#first time trying hindi/urdu poetry

[maraudersbitchesassemble]

ये इश्क भी भला हमसे और क्या क्या कराएगा?

के हम तो मीट चुके उनकी मोहोब्बत में,

और कितना इंतज़ार कराएगा?

हमने तो सुनी थी इश्क की कई कहानियां,

के पागल बने फिरते है हम उसके प्यार में,

अब बस भी हो गईं तकदीर की मनमानियां।

आस लगाए बैठे हैं के कब मान जाए वो,

सोच के डर लगता है क्या होगा हमारा

अगर वो ना माने तो?

[vaidehi-raghunatha]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who liked or reblogged something from you! :3

Okay alright so here goes:

(Btw I've never thought of this before, I never really pondered on this question of the things that make me feel happy but still ig I'll give it a try)

1. BOOKS, BOOKS AND MORE BOOKS!! The first on the list, always, will remain books. I just cannot live without them, they're the bestest friends I've ever had, even more closer to me than my IRL friends actually. I remember my grandpa saying this one line to me always when I was young: that people don't just live their lives, they live their stories, stories that their destiny crafted for them, and since then I've always been hooked on to stories that intrigue me, inspire me, and fascinate me, so I'm someone who cannot live without books at all because I need to devour stories to survive lol, my sanity solely depends on how I dwell in my fantasies and dreams 24*7

2. Badminton 🏸!!! I never had a boyfriend or a love interest of any sort so I decided to fall in love with this sport instead lmao 🤣🤣🤣 but jokes aside, playing badminton is equivalent to breathing oxygen for survival at least for me, because this sport has taught me SO MUCH, even the limited amount of wisdom I have, is because of the millions of moments in time that I've dedicated to the game, badminton taught me to stay strong, to stay hopeful and to stay opportunistic lol. I made so many good friends in my journey of sporting, in fact I've visited half of India already thanks to the different national tournaments conducted periodically in different cities of the country, I owe so much to the game and ig I'll never be able to love a boy as much as I love this sport lmao 🤣🤣🤣 but yeah although I never got permission to pursue this sport professionally, I'm glad I at least got the opportunity to learn the skills and hone my talent in this field

3. My family: mom, dad, sistah and my pet German Spitz named Lucky, idk what I'd do without them 😭😭❤️❤️

4. Singing and dancing and poetry ARGHHHHH I WON'T SURVIVE IF I DON'T HAVE THESE IN MY LIFEEEEEE, penning short poems in Urdu, Hindi and English is a different level of luxury tbh, and who would not want to shuffle their legs and hands for a moment of bliss if there's a Krishna bhajan playing nearby? Who would not want to dance to the beat of the raindrops beneath the darkest of clouds to forget their miseries? Who would not want to hum to old retro duets of Lata ji and Kishore da if they hear it playing in some radio nearby? So u see, life without music, dance and poetry would obviously be equivalent to hell for anyone because these simple luxuries are what make life worth living

5. Idk what the heading for this should be, but.....amongst the top 5 things that make me happy, I absolutely have to mention this otherwise it would be dishonest on my part.

The biggest thing that gives me happiness is, seeing others laughing with a smile on their faces. There's so much of darkness and despair around us, isn't it? We try finding ways to get out of our traumas, our troubles, our battles, but what if there's no way out of it really? Don't they say that "struggle is the other name of life"?? We're born with our own personal destinies, our own ill fates and misfortunes, our own sufferings and burdens, and life is nothing but a constant process of making your way out of this mess, so sadness in a way is inevitable in everyone's life, but that doesn't mean happiness should be out of bounds right? U can find happiness in everything u see around you, everything that happens around you or what happens TO YOU, you just need to have the eyes to identify happiness and the heart to feel the bliss, as for me, I try finding happiness in other people's smiles, there are so many days when I have no reason to be happy, when I am constantly in a state of bad mood, but then when I help others out around me and see a smile on other's faces because of me, that's perhaps the happiest feeling I can ever experience, which is far more superior than all other sources of happiness I've described in the above 4 points. So perhaps "helping others out and making others smile around me" tops the list of "5 things that make me happy"

To everyone who came across this post, here's a happy hug 🫂✨ and the final thing I'd like to say is: I'M SOOOOO SOOOOO SOOOOO SOOOOO SOOOOO SORRY FOR SUCH A LONG POST PLEASE FORGIVE ME BUT I COULDN'T HELP IT SO PLEASE I'M SORRY IF MY LONG POST RUINED YOUR EYES

[siriusblack-the-third]

I really loved that Marauders Dark Academia post <333 I was wondering if you have any other Indian James Potter headcanons? About him or his family etc

Ohhhhh i have sO. MANY.

He does that thing where you slurp chai, click your tongue and say 'haaaaa!' Sirius and Remus give him so much shit for it for the first couple months, but then they start doing it and Peter finds it annoying and suddenly everyone in Gryffindor is being subjected to extremely exaggerated 'haaaaa!'s

He absolutely loathes it when people say British food tastes good. He gets into so many arguments with Peter about it because "come on, mate, that's the sweetest chai my mother makes, she's even skipped the ginger, how do you find it spicy?* "It has cinnamon, Jamie." "Cinnamon is fucking sweet, you little—"

He's obsessed with literature and poetry. Like, even obsessed is a mild word. People think Remus is the type to read books but no, wolf boy over there wouldn't touch a book if he didn't abso-fucking-lutely need to. James is the real bookworm— he got it from his Baba, who waxed poetic about Rabindranath Thakur and Vivekananda and Ghalib and Faiz Ahmad Faiz and told James that their writing was amazing and then there's this little boy reading under his covers with a little ball of not-so-accidentally conjured light which is how he gets his glasses before he even goes to Hogwarts.

He's three quarters Desi. His mother was from India, and his father was half Indian, because James' paternal grandmother was also from India. Specifically, both women were from pureblood Maratha lines.

He does the head movements. All the head movements. Sirius picks it up after spending literally all their time together, and Remus and Peter laugh themselves sick about it so many times, oh my gods.

Sirius learns Marathi, Hindi and Urdu from James' parents in secret and surprises James during the holidays after sixth year because he has the proper accent down and everything. James cries (but he won't admit it)

The Potter family, except James' paternal uncle Charlus and his wife Dorea, live in India till right before his 11th birthday, when the Indo Pak war breaks out. Then they move to England.

James has so. Many. Cousins. He can't remember the names of half of them and he hates how the atyas and the maushis and the mamis pull his cheeks when he visits the country, but he puts up with it because family is important to him. Also he loves playing with the toddlers and babies, they're fucking cute.

Loves kajal so much it's borderline unhealthy. There will always. Always. Be a line of black under his eyes, winging out slightly at the outer corners. Sometimes, when he's feeling himself, he will draw the wing out to a dramatic, bold style that makes the light brown of his eyes look so much more beautiful (Lily drives herself crazy over it).

Absolute pants at waltzing. He loves the music, sure (he can play almost every sheet of piano music he can find on the first try bc baby boi is a Pureblood brat /affectionate/), but he hates the dance style. He'd much rather wrap his ankles with ghungroo and dip his fingers into alta dye, because bharatnatyam is the ultimate dance form and you are wrong if you have any other opinion.

He was really good friends with the Patil twins' parents and family. They would get together to talk shit about the gore loka and Sirius would get mock annoyed that James almost never took him because "Jamie we're practically married already what the fuck mate"

He's really fucking good at maths and arithmancy, and he really fucking hates it. Stupid numbers and their stupid calculations kashyasathi kartoy mi he kay upayog tari ahe ka hyacha (marathi— why am I doing this is this even of any use) but he has a point to prove to snivellus and fuck if he isn't proving it. It also helps that his mother made him complete all fourteen levels of abacus (seven basic and seven advanced) by the time he was fourteen.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: I love your book reviews under the banner ‘Treat Your S(h)elf’ - nice play on words. You have such a wide and cultured range of interests that I really learn something new. Do you read poetry? What are your favourite poets? What are you currently reading?

I love reading poetry because as the poet Robert Frost put it succinctly, “Poetry is when emotion has found its thought, and thought has found words”.

Poets are before anything else in the words of W.H. Auden, “a person who is madly in love with language” and language is the bedrock of any culture and society and ultimately civilisation. When you truly think about it, poetry is meaningless when it has been left to gather dust on a piece of paper. It is simply a memory of an idea conjured up by a writer with something to say. Poetry must be read, it needs to be experienced because it keeps these ideas burning. These meaningful concepts about the nature of life, death and everything. Every time a person reads a poem, a new bright spark emerges in that person’s head. A new way of thinking, a new way of understanding. That is exactly why poetry must be read because it is the essence of our language.

The reasons I personally read poetry, you ask? Here are some reasons I can think of from the top of my head others are too personal to reveal:

I read poetry because poetry is thoughts that breathe and words that burn. And I read poetry because it is what happens when my mind stops working , and for a moment, all I do is feel. This is good therapy for me as I’m not the most openly emotional or prone to displays of emotion in public. It’s just not how I was built. Poetry helps one to feel. So some poems remain so close to my heart.

