Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose photographs defined the 20th century, died on August 3rd at the age of 95
Do you wish people like these lived longer? I do.
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The whole concept of censor board absolutely bores me. No, I don't have such a high opinion of society that I entirely question the need of such a board. But I'm questioning its functions. Its definitions of violence, vulgarity and obscenity are very confined, and strictly conservative. What should it censor? And what should be the criteria to arrive at the decision? Since it is applied to movies, should it not be its responsibility to not just categorise, but inspire too?
Censoring is almost always associated with sex. If we think deeper, its effects are more harmful than useful. There is already an abnormal amount of suppression of sexual impulses imposed by society. And for all such people, who are usually obsessed, justifiably so, movies act as an outlet. And if they are denied that vicarious pleasure, after having spent their money and having come with many expectations, they come out of cinemas more frustrated. It doesn't need one to be educated in psychology to see this; it just needs common sense, which, unfortunately, is not so common. For such movies, the board's function should just be to classify it with certification. It's meaningless to cut scenes. The people who make enjoy it, the people who act enjoy it, the people of censor board enjoy it, and all of them are paid for doing so! Then why should the common man, who actually pays to watch that movie, be denied of that!!? Ridiculous!
People go to watch porn movies for only one thing - and you know what. They do not obviously go to study techniques in cinematography or editing. Damn it! And porn is not same as vulgarity or obscenity.
Does that imply that I'm suggesting they should let pass any level of vulgarity? Interestingly, 'vulgarity' is quite relative and subjective. So, I don't venture to define it. What I'm implying instead is to discourage 'out of context' scenes and demand filmmakers to think better ideas.
What kind of 'cuts' would I recommend if I were on the board? I'd not let pass even a single music video. Crap! Junk! Garbage! Do you call them music videos? Then what should one call Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall? Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror? Madonna's Frozen? Maksim's Exodus? Enigma's Back to Innocence?
And, interestingly, those artistes blame the demands of the audience for coming up with such bullshit! It's just filling up the fact that they actually are dumb heads without an iota of creativity. I suggest them to watch the songs from Mani Ratnam's movies and get some ideas before wasting money on some audio-visual shit.
Secondly, I would not let any of the movies that focus on factionism. Violence is not just gore and blood, the fixation for divisive labels like caste, religion, nationality, etc is more dangerous, though subtle, form of violence. So, all those movies in telugu that lay undue emphasis on regional and casteist bias, and all those bollywood fare that so mindlessly glorifies India and condemns Pakistan would not be allowed by me. And all those 'love' stories (God! I am fed up with them!) that glorify persistence and obsession won't be allowed either. It is these movies that do more harm than, say, a Basic Instinct with no cuts.
Ok, I call it 'cut' for today!
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Does love have responsibility and duty, and will it use those words? When you do something out of duty is there any love in it? In duty there is no love. The structure of duty in which the human being is caught is destroying him. So long as you are compelled to do something because it is your duty you don't love what you are doing. When there is love there is no duty and no responsibility.
Most parents unfortunately think they are responsible for their children and their sense of responsibility takes the form of telling them what they should do and what they should not do, what they should become and what they should not become. The parents want their children to have a secure position in society. What they call responsibility is part of that respectability they worship; and it seems to me that where there is respectability there is no order; they are concerned only with becoming a perfect bourgeois. When they prepare their children to fit into society they are perpetuating war, conflict and brutality. Do you call that care and love?
Such a genius is JK! Why doesn't anyone 'see' something that is so clear!? It's a paradox that will confound me for ever.
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Mr Gardner is best known for Frames of Mind, a book published in 1983 in which he expounded the idea that the mind is not a unidimensional phenomenon whose development can be measured by a single IQ test. He proposed that we have
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It was the dead of night when I decided to stop by, after five hours of uninterrupted drive, at a dhaba to have a cup of garam chai. No vehicle in sight on either side of the straight, long road. The moon was full and the sky glowed with a heavenly radiance, with stars strewn all across it at random.
We were five of us. Friends. Three of them took out the box of cigarettes and lighted their way to glory. All of us were damn tired. It was the most pleasant of breezes that filled the air. The trio arranged themselves comfortably on the rope-made cots. Rakesh, not at all quiet otherwise, became quite quiet as he sat down on the wooden bench, seeming to appreciate the beauty of the sky. And I reclined on the other wooden bench and looked up. The wonderful sky, splattered with the golden stars and that gorgoeus light of the full moon!!
That was my moment of bliss last week. What's yours?
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Recently, while an article about Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) made interesting reading, it makes me wonder if it would work beyond a threshold of traffic density, or in conditions of unorganised traffic. Traffic in most parts of the metros and the country at large, in India, does not yield to any mathematical analysis, courtesy the overtly mismatching ratio of vehicular population to the road length. Accidents are common, and traffic jams are accepted as inevitable part of the drive. With hardly any breathing space for vehicles - effectively meaning the least headway* possible -, it demands an unfailing and continuous alertness on the part of drivers.
It would be, to my mind, certainly interesting to see the recommendations of Dr Davis's computer model for such a scenario. Meanwhile, I find three factors that would, if rightly followed, help avoid jams and accidents in almost any kind of traffic -
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A friend sent this. Funtastic!! Happy reading!
