Melancholic rain
Flowing down the dusky
Cheeks of the clouds
The skies can no longer feign
That all is hunky dory
With the planet and its crowd
Monthly Archives: June 2015
Melancholy
Inertia
Pitter-patter in the ears..
Nose to the wind….
Settled in a yawning void.
Languidity sneers
At the bustling mind
As it diligently toyed
With holding on firmly
Or letting go for once
To live in the moment
It isn’t easy , clearly
Dead habit shuns
Any new intent.
P.S : The first three lines have been borrowed from the status update of a Facebook friend , Jaya Nair Palikkat
Dreamscape
In my dreams, I wander off
To gardens of a thousand senses
And I melt away into the air
Of subtle sounds and fragrances.
And then I am in the bending branches
And then I am in the gentle drizzle
I know myself as the misty shadows
And as the joy of the leaping gazelle.
The darkness wraps me in nestling warmth
The stars begin a lullaby
I rock myself in small white blooms
I sleep, I soar towards the sky.
Itch -after 115 years!!!!!
Two years ago, while browsing through the newspaper , I came across this story of tow turtles who had decided to part ways after a relationship that had spanned over a century and I’d shared my take on the news item with this poem on Facebook. Hope it makes you smile 🙂
Yeah, right …..we won’t part till death
I’d told him decades ago
But now I can’t stand his bad breath
And he’s become so very slow.
He wakes up to wish me
And goes back to sleep again
His forgetfulness
Has become such a pain.
What was it that the bard said
About familiarity and all that stuff
I never would’ve believed I’d get there
But now , enough is enough.
Oh..I’ll be around for sure
I just need some personal space
And really..it’s not as if he’ll miss me
I wonder if he can even see my face.
I know it’s getting wrinkled
But I’d still like him to see
When my tired eyes light up
Amorously.
But the old man ,
He just doesn’t care
For the blush I’ve applied
On my cheeks,still fair.
May be a little distance
Will serve him just right
My barks no longer stirs him
Niether does my bite.
Stillness
My mind is now still
Like water where the ripples
Have ceased to tempt and tease
I can peer into it till
The planktons and the pebbles
Appear suspended in a pool of peace.
The moonbeams that filter
Down through the calm
Light up the sand and the stones
The cockle shells glitter
There is no alarm
Amongst the anemones.
Beyond the lifted veil
Blessed are those that have wings
For flights of imaginations
That take them soaring to the skies
Beyond the gravity of the mundane
Blessed is he whose heart sings
Of distant destinations
Even as dreary routine ties
His days up with a heavy chain.
New frontiers beckon beyond the cape
There’s a depth of calm beneath the gale
Clear skies surround this dreamy scape
When minds see beyond the lifted veil.
And there in that wholesomeness
There is no You and no I
I listen to you and hear me speak
I spread my wings and see you fly.
Do you know the answers?
“When does the butterfly in flight read what’s written on its wings?”
When do the blushing blooms stop smiling to reflect?
When does the gushing stream pause to listen to it’s tunes?
When do the raindrops falling retreat to frown and fret?
When does the sprouting seedling ponder about it’s fate?
When do the falling leaves whisper in regret?
When do the waves ever rising and falling
Stall their ceaseless motions to sleep or to rest?
With apologies to Pablo Neruda for stealing the first line from his poem.
Miracles
We all have various reasons
For our hopes and our fears
For our smiles and our sighs
We all have separate seasons
For watery depths that are clear
And dark , cloudy skies.
We all have secret gardens
Where sometimes snakes crawl
Amongst overgrown weeds
But there are patches that gladden
And where gentle rain falls
On soil with sleeping seeds.
And through the swinging cycles
We stumble to learn
To exult and not grieve.
That there are many miracles
Waiting to happen
If we only believe..
Song of raindrops
This noon brought some showers
That rinsed the leaves
And bathed the flowers
And left them squeaky clean
Now the days will run its hours
Through the breezy sieve
Forcing tempers lower
Into the spreading green.
The earth will then build bowers
From climbers growing restive
So that they breathe slower
As against the twigs they lean
“Ivide”- a film by Director Shyamaprasad Rajagopal
My son had done the online booking for me, so there was no need to rush. Leisurley gardening in the morning , leisurely lunch at noon which I hadn’t cooked and leisurely lolling around listening to some old hindi songs later, I realised I had just about half an hour to get to the Multiplex and be seated and ready to watch “Ivide”, the latest film by Shyamaprasad who is my favourite malyalam movie director.
So I didn’t get to wear the intended sari, a habit I’m almost losing touch with after leaving my job, as the underskirt had no string and there was no time to pull out one from another and string it through this one using a safety pin .Nor was there time to iron a pair of salwar-kameez …so I just got into one which didn’t need ironing , snatched a duppatta, which, once out of the house , I realised was a dark navy blue one instead of the black , which was to match my salwar. But I really didn’t care as my spirits were high as is always the case with a Shyamaprasad film.
