Watched: Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara

I just don’t know how to begin this review. I’m tempted to simply say I liked this movie and that was that. But then I also feel compelled to expound a bit more on its virtues. Forthwith, I present the following awards:
Surprise Package award: Katrina Kaif. Who woulda thunk? The Kaif is so perfectly cast in this radiant, likeable-girl role that one must actually congratulate the casting director. Kaif’s Laila the diving instructor is happy, impulsive, fearless, and needless to say, eye-poppingly pretty. She deserves the award because she actually does embody the spirit of the film and its message.

Best Moment award: Hrithik Roshan, when he spots a group of wild horses in the Spanish countryside during their road trip. Simply one of the loveliest moments he’s ever enacted on screen.

Most Baffling Hair award: Hrithik had his dishevelled mane, Kaif had her glossy curls, Kalki her straight, chic blunt, and Abhay his regular boy-haircut. But what, in the name of Egad, happened to Farhan? (And his wife in real life’s a hairstylist.) I just didn’t get his non-descript curly look. It looked sheep-like and cried out for a pair of shears. Super-interesting and engaging character, dud haircut.

Overshadowed but Still So Cool award: Abhay Deol. The night before I watched ZNMD, I had watched Deol in Road, Movie. So I had rather a lot of him in two days. Still, I’m being objective when I say he is slightly overshadowed by the other two boys. Never mind. His dimples seem to gain in worthiness as he ages, and his easy body language and demeanour are really neat.

Slap Her, She’s French award: Kalki. (I refuse to write her last name because I can’t pronounce it.) Now, I’m merely being silly by handing her this award. The girl is dashed cool and can certainly slip into a role with ease. I just wish to see her in more roles before I really decide on what award to give her.

As to the little matter of the film in its entirety, well, it has a lot going for it. A trio of friends takes off for Spain- a kind of extended bachelor party- to celebrate the impending wedding of one of them. While there, they each have to propose an adventure sport that all three must participate in. And that in effect is the story, with a layer of sub-plots of each character’s evolution through the trip. With a storyline like this, there’s plenty of room for meanderings in exquisite rural Spain, and also for lots of indulgent scenes with the three friends- and these elements I had no problem with. In fact, the chemistry among the three was really pretty terrific, and the sub-plots were also all fine.
In terms of pacing, the editing could have been crisper between the first sport and the next. There was so much time spent on each, too, that it became more ‘tell’ and less ‘show’ which was a bit of overkill for me.
Then there’s the matter of the ‘boy’ aspect of the friendship. I’ve begun to despair of ever seeing convincing and engaging stories of women’s friendships in Hindi movies, unless there are such films and I’ve never seen them. Not that there’s a problem with boys being friends and taking off to Spain on a bachelor trip, tra la la, which gets dampened because the fiancée (a GIRL) shows up. I just want to be shown similar stories from the other side.
That leads in nicely to the next minor but niggling grouse- why did Abhay’s fiancée, Kalki, have to be shown as nearly getting them all in a crash while she’s driving? I didn’t see what this scene added at all; it seemed a little patronising and off-track from the film’s sensibility. Also, too much face time with Hrithik. He’s the biggest star, so we had to sit through countless up-nostril shots of his head. This abated in the second half, but.
The title, although clunky, perfectly ties up the spirit of the story. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, travelling mentally to Spain again and revelling in its whitewashed rural glory. For that alone, I would watch the movie again. Slap me, I’m biased.

Tree

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books -

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

~Jane Hirshfield

Readings: The Everest Hotel by Allan Sealy

Somewhere in the foothills of the Himalayas is a town called Drummondganj, where time is measured solely by the seasons and on the roof of a crumbling mansion lives a 90-year-old former mountaineer with a wandering mind. The mansion, once the  Everest Hotel, is now a shelter run by an order of nuns who also look after the old man- Immanuel Jed- and a motley crew of others.
Ritu, the newest nun, arrives at Everest when the town is in the midst of a political upheaval- the struggle for statehood so familiar in the Indian milieu. That’s not all the upheaval either: Ritu bears a resemblance to Jed’s late wife, and this causes the old man’s mind to come further unhinged. (However, Jed’s mental wanderings are erratic; some days, he is lucid, a great raconteur and quite a wit.) Then there is his young friend Brij, who is a part of the statehood struggle, and who visits him often. And who, on the roof of Everest, among Jed’s bathtubs and other paraphernalia, begins a doomed attraction to the young nun.
The rhythm of life at Everest is then further rippled by the arrival of a young German tourist, Inge, who is on a unique quest- to unearth the history of a dead uncle, a former poet who is buried in the cemetery adjoining Everest. Inge is the fulcrum of the story in some ways. Her mysterious, drug-fueled passions, her abrupt German sense of observation, and her skill at sculpting a new gravestone for her uncle, all intrigue and disturb Everest in ways deeper than the inhabitants realize.
Of these inhabitants, I could not pick a favorite. They all seemed so complete- flawed and unique. And the story itself seemed to fall naturally into three parts: the arrival of Ritu, the arrival of Inge, and the arrival of the child Shama. Three completely different entities with completely divergent reasons for coming to be at Everest. (Also, Ritu’s name in itself was a brilliant yet obvious device- it means ‘season’ in Hindi.)
And lastly, the writing. It is, simply put, brilliant. Sensual, heavy with imagery and perfect shades of sepia and blue. The poetic division of time into the Hindu seasons- Asadh, Jeth, Chait, Kartik, and so on- the lyrical descriptions of the mountains, the flowers (Ritu and Jed share an interest in botany) and the heartbreaking decline of Jed’s mind all flow across the page with flawless pacing and structure. I wonder why Allan Sealy is not more famous. The Everest Hotel was nominated for the Booker, after all. I would definitely love to read more from him and am now on a determined quest for his Trotter Nama and other works.

