October 23. 2011
While I was browsing through the morning newspapers in search of any worthwhile reports, Sneha chechi appeared with a short, stocky broom in the front porch of Doctor uncle's house across the street. "Eppo Vannu?" (When did you come?) I asked. She had arrived yesterday. She stays with her in-laws in Kollam. Doctor uncle is having a prayer meeting today evening. As I am typing this, I can hear this chorus of "Unni yesuve kakkaname..." (Baby Jesus save us) rising from their house musically.
Sneha chechi shared her motherly worries about her elder son who is currently in the 7th grade. He is more interested in brands and fancy stuff. She says he can't be blamed for getting distracted since school has become an arena for parents to flash their wealth loaded onto their kids. Mathematics was her primary worry. They have hired an old teacher, who had taught this boy's dad mathematics in school. But ever since the son heard that this old man had struggled with one problem for around an hour at his friend's place, his brand value dramatically dropped. Sneha chechi is considering enlisting the services of her neighbor ("She is a charter account and Brahmin" i.e. must be doubly good at Maths) for the mathematical upliftment.
"The trouble is he makes a lot of careless mistakes," she said. I wondered aloud if the hurry to finish the exam up and never to go back to double checking is something that kids carry over from their baby days relationship with food when parents insist on finishing the meals, completely and promptly. The aggressive glorification of the mythical "natural, effortless genius" and the round the clock marketing of instant gratification have made kids averse to sustained effort, editing, repeating, rechecking and correcting. Only final products are showcased, never the tedious work and perspiration that goes behind the creation. The instant pleasure of finishing an exam fast far outstrips the distant happiness involved in getting good grades later if a few more minutes are spent in double checking one's answers. The youtube video of Piccasso working hard, making numerous corrections and alterations to his paintings must be made mandatory viewing in school.
I suggested that she rebrand the double checking process to make it more appealing for her son.
When I was in the 7th grade, Amma had gone for an extended training to Chennai. In her absence, Achan had taken care of both of us. It was during that period that I shifted to being a morning person. My vivid memory of that time is working out George Ipe Kurien sir's mathematics homework ("in the homework book" as he insisted) under a 60 watt bulb and frequently checking the high windows of our old house's bedroom for morning light. A loud coop-cooping bird which would announce the dawn. Between the two windows hung a portrait of Swami Vivekananda.
My modest googling attempts failed to tell me the name of that coop-cooping bird. It is as large as a crow, brownish-yellow body with black head and black and white streaks on the wing. Any help in identification will be greatly appreciated.
The interest in trivia quizzing, debating and other extra curricular activities were also triggered during that short period of relatively more freedom. I remember it as a brief epoch before "girls" punctured my awareness sphere. Soon after, the chief motivation factor shifted to impressing the fairer sex.
Being home alone was a good opportunity to have a Wilde Sunday. I have been toying with a couple of new drama ideas so reading something classic seemed meditational. In the old, browned Penguin classics edition of Oscar Wilde's plays that we have at home, the first one is Lady Windermere's Fan.
Written in 1891, this was Wilde's first commercial success and marked his shift into comedies. Wikipedia tells me that most of the character names are borrowed from place names in North England where Wilde had stayed to write the play. This was soon after he met Alfred 'Boise' Douglas with whom he would have an affair and then move on to male prostitutes.
In the absence of parents, my food comes from Rema Aunty's place. Breakfast: Idli Sambar.
The subtitle of the play reads "the story of a good woman" without specifying who among the two leading ladies is the good one. Perhaps both are. Set with careful stage directions (including a rather specific note about the play happening between 5pm on a Tuesday and 1:15pm the next day), the play contains numerous Wilde signature epigrams and witty social observations.
Right in the first minute of the play, Lady Windermere refuses to shake hands with Lord Darlington as they are wet because she has been arranging roses. This was taken as a symbol (wrongly, I think) of her character's fastidiousness by some in the medical community who went onto name a disease as Lady Windermere Syndrome.
Through various characters Wilde unleashes a scathing social commentary and lets slip some of his own personal dilemmas.
"Who are the people the world takes seriously? All the dull people one can think of, from the Bishops down to the bores. "
Perhaps reflecting on his own cheating on his wife, he writes: "Because the husband is vile –– should the wife be vile also?" and seeks solace in social aestheticism: "Do you know I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world. Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance. It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious. I take the side of the charming, and you, Lady Windermere, can't help belonging to them."
Trouble in marriage is the main theme of the play, and Wilde is intimately familiar with the issue: "It's a curious thing, Duchess, about the game of marriage –– a game, by the way, that is going out of fashion –– the wives hold all the honours, and invariably lose the odd trick."
