Women in Love

It's probably an understatement to say that D.H. Lawrence is a problematic author for feminists. Millett and de Beauvoir were particularly harsh on the author and Lawrence's reputation still seems tainted as a result. In a neat inversion of opinions once held by critics like FR Leavis, it is Virginia Woolf who is the celebrated author whereas Lawrence remains relatively unknown (though AS Byatt did offer a defense of DHL).

I never intended to read Lawrence till I first read him in Sydney. Kangaroo started thrillingly enough and then wound its way to a dreary end. Ditto with most of the other books I read. Fantastic as they are, it's not his notions of masculinity one minds as much as the untidiness of Lawrence's writing. His prose is all over the place and in the same breath he can be both ridiculous and sublime. How to approach such a book? Yet despite Lawrence's phallocentricity and the many elements which made him fodder for feminist mockery, despite the fact that he is not an author for an age wedded to irony there is enough in Lawrence to make him an interesting writer. Most of all he is a passionate writer, his books suggest nothing as much as the casual, riotous blooming of a particularly fertile summer. They are filled with the life force Lawrence advocates. And he can write fine poems, as Bavarian Gentians proves.

Oddly or perhaps fittingly enough Ken Russell, who seems to specialise in lurid films, has put Lawrence on screen quite often. Of these Women in Love probably remains the best adaptation of a Lawrence novel and has Alan Bates in the DHL role. Bates is of course good in the role and is quicksilver, charming, opinionated and thoughtful in turns. And he is in a nude wrestling match with Oliver Reed in front of a great, big fire for which unfortunately the film is better remembered. And Glenda Jackson deserved her Oscar simply for saving that scene of Gudrun versus the bulls from utter hilarity.

It is hard to compress Lawrence's notions on politics, gender and the nature of relationships into a film yet somehow Russell manages to conjure up a visual interpretation of the novel helped along by his actors. Most of all the film is a singular visual concoction whose images serve as shorthand for Lawrence's text. Like two shots of coal blackened miners and contrasting middle class people, one on a bus with Gudrun and Ursula, the other when the mine owner gets into his white car. The scene with the figs which is witty and sexual. Ursula and Birkin's quarrel when she rages at his foul, moral corruption and then returns with a flower. The lake and the boat with a lantern. The juxtapositioning of the drowned couple and Ursula and Birkin parting - almost like a flower opening - after making love.

Mesk Elil

From French-Algerian songstress Souad Massi's album of the same name. Mesk Elil is arabic for honeysuckle.

Madras, 7 years ago

Towards the end of 2001 (or perhaps early 2002) I went to Madras on a patent matter and spent a week there. I didn’t know much about the city, it had merely been a transit stop before we went on to the hinterland when on holiday. It was the first time I had stayed any length of time in the city and much of that time was spent meeting lawyers.

Our first meeting was with S. S was a well known barrister and the company was paying top dollar in hiring him. S spent much of his time in Delhi and as we later found was much wont to dropping names. He had a sea side bungalow in Madras and had flown down for the meeting. The bungalow was tastefully appointed in a style that could be called South Indian Modern. The inhabitants of the house, if any, were discreet though a dog roamed freely on the premises. S was voluble in the manner South Indians are, words issued from his mouth, collided, flowed on and while we marvelled at the man’s eloquence little of import was said. K, our local lawyer, was from Kerala and a neat, dapper man who seldom spoke. We ourselves barely got a word in. Eventually someone came around with the coffee. In fact we found that victuals (this word seemed very S, hence it’s employment here) were as measured in Madras as speech was not. In contrast, in Calcutta where a parallel case was running, sweets and tea punctuated every other hour so that we emerged more often than not in a sugar haze.

As it happened both S and K had little to do, as the matter wasn’t heard. This in spite of the fact that the Madras High Court appeared a model of efficiency compared to Calcutta’s. S flew back to his other important clients, the rest of our party departed leaving me to await a further court date. K, who also had a lavish bungalow, dumped me in his offices. These offices were dominated by exceedingly large gods and goddesses and people who went home to lunch but never offered you a glass of water or invited you out for a bite. During the long hours I spent there transcribing notes, K’s assistant, who sported many auspicious rings, ascertained my caste and then informed me that “we” were honest as we were too scared to cheat our employers. This seemed to imply that the intent lay underneath.

