thinkaloud

Urban poetry

2010-10-26T02:15:00.000-07:00

The metro station is familiar territory but it is cold and impersonal. It’s all shining steel, hard stone and bright lights. It is also arms, legs, heads, hair, skin, breath and sweat. But it is here that some fleeting moments of sheer beauty are created by chance. Right here, in the spaces between bodies, stone and metal.

Walking into this cavernous underground labyrinth stuffed full of flesh and things, I am drawn to this couple. Their hands are moving, but their mouths only just. It’s as if someone filtered out all the noise and what is left is pure communication – stretched mesmerizingly thin around them like the rainbow-surface of a soap bubble. And in this bubble around them the space seems to expand with each gesture-for-word. Theirs, I realize, is a silence, which in the absence of words is more than just a lack of sound. It’s an abundance of calm. They talk without speaking. And all around them are words being spoken, yet nothing is being said.

And then there is me.

Smiling like a fool, overjoyed at this urban poetry being written a few hundred feet under the earth, set to music by trundling trains of gleaming silver.

So what is it about a mundane metro commute and two people talking to each other in sign language, that is so unspeakably poetic? It’s like a missed heartbeat in the racing pulse of life in the city. Exhilarating, this precious pause.

To Kill A Mocking Bird (is a sin)

2010-07-17T12:02:00.000-07:00

Its some sort of rite of passage in itself. The reading of To Kill A Mockingbird.

"Shoot all the bluejays you want, but it is a sin to kill a mockingbird"

A novel authored by Harper Lee, it tells the story of Jem and Scout - two young white children growing up in the 'tired old town' of Maycomb County, Alabama. Their father Atticus Finch - an upright lawyer but simply Atticus to them - is a paragon of virtue in no small way. One summer, he is appointed as the lawyer for a 'coloured' man accused of raping and assaulting a young white woman. Meanwhile the children are preoccupied by their mysterious neighbour whom they call Boo Radley and try to tempt him out of his secretive lair, not knowing that when it does happen eventually, so much would have changed.

I read the book many years ago, when I was still in school. What I remember most is not the unfair trial of Tom Robinson and his steadfast defense by Atticus Finch. It is the ominous yet timorous figure of Boo Radley and the vivacious Scout. While the book is set in a time when racial discrimination was at its peak, the issue of race is only one of the strands of life and all its glaring contradictions that inform the actual story. The story of Jem and Scout.

I recently had the chance to see the film version of the novel directed by Robert Mulligan, with Atticus Finch played famously by Gregory Peck.

It is Scout - Jean Louise Finch - who leads us through the narrative. As the events unfold in Maycomb County the children observe all this from a place of innocence but also, of the kind of understanding that only children possess. The kind of simple cold logic that can prompt cruelty but can also unseat prejudice. From their eyes - from Scout's in particular - we encounter all the characters. We 'get into their shoes and walk around in them'.

Scout, her brother Jem and their spindly little friend Dill have been well-cast. Dill is pitch-perfect when you factor in the the little nugget of information, that the character may be based on Haper Lee's childhood friend Truman Capote. even Robert Duvall in his small part as Boo is arresting. But the real reason for anyone to watch this film is Mary Badham, who plays Scout with incredible charm and uncanny confidence. And it is a difficult part to play. For Scout is no girl. At least she does not seem to care much for the conventional physical trappings of a girl She makes her discomfort apparent when she appears in a pretty little dress, having been forced to shed her overalls and plaid shirts for school. How will Scout's tomfoolery stack up against lace and gingham? One only needs to watch her gait, as she strides up to little Walter Cunningham, arms swinging, hands fisted and brow furrowed, to realise that Mary Badham's Scout will not be undone by some silly little dress.

Some of the moments between Scout and Atticus are crafted with great dignity, making them especially poignant. Atticus is put on the spot by his daughter as she demands to know what will be left to her if her father's pocketwatch is to be Jem's. Atticus says, with the slightest hint of grief but just enough melancholy, that her mother's pearl necklace and ring, are hers to keep if she chooses to have them. Scout is reassured. And as Atticus is left with his own thoughts out on the porch swing, we hear Scout asking Jem a million questions about their mother.

The strength of the relationship between father and children is that nothing is hidden. Atticus never tries to conceal the ugliness of the world from them and in return they never leave his side when push comes to shove. It is the kind of mutual respect that is rarely there between an adult and a child. And Atticus listens to his children when he could just hear them. He sees them when he could merely look at them. His defeat in the courtroom is particularly hard on Jem. In the film, Tom Robinson is led away and all we see, as the courtroom empties, is a view of Atticus Finch from the high balcony where the coloured folk sit alongwith Jem and Scout. He simply clears up his desk. The shot remains wide. And a man trying to do the right thing is left alone with his lofty ideas of equality and fairness. And it is lonely on the side of righteousness. Much like when he must shoot the mad dog and face its madness alone, but also rid the town of it.

There are many great things about the film. The title sequence is easily one of the best, setting the scene for what the film will really be about. Anyone who feels the film is a pithy testament of racial discrimination, needs only to watch the opening titles to understand the true meaning of it. The scenes with the children trying to penetrate the Radley property are tense and quite scary. I have a feeling had I been all of 10 years old while watching this film, Boo Radley's shadow would have done some serious damage. The film changes tone when you least expect it. Scout's hilariously clumsy ham costume is suddenly transformed into a death trap when they are accosted on their way back from the Halloween pageant at school. The humour that precedes the scene when the children are attacked, makes the violence even more horrific.

The 'black' characters are thinly imagined and remain peripheral at best. Save Tom Robinson who is allowed a moment in the courthouse scene. But I was only really disappointed at the flimsy characterisation of Calpurnia - the housekeeper at the Finch household - who I remember to be a definite force in the book. Perhaps if Cal had depth in the film, it would have added great value to the underlying narrative about race.

The issue of race is oversimplified no doubt both in the novel and the film. But it is incidental to both. The real discovery is not that Tom Robinson died in vain or that racism clouded the truth and overtook justice on more than one occasion. That is a given. The real discovery is that Boo Radley is really Arthur Radley. That Jem and Scout find compassion where they thought they would find only suspicion and fear. That truth does not always triumph but it is much better to be truthful. That people are victims of circumstance and the greatest tragedy is that everyone has their reasons. That childhood is fleeting and growing up is painful.

Atticus Finch says to Arthur 'Boo' Radley in the end 'Thank you Arthur. Thank you for my children' And you know then, that though Atticus may not have known it, he is grateful to Boo for much more than saving the lives of his children.

Later Scout looks out on her street from the Radley porch and its a whole other view.

If less is more...

2010-07-13T11:49:00.000-07:00

If less is more, more or less, do you want more or less?

There are certain questions that come up inexplicably, without invitation and make their home in the recesses of one's mind. While some of these questions border on the absurd some others are inevitable and universal. And anyone who says they do not know of them is lying.

What do you want?
How much do you want?
What do you need?
How much do you need?

It was an economics class and then a history class in school that I was first introduced to the terrible twins - wants and needs. That it was to be an eternal quest for some sort of amicable reconciliation between the two, I could not have known back then. Karl Marx knew it but I didn't.

"I need you. I want you. Oh baby. Oh baby."

Human greed is a peculiar thing. And by greed I mean real, unbridled avarice of the most material kind. It is peculiar because while human beings take to it willingly and with gusto, its prospects are from the start bleak and pessimistic. For while greed is an endless cycle of acquisition far beyond what need dictates, it is still desperately incapable of providing fulfillment. The cup of greed is never full.

"I'll make him an offer he can't refuse"

So why hasn't the 'less is more' philosophy become a life-choice instead of just an oft-quoted aesthetic principle? Is it narcissism - a firm belief that we are the centre of our own universe and everything must indeed gravitate towards us? Is it the curse of the information age to stare every day at an image of ourselves reflected on multiple screens - only prettier, fairer, richer, happier, thinner, sharper, cooler, more fun, more adventurous and more unlike our real selves?

"You talkin' to me? There's nobody else here."

Everyday we accumulate things. Surround ourselves with objects and noise - the noise of other people accumulating and acquiring more than us. The noise grows with every tweet, every post, every update and becomes a cacophony until the original voice in our head is barely audible. A mere whisper.

What do you want?

How much do you want?

What do you need?

How much do you need?

Work and an Explanation of sorts

2010-04-21T11:32:00.000-07:00

Everyone who has a blog knows what a blogging slump is. That's what seems to have plagued me. There seems to be a lot to say just no right combination of words to say them with. Of course I know that sounds like the cliche of all excuses. My mother would credit my insatiable appetite for sleep, my father likes to blame general laziness and incurable procrastination. But I say "It is infinitely better to shut up, than to sound like a stuttering fool." We live in shrill times, full of information-noise. I don't wish to add to that chaos.

So bear with my silence for a wee bit longer.

There is some new work to show. An educational teaching aid to explain the concept of the seasons / months in the context of the Indian 'Hindu' Calendar. The seasons in this case are not Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter but more nuanced divisions that respond to slight changes in weather that subsequently influence the rhythm of life in some parts of the country. Although one realises that these so called seasons are no longer as easily recognised in the course of the year thanks to a changing climate the world over, it is interesting to note the keen connect between life and nature that these 12 months or "Baarah Maas" indicate.

Here are some of the illustrations I came up with. Ignore the typos in the text pls.

cover page

Worked with Room To Read, India once again. And got to polish my Photoshop skills, which before this project came along were rudimentary at best.

Taste of Salt

2010-01-25T11:17:00.000-08:00

A short story written a while back after a visit to a fisherman's village in Nagapattinam which even 3 years after the tsunami, resembled a ghost-town where time had stopped the day the wave hit shore.

“More fish?” asked Nagamma, ladle full of fiery curry poised mid-air.

“No, I’m full”.

Murugan pushed away the half-eaten plate of food and rose to wash his hands.

Walking outside he savoured briefly the sound of his sleeping daughter. Her tiny frame lay curled on the mat, sleeping the deep sleep only children know. A smile played at the corners of his mouth.

Nagamma watching from behind her pot of rice knew it well. That smile tinged with sadness. It had come to rest on her husband’s face ever since the waves had come to their village.

*******

Murugan balanced himself in his boat. He gathered the net and planted his feet. It had to be just right. Otherwise the net would land in the water with an ungainly plop instead of the graceful splash. The water was the deepest blue edged with gold from the rising sun.

But something was different that morning. A strange current kept rocking the boat, throwing Murugan off balance.

“Amma, let me cast my net so I can feed my children?” he addressed the sea as he often did.

But that day she was in no mood for his entreaties.

*******

A year had passed since the Big Wave roared and claimed the fisherman’s village.

The boy had been sleeping outside. He would fall asleep on the sand after Murugan set out with the others, and awaken on their return. It was a ritual adored by both father and son.

That morning the waves reached shore much before the boats.

“High as palm trees. Loud as a ship” The survivors would tell camera crews and journalists again and again.

“My child”

“My mother”

“My family”

“Gone”

“Murugan, the waves came and took everything!”

Distraught, Nagamma clung to her husband who had become stiff as a tree. The only life left, streamed from his eyes.

*******

Loss echoed through the village, down the highway, over the borders, through the television and into the ears of philanthropists. They came in droves to the little-village-that-was.

“We will rebuild it. No more huts on the beach” the Minister declared before his chopper sped away.

His audience returned the triumphant enumeration with mute stares. The new rehabilitation housing colony was to be set up 3 km away from the sea.

*******

Murugan lay on his mat beside Nagamma staring at a hole in the thatch roof of his home by the beach.

