On The Ning Nang Nong

Anything but black pudding in that shape-shifting and wiry-legged magic pudding. I once tasted black pudding (as I liked chorizo by then) and felt queasy weird and gulped down the black suet with tomato juice. Nevermore! Any meat or bean pudding in any color but the bloodshot black pudding.

Heh! You are ekdam sharp! You noticed that the Manhattan hero was deliberately nameless.

Forlorn exes provide good material for tease in jaunty couples. Mothers and fathers are explosive references to taunt. The merry taunt is always "haan! your ex partner hasn't taught you how to do your own laundry". Blame the ex! Then comes the standoff when couples vindicate their ex afflictions in dating. My ex is the best croquet player! No, mine, can write with both hands and stand on one toe!

Mira would have enthusiastically criss-crossed a member from our nameless hero's family, what say the mother as Rumpus Bumpus, to pit against her Watkin Wombat dad. Couples usually lock in on a member from the other's family for tease and inventive shenanigans. The dad or the mom will pilfer the magic pudding! Boy's mom and girl's dad forge a delighted and surreal alliance (unbeknownst to the parents) to rib around in playful and spirited partners. Good-humored tease never inhibits but only facilitates a relationship during dating, so is the case with Mira and Nameless Hero.

 

Books This Week:



That montage is not irregular shaped and twisted but it is short-lived Suprematism advocated by Kasimir Malevich. Flout traditional rules! Irregular and skew-whiff geometric shapes! Here I come, Art!

Now, back to my Postmodern Romance series. Will continue Part - II of "The Telltale Natives" later.

Till then enjoy the elemental music,

 

Toad, Antiphony, Kirtan, Bhajan

I might write a post on The lives of a cell by Lewis Thomas tomorrow after I finish the book.

But for now,

"Toads sing to each other
and their friends sing back in antiphony".

Ah ..ah ..that word "antiphony" caught my attention, as I have earlier skipped to lookup that word when I heard in a documentary few months ago. So, this time, promptly, I checked.

The looser term antiphony is generally used for any call and response style of singing, such as the kirtan or the sea shanty. Antiphonal music is that performed by two choirs in interaction, often singing alternate musical phrases.Antiphonal psalmody is the singing or musical playing of psalms by alternating groups of performers. The term “antiphony” can also refer to a choir-book containing antiphons.​

Kirtan and sea shanty or kirtan like sea shanty, never seen both forms of singing used in the same breath.

Then I jumped onto the kirtan entry in wikipedia.

Kirtan is often practiced as a kind of theatrical folk song with call-and-response chanting or antiphon. The ancient sage Narada revered as a musical genius, is called a kirtankar (singer of kirtan) in the Padma Purana.The famous story of Prahlada in the Avatara Katha mentions kirtan as one of nine forms of worship, called the nava vidha bhakti.

A Kirtan and a Bhajan are closely related, with both sharing common aims, subjects, musical themes and being devotional performance arts. A Bhajan is more free form, can be singular melody that is performed by a single singer with or without one and more musical instruments. Kirtan, in contrast, differs in being a more structured team performance, typically with a call and response musical structure. Many Kirtan are structured for more audience participation, where the singer calls a spiritual chant, a hymn or a devotional theme such as from Vaishnavism, the audience then responds back by repeating the chant or by chanting back a reply of their shared beliefs.​

Hmm, never knew this difference between a kirtan and a bhajan, not that I ever partook in any spiritual congregation to have learned this distinction. Pretty interesting encapsulated works! Good to know, next time I might spot whether the host performance constitutes a kirtan or a bhajan depending on the involvement of the choral performance.

 

Bridget Jones's Diary

No singleton woman in the planet who ever wondered "what am I doing", "where am I going", "is this man right for me", "why am I attracted to the wrong man", "will the right man be attracted me", would have skipped Bridget Jones’s Diary, and upon watching the film their fears would have been further compounded, but not allayed, with confusion over wearing a thong to precipitate the in flagrante or wearing the scary stomach-holding-in pants to reach that in flagrante.

Fridays are pistachio ice cream tub and cuffed pajamas for me. A perfect rig-out to watch a comic caper. I scoop out a tub full and plonk on the sofa to watch the movie on my Amazon Prime player. Bridget Jones’s Diary is a sweet romantic comedy even today as it was when I watched the movie for the first time in 2001. Bridget "Brenda" Jones is not a prickly loser or a chaste wisecracker like her archetypal Elizabeth Bennet on whom the character and the prejudiced romance is based on.

