On Kieslowski

From Roger Ebert's review of Three Colours

We see him (the judge in 'Red') like so many of Kieslowski's characters, swimming upward through a suffocating life toward the possibility that hope still floats somewhere above.

I connect strongly with Kieslowski because I sometimes seek a whiff of transcendence by revisiting places from earlier years. I am thinking now of a cafe in Venice, a low cliff overlooking the sea near Donegal, a bookstore in Cape Town and Sir John Soane's breakfast room in London. I am drawn to them in the spirit of pilgrimage. No one else can see the shadows of my former and future visits there, or know how they are the touchstones of my mortality, but if some day as I approach the cafe, I see myself just getting up to leave, I will not be surprised to have missed myself by so little.

No wonder, Roger Ebert called him "one of the filmmakers I would turn to for consolation if I learned I was dying, or to laugh with on finding I would live after all".

On a side note: Juliette Binoche! I have nothing to add.

Past?

I am amused at how little of my own past I remember as things that happened to me. I recall them as something I watched... maybe a movie that I watched in a dingy AC-less, bat-smelling cinema hall with a whiny speaker.

It does lend a certain objectivity to see my life with. It is not MY life... it is that guy in the screen's.

Ordinary person's guide to nostalgia

Until recently, I couldn't tell the difference between Left and Right. (I had trouble picking my right from left. Every time I had to tell directions to somebody, I had to check a mole on my left thumb to identify it as my left hand). But we are not talking about my hands here. I am talking about politics.

Like a 'proper' Tam Brahm guy, my political inclinations were non-existent. I mean, it was not 'absent' non-existent. One did watch BBC or CNN once in a while to help with the TOEFL preparations. And read the papers. I spent the most time, when I had my daily dosage of 'The Hindu' (while sipping filter kapi) on sports columns. You know how it is... you go with the general opinion. The widely-accepted stance. The safe bet.

I cried my eyes out when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated (I wasn't even 10 at that time). I didn't support the Americans when they waged the war against Iraq (I am talking about the First Gulf War) because I adored Mr. Saddam for standing up against the superpowers (I didn't know Kurds existed). In a fight between David and Goliath, you have to take sides with David. I cheered when India flexed its nuclear muscle. I was moved to tears when an actor in a Indian movie said that Kashmir was OUR land and even a handful of our soil is not for others to usurp. Palestine was a complicated international situation that world leaders were working hard to solve.

Emergency was a grand period in Indian history because trains ran on time, government servants did their jobs and slums were cleared to make way for a beautiful city. I burst fireworks when India defeated Pakistan in the 1996 world cup quarterfinal in Bangalore. United Nations, I believed was a powerful, autonomous world body that ensured peace and prosperity for everyone. World Bank was a philanthropic organisation that gave (note, gave, not lent) money to develop the infrastructure in developing countries. Colombia was a country of druglords, Brasil of footballers and France of romantics. I hadn't heard of Chechnya, Bosnia, Eritrea or Sudan. I called an Iranian, an Arab and didn't realise it was an insult (It was my Guardian Angel's blessing that saved me from being beaten to death).

Development, to me was skyscrapers (a skyline to take beautiful pictures in front of), foreign cars (that can go from 0 to 60 in 1.2874 seconds) and thirty-two brands of toothpaste in airconditioned supermarkets. And the chocolates. How can I forget those Kit Kats and Ferrero Rochers? Or Pepsi and Coke? And Parker pens and Swiss watches? And the mobile phone towers every meter and half. These were the signs that we were catching up with the west.

Oh! Those blissful days.