The Shining (book) vs. The Shining (movie)

I have taken a huge liking for Stephen King even though I'd be the first citizen of a nation carved out for the most easily scared people on the planet. His writing is extremely immersing. The characters seem very life-like and have all the traits that you'd encounter in a person of flesh and blood. Sadly (or may be not), he writes mostly horror plots. It's absolutely unbelievable how a well-written book affects you.

So I recently read The Shining and though it is not as tightly woven as Salem's Lot or Carrie (the only other Stephen King books which I have read), it did the job. The lives and thoughts of the three Torrances - Jack, Wendy and their son Danny - are penned out quite exhaustively throughout the first four hundred pages. 

As a former alcoholic, Jack's struggle to stay away from alcohol is brought out through his thoughts every time he goes through an extreme emotion. The struggle is intense with his urge on one hand and his family's well-being on the other. He keeps denying to himself that he never had an alcohol problem though history witnesses otherwise. As a school teacher, he has been unfair and even abusive to one of his students. He has even hurt his son in a bout of rage. He keeps thinking that Wendy hasn't forgiven him for this and that her mother keeps conspiring against him. 

Wendy is trying to strike a balance and has married Jack against her mother's wishes. She knows that Jack has a problem but has a doubt inclining towards Jack's well-being. 

I didn't really like Danny's character. He's got an imaginary friend - Tony - who pops up and shows him weird things. Some of them are from the future while the rest of them are too weird. He keeps hallucinating and I felt like turning the pages when he kept having his stupid visions. 

The family moves to a secluded hotel on a mountain top as Jack is appointed to be the caretaker of the hotel during its close-down period of extreme winter. As it happens, the hotel is haunted because of the crimes (Knife-slashing murders! Bath tub drownings!) that have occurred there in the past. The hotel ghosts (collectively called "it") choose Jack to be their weapon of choice and corrupt his mind to the extent of edging him towards killing his family. 

The movie adaptation of The Shining is directed by Stanley Kubrick who is hailed to be one of the greatest movie makers of all time. I tried watching the movie before but the sound and the shock factor was too scary for me to go beyond the first five minutes. 

Having read the book, I mustered up the required courage and watched it all. Though having known the plot spoils a thrilling movie, I think it gave a me an edge over the shock factor and allowed me to sit through even the scariest of scenes instead of watching it with my eyes closed for nine-tenths of the run-time. 

While all movies suffer from the time constraint, one can't help but compare them with the books on which they're based. The Shining (movie) doesn't quite explore the depths of the characters as the background stories are never really brought forward. For example, Jack hitting a school student, subsequently losing his job and being at the mercy of the person who gets him the new job become key shapers of his character. Even the past crimes in the hotel (besides the previous caretaker killing his family) should have been given some screen time. 

Jack Nicholson's delivery of dialogue seems a bit different than the ordinary. There seems to be too much of a dramatic effect imbibed in the way he played the angry scenes. Too many neck movements, too many pauses or too many emphasized words. Something's amiss. I felt that his character was edging towards being a victim of "it" in the book while in the movie it seems like he brought all the badness to himself. A crucial tool for this was how another character (Hallorann) almost gets possessed by "it" but shakes himself out of it. (This is also where the book seems to be a wonderful ode to one of my favourites Edgar Allan Poe taking a leaf out of his The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat and The Masque of the Red Death while the book does not)

Shelley Duvall did a perfect Wendy. She reportedly had an extremely tough time while shooting the movie thanks to Kubrick's eccentricities but the outcome seems just perfect. Her anorexic physique and her weak/confused character is an excellent portrayal of Wendy trying to fight through the circumstances and keep things going. 

I thought Danny in the movie was more irritating than the Danny in the book what with his imaginary friend taking over his body and talking in a funny voice with a dancing finger. I read that the finger dancing bit was thought by the kid himself but all it does is impart a comic sense to the imaginary friend. Can't really blame the kid since this was his first acting stint. 

As expected, there are a few variations from the book and the best one is the hedge maze replacing the hedge animals outside the book. In the book, the hedge animals approaching the characters and the characters getting extremely scared is sort of funny and lowered the scare factor. On the other hand, the hedge maze in the movie had a great effect with the characters running madly through it during the climax. The twin sisters appearing out of nowhere in the movie and asking Danny to play with them are extremely scary! 

