The Revenant - Movie Review

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:

Petals on a wet, black bough. 

( In a station of the metro - Ezra Pound)

The title means a person who returns as a spirit after death, a ghost. The movie is a meditative attempt to portray human condition. It is spread out on a soild canvass of natural beauty and human beastiality. As I read in one of the reviews in IMDB, the movie is 'visual poetry' ( The movie has found the 127th spot in the 250 movies regarded as the best movies of all time). 

The narrartive is interspersed with various dichotomies. The dark landscape is contrasted against the purity of the mind. The white snow is picthed against the dark shapes that wander about. There is the dichotomy between modern weaponary and the traditional ones. The natives  asking the French colonists for guns in exchange of pelts illustratates this. The contrast between the good and the evil is portrayed through the different characters. The traditional wisdom of the natives is contrasted with the new found knowledge of the west. 

The plot tells us how the west was won by the marauding conquerers. Looting and plundering the resources to gain control over the land and nature was   seen as a divine birthright. Natives were displaced and killed and their customes and traditions were eroded and destroyed. The character played by Caprio is in a critical juntcure of history. Born as white skin, his heart is with the natives and he and his son often becomes the butt of ridicule for his bonding with the natives. He has delivered one of his finest performances and he is sure to win many laurels for his effort. 

What is most striking about the movie is the ambiance. The music, the photography and the sound design helps the audience to get into the snow laden woods and the frozen lakes and rivers. The peaceful landscape is often punctuated with scenes of violence and gore. The most intense scenes in the movie involves Glass. The way he traps fish and eats them raw made the Bahraini audience shudder. The intensity level increased when Glass after removing the insides was shown sleeping inside a dead horse. The third scene portarying Glass eating raw bison flesh was the one which really made the audience cower. 

     

This movie is a result of the collaboration between three men, a French director, a Japanese composer and an American actor. I was able to see some parallels between the 1990 Malayalam movie - Thazhvaram ( The Valley) and The Revenant. The poster of Thazhvaram  had an interesting one liner - 

The land without mercy and unvanquished barbarians. This is another way to describe the dark and brooding cinematic creation titled - The Revenant.

Lessons from Farming Simulator 2016

Games are an integral part of my life. They are the perfect zones for relaxation and unwinding. You are transported to a different world and maybe I am hooked on to them ibecause of the escapism element that it provides. I love the art that is embedded in the games. There are hundreds of artists and illustartors who create the world. The world they create is not far removed from the world that we live in. In the game - The Last of Us which is one of the most popular titles in Playstation gaming platform, the game world is so accurate and life like. 

There are varied opinions regarding the act of playing games. Some are of the opinion that it affects the mental growth of the user. There are others who  blabber about the anti-social traits that a gamer can pick up. A research based on the internet proves that games can in fact boost memory and other cognitive skills. A team comprised of cognitive neuroscientists and gaming technology experts created a game with potential therapeutic applications, as part of an ongoing research effort at the University of Texas, Dallas ( quoted from the Huffigton Post article titled - Why these neuroscientists are prescribing video games - Huffigtonpost - Carolyn Gregoire). Researchers have found that some of the large and hugely popular online video games – although condemned by many as time-gobbling, people-isolating monsters – actually have socially redeeming qualities (quoted from www.news.illinois.edu - University of Illinois - Andrea Lyn). Atleast one fact emerges from the finding of these researchers, that games cannot be treated as games. They are, I think they are monumental examples of human creativity and aesthetic sense. 

This blog is based on my experience of playing Farming Simulator on PS Vita. I found the game to be quite immersive and challenging. The ideas below will summarise my thoughts about the game. 

1) The game encourages the players to practice discipline in life. There is a place and space for each farming equipment. 

2) There is a sense of success through the act of buying and upgrading the farming equipment.

3) The game is always punctuated by achievable short term goals and the player can set himself some long term goals.

4) The game offers valuable lessons in planning and execution.

5) There is the scope for vocabulary enrichment through farming vocabulary. 

Lines in memory of a stroll...

