Pseudo random scribblings

Better movies of 2006

2007-01-06T02:44:00.000+05:30

As popular bloggers like Balaji make year end lists and summaries, I too would attempt something similar, presuming some popularity for my blog. Of course since I have seen only a handful of movies, I would restrict myself to writing about what I felt to be two of the better movies in 2006. Of course this can be considered to be an excuse for catching up on reviews that I wanted to do quite some time back.

Veyil – good but not still there

This is yet another realistic movie from Shankar’s production. Coming after “Kadhal” it didn’t satisfy the high expectations but was still quite good. After these reviews by Balaji and B.Rangan, I don’t want to repeat much of the same thing and hence would touch upon whatever I felt strongly in this.

Being a movie where the protagonist is a theatre projector operator, the first half of the movie with its depiction of romance between the lead pair was one of the best I had seen in some time. Movies are an integral part of Pasupathy’s life and he growing up is shown through the movies of those periods. The romance is also tightly linked with movies, starting and ending due to it. It was excellent in the way director chose popular movie songs as a background for some romantic moments. In fact there were so many references to movies that I thought the film crew must have spent considerable effort to find them and fit them into a timeline!

The theme itself – how society treats failed people – was different and it could have been developed much better. The characters were very realistic and it was interesting to see how even with in the same family different people react in different ways to Pasupathy’s return home. The title “Veyil” is justified not only because hot sun is what causes the first twist in Pasupathy’s life, but also because many characters in the movie seem so hardened like any thing exposed to hot sun. Some of the songs, especially those in the first half were really good.

Despite this the movie doesn’t feel great. One of the main reasons could be that over the past few years there have been excellent realistic movies like “Thavamai thavamirundhu”, “Kadhal”, “Autograph” and “Azhagi” and coming after all these movies “Veyil” seems to be a bit too inspired by all these. Though the plot is quite different, many of the scenes seem to create a feeling of ‘déjà vu’ for people who had seen these movies. The other main reason is that the second half is way too melodramatic. We are supposed to empathize with Pasupathy’s character, but I could hardly do that. This should have had a treatment like “Azhagi” in the second half – where the audience would feel the tragedy without any melodrama. Also, there seemed to be one too many ‘folk songs’ inserted into the film and these don’t help in the sagging second half either.

In the end what could have been a great movie ends up being just good. As an aside, it is interesting to see that “Veyil” has no literal English translation. Literally it is only an extension of ‘sunny’, but has the directly opposite connotation. If ever there is a proof required for how languages reflect the life and culture of where they developed, this would be that.

Pudhupettai – Daring and different

As above there are excellent reviews here and here. This would again be a tertiary look at the movie.

This movie is extremely commendable for at least two reasons. First, probably for the first time I see so much of dark humor used in the movie. Right from the beginning, where Danush’s along with his accomplices confide about their troubled childhoods and then when his senior accomplice rates him for his first kill, till the end the movie is laced with an incredible amount of dark humor. Despite the strong part humor plays in Tamil movies, dark humor is of course rare. Probably, this was just a bit too much for many people as I think dark humor doesn’t gel that well with our instinctual moralities – at least until we get used to it. At least that is what I initially felt when I read novels like “Autumn of the patriarch” which had humor in the bleakest of the situations.

Second, I really like the movie for being brutally cynical about our political system and its nexus with criminals. Probably this might more be because I am myself more cynical these days. But still it is refreshing to see one movie exposing criminal – politician nexus and ending without that often farcical ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ climax. Some of my friends where feeling that this was far too cynical and the situation can’t be so bad. I too thought so, but then I remembered that I am from a state where a chief minister was voted back to power despite the cases against the person being so strong that the corruption which took place was open secret. Of course I don’t blame the voters – they had little choice. Despite all this the state is known to be one of the better governed in this country – so I can only imagine the political situation in other worse off states.

Having said this, the movie had quite a few flaws. For one, even I felt that dark humor was overused when in the climax, the villain and the hero (who is of course as bad as the villain) who is out to kill him, have a chat, share food and hero consults him on how to kill him painlessly! Also Sonia Agarwal’s character was left loosely hanging. I did read something in some reviews about her having a crucial scene in the second half, but think it was trimmed off by the time I watched the movie. The movie was very stylishly shot, with various techniques like mood colors and even split screen shots. However I felt this was another thing which reduced the impact of the movie. First, in a movie with so many abrupt twists this confused me a little by diverting my attention. Second, I felt that the seriousness of the movie was undermined by these. The movie looked more stylish than raw and disturbing. I still remember that in “Pithamagan”, the camera perfectly suited the dark and serious mood of the movie. Probably this cinematography should have been less stylish and more ‘raw’.

Anyways with all its flaws, this was one of the honest looks at politician – criminal nexus and it was indeed sad (though not surprising) that it was a commercial flop.

“Pattiyal” would have replaced “Veyil” in this list, except for the fact that I like movies with good theme more than stylish movies. And I didn’t like “Imsai arasan…” that much, probably because I saw it in a bad quality VCD. Of course, “Vettayadu vilayadu” was a pretty ordinary movie except for its lead pair. Overall 2006 seems to be a pretty bad year for Tamil cinema (at least in terms of quality of movies). Hoping for a better 2007.

Back with a difference!!

2006-11-13T01:30:00.000+05:30

Yet again I have taken a long break and I don’t want to bore anyone by going into reasons for that (assuming I have some). Over the course of these months there have been quite a few posts which I wanted to write, but didn’t. Hence, it’s highly unlikely that I should come out of the break by writing a post not quite characteristic of my blog. It is no less unlikely that this is about a non-fiction book which was first book I completed in several months (after leaving 4 fiction books incomplete!). But unlikely things do happen and hence I am here with this post (or the above things are not so unlikely and I am writing this to only give a snazzy feel to my comeback post!).

Of late I have been fascinated by history and politics – both at national and international level. My interest in politics in not in everyday politics but rather in the conflicting ideologies and their approval or rejection by the society as such. All this lead me to wonder about human society as such and also about philosophy – since philosophy is basically about trying explain human life. I felt I needed a basic primer on this loosely bound array of subjects and luckily I came across this book a couple of months back. I wouldn’t really try to review this book as I don’t think I am competent enough (even by my standards). Instead I would try to summarize the content and what I had learned from that.

The book starts off by presenting the opposing theories of socialism (Marxism) and capitalism (functionalism). As the author observes both the theories start as grand theories which can explain everything in society – Marxism by focusing on class inequality and extraction of surplus value from labor and functionalism by theorizing a functional (utilitarian) value for any social trend, even devious ones. This same grandiosity becomes their flaw as instead of observing society and explaining it, they tend to fit the society to their explanations. Then the book moves into more pure sociological theories like action theory which try to observe specific scenarios and then propose theories suited for them. This wasn’t of much interest to me as except for some interesting scenarios this was like sociology for its own sake. The book later takes up a revised Marxism where the theory is extended to the current class struggle scenario – where a class is not related only by profession, but also by various other indicators like social status, religion, race and so on. This seemed to be an interesting one but there seemed to no strong conclusions like in original Marxism (which was probably why it was revised!)

Towards the end the author surveys mostly disparate elements in social theory like Critical theory, feminism, linguistic connections etc. I skipped most of the chapters in this except for critical theory which I found to be the most interesting. Unlike other theories ‘critical theory’ is not strictly a theory since it doesn’t try to explain any thing in society – the only thing it does is to criticize other known social theories. This seems to be crazy at first, but it does make some sense. When people support some specific theory they usually tend to become biased towards that and not be able to criticize it too much. Hence it is important for something like critical theory to exist, since they are the people who can give the most brutal criticism. This when addressed properly would only lead to a better theory. Apparently for this reason most of the critical theorists are not even attached to any universities. Of course the pitfall here is that they may begin to criticize just for the sake of it. More interestingly the critic of critical theory against capitalism was quite similar to what I have (based on, of course, Brave new world).

Apart from these specific learning it was interesting to get a feel of sociology as such. I knew it was not a science, but I didn’t expect it to be as far away from science as I found it to be. The author’s presentation itself leads to this as he presented the pros and cons of each theory before moving to the next. Therefore, at least by citing other people the author seemed to repeatedly contradicting himself. Of course I did like this format as I like to see opposing views. But what was more surprising was the skepticism expressed by several sociologists as to whether even core theoretical sociology can be treated like science.

The other interesting aspect was that to see the amount of contribution done by Marxism to social theory. Of course, it may not have contributed more than functionalism, but it is definitely a surprise to see the impact it has on other theories especially after reading some of our Libertarian bloggers who seem to bash Marxism as if it was the most evil thing on earth. Of course to counter them I also need to know a fair bit of economics, so at least until I find a good primer on economics I would restrict my blog to movies and book reviews!

One disappointing (or rather expected) thing about the book was that it was entirely about western sociology (and philosophy). In the later parts, some theories like postmodernism seem to be like Hindu philosophies, but there was no elaboration on this. Probably I need to read something on Hindu philosophy to get a completely different perspective! Anyway this was one of the most informative books I had read, though it left me with as many questions as answers (and probably this was why it was informative!).

Revisiting some biographical movies

2006-05-08T02:21:00.000+05:30

Biographical films are quite rare in Tamil. However in the last 10 years or so, we have been fortunate to get three such excellent movies. Although none of them were commercial successes, they are certainly worth watching. I’ll briefly review all the three movies, from the most realistic to the most stylistic. Also added on late as a fourth movie is a classic biographical movie.

Iruvar (The Duo):

This movie is based on the life of the real-life duo of M.Karunanidhi and M.G.Ramachandran (MGR). It shows the ascent of DMK, MK capturing power, the split in the friendship of MK and MGR, MGR forming ADMK and capturing power and finally MGR’s death. This is directed by Mani Ratnam and I believe this is one of his best movies. First, it takes a lot of guts to take a movie like this, when the protagonist’s legacy is still richly alive (and in MK’s case he is still in active politics). Though he has cleverly renamed all the characters, it is very clear as to whose life story is being depicted.

Though I was aware of the general events in these two people’s lives, this movie presented so many other details and as I confirmed with my parents most of these details were true. Most of these were kind of open secrets that everybody in my previous generation would know (for instance like how MGR marries Janaki). However some of the other sequences seem to either more closely kept secrets or just imagination – like how MGR’s first wife and Jayalalitha appear alike in the movie (are both played by Aishwarya Rai). But, at least in one case the director has clearly changed the real sequence in the movie (Anna never becomes CM in the movie). This is such a large gap that I consider this only to be a conscious attempt to disclaim this story as a true story. Also conspicuous is that he leaves the story of Jayalalitha totally hanging in the movie – this again might have been due to practical compulsions. Also the director has shown MGR’s reason for the split with MK as ambivalent.

This movie has an excellent cast – Prakashraj as MK, Mohanlal as MGR and Aishwarya Rai as Jayalalitha (her first movie!). Revathi, Tabu and Gowthami are the other female leads and everyone seems to have done their job very well. Stylistically this movie is top class. As it deals with the story of a scriptwriter and actor capturing power, it is filled with poetry and rhetorical flourishes – probably one of the reason why the film flopped in the box-office – which give a special feel to the movie. Though the poetry did seem to go overboard sometime, I did enjoy it mostly, like for instance in a romantic scene between MK and his second wife (played by Tabu).Among other things, the movie does an excellent job in showing how MGR influenced the public through his film songs and in fact two songs are created in the same style! “Kannai katti kollathe” is especially note worthy as it feels like just seeing a typical MGR song!

One thing which can be considered a flaw is that the movie romanticizes the life-story of these two people too much and in the process almost hides their mistakes. There was one scene in the movie, where MGR is questioned by his minister that he like MK is also not controlling corruption and MGR giving a weak reply to it, but this is only one scene which can easily be missed. Also there were too many songs featuring Aishwarya Rai and at least one of them was just an insertion in lieu of an item number. In essence Mani Ratnam might have just taken too many artistic liberties, but still this movie does record the story of two interesting individuals whose lives intersect at crucial points and with it what is till now the most important part of modern Tamil Nadu’s political history.

Bharathi:

This is based on life story of Subramanya Bharathi, who is considered to be the greatest modern Tamil poet, despite having died at a young age of 39. Bharathi was a revolutionary in certain ways and he radically opposed many practices prevalent then (early 20^th century) like caste discrimination, discrimination against women. As a result he was considered an unfit in his own traditional Brahmin community. Also he supported the freedom movement and his songs were instrumental in spreading the freedom movement in Tamil Nadu. Because of this, he had to spend a long time in exile in French governed Pondicherry. Despite all this what really distinguishes Bharathi’s poetry is that they have this spark of courage or even seething anger, in whatever he writes. Due to his genius and anger against society Bharathi was always an interesting personality and this is very well captured by the movie, giving it a very stylistic feel. The character of Bharathi is excellently played by Shayaji Shinde and Devayani plays his wife in a wonderfully underplayed role. All the songs (composed by Illayaraja) are good and very apt to the situations.

The movie starts with the child hood of Bharathi and how he was recognized very early. In this part the sequence leading to the “mayil pole” is very intriguing and I doubt whether it really happened in Bharathi’s life. The movie shows Bharathi in all his moods, as a revolutionary when he performs thread ceremony and puja for Dalit children, as a man nearly mad with ideas when he commands the Nawab to come and meet him and provide money for publishing his collected works, as a dejected father when he is intimated of his daughter’s marriage only on that day and a dejected man when he discovers that after all these years of reforming society he hasn’t been able to reform his own wife. In fact it also hints at widely believed notion that Bharathi consumed ganja for sometime. Especially impressive was the scene where Bharathi goes to meet Gandhi – he barges in when there is some discussion going on and requests Gandhi to head a meeting where he would sing his poetry. When Gandhi refuses due to lack of time and asks him to shift the meeting, he plainly refuses and leaves after saying that he is pleased with this meeting and that he blesses Gandhi’s freedom movement. This really summarizes Bharathi as he was, as a true unconquered and unhindered genius.

All the songs, many of them written by Bharathi himself are very good (music composed by Ilayaraja) and suit the movie. The movie ends with the funeral of Bharathi, which shows the lack of recognition for this poet, as it is attended by only seven people. Bharathi’s own song, “Nallathor veenai seithey” beautifully rendered in the background is most apt –

“Nallathor veenai seithey athai nalam keda puzhuthiyil erivathundo

Solladi Sivasakthi ennai chuddar migum arivudan padaithuvitai…”

“Do you make a good Veena and throw it in the dust,

Tell me Sivasakthi, you have created me with a sparkling intellect…”

(See here for the full translation, also other poems translated in the same site)

Kamraj:

As the name suggests, this is a biographical film on Kamaraj, who was a popular CM in Tamilnadu and considered to be the ‘kingmaker’ nationally. One thing we can notice in the movie is that it is almost documentary style. While this does make us believe that all the incidents shown are true (which I think most of them are), it also becomes a little boring. Nevertheless, it does a good job in showing the principled life of Kamraj and how he virtually shames the current politicians (or perhaps all the politicians who came after him). In fact the dialogues in many places seem to be chosen for this effect as they virtually lash out at the various ills like corruption which plague today’s politicians. The scenes which showed how Kamraj got the idea for the now widely popular mid-day meal scheme for school children and then implemented it were particularly good. In fact this scheme started in Tamil Nadu and was so successful that it has been extended to most other states in India.

Despite being in a documentary style, the movie doesn’t aim to avoid all controversies. Towards the end, it clearly shows that Kamraj is highly disappointed with Indira Gandhi. In fact before going to sleep for the last time, he hears the news that she has imposed emergency and is furious at this and regrets that he had made a wrong decision by selecting her as PM. Also Kamraj is shown strongly criticizing the DMK, for populist policies like rice at Rs.2/Kg. (or some such related thing) and also gaining sympathy on an unrelated injury to MGR during film shooting.

