7 khoon maaf.

The movie reviews were bad. Yes they were bad, I usually dont read them, but read for this one before I saw the movie.

And finally yesterday I saw the movie. I dont know what the fuss of it being a bad movie is all about. Ok, the climax is anti-climax - but I saw it coming right through (Blame my keen sense of sensing the stench of religion). 

Ok, there were 6 men and murders to deal with that allows a limited detailing of characters over events.

Ok, Priyanka simplified her performance to cut out emotional transitions, except catching the actual emotion. 

Ok, the story is simplistic, but considering all that it was achieving - its a pretty decently made movie, at least by Indian standards.

Women are complex, its their sensitivity that lends them this complexity in parts. It is impossible to perfectly define or identify a person let alone judge them, yet, more often I have seen people take decisions on behalf of others. Apparently what seems to be forgotten is that it is one thing to have us make our own decisions and quite another to expect people to dance on our tunes - if one person wants to make all decisions where is the relationship? Either ways, its a power struggle, and no relation is exempt from this rule.  

So Priyanka's character is stuck in her own power struggles. She offers love, money a piece of her ass, and kills the mad dogs she comes across rather than move away - for some misguided motive of saving others?

The point is not weather she is really justified in killing people or not, apparently the question seems to be she is a perfect woman caught among imperfect men - and the only perfect man she falls back on is a self-sacrificing man (or god) eventually. Her fatal flaw is the killing spree - which is hardly telling anything. I have never encountered an individual that is not flawed in more than one ways - or at least the only way of wanting to kill.

The question is what is a flaw really? As far as I am concerned its being a nuisance to each other.

It becomes impossible to identify the truth from lies, and you end up contriving stupid plots to chase this wanting to know the truth. I now know that every action coming out of only emotions results in pain - but this is an insight that is of no use and might as well be discarded when dealing with people around you.   

But yeah, lets give it to the movie and stick to the story line, a woman in quest for love, and men each with a certain misguided motivation (to cover a certain complete spectrum of flaws - arranged marriage with a disabled man, where the disability percolates into being as low self esteem - a drug addict - one sexually perverse form of impotency, where violence cures his impotency momentarily - a man who trades in lies for being a spy , including two timing - a man trading emotions for sex - a man greedy for money - and of course a man who offered blood by letting himself be killed first on the altar of unconditional love)  

Ironically, the child who grows to adult in infatuation is the second closest expression of love.

what really kills the concept is that I have never come across the one woman obsessed only with love without her own deceptions and agendas who can claim to be none of the 6 individuals she killed as far as the traits go. 

So really the only way I can make that story work is by a piece of perverted logic that the director could not have meant ; that every individual is both masculine and feminine - and when he kills his (said) corruptions (of 6 kinds) to reach the divine within there is the true individual restored in balance (a man who sacrifices himself for the world, and a woman who sacrifices the world for a man ; together in harmony of dance); but that is a stance with too many philosophical faults for my liking - I would rather say such a person will be always in conflict far from complete.  

Hence if and the only flaw that glares into my face is that the notion that Priyanka's character suffers no other flaw - which apparently seems to be like a sort of adjustment made to suit the climax - that makes the movie artificial in content, but craft is plenty. I wouldn't mind watching it once, and perhaps twice.

And yeah, the lyrics and songs are good, if at all they profess sweet nothings (we all experience these at least once btw), it goes with the movie - it makes a case of nothing except a commercial cinema (whatever that means really).

Crawling out of the grave
face to face
cry me a please
till I slap you
hey
you would feel alive
in history
for the first ever time
yes you would know

Exactly as serious as you could
push
some good
this pure air, this love,
all hidden
so that I could be nasty
to just see you safe
may be it's just that dirty part
of my job
if I could call it that

How many?

How many times a lie not me?
How many times I let me be?
How many times I let you see?
How many times you couldnt be thee!

