The Great Indian Wedding

Recently I attended the wedding of one my closest relative and this gave me a chance to do two things, 

1) To get a bird's eye of the view of the wedding extravaganza. 

2) To get some ideas for writing a blog. 

**Shopping** 

The first taste, we got off the charged up wedding atmosphere was when we found ourselves in a shopping spree. This shopping was unlike any other shopping that we have done. There was a clear cut agenda about  the time and when we will wear the dresses. Importance was given to the price and the embellishments. After the hunt in three shops, we finally made our selection. In fact, the shopping spree never ended with the first day. It continued for five days. I realized the importance of colors and patterns and did a learn few things about color sync. We were also part of the so called mega shopping schedule of the bride and bridegroom. The location was a famous jewelry shop in the town and some souls were engaged in the act of making the right choices and giving fabulous opinions about the chosen jewelry item. The shopping sessions went on until the shops closed for the day. 

**The Church**

The church and its spiritual operatives were seen as necessary evils. The priests and his coterie were there to bring in the so called 'holiness factor'. The level of involvement and participation was limited but timely. The whole mechanism ran on the size of cash deposit made at the church counter and how well you are aligned with the church committee. This decided the amount of spirituality that will be showered upon. I felt that the simple and elegant prayers said by the elderly members of the family was much more soothing and meaningful. The church also had its own rules and regulations when it came to conduct of the wedding service. The priest had the same attitude of a teacher who enjoyed the act of admonishing  his students for late arrival and the improper behavior inside the church. 

**The Wedding Planners**

The wedding is an event for the elders in the family to take the main role and perform the duties without being asked. The main participants took up their position much ahead of the main event and started the work of coordinating and organizing. The final outcome that the public sees at the end is a result of all these planning and co-ordination. I was able to have a detached look at the events and make some significant remarks about this team work. There was a dedicated transport manager, an entertainment manager (who brought in fire crackers) there was a health and safety inspector (he took precautions to prevent a forest fire), who doubled as the official to herald the wedding events. We also had the finance department, team which looked into the settlements of bills. All these different departments worked like a well oiled machine so that two individuals could start their life as one. 

**Church mediated dating**

Earlier the bride and the bride groom were seen as two individuals. In this technology driven era they start exchanging messages and calls once the families agree upon the wedding date and other details. They also attend the pre-marital counseling session together. This gives them a chance to be together and get to know each other (not that they have a choice to chance to make a diffrent choice). This is a healthy practice and I feel that the church should mediate and take the lead to find common slots for the two parties involved to make the real decision regarding their life. This will save many marriages from hitting rock bottom. 

**United we stood**

The great Indian family is always united but there are deeply entrenched factors that play a part in a family get-together like this. Wedding becomes a venure for some to snub others for their short comings. There are cases when some are frowned upon by the so called masters of the universe. To illustrate this point there was a family who had totally shunned their son and his family. The issues as usual were related to money. The wedding was an occasion for the family to just get on with their lives. I don't think that the two parties ever met during the gala event. They seemed to have buried their hatchet and went about with a forced smile on their faces as if nothing is wrong with their families.  

It is a Christian family, but the members are from different parts of the state. Some of them belonged to a particular sub sect of the Christianity and there are others who are from the same sect but from different corners of the state. These sub groups always try to assert themselves in a wedding. Each one trying to bring in their ritualistic practices. I could sense there was some friction in terms of the rituals and it is not the first time that I was a witness to  this. Anyway,the issues were settled quite amicably and the event was not marred by these petty squabbles. 

**The Lumeiere's & the Jomon T John's**

The real heroes of a wedding are the bridegroom and the bride. They are just the official version of the story, but the ones who really control the scene are the motley crowd of photographers. Right from day one, the wedding planning is based on their arrival and departure. They kind of do an act of appropriation of the groom and whisks him away to some exotic location and starts clicking away in glory. The techniques, angles and the shots are time tested and the army of shutter bugs move about with such an alacrity that there is always a group of people standing around the camera crew with their mouth wide open. It was interesting to see how the job of a photographer is made easier by technology. 

