A Climate For Crime - Adoor's New Film

A CLIMATE FOR CRIME Oru Pennum Randaanum Adoor Gopalakrishnan's latest offering to film lovers and cineastes.


From Adoor Gopalakrishnan's website:

Period and background The 1940s. The Princely State of Travancore, South India. The Second World War being fought in Europe had cast its shadow on colonial British India. Daily necessities like food, clothing, kerosene, petrol were scarce. Unemployment grew while hoarding of grains became routine. Set against such times, the four stories in this film relate to crimes committed by the deprived, as well as the comparatively privileged landed gentry.

Short Synopsis: A film about crime in different contexts and situations

A poor schoolboy fervently yearns to reform his father who is a thief

Two policemen collude to frame a rickshaw-puller in a burglary of which he is innocent

A student suffers trauma over having to abort the pregnancy of his girl friend, a domestic


Two men, one elderly and the other middle aged, fight over a bewitching woman who doesn’t reveal her preferences

Images from Adoor Gopalakrishnan's website.

Click here to read the full article on this film in the above website.

Adoor also won the National Award for best director for his film Naalu Pennungal, based on Jnanapith award-winner Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai's four short stories. He has already won this award for four earlier films. These are Swayamvaram (1972), Anantharam, and Mathilukal.

Read Shobha Warrier's interview of Adoor in Rediff dot com (Sept 8 2009) by clicking here.

Also read (Rediff dot com) Before Resul Pookutty there was Adoor Gopalakrishnan

Thus Spake The Indian Male

"We are all Kauravas now. Dushasana is my hero.

I have the right to assault and strip a woman in broad daylight.

I know that my brothers who will be watching will also join me.

And since this is Kalyug there will be no Krishna

to save the Draupadi I choose to humiliate."
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Woman stripped in public in Patna

My Short Story In DNA Me of 28 June 2009

A short story I had sent to the magazine DNA Me in July 2008 has been published today (Sunday Jun 28 2009) after being in the queue for almost a year.

It is titled Visiting God's Own Country and has been published under the title A Question of Priorities.

Click here to see the story as it was originally written.


The above post will also provide you links to three of my other stories which have been published in the same magazine.

And click here to read it the way it has appeared in print (pdf file):

Lord Meghnad Desai Writes A Thriller

Picture From BusinessWorld (Link given below)

The economist Lord Meghnad Desai has written a thriller. Titled Dead On Time it is about a day in the life of Harry White the British Prime Minister.

Lord Desai speaks to Sanjitha Rao Chaini (BW Books, Businessworld 25 May) about, among other things, his love of theatre, the recession, his love of writing and the Indian politicai scene.

Click here to read this interesting interview.

Adieu Kamala Das aka Madhavikutty aka Kamala Surraiyya (1934- 2009)

Picture from The Hindu.

Kamala Das. Bilingual poet and writer. 1934 - 2009



She knew how to shock. Whether it was by writing about sexuality or the nudes she painted or her conversion to Islam. I remember the storm that her 'autobiography' My Days had created in the seventies. She was one among a handful of women writers who knew how to shock society.Take, for instance, these lines written by her when she was still known as Kamala Das:


Gift him all,
Gift him what makes you woman,
The scent of
Long hair, the musk of sweat between
The breasts.
The warm shock of menstrual blood
And all your
Endless female hungers. Oh, yes,
Getting a man to love is easy but living
Without him afterwards may have to be faced.

Or these lines from the poem The Maggots from the book The Descendants:

At sunset, on the river bank, Krishna
Loved her for the last time and left...

That night in her husband's arms, Radha felt
So dead that he asked, What is wrong,
Do you mind my kisses, love? And she said,
No, not at all, but thought, What is
It to the corpse if the maggots nip?

By the time she converted to Islam and had become Kamala Surraiya she had suppressed her sexuality and had begun to believe that only Islam could give protection to women. I wonder what would have happened if she had met Tasleema Nasreen the Bangladeshi writer in exile. I am told that they had actually met once. Her conversion to Islam had shocked many. At the same time there were many who said that such behaviour was expected of her.


She wrote as Madhavikutty in Malayalam. In Kerala she was also known as her mother the writer Balamaniamma's daughter. Balamaniamma was a famous Malayalam writer and poetess. Her maternal uncle Nalapat Narayana Menon was also a well known Malayalam poet and he had encouraged her to write. So did her husband who she had married when she had turned fifteen. There were many who said that her husband at times treated her like a father his daughter or an uncle his niece.


I remember a weekly column she used to write in Karanjia's Blitz during the mid seventies. It could well have been the openness with which she wrote for she was one of the few writers who had a following all over India. There were better writers than her but she was extremely media savvy long before television became widespread throughout India. She had said that she had stopped writing poetry because poets were not paid well in India.

During the eighties there was a rumour that she was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature. But according to many this was not correct as the names of the nominees are never announced.

I feel that she was at her best when writing about the Kerala she saw in her childhood. Her foray into politics was brief and disastrous. She and Khushwant Singh were not the best of friends. He knew how to irritate her with his choice of words.


Links
Farzana Versey's blog post on her. Click here

Kamala Surraiya on SAWNET. Click here.

Kamala Das at the Emory University Dept of English website. Click here.

Poet Vijay Nambisan's tribute to her in the Literary Review of The Hindu (June 2009). Click here.
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Connie Converse - The Singer Who Vanished

Discovered this song by Connie Converse, the singer who never made a commercial recording, on Youtube. She disappeared in 1974.

In this Youtube video one can listen to her singing "One By One" which was written by her too. This recording was done in 1954.



Recommended www.connieconverse.com

Validation - A Short Film by Kurt Kuenne

Happened to find this short film (16:24) while doing a Youtube search for short films.

According to the information provided at youtube -


"Validation" is a fable about the magic of free parking. Starring TJ Thyne & Vicki Davis. Writer/Director/Composer - Kurt Kuenne. Winner - Best Narrative Short, Cleveland Int'l Film Festival, Wi...
"Validation" is a fable about the magic of free parking. Starring TJ Thyne & Vicki Davis. Writer/Director/Composer - Kurt Kuenne. Winner - Best Narrative Short, Cleveland Int'l Film Festival, Winner - Jury Award, Gen Art Chicago Film Festival, Winner - Audience Award, Hawaii Int'l Film Festival, Winner - Best Short Comedy, Breckenridge Festival of Film, Winner - Crystal Heart Award, Best Short Film & Audience Award, Heartland Film Festival, Winner - Christopher & Dana Reeve Audience Award, Williamstown Film Festival, Winner - Best Comedy, Dam Short Film Festival, Winner - Best Short Film, Sedona Int'l Film Festival.
Category: Comedy

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At last count more than 1,660,000 viewers had seen this film.

My Short Story In An Anthology

Sulekha (www.sulekha.com) have published the sixth book using contributions from bloggers. It is titled UNWIND:A Whirlwind of Writings. It is an anthology of 23 entries and one of the entries has been written by me. I am fairly sure that it is my short story titled The Teacher And The Student.

Some background: This is one of 48 shortlisted articles/stories by bloggers on Sulekha. Each entry was given an award of Rs. 10,000. Of these 48 entries 25 were selected for an anthology published by Penguin India. My story did not make it to this list of 25.

I had suggested to Team Sulekha that they must not let the 23 entries vanish. I was pleased when they wrote to me telling me that they are taking up my suggestion.

Well, this book is the result. I have just placed an online order for a copy.

Click here to read the announcement by Team Sulekha.