Flop January 2010 issue

Faculty of Literally Outlandish Practices

January 2010

editorial

There has been a change at the helm of FLOP. We would like to announce our new editor, a fish called Vasco Da Gama. Vasco is focussed and intent on leading FLOP into the right waters. It lives in a specially manufactured tank the size of Lake Chilka. It lives on drink and is literally drunk as a fish most of the time. It says Old Monk is my Plonk.

When we told that it shares its name with the famous explorer who brought pepper to India, Vasco fumed and told us the real story. The real name of the Portugese explorer was Pedro Domingo Velaquez. He was lost at sea and was exploding the fish singing melancholic songs. The fish would burst and would go belly-up. I asked him what his problem was. He said he wanted to sell chillies and pepper. I guided him to India. He sailed and I swam for seven days and eight nights. He was a bad sailor. Every now and then, I had to swim aboard and slap his face to orient his screwed up eyes. Yes, he was squint. If he looked at you, his left eye would be looking at North Pole and the right eye, the South Pole. Had I not guided him, he would have reached the Americas or the down under from up above. Funny, is it not, that he was seeking the all-elusive sea route to the Orient? So when we landed finally in Calicut, he thanked me profusely by showering abundant chillies and pepper on me. That explains the smell and colour of my body. Then he asked what my good name was. He requested me if he could use it because it was melodious and that the natives seemed to love music. I wished there were patents for names.

When we told Vasco that the explorer's landing was the downfall of what was a glorious vibrant flourishing Indian civilization and that he was followed by British who unleashed what was known as Dark Ages but what was worse, they left a cacophonous language and a sport for sluggards that are polluting our culture and killing our productivity. Vasco said, “Take it on the chin and move on, fellows. First, you never had a civilization. There is no such a thing as civilization. Just look at the history. Wars, debauchery and suffering. Mankind is a steady progress of degradation of values. Second, you don't have a culture. So you can't corrupt what is not there. You are productive where it matters the least, reproductivity. You are busy at it 24-7. A billion and still counting, what a shame! Look at the bright side. You are now the IT super-server of bodies who are the only ones who can speak the alphabets in the proper order without slipping any. Third, what makes you think they invented that sport? They can't even hold a ping-pong ball. The last time I played ping-pong with one of them, he couldn't serve because the ball stuck to his sweaty palm. He would lift his hand to the top and invert it, the ball would unglue after an undue amount of time but the racket would never get to it on its downward flight.”

We picked the brains of our fishy genius.

What is the sport you like the most?

I like all except fishing.

There was a fan of FLOP who wanted to write cookery series. She was talking about sizzling salmon wrapped in spinach and spread on a bed of rice and sprinkled with extra-virgin olive oil. Do you think we should employ her especially since she knows a lot about extra-virginity?

Instead of salmon, you can stuff her. I suggest roasting. Then when it comes to eating, you should start with her eyes...

Ok, ok, we get it. What was your biggest mistake?

I should not have swallowed the ring given to Shakuntala. A fisherman trapped me with luscious bait. He presented it to Dushyanta who regained his memory of her and reunited with her in the forest. A happy ending. Ever since, happy endings have become a norm in films. It is killing the art form. Tragedy should be celebrated in equal measure with comedy.

What is the greatest harm that global warming would cause in the coming decade?

All of you would start walking round in circles at some specific times during the day and the night until you faint. That is Mother Nature's remedy to counter the phenomenon.

Would you like to predict the next decade?

I would like to talk about the Tiger.

No, we don't want to hear about the Tiger. We are not a sleaze magazine.

What a load of guff? Our working ways will have to change. By the way, I was talking about the extinction of the Tiger in India. In the distant future, humans will evolve to have just one ear, one eye, one nostril, one hand, one leg... All one because you are not using your faculties to the fullest. Women would become more equal than men and would start raping and manhandling them...

To all our beautiful users, we extend a cordial invitation for a special tax-free tete`-a-tete´ with Vasco. Sex would be expensive; none of you would be able to afford it. All you have to do is stand on the bank of the tank and sing a melody to it. He would jump into your arms and commence the conversation. But we warn you not to sing, “I'm a survivor. I'm gonna make it.” The face of one such singer was slashed repeatedly by the infuriated Vasco. She didn't survive the blitz. There were other gory deaths that we would not go into.

Here is a picture of our editor in cheap from his younger days.(pic from the archives of The Typos Of India, 1887)

short stories

Boffin

I said, “Coach, do you think Alex Ferguson deliberately threw the shoe at Beckham?”

He said, “He tried to kick somebody. The shoe got dislodged, flew at Beckham and smacked him in the head. That is the official version. The unofficial story is that he does not give a shit if the footballer is an icon or a multi-millionaire. If the player fails to perform, he will get a royal licking in the locker room. So it is possible that shoe was meant to shatter one of Beckman's eyes.”

Thus ended our post-football session chat. We hobbled back to our belongings huddled in the corner of the football ground closest to the main entrance. The ground was in the middle surrounded by an athletics track and then there is huge empty space all round.

“My bag is not there.” said Yogi.

“Come on, it must be somewhere here. Look closely. Look into all the bags.” says Sushant.

Yogi replies, “It is a big black bag.”

It took some time for everybody to realise that a big black bag could be stolen before twelve pairs of eyes. But eyes that were tuned to football. Eyes entirely busy trying to play the game.

The coach asks, “What is there in your bag?”

Yogi says, “Not much. Two hundred rupees and my mobile.”

Amit plays down the gravity of the situation, “Thats ok then. But you better call IDEA and block the SIM.”

Yogi then runs to the offices for ground maintenance stuff and student hostel adjoining the ground to check if they have seen any stranger running away with a big black bag.

When he returns, I say, “They are all in this together.”

He is so shocked that you wonder if he is the same person who lost his mobile and a couple of hundreds. But the truth comes out gradually.

“Oh God! My passport is in the bag.”

I say, “Why did you bring the passport to the football ground?” That sort of question would be put to him thirty times on that day, fifteen times by a policeman.

He is devastated, “Oh No! Not just my passport. It has everything.” The list that he reeled out defined what we call the paper identity of a person in this country: motor licence, PAN card, PUC, passport, mobile phone, school certificate, college certificate, degree certificate, company documents, insurance, bank statements.

I said, “But they must be copies.”

He said, “No, they are all originals.”

I was shell-shocked, “But why did you carry all these documents to the football ground?” That would be the second and the last time I would put this question to him.

The EthicalThief

made in china

He said, “I always carry this bag with me. It has all the documents.”

I said, “But you could keep them in a safe place. Just carry the copies. You never need the originals anyway. Nobody asks for them. Not even the embassy people if you are applying for a visa to travel to a foreign country.”

He said, “But what is a safe place? What is the safest place on this planet?”

I said, “For a start, bank lockers. My rich aunt has stored 100 kilos of gold in them. One of these days, my uncle is going to put her in a locker too. Not that she is precious but a locker is also a safest place to hide a dead body. But I know what you mean. Why would one need all these documents anyway? Ok, we must hurry and file an FIR.”

I ask Mayank, the map of our team, where the closest police station is. He says there are three, Saucybury Park, Perverty and SwearGate. All more or less equidistant. Saucybury Park is the closest.

I tell Yogi that the first thing is do is to tell the security guard in the parking area to keep a vigilant watch on his bike because the bike's key was there in the bag too. When Yogi tells the security guard, the guard assures him half-heartedly he will do his best but he then stares at Yogi for a long time. I hand out a fifty rupee note to him. He salutes me.

I tell Yogi, “Before we go for filing the FIR, let us take a few minutes to get into the mind of the thief. If the thief is professional, he would take the money, the handset but keep the SIM in the bag and dispose the bag in a garbage bin. The documents would be of no use to them. They are your identity. He can't steal it. But he can duplicate your bike key and steal your bike now that he knows its number. So it is a good thing we have asked the guard to look after it. But make sure you change the lock too. Then he has a couple of options. One is to deposit the bag in the police station unnoticed or under the watchful eyes and full knowledge of the policemen. To put simply, he would tell the policeman to take care of it. The other is to call you and return the bag to you. If the thief is an amateur, he will take the money but when he sees the sensitive documents, he will shit in his pants. He will throw the bag anywhere unobserved and run for his life. If the thief is a sadist and is destructive, he will burn the documents and tear the bag. It is

winter and your documents would provide much-needed warmth.”

Yogi ages a few years when I tell him about destructive criminals.

I continue, “Have you ever burned your passport? I did it twice. You must light and re-light it many times to reduce it completely to ash. The cover is the hardest to burn. You know before I burn it, I would look at the visa pages of embassies that persecuted me. Take for instance, one Eastern European embassy in the richest city of our country. I wrote all the vile words I knew on that page, tore that page, burnt that page, looked at it with immense satisfaction and played with it. I would sometimes roll the page, put tobacco in it and smoke it. Sometimes I used the page as a toilet tissue although it chafed my butt and then for days I wouldn't be able to sit properly. Then there was this dazzling girl in the French embassy who floored me. After I returned from Paris, I wrote a love poem, in whatever meagre French I knew, on the back of the visa leaf. Many immigration personnel would see the page, look at the poem, would think of it as official instruction and ignore it. ”

I saw that if I continued in this vein, Yogi would faint.

