loss-for-words dept.
I don't know how I had never come across the Hrishikesh Mukherjee movie Satyakaam, despite having read so much about it. Ah, that statement was so naive! Haven't I often experienced the mysterious arrangements of nature as she, with an amused smile, moulds time, space and causality like a lump of clay?
It should suffice to say, then, that I have seen the movie, and am at a loss for words. Very few movies leverage the cinematic medium to the fullest extent, even fewer transcend it. This is surely one of them.
I shall say no more. This review has said it before me, more eloquently than I could ever have.
Saturday, October 30, 2004
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
first-of-as-many-parts-as-it-takes dept.
Gelo woke up with a start, in the dead of the night. Only seconds later, the cobwebs of residual sleep had been dusted off. He paused, bemused, at this sudden interruption of his well-ordered regimen. This was a singular experience in the life of a man of power. A man who had been assidiously cared for even before he had been conceived (The idea of him had haunted his father and his grand-mother for the better part of almost a quarter century). For a man of his stature, his magnificence, even the mildest case of insomnia was an issue of the gravest national importance.
He turned his gaze to the table near the wall, where his crown was placed. Even in the faint moonlight, the jewels encrusted in the crest gave off a sinister sparkle. The end result of perhaps three generations of intrigue, murder, and other unspeakable acts of wantonness. Of course, Gelo did not think all of this as he looked at it. He was not trained to think of these things. He was not even expected to think of them. God forbid he had a bout of introspection and pondered the justification of his means before his ends. There would be chaos! Darkness!
He was expected to provide reassurance, bearing, pomp and circumstance. Others would do the thinking for him.
None of this, of course, crossed his mind. As he gazed at his crown, a niggling doubt had just wiggled its way through the neural pathways of his brain, finally triggering a chain of chemical reactions, that in his case would inevitably converge towards a resolve.
Scratching his chin with a lazy satisfication, "Pyrrhos...Archimedes", he yawned.
That done, he closed his eyes, and with a soft moan, sank back into his bed, and snuggled into the sweetly perfumed softness of his concubine.
Gelo woke up with a start, in the dead of the night. Only seconds later, the cobwebs of residual sleep had been dusted off. He paused, bemused, at this sudden interruption of his well-ordered regimen. This was a singular experience in the life of a man of power. A man who had been assidiously cared for even before he had been conceived (The idea of him had haunted his father and his grand-mother for the better part of almost a quarter century). For a man of his stature, his magnificence, even the mildest case of insomnia was an issue of the gravest national importance.
He turned his gaze to the table near the wall, where his crown was placed. Even in the faint moonlight, the jewels encrusted in the crest gave off a sinister sparkle. The end result of perhaps three generations of intrigue, murder, and other unspeakable acts of wantonness. Of course, Gelo did not think all of this as he looked at it. He was not trained to think of these things. He was not even expected to think of them. God forbid he had a bout of introspection and pondered the justification of his means before his ends. There would be chaos! Darkness!
He was expected to provide reassurance, bearing, pomp and circumstance. Others would do the thinking for him.
None of this, of course, crossed his mind. As he gazed at his crown, a niggling doubt had just wiggled its way through the neural pathways of his brain, finally triggering a chain of chemical reactions, that in his case would inevitably converge towards a resolve.
Scratching his chin with a lazy satisfication, "Pyrrhos...Archimedes", he yawned.
That done, he closed his eyes, and with a soft moan, sank back into his bed, and snuggled into the sweetly perfumed softness of his concubine.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
