Babies

Thomas Balmes' Babies is a full length Documentary from France on four different babies belonging to different parts of the world. It is a novel attempt to document the birth of the babies who are born in different clime and atmosphere. The concept of the movie is the brain child of Alain Chabat, also the producer of the film, and was adopted by the director Thomas Balmes appreciatively to engender the thought-baby. The documentary opens with two African babies sitting in the mud and playing with stone and clay. There starts a tussle between them over grabbing an empty plastic can and one of the babies begins beating the other. The camera moves down memory lane showing the bulged stomach of an African mother daubing the mineral an calcite rich mud on her belly. The child is Ponijao, a male child, from Namibia. The chosen mother belongs to a particular tribe that lives on the forest plains of Namibia. The women do not wear any cloth to cover the upper torso and child is fed with their bare breasts. The setting is rustic and embraces nature harmoniously. The father of the child is not even shown whereas the Japanese and the American patriarchs contribute much to the accompaniment with the baby. On the other hand the Mongolian child's father does only a patriarchal cameo.

The next child is Mari from Japan, the only other female child chosen among the four, and a completely contrasting surrounding nurtures her. The couple of the child lives in a cosy apartment and Mari is brought up in gadget filled house. The next one is the Mongolian baby Bayar, born in the community of cattle-tenders occupying a vast plain of between glade and savannah. They live in decorated and beautifully pitched tents and not unknown to the modern equipment viz. satellite television. This baby boy grows amidst cattle and a naughty elder brother, who in one frame drags a quiet cat through the bedroom and puts it close to the baby. On other occasion he beats the baby boy till the later cries out. The fourth one of the babies hails from the richest of nations, the US. She is Hattie and leads as sophisticated a life as Mari. The documentary starts with the birth of the babies and ends at the first of the year of them tracking down their growth for a whole year or until the crawlers become toddlers. In the end the babies are shown in their fourth or fifth year. The documentary does not offer any narration or commentary on the setting and backdrop of the babies. Notwithstanding, it traces the psychological features that go with the gaining of knowledge from the environment. A wonderful study carried out with earnestness and disinterestedness.

Old-Year Babble

This is the fifty-second week of the last year of the first decade of this millennium (some mathematical geniuses would agree with me as they fight it out that there was no Zero year between 1BC and 1AD). Let us not worry about the others who say that the decade was over last year itself, for the time being. Let us resolve that the first decade is going to be over in four days. Many people make much fuss about bidding the year adieu and welcoming the new year. As a young boy , i was fascinated to see the cartoon strip that the Tamil daily 'Dina Thanthi', never failed to put on the first page of the newspaper on the first of January. A young boy sends out an old man and the connotations are the young boy is the new year and the old man, the passed out year. Though very mundane, the cartoon strip has a lot of messages in it. For every one the time comes to an end. I am not the kind of person who celebrates much of new years. For a time being i was in a fad of celebrating the Tamil new year opposed to the hype and hoopla filled English New Year. That too fizzed out as the time of it breathed out. Being a student of English Literature, i was part of the company that was celebrating the English New Year in college by cutting cakes on New Year's Eve and putting every one of those present to the gruelling task of narrating their resolutions. I look back at every one of those celebrations with much discomfort now as i consider them funny and juvenile.

It is only for the human understanding that the time has been divided into days, months and years. As far as nature is concerned, it troubles itself only with the changing of seasons. The change of seasons is cyclic and early humans looked forward to them for betterment in their lives. During the French Revolution, in opposition to the involvement of Church, the revolutionists designed a calender with ten day weeks to make people forget going to churches and not being influenced by the Parish and Kingly soverignty. For me it is just like any other ordinary or for that matter special day, if one considers each day special, and one should continue to do what one considers best on that day too. I may have sounded rather skeptical and boorish, however i have just given a piece of my mind.

In a Day

Hoveeel... ooolllliiii... ! The sound keeps ranting the air. It tries to prise the delicate membrane of the ear-drum with its icy chillness. It is on at the dead of the night and has been intermittent. The source of the sound is known though whence it comes from is carefully umbered by the night light. It is the shrilly voice of a puppy that has had an untimely weaning from its bitchy mother. It allows the neigh bours to get some sleep as it, being exhausted of its energy, faints to sleep. The morning breaks up and its hunger wakes it up and reminds it of its prising voice that could summon even the dead from distant land. Unsuccessful though. The shrilly voice summons bevies of hens and piglets, though not at the same time. The early risers of hens strut on the earth raking soft mud and clay to find savoury earthworms and insects. Their morning meditation on food-finding comes to a sudden halt as they see the puppy under an abadoned carton.

The bigger of the hens initiates a conversation with the puppy. 'Hallo there! Are you hungry?' The puppy ignores the cackle as it knows well that nothing comes off it. The younger of the hens swaggers close by and tries to stay close to the puppy. Not ruffled, the puppy begins its hoveeel... ooolllliiii... ! ' Goodness me!' the younger of the hens, 'I think this will not get you anywhere except prising the eardrums of all those nearby'. 'What is your problem?' Rather disinterested the puppy answers, ' i was brought here last evening by a group of urchins who wanted to get rid off me as i was bitten by my mother's lover, who considered me a hindrance for his love-making. And the urchins consider me ugly as the skin on my back grew to be scaly and the fur came off exposing an ugly gnash. I was here ever since last evening and has not had any soul giving me anything. Oh! i am sorry. I almost forgot. A young boy gave some food last night, that was too bad. I managed as i had nothing to eat. I am hoping to be restored to life by some goody-goody soul. Most of the neigh bours never mind my prising noise though they definitely curse me for not letting them sleep peacefully. Another young man attracted, i think rather annoyed, by my wail came to look under the carton and got himself satisfied that i was not dying and went away.'

