The Chore of Everyday Living

"... 'Honesty is indeed a respectable virtue; but how much higher may men attain! Shall nothing more be asked of us than we be honest?'

For the present good friends, nothing. It seems in our aspirations to be more than that, we have to some extent lost sight of the propriety of being so much as that."

                                              - Extract from 'Unto This Last' by John Ruskin

Getting better is a chaotic task. On the face of it, just honour two values (truth and love) and you're on the right track.  But practically, it is full of subjectivity. 'To be or not to be, that is the question.' When all that is needed is to be cool and be in the present, the mind constantly keeps sizing up situations, analysing responses and judging consequences. It is the duck and the paddle story. There is superficial calm while the mind operates furiously and churns out reason and tracks logic. The mind simply refuses to let go.

And there is the problem of loquaciousness. You see it in others but not in yourself. As Viktor Frankl says '(our meaning of life) must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct.' But right action is more as much about not doing the unnecessary things as about doing the right things. To remain masterly inactive is a difficult chore. Warren Buffett says, benign neglect, bordering on sloth, remains the hallmark of his investment process. Sachin apparently leaves more balls in the matches he hits a century. And Gandhi in his autobiography says 'silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth... a man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech.' Tolstoy, amidst much rambling says in 'The kingdom of God is Within You' - 'The ideal is to love the enemies who hate us. The precept, showing the level below which we cannot fall, is not to do evil to our enemies, to speak well of them, and to make no difference between them and our neighbours.' So much for dos and don'ts.

Now apart from providing inspiration, the thing with reading the works of great men is that it puts your life in a rather harsh perspective. The mind is constantly trying to get in sync with those elevated thoughts and at many times when you lapse into being your own dilatory, unrestrained self, there comes an essay of Tolstoy or an example of Gandhi which again puts the mind into churning. The last two weeks went much this way. Now there is a faint light, a bit of clarity, some sense of understanding. And again, there is the difficulty of being in the present, to listen and be truthful. And of being sincere and not serious. Vanity steps in now and then, mind reverts to calculations. But precedents of great men help. And it helps that these men have set the bar very high. Gandhi took a vow of celibacy when he was thirty seven. THIRTY bloody SEVEN! He of course says that it is not just physical abstinence but also mental detachment from horny thoughts. Bloody hell! And now that the winter in Delhi is coming to a close and girls in JNU are shedding their clothes, the mind has to constantly remain on guard! ;-)

Most inspiration I've received during this process is from a now well marketed quote, which originally was released by the British government, in their inimitable style, when the bombing of London began in the second world war. It reads 'Keep Calm and Carry On'. It is rewarding when you get the hang of it.

Day 0 - At RCVP Noronha Academy of Administration and Management, Bhopal

"It is not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame;
But the captain's hand on his shoulder smote,
Play up, play up and play the game" - Vitae Lampada

It is 11:30pm, Sunday, the 1st September, 2013. I have checked into my room and after a refreshing shower, have unpacked most of my stuff. Tomorrow the training starts. For now, I have spread the bedspread over starched bed linen, have hung the suits and arranged the formal clothes in the cupboard, set my laptop conveniently on the table near the large window. From this window of Room No. 40, I can see the adjacent temple and the road that is butting it.

I have been allocated Indian Information Service, and from 10am tomorrow, I'd be commencing my training. I hope to do well. More than that, I hope to embark on the journey of becoming a better person. A challenging, confusing journey it seems as of now.

