As if the real me wasn't proof enough...
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Not A Review – Joker
With the 11 Oscar nominations announced today, “Joker” hardly needs endorsement from me. As an undemanding
Batman fan, when I entered the cinema on 11th October to watch, the
outcome was pre-determined. I went in wanting to be blown away and things went
to plan.
It wasn’t very
long ago that even the thought of a serious superhero movie would be laughed at.
That was before Christopher Nolan lent his edginess to the genre. “Joker”, though
not a Nolan movie, descended further into that well of darkness.
The tone of the
movie was consistently dismal, damp houses, rainy days and cruel characters not
even offering any relief by way of humour. No real attempt at empathy with the
mentally ill is made either. If anything, it will only add to the many
misconceptions that the general audience have about mental health and stereotype those afflicted as unpredictably dangerous.
Put that together
with a plotline that holds zero surprises – terrible things happen to a quiet
guy, whom the audience already knows to be Arthur Fleck a.k.a. the future Joker,
after which he goes on to become the clown prince of crime – and
the rave reviews do seem like overkill. Therein lay the Director,
Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix’s rare achievement.
“Joker” is testimony
to the power that clichés still have, at least on me, no matter how much the critics hate them.
With a potent mix of music, lights and emotions, the Director successfully manipulated
me into cheering for Arthur’s transformation from wimp to monster. I would have
never thought that I had it in me to cheer for a character who was dancing down
the stairs after stabbing a man through his eye… but there I was doing exactly
that!
As the Joker stepped onto the hood of a car, surrounded by adoring rioters and
put on the famous blood drawn smile, my mind flashed away to a dark
caped figure poised on the gargoyle of a distant skyscraper, even though in the movie’s
world, he was still a small boy weeping in an alley. By existing in all his psychotic
glory, the Joker ensured that the Batman had a purpose.
It was then that
the message hit home. Much as we may try to do away with what we define as
evil, its primary purpose is to give the good something to be busy with.
Sunday, January 12, 2020
Trail Tale
It’s the opposite of Netflix.
There is no content on demand and it couldn’t care less
about what you want to watch next. A twisting path laid through a patch of
forest finding its feet again, the trail at WII is many things to many people.
What it isn’t is predictable.
The disinterested world is never too far away and syrupy
devotional songs blaring out from unattended loudspeakers as buildings besiege
the campus walls. Miraculously enough, our fort holds.
The raucous grey hornbills feasting and fighting; the confident
trilling of the little black-chinned babbler; the splosh with which the
spot-billed ducks swim away as I approach the trail section skirting the pond –
sounds of distinctly analog nature find a way through and like the sunlight
filtering through the sal, raise the shield of resilience. Beyond the walls,
there is the thriving partnership of cement, concrete and the cash economy; inside
in a space that is conspicuously small, wander those who have little use for
the holy trifecta.
Through sunrises, afternoons and sunsets, I delight in the
trail’s moods and revere the uncertainty of what’s around the corner. I tramp
through its lanes, claiming kinship with its leaves and beasts, sampling its seasonal
cast – birds, blooms, butterflies. Even on a day of no surprises, I soar in
self-congratulatory joy at nothing more than having had the opportunity.
When the mongoose family looks me in the eye and trots on
fearless, when the black-winged stilts swirl around in mesmerizing formation
above the water surface or the nervous jackal finally finds the courage to
cross the trail despite this troublesome biped looking on, I feel a twinge of
uncertainty.
It’s hard to shake off the questions – is plain curiosity about
the trail’s mysteries reason enough, is dedicated enjoyment of its displays purpose
enough, and is simply writing about it duty enough?
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Bigotry 101 - Mad Dogs and Demons
Do note and be warned. This is how the game is played.
The post below was originally shared by quite a few of my Facebook friends so I couldn’t resist discussing how perfectly the post set about achieving its ‘objectives’. The thought bubble and the crude red annotations on an already very crude post is my addition.
Let’s start by accepting that violence is simply unacceptable and that mob ‘justice’ is no justice at all. The leering happy Muslim faces that you would see on these clips are inevitable in a mob situation where the nastiest instincts of humanity are revealed. That’s the reason why boring words like rule of law, due process and human rights matter – they are exactly what differentiate a civilized nation from the mob.
If you still think revenge for their ‘fellow’ murdered Hindus on Sabarmati Express was the agenda of the mobs in the riots post Godhra 2002, you are severely mistaken. It was rape, murder and petty theft from brand showrooms. There was no ‘justice’ delivered in ‘the lesson taught’ to the nearest available absolutely unrelated Muslim and indeed no equal and opposite reaction. It was fulfillment of personal agendas and cashing-in of political dividends. Every act of mob violence always is (including the one above) and that is why mob violence is, by its very nature, wrong.
