Stepping Stone

May 11th, 2012 at 4:46AM

People thought they would attain redemption by abusing Manto openly. Every day he received letters filled with threats and abuses. I was, however, immune from all these calamities because, except for a few editors, nobody knew my address. Moreover, I used to tear up these letters and throw them away after going through the first couple of lines. I would soon forget them altogether. But Manto would read these letters again and again and would also read them aloud to his friends. They put an end to his peace of mind. One day, just to tease him, I said, ‘Manto, when you die, people will worship you and call you a standard-bearer of all greatness. People will permanently attach the word “great” to your name. They’ll call you an expert psychologist and a national reformer.’ [[181]] Manto got very mad at all of this and began to shout while trying to scowl at me as best he could with his very large eyes. ‘By God,’ he said, ‘if that happens, I’ll come out of my grave and haunt them.’ ” - Ismat Chugtai on Manto — txt_ismat_interview_mahfil1972

Source: columbia.edu

May 11th, 2012 at 2:27AM

And after contemplating for half a century we have realised that it might have something to do with your insistence on calling a shalwar, a shalwar. - Mohd. Hanif on Manto — Our case against Manto | Herald

Source: herald.dawn.com

May 8th, 2012 at 1:23AM

In modern India, there are no political ideologies; there is just political power, or the lack of it, or the ambition for it, or the misuse of it, or the abuse of it. - Dibankar Bannerji — The Dibakarian Way of Life | OPEN Magazine

Source: openthemagazine.com

May 7th, 2012 at 11:57AM

When a Dalit discards his sectarian caste politics and sees his emancipation along with all oppressed through class struggle, he suffers exclusion among Dalits as a Marxist, in the left as an Ambedkarite and repression from the state as a naxalite, all together. He is thus pushed back to his caste cocoon where he belonged by birth. This cruel and complex reality of the contemporary Dalit existence is brilliantly brought forth by Anand Patwardhan in Jai Bhim Comrade (JBC) through an innocuous and unlikely medium of song and music. — Jai Bhim Comrade, A Soulful Song Of The Nowhere People By Dr Anand Teltumbde

1 note Source: countercurrents.org

April 26th, 2012 at 2:33AM

The small neighborhood where the film’s main characters live was the only one not destroyed in the bombings—and the only one with curvy streets, everything else has been built in an arrow-straight grid plan. But now this particular strip has also been completely demolished. The bulldozers were waiting; we bought the area an extra week of life. As always, the most interesting scenery is destroyed to make room for malls. The process often is that the working people are first driven outside the city, out of sight, and they realize they were driven to the most beautiful place. And then they are turned out of there, too. The corresponding American example is New Orleans—the indifference of the federal state and the exploitation of its “the natural disaster” were shocking — Aki Kaurismäki: The Uncut Interview | Filmlinc.com | Film Society of Lincoln Center

Source: filmlinc.com

April 20th, 2012 at 5:23AM

I would like to explain the violence in this film. Because it makes me uncomfortable. The problem is this story had to start with violence. So I wanted to at least make it honest. Because if people want to see violence looking good, there is something wrong with their heads. So I make it look as it really is, fast and ugly. This is my rule and my explanation. Hollywood has melted everyone’s brains. In the old days you had one murder and that was enough for a story. Now you have to kill 300,000 people just to get the audience’s attention. And in Helsinki the violence is not glamorous. It is nameless. There, someone hits you just because they are in a bad mood. - Aki Kaurismaki — Aki Kaurismäki - Biography

Source: imdb.com

April 5th, 2012 at 6:22AM

For mankind, I can’t see any way out,” he says in his deadly monotone, “except terrorism. We kill the 1%.” Which 1%? “The only way for mankind to get out of this misery is to kill the 1% who own everything. The 1% who have put us in the position where humanity has no value. The rich. And the politicians who are the puppies of the rich. - Aki Kaurismäki — http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/apr/04/aki-kaurismaki-le-havre-interview

1 note #cinema #finland #humanity #1 percent

March 15th, 2012 at 7:27AM

main kisan hoon
aasaman men dhan bao raha hoon

kuchh log kah rahe hain ki
pagale! aasaman men dhan nahin jama
karata

main kahata hoon gegale gogale pagale !
agar zamin par bhagavan jam sakata hai
to aasaman men dhan bhi jam sakata hai
aur ab to donon men se koee ek hokar rahega
ya to zamin se bhagavan ukhadega
ya aasaman men dhan jamega.
- vidrohi

main kisaan hoon
aasmaan mein dhaan bo rahaa hoon

kuchh log keh rahe hain ki
pagale! aasmaan mein dhaan naheen jamaa karta

main kahataa hoon gegale gogale pagale !
agar jameen par bhagvaan jam sakataa hai
toh aasmaan mein dhaan bhee jam sakataa hai
aur ab to donoN mein se koee ek hokar rahegaa
yaa to jameen se bhagvaan ukhadegaa
yaa aasmaan mein dhaan jamegaa.

-Vidrohee

— vidrohi kee kavitayen

#vidrohi #poetry

March 9th, 2012 at 12:13AM

emissions:

An extraordinary trailer for Anhey Ghorhey da Daan (Alms of the Blind Horse). Sallitt says it played at Venice and is playing at NYC’s South Asian Fest on 11/13.

Noticed that the film is being marketed by the same guys who are representing A Mysterious World, Gerhard Richter Painting, and People Mountain People Sea all of which were the standouts from Toronto. I hope this film does well.

6 notes Source: emissions

March 7th, 2012 at 6:18AM

The potential force of desire is proverbial in all cultures. Perhaps because an awareness of being desired bestows a unique sense of invulnerability, and when this sense is multiplied by two almost anything can be risked. [ … ]

Desire, when reciprocal, is a plot, hatched by two, in the face of, or in defiance of, all the other plots which determine the world. It is a conspiracy of two.

The plan is to offer to the other a reprieve from the pain of the world. Not happiness (!) but a physical reprieve from the body’s huge liability towards pain.

Within all desire there is pity as well as appetite; the two, whatever their relative proportion, are threaded together. Desire is inconceivable without a wound.

If there were any unwounded in this world, they would live without desire.

The conspiracy is to create together a place, a locus, of exemption, and the exemption, necessarily temporary, is from the unmitigated hurt which flesh is heir to.

The human body has prowess, grace, playfulness, dignity, and countless other capacities, but it also intrinsically tragic - as is no animal’s body. (No animal is naked.) Desire longs to shield the desired body from the tragic it embodies, and what is more it believes it can. This is its faith.

There is naturally no altruism in desire. The offer of shielding, of conferring exemption is made through the offer of the whole self, both physical and imaginative. From the start two bodies are involved, and so the exemption, when and achieved, covers both.

The exemption is bound to be brief and yet it promises all. The exemption abolishes brevity - and along with it the hurts associated with the threat of the brief.

Observed by a third person, desire is a short parenthesis; experienced from within, it is a transcendence. In both cases, however, day-to-day life continues around, before and after it.
Desire promises exemption. Yet an exemption from the existing natural order is tantamount to disappearance. And that is precisely what desire, at its most ecstatic, proposes: let’s vanish.

— From “Another Side of Desire” in John Berger’s Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance (via actuallyaisha)

4 notes Source: actuallyaisha