Su Tungpo

The year is drawing to an end
The leaves are turning golden
I want to go home
I want to go home
I have loitered around this mud flat for too long.

Gulzar's Magic - 1

How to show the utmost intimacy between the hero and the heroin without resorting to explicit lyrics and without crossing the limits of decency? Gulzar knows the trick.

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एक सौ सोलह चान्द की रातें
एक तुम्हारे कांधे का तिल

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(Ek sau sOlah chAnd ki rAtEn
Ek tumhAre kAndhe kA til)

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He won't say a word more and the listener's mind careens to the most dramatic picturization of the lyrics. The same Gulzar will admonish you for imagining a less-than-dignified intimate scene by directing the shot with utmost dignity combined with delicate sensitivity. If you don't believe me, watch this song from Ijaazat (mera kuch saamaan). Sublime !!!!!

City of Carroms, Leisure and Culture

I fell in love with Kolkata at first sight. You can clearly hear the heart-beat of the city as soon as you get down the train in Howrah station. I haven't seen so many people out on the streets in many years. The breeze is luke-warm and humid. The cabbie who was driving me to the youth hostel was an expert. I say this because he drove through a narrow street that has wholesale shops and warehouses on both sides with big trucks parked on the street, yet made it in 25 minutes to the hostel.


The Youth Hostel is located in a residential area. After dinner, I went out for a stroll and the scenes I encountered were truly a feast to the eyes. It's like the clock has turned back to several decades. The streets are really narrow and the houses are huge mansions. The streets are dimly-lit by tall lamp-posts that are old-fashioned and ornate. Most of the intersections are not the regular 4-way ones. Sometimes it is three roads meeting and sometimes it is five. There is usually a Banyan or some big shade-giving tree in the intersection which has a platform built around the tree trunk. I saw middle-aged men and retired men sitting on that platform in groups and chatting away leisurely. If you stand there and lend a ear, you'll hear conversations flying from topic to topic touching politics, art, music, economics, research, globalization... what not. The thing that amused me the most was that these men brought bottled water to drink. They came prepared...... I saw many men dressed in dhoti, some even younger.

In many cul-de-sacs I have seen carrom boards and players. The carrom board is usually set up in a strategic position like under a lamp post, with a bright lamp hanging very low onto the table from the post, casting shadows on the players lending an enigmatic aura to them. There are four players and another six people or so sitting and watching them... or may be waiting for their turn. I haven't seen any liquor shops but I have seen many carrom clubs and street-side carrom boards. Kolkata has a love affair with carroms.

Another interesting feature of the city is the number of cats. Bengalis are obviously fond of cats and consider seeing a cat first thing in the morning a good omen. I guess there is a geographical reason for this. China and North-Eastern states of India have the custom of treating a cat as a sacred animal.

I went to Maidan in the afternoon. The subway ride reminded me of New York. I finished my work at US consulate and started walking by the Victoria Memorial Gardens. It was just 3 in the afternoon and already there were many people sitting in the park. They didn't look like unemployed people to me. The ladies looked like working women with their hand bags and lunch boxes. The men had office bags or briefcases in their hands. It was a mystery to me. If these are working people, how come they are here in the park at this hour of day? It is a week-day and not a public holiday either. I saw many young people, mostly students walking into the park hand in hand. Are the colleges closed too? I'll never know the answer. Groups of people just sat there under the trees on the benches and chatted away happily. I really envied Kolkatans. They live a life of leisure and happiness. When was the last time I went to a park with my friends and had such talks? Another thing I noticed and report with a little shyness is - the couples I saw always held hands while walking, young and middle-aged both alike.