Now,
who talks of now,
all those who don't know how
to get out of rough

I loved what I did yesterday
my consciousness marvels
at all that was done

I expressed my tomorrows
in my dreams
it looked good work
and a victory
I moved in all those moments
yet to come

No  coordinator
no coherence in all this that comes about

So the being in now
is so boring
and such a waste of
time of ours on this earth

The yesterdays was real
the tomorrows more real
than nows
I can change
change because I never lived in the NOWS

Come to my secret place
my past is as naked as yours
look
that future that might be your
looking at that for last time
make love to it before it changes to a
yesterday

Laws of physics for journeys taken on in the inside don't exist.

Observations makes noises
makes a white poem
you could colour and mix and match
you don't know what would come next
understanding may come
may not come
what comes out is a forever
a time that is captured
by a flowing river.

I smell
I listen
I write
and there is so much more
to hold and feel
it matters not
if understanding comes
or not

I look DIRTY
I invented happiness

Learn a word
The colors and their sounds
Shape it then
To a prayer
of the living.

Learn a new everyday
Forge a relationship
see yourself in it
motionless
Perhaps you now
live observing
and not thinking,
soaking it all up
as if this is
all one big dream.

Do we meet each other
meet each other
To meet god
Do we

What did I think?
That god was on my side
This week
No it wasn't
Last week
No, not then
Actually
Never

I guess that was the wrong
question
Then, now
Why did I think?
Would I get a talk
with it (god),
The TV promises this to a
million
May be I don't belong
there too
But I also see
A long line in front of me
Of people who die
Of people who fear
Of people who are dead
Before they die

But those other million
For them their god cares
It makes them happy
And fearless
They watch TV
and become whatever is
handed out to them

For what greater good
Do I belong too?

A safe street
A police officer
Are the things & people
I depend on
Those millions in line too
You too

What do I want?
That how much I will
be messed more
By these millions
of gods

The kings speech. - Spoilers edition.

Summary: An average movie with some really good performances.


I am a huge fan of HB Carter. She has somehow perfected the art of having just the right involvement in a scene. Even when it is amply clear that she forges no bonds with the object of her said desire on screen but herself, you are taken in by the deception she projects and that is quite an art. What makes it even more remarkable is that she is seldom the star of her movies, but projects an aura of being a close rival or even excel without offending.


Colin Firth did quite well too, as did the rest of the cast. 


The movie itself has nothing to offer. Colin Firth summarizes the movie in the first few scenes when he narrates to his children the story of a penguin, pushed to isolation of the south pole and who returns back so fast as to surprise his wife and mutate to a bird that could finally hug his children in his wide wings. The rest is just unfolding of the story hence told. What do people really want to see these days? Add a touch of defiant vicotry against odds, with a heart tugging fight of a person with his traits and the tickets are bought, Oscars won.


All I see is an individual and his struggle with his traits (given, acquired). For some reason, this is a fascinating bed of stories for the world at large - perhaps people see their own struggles expressed in hope of seeing the light they are taught they should see? Perhaps they need a validation that it is fine to be awkward, lose face, ridiculed and one can live through all that to struggle with their traits?


Whatever be the reason, in a day when art is slowly losing the living quality under measured doses of intellect that lingers on the process than the actuals, this is one more movie that attempts to highlight a dogged individual persistantly having a go at himself to beat his traits, if somewhat overpowered by the gratitude of being shown love.


You wont be wasting your time, yet art in my eyes is something that transcends time - I wont say its artless, I wont say it can be bettered, I cant say I can do better - but what does one do with this inner desire to have his mind blown everytime after its recovered from being blown apart?


Yes, the problems are very real, yes the problems are really tough, yes each measures his own depth of problems. But just how many times will we express the same fairy tale with increasing detail?

Addendum: In astrology, an afflicted 2nd house or 2nd lord or an ill placed jupiter indicates problems with speech. It is interesting to note that 2nd is the house of communicative intelligence, it is the house of togetherness in love and family or friends. Biologically it is the throat. Hence speech that is afflicted either in stammering or lies spoken or filth in language. It all stems from being at odds with isolation, and self esteem being a derivative of consensus of the chosen few.