Meandering conversations plastered to the palate

Thoughts and words hurled out from the glottal faucet 

Sliding and moving against each other in the Brownian motion 

Lexis and lexicon engaged in an act of mutual completion 

Reclusive and pensive figure caught in a moment which will soon fade

The table well spread with the passion for knowledge uncertified 

The curves and contours of a well shaped maid

Slender extensions bookmarking the page last read

Ravenous being's eager to devour their own flesh

The cup of life toasted for an act that is unselfish 

The overflowing gift box holds pearls of prosperity

Conversations handled precariously and with much alacrity 

The estranged soul caught in a narcissistic routine

Scanning the sylvan horizon for an enticing figurine 

The hooded figures flow in and remains standstill 

Their presence blurred and the ocular orbs ready for the kill. 

The fading of the time and knell of the hourly bell

Fleeting images and senses gathered in a magical spell 

Transformed into a praxis form of verbiage

The end ushers in a new beginning out of the linguistic foliage 

 

Lisbeth Salander 0.4

                                                                    

2013 was the year when I completed the three books by Stieg Larsson which later on became popular as the Millennium series. The books followed the tale of Lisbeth  Salander. The Girl in the Spider's Web is set against a larger literary canvas. Some characters are new and the old characters are explored and examined in a closer manner.  The fourth installment is indeed a bold attempt by the author - David Lagercrantz to create a story without tampering have with the original tale. This is a sequel which does not spoil the beauty of the the millennium trilogy.  

The story is essentially the tale of some individuals who are trapped in a lonely world. The main representatives being Blomqvist - a journalist who is leading a lonely life enduring many setbacks in his writing career. He is in the lookout for something fresh and new. His superior is Berger who doesn't have any qualms of sharing physical space with get lawfully wedded husband and Blomqvist. The main protagonist, Salander is caught up in the act of romancing the machines and keeping a protective eye on the lives of people whom she care about. The police officer Bublanski is always seeking spiritual solace from his Rabbi. 

The fourth installment pitches Salander against her twin sister Camila and she takes care of August - the child prodigy. The sinking publishing house Millennium in a way represents the old school publishing style and Salander with her super-hacking skills represents the new age technology driven style of publishing. 

I enjoyed reading this title both on my iPad mini, iPhone and Kindle paper white. I was enchanted with the voice of Simon and Vance and downloaded the audiobook. I am sure that listening to the audio version would help me to understand the story and the place names in a better way. I would rate the printed book as 3 out of 5 and I hope that the re-reading of the book using the audio version will be a better experience. 

The protean nature of Twitter in the context of the Chennai floods...

Dedicated to Dr K. Elango - My inspiration and guiding light. (Sir, You are always there in my mind even if we haven’t seen and met for a long time. I would like to make a special mention of the collaborative work which we did when you were leading the training team in Loyola, Chennai. It was about Disaster Management and the ESL tasks that we can create from it. The blog below is one way or the other is inspired by that article which got published in The Hindu)

The city of Chennai is something that is close to my heart. A city that has immensely contributed to my development as a person and as a teacher. It was shocking to see the familiar roads and streets inundated with water. It was as if the whole city was getting a thorough natural cleansing. The city as I know it was on the brink of a collapse. The government system failed and for a few days there were no official announcements. There was an eerie official silence and Chennaites were clueless about the future. Like the many pictures that were circulated online of people trapped on the rooftops of their own houses, the only thing that they could do was wait.

Living a life away from all this scenario made me make use of the only social window that I love - Twitter. I was constantly following up the updates which appeared under the hashtag #chennaifloods. As I was monitoring the Twitter timeline, I could notice the protean nature of the tweets.

In the first stage, there was utter confusion as the tweets were showing the pictures of mass destruction and the screenshots of weather forecast which warned of greater damage and destruction. There was panic all around and people were trying to reach out to their loved ones. I could sense a feeling of virtual camaraderie shaping up and it extended beyond the affected zone. The closure of the airport and the suspension of the train services got a special mention in the tweets. There were many instances of photoshopped images misinforming the public about escaped crocodiles from the park.

In the second stage, the tweetrati was busy offering help and relief materials. By this time, even the government agencies woke up to the grim reality of the flood. The mobile companies offered free talktime and data packages to assist the flood victims. There was an uproar regarding the way Amma devotees were forcibly sticking Amma posters on the relief materials. There were co-ordinated attempts from different corners of the world to lend a helping hand to the victims. Twitter timeline was filled with posters like - Save Chennai,Pray for Chennai. Since Chennai is regarded as the home of South Indian cinema, there were many stars who chipped in with their contributions and help.