I tell him, “Sorry, Man. It is time for action. First thing is to scour the ground. Your bag could be out there without the money and the mobile set. As we scour, I will call IDEA people to block your SIM.”

I call the IDEA customer care number 12345 if they can unblock their SIM. They tell me that if my mobile is prepaid, I should call on 4444. Mine was not, I call my Dad. His was not. I give him the number and tell him to somehow block the SIM as soon as possible. He would call me later and say that there is no one in his friends circle or in our relatives circle with prepaid IDEA mobile. He tells me to stop at any IDEA Cellular shop and unblock it. Firstly it is a Sunday and secondly Yogi has lost everything that would identify him. He does not remember any of the important numbers, for example, the passport number. I don't tell Yogi that he must forget his mobile for good.

Our exhaustive search yields nothing. I tell Yogi that now we must look at all the garbage bins within the circumference of one or two kms. We travel in my car and stop at e v e r y

garbage bin in the vicinity. They don't yield anything.

While in the car, Yogi becomes philosophical, “You know Ravi, what is the point of me coming to this city with ambitions? Why should I have these documents? They have caused me only pain and sleepless nights. I could have stayed in my home town. I could have worked without setting any goals. I would have been very happy. I could have married Mumtaz. She is hot, you know. But she is not educated. She discontinued studies in her tenth class. So I broke up with her because she is almost illiterate. She is not city material. But she is hot, you know. So it was a tough call.”

I tell him, “Don't worry, Man. You will have all those documents within a few months time. Your life will be normal again. You can then go during the weekends to your home town and rekindle your affair with your sweetheart. Those documents are your paper identity. Your identity as a human being who lived will be alive even when you are dead. Those few months when you rebuild your paper identity, there would be many frustrating days and many sleepless nights. You would meet many fools who are stalwarts of bureaucracy. You will feel like butchering them but you won't because you are from a good background and because you are brought up religiously. I know procuring those documents must have killed you mentally as well as physically. You must be prepared to die again. You ask me what is the value in dying again. I would ask you what is the value in living in this country. I would ask you what is the value of human life in this country.”

I feel that I wasn't helping matters and wasn't consoling Yogi enough.

So we go to the police station that is the closest, Saucybury Park. We park the car outside. The station is small, yellow and surrounded by tall green lovely smelling trees. There is a row of tall apartment blocks opposite the station. The few hundred meters to the left and right of the station is just filled with trees. There are no police vehicles or police outside the station. We go in. There is nobody inside. But there is smell of urine, for the bathroom is kept open. The station has five rooms. Two rooms are latched, they could be the offices. We look through the windows. There are no occupants. I urinate in the bathroom before coming out. I could have urinated on the doorstep and nobody would have noticed. Or would they notice but treat me just like one of those stray dogs on the street? Would a stray dog differentiate between a police vehicle and a civilian vehicle before pissing on it? Such completely irrelevant questions kept me in good humour. If my grandchildren ask me if I have ever been to a police station, I can tell them, “Yes, I was there. It was a very relieving experience.”

Yogi says, “How could there be nobody? It is a bloody police station. And how could they keep it open unguarded like that?”

I tell him, “It is a bloody Sunday, Yogi. They would be in bed with their wives, lovers or prostitutes. And what makes you think that thieves live only outside the police station?”

We then drive to Perverty police station. There are police groups outside the gate although you never know why they hang out there. Was the inside too cramped for them? We enter the gate. There are a couple of rows of two wooden benches each laid like pews in a church. There are two police cops attending to the complaints. There are just a couple of complainants. What! Is there no crime in the city? Maybe there is no crime on a Sunday. Even the criminals need rest, you know. I make myself comfortable. Yogi sits on the edge and asks a policeman, “I lost my black bag in Fitoria school ground...”

He is interrupted, “Go to SwearGate. Fitoria comes under SwearGate.”

Yogi beseeches him, “But Sir, can you please file an FIR here?”

The policeman tells him, “SwearGate, SwearGate” and shoos him off as if he was a fly.

We drive to the SwearGate police station. There are a few dogs sleeping peacefully in the open verandah. Not police dogs though. There is a bench and two gentlemen sitting on it. A table with complaint books separates them from the policeman sitting on a chair. One of them tells him, “Sir, I have lost my mobile.”

The policeman slaps the air as though he was slapping him, “Beat it. Stop wasting my time. How come you always lose your mobile phone and I don't?” They leave dejected.

Yogi sits on the bench, “Sir, I have lost my bag.”

The policeman laughs at him, smiles at me. The other policemen join the laughter.

Yogi gathers all the courage he needs to continue, “But Sir, that bag has everything. Passport, PAN card, licence, mobile phone, education certificates...”

The policeman is stunned. He asks him, “Are you stupid? Why did you carry all those sensitive documents to the football would look at me and smile as though asking me from which village did this bumpkin come from? I would smile back. If I didn't, he would lock both of us and beat the living daylights of us for making a mockery

his time and authority. When I smiled, a thought tortured me. Shall I kick him in the face? His face was round and I was already well-warmed up and well-oiled from the football game and the sapping travel to all the police stations. I thought of how far his head would roll if I kicked him in different places and different angles and with different spins. Although his head was round, if my kick severed his head, it would come out with a small overhang of the neck. So would it rock and roll? Would it make his head behave like a rugby ball? You know they say a rugby ball has a mind of its own.

The policeman takes a blank paper and hands it over to Yogi. He tells him, “Now put down one below the other what you have lost.”

The mobile number.

Policeman: Why did you carry your mobile in the bag to the ground? Do you know your mobile number? (That was the only number Yogi knew. He didn't have a record of others anywhere.)

The passport.

Policeman: Why did you carry your passport in the bag to the ground? Do you know your passport number?

The motor licence.

Policeman: Why did you carry your licence in the bag to the ground?

The PUC.

Policeman: Why the hell you carried your PUC in the bag to the ground?

School, college, university certificates

Policeman: Was it necessary to carry your certificates to the ground?

Company project documents, Company stamps, Company round seal.

Policeman: Why did you carry all these to the ground?

Then the policeman tears the paper, hands over the leaf with the list to Yogi, and tells him, “If you find out your passport number or licence number, return to me and we can think of filing an FIR.”

We leave the police station.

I tell Yogi, “Can you call your parents and ask them if they have any record?”

Yogi says, “I can't call them. They would be very worried. It has happened to me many times. They would put me through many religious r i t u a l s

again to exorcise the evil spirits. Let us go back to my apartment. My brother will be there waiting for me and worried about me. He is here visiting me for the weekend. I have my duplicate bike key there too. You can drop me back at the ground so that I can take my bike.”

Yogi stays in CurveNagar. The drive is filled with colleges and universities. While we drive to his place, he would point at a beautiful girl and tell me which university she belongs to. We drive slowly. Beauty soothes the trauma. Or does it worsen it? That beauty, to us in the car, is unobtainable. It is there only to be looked at and not touched or coveted.

I park my car outside while he brings his younger brother, good-looking and definitely more casual and carefree than Yogi. He introduces me to his brother and tells me, “There is good news, Ravi. A man with the name of Milind called my mother in Colapur and told her that he has the bag.”

He calls Milind from my mobile. He tells me, “Milind would be at Probath Press close to Fitoria School Ground waiting for us with the bag. He said he found the bag next to a garbage bin in his neighbourhood. He looked up my mother's number from the insurance papers in the bag and called her. Is he honest?”

I tell him, “He is the thief. He is well prepared. He will have no stone unturned in explaining to us how he found the bag and how he managed to call your mother. By the time we get there, he will have all the holes in his plot covered. He must be an out-and-out professional.”

I restrain myself from asking him why he carried his insurance papers in the bag to the ground

Milind lives in the slum close to our football ground. He must have stolen the bag and ran as fast as he could to his home. How disappointed he must have been when he saw only a couple of hundreds in the bag! We meet him on a pavement on the opposite side of the slum. The pavement has rusted autos. There are kids playing cricket on the main road. Traffic adjusts and deftly navigates their field setting.

He tells us that he has the bag in his home. He disappears into the slum and brings the bag. Yogi tells him that there was a winter jacket in the bag. He pops again into the slum and brings the jacket. Yogi checks his bag. All the documents are safe and sound. His SIM is there too. Only his handset and money are missing.

He asks me, “Should we grill him?”I say, “No. We should be content that you have everything that is important returned to you. He could have burned your documents and buried your bag. But he knew that there is a man's life in the bag. He understood the pain you must have gone through to procure these documents and so he called you. You see he is a part and product of the same rotten system like you and me. He understands how it works. He lives by beating it. We literally live in it. So let us leave. He is an ethical thief.”

