Sneha Jaiswal's Blog, page 293
June 14, 2020
Where Your Eyes Linger
It’s ‘Pride Month’ in the U.S and since more and more Americans are consuming all things South Korean – be it K-pop, K-Dramas or K-Movies and Koffees (read Dalgona), so it’s time we shift our gaze to ‘Where Your Eyes Linger’.
Han Gi Chan and Jang Eui Soo play the lead roles in this new Korean mini-series that just finished airing all of its eight episodes this week. So what’s so special about it? For starters, it’s been touted as South-Korea’s first ‘BL’ series. BL is short for ‘Boys Love’.
I have seen a few Korean films with LGBT themes and they tend to be tragic. And Korean films can be real tear-jerkers. But ‘Where Your Eyes Linger’ is an exception to that. Also, how are all these Korean lead actors so bloody good looking? Just HOW?
Any-who… The story revolves around the rich and handsome brat Han Tae Joo, who is a playboy and keeps changing girlfriends, but is deeply attracted to his equally good-looking male bodyguard Kang Gook. There is a lot of tension between the two men because of their repressed feelings and things get a lot more complicated when a girl starts showing interest in Kang Gook.
The boys go to the same college and are in constant company of each other, however Kang Gook keeps referring to himself as Tae Joo’s ‘servant’. Even though the two seem to share an equal sort of friendship. All the actors ace their roles. And like the title suggests, the eyes do a LOT of talking.
The best thing about K-dramas is that they are short and sweet. The makers usually know when to end things and rarely drag their feet through the story-telling. Within just eight episodes, we see a fifteen year old ‘Man and Master’ relationship culminate into forbidden love.
WIll Kang Gook and Tae Joo let their relationship plateau at platonic friendship? Well, watch the series. Also, this one deserves a season two!
June 13, 2020
Gulabo Sitabo…Uh Oh
‘Set in present day Lucknow (India), Gulabo Sitabo is a social satire about two impossibly peculiar human beings – Mirza Chunna Nawab, who stays in a dilapidated mansion and one of the tenants, Baankey Rastogi..’ – This is an excerpt from the description of the new Bollywood film on Amazon Prime.
I don’t know if the description is meant to mock ‘privileged’ people who ‘Netflix and chill’ in their free time or to simply insult their intelligence. Or perhaps it reflects the ignorance of the makers?
Because the two leading characters are far from ‘impossibly peculiar human beings’ – Mirza is beholden to his wife for whatever little he has in life. He is the landlord of a sprawling, crumbling mansion which is under his wife’s name, the rent they get from their tenants is a pittance. In fact, it is the rent amount that can be classified as ‘impossibly peculiar’ – a meager Rs 30-Rs 55 per month. (Rs 30 is less than half a dollar)
The aging Mirza resorts to stealing things from his tenants and sells them off to make some money on the sides. Since some of them haven’t even paid rent for a few months. Landlords who are out to loot their tenants at every chance possible are far from being a rare species.
While Amitabh Bachchan is brilliant as Mirza, a lot of what he says is garbled and hard to understand. I don’t know if it was intentional or unwitting. Ayushman was okay-ish as the uneducated tenant who is barely making his house run on the money he earns from running his flour shop. The support cast members do their jobs right, nothing too impressive.
As a satire, the movie does work, it shows how everybody is selfish, conniving and just out to watch their own back. However, the storytelling is really slow and there are LOT of unnecessary sub-plots and scenes forced in.
The climax of the film is actually pretty good, but it doesn’t fit well with the rest of the narrative. While for the first 75% of the film Shoojit Sircar and team struggle really hard to make it comical, suddenly, towards the end, they decide to make things emotional and zany. It was just jarring and did not seem earnest at all.
Also, the cinematography was a little troublesome, some scenes are too dark (I mean the lighting) and irritating. The real hero of the film is the dilapidated ‘haveli’ and even that doesn’t get enough justice. The background score is also weird and tries to convey something hilarious is happening, even when it’s not.
Some Quorans have asked me to answer a question – What is the point of the film Gulabo Sitabo?.
I think it’s a pretty pointless film and is meant just to entertain us. But if struggles to do even that.
But if you really have to take a moral from this tale, then perhaps it is – excessive greed and stinginess will never get you too far in life.
It’s 2.5/5 from me for this film.
