Rhyme for Thomas

Fall fall roll and fall
steeply down the slope
cruely cruely cruely cruely
life is but a fall.

For several years I have been struggling to come to a decision regarding the act of giving alms to beggars.
Today I came to a decision. To give. Clement you may think why fobs took so long to come to such a simple solution.
Simple solutions are hard to make. Ask me to give you complicated solutions to problems. I can give you bag loads of them.

The reason for my decision is this: "Hunger can push them to the level of brutes.They couldve stolen from you but they are only begging.Beggars are better than muggers."

Caring for Beggars is more vital to our species than caring for dogs.

Any one who travelled at night in any metros in India will agree with me that beggars in the street are less vicious than street dogs.

So clement next time you see a beggar go for that fifty or one ruppee coin in your pocket.

If you have any different opinion regarding this I am ready for a debate.

Let's make some noise hear in Salon. Recently it has become so boring like a new wave mallu film.

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I think at last, surya bhagwan have desided to shine on my life.
Last month a very good friend of mine named Anoop, with whom I had no contact since september 25, 1992, called up at my home.
After three days, both of us were having beer at Avenue regent. It took me another week or two after Anoop left to get my orientations back. Things were happening like in movies. And today when I opened my mail there was another surprise waiting for me. Its a beautiful face with the name Vandana. She was Vandana Dutta before now she is Vandana Parikh.
What more happiness does a man need, than to meet his friends after crossing one of the wastelands of life.Thank you Snoopy, thank you Vandy.

"Philosophy is sublimated worry." - Paul Bowles.slq

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Just up the road from where I sit now in Bibwewadi, Pune, is the building where the D’Silva’s stayed until three days ago—that is, until three members of the family were identified as the first official cases of Sars in Pune. The spooky feeling I got as the news broke seems a little alarmist now. Still, even now I’m not fully cured of the intermittent thoughts of falling victim to this newest of mankind’s scourges. There was even a moment when I felt a semblance of relief at the thought of sure, if not imminent, death.

Camus’ The Plague keeps coming back to me:

‘Other men will make history... All I can say is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims - and as far as possible one must refuse to be on the side of the pestilence.’
...

‘We refuse to despair of mankind. Without having the unreasonable ambition to save men, we still want to serve them.’
...

‘The plague bacillus never dies or vanishes entirely... it can remain dormant for dozens of years in furniture or clothing... it waits patiently in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, handkerchiefs and old papers, and... perhaps the day will come when, for the instruction or misfortune of mankind, the plague will rouse its rats and send them to die in some well-contented city.’

And those scenes of the plague-infested town in Buñuel’s adaptation of Benito Perez Galdos’ Nazarin. And Scorsese’s bleeding-black tale of death and redemption Bringing Out the Dead—“I came to realize that my work was less about saving lives than about bearing witness. I was a grief mop.”—with that soundtrack of Van Morrison’s ‘TB Sheets’.

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I havent painted in ages. And I am suffering from demons within me.
Yesterday I read the essay Arundathi Roy wrote in Frontline about american aggresion in Iraq. As always it is pure H2SO4.
Again she proved the fact that she is the only one in the whole of Asia with balls. Shame on you fobbin.

Life is a slop
and i cant stop
got to keep rolling
to save my skin from peeling.

Hey Fobbin, like I told you when I saw for the first time that last painting you posted, it reminded me of a classic album cover. So I went searching for it, and here it is:



It’s the cover of In the Court of the Crimson King, the first album (1969) of the prog-rock band King Crimson. The painting is by Barry Godber, who died a year later at the age of 24—this the only cover he did.

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From ‘2 Reasons to Watch Al-Jazeera’, posted on Reason magazine’s website:

“Ziad,” [the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite channel’s] rooftop guy in Baghdad, is in the middle—and I mean right in the fucking center—of whatever area we're trying to pulverize. For a good twenty minutes tonight his camera picked up blinding flashes from explosions no more than a few blocks away, on at least two sides. One particularly close hit sent the camara reeling, and after it settled down, there was a long, stationary, eerily silent shot of a rising mushroom cloud of smoke, while the anchorman kept asking, “Ziad?...Ziad?” …

The weekend was a treat. On Friday I saw the second part of Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers. The first part, though spectacular, was a little disappointing mostly I suppose due to an unfulfilling narrative. The second part I felt to be much better—something like Kurosawa’s Shakespeare adaptations diluted with John McTiernan’s The Thirteenth Warrior. There is Shakespearean grandeur as well as adolescent thrills. I think it is not an exaggeration to say that this film pushes the medium to new limits. Jackson has to be given credit for accomplishing in this series things that many would have felt was impossible. One review of The Fellowship of the Ring went so far as to say that the battle scenes would have Welles and Kurosawa turning in their graves with envy. (No wonder I was disappointed with the film!) Viggo Mortensen’s part may well be the cinematic character whose heroism is most spectacularly documented on the silver screen.

The second film of the weekend also belonged to a trilogy. Though I am yet to see the first two instalments, I caught the last of Sergio Leone’s so-called Dollars Trilogy—the celebrated The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It is one of those films that has become an archetype; or maybe it is the definitive treatment of a particular archetype. This one too has a Kurosawa connexion—the first film of the trilogy being a remake of his Yojimbo. Clint Eastwood continues the Mifune role. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a long, rambling film, stylishly made within the confines of a genre Western, with its sometimes extreme violence spiced with moments of comedy, suspense, and surprisingly, even pathos. Add to that spectacular cinematography, and the film’s most famous asset, the instantly recognizable score by soon to be legendary Ennio Morricone. It is clear that Ramesh Sippy, who made Sholay owes a debt to Leone. And it also appears to me that Amitabh Bachchan has borrowed something of the Eastwood persona in more than one of his films. But, lest we forget, it all goes back to that samurai swaggering into an unwelcoming town, with a scratchy beard, and a mean toothpick between his teeth. To Toshiro Mifune.slfr

A short essay in the Washington Post examining what makes, or rather what does not make, ‘good art’. Interesting.

The Kerala Blog Roll, courtesy Manoj Prabhakaran, an IITian now at Princeton.

Speaking of visually interesting blogs, here’s one that makes me wish for a Nikon and a scanner—Mumbaiite Natasha’s catchily titled ‘Sundancer, My Songbird’s Journal’. Natasha’s interests include Saint-Exupéry, Cartier-Bresson and Walt Whitman. And chiffon, shiny gauze and The Dave Matthews Band.

Congrats to Fobbin for having posted his first painting on Salon. More are welcome, to keep this blog visually stimulating.

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