Au Revoir

Hello!

Like I said, I'm back. But not here. Tumblr's beautiful design and ease of use has charmed me and now I have got a new blog on tumblr, which will be my blog from now on. Goodbye blogger, I had a great time writing here. I had a nostalgic trip looking at my old posts and alternately cringing (at bad writing) and laughing (at funny writing) and feeling like maybe I can write after all (at good writing). But now it's time to move on, and I invite you, faithful reader (I can see you hanging out back there; nope, I was mistaken) to visit my new blog if you ever at all read one post of mine here that you thought was worth it.

Anyway, enough of shamelessly plugging myself, here's the link: http://www.writeliving.tumblr.com/

Hope to see you there!

A personal celebration

I'm back after a long, long time *cheers*

You'll be glad to know I've been a year in college and I'm enjoying it hugely. I've made a lot of friends, participated in extra-curriculars and almost managed to keep my room clean for two semesters. But most of all, I love coming back to this blog and connecting with an older version of me, letting nostalgia wash over me for a while. And I've also realised how much I love writing and reading and anything at all to do with words. This is who I am. It's from this love that I go on to do newer, nice, interesting things like singing and painting and running marathons and trying to act and talking on radio. Because anything new always begins with a solid foundation of something you love and you're good at, which give you the needed self-esteem to experiment.

Hopefully I'll keep up this blog, or regularly maintain a new blog. But now's not the time to continue this post. To anyone at all who's reading this blog and is even a bit interested in what I write, I'll be back!

Book of the month : Franny and Zooey

           When I was racking my head to come up with ideas for this blog, I thought of writing about my favourite books/authors every month, mainly because : a) They are amazing and should be read by everyone and b) I just can't stop raving about them either verbally or in  print.

           I wasn't really a big fan of J D Salinger's widely-acclaimed 'Catcher in the Rye' when I first read it a year ago. Probably I wasn't mature enough to appreciate it, but Holden Caulfield's pessimism put me off, and his tale was so alien to what I was used to it seemed more strange than wonderful. Maybe I should reread it now, after 'Franny and Zooey' and the amazing-in-parts-weird-in-others 'For Esme, With Love and Squalor' reversed my earlier unfavourable opinion of his books.

            Salinger's books would make excellent plays : there is absolutely nothing of the 'he thought, she thought' business in his writing. The only hint to a character's thoughts is through action and dialogue. 'Franny and Zooey' is written in typical Salinger style with a lot of seemingly pointless description. For Salinger descriptions aren't just that, they comment something about the personality of a character, and help you view the entire scene in your mind - just as if you were watching it for yourself.

            The characters are one of the best parts of the book. The most interesting are Seymour and Buddy Glass, the latter supposedly based on Salinger himself. These, the eldest siblings of the Glass family, never directly appear in it but are integral to the book. I do not think it possible for anyone to read this book (provided they like Salinger's writings, of course) and not fall in love with Seymour. Buddy, the reclusive writer, is great, but he appears to follow where Seymour leads, and Seymour is superb. I won't say any more, read the book for yourself (and 'For Esme' and 'Raise High the Roof Beam' if you liked it) and draw your own conclusions.

           Of all characters I empathised most with Franny, the 'baby' of the family. Zooey was a perfect foil to Franny, but it was her feelings, her thoughts that I felt most akin to, all her spiritual confusion,  her naive perception of the world and her sensitivity to criticism. This brings me to the next, most important element of the novel - the content. It is an exploration of a spiritual crisis and what it means to live happily and honourably and truly selflessly in this world. That is a very rough idea of what it is about, but it's what I got out of it.

          Perhaps I liked the book so much because it was obvious that Salinger was deeply influenced by the Bhagavad Gita and various Indian philosophies. However, he mixed these with his own philosophies and questions and his inimitable way of looking at things that everything seemed new, and every concept made me think, think and think some more. If you're looking for the meaning of life, this book will add a new dimension to that search, if only because Salinger pondered over the issue so much himself, and proceeded to give his unique ideology to the world.

        Conclusion : Do give this book a try, and don't get scared by the subtle 'literary' air hanging around it. Drop all your expectations and you might even find it an interesting read.

        Tell me what you thought about it. Is Salinger a genius? Is he overrated? Do you find him a bit ambiguous and confusing (I do a lot, especially in 'For Esme'). Do you love him anyway?

Away from home, finally

Going to college is a lot like rappelling. When I rappelled for the first time, down a thirty-foot rock in Bangalore with my cousin, I went from excitement to doubt to terror before landing on relief when it was finally over. 


I had to climb a rock as big as me to get to the top, and I was sure I couldn't do it. For two pins I would have given up and returned had not the humiliation of failing and the encouragement of the other rappellers kept me going. Even then I came down very rockily, losing my balance, bumping my arm against the cliff and finally nearly collapsing on the ground. Now that the experience is long over, I can say it was a lot of fun and I would love to do it again. I really do mean it - for now.


