A wounded mother

The Mirror Crack'd (1980)

Director: Guy Hamilton

Gene Tierney was acclaimed for her great beauty in Hollywood. She was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1944 and even had a brief affair with JFK before he had political ambitions. After a performance at a World War 2 fundraiser event, she was kissed by a fan convalescing from rubella. Unbeknownst to her, she was in her early stage of pregnancy. She went on to deliver a baby with multiple birth defects due to congenital rubella syndrome. Gene Tierney spent the rest of her life emotionally disturbed caring for her baby. When Agatha Christie read about the actress in 1962, her creative juices must have worked overtime to imagine the feelings of a grieving mother.

Gene Tierney

Of course, there cannot be Agatha Christie's whodunnit with no murders. 

Ms Marple, in 1953, is residing in a small village in the English countryside. A film crew comes to the village to do some shooting. In midst of all the excitement, the villagers also witness a couple of murders. Ms Marple, with the help of her 'favourite' nephew from Scotland Yard, gets to the bottom of it all.

The movie saw the appearance of many stalwarts of yesteryears in the twilight of their careers. It saw Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, Tony Curtis and Kim Novak. Angela Lansbury was there as Ms Marple. Lansbury's career was, of course, still flying high, and she went on to complete 12 seasons of 'Murder, She wrote' from 1984 to 1996.

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The role women play?

Uski Roti (Your Bread, Punjabi; 1969)
Direction: Mani Kaul

A discussion came up with a friend the other day. Rama and Sita are hailed as exemplary beings who lived to the expectations of how a human should live on Earth. Take the perspective of Sita. A princess by birth, not exposed to the rumble and tumble of living in the wild, had no choice but to follow her husband, Rama, when the King decreed that he should spend 14 years of exile in the jungle. Playing the role of a good wife, she just followed without any opposition. 

Through no fault of hers, she had to endure the kidnapping and incarceration in Lanka. She did not develop Stockholm Syndrome but stayed steadfast that her beau would save the day. When she was eventually rescued and finally returned to Ayodhya, she was not hailed as a good wife. She was instead used as a bad example when a dhoby refused to accept his wayward wife back to fold after being caught in a possible remorseful affair.

Rama, living up to the role of a King, and Sita, the symbol of a chaste Queen, had to endure tests of fidelity. Sita took all these in stride. When a pregnant Sita was sent off to the jungles a second time, her thoughts were only about who would perform her wifely duties in her absence. It seems that she had no resentment against the King for the turmoil she had to endure in the name of royal reputation. Such is said to be the role of a good Indian wife - to trust that the husband would do the correct thing for the household and its family members. Of course, neither everyone can be Rama nor can everyone be a Sita!

Fast forward to the present. A modern person cannot stomach all this bunkum. To him or her, individual liberty is prime. Individual rights, freedom of expression and non-conformity to traditional, seemingly archaic, unscientific dogma are essential. Maybe in that way, this movie highlights the patriarchal nature of our societies and how females have to play the part of a quiet wife. This can be quite challenging when a traditional society expects a female member of a community to be seen, not heard. She is expected to perform her preset duties and not question or give opinions! But then, detractors would assert that eventually, the wayward husband came back to his senses, and that is the role of a wife, a stabilising figure.

This 1969 award-winning new-wave cinema movie from the land of Kamasutra is a non-linear presentation of a tale of philandering inter-city bus driver, Sucha Singh, and his obedient wife, Balo. The wife faithfully prepares his daily supply of meals to pass to him when he passes the village bus stop. Sucha Singh is a creep. He comes home only once a week. He spends all the time immersed in the pleasure of alcohol, gambling and his mistress.

Balo, who lives with her younger sister, is quite aware of her two-timing husband. She hangs on, maybe due to financial dependence or avoiding the stigma of being a divorcee or just hoping that he will repent. At the same time, Balo has to fend off an aggressor from her sister. 

In this profoundly slow-moving presentation which focuses a lot on inanimate objects and body parts rather than on faces, we get a flip flop between the present and past of what happens in Balo and Sucha. A simple story that brings back the memory of our past when days felt like longer than 24 hours and a year felt like a lifetime!

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Nostalgia is not a bad word!

von Trapp family

More often than not, I have been told right on my face not to live in the past. I have been cajoled into coming out occasionally, taking a depth of fresh air and smelling the roses. They fear I may soon become an ancient relic that only deserves to be admired in the museum. They ask me to burst my comfortable bubble of the past, leave the sunrise and head towards newer horizons. 

They even tell me that 'nostalgia' is a negative word. The suffix 'algia' denotes pain for a reason. Not too long ago, the term 'nostalgia' was a medical term used interchangeably with melancholy and even post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

So, if I were to believe all that was told to me, nostalgia would be avoided at all costs. I think nostalgia in the modern context is more romantic, re-imagining a time if it actually did when things were hunky-dory, and the world was safe. All these are, of course, mere bunkum. We were just too naive to realise that evil was lurking right under our noses at all times.

