Vishwaroopam and Florida

We’ve found the culprits. We know who dun it. It’s them Adam and Eve, residents of Eden Gardens, Paradise, PL24 2SG. They inspired the Cruella de Vils slaughtering innocent baby pythons in Florida.

There are serious arguments being made for the extermination of the Florida python. Learned Associate Professors believe that the python is a threat to delicately balanced ecosystems. Yet, I can’t help noticing that other non-native species that are spreading through the American south, like, for instance, wild hogs, are treated differently. Hogs are also large, potentially violent, omnivorous, fast breeding, adaptive, mobile, elusive, and are potentially upsetting the balance of many delicate American ecosystems. But unlike pythons, nobody is trying to wipe them out. Why?

My hunch is that this is simply because pythons are snakes. Snakes have had bad rap, negative symbolic associations, ever since they were cast, through no fault of their own, in the villain’s role in the legend of Adam and Eve. Imagine how easily a magpie, symbolizing excessive attraction to superficial beauty, could have prompted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. But mythology can't easily be undone, and this slander of serpents has played through to modern pop-myths. Like, in Harry Potter, Gryffindor's emblem is a lion, but Slytherin's is a serpent?

I find this uniformly negative portrayal of snakes hard to relate to, probably because snakes are often portrayed in positive light in Indian iconography. Shiva has a garland of cobras coiled around his neck. The traditional depiction of Maha Vishnu, Vishwaroopam, shows him reclining on his friend and protector Adisesha, the sire of the serpents. In some traditions, Adisesha accompanies Maha Vishnu to earth to be his best friend during his avatars, like Krishna and Balarama or Rama and Lakshmana. Vasuki, the king of the serpents, churns the ocean of milk to find Amrit, the nectar of immortality, which the beautiful Mohini delivers to the good Devas rather than the evil Asuras.

Not all Indian snakes are good; Krishna tames the evil ten-headed Kaaliya by dancing on his heads. But, Indian snakes are more good than bad, and in that context, it feels natural to revere real snakes that live near people. It feels natural for Wildlife SOS, a charity I support, to send me email about how they’ve rescued lost or injured pythons. Or for the Chinese zodiac to associate the snake with wisdom, intelligence and grace.

Once, western cultures also depicted snakes in positive light. The snakes coiled around medicine’s Hippocratic staff represent life itself. The Mediterranean Tree of Life once showed a serpent twined around the trunk of a flowering tree, the fertile and the virile, yin and yang. Much that was beautiful was lost in Adam and Eve’s deadly smear campaign.

But maybe, just maybe, the end is in sight. Maybe the magic of Disney can undo two millennia of defamation and injustice. I watched The Princess and the Frog recently. It features Disney’s first black heroine, Tiana, who is not a princess born into riches but an entrepreneur who shapes her own destiny. The fairy godmother who helps Tiana triumph over evil is not some flitty, flighty pretty little thing. She is a tough old lady who knows a thing or two about using Tabasco sauce, who lives out in the bayou. Her name is Mama Odie, and her constant companion is, yes!, a python. At home and happy in Louisiana. Walt Disney Studios may have intuitively understood and accepted America’s serpentine future in a way that the learned Associate Professors have not.

Sit down, I think I love you

A Buffalo Springfield classic just shuffled up on my iPod. It goes:

Sit down, I think I love you
Anyway, I’d like to try
I can't stop thinking of you
If you go, I know I'll cry...

...Oh you know what they say about the bird in the hand
And that’s why I ain’t leaving without you...

...So if you want someone to love you
Pretty baby, I’m your guy.

Really?

Experts like Dear Prudence clearly know more about matters of the heart than me. But even I can tell that Dear Prudence would not recommend “I think I love you, anyway I’d like to try” as the ideal declaration of undying love. You had to think about it? And having thought about it, you were so completely convinced that you were willing to “give it a try”? Dude… really...

And what’s the deal with “the bird in the hand”? Is the girl worth trying to love because she is a bird in hand? Or should the girl settle for you because you’re worth two in the bush?

These lyrics are by Stephen Stills, who also wrote "if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with". Bit of a theme developing here.

Maybe Stephen Stills knows something that Dear Prudence and I don't. Maybe this ironic, laconic, self-deprecating approach really works. Real-romantik, a la real-politik?

Either way, great song. Click here to hear it on You Tube.

Follow your dream, not (2)

Building on the thread from the last post about following one's dreams...

Consider a fairly routine career choice facing a college graduate, say, advertising vs. IT. Neither job quite counts as living-the-dream, like playing cricket for India. But the college grad finds advertising more interesting than IT. The follow-your-dream school of thought would typically recommends taking the advertising job, since that initial interest is a sign that the grad will enjoy advertising, more and therefore be more successful. My hunch is that that initial interest in advertising contains no information about whether the grad will ultimately enjoy her job.

