Let the right one in

I'm normally not one to watch Vampire films. But this one was Swedish, it was my birthday and the film is touted to be the baap of Twilight, so I watched Let the right one in.

It was so good. But I really wish to god I hadn't watched it. Its affecting me and I don't like that. The worst thing about it were the buildings and the snow. Frigid from start to finish, the only effective sunlight and cheer in the entire movie was in the last scene, of a golden-haired cherubic 12 year old sitting by a window in a train, watching the gay countryside hurtle by. It misled me to feeling good for the young lovers at first. Then i got on to the cab and got it, like a hail storm - Oskar is doomed to provide for the child vampire till the end of his days.

Whats really disturbing is that the story really rattles the popular concept of love as an essentially pristine thing. Does Eli pick Oskar because he was bullied and lonely? Was she in search of a replacement for Hakan, the aging human butcher in her service? Was Hakan once a boy like Oskar? The wretched screenplay doesnt say and I'm left to make my own conclusions, obviously, not happy ones.

This is why:

Eli was not a child. She picked on one, using the body she was trapped in, just as she used her appearance to lure Jocke, one of her unfortunate way-side meals. She goads Oskar to strike back at the bullies of school. Once he follows her advise, he's already lost all control over what happens next. She has to save him or he dies - it becomes a matter of his life and his death. Until that point, she had been the only one who needed to be saved.

Before he lets her in, she takes him into her world, shows him what its like to be condmned to eternities of blood lust. There, he finds the mirror to his own cruelty. That is what he chooses. See Oskar, you are just like me, says Eli. But that is not all there is to Oskar. There is love for his father, there is intelligence and there is also the option of a better future, that is open to every boy of 12. But by choosing Eli, he chooses to turn away everything but his need for revenge.

Its not the same thing. Oskar is not by nature, a thing trapped in its own evil. Oskar is human Eli condemns him to sharing her sentence. In return, there is a promise of love. Oskar thinks Eli's love is all he needs. Hakan realizes too late that it is not all he needs. Eli is an animal but Hakan, like Oskar, is subject to human laws, not just the laws of the country, but laws of the conscience and laws of human nature, that are severe on everyone, especially on good people who kill the innocent.

Love fulfills our need. Love makes us compromise. Love makes us do things we never considered possible. Love gives us a new purpose, a new lease of life. In Oskar and Hakan's case, all of the above is true.

O my god. What a cruel joke.

chapter 1. Life in the jungal.

When I saw old Whittlebury dancing on the darkened stage, his face contorted in a non-ridiculable expression of real pain, his now well defined muscles catching the mysteriously programmed light sequence, I began to feel sorry for myself.

I'm still a mangosteen. Appealing still, to the eye of a tropical fruit gourmand, but very ordinarily destined to be eaten alive, leaving behind nothing but a seed of continuity. I moaned inwardly and cried inaudibly and waited for my entry cue, which came before I knew it and off i went spinning, spinning, spinning...and 12 spins later, found myself blinded stupid by the stage lights.

On monday morning, I was out on the battle field again, taking flack from Durian who is really not the boss of me but somehow thinks she is. I took it silently as usual, with the deference of someone utterly defeated by herself and now willing to let anyone else have a go. But I was soon back in my cubicle, telling every other mofo Banker/Bank IT/Bank Ops person how fulfilling it was to work in the arts industry event though you are paid in chicken poo. I hate my job. I hate faciliating art when I should be creating it. The best of my days are when I participate in the creation of art as an esemble dancer. Or a production assistant at a movie. The supporting role in a play. Or...when I talk to SweetSop.

I wish I had stuck to computing and worked at a bank, lived in a respectably sized room, without having to split the washing machine by 6 turns of people. Then I wish I had taken dance classes a few evenings of the week, been a writer by night and painted on weekends because heaven knows, I cannot live without colour.

But, dang it, I shouldn't have said that out so plain as day. I am supposed to bend my life to my will, beat it to submission. However, I feel beaten up most of the time and have no energy to grab the club and whack the offensive stupidity that keeps me here.

