The Routine

Gal (Giggles, gives ‘cute’ looks!): Are you angry with me?
Guy (Appears surprised!): No.
Gal : Something is wrong, you are angry.
Guy : No, really, I am not.
Gal : I don’t believe you. You look serious.
Guy : There, I smiled, enough.
Gal (Now she is alarmed!): Now, I am sure. What did I do?
Guy (Still amused, not irritated): What do you mean - ‘What did I do’? About what?
(Giggling friends turn silent).
Gal : Why are you raising your voice? I knew it, you are definitely angry about something. (A little more alarmed!)
Guy (Thinks - “Friends are giving strange looks. Time to change tacks”). : I told you - No!! Hey, by the way, did you watch that interview with Kamal last night.
Gal: Why don’t you tell me what is wrong? Is it because I spoke to R today morning?
(Friends leave one by one, Gal’s voice trembles slightly)
Guy (thinking - Need to think of something soon) : Who cares about R? He is a rich guy, owns a car etc., obviously Girls will flock to him.
Gal (now with tears) : So you think I am one of them?
Guy: Oh come on. I didn’t say that!
Gal: So, that’s the way that is!!  Well, thanks for showing me your true colours today.
Guy: What did I do?
Gal: Nothing.
Guy (thinking - her smile is more dangerous than her tears. I seem to have screwed it up!) : Forget all this, this weekend is Abi’s birthday, what gift do we get?
Gal: I have not yet decided.
Guy: What do you mean ‘I’?
Friends return - No shouting, things seem to be okay.
Gal (ignores Guy, face lights up all of a sudden): Look who is here!! Hey R!! Long time no see!! Nice shirt!!
R (taken aback): Hey, what are you guys doing?
Gal: Oh nothing really! R, remember that module I was working on? I need some help with it. Can you help me? Please !!
R : Sure, I will come to your desk after lunch.
Guy: Hey, I can help you!!
Gal (ignores Guy, looks at R):  That’s so sweet!!
R leaves. Friends, watching this drama realize the next episode is about to start and slowly excuse themselves.
Guy: Are you angry with me?
Gal: No
And it goes on….
(Note : Heard the beginning of the ‘Are you angry?’ routine a few minutes back from a set of young people sitting near where I sit and my imagination took flight! Do I even have to add, that unless one is the ‘guy’ or the ‘gal’ involved, this routine is really annoying to those watching/hearing it??)