People in Kolkata are die-hard fans of theatre. In the present day of film industry dominating all the art-forms, they still kept the fire of theatricals going. Whenever there is a play in an auditorium, it is sold out completely. The auditorium management arranges for speakers outside the auditorium for the benefit of the people who couldn't get the admission for the play. You'll see many people standing outside the auditorium or perching on the walls nearby listening to the play. The manager of Youth Hostel was telling me that every year, many people from other countries come to Kolkata just before the Autumn and stay for 4-6 months to learn music, dance, painting, acting and other fine arts. This city is still a hub for art and culture.

Kolkata has so many facets - looks very conservative when you see young men in dhotis and young widows looking so widowed, and looks very modern and liberal when you see the subway trains, couples holding hands, young women dressed like film stars.

At the end, the only thing I didn't like in Kolkata is the Rikshaw that's not pedalled, but hand-pulled.

75 years Of Telugu Cinema - Mixed Feelings

The degeneracy is rampant ! Yet, everyone stopped to commemorate the maestros of the Telugu cinema. Jandhyala was completely forgotten (till Brahmanandam mentioned him) while Silk Smita got a mention in the departed actors section. Bapu and K Viswanath honored but JV Somayajulu forgotten. Chiranjeevi and Mohanbabu engaged in an uncouth and ridiculous squabble. On the whole the celebration was a fiasco. But some aspects of the function stop you from calling it that - like Balu's anchoring and presence of great personalities like Bapu, Viswanath, and the stars that lit up the silver screen in the yesteryears.

Topping all this agony, I happened to see the following film summary (Veerabhadra) in a popular telugu website yesterday.




I was horrified when I read the last line in the review. My horror stemmed out more from the review than from the actual film dialogue itself. In case the image above is not clear, let me write it again -

"నరకడం మొదలుపెడితే ఏ ముక్క ఎవడిదో తెలుసుకోడానికి వారం పడుతుంది" వంటి డైలాగ్స్ ప్రేక్షకులను అలరిస్తాయి.

As far as I remember, the word "అలరించడం" was used in the context of good music, good cinematography and good dances in a movie... some times a good sentiment brought out by an actor or actress's performance. Since when has this word been used in describing violence?

"బృందావనమది అందరిదీ" అన్న పాటలో సావిత్రి నటన ప్రేక్షకులను ఎంతగానో అలరించింది - I can make sense of this line. But the above line completely beats me. A deep sigh escapes you when you think of the industry - where it started and where it's going. The golden period is certainly over!

Jasmine Vs Jewel

I went to see Ramaa Vaidyanaathan's bharata naatyam concert last Saturday. It was a memorable experience. All the while I was watching the performance, I couldn't help compare it with another dance concert called "Silappadikaaram" my friend and I saw a few months back. These two concerts are very different - Silappadikaaram is a full blown dance ballet with scores of dancers and stage decoration and props etc., whereas Ramaa Vaidyanaathan's performance is a solo dance recital. Except for the fact that both are bharata naatyam performances, there is no comparison between the two. But Silappadikaaram has become a yard stick to me. After watching it, I started comparing every ballet, every solo performance with it.

I watched another Odissi ballet called "Rudrakshya" a month back. It had five male dancers and four female dancers performing various items, some all-male, some all-female, and some combination. There was a male dancer called Lingaraj Pradhan who caught my attention immediately. He looked like "Radha" in male disguise. They performed a couple of items about Lord SriKrishna and Gopikas in Brindavan - one dancer portraying Krishna and the rest as gopaalakas and gopikas. Lingaraj Pradhan looked like he is a gopika. He was not at all effeminating. He is as masculine as they come. But when he dances, that far off look on his face, that smile touching the ends of his lips, that light in his eyes, that gaze filled with devotion makes you wonder if he is really a gopika in disguise and is beholding Krishna in front of him right there and then. I have never seen a person transforming so much, crossing all the barriers of gender, location, space, and time and becoming someone else... so convincingly. It didn't appear like he is a dancer performing and emoting on the stage. It appeared like a gopika trapped in Lingaraj Pradhan's body is pouring out her devotion.

