The Music of the Spheres

Thursday morning at the Birla Planetarium. We're lying back in our seats, urged to imagine it is the 21st of June. Our journey to the Land of the Midnight Sun begins. It will take us from Hyderabad, through Venice, Paris, Leningrad and finally to the North Pole. I'm excited, and might even allow myself to drown in the experience, were it not for one fairly large problem and one smaller one.

Hyderabad is signified by some santoor-type music familiar to all of us from the days of DD. It fairly reeks of jasmine and sandal. But once we reach Venice, we are treated to 'Woman in Love' in some unidentifiable language. Why? Why?

Paris was some retro-pop in French ( I could tell because I heard the words 'person' and 'chose'. I think.) And I couldn't even distract myself with the stars because on June 21, Paris is not very star-friendly.

On to Leningrad. Who wrote the script for this presentation, and when? Leningrad?! Are we in a Kaurismaki film? What happened to St. Petersburg?

And now we get classical. Strauss, and lots of it. It was a wonder the Aurora Borealis didn't waltz in response.

The music of the spheres. Oh Merlin!

Out!

I've spent a lot of time wondering whether I should do what I'm going to. After all, I've enjoyed the couple of years I've done this; I like my name, the one I've assumed. But the time has come to (at least temporarily, at least for today) chuck it out.

This afternoon, I received my copies of my first book. I knew yesterday that they were being sent to me, but I really did not think that they would reach me quite so soon. It's a very strange feeling: when you have proof-read the MS three times and know what the cover will look like, you think you know what the book will also look like. But nothing prepares you for the sensation of seeing it come together into one whole. It all looks so professional... you feel you could not possibly have had anything to do with it!

Okay...so much excitement is unseemly.

So, with no further digressions, here's the cover of my first book of poetry: A Reluctant Survivor (Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 2007).

Cover Design © Neelima Rao.

The book should be available in the Sahitya Akademi sales offices in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai.

Spaniard Turns One

Or, in which Statutory Navel Gazing and Blogispection happens.

Interior. Early morning. A study.

Space Bar sits at a computer typing away. The room is dark, lit only by the monitor. At the edge of what is visible, are several bookshelves punctuated by the occasional light-coloured spines of books. There is a fan that often whirrs and hums but it is off at this time. Space Bar is careful to type softly, lest those who sleep in the adjoining bedroom should wake.

Take 1.

Spaniard turns one! Gosh!

I’m actually surprised that I’ve kept this blog going for one whole year, posting something – anything – nearly every week. I can’t remember which came first: the thought that it might be fun to have a blog, or the name of the blog, which then demanded that I post to get it started and keep it going.

Cut. Too exclamatory and Dear Diary-ish. And incoherent.

Take 2.

It seems almost mandatory for every blogger to introspect on the reasons why s/he blogs and anniversaries seem to amplify this urge. I find such introspection especially hard to do, because it would mean I know the kind of writing I want to do in that space; it only remains then, to sort out the ‘why’. But I'm not even sure of that.

Some people write very personal, journal-like blogs – almost a form of thinking aloud. As Take 1 will indicate, I can’t do that (and this is the place to emphasise that this goes only for me. I have no problem with people who do have personal blogs.) And though I’ve had several posts on cinema and poetry, some on books, some posts that are links, most are what could be categorised as Misc. At the end of one year, I’m still not sure why I have a blog or what I really intend to do with it. After all, I deleted the first one I had; this should augur ill for this one. But given that I spend the time immediately after I put up a post in a state of mild euphoria, followed by two days of complacency and then a rapidly escalating sense of tension (I have to post! I have to post!), that doesn’t seem very likely.

(Aside: notice also, that this post, like the life of my blog, is still going strong in its second avatar. Hmm.)

I can understand why journalists blog, and why they are so widely read when they do. It’s a place where they can give themselves the space to explore all the thoughts they can’t in the media they engage in. They can be more informal, and have conversations about their work. At the very least, it is a place for them to store their published work. But I am not a journalist.

I think of a blog as a lit space surrounded by a pool of darkness. Why I find writing about my life or more personal matters difficult (apart from my inability to understand how anyone could be possibly be interested) is that it feels uncomfortably close to being a Lady Godiva figure at a lit window at night. Do I pretend the curtains are drawn and this space is indeed a private journal? Or do I assume that there will be people looking in? And having assumed that, would I ignore that fact and do what I would otherwise do? (Is that even possible?)

I prefer to think of this space as a stage instead, and necessarily an artificial one. If I must be in the lit space, I may as well offer something else than a slice of my boring life. And if the light leaches out into the dark places and draws in some figures every once in a while who will participate, so much the better.

Like several such spaces that hold a few people in for a period of time, blogs can become a real world sufficient in itself. We know each other by our real or assumed names and our opinions. If we do not know the personal details of each others’ lives, we know, through the writing, what any given person is likely to think, or how s/he will react. Even what we react to are often the same things. We live in an echo chamber and we find our choruses rather pleasant – even the occasional dissonance (who was it said you can have no harmony if everyone sings the same note?).

