The first post

I was in Gymkhana Club yesterday. It is, like a friend put it, the last outpost of the Raj in India. The buildings are quaintly old-time British in architecture and name, as are the many little customs and rules. It felt curiously like home (most of my childhood was spent in old British bungalows in small towns across MP, where the civil service still retains an untarnished glamour, and one never quite outgrew being babysaahib) and everything about the place felt delightfully familiar. I can picture Asha jumping up and down repeating "cultural imperialism" ecstatically, and from where I see it, it defines a part of who I am. I plead guilty, and revert back to floozing over a lovely afternoon well spent (not in small measure owing to a library with a brilliant stock and even more brilliant ambience).

Also, I saw Troy tonight. Again. I must be a masochist to subject myself to such agony. But it was worthwhile just to get the vitriol flowing.First things first. There is something wrong in any adaptation where Paris is prettier than Helen. It is unlawful, because it isnt his face that was supposed to launch a thousand ships. And Orlando Bloom can't act. At all. The storyline has been sacrificed to pander to American ideas of romantic heroism, and the delightful moral ambiguities and weaknesses that make Greek mythology what it is, are turned about on their heads. What you have is Melenaus being killed by Paris (ouch), Agamemmnon stabbed unceremoniously by a (wooden) Breisis (double ouch) and Achilles crying over Hector's defiled body (i gave up here). Speaking of Achilles, Brad Pitt tries really hard to look profound, and succeeds in looking merely constipated.
The only redeeming features are Eric Bana and Peter O'Toole, who have managed to inject some dignity to their extremely caricaturised roles. And the final battle scene between Hector and Achilles is nicely done. Apart from this, the movie becomes another in a long line of Hollywood attempts to glamourise mythology according to modern popular constructs, in the process abandoning all pretences at intellectual interpretation. How else would you explain a corny dialogue like "I'll meet you in Elysium, my brother" being repeated thrice?

Talk about banality!