The Pianist

Once there lived a butterfly, a little one, a beautiful one, its wings were filled with colours and shades that were rare to find as if nature hand picked its hues and contours, It was an innocent little butterfly which swapped its tiny wings to fly around the greenerys of the woods, it stood on top of ancient tress, it flew amidst the morning mist,it kissed the dew filled grass, it drank from the yellow flowers covering the floors of the river bed, it befriended nature and where ever it flew it carried with it a beautiful melody which was heard in the air, its wings wrote a fable on the unending pages of the sky, when it flew on top its little eyes always fell in awe with the beauty of its mother nature,one day a wild strom changed its path,caught in the wind it flew in unknown directions, it travelled across landscapes to reach a war field; the little butterfly had no clue, like a drop of blood woozing from the eye it flew in the forbidden land, it sat on top of glittering swords,it flew amisdt the raging bullets, it saw men fighting with rage and anger, it saw people killing each other, it sat on top of corspes, it sat on top of bleeding wounds, the innocent little butterfly which knew nothing but the beauty of the world was confused, it was distressed,it observed people killing each other, it obeserved the soil turning red, it tried to flee from the place but a sharp knife scissored its wing: the wing which was once filled with a million colours now fell on the ground and was filled with red blood, the wing kissed the ground and slept with the corpes, our little butterfly which was hurt and bleeding, flew away from the warfield fighting the air with a single wing, its little eyes dropped a tear which evoporated before it reached the earth.Now replace the butterfly with a pianist and the warfiled with thestruggling city of Warsaw of the 1940, what u get is a movie in return.The Pianist(2002) a polish/english movie by Roman Polanski is the real life story of an innocent pianist a jew who underwent the worst days of his life living in Warsaw during the German invasion of Poland, a movie which portrays the sufferings that innocent men undergo during a war, a movie which teaches u the ill effects of war like a slap on the face, or in simplewords The pianist is the story of a butterfly caught in the battle.

Władysław Szpilman is a famous Pianist in all of Poland and all of Europe, a man who is made up by music, a polish jew by birth he lives a contented life with his family of 6, untill terror strikes, the German forces invade Poland and the city of warsaw is under siege the family which lived a peaceful life till then is made to undero struggles they could never imagine, along with other jews they are made to vacate their homes and are made slaves in their own land, they are tortured by the nazis and finally are taken to an extermination camp, Szpilman escapes as his entire family enters the horrific mouth of death, then the movie travels with Szpilman in his plight for survival in the holocaust, A man who knew nothing but music is made to undergo pain and torture which almost breaks him into pieces, a pianist by soul Szpilman is made to work as a slave, he is made to walk on corpes, eat rotten food, drink dirty water, he is beaten to death, he hides behind closed doors, suffers from illness with no one by his side to take care, he grows beard and roams around like a lunatic in the demolished streets of warsaw with the memory of his lost family haunting him for an eternity.Finally when the war is over, he survives and all his struggles end up as a brilliant tune which he plays for his land, his people and for his survival.

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Adrien Brody as Władysław Szpilman won an academy award for his performance in The Pianist, I was mesmerized watching him perform as a naive young man, in a particular scene where he is caught in a room with a piano but he cant play it because any sound may bring troops up there, so he plays the piano on the air without touching the keys, the minute emotions he shows as a Pianist who is denied his play shows that he is legend in the making. Described as Polanski's best film till date the movie takes us to the streets of Warsaw, where life is living on the edge.The movie is no-sugar coat when it comes to depicting the pain the torture that the world underwent in the hands of the Nazis is visually translated on the screen.The movie doesn't compel any idea on you it has a very detached view.What we see at the end is a movie which is so honest, bleak, and powerful that it disturbs you more than a live wound.The cinematography is a high point depicting the past in hues of green, brown and grey and the final scenes which dwells on hope takes a slight variation in the colour tone,a master work.The movie considered one of the best films made on Holocaust and struggle of Jews won high credits at the Oscars and at Cannes.

In the defining moment of the film, when a German official asks Szpilman to play a tune in the piano when he is caught inside skeletons of demolished buildings,sitting in front of the piano in a place which is void of life, Szpilman's hands tremble to touch the piano, then he plays a tune, a tune from the inner depths of his heart, a tune which conveys his pain, solace and all his anger, the sound keeps violently filling in the space like a prodigy of the suffering he faced. His hands travel across the black and white blocks of the piano, and that single tune conveys the soul of film, after all what can an innocent and musical pianist do, except to play his tune? I am not a very compassionate person by heart, but moments in the film did make me shed a tear, my mind was thinking about all those butterflies caught in the Battle, in Lanka, in Israel, in Bosnia, in Iraq, in Palestine and in every other place where children, woman, elderly suffer for no reason of theirs, how many more musicians, poets, authors would be suffering right at this moment? please leave them alone their beautiful hearts was not made for war, let them enjoy the beauty, let them walk in breeze, there are still millions of butterflies those who loose their wings in unknown battles, they too were meant to live like the rest of us, please spare them from your ugly wars, after all the beaks of the butterfly was meant to drench in honey not in blood.

