[Reader-list] By a Danish, before ‘Danish Cartoons’

Mon Oct 12 17:27:08 IST 2009

I have often wondered why Lalleshwari (naked if she danced) didn't die of Pneumonia in a  Freezing Kashmir and instead only died when she was 70. 

The image of "A Naked Dancing Lal" is quite romantically attractive. So to speak a "Dancing Dervish" and Naked too. Wowwww!!!!! 

"Nachun" has another meaning in Kashmiri apart from "dance". It also means to "wander around".

Did she move around naked?

Had Lal (pronounced Lull) transcended any recognition of the "shame" with which society recognised nakedness? Was she that disconnected from the world around her?

Her "gorr" (Guru) gave her the advice to enter the 'inside' from her 'outside'. The external accqusitions and accomplishments were not for her. That certainly rendered her "naked" in dealing with wordly matters. 

Did she remain unclothed? I wonder.

Lal was not a raving mad lunatic. Even if she had no interest in wearing clothes, it is unlikely that the people around her would let her wander around naked.

Kshmendra

--- On Sun, 10/11/09, Inder Salim <indersalim at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Inder Salim <indersalim at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] By a Danish, before ‘Danish Cartoons’
To: "reader-list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Date: Sunday, October 11, 2009, 12:33 PM

Thanks Dulali Nag ji
about Dancer in the Dark. I was just thinkng about Lal Ded's ( 14th
century  kashmiri saint-poet) verse:

she used two words in a quartrain VACHUN ( song )and  NACHUN ( dance )
she declares that master gifted her a song, which suggested me to
enter inside from outside. and since then i am dancing naked.

Dancer in the dark in that sense is a naked spinning truth of our
existential beings. so, one can never say what Darkness, with all the
shades of darkness, actually means, and how to differentiate ouside
from inside,  but one can perhaps, see how a continus welding between
existential realities and distant looking political realities shape
our respective beings and our nothingness too.  ( what J.P Satre
talked about, perhpas,  )

Anyway, the leading lady in the film, as we know, Bjork is also an
composer, singer, besides a great actress. i saw Indian Tabla in one
of her concerts on youtube.

love
inder salim

On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 1:50 PM, DULALI NAG <dulali.nag at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you Inder. I don't have words to express how I felt.
>
> On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 11:02 PM, Inder Salim <indersalim at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Dear All,
>> For reasons well known, Danish Cartoons perhaps popularized Danish,
>> but some other kind of brains are working there too, which are of
>> serious nature…
>>
>> Dancer in the Dark 2000 by Elars Von Trier, a Danish Film Director,
>> shot by a hand held camera, to match a documentary style, perhaps, to
>> convince the viewer that it is real, and it does, but
>>
>> The Guardian said it was "one of the worst films, one of the worst
>> artworks and perhaps one of the worst things in the history of the
>> world.".
>>
>>  But don’t  trust the films critics, watch this final clip from the movie
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu5f_T2wcRI
>>
>> The title is profound, not only because Cinema happens in the dark,
>> but there is a strange inability to touch the pain of the other though
>> cinema,  beyond a point. As a medium it is entertainment at the best,
>> but the very for entertainment in life that we sometimes, unwittingly,
>> see a dark end of our personal lives even.  And at the point of time,
>> we have nothing to share, no words, not language to communicate.  The
>> politics, perhaps, begins from there as well, but strangley obfuscates
>> too...
>>
>> "Aataye hain Gaib say yeh mazameen khayal mein". ( these thoughts
>> comes to from nothingness ,GHALIB), which is not far from  what
>> prophetic revelations claim . and If the source is
>> darkness/space-not-known, then we are mixtures of silences. That,
>> perhaps, means that our actions are not necssarily meant to be in sync
>> with our thoughts. “There is no doer behind the deed” Nietzsche. That
>> questions the State, and its machinery via Foucault’s Panopticism.
>>
>> In the Film, the STATE, ( representing a country ) is deeply
>> structured to this promise of goodness (
>> entertainment/desire/security) and also the snatcher of very life on
>> this pretxt or that. So, the very seat of existence that gives us the
>> feeling of life bleeds for the sake for State.  The  death  penalty is
>> part of chain of event that mainfests State, as part of medieval
>> thinking, also as part of  present day American thinking  which
>> pretends humane but is clueless about humanity. The dance, or the pain
>> becomes personal, inwardly,  and we have only sadness to feel...
>>
>> The plot in brief:
>> Selma is a Czechoslovakian immigrant, a single mother working in a
>> factory in rural America. Her salvation is her passion for music,
>> specifically, the all-singing, all-dancing numbers found in classic
>> Hollywood musicals. Selma harbours a sad secret: she is losing her
>> eyesight and her son Gene stands to suffer the same fate if she can't
>> put away enough money to secure him an operation.  Bill, ( typical
>> American ) his neighbour,  reveals to Selma that his materialistic
>> wife, Linda, has exhausted all of his savings and asks Selma for a
>> loan, which she declines to give. When a desperate neighbuor , steals
>> her money, and then falsely accuses Selma of stealing his savings, the
>> drama of her life escalates to a tragic finale.  “It is here that she
>> is pegged as a Communist sympathizer and murderess “
>>
>> She was hanged, while she sang her favourite song.
>>
>> A curtain separates the viewer and the one whom the STATE pushed into
>> a darkness.
>> In the cinema, in the end, it is only a metaphor, but chilling, to
>> realize for a moment, that what if something is forced on us (me).
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62pLY5zFTtc
>> click for a bollywood song like, on the moving train,e sequence in the
>> film
>>
>> With love and regards
>> Inder salim
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> http://indersalim.livejournal.com
>> _________________________________________
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-- 

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