Literatures of Love

Literatures of Love

“ Tell me that you love me”

“ I love you”

“ Tell me once more”

“ I don’t love you”

                       L’ Aventura

Michelangelo Antonioni

LOVE is all a matter of audacity; LOVE is all a matter of unwillingness to suspend our thoughts on our own pleasure, which we alone cannot fulfill; LOVE is a matter of urge to attain the willingness, I mean what we provide, in return. So LOVE is a matter, not only of valour, but of self-seeking. LOVE has, on the poles, idealistic and popular versions: idealistic being a kind of universalisation of the feeling, inclusive of benevolence, mercy, patience, tolerance, fraternity, whereas the popular, as always, lay on the banality of evil.

LOVE is at odds over pessimism. But the outsiders, by all odds would chant, ‘caution’, ‘caution’, taking the popular reading only. Caution does not let off steam of IT to escape, because the popular is gruesome, inflammable with the tinge of morality. If attempt  to occupy a different realm, without signing off valediction,  pressure of the steam inside let loose the blood, blood if let free will call revolt. Thus caution, though presumably keeps the pendulum balanced, essentially renovates the models of relinquished desires hidden, under the crust, but still potent for an explosion. So cautious people, be vigilant, you have hidden a volcano inside; a volcano of temptation, of love, of hatred.

The rationale behind my caution, on indulging in writing about the subject of, and indulging in the practice of preaching IT, the universal temptation, which taunts, tempts and tears everyone, is due to the fear of becoming the voice of the popular, which is what Roopesh Paul engrossed on the title of his film, The Temptation between the Legs. Roopesh, the film director , is a script writer, legitimate enough to talk,( which I am afraid, I am not)  about the temptation, with Indu Menon, the Malayalam Short story writer, both proved, the matter,  the solidified fluid, with the testimony, the life as their white paper. Such a proof after, was Anuragathinte Pustakam, the Book, of love, for love, by love. The book was an example for a simile of burning sensation as Burns wrote, “IT” is like a RED, RED, rose, when our foreheads were not burning, and tongue not parching. It did not dissent to sort of ‘Vegetable love growing v(f) aster than empires and more slow’ or love ‘is a tale told by an idiot, full of furious sound, signifying nothing.’

It was impossible for me to move with the guesswork, oversimplified earlier; not because of the fear, of getting out dated, but for the fear of predation, for the fear of outsiders’ morbid preoccupation with the popular, in the view, since the popular co-efficient denominates my sustenance, as with the majority. The reality, to me, here and now, is the significance of nothingness of the so called love, because nothing does not mean ‘no’ ‘thing’, but means something at least to someone. Let me call it sacrifice, I could hear hail from the chorus of Idealism; let me call it conquest, “great”, the warriors of darkness; let me call it duel, immediately, the fresco of the rustling box, uproar. Let me say, it drives loneliness away, and loneliness in you will be made perplexed. But is it all, and it is more.  To Kamala Das, who composed a foreword to the work,…Pusthakam, IT was not only her thumb impression, the signature, but the print of the palm. The magala- Nisamudden express, a train of love, was the privileged subject of objectified dedication of Anuragathine…

On the week of the Celebration of the day of Valentines, prefixed with my epigraph, at the beginning, the lady Valentines may or may not join the feminists, the celebrators of liberation against the series of rapes, may or may not join those who believe that the celebration of the Day may summon gang rape. It may, or may not be tempting, may or may not open the doors of unanchored vigor for queries. May it be a utopian craving for the balance sheet of future, from the perspective of the past; the past’s redemption of the present or future. Or let me say, it is like the letters Gorky wrote for Theresa.

 Who is Theresa, who is Anna, Who is Fatima? Who are Elsie Moll, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, and Susan Gilbert? They were all a part of the book, of love, of history, of literature, the light of LOVE from many lamps, which Roopesh and Indu collected, and published. The book, though not seriously acclaimed, was a nice companion to those who approach love in all its romantic vitality. A less than one percent of it can be disclosed if I narrate, the gain I am not sure, through the story of the lover(s) stolen from the book.

The story of Gorky:

Once when he was in Moscow, Gorky had a neighbor, a lady with man’s body-language, but still a lady; a brunette, with a man’s voice. She approached the writer to send a letter to her home, in the name of Theresa, addressing Boles. The romantic lines of the letter appear to be comic, to a rational writer since he recognized the heroine of the letter as none other than this lady. Later the same lady approached the writer to write to Theresa, in the name of Boles. The recognition, that rings the bells, was the pain of the lover/beloved in her yearns for love to fill the space of loneliness.

