The Other Man’s Wife

I saw him soon after I took the turn towards my bungalow. He was standing next to Ram Prasad, my watchman. I was irritated. I told that numskull so many times not to entertain people while on duty. But would he listen? He was the friendliest person in the neighbourhood. He knew all the maids and chowkidars and their fathers.

I was little bit more than just tipsy. The last peg was a bit much. But I wanted to spend some more time with that chick in the yellow dress before making my move. But that bitch had other plans.

I slowed down as I reached near the gate and switch on the beamer, a signal to Ram Prasad that I was there. In the sudden flood of the headlight, I caught a glimpse of my chowkidar’s companion. A little hunched, he stood next to the gatepost. But, in his clothes and in his demeanor, he did not look like he could be Ram Prasad’s friend. Who was this fella?

As I nearly banged my car on the gate, instead of opening it, Ram Prasad came rushing to me. “Sir, there’s a man waiting for you, since afternoon. It’s very urgent, he says.”

“Who is he?” I asked, exasperated. I hoped he was not one of those poor fathers seeking to find a job for their sons. I never knew what to tell them.

“I don’t know, saab,” my chowkidar said. “He said he needed to see you tonight, urgent.”

By this time, the man in question had followed Ram Prasad and reached my car window. Ram Prasad moved back and the stranger extended his hand. “Hi, I am Abhimanyu Nahar,” he said. He had a strong grip. The name did not ring a bill. I looked at him expectantly, trying to be as accommodating as I could at the moment.

“Sorry,” Mr Nahar said. He looked nervous. There was something wrong with his face. It was contorted. His salt and pepper beard was unshaven. What was wrong with him? Was he crying? “I am sorry,” he said again, “You don’t know me.”

“Do you want to come inside?” I don’t know why I said that. I hated inviting people home, that too in the middle of the night.

“No, thank you, I’ve troubled you enough,” he said and took a pause, as if to collect his thoughts. “You don’t know me. I’m Priyamvada’s husband.”

“Who?”

“Priyamvada. Priyam, from Rambaug Colony in Nagpur.”

“Oh.” It was all I could say. Abruptly, the air around me shifted. I was not drunk anymore. The interior of the car smelt of oranges, and Pond’s powder and a young girl’s skin — Priyam.

Now, it was the time to get into the act. I looked at Mr Nahar with open defiance. What if he was there to accuse me of having an affair with his wife all those years ago? Whatever. Those days, Priyam was nobody’s wife.

“Sorry to bother you,” Mr Nahar said again, in the same unsettling tone. “I thought you’d like to know. I though you deserved to know. Priyam died. Last night. The last rite is tomorrow.”

Mr Nahar turned, as if I wasn’t there at all, and walked away. I clasped the steering wheels and Ram Prasad opened the gate.

I’ll see you soon, Priyam had said. I was just a lover then, nothing else. We were at the Nagpur railway station, hiding behind the bookshop. Her family was at the waiting room. She had come out to buy a newspaper. But your father is not coming back, I said. But, you are coming to Bombay once your exams are over, she said. I will post you the address once we settle down, she said.

I did come to Bombay soon after but the post never arrived.

I was back in the reality, clasping the wheels with Ram Prasad eyeing me suspiciously. I was crying. I blamed it on the alcohol. I sat there, inside the car which still smelt of oranges, blank. Was I sad? I hadn’t seen Priyam in 35 years. Then, why was I sad? But, how the husband of hers found me? What did Priyam tell him about me? Did she remember me? I had forgotten all about her. Did I? Really?

It was going to be a long night. I revved up my car and then turned towards the road. I had to find Mr Nahar.

[A Short Story In The Making.]

Not You But Someone Else

Mera kaatil mera masiha, ab bhi mujhe pe marta hai…
— ‘Laila Majnu’ soundtrack

It was a bad math after all, you
Dead and I mourning you
You were the killer and I was your target
You were the hunter and I the hunt

Now, I carry your invisible existence around
Me, like that poor Mariner’s albatross, like
Priests with their crosses, like politicians with
Their speech, an empty burden

You rescued me and you died
Your hunt was done and you became the
Prize, which I now carry, an invisible
Burden, a very bad math

Byzantium

The bargain of unrequited love — blood instead of semen. Saoirse Ronan as a young, ageless vampire in Neil Jordan’s Byzantium (2012)

Jaise tumhe aate hai na aane ke baahane
Aise hi kisi roz na jaane ke liye aa...

Repeating Mehdi Hassan.

Ankho a Periodical in Ahirani

According to news reports, every day, at least one spoken language disappears from the world, as the last surviving speaker of the language passes away. This is true in case of India as well, the land of thousand dialects, all of which are in danger as the native speakers continue to switch to languages which are more universal, like English and Hindi. As a result, indigenous languages, especially dialects, most of which do not even have their own written script, die a natural death. Which is a shame really, as, with the language disappears the whole gamut of cultural experiences, how a community lives, hopes, dreams and survives.

