Solaris

Fair Warning: This post discusses the 1972 film, Solaris, and the novel by Stanislaw Lem on which the film is based. If you have not seen the film or its remake in 2002, nor read the book but intend to do so, the following post contains spoilers.

Near the end of Andrey Tarkovsky’s 1972 film, Solaris, based on the novel with the same name by Stanislaw Lem, the main character Kris Kelvin wakes to find that his lover, Hari, a being recreated from Kelvin’s own dreams and imperfect memories of his deceased former lover on Earth, by the planet’s sentient ocean as a way to interact with the humans, no longer existed. Kelvin knew that Hari had found out that she was an artificial creation from Kelvin’s past. The longer she stayed with Kris, the more human she became, and the more difficult the eventual ending would be, for it was reasoned that she would not be able to exist apart from Solaris. Hari, who was made up of “neutrino matter” unlike ordinary matter, had asked Dr. Snaut and his brilliant but completely lacking in empathy colleague, Dr. Sartorius, to use their annihilator device on her. Snaut tells Kelvin that “there was a flash and a puff of wind. A faint puff. Nothing more.”

Hari’s demise was particularly bitter for Kelvin; his past lover on Earth had committed suicide. Kelvin tells Snaut that he wants to fly down to the planet, immediately raising Snaut’s suspicious about Kelvin’s motive. Kelvin reassures him that he will return. Kelvin flies down to the planet and lands on an island. At this point, Tarkovsky’s film and the novel diverge, but only in details and not on the hopes of the main character. In the film, Kelvin is shown as having returned to the surroundings of his family home. When he walks up to the house, his aged father comes out to meet him. As the film ends, the camera view of the house zooms out, farther and farther, until we see an island surrounded by the dark ocean of Solaris.

One may ask, which existence is the real one and which is the imagined? Do Kelvin’s memories of his family and past lover on Earth represent reality or does his experience depicted at the end of Tarkovsky’s film represent reality? Or do both experiences have equal weight as being real? Clearly Tarkovsky’s visual ending in the film sides with Kelvin’s past memories as being representative of reality. How would Kelvin be able to discern the real and the imagined?

Many of us have had to deal with something resembling multiple realities when we find ourselves in extremely different settings, separated in time and space. Not only the settings are different but the rules of our behavior and accepted ethics may be different in each setting. With the appearance of the “guests”, as they were called by the Solaris station crew, novelist Lem challenges us with a moral dilemna. Though made of a different type of matter, the guests are material beings and develop their independent humanity over time. Kelvin is chided by the two remaining crew members for his emotional attachment to the recreated Hari. Snaut, both in sympathy with Kelvin, and in frustration with his naivete, says, “I’m telling you for the last time: this, here, this is a situation beyond morality.” Yet, it is Kelvin’s emotional bond to his guest, his attempt to treat her humanely, and his own self-deluded plans for their future together (he is fully cognizant of his own self-delusion), which may have saved him from descending into the cynicism and apathy of Snaut, or into the complete lack of empathy exhibited by Sartorius towards fellow humans and their guests on the station.

The Russian film, Solaris, was Tarkovsky’s answer to Stanley Kubrick’s science-fiction film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Author, Stanislaw Lem, reacted badly to Tarkovsky’s film adaptation of his novel. Lem criticized the film for reducing the larger themes in his novel of the inherent difficulty in establishing contact and communication between two vastly different sentiences to romantic problems between two people. Lem’s criticism is too severe. Tarkovsky’s film captures well the moral dilemna and guilt faced by Kelvin, as depicted in the novel, and the film’s depiction of Kelvin, Snaut, Sartorius, and Hari are on-spot with the novel. Both the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Tarkovsky’s film version of Solaris are grand achievements in cinema, and I find both of them moving, maybe on different planes of intellect. My own homage of sorts to both Lem and Tarkovsky, and also to J.S. Bach for the film’s title score, may be found here,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLLjrHL2vwY

Krishna Myneni
8 August 2021

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

It has been three days since the American form of government has been sliced to the bone, by the designs of demagogues (there were more than one), and the actions of those enraged by lies, ignorance and bigotry. I believe there are many in this country who are dealing with a mix of anxious uncertainty and a foreboding of dark events yet to occur. For me, a respite from the gloom, however brief, is needed. I found such a break. Today, I watched a movie on Netflix called, “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind”. It is a dramatic and uplifting story, based on real events, of how William Kamkwamba overcame terrible obstacles to save his family’s livelihood. This is a powerful movie and I recommend it to you, whether or not you need a respite from current events, and also, if you can convince them, that you watch the movie with your children — I have to admit that I failed to convince mine.