Post Grad, a movie I watched on a flight recently, broadly in the Reality Bites genre, illustrates the point. It is about a smart, spunky college grad who loves literature, and has dreamed her entire life of working in publishing. After many ups and downs, she finally gets her dream job at the top publishing house in town. Her boss is a jerk. The job sucks. She quickly moves on.

The factors that actually predict whether someone enjoys a job are profoundly situational. Things specific to a particular role, in a particular organization, at a particular time. Questions like: is her boss a good people manager? Does she get along with her colleagues? Does she have the right level of independence, the right support, and prospects for advancement? Does she get paid enough to cheerfully suck up the inevitable hiccups? Is the organization as a whole growing, and filling colleagues with a spirit of generousity? Or is it shrinking, and making colleagues mean-spirited?

Asking situational questions like these feels less pure than looking within and asking "Is this the real me?". But they probably matter more.

Galli Galli Sim Sim

An auspicious post to wish all readers a happy new year...

Just discovered a piece of children's entertainment which is not just mostly harmless, but positively good. It is teaching my children that the differences between cultures around the world are there to be enjoyed, but that underneath these differences human beings are essentially the same, that we are The Family of Man (I think). This is a collection of video and music clips from Sesame Street around the world, published by Putumayo, a favourite music label.

My family is now singing along with Elmo, Big Bird and Sesame Street stars from India, Israel, Mexico, Russia and South Africa. The look and sound of each of these video clips are distinctive and local. Yet, the same spirit and mood clearly animates each of these local executions. Unity in diversity, that old mantra of Indira Gandhi-esque national integration, applies not just to India but to all of humanity.

More generally, I also think this is a fair representation of how globalisation impacts local cultures and identity. At one time, even serious and well-intentioned people in India would have had doubts about whether letting Coca Cola and their ilk operate in the country would somehow dilute India's Indianness. The first debate I ever won, back in high school in the mid 80s, was about "Have we sold our culture for a pair of jeans?". I opposed the motion back then.

Now, two decades after liberalization started, that argument feels settled. Coca Cola and Sesame Street are very much a part of the Indian landscape, and have figured out that it makes a ton of commercial sense to adopt an Indian idiom. India is changing rapidly, India is becoming ever more closely connected to the rest of humanity, and yet India remains as distinctively Indian as it ever was.

And exactly the same logic probably applies to Israel, Mexico, Russia and South Africa as well.

Quick Gun Murugan

Wokay. Mind it! This is not a movie. It is a 90 second ad film stretched out over 90 minutes. But once you are in an undemanding frame of mind that is willing to forgive that flaw, a frame of mind that comes naturally on long-haul flights, Quick Gun Murugan is good, clean fun.

The best thing about Quick Gun Murugan always was his style. The razor thin moustache, the comfortable paunch, the artfully arranged forelock, the green shirt, the large cooling glasses, the panache with which he lights a cigarette, his gallantry with the lovely ladies, his comfort in his own skin...Quick Gun Murugan is the style-god incarnate. All this came through in the 90 second adverts. What the 90 minute movie offers is space to elaborate on this style, and the movie uses this space well.

We find out about QGM's brother, a Grade II government employee who lives in Matunga and shares his cowboy style. QGM's lady love turns out to be a former Bulbul (Brownie) scout who resides in his love-locket and harangues him into staying on the straight, narrow and upwardly mobile. Mango Dolly, a gangster's moll with a heart of gold and a wig to match, does an item number for Quick Gun. He wonders how a nice girl from a good family wound up doing item numbers, and suggests, in all sincerity, that Mango Dolly's work is also a form of worship for the goddess Saraswati.

The plot? Quick Gun is a cowboy. He is also a vegetarian. His duty as a vegetarian cowboy is to save cows, not to kill them. And so the movie is about Quick Gun's battle with his evil nemesis Rice Plate Reddy, who want to make the world non-vegetarian.

Tripping on this cowboy's vegetarianism is not a bad gag. But it is a gag, not a plot. Nobody watching the movie is going to care about whether Quick Gun succeeds in his vegetarian quest. Sure, the point of the movie is to parody a style, not to reveal character or elicit empathy. But couldn't they have tried just a little bit harder? Or less hard, hence giving less screen time to Rice Plate Reddy and his boring flunkeys?

So sit back, relax and get set for an evening with Quick Gun Murugan, my beloved brethren, fortified with a tumbler of whisky and a masala dosa, and you will be the yenjaay! You might even cast a vote in favour of our won and wonley revolutionary leader, புறட்சி தலைவர் Dr. MG Ramachandran.

