Raju

During my recent trip to Corbett National Park, Raju was one of my guides. He took me (and my two hiking companions) on a steep hike behind our campsite. He lived in a house with his mother, wife and children just 5 minutes from the campsite. He talked to us about his walks through the jungle at night, braving his fears. He once encountered a tiger, but the moment passed, and the tiger walked away.

He had excellent vision and spotted a wild elephant walking on the edge of a river bed and the forest miles away. His frank and friendly manner was refreshing, and we felt very comfortable with him. He told us that as soon as children finish school he will send them to the army, as this was a family tradition. He didn't enlist in the army though, because his mother needed him around the house after his father's (a former soldier) death. He was the only other male member of the family.

When we stopped by his house at the end of the hike, he offered us tea. It took a while to come, and it tasted quite odd. My friend immediately asked him how it was made. He said it was powdered milk! He told us that his family believed that if visitors are given milk from his farm cows, it brings bad luck. Ten years ago when some visitors had come, farm milk was offered to them. That night one of their cows was lethally mauled by a wild animal. Since that incident, the family decided never to give home milk to visitors. I was shocked to hear this from an otherwise level-headed and affectionate man. That's the way it goes...

Spaghetti Shiva - A Banana Republic

I was reading the New York Times Book Review and came across a book review of Bananas: How The United Fruit Company Shaped The World. Here's a quote: "The company was, Peter Chapman writes in “Bananas,” his breezy but insightful history of the company, “more powerful than many nation states ... a law unto itself and accustomed to regarding the republics as its private fiefdom.” United Fruit essentially invented not only “the concept and reality of the banana republic,” but also, as Chapman shows, the concept and reality of the modern banana."

Here's Wikipedia's definition of BR: "Banana republic is a pejorative term for a small, often Latin American, Caribbean or African country that is politically unstable, dependent on limited agriculture, and ruled by a small, self-elected, wealthy and corrupt clique.^{[citation needed]} In most cases they have kept the government structures that were modeled after the colonial Spanish ruling clique, with a small, largely leisure class on the top and a large, poorly educated and poorly paid working class of peons. The term was coined by O. Henry, an American humorist and short story writer, in reference to Honduras. "Republic" in his time was often a euphemism for a dictatorship, while "banana" implied an easy reliance on basic agriculture and backwardness in the development of modern industrial technology. Frequently the subject of mockery and humour, and usually presided over by a dictatorial military junta that exaggerates its own power..."

In this context, isn't it odd that the retail store chain we know so well is called Banana Republic? The name suggests that the people who shop at the store are a "wealthy and corrupt clique" (See the Wikipedia definition above). I know I'm being unnecessarily serious, and that maybe Banana Republic is just a cool name, but somehow I feel the reasons the retailers chose that name for their store requires some playful investigation.

Spaghetti Shiva - Mailer and Schama

Creative Non-fiction. What a wonderful phrase! Norman Mailer developed this technique of writing which applies fiction writing techniques to non-fiction. I haven't read any of Mailer's works, but heard this on a NPR radio "obituary" on Mailer who died late last year. His most famous work was The Naked and The Dead, and was married 6 times! He even stabbed his second wife; luckily she didn't die.

Yesterday evening I was watching Simon Schama's (the great art historian) The Power Of Art. I was amazed at the style and production quality of this work. It included features on seminal artists of the western world. The basic structure was to combine dramatized biographical episodes with Schama's commentary on specific works of the artist. At the end of each episode I came away with a wonderful general sense of the artist's life and work and how it changed the direction of art. Schama doesn't get technical and keeps a consistent birds-eye view of the artist's life, while following a carefully selected threads of events. This focus fits the medium of short documentary extremely well.

Caravaggio lived a tortured life, full of brawls, affairs, jail-terms, poverty and murder. He filters his painful life experiences through his paintings mixing amazing beauty with death, very often ruthless and without salvation. With each artist, Schama also comes to important conclusions about art in general. In the case of Caravaggio, Schama notes that realism of death without redemption was a ground-breaking "modern" concept, and in this sense, Caravaggio took western art in a new direction.

Schama also uses well-selected footage to make his points effectively. He connects Picasso's Guernica with footage from the Nazi bombing of this Spanish city that symbolized the Basque people's opposition to fascism. Throughout the documentary images from the war are presented as if in an avant-garde film, creating the world of a nightmare in our minds, which Guernica is.