Sagarb

Calvin was growing up so fast that had he placed his palm on top of his head he would have felt himself grow-up many inches daily. Just like Alice from Wonderland, his most favorite bed-time-story. He was being introduced to so many new subjects at school at such a frantic pace that he was facing great difficulties in coping with them all. His head whirled with so much information being stuffed into it, all at the same time! He was barely out of his age of devouring comic-books and he was already being introduced to Maths & Physics, Literature & Biology. He hadn't even questioned the existence of Santa yet, to deserve punishment of this kind! It seemed that his transition from a world of fairy-tales to that governed by necessities & laws was going to be rather premature & abrupt. He looked so over-informed & drowsy that day that his mom offered him a nice warm cup of chocolate-milk & tucked him early to bed along with his favorite tiger-toy.

As mommy shut the door behind her, Calvin sprang up & prodded Hobbes to stay awake. He wanted to read him his favorite bed-time story for the umpteenth time. Hobbes looked disinterested as he, by now, knew it by heart! Calvin turned the first leaf and started narrating. "A white rabbit ran past wearing a coat and carrying a watch, lamenting running late". Wondering why Calvin had stopped narrating, Hobbes asked "Ain't Alice supposed to follow it?". Hearing no response for long, Hobbes opened one eye of his to see what Calvin was up to. A perplexed Calvin was turning the pages frantically. "Something missing, eh?", inquired Hobbes. "Yeah, Alice's amiss & I need to look for her", replied Calvin. Right before Hobbes' spell-bound eyes, Calvin shrunk & entered a frame in the comic book. Hobbes followed suit...

Tracing Alice...

“Now where u gonna look

for her?", asked Hobbes.

"Let's ask that aging gentleman

with unkempt hair puffing at his

pipe over there", replied Calvin.

"Sir, have you seen Alice?"

inquired Calvin. "Call meAlbert,

I'm yet to be knighted", he replied. "She

went down a worm-hole, right there", he

went on... "U mean a rabbit-hole",

said Calvin. "Umm... u may say so",

replied Albert.

Calvin walked to the 'door' of the worm

-hole, but found that it was locked. A table

next to the door had a key placed upon it but Calvin couldn't reach it as he had shrunk. He looked

around & picked an iron nail which now

seemed like a giant-rod & starting digging

into the door. Irritated by this noisy activity, a man popped out his head from a bath-tub placed close

-by. He had a long beard. "Don't dig. Use it as a

lever & lift the door open", he advised. "But it's

such a tiny nail & the door is so huge!", replied

Calvin skeptically. "Duh! Give me a place to

stand on, and I will move the Earth", muttered the guy as he slipped back into the tub. Calvin obeyed & the door indeed gave way. "Eureka, eureka", yelled he with joy, as he entered.

The door opened into a beautiful orchard. Spring had just set in and the flowers & fruits of choicest colors & fragrances were in full-bloom. It looked like paradise, but there were no people around & Calvin was getting desperate. He had to find Alice! After walking some distance, he bumped into a finicky guy, Werner. "Have you seen Alice, Sir? She entered this door through the worm-hole", said Calvin. "How fast was she traveling?", questioned Werner. "And how does that

"No, I'm Charles and what garden?", he replied. "The place where the first man & his wife lived after they were created by God", replied Calvin. "Don't know 'bout that but not everything was 'created' for mankind. Life evolved...", he continued. "He seems to be an Atheist", whispered Hobbes which Charles overheard. "No, I'm more of an Agnostic, or a Naturalist you may say...", he replied. "Who gave u this address, anyway?", inquired Charles. "Oh, we just followed the white-rabbit wearing a coat & carrying a watch", replied Calvin.

."What!? Now those rabbits have taken to this too?", yelled a visibly upset Charles. He threw away a fat book he had nearly completed writing & started all over again. 'On the Origin of the Species - by means ofunnatural selection', he wrote on its cover and turned the leaf. Calvin was shaken up, but nevertheless was happy to have run into the Mock-Turtle. Now Alice had to be around. "Where can I find the closest habitation?", asked Calvin. "Follow this path of white-pebbles left by Hansel and Gretel", directed Charles getting back to his writing.

matter?", asked Calvin. Sensing the irritation in Calvin's voice, he answered, "I saw a girl there, no

no there...". "Are you always this uncertain?

This doesn't help!", yelled a disg-

runtled Calvin as he walked

on.

After haphazardly looking around for sometime, he came across a stout balding man with distinctive side-burns quietly and intently studying the transmutations of species

in a Mock-Turtle. "Sir, is this the

Garden of Eden & are you

Adam?", asked Calvin.

.

The path sure did lead Calvin & Hobbes to a tall castle. It had two windows, but no doors nor stairs! An apple tree grew under one of it's windows. A young love-struck Romeo stood at the foot of this apple tree, contemplating how to scale it in order to reach the window. His accomplice, Euler, put a reassuring arm around him & adviced, "Traverse depth-first". "Thanks", replied Romeo as he hastily scrambled up the apple-tree. So shabby was his climb that he dropped an apple over the head of another fellow, Isaac, resting under the tree. "Why did the apple fall straight down?", wondered Isaac. Calvin enquired with Euler whether the apple tree lead to Alice. "No, this one leads to Juliet", he replied. "Check out the other window", he further added.

On reaching the other window, Calvin noticed a beautiful long braid of golden hair reaching down from it. It was 20 ells long & touched the ground! Three young men stood at its tip, caressing & admiring it. "Does this golden-braid lead to Alice?", asked Calvin. "Oh, this double-helix leads to Rapunzel", replied James. "Sigh!", uttered Calvin, with drooped shoulders. "We're new to this place. Check out with that old guy, there", added James pointing to a shabbily dressed old man round the corner.

A tired Calvin now approached the old man. He was so old that he looked ancient! "Seen Alice?", asked Calvin keeping his question short.

"Oh, this place looks new to me too, son. I mean, I do belong here but I've returned after 20 years, u see... Things have changed such a lot since then... ", replied Rip. "Phew! I've looked for her all day. I must have traveled more than Gulliver!", sighed Calvin.

"Was she lame?", questioned Rip.

"What? No!", replied Calvin.

"Then was she deaf?", Rip inquired further.

"No! She was hale & hearty", replied an annoyed Calvin.

"Then I have sad news for u kid. She must have been abducted by the Pied piper of Hamelin. One hundred and thirty boys and girls followed him out of the town, where they were lured into a cave on the Köppen Hill and never seen again.”

"No!!! Take me to the Koppelberg Hills, please, please take me to Koppelberg...", Calvin kept pleading.

"You first need to go to school", said his mom as she woke him up. "You're late, Calvin!", yelled she whilst thrusting a tooth-brush into his mouth and making him stand before the mirror of his bathroom.

As a sleepy Calvin stood in front of the mirror brushing his teeth, he pondered what the world would be like on the other side of the mirror. He was so overwhelmed by the urge to experience that alternate world!

Right before Hobbes' spell-bound eyes, Calvin shrunk & walked in through the looking-glass. Hobbes followed suit... To all those kids who are made to grow too early, too fast...

Albert - Albert Einstein

Guy in the bath tub - Archimedes (inventor of the lever)

Werner - Werner Heisenberg (The Uncertainity Principle)

Charles - Charles Darwin (On the origin of the species)

Romeo - Romeo & Juliet (Shakespeare)

Euler - Leonhard Euler (Graph Theory)

Isaac - Isaac Newton (Laws of gravity)

James - James Watson (Double-Helix DNA)

Calvin & Hobbes, Alice in Wonderland, Through the looking glass, Pied Piper of Hamelin, Rip Van Winkle, Rapunzel, Gullivers' Travels, Hansel & Gratel - Kids comics/books

upasna

Winters mean no moving around, following grandma and stepping into the footholds which she creates, in the snow. Grandma says sometimes a thin sheet of snow can cover up puddles of water too, lakes even, one has to be careful. And looking up is important too. After all, that one sheet of snow on the roof sometimes gets up early and flirts with the rays. It’s shy, especially after long periods of seclusion. And then the rays have this thing of looking directly into the eyes. The sheet of snow lowers its eyes, dimples from within and diffidence playing its part makes the rays intrude into its privacy. Finally after much resistance snow gives in. Falls, in love, on to the ground. Sometimes on the tress too. Grandma says, that, can hurt. The conifers hold on to it, till the last droplet, in the hope that the snow will stay, it does, but only so long.

On the first night, snow, falls in careless, soft, rounded portions. She secretly opens the window to gulp in a handful. It’s a wonder how it tastes as good as it looks. Grandma has said that the first night means a trip outside. Today they will walk in the garden, stepping on the soft portions, bare feet. The idea sets off her imagination. It’s a daring act. She is excited all day, waiting for the evening to set in. Later in the night they take a small walk in the snow, to save themselves from future frost bites. The first night is of love, so the snow flakes are kind, supple. It’s only after several days that the freeze sets in and it hardens, loses taste too.

doodles

She often sits back near her window, opening it after she is put to sleep, stealthily looking at these flakes, lost in thought. Days pass by and she wakes up each day looking at the whiteness all around. The window has become her favourite corner. She often thinks of the white expanse and the things beyond. The landscape has remained unchanged for days. She feels as if she’s almost forgotten the gardens, the trees, and the swing. Suddenly her senses are wrapped up with the winter warmth. It does have an unusual coziness, the whiteness around her. She feels alive, with it, at peace, home. It must be because of love, snow is in love.

