Saturday 9 June 2012

Girl With The Sad Eyes


'Choose a career', says Mother.
'Do it perfectly', screams Father.
'Speak up', yell the teachers.
'Die!', screech the relatives.
'Get a life', cries the boy next door who hunts for crabs at night and sleeps during day.
'I don't love you', whispers the man who wishes to be canonized as the greatest saint who ever lived.

That's not what the Girl with Sad Eyes would like to hear. She doesn't wish to live by anyone's rules except her own or do anything she doesn't have the will to do. She's tired of her relatives, their never-ending gossip and primitive talk which makes no sense at all to someone raised in the city. She'd like to fall in love with someone artistic and musically gifted, live in isolation from the rest of the world and die a quick but peaceful death in a world that's too insensitive to her needs and a world which grows less polite with time. The tedious practicalities, routines, numbers and details of an everyday mundane life have begun to wear her out. Although she hasn't lost faith in herself or the hope of a better tomorrow, she soon will. She will endure only a few more of life's brutal beatings upon her fragile spirit and try hard to see the beauty in a world filled with cheap talk, filth and venom before she wastes away like ever other depressed idealist who lived before her. She doesn't paint anymore nor does she sketch nameless faces into her sketch pad. She keeps waiting for something to happen to take her out of her misery like a car accident or a strange incurable illness. Love comes and goes in the form of young men who tease, flirt and pull at her heartstrings but never stay. She comes across an occasional red rose which revives her spirit if only to some extent, until it wilts away. She tries to capture beauty and love that she sees around her in her art and tries to immortalize it, only to find the medium itself fading upon the wall and disintegrating into bits. 

She knows of an old man whom everyone calls 'mad'. But only she knows the truth about what happened to him. His is no ordinary madness. He was once a poor violinist...a simple man...an idealist who made the biggest mistake of his life when he decided to marry. The poor artistic soul was soon pulled into the harsh world of liars and opportunists where reality was much different from anything he had ever experienced. His family now consisted of a terribly vain wife, selfish children and an emotionally indifferent sister, all of whom, burst into his quiet world and pulled him down to hell with them. Today, he just chooses not to remember a soul. He isn't really mad. Just beaten at a kind of chess known as Life.

Below is a song that I've dedicated to him.




The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)

'The Ghost and Mrs. Muir' is a romantic fantasy film starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison, based on a 1945 novel written by Josephine Leslie.

Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison

In 20th century England, a widow named Mrs. Lucy Muir searches for a house to live in after an argument with her in-laws. She settles for a cottage along a seaside village called Whitecliff despite being warned that the house is haunted by a captain who apparently committed suicide. She moves into the cottage with her daughter, pet dog and maid and gets into a conversation with the ghost after provoking him to speak. During their quarrel, Lucy discovers that the captain died accidentally in his bed chamber. She tells him to be nicer and not to use uncivilized language with her being a lady and all. They gradually develop feelings for one another, with her being the obstinate but charming young lady and him being a loud and arrogant seaman.

Lucy's in-laws show up at the cottage telling her that she's now become a pauper as her investment income has dried up and that she should return to her late husband's house in London. Lucy refuses them and turns to the ghost for help as he urges her to write a book based on his numerous adventures at sea. She writes as he dictates and goes to the Publisher's with the manuscript. The publisher, greatly impressed by the captain's story, agrees to publish the book. On the way to the publisher's, she meets Miles Fairley who begins flirting with her and even pushes her to ride in a carriage with him. She discovers that he is a well known children's author who writes under the pen-name of Uncle Neddy. This begins a series of flirtatious episodes and courtship which angers the jealous ghost, making him come to the realization that he has fallen in love with Mrs Muir and that it is only healthy for her to carry on a relationship with a 'real' man. He tells Lucy, in her sleep, that she ought to forget him and vanishes.

Lucy wakes up thinking that her quarrels with the Captain were only dreams and comes under the impression that the book was written only by her. Meanwhile, she gets a cheque for the book, enabling her to buy the house and runs to Fairley's house to tell him the good news. She discovers that he is a married man and returns to the cottage with a broken heart and lingering emptiness. She subconsciously longs for the captain, despite believing that his ghost never existed.
She lives in the cottage for several long and lonely years and her grown up daughter visits her from University with her fiance. From their talk, Lucy comes to the realization that the Captain's ghost really had really existed but mysteriously vanished from both her and her daughter's lives. The final scene is her as an aged woman who dies while getting ready for bed at night. She drops her glass of milk and the Captain appears only to pull the spirit of the young Lucy away from the body. The two of them walk down the stairs and out of the front door, into the mist.