Speed of Light

Sometimes, I wonder if all our best relationships happen in transit, often with people we may never ever meet or meet again. All that is beautiful is ephemeral and most of what is ephemeral acquires a beauty of near-preternatural intensity.

Jebon mein hum raatein liye ghooma karen..

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." - Berthold Auerbach.

Listening to Aashish Khan on the sarod playing the deeply mellifluous Raga Chandranandan devised by his late father, I feel somehow more alive than I've felt in weeks. Perhaps it is because it starts off on a (to my ears) discordant, almost chaotic note and slowly but surely grows melodious and harmonious and ends in an incredible crescendo of joyful strumming. In a way, it reflects my own mental trajectory these past few days.

I've always thought of the sarod as a rather sombre instrument with the Raga Lalita Gauri being the traditional melancholy music that underscored melodramatically tragic scenes in old Hindi films. That's pretty much why I've been so wary of listening to it.

But I'm starting to discover its playful side. And what Chaitanya once scornfully called the "glorified Indian mandolin" is finally starting to appeal to me in ways that not much has these days.

It's like looking anew at an acquaintance you've vaguely known pretty much all your life but befriended only recently after a long heart-to-heart. Which is exactly what last night's conversation with S. felt like. I have her to thank for the recording that fills me with so much joy right now.

It'll be a while before I completely reconnect with the world I guess. But atleast there is this night - this magical musical marvellous night. Like there was Christmas eve. It's feels so good to be myself again.

One Day

"That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it and think how different its course would have been. Pause, you who read this, and think for a long moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or of flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on that one memorable day."

- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.

Lessons in Humanity.

When I was eight years old, my dear Aunt Bhanu had given me a birthday present that was a big box full of five illustrated and abridged versions of classic books. Now these weren't your regular books for kids, not Oliver Twist or Treasure Island or The Prince & The Pauper. These were slightly odd books to be giving to an eight year old. They were Jules Verne's Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Journey to the Centre of the Earth, H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and of course, my then least favourite - Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

It was reading these books perhaps that ignited my life-long fascination with science-fiction and more-so with morbidity.

I dont think their impact wud have been as great had they been the regular unabridged novels read without illustrations that I acquired in my teens, in my attempt to recapture the sense of wonder I had first felt when reading them.

The illustrations had been singularly excellent, and some scenes just stuck fast in my head. I still remember them as vividly as if I had the pages in front of me, alas, the books are lost to me now. Given away to classmates as grown-up novels took precedence or borrowed by younger cousins and not returned.

My mind's eye returns to me certain images though, and I can imagine them even today, my memory perhaps embellishing on what I had originally seen.

A large tear glistening on the hard brown cheek of the enigmatic Captain Nemo's usually stern, shuttered face as the mysterious young man with a hole in his skull, covered by blood-soaked bandages lay dying on a bunk in the background.

The explorers sailing on makeshift rafts, battling against violent storms, lost in a vast ancient underground sea filled with some magnificent and some monstrous fish.

Count Dracula, his long black cape whipping in the wind as he scared off hungry wolves with a snarl and a wave of a sinewy clawed hand as Jonathan watched wide-eyed from the carriage window.

The Time Traveller, adventurous yet afraid, shrinking from the Morlocks in the dark tunnels, realizing that the menacing creatures are the descendants of the downtrodden working classes of the distant past.

They were all stories that touched something inside my eight-year old heart and moved me to wonder, and sometimes fear.

But Frankenstein perplexed me. I did not know what to make of it. I did not know if I felt sympathetic towards the Creature or repulsed by him. I didnt know if I blamed Viktor Frankenstein or if I pitied him. But the haunting image of the Creature, who having received nothing but beatings and tauntings, longingly looking in through the window at a happy family eating a warm dinner around a simple wooden table, thinking how he would always, always be the outsider, shunned and reviled, lingered uncomfortably in the dark corners of my mind.

Tonight, I watched a screening of Danny Boyle's brilliant new play based on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, at the NCPA, and I watched it alone as my erratic schedule and busy weekends wud allow.

I dont really watch movies or plays alone. I enjoy them as the communal experience they were probably meant to be, before home theatre systems and personal computers arrived. I am usually the obnoxious person in the audience who regularly gets shushed by people for whispering too loudly to my friend sitting next to me. So this was my first time watching this play all by myself, in a corner seat at the extreme right of the second row.