Winters are busy for Grandfather; he is covering up the garden, with earth. Rose buds need care. The winter can be harsh and in desperate attempts to save the buds, mud is used to cover up and save them from the snow. She must remind grandfather to plant her pansies in the spring, purple ones.

The first night

Ajay Govind

So this was going to be his winter of discontent.

He entered the room switched on the lights and walked towards the table. It was unusually tidy. A few books, photographs, and a paint brush were all kept in their usual place. But he could not recognize the tidiness. He did not remember cleaning the space. This was happening more often than ever. He was forgetting simple things.

When did he clean the table?

That other question (did he clean the table?) left as soon as it came. He lived alone so of course he himself must have cleaned up the table. But when. That was the question bothering him. He had decided to sit down and write only just a few moments ago. He was sitting in the living room and suddenly when he looked at the calendar and then at his dog he felt the urge to write. It was almost customary for him to make a cup of tea before he wrote anything. He carefully poured himself a cup of strong black tea. The steam slowly rose from within the wide mouth of his orange mug with black circles. It was the last gift he had ever got. Once again, his memory refused him the simple pleasure of nostalgia. All he remembered was who gave it. He could not remember why, or when.

The next ritual was to watch the steam for a few seconds. And he did this religiously. He asked himself whether, one day, he would forget these things too? He preferred not to answer that question. With the hot cup of tea he made his way out of the kitchen to his room. He had not been to the room for ages. Not seen the table top, not smiled at the photographs, not touched the writing on the wall… not written anything. For long. So when did he clean the table? He stopped making an effort, and said: “I must’ve sometime. Strange isn’t it… January friend?”

JanuaryFriend

open theme writing

It was his way of ignoring his condition. He just answered the question in the affirmative with certainty. Somewhere in the back of his mind it troubled him, but he pretended otherwise. This was happening almost everyday. Just yesterday morning he had gone into the kitchen to get some fresh water for his dog. When he approached the bowl in the living room with the fresh water, he was surprised to see there was water in it already. His dog had completely ignored the silly event and not even raised an eyebrow. And he sat next to the bowl of still fresh water with some more water in a mug, wondering when he had poured the water. It was ten past ten on a Sunday morning. He had only woken up at half past nine.

When did I pour the water?

Once again, that other question (did I pour the water?) left as soon it came. He lived alone so of course he himself must have poured the water. But when. That was the question bothering him. But he made a habit of ignoring these events, and carrying on undisturbed in his rather quiet world. Every time this happened he would just look at his dog and say: “I must’ve sometime. Strange, isn’t it…January friend?” It was a strange name by any standards but he said it with pride. He liked that name.

On a cold wintry day his January friend had adopted this modest house. He did not remember how, but the door of his house was open that Friday morning. It was the fourth of January. He tried hard to recollect but could not remember why he left the door open, or even when. He was going to the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea when he saw the dog in the living room. That was when he noticed the open door. That was the first time his condition had manifested. He tried hard to recollect, but found no answers. He settled for a bizarre explanation; the dog had opened the door on his own. It had been three years since that day.

For a long time he imagined that the dog was happier in the outside world. During the first few months of the dog’s stay, he tried communicating this feeling to the dog. He would feed the dog in the morning and leave the door open so he could leave if he so wished. But the dog did not leave. It amused him. He was not used to anyone enjoying his company for such a long time. But soon he did get used to the company of his January friend. It was after an entire year, almost as if to commemorate the event, that he named the dog. The dog had been nothing less than a friend.

He kept the mug on the table. He loved the sound it made on the wooden surface. And with a child-like joy he picked it up and kept it down again. Yes, he loved the sound. He loved sitting there and wondered why he hadn’t for so long. He had not written for so long. And this morning when he was passing by the calendar he saw that it was fourth of January again. He wanted to write something for his January friend. He was reminded of his initial attempts at freeing the dog. He remembered how he had imagined that the dog would be unhappy in his company. He took a sip of the hot tea before he set his pen on paper.

So this was going to be his winter of discontent.

The words were already there. He looked at the words and could not recognize the hand writing. He had only just sat down to write and the words were already there on paper. The pen was still in his pocket. He could not understand how this had happened. That other question (did I write this?) left as soon as it came.

When did I write this?

It was as if there were forgotten bits and pieces of his life strewn all around the house. And he was just moving in circles, from one forgotten space towards another. He looked at the dog and said “I must’ve sometime. Strange, isn’t it … January friend?”

His January friend sighed. He did not even notice this response. He had already forgotten his question and wrote another sentence on the page where earlier there was one. And then abruptly he stopped. He kept the pen in his pocket, closed the book, switched off the lights and went to the living room to pour some fresh water for his January friend.

When he came back, just as he was about to kneel to pour the water, he noticed that the door to his house was open.

The way you sat, rat.The way you sat.You picked my mind,Mind.You picked my mind.You, tube's baby,And baby's tube.Watch idiot box, watch.Play rubik's cube,Rat.You see, you picked my mind.Mind.

Now wipe my screen,Clean.Wipe my screen.Clean,Again.Go take a bath now,And a bow.You see, you rat,This is how.You picked my mind.My mind.Again.

So if you dodo.And Pick my mind.Again.Rat,The way you sat.

SantoshRatblack pearls

akshata viveka

The mind is blank;little prickles of post orgasm fuzziness just about making their exitIts depressing lying here with youmy invisible lover.Questionable fluid drives down my body in little rivuletsits cold, but my blanket is on the floor;somewhere between the bed and the bathroom,dragged sometime between my first vomitand your last piss.Unidentifiable forms morph their way across the ceilingtaunting,but eliciting no recognition.Limbs ache, skin chafes and breaks,and the first recognizable veins of scarlet fluidmake their way down the oddly sloping floor.The room begins a steady descent into darknessedges firstTime thaws,the mind loosens,but not enough.The energy from my body is everywhere but within meI see it take form;the first recognizable thing in months,and strangely fascinating to the slipping soul.The blackness envelops now.Indistinguishablebetween coagulating blood and a dried out heart.Its time to go home.

- The Last Act -

And that was it,the board had two colors–white and blackchequered blocks woven around them,plenty of space above them,to spin even a mastermind in distress.Above all the smoke,winter, city smelling of pork meat and decadence,there hung the boardwith all its malignant hues.Slowly it went up,slowly it went down,slowly it rose, fellslowly and more slowlytill it morphed to an urban tale.It came among the peoplewho just sat and did nothingand lo! Now they had everything.It came among the army generalsto win badges over genocidepersonal glory in fatherland's nameblazed and shone under the sun.It came among the academics,it came among the bankers,it came among the overlordswho all had their false prides.It came among the peoplewho made it their religionwho lived for it,who died for it,banishment also seemed fair.

sutirtha

white board

10 AM, the day preceding the next day.

“You don't it, this work, do you?” he asked finally.

"No, nothing like that, I am just feeling a little tired today" I responded

"Don't hesitate fellow, if you don't like this work, tell me, I'll give you something else" he insisted

"Oh OK, a matter of choice, well, yeah, can I see the list of projects available" I enquired.

"There is no list ready to show you, let me talk to you later, till then at least don't look so terribly bored of what you are working on. "

"hmmmmm, yeah".

Acidity is one of the things I can't help developing a dislike towards, just like I can't help having acidity. It doesn't let you look untroubled and happy even when you want to. He left shortly.

12:01 PM, 4th of march 2006

White board at my desk has a lot of stuff written on it. My boss has asked me to wipe it clean. I have. Multiple times, but then it gets back to being the way it is before it is wiped clean. I also realize that before I started cleaning I would never write on it so much. Every time it gets crowded, my boss asks me to keep it clean. It's interesting, first time he asked me to clean it, he simply asked me to clean it, now he has changed his statement slightly and has asked me to keep it clean.

I ask him why he changed his statement. He looks visibly bemused. I, in the meanwhile, as he is busy looking bemused, take the duster and wipe the board clean.

1:15 PM, 4th of March 2006

There is this new head massager one of my colleagues bought for me. She says I can use it instead of having my hand in my hair all the time. It is a cheap massager and it works. I no longer use my hand to massage my head, not when she is around.


One of my friends got divorced yesterday. Another of my friend feels really sad for him. He asks me if I had any idea about it beforehand.

"Yeah, I had an inkling of it" I said.

"You didn’t tell me" he complained and I was relieved he had something else on his head now. But after some time he regains his composure and is feeling sad about the divorce again.

santosh

A few pages,torn and kept:


Instructor at the gym asked me to carry more than one t-shirt. He says I sweat a lot. He also thanks me when I tell him that I'll do so.


Dusted and outIt seems I am going weak in chest, last night as I rode my way

back home slight winter chill seemed to make its way right

through to my ribs. It seems I am going weak in chest.

This morning a beggar approached my bike at the signal,

nothing out of the usual routine. I found my hand into my back

pocket and then out of it after some time and also found a few

coins first lying there and then rolling onto the beggar’s. I

counted them. Out of my usual routine. I am definitely going

weak in my chest.