We do need some education. But why?

I visited the Iona School yesterday for their Advent Fayre. Some good friends' children attend this excellent school. It was a very nice family morning, with craft activities for the children, live singing, and freshly pressed apple juice. Also picked up a brochure about the Steiner Waldorf system of education followed at Iona, which says:

Integral to the Steiner Waldorf education is its view of each child as a unique, spiritual individual, developing... towards an adulthood in which the individual spirit can find full freedom of expression. Every step in the child's education may be seen as geared to this end.

Was struck by the contrast between this and a thought emerging from my own alma mater, Vidya Mandir, Mylapore:

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All play and no work makes Jack an unemployed adult.

This is taken from an email that came through on the alumni mailing list. Work, in this context, means swotting. Play means loafing around like Aamir Khan in the latest Bollywood flick. The implication, deeply embedded in Mylapore culture, is that the purpose of education is to get a good job, earn a decent living, and support a family.

Does this Mylaporean approach also lead to the individual spirit finding full freedom of expression? Perhaps, yes. Especially if the individual spirit finding expression is similar to that of Mac MacGuff, the dad in the film Juno. Mr MacGuff's teenage daughter, Juno, is searching for her calling. She asks her dad about his career. He tells her that he found his passion, the calling which gave his spirit full expression, in Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) repairs. Which, fortunately, is the means by which he earns a living.

The Universal Soldier. In Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan is not going that well. It is not clear what exactly the fighting is for. Young soldiers are getting killed. There is no end in sight.

Yet, Sam Kiley, a British journalist who just brought out this book on touring with the paratroopers of the 16 Air Assault Brigade in Helmand province, reports that the troops are committed and motivated.

Why? In part, says Mr Kiley, it comes from “a basic male instinct” to prove yourself. In part it is about fighting for your friends and, when they are killed, about avenging them. Above all, it is about sheer thrill. As one Para quoted by Mr Kiley says during a battle: “Living the fucking dream mate.”

Without having read the book, my instinct is that Mr Kiley is telling it like it is, no spin. The Para living the dream is a Universal Soldier.

He's five foot two, he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears,
He's all of thirty one, he is only seventeen,
He's been a soldier for a thousand years.

He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain
He's a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew,
He knows he shouldn't kill and he knows he always will
Kill you for me my friend, and me for you.

He's fighting for Canada, he's fighting for France,
He's fighting for the USA
He's fighting for Russia, he's fighting for Japan...

The Universal Soldier is an archetype; vigourous, integral, eternal. He can pack more life into two days of intense experience than most mortals can in entire lifetimes (refer E. Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls).

Yet, this is almost certainly not what Donovan meant when he sang this song in the sixties. Donovan was the guy who replaced Bob Dylan in the Joan Baez sets at the Newport Folk festival, when Bobby quit being political and broke up with Joanie. Donovan had picked this piece up from a Canadian songwriter called Buffy Sainte-Marie. She was a sixties anti-war protester, a pacifist pointing an accusing finger at the Universal Soldier:

He's the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame,
His orders come from far away no more,
They come from here and there and you and me,
And brothers can't you see,
This is not the way we put an end to war.

Fighting a fighting archetype, huh? Who would've thought...

The Sound of the Fury

...Peter Jackson, requiring a wrathful army for Helm's Deep, bravely ventured onto a cricket pitch, during a break, and asked twenty-five thousand fans to roar in unison. They obliged.

From the New Yorker

The Post-Feminist Goddess

Patriarchal cultures generally build their female characters around two polarized archetypes: the Madonna and the Whore. And so real women casting around for raw material with which to build their identities are forced to make a false choice between these archetypes, and therefore between virtue and sexuality. So, since the days of The Female Eunuch and The Feminine Mystique, one of the themes of the feminist movement has been to create icons who break this polarity, icons who are both caring and potent, who are both babes and moms, and who keep their lives on the rails.

From these icons, real women can more easily learn to be… like Angelina Jolie?

Naomi Wolf, the feminist intellectual, thinks Angelina Jolie is the iconic woman who brings it all together. In this article, Ms Wolf writes that

Angelina Jolie... for the first time in modern culture, brings together almost every aspect of female empowerment and liberation... she broke through into mass-market consciousness with her turn as cartoony superheroine Lara Croft... sexy and daring, confrontational and independent...

When Maddox appeared... Jolie revealed a new vision of single motherhood... tender, glamorous, and complete, father figure or no father figure in the picture... she blurs the conventional boundary of what female stars are supposed to do — look pretty, emote, wear designer clothes — by picking up Princess Di's fallen torch and wrapping her elegant bone structure in a shalwar kameez to attend to the suffering of Afghan refugees in Pakistan

So she becomes what psychoanalysts call an "ego ideal" for women — a kind of dream figure that allows women to access, through fantasies of their own, possibilities for their own heightened empowerment and liberation.