The Book of Love is replete with a lot of stories, of the familiar strangeness of love, lust, conquest. As Shakespeare, Neruda, Fitzgerald and so many others spoke, you float on the Laputa… 

This is enough..

The book is all yours…because …I know…each of you are…  already in it…as I am…in our own ways…

Aswathi.M.P.

Sure, because ...Road is not mine alone...

Sure, because ...Road is not mine alone...

I was walking

Walking alone

Alone and unnoticed

Unnoticed but happy

Happy on my metaphors,

Till a bus passed me.

Relieved thinking

My Metaphor safe

I checked,

Noticed a simile instead.

I ran after the bus,

Saw the bus running after me.

It stooped, I stopped,

Checked my Metaphor,

Happily regained

My Metaphor,

Its Simile

Reshaped into

His oxymoron.

Then I saw a plane

Flowed away, in the blue

Oxymoron flew away, in the yellow

Simile flee away, in the red

My metaphor rushed

 After the simile

Beyond the reach of the plane

Transcends the space.

Knowing them,

I checked my Metaphor.

Now the Metaphor never more,

Irony ever more.

I walked before the irony

Irony as my shadow,

As an oxymoron,

As a simile,

As a metaphor too.

I walked ahead

Ahead of me

I walked after me

I walked around me

I walked inside.

I am walking...

Walking alone

Metaphor rushed to me,

Sought my permission

To follow,

 Getting the answer “Sure”

Metaphor relished

In the consuming passion,

Guided,

Under the guise of following,

 Ignoring

My rhetoric, silent:

“Road is not mine alone...”

Aswathi.M.P.

Best Time!!

Best Time!!

Sharp at 4.45 unfolds the pandemonium, a sitcom with the comrade of tide, waits for no man. The mathematics of life begins from the kitchen. The quantity in kilograms, liters, numbers, and the amateur ratios and units, raw and ripe spins over the head, and proclaims tyranny and revolt from the pressure cookers, onto the two gas burners, showing a sportsman spirit in the competitive whistling. The kitchen music revolves with the oozing of the fire bands, and the crackers often spill a fantabulous spill over the brims of the oven. The mixer drives, the grated coconut to a whirlpool of ecstasy, and melts the solid, with the sensuous touch. The drums of the cutting pan, enjoys the tuck-tuck of the knife, along with the knots of onion, with silent ghazals of melancholy. The snooze and sneeze with mustard and masala add spice to the whole event, followed by a whirlwind, a fast number of the shaft in the bottle of curd. The chil-chil of salt and sugar, played the music of food of love, and the sugar crystals marrying hot, moves to the in-laws where the shapes and sizes of the past ends for the new fusion. The wet and dry combinations displaced again and again with the pipe play on, play on. The whole poem, faster than slow, yet slower than f/past with all the visual, dominating yellow and white, with borders of green and red, auditory, muffled thuds and flute melodies, and the umpteen numbers of notes of varied pitch in between, tactile burns and wounds, the surge of air resulting from the olfactory sensations, or awakening of the spirit with the fresh brewed coffee, and finally the gustatory images aroused out of the feelings invoked in the reader of the composition. The reviews latest or later and the trial and error game of learning by doing, all complex equations by hearted with subtleties might eventually move to x or y axis . But the time machine, being a machine fails to respect the troubled panorama and the clock hands rush to reach the destiny of the circle of eternity. The narrow treads of water with adhesion adjusts the pace of the actor, thus the quickness baths in liters, brisk pace. Then the fluid rival, ordinarily rides with panting, along with the helpless super wo(man) strives, to seek, to get into  the time-engine, not to allow the next door neighbor to the next seat neighbor to conquer the personal space, on the wingless chariot of time. The other tactile calculator reminds, late, two minutes, reduce the call length, it is 7.30: thus the relationships caught in the spider web of time, words numbers, laughs counted, chats reduced, because it is time. The busy door keeper checks the speed, “slow slow, be fast, fast, fast, fast, fast.” Then the paper, bribes the connoisseur of time to return the passenger’s time; the conductor, supposed to conduct the whole concert , imitates the music of the check-bird-“ down fast, fast, fast, fast”. Sleep alarms my portion pending, awakening show-causes my portion yet to be. Passion rests, dating indolence, emptying the bottle of last drop of blood, ebbs, telling at your disposal. 8.40, this is the time to be free, in the midst of the bustling crowd, relax, on your feet, because the equation is unequal, so no rest space. 9.10, a visual feast of time attacks space and space retorts. Location-bus door. The sound of music comes to a new end in beginning. Thus the beginning begins with the end of end game, where the balance sheet tallies- no profit, loss nil. In time, on time, time over.