Windows have an unusual quality. They are expected to open

but whenever they do, you always expect something new at

the other side. I hate glass windows, there is no other side to it.

Yes, I hate glass windows. Table tops are fine, table tops are

ok, there is no other side I look for.

Whenever I pass by a construction site, it is always the dust

that captures my imagination more than anything else. It

speaks for the nature of the site, active, abandoned, almost

complete or wrapped up and done with. You watch the dust

and you know what it is. I moved into a new apartment last

month. Place has nothing but me, another guy and nothing

else. It has glass windows.


There are days, and they mostly are Mondays, when you don’t feel like getting up and back to work. There are too many of them at times. And these days the days are like that. So I decide to sit at home, wondering aimlessly about why my bicycle lost its balance last evening as I was riding back home. It needs a new frame, I conclude, but then I realize with bicycles the frame is the bicycle and a new frame means a new bicycle and so I finally conclude that I need a new bicycle.

On TV they are showing some old footage of Kennedy being driven down the road just before his assassination. Some people are still hooked on to it. There is this thing about black and white footages. Actually there is this thing about anything black and white. Actually black and white as a concept has this thing about itself. Oh,I think I still haven’t told you what this thing is. I am sure it is nostalgia. I am pretty sure of it and am also pretty sure that you’d think about it and would either agree or disagree, but as long as you wonder, I wonder what’s the harm in making such statements !

It is important for anyone who pays you to know that you work on his terms, so it is justifiable, but then as I said it is one of those days. So I sit here, decidedly adamant about not wanting to attend the call today. I have called up a colleague of mine and told him that I wont be there for the call and he gets scared, he hasn’t handled any call on his own so far and that makes me enjoy the situation even more. If you let your imagination go far enough, such situations give you as much pleasure as sex would after a tiring game of whatever you like, I would say for example badminton or cricket. But if you don’t allow yourself to see the funny side of it all then it is as impossible not to feel guilty about it as it is to sound optimistic in a life insurance advertisement.

10:30 AM, 26th day of February 2005 2 PM, same day of the same month in the same year

My boss looks visibly upset as I sit across him at the lunch table. No it has nothing to do with me not taking the call this morning. I am sure of it. He had even said Hi to me this morning as came in, but before I could figure if I wanted to respond he had waited long enough and had moved on.

He looks really upset, he doesn’t even respond as I say hi to him.

2 PM, same day of the same month in the same year

Did you notice as soon as I said the same day of the same year even the month is uniquely defined, but I also have a sneaky feeling that a thought as to why I avoided the month would have crossed your head. Never mind, heads are meant for that, there is no other purpose they serve, nothing that I can think of. I personally feel we could have easily done away with the head and could have accommodated all that lies in and up there somewhere else, but then it is equally likely that I can say the same about most of the body parts, so let me rest my case here. I don’t want to sound funny if it also hints at me sounding illogical.

I am planning to go to the gym now, I know it is a little too early for that, my boss is still in and he doesn’t like me venturing out of my cubical too often, but then like I said it is one of those days. So now I have decided to leave for the gym. Instructor at the gym told me yesterday that I have got a good natural body shape, to which I responded by asking him if the other girl he was preparing the workout for single, to which he responded by saying that she was rich too, to which I responded by saying that the car she gets to the gym in was the only car I could really think about buying and that otherwise I have a distinct preference towards two wheelers.

Grazing

It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes. I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled .

A Modest Proposal- Jonathan Swift

graphics

mayank

mayank

Mehdi Sharifi

taaneya

taaneya

Om Prakash Thapa

just imagination

mayank

fine art

little earthquakes in your face

taaneya

People are strange when you're a stranger,Faces look ugly when you're alone.Women seem wicked when you're unwanted,Streets are uneven when you're down.



People are strange when you're a stranger,Faces look ugly when you're alone.Women seem wicked when you're unwanted,Streets are uneven when you're down.People are strange when you're a stranger,Faces look ugly when you're alone.Women seem wicked when you're unwanted,Streets are uneven when you're down.

People are strange when you're a stranger,Faces look ugly when you're alone.Women seem wicked when you're unwanted, People are strange when

you're a stranger,Faces look ugly when you're alone.Women seem wicked when you're unwanted,Streets are uneven when you're down.


Women seem wicked when you're unwanted,









siddheshh

Jim Morrison of "The Doors” Siddhesh Hatalkar

taaneya

Lov

e an

d c

igg

aret

es

photography

Carrot Fingers

Akshata Viveka

Black

Whiteand

Krishnendu Saha

An old man

Untitled

Kannagi

the b/w landscape

Arnab Sarkar

Taken at Urgam village, Uttaranchal, on the trek route to Kalpeswar ( one of the group of famous Panch Kedar).

open theme

Old lady of urgam village

Sumit Chakraborty

Electric Universe

Ajay Hatti

Swadha

Where Dreams Begin..

open theme

streetphotography

Meditationin

Street

Krishnendu Saha

the shadow,the smoke &

the rain

Arnab Sarkar

Arnab Sarkar

the artisan's workstation

The Phone Cycle

mayank

Distraction

mayank

What about the three clowns of the West? Bush, Blair, Berlusconi. Oh! How much we miss the Bushisms! We asked Bush to sum up his tenure as the most powerful man of this planet. This is what he had to say: I think bush is a dangerous place. A place where hateful few hide. We must smokem out but not burn the bush. Bush got to be nurtured. I was going to say it is a piece of work. The miracle of god. The food of the Bible where I've been since I've been the president. Where the fabulous German asparagus grows. Where human being and fish can coexist peacefully. Where a whole nation finds hope and wings take dream. But you didn't ask me the question 'Is our children learning? Reading is the basics for all learning.' So see you, Bush. See you in the bush.

The great obituaries of the Noughties. Shall we commemorate the actors first? Alec Guinness, the Obi Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy, Oscar-winning actor of Bridge Over the River Kwai and the prominent lead of the marvellous Ealing Comedies that included Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob and The Ladykillers, which was disastrously remade with Tom Hanks. Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, the Odd Couple. Dudley Moore, the Cuddly Duddly, the sex thimble, the dwarf-half of the famous double act with Peter Cook who was recently voted the greatest comedian by all great comedians. Gregory Peck who was critically acclaimed for the role of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee. Marlon Brando, the original method actor. His resume of movies in his first five years is still unmatched: The Men, A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata, Julius Caesar, A wild one, and On the waterfront. The Godfather resurrected his career and became his crowning achievement. Charlton Heston, the hero of Hollywood epics such as Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments, and El Cid, is however less known for his sci-fi class-acts of the 60s and the 70s: Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man and The Soylent Green. Paul Newman, the charitable star, well known for his memorable roles in The Cool Hand Luke, The Hustler, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and also equally well known for his charity work. Anthony Quinn, the star of Zorba the Greek. While Gregory Peck completed the glorious generation of Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Humphrey Bogart, and Robert Mitchum, Marlon Brando and Paul Newman formed the vital link between Peck's generation and the generation of Al Pacino, Roberto De Niro, Jack Nicholson, and Gene Hackman. They epitomized two generations of acting giants now no longer with us.

Luciano Pavarotti, the Italian operatic tenor, James Brown, the godfather of soul, Ray Charles, the pioneering singer of soul, Johnny Cash, The Man in Black, George Harrison, the quiet Beatle and proponent of Indian Mysticism. Finally Michael Jackson. What a thriller of a death! Instead of moon-walking, he is now all-fours-eternal-resting.

Kim Peek, the real Rain Man, the mega-savant who could memorize to the word up to 12,000 books, including the Bible and the Book of Mormon. He could read two pages in about 10 seconds – the right page with his right eye and the left simultaneously with his left eye. He could never recover from the shock of his appalling betrayal by dingbat Dustin and the inconsequential cretin Cruise. H E

Who were the Noughties icons? Can icons be classified into the Good, the Bad and the Ugly? Google and Roger Federer were some of the good ones. Osama Bin Laden is bad. Yes, evilllll! Britney Spears is plain Ugly. Oh baby baby. Oh baby baby. Oh! Shut your gobbogue!

Decorum and Decadence

died of heart attack. Sir Nigel Hawthorne who played the power-crazed Permanent Secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, in the TV sitcoms Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. May you rest in peace, Sir. Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri. Jesus Christ, what an ungodly long name! How can we forget Paul Samuelson, the father of Modern Economics.

When we gave this piece for review to Maneka Gandhi, she complained of our callous disregard for the rampant extinction of non-human species. She wanted us to rename this article to The Decade of Lost Species. So what were lost forever? The Hawaiian crow, Western black rhino, The Baiji dolphin also known as Changjiang, St Helena Redwood, Poo-uli, Spix's macaw, Wood's cycad. Alas the Golden Toad. Scientific name, Incilius periglenes. Kingdom, Animalia. Phylum, Chordata. Class, Amphibia. Order, Anura. Family, Bufonidae. Are you happy? Maneka. Did the biologists look at the adornments on Indian housewives? Not only golden toads, you would find golden bustards and golden dodos.