I remember when I was about to go on my first tour to Afghanistan I was quite calm and cold blooded because that was and is my nature. My father - who served with distinction in uniform like his father and grand father, and great-grandfather before him - was always proud and supportive of me being the black sheep of the family as the only girl in our family going through Sandhurst and now I was off to the last embers of a war in Afghanistan that everyone had forgotten about. He was concerned - like the rest of my family - like any loving parent about what might happen. But he didn’t question my professionalism or my abilities so he didn’t give me that lecture instead he thrust in my hand both classical literature (Thucydides and Homer in particular) and the works of selected poets. He told me poetry will save your life. He wasn’t anxious about my physical safety he was thinking about my soul. For what happens during war and what comes after if and when I come home. Long story short: poetry saved my life.

By nature I am restless to an incredible annoying degree. I fear being bored. I find it hard to sit and be idle. Poetry is my balm for boredom.

I am incredibly busy and I work punishing long hours. Time is premium. People make demands on me and my time. Poems are like super-condensed stories, and are therefore usually short enough to be read over your morning tea/coffee. In this fast-paced world we live in, sometimes poems are a better alternative to reading fully-fledged novels, or even short stories and poetry gives you the chance to continue to expand your literary horizons even during the busiest times in your life. And becoming more widely read is an incredible way to ensure you are continuously growing, and learning, while becoming a more cultured individual at the same time. There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you and when I read some of those beautiful pieces of poetry by my favourite poets it's like the paper is filled with the breathings of my heart.

The most frightening thing is people I know stop growing culturally after they leave university and get on with the business of life i.e. careers, marriage and family. Once on that treadmill they don’t or can’t stop. They are unable to step off and take a breath. Poetry gives you a breather and helps you to re-centre your priorities.  The more you read poetry, the greater your quest for knowledge awakens. Doorways will open inside your mind and unlock your hidden potential for a greater understanding of life. Anyone who reads poetry often can connect with this conclusive sentence formation that defines your very questionable outlook on life.

I also believe poetry allows us to be less rigid in our thinking with an authentic, personal touch. When I read poems, nothing is often straightforward. Every poem has a meaning hiding under it, but it is blocked by a myriad of literary devices such as metaphors and symbolism. It is important to be able to think more figuratively because it allows you to understand ideas and perspectives in a more abstract and possibly more meaningful way. Sometimes I find that having a single page of beautifully crafted words can be enough of a distraction to spark a sudden creative leap in my brain. There have been many times where I've miraculously thought of ways to solve a problem (big or small) purely because reading poetry forced me to think differently from the usual day-to-day thoughts required for general life.

Poetry is best read when you’re hidden from the outside world, in a quiet little spot, somewhere away from all the hustle and bustle. It is increasingly hard to do just that. I have so many demands on my time and limited space but I force myself to carve out the time and space to do this - one must try. As a rule I switch off all social media (not that I have many to begin with but most definitely my phone). The best time for me to carve out time is when I’m traveling as I’m able to shut out everything around me. Usually when I’m waiting for a flight in the business class departure lounge it’s quiet and not too many people to distract me and there is usually a delay to the flight. When I check into a hotel I feel a disconnect to the world around me. I feel like an alien. Poetry helps me to connect again. Poetry calms and focuses the mind. With poetry I can almost reset my day because it’s not just a time zone I have to get used to but also a state of mind - and especially if I find myself being unproductive too!

I often escape Paris and go into the countryside. I love going on walks, hikes, mountaineering, and other outdoor pursuits. It allows me the space and time to read poetry and reflect in peace. And of course I snatch time before I go to sleep to read a poem if I am not too tired.

The point is that I need the head space to absorb the poem and take some time to work out the meaning of the full entity. I try not swallow a whole book in one sitting, instead I read a few poems and leave the book until the next day or a few days depending on my schedule. Sometimes, you can read a poem again and you will find other meanings or pick up on information that you couldn’t see before. That’s poetry, you create the film, journey or picture inside your mind from reading the words on the page.

As for my favourite poets this is of course is a very personal choice. I didn’t read English at university but rather my academic interests were Classics and History, so I profess a very paltry poetic palate. Still, I’m grateful to those friends more versed than I to point me to other poets. So I do my best to keep an open mind and try and read poetry recommended by others or some thing that captures my eye when I browse through book stores or read it as a passing reference in a book I am reading. 

Different poets and poems are discovered at one stage of life and where I happened to live in the world and only take on another meaning when re-read them at another stage. So I tend to re-visit poets I used to read as a teen and then see how it resonates now.

The majority of my poetic readings are in my native English and Norwegian languages but because I have varying degrees of fluency in other languages (because I grew up there for instance) I love widening my poetic palate. One of my regrets is not knowing Japanese and Chinese to a sufficient degree to really read poetry in those languages even if I have basic fluency in literature and everyday conversation. So reading Ezra Pound is one way in English to appreciate these Eastern poetic influences. I’m also ashamed to admit that I only know a woeful smattering of words in Scotiish Gaelic - my Anglo-Scots father knows it fairly well but even he struggles - and really I must find time in the future to learn more of it because it’s such a fascinating language (not least because it’s also dying out and that is tragic).

So below is an eclectic and random list from the top of my head and in no real order of preference:

• Homer (Greek) • Sappho (Greek) • Rumi (Farsi) • Mirza Ghalib (Urdu and Farsi) • John Milton • John Donne • William Shakespeare • Dante (Italian) • Robert Burns • William Wordsworth • Samuel Taylor Coleridge • William Blake • John Keats • Emily Dickinson • Christina Rosetti • Gerald Manley Hopkins • Walt Whitman • Oscar Wilde • W.B. Yeats • Rudyard Kipling • Wilfred Owen • Alfred Tennyson • Rainer Maria Rilke (German) • Cavafy (Greek) • T.S. Eliot • Hilda Doolittle • Marianne Moore • Sylvia Plath • W. H. Auden • Olaf H. Hauge (Norwegian) • Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (Norwegian) • Aslaug Vaa (Norwegian) • Rolf Jacobsen (Norwegian) • Sarojini Naidu (Hindi) • Gulzar (Hindi)

Living in Paris I tend to read more French poetry these days. By osmosis it helps me appreciate the French language and French culture even more.

• Charles Baudelaire. • Paul Verlaine • Jacques Prévert • Arthur Rimbaud • Alphonse de Lamartine • Alfred de Musset • Paul Valéry • Paul Eluard • Jean Genet • Françoise Villon

Poetry is an art that combines the essence of life through the fabrication of reality. Poets challenge and nourish me with their wisdom, philosophy, love and journeys beyond what used to be the limits of my own creative imagination. They push my boundaries ever so more. In doing so they grow my mind for understanding, my heart for empathy, and my soul for wisdom. It would hard to disagree with Robert Frost who sums up what poetry means to me, “a poem begins in delight, and ends in Wisdom”.

Thanks for your question

[anthropologicalhands]

bro, tell me about three poems you've fallen in love with recently. also, i miss you. also, hi.

hello hello! sorry i’ve been scarce lately!

I’ve been in a wildly romantic mood for the last few months, possibly as escapism, possibly also because I was very preoccupied having feelings for someone from whom I am trying to move on from/have since moved on from, but for those reasons, anything about love or the all-encompassing sense of it has been helping me really sort through all of it.

Onto poetry!

I’ve been reading Rumi recently, and one of his poems that really stands out is called “The Marriage of True Minds”:

Happy the moment when we are seated in the palace, thou and I, With two forms and with two figures but with one soul, thou and I. The colours of the grove and the voices of the birds will bestow immortality At the time when we shall come into the garden, thou and I. The stars of Heaven will come to gaze upon us: We shall show them the moon herself, thou and I. Thou and I, individuals no more, shall be mingled in ecstasy, Joyful and secure from foolish babble, thou and I. All the bright-plumed birds of Heaven will devour their hearts with envy In the place where we shall laugh in such a fashion, thou and I. This is the greatest wonder, that thou and I, sitting here in the same nook, Are at this moment both in Iraq and Khorasan, thou and I.

The footnotes for this poem describe it as a description of a mystical union where lover and beloved become one with the universal essence of love. I’ve been curious about Persian, Arabic, and Sufi traditions in poetry just in general lately. I’ve also read different translations of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám - I have a volume with three different translation versions by Edward Fitzgerald which is supposedly widely reputed to be as beautiful as the original, though it isn’t necessarily the most accurate translation. But even the translator was always trying to get closer and closer, hence the multiple editions. The changes between the translations are very subtle but they change the tone significantly, which is just interesting to think about. I still feel like I’m missing a lot, but I hope to dig deeper here, because damn.

There is also Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Kindness”, which I can link to, so I will. Naomi Shihab Nye has been one of my favorites ever since I started seriously reading poetry, but I’m always re/discovering works by her, and this one has been hitting hard.

And there is “Adore” by Li Young Lee, but I’m going to pull out the section specifically that resonates with me:

You say: We cannot look upon Love's face without dying. So we face each other to see Love's look. And thus third-person souls suddenly stand at gaze and the lover and the beloved, second- and first-persons, You and I, eye to eye, are born. But such refraction, multiplying gazes, strews Love's eye upon the objects of the world, as upon the objects of our room.

