The last book of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy is not unpredictable. From the outset it is clear that the book will be about the final trial, which we know that Salander and her “Knights of the Idiotic Table” will win, despite the several new difficulties and dangers that the supporting cast face and survive from time to time. We do not even learn anything new about superhero Lisbeth Salander. But I never felt the need to complain, except whenever I had to put the book down for reasons beyond my control.

The entire trilogy is very old-fashioned, with its well fleshed out but stereotypical characters and the plainness of its themes. The reason it captivated me is because of the pain-staking research and thorough factual approach that Larsson takes. I haven’t read any of his journalistic reports in the Expo magazine, but I suspect that he was an investigative journalist very much like Mikael “Kalle” Blomkvist, in dogged pursuit of facts for the establishment of what he had reason to believe to be truth.

“Who will clean up Bhopal mess?” “Dow not liable for Bhopal?” “Could it have been averted?” “Two arrest warrants, last ignored by CBI?” “Is Digvijaya Singh targeting his own party?” “Did Arjun Singh arrange Anderson’s exit?” These are a few separate headlines and news stories about the Bhopal gas tragedy from the past few days. Recently I’ve noticed that many Indian news channels have graduated from conducting SMS polls (like “Are reporters morons?”) to posting questions as headlines (mostly rhetorical, I hope). I have been of the opinion that facts about unknowns cannot be established from opinions of a million sheep, but I confess that I am not up to date with the latest research in the applications of stochastic models on social journalism involving sheep. I may have missed the forward about the evolutionary manner of establishing facts, which probably proves that if a Twitter follower is moved enough to reply or a serious citizen to call a news desk then he or she must be knowing and telling the truth with an accurately calculable probability.

Unlike them the reporters and other investigators throughout the Millennium trilogy weren’t taught in the new methods of journalism. They start with their beliefs and gut feelings, with what they feel must be the truth, but they don’t thrum the world with persuasive reports about their perceptions of truth being true based on a long list of opinions, on historic observations, on psychological studies, nor on the ever-so-dependable instincts and intuitions. They ask questions and sieve through provable facts. In an explicit lesson Erika Berger tells a young promising journalist, “Think like a reporter. Investigate who’s spreading the story, why it’s being spread, and ask yourself whose interests it might serve.” In another lesson she rules that under her reign news reports have to deal with provable facts and that editorials (not by every person with an asshole) are the only place for opinions. Blomkvist shows them in his actions. Even though the trilogy is a work of fiction I hold it as a text-book example of old school investigation, and Millennium as a magazine of very high standards unswervingly clinging to the elements of journalism.

Another rarity is the vast number of women characters throughout the trilogy. In this last installment Larsson couldn’t have been more explicit with the numerous annotations about (sometimes mythical) women warriors like Dahomey Amazons, Libyan Amazons, Shammuramat, Semiramis, and Boudica. Were it not for those footnotes I probably would have not paid enough attention to the women in the book: Lisbeth Salander, Erika Berger, Advokat Annika Giannini, Inspector Monica Figuerola, Inspector Sonja Modig, Susanne Linder, Malin Eriksson, Ragnhild Gustavsson, and even the award-winning reporter at She of TV4. (Harriet Vanger and Mirriam Wu were strong too, but they are barely mentioned in this book.)

All these characters have a role to play, all of them are what Larsson likes to call “resourceful” in some way, all of them hold on their own and dominate male characters at sometime. Equally noteworthy is the fact that there are no women on the wrong side, no women who finally lose, no women who show cruelty towards other women (or men without justification). In one clear breach of the fourth wall Larsson through Blomkvist says, “When it comes down to it, this story is not primarily about spies and secret government agencies; it’s about violence against women, and the men who enable it.” He is very clear here that it is not about violence and injustice in general, but about that perpetrated by men against women. It is as if he is apologizing on men’s behalf, making sure that they all win. Yet in another dialogue he (again through Blomkvist) mentions that he does not believe in collective guilt, as if conscious about what appears to be so.

Despite many apparent shortcomings — stereotypes, unsubtleness, even clichédness if you will — Larsson with his matter-of-fact reporting style, by mixing fiction with non-fiction (real places, real scandals, real characters), and most importantly with his idealism makes the trilogy fascinating and memorable.

