Samuel Beckett: The Expelled and Other Novellas

So the thing with Beckett is that he can get really boring. OK, that’s not really fair. He’s trying to do something revolutionary here, you can sense that even if you’re not unnecessarily caught up in his post-war context. I’d only read Waiting for Godot before (I’ve never seen it performed) and, being a play, I’m sure that it lends itself to all sorts of interesting adventures when it’s being staged, the lumber of its existentialist weight transformed into a charged climate of anticipation once it comes alive. The short story is a different matter altogether. The density of modern despair condensed into flat, barren internal monologues is not that much fun, to be honest. I know that one is supposed to see that that is the point but it’s one that put me to sleep.

There are four stories – First Love, The Expelled, The Calmative and The End, each of which seemed to me to follow each other in a non-committal, haphazard fashion even though they were all published years apart. The main character, anomic and nondescript enough to resemble every person in ’50s Western Europe, keeps being rendered homeless at the beginning of each story under various circumstances and sets about trying to resolve some deeper, more relevant crisis which, of course, he doesn’t manage to do by the time the story ends. He is up against mundane difficulties which only emphasise all the inner strife, be it the inability to love meaningfully, as in First Love or the indifference to death, as in The End. Leaden, lean descriptions drift somewhat uncertainly and heighten the greater question marks on belonging, belief, human relationships with other humans, nature and the city. Much like the central character, the world around is unsure and uprooted.

Time is stretched and twisted, much like in Godot, making it form complex patterns through the life of the apparent protagonist, from his early youth to his death. That’s the interesting bit, embedded in the physics of change that the world was then reeling from and exercising unto its lost individuals. But then this very comatose ramble through the urban dystopias and bizarre non-events that have become all too familiar fifty years down the line starts alienating one.

There is some real dry humour lacing the stories though, which is enjoyable. Absurd exchanges, soliloquies and asides run through the four episodes, gravely delivered in mock-morbid ways as if to shoot a knowing look at the reader, a fleeting nod and then back to being dead serious. Lines like, ‘But man is still today, at the age of twenty-five, at the mercy of an erection...’ and ‘A good night’s nightmare and a tin of sardines would restore my sensitivity’ stand out as truly memorable.

I did finish the book but it required effort. It got me thinking about whether some writers, while great because of their incredibly responsible work at a certain point in history, become a lot less pleasurable and don’t hold up as great craftspeople years later.

Before there was 'Gunda': the 'Loha' review

A perfect companion piece to Gunda, Kanti Shah’s Loha offers many of the same deliciously cheap thrills and ghanta-stic giggles. I will maintain that it’s a superior film in terms of character exposition, dialogue and social commentary even, but the pleasure of viewing it is enhanced when followed up with Gunda, as an acceptable alternative to the Godfather trilogy of course. Indeed, Loha seems to be such a labour of love for Mr. Shah that it’s even mentioned fleetingly in its much more famous follow-up. Something like Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, this is a movie that will challenge your mental and visual capacities on multiple levels, remind you how lucky you are to have gotten through the ’90s and make you weep for a Suraj Barjatya box set in your Christmas stocking.

The simple story of two good men, Shankar (Dharmendra) and Arjun (Mithun Da), who fight against the gangs of Mumbai, there are a number of reasons why Loha truly stands out as a stalwart piece of cinema, not least because of the aesthetic risks it takes. Prominent among these are the narrative stunts it pulls out of Antonioni’s arse and the revolutionary cuts Mr. Shah uses to move the action from one scene to the other. None of that ‘technical mastery’ nonsense, it’s all old style slice ‘n’ dice, from one random extended trashtalk sequence on the Mumbai docks to another, without any clever editing to distract you from the rapes, murders and item songs. Damn right. Coming back to the narrative daredevilry, Mr. Shah has out-Pulp Fictioned Pulp Fiction with the brilliant insertion of *spoiler alert* Govinda and Manisha Koirala into the film, as a para-plot that completely changes the meaning of what’s happening in the main storyline. By having no seeming connection in time and space to the chief plot involving Dharmendra and Mithun Da, the Govinda-Manisha subplot totally upstages the maa-behen-bhai-baap outta Vincent Vega’s bathroom break. SUCK THIS TARANTINO…er…Mr. Shah seems to be saying. He turns the Bollywood storytelling formula on its balding, greasy head. But you have to watch the movie to really get my drift. All I’ll say is: Jeenyus.

Now, thematically, the film tackles stuff similar to Gunda – there’s the usual gangbanging, rhyming, metaphor-drenched dialogues that would make Shakespeare burn his complete works, lewd references to the male anatomy and...uh…oh yes, boob shots. It’s interesting actually, how the sexual, social and political anxieties of pre-’00s India are all resolved by having someone (a) rape someone (b) kill someone or (c) try to rape and/or kill someone. The backstories of the main characters are a little more fleshed out than in Gunda, albeit in delightfully lurid couplets (principal baddie Lukka’s early abuse – ‘din mein boot polish/raat mein tel maalish’) or through musical flashbacks (the haunting strains of Toot Gaya), so we get a better sense of their motivations. There’s also a lot of talk of manliness and manhood as is wont to happen in any film that shows as many middle-aged guys hanging out on the docks, although among the film’s flaws is the lack of explanation of why the docks were chosen as a place of action and why there are always so many guys in the background with nothing to do. Is the jetty, a place where land meets water, a metaphor for the goons’ feeling of alienation and confusion? Or is it just that Mr. Shah was able to shoot there for free when nobody was looking?

To those who decry Mr. Shah’s work as misogynistic: eggs! There are two strong female characters who have a combined screen time of more than 5 whole minutes so STFU. One of them is even a cop. Sure, she gets molested the only time she is on screen for a period longer than a blink, but she does provide the set-up for one of the most memorable entries of the decade, when Mithun Da swaggers in all set to rescue her, “Dekhne mein bewda, bhaagne mein ghoda aur maarne mein hathoda.” Bhai wah. The film goes so far as to negate traditional virgin/whore stereotypes by having the other good girl don a bikini. And this is in 1997 – a pioneer, for sure. There are even prescient mentions of the political insecurities India was facing at the time – the Hindu-Muslim tensions and illegal arms dealerships, brought out by the Shakti Kapoor’s Mustafa, and a blatant criticism of the TADA (though puzzlingly, the act had been scrapped two years prior to the film – a minor error) and corrupt, capricious central government. There’s also a bit about no longer being a ‘Bambai ka bhai’ but a ‘Mumbai ka bhau’ years before the MNS had even finished using the soaps in their box. Bhavishyavaani! A clipped, cool stand-out turn from Ishrat Ali's underachieving, jaded Bad Cop further emphasises the concerns of this foresighted social drama.

The highlight of the film is the angsty vengeance wreaked by black-clad Shankar and Arjun (as against the white-clad Smurfs of Satan, Lukka and co.). Very Batman, then, sans the ridiculous costumes. Watch it for their heartbreaking, appetite-damaging, eye-violating tale of good triumphing over evil. And the semi-pornographic dance sequences that still manage to be less offensive than Sheela ki Jawaani and remind us of a chaster era. Watch it for: “Duplicate ho ya China Gate, shaadi toh main is hi se karoongi.” Oh yeah.