and the year ends in red...

Thus the month of December has dawned upon us. In this part of the world where I live , the season is filled with a theme color - red. Mid-December will witness the 43rd National Day of Bahrain. The flag of this island kingdom is a combo of red and white. Everywhere the flags are displayed prominently. The trees are decorated with the red LED lights and even the cars are painted red. Alongside these festivities of national fervor, we have Christmas, which again is celebrated in a reddish grand way - thanks to the presence of the US navy and the not so negligible population of Christian expats from Philippines. Uncle Santa and his gift wrappings adds the Red factor to the celebrations. I will end this year witnessing lots and lots of red and who complains when the town itself is painted in red.

My Writing Ethos

There are too many ideas and too many apps for putting those ideas down. The bad experience of yesterday was an eye-opener. I still persist on making some headway in the direction of recording ideas and thoughts. Before I start writing I would like to map my writing ethos.

Primarily, i use my wonderful days to record my positive thoughts of the day. Momento is another app which records my Facebook and other social networking links which also includes Twitter and Instagram. I would like to work on my story using Scrivener and edit the same using Index card and Simple note. ( I am yet to discover the full functionalities of these apps) My blogging is another writing activity for which I need some channel of publishing. I am currently using Mac Journal app for iOS and Mac exclusively for my writing. Day one app will be the writing spot where I will jot down my inner thoughts.

Philomena and the changing concept of motherhood..

'The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time' - T. S Eliot

The movie is about the real life story of a mother in search of her son who was taken away from her via an illegal adoption system which was practiced by the Irish catholic church . Even though the movie looks at the concept of motherhood with all its cliched frills, it moves away from the familiar to the unfamiliar in an easy-breezy way. Philomena is also a portrayal of old age, a time when everybody has got this strong urge to 'reclaim her past'. She reveals the news about her one night stand at the park and the unsanctioned pregnancy to her daughter.

The second most important thread in the story is about this journalist who gets entrapped in his own political web. He is lost and is not sure what to do with his career as a journalist. He lives in a state of indecisiveness, oscillating between two career plans - writing a book about Russian history and the search for a human interest story. He finally decides to take the latter one and that brings him close to Philomena.

In the bonus section of the DVD, Mr. Coogan, who is also the producer talks about how a newspaper article got him hooked on to the story of Philomena. He was more interested in working on the bonding between Philomena and Mr. Martin Sixsmith. The movie, in a way juxtaposes these two characters - Philomena represents dogged determination and an unflinching belief in God whereas, Martin is an atheist and is wavering when it comes to making decisions.

The movie made me look at some of the recent incidents that has rocked my home state of Kerala. This events makes us rethink about the concept of motherhood in these challenging times. The first incident is about a 11 month old child, which was send on para-sailing.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kozhikode/Kerala-11-month-old-girl-sent-on-solo-parasailing-by-parents/articleshow/35452923.cms 

The second incident is about the hundreds of children who were brought from North India to be dumped in Kerala orphanages  without any proper documents.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/kerala-over-400-children-rescued-in-suspected-child-trafficking-case/476062-62-126.html

These are just two incidents of the many cases of sexual abuse and killings that are happening around the world.  There is the Sudanese mother who is sentenced to death and the Pakistani pregnant woman who was stoned to death for marrying against the wish of her family. I am just wondering about the paradigm shift that has happened with the concept of mother hood and the rampant commercialization of children and woman.

Magic of Marquez

Sleeping beauty and the air plane..

This afternoon,for the first time, I read a literary piece written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The chance literary encounter happened when a story of GMM got published in the Malayalam page pulp, quasi-feminist magazine Vanitha. It is titled ‘Sleeping Beauty and the air plane’ which is taken from the short story collection ‘Strange Pilgrims’.

The story was so empowering that I read it standing and transfixed to the ground. It is gladdening to know that my constant hobnobbing with the intricacies of ESL has not spoiled the taste for literature. As I continued to read the biography of GMM, i came across this interesting comment about Gabito from Salman Rushdie. The article was entitled - 'Marquez the Magician' which was written after GMM won the Nobel Prize for Literature. ' He is one of the Nobel judges' most popular choices for years, one of the few true magicians in contemporary literature, an artist with the rare quality of producing work of the highest order that reaches and bewitches a mass audience'

The story triggered in me many personal thoughts. I was even thinking about my Pune bus journey ( seated in my dream vehicle - Airavat and seated next to an iPod-Jazz memory)  and the Jagathy -Nitya Menon starrer episode in the movie - Kerala cafe.

GMM is a person I am internalizing these days. His biography is reveals - word by word the man behind the magical words. The story is a narrative of an ordinary incident that happened in a flight from France to New York. The ordinary is turned into the extra-ordinary by the infusion of some more ordinary events and incidents. The old Dutch lady with her fourteen bags and the snow fall which delayed the flight are some of the usual occurrences in an air-passenger's life. The references to the Japanese bourgeois watching naked nymphs sleeping is a classic example of how GMM’s world view is shaped by numerous literary landscapes from all corners of the world. The Japanese author mentioned here is Yasunari Kawabata - (Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award - Wikipedia).