A similar fate awaits Ahirani, a dialect of the Marathi language spoken in the region known as Khandesh, including Dhule district. Now, the dialect is almost disappearing from the public life, with parents preferring to communicate with their children in more accepted Marathi and with children picking up Hindi and English as their language of choice.

In this context, what can one do to do keep the language alive? The quest for this very answer led Mr Mahesh Leelapandit, a Mumbai-based educator and poet, to start ‘Akho’, the first of its kind bi-monthly magazine in Ahirani.

“This is an ambitious project and a mammoth task,” says Leelapandit. “The idea is not only to keep alive the language, but also to spread it among the people, especially youngsters to give them a feel of their own heritage.”

Leelapandit lists several objectives for the magazine. Foremost among them is to encourage youngsters write in their own dialect. It is a tall order, maybe, but Leelapandit wants to try it and try it very rigorously. Therefore, instead planning a commercial future for his magazine, he wants to distribute it in schools and colleges free, especially in areas where there is a large number of Ahirani-speaking population. Leelapandit hopes that by seeing the magazine in their own mother’s tongue, and reading it, young people will be encouraged to write and write in their own dialect and tell their own story and in the larger context, keep the dialect alive.

Ahirani do not have an original script. So, Leelapandit uses the Marathi script to write the Ahirani transcript. The aim of the magazine is two-fold. To spread the rich treasure of the oral literature in Ahirani, in a written form, and also translated into English, so that those who do not know the language can get a taste of the culture and literature of the people and land of Khandesh.

It doesn’t end here. Leelapandit also aims to enrich the treasure of Ahirani culture by translating world literature into Ahirani. One part of the magazine is dedicated to translate works of Indian poets in English translated into Ahirani so that the Ahirani readers can also get a glimpse of what is going on outside the dialect.

The first issue of the magazine was released in May 2013. Leelapandit is now working on the second issue.

For details, visit Ankho Periodicals in Facebook.
Or visit Mahesh Leelapandit in Facebook.

Tony Kushner

In a The Paris Review interview, playwright and screen writer Tony Kushner talks about his writing process, which I, somehow, can identify with.... "The lesson I learn over and over again—and then forget over and over again—is that writing won’t be so bad once you get into it..."

Do you tend to write very quickly and then revise, and revise, and revise?
I tend to delay as long as I possibly can and get into a lot of trouble and get everyone upset. And then it comes out. I always write under panic. I seem to need that.

Does the panic enliven your plays, or is it just a horrible necessity you have to endure?
It’s definitely horrible and I don’t want to believe it’s a necessity, but it seems to be. I don’t want to valorize it in myself, because it has made it hard for me and very hard for the people who work with me. It’s been particularly tough on Jeanine. It’s caused problems for many theaters I’ve worked with, for Mike Nichols and for Steven Spielberg. It’s never been a good thing. It’s something I have struggled with and suffered from all of my life.

I find writing very difficult. It’s hard and it hurts sometimes, and it’s scary because of the fear of failure and the very unpleasant feeling that you may have reached the limit of your abilities. You’re smart enough to see that there’s something that lies beyond what you’ve been able to do, but you don’t know how to get there, how to make it happen in the medium in which you’ve decided to work. I can be very masochistic, but that kind of anxiety is something I tend to want to avoid.

I’ve been in therapy and psychoanalysis since I was seventeen, so I certainly know a lot about why I procrastinate. But the need to do it is still very powerful. The smartest shrinks I’ve had don’t think there’s a clean separation between the salutary and the unsalutary parts of it. And they tell me I’m probably not going to be able to change it. Like sexual taste, your work ethic is formed deep within, and it’s comprised by all sorts of impulses. Why do any of us bother to put on clothes in the first place and accept toilet training and learn how to read and write and count? It’s enormously peculiar, the process of becoming civilized and developing things like a work ethic and a sexual ethic.

Have you developed techniques for dealing with procrastination?
The lesson I learn over and over again—and then forget over and over again—is that writing won’t be so bad once you get into it. One’s reluctance is immensely powerful. It’s like what Proust says about habit—it seems tiny in the grand arc of a person’s life narrative, but it’s the most insidious, powerful thing. Reluctance is like that.

When you feel most terrified—I think this is true of most writers—it’s because the thing isn’t there in your head. I’ve found it to be the case that you’ve got to start writing, and writing almost anything. Because writing is not simply an intellectual act. It doesn’t happen exclusively in your head. It’s a combination of idea and action, what Marx and Freud called praxis, a combining of the material and the immaterial. The action, the physical act of putting things down on paper, changes and produces a writer’s ideas.
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Alice Munro

Sorry all Haruki Murakami fans and supporters. The Nobel Prize for Literature this year has been announced and it goes to the unassuming Canadian short story writer Alice Munro. She is the 13th woman to win this prize so far and the first Canadian since Soul Bellow in 1976 to win the award.

