Life of Pi a review

This movie falls in the realm of fantasy and hard realism; something in the twilight zone of Paul Coelho’s Alchemist’s spiritual conquest and Bear Grylls true adventures in the wild. If there is allusion to spiritualism it is for you to judge but there is unmistakable aura surrounding this eventful narrative. A business minded family deeply fragmented by business pragmatism and religious world reaches a flash point where the easy equilibrium, the cozy lifestyle is suddenly disturbed for the worst. A decisive point in life for family to take a call to define their future and they do so.  The father of protagonist, a zoo owner in Pondicherry winds up his business and sets out to migrate to Canada. They undertake their journey in a Japanese cargo ship so that animals a can also be transported. The major part of events take place after ship break in a fiery storm over the Altlantic. The narrative zigzags in Gulzaresque flashback style.

It opens with the protagonist now a wizened adult in Canada narrating his experience to the writer and the flashbacks happen during this conversation. Ang Lee succeeds in capturing Indian ethos, brings alive nuances of his early childhood as a curious young fellow. The compacted childhood nicely builds up character of the young hero, a bewildered young man in awe of the sublime. The meaty portion of the movie is all about special effects and apparently no expense was spared to recreate marine experience. The building up of relationship between the young fellow and the beast is done with finesse and subtlety. The floating island scene creates metaphor for search of spiritual mysticism. Also the incredulous response of Japanese investigators to his real experience, trying to unravel drowning of the cargo vessel and his quickly thought up fictitious story to make it palatable adds another set of mysticism.

I will not judge its production value for I seriously suspect substandard projection facility at Big Cinema, the bright sun appears fudgy as if a low resolution frame is exploded to fill up the space, the 3D effect at places unhinges all apparently fault of the theater. Overall a joyful experience with ‘paisa vasool’ and free popcorn.

I would rate this film four stars out of five stars

Let The Stranger Alone IV

The villagers looked at the house with suspicion but were too afraid of the Englishman. The house meanwhile would occasionally erupt in bizarre spectacle. Strong ritualistic happenings added to its already formidable aura of horror. Dogs wouldn’t bark around the house, the goats would stop in their gait stand still in terror. Then one wing of the house burned down completely. The villagers rushed to help with water but the ghostly Englishman came out with gun, fired in air and frightened them off. Thereafter the house was remained completely inert. It is now more than fifty years, nobody knows if the Englishman or his wife is still alive, no one saw any corpse taken out of the house. .. ..

Some villagers reported sighting of a pale and weak Englishman walking through the riverbed a gun slung over his shoulder at the dead of night. Once he disappears, a short exotic woman follows his footstep some distance then disappears. But this could be imagination of these excitable villagers.

This summer E Babu was in the village. He had come here earlier as an immature young man, an immensely gullible fellow. Then stories of mystery house excited him as well as terrified him. Now equipped with his knowledge of the world and as a rational thinker he rejected the mystery about the house with utter scorn. For him it was just an abandoned house; the spic and span condition of house was imagination of the villagers. During the evening gossiping, the matter of the mystery house came up for discussion at which E Babu silenced them with declaration, I will visit the house at the dead of night and settle the mystery once for all”.

Everyone looked at him shocked silence. An old fellow from the village counseled, “teri mat to nahiN maari gai hai!” which E Babu ignored.

Buddha Was Right And Wrong

 Once we are born and acquire some sense of life, our focus remains fixed on survival. Once survival becomes trivial then focus shifts to preserving life but when this also becomes trivial we move to other objectives in life like deviations into succeeding in our chosen vocation or in commerce, art, philosophy and through them peer recognition. One spin-off of this endeavor is acquiring the fittest companion for mating in a competitive society. But at more mature age we look at death critically and try to think of ways to deal with it. Death appears to us as a frightening eventuality since it undoes everything we have done all our life; it simply kills all our devices to keep the life going.  Death appears to us as a dark mystery we know nothing about with our first hand knowledge therefore the horror it evokes. Everything about it is speculative though some of the wisdom coming from sources we hold in very high esteem; it still is not firsthand knowledge. Most of us are lazy enough to accept the handed down wisdom coming from religion about meaning of life. But, is the faith in this wisdom enough convincing? I think we do not have unshakable conviction in our faith, if we do, the thought will penetrate our subconscious and kill the mystery of death. After all mystery of death is creation of our subconscious.

