𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬

The pandemic didn't have an adverse effect on Neil's career, but the changing trends were appearing, like silent patches of seepage on the wall. An upgrade seemed inevitable.
And then, there was Natasha. Texts had progressed to video chats. There was still a starchy newness to the relationship. Neil hoped they would soon break through the two cold, glass screens that separated them.

 
"What next? How soon? What does the future have in store for us... for me?" A syncopated rhythm of questions rang in Neil's head.

 
That winter evening, Neil sat down with his favourite drink, neat, the way he preferred and began browsing the internet for music. He always loved exploring new artistes and new genres, but, suddenly, he wanted to listen to songs he knew, songs he could sing along with. Neil sank into the wrinkly sofa and into the playlists comfortably. In a while, his duet with Bryan Adams came with familiar ease as they chorused, "It isn't too hard to see we're in heaven."

Is this how we mine our joys from the tiniest of crevices?

Song: Heaven - Bryan Adams https://youtu.be/s6TtwR2Dbjg
Pc: Saatchi Art (Moreaux, 2014)

99 Songs!

 Just finished watching 99 Songs and I wonder why I didn’t watch it earlier.

                                                 

Since the story has been written by A R Rahman himself, it obviously ought to be about music, but this film has got so much more. Simply put, it is about Jay's quest for a song that leads him to many other revelations. Just like the fugue that is referred to in the film, the one-note story opens out to touch art, surrealism and different forms of relationships. I’d perhaps call it a fairy tale of sorts with fairy godmothers included. I could see beauty across every inch of the film. A beauty that only an artist is capable of imagining.

 

I know writing a story is no mean effort. A R Rahman, the musician, has poured every bit of himself into writing this story and with absolute honesty. He has put in everything that’s touched him, everything he feels passionately about. Though it was a film, it felt as though I was reading a book with audio and special visual effects playing in front of me. 

 

Many years ago, when I read Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music, I wished there was some way the prose and the music could be played together. And I somehow managed to make my own arrangements. 99 Songs gives almost that kind of a delight. A character's physical challenge in this film also brought to mind a parallel to An Equal Music. 

I tip my hat to Vishwesh Krishnamoorthy. He has done his best to put several abstract ideas into a visual medium with much grace and beauty, through his screenplay and direction. Maybe there aren’t grand dialogues or nuanced characters, but I would let that go because we are looking at people who are not bona fide story writers. We have someone who has just written a story and another who has transformed it visually. Having grown up on a staple of K Vishwanath’s films, I found this a completely different approach. Strangely, it always seems easier to make films about the struggles of a gangster than making films about the struggles of an artist. 99 Songs might not earn the appreciation of a film aficionado or a critic. Thankfully, I am neither! 

 

Like I said earlier, I did not find anything pretentious about this film. Casting would be an example. Ehan Bhat mirrors the simplicity and sincerity of the character that’s been written. Tenzing Dalha is such a pleasure to watch. Unable to forget him after Axone, I was happy to see him in almost every frame of 99 Songs. And then there are the surprising appearances of musicians in the cast that makes one exclaim in delight. 

 

(Still sticking to the book analogy) There is a tiny chapter on Jazz music that Rahman had to definitely write about and I am so thankful he did it. Like I have said in another post, Rahman has been exploring Jazz music like no one else in the film industry. And I’d love to sing the Jazzy lullaby chorus to an infant if I ever get a chance! I am not saying anything about the music in the film because that is what it is. I’m unable to split one from the other. The OST has much more variety than that featured in the film. 

 

Maybe I am dreamy-eyed, maybe I’m biased towards Rahman but I would say it was a Saturday afternoon well-spent. Ha! 

Image Courtesy: https://www.moviecrow.com

 

Schedules

Schedules

The buzz of the household, the whirr of the appliances, the clockwork of chores.

A quiet home. A quieter home-office.

The boss of everything. Everything under control.

And then a startling rush of loneliness.

A loneliness never felt, even as just a speck,

amidst tall trees, the mighty ocean and the wide blue sky. 

My parents didn’t send me to school to fold another man’s socks!

'My parents didn’t send me to school to fold another man’s socks!'

This is not a clickbait title, but a line that actually flashed in my head while putting away my husband’s washed socks at the end of a tiring day. This led me to a train of thoughts. I have fortunately never been in a predicament where I didn’t have a choice—folding socks or otherwise. Putting away laundry or setting the house in order comes out of my need for order and nothing else.

What I’m going to say now might raise some difficult questions but I’ve been wanting to speak about this for a while, for at least a year, actually.

