Crazyfinger

Sid Caesar (The German General)

This week's been one of those when you remember once again that the most important ingredient to living life fully is sense of urgency.  To finish what one started, to keep the focus, to keep the discipline...for some reason I am remembering an old Sid Ceaser comedy routine.  When I first saw it, way back when, I was shocked at how brilliant the routine was and how much discipline it must have taken Sid Ceaser to master it to this level of perfection.  It is comedy sure, but watch the ending, it'll surprise you...

 

"Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell"

Some days this song comes in on the radio around 5:30am in the morning, just when my alarm goes off and I am wide awake, transfixed, no, mesmerized by the magnetic power of this song.  Some days I feel everything that I am is rolled into this song and delivered in a most touching rendition.  And there is more than one version.  Can't say which one I like the best, they are all good.  Here is a list of them, so I can come back to them whenever I want.

1. Bing Crosby version
2. Al Jolson verson
3. Charlie Palloy & His Orchestra version
4. Judy Collins version
5. Tom Waits version

Here are the lyrics.  The Judy Collins version will melt you.  Makes you wonder why Greg Lake never recorded this song.  Push comes to shove, I think I'd pick Bing Crosby version. 

Dear Lalita, would you talk to her for just a bit...?

11th day today.  Soon it'll be 13th day.  Soon they will pick their bags quietly and leave without telling, as the custom requires.  Soon they will begin to pack her things and put them away.  Soon a body will rise from the living room chair with a sigh, see the computer turned off and turned away, go into kitchen for some more tea and experience an inexplicable tug of emotion.  You see, there is one way we can reconcile: that the pain and hurt no longer toils her.  The sadness of her passing belongs entirely to us but this sadness never touches her even a bit.  Isn't that a beautiful thing?  There is a William Maxwell's poignant story called "The half-crazy woman."  Dear Lalita, when you meet this woman, would you talk to her for a few minutes? 

P.S.  You can read William Maxwell's story here.  

Larking Lalita

It's been a while we had spoken so I sent her an email, saying "Are you well?"  Not that I was her friend or anything.  In fact I was not a regular reader of her blog.  Really her preoccupation with cryptics was a bit turn off.  I guess that's because I went through a similar phase when I was younger and gradually developed an aversion to this old skill.  Moreover I never feel comfortable staying too long on other people's blogs.  Feels like I am intruding.  Feels like I am eavesdropping.  An intense feeling of strangeness comes over me on this internet space. 

In the beginning was a quibble between her and me when she picked on my translation of "davvula" as "tender shoots."   

"It's an interesting interpretation, but it isn't correct translation," she said. 

Then we agreed that translation is a bit like cryptic crossword. 
"True," I thought. 
"May be I can make stuff up and send them to her...," I thought. 

"Rusty," I said.  "But still try these...," knowing I didn't exactly stick to the cryptic rules.

1) You can get it in Los Angeles and Louisiana (6)
2) ATI now acquired, found next to everyone, is confused.  Like you! (6)

"How lovely," she replied almost instantly.  "Lalita of course," perhaps smiling, "Geez these *are* rusty really..."

Then, on that day, broken and sitting alone on the bed, I think she was the first one I sent an email to speak to *someone* in the sadness that overtook me.  I was overwhelmed with a feeling that I am being selfish reaching out to people I love, because I was convinced they didn't love me.  Feeling guilty to reach out to others but didn't feel guilty to reach out to Lalita.  Others simply replied back, saying they are sorry and saying "they knew how fond I was of her..."  Lalita too replied back.  But she spoke to me.  I didn't feel I was imposing on her, or putting a burden on her.  Though drowned in that sadness, it occurred to me that there was a quiet space that she gives.  Space where conversation, while not ceasing, stops short of.  Space where you felt you are no longer drowned in that intense feeling of strangeness. 

It means a lot to me, that morsel of a moment when you drove away that strangeness.  For that and much more, thank you Lalita.  Done your time friend, now watch over us...please?

Uwem Akpan

Books centered on experiences of children in troubled times should never be analyzed and bandied about too much, because there's too much of "me me me...look how much I can see..."-ness in any analysis and criticism.  Anyway this to-be-released book, Say You're One of Them, by Uwem Akpan looks like an achievement already. 

