Pisasu a Mysskin Disappointment

A zoom out shot insetting in its rectangular frame a young girl's dreamy visage with opened eyes and a lock soaked in blood suggesting head injury opens Pisasu. A shot very similar to the one in Onaiyum Aatukutiyum with the contrast of day light and zoom out but with bird's eye view credits the pattern that Mysskin uses to begin his narration. The indispensible autorickshaw, the Chennai streets, sub ways, apartment houses barge in to trumpet the style of Mysskin, that of late have canonised themselves with the crowning of "stereotypes". There is this trademark judo, karate and other defensive martial arts-pulped stunt sequence to hallmark the presence of the distinctiveness of the narrator-director. With all this paraphrenalia the director jumps onto the wagon to embark on a hair raising, spine chilling ghost adventure. Alas, the wagon swerves off of logic oil slick and dives into an abyss to pull itself over. Visually narrative scenes of the beginning shroud themselves of coyness and allow them to be usurped by blaring, vociferous vocal cannons of dialogues. The tempo of narration gets a limping support from scampering camera angles which only add woes to screenplay mobility. The one eyed hero, the other eye being covered by his falling hair, resmbling a cyclop, has also been caught up along with the 'sutra-dhari' in the muddled up situation of battling with logic. The detective faculty of the cyclop hero goes blunt when he is rescued from the thugs that come to rob money of the blind musician alms seekers whereas it sharpens to make him receive the dawning knowledge of the auto rickshaw driver's colour-blindness. The cyclop hero's mother and his neighbour never make ruckus of the beating of the malechavunist husband who invites the wrath of the pisasu by being cruel to the hero's mother. Logic helps with the end but not with the selection of the protaginist's domicile for the pisasu's shelter.

Morals of the story: Girls take only a split second to choose their lover and also to fall in love and are avowed to follow that lover even after death. Spirits especially those of young spinsters take refuge in the houses of their lovers and act as protective godmothers of the lover's family. Nothing could drive those young spinster spirits away from their places of stay, which is possible only when they choose to vacate. One can exterminate a spirit's existence by burning its body along with it. Spirits of young spinsters even pardon their murderers if the murder or killing is an accident and not planned and is committed by beaux. It is quite a disappointment for Mysskin lovers.

From Paper to Screen: A Stupendous Transformation of a Literary Work

A creative work is much celebrated by the public. The creator is treated on a par with God. The creator, familiarly known as author, enjoys a special status in society. What accounts the author to have been bestowed with such distinctive treatment? An author is special because in him or her is honed the skill of procreation: a magical talent of transforming the dreary, stultifying, drab world into palatable, scrumptious delicacy tailored to the taste of art gourmet: that consumes it with the necessity to fill the intellectual cavern of hunger, to quench the hogging fire of a dearth of artistic exercise and production and to revel in discussions, to forget the permeating illness of a surrounding that does suck the sap of energy in forms of humans. No doubt that a creative art form with such enormity of reception and energy to stir the minds and hearts of the readers and viewers, in the case of performing art forms, should never go unnoticed and should have had a greater reach into the masses. Such type of creativity and those that create them are not to be slighted. However, there runs the under current of a responsibility of choosing the creation, as all that is written are not special. Most are unpalatable, indigestible, unfit to be consumed and bring with them elements of toxicity to breath out bacteria that help with both digestion and securing nutrients. The onus of culling and glorifying a creative work of literature rests with the consumers for whom the literary work is especially tailored.

