Kazuo and me

I have been in bed the last few days with a bad back. This has resulted in desultory channel surfing lying on my day bed. Sometime today morning, I happened to chance on a movie called Never let me go. It had already started at least 20 to 30 minutes back. I thought it would be some mindlesss romcom and kept looking at the screen while working on something else. But hardly a few minutes into the movie, I was hooked. And as I watched it to the end, I knew I would have to read every single thing this Kazuo Ishiguro had ever written.

I cannot remember when last I was so so touched. The movie is tragic and stoic and utterly morbid all at the same time. And it is not just the nuanced performances of Carey Mulligan or the haunting background score. There are so many places in the movie where there is a stillness in the main cast which is so much more profoundly evocative than any amount of dialogue could have been.

Went out in the afternoon itself and got all the 3 books of his that were in the nearby Crossword. I really need to read them slowly, slowly tasting and savouring each sentence since he has written only six books.

But more than that it has been the palpable excitement and good cheer I have felt all day. It is always like this when I discover a new voice, somebody who resonates and I feel like " My God! how did I not know about this person before" And this book is more than 10 years old. The movie itself is more than 5 years old. It is not like he is unknown... so many awards, so many recognitions... but our paths never crossed. But now I have the chance to start a new affair. I have almost finished half of Never let me.. since afternoon.. but still. There is something so delicate in the way the most inhuman things are alluded to. It is like a sort of gentle unveiling. Of course, in my case I had seen the movie.. but still...

Rain on parched desert

I am a bloody ignoramus... what can I say.. there is so much i do not know.. my ignorance is so deep , abiding and profound that it still sometimes amazes me.

Today, I desultorily decided to try out this new classical music channel of AIR .. http://airbengaluru.com. There was somebody playing Bilahari on the violin and it was extraordinarily good. It was not just good but it was such a deep sound.. so satisfying ... and I thought to myself this channel the sound is so good and I kept listening. After that Bilahari, an announcer came on and said it was somebody called avaneeswaram sr vinu... and I wrote the name down. I had never heard this name before. This is what I mean. There is sound like this out there and I did not know it. After that he played Thaye Yashoda and I just knew I would be out there listening to every single thing this person has played and which is available on the net.

I was just in Chennai last month and attending various concerts and some were good and yet not one of them blew me away. I left the concerts of even the current reigning queens castigating myself and telling myself that I was getting jaded. If I was not able to be moved by the music then the fault was mine. But today that changed. Do you know that feeling when for the first time you hear somebody or chance on a new author or a new actor and for one nano second the world stops spinning.... that feeling that you have perchance stumbled on to something humungous.

There is a Ranjani( just 2.45 mts), a Brindavani( 4.something minutes).... they are all so superb. His violin weeps, it dances, the sound that he produces is exuberant( .45 mts of kathanakuthuhalam), it is plaintive, it is meditative.. it encapsulates every shade of emotion the human heart experiences.

Absolutely not to be missed. After a long time.. a cleansing energising shower on  my parched soul!!