one.

Anyways, this wasn't meant to be a rant on the economic system, just a short how-to on how to escape it. Best of luck.

Cube^2: Hypercube - Movie Review

The movie's about seven people trapped in a cube with no idea how they got there and no idea what they're supposed to be doing or how to get out. It seems a simple enough analogy of the existential problem, but treated with a depth of understanding and thought that is definitely above par. One of the seven is a mathematician. He starts off numbering the rooms but as he finds ever increasingly complex numbers, he develops increasingly complex methods and equations to try and make sense of them. It's a very trippy take on randomness, a concept that has somehow, randomly I suppose, managed to work its way into my reading these days. What I found most impressive about the film was the very tight canvas the writer has given himself. One cube. Some people. He can't introduce things at will and so each incident has to not only drive the story forward within this austere space, but at the same time be interesting because with a concept like this, it's the easiest thing in the world to bore your audiences to death. And in this small canvas, the writer has managed to talk about Nazi Germany, relationships, philosphy, many many things that I can't remember now by just refering to them in the most oblique way. I have to watch this movie again. It's on Star Movies these days but late at night. The best part? No commercial breaks! Though not so good if you're (as I was) having a beer with the movie. Also, this is a remake of Cube, the makers of which sadly have very slim credits but I'd be really interested in seeing what else they might have to offer. Guess there's always this one. The movie is on again at 1:00 PM Tuesday, May 17, 2005 and 3:00 AM Sunday, May 29, 2005. The Star Movies website has a nice "Remind Me" feature, but it doesn't seem to work.

Reef by Romesh Gunasekara

If you liked The God of Small Things, you will probably like this one too. I loved it! It's a slim volume, less than 200 pages, written with such love and affection that it's almost poetry. The book is set almost exclusively in a house in Colombo, written from the eyes of Triton, the servant boy. Absolutely nothing happens in the book. Triton comes to the house of Mr. Salgado and stays there, doing his work until one day they leave for England. Triton's life is simple. There is the house to look after, the cooking to be done and Mr. Salgado, an ordinary man, but what poetry there is in this world, this simple home with the shadow of dark times gathering in the lanes just outside and the shadows that each man casts in his soul. There are long passages devoted to cooking. There are haunting references to the impending bloodbath in Sri Lanka. Right at the end, Mr. Salgado asks Triton to remind him of the Anguli-mala story. Those of you who grew up in the subcontinent might remember the same story as the link, a simple tale of remorse. The way Triton tells it though, is like a sock in the jaw. He turns Angulimala's life into a Sysiphean task of cutting fingers, of killing and killing and killing, and all the time outside the house in Colombo, the death-squads are silently gathering. In the end, this book is all about the writing. It was shortlisted for the 1994 booker but didn't win, so I guess I got to read "How Late It Was, How Late" by James Kelman, even though some Booker winners can be totally unreadable.

The Great Indian Baccha Party

I was very angry last night after watching half of Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, and when I woke up this morning, I knew why. HKA was meant to reaffirm my faith in Indian creativity and so it's failure was not just one bad film for me, but the loss of my hope that someone, somewhere in this country will do something worthwhile. Two nights ago in Bombay someone aptly described the Indian media/entertainment/art scene as a "baccha party" - the little league - and I am beginning to despair of ever seeing anything deeper than a baby-pool ever being made locally. I used to have this debate with friends about whether local talent should be given some leeway, some encouragement initially to nurture their growth, no matter how shit they are. Their side of the argument usually is that in an increasingly globalised world, everyone competes at a global level. Why should I watch Black when I can watch Wild Strawberries instead? Why buy an Indian band's album when I can download all the Grateful Dead I could possibly want. Just because it's Indian shouldn't affect your judgement of it. My argument was that yes, all that is true, but how about supporting them so that one day when (if) they come good, you'll have a worldclass filmmaker/band who lives and works in your city. You have local access to their work. Now I feel that they're right and I was wrong. These people will never grow out of their feeble-mindedness as long as everyone keeps telling them how great they are. It's one massive Mutual Appreciation Society. Look at what's on TV (or rather, don't!). Look at the films that are coming out. I watched Lagaan in London and felt ashamed, even more so when it got an Oscar nomination. Black? Please! HKA? An atrocity. This whole baccha party is being sponsored by big media and their connections and being lapped up wholesale by an upwardly-mobile MBA class that has no time to form any opinion other than what they read in the newspapers. It's a really happy situation for them when they can make money from "Chandu ke Chacha". Really desperate times for the rest of us. Of course there are notable exceptions. Indian Ocean is one band that continues to generate meaningful music. They don't insult the intelligence of their audiences like most everyone else does. "Dil Chahta Hai", "Monsoon Wedding" and "Mr. And Mrs. Iyer" were some great recent films made locally. There, I've run out of names. It's almost as if the rest of the artists think that we've never seen a movie or heard a song before in our lives. I'm sure there are plenty of films/bands/authors out there that I've never heard of that are doing amazing work. It's just not possible that there are none (one lives in hope), but the fact remains that whatever gets to the mainstream is just a joke. I truly believe that some of the stuff that reaches us started out well, and got messed up by the suits along the way. Suits hate radical thought. They like bubblegum, and as long as the tyranny of their business model persists, bubblegum is all we'll get. I don't see their business model lasting very long, what with the Internet and all, but are our indie artists worth it? Some might say that it's a question of money, but that's just making excuses. An average human being today has more equipment well within his reach than Bunuel could even have dreamed of. The constraints are gone, so where is the art? Show us the art! In the end, it's a question of attitude. Nobody does things for love anymore. Bands all over the country don't have the imagination to rise above the ritualistic aping of their succesful western counterparts. Filmmakers are lazy. Authors don't spend enough time on their sentences. How can someone from IIT/IIM now working a cushy job in Hong Kong write a novel worth reading? It takes time to craft the perfect sentence. It takes empathy to write a mood. It takes effort. These lazy bastards, I've had enough of them. Not one original voice to be seen for miles. The future looks bleak.

Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi - Movie Review

This is the absolute LAST time I get taken in by the hype. What a terrible movie. From the first scene itself I knew something was wrong. The gruesome riot completely silent....fuckall. The first thing that hits you about the film is the complete ineptness of the crew. All of them. The makeup artist, the cinematographer, the dialogue writer, the director, the editor, the actors. There. All of them did an utterly hamhanded job. The film looks more like a student diploma film than this so called "revolutionary" film by a Great Indian Director. The cinematography was appaling! No nuance, no composition. Terrible lighting. Yuck. The dialogue was atrocious, and delivered even worse by three total ham's. I mean the guy can't read a line properly in the voiceovers. Flub after flub afer flub. The editing was the only thing about the film that was authentic of the period i.e. abrupt cuts and jumps. Clumsy pacing. A monument to medicrity. The story itself is awful awful awful. Man, Sudhir Mishra's really disappointed on this one. I used to be a fan of his. I left in the interval. I wouldn't have if I hadn't got up to pee, but once I was outside the cinema I could think of no real reason to go back in and have my intelligence insulted for another hour. It strikes me as odd how someone as educated in the medium can make such a terrible movie. I read in some review that "But Chitrangada Singh, whose face draws inevitable comparisons to Smita Patil, is definitely someone to watch out for. She is a complete natural who zaps the camera with a passionate performance." Reminded me of Mira Nair comparing Rabbi to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. How can people be so fucking stupid? Also, the media somehow keeps calling this an internationally acclaimed film. Where, I want to know is the acclaim coming from. The media claims the film "won" the Fonds Sud and Montecinemaveritas awards but the truth is (as any google search will show) that the film was made with funding from these two agencies. It wasn't a prize, you lying bastards. Also, the hype about all the festivals it's been too. Well, let me tell you what else is playing at the DC Film Festival from India: Dil Se, Black, Raincoat, Morning Raga, Bawandar, Dev (yes, the Amitabh Bachchan one) Mughal-e-Azam and Choker Bali. Some fucking festival. Never ever trust the media, I tell you.

The World Jones Made by Philip K Dick

Nice book. Easy read. Gripping start to finish. Dick's 1956 book is full of the neuroses of the Cold War, the references to the Communists and the War, but like all good books, there's an element of general truth in what he writes. In the book the Relativists overthrow the fanatics and the fanatics overthrow them back and I guess that sums up human civilisation, the swinging back and forth between opposite poles. Humans it seems have trouble dealing with duality. They like names and labels to be fixed, unchanging, easy. They like to believe fairy stories. They categorise themselves and the categorisation somehow becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Be it microsoft vs. open source or capitalism vs. well, anti-capitalism, nobody wants to look any deeper than the most generalised principles, and then they want to stick their loyalties to that one cause, however badly it might fit their world view. And of course, loyalty to more than one idea is anathema. Dick writes well, and he generalises enough about the future that his books don't date easily. And really, this isn't a sci-fi book is it? It's a novel about humans which happens to be set in some distant future. 1997. Buy it here Fabmall rocks by the way. I got the Book of Illusions from them a few days ago and like everything else that I've ordered from them, it arrives with stunning efficiency. Remarkable.