I do wish I understood Hindi or Urdu, because many of the Bollywood songs I’m listening to sound like they would be poetry! While the translations give a sense of the beauty, I’m definitely experiencing the songs in a very different way than I would have experienced them if I understood the lyrics. But the ones that just sound beautiful to me include:

Tum Se Hi (linking to a random lyric video rather than the official video because there are these vocalizations in the song itself that you don’t hear in the movie that really add to it.)

Gerua (the visuals for this are just gorgeous. Iceland man!)

Janam Janam (from the same movie as Gerua! I want to give context, but I’m linking these for the SONGS, not the story, otherwise I’ll go into a whole thing about it XD)

Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna (...admittedly as great as this song is, the context makes it EVEN BETTER, but I’ll refrain)

Chaiyya Chaiyya (on a train!!! this song in particular apparently was inspired by an Urdu poem, according to Wikipedia.)

Dil Chahta Hai (best coastal drive music ever)

(Don’t worry about listening/watching these btw! This is more showing where my head has been going. Also, it can be a little weird watching some of these videos if you haven’t seen the movies)

Bollywood’s been great for a lot of my moods, actually,  and I really really wish I could find some critical studies/history of Bollywood books I could sink my teeth into, because calling them musicals doesn’t feel right - like they are very much their own thing and draw from a vast number of traditions that I don’t know, so trying to compare them to western musicals really doesn’t feel right. 

[iwanttobeyourwonderwoman]

Nobody Gives A Shit, Git (5)

Act 1, scene 1.

Brahmpur, India.

-Enter Lata-

-Spotlight shines on first box-

Kabir Durrani swinging his bat and looks out to the crowd

-Spotlight dims, and shines on second box-

Amit Chatterji, legs stretched out on a bench, jotting down lines of poetry.

-Spotlight dims and shines on third box-

Haresh Khanna placing the contents of his bag neatly on his desk.

-Spotlight dims on all 3 as Lata stares into the darkness-

-Exit Lata-

HELLO HELLOOOOOO and welcome back. Totally steering away from the tension of the elections for this post because I just finished watching A Suitable Boy on netflix the other day and as usual I have certain scenes stuck in my head that need to be discussed.

So an introduction, (And lots of spoilers ahead!)

Netflix’s latest indian release has been A Suitable Boy, an adaptation of a best selling book written by Vikram Seth (which i now kinda wanna read) and in collaboration with BBC studios,  follows the lives of primarily Lata and Maan. Set in post partition independent India, it highlights the journey of self discovery as well as what the title suggests, the search for a suitable boy. Intertwined with lots of secrets and scandals, the show is overall captivating and takes a little bit of a modern twist, mainly because of the fact that the characters mostly speak in English!

The main actress, Lata, was portrayed beautifully as such a well educated and independent woman trying to follow her mother’s wishes of finding her a husband but battles with her own secret love for the dashing Kabir Durrani, a muslim star cricketeer of their school; amongst her slight attraction to her sister-in-law’s younger brother Amit Chatterji, a witty poet who holds the power to charm Lata’s brain as much as her heart, although much to her mother’s disapproval. Lastly, we have Haresh Khanna, a humble and talented cobbler who Lata’s mother has introduced her to as her choice of a suitable boy who is  constantly fighting for Lata and her mother’s approval. Overall this aspect of the show somehow reminded me of GIlmore Girls, because of how close mother and daughter were, as were Lorelai and Rory and also how it was always a battle between Dean, Jess and Logan. But who did Rory, and Lata in this instance, really want to be with in the end amongst their romances with each of the 3 men.

So before starting on the show I had only heard of the title and that the lead role of Maan was played by Ishaan Khatter. The rest of the cast included Tabu, Ram Kapoor and so on. A stellar cast to bring out the dramatic tones of the show and highlight the political and religious unrest, scandals and romance all across the 6 episodes. I mean look at the stellar performance and chemistry between Ishaan and Tabu throughout the show!

Starting the first episode, I realise like I mentioned above, that most of the show is in English which is great for a potato like me so I don’t have to read subtitles. Did it match the setting of 1950s India? Initially I wasn’t sure because how do you portray the accuracy in culture if it’s all in English and then I realised a damn good cast is all you need, which they definately had. Also because its a collaboration with BBC, the show has some actors with stronger British or American accents than others, and yet they transition from speaking in English to Hindi or Urdu very seamlessly. I think this would really help to attract the non Indian crowd to also take an interest in the show, as well as the culture.

Now the whole series has been made to be very theatrical, hence the introduction to my post. Throwing in a little fun fact some might not know about me is that I used to study Theatre and Drama, which made my appreciation grow for this style of directing/acting because I feel like it’s hardly being used nowadays. That being said, i feel like having the show in English was key to bring out all the dramatic aspects of the series. I think many people did not like that or maybe could not understand little aspects of it. I loved it though I thought it was a clever way to show off the historical side as well as attract a bigger audience.

*More spoilers ahead!!*

 My favourite scene though, was the ending of Episode 5!

Maan, in a fit of drunk rage and jealousy, had just stabbed his best fried Firoz.

Firoz enters the scene dragging his feet, hands clutched to his side, as blood gushes out of his stab wound. He stumbles and finally gives up as he falls to the ground and continues to bleed out as the scene ends. The best part is, the whole scene was set to be red in colour with very dim lighting all around but a huge spotlight on Firoz. Wow I cant even explain how well thought-out that scene was and how impactful of an ending they were able to portray in that episode. It’s like creating a whole other air of suspense and drama as you watch him as an audience bleeding out. I mean they could have just shown him bleeding out on the naturally lit street (but then again were streets ever well lit at night in that era???) But what I’m trying to say is that the whole show could have taken a very different direction but i very much enjoyed the theatrical direction. 

Overall, I really liked the series, took me some time to get through all 6 episodes though, but it was worth it. It’s also quite a nice and simple reminder while watching that that was what people were doing at that time, without technology and so on. It also makes us think back to (the unfortunately stereotypical) topic of parents thinking that they have to find a suitable partner for their child after a certain age. I mean as bright as Lata was, she was still made to believe that she had to follow the path laid out for her by her mother when she was portrayed to be an excellent student of English Literature. I mean you could actually cross refer this series to A suitable Girl on netflix (a documentary focusing on 3 indian girls and how they’re parents and society pressurise them to get married as well how their married life ends up looking like) and the problem comes back to society, expectations, religion, pressure and just the indian culture. 

So yes to end it all off, I do definitely recommend this show for primarily Indians but also to non indians to have a better understanding of issues ad culture of that time.

Cast - 5/5!!

Plot - 4/5

Ending - 3.5/5 (Why does she end up with Haresh!!!?????) 

Acting - 5/5!!!

Set/costumes - 5/5

That’s about all I’ve got on this show to end off yet another topic really nobody cares about! Well I’m off to watch The bonus episode of Hookup Plan/ Plan Coeur on netflix which is a French series, which I also previously reviewd back in season . So as usual, my other writings can be found in the gituuuu tab so knock yourselves out folks!! 

[thelanguagecommunity]

“what language should I learn?”

“is it better to learn [x] or [x]?”

“is it worth learning [x]?”

I get this type of question a lot and I see questions like these a lot on language learning forums, but it’s very difficult to answer because ultimately language learning is a highly personal decision. Passion is required to motivate your studies, and if you aren’t in love with your language it will be very hard to put in the time you need. Thus, no language is objectively better or worse, it all comes down to factors in your life. So, I’ve put together a guide to assist your with the kind of factors you can consider when choosing a language for study.

First, address you language-learning priorities.

Think of the reasons why are you interested in learning a new language. Try to really articulate what draws you to languages. Keeping these reasons in mind as you begin study will help keep you focused and motivated. Here are some suggestions to help you get started, complete with wikipedia links so you can learn more:

Linguistic curiosity?

For this, I recommend looking into dead, literary or constructed languages. There are lots of cool linguistic experiments and reconstructions going on and active communities that work on them! Here’s a brief list:

Dead languages:

Akkadian

Egyptian (Ancient Egyptian)

Gaulish

Gothic

Hittite

Old Prussian

Sumerian

Older iterations of modern day languages:

Classical Armenian

Classical Nahuatl (language of the Aztec Empire)

Early Modern English (Shakespearean English)

Galician-Portuguese

Middle English (Chaucer English)

Middle Persian/Pahlavi

Old English

Old French

Old Spanish

Old Tagalog (+ Baybayin)

Ottoman Turkish

Constructed:

Anglish (experiment to create a purely Anglo-Saxon English)

Esperanto

Interlingua

Láadan (a “feminist language”)

Lingua Franca Nova

Lingwa de Planeta

Lobjan

Toki Pona (a minimalist language)

Wenedyk (what if the Romans had occupied Poland?)

Cultural interests?

Maybe you just want to connect to another culture. A language is often the portal to a culture and are great for broadening your horizons! The world is full of rich cultures; learning the language helps you navigate a culture and appreciate it more fully.

