Kuttanad, Adyar Zomato Review.

http://www.zomato.com/review/rQGxM

Ghost Site Blues.

There's a certain feeling you get when you look at an abandoned website - a feeling of disconcertment, and incompleteness. It also feels a bit rude and intrusive, as if you're looking at something that was meant to be left alone. It's like looking at a half finished painting, a work in progress, that's somehow stuck in an artist's creative limbo.

You don't know what happened, but you can see the result of it. It's like a virtual capture, a snapshot of a moment in time - thoughts, musings intact, patterned and textured by that moment's thought process. News, frozen, opinions, half formed and brashly said... And you, you can see, from your vantage point, how they stack up to your present reality and if they were of any consequence at all.

In a way it's sad, you almost wish you could reach out and tell them how things ended up turning out, as if they're still stuck on the other side, oblivious, when in fact they're as much in the present as you are. On one level, you're aware of that fact, but you still have this feeling of shouting out and saying, "Hey! I know the answer to that one! You're wrong!".

My theory is that calling out a person on their hindsight, a sort of 'virtual schadenfreude', is the main drive for these feelings.

On the other hand, to put it optimistically, I think that we like to tell people that it's alright, it turned out fine in the end.

English in Africa

This is gonna be a short post, where I put up a link I found online and don't say more than a paragraph about it.

I think it's interesting that in many African countries, English has become so prominent, both officially and colloquially. However, outside Africa, I'm yet to encounter any media/cultural stuff in African English, beyond music (even that stuff is a bit niche/not as well known). Maybe, along with Indian English, African English will become more prominent in the Anglosphere - part of a sorta 'third wave English', as I call it (The 'first wave' being British, second and current being American). I can already feel a distinct and more cohesive Indian English identity, language and feel. It's got media, songs, and even movie bits in it now. It can only get better. I'm assuming it's something similar with African English as well.

Spanish A2 Results!

I finally got my Spanish DELE A2 results this week, after around 3 months of waiting! I'm happy to say I did pretty well. 

I got 83.03 %, with almost full marks in speaking and listening. Very pleasantly surprised, as I thought I'd do my worst in speaking and listening. On the other hand, I lost most of my marks in writing, the section I was most confident of doing well in.

So where does that leave me now? I didn't join B1 classes because they started too soon and I needed some rest, so that's not an option anymore. And if I don't give Spanish sufficient practice, I could end up losing a lot of my proficiency (I've already lost a little, but not too much. What I've lost is mostly speaking skills.)

I could use iTalki, but it doesn't seem to be much help so far. Oh well...

I guess I'll have to learn it on my own for B1, with movies, videos, songs and stuff. Gonna be pretty hard, but no choice. Either stick to it, or risk forgetting what I've learnt.

After all, A2 isn't a beginner level, it's beginner - intermediate, sort of a fluency threshold. 

Anyway, I should think about that later, and for now be happy with finishing A2, and get some small, routine practice in.

New Years?

2013 got over a little over a week ago. Most people, including most of my friends were out celebrating.  I didn't really care. I listened to some nice music, and had a nice sleep.

Why is it that we celebrate the New Year, other than the necessity of celebration? I mean, I've had a lot of fun, crazy New Years, but didn't really feel it was day I had to celebrate.

My theory is that, to many people it signifies a sort of hope, a hope for change. It offers them a chance for them to get their shit together and disown the mistakes and failures of the year before. It lets them tell themselves and their friends that they'll change, and become a new person. That the new year will automatically be better and more magical than the year before.

I don't buy any of that. That's just escapist, to me. I mean, let's say you have an actual life event set to happen for sure in the new year, it makes sense - a graduation, a marriage, whatever. But naively expecting things to be better? Doesn't make sense.

Either, you know specifically that there's something in store for your life, or you change yourself. Otherwise what's the posturing all about?

And even then - you can change yourself anytime if you really want to! Why wait for a far off, magical day? That shows that you're not serious about it in the first place. You're just setting yourself up for failure, or too lazy/scared to break from the status quo.

And even then! If you want to do something worthwhile from the New Year - do it. Don't make a fuss of it.

Do something or don't. But empty posturing and drama don't help anyone. least of all you.