Some of the incidents shown which seemed very relevant to the current political scenario are –

After Kamraj becomes CM, his house in his hometown immediately gets water connection. When Kamraj sees on going home, he immediately orders the removal of the water connection as he has not paid for it and as CM he should be a model for not abusing power.
A couple of cars and a police jeep escort Kamraj on a tour outside. He asks as to what all this is for and after being told that it is for security, he asks – “When I am in my country, among my own people why do I need any security?”
Kamraj usually helps some poor people who come to his residence for help, with his own money. However, when the wife of a person arrested for selling illicit liquor comes, he blankly refuses saying that her husband had done a serious anti-social act.

I felt many other dialogues were aimed directly against current political ills, but I don’t remember many of them now. In fact, if our current politicians were made to watch this, they would feel remorse for at least some time. Dissapointingly, whereas the above two films were at least well received by critics, this didn't seem gather much attention among critics or people - probably because it was quite a low budget venture?

One main thing the movie missed was to show how exactly Kamraj-led Congress lost to DMK in 1967 elections. It did offer some reasons like the populist policies of DMK, but I think the main reason is that Kamraj did not strategically tackle the anti-Hindi (or rather anti Hindi imposition) protests at that time. The movie doesn’t even make any mention of anti-Hindi protests (at least I don’t remember it), so in a way it seems to be blind to Kamraj’s flaws. Nevertheless, an excellent watch which shows how politicians ought to function.

Veerapandiya Kattabomman:

Now, these is a late addition as I was planning to review only the above 3 movies. However, I recently watched this movie as part of the Raj TV’s series of movies called “Tamil Cinema 75”^* – to celebrate 75 years of Tamil cinema. This too is a biographical movie, so decided to include this here.

This movie is one of the classics in Tamil cinema and in particular one of Sivaji’s dialogues is so well quoted that every person who has lived in Tamil Nadu would know that, if not the movie. This shows the life of Veerapandiya Kattabomman who ruled the areas around Panchalankurichi (in south TN). He was one of the earliest people^** who resisted British rule bravely and gave up his life fighting for it. I have not been able to see how much of the movie’s story is real because, when I searched Wikipedia I found two articles, this and this, while the first one gave only very basic info about Kattabomman, the other gave very detailed info but it was exactly the same as that in the movie!

The movie is a long one running for more than 3 hrs and as I saw it on TV, it prolonged to nearly 4 hrs! I had missed the early portions of the movie, but true to its classic status it managed to keep me interested for the rest of the time. The movie proceeds at a leisurely pace, but is never boring. It has a lot of songs, but again they were also not boring since many songs helped in the narration itself. Even at the worst, I didn’t feel that any song was ‘inserted’ as I feel in watching many masala movies now. And surprisingly, except in portions towards the climax, the movie was never really melodramatic and didn’t involve too many verbose dialogues either. Of course I listened to the dialogue where Kattabomman refuses to pay taxes to the British officer for the umpteenth time, and yes the verbosity does seem justified!

Sivaji Ganesan, needless to say, gives a great performance as he brings forth the good heartedness and patriotic fervor of the character. The other lead actors like Gemini Ganesan, Padmini have also done well. In short, this justifies itself as a classic for a good patriotic theme and a good, if not great execution of it.

* - I have a big grouse against this effort by Raj TV. Though good intentioned, it doesn’t seem to be executed well. After some good movie in the start, it seems to be airing some very ordinary movies and suddenly some day we again see a good movie playing. Worse, they don’t advertise the movies even one week in advance and their website doesn’t even have info on what movie is playing today!

** - Though Sepoy mutiny of 1857 is popularly considered to be the first revolt against British, it is not. There were revolts by some chieftains in Tamil Nadu like Puli Thevar and Kattabomman, followed by a much a bigger revolt called the Polygar war.

Musings on Tamil serials

2006-04-09T01:56:00.000+05:30

I had long wanted to make a post on some of the Tamil T.V serials but haven’t done so since I knew the post would be quite rambling. However in order to increase the dismal frequency at which I am updating my blog I have decided to include impulsive or rambling entries and this would be the first of such.

Tamil serials have often been the object of ridicule for mainly being recycled sob stories and most of them deserve that treatment. However a few of them are good, so let me highlight them first. I would reserve the brick bats for later. The serial which first prompted me to write this is “Devathai” being aired in Raj TV. The story is about a woman who dies in what seems to be a domestic accident coming as a ghost and seeing her family (husband and in-laws) and learning about the true faces of the family members. Though it is still not told whether the death itself was a murder, everyone in the family except perhaps her husband is shown to be suspicious in some way. At least in the first few months, the serial was interesting because of the mystery and the different way in which the story was handled. As a relief there is no crying, except when actually needed. Now it seems to have slowed down, thanks to a comedy segment which is not so funny and a somewhat contrived story which becomes as confusing as it is mysterious. Still it is worth a watch when compared to the other serials.

The other one which I was quite impressed with was “Chitamabara ragasiyam” aired on Sun T.V. This comes in, what I think is the, traditional mystery serial slot in Sun T.V – Wednesdays night. This slot once had the classic mystery serials like “Marma desam – Vidhathu Karuppu”, which looking back now was way better than current serials, not only because it was really thrilling but also in the way its ending tied all the loose threads in a logical way, which is really rare in Tamil serials. That serial was the first time in which I encountered the term, “Multiple personality disorder” and it did seem to explain it in very simple terms. Now coming back to “Chitambara…” though not as logical as “Marma desam”, it is quite thrilling. However thanks to a complex storyline and my infrequent viewing of the serial, it appears quite confusing to me. The story is about a series of murders and how they might be linked to an effort to find cure to AIDS. The base concept which is interesting like a conspiracy theory is based on “Nadi joditham” – where a person’s future can be predicted by inscriptions on certain palm leaves – which is popularly done in Vaitheeswaran temple near Chidamabaram, TN. According to the story there is a manuscript which lists in the form of a song, twelve people in whose Nadi joditham descriptions lies the cure for AIDS. These twelve people (or rather people with the same names) are killed and their thumb print is taken. This theme and also some of the characters like the half-mad scientist woman or some “chittars” provide ample scope to tell some confusing philosophical mumbo-jumbo and this is used to the full extent by the serial. Some of the things are based only on wordplay and are obviously wrong, but at least some thing like this is a refreshing change from the all the serials I’ll list after this. For example the last one was, “A doctor, an astrologer and a psychiatrist(?) should always see how a person dies,…,becomes mad(?)” I am at least sure of the first set, which would have been just puzzling to me had I not seen and read some parts in a book called “How we die” written by a practicing doctor.

Now for the ones which I don’t like or like them just enough not to walk out of a room where they are being played. Radhika’s serials have been steadily decreasing in quality and her current serial “Selvi” is ample proof for that. I started watching “Chithi” only mid-way, but it seemed quite good except of course for the ending which was an anti-climax. Her next serial, “Annamalai” started with a bang by talking about such things like re-birth, but it soon lost its way and of course the climax was as bad as it could be. “Selvi” was not impressive even in its start and soon I figured out that it was really going no where and worse getting quite intolerable. It must be really bad since I was able to convince my parents to stop watching it, which we rarely do for a serial. Still we watch it occasionally like once in a week (which by the way, is enough to keep track of a mega-serial without anybody’s help) and it doesn’t show any signs of improving. Then there are serials like “Kolangal” which would be tolerable if not for the amount of crying in it. And of course I am really irritated with all these serials showing their protagonist as perfect too-good people who sacrifice any thing for any one. I am not an Ayn Rand follower fundamentally against sacrifice, but seeing people sacrifice so many things reduces the value of a sacrifice. The other serials which I happen to watch, at least occasionally, “Anandham” and “Mughartham” are quite average and are at least watchable. Of course I guess there are some even worser serials running in the day time, like “Sorgam” which has been running since god knows when (at least since last 4 years?).

The one common, disgusting thing I find all Tamil serials (or rather serials on Sun TV?) is that they all have vendetta as a common theme. And worse they show it mostly among family members – like a daughter-in-law avenging her father’s death by taking revenge on her in-laws (“Anandham”). I feel that watching a lot of such serials daily really creates some negative feelings in our mind, which is why I have really been discouraging my mother from watching these serials. Here’s where I think we should appreciate serials like “Metti Oli”. Though otherwise quite average, it didn’t have vendetta or any other negative feeling as a main theme and instead focused on normal failings of people. I was a bit disappointed that its director, Thirumurugan, wasn’t directing any new serial but it is good to know he is coming to cinema. Talking of directors, I feel a good director and bound script is the second thing which all these serials lack. Stories develop in all directions for sometime and as the number of characters become too much, some are just forgotten for months together, only for them to be reintroduced later whenever the director has to wriggle out of some sudden twist which he has been forced to introduce. To add to all this Sun TV seems to have this irritating policy of allowing serials to continue for any length of time as long as their TRP ratings are high, but wrapping them up as soon as their ratings dip. I believe this has led to the sudden forced endings of many Tamil serials. I don’t have much idea about serials in other channels, though I feel they should be better then Sun TV’s. However, I guess a lot of people like us are stuck with Sun TV serials, simply because you have would mostly missed the starting part of the other serials. This reason may be one of the main reason why Sun TV still seems to have a strangle hold of serials viewership.

A clarion call!

2006-01-26T02:07:00.000+05:30

Thavamai Thavamirundhu - Review
I watched “Thavamai Thavamirundhu” quite some time back and wanted to write a review ever since. Finally got the time and inclination now. Coming from Cheran, after his critically acclaimed and commercially successful “Autograph” this film carried huge expectations and I should say it has satisfied them. After a couple of disappointing movie outings, this one was a really refreshing one to watch.

Cheran takes a similar milieu to his “Autograph”, but the treatment here is so refreshingly different that it makes me think that for such directors there would be no dearth of stories. The movie’s main theme is the travails a father undergoes to bring up his sons and how he is or ought to be treated in his old age. Rajkiran (as Muthiah) and Saranya (as Sarada) are the parents and they toil hard to bring up their sons. The elder son Senthil (as Ramanathan) changes after his marriage and doesn’t treat his parents well, though the younger son Cheran (as Ramalingam) learns just in time. The message here is much stronger than in “Autograph”. Yet Cheran manages not to become didactic and make the message seem very reasonable – quite an achievement by itself (this reminds me of “Vedham Pudhidhu”, of why a strong message need not be didactic). More on this later - the movie is also very good in other techniques, which I would try to list down,

Realism: The movie is always so realistic which makes this message even more believable. In fact, I should say that this movie has taken realism in Tamil movies (at least in mainstream ones) to a new level. (Though I am not giving a plot summary (one can be found here), there a few SPOILERS ahead. Of course this movie is hardly a suspense thriller, so this may not matter much!). As a striking example of the realism, I would like to point out one particular scene – when Ramalingam leaves the house to elope with his lover (on another pretext). In the scene, his mother is woken up by his father to wish him farewell and her voice started off by being really sleepy and feeble – in fact it was just audible! The cinematography is also excellent as it dwells on the various shades of grey in indoors.

Narration style: Cheran follows the same style as in “Autograph”, which is to go back to flash backs repeatedly from the present. Also, in the end he continues with the present for sometime, to result in a rather strong climax. Of course as would be well known by now, he has shot the flashback in color and present in black & white (as in “Hey Ram”). But what was much more interesting for me was the extent to which he focuses on various incidents. Incidents which conventional films would focus on like a normal marriage (of that of Ramanathan) are never shown and we are told of it only in later scenes (in interesting ways). This style allows Cheran to focus on the remaining scenes, allowing them to progress slowly to have the intended effect. Many complain that the film is over 3 hrs long, but I think the length is justified as it allows us to appreciate the feelings and settings. Of course, some scenes are very touching and I nearly cried in a couple of them!

Cast & Acting: There can be no two opinions in this. Almost everyone, especially the four main characters of the film have given a very good performance. Rajkiran as the father is the ‘hero’ of the movie and he blends into the movie so much that I couldn’t say he was acting! Especially his voice was so suitable (tender and caring during many scenes), that it alone was sufficient to convey all the emotions! Almost the same for the mother role played by Saranya. Cheran and Padmapriya could’ve given better performance, but it doesn’t seem to be lacking in any particular way. As much as I would have scoffed at this idea before seeing the movie, Rajkiran would definitely be in the running for the National award for the best actor.

Songs: Songs are exactly the way I like them to be in a movie – they blend with the movie and sometimes move the story ahead. “Ore Oru oorukulle” was a good song to picturise an excursion. “Oru muraithaan” was a touching song and I guess the song was split into portions with scenes in between them (something which I first observed in “Autograph”). The theme music which shows the parents having a good time at their son’s house is very apt for it and it was then I noticed that it had a very euphoric tone. Some segments like this and “Oru Muraithaan” song were like pure poetry on screen. That some little known composers like Sabesh-Murali can give such a fare reminds me the importance of context for songs.

The theme and its stress: Cheran uses the often used technique of using a counter example (Ramanathan) and example (Ramalingam) to convey his message of how parents should be treated in their sunset years. The technique is very effective, since Cheran doesn’t specially villainize Ramanathan’s and his wife’s characters. Their motives are shown to be quite natural, but misguided ones and he also shows their effects. For instance, he shows how Ramanathan’s wife is almost jealous at seeing the care given by Muthaiah & Sarada to Ramalingam’s children and in effect shows the futility and difficulty of trying to live in a nuclear family. The one flaw in characterization may be that the father – Muthaiah is shown to be a perfect person. But I guess the theme wants to stress that even such people are not automatically treated well by their children. Also, all of Muthaiah’s decisions are quite liberal (logical) and balanced and may be this also indicates to the parents that they should change with the world.

However I was having a feeling that Cheran was stressing more than love for parents in this movie and it was confirmed in the final scene when Ramalingam agrees to give the house to his brother, because, he was “his best relation”. Cheran in effect stresses on the importance of relations and the joy got from them, in this fast changing world where nuclear, single child families are the order of the day. In this world, when the necessity of relations and the importance given to it in our culture are being questioned, he shows how important they are – for instance to provide support during distress (like when Ramalingam has his first child). In effect it is a clarion call to restore the faith in our culture.

That such a strong and relevant message can be given convincingly and engrossingly within the mainstream cinema format is a big achievement. That’s why even when I see that all reviews are praising the movie, I feel the movie deserves this and even more!

A shocking cowardly act !

2005-12-30T01:54:00.000+05:30

Shocked at this! Terrorism is always a cowardly act, but when they attack an educational institute and that too a conference venue, the cowardice becomes too much!

King Kong - Why this?

2005-12-27T01:28:00.000+05:30

So I am back after a long break. Without going into any silly excuses, the break has been bigger than what I intended it to be. Though not many people seem to be missing my blog, I certainly missed my blog.

I saw King Kong recently and now have the urge to review it. Not because it was very good, but because my opinion seems to be so much different from the opinions I find elsewhere. I was quite easily getting bored in what is billed as a top commercial film for 2005. Actually I don’t expect much logic from a commercial (‘masala’) film. I only expect it to proceed in such a way (for example, move at a fast pace) so that we don’t notice the logical flaws, at least till the end of the movie. In my recent viewings, movies like Anniyan and Gilli fitted this quite well.