And while the staff at NCPA are always and extremely courteous, they seemed to take special care in showing me to my seat, literally walking me to it and asking if I was alright, probably becoz I was a girl who'd showed up all alone. They even seated three delightfully chatty old Parsee ladies next to me!

But perhaps it was appropriate that all my thoughts about this marvellous play were confined to the solitude of my own mind becoz perhaps that's the lesson that I needed to learn from it.

Of course, the play with the fantastic ensemble cast of Jonny Lee Miller as the hard-hearted Frankenstein, Naomi Harris as the compassionate Elizabeth and the always-wonderful Benedict Cumberbatch in a strangely moving performance as Frankenstein's Monster is chock-full of subtle and not-so-subtle messages if you'll look for them.

Everything from the Biblical idea of Original Sin, the onslaught of science in the modern age, the grave consequences of hungering for power without responsibility, the hypocrisy of society, men trying to play God, slavery, love, loneliness, poetry, childhood and its innocence lost to the very nature of the human condition is covered in the sparklingly witty dialogue of the play. And inspite of the frequent ideological heavy-lifting required of it, the lines of dialogue pronounced by the excellent actors crackle with surprising humour and comic whimsy in a way they never did on the page.

The play may be about a lot of things but at its centre lies the relationship between the man and his creation. And how that creation, abandoned by his 'father', is quickly and brutally taught several lessons about humanity and human beings.

We sense every emotion that passes quicksilver-like on the grotesque face of the Creature - his struggle with his newly given life at the beginning of the play, his abandonment by his creator, his pleas for help as he begs for food, his cries of pain as he is mercilessly whipped, his joyful exultation when he watches the first sunrise of his life, his shrinking from a gentle old blind man's touch, his introduction to music and books by this old man who becomes a very obvious father figure, his sonorous recitations of the poetry he comes to adore, his tender longing for a lover, his violent anger at being rejected and taunted by the very people he silently helped, his heart-breaking anguish at being the only one of his kind, and his cynical but truthful observations on mankind are incredibly and brilliantly rendered by Benedict Cumberbatch (whom I loved as Sherlock Holmes on BBC's new series), and it is a bit of a shock when the actor turns up in his natural handsome avatar at the end of the play.

Also in a stunning reversal from the book, the Creature becomes the hero of the story, so much more than the monster that prowled at the shadowy edges of Viktor Frankenstein's rather eventful life. We experience all that happens from the Creature's perspective. And this is probably where the play triumphs most of all. The Creature becomes a mirror that displays all our flaws back to us, ruthlessly and relentlessly. We tell ourselves we're good people and we'd have been better to him had we encountered him, but there's that nagging doubt at the back of our mind.

We realize that we are indeed guilty of all the crimes he accuses mankind of. We are afraid of what we do not understand, we treat with hatred and hostility those who are not like us, we do not keep all our promises, we are cruel, even and especially to those whom we profess to love. We corrupt the innocent, we exploit the weak, we undermine the strong, we despise the truly good.

The Creature, we learn, is born a somewhat gentle soul, a lover of beauty, nature, and poetry, with a tender heart that is capable of kindness to children and love for mankind.

He desires a bride he may love and keep as his own friend and companion. But Frankenstein cannot keep this terrible promise and destroys her. The Creature exacts revenge as he rapes and murders Frankenstein's wife on their wedding night, cynically declaring "Now I am a real man!" to the grief-stricken Frankenstein who chases after him endlessly to finally destroy his creation.

The play ends as the book does at the North Pole, where the Creature admits to Frankenstein that he feels remorse for Elizabeth's death and admits that he always yearned for his creator's love. Frankenstein confesses that he was incapable of loving and that he envied the Creature's ability to feel love, which made him more human than Frankenstein wud ever be.

And I understood the real reason Bhanu Mami had told me it was important that I read this book properly. She had always known that it was Frankenstein who was the real outsider, and not the Creature. But perhaps, this was a lesson I needed to learn in a darkened auditorium, as three hundred other people collectively drew in their breath at the ending. That, in truth, each one of us is all alone, but those of us who can manage to reach out to another person will never really be lonely.

