Travels with Charlie

I don't know his name. I met him in Bus no. 33, on my way to Santa Monica Promenade. He looked like a homeless person (though his homelessness appeared to me to be more simulated than real). He kept his belongings on the seat next to him, and was busy drinking beer from a can, covered with a black recycled plastic bag. There being no vacant seat I approached him, and he asked me quizzingly as to what I wanted. I asked him if I could please sit there and vacated the seat next to him for me by removing his belongings. And then he started talking.

He asked me if I smoked. On being told that I didn't, he expressed his surprise. He asked me where I was going, and on being told, he asked further if I was going to work. I replied in negative and told him that I was just going to meet a friend. He said, "Ok, you have a good job like me; weekends off."

Soon he pulled out a big bundle of Marlboro, separated each packet from the bundle, put them in another recycled, black plastic bag and told to me, "I'm going to sell these. You're sitting with a criminal, my friend." I told him I didn't care as long as it didn't concern me. He then said, "At least, it is better than" then paused and asked again, "Can you spare me a quarter?" When I tried to pull out a quarter, he laughed contendedly and said, "See, I was just joking. I mean, I was just telling you. I sell cigarettes; I don't beg." And then he started shouting "Cigaratte, cigarette? $2, not $3". Then, on not getting any response, he commented, "I see, this bus is full of saintly people."

He then showed me his left had, which was bandaged, and told me how he had got into a drunken browl with a friend 2 nights ago. He told me that he had asked the doctor putting the bandage as to where the other guy is. According to him, the doctor had replied him, "You hit him with a 2x4 wood; where do you expect him to be? He is lying there unconscious". Charlie told me that he then replied to the doctor, "I'm not satisfied; I want a rematch."

He cut many jokes along the way. He said to me, "My ATM card is not working; may I use yours? I will return it in 5 minutes. By the way, what is your PIN?" He also told the people in the bus that they should not hold him responsible for the fact that they have to go to job even on a saturday. He asked them to cheer up.

He told me that he makes, on an average weekend, about $300 (which I found a bit too much, because he said he buys only about 3-4 bundles of cigarettes, sells them, and then goes back to downtown to buy more, so that he can sell more) and about $65 on a weekday. He told me that he goes to pubs on weekends.

He agreed that he could have made more money if he had gone to Santa monica beach and the promenade, but "them Cops there come on horse" and so he told me that he would rather settle with his usual, safe place: Venice Beach.

Soon the bus stopped at the Venice beach intersection. He got up. I wished him a nice weekend; he smiled at me, said, "Take care", laughed loudly and slowly walked away.

I looked forward to my destination: Santa Monica.

To him, it was just another day at the beach.

In Defence (or, Defense) of Clocky

Clocky is a smart clock, invented by Gauri Nanda at MIT. This clock, on being tried to stop from shouting, climbs down the table/nightstand, rolls over and hides somewhere, so that the lazybum who owns it, has to finally leave the bed to stop it from shouting. And not only that, it would find a new place everyday. In my opinion, this is a very useful and brilliant invention.

But what is the reward for making this invention?An Ig Noble award: the award that is given to people, whose inventions should NOT be repeated. I don't what was so bad or negative about this invention to deserve an Ig Noble. But then, it's not the philosophers but some egocentric megalomaniacs, who rule the world and call the shots.

I think, what this episode tells us is crystal clear: Don't throw pearls at the swine!
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Source: http://www.clocky.net/
Pic Source: http://web.media.mit.edu/~nanda/projects/clocky.html

La Marioneta

The following poem, enetitled "La Marioneta" ("The Puppet), was circulated in the internet a few years ago, as the farewell poem by the Latin American author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who had undergone treatment for lymphatic cancer earlier. This finally turned out to be a hoax. It was actually written by a ventriloquist named Johnny Welch. He later told that he felt humiliated that someone used his poem and, in a way, robbed him of the credit that was due to him.

However, whenever I read the poem, I've felt that the words are really true, though, if I remember it correctly, Gabo himself has called this poem "kitsch". The poem goes as follows:

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The Puppet

If for a moment God would forget that
I am a rag doll and give me a scrap of life,
possibly I would not say everything that I think,
but I would definitely think everything that I say.

