Tonight I killed a firefly

Tonight I killed a firefly

In the kitchen sink.

When I was washing dishes

There lay the poor thing in the water.

Filled with remorse I moved it

From the water on to the kitchen floor.

I went away thinking a million thoughts

And came back an hour later.

There was the firefly

Wet and unable to move

Being eaten by red ants.

What would have been a quick and painless death in the first place

I had prolonged by one hour

Adding suffering to injury.

As it was making the floor dirty

I moved the firefly back to the water

And flushed it down the kitchen sink.

Anyway, who am I to play God?

Cares

What will happen when all my cares disappear
When there is no one to look after
Nor anyone to mourn for
When there is no mouth to feed
Nor any field to seed
When there is no office to go to
Nor any cleaning up to attend to
Won’t life suddenly stop
Like a flowing river in midstream
Trapped by a fallen tree?
What will I do, where will I go?
How will I pass time
Till the day I die?
They say that sorrow
Is just the other side of happiness
Can it be true after all?
Can it be that cares lend color
To the colorless hours we must spend
Before it is time to leave
This world for the one above?

Movie review: Salt N’ Pepper

Aashiq Abu’s Salt N’ Pepper is a breath of fresh air among the films released recently. This romantic ‘foodie’ comedy revolves around the lives of five people whose common denominator is a passion for food and cooking. The theme is fresh, as no known Malayalam movie deals completely with the love for food. The movie also portrays Malayali women as having the same passion for life and food and same vulnerabilities as the male characters. Moreover, the emotional vulnerabilities and insecurity of all characters have been treated sensitively by the director.

Maya, played by Swetha Menon, is a dubbing artist who tries to call a restaurant and ends up calling an irate archaeologist Kalidasan, played by Lal, instead. Soon they become the best of friends and Cupid plays its part without them seeing each other even once. Both are insecure about their age and looks, and turn to two other people for help. Asif Ali plays Manu, the nephew of Kalidasan, whereas Mythili handles the role of Meenakshi who is Maya’s roommate. Manu and Meenakshi meet in the guise of Kalidasan and Maya respectively and fall in love with each other. The climax is a comedy of errors and both the couples get their happy endings.

The noteworthy factor of Salt N’ Pepper is its simplicity of narration and dedication to the main story line. Each character has its own identity and is handled with ease by the actors. Asif Ali proves he can handle comedy quite well after his serious roles in Rithu and Apoorvaragam. The actor Baburaj gives a convincing performance as Kalidasan’s cook in the movie, and the coming of this character to Kalidasan’s house is pretty hilarious. One might argue Mythili has nothing to do but sit pretty in this movie. Anyway, the star performers are Lal and Swetha Menon as Kalidasan and Maya who finally overcome their self-absorption to find each other and fall in love.

But the film is not without its loose ends. The relevance of the Adivasi Mooppan character in the story is not clear. The Mooppan’s earrings are supposed to date back to the era of Ibn Batuta’s coming to India. Later in the movie the Mooppan is taken away from Kalidasan by his sons and grandsons. One expects Kalidasan to go after and bring back the Mooppan, but this does not happen.

The ending is truly filmy with flower petals falling from the skies on Kalidasan and Maya who finally find the courage to confess their love for each other in a movie set. The title song of SALTn’PEPPER also deserves special mention as it shows all the major eateries in Kerala from sophisticated restaurants to roadside dhabas and their various specialties. If you are looking for good wholesome entertainment for the entire family, Salt N’ Pepper is the right choice.

Glass houses

There is a most elegant house opposite to ours. It has a traditionally tiled roof, which is characteristic of all old houses in Kerala. The house is sinlge-floored, vast and sprawling. The veranda is long and lavish, with white marble tiles making up the floor. Beautiful cane chairs and tables line the veranda, inviting one to come in and sit down. The whole house is painted white with big dark glass-paned windows reminiscent of the picturesque cottages in Ootty. In contrast, the gate is a splash of colour, of fiery red upon virgin white.
Occasionally, one of the two occupants of the house come out. He is a tall silver-haired old man with a skull cap permanantly fixed on top of his head. He has the genial appearance of one who is at peace with all in the world. But his regal bearing suggests he has seen better days, days of power and glory. His wife is rarely seen outside; she bears the unmistakable marks of being a traditionally brought-up Muslim woman. Her saree pallu always covers her head and there are glass bangles on both her wrists. She appears younger than her husband. There appears no servants in the house. The other occupants of the house are a grown man and a woman who appear to be the children of the older couple.
The older couple are like the house personified, old and dignified and beautiful. This is the way most houses are; one can get a good idea of who lives where from their bearing and behavior.

