The Book of Disquiet ("I am Someone Else's Dream")

We, humans, are people who by and large live and behave conforming to our social identities. A waiter who looks and behaves truly as a waiter; a priest, truly as a priest; a manager, truly as a manager; and so on. You can often see a Brahmin, whose appearances, behaviour, habits and the symbols he is wearing gives an unmistakable look of a Brahmin. So does a Muslim, and so does many others. Barring the social identities, which we conform to, what are we? Merely humans? I don't know if I can say that. But I always feel I have to assume an identity externally to fit into situations, social expectations and my profession, although internally I feel differently. Yet, how others look at me, the identity they assume in me, which may be expressed in their occasional, unsolicited feedbacks, suggestions or remarks, is still something entirely different. This difference between what I internally feel what I am, what I have to assume and show externally, and what others assume about me, this suffocating rift between different identities of mine, is, what I think, Fernando Pessoa's writings try to express. Maybe, Pessoa is much more complex than this; maybe he is much more different. But I am talking about what I could capture from his writings.

What I feel internally is not very coherent. It always drifts freely. I feel differently at different times. I have altogether different and often conflicting thoughts at different times. For that matter, none of my identities are the same. None of them are coherent. I have no integral identity. This lack of integrity is confusing and the root of a lot of existential anxieties. Normally, people may not take it seriously. Many may not even be aware of this. Some might be aware feebly, but would not have thought about it. What if I take it very seriously? What if I try to analyze myself and my identities so seriously? Then I will become Pessoa! Can I say that?

Pessoa identified his different kinds of thoughts and he realized they were even different types of thought processes. He was crazy, he gave different identities to them, inventing different names and biographies for each of them. He allowed each of them to write poetry, creating varieties of poems. Each expressed different philosophies, different themes. He called his different identities 'hetronyms'. 

'The Book of Disquiet' was written by Bernando Soares, one of Pessoa's many hetronyms, and this book is perhaps the only prose Pessoa has written. Written as a series of daily journals, the book expresses the core of Pessoa's inability to conform to an identity, or his lack of identities. If no identity is assumed, I feel myself only as a consciousness through which thoughts, dreams, imaginations are flowing incessantly, incoherently, discontinuously. What can I make of them? What do I perceive as the center of my thoughts? The thoughts and dreams are not part of any identity. So, I may feel they lie outside me. Everything I see, sense, perceive is me. I am in the clouds, in the horizon, in the wind. My life just pass through and my experience of it is quite detached from me. This detachedness can be sensed in every line in the book. Moreover, when I write it assuming an identity – Bernando Soares – what do Soares feel? He does not have a body for himself nor any sensory organs. What he sees, hears, experiences, are all through Pessoa's body. This makes Soares feel more detached from the experience than he should be. And that makes the writing more abstract and beautiful. For example, Soares feel he is imprisoned inside an infinitely large prison, which, because is infinite and hence is as large as the world, cannot be escaped. His inexpressible desire, which is repeated throughout the book, is not to have been existed. He does not desire to exist nor cease to exist, for both for him are meaningless. He desire not to have existed, to have been saved from the emptiness that he is experiencing. He is very keen in observing everything, living and non-living, around him. Perhaps, he is helpless in that he can't help observing all that happens, even the minute and insignificant experiences and sensations. A sight of the sunset, clouds, rain or the blue sky creates uncontrollable flow of thoughts in him. Thus he feels connected to the world around him. He is so alone yet connected to everything around. That makes his loneliness more suffering. “Whether I like it or not, in the confused depths of my fatal sensibility, I am all these things,” he writes somewhere. He also writes, “I look for myself, but finds no one.” And he is disturbingly aware that he doesn't really exist but his whole experience comes through some one else's body. Thus he writes, “I do not know if I exist, it seems possible to me that I might be someone else's dream.”

All the dreams, imaginations, thoughts, all uncontrollable, makes Soare's mind always noisy. This disquiet is what the name of the book implies. The Book of Disquiet. I am only half-way through the book. It is abstract, disturbing yet addictive.

