D.é.j.à. v.u

Ryan Bingham ( George Clooney) of ‘Up in the Air’ is almost like an alter ego though I cant even compare myself with Clooney’s charisma or Bingham’s air miles. Nevertheless, it’s true that there’s hardly much difference in our thought processes. Simply because, me too, I’m just like my mother. I stereotype. It’s faster

Following Ryan’s Rules here are some of my own travel principles.

• Many of you might remember the old comprehensive all purpose travel list here. Most of these items are dispensable now. Just download the relevant iphone app. Carry a charger in your car or cabin luggage.

• ‘Aisle seats are for those in control of their own destiny’. If you are over 24 and still want to travel window seat, there’s something wrong with you. Or perhaps you are a hopeless romantic. If you are and you are over 24 that means there is still something wrong with you.

• Be nice to your stewardess, air-hostess and check in concierges esp if you are travelling economy. You will never imagine the power they have to influence your travel. Make sure you let them know that you are a frequent traveller. Not overtly but subtly. Use their names , they usually sport a name badge. Again not overtly, some where in the middle of a conversation and not at the end.Remember these are people who are under constant stress, they will appreciate nice friendly travellers who understand them.

• Always have a pair of shoes, T shirt, underpants, pyjamas, a spare tie, trousers, socks and nice clean ironed white shirt in your car. You can never imagine the freedom it gives you. You can just break anywhere.

• Daily commute : Drive an automatic. On an average mile of commute to work in an urban area, you will change gears at least 10 times. That means you are losing 20 seconds of your time every mile changing gears that amounts to nothing in your life. On an average 15 mile commute a day you lose 5 minutes of your life. At least. That means every week you lose a minimum of an hour. In an hour you can skim through London review of Books having coffee. Which is what I do while driving everyday. Because, I drive an automatic. That sounds almost like a punch line.

Here’s a snapshot of the latest LRB+coffee on my way to work.

• Make a drawing of directions to your home and have it scanned ready to email to people who are visiting you. Never underestimate  people’s stupidity or lack spatial direction. Or both.

• Never ask any Asian directions. Period. All of them: Chinese, Japs, South Asians. Even in Asia. Chinese think in their unique own way. They will struggle to translate it to you in English. Japs are generally more culturally reserved. They’ll nod and smile at everything. South Asians have very poor language skills - they can’t explain concisely something they haven’t thought about before. They would rather take you the address you seek, if they can. But remember if you asking for directions, you are not organised enough.

• Another important thing people don’t know. You get jet lag flying west to east as you will be flying against time. You lose time flying east to west. So try getting sleep while eastbound either prior to the flight or onboard and try staying awake while westbound. This means you can have more alcohol onboard flying east. Rum preferably, as it is has the least hangover.

• Duty free at airports is for women and weak hearted. Except for Nicotine, Liquor and Perfume you wouldn’t find any significant difference in prices from outside. If you need to, just buy any of those three and hit the nearest airport bar. It’s better than strolling around with so many smelly tired disorganised travellers. If you hang around, one of the first time flyers will ask you to take their snap. Nothing can be sadder than taking random people’s photographs in an airport shopping area. Bar. People. 

• Always have online a copy of itinerary, ticket, scanned copy of passport, NI Card, driving licence and any prescriptions you might be on.

• TSA lines can be a pain. As Ryan says line behind the Chinese, they travel light and are invariably efficient. Always take out three boxes : First all your paraphernalia, watch belt n stuff. Second laptop. Third your hand baggage. In that order.

• In flight entertainment is for people who don’t know what to do with their time. Be organised. You know the flight duration before hand. It is your time. you can plan ahead. It has to be a really irresistible movie to tempt you but mind you there is no movie on flight that is not available outside. Gazing into a tiny screen for that long is stupid if not anything else.

So long, have a safe journey.

I endured the grand pain called 3 Idiots last week. To put it shortly, it shocked my system. It’s not just the movie but the fact that billions of educated Indians with access to variety of movies in the world, seemed to encourage and even have enjoyed the movie. I know my own perception is not what can be called typical in any sense, but it is awful to see so many Indians who are generally smart in other aspects wrap themselves in deep darkness when it comes to movies. I have been reading reviews and posts of 3 idiots on Indian blogosphere over the last half an hour and the degree of ignorance people have is appalling. There are chaps out there writing on acting in 3 idiots without a fucking idea what acting is all about. And these people are supposed to be the real crème de la crème cine-connoisseurs in India. God save you guys. Im going to write sometime soon on my own cultural dilemmas of movies - 3 Idiots on one hand and ‘Up in the Air’ a lovely work I have watched five time already, but for now here’s two clips of Brad Pitt acting. I am posting them as a reference for people ( Indians)  who want to know or learn how to evaluate acting.