Here are some popular languages and what they are “famous for”:

Cantonese: film

French: culinary arts, film, literature, music, philosophy, tv programs, a prestige language for a long time so lots of historical media, spoken in many countries (especially in Africa)

German: film, literature, philosophy, tv programs, spoken in several Central European countries

Italian: architecture, art history, catholicism (Vatican city!), culinary arts, design, fashion, film, music, opera

Mandarin: culinary arts, literature, music, poetry, tv programs

Japanese: anime, culinary arts, film, manga, music, video games, the longtime isolation of the country has developed a culture that many find interesting, a comparatively large internet presence

Korean: tv dramas, music, film

Portuguese: film, internet culture, music, poetry

Russian: literature, philosophy, spoken in the Eastern Bloc or former-Soviet countries, internet culture

Spanish: film, literature, music, spoken in many countries in the Americas

Swedish: music, tv, film, sometimes thought of as a “buy one, get two free” deal along with Norwegian & Danish

Religious & liturgical languages:

Avestan (Zoroastrianism)

Biblical Hebrew (language of the Tanakh, Old Testament)

Church Slavonic (Eastern Orthodox churches)

Classical Arabic (Islam)

Coptic (Coptic Orthodox Church)

Ecclesiastical Latin (Catholic Church)

Ge’ez (Ethiopian Orthodox Church)

Iyaric (Rastafari movement)

Koine Greek (language of the New Testament)

Mishnaic Hebrew (language of the Talmud)

Pali (language of some Hindu texts and Theravada Buddhism)

Sanskrit (Hinduism)

Syriac (Syriac Orthodox Church, Maronite Church, Church of the East)

Reconnecting with family?

If your immediate family speaks a language that you don’t or if you are a heritage speaker that has been disconnected, then the choice is obvious! If not, you might have to do some family tree digging, and maybe you might find something that makes you feel more connected to your family. Maybe you come from an immigrant community that has an associated immigration or contact language! Or maybe there is a branch of the family that speaks/spoke another language entirely.

Immigrant & Diaspora languages:

Arbëresh (Albanians in Italy)

Arvanitika (Albanians in Greece)

Brazilian German

Canadian Gaelic (Scottish Gaelic in Canada)

Canadian Ukrainian (Ukrainians in Canada)

Caribbean Hindustani (Indian communities in the Caribbean)

Chipilo Venetian (Venetians in Mexico)

Griko (Greeks in Italy)

Hutterite German (German spoken by Hutterite settlers of Canada/US)

Fiji Hindi (Indians in Fiji)

Louisiana French (Cajuns) 

Patagonian Welsh (Welsh in Argentina)

Pennsylvania Dutch (High German spoken by early settlers of Canada/ the US)

Plaudietsch (German spoken by Mennonites)

Talian (Venetian in Brazilian)

Texas Silesian (Poles in the US)

Click here for a list of languages of the African diaspora (there are too many for this post!). 

If you are Jewish, maybe look into the language of your particular diaspora community ( * indicates the language is extinct or moribund - no native speakers or only elderly speakers):

Bukhori (Bukharan Jews)

Hebrew

Italkian (Italian Jews) *

Judeo-Arabic (MENA Jews)

Judeo-Aramaic

Judeo-Malayalam *

Judeo-Marathi

Judeo-Persian

Juhuri (Jews of the Caucasus)

Karaim (Crimean Karaites) *

Kivruli (Georgian Jews)

Krymchak (Krymchaks) *

Ladino (Sephardi)

Lusitanic (Portuguese Jews) *

Shuadit (French Jewish Occitan) *

Yevanic (Romaniotes)*

Yiddish (Ashkenazi)

Finding a job?

Try looking around for what languages are in demand in your field. Most often, competency in a relevant makes you very competitive for positions. English is in demand pretty much anywhere. Here are some other suggestions based on industry (from what I know!):

Business (General): Arabic, French, German, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish

Design: Italian (especially furniture)

Economics: Arabic, German

Education: French, Spanish

Energy: Arabic, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish

Engineering: German, Russian

Finance & Investment: French, Cantonese, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish

International Orgs. & Diplomacy (NATO, UN, etc.): Arabic, French, Mandarin, Persian, Russian, Spanish

Medicine: German, Latin, Sign Languages, Spanish

Military: Arabic, Dari, French, Indonesian, Korean, Kurdish, Mandarin, Pashto, Persian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Urdu

Programming: German, Japanese

Sales & Marketing: French, German, Japanese, Portuguese

Service (General): French, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Sign Languages, Spanish

Scientific Research (General): German, Japanese, Russian

Tourism: French, Japanese, Mandarin, Sign Languages, Spanish

Translation: Arabic, Russian, Sign Languages

Other special interests?

Learning a language just because is a perfectly valid reason as well! Maybe you are really into a piece of media that has it’s own conlang! 

Fictional:

Atlantean (Atlantis: The Lost Empire)

Dothraki (Game of Thrones)

Elvish (Lord of the Rings)

Gallifreyan (Doctor Who)

High Valyrian (Game of Thrones)

Klingon (Star Trek)

Nadsat (A Clockwork Orange)

Na’vi (Avatar)

Newspeak (1984)

Trigedasleng (The 100)

Vulcan (Star Trek)

Or if you just like to learn languages, take a look maybe at languages that have lots of speakers but not usually popular among the language-learning community:

Arabic

Bengali

Cantonese

Hindi

Javanese

Hausa

Indonesian

Malay

Pashto

Persian

Polish

Punjabi

Swahili

Tamil

Telugu

Thai

Turkish

Urdu

Vietnamese

Yoruba

If you have still are having trouble, consider the following:

What languages do you already speak?

How many and which languages you already speak will have a huge impact on the ease of learning. 

If you are shy about speaking with natives, you might want to look at languages with similar consonant/vowel sounds. Similarity between languages’ grammars and vocabularies can also help speed up the process. Several families are famous for this such as the Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Romanian), North Germanic languages (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish) or East Slavic languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian). If you are a native English speaker, check out the FSI’s ranking of language difficulty for the approximate amount of hours you’ll need to put into different languages.

You could also take a look at languages’ writing systems to make things easier or for an added challenge.

Another thing to remember is that the languages you already speak will have a huge impact on what resources are available to you. This is especially true with minority languages, as resources are more frequently published in the dominant language of that area. For example, most Ainu resources are in Japanese, most Nheengatu resources are in Portuguese, and most Nahuatl resources are in Spanish.

What are your life circumstances?

Where you live with influence you language studies too! Local universities will often offer resources (or you could even enroll in classes) for specific languages, usually the “big” ones and a few region-specific languages.

Also consider if what communities area near you. Is there a vibrant Deaf community near you that offers classes? Is there a Vietnamese neighborhood you regularly interact with? Sometimes all it takes is someone to understand you in your own language to make your day! Consider what languages you could realistically use in your own day-to-day. If you don’t know where to start, try checking to see if there are any language/cultural meetups in your town!

How much time can you realistically put into your studies? Do you have a fluency goal you want to meet? If you are pressed for time, consider picking up a language similar to ones you already know or maintaining your other languages rather than taking on a new one.

Please remember when choosing a language for study to always respect the feelings and opinions of native speakers/communities, particularly with endangered or minoritized languages. Language is often closely tied to identity, and some communities are “closed” to outsiders. A notable examples are Hopi, several Romani languages, many Aboriginal Australian languages and some Jewish languages. If you are considering a minoritized language, please closely examine your motivations for doing so, as well as do a little research into what is the community consensus on outsiders learning the language. 

[bookenders]

I don't know how I just realized you were having this celebration, friend! but congratulations! being one of your followers has been such an incredible thing, I love seeing the things that you come up with, and adore your characters! could I get a url based drabble?

[Help me celebrate 800!]

@abalonetea! Friend! Thank you so, so much! 💜 Having you as a follower has been equally incredible!

For you, a lovely little drabble. 

Things I was thinking of while writing it: MBMBaM, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, going to grad students’ office hours in the basements of the humanities buildings, and Tolkien-style linguistics!

Sitting at his desk in the pipe-ridden basement office, Alistair carefully set his still steaming cup of tea next to a mug full of pens and adjusted his glasses. Before him, covering the entire length of the desk, was a very old map of a very secret place.

The lost land was not so much a missing jewel as a page torn from an old book. One that, once found, will complete the story, not be the story itself. One piece of information does not a mythos make.

Abalone, Land of the Lonely Tribes. Ab-, prefix, meaning “away from,” and root word alone, from the Old English “ana,” “unaccompanied, all by oneself.”  Or, more literally, “wholly oneself.” And that’s it, isn’t it? A land untouched by outside influence, hidden beyond the mists all these years. No interaction with anyone else, no outside influence - just a land, living on its own, wholly itself and no other. 

It’s discovery had been Alistair’s dream since he first learned to read a map’s key. Once he started reading about it, he was never seen without a book in his hands, even at the dinner table, no matter what his parents threatened him with to put it down. The habit turned into a virtue once he was accepted to university. And now, little 9 year old Alistair, the child who checked out Latin books from the library to teach himself the language, would be absolutely screaming with joy and excitement.

