Movie today !!

He wants to die and you wonder, why does suicide need more than a person, other than the self-perpetrator. The movie is a story of a Sisyphus, the mythical man who does his job only to lose it all at the top and start all over again. By the end it is the viewer has the responsibility to decide whether Mr. Badii is a sisyphus or not.
Mr. Badii sits in a mountain-esque setting, all alone, with sounds of excavators and dumpings all around. Just him and these sounds, a very profound scene, if you can figure it.

Now showing - My first Iranian movie - Thanks Saurabh.

Movie today !!

The man, the voice, the void and the end!!! His profligacy and his popularity were of the extremes. The problem with not liking this movie is many fold. After all the more uncertain the character is the more certain is his demise. All great things come in small quanta. In retrospect I wonder whether had he been alive, would it have made the difference. Try to prove it, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt have one thing in common. The number 27, go figure.

Expressions like demi-god seem like compromise. He talks of limitlessness and freedom yet the next moment he seeks a hand. He talks of Oedipus, 1984 seems to be written for this song. I am losing myself in “the end” and so whatever may everyone say, The Doors is good, sad, limitless yet constrained by the rule of 27.

“I am the poet and you are my muse” lying in Pere-Lachaise.

Now showing

Movie today !!

A meditative study on individual / group behaviour, negotiation schemes, personality types, and the definition of reasonable doubt.
Now showing

Movie today !!

Bang!! Bang!! Bang!! ... "Ha Ha Ha Ha" - Li'l Dice after his first kill and a fatal grin!! Reminded me of that "ultra violence" and "clockwork orange". After seeing so many "bloody" movies even I have been normalised by violence. Showing violence does not seem to offer that "tense" moments that reveal the vulnerability of the character, to me. So I search for the subplots and the context, and damn the same old zero-sum game, the same vicious circle is what I see.

Damn the normalcy of violence. Some days before I met an ACP here, she also seems "normalised" by violence. "Abhi ek threat aaya", she said with a grin on her face, and her eyebrows in constricted "tension".

Now showing - real story of the favelas, Li'l Dice nee Li'l Z and Buscape, por favore !!!

Movie today !!

"I think dad is having me in my dreams" - A daughter
Disturbing, yet evoking no comments as revealed in a "Festen". Thanks Saurabh !!!

Now Showing Dogme95 style

Movie today !!

Who watches those who are watching and those are who are watching know that they are being watched? Surveillance is a zero sum game by above and our innate scepticism.
-- "The Departed".

Now showing -

Paati, me and murukkus !!

Paati means grandmother in tamizh (and not tamil, I hate that spelling). She was making what we relish as murukkus, which are a snack made of rice flour and a complex web at that. This is what a murukku looks like -

And I wondered isn't this magic. I was looking at the sharp twists and turns and was wondering at their preciseness and I remembered science. Wasn't science all about preciseness and a kind of beauty that lends itself to mathematics. It was the same case here, but this was made by my paati. Well I wondered this is not science but what I learnt long ago called as tacit knowledge, which is reinforced by years of practice. It is very interesting that small events and anecdotes build one's knowledge which in retrospect seems very obvious. A typical example would be to see how her fingers roll around the rice flour to make this perfect shape, which she says she finally achieved in 1982, quoting "25 years of service". Do I say "ROFLOL", no. I said you are wonderful darling.
My paati says she has been making them since she was 10 and her mother used to make one on each hand i.e. two per person and my paati was using one hand. And I wondered how ?
Then I asked, has she ever wondered who can make them like she does and she was blank. Then it stuck me like a loss staring at me, that will catch up unawares sometime in the near future. Interestingly, she said her daughter can match up with her, sometime. Interestingly, none of her maatu-ponnu ( daughter-in-laws) can ever achieve this level that she has managed to achieve. I wonder this is six-sigma or not. So I thought then on, what happens to such tacit knowledge which gets filtered across generation. Why does this get filtered? Well is it a question of interests or relevance or priorities or sometimes just the vicariousness of the experience or just that because it is available outside? Tomorrow the next generation would forget that someone in their own family used to make it by their own hands labouring for 4 hours for 2.5 kilograms of rice flour.

Will someone preserve this tacit knowledge? I sure wanted to and made a start today and this is what I managed. I have made a start but wonder whether would I be able to capture all that my paati has in her head before she becomes inaccessible? Do I know is a wrong question because no one else knows? After all does this change the end result - everything is crushed in our mouths and it does not matter from where it comes. Just that if my paati makes it, the relish is much more exponential.

Will someone preserve this tacit knowledge? It matters to me and I realise I have at least taken a step forward and hope someday I will be making them the way my dearest paati made it.

Amen !!!!

Slokas, sastrigal and me!!!

Certain events that happened recently have caught me in a difficult position. Dying traditions across generations within a single family, perhaps. The death is chosen changing priorities and also the environment in which the generation is brought up.
We had a house warming ceremony and as usual I and my dad were chanting the Sanskrit slokas which I had learnt. This induction to slokas is a normal part of a tam-bram upbringing and so I learnt it along with rudram, chamakam and Vishnu sahasranamam (a thousand names of Lord Vishnu) as well. For the uninitiated they are slokas and pretty long ones at that.
So everyone, by implication my relatives and our generation, watches us dumbfounded along with the sastrigal, who conduct the ceremony, wondering -
1. How come they know all this ? ( how come we missed it ? )
2. How come they know all this ? ( this time the sastrigal, wondering about a professional threat or a sense of relief that there are people who know these slokas )

So I wonder who chose not to learn? I have learnt some Sanskrit and it feels wonderful reciting them with the intonations and all. To quote a specific example - imagine about 50 people reciting slokas together in a crescendo and wonder the kind of environment it creates, quite akin to a concert of Oasis or Pt. Birju Maharaj. Within my family tree, generations have side-stepped these things. Well is it a question of interests or relevance or priorities or sometimes just the vicariousness of the experience? I am gloomy at what I see.

Linguistic Overtures

I am writing again after a long long time. This time my focus has somehow turned into language and its peculiarities. Here are some gems (according to me obviously).

1. "Begum" - "Be"+"Gum" meaning without any sadness, what a farcical word this one.
2. Incidentally if you have not wondered ever "Bedroom" has an interesting jumbled up word which is "Boredom".
3. Two unseemingly related words which are again jumbles of each other - "Teacher" and "Cheater".
4. Propitiously "women ...... men" and the question to you is what fills that dots (a mathematical symbol). The answer is ">" because men on both side cancel out. Now this has some deep insights.

Languages created by humans are so beautiful and they are so quirky that no one notices these small yet very profound links.