The day after my best day

Just finished No Condom No Sex and what a relief that has been. Films always tend to grow on you towards the end. That’s the worst possible phase to loose out because that when you are doing what most essentially has to be done; finish in style.

Editing was a bit tiring towards the end, because of the complexities of the software that we used. Although it was far simpler than some of the other tools available in the market but the creative process drains you and you are left with nothing but a tired feeling of accomplishment. In fact you don’t feel that accomplishment either as you have gone through so much toil any amount of success in return seems to be dwarfed by the efforts put in. However, you still cannot take disappointments at this stage. This is strange. Success doesn’t make to ecstatic, but failures dip you down.

Before my next project I will take up certain writing assignments. Writing oxygenates me. I think I have used that word “oxygenate” many other times too. I like it, one of those rare words who are able to measure up to the emotion behind. Writing is mainly a challenge as my mind wanders into too many plots at the same time. This morning I actually wrote 3 different stories simultaneously. Absurd? I don’t know. I might want to develop a style of my own soon or I will fall into the danger of loosing sight soon. Some of those plots die their natural death. But once started, a plot doesn’t leave you that easily, even if it dies. It lives in your memory and come back stronger later.

So, one good news is that now days I don’t have to deal with writer’s block. I am kind of superstitious; I don’t want to talk about it lest it may hit me again. But what I suffered from was not exactly writer’s block. It was amateur’s block. But I am now suffering from a new block which is more profound than the earlier one. My obsessions to avoid clichés are bothering me. No matter what writing I do, I always come out dissatisfied. It raises big questions. Questions that have unpleasant answers. Where ever I see any interesting writing I look for that element of originality that outshines the rest of the piece. I feel I lack the spunk. I become glum and restless. The battle goes on, until one moment comes where I see that phrase, in my grasp. Then I move on.

Brush Strokes

I have been having various emotional experiences yet not been able to put them into words. Sometimes I wonder what is more oxygenating to me; reading or writing. I read mostly to reach to those hidden emotions where once reached, I don’t want to come back to reality at all. The fiction becomes a bridge to travel to the reality within me. I see reality but only perceive it when fiction intoxicates me.

About writing
For me, writing is rarer yet more permanent. When you lift the pen, you don’t merely put thoughts on paper, you churn yourself, for all the emotional imbalances. Inevitably, words only come out when you want to create a balance out of an unbalanced situation within you. When I write I feel more close to my inhibitions, more concerned about my fears.

Poetry
Writing poetry is another difficult experience to bear. Like someone said, “as a writer you have a whip which could only be used for self-flagellation”. But the fruits are so enriching that you want to go through the pain and fire to see the end.
A full-blooded poem is a journey to a road less travelled (to use the cliché). Once you embark on that inner journey within, the road gets wider and you get lonelier. The absolute solitude of those moments of thoughts sets a rhythm in you which few people experience. Those who claim to have had a ride on this inner rhythm are gifted.

Why say it out?
Why a few things cannot be left unsaid? Why does human heart seek satisfaction by opening out an emotional secret? I see that many story tellers create situations and circumstances where people move towards that center point of utter revelation. And worse when others around them seem to be questionably interested as if the whole set up was meant only for that one moment when the character will speak her heart out. When the emotion was inside the character somehow the audiences were carrying the burden too and when it is blurted out, the audiences feel unburdened. This drains them out and emptiness follows. You almost feel cheated. Things should be left unsaid when there is no particular motive to reveal them. If it is not a narrative necessity, don’t speak out.

Fly in the eye

A striking moment occurred to me yesterday when I was watching something beautiful and imaginative on the screen. The image does not escape me yet. It has lingered on ever since. It was the image of the eyes of a dying horse and of the tiny flies hovering over it. Death was waiting to embrace the animal and flies to eclipse the eyes, but he was still breathing on. His eyes were dozing off never to open again.

