The Night Ordeal

She dreads the ordeal that she goes through every night. She requires an immediate relief. What she gets instead a reprieve. The relief tantalises her as it always culminates in a temporary phenomenon of a reprieve. On several occasions it has given her a long rope to consider it being a permanent escape from the mental trauma. She has often dismissed the hope of getting herself purged of the sin that she has committed without her volition. The night-ordeal has made the sin, of which it is only a by-product, nothing. She relives the moment of desolation and incapacitation far more, every night, in bed with her husband. Her husband is a good man under ordinary circumstances. He is an ordinary citizen of a nation who has found a fine job to sustain himself and his family very nicely. He has only limited goals. He is much pleased with the world and its people. He is comfortably settled with a fine job as a bank manager in a private bank in a metropolis. He married at a very right age of twenty-five and a woman of great beauty and intelligence. She too has not deprived him of any pleasure a man could get from a woman. He has been bestowed rather blessed with the title of 'father' by her with two beautiful children. He had been in cloud nine until the night that dreadful thing happened.

She is a graduate of considerable talent and knowledge in the subject of hers. She was working in a private firm before her marriage. She chose to stay at home after her marriage and until the kids had been born. She is a lovable mother and has devoted her entire time in raising the kids up. It was only after the second child had turned six, and she was thirty, she thought of using her free time productively by seeking employment. Her husband did not stand in her way and was always cheerful and encouraging. With her knowledge of English, she found a call centre job. It was tedious for her as it required night-shift stints once in six months. She thought of declining the offer initially as the night-work would deprive her of the time that she would spend with her children. She accepted the offer after discussing it with her husband and with the confidence that she would manage the short stint that happens occasionally.

She was good at her English and gained a very good name in a very short span of time. She was managing her kids in her home quite well too. Things had been fantastic. She was very happy and her husband too got quick upward mobility in the rungs of designation in his bank. It was at this juncture a very unforeseen thing happened to them. During night-stints, she was dropped by at the wee hours of the night at the entrance of the street on which her house stands. One night, as she was dropped by the taxi service that operates for her call-centre, she was accosted by two men and made her get into a cab that was standing near-by. She had no option as she was bidden at gun-point. There in it, she was brutally raped by a group of men. It was nightmarish and highly detestable. She was thrown out of the cab as the guys got exhausted with their energy, she lost hers much earlier and was in a faint. She lay motionless on the street until the daybreak and was found by the early risers of the street. Her husband was informed. He slept through the night of her ordeal as he had a lot of work to do, the previous day, in his office. She was taken to hospital and spent sometime in it. She was given counselling and her husband was briefed about her status. The husband of hers behaved gentlemanly as he accepted her with great love as he had always had for her.

She began slowly forgetting about her ordeal with the group of men. The husband of hers grew fidgety as he was deprived of his love-making for long. After getting ratified by a psychiatrist, he began the preamble of love making with her. As the closeness between them begin to get strengthened day after day, he has started talking about the ordeal that she was subjected to without her volition. He asks questions about how the men behaved with her, how they caressed her and how many were doing the act simultaneously and what was her reaction then, how she tolerated all these gagging and he is always reminded of the dastardly act of them, quite contrary to mental trauma as the victim limps back to normality the husband of hers has grown empathic. Day by day the questions turn into a tortuous grill and she even finds the traumatic night much easy one to tolerate. She hopes for a permanent solution to this interminable ordeal of hers.

The Supreme Architect

There are several things that decide a buying. I am talking about buying books. Once in a classroom of adult boys and girls of about eighteen or more years of age, i put the question of eliciting their response about buying books. So many hands went up when i had asked them whether they had bought any books in a book-shop. As i narrowed down the point of my knowing i began seeing the raised hands deplete. I pruned or re-phrased my question to know whether any of them bought any book without the book being suggested by any source, like prescribed text piece, recommended by elders or friends, a popular best seller, a much advertised one or something that was the need of the hour. I hardly came across any hoisted hand dangling in the air afore me. The question was a tricky one as it tried to find out the act of voluntary choosing of one in being a book-consumer.

