Not about just putting a lipstick on a gorilla

“The intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex” quipped Edgar Wallace in early 1930s. Indeed the “thinking man’s crime writer” found his own immortality within his creation : King Kong. Many lightyears later came Peter Jackson who firmly established the fact that Kong is King. Yes, I just saw “King Kong” this Sunday morning ( Jan 1, 2006) at Inox with the entire family and I am still reeling under the sledgehammer performance put up by “the 8th wonder of the world”. In his inimitable style, Peter Jackson de-positions Steven Spielberg as a jurassic inhabitant of the Special Effects park. Yet the director doesn’t treat computer-graphics wizardry as billions of blue blistering barnacles littering the silver screen. I can visualise the “wide-eyed school kid” alter-ego of the director looming large in all the frames. I take a trip down the memory lane and I vividly remember the dazed state of my mind after watching the 1933 version in a B&W TV set at my mamato dadu’s place at Lake Market. I was a school-kid that time. The gullible soul that I was, I used to believe in a lot of myths and mysteries in those days. Almost of all them got shattered in zillions of pieces over and over again by the time I grew up. Thank you Peter Jackson. For re-assembling some of those broken pieces and giving me back a part of my childhood memories. For transporting me to the “Island of the Day Before” aka Skull Island where characters from Borges’ “The Book of Imaginary beings” tumble out into the open. For making me reinterpret the inner meaning of the line : “It’s the beauty which killed the beast” at this age and time.

Followed the movie with a family dinner at the Calcutta Club. Superb food from Ambar. This time the service was much better. Maybe because there were less of lazy bearers.

Spent a quiet 31st Dec night with my wife watching Ray’s “Days and Nights in the Forest”.

2nd Jan : Took a day off from work. Went to Belur Math to watch the evening aarti. Had a soothing effect on my frayed nerves.Met my dida at her spartan Galiff Street flat. She is a retired college prof but a very interesting person to talk to. Her advancing years ( she is eighty plus now) and her deformed legs notwithstanding, her mind is razor-sharp. In lot many ways, she reminds me of my deceased grand mother which whom I was attached for long. I clicked a picture of her with me. Perhaps a child’s way of snatching a candy made up of memories and tucking it away in some corner.