Shutter, The Malayalam Movie: A Non-Useful Review

I watched the 2012 Malayalam movie "Shutter" (ഷട്ടര്‍), a directorial debut by Joy Mathew [1]. It is a good movie. I loved the movie neither because it was completely shot in my home-town Kozhikode nor because the characters speaks the Kozhikode dialect of Malayalam. I loved the movie neither because the direction was excellent nor because all the actors acted very well. I loved the movie not because it uses the sound diligently; not for creating any dramatic effects that is actually not present in the scene. Of course, these are some of the elements that makes a good movie. And there are plenty of movies like that. There are other additional reasons why I loved this movie. This post is about that.

A non-spoiler summary of the plot : Rasheed is a conservative moralist within his family, who cannot approve of his teenager daughter interacting with the boys studying with her. He wants to stop her studies and marries her off. That does not deter him from bringing a prostitute to his empty shop during one night after getting fully drunk. Due to some circumstances, he gets locked up along with the prostitute inside the shop for one whole night and a whole day. From inside the shop, he can see things happening around the shop through a slit on the shutter that closes the shop and a ventilator window that opens to the front side of his home. Caught up there, listening to the outside world, he realizes that everyone around him wears masks and only thing that is true and dear to him is his family. Finally, he becomes free from the shop without having any harm done to his life, pride and family honor. Afterwards, he becomes more liberal and understanding towards his daughter and allows her to continue her studies, scrapping off his plans for her marriage. I do not want to describe how he gets free although it is very important for this discussion, since I do not want to spoil your suspense element.

What we see here is a man living in a corrupt society, which in turn corrupts him too. To say that he is honest and not corrupted at the outset is but foolish. It is also foolish to say that he was not aware of the deception and corruption around him. A post-modern man is clearly aware of the corruption, deception, illusion, and ideology prevailing in the society and he also more or less know why all this is happening. But the common nature of the post-modern individual is denial and cynicism. He denies the reason. Then he cynically says that things around him are indeed corrupted and he does not believe in the society and its justice, but he cannot do anything about it, and thus he justifies his submission to it. This is what we call ideology or bad faith.

If you look again, you will notice that nothing has happened to his order of life at the end of the movie. His family life and social life continues as it were. But now he has realized his mistakes and has a good understanding about things happening around him. His understanding of the world has changed, but the world did not itself change. To make it a bit complicated, I would say that the whole series of incidents did not affect his Symbolic order, but just expanded it a little with a clearer understanding. The formal familial relation with ones wife and daughter exist largely in the Symbolic order. Rasheed is a conservative moralist. Any relation between man and woman is sexual for him. That is why when he saw the prostitute on the street, he immediately thought about the possibility of taking her with him. That is exactly why he does not like any contact between her daughter and her male friends. He fears that such a contact leads to sex and cannot approve of it. Clearly, this is the double standard that he retains.

An important question is why Rasheed was not satisfied with his wife. Why is he seeking sex outside of his marriage? It is in this question that we confront the otherwise nonconfrontable fact of human psychology: the Real order. The sexual urge exist in the Real order, since it is instinctual and natural. The Symbolic order explicitly prevents sex outside marriage. But there is still a possibility. There are prostitutes available. Prostitutes lives in a corner of the Symbolic order. The prostitute is inside the Symbolic order since the word prostitute exists and since they are available and since sexual intercourse with a prostitute is possible. Not necessary to have a prostitute, but the possibility of sex outside marriage exists even with a stranger. It is this possibility that ultimately tempted Rasheed to invite the prostitute, Thankam, into the shop. While the Symbolic order explicitly prevents the-outside-marriage sex, there still exists a possibility and a phantasmagorical temptation. The latter is in conflict with the first. This explains the existence of the Real order and the fact that sex exists in the Real. That which exists in the Real is undeniable. Therefore, sex outside the marriage is undeniable.

If sex outside the marriage is undeniable in the Real, but unacceptable in the Symbolic, what can one do? Keep such a hope in ones Imaginary order. In the Imaginary order he creates an alter ego or alter egos who can have sex with anyone in any manner. This creates the fantasy and at times crops into the real world and thus threatens the Symbolic order. To have sex with the prostitute whom he meets on a night is a fantasy that Rasheed kept in his Imaginary order. Therefore, when an appropriate situation came, despite the sense of guilt, he gave into it. Any fantasy, however dear that may be to us, when happened in reality turns out to be a horror, since it ultimately threatens the Symbolic order and hence ones life itself. That is what happened to Rasheed. He is unable to copulate inside the shop. After a while he tries again. He approaches the sleeping prostitute and touches her. Suddenly he senses the presence of a non-existent snake inside the room. He is scared by it and moves away from the woman. That snake is nothing but a proper representation of his guilt and the horror that he was experiencing throughout the affair. However, it is interesting to note that the woman had no fear of the snake. She dares to check the room thoroughly for the snake. This is because she does not have any guilt. Sex with a stranger for her does not happen in fantasy or Imaginary, but in the Real as well as the Symbolic. The Symbolic because she is able to talk about it and even argue about it over phone without any sense of shame or guilt. She is in a way more exalted a human being than any other in the movie.

The whole movie is about the moral corruption of a man, who finally gets some moral education. At the end, he appears to have become a good human. But the irony remains. If sex outside marriage is undeniable, what morality does he learn? In what sense does he become good? Good is simply a word that signifies a concept. He does not particularly become good. He just become good according to the Symbolic order in which he lives. He was not actually corrupted and now becomes un-corrupted. He is a post-modern individual as he is before and now. He just learned the morality of the world and accepted it. That is all. Is that a great transformation? Yes, indeed, psychologically. But not spiritually, since he does not still realize anything about what happened to him and what he has learned.

During my visit to Las Vegas last year, I have seen men passionately kissing each other on the street.  No one even noticed them; so it seemed at least to me. In Las Vegas streets such an act does not threaten anybody's Symbolic order. Thus those men do not become particularly bad or evil in that Symbolic order. That is how the word changes its meaning and position according to the Symbolic order to which it is tied with.

