Dibyendu's WallScript

Those who view Indian cinema as a clash of two diametrically opposed streams—on the one hand, the frivolous gimmickry of Bollywood, and on the other, the classical narrative gravitas of Satyajit Ray in his Hollywood-inspired idiom—forget that there was also a third, vitally important current. That was India’s avant-garde, the New Cinema.   The evolution of the avant-garde in cinema was itself part of a global pattern, a celebrated aesthetic mode that defined experimental twentieth-century filmmaking. It was, in essence, an assault upon tradition—an artistic rebellion that broke apart the ancient conventions of cinema. The term “avant-garde” was first employed in the 1920 s by a small band of theorists. French visionaries such as Louis Delluc, Germaine Dulac, and Jean Epstein attempted to fashion an avant-garde cinema.   This was a cinema that was not merely about stories but about the form of stories—a polyphonic structure that invoked theoretical methods to interrogate realis...

Life is most sorrowful. Only when you are asleep, or when you are dreaming, do you find respite. In the past fifteen days I have slept very little—on average only four to five hours. And because of this dreadful exhaustion, not a single dream has alighted upon my eyes. The beautiful architecture of dreaming has gone missing. Instead, there has been a backdrop of ceaseless and excruciating torment. Whatever life once bestows, it comes again at the appointed time to reclaim.   My father is ill, bedridden for many days. My mother too had become unsettled and anxious for quite some time. It was the season of Durga Puja. I kept thinking—what could I possibly do? There was no leisure for reflection. Nor was there any element of entertainment. At last, last week, I ended up watching four films. Night shows. Two at Nandan, and two more on my laptop, deep past midnight. Cinema distracts one well. Above all, it keeps the nerves occupied.   Whenever I find myself shaken, and feel the ne...

Buddha once declared: I teach but one thing, and one thing alone—the nature of suffering, and the way that leads to its cessation.   The true Buddhist response to suffering is to walk along the path of the Noble Eightfold Way, freeing oneself first, and then extending that freedom to others still caught in the net of pain. It is a discipline of the human spirit, a moral courage that enables us to remain unshackled from sorrow.   But before we see how wisdom ushers liberation from suffering, we must first examine what this suffering is, and how it arises. For unless we penetrate its causes, its grip cannot be broken. Suffering may come in two forms: one physical, the other mental. Deliverance from either can be realized only when we enter into its very roots. In the language of an auditor, it is cure from the origin of risk. Here, the “risk” is none other than the primal source of suffering.   The Reality of Suffering   Buddha taught that human existence is inextri...

I first read about her in Aruna’s Story , a book by Pinki Virani. A book that wrung tears out of me, leaving me shaken. Perhaps only Bibhutibhushan’s Pather Panchali and Dostoevsky’s The Idiot had ever made me weep more. In recent years, I have grown weary of books that indulge in tears; they often feel like staged melodrama. Yet, Aruna’s tale stood apart, carved out of a reality too raw to dismiss as theatre. Whenever I imagine her hospital bed, my eyes brim over.   For thirty-eight unbroken years the girl has lain in a hospital ward. From the age of twenty-five. Aruna Shanbaug—ambitious, brimming with dreams of a larger life. She longed to study abroad. She had chosen nursing as her vocation, a profession of care, a full commitment to serve. Life had barely begun to reveal itself to her. She could not know that what awaited her was so unimaginable, so monstrous, that no imagination could have foreseen it. She did not know that soon she would lose her sight, lose the use of her ...

A renowned female pornographic actress had visited a college campus to participate in a public debate on pornography. Of course, speaking openly about pornography is never easy. In any country, it is a most delicate task. Yet, by the law of nature, the raging hormones of students bear uncanny resemblance to the hormones of pornography. Therefore, in practice, one might expect revolutionary students and the pornography industry to share far-reaching agreements—though they may never confess it aloud. Whether such an alliance existed or not, the undivided attention of the students was locked upon that debate. Inside the campus, there was but one subject burning under the fluorescent lights.   Professors and rival students alike had been sneaking glances at the classical works of this actress, buried deep within the university systems. Elderly professors, unwilling to lag behind in knowledge, had also gravitated toward this unfamiliar medium—drawn by a strange joy, a voracious hunger...

Gabriel García Márquez’s prose — with its cadence that flows like an ancient river and its warp and weft of imagery spun like a loom of myths — renders the reading of his work a ritual, not mere leisure. That this creation earned the Nobel Prize for Literature is no exaggeration: rather, it is one of those rare occasions when history, like a blind archer, accidentally struck the true target. Too often, the custodians of literary canon resemble negligent wage-laborers, carrying out the drudgery of their charge with little passion; most laureates vanish into the dim mist of time, remembered only in footnotes. But Márquez’s work — like Homer’s epics or Dante’s Commedia — has entered the bloodstream of global imagination, refusing to fade.   The Baptism of “Magical Realism”   Across universities of the world, his novel is now studied as the very emblem of magical realism. Why “magical”? Because it dares to narrate the improbable with the solemnity of scripture. Why “realism”? B...