Life-en-treats

Many months ago, I had the good chance of watching a play in the yakshagaana style, Venuvisarjana . Performed solo by Mantapa Prabhakara Upadhyaya; organized by the Ramateertha Foundation. Mantapa Prabhakara donned the role of Radha and charmed us by walking and talking like a woman. But this play was not just about a man wearing a woman's clothes and playing her role perfectly. There was more in store for us. If it was a story about Radha and Krishna, it's a story about love, is it not? What else can it possibly be? Mind you, I didn't say love story... Venuvisarjana is a story about love, it reflected upon what love is, what Radha's love for Krishna was like and why it stands as exemplary for all times. The play captured Radha's love for Krishna, her contempt for his pranks, their playful togetherness, the torment she faces in the small everyday separations from Krishna, knowing fully that he must just then be on his way to meet her and numerous such other ...

I have been browsing the web for at least 7 years now, yet I had failed to discover this thing called the online diary. My blog for me worked both as a space where I would learn writing, think and also put out intensely personal thoughts. Good for me, I finally did discover the online dairy and have one now. Its a place where one can write out affirmations. And affirmations are what I need to write up my PhD dissertation. An online diary can be made public or kept private: it is entirely up to keeper. I was weary of the version of self-hood found all over the web...very declarative, sure, excessive with self-analysis, and lots of hullabaloo about what I have on my mind, what music and mood I am into and so on. It was all about putting into one smart, cheeky line what you go through from one day to another. With friends and acquaintances all knowing everything about you, vulnerability is the only word I can think of and it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. As if one was not vulner...

By: Sushumna Kannan Date: 2010-01-11 Place: Bangalore It's funny how The West looked at The East once upon a time, but things have changed, or have they? Sushumna Kannan questions the stereotypes of India in western media Star Movies, as part of what it called "Diwali Extravaganza" showed the four Indiana Jones movies this Diwali. To put it simply, I was taken aback. One of the four of the Indiana Jones movies Indians Jones and the Temple of Doom is set in India. The film was made in 1984 and effectively shaped much of Americans' beliefs about India throughout the 80s. Young Americans believed that India was indeed a place where monkey brains made dinner and eye-balls were to be found in soup. Tourists hesitated from visiting India. Diaspora Indians all over the world have been traumatized by the representations of India in this movie and are tired of answering anxious questions posed by their closest friends and colleagues. Yes, this is indeed the scene. And...

Today was a great day for me! I finished reading the Tiruppavai and the Varanam Aayiram. And loved it. I regret I wont be able to read it in Tamil. But I shall soon learn the recitation in Tamil from my mother. I know the first few verses already. The meaning is lovely: who can resist loving Krishna? All the stanzas where the young girls ask their girlfriends to wake up early on, resonates so much with my current dilemma between waking early and dozing some more. Ha ha! It's a dilemma of great magnitude it seems...as if it is to do with the very zest one feels for life and the cozy invitation of the bed, and the inimitable, sweetest sleep that touches you at exactly at 7 am, which Tagore too salutes quite nicely somewhere. The psychology of the late risers is so aptly captured in this text! Next in line on my ever-expanding reading list is the biography of Shri Ramanuja.

K.N. Ganeshaiah interweaves many disciplines into his stories Padmapani by K.N. Ganeshaiah, Ankita Pustaka, Rs. 120 Padmapani is a collection of eight extraordinarily brilliant stories. You read them and will sure be left with a good hangover; questions, alternate possibilities, twists and turns will haunt you in good measure. For, here is a book that recreates the genre of the thriller and is highly engrossing: what do ants swarming up in groups have to do with US planes flying across a small town in India? Why exactly do the paintings of Ajanta seem feminised? Has the curse on the Mysore Maharajahs been realised? What’s the mystery of the village Goddess and her miracles? Facts and fiction are so woven into each other that readers will feel an irresistible urge to shoot an e-mail to the author and confirm: ‘This is fiction, right?’ As if to test us, Ganeshaiah faithfully reproduces photographs and other historical details his stories are set in. Combining the styles of travel-writing...

First WB and then World Movies showed Before Sunset and Before Sunrise some months ago; two movies that can be seen independent of each other but are also good when watched sequentially. This movie manufactures tears in my body, but does not help with expelling it. Such is its sense of humour. Not sad at all, not happy surely--and not classifiable in those terms at all. The colour this movie splashes about is the colour of truth. An exploration into the myriad forms of love, disappointing relationships and my favourite part: a prophecy lived out. I seriously recommend this movie to those amateurs among us who have seen few movies, little life and even less of relationships. I cannot help saying that, and sounding imperious! Art makes us better and these movies are ART. But, of course, it takes a long long time to even understand art and then benefit from it. Like everything else, it also possesses the ability to violate us. Art makes better human beings because it provides for us...

A very deep question has been bugging me for quite sometime now. You could call it, that eternal question about the nature of love and human beings and even dismiss it because it's a difficult one. But the eternality of this question is somewhat transposed by the given timeframe, by the very concrete nature of its aspects that binds us humans, as does breath to body. How has the economic downturn affected relationships? I imagine there were households that fought about the sudden cut in resources. Changes in lifestyle must have been hard to enforce, upon others, upon oneself. The confidence of those given pink slips must have dipped even if there was some consolation in the large scale-ness of the phenomena. Occasionally, it must have felt a little like a natural disaster. People must have faced regret, sorrow and a sense of betrayal, with many relationships strained. And what of those who decided to say 'no' to life because they lost their jobs? It was only much later that...