Tuesday, 17 June 2025
Hope lies buried in eternity!
Thursday, 20 June 2024
Of Hope and Fear!
Film Series, 2012, 2013, 2014. 2015, 2023
Tuesday, 25 July 2023
Ideas transcend borders!
Monalisa No Longer Smiles (2022)
An Anthology of Writings from Across the World
Editor: Mitali Chakravarty
My father had an uncanny ability to read faces. No, he does not identify people's medical risks, personality traits or even the prediction of their future. He could tell a person's origin, caste and creed. He was proud of his achievement and held steadfast to the idea that caste division is a necessary tool for society to progress.
He would choose where he ate and sometimes refuse invitations to people's homes or even functions of people with questionable status in the caste hierarchy.
My mother tried to knock some sense into him that the whole world had moved on and things had changed. But he was having none of it. She even reminded him about Periyar EV Ramasamy's speech when he visited Malaya, to leave all the bad discriminatory habits they acquired in India and move forward. But no! He was unmoved and reasonably contended with his way of pigeon-holing people.
I convinced myself that things would change when I grew up. People would become more learned and open-minded. I assumed that religion would take a back seat as science was slowly answering all the loose ends of knowledge then.
How wrong I was.
In the 21st century, the present turned out to be a far cry from what I perceived the future to be. People are congregated in factions. They found ingenious ways to divide and subdivide tribes so that one would dominate the other. Religion has made a comeback in a big way. Fundamentalism has taken root. Putting aside the science and symbolism behind worship and beliefs, believers are more focused on the ritual and blind following of the herd.
The space between the haves and the have-nots is ever-widening. Materialism has crept into all crevices of our lives, and the future does not look bright.
Against this gloomy background, this anthology tries to make its readers that there may be hope if we try.
Borderless Journal, Editor Mitali Chakravarty's brainchild, is hopeful that the world will indeed be one whose borders will be torn down and where everyone will live as one. There would be no discrimination against people by caste, politics, or creed. There would be no wars to show the dominance of one over the other.
Trying to recreate past glory and relive past grandiosities is no use. In God's creation, everyone is supposedly created equal, so why is there a clan of oppressors and oppressed, the powerful and the weak. Through art, literature and storytelling, this anthology, from its interviews with famous moviemakers, thinkers, poets and writers, from its fiction, 'Monalisa No Longer Smiles' and 'Borderless Journal', through its editor, Mitali Chakravarty, tries to create a possible world where borders do not matter. Ideas transcend borders.
Tuesday, 19 May 2015
I see black dogs everywhere...

Young and old alike, they seem to be swept by this epidermic.
Coming mostly from humble backgrounds, one would have think that after enduring the uncertainties of life for a square meal and other comforts in life, enduring uncertainties by now would literally be a walk in the park. The general consensus is that one could not buy himself out of all troubles. Crying in a BMW, however, certainly looks less pathetic then crouching over a pavement but then the hopelessness are the same. It just goes on to say that there are somethings that money can buy like crying in comfort albeit the melancholy.
Just like stupidity, everybody around the victim realises the affliction except the affected party. The sooner the party realises her predicament, the sooner remedy can be sought. Failing this, she would continue barking up the wrong tree to find another name for her bad times. Blame it on the rain, stars, sun, planets and everything in between but the space between the ears.
Tuesday, 28 April 2015
As long as there is life, there is hope


His critiques, however, chide him for not doing so much as to garner sympathy from the public towards the cause of helping his fellow sufferers of ALS and other neurological handicaps. I guess, he is one of the people who does not dwell in sympathy but strive to achieve against all the odds. His final line in the movie says it all - as long there is life, there is hope!
Wednesday, 30 July 2014
The heights of melancholia and hopelessness...

