'nobody can inspire my wallet on a local train. But I can steal a line I hear from a commuter'

So says Sriram Raghavan on Rediff, defending charges that Johnny Gaddar is inspired by Tarantino.

I haven't seen the film yet, but he has a point; there's inspiration and there's 'inspiration' in the way many people making mainstream cinema use it - where it's shorthand for plagiarism. And I'd go watch the film if for no other reason than because he wrote that line in the title.

Via Jai

two space stories

From the Deccan Chronicle this morning. one weird call to arms in the name of peace, and one prediction from a long time ago coming true.

One

'Kalam predicts a space war', the headline says. We have all these space scientists, including the much-appropriated Sunita Williams, at the 58th International Astronautical Congress in Hyderabad, all wanting to discuss our final frontier and our ex-President wants to pre-emptively arm it so that we can 'deal with “celestial” disputes between nations and ensure peace in the outer space.'

"Multilateral approaches are required to ensure that the use of outer space is in conformity with international law and in the interest of maintaining peace and security and promoting international cooperation. Hence, I suggest creation of an International Space Force made up of all space faring nations wishing to participate and contribute to protect world space assets,” Dr Kalam said.

Right. We've seen how successful international organisations are at keeping the peace in the one world we know. Now let's repeat our infinite capacity for vileness, corruption and will to destruction elsewhere, shall we? I'm only hoping that by the time we get around to it, we'll have destroyed ourselves right here on earth.

Two

Astrophysicists have suggested a way to solve the water scarcity which future star trekkers would face in Mars and Moon — drink recycled urine and sweat. This would be the most viable alternative if astronauts and space tourists want to enjoy long sojourns in waterless Moon and Mars or if humans ever plan to set up colonies there.

Forty-two years ago, Frank Herbert called them stillsuits.

Brian is back!

Of the hundreds of posts I've saved in bloglines to read later, or come back to from time to time, at least 60 or more are the posts of Brian Sholis' Today In Letters. He blogged for four months and then disappeared for four more, and now he's back, yippee!

From the latest entry - Evelyn Waugh, September 27, 1944:

Yesterday we drove a great distance to see a battle. It was a splendid autumn day. The countryside is extraordinarily English, with little irregular woods & fields and hedges full of Travellers Joy and elderberries & blackberries & thorn. We picknicked on the side of a hill with a desultory, inconclusive little battle going on a mile below us & drove home by dusk & moonlight to find the telegraphist wandering about the farm without his trousers groaning as though in great pain.

Today has lasted about a week already and it is only 4.15 pm. We are like Chekhov characters.

There are plenty of gems in the archives. If I've given some of you (another) addiction to burn up your time, I shall consider the day seized.

Predictions

of the Nobel Kind:

1. SOME EASTERN EUROPEAN POET OR NOVELIST NOBODY HAS EVER HEARD OF.

PRO: When at a loss for new flesh, the Nobel committee goes back to incest. In the past 10 years, seven of the laureates have been European.

CON: The most common baby name in Europe is Mohammed. Aren’t all these white men dead by now?

(via Maud Newton)

Something fishy is going on here: Manorama Six Feet Under

This is not a review. Just a record of my appreciation for the fish that appear in the film, the only creatures who have an ample supply of water in an arid land:

to the important one named Shakuntala - at one point I remembered the ring that a fish ate in the original story and made up lurid scenarios where Shakuntala, in a meta-mythic twist, houses important evidence;

and the tankful of fish that Satyaveer (Abhay Deol) feeds every evening, that accomodate the suspiciously large Shakuntala, and that are found dead;

to the ugly, predatory ones in Rathore's office. This tank also contains one orange chinese dragon that throws its head back and lets out bubbles. Pay close attention to it in the penultimate scene;

and finally, the plug-in lamp in Brij Mohan's (Satyaveer's brother-in-law) house that has electric fish moving from side to side. If someone in the film had a computer, I have no doubt the screensaver would be the fish one everyone seems to be so fond of.

As we left the theatre, this abundance of marine life in a small town in Rajasthan did not go unnoticed; at least three people were discussing it with various degrees of earnestness on the way out. They - and you - should read Shakuntala Six Thousand Feet Above, at Passion For Cinema.

(The film is very good, by the way. Though comparisons with Chinatown are inevitable, it takes the template and makes something good of it - while paying homage to it in the film. I can't understand why the film hasn't done well so far. So much for adventurous, mature multiplex audiences.)

Events in memory of Shakti Bhatt

Shakti Bhatt passed away earlier this year.

Several events coming up in the next few days, in her memory.

Thursday, 27th September (Shakti's birthday), a reading at

The British Council, 17, Kasturba Gandhi Marg, Delhi, at 7pm.