Nostalgia is not a bad word; this I realised during my last visit to Austria. Imagine a country just living in the memory of its glorious past. Austria is a country that thrives on the glory of its historical past. Its selling points are the laurels of the House of Hasburgh through the times of the Austria-Prussian and Austria-Hungarian Empires, its glorious musical culture and more recently, the razzmatazz of Hollywood's 'Sound of Silence'.

The brutality of imperialism brought with its enormous amount of sorrow, pain and loss of lives. Nevertheless, its negativity seems to have been cancelled with the so-called 'civilisation' it brought. The only trouble is that nothing civil was done in the process. The victors justified their actions by scribing and immortalising their version of the truth. The 'real truth' remains buried behind with the corpses and unheard screams of the fallen.

The victors proclaimed that, and that is proof of modernity. Pop sprang the gargantuan monuments to boast of their greatness. Their leaders' fondness became the trademark of the kingdom. Musicians who jumped to the beck and call of the victors became national heroes. Mozart came to be worshipped as a child prodigy composer.

In the same vein, the German's failed attempt at creating the Third Reich adds to the world's positive narrative. At a time when Hollywood was controlling how the world should think, the mega-blockbuster 'The Sound of Music' came to the fore. This coming-of-age plus anti-Nazi film became part and parcel of baby boomers in their formative years. Capitalising on this nostalgia, recreating an alternative universe of the doe-eyed teenage that never exists, Austria continues prospering by selling dreamers this dream. They proudly claim an annual inflow of 3 million tourists to visit and re-live the life of the von Trapp household.

The country thrives on nostalgia. The nation lives in the memory of the past to plan for the future. Nostalgia cannot be all bad.

Outside Von Trapp villa

Sankt Gilgen - part of Sound of Music tour

Salzburg after dark.

The fields scream to the sound of music.

I 

That will bring us back to 'Do'.

Recreating the royal courtyard. Even musicians and composers have subtle ways of showing the monarchs that all is not well in paradise. 'The Marriage of Figaro' showcasing servants rising up and outwitting their masters – outraged the aristocracy. 

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A many-splendoured thing?

Love and Loss

Author: Malachi Edwin Vethamani

Maybe life has an innate plan to trap individuals. In the spring of youth, when hormones are raging high, we make hormonal-linked decisions that decide our futures. Somehow, hormones control rational thinking. The prefrontal cortex that controls analytical thinking is hijacked by impulses. We take the plunge dazed like a drunk monkey, like a prancing horse with blinkers, head on like sacrificial lambs, only to realise that we are in trouble deep when the dirt (or blood) hits the ceiling.

The path into this journey called love stirs all the primal suppressed emotions. It lights up so many intoxicating feel-good emotions within us that we never knew existed. We are swept off our feet, the world is a utopia, and we only see goodness in everything.

Maybe nature wants us to sow our seeds far and wide; perhaps it is just its way to improve the selection of traits. We lose interest. We get bored with the same routine and want freedom. We yearn to break taboos. We itch to push the boundaries of what is allowed than what is not.

What is this thing called love? Is it the constant high one gets at the sight of loved ones? Is it a societal duty that one performs to complete one's existence? This fulfilment of obligation is gifted with particular added delights, which are the carrot-dangling enticements to lure mankind.

Is it trapping to entice providers for generation next? A contractual obligation in return for an experience of a lifetime? Is successful love one which stands the test of time even though the committed players cannot stand the sight of each other after long but stay for the sake of wanting to uphold the holy institution of matrimony?

Sometimes the nectar of love turns sour. Or perhaps, it meets an unplanned end. The spiralling falling out of love or losing love can be as devastating as the act of falling in. If a loss is already filled with avalanches of emotions, it must be made more difficult with the complexities of 21st-century love.

Prof Malachi Edwin Vethamani's latest collection of poems describes these emotions in simple yet meaningful words that leave a zing that lasts. Many of us will relate to some of the joy, frustrations, cynicism, the wisdoms of hindsight that all the experiences bring us. With the expert craft of a wordsmith, with economical use of vocabulary, he opens the door to a world of literary bliss. A good read.

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Could be a page from Mahabharata..

Duvidha (Dilemma, Hindi; 1973)
Director: Mani Kaul

Watching this movie is akin to a voyeur spying upon his neighbour. The camera work is peculiar in that it sometimes takes shots of the face over a long period, sometimes only at body parts or inanimate structures. The scripts delivered are like rote reading without emotion, as one would hear a conversation at a distance. Nevertheless, these add to this presentation's exclusivity and an arty feel.

In a way, it reminds me of the story of Ahalya, found in Ramayana. Ahalya, the prettiest woman, carved out by Brahma, was married to an old sage, Gautama. Gautama is more interested in fulfilling his spiritual duties rather than spending time embraced in intimacy with his young wife. So, when the lustful Indra, the God of the skies, appeared in a split image of Gautama, the sex-deprived Ahalya performed by wifely duties willingly. Gautama had a premonition of all these, cut short his prayers and returned home to catch them in the act. Ahalya and Indra were cursed by Gautama. Ahalya turned into stone, only to have the curse reversed when Rama's foot brushed Ahalya, the rock, during his walk in the jungle. Indra was cursed to carry a thousand of his favourite pastime, vaginas. It was later changed to a thousand eyes.