The article is a fun read, until you realize that it is not meant to be ironic or tongue in cheek. Is this really Naomi Wolf, the daughter of the legendary Bay Area teacher/poet Leonard Wolf, the Rhodes scholar who advised Al Gore when he was America’s next President, who wrote The Beauty Myth – a book about how modern women have freed themselves from all the traditional feminine myths, except the myth of beauty?

And is she really touting Angelina Jolie as an ideal? The same Angelina who broke off all relations with her abusive dad, french-kissed her brother in public, had a lesbian girl-friend, hit on a married colleague, and wore a vial of her boyfriend’s blood as a pendant. Never mind the bit about being the archetypal ideal woman. Is Angelina even just okay?

Moonballs from Planet Earth would like to propose an alternative feminist icon who brings it all together: Donna Sheridan, the character played by Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia. Donna is a mom, an entrepreneur, has a ton of fun with her girl-friends, doesn’t know which of her old boy-friends is her daughter’s dad, and lives on to enjoy a happy ending.

There’s a fire within my soul
Mamma Mia, here I go again,
My my, how can I resist you?

Sweets for the sweet, but not for Barbie (2)

The last blog post was about Barbie, much reviled by feminists for warping the way girls think about themselves. My take was that Barbie was mostly harmles, and that self-destroying Ophelia was a more scary archetype. To which Radhi had a very interesting comment: "But in our real worlds - madness, despair and anguish are also true, tantalising and in a weird way... much more interesting".

Very true. Which is why Ophelia and Hamlet are compelling characters, but dysfunctional human beings. All happy families are alike, and therefore a bit boring. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, and therefore interesting. Compelling stories are almost always about the darker side.

This is why the Ramayana generally makes for a less gripping story than the Mahabharata. Because Rama works great as the maryada purushottam, but he isn't designed for drama. In the Mahabharata, even the Pandavas include Dharmaputra the gambler, and Arjuna, the androgynous warrior.

But the thing about great stories is that they don't just entertain. They shape our ideas of who we are, and how the world works. And these ideas, especially when taken aboard in childhood, can be self-fulfilling life scripts. Which, I guess, is why the stories of Rama and Buddha and Jesus are told over and over again. Not because they are entertaining, but because they just might do a bit of good.

Iconic pop culture has as much power as religion in shaping the mythos, and with it individual destiny. Life imitates art. Star Wars, Sholay, Enid Blyton, Hardy Boys, PG Wodehouse, Batman comics, Peanuts... they all exert mythic power. And there are good myths and bad myths. For instance, Princess Diana seemed in thrall to the same tragic myth as Marilyn Monroe.



Almost a century before either of them came Empress Sisi of Habsburg Austria, stuck in a loveless marriage to an imperial heir, who "became known not only for her beauty but also for her fashion sense, diet and exercise regimens, passion for riding sports, and a series of reputed lovers. She paid extreme attention to her appearance and would spend most of her time preserving her beauty". Empress Sisi refered to herself in poetry as Titania, the fairy queen who falls in love with the donkey-headed "mechanical" Nick Bottom. Titania, unlike Ophelia, survived her stupid infatuation.

And, to come a full circle, where does Barbie line up in this pantheon? Mostly harmless feels like a fair summing up.

Sweets for the sweet, but not for Barbie

Barbie is right up there, along with McDonald’s and the Marlboro Man, as a capitalist icon that liberals love to hate. Not without reason. Barbie is anatomically inaccurate. She might psych women into body-image anxiety. She could trap girls into limiting self-concepts. And so, for a while, my wife and I very deliberately did not buy our daughters Barbie dolls.

But our daughters were gifted Barbie lookalikes. They did watch Barbie movies at friends' homes. Barbie stuff gradually found its way into our lives. And, having now experienced* quite a few Barbie movies, I am convinced Barbie is Mostly Harmless.

What I like about Barbie is that she is a survivor. She is kind to animals, helps her friends, goes on adventures, solves riddles, sings songs, rides on dragons, defeats the baddies. She generally gets herself a hunky boyfriend. But she is the protagonist. The movie is about her. The boyfriend is an accessory. This is in sharp contrast to the standard template Bollywood script, where the only point of being the heroine is to be the hero’s conquest. This probably does hurt the way many Indian women construct their identities, playing bit roles in their own lives.