How does a work get created? Certainly, those that create populate the earth and share with the ordinary public the world that they inhabit. The milieu remains the same for both the author and the audiences. A work of literature gets engrossed with the reader when there is mutual sharing of experiences portrayed. It is not mandatory that the readers should hail from the same territory to imbibe the events depicted and characters' world of survival. Any literary work could have in it glimpses of daily life that match with the lives of readers, though there never is a chance of a complete matching with an individual reader's life. As the readers read a literary work, they simultaneously construct the world inhabited by the characters of fictitious origin. The readers voluntarily subject themselves to feelings of vicariousness and readily transform themselves as those of fictitious beings and travel with the imaginary characters and identify themselves with either one or more of those fictitious personalities. In the process of involving themselves in the creative work, the readers invent figures so personally configured, the milieu much akin to the place of their living and the application of logic that is whimsical and suits to the personal gains of the character of their liking. As works of art are engendered owing to the experience of their creator, the experience may be personal as the author is ready to share his travails of life or the author would have been a witness to a horrifying event which coerced him or her to react and rouse passion to do something about the catastrophe, their validity must be put to test. Those works of art that withstand the ordeal of screening and establish themselves as serious work of literature, have the capacity to penetrate into the masses and camp firmly in their hearts. At this juncture comes in the genre of film, that takes an interest in the literary work and is very much at transforming, mutating and decorating it in a new garb. Film is an extended art form of drama as it comes under the category of performing arts. Drama has a limited arena for its enactment, in other words drama is confined to four walls or during the time of Shakespeare to much limited resources for production both in terms of props and actors. Film can be called a stage that has the magical feature of accommodating much in its length and breadth and also can tour and adopt to seasons. Films rely much on script for the screen which is otherwise known as screenplay. Screenplay is the story teller or the narrator that decides the sequence of events and their queue. When a popular literary work attracts the attention of a film maker, he or she would occupy in writing a screen story. A salient feature of movies that is films is the use of camera as stage which has an independent capacity, non dependability, either on the actors or on dialogues for narrating the story. The involvement of the camera actually requires a screenplay as there is the possibility of narrating the story sans dialogues. The transformation of a written literary work into a moving picture is stupendous as the black image of letters on white sheet incarnates into animated forms, often with much support from backdrops and variegated display of fine colour. As the written work takes the avatar of a movie either in black and white or colour it comes into clash with the readers' vicarious world, as there is no guarantee that the movie maker's fantasising goes in accordance with any reader's creation of the virtual world of the black letters. No sooner does the reader see the movie than he/she is caught with mixed feelings of either nausea, aversion if the screen version portrays images contrary to their visualisation or a slight discomfort if some anthropomorphs go well with their virtual story.

For a raw viewer, one who is a stranger to the written version, a well made movie that has absorbed in itself the grammar of a movie, looks quite nice in terms of its making. However the raw viewer disqualifies himself/herself from participating in thorough critique of the screen version as the ignorance on the part of the raw viewer prevents a knowledge of changes and liberties taken of it. A major motion picture could succeed in eliciting remark as it surpasses in its screen version in successfully transforming the tenets of written composition into visual nuances where images and angles of camera usurp characters and act as conveyance of theme and subject. Pier Paolo Pasolini presents the gospel of St Mathew in neo realistic style and his portrayal of Oedipus is tinged in modern crisis. Those two are examples of how a known and popular fiction could be put to an entirely different treatment on the screen. As the genres have in them complex variations and could also allow themselves to be amenable to rich, powerful, innovative ways of treatment of subject matter and theme, the audiences are in for two different banquets on decorated platters of magnificence.

