Guide@50: Serpent Girls of Vijay Anand and Fritz Lang

Vijay Anand's 'Guide' was released in India on December 6 1965. So today, December 7 2014, is the start of its golden anniversary year.

The movies has appeared on this blog a couple of times earlier. I still remember its large colourful posters displayed  in front of the town hall, Miraj where it ran at Deval talkies some time in 1966. Aged 6, I wanted to watch the movie! My father flatly and quite rightly refused the permission. I would watch the film a decade or so later.

I consider the movie very significant because, I feel,  it marked the end of Hindi cinema's golden age that had started with Mehboob Khan's 'Andaz', 1949.

By the end of 1965. the best work of Hindi cinema's greats such as Mehboob Khan, Guru Dutt, Bimal Roy, Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Balraj Sahni, Motilal, Nargis, Madhubala, Geeta Bali, Nutan, Meena Kumari, Shankar-Jaikishan, Naushad, Roshan, Madan Mohan, C Ramchandra, S D Burman etc. was largely behind them.

Those who like 'Guide' are often impressed with Waheeda Rehman's snake-dance, ahead of her even other wonderful dance numbers. I always feel that dance is a manifestation of suppressed sexual desires of Rosie played ably by Ms. Rehman. 

Google Doodle on October 10 2014 

courtesy: Google Inc.

R K Narayan's 'The Guide', 1958 on which the film is supposedly based, describes Rosie's snake-dance, on stage, in these words:

“…Two hours passed. She was doing her fifth item—a snake dance, unusually enough. I liked to watch it. This item always interested me. As the musicians tuned their instruments and played the famous snake song, Nalini came gliding onto the stage. She fanned out her fingers slowly, and the yellow spotlight, playing on her white upturned palms, gave them the appearance of a cobra hood; she wore a diadem for this act, and it sparkled. Lights changed, she gradually sank to the floor, the music became slower and slower, the refrain urged the snake to dance—the snake that resided on the locks of Shiva himself, on the wrist of his spouse, Parvathi, and in the ever-radiant home of the gods in Kailas. This was a song that elevated the serpent and brought out its mystic quality; the rhythm was hypnotic. It was her masterpiece. Every inch of her body from toe to head rippled and vibrated to the rhythm of this song which lifted the cobra out of its class of an underground reptile into a creature of grace and divinity and an ornament of the gods.

The dance took forty-five minutes in all; the audience watched in rapt silence. I was captivated by it. . . . She rarely chose to do it indeed. She always said that a special mood was needed, and always joked that so much wriggling twisted her up too much and she could not stand upright again for days. I sat gazing as if I were seeing it for the first time. There came to my mind my mother’s remark on the first day, “A serpent girl! Be careful.”…”

'Serpent girl' Waheeda Rehman

courtesy: Shemaroo and current copyright holder to the feature film 'Guide'

Apart from Mr. Narayan's vivid description,  was there any on-screen inspiration for Mr. Vijay Anand?

Probably yes.

I read a few books this year.

The best of them is 'A Strange Kind of Paradise: India Through Foreign Eyes', 2014 by Sam Miller. Mr. Miller is easily one of the interesting persons who ever visited India. He belongs with the likes of Hiuen Tsang, Ibn Battuta...

The book gave me so much and will continue to give. Every page of the book is a treasure trove.

One of the most interesting things I learned there was great Fritz Lang's 'India films': 'The Tiger of Eschnapur', 1959 and 'The Indian Tomb', 1959.

'Serpent girl' Debra Paget performing snake dance in Fritz Lang's 'The Indian Tomb', 1959

courtesy: current copyright owner to the feature 

Fritz Lang was a greater director than Vijay Anand but when it comes to the battle of serpent girls, the clear winner is Mr. Anand's fully clothed Ms. Rehman!

Pouring Technical Knowledge of the Western World Over Bhopal!

B S Mardhekar (बा. सी. मर्ढेकर)

"...येइल का कधि सीतापति ग
चुकून तरि पण ह्या वाटेला?
घेइल का अन् रुजू करूनी
ह्या बोरांच्या नैवेद्याला?