I took a break from work soon after I got married, just to see what it is like to take care of a home and tend to a family. In less than a year, I took up studies and a full-time job soon after. Throughout a difficult pregnancy, childbirth, bringing up the child, I have been in some employment or the other, battling judgements, from within and from outside. I enjoyed every moment of my child’s growing-up as much as I enjoyed every project I had taken up.

My love, respect and admiration for all the women who get to choose what they want to do, with complete conviction—either taking up a job or staying at home. Once there is a vocalised choice with conviction, there might not be room for pain. I will get back to this in a bit.

There are so many women with no such choice. Their lives are studded with rhinestones of duty and sacrifice. Neither do they speak up, nor are they asked. Everything happens on assumption. Be it childbirth or accommodating the husband’s career, she is made to volunteer. If you notice, she is not solely responsible for either of these. In today’s times, these decisions are not forced explicitly. A responsibility card is thrust in their faces, ever so gently that no one notices it.

                                             

Let’s talk about a semi-urban to urban woman. A woman who is educated and has the skills to be employed well. What happens when she, by her own choice or otherwise, decides to give up her profession and stay back at home? She takes on much more than she had expected to. It rarely ends with cooking and caring for children. More often than not, she feels guilty about taking on domestic help of any kind. There is absolutely nothing to quantify the amount of work that goes on in a home. And if the woman is knowledgeable and independent, she is expected to take on more—driving children to classes or paying bills.

Housework is like quicksand that keeps sucking you in. With no one, in particular, to be blamed, it becomes a vicious cycle. First, the stay-at-home mother/wife takes on more work to assuage her feeling that she’s at home all day and therefore piles up her plate with more chores. It grows to a point when the rest of the family borders on becoming lazy or insensitive. It comes to a point when the lady’s presence at home is not enjoyed but demanded. Mind you, I am not drawing a fibre out of feminism or even sexism. My concerns are practical. I am only talking about fair play. Setting aside someone's clothes to be ironed or getting up to make a cup of coffee for someone when I have a minute does not make me any less but at the same time, it becomes a problem when these tasks are demanded or if the lady is questioned when they aren’t done.

Gone are those days when we glorified our mothers and grandmothers who were supposedly the fulcrum of the entire household. We were hardly familiar with the core of that person. Let bygones be bygones. With time, circumstances have changed. The household does not belong to one person. The man cannot shirk his responsibilities with the excuse of being ignorant or too busy. This effect is sure to trickle down to the children.

 

                                                    

The biggest fallout of all this is IDENTITY. Caught in this whirlpool of chores, the woman loses her sense of identity and forgets her passions and herself. Her individuality is camouflaged in the garb of the family’s interests. Over the years, this has been pointed out a million times already and at the risk of sounding clichéd, let me say that nothing is permanent. Nobody is indispensable. The home won’t need the mother/wife all the time. What happens then? She is suspended in a meaningless vacuum. Where is she to find her purpose? Does she get a break from the chores, even then?

Moving away from employment to take care of the home and children are most welcome if the decision is conscious and carefully thought of.

a. Who will take the decision? The lady and no one else. No one can evaluate the value of her employment except herself. There is a lot more to a woman being employed. Money is just one reason.

b. When will she get back to work? Is this a permanent arrangement or a temporary one? Can she take up anything flexible if she desires to? Will she have added a skill or enhanced her knowledge during this period?

c. Where do her personal interests and passions fit amidst all this? That must never be the last priority.

d. What is the ambit of the work she is going to be doing at home? It must come with its boundaries of capacity and time.

e. Where is the money going to come from? Is she going to have autonomy of finances? Is there going to be an operative bank account for household expenses? What happens to her own finances that she has already earned and saved out of prior employment?

f. What happens in case of an eventuality? Will either of the spouses be able to pick up from where the other has left off?

g. What about a sudden, additional responsibility of extended families, in-laws?

Maybe all this sounds like the cold fine print in a contract. Like it or not, these are things to be thought of to avoid any assumptions and heartache. Ultimately, everything about this decision must be collective, with no room for compulsion or benevolence. Everyone involved must understand the purpose of this decision so that there is neither a cry of martyrdom nor a sense of disrespect.

After all, every human being is born with a purpose that's more glorious than laundry. 

Images: 

Xanthe Bouma, source: theatlantic.com

Lost Identity by Hoda Esmaeilian, source: fineartamerica.com

 

Puddles of Memories

 

It came like a sudden summer rain.

UNEXPECTED.

He and she.

Just like children.

They soaked up every drop of the rain.

IGNORING Mum’s warning.

“Summer rain is no good at all!”

They loved, laughed, lived.

As if for the first time ever.