Parting with dignity

The word ‘death’ evokes different emotions in different people. For most, the word spells doom, the end of everything good, for a few it is something that happens to others, rarely to oneself or to those close to oneself. Hinduism says that death is merely a stop where the soul changes bodies and not the destination itself. In spite of all these logical and philosophical explanations of death, few of us like going anywhere near it. We are either scared of the dead people or disgusted with the idea of touching a corpse. Still death also means business for some people. I am not talking about professional hit-men here, who make it their business to cause death. I am talking about people who work with the dead all the time - the undertakers, the coroners, the employees at a funeral parlour etc. Rarely have I read a book or seen a movie that portrays the life of these people. The only movie I remember watching  that has a main character who works as a graveyard keeper is the tamil movie - Pitamagan. But the story was not about the profession itself, and the graveyard keeper was portrayed more as an animal like person than someone who understands deeply about death (and I was perplexed by the suggestion that he grew up that way because he grew up in a cemetery!), but I digress.
I am not a great follower of Japanese cinema. My only foray into Japanese movies have been some of the movies by Kurosawa (and I will be looked at with disgust if I say that I switched off ‘Dreams’ - the movie that Kurosawa considered his most personal one, midway - somethings should stay personal, I think!!) and more recently one called ‘Confessions’. I also watched one or two of the anime movies (Tokyo Godfathers and another one whose title I cannot recall). I had watched some of the remakes of Japanese movies - The Ring, The Grudge etc. One conclusion I had drawn was that as far as the crown for ‘creepy movies’ goes Japanese and South Korean movies had a stiff competition. In fact after viewing the highly disturbing ‘Confessions’, I had vowed to go nowhere near these movies for a while.  But thanks to Roger Ebert, I had been holding on to this Japanese movie called Departures (Okuribito) for a while now. After more than a year of non-cooperation, my mother had also slowly softened a stance against watching English and other world movies that she did not understand. On a sudden whim, I played this movie yesterday and I found it to be one of the more rewarding movie watching experiences.
The movie opens with a poignant and a strangely funny scene of Daigo Kobayashi, the protagonist working with his boss Sasaki in what is called encoffinment.  The title and the credits roll and we are taken back a year or so in time. The scene shifts to a ongoing concert in front of a largely empty hall. Daigo works as a cellist in the orchestra in Tokyo. Soon after the concert is over, the manager of the orchestra comes backstage and tells the band that the troupe has been disbanded. Daigo decides to move back to his village with his young wife, where he thinks he will find a job while living rent free in the house his mother left for him.
On seeing an advertisement  to ‘assist departures’, he answers immediately assuming that the job would be with a travel agency. He is hired on the spot by the boss, who only asks him if he will work hard. Only after he is hired is he told about the nature of his job. At first Daigo is reluctant. On his first day, he is asked to act as a model for a promotional video, in the role of a corpse while his boss explains the procedure of encoffinment.
Daigo initially hides the true nature of his job as he thinks his wife will hate him for it. Things get worse when the first body that Daigo is asked to help with, is that of a two week old decomposed body of an old woman who died alone. He breaks down at home, unable to share his thoughts with his wife.Gradually however, as Daigo watches his boss preparing the dead bodies with respect for the dead and sees how the kin of the dead people end up feeling grateful for sending away their relative with dignity, Daigo grows to respect and later love his job.
The movie is about this journey of Daigo and later his wife towards understanding the beauty of death and the job of encoffinment. A small note about encoffinment. When I saw this word in the subtitles, I thought this was one of the standard spelling mistakes you find in subtitled movies - a word coined when nothing else matches the meaning of the original word. Seems like I was wrong. Encoffinment is supposedly a Japanese ritual that involves ‘preparing’ the corpse for burial. The Japanese method of disposing (for the lack of a better word) off the dead bodies is interesting. It appears to involve placing the corpse in the coffin and then cremating the coffin in an electric crematorium.
The encoffinment process itself, involves cleaning the body with sterilized cloth, putting on new clothes, applying makeup etc. - all this in front of the family and then laying the body inside the coffin. While this high-level description sounds morbid and even perverse, if you think about it (and you will when you are watching the ritual play out in the movie), it is about how a loved one is remembered in the end. Most of the scenes involving the encoffinment were without any BGM and my mother and I watched transfixed. Strangely the whole ritual seemed somehow pure, serene and extremely beautiful!! All credit goes to the director for composing the scene so well and to the actors for enacting it with so much poise! Apparently the lead actor Masahiro Motoki studied this art of encoffinment in preparation for his role!
For all the seriousness of the subject, there are small moments of fun in the film too. The opening scene that I talked about provides some unexpected laughs. This scene, later continued in the middle of the movie, culminates is a very unexpected and poignant fashion. In spite of the subject (or maybe because of it), the whole movie is really life affirming and positive. It views as death as a gateway to the next life and that was fascinating . Dialogues were very good (at least what the subtitles read!!) and I was wondering if the impact would have been even better if I knew Japanese. One of them stuck in my mind. The assistant at the funeral parlour has this to say about coffins -  ‘Our last shopping in our lives is done by others’ (or something to this effect).
For those interested in offbeat movies and do not mind subtitles, this is a must watch.

