Literature, Cinema, and Life

 

I recently found myself drawn to finding out how many (major) films in the US had been made with a direct link to Tennessee Williams' plays. Although I don't have the exact answer, it seems the number may fall around 16, some of screenplays Mr. Williams himself collaborated on. I had seen some, the famous ones, all classics, but there are some I haven't, so my wife and I decided to get more of those under our belt. Therefore, last night we watched Summer and Smoke, directed by Peter Glenville, with high class performance by Geraldine Page, who in recent popular memory is associated with her performance in Sweet Bird of Youth. I further plan on investigating if anything has been written on whether or not Geraldine Page decided her performance to bounce off Vivian Leigh's iconic presence in A Streetcar Named Desire, made exactly a decade ago. 

Anyway, midway through the film a discussion takes place between the characters played by Geraldine Page and Laurence Harvey as one of them asks if the other knew who said, 'We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,' and to everyone's surprise, the other replies Oscar Wilde. That innocent moment in film reminded me what had occurred the day before at work. A youngish white man with a boyish face, a bit blemished, approached our reference desk and politely asked, a rarity indeed, if he could have his library card number by looking into his account. This request has become quite common with the rise in homeless population and/or opioid crisis engulfing the US. All of those problems were writ large on his face, especially eyes. After I said, welcomingly, "Of course! Can I have your last and first name please?" the fact that despite appearing and sounding not being fully there he wore his mask correctly, I further warmed up to him, and as I typed his last and then first name, mentioning his middle initials to extract a nod from him, I informed that his name read as if it belonged to a poet. I could not see his lip, only his eyes offering a smiling glint. Then I asked if he was a poet. He said, "I am!"

"Can you recite any one of your poems? I asked

He shook his head and I said that was okay. But as I wrote down his library card number on a piece of paper so he could use one of the library computers, I asked him if he could recognize who wrote the following verse:

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow/And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field

Do you know who wrote those lines?

Shakespeare, he said.

You're right, I acknowledged, as he walked away.

If I see him again at the library, I would like to tell him that a conversation between Geraldine Page and Laurence Harvey reminded me of him. I would also like to suggest to him that he memorize at least one poem of his for the sheer pleasure of hearing poetry.

In honor of Jack Hirschman, may his soul roam the streets of San Francisco, as he makes a guest appearance in my unpublished novella Postcard from a Stranger

After sitting in the park soaking in the morning heat, we decided to walk 

around the neighborhood and see if we ran into a beat poet or someone 

connected to the movement. We said it as a joke, but as we began walking, 

we’d spot people who fit our stereotype of the beat people, of hippies, their 

diluted versions, often with long and unkempt hair, a beret or a hat on top, 

their general attire scruffy and casual looking, a leather jacket or tweed coat 

with elbow patches. On spotting a person, men in this case, one of us would 

say, Hey, that’s Ginsberg! Then, as we crossed Columbus near the North Beach 

Public Library, Ambika elbowed me gently and drove my attention to an older 

man walking downhill on Chestnut and said, “Now, that’s Jack Hirschman. I 

can’t believe I recognized him!”

“Is he a beat poet?” I asked.

She called his name aloud, “Hi Jack!” waving. He looked across the street and 

without worrying who we are, waved back with a smile. He’s used to it, I told 

myself. But, then, he really noticed us, two young, attractive Indian looking 

women and he visibly cheered up. Good to see ya smilin’! he hollered as he 

moved on Columbus Street.

“Jim Morrison was his student when he taught at UCLA,” Ambika filled me in.

“Oh, wow!” I exaggerated my surprise. I had never like The Doors. Not really. 

Even though I had visited his grave in Paris.

We crossed over and saw Jack’s diminishing back. He reminded me of a wandering 

poet in medieval India, like Kabir, his long hair like a mane, a thick rebellious 

moustache covering his lips, begging bowl in hand.

“He’s a poet of the streets and cafes. I used to see him occasionally at Adobe 

Bookstore on 16th Street. He was friends with the store’s owner Andrew . . .

(An excerpt from Postcard from a Stranger by Moazzam Sheikh)

Untitled - a poem by Somnath Mukherji

If you love your soldiers,

Don’t send them to war.

If you love your soldiers,

Work for peace & justice. There is more death in war than peace.

If you love your soldiers,

Understand structural violence. Death of the soldiers starts 

long before the battlefield.

If you love your soldiers,

Love them as human beings. Not their uniforms.

If you love your soldiers,

Know that they do not want to die. They love life like you.

If you love your soldiers,

Understand the agriculture policy & its effects.