Painting of Ahalya

This movie, based on Rajasthani folklore, threads along with a similar narrative initially only to resolve on a slightly different path. A pair of young newlyweds return home on a bullock cart. The wife wants to taste the succulent fruit of a giant tree. Despite being prevented from doing so by the husband, the one-track-minded girl plucks and savours the fruit. The spirit of the tree falls hopelessly in love with the enchanting bride.

The Cursed Lord Indra with a thousand eyes

The young groom makes it clear that his priority is to make money and will leave for work the following day. He would be home for the next five years. Seeing the husband go, the tree ghost assumes the form of the husband and lives with the wife. The spirit is truthful in confessing his intent and spills out his heart's content for her. The wife, incensed that her real husband is more interested in acquiring wealth, leaving her for years rather than spending passionate time with her, plays along. The ghost and the wife lived together in absolute for years. The husband returns at the end of five years only to find his wife in labour.

How he, his family and the community resolve this problem is the rest of the story, and it does not involve cursing and petrification.

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Which is real and unreal?

Bliss (2021)

Director: Mike Cahill

This is one of the movies that one will either love or hate; get it, or it just passes by! I thought it was good. It helps the rest of the population not be affected by the complexities of a confused mind. 

Quite often than that, to the lucky ones unaffected by the hardship of modern living, it is sometimes how certain decisions should be made. And we cannot understand why the mentally ill repeatedly make wrong life decisions. They plunge continually into states of helplessness and hopelessness. 

Greg (Owen Wilson) is a staff in a call centre-like office. Even though his superior keeps calling him to the office, Greg is immersed in his own pencil drawing of his dream holiday villa. We gather that he is divorced. Even though everybody else is huffing and puffing, busy answering calls, Greg is in bliss, adding details to his drawing. 

When Greg finally meets his boss, he is shocked to find out he has been fired. Greg shoves his boss aside, and in a freak accident, the boss hits his head and dies. That is, everything became a blur. Greg finds his life going into a tailspin. He is confused. He does not know what is real, what is drug-induced, and what is hallucination. Who is that mysterious lady who keeps appearing and disappearing with yet another concoction to try? Why is the Universe keeps changing? At one moment, they are homeless and hunted like dogs in one instance and, in another, feted as great scientists.

To the uninitiated, this whole exercise is too confusing. If we scrutinise keenly, this entire imbroglio of severe mental illness could be akin to one floating around in a dream. Just like we become the leading player in our dreams and tend to do invincible outlandish feats, the sufferer is convinced that he writes the script of his role. There are no rules there; no holds barred. The trouble is that the audience and co-players do not share the same script. Hence, the clash.

Mental illness causes distortions of the mind. And the modalities to treat the sickness also bring in the same distortion to the mind, sometimes worse, bringing in disastrous outcomes. Sometimes, it makes us wonder. Is the illness worse, or is the treatment worse?

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Civilisation does not equate to civility!

Civilisation does not assure civility!

So, what is it that makes someone great? Is he the one who has conquered all his animalistic desires and knows that his real needs are beyond the realm of physicality and materialism? This man seeks knowledge and is satisfied when the lock of the meaning of life and the hidden secret of the Universe is unlocked. Such a man is fiction. Nietzsche described him as Übermensch. Hindus referred to him as Rama or Krishna, the revised 2.0 version of a complex man. 

Javanese Trishul

Another version of understanding how life works is to look at Hinduism's representation of the Universe - Trimurti, the Trinity - Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva and their consorts. Brahma, the creator, has to work in tandem with his consort, Saraswati. Saraswati is the Goddess of education and creativity. The take-home message here is that to create anything; one needs to have enough knowledge and creativity.

Once the creation is done, life does not just go on unabashed. It has to be preserved and preserved well. To maintain this creation and look after it, one needs the brains, plus the resources for that. For this comes Vishnu, the divinity assigned for this purpose, who operates with his consort, Laxmi, the Goddess of wealth and prosperity. The point here is that to conserve any creation; we need affluence. Wealth is required to ensure the continuity of anything that we create. Maintenance takes money. And money begets money.

At the same time, to guard any property, one should have to power to destroy evil and negative forces. Human instinct is to usurp and squander. He will sleep until his material possession is more than his neighbour's. The guardian for this is Shiva, the dissolver (destroyer). Goddess Sakti or her manifestations Parvati or Kaali, the most ferocious form of divinity, is there to assist him in his task. To maintain the status quo and to keep one's possessions intact, he needs to have the power to destroy. Power is mandatory to stay in charge. Unstoppable rage is pointless. Shiva, by being the brake to unbridled violence, acts against the killing machine of Sakti.

One cannot go on destroying everything in sight forever like what the jihadists are doing. Nothing would be left to protect or protect for. Hence, the creation, preservation and destruction cycle needs to be repeated.

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