First off, I’m sorry for the poor state of the videos. I did the cursory search and these are the ones that I could find. But they are quite handy to prove the point I am making.

 The first one is from Inglourious Basterds (2009), Director : Quentin Tarantino. This is an introductory scene for Lt. Aldo Raine played by Brad Pitt. The character is supposed to be an apache, a countryman from Maine Tennessee. The accent, the authority etc have all been aptly conceived and researched by QT and filmed for max impact. The scene is a two minute monologue of dialogue delivery stating the object of the mission for the viewer.

The second is from Fight Club (1999), Director : David Fincher. This is one of the important scenes in the movie for the much celebrated character Tyler Durden. Tyler the  macho, sexual, anti-capitalist boy from the suburb speaks of the philosophical underpinnings for fight club. It’s again an high impact scene delivered as a monologue by Brad Pitt.

At the risk of patronizing the reader, I want him or her to watch both these clips and see what they think of - the two characters, the settings, the actor.  And do it a couple of times in tandem, you will see that underneath the veneer of the props, the settings, the ambience, the accents, the cultural differences and sixty years between the characters and importantly ten years between the movies, Brad Pitt still is the same. The spurts of dialogue delivery, the walking, the turning, the angling of the neck, the blank face which allows Pitt to move his jaws. I trust you to see the similarities between the characters. This, ladies and gentleman is poor acting and it’s because of those sort of reasons why Brad Pitt is considered an average actor. Did you get it? If you want to find out what good acting looks like - do the same with random clips of Daniel day Lewis ten years apart.

I’ve given an example from what I know.  That is Brad fucking Pitt who it at least trying here and there. At least putting in some effort. For people like Madhavan, Kareena Kapoor etc you can run the movies of their entire career one after another and you’ll will struggle to find any difference regardless of change in the movie, character or setting. They take the phrase ‘ to be oneself’ on the screen or ‘acting naturally’to a whole different dimension.  Who the fuck is Kareena Kapoor? Ive always seen her pout or gyrate and stand there looking like someone who has just given blood. And who the fuck is Madhavan? If you make him wear a decent suit he would remind me of a vacuum cleaner salesman of 80s India.  And they manage to get on screen because her father was something or he knows someone etc. And then there is an entire generation of people online discussing them performances. Dont ever frigging go around using the word acting and Madhavan, Kareena Kapoor and  3 idiots  in the same breath.

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I will write a few thoughts on both 3 idiots and Up in the Air as soon as I am able to.

After a customary break from Facebook, I returned to find a very interesting comment about Vidia in one of the forums. That, he hasn’t been accorded the position he deserves in the English literary canon. This is true and I’m glad to find that there are people out there who feel the same way as I do.

Yes, He has the highest recognition we humans can bestow on any writer. But in real world terms, when people speak about him - this includes both fans and otherwise, there is always a tone of underplaying his contribution to the world at large and the literature in specific. Speaking for myself, I can vouch that my understanding of the current world would have been hopelessly awful had it not been for his works. Of course, I know Vidia himself hasnt helped his image, but can one really imagine how it would have been, if Vidia, still being the enfant terrible that he is, was white?

I believe we would have been made to conjure a very different image, possibly of one wild maverick whose genius and eccentricity naturally handed him a right to somehow see himself above the rest of us. Rest of the world. He would have been undoubtedly hailed as the greatest ever English or American writer who has been gifted with the enviable ability to not only see the diverse human cultures and conditions but also to capture them clearly. Which English writer wouldnt want to be seen or known as that?

But wait! We already have one such writer whose greatness has been irreversibly imposed on the world? William Shakespeare. What makes Shakespeare, well, Shakespeare? What makes him great? He was original. Of course. He was witty. Of course. He was prolific and versatile. Yes, of course.  But none of them in reality truly makes Shakespeare great. There have been far wittier, prolific, versatile writers. Hmm, may be great ideas? Shakespeare lived in an era of great knowledge and cultural explosion, so popping out great ideas were as natural as having tea. So it wasn’t the ideas either, his true greatness lay in his ability to simplify the understanding of the complex and layered human condition for people trying to understand human life. The tools he used that made him so popular were simple - basic everyday human emotions: love greed, hatred, revenge. Suddenly, people just out of the great dark ages of religious priming were able to feel and relate to Shakesperian characters, as they continue to do so even now. Nothing was superior, nothing was supernatural. All shakespeare did was to simply the human condition and see all the sides of any singular argument - from lover’s yearning in a sonnet to an obsessive revenge in Hamlet.