Here is the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPkr9HmglG0

Here is a TED talk by William Kamkwamba: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QkNxt7MpWM

Krishna Myneni
9 January 2021

A Moment in History

The election is past and settled now, for all practical purposes — only the tantrum of the White House occupant remains. The anxiety in our household last week was palpable and we stayed up late watching election returns from the various states, coming in over several nights. In the middle of the night, with the lights off, we looked to the television to see which fork in the road the country would take. It was a unique moment of sharing in our nest, safely isolated from the world outside, where a hunter stalked everyone day and night. We were tense about the possible outcomes but were also excited over the possibility of the first part African-American, part Indian-American woman becoming Vice President of the United States, and we watched with hope of the possibility, by no means guaranteed, of getting past the ugliness of the past four years. When the moment came to celebrate that occasion, we shared the joy with much of the country, though we were connected only through the medium of television. I expect my children will remember this time many years from now. To commemorate the occasion on this blog, I present you with the following piece by Ustad Bismillah Khan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ7psdJuISk

Krishna Myneni
13 November 2020

All of the Rooms in My House

I have a recurring dream, in which I recall that there are places in my house where I haven’t set foot for a long time, for years  perhaps. In my dream, this recollection leads me to wonder whether or not those interior rooms and spaces are actually real or imagined and prompts me to go check the reality of their existence. Invariably, it turns out that, yes there was an entire wing of the house, or an entire floor of the house, with furnished rooms and hallways and stairwells, that haven’t been used in years. There weren’t any secret doors leading to these places, just a choice of a turn in a hallway which hadn’t been taken, or a staircase which hadn’t been ascended or descended for some time. I could have chosen to go to these spaces anytime, but for whatever reason, I hadn’t found the need to go there and eventually forgot about their existence. In my dreams, all of these unused spaces are not rundown with neglect — indeed they look as though they have been maintained immaculately, but by whom, I couldn’t say.

The presence of these vast, vaguely remembered parts of my house suggest a great wealth, beyond anything I possess in reality — indeed, once, I dreamed that I personally owned an entire campus of buildings, much like a university campus, and I was giving an old school mate a tour of my buildings, somewhat ashamed to display my dream-wealth to my humbler friend. No, I don’t claim such wealth, nor would I even wish to procure it in real life, for such wealth would come with a lot of  demands on the precious commodity of time. However, the wealth is very real in a metaphorical sense. All of these rooms in my house, which are recollected after many years, constitute all of the memorable events and experiences, shared and solitary, throughout my life. The memories of those experiences are in the distant past and aren’t able to demand my attention in the present. The rooms also represent relationships with people, friends and relatives and acquaintances, which receded into the past due to separation in time and space. And, so, my dreams remind me that I’m at risk of losing such vast wealth, if the demands of the present aren’t occasionally set aside to remember, and to adjust my future course so that contact with friends and family may be regained, and for places of memorable significance from the past to be revisited in the present.

Of course, none of this is unique to me. All of us have a past with people and places and experiences of significance. All of us are pressed with the daily business of life and it is impossible to keep everything from our past in the conscious present. All of these rooms in our memory are a vast wealth that stays with us, if we are reminded of it occasionally, and no one but ourselves can rob us of this wealth.

Krishna Myneni
25 June 2020

 

 

Discovering Telugu Literature

My first introduction to Indian literature occurred in India, sometime in the latter half of the 1990s. I was browsing the numerous English titles in a bookstore when I ran across the book, Classic Telugu Short Stories (CTSS), edited by Ranga Rao [1]. Telugu is the regional language of the states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh in India and is spoken by more than 80 million people throughout the world. It is also my native language, though back in the 90s I was functionally illiterate in the language. This book is an English translation by Ranga Rao[1] of notable stories by various Telugu writers from the early 1900s to roughly the 1960s, and  I thought to familiarize myself with at least some literature from my native place[2].

Like many other intentions, I brought the book back from India without having read any of it, and it sat on my bookshelf. When, years later, I was going through my books and ran across it, I finally read some of the stories. They painted a picture of another time and place, yet familiar to me, and the stories viscerally gripped and tugged to the forefront the hypocrisy and corruption and injustice behind the facade of a “respectable society”. They portray a wide range of characters, for instance the simple driver of a bullock cart whose naivete with his passenger (of higher caste) would have resulted in his death were it not for his clever thinking, in the story Polayya.  Another depiction is of the soul-deadening blandness of a sheltered middle-class character, Purushottam, who is stuck in a tea shack during a downpour while waiting to catch a train on business, after having a made a side trip to meet a prospective bride at the behest of his uncle, in the story Rain (Varsham). Below is a short excerpt of the depiction of Purushottam leaving the town of his prospective match:

Next day, … he climbed into a double-bullock cart and headed towards the road junction. It was one in the afternoon. Tinkling their neckbells, the bullocks surged forward. As the cart went by the munsif’s house which was right on the way, for some reason the would-be bride came out into the street, saw the cart and, instead of turning promptly back, kept standing there. Leaning one hand on the doorframe, she stood there firmly and looked steadily at him. The cart moved on. She was left behind; but that look of hers kept chasing him… that look burrowed deep pits in him.

Though these stories are garbed in the particular settings and customs of south Indian society of a particular time and region, the stories and characters are universal. Ranga Rao’s collection of hand-picked Telugu stories,  which he translated to open up Telugu literature to a wider audience, was true to its aims. It ignited my interest in Telugu literature, and in the wider literature of India.

Now, I have  (re)learned to read and, to a lesser extent, to write in Telugu. It is my goal to read these same stories in their original language. Strangely enough it was not easy for me to find legible copies of all of the same stories in CTSS in Telugu. After numerous trips to bookstores in India, searching for material online, and with the help of my father and his friends in India, I now have all of the stories in their original language and have finished reading several of them.