The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster

I still have goosebumps from this one, and as I write the title above, they're coming back with renewed force. This man writes and when you're done reading him you can't quite explain what he said, but the feeling lingers on like somewhere deep inside you he's changed the way you think. Somewhere inside, you've understood. Many days later perhaps you find yourself in a contemplative mood thinking about David Zimmer and his life, about Hector Mann and his life and I suppose about yourself and your life. The writing itself disappointed me to start with. I started drawing analogies to a bored Stephen King but now that I think about it, why draw attention to the style when what you have to say can be said so simply. I guess after the enormous success that Paul Auster has enjoyed it's going to be a bit hard for him to write with the same grit as he did the New York Trilogy, but that's okay I guess. He still manages to walk a bizarre line between philosophy and potboiler, seemingly at home in both environments. Don't read further unless you've read the book (available here) as they're called spoilers for a good reason. The book itself deals with Zimmer's efforts to write about Hector Mann, a silent-era comedian now presumed dead. Auster tells the story from many angles, one from Zimmer's point-of-view and many from the totally unreliable points of view of gossip columnists from the 1920s. An interesting way to tell a story. Hector Mann himself is a screen name with a fictitious past and after he leaves Hollywood he retroactively visits all the places he was alleged to have been from, reliving a bizarre time-warped history, bumping into people connected to his past, walking the knife-edge of chance, turning the fiction into reality. And then when Zimmer goes to visit him he's confronted with the most heartbreakingly beautiful work of art, the destruction of Hector Mann's unreleased films. The theme of "if a tree falls in a forest" is repeated in many motifs in this part of the book. Is art art if no one ever sees it? The only person who gets the girl is Martin Frost, and he typed her out of thin her, turning illusion into flesh and blood. Auster meditates on the fragility of "reality" and whether everything is just an illusion in the end. The revelation that Zimmer died without ever knowing whether Alma managed to save the films is probably the finest line to ever end a book. "I live with that hope", it says. The themes of random chance, loss, hope and the fragility of things are beautifully wound together in a very aptly titled book. If things don't make sense, are they real? This is one guy who when I read I get the impression that he sat down and wrote the first words knowing exactly what he wanted to say, and he says it without meandering subplots or halfbaked characters.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

What happened? How did this book manage to go from being Fight Club to Five Point Someone via The Old Man and the Sea? The start of the book is taut and stark and evil but a little past halfway through the book Kesey totally loses the plot and the book meanders to the end. I found myself skipping entire pages and was feeling guilty about it till I figured that ol' Ken'd probably had enough of this goddamn book by then anyways. I was going to see the movie as well, but now suddenly I'm not so keen.

Further Reading

So I did a lot of reading on the bike trip, far too many to post in detail, so here's a short summary: The Gabriel Club by Joydeep Roy Bhattacharya. Strange and intriguing book. I loved it. The story is nonexistent but the feeling is tremendous. Reminded me of Smell, but far more bizarre. You can read an excellent review here (A Stunning Debut) or even better, buy it here. Initially I was surprised that the book didn't do well but then I figure a public that thinks Dan Brown is "Umberto Eco on steroids" will probably not go for this stuff. I fell bad for the author that he didn't hit it big with this one, but if anything that is a confirmation of the high standard of art in this lovely work. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. What a revelation this book has been. Auster's style is very dry, and yet his stories are full of feelings. He writes about his characters in short, simple sentences but proceeds to make them into incredibly complex human beings. Bizarre things happen in his stories, but nothing that could be deemed impossible. It's a wonderful twilight zone between realism and surrealism. Smell by Radhika Jha. I got this book on my trip to Kerala last year. Simply superb. Towards the end one can almost feel reality crumbling around the protagonist. The scene with the puppet show on the metro totally blew me away. Radhika writes with a real intensity of feeling and even though one knows that this is a work of fiction, she certainly writes as though all these things actually happened to her. Although the styles are totally different, the smell motif reminded me of another excellent book, Perfume, another must read. Fooled by Randomness by Nassem Nicholas Taleb This book is aimed at financial market participants, traders, etc, who think they can predict the market. Taleb demolishes many theories about market movements, especially technical analysis, etc. He expounds beautifully on the role of chance, the brain's calculation of probabilites and the many misconceptions people have about stochastic processes like market prices. A wonderful book, almost epiphanic. Having worked in banking for many years, I can safely say that Taleb is a very rare specimen, the renaissance man with a deeply philosophical bent of mind engaged in one of the most cut-throat professions in the world, and his book is a rare glimpse into the mind of this man. Malcolm Gladwell has a nice piece on him at his website.

