vishal bra-burner

besides the fact that he's an accomplished dialogue/screenplay writer, adapter of shakespeare, composer, director, lyricist... damn... now a singer too, there's another reason to like vishal bhardwaj. he is also a believer in the equality of the sexes.

for proof, recall the scene in omkara where mr. omi is crushing out sugarcane juice. as he twists the cog of the mill, his pectorals strain with the effort and etch themselves against his dark chocolate skin, and his waxed-clean naked torso gleams in the sun with beads of sweat. it is a beautiful, real body - lean and strong, not a body pumped up on hormones, that suits a comic superhero better than a real man.

with that scene, mr. bhardwaj deftly reversed the direction of the Gaze that had been focused on the female body for as long as there have been movies.

thank you. thank you.

be careful what you wish for

vasundhara raje is flummoxed that her desert state is under severe flood threat. she shouldn’t be. it was her party bhai narendra modi who had insisted gujarat needed more water and had berated the dam oustees for being selfish for refusing to get submerged.

mr. modi, how’s the view from under the water now?

less than an A4 sheet in times new roman font size 12…

is how long a bibliography of books on arunachal by natives would be. and this is including suspect works of research by suspect academics.

works of fiction? i know of only two that date before 2006. both were in assamese – konya’r mulyo (the price of a girl) and prithibir hanhi (the laughter of the earth) - both by lummer dai. in case you are wondering, assamese used to be the language of instruction in the NEFA days. i haven’t read either.

so, as a native with literary aspirations and pretenses, i simultaneously smiled with pride and seethed with envy when i found out that penguin has brought out ‘the legends of pensam’ by mamang dai. i had hoped to be the one to put our stories to paper. but mamang has a headstart of at least 25 years. still, my book is coming too.(maybe a collection of my blogposts).

but for now, here's my review of the book -

the author is a poet first. even if you didn’t know that she has already published a collection called ‘river poems’, the lyricism of the opening pages of 'the legends’ would reveal her as a poet. she sees the world in songs. she deftly molds english, this foreign tongue, to evoke the cadence of the native voices.

i was carried through more than half of the book on the rise and fall of these voices. it was like visiting my childhood among the pinewood smoke swirling up into the settling dusk, half-listening to stories being swapped by my grandmother and her friends, their shared reminiscences of interesting times - when dr. williamson was killed in komsing, when the great earthquake had moved mountains, when my grandmother had to flee with my infant mother to dibrugarh as a ‘repji’ in a helicopter. (someday i'll take you to my childhood. my childhood was also about the persistent mosquitoes, and the noisy muddy pigs, and the anemic light of the little bulb that lit about an hour of our evenings daily. But memory makes magic.)

mamang builds moods intimately. she draws the landscapes with an expert eye. and she peoples these landscapes with believable characters and their stories. a friend of mine reflected that the book is very south-american in its flavour. i disagree. i do not think the author consciously or otherwise borrows from garcia or anyone else. they simply happen to share similar contexts.

however, through the enchantment of this competent retelling of such stories, one slowly wakes up to the weakness of the structure. the half-hearted use of a sutradhar and her friend mona begins to jar. mona and her husband pierre are firangs. their presence in the stories adds nothing, except maybe as expendable counterpoints and parallels.

the book in essence is a collection of short stories. and she should have let it be one instead of an uncomfortable imposition of an overarching narrative. And while at that, some of the rawer stories could have been culled out and allowed to ripen in the author’s mind for another time and another collection.

oh, and there’s a very cringeworthy lovemaking scene.

it’s definitely not going to be shortlisted for a booker. however, to anyone who wants to know arunachal – about its past and its present, i would say 'the legends' is a pleasant place to begin. it’s a bonafide arunachali effort by a bonafide arunachali. if you are looking for an addition to your collection that you want to will to your grandchild, you may look for something else.

actually, make someone else buy it, read it and tell me what you think.

pg 16

i had gone to patiala house to get my birth certificate attested (apparently, to get residence permit in the netherlands, one has to prove one was born).

this time, the patiala house guy simply asked 'yeh kaun sa state hai' and then kept my papers and told me to come at 1.30 pm. so i took an auto to cp to while away two hours. on the dusty noisy way to cp, a cold glass of beer started looking like a wonderful option. so that's how i landed up at volga at 11.30. since the respected establishment doesn't open before 1, of which i learnt only after i landed up at its doorsteps, i loitered around at bookworm for some time, sent them to look for 'the cuckold' which was not in their stock, and then, finally bought a cheap development-type book to atone for torturing them.

and i was back at volga again sharp at 1. no, they were not open. i stood my ground like that stupid little boy on the burning ship. i ignored the amused glances that fellow-loiterers threw my way, pretending to be engrossed in the editorials of the hindu. about 15 minutes later, a guy turned up and opened the door. as i tried to run in after him, he said they needed another 15 minutes to spiff up the place, and slammed the door on my face. not dissuaded, not insulted i waited patiently and loyally.

finally, 20 minutes later - two hours later to be precise, i walked in as the 'bauni' of the day.

later in the evening, i thought about the intensity of my pursuit and was frightened. calling up aa right now.

in the middle of a traffic jam...

you know what sane people do when they realise that their stomach is about to require immediate scat-infratructure?

they take a u-turn from yusuf sarai, back towards aiims, go left to the safdarjung enclave road, figure out too late that they've landed into another jam, do an illegal u-turn over the divider, see another jam coalescing in front of them, lose their heads, ride onto the pavement, and get stuck when faced with a huge drum placed in between a rundown tent and a devil's tree.

then they sit down with two gamblers gambling under the tent, have a cigarette, bitch about the jam, only to have one of the gamblers stand up and move the drum out of the way, because it's empty.

somehow, the stomach quietened in all that insanity.