Pan’s Labyrinth

“It is only a word, only a word,” says the mother in Pan’s Labyrinth urging her daughter to call her new stepfather “father.”

But of course, nothing is merely a word. Not the word “father” And especially not when Vidal, the stepfather in question, can be patriarchal but is never fatherly. Words have to fit.

Although many things are, admittedly, beyond words… sumptuously Gothic fairytales, say--or intensely re-created histories of fascism. Pan’s Labyrinth manages juggles both brilliantly, and frighteningly. With unforgettable visuals. With inimitable words. With terrifying simplicity. And unreality. Who’s to say that a fascist tyrant pulping a peasant’s face with a heavy glass bottle is less fantastic--or, indeed, more gruesome--than a mantis that changes into an (ugly) fairy?

There is nothing simple in Pan’s Labyrinth. Even the beautifully pure and vulnerable face of its protagonist, Ofelia, verges on pubescence; is clued to a forthcoming awareness of imminently sexual fauns; is limned with a presciently adolescent disobedience and distrust of authority. And everything is serious. In fact--and this is extraordinarily atypical of an experience I count enjoyable--there wasn’t *one* humorous moment in it. Which is perhaps why despite the duality of the resolution, I reacted, with horror and dissatisfaction, purely to the ending that seemed more authentic to reality, and discounted the other.

Pan’s Labyrinth interweaves images and texts from a variety of childhood images and texts--The legend of the cunning Pan and J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and C.S. Lewis; Ofelia’s strangely Alice in Wonderland-ish headband, pinafore and frock, and her Princess and the Goblin ensembles of nightgown and robe. The cumulativeness of this collective familiarity has the effect of nostalgically speaking to our personal childhoods. And so the loss of the child, prophetically named Ofelia (Ophelia), hurts. It recalls our loss of individual childhood, of security we once enjoyed within the fabric of family and certainty, of our inadequacy in the face of inexorable events controlled by mammoth historical fates. Or inscrutable fauns.

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SOLACE

Have to say

As the lies grow
Wide-lipped and
Tipped with white

Have to say

Listening
To new stories and
Those gone missing

Have to say

Say:
Everything will go your way
Okay?

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IN THE ROUGH

(Flood)

Perhaps oysters
String suffering
In peace.
Luminously.
As pearls.


(Blood)

Like pleasures
You press
Into my skin
Where they parade
Proud as tattoos.

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Li’l A’s Choice

We have to drive into the city to pick up Big A--who’s, sadly, working nights most this week. And as I woke Li'l A by slipping a hoodie over his head for the ride, he got this totally Sophie’s Choice look. He's clutching Ninni (a.k.a. “stinky Goat Ninni,” his baby blanky) in one fist and Licky (equally stinkalicious except he’s a still somewhat adorable stuffed dog) in the other.

Can I bring them both?

This is the same kid who in his waking hours claims he’s too old to kiss me in public.

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After _Rabbit-Proof Fence_

Occasionally, I’ll watch serious cinema with Li’l A. Our favorites so far have been the Iranian director Majid Majidi‘s delightful Children of Heaven and Danny Boyle‘s somewhat murky Millions.

We started Rabbit-Proof Fence this evening with the caveat that we might have to turn it off if it got too heavy. But it didn't, and anyway Li'l A really got into RPF, which is about three aboriginal children who are separated from their families by the Australian government and trek the 1500 miles back to their home by themselves.

Cousin S wonders if it’s okay to let a little kid watch “real” i.e. non Disneyfied films. And I say yes, because I hope that empathizing with those frequently considered “Other”--
(a) may make him a kinder person
(b) stave off any Gautama Buddha drama later.
(c) Okay, whatever--I didn’t really want to watch it all by myself.

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Meet Cute

My parents, the lovebirds, celebrate Nov 3rd--the anniversary of the day they first met each other. How cute was their meet? They had an arranged marriage, so it was a very formal meeting.

