Bhoomi Malayalam

T. V. Chandran's latest movie Bhoomi Malayalam is a mixture of stories, told from the viewpoints of seven women. The stories span sixty years of Kerala history, and show the difficulties that women undergo because of society and its restrictions. The seven women are from all strata of society: the sportswoman who has to shelve her dreams because of marriage; the factory worker whose brother gets killed in a political clash; the Muslim journalist whose husband doesn't like her profession; the girl whose brother gets stoned to death by the police; the housewife whose husband's first love is Communism; the rich kid whose mind is turned by books; the poor woman who is raped and killed by a rich landlord. The threads of their stories are woven together in this movie.

An excellent concept, yes. Probably a sign of hope in these times when the standards of the Malayalam film industry are said to be dipping. However, having watched the movie, I have to admit that the idea has not been translated to the screen particularly well.

The first problem with the movie is terrible acting. Except for a couple of the actors (I liked the woman who plays the Muslim journalist) most them over-act and ham and generally make the viewer wince. Nedumudi Venu and Indrans, accomplished actors both of them, were on screen for about two minutes each. Secondly, while the women are all linked to each other somehow or the other, the Director decided that he needed another, more obvious link. So he put each of the women in a red stone quarry and made them scream their hearts out, poor things. The pure contrivedness of the gimmick reminded me of a street play I did when I was fifteen. Thirdly, there isn't enough meat to any of the stories. I guess it's tough to give any characterization given that there are seven stories and only ninety minutes, but who asked him to bring in seven stories anyway?

The stories I liked were the sportswoman's and the journalist's - perhaps because of the relatively better acting. I also liked the story set in 1948. Suresh Gopi plays a man who comes to Kannur ostensibly to teach at the local primary school. In reality, he is a 'Commoonist' who has come to give red ideas to the farmers. He soon marries a local woman, and starts leading processions against the local landlord. The story is about the sacrifices that brave and idealistic people made back then in order to bring about social change. Somehow, the story struck a cord within me - perhaps because of the obvious comparison with the sad state of Communism in Kerala today.

I hope that good concepts like these come up more often. And that they are better implemented from now on. Considering the amount of talent we have, it's a shame that the Malayalam film industry has not made its mark anywhere outside.

Firefox Add-Ons

I thought I would write a post on the dozen or so Firefox add-ons I use. I have absolutely no claims to being a techie of course, but most people in my circle don't seem to know the amazing things that can be done with Firefox add-ons. Whenever I think of some idea that would make any website more convenient to use, I immediately go to Tools > Add-ons in my browser and search for it. Purely because I'm sure that, if I've thought of it, then somebody more technically able than me would have definitely done so before me and, more importantly, created an add-on!

The only problem with add-ons is that they add to Firefox's memory usage. And since my laptop isn't the best-performing laptop in the world, I've had to restrict myself to the few that I absolutely can't do without. So here they are, in no particular order.

• Scribefire: Scribefire is where I'm currently typing this blog post. It's a little button at the bottom of my browser that, when clicked, opens up a window from which I can directly post to my blog. So no more do I have to sign into Blogger to post. It offers every feature that the Blogger 'Create Post' page does - in fact, possibly more. I can do pretty much any sort of text formatting; I can embed YouTube videos directly or add images from Flickr. It even has a live preview function, which is pretty neat. And the best part is that, after posting, I can just open Scribefire and edit the entry directly if I need to, without having to go to another page. This add-on has been a favourite of mine for a very long time. The only hassle is that I can't find the spellcheck.
  
• Personas for Firefox: Not particulary functional, but I like it. I used to download themes for my Firefox routinely. Except that I would get tired of them pretty fast and then I would have to browse themes all over again to find something nice. But now I can scroll through dozens of skins for Firefox in a matter of seconds. Awesome!
• Kwiclick: A recent find. I click the button on my browser and a window pops up that lets me search several sites at once. No more of having to open several different tabs to search Google, YouTube, Twitter, etc. My favourite function is that I can open a YouTube video and pin it to a corner of the browser while I go through my other tabs. My only crib is that it doesn't offer Google Images or IMDb search. Also, it doesn't seem to recognize operators like 'define:' that make Google easier to use. However, since the developer is available on twitter and is very open to suggestions, I guess future versions will be better.
  
• Google Notebook Extension: Pretty staightforward. Opens a mini Google Notebook at the bottom of the browser, where you can add anything interesting that you come across on your daily browsing.
• GMail Manager:I'm sure most of you have multiple GMail accounts. I have four. Two for blogging purposes and two for real-world purposes. And it's always a pain to have to sign out of one account and go to another just to check for new mail that might not even be there. So what I use is GMail Manager. It lets me check multiple accounts from the bottom of my browser.
  