I would value things
not for how much they are worth
but rather for what they mean.

I would sleep little, dream more.
I know that for each minute that we close our eyes
we lose sixty seconds of light.

I would walk when the others loiter;
I would awaken when the others sleep.

I would listen when the others speak,
and how I would enjoy a good chocolate ice cream.

If God would bestow on me a scrap of life,
I would dress simply,
I would throw myself flat under the sun,
exposing not only my body but also my soul.

My God, if I had a heart,
I would write my hatred on ice
and wait for the sun to come out.

With a dream of Van Gogh
I would paint on the stars a poem by Benedetti,
and a song by Serrat would be my serenade to the moon.

With my tears I would water the roses,
to feel the pain of their thorns
and the incarnated kiss of their petals...

My God, if I only had a scrap of life...
I wouldn't let a single day go by
without saying to people I love,
that I love them.

I would convince each woman or man
that they are my favourites and
I would live in love with love.

I would prove to the men how mistaken they are
in thinking that they no longer fall in love when they grow old--
not knowing that they grow old when they stop falling in love.
To a child I would give wings, but
I would let him learn how to fly by himself.
To the old I would teach that
death comes not with old age but with forgetting.
I have learned so much from you men....

I have learned that everybody wants to live
at the top of the mountain without realizing
that true happiness lies in the way we climb the slope.

I have learned that when a newborn
first squeezes his father's finger in his tiny fist,
he has caught him forever.

I have learned that a man only has the right
to look down on another man
when it is to help him to stand up.
I have learned so many things from you,
but in the end most of it will be no use
because when they put me inside that suitcase,
unfortunately I will be dying.

Translated by Matthew Taylor and Rosa Arelis Taylor
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Of late, due to some reason, I've been reminded of this poem, and hence today I dug it up.

Sure enough, we often regret things we said, and we wish we had not said these words! But we also regret things left unsaid; we regret our silence, for how many of us can guess when we are talking to somebody that this may be the last time we are talking face to face.

I don't mean death here, but separation.

One may get separated for life from a dear friend, and without any clue (when one is having the last round of talk with that friend) that there won't be another meeting such as this in this life.

As a drifter traveling from one place to another all througout my life, I've often faced such situations.

If only, humans could know the future!

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Source: http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/marquez.html

Straight Talk

In a world such as that of Glamour, where everyone is obsessed with physical beauty and appearanace, it is indeed impressive to read about someone who knows what his or her job is, and that one is ready to try one's best to achieve that. And so the following news item in CNN about CharlizeTheron impressed me much. To quote CNN:

"Possessor of one of the loveliest faces on the planet, Charlize Theron still finds herself explaining to people that sometimes it's part of her job to hide her looks.

The attention critics and audiences paid to her physical transformation in 2003's "Monster" grew tiresome for Theron, who had gained 30 pounds and became almost unrecognizable behind splotchy makeup and dark contact lenses to play serial killer Aileen Wuornos.

Theron faced endless questions about how and why she concealed her cover-girl beauty."

I have never watched a single film of her with knowledge; nor do I know much about her. But it's not everyday that ones reads such a news item, and that's what sounded interesting to me.

It's not that she is the first person to have done this. Actually, many (for example, Robert de Niro) have done this before: undergoing significant physical transformation to look the characters they were playing. Butunlike her, none of them possessed, suposedly the most beautiful face.

And what does she have to say about it? According to CNN, what she said to the Associated Press is the following: "The celebrity status in Hollywood has gotten really out of control." and "Like one of those snow-globe things, it's this fragile little ball of perfection, and I think people have forgotten what actors do. After a while, I was like, 'Well, what did you want me to do? Did you want me to play this woman and not look like her?' "

She further added: "People said, 'Oh, you're doing another ugly movie,' " Theron said. "I said, 'No, I'm doing another film about real people, and it's not about ugly vs. anything.' It's about searching for that constant truth, and I don't think I'll be able to sleep at night if I know I didn't search for that truth and implement it. I don't know how else to do it as an actor."

