Uproarious Solitude

Reading a book written almost four decades earlier is quite often a frustrating experience. Bad novels remain bad with more dust on their covers, but even good works tend to lose credibility as time makes them look haggard.
This leaves us with very few books that still carry that rare character of mystery to a first time reader. Some call this cult favourites, while if these books touch a broader section of audience, they are hailed great.
One distinguishing trait for a book to be dubbed great is its longevity. If it survives maniacal cold wars of one era, followed by sugar-sweet democracies of another and then the subsequent, bustling market-place of globalisation, it has to be a truly great book.
There have been such works which have survived for decades and no worm has gnawed on them enough to decrease, in any way, their spirit. They, like lifelong celebrities, are not allowed a moment of solitude.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's rip-roaring One Hundred Years of Solitude is one such beauty. Written in the 60s, an era in which world literature rose above the mundane life of English writing, One Hundred... is still fresh for someone who is much younger than the book itself.Along with works like Gunter Grass's Tin Drum and - our own - O.V. Vijayan's Legends of Khasak, Marquez's epic about a bizarre family in an outrageous village called Macondo, is a work that carries the reader to places he wouldn't have dreamt of and introduces characters who are outlandish, yet seem as real as a next door neighbour.
The story (as the age-old lady, Ursula, keeps saying about her life) just goes round and round - from one Aureliano to another, from one Arcadio to another. It does help that Marquez provides us with the family tree of the Buendias, the head of which - Jose Arcadio - finds the enchanted land of Macondo which finds itself surrounded by swamp and sea. The Buendia family grows and grows, as the climate and inhabitants of the village keep changing. If at first a set of intelligent gypsies visit the land with inventions like magnets and ice, in a different era, an English company sets its plant there to the disgust and pleasure of the locals. Wars, babies, science, art, incest and adultery, the village sees, and becomes part of, everything.
Showing an intelligence and imagination of enviable quality, Marquez creates such vibrant characters that it is obvious he has more than an opinion to express, and that the book is as much current affairs as it is magic realism (a term made famous in the literary circle by this book).
The social and political connotations may have been a highlight at the time when One Hundred... was written and to go digging out inferences and decoding metaphors might be a good exercise, but it isn't necessary because the book is too intricately-layered to fall into the category of the ephemeral.
Marquez has provided this book with enough oxygen for it to live and entertain for at least a century. And who knows, even after that it might not be allowed the solitude that runs hauntingly through this brilliant tale.

Rahman Rises

A R Rahman, when he began, and A R Rahman, now, are like two sides of an audio cassette. There are brilliant compositions on either side with a fair sprinkling of uninterested fillers. He has, like a great sportsman would, risen to top form when the stakes were high. When he had to keep his meter ticking with run-of-the-mill fare, he just about managed to get six songs into the soundtrack.
As his career has raised its pitch from film to film, note by note, his estimation of which stake is high and which is not has also changed. So, Shankar, an erstwhile Rahman-regular has looked at options elsewhere. Now, it is the musician who chooses the film he wants to do. However, he has been involved in so many indifferent ventures that one has begun to believe that even he needs time to cool-off, and what better way than to write above-average music for ordinary films. It thus comes as no surprise that he puts in refreshing bytes of sweat and tune for a high-profile project like the Rising after having sleep-walked his way through such bores as Kisna, Boys and Tehzeeb.The fun in listening to Rahman's score in the Rising is that, after his music has adjusted to the Hindi language (thanks mainly to some outstanding lyrics), it has no unnecessary strains of South India in this score. Even when Roja, Rangeela and Bombay were made to wear Northie attire, their music always seemed to come from Adyar.
Rising, Ketan "Mirch Masala" Mehta's magnum-opus, has Aamir Khan. But if he has to justify his star-billing he would have had a lot to do to overwhelm Rahman's score and push into being just a team player. Strangely, the title track should help him do it to some extent.
"Mangal Mangal" rings no less than three times on the volume and every time it has a different sound to it. Rahman would thank his stars that it is Javed Akhtar's words he has threaded into unheard-of tunes. For long, like a good fast bowler who suffers bad slip fielders, Rahman has endured many hopeful, inarticulate poets.He would have rejoiced (subject to his Hindi) like we would when listening to the utterly folksy and lovable voice of Kailash Kher croon, "Koi thut pe hi dhooni ramaye, koi darsan ko jhatpat jaaye". This, as the song seems to describe the pre-struggle days of the devout, takes a rebellious tone in the second version when Kher, again, vaults to a feverish pitch with Akhtar penning appropriately, "Jo seene mein hai jwala behki hui, kabhi pehle hamne dekhi nahi".
In the third and final edition, Kher is joined by another earthly voice from the lungs of Sukhwinder Singh as they record the martyrdom of Mangal Pandey and yes, Akhtar is there to provide the right words yet again."Dekho Dekho samay kya dikhaaye, dekhkar bhi na biswaas aaye", sing the two, narrating a sacrifice.
Such is the force of these three sibling-tracks that one finds it difficult to stop coming back to them. To his credit Rahman has produced a few other tracks which are strong enough to stand on their own feet."Main vari vari" is a tremendous achievement as Kavitha Krishnamurthi and Reena Bharadwaj rediscover the Mujra; especially delightful is the phase where the chorus sings "Main vari vari". It sometimes sounds like "meva rivari, meva rivari" but perhaps that is what adds the delight.
"Holi Re" is the "album ko nazar na lag jaaye" song which is just passable. Aamir Khan semi-sings in this one.
In the other side, sandwiched between two "Mangal Mangal" versions are "Takey Takey" and "Al Maddath". The former is the fun aspect of this album while "Al Maddath" is a quintessential Sufi-style song featuring A R Rahman.Though most of the songs have a wonderful form to them, this album, at least during the initial sessions of listening, is about the three "Mangal Mangal" brothers. In this cycling season, like Armstrong and the rest of the riders, Rising is about "Mangal Mangal" and the rest. And of course, like it has been for most part of the last decade, music in Mumbai is about Rahman and the rest.