chaotic order

Jottings - Slice of life - 435 ( Awaara - vintage Raj Kapoor and Nargis) Growing up in India, Raj Kapoor’s 1951 social drama “Awaara” was always in the background of our cultural lives. If not anything else, the lilting Shankar-Jai Kishan Mukesh number “Me Awaara Hoon” with Raj Kapoor tramping about the city expounding the virtues of socialism in his Chaplinesque stride, was always on the radio or the television in some show or the other. We were constantly made aware by avid cinema lovers and people around, that the movie was widely acclaimed as a classic not only in India but across the world, especially in the erstwhile soviet union, where the virtues of a nobody-man, an Awaara, blended well the communistic philosophy prevalent at that time. It was secretly whispered into our ears that the sizzling nine-year romance between the talented and beautiful Nargis, the heroine of “Awaara” and the married Raj Kapoor, began on the sets of “Awaara” and continued surreptitiously until Nar

Jottings - Slice of life - 441 ( Sir - is love enough? a sensitive and beautiful cinematic masterpiece By Rohena Gera. A must watch!!) It is not often in Indian cinema, do we see films that reflect the best qualities of the cinematic art form. Most of our movies slide down the slippery slope of commercialism, and even good stories, which can be told without any commercial ornamentation, are timidly told with an eye on the cash register only. This is tragic but true. How many times have we not seen a good and socially meaningful story lose its meaning halfway through the movie, and the director lets the story meander aimlessly for lack of conviction or unsure of purpose? How many times have we not painfully seen a film that begins in right earnest to expose the oppressive social stratification in India, and only ends up creating larger than life heroes of ordinary characters and impossible endings? How many times has a film purporting to be a true commentary on the dignity of labor,

Jottings - Slice of life - 442 ( Adolf Eichmann, The trial of the century, Hannah Arendt’s bold hypotheses and its resonance in modern times) ( Note to readers: Even by my own standards, this is a lengthy essay. I wrote the draft of it yesterday night and added a few more paragraphs today morning. Hannah Arendt is one of my favorite thinkers. The events of the last few months, since the general election in the US, led to me read and think again about Arendt’s views on democracy, totalitarianism, and the role of the individual in it. I apologize for the length, but I do hope, you will find the story and the subject interesting enough to pursue your own analysis of these ideas, if you wish to. ) The eleventh of May 1960 was a pleasant fall evening in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The jacaranda flowers were beginning to bloom, and the air fragrant with the sweetness of the season. A Middle-aged man who called himself Ricardo Klement - bald, thin, a pointed nose, with a slight stoop, got

Jottings  -  Slice of life  -  440 ( Minimalism  -  a few thoughts on the philosophy of simple living without the oppressive burden of accumulated things, and a Netflix documentary on the topic) There is absolutely no doubt that the modern age is one of relentless consumerism. Never in the history of mankind has man had so many goods and services to choose from, and more importantly, delivered to one’s doorsteps with a click of a button. If 2020 has unequivocally proved anything at all, it is how much we depend upon Amazon for whatever we wish ( except human trafficking) and how irrelevant our brick and mortar stores are fast becoming. Nothing surprising about this state of affairs at all. This was the promise of capitalism at the turn of the century ( in fact from Adam smith’s time in the 18th century) that every want will find a manufacturer who will have the means to fulfill it, and not only that, each material good in demand, will find multiple manufacturers offering variants of th