Sure, her emotional range is an ideal set up for a Botox-enhanced adulthood. And Barbie is never revolutionary. She does not rage against the machine. She will never be out there on the perimeter, like Janis Joplin, Medha Patkar or Maya Lin. Barbie goes with the flow. When it was cool for women to be Stepford wives, she was a Stepford wife. When it became cool for women to be doctors and pilots, Barbie became Doctor Barbie and Captain Barbie, all splendidly kitted out. Maybe she is more like a Griha Lakshmi than a Bhadra Kali... which, actually, is okay.

The archetypal young woman I find scary is not Barbie, but Ophelia. Barbie survives. Ophelia didn’t. When an envious sliver broke off a slanted willow, Ophelia and her weedy trophies fell in the weeping brook, she chanted snatches of old tunes as one incapable of her own distress, or like a creature native and indued unto that element. Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, and therefore I forbid my tears, for Barbie would have swum to shore.



* I don’t think I’ve ever watched a Barbie movie end to end, but I have watched some pivotal scenes multiple times

The Girl on the Half Shell

Just made sense of a lyric I've heard many times before, but never quite understood. "The girl on the half-shell" from Joan Baez's Diamonds and Rust, as in

... you burst on the scene
Already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
You strayed into my arms
And there you stayed
Temporarily lost at sea
The Madonna was yours for free
Yes the girl on the half-shell
Would keep you unharmed...

This refers to Venus emerging from the sea, as, say, depicted by Botticelli. Joanie referred to herself as both the Madonna and the girl on the half-shell in those days.

Dev D

Re-interpreted classics can so easily go wrong. Like, say, The Thomas Crown Affair. Sorry, but nobody compares with Steve McQueen, certainly not Pierce Brosnan. Or Sabrina. Maybe Harrison Ford is in the same league as Humphrey Bogart, but poor Julie Ormond never had a chance of filling Audrey Hepburn’s shoes.

But sometimes it is worth the effort. Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet has to be one of the best movies ever, streets better than Franco Zeffirelli’s kitsch.

Dev D is closer to Romeo + Juliet than to Sabrina or the Thomas Crown Affair. It’s a value added take on Devdas.

The central story is what it always was – Dev finishes his education and returns home, meets his childhood sweetheart Paro, does not marry her, and descends to drinking and whoring as he slowly realizes the enormity of his error. The re-make is stylish, contemporary, edgy, unsentimental and fun to watch. Some reflections it prompted:

- Dev came home. Time slowed down, and kept slowing down. The days were hot, humid, still, sultry, endlessly long. Time hung heavy on Dev’s hands, until the mesmerizing slowness of time caused Dev to abandon good sense and judgment. When time slows down enough, it becomes an independent mind-warping character in any story. It’s the reason why films like Picnic at Hanging Rock work. When time slows down that much, any insanity becomes possible

- “Move on” has to be the world’s cheapest, least helpful advice. If moving on happens easily, it didn’t matter enough. Paro was an essential part of Dev, whether he knew it or not. Paro and Dev, they were meant to be. It was written. He was her lobster. Dev can’t move on and remain intact. The old Dev has to be dead, and well buried, before a new Dev can be conceived. The descent into darkness was a necessary passage of play, to clear the way for a possible rebirth

- Chandramukhi, played by a Tamil speaking French girl from Pondicherry called Kalki Koechlin, was a casting coup. She brings an unexpected sassiness and vulnerability to Chandramukhi, probably without having to act very much. But more than the acting, I love the possibilities her name opens up. Kalki is the avatar who ends Kaliyugam (कलयुग). Does Chandra similarly end Dev’s Kaliyugam? Who says Kalki was meant to be a man? And how different is Kaliyugam from the Islamic concept of jahiliya?

For all its quality, Dev D stopped short of being brilliant, mainly becaue of indiscipline. For instance, why does Dev generally hook off to the Himalayas and ride on a motorbike? Maybe the crew wanted a free holiday, and bullied the screenwriter into adding that Himalayan scene to the story. But still totally worth the watch. And worth buying the superb soundtrack.

I'm Not There

Just watched I’m Not There, a movie about Bob Dylan’s life. Watch it. When you do,

What will you see my blue eyed sons?
What will you see my darling young ones?
You will see a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
You will hear the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
You will meet one man who was wounded in love,
You will meet another man who was wounded in hatred.
You will know how it feels to be with the princess on the steeple and all the pretty people, amused at Napoleon in rags and the language that he used.
You will know how it feels to be on your own, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.

And you will struggle throughout the film to figure out what is going on and why, which is entirely appropriate for a movie about Dylan.