Interesting, right? So much sense, that is! And that it is coming from someone, who had to witness her mother shoot her father to death in self-defense, when she was only 15 years old!

The picture here is a still from her movie, "North Country", which stars Theron as a mine worker who files a sexual-harassment lawsuit against co-workers.
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Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Movies/10/18/film.charlize.theron.ap/index.html

Loser's Journal!

Loser's journal is how Rosie O'Donell describes blogs. At least, that's what she told when she refered to the fact that she writes blogs.

Obviously she joked; but how far is her description from the truth? Actually, not much!

Many of the people who write blog do not have a life, at least, not by the "modern" definition. Many of them are shy, reclusive people, who prefer to read and acquire information rather than clubbing and doing other thing that society considers opt for the progress of mankind.

But then some must be ready and willing to be losers, so that the winners can enjoy their status!

And therefore, I continue to write my loser's journal!

Contra Jogulatores Obloquentes ( Against Jesters Who Defame and Insult)

I had first heard of the jester sometime in 1997. Then it was perhaps in 1998 when, during a discussion on storytelling, a friend of mine, who had read his Nobel acceptance speech at the library, asked me to go through it.

And then I read it, which was entitled, "Contra Jogulatores Obloquentes", or "Against Jesters Who Defame and Insult". It was based on a Law issued by Emperor Frederick II in 1221, which declared that anyone might commit violence against jesters without any fear of punishment or sanction.

It was a very interesting speech. It was not at all Nobel-speech like but rather informal. In it, he laughed at himself, made fun of intellecuals and attacked the Vetican. In his own words, "I mean come on, first you give the prize to a black man, then to a Jewish writer. Now you give it to a clown. What gives? As they say in Naples: pazziàmme? Have we lost our senses?"

But he also paid glowing tribute to the storytellers of his childhood. Those were some very oridinary people, who taight him the basics of storytelling. "They were the old storytellers, the master glass-blowers who taught me and other children the craftsmanship, the art, of spinning fantastic yarns. We would listen to them, bursting with laughter - laughter that would stick in our throats as the tragic allusion that surmounted each sarcasm would dawn on us. To this day I keep fresh in my mind the story of the Rock of Caldé."

And so he acknowledged how the award belongs to many of these people. "I can tell you there is an extraordinary number of people who rejoice with me over your choice. And so I bring you the most festive thanks, in the name of a multitude of mummers, jesters, clowns, tumblers and storytellers.

And they express their gratitude with explosive exuberance. In my home town, people swear that on the night the news arrived that one of their own storytellers was to be awarded the Nobel Prize, a kiln that had been standing cold for some fifty years suddenly erupted in a broadside of flames, spraying high into the air - like a fireworks finale - a myriad splinters of coloured glass, which then showered down on the surface of the lake, releasing an impressive cloud of steam."

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(Talking of jesters: The jester himself had to suffer many different of violence in his life. This culminated in a group of fascists kidnaping, torturing and raping his wife, Franca Rame in 1973. As the Nobel website mentions: Through this beastly act, they seek to punish Franca and Dario for their political activism, in particular Franca's work in the prisons since 1970. Outcries of indignation and support throughout Italy.)

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Source: http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1997/fo-lecture.html
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1997/fo-bio.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dario_Fo

Obsession of My Melancholy Whore

The title of each book by (the Latin American author) Gabriel Garcia Marquez is interesting, be it "One hundred years of solitude" or "Living to tell the tale". But his latest book, the first fiction in a decade, is entitled, "Memories of my melancholy whores". As someone waiting eagerly to read the book soon, I've gone through some of the reviews of this book, one of which is reproduced below:

(Editorial Reviews: From Publishers Weekly)