कुठली सीता, कुठला राघव?
पुसे खडीचा रस्ता फक्कड़;
आंणि ठेविते गाल झोपडी
तळभिंतीवर फिरून खप्पड."


Eric Herschthal's review of Sven Beckert's 'Empire of Cotton: A Global History', Slate, December 2, 2014:

"...Beckert insists that many of the myths we tell ourselves about capitalism—how it functions best when government gets out of the way, how it broke clean from slavery—are as false today as they were during its 500-year history. In Beckert’s account, not only does slavery play a pivotal role in capitalism’s rise, but so does the state. Governments supplied the guns, built the roads, enacted the tariffs, and regulated the markets that made, and continue to make, capitalism thrive.
Beckert, a recently tenured history professor at Harvard, has also decided to bring back the elite. But they’re cast, now, in a far harsher light. Constantly hovering at the margins are the millions of people who they exploited to make their fortunes—to make, in other words, the capitalist world we live in today..."

Madhusree Mukerjee, Dissent Magazine, Fall 2014:

"...On the night of December 2, 1984, forty tons of methyl isocyanate (MIC), a substance more lethal than phosgene (used as a poison gas in the First World War), and other unknown gases burst out of a storage tank in a pesticide factory owned by the Union Carbide Corporation in Bhopal, India. The shimmering MIC fog, heavier than air, descended on fifteen square miles of the densely populated city, smothering the slums near the factory. People woke up coughing, choking, and blinded, and ran for air only to collapse on the streets. Days later, reporters found cranes removing corpses by the truckload, hordes of children with red teary eyes searching for family members, and gas victims still streaming into the local hospital.
MIC is so lethal that few scientists had dared to test its properties—even a whiff escaping from a test tube can kill. There is no known antidote...

Rajiv Gandhi effectively sacrificed the Bhopal survivors in order to signal that India was open for business, no matter the cost to ordinary people. The settlement was insufficient to provide life-long medical care (conservatively estimated at $600 million) for the more than half million Bhopalis who had filed injury claims, let alone to compensate those who had lost relatives..."

I still remember those couple of days in December 1984 very vividly. I had just joined a petrochemical company.

Recently when I saw the following picture, it looked so creepy. It was as if it was not an ad but a caricature: a  giant hand pouring MIC over Bhopal.  

courtesy: Scientific American and copyright holder of the advertisement

टपोरले पोट, जीवाची साखळी, माऊली...Sophie Starzenski's Mother In Progress

Today December 1 2014 is 105th Birth Anniversary of B S Mardhekar (बा.सी.मर्ढेकर)

I have named the following untitled (BSM never gave titles to any) beautiful Marathi poem of Mardhekar  as

 'A Hymn to Her Journey: Girl to Mother':

"पोरसवदा होतीस
कालपरवांपावेतों;
होता पायांतही वारा
कालपरवांपावेतों.

आज टपोरले पोट,
जैसी मोगरीची कळी;
पडे कुशीँतून पायीं
छोट्या जीवाची साखळी.

पोरसवदा होतीस
कालपरवांपावेतों;
थांब उद्याचे माऊली,
तीर्थ पायांचे घेईतों."

(courtesy: current copyright owner the late poet's family)

[Poem no 27 from 'Kanhee Kavita' (कांही कविता)]

("You're childlike
until yesterday or day-before;
there was wind beneath your feet
until yesterday or day-before.

Today belly has grown,
like a Jasmine bud,
from limbs falls at feet
a string of  tiny life.

You're childlike
until yesterday or day-before;
hold tomorrow's mother,
I drink holy water of washing of your feet.)

(My apologies for poor translation...)

Daily Mail, UK on October 9 2013: 

"Argentinian-born Sophie Starzenski documents her pregnancy in photos 

Pictured from week 4 through to week 40 and then finally with her two-month-old son, Simon"

 courtesy: Ms. Sophie Cetaceans and Daily Mail, UK

Measuring Out Life (and Samadhi) with LEGO blocks...