If you love your soldiers,

Go to a drought-stricken village. A village plundered for coal,

That is where the fodder for your jingoism grows.

If you love your soldiers.

Read history. Have there been parallels? Striking!

If you love your soldiers

Take a breath before you bay for more blood,

Who will fight the war of revenge? Will you?

Can you love the farmer? The daily wager? The poor & the oppressed?

Then you have already loved the soldier, without the uniform.

My review of The Other Side of the Divide

It’s only after one leaves Lahore, Pakistan, and meets Indians, that one realizes the place Lahore holds in their imagination. I have met several South Indians who had a family anecdote about Lahore to gloat over. So it’s understandable why Sameer Khatlani would’ve pined for a most hospitable, colorful place that boasts of having produced or welcomed famous names, not to mention a memorable time his elders had spent there. But Khatlani has another fish to fry too: to humanize Pakistanis because Indians have changed and they “watch nothing that humanizes Pakistan.” It never fails to amaze me to see how easily normal, decent people can be fooled into hating another religion and a people, even their fellow citizens.


To offer a background, he touches on the revivalism of Arya Samaj, hateful views of people such as Gowalkar and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, connecting the dots with Muslim anxiety and communal riots. Many Indian Muslims insist upon Pakistan being the sole reason for their misery, not the bigotry of other Indians. Khatlani had to deal with the anger of his in-laws. His trepidation mellowed as he reached eastern Punjab, amused that most Sikhs view Pakistan positively, primarily because they’ve been visiting their holy sites and enjoying the legendary hospitality in Pakistan for many decades now.

Sikh invitees to the same conference make him feel at home. Once the author reaches Lahore, things only got better. The sound of dhols welcomes the Indian contingent. Khatlani has been in contact with . . .

You can read the rest of the article here: https://www.thenews.com.pk/tns/detail/785539-a-mosaic-of-lahore

Anuradha Kumar's Sense of Time . . .

Excerpt from Anuradha Kumar’s collection

A Sense of Time and Other Stories (coming soon)

The Entomologist at the Trial

The last time I went to visit my uncle, he was still chasing his dreams of making it big in the High Court. A lawyer in the small district court of Old Town, he dreamt big. He could enact long courtroom scenes, such as the one in the Hindi film, Waqt, or Portia’s defense of Antonio, and one day soon, he always promised, he would assist the great lawyer, Ranganath Singh, in the High Court of New Town, the state’s biggest city. Once, after a particularly affecting portrayal of Atticus Finch, he told me, “That great lawyer, Singh, just has to notice me, then there is no way he cannot take me on.” Uncle had never sounded more sincere.

To draw the attention of the great lawyer whose understudy Uncle wished to become, he took on the cases all his peers refused to take on. Sometimes Uncle’s decisions, driven by idealism, flopped miserably. For example, when he took on the case of the temple dancer who had been cheated out of her savings by the priest, everyone said he was mad and sure to lose. Uncle did lose and was forever barred from the temple.

On another occasion, Uncle came to the rescue of the local rat catcher. I had seen the man a few times. He walked slowly from street to street, silent unlike the other vendors, holding out a shiny colorful placard in front of him. It described with very graphic images, every possible way of killing a rat. You could strangle, poison and drown them or trap them in all kinds of contraptions he had especially designed. Long ago, the rat catcher had a voice, but he lost it one day. 

As the story went, this had happened because the rat catcher had shouted himself hoarse in court when a case was slapped against him by an irate client who insisted that the man never caught a live rat. Rather it was a cat that did so, and hence it was the cat who deserved the heavy fees the catcher always charged. My uncle had tried to defend him, but the rat catcher never gave him a chance to talk. The court fined the rat catcher and Uncle was reprimanded. He considered it one of his most humiliating moments. Something he hoped Ranganath Singh would never get wind of. I think it was Uncle who spread the story that it was not any incompetence on his part that forced the catcher to take up his own defense, but rather the latter lost his voice when the Listerine he used every night to gargle and clear his throat turned out to be contaminated. If the rats had chosen this devious way to get back at the catcher, Uncle never let on. 

Last year, I spent another summer with Uncle. It was cramped in his two-room bachelor set-up because I had to share space with someone whom uncle introduced as the entomologist. A man who studies insects, my new acquaintance told me seconds after uncle had introduced us. My indignant response, entirely spontaneous, was to tell him rather coldly that I knew that. I study botany in school, I told him. Maybe it was my imagination or hindsight now, but I think I saw something like panic cross his face. I do remember with certainty, however, the manner in which the entomologist grasped my hand, clapped me on the back, and called me a comrade. It seemed overdone. “Don’t worry,” he told me, “I am no Brundlefly, and just for the record, I never liked The Fly. Insects really aren’t so diabolical, most of them, at least.” He winked at me, and that gesture contorted his face in a peculiar way. As if he wanted to be jovial, but was in fact nervous. 

