When doves cry

A friend's 20 something son who has his bright future laid in front of his eyes and a female companion dying to share his life with, was bogged down by what was thought to be a minor ailment. It turned out to be not a minor disturbance at all. Beneath the triviality of its symptoms, lay the possibility of crab like tentacles of the big 'C'!
The mood around my friend's household understandably turned sombre overnight. 'Sombre' may be an understatement. Tears seem to be flowing freely, irrespective of age and gender. It is indeed disheartening to see a grown man of any age crying.
Why the crying you may ask?
Is it the fear of the imminent demise of the love one, the baby with whom many a precious moment was spent arguing? The arguing was well intended, though. The older wiser one, with his weather beaten bags full of experiences trying to impart what he had acquired after getting lost in the maze of life. The cry, is it because of the inability to ever, ever to connect, to touch, to grow old together is lost altogether?
After the initial denial, devastation, soul searching and final acceptance, the family, after rejecting mumbo-jumbo kind of shaman advised by well meaning relatives, has decided to go on full throttle crusade against the proliferating intruder with the strongest armamentarium known to mankind - Modern Medicine.

Confused concrete jungle

Managed to warp through Hong Kong (the sweet smelling harbour in Cantonese) in less than a day. It is a city that is pretty confused. On one hand, you have its citizens dressed to the nines with the latest winter collection keeping up with the latest trends set in New York, Paris and Milan with furs and boots, on the other hand, they do not fit into a typical metropolitan citizen category with language being their handicap. Even magazines are bilingual trying to write on something quite Continental like making a new cocktail.
You have yuppies (young urban professionals) waiting in line to barge into Louis Vuitton and Cartier flagship stores to lay their hands on the trendiest merchandise, and you also have the boat people and their humble what can hardly be called an abode in Aberdeen area! And everyone is working till late trying to make lots of money.
And they try to sell the trades and tours which are nothing more than flashing of the fetishism of capitalism and the evil past of colonialism.

Another noir drama

Sudden fear (1952)

Myra Hudson (Joan Crawford) is a rich heiress who is also successful play writer in New York. She is overlooking a rehearsal of her latest play, 'Halfway to Heaven' when she commented that the auditioned actor, even though presented his dialogues succinctly, was not macho enough for Myra. The said actor, Lester Blaine (Jack Palance), goes off but not without giving a piece of his mind that even Casanova (from a portrait that he saw) had a deformed face and rough features.
Another actor takes over the role and the play goes on to be a hit. Myra goes off on a long train ride to San Francisco on a well deserved break.
At the railway, she bumps into Lester. Even though Lester had apparently forgotten their previous encounter and had moved on with life, Myra felt that she owes him an apology. The banter goes on to drinks and laughter. Lester even extended his ticket from Chicago all the way to her destination.

Jack Palance

One thing lead another and Myra and Lester are married. Everything seem smooth sailing until a certain Irene Neves turns up as Myra's lawyer's brother's (Mike Connors, his big hit was Mannix) girlfriend to disturb the tranquility.

Mike Connors

We find out that Lester and Irene are lovers and they were out to cheat Myra off her money.
Lester later discovers that Myra was planning to donate a substantial amount of money to a heart foundation. He tries to get some money off Myra.
Myra's lawyer prepare a will for her. Unhappy with the meagre inheritance left for Lester, Myra dictates her proposal on a Dictaphone (an old dictating machine). She accidentally left the machine on, only to discover Lester and Irene's plan to murder her before the weekend was over!
She planned to hide the only available evidence to show it to the police later but in the excitement, the record fell and broke unto smithereens. Left with Hobson's choice, as her lawyer and her friends were all out of town, she had to take care of herself.
Here, we see good high-wire suspense of the crooks and the victim trying to outwit each other. She comes out of the whole imbroglio shaken and stirred but alive as her quick thinking and luck ended up both crooks killing each other.
Truly, Joan Crawford is the star of this movie. Her big starry eyed looked is suitable to portray all kinds of emotions to perfection, be it joy, love-struck, anxiety, fear or hysteria! This film was nominated for 4 academy awards.

