Day 4

M

Nothing much happens when you do not know what you are looking for, quite. A city named after Phalke and a student of early Indian cinema. It is a pointless encounter in the realm of logic. Cities are just themselves, the man Phalke is dead and gone, the surviving prints of his films are at the National Film Archives of India.There is no one to encounter here, some relatives, a few generations down, some descendants of his collaborators too. I have to find a way of making that work for me- those few scraps they know of their illustrous descendant, i already know. Then? I was quite in despair today, then N got me this pack of cards, sexy cards, Ravi Varma prints, different prints, on the covers and the hearts and clubs and numbers on the reverse. and N's brief summary of each case. Puruvuras Urvashi: the case of the man who never felt loved enough ( and maybe he was right? i told N. N just shook his head at this excess. he finds every thing about my attempts, excessive. And i admire his precision, these cards, they are Something. I know a smaller voice inside me is whispering- why can I not think this up? another voice is saying- N, i love you your work. N is silent) I laughed at N's Shakuntala: what we call varmala syndrome. Woman only desirous of being in love. she had to live out rejection and survive it and then make sure she never appeared fully in the last chapter- deflected attention to her kid, by putting a lion in his arms, so she could do her own thing while the king watched himself weep tears on seeing the son he had missed out on. ( image: Dushyant reading the Shakuntala Amar Chitra Katha, penultimate page) Last chapter of mills and boon, reserved material. nothing unusual to tell there, kept off the stage. wide lens, child with lion cub in foreground, king behind looking smaller than the image in front. Nala Damayanti? What was that thing about the male nude? fear of the male nude and counting of the leaves? that character speaks in fragments.