The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker

John LeCarre meets Roger Waters meets Graham Greene. Quintessentially English, tinged-with-existentialism writing dealing with England during the First World War. Stark characters and settings, hints of madness, despair and gloom. Very well written if you enjoy this kind of stuff. Pat Barker is a girl by the way.

Phantom of the Paradise - Movie Review

I first saw Phantom of the Paradise on Star Movies about half a century ago. I remember nothing of that now save for the fact that the film was deliciously bizarre. When Muthu said that he'd seen it and loved it, I said fuck! Muthu liked Magnolia, so there's no telling what he likes. Luckily for me though, my video library has a poor selection of good films and so having exhausted all other possibilities save for "Mujhse Shaadi Karogi", Phantom suddenly seemed liked a great choice. And my word, what a great choice it was. Brian de Palma's weird and dark look at the music business and his reworking of Faust/Phantom of the Opera is one that will definitely appeal to those who look for something out of the ordinary in cinema. This is another movie filled with fantastic storytelling and bizarre sequences. The prison escape, the disfigurement, Beef and his death are all sequences of intense weirdness. The Phantom is brilliant, funny and likeable and then immediately afterwards totally pathetic. Swan is brilliantly played by Paul Williams, who also wrote all the songs in the movie. Phoenix is simply beautiful. When she sings that song at the audition where she finally gets to sing she looks so heart-stoppingly lovely, vulnerable yet strong. This is a no-holds-barred plotline which gladly accepts and even celebrates the bizarre and unusual, leaving you constantly wonderstruck at the director's vision. Two thumbs simply aren't enough for this movie.