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My introduction to Veturi began with the ETV programme ఝుమ్మంది నాదం years ago. I was so overwhelmed with his repertoire that whenever I heard an interesting song – సరళమైనవి, లోతైనవి, చిలిపివి, గమ్మత్తైనవి, అద్భుతమైన భూతులున్నవి  – whose writer I didn’t know, I attributed it to him. I still do and I might continue to for songs written long after his death. It might be because even though he may have not written those songs, it seemed that he could easily have written them with his other hand while attending another mind-numbing awards ceremony.

After his recent death, I listened to a number of his songs hoping to transcribe another of those. I finally settled with ఝుమ్మంది నాదం itself. The music director with the first sound of percussion sends a wave through the legs, and by the time it climbs up the body the lyricist with his first word sets the heart aflutter.

I don’t understand the lyrics completely, but that never hindered my pulse from rising and my mind from dancing beside Jaya Prada and Chandra Mohan. I don’t think the picturization could capture as jubilantly as the words did the resonance of the atmospheric phenomena with the emotions inside the mute protagonist’s heart. ఎల తేటి రొద probably means the sounds in a tender coconut; I don’t know what లెస in కలిత కవిత లెస and విరుపు in నీ మేని విరుపు exactly mean.

చిత్రం: కె విశ్వనాథ్ గారి సిరి సిరి మువ్వ (1977)
రాసినది: వేటూరి సుందరరామ మూర్తి
కూర్చినది: కె వి మహదెవన్
పాడినది: ఎస్ పి బాలసుబ్రహ్మణ్యం, పి సుశీల

ఝుమ్మంది నాదం సయ్యంది పాదం
తనువూగింది ఈ వేళ
చెలరేగింది ఒక రాసలీల

యెదలోని సొదలా ఎల తేటి రొదలా
కదిలేటి నదిలా కలల వరదలా
చలిత లలిత పద కలిత కవిత లెస
సరిగమ పలికించగా
స్వరమధురిమ లొలికించగా
సిరిసిరి మువ్వలు పులకించగా

నటరాజ ప్రేయసి నటనాల ఊర్వసి
నటియించు నీవని తెలిసి
ఆకాశమై పొంగె ఆవేశం
కైలాసమే వంగె నీకోసం

మెరుపుంది నాలో; అది నీ మేని విరుపు
ఉరుముంది నాలో; అది నీ మువ్వ పిలుపు
చినుకు చినుకులో చిందు లయలతో
కురిసింది తొలకరి జల్లు
విరిసింది అందాల హరివిల్లు
ఈ పొంగులే ఏడు రంగులుగా

chitram: ke viSwanAth gAri siri siri muvva (1977)
rAsinadi: vETUri sundararAma mUrti
kUrchinadi: ke vi mahadevan
pADinadi: es pi bAlasubrahmaNyam, pi suSIla

jhummandi nAdam sayyandi pAdam
tanuvUgindi I vELa
chelarEgindi oka rAsalIla

yedalOni sodalA ela tETi rodalA
kadilETi nadilA kalala varadalA
chalita lalita pada kalita kavita lesa
sarigama palikinchagA
svaramadhurima lolikinchagA
sirisiri muvvalu pulakinchagA

naTarAja prEyasi naTanAla Urvasi
naTiyinchu nIvani telisi
aakASamai ponge AvESam
kailAsamE vange nIkOsam

merupundi nAlO; adi nI mEni virupu
urumundi nAlO; adi nI muvva pilupu
chinuku chinukulO chindu layalatO
kurisindi tolakari jallu
virisindi andAla harivillu
I pongulE EDu rangulugA

The only thing I knew about Dibakar Banerjee’s Love, Sex aur Dhokha is that it originally had a five-minute sex scene which the CBFC cut to half. The last Hindi movie that I watched in a theater was Anurag Kashyap’s Dev D. I was mostly disappointed by it, mainly because I fail to understand the greatness of Devdas. What struck me about Dev D then and LSD now is the increasing sexual liberation that mainstream Bollywood is witnessing. It is nowhere close to accepting sex as an integral part of life (as in Europe), but it is acknowledging its presence in the society, in youth, and on the Internet.

