the oxymoron paradox: hybrid monsters

in urban fantasy or paranormal fiction, the stories usually revolve around 'people' that are not really your normative next-door-neighbour 'people'... ergo, 'paranormal' or 'fantasy'... both are sub-sub-genres of a HUGE genre in fiction - 'fantasy fiction', which also goes by the name 'speculative fiction'...

so, your leads in urban fantasy and paranormal fiction - and in cases where its not necessarily leads, its the supporting characters - can vary from vampires, shifters of various kinds - so that's all the cat family, wolves, hyenas (which are considered belonging to both wolves and cat families), rats and bears even - to wyr - that's your fantasy generic term for what common folk might call dragons/ griffins or gryphons / unicorns, etc... - to magic-users, witches - or what in geek-talk are called 'wicca' (go figure!)- and sorcerers, revenants, zombies, ghouls, ghosts, erstwhile gods, and fallen angels and what not!

so here's the thing.. your first premise - the world humans live in - yes, humans and not 'people' - is very different to say the least... most books in these genres will hardly feature humans, and when they do, the takes on humans vary from ridicule and spite, to pity or nostalgia, to indifference or mockery, to anger/rage and the need to avenge the humans for the millennia of social ostracism, torture, and killings of what humans considered 'abnormal' or in other words, 'monsters'...

so all of the paranormal beings are abominations in themselves... now, i'm disregarding the fact that recent teen/young adult pop fiction would cry hoarse to prove otherwise - what with sparkling vampires and six-pack-abs-wolf-boys - or that in most fantasy/paranormal books, this 'being-seen-as-abomination' is taken to task; and its usually humans who are depicted as narrow-minded fanatics who have launched century-long crusades against these 'abnormal' beings that are neither human nor animal - in short, they're worse.. abominations..

now, your second premise - aka the oxymoron paradox - in many books i've read in these two sub-genres, the lead is usually not fully monster, nor fully human, nor fully anything... in short, they're half-breeds or hybrid monsters. if the two terms 'hybrid' and 'monsters' were earlier seen as synonymous, in these books, the half-breeds are themselves abominations... abomination within abomination, ergo the oxymoron paradox.

most world building and plots in UF/paranormal books, when not concerned with humans so much, often engage in meticulously weaving out the socio-political systems and structures of the characters... so vampires and ghouls usually function with a rather feudal 'master'-'servant' or king-subject dynamic; shifters and wyr have the pack leader, aka the alpha, and the rest of the pack, witches have covens, fallen angels are tied to the gods that rule, and so on, and so forth... and needless to say, most books, have brilliant takes on these social and political structures... so there's shifters who find the pack-lifestyle stifling, or vampire subjects who wish to be freed from their masters.. and so on..

and in books featuring half-breeds, one of the most fascinating aspects of the plots is in the severe disdain expressed by the half-breed/hybrid monster towards those 'pure-breeds' who are puritans... or in other words, if you haven't caught the drift by now, those pure-breeds who believe in the 'purity' of their blood/kind... of course, most often this sentiment is reciprocated by the pure-breeds as well... who persecute the half-breeds as abominations...

in fantasy fiction, this is most popularly recognized in the harry potter series by j.k. rowling... one of the main characters, hermione is a 'muggle' - a human-born girl who has come to wield witch powers... and the supreme villain of villains in the series - he who must not be named - is a pure-blood, born of witch and wizard parents, and believes in the purity of the witch-wizard race and sets out on the task of cleansing the world of such muggle-borns... eh.. similar, what say, to what has happened so often in human history?

so, to end, let me say that there's a way in which the half-breeds/hybrids here, often find a way out, to not just tackle the persecution and so on, but that it is in the very 'half'-ness of them that they discover their strengths... or their opponents weakness...

more on this, and what it might mean, with some examples, next time...

the comparison dilemma

i recently saw two trailers of the 'hollywood adaptation' of Steig Larsson's brilliant millennium trilogy... there's much hype about the soon-to-be-released movie and i guess its more than justified.

the books are superb... the storyline is so unbelievably twisted... its tough to sum up the books in fact... at most you'll be left with mere descriptions - umm, lets see... its about... corporate capitalism, women haters, serial murder, investigative journalism... yada, yada, yada... and the world it creates - the people, the relationships, the emotions... (know what i mean?)... it's detailed to the blink of an eyelash and fast-paced in a manner that won't allow you to let out a breath until you're done reading the last page of last book, only because you know its the last.

the swedish movies were stunners with grade-a acting... noomi rapace was as solid as a rock... lisbeth salander is such a tough character to portray.... she rarely emotes... and she's ruthless, forceful and shockingly brilliant in her thoughts... and for rapace to convey the depth and sense of lisbeth through her acting was simply brilliant... she was understated, sure. but she wasn't a goth-zombie staring pupils-dilated into space either... .she packed so much attitude!!! absolutely kicked-ass!! i won't say the rest of the cast packed an equal punch, but the leads were stunning....

now, the 'hollywood' adaptation... first off, its a 'hollywood adaptation' and not the other way round, which is what hollywood's used to, i guess... so that's reason enough to get curious... i mean, why go pick a novel, a swedish one at that, which many might simply dismiss as 'airplane novel' or worse still, 'pop fiction', which has already been adapted as a movie in swedish with rave reviews... so what's the big deal...

next up... the big names... so yea, its david fincher of seven, zodiac and the much recent the social network fame... if that isn't enough, you have daniel craig (very hot!!!).. and rooney mara playing lisbeth... hmm...