Later that night, after the entomologist turned in, Uncle and I sat on the porch outside, watching the stars appear one after another in a rapidly darkening sky. We spoke in whispers, so as not to disturb the neighbors. The only sound in that still night was the unending buzz of the crickets and the creak of cane as we shifted in our chairs. “He’s here for a case.” Uncle spoke in the softest whisper and my chair made an agonized creak as I bent forward to listen.

My review of Mudassar Bashir's Punjabi Novella Rekh

Prolific Mudassar Bashir’s latest novella, Rekh, revolves around a character named Ashi, short for Ayesha, who’s on her way to becoming a medical doctor and is in love with her maternal cousin Khalid. In general, the cousins in her family are close to one another and a lot of relatives congregate during wedding ceremonies in the family.

The patriarch Hashim Ali enjoys the love and respect of his four sons and a daughter, who’s the mother of Ashi. Ashi resists her beloved Khalid’s suggestion that they let their parents know about their mutual attraction for each other because she wants to finish her MBBS without distraction. Circumstances, then, force Khalid to marry Ashi’s sister. As more tragedies pile up, Ashi appears to be the worst loser.

Although the title Rekh may suggest that the author intends to explore the concept of predestination and how it shapes our view of our lives, it is also a character study of a strong-willed person. While Bashir studies the character by situating the narrative within an educated, modern, middle-class milieu, he also does so by invoking the price traditional values exact from a person.

Bashir tests the limits of love and sacrifice in a deceptively simple story. Ashi has a chance to marry Khalid again when her sister dies in childbirth but cannot bring herself to share the bed with Khalid after her sister. Ashi chooses instead . . .

You can read the rest here.

The Day the Cookie Froze

 

After playing baseball in a newly renovated park, I ended up in a shopping area near my home with my younger son. We had to buy a few things which I didn't want to put off till tomorrow, including a new baseball glove for him. He was a little resistant, mostly because he was getting hungry. He tried to trick me into getting something from a fast food menu but I reasoned that today we needed to stick to eating home cooking. He agreed, but I felt bad and suggested that perhaps something small from a cafe might not be too bad. Peet's was right there before we could reach a sporting goods store. My son couldn't decide what to get after staring at a very uninspiring display of sugary items. Also, one of our neighbors was going to drop off a few cinnamon rolls later in the evening, but I knew we were going to be spending quite a bit of time deciding which glove to get for him, not to mention other distractions in the store. So before he could lose his appetite, I pointed out the lone cookie. "How about that? It's not that big."

   "Yes, sure!" he said.

   "Can we have that cookie please?" I asked the person behind the cash register, a young Asian-looking woman. 

   Just as she reached for the cookie, she inquired, "Do you want it heated?"

   Did she say Eated? Is that how young people now talk? I have always believed in the impermanence of a language.

   "Heated?" I asked just to be sure.

   She nodded, leaving me puzzled.

   "Do people really get their cookies heated?"

   "Yes, they do," she said, frozen midway, in case I changed my mind.

   "Wow, really, I thought you were joking!" I said softening up. 

   I took out my wallet. I noticed my son was as usual beginning to get embarrassed. The young woman slid the cookie into a small brown bag and handed it to him. I usually ask him to say Thank you, but I was distracted. 

   "We do it," she offered of her own volition, "because that's what they do it at Starbucks."

   "Starbucks!?" I asked, amused yet irritated.

   "Yes, because it's frozen," she added. 

   The idea began to sink in. 

   "Because it's coming from a warehouse where it's been kept for quite some time," I conjectured.

   "Frozen. That's right," she said.

   "And we don't know if this cookie was made ten years ago or a year ago," I offered.

   "Correct."

   "And they must have used chemicals for preservation."

   She pursed her lips and nodded.

   "But we know that because we are smarter than they think," I added, not knowing what I meant by that.

   She nodded again as if signaling that though she sold the cookie, she wouldn't eat it herself. My son bit into the cookie, annoyed, as we walked out. He chided me lightly for getting into an unnecessary conversation, and when I tried to explain, he said he understood it. I knew he did because there's more awareness about healthy eating at his school. I wondered if there was hope if despite growing awareness and knowledge regarding corporate fast food and chain cafes those business models continue to control our balls, guts, heads. The younger generation, their activism and their knowledge, can take on anything, I believe. Only time will tell how long they are willing to eat the frozen cookie!