“Why don’t you try to sleep Muruga?”

“I won’t be able to hear the waves Nagamma. Smell the salt. Or feel the sand in my house.”

Waving off a fly she closed her eyes.

“You weren’t there” she said. “When it happened, you weren’t there.”

Murugan was silent. He was listening to the distant rumble of the waves. In a few hours he would get up and push his boat into the water.

Turning on his side, Murugan stroked Nagamma’s forehead. She twitched slightly.

“I have lived as a fisherman as long as I can remember. And it is the only life I know how to live” said Murugan sensing his wife’s anguish.

“Do you know what I see each time we bring our boats ashore? I see land as I have never seen it before. Each day the waves have wiped the sand clean of yesterday’s battles. You will see. Tomorrow the sand will be free of yesterday” He said gently.

“Get some sleep Muruga. The day will break soon.”

A solitary tear rolled down a fisherman’s sun-worn cheek and left the taste of salt in his mouth.

Greens are Good For You

2010-01-18T05:19:00.000-08:00

I got to work on two fun projects last year. An informative book about plants and trees called 'Hari-Bhari' by Nirantar was one of them. Nirantar has a great track record as far as illustrations go so I was more than happy to work for them :) These are just some of the illustrations that I made. I have always had a soft corner for all kinds of flora so this was right up my alley.

Second fun project....coming up soon.

A Life Less Ordinary

2009-11-25T09:09:00.000-08:00

Its been too long.

But I suppose sometimes you just don't have all that much to say. And that too can be a good thing.

I often find myself at a loss for words when people ask me that most innocuous of questions "What's up?" And I rummage through my mind for a coherent, robust answer worthy of this eponymous query. Sure, I can tell the rhetorical what's-up from one of those probing, searching, investigative ones. But the discomfort I feel at the latter is becoming something of a social handicap.

And I have never been more acutely aware of this handicap.

For this I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of that wonderful warm shiny gooey thing called facebook. My friends (facebook friends that is) all seem to have highly exciting lives peppered with occasional drama, lots of fun times and most importantly a definitive road map of where this exciting life is going to take them next. (Explanatory status message coming up...)

I used to be one of those people in the pre-facebook era. Figured out, with much less self-doubt and anxiety about where everything is going to end up. Now here I am, wondering what will be while the rest of the world is sending me live updates of lives being lived (or so the facebook messiahs would have me believe)

Never has the phrase "Get a life" seemed more ironic. Because now, you can!

The cup of life that is social networking is always on the up and up, never rock-bottom low mixing with the dregs of yesterday. So when one stares into it , rarely do you get to see rock bottom. But when you do hit rock-bottom - and everyone does at some point - even a lame little "what's up" will make you want to punch someone in the face.

Sometimes I have to shake myself out of the ennui of keeping up appearances. Its not the harmless banter that bothers. Its the feeling of constantly being sized up. The whole idea of living your life like a roster of what you did-who you met-where you went. It might be worth asking then - "How would you live your life if you knew no one was watching?"

Its unsettling - this feeling of living your own life as if you had been for the longest time, merely an opening act in a great variety show. Always on the outside, waiting for the show to start. Stealing a glance every now and then at the audience from behind the red velvet curtain. And while we stare diligently at cursor on screen, tomorrow becomes today becomes yesterday all at once.

And I worry more at this than my seeming lack of ambition, goals and road-maps-to-a-better-life..... because how will there be nostalgia, if I cant't even remember living?

10 X TEN

2009-07-28T00:22:00.000-07:00

So here's the thing. We all need some creative CPR once-in-a-while. I know I do. My friend Nammo - co-conspirator of all things fun - had this great idea to create collaborative pieces of digital art. And that's how 10 X TEN was born. Check out the poster to find out how it works. If you want to sign-up just email us or leave a comment with an email id so we can get back to you. We're also figuring this out as we go along so please bear with us if it sounds a little sketchy at the moment. But the basic principle is - 1o people create 10 pieces of collaborative art.

Interested? Sign up! :)

Shine-a-light

2009-07-28T00:06:00.000-07:00

A light went out yesterday. A bright, shining radiant beam of light. It seems a moment ago, that it was there. Strong and warm, with no sign of a flicker. And just like that, it began to dim. All those who had felt its comforting glow, felt something draining out of their own heart. It ebbed to a single point of light......and then there was nothing. In its place, was heaviness. A weight that bore down on everyone. But there was no darkness. Even in the absence of that beautiful beam of sunshine, there was no black cover of dark. There was instead a glow - feeble at first, but steadily growing strong. Everyone watched it slowly throb with life. those who thought they had forgotten the light, began to remember again. They found they could vividly recall the raidiance and the illuminating joy of its presence. And as memory was called to serve, the glow became brighter and stronger still. Then they knew - those who had loved the light - that this glow would be there forever. It would be with them no matter where they were. And when the sun warmed their soul, they would rememeber their own little piece of sunshine that had lived for too short a while. But one that had blazed so bright a trail that she would glow forever. All they had to do was remember. And they did.

जागते रहो

2009-07-27T23:52:00.000-07:00

इस काली रात में एक आवाज़ अगर है तो वो है उस चौकीदार की छड़ी की ठक ठक । उसकी पतली टांगें जो देती हैं उसकी छड़ी का साथ, लम्बा रास्ता तय कर चुकी हैं। मेरे घर की खिड़की से उसका यह रात का सफ़र रोज़ नज़र आता है । रोज़ वह पीपल के पेड़ की तरह बंधा, गाँठ-भरा शरीर साइकिल पर बैठ कर मेरे घर तक आता है। दुबला, लेकिन बांस जैसा सीधा वह चौकीदार रोज़ मेरी गहरी नींद की खातिर अपना घर छोड़कर मेरे घर की रखवाली करने आता है। उसे देख मैं सोच में पड़ जाती हूँ । उसके चेहरे पर खिंची संकरी लकीरों पर गौर करती हूँ। और मन ही मन उससे सवाल करती हूँ - "चौकीदार तुम्हारे घर पर पहरा कौन दे रहा है? तुम्हारी बिटिया जो सपनों में अपने बाबा की साईकिल चलाती है, उसकी नींद का ज़िम्मा किसने उठाया है?" मुझे जवाब नहीं मिलता, सिर्फ रात के अँधेरे में गूंजती उस छड़ी की ठक ठक और कभी-कभी वो दो शब्द; वो पहरेदारों, चौकीदारों और रात के रखवालों का नारा - "जागते रहो!" अब नींद से भारी मेरी आँखें बंद हो रही हैं । "पर चौकीदार कहीं तुम्हारी खुली आंखों पर नीदं का साया तो नहीं ? होशियार। इस अँधेरी रात को जो तुम्हारी आँखें घूर रही हैं, उसी रात की परछाई में छिप कर दो अनजानी आँखें तुम्हें पढ़ रही हैं। बस, यहाँ तुम्हारी पलकें झपकीं, वहीँ इस सोए हुए शहर की नींद टूटी। हर रात की तरह क्या इस रात की सुबह भी तुम्हारी छड़ी की दस्तक पर आएगी चौकीदार ? हाँ। बस कुछ देर और। तब तक, जागते रहो। "

Midsummer Mayhem: storms, broken trees and other such unearthly pleasures

2009-05-23T10:45:00.000-07:00

the late bloomer: Rajpur Road, Civil Lines

"The rain fell like applause"

- Signature by Michael Ondaatje (From the Cinnamon Peeler)

Finally.

Delhi got the sound and light show it deserves.

No. I’m not referring to the one at Red Fort set to Amitabh Bachhan’s baritone or the one at Purana Quila narrated by Om Puri. (Ironic isn’t it – that the fort built in a time of excess gets the decadent voice of Bacchan while the crumbling, deeply neglected Old Fort has its story told by his doppelganger Puri – just a thought)

Coming back to what I was saying. We were treated to three incredible albeit short-lived thunderstorms in the span of two weeks. And what drama it was - certainly worth the wait. Sepulchral clouds on the horizon, swirling dust, winds that made light of even the mightiest Neem and raindrops that felt icy on sun-baked skin. Thunder sounded a preliminary warning and people scurried like ants, looking for cover. The rumble set the stage with a fantastic drum roll. Whooshing gusts of wind threatened to spirit away trees, birds, things and people alike. Lightning that scared the bejesus out of me with its white whip cracking across the night sky. Even hail that fell like marbles out of tin box!

And finally rain. Delicious, smelling-of-earth, soak-you-to-the-bone, redeem-the-month-of-may kind of rain.

But for me the best part is when the grand show is over. The time when the damp air and sweet smells filling it can be imbibed without prejudice. When people (some people at least!) survey in shock and awe, the arboreal carnage across the city. Huge branches, entire trees, piles of leaves, flowers, pods and nests litter the roads. A fitting homage.

I got to take in the sights on my regular rickshaw ride from the metro station back to my house. The road is particularly beautiful winding up from Shamnath Marg flanked by the pristine white façade of the British built Maidens Hotel, rising up towards St. Xavier’s and the Governors residence and finally ending at a junction framed by Oleander and Jarul trees. Near the hotel, a tall eucalyptus tree had been felled by the storm, and a small army of men and women were at work trying to clear the road. Most of the leaves had been turned to mulch by the speeding vehicles. A happy accident in my opinion because the whole place smelled divine – aromatherapy in the most unlikely fashion!

Further ahead, near the beautiful St. Xavier’s school, a massive branch of Neem had broken off. Almost half a tree. As the rickshaw pulled past the giant green bush on the road I caught a glint of steel underneath. A silver Esteem barely visible, seemed to be resting, virtually unharmed under the canopy. The next day the whole thing was gone – stripped for daatun and its medicinal leaves and bark I bet – or for firewood. I remember soaking in a bath of neem leaves when I was down with Chicken Pox as a kid. To my mind, it’s the closest I’ve come to a spa treatment till date. I’m telling you – Cleopatra might have bathed in milk but I’ve had itchy sores healed by a bittersweet broth of leaves.

Anyway, the rickshaw ride had many more sights for me to savour. The purple flowers of Jaarul, magenta Bougainvillea trellis over a wall, the wet red brick building of B.M. GangeSchool and finally the flaming Amaltas (laburnum) tree in my own house compound. When May began, I was worried. The Amaltas tree I loved to watch, was still bare. In the rest of the city, they had already begun to show off their dangling yellow bunches. This one was bald except for a few new shoots. I thought the mindless pruning of its branches by the neighbours had finally been its undoing, as I had often feared. But as it turned out I was being paranoid. It was just a late bloomer. And like all late bloomers, when it finally did come into its own, it outdid all its golden siblings across town. I should’ve known – our family has a real thing for late bloomers.

These things – part of nature’s very own Cirque du Soleil - invoke in me what I imagine to be the closest thing to religious fervour and passion. A constant reminder that it takes so little to lift ones spirits. For me it takes a dash of good weather and a smattering of crushed eucalyptus leaves put together with a burst of yellow laburnum.

Once Upon A Time...

2009-04-13T09:23:00.000-07:00

Ammuma - my grandmother is an ace story-teller. When my brother and I were young, she regaled us with some not-so-conventional bedtime stories. That is how I first heard of 'The Titanic' and was taken by the phrase "ill-fated maiden voyage". It was also the reason why, many years later while reading Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca I knew how it ended even before I had finished. And first sentences from books like "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderlay again" and "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" were in fact all too familiar. Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities was an instant favourite. My brother and I asked again and again to hear the story of Charles Darnay, Sydney Carton and Lucie Manette. I found the descriptions of the siege of Bastille and the rolling heads at the guillotine magnificently macabre.