They played, praying it would never stop, but

KNOWING all the time that it would.

Summer rain it was, after all.

***

He and She.

They slid back to their jejune lives.

REMEMBERING.

How as children, they trudged back to school

After a bout of cold. Strangely

SAD that they were cured.

The puddles remained.

GLAD.

To float their paper boats, to watch their reflection.

It made them happy. It brought no storms.

Summer rain it was, after all.

All that Jazz

I've always been enamoured by Jazz music. 

To start from home, I've loved  A R Rahman's lovely jazz numbers.

• Vennila Vennila & Hello Mr Edhikatchi  both from Iruvar 
• Jillendru Oru Kaadhal - Just love this one!
• Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na  - I think this is the song where I realised that ARR has a unique talent for Jazz  
• The latest addition  Mera Naam Kizie ...an earworm I wouldn't mind.

And it's a blessing when he chooses to sing them himself with his accordion or piano.  (Side note: I'm making a list of songs where he's played the accordion.)  

Coming back to Jazz, I've heard this genre as the BG score in so many films. Recently, Marvellous Mrs. Maisel and La La Land. I always listen to Jazz on the site, AccuRadio when I'm working. I'm familiar with Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra (his music is also a kind of jazz, I understand). I've loved Madonna do her Jazz in the album Dick Tracy. If I remember right, Indian fusion artistes have also touched upon Jazz (L Shankar, Zakir Hussain with John McLaughlin?). I want to learn more about it.

I've always wondered why I'm so attracted to Jazz music. It evokes a sense of freedom, leisure (not just of hotel lounges), happiness, a sense of living the moment and pleasure (not just of bedrooms, though Jazz cringingly features as a BG for so many seduction scenes [eyeoll] in films.)

So while working today, as always I was listening to music and this playlist popped up. It has some lovely jazzy numbers. Interesting, it's called Wandering around the Parisian Streets! This playlist evokes so many thoughts, dreams and memories...thoughts of lengthy meaningful conversations, dreams of sitting in a nightclub and listening to live jazz, memories of my trip to Paris - one of the best memories of my life. I still can't put my finger down on one thing that made me fall in love with the city. Sometimes, you just fall in love without knowing why - Paris and Jazz are just a few examples. 

And this is the playlist that popped up on YouTube, unasked. 

https://youtu.be/4WLiUSqNcak

While I'm still halfway through, I like Music Of The Sea - Fishing Secrets Jeremy Moyer and Je Ne T'aime Plus.

Tell me about your love story with jazz or a genre you are inexplicably attracted to. 

A little time off

Just stole a glance, though I wished to linger.
The lake and the moon need their time together too.

Labels

 

Adventurers

We are always warned about "thin lines" between this and that.

But some people always like balancing on those lines. Adventurers.

pc: kolyan.net

A Suitable Boy TV Series - Almost there

A Suitable Boy - a book that I loved immensely. And so was looking forward to catching the series. Two episodes down and I had mixed feelings about it before Meera Nair's hand appeared to save the series.

The first thing that struck me was that the setting, language and body-language didn't quite look like the 1950s. A lot of it felt more contemporary, at least in the initial episodes. Well, there might have been a set of highly educated, affluent families trying to fill the vacuum of the British snobbery. I need to do my research, though.

Coming back to language, you find certain characters easily shifting between Urdu/Hindi and English, which sounded a little unnatural. Maybe they should have stuck to English all through. A very difficult decision I'd say. Also, the diction in the initial episodes felt like a college-play and it did get smoothed out later.

The series takes off somewhere around episode 3. That is when we feel Mira Nair's presence perhaps for the first time. The visualisation of Lata's dilemma and agony was beautiful.

I guess that is where one has to appreciate the writers of the series. It is extremely difficult to encapsulate a novel of these proportions into 6 episodes of about an hour each. You need to pick and choose very carefully between what is absolutely essential and what is not, how to throw in a reference, how to weave in sub-texts and so on. What intrigues me every time I watch the adaptation of a book is how the director visualises the unspoken. I guess there lies their strength. However, I felt certain subtleties that Vikram Seth used in the book should have just been left as such. For having skipped the character of Veena Kapoor entirely, I felt Meenakshi's character was unnecessarily detailed only to be dropped off suddenly.

One thing that helped in piecing together all of this is the brilliant casting. I think this was one reason that kept me hooked on to the series. Right through, I kept sitting up and exclaiming "Hey him... hey..it's her!" Even the actors I haven't seen before are quite nicely cast and are have done a great job. The lady who played Mrs Kapoor is a natural. Okay, I had imagined Adil Hussain for Mahesh Kapoor's character but I love Ram Kapoor. So, I'm happy either way. Oh! Danesh Razvi as Kabir Durrani is so charming! Would love to see him more often in films. And Namit Das as Haresh! Maybe I like the character better now. He played the character to perfection (You are caught with mixed feelings between the actor that you like and the character that you, well...!)

