Last Sunset

Ever saw the chunks of ice-slabs, riding the rag-tag cart, that goes skreech-keech every paddle, wearing the rag-tag of jute-bag, hardly abiding the modesty of the semi-pervious flesh, flakes of which wither to, the condescension of glances hitherto near and far, and some three inches down, trickling sweat fail pass the pores to quench or deeper still, and there on the bludgeons of the concrete embellishments, leave their sighs, splatters, exaltations beyond the regular circumferences, as if joy, and the departures from the body of doubt, a body breathed in by the summer's mercury, a doubt of gravity’s disdain, it fails as it leaves the pearls, the ones on the shadows of sterner spires a whiff auburn, the ones on the shine charred, but bright, glowing, imploring the cherubic miscreant off the banters to the trail to the turn, and four alternate ones to left and right, to the decadent factory in which the fizzing whirling machines devour silences, where the coolfi draws its breath; the aqueous trail that remains not to momentous posterity, falters on the floors, roads, skywards ascending, the circular minuscule dot of the eye, wonderous, waltzs the path towards, in the minuscule face that finds a space, ad infinitum imaginarium, of boxes that are houses stacked with their bare shoulders heaving through abrasions, time-carved, rain-polished, arranged with ineffectual disdain for the blind dogs who bump on the azure-coated doors that tastes of posters of fairs on full-moon nights, remedying broken fountains, renegade hairfall lotions, whose lure wafts through thickets of Ballimaran attar in the half-storied rooms juxtaposed as sincere afterthought, behind clouds of the glass pane, rose-stained, the Nastaliq slender tongues cursive in multiple hues of ash and grey, but mostly ash, decades of age dented on the rich topography, a mirage on the mirror, innocuously reflecting most of what it perceives, never a tacit consideration or rational demise, a mirror behind which hides bindi, crimson, corpuscular, pregnant of the essential moorings of a vigorous marriage, those casual gagging, bloodlessness, smudgings of spiritual deficiency, with reminders in nature of sonorous warnings of the gongs, yelling twice for each humdrum heaving, like the pickles of chillies, croquette and care glistened doubly, basking once in the aromatic oils and then in the sheath of pervious skin, a stout Belgian carafe, spread beside straw mattresses where the belle demure, spins the yarn, of travesties unreported in the newspapers, for the crime of dignity in neighbourhoods such as these; it is in mofussils that you find a fresh metaphor for death, not finality, but as counterfactual to the living impasse, jugglers perfecting hypnosis and watchmakers delaying the inevitable, and the cheap suit that I adorn, the gaudy rag-tag, because, you want to look suave when you meet God, opiate murders on senses with too dull a knife, too stale the pills, oh my city of flower and garbage, your asphalt looks soft through the spaces shaped off by my dangling legs, searching respite in the vagabond coolfi somewhere down beneath. 

Kali: Representations in Art (Part 4)

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Art & Architecture Collection, The New York Public Library. "Ceremony of washing the Goddess Cali, and the idol Jagan-Nath". The New York Public Library Digital Collections

Kali. Kulu Valley. 1765

Kali as Chhinnamastika - the beheaded Goddess, Pratapgarh School, 1760s.

Kali. Sashankali.Garwar Painting. 17th. Century

Kali: Representations in Art (Part 3)

Kali and Bhairav in Union. Water Colour Painting. Tibet 18th. Century.

Kali. Thanka painting. Tibet. 1880

Kali. Kulu Valley. 18th. Century

Kali. As Bhairavi. Himalayan Region. Early 16th. Century.

Kali: Representations in Art (Part 2)

Kali. Madhubani. Bihar. Bagvati Devi. 1932

Kali. With ten hands riding a tiger. Ganjifa (playing cards) Mysore. 1896

Kali : Painting on Cloth. Tantric Influence. Himachal.1878.

Kali: Standing triumphantly over Shiva. Chromolithograph. 1897.Calcutta.

Kali . Wood Engraving. Bottola. Chitpore. Calcutta. Bengal 1900.