My cousin was then studying in Madras and we caught up a couple of times. This was the better part of my trip. Our jaunts in the hot, damp nights of Madras let me discover parts of the city I had never seen before. As in Calcutta, I was struck by the strong regional flavour of the city. In the day there was a businesslike, clear cut air to the city, partly I think due to the Tamil temperament. But in the nights, the city and the sea held a soft romance.

And in the evenings when I returned to my room in the hotel, I would pass temples and step out occasionally to visit one. The passageways would be long and dim and even the Gods would be barely visible bar a flash of silk or jewellery. On a smaller scale the householder’s evening rituals were replicated in numerous roadside shrines across the city. At the twilight hour, the world was briefly illumined, scented with jasmine before it slipped into the dark.

Fennel & Strawberry Salad

Though I cook everyday, I am not the sharpest tool in the kitchen. I have a few recipe books inherited from my mother but for the most past, bar Dakshin, they are unread. In fact my mother, who was rather passionate about cooking, put together a recipe book for me. Sadly it got lost in a move and I have yet to forgive myself for the loss.

To cut to the chase, I can safely say that food posts here will be rare. And today's post too is not on an elaborate meal but a simple salad.

I like salads, more so when they are made from unusual produce. Example fennel bulbs. They are not unusual here but I have certainly never seen them in India. Perhaps its faint sweetness and the licorice after taste make it unusual for Indian cooking.

The suburb I live in has a fair few greengrocers so good produce is in plenty. Last week I found a strawberry punnet and fresh fennel and decided to make a salad. Admixed with the two is snowpeas, capsicum and pear with basil garnish and some sea salt. Normally I use the fennel raw but this time I slightly blanched both fennel and snowpeas. A drizzle of a dressing that contained lime, black pepper and lavender (from the Kew Gardens store) and the salad was ready. And there it is in the picture above (the fennel is barely visible, its the pale green slivers at the bottom). Given the minimal cooking all the ingredients existed in happy harmony and even if I say so myself it made for a pretty good lunch.

Food blogs I read occasionally: Nordljus and Trotski & Ash. Part of the reason I am sure is the whimsical names :-)

Watching Television

I don’t normally watch television staples i.e. the soaps and the sitcoms. Each episode turns up with clockwork precision on the appointed day and having to remember this is a little beyond me. The DVDs require too much time committment. Yet in the past few months I have broken the rule, for not one but four serials.

First, The Flight of the Conchords which combines lacklustre moments with genuinely funny ones. And of course there are the songs. And I can never get enough of Mel and Murray.

Second, Mad Men which proceeds at a glacial pace yet remains absolutely riveting on all levels. And while I am not off to get a Mad Men avatar, I have read all the reviews on Season 3 (even though we have yet to see Season 2 here). And I am quite sure a lot of people will now be reading Meditations in an Emergency.

Third and this I should not admit, Packed to the Rafters. Like every Australian soap around it is set in the suburbs, it is faintly daggy and plays on familiar themes. I have never watched the rest. Inexplicably I find myself drawn to the Rafters every Tuesday.

And fourth I have been lent all episodes of The Wire and been told it is a must watch.

That’s more telly in the past few months than in all my years here.

Mixed Media

Its been a long time since I did craft of any kind. Last week, in a sudden burst of enthusiasm I took out the box that contained rusted iron bits that I had collected and decided to make a simple collage by adding a few twigs and string. The canvas was of course first painted ochre. It wasn't a flash assembly but I still like the look of the piece. I don't have a camera at the moment so I had to make do with photo booth.

Separately, this weekend over at my aunt's we decided to rent "Love Aaj Kal". I am not sure what the reviews of the movie were like but it was a real turkey. Apart from the poor execution of almost every movie, why does the dialogue in Indian movies always sound fake? Either the people I know are a rarefied lot or the dialogue writers are actually paid to write this bullshit. On David & Margaret's scale, this one was a one at most.

On this day of sky-blue bears

I was browsing though Mayakovsky’s book on his visit to America (more on that later) and of course turned to the Net to find out more. As one does I ended up at a site which hosted V.V. Khlebnikov's poems, a man I had never heard of before. I am not sure I understand this poem completely or even know the context in which it was written but something about it grabbed me immediately. At the risk of yet another poetry post, here it is:

On this day of sky-blue bears
Running across quiet eyelashes,
I divine beyond the blue waters
In the cup of my eyes an order to wake.