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Fountainhead

There are hundreds of books filling in my little library, books that I grew up with, books that made me grow up, books which fulfilled my secret desires of adolescence, books those made me think beyond my adolescence, books with beautiful women on the covers, old and brown books with strands missing in the middle, books which remain as just a complex jumble of words, books through which I learnt life, books through which I learnt nothing, books bought for mere pride and books bought with the excess of money, books cutting through the interwoven lines of languages, genres, tastes and changing preferences over the ages. There are hundreds of books filling in my little library, and then there is The Fountainhead. It is not just a book , it is a soul resting in my bookshelf, a book with a mystic eye which keeps looking at me, a book which guides me, a book which threatens me, a book which parodies all my foolishness and my hypocrisies, a book which came to me in the time when I was searching for a foothold, an collective expression of my philosophies, a vision through which I am going to look at the world beyond, an inspiration, a platform on which im going to build my future upon, a hidden vault of energy which is going to help me live my life as it should be Lived. “Ayn rand” a name I never heard months back is now a name which im never gonna forget all my life.

Fountainhead is the story of this orange haired man Howard Roark, the Man,self-made, self-sufficient, self-confident architect who lives by his own rules, who is hated for being himself, who can never be hurt, who can never be influenced, who will remain himself at any cost, who has learnt the virtues of being selfish, the bench-mark of a man, an end of all ends. The story is the story of Roark’s triumph amidst the repression, the story of a man against everyone. And his love for his woman, Dominique Francon, according to me she is the perfect woman whom I have ever seen/read about, a woman matching the integrity of Roark, a woman who lives her life for herself and for no one else, a woman as a woman should be, who loves Roark so much that she sets out to destroy him. The story is about the people who connect with Roark and Dominique who from rigid frameworks of all the different kind of people who make up the rest of the world, i.e the rest of us, Peter Keating a successful architect, an example of the kind of man that the world wants, the man who could never be a real man, everything that is opposite to Roark, fake and fragile, Ellsworth Toohey,an example to the men/worms who dictate our age old rules and morals, a so called intellect, an evil who hides behind collectivist and altruist masks, a poisoned soul, a second hander and finally comes Gail Wynand a newspaper mogul, an example of the rest who are caught between the fight of the man whom you are and whom you want to become, who is aware of what he is but still who prefers to be what he is, a manipulator of the masses, A man who could have been one. Through them and the other people with whom we live in the torch lit streets of New york of the early 1900’s for nearly 700+ pages, Ayn rand in a subtle way and prepares us to question everything, every single rule that prevents humanity, she teaches us to defy and inspires us to live a life, a selfish life, a life in which I don’t I don't think of you but about myself, a life which can only be true if I live for myself.

The fountainhead, a book written as it should be, a book from which you can either find all the meanings or find nothing, a book that helps you understand you first, a inward travel through which we reach the very essence of human beliefs and standing on the peak of all our believes, you question everything, YES everything that has been said and done and when the questions fetch no answers we invent them, the real answers which are hidden deep down inside. Ayn Rand teaches you her philosophy through Roark, the philosophy of Objectivism which states “proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self-interest by being selfish”. Living in a world that asks/pleads/threatens us to live its rules/beliefs/wishes/morals, the book opens the all the hidden fountains in the brain and there flows a rivers of thoughts, “Why should I fall prey to others peoples dreams?”, “Why should I forego my dreams myself in the name of sacrifice when im gonna regret it all my life?”, ”Why cant everybody agree that every human is selfish by nature?”,”Why should I live by every rule that were set even before my birth? Why shouldn’t I invent them?” more and more thoughts keep flowing that washes away all the beliefs that your inner mind had always awaited to break. A few days back when I was down, when I was sinking and acting crazy I saw The fountainhead staring at me from the shelves, I felt ashamed, the mere sight of the book brought me back with myself. Can a book influence so much that you fear it?, The fountain head does. The time when I spent reading the book, I was at my best, the clarity that it induced in my thoughts when I read it was like an enlightenment, I judged myself better and found where I stood and where I wanted to move from here. whenever I feel losing out with myself, I keep the closed book in front of the eye and I stare at it, some chemistry unveils and peace sets in. That is the magic that this little book has done in my life, I believe the book was written for me to read it someday. A good book has no real ending, the book never ended in me, it began in me, as a never ending search. Im still haunted with the book, ill be for a lifetime till then ill visit Roark in his little office at the Dana, ill stand by his side looking at him draw his sketches, when he is busy drawing the angular lines on paper ill be staring at the majestic shadows of New York, ill wait till the wind gets colder, ill wait till he gives an indifferent glare at me, ill cherish the moment and ill get back to my reality just to make it better and to make it mine.

Thanks Asha, for introducing me to the epic called Ayn Rand.