It is interesting to notice how Rasheed gains his "enlightenment". He is simply locked up in a dark room from which he can see the life outside, the Symbolic order, through a small slit on the shutter. The title of the movie "Shutter" is very suitable and nothing is more important in this movie than the shutter and what it covers. Obviously, it is not the first time that we hear such a thing. All the saints like Buddha, Sankara and so on and prophets like Muhammed and Christ disappeared for a while into solitude before attaining their spiritual enlightenment. We can forget all the saints, but only consider the philosopher Rene Decartes, who famously said "ego cogito, ego sum" ("I think, therefore I exist": That is, I am thinking. I am able to think. Therefore, no matter how many illusions exists here, but what I call I exists. Otherwise, it will not think. Therefore, I exists beyond any doubt.) [If you have been deceived by the more popular translation "I think, therefore I am", then I am sorry for you. Please consider to learn more about the Decartes' cogito argument]. Decartes understood the existence of cogito (the thinking I) when he secluded himself from the outside world and shut himself inside an oven to escape from the unbearable cold outside. He had nothing else to do but think about the possibility of knowing the objective truth of the outside world. In the movie, Rasheed gets locked up inside the shop not out of his will. His seclusion was somewhat forced. Yet, he is able to rethink of his life and actions. He is able to understand his mistakes that conflicts with the Symbolic order and correct himself.

Possibly, what every man needs is such a dark, secluded place. Where one can directly encounter the fantasy and its horror and realize ones alienation with respect to the Symbolic order. Unless a man is able to get along well with the Symbolic order, his life will be miserable. He becomes an criminal or just a degenerate drunkard or rapist or a great artist with profound creativity. The late Malayali poet A. Ayyappan was such an artist. He was unable to cope with the society and its order. He lived in the streets, outside the social order, and created extremely honest and creative poetry. In the movie also, we can see such a character: a drunkard old man who always sings poetry that other characters cannot understand. That character lives outside the social order. In fact he is even a threat to the social order. That is why everyone hates him and drives him away as soon as possible after getting any service from him.

The Symbolic order that comes under the threat in the movie is clearly a male-dominated one. Females have only secondary position in that order. That is why it tried to protect ones daughter from illegible sex. That is also why it allowed the girl to continue her studies. In doing so, we might first feel that it is giving a higher position to the girl that she deserves. On the contrary, it just integrates the women's need to get educated and be more free in their life into the existing social Symbolic order, without reducing the man's importance and dominating position in it. In this aspect, the movie is not too revolutionary, I claim.

This paragraph contains elements that spoil the suspense of the movie. Safely you can skip it : I want to prove the above point. That the movie does not particularly elevate the status of females. In fact, the shop is opened by one of Rasheed's daughter's male-friends upon her request. She instructs the friend not to look inside the shop but merely to unlock it. Thus, she saves Rasheed's pride and honor even from her own friend. By this act, she proves to Rasheed that she is an intelligent girl, having a stronger moral standard as compared to Rasheed's. What is her moral standard? To keep such a shame from the outside world and thereby saving ones status. This proves that she believes sex outside marriage is a sin. Thus she subscribes to the values of the Symbolic order and is not particularly spiritually elevated. This makes Rasheed confident that she will not get involved in illegible sex. So, he allows her to continue her studies. Clearly, the male-domination continues.

This movie is the director Joy Mathew's debut. And it is excellent. I hope we can see more good movies from him. The stellar performance of Sajitha Madathil as the prostitute is unforgettable. In fact, every actors acted very well in this movie. This again implies that this movie is really a director's movie.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutter_(2012_film)

Midnight Musings on Words, Labyrinths, and Sree Narayana

Not being understood is the most terrible curse in this world. Now I better understand those people like Kafka and Nietzsche. But, seemingly, there is no solution for that. If I ask myself how I can make others understand me, I recognize an even more terrible truth: That I don't myself understand myself! 

To tell others what I want to tell them about me, I need to depend on language. There, I realize that I cannot express myself quite well in words. Words deceive me. Really. When I listen to my own narration, I realize that the words flow on their own account. It is as if I have a very insignificant role in the process. When I think, write or say something, I sense that the flow of the words are automatic, beyond my own control, obeying some prescribed structure of the language. That may be why I am still unsatisfied even after I think I said what I wanted to say. 

I don’t trust words any more. They don't represent me. They don’t' represent my inner feelings and urges. They gravely misrepresent me. Perhaps, language itself is a prison!

I feel I am stuck in my own __________ . I don't know what is the word to be used here. Certainly it is not “life”, “body”, “paradigm” and so on. Nothing that I can think of. Still, I feel I am stuck. The fact is that I feel I am stuck. Perhaps, I feel that it is a fact that I feel that I am stuck. Or, even, it is a fact that I feel that it is a fact that I feel that I am stuck. I am exasperated! Language is a labyrinthine prison. Maybe, it is so for everyone, but not many realize it.

A few days back, I had been to Sivagiri. The most prominent proponents of Advaitic version of Hinduism were, I believe, Malayalis. Sri Sankara Acharya founded it. And Sree Narayana Guru was a major figure, as were Cattambi Swamikal, Nitya Chaitanya Yati, and so on. 

Sivagiri Mutt of Sree Narayana Guru is situated on a hill. It is where the Guru is said to be enlightened. Being an atheist, I could not feel anything “sacred” or “spiritual” about that place. I did not feel any “cosmic vibrations” all those goat-head ones claim they feel when they go to places like this. But, still, it is a beautiful and serene place. Very close to the nature, calm, quiet and silent! I saw the Guru's hut – a very simple one. Great figures like Rabindra Nath Tagore and Gandhi visited the Guru there. Later, I went to the tomb of the Guru on the hill. Enjoying the serenity of the place and wondering about the magnificent life of the Guru, I returned. He was not just a saint. He was an politically activist saint, who acted as a spiritual vanguard of a great struggle of a bygone generation of oppressed people against the upper caste of Kerala. 

Down the hill, in the book stall, I procured a copy of Guru's “Atmopatesa Satakam”. Written in a bit tougher Malayalam, but I don't like the interpretations and explanations added by someone for each stanza for some reason.

