'Wild Wild Country" (2018): One Wild Nutty Ride

Wild Wild Country (2018): "A Netflix Original Documentary Series" in six parts (so far). Set mostly in the 1980s and the nearer past, it's a dazzling, freaky kaleidoscope swirling with the cult of personality, tipped elections, conspiracy, challenges to the separation of church and state, surveillance, immigration themes, homeless people, cuisine, religion, G-men and semi-automatic weapons. What a show -- and how pertinent to our current Trump show!  Imagine the Branch Davidians and Jonestown on a large, international scale, making it successfully. Are you ready? Think Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, the 700 Club and the PTL -- Praise the Lord aka "Pass the Loot" -- Club, armed to the teeth and ready to rumble.     

Wild Wild Country: the Eyes of Texas are Upon You. Or more accurately, the Eyes of Oregon and India are Upon Each Other. "You can't make this shite up."

For all these years I've had this snapshot of a restaurant sign in Copenhagen, Denmark, loving its name: "Zorba the Buddha."  Not until I saw Wild Wild Country did I realize that this was part of the Rajneesh movement -- even though it clearly reads just below the name: "RAJNEESH RESTAURANT." Location in 1983: Strøget, Frederiksberggade 15, København 1459. Suggesting once again that everything is connected to everything else in the grand scheme of things.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

This Place Will No Longer Accept Cash

I. Where have all the rupees gone?  India is phasing out cash. In the US, the penny costs more than its worth in exchange and may be eliminated. In the global trend to "demonetize" (that is, "strip" official currency of value), will we have to rely on "blockchain" accounting systems? And: will our money be safe from electronic theft? Stay tuned! Before you know it, we'll be resorting to barter systems and new forms of "black market" trading. 

II. Living in a "red state" dominated by Republicans, I have found the demonetization process at work even locally. That is to say, this is happening regardless of the party in control, or geographical location. A bulletin arrived recently in the mailbox, delivered by postal service, that reads in part:

"[Place X] Will No Longer Accept Cash

In an effort to improve security, accounting procedures and productivity, [Place X] will no longer accept cash for services. This means bills, citations, fees and other payments to [Place X] will only be accepted with a check, money order, and credit or debit card. 

[We] hope going cashless is not too much of an inconvenience [haha], but [Place X] also has online payments . . . so people could pay at home or work [assuming they have a home, work and a computer or smart phone].

There are three overriding factors [that] contributed to the decision [by whom?] to not accept cash: simplicity, security, and timing.

In terms of security, there is less of a worry about cash floating around [Place X] and it makes bookkeeping and keeping track of bank deposits a lot simpler.

Cash is inefficient. 'It is expensive (and dirty) to handle cash* -- you have a natural loss; you have to pay staff  to count, deposit, and reconcile it; and it increases transaction times,' [no source for this quotation] No cash means no traveling to and from the bank. Plus, not handling money will make [Place X] safer.

The improved procedures will be effective January 1, 2017 . . ."

*Ludicrous!  The mail is "dirty;" credit cards are "dirty." This characteristic never stopped their use before. Wash your hands!

Paper money has been widely used for nearly 1000 years. "Genghis Khan was instrumental in the spread of paper money as currency. . . [I]ntrigued with the paper money he discovered when he conquered China in the 13th Century, [h]e used paper money as a uniform currency across his vast empire. " (Source: "A Short History of Money," link here.)

"Black markets" (informal economic exchanges not authorized by the ruling party) have probably been around since there were more than a handful of people on Earth. Going back to cashless will inspire a revival of bartering, trading and other creative forms of exchange. People will want a fall-back position when computer systems crash or hackers come a'hacking.

I'd be willing to barter with bottles of wine and sacks of coffee beans, among other things. How about you?

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Conrad Rooks: 'Siddhartha' (1972)

Siddhartha, Conrad Rooks' 1972 movie adaptation of Herman Hesse's short novel of the same name (German, 1922; English, 1951), does justice to the original. Though the acting is gently stylized, not "naturalistic," this doesn't bother me in the least. Here and in other ways, Rooks' Siddhartha is on a Buddhist-style par with the Christian-oriented films Pilgrim's Progress (1978) and Christiana (1979). I find all three more enjoyable and more interesting than the majority of films that I've seen over the years. Probably because the stakes are so high, and so relevant to every one of us at all times.

