The Beatles Beat - "I'm not afraid, I'm shy!"

This piece was inspired by someone who said
"I'm not afraid, I'm shy!"



Words unsaid...
eyes unmet...
hands unheld...
...leave steps untaken!

A lidded glance
for a proffered hand.
A tentative gesture
with a somewhat smile.
The spoken silence
amid hushed replies.

A hurried exit
so obviously distraught.
A forlorn look
trailing tender thought.
A lingering hope
leaving sanity besot.

Fiercely though you care,
words you'll never say.
People'll never know
the warmth beneath the cold,
and even less...
the love you left untold.

Mehreen Jabbar's "Ramchand Pakistani" - A Truth, Touchingly Told!

It was ironic that I happened to watch the movie "Ramchand Pakistani" the evening before the tragic events unfolded in Mumbai last week. In the light of which, the following comment of Javed Jabbar, the movie's writer-producer, carried special meaning for me:“While the story is very sharply drawn in a political context of extreme polarisation, what it attempts to do is to project the unifying human dimension.” These words gain further significance when tensions appear to be escalating between the two nuclear nations in the aftermath of Mumbai's terrorist attack.

A year or so ago a visitor on my blog recommended the movie 'Ramchand Pakistani' as a must- see movie made by a Pakistani filmmaker, and I'm glad I took his advice. Mehreen Jabbar has made a movie that both warms and shocks the heart . Based on a real event, the movie captures the travails of an accidental and unusual intruder into 'enemy' territory. Jabbar manages to raise some essential questions about how and why national borders heighten and highlight individual differences which would otherwise go unnoticed. The land on this side of the border is no different from what lies on the other side, and accordingly the people living on either side of it have adapted to its peculiarities. This adaptation would normally make people connect, but in this case the border patrol and the white stone demarcations between India and Pakistan ensure that this connect never happens. It is against this backdrop that Jabbar's unusual protagonist steps in as the intruder who accidentally ventures onto the 'other side'. What unfolds is a series of events presented with utmost sincerity and simplicity, and it is to the credit of the cast, Rashid Farooqui, Nandita Das, Usmaan Abbasi, and Navaid Jabbar, that despite the matter-of-fact narrative, the viewer often has a catch in his throat watching helpless innocents fall prey to the senseless and insensitive mandates of politicking.

Watching this movie reminded me of a 20 minute documentary I had watched some time ago titled "The Little Terrorist", and I want to believe that both these movies are based on that same true life event that happened during the Kargil standoff. "The Little Terrorist" was a telling comment on the ludicrousness of border disputes between two countries that are home to a people sharing a long and glorious history together, and are therefore culturally akin in their lifestyles especially in their passion for Cricket. "Ramchand Pakistani", takes that affinity a step further and poignantly lays out that 'closeness' of the two people as Ramchand, the accidental intruder, finds himself imprisoned on the other side of the border.

Three Cups of Tea - Philanthropy with a difference.

"One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . .
One School at a Time."

"The first cup of tea, you're a stranger; the second cup, a friend; and the third cup, you're family," Mortenson says. "And for the family, they're prepared to do anything, even die."

The Karzais , the Musharrafs, and the Bushes may want to borrow a page from Mortenson's book Three Cups of Tea to see what it really takes to forge inroads into human hearts so apparently different in terms of their color, gender, nationality, language, and religion.

I have my friend Liz to thank for gifting me this novel before she set out on her undefined travels across Central America; what an apt book choice Liz. I'm sure Mortenson's pursuit for peace-without-borders will color your travels as well.

Three Cups of Tea is a popular buy at almost all major book stores across the USA as it has been on the NYT best seller list for the last 16 weeks and is currently heading that list. The novel has grabbed various literary awards in the last two years like the 2007 Kiriyama Prize and Time magazines Asia Book of the Year. It has also been called a publishing phenomenon because of its soaring sales in record time. The two authors, David Oliver Relin and Greg Mortenson, have their individual websites that provide interesting and accurate information about their adventurous work in various parts of Asia.I enjoyed this work of non-fiction as it unraveled some mysteries and misunderstandings that existed in my mind about people living in the so called Taliban- friendly area on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Misconceptions such as these, ones we often carry for a lifetime, filter down into our next generation, and the next, and thus borders are drawn and walls built. Human beings who essentially are the same, in that they care about their families and feel pain when they get hurt, end up perceiving each other as foreigners, with unbridgeable differences that are frequently negotiated with ammunition and deception. A novel such as this provides an alternative to the use of force to bridge this gap of misunderstanding.

Greg Mortenson, the narrator and the main character in this piece of non-fiction, is an ordinary man who takes upon himself to do the extraordinary; build grounds for peace in a 'foreign land' in the most unusual way: by providing education to the female child in a male dominated society, and in an area torn apart by violence and ethnic strife.

Three Cups of Tea speaks volumes for the indomitable human spirit, and is a must read for those of us who seek the silver lining to our 'clouded' world.

Bloggers Unite for Refugee Rights

Snow in October!
An unlikely fall
that bothered one'n all:
"Never happened before"
"Frozen down to skin"
"What! A white Halloween!"

