Movies and Books

The Profile section of this blog has "Favourite Movies" and "Favourite Books". I have listed some memorable movies and books seen and read over the years, from my childhood to now.

My friend Dr Mrinal Bose chided me yesterday for departing from blogging about literature. I am not a scholar of literature. I'm only a reader and a lover of literature. Hence my relationship to a work, or a writer, is a very intense, personal, sensory, cerebral, emotional, experience. The experience of reading something, at a specific juncture, being taken by the work, the insights into and resonances with one's own life - I think a few posts on this blog (e.g. Frog's Song) have emanated from this space.

Dr Bose said he was also interested in cinema and I told him I planned to write about all the films I saw in the year 1982-83, in London, with my friend James. Again, this is as much about my experience at that time of being with James and seeing those films, as its about those films.

How much I have been fed by literature and cinema, from my early childhood, and that supreme bounty still continues, though far reduced in quantity. I invite readers to take a look at the list of films and books (literature) I have shared.

In London, with James

I had been remembering all the films I saw during the year 1982-83 with my friend James Aboud, in London. Quite incredible, unbelievable, uncommon, yet true, and stupendous. Both of us lived in the International Students House in London (the York Terrace residence), where we had opposite rooms.

The picture above is a view of our hostel, looking out northwards, upon the rim of the outer circle of Regent's Park. Our rooms were on the first floor, we could step out into the balcony. Only a few years ago did I learn that this area was considered one of architect John Nash's spectacular creations in the early nineteenth century. Our building was one of the stunning, stark white stucco terraced houses along the outer circle.

James and I became very close friends, beginning late one evening shortly after I moved to the hostel in October 1982, when after we introduced ourselves, we went out to see a film (night show). That was Altered States, with William Hurt, which I suggested as I had read about it before coming to London. After the film, we walked back to the hostel, talking, talking, and then sat in his room, talking, talking. Thus began our friendship, we were like inseparable buddies, tweedledee and tweedeldum. James was four and a half years older than me, and was studying law, in preparation for the bar. He was from Port of Spain, Trinidad. He was in every way more aware, knowledgeable, experienced, and worldly than I was. I was beginning my studies and training to become a chartered accountant.

James opened a wide new world to me. Wordsworth's words about the French revolution come to mind:

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven.

We were companions in life, in thinking, values, aesthetics, feeling, political ideology, in being. He opened himself completely to me. We embraced every kind of enlightened, refined, humane, just, emancipatory, radical ideal. And through James I became friends with some of his friends from law school, like Satyajit Boolel, from Port Louis, Mauritius, and Samir Inamdar, from London. As well as with several of our hostel-mates from the West Indies. In Easter 1983, James and I went for a holiday to Paris, where we were joined by a larger group from the hostel. That shall remain an unforgettable hilarious memory.

James and I saw so many films together. That would usually be on Friday and Saturday nights, after reading the current Time Out. James will remember me screaming-growling to vent all my pent up rage in a desolate underground metro station as we returned after seeing Battle of Algiers, and heard some white bloke saying "We English weren't as bad as the French in the colonies".

Besides seeing films, we also traversed the city together, went for walks, visited pubs and jazz bars, saw plays, attended and gave "parties", went to the disco, watched films and other programmes on tv. And we talked and talked, about anything and everything, usually me taking in everything he said, about his life and experiences, about his family and friends, all that he knew, all about literature, history and politics, all the books he had read, films he had seen, music he listened to, all the places he had lived in (Port of Spain, London-Ontario, Barbados), all about the (Mardi Gras) Carnival in PoS ... He shared his collection of books and music.

Then we went our separate ways, after James moved to a shared apartment in the autumn of 1983, and was busy with his bar exams; and my friend from Calcutta, Rajashi, later to be my wife, arrived to study in Cambridge. James went back to Trinidad a few months later. In 1986, a couple of years after I returned to India, I wrote to him, and we were in touch again. In 2002, I again got back in touch with James thanks to the internet, after having lost contact.

James is now a judge in the High Court in Port of Spain. But he is also an accomplished and acclaimed poet (and connoisseur of poetry). It is my proud privilege to have received from him his two published volumes, The Stone Rose and Lagahoo Poems. A few years ago, I set to melody one of the poems in the former, "Radio Song", and then performed this with bassist Jean Claude Jones and vocal artist-pianist Maya Dunietz, in Jerusalem.