The third stage, Twitter was alive with instructions and advices for a post-flood situation. It included ways to stop the spread of epidemics and issues regarding personal hygiene and sanitation. It was interesting to see how the timeline was alive with suggestions on how to take care of the cars and electronic devices that were submerged in the water.

It is unequivocal that it is easy to comment upon a situation from a far away place. I will never know the true hardships that my friends and well wishers had for a time window of two weeks. I hope they are all safe and sound.

God bless them all...

Spectre - A 5 point review

The world is sceptical about Bond movies. They say that the Bond played by Daniel Craig is too old. They complain about the story line. There is also this issue about exhausting Ian Fleming's collection of Bond tales. Nothing of the above deterred me from watching this 24th Bond movie and here are my impressions about the movie: 

1) The movie can be termed as a tetralogy. The fourth in the series which began with

    Casino Royale followed by Quantum of Solace and Sky Fall. 

2) For a die-hard Bond fan, the movie offers momentary trips down the memory lane.

    The music and the gadgets never fails to hold the attention and the fascination. 

3)  The personal and the other side of agent 007 is revealed in this movie or the first time the viewer is shown the living quarters of Bond and you will be astonished to see it as cluttered and unorganized. The conversation between Money Penny. The movie also reveals how lonely Bond is.

     James Bond: [over the phone] Who was that?

     Moneypenny: He's just a friend.

     James Bond: At this hour of the night?

     Moneypenny: It's called life, James. You should try it some time.

4) Bond movies are famous for their one-liners. The one which will stay with us long after we     leave the theater is - You're a kite dancing in a hurricane Mr.Bond. 

5) The villians in the Bond movies sometimes overshadow the titular hero himself. Most of          the times these villians are well crafted and are endowed with an one-liner like this one          in Spectre - Blofeld: [to Bond] Cuckoo! 

Now waiting for the 25th......

10 things I liked about - The Opposite of Loneliness by Merina Keegan

The Opposite of Loneliness

• The writing style seems to border on the occasional flashes of wisdom and orginal thinking. The style can be termed as 'felt writing’.

• The formats employed for the writing is ingenious and is quite refreshing. ‘The Emerald City’ set in the context of the war on terror, develops through the exchange of letters and shows gradual progression especially in terms of the protagonist’s transformation into a ‘jihadi'.
  
• The author is a quite accomplished person. She did her internships at the Paris Review and the New Yorker. She also was a research assistant with Harold Bloom. I read a review of the book in the Goodreads app which said that the only reason why the book was a success was because of the pre-mature death of the author. I have reasons to differ with the reviewer. The reviewer comfortably ignores the fact that she is a prodigy. In her writings, she has reiterated the fact that there is always the possibility of doing something in this world. 

  “Maybe I’m ignorant and idealistic but i just feel like we can do something really cool to this world"

    The Guardian reviewer clearly states that 

  "she never had the chance to lose her youthful idealism". 

• The idea or concept of the 'cinematic gaze’ was something that had always enthralled me. As tourists roaming around the capital city of Delhi, we have come across the xenophobic tendencies of my country men. We overheard Chinese being ridiculed as Chinese Manchurian and the white skinned ladies being stalked by teenagers begging for a selfie. This anti-social traits is one of the spin-off effects of technology. The non-fiction piece titled ’The Art of Observation’ talks about this 'gaze upon the foreigners’ from the POV of Merina and her friend when they visited India. Her moral stand in this regard is 

  "If it made them happy,after all,why not play along?"