What decides a book-buying? With my very little experience as a buyer of books, all i can suggest is that a supreme force that is beyond the grasp of any earthly perception. I have never felt sorry for choosing any book. I often go through the first page of any book that describes a little about the writer as well as the book. On all occasions i feel an urge in me to choose the book in prospect of being bought. There are occasions that i left the book-shop, after spending several minutes, without buying even a single book. And, there are occasions that i chose books in a matter of seconds and left the stores instantly. For these two contrasting behaviour, i believe only chance can answer. I pray to that supreme force, a Deist term i believe, to confer the ever fierce flame of desire to buy books burn in me.

Epic Endeavour

As my mother asked me to take the dry towel, that had been wet for sometime, that was dry now, off the clothesline, i ended not only taking the towel off the clothesline but also disturbing the smooth file of ants that were shuttling between two mysterious destinations en route the clothesline. For a moment i did not know what to do as i stood transfixed thinking about the onslaught that i would trigger did i disturb their smooth passage. My mother got frustrated at the slackness of my pace at the duty rather dutifully entrusted on my hands from her. She began worrying about my diligence at working out errands. I stood before her as dunce who was incapable of performing a task that would be easy even for a moron.

What made me stood bamboozled was the kind of disaster that would befall on those ants that were traveling on the towel at that time. If i took off the towel, then they would end up as refugees on some unknown territory, finding themselves completely alienated from their colony. I thought about their decimation for a while and even thought about their possible reunion though in the end i ended up disturbing their union. I took the towel off and shirked it rather violently to shed the possible ants that were clinging on to the towel, i did not know how could have i taken the towel off lest disturbing the smooth march of them. It was impossible to stop the oncoming ant to step on to the towel off the clothesline and to speed up the one that was already on its course on the towel.

After ruining their smooth passage, i decided to find out where they were heading using the clothesline as a cantilever bridge. The journey of them started from a teeny-weeny chink in the wood window frame of the window of the kitchen wall, from where the one end of the clothesline began, to another of the teeny-weeny chinks of yet another wood window frame of another window of the dining hall wall, where it ended. On a closer examination i found them transporting chunks of food and chunks of eggs, quite wary of the oncoming monsoon. I did not know the difference between the abodes of these two colonies of them. There would have been differences between the two tunnels that they had built into the wood window frame. I also found out that the detour on the clothesline had saved thousands of miles on the part of the ants to travel. They would embark on an arduous journey crossing water-bodies of the sizes of puddles, lakes and mounds as big as the Himalayas were there no clothesline. I was awestruck at the level of their intelligence as they found a wonderful short-cut to take them safe, quick and in exhaustive. As the clothesline arrived at that spot only a fortnight ago as my mother thought of drying up the clothes under some shade, an act of ingenuity on her part, during the monsoon season. It showed the adaptability of them to the changing ambiance. I felt sorry for those who were stranded off the course by my callous act. I have not obtained any knowledge so far whether they made up their journey to reach their colonies.

'Enjoyable' Trips

I travel much on public locomotives, buses especially. So many hours of my life is spent on buses. It is not an interesting journey that anyone embarks on if what the journey, destination and the route one chooses are quite mundane and drab. On occasions i think of converting hours long bus travel into anything productive. The first of my effort was to look for places on the way and know them fully well, an added wisdom thanks to years of travelling. Second i started noting down the numbers of the buses and their seating capacity and the years of their make. Third i thought of travelling on all the buses that shuttle between the destinations i travel regularly, though the work time does not permit that. Fourth i subjected myself to severe experience of forcibly undergoing a reverie each time i travel on the buses. It was of some use to me when i was doing some research work on some literary pieces as some flashes appeared all of a sudden and opened up new fjords. Then i started concentrating on the timing of buses and the chasm between the first and the successive ones. Next i started reading while travelling and amazed at the books i devoured during these travels, i had to abandon this act as it gave too much strain to my eyes. Seventh and final, i have befriended a lot of conductors and drivers and as a result have become a patron of them.

