Life of Pi.

"Richard Parker! What are you thinking?"

A couple of years ago when I read it I said to myself, no Hollywood can attempt a plot like this one. And thank God for that.

But, this weekend I saw Richard Parker in 3D and couldn't help exclaiming in awe. They've done it !

Yann Martel told an un-tellable Story and Ang Lee went a step further bringing his genius to an un-filmable film done in a way that viewers were left in rapt admiration for the ineffable project Martel took in the first place. One of the rare gems where film is as good as or even better than the book.

Also, a rare 3D film where 3D has been used for viewing the world as it is, in full splendor and not merely for the creating shock value or throwing imaginary giant birds in your eye. It captured the sea in it's unmitigated and infinite rawness. I have never admired the sea more, not even in real life. The film makes one feel a miniscule grain of sand in the grand continuum, the earth and the universe, replete with life. Hollywood has directors like Ang Lee. Thank God for that !

Remind me again...

There is no escape. You can’t be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. You want to get drunk, so you have to accept the hangover. You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing. Don’t try to lie to yourself. You are not a solid citizen. You are not a Greek. You are not harmonious, or the master of yourself. You are a bird in the storm. Let it storm! Let it drive you! How much have you lied! A thousand times, even in your poems and books, you have played the harmonious man, the wise man, the happy, the enlightened man. In the same way, men attacking in war have played heroes, while their bowels twitched. My God, what a poor ape, what a fencer in the mirror man is- particularly the artist- particularly myself!

-Hermann Hesse.

October

...in India.

Long before the sleepy-eyed

taps begin to cry fresh water,
and the giant tree's slumber
breaks into birds chirpy,
the orange of the sky
lets a bit of sun.

Pretending a night still,
I dig deep in my blanky.
It wards me off and jumps
on the ground, mimicking a fall.
I am sure it’s a conspiracy

morning noises
evaporate dew

 clock ticks 8
I am again late.

On my way
I see clouds of dust being pulled(swept)

 from the ground and work being done
A line of trees becomes my sight
with morning flowers red and white.

Washed with a  bucket full of sun
promise of  good day has begun

punctuated with work
 dazzled festive air                                                                                                                                       the time of year winter
dresses for october fair.