When A Loved One Has A Different Mind

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                                              When A Loved One Has A Different Mind

‘Life Flows On’, a feature film dedicated to Global Dementia Challenge and Elderly Care, deals with lives of three dementia patients. Much of the film is shot in Mussorie (Uttarakhand) and it stars Indian actors Tom Alter, Satyabrat Rout, Ganjendra Verma, British actor Allegra Dunn, Norwegian actor Astri Ghosh and French actor Michael Dieter. Directed by Vishaal Nityanand, the film had its world premiere at the Jagran Film Festival in Mumbai earlier this month. It is now being screened at 27 cinema halls across the country.

Besides the delicate issue that the film highlights, it’s Astri Ghosh’s role in the film that caught my attention. Astri is a writer/translator based in Goa. Her Indo-Norwegian background makes her a versatile global citizen. She has translated/written over 15 books as an outcome of her extensive work at the Henrik Ibsen Study Centre at Oslo University, language-teaching assignments at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway and translations of eminent Urdu/Hindi/ Norwegian texts. She also curates the annual Jazz Festival in Delhi, led by Soli Sorabjee. Lately, she has turned to acting, and her repertoire has expanded to include meaningful cinema, the kind we are talking about here. The role in the film was both creative and emotionally painful for Astri whose mother was an Alzheimer’s patient. She says that most of the other actors also had personal stories linked to dementia.

The film evocatively portrays the psychological and emotional journey of Emma (Allegra Dunn) whose mother (Astri Ghosh) is progressively degenerating, with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, after the death of her husband (Tom Alter). The latter appears in a few initial scenes as an environmentalist working in Mussorie. It is after his passing away and the worsening condition of the mother that Emma tries to find a support system at the health services in her town. The complete absence of any facility except diagnosis compels her to head to Delhi, where the doctor (Satyabrat Rout) offers counselling. There is nothing much he can do other than delineate coping mechanisms, progress of the disease and some prescriptions. In the background, a nameless, homeless lunatic (Ganjendra Verma) affected by dementia is shown walking the streets in front of Emma’s house. He is ridiculed and called a madman and one day a lorry picks him up against all his struggles and stows him away to a distant landfill, so that nobody may feel bothered and stressed by his presence. Days later, he is found dead and frozen on a rubbish heap. Simultaneously, Emma’s multiple trips culminate in a no-show as the doctor who was treating her mother has become a dementia patient himself.

In his interviews, the film maker Vishal. N said that his aim was to draw attention to the deplorable infrastructure and support system for the terminally-ill and elderly in India. If the well-to-do in India have no access to dignified medical structure, what of the man on the street? They are left to die like animals. A comparison with the western world then surfaces in the thought process. Yes, there is no doubt that they have a much better support system in place and the weak and differently-challenged people lead a more dignified life. Their emotional needs of companionship with others of their ilk, participation in weekly stimulating activities, and care facilities ensure that they lead more satisfactory lives. The question then arises - with philosophy of spirituality and dharma in India and other countries in the East, why do the old and disabled lead such miserable undignified lives?

After a long meditation, yours truly has arrived at a hypothesis. It’s the karma philosophy – the cause and effect principle – the bedrock of the collective Indian consciousness that makes people treat the widows, disabled and diseased, in the most abhorrent manner. The fact that these so-called unfortunate people have got what they deserved, a divine nemesis, makes others around them shameful and belittled to own them. “These people are cursed and suffering is their destiny” - is the most pernicious paradigm that people in the third world live with. Every deplorable condition and facility (or lack of it) then originates from this mentality. People shrug their shoulders and wash themselves of every guilt and shame in the book of mankind with the quality of ‘PITY’. The follow-up action then can only be charity.

On similar lines, a recently published book ‘The Book of Light’ edited by Jerry Pinto is a compilation of true stories of people who live with differently-challenged relatives. The narrative abounds with accounts of hard struggles with loved-ones of a different mind. The book came about as a follow-up exercise from Jerry’s book ‘Em and the Big Hoom’ (a personal story about his mother who had bipolar disorder). Can we say that the plight of these numerous families would be a different story if the society as a whole thought differently?