What were the neologisms of the Noughties? Did you know Twitter was voted the word of the year 2008? It beat bailout referring to the rescue by the government of companies on the brink of failure, including large players in the banking industry. Can we forget 9-11? Weapons of Mass Destruction? Metrosexual? Unfriend, to remove someone as a friend on a social networking site such as Facebook. Will you befriend an unfriend?

2000 produced witches' knickers (originated in Ireland) meaning shopping bags caught in trees and flapping in the wind. Trout pout from UK, meaning the effects of collagen injections that produce comically oversized lips resembling those of a dead fish. What about Jolie pout? Have you ever smirted? C'mon, you do it all the time. You smoke because you want to smirt. Pumping party from Miami for illegal gatherings where plastic surgeons give back-street injections of silicone, botox... Are you a cougar? Do you watch Picasso porn, the scrambled signal of a pornographic cable channel as seen by a nonsubscriber? Aren't we all set-jetters? A good New Year resolution would be to get rid of one's banana folds and chubb. Anything

which is not spam has to be ham. Don't subject yourself to ridicule by revealing Anna Kournikovas? Never open the kimono in your workplace. Do you want to join FLOP? It is a goat heaven.

Eminem is the best-selling artist of the decade. So kudos plenty for Shady. But your protégé, 50 cent? What follows is our two cents to your judgement and not a rap song. What the f*** were you thinking? You m***** f****** c*** s****** hip b******** hopper. There were many underrated movies, Morvern Callar, Spirited Away, and Spider, to name a few, that disappeared without a trace. What about the most overrated movies of the decade? Slumdog Millionaire, Star Wars post-prequels or pre-sequels, Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Oh! What the hell! Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gham summed up Bollywood. The director now hosts a chat show that should rightly be called Coffee with a Clot.

Who ruined this decade? Who will be forgotten but should be remembered and pilloried? Dan Brown, the conspiracy spouting shyster but now a multi-millionaire dollar industry, the father of trashcan popcorn literature, the messiah for greenhorn readers, the entertainer for travelling-because-everybody-else-is-travelling nincompoops. Now everybody thinks they know all about good literature. What is the worst book of the decade? Is it not Five Point Someone? The movie called three idiots is loosely made on the book, which to start with is ultra-loose like a free flowing salt. Shouldn't it be called four idiots if you included the author? What about the dumb thousands who read it and are now raving about its literary merit?

Harry Potter, the never-ending saga of a wizard. J. K. Rowling, for heaven's sake, stop scrawling. Al Gore, the inconvenient truth for you is that you have lost the presidency. Gore, Obama, Oh! What a barforama! To the Nobel Peace Prize committee, does Gandhi ring a bell? Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth. So shouldn't you be called The Swedish Screw-up Committee? Next year, it would be Rupert Murdoch for having brought peace to millions on the couch.

Match the following

Pereyaslavl-Zalessky

When my paper got accepted for the International Conference to be held at the Program Systems Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Pereyaslavl-Zalessky, there was only one thing on my mind, which was to travel in Russia and especially see Moscow, St Petersburg and Pereyaslavl. So I requested the Director of my lab to present it and I busied myself preparing for the travel. My Russian colleague and best friend, Vladimir (Volodya), hosted me. I went to the institute in Pereyaslavl-Zalessky on the conference day (5 September 2007) only to be asked to leave by my Director. He told me not to waste my time at the conference but make the most of it visiting places. He was right; Russia is a tourist’s paradise.

photo feature

Pereyaslavl-Zalessky, meaning Pereyaslavl-Beyond-The-Woods, is 127 kms by bus from Moscow. The name came from the name of the older town, Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi, located where Alta River flows into Trubizh River in the Kiev Oblast (province) in central Ukraine. It was one of the first campaigns in Russia to encourage people to move to the East. The name has been changed to Pereslavl.

Indo-Russian friendship was forged during the Cold War. In the cultural landscape, Raj Kapoor’s films enjoyed immense popularity. But did you know that Mithun Chakraborty had a massive following in Russia? Did you know that his song Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja Aaja Aaja of Disco Dancer is much loved? Volodya would always split my sides by singing it to me. His other favourite song is Pehla Nasha from Joh Jeeta Wohi Sikander. His favourite culinary dish is Mango Chutney. He would plead me often to open a shop specialising in Mango Chutneys and he said he would give up his research studies and work in it. Many Westerners that I have met over the years had the impression that India and Bollywood are synonymous and that Bollywood was the reflection paragon of Indian culture. I didn’t bother correcting it. A German friend of mine once told me that Bollywood is getting corrupted. I asked by what. She said by all the art-house movies influenced by Western cinema. It is hard to not agree. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the heat in the friendship has reduced even though India remains the second largest arms market for Russia. When Putin was in India a few years ago, he received a lukewarm welcome compared to the glorious fanfare for Blair and Bush. What bloody opportunists we are!

Bringing you back to Pereyalsavl, so there I was in September 2007 walking in the countryside visiting cathedrals and eating succulent blackthorns (Prunus spinosa) from the trees on the roadside. There were many apple orchards too. A year later I found myself playing tennis with a Cuban in Valencia, Spain. I asked him about my thoughts on writing a monograph contrasting philosophies of Gandhi and Castro. He told me he didn’t like Castro.

It is one of the towns in the Golden Ring, which is a tourist route that runs through a series of cities and towns in central Russia remarkable for their ancient history and historical and cultural monuments. The Ring became the centre of Russia in the twelfth century after Kiev, the mother of Russian cities, had lost its leading role in political and cultural life. The cities of the Ring became the capitals of the principalities where religious life and arts were thriving; they were also important points on the trade routes between the North and the South, Europe and Asia.

The starting point of the Ring is Sergiev Posad situated about 62 kms from Moscow. The name of the town, meaning Sergius’s Settlement, is associated with St Sergius of Radonezh, the spiritual leader and monastic reformer of medieval Russia who became the venerated saint of the Russian Orthodox Church. It grew around the picturesque complex of buildings of the Trinity-St Sergius Monastery or Laura inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage site list in 1993.

The other Ring cities in clockwise direction are Rostov Veliky, meaning Rostov the Great, located on the shores of Lake Nero. Uglich whose name deriving from two different versions, one from ugol meaning angle because it is situated at the place where Volga bed makes an abrupt turn and ugol meaning coal from charcoal-burning which is the popular craft there. Yaroslavl is the largest and most urbanized city of the Ring. Its emergence is associated with Yaroslav the Wise – one of the most intrepid rulers of Ancient Russia. The historical part of the city, a UNESCO world heritage site, is located at the confluence of the Volga and Kotorosl Rivers. Kostroma situated a little downstream the Volga from Yaroslavl and at the confluence of the Volga and Kostroma Rivers was known in the middle Ages to produce world’s best linen. Vladimir was founded at the end of the tenth century by Prince Vladimir the Red Sun and is located on the Klyazma River; many of its masterpieces feature in the UNESCO World heritage site list. Bogoliubovo was built by Prince Andrei Bogoliubsky. Suzdal whose first chronicle dates from 1024 is located on the Kamenka River. It was sacked

several times but each time revived within a short period. It was inscribed on UNESCO world heritage list in 1992. Finally Yuryev-Polsky founded by Yuri Dolgoruky (known as George I and founder of Moscow) in 1152 is located in the upper reaches of the Koloksha River.

Pereyaslavl-Zalessky situated North of Sergiev Posad is located on the shores of Lake Pleshcheyevo. The city was founded by the Prince Yury Dolgoruky in 1152 and derives its name from the other, earlier Pereyaslav located to the south-east of Kiev, at the place where the Trubezh River flows into the Dnieper. Pereyaslavl the New was encircled by earthen ramparts, which survived due to the several layers of oak logs embedded in them. The high ramparts with fortress walls, the rivers Trubezh and its tributary Murmazh as well as swampy lowland around, turned the town into an impregnable citadel.

Between 1238 and 1253, Prince Alexander Nevsky, who became famous for his victories over the knights of the Livonian Order, ruled it. In 1238, the town was devastated by the Tartar-Mongol hordes. The prince restored urban structures, walls and towers destroyed and burnt down by the enemy.

The northern elevation affords a panoramic view of the town with the Goritsky Monastery of the Assumption in the south. It was founded in the fourteenth century in the reign of Ivan Kalita, the Prince of Moscow from 1325 to 1341. The strategic position of the monastery made it vulnerable to enemy’s attacks and it was repeatedly vandalized and burnt down. Of greatest interest in terms of architecture is the eastern corner within the monastery fence where the palace of the guard and the two gates adjoining it are located – the Saint Gate in the South, with the gateway Church of St Nicholas, and the Passage Gate in the east. The Passage Gate is an example of the decorative trend typical of local architecture revealed in the sumptuous and varied decor of figured bricks. It looks especially ornate on a sunny day in an intense light, where interlacing light and shade patterns play on the high relief of the masonry work. Presently the Monastery houses the Museum of History and Art, whose prized exhibits are canvases by Ivan Shishkin, Konstantin Makovsky, Alexander Benois and an assemblage of works by the well-known Soviet artist and teacher Dmitry Kardovsky. Kardovsky was a prolific book illustrator who worked on the Russian literary classics by Chekhov, Gogol, Lermontov and Tolstoy.

