The Beguiling Charm of the Delightfully Fatuous

All of us are children once; so this piece does not seek to portray the child as a monster, but to lend colour to a side in him which is seldom understood, much less studied. Children till the time that they develop an irritably rasping adult-child voice and shoot up suddenly leaving them with big misshapen knobs for knees and a disposition decidedly veering towards the testy, are generally regarded as lovable cherubs. Babies and young children attract a kind of affection, wonder and indulgence which I suppose, we accord to God in some measure.

There is another side to children though – and it is not pretty. One of the iconic (and most violent) films in the Western genre, ‘The Wild Bunch’ opens with a powerful scene. An outlaw gang rides into town past a bunch of children gathered around, observing something with smiling faces and twinkling eyes. The camera shows a couple of hapless scorpions whom the children have evidently trapped and thrown right in the midst of a squirming colony of red ants. We see snatches of this torturous diversion for the kids; the kids are all smiles and subsequently all fun having extracted from this macabre exercise, the kids pile straw on top of the squirming ants and scorpions, and set the insects on fire. This sequence shown as a motif I suspect, of the patina of mindless violence which pervades the movie, is also revealing of how children sometimes seek and derive a pleasure from means which are to say the least, extremely cruel and evil-hearted.

As a child, I was often subdued, meek and quite dull-minded. I stumbled and stuttered my way around adults and kids my own age; I guess, people who knew me a child would have called me ‘colourless’. It was this dullness and absolute uneasiness with most of the stuff in that life I suppose, which gave rise to an extremely violent and perverse streak in me. I was filled with the most blood-thirsty ideas of how to divert my mind, and animals invariably, were the easy targets. Animals and I confess, some of the people around me too – typically the servants and their children. If I saw an insect, I would chase it around till I cornered it and squashed it; if there was any pretty trinket which my younger sister possessed, I couldn’t wait to forcibly snatch it from her and hide it, even break the thing sometimes. As I grew up and learnt to observe others, I saw so many other children who had that same violent, senseless streak – anything pretty belonging to someone  else had to be defaced, any kid younger had to be bullied and any creature small enough had to be terrorized. And kids, as the opening of ‘The Wild Bunch’ suggests, may be most brutal when they are in a mob.

Acclaimed British write Rumer Godden, who possessed such unique insights into people, particularly children says “….children can turn into monsters”. However, classifying children as either strictly belonging to the harmless, lovable stereotype or conforming to the violent and cruel mould, may be wrong and what is more significant, reeks of a mindset extremely opinionated and unlearned. How then should we view and treat children? I found the answer in one of Godden’s stories. (A child is a layer cake, just like an adult but oftentimes with a shining purity which is rarely found elsewhere.) The story is titiled ‘Lily and the Sparrows’; a group of children thoughtlessly kick around a tiny peke dog who was the only companion of a dowdy, lonely spinster, till the poor creature is reduced to a dead, bloody mess. One of the children’s father apologises to the elderly lady saying, “They didn’t mean it. They didn’t know what they was doing. You mustn’t think that. Not bad kids really.” Later the old lady, distraught and extremely grief-struck at the renewed solitariness of her grey life, prays before God saying, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they do.”

In the sensitive, understanding words of the child’s father and in the old lady’s sympathetic prayer beseeching forgiveness, I curiously find redemption for the heartless antics of children and for the angry kid that was me so long ago.

[CPq has explored the theme of playful cruelty among children earlier in this piece about boys and house lizards]

‘Yogi-c’ Bear!

I had the opportunity last week to go to the city zoo. The Guwahati zoo is to say the least, quite large and juxtaposed against the heaving concrete mass of the city just outside its walls, acts as an oasis of green resplendence. I have seen pictures of zoos worldwide, especially in Europe and America where the facilities are immaculately designed and maintained, lawns are manicured, and the zoo enclosures are extremely animal- and viewer-friendly. I remember seeing a programme about a rhino in some zoo in America where the animal was barricaded within metal rods so designed to almost look and feel like bamboo stalks, while at the same time, being strong enough to restrain. It was an African White Rhino and his enclosure was spotlessly clean; even some of the foliage on a trellis beside his enclosure was amazingly life-like but artificial. The animal looked quite happy too. It is with some sense of regret mixed in part with no small measure of pride, that I say that our city zoo is unlike the other zoos I had just talked about. You see, the Guwahati zoo itself rests within a reserve forest which means that for a large part of your trekking within the premises, you do feel as if you are in a forest and not a man-made facility. The topography of the zoo is also quite unique; the terrain is undulating fringed by small hillocks on the northern side, ringed by bamboo thickets in places. The zoo also has natural water-bodies though I confess that they may definitely be better looked-after. The terrain slopes down from north to south with the lower southern side (the part untouched that is) somewhat marshy, where some of the water-loving animals are kept. As we entered through the shining new gate of the zoo, we were greeted by the loud (almost vulgar-sounding) hoo-hoos of the Hollock Gibbons, and therefrom started a magical 6 hours. I present before you here, the story of one particularly sage Himalayan Black Bear who blessed us with an unique visitation that hot sunny day. He sat on his haunches with all the utmost seriousness of a person contemplating the more subtle stuff in life; he looked so much like the ‘Laughing Buddha’ figurines sold and bought these days that it was decidedly uncanny. Lets call him ‘Yogi’.