Just because

Because, predictably, one wants to be in Paris right now.
Paris Pink by fsudm on Polyvore.com

Readings: The Ingenious Edgar Jones

The Ingenious Edgar Jones tells the story of a mysterious dark-haired boy, born ahead of his time on a lightning-filled night in the Oxford of the 1800s. Immediately upon his arrival, he disappoints and vaguely puzzles his mother- she had wanted a girl- and delights his father- but slowly, as his life goes on, this state of affairs is somewhat reversed.

The boy Edgar, while supremely gifted with what would now be called mechanical abilities, lags behind in reading and writing and thus remains functionally illiterate until as late as seven or eight. Constantly drawn to the great outdoors, he figures out ways to escape his lessons and roam free in the wilderness outside his home. Then, one day, on a sojourn right into the city, he comes across a fascinating place- an iron forge- and promptly offers himself up for an apprenticeship.

Later he is taken in by a Professor of Anatomy from one of Oxford’s colleges- the old man, never named, sees the spark in the boy’s creativity and takes him on in an apprenticeship of his own- for his grand dream project of a museum of natural history. But all the while, what Edgar wants as badly as he wants to invent things of metal and bone, is that eternal quest for most children- parental approval- and that espcially from his father.

His master at the forge, the Professor, and lastly his kindly master at the invention shop- Mr Stevens, all fall short of his desires for validation. Naturally. His father, William, is unable to look beyond Scripture and accept his boy’s somewhat different vision and talents.

And this is the crux of the story. A child, born both different and gifted; the religious climate in the England of the 1800s where Science and God are raging against two sides of the debate, and the devastating social justice of the time that Edgar finally comes up against.

The story ends with a somewhat different outcome- magical realism, almost, which did not jibe well with the rest of the story. However, Edgar is a curious and engaging fellow; you do want to follow along on his adventure, want to laugh with him (and he does laugh an awful lot) and weep when his brave heart is disappointed yet again. His inventions, whether of bone or metal or cloth, are marvelous, his imagination fierce and his spirit tender yet powerful.

Elizabeth Garner is a writer of both vision and precision, each of Edgar’s futuristic inventions outlined with spare yet well-rounded detail. Edgar's initial fascination with metal is well-structured into his curiosity for natural history, and then finally his joy of invention itself. The emotions are evoked more from the reader, rather than laid out on the page in grandiose prose. I enjoyed the tale as much as the telling, and would love to read more from Garner. (I almost wish for a sequel to Edgar.)

Elephant Bells

He killed thirteen people, they told us. Would walk to a house at night, knock on the door. And whoever opened it, he would kill.

Well then, quite a story it was, especially for a Saturday morning in the shallows of a still, olive green river looking at his placid eyes. And he had a bell around his neck! Stories of horror seem hard to believe at this moment. I want to scratch his ears. And I do. I also wade into the water and lend a hand to his mahout in scrubbing him down- his tough, dark skin and massive body feel like a kind of living ship, a mysterious craft bound for the center of the earth rather than just the hide of a mere creature that can be tamed, be kept by the likes of us.

The rest of the afternoon flowed by in a mix of elephants (some so dangerous in mast, they are kept chained to a hillside) and black-faced langurs  waiting to eat off the scraps of elephant meals, and then a tiny orphaned elephant that wrapped her trunk around your finger and pulled. My heart almost stopped when she did that the first time- right from the bristly hair on her head to her oval toenails, she was a miracle of longing and heartbreak. Sigh.

Walking back to our cottage, a familiar sight- the goats. And a herd of spotted deer off in the distance, looking up at us critically. One has fine, large antlers and a proud stance. He looks like he doesn’t approve. They stand under the golden droplet flowers of an acacia tree, tense and alert. Framed with a backdrop of a looming, dark gray mountain, they are unaware of the beauty they give to human eyes.

When I go away from the city, this is exactly what I want to see. Places where the mountain almost overwhelms you, and you can see each spot on a deer, and can recognize the faces of the goats and that of their ancient, gap-toothed herder- these are the places I want. 

In the Company of Goats

It is a strange experience to be at eye-level with a goat: particularly one that is kneeling down to have a drink from the swimming pool that you are in. When I thought about ‘wildlife’- we were in a National Tiger Reserve, after all, goats were not the first creature on my list. But these goats came, and they wandered, they drank, and they squatted or walked up and down on the porch of our little dark-red cottage in the woods as if it were home. And it was, for all intents and purposes, surely.

That first afternoon, after the encounter with these other-wordly, marble-eyed creatures, we made our way like lemmings down into the rock-framed infinity pool that we had so longingly eyed on our way to the cottage. It was everything. First we each chose one of the flat rocks bordering the water, and like lizards in the sun, simply sat the afternoon away. Oh how transparently city-weary we were! To hear the silence and to count the ripples on the water were for us, bliss. Then, a plunge. There was even a tree-house as part of the view, weaving in and out of sight with the wind.

Later, the rain. Not the weary urban showers that fill the city like a teacup, but wild, fresh rain that sounds like a war on the tin roofs.

I may never leave. Luckily, we have tomorrow.