More by Uwem Akpan in the The New Yorker magazine:

• Short story An Ex-mas Feast
• Short story My Parents' Bedroom
• Author interview Between Two Continents

These stories are a significant achievement because, among other things, the craft of writing the author got it right.  Because if you don't, then you are conveying inaccurate experiences, inaccurate re-collections.  That inaccuracy would be a world away from the truth, however dangerously all-encompassing that term "truth" is. 

"this game is rigged"

At lunch we were discussing how ass-backwards the sales approach has been this quarter.  I said, with my usual animation, "When you are falling from a 100-story building, until 50th floor it feels like flying." 

Over and again, I am amazed at how this business remains unchanged.  Yes we are a high-technology business, but in a lot of ways we are a jelly-beans business.  People don't like to hear that. 

Walking back, I self-consciously nudged Y. away from the curbside (yes, yes dear KT, I still remember the lesson...!  But I think she knew what I was doing by the way she smiled).  Convinced of what lay ahead for us, I said aloud, "We are in a flying phase.  And you know what, I am not exactly sure what kind...!  Scary." 

Before we reached office, two images came to my mind.  One a scene from the book I am reading now.  And the second from "The Wire," (which in my book is likely to remain for a long time the best TV drama ever made). 

Bao-yu and Aroma in Cao Xuequin's The Story of Stone, Vol 2:
    "`Now my idea of a glorious death would be to die now, while you are all around me; then your tears could combine to make a great river that my corpse could float away on, far, far away to some remote place that no bird has ever flown to, and gently decompose there until the wind had picked my bones clean, and after that never, never to be reborn again as a human being - that would be a really good death.'
    `I'm sleepy," said Aroma, unwilling to reply, for she had observed that his mad fit was on him again.  And Bao-yu at once closed his eyes and fell fast asleep."

And here is that scene, the last moments of Bodie. 

“Ahh-merr-ikaaa … America. It must be very beautiful place, yes?”

I am not a big fan of reading blogs via feed readers. This may be why the number of blogs I read have come down steadily. Sandbox is one of the very few feeds I have in my Netvibes reader, and I love reading every post. 

This one, DEEP THOUGHTS WITH BIGGIE SMALLS, is a blast.  I especially liked the punch line.

49 Poems of Yu Xuanji

By far the best part of my day-job is the opportunity to immerse myself into most things Chinese.  My pinyin is nowhere close to where it should be by this time - given it's been a few months I am hacking away at it - but my Beijing trips increase my cravings for China with every visit.  Hmm...did I say the best food I ever had was Chinese food in China?  I now think - though only half-way into the 4-volume set - that The Dream of the Red Chamber (also called The Story of the Stone) is probably the best literary work that emerged from 1760s east or west or whatever. 

I am now reading Yu Xuanji's poems.   She died around 871, when she was only 28.  About her:

"Outside her remarkable poems, we know very little about Yu Xuanji. Her surname, Yu, which means "fish," is unusual. Her given name, Xuanji (Hsuan-chi in Wade-Giles romanization), means something like "dark secret" or "mysterious luck." She was born around 844 and died around 871, at the age of twenty-eight."

Here is an extract from one of her poems (#35, Late Spring Improvisation):

"...
around here it's mostly army drums
disrupting morning sleep
nothing but magpies in the courtyard
chattering through spring sorrow
how could I hope to have any part
in the world of grand events
my own life at such a distance
and no place to tie up my boat?"

All that and more - including a brilliant introduction to the etext collection - is at the University of Virginia etext library.  Here is an extract from the introduction. 

"Western role names like "nun" and "concubine" (lesser wife) and courtesan" (since a number of the poems suggest that she led this life as well) are clumsy ways at best of denoting social roles and relationships that were very different from the ones we know. They fail to characterize a life that we are more likely to glimpse, if we manage it at all, by turning to the remarkable poems she left, forty-nine in number. These poems reflect her relations with men--relations that are certainly more complex and interesting than any reduction of them to sex and commercial transaction would suggest--and they also show her exploring the Daoist ideals of meditation, solitude, and contemplation of nature. Behind them stands a person who escapes stereotypes, a gifted writer who explores the limited options available to her, material and spiritual, with vigor and imagination. "

~

Where To Now...?

