Sourav's Blog

Death to the King

2010-01-19T10:36:00.001+05:30

Wasn't it lovely when people would sing,
Everyone would shout death to the king,
We'd all come out and march down the street,
Upon the palace gates we would then beat,
When the gate was down we went inside,
We caught him asleep he couldn't hide,
We dragged him down to the guillotine,
He kept shouting, "I am the King",
We strapped him down, everything grew quiet,
The king was scared, he couldn't hide it,
The blade slid smoothly through his neck,
His blood splashed down onto the deck,
We buried him without a casket,
But there lay his head, still in the basket.

Happy Memories

2010-01-18T11:06:00.003+05:30

I wish I could turn back time,
Turn back to the happy moments.

But time didn't stand still,
it ran faster than I wanted it to.

All I have are memories,
Unforgettable feelings.

I wish those moments would come back soon,
Because there's nothing else that I'd rather like.

Am working on a spell right now,
To let time freeze somehow.

Hopefully with time frozen,
My life will enliven.

Review: Modern Times (1936)

2009-11-28T00:48:00.003+05:30

Chaplin’s last 'silent' film, filled with sound effects, was made when everyone else was making talkies. Charlie turns against modern society, the machine age, (The use of sound in films ?) and progress. Firstly we see him frantically trying to keep up with a production line, tightening bolts. He is selected for an experiment with an automatic feeding machine, but various mishaps leads his boss to believe he has gone mad, and Charlie is sent to a mental hospital... When he gets out, he is mistaken for a communist while waving a red flag, sent to jail, foils a jailbreak, and is let out again. We follow Charlie through many more escapades before the film is out.

Charles Chaplin ... A factory worker (as Charlie Chaplin)
Paulette Goddard... A gamin
Henry Bergman ... Cafe proprietor
Tiny Sandford ... Big Bill (as Stanley Sandford)
Chester Conklin ... Mechanic
Hank Mann ... Burglar
Stanley Blystone... Gamin's father
Al Ernest Garcia... President of the Electro Steel Corp. (as Allan Garcia)
Richard Alexander... Cellmate (as Dick Alexander)

IMDB Link

Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936) is the final film to feature the great actor/director/writer's most easily recognizable incarnation: The Tramp. Here is a character that is so ingrained in the collective conscious of modern film audiences that many recognize him despite the fact that they have not seen a single Chaplin film. Indeed, several iconographic studies have labeled The Tramp (with his worn hat, distinctive mustache, dusty suit, cane, and trademark waddle) as the single most identifiable fictional image in history.

Still, the film that perhaps most influenced the creation and thematic realization of Modern Times was not even a silent one. The Jazz Singer, which debuted in 1927, five years before Modern Times began production, is perhaps the most important watershed film in the industry's century-old history. In the film, comic great Al Jolson stands up in front of the audience and...sings. And as Millard Mitchell said in Singin' in the Rain, the public was suddenly in a frenzy for "Talking pictures! Talking pictures!" Sadly, with the advent of synchronized sound and dialogue, the world of silent filmmaking began to slip into obscurity with audiences and studios now viewing it as obsolete and undesirable. Nevertheless, Chaplin continued his passion for the subtle craft by creating City Lights (1931), which many critics and academics consider one of the greatest films ever made, but by the time Modern Times was released, Chaplin was one of the last directors left clinging to a dying art.

Modern Times is not an entirely silent film, (there are dialogue snippets and sound effects), but if you look closely, every character with dialogue (excluding Chaplin himself) is being mocked. Even when The Tramp opens his mouth (the only time he ever did so in a film), the words are nonsensical, defying the burgeoning convention that dialogue is mandatory for substance, entertainment, and quality.

Despite the film's status as one of the greatest comedies of all-time, it is hard to ignore the political component. In his movies, Chaplin often exhibited a great mistrust for authority and progress, as often embodied through the social elite, the police, and wealthy entrepreneurs. The irony of the film's title, then, is two-fold. It connects with Chaplin's own bitter feelings regarding his moribund art form, but also refers to the plight of the working classes during the Great Depression (long working hours with little job security and meager salary, while the upper classes remain wealthy and bide their idle time) The world was changing fast, and Chaplin foresaw that many of these changes were far from beneficial.

As we watch The Tramp struggle through the modern, mechanized world, we laugh at his antics and the absurdity of their results, but we can also feel pain and pity. He is clearly a man who does not belong. Indeed, The Tramp can almost be thought of as a misfit who has passed through a membrane from some alternate reality and unwittingly fallen into our familiar world (notice that he does not have a name or identification of any kind, and as far as we know, he has no friends, family, funds, or history).

He takes on assembly lines, feeding machines, department stores, policemen and various other mass-oriented aspects of the industrialized world (all which demand and exhibit sameness and conformity), but The Tramp (and his symbolic extension, the individual) never seem to fit.

This is, consequently, why Modern Times is also one of the most poignant love stories ever put on film. The only character who is on the same level as The Tramp is a young, homeless woman who is referred to as "The Gamin" and is played by Chaplin's then-wife, Paulette Goddard. These two are brought together by the fact they have almost nothing except the will to live and continue forward, despite adversity. Both are nameless, neither has a home, and they each have no money or material possessions.

It is here that Chaplin makes his most poignant and saddening statement about modern living. The Tramp and The Gamin are the only characters who exhibit individuality and idealism, yet they are also the ones lowest on the social and economic food chain. The conclusion of the film, which most likely reflects upon Chaplin's own emotions, is tinged with sadness, but also a lingering hopefulness that resonates as loudly and clearly today as it did more than sixty years ago.

Then there is, of course, the comedy, which is the stuff of legendary status. Some of the most memorable comic images in film history are found in Modern Times. These include The Tramp's bout with an assembly line (and his resulting twitches), his unfortunate encounter with "nose-powder", the moment when he quite literally becomes a cog in the wheels of industry, and his epic struggle to bring roast duck to an angry customer.

In my opinion, however, the two standout moments are the scene in a department store involving a blindfold and some rollerskates (the most exquisite moment of comedy in the film) and the sequence where The Tramp is submitted to the mad whim of an out-of-control feeding machine (the most uproarious moment in the film).

These are just a handful of moments that make Modern Times the enduring masterpiece that it is. On a personal level, the aspect of the film that resonates strongest with me is its appeal to the idealistic misfit in all of us. In our hearts, many of us long for the simplicity and exuberance with which The Tramp and The Gamin live life (with attention to the bare essentials and an absence of need for materialism and modern trappings).

As Chaplin so skillfully shows, however, our modern times make this lifestyle a faded dream, lost among the sheep-like herds of men and women scurrying through a modern metropolis that only Fritz Lang could make seem darker and more devoid of true humanity. Still, the final image of Modern Times refuses to let the film end on an exclusively tragic note and demonstrates that the individual is still alive and may yet find his way in an ever-changing world.

* Supposedly was to be Charles Chaplin's first full sound film, but instead, sound is used in a unique way: we hear spoken voices only when they come from mechanical devices, a symbol of the film's theme of technology and dehumanization. Specifically, voices are heard from:

o The videophones used by the factory president
o The phonographic Mechanical Salesman
o The radio in the prison warden's office

* The singers in the restaurant are also heard, and some scenes include sound effects.

* The Little Tramp's last words before his final fade out after more than 22 years as a screen icon: "Smile! C'mon!" (it is easy to read Charles Chaplin's lips at the very end of the film).

* Charles Chaplin allows the Tramp to speak on camera for the first time during the restaurant scene, but insisted that what the Tramp says be universal. Therefore, the song the Tramp sings is in gibberish, but it is possible to follow the story he tells by watching his hand gestures.

* Paulette Goddard's character's name is Ellen Peterson.

* The film originally ended with Charles Chaplin's character suffering a nervous breakdown and being visited in hospital by the gamin, who has now become a nun. This ending was filmed, though apparently only still photographs from the scene exist today (they are included in the 2003 DVD release of the film). Chaplin dropped this ending and shot a different, more hopeful ending instead.

* This was one of the films which, because of its political sentiments, convinced the House Un-American Activities Committee that Charles Chaplin was a Communist, a charge he adamantly denied. He left to live in Switzerland, vowing never to return to America.

* A full dialogue script was written for the film, as Charles Chaplin had intended to make a complete talkie. According to a documentary on the DVD release, Chaplin went so far as to film a scene with full dialogue before deciding instead to make a partial talkie.

* Discounting later parodies and novelty films, this was the last major American film to make use of silent film conventions such as title cards for dialogue. The very last dialogue title card of this film (and thus, it can be said, the entire silent era) belongs to The Tramp, who says "Buck up - never say die! We'll get along."

* Co-star Paulette Goddard actually made significant story contributions.

* France's Tobis Studios sued Charles Chaplin for plagiarizing the conveyor belt sequence from René Clair's À nous la liberté (1931) but dropped the suit when Clair declared himself honored by the tribute, saying, "I have certainly borrowed enough from him."

* According to a fall 1935 issue of Variety, Charles Chaplin was expected to run behind schedule on the release of the movie as he tweaked the soundtrack. He also wanted to chop over 1,000 feet of film from his then existing cut.

* According to Paulette Goddard, Chaplin was deeply and profoundly involved in the recording of the musical score. He spent days upon days in the recording studio writing themes, and only left when Paulette begged him.

* In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #78 Greatest Movie of All Time.

Those were the days !!!

2009-03-24T12:53:00.003+05:30

Most people look at us and don't really understand what we're about. We all smoke and swear. We drink too much coffee and drink socially. We've all have had sex and lots of it. We hook up inside the group with our friends' sisters and ex's best friend. Some of us smoke pot and others smoke rocks. Some don't do drugs and they go to church and are in the choir.

We're a lot of different people from a lot of different places brought together by one common goal: to get the hell out of P.E.S. College alive. We all know each other through a friend of a friend. We met on the smoke deck or in the cafeteria. Some of us went to high school together and others we picked up in class. We've got preps and gamers. Singers and ravers. Hip-hoppers, beat boxers and a couple of good, clean, and wholesome suburbanites.

We talk about sex and life and politics. Abortions and movies and music. We have plots to take over the world and who will be in charge of our league of elite warriors. You name it, we've discussed it. We're smarter than your average college student. We're open to new things and we try whatever we can. We're not scared of the real world. Most of us live in it. We've all had our fair share of hard times and good days.

We haven't slept, haven't eaten, haven't moved in days. We've got errands to run when we get out of school before we go to work. We study and cram before tests and take all of the same classes with all the same teachers. We help cheat from old notes and give tips to each other. That teacher is awesome. "This class is too hard, you should take the other one instead."

We all work to pay bills we shouldn't even have yet. We still live with our parents or brothers or sisters and some like me live alone away from my family. Working one or two jobs. The student loan and financial institution office knows most of us by name. We still hang out in the summer and have wild parties, chill parties, small little get togethers. hide and seek at the park in the middle of the night.

We call each other to check in. Everyone knows everyone's business. Even if you don't know that they know. News travels fast when you're sick... expect a lot of phone calls.

We have groups within groups within groups. These people talk all the time, but those four talk more together and the two out of the four are best friends. We all get along, but we all dislike some of the others. We don't like to cause problems, though, because everyone choses sides.

No one knows why. We're all so different. Some drink, some smoke. Some curse, some toke. We've got Hindus and Christians. Muslims and Parsis. Athiests and Jews. Game players, sooth sayers, and some watch the news. We have politicians, sex fiends and drug addicts. We're all coffee drinkers and aspirin dependants.

Opposites attract and we're birds of a feather. We don't even know how we all jam together. Some of us came and some went. Some stayed and just can't get the hell out. English, Business and Science majors.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm glad and proud to be able to say that I know you people and that I can call you my friends.

I really miss those days spent attending college in Bangalore even though I hardly ever attended theory classes after the first 2 months. I love the fact that sent a fake letter to my principal making it appear as if my father sent it saying that "In order to continue his studies, he needs to work to support himself and therefore unless you kindly allow him to skip the theory classes, he wouldn't be able to get his degree." The effect that letter had was that I could only attend the practical labs and while away my time during the theory classes.

It really was fun. Looking back, I had one hell of a time in College. I wish I could relive those days again !!!

Sheltering Wings

2009-03-24T12:18:00.003+05:30

The lonely, rippling tides,
Creating wake through one's integrity.
Arose the lonely demon from which resides,
In his unaccompanied, blackened soul.

He glides over the earthen terrain as if he were aloft,
In the meadows admist the eternal blue skies.
But by embedding oneself under the sheltering wings of the Protector,
One will be safe.
All will be safe.

Is Being Attractive The Main Deciding Factor?

2008-11-13T00:07:00.004+05:30

Do you think being beautiful or sexy - just by itself - is a surefire way to guy's heart? How many "beautiful" or "sexy" girls do you think are really loved by their man?

The Fact: These attributes may matter for a fling but in a soulmate, a man looks for something else.

The Sexy girls are often "torpid" in bed: That very often is an open-secret among men (unless, of course, they visit one of the "Gentleman's clubs" where being sexy or beautiful alone doesn't work!). The beautiful girl expects the man to do all the work! That may go well with him at first but in a true mate he looks for a two-way exchange. And that's where good old Mary wins. She touches, she plays and the man sways! Men love that and more so when they are just looking for a perfect wife.

The beautiful girl expects royal treatment: Why not? She is cute, attractive and with choices - apparently. Good old Mary looks for a soul-to-soul connection and a deeper bonding. That's what the men really want deep inside - care, love and involvement.

Good old Mary believes in true love and the Bombshell triggers the "survival of the fittest": So is Mary a loser? Men often look at beauty as a mystery - it ceases to exist when unfolded. So the sexy girl does pretty well till the aura of beauty and her mystery remain.

Good old Mary wants to have a happy family and beautiful girl, a happy face: It's beauty that is her survival mode but men are just grown up boys. At the end of the day, they look out for nurturing love. And good old Mary is always a shoulder to cry on when things are not just right. She gets her man since she knows what he really looks for in mate.

This is what I feel and have heard time and over again from other guys who I have talked to. You all are free to give your point of view which might lead me to write another post about this.

Are Sex-Scenes Mandatory In Movies?

2008-11-10T16:49:00.005+05:30

People say the humidity pushed me over the edge. Things here to the east are different, a little crazier, a little more corrupt, a little closer to coming undone, because of the constant choking humidity. That sweltering heat. Indoors, you shiver in Antarctic air conditioning, the machines perched on your windowsills spitting out ice cubes and penguins, but you steam in your own juices like a lobster in a microwave the instant you walk outside. Everybody from the East is naturally a few steps closer to a psychotic meltdown than, say, their Southern countrymen. After years of having all the oxygen sucked out of your brain every time you step out your front door, something bad happens between your ears.

All the above factors conspired to make me write about a discussion I had with a friend of mine recently about why film-makers feel the need to have sex-scenes that didn't belong and were gratuitous. It got me thinking about which sort of scenes do belong and are necessary for the narration of the movie and what makes them necessary.

Here's my point of view:

I personally think that there is only one time that a film-maker can get away with sex for sex's sake and that's when the characters do it for the first time. Then, I feel you have the freedom to make scene(s) as long and as involved as the film-maker likes. After that the sex-scenes should have a purpose other than to show that the characters are just having fun again.

There are movies can be exempted from this like "9 Songs" which primarily is a film which shows the decline of interest in a couple over time related to physical intimacy if there is no emotional feeling(read love) involved. If that's the theme of a particular film then definitely the film-maker has the justification for multiple sex scenes. Directors like Catherine Breillat, Pedro Almodovar, Jean-Luc Godard, etc. have had multiple sex-scenes in their movies but no one calls them obscene and they are all award winning and critically acclaimed directors.

Then there are those compulsory "turning point" sex-scenes, where a character realizes as they are having sex, "Oh, this person isn't just another one-time-sex partner". This can happen in two different scenes in the movie or the same one but it depends on the characters and whether or not one of them is farther along the emotional journey than the other. It also depends on the producer and the quality of sex-scenes that they prefer.

One can also make an epilogue-type sex scene that shows the characters engaging in sex in which the film-maker can make a great-to-do about how even better the sex is now that they are married or engaged or bonded or whatever.

I can't think of any more reasons but if you, i.e. the readers can think of any then please mention in the comments.

Links to:

10 Movies Remembered Primarily for a Sex Scene

10 Movies That Sold due a Sex Scene

27 Years Of Walking On Earth.

2008-11-08T08:21:00.004+05:30

Probably you know that I’ve been walking around this earth for roughly 27 years now and have come to learn a bit about this world. I never claim to know everything & I don’t really like it when people assume they do. Even if one knows a lot, one still has a lot to learn, even about the things one “knows". I’m not certain where this is going to lead but I just wanted to list a few things that I understood recently:

I love having a conversation about old shows on Doordarshan we used to watch as kids.

No one is more vulnerable than when they are defecating in a public bathroom that has no latch.

The more devoid of colour a beverage is, the more likelihood of it being very alcoholic.

A small dog frightens one way more than a big dog will.

Voting makes one feel really good right after one does it and makes one feel very small once the results are in.