The sight of the co-passenger brings in GMM, the pangs of love and lust. His breath is laced with passion and he concludes by saying that - ‘there is nothing more beautiful in nature than a beautiful woman’

Charm of a place...

Traveling to different countries makes one experience different cultures. So far I have traveled to five countries. I had the time and space to write about some of these countries. Reading Garcia Marquez's biography this morning made me reflect on the possibility of writing about the country in which I live right now. Gabito was traveling in Europe from Paris to Moscow to Budapest. He was a keen observer and had some authentic reflections to make about the countries he had visited. Sample these words about London - ' When I arrived in London i thought the English talked to themselves in the street. Later I realized they were saying sorry. On Saturdays, when the whole city piles into Piccadilly Circus, it is impossible to move without bumping into someone. Then there is a vast buzzing, a uniform street chorus: 'Sorry'.' When his eyes saw Moscow, he wrote - "I didn't want to know a Soviet Union with its hair done up to receive a visitor. Countries are like women, you need to know then when they've just got up."

Lost and Discovered...

The Lost series is based on an uncharted island. To me, the 'island' is the main character in the series. It exists in multiple level of meanings and allusions. The island itself is an experimental ground where scientific and metaphysical elements clash. The human characters are just pawn in this experiment. The story takes us back to the days of Abel and Cain and the Original sin. There were rules on that that should not have been breached. Rules which were rooted in the concepts of good and evil. The creator created the beings with these traits.

The island was lost to the whole world until the crash of the Oceanic flight. When the island was discovered, the passengers in the flight were lost from the face of this earth ( at least it seemed like that). The characters are all from diverse backgrounds and most of them had a strong sense of the past. When they are lost they seem to rediscover their own self which had been lost in the hustle and bustle of life.There is Sayid who was a republican guard who was faced with the challenge of interrogating his girlfriend. Then there is my favourite Jack, the doctor who was taking his father for a burial. Locke is the teacher who worships the island the moment 'his feet touched the ground'. The leading female character is Kate who is a convict running away from Law. Locke and Kate are ones who wants to stay because the a normal and ordinary life is lost for them in the (real) world. My second favourite character is Hurley, the meat ball who specialises in bear hug.

Lost is all about the sense of 'letting go'. Nobody owns anything in this world. I maybe a proud owner of something but the ownership has its limit. Ben, Locke and the 'Others' wanted to stay in the island. They are in a state of escapism bordering on possessiveness. Lost also shows that possessiveness leads to kind of aimlessness. You possess something and that thing possess you. The series moves through different dimensions. It starts off as a common experience of being lost in the island which have read and seen in both literary and cinematic represenatations like Robinson Crusoe, The Lord of the Flies, Castaway and even in Life of Pi. The new arrivals on the island are plagued by a sense of bewilderment of the space and strangeness about the mysterious characters around them. They all got connected in the stage where they were trying to salavge what is left of the Oceanic flight. The slow motion montage is quite emotional and creates a sense of bonding between the viewers and the characters. They are aware of the dangers that are present in the island and also of the eeriness of some of the characters. The moment they decide to face the dangers the series moves on to the next stage. Here are similarities:

I notice: that the hills

which the eyes make flat as wall, welded

together, open as ai move

to let me through; become

endless as priaries; that the trees

grow spindly, have their roots

often in swamps; that this is a poor country;

that a cliff is not known

as rough except by hand, and is

therefore inaccessible. Mostly

that travek is not the easy going

from point to point, a dotted

line on a map, location

plotted on a square surface

but that i move surrounded by a tangle

of branches, a net of air and alterante

light and dark, at all times;

that there are no destinations

apart from this

(Margaret Atwood - Journey to the Interior)

The journey into the interior of the island is both physical and psychological. Jacks confronts his father, Kate reflects on her law breaking past. Charlie sees himself performing with his brother in their rock band. Locke is fearless one and enjoying his much anticipated adventure in the outback. They explore the island and discover the third element in the story - the science behind the existence of the island.

From this point the series takes the viewer for a roller coaster ride. There are references to folklore, myths and legends. The story moves forward in time but the characters are struck in a time trap. Every time the wheel turns the story and its landscape change. Characters are introduced and re-introduced. Story and the characters moves around the world keeping the umbilical chord with the island intact.

At the end it all boils down to the fact that good will always prevail over the bad. Personally i felt the ending to be a bit confusing. It was as if the white light clouded my vision. The church scene gave the series an unwanted religious tone. Some of the answers were received but others still remained a mystery. It took one year for me to watch the whole series which comprised of 6 seasons. There were instances where I had watched a whole season ( 6 DVD's) within a duration of two to three days. This is the first time that i had spent time watching a TV series. The mysterious plot was the reason why i got hooked into Lost. I was lost sometimes but the quick 8 minutes recaps brought me back. My tryst with lost was personally rewarding and it was one of the few instances in life where I felt satisfied and happy.

Persian graffiti