Films

I tried to recall and list all the films James and I saw together in London.

Altered States
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence
Draughtman's Contract
Battle of Algiers
Pixote
Yol
Eraserhead
Identification of a Woman
Sophie's Choice
Question of Silence
Veronika Voss
Zelig

I'm sure I've missed some. We also saw on tv, besides several other films, My Dinner with Andre - in our (empty) hostel tv room. Andre remains in mind, for the Zen quality it drew us into, a dialogue, a timeless dwelling in that stream, something one could have stayed in forever.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas!

I remembered hearing (in London, around Christmas 1982) from my friend James Aboud's music collection, Bing Crosby and David Bowie's Christmas Special, featuring "The Little Drummer Boy" and "Peace on Earth". This was recorded in September 1977, a month before Bing Crosby passed away. I just found this on YouTube.

Enjoy!

Thank you James, and thank you YouTube!

Literature post

My friend Mrinal Bose, a physician and writer, chided me last evening for not writing about literature on my blog. Actually I had been holding back on that. For that would unplug a torrent within me, and nowadays I’m seeking tranquillity rather than turbulence.

My only defence was that I’m no scholar of critic of literature. I simply love to read, and have the habit of being moved immensely by some books.

Serendipitous literature highpoints for me in the last couple of years:

Kenzaburo Oe's Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age, and A Quiet Life. What a wondrous, magical experience Rouse Up ... was for me! And Quiet Life - is so quiet, restrained and modest in comparison, so to read the two in succession is a good introduction to the awesome calibre of Oe.

Jose Saramago's Blindness and All the names. Again awesome … I read these two books and Oe's Rouse Up ... during visits to my sons at the Rishi Valley School. So they have a special aura in my memory.

Re-reading all of JD Salinger's published works (Catcher …, Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey, Raise high … and Seymour); discovering his uncollected stories on the internet and reading these. You either love Salinger or detest him. If you are in the former category …

Lagahoo Poems by James Aboud (Trinidad). Magical, mystical, terrifying, thrilling …

A collection of some of the best works of the “graphic literature” genre.

Writings of DT Suzuki, including the 3-vol Essays on Zen Buddhism.

And meeting Gunter Grass during his visit to Calcutta last year, spending a whole day with him (on a river cruise along the Hooghly!) and giving him some of my poems (written out by hand).

Gunter Grass and his wife lived in Calcutta in 1986-87, and he wrote a book, Show your tongue, very critical of the apathy of privileged sections of Calcutta to the poverty around them. He came to visit Unnayan, the social action group I was working in then, to learn about rickshaw-pullers; that organisation had done a lot of work on this concern.

I met Gunter Grass then, and took his autograph on my copy of Tin Drum, the first serious work of literature I read, when I was 20. When I met him again last year, he warmly remembered his visit to our office in 1986 and said he had been impressed by the youthful energy and social radicalism. He also told me that he had written a novel about the rickshaw (Toad Song).

He was in Calcutta again, for a new experience.

I told him that in India, when people meet elders or teachers they touch their feet - to express their respect and reverence, taking the dust of their feet to bless them on their journey. But in a modern, 'secular' society, these traditions are going out of currency and are also frowned upon by some. Grass said he understood and appreciated this, and spoke about young artists thinking they were the cat's whiskers, descended straight from heaven!

I spoke to him about his being a graphic artist (he also drew extensively, on his 1986 visit), and that he might be interested in the emergence of the 'graphic novel'. (One of the leaders of that movement, Will Eisner, who wrote A Contract with God, had passed away recently.) With reading falling, perhaps we are going to see the growth of this form. And it provides a far richer experience than the written novel. I grew up consuming comics, including comics-type illustrated versions of the classics. Three years ago, on behalf of my son I was searching on comics on the net and came upon a magnificent treasure of graphic novels, to update my knowledge of this medium after having read Art Speigelman’s Maus books in the early 90s.

On the river cruise with Gunter Grass, we got down at Serampur to visit the famed seminary and college there. A cycle-rickshaw puller, an old man, recognised Grass from reports about him in the newspapers. Grass was most impressed!