How some 'firsts' bother us!

YET...

there are those we don't remember:
The Holocaust that needn't have happened
except that all those eyes had not opened.

Look what happened in Darfur:
while world leaders humanity feigned
hell broke loose and barbarity reigned.

Will this be another shameful 'first':
The Congo nation's pitiful plight;
a people pleading in fearful flight.

How many 'firsts' will History reap?
How many 'firsts' until we see
that one man's home
can't be anothers to keep?
Is our planet to become a graveyard of displaced refugees?

Barack Obama - "A Change we Believe in"

Change,
the ultimate hope!

fears gone
tempers calmed

visions cleared
obstacles removed

threat disarmed
innocence harbored

poverty checked
hunger lessened

faith instilled
suspicions cleared

gunfire silenced
peace established

Alas,
change is but a phase.

What will it take
in order to sustain
a 'change we believe in'?

Vote Obama is the claim!

Singleton's 'Seduced by Memory'

"Jeremy Hightower enters Donna’s life and claims to have nurtured a forty-four-year love for her. Swept up by the fairy tale, she allows herself to fall in love, only to realize that Jeremy has a past that could interfere with their future together."

"Ollie Singleton's maiden novel "Seduced by Memory' came to me via an unusual route. iditis gave it to me saying "Tell me what you think of it." Not given to serious reading, I made sure this novel was not one of those that I'd abandon due to sheer exhaustion of having read and reread the same page many times over! Well, I was assured that was not the case, and that proved to be true. By the time I finished my first reading I was already a fourth of the way into the book. The main character was interesting, but became less complex as the story progressed. Though an easy novel to read, I'm not sure what made it so: it's simplicity of plot or its sheer readability.

As a first write, the novel holds promise for this author, and I would probably want to read her second novel if she were to write one."

MM

Dewdrops on cobwebs

(Click on picture)


The finer things in life
that we often fail to see,
may carry cherished dreams
that never come to be.


The silky cobweb spine
hugs misty drops in twine
though wanting to comply
does nature's law defy.

The freshness caught my eye
such beauty couldn’t deny
of harmony so balanced
with dew that web enhanced.

Those drop would not be seen
if thunderous poured the rain;
the dewdrop would've drained
if weighty water rained.

The beauty captured thus
would only crystallize
if mist and fallen dew
fell gently from the skies.

Dewdrop on a cobweb
seems frailty ultimate
yet on that bush that morning
did my thinking complicate!

'Before the Rains' - A Role-Reversed Sequel to E. M. Forster's 'Passage to India'?

The storyline of ‘Before the Rains’ did not enthrall, yet it isn’t a movie I could forget easily, and for two reasons: its surreptitiously sensuous setting and its obvious parallels with E. M. Forster’s Passage to India.

The movie is set during the British colonial period in India, sometime in the 1930s, and it is perhaps a low budget film which accounts for its cast and its low key marketing (if any at all). It is the rich and vibrant colors of Kerala, the setting of the movie, that hold the audience in complete awe. This rapture soon melts into a willing submission of the audience, almost a seduction, to the luscious landscape of South Western India. The photography in the film has opened up a new tourist haven - a tropical coastal paradise. I wouldn’t be surprised if this movie does to Kerala what Brokeback Mountain did to Wyoming.

Apparently, ‘Before the Rains’ is adapted from the story “Red Roofs” presented by Israeli director Dany Verete in his movie Yellow Asphalt; Red Roofs is about an illicit relationship between an Israeli Jewish farmer and his Bedouin maid. However, it was not this Israeli connection that I was constantly reminded of during the movie; it was E.M.Forster’s characters, Mrs. Moore and Mr. Fielding, from Passage to India that kept flashing in my mind. Director Sivan’s chief protagonist, TK (Rahul Bose), is the Indian counterpart of Forster’s Fielding in Passage to India. Both characters are intelligent and sensitive human beings, who though wishing to be loyal to their own, are bipartisan in thought and ultimately in their actions as well which ultimately leads to major changeovers in the plot. In Forster’s novel, it is the native Indian, Dr. Aziz, who is accused of a physical assault on a memsahib, whereas in Before the Rains it is Planter Moore who is under suspicion for having an affair with his married Indian housekeeper. The parallel does not end there; there is a Mrs. Moore in the movie, who, coincidentally, has the very name of her Forsterian counterpart. She, like the other Mrs. Moore from Passage to India, is aware of the real nature of the relationship between her husband and the maid, and yet decides to keep quiet about it. Mrs Moore in Passage to India cannot live with the guilt of having kept silent on the Malabar incident and dies on her way to England; the Mrs. Moore of this film knowing the truth, cannot voice it, but decides to go back to England after ending her marriage.

As I said at the beginning, I haven’t been able to forget the movie. I’m still trying to figure out whether the obvious parallels between Before the Rains and E.M. Forster’s Passage to India were a chance happening, or did Santosh Sivan plan this movie as a role-reversed sequel to E. M. Forster’s Passage to India to explore the power and volatility of forbidden/ illicit relationships within a charged socio-political setting.

I would watch this one, if only for its seductive setting – Kerala.