LSD is not doing as well as I wish it. On its eighth day, a Saturday second show screened on the biggest screen of a multiplex here was only half-filled. I wonder whether it is the unknown cast or the reality atmosphere that is putting off the crowds. If it is the word of mouth about the “adultness”, it is a pity for it has nothing more shocking than is shown round the clock on various Indian news and reality TV shows.

The movie opens without titles, with a promise that the viewers will be treated to three raunchy movies for just one movie ticket (though popcorn doesn’t really fit here), and it takes us on an unabashed tour of sensationalism. The three “movies” tightly share their themes and are loosely interconnected in the way many well-known non-Indian movies are (e.g. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel, Paul Haggis’ Crash, Stephen Daldry’s The Hours, and Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic). I don’t intend to draw too much attention to this novelty, but it has been executed carefully here and I would like to see whether and how Indian Cinema milks it.

In the first movie, a young lad and a lass studying in a film institute fall in love while he directs a movie for his diploma certificate in which she plays the heroine. She is rich and he is street-smart, but together they are only fools for love. They reminded me of Sam Mendes’ American Beauty (creepy Ricky Fitts with a camera in hand) and Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces (director and ingénue). Why the scholarship-sponsored young director would make such a clichéd and terribly-acted movie is beyond me (he prays director Adityji), but its production gave Dibakar the opportunity to throw many stones at today’s state of Bollywood and more on reality TV. The entire movie is shown through a camera spitting out the timestamp, aspect ratio, battery charge, and lighting, and I was initially curious why Dibakar chose to include them. He may have been drawing our attention to the fact that the characters outside the young lad’s movie act as dramatically (reality ishtyle) as those inside it. It is a distraction. It could be my inexperience with watching reality TV. During the first married night of the protagonists, I found myself wondering whether the shot would be cut because the camera only had two minutes of charge left.

Voyeuristic hidden camera scandals are apparently all the rage in India, and Indians find the grainy videos more orgasmic than autoerotic asphyxiation. I am amused by the amount of research that must have gone into making the second movie, which revolves around an unemployed loser’s attempts to make a titillating video using the CCTV cameras in a supermarket. He desperately needs the money, and his conscience can turn around and on and off like the cameras that he controls (and sometimes doesn’t). After one beautiful caricature of a salesgirl calls his bluff, he digs his way towards another salesgirl with low self-esteem. He respects and likes her, gets attracted to her, tries to possess her, and she falls for him. The characters and their story are more developed than in the previous movie, but they mostly continue to act, especially talk, the way people do on reality TV, as if they are aware of the camera and the roles that it entails for them. Random thought: would a man jerk off on the night that he witnesses a gun shooting?

In the third movie, a cameraman who was once involved in prestigious sting operations, finds a candidate for a sex “sting of the century” which is all that his new employer wants from him (thanks to TRP ratings and a beautiful award on her table). The candidate was abandoned by the topmost album singer for a Russian (could have been an Ukrainian) who was quicker on her knees. The scorned woman wants revenge after surviving a suicide attempt (like the cameraman). The cameraman and the woman try to execute the sting operation, sketched by his boss and her assistant, and enhanced by them. As the movie progresses, the camera recedes, and while I welcomed it, it also distracted me too much just the way head-hopping and POV transitions within a paragraph distract readers. I am mostly ignorant about camera positions, but here I started feeling that it interfered with the story.

While the three movies seem to be centered around love, sex and betrayal respectively, each of them have all three elements as their central themes. The most enchanting aspect of LSD is the set of progressions from one movie to the next: the receding camera awareness, the increasing camera importance, the thickening plots, the deepening characters, the increasing casualness of sex, the decreasing crime, … I tip my hat to Dibakar Banerjee.

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I have never been the voracious reader that I present myself as. I began reading very late in life and I remain a slow reader. In the best months I may read four books, but in most months I manage one. I am not in the numbers game. I simply wish to read more than I do. There are so many great books that I have not read and will never be able to read. Those books which I have always wanted to read, which I sincerely promise myself to read some day, and which I postpone knowing well their exalted position in the history of literature and in my own wishlist, I collect and keep them aside as classics. Today I am brimming with new hope. I made one of my best discoveries of the new year — audiobooks.