Siddhartha's look benefits from the Swedish cinematographer Sven Nykvist (1922-2006), probably better known as an Ingmar Bergman collaborator. And it's nice having actual Indian actors playing all the parts, with Indian music in the background, and Indian architecture and ecosystems as the visual backdrop. 

Simi Garewal as Kamala, Shashi Kapoor as Siddhartha

As for the director Conrad Rooks (1934-2011), he was an interesting fellow in his own right. Beneficiary of Avon wealth (as in, "Avon lady here"), he shook off adult alcoholism and drug addiction through a Swiss "sleeping cure" and then went on to make Siddhartha. His earlier film Chappaqua (1967), is a chaotic mess, but it does have some groovy scenes with William S. Burroughs, Alan Ginsberg, Ornette Coleman, Ravi Shankar and Moondog, among others. 

Nothing remains the same

Everything changes

Everything returns

Today's Rune: Partnership.   
   

Anita Nair: 'Ladies Coupé' (2001)

Anita Nair's Ladies Coupé (2001) gives readers a glimpse into some of the workings and manners of India in the late twentieth century. It's really a series of tales related by different women traveling on a train to Kanyakumari.  They are interrelated but could also work as stand-alone stories. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Reminds me somewhat of Tosin Otitoju's Three Sisters (2015) which can be found via here.

Akhila, the main character in Ladies Coupé, has been a primary caregiver for her family. Now in her mid-forties, she's philosophical about life. On the train early on, she chats with a fellow passenger: "'As far as I'm concerned, marriage is unimportant. Companionship, yes . . . The problem is, I wish to live by myself but everyone tells me that a woman can't live alone. What do you think? Can a woman live by herself?'" (page 21). In this way, Anita Nair, the author, also happens to be directly engaging her readers with interesting questions like these. 

Akhila's friend Margaret at one point says: "'Akhila, if there is one virtue I have, it is immunity to what people think of me. Naturally this makes them dislike me even more. People don't like to think that their opinion of someone means nothing to that person. And when it is a woman . . . the thought is intolerable" (page 136).

A couple more quips. "Often Akhila had to remind herself that this woman who gnawed at her nerves like a relentless mouse was her sister" (page 160).

"It seems to me more and more that I know nothing" (page 190).

Given the sometimes long names and nicknames of people, places and things, including foods, I found it helpful to jot down notes to more easily keep track of everything. Now I'd like to eat some Tamil food and think about social expectations and reincarnation. Cool beans!

Today's Rune: Initiation. 

Asha Bhosle: 'The Golden Collection' (1996)

This collection of Asha Bhosle movie tunes is a trip. I can hear South and East Asian elements here and some of Asha Bhosle's vocal style in Vietnamese rock and pop music from the 1960s and 1970s. There are also European, American and Middle Eastern tinges. It's in Hindi but it's global. It's cool. 

May take a while for some ears to take in Asha Bohsle's often high-piercing vocals, but above all, she lays down some serious trance music.

Using Google Translate, one can covert Hindi song titles into other languages. Track Number 9 on CD 1, from Hindi into English: "Jaiye aap kahan jayenge" = "Where Will You Go?"   

The thirty-one tracks in Asha Bhosle: The Golden Collection (1996) were "arranged by Sanjeev Kohli," according to a note on the back cover of the CD. He was a major music producer and executive at HMV (EMI India) at the time, and a strong promoter of international music. For the record, the back cover also lists RPG, and The Gramophone Company of India. The tracks here range in recording years from 1957 to 1986.  

Asha Bhosle  (born in 1933) and her big sister Lata Mangeshkar (born in 1929) have both recorded thousands of songs. They are widely known as "playback singers," -- that is to say, actors lip-sync their recorded vocals in movie scenes.

Thank you Asha Bhosle, Sanjeev Kohli, Lata Mangeshkar and India for these tracks. I now pass this anthology forward.

Today's Track: Breakthrough. 