• The way the reader is introduced to the Toyota car in ‘Stability in Motion’ is quite innovative and fresh. She was able to develop the idea of a car into a well-composed non-fiction piece. She describes the car ‘as a vehicle crowded’ with ‘physical manifestations’ of her high school memories. 
• Some of her writings carries a foreboding the pre-mature death. The story ‘Winter Break’ has this sense and it also has the words ‘Don’t worry, I’m driving - the message conveyed to her mother. To borrow the esoteric construction from 'The Guardian’ - ‘

  "sentences written light heartedly are piercingly loud reminders of what will never be"

  
  
• One of the personal themes that I was able to read into the book was - Live happily and when you know that you are going to die, have a frame of mind of calmness and no-regrets. 
• I  need to comment on the presence of death in her writing. There is this sense of doom that permeates in her writing. We all tend to get emotional about death. To quote The Guardian ‘ her finite body of work inextricably and forever after bound up in the tragedy of her death, lending an understandable poignancy to much of the writing. It is the same feeling that we get when we watch - Fast and Furious 7 sans Paul Walker and The Dark Knight sans Heath Ledger. 
• The legacy of Merina Keegan - What she has left for a reader like me and others is something that should be documented. She had a short but meaningful stay on this earth. A productive and well-lived 22 years. She was quite optimistic about life. She wrote in her final essay for the Yale Daily News, the opposite of loneliness - 

  "We’re so young, We’re twenty two years old. We have so much time"

  This is the temperament that she has left for us. Two poetic expression that appear in my mind are,  
  
  Rabi Ben Ezra - Robert Browning 
  Grow old along with me!
  The best is yet to be,
  The last of life, for which the first was made:
  Our times are in His hand
  Who saith "A whole I planned,
  Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!''

Dylan Thomas - Do not go gentle into that good night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

The following themes in the books appealed to me: 

• The bug killer and the human side of a menial job.
• The trapped sailors in the submarine.
• The U.S marine and his emails to his girl.
• The girl who was allergic to gluten.
• The sense of loss after death of a love one.
• The sense of loss after the death of loved ones.
• The train journey through the Indian heartland 
• The 'elegiac essay’ about the first car.
• The child who was the Jesus under study for a Christmas  
      event.
• The placement test and the employability patterns at Yale    
      University.
  
  The themes are varied and are drawn from different sources. This gives me the idea that it is not a book or a movie that should serve as the prompt for me to write. It should be the life that I see around me. As writers around the world are engaged in NANOWRIMO, this is the thought that should take me forward. 

10 lessons from The Martian

10 lessons from The Martian

1. Always find some ingenious ways to survive adversities.
2. There is nothing like quitting, keep trying.
3. Always do the right calculations before taking the big leap.
4. Try to maintain a healthy and emotional bonding with your team.
5. Maintain your emotional equilibrium with some cool songs.
6. Make a timeline for the actvities that you undergo, however insignificant they may seem to you.
7. Talk to yourself, write to yourself and record your thoughts.
8. Discover what is important and just do it
9. Spend some quality time reflecting on your life and activities.
10. Don’t lose hope.

The online course and me

For the first time in my life i enrolled for an online course and I found the following to be the exciting features of the same.

•  It is important that the participant is quite honest about the
      course and the completion of course content.
•  I did have a doubt about the programme managers ??? who
      may steal valuable personal information plus the ideas  
      shared in the course may violate the intellectual property  
      rights.
• The participant should be committed and ready for the
      course. He should introspect and find the most convienent    
      time and space for himself.
• It is interesting to see eager students from around the world.
     They defintely will inspire and make us work better. 
• The presentation structure is quite lucid and clear. 
• The course also proves the point that real learning happens
      even in the absence of the real teacher. 
• The teaching style is interspersed with tasks and videos.

The Simple Acts

“To be simple is not a simple thing” 

 E.E Tian Hong ( On Writing) 

A few months back, I had started noticing all around me acts of simpleness and austerity. This blog is all about the concept of simplitude which is quite essential for a balanced and satisfied life. It takes a huge amount of sacrifice and patience to be simple. There are external ( society, financial) and internal factors ( discipline, will-power) that makes people lead a simple life. 

I remember reading somewhere that we live in a world of excess. We have everything and sometimes it is difficult to take a stock of the materialsitic things that we have. Today the adage ‘Each one according to their means and not according to their greed’ has become a cliched one. This buying power, that we enjoy is so shocking that it has turned us into monsters imbued with a feeling of self-importance and self neglect. We have lost oursleves in this act of hording that it has become mindless and  self-destructive. 