• TwitterBar: A pretty common add-on, I believe. It lets me post to Twitter from my Firefox address bar. I'm not into Twitter enough to use TweetDeck or Twhirl or any other desktop application. So this works fine for me. If a tweet strikes me while I'm surfing, I just type it out into the Firefox address bar and post!
• Better GMail 2: A compilation of a lot of useful Greasemonkey scripts. It shows any attachments by type, and unread counts in the Favicon. There's also a filter assistant, Folders4GMail, etc. Only for people REALLY addicted to GMail.
  
• Download Statusbar: Pretty basic. Downloads show on a bar at the bottom of your browser rather than in annoying pop-up windows.
• Greasemonkey: Ah, Greasemonkey! What would I do without it? It lets me play around with websites. I can add things and remove things - well, as long as people have written scripts for them, since I definitely can't! I use only three Greasemonkey scripts, and all three are amazing!

1. Facebook Purity: The reason I installed Greasemonkey in the first place. You know how the Facebook Homepage currently has all the annoying quizzes that your idiotic friends ever took? Well, you can remove all of them by just installing this script! Brilliant, eh? Well, unless you're one of those people who take great pleasure in clicking 'Hide' for each of these things, like Naween!
2. Integrated GMail: I've blogged about this awesome script before. It integrates Google Reader, Calendar and Notebook into your GMail page. You can minimize and maximize these as you wish. Very useful for those who are addicted to these!
3. Troy's Twitter Script: For people who use Twitter from Firefox. It adds several functions to your Twitter page - an RT button, automatic URL expansion, autopagination (pulling in the next page when you reach the bottom of the current one), shrinking of URLs in your tweets. My favourite function is that it shows tweets as conversations. You can see what people are replying to when they tweet something, which enables easy people stalking. :D Also, images and videos get automatically embedded if the tweet contains any such links.

There are also a couple of briliant add-ons that I had to uninstall for various reasons.

• StumbleUpon: No need to elaborate on this one. Takes you to random websites depending on your interests.
• CoolIris: I started using this add-on back when it was called PicLens. The very first time I used it, I was completely blown away by the 3D display. Try it - you will be, too. Back then, I was using it to browse images, mostly - on Google, Facebook, etc. Then it became CoolIris and added a lot of functions like video search and what not. I uninstalled it soon after that because my Firefox kept getting stuck and I blamed this addon, for no reason in particular.  I'd recommend that you try it at least once - just for the awesome display.

So tada! There you go. An Absolute Amateur's Favourite Firefox Functionalities. (Ha! Double alliteration! I like!) Currently, these add-ons are the only things stopping me from switching to Chrome. So I hope I've managed to inspire the non-techies who read this blog into trying add-ons. And the techies, please let me know of any nice ones that you use.

The Afternoon

I'm lying on my bed, half-leaning against a pillow. A book lies by my side, face down, flaps open like a wounded bird. The fan zooms round and round in the air above me. I'm staring out of the window through the parted curtains.

The wind is heavy today. It rushes in through the hapless windows, it bangs shut the open doors. It shoves the newspapers to the floor, it plays with clothes and hair. It sings its way through the entire house, its rhythm echoed by the trees outside, and finally exits through the western windows.

My door is bolted, my windows face west. Still, the wind decides to peek into my room. It wakes me from my half-doze, and it beckons me towards the window. I go to it obediently.

Coconut trees waving their tentacles about in an elaborate dance. Roofs of terracotta brown and mouldy green. The acidic white of a tall building far away. Behind these and framing them, a sky of washed-out blue. The whole scene bathed in sunlight so golden that the eyes want to squeeze themselves tight for safety.

Have you ever heard the rushing noise that wind makes in a forest? It's a scary sound. The air riffling through millions of leaves, passing through them like an army of ghosts through a graveyard. One's eyes start up in fear, wondering what unearthly being could make such a noise. And the only sight all around is that of the leaves screaming in the wind, trying to cling on to their branches.

The noise I can hear now is similar. The rushing wind and the screaming leaves and the creaking trees. A metal sheet covering one of the roofs has gotten loose. Every so often, it lifts up and goes crack-crack at the wind, like a timid dog barking in vain at a stranger.

I'm standing in the safety of my house behind a grilled window. Yet, watching this fierce struggle of nature, I have pleasant goosebumps to my arms. It's a life-and-death battle out there.