Visions of a Better World: Howard Thurman's Pilgrimage to India

Quinton Dixie and Peter Eisenstadt's Visions of a Better World: Howard Thurman's Pilgrimage to India and the Origins of African American Nonviolence (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011) works nicely in tandem with Thurman's wondrous autobiography. Some of the same ground is covered, often from a different angle, with the core of this book built around Thurman and the four-person delegation from the United States that extensively and intensely criss-crossed India in the mid-1930s. The parallels between Jim Crow in the USA, British imperial administration in greater India, the caste system and various other forms of socio-economic power interactions were clear, as were emerging methods utilized to change things up. Howard Thurman and his companions did their part in seeding the ground for change, embracing "interculture" and ahimsa, or "nonviolence" (a word Mahatma Gandhi is credited with having "coined" in 1920), a pragmatic and also transcendent long-term approach that begins with consciousness raising.   

"The delegation visited more than fifty cities during their tour . . . There were at least 265 speaking engagements in the 140 days the tour was in Asia, with Thurman speaking at 135 of the engagements" plus "interviews with [Rabindranath] Tagore and Gandhi." (Visions of a Better World: Howard Thurman's Pilgrimage to India, pages 86-87).  The latter was the first meeting of Gandhi with an African American delegation, and it was a resounding success. 

During the Second World War (in 1944), Howard Thurman and his family moved to San Francisco and worked to build up the Church for the Fellowship of All People, an integrated, intercultural organization. Until then, there had been very few integrated religious bodies in the USA -- besides small groups in San Francisco, Oberlin, Philadelphia and Detroit, little success had yet been realized in breaking down race-perception barriers. "The need for whites and blacks [and others] to work together was precisely to overcome the abstractness of race relations lived in separate segregated worlds" (page 157). This was a new beginning at changing the status quo.

Reaching beyond the status quo is one of the many aspects of Howard Thurman's action-worldview that resonates with me. I am in accord with his thinking and his hopes, seeking to live, inspire and seed the opposite of what he called "The Tragedy of Dull-Mindedness."

Today's Rune: Flow. 

Howard Thurman (1899-1981): With Head and Heart ~ Take I

Just about finished reading With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (originally published in 1981). What a life! What an arc!  

He's looking up and seeing Halley's Comet in the year 1910. Around the same time, a traveling salesman is peddling "comet pills" to save you from comet-crashing-infernos. . .

Hungry, resourceful and often on the move, Howard makes friends with librarians wherever he goes -- and reads as many books as he can at all times when not writing his own. Like Frederick Douglass, he is propelled by the initial ability to read, and thereby to ponder, and thereby to kick out the jams, and thereby to bust another move way on down the line. . .

He outflanks segregation time and again, raising consciousness -- his own and that of those he encounters -- along the way.

Thanks to one act of kindness by a good Samaritan, he's able to take a train with luggage and some food . . . on to Morehouse College in Atlanta; later to Rochester, New York and Roanoke, Virginia; King's Mountain, North Carolina; Oberlin, Ohio; Howard University, District of Columbia; to India and meetings with poets, writers and Gandhi (in 1936, mind you); to San Francisco and the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in the very midst of the Second World War; to Boston University; to the Middle East and Africa; and back to San Francisco . . . almost all this time during the segregated/American Apartheid/Jim Crow years . . .

Thurman's thinking-journeying is advanced and inspiring for any age or time -- including the 21st century. 

"In my mind, religion had become so identified with sectarianism, and its essence so distorted by it, that I felt a need to bring to bear all the resources of mind and spirit on the oneness of the human quest. . . the human situation, the human predicament, the human plight" (1st edition, pages 199-200).

You read this, you want to do things, and communicate them.

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

The Essence of Sufism

John Baldock's Essence of Sufism (Edison, New Jersey: Chartwell Books, 2004) is a primer on Sufi mysticism that includes historical context and discussions of Sufi texts and ideas under the general umbrella of Islam. Sufism is of interest to various seekers and poets, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. 

Rather than summarize, I'll roll out examples.

"All know that the drop merges into the ocean but few know that the ocean merges into the drop" ~ (page 77) ~ Kabir of India, circa 1140-1518.