I told him I did not consider his book on Calcutta offensive, or part of the long tradition of westerners writing sanctimoniously about this city. I said it was a work of deep compassion and love for the common man. Grass was really happy to hear that!

A poem to commemorate new beginning

In 2002, I wrote to my friend James: “It looks like a long, difficult, sad period of depression has lifted and a new, energetic beginning is being made, in a new direction.”

James replied with a poem “to commemorate new beginning”.


The Lifting of the Dread (for Rama)

James Christopher Aboud

Here's to the lifting of the dread, to the ball of hair
choking us without strangulation
that is spat out suddenly without explanation;

Here's to the unnoticeable things that once noticed
unlock the doors that lead us back

that remind us that everything is temporary
including this day, this beautiful day,
this moment of lightness seeping through the heavy sky

O let us memorize this moment as a prayer is memorized.

Painting: New Beginning, by David Miller.

World Without End

Here’s a poem by James Aboud which appeared in the Autumn 2003 edition of poetrymagazine.com. The poem is from his Lagahoo Poems (Peepal Tree Press, 2003).

James: A Lagahoo is a mythical Caribbean figure loosely based on the European werewolf myth. The voice in the poem is Lagahoo's. This is one of the dark Lagahoo poems, but it looks more dark in isolation.

World Without End

James Christopher Aboud
Trinidad & Tobago

O Footprint of blood at the edge of the green forest
O Medicine of mud and dead leaves
O Shadow of the ocean's manta-ray
O Will of chalk, muscle of Mora
O Orchid root that binds the mind's trajectory
O Choice of equal paths
of equal sighs
borne past the thick jugulars
O Destroyer of light, Destroyer of shape
O Storm
O Terror of eyes and the eye's claws
O Mouth forever gaping, forever sliced
O Phallus, O wind of angels and bonfires
O Final song of lust
O Lust, more dead than dead eyes
O Face of death powdered with green moss
O Hideous shape made more hideous in the night
O Violence of sun and jagged stone
O Violence of thorns and insect mandibles
O Comb of rain, black hairy cloud
O Breast pierced by iron, pierced by broken glass
O Tongue of cloud alive in the mouth
O Tongue that will not give in

O Cobweb made of wrists
O Wrists more brittle than the will
O Dark shape
O Guilt that crawls on its belly
O Guilt whose saliva seals the fist shut
O Guilt that wraps each poison berry
O Terror of night, and the soul's marrow
O Dark life
Always and ever O prison of bone

© Copyright, 1994, James Christopher Aboud

Photo: Brandie Earle

Resonance

Shortly after reading James’ poem I wrote him:

At this morning's Mahabharata reading, Prof Lal also read from the Buddha's "Fire Sutra" (sutra means sermon). This brought to mind the resonance of your poem "World Without End" to the Fire Sutra. As a student of Eng Lit, you are aware of the "Fire Sermon" section of Eliot's Waste Land (which I first saw and read in the Eliot volume in your room in London!).

I found and read the Fire Sutra six years ago. I am attaching an extract from it.

The core scripture of "High Hinduism", the Vedas - expressions of revealed knowledge of the pastoral Aryan settlers, who are believed to have entered India and subjugated and enslaved the Dravidian inhabitants - has much to do with yagna or sacred fire sacrifice. An elaborate ritual, where a small fire is lit (using twigs and dried cow dung cakes) and flamed by offering successive leaf-spoonfulls of clarified butter and other ritual materials, to the recitation of sacred mantras and symbolic gestures, connoting inner purification through the process of worship based on ritual offerings.

Sankara, the great 9th century St Augustine-like figure who re-engineered Hinduism into its present form, in his commentaries on the Upanishad (ancient Indian metaphysical visions) reference to "the seven life breaths", explains this in terms of the seven organs of sense (two ears, two eyes, two nostrils and the mouth).

They are compared to seven different sacrificial oblations. The enlightenments produced by their activity are the flames of the sacrifice; the objects which supply their action, the fuel. Every sense moves in an appropriate world of its own; but they are all coordinated by the mind, which is located in the heart. (All this is also part of the "Tantra" worldview, of the individual's connection to the cosmos through different inner centres of energy, and the journey of the kundalini, the serpent coiled at the base of the spine, through these centres, beginning from the groin and culminating in the crown, to its release and connection with the Absolute.)

