Spots of Joy !!

 Happiness comes from the smallest things in everyday life. Like in my case, I wait for these birds to appear every winter ... and now, they are here !! 

 

Mary

 “You may think you know my story,” Mary tells us. “Trust me, you don’t ...”

‘Mary’ is a re-imagined period drama that explores the character and the circumstances of being the ‘chosen one’ to give birth to the promised king as per the prophecy of ‘Isaiah’. The film portrays Mary of Judea, as a young woman coming into her power and accepting her unique destiny, albeit with occasional fears and confusion … balancing her humanity with her divinely ordained role.

Joachim and his wife, Anna, have their prayers answered when a daughter is born to them in exchange of the promise to dedicate her to the service of the lord. Young Mary is sent to the Temple of God in Jerusalem. While Mary accepts a mission, not of her own choosing, director D.J. Caruso shows her as a heroic woman, who displays remarkable strength and courage making her life story a survival narrative in many ways. Chosen to bring the Messiah into the world, Mary finds enemies in Judea; she is shunned by the community for carrying what they believe to be an illegitimate child. Mary fights back and persists even in the face of the temptation of Lucifer. Later, Lucifer provokes a mob to stone Mary to death but Joseph saves her. When King Herod orders the “King of the Jews” to be killed, Mary and Joseph are forced to escape to save the newborn Jesus. The film ends as they return to the Temple of Jerusalem with Jesus. The priest proclaims a new prophecy … the blessed child is destined to bring about the rise and fall of many.

‘Mary’ isn’t a typical Christmas movie: it dramatizes the miraculous birth of Jesus and also the miraculous birth of His mother – Mary, through events that may or may not align with the Scriptures.

She's always a woman to me ... ♫

 

She can kill with a smile 

She can wound with her eyes 

She can ruin your faith with her casual lies 

And she only reveals what she wants you to see 

She hides like a child, 

But she's always a woman to me 

She can lead you to love 

She can take you or leave you 

She can ask for the truth 

But she'll never believe you 

And she'll take what you give her, 

as long as it's free 

Yeah, she steals like a thief 

But she's always a woman to me 

When the song was released the women's liberation movement was really gaining momentum and a lot of men didn't understand what it meant … Did liberation mean that the new woman was trying to be a man? No ... perish the thought! The term ‘new woman’ emerged at the end of the nineteenth century to describe women who were pushing against the limits which society imposed on women. Today we might call her a liberated woman or may be a feminist. Less constrained by Victorian norms and domesticity than previous generations, the new woman had greater freedom ... she challenged conventional gender roles and met with hostility from men and even from women who objected to women's public presence and supposed decline in morality ! Put in a simpler way, the new woman was the young women at the turn of the century to reject her mothers' ways in favour of new, modern choices. Indeed equations change every day. Questions have been raised on how far women's liberalism has become effective. But the big change was that women have tasted the possibilities; they know what’s in the realm of their grasp … the freedom to work or be single, the freedom to define themselves, to find what they really want. 

O ... she takes care of herself 

She can wait if she wants 

She's ahead of her time 

O ... and she never gives out 

And she never gives in 

She just changes her mind 

And if all this brings confusion to the woman, think of the poor man. What worked well some time back did not work anymore. The men are slowly getting the idea, they are trying to understand the new rules and become new men ! Yet the new man seems to be a confused young man right now … trying to be gentle, open and supportive new men while fulfilling the traditional male role of being aggressive, assertive and high-achieving. Typically men do not like the expression ‘new man’ at all … the new man is a caricature ! They do not care for ‘feminists’ either …for feminists are 'short-haired women shouting for their rights'. Indeed there are very few new men around and there is no evidence to suggest that we are witnessing huge social change. But in my own family and among friends and acquaintances I see men who are more open to change. Men are becoming incorporated into domestic and societal roles, which have traditionally been the prerogative of women. 