I enjoy that. I enjoy the eventual sense of community, the opinions that people hold, the way they express themselves and the conversations. I read several blogs for these reasons; I can only assume that someone somewhere likes to read mine for similar reasons.

So…Spaniard turns one.

Thank you all for reading!

Sneaking Sicko Out

Talking about Michael Moore, his latest film, Sicko is being premiered at Cannes today. From his website, here's his account of events leading up to Cannes:

I was floored when our lawyers told me this. "Are you saying they might actually confiscate our movie?" "Yes," was the answer. "These days, anything is possible. Even if there is just a 20 percent chance the government would seize our movie before Cannes, does anyone want to take that risk?"

Certainly not. So there we were last week, spiriting a duplicate master negative out of the country just so no one from the government would take it from us. (Seriously, I can't believe I just typed those words! Did I mention that I'm an American, and this is America and NO ONE should ever have to say they had to do such a thing?)

Harvey Weinstein has taken on the mantle of protector.

Intimidation, investigation...does any of this sound familiar to anyone?

Adventures in Semantics Part 3: Collective Nouns

Our light at the traffic signal and I have to turn right. Traffic moves at the usual slow crawl when it's our turn. Our green light, on the other hand, has a differnet sense of time. As I cross the signal, the cop puts out his hand to stop those behind me.

"Just made it!" I say.

"Yes," says my son. "There was a zoom of cars just after we crossed!"

More collective nouns here.

Adventures in Semantics 1 and 2.

Bomb blast at Hyderabad's Mecca Masjid

"The two bombs which killed five people and injured many others inside the Mecca Masjid compound near the Charminar on Friday afternoon here appeared to have been remote controlled.

Two unexploded bombs have also been recovered from inside the compound. Soon after the explosions, around 200 people gathered outside the mosque, pelting stones in protest against the incident.

The blasts took place in the compound of the mosque around 1:30 pm while Friday prayers were on. The injured have been rushed to nearby Osmania Hospital.

Section 144 has been imposed in adjoining areas."

The rest here and on all TV Channels.

Running to Stand Still: Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth

Where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone. And what is it to say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.
—from Chief Seattle’s speech*






R. Rajamani, former bureaucrat and environmentalist, made three very interesting points while introducing Al Gore’s Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth on Sunday, but hoped that we would not then be compelled to look at the film through the narrow lens of his views. But as happens when an argument is persuasive, it was impossible not to notice the accuracy of Mr. Rajamani’s statements. He said that

1) the film was a shrewd mix of the sentimental and the reasonable;


2) that though it was a film about a subject that might be said to be dry and boring, had all the elements of good showmanship that characterises the best cinema; and


3) that the film was as much about Al Gore as it was about global warming.

I’d say that all the three points he raises are related. Al Gore, early on in the film, introduces himself to an assembled audience. He says, “Hi. I’m Al Gore. I was the next President of the United States.” The audience erupts into laughter as he says, with a smile that makes them complicit in a joke, “I don’t find that funny.”

In another clipping of the same presentation that punctuates the film, he walks along the screen on which a chart compares global temperatures for the last few million years. As he walks along, he indicates the Ice Ages – several of them – alternating with warmer temperatures. When he comes to the end of the chart, he tells the audience that the last fifty years have seen an unprecedented rise in global temperatures. Then, moving slightly away from the screen, he fumbles with a contraption to one side of the stage, saying that he’d been taught to use it, but if it doesn’t work…The audience waits in silence. He climbs on to the contraption, which turns out to be a sort of crane, and resumes his presentation. As he talks about projected temperatures for the next fifty years, the crane rises along with the red line on the chart, until he is way above the screen and the audience.

Gore’s methods are very different from the sledgehammer techniques favoured by Michael Moore. It might have something to do with the fact that he was, after all, the former Vice President of the US; that accommodation and dialogue are more natural for him than confrontation and sarcasm. But he is also aware that if the ordinary person is to be won over into recognising the threat that global warming poses, he would need to persuade them with humour and gesture. If the film has one defining characteristic, it is in the recognition that people need to be entertained while they are informed. Which is why Gore uses the kind of animation shorts that teachers use in school to persuade children to brush their teeth: to illustrate simple points about greenhouse gases or to make fun about inadequate action and where it might get us (he uses The Simpsons to do the latter).

Every once in a while, however, in a more contemplative tone, Gore talks about his farm, his childhood; about the tobacco farming that his father abandoned after it was proved that tobacco caused cancer; about his six-year-old son’s accident and recovery and how it brought home to him the need to spend his life doing something worthwhile. While these sections skirt the edges of sentimentality, they escape a certain tweeness because of Gore’s belief that the personal is the political, and his willingness to take responsibility and act on his convictions.