Those who still wonder how much money a man wants, when one would get satisfied in ones life and why life seems to be miserable even after becoming rich and healthy! I say unto them. Indeed life has no meaning. Life is absurd and worthless. But if you feel frustrated about it, then it is because  you have not invented you own meaning to it. It is because you chase a non-existent illusion all the time without realizing that you are merely wandering aimlessly in a labyrinthine prison. But don't feel guilty about it too. It is not your fault. Absolutely not your fault. In sharing you my thoughts, I love you like God loves humans:)

Tempted to conclude with a quote, thanks to the movie Dead Poet's Society:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,
to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,
and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

                                           --Henry Thoreau

Chennai,

Dec 27, 2013

Books

I added a page on this blog: Books. It consists of a list of most memorable books I have read so far. If books are windows to the world, they have been my windows. Truly.

Since I have created this list purely out of my memory, they are not necessarily listed in the chronological order of my reading. Besides, there are quite a few books that did not find themselves into this list. However, I was able to add some kind of time-line into the list. They are separated according to blocks of a few years in which I read them. These intervals of years signify different times in my life: 1996 to 1999 during which I enrolled myself into our village-library with the help of my friend, during which I was able to develop a penchant for reading, and during which I believed almost everything that appeared in books! Then 1999 to 2003 during which I was an undergraduate at Thrissur, during which I started speculating the truth of what I read in books, during which I developed a firm foundation for my reading and ideas, during which, with the help of my good friends, I was introduced into great writers and thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and so on, and during which I started understanding that there are no absolute truths, but everything is a perspective. Then 2003 to 2005 during which I was job-less mostly and then became a teacher, during which I struggled to develop my own perspectives and ideas and miserably failed. Next 2005 to 2007 during which I was a post-graduate student, during which I fully recognized and accepted my failure to develop my own perspective, during which I disowned many of my own ideas and perspectives, during which I disowned a lot of other things, during which I fully understood Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence and affirmation of ones fate and life ("amor fati"), and during which I became a complete nihilist and extreme atheist. Then came 2007 to 2012, my lonely Ph.D. days, during which I became what I am today, during which I read not just books but also a lot from the internet and watched a lot of movies, during which I learned to affirm my fate, and during which I don't still understand what all happened to me. 2013 was a stable year with a lot of developments in my life, during which I started getting regular salary and was able to buy any book I wanted, during which I pledged that I will not sacrifice reading for anything else and became so determined. My life, academic development, and other things revolve around all these years and the books I read.

So, that was my narration of my own story, which, indeed, is a lie from a pure psycho-analytic perspective!

Sandeep

Trivandrum

Dec 24, 2013.

Survival During the Non-Apocalyptic Era

Genre: Fiction

The sun during the day,

The moon during the night,

The joy of waiting

When they were not there,

Were my primary reasons

For not embracing suicide,

The last resort to escape

The infinite possibilities

For metamorphosis
And transcendence,

During the Non-Apocalyptic times.

#sandeeppalakkal-chennai-thethirdofdecembertheyearoftwothousandthirteen.

A Portrait of the Artist in the Eve of Apocalypse

Genre: Fiction

The Hope:

I would've been happy,
As long as my sky did not crack;
As long as the peace of my meditation was undisturbed;
As long as the animals around me did not quarrel each other.

The Orgy of the Intellect:

All I needed was an ideology
That would keep my sky from cracking;
That would keep the peace of my meditation undisturbed;
That would keep the animals around me at peace.

The Disillusionment:

But, today, I became aware
That my sky was indeed going to crack;
That my meditation itself will go futile;
That the animals around me will cease to exist.

The Departure:

In the evening, I looked at the departing sun
Until the twilight faded away in the horizon.
Adios my dear old friend,
My reason for deferring a suicide on many mornings!

The Apocalyptic Strength of Will:

The last sun departed, the last night freezing in,
I am witnessing the final moments, my moments of the truth.
These final moments for me are not for engaging in fornication.
Neither are they for felony nor rape nor self-indulgence.

The Last Resort:

These moments, my final moments,
Are the only private things I ever own.
I imagine a colourful sky that will never come to be,
Yet, bring meaning in eternity to my vanishing soul.

The New Hope:

With the ever depleting strength of mine,
Let me embrace you, dear death.
How beautiful you are! To arrive tonight,
This night of the apocalypse.
I will drink from your everlasting fountain of bliss
Forever to quench my everlasting thirst.

The Release:

I feel very light, for I can sleep tonight
Without the burden of a morrow.
No more anticipations, no more hopes,
No more sunrises to shine in my life.

The Meaning aka Nirvana:

My mind is quiet,
My heart secure.
My breath is deep,
I am One with the God.

I feel no pain,
I feel no shame,
I feel no guilt,
I am One with the God.

Lying on my bed,
Reduced into the null in the whole,
I am One with the God.
I am One with the God.

--sandeeppalakkal-chennai-decemberthesecondtheyeartwothousandthirteen.

Pratibha's Voice [Experimental]

Genre: Fiction

I am nothing, a nobody. Now, I am a voice inside someones head. To be at least a voice in someones head -- that is one of the best blessings of my existence.

I was born when I was twenty-one years old. It was the fateful day that my best friend's father forced me into his bedroom, when there was nobody at his house, and pressed me on the bed under his body. I was scared. That was the first in my life in such a magnitude. I cried and cried, and begged him for my honour. He did not heed, but pressed me onto the bed with more force. I put a staunch fight against him, using all my strength. In a few minutes, as I was losing my cloths one-by-one, I recognised how weak I was. My eyes were filled with darkness and I saw no chance for escape. But I could strongly feel the dark, deep abyss into which I was falling eternally.

There was a moment. I became temporarily free. Just to take a breath. I saw him removing his undergarments and embracing fully nudity. And below his belly, I saw his meat, fully erect and ready for the torture. Yet, it was rather silly. A tiny, weak shaft in all its ugliness around it!

Ironically, I could not help laughing! I don't know how I got the strength. In all my sincerity, I laughed!

“Is this all what you got? Is it with this that you are going to do what you are going to do?” I asked  him being unable to suppress my laughter.