Befriending the workforce that runs buses has taken me to a lot of interesting anecdotes having been told by them. A few days ago when i was travelling, a motor-bike rider misbehaved or violated the rules of traffic and blamed the driver of the bus for the act. The driver, a young man, angered much by the biker's act was on the verge of starting a tiff with him and the pillion. The public intervened and saved the rider from receiving blows. This act led to a series of stories being told by the driver about the misbehaviour of both road users and people who travel on buses. It is quite alright in the morning, barring some stray incidents of male caressing and fondling the female in crowded buses. Whereas night travel offers a treasure trove of incidents. Some time ago in a bus a man was misbehaving with two girls who were sitting in the parallel pews in the bus. A stern warning from the driver made the man sit quiet all through the journey afterwards. On another occasion a man, heavily drunk and almost not in right senses, was sitting in the seat behind and was fondling the woman who was sitting before him. No one could do anything and the woman too lost faith in the stopping of the act. She did a very interesting thing of taking the ring off the finger of the man and as he was drunk and in the ugly act of physical debauchery, he did not know that. The woman waved to him as he got off the bus the ring. There were also acts committed by drivers and conductors who are supposed to run the buses providing safety to the passengers. I was quite shocked to listen to these stories. Though there is a scarce doubt that pops up in my brain as i ruminate these acts. In atleast a few acts like these the women too enjoy the 'ugly' thing. I may be wrong. There are occasions that force them to be incapacitated. However the doubt lingers on. I thought of writing something else. Somehow i embarked on this not so decent journey.

The Great Indian Novel

I recently bought the novel The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor. It is a rather lenghthy novel of nearly four hundred and eighteen pages in the publication that i bought. The print of the book is rather minute and the size of the font is a little bit teeny-weeny. Had it been of a quite a big font size, comfortable for the old people to read with or without spectacles, the novel would have definitely gobbled up nearly six hundred pages. It was published in the year 1989, when Shashi was around thirty or in his early thirties. He spent most of his time in the UN and recently ended his career there. He also acquired a Ph d at the age of twenty-two.

The novel is based on two things. Tharoor would have been inspired by the great epic of The Mahabharatha that he had before him a lofty model to emulate. He himself gives out a foreword in the beginning to caution the readers, who would have bought the book with the expectation of reading through a great novel, that the title is a translation of The Mahabharatha into the English, that means the Great India. He has drawn the theme from the two things of the Mahabharatha and the political happenings between 1910 and 1980 in India. The novel begins with a tinge of parody of the conversion of the Brahma, one of the Hindu Trinity, into a tycoon and friend of VV, stands for Ved Vyas, another successful entrepreneur. It sails smoothly by simply retelling the Mahabharatha until the birth of the sons of Vyasa through Ambika and Ambalika. It swerves itself off its path all of sudden as Ganga Dutta, the man who has taken a terrible vow to abstain from climbing onto the throne: Bhishma, is identified with the Mahatma that India engendered. The novel also offers some interesting portraits of all national leaders including the former head of the political party that Shashi Tharoor now represents to have become the Member of Parliament. The novel also touches upon Indian life and views politics through the eyes of common man.

Tharoor can be appreciated for his fictitious selection of names like Manimir, Chakra and so on so forth. The novel depicts some important political happenings in India between 1910 and 1980. I think it is good for anyone who would love to taste History if it was told in the form of a story.

Lalithambigai Antharjanam+Kamala Das+Virginia Woolf+Deepa Mehta=Water

It is a strange title to any article. Four Women are equivalent to Water. The word, i owe a disclaimer to the reader, does not refer to the basic element required for the effloresence of nature and its rebirth. It is the title of the 2005 Deepa Mehta film Water. She started shooting the film after getting permission from the Government of Uttar Pradesh in 2002 with her favorites Nanditha and Azmi. She had to abandon the project as the Hindu Groups claimed that the script of the film was anti-Hindu. She re-started the project with the help of a Canadian producer in 2004 in Sri Lanka. She had to drop her favorites as the script needs a young protagonist, i should say supporting protagonist, since the girl, eight year old Chuiya, is the protagonist of the story.

