8 Boring Things about me

This is a reply to a tag. Neither scifi, books, movies. Though, I think I am getting back into more expressive phases of life again. So turn back if you are not interested in an very ordinary life and comeback later for newer posts.

Here it goes. I thought today would be a great day to restart since it’s Vidyarambam. (Actually, I missed today by a minute or so..) Lekha tagged me, and hell; here it goes (She has forbid me from mentioning science fiction. :-(  )

1. I am an incredibly insane critic of myself. Ever worried about embarrassing myself, of committing a mistake. Not in _that sense, I am OK with a couple of silly moments every now and then, nobody’s perfect. Because, only those damn things are etched into memory like hell. 10 years from now, I would be remembering only how I made a mistake, rather than the blasting time we had last weekend when Abdul was in town. Which is sad. I’ve heard this is true for a lot of us. Which is why I am getting a camera to balance it. Real soon.

2. My thought process is weird. Anyone close would tell. I think up extreme scenarios, and worry about them. Every damn semi-serious “situation” becomes a high-adrenaline photo finish. The last couple of months, though, I have surprised myself in this regard.

3. I am complete TV addict. Movies too, and even casual channel browsing can keep me on for hours.

4. I am unbelievably lazy. Think of doing the bare minimum required to exist. Like disliking traveling, though would love to see new places. That sort of lazy.. Hope someone cracks teleportation in my lifetime.

5. I do not sleep much. Infact I hate it. My day always ends with the feeling of not having enjoyed to the full. Getting up in the morning is a different issue altogether

6. I hate being alone. And ya, I am a bit shy and reserved. (this is taking enormous effort).

7. I hope to live forever, because someone might find a way to, in our lifetime :)  I am getting extremely bored writing this. I am probably going to mention the “word”.

8. I am fond of ideas presented in convoluted/alternate ways. Which is probably I like scifi (Oops).  In the end, something should “strike” to the mind. It need not be clever, but it needs to be beautiful and carefully done. Just that, there should be several layers to it, just as in how we see things around us.

OK. So that’s over.

I don’t think I will tag anyone, though, I would like a lot of people to come out of hibernation. Especially CT and Fatz. And Subbu, don’t go into the silent mode, please.

I read a couple of very interesting books. Kurt Vonnegut’s Time Quake, etc. Will write my opinion later, though you can pick it up without waiting for it.

ok, let’s do this.

Hey. I am back. Sort of. But probably not for long. I have stopped being the guy who can choose to post regularly. Take a cue from this post that from now on, I will update only when I feel it is really needed. I am struck down by heavy load of work, or disinterest.

Anyways, lots of life passed through these months. And a lot of prose too. Mostly the kind I like. Science fiction and fantasy.  I discovered Neil Gaiman. Finished two books, Anansi boys, Smoke and Mirrors and am eagerly waiting to get my hands on his masterpiece the American Gods. His writing is sort of fairy tale-ish for adults and I found it very interesting. Very calming in a sense. Anansi boys is a good fantasy story in which the hero, after his father’s funeral, discovers that he was really a God. Called Anansi. (The west African spider god, the internet says.) And he was a trickster God too, very clever. I will not spoil it one bit by explaining any further. It is beautifully written, is funny and interesting to read. If you liked the stories your grandmother once told you when you were a kid, you will probably like it. If you were not that lucky enough, you could start by trying the other book, Smoke and mirrors. It is a very nice short story collection which contains a lot of such fairy tales as well as other fantasy stories. I liked the were-wolf/Cthulhu ones a lot and by the way, I also happened to read H.P. Lovecraft. (Just before this one..) You could read the online version of his new story How to talk to girls at parties too. But it’s sort of more scifi than usual. But good and funny.

