Thistles

Awhile back the thistles were in full bloom. I decided to photograph them before they entirely disappeared and whilst most by now are more thistledown than flower, a few blooms remain. 

And a poem from a Ted Hughes book of poems I have been reading.

Thistles

Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men

Thistles spike the summer air

And crackle open under a blue-black pressure

Every one a revengeful burst

of resurrection, a grasped fistful

of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up

From the underground stain of a decayed Viking

They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects

Every one manages a plume of blood

Then they grow grey like men

Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear

Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.

A visual interpretation of the poem on youtube.

__*__

And so the year is dispersed and it ends to be replaced by a new one.

The Week Before Christmas

Review of Majboor on the phillum blog.

The lead up to Christmas here is often exhausting, especially if you feel disinclined to shop as happened to me this year. On Friday evening I watched Majboor and wrote up the review.  Saturday was taken up with shopping for gifts because I couldn't put it off any longer. I bypassed the malls and went to the outdoor  Rocks Market which was fairly pleasant given that we are still having rather cold and cloudy days well into the summer.  Then the packaging of gifts, the making of cards, the weekly grocery shopping, the weekly cooking, a fine tune of the Majboor piece and the weekend had just slipped away.

One important gift still remains.  My niece is of an age (4) when she has been sucked completely into the world of Disney (something that alarms me but that's a separate story) and Ariel is a particular favourite of hers.  Anyway a few months back we got talking about Ursula the Sea Witch who features in the animated series (naturally as a fat blue woman) and then somehow we got to the meaning of the name Ursula with my niece - a somewhat opinionated child - refusing to believe that it meant "little bear" because "you are very wrong Anu Periamma, Ursula is a sea witch!" Then she had one of those moments where she suddenly got what I meant (and I love these moments, its like watching a light suddenly shining in her mind!).  This carries its own dangers because she became immensely preoccupied with Ursula and the potential of another story that featured a bear.  Rashly I promised her a story of Ursula and the Bear to be delivered by Christmas but I have yet to start on it.  Hopefully inspiration strikes soon otherwise I will have a somewhat disappointed niece on my hands.

The shopping trip was slightly sobering too.  The markets were deserted and a girl at a stall told me that this year they would be making little or no profit during the crucial holiday season.  In my suburb, the Eastern European man who opened a small store of cheap bed n bath stuff has seen no customers and has grown progressively sadder and more dishevelled.  Perhaps it's fears of another financial crisis. Or perhaps everyone is online.

Speaking of which the highlight of my weekend was a trip to my favourite bookstore, Abbeys.  A wave of pure happiness engulfs me in nice bookstores so I remain loyal to dead tree books and can't contemplate an electronic one. Ever :-) 

And here are pictures of an Australian summer that has seen more rain and cold than the fabled sun of tourist brochures.

Dog Days

I have been dog-sitting.

The dog belongs to my uncle and is quite the apple of his eye. So I had to move in to keep an eye on the dog while he is away.  The dog has been behaving thus far and in an effort to establish friendship has shown me its bones hidden all over the garden. He's a Lab of some sort and fairly gentle as dogs go.

As I am away most of the day a walker comes around during the day.  This hasn't stopped the dog from attempting to bamboozle me into a walk.  Most often he loiters around the house but now and then he comes and barks at me, these appear to be requests for bone time or walks. Or he will hang around hoping for food, his stomach is a bottomless pit.

Bone time is very sacred and must be adhered to every day, its the hour when he bonds with you by chewing on a bone while you sit close by.  I have to take a book and sit by him till the bone is chewed to the...bone.  Of late we seem to have swung back into winter which makes this slightly unpleasant - especially when the demand comes at 9:00 pm.

I am not entirely sure why but I talk to the dog in Tamil, maybe because its the language I employ for babies.  It hardly makes a difference to the dog of course who only responds to a few important words.  I sing nonsense verse to it once in awhile too but it always leaves the room when I do so which hasn't done much for my pride in my singing :-)

The suburb my uncle lives in is fairly unremarkable, there are streets of suburban houses, schools, the odd community centre, a Railway Parade.  Over it all lies that Anglo-Saxon somonolence (as Murray Bail once put it in a book) peculiar to the more far flung suburbs of Sydney. 

This part of Sydney is also quite green and leafy and is a part of town where the city's early vegetable gardens were established.  One sunny day the dog and I went for a walk.  The park nearby is a mix of native and foreign trees and full of bird life.  I took a picture of galahs which are abundant in this part of town. And just a few general pictures in and around the park.

