The Long View Letters
Issue 10 (Sept 06, 2026)
On Birds, Spiders, Gods, and Others
Why is it unwise to skip a newsletter edition or any decent habit? It takes 2x the willpower to return to it!
The last few weeks have been spent underwater. I do not mean this in the sense of drowning but immersion. So, each word of this newsletter feels like a grip on the ascent line back to the surface of the waters where perhaps you and I can make contact.
My days have been punctuated by listening for Alexandrine Parakeets and Black Kites in the morning and evening (while taking for granted the pigeons and mynas). In the meanwhile, a peacock green has settled on top of the trees and lawns of the neighbourhood park thanks to the monsoons.
As always, from the vantage point of my balcony I am deeply aware that my gratitude for the rains must be the opposite of what the daily commuter attempting a Herculean labour on Delhi’s jammed roads feels. I know because I have been that commuter myself.
In a previous edition, I wrote that The Odyssey was on my watch list, and that if I made it to the movie hall, it would be the first time in over a year. As it turned out, after zero movies in 15 months, I have now watched three in one.
In chronological order, these are The Odyssey (IMAX), Spider-Man: Brand New Day (4DX) and Ohh My Dog in 2D. I wonder whether the IMAX experience, by rendering oversized dimensions on screen, and the 4DX version, by tossing us in our seats like salad, aims for immersion or overwhelm.
Perhaps you have read enough of these two colossal hits so let me tell you about the one that flopped. Ohh My Dog is a Bollywood production that stars, for the first time ever, Indie dogs. So far, in Hindi cinema, we have had Spitzes, German Shepherds, Dobermans, and Pugs. But the canine lead in this movie is a brindle-coat Indie named Bruno (Oscar in the film), with a face sweeter than honey.
You might be unsurprised that it was this movie I booked tickets to for a second time. But not enough people did and so the shows were cancelled.
It would be entirely fair to say that there were lacunae in the storytelling and in the acting (though not of the dogs). However, to my mind, of the three movies – it is Ohh My Dog that is seminal. After India has spent a year waging legal and information wars against its free-roaming dogs – here they are leading a film. In OMD, Oscar isn’t a pet. He simply lives with a group of young boys who work as labourers at a construction site and buy him biscuits at the end of their shift. To the systems - police, healthcare, and others, they are as invisible and vulnerable as each other. What saves them is love. It singles out dogs and boys for grace because it says "I see you!" In doing so, it helps them rise above the blindness of all that surrounds them.
In 2025, when the court proceedings against dogs began, activists and animal lovers resorted to a myth from the Mahabharata to show that dogs belong by our side. But we need more stories, newer idioms (Emily Wilson’s takes notwithstanding). So, I believe Ohh My Dog was a step in the right direction. Regardless of its fate at the box office, one hopes it paves the way for a new kind of perspective in cinema that can in turn engender a shift in civic consciousness.
I'm not sure that The Odyssey matters in the same way, outside its IMAX cred, though it was a spectacle and a half. The same goes for Spiderman.
And I say all this without going into art for what’s sake debate. Perhaps films must only be spectacular not necessary. Who can say?
Interestingly too, the three movies I watched had a double helix as their central structure: Odysseus and Telemachus, Peter Parker and Jean Grey, Oscar and Momo.
A narrative’s frame, created by where the teller stands, and the time of the story’s action, is what drives audiences to identify with one character and alienate another. But during Spiderman’s showing, there was a moment when the name of the mind-bending antagonist was revealed, and the theatre rang with the claps of one man who yelled, “Yesss! Jean Grey!” I imagine he would have happily leapt to her aid against the guys who had showed up to the theatre in red and black t-shirts.
At the end of a movie (or book or play or song), where we land depends so much not just on what we are shown, but who we are, in seeing.
The other day I scrolled on to a Facebook post (which belongs to a genre governed by a single maxim – Tell Don’t Show). In it, the individual listed values they held dear, mentioned an upsetting interaction, and expressed bewilderment as to why people would want to be any other way than kind.
While this felt like a 4DX experience for my mind at first, eventually it came to me that we have perhaps all had versions of this thought. How can someone be this self-involved? This dishonest? Or cold? Or simply cruel? How can Poseidon curse a hero of the Trojan War? How can Jean Grey threaten MJ’s life?
If this idea - that we must all function in a way that is universally legible, and eternally bound took hold, would we still have movies? Or books? Or social media platforms? I imagine an effort to identify the other, and our consequent response, makes for all the stories there could possibly be.
What do we do with the other? Do we fence it in and euthanize it? Do we see it as invitation to listen, or simply, to recognise the limits of our own language?
Not that this instinct to possess (as a ghost) the mind of another is always an unmitigated blessing. There are circuitries we can never trace, impulses we will never aspire to. And we might consider that the grace of God. Or sanity.
Speaking of God – many Hindus celebrated the birthday of Sri Krishna on the 4th of September. Sri Krishna is India’s eternal muse. His legends have inspired epics and scriptures, poems and dances, and much more. So, to conclude, let me tell you a parable from his boyhood.
When Krishna went cow herding with his friends in Vrindavan, they would take a break for lunch in the pastures. In a circle, the boys would sit cross-legged, with Krishna in the centre. Each thought he loved Krishna best. And each would see his best friend was sitting facing him. So, mealtimes were filled with jokes, and sharing, and love we only know as children.
It reminds me of the saying - God is an infinite circle with a center everywhere and circumference nowhere, while man is an infinite circle whose circumference is nowhere, but whose center is located in one spot.
Isn’t human existence such a great opportunity then to both search for one’s center and skirt about one’s circumference (if one can find it)?
There's no knowing where I end and you begin.
Best,
Skendha
The Long View Letters
P.S. Thank you for being here. Write to me if you please. I'd love to hear from you. Even if it's just what colour around you is giving you joy right now?
P.P.S. Enjoy Oscar aka Bruno <3
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