Often compared with Chekhov, she is the most celebrated contemporary short story writer of our times. While Murakami fans may mourn, for Munro fans, this is perfect opportunity for those unacquainted with her work to take a first-hand look at her genius work, and see what a short story can achieve. Yes, the award is, in a sense, a nod to the art of story itself, which is often consigned to a second class genre after novels and poetry. Traditionally, it is the novelists and poets who have been awarded the world’s highest literary awards.

HERE’S SOMETHING about Alice Munro AND SOMETHING by Alice Munro

Alice Ann Munro (née Laidlaw; born 10 July 1931) is a Canadian author. The recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature and the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work, she is also a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction. The locus of Munro’s fiction is her native southwestern Ontario. Her "accessible, moving stories" explore human complexities in a seemingly effortless style. Munro's writing has established her as "one of our greatest contemporary writers of fiction," or, as Cynthia Ozick put it, "our Chekhov."
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Alice Munro, the renowned Canadian short-story writer whose visceral work explores the tangled relationships between men and women, small-town existence and the fallibility of memory, won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday. Announcing the award in Stockholm, the Swedish Academy said that Ms. Munro, 82, who has written 14 story collections, was a “master of the contemporary short story.” She is the 13th woman to win the prize. The selection of Ms. Munro was greeted with an outpouring of enthusiasm in the English-speaking world, a temporary relief from recent years when the Swedish Academy chose winners who were obscure, difficult to comprehend or overtly political.

Ms. Munro, widely beloved for her spare and psychologically astute fiction that is deeply revealing of human nature, appeared to be more of a purely literary choice. She revolutionized the architecture of short stories, often beginning a story in an unexpected place then moving backward or forward in time, and brought a modesty and subtle wit to her work that admirers often traced to her background growing up in rural Canada. Her collection “Dear Life,” published last year, appears to be her last. She told The National Post in Canada this year that she was finished writing, a sentiment she echoed in other interviews.
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How old were you when that first book came out?
I was about thirty-six. I’d been writing these stories over the years and finally an editor at Ryerson Press, a Canadian publisher that has since been taken over by McGraw-Hill, wrote and asked me if I had enough stories for a book. Originally he was going to put me in a book with two or three other writers. That fell through, but he still had a bunch of my stories. Then he quit but passed me onto another editor, who said, If you could write three more stories, we’d have a book. And so I wrote “Images,” “Walker Brothers Cowboy,” and “Postcard” during the last year before the book was published.

What was the process involved in writing Lives?
I remember the day I started to write that. It was in January, a Sunday. I went down to the bookstore, which wasn’t open Sundays, and locked myself in. My husband had said he would get dinner, so I had the afternoon. I remember looking around at all the great literature that was around me and thinking, You fool! What are you doing here? But then I went up to the office and started to write the section called “Princess Ida,” which is about my mother. The material about my mother is my central material in life, and it always comes the most readily to me. If I just relax, that’s what will come up. So, once I started to write that, I was off. Then I made a big mistake. I tried to make it a regular novel, an ordinary sort of childhood adolescence novel. About March I saw it wasn’t working. It didn’t feel right to me, and I thought I would have to abandon it. I was very depressed. Then it came to me that what I had to do was pull it apart and put it in the story form. Then I could handle it. That’s when I learned that I was never going to write a real novel because I could not think that way.

The Beggar Maid, too, is a sort of a novel because it’s interconnected stories.
I don’t want to second-guess things too much, but I’ve often wanted to do another series of stories. In my new book, Open Secrets, there are characters who reappear. Bea Doud in “Vandals” is mentioned as the little girl in “Carried Away,” which is the first story I wrote for the collection. Billy Doud is the son of the librarian. They’re all mentioned in “Spaceships Have Landed.” But I mustn’t let this sort of plan overtake the stories themselves. If I start shaping one story so it will fit with another, I am probably doing something wrong, using force on it that I oughtn’t. So I don’t know that I’ll ever do that kind of series again, though I love the idea of it. Katherine Mansfield said something in one of her letters like, Oh, I hope I write a novel, I hope I don’t die just leaving these bits and pieces. It’s very hard to wean yourself away from this bits-and-pieces feeling if all you’re leaving behind is scattered stories. I’m sure you could think of Chekhov and everything, but still.

And Chekhov always wanted to write a novel. He was going to call it “Stories from the Lives of My Friends.”
I know. And I know that feeling that you could have this achievement of having put everything into one package.
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''I never intended to be a short-story writer,'' says Alice Munro, leaning back and laughing in a chair in her publisher's office. ''I started writing them because I didn't have time to write anything else - I had three children. And then I got used to writing stories, so I saw my material that way, and now I don't think I'll ever write a novel.''

The 55-year-old Ms. Munro is the author of a new, critically acclaimed collection of short stories, ''The Progress of Love,'' as well as one novel (''really a collection of related stories'') and four other volumes of short stories, including ''The Beggar Maid'' and ''The Moons of Jupiter.'' She has been called one of the foremost contemporary practitioners of the short story.

