10/16/2013

Thine eyes...

Thine eyes,
was there ever such a mirror as these?
A vision of your soul they show,
an image of the hopes and desires
that lie beneath.
Dreams of love and longing,
hints of warmth and belonging.
Thine eyes,
was there ever such a mirror as these!

Sweet innocence your face,
trusting your dainty touch,
and thine eyes, thy sweet-sad eyes!

5/04/2013

One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

A candidate for a movie-script -- a series of short-stories really - a la Jhumpa Lahiri - neatly woven into a tapestry of a bunch of motley characters trapped in a building by an earthquake.

My favorite was probably the first - Jiang, now a gramma, recounting her days as a young Chinese girl in Chinatown who falls in love with a dashing Bong and how their lives are rendered by the Sino-Indian conflagration of '62.

Then there's the pathos of Mrs Pritchett - the well-to-do accountant's wife who tries to take her life when she realizes that their relationship is missing a deeper love - and the realization from an apparition that wells up from within her - that she was responsible for giving up her own dream and passion as the young Vivienne - to settle instead for a life of promised domestic bliss with a serious kind of bloke whom she didn't understand well enough to start out with.

The sub-story of Tariq, the ABCD (American Born Confused Desi) is probably the best fit for a Karan Johar directorial, set as it is in the backdrop of America post the twin-tower bombing.

A motley set of individuals, each confronting and baring their desires, shortcomings and heartbreaks. A sweet recipe for a movie-script. i'm surprised it's not been picked yet.

The ending is left a bit open.
To paraphrase, 'The iron-boot clad giant thumps overhead as Uma begins the end of her story'.
I take it that the aftershocks set the tremulous roof crashing over the group and they all perish.
What's your interpretation?