Yesterday I was putting away some stuff and the dog looked extremely doleful.  It then struck me that it thought I was also packing and leaving. Much petting and endearments later he looked happier.  Of course when I do leave he will hardly notice because the family will be back:-)

Initially the dog-sitting seemed a bit of a hassle coming as it did in the midst of a busy work spell but it's turned out to be a bit of a change and a mini-vacation.  Perhaps a staycation keeping house and dog for people on real vacations is a perfectly acceptable way to step out of one's routine:-)

__*__

Separately the guy I buy The Big Issue from informed me today that he was now married to one of his customers.  When I first met him he was homeless, separated, had lost custody of his children and had just started selling the magazine.  Since then he had bought a place, earned a diploma. And now the marriage.  It made for a happy story.

Manthiri Kumari

New review is of a Tamil movie released in 1950, Manthiri Kumari.

Reviewing these films have left me little time for writing anything else, though tres facile and silly they require a fair bit of work. I wouldn't have watched these films were it not for writing the reviews for my cousin - perhaps a good thing as the earlier reviews of arthouse flicks on this site perhaps just have the one interested reader :-).  It's been an interesting exercise and makes me appreciate commercial films (for lack of a better word) a little more.  Manthiri Kumari for e.g. is a crowd pleaser and inordinately long but once you enter into the spirit of the thing it proves to be quite a delectable film.

And some random pictures I took this week.

Peonies on my Window



Life Death



Assemblage

Jacaranda Season

Gerberas

Such a tiring week.

Review of Mr and Mrs 55 here.

And a pic of the pretty terracotta coloured gerberas in my office this week.

A River Runs Through

“The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there”.

So goes LP Hartley’s oft quoted opening sentence from The Go-Between. The future is unknown, the present is what it is but the past is rich, known, unknown, and complex and can be endlessly rearranged for meaning at different stages of life. Mining one’s own past is not just about memory and nostalgia but also curiosity about the lives of those who lived before us, the things they did differently.

A set of photographs taken in the mid 70s made me think of my great-grandparents.

My mother’s grandparents had lived in Bombay for a long period of time. My great grandfather had worked as a surveyor with the British but at some point the great grandparents moved to Tiruvidaimarudur, a tiny village on the Kaveri. The sprawling village house they lived in was almost the last in a lane that was exclusively Brahmin at the time. The lane tapered off into fields that led down to the river. My mother and her brother spent their early years here, my mother was therefore especially attached to her grandparents and we predisposed to like them.

This village house had served as a centre for many family functions, my parents had got married here and in ’74 so did an uncle. My parents took us to the wedding and we stayed on. The wedding had resulted in a full house and us city rats - my brother and I and relatives down from Chennai spent most of our time on the large swing in the house. When they left, the days became silent and long. Still my great grandparents did much to keep us amused as did our parents.

Opposite the village house was a pathashalai. For a large part of the morning we would hear lessons being recited but later in the day the boys would come out to play and my father and brother would join in a game of cricket or the like. One such game had resulted in a gash on my brother’s head, duly and efficiently stitched up by the local doctor. Much was made of my brother’s bravery because of the lack of anaesthesia of any sort. Though at that age I would often disrupt and join in my brother’s games back home I didn’t join them in Tiruvidaimarudur. Instead I spent a great deal of time in the garden of the pathashalai which was fragrant with flowers or roaming around the gardens and fields behind the houses on the street, my botanical impulses all afire. Part of the reason for my “feminisation” in the village was my great grandmother whose methods of coercion were gentle and therefore highly effective. I was thus put to work on making a kolam every morning, plucking flowers (I was given a sweet little steel basket which made me a happy girl) and the like.

I recall my parents being very happy here. My mother as I said was very fond of her grandparents and she was relaxed in their presence and her independent questioning streak was sublimated by the daily tasks of cooking with her grandmother, washing up and the like. This was in spite of the fact that her tales of village life were sometimes sordid, she never failed to let us know that everything good and evil in human life was there in that tiny patch of earth under southern skies. The saddest of these tales was of a childless aunt who had indulged her as a child but had borne more than a few taunts and would often cry herself to sleep. For my father, the air, the fresh produce, the milking of the cows, all this suited him. He would give us a bath in the mornings, we squealing with delight at the buckets of cold well water poured on us. For the rest of the time he occupied himself in several ways, the chief of which consisted of teasing an overtly orthodox great uncle with tales of his Army life and his renunciation of caste to become a Kshatriya.