There don’t appear to be any shortage of Telugu writers nowadays, but, perplexingly, there appears to be a shortage of Telugu readers [3].  It will be the world’s loss if the literature of that region of India, or of any region of the world, is ever truly lost in its native form. I have great respect for the Unicode project[4], which has the ambitious goal to encode all written languages in digital form, allowing them to be rendered electronically or on hardcopy. Using these technologies, people in India, and outside of India (Project Gutenberg), have made available the electronic versions of some Telugu literature to the world.

Krishna Myneni
2020-05-26

References

1. Classic Telugu Short Stories, Ranga Rao, ed., Penguin Books India, 1995. ISBN 0-14-025167-7; Ranga Rao is the pen name of author/translator/editor, Panduranga Rao Vadrewu.
2. Telugu short story from early times to 1930s by Dr. K. K. Ranganathacharyulu, Malathi Nidadavolu, https://thulika.net/?p=614, (2010).
3. Where have all the Telugu readers gone?, Mukesh Manjunath, https://thewire.in/culture/telugu-literature, (2017).
4. The Unicode Project, The Unicode Consortium.

A Republic on the Threshold?

About a week ago I finished reading this absorbing and disturbing book, which puts forth the proposition that, since its Solomonesque creation, India has been spiraling from a diverse democracy towards a majority-ruled, authoritarian state. I have little argument against the notion that the current administration in India is deliberately heading towards such a goal. Much like other governments which fall into line behind a cult of personality, the symptoms of the disease are there: the scapegoating of minorities, the renunciation of science,  the promotion of alternate history, the notion of becoming “great again”.  I had also known about the emergency declaration which Indira Gandhi, India’s lone female leader, used to suppress constitutional rights during the 1970s, and the machinations of her party, the Congress Party, to prop up a dynasty behind which corruption fluorished.

In the eyes of the author of Malevolent Republic, K. S. Komireddi, these separate intervals of rule are all connected by a common drift or descent towards majority authoritarian rule following the passing of the original Congress government of Jawaharlal Nehru, and its successor government by Lal Bahadur Shastry, both of whom, the author argues, saw their responsibility to “become a model of democratic leadership in a post-colonial landscape yielding rapidly to dictatorships.” Then came the rule of Indira Gandhi, under which the author gives numerous and sometimes horrific examples of the inversion of power from the people to their leaders and of the corruption of power, particularly with the latitude given by Indira Gandhi to her younger son, Sanjay, whom she was grooming to be the next leader of India. The rise of the BJP cojoined with Hindu-nationalism, following the detached leadership under Indira Gandhi’s elder son, Rajiv, culminated in the present government.

Malevolent Republic paints a dark picture for the future of India, if it remains on its present trajectory. There is little counter-argument to the evidence it presents. At the end of the book, the author presents a call for action:

Modi has drawn out the very worst in many Indians. But his reign has also smashed the complacency that governed the attitudes of many Indians and activated citizenly antibodies across the country. It has belatedly awakened us to what we may be poised forever to lose.

For those of us who have been adopted by the U.S., these statements should also sound familiar. For India, I believe two recent movies by director Anubhav Sinha, exemplify the passage in the book: Mulk and Article 15. I watched both of these in the last couple of weeks. A scene in Article 15 was undoubtedly inspired by one in the movie, Mississippi Burning. Below are links to the trailers.

Krishna Myneni
2020-05-24

A Wide Virtual World of Music

One of my favorite things to do on social media, as for a lot of people, was to share musical treasures that would turn up on the internet, mostly on youtube. Perhaps this was annoying, more often than not, to people who followed me online. But that thought did not stop me from sharing what I found pleasing. Here is one example, a group of guys getting together in a living room jam session to play Angela by Bob James — some of you may remember that the opening of this song as the theme song of the 70s TV show, Taxi:

 

Krishna Myneni
2020-05-23

 

 

The Past is Always With Us

Several years ago I cleared the content on my blog and stopped posting not just at WordPress but at other social media sites. Online interaction was making me ill, perhaps not physically, but it was certainly taking a mental toll. I was disgusted with much of what was going on, politically, at the time. I learned that more than a few people I knew, friends and colleagues, harbored resentments and views which they kept hidden, perhaps unconsciously, in dark corners of their mind, uncorrelated in any way with their interactions with me … up until that point. Exiting the online world was my way of protesting. I shut down my science and programming website, removing all content, and deleted my accounts from facebook and other sites. I kept my WordPress blog, but removed the content. You see, I was no longer sure how I wanted to interact online with others. But the past is always with us. Despite the ugliness of the underlying reality which became all too apparent, as if I a curtain was suddenly pulled back, much that was good about my social interactions with online friends remains in my memories, and resurfaces from time to time.

With some trepidation then, I will dip my toe back into the online social world. Yes, I have a different view of the world around me, both the real and the virtual. But the need to share thoughts and views about life is always there, and the preservation of the good is still a worthy goal, in any age.

Krishna Myneni
2020-05-23