The world that Vidia sought to understand and write about was totally different than the post renaissance world of Shakespeare. The people of the world were already familiar with the human emotions. Russians and Germans (Dostoevsky, Nietzsche et al) had already made  great inroads into human thought; the wars had already defined the consequences of the wrong thoughts and wrong emotions. The industrial era was over and the great colonies were becoming states overnight. The world was like a jar of coins dropped on the floor, but the coins were no longer pennies or shillings. They were different in colour, size, shape and form. And all of them had their own emotions and thoughts, so different yet adjacent wanting to converge into one. One world. What Vidia did over the next few decades was to individually examine them all and coalesce all what he saw into one book after another. Mind you, it is not effortless and most definitely not easy.  And surely anyone who had either first world or third world allegiances or identities would have messed it up, as they have. In there lies Vidia’s greatness! You dont have to look further than his works to understand the world in the late 20th century. Any rational man innately curious of the world would vouch for it. It is for this reason that I think it is a shame that we as humans still hold emotions, bad or negative, colour our judgement to downplay a single man’s accomplishments, especially when we all know deep within that those very emotions would have been utterly useless to comprehend the world of the late last century. Well what can one say? Shakespeare once famously wrote of our faults as humans, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” but Vidia had evolved it further , the world we know now where faults are relative and ‘private’, in a post-modern, post-colonial sense.” The world is what it is…’‘

Just a few random notes from the Sisley series

What is Sisley wanting to show us?  He seems to have a special interest for huge landscapes, and obviously he is one of those pioneering impressionists. Yet, his subjects can not be called very typical. Contrast Renoir’s the Luncheon of the Boating Party with Sisley’s Provencher’s Mill at Moret:

A. Renoir’s the Luncheon of the Boating Party

B. Provencher’s Mill at Moret

It would make you wonder if these two paintings really belong to the same school of painting? Unlike his fellow impressionist Renoir, he seems to want to have very few people in his paintings . An occassional distant silhouette of a human figure who appears too tired or perhaps bored of his own insignificance is all one gets to see in a Sisley. But what Sisley really wants us to show are the aging walls of a mansion or a mill, but still, not quite just that. He enwraps it in motion. Motion or movement is what he wants to see. The huge old mill under the warm bright sun is domineering , but beside flows a river which in the painting comes across a tad bit in a hurry. In another named Regattas as Molesey, the Regattas are at the distance covered in the foreground by flags that though look faded n old,  are fluttering so rapidly you cant miss the energy of the air. Movement, isnt that what makes impressionism ?

Regattas at Moseley

Sisley is about handshakes between the slow and the fast. Static and the dynamic. And unlike Degas where the dances are learnt indoors,

Sisley want us to see those silent dances going on outside.

Degas: Dance Class

Sisley: Morning at Moseley Weir

 The stream flowing, water gushing may be not so quiety. The flag fluttering ferociously 20ft above our heads, the leaves rustling on their own. All overlooked by a grand charming sky that has been put together in small, meticulous strokes.

Here’s the Femme Vocalists List I made on spotify:

http://open.spotify.com/user/sunilification/playlist/186124D7NaKdaDtmvybSIg

Just made it as eclectic, have left out the classical singers ( not that I know many). You would find some of the artists are bands, but they sure would have an interesting lead vocalist. Not all the songs are necessarily personal favourites, its the voice. the list is actually couple fo months old. I have made a few additions since. Just too lazy to load up new screen shots. 

And, yes, I like Everytime by Britney Spears. Her best yet most underrated song!

cheerios

The Isles on 07/01/2010.

Picture: Terra Satellite, NASA.

Easily the sharpest female writer alive.

This is one of my all time favourite scenes from one of the all time favourite movies Syriana. It is a meeting between Prince Meshal and Dean Whiting ( played by the wonderful Christopher Plummer , BTW- When the heck are they going to give him an Oscar for the best supporting actor?).  I guess the Asian chap is modelled on Lakshmi Mittal?

I often think of this scene when I meet socialists as innocent as a butter on a toast, whose world view is as boxed as a sandwich accusing of the toaster of burning the things up in the world.

Regard the video somewhere midscene(00:55 secs). You’ll notice Prince Meshal accusing The Americans to be always happy to be drilling holes in other people’s countries. This is a classical anti American cry you get to hear everywhere.
The naivete of such a conclusion , in this case that of Prince Meshal is so wonderfully captured in the scene a minute before where he describes to the gathering about his great birthday present a couple of years back that cant be topped. Apparently he graduated and on the same day his trust fund matured and his Mom had a Horse at the Royal Ascot which came in first. In spite of the benefit of reflection, it simply never occurs  to this Oxford graduated Prince the possibility that the race could have been fixed!