Bullock carts and a sole Ambassador cab were the only modes of transport in getting around the village. We had arrived in a bullock cart and would leave in one. For the rest of the stay we would walk everywhere. A visit to the temple would mean a walk and my brother and I would peer down the long dark passageways in the temple, do our pradakshinams and always always harbour the fear that the Brahmahathi in the temple was waiting for us and we would never return to Delhi. Once we were taken to see some kind of temple procession. And sometimes we would be out late at night, once to see a movie in the open air theatre, and the return journey would be through ill lit lanes. The houses on the side would have flickering oil lamps, my great grandmother whose hand I held tightly would cry out a soft greeting once in awhile. The lanes were not lonely though; I can still see and smell the shuffle of people as we wound our tired way home. At the point where we turned into our lane lay an unsecured pond and I lived in fear that I would inadvertently drown in its inky night waters. By day though the pond held no fear for me, it was like something in an enchanted tale right out of Amar Chitra Katha partly because of its many lotus blooms. But I was also a child of my environment, I wanted very much to put them in a vase in our drawing room at home.

Though we were young and knew how to while away the hours, my brother and I would often long for books. My great-grandfather, a spare erect man who dressed in crisp clean clothes, was a diligent reader. He was a member of the local library and would take us there. I can still recollect his voice on our walks this many years later. It was a small library and my brother and I, ravenous readers, had finished with its contents in a week or so. Nevertheless we would reborrow the books and let me just say that I knew Russian Folk Tales better than any lesson I had swotted in my school term. In retrospect it is amazing that the library had any English books at all. My great grandfather himself wrote precise English and his writing style tended to the epistolary, we would get detailed letters on occasion when we returned home.

At the end of the lane as I mentioned lay the river. Sometimes my father would take us there though we were forbidden to swim in its waters. My mother and her brother, less supervised, had however mucked around in its waters as children. We would drag our feet along the edge of the water and occasionally a fish would nibble our toes but that was as far as it got. Here the river did not look imposing but we had been taken to Kumbakonam once and the river was far more grand there though not more so than a few that we had passed on our long journey south.

In spite of the idyllic nature of our visit, village life ran its usual course. My great grandparents help, Visayam, was forbidden to touch anything or enter certain places. Everyone enquired as to the caste of our help back in Delhi. A girl aged ten got married on our street; my great grandmother went for the wedding and pronounced that never had a bride looked more charming. This was one event that agitated my mother. On a much later visit I learnt that the girl had run away and returned to her natal home. There were unsavoury rumours about the pathashalai vadiyar. And there was just a hint that the demography of the village was changing, this was much more apparent on our later visit a decade later.

In Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North (an excellent book that I recommend), the narrator returns at the end of his studies in the UK to his grandfather’s village at the bend of the Nile. To the narrator his grandfather stands for a past that is timeless and reassuring even as things change. Of course, as the narrator realises, this world is not as pure as he imagines. Much as my mother explained. My own grandparents lived in the city; in spite of their house being on its fringes we in fact came to a bustling metropolis on most of our holidays. Yet in Asian life everywhere our roots seem to lie in the idea of a village much like my great grandfather’s. Writing this made me feel that I am no different, that the past that is timeless and reassuring to me is not my grandparents life, it is the life of a small infrequently visited village on the Kaveri.

In picture above from L to R: My grandmother (who doesn’t make an appearance in this piece), my mother, my great grandparents and the overly orthodox uncle. In front, brother and me.

Thinking Of

For RM and GM who did a pretty mean rendition of this song in the 60s.

This and That

Review of Karan Arjun here.  I rarely watched films of the 80s and 90s and this one reminded me why. And wasted a few hours of my long weekend:-)  It also reminded me of being trapped in buses which had videos with volume knobs set to maximum, a feature that happily seems to have been removed from modern buses.  And it is hard to believe that the actors in it once appeared in Fauji and Adhe Adhure.

Not all viewing experiences were so dire. Once in awhile Aunty splutters to life and it did so this time around with The Slap, which began airing last week.  I haven't read the novel though I have read Christos Tsiolkas' earlier work, Loaded, a fairly raw and visceral take on growing up Greek and gay in Melbourne.  The Slap is set in Australian suburbia and is more a state of the nation novel, the first episode suggests a promising series.  Tsiolkas' writing may not be to everyone's tastes (particularly the explicit sex, drug abuse and the sometimes blunt employment of language) but part of his appeal I think is a genuine attempt to articulate his thoughts and concerns.  The ABC has gone a bit overboard with the marketing of the series and Tsiolkas is everywhere on the channel, luckily he is an engaging interviewee.  In fact much like with Tsiolkas, a recent episode of QandA also broke away from the usual interviewing format led by Zizek and Mona Eltahawy. I had read about Zizek but never heard him speak and whether you agree with his ideas or not that hour made for pure theatre.  Which is rare on the ABC.