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It started with Google (by this time, it is common knowledge that it is the first-mover in many things online). The earth-shattering (virtual earth, I mean) news that it will open its services in e-mailing and that it would offer users a space of 1GB. To make this service
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Is sanity of mind dependent on one's education, upbringing and environment? Or, is it independent? If it is independent, why doesn't everyone have it in equal measure? Is it because although it is independent, yet it is susceptible to getting affected by the outcomes of circumstances? If it is dependent, then it implies that attaching reverence to great souls is useless, for they have become great only by a chance combination of circumstances. This, although sounds logical, doesn't sound convincing to me.
Is it right to assume that anybody else in the place of Prince Siddhartha would have taken the same decision to walk out and eventually become the Buddha? This is utterly immature a statement. Ergo, it takes 'something else' on the part of a human being to enlighten that spark of 'intelligence'. Is there a technique to do this? Can this be taught? It cannot be taught. Millions of people must have read the Buddha, but we never had another Buddha. So, it cannot be taught. So, it is independent of one's literary abilities. It has to be discovered by onesels. Hence, Buddha's statement - 'be a light unto yourself.' How did he come upon this? What is 'that' he had? Sanity, once found, never leaves. Because then there is nothing holding on to anything, so there is nothing to be lost. The consciousness moves into a wholly new plane - a plane of no return.
Passion is the secret, I guess. Who do you think is the most sane/rational soul who ever walked on this planet? If I were to name, I'd choose - Buddha, JK and Russell.
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On occasion, it occurs to me if any other generation preceding ours (this needs clarification. By 'ours', I am referring to those born between the years 1970 and 1980) or any ones in future would witness as many changes at such a rapid pace as we happened to. I'm sure I'm missing out many things else, but the following is the list of things that, to my mind, justify my feeling:
1.We lived in times when radio was an indispensable part of our daily life
2.Having a telephone was a luxury
3.The balcony ticket in cinema was Rs.5/- (average)
4.Petrol came at Rs.20/- a litre
5.The shopkeeper would return the change of 5 paise
6.An entire colony of people would gather to watch chitrahaar on the television
7.Water was free and plenty
8.Writing letters was an eagerly awaited activity at weekends
Modes of communication have seen incredible advancement. We have seen it all - radio to TV, phone to mobile phone, letter writing to e-mail, cable, SMS, virtual love, online dating, history-as-it-happens on the World Wide Web, ...
Change in the value of rupee happens at a normal pace - and is, on the average, similar for every decade, so it is not a big thing to actually mention. Every generation, indisputably, comes with unique privileges that are denied to others. Nevertheless, our generation seems to stand out in the case of witnessing the most rapid of changes. It might not sound very objective to many, and it may also lead some to infer that my knowledge of history is quite limited and my observation, not quite deep. Well, every opinion, for whose support no mathematical data exists, can be contested in that spirit and it is not, logically, possible to refute either, in spite of the fact which side observation seems to favour.
If there is some kind of material on this topic, I'd surely like to take a look. Not at all to source reaffirmation, but solely because it makes for an interesting reading of the steps in human civilisation and the genius of man, in a wider sense.
[I have, as it seemed inevitable, focused on only that part of the population that could afford, economically, access to all the aforementioned accessories. In doing so, I had to, naturally, eliminate two groups - the one that could afford them quite easily and the other that finds affording a minimum of them impossible]
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What do you call a society that doesn't feel the loss of a poet? Dead, callous and unaesthetic? Or, does it reflect the 'new-age' priorities? Why am I asking this? Because, on Sunday, I expected ToI and The Hindu to come up with features on Dom Moraes and it seemed like it was a deliberate move on their part not to. Well, of course, I'm exaggerating, courtesy the amount of disappointment.
For many people, it might not look as big as I'm making it out to be. Most people would readily forgive, assuming emotions go that far in the first place. But then it troubles me - why a certain actor's wardrobe or a political misadventure makes it in color to the front page while the death of Dom Moraes, one of the great writers we had, passes off as silently as his life and death were!?
So, I'm asking myself - what do you call a society that doesn't feel the loss of a poet? Is it same like asking - what do you call a man who doesn't have a heart for poetry?
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Dom Moraes is no more.
'We start out as white slime and end up ashes' -- Derelictions
So, all the poets are gone?
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Here's what Mani Ratnam said when he was asked how he feels when people criticise his film (source: Rediff.com) -
"You want to hit them first. (laughs).
After the anger has gone away, you try and find out whether there is a valid point in what they are saying. You know the ins and outs of your film. When I see a film, I have an opinion. Everybody has an opinion.
If you wanted to make a film the way you want, you go ahead and make it. I am here because I feel I can make a commercial film from my perspective."
The last sentence should silence all those critics who review a film and write just about anything, out of sheer impatience to meet the deadline, taking support of stupid metrics.
When it's a Mani Ratnam film, should it matter if it makes money or not? He makes great stuff. Period.
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Books 2015:
1. The Man Within My Head
2. Discontent and Its Civilizations
3. Manhunt
4. The Strange Library
5. Design As Art
6. Free Radicals
7. The Blank Slate
8. The Festival of Insignificance
9. Aarushi
10. Man (Dis)Connected
11. A Good Story
12. Camus, A Romance
13. Bank of Dave
14. The Myth of Excellence
15. The Music of Man
16. Jack Reacher
Films 2016:
1. Abbayitho Ammayi / Tel
2. Bajirao Mastani / Hin
3. Chhota Bheem and the Himalayan Adventure / Hin
4. Wazir / Hin
5. Naannaku Prematho / Tel
6. Chalk N Duster / Hin
7. Airlift / Hin
8. Kalavathi / Tel
9. Asterix / Eng
10. Ghayal Once Again / Hin
Idea of the Month:
Why is it the way it is?
