Horizontal

We take our body for granted. I have been horizontal for more than 24 hours, unable to get up. The simple act of getting off the bed and standing seemed so distant and difficult and painful. It was scary and unnerving and agonizing and very sobering. One of the times I tried to stand up the pain was so intense I passed out and fell one the bed and woke in her arms 15-20 seconds later. 

I finally was able to get up 20 minutes ago. It still hurts but I have walked and gone to the loo and stood a minute in the balcony looking out. Now I'm sitting in front of that greatest of babysitters, the TV. But before I surfed I wanted to put this down. I will be in bed again soon because I must, but I will be less pessimistic. 

Aaaargh

I was quite alright a while ago. Now I have that feeling in the chest when it seems like a long violent scream is stuck inside.

Oh well.

Miss, Please Can I Go To The Toilet?

Here's an intimate little piece on Dibakar Bannerjee waiting to see how the Big People With Cinematic Scissors would react to his film.

The regional chief of the Censor Board was ready to see the director and the producer. Banerjee walked up the building staircase to a charming screening room of horrors. The chief sat in the middle seat on the top row. His Censor Board colleagues included a lady in a burkha and a man in a grey-brown safari suit. Banerjee and his producer walked halfway down, between the seats, and turned to face him, like subjects would face a king.

The amazing thing is, that a filmmaker has to ask for concessions even to get his film rated 'A'. How unbelievable is that- someone has to regulate what even people who are adults can or cannot watch? I could own a farmhouse, guzzle scotch, buy tickets to watch cheerleaders shake their thang, produce frickin' babies for heavens sake. Think about it- its ok (even bloody recommended) for me to create life and be responsible for it. But I still can't decide if I want watch a movie that might be opinionated or have nudity.

Go screw yourself.

hat tip: IC

Small

The haze lifts, the petty intensity wanes, the viscious silence starts to let go.

Abandon

Hope!
Take your filthy promises,
wrench your lusty kisses
Go, go... begone.
Fake is your glowing path,
insidious is your wrath.
Leave me alone.

Desire!
You slimy vengeful cur,
my shameful black slur,
don't please me.
Take away your dark heart,
and let our ways here part,
just release me.

Delusion!
Take these visions, so rich.
Oh, my beautiful witch,
forgive your prey.
Cast not your spell,
mask not this hell.
I beg, fly away.

Go, leave, please, release, away.
Lest this momentary clarity
loses to familiar insanity,
which seduces me with all of you
reduces me with all of you,
so I believe I grow.
While I grieve, I know
at my ignorance.

Waiting

You wait for the beep of thrill, the tone of desire, the reminder of hope. Your fingers tingle. They feel like they are delicate, shaking. They aren't. But they seem they are, the frisson of excitement has them bound; the tingle of memory and expectation courses through you.

The little sound will not be for you. Indeed, none of this is for you. Yet you want it to be. You want to be part of it. How easy it is, to see what you desire looming in front of you... while it hesitantly hovers for another.

Hope, though, is a strange thing. Enticing and powerful and exhilirating and fickle. Utterly deceptive.

Or is it just you? Just you being gullible? Choosing the transient buzz of possibility over the cool silence of improbability?

Yes, silence is all there is.

zzz

Its terrible to realise you are sitting and waiting for cyber space to refresh, with no particular purpose.

rear entry

Blogger's screwing me. Experimented, tweaked, tested and finalised a new template that is working just fine on a dummy blog. Now it all just refuses to even load, Blogger is full of its big lettered code errors.
Rogering me. Roger that. Blogger, is your first name Roger?

sheesh, brain chewed.

aargh

I am still reeling from Ghajini. I can't quite reconcile to Aamir Khan in such a grating, mindless, hopeless piece of cinema. Throw logic to the winds, add unhealthy doses of screechy sound effects, regress in huge chunks to brain-dead 80s Bollywood. And make me pay 12 dollars for it! Bah. The villains were from some cardboards cutouts from two decades ago- bizarre imports from Tamil cinema (surely?) who couldn't act to save their fat bellies. They just had to stand around, then shout uncontrollably when attacking the hero before- quite literally- falling senseless.

The (absolutely fantastic) premise of the film- short term memory loss- was reduced to a tacky sneering one liner for the villain. We see none of the confusion, twists and mind-numbing intrigue it can provide. We aren't made to empathise (or even really see) what such an ailment could do to a revenge-obsessed man with only himself to rely on. Eventually the film ends up being almost a parody of itself, careening mindlessly from one messy act to another, till you are left wishing that the only short term memory in all of this happens to you, so you forget the last 180mins.

I'm sorry Aamir Khan, maybe its your fault that we now expect a certain kind of film from you- at least slightly intelligent. This experience, though, had nothing cerebral about it, nothing even plain smart. So damn whoever for ruining it for me and making me write such a blog post at 4am.