In other important news, after months of frustrated attempts, I got a decent picture of a half-blown dandelion.

On Saraswati Puja

Though Saraswati Puja falls during different times in different parts of India, the ninth day of Dusshera is traditionally the day reserved for Saraswati in the south.

My attitude to religion and ritual is fairly laissez faire but aspects of it do interest in. I have a shrine at home largely full of my mother’s idols/paintings; I light a lamp once in awhile. I like the feeling of being in an old temple, the odour of past obeisances so to speak. But there is plenty else that I have little interest in, including festivals.

In many ways my interest in religion and ritual is tied to my interest in the past. I like books on mythology even if they are tinged with the wildly fantastic, e.g. Joseph Campbell’s books. Campbell in one of his books writes of the Hindu concept of the ishta devata in terms not merely of idol worship but what the devata symbolises. He relates this to his own belief in Saraswati because wisdom and knowledge were not merely the tools of his trade but what he valued most.

Saraswati as everyone knows is a neglected goddess with few temples dedicated to her. Even in the shops cluttered with idols of every description, she would be hard put to locate. In a way Saraswati flows underground through Indian life much like the myth of the river from which her goddess cult stems. Maybe it is this neglect and her elusive nature that makes her interesting to me but I am being facetious, like with Campbell she is my ishta devata because she represents what I value most in life.

Of course you do not need a goddess to personify the feeling or thought that the getting of wisdom is important. But there is something simple and sweet in reserving a day for it, in the act of placement of the books that matter to you, covering them with a new cloth and placing a few flowers.

So I plan to do that tomorrow. For some reason, choosing the books for the puja has always been the most exciting part of the day since my childhood so I will give it some thought over the next few hours :-)

PostScript: Though, as with every other goddess, it’s the Ravi Varma painting of Saraswati that is ubiquitous, the kalamkari versions (as in the pic for this post) remain the more elegant representation of the goddess.

Ashadh Ka Ek Din

There is no season of rain in Sydney.  Instead sudden bursts of rain punctuate most months.  After a mild beginning to spring, this weekend turned wet and cold.  I walked around all morning for several reasons and took a few pictures.  50 to be exact but a few below.

Dev D

I decided to move the film reviews,which unsurprisingly are the most popular posts (!), to my old blog. 

This week it's a review of Dev D, an adaptation of Devdas. I had not read the book or seen any film version so I ended up having to skim through a good deal of material.  As it happened, I unexpectedly found the novel interesting.  And watching the 1955 film version reminded me of how quiet and sure Bimal Roy's film making was and how good an actor Dilip Kumar could be (though he is rarely spontaneous, it is a studied performance).  If I have the time, I might do a more serious comparison but for the moment this will do.

Inexplicable Firangi Obsessions

There are no greater chroniclers of the self than the white professional classes, so any thoughts on them are more or less superfluous. Don’t bother for they have already thought of it.

Nevertheless some of the culture here is so bemusing to me that I thought I would post on it anyway. A purely random list that is entirely incomplete follows.

Like going to yoga class and finding that it’s not sufficient to turn up in your old salwar kameez as you may do back home. No there is gear to be bought - sans lady fitting lycra and de rigeur mat you are like a fresh off the boat rustic. And the conformity of the group is such that the salwar kameez doesn’t even provide a respectable cloak of authenticity. Authenticity is also not helped by the fact that most girls are better than you at yoga. Of course even before you get the gear, you have to choose from a smorgasbord of yoga types (what, bending myself into an odd shape is not enough?!). My favourite comeback to people who do super heated Bikram Yoga is oh, that sounds like an ordinary day of yoga in Mumbai. No one has ever laughed at that witticism.