I am no longer self-conscious when I’m by myself in public and smile because something very funny or inappropriate just popped into my head.

The untidyness in my surrounding life parallels the clutter in my mind.

I find that making out can vary from casual to intimate; the only difference is one's intention.

All-in-all I’ve made several goals for myself this month. They include reducing at least 5 kgs of body fat, buying a vaio laptop, getting a titanium credit card, visiting as many cities as I can before terrorists destroy them, and learning to find more and more time to write. A lot of these goals are very simple, which is great. These aren’t all officially on the Before 28 list, but I’ve become a product of list making and I can see the benefits in making them. I got a message from someone that said that I write like a programmer. To illustrate the differences I will write the entire next paragraph in actionscript code:

//start
var Sourav:Workaholic = new Workaholic();
Sourav.workEthic = 100;
for(var i:Number=0;<7;i++){
Sourav.workEthic -= 10;
}
if(Sourav.workEthic < 50) {
Sourav.emotionalState = “lazy”;
getMotivated();
} else if(Sourav.workEthic > 100) {
Sourav.emotionalState = “over-worked”;
relax();
} else {
Sourav.emotionalState = “balanced”;
}
function getMotivated(){
getURL(”http://www.google.com”,”_blank”);
//type in inspiring words
}
function relax(){
sleep();
}
//end

Here's my present situation. As you may or may not know I’m constantly in touch with my friends through phone, sms or through the internet but the city I am in right now has no one who I can actually call a friend. Now I rarely mind this state of being; I think being alone is what I need right now because it helps me re-group and re-organize life's goals. That being said, I sometimes do get a bit lonely, and how could you not? Now I don’t actively go out trying to find someone to hang out with; I always find that doing that can actually make one start disbelieving that one can have real good friends and not "Fair-weather" ones. Instead I'm better off relying on my current social network to assist in finding new friends who can just be interactive without being judging and bitching behind my back. I find that making the most of life is fairly easy to do when you don’t have very many expectations. Think of it this way: If you expect something to go great and it doesn’t, then you feel bad. If you expect something to go bad and it goes bad, then you feel bad. If you don’t expect something and it goes bad, then it’s ok cause you didn’t really expect it to be good. If you don’t expect something and it goes great, then it’s always better because you didn’t expect anything and ended up with awesomeness. I feel like I’ve professed this to many people but I really do think that this thought process is the key to keeping one smiling. Expectations come from prejudice of a situation. And while a healthy dose of prejudice is fine… too much can restrict you. I’m a big proponent of limitlessness; I’m aware (and so is my spell check) that it’s not a real word but so what. You at least ended up on this page.

That all being said, I’ve made a new awesome friend Fritz, he's 22 and he writes fiction which I do too and hence, I get to discuss things that run through my head with him. I’ve been meaning to do that for a while now; yes both make a new friend and have a meaningful conversation with a person who can listen and give another point of view to my weird thoughts. As he has come to India for the first time (He's from NYC, U.S.A) and intends to stay for 10 long months, I can surely look forward to some exchange of thoughts and talk about cultural differences and some debates about stuff on which our views differ. All of the most talented people are now my friends so that’s very good! It’s great to keep talent around to inspire you and kick your butt a bit to push the boundaries and make one strive to do better.

By the way, I wanted to touch on traveling. I had a great time in Gangtok and Mandarmani but I haven't been travelling much for the past 1 year. I like that in all of those places I was able to seek peace and quiet whether it be the snow-capped mountains surrounding Tsongo Lake in Gangtok or the vast expanse of clear blue sea at Mandarmani. I feel like this whole month as well has been about reconnecting long lost bonds. Just the other day I talked to my school friend Parijat after 8 long years but it never felt any different than it was 8 years ago when we met everyday in college. It’s true what people say about friends: Even if you aren’t in constant contact with them, true friends can pick-up and continue on right from where they left off. I’m thankful for this. Only a few more weeks left till I can apply for leaves from my new-job. That’s going to be a great holiday.

Why?

2008-11-06T08:08:00.003+05:30

Why is it so hard for you to understand,
I don't want to be with you anymore,
You gave me only your hand,
You didn't give yourself and I demand war,

You betrayed me and I am falling apart,
You said you loved me but you hated me,
You weren't any longer my guard,
Being my enemy is what you wanted to be,

While I was crying the pain hurt everytime like hell,
It didn't stop, it was your way of loving someone,
How come you don't know, tears are what you sell,
Don't you understand the damage you have done,

I still love you, I don't know why,
First I was afraid to stand up and tell you how I felt,
Now I am afraid, I don't know anymore if I'm still standing high,
I shiver when I think about how you yelled,

But I still long for your touch,
And as I'm imagining,
I still love you very much,
From your love I could sing,

I think it's wrong,
Desiring a woman who always wounded my soul,
But I've been with you for so long,
I don't want to speak, everyday you desperate call,

I don't understand why, you first desert me,
And then you only want to be with me, it's the,
Question why, I am so depressive and still love you,
It doesn't make sense, Oh why, why, why, why do I still want you?

Why, why, why, why, why, I keep thinking,
I realize, in your love I'm sinking.

Not my work. One word modification from a poem written by Charley.

I'm not a NERD

2008-11-04T15:58:00.002+05:30

My hands are always moving and my fingers never still.
The monitor is my ink. The keyboard is my quill.
My guitar is in my speakers and a disk holds all my drums.
The key to my eraser is now beneath my thumbs.

My paintbrush is my mouse and the bristles are the cords.
My programs built my house. The tool bar hung the door.
The Internet's my city, state, and country. It's my globe.
Google is a map when I cannot find my Home.

I fall asleep at some sites and wake up in others lost.
I'm addicted to blogging and I don't care what it costs.
Every Sunday I get up and go to church at AMD.
It takes confessions while pretending not to sleep.

I keep up with correspondents at night before bed.
"Yahoo!" "You've got mail!" Or whatever it may have said.
I log off and go to sleep. I dream only in words.
I may not be cool to you, but in MY world I'm not a nerd!

Strength

2008-11-04T15:39:00.003+05:30

A mind so strong
Cannot be owned
This life I live
Is mine alone
As it has been
And still will be
Until the time
That death ends me
I am myself
And on my own
To deal with hell
My strength has grown
The stress forged will
I wield has shown
No link as weak
Or piece as lone
Within these walls
Of mental shields
I live at peace
As torment yields.

Living In Fear

2008-11-03T20:18:00.004+05:30

Time resumes to the taste of glass
As slivered dust fades away
Realization hits as an aftershock
Death has never been closer
Twisted forms of flesh and steel
Lie still now, rid of motion
Reeling from the forces involved
That bend both metal and the mind
Through a skewed door
I see the fast lane frozen
From my place in the middle
Standing, stopped as i was
Such an eerie pause surrounding
This vein of travel clotted
Calmly invades me
As wounds bleed in my eyes
These tears of red are shed for scars
That touch the bone and leave my sight
A grateful fortune for I'm thankful
Marred my face with marks so painful

P.S. --- Tribute to the people who are still braving it out there even after losing their near and dear ones. I lost three friends in the blasts. Swapan, Neog, and Nirmala, you would always be remembered.

Could That Ever Be?

2008-10-21T18:27:00.001+05:30

Emptiness inside me
Something is missing for sure
Broken poems and laughter

Does this sound complete?
Recording my feelings
Does this mean anything?

No one understands me
That is the usual statement I am sure
Does anyone want to know me?

Does anyone really care?
Questions I ask
Answers I never find

Would it be too much to ask?
Another question I am sure
I'm a ghost with no answers

Does this sound right to you?
All I am asking is for you to be in my life
Could that ever be?

I Care

2008-10-21T18:17:00.001+05:30

I want you to know how much I really care
The way things are make it difficult to share
The way you look at me I can't help but stare
Your eyes are so beautiful that no one elses can be compared
From the day I met you I have always been aware
That all these feelings are there
Months have passed by and these feelings I bare
I am just wondering how much do you care?

Fading

2008-10-21T17:21:00.002+05:30

Fading like a flower
Flooded like the streets when it rains
Dark as my room when I lay there all alone
As broke as my heart when denied your love
As broken as ten thousand mirrors
But nothing compares to the way my love seems
Stronger than any force that has ever been
Undying like a thousand anthems played

P.S. --- I didn't realize my poems were worth copying. Check the link out and see that this person copied it and submitted it for a poetry contest.
Link to Poem copied from here

Broken Dreams

2008-10-06T17:35:00.004+05:30

Have you ever had your dream broken,
Hope left completely unspoken,
Found you had no chance,
To go another round of the pin-head dance,
Lost your way wandering in a trance,
Nothing left to say,
Just another day,
Burning for the lie?

No place to call home,
Chips crashed all alone,
All for one brings on the fall,
'Cause no one's ever for us all,
The system is completely broken,
Each of us made just a token,
Just another way,
Of burning for the lie.

Tell me to work hard,
For my just reward,
But it all rolls uphill,
Never our dreams fulfilled,
I'm shaken and I'm chilled,
It's a horse-sized bitter pill,
All the edges fray,
Burning for the lie.

My belief is somewhere,
Under the floorboards the bank is going to own.

Where is the next blast going to be?

2008-10-03T21:27:00.003+05:30

Bomb blasts have become a regular feature in India, especially in 2008 with blasts happening in 7 cities and we can assume that there are more to come. There was a time when we considered life in Jammu & Kashmir to be dangerous but today is there any town or city in India which can be called safe from terrorism? Terrorists have spread themselves to every nook and corner of this country and therefore we can never know where the next blast might happen.

Where is this country headed? Terrorists are sending e-mails and contacting the country’s security forces or the media threatening or challenging them to do whatever possible and they have been largely successful in causing terror in people’s minds about the condition of internal security of our country.

All the blasts have been executed in a very planned manner and they have crossed every limit of humanity. This time around, the terrorists even targeted hospitals and timed the blasts so that they took the maximum number of lives by timing them exactly when the blast victims were being rushed into the hospitals. This inhuman act speaks a lot about their intentions and that they don’t value human lives. None whatsoever.

"Do whatever you can. Stop us if you can," This was the statement given by a group calling itself the "Indian Mujahideen". A small bunch of anti-social elements which deviated from SIMI challenging the world’s largest democracy ? What is the Government of India Doing ?

India has been the target of repeated terrorist attacks attributed to Islamist terrorists. Experts say the vast majority of those attacks in the last few years were carried out by SIMI with help from outside India, chiefly Pakistan. Till now, SIMI has been responsible for most of 1,193 deaths attributed to Islamic terrorists in India since Sept. 11, 2001, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a New Delhi research firm.

Are we getting habitual of these blasts? That is the quintessential question. Do we have an answer to this question? I don’t have any answer to it yet. What kind of future are we going to give to the next generation? A seed that was bowed during partition has now grown into a big tress, and unfortunately today this tree is fruiting products like Indian Mujahideen, SIMI, and foreign terrorist organizations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba. Bomb blasts are heinous crimes on humanity. The people who are doing so are puppets controlled by the hands of masterminds sitting away at safe places but these puppets work away methodically like machines without asking questions.

Hope that the scene changes soon and that we wouldn’t be seeing such gory pictures as the one above in the days to come. Here I am wishing for a better and terror free India.

Chronology of Major Bomb Blasts in India

• October 1, 2008: Blast in Agartala, Tripura killed 2 and injured 100.

• September 30, 2008: Blast in Malegaon, Maharastra killed 4 and injured 70.

• September 27, 2008: Blast in Delhi's Mehrauli flower market killed 1 and injured 23.

• September 13, 2008: Serial blasts in Delhi killed at least 24 people and injured more than 100.

• July 26, 2008: Serial blasts in Ahmedabad killing at least 30 people and injuring more than 100.

• July 25, 2008: Nine explosions in Bangalore create terror killing 2 people and injuring 12.

• May 2008: Eight serial blasts rock Jaipur in a span of 12 minutes leaving 65 dead and over 150 injured.

• January 2008: Terrorist attack on CRPF camp in Rampur kills 8.

• October 2007: 2 killed in a blast inside Ajmer Sharif shrine during Ramadan.

• August 2007: 30 dead, 60 hurt in Hyderabad 'terror' strike.

• May 2007: A bomb at Mecca mosque in Hyderabad kills 11 people.

• February 19, 2007: Two bombs explode aboard a train bound from India to Pakistan, burning to death at least 66 passengers, most of them Pakistanis.

• September 2006: 30 dead and 100 hurt in twin blasts at a mosque in Malegaon.

• July 2006: Seven bombs on Mumbai's trains kill over 200 and injure 700 others.

• March 2006: Twin bombings at a train station and a temple in Varanasi kill 20 people.

• October 2005: Three bombs placed in busy New Delhi markets a day before Diwali kill 62 people and injure hundreds.

• August 2003: Two taxis packed with explosives blow up outside a Mumbai tourist attraction and a busy market, killing 52 and wounding more than 100.

• September 24, 2002: Militants with guns and explosives attack the Akshardham Hindu temple in the western state of Gujarat, 31 killed, More than 80 injured.

• May 14: Militants attack an army camp near Kashmir's winter capital, Jammu, killing more than 30, including wives and children of soldiers.

• December 13, 2001: More than a dozen people, including five gunmen, killed in an attack on parliament in New Delhi.

• October 1, 2001: Militants storm the Jammu and Kashmir state assembly complex, killing about 35 people.

• March 1993: Mumbai serial bombings kill 257 people and injure more than 1,100.

Led Zeppelin - Stairway To Heaven

2008-05-13T13:24:00.006+05:30

Listen to the following by clicking on both "Play Forward" and "Play Reverse" and decide yourself what Zeppelin tried to create.

Going Insane

2008-03-29T12:03:00.001+05:30

Broken and afraid,
There's no place to hide.
Lost in the mind,
Beg and scream,
Pain so keen.
But can anyone understand,
That you don't mean to demand?
Bleeding from the eyes,
A way out we're trying to find.
Tears fall to the ground so hard,
Arms have become so scarred.
Get through this nightmare tonight,
And maybe in the morning we'll be all right.
Memories flood the brain,
Completely going insane.
Curl into a ball,
And into madness we'll fall.

Darkness & My Doom

2008-03-29T11:53:00.002+05:30

Darkness is my saving grace,
The light of day I shall not see

I will never know,
Just why you have forsaken me

Silenced by your choice,
For my screams you shall never hear

Condemned to my death,
Unable to conquer your fear

Pain I must endure,
As I am severed from your womb

Darkness is my only saving grace,
A plastic bag my only tomb

Atheism

2008-03-28T01:04:00.002+05:30

I’m a canonical person who is sometimes bordering on the verge of insanity as some people around me will aver. So, as I tattle about me being an atheist, no one needs to take heed. I don’t want to bore you with my perpetual lecture about Atheism. Anyhow here goes aught.

Someone today brought up the issue which got me thinking again about HIM i.e. GOD. I always assay to ascertain why I bother to waste my invaluable time to think about HIS existence or non-existence (According to me) ? It’s been a hell lot of time since I last spared HIM a thought! Those of you who are still reading this and aren’t bored to death will tend to think that I’m sacrilegious.

For those unworldly beings who doesn’t know what Atheism Means: The word ‘atheism’ comes from the negative ‘a’ which means ‘no’ and ‘theos’ which means ‘god.’ Hence, atheism in the most base terms means ‘no god.’ Basically, atheism is the lack of belief in a god and/or the belief that there is no god. By contrast, theism is the belief that there is a God and that He is knowable. I need to mention that most atheists do not consider themselves anti-theists. Most consider themselves as non-theists. I've encountered many atheists who claim that atheism is not a belief system while others say it is. Since there is no official atheist organization, nailing down which definition of atheism to use can be difficult. Following are some definitions offered by atheists. ·

"An atheist is someone who believes and/or knows there is no god."

"An atheist lacks belief in a god."

"An atheist exercises no faith in the concept of god at all."

"An atheist is someone who is free from religious oppression and bigotry."

"An atheist is someone who is a free-thinker, free from religion and its ideas."

Which ever definition you go by, atheism denies God. There are two main categories of atheists: strong and weak, with variations in between. A strong atheist actively believes and states that no God exists. They expressly denounce the Christian God along with any other god. Strong atheists are usually more aggressive in their conversations with theists and try shoot holes in theistic beliefs. They like to use logic and anti-biblical evidences to denounce God's existence. Agnostic Atheists, as I call them, are those who deny God's existence based on an examination of evidence. Agnosticism means 'not knowing,' or 'no knowledge.' I call them agnostic because they state they have looked at the evidence and have concluded that there is no God. But, the interesting thing with them is that they say they are open further evidence for God's existence. Weak atheists simply exercise no faith in God. The weak atheist might be better explained as a person who lacks belief in God the way a person might lack belief that there is a green lizard in a rocking chair on the moon; it isn't an issue. He doesn't believe or not believe it. Finally, there is a group of atheists that I call militant atheists. They are, fortunately, few in number. They are usually highly insulting and profoundly terse in their comments to theists, particularly Christians. I’ve encountered a few of them and they are vile, rude, and highly condescending. Their language is full of insults, profanity, and blasphemies. Basically, no meaningful conversation can be had with them at all.