Buddha for instance was not satisfied with the accepted view of his time therefore embarked on a quest to unravel meaning of life so that he can understand death. Buddha found an explanation for life and his conviction about it was deep. So deep that it penetrated his subconscious therefore death appeared no more mysterious. Buddha was right in finding a meaning for his life but he was wrong in prescribing the same meaning to everyone. It doesn’t work; we are individuals and have our own subconscious that creates a spell around death. To penetrate that spell we have to find our meaning, a powerful meaning so convincing that it penetrates our subconscious and breaks the spell cast by it. Once we can do that we will be at peace. 

Let The Stranger Alone III

The mysterious Englishman wouldn’t interact with the villagers. There was no point; the villagers wouldn’t have understood him. The man remained aloof but respected village ethos, would not intrude in temple activity. The disinterest suited the villagers, who were anyway in no condition to challenge him. Only once he came to the temple, watched the deity curiously for a long time, then walked away without bothering to look at the worshippers. Once he came out of the house and fired from his gun in anger when villagers were performing some noisy ‘Puja’. Gun shots quietened them. Thereafter the villagers were careful not to make too much noise in their celebrations. Villagers always had fanciful stories about the white man mostly painting him in bad light. But the woman, the Bakki, wouldn’t come out of house. She was the butt of their ire yet evoked a sense terror being a clairvoyant. The mysterious woman remained aloof, talked only to Madan Bhai. Some years after the Englishman’s marriage the villagers began to hear noise of violent quarrels emanating from the mystery house. Much they would have liked to hear the details but the fear of the English man kept them away from the house. Then the quarrels stopped altogether instead complete silence greeted them.

       The Englishman came out one afternoon. He was a changed man, a poor copy of old self; a mere skeleton around which a layer of skin was grafted, eyes sunken into its sockets altogether a ghostly image. He briefly walked around the house then disappeared into the house.

Then children from villages began to disappear……………

Will be contd.  

Let The Stranger Alone II

The house has been in existence for some time, the oldest among the villagers remember it from their childhood. Its edifice is strong they say, though parts of it crumble and then mysteriously rebuild in time. How old is Madan Bhai? They can only speculate; the fellow did not belong to Badolgaon. He was brought in by the owner they say. Who lived in that house, you ask. They say, ‘Oh! It’s been lying unoccupied for a long time.’ There is a small hut not too far from the mystery house where Madan Bhai lives. Madan Bhai appears old but in that weak frame he has an agile body. The beady eyes shine in anger if you ask anything about the house.  Not even booze makes him talk about the house; seems like the ban on the subject has seeped deep in his subconscious. Besides Madan Bhai keeps himself busy in that house, seldom comes out for social interaction. Nothing changed in its appearance as well, so the villagers say. There are trees around the house but none tall enough to obstruct its maleficent façade. Even though the house looks in prime condition, the space around it remains untended. This contrast only adds to its overall deathly aura.

The legend of the house spread across the country. Curious visitors would come and pass by without venturing to trespass its foreboding portal. There is a story of an adventurous visitor forcing himself into the house. People waited for him to come out, somebody came out, it wasn’t him the say and the fellow was demented. Well, you can take that story with a pinch of salt. The villagers here are prone to tell stories out of their fancy imagination. The aura of the house kept growing with the passage of time. It’s secret if at all there was one, rested in the mind of laconic and pugnacious Madan Bhai.  Several stories abound, the primary being it was built by some reclusive Angrej Sahib. The Englishman, a rifle slung over his shoulder, would stomp the jungle, hunt the wild animals that abounded there. The villagers were terrified of him although he did not interact with them. The man married a local woman as it turned out that the woman was a Bakki….. 

to be contd.....

Let The Stranger Alone

The new under constructions road cuts through the village, dividing it into temple side and the slope side. Temple side has the Panchayat Ghar, another house and the erstwhile ‘Daand House’ and barren agricultural fields once toiled but now abandoned, the other side constitutes bulk of the village on the Chandakhal slope. It is a picturesque setting for an outsider but inert piece of land for the villagers. Nothing happens around here for months …..

