CINEMA PARADE

This is an unplanned post.

Blame my laziness or may be something more sublimely intricate, but its getting difficult to get the words hovering around my head to bring within a mental frame of reference. Like the tiny winged arthropods looming all over, it's getting harder to tame. (No reference to the Obama-Fly Swat whatsoever)

Have watched a parade of cinema, Have resumed the reading spree with Orhan Pamuk's Snow. (Oh! I HAVE to read him more).

I'm an ardent Michel Gondry admirer. At last got to watch his "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". This title has been taken from Alexander Pope's "Eloisa to Abelard". After a long time a film made me happy, I mean a certain uncertain kind of happiness. There is a Joel and Clementine everywhere we look at. Things never change, being forgetful or trying to become one only expedites the entire emotional exercise. The anti narrative format of storytelling leaves one feeling so unsymmetrically wonderful indeed. The things we do feel happening (to) inside us but that never gets visually exemplified, gets a life here. At first I was a bit queasy about watching someone as hilarious as Jim Carrey in a supposedly serious avatar(not accounting The Truman Show) but I was thankfully wrong this time.

My next watch was Almodovar's Volver. I always presumed I would like Pedro Almodovar, I don't know why, but I simply knew. I had a difficult time deciding which one to start with - All About my Mother or Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, or Bad Education. I finally zeroed in on Volver and I was rewarded with a satisfying experience like no other. A bright colourful film portraying women of three generation battling life and it various other encumbrances in the most effervescent way ever.

The third memorable watch being the Oscar winner "The Lives of Others" . I won't attempt to write anything about it, its worthy a watch (or may be more). Brilliant.

And, yes I'm currently taken with this song by Beck (also a part of the soundtrack of Danny Boyle's utterly forgettable "A Life Less Ordinary").

I'm in love with images but not getting enough of them (if only I was able to capture every beautiful moment occuring at all the accidental intervals).

I'm discovering jazz music from the past.

Jazz is beautiful, for melancholic evenings and otherwise.

P.S:

The last film watched was 21. Reminiscent of Ocean's 13.

About Dying Lakes and Bored Being (and her unsensible mutterings)

Deepor beel(a Ramsar site), one of the largest freshwater lakes in Northeast India and the home for many threatened species of birds and rich flora and fauna has been on the topic of discussion among many environmental enthusiasts. For the generations of fisherman community, who have been dwelling in the villages in and around the beel and who are largely depended on the this wetland as their the major source of livelihood, the threat is felt most acutely.


No, I'm not going to write a report accounting how terrible things are gradually turning out to be (particularly concerning everything related with the environment). I'm just giving away my experience when one fine summer morning recently, I walked to the beel in the company of my dear friend K to see the wild expanse at an early hour. The decision was worth taking. The collage is composed of the very many pictures of the land and the lake captured by me.

The ride on the the boat swirling around the deep marshes and the wild grasses proliferating, along with the company of all the sounds that have become so unfamiliar here otherwise ( e.g the breezes, the splashing of the oars hitting the water surface, the birds and the insects still humming) and the scene:

The pelicans flying over head,

The farmers ploughing,

The goats and pigs busy with their business.

For some time everything was at a standstill. Frozen moments.

The oarsman had been very kind, he was just returning from his daily early morning (read:2 am) fish-hunts. On being asked about the birds and the lake over the years, all he said, "Things have changed, now there are so less birds here and the fishes, well.... The lake is shrinking."

The ride ended soon

As far as my life is concerned, things are pretty staid.

My days sum up with the variables thus mentioned below:
Varied music (have been getting my eardrums muffled with Simon & Garfunkel, Incubus, Travis, The Shins and Coldplay)
Empty everydays, (surfing is all I've been doing)
and occasional cinema (watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 8 1/2, a repeat of Bandidas and 27 Dresses)
The ultimate equation formed is not that satisfying .
The sudden and unpredictable rainy nights and the rearing long warm summer mornings are so not apt for feeling all spirited.

Varieties: VIGNETTES

Recently (or more properly), immediately after the exams, I went to Guwahati basically to achieve some subliminal form of unwinding (whatever I mean by that!). Well, what followed was a series of misadventures (Read: The bus, a night super, broke down in the middle of nowhere at 1.45 am. We somehow managed to get in the cabin of a bus that dropped us till Shillong where we got down at a friend's place to put up for the night.. er early morning).

The pictures posted here are mementos of one of the most beautiful places in India. I did not get to spend a considerable amount of time there but these images only makes you want more and these are nothing, really.

These flowers can be found trailing the entire quarter campus (and most other unguarded places all throughout Meghalaya). Oh! the magic you spin, the invisible perfumes emanating from your wild blossoms!

At 5.40 am, this is how the streets of Shillong bade us good bye.

Well, this picture was taken in the return journey while somewhere in Meghalaya, the bus was going through one of its rigorous 'Police Checking.'

A Tribute to "Failed Feelings"

This is exactly the fate of emotions when they run too high- they spill over. How to gather up and unwrap these feelings (treasured and kept in custody for so long) which are too accustomed to the darker corners ?

The fire that fed these feelings was thriving on the leftover heat but it was bound to get cold, like most other living things. The irony is that every time when she thought that the evening was about to give way to the dark night(at last), there arrived a singular note that would be enough to keep the fire of hope burning and let her continue with her dreams. But the one who should have felt the underpinnings of these hidden admiration failed to see through even after she had tried every possible way to make the emotions legible but this seemed to be one feat utterly impossible to be accomplished. She never knew she was so hard to read.

She has been always left ashore.

Life is simple if seen from one undisturbed angle, we make it complex and unruly, it seems. Her fault lies in the fact that she lives in a hyped world of her own where everything is so happy: happy thoughts, happy faces, happy dreams, fulfilled feelings. But the reality is severely simple. This note written as a tribute to her failed feelings (failed because it never saw the light of the day, failed because it means nothing to anybody, failed because she had no right to feel them, anyways) will be drifted away in the saline river of tears, may be. The words will get blurred but she is happy to see that other people are getting more reasons to smile and be happy. A part of her world thus survives with the collective collusion of other's happy sides. Not everyone is required to end up like her.

A banished angel treading on the path smeared with the blood of her own failed feelings that were never understood.