But indeed I think GOD is a theoretical conception contrived to ply psychological back up to people.

Atheist positions seem to fall into two main categories. The first is the lack of evidence category where the atheist asserts that the supporting evidence isn't good enough for him to affirm God's existence. The second is the category where they believe that the idea of God existing is illogical and contrary to the evidence at hand. To simplify, one says there isn't enough evidence to decide and the other says there is evidence contrary to God's existence. For those atheists who simply lack belief and exercise no energy in the discussion, neither category applies because they are not involved in the debate. A typical argument posed by an atheist to show why God does not exist is as follows: God is supposed to be all good and all powerful. Evil and suffering exist in the world. If God is all good he would not want evil and suffering to exist. If He is all powerful then He is able to remove all evil and suffering. Since evil and suffering exist, God is either not all good (which means he is not perfect and not God), or he is not all powerful (and limited in abilities and scope). Since either case shows God is not all good and powerful, then He does not exist.

Some Basic Tenets of Atheism

Presuppositions are important to us all. We look at the world through them. The atheist has a set of presuppositions, too. Though there is no definitive atheist organization that defines the absolutes of atheism, there are basic principles that atheists, as a whole, tend to adopt. They are listed below. Please note however, that not all atheists assert all of these tenets. The only absolute common one they hold to is that they do not believe in a God or gods.

1. There is no God or devil.

2. There is no supernatural realm.

3. Miracles cannot occur.

4. There is no such thing as sin as a violation of God's will.

5. Generally, the universe is materialistic and measurable.

6. Man is material.

7. Generally, evolution is considered a scientific fact.

8. Ethics and morals are relative.

For the Christian, atheism clashes with many aspects of our faith. Some atheists openly attack Christianity citing apparent contradictions in the Bible, perceived philosophical difficulties related to God, and what they consider as logical evidences against God's existence. But the atheists' criticisms are not without answers. Hopefully, this information will help answer some of their claims and give reasons for believing in God.

We sometimes tend to think otherwise that there indeed is something out there which we have no clew around but what if it’s a legerdemain? What if there is nothing at all?

These are questions to which I haven’t been able to answer but I can surely say that which I can’t see, feel, hear or touch, I don’t believe.

Can Atheists be ethical?

The answer to this question is a definite, "Yes." Atheists are people who, whether they like it or not, have the law written on their hearts. They are subject to the same laws of our country (and other countries). They have a sense of right and wrong. They must work with people and being unethical in society would not serve them very well. It is practical and logical for an atheist to be ethical and work within the norms of social behavior. Atheists, generally, are honest, hardworking people. Nevertheless, some Christians raise the question, "What is to prevent an atheist from murdering and stealing? After all, they have no fear of God and no absolute moral code." The answer is simple: Atheists are capable of governing their own moral behavior and getting along in society the same as anyone else. At the risk of labeling the atheist as self-centered, it does not serve the best interests of an atheist to murder and steal. It would not take long before he was imprisoned and/or killed for his actions. Basically, society will only put up with so much if it is to function smoothly. So, if an atheist wants to get along and have a nice life, murdering and stealing won't accomplish it. It makes sense for him to be honest, work hard, pay his bills, and get along with others. Basically, he has to adopt a set of ethics common to society in order to do that. Belief in God is not a requirement for ethical behavior or an enjoyable life.

On the other hand

Atheists' morals are not absolute. They do not have a set of moral laws from an absolute God by which right and wrong are judged. But, they do have a legal system with a codified set of moral laws. This would be the closest thing to moral absolutes for atheists. However, since the legal system changes (slavery was legal 200 years ago but is not now), the morals in a society can still change. At best, these codified morals are "temporary absolutes." This can be a problem as the norms of society shift and the ethics shift with them. In one century abortion is wrong. In another, it is right. Well, is it or isn't it right? If there is a God, killing the unborn is wrong. If there is no God, then who cares? If it serves the best interest of society and the individual, then kill. This can be likened to something I call, "experimental ethics." In other words, whatever works best is right. Society experiments with ethical behavior to determine which set of rules works best for it. Unfortunately, however, social experimentation is often harmful.

There are potential dangers in this kind of ethical system. If a totalitarian political system is instituted and a mandate is issued to kill all dissenters, or Christians, or mentally ill, what is to prevent the atheist from joining forces with the majority system and support the killings? It serves his self-interests, so why not? But, to be fair, just because someone has an absolute ethical system based upon the Bible or Gita or Koran or any other Holy Book for that matter is no guarantee that he will not also join forces for the killings. But the issue is the base and ramifications of that base. Beliefs affect behavior. That is why belief systems are so important and absolutes are so necessary. A boat adrift without an anchor soon crashes into the rocks. The Bible teaches love, patience, and seeking the welfare of others even when it might harm the Christian; in this the ten commandments are a summary. In contrast, the atheists' presuppositions must be evolutionary. Since evolution teaches that life is the product of purely natural and utilitarian properties of our world, survival of the fittest, natural selection, and equating humans to animals as a species are the ontological basis for our existence and living. With this the value of man is lowered. In contrast, it is a very high calling to treat people properly who also are made in the image of God.

Basically, I do not see how the atheist could claim any moral absolutes at all. To an atheist, ethics must be variable and evolving. This could be good or bad. But, given human nature being what it is, I'll opt for the moral absolutes.

I have read incandescently many theistical and atheistical books but haven’t arrived at a conclusion yet. But will what I am rambling about have any repercussions in those who read it eventually? I doubt it. What good will it do for you to read a lecture on atheism given by a hallucinating 25 year old male? Don’t you think you have wasted a lot of time if you are indeed still reading this? Anyway, if you visualize anything about GOD and want to speak out then do reply and let others know about what your view is !!! Signing off here. Will write again if anyone is duly interested to hear what this crackerball of an atheist has to say.

Tare Zameen Par Review

2007-12-27T15:18:00.000+05:30

Cast and Crew
Official Website: Tare Zameen Par
Duration: 2:40 hrs (approx.)
Genre: Social, Kids, Family
Director: Aamir Khan
Story: Amole Gupte
Lead Actors: Aamir Khan, Darsheel Safary
Supporting Cast: Sachet Engineer, Tanay Cheda, Tisca Chopra, Vipin Sharma
Music Director: Ehsaan Noorani, Loy Mendonca, Shankar Mahadevan
Lyrics: Prasoon Joshi

Plot Summary

Ishaan Awasthi (Darsheel Safary) is a dyslexic, but no one around him knows that. Ram Nikhumb (Aamir Khan) puts his faith in Ishaan and helps him work on his weaknesses and enhance his strengths.

Review

How can anyone not love a movie about children crafted with utmost compassion - children with special needs at that? But, is that the only reason I liked Tare Zameen Par? Absolutely no. What I know for certain is that a strong single-line story is narrated in a extremely charming manner. It is truly uplifting when spirit wins and yet, it is not all about the spirit of winning.

Tare Zameer Par is about a child who suffers because no one around him conceded that he is a slow learner. The beauty of the narration is that the message applies to all children - learning disability or not. How can creativity not deserve a place in academics? It also points a very subtle finger at how we build conformation in our system right at the roots.

The pace of the first half gives you time to think of normal children who are just not academically inclined. The resolution in the second half, however, comes by too quickly compared to the trauma shown earlier. But, I guess, if the point is to show that difficulties can be overcome, you don’t necessarily want to show how difficult it is to overcome them.

About 45 minutes post-interval, Darsheel Safary (Ishaan) said a line which made me realize that he hadn’t said a line in the last hour or so. There I was feeling sorry for Ishaan, feeling like yelling at someone to give him a big hug while I fought this lump in my throat that had been there for the longest time. All this based solely on Darsheel’s expressions and body language!

Kudos to the director for taking this decision and many such with brilliant confidence. And, finally we have a dialogue writer who knows when not to give the actors a helping hand. There are a couple of verbose, preachy scenes. But, they made the point because they were well written.

Aamir Khan’s entry into the movie seemed over-the-top and forced, mainly because it was in absolute contrast with the tone of the movie thus far. But after a little while you realize that you can’t distinguish between the actor/director Aamir Khan and his character Nikumbh. They are both fighting the same cause. Passionately. The other characters serve their purpose as caricatures - stereotypical father, loving mother, understanding sibling, ruthless teacher, and jeering peers.

No matter who or what the focus of the camera is, the love it feels towards its subjects shows in each frame. And, in turn, you fall in love with what you see on screen. Compositions, lighting, angles, colors all work successfully together to engross you and very often to enchant you. The lingering camera might have added a good 10-15 minutes to the run-time. But you will be hard-pressed to point out exact scenes which the movie could have done without. Everything is building character or atmosphere or both.

The songs too contribute to the narrative. The lyrics are sheer poetry. I know, that’s what they are supposed to be, but can’t remember the last time lyrics brought me to tears. “mein kabhi batlaata nahi” kept me speechless (and we all know how difficult that is!). And rock-style guitar strumming to a kids’ song - that’s what I call creative.

Yes, that dash of seemingly inevitable melodrama exists. The side-characters transform for no apparent reason. The climax is exaggerated and is as unrealistic as it could get. However, the aim is to show not reality of life but reality of the condition that this child suffers from. Once you get that, you pardon the make-up a mother is wearing at 6 AM while doing her chores. And anyway, most of this is towards the end, by which time you are willing to forgive. Because, above all else, it makes you think.

When did we grow up? When along the way did we forget what it felt like to be yelled at, to be put down, to be ridiculed? And why did we choose the next generation for revenge? Will we recognize the child in us that is struggling to get out? Will the sensation that the lump in the throat created, stay after the credits roll?

What worked

* The gutter scene in the beginning, beautifully shot!
* Titles - adorable!
* The manner in which the street vendors were captured in the sequence where Ishaan is roaming on the streets.
* The shudder Darsheel gives when the car starts (at the hostel).
* The way Ishaan’s character has developed. You know he is the kind who would hate showing his tears in public and thus refrains from crying when he is hit on his knuckles.
* Portrayal of how color is sucked out of Ishaan, a child whose only true love is colors.
* The scenes in which Ishaan is shown gazing at the scenery - a breathtaking composition.

What didn’t

* How can a school which boasts of discipline allow a parent to interrupt class?
* The principal of the school did not look stern enough to be such a stickler for discipline.
* How come Ishaan became such a sudden favorite at school that he got a standing ovation?

Nitty-Gritty

This section lists things that I think are not important
to the overall impact of the movie. In most cases, it could be explained away by something like, “we noticed the glitch after the scene was shot and there were schedule/budget issues and thus we could not re-shoot it”. I like giving the makers the benefit of doubt, but I am amused nevertheless. Hopefully, they will tickle you too.

* Teachers announcing marks of 60 children in front of the whole class, as if she was taking a roll call. Where does that happen? Marks usually are kept secret. And even if marks are announced they are just of the highest and the lowest scorers.
* Ishaan wears a uniform that is two sizes bigger than what he needs. Again, superficial things purposefully used to exaggerate situation and evoke empathy.
* Where did Ishaan get money to buy the gola (ice-candy) and take a bus ride? He used his school bus to go home, why would a third grader have money?

Cursed

2007-11-26T08:13:00.000+05:30

Innocence of day
Raped away by night,
No way to resist,
Powerless to fight,

Imprisoned within himself
His bloodlust rages,
Killing them
One by one.

He lurks in the shadows
Hunting his prey,
It must be done
Before the start of day,

Haunted by spirits
He ravages the lands,
With a vengence filled heart
And bloodstained hands.

Review: Live Flesh (1997)

2007-09-18T14:56:00.000+05:30

Victor Plaza (Liberto Rabal), a prostitute’s son born in a Madrid bus -- and on the very day in 1970 that Franco cracked down on personal liberties in Spain -- gets in serious trouble as a young man, goes to prison, and emerges while still in his twenties, eager to claim his personal freedom in a newly energized country. Franco is dead, and the reborn Victor -- the hero of Pedro Almodóvar’s Live Flesh -- has a galvanizing effect on everyone he meets. A lover with dark eyes and a small goatee, Victor is neither evil nor violent, but he’s an inexperienced, hungry young man, and things go out of control when he’s around (Rabal has rough edges that his predecessor in such roles, the handsomer, more skilled but more predictable Antonio Banderas, did not have). Live Flesh, the best movie from Almodóvar since that Iberian screwball classic Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, turns into a happy joke about passion as destiny, eros as the dominating force in life. Apart from eros, of course, there isn’t much life in Almodóvar -- the world of work and family hardly exists. But this Spanish bad-boy writer-director does the comedy of sexual passion better than anyone else. The entire history of Spanish repression and guilt seems to gather inside the heads of his men and women; they are naturally explosive in ways that Americans, with their lesser sense of sin, their hygienic attitude toward sex, could never be.

The story, which has been freely adapted from a Ruth Rendell novel, teases symmetry into an Almodóvarian pretzel. Eager to become the world’s greatest lover, Victor sleeps with the wives of the two Madrid policemen who put him in jail -- first Clara (the great Angela Molina, of the tragic mask), who is much adored by her murderously obsessive husband, Sancho (Pepe Sancho), who loves a woman by trying to dominate her and, if necessary, kill her. Clara cheats on her husband in order to survive him, in both body and soul. Taking Victor in hand, she teaches him some of the more essential points of lovemaking, and under Clara’s tutelage, he becomes a saner and gentler fellow -- a better man, in every sense. You might say he is healed by sex. Live Flesh, which begins and ends on Christmas, is about salvation; Almodóvar is eros’s last true worshiper.

Bored with Clara, Victor pursues the exquisite Elena (Francesca Neri), the woman who lured him into trouble some years earlier. It was at Elena’s house that the 20-year-old Victor accidentally shot Sancho’s partner, a promising young police detective named David (Javier Bardem). After the shooting, Elena, the daughter of the Italian consul, a rich girl dabbling in drugs, was so guilty over her own role in the affair that she married David, who had taken a bullet in the spine and was confined to a wheelchair. He’s a dynamite wheelchair basketball player and a thoroughly virile man in every sense but the literal one. So the adulterous joining of Victor and Elena is charged with the many varieties of desire, guilt, and ambivalence. It’s a scene worth waiting for -- certainly the most sensual of Almodóvar’s heterosexual love scenes.

Almodóvar’s electric, brightly colored hyperbolic style has always teetered on the edge of camp and pornography. When he’s going well, he achieves a delirious freedom of tone; when not so well, he horses his way into silliness. In Live Flesh, Almodóvar has stabilized his manner somewhat. The movie is not as startling and fantastic as Law of Desire or Matador, but it doesn’t settle into commonplace realism either. For Almodóvar, sexual passion is part of the cruel joke of Spanish guilt and fatalism. Sex is a matter of life and death that drives people into absurd situations; Almodóvar’s most tragic scenes slide into farce (and vice-versa). These men and women seem not to possess “psychology” but only desire; that’s all the psychology Almodóvar needs. It’s a view of character that dissolves social reality. Would an elegant woman like Elena, the daughter of a foreign diplomat, marry a young policeman? Would she leave him for a young nobody? In this movie, such questions are beside the point. Almodóvar embraces the Mediterranean, or celebratory, view of sex, familiar from Boccaccio’s stories, in which eros is a democracy of matching bodies and temperaments. Society, money, status all shrink to nothing. Despite his erotic fixations, Pedro Almodóvar is the cinema’s last true innocent.

Review: Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990)

2007-09-18T14:28:00.000+05:30

Who hasn’t felt, when in the throes of passionate love, just a little unbalanced, maybe even not-so-slightly lunatic? And who hasn’t felt a little spiritually strangled, mentally manacled by the obsessive love of another? And which of us hasn’t done something dreadful from which we’ve spent significant psychic energy trying to escape in an aimless journey down the river of denial, perhaps eventually committing to a series of actions aimed at expatiating this perceived sin, all the while secretly convinced of a personal unworthiness of complete catharsis?

Hmmm… okay, maybe not. Still, hang with me for a while on this, okay?

I guess the reason that Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Spanish director-farceur Pedro Almodovar’s dark sex farce, remains a constant source of delight throughout its 100 minutes, and in the years since its 1990 release is its consistently relevant, deliriously provocative and giddily perverse exploration of the off-kilter and cruel-to-be-kind world of obsessive love.

This movie’s focus is almost entirely on the disturbing relationship that develops between recently released mental patient Ricky (Antonio Banderas) and drug addict/one time porno star with “legit” thespian ambitions Marina (Victoria Abril). Indeed, a big part of the film’s appeal is the nature of Almodovar’s fearlessness; he tackles clichés, like those implicit in this Madonna-whore treatment of Marina, in order to turn them on their collective heads and force us to face our own comfortable preconceptions. Ricky, a slightly lunatic Lothario, has become obsessed with Marina, and decides that the best way to convince her to return his love is to kidnap her in her own home then tie her to her bed. “I’ll never love you, ever,” she quite plausibly asserts. “We’ll see,” retorts Ricky.