Lovecraft stories are a must read, as any respectable weird fiction/horror fan will tell you. He also reminded me of the poetic Ray Bradbury whose Martian chronicles is a huge hit in my tiny collection of books. I am yet to read the Dunwich Horror or others by H.P.L, though the one I read, “The doom that came to Sarnath and other stories” has some lovely stories like the one in the title, and his prose poems “Memory” and “Ex Oblivione” are price catches. Most of his stories are available on the net at wikisource. He is really a true genius at what he does. Bring out that deep fear of the unknown ancient. (I have read this a long time back, my previous posts talk about this..) Though not really nightmare material for today’s kids, there is an elegance in the way he puts out his ideas. Some paragraphs have a special lyrical quality to them like Ray Bradbury’s writing. Where as the most Bradbury I have read evoke a sense of loneliness and sadness, Lovecraft’s word invoke eeriness and insane irrational fear. Helplessness. The magnificence of the enemy.

Happened to stumble upon another author called China Mieville.  The book is titled The Iron Council. Terrific use of fantasy worlds and races. Imagine the worlds like those of LOTR used up cleverly to write more interesting stories. Economics. How would things run on the middle earth? what kind of relationships do the races have with each other? The sort of worlds that make other normal fantasy ones look silly. There is sciences, economics, politics, racism, revolution,  his world is amazingly rich and real. And the descriptions, they are the real catch here. They are really beautiful and easily slow down your otherwise furious pace of reading. The story revolves around the city-nation called New Crobuzon where plenty of races like humans, the cactus men, the remade (sort of steam punk cyborgs), vodyanoi (frogmen) and countless others live in a state of uneasy equilibrium for having to interact with each other. It is not a normal fantasy story at all. Infact the author almost hates Tolkien’s definition of what fantasy is. It is not a world where you escape to. It is a very clever and crafted version of our own, spiced up magnificently with loads of creativity and imagination. It is at least not about saving the world. Again, you have to read it on your own. I found it very interesting and have bought another one called The Scar. (His first book Perdido Street Station, I just can’t find it anywhere in B’lore. Do give me an indication if you found it somewhere..)

Then comes the true classic which I finished in just four days. (This rarely happens, I am a slow reader and usually take my time with books.) Ender series always have fascinated me, just because the stories are extremely cleverly crafted by the author Orson Scott Card and he usually enjoys throwing good morally conflicting questions at the reader. You can easily read through this delicious higher level ideas because the underlying stories are usually fantastic. I liked the Ender’s Game very much. I read Xenocide later (3rd book) and it was even more impressive. I read the in-between book The Speaker for the Dead earlier this week. It is the in-between book in the series, and is truly fantastic. Ender’s Saga remains amongst my favourite trilogies closer to Asimov’s foundation, Clarke’s Space Odyssey. I usually hype some of my favourites amongst my close friends. And they usually ignore it till the books somehow manage to reach them through some other channel And then they go nuts about them Terry Pratchett, Foundation series they all come under this list. Guess this is one of the series they have most endured me about, with out reading. So I will patiently wait till someone else asks them to read it. Because it isn’t fun to not to be able to discuss how cool something really is. I mean, the enjoyment is not complete for me, unless I see someone else also enjoying it as much.

I am currently reading The Martian Timeslip by PKD. A small number on the back of it says it is number 13 in the list of SF Masterworks. I usually enjoy PKD, though let’s see how it holds up.

Some thoughts on the movie ‘Babel’

These are some of the ideas which I collected after some thinking and looking around, about the movie Babel. If you have not watched it, you are advised to not read further. I am writing this mainly for the group of friends I went along to watch the movie. By the way, it is both a baffling and beautiful movie at the same time.

1. The three threads in the movie, are all brilliant human stories touching us with delicate moments. The Japanese storyline is infact the one I liked most. The disco scene was wonderful. Note that all three storylines have different color palettes and background sounds. The camerawork is brilliant, many scenes manage to stay in the memory (esp. the Tokyo ones, younger brother shouting at the cops hands raised, the maid breaking down and crying before the indifferent cop, etc). It is also a notable point that the moroccan and the Mexican stories end bitterly, the American ends almost happily and the Japanese one in an indeterminate state. This makes them more life-like stories. (Yes, the Mexican one is a little bit stretched, but who knows what happens to border crossers.)