I have an image from one such narration - it is of an old almost toothless woman sitting on the other side of the guillotine knitting away an inexorable scarf watching with considerable glee as the heads roll into a basket. One would imagine that my child's mind would reject such violent imagery - but somehow it stuck. As did Marie Antoinette and her "let them eat cake" remark which is something of a historical myth. I think my grandmother's bedside oratory brilliance had something to do with the fact that both history and literature became dear to me.

But the stock of great stories was endless. She never tired of telling us about our illustrious lineage. We would puff up our chests and preen at the mere mention of the 'Royal Family of Cochin'. And the inevitable child-like barrage of questions would follow. So did vallia-muthachan (great grandfather) wear a crown? Did you have an elephant of your own? Did you eat dinner on a table that was as long as a coconut tree? Of course, none of the above was true. And my grandmother would try her best to sound mysterious when she said "No.But we had two cars!! An ambassador AND a Chevrolet!!!" Needless to say, we weren't impressed. Not even when we heard about the children stealing dosas from the kitchen. Stealing? Dosas? Royalty? Pffftt.

But we loved hearing about Padmalayam - the big house, with the central courtyard. The lagoon at the back witht the coconut tree bent so low , it almost formed a bridge. The maid who would catch tiny fish using her sari like a net just to amuse the children. My great-grandfather who loved wearing walking shoes even with a mundu. And how the eldest of 6 brothers and sisters fell into a ditch full of dung while trying to run away from his tution-master.

Today, even at the age of 80, my grandmother is holding on to those stories for dear life. For so many years, growing up in family that was more scattered than together, she has been my eye and ear into the past. Going through old family albums, identifying thumb-sucking uncles and mischievous aunts while savouring anecdotes like adamaanga - yeah, that was our thing. Now, as her memory fades she finds the urge to talk about those days and years past, more often. Repition seems to be the backbone of remembrance. And even though names and incidents get all mixed up, the story never ends. She will stop mid-sentence, squint and frown - as if putting a puzzle together in her head. Eventually, she returns to her audience with a fresh detail or a forgotten twist in the tale. And we forge ahead...... It's amazing how much she still remembers, and how easily we seem to forget.

Grandparents perhaps intuitively take on the role of chief-storyteller. Their own lives, mirrored in their children and their children's children, take on mythic proportions. Perhaps it is some primordial preservation instinct that makes us want to pass on our stories to each successive generation. So that even in un-living and un-being, an echo of the life lived may resonate in time.

Book Number Do

2009-04-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

cover page

Birju considers his fields

"there she is!"

the chase

the discovery of the nest

and finally....a change of heart.

So this one is called 'Chugga' - which basically refers to the food a mother bird brings back for her babies. I thoroughly enjoyed figuring out the characters and their surroundings. A lot of the action takes place in and around a maize field so I tried different view points and angles to keep the visuals engaging. After Najma Ki Jeet this is my second book with the same organisation - Room to Read (India). These books are published as part of their local language publishing program. The books find a place in children's libraries set up by the organisation in different parts of the country. Definitely a fun project!

Highs and Lows: Unsolicited Opinion

2009-01-28T03:10:00.000-08:00

Given how saturated our lives are these days by the omnipresent, ubiquitous in-your-face media it's hard to be restrained in one's own reactions to the goings-on around you. There have been many events, incidents, occurrences and occasions when I have wanted to vent my frustration on this blog. But for some unknown reason I haven't been able to bring myself to do it. Perhaps its the feeling that my opinion/observation would be just another shrill voice adding to the cacophony (literally - have you heard the likes of Barkha Dutt, Arnab Goswami and Rajdeep Sardesai trying to outshout their on-camera victims??) However, some time has passed and after much quiet reflection I have decided that I do want to put my do paise worth of opinion out there.

Brevity will be it though, since many of these happenings have lived out their time in the collective consciousness of the media - if not the people en generale. So here are a few things that have disturbed, enraged, upset and/or reassured me in varying degree. (in no particular order)

1) 26th November 2008: People aren't about to forget this date anytime soon. Many tears have been shed, even more words have been spoken and written. But at the time I felt nothing could heal the wound other than introspection. A serious and solemn look at our history - the parallel history of two nations which used to be one. And that erroneously forgotten human tragedy - the partition. It is said that amputees in the early days sense their missing limb as clearly as when it was still attached to their body. A phantom limb syndrome. Ring a bell does it?

2) Marathi Manoos and the politics of the MNS: An MNS worker said on television in an attempt to justify the Marathi Manoos agenda "In Rome you must do as the Romans do, or else....leave." How absurd. While they quite rightly point out that Mumbai is not Maharashtra they are unable to apply the same logic to their own mandate. For if they had, surely the MNS and Raj Thackeray would have done something for the suffering populace of Vidarbha? Surely his esteemed legions would have asserted their regional identity through Marathi Cinema and Theater....But how can they, when they are driven by nothing more than narrow political gain.

3) Media noise: It has been a while since 24X7 news became as normal as mobile phones. But how does one ignore the constant barrage of images that trivialise and sensationalise all at once. Everything is newsworthy and simultaneously nothing is. As if playing out an Orwellian saga, the camera is everywhere - lingering on every shard of glass, every drop of blood and every wrinkle on every tear stained cheek. All the world's a stage and today, someone is always watching. While the Simi Garewals and Barkha Dutt's of the world pass loud judgement, the rest of us struggle to hear the thoughts in our own head. Wildly gesticulating anchors proclaiming 'an exclusive, live, breaking news' every other minute leave no space for coherent thought. Everything is a premeditated, foregone and foretold. And in the meantime a girl and a man murdered brutally still wait for justice.

4)Mangalore, Kandhamal, Bajrang Dal, Shri Ram Sena, Intolerance INC: It seems in our country economic progress, steady growth rates and 'shining' labels are inversely proportional to tolerance. Every time such an incident occurs I find myself wondering how can one human being do this to another human being? Why is it so hard to live and let live? The musing, I am aware, sounds laughably naive. But no one - no newspaper, no book, no film, no friend or family member, no intellectual - has even brought me close to an answer. And since there is no reassurance from the State that Intolerance will not be tolerated, I believe we are on our own. (with the corporate honchos cheering for Modi, the whole thing has been painted an uglier shade)

5)Sanjay Dutt and his fall from grace: Munnabhai, MCP as he's been aptly christened on this blog has definitely lost favour with me once and for all. During his impending 6 year conviction almost two years ago I had written a semi-sympathetic post on this blog. And now I wish I hadn't. Read Sanju Baba's regressive spiel here.

6) New New Wave: On a slightly positive, uplifting note the arrival of 'Brave New Bollywood' has been such an encouraging development. So many good, heartwarming films have graced the big screen in the recent past. Dibakar Banerjee - without a doubt one of the torchbearers of this new cinema along with a few seasoned others like Anurag Kashyap, Vishal Bharadwaj and Rajat Kapoor. Small stories with great ambition that stay away from those broad brush strokes that Bollywood uses all too often to colour our notions. Just go over to passionforcinema.com and you will see the child-like wonder with which cinephiles - both known (like Kashyap) and unknown - are talking about this second-coming of mainstream cinema. Here's hoping there are more big-little movies like Aamir, A Wednesday, Mithya, Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, Khosla Ka Ghosla and Manorama Six Feet Under.

7) Slumdog Millionaire: Fact or Fiction or Who-Cares-As-Long-As-It's-Fun? I'm on the fence with this one. Do I take issue with the word 'Slumdog' -No. I think it has more to do with the word "underdog" than it has to do with the more Indian "gali ka kutta". (although in one of the sub-titles the hindi word kutta is replaced by the word slumdog) Do I have an issue with it as a film made by a foreigner who has little or no understanding of the complexities of India - Erm. Yes and No. The outsider argument does not seem relevant when you take into consideration that Danny Boyle has made the film primarily for a Western audience. Therefore the reliance on tiresome cliches like the Taj Mahal and the very Lonely Planet-ish image of the child-god Rama encountered in the scene where Jamal and Salim are running away from a riotous mob. The narrative structure too is fairly straightforward and formulaic at times, building up to a predictable yet exhilirating end. I thoroughly enjoyed the parts played by the youngest three - who were in my own personal view let down by the older actors who took over. The characters of Jamal, Salim and Latika outlined quite poignantly by them were somewhat abandoned by Dev Patel and the others. The tumble from the train, into the future was where it started going downhill for me.

An oversimplification of otherwise complex issues could have been ignored because one is so used to this lumping together of themes in a most superficial fashion in mainstream Bollywood. So while slums, squalour and even the rags-to-riches tale are fact, it is the telling of the tale that gives it away as pure fiction. So let all discussion stop at that. It is not refined social commentary. We know that. Does Danny Boyle know? I'm not sure. In the meantime....let's root for A.R because it's irrelevant whether he deserves recognition for the music in this film. The point is that he does.

8)Obama! : The world took notice as one man stepped up. What a moment. Forget whether he will be good for India or not and just revel in that most positive message of the year "yes we can!"

There. I said it. Now I can move on.

Cest la vie.

Winter Wonderland

2009-01-25T07:54:00.000-08:00

Winter in Delhi is many things. Bitterly cold, sun-less and bleak for the most part it can be an unhappy time for many. For me though, the city shrouded in mist is a happier place. Happier than the Delhi of April and May – when bathing defeats its own purpose and the tarred roads melting in protest, stick to your shoes. Happier than the city in monsoon when complaints are rife of potholes and puddles. No. Winter is relief.

And what an entrance it makes! Easing its way into our lives with a shudder here and a shiver there. Not like spring that reminds of the oppressive summer heat lurking ahead. Long hot days give way ever so gently to shorter days when the cool air brings goosebumps on bare arms. Night sneaks up on the day and the light fades dutifully. The sun doesn’t hurt anymore – its warmth spreading deliciously over skin bare now but soon to be hidden under warm layers. Soon instead of the once-a-week Chocobar, it’s warm smoky peanuts and seeking out the un-earthly pleasure of cracking their crunchy shell under thumb and forefinger. The city is changes its hues – Tilak Marg will be flanked by a skeletal army of trees. Trees that jealously kept out the sun, now filter its rays and create winter ephemera.

Like I said winter in Delhi is many things.

It is the billowing white mist from my mouth. It is layers of wooly pleasure – scarves, gloves, multi-coloured socks, shawls, sweaters, stockings and neck warmers. It is going to lodhi garden to watch the dogs play and laze around in the fickle sun - just like everyone else. It is huddling in an auto sharing a shawl while the wind makes light of your chattering teeth. It is waking up in the dark (when we were young) to go to school. It is a bonfire of dry leaves that dies out almost as soon as it is lit. It is the haze that hangs low on the empty streets at night and the halo that crowns the tall lights along the way. It is dahlias and chrysanthemums. It is lumpy quilts wrap around frigid toes and a frosty nose. It is sun-kissed mornings and plump oranges with tangerine jewels. It is the smell of freshly washed woolens and their fuzzy warmth baking in the sun. It is fallen leaves crackling underfoot and the smell of wood smoke.

To me winter in this city will always smell of burning leaves. Perhaps it is because until a few years ago these autumnal-discards were burnt in neat little piles along the roadside. The pungent acrid smell tickled the back of my throat. But mixed with the winter air, it felt cold but smelt of warmth. A warm woody fragrance that would get into my clothes if I got close enough to these winter pyres.