Happy New Year - May it be one without expectations. 

Language Progress #1

Progress in language learning as of today

• Spanish : At a respectable level of fluency. Need to practice it a bit more so that I keep in touch with it. I'll be getting a copy of Cortazar's Rayuela (Hopscotch in English) from a friend, so that'll help out a lot. Not found many Spanish language partners on italki so that's not an option. Still stuck with just indicative tenses. Need to work on conditional tenses a bit. At a post A2/mid B1 level. Comfortable enough for now.
• Portuguese : Improving thanks to some practice on italki, and some study. Sometimes, getting it mixed with Spanish, but thankfully not too much. Listening to Brazilian music for practice. I've got this one movie, in European Portuguese to help me get accustomed to it. Since I'm learning the Brazilian variety, whatever I know is pretty informal. That's fine though. At probably a mid A1 level at the moment. Learning slowly, but very steadily. Knowing Spanish helps greatly. Love the rhythm of this language! Need to practice more. Focusing on this for now.
• Japanese : Practicing Kanji for now on memrise. Getting them stored in memory with repetitions, though, only the symbols and their meanings, not the readings. Still nowhere near ready for an exam, but this way I won't have to focus too much on worrying about kanji and their meanings. Keeping this aside.
• Persian : Not really focusing on this too much. Getting to know some words through Urdu, that's about it. Keeping this aside.
• Russian : I read up on this when I'm bored/tired of Spanish/Portuguese. I know just the very basics thanks to memrise. The more I do, the more I feel that this is a really classy language, more so than French! Would really like to study this in the future, due to its difficulty can't focus too much on it now. Just been practicing my Cyrillic again, and learning some very basic words, and doing reading practice. Keeping this aside.
• Urdu : Getting some reading practice done from the local library, and from this site that I found just yesterday. All in all though, I still find Urdu extremely alien because of all the Persianate/Islam culture it was born in and the Perso-Arabic vocab. Reading about its history, I can see why it was such a big deal, because now, it's pretty useless, except maybe in Hyderabad. Most Urdu speakers (in India) can read Devanagari anyway, and official stuff is in proper Hindi... So proper Urdu's (with Nastaliq and all that) use is confined to Muslim neighborhoods/cities, and by definition it's an exclusive community language nowadays which adds to its disuse. I'm not distressed about that though. That's something for another post. I'm learning this for the literature/poetry it has/had. Late beginner level, I guess.

Tasher Desh.

       "Why do you want to fly away, when it's far more sensible to live in a cage?"

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Today I went to this pretty cool event : http://www.indiearth.com/xChange2013/ConferenceProgram.aspx

Found it through Twitter, just when I was despairing that nothing ever happens in this city. Went for it with some friends. Wanted to check out some bands, but the music events were way too late (around midnight) for us to go to.

So anyway, we ended up going for the film program. When I looked up the schedule, I was excited to see Tasher Desh by Q on the list. Why?

Q, is one of the coolest modern Indian directors. He's done some of the most revolutionary (in both senses of the word) Indian films I've ever seen, including Gandu (not seen this fully) and Love in India. I'm also eagerly awaiting his new documentary, Sari.
He has many other talents as well, like being the frontman of a band, Gandu Circus.

Going by all that, I had high expectations for Tasher Desh. I read reviews, which were very glowing. Knowing Q's work, I wasn't surprised. Then, I saw the trailer.

Just wow. Blew me away. I knew then I HAD to see it. So I did.

The screening room was perfect. Quiet, with great speakers, and soundproofed totally.

The movie starts :

It's basically an adaptation of a Tagore play of the same name, set in a strange, trippy world that's like a medieval Indian society, but with a strong European feel, and stuck in ruined castles, and with barely any people. Not for long though : The movie shifts to somewhere else, and the craziness ensues. The card people from the trailer make an appearance, and the rest of the movie is pretty much set there.

Now, I'm not gonna talk much about the story, which is a good thing because it was pretty much abstract and had no concreteness. Pretty open ended. Also because it's better seen than spoken about, because it'd make a different impression on everyone.