''I don't really understand a novel,'' Ms. Munro says. ''I don't understand where the excitement is supposed to come in a novel, and I do in a story. There's a kind of tension that if I'm getting a story right I can feel right away, and I don't feel that when I try to write a novel. I kind of want a moment that's explosive, and I want everything gathered into that.''
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Many of your stories are about women. How do you feel about being called a feminist writer?
Naturally my stories are about women—I'm a woman. I don't know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I'm not always sure what is meant by "feminist." In the beginning I used to say, well, of course I'm a feminist. But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I'm not. I think I'm a feminist as far as thinking that the experience of women is important. That is really the basis of feminism.

Over the course of your career, have you changed the type of women you write about?
I'm not sure that I have. I'm not an autobiographical writer, but I've pretty well followed my own life in terms of what I think about and what I see. So if now I'm writing stories about an older woman looking back on her life, it's because of where I am now. I was a young woman when I wrote "Walker Brothers Cowboy" [a story about a young child spending the day with her father]. I was then in my thirties, and I was looking back on my childhood—so I do tend to look back. I don't tend to do the present very well. I have to see things in the rearview mirror before I can get what they were all about. I still write a lot about the sixties, which was a watershed decade for women of my age. We weren't young enough to really be with that decade, but we were young enough to see that all possibilities were not closed to us. It's something I look back on over and over again. But during the sixties, I was writing The Lives of Girls and Women, which is about a much earlier period.
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What are your writing habits—do you use a computer? Do you write every day? In the morning or at night? How long does it take to complete a story?
I’ve been using a computer for a year—I’m a late convert to every technological offering and still don’t own a microwave oven—but I do one or two drafts long hand before I go to the keyboard. A story might be done in two months, beginning to end, and ready to go, but that’s rare. More likely six to eight months, many changes, some false directions, much fiddling and some despair. I write everyday unless it’s impossible and start writing as soon as I get up and have made coffee and try to get two to three hours in before real life hauls me away.

What advice would you give to young writers?
It’s not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. You might say, “Read,” but a writer can read too much and be paralyzed. Or, “Don’t read, don’t think, just write,” and the result could be a mountain of drivel. If you’re going to be a writer you’ll probably take a lot of wrong turns and then one day just end up writing something you have to write, then getting it better and better just because you want it to be better, and even when you get old and think “There must be something else people do” you won’t quite be able to quit.

What writers have most influenced you and who do you like to read?
When I was young it was Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O’Connor, James Agee. Then Updike, Cheever, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Taylor, and especially and forever, William Maxwell. Also William Trevor, Edna O’Brien, Richard Ford. These I would say are influences. There are dozens of others I just like to read. My latest discovery is a Dutch writer, Cees Nooteboom. I hate doing lists like this because I’ll be banging my head soon that I left somebody wonderful out. That’s why I speak only of those who have influenced, not of all who have delighted me.

Cynthia Ozick has called you “our Chekhov.” How does that comparison make you feel?
I have recently re-read much of Chekhov and it’s a humbling experience. I don’t even claim Chekhov as an influence because he influenced all of us. Like Shakespeare his writing shed the most perfect light—there’s no striving in it, no personality. Well, of course, wouldn’t I love to do that!
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Do you find writing difficult, as a rule? Has it got any easier over time?
I do and don’t find writing difficult. Nice bang away at the first draft, then agonizing fix-up, then re-insertions, etc.

A couple of times in the past decade or so you’ve said that you were going to give up writing. Then suddenly new stories have arrived on my desk. What happens when you try to stop?
I do stop—for some strange notion of being “more normal,” taking things easy. Then some poking idea comes. This time, I think it’s for real. I’m eighty-one, losing names or words in a commonplace way, so…
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Munro was no young literary phenom—she did not achieve fame in her twenties with stories in The New Yorker. A mother of three children, she “learned to write in the slivers of time she had.” She published her first collection, Dance of the Happy Shades in 1968 at 37, an advanced age for writers today, so many of whom have several novels under their belts by their early thirties. Munro always meant to write a novel, many in fact, but “there was no way I could get that kind of time,” she said: "Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn’t intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel. But when I was younger, it was simply a matter of expediency. I had small children, I didn’t have any help. Some of this was before the days of automatic washing machines, if you can actually believe it. There was no way I could get that kind of time. I couldn’t look ahead and say, this is going to take me a year, because I thought every moment something might happen that would take all time away from me. So I wrote in bits and pieces with a limited time expectation. Perhaps I got used to thinking of my material in terms of things that worked that way. And then when I got a little more time, I started writing these odder stories, which branch out a lot."
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The Assam Garden

For obvious reasons, I am curious about the mention of Assam in situations where there is no obvious connection. Recently, I learnt that Hollywood actor Audrey Hepburn had a dog called Assam. How did she come up with the name? Because she liked Assam tea?