R shares my joy for the cold season. And though hers is a sartorial obsession we were equally excited about the steadily dipping mercury. One evening as we sat in auto speeding down Siri Fort road, considering the nip in the air with apt concentration R said something…..wonderful.

Don’t you think people seem a lot friendlier in winter?

Hmm. Why do you say that?

All this road rage and rabblerousing….it’s because in the summer everyone is so hot and bothered. But in winter…it’s so cold that people can’t be bothered about sticking their noses out of their monkey caps, let alone open their mouths to say something vile.

….I think you’re on to something.

I can’t wait for it to get so cold that my knuckles get jammed! says R here eyes the size of saucers. Hey, move over so I can get under your shawl. My nose is cold.

As we cowered in oner corner of the auto almost cheek-to-cheek with bare chested Sallu bhai, I caught a whiff of wood-smoke from a park nearby. Winter had warmed my heart yet again.

Literary Landscapes

2008-10-13T04:23:00.000-07:00

I loved this post on this blog. And it got me thinking - if I could visit any of the places from the imagined landscapes of the books I've read where would I go. It's a charming thought really. And for me, that's what books are all about at the end of the day. About people and places that are so delicately imagined that by the time you're finished with the book they already seem familiar.

So here's my list of top five literary destinations in no particular order:

1) Macondo from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude

2) Dehradun and Mussourie from Ruskin Bond's stories

3) Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series

4) Malgudi from R. K. Narayan's Malgudi Days

5) Istanbul from Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red

There are of course many many more like The Faraway Tree from Enid Blyton's stories, Miss Havisham's ruined mansion from Great Expectations, the fantastic cityscapes described by Marco Polo in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, Mr. Biswas's house from V.S. Naipaul's A House For Mr. Biswas and Jack's Garden from his Enigma of Arrival, 1968 Prague from The Unbearable Lightness of Being to name a few. Even some not so pleasant lit-scapes like Orwell's dystopia from 1984 - Oceania, the Oklahoma dust bowl from Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and Limerick in Ireland in the 1930's and 40's from Angela's Ashes.

I'm tempted to list out fictional characters I'd like to meet (from literature and cinema), films I'd like to live in and and works of art I'd like to be! This could take a while.....

(....more later on literary landscapes.)

Najma Ki Jeet - Aur Meri Bhi!

2008-08-08T10:52:00.000-07:00

I enjoy drawing. And I discovered it only recently along with the realisation that anyone can draw. My desire to illustrate a book for children took shape in the form of 'Najma Ki Jeet' - a story about a girl who wins a small but significant victory. The project was comissioned by the organisation Room To Read. It is for now my first and only children's book. These are the only pictures I have - not the best but will have to do for the moment.

Edit: For the record, the story has not been written by me.

Reflections on Design and Cinema

2008-08-04T10:18:00.000-07:00

The following is a small extract from my diploma document. For those who don't know what that is - it is basically the final stamp on four (or two-and-a-half for some) years of design education. I look at it fondly as a reminder of all that transpired between me and NID. However, I chose to post this particular extract for a different reason......

In the four years I spent at NID needless to say, there was a lot to learn. For instance, I learnt a fair amount about what we mean by design and what one has to do to put the process of design into motion. Having been a student of Film and Video Communication at NID I have somehow always felt greatly at odds with the over-arching discipline of design vis-à-vis that of cinema. Cinema – a very intuitive and subjective medium not to mention a highly sensual one – seems far removed from the pedagogy of design. The latter is rational, logical and in its very essence something functional.

It would be far too simplistic to view the disciplines of design as cinema as two separate water-tight compartments when in fact their paths do cross often. Undeniably, a piece of cinema is actually part of a meticulously crafted and constructed reality. The beauty of cinema however, is in its ability to combine word, image and sound in space and time. It is the potential of the cinematic idiom to evoke emotions – real emotions – that set it apart from the problem-solving, analytical realm of design.

Cinema owes a great deal more to literature, music and the fine arts than it does to the academics of design which prescribes certain ways of dealing with a problem of life and living. Imagine trying to rationalize the tragicomic nature of Chaplin’s Tramp or any of Woody Allen’s neurotic characters!

Though one may say that a character is designed to perform the charade it does on screen, it is impossible to define the formula or right process by which a character may be ordered to do one’s bidding. The guidance for that comes from some sort of inner compass located first within the director/writer and in some extraordinary cases, within the gifted actors who play those parts.

Those aspects of cinema that touch a chord with its viewers operate beyond the practical realm of design. Good cinema cannot be inspired as a mere solution to say, a narrative problem. It is not the means to an end as is the case with design. It is both the medium and the message. The communicator and that which is communicated. And though it is mechanically conjured and virtually an engineered product, it transcends those limits once it reaches its final destination – when it is seen, heard and felt.

The Sound Of Silence: reprise

2008-07-26T00:20:00.000-07:00

I had posted an excerpt from this article some time back on this blog. It has since then been published in Rock Street Journal. Here's the rest of it. A travel piece on Diu. This is the original piece i wrote. The one that appeared in the magazine was abruptly cut short at the end.

The Sound of Silence: Weekends in Diu

When the going gets tough…..head to Diu! That was pretty much the mantra for us while we were busy pursuing a novel education in Ahmedabad. It was always the easiest place to get to and it was never too hard to find more than willing fellow travelers. For me the lure of Diu was always the promise of an invigorating weekend at the beach away from the madness of busy lives in the city. And the fact that this particular island destination comes without the tourist hoopla that surrounds most beach-towns was the icing on the cake.

A quaint little hamlet, the island of Diu is situated off the Saurashtra coast of Gujarat. Though it is accessible by rail and by air, we always made the overnight trip by bus – a neat 180 Rs to get you from Ahmedabad to Diu. The bus is no luxury coach but the slight discomfort seemed a small price to pay for what lay ahead. By around 7 in the morning, just as you begin to rub the sleep from your eyes, the smell of the sea tells you that you have arrived. Even now, despite having been there before, every time we make the trip, the first sight of the sea never fails to excite me.

We would spot the first signs of life in an otherwise quiet town - the fishing boats anchored in the bay bobbing in tandem with the waves, nets spread out to dry, the wooden ship building yard with unfinished skeletons waiting for the tide, neatly scrubbed kids on their way to school - a sleepy town awakening to yet another sleepy day.

The ritual on arrival was always to first and foremost, hire bikes! Mopeds, scooties, the Luna or bicycles should you choose to exercise while you’re on vacation. There is nothing more satisfying than zipping around on a relic of a moped on a road that bends and dips and curves, giving you fleeting, tantalizing glimpses of the sea. Plus it’s an incredibly economic mode of transport given that the rental is about 100 bucks a day inclusive of one tank of petrol! Another reason I prefer having my own mode of transport when I’m traveling is that one avoids being bullied by over-zealous auto-wallahs who moonlight as tourist guides. Eager-beavers that they are, their sole aim is to hijack your vacation. So beware - independence is crucial to the intrepid traveler!

I must admit though, that sight-seeing in Diu was definitely not a bore. Despite being a small-town with a distinctly laidback quality, there is enough to keep you on your toes. The Portuguese fort that sort of outlines the city is definitely worth a visit. It seems to rise up out of the water and offers a spectacular view of the Arabian Sea. Though overrun by loud tourists on weekends, the fort is not to be missed by the architecture and history buff. Old cannons, ruined ramparts, a lone light house and my personal favourite – the long stone pier that stretches out into the sea - it’s the stuff of movies and legends.

The real appeal of Diu is not so much in the sights but the setting of it all. Huge rocky cliffs, diminished only by the carpet of yellow daisy like flowers, are scattered all over the island. Ideal for soaking up the sun, exploring these mountains of rock chiseled by the sea is a must-do. The Gomptimata beach – a rocky shore with wild surf – on the far end of the island has some phenomenal cliffs where if you look hard enough you can find yourself a comfy little corner on a ledge and while away the hours reading a book or just watch the waves crash into the walls below.

A former Portuguese colony, Diu still retains some of its old world charm. The remains of a colonial past are there for those who wish to see it - in the churches and forts, the names of restaurants and the elusive half Portuguese half Indian families that still inhabit the island. Those who have been to Goa will recognize the vibe – a multicultural strain trying to hold its own in the midst of the local milieu. In Diu though, unlike Goa, this strain stands out simply because it tries not to. And if you’re not careful, you might miss it altogether.

What struck me most about the place on my first visit there was the serenity and stillness that seemed to lurk in every nook and cranny. It was easy – a breeze in fact – to find a deserted strip of sand to spread out on or waves to frolic in without having to worry about strange prying eyes.

In Diu, I have found it much more rewarding to steer clear of the so-called ‘popular’ and ‘best’ beaches and head to the ones that aren’t necessarily listed on any web site or those that feature as a perfunctory remark in the travel guide. In this respect my pick is Jalandhar beach – a pristine golden stretch of sand with big beautiful waves. We were advised against swimming in these waters due to strong currents but we didn’t mind. It was enough to just sit and let the waves come to us while we sipped on beer and felt our skin turn brown. The great thing about Diu is that no one beach is like the other. If one is rocky the other is sandy. One has the perfect waves while the other is a paragon of stillness.

If you’re not sunning yourself on a beach in Diu you should be in Naida Caves. When we got to the dirt road that said “this way to Naida caves” we were in half a mind to turn back and head to the beach where it was open and sunny and bright. What was in front of us was nothing short of something out of an Indiana Jones movie. Prehistoric was the word I believe someone used to describe these caves. But do work up the courage to venture into the underground labyrinth because it will be well-worth the effort. Once we had navigated through the undergrowth the caves just opened up in front of us. The afternoon light came in through shafts in the ceiling and suddenly it wasn’t so ominous anymore. A photographer’s delight the light, shadows, textures and sheer scale are mind-boggling once you’re there. Though it is unwise to venture into the caves late in the evening, a trip to Naida is a great diversion from the sun-sand-and-sea.

Just a few meters down from Jalandhar is Chakratirth Beach or Sunset point. A crescent shaped cove, it was here that we spent many many hours floating in the still water, playing the fool as the sun set on the horizon. If you’re traveling on a shoe-string budget you might want to consider shacking up at the Sea Village Resort on the hillock that overlooks this beach. The rooms here are made out of cargo containers which explains why it’s so easy on the pocket. It’s a tad grungy but makes up for what it lacks in comfort by its proximity to two of the best beaches in Diu.

On one occasion when we were feeling relatively rich, we decided to stay at the more up-market but curiously delightful Resort Hoka named after the Hoka tree - a strange branching variety of the palm that was introduced in Diu by the Portuguese. Hoka was marvelously comfortable with large, airy rooms, hammocks in the garden and the latest addition – a swimming pool! Another reason to go to Hoka – the food! Their sea food curries are delectable in their simplicity. Despite being a beach-town the sea-food in Diu was by and large disappointing till we discovered the menu at Hoka. I despised Tuna till the cook here made me change my mind!

It was on one such culinary excursion when hungry and hapless we stumbled upon Heranca Goesa. Tucked away in a by-lane opposite the Church of St. Francis this intimate breakfast and dinner joint is run by a pleasant Portuguese-Indian family. We were more than grateful for a hearty breakfast of chocolate and banana pancakes, eggs, toast and coffee. Their own personal kitchen dishes out these tummy-pleasing delights and for a moment you forget you’re still in Gujarat. It’s a great place to meet other travelers since everyone eats together at one table.

I have been to Diu four times till today and each trip has been incomparable to the previous one. It’s surprising how doing very little while you’re on vacation can work wonders for a mangled wreck of a brain. I remember coming back to Ahmedabad with my pockets full of sand and thinking “does it really get better than this?”