There were other some very touching moment through the 2 hour long film called “Waltz With Bashir”. I am sure many of you have seen this film and agree to what I am about to say. This film takes you through the broken images of the lost memory of a war soldier in Israel. Although the film revolves around this character but the theme is essentially war. What is most striking about the film is the freshness of the story and psychological element around it. It depicts brutality of the war yet avoids direct narrative. Hence the overall effect is quite sublime and profound.

This is animation at its best. You cannot make out the fine line between the real and the surreal and the film travels between these two genres very effortlessly. You hardly notice the shift. Sometimes you are transported to the war scene with guns and flares, and interspersed between these are dreamlike experiences owing the complex nature of human mind and how it reacts to warlike situations. There are also some very interesting almost scientific insights into the minds of humans especially during trauma and war.

The film is very brisk in the narrative but never hurries on to you. It pauses to ponder when it should doesn’t drag on when it shouldn’t. The film gets over in under 100 minutes and ends up telling a whole lot of things about life, war, people and crime, mostly through those striking images. It is an irony that whatever you can achieve with animation can hardly ever been imagined other genres yet there are very few experiments in animation in most of the big film industries. Agreed that you see a lot of animation work but most of it carries a stereotype of big entertainment value rather than serious and solemn cinema. If the success of the cinema is measured by how much it moves you and whether is it able to give you something which is unique in nature and very distinctive observation about life then this film has be of a great value to the world of cinema and viewers.

बढे चलो

एक बार फिर वही हुआ जिसका अंदेशा था
झारखण्ड में खंडित जनादेश।
फिर सिलसिले शुरू होंगे,
खरीद फरोख्त और सीटों के बन्दरबाट के
फिर मारकाट मचेगी

अन्याय के नारे गूंजेंगे फिर शांत हो जायेंगे,
ताकि आगे की कार्रवाई शुरू हो
कुछ जेबें गरम हों,
कुछ घरों की आग से

जल जंगल जमीं सब जायज है
मगर हर जायज चीज़ जरूरी नहीं
जिसको आगे बढ़ना हो वो रास्ता खुद निकाले
खुद को जलाये या दुनिया को
इतनी दूरदर्शिता लेकर सोचना बेकार है
आज में जीने में ही भलाई है

उद्योग ही विकास है
उनकी जरूरत सर्वोपरि,
क्यूंकि वे समाज का स्तर ऊँचा किये हुए हैं
वे हमारे देश की बैसाखी हैं
उनके विषय में बहस निरर्थक है,
इसीलिए कुछ समाज के उत्तराधिकारियों का
उनके इशारों पर खेलना अनुचित नहीं,
जो वादे किये जा चुके हैं,
उनसे पीछे नहीं हटा जा सकता,
अनदेखा नहीं किया जा सकता।

आदिवासी क्या हैं ?
उस सभ्यता के पद चिन्ह,
जिन्हें परिवर्तन की हवाओं से मिटना होगा,
और आखिर वो भी तो गतिशील समाज हैं,
जिसमें कुछ भी ठहरा नहीं रह सकता।

यह जरूरी नहीं कि
सारी मानव जाती सिर्फ जल जंगल जमीं की उपासना में जुट जाये
और भी मक़ाम हैं काबिल-ऐ-हासिल

जो जा चुका

वो अक्सर कल मैं ही जीती थी
अपनी आज की अनुभूतियों को,
किसी कल के लिये समेटती थी
खुद को आज की बारिश में इसीलिए भिगोती थी,
ताकि कल उसका मज़ा हासिल कर सके।

हर आनंद, हर चुटकी को इस तरह संजोती थी,
मानो कल के श्रोता को बखान की तैयारी में हो
आज की लहर को,
कल बन जाने पर अविरल निहारती थी
जीवन के सफ़र को,
समृति बन जाने पर गुजारती थी।

उसके मन-सरोवर में,
कल के कई चलचित्र मौजूद थे,
जिन्हें वह उत्सुकता से सुनाती थी
जो बीत गया स्वर्णयुग था,
ऐसी उसकी मान्यता थी

Empire of the Sun

My writings tend to be very autobiographical and direct in its prose. I begin to delve more into myself and more hidden areas of my mind get illuminated. Thus begins a journey into an alien yet distinctly familiar land which never seems to run out of surprises.