But King Kong was neither an absorbing masala movie, neither did it have an interesting story line. Of course, one thing I have to clarify is that I was never able to accept a gorilla expressing so much affection for a human (in such a short time) and even worse, the human reciprocating it! May if some one is able to accept it the movie would be more viewable. Nevertheless, I don’t find any excuse for showing a whole zoo of crazy creatures in the forest scenes in Skull island. Just because you have the power of computer graphics doesn’t mean that you have to overuse it like this! As every possible creature which fitted the imagination of the director comes on screen, we (myself and my friends) were laughing out at the action sequences, for otherwise we would have been nauseated by those animals.

I have jotted down some amusing and illogical things I found in the movie. Usually I don’t do this for a commercial movie, but in this I was able to find so many flaws even while watching the movie, that I thought I should put them down.

Most of the characters in the movie (including King Kong) seem to be mad – they do extremely risky things, bordering on illogical. I can excuse the movie producer’s madness in going to a remote island as ambitiousness, but I find no excuse as to why the crew of the ship went into an unknown forest for just rescuing a girl, how he accepted to encounter a mighty gorilla with only Chloroform and some ropes and finally how the girl thinks that climbing to the top of Empire state building can save the gorilla.

Every animal in the Skull island seems to be all set to fight until death! From my limited exposure to Discovery channel, my knowledge is that animals don’t hunt unless they are hungry and though they fight with each other over for instance a female, they rarely ever fight till death. But here we see two dinosaurs fighting to death with the King Kong over such a small prey like Ann. Of course the other thing I remembered when I saw the King Kong facing three dinosaurs was how it was exactly analogous to Rajinikanth (or any other mass hero) finishing of ten villains ;-)

Back in New York the movie’s human hero (forgot his name!) directs King Kong to Ann in the very next scene after wondering why she is not present in the auditorium.

Apart from the above, I did find numerous logical flaws later. Of course the main flaw was that the movie was too lengthy. It could have easily been trimmed of by 30 minutes, mainly in scenes in the forest and also in scenes on the ship. One thing I liked about the movie was the way it started and showed the New York of depression era. The relation between King Kong and Ann though unbelievable was shown quite subtly and some sequences like the skating scene were quite good.

In summary, this is quite a mediocre movie with an unbelievable storyline, entertaining only if you are ready to tolerate a zoo of weird animals and be able to appreciate an extra-human (!) relationship. I really don’t understand why it is getting such good reviews – perhaps a majority of people fit the above description!

Personally, my last two movie outings have been a disaster despite having selected the movies. The last movie was Ghajini. Except for cute romance between Surya and Asin there was really nothing else in the movie. And just like how I feel King Kong misused and overused some good computer graphics, I felt Ghajini had misused and disused an excellent movie concept like Short term memory loss.

This was a post written in some urgency, but I have two posts pending for a long time, which I am putting down just so that I don’t forget to write them.

A review (or should I say an overview) of Tamil television serials.

A review of three excellent biographical Tamil movies Bharathi, Kamaraj, Iruvar.

A perfect movie?

2005-10-03T01:33:00.000+05:30

A couple weeks earlier got a chance to watch Kudaikkul Mazhai, again. Surprisingly it was telecast in Sun TV (I have a big rant against Sun TV, but that would be later). Don’t know whether they wanted to have at least one recent good movie in their collection or bought it by plain mistake! Having started this topic, here is one complaint against Tamil channels – Why do all of them take a good three years or more after the release, to telecast Tamil movies? Especially, when Hindi channels seem to be airing the movies barely one year after the release date. Is it because of some archaic agreement by the movie makers or all the channels plain stupid?

Already I have digressed quite a bit. Returning to the movie in question, I had already reviewed it here. But just wanted to add some deserving praise for it. Because even the second time I saw it I couldn’t find any flaw in it. This is the most perfect (or the perfect?) movie I have seen (of course “Hey Ram” is still my favorite movie). Though perfection may appear to be an elusive goal, it is feasible if the task is very well defined. Which is what this film does – it takes a theme of how fragile a person’s psyche may be and how it should not be offended for fun – and portrays it to near perfection. The movie would appear weird in a first viewing, but the climax justifies the weirdness. In a second viewing, we can see that everything in the movie moves towards the climax.

Just like how a complex but beautiful mathematical proof proceeds by pulling along disparate elements with it to lead to a beautiful result which wouldn’t be possible without any of the constituent elements. Even if the proof is difficult to understand and result doesn’t seem important enough to warrant the hard work, the proof should nevertheless be appreciated for the beautiful way in which it evolves. There lies, in summary, my appreciation for the movie.

Appreciating "Hey Ram"

2005-09-22T14:38:00.000+05:30

For quite some time now, “Hey Ram” has been my all-time favorite film. Of course, as I have not got the chance to watch (despite trying earnestly) many of the Tamil classics, this would mean that this is my favorite film from the 90s. However many seem very surprised when I say this. I know few people who like “Hey Ram”, but for most the film means either a confusing and intimidating film or a steamy film with intimate scenes between the lead actors or both. I guess the film is fairly well known (though may not be popular) in Tamil nadu (or should I say Chennai?), as interaction with my peers from there has revealed. However, surprisingly it seems to be little known to people outside Tamil nadu and I got only vague responses like “I guess the film is known for the smooches between Kamal and Rani”, when I tried to ask some people about it. For all I know, it may well have these, but that is not the point of the movie. It pains me when such a good (or great?) film is so unappreciated. Hence this attempt to take stock of what film tries to say, weigh it with all the criticism I know of and compare it with a well known and much more popular series of films – Mani Ratnam’s “Terrorism Trilogy”.

Review of the movie
A summary of the movie can be found in many places in the web, like here. I would tell whatever is necessary for this review. In short the film tells how a well educated, forward minded person becomes a terrorist and almost assassinates Gandhi before realizing the reality. There have been other films on terrorism and religious fundamentalism, but what I like in this movie is that it almost goes inside the psyche of a terrorist and examines why he becomes one, apart from showing how he realizes the truth.

Saket Ram (Kamal Hassan) is an archeologist working in Indus valley sites with his friends Amjad Khan (Shah Rukh Khan) and Lalwani (Saurabh Shukla), when Hindu – Muslim riots break out (during the time of partition). He returns immediately to Calcutta to join his wife Aparna (Rani Mukherji) and spends some happy time with her. However as riots break out in Calcutta, they are attacked by a Muslim mob and while he is tied into inaction, his wife is raped and killed. The intimate scenes between Kamal and Rani and the brutal rape scene are often criticized, but I feel both are important to show how much Saket is affected by this incident. In his fury Saket takes up arms and attacks and kills some Muslims until he regains his self. Later he comes into contact with a Hindu extremist – Sriram Abhyankar (Atul Kulkarni), a Tanjavur Marat. Totally broken he comes back to his home town (Sri Valli Puttur?) in Tamil nadu. Hardly before he returns to normality he is compelled into a second marriage with Maithili (Vasundhra Das), a typical Tamil Brahmin girl. This part of the film shows how he still suffers from the trauma of the events in Calcutta. Unable to forget the events he makes an emotional trip to Calcutta. Here he meets the Abhyankar again, who fuels his hatred towards Muslims and says that the root cause for this (Muslims enjoying privileges) is M.K.Gandhi.

Later he returns to his hometown and stays for sometime there. Now feeling quite stifled by his traditional family and needing a change he goes to Maharashtra(?) with his new wife. There he attends a party given by the Maharajah, who acts as the organizer for Hindu extremist activity. There, brainwashed and under the influence of alcohol he swears on his mission to kill Gandhi as he happens to be one of the two chosen persons to do this. The imagery in this part is a very beautiful one. It shows how confused he is under the influence of drugs. A drunk Saket rushes to have sex with his wife, just when seeing a sexy dance performance. Later he is shown to visualize her like the gun he just picked up before the Maharajah. This hints at how sex and violence are often outlets of suppressed emotions triggered by an event. Some symbolic scenes earlier in the party also show his guilt of having orphaned a young blind Muslim girl (by killing her father in Calcutta riots). The imagery later where he braves a strong wind when aiming with his gun seems to show the struggle between conscience and instinct of revenge. Immediately afterwards, the other chosen person to kill Gandhi – Abhyankar - is critically wounded in a Polo match and he extracts a promise from Saket that he would do the mission whenever told so.

Saket now returns to his hometown, but remains a disturbed man since he knows that he may have to complete his mission at any time. After some time, he receives a telegram, which says him to deal with Gandhi when he stays in Delhi. Saket leaves home without informing anyone and after renouncing worldly ties in Benares comes to Delhi to plot the assassination. It is here that an interesting diversion comes in. Saket goes to a Muslim dominated locality in Delhi to retrieve his gun, which he has misplaced. There he meets his old friend Amjad. After going to the soda factory to retrieve his gun, he confides to his friend of his mission. In the soda factory, because of his gun the Muslims there (who are also armed) consider him as their enemy. After a small fight he escapes from there. However, due to circumstances this leads to a Hindu – Muslim riot in that place. It is interesting to see that first Saket argues with Amjad against Muslims, but later in soda factory he begins to defend Muslims when he sees that it is the Hindus who keep fighting even after a peace offer was made. This event I think shows that there is no one side which is correct in religious riots and they arise because even small things (like Saket taking a gun there) can trigger a riot in a tense situation. The most touching scene of the film was when the police asks Amjad in his death bed to identify the man with the gun (who was Saket himself) who started all this and Amjad replies, holding Saket’s hand – “I only know Ram, my dear brother Ram” – meaning he still sees the real human behind Saket. Amjad dies because of the injuries in the fighting and this causes further guilt to Saket.

Later Saket’s in-law’s find him at Gandhi’s place and assuming he has come to serve Gandhi, introduce him to Gandhi. Further he becomes very familiar with Gandhi as he is hailed as a savior of Muslim community in the recent riots in Delhi. These scenes which show Gandhi are very interesting scenes in the movie. Kamal doesn’t take the easy way out by showing him as a holy person beyond question. In fact in one scene, Gandhi himself is shown to say that he is not a Mahatma. Later in another, he says he is helpless against these Hindu – Muslim riots and only thing he can do is to fast. This is more or less my stand on Gandhi – that he might have done normal mistakes of a human and it is wrong to glorify him as a perfect Mahatma or disparage him as a Hindu-hater or a cunning politician. As Kamal (or is it somebody else?) told in an interview “The greatness of Gandhi lies in the fact that, even if you remove all the halo and popular image from him and dissect him (his actions) to the core, he still comes out a better person than what we would have thought”.

Already disturbed by the riots he started in Delhi and after seeing that Gandhi did not deliberately try to harm anyone, Saket goes to confess to Gandhi – but its too late as Nathuram Godse has just killed Gandhi. Nasserudin Shah in his limited role gives an excellent performance as Gandhi. Shah Rukh does his cameo role quite well. The two heroines have little screen presence, but perform well.

Hence, the movie is a brave attempt which almost succeeds in dissecting the psyche of a terrorist and hence the heart of a terrorist movement. Even good, educated people become terrorists due to certain triggers in a volatile political situation. Hence to prevent terrorism (and religious fundamentalism) would be to maintain a stable and just political situation, with respect for other religions/groups. We should always try to address real inequalities in the society, since when there are not redressed they lead to terrorism. Also people should be made more aware of divisive forces which encourage terrorism. It also tells not to target the family/community of a terrorist – since he becomes one due to circumstances and may not have anything to do with his community.

Also there is one more layer to the movie, in that all this is shown in flashback as old Saket is being taken to the hospital but is stopped on the way because of riots in the anniversary of Babri masjid demolitions (Dec. 6th). As we relate with the story it is clear that we have not learnt from our mistakes - that religious fundamentalism and terrorism are self-defeating and endless exercises in terror. If we want to more interpretation we would always find more layers in this movie – like why the title is “Hey Ram” when Gandhi is not shown to be saying this during his death – whether it is directed towards the two ‘Ram’s in the movie and the real life Ram all of whom plotted to kill Gandhi; the naming of the Saket’s second wife as Mythili (other name for Sita) and quite few other things, but of course we never know whether the director intended this or not.

There are many other subtle things which reveal the meticulousness with which the movie was taken. Like the photo of Hitler in the Maharaja’s palace which shows the Nazi tilt of the then Hindu fundamentalists, postman hesitating to give the telegram directly to Kamal due to untouchability at that time in Tamilnadu, showing the then Maharaja’s hobbies like hunting and Polo etc. The same meticulousness also seems to present in the period sets. The background score by Illayaraja suits the mood of the movie. There are few full-fledged songs, but those that are present justify their presence and are quite good. Nee partha… song is a haunting one.

Criticisms:
I would try to analyze the most common criticisms of the movie that I am aware of.

Kamal seems to be obsessed of himself and almost every scene has him. He hogs the screen presence.

I regard this to be the most stupid of all criticisms. It is the story of a man who becomes a terrorist – it is told in a biographical way. In fact I don’t remember a scene in which Kamal was not present – because it is the story as experienced by him. I was really surprised when I learn that a supposedly leading critic has dubbed the film as narcissistic – how can he have the same scale for all styles of film making?

Too much of violence and sex.

I can’t really comment on this as I have seen the film only in television (a good 4-5 times, thanks to Sun TV). But even if it has these, it does seem to be justified for the theme. For me, anything in the film is OK as long as it gels with the story.

Not easily understandable. Too many English & Hindi dialogs and sound quality is not too good.

I would agree to some extent with this. Though English and Hindi dialogs are required to keep things realistic, Kamal could’ve at least provided sub-titles. I really don’t get why he didn’t do so. Also the sound recording was done as live (on the shooting spot) recording – I don’t see the advantage with this and dialogs are less clear sometimes.

Kamal has wasted good actors like Girish Karnad, Hema malini with small roles

I don’t get the point of this. Casting is director’s prerogative and as long as they act well we shouldn’t complain.

Quite complex, symbolic and often multi-layered.

I would agree with this. In fact when I saw it first I understood only half of what I do now and I thought Saket was indeed going to kill Gandhi! It may not be the same for others, but for me it gives joy in understanding and putting together the pieces in such a work – as long as it is honest to itself. Also it quite questionable whether a movie with such a deep message can be made any simpler. If making it simple reduces the depth then it would become like many other mediocre movies.

It is anti-Hindu/ anti-Muslim/ anit-Congress/ anti-RSS

The very fact is considered to be against so many interests should show that it doesn’t really support any of them. Of course parts of the movie are anti-Muslim or anti-Hindu but we shouldn’t judge a movie without watching it till the end. And of course the end justifies and imparts a strong message.

Kamal doesn’t act well and appears stony faced thoughout.

I really can’t comment on this, as I think evaluation of acting is a very subjective thing. Yes he does remain quite stone faced – but anybody who is undergoing a serious struggle with his conscience may remain so (of course, some may not remain so and may show all the confusion or clarity in their face).

Comparison with Mani Ratnam’s “Terrorism Trilogy”

None of the films in the trilogy (Roja, Bombay and Uyire (Dil se)) really stand up to “Hey Ram” in the depth of the message or the way it is told. Only Roja comes closest though it is still very far away. Here are individual comments,

Roja – This movie is quite good through out and in the end it gives the message of how even a terrorist can be reformed and made to see the truth. Of course this only shows the human side of a terrorist (something which “Hey Ram” also does) and this is hardly the method to solve it. Offers some insights into Kashmir Terrorism, but none very deep.

Bombay – Certainly the worst of the trilogy. When somebody remarks to me that this is a good film on terrorism, I get irritated to no end. The film it self doesn’t offer any new insights into the Bombay riots, except that two rival religious leaders were fuelling it, which is quite well known. At least Mani Ratnam could’ve avoided the preachy climax – where Hindu and Muslim children join hands, just after a riot. How realistic is this? Anyway, what is the point – how is this going to solve terrorism? Endings like these encourage the thought that religious harmony will magically develop.