The road curved and the sea came up in front – moonlit, the landscape seemed dramatically altered. After sun-down, cruising at a comfortable 20 km/hr on our mopeds down the road that runs parallel to the sea, someone from the distinguished convoy of travelers would always start humming “Riders on the Storm”. And somehow it fit – a familiar melody, the distant but constant sound of the surf, the wind on our face and the salty smell of a weekend well spent.

Paul Schrader Live!

2008-07-20T23:12:00.000-07:00

image courtesy: google

At the Osian's Cinefan film festival held recently in Delhi I had the chance to go (read sneak out of work) and listen to Paul Schrader talk about screen writing. To my mind this was a golden opportunity to a) maybe learn something about screen writing from the guy who wrote the most precise character sketch ever b) to be in the company of Scorsese's ghost :)

The Siri Fort Auditorium is uncomfortably large. There was a table, chair and white board on the enormous stage and some sort of video projection at the back which I thought would give me a decent view of Schrader as he delivered his lecture. I took my seat at the back just as he walked on to stage and took his place. Bald, chubby, casually dressed in shorts and a t-shirt Paul Schrader was as far removed as can be from the mental picture I had of him from an iconic photograph taken on the sets of Taxi Driver.

As he spoke in that distinctive American drawl about writing and creating cinema in words, he became more familiar. The session titled 'Masterclass in Screenwriting' shaped up like an outline of a lesson in scriptwriting. There were some bold statements that were thrown at the audience. I'm paraphrasing at best but here's one such statement "If you're not willing to drop your pants and let it all hang out, or if you're looking for something more polite and discreet - this [filmmaking] is perhaps not for you." Not the best orator and hardly eloquent - but then it made sense when he spoke of the need for economy of expression. Words cannot make up in number what they lack in girth. In a time when words are cheap and silence costs dear, to say nothing is saying a lot.

The audience was waiting for some sort of an epiphany. But it didn't come. Instead what we got was Paul Schrader talking about his failed marriage, many failed relationships, his suicidal rage, the birth of his daughter, the problem of abject despair and loneliness and its most absolute ambassador - travis bickle and his yellow taxi cab, sparks that fly when a problem finds its own suitable metaphor and a film we thought was about Jake LaMotta when what it was really about was two brothers.

Naturally expectations ran high - and people did end up being disappointed. However, I did find something valuable in that lecture despite the general opinion that Paul Schrader 'aint much to write home about. Which was that no matter how many scripts you write or how many films you make, everytime you write a new script or make a new film or create anything - you have to begin at the very beginning. It's never easier, shorter, quicker or any less agonising. And the journey is always inside out.

Steven Spielberg and The Return of Indiana Jones : Entertainment Inc.

2008-06-02T02:41:00.000-07:00

If ever there was a megalomaniac of cinema (the Hollywood kind) it is undoubtedly Steven Spielberg. There is nothing this man cannot do. Benevolent alien beings, not-so-benevolent alien beings, swashbuckling treasure hunters, dinosaurs, sharks, thieves, war heroes, war-profiteer turned heroes, racism, Nazism, colonialism - you name it he's done it.

Although it reeks of the assumption 'If it's bigger it must be better' Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of The Crystal Skull is so great to watch only because it is unpretentious and unapologetic about its need to entertain. I mean, just look at the opening sequence - the audaciously self- conscious introduction of Indy Jones as his shadow creeps up on the edge of a jeep and he puts on 'the' hat, a rapier-toting Cate Blanchet, highly magnetised mummified remains and a chase that ends in a nuclear blast which of course Henry Jones survives (and how!) . The scale of imagination (for a rationalist like myself) is just unbelievable. It's good stuff as far as entertainment is concerned. And the promise of a thrill-ride is well-kept right till the end.

Of course the tendency to indulge in some all-American flag-waving did not go unnoticed. "Better be dead than Red!". Come on! We already know what you mean Mr Spielberg when you have the Russians running amok looking for aliens that landed smack in the middle of the U.S of A. So leave the 'west is best' sloganeering where it deserves to be. Back in the 50s.

But let's call a spade a spade. This film shouldn't be judged for its cinematic appeal. Or for political correctness. Or for Spielberg's directorial abilities. For that evidence is plentiful in the form of his other films. Wikipedia has a whole other page devoted to a 'list of Steven Spielberg's films'. The point is that here is a man so comfortable with the medium at hand that he can do virtually anything with it. And for that - just that nothing more - he deserves to be remembered long after his time.

Delhi Times

2008-05-30T02:43:00.000-07:00

I have a bone to pick with this city.

What is it about Delhi that makes even the most demure, polite,well mannered people whip out their claws and bare their teeth?

Delhi is not for the fainthearted. It is exasperating, infuriating and tends to just rub people the wrong way. A colleague at work told me that a man consumed by rage (in all probability due to an altercation over a near-invisible dent on his precious vehicle) started chucking mini boulders at other commuters, damaging a small cavalcade of big cars and even bigger egos. Where he found boulders to hurl on a main road is a question worth asking. (Although my guess is it was thanks to the BRT/MCD/PWD/NDMC or some other acronym that makes good use of the taxpayers' money by digging up every square inch of motorable road) And anyway, the fact that he found it in him to do such a thing is perhaps mundane and would draw less attention than the question of availability-of-boulders-to-throw-at-errant-drivers.

These are the times we live in.

A time when violence is the new normal
A time when we split hairs over whodunnits while a nation becomes a republic overnight
A time when we ask the most banal questions with utmost sincerity....

....and leave it to someone else to bell the cat.

G.e.t R.e.a.l

2008-05-27T03:16:00.000-07:00

It rained and I was happy. But I had reality shoved in my face by just another jackass - the rich kid with the big car - when he calculated the precise turn of the wheel that would splash just the right amount of murky rainwater to soak me down to the bone. Just when my head was a-buzz with rain-soaked laburnum and i-love-the-smell-of-wet-earth thoughts.

Assholes will remain assholes. Yes. Even on days when flowers that gladden your heart dance their mirth in front of your eyes.

Throw down the gauntlet.
Take the bull by the horns.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
Get real.

and Get Going.

Tomorrow is another day.

Yet Another Inconvenient Truth

2008-05-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

image via 'skineart by njlee

It floated into my stream of consciousness like a post-it tugged loose from cyber space. Cloaked in deceptive simplicity, the ring of truth is unmistakable in this charmingly lucid statement. So true and yet, somehow, so incredibly disconcerting.

To think that life will never make complete and total sense until it has passed you by............

*shudder*

I bet there is an appropriate Calvin-esque retort to this.

Until the next pit stop

2008-04-27T04:29:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: this is not a poem.

The tracks span length and breadth in the soil
over water, land, valley and rock
they leave a marked trail
the train runs snake-like
pregnant with the mass of humanity
lives in tow, trussed up in linen
or boxed up in cheap wood. The lives
dangle, they leap, they sweat
they sleep, they watch, they bore
they shit, they score, they cry
they scratch, they shift, they doze
they laze, they trace, they look
they cook, they eat, they wash
they give and they live
from one place to the next
forever in motion
no full stops no stopping for air
go sit on the roof if you can't
breathe inside where
the babies yell for their mother's breast
and the air is like glue
filled with the acrid smell
of pickle, sweat and soot
let your eye traverse the contours
of resting bodies - bodies in limbo
waiting to move - dormant
till the next stop.
the next stop
life begins anew
and so we play at the charade again
we move, we pull, we push, we shove
we lean, we stall, we, yell, we crush
we smile, we wave, we holler, we pale
we step, we hop, we skip, we jump
we lift, we heave, we ho and we hum.

Never too late?

2008-04-08T04:55:00.001-07:00

The past few days have been - to resort to a cliché - an emotional roller coaster ride. To be reminded of the impermanence of life in the most jarring way, is to have a mirror held up to how you've been living it all this while. A spitting image of everything you didn't do. Didn't say. Didn't think of. Until it was too late.

No wonder it's liberating to think of yourself as a mere speck of dust on the face of the earth. Without the weight of responsibility, relationships and the rigour of living, as a speck of star-dust you are free. How cool would it be if you could zoom out at will and look down at the earth from space, and watch your troubles disappear to leave only a great big ball of blue-green? Rationalists can come running with their pitchforks of reason and yell "escapist!" but I am at the moment reveling in the (mis-guided) pleasure of denial.

To try and fudge over the hurt and guilt of not having been the person I should have been.

But I know I cant bury my head in the sand forever. So when I'm ready - when I've healed a little - I'll look up and face reason, reality and all those other things I'm avoiding right now. After all how hard can it be to pick up the phone and call someone you haven't spoken to in years? Or to write that story you've been meaning to write for the longest time? Or to tell someone that you wouldn't be the same without their quiet presence in your life?

Not all that hard. For sure.
And anyway, life is too damn short for me to believe otherwise.

In her own words

2008-04-01T22:53:00.000-07:00

I cannot emphasize enough what a great teacher and extraordinary human being Chitra Srinivas was. She did not merely teach history from a book, she told stories complete with the triumphs and failures, the hits and misses and the highs and lows of humanity. Her integrity and genuine love for the subject she taught reflects in this piece she wrote after she opted out of the commission set up by the NCERT to review the new history textbooks. I'm posting an excerpt. The full text can be found here.

Text books: Sectarian Story or History?
by: Chitra Srinivas, November 10, 2002

"I am a schoolteacher who has taught history for the past 25 years. I have enjoyed teaching the subject. I don't claim to be an expert, and I do not belong to any group or subscribe to any particular ideology - the Left, the Hindutva school, or any other. I think the study of history is important because it helps us discriminate and judge, see patterns and connections and, above all, think logically by observing cause and effect.

History has long been treated as a boring subject; indeed, not many students want to study it at the college level. Yet, every government wants to control the writing of this subject. Because it is history that makes a nation. It is through history that one can control minds, especially the young, impressionable minds at school.

I was a member of the five-day Review Workshop organized in January 2002 by the NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) for the class 10 textbook. I went with an open mind, but as the reading of the draft proceeded, I observed that there was virtually no discussion. For two days, the history text was merely read out. I was the only one who raised objections, whether about the language, facts or even the obvious ideological slant. It was a lonely battle.....

...... I have always told my students that the beauty of Indian culture lies in its ability to accept and assimilate any stream of thought. As a responsible teacher, I am unable to accept distortions in the writing of history that go against the very spirit of India's existence.

I wish for all my children a world where they will be free from hatred towards one another. I also love children too much for them to be left to the mercies of politicians who have their own sectarian agendas. "

For My Teacher

2008-03-31T03:17:00.000-07:00

A phone call.
I listened.
I panicked.
It isn't true.

I haven't met her for the past one year. I was going to meet her soon. I had to tell her I'm working now. That I've made it through. That I have missed her these past few years. That I think of her so often. That I speak of her so often. That my friends know of my teacher who could transform an ordinary class into a mind-bending exercise . And that when they tell me how lucky I am I know exactly what they mean.

Four years of history, life, the universe and everything else. The mad-frenzy of G.S Elections, an unreal year with the Students' Executive, innumerable mornings of reading the news, chalo bhor ke raahi , scanning the paper for anecdotes and discoveries from bygone eras, projects on Sufi music and British memsahibs, bulletin boards, the cold war, We Didn't Start The Fire, panel discussions on Mohammed bin Tughlaq, the controversial history textbooks, the refrain of songs sung again and again in class and in the choir, taking frantic notes in class trying to keep up with her, classes in the warm sun on a winter's day, a card from her on children's day that spoke volumes, a note from her in a paper, the collective gasp of surprise when we got to know she was an F1 enthusiast, the steady stream of seniors who came by every now and then - always to meet her in particular, the stories of her students which she told and re-told a million times, her laughing eyes and animated hands, a yearbook , more songs, diya ceremony and a farewell that ended with karavaan chal diya, door ke desh ko, aur khamosh hum, dekhte reh gaye.

