Things I Like

Right now I am reading The Maias. Its a door stopper of a book and I want to bunk a day's work and curl up and devour it all in one gulp. Sadly I snatch reading time here and there to take it in. Thus far it is a classy soap that loves exclamation marks but that is just the plot, there is so much going on and Eca de Q is having so much fun and at the same time it is a sprawling, leisurely commentary on 19th century Portugal and I am entirely captivated and can't wait to finish it and restart all over again. Also I think I really really need to visit Portugal because whatever little I have seen and read (Mysteries of Lisbon, you are perfect) has been so absorbing and interesting that you have to remind yourself that these people are writing about themselves as the backwater of Europe.

I spend way too much time on tumblr, its like a rabbit hole you fall into and then you reappear and you want to write #IDK #holy fuck #excuse his beauty #obsessive replaying #cuz why not - because those are the tags you see along with other even more incoherent fangirling tags and then you realise that unlike most of tumblr which is VERY YOUNG you are on the wrong side of 40 and well perhaps a lyricist like Johnny Flynn doesn't quite deserve that and on that note here is his song, I am Light.  Only Nick Drake is rotated more often in Chez Anu. Pic Source here. And IDK is I don't know:)

And lastly, three cheers for Caravan which gets top marks not for being a great mag but for actually posting my favourite short story, Ras, in a new translation.  Even Indian cinema couldn't ruin it, not that it didn't try (to be fair it wasn't bad).

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.

In India

I am in India at the moment. For a change, it's been cooler here than in Sydney though the winter dust has settled over the trees making everything rather muted.  Still, the mild end of an Indian winter is quite nice. And I can see the first hints of spring, the odd mango and gulmohur bloom. 

The days when I read my way through a flight are in the past given in-flight entertainment.   The first leg of the journey was taken up by The Social Network which was decent but forgettable though its "revenge on the ex" motif was way too simplistic. Next leg, Tamara Drewe, a reworking of the Hardy novel, "Far from a Madding Crowd".  It didn't have the weight of the Hardy novel but was a clever adaptation and quite fun.  Last leg, appropriately, was Udaan. It was a straightforward story but entirely naturalistic - astonishing really given the way Hindi films are. And the Jamshedpur setting was a bonus.

I had a brief stopover in Perth, possibly the world's most silent airport.  Like many an Australian city, it simply didn't look integrated with the landscape.  Part of this is because of the Australian bush which somehow seems to overwhelm human habitation.  There is a certain familiarity to the bush, the nature of the flora is broadly the same in look around many parts of Australia, but there are very many variations in play. Perth was no exception and I hope to go back and look around a bit. 

Back home, the threads of family are being taken up.  I cam across an old "autograph book" of my uncle's from his schooldays that I had kept as a keepsake and the entries made me smile.  Sunil exhorts him to"Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none". Harish says "Sugar is sugar, Salt is salt, If you forget me, That's your fault!". And Norbert relies on an old favourite, "Down in a Valley, Carved on a Rock, Three Little Words, Forget-me-Not". I have seen these in so many autograph books (I suppose they have mutated into a different form in the facebook age) and they are often a mixture of pious Christian strictures and sentimental Victorian poetry  that seems to have persisted well into the 1980s in India.

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The picture on top is of - I think - strawberry seeds that had just sprouted when I left Sydney.  The shoes  are discards from the op-shop and are excellent for growing young seedlings. Sadly, they may not survive my absence and the intense heat of the summer.

Summertime

 

Its early summer here; the days are warm, the skies are blue and the evenings cool. I set out to photograph the blue jacarandas before their brief glory disappeared but ended up taking lots of photographs given that the gardens up and down the streets are all in bloom. Pictures here.

And here below is Sam Cooke's version of a famous song, Summertime. 

And just for added measure here is the great Paul Robeson's old timey version.

Flower. Memory. Song.

Pictures of flowers are not art unless they are done by Georgia O’Keefe and perceived as sexual metaphor (though the artist herself was slightly cross with these interpretations). Instead their images are everywhere as short hand representations of trite emotions, as easy photography. The Victorians made a brave stab at creating an entire language based on flowers and quaint and courtly as this is, theirs is an age of such florid sentimentality that it has fallen by the wayside. To admit to liking flowers is perhaps now on par with expressing a love of teddy bears and red hearts. But I like them and particularly their careless blooming in spring. Just today for e.g. I saw the sloping end of a railway station ablaze with the gold and red of flowering weeds and it made me happy in an irrational, unpredictable way. So I can’t help photographing them. As I did on a walk awhile back. I particularly loved the way the azaleas looked like snow deposited in front of the house and the last of the rain on the ipomoea. 