The Thirunelly Temple

The Thirunelly Bhagavathy's abode is on top of a hill in the middle of a thick jungle. Tall stone steps lead up to the temple. Surrounding it on all sides are high mountains covered in green. The devout have to undertake a pilgrimage deep into the unspoilt jungle and up the hill in order to get a glimpse of the goddess.

Of course, the blue metallic road and the spanking new rest-house right in front of the temple makes everything that much easier. The Bhagavathy has become quite popular, apparently. Tourist buses and shiny white SUVs line the route up the hill. Our driver, having confidently started up the road, is forced to give up half-way because of the traffic jam in the middle of the jungle.

When my parents last came here ten years ago, the road was full of potholes, and the rest-house was some poor architecture student's third-year project. Nor was the goddess so sought after. They parked right in front of the temple - hard to imagine now. Of course, there were very few SUVs in India back then.

The number of visitors might have multiplied in the last decade, but when we climb up the stone steps, we discover that the temple itself is much as it has always been. Facing us is a low white washed building with a moss-covered tiled roof. Inside it resides the Bhagavathy in all her silk-clad splendour. The rolling green slopes of the surrounding mountains draw the eye upwards in awe. The stone floor is cool and comforting underfoot. A new gopuram is under construction, but that is almost the only change.

Apart from the people, of course. Somehow, we have managed to get there early enough to escape the rush hour. When we come out of the inner building, there is a huge queue outside, waiting to go in. Having paid for our archanas and pushpabhishekams and Bhagavathy-alone-knows-what-else, we leave the Bhagavathy to her masses.

My parents now want to visit the Papanasham, where my grandfather bali ceremony was done. The path to it leads off the main temple complex through thick jungle, down another bunch of stone steps. Green trees line the path, and birds call constantly in the gloom of the woods. Unfortunately, the poor traveller, having devoutly left her footwear at the temple entrance, has only rocks to step on most of the time.

And when the Papanasham is reached - oh, what a sight! The once-gushing stream has been reduced to a few pools of dirty water. Groups of recently bereaved people sit amidst the rocks on the stream bed and try to rescue the souls of their beloveds . A Brahmin priest with a big potbelly presides over each group. Depressing. Apparently, the water shortage is only partly because of the summer - people higher up the slopes draw water from the stream for domestic use.

We return along the same metallic road down the hill and towards our guest house. Signboards by the roadside speak of many 'resorts' on either side - for the spoilt city-people to experience the unspoilt jungle, perhaps. All along the way, tall bamboo groves sigh in the wind like lonely giants. I look out at the greenery with unseeing eyes and think about how nice places always get lost to modernity.

Tirunelli Temple, Wayanad, Northern Kerala. About 5 hours from Bangalore.

Moving On

I guess all my non-XL readers must be sick of my XL-related posts by now, but this was something that I wrote for the batch yearbook. I don't know if it will get chosen or not, but I think it's one of my best pieces of writing ever. Just had to post it here.

I walk out of my room, and the corridor is dark and empty. The rooms are all padlocked. I call out, and there is no response - no reassuring sounds from the mess, no music from the corridor across the hall, no call of voices from upstairs. Just a tremendous oppressive silence. There's something wrong, surely.

I walk out on to the veranda of GH3. The morning sunshine is warm and yellow. The birds are calling, the greenery is fresh and bright, the wind is rushing through the trees. But there's something wrong. I suddenly realize what has happened - everybody is gone. All my friends, they've left - never to return again.

I look back at my hostel, and it seems an empty shell. There is no life. The windows are closed and shuttered - the curtains don't twitch in the wind. No music blares out from the rooms. My beloved hostel, and yet not. I leave it behind and walk on. The learning center lies deserted on my left, but I ignore it and move towards JLT.

The sight of the empty JLT and the dark windows of GH1 makes my heart ache. But my spirits lift as I walk between the twin lines of trees. Their towering heads raise my eyes upwards in awe.  The wind whistles through the long leaves and soothes my pain. I sit under BodhiTree, and I feel as if I am in the lap of history. So many people must have sat under this very tree and dreamt of their futures. So many must have talked and laughed and sung songs and been happy here.

GH1 is cool and dark after the sunshine outside. I walk up to the first floor, the IR corridor. I remember how the entire corridor used to empty out five minutes before class, people pouring out of the rooms in a stream of rushing legs and flailing arms. I walk the entire length of the corridor, and run my hand over each of the doors, remembering who had lived where. I smile thinking of each of them, their idiosyncracies, the little stories about them.