I have seen people who turns off their cellular data when it is not required. There are people, with great eye-strain and difficulty read e-books on their small screen sized smart phones. There is one trainee who created a practical and minimalistic logo using a simple software like MS Excel and MS Paint. I met a trainee once who was using a pencil which hardly fitted in her hand.

It took more than three months for me to publish this post. I was preoccupied and maybe I have forgotten all about living the simple ways of life. 

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

Francis Itty Cora and Art of Historical Fiction…

To read Historical fiction in my own mother tongue was something unique. I am not a stranger to this genre. My first tryst with this type of writing was some years back when I stumbled upon the novel - Vishakanyaka by S.K Pottakadu. The novel chronicles the life of immigrants from Travancore who got resettled in the western ghats i.e Wayanad. S.K cleverly creates a world of tryst between nature and man. The arrival of missionaries and how the locals treated them with a certain amount of skepticism and xenophobia. The portrayal of Vishakanyaka (poisonous virgin) as the spirit of the western ghat and Joseph as the innocent boy from the south who gets entrapped in the animalistic instincts of nature is portrayed in all its ferocity.

It was during my stay in Chennai that I was introduced to the African American writer named Alex Haley. He was a master of faction mixing fiction and facts. The seminal work of Alex Haley titled Roots traces his ancestry to a village in Kenya. Even though the novel was dubbed as a work of faction, i didn't see much of that genre. It was only when I read The City of Joy that I really felt the historic elements in the world of imagination.

Dominique Lapierre enthralled me again with his novel It was five past midnight in Bhopal. I was quite excited about these works because they genre of faction or historical fiction really appealed to my senses.

My reading pathway then took me to the novels of Elizabeth Kosotova. The novel The Historian narrated the story of Count Dracula. I purchased the second book titled 'The Swan Thieves' but could't read because of its sheer volume. I am searching for the ebook version of the same.

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code became the next book that took me to the world of historical fiction. It is a masterpiece and the book traversed through precarious literary, religious, and historical terrains. It was an instant hit and i remember travelling to Bangalore to watch the movie version since it was banned in Chennai.

It was Bobby uncle who mentioned about the novel by T.D Ramakrishnan tiled Francis Itty Cora. I was completely blown away by the sheer amount of information that the book carried. Seated in a rural town of Kerala, the author has managed to bring in the whole world in front of our eyes. The novel moves from Kunnamkulam to Florence in Italy and then to Lima in Peru. The story is narrated through letters and old manuscripts. There are several instances where the main characters are interacting with history and historical figures like Hypatia, Vasco De Gama, Roman generals and even artists of the Florentine school of painting.

The novel fascinated me because of the local flavour that it encapsulated. The Kunnamkulam lingo,cultural and religious ambiance is depicted in an authentic way. The story is centred in this town and its past. The titular hero used to live there and he was fondly known as Kora pappan. He was a patriarch and was also a business magnet. He had numerous ships and he used to conduct business with far off lands like Egypt, Abu Gharib Prsion, Iraq, and Italy. In one of his travels he never returned. He was enthralled by the spirit of Renaissance that he witnessed in Florence. In spite of his stay in Florence he was able to keep contacts with his hometown. It was in Florence that he heard about the Hypatian school of mathematics. He was deeply influenced by the concept of symmetry in nature. He found some co-relation between the Hypatian and the Kerala school of Mathematics. Two story threads which i found a bit unusual is the reference to cannibalism and the 'love school' that functioned in cochin. The author seems to have included them to garner more readership from the so called masses. The ritualistic act of offering grown up girl to Korapappan also takes the novel to the realms of black magic and occult.

The novel is interspersed with mathematical equations, sanskrit verses and quotes from ancient manuscripts and palmyra leaves. All these clearly shows the hardships that the author underwent to bring the story to its complete shape. Three words that guide this novel throughout are - Research, Research and Research.

I admire the craft of writing a novel and the pain behind the act of creation. It is a time consuming and time bound activity. Ihave been toying with an idea for the past one year and still is struggling to get that idea into a proper and decent shape

A Student's Profile...