Fact is everything in this world is a competition sport. Or an expression of individuality. Take cycling. Attire is important. You can choose between yet again lycra (serious cyclist who will mow you down) or hipster gear (more leisurely but likely a cycle snob). You have to decide on the kind of cycle you want to ride. You have to choose where you wish to buy it. There will be bicycle magazines. They will feature pretty bicycles. They will also feature people who will claim bicycle repair is an art and run boutique shops providing “restoring” services. You have to enter some run or the other. Ride to raise funds! Ride to have a good time! Ride to wear tweed and pretend it’s the 1920s! In fact the white professional classes pretty much organise a run at the drop of a hat. And importantly you have to talk about it; everyone should know you are different because you ride a particular kind of bicycle. Just like a million other people yes but they aren’t doing it in your own quietly superior way.

Coffee snobbery warrants a book, someone somewhere is no doubt writing the nth definitive guide to coffee drinking and letting you know the type of coffee bean you should consume only on pain of death or expulsion from the group - which are one and the same.

But the award for the most inexplicable snobbery goes to the hoo hah over fonts. Why would anyone object to Comic Sans when it is more legible than most people’s handwriting? Why would anyone obsess over what the most fashionable computer font is? Why would anyone think a font says anything at all about a person? But as it happens you do. There is nothing more tedious than the tyranny of typography.

The snobbery of the class is however best expressed in its musical tastes. There are a bewildering number of tags (electro/pop/funk/rock/metal/ trance/folk/jazz/blues etc. etc. all of which can also be happily combined to generate an infinite number of tags) so that you can pigeonhole yourself into a category and then go on to diss every other kind of music. Of course the music should be dark and ironic, sunny ditties rarely enter this realm though twee is admissible. Discovering an obscure but great band/singer is a holy grail and belonging to such a band is a guaranteed ticket to white folk heaven.

Inexplicably no such criteria are required to be applied to books and movies. It is enough that you read or watch a work based on cartoon network/video game fare, nothing else is expected of you. Preferably you eschew books for graphic novels. You can however write an essay on such a work to establish that you have a proper adult appreciation of cartoon network and games. You are however allowed to read Hunter S Thompson or Charles Bukowski.

The enthusiasms of the class vary but this approach remains the same. You either have to break some made up record (hullo surf dudes) or it has to be that single thing that defines your class, pronounces your elevated taste and separates you from the barbarian hordes who surround you (hullo taxidermy).

The class also likes to wear its heart on its sleeve. There is no greater badge of honour than to have been to some third world country and “made a difference”. And if you aren’t making a difference, at the very least you have to be travelling somewhere and penning wistful, quirky books on finding yourself in some suitable location. Paris and Italy remain perennial favourites. Then of course you write a book on it. In fact writing a book or a blog is almost like a rite of passage for the class. The book can either be life-affirming or dark and ironic. The latter is much preferred because the class prefers its life lessons to be laced with dark stuff, typically broken homes, addictions, mental illnesses and the like. The impatience this arouses in me is of course demonstrative of my own class (hey you want to see real dark stuff, come to India!).

Then there is stand-up comedy. Ostensibly this is a lot of funny folk getting up on stage which sounds like a good thing. Invariably it is not. Most often it is a lot of unfunny people regurgitating the same “this is a white person’s life and isn’t it so funny and aren’t we so cute” shtick. Sitting though a comedy festival – the scripting, the sheer effort involved in non-stop comedy that is essentially banalities on the banal life - will without doubt make you turn to dark and depressing thoughts.

At which point you may wish to spork your eyes out. Except that phrase is pretty much the cutesy slang endemic to the class and will come complete with its own statement T shirt.

Blooms

I had an internet less weekend which was so blissful that I fell to thinking about pre-Internet days and reconsidering my online obsessions.  Nevertheless a post for the first day of spring.  The weather has been mild and we have had one of those sudden seasonal transitions resulting in a riot of blooms on the roads.  The light here, always so distinct, also changes with the seasons which must account for the colours in some of the pictures that I took on a walk.

A few artificial blooms (brooches) too arranged on an old magazine that I dug up (it saddened me a bit that I have almost abandoned the leisurely flip through a magazine for internet time...).

Let's see how long the Internet in Moderation lasts!

At my Grandmother's

Lazy post for today.  The last of my pictures from Mumbai were taken in and around the Mahalakshmi Mahal (new name for the grandmother's house!).  In retrospect the visit had all the hallmarks of a plot for a chick flick - single woman with a career visits her grandmother's place and rediscovers life and family, finds love with an old fling and decides to stay on.  Though elements of each of these were present on my visit, in retrospect its a good thing that real life is not equal to Hollywood!

First up, the blossoms of the citron/narthangai.  My Tamil genes speak when I say that curd rice+narthangai on a summer afternoon=perfection!