Plum cakes and wine

During schooldays, Christmas used to mean lots of fun starting with the Christmas celebration held on the last day of school. The major events at school used to be dancing around the decorated Christmas tree to the accompaniment of carols, seeing plays featuring the Holy Birth, and exchanging cards and good wishes. Similar to Onam holidays, Christmas holidays were always spent with grandparents and cousins in our ancestral home. There would be plenty of plum cakes and our normally non-alcoholic family even indulged in the pleasures of wine drinking. The feeling was: no wine? then how can it be Christmas? Not being a Christian had never hindered us from waiting expectantly for the festive season.
A week before X’mas, a lighted star would adorn our garage. On a particularly fine evening during the holidays, we would do the Great X’mas shopping. Shopping for stars, greeting cards and cakes was really an occasion. A list of all the relatives, friends and teachers to whom cards need to be sent would be drawn up. I remember once I took cards for all the students in my class (about fifty or sixty in number) because I couldnot leave anyone out. Small presents and trinkets like tiny figures of Santa Claus, decoration items like crape paper and sparklers would all find their place in our shopping baskets. We never bought wine from the local bakeries; we always bought it from an old man who brought bottles of the amber liquid on a cycle. It was almost a family tradition.
On one Christmas eve, me and my father had visited our one and only shopping complex in my hometown at midnight. I was doing my tenth and because of my inexhaustive list of tutions, I had been unable to go to our ancestral home for the holidays with my mother and sister. So, my father had taken me on a midnight tour of the town to cheer me up.The entire place was decorated beautifully with lights and a lone ice cream parlor had been open. As we sat inside and placed our orders, we saw a beautiful procession start from the entrance of the complex; it featured a merry Santa Claus at the front followed by actors in costumes depicting the Holy Birth. At that moment, I found myself believing whole-heartedly in the fable of the little boy who had been born in a stable and later went on to change the world.

What’s new on my blog? Social Vibe

On the second sidebar, you can see an option titled Social Vibe. It specifies the social cause this site supports. This blog supports the treatment of children suffering from AIDS in Africa and India. I had searched long for something that benefits Indians, and came across this one. In this post, I will explain how this option works, and how you can play a part in changing the lives of some unlucky children who live in the shadow of AIDS. When you click on the social vibe image, you are taken to a new window. From the window, you have to do a number of activities like answering some questions. To my surprise, many questions deal with some TV shows (possibly American) and some consumer products. I skipped over them and answered only those questions I felt could be answered. By doing so, you are providing revenue to the website that hosts the cause. This will be used to provide several hours of free treatment to children suffering from AIDS in India and Africa. Each activity has certain number of points attached with it. The number of hours of free treatment for those hapless children depends on the number of activities you perform. Their website (http://keepachildalive.org/) seems genuine, and I invite you to check out the new Social Vibe option in my blog.

Paleri Manikyam – A director’s revenge

Another idle evening in the flat. So, I thought I would write a small review about a Malayalam movie I saw recently – Paleri manikyam – oru paathira kolapathakathinte katha. The movie was sordid to the last degree; it made one remember the truly ghastly photos that are repeatedly shown in TV news channels when some kind of tragedy occurs and large numbers of people are killed. I have heard a lot of people deploring the way news channels show dead bodies without any mercy to increase their newsvalue. If this censure had been made applicable to movies too, Paleri Manikyam probably wouldnot have got a theatre to play in.

The movie tells the tale of Manikyam, a young doe-eyed beauty, who comes to Paleri as the wife of the village idiot and is raped and murdered by someone. Mammootty is a detective who comes to Paleri in search of the truth behind the murder. I don’t know the name of the actor who played the heroine; after watching the movie I reached the conclusion what is in a name? Although the camera failed to showcase her (doubtful) acting talents, all the rest of her got showcased pretty well to the delight of the audience (all in their early twenties). Anyway, none of the ladies in the film had anything to do except look extremely desirable to Mammootty of all ages.

Mammootty has tried his hardest to enter the spirits of all the characters he plays in the film – the hero (a detective), the villain senior (a feudal landlord) and the villian junior (a genius from the BHU). The big M as the villain senior is not too bad, but can be compared in no way to Thilakan who played a similar role spectacularly in Kannezhuthi Pottum Thottu. The other two characters deserve no special mention – Mammooty was truly and completely himself, 100% .