Uyire (Dil Se) – A confusing movie in some ways and ‘poetic’ in some ways. At least Mani Ratnam doesn’t turn preachy here. It can be taken to show the ever present struggle between love (of all kinds) and terror and how sometimes even love can’t stop a terrorist. Quite a good one for this theme.

(If some of my readers are aware of really good contemporary films on such topics, do tell me.)

Hence my point that despite better in many ways then some of the most popular films in terrorism, this movie is sadly very un-appreciated and under rated.

A short story defends a novel !

2005-08-09T20:56:00.000+05:30

What happens if a talented author’s popular and intriguing novel is criticized for its “lack of a clear moral”? Though I can’t comment on what other authors would have done, Gabriel Garcia Marquez counters the criticism through a short story - in his trademark magical realist and symbolic style, this story’s moral is “Why should a story have a (clear) moral?”

I must accept that I have taken the help of a commentary (second essay in the commentary is more relevant) in understanding this beautifully symbolic story. In fact it was because of reading this that I started reading the story. It was a part of my still unfinished collection of his short stories. As many of the thirty odd stories were rather like essays, I am yet to read even half of them. But this one story is enough reason to buy the book! Of course after reading the story I realized that commentary or no commentary, the symbolism was so strong that I would have got it after some time.

The novel in question is “One hundred years of solitude” and the short story is “A very old man with enormous wings” (and intriguingly subtitled “A tale for children”). It goes like this. An old man with big wings is suddenly found in a fishing hamlet. The people there initially think he is an angel, but he doesn’t possess any trait of an angel other than his wings – he is old and dirty, wings are broken, he speaks a language which no body understands and though he does some miracles they are rather weird (like making flowers to grow on a leper's wounds). However there is a general curiosity and people from nearby places visit him and the couple who found him become rich. Meanwhile, another strange thing happens in the village. A huge spider with the head of a girl arrives in the village. It is told that the girl was turned into a spider by a flash of lightning since she had disobeyed her parents and gone dancing all through the night. The girl speaks and tells her pitiable story and now people are more amused by the girl than by the old man. Quite soon nobody cares for the old man, including the couple who gained from him. Nobody thinks he is an angel because he doesn’t look like one. This is another theme in the story – what is stranger, an angel appearing or an angel which doesn’t look like an angel appearing? The story ends with the old man, after some years, suddenly growing his wings again and flying away.

Now you can try to guess the symbolism yourself before reading ahead. It shouldn’t be all that difficult since it is quite intended. If your interpretation is sufficiently different from what I have given below, do leave a comment.

The first obvious part is that the girl represents a story (or work of literature) which is very simple to understand and gives easy morals for everyone to understand. On the other hand the old man represents the artfully created, complex story (like “One hundred years of solitude”), that ultimately has more moral than a simplistic story but has to be understood with effort. Though this story speaks a language not easily understandable to people and has apparently weird morals, its nature (of being equivalent to that of an angel) can’t be questioned because of this – if the people had probed more than ignoring the old man they would have learnt more from a true angel. Also Marquez seems to say that the popularity of the book was due to a curiosity and not many understood it sincerely (something which I always doubted!). If I extend the symbolism even more, he seems to say that those who benefited most from the work (publishing houses?) have done nothing to study it seriously.

I have myself thought the lack of a clear moral to be a defect in the novel, but now I don’t feel strongly so, after realizing how important and relevant to real life some of the themes in the novel are. Though the latter points in the interpretation of symbolism may be a bit far-fetched, the former points are strongly implied. When I realized that this story was his defense symbolically, I couldn’t help being amazed at his intellectual prowess!

Two flawed decisions

2005-07-15T19:11:00.000+05:30

This post has been long pending and I finally thought of writing it before it became outdated. It’s about two government decisions, both of which I think are shortsighted and flawed. The first one (and still openly debated one) is the central governments decision to ban smoking in movies. Of course I am not one of those freaks who demand total freedom of expression, but this is a different case altogether.

The first point is that movies are reflecting mostly only things which happen in the society. If we ban smoking in movies, it’s like pretending that there is no smoking in our society. By refusing to acknowledge the problem of prostitution, not only does it grow unabated but we are also in an unenviable position with regards to AIDS. I can’t stop myself from remembering Marquez’s quote on self-deception here. Of course when mass heroes smoke in a positive character, then it does promote some people to take up smoking. But there are other methods to prevent this from happening. Like making Censor laws more stringent and categorizing films more – but the censor system here seems so broke that I may as well write an entire blog post on it. But still reforming the Censor system would solve many other problems like excessive sleaze in many of today’s movies.

The problem with a ban on smoking is that it prevents even deliberately negative depiction of smoking, which in the absence of other positive promotions, would serve to reduce incidence of smoking. And of course, politicians may also come up with innovative ideas of banning other ‘bad’ things like drinking, rape, roberry etc. from movies which would make them totally divorced from reality. And of course these things existed even when there were no movies! Actually I can’t still believe one person’s ‘passion’ could convince the entire cabinet on this. Anbumani Ramadoss, the health minister, had told a few months ago in an interview to a Tamil magazine that there would be a ban on smoking, drinking in movies. Then I thought that he had also begun to talk like his father, but now I can scarcely believe that it has become a law. Nowadays it seems anything can become a law here, which leads me to the next topic.

Recently Jayalalitha ruled that entrance exam would no longer be conducted for admission to professional courses and also that the marks of the exam conducted this year won’t be considered for this year’s admissions. The last bit is too ridiculous for anyone even unfamiliar with the topic. This is since, if this is implemented it would be like wasting the time students spent on entrance exam preparations. Any decision like this need to be taken at least one year in advance. Since entrance exams have existed for the last 20 years or so, suddenly announcing this is like government breaking its promise given to the students regarding the mode of admission. Thankfully, the high court overturned this order and the supreme court has refused to stay high court’s order, as a result of which, Jayalaitha has finally conceded to do this year’s admissions by including entrance marks.

The following are the reasons why I feel the order doesn’t serve any useful purpose even in long term. The reason offered by government is that rural students would benefit from this, as they don’t have access to entrance exams coaching centers. Even assuming the last part is true (which should be itself studied), the following are my arguments –

Let us say that the pattern of public examinations are not changed, i.e not made tougher. Then there are two problems –

The current pattern of public exam tests more of rote learning and neat handwriting-drawing skills than intellectual skills. Even then, the marks are always very subjective, since the correctors can’t obviously read everything and also there would be some totaling mistakes. The entrance exams, on the other hand are computer corrected. This almost rules out totaling errors and questions also tend encourage more objective thinking.

With the number of centums and multiple centums always increasing (I guess more than 300 students have centums in all subjects for engineering), it won’t be difficult to imagine a situation where the number of students getting centums in all relevant subjects would itself outnumber the seats in a particular prestigious college. This is in fact more applicable for medicine and even more for O.C (non backward caste) candidates. Introducing other things like marks of language subjects, age or past marks to break this often occurring tie would be height of nonsense. This inevitably leads to the next point.

The government had already proposed to make the public exams more ‘objective’ and hence (though this is not told) more tougher. So what would happen if all the questions in the public exam were to be made objective – it would almost appear like the entrance exam! And of course we are told to believe that the well-oiled coaching machines in the cities won’t find a way to coach on this paper. Even reaching some kind of middle way solution would be making public exams more tougher making urban students with more coaching benefit from it.

In the end the government is not changing anything! And it is making things unnecessarily tough for CBSE and ICSE students, since they would not be able to attend this public exam (unlike the entrance exam). Obviously this is all done with the upcoming assembly polls in mind and that’s why all the parties are forced to ‘support’ this move.

The real pity in this is that two issues which require real debating (and not such hasty decisions) have been ignored here. One is to prevent the hassle of students writing multiple entrance exams. In fact, it would be good to standardize this even across the entire country. The other is to promote better methods of examinations where the creativity of students is tested along with their technical knowledge. This would be the one which would prevent the growth of coaching institutes. I think CBSE public exams test creativity quite a bit, but I have heard some students say that they are way too subjective. But at least we must look for a solution without escaping with rules like these.

Anniyan - a bit of everything!

2005-07-10T12:39:00.000+05:30

Anniyan had all the usual flaws that I would find in a Shankar’s movie. Song sequences which have almost no connection with the story and use unnecessarily expensive gimmicks, noticeable lapses in logic and unnecessary drumming in of the message by what is usually a public appearance by the hero. Despite all this I should say I liked the movie as a whole.

Though this movie is thematically quite similar to his earlier vigilante movies (Gentleman, Mudhalvan and Indian) there is difference in the message he wants to convey. Instead of blaming it all on corruption and politicians, Shankar urges us to look at ourselves to see whether we are all law abiding citizens who do our work well. It is this message which is quite close to my heart. I have myself seen quite silly and irritating acts by people like spitting on the streets and always wondered why they do such avoidable acts. Shankar’s point that only such small individual mistakes lead to a huge mistake is one worthy of note. I guess there are very few movies which have tackled this kind of subject – “Unnal mudiyum thambi” is one I remember right away, though it tackled it in a completely different way. Vikram as “rules” Ramanujam seems to overplay a bit, but the rest of the movie is also based on this characterization.

Second thing I like in the movie is Vikram’s performance. He has got his best chance after Pithamagan and used it almost very well. (SPOILER WARNING – for the rest of the paragraph). Playing three totally different characters is always a challenge. He excels in this, especially in the two scenes where he continuously changes between the three characters. Many people (atleast in blogs) seemed to dislike Remo, but I think he was quite romantic – in fact I haven’t seen Vikram in such a totally romantic role. Another frequent complaint is that all these three characters are overplayed. I think the characterization is by itself in that way. Only because Ramanujam is such a rigid, un-emotive and physically timid person, there exists a real case for Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). Another thing I like in the movie is the innovative way in which Shankar has used Garuda Purana mythology. Our directors need to involve more of our mythology or folklore while making thrillers, instead of just relying on overplayed sound effects (perhaps effect of seeing Kaal!). Of course Shankar seems to have used MPD to push in what would be otherwise unbelievable fight scenes. But still they, especially the one in the martial arts school, are quite amusing. And there are other lapses of logic like Anniyan who is a virtual personality arriving at a scheduled time to address people. But the pace of the movie is good enough that most won’t notice these.

The songs proved to be the biggest letdown of all. Of course I had heard that Harris Jayaraj’s music for this was no where as good as earlier Shankar movies (which were all done by AR. Rahman). Shankar has spoiled it more by not connecting the songs to the story. Suffice it to say that a fairly serious story with a message has all the five songs as romantic songs (except may be Kaadhal Yanai). Some songs had good music (like Kaadhal Yanai) and some had good (or amusing) picturization, but mostly they didn’t gel with each other or with the story. Also the heroine Sada doesn’t appear good in such exotic locales - she looks better in a simple dress. It is always irritating to see a director like Shankar not relying strong enough on his story and resorting to silly gimmicks in songs in the name of technological advancements. A frequent excuse is that movies (at least nowadays) should have some explicit commercial element, but I guess this has long been disproved with the success of directors like Selvaraghavan and Bala, where songs are blended with the movie (and I am only considering directors who have been consistently successful in box-office).

The climax was quite stylish, but at least I was expecting it. However it doesn’t gel very well with the main psychiatric concept behind the movie. There seems to be quite extreme opinions in the media and blogs about the movie, with some hailing it as great advance in Tamil movies and others saying that its nothing more than a recycling of Shankar’s earlier movies. I think it’s neither of them. On the whole, this is a very entertaining movie with a sugarcoated, but relevant message (though I believe that sugarcoating a message also reduces its effectiveness).

Comparing two pairs of movies

2005-06-15T18:38:00.000+05:30

While idly looking through my blog I discovered that my last 6 posts were all book reviews or about books. Suddenly I realized that my blog was becoming too bookish for even myself and hence this post on few movies. I have seen quite few good old Tamil movies of late and wanted to comment on them, but that would be on a different post. Since I like comparing, I would comment on two pairs of films – similar in their themes, but starkly different in the way they were produced, one of them is ‘big’ and the other is ‘small’.

To keep the discussion as global as possible I would start with a recent Hindi movie – “Kaal”. Boasting some leading actors, good locations and a ‘different’ script this was, I guess, released with quite a lot of hype. But through out the movie I could only pity the technicians who had worked for the good locations, different camera angles and background score (which though too loud, would have been good if used properly) on essentially trying to prop up a weak story and screenplay. In fact, I feel that if all these technical elements were under played or at least limitedly used the movie would have been more tolerable. There was absolutely no scene in the movie which was truly terrifying and there was not even much thrill. Of course I didn’t know who the murderer was, but I didn’t care! And the ending was as insipid as it could be - a murder mystery conveniently blaming a ghost!

The sharp turning camera angles, the unnecessarily loud background score and the skimpily clad ladies (why do you wear such a dress in a forest - to get more mosquito bites?) were all constant irritations. It was the Hindi movie I was seeing after quite some time and I thoroughly regretted the choice. More irritating was that it was being hyped as a new generation Hindi movie! (I had felt the same about “Bhoot” though to a much lesser extent). The movie seems to have deservedly flopped in box office, proving that people can’t be cheated too much by glitz and glamour (of course they can be cheated to some extent, which is proved by the success of “big budget” masala movies).

Coming to this movie’s counterpart it is a relatively little known Tamil movie called “Whistle”. I saw this in television recently. I think it was released very normally and succeeded to some extent. Now I don’t claim this as a classic thriller movie. But it was thrilling and thrilling till the end. And it didn’t have to resort to stupid techniques like a ghost being a murderer (in fact this is ridiculed in the movie). Surprisingly, for all those who regard genre movies very highly, this wasn’t a pure thriller – but had a college group and romance as a background. I can’t comment much on the romance part since I missed something like first 30 minutes of the movie and anyway most of the characters were dead in the end! But it didn’t obstruct the thrill at all. The songs did spoil the thrill somewhat and at least two could have been cut down (there are also some nice and popular songs in the movie). But the last half an hour or so was totally focused and thrilling.

What I expect in a thriller movie is that the identity of the killer (or any aggressor) should be a surprise not easily guessable but still should be logically justifiable (match with all the clues in the movie). This was quite well done here, since any one person being killer would be too difficult here, two people are shown as killers. And their motive is justified by a rather chilling flashback, which also justifies the title and which reminds me of “Kudaikkul Mazhai”, but that is a digression. In “Kaal” this has no meaning since the aggressor is a ghost who can do anything! Sound effects are very well used in the movie, with something happening in silence producing the most shock. All the actors were new, but did seem to perform their roles well. The director(s) are JD-Jerry, faintly familiar, but I don’t recall how. In short, another “small” movie which wins hands down over a “big” movie.

My next comparison would be much more critical and may not be liked by many Shankar fans. It is between his movie, the over-hyped “Boys” (which did very average in the box office) and “Thullavatho Ilamai” (title is hard to translate literally, but one try is Springing youth), which was a relatively unknown film when released, but became a huge hit. Both are concerned about pangs of growing up, difficulties a set of youth face and the how they finally overcome all this. Both were accused as being almost soft porn movies. But there ends the similarity. Now I would like to exclude one factor from this comparison – sex in both these movies. Personally I believe that, sex is shown in a much more subtle and mature way in “Thullavatho Ilamai” than “Boys”, but this may be wrong since I saw the latter in theatre and the former in television.