Michael Foucault’s thesis which resulted in his book ‘Madness and Civilization - History of insanity in the age of reason’ highlights the control of power structures in societies. Religion, the state and societal control make living a jail, where people are constantly monitored based on beliefs and constructs. Madness and so-called lunacy have, therefore, been viewed through various societal belief–systems in different periods of history.

The book outlines that madness was a part of neighborhoods in the medieval age. Lunatics roamed the streets and people enjoyed light empathetic moments with them and also vested them with some divine epiphanies. At the turn of the 17^th century, tales of darkness, evil, witches, visitations by demons drove fear into the minds of the so-called fortunate and able people and they drove the mad (delirious, delusional, depressed, violent) off their streets.  They confined them or put them into ships (ship of fools) which endlessly sailed the waterways around lands, till the mad died locked in underwater cabins in the ships.

With the dawn of modernism was born an umbrella terminology ‘mental case’ for every differently-abled mind. The state put in place asylums, psychiatric wards, cabinets of medicines, team of doctors and research students to monitor the so-called ill. Foucault terms this arrangement as another form of imprisonment from the prison to a psychiatric ward. At the end of his book, he brings in the idea of ‘art and madness.’ Van Gogh, Antonin Artaud, Gerard de Nerval are examples of mad artists who created praiseworthy artistic works. His central argument rests on the idea that modern medicine and psychiatry fail to listen to the voice of unreason and the mad. Neither medicine nor psycho-analysis offers a chance of understanding unreason. To do this, we need to look to the work of "mad" authors such as Nietzsche, Nerval and Artaud. Unreason exists below the surface of modern society, only occasionally breaking through in such works. 

Ship of fools, confinement, pariah treatment, psychiatric wards, indifference, hatred, fear, neglect and shame are not the answer. These societal perceptions only worsen the situation. The story of madness exists, in some form, in every household. The solution, maybe, lies in answering the question – “How do you define normal?” A well-reasoned and holistic treatment of the subject will restore the dignity of the differently-abled people. 

An Accountant Film Review

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Theatre Buffet

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Theatre Buffet

I was booked again and now I have to tell you how. This time it was a series of four plays. The plays were performed within an hour and a half.  10-minute plays, a theatre phenomenon which has taken the world by storm, has arrived in Goa.  

Very-short-plays are being performed by ‘Peas & Carrot Theatre Co.’, which was founded by Kyla D’ Souza in 2013. Their debut play ‘Sure Thing ‘, by the maestro of the short form - David Ive, ushered  high octane fun earlier this year. Kyla trained at ‘Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute’, New York.  Her co-director, Tavish Bhattacharya, is from ‘Dramanon’ (Dramatist Anonymous), which was touted by India Today as one of the emerging young English theatre troupes in India, with drama chapters in Manipal, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

The genre of very short plays began as a quirky exercise in ‘Polaroid playwriting’ and had a debut in the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s 1977 Humana Festival of New American Plays.  What began as an experiment, opened a wild playfield of possibilities in the theatrical world and has since been taken up by prominent playwrights of modern theatre like David Mamet, Tony Kushner, August Wilson and others.  The time limit imposed by the form has enhanced the power of the genre. The structure of the play is tight, and as a result of this restraint, the impact is strong and explosive. Actors are impelled to showcase their talent and versatility, as if in a cameo, to take away the laurels. A popular anthology of 10-minute plays describes the genre this way: “A ten-minute play is a streak of theatrical lightning. It doesn't last long, but its power can stand your hair on end.”

The short form has morphed and appeared as an exciting format in literature, theatre, films and sports. TTT – Terribly Tiny Tales are doing the rounds on twitter and the short story has seen the light of day after a long period of hibernation.  Ever-shifting attention spans of the modern populace has propelled creativity in newer directions, giving birth to varied genres within the existing structures of the long form. 10-minute tales, plays, films and games are not a passing fad any longer. They are here to stay considering the high popularity that they have garnered from global audiences.