Her friends will read from her work and remember her with poetry, short fiction, and music. The Shakti Bhatt Foundation will announce the inaugural 2008 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize.

Friday, 28th September "Open Baithak" Performance in Poetry & Art Series

British Council Delhi,

6.30 pm.

Sign up starts at 6.30pm. Open reading/performance start at 7pm. Each poet/performer gets 5 mins on the stage and is expected to bring in new work every time -- and also to delight the audience by doing risky and innovative things with it. You can read/perform in any language. Wheelchair accessible.

Baithak Theme: Love, Lies, Forgetting

Sunday, 30th September Caferati's First Annual Celebrating Shakti Bhatt Workshop.

The Attic, 36, Regal Building, 1st Floor, Next to Kwality Restaurant, Parliament Street, Connaught Place, New Delhi 110 001.

4pm.

One workshop focuses on Creative Editing for Creative Writers, and will be led by Urvashi Butalia and Anita Roy of Zubaan. The second workshop is on Indian Poetic Forms and H S Shivaprakash of JNU will lead a part of this workshop.

And finally, the details of the Shakti Bhatt First Book Award 2008, below. If anyone has any queries about any of these events, ask in the comments and it shall be forwarded to those concerned.

The Shakti Bhatt Foundation is a non-profit trust set up by her family to keep her memory alive.

It wishes to reward first-time authors of all ages.

THE SHAKTI BHATT FOUNDATION

announces the inaugural

2008 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize

The Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize is a cash award of one lakh rupees.

A 3-member panel of judges will shortlist entries. The 2008 panel of judges includes William Dalrymple and Kamila Shamsie.

We invite entries in the following genres: poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction (travel writing, autobiography, biography, and narrative journalism) and drama. Open to first-time authors of all ages.

The book must be published between June 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008.

Only books published in India are eligible.

Publications must be in English or translated into English from an Indian language. Vanity press publications are ineligible.

Deadline for entries is July 15, 2008.

Wondermark

If some of you have already been reading Wondermark, that's great. If you haven't, here's a sample.

Succumbed

A few days ago, Equivocal sent me an invite to join the Fulcrum list on Facebook. I politely mailed him back saying I don't do Facebook, or Orkut or any of these evil time-swallowing things. I mean, I do enough with blogs and Ryze and other stuff.

Pity, he said. There are some really interesting discussions about poetry there.

I hate people who know what strings to pull. I've been getting these Facebook invites for months now and I've successfully ignored every one of them. But this one I thought I'd check out.

Before you knew it, I was staring at a page that asked me to fill out some stuff and there I was a fully paid-up member of the Facebook community. In the next five seconds, my mailbox was choked with friends' requests and network invitations and god knows what else.

So I complained to Equivocal, who said, rather gleefully for the zombie he claims to be, "I lied if I said this was harmless. I am a facebook zombie and you've just been bitten by me. Welcome to the world of the undead."

Bah. I continue to ignore any additions on my wall (wall?! What are these guys - Kilroys?) Anybody who wants to communicate with me can do so via email.

Do you know the things people spend their time doing? Sending people fortune cookies, chest bumps, and joining networks that campaign for the removal of the 'is' on the status message on one's profile page. Who wants to know who is massaging whose liver and who is trying to grow another brain? I mean I know I have better things to do - like refreshing my page a million times to see if there's are new posts on Bloglines, for instance. That requires much concentration and a large expenditure of one's mental resources.

Wait. There's more. I get a mail telling me someone's done some scrappy stuff on Orkut. BUT I don't do Orkut! I've never been there, never done that. So how could anyone do anything on a Orkut page that doesn't exist?

This is sinister. I check out the link to see what happens, and it turns out that I have an Orkut page. I have no idea how. I also seem to be born in a wildly improbably year but hey - why stop at one weird thing? (Can you tell how much this is upsetting me? I've never used so many italics except in posts that have film or book titles).

Just so everyone knows, I Don't Do Orkut.

Facebook I shall look at but I shall be as silent as the mountains.

Where's Ignatius J. Reilly when you need him?

And Equivocal, those discussions had better be outstanding!

ryhmes with brown

You know those colour rhymes we used to do as kids? Red, red, go to bed. Yellow yellow dirty fellow. That kind of thing?

You will be happy to know that kids these days are not as sappy as we appear to have been - I mean, did we really say green green fairy queen? What were we thinking?

Yesterday I found out that school playgrounds these days have a rhyme for brown.

Brown, brown
pull your chuddies up and down.

No kidding.

Apropos of rhymes, verses and children, Saturday's Poetry Society meet had someone present a worthy paper on children and poetry. The one high point of it was this poem by Robert Graves.

Alok's book tag

This one's been doing the rounds for some time, and when Alok lazily tagged everyone who's on his sidebar, or anyone who has ever commented on his blog, I thought, what fun, so long a sI can vary things a bit here and there.

