Saturday, November 06, 2004

me Job

I have dis tendency to go speek pidgin once ina while reminds me of de
times me was in nigeria. eskoos.
so bout me job. I go work in dees place call crest animation studios fo mumbai.
Hea dey mekam animation cinimas fo small pekins of dem white peepul an
make lotto money.dis place is big man. full o computars. work hours comes from
10:30 and we fineesh de work at 6:30.some time we stay dea to midnight an watcham
cinima. all de computers dem have de cinema.good ones an de bad ones. no polising buseeness hea.no one go shout at you. i ge lorriful work, you fineesh an givam back
propah. very nice. sometime on evenins an sunday we com wi bellyfull of bee or
rum an try de work or de cinima.some o dem buggas play some killa game with de
network and killam each odar an demselfs shouting benchod an moddarchode.
i no likam de games. it is in de middle of dis raca me do de lighting and de
texture job.me hea is de lighting an texture specilist. plenty o sexy girls too fo
timepass. mosta dem no anithin. dem talk an escape. we buggas do all de jobs. we nevar mind. we neva thro dees chikins out, they are like decinema an de killa games.
mekam de pressure small.so so is me work. an fo godssake neva think me only play an no work, de presha kills man.
slcw

Saturday, October 23, 2004

Some times precious things comes to you free, almost free or for ten rupees.
I picked up an old worn out 'The Joy Luck Club' by Amy Tan from a junk shop next to my flat. Actually it was not a second hand bookshop. I was just passing by, my eyes caught sight of a book with the word 'shishi'with a samurai's picture on it. I ve heard Mifune say this word in some Kurosawa film, so I jumped inside and grabbed the book. But it turned out to be some sort of samurai pulp stuff, that too written by a foreigner. Then I noticed another book lying there and asked vendor to pick it up. It was The Joy Luck Club. I hid my excitement because I dont want the vendor to hijack my Joy. Me ask the price he say ten.
I no believe my ears,pay the money fast and ran home, scared that he may change his mind. Been reading it since then, Great book man. I am reading it slow, Like i read de poetry
savouring each word and incidents.

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Christopher Reeve 1952-2004


As a childhood hero 'The Superman', he personified Physical Strength
and Power; as omnipotent and benevolent as a Man God can get.
He bought kryptonian magic into our dreams and made us wish secretly
that one fine morning we will be the master of such powers which will
transform our puny, unimportant life into a super-duper mega adventure
story.

Years later, as one of the life's greatest irony, our Superman fell from a
horse and injured his spine, beginning the most gruelling, painful and vegetable
existence till his death last week. The person whom you saw on the
wheelchair was not Superman, but a broken and biologically useless
human being.

Later, the whole world stood up in awe when they witnessed
the phoenix like ressurection of human spirit from that inert humanbody.
Strenght of this man's spirit grew bigger than the Superman he created. It
gave poeple hope, it made them dream even when there was nothing to
stand upon. It taught the world that nothing could break a human, how
small or puny he may look. It taught them to turn around and look life
straight in the eye and say let's play, .....to roll with the punches.....


Fairwell to my Childhood hero
Source of strength in my Adulthood
slcw

Sunday, October 03, 2004

PC Magazine’s April 2004 choices for the web’s top 100 sites.
sll

The Booklist Center is perhaps the biggest collection of booklists in the virtual world.
slrs sll

Sunday, September 05, 2004

Fobbin wrote to ask why I don’t write anything nowadays: well, Fobbin, the last time I tried, this is what happened—

Okay, write. About what? Yes, that’s the eternal question, isn’t it? Challenges you that does. Oh yes, for my money, I’d never tackle it. Got loads of better things to do. What if…? No, wrong start. I like auto-capitalization. Reminds me of piracy. Guess why.

Break. Predictable? No flow. That’s it. Okay, so I’m not exactly mesmerizing. Blame whom? Bullcrap! Quit? Please do.


slcw

Sunday, August 15, 2004

Getting inside a train in Mumbai

Getting inside a train in mumbai is scarry. You need to have large quantity of Old Monk booze inside you to think of even attemping it. The approach road to the railway station is the point of departure for any quality that is attributed to homo sapiens.People suddenly become cattle, switch off their brains and go auto-pilot. Then like in a trance they join the ones already on the move. They push and snort and kick and chew and stink and moow/brey and step on each others hoofs without mercy.They climb up and down the stairs and finally reach the so called platform.