Pune-Varkala Bike Trip

The prudent man would begin a 1000 mile bike trip with detailed preparations, bike inspections and lists of things to take. The truth is, I've never been a prudent man. And so it was that shortly after having woken up one Monday morning (28th March), I decided that I too was going with Anoop and his brother Amit on their bike ride all the way to Kanyakumari. Toss some clothes in a bag, tie the bag to the bike and you're off. One of the pleasures of owning a Karizma. I'd like to take some time here to talk about the bike here. The Karizma is not renowned for it's touring ability. For starters it doesn't even look like a tourer. It looks quite fragile and more like a city bike for people with more money than sense. However, as it turns out, she is simply superb as a tourer. Superb performance, superb safety, superb reliability. What more could a reasonable man want? Superb comfort? Okay, got that too. When we started out I wondered whether my bike would keep up with the chugging locomotive and by all apperances omnipotent Enfield that Anoop was riding. I needn't have worried. The Karizma easily outperformed the Enfield, and totally crushed it on hills although I believe the latter is more due to the specicities of Anoop's bike than a general observation about Enfields. At any rate the superb silent Karizma engine performed like a dream. Overtaking was safe due to the power the Karizma delivers even in fifth gear. Just a little twist of the accelerator and the truck that was blowing great big diesel fumes in your face is quickly consigned to history. The braking is equally magnificent. A quick trip down the gears and a bit of brake and you're at a standstill. Wonderful. All this of course makes for a much safer ride on highways. And the best part - at the end of a days riding you're still limber. People say that the Karizma's riding position puts too much weight on the wrists. I can safely pronounce this as a myth. We did an average of 250 kms a day and at no point was there any sort of discomfort in the hands. The only thing I'd like to change about the riding position is the footrests which are a bit too far back. Even so, after a while one gets used to even that and there's nary a long-distance biker who doesn't need to stretch his legs at the end of the day. All in all, the Karizma is a comfortable bike. So comfortable infact that even someone with as little long distance biking experience as I could do 7 days of 6 hours on the bike with no apparent trouble. The route that we took was quite straightforward. Started off on NH-4 which becomes quite pleasant once it gets out of Poona. This is the same route I've often taken to Panchgani and there is slow but steady progress on the four-laning dream project Golden Quadrilateral. Up till Shirwal the highway is in stages of patchy completion but then it's fully ready up until a little before Karad. We turned off just after Karad towards Amba where we planned to spend the night. It was getting dark and freezing cold, making me thank the little voice in my head that said "It may be April. This may be India. Even so, pack a jacket. Always pack a jacket." Reached Amba at 11pm and ended up staying at the Pavankhind Resort, a lovely, luxurious yet homely place owned by a charming gentleman called Mr. Shirgaonkar. The next day we made our way down the ghats to NH-17, the Bombay-Goa highway. The drive down was stunning. This was where Anoop's bullet blew two fuses in quick succesion and then proceeded to have a flat tire. I got seperated from them in the confusion and did the 280 kms to Madgaon all by myself, which was wonderful fun. This bit of NH-17 is the kind of highway that makes biking a pleasure. You set your cruising speed at 60 and then sit back and relax. The road is good, the traffic light, the scenery acceptably pretty. Sometimes you round a corned and see a great big river. This can be stunning. It was really hot during the day but as the sun got low in the western sky it turned beautifully pleasant and it was a nice experience to bike through a countryside that was slowly switching on lights. I love this time of day. Stayed an extra day at Benaulim trying to figure out scuba for the Kumar brothers. This didn't work out so we set off southwards again. Goa was also a pleasure to bike through, but things started getting worse as we got into Karnataka. The villages didn't have the same neat, clean look as those we'd passed in Maharashtra or Goa. Karnataka highways seem to have been forgotten by the tourist industry. Some places are truly stunning (driving into Karwar, for example) but there is a real shortage of decent places to eat and spend a few hours avoiding the afternoon sun. Even so, there were enough stretches of clear highway to keep things pleasant. That evening we stopped at the awesome Turtle Bay Beach Resort. They have a huge, empty beach and great food, though they're a bit pricey. This was probably the last day of good biking as the road deteriorated pretty rapidly after that. A better idea for a bike trip would be to bike down to here, stay three days and then bike back. The rest of the trip is not recommended except as an endurance test. The next day we stopped to try and get Anoop's bike to climb a bit faster, which took a fair amount of searching for an Enfield mechanic. Then we had to go to Udipi station to book our return tickets from Trivandrum. The railways have certainly improved and this whole deal was completed with a minimum of fuss. Onwards through Kerela where NH17 is continuously flanked on both sides with houses. Sometimes it narrows down to one traffic clogged lane in some godforsaken hellhole like Thellasery where it's hot, sweaty and nothing is moving. This is my third trip to Kerela and I've decided that I don't like it for the most part. The famed backwaters are a huge anticlimax, the Periyar sanctuary likewise and even Munnar etc. can be given a wide berth without getting the feeling that one is missing something. Only Varkala redeems Kerela in my eyes and soon that will be gone too. One strange thing about Kerela that strikes even the most unobservant of travellers (i.e. me) is that women seem to be stuck in a different age here. All the female centric hoardings were either for jewellery or saris, nothing else. One hardly sees any women on the streets and all in all there's this hugely conservative vibe coming off every thing. Burqas are common. I even saw a hoarding for Parvin Pardah and Hijab featuring a pleasant looking woman in a hijab. Imagine that. Next night in Nileshwar. The Nileshwar resort had the world's best chef and the world's worst service. All this wonderful food would come to the table in the wrong order. It was sacreligious. Sometimes we'd eat in tiny restaurants. When you ask for a menu, there is none, so you ask - what do you have? The answer is rice, chapati. And? And nothing else. Okay, daal? Yes, we have daal. Vegetables? Tomato sabzi, aloo gobi, capsicum. Alright, non-veg? Beef curry, chicken curry. Now we're getting somewhere. No matter how hard you try, waiters in these places have trouble telling you what they have and it's almost a challenge to coax the list out of them. Evolutionary dead-end. Anyways, by now NH17 had become quite terrible, passing through big towns was taking ages and everyone was getting impatient. The Karizma had a little hiccup as she overheated in Cochin possibly due to her being overdue for a servicing, but even so ten minutes later she was fine again and the big broad NH47 between Cochin and Trivandrum came as a pleasant relief, and along with it came the rain. It started pissing down about 40 kms from Varkala, so we spent the night in some unknown place. The next morning we reached Varkala. Carrying on to Kanyakumari seems like an unnecessary act given the state of the highways outside, so I'm just going to go have a beer and look at the sea. I'm reading "The Eye in the Door" by Pat Barker. It's amazing. Review later. To conclude, I'd just like to say that biking long distances is a superb actuivity. The highways are only as dangerous as you make them, and the pleasures of seeing the country from so close are indescribable. When you finish a trip where you have been intimately connected to every inch of progress that you have made, there is an extra edge to the thrill of arrival. Like trekking on bikes. I'm looking forward to the next one already. Update: I calculated the fuel efficiency of the Karizma twice during the trip. Once it gave me 609kms for 11.85 litres (51 kmpl) and the other time it gave me 637 kms for 13 litres (49 kmpl). Staggering. Unbelievable. But true. At the time of loading it onto the train it still had 7 litres in the tank. The boys who put it on the train there really liked the Karizma :-)

The Ones I Didn't Like

Just in case you're wondering how I manage to say nice things almost always about the books I read, I just wanted to clarify that I don't write reviews about books I hated. Even so, here's a short list: The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass - too dense. The English Teacher by RK Narayan - terribly slow and boring Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein - just generally shit. bad writing. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemmingway - style out of date and no fun anymore.