I have never been very particular about preserving the sanctity of a book in its traditional form. It is reassuring that they continue to exist, whether as hardcovers or paperbacks or e-books or audiobooks or multimedia or future superformats. The forms and formats will come and go based on their ergonomic and economic viability. I hope for not much more than to find them agreeable.

I have largely survived on paperbacks and e-books while ignoring audiobooks until last year citing numerous excuses that I can instantly cook. Exactly a year ago I got my hands on a pre-release of the audio version of the recent Who is Mark Twain? It sat there in one of the folders of my PC ignoring me with greater snobbery than I am capable of. The atmosphere changed this year. I have already listened to Who is Mark Twain?, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, and Walden. I am now listening to James Joyce’ Dubliners. There are many more in the pipeline.

Listening isn’t the same as reading. Nothing comes close to the pleasure of sitting on a toilet and leafing through a splendid story in the dead of the night. Perhaps due to my inexperience, when listening to audiobooks I can’t very well see the words dancing on a page nor observe the linguistic experiments. Still, I prefer that to not reading at all. And while commuting they are better than reading itself. Reading is strenuous when traveling by train, and is not enough to escape from the inanities waiting in adjacent berths. Listening to audiobooks, on the other hand, presents a pretty picture of voluntary deafness and youthful snobbishness.

I may unintentionally be violating copyrights, as I haven’t yet figured out how to verify copyright status of books, especially audiobooks, inside India. I mostly download the audiobooks from LibriVox. It is a beautiful sister site of the ambitious Internet Archive. If you are its user, consider dropping some change in their jar.

If you’ve never tried an audiobook, do.

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The day after the big night. The day after a decade of Oscars. This is a better time than most other to air my mixed feelings about awards in the acting categories (hereafter called acting awards) given my interest in fiction.

While the deservingness of awards are eternally debatable, awards play a role in reminding us of some notable events of any year. I tend to remember the acting awards more than any other awards. Because I love and root for the stars who bring those characters to life. Because I can appreciate and prefer character-driven stories to plot-driven and drivel-driven ones. Because I can more easily imagine myself having a conversation with them than imagine myself pondering great ideas or themes or crowds or angles.

I have watched 32 of the last 40 performances that won acting awards. The ones that I haven’t watched yet — including three that were announced last night — are from the movies Iris (2001), Monster’s Ball (2001), Dreamgirls (2006), La Vie en Rose (2007), There Will Be Blood (2007), Precious (2009), The Blind Side (2009) and Crazy Heart (2009). I have watched many others that won just the nominations, but it would overwhelm us all if we went into those statistics.

Anyway, as I thought about all those 40 characters it struck me that only 4 each from the leading actor and actress categories are fictitious. The remaining 12 characters are based on real people. Why is that? What does it mean? Every year Hollywood makes several biopics. Several, but a minority. Then how come some of these not only manage to get nominated but also win?

Apart from the given fact that the actors must have acted well, real characters have a great advantage. The writers and the actors start with a lot of material, from costumes to quirks to voices to unexplored depths. The actor can push limits to a great extent, lose or gain a few stone, grow hair or go bald, spend hours with the real fellow learning to play the piano, wear the underwear of the same brand that the real one did, do outrageous things that they wouldn’t normally do for a fictitious character. This gets the actor and the audience to believe that he or she has immersed into the character. The actor and the audience alike are willing to accept that there is something about this character that is unique, that is inexplicable, that is the way it is. And if you get it right, you get the award right?

I don’t mean to suggest that this is undeserving. Hollywood has got that part right about making biopics, about making in-depth character studies. Whether it is the writers’ inability to identify worthy protagonists, or the lack of freedom for them to do such things without getting into serious troubles, I haven’t yet seen that culture of making biopics take off in Indian cinema. I only wonder whether the award has been given to the actor because he or she has acted better than all others or because the actor has successfully delivered what we knew and expected from the character.

On the other hand, only 5 supporting characters of the last 20 that won are based on real people. If an original screenplay writer has a great character, they should probably write it as a supporting one.

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