A beautiful smile and
the summer that you wear
A vision that I hold
A book that I want to
complete

To be here in
this forest
And nobody searching
Is it scary?
Not for me
I know soon
The summer will end
I want to stay till my
next day
I hope I don't sleep much
And do always what I
want like
Consciousness without frontiers or
boundaries

This smile and for once
I won't decode
and let it be awful
for it has a charm of it's
own

and at this hour
If nothing replaces
Nothing
Let it be

I'm sorry the thought is dead
It may have got to you
before I did

It is hard
And more hard to give in
If the universe is an artist
all by itself
I am running away from it
There is a difference now
that I can see that act
About it all being real
And not being real
even this breathing
or eating in fear and
fears, and then,
silence
and then
not living in lies
the first of universe hits
me
and I would rather
be
then being

You knew
yes all of this already
and yet all this again was not stupid
not stupid
may be hope,
yes, just that
and now it is real.

A mother surprised us,
her sweat and her thought,
made the vegetables inside out
with spices,
she served and then walked away
back to her kitchen,
the gate, she whispered to her daughter
and winked,
living and then entering a line,
"this is what I was waiting for"
from the people who she loved and shared.

God included women
to bind the forces all around,
or may be God was a woman,
and may be that is why she knew that men would
be weak, and look
darker without the her.

She walks away with ease,
after serving life,
slips back to hot and sweaty kitchen,
for she knows,
the value of a clean knife.

Game.

How come, hey
You haven't yet watched
that you were always in a game
that you were the game,
locks changed,
do it again,
or may be the first time is the last time game
for you.

I tell you,
you were great,
yes, only pity that
you dint see it coming,
let me ask you something,
you have a favorite player,
or a actor,
you have?
I bet you do and I raise you to that,
laugh, yes laugh,
it was only a sleep,
and so what you saw a big dog,
barking down on you,
why call it your work,
look it was a game
and you went cold on cards
drawn to you, the cards skinned you.

Play and you will be ok,
go get what you have,
yes, you have that already,
you want to call me on that,
I would raise you to that,
game.

Thinking about something that
what I went through
I could have read
I could have watched
But when I went through it
It wasn't like the books
It wasn't like the movies
It was a feeling so vulnerable
That about what I would
call depths
Not a game for judges
on street
Trying to look through you
and encapsulate what you felt
what you went through to some
filthy parallels in some filthy book
or some "can't help myself" movie

I had what you call hot
coffee
I'm still high

Living now all the answers
as they are matched by a very very
slow me

I am told about love
explained about fear
and fears
A sun in my eyes
and I am now guided
about health
and someone else's wealth
and how would I grow up
just like the one who gave me all
the answers
but I am slow
very very slow
I see myself living them
trying to match them
I hope I would last
for they taught me
all about life
and death and how they met god
and how I could visit
some day too
a hell that they talked about too

I want to ask all those who tread here
all these who have all the answers
why do these then ask
"What to do?"

I am still asking questions
a slow me
a very very slow me

Rumbling machines
In a order and such smooth
mechanics
Made by love of a man
Or in despair but inspired
The designing bringing in silences
of cool summer woods

Rumbling machines
Cheering children and old
alike
Feeding and moving a world
Healing and cleaning
Erasing pain
And warm socks
And a toothbrush

Rumbling machines
Made by humans in love
For the love of smile and joy

Colors in my words
Posters in my prose
A point of view in my
poem
You light up
I feel warm in that
light
One of these days you
will be cornered
And I unaware

A little prayer
Bangs in the corners
of my mind
A cut in my temple confirms this
Torn between me and the
idea of me
Trapped in a you
A body or something
more from outside

This earth must be lost
For the entire universe
That holds it
Does not see it cry

The head felt dizzy
It had read the entire life
It was to die
And it seemed very very active
Hanging on to disappearing body parts
The morning looked clear and the
coffee lied there cold
not a drop sipped