Bridget would take every setback in her stride even the stale dress code supposed for a bawdy 'tarts and vicars' party. She is swift to "de-bunny" her gaffe and never gets stuck in any rabbit's hole wallowing at her routine and very persistent, for no faults of hers, blows. Her spirits and her determined chase to hitch a "proper" boyfriend may plummet a bit but never sinks. She rises upbeat, each time, even in her change of career from agreeable publishing to novice television, and her birthday celebration with "blue soup" and "congealed green gunge", which would give a run to even Dr Seuss's green eggs and ham, brings her closer to her stiff Darcy.

In the beginning of the film, though her mother's turkey curry buffet sores her, she runaway fantasizes to settle with the city slicker Daniel Cleaver whose proposition of true love as she again imagines is going together for a "mini-break" over "poncey" poetry. When she recognizes him for a stylish ladies' man who could never cross that "extraordinary" gap to commit, she does not blubber up like a whale's blow but only "fannies" her way into new prospects of career, with chimney smoking and fish drinking abstinence, and latent romance with Mark Darcy.

Eventually, she wins over Darcy. Well, even if that means running deshabille in knickers and camisole in a snowy evening to tell him that she likes him despite the stupid things he wears that his mom buys and the haughty things he says and the utter lack of thought to his sideburns.

Bridget is endearing to everyone who has drifted in relationships wondering is it them or me or the conspiracy of the cruel universe that promises me a teaser and snatches away the fulfillment. She is a mascot for women who realize that handsome freaks steal and break hearts but the husky gruffs recover and mend them for us. And also be careful with your diary containing brutal, though prejudiced, truth. Don't leave it unattended in the living room in your frenzied search for short, extra-short or thong-short knickers in the wardrobe to impress the man. Who knows, he might just find you irresistible in your tummy-constrict hold-up worsted pants.

 

Movie: Dum Laga Ke Haisha

To reconnect with my mushy Bollywood roots, this weekend, I decided to watch a Hindi film.

The movie I selected was anything but mushy.

The Indian love stories of the 90s were so stereotypical with the eternal avowal of love before plunging into deathly rapids from a cliff or stark rebellion against unyielding parents with "pyar mein jeena aur pyar mein marna" ultimatum with clutched poison vial, that resembled a cough syrup bottle, that film makers would have dreaded to manufacture any other conciliatory plot lest their experimental films tanked at the box office for not having pandered to the tragedy-hooting youthful crowd. With the turn of the century, the love stories too adapted to general sensibilities and modern romances in which portrayal of love had to be grounded in ordinary lovemaking prepositions of a banal couple than such heedless extremities. Realism! Naturalism! Make it look like something the audience could invest familiarity in! I know him. I know her. I know such romance. He was my bhayya. She was my bhabhi. That was my didi.

DLKH isn't a comical romance. DLKH isn't a profound romance. It isn't even vintage and conservative romance though set in Haridwar for a time when cassette recording was in vogue. Then, what is it? A slow-stirred romance between the pudding-faced Prem (played by: Ayushmann Khurrana) and butter-larded Sandhya (played by: Bhumi Pednekar).

Prem, a high school dropout working in his family-owned audio and video recording shop, daydreams of marrying a slender and beautiful bride to flaunt in his neighborhood. Sandhya , a comely romantic who always wanted to get hitched and play a devoted wife since she was a child, is preparing for her teacher's training course. They both commit into an uncertain marriage coaxed by the elders of their respective families. After the wedding, Sandhya attempts to melt the cold rebuff of Prem over with her fun-loving spirit in choosing a barrel-sized silk gown and erotic videos borrowed to suggest intimacy unbeknownst to the prying elders of her in-law's family. Prem repels to her every seduction thus leaving Sandhya confused over her sex appeal as an overweight. Though Prem snubs her on the first night, he consummates their marriage on the second night. But soon, the fine cracks in their unloved marriage blow up one night when Prem in a drunken anguish shouts aloud to his mates that Sandhya is so repulsively fat that mating with her is harder than enduring hell, thus humiliating Sandhya in a gathering and provoking her to slap him. She decidedly walks out of his joint-family house and life the next day and returns to her parents home.