However, the movie made me think a lot, in simultaneously different paths. It was one of the most unique Indian movies I've seen till date. Some of the things that really stood out to me :

• The editing. It was just world class stuff, could compete with editing from American or world movies, that's how good it was. It had a really nice sense to it. It'd be abrupt, subtle, jarring, glitchy, smooth - whatever the situation required. There was a glitchy introduction scene when the 'actual' movie, ie, the play's content begins, that was just amazing. It was a scene that starts, and then gets stuck, and starts glitching in this sorta pixelating way, and then continues!
• The language : Well, I don't speak Bengali. However even then I'd be able to tell when English words get mixed up with a language as is in the case with colloquial Hindi and Tamil (Tamil has more so than Hindi, ironically!). The language in the movie IIRC used the original Bengali text of the okay - Tagore's own lines. That means very minimal English influence in word choice, almost 0. (Minimal Perso Arabic words also, AFAIK). I could pick out a lot of literary type words (tatsama ones), which gave it a grand feel akin to using lofty, older English for a movie. That gave it a really striking elegance to my ears. (Any Bengalis can tell me if I'm close to the mark and how it sounded to them.) 
• Spontaneity : One of the things that defines modern Indian society to me, especially in contrast with the West, is the inertia of the society. We struggle to let go of things, and our worse cultural aspects tend to stick around for generations. However, I feel in modern days things are speeding up thanks to the much faster pace of growth, plus globalization and the internet. Plus, younger people, including me, are more used to either living in a comparatively faster bubble of society, or identify with one. So there's a culture clash there. The movie was kinda a metaphor for that to me, but not in an in your face way : Rather builds up the frustration and then lets it go, with the results being ambiguous. Thinking back, when Tagore wrote the play, something similar was going on in Bengali society, with the changes and formation of a national identity.
• Sexuality : In this movie, as the lead actress Rii Sen said at the venue (Yes, she was there! To promote the film and to talk a little about it.), the expression of the female sexuality was much more subtle and aesthetic as opposed to in your face and crude. Another thing was, the women were shown as being in control of it and acting on it, in spite of opposition from the higher ups and peers. Again, in contrast with society, and also in very stark contrast with most Indian movies, where this sorta stuff is not portrayed very well generally.
• Counterculture feel : This movie had a strong counterculture feel to it, with its theme of rebellion, its psychedelic, dark sounding music, and general abstractness and its very nature of being different and eclectic in concept and execution. From the editing to the idea to the music to the costumes.
• Aesthetics : As you can see from the trailer, the movie had a strong commitment to a certain aesthetic sense : The eccentric costumes of the card people, the old, trashy costumes of the prince and his retinue, the run down castles and their furniture, the make up, and the general visual feel it had.
• Camera work : The camera work in this, according to the guy who did the editing (also at the venue),  was done by both Q, and another camera man. One shot was still, and the other one was running around. Both were used in the film to great effect. You've suddenly got steady shots, and suddenly haphazard ones.
• Music : The soundtrack to this movie had very varied styles, jazzy tunes, folksy tunes, and electronic sounding ones, not to mention the mix within the songs themselves. Add a nice sound production and great lyrics to this mix, and you've got some really cool music. Add that to the visuals the music was portrayed over and you've got a great movie soundtrack. The music visuals were closer to musicals than their Western counterparts, seeing as it's a movie based on a play, but thankfully a far cry away from the senseless excesses of Bollywood song and dance routines. This, to me, is a perfect balance that they struck, that really needs to be seen more in Indian cinema. 
• Relevance : Now, a lot of 'intellectuals' in India have some very theoretical points that are either arrived at through mental masturbation, envisioning an ideal society, denial, or projection of ideas onto others. In my opinion, this movie was smart and did not preach or claim to have any answers, yet still stuck to its sincerity and made several points and spoke on certain levels. Rather than 'THIS IS IT', it was more like 'So, have you considered...'.  
• Open ended-ness : This was nice because even though the movie was very different from usual, and had a lot going on, it was very abstract and could be interpreted in any way. This was confirmed to be Q's intent at the venue, by the guy who did the editing. The whole movie was what you make of it, rather than pushing an agenda or (a) message(s).

To finish off, here's brilliant review mirroring my own thoughts (though in much more detail).