Strangest thing.  No matter how much I resist the urge to express, get angry at myself for breaking the silence, this stickiness remains.  Driving back to airport at 5am in the morning in Washington DC, it occurred to me that pointless-ness as a state of being is perhaps the last frontier.  After all, when one understands so much, is at peace with so much that was once the source of restless-ness, what was once love turns into a tendency to leave things alone.  Leave people alone.  Leave oneself alone.  To make way for something else.  Funny how often in moods like these, the song and the soldier creeps back into my mood.  I think I will now remember this song as the one to go to, whenever I need to recover from the pointless-ness.

Personal Impression: "A Tree of Palme"

I wrote this personal impression sometime in early 2005 when I first saw the movie in Osaka, Japan.  I am so drawn to this movie that I saw it again on DVD this past week.  I am pulling this blog post out of the archives and posting it once again, this time with a few pictures scoured from the net.

A Tree of Palme – Directed by Takashi Nakamura (Animation Director: Mamoru Sasaki.  Released in 2001 with English version in 2005.)

To say The Tree of Palme’s animation is breathtaking is to miss the point, nearly.  One is drawn into a layered landscape where life’s purposes, desires, limitations are manifest in physical form.  In the orotund rocks and boulders and in strange shapes with musical sounds that emerge from under your feet lies a backdrop for the strange sub-plots and for the story set in strange lands. 

When it's all over, you are filled with a heavy sense - you wonder if it'll ever go away - of a pre-reflective awareness of tragedy that only children seem to possess intuitively.

When the movie opens, the blue light hanging from the roof outside the window sets the tone and the still-ness of a human girl (the recasting of human-ness into a novelty is only one of the improvizations of the anime art) in the dead center of the screen is an unmistakable prelude to a foreboding tragedy.

What can one say about the plot?  It is as if a massive sweep is made by an unseen hand through giant swaths of civilizations of past and future; a solemn cloud of time is selected for its loneliness, plucked and is set in motion.  When time is this lonely it creates moments of turmoil in the history like the one in The Tree of Palme. 

No matter the story is based on Pinocchio, but the work stands on itself, constantly overflowing the technology and even the sheer brilliance of the artistry behind it, reaching out and waking up the slumbered corners of the viewer’s heart and soul.

We see Palme first when he is chasing a Niger Triggerfish, and we are unsure: is it bravery or a child-like obliviousness to danger?  The first glimpse of his puppet-like behavior shows when he rips his leg, caught in the crack of boulders, revealing a bunch of broken wires, and still goes blindly after the Triggerfish with an uninterrupted gaping smile in his face, eyes fixated on the target.

The point of this scene is not to tell us about a puppet-robot child.  It is about the deep dark roots of the beginning of a tortured soul in a way very few “real” movies tell us. His creator, Fou, watching him from the ground below is reminded of Xian, his wife, and he knows Palme has the same qualities of rushing headlong into the unknown little realizing what he is up to or up against.   Fou created Palme, as a gift to his wife Xian but Palme shuts down when Xian dies.

Until the knowledge that Palme is a puppet-robot hits us, we don't realize how groundless his beginnings are (ground as in grounded in human-ness) and yet the deep yearning that he begins to feel are ours, our very own yearnings.  The blue blood of Xian marks the time in the scene as a beginning of a life (of Palme) that we are stoked to understand.

The main story here is simple.  Palme is a puppet-robot, yearning to become human.  Tamas, the world Below is where Palme should go to become human.  The Tree of Palme is the story of Palme’s journey to Below.  But Palme carries the secret, the Egg of Touto, that could potentially destroy the world Below.  A blue pendant in his neck acts as a protector.  The precious oil of kooloop tree which flows in Palme’s veins will keep the Egg alive.

Guided only by the inner voices from somewhere his own wooden heart and the aural reminders of the old man Fou to go to Tamas, Palme sets out on a journey.  Falls in with a group of escaping children, whose leader is Shatta.

Palme, ever mesmerized by the blue pendant, but not knowing exactly what it represents, accidentally drops it and it lands next to the little girl Popo, marking a beginning of the friendship.