He is the cynosure of the whole class. He is the reason for their smiles and frustration. He walks like as if he just learned walking and he is little slow in his speech. He represents the general mood in the class — irritated too easily and dead slow in understanding. He is somebody who is here for a long time and he is just aimlessly drifting in this learning cauldron searching for nothing particular. I was curious to know more about this entity. I asked him questions about his family and his friends. I found that he is more of an indoor person. He is addicted to the internet and he spends a huge amount of money and time on the web. A sure that he is a recluse or he is made one by the society. I know him as a trainee but I can create a bigger picture by putting together bits and pieces from his life. I can imagine his parents who took care of him from the moment they knew that something was not right in his brain. Some nerves are plugged into the wrong slots. I have these questions and some of the possible answers that creep into my mind when thinking about his parents.
- What kind of emotions do they have towards him?
- Do they feel dejected?
- How do they cope with the fact that he differently abled?
- Maybe they take refuge in the Divine power.
- They are used to his presence and antics.
- They need lots of patience when they deal with him. I have exercised great caution and self-control in the class. He is one person who lacks the
dexterity which is much needed in a classroom.
I don’t teach him anymore. Like leaves falling away from trees, he too is gone, buried in the layers fallen memories….

Sawadee kaap - Thailand Diary Part 1

Thailand is a free and peaceful country. Recently we had the opportunity to live there for a period of one month. It was purely a professional trip for attending the CELTA certificate course. The location was in the north of Thailand in a place named Chiang Mai. We stayed in a resort cum spa known as Vdara.Chiang Mai is far away from the hubbub of the capital city Bangkok. This short stay in the rural country side lies juxtaposed in our mind with the racy life of the cities like Pattaya and Bangkok. CELTA program was a highly demanding one in terms of work and lesson plan preparation. We were free only in the weekends so we tried our best to squeeze in more sightseeing trips on weekeneds.

One of our first trips was to the Wacharatan waterfall situated some 50 kms from the Chiang Mai city centre. It took almost one hour for us to reach the spot which is located in dense reserved forest area.On our way to the waterfalls we visited an an ancient Buddhist temple. The temple was some 600 years old.and it was one of the ancient and historically relevant monuments of Thailand. A Buddhist monastery was attached to the temple and we saw some Americans dressed in the Buddhist attire participating in the holy ceremonies.

The waterfall was a great sight as the whole place was part of the reserve forest.

The huge white column of water cascading down the green mountainous slope offered an excellent view. We decided to spend some more time listening to the thunderous roar of the waterfall. We took our position on the stumps of huge trees Which served as seats in a coffee bar located conveniently next to the waterfalls. We felt the calmness and ferociousness of the surroundings as we sipped coffee and talked to our guide cum driver about the drug related threats in the area. In the coffee shop we befriended two Buddhist monks who were on a journey to discover Thailand. They were quite animated in their conversation and they asked us about the Tibetan monks who were living in exile in India and they were quite happy to know that India is providing the logistical support to the monks in exile. We ended the first day of our trip by eating dinner in an indian restaurant. Thai food was quite bland in taste and we were in search of something to burn our tongues. We enjoyed the food and left the restaurant with our tummy singing 'jai ho'.

The next leg of our sight seeing adventure took us to the Walking street in Chiang Mai. The market extended to 2-3 miles and all sorts of traditional stuff was displayed and sold there.We saw puppetry show from Japan, Chinese lamp sellers, Chihuahua's on display,and lots of Thai food. The walking street looked like a Thai version of R.K Narayan's market place in Malgudi.
The walking street can be termed as the commercial life line of Chiang Mai. The fact that Thai people were dependent on tourism were quite evident from the hustle and bustle of the evening market. The poverty induced misery and hardships were etched on the faces of the locals. They smiled and laughed for the sake of pleasing their buyers and rolled back into their own gloomy world once the transaction is done.Artists performing traditional art forms occupied the middle of the street. They played on some Thai country music with great involvement and vigour. The market and street became too crowded as it became dark. We could see sorts of nationalities there - French, Spanish and even some Indians. Among all the din in the market one little girl stole our attention. She was dressed in the traditional Thai dance costume and swayed to the slow music emanating from the recorder. She reminded us of the exquisite artists made popular by Arthur Gordon in his novel - Memoirs of Geisha.

The girl had a placard in front of her which stated the reason behind her act. It read - No scholarship, Please donate money for my Education.