"García Márquez's slim, reflective contribution to the romance of the brothel, his first book-length fiction in a decade, is narrated by perhaps the greatest connoisseur ever of girls for hire. After a lifetime spent in the arms of prostitutes (514 when he loses count at age 50), the unnamed journalist protagonist decides that his gift to himself on his 90th birthday will be a night with an adolescent virgin. But age, followed by the unexpected blossoming of love, disrupts his plans, and he finds himself wooing the allotted 14-year-old in silence for a year, sitting beside her as she sleeps and contemplating a life idly spent. Flashes of García Márquez's brilliant imagery—the sleeping girl is "drenched in phosphorescent perspiration"—illuminate the novella, and there are striking insights into the euphoria that is the flip side of the fear of death. The narrator's wit and charm, however, are not enough to counterbalance the monotony of his aimlessness. Though enough grace notes are struck to produce echoes of eloquence, this flatness keeps the memories as melancholy as the women themselves. 250,000 first printing." (Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The number 514, mentioned above, intrigued me, because Marquez often seems to put a very huge number when it comes to one's extent of sexual escapades. Of course, this is not the only thing that he exaggerates; another example is the length of hair of the central character in, "Of love and other demons", which he puts at 200 feet.

But what seems more intriguing to me is his obsession with whores. For example, Florentino Ariza, his principla character from "One hundred years of solitude", who had vowed to remain chaste for Farmina Daza, his lost love, learned the basics of sex from a whore, and by the time he meets Daza (after 53 years 7 months and 11 days!), he had slept with, if I remember correctly, 626 women. And true to his form, he lies to Farmina that he had kept himself virgin for her all along.

In the first part of his autobiography, "Living to tell the tale", Marquez chronicles his initiation to sex by a whore, to whom he had gone to collect the rent on behalf of his father. And now in this book, "Mwemories of my melancholy whores" , he puts the number of whores his character slept with at 514! And this coming from a person, who has remained married to the same woman for 47 years!

I just wonder, if this is the fantasy of a shy, awkward, bookish teen, who may or my not have been initiated to sex by a prostitute, or the guilt of a man who really led a very promiscus life until he met the woman of his life and married her, when he was already 30 years old?

But then, when it's Gabo, how can one differentiate the fact from the fantasy?
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Sources: http://imdb.com/name/nm0305781/bio
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/140004460X/104-1455821-2756762?v=glance
&n=283155&s=books&v=glance

Is Zohra Sehgal Titanic?

Anyone who has not watched Titanic, has not led a life worth living, not because Titanic is that great a movie, but because everyone else has already seen it and, the enthusiastic description by the people who have seen the movie would drive any person who has not yet seen it crazy. But then the story is Titanic is fascinating, because ther world had not seen anything as grand as the Titanic when it was built. In fact, when titanic, the largest passenger steanship, was launched in 1912, they boasted of it as the unsinkable ship. And yet, within a few days of its first voyage, Titanic went down on 14th April, 1912.

That same day, another everlasting, unsinkable thing was born: Sahibzadi Zohra Begum Mumtaz-ullah Khan, popularly known as Zohra Sehgal. (I'm writing this based on an article I read in 1994, so maybe the date is wrong, but for sure, Zohra Sehgal was born in 1912).

(I first saw this grand old lady in a T.V. series entitled Mulla Naseeruddin, and was so impressed by her easy acting and the great smile that I started reading about her. This was the mid-1980's, and I lived in a part of the world, where Internet was still not there. So my only source of information were magazines, newspapers and books. And that's where I first came to know about her date of birth, which I have not been able to re-confirm at this moment.)

In spite of having been born into a traditional Sunni Muslim family, she travelled across the world with Uday Sankar's troupe, fell in love with, and married, a Hindu guy, and later went on to establish herself as an eminent member of the London Stage, and has remained active for almost 5 decades now. Not only that, she has also remained active in cinema and television.

And at 93, she is still going strong! That makes me think if she's Sitanic reincarnated! Who knows?
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Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Titanic
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0782247/
http://www.rediff.com/style/aug/01manj.htm
http://www.sruti.com/Mar04/spotlight.htm
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050423/saturday/above.htm
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/mp/2002/12/19/stories/2002121900450100.htm
Pic Source: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1041225/asp/opinion/story_4161843.asp

The Only Jew Who Made a Buck offa 'Hitler'

Due to the terrible atrocities on the Jewish people in Europe for about 200o years that culminated into the Holocaust, the Jewish people are very (rightfully) sensitive about any humor that concerns them; based on my personl experience, I can say that many of them detest anything that even remotely hints of anti-Semitism.