When Roualt beats him on his head, mad with Palme's enigmatic ways, the children are surprised to learn that Palme is a puppet.  Now the kids are fascinated with this synthetic puppet-robot.

Fight breaks out, kids taking sides.

    "You'll be as bad as the grown-ups you hate!"
    "Settle down, will you?  It's just a kooloop-wood puppet."
    "But he's one of us!"
    "Let's not fight.  Even puppets don't want to get torn apart."

Palme’s first sign of self-recognition comes in a brief flashy moment when as he was about to be swallowed by a maggot he realizes Xian, his mother, is dead.  He loses hope, ready to give in to death and your heart breaks when we see Palme turn into the kooloop tree as the sap inside him has taken roots and starts to grow into the tree.

Yet you know exactly what he is thinking when Koram, who gave him the Egg, appears in his vision and goads him not to give up.  She reminds him that Xian is alive within Palme.  The clouds start to clear away from his incipient mind.

The metaphor here is touching.  As long as Palme gives up on the idea that Xian is alive, he loses hope and can't help turning himself into a tree.  As soon as Palme realizes that Xian is alive inside him, as that kooloop-tree oil, Palme is awake.

There is an amazing lyrical scene on the ship.  As they are talking suddenly the sky opens up and a blue Stone light shower starts falling from the Roof.  Palme is absolutely mesmerized.  Popo, fascinated with the purity of his delight, decides to show him more, takes him to the middle of the lake and they sit silently and wait.  As light turns dark, Selene flowers emerge from undersea and float gently upwards, releasing their pollen.  They eat the crystallized honey that these giant flowers carry secreted by the insects.

The greatness of Takashi Nakamura lies in the manner in which Palme’s growing self-awareness is expressed through a series of intense interactions with humans.  Palme asks Popo to come with him to Below.  When Popo's mother refuses and lashes at them viciously, Palme self-consciously covers his wiry exposed arm.  Is it the beginning of him turning into human?

"If I were a human, your mother wouldn't talk to me like that.  It’s not good being a puppet," laments Palme wistfully.

When Roualt threatens to kill Popo unless Palme's oil is to be handed over to him, Palme steps in and offers his oil to Roualt by stabbing himself.  Do we need any more proof of Palme’s effusing humanity?

There is a scene in which a floating grass tulip playfully follows Palme.  In a burst of juvenile bravado, Shatta climbs up on this floating grass tulip, bursts its flower and floats down with the tulip parachute. Popo, the ever sensitive little girl, is upset at the burst flower.  Palme says, "It's only a dead grass."

The irony is not lost on the viewer in what Palme just said.  Is it a child-like detachment or a sign that Palme, a puppet in whose very veins flow a kooloop tree's sap, is already turning into a human?

The maggot bola shows Popo the dream of her father.  But Palme thinks Popo is hurt, drives bola away and starts yelling at Popo:

"I'll get rid of it!  Things like this start hanging around because you can never cheer up and act human.  At this rate I will never become human!"

This scene suddenly rings ominous chords and we sense that this movie has just taken a huge turn into another unknown in Palme's journey. 

These and other scenes like the next, propel this movie into heights of permanence.

When everyone is sleeping, Palme takes his sword out of its sheath and starts playing.  Out of the bushes, a baby aguri, a deer like animal, playfully approaches.  Now we see a devilish smile in Palme's face.  He grins, hides the sword, and beckons the aguri:

"Come here, come on, that's it.  Nice aguri!" and as it nears his sword's reach, with a vicious swing fells the innocent animal.

Takashi Nakamura’s liner notes tell us why he crafted this scene:

“Although this is an accident, it is a big one that leaves Palme with a hunk of guilt like a black rock inside his heart.  But, that realization cannot end his soul search.  With that act, something inside him breaks. Palme senses unconsciously that something has died.  But he cannot stop or turn back. That’s the cruelty of this scene.”

Next morning when Popo falls into deep sorrow at the death of aguri, Palme's demeanor is clearly defensive.

    Palme: "Do you want to turn into stone, I want to become human, it's time to go!"
    Popo: "Aren't you sad?"
    Palme: "I am a puppet."
    Popo: "You didn't used to be like that!  You are strange now."
    Palme: "I know I am strange!  That's why I am trying to become human."
    Popo: "Palme!" aghast at his pretentious behavior.