'OK, we will call our master and try to bring the attention towards you. You stay here, by the way for sometime suspend that gnawing shrill of yours.' The younger one of the hens walks back to join her mates and dawdles its way to its place. The puppy waits for sometime and nothing comes by and resumes its hoveeel... ooolllliiii... . The bevy of piglets is attracted by the loud squeal and swerves to find the source of it. The initial confidence between the bevy and the puppy has been established through nosing each other. The piglets pout their mouth and push the muzzle to touch the nose of the puppy. Rather bamboozled, the puppy thinks for a second that it has met its brethren. 'Oh! No. take your crappy muzzle off mine.' The prettier of the piglets moves cosy in its position and starts fondling the fur of the puppy with its nose. 'Stop it i say. I do not need any of your comfort. I am sick and do not aggravate it by supplying me with your contagion of germs.' Oh! we are sorry. We have not dug our noses yet into the turds. We are clean, can't you see. We ooze fragrance. Does it not reach you?' declaims the prettier. 'Alright! Can you be of any help to me?' 'Sure what do you want us to do?' 'Get away from here.' 'Oh! our sympathies are always with you. Bye bye.', depart the piglets. As the morning travels fast the puppy gets some milk from the same goody goody soul and goes to sleep after slurping the milk. In the evening its hoveeel... attracts another group of urchins and it plays with the puppy for sometime. There starts a small skirmish between two boys on fondling the puppy. That separates the coterie into two. They scatter immediately dropping the puppy. The ruckus subsides and one of the fighting boys comes with his cousin to show the puppy and is shocked to find the carton laying empty. As for the puppy it starts another round of its fight for existence.

Where is she?

It has been several days since Olivia went missing. A search party had been formed and that did the act of turning all the stones to look for any information that would tail them to find Olivia. The family of hers is grieved much by her absence. The government are also much discouraged by the act of hers. In fact, the government are looking for an opportunity to grab her well ahead of any of her relatives or friends would catch hold of her. Olivia is unmarried and only twenty-seven. She was a very brilliant student in her school as well as college days and stood first in the state level test conducted for the recruitment of prison-guards. Her track-record as a trainee too did confirm her talent. She has been a prison-guard superintendent for three to four years and has been active in her profession. The police do not hold any record of ill-demeanour on her part. Her family has very decent history and is not connected with felony of any kind in the recent past as well as the historic past. Things have been quite muddling as none of the search parties has come out with any clue of her presence. There has been a severe hunt for dead bodies and their identification parade too but with no avail.

Olivia was on duty on that fateful day when all of a sudden a huge conflagration triggered by an electric short circuit engulfed the female ward of the prison that housed nearly one hundred odd convicts. Most of the inmates of the ill-fated quadrangle had been convicted for petty crimes like pick-pocketing, jay-walking, causing public nuisance as some of them exposed their private parts publicly and so on and so forth. The keys of the ward were with Olivia but was not the permission to open the lock . She contacted the chief of the Prison Control, who was out of town and was an incommunicado as he was holidaying in a resort. All these delaying features were on as the fire was ravaging the ward and singeing their physique. Olivia could do nothing as the singeing turned charring and obliterated the prison-mates. She was a mute-spectator (rather a hollering-spectator) of the event. That night she went missing. The whereabouts are not yet known.

Forgotten Things

'Circle' a Marathi short film screened as the inaugural feature in the Madurai Documentary and Short Film Festival, currently on in the Madura College Auditorium halls, happens to be the theme of this article. I have been quite fortunate to watch three short films or documentaries this forenoon of 07/12/2010. This first one is a real treat to the audience who has been hankering for a great feast, much different from the mundane box-office implosions. It is a story of a six or seven year old boy, who is fatherless and poor. As the film opens the boy bathes himself with tremendous involvement relishing each drop of water that caresses his body from crown to toe. The mother hurries him with the lure of his favourite sweet-meat impending to be prepared as it awaits the condiment of jaggery to go with it. He finishes his bathing and prays to Gods and to his departed father and rushes out to buy the condiment. En route to the destination he is subjected to devilish lure in the forms of a race, a bioscope show; a feature with an aperture to view photographs of film personalities, and in the end a game played by boys by drawing a circle and putting dimes within it. The objective of the game is to release as many dimes as possible from the immure. The boy successfully suppresses the former surging pitfalls but finds himself engulfed by the last one. He plays the game with great aver and contributes greatly to the disfigurement of the dime. The game gets abandoned as the elders of the village interrupt and the boys disperse picking up the dimes that they have laid their hands to. The boy rushes to the shop only to be told that the dime will not be accepted in exchange of the jaggery. Disheartened, he cries himself out in a temple and goes back home much late only to be consoled by his lovable mother and treated with the surprise of getting his favourite sweet-meat from his neighbour.

The remaining two films deal with two different subject. The Austrian 'Waiting' has a post-modern theme of unresponsive attitude of the citizens as they proceed with their work no matter what happens around them. The Tamil 'Senkruthi' features three powerful figures, Ravana of the Ramayana fame, Kumaran a freedom fighter from Tamil Nadu and One Man from the Sri Lankan Tamil family that has suffered in the recent war between the LTTE and Sri Lankan Army. It has a rather somber end with macabrely finish to it.

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.