Dream On

This happy little two-day sabbatical has done me good. I'm rested, refreshed and rearing to go back to work. Also, it's given me a deeper appreciation of one of Richard Gere's decidedly more daring films. Having absolutely nothing to do at 1 AM prompted me to watch it on Zee Studio last night. Called "Mr. Jones" it is superficially a story of a man with bipolar disorder, prone to climbing the dizzying heights of euphoric contentment before plunging into the depths of depression that make him repeatedly suicidal. One such attempt lands him in a state-run psych ward where he meets a rather wistful and beautiful psychiatrist who grows attached to him and learns to appreciate his whimsical, if slightly delusional world view.

At its centre, it is quite a seductive study of a mental illness, making manic depression vaguely attractive, with its own skewed interior logic. It makes me understand what I'd always thought was a strange quality about crazy people. They're so convinced about their world view that some times we cant help but envy the strength of their conviction.

Anyway, moving on to what is the point of this post, there is a scene in the film that I really liked, in spite of the rough-handed way the rest of the movie played out the implications of the scene.

In it, Mr. Jones and his psychiatrist are talking on the rooftop of the hospital (most real-world psychiatrists will immediately tell you what a stupid and dangerous idea this is) and she's asking him about what sort of dreams he's been having lately, a valid question if she still believes in Freudian dream analysis. And now Mr. Jones does something really wild, he gets up from his chair and climbs to the ledge of the rooftop in one swift motion eliciting a squawk from his psychiatrist who finally sees the potential folly of this particular setting.

He spreads his arms out while she begs him to climb back down and he says, "I dream about flying!" She continues her entreaty while he surveys the view and he asks her, "What do you dream about?" She replies that she doesnt remember her dreams but she used to dream of flying when she was a child.

He smiles and utters the single best line of the movie, "Why do only children have flying dreams?" She stammers that she doesnt know and he asks her if she thinks he'll really fly off this rooftop if he tried. She screams that he will die and he asks her if there's really a difference before climbing down. She slaps him and the movie moves on to their love story but the memory of the goosebump-inducing scene is what lingers beyond the rest of their 'romance'. We wish they'd let us into her mind to see if she understands that she's falling in love with not just the man, but also this disease. That it is his mania that makes him so certain, so charming, so delightfully romantic. That she will never really know her loved one, and that she is ethically compromising herself by becoming so involved with a patient she's trying to help.

Regardless, the question Mr. Jones throws at us is important. Why do we dream of flying as children and stop when we grow up? Is it becoz we know that it is one of those things beyond the realm of possibility unless we have an airplane or a handglider? Or do we hang on to the dream by transmuting it into a realistic dream of becoming aeroplane pilots?

Does this also happen with other childhood dreams? Maybe we simply put them aside when we realize they wont really ever come true.

Is this why children aspire to become astronauts while adults put up with the drollest of jobs, becoz you have to, you know, 'grow up and get real'?

When we're young, we have the future, bright and whole, ahead of us. We believe we have endless potential to realize all the million possibilities we've told ourselves our lives will segue into.

We think we're brilliant and wonderful and that someday we'll definitely win an Oscar or a Nobel or something really, really important will happen for us.

But a lot of times, as we grow older, the realm of possibilities shrinks and aspirations shrivel up and die. And that is a real pity.

I think Mr. Jones senses that better than a lot of people becoz he is cursed with the ability and the sense to feel both the expansive high of optimistic hope and the suffocating cynical vise of desperation. That is why he alternates between living life as if he will die any minute before proceeding to attempt to die the next minute. We are fortunate that we do not share his fate, but atleast we can learn a lesson from it.

And for me, keep this day.

I had the rare but ultimately fortunate idea of cleaning up my old schoolbooks cupboard again, since Mum kept insisting I clean it or she wud throw the whole lot of books away.

I found this old scrapbook I used to keep, in which I loved to record interesting lines from the books I'd read. Or snatches of a brilliant poem. You know the feeling?

When you read a certain line and are gobsmacked by the truth and beauty and goodness of it?

That happened to me again as I found several tonight.

And now that my blog has replaced that scrapbook, I deposit them all safely here lest the pencil-writing fades and I lose those lovely thoughts.

