Perfect Days - A Perfect Movie

 It was a strange first 30 minutes of the movie. 

The protagonist, a middle-aged Japanese man, wakes up, rubs his eyes, goes to the bathroom, brushes his teeth, wipes his face, dresses up in his workman clothes, picks up the car key, shuts his door, gets a can of coffee from the pay fridge, gets into his van, plays a cassette of happy sounding western music and goes about his job. He is a toilet cleaner in Tokyo Toilette and he opens the doors and with meticulous and even fond care cleans the rims and the surface of the pot, repeats this in more places, goes to a public bath, washes his body happily, sits on a park bench in the afternoon, takes a picture with his small camera( not phone), goes to a small restaurant, has a meal, goes home, lies down on the mat, switches on the light, takes out a William Faulkner novel from his well-stocked, neatly organized bookshelf, reads a bit, reaches out for his light, switches it off and goes off to sleep.

This sequence takes 10 to 12 minutes. And the second day, the same 10-minute ( or at least felt like 10 minutes) sequence repeats. So it does for another day and a few sidelights do take place. One is with a much younger toilet cleaner who is doing his cleaning job without the least bit of interest and then a brief stay by his niece Kiko who is reluctant to go back to her mother( the protagonist's sister) who is stylishly dressed and comes to pick her up in a fancy car.

Wen Winder is a German maestro and this movie fetched the lead actor Koji Yakusho the Best Actor award at Cannes 2023. 

The movie leaves an impact long after you see this. Some messages resonate powerfully. You can be contented with life's very mundane daily routines. Setbacks ( hinted in the movie - the protagonist's tastes in reading and music hark back to a more privileged life earlier) are par for the course. A clear sky, some beautiful music, and dedication to duty are enough for a good life. The movie has very few words exchanged, and the action does not even rise above the routine that also suggests, as a friend put it, you are better off by not giving words to your thoughts. Sometimes words can be a source of misery by the associations they bring.   

We the Leaders: My foray into writing a book

 

Leadership is a fascinating subject. Partly because it is part of our everyday usage but it is not easy to explain it, partly because it has so many facets. This is one of the most written about topics in management literature. Academics, top global CEOs. Journalists - everyone had a stab at it.  

I was also transfixed by the idea of understanding it. I still am. The world has seen the leadership of Gandhi, also of Churchill; Jobs, and also of Eric Schmidt. Their styles within even a narrow domain of human endeavour could not be more different.

Who is a leader? What is leadership? How do you become a leader? How much more effective can you be by becoming a good leader? Is it action or is it inspiration? Is leadership contingent or does it have permanent values? What role does culture play in leadership style? Is a Japanese leader different from a British one? Can you transfer leadership skills from a monastery to a commercial organisation?

The leadership puzzle has countless questions. My book, published as an introduction to leadership drew from my experience as a leader of a commercial entity and my readings. 

I thought it would be more appealing to have a short book but the regret I have now is I should have put more on each topic.

But then there is always a tomorrow.

( The book is available on Amazon)

Milan Kundera dies at 94

 

(From my tribute to Kundera on FB)
Milan Kundera, a Czech novelist, died on Tuesday, 11th July at 94. For me, it is rather personal.

Years ago, I was a participant in a television quiz where apart from general awareness, we had a subject round where we could choose our own topic. I had stumbled into a review of ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ by Kundera in the now defunct Gentleman magazine and then went on to read the book. It was exhilarating.

Over a period of time, I bought a few of his other works. I found his ability to distil profound truths of life through a mix of levity, seriousness, stories of resistance against the repression of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and also hedonism beguiling. A few stayed with me.

One I always think about is that life moves like the hands of a clock, in a pattern and always repeating the same thematic cycles. I have found this to be so true for myself - it has been chronologically linear but cyclical in so many other ways.

His characters approached the absurdity of existence and an intense desire to experience life in the same breath. They lived and talked as of they were faintly bemused but still flying over all that life threw at them.

Here is an excerpt from ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’:
“People usually escape from their troubles into the future; they draw an imaginary line across the path of time, a line beyond which their current troubles will cease to exist. But Tereza saw no such line in her future. Only looking back could bring her consolation. It was Sunday again. They got into the car and drove far beyond the limits of Prague.”

Having told the organisers that my topic would be ‘Works of Milan Kundera’, I discovered that I did not have his entire collection. In those Pre Amazon days, I started scouring all the bookshops in a few cities both personally and through friends. Usually, a lone Kundera would be lying on the shelves and a couple of his works were not easily available. The search however eventually yielded fruit and I managed to get all the missing books in my collection barring one. But in the months after the quiz, I always noticed the same shelves with many Kunderas. Did I play a part in building up that demand? I would fancy so (chuckle).

Kundera lived in Prague and then migrated to Paris. The first one full of both gorgeous architecture and the tragedy of lives and potential snuffed out by a draconian state. And in Paris, one can always sense the existentialism of Sartre, along with a celebration of life through its museums and grand boulevards. Kundera was both - Prague and Paris.

He was also a perennial Nobel contender but somehow did not get it. To me however, though lesser known, he is there with some of the finest: Mahfouz, Barnes, Coetzee or Munro if not Marquez and Camus.
Milan Kundera: April 1, 1929, to 11 July, 2023.

Propaganda for Kings

 Krishnadevaraya was a powerful king who ruled in Vijaynagara in modern Andhra Pradesh from 1509 to 1529. He ruled over a vast kingdom that included an area encompassing Bengal to Karnataka. 

Allasani Peddana was a great Telugu poet and fancied himself as 'Andhrakavitapitamaha' or the Creator of Telugu poetry. He was in Krishnadevaraya's court. 