It took ten years of sifting through dusty library stacks, fighting tooth and nail for funding, traveling around the world with nothing but a change of socks and a toothbrush to talk to people whose languages he didn’t know, being sequestered in basement after basement with the excuse of ‘no offices available sorry,’ and defending his ‘unfounded’ research to men who thought they were better than everyone else because of a piece of paper, but today was the day.

He’d come across a stray note in the margins of an old poetry book from an author whose name he would have to write down as soon as he averted this elation-induced panic attack, and traced it’s origin to a woman who had written not one, but two whole books about the true origins of the Atlantis myth. Apparently, over time, the name’s etymology went through some confusing translation phases and ended up in the Old English borrow word soup. In the bibliography of the second book, he found a title that caught his eye. 

Unfortunately, it was only available in India. So he spent two days learning specific phrases in Hindi and Urdu before spending half his meager funding on a one way plane ticket to a city he’d never heard of. That source led him to a phone call with the head curator at The British Museum, who was not amused by his request to plunder their archives looking for a big unknown something. 

Nothing a few favors for the security guards and interns couldn’t fix, however. Which cost him the rest of that semester’s grant funds. But that didn’t matter. Because inside a sealed wooden crate beneath an enormous coffin full of tattered shoes, he found it.

Oh, gods.

It was exactly as the Atlantis woman had described it. Or, rather, exactly as the people who discovered the map in the 1600s described it. Old and worn yes, and yellow-brown at the edges and around some of the ink blots, but surprisingly well preserved. The ink hadn’t even run or bled at all. It was a true miracle find. If only it were labeled.

All that was left was to actually find the region on said map that held Abalone.Left hand gripping the compass, right hand holding his place in the weathered explorer’s logbook, Alistair knew he was close. Two more coordinates to try, one more triangulation to calculate, and-

There. Right there.

On the eastern edge of the Coaldim Mountain range, just south of the Infinite Lake, in the small patch of flat land he had thought was a grove. 

He found it.   

Abalone.

He had gotten so close, closer than anyone in history. This was his life’s work, his ultimate achievement, the very thing that would elevate him to the third floor windowed offices.

In his joyous haste to celebrate his monumental academic achievement in his teeny tiny basement office, his arm swung a smidge too wide and nudged the mug full of pens on his desk. Alistair watched, eyes bugging out in panic, as the mug wobbled around and around and around before tipping ever so slightly one way, then bobbing the other, until finally giving in to gravity’s cruel intentions and spilling pens all over the map. His heart was in his throat, beating loud enough to rattle the pipes behind and overhead.

The handle of the mug twisted, caught the edge of the tea saucer, and, like a circus man paid peanuts to launch his friend up up and away via see-saw, threw the full, steaming cup into the air. It turned over once, gravity continuing to play tricks on poor Alistair by keeping the liquid nestled inside the cup’s curve, before landing upside down with a flourish of tea in a calming, chamomile-scented wave settling on the parchment sand.

The map of a landlocked region was now an ocean. The very old, very rare, very fragile map on loan from The British Museum.

With the future of his career so close, yet now so, so far out of reach, Alistair only had one regretful thought fall out of his mind.

“Aw, beans…”

I guess Abalone will have to remain away from everyone and wholly itself for a little longer. 🤷🏻‍♀️

There’s a really dumb subtle pun in here, too. 

Spilling tea ➡ spill the tea ➡ reveal information, but I inverted it. Ohoho!

**********

Want more original fiction?  Take a gander at my original writing tag and my short stories tag!

For writing advice and observations, check out my advice tag.

Want info on my WIPs? Have a look-see at me WIP page!

Do you like the way I put words together? Consider buying me a Ko-Fi! (Link in my blog description!)

Want to be added to my original fiction tag or my WIP tags? Let me know! 😊

Originals Tag List: @piratequeenofpixies, @quilloftheclouds, @snickertoodles, @carmenwrites, @purpleshadows1989, @ofvisitorsthefairest, @theevolutionofledarose, @kriss-the-writing-nerd, @waterfallwritings

[dweemeister]

Pyaasa (1957, India)

When a print of Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa arrived at the Mumbai offices of Ultra Media & Entertainment (a film distribution and production company), the incomplete negative had almost completely melted. One of the most popular and acclaimed landmarks of Hindi cinema (“Bollywood” to many of you) needed immediate restoration. Several months of clean-up ensued, and the restorationists submitted the newly-cleaned print to the 2015 Venice International Film Festival. Pyaasa now has a second life for cinephiles who want to explore more of Bollywood – although, for the very fact that Pyaasa feels like a socially and thematically subversive work for its time, it is not recommended for beginners. As Guru Dutt’s first film after starring in and directing Mr. & Mrs. ‘55 (1955), Pyaasa is a magnificent feat of artistry and certainly Dutt’s most cinematic movie that he had made by that juncture in his career.

Vijay (Dutt) is a struggling poet uninterested in composing the treacly love poems that publishers and the public are demanding. “You call this gibberish ‘poetry?’” asks one prospective publisher, “You must write poems about love.” Against the wishes of his mother (Leela Mishra), he avoids living at home, lest he subject to the demeaning insults from his brothers. One evening, Vijay is wandering the streets when he hears a prostitute named Gulabo (Waheeda Rehman) singing his poetry. He follows, but she pushes him away when she realizes he has no money. Gulabo will, after reading a paper dropped from Vijay’s pocket, deduce that the person she just banished is the poet whose works she is enamored with. Further bitterness and disappointment follow Vijay when he learns his ex-girlfriend Meena (Mala Sinha) has married a hotshot publisher, Mr. Ghosh (Rehman; no relation to Waheeda Rehman). Vijay will begin work for Ghosh as a servant, leading to a finale flushed with bitter lyricism. The film also stars Johnny Walker as Abdul Sattar, a massage oil salesman who serves as comic relief.

Having gone through two previous Guru Dutt films in chronological order, my initial experiences with the Bollywood superstar included the swashbuckling spectacle of Baaz (1953) and the social satire of Mr. & Mrs. ‘55 (1955). Those two films allowed me to see the trajectory of Dutt’s directorial and developing aesthetic senses. Thematically, there is little in those previous films that could have prepared me – or frequent moviegoers in India in 1957, really – for what Pyaasa brings. The film is primarily capturing the travails of a struggling poet who composes poetry unmarketable to the masses. His words tell not of sweeping romances or witticisms, but commentaries on how cruel and destitute the world can be – heartbreak, injustice. Some of his poetry is social protest; these words seeping into the film’s soundtrack as lyrics (more on this later). For Vijay, his poetry serves to cleanse his soul of cynicism; anyone who purports to enjoy his poetry is celebrated, but he is not focused on numbers and mass popularity (although a decent paycheck might help). Yet there are still moments of the romantic in Vijay, at least from the past. In a flashback from his college days just over twenty minutes in – this scene is poorly edited, and it was not until several minutes afterwards did I realize it was a flashback – he recites this:

When I walk, even my shadow lags behind. When you walk, the universe keeps pace. When I stop, clouds of misery gather. When you stop, spring’s radiance is outshone.

That is the extent we ever hear of Vijay’s romantic poetry. 1950s Bollywood films certainly approached topics of materialism, but none to the extent and serrated cutting edge of Pyaasa. Pyaasa never reaches Satyajit Ray-levels of despondent, soul-crushing resolutions; however, this movie is more willing than most working in Hindi-language cinema at the time to avoid a glossy or compromised ending. Credit to Dutt for overruling screenwriter Abrar Alvi – who lobbied for a compromised ending – for the film’s fearless final twenty minutes. Perhaps Vijay’s decisions in the closing stages are not the most enlightened or practical, but make sense given the character’s tenacity and Dutt’s desire for an unconventional finish.

Most remarkable about Alvi’s screenplay to Pyaasa is how Gulabo is treated. No matter where movies were produced in the 1950s – the United States, Europe, across Asia, and elsewhere – the depiction of prostitutes and sex workers was a lot to be desired. As great as the following two movies both released in 1957 are, Pyaasa treats Gulabo with more dignity than Nights of Cabiria (a film that, upon seeing it six years ago, helped me recognize some personally regressive attitudes towards sex workers and learn more about the topic) does with its titular character. The tendency, even now, is to morally punish a sex worker character in a film, to demean them for their sexual expression, or to portray them as tragic figures suffering through unimaginable conditions of abuse or poverty. None of these apply to Gulabo – always in control of her situation, comprehending almost fully what she wants most in life, and subordinate to no one. Her actions throughout Pyaasa are out of love for Vijay and Vijay’s work, but there is no sense of “belonging” to a man or a romantic ideal of fixing a broken soul. A broken Vijay does not deserve the familial, financial, and mental turmoil that he is struggling through, so Gulabo selflessly helps Vijay from the desperate depths of his own mind.