I am in my terrified stage with regard to hostel. I have wanted to go to hostel ever since my cousin told me about night-shows, midnight feasts - a dream ever since I read Enid Blyton - and most of all, being independent. Now that I am actually in, however, and I have to go tomorrow to buy buckets and things for my room, I find myself dwelling more and more on the potentially scary people I'll have to stay with for five years.


Will they drink, smoke, do drugs, rag juniors, make me sing onstage, make me speak onstage, speak to me, not speak to me, expect me to talk more or completely ignore me?


Will I be able to make friends, earn the approbation of teachers, talk to seniors, wake up at 7:00 a.m. everyday, decide what I really want to do in my life, balance study and fun, participate in extra-curriculars, stomach the mess food and put up with the (probably) lousy rooms?


Now that I have written that out, I realise that I will have to do all the above, of necessity, because I am going there. So instead of focusing on the bad things that could happen, I should focus on the potential good ones. Maybe I'll have a great room-mate and good friends; hopefully I'll enjoy what I study and I'll have enough time to do extra activities on the side; perhaps once I'm actually on campus I'll discover a lot of exciting, inspiring, amazing stuff about it I never even dreamed of. 


There are a lot of trees on the IIT Madras campus - that's the best part about it. There are always a lot of activities like marathons or lectures by eminent personalities. There's sure to be a library, and the campus is so huge it will take me a good five years to explore every nook and cranny of it thoroughly. If the course is rigorous and the load huge, well, I was always a workaholic and a nerd and I'll be able to manage. 


I hope I'll improve the things I like about myself and change the things I don't. I hope I meet all my goals for myself. I hope I''ll find one thing I love so much I'll want to do it for the rest of my life. I hope I'll have loads and loads and loads of fun! 


How was your college experience? Or if you're joining this year, how do you feel?

Subtitles

They are everywhere. No English, Tamil or any language film is without lines of text running below the screen, in a variety of options such as Russian, Spanish, Chinese and Polish apart from the usual English. Earlier subtitles were used to translate obscure foreign films to a more universal language, no doubt to increase the market for those films. Now every single movie, TV serial or reality show has them, but that doesn't mean these ubiquitous subtitles are the same everywhere. No, there are some subtypes which I, a fairly frequent watcher of VCD movies, have decided to list.

Remember that I am not including the perfect English script which characterises subs in movie theatres. Those are tame and boring. The ones below are unique, to say the least.

1) The-subs-of-people-who-stab-at-a-dictionary-at-random:
When you get a pirated version of an English movie that surprisingly has subtitles, you know this is the variety to expect. The words are written at random and only vaguely sound like the actual conversation, because the subtitler obviously can't understand what the talking heads are saying, but charitably intends that that need not hold him back from attempting to help (or hinder) other equally ignorant watchers.

My copy of Twilight, for instance, was burned from my friend's, who got it from her friend, and so on. Now Twilight is a movie that needs subtitles because the characters keep mumbling to themselves throughout the movie, and I was pleased to find it had them. I revised this opinion when Bella started talking about her decision to go to Forks.

"My erotic mom was about to get married..." read the subs, as I gaped. I recall Bella meant 'erratic'.

The whole movie was like that, and after a while I stopped focusing on the action and gazed at the bottom of the screen instead. It was far more entertaining.

2) The-subs-of-regional-movies-which-translate-everything-literally:
Regional movies have English subs nowadays, which I find an extremely good thing since I can't understand all that is spoken, especially in Hindi films. The translation is more or less accurate, which is a good thing for the prosy dialogues. It is a different matter when it comes to the songs.

My copy of DDLJ (Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge) has awesome translations, perhaps because the lyrics themselves are so good.

'As soon as I saw you my darling,
I knew what madness love is'

Well that's exactly what 'Tujhe Dekha' says in Hindi, so the English sub sounds wonderful and sweet. And all the songs in that movie are sheer poetry, so that saves us. But what happens when the lyrics are not poetry? Well, we don't notice them in the song, but translated into English that is an entirely different matter.

These are some of the gems from Tamil:
"I will stick to you like fevicol."
"You are like a bowl of fruit." (This is a compliment apparently. Both are from Ghajini.)
 "Who is going to shake? You, you." (From Vasool Raja MBBS.)

And of course that famous literal English translation of Rajnikanth's autokaaran song that was the subject of a popular email a few years ago:

"I am auto-fellow, auto-fellow,
For all poor people family fellow,
Mother-loving something fellow...
Ajak means Ajak only,
Ghumak means Ghumak only."

It's not a proper translation except for the Ajak and Ghumak part. Check out the whole online by googling 'autofellow english translation'. There's even a youtube video on it!

3) The-subs-which-do-not-exist:
My friend told me about this type, I haven't come across it yet myself. It is very simple, used by people who know they can't understand anything happening on the screen, and yet do not resort to cunning guessing-games - they simply leave the screen blank.

And not just blank either, the place where the subs are supposed to be contains a question mark instead. So I imagine there would be a series of question marks which makes it look like the actors are themselves puzzled. Nice help, guys.