I only know the basic kolams but I do like making them and the black slate laid down for it at the entrance made it an infinitely pleasurable activity.

Often I had little to do except wander around the house.  Despite some of my internal feelings which were at times unhappy, there was a certain kind of tranquillity brought about by observing tiny details - though I never achieved the state of grace of the protagonist of The Scent of Green Papaya :-)

When I did venture out the photographs I took were partly a record of sights I grew up with and that somehow seemed to have survived time, even as the people have changed.  The vegetable carts in Rajawadi are an example.

All the time I was in Mumbai the house was full of painters and they would be terribly self-conscious each time I photographed them.

Most of my pictures are a recordal of things that interest me though they make for pleasant images. When my cousin was visiting, she played around with my camera a good deal making for very different images. This image of our grandmother is by her and I like the way it foregrounds an object that my grandmother uses every day.

The Importance of Being Rancho

So I saw 3 Idiots.

Mostly I learnt that men cry, hug and piss at the drop of a trouser. Shall we see how all this unfolded? !

A plane returns to base because Farhan (Madhavan, once so cute but now needs to go a little easy on the thair shaadam eh!), is having a fake spasm of sorts. Soon he has hijacked an airport car and is on his way to meet best bud Raju (Sharman Joshi). The reason for all this is that much hated Chatur Ramalingam (Omi Vaidya) has located the other best bud, Rancchoddas Shamaldas Chanchad aka Rancho (Aamir Khan) who disappeared after graduation. Question Time! What’s common to Tams in Bollywood Films and Brits in Hollywood Films? Answer: Both sport dodgy accents and are designated DOUCHEBAGS! Chatur it appears has been harbouring deep RESENTMENT against the best buds. And is also looking for an inventor called Phansukh Wangdu (people lol, rofl, lmao at the names!), all round genius who has 400 patents to his name (your viewer was all lolwut at patents=genius!). So they are off to Simla where Rancho now lives. Why is Chatur so bitter? FLASHBACK! Time for a Boys Own Adventure where their antics will be treated with a Boys will be Fucking Boys!!

Podgy Farhan has just joined the Imperial College of Engineering and is soon rooming with Raju, he of the 100 Gods Shrine who shall bless him with Complete Examination Success. Time for RAGGING! Lots and lots of boys! Lots and lots of dropped trousers! Arse Stamping! Chatur in a bowtie and skimpy underwear! Everyone looking like an undercover overage student like Drew in Never Been Kissed! Rancho entering, Farhan looking a little smitten - Ruined Botticelli Angel who has been a tad “refreshed” – IRRESISTIBLE! But if you think up next is strobe lights, dance music, Bad Bad Rancho and Queer as Log you are wrong for this is at best a bad advertisement for Dora Underwear. Rancho doesn’t want to drop his trousers – no Tough Male Initiation Rites for the wuss! - and locks himself into a room. Time for a Bully aka Senior to ferret him out by - umm - pissing on his door. Time for a glimpse of Rancho’s native genius for he quickly rigs – double umm - an Apparatus for a Sharp Short Shock to the Scrotum of a Pissing Person! Useful given the movie has so much serial pissing!! So massive toolery all around – except perhaps in the underwear.

ViruS (Boman Irani) - he of the charming eccentricities – Listening to opera! Being shaved while listening to the opera! Taking ambidexterity to new heights! Carrying a bird in a nest! – is giving the TOUGH TALK to the overage students. And mooning over a pen designed for space. Cue a Rancho The Great moment (Reader, you are warned, there are MANY!). It is all about a pencil for space – Rancho boy you will have to do better than lifting old cosmonaut/astronaut anecdotes to establish genius!! Now ViruS his enemy for life but hey ViruS join the queue, we can’t stand a smug smart arse either! Also joining the queue - the Prof in the next scene who is – triple umm - predictably unzipping his trousers! Another Rancho the Great moment - don’t beat us over the head with his genius, folks! And I forget - there is a parallel track of Chatur, Obnoxious Teacher's Pet for each such moment.  