“Boys” shows the travails faced by the youngsters when they run away from home, but finally they are heroes and hence triumph in a short time after facing all the hurdles. The love story here is quite silly, being based on such silly scenes like hero running naked in Anna salai for proving his love and earthquake helping the lovers to unite! But still they are the hero and heroine and must unite and live happily in the end. In short I feel it romanticizes infatuation as love and chance success as success gained by hard work. How many singers have come up so quickly in life and how many of us have such special talents like singing? Basing such things to show that a group of runaway teenagers are successful only shows the eagerness of the director to have a happy ending, even if it is unrealistic. I dislike Shankar’s movies mainly for these – in fact I would say “Indian” was the only good movie he has done. “Mudhalvan” and “Gentleman” are movies with a good theme but messed up throughout and in climax, respectively. The other three including “Boys” don’t even warrant a mention, as they have nothing more than an average movie.

In contrast “Thullavatho Ilamai” is starkly realistic. Here also youngsters run away from home and get to discover themselves and the world. But both these experiences are not pleasant, so they return back to their homes – and the movie effectively ends there. This also has lead pair who are initially friends, but due to their parents’ suspicion and due to their close stay when running away, have sex. But the movie clearly shows that this is the result of their momentary lust and hence they live as before when they return home. In fact to add emphasis it is shown that the boy, not wanting to face her, left the school and hasn’t met her since. And the rest of the youngsters stay in their homes and come up in life the hard way. In fact the climax of hero and heroine not meeting ever after surprised me, as I thought the climax of a commercially successful Tamil movie can’t be so realistic. On the down side, the movie happens to be a bit didactic with some messages for both parents and children (not that Boys didn’t have this). The movie blames the parents for most of the faults, but that is justifiable for the parents shown. Though it doesn’t have the glitz of “Boys”, it has a very good musical score by Yuvan Shankar Raja and of course direction and screenplay are most impressive of all. Kasturiraja is the director, though it is said that his son, Selvaraghavan, now a popular director played more than a helping hand in this. The lead pair was unknown then, but now Danush is a leading hero.

One reason for matured handling here could be that these youngsters are school final year students and are hence younger than even those shown in “Boys”. But even this can’t justify the totally unrealistic manner in which script is handled in “Boys”. As an aside, I finally confirmed that the beautiful song “Theenda Theenda” was in fact during love making of the lead pair. It was of course cut off in television, but I got the initial music in the scene. Without doubt, it is the most decent, subtle and pleasant song I have heard for a love making scene. No wonder that when I am asked as to what is wrong in showing sex and glamour in movies, my only refrain is to show them only when important to the story and in an enjoyable and not repelling manner.

There are some more movies on which I want to comment and I would list them down so that at least I can remember them – K.B’s “Arangettram” – though I didn’t see this fully, it was already bold enough to shake me, “Pagalil Oru Iravu” - a good climax, K.B’s “Sindhu Bairavi” – a good but controversial movie, Bharathiraja’s “Padhinaaru Vaidhinile” - a good movie worth its reputation as a classic. I am trying desperately to watch classics like “Nizhalgal”, “Oru Nadigai Nadagam Parkiraal”(An actress sees a play - what a title! It's self-referential!) and all Jayakanthan story movies, “Mogamul”, but I am not able to rent or even buy these VCDs or DVDs in Bangalore (or are they available in Chennai?). Can somebody help me please!!

More of "One hundred years of solitude"

2005-06-12T14:22:00.000+05:30

These are some of the quotes that I like most in One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The opening line of the novel gives a teaser for the rest as it presents the past, present and future together in a single stream of thought.

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

This comes near the middle of the novel and its simply amusing. Though some people take this literally, i guess this is more of a sarcasm. (The character Carmeilia is mentioned only here in the entire novel)

"Carmelia Montiel, a twenty-year-old virgin, had just bathed in orange-blossom water and was strewing rosemary leaves on Pilar Ternera's bed when the shot rang out. Aureliano José had been destined to find with her the happiness that Amaranta had denied him, to have seven children, and to die in her arms of old age, but the bullet that entered his back and shattered his chest had been directed by a wrong interpretation of the cards."

This is a beautiful quote for just its imagery and of course leaves us with quite a bit to think.

“One winter night while the soup was boiling in the fireplace, he missed the heat of the back of his store, the buzzing of the sun on the dusty almond trees, the whistle of the train during the lethargy of siesta time, just as in Macondo he had missed the winter soup in the fireplace, the cries of the coffee vendor, and the fleeting larks of springtime. Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart, that they shit on Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.”

This quote is a vivid example of Magical realism used by the author. This may be symbolic too, but I haven’t found the symbolism yet!

“A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.

"Holy Mother of God!" Úrsula shouted.”

This is from near the end of the novel which I like it for just its play of words –

“It was the last that remained of a past whose annihilation had not taken place because it was still in a process of annihilation, consuming itself from within, ending at every moment but never ending its ending.”

One hundred years of Solitude -Perplexing, yet enchanting

2005-05-25T17:06:00.000+05:30

Perplexing, yet enchanting. This is how I can describe in a single line my view of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magical realist classic “One hundred years of solitude”. I can either say that the novel is an over-ambitious, confusing work or that it would take me some more time to appreciate it fully. I feel both of it now, though more of the latter.

A summary can be found here. It tells about the founding of an imaginary remote Latin American town called Macondo, it growth and its decline and along with it the story of six generations of its founders – the Buendias. Jose Arcadio Buendia and his wife Ursula are the founders of the town. A very helpful family tree can be found here. More than magical realism the novel brims with symbolism. In fact it would be hard to find a main incident which is not magical realist or symbolic or both. It is generally felt that this is more understandable than Marquez’s “The Autumn of the patriarch” – but I differ. “The Autumn…” though much more difficult to get into, is much easier to understand then this novel with loads of symbolism. Of course if one wishes, they can consider this only as a story of a family, disregarding all the symbolism.

But on another level it becomes the story of the entire mankind. In fact it is quite interesting to find out the exact meaning of solitude in this novel. I feel that all the main characters in this novel (belonging to Buendia family) have a trait of solitude. In some reviews it is noted that Ursula, the matriarch of the family who lives to more than a hundred years, is an anti-solitude character. But I differ with this. Ursula is a pragmatic lady and involves herself in making the family financially secure. But she does little else. She leaves the bringing up of the children to her Indian servants and is not even aware of their growth. The following quote brings this out clearly (p. 55)-

“So busy was she in her prosperous enterprises that one afternoon she looked distractedly towards the courtyard while the Indian women helped her sweeten the dough and she saw two unknown and beautiful adolescent girls doing frame embroidery in the light of the sunset. They were Rebecca and Amarantha”

Hence this is also a kind of solitude – where one is so involved with material welfare, that they lose track of others feelings. Based on this I would say that solitude here means any state where one is oblivious of some of the happenings around them. That may be because one is too much engrossed in earning money (Ursula), involved in politics and work (Colonel Aureliano Buendia), obsessed with science (Jose Arcadio, the founder), two people obsessed with each other (Aureliano(II) and Amaranta Ursula), obsessed with social status (Fernanda del Carpio) or engrossed in the bitterness of past events (Amaranta and Meme).

Many confusing symbolisms reveal themselves after some thought. The unusual fertility of the farm animals of Aureliano Segundo and his concubine, Petra Cotes indicate the limitless resources available to one at youth. As they grow old, the fertility of the animals decreases. As they have squandered their riches of the youth they are doomed to suffer during old age, as Aureliano does. However there a few symbolisms which have not yielded to me yet, like the flying to sky of Remedios the beauty or the strange murder of Jose Arcadio (the second).

The novel also tries to symbolically tell the whole story of the mankind, but because of the same symbolism it is still quite confusing as to what it really tells. When the founders arrive at Macondo, it is a pristine place and “many things don’t have their names”. The only contact with the outside world is through gypsies – who bring some useful innovations to them. It is interesting that the innovations which are regarded as magic at this period appear again at a later time, but are then considered science. Marquez also notes that later group of gypsies parade technology as a entertainment rather as being useful to life. It is interesting to ponder on whether this rings a bell with the current direction of technological progress.

The town then gets embroiled in politics, as Colonel Aureliano organizes many revolutions against the central government (to which Macondo finally comes in contact with). The important turning point comes when a company decides to setup a banana plantation in the town. Initially it brings in a lot of progress but finally thousands of workers are massacred in a strike and as the banana company leaves the town, its decline begins. Despite his reportedly communist leanings, Marquez doesn’t seem to explicitly say that the banana company brought decline to Macondo. He notes the ‘prosperity’ brought in by the banana company and the decline when they withdraw from the town in a more or less neutral way. It is for us to decide whether the company is to be appreciated for bringing in some prosperity or accused for starting the decline from the height of the prosperity. And of course for us to decide whether the company stands as a metaphor for capitalism in today’s world.

The false ideologies in politics and the futility of war are clearly brought out. Here I found that Aureliano’s character became quite similar to the General in “The Autumn…” with Marquez using the concept of “Solitude of power” – but Aureliano recovers just in time.

Also Marquez stresses on the theme that Time moves in a circle. This is very obvious based on many things in the novel, like the inventions of gypsies appearing later as scientific inventions, Jose Arcadio Segundo fighting and remaining incognito like his grand-father Colonel Aureliano Buendia and incest between Aureliano Jose and Amaranta repeating itself more vigorously as that between Aureliano (the last) and Amaranta Ursula. In the novel also this is mentioned several times. The incessant repetition of names also hints at the circular nature. An interesting question is “If Time moves in circles then why does the town come to an end?” The novel itself provides the answer –

(p.402) "…the history of the family was a machine with unavoidable repetitions, a turning wheel that would have gone on spilling into eternity were it not for the progressive and irremediable wearing of the axle."

Thus Time moves in a spiral rather than a circle! A spiral which points towards the inevitable destruction, because when people repeat the same mistakes, the family is not as strong as before to deal with the mistakes.

The novel also has some puzzling things towards the end – the whole story of the Buendia family is foretold in the parchments written by the gypsy Melquiades. In fact the name of the novel comes from the fact that a hundred years after the parchments are written, it is interpreted. Then is the novel the same as these parchments? Not likely because the novel doesn’t have this beautiful and chilling epitaph of the parchments (pp. 420) –

“The first of the line is tied to a tree and the last is being eaten by the ants”.

Also a character with the name Gabriel Marquez (yes! with the same name), who is a friend of Aureliano (II) and descendant of a founding family, escapes from Macondo, just before it is destroyed. Is the whole story told through him?

Of course the last few pages of the novel happen to be the most puzzling. Especially the last sentence of the novel is as enigmatic as it is poetic –

“…because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth”

How can a race (or a town) be in solitude? The explanation I used to think of before reading the novel fully was that, the town was remote and always separated from the rest of the world. However, Macondo becomes well connected to the world around the time the banana company comes and even during its decline is connected by a rail road – only that it’s forgotten by the rest of the world. Now I think, this solitude has the same meaning as the others in the novel. In some vague way, it refers to the people of the town not paying enough attention and not taking enough efforts for the survival of the town. They are too busy earning and enjoying during the times of the banana company and after it leaves are totally shattered and they too begin to leave or stay passively in the society.

In trying to understand this novel I tried reading a few reviews online (by noted literature study aid publishers) and they seemed to be as confused as me! Quite a few reviews I read were contradicting each other in interpreting some of the symbolisms. In fact one of them interpreted that from the vigorous mating between Aureliano Segundo and Petra Cotes, Marquez favors sexual promiscuity, whereas his treatment of the sexual passion between Amaranta Ursula and Aureliano (II) would have easily disproved this. I am aware that there are entire books on this novel, but I would still like my remaining questions to be answered more easily. They could also be answered if I was to read the novel once again, but though I have the interest for it I don’t seem to have the patience for it now.

Irrespective of whether you want to peal away the symbolisms or not, this novel is certainly a good read – touching, comical and revealing sometimes, but always puzzling.

Ponniyin Selvan - An engaging lesson in history!

2005-05-16T20:44:00.000+05:30

This is another post after a long break in my blog. But still this was a pretty quick entry to write up. The post which is really long pending is my review on “One hundred years of solitude”. Apart from the novel itself being very dense with a lot of symbolism, I also have to hunt through it for quotes whose location I have forgotten – felt I should have made a note of quotes as I did for “The Fountainhead”.

Coming to this post’s topic, it is the review of the Tamil historical epic novel – Kalki’s “Ponniyin Selvan” (Son of Ponni (Ponni is a river)). I had heard about this book for quite some time – it is arguably the most widely read Tamil novel and though written about 50 years back, it is still very actively read among the current generation of Tamil readers. It deals about the events during the succession of the Chola emperor Parantaka Chola II (Sundara Chola) around 970 AD. It is really an epic novel in characterization and the length – it runs to an amazing 5 volumes and nearly 2200 pages (in a size slightly bigger than normal English novels!).

Though the novel is too big to summarize here, I would attempt a very short summary to the story. During this time, Cholas are the dominant force in the south and their empire stretches from Kanyakumari to the banks of river Krishna and east cost to the Nilgiris. Aditha Karikalan is the crown prince (leading the northern forces at Kanchi) for over three years now, as the health of the emperor gets worse. However, due to some reasons a section of Chola generals plan to bring Madhuranthakar, the younger cousin of the emperor to throne. Vandiyathevan, heir to a now defunct royal family, brings a message from the crown prince for the princess Kundavai and comes to know of this plan and is sent by her to Srilanka to where Karikalan’s younger brother Arulmozhi Varman is leading an armed invasion of the country. On the way, he meets the bewitching Nandhini who is the wife of Chola chief general Periya Pazhuvettarayar (who is aligned with Madhuranthakar) and unknown to her husband is involved with a group of Pandya conspirators who are plotting to destroy the Chola family. The novel builds on the relations between these main characters and many more characters who come in later and finally ends with the succession being resolved in a rather unusual manner.

There are many areas in which I feel that the book is top notch. Below are the few of those.

Retaining the interest of the reader for this length is itself quite an achievement, for any novel of any genre and Kalki does this with ease. Though I could notice a bit of slowing down in parts 3 & 4, part 5 picks up with more interest than ever. And of course I never felt the story was being dragged (considering that this was first serialized in a Tamil magazine and noticing the current mega serials in T.V!).
Most of the major characters are real historical characters and many of the incidents are also real incidents. The amount of research that has gone into this is spectacular. Kalki brings alive the Chola world before more than 1000 years, reveals to us ancient Tamil culture and rule and all this without compromising much on historical truths! It seems he has only capitalized on the fuzzy areas of history to makes his own characters and incidents.
The amazing depth in characterization. All the characters in the novel are truly multi dimensional and in fact nobody is portrayed as a villain! Kalki shows the fallibility and the prowess of all characters, except perhaps Arulmozhi. Here too, he shows that it is Arulmozhi’s nature that he is very gentle and obedient to elders, so this also seems quite realistic. In fact the novel seems to have two equally important heroes, Arulmozhi and Vandhiyathevan. Though the story is named after Arulmozhi (whose other name is Ponniyin Selvan), the narration starts, ends and mostly proceeds through with Vandhiyathevan. There are varied kinds of romances in the story from the matured love between Kundavai and Vandhiyatevan to the mad love of Manimekalai to Vandhiyathevan. This is one of the best, if not the best novel I have read as far as characterization goes.
Kalki’s style of writing. In this story of betrayals, revenge, love and murder, Kalki succeeds in keeping a gentle undercurrent of humor mainly through the characters of Azhvarkhadiyan and Vandhiyathevan. He also turns the prose enjoyably poetic in quite a few places. And of course there are quite a few songs and poems, some of his own and some culled out from classic Tamil texts. Most touching among these were the song by Poonkuzhazhi (which appears quite a few times in the novel) –

“Alaikadalthaan oyindhirukka

Agakadalthaan ponguvathen?....”

(When the sea of waves is silent, why is the sea of my heart turbulent?)

And the love song of Manimekalai.