Warring Sexes

The Mother of Pondicherry first met Sri Aurobindo in 1914 when she came to Pondicherry. Mirra Alfassa, who became the disciple of Sri Aurobindo and later referred to simply as 'Mother' wrote volumes of letters and essays and her spiritual talks had all been combined for a special edition of publication. Mirra had to leave Pondicheery, immediately after reaching it in 1914 due to the first World war. She took asylum in Japan where she happened to meet Rabindranath Tagore. Her sojourn in Japan was productive as she spent her free time in writing essays and letters. 'Woman and the War' is one of her interesting essays that were written in Japan that show how savvy Mirra was in current affairs of her time. The essay begins with a self-imposed question to put Mirra's idea on Feminism and its recent developments. Mirra compares the first world war's impact with the growth of feminism. The war is seen as a dispenser of scum that has been masking the eyes of the world. It has peeled off the pseudo upper layer to show the world how the sexes could complement each other for a better world. The war shows the world of the uselessness of the fight between the sexes and reserving jobs for the woman folk. When men were at the front, the women stepped into their shoes perfectly. Women were considered an object of pleasure, a distraction to productive work and a tender of family heretofore. The war provided an opportunity to women to prove their mettle and calibre. When women could assist the wounded at the war front, could they be termed as the weaker sex. Mirra quotes of the ancient Indian life where the women were allowed to govern and she also reflects that such a system is also in vogue in France, when it comes to administering the house-hold chores. However women are not allowed to hold public offices and govern a public body. She ruminates on a true incident that happened at the time of the first world war. An American society had requested its English counter part to help to save a few villages from famine that were on the Belgian soil under the German occupation. The request fell in the deaf ears of men. Fortunately a nurse heard it and with tremendous skill and organisational act she accomplished the act with her woman friends. Mirra is not too proud of the capabilities of women. She is wary of their weaknesses too that also get exposed by the first world war. She wants women to extricate themselves from the grip of emotions and sentimentality if they want to succeed in their position. Of course women are capable of love and humility and abstain from brutality and vulgarity. However they must getaway from passionate nature and partisanship to sustain themselves as successful administrators. Mirra appeals to the world to include women to achieve more. Women are for the interior and men for the exterior shall no longer be fructifying. The sexes must be put together for a sustainable progression. The hostility between the sexes must be put aside in the obsolete category. The war has destroyed the old structure and in their places must rise structures that are jointly built by men and women. Mirra feels that it can only be achieved through spiritual energy. All humans ought to grow spiritually. The Dhammata, the divine world of Buddhism is at the basis and on it is built other structures that sees all equally and does there remain no distinction. The feminist problem is spiritual problem and in recognising the spiritual equality can it be solved.