Therefore, last week in Mondovi Hall, ICG we were treated to a broad spectrum of theatre titled ‘Officially Speaking’. The plays mirrored contemporary office settings with heavy emphasis on sexual activity on and off office hours.  The four short plays showcased were: ‘The Business Lunch’ by Sean Slater, ‘The DMV One’ by Nick Zagone and ‘Fate’s Steady Hands’ & ‘Photocopy Love’ by Alex Broun.  Max Fernandes, who has appeared in some videos by the Indian comedy group ‘All India Bhakchod’, added a good punch with his acting skills.  Moksha Kumar debuted with a spicy affair in the last play. The stalwarts Kyla and Tavish both acted and directed the plays.

‘The Buisness Lunch’ is about a young businessman who is approached by his boss for a new pet project. He becomes educated in everything from buffalo sandwiches to bean bag chairs. The underlying message is that the boss is always right and a newbie must temper his own ideas and actions to his boss’s requirements. The contrasting high boom of the boss and the weak, timid voice of the employee encompass the entire sequence. The web byte that the playwright was raised by deer in real life in the Californian backwoods heightened the office drama in my mind during the play.

In ‘The DMV One’, the three unnamed characters are played by Kyla, Tavish and Moksha. The play proves that not every visit to the DMV is dull and boring. To liven up mundane bureaucratic procedures about filling forms and furnishing proofs for everything, the office goers have devised their own fun and sexual play to relieve the tedium.

‘Fate’s Steady Hands’ and ‘Photocopy Love’ by Alex Broun are sexual comedies again – out and out laugh riots. Alex is an award-winning Australian writer whose 10-minute plays have been performed the most in the world. Often referred to as the ‘Shakespeare of short plays’, Alex has had over 100 different ten-minute plays produced in over 1500 productions worldwide. His plays have been produced in theatres, universities, schools, colleges and community groups all over the globe. His most popular short play ‘10,000 cigarettes’ has had over 200 productions across the globe including 35 states of USA.  His site sells 10-Minute scripts on the web. Anybody can download his play for a fixed fee and perform it within 12 months of the download in any part of the world. He also conducts workshops on writing of short plays. ‘The Short and Sweet’ theatre festival in Dubai and other cities is his runaway success idea. For more information, visit www.alexbroun.com.

I look forward to many more productions in the future by the lively troupe ‘Peas & Carrots’. They also organize theatre workshops and would be ideal for any budding theatre-lover. Follow them on Facebook to keep abreast with their upcoming shows.

Travel Literature

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 Travel Literature

Jan Morris, the Welsh historian and travel-writer turned ninety on 2^nd October this year. The greatest travel-writer of our times, her accounts are “a highly subjective, romantic, impressionistic picture, less of a city than of an experience.” Her stance is determined by two paradigms – E.M.Forster’s advice (who wrote about the Egyptian city of Alexandria), “one ought to wander around aimlessly.” The other she takes from the psalms; “grin like a dog and run about the city.”  

Her impressions about Venice, London, New York, Sydney, Bombay and many more places are less about facts and more about how the place feels like. For instance, in case of Sydney, she writes about its wistfulness. She felt that it comes across as macho and fun, but has a wistful quality about it.  It’s a feeling that grew within her when she spent some time there, thinking, breathing, nosing around the nooks and crannies of her surroundings. She says, “Yes. It’s a kind of yearning, a wistful quality. Often what I feel about the Australians themselves is that they resist it a bit because they don’t feel they ought to feel these sort of feelings. But they probably do, really, I think. It has something to do with the landscape.”

Venice remained the most beloved of her destinations, and she visited it again and again. “Streets full of water” (a saying by Robert Benchley), where you take a boat to supper, she writes about the vaporetto, “Except for the very latest vessels, the whole fleet has been successively modified, redesigned, rebuilt, re-engineered, so that each craft, like a great cathedral, is the product of generations of loving hands and skills – a steam-cock from one period, a funnel from another, a wheel-house from a third, all embellished and enhanced by some very fine early twentieth-century life-belts.” Reading this, a traveler would be inspired to visit Venice and experience these marvels, great cathedrals of craftsmanship.

In India, she encountered only kindness. A tolerance and a helpfulness. “An acceptance of differences”, she writes. A chaotic landscape where everything coexists - colour, noise, smells, temperaments; and yet there is a system in the anarchy. She went looking for remnants of the ‘British Raj,’ and she found that in abundance, the changes that the British brought on the landscape imbuing it with a hybrid culture.