Also he handles the narration almost continuously for over 6 months, which is quite difficult to do. He achieves this by focusing the story at some place and then goes back and forth a little in time. Though this doesn’t make the narration non-linear, the effect was quite different.

Kalki includes so much of historical information that this almost becomes like a historical text! Though the story is about the Chola dynasty which has been flourishing for about 100 years, Kalki takes pains to illustrate the history of earlier Cholas and also the history of some Chola general’s dynasties. He also deals quite a bit on the religion, culture and even food habits of the time! In particular he shows the Saiva – Vaishnava dichotomy in Hinduism very clearly. He also maintains the tone of the novel very objective. Whether it’s dispelling myths of Kollivaipisasu (a form of ghost) or discussing atheism and religious theism at one stretch, this is about the most liberal a historical novel can get!

No doubt the novel rekindles the interest in Tamil history, literature and culture among the people in the current generation and is hence a hot favorite even now. I have personally seen copies of this book getting sold out in a book exhibition when copies of most other novels were still available. In spite of all these, I feel the novel could have been better in some ways. These are not flaws, but I feel the novel could have been even better (though many may not agree with me). I feel the difference especially when comparing this with my other favorite historical novel, The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet. This novel tells about the English history from about 1123 to 1174 AD. I feel the following points are worth noting –

The novel seems to be almost obsessed with happenings in royal household. Most of the major characters are royal characters and even the few exceptions like Poonkuzhazhi and Senthan Amuthan are highlighted only when they interact with the royal family. This is of course not a flaw, but I feel that to reflect more on practical values one could have focused on some commoners. This is where I like the “The Pillars…” more, since it shows a few commoners as the main characters and through them illustrates a range of values. Though this novel also illustrates few values like good governance, true love, generosity I feel it lacks the full range of values as done in “The Pillars…”.
I personally like an epic novel to span a large time, like 50 years for “The Pillars”. I feel this shows the real nature of the characters as they age and take on more responsibilities and change. However this novel stretches only for about 8 months. Though Kalki tells some history about each character and ends with a note on the future of the main characters, this still doesn’t have the same effect.
(Spoilers here!) I can’t fully appreciate the climax of the novel, which is the sacrifice done by Arulmozhi – relinquishing the throne to (new) Madhurantakar. At least if he had relinquished it to old Madhurantakar it could be called a sacrifice, since old Madhurantakar wanted the throne badly. But in the climax, when every one wants him to be the emperor, Arulmozhi almost forces new Madhurantakar to be the emperor. This seems more of a shrewd move, of freeing himself for his long wanted expeditions, than a sacrifice to me! Of course, as I have learnt from some articles in Ponniyin Selvan e-group, history could be actually different here, as it is mentioned in some engraving that the Madhurantakar who was crowned as Utthama Chola “wanted” the throne.

To summarize, this is an excellent read for anyone who is even slightly interested in Tamil / Indian history. For a non-Tamil reader there is a complete English translation available here. It seems to be quite a faithful translation of the original.This novel is ideal to be made into a two part or three part movie. It seems the cost is deterring people who wanted to film it, but it's nevertheless a pity that this hasn't been made into a movie. Though there is a related movie by name Raja Raja Cholan, it deals with his life after coronation and it seems to be more of fiction than history.

[Note on history: For those who haven’t found this out already, the novel’s hero Arulmozhi is later crowned as Rajaraja Cholan. He and his son Rajendra Cholan expanded the Chola Empire far and wide by conducting successful expeditions to various places like Srilanka, Bengal, Myanmar, Malaya peninsula, Sumatra and came to be known as one of the greatest emperors in south Indian history. He also built the famous Thanjavur Big temple and later built a new capital for Cholas – Gangaikondacholapuram, consecrated with water from the Ganges. The Cholas flourished for nearly another 300 years, creating a Golden age for Tamil literature and culture, until they finally fell to the resurgent Pandyas by about 1279 AD]

"Brave new world" and our future

2005-03-09T11:40:00.000+05:30

So I am back after a long break (longer then what I intended it to be) and I decided to relieve myself of a long pending post, by putting into words some rather abstract ideas in my mind. This post will be primarily concerned with reviewing and interpreting Aldous Huxley’s The brave new world. When I first started with the novel I thought it was a science fiction. Yes, it has a lot of elements in a science fiction novel, but it is much beyond that. It is a prophecy on our society and as it happens to be quite accurate it is also a grave warning for our future. It is extra-ordinarily prophetic considering that it was written in 1930s.

The novel presents a future society (nearly 600 years into future) which is on the surface a utopian society. Everybody (well, nearly everybody) is happy, there is no violence of any kind and society is very stable. But just below the surface it presents quite a few horrors – everybody is happy because they are not allowed to think of anything beyond their day-to-day work. After their work, to divert them they have unlimited sex, since there is no family setup and anybody can and should mate with everyone else in the society. They also have feelies for more divertion, which seem to be horribly close to the current movies with virtual reality added. They have pretty sophisticated sports which are our simple sports adapted to use a heavy amount of machinery to encourage consumerism. And of course if nothing of this is of any use, then they take soma – the drug which relieves them from reality. So this is how they remain “happy”. Their Happiness is not by a quest and oneness with Truth, but by denying the existence of Truth and refusing to search for it. To maintain this social order all the babies are raised in bottles fed with nutrition (since there are no mothers) and also there is a strict classification of people into classes – alpha, beta, gamma, delta and epsilon and into some sub-classes like alpha plus. Each class is to do a specific kind of work like intellectual work for alpha. And they can do only that, since they are psychologically taught so from childhood and some enzymes are used to restrict their functionality. In fact the alphas are only one who can “think”. Cloning is also used widely, though Huxley uses a different terminology for that, and in the lower classes many hundreds of people are from the same clone (since that helps preserve social order more). The novel then shows how somebody who comes from a civilization like us (the savage), feels in this kind of a world.

Now this is only some piece of fiction and why should we bother about it? Because our society (especially the western society) is quite close in some aspects to it. The family structure has degraded and sexual promiscuity is an ever increasing and accepted part of our society. Entertainment and media is increasingly being looked at as a way to ‘escape’ from reality. The use of drugs has been increasing and media promoted consumerism means we consume more than we ever did, even if don’t know what to do with the waste material generated. And worse I am also able to figure out how the society may be lead in the same direction. So here is my theory. Whatever appears below is only my interpretation of the novel.

The novel is unique that unlike many other dystopian novels (like “1984”), the society has elements of socialism and capitalism. As a socialist totalitarianism, the government scrutinizes all media and scientific research, so that no “truth” is revealed. Also there is total lack of individuality and a lot of collectivism. But there are unmistakable capitalistic traits like use of mass-production, consumerism and of course other things that I have mentioned above. As a result of these socialistic traits of the novel it is difficult to imagine how such a society can result from a society like ours, though I think I have the answer for this. The answer also lies in the novel, in the final chapters of the wonderful dialogue between the savage and the world controller. The world controller explains that the quest for truth and beauty (science and art) must be controlled to reach a state of happiness. He remarks at a point

(The world controller to the savage)

“It's curious," …"to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to have imagined that it could be allowed to go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. … Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific research was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were the sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled–after the Nine Years' War.”

(Emphasis by italics original, by bold mine)

Even in this short extract there are many interesting things. Huxley indicates that industrialization caused the shift from the truth to comfort. This of course supports my theory. But I don’t agree that “in spite of everything unrestricted scientific research was permitted”. We agree to carry out research in areas where we don’t know how to handle the outcome (like in human cloning, for instance), not only because we want to search for truth – but we have powerful corporations who have put or ready to put in millions of dollars in it and hence lobby for it. Industrialization makes us search ruthlessly, heartlessly for at least a part of the “truth” which is profitable to the industries, at least in the short term. Huxley makes a slight jump now, talking about the Nine Year’s war. He doesn’t explain anywhere how unrestricted scientific research leads to the war. That is for us to make out – and given the current global situation we are one of the best equipped to do it since sometime in history. Unrestricted research and their unrestricted use has produced nuclear weapons and only now we are discovering how close the two superpowers of the world were, to using it during the cold war. We refuse to stop the unrestricted use of our environment, despite threats of global warming and umpteen other hazards. What I mean here is that our world is increasingly becoming unstable. It may be either due to increasing threat of terrorist’s attacks and its reactions which can lead to a situation like the Nine Year’s war – or it may be just the instability in our environment which may finally boomerang on us.

Now my theory is that when such a thing happens, the (surviving) human kind’s reactions would be over-cautious, which would be to strictly regulate all forms of art and science. And of course to prevent us from being aware that they are being regulated the vices of our capitalistic society come in handy – escapist entertainment, unrestricted sexual promiscuity, mindless consumerism and its endless “innovations” and free use of drugs. Now my theory explains logically how our society can progress to society as depicted in the novel.

What can we do to avoid this? Huxley doesn’t directly answer this question. In fact in some places, he hints that he has lost hope with this society and a society as depicted in the novel is the only possibility for human kind to survive. Now I won’t be so pessimistic. I still think we can do something, but time may be soon running out. We should not think of technology as an end in itself - scientific research, at least in some areas should be restricted and its use even more restricted. We also need to fully rethink (though we are already doing this partly) the basis of our industrialization and define the line between need and greed. Mindless consumerism results in over-consumption and this should not be allowed to prevent a sustained use our environment. In short instead of creating an unsustainable paradise for the elite of the present generation, we should create a sustainable living place for all the people of the next several generations. The above may not be easily implementable suggestions, but that alone can’t undermine their correctness.

Many may disregard this as a paranoid conspiracy theory, but using the reasoning I followed this does seem to be a distinct possibility and we need to prepared for it. I would be eager to debate on any flaws in my reasoning or even otherwise about this post.

My commentary ends here. The following is an interesting quote from the novel, which talks of relevance of god in the “brave new world”. This and previous quote was got from the full text version of novel at http://www.huxley.net/bnw/. Chapters 16 & 17 form the crux of the work and can be read even by itself.

"Quite so. I'll read you one of the things he did dream of in a moment. Meanwhile, listen to what this old Arch-Community-Songster said." He opened the book at the place marked by a slip of paper and began to read. "'We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters. We are God's property. Is it not our happiness thus to view the matter? Is it any happiness or any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may be thought so by the young and prosperous. These may think it a great thing to have everything, as they suppose, their own way–to depend on no one–to have to think of nothing out of sight, to be without the irksomeness of continual acknowledgment, continual prayer, continual reference of what they do to the will of another. But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man–that it is an unnatural state–will do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end …'" Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. "Take this, for example," he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: "'A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false–a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.'" Mustapha Mond shut the book and leaned back in his chair. "One of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didn't dream about was this" (he waved his hand), "us, the modern world. 'You can only be independent of God while you've got youth and prosperity; independence won't take you safely to the end.' Well, we've now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. 'The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.' But there aren't any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?"

"Then you think there is no God?"

"No, I think there quite probably is one."

"Then why? …"

Mustapha Mond checked him. "But he manifests himself in different ways to different men. In premodern times he manifested himself as the being that's described in these books. Now …"

"How does he manifest himself now?" asked the Savage.

"Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren't there at all."

My review on “The Fountainhead” (part 2)

2004-12-02T10:43:00.000+05:30

(Part 1 of the review is in my
previous post)

I started reading this novel since the opening was quite dramatic and it also boasted of some new philosophy. I got good comments on these by a couple of my friends who had read this and so I started to read it very expectedly. Initially I thought the story was quite good with some weird characterizations. Then the story also started getting weird. I knew something was wrong, but not quite what it was. About six months back I finally hit upon it when I read a stupid view on nature (given in the section on nature below). Not yet convinced, I did a search on Google and hit upon
Ayn Rand Institute’s webpage (the institute is headed by Leornard Peikoff, who is the ideological heir of Rand). I read two articles, one explaining why we should not care for nature because doing so would slow down ‘development’ and another arguing that there was nothing wrong in US invasion of Iraq, and in fact US troops should leave Iraq in anarchy and return immediately since the purpose of the war was served (this last part is a bit too much). It was then that I decided to go through the novel more carefully to understand how a novel on objectivism inspires people to advocate such subjective trash. In the first part of the review, I criticized the novel as I would from my heart alone. But since many “objectivists” would say that anything subjective is worthless, I am providing this review written as objectively as possible. I am not providing a plot summary since that would make the already long review, even longer. You can find a
plot summary here.

The main flaw with this novel is that Ayn Rand tries to justify her philosophy by only portraying two extremes. She has a black and white vision of the world, there is no grey, leave alone any color. Thus, there are two sets of characters in this novel. One is the ‘objectivist’ kind. They are a geniuses in their own field, mostly asocial, have absolute integrity, posses such ‘virtues’ like selfishness, self-centeredness, egotism and have weird personal relations. On the other side are the ‘subjectivists’ who are the exact opposite, incompetent in their own field, have no integrity, posses or pretend to posses these virtues - altruism, humility. There is no one who can posses a mixture of these (the exception being Ellsworth Toohey and few minor characters like Heller & Kent Lansing). So she manages to nicely bash up the subjectivists and their virtues. Now why can’t people posses a mixture of these characters? This question is never answered. In fact Rand tries to escape from this by saying that her characterization of hero is as “man ought to be and should be”. My simple question is that if a philosophy can be expounded only with such characters that are perfect (or totally imperfect), then how it is suitable to this world where the people have various shades in their characters? For instance, I have seen or known many people of immense original talent who don’t have the characters of Rand’s objectivists. For instance, Albert Einstien was one of the best scientists of last century. Yet, he was a humanist. He was know for his humorous, gregarious nature and though he
influenced US to build the atomic bomb (because of the threat of Germany), he was disturbed by it’s use and
later advocated for peace. Or consider, Linus C Pauling, the only person to get two unshared Nobel prizes, a noted chemist, he opposed the US government on nuclear issue so vehemently that he was not certain of being allowed to go to Sweden to collect his chemistry Nobel prize. Now was it not altruism? Or if still not satisfied consider the following quote –

Quoting from Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Aspects (Gerald Holton and Yehuda Elkana, editors) (thanks to this website):

“The one man who was, during the last years, certainly by far Einstein's best friend, and in some ways strangely resembled him most, was Kurt Gödel, the great logician. They were very different in almost every personal way - Einstein gregarious, happy, full of laughter and common sense, and Gödel extremely solemn, very serious, quite solitary, and distrustful of common sense as a means of arriving at the truth. But they shared a fundamental quality: both went directly and wholeheartedly to the questions at the very center of things.”

This exactly shows the point I am trying to drive at. These two men were both great scientists, yet very different in their personal traits. Einstein was unlike a Rand objectivist, but Godel was quite like one – like Roark for instance – though I don’t know whether he had the same ethics. Yet they were both good friends and worked together. This simply shows that being able to think rationally has nothing to do with a person’s personal relations and ethics – at least not in the black and white way it is described in the novel. Rand simply tries to impose her model of dangerous ethics and weird personal behavior as objectivism, when in fact, objectively analyzing it we find that this has nothing to do with it.

The other problem with the novel is that Rand twists and distorts the popular meaning of some common things like selfishness and selflessness, until it suits her philosophy. She defines selflessness and altruism in the most extreme way and of course manages to discredit them. Selfishness also has an extended definition which means that we care for what we own, where what we own can be anything which we rationally support. This is of course far from common meaning of selfishness (and is closer to altruism, in which case Rand has told nothing new) and thus the philosophy is ripe for a lot of misuse, which is I think what is happening now.

The only key positive takeaway is the importance of reason, but Rand is not the first one to tell this! Reason is always the main thing to guide our actions and I have seen its importance being stressed in many places in the traditional literature I have learnt in my childhood [for an instance see FOOTNOTE 4]. Also Rand, as with any other thing, takes reason to an extreme and claims it as the absolute and in the process doesn’t recognize that reason has its own limits [see FOOTNOTE 1].