So i've been feeling lately...

That I shouldn't shy away from doing what I love. Its obviously the only thing that'll keep me happy.

The Dance Blast! show was great. They are great at what they do...and they do it with perfect coordination, throw in a great deal of energy and are creative in a bollywoody sort of way. I loved the show. And it must be noted that all the choreography at the Shut Up and Dance! show this DR, were by student choreographers. Student choreography usually, I have found, to be rather wannabe albeit edgier than those sketched by a mature hand...but then again, blast is altogether aspirational so that naturally contains the wannabe and edginess stood out razor sharp. In other words, the kids did a GREAT job. It had me clapping with the crowd, me event manager, standing there with my blazer and my walkie and clapping away like a groupie. Of course I didnt clap. Claire was right behind me, not clapping....so I didn't clap really.

Singapore is tropical paradise. It is also the safest haven in Asia for normal, apirational people of the working class, with no serious ambitions of changing the world or doin something different. Its like living in an extremely posh housing development unit that is so contained that sometimes I look upto the sky expecting to see a glass enclosure sealing the bubble. This is a strange, misleading feeling to get in a place that imports everything for its upkeep, including water and beach sand, which is itself a strange fact considering this is an island. Strange, strange, strange.

How do people go to work everyday thinking " this is it?"

Work, in my experience, is this:

Someone has a (or several) job to be done so that he/she can live a comfortable, fulfilled life.
But that someone has employed his energies figuring this idea out and so can't actually do it himself (or) he has done the job himself for a long enough time period to know that he/she doesn't want to do it himself anymore, no matter how much the end justifies the painful means.
So they pay someone else to do it.
Someone else doesn't want to do it.
So they are given perks
They are given allowances and time off.
They are taken out to dinner and spoken with kindly about their "future"
That someone else thinks...well, I'm treated well. I can buy some of the stuff I want. My life is not a struggle so long as I hold this job . How does it matter that the person I'm working for is profiting by at least 10 times what I'm being paid?
So you stay in the job.

I am going to make my own job. I will concentrate on my dance and take up drawing and writing again. I will also apply to grad school next year. I will hate my life if I don't set it in the direction of mental work within a year.
Academia...here I come.

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Endless summer days are here

Why do our summer memories hold us so captive to their magic? Perhaps because they were the only instances in our misused age of innocence when we viewed time as a limited resource. Everyday was precious. Every wink of hot, sweltering sleep under a noisy fan. Every ripe, juicy mango. Every lemonade mama made after whole mornings of biking through the suburb. Every picture of some eternal, veridian afternoon painted at summer art classes. Every visit to grandma's and every sleep over with the cousins. Every minute was treasured because even as children, we sensed that this time would be gone before it had begun.

I was watching old Friends reruns today, from way over in 1994. I was 8 in 1994. I remember imagining the quaint baggy dresses, the dungarees and the shapeless hipster jeans, the awful tights and the wavy hair as the heights of fashion. I remember when "hanging out at the coffee shop" seemed like the idyllic life of my dreams. I remember wondering if such things really happened to people like us...

I'm experiencing nostalgia about the Nineties! Wow...time sure is flying.

pastiche

Fragments. A sign of our times. This is the age of the frayed-ended people.

The Friend: Lost Frequencies. Am I alive or dead?

The daughter: Very grown up indeed.

My new speakers: A floating song and I are playing a game of cat and mouse. Dodge and push away, I’d rather anything than be found by this dogged strand of thought. Then suddenly, I give in and let the song come sit with me. A deep breath of silence… and the music of bleeding violins fill my room. My tragedies are crying themselves out. But I stand outside and watch.

The scientist: Questions of science and progress do not speak as loud as my heart (quote-unquote)

The artist: Gently stirring beast.

The magic wand: I breathe music into a hollow piece of wood. A finger up and another down… and a song is strung together. I’m a magician. Dreadful paradise…so disconnected from anything. I can’t leave this place any more. My addictions are not obvious to anyone but me. But I am, literally, being eaten up. In sometime, I’ll be no more. A blank space on a page of scattered word-carcasses

Problems: Over dramatized in self absorption.

