ARC

Where does compassion for a subject in one’s novel begin and desire to finish the story end? Is it right to use actual people to write something and hope that they will die soon so that you can finish writing? Do we as a society have the moral right to take the life of another human being even if that person has killed someone? Are we capable of realizing how momentous and irreversible death is?

Writers, I think, are highly selfish people. They live for their craft and characters and usually interact with society insomuch as it often gives them ideas for new stories. To them nothing matters more than getting a story down on paper and most importantly finishing it. They have to maintain a unique relationship with their characters. They have to be honest and caring but detached enough to not get personal and impose their own view on the people in their books. It is this conflict that Capote struggles with as he writes ‘In Cold Blood’, arguably his most famous work.

On one hand he is a narcissistic man in love with himself and on the other hand he has a compassionate heart. He is unable to detach himself from the people who form characters in his book. He wants to finish the book but for that to happen the protagonists have to die. So he vacillates between not helping them find a lawyer so that their appeal against the death sentence cannot go forward and hating himself for being so self-absorbed.

He cannot help himself from developing an affectionate bond with a person who has murdered a family in cold blood. He begins to care for him. He wants to help him delay the inevitable. But deep within all this affection is his selfish desire to be done with the book, a book which he has proclaimed, even before he has written a word of it, as his best. So he struggles to find a moral center, a justification for what he is doing, and he fails.

Philip Seymour Hoffman justly deserves all the praise he has been getting. His is a sublime performance and is one of the best I’ve seen in recent times. He achieves the rare distinction of slipping so much into the character’s skin that you no longer see the actor; you only see the character he portrays. He carries the film solely on his shoulders and never falters. The moment near the end of the film when he truly realizes what is about to happen, the way Hoffman breaks down made my eyes water with genuine empathy for what the man was feeling. It was a supreme achievement. Praise should go to the director Bennett Miller as well. It is hard to believe that this is his first feature film. To show the internal conflict Truman Capote underwent when writing one of the most important book’s of the 60s in such a brilliant manner; Miller can be proud of the perfect jewel he has crafted.

Finally, there is a subtle hint of change in the legal air! Gays and homosexuals who have long been fighting a lone battle for recognition in India have something to cheer about. The Supreme Court of India sent back a plea concerning the reappeal of section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, originally struck down by the Delhi High Court as not being in “public interest”.

In India, homosexuality is an offence under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Gay rights organisations and human rights activists have long been fighting to abolish that section under the grounds that it is unconstitutional and discriminatory. Until now, Indian courts had refused to budge and change the law. But this might be the start of something new.

I firmly believe that homosexuals should have equal rights as everybody else. It is inhuman to deny them the very rights we take for granted. I hope this forward-looking decision by the Supreme Court will usher in a much needed change and abolish what, in my opinion, is an archaic law.

Read more here.

On the sofa
We lay lost
In our feelings
Tracing hair and
Hidden fingertips
While the fan above
Slowly revolved with
Our newly evolving love

—–

we were talking
when time flew
in through the
open window to
snuggle with our
love and tell us
shared stories
from our collective
pasts and futures

—–

We sat
Side by side
In the evening
Thinking-
About love found
About hands united

The sun
Fell below the far line
Leaving us
To trace our palms
And find
The map of Cupid’s folly

—–

Three pink pillows
you wanted yesterday,
In exchange for a
notional apology from me.
Today you think
and refuse to talk.
So I wander around the
house looking for words
you forgot to erase from
our common conversation

—–

Images come and go
Falling like wet hail
On my narrow sorrows

Watery eyes in transit
Watching the dull glow

Of

A sliver of sunshine
Quivering in a droplet
Of our distilled love