Sunday, August 12, 2012

Sleeplessness, Movies and Stories

I am sleepless that is why I am writing. I enjoy it. As simple as that. No grand design, no dreams, no agenda. This is what I do, and I do when I like. It is addictive. It is not serious for now but in future, may be when I really want, and when it really matters and has value, I have plenty of manuscripts. Novels, stories, poems, essays… When something will be written, it will be serious, it will be the day. For now, it is just ‘works in progress. It is my own writing’s self-potency check, just an unprofessional one. It is like English 101 scratch, something different that it has is- its rough like a never ploughed land, no editions, no readers, no propagandas, no peer reviews, no paraphrasings, no stupid rules, no political correctness, no fear of priests, no obligation to fulfill parent’s dreams, no intention to hurt fundamentalists, no hidden ambitions. It is just me. I am it. I am writing myself.

The Olympic is over. I don’t care for it anyway. There are some funny games. Few games are ridiculous. And believe it or not, in years to come, we will find out that most of the athlete there were involved were on steroid, or got some hip injection or some other drugs. Nevertheless Olympics is a sporting event alright. Greek can have some odd sense in having fun sometime but they became the foremost scientist to create such an entertaining event. They did this to please their God Zeus. Later many countries joined and now it is an international event. Peoples’ emotion run high. And America is now proud that it stands on top of the medal table, also winning women gold in soccer. Only for national pride and medal tally, but not anything else would be Americans that interested in soccer otherwise.

The hailstorm ruined my Sunday soccer fun. Watched a lot of movies this weekend although I was busy reading some stuff. I have loved some of the movies and sometime even a movie can influence person’s life. Not that it has done mine, but I enjoyed watching movies. In 90s I watched each and every Hindi movie that was made. Soon I started getting annoyed. Those days are gone, and I don’t have that much patience and time anymore. English movies are usually short and to the point. It is direct. Back in 90s I remember Hindi movies were very cautious in showing skin, or kisses on screen. People would burn the cinema hall if they see any ‘heroine’ lip-locking any ‘hero’. It was a big deal. People idolize these idiots inasmuch as that they would copy their hairstyle, clothes, speeches etc. They even made statue, they worship the celebrities. General public touch their dirty feet, still now.

Sex was taboo in movies. If they had to show two lovers kiss, they would come close and some sunflower would appear in front of the camera and cover the kissing couple up. Film director could not show skin or sex or anything for that matter. In each and every movie, there would be a ‘RAPE SCENE’ where a villain would rape a protagonist’s beloved sister. The audience would get glimpse of some chest, thighs, and funny screams of the actresses. People enjoyed and craved for it. For many Indian public, Mithun was the best actor ever. Mostly Indian but sometimes a Madhesi Nepali would rent some old time Mithun movies and feels content, when in the movie; he takes revenge of his sister’s rape and kills all the antagonists. Indian court never gave justices in these movies. This was story in each and every movies made at that time, believe it or not. Slight changes but those were the themes. But now Indian cinemas have changed. They show everything; sometime they are worse than Hollywood movies. I bet many Nepalese have seen the poster of ‘Raat ki Rani’, ‘Pyasi Jawani’ in some dark street, ‘bad hoods’ and some open cities in Bhaktapur and Kathmandu. I really wondered what they were.  It was probably the most skin showing movies of that time, I am not sure. It definitely looked tempting and curious for teen agers and old perverts who would pay lots of money to watch someone get raped in a movie. It was underground business as far as I remember.

With the emergence of disco restaurants, cabin bars etc. sex came out of its taboo status. I have no idea how Nepalese film are nowadays. They had terrible actors, bad acting, worse directors, child raping producers, and no good stories. I have no idea as I have stopped seeing any Nepalese and Indian movies at all. Sometimes one or two movies were made that made some impression on me. Sometime a novel is converted to a movie by a literature loving guy. I watch it. I want to see those movies more often. My reading is often eased by the movies, from visual and audial displays on screen. On the other hand, the imagination when reading a book is so addictive and ecstatic that sometime a movie based on a novel can completely destroy it. I have become lazy and sometime I listen to audio books so that I don’t have to read, mostly when I am tired. Although I appreciate the technology and efficiency, listening audio book is not as amazing intelligently experience-wise. Reading, revising, stopping, and reading again the lines and paragraphs of the books, the actual prints where you turn over the page and remember of another character in another book is not as smooth in audio books. Again audio book readers don’t read as fast in places as I read and don’t skip anything as I do if I am scanning. I do not much enjoy the audio books. I like movies sometime based on novel but then again all movies based on novel are not that good. Just for the sake of it, I watched ‘Old Man and The Sea’ and ‘Animal Farm’ recently to freshen up memories. They are not as good when you read and develop a connection. I am more a reader than a listener of a reader.

Sudarshan dai was a good listener. I often read, explained, and criticized many of my course book stories and poems, and his and sometime an odd, difficult book like ‘Thus Spake Zarathrusta’. My friend Nirmal was a good listener but he could think about stories differently too. I told him about many stories I read. Well, not everyone is Aesop but I loved the old school course book where we studied about Aesop’s fables and thought myself of being one day. The intelligence and mediocre stories, yet very popular and daily moral stories of ‘Thousand and One Nights’ or ‘Arabian Nights’ are still fresh in my mind. My favorite was ‘Fox and The Sour Grape’. Who does not know the story? Human psychology is just fox-like.

Irving Texas
8/12/2012  



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