And man, do we ever. See, that is. The “evolution” of their relationship, which challenges the audience’s comfortable middle-class comfort zones with regard to love and sexuality, is as visually exciting as it is intellectually and emotionally brave. The film is explicit, not just in its sex scenes, but its emotional honesty, as we struggle to understand these fragile, remarkable characters caught in an extraordinary love story, whose bonds of love are the ties that bind. Central to this film’s success is not only Almodovar’s uncompromising adherence to this tightrope vision, where he treads delicately between moments of giddy farce and then challenges us with dark scenes that threaten emotional and intellectual revulsion, but also a pair of no-holds-barred bravura performances in the lead roles. The charismatic Banderas, whose Ricky is the definition of dangerous and alluring Latino sexuality, and the pouty and sensuous Abril, whose Marina is both alluring and dangerous, deliver performances that are almost unsettlingly unselfconscious.

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! is a film that won’t sit easily with a lot of people whose comfortable lives are built around Hallmark-like assumptions about the “niceness” of love. But for the rest of us, the film offers a delightfully twisted romp through the darkness visible in the recesses of our libido.

Review: Bonnie & Clyde (1968)

2007-09-15T21:31:00.000+05:30

Freed from the production code that drove most of the old Warner Brothers gangster films of the 1930s and 40s, Arthur Penn gave Bonnie and Clyde a new kind of thrilling glee. When Warren Beatty, as Clyde Barrow, utters his famous line, "We rob banks," it's like a badge of fun, as if he were boasting of bungee jumping. The presence of a young, worrying Gene Wilder, an Oscar-winning Estelle Parsons and Michael J. Pollard add to the lightness. But Penn has a few tricks up his sleeve, and carefully layers the movie with little time bombs, such as the subtle references to Clyde's impotence and his violent reactions to Bonnie's attempts at lovemaking, all the way up to the celebrated, and still devastating, final violence. Faye Dunaway plays Bonnie with as much sensuality and nerve as the movie requires, perfectly matching her powerful co-star. Gene Hackman rounds out the cast in one of his earliest and greatest performances.

Bonnie and Clyde (1967) was one of the most famous, and groundbreaking, films in cinematic history. This was the retelling of the infamous Depression-era bank robbers who became folk heroes, containing classic performances from Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, as well as one of the most controversial endings ever in film.
The film certainly gives an air of romanticism, at least at first, with its portrayal of the two people. Bonnie is persuaded by both Clyde`s charm and his threatening aura. She has the sort of personality which easily falls for Clyde`s comment that she is the best girl in the state, and in no time flat she is swept into the risky business of bank-robbing. Along the way, they pick up a young gas station attendant named Moss, and later, Clyde`s brother (Gene Hackman) and sister-in-law are part of the bunch. A combination of Bonnie and Clyde`s rebellious youth, and their numerous run-ins with the law ensure their notoriety in a time in which people were in need of something to free their minds of the miseries of poverty and hardship. Yet all good things must come to end, and they do here, as well, -- and most violently.

One major theme in the movie is the idea of celebrity. As Bonnie and Clyde make their way across America, everyone wants to be part of the story, to say that they saw (or in some cases were robbed by) Bonnie and Clyde, celebrity criminals. The newspapers in the country saw fit to fabricate the number of robberies committed, in order to sell more papers and to perpetuate the mystique. The movie makes the claim that these crimianals were not out to harm the common folk, and in fact there is one scene in a bank in which Clyde kindly tells an elderly customer that he is not out to take his money away. This anti-authoriatian attitude certainly didn`t harm the heroic image they had aqquried. I certainly did not excatly find these characters endearing. For me they seemed more like white trash than radical socialists; foolish kids more than heroes. But that tension between what they really are, and what people (those following their story, the criminal gang itself, and even the film`s audience) want them to be is strong stuff, especially as it soon becomes clear it will not be a happy ending.

The actual relationship of Bonnie and Clyde is also interesting. Warren Beatty, in playing this character, has a little joke on himself and his notorious womanizing image, when Clyde tells Bonnie clumsily that "I ain`t no loverboy." While this may seem to be modesty on his part, it is later clear there is more to it. Clyde suffers from impotence, as all his energies are focussed on crime. Bonnie, on the other hand, is the sexual aggressor, equally comfortable in her own body, and in handling a gun. (The parallels between sex and violence are fairly clear.) Faye Dunaway successfully plays the character for her toughness, and, later on, for her fear that her fantastical lifestyle will start crumbling down on her.

The infamous ending is no doubt known to many, in a bloody, utterly final shootout which broke taboos for both violence and grim endings. Despite the more bloodly (and senseless) violence in current films, those situations could never match up to the ending of this film, as it is so final, so cold, so wrenching, that it will stick to you for at least a few minites. Basically, a number of thoughts should come to your head -- Do they deserve punishment? Should the audience have been rooting for these characters?

Review: Pulp Fiction (1994)

2007-09-13T03:07:00.000+05:30

Pulp Fiction is the volcanic eruption of Quentin Tarantino's mind. What erupts is so original, so funny, obscene, violent, outrageous and clever that the film will be remembered as one that added a new dimension to the already zany world of movie making. That's it for the adjectives. The movie is to be seen, not described. It's devilishly hard to capture an explosion.

The new dimension is the mind of a 31-year-old ex-video clerk from southern California. The image is inescapable: Tarantino watching hundreds of hours of videotape, absorbing the B-movie subculture until he had to write about it. Does this mean that television, the country's demondrug of choice, may have an unexpected side-effect? Have all those hours in front of the box produced in Generation-X the ability to catch the world in fast-frame images so evocative and confusing and entertaining that we will have to learn the new language of image?

Can a movie that puts a hammer, baseball bat, chain saw and sword in the hands of thugs be funny? You bet it can, when the background is a running stream of hilarity. It's full of wacky juxtapositions: blood and civility, violence and compassion.

The movie is a twisted cat's cradle of three intersecting stories set in the underbelly of contemporary Los Angeles and inspired by the pulp fiction magazines that were newsstand staples in the 1930s, the kind printed on paper so cheap you could use it to soak up spilled milk.

Amanda Plummer's Honey Bunny and Tim Roth's Pumpkin are discussing career options in a coffee shop. Vincent (John Travolta) and Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) are carrying out orders from their boss, Marsellus (Ving Rhames), who tells Vincent to baby-sit his wife Mia (Uma Thurman) while he's away. Butch (Bruce Willis) has been ordered by Marcellus to take a dive in a fight. Instead, he takes the money and runs. With a dead body in a blood-soaked car, Jules and Vincent turn to "The Wolf" (Harvey Keitel). Those are the bare bones of the thing.

Now, add a superb rhythmic score, vivid cartoon colors, a wealth of underworld detail and a cast of good actors who have somehow stepped perfectly into Tarantino's head. They run with his vision, but never too far. You will remember the barrage of electric images, Butch's moment of truth and Vincent's solution to his baby-sitting dilemma.

The actors all seem to understand they are interpreting ludicrous ideas from a wickedly original imagination. Carrying the film along at three levels beyond reality, they execute perfectly the images conjured up by an ex-video clerk who watched only so long before his mind spilled over. May we all be around for the next spill, and may Tarantino be lucky enough, always, to have such actors.

Teardrops Of Ice

2007-09-10T17:10:00.000+05:30

I stare at my face in the mirror
Yet I cannot see the lies
Or the pain within my heart
Blinded by memories of the past
I gaze into the void of nothingness
Hidden within these deep brown eyes of mine
Staring back at me from it's reflection

My hatred is gone
All that is left is emptiness and sorrow
Now flowing through my veins, poisoning my mind
Teardrops of ice are blurring my reflection
Drowning it in silent greif

Lost behind the lies, never to return
Can't you hear my cries?
My soul was left to burn
I'm falling through the mirror
To a world beyond

I open up my window
Welcoming the cold moonlit night
I reach for the pale reflection of the sun
It's taking me forth on a journey
A journey to the world of twilight

Nightfall, take my hand
Guide me away to the stars
I fall into oblivion
Frozen tears are in my eyes
As I now close them to dream away
Slowly drifting forth into the shadows.

Review: Kate & Leopold (2001)

2007-09-09T00:04:00.000+05:30

I feel bad for women. They apparently have so little to look forward to in modern men that they'll attend films like "Kate and Leopold" so they can rediscover chivalry. Chivalry, of course, was that male behavior practiced at the turn of the 20th century where men of means stood when a woman left the table, opened the doors for them and regarded them as princesses 24/7.

In this time-travel movie, Stuart (Liev Schreiber) travels back to 1898 New York and brings the aristocratic Leopold (Hugh Jackman) back with him to modern day New York. This turns out to be great for his ex-girlfriend, Kate McKay (Meg Ryan), because Kate has terrible luck with men and is looking for somebody exactly like Leopold, a man with manners. Most of the men in her life are boorish slobs. There's Stuart, of course. Then there's her brother, Charlie (Breckin Meyer), and her boss, J.J. (Bradley Whitford), who's hitting on her as a condition of her promotion. Until Leopold comes along, Kate is all about her career and simply doesn't have time for love.

Indeed, all of Kate and Leopold's interactions are predictably wonderful. Leopold says beautiful things to her, cooks for her, pulls her chair out, and acts the gentleman every second of every day. After all, this was exactly what being a guy in 1898 was all about, right? Fortunately for Kate, Stuart didn't drag back a factory laborer who slaved away 12 hours a day, was missing most of his teeth, and had an expected life span of about 45 years. Apparently director James Mangold cut the scene where Leopold tries to squeeze Kate into a corset and accidentally breaks a few of her ribs. Oh, and then there was the scene where Kate tries to go vote in a local election and Leopold beats her in the middle of the street for attempting to violate the law.

Once again, nostalgia emerges victorious over the actual facts. Ultimately, this movie suggests that women would be happier if they fled the business world and dropped out of sight into the arms of a big, strong man. After all, if Kate were to go back to 1898 New York, isn't that exactly what would happen?

The Raunchy Origins Of Valentine’s Day

2007-09-07T12:58:00.000+05:30

If you thought that Valentine's Day was all about innocent romance, then think again. St Valentine may be the patron saint of lovers, but according to a professor at Roanoke College in Virginia, the symbols and imagery of Valentine's Day have much raunchier origins. Psychologist Galdino Pranzarone says that the real meaning of Valentine's Day has been lost over the ages, and the sexy significance of Valentine's symbols has been toned down.

Consider the love heart symbol, suggests Pranzarone, who believes the origin of the heart symbol was probably the shape of human female buttocks seen from the rear. "The Greek goddess of beauty, Aphrodite, was beautiful all over, but was unique in that her buttocks were especially beautiful," he explained. "Her shapely, rounded hemispheres were so appreciated by the Greeks that they built a special temple to Aphrodite Kallipygos, which literally meant, 'Goddess with the Beautiful Buttocks'."

So if the heart symbol is really a female butt, what does Cupid's arrow through the heart symbolize? Cupid - the son of Venus and the Roman god of love - is no innocent little angel, said Pranzarone. "Even though he was a cute cherub, he flew about naked shooting people in the heart with arrows. His relationship with his mother was not particularly wholesome, either. Paintings from the Renaissance show a rather incestuous relationship existing between Cupid and Venus." And what about Cupid's arrow? "Do I really have to explain the obvious symbolism inherent in Cupid's arrow?" asks Pranzarone, clearly wishing to avoid talk about erect phallic symbols. Cupid exists in other cultures as well. In India, Cupid is known as Kama, where he represents passionate, lusty desire. "The famous sex manual of India, the Kama Sutra, was named after him," explains Pranzarone.

Phallic symbols and women's buttocks are probably not what greeting card manufacturers think they're putting on their cards, but Valentines cards have their own interesting history, dating back to the Roman Empire. Pranzarone explains that during the festival of Lupercalia in Rome, "young men chose their sexual partners by a drawing of 'billets', small paper cards, with women's names on them. Christians later denounced the use of these cards as a lewd and pagan custom. The Church tried to substitute the exchange of prayer and sermon cards at this time of year, but the people reverted to hand-made love notes. The commercialization of the Valentine card occurred in recent history at the end of the Victorian Era," he said.

The Lupercalia celebrations, when lovers met through a public raffle, were conducted in February, which Pranzarone said was a decidedly sexy time of the year, representing spring, new life and reproductive activity. "The Romans held love and fertility celebrations in February… a time of love, eroticism and sexual license, [where] enthusiastic revelers were paired up by public raffle."

Popular gifts for Valentine's Day also have their own erotic symbolism, according to Pranzarone, who says that the heart shaped box chocolates usually come in is symbolic of the female genitalia. And as for flowers; "There's no escaping that flowers are the genitalia of plants," he says. "So what are we saying when we present our beloved with a dozen, beautiful red, long-stemmed genitalia?"

Review - Unforgiven (1992)

2007-09-07T12:53:00.000+05:30

It comes late in the movie and, coming from Clint Eastwood's steel-trap mouth, it's sweet music. "Any man don't wanna get killed," he warns a saloon full of armed varmints, "better clear on out the back." In "Unforgiven," his trembling opponents don't need a second push. They stampede through the door.

This is Big Whiskey, Wyoming, 1880, and these men (including Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris) are living in a Western just like they used to make. But the movie's fitted for the '90s too. In this modish world of blow-dried drug dealers, Uzi weaponry and odd-couple cop partners, a six-gun yarn set in the last century better hold its own. Thanks to Eastwood's relaxed direction and David Webb Peoples's savvy script, it does.
In Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, the winner of four 1992 Academy Awards, including best picture and best director, people die just as they have in dozens upon dozens of westerns but with one difference: whereas even the most minor characters killed off in westerns of the past were permitted to die with some dignity, in Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood, directing from an original screenplay by David Webb Peoples, is not concerned with appearances. People die wherever their killer finds them.
In one scene, a man is plugged full of bullets in an outhouse. He spews blood while defecating, his arteries emptying along with his bowels. John Ford, and even Sam Peckinpah, would have let their characters make more graceful exits, at least letting them pull up their pants, but Eastwood makes no concessions to decorum. If the scene was choreographed, it was only to insure that it did not appear rehearsed. One does not watch the scene and express admiration for the "cool" or dramatic way in which the victim stumbles to the ground. In Unforgiven, being killed is an ugly, painful humiliation, almost as much for the killer as it is for the victim.
The plot of Unforgiven is a simple one: a prostitute’s face is slashed by a cowboy who takes offense at the woman’s having laughed at his "small pecker." When the sheriff (Gene Hackman) refuses to punish the crime in a manner that the women consider appropriate (he merely demands that the cowboy repay the saloon owner for the loss of income that will result from the slashed hooker’s diminished appeal to customers), they band together to offer a reward to anyone who will administer a more violent and permanent punishment.

Soon, a young arrogant figure calling himself the "Schofield Kid" (Jaimz Woolvetz) rides onto the Kansas farm of William Munny (Eastwood), a once sadistic killer now reformed through the love of a wife whose grave Munny is seen digging during the opening credits. "I’m not like that no more," Munny tells the Kid, but with two small children and a failing farm to support, Munny eventually accepts the Kid’s offer to join him in pursuit of the "whore’s gold," but only after enticing his former partner, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), to share the journey into Big Whiskey, Wyoming, and, of course, sharing the reward.

As they make their way to the town where Sheriff Little Bill Daggett rules in an especially brutal manner when not building a house, on the porch of which he dreams of "drinking my coffee and watching the sunset," Munny and Logan remember their wild and unconscionably violent days which they now regret and believe are safely behind them. Munny is not convinced, however, and continually expresses shame and horror at his past cruelties. He is a haunted man, not at all eager to feed the Kid’s hunger for details about the art of killing.

W.W. Beuchchamp (Saul Rubinek), a writer "of books," as he repeatedly tells those who ask, is as eager as the Kid to hear of the exploits of such merchants of death as Munny, as well as English Bob (Richard Harris), a cold-blooded killer whose romanticized biography Beuchchamp is writing. The elegant Bob arrives in Big Whiskey with Beuchchamp in tow, eager to collect the bounty, but instead of living up to the title that Beuchchamp has given him, "The Duke of Death," Bob gets a severe dressing down from Daggett who exposes the fraud behind English Bob’s legend, in addition to beating the fanciful gunfighter senseless. As Bob lies defeated in Daggett’s jail cell, the cruel yet affable sheriff debunks the myths of the West’s quick-draw and short-tempered killers, including one of Bob’s victims, a man called "two-gun," not, as Beuchchamp believes, because he carried two pistols, but because he had an especially large penis which he once placed in the wrong woman’s holster, leading to his demise at the hands of the jealous Englishman.

With Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood casts a cold objective eye on the realities of the West after the gunsmoke from decades worth of Hollywood westerns has cleared. There are no heroes in Eastwood’s vision, only men and women whose flawed spirits take their toll on the flesh, their own and others. There’s good and bad evident in the best and the worst of the people in Big Whiskey, but it’s the ugly--the ugliness of vanity, revenge, money and death--that Unforgiven emphasizes.