At another point, the Persian Sufi poet Attar of Nishapur (or Farīd ud-Dīn Attar, circa 1145-1220 A.D.) describes a question and answer session with Rabi'ah al-Basri (of Basra, Iraq, circa 715-800 A.D.), one of many Sufi mystics who were (and are) women. 

Rabi'ah is asked over several lines (to adopt the Joyce Carol Oates title), where are you going, where have you been?

She states that she has come from and will go to "the other world."

'"Then what are you doing in this world?'

'I am making a game of it.'" (page 94). 

Pictured Here: the cover of a version of Farīd ud-Dīn Attar's The Conference of the Birds (1177 A.D.). I love the images and have often imagined a "Court of the Birds." Baldock notes that Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1342-1400 A.D.) wrote a somewhat comparable, if much shorter, poem sometimes named "The Parliament of Birds" and "The Parlement of Foules," circa 1382.

Later, Baldock gives us these lines: "[T]hey have become a mirror in which nothing is seen but the reflection of another . . . They are a mirror in which all we see is an image of ourselves" (page 110). 

Paraphrasing the Persian Sufi Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273 A.D.):

"If you are a traveller, it's best to take counsel with fellow travellers rather than stay-at-homes" (page 190).

This barely touches the surface of The Essence of Sufism, let alone the full range of the mystical Sufi worldview. But it's better than a stick in the eye, I hope! 

Later, perhaps, something about Fatima of Nishapur and Nunah Fatima bint ibn al-Muthanna, i.e. Fátima de Córdoba, among others ~ ranging from India to Persia to Iraq to North Africa to Spain ~ and more in between ~ and without ~ and within. 

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

In Praise of Limes and Lemons

If you were to compare lemons and limes, limes and lemons, what would you say?

Limes are lime green, lemons are lemon yellow.

Lemons have seeds, limes don't (with exceptions like the Key lime variety).

Lemons and limes can be mixed, combined together to juice up a gin and tonic, for example.

The lime (lima in Spanish, like the capital of Peru) originates from Persia (Iran) and Iraq, but is now grown in various places around the world, including Mexico and the USA.

The lemon (limone in Spanish) originates from China, India and in between, and is also now grown in various other places, including North America.

Lemons tend to be larger than limes -- though such is not the case in the ones I recently purchased (pictured above), thanks in part to drought.

If something is a dud, it's sometimes called a lemon, but not a lime. Why? I don't know and am too lazy to look it up at this juncture. Do you know?

Personally, I like lemons and limes, with a tilt to the lime for its zestier pop to the taste buds.

Sometimes on a hot night, I love to squeeze lime juice into a tall mug or glass filled with Cerveza Modelo Especial, the rather sharp, thirst-quenching Mexican lager. (A bottle's worth delivers about 145 calories, by the way).

If the limes run out, lemon juice alone or even a little lemonade can be mixed with just about any lager to make a shandy or panache, though for me, a little added lemon juice goes a long way. Limes are better. 

Today's Rune: Wholeness. 

India: The Sahmat Collective Exhibition at the Ackland

Colorful and impressive multi-genre exhibit at the Ackland Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -- "The Sahmat Collective: Art and Activism in India since 1989." 

". . . discover the influential, Delhi-based artist collective called Sahmat, whose members create -- through a mix of high art and street culture -- powerful  and vibrant works of art in defense of freedom of expression and in celebration of secular, egalitarian values." 

Free admission. True story!   

[Benjamin] Franklin Street from a cross-walk, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, September 2013. About a block from the Ackland, just last Sunday. 

The Sahmat Collective: closeup. Groovily, flashless photos permitted. 

The Sahmat Collective: banner outside the Ackland. I did some eyes-on art history here as an undergraduate student, among the most enduring strands of my formal education. I strongly recommend ongoing cycles of art history to everyone of all ages via the internet, in person, by the book or in class -- whatever works. It's usually affordable to all or even free so it's up to you.  

Today's Rune:  Fertility. 

Defining Lines at the Nasher

Much to see at three thoughtful, absorbing exhibits at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. "Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space" is one of them. ". . . [C]o-curated by Iftikahr Dadi and Hammad Nasar, brings together art across many genres . . . that have their common theme a preoccupation [pun intended?] with borders, boundaries and lines that divide and demarcate. . . " The British Empire, for one, "brought in its wake the geographic and cartographic division of much of the inhabited world . . ." Obviously, we're still living in the fallout zones from "the Middle East" to Africa and everywhere else in the world as we know it -- or really know it not. 