Years passed by though
the watch on wrists clicked just
a second
No hope now
and nothing to lean on
I had wondered it would always be the night
but it was a morning
and I asked why

A mortal being shinning
still intact
and yes I felt my neck warm
would all this be my work
I asked, only if I survived
But I am wondering
although never did the sun and moon
disappear, but something in this whole story
seems like there was a point that seems missing to me now,
next time
yes, next time I would pay more attention and guard
my work

To The Winds

Dusty toes walking
Seasons changing
All smoke and a stage set
My hands and the veins bursting

Give me
give me some air
some grass to walk on
and a shinning sun
and I promise
these eyes would never shut
never

Burning toes
days and nights
watching through the
windows of
what it could do
and how it could now too run

No nothing from heaven
required
just this heaven about
I wonder that it
yet makes me laugh
and my toes
dusty
burning
light as a feather
walking in to
the winds

Life
hmmm life
and me, this me experiencing life
in a stereotype
trapped in mondays and tuesdays
as much in wednesdays and the dirty
grind of thursdays
passed unwillingly through fridays
and have nothing to say for the saturdays
or the sundays
the dirty linen washed for mondays and all
again.

Death I have no idea
whatsoever
Life I spoke above in
all my relativity
then there is restlessness
which is not of any above
neither dead nor alive
just lost in
waves of thoughts
and sufferings
and silence

I return
to wash myself
of all human
till it dawns about me
yes me and this life
were the same
and this now sounds
uninteresting and confusing
as much you want it
as much you take on it
the only thing that happens
is the so called human logic
tears itself down
to be the life
of a human

Her Song

I can hear her
song
See her through
the net curtains
and she in shadows only in her
netted socks

"I want to see places
Be a girl for the rest of my life
I would have hands to wave
and would write letters of travel

I would take wrong roads
and would always go for the bird
in the bush and
let go the one in hand
no cages could hold me
and would hate to understand
me

I want to see places
distracted and
forgive me God
I cannot believe in you

I would disappear in winds
or in sounds of sands
look for time
as it would chase to kill me
and me to beat it

I want to see places
and villages
where I would choose to be
born

Unfinished I would always be
choices would be for frogs
would I kiss them or not
and have some good moments

My being fragile
would be my strength
and I would then look at fate
and laugh"

The Immortal

The winds cut me in to
two halves
Under one I was all
that was passed on
That half made of stone
was also sentimental and with a
name
Men gathered around that
name
And saw themselves in that
asking for a shelter from the storms
Mortality they said was not welcome
And how they looked for newer products
every day and in all night

The other half
was as lost as a nucleus
in this universe
Lucky it was
for it could never be named
and could be faded
by men who never grew any ears
it would be this that would be immortal
with nothing to sell
and buy
buried in dust
sleeping alone


If the conclusion drawn by readers
reads hopeless
hmmmm
if it does
then there is hope or
I call it flower
which you see was not seen
and is now
as you or if you read this again
upside down

Dune (incomplete writeup, likely to stay that way) - For you Ash.

My memory of myself does not go in detail of all past except as muted images if I try and recall, but strangely I seem to carry in me the seed of that experience as an unstated lesson. Like looking at myself and making a new inference of sometime in past that has been changing to reach this point in time to touch me. I hence span many years when I look back, while I live here. Here, now, is in question because I am never devoid of the summary. 

Creativity is a way of connecting unrelated memories to form a coherent context. Since what we write carries the signature of our personality, even a description of a personal experience becomes creative to others. What is painfully obvious to me is creative to others. Hence originality is not something that has been experience for the first time in history, but a first common popular expression or directness of experience before all expression before the author till that point. Call me a pessmist but there is neither creativity nor originality in operation, just a incessent quest to fill the memory and then vomit it out as expression in tune with our own weirdness of existence at the point of vomit. 

This is with all due respect to great authors and brilliant writers who have achieved fortune, glory, release and sex by providing the end result of all creativity: entertainment.

