Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Moral Screen

While watching a movie, mother would make us cover our eyes when the "scenes" came - the scenes that were supposedly made only for adults. However, the very masking elicited the undying curiosity for the forbidden and found release in furtive glances and later on lurid fiction.

A film that we all as a family had gone to see depicted the life of Vemana the poet who had miraculously transformed from a life of debauchery to one of a poet-saint and lived the remainder of his life as a naked mendicant singing eternal truths.

The first half of the movie showed the decadent prelude and we were naturally submitted often to sharp glances and hisses from the mother to drop our heads. When the second half began to take the audience through the transformational process, which included much abstruse poetry and high-flown language, we lost interest and started to fidget and beg to be taken home.

Mother oberved rather ruefully that just when she wanted us to watch what was needed for us, we wanted to leave, while all the time before that we were gawking at the screen as if we were imbibing at the fountain of divine wisdom.

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