**Meeting Point** 

The wedding event is a great time for people to meet, especially the ones who are Non-Resident Indians. Many relatives came up to me and quizzed me about their whereabouts. I was careful not to divulge the real feelings that I had within me didn't give a straightaanswer. I took a diplomatic stand and sought the help of my partner who is endowed with a razor sharp memory. It is a strange feeling to meet people for the first time after so many years. The people flowed in incessantly and there was never ending queue of cars and buses which were used to ferry people from one location to another. Weddings are the only occasion for some house wives and retired individuals to be active. They delve themselves into the duties and responsibilities associated with a wedding and make themselves the custodians of the eve. t.The gathered population is also keen on inspecting the home and the immediate environment of the bride and the bridegroom and starts the work of free publicity laced with the usual ingredients of gossip. 

The Indian wedding is indeed a colorful affair and the nature of the wedding and the rituals will vary from rich to poor, religion to religion,and from South to North.The spirit remains the same. 

Sughandhi Enna Andal Devnayiki - T D Ramakrishnan - A review

Personal Touches: 

I heard about this work for the first time from the author T D Ramakrishnan himself when he attended the Bahrain Keralayee Samajam book festival in the year 2014.. He spoke at length about the island country of Sri Lanka and how as Malayalees we had a dispassionate look at the whole thing. The same feelings are reiterated in the prologue to the book when he says that it is the sea area between India and Sri Lanka that prevented Indians from knowing the horrendous happenings in Lanka. TDR is heavily influenced by the Tamil culture and he has to his credit some translations from Tamil literature. He has lived and worked in Chennai for sometime and has a peculiar fascination for the Tamil culture. 

A celebration of Womanhood

The novel is a celebration of womanhood. The immediate target of any war or civil disturbances are the women. The novel also celebrates the fact that woman can be good at bed and good at the throne. The main feminine characters are portaryed as combinations of beauty and brain. The titular character, Devanayiki, the high profile Manju act as lietrary testimonies to this fact. The novel is an act of profiling of three distinct individuals. 1) Andal Devanyiki 2) Sughandi / Meenakshi Rajaratinam and 3) Rajini Thiranagama. What the novel establishes is the fact that no system is perfect and either you have to live along with that reality or do something to change the system.The book talks about people who were ready to change the system and the price they had to pay for it. The work strongly supports the rebirth myth and even alludes to the cliched concept of the phoenix bird.

Research and the concept of Historical Novel:

The amount of research that has gone into the making of this book is simply astounding. The brahminical roots of TDR could have helped him to read some of the texts in their original form. The research objectives for him was three- folded. The first one was to research about the classical Tamil literature. Secondly, dig into the past life of the Chola, Chera Kingdoms. Thirdly, look at the immediate history of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka itself has two histories - one belonging to the Tamil migrants and the other one belonging to the Sinhalese people. While reading the book, I had to take many  digressions to do some web research about the history of some places and do some check on some personalities. Like his earlier book Francis Itty Cora, Sughandi enna Andal Devanayiki borrows heavily from history and it serves the purpose of a literary canvass.  The novely is built around the character of Andal Devanayiki. He examines the biographical details of this character and finds parallels between her life and the struggle for liberation in Sri Lanka. The novel can very well be treated as a historical novel like the novels of Elizabeth Kostova. The novel portrays the anguish of an age and kind of connects with the Arab uprising and fight against the Fascist forces around the world. The novel also chronicles the rise and fall of an idealogy. The Liberation of Tamil Tigers Elam had some flaws in the system and the same applies to the Sinhalese idealogy of 'Srilanka for Sinhalese'. 