Sandeep

Bangalore

17-Sep-2015

Tarkovski: Life, Meaning, and Solitude

I have heard people saying that there are no art cinemas and commercial cinemas. There is only cinema. Obviously, these idiots have not watched Tarkovski. His cinema is purely personal and hence fully artistic. Watching his Zerkalo (The mirror) was a beautiful experience. The way we remembers our past is in a nonlinear and distorted manner. As time goes on, we interpret our own past in different ways. And our memories of our past is only what we own in our life. Once we lose our past, we lose our identity and life itself. At the end of our lives, it is our memories of our past that will convey the ultimate meaning of our lives. In Zerkalo, he really has captured how one remembers his past through dream-like sequences. That makes the movie very beautiful.

I just finished watching Solaris (or, Solyaris) . Without Zizek's Pervert's Guide to Cinema, I would not have understood a bit of it. Thanks to Zizek! Solaris proposes that the meaning of life is ultimately unknowable and one has to be at the end of ones life to understand if his life had any meaning. It is vain to seek the meaning in love and knowledge and so on for they create only fantasies of meaning. When one loves, just love. It is not for seeking the meaning that one loves. But that one loves is the meaning. It is no worth to seek the meaning of human life. But human life is the meaning of life. I know this is not clear. I need to explain it. But let's try another time. For, now I don't know if I have understood it!

The following is an interview by Tarkovski in which he describes his views on life, its meaning, art and solitude. I am touched by his views. How profound they are!!!

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)

Cultural implications of the Star Wars

I watched Star Wars recently. A series of six nice movies! I loved watching them and enjoyed very well. The settings, technical perfection, direction, editing, background score and cinematography were all excellent. It was two weeks back that I heard of the discovery by NASA of a planet with two suns (Kepler-16b) 200 light years away from earth, in a remote galaxy in the news. The news paper also mentioned with enthusiasm the similarity of this planet to Tatooine, a planet with two suns in the Star Wars series. How beautiful would be the sun set in that planet! It was this thought that sparked my desire to watch Star Wars!

The sunset in Tatooine!

However, despite my fascinations about the movie, I have some immeidate, arguably cynic thoughts on these movies. Since the movies are very popular, I note them down below. Perhaps, these are some of the reasons behind the popularity of the movie?

1. Anakin Skywalker, his son Luke Skywalker and daughter Lea Skywalker are somehow the chosen ones. Their blood has some special qualities compared to "normal" humans, and they have strong presence of the [cosmic] forces in their body. Even without training, the Luke skywalker is able to excel in the so called Jedi fighting arts, which otherwise a normal human takes long time and effort to learn. The life of the father skywalker proves that if the chosen one becomes evil, he is the most evil! So there is a division: chosen ones with special abilities and normal ones. Isn't this pure racism? Even more, isn't the concept of chosen ones and the qualities of their blood quite similar to Hitler's Aryan supremacy? (Two years back I had gone for watching a classical dance of a girl in Chennai. In the introduction her teacher, who herself is a prominent dancer, in the presence of a well-known classical singer from south India claimed that, "classical arts are not for everyone, but one should have it in the genes!". She added that her student had it in her genes through her father and family. Hearing the teacher's praise for her student, everyone in the audience except I applauded with cheer. I felt NAUSEA, extreme nausea. But this is India. Unlike Hollywood, we are third world. I'm afraid my friends in Infosys will approach bounty killers to kill me if I call India third world.)

2. The settings in the Tatooine planet is very similar to Arabian towns, while in Coruscant, where the Jedi lives, the settings are similar to a Western country (United States?). (Interestingly, Tatooine was set in Tunisia, the North-African country encompassing Sahara desert.) Tatooine has no plants and trees but only deserts. The natural inhabitants of this planet are ruthless, cunning, fat and hedonistic. Anarchy is the rule and the slavery prevails. Doesn't this indicate the unconscious reflection of the Western perspective of the Arabian countries and Islam?

Town in Tatooine

3. Only two or three blacks are in the film's caste. Samuel Jackson is the only black in the film's leading characters. When they are called humans, why no black and no Asians? On the other hand, many non-human characters, who are inhabitants of various planets, speak English with Russian or Spanish or other accents (I'm not good at recognizing them all). Why this irony? What is the implication? Again racism?

Samuel Jackson as Jedi  Mace Windu

4. Anakin Skywalker is "converted" from the side of the good to the side of the evil by the villain Sith, and becomes the famous Darth Vader. Finally, he is redeemed. Does this at least indirectly frown upon religious conversions?

