CHILDREN OF EMDEN

Change is inevitable. That is a rather clichéd way to begin this exercise but I have never found the truism more applicable than in the last 19 months. Since leaving Chennai behind in August 2002 my only contact with the city had been during the scrupulously saved 15 days of vacation once every two years. The Chennai I was acquainted with was quintessentially middle class. The city woke up early to the strains of M.S’s Bhaja Govindham, a steaming cup of filter coffee and The Hindu. The rest of the morning involved unhurriedly perusing the previous day’s news and motoring off to another workday in a Bajaj Chetak. The evenings were for Wonder Balloon followed by homework with the kids capped by a light dinner. Weekends were reserved for unannounced visits to houses of relatives and an even more languid pace of life, if that was possible. What faced me on my return in 2009, however, was a chronological impossibility. A city I would have at best described as avuncular seemed younger and filled with the impatience of a teenager. Old clichés had made way for new ones - milkmen with mobile phones and traffic that could easily be misconstrued for a parking lot.
The congestion generated by capitalist enterprise makes me wistful but the impracticality of traveling backward in time is not lost upon me. Iterative introspection makes obvious the fact that no one generation can completely absolve itself of the sin of not recognizing that the roads they walk on, are paved on the past. For the willing however, Chennai still offers the glimpses into the past.

The Story

An unpalatable task faces Swaminatha Iyer during his vacation in Chennai. He must confess to his parents that he is engaged to his Armenian girlfriend in Los Angeles without their consent. In the midst of the argument the narrative is thrown back to the night of September 22nd 1914. Working late in the Madras High court a young barrister, Swaminatha Iyer Sr., is injured as a result of SMS Emden’s blitzkrieg on the Madras Harbor. Losing blood quickly, he manages to limp to the premises of the Armenian Church, where he is nursed back to health by the rector/caretaker in the dead of night. The picture he takes with the rector in the belfry of the church as a memory of that night watches mutely as the junior Swaminatha Iyer’s parents, unaware of the past, bemoan the problems that would befall the family if Justice Swaminatha Iyer’s great grandson and namesake married an Armenian girl.

Fear and Faith

Al Gore's genuine worry about the world melting away like a popsicle could well be the result of a week spent in Chennai. And as the heat slowly but surely erodes all synaptic flashes in my brain, I sit here contemplating the most fundamental question that can face anyone" "Am I Michael or am I Fredo?"

For all my "fierce individuality" and "personal goals" I think it is fair to say that I would be crushed to be perceived by my parents as Fredo. And the fear is debilitating. If anything has become apparent to me this past week it is the dynamics of fear. Prior to moving to India I experienced was a moment of severe clarity where "success" and "failure" in their packaged and preserved forms ceased to exist. Life has an uncanny knack of rocking the very thing you consider fundamental. When new circumstances obfuscate a goal so easily one has no choice but to question the potency of the fuel in one's tanks.

"Certainty", be it blind or well founded, is at the core all actions ever performed. While philosophically one may wax eloquent on Nishkaama Karma and such, all things worth doing were begun with the certainty of accomplishment. It is the well from which springs the tenacity to move the mountains. Usually once you find the well the mountains disappear because they are demons of your creation. And clarity is once again yours. Until then the search for the elixir continues.

No one said it like Gounds when he said: "பிரச்சன எல்லாம் ஒண்ணு தானே டா !"

R.S.Prasanna's Art

I had a chance to revisit a short that I was introduced to through this site . The film maker writes here and his films are available here. I've seen most of the films now, but the first one I saw, "Art", remains my favorite. And not just because the soundtrack features "Lemon Tree" from Fool's Garden.
The first time I saw it, all I could see was a diatribe on critics. I had just seen Shyamalan's Lady in the Water and I guess Bob Balaban's Harry Farber was still fresh in my mind. I certainly enjoyed the humor because I'm not the conscientious type and love unintentional sexual innuendo as a source of humor ("I like using my head" hah!). And the parting shot dialog had me in splits as well. But in that initial viewing, my compromised propositional attitude and only allowed me to see the viewer's acting like they were the cat's whiskers only to have their opinions snipped by the artist.
Recently something prompted a re-watching of the short and I noticed how its not just the "suits" who are guilty of taking themselves too seriously. Since we as viewers are looking at the events unfold from the point of view of the art the audience is the piece of art. And the critic's self-seriousness is a source of amusement. But when the "painter" himself says "It's a masterpiece" it is hard not to look at him with the same condescension I had till now reserved for the critics, creating some sort of inverse-Pygmalion relationship. By the same token other people in the audience could be flattered or embarrassed lending multiple interpretations and an interactive viewing experience, if only at a thought level rather than at an experiential level. It is funny that by hanging up a window (of sorts) Prasanna has also managed to hang up a mirror (of sorts) in a short span of time and all in one shot.