Ab Tak Chhappan (Movie Review)

Good film. The story isn't that great but atleast here you have a director and an actor that understand the value of silence. Nana Patekar is Nana Patekar as usual. I have yet to see Nana in a role other than that of a slightly mad, junoon-chadha-hua character, but then I'm not complaining because he really knows how to play that well. The film, while being gripping, isn't extraordinary. There are some wonderful scenes like the one where he's talking to the gangster while dropping his wife off. Dialogue was good, action was slick. No complaints. Ending was acceptable. No complaints.

Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (Movie Review)

I scoured the net for reviews of this movie and didn't come up with a single one. Seems a pity that such a great movie should have its first independent review on the net written by one such as I. The film is about two struggling photographers, blah blah. If you haven't seen it, go see it first. On with the review. It is hard to find fault with this movie. The writing, which for me is the best part of any movie, was superb. Initially I thought some of the plot devices a bit ludicrous, but this ludicrousness is what makes the film so great. How else could you have that whole time-bomb sequence which ends with Pankaj Kapoor et al having a serious discussion with soot on their faces! Ahuja not recognising the drunk d'Mello etc. might seem like bad writing but a clean plot was not the point of the film. Quite the opposite. The nothing-is-impossible writing distracts you while the film delivers a subconscious roundhouse punch. I don't remember them all but the film is so full of great lines and subtle nuances that it is almost impossible to list them all (or is it?) All the actors were wonderful except perhaps Satish Kaushik, who was saved by his lines. (Mr. D'mello, rukiye please!) Bhakti Barve was sizzling in this movie. She didn't spend close to enough time on screen for me. Neena Gupta was forgettable. Om Puri was superb. Everyone was great. What am I saying? There's one scene in particular which really impressed me, the one with the time bomb. With ten seconds to go for the bomb to burst, Tarneja et al start counting the seconds. I don't know if this is an accident or the directors mind-blowing take on James Bond, where there's 22 seconds to defuse the bomb which last for eight minutes of film. Anyways, they start counting and they're counting all wrong, far too slow and then you realise that the clock is ticking off the seconds so you can count and it's already been way more than ten seconds and you're going ha ha, this is cool, when they finish counting to zero and precisely at the moment, the clock strikes eight. The film maker controls the universe. One second is elastic. Wonderful! All the scenes are great. There are some touches which totally blew me away like the photograph of Indira Gandhi in Bhakti Barve's (so hot!) office reminded me that we used to live in a highly authoritarian country. The political commentary is not just on the surface, but everywhere. I'm at a loss for words, so I'm just going to watch it again, take notes and write another review. And then maybe the day after as well. What am I doing on Sunday? Nothing? So maybe another one then.

In America (Movie Review)

A sweetly sentimental story of the unlikely friendship between two Irish immigrant girls in New York with a black artist dying of aids while their poverty stricken parents lose another baby. Utter rubbish. When are we going to see something from the Irish that doesn't involve terrorism or poverty? Some scenes are pure poetry though. They should have shot the writers before the film. This film should have been shot start to finish as a fifteen (make that five) minute montage with no dialogue, because that's how badly the story lets down an otherwise excellent crew. Well, atleast some struggling English actors might get a shot at Hollywood stardom because of this film. It certainly wasn't good for anything else. Note to self. Don't watch any other movies by Jim Sheridan.