This picture, nonetheless, is the perfect example of how the merchants of mayhem work your mind.
1. Tricking you into thinking of all of ‘them’ as ‘one’. They want you to sweat in terror at the ‘fact’ that your Muslim colleague or classmate is no different from the ISIS beheader you saw on ShankhNaad. Don’t you need protection from their madness? Who will you turn to [Wink wink]? Note the ‘30%’ smoothly slipped in there… as if all of Bengal’s Muslim population can be seen on this clip - Indian/Bangladeshi/who cares as long as it is a ‘violent Muslim’ who fits the narrative. “Look at what THEY are doing at 30%. Imagine them in majority… shiver me timbers!”, they squeak.
2. They also want to remind you that it is ‘these’ people who have hounded minorities in their Muslim majority homelands, quietly, surreptitiously pushing the same fake message that they DON’T BELONG HERE. Never mind the fact that the people seen here had zero involvement in the atrocities perpetrated in Muslim majority countries. Once more, it’s the same “All Muslims are the same [Read terrifying]. It’s just their NATURE” narrative. Though they’ll shout from the rooftops “Why are Indian Muslims protesting CAB?”, they’ll also whisper “You see? These people are naturally violent, ALL OF THEM. Isn’t the law that is flagrantly discriminatory against THEIR religion a masterstroke? [Wink wink]”
At this point of time, the reader may be wondering as to why speak only about the Hindu merchants of mayhem and not the others?
It’s because all of these ideas of these merchants of mayhem are that fucking unoriginal.
Selecting bits of incendiary information, encouraging blanket hatred against the ‘other’ – that is the bread and butter of every carbon copy Islamic terror outfit (Kafirs must die on earth so that I can live a Kafir lifestyle in heaven), white supremacist (we started everything so enough of this sharing with these ungrateful inferior non-whites) and Maoists (them rich people must be executed and their wealth distributed).
Not only is such stupidity unproductive and dangerous, it rapidly comes to grief with maximum trauma and negative benefits. If history (not the WhatsApp edition) is a long bus trip, religious fundamentalism, white supremacy, Maoism are the co-passengers from hell – too much baggage, full of ignorant opinion and filled with an uncontrollable urge to be the bus driver.
But… but… but then why don’t we hear voices from the other side criticizing their own?
To that question, this answer is as fucking original as it gets… this being my very raw personal experience.
It was nearly the last day of my long tenure in the USA when I was called a terrorist. Right to my face. Aloud and in the middle of a crowd. By someone who couldn’t possibly have been more than 6 years old. Even as the kid’s smug white parents looked on, ‘pride’ shining in their eyes. In the heart of New York City, a surge of rage rose taller than the Empire State Building within me and almost as rapidly subsided.
I could see in that microsecond what made the kid think that way – brown guy, reasonably dishevelled from walking around that great city for the umpteenth time, holding camera in hand and ‘scouting’ for locations to bomb. All the ticks, all the filters that the kid’s monumentally stupid, hate-filled environment had trained him to pick were fulfilled. I was, as Stephen Colbert put it, “Mus-lish” enough.
I really felt no need to explain that everything he had known about brown people was wrong. That there were a lot of brown people who were not involved in bringing down the World Trade Centre, including Muslims and non-Muslims like me. That if he talked to us, he wouldn’t find us that very different from ‘his’ people, whatever that allegiance might be.
Most importantly, I felt (for a very brief while) how every Muslim around the world must feel when asked to take responsibility for ISIS or about why he ‘didn’t protest the atrocities’ of his ‘co-religionists’. I realized the load that someone else’s bigotry and ignorance put on my sanity. I didn’t owe any explanation to anyone and I couldn’t be responsible for what someone ‘thought’ I was, where I came from, or what my ‘intentions’ were. If I am the demon from someone’s nightmare just by existing, the fault is definitely not mine.
But… but… but my bigotry is well researched and personally experienced, the reader may claim. Why would a community be hated ‘around the world’ if there weren’t cause for it?
The answer to that, I am afraid, is once again fucking unoriginal and I must fall back on the Internet proven Godwin’s Law. Looking beyond WhatsApp screenshots for history might be critical to the argument.
There once was a time (and still is, in the pockets where Nazis are heroes) when in countries ‘around the world’, the root cause of all evil was a Jew. They were ‘everywhere’… taking over, destroying ‘us’, proliferating ‘theirs’. It took a Hitler supported by his trial-less murder of 10 million non-combatants, a World War and two atomic bombs to realize that there was a slight problem with that sweeping generalization. The problem was that the assumption was overwhelmingly and gut-wrenchingly wrong. Evil. Unacceptable.