Bed time: I find myself watching the moaning night song unfold. First there is a dusty ceiling, the whipping blades of a fan and dancing cobwebs. Then it falls through, to blackness and blueness, a sky thronging with swinging nebulae, shimmering clouds and a shy, self conscious moon, inadvertently put into the spotlight. Stars… twinkle. It’s a spectacular show and I am honored to witness it. The higher up I go, the denser it gets. I am found.

Responsibility: Far better than hope.

Since N wanted me to archive this golden memory

I will not complain I will not complain I will not complain!

Anyhoo...

Singapura is turning into a ridiculous experience these days. I spent all of yesterday with this absurd feeling that I'd signed on a starring role in a Mandarin film, with much in the script being lost in translation. The prospectus just magnified certain words like " Top 20 among world's universities", "world class facilities", "unique international experience" and bla bla bla ... useless glitz.

That being said, Singapura affords Madness too. Friday night found four generations of POI (peeps of indian origin) NUS undergrads congregating at our favorite (read cheapest) pub in Clarke Quay. The place closed eventually, so we found ourselves on the bridge till 3am, inebriating our selves with rounds of beer from the corner 7-11, puffing out perfect rings of smoke and getting strangely philosophical. Or maybe the philosophical part was just me. Eventually, people started coupling and left. Or maybe, they just had had enough nonsense.
And then there were 5 of us.

At this point, N points out that he has a 9 am final the next day.

"Abeyy, this is THE chance beyy. 4th year mein aa gaya hoon and
I've never written an exam sloshed. This is my chance beyyy."
We all agree. We promptly hunt for other ways to maintain sweet intoxication (free of cover charge of course)

Arena has two black women sporting c-rrrazy afros in white hot-pants. Not my beat, really.
The Rupee Room is infested with Indian uncles.
Forbidden City has shut by 3am.

So we arrive at our Mecca- The Ministry of Sound. 9 rooms of music (worth paying cover charge for). We skip trance and R&B and techno and all that (trance and techno are supposed to be the same thing no?No?) and reach the Retro room and boogie away to Boney M for the rest of the night. I feel like I've died and reached heaven. Somewhere in between, I notice people have dropped away like barnacles off a ship ( I know, most absurd analogy possible).
And then there were 3.

T tries to do a jive with me but I trample all over his toes. He, however, simply smiles and looks at the LCD image of the girlfriend on his phone. Aaah...love hath cometh at last. T is happy. N is happy. Everyone is happy.

At 6 am, a cab deposits us back home. We lie in uncomfortable positions on the stairs in front of the hostel (N, me and T, in that order) and count stars like drunken fools.
"I'm not high."
"Neither am I."
"Yea, I'm fine."
But when we notice that one star is positively moving across the sky, we begin to reconsider this.

" Err...guys, do you see a star moving."
" Abey, its not moving bey."
" But it is!"
" okay, lets see in comparision with a stationary star. Oh f*@% man! It is moving!"
" Do you think we're all in the same dream?"
" No. Its a geo-stationary satellite."
"Oh."

Silence for a while.

" Did you know that people don't dream when they're snoring?"
" Really?
" Ya"
" Wow. That means my dad hasn't dreamt in 30 years."

Silence. Laughter. Silence.

"Oh look. There's that planet Mercury. Usko morning star kehte hain."
"Chup kar aunty"

There are still 2 more hours before N's exam and its crucial that we keep him awake. T & I embark on this mammoth task by watching Waisa Bhi Hota Hai part II and feeding him with peanut butter and jelly on hot toast. But in about half an hour, two fully grown man-babies are fast asleep on my lap.

And then there were none.

I guess college in Singapura, as good as college anywhere.

Epilogue:
N made it to the exam on time. He didn't know a darned thing and consequently finished the paper in 10 mins.

"30% paper tha. I'll manage a B+." He says.