I guess heavy music was a characteristic of Kubrick's movies (have seen only one other movie of his - A Clockwork Orange) and it had the necessary effect. The background music while the family rides through the mountains and while the kid's tricycles around are eerie. 

Overall, the movie did a great job of capturing most of the parts of the book. It wins in scaring the watcher but loses out in leaving a lasting impact. 

Obvious India-related allegories in Interstellar

Wherever I go on the internet, I find a few deductions, theories, plot-holes, etc. about the movie 'Interstellar'. Here I present the obvious allegories related to India that occurred to me:

1. Cooper cares for his daughter more than his son: This one's quite obvious to whoever follows Indian politics. The son tries to communicate through his messages but is unable to strike a chord. The daughter needs to rise to save the family party. The movie forebears what is being spoken in hushed voices among the workers - the daughter must rise.

2. Nitrogen: The movie prophesises that Nitrogen level will rise in the earth's atmosphere. We all know how important nitrogen is for plants to survive. (Know more by searching 'Nitrogen fixation'). Break the word 'Nitrogen' in two parts to understand the allegory. Nit-Rogen. Now say is slowly. Knight Rojen. Knight Rajan. Yes. Raghuram Rajan will rise in the future like a knight to save the Indian economy.

3. Eureka!: Was there any need for Murph to throw out all the papers and shout 'Eureka'? Not in the context of the movie. She took a break from all the quantum physics, turned on the TV and ended up shouting, 'Eww Rekha!', a hint to Rekhaji to stop overdoing her makeup and moaning while talking.

4. Mann: You didn't really think that the scientist was named such as a hint towards 'Man' trying to destroy 'Man'. No! This is a clear reference to one of the few good comedians left in India - Bhagwant Mann. The quality of comedy in India has degraded to such a low level that it will destroy mankind.

5. CASE, TARS, KIPP: The robots were so lovable, weren't they? But why such odd names? Their names together form an anagram. Solve it and you have a message towards building unity. CASTE IS A KRAPP or more simply, 'Caste is a crap'. We must look beyond our castes and work towards unity.

6. Wormhole: You enter the wormhole and travel through an amazillion kilohours and kilometres distance in time and space. 'Wormhole' is an obvious hint to 'Varmaala' - the garland of flowers used during weddings. Once you go through the ritual of marriage, you travel so far away from your earlier self that life is just not the same.

7. The time paradox: Who positioned the wormhole near Saturn since 5th dimensions humans were yet to form before Cooper's entry in the black hole? In theory, this is answered by the looping nature of time (as against the linear nature as we now know) as proposed by the B-theory of time. This theory is named after Bollywood. (Believe me. Don't Google.) You watch a movie and the plot takes you back in past when you had watched a similar movie.

8. "We are 'them'": This line relates to two important aspects in India. The first aspect is that of Indian politics in general and Maharashtra politics in particular. You don't know who is who. One day, you think they are the opposition, the next day you think they are constituents of your government. Nobody knows.
The second aspect is that of BCCI and ICC. When a board complains about BCCI to ICC, this is the line that BCCI whispers with an evil grin.

9. Customizing the robots: This one goes deep. The "Honesty setting" scene was only to set questions before us Indians. Will we ever be able to achieve a 100% on this scale?

10. Black Hole: Nobody knows how would anything behave in the Black Hole. This is a hint towards black money. There's no way to know how one would react while dealing with black money. Today you might say that you can get the black money back. Tomorrow, the black money will make you forget what you have said in the past. There are unknown forces here.

[Inspiration: Interstellar: Symbolism in name choices , How Interstellar explains Batman and so on]

RIP Cartoonist Pran

There's something about comic books and train journeys that binds them together. Whenever I travel by train, I try to squeeze in a few minutes to reach the books and comics hawker and grab a few comic books. I do this even when I am carrying my own book to read. When I look back, I think Chacha Chaudhary and his creator Pran are to be thanked for this tiny custom. The bond between train journeys and Chacha Chaudhary comic books seems to be hidden in the perspective that they both offer about the idyllic Indian life.

It's highly possible that the first book outside the curriculum that I laid my hands on was a Chacha Chaudhary comic. I remember the plots being high on simplicity and the language as chaste as textbook Hindi. They were childishly funny and interesting; clearly aimed at younger readers.