Today, I learnt about a little-seen British film titled ‘The Assam Garden’. Really. That too starring an aging Deborah Kerr. The following is some of the stuff about the film that Google would help me find.

Says Wikipedia: The Assam Garden is a 1985 British drama film made by Moving Picture Company and distributed by Contemporary Films Ltd. The film was directed by Mary McMurray and produced by Nigel Stafford-Clark with Peter Jaques as associate producer. It was written by Elisabeth Bond. The music score was by Richard Harvey and the cinematography by Bryan Loftus. The film stars Deborah Kerr and Madhur Jaffrey with Alec McCowen, Zia Mohyeddin, Anton Lesser and Iain Cuthbertson. The film was shot at Priors Mesne in Aylburton, Gloucestershire, England. At certain times of the year the garden is opened as part of the NGS (Gardens open for Charity) Scheme. In addition part of the land owned by Priors Mesne and run by the owners is now a Deer Park.
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Walter Goodman review the film in The New York Times in July 30, 1986: “THE ASSAM GARDEN,” a British movie that opens today at the Film Forum, brings Deborah Kerr back to America's screens after 15 years. She plays an elderly woman in the southwest of England whose husband has just died. As young marrieds, the couple had run a tea plantation in India, and on their return home, they created an elaborate, Indian-style garden in their big backyard. Miss Kerr is convinced that her husband gave his life to it.

Into this garden, which the newmade dowager tends devotedly in prospect of recognition in ''Great British Gardens,'' comes an Indian woman now residing with her ailing husband in a nearby housing project. What ensues is mainly a duet for two elderly ladies - getting to know you, as Miss Kerr was once wont to put it.

What they get to know is that both are displaced persons, moving into old age with memories of happier years in India. Miss Kerr gives a nicely modulated performance in the somewhat familiar role of a proper English gentlewoman, outwardly confident but filled with misgivings about her ability to carry on. Madhur Jaffrey has the more interesting part, apparently subservient but effectively manipulative, and plays it with nuances galore. That is not a small achievement given the flatly earnest quality of the script by Elisabeth Bond and the overly explicit direction of Mary McMurray, making her directorial debut.

''The Assam Garden'' is as stuffed with sensibility as the dowager's drawing room is with mementos. Insistent music signals each change of mood, and every unsurprising development of the women's relationship is rubbed in like the ointment that Miss Jaffrey uses on Miss Kerr's bruised knee. ''I don't want to see you go,'' says Miss Kerr finally, in case we hadn't noticed.
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prodosh_bhattacharya (India), a user at the IMdb.com, however, has some nice things to say: This unpretentious little gem came out around the same time as David Lean's PASSAGE TO India, and has been unfairly overshadowed by the blockbuster. I was charmed by the quiet, sensitive, yet emotionally charged portrayal of how an insecure, aggressive widow of a tea garden manager reluctantly develops an affectionate relationship with an Indian housewife and her family. What I found particularly good was that the Indian housewife, played excellently by Madhur Jaffrey, is no impossible goody-goody, but as much a human being with likes, dislikes and prejudices as the widow played by Deborah Kerr. There is also the sad irony of the grandchildren of the Indian family inevitably leaving their 'Indianness' behind in favour of a British lifestyle. Strongly recommended for those in the mood for subtlety and understatement. And it should be watched with Lean's PASSAGE TO India for fruitful comparisons. To my mind, and I'm probably in a minority of one, THE ASSAM GARDEN is the better of the two films. I once possessed a video recording of it, which is now the property of the Film Studies Department of Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India.
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And this is what Time Out London has to say: Though very much a two-hander and marred by the restraint that the film itself castigates, this is an often affecting study of two women - the widow of a colonial bigwig, cherishing memories of her privileged years in India, and the elderly Indian immigrant who to some extent penetrates the English woman's loneliness by forcefully offering friendship. It's a discreet and subtle movie, gradually scratching away at Kerr's veneer of happiness to reveal a core of frustration and resentment. Both the camera, prowling around the gorgeous garden that the women tend together, and Kerr's carefully controlled performance, suggest further depths of dissatisfaction. Far from original, but engaging.
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Istanbul

‘Istanbul’
BY Frederick Seidel

Stray dogs with a red plastic tag in one ear
Have been licensed
By the city to be safe and allowed to live in the street,
So they wander around, or more likely just lie there,
Healthy, checked by a city vet, without a care.
They’re red-tagged Turks and they’re an elite.
You walk past them in the street.
They’re bums, they’re the homeless, not educated.
It’s complicated, but they’re regulated.
It isn’t complicated.
The red tag is their fez.
That’s what the republic Atatürk founded says.