In a twist, Dutt and Alvi – in a certain way of looking at it without spoiling the film – take the main character out of the film about a half-hour before the conclusion. We see Vijay’s brothers attempting to soothe their pain over their mother’s recent death (unbeknownst to Vijay) with illicit payments from Ghosh. Ghosh – a publishing executive seeking to expunge any inconveniences of his pocketbook or his twisted conscience, has a dastardly plot to help only himself. Vijay, though separated from the narrative for several resolving scenes of Pyaasa, is disgusted with what he has seen and heard from his family, his employer, and probably countless others in the past. In the film’s final musical number, Vijay recites/sings:

This world of palaces, of kingdoms, this world of power, The enemies of humanity, this world of rituals, These men who crave wealth as their way of life, For what will it profit a man if he gains the world?

The returns diminish; a desire to acquire more feeds upon itself, destroying the moral groundings of all. Though Guru Dutt and Abrar Alvi probably did not have Buddhism on their minds, Vijay’s answer – articulated with the light illuminating his figure while facing the camera – to all he has seen is a weary enlightenment. In these final scenes, Vijay appears as if he has ascended to a higher plane of existence, knowledge, and perhaps spirituality.

Cinematographer V.K. Murthy (a Dutt regular, having shot Mr. & Mrs. ‘55 and 1959′s Kaagaz Ke Phool) improves upon his previous collaborations with Dutt here. Murthy is the most important person that makes Pyaasa – by some distance – the most aesthetically enthralling movie that Dutt had directed by this point. Whether dealing with flashbacks, fantasies, or reality (or even surrealistic touches to reality, which is something that is unexpected, but contributes to the feeling Vijay is not entirely present in the corporeal world), Murthy provides gorgeous deeply-staged shots with dollied close-ups that, in less-assured hands, might come off as corny but instead heighten the dramatic stakes. But Murthy is not helped by editor Y.G. Chawhan, who handles scene transitions poorly and bungles the first hour’s flashback by not properly announcing that it is a flashback.

As an actor, this is Dutt’s most trying performance. After playing romantic leads Mr. & Mrs. ‘55 and Baaz, this performance in Pyaasa is worlds apart from his past. By the midpoint, Vijay sees nothing but the corruption of the world and is doing little to improve his situation. Vijay is Dutt’s least dynamic protagonist I have encountered thus far, but that does not devalue his character’s suffering and that inimitable way Dutt broods and listens or observes to other characters. Dutt’s character suffers silently; his performance is never labored, but enriched by his naturalistic acting. Waheeda Rehman, appearing in one of her first films as a leading actress (the role of Gulabo was originally intended for Madhubala), is stunning – her charm prevents Pyaasa’s existential and anti-materialistic themes from landing with a thud that might have excited some European auteurs at the time. Her appearance is undermined by the lengthy flashback that takes her out of the film’s first hour after one hell of an introduction.

Pyaasa includes a spellbinding musical score from composer S.D. Burman and lyricist Sahir Ludhiyanvi. But considering that the songs are built around Vijay’s poetry and the plot concerns his struggles, Burman’s music is secondary to Ludihyanvi’s lyrics – Ludihyanvi himself was primarily a poet who wrote in Hindi and Urdu. There are fewer musically spellbinding back-and-forths like “Udhar Tum Haseen Ho” in Mr. & Mrs. ‘55. For Pyaasa, poetry recital serves as musical performance for the film’s most interesting songs. Waheeda Rehman’s one hell of an introduction in “Jane Kya Tune Kahi” – where Gulabo (Waheeda Rehman was dubbed by Geeta Dutt) recites Vijay’s poetry back to him without knowing the fellow in front of her was the author – sets everything forward. This alluring misunderstanding of a song introduces the romantic tensions early, eliminating any annoying teases that might distract from the film’s larger themes. The climactic “Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye To” defines the film, with its stunning, poetic lyrics, and is as context-dependent as original songs can be in cinema. Layers of meaning also sung earlier in “Jane Woh Kaise Log The” (behind the aforementioned song, it serves as the second-best poetry recital as performance) are expanded upon.

Less acclaimed from Bollywood fans but appealing to yours truly (I am grounded in Western musicals) is a fantasy sequence within a flashback: “Hum Aapki Aankhon Mein”. Sung by Vijay (Mohammad Rafi dubbing Guru Dutt) and Meena (Geeta Dutt dubbing from Mala Sinha), it is a song of budding love in a setting only possible in dreams. Or a soundstage, I guess. With maybe too many smoke machines concealing their feet, Vijay and Meena dance together with a gracefulness not out of place in any place that values the transporting nature of musicals. Johnny Walker (dubbed by Rafi), who is weirdly adorable in his comic relief roles, is endearing in “Sar Jo Tera Chakraye” while trying to sell his oil massages to passers-by. With the exception of these two, almost the entire Burman-Ludhiyanvi score draws its operatic-like drama from the plot – so make sure to concentrate a bit more on the lyrics than usual for Hindi-language movies.

For some cinephiles who have not yet ventured into Bollywood but have seen Bengali films (probably Satyajit Ray’s movies), Pyaasa might be an ideal point of entry for its combination of Bollywood escapism and Bengali-inspired parallel cinema. For everyone else, Pyaasa will be an anomalous, but memorable entry into the Hindi cinema canon.

Pyaasa translates to “thirsty” in English. That might not be the most appealing title, but it reflects Vijay’s craving for a righteous, altruistic world that just does not exist. How much of Vijay was a reflection of Guru Dutt is a point of speculation – Dutt, an advocate of social justice, seems to have enjoyed more creative freedom in Pyaasa that was not apparent in his previous films. His political voice is more pronounced here than ever before, showcasing an artist displaying a mature understanding of the medium he wields. At thirty-two years of age the year of the film’s release, Guru Dutt shows a confidence that belies his youth. It results perhaps not in a call to action, but to show us a response by a man so completely dedicated to his craft.

My rating: 9.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[razor3bareek]

Attitude Shayari in Hindi

Mujhe mat dikhao yeh dhaar apni talwaar ki

Maine mehaz alfazon se takht paltein hain

मुझे मत दिखाओ ये धार अपनी तलवार की, 

मैंने महज़ अल्फ़ाज़ों से तख़्त पलटे हैं। 

Kuch aise bhi toofan hain andar mere

jo khamosh bohot hain 

क��छ ऐसे भी तूफ़ान हैं अन्दर मेरे, 

जो खामोश बोहोत हैं

Make sure you stumble across the comment box, and yes, share the post

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तेरी पहचान महज़ मेरी बर्बादी है, तेरी अपनी कोई पहचान नहीं । Living life thousand NAZMs at a time. DM for collaborations

Ab ke jo laut aayi tum toh chain cheen lunga tumha

EID MUBARAK ✨ READ FULL POEM ON BLOG, VIDEO AVAI

HAPPY BROTHER'S DAY. I am not mentioning each one

And then in her profound eyes I saw love of a lif

I love how the song "yaar ni mileya" travels from

taleem = education Adavat = enmity taleem-e-adava

I never felt anything of that intensity ever again

Did you ever fall in love again? Was it easy? Was

Ek kaam kardo, nahi actually do, ek toh post bata

Ramadan Mubarak 🙌 Taleem bhi paayi saath hi hu

"Ramzano mein main bhookha reh liya karta tha saat

LINK TO FULL VIDEO IN BIO I recently came across

"लगा के आग शहर को, ये

Ramzan Mubarak ✨ . . . . . Roti kum padne par hu

RAMZAN MUBARAK ✨ . . . . . Roze poore chal rahe

"Shayad pata tha usse, hum juda ho jaenge" I reme

Do you guys think, being in a relationship is the

WHICH CHILDHOOD SONG STILL TAKES YOU BACK YEARS DO

LINK TO FULL VIDEO IS IN BIO 🙈 lekin haamn yaa

I recently came across boys locker room controvers

Kabhi Krishn toh kabhi raam hu main 🔱✨ . . It

"Kon Kehta hai Sabak Sirf Kitabo se Sikhi jaati h

Kaise ho sab? toh ek video dala hai "boys locker

Ek sher, apni hi azmat mein 🔱✨ . . . . . Mera

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[mredlich21]

I’ve been tossing around the idea of doing a post that tries to put Bahubali 2‘s all India success into context.  And then both T.J Stevens and Cerusee indicated that they would be interested, so the poor Samarth-Mukherjee family has to wait another week for me to finish them, because I want to try a brief history of “regional” films.

Non-Usual Disclaimer: Hindi film is my area, I know all kinds of things about Hindi film, but I only have the tiniest knowledge of non-Hindi films from India.  So I will do my best, but forgive me if I miss things.

  Indian film did start in Bombay, everyone agrees on that.  The actual film is disagreed on, it was either Raja Harischandra in 1913 or Shree Pundalik in 1912.  But either way it was in Bombay where it started.  And then film spread very very rapidly through out the rest of India, with multiple film centres popping up for each language.

And it wasn’t just a matter of different languages.  Because a language isn’t just a language in India.  You might as well say that the only difference between Spain and Sweden is language.

Bengali films tended to be literary, complex social issues and characters and so on.  Marathi films had a kind of hearty earthy comedy.  And the Telugu films were epic historicals.  And so on and so forth.