His face became red. He was being overpowered by his anger. His weapon, too. Suddenly, it was diminished to nothing. All its might that it tried to assume a moment before was lost at once in the void of its purposelessness. The man was ashamed. Anger and shame belittled him to nothing. After all, to be aggressive is the sign of the weak. He slapped me on my face. Twice. But that could not deter me from laughing. His courage seemed to have drowned in the heavy tide of my laughter. I spat on his face. Vehemently. He grabbed my long black hair and pulled me out of his bedroom.

“Get out of here, bitch!” He shouted at me.

He was a coward. He dared not to kick me out of his house in my full nakedness. He went back to the room and rushed back at once with my dresses. As soon as I was able to slip inside my attire, he pushed me out.

I went back home with a mind that was torn inside out. 

It was the day I realised my identity in the world. It was the day I understood who I was. 

It was the day I was born into this world.

To be continued.........

Centenary Reflections!

I was aware of this. But I did not want to exaggerate it. That this blog now crossed One Hundred posts. One hundred posts! As I look at it, it seems to be big. As I think further, it is insignificant.

So what is the purpose of this blog? Here, I would like to quote Terry Eagleton:

"What we need is a form of life which is completely pointless, [...]. Rather than serve some utilitarian purpose or earnest metaphysical end, it is a delight in itself. It needs no justification beyond its own existence. In this sense, the meaning of life is interestingly close to meaninglessness." 

--The Meaning of Life, Terry Eagleton.

The quote seems to say it all. Not really. I have a purpose for this blog. That is as I have stated many times here: To enjoy the inexorable pleasure of writing. And what do I write? Perhaps, as I stated in my first post in this blog, I do sense the ordinariness of my life and the grandeur of the ordinary. On a hindsight, it is about this grandeur which I sense in the ordinary nothing that I write in this blog.

I love this blog and love blogging. As you have recognised, this blog is a completely personal one. Just Google how to write a blog. You will find numerous articles on how to make it a success, how to get more readers, how to advertise, how to make money out of it and so on. I have not fallen and will never fall into such traps. I am not writing this blog to be read, but just to write. All those articles and perspectives on blogging/writing and the challenges blogging face from Facebooking have appeared recently. I remember that I started writing this blog in an era when likes and shares and comments were not important. I love those days, and they are already the "good old" days of the Internet.

When I shared my Catch Me if You Dare in Facebook, someone asked me why I share things that he could not understand! That is the level of animosity Facebookians harbour towards individualism. The idea of Facebook is to be not different from others but to conform to the common filthy standard. I reject this and stay adamantly reclusive in the blogger and elsewhere.

I remember starting the blog by writing down very short posts. But the blog developed me into a better blogger, I think. As I developed the blog, it developed me too. The exchange was mutual. In the beginning, I used to struggle to write anything meaningfully and properly. I don't feel that tension anymore. Once I have the topic [there are many, I claim] and the right mood and time, words flow. The inspiration is that I can put it in this blog! That's why the blog becomes my favourite, again.

Not to mention a few friends who I gained through this blog!

As a concluding remark, I would like to say that I will be here, blogging, as long as Google removes the Blogger from the services that it provides. If that happens, I will still try to survive in some other form, on some other platform, as a blogger! I am aware that the personal blogs of my type are getting reduced in the Internet and the new focus is on more impersonal writings with some purpose. But what can I do about that? To express myself freely is my freedom, even if I am not the favourite of the masses.

Of Umberto Eco, Truth, Inquiries, Memories and Etc.

Life is nothing but memories. Memories, distorted and remembered in a nonlinear order! They recreate my past, again and again, inside my head, like a movie. All my pain and pleasure depend on what I remember and how I remember. When I lose my memories, I lose my life and its meaning. Death is not just physical, but it signifies the loss of ones memories forever.

The loss of memory was one of the major themes for Umberto Eco's two novels: The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana and The Prague Cemetery. In both novels, the main characters, Giambattista Bodoni and Simone Simonini, respectively, wake up in the morning to realise that they don't remember who they are and what they used to be in their lives. Later, Bodoni even laments that he does not remember if he made love to any women, including [the woman who claims to him to be] his wife [which is true]. Love forgotten is love never existed. A life forgotten is a life never lived, not even in the dreams; it's quite like never born at all. In the novels, the memory losses cause both the protagonists to start an ardent endeavour to regain their memories and recreate their past. The result is that we have exciting, passionate, emotionally and intellectually stimulating stories!

One of the protagonists, Casaubon, in Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum also gets caught in a similar situation. He does not lose his memory, but he becomes fully disoriented and is unable to properly interpret the sequence of bizarre events he and his friends had to go through, as a consequence of their pranks. He tries to organize his memories in order to interpret them and thereby recreate his past in a more meaningful way.

In fact, all of the Eco's novels are like this. The protagonists get caught in very strange situations and become completely confused. They do not shy away, but want to solve the mystery by engaging in intellectual inquiries and reflections. This is why Eco becomes my favourite. Each character starts a feverish search for meaning and stability in his own way. This leads to an intellectually stimulating conversation with the reader in multiple ways. 

In Mysterious Flames of Queen Loana, the Prague Cemetery and Foucault's Pendulum, the protagonists start writing down everything. They start the "talking cure" as suggested by Sigmond Freud. 

Baudolino in Umberto Eco's another novel Baudolino also starts telling his story, but not to himself; he does not document it himself, but tells his story to another character, Niketas Choniates, who starts documenting it to interpret it. Here, like many of Eco's characters, Niketas Choniates is also a fictional depiction of a historically real individual.

In The Name of the Rose, which is Eco's first novel, William of Baskerville and his disciple Adso of Melk, set forth to solving a murder mystery in a monastery. The search for truth again starts an intense and stimulating conversation, which gets entangled with the questions truth, interpretation and such philosophical questions. Here, the story is told in the voice of Adso and the author [Eco] claims he just translates a historical document he came across. Finally, the point is a document written in search for finding a meaning of events by proper interpretation.

Eco's another novel, Island of the Day Before, which I have not started reading yet, tells the story of Roberto della Griva, who gets shipwrecked and washed up on the shore of a lone island. I do not know anything about the story beyond this point, but surely constitutes an attempt by Griva to reinterpret his past. I am sure that the novel will contain a self-documentation by Griva of his thoughts, interpretations and inquiries.