In presumptuous and light-witted households where the father reprimands the son to use a condom and not seed babies till their economic conditions improve and where the mother goads her daughter to borrow blue films to seduce the damadji, both Prem and Sandhya after their breakup introspect the lack of selfhood and independent ambition in their life. In a mocked reconciliation as a run up to their impending divorce, both unite again as a couple but this time as solitary and reflective drifters than spited and disillusioned partners.

As any cheerful movie would have it, this movie too brings them both together not from any endearing virtue but engulfing vulnerability that each senses in the other. A shaken-up vulnerability to reclaim their wounded pride. While Prem decides to retake his tenth exam, Sandhya is offered a teacher job in Meerut. In their determined pursuits they sense a belonging in each other to overturn the imposed biases they had to endure as a down-and-out man and snooty educated woman. Well, there is certainly the much-awaited endearment too that transpires in a local piggy-back race called Dum Lage Ke Haisha in which the husband has to carry his wife on her back and race to win the coveted ten thousand prize money.

Against all odds, beyond all hope, with no hurt between them, with no falter to bond again, in an unspoken promise, for the unattended strength, before any further dissension, after the viable affection even in strange and forced marriage, Prem participates with Sandhya in the race and wins the prize and her trust both.

Prem continues to haul Sandhya all the way from the finish line of the race to home running unstoppable in joy and pride in his eagerness to kindle his love and smooch her. The film went on to win the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi in 2015. I loved the film and the performances of the lead pair. As recounted, Prem and Sandhya, the characters in whom I, as an audience, could gleefully and loudly invest familiarity in! I know him, I know her, I know that uplifted romance. He was my bhayya. She was my bhabhi. That was my didi. She was my friend. No, that was my undeterred buttered-larded teacher married to the unflinching pudding-faced uncle.

 

Wanton Cute

I replay my Ning thoughts to offline and real friends.

I just sent the Dum Lage Ke Haisha review to a friend. He hurriedly replied: Do you write reviews also?

Eh, what, review, nada. I assured him that such maniacal ink should be honored as jottings and mumblings than proficient undertakings. Moreover no competent reviewer would employ phrases like "butter-larded" and "pudding-faced" in their writing. To that he replied, "But you write cute". I pretended to be uninterested. Hah! I just scratch thither and hither, to which, he further texted, "You write wanton cute."

Wanton Cute sounds like a Chinese broth. I was tempted to clarify such feisty moniker on me. What kind of cute is that? Sustainable and green cute or explosive and red cute. Being a pretentious woman, I fake certain impassivity though every nerve in me is hankering to clarify that mysterious phrase. What could 'wanton cute' possibly mean? Reckless cute?! Prodigal cute?! What kind of cute is my writing.

When men make passing remarks, they are capable of being needlessly and annoyingly terse. On the other hand, woman are capable of epic interpretations. Bawdy cute?! Brazen cute?! What kind of cute is that? Would it not have been sensible of him to have expounded on that 'wanton cute'. You might say, would it not befit me to ask him, dude, what's a 'wanton cute'. No, as a woman I am supposed to be unaffected by stray charm and as a man he is supposed sense the unsensible hesitation in me.

Back to 'wanton cute', the origin of this blather, why cannot men be superfluous in their speech for the woman to grasp the wanton need of the hour. What the heck is that modifier? Aimless cute?! Worthless cute?! Or, want on cute!

 

Take A Hike

I logged in today to fold up the "Telltale Natives" story but reviewed the film DLKH. Then, was distracted by the 'Wanton Cute' conversation. As I settle down to peck my wayward story, I further linger on a thoughtful gesture I came across few days ago in relationship forum. I randomly clicked a thread and was bewildered by a coda to the OP which read:

Brutally thoughtful and preemptive gesture for an advice column. True, no way any OP could see the pragmatism in any unsugared analysis. Since this 'take a hike' reluctance to yield to even sensible prevarications is universal and not limited to specific human conditions, I am taking the liberty to tangentially explore this precocious gesture with no context or background. Just ...why is it hard to sense common wisdom in our youth.

If someone had told me the same in my youth, I would have pulled their teeth out and asked them to take a hike toothless.

But why? Why was I that impetuous creature and what had changed? Why would common sense not appeal to me? Why would even credible advice at odds to my own delusion slight me? Have I outgrown my juvenility? Did I? How? Didn't I? Why not?

Many claim to acquire wisdom and maturity in advanced age. Does our hoarded empirical knowledge reform us? I paused.