Chachaji has no superpower except that his brain works faster than a computer. Most of the stories started off with Chachaji at his home struggling in a friendly tiff with his wife. A police officer would approach Chachaji and ask for his help in solving a tough case. With his brain and his accomplice Sabu's thew, the case would be solved in about four pages. Most of the stories were signed off with a signature "Chalo Sabu," from Chachaji. An extreme show of brainpower came with a footnote: 'Chacha Chaudhary's brain works faster than a computer'. A panel with a volcanic eruption on Jupiter appeared immediately after a panel that depicted Sabu's anger. The footnote said: "Sabu's anger leads to an volcanic eruption on Jupiter". You could tell a bad guy by his name - Baarood Singh, Gobar Singh, Dhamaka Singh, etc. The backgrounds in all the panels were simple with just rectangular blocks for buildings. Homes and offices looked the same except that homes had clothes drying out on their windows. Every action sequence appeared with a sound. Ratatatat for firing of bullets, dhadaam for blasts, kikkkk for kick, bhadaam for a punch and hooo-hoooba when Sabu lifted heavy things. What fun! I guess it was even the pictorial depiction that got me so involved. There was hardly any detailing to the backgrounds. But all areas seemed just as they should be - without any crowd and with open spaces. 

Here are a couple of plots that I remember:

• A dwarfish weightlifter named Piddi challenges people to lift bulldozers. Piddi lifts his bulldozer easily while the other person struggles to even move his bulldozer. Then Chacha Chaudhary finds out that Piddi's bulldozer is made of thermocol while the other bulldozer is made of steel. 
• A customs officer asks Chacha Chaudhary to come to airport as he suspects a possible smuggling of drugs. Chachaji and Sabu are taken near an airplane where passengers (after having gone through security check) are queued up. Chacha's dog Raaket whiffs out the drugs stashed in a huge boil on the forehead of a cancer patient and that's the end of it. 

The only series of books that I remember which was dedicated to one particular villain was the Raka one. This guy is the biggest nemesis of Chacha Chaudhary. I remember he was shrunk, captured in a bottle and thrown down an ocean. But he returned. Then he was sent off to another planet. But he returned (using a couple's satellite who decide to land on that planet and collect some material)! I think currently he's locked up in some cave. This was easily the best set of books in the series.

I remember the first page of the comic that gave a brief profile of the creator. This profile had the exact same words and never changed. It said that he was born in Kasoor which is now in Pakistan. His cartoon strips are in some museum in America. He also holds some Limca record. Back then, he didn't really seem to be a big deal actually. Whenever I looked at his picture, he didn't come across as somebody who'd be into making cartoon sketches himself. Donning a wide smile and a posh suit, he seemed like somebody who owned the company that had hired some hundreds of cartoonists. It was only after the Chach Chaudhary series began airing on TV that I read up about Pran.

To my surprise, he was the force behind it all! The creator! Despite the advancements in animation technology, he used to sketch on paper. Talk about being a purist. I read a couple of his interviews where he talked about starting off in the 1960s as a small time cartoonist with the Shrimatiji series. This series that depicts the daily struggles of an Indian housewife is still published in some magazines. When asked about what made him start Chacha Chaudhary, he talked about creating a character that would appeal to the masses and was distinctly different from the western comic superhero characters like Mandrake, Phantom, etc. As a result, characters like Pinki, Billu, and Raman took form. They too had no special powers except the occasional comic instances in their lives. He wanted Indian cartoonists to be original in their work instead of imitating the works of established cartoonists abroad. He wished for a greater recognition for Indian cartoonists with possibly a museum dedicated to their work.

I heard about the news of Pran's demise this morning and my mind went back to those amazing days when I spent time with my collection of Diamond comics. I read some of them again and again even though I knew what was coming next and in fact, knew the lines by heart. It is thanks to his simple books that the first seeds of reading were sown in me. It was his creativity that had me engrossed in the simplest of tales. With all the short stories bound together in comic books and sweet memories, I am sure Pran has had an influence on what I have turned out to be. It must've been a struggle for him to take his characters from humble magazine strips to such a mass-scale publication when cartoons were hardly recognized by the Indian middle-5class. I am sure there are so many out there thanking him for sticking around. There's immense respect for somebody who creates something that is loved by the masses for half a century. May there be more Prans who drench our souls in the flow of their creativity. May there be immense recognition and reward for them.

It seems like the inner child in the superior power is in desperate need of some lighthearted laughter. Rest in peace, Pran.