Azalea Snow

Pink bauhinia

Ipomoea

Magnolia

But I like the sturdiness and colours of grasses too and if I had to choose I would perhaps live in a house full of grasses inflected with a few flowers. 

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In better times the middle of October would have meant wishes for my uncles whose birthdays lay barely a day apart. The first time one faces any kind of loss, its intensity burns away so much that you are shaken, purified, every detail and date burnt in your memory. Then it happens once too often and you grow resigned, a little tired. You understand that even these emotions are impermanent and everything will be obliterated by time. It becomes easy to present yourself to the world as if unmarked. But somewhere deep inside it still remains incomprehensible and a small kernel of grief ebbs and swells with the days. I feel sorrow for my uncles, for the sudden cruel way in which things ended. Some days I miss them and search for the gaps in their lives, look for clues in old pictures for the young men they were.  And I want then to conjure them up once more and wish them a happy birthday. 

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I have been listening to more English folk, e.g. Barnacled Warship, this week. Like most of Johnny Flynn’s songs it has the strange quality of seeming archaic and modern.  I like his songs well enough but I am strangely taken up by the lyrics, the language in them. It’s been a very long time since I wrote poetry but reading the lyrics jogged some dormant part of my brain.  I haven’t got to the poem stage but a few phrases that could form the basis for a poem flash through my mind once in awhile.  Perhaps a fuller immersion in poetry is needed!

Long Weekend

The Labour day holiday has meant a long weekend and the onset of Daylight Savings, a firm sign that we are now in spring. Even though Sydney's weather hasn't been complying and today has seen cold, wind and rain.

The niece turned 3 recently and of course remains the apple of my eye. She had a small party today and was quite busy with her friends so we didn't get to play our silly games which consist of fake swimming, yelling in rooms to hear echoes and the like, very little can keep children amused. I find myself a little surprised to be entering these games but soon she will be a schoolgirl and rarely home so we all in fact make the most of her pre-school time. Though hearing the words "let's do it again" for the 25th time can strike a faint chill even in the fondest aunt's heart. As part of her gifts she got the sketch below which is by my cousin from a photograph taken when she was 1. The other picture is of a tee I dyed with tea (!) and then embellished with a few lace and bead bits I had. My niece is likely no hippie chick but right now she wears all that is given to her so I think the tee passes muster!

Last week my train reading consisted of The Believer. It had a fascinating account of the Radium Girls case, a landmark case for industrial health and workers compensation. The carelessness with which radioactive material was handled (the girls used it as nail polish), the precautions for scientists which didn't extend to workers, the selling of Undark or iridescent paint as safe, a legal case in which the workers were sought to be discredited by the company, all feel uncomfortably familiar. In spite of the outcome of the case and changes to the way occupational health is viewed, you are left with the feeling that it can recur again. The magazine also had an interesting interview with Robin Nagle, anthropologist with New York city's Department of Sanitation. Her take, every single thing you see is future trash, is a sobering reminder of how ephemeral everything in our life is. And yet Nagle also points out that the successive layers of trash on which cities are built also provide clues to what we were and how we lived. Nagle in fact wants a Museum of Sanitation and has had trouble getting it up though creating trash is a universal human activity.

Last week I also finally finished seeing a 6 part serialisation of Mansfield Park made in the 80s. Given the vast number of recent slicker Austen productions, it is a little hard to see past the stage like settings, the ordinary acting, the limited budget. And yet once you get past that, its leisurely literalness seemed far truer to the book than any recent adaptation. Mansfield Park isn't a very popular book and I often felt it was because it was boring, in fact it has more troubling overtones than the rest of Austen's work and had Austen not chosen an overtly moral tone is perhaps more interesting than the other books she wrote.

And on the subject of trash, its been a while since I bought anything new apart from office wear. This is because my local charity shop has an immense amount of vintage stuff at throwaway prices. The dress I recently bought is pictured below, its kind of Mad Men meets Madras plaid, I am planning to wear it for one of the Christmas parties that will be soon upon us.

And lastly a happy song for the weekend. I have been listening to this particular song from Noah and the Whale way too much recently (does this confirm my liking for twee folk/pop?!). Its cheery and young but also slightly wistful, and none of this is lessened by the fact that the guy and the girl broke up before reaching the 5 year mark.

A book, A movie, the usual

It's been quite busy of late and though I have bits and pieces of things I want to write about, I don't have the time or energy to bash out the words on my computer.  Friday evening inertia and the all pervasive cold has made any thought impossible but I will do my best :-)

The daily train commute has been occupied by a reading of Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Buru Quartet. It is a sweeping account of the beginnings of Indonesian nationalism and I wish I had the time to read it at one sitting as one may have done over a summer holiday.  The fact that it was orally narrated and then written much after the events took place gives it a sense of distance and perspective. I hope to blog on it at a later date.