We get disturbed by propaganda and exaggerated hero worship when we see it with political leaders. In te age of democracy and equality it seems so baffling. We treat mere men as Gods. This probably has a genesis in the way in a feudal society we treated our kings. They were arbiters of justice, commanders of the army, divine inheritors who lived in the fanciest of palaces. They also had poets eulogising them to the skies.

Peddana's classic 'The Story of Manu' begins with a encomiums to the glory and prowess of the king. Some of it will embarrass even our most praise-hungry modern leaders.

" For one rich in such qualities,

for an expert rider adept at handling any sort of horse,

for one who is quiet at heart,

whose brilliant fame turned all space white,

whose sword is like a snake filling its belly with the life breaths

of enemies trembling the darkness caused by dust

kicked up by his horses' hooves in one continuous charge,

for Karma reborn, a paragon of the art of giving,

for one who is loyal to good people,

for the lover of lady poetry,

for one whose fame rolls like waves to the end of space,

makes the sun redundant,

who captured the son of the Kalinga king 

in less than half a minute,

whose mind, with all its thoughts and words, rests at the feet

of Lord Venkatesvara, the ultimate source of kindness."   

Art and Human Beings

 

Art plays an important role in modern human societies. Mona Lisa's face may be amongst the most recognised faces in the world. The Dancing Girl of Mohenjo Daro ( pic above) is in one small piece brings a vivid representation of that civilisation for us. The Nataraja is the iconic distillation of the glory of Southern India.

The cave paintings in France and Spain (image below) show us how evolved humans were in art even in the ice age. Initially, the people refused to accept that it could be from that era. But as it was proved that the paintings of horses, bison and mammoths were done by the primitive people it became clear that even in basic, pre-historic conditions art came naturally to humans and it may have allowed them to connect to a superior state of being as it does now.

Through art, we can fuse reality and imagination in a way that can outlast us. It connects us to a cosmic sense of existence that makes our mundane lives more acceptable.

Modern education in India with its emphasis on STEM, science-based disciplines and almost complete discarding of art from the curricula, and including literature too; produces graduates bereft of a sense of grandeur and universal spirit. It does not help that the broader society at best engages with commercial movies as the highest form of art. There are hardly any patrons or even artists or literary figures that can infuse the spirit of art in society. All this adds to a mechanistic, transactional life. Time we addressed this.

Regional Poetry in India - Sparkling

The regional poetry In India is sparkling with talent and some of the sharpest voices are from women.They are breaking barriers. They speak with irony,insight and courage. Here are samples from two of them – both young and original.

Salma/Tamil
When I pull him close
And fondly nuzzle his hair,
He flinches from the touch Of my breasts and moves away
Forgetting that they had once
Processed my blood to feed his hunger
When I reach with my hand
To run my fingers through his hair —Tendrils upright like reeds on a riverbank —He pushes it away, and moves on.

Sunanda Das/Orissa/Oriya
How is it possible ?
Everything smells of your body.
Detergents have no use.
However so much as I scrub,
The odour remains.
What do I do?
How do I escape ?
I am not able to lift
My little finger.
I can do nothing
Except lie down with eyes closed
And long for that fragrance.

What ails Indian writing ?

The Man Booker award to Adiga is a fine statement of affirmation of Indian writing. There have been previous winners too from India. But the Indian writers who have spent bulk of their lives in India still fail to fire the imagination of readers in the world.

Their stories are engagingly told and capture a time and place perfectly well. But the themes are not universal enough to connect to everybody. The writers lack the penetrating insight of a Naipaul, who harshly throws a searchlight into our souls. They do not have the suave urbanity and haunting themes of emotional loss of a Kundera. They do not provide the searing intensity of a Coetzee or the subtle romanticizing of a Mahfouz.

I think this happens because Indians grow up in protected environments. They live within defined boundaries and fail to explore the limits of their lives in relationships and in their own internal journeys. The society also tries its best to see that any behaviour or attitude beyond its five thousand years of past is smacked hard. So when an Indian writes and tries to plumb his depths of experience , he falls short of capturing deep, eternal truths and the unvarnished realities. There are a few notable exceptions in Indian languages however.

It does not help that the country lacks a culture of reading except in a few places.

There is a long way to go for Indian writing to flourish internationally.

Indian Art in the Stratosphere

In December 2002, my wife and I went to a gallery in Calcutta which claimed to be selling affordable art. I was always interested in Indian art and I had some knowledge about a few painters. The proprietor of the gallery recommended an ink on paper by Shyamal Dutta Ray. I had not even heard of him.But the owner seemed genuine and the painting was aesthetically good. We bought it for fifteen thousand rupees.

The art market boom was in its incipient stages then. Neville Tuli was just beginning to get some media space and there was some talk about Indian artists generating excitement in western art markets.

Then the interest in India began. The westerners interested in India began to buy Indian art. The non-resident Indians with wealth and some aesthetic interests reached a critical mass. The rich domestic Indians also saw art as a great status symbol. The market exploded. The prices today have reached absurd levels.

I got mail today from a gallery about a self-portrait by Paritosh Sen for one lac rupees and I had seen this piece being tagged at twelve thousand rupees a year and a half back.

But does anybody understand art barring a few pundits ? I cannot claim to say that I can identify great art even after visiting countless exhibitions and galleries. Some art hits you immediately with its power and beauty. But many great art remain incomprehensible and silent in their impact. Mona Lisa in Louvre would have probably been missed by many as a smallish and non-descript painting without its fame. The Shyamal Dutta Ray painting has been hanging in my house for the last four years (now worth a few lacs) but nobody, repeat nobody, has so far cast a second glance at it.

So it is only a status symbol and no rich household is complete without a piece by a well-known painter. It stays there as does the latest B & O music system. Who cares whether it is great or simply average or even bad ?