5. Natalie Portman's character,  Amidala, the Queen of the planet Naboo, always say "democracy should be protected", "people are suffering" and "people must be saved". In spite of this, the movie never portrays the so called people or their sufferings. Instead, the order of the world is restored by a minority of "heroes". Doesn't this imply the role of the entire human society is less important compared to the "heroes"?

Natalie Portman as Queen Amidala

6. Queen Amidala was a strong woman and used to fight in the battles herself despite being a Queen (A Queen who tries to protect democracy? Don't ask me this ironic question. In Malayalam, we have an old saying: "no questions possible in a story" -- maybe, the remnant of the old feudal times or so when no questions were allowed in the society. But we are in modern times, and we should ask questions even in the stories! Don't we?). This continued till her marriage only. After her marriage, she is just a house wife and is not involved in politics or any other serious acts. She lives as a shadow of her husband -- Ankin Skywalker. Doesn't this say that the role of a good woman in the society is to be a good house wife?

7. The Luke Skywalker is portrayed as "the last hope" of the society by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda, two Jedis themselves. But all the Luke Skywalker cares about till the end is not the society or social order but his friends. How can such a selfish person be "the only hope" of a society? Doesn't this imply some kind of racism or something? I smell "something"; only I can't understand it. What is it?

8. When any battle is about to begin, the "heros" say things like "now the fun begins" etc. Sometimes, some characters almost indicate that the only solution is war and diplomacy can't solve the problem. Isn't this plain glorification of war?

9. How much does the succes of Star Wars reflect the ancient, barbarous human instincts and beliefs?

10. I personally felt the planet where the Jedis and the parliament are as the United States, Queen Amidala's planet as Britain, Tatooine as Arabia, etc. In truth, can we relate Star Wars to the story of our planet alone?

Jedi Yoda

Darth Vader

For unknown reasons, though, my favourite characters are Darth Vader and Jedi Yoda. Possibly this reflects my unconscious worship of a wise-hero and an anti-hero!

All images: courtesy to wikimedia.org.

The Matrix and the Monte-Carlo Simulations

Recently, I watched The Matrix trilogy, again, just for entertainment. The whole series of events, to be honest, was just funny. Taking the "red pill" to "wake up to reality"! OK, anything is fine in a movie. I wonder what those "awaken" human beings are going to do in the "real" world! What are they going to build? What difference it makes! At least, in the first part of the movie, there was one "bad" guy who felt the reality was too unbearable. I liked him. The supposed villains, that is, the machines, are truly not conquered, it seems, in the third part. Maybe, they intended it as a shift in the plot.

Neo and his "simulations"

So much has been discussed about it by now, as the final part of the movie was released eight years back. But there is something interesting in the movie that I would like to ponder upon: the scene where Neo enters "the door with the lights", seeking for the "source", and meets the "Architect" (apparently a computer program) of "the Matrix". The Architect is shown to be an old person god knows why. In that scene, Neo's face is shown in a large number of computer monitors. As the Architect talked to him, each of Neo's images responded in a different way. The actual Neo's response came after a pause. Those monitors were predicting Neo's response, possibly making use of its knowledge of Neo's personality, his behavioural patters and his past. That scene was the only interesting scene to me. Because, what I was seeing was actually a Monte-Carlo simulation of human behaviour!

In Monte-Carlo simulation, we study a random phenomenon by simulating it many times, independently, and recording the output of each simulations. If the number of these iterations is large, we can more or less expect that we have recorded most of the possible outcomes of the particular phenomenon. This gives a fair understanding of what phenomenon that we are dealing with. Monte-Carlo simulations are used in experiments pertaining to various fields such as signal processing, physics, biology, economics, business studies, and so on. To have a nice Monte-Carlo outlook, I suggest you to read Fooled by Randomness, by Nicolas Taleb.