The title features four women. Three of them are writers, i should say four of them if i include Mehta also. None of the three writers is alive. The first one wrote in Malayalam; the second one in both Malayalam and English and the third one is British and eventually wrote in English. They appear in an order in the title as their influences are seen in the film of Deepa Mehta. The first of the influences has come from Antharjanam. 'Cast me out if you will' is a powerful phrase of hers that is employed by the protagonist of the story 'Admission of Guilt' (Kutta Sammadam)in which the protagonist, a Brahmin widow in her early thirties, is summoned by the elders of the community to take oath before them about her fidelity. She had been married at a very tender age even before she attained puberty to a sixty year old man. Her father exchanged her for a thirty year old daughter of that old man who had been included into the 'Nallukattu' as the fourth of the wives of the child's father. The sixty year old man was sick and the girl did not much stay in her husband's abode. She was brought back to her maternal house immediately. One day when she was playing hopscotch a messanger came and divined the dreadful news of the death of her husband. she lost her husband much before she attained puberty. She stepped into widowhood and had been a widow ever since. She is now found pregnant and the elders want to know the act of immorality on her part. She challenges every one with the phrase 'cast me out if you will', as she says she has been embraced by a divine figure in an unearthly hour when she has gone to have a bath, an ablution to be carried out before setting foot on the campus of temples. I see resemblances between her and the girl Chuiya in the movie Water.

Kamala Das is remembered through the film, as the keeper of the house of the widows decides to send the child to an old man who is in need of a nubile sexual partner. Kamala Das' 'A Doll for a Child Prostitute' is a terrible story that unravels the veneer of modesty of Indian traditional life and exposes scathingly the reality.

I could not help myself except thinking about Virginia Woolf as the supporting protagonist; Kalyani, played by the very beautiful Liza Ray, decides to commit suicide as the lover of hers, again a fine casting as John Abrahams playing the role of Narayan; a radical reformer influenced much by the teachings of Gandhi, happens to be the son of a local big-shot, who is also much entertained by the night visits of Kalyani, as that has become the only source of money for the widows to sustain themselves. Kalyani comes back to the house but the keeper of widows does not let her in. Kalyani takes a firm decision of walking into a water body and drowns herself very much like Virginia Woolf. I must say Kalyani is the predecessor as the film was set in 1938 whereas Woolf died only in 1941.

Deepa Mehta excels in the field of writing. The film is sheer poetry and India are ashamed of not letting her shoot in real setting. Sri Lanka does not resemble much of North India though it has remnants of the South of India. The sets though made with fine artistry and hard work create only an artificial back drop to the story. A good film.

A Ride of Life-time

It has been almost a fortnight since i published anything in my blog. The last of the posting is a story of mine that has received lukewarm response from the readers, that is if at all there are readers who are serious about any kind of writing. I do not demean any effort of anyone in getting their comments registered for my write ups. As a writer, i long to be commented, criticised or even ridiculed at, berated at and so on and so forth. By the way, this is not i intend to write now. I have spent the whole of the past two weeks in doing something pretty much academic with my colleagues. I have had no free time to do the thing i like the most; reading and wathcing films. My colleague in the Department of Tamil, Rathinakumar, gave me two compact discs of two films. He has a very fine collection of world movies and has been kind enough to give a glimpse of his collection to me for tasting his broth. I am now going to write about the three movies that i have seen this weekend. Two are his contribution and one is mine.

'Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles' is the name of the Japanese film released in 2004. The year of the release is only a surmice, as the sub-titles of the film do not deprive of the makers, actors, production crew or anyone for that matter, who has associated with the movie. The film opens with an old man staring at sea with dismay. He is Takata, who has moved to this fishing sea-shore small town after the death of his wife. He has a son, who chooses to live in Tokyo. The son, Ken-ichi, is a teacher in Oriental folk-arts and is published much in that field. He travels a lot to China to record the native opera performed in villages. The opera is popular in the Yunnan Province of China. Takata is unhappy as the relationship between him and his son has strained greatly after his immigration to the fishing hamlet. He is not much in contact with his son and his daughter in law. The daughter in law, Rye, sends an invitation to him to visit Tokyo. The reason is that the son is ill, suffering from severe stomach pain, and is admitted to hospital. The invitation is not approved by Ken-ichi and he refuses to admit his father into the room. Rye consoles the father and gives a video cassette that Ken has recorded. The father comes back to his native town and watches the tape, which contains a recorded programme of the Chinese dance form. In it the son talks to a performer, named Li, who assures a fine performance of the story of Lord Guan, who travelled thousands of miles to save his friend: 'Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles', the next year. Ken is ill and cannot travel to China.