The first words my mother ever said to my father were in chaste and polite Telugu as she offered him coffee, “Coffee Theesukondi.” To which, my father said, “Thank you.” Adequate. Even well executed. Except to hear my dad tell it year after year, it almost rivals R&J :)

He:
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

To which, she:
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

None of my friends’ parents celebrated anything like that, but I thought I would. Except that despite serious mind dredging, Big A and I can’t recollect the day we actually met. So instead we celebrate our first date, which was on a snowy Jan 26th.

This isn’t a very good poem, but it makes me smile--and what the H-E-double-toothpicks-- it’s my blog and my anniversary :).

Update: Pulled my poem. You've got Old Will so you shouldn't complain, it's not like i'll ever compare :).

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Temple Dogs

My boys.

I can take them to the temple despite the one being a non believer and the other being too young to know his mind. And for the occasion, I can wear a thin tissue sari totally unsuitable for 13 degree weather and be too lazy (or vain--with me that‘s likely too) to cover up in a wrap.

Not only do they follow me around like gentle, well behaved puppies inside the temple, they’ll bring the car around for me, rev the heat way up and try to wrap me in a jacket before I’ve even clipped on my seatbelt.

Which kind of explains the temple visit. Because I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but I do know when I need to say thanks.

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SNORKELING

Everyday for breakfast
She had spoonfuls of sky
Nothing close or nearby
Ever seemed same again.

So in another land,
In some softly alien sea
They consent to band
In lithe experimental ties

With elongated limbs,
And buckled lungs,
Talking of walking water
Minus primness or miracle

Finding the sea suddenly
Small as a lapping pet,
Animated in assault,
Circling them for treats.

Then too soon, in ten or so days,
Their rules and goodbyes unsaid,
They fly; the red of an airline blanket
Flowers, in her lap, like a miscarriage.

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Aaj Chelli ka Happy Birthday Hey!

Today is the birthday of the best sister in the whole world (mine:)!

Happy, Happy Birthday, Chelli!

[AA, my favorite aunt in the whole world, calls me to get the birthday girl’s new digits. I give them to her and then somehow a go-to call turns into an hour-long talkfest.

At the end of 60-odd minutes, AA says sheepishly, “M, can you give me the number again? I ummm, doodled all over it and I can‘t make out the numbers anymore.”

My favorite aunt, I tell you!]

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LTTE's Child "Soldiers"

KS pointed me to this report in Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror, which has several testimonies from child soldiers about being kidnapped and forced to perform military duties for the LTTE.

Horrible.

Wrong.

And the reason I won’t support any commercial ventures that validate or replicate LTTE culture.

The children are quoted as being 16 and 18--and I’ll forgive you once if you're thinking that they’re more adolescent than child. Because, really, we have to take into account that they are generally drafted around 12 years of age. That is incontrovertibly a child, dammit.

I meandered down the rest of the article and perked up a little when I saw Radhika Coomaraswamy mentioned. I met her once upon a time in Colombo--a very unassuming, highly efficient, and quite jolly person. It turns out that she has recently been appointed as the UN’s special representative for children in armed conflict. Here's hoping that she can hold the LTTE to their frequent denials and resolutions regarding child soldiers.

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Incidentally, Radhika Coomaraswamy’s is the *only* Tamizh name amongst the reams of Sinhala and European names on the acknowledgements page of Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost. It's a dismaying indication of a lack of balanced research in an otherwise dazzling book.

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The Doggies

It started off playfully enough.

Big A and Li’l A and I have different surnames. (Long story; some other time.) Anyway, for emotional reasons, I’ve been meaning to find us a new family name. Of course, we started with the obvious suspects, a mix of our family names: we tried Wandawasi (one of my family names) coupled with Laskey (part of his) as in “the Wandawasi-Laskeys are all crazy” but that’s just so tediously fangled.

We needed something else.

Long ago, we’d watched an American-Desi movie (in fact, it might have even been called American Desi) in which the FOB cousin mangled the “dawg” greeting and hailed his homies with “Hello Doggies.” That totally cracked us up for days after. And so, for years now, we’ve been calling each other “Doggie.” Except when Big A is mad at me and yells, “Sweet Baby Puppy” (because you know, the fact that he’s actually yelling at me coupled with mean names could traumatize me forever).