I’m Not There features six avatars of Bob Dylan, played by six different actors, set in different places and periods, beautifully shot in six different styles. The six actors playing Dylan don’t look like Dylan. The one who looks most like Dylan is Cate Blanchett, playing the stoned superstar who hangs out with the Beatles in London in 1966. Another avatar is a little black boy who travels around America in empty railway wagons, accompanied by his guitar, singing songs about the Depression. A third avatar features a folk singer singing political protest songs along with his Joan Baez-like girl friend. There really could have been many more avatars; there is no room for one featuring a middle class Jewish kid growing up in Hibbing, Minnesota.

The soundtrack is great. You will hear more than a trace of skipping reels of rhyme. Like Dylan songs, the movie floats along on a current of metaphor and imagery. It takes you on a trip upon a magic swirling ship, through the smoke rings of your mind, down the foggy ruins of time. Each scene feels rich with layered meaning, every shirt or jacket, every chance encounter and every throwaway phrase feels like an oblique reference to the god behind the avatars. I am glad I watched this film on DVD rather than at the movies. I had to pause multiple times to google up references. Is that girl meant to be Suze Rotolo? Or Sara Lownds? Both, it turns out.

Sure, it is fun to watch, especially for someone brought up with Dylan-lore. But how does it work as a movie? There is no obvious narrative tension. None of the avatar sub-plots have knots that need to be resolved.

Does this movie bust the theory, previously posited on this blog, that all great stories are built around somebody wanting something really badly, and having difficulty getting it? I thought it did, until I realized that the movie is not about the avatars but about Dylan himself.

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you.
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you.
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.
Strike another match go start anew...

Dylan did strike another match and start anew, time and again. Leaving behind the orphan with his gun, crying like a fire in the sun. Yet just when the saints should be coming through, he settles into a new pattern, which becomes as limiting as the one he left. Maybe it ain’t over baby blue, until Bobby realizes that freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

Play up! play up! and play the game!

There is a breathless hush at the close tonight -
Ten to make and a match to win -
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.

And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his captain's hand on his shoulder smote
Play up! play up! and play the game!

My family's primary religion is cricket. I grew up with these words echoing inside my head, reminding me that cricket is our spiritual calling.

When I recited this poem at my grandparent's dinner parties, or at junior school elocution competitions in Madras, I was vaguely aware that there was more to the poem. But I stopped the recitation at this point. That was probably a good thing. In the Victorian original the next stanzas go:

The sand of the desert is sodden red -
Red with the wreck of a square that broke
The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed its banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks -
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the school is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind -
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

Jeremy Paxman quotes this poem, Vitai Lampada, in The English. Paxman's take on the poem:

It is hard not to be carried along in its rhythm, even if there is something so breathtakingly stupid about the poem that it is hard to imagine how on earth it could ever have been taken seriously. Yet, in the balmy days before August 1914, the idea that life was essentially a version of the Game seemed almost plausible.

"The sand of the desert is sodden red, red with the wreck of a square that broke", is a reference to the seige of Khartoum, a colonial misadventure which ended with the entire garrison at Khartoum slaughtered and General Gordon, the British officer in charge of the garrison, beheaded by the Mahdi army.

And that is somehow like a game of cricket? Paxman is spot on: breathtakingly stupid.



Reminds me of Lance Klusener. He was asked how he stayed so calm after South Africa crashed out of the 1999 World Cup semi-finals in one of the greatest games ever. Klusener said "nobody died".

Good perspective. Must remember next time India are playing.

Juno

Juno is an outstanding film. It's funny, quirky and cuts as deep as you want it to. Watch it.

This is an old-fashioned movie, a movie with a plot. A monosyllabic dork who runs around in golden shorts gets a sixteen year old pregnant. She is going to have the baby. Complicated situation needs resolution, and that keeps the story-line rolling.

But is that what the movie is about? Naw. In almost all movies worth watching, plot is nothing more than a device that serves to showcase character. What makes the movie is Juno, the title character, brilliantly and authentically played by the twenty year old Canadian actor Ellen Page.

Without giving too much away...Juno is naive, mature, perceptive, cynical, trusting, would love to be wooed by a jock, loves her own dork, is spunky, vulnerable, really into cutting edge music, thinks chemistry lab is kind of cool, just doesn't get her tone-deaf parents, has wonderful parents...she is real.

When Charlie Brown picks up the Little Red Haired Girl's pencil, notices it has been chewed, and beatifically declares "She's human", maybe he is discovering that she is a bit like Juno.

Ideally, Juno, I ain't looking to analyse you, categorize you, or define you, or confine you, all I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you.

But...but Diablo already defined you. By calling you Juno. Not Jane, or Janet, or Jennifer, but Juno. Juno, wife of Jupiter, mother of Mars, Regina of Rome, guardian of the Empire's finances, Lucina (she who brings children to light), spiritual heir to both Hera and Diana. The goddess is back.