The above account indicates that the best travel writers are not really writing about travel at all. They write a subjective account of the places they visit. They are recording the effects of places or events on their own psyche, rather than an objective relay-commentary of the place of visit. Another great writer who comes to mind at this juncture is Ryszard Kapuscinski.

Ryszard was proclaimed the “Journalist of the century” by the Polish Government in 1999. They say, he took journalism into literature, based on his literary reportage. His writing, with its rhythms and imagery, was that of a fine novelist. He, in turn, regarded his achievements as inspired by the travel records of the first ‘globist’ and travel-writer, Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century BC and wrote about the Greco-Persian wars.

Ryszard graduated at the time when Stalin’s terror reign had far reaching effects in the Soviet-occupied Poland. He was immediately inflicted with the desire to ‘cross the border’. His first assignment landed him in India, his maiden encounter with otherness. He regarded it as a great lesson in humility. He realised that a culture does not reveal its mysteries, unless you are well-versed in its “language”- the harbinger of its culture and essence. He writes, “I was greatly intrigued by the ritual of small boys - like Rabi (Tagore), who would wake up in the morning and accompany his father to the fields to watch the sunrise, singing the Upanishads.” He doubted whether he would ever comprehend a country in which children start the day singing verses of philosophy.

On sighting Rome from a plane, the first illuminated city in his life, he was dumbstruck. He describes the experience thus, “Below me the entire length and breadth of the blackness through which we were flying was now filled with light. It was an intense light, blinding, quivering and flickering. One had the impression of a liquid substance, like molten lava, glimmering, with a sparkling surface that pulsated with brightness, rising and falling, expanding and contracting. The entire luminous apparition was something alive, full of movement, vibration and energy.”

It is more real than fiction, but more genuine than mere fact. Travel pieces are about places and experiences which reach us through the consciousness of another human being - the alliance of knowledge and sensation, nature and intellect, sight and interpretation, instinct and logic.

The Pleasure Project

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Indian Classical Music

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                                                           Alaaps, Raagas & Riyaaz

AR Rahman’s concert at UN General Assembly in New York on 15^th August marked the centenary celebration of the great Carnatic singer MS Subbulakshmi.  It took place 50 years after the latter performed there in 1966, on invitation by the then Secretary General U Thant. Why do certain Indian musicians become legends? What magical sounds do they render to have a diehard following over continents, irrespective of language and nationalities?  Welcome to the fascinating world of ‘alaaps, raagas and riyaaz’!

‘Kausalya Supraja Rama’ is the first rendition of the day at sunrise in every south Indian home. They would affirm that this classical enunciation of the mantra by MS evokes celestial vibrations in the environment and connects a devotee to the divine. It’s a demonstration of a simple raga in a voice of perfect pitch and that's why “Venkateshwara Suprabatham" album still peaks in the market. MS demonstrates the bhakti rasa here.

The rasa is derived from ragas made up of notes and srutis.  Swara or note (Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni) is not just a particular musical frequency that can be found by hitting the right key but in the case of a great musician, it is an utterance that comes from deep within the soul. The singer may have the perfect pitch and yet not get to the next level. Iconic singers indulge in a seductive foreplay and approach the swara tenderly and lovingly and arrive at it from below or above, caressing that hidden half note that hovers next to it, and this is what makes their notes really shine forth.

People throng to hear a great musician sing or play an instrument. For the adroit performer, ragas are not abstract aesthetic constructs made up of notes, but are connected to emotions, events and even seasons. With ragas, the musician paints a beautiful sound-painting resulting in an emotional reaction. Ragas, played to perfection with alankars and taans (embellishments), can create rasa of love, bhakti, playfulness and also thunder, lightning and hailstorms. Crescendos of such colour and emotion are the result of years of meditation on musical notes - and on life itself.

If the celebrity musician is in the right mode, they unfold and lay out the raga in the ‘alaap’. The languorous lovemaking continues in the ‘jor’, awakening each note to the seductive drone of a tanpura. Progressing gradually, the ardour increases and the percussion joins in to imbue the music with a vigour, keeping pace with the rising tempo of emotional fervor. The crescendo arrives with the ‘jala’ - the pitch of union and fulfillment personified by unending reverberations of exhilaration.

