Blogging is the realization of loneliness. The realization that you are unique, that you are on your own when it comes to survival in ths world, a world of myths, beliefs and precedences, a world that constantly pushes you towards the romantic even when your sights are firmly set in the pragmatic, even when your feet are firmly rooted in the intricate practicalities of the quagmire that is the real world. The world as you see around you is not the world that your mind moulds for you. As such, a blog is the technological alternative to the dope, to the booze and everything that represnts an escape from the harsh realities of the deset of the real, that endless stream of events so detached from the perceived and believed romantic tales that have created the balancing nether world inside us, the world that provides us an alternative to look forward to in times of despair, shock and sheer disbelief so that you have a reason, when it matters most. In short, a blog is everything that you want the world to be, even when your senses try to convince you the fallacy of it all, the foolhardiness of romanticism that is sure to engulf you one day.

A blog is a reason, more than anything else. A reason, which you know won't come to life and turn against you. A lifelessness you can count on. One which I am gald of.

9 am - Ulzhan (Volker Schlondorf)
11.30 am - Two Legged Horse (Samira Makmalbaf)
3.30 pm - Machan (Uberto Pasolini)
6.30 pm - PArque Via (Enrique Rivero)
9 pm - Refugee (Reis Celik)

5 movies. 5 different settings. 5 different Directorial approaches.

It has been a good day (Although Parque Via crawled a bit too slowly at times).

My Pick of the Day - Evens between Two Legged Horse and Machan. And Ulzhan would not be far behind.

Snap of the Day - For the first time in this year's IFFK. i heard comments and cat calls due to real frustration inside the hall during Parque Via. So much so that someone finally shouted, "Please shut up. Please don't disturb others." I would not blame either party. Especially when you have watched the protagonist brush his teeth thrice, mow the lawn twice, press his shirt thrice, and watch the news 4 times. :) Mind you, the climax compensated for all this.

9 am - Promised Land (Amos Gitai)
11 am - Day of the Full Moon (Karen Shakhnazarov)
3.30 pm - Emptiness (Svirak)
6.30 pm - The Rider named Death (Karen Shakhnazarov)

My Pick of the Day - Emptiness

Snap of the Day - Kavi Ayyappan sitting in fornt of Kairali singing loudly and passing comments on passers-by, including his old pals like Mr.T.V.Chandran. He looked very young. (Rather sounded very young).

9 am - Postcards from Leningrad (Venezuela)
11.30 am - The Yellow House (Algeria)
3.30 pm - Laila's Birthday (Palestine)
6.30 pm - Dreams of Dust (Burkino Faso)
9 pm - The Photograph (Indonesia)

12 hours. 5 movies. From 5 countries.

I am dead tired. Got to catch some sleep.

My Pick of the day - Laila's Birthday

Snap of the day - Reached Kairali 15 minutes before the 3.30 show and found that even the walkways inside the hall were occupied. Sat on the floor . 5 minutes later, another guy came and sat on the floor in front of me. Guy looked familiar. Was in fact Lal Jose. On the floor.

They are there... everywhere...Despeckled all over our physical and mental existance...Substituting what is with what could have been...Life is all full of them...

Symbols.

In that sense, first 3 days of IFFK for me has been full of life...life at its at its roaring best...

The festival started off for me with a 'Flower in the pocket', which was...er..okay. The hilarious story (courtesy : IFFK synopsis) did not resonate too much with me. A good movie...nothing else to remember it beyond this week.

The day got better in the afternoon with Chevolution, exploring the stories and the myths surrounding the most popular revolutionary of the past century, and how that famous image of Che has been used and reused over the past fifty years to symbolise many things that were - and were not - related to what he stood for originally. From battelfields to bikinis, THAT image of Che has been everywhere, moulded and polished in various contexts, sometimes commanding, sometimes confusing. The languauge of symbols were being revealed to me for the first time in IFFK, perhaps fittingly through a tutorial aka documentary.

Day 2 started late into the evening for me courtesy one of the hundreds of Indian marriages that took place on that Saturday. The knockout punch delivered by the 1 ton meal in the afternoon lasted late into the evening, and i had to rush myself to reach 'A wonderful Town' in time. A good movie again, with occasional sparks of brilliance in between as the couple progressed through the various stages of love. The symbols came into full strength towards the end of the movie, with the unseen father of the protagonist, and the brothe of the heroine taking the theme to a higher level. But by the time, I was out of Remya(the cinema hall), I was wondering whether I should lower my expectations a little wrt IFFK.

Then came Blindness. Paradox. It opened my eyes wide. Respect, admiration and joy.

I have seen City Of God. A splendid movie that revovles around the favelas of Rio, CoG introduced me to the name Fernando Meirelles (not that i noted the name at that time :)). City of God was more an impact movie with the punch inherently present in the disturbing theme of children taking to arms and violence. It was more of a Director's flick, with the story line taking a distinct second seat.

In Blindness, Saramago's story comes to the front. But then, Meirelles' direction wont take a back seat either.

I cant remember of another film that has bombarded me with so many symbols. Right from the first scene in the traffic block, symbols bump on ot you relentlessly. The Doctor, his wife, the quarantine, the inmates, the villains, the guards, the world outside...everyone were things that we - painfully or not - have relegated to the various corners of our mind. Sacrificing, soothing, suffocating and scoffing, the coming together of Saramago and Meirelles has created a celluloid clasico. A must watch. 5 stars. Hands up. Surrender. White flag.

