Mountain of light

It is not very often that I am so moved by a movie that I am compelled to write about and it is even less often for that compulsion to stay with me for even after almost a month since I have seen the movie. They say you can only appreciate a good thing if you seen the bad stuff and I couldn’t agree with it more. I still can’t stop thinking about the movie and I so want to go see it again. The movie is fresh in my mind as if I saw it yesterday and every time I think about it I discover something more that I liked in the movie.

The movie is set in the 70s in mostly New Delhi although it starts off from the Meerut riots in the during the late 60s and then pans over to the Delhi University in the 70s. It is about conflicting political ideologies, about the license raj, about the Mr. Fixer (remember him?), about the rise of Naxal movement in India and about the Emergency. The movie is also about simple things like love, attraction, following your heart and honesty. The movie appeals to the heart as much it does to the head and that is what kept me totally riveted to the movie. The movie also has an excellent soundtrack set to Ghalib’s poetry and while it adds value to the movie I seriously wouldn’t have minded if this movie had no soundtrack at all. It’s a movie which made me think, made me ponder and also angry at the quality of movies that can be made and what actually gets made.

I am keen follower of the politics in our country and I have always wondered why so less is known of post-independence politics in this country. Why have our history books stopped at 1947 and the only thing that we talk about after that is the Five Year Plans. I know more about the Mughal Empire than about the Emergency. There is nothing about the split in Congress after Indira Gandhi came to power, about the Emergency and its causes and effects, about the shorted lived Janta Party government. What about the JP movement, about its origins and how did it fizzle out? There was the liberation of Bangladesh, origins of militancy in Kashmir and the more recent sending of a “peacekeeping” force to Sri Lanka. What happened during these events, how did they shape the future of India, what were the powers thinking during those times and what went wrong. Surely we can talk about them 20-30 years down the line. There are media reports about the Naxal movement spreading across this country but I have no idea of its origins and its political ideology. Those were exciting times and nation building times. A lot of what we face today has its origins in events that happened in the decades after Independence, yet I don’t know off too many movies made on those events. One movie which stands out is New Delhi Times which I remember was banned for some time after its release. Movies have to be more than sleaze, song and dance and falling in love or trying to fall in love or whatever they call it these days. I have nothing against these movies, but where are the serious movies, the real stuff? Where are the movies about real people and their real passions and about them going about to fulfill their passions? When was the last time you heard about political ideas coming out of from our colleges and schools. A case in point is after the Vietnam War, countless movies were made on the war and the anti-war demonstrations inside the US.

It is depressing that we know so little of our modern history because that to me is what equips us to face the future. Surely our single minded focus on building careers hasn’t clouded our sense of history and our duties as citizens of this country.

Mountain of Light

Starting a new blog is something that doesn't come naturally to me. I already have a blog, and all I need to do is write in it and go back and see it when I want to and people can come and comment on it if they want to. So then why am I starting this new blog ? One, my old blog Mind of an Unmarried Man became a blog non grata the day I got married and second, it wouldn't accept my posts for some reason. Yes the mind doesn't really change with marriage (or atleast it hasn't in my case) but then try telling that to your wife who after marrying the man behind the blog sets about rooting all unmarriedness out of his now married existence.

Ok so I decided to start a new blog. The blog needs a name and for the life in me I couldn't come up with a name to suit my blog which is in a way an extension of my personality, it is me in the virtual world. Yes you could argue that Mind of an Unmarried Man wasn't much of a name but then lets decide to let sleeping blogs lie shall we ? So coming back to the name bit, it was decided by that I will run fingers through all the books on my bookshelf and feel the energy (aura, vibes and what have you) of each book and I would know for sure which book will be the title of my blog. Out came this book with the title "Mountain of Light" by George MAcDonald Fraser.

I can do no better than to quote from the backpage of the book " With the Mighty Sikh Khalsa, the finest Army ever seen in Asia, poised to invade India and sweep Briannia's Ill -guarded empire into the sea, every able-bodied man was needed to defend the frontier - and one man atleast had his answer ready when the call of duty came: "I'll swim in blood first!" Alas though for poor Flashy (Flashman), there was no avoiding the terrors of secret service in the debauched and intrigue-ridden Court of the Punjab, the attentions of its beautiful nyphomaniac maharani (Not that he minded that, really). The horrors of its torture chambers or the baleful influence of the Mountain of Light"
Flashman is a fictious British character who manages to be in all the important world events of early to middle 19th century. The events and the character that are talked about are mostly real. In this particular book, he is in the middle of a crumbling Sikh empire as a British spy and the Maharani takes a fancy with him and he is only too happy to roger her with the Kohinoor, which at that time was in posession of the Sikhs, dangling at her waist. The Mountain of Light is a reference to the Kohinoor.

The title is indeed a little stange and I think it will take some getting used to. I don't this blog of mine will ever be a Mountain of Light showing poor, lost souls the right of way to wherever it is that they want to go. However, this blog could probably show me some light as I look to understand issues, events and happenings that matter to me and for which I want to write about. This is a new beginning and I have sorely missed writing. I want to write in as frequently as I used to because writing gives me clarity like no other form of expression.

To brighter and clearer times ahead.

Leaving on a holiday is so easy. Get the backpack out, throw in a few clothes, pocket the tickets and all set to go on a vacation. No laptop to carry, no presentations to worry about, no appointments to reconfirm and no formal clothes to be washed and ironed.. However what is not so easy is leaving the daily worry schedule behind. Leaving career worries, financial worries and general in life worries and stresses that seem to take up more and more of my time. Maybe the vacation will give me the oppurtunity to look it all from a distance as a third person looking at the worries and myself at the same time. It will probably help me see how miniscule these issues are in the larger scheme of things. Or maybe not. Maybe i'll just soak up the sun, eat sleep and read as I usually do on all my vacations.

Who wants to think and analyse anyways. What good has analysis done to anyone. What good has it done to me. It just makes simple things complicated and suddenly you don't know what to do or what not to do. If you are a student or a practicioner of business management then you might think this is the apt time to call in a consultant. Unfortunately, that is not the case with my personal affairs. There is no consultant to call in and there is no report that will deal with my worries. The problems, stresses are all mine and have to be dealt by me or they just lie unresolved. Which is not such a bad thing actually. I have so many unresolved issues and I just tend to conviniently forget them unless the whole thing blows up on my face or I am reminded of it or both. You hear so many quotes on life that you begin to think that one day at the fag end of your life you might churn out a quote yourself and that quote would also sum up your life as it has been or as it has not been. That quote might be your sole contribution to the the business of living and to the english language if you are lucky. Oneday someone might read that quote and truly identify with it. Not that it will make a diffrence to either his life or yours but then what makes a difference anyway.

I have spent two years writing into this blog and analysing to death everything that I have written about. I have churned out a few bylines in the process. Maybe people have come to my blog and identified with what I have said or maybe its got them confused. Maybe its made things clearer for me than what it was before I started to write about it. But again what do I do with this clear picture of issues that don't affect my immediate life.I might frame this picture and hang it up in my living room and look at it once in a while. But what about the issues that affect me more closely, nothing that I seem to think or do makes things clear there. But to be fair I don't do much about them anyway. Except taking vacations to run away from them once in a while.

Happy Holidays!