Digging for Meaning

I intend to write science fiction. Hence I am reading it. Ursula K Le Guin's 'The Left hand of darkness'.  She wrote this in 1969. If she were to write it now, I would think it would be a completely different novel. It is a story set on a cold planet where people do not have one gender. For the most of the time, they are neither male nor female. Once a month, they go in kemmer, a state of being either male or female and desirous of sex. And when they meet an earthling, they think of him as a pervert for being always in kemmer, always male. This perspective though revolutionary, remains the setting and never quite drives the narrative. And that was disappointing for me when i read the book. When i picked up the book, all I knew about the book was this perspective on gender. And it made me really curious of what can happen differently in this world. Instead, I got a story that emphasizes the similarity of the human condition across the planets, across the differ...

I know, it might sound unduly parochial and unaccommodating of minorities perhaps, but why is Sanjay Leela Bhansali stuck on European sensibility? I am not questioning his choice of Goan catholic community as the backdrop for his stories (But even then there aren’t as many white people in Goa who dance the flamingo and wear jackets all the time or wear the Spanish gypsy dresses. In the movie most of the actors are very fair. Hmmm, perhaps it’s the Indian movies prerogative.), but his artistic liberty that is very narrowly defined by a certain romance with European visual culture and obscene opulence. What really bothers is, we don’t have many poetic visionaries creating beautiful cinemas, and the one we have is hopelessly afflicted with myopic obsession with a certain style that robs much from his story telling. Guzaarish is beautiful at times, but then it was actually supposed to be about life’s wonder and an individual’s choice. The beauty s...