So last night after he returned from work at 11:30, we’re gnawing this to bits again, and he facetiously said that perhaps we should just go with “Doggie” except perhaps we could ethnicize the spelling a bit so it’s not too obvious. I came up with “Daghix” (‘x’ silent) and “Daghe” (with an accent on the ‘e’) and we fell asleep laughing.

This morning, I realized that I’m 100% in love with the name and 90% serious about actually changing our name to Daghe (more Indian sounding). While we were stopped at a red light, I confess this and was stunned when the normally super sensible Big A shared that he likes the name 90% and is 40% serious about adopting it.

Helllllooooo Daghès!

Update: Li’l A came home from school and said: No way. It’s a strange day when the voice of reason comes from the seven-year-old.

Update Again: Big A just reminded me that the movie was actually Dude, Where's the Party and the line was actually, "Hello, Doggie friends!" (which is infinitely funnier!)

The Martin Luther King Day Mystery

Last year, Li’l A and I watched Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi together. Don‘t tell me it‘s overly hagiographic (I know); and don‘t ask me what a five-year-old got out of it (I don‘t know).

But I guess something must have stuck, because he told me that he had mentioned to his class when they were prepping for MLK Day that MLK had been influenced by Gandhi.

And that they didn’t believe him.

So we embarked upon some high-tech research (okay, okay--we googled) to reassure Li’l A that there had, in fact, been a strong and acknowledged influence. Although really, whether MLK’s avowal of moral force over physical force is Gandhian in provenance or not, it would still be awesome and admirable.

We also found the I-have-a-Dream speech.

And we watched that too. Too often, as the grownup, I’m unable to satisfactorily explain to my boy why some people live on the streets (no, really--how do we let that happen?) or I may have to introduce him to the world in terms of its danger--don’t talk to strangers. So on the occasions that we watch something uplifting like MLK’s speech, it makes me feel like a successful parent to be able to say: Yes, it’s true that the world isn’t always fair, but it is possible to take a stand, to change indifference and injustice to action and equality.

Watching those thousands of marchers singing “We Shall Overcome,” readying to fight the moral fight, black and white amassed like one family in the literal and figurative shadow of the Lincoln Memorial resulted in significant goosebumps for me and a look of great seriousness for Li’l A (even though as any self-respecting kid would, he ribbed me, momentarily, about the goosebumps).

Then I noticed all these men in the background wearing what looked like Gandhian topis. Although I wonder if they might not just be naval flat hats.

I don’t have a clue…

Do you?


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Happy Husband Day

I dreamt last night that my sweet, sweet mother-in-law threw me a party and baked me a cake and the glittery chocolate frosting on the cake said, “Happy Husband Day.”

So when I crawled back into bed at 9 (a.m.! Don’t judge!) to wake Big A, I told him about it, and declared today Happy Husband Day. He was super sleepy, but nevertheless mildly pleased, and he then started making lame-o, low-key requests such as-- “I want five more minutes of sleep,” “I wish my phone was charged” etc., until I had to spell it out for him.

Ummm, Hello? It’s Happy Husband Day. Kinda like Happy Birth-Day. So i'm pretty certain it’s actually MY day, ok? Then I gave him the list: Cake, party, presents...

He was asleep before I got to the messenger bag I really, seriously, desperately need. (Know this: An outsize Canal Street knock-off Balenciaga will give you shoulder pain. I lived and learned. Hopefully, you've learned without pain of your own.)

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It’s the End of an Era (But shed no tears for me!)

For years now, Big A has been enslaved by the power of my tears. They’ve effectively halted arguments, wrung out extended apologies, made it possible to get my way on everything, be forgiven anything, and frequently enabled good in the world.

But not anymore.

Not after he mistakenly donated my much-beloved, sample-size Italian designer jacket to Goodwill and I cried real gulping, sobbing--and per him, for the first time--angry tears at the loss. That materialism put paid to the fiction about me being a noble and sensitive soul. You can get that worked up about some silly jacket? Really?!

That means no more Magic of Tears™ in this household.

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Children of Men (I think they mean Human Children)

I wasn’t sure I’d like the movie. I know I didn’t approve of the title--Children of *Men*??