Kali: Representations in Art (Part 1)

Kālī also known as Kālikā, is the Hindu goddess associated with empowerment, or shakti. She is the fierce aspect of the goddess Durga. The name of Kali means black one and force of time, she is therefore called the Goddess of Time, Change, Power, Creation, Preservation, and Destruction. Her earliest appearance is that of a destroyer principally of evil forces. Various Shakta Hindu cosmologies, as well as Shākta Tantric beliefs, worship her as the ultimate reality or Brahman; and recent devotional movements re-imagine Kāli as a benevolent mother goddess. She is often portrayed standing or dancing on her husband, the god Shiva, who lies calm and prostrate beneath her. Worshipped throughout India but particularly Bengal, and Assam, Kali is both geographically and culturally diverse.

What better way to worship the goddess if not take a stroll down the backyard, and see how She has been depicted across timelines. :)

Ada Corishant, "The Virgin of the Pagoda". Illustration by Giuseppe Gamba for the 1897 edition of "I Misteri della Jungla Nera" ("The Mystery of the Black Jungle")
Publisher: A. Donath, Genoa.

Kali in Boutique style on cloth.

Kali. Himachal. 1790s.

Hand-colored engraving titled "Ceremony of Throwing the Colossal Statue of the Goddess Cali into the Water" by Frederic Shoberl from his work ''The World in Miniature: Hindoostan''. London: R. Ackerman, 1820's.

Engraving titled "The Thugs Worshipping Kalee". The Missionary Repository for Youth, and Sunday School Missionary Magazine Vol XII (1850), p. 98. Illustration for the article "The Thugs".

 "The Kalee-poojah [feast] of the Thugs". From Harper's Weekly, 1858.

Notes from MAMI: 24 Frames

What remains behind on the screen, and at the back of the eyes, are the soft touches of beauty and grace, and an utmost reverence to images. A complete submission to the veritable charm, nothing less. The master sings his own adieu, as chirping birds from Breugel's Hunters in the Snow join the cacophony with organic elements from static frames of some other time, and shifting spaces - the raging snowfall to the roaring waves, to the silken winds carousing treetops, to the beaches,Parisian avenue, concrete roads, misty forests where minds wanders off in this stagnant act of patient observations. The final piece of music 'Love Never Dies' plays in congruence as a couple from a Hollywood film footage embrace passionately. As 'The End' flashes up in the screen within the screen with a female head resting gently on the table, silent, death devours Kiarostami, leaving behind his befitting swansong of photographs and cinema. 24 Frames is the tableau of miniature landscapes brought forth from the foveal zone of the master, as he saw it, and the enigma of the images is there for generations to behold.

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Still from '24 Frames' by Abbas Kiarostami, his swansong film.

Notes from MAMI: /*rant*/

Rashtrabadi uncle inside an international film festival auditorium preaching the morality of respecting the national anthem and advocating throwing away 'burbaks' who fail to venerate the rashtra, and then walking the damn out of Med Hondo's classic (on blaxploitation and slavery in 60s France, an absolute adudio-visual delight with delicious dolops of sarcasm, subversion and humor) twenty minutes later. 

Festivals have their absurdities and charm in equal measure.

Notes from MAMI: Cold Opening

The annual film festival tumbles into town with its showdom of splendor. Well, ideally we should be celebrating the aura of the celluloid, err, the 35mm projection, err, the digital projection itself, in the intimate confines of the theatre, nothing more, nothing less. However, things are a bit different in our maximum city. Or, what I like to call the city of extremes. You possibly cannot fathom a better phrase when you venture towards Andheri West where two adjacent PVR multiplexes are hosting the majority of the shows, spread over nine different screens in two locations. As you traverse through the fluid JVLR riding on the morning easy traffic with dreams of the anticipated images conjuring up in your mind, a sudden denouement hits you in the eye, or rather the entirety of senses, as one approaches Captain Suresh Samant Road (after crossing Jogeshwari West). In the midst of towers as tall as forty floors and compound walls speck lined with choicest shrubs, the road leading to them is tattered, dingy and has not seen repairs for eons. After a mild drizzle, the slosh and damp due to accumulated garbage is beyond redemption. On the other side of the high gates of highrises, chawls and two-storied rag-tag shanties coexist in vagaries of quotidian existence. People residing, loitering, bantering, shouting, fist-fighting in all their essence, baring the polluted realm they are placed in. As one swivels out towards Andheri West, huge monolithic structures housing corporate firms and restaurants, breweries and ateliers, night clubs and mega malls come into sight. These are the places of meeting, sharing, and happening, where the best of the Bombay lot meet, and spend their bucks. If only one could care about the roads on the way towards merriment. 