Feminist Poetry - Glimpses

'The Other Side of a Mirror' is a poem by Mary Elizabeth, the great great niece of the great romantic poet, S T Coleridge. The poem presents a morose picture of the figure in the looking glass. A woman looks herself in a mirror which reflects her inner self. The speaker of the poem claims herself a conjurer and creates a visual in the glass. Instead of reflecting a lively, gay woman, the mirror shows the figure of a sullen woman. The figure has an unkempt hair and the face is want of beauty that once filled itself with jealousy. The face is an aureole of distress. The figure's mouth is agape and lips are parched and nothing comes off it. Her eyes gleam but express a dying desire in her. The face stands for a hopeless dream. The emotions of revenge and jealousy possess the face and are responsible for the dying flame of goodness. The vision is obnoxious and the woman pleads the vision to die out and never to return. The woman is so sure of the uncanny form in the mirror and whispers out to it that it stands for herself. The poem reflects on the distressful state of the narrator. The use of words that stand for contrary feelings suggests that the narrator is in the state of quandary and oscillation. However the line 'She has no voice to speak her dread' clearly states that the woman is enduring an unspeakable suffering and voicing of which would put her in jeopardy. The poem is an example of subjugation and torment of inner self. 'The Doubt of Future Foes' is Queen Elizabeth's poem, is believed to have been composed between 1568 and 1571. The poem depicts the queen's skill in rhetoric too. Queen Elizabeth faced hardship as any monarch would have, during her rule, to her throne. The poem written in the background of the rising of Queen Mary of Scotland up against Queen Elizabeth stands testimony to Queen Elizabeth's valour and administrative excellence. Queen Mary took refuge in England in 1568 by abdicating her Scottish throne that resulted in the movement of putting the Catholic Mary on the English throne. There were a number of attempts to throw away non-protestant, not-catholic Queen Elizabeth who took up a middle path by distancing herself from both sects. The queen is much worried about the prospective attack on her kingdom that makes her subjects concerned and worried. She tells them that if they apply their reason then they will not get worried. She comforts her subjects that all the perilous attempts of their foes will be thwarted by her force.The eyes of the foes have been covered with pride that blinds their vision and makes them miscalculate her strength. She warns that the person who sows the seed of ill-will would get disappointed as peace will eventually conquer. The land of Elizabeth never fosters traitors that would stay to prevent the entry of the aliens. Her sword would see to it that the enemy gets destroyed on their entry. Elizabeth Cary is the first woman English playwright whose work got published. She also holds the credit of her biography being written officially, the first ever of an English woman writer. 'The Tragedy of Mariam' is the first play in verse by an English woman. Cary took the story from the Hebrew tales that got translated by Josephus. The story is about king Herod who leaves his wife Doris for Mariam. The king is helped by his sister Salome. In this prescribed piece the chorus speaks about the duties of a wife. It is not enough that the wife shuns herself away from committing evil. She must also exercise precaution from getting herself plunged in the suspicion of others. She should restrict her free will and practice restrain. Though there are liberties allowed legally, a woman would not indulge in themselves freely. She is forbidden from letting personal things go to a second ear, that would blot her honour. A woman has to give herself completely to her man. She must not allow her mind to wander and offer only her body to her man and must not let free will to takeover her mind. This may ruin her chastity and make her impure. Thus the chorus advises Mariam who has committed the act of snatching Herod from Doris. Lady Mary Chudleigh, a seventeenth century, self educated genius of a writer, discusses the patriarchal supremacy in the prescribed part of her poem 'The Ladies' Defense or a Dialogue between Sir John Brute, Sir William Loveall, Melissa and a Parson'. Melissa answers about the duties of a woman, as earmarked by the men. She is a representative of the female world and is dissatisfied with the position and treatment of women in the patriarchal society. The men hate women and never allow them to the secret of that which attracts men to women. The menfolk prevent women from education and knowledge and accuse them that they are incapable and fit only for household chores. It is denial of opportunity and forced branding that the women have to face. The world has turned its head away and the women have only to plead to heaven. The world is spiteful and vengeful. Even those who pity women's status do not realise their true strength. The men think that it is enough for a woman to know how to dress and dance and to their impervious heads it never occurs that women are for far better prospects. Melissa then calls out to all women to snap the strings that attach themselves to a puppeteer. They must wake up to knowledge, throw away novels and take history books instead. Women must immerse themselves in all nooks of knowledge and practice humility. These acts will fetch them respect, fame and will silence men and they will be in the affable company of other women and more importantly it will make them withstand the malice of men and stop their yearning for them.

The Balcony

Jean Genet's 'The Balcony' is an eponymous title. It is the name of a brothel house run by a woman named Irma. It is an unusual brothel house where one's physical gratification never gets fulfilled. It is a place where one goes to gratify one's desire. The desire has nothing to do with one's physical urge. It is to do with one's hope of life, one's ambition and one's hankering for power. The whole play could be viewed in the aspects of desire for power, temporary loss of power and retention of the lost supremacy. The characters are the Bishop, the General, the chief of police and the judge who visit Irma's phantasmagoric studio where their inner desires get fulfilled by Irma. She supplies props and also characters and creates situations and executes their intentions. The characters or personalities turn to Irma to compensate their loss in the real world. The whole play is set only in the studio of Irma where most of the action takes place and the audiences are fed with information about the coup d'etat of without now and then with the arrival of characters. Genet works out the transformation fantastically as the members of Irma's clientele get in to ease them and with a sense of unbearableness of their loss. As the play progresses, there is gaining of power by the insurrectionists and as it reaches its denouement they are put under control and power gets restored. Irma appears as queen and faces the audiences and addresses them. It is not clear whether she puts on the role of the queen or she appears as queen. However she confirms the disbelief of the audiences by stating that things will be very strange in their real lives in their houses. The play ends with this final speech of Irma/Queen that is addressed to the audiences and not to the characters of the play. Through this play Genet confirms the 'play' of supreme powers in the lives of humans and its permeation everywhere.