The Four Seasons Hotel Istanbul
Has toothsomely been called the best hotel in the world.
The luxury takes place in what was once a prison.
To be a prisoner of luxury
In the old centre of the city
Is such a Turkish incarceration
To luxuriate in.
The Turkish hot chocolate the Four Seasons serves perspires
Oriental desires.
Think swarthy sweetness.
Think secular Atatürk.
But Sultanahmet has turned more than a bit Islamic.

From Claridge’s and London I have come
To the holy city of Byzantium
To see Ayasofya.
I see the Blue Mosque and I see a
Fanta-zi-a projected on the air
Whose six minarets make it Disney beyond compare,
A fat domed flying saucer with sticking-up spikes of hair.
I am awakened to the opposite of despair
By the Blue Mosque’s muezzin’s dawn call to prayer.
Another nearby mosque’s muezzin immediately starts to call.
Come one, come all!
Antiphonally back and forth, and I go back to sleep.

I dream I’m dead in the trunk of a car. I’m the survivor.
I’ve hired for the morning a car and driver.
It’s my Disney Fantasia
To drive to Asia.
Let’s cross the Bosphorus.
It won’t be hard for us.
Each day I take my pills from the day’s section of the tray
Lest the Lord disappear me and throw me away.
I find myself across the bridge in Asia thinking of Aldo Moro.
Who on the Golden Horn thinks of Aldo Moro any more, though?
I’m back at the Four Seasons.
The Red Brigades had their reasons.

Be so kind as to cover yourself please with the blanket, presidente.
We’re going to drive you to another location for your safety.
So he covered himself.
Moretti immediately pumped
Eleven rounds into the blanket point-blank.
The car was left on a street pointedly
Equidistant from the Christian Democratic headquarters
And the Communist Party headquarters.
I’ll stay in bed under the red bedspread.
A Turkish flag of red soaks the bed.
I’m better red and dead.
I’m full of bull in Istanbul.

Awake!
Listen to the Voice! Climb out of the trunk! Rise and shine!
The bullet-riddled Moro is divine.
Each bullet hole is a portal to the immortal.
I’ve breathed so many million tears my legs ache.
My fellow Armenians, my brain is about to break.
I walk up the hill to Topkapi Palace past the red-tagged dogs.
I’ve heisted so much bullion.
I’ve lived a life of luxury.
I’ve lived my own Topkapi of poetry.
I’ve lived through four seasons. The muezzin calls.
The duelling muezzins call. It’s dawn. It’s dark. I SEE.

There’s the Statue of Liberty,
And there’s the United States of America,
And America’s holding the Statue of Liberty up in the air
Just exactly the way a grinning actor holds up his Oscar.
We’re in a holding pattern over land and water
On a rotating stage, circling New York Harbor.
We turn past the torch.
We’re on final approach.
It’s the end of my flight and Istanbul’s almost over.
The tugboats towing Ellis Island are the size of ants.
They trumpet like elephants.
The Blue Mosque broadcasts one of its beautiful chants.

Laila Majnu

Kahanaa ik diivaanaa terii yaad men aahen bharataa hai
Yaad men aahen bharataa hai
Likh kar teraa naam zamiin par us ko sajade karataa hai
Us ko sajade karataa hai
Likh kar teraa naam zamiin par us ko sajade karataa hai

Shaakh girebaan khaaq basar phirataa hai sunii raahon men
Phirataa hai sunii raahon men
Saayon ko lipataataa hai aur lailaa lailaa karataa hai
Lailaa lailaa karataa hai
Likh kar teraa naam zamiin par us ko sajade karataa hai

Terii ek jhalak kii khaatir jaan aankhon men atakii hai
Jaan aankhon men atakii hai
Jii kaa aisaa haal huaa hai jiitaa hai na marataa hai
Jiitaa hai na marataa hai
Likh kar teraa naam zamiin par us ko sajade karataa hai

Kud ko bhul gayaa hai lekin terii yaad nahiin bhulaa
Terii yaad nahiin bhulaa
Dil ke jitane zakm hain un men teraa hii aqs ubharataa hai
Teraa hii aqs ubharataa hai
Likh kar teraa naam zamiin par
Likh kar teraa naam zamiin par us ko sajade karataa hai
Us ko sajade karataa hai
Saayon ko lipataataa hai aur lailaa lailaa karataa hai
Lailaa lailaa karataa hai

Kahanaa mere diivaane se
Kahanaa mere diivaane se lailaa terii amaanat hai
Lailaa terii amaanat hai
Terii baahon men dam degii tu jis kaa dam bharataa hai
Tu jis kaa dam bharataa hai
Dil ke jitane zakm hain un men teraa hii aqs ubharataa hai
Teraa hii aqs ubharataa hai

Sadake jaaun is qaasid par jis se ye paigaam milaa
Jis se ye paigaam milaa
Meraa qaatil meraa masiihaa ab bhii mujh par marataa hai
Ab bhii mujh par marataa hai
Meraa qaatil meraa masiihaa meraa masiihaa meraa qaatil
Meraa qaatil meraa masiihaa ab bhii mujh par marataa hai
Ab bhii mujh par marataa hai
Lailaa lailaa lailaa lailaa.