"Defining Lines: Cartography in the Age of Empire" takes a similar look at dividing lines, focusing on maps as cultural artifacts that carve up the world in ways that favor certain groups over others. "No matter . . . their claims to 'objectivity,' 'accuracy' and 'authority,' maps never simply show the world as it is; they are . . . 'a construction of reality, images laden with intentions and consequences.'" In the end, it's mostly about culture, power and economics. 

A third exhibit revolves around Doris Duke's spectacular "Shangri La" project in Hawaii, replete with beautiful Islamic-themed signs and wonders.

Very impressive all.

Today's Rune: Journey.   

Apollo and Dionysus: Fahrvergnügen-in-Action

So this madcap philosophy dude Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) scribbled an über-groovy -- maybe even Fahrvergnügen -- book called Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik / The Birth of Traqedy and the Spirit [or Ghost] of Music (1872). One of his dearest grooves is on the pull in human nature, and in human affairs, between order or stability and freedom or chaos, between set form and open form. The Greeks knew all about it, Nietzsche points out (or reminds us, depending on where the reader's at), all that balance jive, as represented by the gods Apollo and Dionysus. 

Apollo and the sun, Dionysus and booze, specifically wine and its close relatives, and wild times (i.e. Bohemian and/or religious wild times -- also known under the aegis of the Dionysian Roman avatar, Bacchus). 

Humans tend to tilt one way or the other, depending on time, age, circumstance, feast day, holiday, night of the week, pay day, and so on. 

Mondays and Tuesdays are usually given up to Apollo, I suppose. The same cannot be said for Fridays and Saturdays. At least in the Western Lands in the Year 2013 of the Common Era so far as I know.

Apollo and Dionysus are not ever wholly separated. They're more like the yin and yang -- you know, more like the Chinese symbols swirling into each other with a little dark in the lighter part and a little light in the darker part.

We could delve into somewhat similar Hindu stuff like Kālī and Shiva to make some other sort of apt comparison -- or maybe not. Not today!

Only for now, please do consider not purging your Shadow Self on the Dark Side of the Moon while alternatively not getting burned by your Blinding Self on the Near Side of the Sun. 

Indeed, why not wear shades and get your Fahrvergnügen on, if you dare and so desire? 

For now it's time to go, and Time Waits for No One.

Today's Rune: Warrior.       

Trishna

 

Trishna (2011/2012), the eighth of Michael Winterbottom's films to pop up here, draws its main arc from Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented (1891). However, the setting has been transposed to contemporary India, making for an interesting update.

Trishna, the main character (played by Freida Pinto), was born into rural poverty. The man who becomes her abusive boyfriend (played by Riz Ahmed) was born into great wealth. Intense conflict ensues -- involving socioeconomic class, privilege, and gender differences. Trishna at first becomes a servant at one of said boyfriend's father's luxury hotels (a converted palace of ancient origin), and she sends money back to her family. Later they move to Mumbai and she is exposed to modern urban life. Things start to go awry just about then.

Trishna shows many facets of early 21st century India. What's riveting beyond the story line itself is seeing the weird juxtapoisition of ultra-modern gadgets with ancient traditions, large domesticated animals in the streets and paths, plus monkeys and peacocks positioning themselves in various locations. It's a wild ride, and for Trishna -- as for Tess in industrializing England -- a tragic one.

Today's Rune: Defense.   

World Karma Comic-Comedian Russell Peters

When performing, stand-up comics have to be sharp and on their toes, prepared yet flexible. This line of work is not easy, and even less easy is financial success, wide recognition and influence.

I love a good comic-comedian as much as anyone, to laugh and be amazed at quick-thinking jabs and responses, to empathize. And to be enlightened into thinking about things from different angles.

Lately I checked out a fair sampling of comedy feauturing Indo-Canadian wordsmith-mimic-joker-observer Russell Peters.

This dude is a true world comic.

He can (and does) make references to the cultural peculiarities and foibles of all sorts of social groups. He can mimic formal language, local inflections and slang from Iraq to India to Indiana and beyond.