Sisyphus - an Existential Man

Albert Camus' 'The Myth of Sisyphus' is a four chapter book that deals with many of the modern philosophical issues concerned with life. Camus discusses the possibilities for a human to commit suicide and the functioning of the individual's brain and its abetting in the act of committing suicide. The fourth chapter retains the title of the book, 'The Myth of Sisyphus'. Sisyphus, a righteous kind, committed the act of divulging a divine secret for water. He chose to enjoy what the Earth could give rather than what the divine decide. Another version puts him in the list of callous men who acted as a highwayman. Yet another version calls him a recalcitrant who chained the powerful Death and made Pluto angry. However all these versions agree on the punishment meted out to him; rolling a boulder to the pinnacle of a mountain whence it would roll down to the abyss of the underworld owing to its weight. Camus considers the mythological Sisyphus a representative of modern man. He compares the unproductive task of rolling the big rock to the pinnacle of a mountain to the day to day labour of men. Only when the labourers get conscious of their activities and their meaninglessness they get frustrated and their day to day life will be torturous. What causes this frustration is the teeny weeny sapling of hope that clings on to this harsh physical activity. Sisyphus is never conscious of his absurdity until he hopes not of positioning the rock on the mountain. When the hope of stationing it on the pinnacle buds in his heart, he is sucked into the vortex of disappointment. He will find himself in the position of doing a useless labour. According to Homer, Sisyphus is condemned by the Gods to this state which according to Them is the most poignant punishment. The strain is only physical until the condemned is not aware and not thinking beyond this hard labour, which turns to be a mental trauma once the victim begins nurturing hope. Camus takes up this Sisyphus who has committed himself to hard labour without an inkling of its consequences. This acceptance of one's predicament as it has been a product of one's own acts eliminates the possibility of a higher destiny. Camus presents Sisyphus as an existential man who never bothers with the ideology of the existence of God. For him everything in

the world exists and interests. Camus is concerned very much with the descending Sisyphus whose contemplation gives energy to his existence and whose reverie puts him in the position of deciding his fate in the world.

Woman of Moral Stories

She had a very unhappy childhood. She lost her mother when she was eleven and saw her suffer when the mother had to give her daughters in adoption owing to their dire straits living. She had a good patron who paid dowry on behalf of her to have her live happily, which turned out to be a severe disaster. Her husband was dissolute and her marriage got annulled after two years. She was Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, the French woman writer of the eighteenth century. All her personal suffering gave her resource for her writing and made her a writer of didactic tales for young people, especially girls. Beauty and the Beast is one such tale of hers and she uses it to instruct the young girls. The writer believes in right upbringing, possession of righteousness, simplicity and moral uprightness amongst young people as traits to be honed for decent living. Most of her tales reflect all these notions of hers. Once upon a time there lived a merchant. He was very rich and had three beautiful daughters. Of the three the last one was very kind and simple and helped all. She was not haughty and carried herself in all humility and treated the rich, the poor, the invalid and the healthy alike. The people of the town began calling her beauty and soon it became her name. On the contrary her two elder sisters were unkind, rough and in possession of stolid temperament. It so happened that the merchant all of a sudden lost all his wealth and chose to live in penurious condition. Beauty did all the chores as there were no servants whereas her two sisters were busy finding suitable matches for them. They got rejected by wealthy gentlemen who had been rejected by the two sisters when they were rich on the ground that those gentlemen were not super rich. The two sisters were of the opinion that Beauty was meant for menial life only and never partook in daily chores to help her. One day the merchant got information that if he could take a trip he would get back at least half of his lost wealth. So the father bade farewell and departed with the intention of satisfying the requests of his daughters. The eldest needed a diamond necklace, the second needed a suite of pearls and Beauty simply needed a white rose. The journey was fructifying and the merchant could find the requirements of his first two daughters and was in disconsolation as he could not find any white rose. He was taking his trip back and found a palatial house with fine garden overlooking and an avenue of lemon and orange trees.