Coming back to Neo's case, Neo is the random phenomenon and the Architect's statements to Neo are the excitations or inputs. Neo's responses are expected output, but, by simulation, the computers generated Neo's responses simultaneously and independently; and they were all quite different! Isn't it the same in our "real" world, outside the movie, too? As we face the everyday life, we respond in some manner. Many believe that a person's behaviour and the way he responds to his surroundings describe him completely. We say, "Oh, he is such a mean person" or "he is a lazy fool" or "she's a pompous girl" by studying people's behaviour. And yet, it is a random outcome! It could be different! Then can we rely on our own judgements of a person? Rather, how "accurate" are our "estimates" of the personality of a person from his behaviour? Maybe, we have to observe a person for a long time and study his behaviour in different circumstances to know him well. Also, we have to see how varying is his behaviour and "mood". What I mean is that a person responded angrily to a simple question today does not necessarily mean that he is short tempered. Maybe, he did not have a nice breakfast in the morning and so he was annoyed. We have to observe him patiently for a few days, on different occasions. It may turn out that he is actually very kind and soft-spoken! Well, statistics describes accuracy in terms of variance -- a measure of how varying the output of a random experiment can be. Do you see the connection? It is in order to study the variance that a Monte-Carlo simulation simulates an experiment many times -- to see all the outputs.

The Architect, perhaps being very old and having seen six older versions of the Matrix and Neo, very accurately predicts that Neo will respond emotionally rather than intellectually to the situation he was facing -- his lover, Trinity , was under attack, and he had to save her no matter what happens to the Matrix and other human beings! yes, his response was emotional. In that he represents the entire human race. The way humans respond to the every day life is more motivated by emotions than intellect (I'm reminded of reading Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence). I remember the sly expression the Architect bore on his face when he saw that his prediction turned out to be accurate. That was the best scene in the entire Matrix trilogy, to me!

Beyond words

'Perfume -- The Story of a Murderer' is a very good movie, though I would not say that it is an exceptional one. It is the story of a man who had a talent for sensing odour, and the extent of his talent goes beyond the usual human possibilities. For example, he knows the smell of iron, frogs, wood, water, and almost anything around his world. Besides, to sense the smell of something, he does not have to go near it; he can sense it from a distance. Even his sexual attraction towards a girl is manifested through his desire for her body odour, which she loses immediately after she dies. At some point of the movie, he realizes that his body does not have any smell of its own. For him, he is the only person in the world 'who' (or rather, 'what') does not possess a smell of his (its) own. Later, he falls into an obsessive struggle to extract the smells of beautiful women, and own those smells for himself. How? That is the story of this film.

In fact, I have no intention in talking about this movie itself. I am more interested in something else. The above character learns to speak lately in his childhood. Up to the age of ten or twelve, he is unable to convey anything through words. He senses the world through odour. And for him, anything around him is distinguished by its odour. When he finally learns to speak, he realizes that words were quite incapable of expressing the reality around him, what he has seen and felt. He could not find equivalent words for many things in the world as he knew it. It is this point I am interested in.

We all see things around us and feel many things inside our minds. And we identify almost all things within and outside us by words. Probably, man has been able to make his distinguishable mark on earth (or is he/she?) because of words. Thoughts originates as words (or do they?). Without words, no thoughts, no discoveries, no stories, no science, no news, no advertisements, and no "culture". But how do we learn words? Someone teaches us! We understand the world around us through the words someone has taught us! How strange! How mistaken we possibly could be about things around us! Shouldn't we learn words through nature? Why are we not taught like that? What if we are confused between things in the world because we identify them with wrong words? Do we have words for everything around us? At least for every feelings we have? What if we think that we are sad when we actually feel a mix of sadness and happiness? This happens to me many times! What are the words we use for our feelings? Anger, happiness, sadness, melancholy, jealousy, lust, serenity, and what else? Do we have feelings which do not have equivalent names? When I say I am angry, is there only one kind of anger? What if I can have many types of anger but I wrongly identify all of them as just "anger"? Have I really understood what anger is? (If you think I am writing some nonsense and I have gone nuts, you might as well be wondering "does he really understand what he is writing"?)

Buddha said "truth is beyond words" and what one needs is not indoctrination, which is merely knowledge of a few words, but a "transmission outside doctrine, with no dependence on words". Saramago has shown us what a person who can see sees in a world, where everyone is blind. Modern science says we have evolved in order to survive the hardships that we come across in the world. What if we have evolved in such a way that we cannot see what we must not understand? Put together, man is limited, imperfect, and blind in some sense.