Aswathi.M.P

പനിക്കാഴ്ച

Review: Jones- Fielding & a Diary Pride or Prejudice?

Review: Jones- Fielding & a Diary

Pride or Prejudice?

 Eve of New Year:

 Bridget opened her diary, kept pencil, ruler, pen, eraser and sharpener, beside her. She divided the diary into two. On the right she wrote I WILL, ON THE LEFT, I WON’T…. “Stop ..I SAY, STOP…Helen fielding interrupted from the text. Are you going to rewrite my story without my permission,”  heard an oracle. In order to hide the shame, being caught red handed, I said, “No, no..Actually, I was about to introduce your book to make it more popular though it is not of my langue and parole.” There was truth in it, though a compromise.

This story may be the story of some of us, irrespective of gender, class, caste, age or background. Perhaps it may not be our story, but the story that we can or cannot tell since we know Bridget JonesES. Possibly, this may be the story of someone with whom we may have ties, to whom we are learning to be, deeply in love with , or from whom we wanted to escape, escaped, or still, acting coy mistress play,  the rhetoric being existence. This story confessed itself to be feministic, accepting the constant degradation, Chick lit as the mantra of coronation. Thus the story of a young girl, who wrote a diary secretly, discloses the secret wishlists after a year, where the feelings are no more the feeling, where she rests all passions spent. The novel Bridget Jones’s Diary is the diary of a young girl, ( Not Anne Frank).                                     

The novel in the form of diary begins with New Year’s resolutions of Bridget Jones. It is divided into two sections titled ‘I will not’ and ‘I Will’. This may be the right time to read this novel, since we are bunching our desires, promise ourselves with the wills of future, won’ts, as reflections out of past, and weaving the present for the next year, leading from present to PRESENT. So was Bridget Jones, the Chick lit. heroine doomed to carry the ambivalence pertaining to the existence of every (wo)man of 1990s , when the first issue released, especially that of a self reliant woman, a shopaholic, (alcoholic, chain smoker,) glutton, singleton(?), and meets the criteria of a feminine idol-cosmopolitan woman, when she commences her entry. Just after made the decision to form a mature relationship with a responsible male, she fell into the web of Daniel, her boss, with whom she flirts, chats, and tries to date, but reluctantly shies away. The anxiety is the effect of internalized models of beauty which she feels ideal for a man to love a woman. Her concept of beauty is the notion of her infatuation towards the commoditization in which woman is both a commodity and a consumer. She was badly in need of a partner simply for the sake of exhibition and the element of love is second to this. The equation is corroborated when the image of reluctant female is exposed. When the story unfolds, the consistency of the feminine image is broken and she portrayed the struggle of the individual, to have a unique ideology difficult even for her to explain. This lack of the puritan concept, of purity is a part of the post modern sub culture celebrated through the novel especially through the unofficial problem maker/solver meetings of Bridget and friends. Even after making all the rhetoric of wisdom the estimation of Bridget is too superfluous as she felt like being cheated after she discarded the carnal pleasures of the then hero. She again marked the wealth of the man, Mark Darcy,whom she marries at the end as the mark of his dignity and his exterior i.e. the outfit as the proof of his being a gentleman. The logic of these empowered women will reserve practicality when it comes to the bottleneck of a single relationship.

The looking glass of Chick lit. Woman whether mother or daughter satisfies only by the acquisition of commodities even if she is well aware of it as useless as far as she is concerned. Her foundations will always be in her makeup box. But the rigidity offered by the confidence of financial security and independence is in conflict in the presence of mothers of her own age she met in a party. Lonely in a crowd,  ‘a nightmare scenario’ was she, then a marginalized phenomenon in the midst of ‘powerful mothers’. But on another occasion she calls a mother as “a hideous grow-bag-cum-milk-dispensing machine”.

Career is for money, weightless is weight-full in others perception, a rich man will the partner with all riches, shopaholism adds to prestige, thus goes the exposition of femaleness, rather than femininity in the novel.

Still Jones is being placed, especially today along with Diary of stocks. It serves the entertaining purpose, as it satisfies the lust residing in all to peep into the secrets of others- to the calls of the instincts’ bed rooms, nature’s bathrooms, flavors’ kitchens, gossips’ living space, so to speak. A diary serves it all. Thus Fielding, and Jones…( Not Henry Fielding and Tom Jones…It is Helen Fielding and Bridget Jones’s Diary)