Heart goes out to Mutu

Dont know why.

Hot Cheeks, Hard Stones

Ignatz's amorphous cheeks are very hot. Theyre dry and blazing. This could be the exertion from the library, or anti-fungal cream. Kat thinks there isn't another copycub in Bangalore who does this much research for a straight assignment and comes back by autos that always try to cheat with a tour of the Western Ghats and no change. The research to the assignments themselves usually a case of all dressed up and nowhere to go. love it.

Light and a Lampost

Ignatz is besides herself with pleasure and is pleased to report she has made some headway in her assignment due for Sunday. She(he (it)) hasn't put down a word of the article yet but things are cleverly coming together on other sheets of paper which will go some way. Currently in a cafe and eager to piss like a dog at a new lampost. There is no toilet in this cafe and no publictoilets nearby so will look for a lampost at home.

Impending Destitution

It's happened dear pantomimists. Just when I'm teetering towards some balance in my freelancing frolic and need all the stability I can; the sign has come upon me. The sign of certain destitution - by the dawn of the first of December, all personal effects are required to be purged from the family shack and with that the presence of the person behind this blogger. How all this came about is beyond my present patience to commit here, but things were coming to a head. Well atleast there's a month to soundout to distant figures who could pass for friends - and time to pack up and here I think I'll have next to no clothes, lots of underwear and bras but how on earth will I lug my library - serious weeding out necessary here.
I'll keep you posted.

And try out NaNoBloMo - the novel blogging contest. I'm on it too.

Roerichs - How could they?

There's something like falling into a trap of cynicism. It's so easy to blame the State Government for doing nothing for the Roerich estate except appropriate whatever was going for it - because there we had it, the acheivements in the posters standing at the porche: repair of the cracked foundation, repair of the broken Mangalorean roof tiles, repair of the facade, and repair of rear balcony. I thought atleast the State's let Tataguni remain the way it was left. The Supreme Court judgment on the Karnataka government decision to acquire the Roerich Estate is still pending. But if the Government's undirected intentions are marked by anything it has to be the uninspired memorial above their graves, which is slabs of polished granite extending insensitively for some distance to join the more sensible (likely original) brick path leading into the estate. Then I did a bit of googling and this is a bit of what's to know:
-Almost the the entire series of 515 paintings on Kulu Valley are untraceable
-13 sandalwood trees are missing from the Tataguni estate
-Only 115 of the estate's original 340 silver oak trees remain
-Only about 21 pieces remain from the couple's legendary jewellery collection. 319 pieces are missing, with sources hinting at politicians, employees of the estate, 'friends', and even a few police officers playing a part. Rediff.com's M D Riti reported in October 4, 2002:
"The jewellery was the joint collection of Devika Rani, her first husband, the legendary film-maker Himanshu Rai, Svetoslav Roerich and Helena Roerich, and Devika Rani's father M N Chaudhari, who was the first surgeon-general of the Madras presidency at the start of the 20th century."

So there it is, truckloads of manipulators who would find some way to appropriate the Roerich legacy. There are suggestions that in their later years, the Roerichs were more forgetful and had begun to let go. Just the right time for wily caretakers to step in and be their memory. So what were the options left to the Roerich's if they had decided on willing their legacy neatly? Caretakers? They may have considered an agreement with the State binding them to mainting the estate as a ecological reserve, cataloged the collection of paintings and pledged them to museums of repute, even the city's CKP, which they enjoyed frequenting. I'm on the side of Russia’s South India consul-general Mikhail M. Mgeladze - "Roerich wanted this estate to be a world hub of young and seasoned painters. I hope that will happen," he said.

We can only learn.
If you have a legacy, apply yourself to seeing what you want done with it right away, before it turns into a fiasco.

WALKING IN WALKING OUT
There's something inexplicable I did feel: a presence when i entered their home. I should never have gone in because the moment past the threshold, i was mortified by a real sense of desecration. It was a thick stream of vistors making their way in a small bend into the sitting room - that gave a view of the kitchen-dining and bedroom - and out again. Why did I look into the bedroom? This, if anything, was their personal sacred space and here necks craning and eyes peering hungrily into the centre of the bed. Something was wrong letting anyone at all into Tataguni, to say nothing at all of the Government claim and control.
There was Roerich's studio in which hung 14 paintings (I counted twice), among which I could later identify:
-Lakshamma
-Lakshmi
-Mme. Devika Rani Roerich
-Roshan Vajifdar (pic. on top)
(I only have a memory for the portraits. If I go back tommorow, I have a look at them all and add to this.)