Advancement in age is not the ease to assimilate outward experiences and harvest latent wisdom, but the recognition of the finest problem-solving technique in human history. A problem can not be eliminated but be toppled only with another problem. The hard affirmations we seek from our partners and families to restore our intimate faith and rightful pride are eventually discredited not because we have locked in on profound wisdom but ...because.....undoubtedly...it is only ...because ...of a ....grey hair strand! You heard it right. Grey hair! Women might not remember their special first kiss or their very special first romance but they would undoubtedly remember the shock on sighting the first grey hair. But I am too young, grey hair?!

That black and silky hair we had taken for granted since birth, when shows signs of aging, is the ultimate challenge as all other snags till then cower like timid insect bites. On seeing that errant grey hair, you would hurry to a saloon and inquire the dyeing techniques. You would be astounded by the overwhelming shades of black! You would dash home and inquire with your partner: "My hair was just black but now I am to decide between charcoal black and jet black and iPhone's space black to dye my hair." You would get so involved in your latest color-shade conundrum that every primeval setback up until that saloon visit seems meaningless and silly. All the earned affirmations and wrested apologies we fought for years loose their significance in that singular moment.

In few years when the dye troubles appear to have been streamlined, then comes the devastating news from the doctor that your wobbly knee caps have worn off. What the heck is a knee cap worn off? Why would caps even wear off when they are meant to protect relentless ..also ...those caps performed fine till yesterday, only a slight pain. How did this red blip appear on my neck? Why is my arm wobbly like jelly? What happened to the muscle? The bones ...osteoporosis! I was fine till yesterday ...I mean till the hair turned grey.

Old age isn't newfound wisdom but oversight we develop on marginal annoyances in life with our newfound challenges in our decrepitude.

Hair, bones, paper-thin knee caps, jellied arms and red blips overturn our other supposedly critical problems with misfits in our families. We can no longer attend to whines as we deliberate on the nervous task to pick a shade of black dye. We no longer seek retributions to our indignities as we ponder on our thinning knee caps. We don't forgive, or forget, but overlook past contempt, offences, aspersions because we just realized that bones hidden in those jellied arms can snap just like that.

Age depletes our enthusiasm to indulge in mindless scrapes with newer and uncharted and destined ache that displaced our hitherto self-inflicted ache. And remember, your world turned upside down with that first grey strand.

We inherit no approaching wisdom with age but only the common sense of cultivating the blithe and 'seize the moment' spirit to overlook and abandon the petty annoyances of life with whatsoever black shade still lingers on our head. Which brings me to why I would have pulled out the tooth and sent to the hike because back then, in my heady youth, mulling over insubstantial restitution, with no grey hair, I would never have heeded to even my own post that I have written today.

 

The Treachery in Compliments

I sit down one more time to finish the pending "Telltale Natives" story but then I am troubled by this pressing confusion. Have you ever noticed how we are dismissive of compliments from sweet friends notorious for being cloy and dispensing gratifying compliments with no sense or reason.

Oh! So extraordinary!
Oooh! This is amazing!
Oh la la! You are stupendous.

...these candied remarks don't excite us as we are stultified on hearing such treacle from those eternally sweet friends. Their intent is earnest but their execution is overblown. However, once a while, when our amateur handiwork is sighted by those whom we regard as the connoisseurs of fine tastes and superior observation, and they flippantly remark with a "you are articulate", we swirl giddy in exhilaration. We dreamily spin to their impoverished remark rather than cartwheel in the bloated remarks of our dear friends. We are annoyed and confused. Why do these discerning eyes hold such sway on us even in their sparse and flat voice? You are articulate. What is that supposed to communicate? May be it is just an offhand gesture disguised as customary compliment. Yet, these customary and lean and restrained gestures missing accredited modifiers even like "nice" and "great" , as in "you are nicely/greatly articulate", transfuse us with strange mirth. You are articulate, still ceaselessly reverberates in our pompous minds.



Why we we choose these austere savants to inflict such agitation in us. You are articulate! That's it or should I wait for deferred completion of that economized compliment.

Should we even be affected by any form of whatsoever compliment? Righto, now I am on the right track.

In The Donna Reed Show, our protagonist, the cheerful and quick-witted mum of the fictional Stone family, provided extraordinary and amazing and stupendous insight on compliments. She said,

"Women are only nice to other women when they feel sorry for them.
If they really envy another woman, they slander her.
That's a compliment."