Sankara and his brahminical vedic Hinduism is also of course associated with the sanctification of caste, commensality and untouchability. And tantra was also essentially a knowledge of the folk shaman. High Hinduism and folk shamanism fuse together in India, and its not possible then to say what is high and what is low, or even who colonised whom.

Sorry to unload all this on poor you!

Loose threads

James replied:

Hi Babloo

I have a translation of the Upanishads done by WB Yeats and Shree Purohit, called "The Ten Principal Upanishads". A passage from this work is quoted at the beginning of the Lagahoo Poems from which "World Without End" is taken. I copy below the 2 quotations that precede the work. (Quite surprising that you picked up on some of the loose threads here!)

"Above the senses are the objects of desire, above the objects of desire, mind; above the mind, intellect; above the intellect, manifest nature. Above manifest nature, the unmanifest seed; above the unmanifest seed, God... beyond him, nothing."
Katha Upanishad, translated by Shree Purohit Swami and W. B.Yeats

"Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out."
John, 12:31

Thanks for your mini dissertation on and translation of the mysterious arcana of Hinduism. Always eye- and mind-opening.

Remain in light.

Frog's song

A dialogue with James Aboud from 2002.

Dear James

Some five and a half years ago, I was waiting for the train on the Calcutta Metro, on my way to work. I stood at the same spot where I always stood - in front of a particular mural on the wall across the tracks. This was at the Rabindra Sarobar station, bearing the name of the great poet of India/Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore. So the platform walls were adorned with murals accompanying snatches of his poems and songs, touching on different seasons and moods.

After I started taking the Metro to go to work in a new job, I stood in front of this particular mural, with a picture of a frog on a leaf in water, and two lines, in Bengali. I stood there because it brought to mind my (older) son Rituraj, who as a little child was fascinated by frogs and once sat on his haunches in our house driveway, just gazing away at a tiny frog. Once inside the train, I would stand on the far side, in front of a window, so that I could see the murals in another station, Rabindra Sadan, also named after Rabindranath Tagore. Here there were reproductions of Tagore's pen and ink sketches and his hand-written lines in English, of mystical personal realisations. I would wait to see what lines I'd face each day, and read this and try to internalise it, as a personal message for the day.

After over a year and half of such a routine, standing one morning at my usual spot in front of the frog mural and its accompanying lines, the image and words suddenly became a key to an awesome revelation, where past and present, self and other, ancestor and progeny, literature and scripture, here and everywhere - all came together in me in a very personal way, leaving me utterly overwhelmed and humbled, for having received the gift of Truth, as Being. But some months before that I had gone through an experience that totally transformed me, my outlook, my work, my life. A preparation had taken place, to transform the mundane, into the Divine!

The lines:

Eshechey borsha, eshechey nobino borsha
Gogono bhoriya eshechey bhubono bhorsha

In my translation -

The rain's come, the new rain's come!
Filling the firmament, a universe of faith's come!

Maybe it was a breakthrough of the child’s imagination in the light of personal pain that enabled Tagore to get a new insight altogether into “the frog in the well”, as a sad sage who eventually found fulfilment!

Here's a stanza from another poem I later wrote:

They throw stones at the frog in the well,
Rama looks, wistful and forlorn.
The sad sage who leapt, sang, and then suffered torture
Now sits drenched in the very heart of heaven!

I had also been quite impressed by the tantric murals in the Kalighat metro station, which I would try to read in my own imagination. Several months later, again on a ride on the Metro, while passing the Rabindra Sadan station (the one with the sketches and lines in English), but this time facing the platform, I saw on the platform lots of young boys and girls, college students, engaged in easy and happy bonhomie. A poem came to mind:

Calcutta metro

Awe of the universe
And reverence for the dear departed
Interred for posterity
As subterranean viaducts
Of amazing metropolitance.

For me this is a mystic mantra, of rooted personal awareness.

When you are here with me in Calcutta I can try to share this with you!

