Movie & Musings

Today I watched a beautiful movie called “The Kite Runner” based on the popular novel by the same name authored by Khaled Hosseini. The story, which is somewhat autobiographical, “floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee” without mincing words. I wonder what it is in mankind that sheds a tear for the loss of another. Is it the same mankind or another-kind that rapes and plunders everything around it? Undeniably we all have in us that dark, perverted animal that sleeps somewhere deep inside. For some unfortunately this animal roams freely, controlling their thoughts and actions.

The Kite Runner is a story of such pure love on one hand, and violent hatred on the other. The ugly and oppressive regime of the Taliban is portrayed by bodies hung by the roadside, women stoned in public in a stadium, and men and children without limbs. When a guard checks the protagonist Amir for weapons and tells his companions that he has a soft body you feel your bile rising. There are many such moments when you find yourself writhing and rejoicing in the destinies of the characters. This in my opinion is the mark of a great movie, which The Kite Runner undeniably is.

This brings us back to the stark realities in Afghanistan. When a country is banned from movies, television, videos, music, dancing, hanging pictures in homes, clapping hands, equipments that produce music, statues, pictures, you cannot blame the country’s people for watching public executions in soccer stadiums. This does not have to do with Islam. This has to do with human nature.

Love or something like that...

Recently I was listening to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”. It was so beautiful and I was awestruck that he could compose something like that when he was completely deaf. It is said that he composed a lot of his music inspired by his “Immortal Love”, a lady named Antonie Brentano, whom he never married, but wrote impassioned letters to.

(Un) surprisingly there is very little information about this mysterious woman who even Beethoven didn’t know much about. Now the train of thought that Im pursuing here is, if he had married her or did have a longish affair with her and dumped her she might not be his “Immortal Love” anymore. As cynical as one might think this is, for love to be immortal or eternal it has to be unrequited, unconsummated or one that ended with tragic consequences is my personal opinion.

Take the case of any of our legendary love stories, Shakespeare’s classic love story Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, popular Arabian tale of Layla and Majnun, our very own Devdas and Paro (adapted into many a Bollywood movie including Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s magnum opus which they had the cheek to send to the Oscars!!), Heer Ranjha, still a favourite in Punjab and Pakistan (infact Punjab has other tragedies like Mirza Sahiba, Sohni Mahiwal, etc), Kovalan Kannagi or even Kovalan Madhavi of Tamil epic Silappadikaram and many more.

These are no happily ever after stories; these are stories full of longing and angst, where lovers rebel faced with treachery and deceit. These stories have lovers struck by the blow of fate in the prime of their love, life and what not. I wonder if only these guys had got together or married or had many kids, would their love be as celebrated and as legendary. Even Shah Jehan and Mumtaz Mahal’s love became stuff of greatness only after he built the hauntingly beautiful, near perfect Taj and made it her tomb (Let us for one minute forget those forwards we got where the Taj was originally supposed to be a Shiva temple and blah blah).

One of my retirement plans is to write the greatest love story where the lovers get married at an “appropriate” age, have two kids, send their kids to good schools and colleges, plan, invest and insure for their old age, have no diabetes, blood pressure or prostrate problems and live happy till a ripe old age of 90 and 95. Now that is some love story and 40 years down the line when I retire it will be some story to tell!!

Cacophony

Why can’t people stand it when some one disagrees with them? Why are people so limited that they can’t have anyone else’s opinion but their own? Am I limited too when I disagree with someone? I grit my teeth when I find people making judgements and opinions of things they have no knowledge about. Then I wonder if more knowledgeable (than me) people would grit their teeth at me. But then I always respect the judgement of such people and truly listen to them or I try to.

If people could just open their minds and hearts a little bit, the world has so much to teach. You and I are such a miniscule part of this world we have no right to disagree with anyone. Humility is probably one of the very few things in this world that is so rare and is valued so less. What have you done that you think you are better equipped to pass judgements on anything; every single thing in this world is as exciting and wondrous as you think you are.

There is beauty in humility as there is beauty in silence, in the mighty ocean, in a drop of honey, a ray of sunlight, a child’s curiosity, a girl who does not know she is beautiful, the list is endless. Why is there this tearing hurry to spill all you think you know and disregard anything that is new to you? When we grow (supposedly) in age, we lose one valuable thing, curiosity. Instead of embracing something that is different from us or what we know, we get suspicious of it. If someone is not you, they are not weird or wrong…they are different. This is of course easier said than done, as all meaningful things are.

This is the reason why I think this song from Pocahontas is so right!!

“You think I'm an ignorant savage

And you've been so many places I guess it must be so

But still I can not see

Is the savage one is me

How can there be so much that you don't know?

You don't know

You think you own whatever land you land on

The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim

But I know every rock and tree and creature

Has a life, has a spirit, has a name

You think the only people who are people

Are the people who look and think like you

But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger

You'll learn things you never knew you never knew”

Cobwebs in my head…

Sweet strain of a forgotten lullaby,
Beckons me to take a walk down memory lane,
I wander along watching the little packets of recollections,
Amidst deep, dark, lost jungles the unravelled lain.

Wisps of a forgotten song on a familiar trail
Entice and elude like sun-dew on a leaf,
I seek, hoping it would come to me,
I pray and meditate, with little relief.

Insane is the landscape that surrounds me,
Juxtaposed with truths, half-truths and dreams I have seen.
I know not when the melody crept into my being,
Ungratified it haunts my sleep and every waking scene.

Silken are the strands that link the new to what I knew,
Slipping away at the slightest gust, it is but feign,
What the power of the mind promises,
For when remembrance ceases in me, I declare, god is profane!!

Carousal Ride

Glint covered walls,

hanging festoons held up a sway,

cotton candy and strawberry ice

milling crowds upbeat and gay

Stomping horses in red red reins,

beady eyed ducks waddle with webbed feet

hares run about flapping ears

shuddering yellow cabins add to the beat

ting a ring a ring a ring

the lights do a bebop of their own

all this merriness in a march

just to be under the grand lady's gown

Hold on tight, the father shouts,

enjoy the ride while it lasts

you think you're going somewhere?

You’ll come back to the been pasts