Anyway, the idea of the new man is not new. There were plenty of affectionate and sympathetic men around in previous generations. But those affectionate and sympathetic men of the previous generations were never asked questions like – "Is it important for you to be the breadwinner ? Are you competitive ? Is it important to you to have a good physique ? Would you share the housework or look after the children ? Are you confused about how you relate to women ? Do you find it difficult to talk about your feelings ?" The answers, I guess will reveal a lot. It will be interesting to put these same questions in their proper context to a new woman too. The answers will reveal a lot, yet again ! Indeed we all are living through changing times. However, the basic rules of human relationships have always been the same … you cannot force your views on somebody else, emancipation is a state of the mind ! 

And she'll promise you more 

Than the Garden of Eden 

Then she'll carelessly cut you 

And laugh while you're bleedin' 

But she'll bring out the best 

And the worst you can be 

Blame it all on yourself 

Cause she's always a woman to me 

She is frequently kind 

And she's suddenly cruel 

She can do as she pleases 

She's nobody's fool 

And she can't be convicted 

She's earned her degree 

And the most she will do 

Is throw shadows at you 

But she's always a woman to me 

Coming back to Billy Joel’s song … there's a sort of haunting melancholy in the song. The man cannot reconcile the things the woman can do to a man with the chivalrous notion he seems to hold of a woman. She's on a pedestal like a Goddess … even though he seems to know she shouldn't be; and now that she has fallen off, he alternates between cynicism and admiration for her. The song captures the duality a man can feel when he's involved with a woman who has embraced liberation in context of society's stereotypical expectations of what it means to be a woman. The woman does not appear to either seek or need approval from others, and she's not taking responsibility for others reactions to how she is. She is her own person, has accepted it and is proud of it. So he chooses to blame himself, “Blame it all on yourself"… for he still loves her and recognises her as still being very much a woman. The song does not speak of the perfect woman, it speaks of a woman and the man who loves her for who she is and can be.

 

Life ...

The river, with its ancient flow, reminds us that our time, like the water, will always carry us home ...

# Image generated with AI  

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Peter Weir’s film Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) creates a palpably dream-like atmosphere … a world of golden glows and gentle whispers, where the characters exist as hazy, evocative recollections. The film opens with the statement … "On Saturday, 14 February 1900, a party of schoolgirls from Appleyard College picnicked at Hanging Rock near Mt. Macedon in the state of Victoria. During the afternoon, several members of the party disappeared without trace ..."

Based on a book by Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock takes us to the girls' finishing school in Australia, where the teenage girls embark on a picnic to a local landmark – a near-vertical precipice called the Hanging Rock. While the girls rest at the foot of the rock, a group of four girls begins to traverse the rock. However, something unexplained happens and three of the girls fail to return. And soon afterwards one of their teachers follows and she also disappears. Search parties scour the vicinity of the rock but no traces of the three girls and their teacher are found. Weir doesn't provide any worldly explanations for the disappearances. He allows the mystery to stand … and focuses on how everyone else reacts to the disappearances … possible explanations abound but Weir only provides tantalizing hints. The whispered voice-over of a line from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, "What we see and what we seem, are but a dream. A dream within a dream," spoken by Miranda, one of the schoolgirls is a more telling introduction to the film.


However, while the movie doesn't provide a definitive physical explanation for the disappearances, Weir loads the movie with clues that the disappearances should be viewed as metaphorical. For instance, the main events take place on Saint Valentine's Day – the most romantic day of the year. However, the teenage girls are trapped at a girls-only school. As a result, they pass Valentine's cards among themselves and breathlessly read love poems to each other. In this land of sexual repression and misplaced sexual yearnings, the girls venture to a towering rock … with possible phallic implications … and four girls in the party begin to climb higher and higher up the slopes. One girl turns around and runs screaming down the rock but the others take off their shoes … a sign that they are breaking from repressions, and as the camera idealizes them in a golden haze, they begin their final slow-motion ascent. On a metaphorical level, the movie suggests that the girls' have become enraptured by the rock's magnetic pull and they have embarked on a hypnotic journey to a mythical never-never land of higher fulfillment.