The markers of extremist movements are all the same.
1. We were the best before ‘they’ came in and perfect as we are, we do not need to absorb anything from anyone else (don’t you dare reveal that what we have is a wonderful composite of ALL the cultures that call our country home).
2. We had everything before everyone else (and even if we didn’t, we’ll shame our wise ancients by treating our myths as science and history, completely ignoring the invaluable philosophy embedded in them).
3. We are the nice guys who are being taken advantage of. Haven’t we been appeasing ‘them’? ‘They’ are so lucky to be here instead of ‘there’ (hence we must pro-actively ‘unite’ to get us our historical dues).
4. It takes a Great Leader to restore a Great Nation by his sheer unquestionable genius (if you disagree like all those ‘fake’ intellectuals who have been letting us down, there’s always a neighbouring country we could send you to). Giant statues, falsified history, inappropriate appropriation of national heroes and the all-important Facebook soldiers, all vie for second position in that great mission of national upliftment.
5. It doesn’t matter if our country is going through an economic, social and moral crisis, what’s important is national pride based on hatred of the ‘other’ and putting ‘them’ in their place (because filling stomachs is not as easy as ripping them open).
6. Last and most important, ‘they’ are hardly human, not worth our thought and attention, evil reproductory robots who are hell-bent on finishing us. We tried so hard to reach across the aisle but look at what we got. We must get rid of ‘them’ for our survival.
You get the drift. The end results of all such movements, likewise, sooner rather than later rain faeces on their collectively angry faces and on much of the landscape around.
Yet the ease offered by these simplistic narratives must be acknowledged. There are terrible things in the world – poverty, hunger, want. What better than a readymade bogeyman to blame it on and a mob mission to lynch him with! It frees the individual from the pain of thinking complicated things through and though a mental slave, imagine himself to be a fighter of ‘evil’ in his inner life. He has no clue of how ugly the reality that he is fostering is.
For these are people who claim that they are all for the ‘right’ type of Muslim but even a lifelong student and doctorate of Sanskrit is unsuitable to respect as a teacher just because his name is Feroze Khan. Yes, they are those who think that candle light protests are more dangerous for the structure of the country than a terrorism under trial being appointed to the nation’s defence committee.
I can only hope that they will realize in time that bringing in the slavering mad dogs from the margins into the central hall doesn’t make them any less mad, it makes them more so.
Tuesday, June 4, 2019
A Lil' Bit of Everything
I do not place much stock in books on spirituality. Page after page of dense prose on how one can become one with the universe and listen to its beating heart is not really my kind of reading.
I picked up Herman Hesse's "Siddhartha" on a whim from a bookshop in Darjeeling because I had previously read the magically dark book that is "Steppenwolf", also authored by him. From an age where Eastern spirituality was being explored by Western minds, any Hessian perspective was bound to be interesting.
A fictional contemporary of Gautama Buddha, the titular Siddhartha is a variation of that vague term often found in books on mysticism - a seeker. The book, despite a fair chunk of cryptic text devoted to 'searching', listening to 'the hum of all creation' and all those other tropes found in this story type, is applicable to more than just those seeking spiritual answers.
Siddhartha's journey through cycles of intellectual dissatisfaction, extreme penance and complete sensual pleasure is rewarding to read not because it argues very strongly for either meditation or for materialism. Neither does it picks sides between enlightenment and emotion. By the end of the book, it is beautiful artistic testimony to why we just might need them all.
Sunday, June 2, 2019
Killer. Cute.
Life's not easy and that is not changing anytime soon. Under-equipped, overwhelmed, ill-prepared - we lurch from one incident to another in the fictitious hope that one of these days, things will settle down.
Alternatively, we have a mouse. The southern grasshopper mouse to be precise. Operational in the Sonoran Desert of North America, where daytime temperatures hover around 48 degree centigrade, this furry evolutionary experiment seems, at first, a bit like a post-lunch doodle by its creators, with teeth designed to chew grains and shaped like a substitute Teletubby.
As this National Geographic video short reveals, appearances deceive and this little creature waggles its tiny fist at anyone who dare classify it as cute. It means business and it does business, a fully operational carnivore as many a fatally venomous Arizona bark scorpions may have found to their surprise.
So the next time life seems like a trackless wasteland disproportionately at odds with the resources and talent available, remember that somewhere out there, in a terribly dry desert of North America, a grain eating fluffy ping-pong ball snacks on scorpions and howls at the moon.
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