Many times, our own state of mind, sentiments, emotions, feelings flow out and create an aura around people and make us think that we are watching their performance where, in fact, we are watching our very emotions being enacted by them. We see things in the light of our own emotions. But that was not the case here. It was not my imagination. Lingaraj Pradhan was truly showing the audience glimpses of his soulful performance.

I drifted. The topic of this post was not Lingaraj Pradhan. The topic is Ramaa Vaidyanaathan. The concert's highlight was the varNam. She chose Swati Tirunal's "Saatura Kaamini" set in Kalyani and performed that item for almost an hour. The theme of the varnam is the dancer addressing Lord Padmanabha and pleading on behalf of her friend who is in love with Him.

The song says - "O Lord Padmanabha, my friend is madly in love with you. She is consumed with desire and has become very weak. You're the master of all the worlds. You take care of every single creature in this entire universe, yet you are not seeing her misery and removing it. She cannot take your separation anymore. Oh lord adorned with Kasturi on forehead, the fragrance of Kasturi is making her miserable with your thoughts and separation. Be compassionate. Don't disappoint her and remove her misery."

Ramaa Vaidyanaathan's choreography and performance to this song was so original and beautiful that it brought tears to eyes a few times in a span of 45 minutes and made a lasting impression I will cherish for the rest of my life. The moments I remember vividly even after all this time are -

While doing sanchaari for the word "sakala lOka naayakaa", Ramaa shows different living beings in the world such as animals, birds, humans and enacts how Lord shows love for them. She depicted Krishna taking care of the cows, petting parrots, embracing gopikas and thus making all of them happy. At one instance, She became a cow. I cannot forget the way that cow raised its head and gazed so soulfully to get Krishna's attention. You can see the love, loyalty, devotion and innocence in that cow's gaze. Ramaa disappeared and Krishna's cow appeared there. It was magical.

Another highlight was the way she depicted the girl smelling Kasturi in a dream-like state and going after it. The girl is already suffering pangs of separation from the lord. She sits in a garden pining away for him and falls unconscious. In that state of unconsciousness, she smells Kasturi. Do you remember how they show in the movies a heroin sleeping and her soul raising from the sleeping person and going around singing a song with the hero ? You can see both the sleeping heroin and the soul heroin in the same frame. That is made possible with the technology there. Here, on the stage, Ramaa makes you feel like there are two persons. One is unconscious with greef, and the other one is raised from unconscious person and goes in search of the source of kasturi fragrance. I couldn't believe my senses. That was the greatness of Ramaa Vaidyanaathan.

Finally the girl finds the source of Kasturi fragrance. She sees lord and embraces him with joy. The fragrance is transfered to her body. She starts smelling like him. And suddenly he disappears from between her arms like a dream. And the unconscious person wakes up. Next morning her friends take her to the river. They all are about to get into the water for a bath. The girl refuses to bathe because she doesn't want to part with the fragrance on her body that reminds her of her closeness with the lord. This was a scintillating moment in the entire performance. I believe I saw a few wet eyes including mine.

Ramaa Vaidyanaathan's speciality is, she doesn't rush with her mudras and abhinayam. She gives it time to register with the audience. Each mudra is performed with such leisure and perfection that you can appreciate the beauty and the technique. Each expression and emotion is performed with such clarity that you get time to relate to it and experience it yourself. You soak yourself in the performance and at the end feel like you've performed yourself. You come out of the concert hall blooming and engulfed by the fragrance of the devotion.

Silappadikaaram is a fast-paced ballet with zero-defect perfection, crying beauty and blinding brilliance. It will leave you breathless. I kept comparing Silappadikaaram to the concert and at the end of the concert, the conclusion I came up with is -

Silappadikaaram is a jewel and Ramaa Vaidyanaathan's concert is a rare fragrant Jasmine.

If you are still curious about Lingaraj Pradhan, I still maintain that he is a gopika who got lost and is trying to find her way back to Krishna.