Lord of the Rings: The Appendices

This is the Tolkien trip for the real Tolkien fans. I noted before that the movie was good, but left an old-time Tolkien fan like me a touch unsatisfied, like having eaten half a meal. Now, having watched the extensive appendices which come with the DVD box set, even I am sated, chock full of Tolkien fundas to inflict on the innocent bystander. Here is a sampling of the nuggets that made the appendices totally worth watching: - Rohan is modelled on Saxon culture. The motifs on the armour, the design of the helmets, they are meant to look like artefacts from the famous Saxon burial sites at Sutton Hoo. Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon, the culture which produced Beowulf, and deeply regretted the loss of a “native” English mythology with the coming of the Normans. Rohan was his way of imagining how Saxon culture may have developed if the Battle of Hastings had been won - The tale of Beren and Luthien, of the elven princess who gives up immortality to wed a man, is incidental to Frodo’s quest. But it is probably the most intensely personal element of the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s grave refers to himself as John Ronald Reuel Tolkien Beren, and to his wife Edith, buried alongside, as Edith Mary Tolkien Luthien - The original movie script had Arwen fighting alongside Aragorn at Helm’s Deep. Liv Tyler spent months training to use a sword. Several fight sequences with Arwen were filmed. Then, there was a leak, the bloggers found out, and revolted. They accused Liv Tyler of betraying Tolkien because she wanted to play Xena, the Warrior Princess. The online vitriol was so intense that the bloggers won. The elven host finally showed up at Helm’s Deep without Arwen. Liv Tyler was clearly very upset by this, but it was the right outcome. Well done, bloggers - On the shoot, Viggo Mortensen had the hots for the Rohirrim girls. Not for the gorgeous Eowyn. But for the soldiers who rode with Eomer. They’re babes in drag. Apparently, Viggo was really into these lithe, lissom, helmeted ladies, wearing beards and carrying spears. This was gleefully reported by Dominic Monaghan, who plays Merry, and later denied by Viggo - At the party to celebrate victory at Helm’s Deep, Legolas drinks Gimli under the table. That’s what happens in the movie. In real life, Orlando Bloom passes out at the merest whiff of alcohol. In Dominic Monaghan’s words “Orlando is so pure, his breath smells of flowers”. The appendices have enough room to acknowledge, and even enrich, Tolkien’s vast Middle Earth. And they also open up another vast world, the world of Peter Jackson’s film project. Watching the appendices, you’re an insider to one of the biggest films ever made. If you’re the sort of person who has ever dreamt about wearing an elven cloak and canoeing down the Anduin with the fellowship, the appendices are a must watch.

Lord of the Rings. At the Racsos

This is to announce a special Racso award for the worst moments in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. Brought to you by Moonballs from Planet Earth. 

The nominees are: - Gandalf and Saruman. The fight in Orthanc, when the venerable wizards biffed each other's flowing robes and beards into a terrible tangle - 

The last homely house. Rivendell, with its kitschy soft-focus shots and air-brushed effects, looked like something from a Thomas Kinkade painting - 

The paths of the dead. The avalanche of skulls that nearly trapped Strider, Legolas and Gimli inside the Haunted Mountain. This could have been a solemn moment in an action-packed film - 

Arwen and Aragorn. The kiss on a bridge in Rivendell. Of course, it had to be in soft-focus. Why was this limp love-story promoted from the appendix to the main film? More screen time for Liv Tyler is not reason enough - 

Uruk Hai births. The slime-covered creatures emerging from the breeding pits under Orthanc. Some things are better imagined than seen, even in a film 

And the Racso goes to Gandalf and Saruman biffing it out in Orthanc. Thunderous applause. Nothing can beat Saruman and Gandalf twirling each other around Orthanc for sheer goofiness, especially in a film that clearly cares about production values.