Today, someone was wondering if he could realize an ideal lowpass filter (for non-techies, tuning of your radio in a perfect sense, without any extra interference). And by discussion, I could make him see why he could not! The trade-off between time and frequency characteristics, the uncertain principle and the practical non-realizability of infinity! But even then, we can cleanly listen to our radios, watch T.V. and talk to our friends over mobile phones! All these situations need filters. He said "Signal processing is great! Our technology is great!". I replied him "It is the opposite. We are imperfect. Even with imperfect technology, we can do many things that we are doing. We cannot sense any imperfection introduced by technology in radio music, T.V. shows, or mobile conversations. This is because, I repeat, we are limited and we need only limited technology". Will you agree with me? Without technology, we cannot see the infra-red radiation. When we see it by the help of technology, we feel that the technology is excellent. On the contrary, we cannot perceive the imperfection of the technology because whatever imperfections our technology suffers from are all due to the imperfection possessed by us!

Starting from a movie, I have gone to technology. I do not know what is happening to me. Probably, I have really gone insane! Nonetheless, I still dare to wonder what is beyond words?.

Becoming human!

Finally, after a short gap, I watched an excellent movie two days back. I watched it on DVD, along with my wife, and throughout the movie, she kept wondering "how somebody could conceive such different ideas!". Of course, unlike me, she had never got an opportunity to go beyond the usual Hollywood/Bollywood/Malayalam/Tamil shit! But, now, gradually she is ....

The Movie

The movie that grabbed our whole attention for two hours is "The Terminal". It is directed by Steven Spielberg. And Tom Hanks plays the protagonist Viktor Navorski. Tom Hanks has been one of my favourite actors -- how can I ever forget his class performance in Cast Away, The Road to Perdition, Philadelphia and Forrest Gump!

Well! To summarize the movie, Viktor visits New York for some purpose (that's less important, I think) and he belongs to a fictitious East European country, called Krakozhia. By the time he reached the New York airport terminal, civil war erupts back in his country and the government is overthrown. The United States has not recognized the new government and has cancelled all visa given to the citizens belonging to Krakozhia. Consequently, Viktor cannot enter America. Thus he happens to be "a person with no country", and is simply "unacceptable" to America. He cannot fly back to his country until the war is over. He is forced to live in the airport terminal, his passport being confiscated by the authorities. He is left with no money, no place to stay, and no work. On top of it, he knows very little English!

What I have described is the beginning, probably spanning the first twenty minutes, of the movie. The rest of the movie is about his struggles to survive in the terminal. I interpret the story as the struggle of a lonely man, thrown into a completely strange and, above all, indifferent world. His only objective is his survival. He has no identity, no society, no affiliations and associations, and no friends. Have you ever thought what a man would do in such circumstances? Viktor never resorts to anything immoral, but keeps his dignity as a human being throughout. Naturally, the initial concern must be food, and in the modern society, this means money. He discovers several opportunities in the terminal to earn money (watch the movie -- I don't want to kill your pleasure of anticipations). Later, his efforts are to identify and get himself identified with his surroundings. That is to say, to learn the language, to communicate with others, to make relationships, and so on. He has to begin everything from the scratch, like a new-born child! He has to learn how to become a human being. Fortunately, Viktor is admirably creative in overcoming all the difficulties.

Surely, this movie is something I am not going to forget in my life. My wife enjoyed it very much though it was pretty different from her usual taste!

Pirates 4

I watched the "Pirates of the Carribean 4" with a lot of enthusiasm. Well! Jonny Depp as Jack Sparrow ("there should be a captain somewhere in there" :)) was excellent, but the role of Angelica demanded very less from Penelope Cruz. However, the scenes in which both come together were very nice. The film had nothing special which could exploit the 3D vision! Except for a few scenes, the movie experience was merely 2D.

But we relished the coolness which the air-conditioners provided at INOX in this hot summer in Chennai :)

On Baudolino, Snow, and white lies

    "... I am a writer of histories... Where will I put the story that Baudolino told me?" [Niketas]
    "Nowhere. The story is all his. And anyway, are you sure it is true?" [Paphnutius]
    "No. Everything I know I have learned from him, as from him I learned that he was a liar." [Niketas]
    ...
    "It was a beautiful story. Too bad no one will find out about it." [Niketas]
    "You surely don't believe you're the only writer of stories in this world. Sooner or later, someone -- a great liar than Baudolino -- will tell it." [Paphnutius]