We learnt from her but she never failed to remind us that after more than two decades of teaching she was learning too. From us.

My memory of her was so much in conflict with what was in front of me. A small shred of the person i knew- we all knew. To see her simply lie there motionless was a reality I did not want to accept. I walked up to her to say goodbye, but i couldn't. To say goodbye would mean letting go. And I wasn't ready. Tears flowed not so much in sorrow but in sheer disbelief. In anger and pain at the thought of one such as her silenced by death. An unbearable lightness.

Death. The only certainty. And yet its coming leaves us powerless against the stark truth. She is gone. But even so, her spirit is too big and too free to be contained by the finality of death. I hope she finds peace. A place to rest with her books, Michael Schumacher, music, maps, questions and a window to look out of.

If the universe really is made of stories, then Chitra ma'am's stories will glow in the dark.

with love, gratitude and warm memories of times well spent. you are missed.

Universal Truth on NGC

2008-03-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

The other day, while watching a bewitching series about the birth of our planet Earth on National Geographic Channel I had one of those moments when you realise something and knock yourself on the head for not having thought of it before.

As I watched a make-believe earth hurtle through a make-believe universe I figured that...

The earth is big.
The universe is bigger.
Humans are small.
I am smaller.
My issues are wee.

Life is that simple.
Really.
It is.

In Memoriam...

2008-03-14T04:33:00.000-07:00

Nostalgia is something I like to indulge in every once in a while. And it is indulgent I think, to savour memories and thoughts, re-play incidents and moments in slow motion with omissions and additions. To not take take stock of the present and revel in a past re-imagined. Phrases like 'the good old days' and 'hamaare zamaane mein..' or even my latest favourite 'aaj kal ke bacche' trigger a chain of thought that follows a trail of old phtotgraphs, memorabilia and notes from a diary. The present pales in comparison to the glorious past.And somehow things never seem as great as they used to be.

A wise wise man once said "We live life in retrospect." When i first heard that statement I was astonished by the simplicity of its truth. Generation after generation has believed that there was never a better time to live (not exist) than when they were young. The air is always cleaner, the trees more abundant, the children more child-like and life infinitely simpler back then.
Grandparents are among the first people to introduce you to this curious world that belongs to their memory and is eventually given over to your imagination. The ancestral house with a dozen rooms to get lost in. The crazy cook whose adamanga you steal at your own risk. The large family you wished you could have. The music sessions your grandfather had with his daughters as he played the veena and they sang. The story about the namboodiri who cured the sick boy of a snake-bite but died himself. And the many many ammavans, chittammas, chechis and chettans you just can't keep up with.

Then....you have memories of your own. The railway track that you named 'trackey' and then returned to years later with a little cousin in tow. The swimming instructor whom you threatened with instant death at the hands of your father (who FYI is a doctor). The pond at the back of your grandmother's house where you poked the turtles while your cousins thrashed around trying to swim. The aunt who died of cancer but taught you how to squeeze colours out of a flower. The time when you lost one slipper in the slush after the rain and went home with one foot in a slipper and the other in a cast of mud.The train journeys when you would wait for a glimpse of the hill shaped like a thumb. The history projects at school that you put your heart and soul into. The teacher who made you not just like the subject, but love it. The moment when you knew you had made it to that one institute you had been obsessing about for 3 years..... and everything that followed.

It's the good stuff we romanticize. The rest is all reluctant remembrance. The things we leave behind don't actually get left behind. They get shelved into some compartment or the other and are labeled unanimously "For Future Reference." And then we reminisce about the good, bad and the ugly....incessantly and unabashedly. Why wouldn't the present then seem like a mere shadow of the past?

Kitsch is not kewl

2008-02-27T22:42:00.000-08:00

image:© O. Alamany & E. Vicens/CORBIS

I'm not feeling too eloquent and articulate today so I'm just going to use other people's words (for now) to try and describe what I feel about 'kitsch'. I was blog-hopping yet again when I came across masalachaionline's eclectic collection of posts featuring Indian artists and designers. One such post featured a bunch of photographs of 'Indian street-art'. The following was one of the comments left by a reader and I'm borrowing her words:

"these are wicked - I love any street art and look forward to seeing more of this. I don't like how Indian street art has been appropriated by retro-ironic types here though - really irks me when I see rails of mass-produced tees and totes with some faux-bollywood style poster, or Indian packaging or something - you're left with nothing of the original humour, but just some dry remnant of exotica."

A more oblique but interesting viewpoint is provided by Franco-Czech writer Milan Kundera in his fabulous book The Unbearable Lightness of Being where he says that kitsch is the anti-thesis of anything that is remotely reminiscent of individuality, originality and doubt. A leveler of the contradictions and complexities of real life, kitsch according to Kundera is akin to totalitarianism where "all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions."

So what's all the fuss about? When what all kitschy art is really all about is imitation and appropriation of an established style without trying to question it any way. It doesn't challenge convention, it follows formula and is a function of capitalist machinery. How many more pillow cases/bags/t-shirts with printed faces of Rekha/Dharmender/Amitabh do we have to sell before we move on to something that can be called 'original' and 'authentic' without having to use quote marks?

The Sound of Silence: an excerpt

2008-02-16T06:34:00.000-08:00

Nagoa Beach, Diu.

The following is an excerpt from a travel piece I wrote for RSJ. The article will appear in the coming edition of the magazine. The piece was written keeping in mind the readership and general profile of the magazine.

When the going gets tough…..head to Diu! That was pretty much the mantra for us while we were busy pursuing a novel education in Ahmedabad. It was always the easiest place to get to and it was never too hard to find more than willing fellow travelers. For me the lure of Diu was always the promise of an invigorating weekend at the beach away from the madness of busy lives in the city. And the fact that this particular island destination comes without the tourist hoopla that surrounds most beach-towns was the icing on the cake.

[ to be continued.....]

Of Dogs, Cats And Everything In Between

2008-02-15T23:11:00.000-08:00

For Jofree and The Band of Mothers

"all dogs go to heaven"
so do cats, birds, cows, donkeys, tigers, armadillos, hedgehogs........

On a recent visit to the local animal help organisation called Friendicoes, I had a sort of an epiphanic moment of my own. Standing in the midst of dogs and puppies of all shapes and sizes (literally) clamoring for attention, I was amazed and moved at the spirit of these beautiful animals. So many of them had been through some horrifying, scarring experiences - most often at the hands of an insensitive uncaring human being - and yet they trusted me and others around them implicitly and without question.

Some of the stories I heard from Geeta (Founder, Friendicoes) left me shocked and disgusted at the cruelty that seemed to come so easily to some people. Toffee, a Great Dane, was rescued from his own home after being neglected by his owners. He hadn't been fed a single morsel of food for 8 whole months. You could tell that he would have been majestic in his prime. And yet he couldn't even stand on his own or swallow his food. He had been starving for so long that his body rejected any food that was given to him.

There were others who had hope. Rani the silken black Lab, padded up to me and nudged me till I patted her head and scratched her tummy. Champ the puppy with a fractured foot darted across the room without a care in the world stopping only for some cuddles. The lithe doberman Dobi strutted around like the proud pooch he is.

I've never had pets but I was reminded of all the times I spent in the company of some pup or cat or scraggly dog on the street. My brother and I 'rescued' many puppies-in-distress although admittedly some didn't need or want to be rescued. But each time we had to let them go, we cried buckets. Howled and wailed so much at having to let Jerry/Snowy/Manju/Tuffy go that my father would promise to bring a puppy home soon just to stop us from screaming like banshees.

A year or so ago I had the opportunity to take care of a little waif of my own. (Well not mine exactly. Me and four other besotted women :D) We found her tucked away in a locker at NID mewing with all her strength. And when I pulled her out I was surprised at how little she was. Barely the size of my palm, she was only a few days old and probably lost. I remember holding her at night, scared to bits that she was going to die because she looked so lifeless, hoping she would pull through. She did - and how!

The next five months were all about Jofree. It seemed that all she wanted to do was play - or eat! Every little move she made was cause to celebrate. The five of us would fuss over her endlessly. She made fools of us and we gladly obliged. We talked nonsense, saved the best piece of chicken from dinner, bought Cerelac and feeding bottles and fought for her attention. I remember how A would have an entire conversation with her absolutely certain that she understood. N would make Jofree sit on her shoulder while she walked to class and R patted her to sleep on a particularly traumatic night. We were so wrapped up in that kitten that we were called the 'Band of Mothers' by some friends. Possessive to the point of being irrational, I think if the relationship between Jofree and her 'mothers' is to be judged in human terms, Jofree would have said "I think we should just be friends."

Jofree was the most lovable sprightly kitten. Maybe everyone says that about their pets, but this kitten had the spirit of a crazy ball and the energy of a lightning bolt! She wasn't too clever but that made us love her even more. She answered to her name and came running at the sound of rustling plastic which to her meant FOOD! She would climb up trees and wouldn't know how to get down. Eager beaver that she was, her attempts at friendship with the other cats on campus ended poorly. Due to obvious reasons, being a cat didn't come naturally to her. So Jofree learnt the hard way.

Despite all that she grew up into a gorgeous cat. We thought she was gorgeous. Every time I think of Jofree I think of everything she taught us. How she brought five friends closer together and tested their patience and compassion. She reminded me that being human means being humane. I'm so glad we found her.

tan·gle

2007-12-27T03:11:00.000-08:00

he woke up paralysed

and found that he was no more

than a tangle of thoughts.

Flotsam I Am

2007-12-27T02:52:00.000-08:00

So many times I've felt exactly like this. Going somewhere.....reaching nowhere. I haven't yet made up my mind if this is a good thing or something that is to my detriment.

Pre-determined destinations have never been my friends. I continue to drift among strands of thoughts that don't tie up to form a web and ideas that melt as quickly as they form.

One tends to float or amble towards a general destination with no road maps in hand. Reaching nowhere is not exactly a dead end. It's more like coming to a clearing which stretches as far as the eye can see.

So the best thing to do I suppose is to walk on....

List-en to this...

2007-12-22T08:28:00.000-08:00

I adore making lists. It gives me an absurd sense of purpose and the (often false) feeling that there is order where there appears to be chaos. But my lists are not always functional. Quite the contrary actually. Riffling through old notebooks, journals and the innumerable pieces of loose paper I hoard (I'll get into that subject some other time) I found list after list of things, names, activities, places, people, words and thoughts. (I was reminded of the film Pillow Book (1996) by director Peter Greenaway. The film had a fascination for lists - lists of a more 'bohemian' nature.)

I was going through the Top Ten section at sensesofcinema.com. Random lists submitted by readers of their top ten favourite films. Thats what got me thinking about lists in the first place. I have never succeeded in making my own "top ten" list of films. It's horribly tempting what with film magazines, e-zines and TV shows throwing lists at you from every direction. Best Directors, Best Films, All Time Greats, Top Ten Film Noir, Best Musicals and so on and so forth. Sight and Sound had asked renowned film directors for their own lists. One of the directors said "I won't put Citizen Kane on that list just because every list in the world tells me to!' Fair enough. And I don't blame said director for the outburst. Lists are sensitive things. You have to be careful what you put on it. When I tried making such a list I felt so burdened that I had to abandon the venture. How do you decide the criteria for such a list? And why only ten? Why not five or fifteen? Since then I have stuck to making lists that come with far less responsibility and where the criteria are not as important as the making of the list itself! It's been good going so far.

