R. Ramachandran

R. Ramachandran (1923 - 2005) lived the life of a poet though he wrote rarely. If you'd asked him about his reasons to write, he would've shrugged it off wondering why he wrote them in the first place! The writer vexed with existential questions of life's absurdity and randomness, creative art as its byproduct was equally absurd and meaningless.

He had lived his youth in the pristine splendor of pre-modern India and in the slow pace of village and small town habitats. Yet he felt the disquiet beneath the surface whenever a gentle draft helps a dead leaf tumble down to certain death or when faint sunshine spreads across green valleys under the gloom of rain-laden clouds. He considered himself merely a conduit to record the angst hard enough to lose oneself in pursuit of the glory of awards or membership in literary cabals!

Here

Here
an enchantment that bloomed like the sky
flitting about and evanescent -
a yearning that swelled like sunshine
a sorrow that grew like shadows
a silence that condensed like the night.
Here
who will ask for who and about what?

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Symphony

In the night
my heart played a symphony
I composed yoking
the Earth's eloquent
wide pastures' green,
and the Sky's boundless
silent deep blue.
Presto, I heard the clamor
of Time's roaring laughter
as it hurtled away
hauling death on its back.

note: Free translation of two poems from Malayalam by yours truly.

Irfan

I saw Irfan for the first time on television in the eighties. It was a different world with the good old Doordarshan as the only channel for visual media artists who themselves were barely emerging out of the long shadows of theater and literature. Primetime serials carried ambitious projects upon the shoulders of the middle of the road heavyweights like Nasrudheen Shah, Om Puri, Shyam Benegal, etc.

There was Kathasagar (1986), a haphazard collection of episodes loosely based on short stories from world literature. One of them was Chekhov's Ward No. 6 in which Irfan played the role of a doctor opposite Pankaj Berry, the hard-headed inmate in the mental asylum. Irfan presented the turmoil boiling over in the doctor's mind as the doctor's empathy for the patient evolves when he begins to question the sanity of the world around him. By the end of that twenty-odd minutes, one could see that we just watched something special. Even a casual viewer would make an instant connection with the character, his world and see what Irfan wanted you to see and feel. There was no hint of make-belief or artist pulling his rank. He appeared and behaved like an outsider having a look into the world of television.

Irfan did have more than a look into the hallowed halls of not just Indian cinema, international cinema too. He proved to the world that he had so much more to offer than the stereotypes of Slumdog millionaire. However, what was strikingly remarkable about him was that he kept his endearing persona exactly the same even after more than 30 years of an acting career that scaled incredible heights. Pick any movie, you will know what went through the minds of each of Irfan's characters. Their joys and struggles would appear so real, more so in an Indian setting. Incidentally, the majority of his movies had journeys as a theme, in which Irfaan reveled while unwinding the inner transformation of his own and others' around him. He cherished the quintessential Indian and it was easy for anyone to spot. Irfan has been having a look into them from outside.

In Paan Singh Tomar (2012), there was a scene when Irfan's character has had his chance to avenge the adversary who'd forced him off the edge of endurance and made him lose everything he earned from a lifetime of steeplechases against all odds. He wanted now time to stop and plead his case to his nemesis and ruminate over what could have been; how a callous society failed a soldier and a champion athlete. You'd feel the same anguish you had watching the doctor lose the game of wits with the world in Ward No. 6. Irfan brings you closer to the character and his world again

You wouldn't see Irfan make gratuitous statements for political masters or find him hang out among elites stoking religious divisions. He was still an outsider having a look into the world to redeem it for all of us. He will be missed. RIP.

Pandemic

A virus latched on to the human microbiome and turned this world upside down. It traveled across nations and continents without a passport but used all that humans had achieved over a million years to move from Main street to Mars. Even in the age of travel bans for whimsical reasons, the sudden surge in the spread and the mortality rates have spooked governments and people alike. The systems we have built to shield and preserve ourselves are teetering at the edge of collapse. It is staggering to think that if the Virus was a bit more lethal than it already is, civilization, as we know, could have been facing its worst existential threat. I hope the price to conquer this unseen enemy will not be too high by the time when it will be over.
In the meantime, it is important to keep the senses normal as much as possible when everything normal as we know - daily rides to school, work, grocery stores, weekend visits to family, and friends have been halted. We are quarantining ourselves at home, county, states, and countries to wait out the pandemic and survive. The long line of migrant workers in Delhi walking the longest distance home, doctors, and nurses appealing for supplies and medical equipment from the corners of New Orleans and New Jersey are stark reminders that the system is under heavy stress.
Jose Saramago's dystopian novel Blindness is a chilling inquiry into what makes us human in the face of an epidemic of "white blindness". The eerie sense of panic we feel now is the backdrop of Saramago's story in which the fabric of society is torn apart when the government attempting to contain the contagion with increasingly inept and repressive measures, while overcrowded asylums degrade living conditions surrounded by military. The internees battle each other and burn down the asylum only to find that the army has abandoned the asylum, who afterwards join the throngs of wandering blind people in a devastated city to fight and survive. The story ends with the ailment vanishing as suddenly and inexplicably as it had begun, but not before putting human capacity to cope with its ultimate test.
For our own sake, let's keep everyone's health and wellbeing in our prayers and hope for a flattened curve and cure soon.