For a Long Moment

Wow. Suddenly I have nothing to say. Or nothing that I want to say. But it will pass.

What's bothering me is political, not personal (except insofar as the political is personal); it's aggravated by reading David Levithan's most recent novel, Love Is the Higher Law, set on September 11, 2001 and the period immediately afterward. It's much better than Wide Awake. I also am watching the 2008 American remake of My Sassy Girl, which is depressing in its own right. The Korean original, released in 2001, is one of the great screwball slapstick romantic comedies; the remake is competent and disciplined, and that's the trouble: it has none of the craziness and joyous excess that makes the original so memorable, and the American leads have none of the chemistry or charm of the Korean leads, Cha Tae-hyun and Jeon Ji-hyun.

So, to fill the space, here's a number from the 1964 Hindi film Dosti, which means "Friends." I learned about it from Ruth Vanita's book Love Rites: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West (Penguin, 2005). Dosti is a love story involving two teenaged boys, one blind and the other lame. It's not a gay film, but the friendship is extremely intense and rapturously emotive. I haven't usually liked the music in Bollywood films, but I love the songs in Dosti. According to Vanita, it was the songs that made the film popular. At this point, the two have been separated, and Mohan, the blind boy, sings of his loss and continued devotion.



There's a literal translation of the Hindi lyrics here.