4) The-subs-which-are-so-awesome-they-are-better-than-the-movie-itself:
I have watched only one movie where the subtitles come under this category. It is not just that the English used was perfect, without any grammatical errors whatsoever. It is not even that the vocabulary was of a high order, and made sense.These are good in themselves, but there was more.

The lyrics rhymed.

That line needed that dramatic effect. It was simply awesome, I considered, for subtitles of a Tamil movie song to rhyme. This is a translation of two lines (The movie is 'Nanban'):

"Who is there like my friend? (En friend-a pola yaaru machan?)
He changed every fad and trend." (Avan trend-a ellam maathi vechan.)

And so on, all through the song. And it was not just this song, every one rhymed the same way. Except for 'Aska Laska', the lyrics of which mostly just mention 'love' in many languages, including Arabic and Russian.  Yup, the English subs mentioned every language used in the song.

So I have preserved that CD. The movie was not bad (an unimaginative copy of the Hindi original though), but the actors, director, scriptwriter etc. are nothing to the subtitlers. I don't know if they were paid for their work, but it was so cute of whoever they were to think of rhyming the lyrics. Hats off to you guys (or gals).

So these are the four main categories I could think of. Do you know any more? Mention them in the comments!







   

On Ommwriter and other things

If you're an old reader of this blog, you would have noticed the change in background. This is part of my effort to write more and write better. I even made after-exam resolutions to write at least five posts a month, but I'm already half-way into April and this is my first post. I find that blogger's stupid bug-filled settings really annoy me and that's probably one of the many reasons for this. I am planning to shift to wordpress soon, which apparently is better.


I feel inspired to write on the Word page and on Ommwriter, which is a great writing app I've downloaded. For those who don't know about it, it simplifies the hundreds of useless Word options into just four fonts. Ommwriter is inspired by the Zen way of things. There are various backgrounds you can choose from, and it plays some soothing music in the background to inspire you to write. It can be downloaded for free from ommwriter.com. It's pretty awesome, and it really works for me - I do write more on it than on Word, or on blogger's screen for instance.


Now that Blogger has changed its settings though I want to give it a try. And I have some pretty awesome post ideas too. Please comment my dear readers, 'coz feedback is manna to writers, as I well know. Even if I suck tell me so. I'd like the journey of a hundred books to begin with these humble posts.

World Poetry Day

Yes, it's World Poetry Day on March 21. It's amazing how they seem to have a day for every conceivable thing, including teddy bears (it's on 9th September). I missed celebrating the first Pi day last week on March 14 (how do you celebrate Pi day, you ask? Well, it is a universally established fact that you do it by eating pies!) but another one turns up on 22nd July, so I can relax. Good old mathematicians - with admirable foresight they have provided two days in a year dedicated to one thing - a modest, unassuming constant that providentially sounds like a yummy dessert dish.

But back to poetry - Charlotte Bronte says that there is nothing beautiful in this world which is not poetry. This assertion wouldn't have made any sense to me a few years ago, when poems were no more than a boring section in my English textbook which I never could connect to, and no teacher could ever make me understand how blank or free verse could be considered poetry at all.

Then I read a few poems of Wordsworth - The Solitary Reaper (CBSE students would remember it), the Daffodil and Tintern Abbey (ISC students would remember this). I simply fell in love with them. They are such deceptively simple poems, talking of an emotion deeply felt, soul-stirring, which could never be put in plain prose half so well. If you've ever felt lonely, or that all "the weary weight of this unintelligible world" is dragging you down, his poems offer solace and comfort, a simple feeling of kinship and of hoping for higher things and better times.

I think poems are very similar to angsty songs by any rock/soft rock/pop band you care to name. In fact, they are songs without the music, or songs are poetry with music, whichever you prefer. After all the numbers by Linkin Park or Dead by April also talk about suffering and pain and a wish to overcome them. I think that no one can become a really good poet or rockstar without being compulsive loners or extremely sad for some reason. 

All the good poets I've read about were slight misanthropes and they all reached their peak before they became famous, and either died or never wrote again, or wrote awfully once they were made Poet Laureate and began enjoying popularity. I don't know why - but fame seems to kill creativity. Maybe that's why so many bands break up after a while too - because they simply can't make the same kind of songs anymore.

Poetry is the intimate expression of someone deeply stirred by feelings not easily put in words. I have never written poetry in my life, except once - my verse is usually of the 'I have a canary, His name is Billy,' variety. Therefore I have all the more respect for people who actually can write good poetry - which I've finally understood as not something that has to rhyme or be so long but be something that flows from the heart, something that must flow from the heart or choke the person if left unexpressed. The best poetry is that which is simple and unvarnished - from the poet's heart and soul to the reader's.

Therefore I make this tribute to all my favourite poets, and authors - Wordsworth, Vikram Seth, who writes the funniest poems and first made me like poetry, Charlotte Bronte, and L.M. Montgomery who wrote prose but was a hardcore poet at heart and first taught me the distinction between a good poem and a bad one - Thank you for your gift of words for generations to come!