The White Tiger - Value for Money

The reason behind 3hr+ movies with intermissions and tasteless excess:

'That evening, while driving back to the apartment, I looked into the rearview mirror. Mr Ashok was wearing a T-shirt.
It was like no T-shirt I would ever choose to buy at a store. The larger part of it was empty and white and there was a small design in the centre. I would have bought something very colourful, with lots of words and designs on it. Better value for the money.' - p.149

[please post any pics to best communicate this]

The White Tiger - Murder

'Here's a strange fact: murder a man, and you feel responsible for his life - possessive, even. You know more about him than his father and mother; they knew his foetus, but you know his corpse. Only you can complete the story of his life; only you know why his body has to be pushed into the fire beofre its time, and why his toes curl up and fight for another hour on earth.' -pp.46-47

Reminiscent for me of Clint Eastwood's excellent portrayal of the reality of violence in Unforgiven:

 
                               MUNNY
                   Well, that fella today, you shot
                   him alright.

                              THE KID
                          (forced bravado)
                   H-hell yeah.  I killed the hell
                   out of him... three shots... he
                   was takin' a sh-sh-shit an'...
                   an'...

     The Kid is shaking, becoming hysterical, he can't go on, and
     Munny hands the bottle back.

                               MUNNY
                   Take a drink, Kid.

                              THE KID
                      (breaking down, crying)
                   Oh Ch-ch-christ... it don't... it
                   don't seem... real... How he's...
                   DEAD... how he ain't gonna breathe
                   no more... n-n-never.  Or the
                   other one neither... On account
                   of... of just... pullin' a
                   trigger.

     Munny walks back to the edge of the rise and watches the
     rider and it is a lovely sunset happening and he is talking
     to no one in particular.

                               MUNNY
                   It's a hell of a thing, ain't it,
                   killin' a man.  You take
                   everythin' he's got... an'
                   everythin' he's ever gonna have...

                              THE KID
                        (trying to pull him-
                           self together)
                   Well, I gu-guess they had it...
                   comin'.

                               MUNNY
                   We all got it comin', Kid.

A Passage to India - Death (Again)

Fielding converses with Adela Quested:

''...it has made me remember that we must all die; all these personal relations we try to live by are temporary. I used to feel death selected people, it is a notion one gets from novels, because some of the characters are usually left talking at the end. Now "death spares no one" begins to be real.'
'Don't let it become real, or you'll die yourself. That is the objection to meditating upon death. We are subdued to what we work in. I have felt the same temptation, and had to sheer off. I want to go on living a bit.'' - p.262

A Passage to India - Marriage

Fielding, the learned professor provides us with another rejection of accepted tradition:

'At my age one's seldom amazed,' he said, smiling. 'Marriage is too absurd in any case. It begins and continues for such very slight reasons. The social business props it up on one side, and the theological business on the other, but neither of them are marriage, are they? I've friends who can't remember why they married, no more can their wives. I suspect that it mostly happens haphazard, though afterwards various noble reasons are invented. About marriage I am cynical.' -p.260

But Fielding obviously has a view on REAL marriage of which he is not cynical, surely...

A Passage to India - The Eternal Sleep

'Those in the Civil Station kept watch a little, fearing an attack, but presently they too enteredt the world of dreams - that world in which a third of each man's life is spent, and which is thought by some pessimists to be a premonition of eternity.' - p.239

It is interesting then that quickly following this passage, Fielding has this to say:

'Liking here better he smiled and said, 'It'll get us to heaven.'
'Will it?'
'If heaven existed.'
'Do you not believe in heaven, Mr Fielding, amy I ask?' she said, looking at him shyly.
'I do not. Yet I believe that honesty gets us there.'' - pp.240-241

 

Hypnos, Greek god of sleep, and his brother, Thanatos, god of death, as painted
by John William Waterhouse (1849-1917)

A Passage to India - Poetry to address the Heat?

The following passage describes quite incisively the severity of the heat that accompanies India's summer months, drawing neat contrast with the life pattern of Europe:

'Making sudden changes of gear, the heat accelerated its advance after Mrs moore's departure, until existence had to be endured and crime punished with the thermometer at a hundred and twelve. Electric fans hummed and spat, water splashed onto screen, ice clinked, and outside these defences, between a grayish sky and a yellowish earth, clouds of dust moved hesitatingly. In Europe life retreats out of the cold, and exquisite fireside myths have resulted - Balder, Persephone - but here the retreat is from the source of life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it, because disillusionment cannot be beautiful. Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful, and sorrow august, and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them. The annual helter-skelter of April, when irritability and lust spread like a canker, is one of her comments on the orderly hopes of humanity. Fish manage better: fish, as the tanks dry, wriggle into the mud and wait for the rains to uncake them. But men try to be harmonious all the year round, and the results are occasionally disastrous. The triumphant machine of civilisation may suddenly hitch and be immobilized into a car of stone, and at such moments the destiny of the English seems to resemble their predecessors', who also entered the country with intent to refashion it, but were in the end worked into its pattern and covered with its dust.' - pp.214-215

Is the weather so linked to civilisation? And is it true that India fails to accomodate the men who yearn for poetry? What kind of poetry?