Namita Devidayal, in her book “The Music Room”, writes, “Merely mastering the notes is not enough. You have to reflect on the human condition, on life itself. Every time a musician sings a raga, it unfolds and expands, revealing new insights and pathways. That is why they say that a musician really becomes a musician at the end of his life. When a veteran musician uses notes to tell a greater story, he attains celestial heights and his art then breaks free from material grounding. The note ma in Raga Yaman lies in the uppermost sruti, the one closet to pa. It is only when you start hitting the precise sruti of the raga that the raga will open up to you and say “Aah! Now you may enter me ….”

Riyaaz is a musician’s hours of sadhana stretched endlessly. 

 Lost in sounds of cascading music, trying to achieve the perfect note, they lose all sense of time.  Devidayal writes, “One evening a man on his way to an all-night theatre, passed the maestro’s house after dinner and heard him practicing a particularly complicated taan- a piece that shot up, did a number of stunning trapeze swings and twirled its way down a spiral, all in one breath. He did it over and over, but one note kept slipping. The man listened for a while and then went his way. It was close to four in the morning when the man intoxicated with sleeplessness, returned back. When he passed by the great singer’s window, he heard him practicing the same taan.  It was now perfect.”

Bombay Jayasri, carnatic musician from South, is famous for her soothing and sober style of rendering. Voice culture and breath control are techniques that singers master very early in their vocation, and keep stretching it more and more over time.   Kesarbai Kerkar, one of the most noted Khayal singers of the last century, had a strong will and determination. She had long stopped learning from her guru Alladiya Khan, the founder of the Jaipur gharana. But then, just before he passed away, he gave a few private concerts where she heard him sing ‘Samporana Malkauns’ – a rare raga that uses all the seven notes. She marched to his house determinedly the next day and asked him to teach her the raga. The two got together every morning and once again the jewels of music were passed on from guru to shishiya.  Alladiya Khan at that time was ninety and Kesarbai fifty years old.

Lastly, there is no saying about ‘The Rahman Effect’.  With his unparalleled capacity for work, AR Rahman creates exceptional ‘sound designs’ fostering team-play of talented musicians in India and abroad. His imagination has synthesized and tapped sound patterns unheard of before. Humility in the face of his prodigious talent combines to form a potent package. He says, “Every time I sit for a song, I feel I am finished. It's like a beggar sitting waiting for God to fill your bowl with the right thought. In every song, I ask help from Him. Everybody around is so good, so to create music that will connect with so many people is not humanly possible without inspiration.”

I would like to end with words from Vikram Seth’s book, ‘An Equal Music’- “Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness, why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music- not too much, or the soul could not sustain it- from time to time.”

Roald Dahl 100 years

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    Fun with Gobblefunk!

This past week we‘ve been having a scrumdidlyumptious time celebrating 100 years of the British author Roald Dahl, who invented gobblefunk. Chatbag, babblement, scrumdidlyumptious, muggled, snitching and wonka- vite are some words that every reader of Roald Dahl books identifies with. Nicknamed Moldy, Lofty and Stalky, Roald Dahl was born on 13 September, 1916. His motto - “My candle burns at both the ends/ it will not last the night/ but ah, my friends, and oh’ my foes / it gives a lovely light” inspired him to write children’s books which have sold more than 200 million copies and have been translated into 59 languages.

RD was terrorized by the thought of writing boring books for children. He did not want his books to be daunting and preachy. On the contrary, he wanted them to be funny, exciting and wonderful. He wanted children to laugh (belly-rumbling laughter), squirm in their seats or be tense and excited while reading his books. This made his books real page-turners. Some of his famous works are Matilda, Esio Trot, The Magic Finger, The Enormous Crocodile and Fantastic Mr Fox.

His formula of success was to conspire with children against nasty adults. Matilda had nitwit parents, Mr Fox had not-so-fantastic neighbours, Jame’s aunts were mean and the Twits were ugly in themselves. He said it was important to have nasty characters in a book - the more you loathe them, the greater the fun you have when you see them being scrunched in the end. Whenever a brilliant idea struck him, he quickly wrote it down and later worked on it to develop it into a complete book. The famous book ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ germinated in a flash – “How about a chocolate factory that makes fantastic and marvellous things… with a crazy man running it!”