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SEE THE SONG IN YOUTUBE:

Black Sabbath

One of the great horror anthology films, and Bava's personal favorite of his works, BLACK SABBATH solidified the director's reputation as Europe's maestro of the macabre. In "The Telephone," a woman is haunted by menacing phone calls from a former lover. "The Wurdulak" stars Boris Karloff as a vampire hunter whose family is stalked by the wandering spirit of an undead ghoul. "A Drop of Water" involves a nurse who steals a ring from a corpse-not realizing the curse that is carried with it.
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Black Sabbath (Italian: I tre volti della paura (The Three Faces of Fear)) is a 1963 Italian horror anthology film directed by Mario Bava.[1] The film comprises three horror stories: "The Wurdulak" (based on the novella The Family of the Vourdalak by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, and starring Boris Karloff), "The Drop of Water" and "The Telephone". The heavy metal band Black Sabbath appropriated their name from the British title of the film.[2]
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This lushly photographed film consists of three tales: The Telephone, The Wurdulak, and The Drop of Water. Bava was inspired by Roger Corman and his Poe films and wanted to do something similar. Instead of looking toward Poe, Bava decided to mine other sources, most notably Chekhov and Maupassant. Don't try to look for the original stories, though - all of them are very loosely inspired. Just look at the story "The Telephone". It was supposed to have been inspired by Maupassant, yet the author died in 1893 before the use of the telephone.

Truth be told, I am not very happy with "The Telephone", the first tale of the film. Although it is very effectively directed, it is ultimately predictable and contrived. It's basically one of those escaped psycho stalker tales, something we've seen far too much of. Bava does manage to mine some suspense from the premise, especially with his use of the ringing phone. To be fair, this premise was probably much fresher in the early sixties than it is now. It stars Michele Mercier (WEB OF THE SPIDER, better known for her role in Truffaut's SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER) as the victim and she is pretty damn good at looking genuinely frightened. At the very least this segment is entertaining, even if it is not up to par with the rest of the film.

The second tale is "The Wurdulak", and what a triumphant piece it is. Not only are there genuine chills to be found throughout this 30 minute mini-movie, it is probably one of the most effective performances of Boris Karloff (FRANKENSTEIN, BRIDE OF RANKENSTEIN, ISLE OF THE DEAD, BEDLAM, HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, THE RAVEN)'s career. Karloff's role as the patriarch of a close-knit family who may or may not be a vampire is chilling and eerie. Based very loosely on a story by a Russian Count by the name of Alexei Constantinovich Tolstoi ("La Famille du Wurdulak"), the story tells of a vampire that has been ravaging the countryside. It is said that the vampire especially feeds on those that it loved most when alive. The next thing the viewer will notice about this segment just how brilliant Bava's use of color is. Colors stand out with psychedelic detail. Everything you see is photographed with a painter's eye - the moonlight blue cast of the fog, the orange-yellow glow of the window from the darkness, the bone-white little boy in the mist looking for his mama and shouting "I'm cold!" (I've always found spectral children especially creepy). I think that "The Wurdulak" is a gothic masterpiece and you can see Bava's influence on Tim Burton's art direction in the lesser film SLEEPY HOLLOW.

Finally, we come to "The Drop of Water", the most effective piece in the entire film. Structurally, this story will be very familiar to those of us who grew up on EC comics. It's the typical corpse-comes-back-from-the-dead-to-seek-revenge tale. In Bava's hands, however, it goes to another plain. The plot is this: A nurse is called upon by a maid (Milly) to dress the corpse of a medium that supposedly died during a seance. The dead woman appears to have been wealthy and lives in a luxurious and ultra-creepy gothic mansion, complete with roman columns and dozens of cats. The nurse, Helen Chester, played to perfection by Jacqueline Pierreux, spies a ring on the corpse's finger and pockets it. Typical stuff, eh? Just wait until you see this corpse. When I first saw this corpse as a child I promptly burst into tears. I was sent from the room with this ominous phrase from my mother: "No more horror movies for you!" (Thankfully, mom reneged on that promise) The corpse mask itself was created by Bava's father Eugenio and I would venture to say that it is one of the most effective pieces of make-up in the history of the horror film. If you don't get a chill when you first see it, then you are one desensitized bastard, heh. Bava knew how effective the corpse was too, because he used it to burn one horrifying image after another into your psyche: Sitting in a rocking chair with her cat, decked out on a canopy bed with a rigid rigor mortis grimace, literally gliding towards the victim as if on air - each one sent the goosebumps up and down my spine even as I watched it with adult eyes.
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Furious 6

When the fifth installment of the hugely popular car chase saga The Fast & the Furious was released, I said watching the new Fast Five film is like attending a family reunion. These characters may be badass criminals, but, as Vin Diesel’s Dom constantly reminds the audience, they are a family and the audience is the past of that family, who would root for them no matter what.