Unlike the novel, the film is dreamlike, mysterious, and filled with implications. The fatal picnic takes place in an environment described by, among others, one of the first Australian poets, Charles Harpur:

Not a sound disturbs the air,
There is quiet everywhere;
Over plains and over woods
What a mighty stillness broods.
All the birds and insects keep
Where the coolest shadows sleep …


There are many unresolved incidents in the film and many characters filled with many layers of meaning. Weir intentionally leaves these and other questions unanswered, mysterious.

In the film's final sequence a voice-over commentary provides information about the fate of Mrs. Appleyard. Her body is found at the base of Hanging Rock, and it is believed that she fell while attempting to climb it. The same voice informs us that the search for the missing girls and their governess continued for the next few years without success and that their disappearance remains a mystery. These last words are accompanied by an extreme slow-motion evocation of the picnic scene under the Rock. Miranda is shown waving goodbye, and the freeze-frame of her turning her head away from the camera ends the film. The shot fades out, leaving the viewer intrigued, bewildered, mystified.

I saw this film on television when I was in school. Though I could not understand the film at that time, its haunting beauty remained a memory. I just remembered the name and years later when I got a DVD copy, it was like a dream come true ...

Forest

 “In a forest of a hundred thousand trees, no two leaves are alike. And no two journeys along the same path are alike ...”

#Chalsa 

Men's Day !!

"I have been wearing saris in the form of dhotis since my school days. I have always been experimental when it comes to sartorial choices because I have always found the idea of non-living things to have gender as ridiculous.

While on social media, people from my country show me love and support, I am not sure if it would be okay for me to walk down Connaught Place or in Kolkata’s New Market area. But on the streets of Milan or Barcelona, either people mind their own business or, most often, they come up and say the nicest of the things .."

~ Pushpak Sen

May you always find the strength to chase your dreams and make them a reality.

Happy Men’s Day !!

Wildflowers ...

 “They are wildflowers. They would not want a name ...”

# Gorumara National Park

# Dooars

'In Her Place'

 'In Her Place' is based on a real incident that took place in Chile in 1955. A popular Chilean author, commits a crime of passion and is awarded a controversial minimal three-year sentence and then a presidential pardon before it is served.

The film explores the growing fascination of Mercedes, the secretary to a senior judge - with the glamorous killer on trial. The killer's apartment is everything Mercedes' own shabby home is not: it is spacious, beautiful and, most alluringly 'silent'. Mercedes makes repeat visits: at first, to water the plants, but later, to luxuriate in the killer's glamorous lifestyle — she reads her books, dresses in her expensive clothes, cooks meals in her swanky kitchen — the apartment becomes a refuge from Mercedes' own 'imperfect' life. Mercedes’ obsession remains under control; her double life has no significant consequences. However, her sorrow when it falls apart as the killer receives presidential pardon, is palpable at the end.

Mercedes gets a 'Room of her Own' where she can be, at least temporarily, the independent, empowered woman she perhaps wanted to be ...

'Afwaah' - Rumour

 Director Sudhir Mishra's film shows how 'Afwaah' (Rumour) spirals out of control when social media is cunningly manipulated by the rich and mighty to create false narratives for political gains.

Set in Sawalpur, a small town in Rajasthan, the film explores how and why rumour mills operate in the age of easy internet access. It tells a cautionary tale by focusing on an unsuspecting victim of intolerance as well as the perpetrators - and beneficiaries - of divisive politics. Gradually, the film transforms itself into a commentary on the contemporary political scenario, the rising vigilantism in the name of cow and love jihad and the use of social media as a political weapon.

'Afwaah' is a relatable political film that makes us aware that we should not blindly believe all that we read online ...

The Bloody Line

 W. H. Auden's poem, 'Partition' serves as a critique of a dark chapter in Indian history as it provokes a troubled conscience to reminiscence some dark memories.

He is the British barrister Sir Cyril Radcliffe who was hastily put in charge of drawing the 'bloody line' that created India and Pakistan. At the end of the film, Radcliffe walks to a quaint little church with his wife, carrying a lifetime's guilt for agreeing to draw the line that had, and still has, violent repercussions.