The feeling is almost of going from primary school to secondary school for the first time. You've covered your textbooks with brown sheet, you've pasted labels on it and have written your name and subjects with a newly bought fountain pen. The uniform is ready (pants for the first time!). The smell of new things lingers in the air. New books, new clothes, new schoolbag. Well, it is a bit like that now. The only advantage of being older than a sixth grader is that I can contextualise these feelings and give them some names. There is anticipation, apprehension and nervousness. Well, ready or not, the journey has begun. Let us see how things turn out. With an open mind and an embracing heart, I sign off :)

Peaks and Troughs

"Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play;
Belinda smiled and all the world was gay." - Alexander Pope

The sea water collectively moved gathering speed, as if to break into a charge, the blue water turning into a frothy white wave. And then it calmed down, spent its energy in trying to overwhelm a retreating wave, dissolved into a smaller muddy mixture which then retreated back to the sea. Meanwhile, the next layer was collecting its horde of water droplets and forming another wave. As he sat there, more sober today and a bit obstinate, the waves formed, crashed and dissolved over and over again. Each time rising with hope, riding with grace and fizzling out in the end. The beach was lively, the breeze was gentle, the evening sun mild.

How was he doing? he wondered. He was 51 years old now and these questions kept bothering him nowadays. He was doing alright. Like the Bay of Bengal before him. Not very tempestuous, not really roaring out but adequately supplied with life, sufficiently providing to others and with a generous, inviting attitude towards social exchange.

How was his life going? Well, it was dynamic, much like the shore. And it was repetitive, much like the waves. Yes, there was a pattern emerging, contentment and curiosity, satisfaction and moral debate, all taking turns. It was repetitive and yet dynamic. Yes, much like the sea. Much like life.

What was he becoming? Trying to make a beach out of the seaside, really. Trying to erode the sharp boulders and smoothen the rough edges. Trying to row past the superficial distractions and get to the calmer, deeper side of things. And trying his best to avoid cyclones.

It was all contained in the beach, the story of his life was there. Playing out itself in abstract form, wave after wave, showing him the way it works. The beginning, the journey and the end. He had succeeded at some of his efforts, like the wave that managed to reach out to him, to just touch his feet before lapsing out, at other times his efforts had failed, like the baby wave that got smothered even before it could pan out, take shape and put up a fight.

But come now, come, come, what does it matter? When there is always the eternal bond between the breeze and the water that makes the waves a perpetual reality. What does it matter, when he is sitting there besides the love of his life, feeling the water and feeling the breeze and watching before him the dancing waves play out for them the story of their life, full of peaks and troughs, full of missed chances and fulfilled opportunities, driven by the bond that makes the world go round.

PseudoSacroPsychoSanct babble!

Here I am, sitting in the good old Anna Centenary Library again. I have been posted to a village called Sirwar, near Raichur, in Karnataka for my 3rd branch training. I have taken the week off and am trying to get back in touch with studying. In the mainframe of my mind, from the far left corner, economic survey is staring back at me with apathy. In the centre, the incredibly hot and arid village of Sirwar is looming before me, right beside the economic survey. To the right, nudging Sirwar and Survey coercively is a face - the learned, judging, no-bullshit face of Dr. Purushottam Agarwal - the man who presided over my half-an-hour long Civil Service interview.

Future beckons, it has been beckoning for quite a few months now. Destiny awaits, without hurry and with no hesitation. And life moves forward. Ever so coolly. Ever so unfailingly. All the decisions that have to be taken are coming close with their own deadlines to a not-yet-ready/just-getting-ready mind, just like our underdeveloped/developing country's dozens of flagship programs.

I'm standing, yet again, at crossroads of life. I have to, yet again, make a decision. It seems I keep coming at crossroads every three months in my life. The question is - am I progressing or am I just running in circles?  Fuck it, I'm okay with crossroads nowadays.

What do I feel now? I feel at peace but there is also a can't-be-bothered feeling. Solace is there, yes, but not certainty. Rest is there, but I don't feel any leisure. There is fun but no madness. There is hunger, but no craving. Appy is there, but there is no fizz.

The date of results is coming close, so is the date of the next preliminary exam.

There is this blanket of numbing relaxation I feel and I'm not sure if it is complacency or weariness. Or something else. But I feel love, for the people around me. I feel satisfied about the way things are unwinding or winding up. And I'm blogging, just for the sake of blogging, just to put my thoughts out there, in the chaotic temporariness and small permanence of the blogosphere. 