A list is ordinarily prioritised. Some things are more important while others are not so. Some things demand immediate attention while others may be content to wait a while. But then there are the lists that are simply there because someone felt like making a list. An idle mind is the perfect source of an odd little list. And the possibilities are endless!

My own lists include:
My favourite words with each letter of the alphabet
The books I simply must read before I die and a list of all the books I have ever read (it's a work in progress)
The films that I think have changed the way I look at cinema
'Indian' English words that I think are indispensable
Names for my dog when I do get one
Hindustani Classical Ragas that give me goosebumps and/or make me cry
Possible subjects for a research paper tracing the material history of an object (e.g. paper, cotton, salt, indigo etc.)
Overrated film classics (next in line is underrated film classics)
Credit lists for my various film projects
Thank you lists for various things
Things I learnt from Mumbai
Words to look up in the dictionary (obsequious, eponymous words like that)
Things to do when hopelessly bored
A list of my most vivid childhood memories

And now......A list of lists! How fitting!

Blogito Ergo Sum?

2007-11-18T08:27:00.000-08:00

The great thing about blogs is not that you get to write, vent, display your wares or publish stuff you think no one will ever read anyway. The great thing is the whole universe of bloggers that opens up once you have discovered and unraveled for yourself some uncharted blog territory. Blog-hopping is great fun and immensely satisfying I think. Not all of it is good - far from it. But it's almost like a silent conversation with people adding to it on their own, bit by bit. A conversation that doesn't really have a beginning, middle and end. One that is prone to many many tangential departures. Some of which you may not understand or be able to contribute to. While some of it might strike a chord and you might find yourself smiling a little because you understand.

A friend remarked that she would NEVER use her blog as a personal diary. Neither would I. But there are many who do just that. I have come across several blogs that give so much away about the author, that one immediately feels like an unwanted visitor. An intruder in violation of personal space. The argument is simplified by saying that if it's out there then it's meant to be read. Of course. But have we discarded our traditional notions of what is public and private? Conventional ideas of space? Blogs perhaps exist - as does most of the content on the internet - in the turbulent space in between the two spheres of public and private. The lines are fine and blurry. A post might be plain rhetoric - not meant to be answered or discussed. Sometimes it is provocative and invites argument and quarrel. It may seek definition or defy it altogether. A blog derives meaning from dialogue, from this dynamic relationship that the author establishes with the universe of bloggers. It grows in most cases. But there is also death and decay. A wasteland of abandoned blogs - conversations left incomplete.

An article in Tehelka about "Celebrity Blogs" says Blogs are cults of personality, read for the tastes, idiosyncrasies, lifestyle and preoccupations of the blogger." Cults of personality! Indeed, it is a cult with faithful followers, timid first-timers and incorrigible zealots who work tirelessly in order to make this a cult worth subscribing to. My own preoccupation with blogs has been somewhat of a mystery to me. Is it really "Blogito Ergo Sum" - I blog therefore I am? No, not by any stretch of imagination. But it might be "I am therefore I blog." Just that. Nothing more, nothing less.

Cinephilia - Young Love

2007-11-15T22:51:00.001-08:00

I wish I could boast of having been a cinephile since the day I was born. The truth however is bland and stares me in the face. I am incredibly envious of those die-hard movie-buffs who fed off of cinema and scaled walls to catch the latest film in town. I have vivid memories of going to the circus that came to the Red Fort grounds and the puppet show in Sri Ram Center, but no such memory about going to the cinema hall.

I do remember the films that I watched as a child. Back then the fascination was with the stories and characters - not so much the medium itself. I was completely taken by The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins and Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang. The musical was such a spectacle and it was thrilling to watch Julie Andrews and Dick-Van-Dyke do such wonderful routines to the music. The video-store near our house was a regular weekend haunt. VHS tapes of Tom and Jerry, Lion King, Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, Mr. India, Home Alone and much later, Lawrence of Arabia made their way into our home. There was also a most wonderful television channel called DD3 (Doordarshan 3) which showed films like Born Free and The Gods Must Be Crazy. But my engagement with the material was far less than with say, books, music and theatre.

The film appreciation course at NID in my first year was something of an eye-opener. We watched films like Jojo's Cafe and Wedding and standard film-school fare like De Sica's Bicycle Thief. Alain Resnai's hauntingly beautiful Hiroshima Mon Amour left me bewildered. It was so lyrical, so sublime and yet so powerful. There were other films and directors whose work I learned to appreciate and identify - Truffaut's Les Mistons, Ozu's Tokyo Story, Zhang Yimou's Ju Dou, Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers, Welles's Citizen Kane, Godard's Breathless and Weekend and My Life To Live, Ray's Aparajito, Chaplin's The Great Dictator and Modern Times, Antonioni's Red Desert, Resnais's Night and Fog, Kieslowski's Three Colours Red White and Blue,Almodovar's Talk To Her and All About My Mother, Scorsese's Raging Bull and Goodfellas, Vertov,s Man With A Movie Camera and Robert Weine's Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to name a few. It was then that I began to really look at cinema. I saw it as the perfect amalgam of the great traditions in art, literature, music and theater. It was a social and historical document. It was unique in that it was imbued with the value of the fourth dimension - the dimension of time.

When I watched Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso, I felt a strange kinship with the little boy Toto who grows up to be a filmmaker. The enigma of cinema - the nearly magical projector, the sound of film whirring through it and the dancing translucent images on the screen - is hard to shake off once of you have experienced it. Today this romantic notion of film and cinema is being replaced by something far less tactile. Something that has changed the very foundation of filmmaking and has empowered many more people to make films. There is nothing even remotely romantic about digital technology. Nothing to touch and feel. No sounds that reassure. The world of objects reduced in one fell swoop to some binary code and little squares that are inadequate from the start.

I am in no position to speak of the joys of one medium as opposed to the perceived ills of another. I haven't had the opportunity to fiddle with a film projector or use the lithe video camera, almost an appendage of the human arm when in use, in diverse ways. I do not wish to debate over the subject of analog and digital - though it is changing the very nature of communication - because I am no expert. But I will say this - if i were to strike up a romance with one of the two, it would undoubtedly be the former.

The Beginning of An End

2007-11-14T21:51:00.000-08:00

It's odd that one should speak of beginnings and endings when in fact it is impossible to separate one from the other. It still hasn't sunk in that there won't be another semester of NID to go back to.But now, going back will mean new ways of seeing. Looking at the same spaces and being amazed at how powerful a drug nostalgia really is. Memory hinges on the permanence of these spaces so that even when familiar faces are few and far between the past is never too far away. Nevertheless you sense change, a callous disregard for the old and an unabashed acceptance of anything that reeks of the new. It's a bitter pill to swallow but you learn to take it in your stride. The spaces you once laid claim to are now populated by the hopes, aspirations and miseries of a new set of people. Ferociously territorial once you were about that one desk by the window in your studio. You return to it anxious to find a trace that betrays your presence. Instead you find an intruder in YOUR space. Eager to reclaim what you consider to be yours you make your presence felt. But then you recognise the intruder. It could have been you.

Sometimes the memory of a place and the time spent within it is so strong that you want to posess it in its entirety. And so when you go back you look for confirmation - a sign that tells you "Look here - this brick is exactly the way you left it!" Sometimes you find it so and it's enough for the time being.

(photography by: Sanjay ; Holi at NID)

Encore

2007-09-05T22:58:00.000-07:00

Watching a film for the second time often tempers initial reactions and rash judgements. It is a good opportunity to sit back and let the story run its course while you begin to notice scenes, actions and gestures previously overlooked. I went to see Chak De with a friend for the second time and realised that while there are some gaps in the storytelling and hints of over-indulgence, by and large the film comes together quite well. This is not a review. Merely a few observations borne out of a fresh perspective.

- Great directing of the sporting action by director and cinematographer. The action is superbly filmed and places the game with all its nuances in the spotlight.

- Sensitive handling of sound. Split-second delays, restrained use of background music and treatment of silences as sound added value to the action

- Superb construction of certain key charcters. Especially Bindiya Naik whose conflicts and angst are laid bare in the manner in which she is framed in the film.

-Great acting by Shilpa Shukla whose body language was powerful and evocative, as she tried to bring the world-weary, no-nonsense Bindiya Naik to life. In the scenes she shares with Shahrukh she rises in stature and is on par every step of the way.

- The camera was eloquent when it came to the staging of particularly tense moments or moments of despair. The close-ups of the players at key points controlled the mood of the scene beautifully.

- The last scene was unnecessary and too overtly sentimental. The little sikh boy was just too much. I'm sure he used the hockey stick to beat up a small kid.

- Abhimanyu singh had the worst lines in the film. Even if his character was essentially a wimp his dailogues made sure he came across as a complete moron.

- The resolution of bindiya's conflict was far too simple and dispensed off without enough thought. It was an oversimplification of an otherwise complex character.

At the end of the day its an entertaining film. Definitely worth a watch.

Chak De I say!!

2007-08-30T05:47:00.000-07:00

Chak De India was one of those movies which earns grudging respect from even the harshest critic despite the usual barrage of stereotypes and narrative cliches that it contains. I was pleasantly surprised by what Shimit Amin and more importantly, Yash Raj Films had put on the table. Chak De India is no pathbreaker but it is a more than credible effort at a subject that has been grossly misrepresented in the past.

Yash Raj Films can very well take a bow for it has a lot to be proud of as far as this feature is concerned. Imagine a Chak De centered around cricket. Easy isnt it? Then again the sport itself is not the be all and end all of the film. The hockey that we see is played with passion (and shot with zest) but never forced down our throats by eulogising players - the sort one would immediately associate with cricket. The emphasis is instead on the act of playing. "Play like nothing else matters in those 70 minutes" is what Kabir Khan tells his rakshas-sena. And they do. Jingoistic drivel is never too far away with "play for your country" kind of sloganeering lurking in the shadows. Perhaps it was screenwriter Jaideep Sahni (of Khosla ka Ghosla fame) who tied all the loose ends together with his dialogue that flowed with such ease in the face of heavyweight issues like patritotism, spotrs(wo)manship and national identity.

Clearly Chak De was not an attempt at one-upmanship in order to re-establish Hockey as the national sport despite Cricket being the universal favourite. It simply sought to pay heed to a sport that has never found its place in the sun. And it is a sport that is immensely demanding of its patrons and requires dextrous skill. The tongue-in-cheek references to cricket weren't lost on anyone.

I was impressed by the sound characterisation in the film. From Kabir Khan to Bindiya Naik (one of the most alluring figures in the film) to Komal Chautala to the matronly Krishna Ji. They were full-blooded characters with genuinely complex stories behind them. There were several poignant moments in the film which could have so easily slipped over to melodrama. The rabble-rousing Bindiya Naik touted as the most experienced player on the team vows to play by her rules or to not play at all. And one realises that these rules she calls her own are not really determined by her. They have been given to her by a system that is corrupt and where it is as important to play games well as it is to play the sport.

The girls easily steal the show. What the filmmakers did when they chose these fledgling actors over crowd-pulling stars was to choose their script, their story and their characters above the obvious commerce of cinema in India. Of course with Shahrukh himself playing the lead the crowd was already collecting at the ticket counters.