Takata wants to do something for his son. He visits China's Yunnan Province without letting his daughter in law know of his visit. He catches hold of an interpreter, Jasmine and tries to film the performance of the story of Lord Guan's travelling. As it is about to happen, Lingo, a local quack interpreter tells him that the actor is different and not Li, as Li has been jailed for the crime of an assault for three years. Takata does not want any other person performing it. He decides to take the matters to the judicial system, which refuses it on the grounds that a foreigner is never allowed, apart from foreign correspondents, inside to film anything. Takata does not lose hope and sends a video cassette describing the condition of his son, who is afterwards diagnosed with cancer in liver, who is known to the authorities, as he visited quite regularly and stayed in the villages alone for many days. Takata is given permission. However, Li breaks down and cannot perform the role, as he is thinking about his eight year old son, Yang yang, born out of the union of him and his wife.

Takata decides to visit the stone village, that is very far away from the prison and bring his son to the prison. The trip to the village makes him understand about the people of the village who are the sole guardians of Yang yang as he already lost his mother. They hold a community feast in honour of him and decide to send the boy with him. In the mean time, Ken has relented and is much moved to know about his father's intentions and wishes him to come back to Tokyo immediately. Takata is conveyed of this by Rye. Takata has forced himself in a situation that he has generated personal interest in him to film the opera. On the way to the prison, the boy escapes and spends a night or two with Takata. The villagers do manage to find them and Takata firmly wants to know from the boy that whether he is really interested in seeing his dad. The boy answers negatively and Takata leaves the boy after getting assurance from the villagers that they would do take care the boy. He still does not lose hope and decides to go to prison to find whether Li is in a good mood to perform the opera. On his way to prison, he is informed of the death of his son and a letter of him is also read out. He goes to prison and shows pictures of Yang yang to Li and expresses no interest in filming the opera. Li requests him that he would do well and dedicate the opera to Ken, who is his friend, and Takata would show the performance to him. The film ends with the performance of the opera.


The second film is 'Divided We Fall' by a Russian director Jan Hrebejk. Many films have been made for years using the second world war happenings as the back drop. Charlie Chaplin's 'The Great Dictator', that is the other movie i saw this weekend, tries to visualise, rather mockingly, the dictator in a hectic robe of activities. Chaplin's portrait of the dictator Hynkel, that is very much modelled on Hitler, is highly comical as he tries to parody the serious activities that Hitler was credited with in involving himself.

The present film by the Russians was released in 2000, and is about a Czech family that was living in Russia or i think in Czech, during the time of the second world war. The film is such a fine blend of family drama and historic holocaust. The first six minutes of the film depicts six years between 1937 and 1943. The remaining one hundred and fourteen minutes depict the happenings from 1943 to 1945. Josef and Marie are a childless couple. Josef is employed in the firm of a Jewish businessman. As the film opens, the audiences are shown the happy gathering of all races. The Jewish family moves to a concentration camp and its whereabouts are not known. David, the son of the Jewish businessman returns after two years, by escaping from a camp set up by Nazis on Polish soil. Josef helps him to escape with a friend to another of the destination, that miserably fails as the friend does not turn up at the agreed on spot. Josef decides to keep David, who tells him that his family members would have died by now, in his house without the knowledge of the Fuhrer's men. He has a, rather, snooping friend Hurst, who often scampers into Josef's house in a surprise of alarming degrees. He senses the arrival of David and tries to find it out. Josef gets a job in Hitler's administration. He also visits doctors in the prospect of fathering children.

On one occasion, while Josef is meeting the doctor, Hurst tries to rape Marie. Marie kicks him and walks her way home from the place of the incident. The doctor gives out a shocking news that Josef could never father a child. In the meantime, Hurst wants to take revenge on Marie and brings a widower German officer to stay with the couple. Marie turns down the request by informing him that she is pregnant and the couple needs the small room for the child. Josef is now caught in a Catch-22 situation. He cannot father but needs a child for being spared from the gallows. He requests Marie, who loves only her husband, to bear a child through David. After much coaxing, David agrees. As Marie nears her delivery time, the Hitler's regime is rooted out and Josef finds himself in a quandary, as he is accused of supporting Germans and he proves that he is friendly with Jews by revealing the secret behind the birth, and before being comforted with the birth of the child. The film ends with the proud father Josef walking his pram with his child, a male child.