by Anurima Chanda on July 25, 2009
Alas! Before I have the time myself to pen down my immense love for my sweetest sweetheart, The Telegraph ruins it all, and makes mine just a continual rejoinder. Nevertheless, let me just assure my fellow readers that I was thinking about a way to celebrate my love for Him for a long time now, and the event of watching his Finding Neverland for the umpteenth time recently finally rolls the ball in the canon and fires a loud bang-really glorious at that, and that The Telegraph has nothing to do with this bongocentric-outburst of prem-bhalobasha-unmadona. Yes, I am talking about the hail and mighty Johnny Depp, and this is just a celebration of Depp-ness!!
That weird coagulated human pieces with scissors for hand, had me going ga-ga about some years ago, and I was unsure as to what was that tinkling sensation at the pit of my stomach at encountering this so-not-possible entity, overshadowing my TV-screen. Edward Scissorhands introduced me to His world and I was more than overwhelmed to be a part of that web of mysticity that has been surrounding his presence with a halo that seems extremely enticing. This new face, with much lesser known credentials; and a techno-cap trying to find out other pathways to reach that god-like dream weaver. That was the beginning of my Depp-ian pursuit. Today I stand, proud to call myself one of his ardent fans ever, and given the release of his recent Public Enemies, I take this opportunity to rant and rave about how much I love Him. (Com’on this Depp-sity is very much on cards: I have given the reason for such outburst in the previous line itself.)
Before having immortalised his image as the oh-so-dirtily-sexy Jack Sparrow, he has dazed hearts with his gulpy-knight-in-shining-armour in the Sleepy Hollow. Where The Ninth Gate and The Secret Window have blazed screens with lit up furnaces and fiery-warmth, Chocolate has brought back our pirate back to the shore. Blow got me brain racking with the seriousness that this actor was capable of flooring, as did the ‘fantasy’ Chocolate Factory turning seriously real for the red-seat occupants. I wonder where he stores that casual sexiness while fantasizing reality and authenticating fantasies. While What’s Eating Gilbert Guber bowled down the ordinary elderly-brother image with extraordinary finesse, this dark eyed superhero replaced my Eliot-ian mental image of Sweeney Todd. Howsomuchever I write about him, it seems less. For me he has remained that inexplicable Peter Pan image who has painted dream sequences on real life canvases and had me swooning over his casual good-looks at anywhich character that he has played. I find just one word to describe this ‘Just An Actor’: MAGIC!
Before you all exempt me for contributing any further to this bongocentric technocratic world at filling your pages with such nonsensical love confessions, let me just take this one chance in the concluding section, to defend my overpowering love for Depp: because more than anything else, Depp seems to have given visual place to my imagination of our very own Thakumar Jhuli, and I just wanted to share that magic on our pages of Bangali-ana-on-electronic-media!! Cheers: as the magic continues!
by Anurima Chanda on July 25, 2009
Traveling in the land of evolutionary linguistics, confrontation with the known seem to seep into the zone of the unknown. While morning had begun with a hope that would thwart all encroachments from the land of adultery, evening brings with it the realization that the fault lay in our very basic premise. Indeed, when it is the land of language, it is the rule of adultery. The divisive spirit enthusiastically demarcates one language from the other. However, that we could separately regard each as an individual is a question that remains unresolved for times immemorial. Individuality if I rightly understand is a child of its unique origin. Yet the question here is something that lies even before origin-ality. What is it that we call the aadi? Where is it that we began?
Harping on that thread of an ancient belief that all have sprung from the bowels of that sound which we identify in the chant of ohm, Bhartrhari gives to us the shabda-tattva: the Supreme Essence. That language is a more a thought process than a living reality is much understandable, but that the thought process is itself carried out in individual languages is what leaves me beserk. Before I entangle myself in the loopholes of anchorages, let me try to float back to the land that I hail from.
Madar chod. Rohinton Mistry’s un-italicised un-glossed declaration seemed to have reverberated both the pages of his Family Matters as well as my little enlightened consciousness. Turning to its cover I refurbished my already gathered awareness with the printed affirmation that the book was nominated for the Commonwealth Prizes. That this category clumps together former European colonies is not unknown, but that its writers attempt at an Empire writing back is arguable while sorting out its targeted readers. I wonder how a non-Devanagari descendant would gather the madar-chod-ness(pardon my language) of that particular situation.
Recently hogged Anuja Chauhan’s The Zoya Factor not only had me falling in love with Nikhil Khoda(*wink, wink) but also had me going a-blast with her un-glossed toiings and nanga cricketers. I am given to believe from a very reliable source, that it was with Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy that this Indian word-foolery had found its root to branch out with such lividness, but what makes me even more livid is that the language politics has no longer attempted to keep its adulterous nature under hood and come out with it in the open all undisguised and not at all embarrassed. Yes, just as Hindi is an offshoot of Devanagari, and Bengali hails from the Pali (if I have my facts correct) so are many different ‘individual’ languages just an offshoot of something that has gone extinct in giving birth to a newer generation. David Daiches would rightly bless us with the origins of English at length, but that it has evolved a tumultuous pathway gulping all that comes its way just like a hunger-driven dam-less river, is what threatens its status as an ‘individual’ just like all other languages. But now, the cherry on the cake; with the debate over whether Jai Ho should find its place as the millioneth word of the English dictionary…the Empire writing back seems (indeed) ‘accomplished’.
Long live adultery!! (Oops!! I mean only in the land of languages!!)