Funny guy. It seems as if his immediate audiences love him. Most do not take particular offense because he is coming at people and social groups from a global perspective, and with a seasoned Indo-Canadian understanding of how things work.

He enjoys close consideration of sounds, wording, names and the quirks of language, attitudes and stereotyping, all of it leading to a greater appreciation of the way things are.

Today's Rune: Wholeness.         

Teachers III

Picking up from the last post, classes with Ruth Cunningham aka Dr. Bishop stuck with me over the years. She had a clever, sometimes goofy way of drawing us in. On the one hand, she'd tie history to pop cultural references; on the other, she'd weave history with personal references. For anyone with even basic curiosity, this often worked.

Two electives I remember well: one on India and the British Empire, and another on Communist China. Ms. Cunningham/Dr. Bishop (she finished a Ph.D program and got married somewhere along the line) drew on personal experiences while researching for her dissertation in India, and she'd do snippets of songs like "My melan-Kali baby" and make alluring comments about "Tantric practices," Hinduism, Buddhism, British administrators of bygone ages in pith helmets evading Thuggee assasins from which derived the words thug and thugs, and so on. The People's Republic of China was in the process of changing its universally preferred nomenclature at the time, changing the name Mao-tse-Tung -- "like Mousey Tongue," she'd say -- to Mao Zedong, and Peking to Beijing. Thanks in part to her, we were attuned to such changes.

In another history class, Ms. Cunningham/Dr. Bishop described how the French ribbon farm system worked in a way that made it easier in later years to draw connections between the French settlements of Nouvelle-France in Québec/Quebec (permanent settlement from 1608) to Détroit/Detroit (founded in 1701) and La Nouvelle-Orléans/New Orleans (founded in 1718).

In another instance, she made it easier to understand the complexities of the Balkans, past and present, well before the death of Tito and the breakup of Yugoslavia. I'll never forget her play on the Oscar Mayer Weiner song from the perspective of the World Power leaders of one hundred years ago:

"Oh, I wish I could own a Bosnia-Herzegovina, for that is what I truly want to own . . ." 

In another verse, she sang from the "common person's" persepective:

"Oh, I'm glad I'm not in Bosnia-Herzegovina, that is where I'd truly hate to be. . . 'Cause if I were in Bosnia-Herzegovina, there would soon be nothing left of me."

She nailed it, and I still remember. Substitute just about any war-torn country today and the song still applies, both verses.

Today's Rune: Fertility.           

It's 1968, Okay?

1968 is a year that keeps reverberating. Like the eclectic music coming out that year, it's hard to absorb.  The Tet Offensive and a series of massacres in Vietnam, MLK's assassination. The Prague Spring and the Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat, related because Václav Havel was a fan of the band, an inspiration for engaged artists and protesters behind the Iron Curtain.     

I remember, as a little kid in 1968, a lot of excitement about Jean-Claude Killy, France and the Winter Olympics. Only later did I read about Opération Canopus, the first French thermonuclear test detonations that made France, in 1968, the fifth nuclear power after the USA, USSR, UK and PRC. Since 1968, the governments of India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea have joined the club, with Iran's hoping to tag along shortly.

Today's Rune: Journey.   

Deepa Mehta: Water (Reprised)

Indian-born Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta’s Water (2005) is subtly powerful, a gem, a work that I strongly recommend. Water is vivid, one of the most gorgeous looking films I’ve yet seen. Its elements are timeless, seemingly eternal traditions conflicting with modern change. It is compassionate and empathetic to all its characters (a rare thing in film), underscored with beautiful music and cinematography.

There are strong individual stories set within the larger matrix of historical change. Much of Water is seen through the eyes of Chuyia, a lively eight-year old widow who is sent to an ashram to live out the rest of her days among other discarded widows. The year is 1938, and though in India, under British rule, there are legal alternatives to the ancient Hindu practice of sending widows to pasture, tradition remains well-entrenched. Besides living in an ahsram, widows could marry a husband’s brother if he and his family would accept her; or, more drastically, there was the sati alternative: self-immolation on the husband’s funeral pyre. These are obviously cruel alternatives, as even “the best” option, living in an ashram, is like being consigned to a lifelong orphanage for girls and women only.