On September 15 2014, I wrote लेगोत् लेगोम् उदच्यते!...But Ram in Hanuman

T S Eliot says: "....I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;..."

How about LEGO blocks instead of coffee spoons?

courtesy: Fox

from The Simpsons  'LEGO Spectacular' first aired on May 4 2014

 And even possible Samadhi....

Artist: Barbara Smaller, The New Yorker, February 17 2003

नवगिरे-तांबट आणि ड्यूररचा गेंडा...Had Navgire-Tambat Seen Albrecht Dürer's Rhinoceros?

I wrote a post 'गंगाराम चिंतामण तांबट: The Hidden Marathi Artist In A British Archive' on August 31 2011.  


There I said: "I wish to reproduce two pictures of Mr. Navgire-Tambat courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon collection. These drawings on paper were commissioned by Malet and the British artist James Wales.
How many better drawn Rhinos have you seen? Me none."

One of the pictures is this: 

A Rhinoceros in the Peshwa’s Menagerie at Poona, November 1790, watercolor and gouache

current location: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

In February 2014, I saw the following:

'Albrecht Durer's (1471-1528)  woodcut of a rare and novel beast is a magnificent product of the curious, questioning Renaissance mind.'

Courtesy: The Guardian and The Trustees of the British Museum.  

Regardless of whether Mr. Navgire-Tambat has seen the Durer's picture or not, he had seen a real rhino in the collection of Peshwa's.  That was not the case with Pieter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) when he drew a hippopotamus in 1616.

Daniel Margocsy writes on Nov 12 2014:

"...Large and aggressive, live hippos were practically impossible to transport in those days. In modern times, the first two hippos arrived in Italy in 1601, when the Italian surgeon Federico Zerenghi brought their skins from Egypt first to Venice, where he had them stuffed, and then to Rome and Naples, where he exhibited them. As luck would have it, Rubens was traveling in Italy at that time, and circumstantial evidence indicates that he probably saw these exhibits with his own eyes. Exotic animals were a prized painterly object, and it is no wonder that Rubens decided to picture this animal in his series of Hunts that he painted for Maximilian I, ruler of Bavaria..."

Location : the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany

courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

Dolls: Buster Keaton, Raj Kapoor

Raj Kapoor was influenced by Buster Keaton, he talks about it in the book-   'Raj Kapoor: Speaks' by Ritu Nanda in the chapter 'Making of Mera Naam Joker'. 

(This year I have watched quite a few pre-1950 American films and their influence on Hindi films is far more than I previously imagined. More on that in 2015.)

When I saw the picture above, on Facebook, of Buster Keaton along with his doll, I remembered unforgettable song from Mera Naam Joker, 1970: 'Jane Kahan Gaye Woh Din' (singer: Mukesh, Lyricist: Hasrat Jaipuri Music: Shankar Jaikishan)

That song alone demonstrates how talented Mr. Kapoor was, although I have always felt that the talent was not always harnessed fully cinematically. 

courtesy: Shemaroo and the current owner of the copyright to the feature

वसंत वृक्ष...The Tree of Lalit

The following is the 50th cover designed and created by Vasant Sarwate ( वसंत सरवटे) for Marathi magazine Lalit (ललित).

(Magazine is priced Rs. 100.) 

Third row from the bottom, two covers on the left,  belong to Diwali   2007 and 2009 about which I have already written in the respective years.

The one on the bottom left is dated Diwali 1964.   Not just the plant has grown into a solid looking (guava?) tree but  even the kid has grown into a nattily dressed middle-aged man - no doubt feeling little proud- who is still smiling.

Today Sarwate himself is in autumn of his life but listen carefully, and you can hear his life force gushing through the tree of Lalit, 'वसंत वृक्ष'.

 (Magazine was priced Rs. 0.75)

 
If you wish to enjoy a few of the past covers of Lalit done by Sarwate, please visit the given links.

