Indian Writing

I liked it very much. It’s a Mumbai film - does the city so well, including the north-south commute, the cooperative society, the Malabar Hill in-laws.

Also the greed, obsessiveness, and desperation.

The tapping on the car window at traffic signals.

The lifetime it can take to move from a 1-BHK to a 2-BHK.

And the music by Indian Ocean so well integrated into the film, especially the song that plays during Rajat Kapoor’s bus ride.

Definitely one of the better films of the year. Good work, Jaideep Varma.

(Picture Movie Talkies)

From this superb collection edited by Jeet Thayil for Penguin India, this poem by Gopal Honnalgere (1942-2003):
(I can’t seem to get the text formatting quite right, sorry)

The Donkeys

maybe it’s a legend
I don’t remember his name
a tibetan poet sat and wrote
poems poems poems all his life
when he was eighty nine
and with a mirror-like bald
head approaching death
he had with him three
donkey-loads of poems
he wanted to give them away
to a prayer wheel turning monastery
he carried them on three hired donkeys
and began to walk thinking about life
it was a god-freezing winter
the old man started shivering
and couldn’t walk
he made a bonfire of
one of his donkey-loads of poems
and warmed himself sitting near the fire
when he was about to start on the journey
a thought came into his mind -
he saw the donkeys, recalling one of his poems
on donkeys, the donkeys too were shivering
he again made a bonfire
of his two remaining donkey-loads
and made the donkeys stand
around the fire in trinity

the critics say
a single unburnt line of his poetry
discovered by posterity
is enough to express all his perception
you
search
for the donkey
you
ride
on