Hook: And now, Peter Pan, you shall die.

Peter: To die would be an awfully big adventure.

Peter Pan,

J. M. Barrie

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.

Auguries of Innocence,

William Blake

(I didn't actually read this one, I heard it quoted by Captain Picard in a Star Trek movie and immediately loved it and googled it on the first incarnation of my computer on a 56kbps connection and it took an hour for it to load. I still remember how frantically I searched for these lines then.)

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot,

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned...

Eloisa to Abelard,

Alexander Pope

(I didn't read this either. It's from the movie. This was on the last page of the book, and since I'd grown up written with a ball-pen with ink that is now dreadfully smudged.)

Under the spreading chestnut tree,

I sold you and you sold me.

There lie they and here lie we

Under the spreading chestnut tree.

1984,

George Orwell

(I still remember how excited I was when I brought this book home in a terribly tattered but delightfully complete edition that my surly school librarian had handed to me. I finished it in three hours and realised for the first time in my life, what it means to be truly free.)

My words fly up,

My thoughts remain below;

Words without thoughts,

Never to heaven go.

Hamlet,

William Shakespeare

(I shall never be the same for having read this. I have never read words written like this before or after. I had always expected Shakespeare to be a snob's delight. I had never thought I'd be so bowled over by the wrenching depth of his writing.)

And finally, last and definitely not the least,

I sit beside the fire

And think of all that I have seen,

Of meadow flowers and butterflies

In summers that have been.

Of yellow leaves and gossamer

In autumns that there were,

With morning mist and silver sun

And wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire

And think of how the world will be

When winter comes without a spring

That I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things

That I have never seen.

In every wood, in every spring

There is a different green.

I sit beside the fire

And think of people long ago,

And people who will see a world

That I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think

Of times there were before,

I listen for returning feet

And voices at the door.

Bilbo Baggins singing "I sit beside the fire and think.."

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,

J. R. R. Tolkien

(I'd read this in tenth standard when the first movie was about to release. I was moved by the profound wistfulness and latent wanderlust in what is deceptively simple verse. This is written on the very last page. I shudnt really put this here becoz I have it nearly memorized. But it's fitting that it acted as a bookend both there and here.)

A Serious Woman

Today of all days, I was accused by a certain friend (not an old friend, luckily), of being "too serious". Apparently, I read serious books, I watch serious movies even when stressed out while others prefer to watch "timepass" movies and I use a serious tone even when joking. (I used to think that last was called being sarcastic, but well, definitions change.)

In all probability, she says, one bright and shiny winter day, I just might turn into a blues musician. Or maybe I already am one and I just dont know it yet. She must've believed that I'd consider that a somewhat alarming prospect. Although, why I wonder. Blues musicians seem perfectly normal happy folks.

On days like this, one realizes that what Dawkins said about altruism is true. It is only a front for selfishness, if only thrice removed from the first action. No one, ever, ever, says or does anything that is not selfish. Take that, Ms. Rand. You wrote all those books with such passion, and it was all just a lot of preaching to the converted.

Speaking of being a serious person, I keep entering these bookshops (I did it again today) hoping to find a new Wodehouse book to read, only to realize I've probably read them all. Why didn't you write more books, Sir Pelham Grenville? No one writes them like you anymore. You, Sir, are seriously funny.

No matter. I'll just read the books I have again. Reading Wodehouse's prose never fails to enrapture, even on the hundredth encounter. Stuff like "He was white and shaken, quite like a dry martini." or "She had a penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel." never gets old.

All in all, today is the kind of day that makes one want to curl up in bed with a lovely book, A Pelican at Blandings, in all probability, and switch off the distracting cellphone.

And quote for the day? Well, this one.

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read." by, who else? Groucho Marx!

Ode to Multitasking

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. "

The Notebooks of Lazarus Long,

Robert A. Heinlein.

P. S. Thank you, Falak, for introducing me to the incredible awesomeness of Robert A. Heinlein's science fiction. I am looking forward to hundreds of hours of pure reading pleasure post exams.

P. P. S. I'll be back after what has been built up into the most important and toughest examination of my whole, entire life. Wish me luck! :)

"Poem sunega?"