Land of Confusion!

Perched on a collection of rocks amidst the hostile winds and seas of the South China Sea, Macao may seem like a morose land with a grey skyline. Without fertile agricultural land, it had to depend on other source of economical dependence.
What other way to make money than to deal with money itself, like use money to beget money, like gambling. Hey wait, the Jesuit forefathers who set sail to spread the good word of the God, established this land of the foundation of Godliness, gambling being one of the cardinal sins.
The sin would be halved if all the remnants of the ruins are conserved and shown to the world to lure heritage status and to lure divine help needing tourists from whom we will suck their money. Not to forget our pre-Portuguese seafaring ancestors and Ah-Ma temple with the sea protecting goddess. The mysticism just makes Macao more mysterious. Even its name was erroneously derived when the visitors landed at the local Fujian tribes were seen pacifying their newborns (probably after seeing the hirsute large white apparitions alighting the vessels) saying 'Mah Hau' 'Mah Hau' which later became Macao to the tone deaf sea faring drunken sailors!
Realising the need to make money, Macaoans lure their guests with aesthetics. Filling the city with lots of eyes pleasing blooming flowers all year round with high maintenance culture and a typical communist era infused discipline and artistry, the city is clean, modern and spick and span. Workers are seen wiping single leaf on the landscaping area to make it appeasing to the eyes of the beholder. Everything seem to be working like clock work, making the need for technicians to hang around redundant, all works on auto pilot.
Tourists come here to live their dream, to relax. Others live in a dream,building sand castles in the air, gamblers come to City of Dreams Casino hoping to hit their first million bucks just to go awoken back to reality to live back in their usual nightmare...

Meet me halfway!

We have heard again and again of two parties complaining about each other, each trying to justify their actions over the other. Each party would tell their version what they perceive as the truth and the actions
would seem to be only natural thing to do. We, the listeners, would be roped in so as that be a yes-man so just that to legalize their actions. We would be left in conundrum as to where the real truth lies. Both parties seem to telling the truth and seem to have act on the best of interest of both parties. At the end of the day, if the action was carried with no malice intended, there would be in no feud in the first place. The easy way out of this wrangle would be implement the no-fault or the Act of God clause. It seems that Man is always quick to blame God on everything and is an easy punching bag for fallacies of Man.
The truth is always in the middle, perhaps the party involved would meet each other midway before they reach a point of no return.

2 Short Stories

Kapurush - O - Mahapurush (The Coward & The Holy Man; Bengali, 1965)
This is a collection of two stories, one on a triangular love affair and the other on the gullibility of the public and blind faith.

Kapurush
The topic of love triangle has been dealt with by the Indian silver screen umpteenth times with varying success from 'Sangam' to 'Saajan' to 'Jab Tak Hai Jaan' and till the end of time. What make this different is the simplicity of story and the excellence of direction and acting, minus the razzmatazz of an Indian wedding and melodrama.

Storm in tea-cup?

Amit Roy (Soumitra Chatterjee who has been seen in many of Ray's films) is a screenwriter who is stranded in a small town when his car stalls. Bimal Gupta, a tea planter offers him a place to stay the night. Back in his bungalow, Roy, discovers that Mrs Gupta is actually (surprise, surprise) his old flame whom he did not have the courage to sweep her off from her guardians when they sent her away, not approving of their relationship. No doubt, Roy then was at a cross roads, was poor and was jobless.