2013: Lalit, 2013

2012:  Lalit, 2012 

2011: Lalit, 2011

2010: Lalit, 2010

2009: Lalit, 2009 

2008:  Lalit, 2008 

2007:  Lalit, 2007 

Hanging Upside Down Like Possums

Today November 14 2014 is Children's Day

"Down the block where Stieren meets Guenther, a father trimmed a lantana bush, his two girls hanging upside down from the porch rail like possums."

Artist: Ester Hernández

courtesy: 'Have you seen Marie?', 2012  by Sandra Cisneros

 

Did Desai-bai Ever Hold a Cricket Bat or Wear a Hat?...काळा सूर्य आणि हॅट घालणारी बाई

Today November 10 2014 is 86th Birth Anniversary of Kamal Desai (कमल देसाई), author of 'Kala Surya aani hat ghalanari bai' ('काळा सूर्य आणि हॅट घालणारी बाई')- 'Black Sun and Hat Wearing Woman'

Sylvia Plath:

"...Widow. The bitter spider sits
And sits in the center of her loveless spokes.
Death is the dress she wears, her hat and collar.
The moth-face of her husband, moon white and ill,
Circles her like a prey she'd love to kill..."

 
Jonathan Yardley, May 31 2014:

"...(Rebecca) West was a feminist before the word had gained wide usage, but as a daughter of late Victorian and Edwardian England, she was a feminist with an asterisk. She “wrote angrily about the necessity of better working conditions for women,” yet “more than once she remarked to friends that there was nothing as sad and lonely as the lot of a woman who did not have a man.”..."

Our family called the late Ms. Kamal Desai:  'Desai-bai'.

On January 13 2013, this is what I wrote on a blog dedicated to Kamal Desai.

"I never commented on the Ms. Desai's art either on my blog or here because I never liked what she wrote. (Not that I have a read a lot written by her but whatever little I did.)

I did not like even her supposedly last essay- on Anil Awchat (अनिल अवचट)- in 'Lalit' Diwali (ललित दिवाळी) 2012.

But I liked her as a person.

She and our family went back a long way. We lived just 100 meters from her house in Miraj (मिरज). She and my father were colleagues at a Bhiwandi (भिवंडी) college and at one point we would have classified her as our good 'family friend'. 

She came to our house a few times in Miraj and I still remember a very pleasant evening our family spent on the terrace of Ms. Desai's house at Miraj.

I think her sister and very old mother (?) too were around. As a kid I liked her because she came across as funny.

 My father, she and another of their colleague saw a performance of celebrated Marathi play 'Natsamrat' (नटसम्राट) in Mumbai, soon after its launch, around 1970 (?). My father later told me the kind of commentary she was doing while watching the play. She called my father 'GD'. She said something like this: "what are you watching so seriously GD? This all is xxxxxxxx!"

I know some of the family feuds she had to suffer. Various writers on her have alluded to them on the blog already referred to. In fact, I know a lot of gory details because once she came to our house and met my mother after an 'incident'...Very unpleasant. Almost unbelievable. But I won't recount them here.

I tried to meet her in Pune when Sadhana (साधना) award was bestowed on her. Just after the function, I touched her feet and tried to make small conversation. But she was lost somewhere. I realised I was unable to take the relationship forward.

I lost all the interest in her literature after reading Vilas Sarang's (विलास सारंग) criticism of her work (by the way, my father too never spoke about her writing but often spoke about her witticism), ('मराठी नवकादंबरी', 1983, 'अक्षरांचा श्रम केला', 2000). When you love Sarang's literary-critical writing, as I do, that is the price you pay. Now, there was no motivation to make even an attempt to read her work.

Today, I don't possess a single book written by Desai-bai. But I remember her as a very pleasant, funny personality."

I looked at the following picture in January 2014. Apart from realizing that my own batting stance was better than that, I thought of Desai-bai and wondered if she ever held a cricket bat in her hand. 

Or wear an actual hat? I never saw her wearing any.

Pictured: Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa playing cricket

Photo-artist: Not known to me; Year: Unknown to me

courtesy: the Paris Review and Facebook