so its inevitable i guess that when the hollywood adaptation is out, it at one level will be compared to the book.. but that comparison with the book will occur by means of a detour through the swedish movie.... people aren't going to watch it and simply say, 'hey this scene from the book was not there'... they'll be saying.. 'this scene which was there in the swedish movie was not there in this'.. and vice-versa....

articles online have already started taking notes on what all the swedish film missed out on which the hollywood one will capture.. and what changes from the novel this one will make.. oh and all the e-battles have already begun about 'watch the movie and then make your comparisons'... or 'don't go flaunting your world cinema knowledge here, buddy'... 'you judge a movie based on the music you hear in the one minute trailer?' etc. etc. etc..

so... yea... i guess i look forward to it... but i'm waiting and watching for rooney mara.... i have a premonition she's not going to pull through lisbeth's role... from whatever the trailers indicated, its the direction, cinematography.. and check out the camera angles on  her... she looks like she's from outer-space!! seriously! dot pupils.. blank face....

so guess i'll be making those comparisons as well... at least as far as lisbeth is concerned...

the final solution

the Times of India reports that in the last decade alone, the depth of the Hussain Sagar lake in Hyderabad has come down to 40 ft from 60 ft... worse still, in some areas, the depth of the lake is only about 20-30 ft.


this is attributed to the immersion of approximately 30,000 - 40,000 ganesha idols in the lake each year.

in fact, the size of the lake as it exists today is itself supposed to be only 40% of what it used to be...

is this a dilemma any different from what we see happening in rapid proliferation to 'natural resources' in other parts of the nation? i'm willing to think that it is different... but i may not be able to articulate why... as yet.

in most cities, water bodies, small and large, have been filled with sand to reclaim the land for establishing settlements. the city of Bangalore as we know it (of course we no longer know it as Bangalore), for instance, stands on what used to be a minimum of 400 water bodies including ponds and tanks. 

but few cities have water bodies (other than rivers or beaches) that are constitutive of the 'image of the city'. for example, in Chennai, who would want the smelly 'Cooum river' to represent the city??? in fact the history of the Cooum might tell a different tale of the city altogether... 

but no, in Chennai, the long strip of the Marina beach is such a source of attraction - apart from all the elites who drive down to the beach to then walk on the 'jogging track', - even the flights that take off from the Kamaraj airport will do a little jig and take you a few thousand meters through the beach into the Bay of Bengal and return to its normal course... 

just as the flights that take off at Bombay will do the same into the Arabian Sea via the Juhu beach... 

of course the beaches that are the edges of seas which tie up with oceans are mainstay for the fisherman communities in these regions... 

take the Hooghly river... popular visual imagery is so crucial for the ways in which it shapes our 'images' of the places we inhabit and imagine. even before i'd seen the Hooghly river, the utterance of its name would bring to the fore an image of sunset, and silhouetted boats with fishermen.... this is the river that annually sees the immersion of hundreds of thousands of durga idols... this is also the river that is source of livelihood for fishermen...

but then again, these are big rivers and beaches... lets get back to smaller water bodies that exist... a place like Baroda has the Sursagar lake which like the Hussainsagar is a dumping/immersion ground for the ganesha idols... of course no one fishes here...

or take Nainital for instance... tourism and the lake.... tourism which has generated new forms of employment, but is slowly killing the lake...

same shit, different place? perhaps... but something needs to be said for such inanity that goes by the name of 'cultural practice'!

can the existing vocabulary of water bodies as a source of livelihood translate legibly into concerns for ecology?... from where things stand today, no.

so is it for this 'image' of the city that heritage conservationists clamour for the preservation of water bodies?... or is it for the ways in which water bodies are so constitutive of our built environments?... how does ecology itself become the cause/ name by which we attempt its preservation?

added to this dilemma is that the heritage conservationists have to contend with socio-cultural and religious practices of people, which they cannot disregard... so what do they say, then? they say two things - one, turn to more eco-friendly idols that use organic clay instead of plaster of paris and eco-friendly paints... of course they don't know how cheap the PoP and chemical paints are.. and how many people would afford this eco-friendly material? and perhaps some might even say, why the hell should we give a damn about eco-friendliness; its the government's job! following this, the second thing that the heritage people say - government authorities should 'wake up' and clean these water bodies. if they claim that they do clean, then they should clean better.

is this the best we can do? go the 'eco' way or the 'management' way?

surely 'management' is an issue... but clearly the dangers of the 'management' argument are apparent - in its inevitable conclusion, it speaks of the privatization of the lake... who knows ten years down the line we see a TATA/Birla board all around tank bund... perhaps we'll be ticketed to pass by the lake... perhaps there'll be a statue of aforementioned TATA/Birla among the esteemed few that find place in tank bund... 

and forget what to do with the lake.... what can be done with the practice? why have the number of idols been increasing at an alarming rate over the years? should immersion be banned? should there be a limit imposed on number of idols per society/ neighbourhood? but that's all anti-democratic... so how does ecology work with democracy? can ecology work only through capitalism - a la the new eco-friendly and organic exotic - or through state control - which despite its seeming horrors is in fact only a miserable ideal...

and finally... what of 'the people'... is this what 'popular culture' is? this maddening, inane practice that seems to be championed in the name of some 'diversity', 'ephemerality', and 'vibrancy'... or worse still, in the name of 'democracy' and 'secularism'...

what would the city or town or village be without its rivers, creeks, lakes, ponds, tanks? nothing.

perhaps the biggest myth we rely on, apart from the superiority of man over nature, is that of the eternality of water...or air...

why hark over the 'image of the city' when there won't be one any more...