The silver spoon of my extended eyes
Offers me a sea buoying a storm petrel;
And I see how the Russian bird flies
Through unknown lashes to the roaring sea.

A sea of heavenlove has capsized
Someone's sail in the round-blue water,
But the first storm is hopeless and gone
And from now on the journey is spring.

1919

Poem from this site.

The Looking Glass Wars

When I was at IIT Mumbai, I was - in a loose sort of fashion - a part of the lit group there. The group did not possess any especial talents, most of us were merely techies with literary pretensions. Our efforts found themselves in the few magazines the Institute put out merely because most people were too busy with their studies and couldn't give a rat's arse for literature of any sort. Still, there was a camaraderie of sorts, books and ideas exchanged and the like all of which could be quite heady. Of all of us who wrote, the only one (in my opinion) who had the potential to be more was my friend, Rajeev Nair. It was always a pleasure to walk down to his room and read something new that he had written. Even now when I read his poems, I find them subtle and sophisticated in tone.

Here's one that I quite like:

I. That laterally inverted, two dimensional
Image with crow's feet and greying hair
Isn't me......
I am something else entirely.

II. They told her she had a face
That would crack a mirror
Funny thing;
When she finally looked into one,
It wasn't the mirror that cracked.

III. She and I
We'd look into the mirror
And talk to each other's images
We'd do it for hours

Then the mirror broke
And we can't stand each other.

Perhaps more poems were written post IIT but in the interim years we lost touch and I haven't seen any. If the muse has long left the building, it would be a pity.

Mandarin Bluegrass

Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet marry Mandarin lyrics with Appalachian sound in this video:



Lovely.

மௌலீஇன் பொறந்தநாள்

My father turned 71 today. Physically he hasn’t changed much with the years, really it is as if someone took his 20 year old self and did a few ageing effects. As a person of course he has changed given the many ups and downs of his life.

Unlike most daughters, I don’t think I was ever Daddy’s girl though there are the requisite number of stories of the songs he sang to me and the like. I adored my mother; in turn I think my father had a soft spot for my brother. It wasn’t as if he was a bad parent, if anything he was a very conscientious father, it’s merely that the shifting alliances of childhood pitch you one way and the other. But I was like my father or so my mother would tell me. In part this was because we exasperated her in similar ways. As a child I used to feel a small stab of pain when my mother made this pronouncement because of course I wanted to be like her. But she was right. Many women find themselves turning into their mothers as they age but I find in myself, as I grow old, many things that remind me of my father.

My father and I have had many fractious moments but they have lessened with the years. We still disagree about many things but also agree about many things and now there is a certain bond between us. While my father has mellowed with age, it is possibly true that the change has lain in my perception of the relationship. In the parent-child relationship, it’s hardly likely that a parent will experience epiphanies about the child. It is usually children whose perception of their parents changes with time. As a child I had a certain fear of my father because he could be moody and had a volatile temper. But with time I can see his good humour and his equanimity in many situations. I can see that more often than not his intentions are good though the execution can go awry at times. I can also see the very long journey he has made from a struggling large family in a small town to what he is today; it can be said that my father is a self-made man who has never leaned on anyone. In this he always seemed to represent a very masculine template. But he surprised us in later life by learning to cook; previously he had done little but make a cup of coffee. As it turned out he brought military precision to the art of cooking and now does a darn fine job of it. Similarly he was his mother’s principal carer in her last years; a job I would have never thought him equal to in the past. But he took it on with patience and good cheer. And of course there are many ways his daughter is not similar to him so amongst many other things I would like to give a big shout out for his persistence in making his scatter brained daughter dimly aware of financial matters. In short he is a good egg.

I am sure today like every other day my father will have two pegs of his beloved rum. I would like to raise a metaphorical toast to him in return. May he have many more days of that health tonic, Old Monk aka Soma Rasa and may his moustache flourish for long.

Hong Kong Airport 3.1.2002

A mother and daughter amicably gossiping and eating fruits.

Two young girls in black coats with grey fur trim and fur caps looking like Mongolian princesses.

Children in brightly coloured padded jackets.

A Christian from Vancouver pressing the Bible on his neighbours.