Also, pre-viewing, I disliked that the trailer seemed to endorse the barely-under-the-radar preoccupation with fertility that seems to be everywhere these days. I know that my upcoming, bigheaded comment is exactly the kind of thing that’ll return to bite me in the ass someday when I really really really want to have my own biological kids and it turns out I can‘t--but I’ve always felt it wrong to go so crazy about expensive fertility treatment in an already tired and overpopulated world when there are orphaned and abandoned children everywhere in need of love.

Alright. Alighting off soapbox.

The movie is a very dystopic vision of our near future in 2027, where Britain is the last outpost of Western power and there has been a global failure of fertility--according to the movie, specifically female fertility--resulting in no children at all since circa 2009.

Britain stagnates on two levels because not only are there no children, but immigrants, the other way that a nation state aggregates citizens, are unwelcome--i.e. they are caged and deported or tortured and executed. There’s too much sordid hatred, guns, bombs, futility, despair, crumbling buildings and broken lives to really do any enjoying at this movie, but it does encourage thought and taking stock.

And bad dreams.

And sporadically, grim moments of nervous humor. You simply have to laugh when a young woman in a barn reveals the miracle of her coming baby and the first words the other character utters are “Jesus Christ!” Imprecation rather than an explanation, but still. Although, ultimately, Jesus Christ might be the key to the movie--not in a Christian sense, but in tapping into the way that his birth or anyone’s birth alludes to the vast and mysterious miracle of life and our choices about and within it.

The ending is supposedly uplifting, but I didn’t appreciate it. I was otherwise engaged in speculating about how awful it would be if I were caged and tortured and deported. In fact, I went on and on about this even after Big A valiantly promised to come save me, spring me, etc., and only really stopped when his eyes acquired a misty film. Whether that was from strongly imagined sadness at my loss or distress at my utter and exceptional idiocy--We. Will. Never. Know.


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COURAGE

Today has left you
Yet you have no fear for tomorrow

The evening hides
Empty between day and another night

You decorate your loneliness
With remembered smiles and old words.

Anyone can question pain
You are the only one to seek answers from it.


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[Another found poem from an ages-ago notebook.]

DEMAND AND DESIRE

[Being a ditty that I scribbled in the margins of my Economics Reader the day I received my first payment of pocket money--a sum of 25 princely rupees--at age 15*.]

Digit-al dreams rise through the senses
Budgeting income and desires
Desires badger on seemingly relentless
And my limited income expires.

If one had everything one wanted
There would be nothing left to buy
Money is therefore vastly overrated
And there really is no need to sigh.


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* So although I cannot claim any real childhood hardship [I.e. I never walked to school uphill in the snow etc., or ever even walked to school...] I’ll never tire of pointing out to Li’l A that his $2.00 per week trumps my Rs. 25 per month in all of these ways: age of recipient, value of amount, frequency of payment.

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FOR GOOGLED ACQUAINTANCE

When she was fifteen
Sreekumar Verma told her
That his poems
Turned out
Exactly as long
As the sheet of paper
He happened to be scribbling on.

Not Alan Maley. Ahem.

On her first landmark
Visit to Crossword
She met R. Sriram
Marveling his empire of books
Recalling their frail memories
Across an intervening decade
And a pregnant belly.

Wonder where Ameen Merchant,
Who gave her
Her first copy of Midnight’s Children,
Is.

Vasantha Surya
Told her to read Chomsky
“There’s such a nice chomp in it,”
She said, sweetly.
Will she as sweetly forgive
The blue-pencilled query:
“Is this a cookbook for the Yanks?”
In the fiction manuscript that cast
“Vadai” as “a spicy lentil doughnut”?

And Sujatha Devadoss
Sujatha Devadoss Pelletier.

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Because the "exotic dancer" thing has been done to bits

But we still need something that suggests “erotic…”

Hmm…

Hows about “ecstatic,” or “economic,” or “eccentric,” or “epiphanic”, or “electric,” or “elastic,” or “emphatic,” or “erratic…”

Nah!