I really can't say if I'd like to recommend this series to those who have not yet read the book because the series undoubtedly lacks the depth and the entire intent of the book. It has captured Lata Mehra's story to the fullest. It has tried its best to get the mood of the political strife, sadly there isn't much time. Like I have said in my review of the book, the phrase "Suitable Boy" is much more than just a marriage match. Here's my review of the book.

 

Surgical Strike

"Just imagine", they said, "how free you are going to be." Everybody pep-talked me. "You are not sick. You are only going to get better. You are not a patient," they said. So I went and got an expensive mani-pedi, finished it off with red nail polish.

The first thing as soon as I check-in: (note: my usage of the term check-in shows my state of mind at that time) "Madam, please cut nails and remove nail polish." The earth shattered around me. There were thunder and lightning. I turned around three times in slow-mo "Aakhir kyon?"

The angel in white boomed amidst the thunder, "Patient-ku, no nail polish allowed meydem." Disillusionment #374 of my life. I tried to make a joke out of it, "Patient-aa? Naana? Chey" etc. "You only meydem patient"

I begged. I tried reasoning. Nothing worked. Finally, making impatient clucking noises, I obeyed the nurse's orders. And she sweetly patted me and said "Thank you for being patient with us" (Don't you pun on me, woman!)

The surgery: I was lying there, watching the (literally) cold operation theatre being prepared for the surgery. I don't know if they were preparing to fell a tree or work on a human body. Such was the size of the tools they were laying out.

I meekly asked them, "Do you have to really do this in front of me?" Here I was, going through the most unattractive and unattracted day and there was this anaesthetist trying to make flirtatious small talk, comparing the nightlife of Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore. The conversation did put me to ease but I was too proud to accept that Chennai has a boring nightlife. Hmpfff...

Soon they bundled up my spine like an old, unstarched Bengal cotton saree and punctured several times. The nurses were so excited as if they were pinning sequins on the old Bengal cotton saree.

I could hear exclamations of "Ah! Now it's good. Ah! Super." In a few moments, I was in a daze. The anaesthetist came close and asked me, "How do you feel?" I could hear myself drawl, "As if I have downed six pegs of whiskey neat" Hangover of all that nightlife banter I guess.

I was wheeled out of the OT, grinning like a Cheshire cat, waving like a gallant Olympic medallist, all thanks to the whiskey..err.. the anaesthesia. Unsavoury display of discarded body parts almost made visiting relatives faint in fright. Thank God, nothing untoward happened, else I would have ended up paying the room rent x 2.

Post-Op: Anyway, I managed to sneak home within a few days and then started the trouble. Sat up all night because of heartburn (arrey, I mean the real physical heartburn yaar), sprained my neck because of that. So for the next few days, I was a robotic Frankenstein who had to do a complete turn around when the peripheral vision gave up. Then there was this no-bending rule. Being a rebel, I always like to bend the rules. But when they ask the rebel herself not to bend, that's when you realise life has its way of taking its revenge. That's when your brat will toss her jeans on the floor; your cook will leave onion peels on the floor. And you must refrain yourself from bending down, just like Bhagyashree in the final act of the Dil Deewana song. Label me a control freak if you want to. Fine, but what will you do when the bar of soap slips off your hand in the middle of a bath? You get creative and resourceful. You learn to use your toes to pick up anything ranging from clothes to hair to bottle caps, you name it (remind me to enlist myself for the next season of India's Got Talent). If the toes fail you, you learn to use shampoo instead of soap.

While I was recovering, people pampered me with cinnamon rolls and baadhushaas. The goodies have now neatly arranged themselves like a kid's stacking rings around my waist. I don't know how many more months I will have to walk around with this jiggly-jelly-belly. (Why the hell do good things have to be so fattening?)

When I rapidly lost a lot of weight soon after the surgery, I was thrilled. The lady at the hospital knowingly nodded her head and gave out the dark prophecy "You will gain as quickly as you have lost" Oh Oracle, how I ignored your warning!

Now after two months, the stacking rings follow with me to the office desk, threatening to get larger, but that's okay. I am happy that it's all behind me now or on my behind.

Reference material for the uninitiated

* Stacking rings: Illustrated above

* Bhagyashree's urges: https://youtu.be/7IHTdSc3WTw?t=239