Death & Darker Realms #14
“Stray spots on the blood floor
The memories all stale and sour
Like long forgotten folklore
It was not the violence that hurt”
First few lines from poem number fourteen in “Death & Darker Realms”. Sometimes there are things hurt worse than physical blows in a relationship. This one delves into that.
For the full poem, you can get a copy of ‘Death & Darker Realms’ on Amazon. It’s a collection of 40 poems exploring death, depression & dysfunctional relationships.
Following are the links –
Amazon India Ebook / Amazon India Paperback
Please check your country’s Amazon if I haven’t listed it or just on your kindle/kindle app.
June 12, 2020
First They Killed My Father
To anybody that doesn’t know a thing about the Cambodian genocide carried under the Khmer Rouge, this movie is an absolute essential. Shot in a way that blends both art-house and documentary styles, the film captures the horrors of the Campuchea regime through the eyes of the five-year-old Loung Ung.
Watching this film made me nostalgic about my 2019 Cambodia trip and reminded me of how it felt to realize we learn so little about the world in our school history books. At least a two million Cambodians are believed to have died during the years Khmer Rouge ruled the nation.
‘First They Killed My Father’ starts with a beautiful montage of a happy wealthy family of a military officer. He has about seven children (if I counted right), Loung Ung being the second youngest. That same day, members of the communist party of Campuchea storm the streets of Phnom Penh and force everybody into evacuating the city.
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The Khmer Rouge wanted to establish some sort of an agrarian utopia, devoid of technology. Doctors were forced to give up their modern medicines. Intellectuals and anybody who worked for the toppled government was murdered in the cold-blood. And all Cambodians were whip-lashed into doing hard farm work without any tools. Even children were made to work in the labour camps to earn less than a fistful of rice on their plate.
Until the credits rolled in, I didn’t realize it was directed by Angelina Jolie. She and her team have however done a brilliant job of portraying the brutalities innocent Cambodians endured during that dark period in their history. Jolie has co-written the script with Loung Ung, who had written a memoir by the same name. So the movie is based on true events.
Now to the cons – the film has a lot of unnecessary still shots of characters where they are not emoting at all. It’s hard to understand if some of the actors are trying to emote a sort of despair where you can’t feel a thing, or if they just cannot act.
The film demands a lot of patience in the viewer due to its slow pace. I saw it over three days and did not fast-forward anything. While I think it’s a damn good film, it’s not for everybody.
June 11, 2020
Death & Darker Realms #12
“In the distance between us…
There are a million possibilities…
And too many mental gambles…
That could materialize into monsters…”
First few lines from poem number twelve in ‘Death & Darker Realms’.
What can I say about this one? Sometimes the distance between two people is physical… and sometimes… Just mental. And either way, things can get really hard.
For the full poem, please grab a copy of “Death & Darker Realms” on Amazon. It’s a collection of 40 poems dealing with themes like death, depression & dysfunctional relationships.
Following are the links –
Please check your country’s Amazon if I haven’t listed it or just on your kindle/kindle app.
June 9, 2020
Temple of Literature
For some odd reason, husband and I were discussing how amazing and cheap our Vietnam holiday had been in December 2019. We were there for almost 8 days and I haven’t blogged about it even once in the six months that have elapsed since. But today, I feel like writing a little about it.
In fact, I just want to talk about one place – the Temple of Literature in Hanoi. It was here that Vietnam’s first University was established, making it the center for all renowned scholars of the nation to gather for centuries. The country has seen several wars, but the Vietnamese have fiercely protected its premises.
Constructed in the early 11th century, the Temple of Literature co-exists like a beautiful ancient relic amidst the hustle and bustle of the modern Hanoi. With fancy cafes designed to make your Instagram feed look cool dotting the streets around it.
Despite being a popular tourist spot, what really makes the Temple of Literature special is the fact that graduating students even now visit the place to celebrate their academic milestones.
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On the day of our visit to the temple, it was filled with happy looking youngsters dressed in graduation robes, taking pictures and selfies. It was so nice to have them all around. I am probably writing about that day also because I have been nostalgic about my own convocation ceremony.
The premises has five courtyards and is filled with ancients slabs commemorating scholars who once studied there. In the end, there is a lovely little building that has a statue of the philosopher Confucius. The temple is dedicated to him and other philosophers and great minds. Right outside, there is a cute antique shop.
Strolling around the courtyards that are filled with beautiful trees, bonsai plants and relics from the past, is a calming balm to a city soul who appreciates history.
If you ever visit Hanoi, visit this place.