In the silent era, there was some travel between industries, since it was a simple matter of swapping out intertitles to open up films between language groups.  But there wasn’t as much travel as you would think, audiences liked what they liked, and it wasn’t just about the language the intertitles were in.  It was about the stories being told, familiar stories from childhood, and the architecture, and the character names, and everything else.

(remember my epic Devdas posts?  remake after remake after remake?  Because each audience wanted a version in their own language.  I didn’t even talk about the Telugu version!)

Sure, there were cross-overs.  Bengali to Hindi was a common one in that era, Devdas and Parineeta.  But the cross-overs tended to increase as there was actual mass migrations of ethnicities.  So, after the Bengal famine, more and more Bengali filmmakers moved to Bombay, along with massive groups of refugees, and the Hindi industry shifted to accommodate them.  And there was an influx of Urdu poetry and the creation of the “Muslim Social” genre after Partition, when masses of artists from the Lahore industry, along with more refugees, suddenly found themselves part of the Hindi audience.

(Chaudvin Ka Chand, in Hindi and Urdu, set in Lucknow, and produced and filmed in Bombay)

But, as we all know, the south was something different entirely.  Bengali and Hindi, Urdu and Hindi, dozens of other smaller regional languages and societies had elements in common.  The audience members shifted back and forth across borders, and so did artists.  And a Hindi audience could vaguely follow a Bengali film, the architecture wasn’t that different, neither were the clothes or the religious festivals or any of the rest of it.  It wasn’t the same, I definitely don’t want to say it was the same.  But it was similar.

But the south, that was something different.  Just as Bombay attracted artists from all over the north of India, so did Chennai/Madras start attracting artists from all over the south.  And while the Tamil audience was not the same as the Telugu audience, they were similar.  Much more similar than Tamil and Bengali, say.

I’m not talking about actual film styles here.  Or not only about film styles.  Bengali social dramas with strong female characters share a lot of Venn diagram elements with Tamil social dramas with strong female characters.  But it’s the little things, the kind of pictures on the walls, the colors used in the costumes, the way of doing hair, it’s all just different if it’s not from your home region.

(Two strong 1970s heroines, but one is Tamil and one is Bengali and they look totally different.  In little bitty ways)

And you combine that with the genre differences that are there, and it is all just too different to cross-over.  If you are raised on Telugu historical epics and action films, with heroes wearing lungis and heroines who never wear Salwars, with mustaches on the men and heavy eye-liner on the women, and Bharat Natyam dancing instead of Kathak, than any other kind of film from anywhere else in India just isn’t going to feel “right”.

And so by the 1950s, Indian film had settled down into a nice segmented audience with a nice segmented map.  Tamil films and Telugu films played side by side, each taking one half of the southern regions with the occasional blurry areas that they shared.  Bengali films stayed fairly firm and steady in the East.  And there were the smaller areas, each with their own little personalities, Bhojpuri and Malayalam and all the others.  Tiny hidden gems.

And thinly smeared all over north India, like butter that can’t quite cover the toast, was Hindi.  Every other genre has this strong identity, specific to particular ethnicities, but Hindi kind of doesn’t.  There’s quite a bit of Punjabi in there, and some Marathi, and a touch of Bengali, a little Gujurati, and this that and the other thing.  But it is a rare Hindi film that makes you go “yes!  That is exactly and specifically what it was like to grow up in my hometown!”

(Chashme Baddoor was one of those rare Hindi films that actually felt like it was in a real place, and then of course it got remade as a ridiculous sex farce)

Hindi played down south too, just not as much.  But it did play at least.  If you wanted to, you could see a big release anywhere in India.  Unlike the southern films, which would rarely make it out of the southern half of the country, and even more rarely overseas.

And this was life from, say, 1950 to 1980.  Everyone had their regional language films as a main course, with Hindi as a side dish.  And in most areas in the south, you had your local films as a dessert on top of the Tamil and/or Telugu main course.  Languages like Malayalam had their own industry, but they weren’t bringing out films every single week, if you wanted to go to the movies each Friday, you would primarily be watching Tamil/Telugu and the release in your own language would be a special occasion.  And then there would be Hindi, if there was nothing else, or if there was something really remarkable, you might as well watch it.

And then in the 1980s, things started to shift.  Not artistically at first, but technically.  VHS came in.  Suddenly if you had grown up in Madras and were now living in Delhi for work, you could just rent a movie from home instead of suffering in some Hindi theater.  And if you were living in New York, you no longer had to suffer through some Hollywood film, you could rent a Hindi film from back home too.

(Aw, I’m all sentimental for VHS now!)

Hindi film went from being spread very very thinly all over India to being spread even more thinly all over the world.  The flavor kind of got sucked out of it, you know?  It became truly “Indian film” with no real specific identity.  And I say that as someone who loves Hindi film!  But if I watch it, I might pick up a few words of Hindi and a basic idea of the Ramayana and see Marine Drive in Bombay about a million times.  But I will never really get an Idea of what it is like to live in a village in India, or on the streets of a city, or the political history of the country, or the artistic traditions, or any of the rest of it.

There was a lot of other stuff going on in the 80s too of course.  Amitabh had kind of taken over the industry, with his action films, and the women and children were being driven out of theaters, there was a general artistic decline.  And, this is my personal theory, but I think this artistic decline was self-perpetuating because great art attracts great artists.  If I am a filmmaker in, say, Kerala.  And I am watching amazing films coming out of Bombay in the 1970s, the heyday of Salim-Javed and Yash Chopra and all those other brilliant people.  Then I will think “boy, I want to go to Bombay and work with these people!”.  But if I am that same filmmaker in Kerala in the late 80s and I am watching the current Hindi films, one repetitive chauvinistic action film after another, I am going to want to stay where I am and work with all the other interesting people who are staying in Kerala as well.

(I really need to watch Aalkkoottathil Thaniye again.  Also, this kind of deep character drama is what Kerala was making while Hindi films were cranking out Amitabh movie after Amitabh movie)

And so, in the 1980s, for the first time those regional films started to chip away at the traditionally solid Hindi audience.  Tamil and Telugu hits started making waves in Bombay.  And being remade in Bombay.  Boney Kapoor, that’s how he made his money to start with, going down to Chennai and funding some southern stuff, and then taking those same scripts and remaking them in Bombay for the Bombay audience.  Taking some southern stars along as well.  Sridevi, of course.  Also Mithun Chakraborty.  Kamal Haasan and K. Balachander, on the slightly more artistic side, also made their way north in this era.  And the Hindi industry started running scared.

Look at the old Agneepath, for example.  It was supposed to be a major Amitabh hit.  But not only was Mithunda brought in as a second hero, his character was aggressively southern, a desperate attempt to grasp at the audience that Hindi films could feel slipping away.

  But there was nothing to worry about, really.  It was just a natural shift of the industry.  Hindi films were in an artistic funk, and were confused by the new reality that forced them to fight a bit harder to keep their audience.

And then it all got sorted out in the 1990s.  Hindi films firmed up their domination globally, and started to find their new home in India in the slightly higher priced theaters, making going to the theater an experience again, something that no VHS tape could compete with.  And regional films firmed up their audience as well.  And found their own global presence, I’m sure we have all heard stories of how big Rajnikanth is in Japan.  And obviously Tamil films rule Malaysia with no competition able to break through, and I am sure there are various other older pockets around the world I don’t know about.

This is also the era when the 3 biggest artistic breakthroughs from the south came up to Bombay.  Which kind of proved that the boundaries were firm, I mean, we don’t talk about how Yash Chopra was a Punjabi filmmaker in the same way that we talk about Mani Ratnam as a Tamil director.  Because he went back home, you know?  He made Roja, it was dubbed in Hindi and released all over the country and became a massive hit.  The first film (so far as I know) to do that.  And then Ratnam went back home to Madras and kept working there.  Heck, his production company is called “Madras Talkies”!  And Ram Gopal Verma did the same thing, came up north to make Rangeela, massive hit, and Satya, massive hit, and then kept shuttling back and forth between Hindi and Telugu films, never really landing on one more than the other.  And of course AR Rahman has made his commitments very clear, 3 Tamil films to every one Hindi or English.  Mostly, we know the boundaries are firm because these are called “crossover artists” and their films are “crossover films”.  Which means there must have been a border for them to cross over.

(If you want to know more about Ratnam and Rahman, you can check out my post on them)

And this brings us to the 2000s!  When everything changed again, some more.  Firstly, there was that global audience.  It had just started to spread in the 80s/early 90s.  But by 2000, it was firmly in place.  Hindi films played in mainstream theaters all over the world.  Non-Hindi films were slowly following their lead.  They both started the same way, small community groups renting out church basements and playing reels they’d shipped over through some funky little distributor.  And then slowly getting big enough to rent a theater in a multiplex and sell tickets, and get the reel from a real grown-up distributor that had started investing in Indian film.  And finally getting so big that regular American theaters and distributors were dealing directly with Indian producers.  Only, Hindi films started out like that in the early 90s, and non-Hindi films started out like that about 5-10 years later.  They have been running to catch up ever since and just in the past few years, they finally have. (if you want to know more about the global audience, you can check out my thesis.  And if you want to know more about Hindi film history in general, check out my book)

Let me back up for a second to that 50s-80s era when every language group had its own set audience and Hindi film kind of filled in the gaps.  One huge thing to remember about this era is that there were no “all India hits” of the way we have them now.  Because there were no all India releases.  It was a simple matter of the number of prints made up.  Back then, dozens of prints were a big deal.  Now we are talking about thousands upon thousands of prints.  Bahubali 2 supposedly took up 80% of all screens in India.  I don’t believe that for a second, by the way, but just the fact that the producers feel comfortable making that kind of a lie tells us how big the releases are now.