Which is probably why he characterises the issue of global warming and what we need to do to solve it as “not so much a political issue as a moral one.” I find it extraordinary, because given that at every stage in the latter half of the film, the results of climate change are clearly political – the migration of refugees from countries affected by the effects of flooding or desertification, for instance – he does not manage to make a convincing case to support his statement. When one considers how closely geography is related to politics, it seems amazingly blind to characterise the issue as a moral one.

The other weakness of the film is the number of related issues it ignores: trading in carbon emissions, for one; the continuing export of obsolete technology by the US that is nothing if not cynical and self-serving; the connection between the energy consumption of the US and its political presence in different parts of the world.

Unfortunately, global warming is only one of the many environmental disasters that await us. We have to deal with the poisoning of the oceans and rivers; our depletion of more than our carbon reserves; and the huge question of what to do with the enormous amounts of waste that we produce. Granta had an excellent issue a couple of years ago called This Overheating World (Granta 83, October 2003). The photo-essay in that issue had some images of rusting tin cans, car tires, computers, radios, TVs – all looking frighteningly indestructible. (Some articles from the issue available here).

In one of the articles in that issue, published before Al Gore made his film, Bill McKibben says:

As satisfying as it is to blame politicians, however, it will not do. Politicians will follow the path of least resistance. So far there has not been a movement loud or sustained enough to command political attention. Electorates demand economic prosperity—more of it—above all things. Gandhianism, the political philosophy that restricts material need, is now only a memory even in the country of its birth. And our awareness that the world will change in every aspect, should we be so aware, is muted by the future tense, even though that future isn’t far away, so near in fact that preventing global warming is a lost cause—all we can do now is to try to keep it from getting utterly out of control.

This is a failure of imagination, and in this way a literary failure. Global warming has still to produce an Orwell or a Huxley, a Verne or a Wells, a Nineteen Eighty-Four or a War of the Worlds, or in film any equivalent of On The Beach or Doctor
Strangelove. It may never do so. It may be that because—fingers crossed—we have escaped our most recent fear, nuclear annihilation via the Cold War, we resist being scared all over again. Fear has its uses, but fear on this scale seems to be disabling, paralysing. Anger has its uses too, but the rage of anti-globalization demonstrators has yet to do more than alienate majorities. Shame sends a few Americans shopping for small cars, but on the whole America, now the exemplar to the world, is very nearly unshameable.

While Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim (the director of the film) might not have the cinematic chutzpah of a Kramer or Kubrick, and while all that the film might achieve is a minor reversal, if that, it has to be admitted that it does what some good films can do: raise the spirit enough for us to hope that something may yet be achieved, that simply by writing or making a film about it people could be induced to change their way of living.


There’s an old joke I was reminded of while watching this film. A man walks into a restaurant and is told he can order whatever he likes and he wouldn’t have to pay for it. So he orders the most exotic, expensive things on the menu. At the end of his meal, he gets ready to leave, when the waiter presents him with a whopping bill. “What’s this?” the man asks indignantly. “I was told I could order anything and there would be no charge!” “There isn’t, sir” the waiter replies respectfully. “This is your father’s bill for the meal he ate twenty year ago.”

The most unambiguous message of the film is this: that while we pay the price for the excesses of the previous generations, we must ensure that our children are not left with a burden that is too large to be borne.


* From the famous speech attributed to Chief Seattle, though it is said that a playwright, Ted Perry, wrote it for a film called Home.

Leela Samson vs. the Sangh Parivar

James Laine, M.F.Husain, MSU Baroda, Leela Samson.

We could look at these two articles in the light of the whipping up of frenzy. Expect more developments from the Hindu Right on this matter, who manage to get their people's knickers in a twist with the most incoherent arguments. I can picture some dude sitting in Goregaon (W) wringing his hands in despair at the state of our country's institutions of culture. They've moved a few statues! They allow boys and girls to mix! Horror! Somebody do something!

By contrast, there's Baradwaj Rangan's interview with Leela Samson (done before this brouhaha erupted, I think) which gives a more clear insight into her philosophy and motivations than the product of The Organiser's fevered imagination. (Please take note of one of the comments to the post; Baradwaj has wisely refrained from responding).

All this via Rahul's blog.

I wonder what would happen if Mr. Menon or Mr. Daivamuthu actually met Ms. Samson. The imagination boggles at the high levels of absurdity that would result.

Common Species of the Literary World

# 41: The Book Blogger

(Via)

No, I don't know where the other 40 are. If you find them, do let me know.

(oh, and click to enlarge the image)

'the weird guitar guy'

Old age is a sad, sad thing. I'm not even talking about decrepit old age when the body gives way and the mind wanders. That would be understandable. Sad, but understandable.

But when you know you have it in you to do a Never Ending Tour of the world, and in between all the continent jumping you take the time off to visit your grandson's kindergarten class, and you imagine that singing a few songs for the kids is a Good Thing, but the kids call you 'the weird guitar guy', and you weren't even trying to scare them, really, by singing gruesome songs with great relish...then it's tragic.