Down memory lane
An examination-day assignment unexpectedly takes me back to my own school years—to examinations, anxieties, teachers and the people whose presence quietly shaped those years.
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Mona Madam
I remember Mona Madam as a cheerful, generous teacher who loved children instinctively. To me, she was never merely a teacher; she showed how naturally learning and affection could belong together.
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That Far in Love
Who was she? This struck me repeatedly. She was young and in the full bloom of her youth. She didn’t seem to be clever. Though she was not over thirty, she appeared to be over forty. She had dry, ragged hair, an unkempt appearance, and seemed to want hygiene and cleanliness. She seemed to have…
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One-Liners Medley
In the film Ben-Hur Judah Ben-Hur who is on a torture trip along with the other prisoners and criminals is denied water. As he pleads “Oh God” Christ comes with a pitcher of water, washes his face and gives him more water to drink. The guard notices this and says, “I said-no water for him.”…
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Unreserved experience
After a hiatus of nearly 7 years I travelled in an unreserved train compartment recently from Nellore to Vijayawada. Travel in a reserved air conditioned coach is a sanitised experience where order and protocol is enforced on an otherwise chaotic Indian railway carriage. Also boundaries of class because of the higher cost of the travel create barriers of access. A group of Bhavanis boarded the compartment along with me.
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The Western as a Genre
From John Ford to High Noon and The Magnificent Seven, Krishna Mohan reflects on the moral codes, archetypes and vast landscapes that give the Western its enduring power.
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Luis Buñuel and Surrealist Cinema
Luis Bunuel was one of the founders of the surrealist movement in films along with Salvador Dali. Surrealism is the exploration of something beyond the real. It is digging into the dream like, deep unconscious to discover new realms of expression. It is the mind’s unconditioned, unhampered response to ideas. It is not rational, not pragmatic…
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Kolkata
For a long time I had wanted to visit Kolkata, a city about which I have read a lot, heard and thought a lot. From the writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Bibhuti Bhushan, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Sarat Chandra, from the films of Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Aparna Sen i had a few notions in my head. I have been an ardent admirer of the intellectual spirit of this city. Bengal; the cradle of Indian renaissance, the land of pioneering reform, the place from where the flames of freedom fanned across India, the land of intellectuals, reformers and patriots, I wanted to be
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The Study of History
After I completed my +2, I tried to get into a BSC course. It so happened that the seats in BSC those days were highly in demand and I could not get a BSC ZPC or BZC. When I was drifting aimlessly and unable to decide what to do next, opportunity knocked and I got admission into B.A (H.E.P).History, English, Political Science mainly because I studied Advanced English in my +2. This course was called B.A (Litt) during those days.
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And Quiet Flows the Don
A return to Sholokhov’s sweeping Cossack world, where war, revolution, landscape, love and human endurance move together across generations.
