Tambourine Man

One of the first songs I liked of Dylan and one of the best. But lyrics are so bizarre, wonder if it is a drug trip.

Yuddham Sei

Why so pretentious, Mysskin?

Chabrol no more

Claude Chabrol is dead. I always thought I would get around to watching at least one of him movies before he dies.  That sounds so selfish, but I feel a real sense of loss and disappointment. Loss that he is no more and disappointment in myself that I never got to know him through his movies.

With luck, I will be able to set right the second feeling.

Paiyya

A guy of superhuman strength meets a beautiful girl and falls head over heels. Much of the movie takes place as they take a car ride from Bangalore to Mumbai. Director Lingusamy breathes life into what is otherwise a formulaic, dull and uninteresting affair. Karthi’s overcooked expressions are beginning to get on my nerves and Tamannaah seems indifferent to the proceedings at times.  Why is Tamil film music suffering so? I can hardly appreciate Yuvan’s songs for the movie though the background score keeps with his tradition of creating loud scores. As pic is efficiently done and is never boring, a box office hit can be expected.

Karthik calling Karthik

I hate it when an illness like schizophrenia is used for entertainment purposes. They hardly do the same for typhoid or common cold, do they? Besides, the plot is razor thin and the second hour of the movie drags on without respite. Acting by Farhan Akthar is the only strong point, though the crowd was totally wooed by Deepika Padukone.

The writer without paper

In the dark of the night, K would get up thirsty. The first thought to strike him was always the same. Today he would write. Today what he wrote would tell the world he was always a writer. Today he would prove that he was better than most.

The next day, there would a bad dream and he would rise sweating. Horror would stay stuck in the hollow of his throat. The same thought would haunt him. He would lug it with him all day and take it with him to bed. The thought slept in him again that day.

Gradually he grew to love the thought more than being a writer. The burden had now become like the shirt on his back.

He never wrote anything. At least nothing on paper. In his mind, he was the greatest writer alive.

It was a pity no one knew K. And K knew no one. Or may be a blessing. Because K could not write. Not on paper.

K never observed anything. K’s life happened only in his head. K even believed all lives happened in people’s heads. There was nothing in the outside worth believing.

But K wrote many stories. When he turned and tossed in his bed, he would get first sentences. Always first sentences. They were beautiful, again only in his head. When he woke up, they were gone, along with the night.

That’s how K became a writer without paper.

Ramayana and Mahabharata

After a long time, I am reading C Rajagopalachari’s Ramayana again. In my childhood, I read this book without the criticism running parallel in my head and it was, in a way, more of a pleasurable read. Now, I realise that the translation, quite famous and widely read, is perhaps not the best. I wonder if Mahabharata, which sits next to Ramayana on my book shelf, would pale in comparison to the countless times I have read it in childhood.

But despite the translation (which I should say does have its merits, like its simplicity, for example) , some of the epic’s true greatness shines through, and I was left awestruck at the power of a story that I and most Indians know like the back of their hand. Despite the fact that I knew every plot detail, the little details jumped at me. Minor characters, quite forgotten, assumed a life I didn’t know they had before.

So, as one of the most pleasured reads of recent times — Love in the time of cholera — lies unattended next to my bed, I am pretty sure to plough through the rest of Ramayana in pretty good time. And that I will finish a book for sure this time around, (something that I rarely do) is such a heartening thought.

Tamil Padam

Rarely do get full-length spoofs to watch in Tamil cinema. Pic is hilarious at some points, but some jokes do fall flat. Guess, I expected it to be better.