I few hours ago I was watching a film called as “Empire of the Sun”. The story is about the life of a boy who is caught in the crossfire between China and Japan during the Japanese takeover of China in 1941. The film like any other Spielberg film doesn’t waste a single moment to move the story ahead and the narrative progresses at a brisk speed. Yet there are instances when the film allows you to take a pause to reflect on the dreams and aspiration of the boy around whom the story revolves. The film starts portraying the realities of slow but steady collapse of China’s civil structures during the Japanese invasion, even as the British empire is shrinking rapidly and how the whole country, especially Shanghai, becomes a hostage into the hands of mighty Japanese forces. This sets a perfect stage of parallel narratives, one that of a military war and other an emotional battle fought by a little boy. As the history has unfolded, we all have witnessed how China has made Japan apologise for every single war crime of those times.

The film is a very direct narrative of the dreams and triumph thereof of an English boy whose father was a successful business man in the pre world war China. He was filthy rich and hence famous with some very important connections in the world of politics and business. Although it was common knowledge that Japan and China would soon enter into a war given the Japanese fascist ambitions during Second World War, no one actually believed that Japan would sabotage the social and political fabric of China so completely.

During the pre war scenes the film also tries to portray how British almost lived in a parallel China created to suit their comfort, stateliness and opulence. We see some very pleasing images of the British upper class enjoying Christmas together, with their sumptuous dinners and fancy dresses. We also see the images of a subservient China out to serve the British Also, there is the other part of China which is marginalised, underprivileged, and hungry, with its dark and narrow lanes where you cannot see beyond the next turn.

We see all this through the eyes of a school boy with a curious mind aspiring to become an air pilot. This film is as much about the war as it is about the little dreams of the boy. As the story progresses, his passion for flying seems to grow on him, as if everything around him seems to scheme up to turn his dreams into reality. As the music of his life, as it plays around him in the form of his little pleasures of seeing his small aspirations coming true, seems to strike a melody, the chord suddenly snaps. You are thrown in the din of utter poverty and ruthlessness of concentration camps. But the dreams of that boy still linger on and somehow life doesn’t want to deprive him of those little spells of charm when he sees his object of dreams, the fighter plane.

And this is where lies the filmmakers’ biggest triumph, the innocent belief of a boy, which never seems to renounce his aspirations in the face of doom and hopelessness. Despite many flaws in the film itself, you feel a divine touch of the indomitable spirit of life in the form of a tiny hope which never gets shaken by the blizzards of war.

Hedda Gabler

वह उसे बेहद चाहती थी,
इसीलिए माफ़ कर न सकी।
जानते हुए भी कि,
उस रिश्ते की मौत निश्चित है,
साथ उसके इन्साफ कर न सकी।

इर्ष्या में जल जल कर,
हालात को बद से बदतर बनाती रही,
योजनाबद्ध तरीके से अपनी उल्फत का,
रेशा रेशा उखाड़ती रही।

वो उस कोरे कुहासे में,
उफक की रोशनियाँ खोजती रही,
खून से लिखे अल्फाजों को,
अपने ही खून से पोछती रही।

उस पुराने प्रेम को पा जाना चाहती थी,
उसे इस जहाँ से कहीं दूर,
किसी अनोखे क्षितिज पर,
पहुँच जाना चाहती थी।

लेकिन वो उसकी कुर्बत पा न सकी,
तो उसे उफनती लपटों में झोंक दिया,
जिस तलवार पे बाकी थे यादों के छींटे उसके,
उसे ख़ुद के सीने में भोंक दिया।