chaotic order

In 1950, Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” created a sensation in world cinema. It still remains one of the most powerful movies ever made. The movie is about a rape and a murder in a wooded garden, and four different eye-witness accounts of it. Each of the accounts seems equally plausible and true. So, what is the truth? In an attempt to answer this question, Kurosawa cinematically presents different slices of what could be true and asks the viewer to arrive at their own judgments. The movie is at once a dazzling act of cinematic brilliance in its composition and style, and at the same, at a more profound level, a philosophical investigation into the nature of truth, evidence, and interpretation. In the opening shot, with torrential rain beating down on a dilapidated temple, one of the witnesses, a wood-cutter huddling together with a priest, begins the tale with the mysterious statement “ I don’t understand…”. The rest of the movie is an exploration of this question. In his autobiography

Arvind Adiga’s 2008 Booker prize-winning book “The white tiger” may not be remembered in the long run for its flowery prose or style, but it will certainly be appreciated for its hard-hitting tale about Indian society in the twenty-first century. When I read the book many years ago, I remember finishing it in less than five hours — a rarity for a Booker prize-winning work, which is usually dense and multi-layered. But “The White Tiger” in contrast was a breezy read. The pages turned with effortless ease, the language was uncomplicated, and the voice of Balram Halwai, the first-person narrator and the hero of the tale floats through the book, hypnotically recounting his life’s journey from a poverty-stricken, slavery ridden rural India, to an Indian metropolis, and becoming an entrepreneur and a master of his destiny. One would find the story surreal in certain places, exaggerated in a few episodes, but the overall narrative flows with rapid pace, a sure pen, and tremendous convictio

It is one hundred and thirty years since Oscar Wilde’s enigmatic, mysterious, and beautifully written novella, (the only full-length work he ever wrote) “The picture of Dorian Gray” hit the English book stands after much controversy and criticism. In 1889, The editor of the Lippincotts monthly magazine, J.M Stoddart, met and requested two authors - Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde, to write a novel each for his magazine. Conan Doyle was quick to oblige, and within months submitted the now famous “ The Sign of Four” — the first of the great Sherlock Holmes adventures, but Wilde dilly-dallied. When Wilde finally gave the manuscript of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” to Stoddart in early 1890, the editor loved the writing but was appalled at the story and its implications. He begged Wilde to edit and rewrite some of its chapters. But Wilde refused to budge. The book was finally published in the June edition of the magazine, with an edit of only five hundred words, and nothing more. T