It’s nature, the strong preys on the weak. No point blaming the toaster.

The new Turkish singer I found on Spotify. Utterly delightful post-modern listen, a confluence of eastern, western pop. The ‘Romeo’ has an undeniable German Influence.

1. aşkın ateşi.

2. Romeo.

PS- Cant seem to upload youtube videos from scribefire. Dont know if it’s the mac ? the scribefire, the host or the wordpress mu?

Sigmund Freud’s Analysis couch.

From gapingvoid:

I have been thinking about what Philip Roth had said here about the decay of the novel. Of course people writing general epitaphs on novels is not new. Many writers have voiced alarm about the general deterioration of novels from time to time. If I remember correctly I think Naipaul once even went on to announce that the Novel was dead. Such remarks, in spite of being far away from truth often end up attracting vehement criticism by a differing faction of writers. But one still cant ignore the fact that idea of a novel now is totally different from what the novel was a few decades back. I suppose one can argue it either way, evolution? deterioration?

But what a struck a chord with me about Philip Roth was how he had found a realistic middle ground between the two, which if one cares to ponder truly reflects the direction ofthe novel and perhaps writing and reading in general. Every other time I visit a major bookstore I see racks of books being taken down to accommodate a newlyreleased PS3 game or a new set of exotic cookbooks. And then of course anything that manages to stay on the shelf is but a child with a backing of big publishing house that operates with a more aggressive marketing plan than its nearest rival.  Seriously, try finding a well written John Banville published 10 years back in a renowned book store? I bet it would be easier to find a second order compendium for Harry Potter and the prisoner of post-moderntime pass? 

Further in the article, Roth makes an very important observation:

“the print that’s theproblem, it’s the book, the object itself”. “To read a novel requires a certain amount of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks you don’t read the novel really. So I think thatkind of concentration and focus and attentiveness is hard to come by – it’s hard to find huge numbers of people, large numbers of people, significant numbers of people, who have those qualities,” 

This is so true. I look back at all the booksthat made any real dent on my consciousness, and all of them I had read with a consciousness frame of two chronological weeks. Regardless of the writing and the writer, the more time you use to read a book, the more it gets diluted. But sadly as a generation we are, day after day, moving into an ultra post-modern lifestyle that increasingly puts us  away from those precious two weeks.

I guess Roth is right; real literature is going to be buried deep in the vast mediocrity of celebrity biographies and Harry Potters, which in themselves will be floating in an endless galaxy of evolving mindlessness.  The Novel Industry would naturally strengthen, but not the Novel itself.  You may choose to layback and preserve yourself, but you’ll only be a labelled minority; Reality of the future would be borne out of twitter and its successors.

Someone once said that History is written by the victors, which is a well known street truth yet we  borrow such a statement because such someone was born before you and had indeed said it. So here goes – History is written by the victors.

Since we know now History is indeed written by victors, we’ll take a brief look at someone who was on the losing side. It has been 65 years since Erwin Rommel’s death during the second world war yet it is a pity that he is not accorded the position he deserves. While we have movies and acclaimed documentaries to celebrate war heroes like Montgomery, Patton, and Eisenhower on the allies’ side, it is a matter of shame that we still haven’t got around to acknowledge the brave and conscientious of the axis.

It is without doubt that Rommel was on the wrong side of the war. Whatever we know about him suggests that he was not fully privy of the Nazi party agenda till later in the war. And when he found out, he did display commendable resistance in whatever way he could. It is a known fact that he openly defied orders to kill Jewish prisoners of war. And when he learnt about the atrocities of The Third Reich against The Jews, he slowly distanced himself away from the central command. Also, when allegedly implied as a conspirator against the Fuhrer he chose the dignity of taking his own life to protect his family.

If those traits define him as an exemplary human being, his military acumen is unparalleled. There is no doubt that Rommel was one of the pioneering military strategists of the 20th century and perhaps of all time. How many people do you know who ran through a country as big and mighty as France with a Tank Division? Had he fought on the allied side of the war I am sure he would have been glorified to no end. It’s a pity he has been neglected because the fought on the wrong side. It was his 65th death anniversary on 14 October.

For those who don’t know here’s more about the famous 7th Panzer division or the Ghost Division that Rommel commanded. (I still remember how exciting it was to read as a  teenager how he had ran though France)   and here’s more on Rommel himself.