Now time for obligatory creative student crushed by the forces of college bit for beware ViruS the Villain is at large, he will fuck you over, destroy all hope, crush your spirit and spit you out a ghost of a man! Oh note that the student is a Lobo so he gets to sing an English song! Also another song where the bogs are like something out a product catalogue – check out the red doors, the smooth granite! Soon Lobo is quite DEAD and hey a Rancho invention is there to record the moment! And Rancho has a most revolutionary thought – all student suicides are MURDERS! The blood of our nation’s youth is on our Professors hands! For this ViruS puts him on the spot and time for another Rancho The Great moment accompanied by a homily - though oy any dimwit can spot what Farhanitrate and Prerajulisation is! Also time for ViruS’ favourite activity – writing letters to parents! Farhan’s are the aspirational sort, Raju’s the poor wanting a better life. And both are very UNHAPPY so the 3 idiots are soon cruising the streets. So of course time for the Boys will be Fucking Boys to crash a wedding. Oh look ViruS has a daughter Pia (Kareena Kapoor). She has spectacles, she is INTELLIGENT! But has a fiancé who is very very devoted to BRANDS! Hot Chick with Douchebag or Closeted with Beard? The Jury is OUT!

Soon ViruS is giving Raju and Farhan a valuable piece of advice – they are have nots while Rancho is a HAVE! So he can do ANY fuckery he wishes! The life of the genteel poor on the other hand, fucked but no fuckery allowed! Soon all pants down for a discussion and Raju in open rebellion against Rancho and rooming with Chatur. But Farhan still smitten, the man does adore a ruined Botticelli angel!

Anyway Boys will be Fucked up Boys! So a plan is hatched up to “rescue” Raju from Chatur’s clutches. This involves a tiny switch in Chatur’s speech for an Important Occasion. Sort of like putting a spider in a classmate’s desk in Std. 5 when the School Inspector comes visiting. Clever! Also Chatur not knowing Hindi – both HILARIOUS and a CRIME – we must all be proficient in the Rashtra Bhasha! The word in question in India’s Most Famous Speech after Kitne Aadmi The is balatkar. The Rape Word – guaranteed laugh riot! Naturally Chatur all stroppy and vows REVENGE! Oooh FISTFIGHT!!! But no, just drunk people promising to be successes 10 years later. An Apparatus for a Sharp Short Shock to the Plot badly needed!

But we commence a Romance Fuckery Plot in which Rancho manages to divest Pia of the Brand Whore Douchebag/Closeted Fiance and get it on with him instead. Does anyone care about this unsexy romance? NO! Can we have a Time Travelling Device back to 50s Sluttery?! NOW! But halt. We must not forget the mission of this film, to establish that Rancho aka Aamir Khan is Great and Can Do No Wrong! Weird hospital track (hey nice Fortis product placement there, brand whoredom much!) involving Raju’s father. Raju also smitten by the ruined Botticelli angel so he CRIES (Sam Taylor-Wood, you are needed!) and HUGS Rancho.

Your viewer is now suffering from infinite tedium. Also never has a movie stuffed itself with SO MANY unsexy men. That’s it! I am wandering off on my very own Sapphic fantasy track! Indulge me till I return!

Exam results out - Quelle Surprise! Raju and Farhan bottom of class, Rancho a topper! Green Monster! Class Photograph! A Bet! If Raju and Farhan get a job, ViruS will shave off his moustache. Not that we care, a moustache less ham is still a ham! Plus the only good ham is Jon Hamm!

TEDIUM REIGNS. Also the back and forth now very confusing. Sapphic fantasies aren’t helping. Neither is Mr. Hamm. Time to keep company with Tall, Dark and Handsome Mr. Pinot Noir methinks and to hell with the chronology.

Back in the present our boys are in Simla (And a man is snapping 5 burqa ladies, wtf what was that about?!) and at Rancho’s mansion. Rancho’s dad is dead, also Rancho is not Rancho. Sooper Plot Twist, machan!

Some absurd fuckery, cuntery, sluttery, drunkery (God I feel SO much better just using those words!) ends in a dare (Boys will be Fucking Boys!). Rancho is trying to get into Pia’s bedroom, also some very strange stuff with a sister and a baby and all is well! OK, PISSING alert, this time its Raju spraying ViruS’ Wall! Time for ViruS’s second favourite thing after writing letters to parents! RUSTICATION! Out sails Raju though ViruS’ window to the strains of opera. Oh Raju, you really shouldn’t have done that!!!! For now we have to sit through more weird hospital scenes and CRYING and HUGGING and Rancho The Great.

Oh good here’s Mr. Shiraz, a super smooth sort from South Australia - only a ménage a trois will get me though this!

There is some bit about Farhan becoming a wildlife photographer and talking to his dad about it and TEARS! And Raju getting a job in spite of failing so more TEARS! ViruS now without a moustache. CRY, CRY, CRY! HUG, HUG, HUG! DROP TROUSERS! Rancho Tussi Great Ho!