On my inebriated psychological behalf,
I'm secretly whispering my sign off,
With a careless, tranquil high,
and a comatose, chilled Goodbye. 

Talaash: The Answer Lies Within (2012)

The film opens with footages from around Bombay. Bombay, crowded, colourful, with a dizzying variety of lives, myriad hues of reality and endless possible alternatives of perception. Night in Bombay. Adult DVD stores, people breathing-in marijuana, call girls lounging and throwing glances in street corners. Night stretches into midnight. The stretch of seafront caught in the camera is empty except for two homeless guys and their dog. The footpath adjacent to the seafront is clean and flooded by the amber streetlights of the night. A hawker cycles his way back home. Suddenly, the dog senses danger, howls and jogs off. In comes a car at high speed, breaks without necessity, turns and dives headlong into the sea. The homeless guys and the hawker gape in astonishment. A freak accident in the middle of a road devoid of any other vehicle. Morning takes over from midnight. Inspector Shekhawat (Aamir Khan) arrives to take charge of the case. Talaash, a neo-noir set in the streets of Mumbai is a grippy, engaging tale told in a neat, aamirkhanlike fashion.

Inspector Shekhawat (Aamir Khan) is a man with apparently a good career record and belief in values. He handles cases and people with good sense and respect. When he takes up the case of the accident of Arman Kapoor (a film actor) and plunges into questions of why and why-not, his personal tragedy of losing his son in a picnic mishap haunts him. In comes Kareena, a call-girl, who helps him out with clues to the case and listens to his sorrow of losing his son. One lead takes him to another until things start connecting and making sense.

The movie ends with the Inspector solving the case and coming to terms with his personal loss. Kareena Kapoor and Rani Mukherjee deliver good performances, Shernaz Patel as the neighbour with an occult gift has done a commendable job. The story is etched in realism even though the mystical part of life after death is integral to its storyline. The film is a taut psychological thriller with profound social angles between the lines. It is engrossing and satisfying.

8/10 

Skyfall (2012)

When Bond sits down in front of a painting to meet his new Quartermaster, a young tech-wizard not without some degree of affable narcissism, to get his mission's equipments, he gets an improvised gun and a mini position transmitter (a radio). 'It's not exactly Christmas, is it?' Bond quips. 'What were you expecting, a pen that explodes? We don't go in for those kind of things anymore' Q retorts. That scene insinuates the treatment and style of the James Bond theme in 'Skyfall'. The rituals of a bond movie are not disregarded but they lie underneath shades of progressing scenes. The scene in a Shanghai pub is a case in point. The Bond babe (not the Bond girl but the beautiful babes who end up dead in Bond movies) Berenice Marlohe gets in touch with Daniel Craig and the impressive self-introduction of Bond takes place. 'Bond', he says to her, 'James Bond.' And then the bartender hands to him a shaken martini and he accepts it with one word - 'Perfect'.

Apart from a taut screenplay, very well shot action scenes and an engaging villain (played by Javier Bardem), the film also probes, questions and quakes the relationship between M and her agents, the choices operatives make in their minds in split seconds that become irrevocable decisions in the next second and how they have to live with their acts, for the rest of their lives. Their actions might turn out right or wrong but that also hangs on if they are fortunate or not at the given point of time. The film also dwells into the role of MI6 in British democratic politics, their efficiency which is based on secrecy and their effectiveness which needs cooperation which is attained by transparency. There is also the intuition of the field-worker that is in conflict with the informed reasoning of the desk-job facilitator that reaches a breaking point in M's decision to 'take the bloody shot'. Sam Mendes makes us feel that difference right from the start when Bond and Moneypenny chase the bad guy while M constantly nags them for updates. When cars roll out on either sides of Moneypenny's jeep and M asks 'What happened?', the difference between being on the field and behind a desk becomes apparent. 'A couple of VW beatles, I think' Moneypenny replies.