The cathedral of the assumption in the monastery has several distinct features of the Baroque style: the elaborate plan, many-tiered design, figure-shaped window surrounds, diverse pilasters articulating the walls and drums of the domes. The inner decor has an exceedingly lavish decoration. The walls and the vaults are adorned with murals as well as with numerous moulded decorations, ornamental panels and representation of cherubs and angels. The elegant white stuccowork contrasts effectively with the light blue tinting of the flat parts of the walls. The carved and gilt many-tiered iconostasis was produced by the Russian craftsman Yakov Zhukov.

The focus of Red Square in Pereyaslavl is the Cathedral of the Transfiguration, which is of the same age as the town. Resolved in austere and concise forms, it is markedly different from the richly adorned cathedrals of Vladimir dating from the same period. It has also very little in common with the diverse local churches built in the eighteenth century that have polychrome facades and are elaborate in plan in keeping with the Baroque style.

There is desolation in the monasteries due not only to the denial of religion in Soviet Union but also due to the lost importance of Pereslavl for the Russian emperors. The cathedral in the Goritsky Monastery has been neglected since the 18th century.

The river Trubezh and the lake Pleshcheyevo have shaped the specific features of Pereyaslavl. It was on this lake that Peter the grea

t began to build at the end of the 17th century, poteshnaya flotiliya, the toy flotilla of sea crafts, yachts, galleys that gave birth to Russian navy. The story of the toy flotilla is the subject of the display at the Botik Estate Museum where one of the Peter's first boats, the Fortuna, is preserved.

There are many other attractions such as the Museum of Pots and Kettles in the Village of Veskovo, which we found on the way down from the Institute. It contained a large collection of old kettle-samovars, teapots, coffee-pots, chocolate boxes, chinaware toys, and other handicrafts. This is one of the three private museums in Pereyaslavl, the other two are the Museum of Flat-Irons and The Museum of Choo-Choo Trains. .

We didn’t know about the Blue Stone however. It is a relic from the remote past. It is an enormous field stone on the bank of lake Pleshcheyevo. There are many legends associated with it. Historians and archaeologists pieced together evidence of the first settlement of Finns, pagans who idolized the field stone. They were followed by northern Slavic tribes, pagans worshipping Yarila, who continued the idolization. They built a big Slavic settlement, named Kleshchi, which was a precursor to the town of Pereslavl.

What can you say about it? Wow. Just wow. I’m lost for words but I will try. It is as brainless and as retarded as a monkey on cannabis. I saw it for about 20 minutes last night and I got thoroughly disgusted with the pure sickness of the show. If Roadies wasn’t already enough to screw up one entire generation of mindless followers, then here is another cool new thing MTV has to offer. The plot of the show: MTV selects two smartasses and then clubs them with a bunch of stupid self-proclaimed babes. Now these hotshots are probably as bright as you can expect an empty beer-can to be and the guys have hell lot of nothing to say. They always have an answer; it’s a smart answer and like most smart answers, it doesn’t mean anything at all unless you are one of those people who go to parties with a camera trying to get clicked with hot chicks so that next day you have something to post on Facebook. Coming back to the plot, now that a lethal combination of sickness has been concocted, MTV puts them through various situations that lead these chicks to fight amongst each other for the guys. Not that they actually care for the guy but then they have to get one guy hooked so that they can stay till the end and thus win and then actually get a cool rich guy in their real life, some guy who would just be so dumbstruck by their fame and boldness (read sportiness). As the show progresses, the fights gets more and more intense and so does the fake romance and mushiness. Everyone talks about how they love or hate one another and then they talk again after a while a b o u t

how everything they are doing is to win. Coolest people in the show are the ones who can lie and manipulate the most. The better you lie, the greedier you are, the cooler you become. Its quite amazing the way MTV has turned morality on its head; it is genuine irony to see these same people holding debates about various cultural and social issues in a very libertarian way. On one hand, they support a free society with no moral policing but on the other they encourage people to be stupid, greedy, and opportunistic and to be proud of them as if they are priceless qualities. Putting down one form of brainwashing from the saffron green outfits etc and putting up another form of brainwashing is the way to be.

These people are genuine loudmouths who think they are so cool that they actually get to decide what’s cool. And sadly lots of other fools who surround us are making all this come true by choosing to make their ambition of life, to be a three quarter retard Roadie. As you might have noticed by now that I somehow drifted from the original topic of reviewing Splitsvilla and rambling about the overtones of MTV products, that’s happening primarily because of the nausea the show left me with. If you have any respect for your intellect, then avoid this show. Watching a potato getting boiled would be a more entertaining exercise than this.

ADVISORYSTUPID CONTENT

Splitsvilla

revi

ew

GREY CELLS

OY!!WHY ARE YOU

HERE??

Russia meant writers and revolutions to me until I visited it a couple of years ago. It was a mysterious land, a land whose ethnology I roughly put together from the works of her writers. So there was a lot to see and understand and re f ine my bookish knowledge . Unfortunately the time was only just enough for me to be a thorough tourist who ticks items in his sight-seeing list as he sees them. Of special interest were the lives that have been scarred by wars and revolutions, the remnants of communism in Moscow - the Red Square of Kremlin and the matchbox buildings, the deification of my favourite writers Gogol, Pushkin and Bulgakov in public life, the museums and the palaces - House of Treasures, Peterhof, Hermitage, Catherine, the walk up and down the vertiginous escalators of the artistic metros, the train travel from Moscow to St. Petersburg (the same train that I took was bombed a few days ago), the ballet Black Swan by Tchaikovsky in one of their premier theatres and their food and drink - rassolnik, pelmini, blini, pierogi, prianik medoviy, red caviar and vodka.

And then I also wanted to buy a couple of film DVDs. One was the Ballad of a Soldier and the other, The Cranes are Flying. The first two Russian films that won at Cannes: Ballad won the special jury prize in 1960 when La Dolce Vita by Frederico Fellini took the Palme d’Or, The Cranes Are Flying won the Palme d’Or in 1958. These two films heralded the renaissance of Russian cinema after the thaw. But these are only a couple of reasons. They are war films directed by a new brand of stylists who departed from the content-oriented films that glorified Stalin. They are war films that offered perspective different from the stereotypical English fare. War films are generally multi-genre projects containing action, adventure, t ragedy, and documentary. But th is compartmentalization into genres is mainly a

Hollywood by-product whose stereotypes have emasculated these films – nonstop action, minimal dialogue, wide-scale destruction, deafening gun noise, aggressive nationalistic overtones that always blur the reality and obscene showmanship (that is so blatant in Patton and The Great Escape). Battles were fought away from the battlefields too in the impoverished households who sent their loved ones and bread earners to the war. There are very few films that explored this heartrending side. The Ballad of a Soldier is a supreme example.

When I found its English translation after a harrowing search, I had the same exuberant feeling as when I saw a pride of lions that remained elusive until the fourth day of my safari in Kruger National Park. I even remember the bookshop where I found it. It is a beautiful building called Singer House, also widely known as House of Books. It lies on the intersection of Nevsky Prospekt, the most famous thoroughfare of St. Petersburg, and Griboyedev Canal, and opposite the impressive Kazan Cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Cranes Are Flying still remains the prize to be found.

Ballad of the Soldier is primarily a war film. But that is too narrow a categorization. It could also be classified as a great love story. It is not just one love story but a wonderfully interwoven set of love stories. Why was it called a Ballad and not Story of a Soldier? A ballad holds a special place in Russian literature. Like many other goods, it came from Germany. Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky was the first famous ballad writer and was particularly admired for his first-rate melodious translations of German and English ballads, Pushkin considered the father of Russian literature would become his heir apparent. He introduced Romantic style to Russian literature and would become a major inspiration for generations of readers and

writers. The director and scriptwriter, Grigori Churkhrai, is one of them.

The movie is about a soldier Alyosha whose heroism in the war earns him a six-day furlough to see his mother and fix the roof of her house. However on the way home, he loses the time that he was supposed to spend with his mother, helping, rescuing and alleviating the distress of people. This is the key idea of the Ballad. His bravery in the beginning of the movie does not mean much, in contrast to feats traditionally described in ballads. Self sacrifice is the all-encompassing theme.

The movie starts with Alyosha’s mother walking to the edge of the village. She is passed on the way by a couple, the mother holding their new-born child. There is a single snaky road that disappears into the distant horizon and that conveys traffic to and from the village. She waits on this road everyday for Alyosha’s return from the war. As she waits, the dialogue in Ballad starts with a note from the narrator saying that she is waiting for her son who died fighting for his country and buried far away in a foreign land. The magnitude of the tragedy is made known right at the start. The dolorous score by the composer Mikhail Liv intensifies the solemnity.

The story of Alyosha is then told starting with a battlefield scene with him and his commander in a trench facing fire from enemy tanks. The commander gets killed, Alyosha runs for his life with a tank hot on his trail only to stumble on a bomber, which he uses to knock down a couple of tanks. This is the only battlefield scene of the movie.