Besides changes in law, other challenges to the status quo abound in Water. Indeed, the movie itself, simply by showing the marginalization of widows (still evident to a large extent in South Asia), has been taken as a challenge to societal norms. Deepa Mehta’s sets were attacked and burned by angry traditionalists during the first attempt to complete this film in 2000. She resiliently tried again and filmed in Sri Lanka in 2004.













Within the intertwining narratives of Water, widows, religious leaders, the ascendant Gandhi, and Narayan (John Abraham), a Gandhi proponent, all explore peaceful but often radical alternatives to the old ways.

All of the performances are outstanding. Chuyia (Sarala) is wonderful (and I’m not often a fan of children characters/actors) and serves as the perfect character for introducing the viewer to the milieu. Mehta’s use of a moving camera is particularly effective following Chuyia as she runs through narrow streets and alleyways. Madhumati (Manorma) is perfect as the slothful, crabby head of the ashram who pimps out Kalyana (Lisa Ray), one of the more rebellious widows, in order to pay the rent. Gulabi (Raghuvir Yadav), her eunuch pimp, is colorful and creepy, a Felliniesque character.















My favorite character in Water is Shakuntala, a strong, thoughtful, deeply religious Bengali widow played evocatively by Seema Biswas. She, perhaps more than most, subtly undergoes change in her outlook during the course of the film.

Water is the third in a trilogy of Deepa Mehta films. Earth (1998) is set against the backdrop of the partition of India and Pakistan. Fire (1996) involves intense relationships between women. Water (2005) is well-named, as virtually all of the film takes place against the backdrop of the sacred river, the Ganges (Ganga) where it flows by Varanasi (Benares). Metaphorically, of course, water represents a myriad of deep spiritual traditions, dreams, and possibilities.

Today's Rune: Possessions.

Afghanistan and Iraq

Afghanistan, June 2011: NATO International Security Assistance Force

Under the Obama Administration, bin Laden has been killed and tonight, the President announced troop reductions in Afghanistan. The US and its NATO-led allies are making a socio-economic and political move that is pragmatic, a compromise solution -- they are all drawing down. The various home fronts have been clamoring for this and in country the majority of Afghans want it, too. Meanwhile, the Libya war ought to play out this summer. If this is surely not the best of all possible worlds, it's better than escalating what are already two (Iraq and Afghanistan) of the longest running wars in US history. Anyone out there disagree with the drawdown? 

Today's Rune: Possessions.  

John Coltrane: India

Musical interlude: John Coltrane and company's "India" -- recorded fifty years ago this coming November. 

Today's Rune: The Self.  

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities II

Something to consider. Excerpts from US President Barack Obama's State of the Union address last night:

Meanwhile, nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world. And so they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. They're investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became home to the world's largest private solar research facility, and the world's fastest computer. . .

So yes, the world has changed. The competition for jobs is real. But this shouldn't discourage us. It should challenge us. . .

The future is ours to win. But to get there, we can't just stand still. As Robert Kennedy told us, "The future is not a gift. It is an achievement." Sustaining the American Dream has never been about standing pat. It has required each generation to sacrifice, and struggle, and meet the demands of a new age. . .

This is our generation's Sputnik moment. . .

Good spech. Not sure about the Madison Avenue sports/war metaphor, "The future is ours to win,"* but the idea of having a better rail system, stronger insfrastructure, more jobs, and some thought about the future seems better than anything the GOP has in mind.

*(Reminds me of "The Future is Now at Honeywell.")

Obama's ideas are undoubteldy more on the mark than this July 1968 Kroger ad, "JOIN THE KROGER REVOLUTION." If I'm not mistaken, that's no Molly Pitcher there. On the other end of the macho spectrum, I recently saw -- during the NFL playoffs -- an equally ridiculous ad featuring George Washington in a Dodge Challenger swooping down on a line of British redcoats -- who stampede and run away cowering. "There's a coupla things America got right. Cars -- and freedom." People seem to love it. If only life was so simple for some. The past is ours to win? Pitiful, man. Here it is:



Today's Rune: Defense.