Measure

I watched the film "The Constant Gardener" today (7.30pm: "where you going e*?" "to watch a movie!" "like a normal person?" "yes! like a normal person.")

It is a beautiful beautiful film. Elegant, contemplative, subtle, haunting. Visually compelling. It showed the beauty and the vibrant colours of Africa (which I much appreciated). The direction was excellent. Adapted from a Le Carre novel, it could have so easily gone wrong—in other words, the blockbuster hollywood conspiracy-thriller route. Instead, we have a thoughtful potrayal of the moral and humanitarian issues behind the pursuit of profits at big pharma, the complicity of governments, and the abuse of the weak and unprotected that is never melodramatic. The film uses colours, nature, and a very human, micro focus on the daily realities of deprived Africa to appeal for our sympathy and sense of what is right. The film begets the question: What is the worth of a human life? I think it has been said before (and this I deeply agree with) that our kindess/goodness can be seen from the way we treat our most defenceless. Personally, I think the film also turns a mirror to us (me) and asks: What is your measure?

I feel inadequate, ashamed even, that I am so apathetic. That I am living safely ensconced in my first world life with nary a thought for the impoverished, the underprivileged, and the deprived of the world. Whereas in the past I used to care more, as I grew older, at some subconscious level I must have decided that the world is divided into the wealthy evil empire which produces and destroys, and those who care, and if a line is drawn in the sand, that I would rather stand on the side of the haves, than the have-nots. I reminded by the film that the world is bigger than I am, that the troubles of the world are wider than I can encompass, and yet the individual stand against darkness is incredibly simple, and that is just to care. To care in the now, to your capacity.

I am currently having the briefest of respites from the hecticness of the past few weeks. The exhaustion has not completely dissipated, because I am pushing myself to my physical limits in order to live as much as possible in the little snatches of now, to steal as much me-time as I can, while this lasts.

Beautifully, apart from having watched this hauntingly beautiful film (and I am now thinking I should definitely watch "City of Gods"), I have also begun reading a beautifully written book—Ernest Hemingway's "For whom the bell tools". I have finished "A moveable feast" a few weeks ago, which is my first Hemingway (bar one short story many years ago which I did not appreciate in the least). I like his writing and wonder why I have never read him before. Then it was Haruki Murakami's "The Elephant Vanishes" which was haunting and strange. Inscrutable patterns within patterns which I would love to decode, given time. And now "For whom the bell tolls".

All that coupled with a big bed in a five-star hotel room with a sea view, working under blue skies on the hotel's beach front, and swinging to MTV Europe after a night-time shower, just about a fortnight ago, and I'm feeling a little bit lucky and a little bit calm. I just need to get some sleep and be less exhausted, cranky and irrational all the time.