The skies were sombre and trees along the road were trembling and shedding their leaves….the ambience provided by the weather was a perfect prelude for the crime thriller that “Ivide” was reported to be.
And I’m a die-hard crime-thriller fan. I love watching TV serials which involve crime investigation, current addictions being “Monk” and “ Mentalist” on Star World.
I love watching them for the reason that the better scripted ones exposes us to the darker shades lurking inside people who are perceived most of the time as normal and harmless . When the story unfolds in ways that allows for a peek into the mental state of the crime-doer and his or her circumstances , or the reason for the crime , one does wonder if we can be so damn sure that we would have behaved differently if we were in his or her shoes.
I’m not so sure that viewers who will go to see this film because it has been labelled a crime thriller , will be entirely satisfied.But a fan like me who would have gone to see it with or without any tags, because of past experiences of watching this Director’s films , will not be disappointed.
The story, scripted by Ajayan Venugopal, who had also done the scripting for Shyamaprasad’s earlier film “English”, is set in Atlanta and revolves around three main characters. Varun Blake, a police officer played by Prithviraj; Krish Hebbal (played by Nivin Pauly), a self- made IT professional who has helped build up the company he works for during the eight year span since his arrival in America as a software programmer and is an aspirant for the position of CEO, which he thinks he deserves , and Varun’s ex-wife ,Roshni Mathews, who has newly joined Krish’s firm enacted by Bhavna. It also turned out that Krish and were old schoolmates.
There are quite a few undercurrents to the story which moves forward even as Varun tries to investigate the murder of another IT guy whose relevance to the story is that he is an Indian immigrant in the land of dreams. Varun’s broken relationship with Roshni whom he still loves, his discomfort at the growing closeness between her and Krish, the manipulative tendencies winning over Krish’s integrity when he sees his future being threatened and Roshni’s anguish when this aspect of his personality becomes apparent all play out during the course of the film.
This surely is the most well emoted role by Prithviraj. He has slipped into the role of the young man with his personal demons, who as a six year old orphan in India had been adopted by an American couple and who grew up in that country , with the same ease with which he carries off the body language and diction of a police officer adept in his job. One was left wondering at the cause of his explosive anger, which estranged his wife and left him to maintain a physical distance away from her after the divorce came through , because of a restraining order , till it was explained in an exchange he had with his adoptive mother , some time after the interval. One may hold a view that his contained animosity towards his adoptive parents may have been a matter of his perception and hence not justified. In fact, there is a hint that he himself may have questioned the validity of his angst , when the background narrative in his own voice, which acts as a thread to the story right from the beginning, wonders where in life he would have been , had they pointed to another child in the orphanage as their choice .
How many of us wonder about the pyschological confusions that such adoptions may possibly generate when a poor / orphaned dark-skinned child has to grow up in a white-skinned dominated society ? How much do those societies reflect on it? I wouldn’t know , but the reverse is hardly the case , isn’t it….a white skinned foreigner being adopted and growing up in India? Would we have made it easier for them?
And what about the mindset of those who look upon the society they migrate to as inferior in morals or cultural values and deserving of disdain as individuals , even as they partake of the opportunities of that land to further their prospects in life?
And yet, in such and all other cases of human interactions, we do hold on to grudges , sometimes merely on the premise of our perceptions, don’t we?
Nivin Pauly’s role as the upwardly mobile IT immigrant from South India ( the fact that his virtual conversations with his mother was always in malayalam from his side , while she spoke in Kannada, was slightly incongruent or may be I missed the explanation) was performed well enough, but definitley did not match Prithviraj’s prowess. I guess youngsters sailing towards greener pastures that they perceive the developed world to be, can relate to the uncertainties that plagued a career like his , once they start trying to and succeed in getting a foothold there.
Scratch any scar of tension between two communities anywhere in the world and at any time in history and one will perhaps find the fear of being overpowered and being left bereft , in either or both. It is the same fear, which many a time plays out into reality, that feeds the underlying and often overtly expressed animosity between an immigrant community and the local population. Why Indians fear the Bangladeshi influx or why the UP “bhaiyyas” are resented in Maharashtra or why the Bihari and Bengali labourers are not open-heartedly welcomed in Keral a or elsewhere isn’t really different from why an American who has returned from the warfield in Iraq is likely to feel when he finds that the job he takes up after returning to his civilian life in his homeland is lost because of outsourcing, is it?
These nuances of human relationships are the forte of Shyamaprasad’s films and “ivide” does full justice to that genre.
The background score was excellently merged into the scenes, softly and unobtrusively. I liked the two songs too.
Loved the way the camera took us along.
I also liked the way the film ended. Have always suspected the veracity of the quote ascribed to Buddha though , notwithstanding the fact that tis a beautiful one, “In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you