Going by her overturn of what it means to compliment someone, I should cultivate unconcern to even a vague compliment because to praise someone is to feel sorry for them. I must relish and draw out the most visceral form of compliment which is envy in the other person. Am I going in the right track. Awesomely!

Next time I hear a compliment even a deficient remark like "you are articulate", I would strive harder to exact envy over that remiss. Yee-hee!

With these never-ending meanderings, I doubt if I would sit put to complete the "Telltale Natives" story. Sigh!

 

Bukbuk Scribe

I have a group of friends, three to be precise, who sense that I yammer somewhere online about us. I haven't mentioned the exact IP address of the website but they aren't much into blogging that they would seek me out in this hideout.

They are ever surprised of my solitary blather, mind you, not of my capability to blather but my insistence to blather in solitude. I convince them of the De Profundis works composed in isolation and in exile and in prison. I enjoy yammering in solitude about my vain observations. I also tell them of the origin and motive of this lazy undertaking to improve my language.

Recently, one of them asked me, "Has your language improved?"

I thought for a moment.

"Earlier I used to scritch bird-sized tweets but now I scratch giraffe-sized essays."

I don't know how to evaluate my improvement. Have I even improved? The grammar, the structure, the timing, has anything improved at all.

Like a pentimento my writing is heavily edited that sometimes I rehash a post which remarkably loses all traces of original composition. I have honed my editing virtuosity for sure.

I am not considered grave in my circle of friends and those who talk to me for three minutes can easily infer that I am harmless to anyone but myself in my overshot and frivolous ambitions. So my haphazard text though redolent of hieroglyphic musings is only decipherable to me. Notwithstanding, has my speed improved at least? I don't know. But certainly the giraffe-sized essays protrude to greater claim now than those bird-sized tweets, which means, either my speed to type or my ferocity in absurdity, something has cranked up.

Alas, I am supposed to write up part-II of my self-indulgent narratives on modern romance. I hurry up the conversation in my eagerness to wrap up this wretched story I intend to complete. She laughingly cuts the call with ..."you are such a bukbuk". Eh, bukbuk?!

 

The Conversation
(Interlude) ​

The Nilakantans are as chaotic a family in the mornings as the savage bulls in the Pamplona Festival.

"Poorni, did you see my phone anywhere? Last time, you were spying on my FB. I know. Where is it?" He growls from the living room while rummaging through the sofa cushions.

"I have no idea what you are talking about. Your reunion pictures are so ugly that I need no spying on you." She hollers from the bedroom amidst crunched papers all around her.

Adi walks up to in her bedroom and cocks his head.

"You didn't find even my college hottie Meeta slightly threatening?"

"Puuuf! No one has that charm and wits and ingenuity of this Poorni. Your college hotties were wax dolls and even today in their elastic smiles they look weird and funny and not threatening to the wild charm and sharp wit and enormous ingenuity of this Poorni"

"OK, Ms Enormous Ingenuity, tell me, where is my phone? Where did you dump it after 'spying' on your innocent husband"

"I am busy, cannot you see. I am supposed to finish this 'Telltale Natives' episode. Why don't you read my stories and tell me what you think of them." She springs up from the bed and locks her arms around his neck. "Read them."

"Ooo no, no, don't involve me in your sappy love stories. Boy meets girl. Fall in love. Keep me away."

She drops her mouth open in amusement. "Sappy love stories? What? Your foot! My love stories are jaunty and contemporary. My characters Freya, Vasanti, and Dhanya are spirited voices of natural and goofy romances. My stories are not your 'Laila and Majnu' or 'Romeo and Juliet' beat-up tales. These voices are original. These romances are —"

"Ms Ingenuity, Juliet was fourteen when she fell for Romeo. Cut her some slack and you carry on with your 'jaunty' and 'contemporary' romances. Also, you look utterly delicious."

"That is not the point." She pinches his nose.

"That is the only point I want to make before I head for office. Your button nose is yummy delicious ". He nuzzles against her nose. "I must leave now. You carry on with your Vasantis and Dhanyas." He bids her.

Poorni climbs down the bed and paces in the bedroom. Sappy love stories? Wait, till he returns. She heads to the living room clutching loose papers and a scraped pencil. She thumps on the sofa and maniacally scratches away while occasionally blinking in her wispy cloud-thoughts.