We took some time visit the Royal Gardens where we saw the Tulip flower festival. The garden housed the Royal palace and horticulture products from around the world. We figured out that the garden stretched for miles and miles. So we hopped into the tour bus and enjoyed the endless flower beds and the world famous topiary of Thai elephants and other things. The royal palace inside the park had elegant wall paintings chronicling the life of King Rama IX,the Great who belongs to the Chakri dynasty. The palace also contained various religious motifs.The tulips that were on display was Siam Tulips which was cultivated only in Thailand and it is different in size and shape from the tulips found in Netherlands. The Royal garden is the permanent venue for the Annual royal flora festival held in the month of december.

(This concludes the first part of Thai diaries. Still to come Life @ CELTA, Bangkok and Pattaya - Illusions and Realties, Train journey from CNX to BKK.)

Classifying N the classified...

People are eager to classify people and events for easy understanding. stereotypes are created and preserved as idols. any attempt to break and create a brand new image is oppressed and throttled. This is the world. The morning banter of my house owner about the killing of an Indian lady and the abduction of the child in America makes me think that he is just over blowing the image of america as an evil country. I don't have any special inkling towards that country and I am not a intellectual like Chomsky to dissect political or social involvement of America. For 10 years that man worked in Russian Consulate and he is an ardent communist supporter. In his eyes America is still the epitome of Capitalistic values. Why, we don't have capitalists in India. Not everybody is a capitalist in America. There are poor people in the US. On one side the Indian middle class yearns for a NRI status. The young generation is not bothered about the rusty ideas of capitalism and feeding the poor. They want to taste success and they are ready to achieve it at any cost. 

Babyettan – A Verbal Remembrance...

To me he was the man who launched a thousand smiles. It is quite an emotional act to write about somebody who is no longer present in this world.  The charm and the aura of that person becomes all the more vibrant when there is a trail of lovely memories associated with that person.

I have many fond memories about Babyettan. I have always felt his presence right from my childhood. He was my dad’s best friend and if I remember correctly they were like carrot and peas. They had their own share of fun and exotic escapades. They even had a special kind of language to converse with each other filled with tamil and Kunnamkulam slang.

Babyettan was fond of traveling and just one year back he had visited his relatives in Mumbai. He was a good conversationalist. He kept his audience always in the comfort zone and made them laugh and roll on the floor. I used to eagerly wait for his arrival at our home. Usually his arrival was notified to us by a loud shout of my dad's name. The visit normally lasted for some hours. This social interaction always reminded me of the weekly roundup shows in news channels. Those days the outside world came inside my dad's shelter breaking the barriers of cement and stones.

He was an avid reader and this helped him to stay abreast with the latest happenings in the world of literature and cinema. He never missed a good cinema. He was acutely critical about the dwindling quality of the malayalam cinema.  He was a regular visitor at some of the literary events in the city. Being part of the All India Radio circle ( AIR) he was always invited for these events. He used to subscribe to magazines and usually he read for a considerable amount of time before hitting the sack.

His fiery spirit is something which I admired. He took life as it came and never had any real worries. Maybe people who took life as a mathematical equation will find his way of life bit difficult to accept. He had his individuality and it was unique. He lost his soul mate years ago and lived his life with exuberance and joy. Maybe the soul mate's passing away was one of his deep and private thoughts.

He was a social being and his presence was felt in almost every social occasions like weddings, baptisms, funerals and death anniversaries. He enjoyed the act of sharing his travel itinerary with people around him. Due to this social gatherings he was always on the move. He travelled by train and bus frequently and he liked to walk.

He liked ot walk in the morning and in the evening. He had his own speed and unique style. He usually carried an umbrella with him. The umbrella served as both as a walking stick and as a protection from sun.

There are many memories associated with Babyettan. When I was student in Loyola college chennai he had come there to visit me.  I was a student there and he had come to Chennai to visit his relative. We both went for a walk in the campus. He was lucky that day to see the actress of yesteryears – Seema. He was surprised and thrilled and I could sense the youthful memories flooding his mind and he was gripped with the waves of nostalgia. He was the one who conveyed to me the news that my article has been published in education edition of ' The Hindu' .