This is how Umberto Eco finishes his novel "Baudolino"--just by admitting that "I am that someone (of course, a great liar than Baudolino) who has now told you the great story of Baudolino, which, in turn, is a great lie". Thus he joyfully laughs at himself, and once again reinforces his concept of a novel. For, I remember him saying in "The Name of the Rose" that he (or the narrator in that story) was writing it, claiming to be based on a true historical event but without assuming the narration to be historically true, to enjoy the sheer pleasure of writing. But, at the same time, both his stories named above are very beautiful, investigating on the deep nature of human beings--their love, deception, hatred, jealousy, lust for mysteries etc. And in every aspect these novels are more than imaginative: they are brilliantly intellectual. And this is why I love his novels. I believe that this philosopher-cum-medievalist-cum-semiotician-cum-novelist has written five novels, and I, having finished "Baudolino" this week, am already feeling an internal urge to read all his other works.

"Baudolino" is the story of Baudolino, who lived in twelfth century as an adoptive son of the emperor Frederic, and his mysterious ventures. Specially, he ventures deep into Asia, probably into India, to find a lost Christian kingdom of "Prester John". Baudolino is an intelligent, learned, widely read man, who easily learn any language--a skill that helps him wander into the unknown places. His most celebrated talent is the ability to tell lies so convincingly. Maybe, Umberto Eco means that he was a great story teller. Anyway, the novel is written as is told by Baudolino to Niketas. While reading, like "The Name of the Rose", I was thrown into an unknown medieval world. In this novel also, again as in "The Name of the Rose", the main character (Baudolino) walks through a lost, ancient, underground cemetery, where dead bodies of monks are kept. That was a beautiful moment of the novel.


This weekend, I also finished another novel from another exceptional novelist, which I was reading in parallel with "Baudolino". It was "Snow" by Orhan Pamuk. Unlike "Baudolino", which takes place in twelfth century, in the medieval Christian world and Asia (or India?), "Snow" is set in Kars, a remote city in Turky, in the modern times (90's), in the modern Muslim world. The story is based on the headscarf issue in Turky, and, more than that, it talks about IDENTITY. Yes, a conflict of identity between the Western and Muslim worlds. The perspective of radical Islam is portrayed well. I, being from India, can see the point, and, after reading the novel, have started doubting my own identity as an Indian. To what extend am I really Indian, or Malayalee, for that matter, vis-a-vis am I influenced by Western thought? I don't know. As always, I find an excuse for my ignorance: I am not so intelligent to answer this (any) question.

In "Snow", the author starts narrating the story of his poet friend, Ka, who ventured to Kars to meet the woman of his dreams, Ipek, and to propose her. He is then caught in the political and social issues in Kars. Finally, the author, Orhan, himself becomes a part of the story and talks to us as a character in the story. This was very beautiful. Furthermore, to my surprise, and to provoke me to remember my own opinion on Eco's concept of a novel, a character, Fazil, in "Snow" tells the author, Orhan:

"If you write a book set in Kars and put me in it, I'd like to tell your readers not to believe anything you say about me, anything you say about any of us. No one could understand us from so far away."

To this, the author replies:

"But no one believes everything they read in a novel."

My question: does the author imply that the entire novel was a lie that he created out of his imagination to say something that he wanted to say (of love, deception, jealousy, identity, Western vs Islamic)?

Lately, I have started coveting to become a man, a BIG liar, who can imagine a lot, who has a repletion of words in his consciousness, and to write great stories.... My god (though I am an agnosticist in theory and atheist in practice, to tell a lie), if I were to become so!!!

Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja: A movie

Wonderful! Excellent! Spectacular! Adjectives fail me to describe this work of art: Pazhassiraja, a Malayalam movie about the King Pazhassiraja from Kerala, who fought against the British East India Company in the beginning of 19th century, it is directed by Hariharan for M.T. Vasudevan Nair's script. I am not the one who can write reviews of movies. Let me attempt to describe how I enjoyed this movie.

From beginning to end the movie is tight, breathtaking. Every scene has suspense, and I had to eagerly wait to see things happening. Direction is really good, so disciplined and careful. The movie was more than three hours, but I never felt bored (I was reminded of "Seven Samurai"). The director Hariharan has used every character in the movie very well. Everyone has definite roles except for Dora Baber, I don't know why she got a place in the movie--is it for creating some sentimense? However, the character is funny.