Inconsistent characterization:

Peter Keating:

This character is Rand’s illustration of how a ‘selfless’ man ends up unhappy. This is worst characterization flaw in the novel. I have never known any topper in my entire academic life who is so bereft of original talent. It seems Rand simply wanted to bash up academic establishments by this. Accepted that toppers may not be the best in their class, but a topper in Architecture in Stanton (parody of Stanford?), not confident enough to design a house is simply too much. He also seems to be so emotionally weak. However lacking in integrity a person is, there is always a breaking point and realistically it should be when he is asked to send Dominique(his wife) along with Wyanand, for the sake of a single commission. He wouldn’t have starved without that single commission!

Dominique Francon/Keating/Wyanand/Roark:

She is the heroine of the novel. I was confused as to which last name I should use, so I have given all those which come in the novel. She seems to a character with no aim in life until she sees Roark and from the moment she sees him, her only aim is to live for Roark (this is individualism?). She proudly states that she has no purpose in life in the following quote (conversation between Dominique and Alvah Scarret, pp 134):

“…Is it an inspiring sight to see a man commit a heroic gesture, and then learn that he goes to vaudeville shows for relaxation? Or see a man who’s painted a magnificent canvas- and learn that he spends his time sleeping with every slut he meets?
What do you want? Perfection?
- or nothing. So you see, I take the nothing”

Rand has provided an ideal excuse for any idler! Dominique doesn’t seem to be educated in any grad school but suddenly becomes an expert in Architecture. She is the one who can separate wheat from chaff, and also judge that the one who designed Enright house was an objectivist, just with its drawings! (Dominique to Toohey, pp.232) She also dumps two of her husbands Keating and Wynand very rudely. In fact I could never get the way she dumped Wynand. It was at the worst possible time, in the worst possible manner and for what? How did she suddenly realize that she should defend Roark? What if Wynand had never defended Roark in the first place? It seems Rand just wanted a picture perfect ending with the hero and the heroine living happily together ever after!

Howard Roark:

He is Rand’s idea of a perfect man. Except for his genius in architecture, everything in this character is weird. I won’t discuss about his ethics, since I don’t like to trivialize ethics by discussing them as Rand has done ‘objectively’. But still some things were very irritating. He eats drinks and sleeps only architecture and he can’t live without it. I don’t know how he ‘objectively’ (at the age of ten!) chose architecture. If he is exposed to other fields would he not find another interesting? Can’t he work in that field and architecture simultaneously? Again Rand seems to forget history. We have had many multi-faceted geniuses, like Leornado Da Vinci, who was good as a painter, engineer, mathematician, architect and philosopher. So does this mean that he was not good in any of those? Probably according to Ayn Rand.

Ellsworth Toohey:

Being a powerful antagonist character in the novel, this is quite well etched. However there is still a small flaw I perceive. Why does he try to encourage mediocrity when he himself is certainly not mediocre? The reason Rand gives is that he finds that “only weak people need his help”, which doesn’t seem a strong enough motive. Rand also says that he wants power, but it is very uncertain as to what sort of power it is and how he intends to use it.

Treatment of Nature:

Rand for some reason seems to utterly despise nature. The quote below would be enough to show it (Wynand to Dominique, pp. 433)-

“… When I look at the ocean, I feel the greatness of man. I think of man’s magnificent capacity that created this ship to conquer all this senseless space. When I look at mountain peaks, I think of tunnels and dynamite. When I look at planets, I think of aeroplanes.”

This is at the core of the mistake of the industrialized world and Rand stresses it as a philosophy! Why is the ocean senseless? Is human kind really independent of sea life? Similar themes that man’s principal aim is to “conquer nature” are consistently and quite unobtrusively inserted in the whole novel, mainly in philosophical dialogues. The fact that we view nature as something external to us and to be exploited and not as something which is a part of us and necessary for our own survival has been the reason for much of the environmental crises arising of late. If our rampant industrialization destroys our environment then how do we live? The answer by the objectivists may be something like in the dialogue I have given in the previous post. Though this may be a bit of an exaggeration this was the impression I got from going through many articles in ARI website.

Ayn Rand considers unrestrained capitalism to be the cure for all evils and I don’t quite see the reason in this. Rand, quite rightly, criticizes social vanities like party circuits, fashion and escapist entertainment and recreation as being “irrational”, but I don’t think she really acknowledges that capitalism plays an important role in promoting these. Also, she seems to assume that capitalism always encourages original talent, with which I strongly differ.

It was my individual interest which made me have a closer look at the novel and there in lies the irony – some ideas (like reason) work against many other ideas in it. Also Rand ironically becomes similar to her main fictional antagonist, Ellsworth M Toohey.

Toohey has an amateur knowledge of Architecture, but still writes a book which becomes a bestseller and changes public opinion in architecture. Rand too explains her philosophy in two dramatic novels with a lot of pop-heroism, makes it a bestseller and has a dedicated cult like popular following
(article here). Their intentions may be different, but their means is very similar. Again, ironically a saying which best fits the situation would be this, though Rand would scorn at it as being mystical.

“The more two things are different, the more they are the same”

In summary, the following is my opinion on the novel. As a literary work it is good in parts (I like especially the dialogues of Dominique). However, I should also note that in my limited exposure to fiction I have read authors much better than her in style and characterization (like Marquez and Okri). As a philosophy it is ironically very subjective [Footnote 2] and even dangerous. Rand destroys even some good ideas like reason and integrity by taking them to an absurd extreme. The dangerous extreme to which the novel goes is best summarized by this quote. (Roark’s speech, pp. 667)

“All that which proceeds from man’s independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man’s dependence upon men is evil”

In this way, all products from our big companies are evil! In addition, she links reason with such unreasonable ideas like utter disregard for environment, asocial behavior and retrogressive portrayal of women (I have not touched on this, but this aspect is too well known). This might have been a vehement counter to socialism when it was written, but today it is apparent that it has aged very badly. It is also quite a dangerous book since Rand manages to be quite manipulative, especially if read quite lightly. This aspect is also apparent from what her followers like ARI and to some extent Libertarian party[FOOTNOTE 3] are doing. I don’t know why this novel is so popular and influential, but probably because people like reading weird things told in a dramatic way or worse because they like the philosophy since it allows them to justify some of their actions which can’t be justified otherwise.

Now I know that many would pounce upon me saying that I am commenting on objectivism without reading Rand’s masterpiece “Atlas Shrugged” or her few philosophical books. This is true. But I guess Rand has fully defined objectivism in this novel and it is only explained in more detail in “Atlas Shrugged”. Nevertheless I would like to read it some day, but since literary/ideological criticism is not my livelihood I wouldn’t like to spend much time on it very soon (especially since I would like to read it “in depth” as I had done with this novel). Also, as much as I try to refute it, it is undeniable that criticizing a novel to this extent results in a certain negative emotional drain and thus I would like to move away from all this and read some works I really like. Of course I am open to answering any comments/queries based on this review/novel, which in any way shouldn’t require much effort since I have done most of the home work already.

[FOOTNOTE 1]

Why reason is not the absolute

A mathematician Godel discovered a result in 1931 which has far reaching consequences. He proved that “No consistent logical system can prove itself to be consistent, unless it is inconsistent in which case it can prove anything” [Kozen, D.C, Automata and computability, Springer]. As a result of this, no logical system can claim to prove all known truths (mathematical truths or “true theorems”) and worse some truths proven by it may not be true because we can never know whether it is consistent. Of course we can prove a system is consistent by going to a meta-system, but again that meta-system may be inconsistent and hence we have to stop some where by just trusting that the system is consistent until an actual inconsistency is found out. Thus our entire mathematical system is in essence built upon faith. Not the same faith as used in common parlance, but faith nevertheless. Now, I am not a philosopher or a mathematician and so I won’t try to elaborate on the philosophical significance of this, though it is true that it does have a lot. The simple question that I wish to ask is, when logic (or reason) is not absolute even in the idealized world of mathematics how Ayn Rand expects it to be the absolute in the imperfect physical world?
(back)

[FOOTNOTE 2]

Some glaring subjectivisms in a book on “objectivism”!

Roark and Dominique seem to understand each other through telepathy (as in their first meeting and many meetings later)? Is telepathy scientifically proven?
During their first love making Dominique doesn’t have any idea of Roark’s creative skills or his ‘objectivism’. Or did she find it out by how he grilled through stones at the quarry!?
“The first motor was considered foolish [Roark’s speech pp. 664]”. Who considered it foolish? When? Can somebody provide some reference on this, as I am not able to find any despite my best efforts!
“…when I look at the planets, I think of aeroplanes” .Who ever told Wynand (and Rand) that an aeroplane can fly to a planet? ‘planets’ should have read ‘sky’ or something else, but is it a innocuous mistake or a sinister distortion of truth?
How is the art (sorry, science) of knowing a person by his face and first glance objectively justified? (Toohey’s speech, pp. 252)
(back)

[FOOTNOTE 3]

There is a
movement called Libertarianism which is closely related to objectivism (though
"objectivists" don't recognize this). It is the “third largest” political party in the US now. I came across an open letter
by its "pioneer" president-candidate asking voters to vote for Bush in this
presidency elections (though I saw this in ARI, I don't have that link now ). I don’t question his political stand, since I can’t lay claim to enough first-hand or even second-hand information on the political scenario in US. My point here is that this article, coming from a
"objectivist" movement is very subjective. It is common knowledge that one of the main accusations against Bush was that he lead US to war on Iraq on still unsubstantiated grounds of existence of WMDs. The author who supports Bush, doesn’t mention
this even once and beats about the bush for most of the part claiming things like "terror network in Iraq" has been destroyed. Alas, to what levels has objectivism fallen!
(back)

[FOOTNOTE 4]

This couplet from the nearly two thousand year old Tamil work Thirukkural is one which quickly comes to my mind, but surely there are many others.

“Epporul yaryarvaik ketpinum apporul

Meypporul kanbadhu arivu” (Kural 423)

“What ever we may hear from whichever source, to find the true meaning of that, is the function of the intellect”
(back)

I am an objectivist!

2004-11-26T17:44:00.000+05:30

I have realized after finishing Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead, that I am an objectivist. I am an objectivist simply because I like to be. Yes there is an objective reason behind this, but I don’t have to explain this to anybody since others opinions don’t matter to me. Yet, due to my own objective decision, I would let some of those reasons be known to you now.

It gives me absolute freedom. I can do anything I want and since anything I do is for my own interests and selfishness is a virtue, I am right in doing whatever I like. I don’t have to care for the society and in particular for those I don’t like (because they are always subjective). I have no responsibilities, barring what I choose to be comfortable for myself. It also gives me absolute freedom in my personal relations. I can make or break any relation without having to offer any explanations (just like Dominique does to Keating and later Wynand in the novel). I am correct in disobeying the government in many things, since it has no right to curtail my individual freedom. In particular I am correct in not paying my taxes, since taxation is only a means to benefit the poor by stealing from the rich. Above all I like this philosophy now because with some luck I am powerful in the society now and I don’t want to share the power with anyone, nor help anyone else to reach that place.

I do not care for the environment because I would make less profit if I care for it. And in any case my wealth insulates me from the environment with the use of technology and it is only the poor people who are going to suffer, with whom I don’t sympathize for any reason. In fact if somebody were to ask me about environmental concerns, inspired by some ideas in this book, I would answer them in the following way.

Are effects like global warming, not a result of our unrestrained exploitation of our environment?
Yes.
Then should this continue?
Yes.
Then what would happen to our environment? All of the land mass may be submerged soon. Where would we live?
Human genius has long found an answer for this. Using super-strong alloys, we construct entire cities suspended in air. We can grow vegetables and fruits using greenhouses, we can have even parks, resorts…
Who would provide the money for this?
Our great corporations will do.
Then, wouldn’t this be prohibitively expensive for our poor? Don’t they need to live?
Yes it will be too expensive for the poor. And yes they don’t need to live. The poor have no right to live. The poor remain poor because they are incompetent, lazy and dumb-headed[see speech by Dominque at pp.130]. In this world of survival of the fittest, they don’t deserve to live.

Of course I understand that there some moral issues which can’t be dealt with entirely rationally, and as long as they are not important to me, I’ll allow organizations like ARI to decide for me.

If these reasons don’t seem to be objective it is because I have chosen to disclose only some of my reasons and obviously my reasons can never be subjective because I am an objectivist which implies that I am a perfect man.

PS: If you haven’t got what I am saying, then look out for my review on “The Fountainhead” which I’ll post shortly. If you are getting it, then that is better – you would be able to enjoy my review much more!

On Kudaikkul Mazhai and other movies

2004-10-18T15:59:00.000+05:30

I had seen quite a few movies a recently and I thought I can comment on a few. One that I was most impressed by was “Kudaikkul Mazhai”(Rain within Umbrella), scripted, directed, produced and performed by Parthipan. I was expecting something different from this film, but nothing prepared me for what I saw. Given that most of the film took place in an old bungalow, I thought it would be similar to either “Kadhal Kondean” or “Julie Ganapathy”. But I couldn’t be more wrong. The story shows how a sensitive man is very much disturbed when a girl pretends to love him for a candid camera show. It then shows how he is afflicted with schizophrenic delusion and from then on proceeds to the rest of the story. I wouldn’t like to spoil the suspense by revealing anything, but there is a sudden twist at the end, which puts the entire story at a different perspective. But there are numerous clues for this throughout the film, for instance, that the rest of the film has a surreal feel and also that heroine seems to behave in a way that is strangely ideal, as the hero would like her to. Well I guess I have already revealed quite a bit! The twist is some ways similar to one in “The sixth sense” though the story has nothing to do with it. The dealing of illusions is in some vague way similar to “A beautiful mind”, though when comparing with that, this story ends where that really begins. Though I am comparing with other films for their style, the content and presentation is startlingly fresh and I have certainly not seen this in any other film before. Parthipan builds the film with various strange incidents which finally get justified only by the climax. There are numerous symbolic incidents too, a few of which went over my head! But what astounded me was, the professionalism displayed in the film. There is not a single incident, a single scene which is wasted and inserted for commercial sake. Many describe the brother character of hero as unnecessary but on retrospect (again after the climax) it is very much necessary, though those dialogues could have been cut down. Parthipan has not compromised anything for commercial sake, and if the film is intellectually challenging he lets it to be so. With only two main characters the performances are important and both, especially Parthipan have done very well. In all it’s a refreshingly different, moderately entertaining film, even if it strains on your brain. I guess the film hasn’t done well commercially which is not very surprising, though I hope Parthipan continues to take such films!