2. Babel means confusion. (It is also refers to an old Christian story which everyone knows about.) As the name suggests, the movie is about failure to understand and the failure to convey ourselves clearly to another. The deaf-mute being the most straight forward example. Having lost an infant son to SIDS, the American couple are probably struggling with their guilt and grief. (SIDS according to wikipedia, can cause parents to feel a lot of guilt). Failure to convey and understand each other’s mental state was the possible reason of their strained relationship. The Japanese girl and father are similarly not able to help each other. Also, the girl is in more trouble because everyone except the kind policeman have trouble realizing what her actions mean (esp. the dentist). The Americans and Mexicans have their own version of misunderstanding each other because of the filters of intolerance, distrust.

3. Are you wondering that problems of miscommunication are not mainly due to language barriers in this movie? Husband and wife, father and children are the ones having trouble conveying each other. The arid desert in Morocco understood the call of distress immediately. Modern Tokyo is still having trouble understanding the distress signals of its deaf-mute daughter (because of her inability to convey it properly?). Strangers from different worlds tend to understand each other when their own are not (Remember rest of the Americans leaving the couple to fate).

4. Apart from all this, what did Chieko’s note say in the final scenes? I still have no clear idea, but these are the general ideas floating around: a) The note says that she killed her mother b) A suicide note c) a confession about the truth of her mother’s death and apology. I personally thought that the note was a suicide note. (In which she would jump out of the window as she explained). The cop’s kindness has probably made her not do it. I cannot really see the reason for (a). Anyway since the director thinks the contents are immaterial, I would consider it as her final attempt at conveying herself to someone, after all her earlier utter failed ventures.

5. Is all this instantly clear from the movie? No, that is why I wrote the movie is baffling. Its left to our intrepretation. There are lots of other small themes which I omitted (Like everyone lost someone to death in the story arcs, the butterfly effect: one small act of kindness resulted in so much loss and chaos.) This is also why analysis makes no sense. It spoils the fun too. Well, the movie’s name is Babel for no reason. But hey, it sure was fun to write this much. One thing is for sure though, I enjoyed the movie very well. But certainly not more than 21 grams. Some notable reviews are listed below which I came across:

NyTimes: Faces are better understood than words. (And goes into the details of the shots and camera angles)

Slate: Globalization is God’s weapon against the tower of Babel (Or how an American weapon destroys lives across the globe…ugh, but its a point of view.)

DenverPost: Interesting. Butterfly effect and the cynical world. And they like it better than 21 grams!

Rolling Stone : They are stunned by the movies complexity. After all, the story spans 4 countries, a number of languages, and races and still works. And look at the sheer quality brought about by its truely international cast.

Books again!

1. Happy new year to all.

2. 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 Its already an interesting start!

3.  A glorious Horror streak, as I read the legendary “The Call of the Cthulhu” over the weekend. This short story is regarded as a genre defining creation. While I was not overwhelmed by horrible nightmares during nights, I immensely liked the language and the narration style. The story will invoke in the reader the ancient fear that is probably inscribed in our racial memories. What happened on Earth before humanity rose? Were there any other beings who ruled over like we do now? Is there any of it left which is waiting anxiously to take over the territory once lost? Were we once so dumb to be their slaves? In our hectic race to mastery on Earth’s resources did we forget that we were once slaves?

Most of H.P Lovecraft stories evoke such fear in the reader’s mind. Cthulhu, or the great old one as he/it is known became so popular that it became a pop-culture phenomenon in itself.

So if you are ready for some horror, maybe you can start with this masterpiece. And hey, I have something else for you, if you cannot find a book. The Horla which is an old short story (originally in French) which is said to have inspired Cthulhu.  And then, when you come back from reading the Call, you can maybe visit this interesting short called I, Cthulhu, written by Neil Gaiman. *

And I am relieved to be back among some books.

4. 6 ! by the time I was writing this post. Awesome Max!

5. Bob Dylan! I am finally starting to like his songs. Starting with “Like a rolling stone” and “Desolation row”.  Really strong lyrics for the former. But Desolation row, now, that is a very interesting song. The song forms an interesting mental picture, involving a number of interesting characters (some of which I don’t know about) and interesting situations in a place called Desolation row. If anyone finds out what exactly the song is about, please tell me.