Pandit Bhimsen Joshi

I managed to get my hands on an old Films Division documentary about Pandit Bhimsen Joshi. I have to admit, I knew next to nothing about his life and work before I saw the film and I was amazed by it. What a guy! Okay, now since I don't really know anything about Panditji, all of the below might be all wrong, so caveat lector. Anyways, he ran away from Gadag when he was a young boy because he said there was no one to learn singing from in Gadag. So he hitched rides on trains, singing for the ticket inspector in exchange for not having a ticket. Sometimes, he says, I'd get a guy with no ear for music and he'd throw me in jail. It took him two-three months to get to Gwalior. After that he travelled extensively for his music, once settling in Lucknow for a few years to learn Thumri. What struck me most throughout the film was the amazing obsession of the man with music. He'd do anything for it. He had no money he said, and yet he fuelled his obsession somehow. Today, even with all his success and acclaim, he seemed very down to earth, so much so that it began to seem to me as though for him, it was all just about the music. In the guru's house, no one looked at the watch. When the guru felt like giving taleem, that was when taleem would happen. And it would go on for as long as the guru wished. Hours and hours at times. Cut to Panditji saying - artist koi school ya college me se to paida nahi hote na. Reminded me of a conversation two friends of mine were having about the classical music education systems in India and the West (the Western method being more pedagogic). If Bhimsen says that a pedagogical method is unsuitable for his art, then that's enough for me. I'm not going to argue with him. This was a really nicely made film. It was made by Gulzar for the Films Division. The story of the "jugalbandi" between Bhimsen and Manna Dey was really wonderfully told. How come they never showed us films like this when we went to the movies way back when? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Surprisingly, I have actually been to a Pandit Bhimsen Joshi concert. This was when I was in college and fully into my heavy metal phase, but I went because my girlfriend wanted to go. She was at the film institute, so of course she had to give me a cultural education. I reached the venue trying my best to keep an open mind. I needn't have bothered. Panditji blew me away that evening. Transported. Sublimated. Pulverised. From the moment he sang the first notes, even my unworthy ears could tell that what was happening here was no ordinary thing. I'm glad I knew that girl.

Big Fish - Movie Review

Update: Apparently the ending is more or less as it is in the book. The author, Daniel Wallace, makes a cameo as the economics professer at Auburn. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- So I figure there are enough reviews on the net, so I'll keep this one short. At first I thought this was one of those movies that Anoop likes. Then it got better. And better and better. This movie is awesome. Hollywood endings piss me off though. They're written by market researchers. It's almost censorship! When Billy Crudup starts telling the last story I was torn between the intense emotion of the previous scene and the totally crappy story he tells. All the people are there?? What rubbish. Otherwise spectacular.

The Dark Room by RK Narayan

I'd always been a little wary of RK Narayan. While I, like many others, had thoroughly enjoyed the television series Malgudi days and I suppose, like many others, I too had based my estimation of RK Narayan on them. I don't know now whether it was my naivete or the treatment of the stories or what, but I'd always assumed that Narayan wrote storied in a light Wodehousian vein, a style that is not my favourite right now. Thus, it was with some trepidation that I picked up the collection Memories of Malgudi. Imagine my surprise then, when the first book, The Dark Room was this dark, menacing novela. Narayan muses on the futility of life and the helplessness of his protagonist Savitri, filling each scene with undertones of as many hues as there are facets to human nature. Hypocrisy, deception, kindness and despair are all present in their full glory, coloured and shaded by the characters, their morality and their situations. This book is such a pleasure to read I'm almost ashamed of the review I wrote for it.

Abida Parveen Live at NCPA 12 03 2005

So I figure that Nusrat was truly a God, because Abida - who is clearly the second most famous sufi singer alive today - doesn't even manage to come close. Having said that, let me also say that I probably entered the concert with certain misconceptions abour what I was going to see. I remembered Nusrat's singing as having a strong classical base and an ample amount of improvisation, and so I figured Abida would be more of the same. However, although she has a phenomenal voice and she sings with passion, her entire performance was far more folky than I had anticipated. Once I'd internalised this fact, the concert went much better from there on. Abida and her band were musically monotonous, so much so that even her acclaimed voice couldn't lift the performance to any sort of greatness. It took me the whole of the first set to recognise the modalities of the concert. Like a blues song, Abida would pick her couplets at whim, sing them and then come back to the refrain over and over, almost trance like. The lyrics that I understood were phenomenal, and so once I'd settled back to think of it as a poetry recital rather than a musical concert, things went much better. Musically though, the concert was a disappointment. None of her accompanists got a chance to show off their skill. Abida sang one scale the whole evening. None of this is meant to be disparaging though. Perhaps (very likely) I'm totally ignorant about the Sufi musical forms and what Parveen did was probably exactly what she has won so much acclaim for. It's probably just me.

The Station Agent (Movie Review)

The Station Agent: A mostly pointless film which has little to say but says it well. The character of Finn is quite stereotypical but well protrayed. The other two characters are awful and a little bit unimaginative, so much so that one is thankful when they aren't around on screen. While this might be the kind of film some people enjoy, I didn't particularly fancy it. Watching "an unikely friendship between three troubled individuals" isn't my idea of good cinema. The writing was inconsistent, so I have to admit it was brilliant in parts but somehow falls short in the end. Cinematography was slick but unimaginative. An uninspired film, but a worthy attempt.