The performances are impeccable. As Munny, Eastwood, often dismissed as a "star" who gets by on his charismatic presence in lieu of acting, offers the finest performance of his long career. Twenty-eight years after A Fistful of Dollars launched him on the road to superstardom, Eastwood’s William Munny could be the laconic and mercenary Man With No Name, now aged and mellow, and mournfully looking back, finally feeling the pain his recklessness had caused others. Gene Hackman’s Oscar winning Little Bill is a man who exploits his sheriff’s badge to maintain an egotistical control over the town, rather than to keep the peace. Morgan Freeman provides the compassionate balance that keeps Munny from drowning in his self-pitying nightmares, and, as the Schoefield Kid, Jaimz Woolveet embodies the youthfully ignorant bravado that Munny and Logan dropped before the Kid was born. There is also an outstanding understated turn by Richard Harris whose marvelous portrait of English Bob compensates for the shameless mugging he has engaged in through a string of unworthy, career killing projects in the two decades preceding this deserved comeback. The rest of the cast, including Frances Fisher as Strawberry Alice, the hooker who proposes that the women seek revenge, and Anna Thompson, the "cut whore," are also excellent.

And then there’s long, lean Anthony James as Skinny, the saloon keeper. Twenty five years earlier, James made his film debut as Ralph, the man behind the counter of the diner where Warren Oates liked to sip Coke and eat pie in another Oscar winner for best picture, In the Heat of the Night. James is one of the great unheralded character actors of our time, and his presence is always welcome.

The cinematography by Jack Green, editing by Oscar winner Joel Cox, sets by Harry Bumstead, and music score by Lennie Niehous (centered on "Claudia’s Theme" written by Eastwood) are all first-rate. The personnel behind the scenes are all regulars in Eastwood’s Malpaso company, and it is interesting to note that Eastwood is the only major director--in fact, the only director currently working--to shun the possessive credit ("A film by...") that was once reserved for the absolute giants of the craft--Hitchcock, Ford, Hawks--but is now claimed by every traffic cop who steps behind a camera. Eastwood recognizes the art of filmmaking as a collaborative effort, one which a director leads but surely cannot do alone. Perhaps Eastwood’s generosity is what makes his team continually strive to deliver their absolute best. With Unforgiven, they have.

Review: The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

2007-09-06T16:45:00.000+05:30

Runtime: 111 Director: Paul Greengrass Starring: Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, David Strathairn

Jason Bourne (Damon) continues his search for his unknown past. After tracking a possible lead to Spain, he joins up with former enemy and government agent Nicky Parsons (Stiles), and has to contend with the continual might of the CIA and the US government on his trail. Meanwhile, agent Pamela Landy (Joan Allen), who has tried to stop Bourne before, has joined forces with CIA Deputy Director Noah Vosen (Strathairn) in a final attempt to kill or capture the renegade assassin.

The Borune Ultimatum is something of a cinematic rarity - a third installment in a trilogy that's actually superior to its predecessors. I wouldn't say it's perfect by any means, and there are some things about it that I genuinely didn't like. But for the most part it's a thrilling ride, and one packed with a calibre of acting you so rarely see in films of this nature.

I confess that five years ago I wouldn't have pegged Matt Damon as an action star, but he really has turned Bourne into a memorable character. Bourne is lethal, efficient and relentless, but the character is also tinged with a hint of desperation and sadness. Damon has always been able to convey the complexities of Bourne, and his performance here is certainly no exception. However, I would say that the vulnerable and almost repressed human side of Bourne has been diminished here, until the final third of the film anyway. In many ways he's almost too deadly and powerful in Ultimatum, hacking through enemies like an SAS-Ninja-Jedi. The result of this is a brilliantly intense character, but one we never think for a second is in any form of danger.

Elsewhere, Strathairn and Allen really do make the most of roles that would have crumbled in lesser hands. Landy and Vosen aren't complicated characters at all, though Landy has her doubts about the intentions of those around her. But the two actors transform scenes that could just look like a couple of grown adults squabbling into something a lot more than that. They might just be standing in rooms talking, but they hook you onto every word. Stiles has a bit more to do here than in the previous films, though Nicky's introduction is a bit too convenient for my liking. That said, there's an unusual chemistry between Stiles and Damon, and the character provides opportunities for the pace to quieten down a bit.

Three films in, and there isn't much plot to talk about anymore since we know what all the characters are up to. So that affords the film more time for action sequences, and there are plenty of them. There's a brutal intensity to them that suits Greengrass's directorial preferences well, and a climatic car case in particular is absolutely electrifying. That said, I do wish someone would buy Greengrass a tripod for his camera. The frantic shaking and zooming is forgivable during the action sequences, though on occasion it does distract from the proceedings. But Greengrass shoots the whole film like this - we really don't need a wobbly camera and quick zooms up actors' noses when they're just sitting down and talking on the phone. His style can sometimes make the film hard to watch; by comparison, even Michael Bay is normally far more restrained in interpersonal scenes.

Whether there will be anymore Bourne films is hard so say, as the film ends on an appropriate point with which to conclude the series. But as a trilogy closer The Bourne Ultimatum is a crackingly good ride, packed full of exhilarating action and engrossing performances.

Nothing But Nothing

2007-09-06T00:16:00.000+05:30

Black
Black as night
Black as the dark shadows in my black mind
Black as a blind man's hatred of his vision
Who hates nothing more than blackness.
Who sees little else
Black
Black as death.
Putrefied, abysmal, repungently repulsive, vile death.
Black as my horror of knowing
Who and What I am.
Of knowing what I have done.
Of what I must do and why
Black as the detached loneliness and solitude
Of being unique in my understanding of myself.
Of being solely responsible for myself and my pain
Black as my heart when I reflect on my bitter life.
Total, utter darkness
There are no lights, no tunnels. No hope.
All is lost. Gone. There is nothing there at all.
Only the complete, overwhelming blackness of emptiness & silence.
Silence is my blackest friend.
I have but one friend.

No Pity For The Weak

2007-09-05T23:30:00.000+05:30

The blows rained down upon her
As she cried No Stop Don't
The fists smashed into her
Again Again Again
And she sobbed as she described to me
The pain, terror, humiliation
Of this the first of countless beatings
Four years ago.

I looked at her with pitiless eyes
And struggled to mask the disgust I felt
For her the weak pathetic waif
Who will not repel what is killing her
She wants it
Sickly craves it
She needs to be needed
For something, by someone
She deserves her pain
Earned through inaction
And rationalizing that he will change
Her unjustified hope
Gained her four years
Of unmitigated hell.

All around her saw the truth
And knew what she should do
But she dismissed wise advice
Ignored the intelligent path
And chose her fate
With downcast eyes
She deserves her pain
Whether fists or words or apathy
And so will you
So do you.

Cloud Formations Over Jamshedpur

2007-09-03T12:05:00.000+05:30

Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC FX7 Lens: 35-105mm Exposure: 1/4s at f/3

Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC FX7 Lens: 35-105mm Exposure: 1/8s at f/3

Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC FX7 Lens: 35-105mm Exposure: 1/4s at f/3

These pictures were taken on 1st September 2007 at various locations in and around Jamshedpur. The cloud formations varied at different times of the day and I captured whatever was possible with the little time I got with my travelling restrictions.

Secret Depression

2007-09-02T23:42:00.000+05:30

There's a secret depression in my soul
Welling deep and simmering quietly
Chipping away methodically
At my fire
My ambition
My will to survive
I keep smiling defiantly
Attitude is everything
And no one will know the truth
Of my pain in the dark
Of my really deep thoughts
Of the secret dead
At the base of my heart
That inevitably wins in the end.

Review - Spartacus (1960)

2007-08-31T07:34:00.001+05:30

Spartacus, based on Howard Fast's popular novel, is Stanley Kubrick's glorious masterpiece about a slave uprising in Rome in 70 B.C. A young and ambitious Kirk Douglas apparently did not care to lose the title role of Ben-Hur to Charlton Heston. On the policy that outdoing rivals is the best revenge, Douglas plotted a new project. A best selling novel on a Roman slave revolt, light on history but heavy on drama, was written into a screenplay by a writer blacklisted as a Communist sympathizer. A nearly all-star cast was assembled, which included Laurence Olivier (who reputedly thought he would perform better in the title role than Douglas, and only grudgingly accepted a secondary role). The original director of the project was fired, and in his place was brought the artistic Stanley Kubrick (whose eye for dehumanization clashed with Douglas' humanism). The Spanish army was enlisted to ape Roman legionaries, and an epic score was composed to bring orchestral notes. The result, whether foreseen or not, was one of the best films Hollywood ever produced. But it is not about history, and never was.

Douglas' Spartacus is born into slavery and spends his miserable life dreaming of the death of the institution. He believes in honesty, fair play and equality. He would rather be a singer and poet than a fighter. He wants to understand the natural world and the way it works rather than rely on hokey mythology. In short, he presages the humanism and intellectualism of modernity. As he hangs on his cross at the end, watching his now free wife and son leave Rome behind, we are to anticipate... what exactly? The coming of Christianity and a new breed of morality? A proletariat revolution? The end of Hollywood blacklisting? Perhaps all the above.

As a piece of historical validity, the movie is bollocks. Spartacus was not born into slavery, but sold into it after deserting the Roman armies. He sought not the end of slavery, but merely to turn the tables on his former masters. Nor was he crucified, but presumed dead on the battlefield.

Spartacus is a movie that firmly establishes pagan Rome as an Evil Empire, against which either Judeo-Christian morality or post-industrial humanism may be contrasted. The opening dialogue in fact offers some of the worst over-the-top moralizing in history of cinema; something about the evils of pagan Rome which the future religion of Christianity shall cleanse. I am not altogether convinced the theocracy and serfdom of Medieval Christianity was any more virtuous than the paganism and slavery of Ancient Rome.

In a sense, though, this is all beside the point. Spartacus is not about history, but aesthetics. We have superb customs and scenery (for 1960). We have a memorable score; the haunting love melody between Spartacus and Varinia, and the harsh martial blasts that announce Crassus. We have the Spanish army offering a shivering impression of what a Roman legion must have looked like marching into the field of battle. And we get a sense, thanks to the training school of Capua, of the rigors of gladiatorial study. The movie won four academy awards, three of which are in these technical areas and are all well deserved.

But most of all, we have superb acting. Forty-seven years later, Olivier's shining performance as Crassus still sets the standard for the self-aware dignitas and gravitas projected by a Roman patrician. Indeed, in the modern age one assumes a Roman patrician should have a cultured British accent. Olivier should not have suffered any insults for playing second banana to Douglas, for his commanding presence steals all the scenes in which he performs. His harangue of the Roman Senate and army before the showdown with the rebels should be required viewing for orators. Olivier is also perhaps the only actor that can convincingly deliver such lines as: 'Rome is an eternal thought in the mind of God.' Too bad the historical Crassus was neither so conservative nor as dignified (oh, but I need to remind myself this is not about history).

Charles Laughton plays another kind of patrician, one that every American frat boy trains to imitate: a senator given to looser morals and more corpulent pleasures. Laughton is delightful as the kind but wily Gracchus, lover and beloved of the people, guardian of Rome's left wing.

The real ham, and the one who actually won an academy award, is Peter Ustinov. Lentulus Batiatus is a fawning middle class Roman lanista, forever seeking profit and ingratiating advancement at the hands of his patrician betters. Crassus and Spartacus both offer, in their own ways, ideals that mean little to Batiatus' business minded pragmatism. Watch Ustinov scurry about at this deliciously pathetic “sesterci” pincher, displaced by his former slave's revolt and groveling before the sinister Crassus and benevolent Gracchus! It is one of the wonders of Hollywood's Silver Age.

Then we have Tony Curtis, perhaps best known in the modern age for contributing one half the chromosomes that created the wondrous body of Jamie Lee Curtis. But before that, the Bronx native was apparently a star in his own right. He plays Antoninus, a house servant trained in Greek culture. He finds his way into Crassus' employment. The conservative Roman senator sneers at this product of Greek aesthetics, and could find better uses for the handsome slave. The famous scene has Curtis cringing before Olivier's veiled hints of bisexuality. (In the historical world, a Roman patrician would not have had to justify his bisexuality to anyone, least of all a lowly slave, but I seem to forget this movie is not about history). In any event, Antoninus escapes to join the slave army, and becomes the educated foil to Douglas' illiterate rebel leader. The cultured slave and the warrior slave wish they could be like each other. In them we are supposed to see embodied the refined peace and just war promised by the slave revolt.

The one downside in the acting cornucopia is the fellow who played Glaborus. I am not sure of his name, but it is best forgotten. I have seen better acting from street vendors.

I should mention something about the famous scene where the survivors of the slave army stand up and shout 'I am Spartacus!' to prevent the actual Spartacus from being identified. They are, indeed, all Spartacus. For Spartacus is no longer a man; he has become an ideal, etched into the souls of all freedom loving people, breathed into the life of the yearning masses straining from oppression. I guess, once again, it is not about history.

The Poison Of Religion

2007-08-30T14:23:00.000+05:30

I hate the polarizing effect of organized religion and the fact that if you aren't of _____ religion then you're going to hell or some other eternal damnation. If you think Ganguly is arrogant, how arrogant is a man who professes to speak on behalf of some make-believe God or professes to be able to help save your "soul"? No wonder the Church went on the great Crusades and killed thousands of Muslims who now kill thousands of others or backward ass religious leaders who burned witches at the stake. Remember The Inquisition? I've never heard of a group of realists/humanists/reasonists committing atrocities like that. Thank God I was never an altar boy that had to play Mr. Stinky Finger with a catholic priest.

I have nothing against religious people. 99.9% of my friends claim to belong to this religion or that. I don't think religion makes them good people though. I think they'd be good people without religion. Hell, how many murderers, rapists, child molesters, etc were members of a religion before they committed their crimes? Jim Jones anyone? How about Pope John XII? Religion didn't make them good people. People are people and good or bad has nothing to do with religion. But, the pendulum swings and whereas religion doesn't make you good, many religious people I know believe that a lack of religion makes a person bad. I suppose people believe in only certain parts of their own religion because some in the Christian/Catholic religions forget the part about "Judge not lest ye be judged." A friend a while back who was going through a rough time told me "If you found God, you'd find happiness." Well, I replied with... "I am happy. I don't need an imaginary force to rely on. I'm happy every day and I haven't been angry in a couple of years and I haven't been sad or depressed in many years. You evidently have found God and you're crying your ass off every day for a week. Where is that happiness?" It should be noted I wasn't knocking my friend because of his/her religion. I was only defending my beliefs because for some reason he/she thought I was unhappy. Quite the contrary.

The unfortunate side is that my "lack of religion" has caused one of my relationships with girlfriends to fall apart. Funny.. A person claiming to be a Hindu and has premarital sex and drinking and smoking most nights of the week gets upset with me because I don't go to temples or churches or mosques or believe in a higher power.

Amazing...

I should mention one thing. I don't totally negate the possibility of a higher power. I only wait to see physical evidence (proof) of said higher power and in that event, I'll shut the hell up.

Just yesterday my best friend (who is catholic) and his girlfriend (who is catholic) were here in the office. She told me that I HAD to believe in something or I would never find happiness. I told her as I've told everyone else "I am very happy." I went on to tell her "I believe in you, I believe in Joe, I believe in myself. If YOU fuck me over, it's not because of God or Satan or Mars, it's because of YOU." She shut up after that.

It's unfair in so many ways that an atheist is looked down upon no matter that the person may be kind, decent, fair, family oriented, responsible, etc.

Many of my atheist type friends prefer the term "Skeptic" since "atheist" seems more polarizing. I think religious folks should be the "skeptics". Why is a person who believes in science and can see proof of what the world is, where it came from, how old it is and what makes up the galaxy be a skeptic? The person who doesn't believe in proven science should be the skeptic. They base their lives on some religious text and mythology and can't prove any of it yet they aren't the skeptic?

There is something decidedly wrong with that.

Apocalypto (2006) --- Review

2007-08-29T04:58:00.000+05:30

Apocalypto brings out what's unique and gripping in Gibson as a director. It's pure adrenaline -- a tremendously exciting chase movie, shot in Mexico, that just happens to be set in ancient Maya with dialogue spoken in Yucatec Maya, with English subtitles. Heck, you lived through Latin and Aramaic in Gibson's Passion of the Christ, so don't be a wussy. Actually, you'd better not be gore-shy, because Apocalypto is one brutal and bloody ride.

The plot, cooked up by Gibson and Farhad Safinia, focuses on Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), a braveheart if ever there was one. Even women and children are killed when his village is attacked by another tribe. After hiding his pregnant wife and young son in a cave, Jaguar goes on the run experiencing adventures that would give Indiana Jones the screaming meemies. The movie flies by fast enough to cause whiplash. Youngblood, 25, is a Comanche and Cree Indian from Texas, and he holds the screen every treacherous inch of the way, suffering penitential hardships from spears, snakes and tribal rulers intent on removing his heart while it's still beating.