One man woman

Mr Gupta, we discover, is a bitter and lonely man, stashed away in the middle of nowhere with no friends and bound by a hierarchy class system where the high ranking officers are discouraged to mingle with their subordinates. His only companions are whiskey and his wife Karuna (Madabhi Mukerjee, seen in Charulatha and many of Ray's movies).
Roy is disappointed that Karuna does not show any enthusiasm upon meeting him. He tries to start a conversation with a rather 'matter-of-factly' Karuna, in vain. He tries to woo her back. After repeated fail attempts, he expressed his desire to marry her via his scribbled message on a serviette. He decides to leave town by train and Karuna was supposed to leave her husband. As he waited for the train, Karuna did appear, not to follow him but to take the bottle of her sleeping medicine that Roy had taken from the night table! End.

Old times to rest!

As in all of Ray's films, many of the conclusions on the story are left to the imagination of its viewers. Till the end, we keep imaging that Mr Gupta is aware of their previous affair and was going to expose it anytime but it never happened. We are left to imagine that Karuna is unhappy with her husband, a hard drinking, ever complaining, youthfully challenged balding man. Karuna never shows it but at the end one is left to wonder whether she really is from the fact that she has to use sleeping tablets!

Mahapurush

Divine blessing seekers!

Ever wondered why all men of God end up in India? Well, for the same reason why all alien sightings are sighted in the US. It is the psyche of citizens of the nations. In the former, a need for escapism for the tortures of daily life whilst in the latter, the general distrust of the authority and the importance given to self expression!
The film starts with a scene at a railway station with scores of divine hunger desperadoes shoving to catch a glimpse of their guru Birinchi Babaji and accept his pittance of blessed flowers. The followers gain satisfaction as the train moves and they touch his dirty foot as he sticks it out of the moving coach!

Taught Einstein E=mc2

In the train, a distraught Gurupada, a widow who is at wits end trying to get his daughter married is captivated by Babaji ageless stories about his immortality. Babaji had allegedly had conversations with Plato, Buddha, Jesus and Einstein on the theory of relativity!
Gurupada offers his place for meeting. Meanwhile, Satya is in love with Gurupada's daughter Buchki who does not return his love. In fact, she plans to become Babaji's full time disciple.
Desperate, Satya, a book keeper, summons a group of his intellectual friends for help.

Seeking intellectual blessings!

The intellectuals, sneering at the masses manages to drive the holyman and his assistant out of town by creating a mayhem in the house with a fake fire scare and power failure. Babaji absconds happily with some loots that his assistant manage to squander from Gurupada's house in the melee!
Satya wins the heart of his girl. End.
As in Ray's 1960's offering 'Devi', he takes another swipe at the blind unquestioning faith accepted into the society. Maybe because there were too many character involved, you do not get drawn too deeply into the story. To me, just another Ray's film. Not too outstanding!

Banality of evil or devil at work?

Sailing through the tumultuous undulating wavy ocean of life and trying to make sense of this entity called life, I venture deep into the crevices of my non dominant right brain trying to find an explanation to the many bizarre every day happenings. I am only left more confused than I ever was.
Why do we do the things that we do?
In fact, this concept has been argued by modern man for aeons  People do evil stuff which seem unthinkable to others. Instances like the Holocaust, Khmer Rouge genocide and of late the Indian brutal rape-murder incident fit the bill perfectly.

Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt, a critical thinker of a generation ago, sitting through the Israeli trial of Adolf Ikemann and his role in the holocaust, argued that, people who push the button in these heinous crimes are just like you and me. They do not have the personification of evil of you and I have in mind. They are fastidious law abiding citizens leading mundane lives dedicated to do the task assigned to them.

William-Yau-Zhen-Zhong

On the other hand, opponents of this theory suggest that these people have certain traits which only surface in the correct environment and people of same frequency.
The purist of theological minds would confidently negate this dilemma as a non issue. The scriptures have provided us sufficient guidance on how life should be lived. Our forefathers and the Word of God have paved us the time tested Path of Enlightenment which would unquestionably lead to peace on earth and eternal bliss. But then, I find that difficult to stomach as most of man's raising of arms have been in the name of proving that their religion is superior over their brothers'. Is the human race doomed to annihilation right from start?