Let’s go with this word I’ve never heard before and can’t be bothered to look up in the dictionary…

Behold! “Eclectic Dancers.”


I guess the ad could mean that the dancers derive their styles from various sources--but i'm not really getting that. Now i'm waiting for "ecclesiastic" dancers...

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On How I’m bringing up an LOTR geek

They’ve changed the color of the casing on Li’l A’s Albuterol inhaler from grey to white. His eyes light up and he goes, “That’s like when Gandalf the Grey became Gandalf the White.”

My jitters about being late for school melt into a happy drippy puddle of pride.

“YaY!” I say.


_____________________________________________________________

[Incidentally, not that I’m jealous or anything, but i'm that girl who spent much of her early teen years in an LOTR haze, running around declaiming my mock up of Eowyn’s lines:
“No man am I; Eowyn of Rohan am I.
Now weep Nazgul and DIE.”
But it's Li’l A who gets to experience LOTR in a whole new dimension via his Gameboy. It Sucks. I'll tell you that much.]

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AlternaWriting

At the end of a women’s studies seminar in 1999, my friend Susan Stone told me that I absolutely should read The Little Princess. It’s not the kind of thing I ever remembered to reserve at the library, but recently, I found a copy at The Strand that I picked up for under two dollars and then couldn’t put down.

The novel is pretty precious--after all it’s by the same Frances Hodgson Burnett who wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy. But there's plenty of dross of a cultural nature that i found extremely interesting--the titular character comes from India (she’s the daughter of a British colonial officer) and there’s an Indian butler, Ram Dass, who has a fair amount of agency in the latter half of the novel.

Also, I guess that I was subconsciously hooked (!SPOILER AHEAD!) to the plight of the motherless child who suddenly loses her beloved and doting father to illness. Because at some point in the night these words emerged:

Now although you may believe that Sara’s father had died and perished in the forests of India, in truth, he was biding his time in order to re-enter his beloved daughter’s life at an opportune moment. Only the contemplation of her jubilance allowed him to rein in his impulse to present himself to her at once.

And so the next day, I continued with the rest of the novel quite optimistically.

Until I reached the end of the book and the child's father, kind of obstinately, stayed dead.

And then I realized that I must have dreamt that buoyant passage.

I wonder how much of my reading I habitually morph into a shape that is more agreeable to me without realizing it at all.

_____________________________________________
Although my subconscious is continually playing wordy tricks on me, I’m somewhat mollified by the passable imitation of Burnett that it accomplished.

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Bhaumik on Why We Love to Hate Arundhati Roy

Saba Naqvi Bhaumik would like us to know that Indians have a "love-hate relationship" with Arundhati Roy because, you know--

First, there is the macho male response to a woman who is not just brilliant and beautiful, but is also blessed with a talent for turning out powerful prose. Roy would be adored by the Indian male if she had been content to sit prettily on a pedestal.

And so some advice for Ms. Roy from her loyal backer:

But if Roy insists on staying on in India, there are a few things she could do to soften the hatred she often inspires in some Indians. Wear saris, shut up, stay at home, have babies, grow her hair long and start plaiting it.

Bhaumik doesn't mean it really, of course. Just being funnee.

But still, how sad and strange that a criticism of patriarchal mores should have internalized toxic levels disdain for the sari-wearing, long-braided populace.


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Patriotism = Shopping

I’ll tell you all about my 19th Century-Young-Adult-fiction binge soon--

But in the meantime, just having come out of the X-mas extravaganza reminds me--by virtue of contrast--of this passage at the beginning of Little Women:

You know the reason Mother proposed not having any presents this Christmas was because it is going to be a hard winter for everyone; and she thinks we ought not to spend money for pleasure, when our men are suffering so in the army.

I'm still trying to understand how the very people who took us to war pretend that that everything is normal and that we should all go about our shopping as usual. Isn't that more disrespectful than anything that has come out of Kerry's yap yet?

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Resolve

* Finish the dissertation already.

* Take the next step in adopting us a couple more kids.

* Get to yoga on Tue &Thu.

* Take completed projects to publisher.

* Perhaps, maybe, possibly think seriously about applying for U.S. citizenship.

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