Himalaya (Movie Review)

Himalaya is a breathtakingly beautiful film, and that's just the start of it. The cinematography is exquisite and some of the shots are truly stunning. How ever did they film some of those shots? I suppose with such breathtaking scenery, it would be pretty hard to make an ugly film. Even so, this is one beautiful film. Although his IMDB credits are quite slim, director Eric Valli clearly knows what he's doing with the pace of this film. He's taken his time with the shots, letting the movie sink into you. The writing is great, very understated and mellow. A cast of mainly non-actors delivers a Bollywood-shaming masterclass in restraint and expression although since they're speaking a language I don't understand, I'm not sure I'm sure about this :-). What I loved most about this film was the way (for the most part) each scene said what it said without having to say what it said. The storyline isn't great though. The "demons path" device and the fully-resolved ending kind of turned me off a little bit, but then one can't always have everything.

White Noise (Movie Review)

This movie can be proud of itself as it has just displaced Joggers Park as the worst movie ever made. Tip to Vinta Nanda - when your characters discuss mediocrity, make it sound like an aspiration rather than a disparaging remark.

Yuganta by Irawati Karve

Just finished reading Yuganta by Irawati Karve. The book is basically an exploration of the major characters and events in the Mahabharata, so some familiarity with the story is essential for reading this, although it will probably suffice even to have just the cursory knowledge gained from grandmothers and half remembered, fairly ridiculous TV serials.

The first thing that struck me was that the author was on a mission to undermine many fondly held beliefs. She ascribes the basest of motives to the actions of major characters and cannot see good in anyone. Her's is certainly an iconoclastic view. She decries the way women were treated in the Mahabharata, blaming the men for all their woes. However, she never gets too strident about it either, managing to convey her views rationally (well, as rational as any interpretation of a 3000 year old epic can get) and without losing her tone of equanimity.

The most interesting parts of the book for me were when she ties in the verses of the Mahabharata with historical detail, explaining the relationship between the words and the way things were way back when all this written. For her, the Mahabharata is not just an exquisitely told story, it is also a document of the past, an anthropological living being. Throughout the book, one thing that stands out is her great love for this classic tale, as well as the awesome scholarship of this remarkable woman.

She ends the book with a particularly poignant essay. She says that the Mahabharata is a thing of great beauty, and the most beautiful thing about it is its philosophy that in a world where everything is open-ended, undecided, fragile, the thing to do is to get on with it. Not everything is pleasant. Sometimes you go unrewarded while others less worthy than you rule. Life is hard, deal with it. She goes on to contrast this with post-Mahabharata literature which was without exception sweetly sentimental and designed not to disturb, as well as reflective of the increasing dogmatisation of literature in the more puritanical Brahminic age, which rejected the rumbunctiousness of the earler ethos. She writes one sentence that makes me shiver - "How did we accept the dreamy escapism of bhakti or blind hero worship after having faced and thought undauntingly of the hard realities of life? How did the people who used to eat all meats, including beef, find satisfaction in ritually drinking the urine and eating the dung of the cow and calling this quadruped their mother?" Yes, she has strong views, but as I look around at all the stereotypification - especially on TV - and the lack of anything thought provoking in the mass-media, I wonder if it can be good for a society to be fed on a steady diet of sachharine sedatives and Page 3 self-respect. Where is the discordant, tortured voice of our times? Where is the dissent? Who is going to make us introspect and improve? Someone needs to do this, or there'll be nothing to do. In other words, buy this book. It is wonderful. A small sidenote about Irawati Karve - the bio-blurb in the book says that she got her Doctoral degree in Anthropology from Berlin U in 1928. 1928?!?! A scant few years after Cambridge produced it's first female graduates, this woman from India was doing a doctorate in Berlin? In German? I find that most impressive. As Anoop said, this woman is the greatest feminist icon that never was. Greater than Aishwarya Rai? I asked. No comment, said Anoop.

Ojos de Brujo

This is what I found while listening to Radio Netscape the other day - a great contemporary band called Ojos de Brujo. Their homepage doesn't seem to work, but you can find a nice interview of theirs here. The music is really mixed, but mainly as they say, flamenco and hip-hop. They've got all the tricks of arrangement done really nicely, lots of band dynamics and simply mindblowing use of voices. Although this is probably not going to be my favourite band of all time, their album is certainly instructive in terms of their approach to songwriting and arranging. And of course, their sound is wonderful and should be good for many weeks of joyful listening. I bought their album "Bari" from iTunes, but I suppose it should be available on most major emusic sites.