So when I say “Hindi film filled in the gaps”, what that meant was that some Hindi print that had started out in Bombay and months later slowly made it’s way to Madras would be used to fill in an empty screen in a theater that was mostly playing first run Tamil stuff.  Hindi film didn’t release all at once everywhere it the country and unite the entire audience with one story.  No, it was more that some poor tired print would make it’s way very very slowly over the course of several years from Bombay to Madras to Calcutta to Hyderbad to Delhi, with a little jaunt over to New Jersey, and then maybe Egypt or Jamaica, and finally take its poor sad self over around a tour of the hinterlands of India, with whole reels missing and the sound cutting out and half the audience having already seen it somewhere else but still ready to watch it again.  This was an “all India hit”.  A movie that could play and replay for decades anywhere in the country.  Not a film that released simultaneously in every theater everywhere.  If you are talking about a film like that, arguably the non-Hindi films were more likely to do total coverage of an area.  Just because they weren’t spread so thin.  You could take those same 30 prints and manage to fill every major theater in the region, and every person in the region could watch the same thing opening day.  Or at least opening month.  Unlike Hindi, where those 30 prints would be split between Bombay and Delhi and Calcutta and Chandigarh and a handful of other cities.  And only one or two theaters in those cities.

Now, coming back to the late 90s/early 2000s.  Hindi film all of a sudden had soooooooooooo much money (blah blah, liberalization and industrialization and some other stuff you can read about in my nepotism post).  And it started shifting from the idea of an “all India hit” being a film that could play and replay all over the country as it slowly traveled, to the idea of a hit that released all over India simultaneously and did equally well everywhere.  And then, shortly after, a film that released all over the world and did equally well everywhere.

(Hum Aapke Hain Koun, first film to really crack the NRI market.  By giving them a generalized happy family version of India)

And it worked, for a while.  Because Hindi film had a lot of experience in appealing to everybody.  Like vanilla ice cream.  It’s not necessarily anyone’s favorite, but no one really hates it, you know?

But now Hindi film is beginning to hit another one of those draggy periods of artistic funk.  And it’s lost track of it’s audience again.  India as a whole is getting terribly divided.  It’s the multiplex revolution, theaters that used to be a place where everyone watched together, maybe some in upper and some in lower stalls, but at least all in the same place, are now getting completely segregated.  And Hindi film seems only able to appeal to the multiplex audience.  It’s easier that way.  Once you have gone to an English medium school, and then an international college, and now work for a multi-national corporation, all the rough edges are sort of scraped off and everyone is the same whether you grew up in Bombay or Hyderabad or New York.  And you can all enjoy some movie with an NRI hero living in London, and a heroine who is a fashion designer, and dialogue that is half English and half very high class Hindi.

But no one else can enjoy those movies.  It’s not just that the lower classes in India can’t relate to the characters, the second generation in America can’t either.  Or the negative generation in America.  “Negative” meaning the uncles and aunties and mothers and fathers who are brought over on Visas.  It’s just the middle generation that gets some enjoyment out of the films.  They’ve gone too far, gotten too neutral until they are less vanilla ice cream and more, I don’t know, skim milk.  You still don’t hate it, but you don’t exactly enjoy it.

And thus, the rise of the non-Hindi films!  Because they still have some flavor to them.  And suddenly instead of Hindi films filling in the gaps in other regions, the other regions are filling in the gaps in the traditionally Hindi territories.  Which, now, means London and New York and Sydney along with Bombay and Delhi.

One thing to remember, Bahubali excepted, is that the non-Hindi films still aren’t really breaking out of their regions.  It’s just that the borders of their regions have expanded.  Punjabi immigrants ended up in Canada and Australia, their films play really well there.  Southern immigrants landed in America, Telugu and Tamil films do well here.  Malayalam films do well in Dubai.  But Punjabi doesn’t play in America, Telugu doesn’t play in Canada, and so on.  The Global hit is as much an illusion as the All India hit.

(You see how this is a Punjabi territory for film?)

My interpretation of the current trends, again Bahubali excepted, is that things are bubbling back down to a healthy level.  The future of Hindi films isn’t in Sultan and Bajrangi Bhaijaan, but in Badrinath Ki Dulhania and Dum Laga Ke Haisha.  Hindi films can use their slightly higher degree of gloss and budget and so on to make movies that most people can enjoy.  But they can keep their aim smaller, lower budgets and fewer screens, not trying to please everybody and ending up pleasing nobody.  Go back to being the films that play very very well in some places, and can be more or less enjoyed everywhere, in between people watching their “real” movies.  Whether they are watching their “real” movies in Toronto or Chicago or London or Kochi.

Hindi Film 101 One-Off: Bahubali 2 and the Future and the Past of All India Hits I've been tossing around the idea of doing a post that tries to put Bahubali 2…

[global-news-station]

From Netflix to Hitler, protesters are tapping pop culture and history as they vent their anger against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new citizenship law — and with deft use of India’s beloved acronyms.

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) eases naturalisation for persecuted religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, but not if they are Muslim.

Critics fear it is the precursor to a National Register of Citizens (NRC) that many among India’s often undocumented 200 million Muslims is aimed primarily of making them stateless.

Modi’s government denies this and says the law is a humanitarian move, but it has sparked two weeks of protests that at times have been violent. At least 27 people have been killed.

“NRC is Coming” reads one placard, co-opting the “Winter is Coming” slogan of the smash-hit fantasy series “Game of Thrones”, with Modi’s black and white mugshot in the background.

Also Read: ‘A clear plan for a Muslim genocide in India’

Others inspired by the same fantasy series include “Winter is coming for Modi and Shah”, referring to Home Minister Amit Shah, and “Modi – you are making Cersei look good”, a nod to a “Game of Thrones” villain.

“Netflix and raise hell”, says another, in a spin on the expression “Netflix and chill”.

“Stop trying to make NRC happen!” meanwhile rips off a popular line in Lindsay Lohan movie “Mean Girls”.

– ‘Die like Hitler’ –

Anjali Singh, clutching an “Error 404, Hindu nation not found” placard, said that Modi and his government had  become more aggressive in moving forward with their Hindu agenda.

“So our messaging has also got more explicit and direct,” Singh told AFP.

Slogans like “Long Live the Revolution”, a popular chant of India’s independence struggle against British, echo at many demos, with a rhyming chant of “If you act like Hitler, you will die like Hitler”.

Caricatures of Modi and Shah wearing Nazi uniform and posters of Hitler holding a baby-sized Modi aloft have become a staple as videos and pictures that are viral on social media, as well as of graffiti.

“Everything that happens offline ends up online and we have to have a global appeal in our messaging,” Kiran Malhotra, a student protester in New Delhi, explained to AFP.

Also Read: ‘Wake up before RSS commits genocide of Muslims,’ PM Imran forewarns

“Someone sitting in the US or Europe will not understand the change in India’s citizenship law but comparing Modi with Hitler simplifies it,” Malhotra said, her placard depicting a cartoon Modi with a swastika armband.

Many protesters are also rehashing Indian TV jingles from the 1980s to give a nostalgic touch to the protests, while others are using tambourine beats to sing “Down with Modi” or recite the preamble of India’s constitution.

Other favourites include a Hindi version of US civil rights anthem “We shall overcome”, as well as revolutionary Urdu poems.

“The messaging has to be more explicit and direct now,” Ira Sen, a protester told AFP.

Her poster features independence icon Mahatma Gandhi holding his “My experiments with Truth” autobiography alongside Modi cradling what the drawing depicts as his version, “My experiments with lies”.

– Homs to Hyderabad –

Many people are demonstrating for the first time, drawing inspiration from protests in Hong Kong, Chile, the Arab Spring and against US President Donald Trump’s travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority countries.

“People power can bring change. Democracy and constitution will win, despots will be thrown out,” Meenkshi Roy, an interior designer told AFP, holding a placard “Caesar will go… Rome stays”.

Other placards are topical (“PM 2.0 is worse than PM2.5”, a reference to a measure of pollution in India‘s smog-choked cities) and witty (“I have seen smarter cabinets at IKEA”).

“There is more youthful but aggressive language in slogans and placards. Some of the placards are downright offensive, some mocking and many other are sarcastic,” Steve Rocha, an activist, told AFP.

“This protest has everything –- graphics, words, music, poetry and rage.”

The post Graphics, music, and poetry: protesting Indians get creative to vent anger against Modi appeared first on ARY NEWS.

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