"Chhoti chhoti chitrayi yaadein

Bichchi hui hain lamhon ke lawn par. 

Nange pair unpar chalte chalte

Itni door chale aaye

Ki ab bhool gaye hain -

Joote kahaan utaare the.

Aedi komal thi, jab aaye the.

Thodi si naazuk hai abhi bhi.

Aur naazuk hi rahegi

In khatti meethi yaadon ki shararat

Jab tak inhe gudgudati rahegi.

Sach, bhool gaye hain

Ki joote kahaan utaare the.

Par lagta hai,

Ab unki zaroorat nahin." 

Satyanshu Singh and Kumar Devanshu.

Udaan.

"Poem achchi lagi? Samajh aayi?" 

Saw Udaan again today with Mishti and Momo. Was deeply affected again. Maybe it was the exam fatigue. But related to and recognised so much. Some of the loveliest of things are also the simplest of things, no?

O Captain, my Captain!

I have been fascinated by Walt Whitman since the first time I watched Dead Poets Society ages and ages ago at the behest of C. This wild-haired, bright-eyed monkish figure that loomed above Robin Williams' classroom, a figure Williams' enthusiastic revolutionary of a teacher used in frequent memorable scenes to inspire his impressionable young students. Last week, I bought a Wilco Classics edition of Leaves of Grass from the Crossword sale and I intend to read it in its entirety. But much like my textbooks, I find it impossible to read any manner of poetry at a stretch becoz for me, it demands more concentration of thought than I can supply for longer than an hour. Otherwise, I feel like I am not reading it with the sort of passionate attention that it surely deserves.

So, for the present, I am content to read his poems from my trusty poemhunter ebook, like I usually do, sporadically and hopefully, with the kind of joyful focus it calls for.

Having read many of his lines like the lovely Song of Myself where he says "For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you", I now think that he was an incredibly learned man, as much aware of the world of science that governed the exterior as he was understanding of the innermost questions, thoughts and workings of his own personal world, literally, "insightful" and "introspective".

This poem by Whitman holds sway over my imagination since first I heard it in the film, I suddenly thought of it again today. Isn't it wonderful?

O Me! O Life!

O Me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew'd,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here - that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

The lines of the answer fill me with this strange soaring feeling, it is like a knowledge that others have pondered what I have pondered and that Whitman gives a most reassuring answer, dont you think? :)

Comeuppances

For the life of me I cud never finish The Fountainhead inspite of having attempted to read it on three different occasions as many as three years apart, hoping that perhaps at 21 at last I was mature enuff to read the whole thing.

Well, no such luck. Now I just randomly skim the book, stopping and reading wherever my gaze happens to land at that particular moment in time.

Regardless of never having reached the ending, a lot of lines and vignettes come to mind. The one that follows is perhaps one of the book's best-known lines but today, I really envy Roark's self-centered detachment from the world of mediocre minds.

I think there's this famous scene from the Roark's trial, but I cant remember precisely where that falls becoz of my disjointed reading habits. In this scene, Toohey confronts Roark and says to him,

"Why don't you tell me what you think of me, Mr. Roark?" to which Roark replies,

"But I don't think of you."

Exactly.

I have a mental image of me whooping and cheering in the courtroom when he says this. But I'm sure Roark being Roark wud care nothing for it.

Now I imagine I was the one saying that and derive even greater satisfaction from it. Altho' this whole exercise makes me feel like I have missed the point by miles. No matter. My aim is achieved and I am in a much, much better mood now. :D

Before it ends

Sometimes, you need to know, to really believe in your heart, that no effort ever goes to waste. That all your reassurances and all your kindnesses have not been for naught. Especially the love that you pour into someone else. Someone who let all that love slip over their skin. To paraphrase Def Leppard, where is that place, that place where love goes after it dies?

Tell me, do you believe that good things happen to good people? And that it all evens out in the end? Do you?

Well, I did, too.

Sweetcakes and milkshakes

Its been ten years since I first saw Before Sunrise, I was 12 years old then. I distinctly remember watching it on Star Movies and thinking it was so romantic to spend a night walking around a European city with someone you've just met and feel an immediate connection to. Today I saw it for the third time and tomorrow I shall be twenty-two. Nearly the same age that Celine is in the film. Of course, now I understand more of the subtext in the conversations that the film largely consists of. I also see the remarkable acting that goes into scenes like the one in the listening booth where Jesse and Celine are forced to stand close together, and they look awkwardly away from each other, nervously avoiding eye contact.