Political Stand

The novel navigates cleverly through the cultural, social and political tapestry of the island country. It talks about the rivalries that existed among the Kings of the ancient times and the same is juxtaposed with the civil war that divided a nation. There are attempts made to make the local universal by referring to the Arab spring and the fight against fascist forces all around the world. The author is quite careful not to take a stand when it comes to the political scenario. Instead of overtly getting involved in the scenario,he blames both the parties. He concludes with the realistic picture that the war is far from over and the concept of integration promulgated by the Sinhalese government has not reached a satisfactory level. The author sees the presence of Budhha Bala Sena is a threat to this smooth transistion.  He warns of the millions of the LTTE sympathizers in countries like Canada, France and United Kingdom who are still nursing the old civil war wounds but are working like the Resistance army during the time of Nazi occupation of France.

As an Indian, TDS has taken a neutral stand by making just one mention about the atrocities committed by the IPKF. Maybe he was worried about the anti-national branding that is quite common these days with the student's agitation at JNU seen as a terrorist act. He has portrayed the role of  US/CIA as agencies that worked in close association with the rebels cause of toppling the Sinhalese government. There is no mention about the Norway’s role as an mediator. A closer examination of the literary landscape of the novel may lead us to the assumption that the author is supporting the cause of the Tamils. His sympathies are with the Tamils and he ends the novel with the two powerful descriptions. One about the new generation Tamil sympathizers being tortured in the prison camp. The second is the image about the huge shape of Andal Devanayiki taking  giant strides. 

The Feminine Power of the Narrative:

The words have their limit to bring in or stir up the right emotions. The author has tried to pull the right heart strings by making the narrative overtly sexual and graphic. This is one book which needs some kind of Parental Guidance. There are vivid description about the intimate scenes between the King and his consorts. The sexual acts reaches a level of experimentation employing Tantric sex and the use of other guides on the art. The culmination of these experiements makes the titular character achieve a level of consciousness that is akin to the state reached in the movie Lucy played by Scarlett Johansson and the evil Nazi officer in the movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull. Maybe it is the authors literary ambition to elevate his character to a level of omnipotence and omnipresence which is quite striking in the concluding part of the novel.

There is clearly a sense of the novel being written from a feminine perspective. The feminine personality is seen as a great buffer to all the pain and the grief in this world. The acronym of the title of the novel will read as SAD which stands for Sughandi Enna Andal Devanayiki. The lines that gets repeated throughout the novel is: 

I am sad,sad, sad

I am mad,mad, mad

Fuck me

Fuck me

Fuck me

The novel is a strong attempt to chronicle the lives of the women who were involved in the cause of the Tamil freedom. The novel is a dedication to all the lives lost and to one individual - Rajini Thiranagama. It is this personality that  prompted TDR to embark on this grand literary journey to bring to the forefront the physical and mental pain that a group of people, who are Indians, not Tamils, had to suffer at the hands of a government. The International Red Cross has used these words to describe the situation ‘unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe’ This is no critique of the system known as LTTE but a careful chronicling of some lives involved.

After reading the novel, I feel the urge to visit this country and see some of the places mentioned in the narrative like Sigiriya, Jaffana, and Mullaitivu. I read about the plans by the ICRTC to conduct Ramayana Yatra to cover some of the religious significant spots in Srilanka which is again a calculated move to project the glossiness of the island nation. There should be educational trips and discussions about the true history of this land where battles were fought over ethnicity and fascistic ideologies. 

Summary of Writing without Fear - Using Life writing to free the writer within you - Christopher Mitchell

Recently I did course in Skillshare. As I attended the course which spanned for three days, I made some notes and jottings. This blog summarizes the notes that I created.  

The course at the outset tries to answer one pertinet question - Why do we need life writing?

1) Personal experience provide great material.

2) No need for research or outside consultation

3) You are the expert and it is all about writing what you know and it is better to avoid any upsetting memories.