So when I bask in the glory of my creativity, its just that I cant recall my memory in exact detail and consider it a trivial matter that I am hiding the source of this memory from the reader while I present it with casual and assumed assurance and confidence.

This notion has never allowed me to take credit of anything I write well and ignore any praise given as meaningless. But has not hampered my ability to appreciate written work of others - for that seems like appreciating the person himself - something which is a very natural and deep need ingrained in me for whatever reasons. 

It is also my signature, I am incomplete without the other, yet the other is non-existent outside me. Mutual respect is quite possible, however, and sometimes that is all that one can afford.

Of course all praise with inherent cynicism makes me live in the moment of contact with awkwardness, so then, grace and timing are the things to acquire in reality and hence are to me more valuable than creativity in all its obviousness. 

I respect actors and actresses for the same reason, for they express no creativity but own all creativity and it takes a tremendous personal control to do this and yet look graceful.

We experience the same emotions in different settings, and the settings have to get progressively weird or darker or stranger to evoke the same emotion twice. This is why the creative world constantly finds cliches, what is in vogue today is quickly relegated to a cliché tomorrow. 

But the source, method and reason for all experience remains the same. And assumes the dimension of real only when it touches the shore where you are standing.

Dune is then a clever adaptation of history, it explores mysticism and cynicism of this mysticism by projecting the cultural history and philosophy of the world by pushing cliches to what perhaps then seemed to be their logical conclusion through the eyes of evolution in an alien setting to create a creative story. Since perhaps it was the precursor of the cult of modern scfi sagas it still stuck to human's as the lonely inheritors of the universe minus the weird muted aliens occupying the same space - something which happened later in the scifi world.

Yes its in parts sloppy and muddles clarity and directness to create an allure for the readers to fill in and expand on authors own cliches - but it delivers the motif of all creativity: entertainment, not imaginary originality.

This starts my review of dune. Dune is the hope for change, which is odd, because change is minus hope. But perhaps hope is natural now to the established culture of the world. So we reject change as it is happening and begin hoping for it. It has in it the seed of desire for fertility. 

Fertility that can spawn among other things creativity to keep us perpetually in a state of pleasure, hence without pain. Which is also odd because there is no creativity or expression in pleasure and pain is what drives the pens across the globe.

So perhaps, mankind can consider itself liberated when it needs no literature or entertainment for people to go about living. That while it sounds like a page out of the horror stories, might actually be quite exhilirating like a scientist discovering in a laboratory devoid of cliched connotations of his dry life outside it. And then its like the notion of limit tending to infinity, something racing very fast to catch up something that does not exist in reality, and all we are left with is a race. 

One does not question it, need not question it and some might not even consider that there is a question worth asking about it. And some who ask questions fall out of it and are caught in the middle of nowhere, like that delicate moment when a deer is caught in a head light on a highway, only snapping out of the light with wits can save that life then.

Paul Atreides then is the symbol of hope for change we are told. One who delivers it is the messiah and one who can deliver it has to always move into an alien setting, where the commonplace can ignore his awkwardness and glorify his deftness and his stories, his signature for he comes from the changed land to begin with. Of course, all you need is the ability to grab the attention first. And Paul does it.

Paul is terrified with the consequences of his power, not for the power itself, but for the uniqueness of it attributed in him, the source of all cult for those who are not individuals but followers. The consequences are always in token of blood, eventually. 

Yet, the fertility in nature, perhaps more aptly expressed in women, the "Bene Gesserit", knows that the war is the only source of natures purpose of creativity and expression. Blood spilled is blood created. Of course in the next cycle where everything now becomes a legend for casual recollection in bed time stories.

Paul is terrified and wants alternatives. Preservation of blood to the same effect. He wants to break the tradition to achieve this. But to break the tradition and survive the act is to propogate a legend. And a legend always has in it a seed of blood, destruction. Nature hence will have its way one way or the other! If only all seeds of legends could be prevented from germination, man could become god, but that is impossible for if there is to be a god it cant be apart from nature!