Only today did I notice the easy, gentle manner in which Jesse reaches out to brush Celine's lock of hair away from her face only to realise that she may not think it appropriate considering they'd only just met and draws his hand back abruptly, an action strangely mirrored by Celine in the second film as she reaches out cautiously to comfort Jesse when he tells her about his agonising nightmares but she recoils suddenly as he turns to face her with tears in his eyes.

I remember having thought the film was flawless beginning to end when I first saw it. And as it so often happens with films you've seen a long time ago and loved and then revisited, you find yourself wondering why it was that you didnt notice any of the flaws before, few though they may be, which you can quite clearly see now. No movie you've really loved the first time around ever really matches up to the memory you have of it. Thats why, unlike school girlfriends, I find the very idea of watching Titanic every year highly silly and cringe-inducing, while they moon over Leo's long-departed boyish charms.

I also remember having thought of the ending of Before Sunrise as perfect. I thought the hasty decision to meet at the same station six months from their magical night was wonderfully romantic and I was certain that they do meet. I mean, how difficult cud it be? If fate brought them together once, it wud do so again. In fact, I cud have bet that thats what happened, unaccustomed as I was to films that did not have happy endings.

And then last week, I saw Before Sunset, the prickly sequel that continues the conversations the protagonists started ten years ago. Except, this time, Jesse and Celine are more jaded, less idealistic, more bitter, less trusting and the movie doesnt feel so beautifully romantic as the first one did. In fact it feels fraught with anxious tension instead of the languorous dreaminess of the first film.

We learn that Jesse and Celine did not in fact meet at the station like they'd promised each other, that they spent ten years of their lives apart. Now they meet as if by sheer chance, clever old fate bringing them together again to show them how much time and happiness has passed them by. She is in a relationship with a man she does not particularly care for and admits it has been this way with many previous relationships. He puts up with a loveless marriage only for the sake of his son, his only source of happiness in life. Thus, in the second film, he unconsciously traces the same path that his parents had taken with their unhappy marriage, something he said he disapproved of in the first film.

To me, ensconced in my little world of facebook and mobile phones, it seems unbelievable that they never found each other all those years, having never even told each other their last names.

The second film seems to be about missed opportunities and second chances as much as the first was about taking a chance when you feel you have a connection with someone.

Ethan Hawke's pretty poutiness from the 1995 film is replaced by a solemn weariness that goes well with his now-lined face and noticeably forced smiles while Julie Delpy's upbeat confidence, that I so admired from Before Sunrise, is still there but is probably tempered with maturity and a certain wistful quality that I swear wasnt there before. At the end of the movie, we still dont know if the two end up together like they're meant to, or if rational, adult decisions get in the way of true love.

I dont even know if this time I really want them to get together as much as I did before. Perhaps I have also grown more cynical and jaded about the idea of love and happy endings. If they do get together, maybe they end up like every other couple their age, in a limbo between happy contentment and peaceful resignation. If they dont, maybe we'll have another film, set ten years later, with the characters in their forties, continuing their energetic conversations once again.

As I was watching the movie today, I cudnt help shake off the gloomy feeling that time only ever runs in one direction and ultimately runs out. And not only becoz like the characters, I didnt want the night in the movie to end. "The years run away like rabbits." Hawke pronounces in his phoneticatured imitation of Dylan Thomas' voice. Something I'd only laughed at a decade ago, made me really think this time.

Earlier in the movie, Jesse and Celine are in a cemetery when Celine tells him about having come to the same place as a teenager and noticing another teenager's grave, thinking, Wow, we're the same age! And now Celine was twenty-three and the dead girl was still thirteen. Thirteen forever, she says. Only by dying can we stop the onslaught of time on our bodies.

And as I turn a year older, maybe my big birthday gift should be realising that the older we get, the more people we know, the more we learn, we not only have a lot more to lose, but also a lot more to gain with every chance we take.