The duration of the movie is 88 minutes. There is not a scene unnecessary and not a second redundant. The execution is flawless. The actors, Vladimir Ivashov and Zhanna Prokhorenko, were amateurs picked from the acting school.

Through their fresh youthfulness and heartfelt debut performances, they elevate the movie. The film reflects beautifully the difficult economical and moral situations of poor and working classes living in humiliating poverty and desperation during the war. It has none of the showmanship of The Great Escape or The Dirty Dozen. It has none of the aggressive nationalistic overtones (so evident in Patton) or the glorification of Stalin and Communism. It is realistic and reproduces poignantly the human drama away from war but torn apart by it.

Ballad of a Soldier

The making of the movie turned out to be an arduous battle for Grigori Chukhrai, the director and scriptwriter. When the script of Ballad was presented to the Artistic Board for approval, there were many who decried the shallowness of the subject. Their main objection was that it was some silly film about a boy and a girl. But Mikhail Romm stood up for Chukhrai. Mikhail Romm then was a renowned filmmaker and the leader of the Russian State Institute of Cinema (VGIK). He was influential in introducing many great film directors, to name a few, Andrei Tarkovsky, Grigori Chukhrai, Vasily Shushkin.

The script was then sent to a directorate led by Alexander Sergeyevich Fyodorov, the namesake of the Great Russian poet Pushkin. He raised objections saying how could Chukhrai, who having participated in Battle of Stalingrad, the grandest battle of Twentieth Century, could make a trifle about a boy and girl and some roof-fixing. He said that it was not serious and pales terribly in comparison to his award-winning first venture Forty First. Chukhrai impressed him that he was making the film of his life and that it is a true story honouring the lives and contributions of some of his best friends that he had lost in the war. The script was then sent to editorial board which approved it.

Chukhrai choose the casting, which was sent again to the Artistic Board for approval. Oleg Strizhenov who appeared in Chukhrai’s Forty First was chosen for the male lead, Lilia Alyoshnikova for the female lead, both of them were very popular with the public. Shooting began but then minor disaster struck on the first day. During one of the episodes with close-up shot of troops bound for the front and the actors bound home in the opposite direction, Chukhrai’s ankle was smashed by an army truck and he ended up in a hospital. The time in the hospital allowed him to introspect and a thought that there was something wrong with the f i l m

rankled him. He found it to be the casting. So he returned to the Artistic Board and asked for a change of cast. They were outraged and they told him that even the Great Sergei Eisenstein, the maker of Battleship Potemkin, didn’t change his cast. Chukhrai as usual was adamant and got his way.

He chose Vladimir Ivashov from Romm’s class for second-year students to play Alyosha and Zhanna Prokhorenko to play Shura. When he spotted her, she was doing her first-year studies in the Moscow Art Theatre School considered then to be the best school in Soviet Union. But he told Zhanna that he needed her mother’s permission since she was so young. Her mother was hesitant saying that it is not good for Zhanna’s career to leave the most prestigious school in Soviet Union. Chukhrai told her that she is not a tall girl and so she would eventually graduate and end up doing roles of waitresses in movies and would always have a single line to say, “Dinner is served.” Instead she would be given the lead role right away in his movie. Her mother was convinced. He then met Radomyslensky, the dean of Moscow Art Theatre School, to release Zhanna for the film. The dean refused saying that directors spoil the actors and then threatened to expel her from the school. Chukhrai requested him to transfer her to VGIK. While this talk was taking place, Zhanna waited eagerly outside for the outcome. When Chukhrai came out, she said she would not mind her getting expelled from the school. So she was transferred to VGIK and joined the first-year classes there. She was then cast as Shura.

So shooting resumed. Same place, same episode, same shot, Chukhrai fell ill from Typhoid fever and had to be taken to the hospital again. He got well and returned to shoot. But then there was a mutiny in his ship. The film crew refused to work with Vladimir and Zhanna. They thought they were making a film with Strizhenov a n d

Alyoshnikova, stars loved by people, and now it looks like a film made for kindergarten. Half of the crew left Chukhrai, who recruited and refilled the crew and resumed his shooting.

hen in one of the train scenes, an accident leads to a woman on the platform suffering a severe concussion. Chukhrai is interrogated. His camera person, Era Mikhailnova, defends him saying that it was the fault of the engine driver who sped it too fast compared to what was rehearsed. Chukhrai refuses her defence but was later acquitted. Then he tells her to leave. This was not because she didn’t like the film and that she thought the script was bad and that she held few meetings voicing her dissent but because she was, according to Chukhrai, a traitor who betrayed the engine-driver. Chukhrai, a celebrated war veteran, tells her that he never worked with traitors. Then cameraman Vladimir Nikolayev, who was a war veteran himself, joins the film crew. They complete the film on schedule dispelling all doubts of overrun costs and schedule.

The finished film was then shown to the studio head, Vladimir Surin. Surin was an untalented musician who played trumpet badly in Bolshoi Theatre; he was later to be appointed deputy minister of culture and then the head of Mosfilm Studio. He summoned Chukhrai and said that there is no film and that what he has filmed counts for nothing. He then summoned the distribution people who said that the film is worthless. Chukhrai was asked to delete some scenes which he vehemently refused. He quoted Pushkin who said a Poem is an act and said that he is responsible for his films and his act and that he was not going to do anything that he would be ashamed of. He was defending the work that would be his greatest achievement.

So the film was brought to the Party meeting where they were unanimous in objecting that the

film is not contemporary. They harassed Chukhrai that his film is about history and did not satisfy the constraints that all the films that were to be made must be contemporary. Chukhrai knew he could be expelled but he had the courage to say that they were talking nonsense and that there were widows crying over their killed children and husbands and so how could they say that his film is about history. The artists who he admired spoke against him and said that he was making a film especially for Cannes. They were all unanimous that the movie is anti-Soviet, anti-army and anti-people and they all voted to expel Chukhrai from the Party although more than half had not seen the movie. The film was shelved.

About a month later, Chukhrai was summoned to a Central Committee and was told that his film would not be released in all the cities and that it was prohibited in the Capital and other big cities. His film would however be shown to workers in factories and collective farm clubs. He refused to compromise and walked out. Then he got a call again from the Central Committee. He was now surprisingly asked to go to Cannes and show the film. He went to Cannes and showed the film at the same time Federico Fellini was showing his masterpiece, La Dolce Vita. He was not convinced that the snobbish Cannes audience would appreciate the tragedy of a mother who had lost his son at war. He was mistaken, for the Ballad won the Special Jury Prize. It went on to win Golden Wolf at Bucharest Film Festival, Golden Gate at Sans Francisco Film Festival, BAFTA best film tying with The Hustler, Danish Bodil Award for Best European Film and an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

Did this landmark film in Russian cinema change the lives of those involved in its making? Unquestionably yes. Much like Pather Panchali propelled Satyajit Ray into the ranks of the great directors and Roshomon catapulted A k i r a

Kurusawa and Japanese cinema into the world spotlight.

Grigori Chukhrai was born on May 23, 1921 at Melitopol in Ukraine. He moved to Moscow with his mother when he was a child. He applied to join the Moscow Film Institute in 1939, but was drafted into the army before he could sit his exams. He fought in the Battle of Stalingrad, was commissioned and was wounded five times. He scripted the Ballad with Valentin Yezhov (literally meaning son of a hedgehog) based on his real life experiences. His third film, The Clear Skies, is about a valiant Soviet pilot shot down and captured by the enemy but who is expelled from the Party after his repatriation since his capture was considered a defeat and whose reputation is restored with the death of Stalin. He continued to make war films, a two-part study of the Battle of Stalingrad and An Untypical Story, about a mother who shelters her deserter son throughout the Second World War. He headed the Moscow Experimental Film Unit until his death in 2001.

Vladimir Ivashov was 19 years old when he was chosen for the role of Alyosha. He became a star overnight. After he graduated from VGIK in 1963, he made many insignificant comedies and could never repeat the magic of the Ballad. His only other memorable performance was in the lead role of Pechorin, the film directed by Stanislav Rostotski (1967), based on Mikhail Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time, in which he plays the aristocratic Russian officer whose existential life leads him to persecute and destroy those closest to him. He was virtually forgotten in Seventies and Eighties. His life in Nineties was miserable leading to his death in 1995. In August this year, the Russians remembered him - he would have been 70. His wife, Svetlana Svetlichnaya, was one of most beautiful women to have graced Russian cinema. Her role in the 1968 cult comedy

Diamond Arm turned her into a Soviet screen goddess. She starred opposite Vladimir in A Hero of Our Time.

Coming back to the opening scene of the movie that haunts me even today, would Alyosha’s mother walk everyday to the end of the village to wait for his return had he not returned briefly? What his return had done is to give her that eternal false hope. But then she has seen her son return once, there were many who had no such luck.

A retrospective

You know the voices inside my head are sometimes a bit antisocial.

I don't know why. I like life….i guess…Don't know..I am a bit confused maybe.

relax dude!! just chill .ok!!

listen to some music!! you will be fine.

wow!! no more confusion!!

I will cut your throat wide, opening A hole in your neck..

Documents

Flop January 2010 issue