Catch the source of all creativity, which is philosophy, history, mysticism, religion and ones own living - and let the hatchet flow, touch the fortune it brings and the glory it attributes, be lost if you can, for if you are not lost, you are forever left in the emptiness of an imaginary cell. Tormenting yourself and the only thing that can save you then is the knowledge that you are unique and everything you experience is unique for it ingrains in it the way you and only you can experience it irrespective of historical similarities, a bridge that can gulf the gap between two islands. Yet it can keep you moving, for then your experience and its expression like your creativity can never be devoid of meaning. It is you always.

Paul has a struggle of identification. For he has in him the co-joining of many purposes, each with a distinct identity, each asking the pledge of his blood for the measure of power it has given him to be what he has become. Dominant identities in Paul are that of Atreides, Bene Gesserit the Fremen, the spice, the legend of Kwisatz Haderach, the skills taught by friends, the images of blood and its relatives, two planets, stark in their comparison, his alienness as he steps into his manhood, his notion of love from the "other", his self seen flowing along with the order of things, the possibilities he becomes through the possibilities he could be, the authority of the emperor and even the Harknonnen that he chooses to destory as a choice of his alligence.

His own desire for Chani compromised with his struggle for his purpose caught in interrelationships and co-mingling of powers, physical political, mystical across his known universe. Yet this is a weakness to both Chani and Paul. Weakness because they perfer naming the relationship as the world would deem fit for legality, and strength because the relationship can endure even the lack of it. Can it, well lets give it to a novel that it can?

Whore

Looking for a whore
with a straight back and
a head held high
for
I want to work for that whore
as inhuman as possible
She would know about wishes and
shadows
She would know about love and humans
She would be a magician of happiness
In her mouth would be a million smiles
Alone in the dark she would
be a poem
She could shoot the misery and even shooooo
away all the diseases
In her spine she would have an intolerable
pride
I am looking for that kind
whore
the human I would call a being

The fictional character asked for
a memory
to an another in a distance
'I am real, more than all in
flesh and blood,
I need coexistence and play
hide and seek
I want to hope
And eat what I can't even
digest
I could be lost
and then found as in the morning
news paper,
Separate from you
and then speak to you
in your ears in a very loud
voice,
I could walk the various lands
and say to all
Amen.
I ask for a memory
A permit to cross over from the fiction
to real for I'm more
real than all in flesh and blood,
for they all lived in separation.'

Reprise

Repost from a dead blog.


Chalo Phir Kare hum,
Ek Din Ki shaadi,
Kal Phir milegi,
Tujhe bhi Azaadi,
Khel khel me gar,
Dil dukh gaya tho,
Ek dusre ko, hum dAntlenge,
Khilone hai lamhe,
Phir kabhi baantlenge ..

The horizon ended
To see the day liberate


It had been in dust
Covered and all alone
No one could see
What it could weave
So it layed in sands
Over days and days
In love with music that it
dreamed
Waiting for that one intense
moment of belief
To rise from the dust
And demand a life
The life of the day
Determined and led by
the dream it sang

RF's.

People constantly hell bent on changing themselves, ask - for what, why! Perhaps a goal? Isn't change a default as is?

Then again, the human considerations? What of them? With every change the " static" human mind will find something to dislike in change. The moving do not care anyhow. And what of those who like you now, what do they do with your change?

--------- o -------- o ------------

Words and weapons, shoot, the obstacles, the enemies. Not, wage wars. Then again, Sometimes an obstacle is the best way to change the flow. One needs to master the art of creating obstacles to an end.

--------- o -------- o ------------

What of the obstacles when one has given up on change? Do we bump into them, if we decide that they exist? What of those that cant make up their mind?

 

Asking myself why i write?

What I am writing is not for me, but be certain, it is not for you. It is selfishness of expression, floating out like a weapon, devoid of war devoid of a goal, just a purpose of it's own expression. And like someone said, not all your piety nor wit, will halt the moving finger. A weapon that won't touch you, until you try to guide the fingers. It is a war I wrote, then, but it takes you to read through it.