Pokkan (the village idiot) remained in my heart long after I left the theatre; his emotions were entirely believable and portrayed very sensitively. The actor who played the Communist barber (Sreenivasan’s younger version) too was remarkable.

Although the representation of a bygone era has been done meticulously and does the director credit, dialogue of the film felt very artificial. The ending words in which the writer plays with Robert Frost’s memorable words (And miles to go before I sleep) fall totally flat.

Last but in no way the least, one must applaud the film for giving added impetus to the already flourishing beverages market of Kerala (we have become the most drunken state in the world! hooray). All actors are shown as drinking gallons of alcohol whenever they have anything to discuss in the film. Although she has nothing much else to do in the film, the hero’s woman partner is portrayed as drinking liquor and enjoying cigarattes – does that refer to equality of the sexes and modernity, one wonders.

My first funeral

It was not exactly the first funeral I had attended, but the first one in which I could really see and follow the proceedings involved. He was laid on the floor of the home he had built in the depths of a large and green plantation. His face looked as though he was in a deep, untroubled sleep. Ever since I can remember, he had looked the same, old and bald with short tufts of white hair. I am pretty sure he wore spectacles. He was always an old man, so I never noticed how he was getting older over the years. It is quite funny how some people whom you have known since your childhood remain the same over the years without getting a day older or younger. He was one such person. Around him the house resonated with the chanting of the Ram nama; there were no or minimum sounds of sobbing, he was old and the people whose hearts were really broken were not present. The house was calm and cool, the relatives talked in hushed tones mostly about their sons who lived in the US and their daughters who had married into the most prestigious families. Life was all around, unsubdued even in its intimate encounter with death. Some might call it unfeeling and disrespectful, but life finding its voice in the vicinity of death is oddly reassuring. Death is permanent, but so is life – only the one who lives changes.

An evergreen prayer

I was travelling today from Kochi to Trivandrum via Kottayam, by train. The scenery is always very beautiful, as anyone who has travelled in Kerala would probably report. Today, it was more so as we are in the thick of monsoon rains. For the space of the journey, the clouds were kind enough to part; a monsoon sunlight (something that everyone near the Equator knows) illuminated the rushing streams and rolling fields. My co-traveller, a young North Indian woman, was busy taking snaps with her mobile phone. A sense of pride in being a native of this land overwhelmed me for a moment. Almost on reflex, a short prayer to save the beauty around me from the evil-eye was uttered by the ‘modern’, not-so-religious me.

The post seems too short; I feel it doesnot quite express what I felt at that moment. The fact is that rolling fields and rushing streams are fast disappearing from Kerala’s face. Each journey makes me realize it. I agree that it is a much-debated topic. But, actually seeing the change is very different from hearing or reading a report. It is like watching someone die, someone whom you loved very much.

Pursuing happiness

Definition of happiness varies from person to person. This is not a fresh topic for musing, I admit. But, we human beings have the habit of chewing the cud, thinking about the same age-old topics again and again. It is not a crime. Still, the topic of happiness maybe considered a trifle old-fashioned; one may argue that people are too busy to think about this particular topic nowadays. I disagree. Maybe they don’t seem to be thinking about it at the surface level. Maybe the busy people are busy because unconsciously they feel that keeping busy keeps them happy. It is quite possible that you are very comfortable with the concept of being busy and you confuse this feeling with happiness. Aha, now we have a lead. Happiness is being comfortable. Being comfortable in the material aspect is another thing all together. But if you are comfortable with the thoughts in your head (the thoughts themselves may not be happy), you are happy.

Happiness is different from enjoyment, definitely. Does enjoying a party mean you are happy? I think not. Parties are supposed to be enjoyable. People expect party goers to be funny, jolly, and lively. But happy? Not exactly. You can go to a party and still not be happy. There arises a new problem. Not being happy does not mean being unhappy. That is the problem with the word unhappiness, it seems to be a very specific state – the state of being unhappy. Not the state of being angry, not even one of being out of sorts. You are unhappy with your surroundings, your partner, your friends, and so on. Maybe ‘dissatisfied’ is close to the feeling of unhappiness. ‘Unhappiness’ is very definite whereas ‘happiness’ can mean a lot of things.

I think i will stop for now. I feel quite happy now that I have wasted some space and energy on a perfectly worthless discussion.