So, here I go.

Total number of books owned

Let's start with the tough ones, why don't we. I don't know, but somewhere in the region of 3-4,000 is what I'm guessing.

I had a wonderful opportunity that I didn't take, to count about a year ago when I took out every book from every shelf, cupboard, kitchen shelf and coffee table there is, dusted all of 'em, cleaned the shelves, cupboards etc, put fresh paper and neem leaves (to keep the silverfish out), re-ordered books by author, genre, country and unavailability (most precious and out of print books were hidden away in top cupboards to discourage borrowing). At that time, I had piles of books all over my bedroom floor, so that the only way to get from this side to that was to climb over the bed.

Ok, so I'm bragging a little. But mostly I'm in a panic, because I'm remembering books I know I have but can't immediately recall where I've put them. Like that book without a cover that I picked up at Abids one Sunday more than a decade ago, called A Pocketful of Ribaldry. Once this starts to happen I'm in trouble, because it usually means waking up at 2am in a cold sweat and wondering if, in a fit of madness, I'd agreed to lend my copy of, say, The Film Till Now to the local film club.

(I'm kidding. I don't lend books. To anyone.)

Last book bought

The Speaking Tree by Richard Lannoy. At Fountain. Of course, the only Speaking Tree I knew anything about until five years ago, was that very annoying column in The Times of India. Then, when I was editing a journal which had a paper by Richard Lannoy, I heard of this book. Haven't started to read it; wonder if it might have dated in the 36 years since it was written. I shall find out, shan't I?

Last book read

We're not counting Greenwitch, are we? That took me all of an hour and a half. Let's see...ah yes. Kamila Shamsie's In The City By The Sea. This must be one of the few times I've started at the beginning of a writer's work (when they've written more than one book and one can choose, of course. I'm not talking about first books where, by default you begin at the beginning).

There's this lovely bit towards the end of the book, where the young boy, Hasan, is in a thoughtful mood. His cousin, Zehra, is not very encouraging; especially not of potentially purple poetry. I've been wanting to post this for a bit, so here it is:

‘There’s something really wonderful about this,’ he said. ‘I mean, its so simple, it’s moving, you know?”

Zehra raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh god, you’re going to turn into one of those boys who write poems entitled “For I Have Seen The Miracle Of Sunsets” at the age of sixteen and never have more than three words in a line.”

This three-words-in-a-line indictment is something I'm going to use very soon, somewhere. I can just feel it.

Five books that mean a lot to you

I'd rather amswer the question, What's your favourite colour. I mean, really! 'ean a lot'because of what the book's about, or because of how rare it is, or because of what someone wrote in it, or because what it cost you to buy it? All of these things make of a book something more tahn its contents. But whatever...

Eric Rhodes' A History of the Cinema.

In class 9, when reading history for fun was a very startling idea, we had to do a project on any subject of our choice. Three of us chose Film, because we thought it meant sitting and watching films for one week, and what could be more fun? We were right. But we also had a lot of reading to do, and history never read better. Every title, every name was a litany, an enchantment: Berlin, Symphony of a City. Murnau, Caligari, Kuleshov, Vertov, Einsentein, Pudovkin. Even today, I know I will recognise these films, should I ever manage to see them, just by their descriptions. I will know early Surrealist Cinema; I will see UFA in early German cinema and expand it in my sleep into Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft.

Scaramouche (first edition)

The long story here

Letters To A Young Poet, Rilke.

What can I say? There are some books that are like Bibles. I know some people who have claimed that Jonathan Livingston Seagull was their Bible. Thankfully, I am not of their number.

The Archy and Mehitabel Omnibus

For the longest time, when I was in college, one pavement seller, I think in F Block, CP, used to have Archy and Mehitabel. I used to pick it up each time, turn it over, read a poem or two and ask the guy how much it was. His answer never varied, no matter how pathetic I looked, and it was always unaffordable.

Two years ago, when my friend, Sampurna came to stay for a few days, I told her this story. What are the odds that among the few things she was carrying in her shoulder bag (for a stay of five days! How does anyone do it?!) was this book? And what are the odds that she would feel generous enough to give it away?

*CHEATING ENTRY AHEAD*

All the Saints, Edgar Wallaces, Sabatinis and some other books

No really. How to calibrate the worth of these rare - if low-brow - books? In this category are also the children's book you won't have even heard of: Chronicles of Pantouflia by Andrew Lang and At The Back of the North Wind by George McDonald; the Richard Armours - It All Started With Eve, It All Started With Columbus (though, to my eternal regret, not Twisted Tales From Shakespeare). And Sellar and Yeatman's wonderful 1066 And All That.

Who Do I Tag?

Anyone who wants to take it up. Just let me know, though and I'll link it up.