This being Gibson, there's more to the film than the rush. It's impossible not to see parallels to our own cultured civilization, one that knowingly destroys its environment and sends troops to Iraq as human sacrifices. Gibson has made a film of blunt provocation and bruising beauty -- it's breathtaking to watch a jaguar racing in the jungle alongside the man who is named after the beast. Say what you will about Gibson, he's a filmmaker right down to his nerve endings.

Having said all this, I have this to say - the movie's not violent enough. Okay, so it's gruesome, with the mano-a-mano scenes where one bashes the other's head in. But today's audience really is quite used to that, and Mel Gibson knows enough not to push the point - so in fact the sequence of the ransacking of the village was rather tame. You know people are being killed but you don't really see it and you don't hear a lot of bone-crunching sounds. Gibson pushes the violence where it counts - when it gets personal.

You see, people simplistically associate Gibson with violent movies. They think that what he really likes is to make violent movies. Idiots. Watch closely. The one consistent motif is the feeling of desired vengeance it arouses in the audience. Gibson is very good at setting up conflict between characters, but not just any conflict, it's one specific type of conflict - where the bully unreasonably heckles the protagonist and destroys his life around him so very completely, arousing the desire in the audience to want to reach in and choke the bully ... but ah, that's not what movies are supposed to do. Movies are for the protagonist to go through trials, gain his strength - and then launch into what is known as 'payback time'. That's what Gibson has always done in his movies and what he does best.

As for the whole Mayan civilisation thing, well it doesn't really involve too much of the Mayan (as in, the city dwellers) themselves. The thing is I love movies that are set in ancient times. Unfortunately those movies almost don't exist. They don't make them coz the public is too stupid to watch them. Or it's just that I'm weird and unique in a lonely sense, the same way that Alexander was lonely because no one understood him or his vision and ambitions. (I plugged in lonely coz so many people come up with the rebuke "everybody's weird", which is also saying that nobody's weird. Which defeats the point.) Which is why I'm glad Gibson went ahead to make this film, and in a forgotten/dying language as well - he is the only one with the money to do so (big fat money from The Passion Of The Christ, yeah!) and the interest in it as well. The only one. Other directors are hired to make movies like Troy or King Arthur.

Now I'm getting to why I don't think the movie is violent enough. You see, I got really fascinated when watching a documentary/reading an article about the Aztecs (who are different from the Mayans, who are different from the Incans ... but how could you guys tell? I can't), about how they have this sacrificial ritual (annually?). They line up up to 20,000 prisoners captured from neighbouring villages, along the way up the largest ziggurat in the middle of the capital, with the entire population descending into trance as high priests rip out the hearts of the prisoners, drink their blood, and chop their heads off and fling it off the ziggurat, then the body as well. Now, when I imagined that scene, I imagined it with the ziggurat filled with blood from top to bottom, the blood slowly flooding the bottom of the ziggurat, moving through the feet of those closest to the ziggurat, the stench of the blood pouring from the bodies, the flop-flop sound of the bodies being flung off the ziggurat going down the stairs, the squeezing of the half-beating hearts to squish out the blood, the messiness of it all, and the entire population with their eyes going up into their heads. Anyways, archaelogists today try to explain the fall of the Aztecs by the fact that their thirst for prisoners for the sacrifice forced them to ravage village upon village which, understandably, causes undue resentment and eventually the neighbouring tribes co-operated with the impending conquistadors to bring down the Aztecs. But that's beside the point.

The point is, I actually imagined the ziggurat sacrificial scenes, and thought, wow, if I could make a movie like that ... no one would watch it. People would be too pussy to watch it. Heck, I'm scaring myself - it's a really scary sight.

You don't get that in Apocalypto. No. Apocalypto is a movie designed for 21st century audiences - it's too barbaric to stage it as bloody as that, plus people might not believe it. Some might even have thought that Gibson did that purely for violence's sake. The sacrificial sequence in the movie is still scary. It's just that I'm the only person in the world who thought he didn't go far enough.

Now, to the characters - wow, they set it up pretty well. The actor who played the main character, Jaguar Paw (which I'm sure sounds a whole lot better and a whole lot less contrived in the language they speak), is surprisingly charismatic. Even though it's almost entirely a physical role, in the beginning we see him as this pensive person, the only one who goes into his mind, and it takes his father and his wife to call him back. In effect he's the modern hero - one who is physically adept as well as mentally agile. As for the rest of the characters, it's kinda hard for them to screw it up, since it's pretty on-the-nose - they're either trying their very best to kill someone, or trying their very best to survive. Such are the times in (what is apparently) 15th century Central America.

Visually - wow. I'm guessing that is hi-def. Thing is, the whole movie is shot with the Nat Geo look - for the film students, what we have here is pretty deep depth of field. It took a while to get used to it. At any case it is a beautiful film to look at. The costume design and make-up departments deserve kudos as well, they were so well done that it suggests a certain level of complexity in the social structures, plus incredibly detailed textures on the men's bodies.

Now, because this is a Mel Gibson film it still requires suspension of disbelief. Some of the scenes are a little over-the-top - not too much, just a little. But I enjoyed it.

Just this. Please, do yourself a favour. Don't go watch this film when you're in the mood for something more like The Queen, and then come out of the cinema saying the film sucks. Assholes.

Words Are Not Offensive, People Are

2007-08-28T03:43:00.000+05:30

Words and speech are powerful tools of communication. Combined with inflection and body language, they are used to convey information from one person to another. This is done directly (the literal translation of the words) and indirectly (the context of what is being said). Though it doesn't seem particularly obvious to us at most times, words, when spoken or read, have two separate meanings – the meaning intended by the speaker/writer, and the meaning understood by the listener/reader. The distinction between the two is very important, because the greater the difference there is between what is meant and what is understood dictates how effectively we are communicating. Our goal, then, is to close the gap between what is intended and what is understood. Only then can a free and meaningful exchange of ideas occur, such that real consensus can be reached.

It is with that goal in mind that I address the issue of offensive speech. There are currently words in the English language that are considered offensive. The commonality between them is their association with offensive objects and/or offensive ideas. Thus, society treats these words as taboo – they are avoided in many social and professional contexts and are banned from use by children and general access media. Some words are considered so bad that efforts are made to ban their use completely. What seems to be forgotten, however, is that though these words are concise symbols of offensive things and ideas, they are just that – only symbols – and thus they are not necessary for the expression of such objects or ideas. I can be quite offensive to people by using strictly acceptable words. Remember too, that for a word to be offensive, it requires someone to consider it offensive – if the receiver of the message did not consider it to be offensive, then despite the best efforts of the communicator, the message would be meaningless.

This brings me to my point – why can we not simply stop being offended by words, and thus take away their meaning and power? When trying to be offensive, the goal is to evoke a negative reaction from the receiver of the message. If no such reaction is garnered, then the act is meaningless. We would be effectively robbing bigoted people of a very simple and effective tool. It would be different if banning offensive words actually contributed to a decrease in offensive behaviour. However, only education and understanding can make such a contribution. Ironically, the banning of offensive words only increases the negativity of these words, increasing their power and effectiveness. Additionally, banning words can be counterproductive in that it can provide the illusion that the decrease in the use of the words might equal a decrease in offensive ideas in society and progress in the fight against ignorance and prejudice. It would seem that any benefit in banning offensive words would be purely superficial; the bad clearly outweighs the good.

I realize that ceasing our negative reactions to offensive words is easier said than done, but I do believe that with practice, it is achievable. But then again, what do I know? I’m just some retarded, incessantly rambling faggot.

Before Sunrise (1995) - Review

2007-08-28T01:26:00.000+05:30

This is a sweet romantic movie I have seen in a very long time.

Director Richard Linklater, with BEFORE SUNRISE, has created a special dialogue-driven dating movie. Throughout, most of the film, the intrinsic story follows a cute young couple through a long, first date. A French graduate student, Celine (Julie Delpy), and an American boy, Jesse (Ethan Hawke), meet on a Budapest-Vienna train. It starts with a contingent encounter in the afternoon on the train, and goes throughout the night and until the early morning, turning into a 14 hour date.

Considering that Linklater's previous films were SLACKER and DAZED AND CONFUSED, BEFORE SUNRISE is a surprisingly mature work. One of the film strengths is that it captures the flavor and fluid structure of a first date, hooking the audience with "intriguing conversations" and the couples' spontaneity. You get to know the characters as they get to know each other, just like a first date, "as the two share in their love for the unrehearsed and their appreciation for the unexpected as they explore in a powerful meeting of hearts and minds."

The well cast movie has cute romantic moments. My favorite scene, takes place early on in the film, on a train. Charming young passenger, Hawke, makes an amazing pitch for Delpy to spontaneously get off the train with him, involving time travel and her future regret about missing an opportunity to spend time with the "right guy." It's the kind of crazy pitch that only a young guy would try, and only a young girl would go for. Oh to be young!

Lee Daniel did a terrific job with the cinematography, especially with his effective lensing of the atmospheric Vienna locations, which enhances the viewing experience.

BEFORE SUNRISE must be popular with people who enjoy romance films, that are unpretentious and grounded in realism. Although the pacing is slow at times, it's congruous, creating the right overall mood of the all-night date. "Before Sunrise" even has suspense, making the viewer guess if the couple will end up with each other. Romantics will be well satisfied by the ending.

We then see them condense the entire course of a relationship into less than 24 hours, with all the usual landmarks (the initial goo-goo eyes, the first kiss, the first fight, etc.) played out against the sumptuous Viennese backdrop. Hawke is engagingly goofy and Delpy, despite a tendency to overplay the intellectual waif card, is more than a match for him. See it with someone you love. Even better, see it by yourself and pick up a total stranger in the lobby afterwards. :)

The Best Is Yet To Come

2007-08-27T11:52:00.000+05:30

It's not too late.
It's not too late at all.
You're young.
You have many years to go.
Why do you lament your finite moments
When so many more lie ahead?
If it's college degrees you want,
You can have a dozen or more.
If you want a career,
You have decades to have several.
Why lament the current status quo?
You know one thing,
Or else you're just pathetic.
You will be alive.
So what does that mean?
It means you'll get through whatever the hell comes
And you will be alive.
So you will have the time.
The time to control your own destiny.
You aren't through with options yet.
Oppurtunity is a grain of sand
On the infinite beach if time.
Implementation is the bitch.
That's the true test of the power of your spirit.
Can you make it happen?
Or are you just a dreamer and a spectator?
We're young, you and I.
We can, and will, eventually rule the world
And all reality as we know it.
Let's take a deep breath,
And focus on growth.
The best is yet to come !

I Can't Change For You

2007-08-27T11:37:00.000+05:30

You cannot ask someone to change
As a prerequisite to being with you
I have struggled a lifetime to change myself
With mixed success
Do you think I could change for you
Easier than for myself?
I am who I am.
With strengths and weaknesses.
I should try hard.
I can be motivated to be at my best.
I want that external motivation.
Someone urging me to improve myself,
Further my goals,
Succeed and prosper.
But that is encouragement,
Not requirement.
I will either change
Or I won't.
I will do the best I can
No more.
Love me for who I am now
Or don't love me at all.

Love & Freedom

2007-08-26T08:22:00.000+05:30

We lust for freedom,
But long to be captured;
Kill for power,
But live for pleasure;
And die for love.

Where are you when so much time to myself makes me reckless and restless. When the words won't quit and my fingers are tired and I'm wishing that I could pause for a moment and have something else to appease my passions. Where is everyone? Where have they ever been? No place that I know of and not the darknesss that I've been in.
Lately time moves so quickly and I don't understand it because under the circumstances I would expect it to move slowly. But I guess I am different. Always have been. It's times of happiness that every hour feels like years. That space between one weekend and the next infinite when there's someone that you miss but when sadness unfold its musty blanket time speeds up. Months expire in minutes and I go back and read the days trying to remember what was. Even still, even with the triggers it seems all a dream that I've been sleeping since.

Nothing seems real. Not one single solitary breath. All the months seemed to expire in only minutes. I don't feel like I've been alive at all. Not since.

Such unusual ideas caught in dead eyes.
Hope bereft.
Faith unkind.
Polaroid friends.
Instant photographs lacking dimension.
Born so bloody.
So small, so weak.
Incubated infancy.
I survived.
But then i never really did.
Just kept on breathing without any reason.
And then they all question why.
Why such unsual eyes caught in dead eyes.
They push me like piano keys.
Wanting me to sing.
But i just avert my gaze.
So that they won't see.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994) - Review

2007-08-25T14:39:00.000+05:30

Ireally don't know how I didn't see this movie which released in 1994 till I had the oppurtunity last night.

"Some birds are not meant to be caged, their feathers are just too bright"

The words resounded not just through my mind and ears but through my soul as the end credits rolled and I had the experience of a lifetime as the movie came to an end.

The last place one would imagine to find hope would be a prison. Moreover, the last movie in which one would expect to find hope is a prison movie. However, in "The Shawshank Redemption", hope is exactly what we get.

"The Shawshank Redemption" is the story of Andy Dufresne ( played sensitively by Tim Robbins) - a big shot banker who is sent to gallows of Shawshank Prison after being falsely implicated in the murder of his unfaithful wife and her boyfriend. Andy leaves behind a world of champagne, chiffon and grief (owing to his darling wife’s murder and his implication) to enter another world of grief minus the chiffon and champagne. Shawshank Prison is a hopeless hell - dark, frigid, ruthless with gallons of devilry and pinches of sunshine humanity. Shawshank is one of the most hellish prisons run by a bunch of uniformed devils who see no difference between criminals and dead cattle. And the reins of this living hell are held in the hands of Warden Norton - who lives by the Holy Bible but is in love with the devil. And here comes Andy Dufrsene - a living dead with a genius mind and a loving heart.

The journey of Andy is seen through the eyes of Red (The irrepressible and ever dependable Morgan Freeman) - another prisoner at Shawshank who is a happy-go-lucky cad, somebody who has hardened himself to the cold walls of Shawshank and lives by the rules. For him, Andy is a paradox he can never fathom or understand. Andy’s mysterious charm, his enigmatic persona and the light of humanity that he sees in Andy’s straight expressionless face first intrigues him, then fascinates him and finally bonds him to this abysmal man.

Andy first settles into the Shawshank Prison after a few harsh brushes with the guards like Captain Hadley, the devil in robes Warden Norton, the gay "sisterhood" molestors and many other hurdles .....slowly his genius and intelligence at finances wins over the jail authorities and his sunshine human touch stirs up something inside every frigid criminal ....Andy makes his own place - both in the jail and in Red’s heart.......And one fine day , after more than ninteen years in the prison, triggered by the cold murder of a harmless small-time cad Tommy (of whom Andy had grown increasingly fond of) by the guards, Andy ESCAPES Shawshank through a vent he made behind Rita Hayworth’s poster for two decades )- making sure that after he is gone, the corrupt warden and his gang is taken off Shawshank so that the prisoners can at least live wih dignity ....and that Red finds his way to Andy upon his release.....

More than the plot, the story - it’s the soul of the film , soul-stirring moments and the enigmatic characters who dissolve in you when you watch the film. The film makes you want to believe on whatever Andy believed in ....and you know what he believed in and what kept him sailing throgh those ninteen agonizing years ?....HOPE.....Andy soon learnt that if there’s one thing inside all of us that nobody can take away from us, then it’s hope ... the hope for tomorrow , the hope for realizing the most distant dreams and the hope of survival. All through the hellish time at Shawshank that Andy was getting beaten up and bullied, maintaining accounts for corrupt Shawshank officials (which he used to expose them), making library records, instilling hope and light in dead minds and hearts - he was actually getting nearer to his dream of garnering freedom, of living his dream life one fine day fishing by the vast blue sea.....and when that chance was taken away from him by the Shawshank officials (they killed Tommy whose testimony could have released Andy of the charges for their own ulterior motives), he takes his own flight to freedom and stands against the rain and screams -the scream of a free-being.....

Shawshank Redemption can be termed motivational....inspirational....and all those adjectives that refer to optimism . But more than that it’s a lesson of life that Frank Darrabont has put forth for the viewers .....in the darkest hour, there’s promise of light and believing in that promise is what hope is all about. If there’s one thing that keeps all of us alive , then it’s hope....a hope for a better tomorrow. The film reminds you that heaven and hell are inside us - watch Andy Dufrsene create his own heaven in the cold hell of Shawshank and make his fellow prisoners a part of his little paradise. Andy defines the power of human spirit .....Red defines the margins between good and bad how much all of us yearn to return to our innocence (Red might be a old criminal but his heart still beats for innocence).....Above all, Shawshank Redemption instils in you the age old faith - Salvation lies within.......

Enough said, the film is an experience to be lived and savoured.

Here are a few of my favourite moments from the film ....Do look out for them :

1. Andy saying , "Hope is a good thing , perhaps the best of all things.... and good things don’t die."

2. Andy playing music in Warden Norton’s office. The music reaches the ears and hearts of all prison inmates and they all stand still in that moment of heavenly bliss.