Some backstory fuckery in which the fake Rancho is established as a boy prodigy and genius who would put Mozart to shame. Nothing to see here, move along.

Ongoing ViruS Villainy involving an exam paper and its theft. Does anyone care! A thousand times, a resounding NO! ViruS also “murdered” his son apparently. Boo Hoo.

Oh God no, ViruS don’t let us down, we could have so got together and given Rancho the bumps and tied the fucktard up, put stones in his pockets and thrown him into a river for good! But Sad Sad Day - here he is acknowledging Rancho The Great. This involves floods, the birth of a baby and a vacuum pump. All like some ghastly chapter in a management text book with big signposts to instances of ingenuity, teamwork, blah blah blah. All topped with CRYING. Will this child who shall hear the story of Uncle Rancho's Method for Delivering a Baby every single fucking day of his life be an Anti-Rancho? One lives in hope!

Anyhow back in the present, inexplicably Pia is getting married to the Brand Whore. Who is wearing a pink robe and pink slippers. And listening to Opera. Douchebag AND Closeted! Quelle Surprise! Pia does a runner.

Then we are all in Ladakh where we get further proof of Rancho the School Teacher’s ingenuity bringing joy and progress to poor Ladakhians (what the hell is the man inventing anyway, Permanently Keeping Cheese From Yak Milk?). So everyone gets to meet up because of the reappearance of both Pissing and the Apparatus for a Sharp Short Shock to the Scrotum of a Pissing Person and it winds its way to its predictable End. When I wake up I think- If 3 Idiots was male, I would definitely be applying that Apparatus to its Scrotum. PRONTO. Though  an old fashioned short, sharp kick to its backside would do just as well.

__*__

India’s most popular movie it appears is a mash up of 101 Jokes for all occasions, self-help books and a smattering of Edward de Bono. Its like being stuck in a training course for middle management where you are allowed to fondly recall the last time you were properly alive, aka in college, and made to believe that the rainbow of alternate existence in which you are totally going to be CREATIVE and LOVE your WORK is around the corner. It will no doubt be conducted by Rancho The Great.

If you stick to the very end, it will also make you Vote for Rote.

Two Australian Movies

I try and watch as many Australian films as I can so this week I finally caught up with two movies I had wanted to see for a while, Proof and All my Friends are Leaving Brisbane.



Proof came out in the early 90s and stars the always excellent Hugo Weaving as Martin a blind photographer who distrusts everyone and is locked in a dysfunctional relationship with his housekeeper, Celia (Genevieve Picot who reminded me very much of Isabelle Huppert). Martin takes pictures so he can have proof of what is around him. Celia is obsessed with Martin, a fact he makes use of, in turn she takes her pleasure in both coming on to him and tormenting him in subtle ways. When Martin meets Andy (Russell Crowe), he takes to him and they become friends. When Andy starts interpreting Martin’s photographs, Celia is threatened and seduces Andy. Since this is not a French film with Huppert (Ms Huppert’s films do not allow for tender sentiments), her revenge doesn’t quite work and eventually Andy and Martin re-establish their friendship and Martin learns that the world may not always be interpreted truthfully but is at least interpreted faithfully most of the time by the people close to us. Proof established Jocelyn Moorhouse and this movie is so good that it’s a pity that her particular way of film making didn’t quite work in Hollywood. The cast is on pretty top form in this three hander, even Russell Crowe (an actor I have never really taken to). It’s a small perfectly made film and I kid about the French film comparison – it’s for the better that this movie has an undercurrent of warmth.

All my Friends are Leaving Brisbane is a much slighter film that deals with a dilemma familiar to anyone a few years out of graduation – to stay or to leave? Brisbane is a small city and opportunities, both professional and personal, often lie elsewhere. What do you do when your friends up and move and when your own life feels stagnant? There are no surprising answers in the film about two best friends (played by Charlotte Gregg and Matt Zeremes) who have never got to the romance stage and are questioning where their lives are heading but it is not a movie that is looking for surprising answers. It’s disarming in its sweetness and even if its ending is conventional, it doesn’t feel forced. Its Brisbane setting is incidental – I could see a number of parallels with people a few years out of IIT and working in India for e.g., the discussions on whether to stay or leave, the one cussed person who refuses to and the like. On the other hand I lived in Brisbane for awhile and part of the charm of the film for me lay in how acutely it captured the cosiness and boredom of the city.