Reviewing Eco's novels is beyond my talent. Already you can find a few reviews and discussions in the Internet. This post [and a sequence of coming posts] is not about Eco's novels, but how they inspire an interpretation of my own memories. I do not know yet how and to what extent I am going to do this, but we will see that in the coming days. In other words, this is a review of my self-documentation of my own interpretation of the past and search for a meaning. Note that I have said "a review of my self-documentation", which means that the real self-documentation, in its candid and true form, will not appear here:)

Post Mammootty [God] Utopia for Cinema

This post may be late relatively.

In a couple of recent Mammootty films in Malayalam, his characters have been projected as God's representatives. I have not watched most of these movies, since I felt there were better ways to torture myself. So, I can't attempt a review of these movies. My point is different.

God stands for good values. Thus, marketing a character as God's representative implies that he stands for the good values.

From others' reviews, judging the trailors, and recalling the few movies that I have actually seen, the good values in these movie should be read as "good old" values -- traditional, conservative, religious, moral, anti-feminist and so on.

First question: why the movies focus on values? It is due to the the modern times, which many consider evilsome: loss of human values, social values, commodity values, increasing corruption and rape and so on. So, basically, these movies attempt to restore the values by depicting good characters who act unbelievable ethical standards and thus represent (or even surprise)God. The hope is that these characters will inspire people to reflect and change themselves and thus will create a good future.

Second question: Why Mammootty? This is easy. Mammootty represents the male-dominanating values of Malayali society. He is old enough to be considered "mature" and is an icon of both old and young.

First irony: Mammootty [Mohan Lal, too] was caught by the income tax department two years ago for evading tax. Period.

Second irony: The reason for moral degradation of the contemporary society is not because we don't have inspiring stories. The reason is ingrained in the economic changes and reforms. The advent of captialism. Values are not important, but the price is, and it soares high. As high as it would seem that an average citizen could never attain that height.

Third irony: The solution of having godly characters will not produce any positive effect. That only will sustain the fantasy of the society that old and traditional was good. No economic reforms are suggested.

Third question: What is the possible reaction through cinema for a positive change? Perhaps, a [Zizekian] utopian solution is to sign up a very young, the gen-next, actor, who has a completely freak-star image [like Asif Ali or Dulqar Salman or Fahad Fazil (All Muslims? LOL)] for a movie in which the character face the despair due to loss of values, etc., quite similar to those in Mammootty movies, and tries to solve it seriously and ethically, as a representative of God and Old values. In other words, replace Mammootty with one of such guys as these as a God's representative.

Fourth question and forth irony: Does the commercial value of Malayalam cinema care about any of that discussed above? No!

Old Man Insights

You might have noticed that I am in a spree of posting here. All these posts are connected. They belong to the same stream of thinking. Where are they taking me? I swear I don't know.

I have noticed that my posts have been getting ever bigger. I have to be brief in an Internet age. 

But writing needs freedom. I try different styles, without much concerning myself about the length of the post. However, I may not be very good in the styles yet.

The writing style of this post is inspired by many posts in Evan Williams' new writing platform Medium; a style that is very concise. Recall Mr. Williams is the creator of blogger! And twitter, too!

Here we go.

Of late, I am having a strange thought: how would a 90 years old man or woman would like to recount his or her life?

I don't want to ask them directly. I want to imagine it myself. To imagine is more pleasurable! 

I find it more difficult to imagine like an old woman than an old man. Hence my attempt here, now, is to imagine like an old man.

Perhaps, he wants to look at his life by milestones. Like, by the age of 10 I started playing football; I was 18 when I went for my first job; I was married by 26; I became a father by 28, a grandfather by 55; and so on.

Human memory distorts the facts and one always remember nonlinearly. So, the old man would have some connecting dots that are his milestones and a lot of associated details connecting every dot with each other in complex and multiple ways.

Everything is connected in life. Everything happening influences every other thing happening. 

So, being 90 or more, the old man can see all his milestones and perceive all the connections at the same time. That gives him a massive insight to his life, and, perhaps, to human life in general! That is one of the biggest assets one can have, isn't that?

I envy the old man, since I lack that kind of richness now!

I love the way Sean Connery and Clint Eastwood look at their characters James Bond and Dirty Harry, respectively. The attitude is that: Oh! That character worked at that time; I cannot do the same character now; If anyone else wants to do it has to be different, suitable for the times; I had my nice time and now it is gone and it is absolutely OK.

WOW!

If only I could have such a full understanding of my life! 

Now, I can remember and connect the dots in my past. But I am always baffled by the uncertainty of the future and hence feel incomplete and discontent.

Final thought: If just a 90 year old man owns this kind of riches, what a man with immense knowledge in the history of humanity -- the likes of Umberto Eco and Slavoj Zizek -- would possess! The (almost) entire history of humanity! And they don't have to be 90 years old for that! That is so much of insight, man. So much. Massiver than the massive!

Galaxies Apart, Remembering the Earth

Sitting inside my room, its door and windows closed, I am feeling that I am sitting inside a closed box isolated completely from the external world. There is not even a ventilator to this room. Inside here, in this moment, I am currently coexisting with numerous micro-organisms and a few small insects, which include three or four mosquitoes whose music I can hear. Some of these micro-organisms live inside my body. Among all these living beings, who incidentally constitute my society, perhaps, I am the only one who is aware of its own existence; I may be the only one with a thinking mind -- intelligence. Science says so. Who knows. I am a skeptic, always, in almost everything. Kindly, excuse me for that.

It is completely quiet here; a dead silence akin to a cemetery in the darkest hour prevail here. The only sound that I can hear is the rhythmic rustle of my breath. And a generic humming noise coming from an unknown source -- perhaps, from the external world, but I cannot judge. Listening deeply, and listening intently with my mind, I also hear, at least I feel I hear, a humming sound emanating from my head. A ceaseless sound, which threatens the peace of my mind and the beauty of this moment. This moment is nice: to stay away from all the human existence, thus to break away from the absurdity of existence. Inside this room, I do not encounter within me the need for a meaning for my existence, unlike the way I feel while living in the external world. Here I feel calm, silent, and protected by the definiteness of this existence.

Slowly, my mind fall into the great depth of forgetfulness. The ocean is calm, but dangerously fathomless. ............................................................