My patience with reading doesn't extend much to films.  These days even a 90 minute film feels inordinately long, no doubt exacerbated by the grazing on the Internet every few minutes that we all succumb to these days (Laura Miller wrote in Salon that she in fact barely watches a film before jumping on to imdb to check the details on the film and then continuing the back and forth, on reading that I had a wry smile of recognition).  I have been trying to watch a film every weekend, mainly because I have a ginormous amount of bought and unviewed DVDs threatening to overwhelm my place.  So I watched Passion Fish - all 2+ hours of it - uninterrupted.  Given the length, it is meandering but I muchly enjoyed it. As a film on female friendship, it is way above the likes of Thelma and Louise or the traditional tearjerker like Beaches.  The lead actress is very good and so is Alfre Woodard. Bonus, Alfre Woodard is astonishingly beautiful-I can't think of anyone I found this attractive in a long time. And there is a youngish David Strathairn, assuredly hotter than the bog standard leading man! And it has a lovely Cajun/Zydeco soundtrack.  

Half the year has passed by in what seems to be unseemly haste.  After a long spell of summer, it's been really cold here. Normally I enjoy the Sydney winter but this time around I am quite tempted to pack the Buru Quartet and take myself to a Bali beach!

Weekend Mash Up

For one reason or the other I haven't been reading much or watching any movies.  Then over the long weekend I caught up with a few movies and books.

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First up, Kaagaz ke Phool. I must have seen the songs of this movie any number of times but hadn't seen the movie itself.  Given that it is generally touted as a classic, I bought the DVD on a visit to India and finally got around to seeing it.   It turned out to be movie that had a few things to say but said it all so badly that you had to wonder if this really is the best of Hindi cinema.  Its tale of genius/creativity crushed by the world at large was well meant but given that every tired trope and stereotype from the adoring ingenue to an insufferable wife (I must note that many Guru Dutt movies are laced with a certain kind of misogyny) are present in the movie, it makes for tortuous viewing.  The film is at its best when immersed in the workaday life of films and it goes against the grain of popular cinema in being relentlessly pessimistic about the chances of sustaining both creativity and love in this world.  The people who Dutt casts are also regulars  (including of course Murthy, Dutt's photographer) so there's something of the sweetness of the man himself that comes through. But it's hardly up there with an early Ray or Ghatak or even Tamil movies like Parashakti and Andha Naal. If anything it illustrates the perils of straddling the conventions of both art and commercial cinema.  And like many an Indian film it harbours the contradiction of an often laboured, naive and embarrassing narrative punctuated by sublime songs.  In the songs, the films seem to find exactly what is to be said - Waqt ne Kiya for e.g is pure art even on repeated viewing - pity about the rest of the film.  And sadly, Johnny Walker, so delightful in all his songs, is otherwise completely insufferable. 

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Talking of songs, the somewhat cheesy remix of Kitni Akeli has been on high rotation :-)

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I was unable to read more than a few pages of How we are Hungry. The general reviews of McSweeneys and The Believer seemed to suggest tweeness.  So I was predisposed to give Away We Go, which is scripted by Dave Eggers and his wife, a skip.  I did however watch it and was unexpectedly charmed.  Some of the criticism regarding its smugness is true.  Still, this tale of a couple expecting a child who travel everywhere only to return to a sense of home is sweet.  It's central theme really is that each couple works out in their own way what they want their family to be.  This is admittedly compromised by the farcical nature of some of the families the couple meets on their journey (the redneck mom, the nutty leftist etc. etc.) and perhaps lead to the charge of smugness.  But on the whole this is such a gentle, sweetly tart movie that I quite liked it.  And on a reading, The Believer was not bad either.

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Also got around to reading a long held copy of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia.  It is many years since I read a play and this one was brilliant.  It is witty, beautifully mixes science (thermodynamic, chaos, fractals) and art and moves easily through the centuries.  Stoppard wears his erudition lightly and I think every bit of praise that Arcadia has garnered is more than well deserved. 

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The ABC had a decent, detailed documentary on Walt Whitman which stirred memories of a long ago reading of Leaves of Grass. Which I must read again.  Here's Whitman on animals:

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.

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The doco of course made reference to Whitman's homosexuality. Which reminded me of a recent visit to the airport and the tender kisses and farewells exchanged between an Indian boy and his Chinese boyfriend. Sydney is by and large tolerant and this has an effect - I have an Indian friend here who quickly progressed from being homophobic to acceptance. The ordinary, matter of fact nature of the exchange is a measure of how much things have changed and how much they will continue to change.