Caribbean mysticism

James replied:

Hi Babloo

Thanks for the narrative of your journey. India has its mystical, ethereal existence which shares space, casually, with the other world of commerce and politics and fast food. Something like Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross Station in "Harry Potter" (which my 8 year old eldest daughter begs me to read- she's read all 4 volumes, twice!). I could see your Tagore experience occurring only in India; I mean, occurring in the way that you described.

In the Caribbean, there would have been the perfumed scent of the bored American wife, on holiday, enjoying some local action. She would have been standing at a bus stop, not a train platform (here, we have no trains) and there would have been some reggae music playing in the background. Now the white woman leans temptingly into her black companion and a young black girl adjusts her skirt, wondering about her place in this small island world. She has her moment of "satori" too, gilded from the fingers of seaweed and the bright eyelashes of coconut palms, seducing more than the waves. The Tagore poster is replaced by a McDonald's advert, and the poems by the loaded repartee between the black girl and the young man.This is our "mysticism". It is forged out of landscape and escape, confinement and limitless earthy/sensual imagination. The vocabulary is decidedly different.

I would have both, if offered both, but if asked to choose, well, I would have problems.

The woman at the bus stop turns her eye to me. I pierce her with Mediterranean scrutiny. Excuse me, I must be going. The blasted bus is late and the woman is smiling.

::::::::::::::::::::::>>>>>>::::::::<<<<<<<<::::::::::( waves crashing on shore)

James

Platform number something and a half

From another exchange with James in late-2002:

Dear James

Thanks for sharing your thoughts / feelings regarding US - Iraq. You are Arab after all! I am with you 100% in what you say.

Might rules OK! You don't like it, get f...ed.

I have lived and worked in Israel, and also spent some time in the West Bank, and thus seen, heard and felt for myself something of the madness there. The situation in Kashmir here is perhaps comparable. No rationality, no principles, no uniform standards. Expediency, narrow interest, opportunism, cynicism, etc dictates.

Unfortunately, I can't be a flag-waver, or even a glib ultra-radical!

But why should poor old Uncle Sam be seen as the sole ugly, evil bastard? Anyone else in a similar situation would have done the same or worse! What about the civil wars of social, cultural, racial, economic strife taking place in so many places? In my own India, though "Global Imperialism" is a major factor affecting the quality of life of people, there is also an enormous domestic agenda of transformation, which gets far less attention than the purported struggle against Imperialism!

So obviously all this will breed a response, its mirror image. But the world and mentality of the humble jihadi has also to be understood. I have been working for some years now in such an environment. Like you said about India being like platform number something and a half, there are so many apparently bizarre (but within its own milieu, quite normal) platform something and a halfs all around us. In the 'Third World', there is far less capital available to apply the cosmetic that enables the illusion that man has evolved far beyond his animal origins. "Life in the raw" is more easily and readily visible here. Besides, the more overt forms of imperialism, there is also the enormous imperialism in terms of culture, life-style, values, which is also at the heart of the global problematic.

Basically human beans everywhere have to lift themselves up, be lifted up, from the muck. As one of my Gurus, the American thinker Lewis Mumford, wrote, there is a "geological fault in the human psyche", the only difference between the situation of the immemorial past and today is that today the fat cat has the power, capability and means to wreak much greater havoc, and destroy life itself. In Mumford's words (which never fail to sound to me like Biblical verses):

“Those who have studied the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian religious texts know how cruel, destructive and inhumane man’s godlike faculties actually can be. Only mammalian tenderness and human love have saved mankind from the documented gods that rise up from the unconscious when man lets himself off from the cosmic and earthly sources of his life.”

I entered social activism after I returned to India from London in late 1984. But for some years now, my own existential solution to the intricate lunacies of Politics and its not so sublime psycho-ethical connotations, has been to turn inward, towards self-correction. Working at self-improvement, and on that basis helping others to as well, seems to be the only way to retain one's "sanity" while living in this world!

Literate

In an earlier post I remembered my friend James Aboud, in Port of Spain, and wondered whether there were very many judges with his taste, erudition and sensibility.