.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

I do not know how long I stayed like that. I was not asleep. My mind was not at rest. It was, and still is, reverberating, beyond my control. I can't help it. I hear imaginary sounds; I have strange visions; Once in a while memories from the past haunt me. They come together to form sequences of images, quite like an imaginary movie, in front of my inner eyes. They don't have any meaning. I cannot interpret them. Yet, they haunt me, because they are seemingly real, belonging to my distant past. Of many of them, I don't understand why they arise within me now. They don't have any significance. No importance at all. Yet they haunt me, because they are real. They are real, but distorted and nonlinear. They haunt me because, although distorted, they are real.

There was this boy, myself, years ago, I don't know how many years. Perhaps he was just five years old. Or, maybe, just six. His old grannies, aunts of his mother, there were two of them, both of them almost blind, one of them stooping forward due to age and weakness, asked him to take them to the doctor's house across the road. He was scared. For, he knew that he could not manage that kind of a responsibility. That was huge for him. He said, ask my mother or my aunt. They replied, no, you can, my child. With a lot of hesitation and fear, he took them to the doctor, for he loved them and did not want to disobey. They had to cross the road, with relatively no traffic at all if I compare with the contemporary times. He was cautious. He looked around. Both his grannies, whom he loved as he loved the god, were almost blind, one of them stooping forward due to age and weakness. He took them to the other side, firmly holding the hand of one of theirs, and she holding the hand of the other. He sighed deeply on the other side of the road, a sigh of consolation. The grannies met the doctor. He stayed outside the doctor's room, looking out at the road. One or two buses passed. Seeing that his mind started getting agitated out of anxiety. How would he take the grannies back to the other side? When the grannies came out, he saw one more bus passing on the road. He was defeated fully. His mouth was salivating, his heart fluttering fast. Oh my god! What will I do? He lost all his hope and faith. Asking the grannies to sit there in the doctor's waiting room, he rushed home. He could cross the road, that was not difficult. He called his aunt, who was surprised and also perplexed to hear the news. The anxiety he felt that day is still alive within my mind. I can still feel it with its full intensity. Those days are gone. Those grannies disappeared from the earth. Yet, the memories are haunting me, but I don't know why!

The silence has deepened. I am alone in this room, isolated from the human society. But there are still things in here that connect me with the external world. The old iron-made shelf; the cot; the bed; the cloths; the electric lamp and fan; and so on. Yet, I don't know why I feel it so strange to sit here alone. I don't know why I feel like living galaxies away from the human world.

Oh! galaxies! Have you gone to the end of this world?

There was this road. The same old road. And there was this gate. Opening directly to the road. Behind the gate, there was this house, a big house, now lost to the eternity, but then surrounded by plants and trees and empty lands. One day, this boy, myself again, when I don't remember, went outside the gate to see buses and bicycles and auto-rickshaws and, very rarely, scooters passing. He was waiting for his uncles. They would bring candies for him in the evening when they come back from work. He was waiting there in a joyous mood. In those days, there was something called the joy of existence, which has been lost by now to the entire mankind, I don't know since when. There! It was quite unexpected. He was scared to death. For a few moments he did not know what he should do. In the distance, from the other side of the point where the road curved, there appeared a giant, black mass. With big ears on two sides, with a long trunk! The sight of the two long, strong tusks got the guts out of the boy. Soon he woke up from the initial shock of the moment. He was after all an animal; an intelligent monkey. He had to survive. He had an instinct for survival. He ran back behind the gate. I don't know how he managed to close the gates. He just pushed it back with all his might as he was running towards the house. He heard the gate getting closed with a loud bang behind him; that sound is still ringing in my mind. That was a domesticated elephant. His uncle could not help laughing when he saw how he ran into the house.

Memories may torture you; but they are also a bliss!

If I forget all my memories, I would be nothing, but really a dust in this universe. I lose my identity. It is like I have never been born. That intensifies the absurdity of existence.

Memories are memories. They influence you beyond your understanding of them. They don't need you to understand them. But they work in the back of your mind, always reverberating and making strange sounds and visions. Perhaps, they are haunting me because I clearly know that they belong to a lost world, a world that will never come back again.

Sitting here in isolation, undisturbed, I could feel like the god of this world. World, this closed world. Yes, I have already started feeling in that way. But, remembering what Nietzsche wrote, the stomach prevents me from continuing to live with that illusion. In some sense, the stomach brings the primary meaning to this world. The phallus and vagina, the secondary one. Like the Thomas Mann's protagonist, who was very content in leading a frugal life, reading his books and eating what he had, refusing to do any work for the external world, but whose peace of mind was slightly disturbed when he saw a beautiful women and was completely destroyed by the sight of her beautiful palm resting on her seat near him while they were inside a theatre, I am also disturbed by the reality of the emptiness of my stomach. The stomach is aching. The first thing next is to devour.

--Sandeep Palakkal, Chennai.

Of the Symbolic and the Fake, Etc.

Life changes. Everyones'. The Lonely Wanderer's too!

I finished the degree and got out of the student life. And a new life started.

That is me receiving the Ph. D. from Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, the director of IIT Madras, during the 50th convocation of IIT Madras on July 19, 2013.

I joined a company in its R&D team. Becoming financially better, I started my efforts to manufacture an offspring. That was successful. A baby boy. He is now six months old and kicking. Yea, literally: if you sit near him, he will practise his front-kicks on you:) Being a father: pain and pleasure. Both at a time. Like everything else in life, but not the same. Thanks, my son -- for transforming me into a father. That changes everything. Or, many things, at least. What the heck! Why am I saying all these? If you are not yet a father, or a mother, for that matter, you will possibly not understand what I am saying. I would not understand what I was saying had I not been a father, for sure. On contrary, if you are a father or a mother, then you don't need me to tell you about it. Both ways, perhaps, this is a dead end. In case my yearning for writing takes me towards it, we will, maybe, talk about it later.

With Vijual Sandeep, on Nov 16, 2013.