So, you don’t really need a story and plot to make a F&F movie, just put the characters together and make them drive fancy fast cars, in scenic locations. That’s it.

Fast Five was a heist film in the tradition of Ocean’s 11. In the new film, sometimes call Furious 6, it goes back to bad guy vs bad guy mode. And Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty returns from dead, motivating a new series of car chase with fancy machines, first in London and then in Spain. And there’s something about microchips and stuff you don’t really car about.

There is nothing much to say about the film. But, if you have seen all the earlier films, it’s all fun, the way the characters interact with each other and all.

And, oh, there is Luke Evans as the bad guy, who smoulders and does his job quite effectively. And hand to hand combat scenes are especially nice. As I said, it’s good fun.

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Fast & Furious 6 (alternatively known as Fast Six or Furious 6) is a 2013 action film written by Chris Morgan and directed by Justin Lin. It is the sixth installment in the Fast and the Furious film series. The film stars Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Chris Bridges, Sung Kang, Luke Evans, Gina Carano and John Ortiz. Fast & Furious 6 follows a professional criminal gang led by Dominic Toretto (Diesel) who have retired following their successful heist in Fast Five (2011), but remain wanted fugitives. U.S. Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) agent Luke Hobbs (Johnson) offers to clear the group's criminal records and allow them to return home in exchange for helping him to take down a skilled mercenary organization led by Owen Shaw (Evans) and his second-in-command, Dominic's presumed-dead lover Letty Ortiz (Rodriguez).
Fast & Furious 6 was in development by February 2010 as the first film in the series to move away from the underground car-racing theme of the series' previous films which was considered to have placed a barrier on audience numbers. Pre-production had begun by April 2011, and principal photography began in London, England in July 2012. Filming locations also included the Canary Islands, Glasgow, and Los Angeles. The film was first released in the United Kingdom, on May 17, 2013, followed by an international release on May 24, 2013. The film has grossed over $780 million worldwide, making it number 43 on the all-time worldwide list of highest-grossing films, in unadjusted dollars, and the third-highest-grossing film of 2013. A sequel is scheduled to begin filming in September 2013.
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In Another Country

Writes Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian:
To distract herself from money worries, a young film student sketches out three different versions of a script featuring an elegant, slightly haughty Frenchwoman (naturally, Huppert) who comes to Mohang. In the first version, she is a visiting film director; in the second, a woman having an affair with a Korean film director and in the third, she is a single woman whose husband has deserted her for a Korean man, and now she seeks guidance from a monk.

We of course see these three variations acted out on screen, interspersed with scenes showing the woman scribbling: it is a little like Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda. But the "real" story, the story of the writer's financial woes – that is left irritatingly unexamined and unresolved. Perhaps even the fiercest Isabelle Huppert fan would not expect her to give three radically different performances, and so it proves. In Another Country looks very much like something written on a napkin and shot in the one afternoon that Huppert could come to South Korea. Slight, diverting, forgettable.
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Writes A. O. Scott in The New York Times:
Like many other films by the sly and prolific South Korean director Hong Sang-soo, “In Another Country” is at once a comedy of manners and an oblique commentary on the power of cinema to expose and alter reality. Its three chapters, each a little under a half-hour long, are scenarios dreamed up by an aspiring young screenwriter (Jung Yumi) in the midst of some vague family trouble. The movies she writes, which we see enacted on the screen (with Ms. Jung as a helpful neighbor), are variations on some of Mr. Hong’s favorite themes: social awkwardness, sexual frustration and the selfishness of Korean men.

In each vignette Isabelle Huppert plays a Frenchwoman named Anne, who finds herself the only foreigner in an overcast beach town. Whether she is a filmmaker, the lover of a filmmaker (Moon Sungkeun) or a newly divorced spiritual seeker, she finds herself entangled in an odd group dynamic made more so by her cultural and linguistic estrangement. Whatever the situation, she attracts the clumsy, infatuated attention of a lifeguard (Yu Junsang), with whom she communicates in halting, half-shouted English.

Other recurring characters include a pregnant woman (Moon Sori) and her husband (Kwon Hyehyo), whose relationship is unsettled by Anne’s presence. Anne is not precisely the same person each time. Her clothes and hair are a bit different, as is her temperament: coy when she wears red, reckless and abrasive in green. The others are sometimes rude, sometimes solicitous, and variously puzzled, exasperated and charmed by her presence.

Which might sum up the experience of this movie, which is never less than moderately interesting but only intermittently more. Mr. Hong’s playful formal ingenuity is evident in the way certain shots, scenes and events are repeated with small but significant alterations. He — or his alter ego, the fledgling writer — is pleased to show us how much he can do with a strictly limited set of elements. We notice patterns and motifs without worrying too much about the structure that governs them. Our job is not to interpret things like the repeated theft or borrowing of an umbrella, or the way certain scenes echo one another, but rather to notice that these things are there.
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