6. Had a remarkable time with friends on the first day of the year.  It will be cherished for a long time.

* These are horror stories. Except maybe for the Gaiman short story. Approach them if you are comfortable with the genre. (In other words, you are warned)

Happy Christmas

to you all.

My thoughts as usual.

1. Phillips SHP 805 headphones. Alexy’s. Since I discovered them, the poor guy had to literally fight with me each time to actually listen to something. So I got out this weekend and with some support from my roommates I finally bought them. (finding them was tough). 1150 bucks of pure blissful sound*. So my friend, here is my unplanned christmas gift to you, your right to listen to music on your headphones any time you wish

2. Another great christmas gift that I saw presented: Gifting each other a chance to actually meet each other in person. After a year or so. Top that!

3. So why does VH1 show all that reality bullsh*t? They are so good when they actually play music. Whatever happened to storytellers? Infact, VH1 Classic is the best that TV offers nowadays imo. Why do they need “Pimp my Ride”?

4. Tina Turner discovered! “What’s love got to do with it?” and especially “We don’t need another hero”. My incredible ignorance in music is only matched by the happiness I feel when I think about the infinitely large musicscape left for me to explore.

5. Motorcycle diaries is a great movie. Watch it somehow. Please.

6. This whole, numbered list thing is working so well**. Why ever did I not think of it earlier? And yes, I am trying to hold that story in my mind, while trying to get to sit still with a pen and paper in hand.

*If any audiophiles are around, suggest me good headphones below 2k (If you think SHP805 is not the best one available) and I will be eternally grateful. I am not into ear/canal phones,Too risky for hearing according to a good friend. And ya, sennheizers at Apple showroom are a bit too hot to handle.

**No chalams about whole numbers please.

Some interesting things

1. 12 degrees cold = white knuckles when riding

2. 11 pm to 1 pm is a good time for TV(Atleast yesterday): Powerpuff girls, Dexter, Courage the cowardly dog, VH1 Classic hour etc

3. Vodafone and Reliance compete for Hutch.

4. I lust for a UMPC (maybe, look at the battery life: See the Russian link )

5. I lust for a dual core. (Core 2 Duo and Core Duo are almost same now? Office PC is Pentium D)

6. I badly want to write a story. One is brewing and dangerously taking up mindshare.

7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I am not a big fan, but some of my close friends are crazy about these books. And ya, its the 7th book, and 7th in this list, etc.. )

8. I over-laugh at jokes now. Is that bad?

Revived!

I haven’t been getting time enough to read other’s blog. So where would I get time to write.

Anyway:

1. Sandman series by Neil Gaiman is very good. I mean, very good story-telling through comics.

2. Transmetropolitan written by Warren Ellis is great comics, describing and criticizing the futuristic world which it is set in. The best part is, you can see the glimpses of now in this world. It strongly reminds one of The invisibles, which it is not. Which is a totally different beast.

3. Wow, I have been reading comics more than books nowadays.

4. The elitist bastard and long time friend is getting married!

5. I am drowned in the C of code.

6. I gloriously wrote zero words for this Nanowrimo. That’s right, absolute loser me.

International Film Week

Me, SB and a mutual friend of ours were keenly following the International Film Week that is going on in Bangalore.

Even though we missed the first three movies, we will make it 4 out of 7 when we watch The Beat That My Heart Skipped today evening. The three movies that we watched were all good.

The Emperor's Journey was the first movie/documentary we saw. It follows the annual march of the Emperor Penguin to the place where they breed and bring up their young. Shooting anything in those hellish conditions in Antartica must be regarded with respect. For this, they must have spent months in those conditions. The narration was in French (subtitled) and was surprisingly from the point of view of the penguins. Which is justified when you see, really how much effort and sacrifice goes into raising those cute little penguins. All those mothers from Hindi movies who keep repeating how they suffered for 9 months might want to watch this.. Ofcourse no disrespect meant to human mothers and fathers, but this film will surely bring tears to their eyes. For us boys, we can open our mouths wide and wonder at how complex nature can be. And those li'l ones are so cute. If I had fridge, and a freezer wide enough to have an ocean, I will maybe keep one as a pet!