We were talking about changes. Yes, sir. Changes. Working for someone is actually a pain. You spend your quality time in your office, doing your job, along with your colleagues, morning to evening. If you are lucky, you will be doing something you love. In my case, I believe I do what I love. Reading, understanding, learning, sharing, developing signal processing algorithms. I love that. I cannot say it is signal processing anymore. My beliefs during my college days have already been shattered. There is no signal processing independently in the industry. One cannot conform to that alone. One has to expand. Expand. Expand ones realm beyond ones horizon. I learn machine learning, computer vision, pattern classification and so on; a little bit of everything. Period. No more technical terms and discussions. This is my fucking personal blog. I have a separate blog to write technical things. [I always pledge that I will not use such obscene words anymore. But sometimes, I can't help it. It just comes out of my mind. Habit.]

So what we were talking is about the work life. That is no good, I claim. Because, since morning to evening, one has to do the job. Nothing else. That is what is disgusting about it. I get different kind of impulses at different times. Sometimes to do my work, some other time to read a novel, and another time to write. To write. That is to be myself. To give a release to my ever reverberating mind. Excuse me if I sound self-boasting or pompous. My mind is not great, but what I said was the truth. It is always reverberating, quite often disturbing my sleep. It is full of thoughts, sounds, visions and memories, and so on. Most of the time, it is all crap. Another most of the time, it is just pornography. How vulgar and wasteful! Rarely, it is beautiful. It is about this beautiful that I am going to talk about in a while now. 

But wait. Patience is the key to lead a normal life in this ridiculously absurd world.

Just going backward a little, again, we were talking about the work life. The lack of possibility to go with the impulse reduces my freedom and my happiness. And my [I did not want to claim this] creativity. Besides, you miss the sun and the day. You miss the life outside. I mean the nature, not boring humans. That is really a loss, I think. That is like the loss of the "real" in psychoanalytical sense. I am put in the "symbolic" inside the office and I loss the "real" of the world. Then my "imaginary" starts working. I develop fantasies in order to be happy in the "symbolic". I don't want to talk about it. I hate it. And I resist the fantasy. I try to understand the "symbolic" and the "real". I try to repress the "imaginary". Well, I don't really repress it. Thanks to my inner culture, I try to understand the "imaginary" and try to deal with it intellectually. As I wrote sometime back, a problem that is understood intellectually and came in terms with emotionally is no problem anymore.

Today, while I was coming back from the office, travelling with my friend on his bike, we were caught in the traffic jam. That's an everyday business in Chennai. We are over-crowded. My wait longed for about ten minutes. I looked above at some instant. And, I encountered the "real". As a reminder of the fake nature of the "symbolic", the "real" extended in front of my eyes, and then inside my mind. I saw the twilight of the evening slowly flourishing over the horizon. My mind felt incited by its beauty. Birds, most of which being eagles, were flying towards me from the horizon. They looked happy and delighted. They looked calm and charming. They looked free and independent. Colour is the fake nature of the world. It is through this fake characteristic, the world itself arises in front of me. The reddish-orange tinge of the twilight in the horizon, the blueness of the sky right above my head, the green shade of the top of the tree I was seeing afar and the blackness of the birds that appear as distant shadows above me. That was -- how would I fake it in words? -- beautiful.

At that moment, I became what I really was. Just a dust in this giant, vast universe. That's just how I experience the loss of identity.

My house -- read this the house that I have rented -- is clean and tidy. You can see a woman's touch in everything. That woman is me. I am man and woman. Why not? I am no fake. I am honest. I am a hermaphrodite. The ardha-nareeswara. My wife is studying in a place far away from me. My son is torturing his mother by staying with her. I live alone here, like a right-conservative (thanks to Clint Eastwood's character in Grand Torino) who fixes his own house. Self dependent. I cook my food. I enjoy cooking, though I hate what I am cooking. November is a cold month in Chennai. But this winter does not seem to be as cold as it was in 2009. Yet, it is nice to sleep in a cosy bed, under the blanket, thinking of all these things. I can sense life under my feet. My soles are cool. My toes are motionless. I feel them with my mind. The sensation moves upward. And I feel like a man and like a woman at the same time. And I don't fucking care what the sadist feminists and the masochist macho-maniacs will think about it!

--Sandeep Palakkal, Chennai, Nov 25, 2013.

Ode to My Fate! (Non-classic)

"My solitude doesn't depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company."   --F. Nietzsche.

---------

I've a friend

Who's a cunt.

Words will blaze

Peace when you faze.

I'm in a rage

Not in your cage.

I'm no poet.

My heart, be quiet!

Silence of the night

Intense my plight.

Expect only hate

Affirm my fate!

Period....

Period....

Period....

Ceaseless this prod?

------------

--
Sandeep Palakkal
Chennai
Aug 7, 2013.

Catch Me if You Dare!

The subtle difference between the symbolic and the semiotic leads to the  major difference between James Joyce and Umberto Eco. 

On the other hand, the greater difference between the abstract and the concrete doesn't explain the lesser difference between James Joyce and James Bond. 

Timothy Dalton is my favourite Bond, and I loved him in Living Daylights. 

That was a time when I wondered if Roger Moore and Roger Penrose weren't somehow connected. I felt very much at ease when I learnt about the Moore-Penrose inverse. 

You know? It is a smaller world than your senses perceive. Everything and everyone is connected here and the connections span beyond Facebook. They  began even before I revealed my name as "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh" to him who knelt before me, but, who, alas, mistook me for a burning tree!

That's for now. But mind you! It is not the end. You'll never see the end, you immortals!

Think beyond! Dream high! Live dangerously!

Ad hominum salutem!

A Moment of Anguish

It is getting more and more wonderful as I think about it! Today,  I passed a moment of anguish by telling myself that nobody can kill my enthusiasm for reading and my urge for writing. The fact is that today I finished reading Prague Cemetery of Umberto Eco. Have ever lived in forgetfulness? Well!  That's how I felt while reading that novel. To say in Eco's style, I must be an extreme masochist to have selected this novel to read. What more, I am an atheist, but God willing, I am going to read all the novels by Eco. Two more to go: Foucault's Pendulum and The Island of the Day Before. Looks good, no?

No Mothers

My dear ailing friend,
I know what you're seeking:
Unconditional love!
Alas! you'll not find it
In this world.
For, only mothers carry it
In their breasts.