And for posterity, this, my favourite lines of dialogue from the first film,

Jesse: Sometimes I dream about being a good father and a good husband. And sometimes it feels really close. But then other times it seems silly like it would ruin my whole life. And it's not just a fear of commitment or that I'm incapable of caring or loving because... I can. It's just that, if I'm totally honest with myself I think I'd rather die knowing that I was really good at something. That I had excelled in some way than that I'd just been in a nice, caring relationship.

Celine: You know, there was this older man I once worked for. I think, 52 years old. He said he'd spent all his life working. Working to build his career. And now, all these years later, he wished he had done something else. Married a good woman. Raised children. Had a family. Loved. I mean, think about it. You know, I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt. And, isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?

P.S. I really dont intend this post to make a lot of sense. It was just to clear my head a little.

Do kadam aur sahi.

For the past week, I have been watching this old DD series Mirza Ghalib based on Ghalibsaab's life on youtube. T. told me about it. Unlike T., who hails from Lucknow and learned Urdu in school and can read, write and speak it (as far as I can tell), my introduction to Urdu comes mostly from whatever Gulzar and Javed Akhtar wrote down in the songs that Bollywood fed us over the years. Therefore, my relationship with the language is somewhat tenuous. But I sense the beauty and grandeur of it. And it makes me long to learn the words. Even though I may never master the script, I can still read it as written in good old Devanagari. Watching my best friends struggling with French, I realised I may never have a thing for the Romantic languages but intricate Indian tongues endlessly fascinate me.

Maybe, just maybe, Italian is captivating (becoz of my fascination for Latin mostly, or perhaps my fascination for Italian men, whichever). But thats about it for the Europhiles and me.

For now, Ghalib's delicately created poetry is inspiring me to dive headlong into these lovely sounding, resonatingly beautiful new words.

Starting with his mostly widely known poem, I just want to have this on my blog. So I'm stealing it off of my veritable friend T. 's blog. I know he wudnt mind.

Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi Ki Har Khwaish Pe Dam Nikle

- मिर्जा गालिब (Mirza Ghalib)

हजारों ख्वाहिशें ऐसी कि हर ख्वाहिश पे दम निकले
बहुत निकले मेरे अरमाँ, लेकिन फिर भी कम निकले

डरे क्यों मेरा कातिल क्या रहेगा उसकी गर्दन पर
वो खून जो चश्म-ऐ-तर से उम्र भर यूं दम-ब-दम निकले

निकलना खुल्द से आदम का सुनते आये हैं लेकिन
बहुत बे-आबरू होकर तेरे कूचे से हम निकले

भ्रम खुल जाये जालीम तेरे कामत कि दराजी का
अगर इस तुर्रा-ए-पुरपेच-ओ-खम का पेच-ओ-खम निकले

मगर लिखवाये कोई उसको खत तो हमसे लिखवाये
हुई सुबह और घर से कान पर रखकर कलम निकले

हुई इस दौर में मनसूब मुझसे बादा-आशामी
फिर आया वो जमाना जो जहाँ से जाम-ए-जम निकले

हुई जिनसे तव्वको खस्तगी की दाद पाने की
वो हमसे भी ज्यादा खस्ता-ए-तेग-ए-सितम निकले

मुहब्बत में नहीं है फ़र्क जीने और मरने का
उसी को देख कर जीते हैं जिस काफिर पे दम निकले

जरा कर जोर सिने पर कि तीर-ऐ-पुरसितम निकले
जो वो निकले तो दिल निकले, जो दिल निकले तो दम निकले

खुदा के बासते पर्दा ना काबे से उठा जालिम
कहीं ऐसा न हो याँ भी वही काफिर सनम निकले

कहाँ मयखाने का दरवाजा 'गालिब' और कहाँ वाइज़
पर इतना जानते हैं, कल वो जाता था के हम निकले

--
चश्म-ऐ-तर - wet eyes
खुल्द - Paradise
कूचे - street
कामत - stature
दराजी - length
तुर्रा - ornamental tassel worn in the turban
पेच-ओ-खम - curls in the hair
मनसूब - association
बादा-आशामी - having to do with drinks
तव्वको - expectation
खस्तगी - injury
खस्ता - broken/sick/injured
तेग - sword
सितम - cruelty
क़ाबे - House Of Allah In Mecca
वाइज़ - preacher