Even though the road is still under construction, it is not too far off from completion.  A curious structure, an equivalent of a ‘Haveli’ in plains, exists where the road winds around the ‘Daand House’ hill and then disappears behind it. The house is not neglected but in prime condition yet nobody lives in that house. It is remote, sits on a vantage point on the landscape yet detached from the activity of village although there isn’t much of it anyway. Villagers avoid looking directly at the house as if it were a living thing, a malevolent apparition. After nightfall the house remains dark save a window on first floor at end of left wing. The light is not too bright but its radiance dances on the window pane as if it is lit by a large candle. The house almost merges into the dark background of rising slope Chandakhal, become one with it. The overall impact is frightening. Even if it is not haunted, it still evokes a sense horror. Nobody lives there is the refrain of Madan Bhai, a limping geriatric, who is responsible for its upkeep. Why he does it, he refuses to tell, if he is paid for his services, he refuses to tell that as well. But he is quite emphatic, nobody lives in that house.

To be contd........

Anna Hazare ,The Media and You!

When to Stop?

As a little boy I struggled for words. If someone asked me to write a couple of hundred words I would be completely lost; a cow has four legs, two horns, a tale and gives us milk blah-blah and that’s the end of a write up on a cow. Sometimes we would be made to sit on the ground on some fancy occasion like Independence Day when a hotshot government official would come and harangue us nonstop. Sitting under the hot sun waiting for the packet of ‘laddus,’ courtesy government of India, after this hotshot ends his discourse on morality and patriotism, I would marvel at the fellows ability to think up words and curse the same fellow for not knowing when to stop. Anna Hazare and his cohorts don’t know when to stop. All or nothing is zero sum game that nobody wins. All the goodwill dissipates when we feel exasperated at the snootiness of fellows unwilling to compromise. It was with the Baba Ramdev the first time over; three central ministers went to the airport to greet him, clearly the government was growling at his feet, he could have extracted some positive measures from the government for his cause but the stubborn stance ended in a resounding fiasco. Baba Ramdev ended up as another rabble rouser with considerable loss of credibility. If he had compromised, his influence and aura would have remained intact for future use. It is the same with the Anna Hazare, people empathize with his cause but are also impatient with their snootiness; my bill, my terms, my method no less. Even Mahatma Gandhi a thousand fold bigger persona than Anna Hazare disappointed the people for calling off agitation after Chaura Chauri incidence. So the trick is to know when to stop. The other guy will only concede to a point never all the way.

The Media

The media has whipped up a non-issue and put it up on the prime time discussion. It is like Picasso’s Guernica is on display and the panel of experts are discussing the frame of the painting. The issue is corruption and the empathy of the people with its eradication is well known yet the ‘Media’ is discussing the lack of substantial crowd gathering at Jantar Mantar. Our media apes the west and then moralizes; our culture, our values and our ethos are different. When Obama came to India, you would think heavier issues of real politics would be discussed thread bare but what you got was saturation coverage of items on the dinner menu. The whole thing was whipped in such a manner that it became a suspense thriller from Bollywood. There were scoops, reporters taking risk going into the sanctum sanctorum of the hotel and trying to eek out a response from the chef and chef predictably acting pricy about it. In the end of it all we were made to realize that the revelation that is was Hydrabadi Biryani and not Luckhnavi Chicken Tikka, was worth the wait.  This is our media

And You?

The entire act is for you. You are the central object of this exercise. Corruption matters to you and you are indeed incensed that no action has been taken for its eradication. You know that the people who will take action are themselves corrupt and will not move unless pushed to move. You like Anna Hazare for doing what he is doing and would like to contribute is some way. There is oblique inference in their effort that makes you guilty for not going out and supporting him. You are not to be blamed. You are doing what you are supposed to do. Average behavior is designed behavior therefore you are behaving in the manner you are designed to behave. It is OK to send SMS in support of Anna Hazare movement and also go out and peek at the gathering if you happen to pass through that place but to expect that you will take leave from your job and make effort to reach at the gathering in support of the movement is to say the least foolhardy. An individual runs cost benefit analysis in his head and decides accordingly. Sure send SMS in Anna’s in support, write comments in blogs etc. and generally help out if it is not too much bother. I say you are doing just fine so relax and cast off that guilt from your head.