Movie Magic

There is an explosion, a disturbance throbs through the air, and the chase is on! Yes, reader, I saw Dhoom 3 on the big screen and I cannot think of a better way of enjoying a holiday afternoon with my family. I have previously waxed exuberantly about the magic of Hindi movies, and I am reassured that that magic has not waned as I get older.

As a girl, I remember the excitement that flooded the pit of my stomach at the prospect of a film outing, especially if a large number of people were to join in. During vacations, the afternoon or morning shows were preferred, and during regular school days, we went for night shows. The entire day ended up revolving around these outings, even when we had other things going on, other treats. We had consultations about wardrobes, who might say what, who would sit next to whom, and conjectures about what possible plot lines could lead up to the songs we all knew by then, thanks to the Binaca Geet Mala on the radio. Buying snacks at the theatre was out of question; those snacks would be prohibitively, exorbitantly priced. But perhaps, we could go for bhel or other spicy-sour-irresistible street food after the film. Oh the possibilities of how the outing could turn out were endless! Who knows what adventures awaited us in the unpredictable, electrifying hustle-bustle of the city streets and cinema halls! We wanted to be prepared for it all!

As I grew up, I promised myself I'd bloom into this sophisticate, for whom a film outing would be no big deal, nothing to be excited about; such excitement was for silly young girls, who had no real "life" to speak of. I had plans for my "life," which would be scintillating and sparkling with all manner of unimaginably brilliant things. Hindi films would pale, I promised myself.

Last week, when I went for Dhoom 3, I realized that this was one of the many promises I'd broken to myself. I could not resist the excitement that flooded over, unexpectedly. Of course, since I am no longer the dashing thrill-seeker, I do pray that no unexpected adventure awaits me on the streets or cinema hall. But when the chase is on, I find myself on the edge of my seat; I love the surprises splashed on the large screen; I do not need the screen to be 3-D to get fully immersed in the movie.

There are a few selves I wear, which help me live most fully. The un-aging self in the cinema house is one of these selves. It is well-known that those who read, get to live a thousand alternate lives; I would contend that the same is true of those who love the movies!

On this last day of the year, try out an unfamiliar self; go to the cinema theatre! Find a motorcycle you'd never ride, navigate vectors you could never balance or control, swing behind the screen to discover an unforeseen, amazing reality; who knows what astonishing, electrifying adventure awaits a half-forgotten imagined self?

Well-Watered

There is a tree in the center of some of my stories. This tree stands near a well. All around these two swirl the many tales that need to be told, that once told, perch on a branch, like wish-threads, anchored, yet weaving in the passing breeze. Even though I have fastened a few, my basket of untold stories seems to be just as full as it was when I first began telling of the tree and the well.

Sometimes, this defeats me. I cannot imagine how I am to get words enough for these tales, if my life time, with its too, too many demands, will be long enough. Somehow that worries me more than availability of a receptive audience for the stories. The beings that live in, around, before and away from the tree nag me, haunt me, insist that I tell, though I don't know to what end. I don't think that these tales have any edifying value, or provide an insight about how one may improve oneself or enrich one's life. In fact, the stories are more dusky twilight than golden dawn. Worse, they offer no apologies for their dark hues.

I make a deliberate effort to help each story to stand on its own, a valid entity irrespective of the larger tapestry it helps weave. I explain to the tales that they all should be independent, as though they were my girl children and I, their concerned parent, were trying to impress upon them the importance of good grades that they may support themselves and their offspring instead of relying on their future wife-selves. However, they wish for nothing more than to gather near the well, sit cross legged beneath the spreading shade of their tree. No matter how far I have them wander, when I look behind, I find them clustered around their well, like Grimms' Twelve Months.

I hope to pass muster as I seek their guidance. I shall make an effort to be polite and offer them what poor nourishment my pockets hold. Most of all, I shall try to listen very closely to their riddles. After all, I could scarcely hope for a better map, no matter how dark or labyrinthine my wooded path!
 

Fallow Season

This weekend has been one of the quieter ones, the kind of quiet imposed on the centers of storms, the kind that is needed to sustain, the mandatory opposite of action. I do understand the balance such days provide, the kind that force me to just sit still and wait.

Now I don't presume to evoke ghosts of Milton, where the waiting has some cosmic significance or divine directive. On the contrary, actually, this waiting has been forced on me because my constant worrying over trifles, the various, varying demands made upon my conscious mind, and the fast pace of our disjointed lives has caused a system failure of sorts in the primary circuitry of my being.

I have been primarily couch-bound for the past few days, weighed down by a fever and an exhaustion that looms by 2pm, and I have spent hours, supine beside my computer with stacks of ungraded work, surrounded by floors that need cleaning and a house that needs picking up. I have had to take many, many naps, each feeling like an infinite stretch of time, where the world outside the door shifts axis while I am held captive by whirlwinds of unresolvable worries that clutch me in their nightmare jaws.

I acknowledge the necessity of this fallow season. It reminds me of other fallow seasons which have changed my inner landscape irrefutably. The one that comes to mind is the long three weeks of enforced bed rest when I was on the brink of puberty. It was ages ago, from where I stand today, of course. But that was the season during which I realised that my true love was going to be, had always been the fictional word. My students today ask me when I had the time to read all the mythology and tales I teach and I know I have my fallow season to thank.  My inner self had used that season to adjust, fit, evaluate, and compensate for the being I was growing into, while the stories of the past ages whispered important input and sketched indelible patterns on the basic structure of the self as it moved towards a stable, crystallized form.

This fallow season is no exception. The difference is in the stories I am feeding this self. These are newer tales (though it is the same Story), woven in different hues and textures. On the one hand, I am going through the Puranas (the most ancient, contemporary, changing, iconoclastic of Hindu literature), and on the other hand, I watch all the television series that I never usually have the time to catch up on, as I nap. Squeezed between the cracks are the occassionals, like the books my book club is reading and the latest Umberto Eco I just stumbled upon at the public library.

I do not hope to have a firm grasp on why this season has been necessary, or what it is supposed to give my inner landscape. Those thoughts are nebulous and will wisp away if examined. All I know is that some sort of regeneration has been required. My house is being worked on (for the time being), my child is fluffing up her wings and checking her compasses to begin her first flight into adulthood, and even my usually clueless conscious self can clearly see that a stage of our lives is closing up.

Today is the first day that I have been able to stay up this late after 3pm, and I've had only one nap, so I know that the time for me to get up is very near. Unlike the end of the earlier fallow season, however, I do not find myself particularly looking forward to the new season that awaits around the bend; I am afraid I might not have the energy for it. These past months have, I fear, broken something in me, re-wired something essential. I am afraid I might be proven unable, lacking in whatever the new stage demands of me, that this fallow season might be sown in dry earth, incapable of bringing forth all that it used to.

I lie here, shivering, the napping cats my main heat source. I hope and pray that I find the new stage a recognizable setting, with familiar choices and realised hopes. I invoke the kind gods I read of to rudder and steer my ship; I invoke the stars to guide my compass; I invoke the fallow season to sow enough for me to recognize the axis mundi from mirages; I invoke the Story to map understandable directives; and I invoke the true horizon to steady my course.