Mean while some of the cattle might have lost their humbs,fodder, hoofs, brothers&sisters&offspring (courtesy;Bollywood). On the platform the great mass of restless cattle will be pulsing irregularly at the edges where the trains are supposed to come. Finally when the train arrives the clot of cattle wont move back so that the ones in the line of fire can save their noses, boobs, pricks and the toenails from being rudely tickled by the rowdy train. Now that the train have thundered its way in, it triggers off the famous adrenaline rush in the already restless cattle, causing great turbulance inside the dirty bowels of the station. Every beast on the platform has only one motto in his/her mouth."Every cow/bull for himself,the train agaist all". Then the train suddenly stops on the dot. Yes on the dot. No courtesy slowing down for the old cow's sake. On the dot. Suddenly in a great uproar all the bulls shout "cows first" and do the famous dance number "stampede in savanna" by the famous group: The Wilderbeasts. Pure headbanging madness is what follows. Remember Toilet flush. Please dont flush, its the truth.

Avalanche. Landslide. Till the Iron beast is full.

To conclude,let me put down what the railway station has to say about the incident." Once train stopped inside me, like a huge vaccum hose with mouths all over the body, it sucked in almost all the cattle on the plat form."
slcw

Saturday, August 14, 2004

Mumbai is intimidating. Especially for someone who comes from kerala,
where cities are smaller and calmer.From what I saw, mumbai is all about people. In fact any metro-city in India can be defined similarily. People dominate everything. You will never notice the architecture or the trains or the taxis or even the billboards. People distracts your vision, your thinking and your movements. They flow in and flow out of every conceivable orifices of the city. You feel that you are inside a gaint anthill. Remenber ANTZ ?!!

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Ive just finished "Trainspotting" a novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh. A remarkable work. I will post review soon.

Life in Mumbai..... Nothing remarkable. Just like living in any city in India. It has given me a great chance to study the Individual in a crowd.

Monday, June 28, 2004

I have been reading a lot over the last three or four months. It has been books, books, and more books, to the total exclusion and neglect of almost all else. At present, I am going through the delightful Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, who has been a formative influence on my life. I remember the school library being purged of books by Russell after it was revealed that he was the inspiration behind my unorthodox views on the subject of religion. I regret to say that my school teachers were a rather reactionary lot.

Before the Russell book, I had been grappling with a writer who has been a great discovery for me—Samuel Barclay Beckett. At one stretch, I have read four novels, in addition to a play, by this ‘last Modernist’. The play of course was Waiting for Godot—that great mainstay of the Theatre of the Absurd. But more than the play, it was the novels that struck me the most—struck me dumb.

Murphy is a comparatively light work, nevertheless haunting in its portrait of a man who ends up in a mental hospital as a male nurse, so that he may contemplate his situation the more at peace. The odd tone of the work made me suspect that the man behind the work could only have ended up in an institution, like his hero. When I read up on the writer after reading through another three of his novels, I was surprised to be wrong—two years in therapy was all he had to go through!

The three novels Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable constitute a trilogy and surely is one of the most striking works in all literature. In paring down the superfluities that mask the essence of man, Beckett teeters at the edge of the communicable, and in a performance of literary and linguistic bravado, uses language as a tool of impotent communication, and portrays the mind as a hollow of incomprehensibility. The singlemindedness of purpose which led to the realization of this searing artistic vision is humbling. The trilogy is a madly difficult work, but surely reading it is as easy as facing the breeze when compared to the gargantuan effort it must have taken to bring it to fruit.

I have Aeschylus and Shakespeare waiting at my desk. Surely a surfeit. But I feel like a sinner.
slcw

Sunday, June 27, 2004

I am in Mumbai now.
Strolled around Central Railway station.
The victorian architecture is awesome.
I was with my friend Rajesh.
we went closer to study the cornices and the curvings.
then rajesh exclaimed " fucking bloody Indians".
I was surprised because he never sweared. not the least in English.
to my questioning gaze he pointed his finger towards the walls and floors of the building.
Gaaaad!!! the place was... O K I will give you this picture.
Imagine Jackson Pollock working with cowshit, concentrated piss, while havind a bad case of diahhrea, raptured Haemeroids and his mouth full of pan. I am sorry i am terribly at loss with words in explaining what I saw.
On the way back, I bought a copy of sunday Express. I got a tiny but smart kick on my balls when I read that they are planning to name this work of art as a world heritage site.
Good, my only request to the railway is that,they should provide soap, napkin and a bottle of antiseptic to the daredevils who come there to share the heritage.

