4 nights back, at about 2 am, I progressively regained full consciousness from my slumber because of an interesting film on the tele. I had my plans of reading, which got delayed for another day, so captivated was I by that film. Though the generations depicted and emotions that played out on the screen were alien to me, I felt a connection, a familiarity, a great grab of nostalgia. It added to my reveries of a more interesting life, and I spent another day browsing around for more on that nameless film that had Shashi Kapoor playing a Nawab in the pre-independence era, and one magnificent lady (in the years of hippie-dom) tracking down the history of another magnificent lady who was a foriegn officer's wife and a muse to Shashi... Heard of James Ivory? Ismail Merchant?
Heat and Dust? Yesss, thats the name.
These people must've made a few good, nostalgic movies on similar lines, I've got to have 'em all.
Read about the concept of a
secret santa at reddit, that was such an amazing idea that went like a fairytale at this festive time of the year.
I learnt yesterday that not only did I get a Google Wave account back in November, but I even created waves and discussed irreverent things with my irreverent friends. That must've been on some strange forgettable night.
New to my place is the installation of Counter Strike on the machines. Soon we'll start with the killing.
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3 comments:
then i would recommend you this http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107199/
movie talks about aging poet who laments about death of urdu in modern times, it is a tale well told,the feeling of nostalgia that makes the movie intense, yet lucid in presentation...... i reckon you should watch it and more so as you are in city of nawabs.....
i dont know how pertinent is it but at mention of this movie and its plot one dialogue comes to mind about city of Lucknow from the movie SEHAR (well i hope u must have seen, must for laknavi, its an Arshad Warsi movie and mine favorite cop movie in all i can say a brilliant movie).....
The dialogue goes like this
"lucknow main ab wo baat nahi rahi, use kya kehte hai ki zabaan main wo nafasat nahi hai ab".........can that be attributed to death of urdu other than other things....... need your answer?????
oops forgot but first tell me how true is that dialogue....
Wow, allegation of a murder on us Lucknow-wallahs. But hold on, death of urdu needn't be ascribed to anything.
1. It's only a drop in the percentage of Urdu speaking populace, rather than a drop in the numbers. It's always a relative thing, and its a responsibility of those in the shrinking numbers to maintain the character (whatever it may be... urdu, poetry, dance, literature, music) , and of the the फनकारs to go beyond and glorify it.
2. In my household, Urdu has never been THE thing, but the 'tehzeedb' and 'nafasat' have been a part of our upbringing. The character of Lucknow is not just a vocabulary of (beautiful/esoteric) Urdu words.
3. You really can't help but see this transformation when Lucknow sees this much migration - people moving out for greener grounds, people moving in for the same reason...languages, cultures merging, Hindi becoming dominant.
4. Nawabs were known for being complacent. And then we have the phenomenon of Urdu getting out of common consciousness. This is just another extension of that character.
And I really have to catch up on both of those movies.
[scribbles down in the 'while-in-lucknow' todo list]
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