In all this Monday dilemma i forgot to narrate my weekend to you, probably then you will see why i hate my Mondays!!! So Chennai is celebrating hundred years of Basheer...no, no i am not a hardcore Malayalam literature reader...but yea,yea maybe i read more than many from similar backgrounds....I have had my moments with M.T, O.V , Malayatoor and of course Basheer...As i grew older i have relied more on translations than on originals...having entered the classic space of bourgeiosie english...i know there is a difference but lets concentrate on the essence (pretend its there atleast).....its better than not reading anything is the best argument i can come up with. My most memorable Basheer has been Balyakaalasakhi ( childhood friend) read in early school....so when i heard about the fest from my roomy i was excited as hell...but as always my excitement rarely translates into action...so having missed the initial week i went on to attend the second....a play by a contemporary group....the idea was fabulous though its elaboration lacked the finesse....but that does not mean they don’t deserve the appreciation...well planned, well practised...well delivered...just a little crude but that i guess added only to the homliness....weaving a plot with seven of basheer’s stories and novelettes is not an easy task...to reweave the author’s sentiments....even more difficult...but the best part of the play was the authors presense as a listener, observer, thinker and participant....it was like weaving a thread of how the author felt and thought...i appreciated that the most....to let the audience be partisans to the birth of an idea...of a story....especially when the author has a repute of being magical with his characters...u do wonder where he got the idea from....yes barthes might twist in his grave hearing me speak in this manner after having read him twice and pretending to be the proponent of the “Death of the Author”...but hey i still can’t get over the modernist trivia of knowing the thought process of the man who created this wonderful piece of work...yes i accept it is incomplete without the reader and his interpretation alone adds value to the work of the author...i see a mother-child relation....you mold, give birth but whatever you do the child will grow out of your fencing......its not stand alone...but i can’t help admiring sheer creativity, to envy it...so letting me become a voyeur inspecting the life of the creator was splendid...it arouses the artist in you....to see the objects and people that inspired the author....i wonder if you share my excitement...
Well the icing on the cake is still not here...on Sunday after a hectic Saturday (about which i will write in my next blog ) they screened “mathilukkal”....like every other malayalee, i have also watched the movie on many occasions but i wanted to watch it again., not because i thought it was superb but i wanted to go with a certain awareness and perspective which i have not had before.. to view it as a true story of the author, to see it as a work of the director, to see how it was made....and i did...the sensation was different...you notice the frames, you try to analyse its symbolic meaning.....you start identifying mamootty with basheer, quite unconsciously....cherry topping was the conversation with adoor post-movie screening!!! What is more refreshing than the director’s perspective of the movie....again barthes may you rest in peace...it is a wonder to listen to the thought process of another person.....just like talking to a photographer asking him why he chose a frame...of course most of us amateurs don’t have profound reasons or we just have an instinct.....But a trained artist will tell you the angle, the scene, its significance...if you are deeper the symbolic content of the your signifier.....if this process happens to a shot, the significance is mre elaborate....so simple things like why a five second shot of light bulb or an otherwise redundant looking shot of the author trying to catch a moth on the wall is elaborated to you from the author/director’s perspective.....glorious...slightly, no highly sycophantic and purposely voyeuristic but thats okay.....i am no genious to thwart it anywayssssss.....emotions depicted through metaphoric images and statements....detailed shots of the subject....might earn the repute of being dragging but it brings out the character awesomely....so watching a scene where the character basher stands outside his cell and looks with slightly parted lips (signifying not just nonchalance but a temporary dumbness, apparently also an indication at the authors mental imbalance) are captured by very few directors and very few mainstream actors let themselves be shot in this fashion....you never see a character while seeing shahrukh flick...you only see the star...i guess thats the difference between a superstar and an actor!!! lack of metamorphosis into the character.....Anyway after these few insights into the mind of the authors in the likeness of basheer and adoor....we went to ente keralam to empty our wallets and fill our tummies with almost authentic mallu cuisine....yumm i was satiated...this is called overall well being....but i think i spoke too soon.... it also put that germ of doubt once again into my ever vulnerable mind....where am i ? well acknowledging multiple truths is the facet of everyones life so for the time being, i shall hold my peace and return to my revolving chair....
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