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

It is your decay
that you lovingly call time.
slcw

Kill the grammer

It is the grammer that choke my throat
and deny me the right to cry
It demands the marriage of words
wants roads to carry meaning
as if roads and marriages are here for ever
I wanted to kill the grammer
and shriek on these pages.
would anyone bother to read
the pure ascending curve of my wail
the pure art of vowels.
slcw

Monday, May 31, 2004

This blackness chokes me
blackness stings my eyes
black hair plugs my throat
black breath burns my nose

this whiteness stares at me
and I
hold with my trembling hand
this black pen.
slcw

Saturday, May 01, 2004

‘We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.’
- Henry James, ‘Dencombe’ (1893) slq

Monday, March 08, 2004

Replaced this almost two-year-old ‘thumbnail sketch’ in the Participants section:

Clement Pananchikal is a madman who thinks he is Clement Pananchikal. A native of Kochi in the south Indian state of Kerala, he is presently bored with his government job in Pune. A literature student in awe of Shakespeare, he shares with Hamlet a terminal inability to make up his mind. At various times in the quarter century that his life has spanned, he has been a brooding, sin-wracked Catholic; a raging atheist; and an indifferent agnostic. He also happens to have a weakness for Bob Dylan's gobbledegook and the Beatles' musical odysseys. Clement fancies himself a film buff because he knows the difference between Erich von Stroheim and Josef von Sternberg. His all-time favourite films include 8 1/2, The Godfather, The Godfather II, The Grapes of Wrath, It's a Wonderful Life, The Mission, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Platoon, Ran, The Sacrifice, Schindler's List and Throne of Blood.

sll slcw

Installed w.bloggar on my computer. I had expected it to be more powerful. But, sure, it adds some convenience. Let's see if it will get me to blog more frequently.

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

The latest Best of the Web from PC World mag. sll

Saturday, January 31, 2004

The Art of Killing



Kill Bill, Vol. 1, as the titles in the beginning themselves proudly proclaim, is Quentin Tarantino’s fourth film. The previous three films in this American director’s oeuvre have established him as perhaps the most audacious of contemporary filmmakers. The thorough amorality of the attitude he strikes, especially with regard to his treatment of violence, has attracted as much controversy as the sheer vigour and panache of his filmmaking style has earned plaudits. With the jury at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival awarding the top prize to his mesmerizingly accomplished underworld saga Pulp Fiction, the art-house admiration he had gained with Reservoir Dogs translated into mainstream recognition of his mastery of the medium. With just two films under his belt, he was being cited along with the likes of Martin Scorsese as one of the most influential directors of the times, thanks to an army of imitators all over the world.

Kill Bill is a typical example of his work. On the surface, it is a mindless rehash of an excruciatingly violent revenge plot. But the wit of Tarantino transforms this silly plot into a tribute to the countless martial arts flicks he was exposed to during his career as a video-store clerk. The idiosyncrasies of one lowly genre are used to explore the medium of cinema itself.

As a stretch of Japanese anime relates the archetypal events of a character’s tragic life, Tarantino and his team bring the emotional pitch to the heights of opera. We are left to ponder the artificial dichotomy between high and low art. The animated section, admittedly the high point of the film, might also be Tarantino’s retort to his critics. In spite of all the macabre violence and, some would say, tastelessness, the effectiveness of the sequence is undeniable.

What contributes in large measure to that effectiveness is the music he employs for background. And just as important is his original way of employing it. The soundtrack to his films is a curious post-modernist pastiche, striding blithely across genres. Among all the dissection of this auteur’s style, perhaps the most underappreciated is the role that music plays in its success.

The eclectic choice of music throughout the film underscores the fact that Tarantino is no classicist. He will use anything that he feels will be effective. This characteristic tightrope-walking on the subject of style is in itself exciting. The results are sure to displease, even disgust, many. The most unpleasant part of the film is, no doubt, the extreme violence, simultaneously visceral and casual. It beggars description and has to be seen to be believed. And even seeing, you may be left unbelieving. And that, perhaps, is because Tarantino has his tongue firmly in cheek.

Though he is not innocent of the charge of revelling in excess, those very excesses are an indictment, and a celebration, of the medium. What shines through the ambiguity is the compelling art of Quentin Tarantino.

The following review was imparted the particularly flawed verbosity that it has with the honourable intention of submitting it for favourable consideration by one of the fearsomely capable editors who select contributions deemed fit to adorn the august square centimetres of the esteemed publications, the protection of whose sanctity is their noble mission.

Anyways, common sense got the better of me, and here, a couple of weeks after it was keyboarded, it debuts as pixels instead of ink.

I don’t expect many out there in cyber wilderness would have their ears peeled for the not so frequent hollas from here this Salon. Still for the hapless whose projectile trajectories conspire to effect the suspected-to-be-auspicious eventuality of being here now, Love. What other message is worth breaking a five month long Sabbath?