Lord of the Rings. At the Oscars

This is to announce a special Oscar for the best moments in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. Brought to you by Moonballs from Planet Earth. The nominees are: - Minas Tirith. The seven-circled white city on a hill, topped with the Tower of Ecthilion glimmering like a spike of pearl and silver, whose fighting men wore breastplates wrought with the White Tree of Gondor - Lighting the beacons. The bonfire relay across the snowy mountain-tops that brought the Rohirrim thundering south to fight alongside Gondor - Edoras. The setting for Meduseld, hall of Theoden son of Thengel, Lord of the Mark of Rohan. "Before the mountains of the south: white tipped and streaked with black...a tumbled mountain-mass with one tall peak stood like a sentinel a lonely height...set upon a green terrace, there stands aloft a great hall of men. And it seems to my eyes that it is thatched with gold. The light of it shines far over this land..." - Faramir's charge on Osgiliath. The futile cavalry charge Faramir led on an occupied Osgiliath, while Pippin sang at Lord Denathor's sumptuous lunch - Escape from the mines of Moria. The vaulted, crumbling staircase through flaming nothingness that led the Fellowship to the Bridge of Khazad Dum, where Gandalf battled the Balrog And the Oscar goes to...Faramir's charge on Osgiliath. Thunderous applause. All the nominations, the value-add in going from the book to the movie, are about visualization. The film stayed faithful to Tolkien's words, and yet visualized these scenes with a vividness and beauty that is far beyond my own imagination, even as a committed Tolkien fan. The unsung heroes of the film are probably Alan Lee and John Howe, two artists who have been visualizing scenes from Tolkien for decades, long before this film was even conceived. Peter Jackson had the good sense to collaborate with these outstanding old pros. Faramir's charge on Osgiliath wins the Oscar for being more than visualization. This scene is implied rather than described in the book. The movie takes this raw material, and builds it up into an emotional crescendo so intense that I almost dare not imagine it. By rights, it should have crumbled under its own weight. And yet, it works. Well done. Thanks PJ. Blog readers and Tolkien fans, please do chip in with your own Oscar nominees.

Lord of the Rings. On film?

I recently re-watched the Lord of the Rings Trilogy on DVD, and thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle, all nine hours of it. Yet I came away with a nagging sense that something was missing. And having mulled it over, here is my take.

Superficially, the Lord of the Rings is about Frodo’s hero-quest to destroy the ring of power. At this level, Frodo’s quest is no more or less compelling than that of Luke Skywalker, Clark Kent, Eragon, Zorro, Captain Kirk or Harry Potter. What makes Lord of the Rings special is the richness, the detail, the layered folk lore and the resonances of the vast Middle Earth within which Tolkien sets Frodo’s hero-quest.

Clearly the hero-quest matters. Anyone who ever picked up the Silmarillion was already a Tolkien fan. But what differentiates Tolkien from mere mortals is the texture and the staggering scale of the Middle Earth he imagined.

When the book was translated into the movie the balance shifted away from the folk lore and resonances of Middle Earth, towards the driving action of Frodo’s hero-quest. Film, even nine hours of film, doesn’t have much room for discursive reflection. Something was necessarily lost.

Some of this loss is obvious. Parts of the book have just been edited out. Leaving out Tom Bombadil and his wife Goldberry, daughter of the river Withywindle, was sacrilege to many old-time Tolkien fans. There is no room either for Radagast the Brown, the wizard steeped in the lore of wild animals, or for Gil Galad the elven king, of whom the harpers sadly sing. One would never know from the movie that Pippin’s Took clan had a reputation unusual behaviour, perhaps because a Took ancestor may have married a fairy. When Sam sees an oliphaunt, he has no time to put his hands behind his back and “speak poetry”, to trot out the fireside rhyme about oliphaunts he learnt back in the Shire.

A more subtle loss also runs through passages that were amplified in the movie.

Consider Anduril, Aragon’s sword. The sword is a big part of the movie. It is shown in the first scene, slicing the ring of Sauron’s hand. The movie introduces new scenes starring Anduril, like when Arwen and Aragon share a special moment over the broken blade, and when Elrond presents Aragon with the re-forged sword on the eve of battle (Aragon leaves Rivendell carrying Anduril in the book). Yet, the meaning of Anduril is overwhelmed by the urgency and tumult of war all around; the sword remains just a weapon.

Reading the book, I had time for my own imagination to work on Anduril, to transform Anduril from a weapon into a talisman. I knew that Boromir had come to Rivendell because he heard a voice saying:

Seek for the sword that was broken
In Imladris it lies…
For Isildur’s bane shall waken
And the Halfling forth shall stand.

I could let the rhythms of Bilbo’s little poem to Aragon ring in my ears:

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost…
Renewed shall be the sword that was broken,
The crownless shall again be king.

I had time to understand that Aragon is Elendil’s heir because he is the man who wields Elendil’s sword. A great sword forged by elvensmiths can’t be handled by just anybody. The sword chooses its wielder, and in so doing, defines the wielder’s destiny. I simply wouldn’t have understood that if I had watched the movie first.



That said, if something was lost, something was also created. There were scenes in the movie which were way more powerful than anything I’d imagined before. More about that in my next post.

Looking back, I am very fortunate to have experienced Lord of the Rings in three different mediums, in the right sequence. First, as a story told by a favourite aunt to the children in the family, second, as a summer holidays’ reading along with my cousins (competitively exchanging cool Tolkien trivia), third, as a big-budget film.

The only other works I’ve experienced in roughly the same media, in the same sequence, are the great Indian epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Am I comparing Peter Jackson to Peter Brook? Or to Ramanand Sagar?