And so, some of the following quotes by US moviemaker Mel Brooks came to be as a bit of a suprise. However, I quote them here because, in my opinion, they'tre real funny.

"Look at Jewish history. Unrelieved lamenting would be intolerable. So, for every ten Jews beating their breasts, God designated one to be crazy and amuse the breast-beaters. By the time I was five I knew I was that one."

"I'm the only Jew who ever made a buck offa 'Hitler' !"

"I cut my finger. That's tragedy. A man walks into an open sewer and dies. That's comedy."

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Source: http://imdb.com/name/nm0000316/bio

All Because He Was a Jew?

I hated Shakespeare for two reasons. One is that some of his works were part of my school curriculum and some not-so-bright teachers tried to drive these into my skull. That led to my being turned by even the mere metnion of the word, "Shakepeare". Second, most of his works are pretty long, and I being an impatient and lazy man, could never gather the nerve to pick up one of this books and go through it.

Over the years, I read quite a number of esssays, some telling that it was someone else who wrote the books that Shakespeare is credited with, and some other vehemendly defending shakespeare. I read that even eminent people such as, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Freud, and others have expressed disbelief that the man known as Shakespeare actually produced the works attributed to him.

Then one Friday afternoon, I picked up the movie, "The Merchant of Venice", by chance, because it had, among others, Al Pacino as the Shylock. Yes, the evil Shylock, who would chop off a pound of felsh to compensate for his 3,000 ducats.

The movie started with a disclaimer about how in Europe in those days, the Jews had to lend money and work as userer, because they were not allowed to pursue any other profession. And what that made me think was that I was going to watch another cheesy movie.

And then, I heard Shylock saying the following lines:

"He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. "
"I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. "
"If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. "

Sounds pretty corny, right? These lines must be created by the politically correct moviemaker of the 21st century, correct? At least, I thought it so. And then, out of curiosity, I checked for the source of these dialogies in the internet.

And the result of the search surprised me. It was Shakespeare, who gave Shylock these words, as is seen in the folliowing:

"To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction."

And then I realized what kind of fella Shakespeare must have been! To write this in the 16th century (or the early 17th century), one must be centuries ahead of one's time; especially in Europe, where Christianity had been busy persecuting Jews for 1600 years by then. It's interesting to note that the same Europe, which had banished Jews for centuries, and which, at a later date, would invent Ghetto, Pogrom and the "Final Solution", gave birth to someone whose views were so liberal and balanced.

That also made me realize how stupid many of the people that I met in my school days and later, who had read this book and tried to talk to me about it, were! Almost all of them either criticized "Merchant of Venice" for being anti-Semitic, or simply aceepted the 'fact' that all Jews must be greedy moneylanders; some of them refered to Shylock, whenever they had to mention someone exceedingly greedy. ; nothing could be farther from truth than this.

Coming back to the work: Shakespeare does not stop his attack on injustice at that point, in "Merchant of Venice". He next attacks the hypocrisy of the Christian noblefolk, when Shylock asks the court:

"What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?
You have among you many a purchased slave,
Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules,
You use in abject and in slavish parts,
Because you bought them: shall I say to you,
Let them be free, marry them to your heirs?
Why sweat they under burthens? let their beds
Be made as soft as yours and let their palates
Be season'd with such viands? You will answer
'The slaves are ours:' so do I answer you:
The pound of flesh, which I demand of him,
Is dearly bought; 'tis mine and I will have it.
If you deny me, fie upon your law!
There is no force in the decrees of Venice.
I stand for judgment: answer; shall I have it?"

I now have more reasons to dislike the so-called enlightened people, and not to take anyone's assessment of a work of art at face value.
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(Shakespeare was, however, not a superhuman. Perhaps he would have host his head, had he opted to vindicate a Jew. So, finally he had to make Shylock renounce Judaism, convert to Christianity and forgeo all his wealth and properties.)

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Sources:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0379889/
http://imdb.com/title/tt0379889/quotes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare
http://eamesharlan.org/tptt/merchant31.html
http://www.william-shakespeare.info/act4-script-text-merchant-of-venice.htm