Writing memoir is all about self awareness, introspection, joyful/sad/life moments. The intention of this course is to create memories which can be passed on to the future generations. The five stages of the writing process 1) pre-writing, 2) drafting, 3) revision, 4) editing and 5) Publishing

Pre-writing is all about digging around in the dirt. This is time to discover the big idea which will in turn will become the focus of the memoir. In this stage we write without judgement and we learn to leash the monster. You should exercise the writing muscles everyday, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, or a journal entry. Creating a daily regimen that allows us to make great strides in our craft. We should learn to love the process. The three pre-writing tools: are brain storming , clustering refers to the act of mapping and free writing is always raw, uninhabited passages, no punctuation and grammar. It is focused on putting ideas to the paper. Afterwards one can highlight the words as paragraphs that surprised you. Brain storming can be described as ideas that came in short bursts. The act of grouping and organizing is known as clustering. The first draft will always be sloppy and need not be perfect. ‘Free writing helps to loosen your memory’- meaningful ideas that come up in free-writing will be used later for draft. When you write the first draft you are not striving for perfection 

The five senses to make your memoir more tangible are, hearing, touch, smell, taste and sight.  The events should be arranged in the chronological order like Harper Lee's - To Kill a Mocking Bird which contains a series of flashbacks, a pinch of local color and flavour of regionalism. Harper Lee places her charcters in the familair literary terrain of the American Deep South. 

Looking at the brain stormed ideas and search for that word or idea that will give you the spark to start writing. Opening line/the hook which will intrigue the readers.The feeling that the opening idea or line is something which I can live with. The second paragraph can be quite realistic in the sense that you can talk about the setting and introduce some characters. Experiences portrayed should be unique and there will never be any place for over-inflated language. The balance between objectivity and subjectivity is also of prime importance.

Revision is the stage when you make your writing strong. The writing after the pre-writing is like a rough piece of cut wood. Revision allows the writer to ‘re-see’ the draft for clarity, cohesion and ‘consistency'. There are four ways to do revision - expanding underlining -  highlighting passages or sentences and details to make passages more vivid, cutting - removing some words, reorganizing - make passages more coherent, and replacing - language choices - replace cliche’s with unique expressions - overused words. Revision is also the stage where you emotionally connect with your reader.

Editing - The act of cleaning grammar and spelling. It is also the stage where you start cleaning up the draft for typographical errors and grammatical errors. It is good to read the memoir aloud. find your voice - writing intricacies, hear awkward phrases, slow the reading speed enough to catch mistakes as you read - focus on each word and phrase.

Certain things that can be worked upon in the editing stage are: needless repetition, grammar mistakes, typographical errors, and spelling problems. b

Certain books that can help in your journey through the beautiful world of words are The Little Brown Handbook and The Elements of Style. The web resources that can referred to are ‘OWL - Purdue Online Writing Lab’ - owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/ and www.cws.illinois.edu/workshop/writers

Publishing - It is the final act of your writing procedure. It is all about sharing the final work,maybe in a blog,or a website or even a book. The following acts of publishing can be done through the following acts like share your work with a loved one, publish in a website or a personal blog and create a project gallery of your writings. 

The course illustrates some instructions on writing and life. The main reason for the writer’s frustration are writer’s block, the fear of the blank page, and the urge to be perfect on the first day. Another feeling that haunts the writer is the  'inablility to say what I want to say and how I want to say it'. The writer is also afraid and he is plagued by the thought 'I am nervous about what I might say'

One example of perfectionism quoted in the book is about the 47 endings written by Ernest Hemingway for his novel - Farewell To Arms - just to get the correct order of words. The focus should be to write the beginning, the middle and the end. You should not aim for perfection when you write the first draft but rather you should aim to make it elegant. Memoir writing demands that the writing is truthful, authentic to oneself and the memories. It is important that the fear is conquered and it is put on a tight leash. We should always free oneself so that we can write without fear.

Writing process is always recursive and it helps when you always visit the stages that you have completed.

The course explains the classic guide and the steps in writing non-fiction, develop a routine, sit in a comfortable place with a hot beverage and hour or so. 

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