Time Flies

There is only one thing that never lies besides King Harischandra (of course, since if such a person even existed, he is long gone by now, so the present tense does not apply; also I am not sure if the King would want to be called a ‘thing’ (damn, I should stop this ugly habit of writing between the lines!!)) - the Mirror. So while our actors try to put on a bold face (and a rather stiff one, thanks to all the Botox), in front of their fans - the women wearing lesser and lesser clothes every passing year to divert the attention from their faces and the men hiding behind large sunglasses to hide their eyes and wearing impossibly warm suit buttoned up till their chins to hide the creases on their necks, at night, when they are all alone or with accepting (compelled to otherwise) spouses, the mirror tells them the truth. While we love to talk about how age is just a number, we usually say that to others who complain about old age. When we start growing old, we start complaining too and it is at that time, we realize that age is not just a number!!
Coming to think of it, I think every person’s life (or almost every person’s life) can be divided into two parts. The first where one  always wants to grow up and the second where one is wistful about getting what one wanted earlier ! It is one of life’s little ironies that the first half with a dream that can be realized is shorter than the latter with the impossible dream (unless of course you consider going completely loony as a return to childhood).
You may ask why all this talk of old age etc. at this point. (And may I humbly point out that ‘You’ are only one of the thousand plus readers of this post who may come up with this question!!). Is it because the blogger is growing old too? Does she struggle with the pangs of middle age (or old age)? Does she find herself frequently checking the mirror for signs of old age? The Answer? None of the above. This blogger is still at the prime of her youth, even if you may think otherwise looking at her or her experience. The reason I am writing this is because I am reading this book called ‘Time Flies’ by Bill Cosby and while I was reading the book, I was wondering how poignant humour can sometimes be. Before I start waxing eloquently about the beauty of growing old etc., a few lines about the author and the book.
My library is a very strange and enchanting place. In terms of size it is smaller than our kitchen (which is larger than many other kitchens!!). While most of the racks are filled with the popular paperbacks, organized by either author or genre - when the author is not popular enough (according to my librarian at least!!) - there is one rack that is full of books that do not fall under these categories. It is here that I often strike gold. So last week, I had gone to the library promising to get just one book for my mother, I started wandering (figuratively of course, since in my library, there is hardly enough space in each ‘aisle’ for one person to turn). I saw this book with Bill Cosby’s picture on the cover. The face - I did not recognize, but the name-I did.
I had heard the name Bill Cosby before (along with names like Bob Hope). I sort of remember reading somewhere that he is a very popular American comedian. I had not seen any of his shows, so I started reading this book with no preconceived notions on what to expect. I am glad I picked up the book!!
Time Flies, as the name indicates is about Cosby’s take on growing old. He had just turned 50 at the time of writing this book. The book is full of hilarious personal experiences and thought provoking comments on mankind’s fear of turning old.  For example, Cosby talks of getting his trifocals and getting intimidated by them, wondering which part of the lens to use, without knowing where the person he is looking at is in the room!! . This is one of the most hilarious episodes in the book (at least of what I have read of it). Other episodes are on his memory lapses, changed food habits where he is forced to eat celery stalks and other vegetables, his reduced athletic abilities, his struggle with his ever increasing girth and reluctance to wear a bigger sized dress. The part where he describes how he tries to fit into his size 15 shirt although his size has increased to size 17 1/2 is bitingly funny!
Besides his personal experiences, Cosby also talks about how as a country, Americans dread growing old and do all sorts of funny things like using beauty products, undergoing painful surgeries, herbal supplements etc to ward off the imminent old age. While this was probably true only for Americans at the time this was written, I think this is becoming a norm across nations - at least among those who can afford it. I remember this particular line he had written about a woman he knew, who applied the pollen of some flower on her face regularly - a sneeze from her would pollinate an entire garden!!
I may find fault with the Americans and America for a lot of things, but one thing I really like about them, is their ability to laugh at themselves. This is something that we probably lack as a country. We like laughing at people as long as we are not even remotely related to the targets of the joke.  Cosby’s sense of humour is different from the others that I have encountered and importantly, it has a sense of warmth along with all the humour. Cosby does not talk from a pedestal and the personal experiences, while being funny, also convey the confusion that a person would face at seeing himself change, without his noticing.  Middle-aged or not, it is easy to relate to Cosby’s writing. There is a lot of compassion and love in Cosby’s writing. And underneath all that self-deprecation, is genuine bafflement at seeing the man in the mirror change!!
I don’t know if my increasing interest in books/movies on humour is to do with my growing age. I do know that my ability to find humour in almost everything around me is definitely due to it. I also like the fact that unlike before, where I would find only a certain type of humour funny, I am able to understand and laugh at different brands  of humour - PGW, Douglas Adams, Fry and Laurie, Friends, Everybody loves Raymond, Seinfeld, Simpsons, Dexter (yes, it is gruesome, but also has dry humour!!),  movies by Tarantino and Coen brothers (same as Dexter ) etc.  (although I still don’t find Akshay Kumar and Govinda funny!!). I am learning to go beyond tolerance and have learnt to accept faults in others (and in me) with passing years. If these are perks of growing old, I would not mind old age at all