The next movie was King's Game (Danish). This was a political thriller which exposes how complex and cheap the power-game can get. But in stark contrast to Hollywood or Hindi movies, there are no guns, explosives, drugs, sex or financial scams worth the GDP of a small country. The acting was amazing, nothing felt out of place. But you know, if you keep reading our newspapers, I don't think you will regard anything in the movie as thrilling But it is depressing to know that bad people are there everywhere.

Barbarian Invasions (Canada - French) was the story of a dying old father. His family and friends come together at the time of his death (brought together by his son) and we get to know interesting facets of their lives. The movie was funny as hell at times. Nothing too sentimental, sad, funny and satisfied at times, this movie also stands out for some good acting and extremely good dialogues (even though subtitled).

Although I am yet to see the last one, (I will update that later) all these movies were like good appetizers; clearing the track for some more movie goodness from abroad. They will surely help beginners like me to keep the interest and widen one's range in movies. All the hellian traffic and skipping dinner is justified after those two hours well spent. Hats off to the organizers.

Details: Today is the last show (I guess), at Pallavi theatre: 6.30 and 8.30 PM. The theater is near Kanteerava stadium.

Slaughterhouse Five

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

One of the strongest anti-war novel I have read. Catch-22 comes in first whenever I hear about anti-war novels. It must be the epitome of how to pull off a plot of stark contrast and irony. Mix and match dreadful conditions with silliness and humour, mock bravery with cold fear, death and insanity with life on the edge. And in the end, the protagonist escapes somehow.. (Or I hope he does so safely).

Slaughterhouse Five sets things straight. Sometimes in war, there is not even hope left. There is nothing but misery and death and pain. Desperation and severe mental trauma drives our protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, into dreaming up time-travel and alien worlds to which he often escapes.

The book is primarily about the Bombing of Dresden, which killed more people than the Hiroshima bomb, and destroyed almost all of the German City. The author himself was present as a prisoner of war in the city at the time of the bombing. (He appears in the novel as himself at times). The story is about how Billy Pilgrim, in the most terriblest of these consequences comes unstuck in time. That is being able to travel back and forth in time, essentially moving around in his own life time. He mentions that he is in a constant state of stage fright as he is not sure which part of his life he will have to play out next :).

Later he meets beings from Alien planet called Trafalmadore, who are beings of four dimensions. That is, they can look at their timelines and move along it, as we can look at a long mountain range. They find it interesting that, in all the inhabited planets, only on Earth, there is talk about free-will :D. We are all ants stuck on amber according to them, unable to change the past-present-future. Since they can move along their time line, the concept of death is not something final to them, and they are immortal. Interestingly, at the planet, he has to spend time 'mating' in their 'zoo' along with an erotic movie star from Earth.

Upon return to Earth, he spreads this philosophy among people giving them peace, and becomes famous. The book also gives us glimpses to parts of Billy's life from where his fantasy life elements might have come from.

The story threads between the war-time, his life on trafalmadore, and his later life. Since this plot involves time-travel, the author could beautifully skip across Billy's life at wish, providing us much relief because the true continuous account of the war is unbearable. The book does not glorify war at any point of time (which is mentioned as a primary objective in the first chapter). Beautiful book, totally worth the time spent.

Stalker

I have been trying to fight off this enormous lack of interest that has crept into my system. My general policy about writing is 'if it is not fun enough to rant about any subject, I will not'. (The vice versa rule might be added by a less lazy person)

There were a lot many very interesting moments that happened in my life in the last 4 months. Plain lazyness has kept me from writing about them. And even on the last post, all I could manage was post something I wrote back in November. So this is to be considered to be a step for my war against lazyness.

As always, Collective chaos came up with a classy menu for their film festival in February. Named "Tarkovsky Retrospective", it tried to showcase the great Russian director's work. Due to timing issues I could not watch the great Solaris or Nostalghia, but I managed to watch 'Mirror' and 'Stalker'.

Mirror, is a strange movie, and is not easily understood. You have to watch it to know what I mean. It is no fun writing about it . There were a lot of small scenes which touched my heart, though.
Imagine a man standing in a paddy(?) field. Quite far away. A gentle breeze descends on the field beyond the man and a ripple slowly drifts towards us. As it reaches the man, he raises his hands to feel it. When the wave finally reaches us (camera), we almost feel the shiver of cold, or atleast wish to feel it.