When Popo collapses at the entrance for Below, tired and no longer able to walk, Palme agonizes like a thief caught in the cul-de-sac.

Dragging Popo, "Soon I'll be human! Don't give me any more trouble! Think more about MY predicament!"

"What do I do?  What do I do?  What am I going to do?" and bites his hand only to see that small saplings sprout from where he bit his teeth on the back of his palm.

Now the tragedy of Palme is all too clear for us.  His mind and soul is turning into human, selfish, self-centered, rushing hither and thither but he still has the puppet's body.  He is aghast and helpless at this, slowly a revolt brewing in his heart.  He rips them "Damn these things!"

But when he reaches Below, the people trap Palme, ready to kill him for the Egg that is implanted in his head.  To let Palme escape, Koram leaves a trail of destruction.

Palme, all shot, blood gushing from his injuries, says to Shatta:

"I am sick and tired of being a stupid puppet! I am going to become a strong man like you!  I am going to become human for Popo's sake.  I want to stay by her side forever!”

Collapsing to his knees, with blood gushing from his injuries, the puppet's bare knuckles curl in a gesture of a plea, "Please! Let me become human!”

We are only half-way into the movie by this time.  What ensues is an intense, horrifying and tragic denouement.  Caught in the fate between Koram's single-minded pursuit of her father, the survival of people and his urge to become human, Palme's finality can only be understood by watching this unforgettable tale of humanity with the solitude of the audience it deserves.

Tagore and Noguchi

"The cripple, shorn of his power to strike, may collapse, but to ask him to forget the memory of his mutilation as easily as you want me to, I must expect him to be an angel."

Pakeezah - 1

This surely is one of the most subdued choreography....it is amazing how brilliantly the whole song sequence is filmed.   First time we bought a "smuggled tape recorder" from Shahran hotel, it came with a cassette tape of, what else, Pakeezah.  This too was his favorite...

Maa Bhoomi - 1

Skipping through directory menu of downstairs phone, I stopped at the entry: "DAD 0119140..."  At once I felt as if an entirely separate being in me became awoke.  Which phone would ring if I call that number?  Why am I still here?  Something should've changed...Then I remembered this song, sung by Gaddar (Gummadi Vittal Rao) that he used to like.  Haven't heard this one in a loooooooong while, but here it is, with my transliteration.  Someday when I have time I will try my hand at translating it...   

Bundenka bundigattaay...!
Padahaaru bundlugattaay...!
Yey bandley vastavukoduko?
Naizaamu sarkaroda...!

Bundenka bundigatti, padahaaru bundlugatti,
Yey bandley vastavukoduko, Naizaamu sarkaroda...!
Nazeela nilchinavuro, naizaamu sarkaroda...!

Bundenka bundigatti, padahaaru bundlugatti,
Yey bandley vastavukoduko, Naizaamu sarkaroda...!
Nazeela minchinavuro, naizaamu sarkaroda...!

Poleesu miltry rondu

Poleesu miltry rondu

Balavantulaanukonee

Balavantulaanukonee

Nuvu pallelu dostivi koduko

Oho pallelu dostivi koduko

Aha pallelu dostivi koduko, Naizaamu sarkaroda...!

Bundenka bundigatti, padahaaru bundlugatti,
Yey bandley vastavukoduko, Naizaamu sarkaroda...!
Nazeela minchinavuro, naizaamu sarkaroda...!

Jageerudaarulanta,

Jageerudaarulanta

Jameenudaarulanta

Jameenudaarulanta

Nee Yandaajeriri koduko

Nee Yandaajeriri koduko

Nee Yandaajeriri koduko...! Naizaamu sarkaroda...!

Bundenka bundigatti, padahaaru bundlugatti,
Yey bandley vastavukoduko, Naizaamu sarkaroda...!
Nazeela minchinavuro, naizaamu sarkaroda...!

Stree purushulantagalisi

Pillaalamantagalisi

Stree purushulantagalisi

Pillaalamantagalisi

Vadisela raallu nimpee, vadivadiga gottitenoo

Vadisela raallu nimpee, vadivadiga gottitenu

Karaapu neelludechhi, kandlalla jallitenoo

Karaapu neelludechhi, kandlalla jallitenoo

Nee miltry baaripoyero...!