The common room is warm and yellow in the sunlight. Dust motes float here and there. I think of all the avatars I have seen this place in - the drunkenness of pulsating lights, the emptiness of the grey dawn, the excitement of MAXI Bazaar, the seriousness of project meetings, the fun of TT matches. It makes my heart ache so much with loss that I just turn back and leave.

Outside, the sunlight seems dimmer, somehow. Dry leaves scrunch underfoot. The bougainvillea in front of the library mocks me with its brightness. Beyond it, the faculty quarters seem dark and promising, inviting me to take a walk under those trees, as I have done countless times before. But what's the point, when all my walking partners have left me?

I go to the sports field. The empty basketball court waits poignantly for the rhythmic thwack of an orange ball. The football field seems resigned to being an overgrown grassland. The tennis court lights are dusty from lack of use. I listen closely, and I can almost hear excited voices from the past, the generations that have played and cheered and been happy here.

How can one be so in love with a place? If it was because of the people and the memories - that would be understandable. But no - I am in love with XL independent of everything that I have experienced here. I am in love with the very air here, the green of the trees, the quality of the sunlight, the orange of the sky, the music of the birds in the trees.

I walk out of the gates of XL, and look back one last time. XLRI 1949, it says. I remember the first time I saw that sign, the excitement and the possibilities those simple letters evoked within me. And now my two years are done. I am now just another of those lucky who have lived and laughed and cried within these walls in the past. Time to move on, time to let another generation come in and experience the magic.

The Beach and Me

You know, I lived in a city with a beach for six years, and practically never visited the waves. My parents used to take me sometimes when I was a kid, and we would be one tiny family amongst thousands on the huge crowded beach. We would eat roasted peanuts and ice cream. My dad would chaperone my brother and me in the water, and my mum would watch from the shore.

Two trips I made last month have made me realize that I want to live in a city with a beach - or at least one that's close to a beach. Definitely not a landlocked city like Delhi. Where would I escape to, away from the dust and the grit of ordinary life?

Mountains? No, mountains are not for me. I like them, but they're too imposing to be calm and peaceful.

My parents used to have a thing for deserts. I've been to Rajasthan at least four-five times, thanks to them. Even when they took me to see mountains, they chose a desert - Leh. Leh, beautiful Leh. The name itself is so romantic.

I think I could sit for hours on a beach, just watching the waves. I don't even need alcohol, unlike a lot of my friends. A quiet beach, golden sand, noisy waves. Maybe a book - to hold, to read maybe a few sentences of, but not to get lost in. I used to daydream about owning my own island, complete with golden beach and palm trees. Considering global warming, I guess it's not that remote a possibility now, except for the beach and palm trees part.

Did I tell you about the time I lost my glasses to the Bay of Bengal? It happened in Puri last month. Early morning, the last day of our stay there. Only the die-hard beach fanatics were up early. Meanie and me, plus Blue as the male bodyguard. We went into the water, and Meanie wanted to go right up to the place where the waves formed. Just to have them go over her in an arc - you know, surfer style. We went further and further, and the spot seemed just a bit out of our reach. Or maybe it was so scary that we didn't want to get there.

Finally, I got irritated and left the others and went right up to that place, and a big wave went right over me, and I capsized like a boat, and it was scary-scary-awesome.

We stayed there for a while longer. Just as we were leaving, a HUGE wave came, and all three of us fell over. Scary to lose your balance in that much water. We swallowed some water and came up sputtering, and then Blue and I realized that our glasses were lost. Meanie, miraculously, had kept hers.

Blue and Meanie immediately started searching for them, but I started laughing at our idiocy. To go out into so much water and dare the waves to do something to us! But we were so insignificant to the waves that they had just made fun of us by making us half-blind. And now these two were bothering to search for the tiny little things in the vast ocean.

Of course, I could afford to laugh because I had my lenses to fall back upon. Poor Blue had to survive the entire journey back without his glasses.

Purge

I want it to rain. A long endless storm, complete with thunder and lightning. A storm so big that everything else ceases to matter. Something to clean up this place and drive all the negative things away.

The sky should become so dark that daylight is forgotten. The sound of the water must pound in my ears and remind me of waves crashing on jagged rocks. Bird calls and car noises must be silenced. The trees must fear for their very existence and bow before the wind in supplication. Leaves must scurry from place to place in search of shelter and finally, finding none, die a sodden death.

The purging should be complete, at whatever cost. Even if a few innocent things are washed away in the whirlwind. There must be no mercy.