I also saw “Nandha” directed by Bala, for the second time. This film, which remade Surya as an actor, is quite somber, mostly about relationship between son and mother and ends with mother poisoning her son and killing him and herself. Most films would be clarified on seeing them for a second time, but in this I only got more confused. It is always quite difficult get any intended message out of Bala’s movies and so just as I considered “Sethu” to be only a new kind of love tragedy, I was considering this film as an emotional tragedy. But I did notice something else in this viewing. It seems to show the conflict between violence and non-violence. Rajkiran, who professes violence to right any wrongs and that we are our own god is at one extreme. The other protagonist is, strangely, silent but much more effective. Surya’s mother is appalled at the effect of his violence, like her husband getting killed or about the plight of Rajkiran’s daughter (at the end of the film). Surya is torn between the two, and chooses the path of violence initially though in the end he willingly and knowingly submits to his mother poisoning him. This makes me wonder whether Bala resolves the conflict towards non-violence, though this is too vague an indicator. What impressed me most was that many important twists in the movie are explained by only one dialogue or none at all– just the barely sufficient, no over emphasis or theatrics. For instance, in the climax, the fact that Surya willingly takes the poison gives a new interpretation for the film. But this is shown without even a single dialogue. Surya takes in the food, after tasting it and finding it to be poisoned looks confused one moment, then he looks at his mother with a bitter look which slowly translates to a knowing glance and he finally takes up the rest of the food. This turned out to be the most poetical scene in the film. This is what I consider to be the hallmark of any Bala film. The most important scene which justifies the whole film is dealt with only subtle emotions and no dialogues and no theatrics. Whether it is Vikram in “Sethu” who silently disregards his relatives and goes back to the asylum, not necessarily because he is mentally retarded but because he wants seclusion, or Vikram in “Pithamagan” who disregards his lover and hence the entire society in a single gesture and walks back, or Surya in this movie, Bala confidently rests his entire film on a few powerful gestures, instead of wasting time on lengthy dialogues and theatrics, something which even famed directors like Mani Ratnam don’t do consistently, as was demonstrated in his latest film “Aayitha Ezhthu”. My AE and Pithamagan reviews can be found here and here.

Though this post is already too long, I have to comment about a few more films. Both had revenge as the theme and hence I shouldn’t have liked them. But they gave quite convincing reasons and the presentation was also good and so I should accept that, regardless of the message, they were an entertaining watch. One was “Varnajalam” (Play of colours). This is a fairly recent film and Srikanth had done a grey character very well. This is a story of a personal revenge which is executed coldly and clinically. The story is told quite well, though it appeared a bit confusing to me, probably since I wasn’t watching the film attentively. What impressed me was that there were no insertions to the climax like a new love relation for the hero – it just ended with him taking revenge. However the film sagged in the middle and comedy track by Karunas was a damp squib. The second was “Sabash”, with Parthipan as the hero. I actually started watching this after sometime from the start, but it was quite interesting. This shows how, a husband avenges a person indirectly responsible for her wife’s death by framing him in the same case. There was a constant suspense as to whether Parthipan’s methods would be exposed and how he deals with various challenges. All the actors had performed well. This was also quite professional with no unnecessary stuff. I think these two films were not noticed much, though I don’t know the reason. They were focused on their theme and were quite entertaining, and frankly I don’t expect anything more from a film.

Quite a contrast from the films I have described above was “Minnale”, which was also remade/dubbed in Hindi as something whose acronym is RTDM. This is directed by Gautam who later directed “Kaaka Kaaka” and frankly I couldn’t believe that it was the same person who directed both. I have always believed that a director stamps his identity on all his films, but here I am wrong. Virtually everything that is good in KK is messed up here. One instance is the picturization of the songs. Nice music by Harris Jayaraj and good lyrics has been messed up in the film. Of course the script is itself quite weak and the climax was the expected one. The film also has numerous logical flaws, but I won’t waste time & space by discussing that. Either Gautam must have learned a lot in the time in between the two films or he must be quite inconsistent in the application of his skills and I hope it is the former .

An experience called "Autumn of the Patriarch"

2004-09-27T19:28:00.000+05:30

I was planning to write about “Brave new world” first, but since I thought I needed to compose my thoughts more, I would be commenting on “The Autumn of the patriarch” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Reading this novel was a whole new experience. Some books like “Brave new world” have made me think, but this is the one which has made to feel strongly. Not that there wasn’t anything to think about it, but that happens much later. The novel is about the life of a tyrant of an imaginary Caribbean country. Marquez’s imagery and narrative is so stunningly beautiful that we become a part of this novel, sympathizing with the people of the country ruled by the tyrant and also sympathizing with how a normal person with normal fallacies becomes a tyrant.

Marquez follows a ‘stream of consciousness’ style here – which means that the flow is as chaotic as our everyday thinking. It starts somewhere and in between branches of to something related, backwards or forwards in time and often Marquez doesn’t come back to where he started. The whole novel is organized as six independent sections (or chapters) – independent because they don’t exactly build upon events in earlier chapters. Each one starts just after the death of the dictator, and crisscrosses time and space. To heighten the effect, Marquez uses long (really long) sentences running to 3-4 pages usually and last one (which is the last chapter) running to some 50 pages. Of course these are not grammatical, as everything like person, tense and time change during a sentence and to add to all this the author doesn’t put dialogs in quotes. What results is a novel which is quite difficult to get into. But I think it is these same things which add to the magical appeal of the novel – the ‘stream of consciousness’ with long sentences really make the happenings a little bit confusing and hence add a magical, illusionary appeal – it hints on the theme of the novel – deception and self-deception. It is as if, the state machinery deceives the people about the dictator and dictator about the people so from either side we don’t get the true picture and hence traces of that deception remain in the reader’s mind too. Apart from the style, Marquez doesn’t use much of magical realism here, but where he uses, it intensifies the imagery superbly.

I also felt like regretting the choice of the novel for the first 15-20 pages, but once I really got in, nothing, not even the effort of reading each part at least twice to understand it, could stop me. The imagery and narrative was breathtaking and it was really an experience to read this. For instance, in one of the sequence where the dictator’s wife is assassinated, the description wasn’t exactly so gory, but the imagery was so disturbing that I had to take my eyes off and relax for a minute or so. The final page really drives home the theme of self-deception. Reflecting on this, I realized how dangerous self-deception was and even recognized some instances from my life where I have willingly deceived myself. This can also be read as a tragic tale of how a simple person is pushed in to becoming a dictator for his life. But most of all, this can be simply read for its literary splendor; it’s breathtaking and awe-inspiring imagery.
Below is my favorite quote from this novel, plucked out from near the end of last sentence and another quote to go with it.

"...but he learned to live with those and all the miseries of glory as he
discovered in the course of his uncountable years that a lie is more comfortable
than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth, he had arrived
without surprise at the ignominious fiction of commanding without power, of
being exalted without glory and of being obeyed without authority..."
Gabriel
Garcia Marquez,"The Autumn of the Patriarch".

"Nothing is so easy
as to deceive oneself; for what we wish, we readily believe." Demosthenes, Greek
Orator.

A desperate move?

2004-09-06T15:15:00.000+05:30

I have a lot of things in my mind and since I wasn’t finding enough time to put them down, I thought I can take a look at a current issue. As some would have guessed from the title, it is nothing but the “ban” on release of non-Kannada films for 7 weeks after their release elsewhere. Surprisingly, this ‘ban’ is not from the government but from the film producers association (or whatever it’s called), but seemingly has the tacit support of the government. While the ban, which is from somebody outside the government being implemented, is itself a cause for deep concern, the reasons given for the ban are only more so. This move is supposed to protect the Kannada film industry and give more (captive) market for the Kannada films. I don’t know how they expected everyone to start viewing Kannada films just because other films are not available, rather than do the obvious, view the same other language films through pirated VCDs. The first obvious reaction of this ban has already come with the closure of many theatres in Bangalore. If, god forbid, should the ban become permanent, the net effect would be that most of the theatres which showed non-Kannada films would close down and there would be an increase of piracy for all these films and as a side-effect for the Kannada films too. Thus the producers association seems to have come up with a magical solution which harms both parties. The only reason for such a move could be, I think, desperation. After this ban, I came to know from various press reports that the Kannada film industry is in quite a bad shape. But the solution is to introspect and improve the quality of Kannada films, not these kind of moves which seem to be an acceptance of the poor quality of Kannada films. Of course during the rebuilding period some kind of protection may be required for Kannada films, which can be enforced in a much gentler manner like requiring all theatres to screen a fixed number (which should be judiciously decided) of Kannada films in a year. These kind of moves only end up in making people seeing other language films feeling discriminated against. As an aside, moves like these and some simple things like bus route labels still being in Kannada only, makes me feel that Bangalore is still unable to reconcile itself being a cosmopolitan city. Click here to see how a Kannada filmmaker also feels in the same way (read under sub-heading 'appalled').

On some Vikatan books and director Bala

2004-08-05T19:00:00.000+05:30

An interesting and absorbing series has just come to an end in the Tamil weekly Ananta Vikatan. Authored by writer S.Ramakrishnan and titled ‘ThunaiEzhuthu’ (Supporting Letter), the series was one of the best ones I had read in magazines. It is a series of essays focusing on various topics sometimes quite abstract. The author usually starts of with a personal incident, but soon goes to a deeper and somewhat philosophical interpretation of the topic that is usually quite touching and also thought provoking. Hopefully, Vikatan should be publishing this as a book as they do for most of their series articles. Then it would be a must buy for me.

Meanwhile, one of the books already published by Vikatan which would be good buy is Evan thaan Bala (He is Bala), a semi-auto biographical account by director Bala. It recently came as a series in the same magazine and I read most of the parts. Atleast according to me, it is a very frank account of his life by Bala. To those who are not aware of Bala, he is currently one of top directors of Tamil cinema. Many adore his direction style and some others, I guess, hate it. The reason may be that all his 3 films so far have been quite disturbing and end in tragedy. Still his first film (Sethu remade in Hindi as Tere Naam) was a blockbuster and others were also hits. Though regarded by many to be on the same league as Mani Ratnam, his direction style is quite different. For one, he shuns any form of glamour, which may be results in an added emphasis on violence in most of his films. Interestingly, I have observed that many die hard fans of Mani detest Bala. Frankly, I like both their films though they are very different. I was intrigued by the weirdness of Bala’s films and started reading this series to know more about this. This book could be quite inspirational to many, as Bala describes his transformation from reckless, uncared for and rowdy youth to one of the top directors in Tamil cinema. Both the books are published by Vikatan Publications.

The kumkonam tragedy and it's lessons

2004-07-21T09:50:00.000+05:30

The recent fire in Kumbakonam is a very tragic and entirely avoidable incident. For many years, I have seen such schools which are run from a residential building with no open space at all. The thatched roof literally became the final straw, I think. Only now after the incident the government has taken steps to close all such schools. However I don’t think that this incident should be politicized. Also I feel the opposition’s statement that the government did not take enough steps after the Srirangam fire (which was at a marriage hall) is also not just. Simply because, the government had then taken steps to scrutinize (only) all marriage halls and this is what you expect from any normal government here ! Such is the state of governance and administration in our country that the government only takes stop-gap measures after each tragedy. May be another tragedy (though god forbid that) should happen so that government scrutinizes some other public facility. What is needed now is a complete relook at the administrative system that has allowed this to happen and just a suspension of a few officers involved in the incident would not serve that purpose.

However for me, what was more disturbing was the reports that teachers of the children had abandoned them and saved themselves. Also it is reported that one of the teachers instructed the students not to leave and told that the fire can be controlled ! As if to vindicate these reports the teachers are still absconding. I think that this is only symptomatic of the moral decline of our society. In a society driven by money, teaching profession (especially at school level) is not at all lucrative because of the pay levels. Thus mostly only those who are not able to take up other professions end up in this and they also only think of earning more money by taking tuitions. Being service oriented and caring for their students seems to be a thing of the past. If not for high ideals of the teachers even basic humanity should have prevented such a despicable action. That the teachers who are supposed to make the next generation don’t even have these basic human values is a cause for grave concern.

As an aside, I think the habit of students going for tuitions has increased phenomenally in Tamil Nadu. I myself never went to tuitions until my 12th standard and it was the same for most of my then classmates. Now I hear of students going for tuitions for many subjects even before 5th standard, even in small towns. (In this atleast there is a generation gap with in 6-7 years!)And most of the times, the tuition teachers are the same as their teachers in school ! Also, various pressures exerted by teachers to make children join their tuition, like being biased against them or not teaching properly are not uncommon. I am strongly against this trend, not only because this puts the teaching profession in a bad light, but also because it is sure stamp out any creativity that is still left in the students after going through our syllabus and examinations.

Becoming more mundane

2004-07-19T03:12:00.000+05:30

As I told in my previous post, the title of the blog was chosen impulsively and like for most decisions taken so, I began to regret it after sometime. The title appeared to grandiose in nature and though occasionally I would discuss such grand ideas, by no means would my blog be composed of only such discussions. After thinking about an alternative name for sometime, I hit upon this title – ‘Pseudo random scribblings’. I would now try to explain the rationale behind this title (assuming there is one!). I was tempted to name the blog as ‘random scribblings’, but after some thought I realised that my writings would not actually be in random areas and I would exclude myself from certain areas while concentrating myself one some other areas.
Some of the areas from where I would exclude myself are –

Active political stands or discussions
Personal issues which are of no relevance to anyone except me (this will not be a personal journal)

Some of the areas where I would like to concentrate are –

Apolitical discussions on current issues
Review, criticism on literature I come across (mainly fiction)
Review, criticism on movies I happen to watch (mainly Tamil, occasionally English, Hindi)
On other things which affect me in some way (like my first post)

With the bulk of my writings to be concentrated in these areas, I didn’t think it could be called as ‘random scribblings’. True, that this is not exactly pseudo-random either, but I don’t know of any other class of randomness in between these two!
[Even assuming that there is no other class of randomness between random and pseudo-random, what is given above is not a precise definition of the scope of the blog and hence concepts like random & pseudo-random may not be even applicable to this.

Accepted, but I am not immune to the human tendency of trying to explain intellectually the things which are in essence decided at heart.]

Truth , Beauty and Happiness

2004-06-27T22:40:00.000+05:30

I have started this blog quite impulsively after seeing that quite a few of my peers in IISc have started one ! For sometime now, i have had some ideas which i wanted to post somewhere, but was hesitant in starting a blog because i knew that i would not be able to update it frequently. But today, in a moment of impulse i have started one and i only hope that i can continue to keep it alive.

Coming to the topic of the blog, for i think it ought to be explained in the first post, i should concede that the topic was also chosen quite impulsively as the page asking for topic was staring at me, as the only barrier for me creating a blog. Nevertheless, this had been a topic which has provoked quite a few thoughts in me. The first time i began to consider truth and beauty as being equivalent, was when i read (actually, re-read)
John Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn. Though, i am not a avid reader of poetry, i first read this as a regular part of our syllabus in high school and though i didn't understand it fully, i was enchanted by it. A few years later in college, i managed to do some searching in net and understood more of the poem. The following lines were present as my mail signature for quite some time (perplexing quite a few !) -

"...Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter;...
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty.'-that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
John Keats in "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
"When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
--Buckminster Fuller

The whole poem is so enjoyable and thought provoking to read. Just do a google search, you'll find many copies.

The third item in the list - "Happiness" may be considered by many to be equivalent or alteast directly proportional (pardon my terminolgy) to the other two. I always had a vague veiwpoint that while 'true happiness' can be considered to be equivalent to these, the happiness that most of us want and get, which is merely a delusion of our senses, only leads us farther from Truth and Beauty. And then one day by quite a chance, i happened to read a novel by Aldous Huxley - The Brave New World. This not only supported, but also reinforced many times my views on these. This novel is extraordinarily prophetic, as in 1930's Huxley has prophesised a society which has a strong resemblance to our current society, but live in a way which would not be very pleasant to us all. All the inhabitants (well, almost all) are happy, because they are made to be happy, by sensuous delusion of their senses. This is where i think our current soceity influenced by western materialism is heading to. Some may find that some things dont exactly confirm to a capitalist society, like the state control over the subjects, but upon some thought this is the only way there can be some stability in a purely capitalist society. I intent to post a detailed review on it, sometime soon. But for now, here is a tantalizing quote from the novel -
(pardon me that this not exactly a quote, since i dont have the text with me now).

(From the coversation between Savage (a being like us!) and World Controller)
Savage: Do you think God exists now?
WC: Yes, i think so. God manifests himself in various forms at various times....
Savage: Then, how does he manifest himself now?
WC : He manifests himself by his absence