Nee miltry baaripoyero...!

Nee miltry baaripoyero...! Naizaamu sarkaroda...!

Bundenka bundigatti, padahaaru bundlugatti,
Yey bandley vastavukoduko, Naizaamu sarkaroda...!
Nazeela minchinavuro, Naizaamu sarkaroda...!

Chuttumuttoo suryapeta,

Nattanaduma nallagonda,

Chuttumuttoo suryapeta,

Nattanaduma nallagonda,

Nuvvendedaidrabaadoo,

Daani pakkaa golukonda,

Nuvvendedaidrabaadoo,

Daani pakkaa golukonda,

Golukondaa kilakinda
Golukondaa kilakinda
    -
    -
Nee Gori kadtamukoduko, Naizaamu sarkaroda...!
Nee Gori kadtamukoduko, Naizaamu sarkaroda...!
Nee Gori kadtamukoduko, Naizaamu sarkaroda...!
Nee Gori kadtamukoduko, Naizaamu sarkaroda...!
Nee Gori kadtamukoduko, Naizaamu sarkaroda...!
Nee Gori kadtamukoduko, Naizaamu sarkaroda...!
-
-
-
Nee Gori kadtamukoduko, Naizaamu sarkaroda...!
Nee Gori kadtamukoduko, Naizaamu sarkaroda...!

This Category Closed

I stopped tracking this "My Comments Elsewhere" category.  A few comments of mine out there on other blogs are not linked here. 

Bhanumathi - II

Couldn't resist going back to one more song...This time I absolutely had to try translating this song into English.

At last...!
Jasmine festoons began swaying in the heart
Moonlight began swinging in the eyes

How sublime comfort fills this night...!
How long's hence...bloom fills this life...!

When doves whispered "Ohuroo roo" on the branch
When wind rustle breathed sighs on the sprig
Or even when rivulets just tinkled in the lake
At the faintest sounds of soft wind in tender shoots...!
Thinking you are here at last, hearing only your voice
Eyes moist with tears, at once I looked all over

Even for a moment now, don't leave, hear?
This whimpering heart, don't let it break, hear?

How long's hence...bloom fills this life...!
How sublime comfort fills this night...!

Bhanumati - 1

Earlier this afternoon I was out and about and out of nowhere began thinking of stories of Bhanumati I used to read when I was about fifteen. Here is a song, sung and performed by her, one of my favorites:

Here is a rough and tumble translation of the song (in Telugu in the above video):

What haughtiness you put on...!
When beautiful belle unasked
Come calling
Really...!

Way to go, Prince...!

When this suave, this svelte
This tender youth
I put out for you
And come calling
What haughtiness you put on...!

On winds wafted, intense longing
Aroused, blue shadows of dark evening

Again and again
As the agitations of resounding anklets
Hasten and come calling, you handsome
What haughtiness you put on...!

(C) "Poem: It must be!"

Actually it was this last verse that broke the barriers of mute for me.

“This deeply engraved alphabet.
Does it belong to the one whose
name it is. Or to the hand that
left the impression.”

Verses like these are bound to expand the market for poetry...

(C) "Draft Blogger's Code of Conduct"

All this chaos that you (and others) are trying to wrestle with, is perhaps because the structure of a blogging software (all blogging platforms seem the same to me so allow me to generalize) is too packed, too one-dimensional, too blogpost-centric. How about two specific suggestions:

(C) "A personal LOC"

This expression, "did what she wanted," sparks firestorms of emotions in all men, rather unnecessarily, because it is a floppy phrasing, as the image it summons is "she wanted to do something slutty so she did it."

(C) "In praise of the parasitic blogger"

If blogging to you then was "a new and still embryonic literary form," then in acknowledging the parasitic nature of your avocation now, you not only endorse the dilution of such a literary form, but, in doing so, I believe you give in, rather without a fight, the hijacking of this blogging medium by "journalism," and "news/views and opinion making."

Come to think of it, if blogging these days is anything, it is an exercise in a convenient and repeated conflating of such a "literary form" with the nearly form-less act of opinion-making, by the acknowledged shit-collectors.