The cinematography is excellent. There are a few visually charming scenes throughout the movie. Especially, there is always the presence of the forest in the movie, which is exploited well. The scene in which a white horse is running through the river, Mammootty taking bath in the river, the camera work in the scene where the "Pazhassi pattalam" (the army of Raja Pazhassi) is shown at the Telecheri fort while the King Pazhassi signs a treaty of peace with the British are very good. And there is the introduction of Sarathkumar--excellent. The fight scenes are also very good.

Regarding acting, I have nothing to say. Every actor has done his / her part very well. Sarathkumar is really fantastic. From his introduction to his death, he was like a fire on the screen. His body structure, agility, proud look, everything is superb. (While watching the movie my mother asked me who that actor was, she felt he was a good actor. I told her, in fact, he really is. This is the debut film for Sarathkumar in Malayalam.) And there comes Padmapriya. Maybe, a female character doing so much stunt is for the first time in Malayalam cinema. She has put immense effort into every scene, especially in action scenes. Has she dubbed for herself? Her Malayalam is not natural but good. If she has dubbed herself, great--keep it up! Characters played by Suresh Menon and Manoj K. Jayan are also good. Suresh Menon is becoming better and better, he has to put more effort to improve his facial expressions. However, compared to his other movies, he acted very well in this one. I have nothing to say about Mammootty, I could never say if he was acting--so natural a performance. Excellent are the performances by other actors like Devan, Suman, Jagathy Sreekumar, Jagadeesh and the actors who gave life to the British characters.

I will never forget the fight scenes. They looked really real. Swordfights by Mammootty and Sarathkumar, and fights using bow and arrow by Manoj K. Jayan and Padmapriya, are taken well. The director and stunt director have taken much care to make the scenes natural, fierce and real. We can really feel the spark when two swords are crossed.

The end was nice though I have the opinion that it resembles like the end of the Hollywood movie "300".

Another thing not to forget to write down is the dialogues. Once again M.T. Vasudevan Nair proved his mettle by using the Malayalam language in the most elagant way. Each dialogue is beautiful, poetic, sparkling and unforgettable.

Someone asked me if it is an art movie or commercial movie. What can I say? I can't distinguish. It is a great work of art, and it is commercial--it attracts people, that's all. Any way, I experienced multiple goosefleshes throughout the movie. And there were long-standing ovations and whistles for every stunning scene, performance and dialogue. I think most of the applause went to Sarathkumar as he had to put more stunts and fights than anyone else in the movie. I confess that I want to see the movie once again.

While searching the internet, I discovered this blog: http://malabardays.blogspot.com/. The blogger Mr. Nick Balmer claims to be the great great great great nephew of Thomas Harvey Baber, the British sub-collector of Thalassery under whose command Pazhassiraja was killed eventually in 1805. Thomas's account of Pazhassi's death is put up by Mr. Balmer in his blog.

Don't watch this movie: "Abre los ojos" A.K.A "Open your eyes"

'Abre los ojos' (Open your eyes) is a Spanish movie directed by Alejandro Amenábar in 1997. I watched it recently and got depressed for a few days. The "hangover" is not yet over. It was deeply felt by my innermost senses. So, my advice to you is this: watch the movie only if you are sure that you are a strong willed person (unlike I am). Of course, this is my subjective view. You can take it, or not!

The movie is Spanish and i had to use subtitles. It is about dreaming and its influence in us. But, the dream continues even after the person (hero) is dead. What is real and what is dream is unknown in the middle of the movie. However, to my consolation, the director demystified everything in the end; otherwise, I would have gone mad (what? madder? Oh, no!).

I am a person who loves movies and novels very much, and some of the stories have a capacity to catch my full attention, and, then, I feel the hero and me are the same. I feel everything that the hero (or any character) feels; I am equally disturbed; and I want to solve the problem (whatever). Abre los ojos was surely such a movie. It talks about love, deception, jealousy, rejection, loneliness, and so on; but the exception is the element of dreaming, and like I said above, of death and the continuation of dreams. Though it can be considered as a science fiction because it entails cryonics, I feel there is more in it. Especially, rejection was deeply felt.

I don't want to say more about the story here; just that I was depressed, and my strength of will to live was at stake for some time :-). But I hope others are stronger than I am and would enjoy watching this movie. I did not enjoy watching this movie but I enjoy having watched it!