Its appaling:Bhopal tragedy

Few days back,the court and the media and the government were gunning to prove the fairness and effective ness of the Indian judiciary system by handing a death penalty to terrorist Ajmal Kasab.Well,he was handed the penalty and kudos to the judiciary,good on them.Now yesterday,the court handed a joking 2year jail sentence,for the offenders in Bhopal Gas tragedy,that to 25+years later. 2years in jail is what they get for facilitating 25000 innocent deaths and millions of toxic affected genetically mutated children who were not even born then.On top of that Warren Anderson,the main perpetrator of the "negligence" has not been extradited.The US national is still scot-free.WHY??? Now,i am all for the fact that a terrorist like Kasab should be hanged but is it not because Pakistan was related that the Government tried to make an example of him?I am not pro terrorism,and i am not pro any foreign nationality,but should we not look into ourselves also?Our own people and should not the Government of India meet exemplary punishment for the criminal negligence that caused this horrific tragedy?

Poetry and Motion…Poetry in Motion

·                               A Review of Aparna Sen’s  The Japanese Wife

               The poster of the film says it to be love poem by Aparna Sen and the film itself certainly validates the claim. This adaptation of Kunal Basu’s short story by the same name is almost epistoleric in its rendition as we see the nerdy schoolmaster Snehamoy(Rahul Bose),sending letters to his pen-friend, the Japanese girl Miyage(Chigusa Takaku),and through it bridging the vast sociological, geographical and cultural boundaries that lie between the  Sundarbans and Yokohama, Japan. Why, where and how did they become friends is not known and possibly because it is not needed to be known. The only thing essential for the audience is to see how this Japanese friend becomes the Japanese wife.

               The two lead characters actually never meet but through the letters, the broken voices from ISD calls and various emotional bonds that manifest within this vast landscape creates an absurdity of sorts. Yes, they are absurd and so is there love that transcends such a vast geographical barrier and resides in a mythical landscape of their imagination. In time both consider themselves man and wife sustaining it for two decades and Snehamoy’s domineering pishi played so charismatically by Mousumi Chatterjee also learns to live with her virtual daughter-in-law. Raima Sen as the demure Sandhya is the other jigsaw that makes this wonderful kaleidoscopic puzzle complete,so simple yet so profound. Sandhya plays the physical presence of Miyage’s absence in this long-distance almost platonic non-physical relationship and does it very silently and subtly. Sandhya remains a remarkably etched character as a woman who cares for the person she loves without ever having the scope of actually being his---as a wife. But the performance of a lifetime comes from Rahul Bose who is shaken out of his comfort zone and portrays this nerdy schoolmaster with elan. Anay Goswami’s cinematography captures this poetic absurdity quite masterfully on celluloid through the myriad minded River Matla, making it appear quite like an omnipresent character that plays such a huge part as the letters from Snehamoy pass through the ferry across the river and the only way of Miyage’s letters reaching him is by the same path.

            However the actual notion of the film’s magic lies in the plot and how it is rendered, through its absurdity and sheer depth of poetic emotion. Both Snehamoy and Miyage wait that one day the “’twain shall meet”. They wait and in simplistic terms like absurd tramps of Beckett, the wait is unfulfilled, but the failure is not in desolation as we see the tramps, but in triumph. Triumph of the very fact of human emotion that sets us apart from all animals and keeps us nearer to God. In our disintegrated lives burdened by the vagaries of individuality, the film is a dream. A reality where we fail to be alive to the emotions of those under the same roof, this relationship, boundless in time and space is a dream which we all must see live and celebrate this celebration called life.