But, is it nothing to know when you are dying, when you are about to take leave of this world, of its joys and sorrows, when the past of your life is unfurled before you, when eternity opens wide its portals, is it nothing to know at that last awful,supreme moment of your lives, that you have not lived in vain, that you have lived for the benefit of others, that you have lived to help in the cause of your country's regeneration?

-Surendranath Banerjea

Sunday, July 18, 2010

A Chronicle of Fantasies..

Fantasy stories have never been my choice.. Not when i was a kid,not when i grew up.. It was never tom n jerry or scoobee doo which entertained me when i was a kid,but the *dishyum dishyum* movies which i watched with my grandpa.. It was not the handsome-prince-crosses-seven-seas-for-the-princess stories that mom narrated,but mahabharata and ramayana.. Hence i was honed,to turn my back to fantasies..

When i was in school,there was a girl who told me of a lady who was turning tides throughout the globe,.and that was J.K.Rowling..She wrote one book,then the other,then another,..it went on until she became one of the biggest aristocrats in the world..What i could never understand was how/why people enjoyed such fantasies which didn't quite appeal to their sanity.. The 2hrs i spent in Hyd IMAX watching HP5,the one n only HP which i had to watch,was a torture to me,for,i rotated my head 360 degrees only to find everyone gaping with awe at the movie,the script,and the 3D!!



J.R.R.Tolkien was in no way inferior to Rowling,for he made every single guy speak in laudative tone about his Lord of the Rings.. If HP suffered from the wrath of muffling of the sumptousness when compared to the book,LOTR was bloody brilliant.. The 12hours that guys stayed hooked to the pc just to watch all the 3 movies at a stretch was inconcievable.

Next in the list was Stephnie Mayer,who presented every girl with the dreams of a vampire-sweetheart who could rescue them at the need of the hour.. I hoped she would stop with Twilight,but again,she was in no way different..

I'm unsure if i had missed any other mavericks who aced the field of imagination..But what stayed and still stays beyond my realm of understanding is,how people manage to enjoy the books/movies which they were sure to be challenging their lucidity.. Not that movies like transformers were believable.. But somehow,it was kind of watchable stuffs unlike the handsome-vampire-falls-in-love kinda storyline..

There would still be authors like Rowling who would keep questioning the acumen of a layman.. And there would still be people like me resisting them.. But an author becomes a prodigy,when he challenges the established norms of human imagination and transcends into weird realms.. Hats off to all those guys for their imaginative and narrative abilities!!!

Khuda Hafiz
~Gayathri~

2 comments:

Avinash G Nair said...

A literary work and movie based on it are two different dimensions. All three literatures you mentioned here has been source of inspiration for movies. But you can't judge a novel, just by watching the movie which shares the same title. Script writers do change the storyline in order to maintain continuity of the movie, to make it simple and even to suit their budget. So you can't blame JK or Tolkien or any other if you didn't like the movie.

The epic novels Ramayana and Mahabharata, were great literary works and had elements of fantasy in it. And you liked it, isn't it? Humans dream and imagine. That is what differentiate us from all the other species. So kudos to those imaginative authors, film makers and their readers and audiences..!!

PS: 1. LOTR series is a brilliant work by Peter Jackson. I suggest you watch it.
2. Instead of Stephenie Meyer, you should have included C S Lewis in the list.

ZB said...

boy, your realm of writing is expanding by the day, and this very realm will one day take you out of the realm of popularity....you use very difficult and hardly used synonyms, which maDE me reaD TWICE.nICE POST.....

i FEEL, Fantasy needs to be read with the right intention and not to hunt realism in it. Its like watching Rajni Kanth movies.I used to hate it when in school...then when i grew up i realized how much limitations i have as a mere mortal.A fantasy, which breaks the conventional realms of reality came as a rescue. A hero, though in fantasy, who could beat down 20 goons without even a bruise on his Dermis needs to be applauded, though in fiction. tc:)