Day 3 started off at the warfront in Kangamba, Angola in the 1980s. Made with what is sure to be a big budget, Kangamba stresses more on the visual impact of the war-theme and the rise and fall of individuals and groups. More of an entertainer, Kangamba closes off with the death of Major Mayitos, drawing a vague symbol of the victory that never was/is.

Thalappavu, Madhupal's directorial debut, was a film that i had marked even before the festival, as the chances to see it outside a festival circuit were bleak. An evenly paced movie with a good cast, Thalappavu impressed with the treatment and the creative overlapping of subplots at their edges. Madhupal has much more to offer malayalam cinema.

Lunch at Arya Bhavan (courtesy my dad who was just out after The Refugee :)) left me at the same 1-ton-heavier state of yesterday. And like yesterday, my last movie of the day, Hafez, threw me off balance.

Okay.. i admit it. I lost it towards the end of Hafez.

Such was the intensity that Hafez demanded. At more than one stage, my over-stretched mind wanted to throw it all away and get out of the cinema hall. Yet there was something holding me together, some strange feeling that drove me deeper into wilderness while tying me on to my seat. The philosophy and the symbols were completely different from Blindness, yet they were so similar in the manner of torture they effected on your mind. Hafez left me drained and wasted to such an extent that I lost my mental stature to enjoy another movie.

Hafez ended my day 3 prematurely. Nevertheless, it left a golden snippet in my mind, to get back tomorrow at IFFK, that runs something like this

"Truth is like a mirror that has fallen from the sky. We all are holding various pieces of this shattered mirror. Looking into our piece, each of us say that I see the truth."

Dalit boy called by NASA as research scientist.

I saw this headline in the info scroll bar of CNN-IBN today morning. When they could have presented it as "Indian gets invited to NASA as research scientist", they distort the significance of the news bypresenting it in a different light.

And they say that politicians thrive on castes!!

PS : Shridhar Kamble has made the whole of India proud with this achievement. Unfortunately, most of the national media is highlighting his caste rather than his contribution.

"We are a nation of a billion people and we must think like a nation of a billion people. Only then can we become big."
- Dr.A.P.J.Abdul Kalam

Some day last week, THE HINDU carried a picture of a couple of some Chinese jumping youth jumping for a photograph infront of the Olympics count-down clock in Beijing. Visibly jubilant, they exuded the kind of pride that is seen only on the face of the victorious. The story went on about how the Chinese can't wait to showcase a 'New China' infront of the world, and how, by the end of the games, China would have grown out of Asia to become a big country in the World.

I thought about Apna Bharat. And a perfunctory comparison with China.

'Superpower by 2020' is a concept that has been doing the rounds for quite some time now. Yet it seems that we are waiting for Jan 1st 2020 to become a superpower overnight rather than work towards it. We lack a cohesive buzz that is needed to drive us forward. We still carry too much baggage with us; from the colonial era, from regional and linguistic diversities, from social and economic disparities. Shedding all this load in 60 years is impossible; I agree. But over the years, we could have left behind a lot of junk in our quest for a new collective identity. Unforunately, rather than create a new singular face infront of the world, 60 years down the line, we continue to be a heterogenous agglomeration. Forget about putting our differences behind; we are adding on to it.

Look east. Over the last 4000 years, the Chinese were ruled by as many as 40 different kingdoms. That is a sures-shot recipe for diversity, especially when you consider the size of the country. A number of ethnic groups speaking different dialects exist there too. What they have succeeded over the years is the sinicization of these distinct identities, thus creating a unified identity that every one can look up to. This has been their greatest political achievement, thus laying the platform for a giant leap that has overawed the outside world.

And where are we? As every day passes by, we acquire more and more identities - cultural, social, political. But none of these goes by the name "INDIAN". New outfits emerge as children of changing socio-economic equilibria. None of them have included Nationalism in their agenda. They want development for their group. Only their group. Everybody else should go away. Our administrators waffle to take action against them due to lack of supportive political will. The rebels move on with impunity. Our political institutions too have not succeeded in bridging the gap. The situation has been exacerbated by a new generation of media streams which, in their frenzy to cater to the local markets and audiences, have inadvertently led to further fragmentation.

This is one area where, I believe, a single party rule has benefitted China. This might have curbed a lot of freedom in various spheres in various degrees. But ultimately, it has given the Chinese system a robustness and pace which cannot be matched by most democratic systems. They have sacrificed some of their rights, and gained many others in return. The right to brag is just one of them. Yes there will be corruption. Yes there will be wirepulling. But then, no system is free from these diseases. The crux of the matter is to get things done with minimal fuss and move on; to spend minimum time from decision to implementation. It is this ruthless efficiency that is the hallmark of the Chinese. They have created some of the modern day marvels over the last couple of decades- like the Three Gorges dam and the Tibet-Qinghai railway line and the longest sea bridge in the world which they opened last week. These achievements draw strength in no small degree to the political and scientific foresight and the sense of collective pride that has been created. Compare these with what similar we have done over the last 2 decades. Not much eh?

We can always argue - endlessly - that the Indian scenario is peculiar and is moulded by a variety of socio-political drivers. Which is true. But we are not reacting against these fast enough. What we have lacked over all these years is not the laws or personnel or strength. What we have lacked is political will; petty vote bank politics afraid to change the status quo. It will change only when our leaders and representatives become bold enough to tackle change head on. When that happens, more people would break the traditional barriers and reach the main stream of development. When that happens, separatists and secessionists would disappear. When that happens, we would start thinking like a nation of 1 bilion people.

Will that happen by 2020?