He liked good and tasty food. He experimented with different types of food. I used to check with him for all the latest information about the new food outlets in Calicut.

His lived his life in three places and all the three had a common association. They began with the letter K - Kunnamkulam, Kochi, and Kozhikode. He was born in Kunnamkulam. He had both spiritual and intimate connections with this place. He was a frequent visitor at Arthat church and he liked attending the Sunday service there. Kochi was more like a work place for him. Kozhikode served as both personal and professional landscape for him. He was the familiar face in Malaparamba, Calicut - 9. He will be missed on the roads of KSHB colony. His face and voice will linger in the minds of those people who knew him.

I pay my deepest condolences to his family...

May his good soul rest in peace….

Book Review The Big Book Shelf by Sunil Sethi

Book Review
The Big Book Shelf by Sunil Sethi
The author in conversation with 30 famous writers
The book was purchased from Calicut airport before boarding the flight to Muscat.
In the blurb the author says that ' writers are often reticent about how and why they write, how their ideas and themes develop or how their charcters and plots emerge. they can be equally reserved about their personal histories.
This book gives a peep into the lives of literary giants including Nobel laureates, Booker Prize winners, acclaimed historians, biographers, and philiosphers. The book is dedicted to all those who regard books as enduring companions in life. The introductions talks about the birth of the talk show on NDTV - Just Books. The show was neatly divided into the following sections
1) Book Pills - short take on the literary happenings of the week
2) My bedside book - well known people talking about their favourite books.
3) My Pick - A list of new titles in bookshops.
4) Interview with the author - ( The seed for this compilation)

This book is all about the passion of reading and the love for letters, sprinkled with quotes from great authors - Sample this from Nadibe Gordimer - Reading my dear is the only training for a writer from a younger age. You only become a writer by being a compulsive reader. Paul Theroux advices young writers like this - Go away. Yes. Leave home, leave your parents and leave all the comforting things that hold you back...because if you stay...people will always ask you what you are doing - what you are writing,what you are publishing. They ask you questions that you can't answer.

The book also gives us a glimpse into the working culture of the writers. Jeffrey Archer's regime goes like this - 'I write up to seventeen drafts. I get away for two months and I wake up at 5:30 in the morning. I write from six to eight and take a two-hour break, I again write from two until four, followed by another two-hour break, I again write from two until four, followed by another two-hour break, then I write from six until eight, light supper, go to bed at 9:30 or 10:00 and begin again at 5:30 the next day. Fifty days of that in a row. Khushwant Singh rises at 4 a.m everyday, hasn't missed a newspaper deadline in sixty years and is ruthless in dismissing visitors. 'People don't drop in. I don't see them without an appointment and when I invite them it's strictly between 7 p.m and 8 p.m. I can be very rude to anyone who stays even a minute after eight' Some authors who are younger, juggles two careers - for example - Upamanyu Chatterjee, who is also a civil servant sets himself a ceratin number of words a day or how to resolve an idea ora problem in the plot, as a daily target. He writes every morning before leaving for office.He takes about five years to complete a novel. The story of Nadeem Aslam is inspiring for all those who want to master the language - Aslam grew up in a small town in Pakistan, attending an Urdu-medium school till the age of fourteen, when his family was forced to migrate to Britain to escape poiltical persecution. " When I arrived in England my English was, "This is a cat."... My life was broken in half. Instead of going to college, for many years he eked out a meagre living, working on building sites and in bars so that he could read in libraries. He would retreat into a private world to be able to write.'There were times when I draped the windows with black cloth. There was no phone, no TV and no radio, no newspapers and I just filled up the freezer with food and didn't leave the house for two and a half months.

The book also examines the themes and motifs found in the work of these writers. Some of them like Amartya Sen, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh and Kiran Desai left India and thier literary world view was changed. The same can be said of Salman Rushdie and others who belong to the Indian diaspora. There is also a group of foreign writers like Paul Theroux, Mark Tully and William Dalrymple who likes India and makes the land a part of their literary landscape.

Some of my favorite writers who are featured in this book are:
Kiran Desai
Umberto Eco
Gunter Grass
Orhan Pamuk
Salman Rushdie
Amartya Sen
Vikram Seth
Khushwant Singh