He specially noted to parents – “Be sparky and fun with your children – never forget how you were when you were a child.”  Sophie, his granddaughter recently wrote, “He had all the accoutrements of magic: Amaretto biscuits whose wrapping papers you lit and watched shoot into the sky, a miniature steam train, that huffed and puffed round the dining room table if you filled it with water; the house was dotted with Witch Balls – ancient, mirrored spheres that hung from a window so that, should a witch be so bold as to come knocking, she would be confronted with her own hideous reflection and flee, never to darken the door again. He was famous for writing the names of his children, and later on, me, in the grass with weed killer while we slept. ‘The fairies have been,’ he’d say over breakfast. 

‘Let’s go and see what they’ve been up to.’”

Roald Dahl enjoyed inventing words, especially naming of things. For example, in the book  BFG, there are some wonderful names for the giants and for food, not to mention the BFG’s particularly interesting vocabulary. “But if you don’t eat people like all the others,” Sophie said, “then what do you live on?” “That is a squelching tricky problem around here,” the BFG answered. “In this sloshflunking Giant Country, happy eats like pineapples and pigwinkles is simply not growing.” At the beginning of his career as a writer, Roald Dahl collected lists of words in an old school notebook. “When you’re describing something or someone,” he said, “you can’t just choose dull words like beautiful, pretty or nice. You must search for more meaty and imaginative words. 

Here is a list of words Roald Dahl collected under the heading ‘Angry and Rude or Nasty’:

arrogant blazing brutal choleric coarse cruel dangerous devilish disdainful disgusting evil fierce furious ghoulish grim gruff harsh hostile icy-frosty inflamed infuriated impudent irritable insinuating intolerable malicious malignant menacing mocking murderous nauseating nettled noxious odious offensive ominous piqued rapacious repellent repulsive revolting rough scowling shrill smouldering smug snapping snarling superior stern taunting truculent tyrannical vengeful venomous vindictive.

Now isn’t that what being a writer is all about – to have the most appropriate word in context for a character? No wonder, he succeeded in fleshing out the most intriguing characters such as Mrs Trunchbull, Willi Wonka, Matilda and BFG.

His personal life was most interesting. Very much a family man, he begins his two autobiographical books ‘Boy’ and ‘Going Solo’ with a background about his Norwegian ancestry, his parents and siblings. These are my favourite reads and I keep revisiting them whenever I have to prepare for a book-reading on RD, and this particular year there have been umpteen revisitings. RD was the apple of his mother’s eye, who called him ‘BOY’, but when it was time for him to take wings and fly, she let him go and he enrolled for a job overseas, first in wild Africa and later in the RAF before leaving for the US. His adventurous spirit led him to explore deserts, learn Swahili, trudge rainy forests, fly Tiger Moths and Hurricanes in battle zones, and ultimately write when he was posted as an Air Attache in the US. With the birth of his five children he let his imagination run wild, becoming even more animated and joyous by telling stories to his children and concocting fun games at home.

There is much more to RD than just being a writer of successful books. He often said, “If I wasn’t a writer, I would have been a doctor.” He started a charitable trust – The Marvellous Children Society (in Misseden, Buckinghamshire, England) that supports children with terminal illness and other ailments. The Roald Dahl Museum is a centre for children’s workshops and reading programmes. Ten percent of his writing royalties go to these establishments even today. He valued kindness as the greatest human value, even more than courage and bravery.

Alright children, remember to don a Willy Wonka top hat or your fantastic bushy Mr Fox tail for a Dahlicious dress-up day at Broadway Book Centre on 18^th Sep 2016 at 5 pm. Craft your own Matilda Reading Corner, Solve a RD Crossword or take part in the RD Quiz.

RD fun is going to be bigger than James’s peach, more enormous than a crocodile and more marvellous than George’s medicine.

“Never do anything by halves, Go the whole hog, if you want to get away with it- BE OUTRAGEOUS!” – Matilda