There are no mothers here
Any more!
Fathers have killed'em all.
All the mothers.
Remaining are only
Wounded breasts...
And... torn up vaginas....

Palakkal Saga: The Very Beginning

I'm going to narrate you some story, or perhaps some stories. But I warn you that they are not mere stories but actual events, which humans in flesh and blood had created with their own lives. It is the real history. Before reading these stories, ask yourself if you can take it. Ask yourself how bold and courageous you are! For these stories are only for the strong and the privileged!

This is the saga of Palakkal. This is how it all begins. This is how the history begins.

Palakkal's saga consists of stories of life and the tyrannies of life. Many of those stories took place in a small piece of land in a corner of the earth, which faced all the remotest galaxies. Northern part of that land was full of saffron-coloured desert. If one travels southwards, one has to pass through the white-snowy mountains. Thus one pass from the desert with no water to the snowy mountains that produced all the water on earth. That may sound paradoxical to some. But to see through the paradox, one must travel even southwards only to see the lush green forest, which was inhabited by a lot of mysterious animals and humans. "Saffron-white-green." That was the colour of the land. Below the green forest, one can see the boundless, deep blue sea, which in turn was inhabited by those beautiful fishes and mermaids. That land was blessed by the gods, where people lived lazy lives in pleasure.

Thousands of years ago, Palakkal was born in a small village of the green land, which was adjacent to the forest, surrounded by the sea on one side and a series of small hills on the other side. At the time of Palakkal's birth, his father, a man of courage and will power, was fishing in the river. A sudden stream of flood came from the mountains and took him with it to the sea. He never came back. That was the first liberation in Palakkals life though he did not realised its significance: liberation from the tyranny of order and obedience. His mother raised him affectionately. She was a woman of strong character. At the age of ten, his mother died of malaria. Her horrible death shattered Palakkal deeply. Yet, he did not know that he was liberated again, this time from the tyranny of self-less love.

Orphaned and helpless, Palakkal was taken by a rich farmer, who lived nearby. He was put to work in the fields with the farmer's workers. He was only a small boy yet he was given a man's work. Before the sunrise he started his work and till late night he had to work, stopping only for his meagre lunch. Suffering badly for a while, Palakkal learnt how to withstand the hardship. During his work, he ate fruits from the forest and drank milk from the cow. Other than work and eating, he had nothing else to think of. No time for anything else either. He received no kindness and no love. Only tinge of kind words he received was from the farmer's ugly looking, dark-coloured, fat wife. She treated him with kindness and gave him good food whenever he was happened to be called for some household work in the farmer's house. Such occasions were but rare. Thus, rare were the occasions Palakkal ate something that humans would normally eat. From the farmer's wife, Palakkal learnt that external appearances meant nothing and black often conceals white, and ugliness, beauty!

Years went by very fast. Palakkal was gradually growing towards adulthood. One afternoon he was working at the mangroves when the farmer came that way. The farmer never used to tell Palakkal anything directly other than giving some orders. For him, Palakkal never existed as a human being. However, that afternoon, upon seeing Palakkal, the farmer stopped and looked at him carefully. He ordered Palakkal to bring water from the river to his rest house in the forest. Palakkal went with water and the doors closed behind him. In the darkness inside that hut, with hands and feet tied, Palakkal experienced the pain and pleasure of the sodom. The poor soul of Palakkal cried and cried, but receiving no help. That day, Palakkal learnt the tyranny of the phallus. Many such afternoons were repeated for Palakkal with his hands and feet tied and the sodom at work, and always he sobbed and sobbed. Nothing particular happened to the world around him. Everything flowed forward normally and peacefully. Only Palakkal's boyish mind was in utmost agony.

On a calm evening, Palakkal was given some household work in the farmer's house. He was involved in his own work with a weeping but attentive mind when he was called by the farmer's wife to the kitchen. As usual, she gave him food and hot coffee. Palakkal was eating his food, sitting on the floor, when the farmer rushed into the kitchen. Seeing Palakkal, eating food in his kitchen, the farmer got enraged. He kicked Palakkal out of the house and started beating his wife. Palakkal heard the farmer's wife crying aloud. The farmer was shouting loudly too. Palakkal knew this was normal. He had seen and experienced what the farmer would become when he is violent. He shuddered with fear at the thought of how the farmer would punish him later for his mistake. He thought of running away, though he knew that the farmer would chase after him and catch him finally. But the woman's heartbreaking cry could not be neglected. It wounded Palakkal's innermost self. A sudden fire in the nerves awakened Palakkal. He stopped thinking and ran into the house. The woman was lying on the floor and the man was kicking on her abdomen. Palakkal saw an axe leaning on the wall. The axe rose and lowered once. The headless farmer fell down on the floor like a tree. That was the end of the tyranny of the phallus! That is to say, Palakkal's liberation from the tyranny of the phallus.

The farmer was long gone. Palakkal replaced the farmer. He lived with the farmer's wife. They became man and woman. Fat and ugly may she be, yet she was a woman, and she made him a man! The tyranny of sodom was forgotten. The tyranny of the phallus was forgotten. Palakkal now learnt the pain and pleasure of the phallus... and that of the vagina. He loved her. He loved the farmer's children, a boy and girl, as his own. Life seemed settled and peaceful. But fate had it otherwise. A plague broke out in that place killing a lot of unworthy souls. The farmer's wife, and children, were not spared indeed. Putting fire on their bodies, Palakkal did not cry. This time he felt his liberation. Liberation from the tyranny of a woman's love. A woman's erotic love. And his own love and lust for her!

Liberated from the order of life, self-less love, and tyrannies of passion, that of phallus and vagina, Palakkal thus gained the ultimate mental and physical freedom. He was free to choose his own life now, free to go anywhere and free to die also if he so desired, without asking or thinking for someone or something. Sitting under a tree Palakkal asked himself what was next! Having known the pains and pleasures of life and lust, he decided to go away. He did not know where, but away... away from life, lust, pains, pleasures, and tyranny. He realised then that he had to go away from humans! He realised that he had to cease to be human. "I am not human, I am a monster" [1], he thought. He rose to his feet and entered the dark forest, alone, with no fear and with almost no aim.

Maybe continued....

[1] Slavoj Zizek