The movie was generally biographical, and it describes the author's interactions with his mother. For some reason, Author's mother (from yester years) and his young wife are played by the same actor. (It is stated that the author is reminded of his mother whenever he sees his wife.) At another point, the author starts describing his story to his son, and from that point onwards the young version of author is also played by the same actor who plays his son. This makes everything difficult for us. Since the director believes that art should never be forced to follow any rules… I will stop commenting about this one But I did not have a bad time watching it. (just look out for scenes like the one I described above) I am also reminded of one of my friend's views that what's more important in art, is the how the audience is made to feel, and feeling's do not necessarily need logic. So strictly speaking a continuous story is not very important.(If you can keep your audience satisfied and make them feel exactly how you want them to feel). I think those were sb's thoughts, or atleast that is how I understood it from that discussion. (Anyway, Follow up link: Tarkovsky on Mirror)

This brings me to the exact reason I am writing. Stalker, the second film I saw on that day was simply spectacular. (A perfect science fiction movie, imo, although I am yet to see Solaris)
An (alien?) meteorite has destroyed a small Russian town in the near future. The area has come to be known as the zone. People travelling through this zone have mysteriously disappeared. Physics is said to be distorted in there. The Soviet Army has closed down the zone from people and, for years, the only people who now enter the zone are the illegal stalkers who somehow manage to outrun the army in and out of the zone. After they have closed down the place, there is a strong rumor spread among the population that there exists in the heart of this zone a room where you can go and it will grant your heart's ultimate desire.

Spoiler Warning! You have been warned, and this is a suspense movie.
The concepts of the zone and stalkers are taken from a Russian scifi novel called "The Roadside Picnic". The novel presents a curious theory that zones are picnic-spots where aliens land and leave a lot of strange artifacts not knowing their effects on surrounding population. Quite funny initially, but consider the plight of wild animals who have to deal with a flash light we left.

The story follows a stalker who has to take a scientist and a writer into the zone in search of the room. The stalker shows irrational fear about the zone, never trying to go by a straight forward path. It is like always choosing the long and safer path over the short one. The writer comes across as a drunk and pessimistic man, always doubting himself and the world. He is probably in search of inspiration for a story and the scientist says that he wants to know the actual truth about the room.

In the beginning we would see that the stalker himself in dire consequences, his child unable to walk, and probably suffering the consequences of his exposure to the zone. But somehow, he is not able to find peace away from the zone. The trio dodge bullets from the army and enter the zone through a trolley car, which takes us from a filthy brown Russian town into the lush green expanse and quiet of the zone. (The camera work all through the film is more than excellent.)

From there the long winding journey starts towards the room. Interesting fact about the journey: The stalker throws metal nuts tied with white ribbons in the general direction of travel and then follows only their trail. During this tiring journey we discover the three personalities in detail. On the actual reason each of them is seeking the room. The stalker explains more about the ways of the stalker. His love, fear and respect for the zone is revealed. The ultimate rule is that the stalker must not enter the room himself. He is only to be a Guide, and he recites an story about how his mentor broke this rule and later had to commit suicide. The landscape also changes as the complex journey begins. The lush green landscapes in the beginning start to contrast with the greyish abandoned structures inside the heart of the zone.

The background music plays its part to perfection, and the suspense builds up to an excellent emotional climax. Unlike other sci-fi movies concentrating more on the science part, this movie uses sci-fi as a plot element to bring about curious character traits of people around us. We ultimately see how wretched and how good we can be. This was one of the most stunning endings I've ever seen. Most reviews have categorized this movie as a journey from loss to discover faith. I felt it more as a discovery of qualities that make us human.

Remarkably, the movie uses almost nothing to generate so much suspense using clever plot elements and music. If you are in the right mood - that is donot feel like munching popcorn and relaxing, and are not averse to science fiction elements (which are very few) and most importantly can be patient - you should easily enjoy this one, and feel as impressed by it as me.

Original CC link for Stalker . Another (DVD) review of Stalker, which probably does better job.