This was one of the first movies that Amma took me to watch back in the days. Perhaps, she needed to reminisce her trying times of early adulthood.
Even after all these years, its songs, especially 'Kaathrinile Perum Kaathrinile' sang beautifully by K.J. Yesudass, still makes my hairs at the back of my neck stand.
This movie skyrocketed in popularity in the South that remakes were made in Tamil, Telegu and Hindi using the same main actress, Sharadha. The original film was made in Malayalam based on stage show. Sharadha went on to receive the National Film Award for that year.
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Sharadha |
The story starts in a court-room. Vijaya (Sharadha) is in the dock for mercilessly poisoning her three kids. Keeping mum, the Public Prosecutor,Vatsala, (the ever beautiful Indian ex-stewardess turned actress and turned priestess, Kanjana) has an easy time proving her case. Vijaya is defended by a bumbling lawyer, Samanthan (the ever versatile TS Ballaiah) and his crook of a secretary (Nagesh).
As the case almost comes to an end, Vijaya finally breaks her silence. She narrates her side of the story. And the credits roll in as we are transported to a time when Vatsala and Vijaya are easy going bharathanatyam dancing university students pursuing BA.
Vatsala's father is a crooked lawyer (TS Balliah) who is not very bright but strikes rich with his client's ignorance and naivety. His assistant, Nagesh, uses his position to con the gullible for a little tips here and there. Looks like between of these Brahmins, they try to outdo each other in getting bribes! Their antics on-screen are great to watch. (A bashing of the upper caste of society)
Vijaya's father (Major Sunderajan) had seen better times. A disciplinarian and a stickler to time, order and natural justice, he had helped his relatives just to be left in a lurch with a lawsuit on his property and his factory for ownership. Hold behold his lawyer is the incompetent Samanthan!
Tragedy strikes when Vijaya's father loses his case and is thrown out his own house. Left as a pauper with no means to support himself and his daughter and shunned by friends and relatives, the trauma proved too heavy on his ailing heart. He succumbs to a massive heart attack. The only loyal worker who stood by Vijaya and her father is Ramu (the melodrama king of tragedy, AVM Rajan).
As the cash kitty gets smaller and the hostility of the Indian environment on seeing a helpless innocent young pretty girl proved too much, Ramu brings Vijaya to stay in his ramshackle hut of a factory worker. Ramu's household personifies the epitome of melancholia with bare necessities and a ever complaining mother who openly expresses her discontent of life and she imagines a comfortable life with her daughter and husband, which never materialises.
Back in university, Vijaya was chased around by a fun loving jovial fellow student, Muthuraman. Seeing her hopeless states of affairs in Vijaya, her beau decides to confess that their relationship was based on friendship love, not the lover's kind!
Left hanging on a thread, Vijaya takes the bold step to nosedive into the web of poverty, to marry the sad faced Ramu. They had bliss in their humble abode. Testimony of their happiness were the three kids and the song which showcases the joy of celebration in a poor man's home.' " Come ponggal or diwali, there are only tears in our home...!" How more pathetic can you sound?
As if not enough, tragedy strikes yet again. Due to management-workers' dispute, the factory is closed indefinitely and Ramu and his co-worker are left to starve. Union disputes becomes intense and Ramu is finally knifed down, leaving Vijaya and the kids hungry and penniless. If fate is cruel, the society is also unkind. Relatives and neighbours soon start hurling various unsavoury accusation against this young widow. Hunger drives the children to beg, enraging Vijaya. Soon they start to steal food. All these proved too much for someone who at one time had her future all paved ahead of her. She opts for mass suicide. Unfortunately, she survives and is put on the dock.... The storyteller tries to justify the protagonist's actions and inactions to the cruelty of society and fate. She does not admonish the lack of her initiative to uproot herself from misery but instead look for self pity. Perhaps if we had walked a mile in their shoes..
A timeless classic with melodious melodies to match the path of nostalgia. A reminder though...
Now, if only the children knew a soup kitchen they could go to....
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
Hope in humanity
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/04/01/cnnheroes.krishnan.hunger/
http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/04/01/cnnheroes.krishnan.hunger/
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