Jejune air hostesses in black mangling the English announcements.

A tall, spare and kind looking man staring out of the window.

Not much later, Shanghai airport.

Her Morning Elegance

Oren Lavie's stop motion video:

In Praise Of........Jacarandas

We are a fair way from the beginning of summer, at the moment it is only the wattle that is in bloom colouring the landscape a distinct Australian green and gold. But there is no better time to think of the coming of summer and the brief blooming of jacarandas.

Jacarandas are fairly common in the cities I have lived in here. With their green leaves and mauve, papery blossoms they add a touch of coolness to the summer. For a brief while, the blossoms, the seed pods and leaves float and drift through the landscape and collect on pavements, the flowers staining them a faded purple. For the rest of the year, the feathery pinnate green leaves, similar but brighter than that of the tamarind remain except for a brief spell in winter.

In Brisbane, you cannot escape jacarandas and they are almost emblematic of the city. In November, if you were to be at the Mt. Coot-Tha Botanical Gardens, the city spread below looks like it has been carpet bombed with the distinct mauve/violet tones of jacaranda. They are particularly prevalent at the University of Queensland and there are a host of exam superstitions associated with it given the time of flowering. In Sydney, there were a fair few at Killara where I briefly lived and they mingled with other violet blossoms like the agapanthus that flowered at the same time. The picture above is a watercolour version of a photograph taken in the suburb.

In India they bloom everywhere, particularly in the drier parts like Delhi. In my memory, they are not the large spreading trees here but more delicate and less leafy in nature and to my child's mind they looked like the bluebells of Blyton books. In fact jacarandas still remind me of the intense heat of Delhi afternoons. The kind of heat where people sleep through the afternoon and circles of damp form on the pillow (if one were to employ Marquez speak). But the blooms are too delicate for the Indian temperament, they are often drowned out by the brighter colours of amaltas, gulmohurs, copperpods and palash that flower approximately at the same time.

The blooming of jacarandas does not appear to warrant a ceremony like cherry blossom viewing even though its flowering is as romantic and ephemeral. This time around I plan to take along some lavender tea (to maintain the violet theme) and have my own little reading ceremony under a suitable tree.

Advice for K

A Room with a View, whilst not Forster's best, is one of few romantic novels that I like and return to from time to time. Last year a young acquaintance of mine was over for dinner and his general air of depression and thoughtfulness over matters of the heart (with which he had experienced a few hiccups) led me to write down some advice for him. I found it while deleting mails today and here it is in its entirety.

E.M. Foster's A Room with a View is about a depressed idealist called George Emerson who is searching for the meaning of life. In Florence he meets a young woman named Lucy Honeychurch and poses her a Q on the eternal why of life by way of arranging the peas on his plate in the shape of a Q mark. At some point, no doubt aided by the elements of Italy - the sun, the passions, violets irrigating the hillside - he has a moment of epiphany and realises that something tremendous has happened which is really high faultin' parlance for "I fell in love with Lucy". With this he is no longer depressed for the meaning of existence is revealed to him. It takes awhile for Ms. Honeychurch to transcend her own social background and timidities and recognise that Mr. Emerson provides her not the cloistered, mundane room of boys of her class but one with a splendid view. She does eventually do so this being a novel requiring a happy ending.

Certain morals can be drawn from this story:

K needs to arrange left over food in the form of a Q mark;

Recognise his own Ms. Honeychurch - even though the elements of Sydney seem more hospitable to the epiphanies of drunken revelries; and

Offer her a room with a view i.e. the possibility of life as opposed to the tick marks of the standard trajectory of life.

As a post script, I must add that many women I know do not find the book romantic because a) George kisses Lucy without her "permission" and b) George has no money and no standard trajectory. This too K must keep in mind :-)

I am not sure if the advice was taken though I did receive a somewhat enthusiastic response to my email. And this reminds me that a re-reading of the novel is due. As is a dekho at the film - one of few times Merchant-Ivory got things right.

Workwear and More

Another blog on design for men, A Continuous Lean (previous post here). This one is an interesting potpourri of styles, history, people and more. And just like Engineered Garments, Workers seems to be a Japanese take on retro American workwear.

Coninuing on the workwear theme, the Guardian once had an article on Old Town which draws its influence from British workwear amongst other things; the clothes and the site have more than a hint of nostalgia.