3. Red sitting in front of the jury for his release and telling the young officials that he has learnt what he had to and frankly he doesn’t give a damn about being released or being retained in prison.

4. Old Brooks writing on a ceiling "Brooks was here " and hanging himself to death. His old age, his helplessness was so moving!

5. Red and Andy meeting against the blue sea in the end.....their souls blowing in the winds of freedom

And guys, Red’s words are echoing wisdom. "Get busy living or get busy dying"

The screenplay is full of moving and beautifully etched scenes threaded together meticulously into a fabulous film....the cinematography is all charcoal and sunshine and in this contrast lies the beauty of the film. All performers are classic, Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman of course take the cake. All in all, Shawshank Redemption made me believe in the paradise within and the promise of hope.

This review has been written to share what the film made me feel and if in the attempt of the same I have missed out some details, fogive me.

Spes Somes!

I'm addicted to you baby

2007-08-25T14:12:00.000+05:30

I'm addicted to you
To your smell
To your touch
To touching you
Holding you
Caressing you as we merge
Entering each other
Joining within
You are my muse
My inspiration
My well of creativity
From which I drink all too often.
And yet the dangers of pleasure
And the consequencess of excess
Have brought me to this point
I think we need a separation
I need a rest
Time to recuperate
To recover from what has unquestionably been
EXCESS
For a very long time
It's time for a break
No more bong hits for a while !

Leap

2007-08-25T13:35:00.000+05:30

I don't know the answer, the secret is kept
The solution eludes me, the leap can't be leapt
One thing that I know and this is for certain
The veil has been rent, no more is the curtain.
To stand before God, is what He allows
But what do I say? He doesn't want vows.
He loves me and hears me and cares for my life
He won't let me be overburdened with strife
And yet there's a secret and I do not know
What I am to do, where I am to go.
I thought at one time, a preacher I'd be
But now I don't know if that's His will for me.
No one is around, I'm always alone
They seem to not like me, no interest they've shown.
Am I weird, do I stink, do I bug them somehow?
Why am I alone, do I look like a cow?
I hope it's because of some heavenly goal.
What it is I don't know, it's taking it's toll.
Maybe it's me expecting too much
Maybe no one has friends and buddies and such.
I don't know the answer, the secret is kept.
The solution eludes me, the leap can't be leapt.

Shit

2007-08-13T11:32:00.000+05:30

The Ghost Shit
The kind where you feel shit come out, see shit on the toilet paper, but there's no shit in the bowl.

The Clean Shit
The kind where you feel shit come out, see shit in the bowl, but there's no shit on the toilet paper.

The Wet Shit
You wipe your ass fifty times and it still feels unwiped. So you end up putting toilet paper between your ass and your underwear so you don't ruin them with those dreadful skid marks.

The Second Wave Shit
This shit happens when you've finished, your pants are up to your knees, and you suddenly realize you have to shit some more.

The Brain Hemorrahage Through Your Nose Shit
Also known as "Pop a Vein in Your Forehead Shit". You have to strain so much to get it out that you turn purple and practically have a stroke.

The Corn Shit
No explanation necessary.

The Lincoln Log Shit
The kind of shit that's so enormous you're afraid to flush it down without first breaking it up into little pieces with the toilet brush.

The Notorious Drinker Shit
The kind of shit you have the morning after a long night of drinking. It's most noticeable trait is the tread mark left on the bottom of the toilet bowl after you flush.

The "Gee, I Really Wish I Could Shit" Shit
The kind where you want to shit, but even after straining your guts out, all you can do is sit on the toilet, cramped and farting.

The Wet Cheeks Shit
Also known as the "Power Dump". That's the kind that comes out of your ass so fast that your butt cheeks get splashed with the toilet water.

The Liquid Shit
That's the kind where yellowish-brown liquid shoots out of your butt, splashes all over the side of the toilet bowl and, at the same time, chronically burns your tender poop-chute.

The Mexican Food Shit
A class all on its own.

The Crowd Pleaser
This shit is so intriguing in size and/or appearance that you have to show it to someone before flushing.

The Mood Enhancer
This shit occurs after a lengthy period of constipation, thereby allowing you to be your old self again.

The Ritual
This shit occurs at the same time each day and is accomplished with the aid of a newspaper.

The Guinness Book Of Records Shit
A shit so noteworthy it should be recorded for future generations.

The Aftershock Shit
This shit has an odour so powerful than anyone entering the vicinity within the next seven hours is affected.

The "Honeymoon's Over" Shit
This is any shit created in the presence of another person.

The Groaner
A shit so huge it cannot exit without vocal assistance.

The Floater
Characterized by its floatability, this shit has been known to resurface after many flushings.

The Ranger
A shit which refuses to let go. It is usually necessary to engage in a rocking or bouncing motion, but quite often the only solution is to push it away with a small piece of toilet paper.

The Phantom Shit
This appears in the toilet mysteriously and no one will admit to putting it there.

The Peek-A-Boo Shit
Now you see it, now you don't. This shit is playing games with you. Requires patience and muscle control.

The Bombshell
A shit that comes as a complete surprise at a time that is either inappropriate to shit (i.e. during lovemaking or a root canal) or you are nowhere near shitting facilities.

The Snake Charmer
A long skinny shit which has managed to coil itself into a frightening position - usually harmless.

The Olympic Shit
This shit occurs exactly one hour prior to the start of any competitive event in which you are entered and bears a close resemblance to the Drinker's Shit.

The Back-To-Nature Shit
This shit may be of any variety but is always deposited either in the woods or while hiding behind the passenger side of your car.

The Pebbles-From-Heaven Shit
An adorable collection of small turds in a cluster, often a gift from God when you actually can't shit.

Premeditated Shit
Laxative induced. Doesn't count.

Shitzopherenia
Fear of shitting - can be fatal!

Energizer Vs. Duracell Shit
Also known as a "Still Going" shit.

The Power Dump Shit
The kind that comes out so fast, you barely get your pants down when you're done.

The Liquid Plumber Shit
This kind of shit is so big it plugs up the toilet and it overflows all over the floor. (You should have followed the advice from the Lincoln Log Shit.)

The Spinal Tap Shit
The kind of shit that hurts so much coming out, you'd swear it's got to be coming out sideways.

The "I Think I'm Giving Birth Through My Asshole" Shit
Similar to the Lincoln Log and The Spinal Tap Shits. The shape and size of the turd resembles a tall boy beer can. Vacuous air space remains in the rectum for some time afterwards.

The Porridge Shit
The type that comes out like toothpaste, and just keeps on coming. You have two choices: a) flush and keep going, or b) risk it piling up to your butt while you sit there helpless.

The "I'm Going To Chew My Food Better" Shit
When the bag of Doritos you ate last night lacerates the insides of your rectum on the way out in the morning.

The "I Think I'm Turning Into A Bunny" Shit
When you drop lots of cute, little round ones that look like marbles and make tiny splashing sounds when they hit the water.

The "What The Hell Died In Here?" Shit
Also sometimes referred to as "The Toxic Dump". Of course you don't warn anyone of the poisonous bathroom odour. Instead, you stand innocently near the door and enjoy the show as they run out gagging and gasping for air.

The "I Just Know There's A Turd Still Dangling There" Shit
Where you just sit there patiently and wait for the last cling-on to drop off because if you wipe now, it's going to smear all over the place.

Confusion

2007-08-10T11:47:00.000+05:30

My brain is slowing down and I feel I'm in a rut
The lights are growing dim, the doors and windows shut
I feel the emptiness inside, the lack of life within
I wish it would all stop or maybe I wish it would begin
This fog has got me guessing, a travesty of mind
Like spinning in a circle, the exit I can't find
What the hell is going on, is my brain a dud?
The feelings in my heart and head have fallen with a thud!
I'm so sick and tired of this, I want to feel alive
But all I have seems dry and old, not likely to survive
This poem is just an outlet for all my loss and greif
Of what I'm note sure of, where is the belief?
Day after day, week after week, month after months and years
It seems to me to never end, like the ebb and flow of tears.
A string full of knots, a screen full of holes
Can't come to a conclusion.
Numbing like the bitter cold, frozen with confusion.

Necessary Suffering

2007-08-06T23:42:00.000+05:30

We resign to the fact that lives will be lost
To satisfy cravings, no matter the cost
The voiceless will die,
No screams to be heard
Though the horror goes on,
Few people care

Grown for our pleasure
Tweaked for good measure
Slaughtered at leisure
For a culinary treasure
Who said it was right to create life to take it?

To slit the lamb's throat to grill fry or bake it?
Take newborns from mothers,
Slaughter cows whilst with baby?
All for the sake of sausage and gravy!
Grown for our pleasure
Tweaked for good measure
Slaughtered at leisure
For a culinary treasure

Watch the beast struggle
Whilst it's throat's being slit
Improperly stunned,
Struggling,
In agonizing pain,
Falling into the blood pit.

Thrown live into the scalding tank,
Soon this pain must cease
Poor innocent,
Never caused harm,
On her vile path to everlasting peace

Grown for our pleasure
Tweaked for good measure
Slaughtered at leisure
For a culinary treasure
Maybe they haven't died in vain
Some good may come from all this pain...
Might end up in a recipe!

2007-08-03T00:22:00.000+05:30

Photographs Taken at Udaipur Beach, Orissa on 1st August 2007

Deserted Stretch Of The Beach
Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC FX7
Lens: 35-105mm
Exposure: 1/4s at f/3

The Beach as seen from the sea at Low Tide
Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC FX7
Lens: 35-105mm
Exposure: 1/2s at f/3

Storm Clouds Blocking The Sun
Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC FX7
Lens: 35-105mm
Exposure: 1/8s at f/3

The Place Where The Blue Sky Meets The Sea
Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC FX7
Lens: 35-105mm
Exposure: 1/8s at f/3

2007-08-03T00:05:00.000+05:30

Serene Beauty Of Udaipur Beach, Orissa
Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC FX7
Lens: 35-105mm
Exposure: 1/8s at f/3

No Fishermen to be Seen at Low Tide
Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC FX7
Lens: 35-105mm
Exposure: 1/4s at f/3

Fishing Boats at Low Tide idle on the beach.
Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC FX7
Lens: 35-105mm
Exposure: 1/4s at f/3

Lonely Boat at Low Tide
Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC FX7
Lens: 35-105mm
Exposure: 1/2s at f/3

Bipolar

2007-08-01T03:02:00.000+05:30

Emotions run wild,
Like a balloon on a pin
Swirling round and round,
All it takes is something small to begin,
Puts me on the ground
The God-damned adrenalin is flowing like rain
And I can not stop it
Wires me up so tense I'm in pain
Makes me feel like shit!
The meds they gave me help a little,
Just not enough
The peace that I have
Is way too brittle
Life can be rough
Times I just sit and cuss like a sailor
I hate this freaking feeling
It's worse than being locked up by a jailor
Who loves to see me reeling
A bill that is due, a problem at home
Hostility directed at me
Can shred my peace and chill my bones
Get me longing to be free
They call it bipolar, a mental disease
To me it's just a pain
Someday I'll pass on and really be free
Till then I'll just sustain !

Why'd You Have To Touch That Damned Glass

2007-08-01T02:46:00.000+05:30

Now, these wrists are cut, and your soul is shrieking,
This body's going numb, and your blood is leaking,
These lungs closed tight, and you can't speak,
Your mind is racing, for the memories it keeps

Then, you see yourself, lying all alone
Smiling for your friends, dying all alone
Screaming for hope, crying all alone

These glass shards have sunken deep
Beneath this feeble flesh.
And it will keep digging the more you reach,
Until there's nothing left

Only a fool would fight for a heart
That's broken to pieces, and shattered apart
Crushed once more, then scattered apart.
Only a knife could be this sharp
To kill your spirit before it even starts

And only this fool could rig some pieces
To power his machine of broken metal laces
To live and be haunted by this stasis
Chained and bound by invisible leashes
Of a vile poison in the blood

Then There Were Two

2007-08-01T02:43:00.000+05:30

Yes, indeed, we've lost the two;
For the many, unto the few.
What else is there left to do?
To drown in the darkness inside of you.

We are all one bastard child,
In front of the gun guzzling shots
Of sub-zero vodka to make us smile,
When nothing is one
And nothing is won,
In shadows or sun.

And so we arm ourselves with inebriation
To make mistaken contemplation,
Built upon a frail foundation of misbegotten motivation.
Still, this picture remains frameless,
Outside of this broken home
Nowhere to belong,
Nowhere left to roam...

And so we take this pain,
Straight to the head
Keep it deep inside until we see blood red
Either liquor in the glass,
Or blades in the bed
All because of some thing that we regret

Now You've Gone & Set Me On Fire

2007-08-01T02:05:00.000+05:30

Nothing is right about the boy in this story,
His name shall remian nameless,
This won't be boring
You see everything was wrong with him,
From the beginning
He lost it all form the start,
Couldn't even win from sinning.

You see, how could it be that depression
Takes away every part of your reflection,
Yet a segment of your heart breaks
Who is this broken king behind those glass eyes?
Who is this tragic hero that bears this lonely guise?
His mind is a firestorm;
He wants to give up and die,
But on the other side,
He just wants to fight to not make it a lie
That he could be better;
Grapple the destiny of a broken home,
Shattered dreams,
And feeling so alone.

Unlike his dad,
Who makes him so mad
That it's sad how bad trust fails even in blood
Only the rage inside engages the ties that bind
Only a million more mountains to climb,
All for naught knowing he'd be caught
And should never have fought

Where is his light in this plight,
No place in sight
No one really loves him,
No one really cares,
They only want to hold him,
To make sure he stays there.
Living your pathetic life only to find
That you were only a puppet the entire time

To make his own path,
He must face the wrath
Of every now-angry fool that laughed
Behind his back in the past
The same ones that chain him down
He will blaze a trail,
He's up to the task.

Marriage

2007-07-29T05:15:00.000+05:30

Someone said the hand you hold
Is the hand that holds you down
Slowing your progress
Cooling your fire
Tapping your speed
Changing your direction
Redirecting as best can
A racing steed filled with passion,
Power holding on and reined back
Struggling, fighting
Chomping your bit
You negotiate, gesticulate, masticate
Toward some mutual compromise
Acceptable but distasteful.
So, do you advance under control
Or gallop unhindered?
Civilized or wild?
Bureaucracy or anarchy?
My racing balooning sprit cries to
Shoot forth like a tracer bullet,
Whose fire burns a thousand times
Hotter than petty mortals
He who burns brightest burns fastest
But what a ride!
It's not an easy choice.

Unforgettable Photos

2007-07-28T03:27:00.000+05:30

1957. The first day of Dorothy Counts at the Harry Harding High School in the United States. Counts was one of the first black students admitted in the school, and she was no longer able to stand the harassments after 4 days.

January 12, 1960. A second before the Japanese Socialist Party leader Asanuma was murdered by an opponent student.

1963. Thich Quang Duc, the Buddhist priest in Southern Vietnam, burns himself to death protesting the government's torture policy against priests. Thich Quang Dug never made a sound or moved while he was burning.

1962. A soldier shot by a sniper hangs onto a priest in his last moments.

1965. A mom and her children try to cross the river in South Vietnam in an attempt to run away from the American bombs.

1966. U.S. troops in South Vietnam are dragging a dead Vietkong soldier.

February 1, 1968. South Vietnam police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan shots a young man, whom he suspects to be a Viet Kong soldier.

1972. After South Vietnam planes accidentally drop a bomb on a town

1973. A few seconds before Chile's elected president Salvador Allende is dead during the coup.

1975. A woman and a girl falling down after the fire escape collapses.

1980. A kid in Uganda about to die of hunger, and a missionaire.

February 23, 1981. Colonel Molina ve military police seizes the Parliament building in Spain. The photographer did not expect the scene, and hid the films in his shoe.

1982. Palestinian refugees murdered in Beirut, Lebanon.

1987. A mother in South Korea apologizes and asks for forgiveness for his son who was arrested after attending a protest. He was protesting the alleged manipulations in the general elections.

1989. A young man in China stands before the tanks during protests for democratic reforms.

1992. A mother in Somalia holds the body of her child who died of hunger.

1994. A man who was tortured by the soldiers since he was suspected to have spoken with the Tutsi rebels.

1996. Kids who are shocked by the civil war in Angola.

2001. An Afghani refugee kid's body is being prepared for the funeral in Pakistan.

2002. Soldiers and villagers in IRan are digging graves for the victims of the earthquake. A kid holds his father's pants before he is buried.