M loses some of her unassailable professionalism and dignity because the director falters at points in his treatment of the character. In one scene she is decisive and impressive as in her meeting with Ralph Fiennes where he tells her that she should retire. 'You must retire with dignity' he says. 'The hell with dignity, I'll step down when the job is done' she slams back. In other scenes she comes across as someone struggling with her emotions and wrestling with her demons. And in the scenes after she is fake-kidnapped by Bond to lure in Silva, she seems even frightened at times. Her old age becomes suddenly visible and her self-control falters (she even confesses 'I fucked up') and her helplessness surfaces. The direction in such scenes appears unsure.

Daniel Craig delivers. With him there is a toughness, even if it means compromising on the charm, about being Bond. When Pierce Brosnan walks in a suit, he tantalises with his charm. When Craig suits up, it gives him the look of a grizzled operative, tough and focussed. The Aston Martin was a beauty, the blown up castle well located for a finale and Javier Bardem as the villain Raoul Silva, super-talented but a victim of acute suffering and a little touched in the brain, is a poetic Satan.

Skyfall is a well-made Bond film and when Adele croons in the beginning 'This is the end', you can get set for a grippy story told by Sam Mendes, the Bond way.

Skyfall - 7/10 

Argo (2012)

Ben Affleck is endearing. The movies he has directed so far - Gone Baby Gone, The Town and Argo - have all reached excellent standards of film making. He seems to move from strength to strength and Argo, despite all the cinematic constraints that go with translating a complex international issue from paper onto the silver screen within 120 minutes and trying to keep it engaging but not populist, manages to make a mark. It takes a lot of clarity and a top class team to film retrospectively about important issues that really happened, reconstructing scenes from photographs, recordings and research, getting the sequences straight in their own heads and then extracting performances from different actors with their own personalities and styles and making it fit into the particular situation, a hostage crisis in this case. Ben Affleck manages to do that well and in his capacity as an actor, he displays restraint and as a director, resourcefulness.

The effort has been to deal with the hostage crisis as such and stay away from debates of the right and wrong of the Iranian revolution itself or the moral culpabilities of the Cold war era U.S government and the Islamic Republic of Iran that emerged under Ayotollah Khomeini. Affleck has a lot to pack in the two hours and he does so with style. The dialogues are one of the best elements in the film and their delivery by the cast is timed and measured in a way that it puts those wonderful lines right into context. The casual rogue humour of Hollywood filmdom and Washington bureaucracy combine to conceive Mission Argo, so to speak, and the characters from both these worlds, with a glass of whisky in their hands, come up the clinching line of the movie - 'Argo fuck yourself.' That line packs the nonchalance of both the worlds, the daredevilness of the operation, the panache of the persons involved and even a philosphical detachment from the result and a disenchantment with heroism. 

Middle eastern style music in some scenes adds to the effect of the credible sets of revolutionary Iran. The persian-esque music during scenes where the flight takes off from U.S to Iran and when Ben Affleck (Tony Mendez) changes into a blue shirt after a sleepless night to call on the 6 Americans gives an almost physical jerk and draws the viewer all the more powerfully into the plot. The actors have all performed well, Alan Arkin as Lester Siegel especially  delivers a riveting performance. He times his dialogues, beautifully cheeky dialogues, with an uncanny finesse. The scene where he negotiates with a director to sign him for Argo is immensely enjoyable and the smile it produces gets revived in the viewer's lips whenever he comes before the camera. It was a smile expecting a shrewd humourous line and also noddingly acknowledging the sharp spontaneity of his behaviour and therefore making readymade allowances for its wit.

The climax is highly cinematised yet Ben Affleck, the director easily steals the show and wins over the audience primarily because he avoids taking sides and his own character in the film, that of exfil specialist Tony Mendez, calls a spade a spade and comes across as a man of action and pragmatism rather than of eloquence and charm.

Argo - must watch - 8/10