"Good heavens! how marriage ruins a man! It's as demoralising as cigarettes, and far more expensive"
"Well, there's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about."
"Reformed, you would be perfectly tedious. That is the worst of women. They always want one to be good. And if we are good, when they meet us, they don't love us at all. They like to find us quite irretrievably bad, and to leave us quite unattractively good."
And observations that are applicable even after 120 years! "It's most dangerous nowadays for a husband to pay any attention to his wife in public. It always makes people think that he beats her when they're alone. The world has grown so suspicious of anything that looks like a happy married life."
"London is full of women who trust their husbands. One can always recognise them. They look so thoroughly unhappy. I am not going to be one of them."
Appi-amma brought lunch: Rice, Chutney, Beetroot 'mezhukupuratti' and vazhathada (banana stem) 'thoran'.
Wilde's cynical wit sparkles throughout in exchanges like these:
LADY WINDERMERE: Are all men bad?
DUCHESS OF BERWICK: Oh, all of them, my dear, all of them, without any exception. And they never grow any better. Men become old, but they never become good.
LADY WINDERMERE: Windermere and I married for love.
DUCHESS OF BERWICK: Yes, we begin like that. It was only Berwick's brutal and incessant threats of suicide that made me accept him at all, and before the year was out, he was running after all kinds of petticoats, every colour, every shape, every material. In fact, before the honeymoon was over, I caught him winking at my maid, a most pretty, respectable girl. I dismissed her at once without a character. "
and
LORD WINDERMERE: What is the difference between scandal and gossip?
CECIL GRAHAM: Oh! gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. Now, I never moralise. A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain. There is nothing in the whole world so unbecoming to a woman as a Nonconformist conscience. And most women know it, I'm glad to say."
And later on he defines cynicism in this immortal exchange:
CECIL GRAHAM: What is a cynic?
(Sitting on the back of the sofa)
LORD DARLINGTON: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
CECIL GRAHAM: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market price of any single thing.
The more famous of the epigrams appear towards the second half of the play: "Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship. "
"Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones."
"Misfortunes one can endure –– they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults –– ah! –– there is the sting of life."
"Wicked women bother one. Good women bore one. That is the only difference between them"
"In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst; the last is a real tragedy!"
"we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
"Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes"
The 'fan' in the title, a birthday present to Lady Windermere from her husband appears early on the play and assumes more and more significance as the action progresses.
The timeless wit : "Wonder why it is one's people are always so tedious? My father would talk morality after dinner. I told him he was old enough to know better. But my experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all."
Despite all the cynicism, he inserts these: "if on really loves a woman, all other women in the world become absolutely meaningless to one. Love changes one –– I am changed." and "Nowadays people seem to look on life as a speculation. It is not a speculation. It is a sacrament. Its ideal is Love. Its purification is sacrifice."
The play was such a stupendous success that Oscar Wilde who was sure of it becoming a hit made close to half a million pounds worth of today's money by opting for a percentage instead of upfront fees.
Here's what Wikipedia says about Wilde's behavior at the first staging:
"When Wilde answered the calls of "Author!" and appeared before the curtains after the third act, critics were more offended by the cigarette in his hand than his egoistic speech:
Ladies and Gentlemen. I have enjoyed this evening immensely. The actors have given us a charming rendition of a delightful play, and your appreciation has been most intelligent. I congratulate you on the great success of your performance, which persuades me that you think almost as highly of the play as I do myself."
While reading the play, I had the lovely English actresses Olivia Hallinan and Julia Sawalha play the lead roles in my head. In the afternoon, a youtube search lead to the 1925 silent adaptation of the play by Ernst Lubitsch. The cinematic adaptation retains the main storyline but deviates quite a bit in the portrayal of characters and the complete absence of some of them. There are some nice touches like the framing of the three gossipy women like the witches of Macbeth.
One of my favorite bits in the drama was keeping the contents of a note unknown and ultimately burning it without revealing, but the movie prefers to show expIicitly what the note says. Irene Rich is absolutely stunning in the washed out black and white footage. If you are the type who, like me, gets deeply involved in movies and vicariously act along with the actors on screen, silent movies will be hugely appealing because the text cards that come in between provide ample time to prepare our reactions.
A truthful to the original TV adaptation from 1985 is also available on youtube.
Achan returned from Kochi by the Gorakhpur Express in the evening. The snacks from the prayer meeting, that ended a while ago, at doctor uncle's house should do for dinner.
Here's the link to the play:http://www.planetmonk.com/wilde/pdfs/windermere.pdf
And the 1925 movie:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPr5nRKlVZU
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