P.S. You can connect with me on Facebook, GoodReads and Instagram
Death & Darker Realms #11
“The fireflies were our only hope
In their dim green brilliance
Under the kind glow of the moon
She used to catch them
And make her hands their cage”
Some lines from the middle of poem number eleven in “Death & Darker Realms”.
Wonder how many of us ever had the experience of living in a place that didn’t have electricity? My ancestral village didn’t. Not till I was 12. So some of my earliest memories are of fireflies lighting up the beaten road that led to the market.
The joy of catching a firefly in our hands for the first time was something else. But the horror of seeing the die in minutes would wipe away all the joy. This poem is loosely inspired from those days.
For the full poem, you could get a copy of “Death & Darker Realms” on Amazon. It’s a collection of 40 poems dealing with themes like death, depression & dysfunctional relationships.
Following are the links – (the paperback is available on Amazon.com)
Please check your country’s Amazon if I haven’t listed it or just on your kindle/kindle app.
Online Convocations
Our journalism alma mater held its first online convocation ceremony this Monday, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. Up until then I had been reading about robots collecting certificates for students in Japan and things like that. But to see screenshots of the online convocation ceremony of the college where we mad long-lasting memories made us extremely nostalgic.
“Our convocation was such a happy day
All of us were so excited
And the morning was such a blur, everybody fussing over how they looked” I texted on my friends’ group.
N: Yeah it was so nice
N: Plus the last minute goodbyes and everything
Another friend responded.
“Fuck fuck fuck. So glad we are all not in that phase.” I said.
That 2012 morning came back to me vividly, when we were are still trainee journalists, absolutely clueless of the ruthlessness of the media industry. P Sainath, a reputed journalist & the author of ‘Everybody Loves A Good Drought’ had been the chief guest for our ceremony. All of us were happy and proud to hear him give us cubs some wisdom about journalism.
Now is a different time. I see freshers from my college now putting up frantic messages on LinkedIn, seeking any sort of job or internships they could do. Since almost all media firms are busy cost-cutting and firing people. Hiring has been frozen by most companies.
This pandemic is making me see how lucky we had been, to have graduated without a care in the world, surrounded by the friends we grew to love, with new jobs at leading publications waiting for us.
But the times are tough for everybody, a lot of my friends in the media have had to take pay cuts. Some of them are dealing with anxiety of a possible lay-off. Sometimes even I feel that maybe my decision to take a break and focus on writing could have been ill-timed.
All we can do it hope things get better. And until then, we could curse the year to ease some of our frustrations.
DIE 2020. JUST DIE.
June 8, 2020
Death & Darker Realms #10
“The pain love can cause is not in the whirring of the heart
Its arteries turning into blades, cutting through your innards
The rapid beats of unease inching closer to some death
A funeral for a dream or desire; rest in peace my love
The rusted chains of our beaten swing won’t miss you…”
These are the first five lines of poem number ten from “Death & Darker Realms”. It’s about heartbreak and how the smallest of things can trigger you. Their copy of keys that you can’t bring yourself to get rid of. A book, a birthday gift perhaps. A pen that doesn’t even write anymore. Anything.
Wrote this one in 2016. Not sure what the inspiration was.
For the full poem, you could get a copy of “Death & Darker Realms” on Amazon. It’s a collection of 40 poems dealing with themes like death, depression & dysfunctional relationships.
Following are the links – (the paperback is available on Amazon.com)
Please check your country’s Amazon if I haven’t listed it or just on your kindle/kindle app.
June 7, 2020
Manga Messy-ah
‘Manga Messiah’ was an impulsive buy during a visit to the bookstore for the first time since a nationwide lockdown was slightly eased in my city and book-stores had started opening up for operations.
The blurb for this one said “From the biggest-selling book in the history of the world… comes the greatest story ever told… about the most controversial man who ever lived… presented in the most popular graphic novel format on earth…”
While I was pretty excited when I bought the book, reading it was so bloody disappointing. For some silly reason – I was expecting some fictional stuff with interesting twists and turns in the story of Manga Jesus. But this book is just the Manga version of his story. Nothing less. Nothing more. Old wine in a new bottle. Booooring.
The illustrations were fun and true to the manga format. However, it usually takes me an hour to finish a Manga. Manga Messiah took me over a week to finish, because I kept taking day long breaks from it. It’s no fun when you already know the story. Even Manga magic can’t make it interesting.
2/5 for this boring mess of a manga. Get it only if you’ve never read Jesus’ story before.
