Tuesday 1 November 2016

The Remains of the Day

The Remains of the Day is a 1993 drama film adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from the Man Booker Prize (Fiction-1989) novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. It was directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant, Mike Nichols and John Calley. It starred Anthony Hopkins as Stevens and Emma Thompson as Miss Kenton with James Fox, Christopher Reeve, Hugh Grant and Ben Chaplin.

The protagonist is butler Stevens who narrates the story in first person. At the superficial level, the narration is about 'too much of dedication' for work at the loss of personal relations (Butler prioritizes his work against dying father and fails to reciprocate the love for which he longs in old age). The layered narration can be read as postcolonial narrative written by Japanese-English writer who narrates the readiness of servant class for subjugation to upper class and it is so internalized that even if the 'Master' changed to an American instead of an English man, the 'serventhood' of Stevens the Butler is unflinching. The last scene of the film shows a pigeon trapped in mansion. The window is opened and the new American Master flies away the bird and with it the camera flies sway in the clouds - showing us the large Mansion as a sort of cage, and it get tinier as camera flies higher - within which Stevens is 'happily' trapped / prisoned.

The other layer is much deeper. The background is that of 1930s - the beginning of WWII. It is significant to know how something we are so proud of at a given moment of time in history turns out to be something we are utterly ashamed of. The Nazi sympathizer rich elite British aristocrats are presented of whom the servant class was once very proud of but where ashamed of it in the verge of the unfolding of the events in history.

How symbolically Ishiguro signifies the entrapment of time and history! What so ever class one belongs to - the imprisonment of time and history is terrible. The remains of the 'time' is what remains with us to torment us and we have to live with it. There is no escape from the remains of the time.

Watch Full Movie here:

Friday 28 October 2016

The Teacher is an Iceberg

The Teacher is like an Iceberg

The true teacher is like an iceberg. The students are like the birds flying around the iceberg or like the penguin walking over the iceberg. The birds / penguins seat on the tip of an iceberg for rest. The perception of bird / penguin of the iceberg is what it can see - the outside visible - the eighth part of the huge mountain. The students who just parched on the tip of iceberg have little understanding about the teacher. Some birds / penguins dive deep in the water to catch fish. These birds / penguin can have better understanding of the depth of the iceberg. But birds can never dive deeper to see the bottom of the iceberg. The vastness of the iceberg is experienced as one dives much deeper in the sea. It is beyond the capacities of birds. But there are some students who are like scuba divers. They can dive in deep waters. They can experience the vastness of the iceberg.

The students who do not dive deep into their studies cannot come out with better understanding of the teacher. Most of the students are like birds. They chirp. They tweet. They parch. They think they have know the iceberg. These birds when they fly at the coast, see rock mountains and pronounce judgement that they are bigger than the one seen in deep sea. They do not know that these rock mountains have feet of clay. They cannot stand the tremors of time. They crumble when earth tremble. The iceberg do not tremble. It swiftly floats during the times of tremors. Its firmness is in the flux. It is not rigidly attached to immovability. The summer sun makes rock mountain hot. It emits heat in the surroundings. And what does the iceberg do? It melts. It makes the surrounding calm and cool. It is not like tree that it can grow but cannot move. The iceberg grown in height as well as in depth. It swiftly moves with time. The true teacher is not like a tree or rock mountain. The true teacher is like an iceberg. The students shall not be mere trekker or a bird to understand real worth of the teacher. The students shall be an expert scuba divers. The deeper they dive, the better they understand the teacher.

Friday 30 September 2016

Timepiece

Microblog on Timepiece

The clock. Yes, it's the clock! The timepiece has created all the hegemonic virtues around punctuality, and vices around 'free-will' to be 'natural being'. Had there been no clocks, there been nobody to be on 'time' and hence nobody would ever be 'late'. . . No need to give undue respect to those who are on time, and no need to despise those who are late. Cursed be the day on which clock was invented! There is no surprise - 'Horology' (study of time) sounds like 'horror'.

Thursday 29 September 2016

Selfie in Literature

#Selfie in #literature is not a new phenomenon.
Actually, this is going beyond autobiographies. As autobiographies have yet another battle to fight n win and that's about it being called "real" literature. But, quite interestingly, writers have used "words" as now people use "camera" to take selfie of what they do, eat, drink, travel . . . and what not!

The only difference is that this new form is just done with camera phones rather than with words. There are great many #narcissists in literary world.
Walt Whitman with his '*Song of Myself* which begins with this line
"I celebrate myself, and sing myself"
is an example enough to prove it.
*Kamala Das*/ *Madavikutty's '* *An Introduction* ' is yet another interesting example of selfie in poem:

"I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar,
I speak three languages, write in
Two, dream in one.
...
It is I who drink lonely
Drinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange towns,
It is I who laugh, it is I who make love
And then, feel shame, it is I who lie dying
With a rattle in my throat. I am sinner,
I am saint. I am the beloved and the
Betrayed. I have no joys that are not yours, no
Aches which are not yours.
I too call myself I*."

(The image is gujarati poem (?) by Chandrakant Bakshi. Shared by Jay Metra in comment on fb post.

Monday 19 September 2016

Existentialism: Video Resources

Existentialism: Learn to think and 'be' an Existentialist

This blog contains two web resources and nine short video to learn the fundamentals of Existentialist philosophy (apart from additional reading resources for deeper understanding).

1) Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice. It is the view that humans define their own meaning in life, and try to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational universe. It focuses on the question of human existence, and the feeling that there is no purpose or explanation at the core of existence. It holds that, as there is no God or any other transcendent force, the only way to counter this nothingness (and hence to find meaning in life) is by embracing existence.

Thus, Existentialism believes that individuals are entirely free and must take personal responsibility for themselves (although with this responsibility comes angst, a profound anguish or dread). It therefore emphasizes action, freedom and decision as fundamental, and holds that the only way to rise above the essentially absurd condition of humanity (which is characterized bysuffering and inevitable death) is by exercising our personal freedom and choice (a complete rejection of Determinism) (The Basics of Philosophy) (Click here to read full article)

Existentialism

2) Existentialism is a catch-all term for those philosophers who consider the nature of the human condition as a key philosophical problem and who share the view that this problem is best addressed through ontology. This very broad definition will be clarified by discussing seven key themes that existentialist thinkers address, i.e.

a. Philosophy as a Way of Life; b. Anxiety and Authenticity; c. Freedom;