About Love: Wille zum Leben or as Schopenhauer may say, “It’s 100% Natural!”

The next time you see Handsome Bob and Plain Jane holding hands and evidently in love, slowly recall the name of Arthur Schopenhauer before you inevitably silently mutter in surprise, “Why her?”. The logical next question is, ‘Who is Arthur Schopenhauer?’ He was one brainy dude, a philosopher actually, and rather a crusty one as history announces, but a thinker known for a perceptual clarity which has attracted and influenced many other thinkers.Now Schopenhauer or let’s call him Mr. S, says that when two people fall in love, the real purpose is…um, procreation and furtherance of the species.

Mr. S' work in ‘The World as Will and Representation’ proclaims that all human effort is designed towards furthering a will (or desires in common parlance), which tragically is destined to be unsatisfied. This discontentment later leads to pain and suffering. Here’s what Mr.S says about love.

• Mr. S calls love ‘wille zum leben’ or ‘will to live’. The romantic condition is by extension of this ‘will’, just as inevitable as feeling hungry or thirsty.
• Nature succeeds in pulling wool over lovers’ eyes by deceiving them into thinking that the love and companionship of their mates are essential for their lives’ happiness. When in fact as Mr. S says, it is not so…you’ll be unhappy with or without your loved one. Yes, love as Mr. S puts it, is nothing but Nature’s deception.
• Guys look for complementary physical features (mainly) like a sharp nose, nice eyebrows while girls typically look for ruggedness, strength and security. In other words, we search for the most ideal mate so that the offspring from such a union leads to a perfect specimen (imperfect love with perfect result, result here is a baby).
• Mr. S also has a comforting word for people who get dumped – your partner’s rejection is not necessarily a condemnation of you personally; it is just that he/ she has found a better mate who can produce a more perfect specimen. Gee, I don’t how rejected lovers are meant to construe this as comforting.
• Once the baby comes in, Nature’s agenda is fulfilled. The physical attraction now being thoroughly worn down, the two people formerly in love, are destined to spend an unhappy existence together or, just part ways.
• Since we look for complementary mates, short girls will fall in love with tall guys and yada-yada. Hence, the first question in this piece, ‘Why her?’

I feel a natural (that word again!) tendency to dismiss these basifications as hokum but I will not. Empirical evidence is just too strong for casually tossing out whatever Mr. S has to say. Further the interpretation of desires as the root of all disenchantment is a philosophy which has been expounded by far too many sources for it all to be just a single man’s ravings. There is a remarkable congruence between Mr. S’s words and the ascetic teachings of Hinduism and the core beliefs of Buddhism.

The remarkable thing about stuff in life is this – if you think long and deep enough, everything can be reduced to insipid, dull details. There is this wonderful moment in the film Local Hero (1983), when a knowledgeable scientific sort explains the phenomenon of the Aurora Borealis to a layman as ‘high energy protons spilling into the earth’s atmosphere..’ and the wonderstruck guy is just too amazed at the colourful display overheard. It is not important to the guy how the Aurora has been formed, perhaps what is important for him and for us too I guess, is just to be present there in that silvery moonlight when that display occurs. I feel the same way about love.

Looking beyond the colours!

Is animation a film genre or a film technique? In the mind of course, animations are films where the scenes are created by the artist’s hand or the computer.  As the slew of animations past and present amply prove, animated films do not have a fixed stable of settings, neither do they have a predominant mood nor do they follow fixed thematic patterns. Animations today harmoniously nests in a space where they borrow and develop upon elements quintessentially associated with other genres. So, we have a western-style ‘Rango’, a war-themed ‘Grave of the Fireflies’, a sci-fi ‘The Iron Giant’, a fantasy-filled ‘Spirited Away’, the political commentary ‘Persepolis’, a dramatic ‘Mary and Max’, and the list goes on and on.

Defining animated films as those meant for children entertainment is both marginal and erroneous. With major animated productions in recent years with epic settings and advanced technology (notably 3D), animations are no longer the realm of the kids or the kids-at-heart. From the ‘realistic animations’ of Hollywood to the anime toons of Japan to “claymation” techniques, animation films are entertaining and like so many have proved, make for great cinema.