These are what I noted among his collection of books (I had to miss out on the authors and publishers in almost every case; had to strain across the restraining chains to make out what little I could; once again if I can I shall update this)
-The Races of Mankind
-Velasquez
-Russian Folk Arts and Crafts
-German Cultural History
-Art of the Autonomous republics of the Russian Federation
-The American Fruit Culturist
-Here is God (Author:Chaman Lal)
-Raphael's Prophetic Almanac
-Short Stories (Chekov)
-Foundations of Buddhism (several volumes or a hundred copies of the same)
-India Materia Medica
-United States Dispersatory
-Konstantin Stanislavsky
-The Secret Doctrine
-Education (Sri Aurobindo and the Mother)
-The Presence of Tibet (Cresset)
-Permanent Red (John Berger)
-Byzantine Art
-Paul Robeson
-Bretton's All about Everything
-War and Peace
-The Spirit of Islam
-What price Crime?
-Life of Swami Vivekananda
-The Wealth of India
-Geology of India
-Butterflies of the Indian Region
-The beautiful Indian Climbers and Shrubs
-Snakes of India
-Cactus
-Le Parler l'amdo
-Coin Collecting as a hobby
-The Science and Arts of Perfumes
-The Essential Oils
-Perfumes, Cosmetics and Soaps

Svetoslav Roerich studied architecture at Columbia University, winning the Grand Prix at the Sesqui-Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1926. Devika Rani studied music, drama, architecture and textile design and apprenticed under Elizabeth Arden.

An Amores Perros review, among other things

This acclaimed flick by first-time director Inarritu came in for raves when it first jumped out 4 years back. So what can I say? Well there are 3 otherwise isolated plots united in one incident: a ballistic car-crash; i loved the way he shows that on the second/third account - out of nowhere. Translated AP goes like: Love's a bitch. And so it is, going by all the crap love entails in the lives of the 3 protags. Ofcourse its unfortunate theyre all said from the man's point; the lady love objects are curd brains who either eventually part their legs then protest or break a family then get crippled or who remain more incorrigible than a dirigible (really?). This film comes with an R rating but I don't know what that was all about. The gore was the dogfights and one carcrash and I still don't understand why some reviewers say they couldn't watch past the opening sequences. The beats and numbers were cool; it's no wonder - Inarritu has deejaying somewhere on his cv. The soundtrack makes the scene of Ramiro's urgent copulation behind racks in the supermarket workplace, seem almost doable.
All the threads are tied in the end, with one guy getting ditched, another getting hitched, and the other getting rich - he makes his confessions and walks with wads of stolen money. And the moral of it all is, you guessed it smarty: Love is a bitch. even if you do get rich.
(For all the people who love watching good-looking men, theres Ramiro and his brother, Octavio. Though Octavio is kind of mesmeric in a dreamyeyed loverboy way, I thought Ramiro was magnetic; always had a thing for the evil kind.)
A good reviewer would have a lot to say about El Chivo; but since I only have pretentions to being one I'll say: he's a committed and powerful vagabond.

There was meant to be a discussion immediately after the screening but clearly they couldnt make up their minds so I didn't stay.
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This week saw the passing away of Derrida of deconstruction fame. This is how a too clever by half Steven Plaut put it in frontpagemag.com:
"He had been conducting a terminal "narrative" with cancer. Well, at least that is the subjective unproven conclusion we have, since, after all, how do we REALLY know that death and cancer exist? ... (deconstruction being) the nonsensical infantile "philosophy" that argues that words have no meaning, there are no facts nor truth ..."

Ofcourse don't depend on Plaut to put it right, you have do the unravelling yourself.
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I'm struggling making out my first invoice. I hope noone dies or the house crashes and I'm the lone survivor left with bills and inheritance tax because one shall most certainly break.

Pi in my Eye

I am an escapist. This is only the second time in recent memory that I've demonstrated it so definitively. The first time was when on the eve of a final year exam paper I was severely unprepared for, I did this: after covering only 1/5th of the syllabus stock, I climbed into my loft, pulled out Gone with the Wind marvelled at the film poster cover art and read the novel, end to end till the exam morning. even down to revisiting the most modestly arousing stretches. This behaviour is nothing short of depraved and a signal of something rugged sounding in psychology.

This time it's a freelance assignment I have to submit on Saturday. I had a whole weekend; sure I did all the relevant reading but something hard was coming in the way of putting it to msword. Then in crucial midweek ie. wednesday, I stole into my sister's room and saw this on her bed: Life of Pi. Who would have though this neighbour of mine, who was going through an Agatha Christie phase (for crying out!), would have the better sense to pick up Pi? I took it away and read it cover to cover and returned it the next day (today). It bears pointing out here that I am a notoriously slow reader in the best of circs. So all this flash reading says something?

As for the assignment, I still have 2 more rolling pages to fix together.
As for Life of Pi - read it!
(I like the way he's mimicked an Indian boy's thoughts but somehow it's easy to see where he was kind of stretching it; like aspects of the Mahabaratha or whatever that only firangs would end up bothering with and other pretty unlikely thinkings.
But Richard Parker and the possibilities are gripping. Read it.)
Yann Martel is exciting.