In a similar vein, I wonder whether there are very many employers as literate as Mr Ram Ray of Calcutta. He runs the advertising company Response India. I worked for him in 2000, on the CALMANAC project of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation. Calmanac.org was the official website of Calcutta. We managed to put out a reasonably good website on the date of the launch (24 August 2000, the day observed as Calcutta’s “foundation” day). And further work was done thereafter. The portal got very good responses from surfers. Sadly, for reasons unknown to me, Calmanac.org does not exist anymore. And thus a lot of information and content that we had worked very hard to collect and put up – is not accessible.

Mr Ray once asked me about haiku. I gave him my copy of Basho’s Narrow Road to a Far Province. He still has that, and I’m sure, to good effect!

On another occasion, Mr Ray requested me to give him a write-up about … moral conduct catechisms, the kind associated with particular numbers, like “the three such and such” or the “four so and so” and so on. So I quickly concentrated my thoughts and wrote out a short note. I sent it to him saying: “Herewith some thoughts triggered by your reference. Hope it's useful.”

He replied: “Many thanks for your prompt response. After abstruse simplification of the profound proselytizations and mystic mores, your input will be indeed useful.” He titled it “Mnemonics of Conscience”.

I wish my beloved English master in school, Mr GM Khan, were alive to read this and critically assess it towards instilling sound composition skills.

Buddha Purnima in Salzburg

I was in Salzburg, Austria in mid-May, to speak at an international congress on city planning. My presentation was on slums in Calcutta. There were also speakers from East London (South Africa), Alleppo (Syria), Sao Paulo (Brazil) and Istanbul (Turkey). The presentations were very educative. My presentation was well received; though I was speaking about a depressing subject, that of chronic poverty and the failure of public policy, for the conference participants I seemed to personify hope!

I was also able to share some of my sacred text based songs at Salzburg. Buddha Purnima, the full-moon commemorating Buddha's enlightenment (Taurus full moon) this year fell on Saturday, 13 May, while I was in Salzburg. On Buddha Purnima night, I sang the Buddha's enlightenment exclamation, to the heavens, from the balcony of the palace in Salzburg where our conference was held. Perhaps in response, the full moon emerged from behind clouds and lit up the sky! I also sang the verses by Shantideva and my most recent composition, in Hebrew, from the Book of Psalms, "And he shall be like a tree". My friend from RIMC, Abir Samuel had helped me in learning this. There were some Jewish and Israeli participants, and they confirmed that I had got it right.

Back home after the conference, I received an email from Sonja Prodanovic, a participant from Belgrade, Serbia. She wrote:

"Our daily ongoing politics of disintegration is still shocking to us, even paralyzing personally when one returns back home. We have a new split of our State (Montenegro). Not that we mind, but the daily events are burdened with it all, even after 18 years of our self-induced destruction. The war crimes are fading away and war criminals and the dirty money are becoming development initiators. It is only when one gets out from what is for the majority of the people a totally closed State that one realizes what are the real problems of the World. It was an immense gain to us at the SCUPAD meeting to be able to hear all the case studies of really complex, troublesome cities and communities. Add to that the admiration for your personal work, your dedication and the richness of your soul, and the gift you gave us on the balcony under the moonlight, showing I think to all of us present, the possibility despite the reality of Calcutta life, to find the energy as well for such rich cultural elaboration of personal calmness and purposefulness. When in despair I close my eyes and recall your singing and recitals, remembering the strength of the wisdoms, I say to myself that I should be ashamed of thinking that our troubles are great ones. I have learned at a very late stage of my life what a troublesome world we live in, but equally what wonderful people, yet undiscovered, are around. Thank you for the new discovered experience and enlightenment."

I wrote about this to my friend James Aboud, in Port of Spain, Trinidad (we had been hostel-mates and close buddies in London in 1982-83). He replied: "Singing from the balcony under a moonlit sky in Salzburg. It is the kind of scene that makes me want to plan a murder or start a religion!!" He added: "Did I tell you that I am now a Judge of the High Court? I have the robes, but no wig (sadly, as I need one for my baldness!!). It is very relevant and meaningful work, to be a dispenser of justice. Of course, taking an emergency pee at the side of the road is no longer appropriate behavior."

I wonder whether there are many judges in the world who possess James' erudition, taste and sensibility. He is also a first-rate poet. His second volume of poems Lagahoo Poems was published last year.