Anyways, the festival venue at PVR ECX, Citi Mall greets with sights of school/ college-goers thronging in sparse groups, and young professionals in few numbers. Not much of the common crowd in sight. This is a great departure from the festival fare at Kolkata, where people from all walks of life can afford the tickets and walk in straight into a Godard or Makhmalbaf, without hesitation. Mumbai hoists its festival colors in the palatial arenas of PVR, where the sleek corporate touch to the entire proceedings ups the tickets price to quite an extent. The student delegate pass for five hundred rupees would enable me to watch any number of films for all the days at any of the seven designated venues. I'm not complaining on that front. 

However, as the day progresses, one notices the inflow of people, mostly professionals from the city's native industry of film and television, video and photographic communication. I fall a bit judgmental, but as I eavesdrop while sipping my chai, I fail to find any discussion bordering on films but on hush-hush talks of the tinsel town, the glitz and glamour of celebrities dropping by, and insincere, vague quips about film in general. I find the popular film critic Baradwaj Rangan in close conversation with the monumental filmmaker Kamal Swaroop, out here for the screening of his film Pushkar Puran. I feel the intent and passion with which they steer their dialogue, though I am not eavesdropping, and I feel content at heart for the love of cinema. 

Now, on to the films! 

Notes from MAMI: The List

Film festivals bring in with itself a lot of meticulous planning, erm, scheduling so that one does not miss out screenings while hopping from one location to the other, genteel jumping the queues as need be, and looking for alternative screening timings in case of clash. After much deliberations over the films that need, ought, must, should and not be viewed, I came up with the following. I am mainly sticking with films playing at two venues of PVR ECX and PVR ICON located at Citi Mall, Andheri West and Infinity Mall, Versova, separated by a distance of 500 meters. Lets hope to catch the most of the films.

The Essentials 

Oh, Sun! | Med Hondo | Mauritania

Flashback | S.N.S. Sastry | India

The Society of The Spectacle | Guy Debord | France 

Level Five | Chris Marker | France

From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf | CAMP | India

24 Frames | Abbas Kiarostami | Iran, France

Looking Forward To

Loveless | Andrey Zvyagintsev | Russia

mother! | Darren Aronofsky | USA

The Third Murder | Hirokazu Kore-eda | Japan

Loving Vincent | Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman | UK, Poland

The Other Side of Hope | Aki Kaurismaki | Finland, Germany

Funeral Parade of Roses | Toshio Matsumoto | Japan

Thelma | Joachim Trier | Norway

On the Beach At Night Alone | Hong Sangsoo | Japan
(and his retrospective)

Scary Mother | Ana Urushadze | Georgia, Estonia 

Redoubtable | Michel Hazanavicius | France

The Square | Ruben Östlund | Sweden, France, Denmark

Centaur | Aktan Arym Kubat | Kyrgyzstan, France, Germany, Netherlands

Indian Fare

Pushkar Puran | Kamal Swaroop | India 

Ashwatthama | Pushpendra Singh | India 

Village Rockstars | Rima Das | India

Zoo | Shlok Sharma | India 

Ajji | Devashish Makhija | India

Ralang Road | Karma Takapa | India

Greetings to Tati

On the birthday of one of my favourite filmmaker, Jacques Tati, screengrabs from his film Playtime (1967) for the celebration.