2003. An Iraqi prisoner of war tries to calm down his child.

Sorrow

2007-07-28T02:11:00.000+05:30

Walking down my path of life
confused by the patter of rain
into my mind I hide
outside your reach I thrive

Running from the life before me
Fleeing from the pain in me

Wishing I was never here
Wishing I was not in this world

Sweet Sorrow
Pain living through tomorrow

Come into my soul
Reach in and take me out
From within this hell I'm in
I can't take this pain anymore

The pain and guilt all well
inside my mind
the depth of tomorrow
within the thoughts of today

Nothing matters when nothings here
see my pain
smell my fear

Crashing like a storm of fire
hitting like a ton of bricks
The pain of the collision
is mine to bear

Where do I go from here
I've made it out of your reach
broke the chains
fate has no hold

Running wild
through the trees
not wanting to be
me

Edge Of Life

2007-07-28T01:23:00.000+05:30

Sitting on the edge of life and death
Wondering if jumping would be the best
Not knowing where my life is going
Being pulled in all directions
Which way to go I do not know
Looking to the heavens for answers
Judged and taught not to care
Giving you all I can
And still getting shit on
I tried to tell you
This wouldn't work
Hoped you would listen
Now you complain your heart is broke
Why didn't you listen
To the warnings I gave
Tried to tell you
But now it's my fault
Looking down at the people passing by
Hoping my fall won't be a surprise

Silence

2007-07-27T13:54:00.000+05:30

Give me a sharp knife;
I’ll rip all the mist around,
I’ll put and end to the useless life;
Bring voices into death’s sound.

Let me touch the cold metal,
Feel the edge of creation,
The perfection of steel so lethal
Fulfilling my pleasure.

Shining, reflecting life’s tones,
Approached to skin in delicate moves,
The weapon of freedom rose,
As the touch of life I lose.

Give me something sharp
For itches of ignorance
To scratch all those who have no heart,
To stab the place a feeling should replace.

Face them to what they’ve skipped
When learning life’s lessons…
They only ripped
And married ignorance.

Those will only become concrete
When feeling the pain,
The thrills rising from the top of their feet,
The blood rushing in vain.

In A Mind

2007-07-27T13:50:00.000+05:30

All alone in this darkness
Wondering why im still alive
In this darkness i sit in silence
Thinking why i took this dive
Head first into hell,
Along this lonely drive
Why am i still alive

Faking happiness for those around
While inside i wither away
Walking along,
Wondering what i did wrong
Thinking if I will make it to the next day
Walking on my lonesome way
All alone i shall lay

Asking myself if i should die
Waiting for the day i do
In this darkness i sit in silence
Pondering what i did to you
I apologize for what i do
Soon i rot, away from you

Dead inside, my silence is forever
Still wondering why
Walking along wondering what i did wrong
All alone i shall cry
Waiting for the day i die
Finally i say good-bye.

Mors Imortalis

2007-07-27T13:46:00.000+05:30

Death Immortal
+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+

It Shall never end,
this death from within me,
condescending,
and never ending,
spits on your faces,
reduces numbers in all races,
will always meet in the end,
foreboding,eroding,
drains your life like a pump,
turns you into nothing but slump,
a heap on the ground,you will make not a sound.

This process repetitive,
eventually you'll embrace the final sedative,
You'll die on one day,
and never dismay,
the fact that you've ended,
your soul has amended,
gone to that better place.

To look upon his face,
must cause terror within,
causing pain and disruption,
there is no extension,
there is only decension,
into a fiery pit,
or a holy eden,
wherever you go,
your body,
in time,
will be eaten!

The worms will crawl in,
and the maggots crawl out,
and cause all kinds of gout,
it will hurt not a bit,
so don't worry your head,
that to might fall off,
considering,you're dead.

Night Stalker

2007-07-27T13:39:00.000+05:30

You wait on your prey like a buzzard that waits for his prey's death
You have no remorse or regret even if your victims think you lie in wait
Waiting and watching for the right opportunity to watch as your victim's take their last breath
You are sick beyond belief, you are in an awful mental state.

You stalk at night with gun in hand
Killing in the name of Satan but to you it was only fun
To me you are the most insane person in all the land
You always stalked at night never in daylight under the sun.

You broke into houses, savagely raping your female victims before you introduced them to death
After it was all done you had a morbid sense of pride
In your sick mind you were having fun as you watched others take their last breath
The malicious intent you showed your victims, it's like you took evil as your bride.

With pride, with no remorse you robbed, raped, and killed
In the name of Satan you thought you had it made
You have no conscience, I wonder if you even know how to feel
I believe for the crimes you did, in the fiery pits of hell you will forever wade.

During your trial, pentagram in hand, you made your so called God known to one and all
We all know you thought on your knowledge of Satan you were a whiz
But where was Satan when you got caught and took a fall?
Your soul will surely burn forever in hell, Richard Ramerez.

Alone

2007-07-27T13:33:00.000+05:30

My, my breath is fading
Fading away into the cold air
The last of my energy
Are all but gone
When will I see them
Those who I have lost in my life
And if I will see them
Will they be as they were alive
Or will they, will I see them as a medusa
Misshaped and lost
Or will I forever walk in loneliness
Between the world of the living and the dead
Forever alone
Like I always did
Alone

My life is coming to its end
There is a hall
A long hall
For now it is white
But what will it be later
Dark, red, purple, yellow
I don’t know
But what do I know I ask myself
For all my life people have ignored me
Giving me the feeling I can’t do nothing
That I am nothing
But now thou all can’t do it any longer
I will see my loved ones back even in this time of my own torment
I can see them
And with last of my energy
My arm is reaching for them
And I can feel her warm fingers in my cold fingers
And now I can finally rest
Freed from the chains of torture that I wore
When I was still alive
But still I know
That I have died
Alone

Succubus

2007-07-27T13:28:00.000+05:30

Creature of the night,
entraps with lies,
her touch inflaming passions.

Succubus she,
yours to never be,
her ways mythic in fashion.

Demonly being appears
in your dreams,
succulent wants awaken.

Restless your sleep,
those fears are deep.
Peaceful dreams are taken.

Desires climb
a thousand times
and again forever more.

Last breath, this night,
no struggle nor flight,
succumbing to ancient lore.

Hypnotic, her eyes,
devilishly wise,
you find resisting useless.

The will is gone…
weak smile, she’s won.
Poor man, completely helpless.

Whom she may choose,
resolve will loose,
prey to this ardent beast.

Your soul she has claimed,
empty shell remains…
and in death you find no peace.

Tendencies To Exist

2007-07-26T08:36:00.000+05:30

This human race is dedicated to superficial appearances and capricious, vain behavior, it may seem. Plants and animals with exotic character blight earth to have destroyed the “native ecology”. Human stupidity anoints this land everywhere. There are so many people with knowledge. We have become totally confused by knowledge and now elevate its reputation to “intelligence”: but not everywhere in the world perhaps. I have what I call “my wave of attention”. Often this is called concentration but for me it is more like a wave of my virtual spectrum of light. Concentration determines only where my attention will be focused. Usually thoughts jump so fast that we are unaware of their leaping. We regard consciousness as continuous. We perceive a real world of matter around us, persisting in linear time, if we follow the axioms and tenets of western knowledge. We pay no heed to how we know. When I am aware, I know that my consciousness, my focus leaps around endlessly if I allow it to. Clock>monitor>radio station>imagination>radio station>weather>coffee>keyboard...over and over from a>b>c>a>d>e>b>c>fm just beyond our knowing. I “know” that my reading is no different. It is not linear. My vision leaps all over the page at frequencies that delude my common sense.

There are times when tired or meditating eyes truly “see” pages turn to alien hieroglyphs, white space form is predominant, and all meaning turns to total amusement and laughter. The ratios and proportions of the forms of writing disappear and all meaning is lost into a beyond. To let this happen if have to release my significance. I am concentrating, but my wave of attention is attenuated from purpose or meaning or ego. Only by deliberately recognizing another aspect of ourselves is it possible to step outside the set of normal reality and so “see” that normal reality is inconsistent. The question is, of course, how do we live when we are an outsider looking in on the ridiculous behavior of humanity? The isolation and loneliness can be quite severe and we may become insecure, threatened and unbalanced. We may be possessed by an urge to escape from a society and patterns of behavior for which we have lost all respect. Typical ambition begins to appear to be futile.

The real heart of our problem is actually within ourselves. We feel that we have stepped out of the “swamp” of greed and violence but the mud of logic cause and effect sticks to us and we may find a limbo of indecisiveness and confusion. We still want to apply “intellect” in the beyond of intellect. Classically these are the dramas of Zen monks. They sense to believe, that they have escaped from the “world” but they take their baggage of intellect with them. The Masters questions are designed to thrash their logic (ego) out of them. Some monks have been known to meditate for a lifetime on a question such as “the wind blows: the trees bend: who is to blame?”.......or maybe: “can ducks fly away?”

Many times I asked kids that I was babysitting, others questions such as - why is the sky blue? After laughing at their honest efforts to tell I would say, ”Simple, if it were black it would be night time!”
“Can pelicans fly?” they just do! “Why is this car parked on the side of the road?”......well, the man lives at the house and he didn’t want to open and close the gate so he left his car here and walked down the drive. Nice try, but if he had parked it in the road we would have smashed into it! Gentle teasing of their intellect for laughter, what shared pleasure!

No matter what words we write, no matter what metaphysics we explore, no matter how much internal seeking, we are either intellectuals or we are of no significance. A broken mirror is a broken mirror. Ego has a hard and unforgiving boundary. So we have to find our way and have compassion for ourselves. We can jump in and out of significance. We can study, be happy and useful in society, enjoy the wealth and plenty and try to share a little with the less fortunate. We turn our wave of attention outwards. We might make a home where our attention is turned inwards after our forays into the world. The danger is that our homes become mere extensions of the world of significances. We fill them with technologies that never let us rest. a > b > a > c > a > d > f > b. Who we invite to our homes and for what reasons might make our salvation.

I am melted from the idea of my cosmic lover’s voice of intelligence and sensuality. Every sound a cosmic kiss, vibrant with living. My love for her has no significance. I sense her mutual delight. Our waves of attention turn to each other’s pleasures. We spread out beyond the boundaries of ego. Ultimately we are harmonic oscillations. In our “room” there are no televisions, no computers, no phones; we have soft candlelight, incense vapor, old tapestry, and gentle music and each other. We fall and fall from significance and logic and time to find each other’s vibrations of being: turn our waves of attention to each other to kiss and lick and suck and touch and talk and all in a place of moment without knowledge. Does she think that electrical technology might radiate waves of interference into our natural waves of being?

One day I jogged my meadow and few swans danced in the river. They seemed to follow me down the way, surfing the tender waves to nearly standing on the sand. My wave of attention took on the wavelength of the swans until I reached an inner state of such awareness that the whole universe was an orgasm of delight. A woman approached: she was deep in thought; head bowed. I yelled good morning and pointed to my swan fantasy. But she could not see. She was trapped in her own significance. In the city pedestrian zone, I let my wave of attention find the wavelengths of resonance without my interference. I surrender to the bright lights and tinsel and great joy fills me in my surrender. Who sees? Who smiles? Sometimes I wonder how the “intelligence” survives menial laboring?

They smash the pot of their own significance and life is vibrant and brilliant? Rhythmic resonant existence has been stolen from us. Many have never been so at delicious peace as when in harmony with physical repetitive labor in the fields and forests. a > a > a > a > a > a > a > a > a.
In red light they are red, in blue light they are blue, and in my light my cosmic lover is love and all pleasure. Perhaps I may find some times while my worldly significance is abandoned. As I walk my meadow, along the river. Meaningless ridiculous internal sounds of my own vibrations with no significance at all.
When western eyes see the rhythmic rocking of the Taliban to recite the Koran, intellect dismisses them with disdain. But do they have a means to become unworldly, where their lives are individually of no significance? I can never condone their primitive violence but if I rock with them, I can understand the incomprehensible in a flash. This dipole of knowledge and blind ignorance is the ultimate war that has been projected from within every one of us. Science increases our individual ego significant in a world of wealth and privilege. Western economies thrive on ego and fear of its loss.

The female beauty and sexuality and intelligence paradoxically must drive many male egos to their primitive state of possession desire and some female egos to jealousy and conspiracy. My lover has to accept the yin yang of existence and delight in her own experience perhaps, sometimes in the circle of time, sometimes in the timeless circle? We oscillate. We dance.

I wanted to share feelings with women at different times. Always with the same predictable result. Absolutely no peace. No respite from significances. This must be this. That must be that. Merciless continuous insecurity of their ego until I might go mad. Even very well educated. Absolutely no awareness or internal intelligence. The first time in my life happens that I have been able to share my crazy dances with one and you, my love.

The Carriers of Dreams

2007-01-27T01:20:00.001+05:30

All prophecies write about the destruction of the world
All prophecies say that mankind will create its own destruction.
But the centuries and life ever-renewable have always borne
Generations of lovers and dreamers,
Men and women who do not dream of the DEstruction of the world,
But about the CONstruction of a world of butterflies and nightingales,
A world of love and understanding,
A world of dreams and of dreamers

They are the carriers of dreams,
The Knights Templar of the dreamers,
Forever protecting the pilgrim trails to the Holy Land of Dreams.

From their first breath,
They are driven by love.
Beneath their everyday appearance
They preserve tenderness and the midnight sun.
Their mothers find them as they weep over a dead bird,
And later they may find many of them killed just like the birds they wept for

These Dreamers made love to translucent women
And made them pregnant with honey and children
After a winter full of tenderness and green leaves.

Thus the Carriers of Dreams began to populate the world,
Fiercely opposed by the carriers of wordy prophecies of doom.
THEY called them deceited, romantic, utopic thinkers.
THEY said their words were old - and old they were - and out-dated,
Because the memory of Paradise IS old in the hearts of mankind.
It´s true that this race never stopped dreaming and building beautiful worlds,
Worlds of brothers,
Of men and women who called each other comrades,
Who taught each other to read,
To comfort each other in the face of death,
To heal, to care, to love,
To help each other in the art of love an defence of happiness.

They lived happily in their land of sugar and wind,
And others came from everywhere
To drink from their breath and their clear eyes.
And those who met them went out again into the cold world of the Prophets of Doom.

And there they carried dreams
And dreamt of new prophecies that spoke of butterflies and nightingales,
Where the world would not have to die,
Where, on the contrary, scientists would invent amazing things
Fountains, gardens, toys, all to make mankind´s fortunes even more blessed.

They are dangerous – printed the big newspapers.
They are dangerous – said politicians in their speeches.
They are dangerous – mumbled the artists of war.

They have to be destroyed – printed the big newspapers.
They have to be destroyed – said the politicians.
They have to be destroyed – muttered the artists of war.

The dream carriers knew of their powers
And they were not surprised.
And they knew life had created them
To protect themselves from the death their prophecies had predicted.
And that´s why they even defended their lives with death.
That´s why they created dream gardens
And exported them everywhere wrapped in big red ribbons.

The Prophets of Darkness spent whole days and nights
Guarding the passes and passages in search of these dangerous cargoes.
But he who has no eyes for dreaming does not see dreams,
Neither by day nor by night.

And the dreams have begun to travel across the world in a busy traffic
Which cannot be stopped by the merchants of deaths;
And everywhere you can see the packets of dreams with big red ribbons,
If you belong to the race of dreamers.

But the seed of these dreams cannot be traced,
Because it is wrapped in loving hearts or hidden under big pregnancy gowns,
Beneath which dreamy little feet tap-dance in the tummies that carry them.

It is said that the earth – after it gave birth to them –spat out a rainbow
And breathed fertility into the roots of the trees.
Only we, who have seen them, know they exist.
Know that life has borne them to protect itself
From the death the Prophets of Darkness foretell.

Can Love Be Real?

2007-01-06T18:18:00.001+05:30

I have written much about love in all its forms and as a result of this people have told me that I know a thing or two about it…wrong! I don’t know the first thing about it, though I am aware of the wonderful feeling of being in love. And as long as my love is reciprocated...I'm in heaven and just like everyone else on the planet...I thrive and am completely lost in my other half and that is as it should be.

I’ve read books about it and watched heartfelt movies with a ‘love’ theme, both of which take many spins on the subject, so much so that it is confusing. Playing dangerous games by using reverse psychology or flushing people out by ceasing contact will lead to trust issues and if you can’t trust someone there is no relationship…simple as that.

We are told to go by gut feelings that, without consideration, are accepted as true…and they can be, but more often than not the initial feelings of love involve physical gymnastics and these feelings are what urge us on to, what is hopefully, a great future, but can also be nothing more than a quick fix. I believe that a meeting of the heart and mind will lead...not urge you on...what do you do after sex??? Smoke!

If the meeting of hearts and minds doesn’t take place and you are basing your feelings on sex alone; you will be facing a bleak future. Let me clarify this with the observation that sex is freaking fantastic, but it’s not enough to sustain a lasting relationship. Let’s take a hypothetical situation where a spouse becomes ill and is unable to play the role of sex partner…this should not be an issue…ever...not if you are truly in love.

I think the most painful situation is unrequited love; it’s hollow and lonely. People find it difficult in the extreme to move out of that dilemma. Can love like this lead to anything worthwhile? No!

There seem to be no answers to this except for us to be diligent about who we so thoughtlessly give our entire being to…It’s a gift not to be abused, a gift that is given with hope and love…there’s that word again! Love…what is it?

It’s wonderful when both people feel they can’t live without the other, when the very thought of not being with each other is unbearable…

When hearts and minds are attached, one is lost without the other…

Correct or not, that is how I elucidate “love.”