This could very well be one of SRKs better celluloid moments. We are spared the star-studded swagger and the come-hither curl of the lip. No SRK with outstretched arms set off by the Manhattan skyline. No stammering and no hamming. This was Shahrukh the actor not SRK the brand, in action. We see a Shahrukh with stubble and even a few grey hairs, sporting not see-through shirts but ordinary clothes. He is not Raj or Rahul. He is Kabir Khan and that defines his identity and his persona on screen as far as Chak De India! is concerened. His hand comes up in a salaam and not a namaste when he greets the foregin coaches. It is his mulk and qaum not his desh that he talks about. Kabir Khan, forsaken by his country and his people, earns his redemption when his motley bunch wins the championship. (Of course they win!) The scene is played out eloquently. The goalie captain Vidya saves the final goal. (A seconds delay in the sound of the erupting cheers makes all the difference. ) Its done. The team has won. But for Khan it is a vindication only he knows about. We see him standing alone in the frame. He simply stands for a moment before his knees seem to become weak. He falls back a few steps and grabs onto a rail for support. The moment defines Kabir Khan's quest for identity, his quest to reclaim his pride. No expository dialogue could have conveyed what one gesture, executed effortlessly by Shahrukh, conveyed.

Once in a while a film comes along that redefines the way we look at mainstream cinema. Chak De India is not that film. But it is definitely a film that restores faith and gives hope that there is more to Bollywood than meets the eye.

And Justice for all - on Sanjay Dutt and what it means to be a star

2007-08-02T06:07:00.000-07:00

Im all for equality before law. And in times like these where rule of law seems to have become nothing but a textbook term it is even more imperative for the state machinery to uphold and honour the law. But I couldnt help feeling the deepest sympathy for Sanjay Dutt and his family as he was sentenced this Tuesday to 6 years of rigorous imprisonment. Not because hes a filmstar - thoug he IS one of the better ones - but because he did in fact seem to be a changed man.

In our country filmstars and celebrities a have life that seems to run parallel to and at times dangerously at odds with the rest of the nation. The cult of celebrity has captured the imagination of the country in a manner that rivals the most ardent devotee and believer. It is a zealous faith, that borders on fanaticism. I just saw a news item on CNN-IBN about a man who had cut off his finger as an offering at a dargah. All for Sanju Baba. even without one finger his faith is intact. Unshakeable even in the face of evidence and the due process of law that has found Dutt to be guilty.

We may scoff at the obvious irrationality of a fan but trust me - it takes one to know one. One only has to mention "Rajkumar" to get a reaction that will be nothing short of extreme. If his natural death caused a city to be paralysed for two days on account of endemic violence, I wonder what would have happened had Veerappan done the unspeakable when he had the chance. Saira Banu, presumably distressed by the verdict had this to say to the media and anyone who was listening "Had he (Sanjay Dutt) been a South Indian superstar people would have been out on the streets in protest. But here nobody seems to be bothered." It is a strange and extremely self-indulgent statement to make. I say strange because it seems that the cult of celebrity is subscribed to not only by the aam janta but is believed to be the rightful claim of filmstars. By themselves!

It seems natural to ask WHY. Why are the likes of Sanjay Dutt, Amitabh Bachan, Rajkumar and Rajnikant revered and are second only to those images and beliefs we deify as religion? Why does an otherwise sensible human being take his own life in the event of his hero or heroine succumbing to what is only inevitable in natures scheme of things? What have these demigods of cinema given to our teeming millions which no heads of state have been able to give? Why has Munnabhai made Gandhi the new -ism yet again when historians, activists and politicians have notably failed in doing the same? Why have temples been built in the name of Amitabh Bacchan when religion has relentlessly failed its own followers?

Cinema in India belongs to the people. Ramachandra Guha in his sprawling work "India after Gandhi" gives due credit to it as a potent force and a necessary thread in the democratic fabric of the country. But then there are many shadows that lurk on the edges of this bright picture that everyone seems to be so eager to paint. The "film fraternity" in India has remianed consistently apolitical. Even Amir Khan had to reasess his position on NBA when his association with Coke was brought up. A commitment to art is a commitment to society. It cannot be diverged from the same. Amitabh Bacchan was a product of the time. His angry young man was a reflection of society. And he is still riding high on the wave of success that began then.

Why did the film communiy that owes its very foundation to the people, not come out in support for the victims of the Gujarat riots? Instead of paying lip-service to a cause why don't the babus of bollywood make a film on it? Why has there been a conspicuous absence of films being made on the Partition which is a deep fissure on the Indian sub-conscience? In countries like Germany, Italy and the Middle East cinema has provided an avenue for positive debate - a means to acknowledge and come to terms with the past and take stock of the present. One only has to watch films like No Man's Land, Goodbye Lenin or the films of the Makhmalbaf family to realise that cinema can indeed be a force to reckon with. And though I dont believe cinema to be a direct vehicle of change, I know that it is a catalyst and can do wonders for a starved imagination.

Another one bites the dust - red dust?

2007-08-01T06:21:00.000-07:00

"My contribution to the formation of a new cinematic language is amatter that concerns critics. And not even today's critics, but ratherthose of tomorrow, if film endures as an art and if my films resist the ravages of time."

Michelangelo Antonioni, 1965

Two greats gone in two days. A staggering loss. I read something on another blog which insinuated that God is trying to have a film festival up in heaven. I wonder what's next.

Obituary : Ingmar Bergman

2007-07-31T01:58:00.000-07:00

image courtesy: movies.yahoo.com

INGMAR BERGMAN (1918-2007)

The first film I watched by "the gloomy Swede" was Cries and Whispers. I now think that perhaps I wasnt quite ready at the time to soak in the melancholic strain of the film. It distressed me at the time and left me feeling incredibly vacant. Just as I felt today when I heard of his death.

It takes great courage and fortitude to be able to make films the way Bergman did. Delving deep and often confronting his own demons by asking questions we didn't dare ask ourselves. Intensely personal yet universally humane, his work raised the bar of cinematic practice by diminishing the distance between artistic enterprise and narrative capabilities of the medium.

He will be missed. But more importantly he will be remembered.

D.O.A

2007-07-26T23:39:00.000-07:00

Found this gem in the latest issue of Time Out Mumbai in the regular column by Girish Shahane"

Why Crompton Greaves?

Because Bombay Dyeing.

Why Bombay Dyeing?

Because Gwalior Suiting.

Cause of death on close inspection was revealed to be not a stray "suiting" by said Gwalior but the import of some good old all-American-ness that we confused desis can never get enough of. So Bombay Dyeing because of some Hard Rocking. ;)

Riddle me this

2007-06-06T00:38:00.000-07:00

It appears that I have landed myself in some sort of existential conundrum. A question popped into my head enunciated lucidly by the-voice-in-my-head. It said rather slowly so as to magnify its great import and asked "Would you rather be well-read or well-travelled?"

Sticky situations are the best of friends with inadvertant indecision.

Le Corbusier on an idle evening

2007-05-03T04:21:00.000-07:00

The following piece is something I had written after a visit to the Ahmedabad Textile Mill Owners' Association - a building designed and realised by the French Architect Charles Edouard Jeanneret - better known as Le Corbusier. Having read about the architect fairly recently my impression of the building was coloured not just by the one visit. However this piece is also an ode to idle evenings that turned into fantastic forays by sheer chance....

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We brave the sun and step out. Minds in tow along with watchful eyes and searching steps. Time to be spent wisely. Time not to squander away for the sake of mere leisure. Passionless we must not be for there are many things the eyes have not seen and the ears have not heard and the skin has not felt. And so with foreknowledge that ignorance is bliss to only those who fear knowledge, we set out in search of some sign of meaning. Something that will bellow with confidence when it says to you... "Today you have lived! And so you may pause - not rest - but pause untill tomorrow dawns and you will know nothing once again."

Rest assured ours was not such a lofty mission. We only sought to spend some time doing something other, something more constructive and rewarding (well in retrospect at least) than sleeping, eating and generally whiling away precious seconds, minutes and hours of days that pass only too quickly.

It isnt too difficult to find something to do in Ahmedabad. My opinion was quite the opposite about three years ago but much has changed since then. And opinions are the most fickle and transient of all things human. Four years in an odd little mixed up city which cant seem to make up its mind whether it likes wood, brick, concrete, glass, acrylic or plastic to adorn its many faces with.Four years is not too much to boast about in the life-span of a city. The nearest significant marker for growth in a country even is a 5 year plan. Mental detours and tangential departures notwithstanding....Ahmedabad has changed. A few remarkable (in the most banal sense of the word) changes have taken place.

The city limits have been extended. So more strip malls and more muddled architecture. The city has ostensibly taken to CNG and gone are the days when one would spend the enitre auto ride from Paldi to CG Road wiping involuntary tears off ones sooty cheek. The river that runs through it all has seen it all too. The conflict between the old and the new. The sacred and the profane. The rich and the poor. The water-fed and the water-starved. The peaceful and the hot-blooded. The battle of wits and vigour and strength and stamina. Modi vs Medha. Sabarmati has seen it all.

***********

Our very own thing to do was to visit one of the many architectural gems of the city. Lesser known but no less important or magnificent, the Ahmedabad Textile Mill Owners' Association stands solemnly on the busy Ashram Road. Oddly and ironically it is right opposite one of the more "modern" multiplex complexes. One can miss it quite easily. The first impression is no spectacle. Grey concrete blocks amid patches of green and squares of colour. A ramp likened by some to the gangplank of a ship leads to the main building that houses a few offices, seminar halls and one truly spell-binding auditorium.

Le Corbusier, touted by some as India's favourite architect , first visited the country at the request of then Prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru had envisioned a modern India - independent and at par with any nation in the West. Corbusier's visit was to be the beginning of an uncanny freindship. The ATMA building is one of four built by Corbusier Ahmedabad making it the only city after Paris to house the largest number of his independent creations.

Modest and almost spartan in form, the building pulls you into its cavernous spaces. The volume contained within is not betrayed at first sight. Stairs that lead to dead spaces, doors that open into thin air, looming vaults and minimal details. The auditorium was a sight to behold at four in the afternoon with sunlight streaming in from the skylight above and forming golden ribbons on the floor. Contained as if in a cocoon the spiral structure of the audiotrium was dramatically heightened by the asymmetrical wood panneling. Light and shadow. Sound and silence. They all played tricks on us that day.

An unending sense of calm, quiet and peace prevailed in that space. How is it possible for something as inanimate and stationary as architecture to assume such poetic proportions? I have always felt greatly humbled in the presence of great art - be it a painting, a piece of music, a sculpture or architecture such as this. One feels small and the lack of words, the inadequacy of language to express the true depth of emotion is always a burden that bears down heavily. But one feels grateful and orivileged to have had the opportunity to appreciate the work of someone as masterful and impassioned as Le Corbusier himself.

Meanderings....

2007-04-11T21:52:00.000-07:00

There are time when you can feel absolutely and completely alone while being surrounded by a sea of people. Your face becomes an inscrutable and unyielding mask that puts on the prescribed emotion as if on cue. But inside....its another story. There's a storm brewing. All purple rage and grey gloom.

You let your thoughts wander. Arbitrarily they make tangential connects. I was thinking just this instant of what Truffaut said about Renoir's films - "they're as simple as saying hello." How beautiful....how eloquent. And the next thought that trundles through my head is about the two goats in the phtotograph I saw and how they seemed to be smiling at me. Decidedly odd....

Solitude always meant something good. Something very peaceful. Something you experience as sharply as a moment of clarity and yet, paradoxically, as languidly as watching the sky change hues at twilight. In such a state the inane and the obvious details become infinitely more absorbing than the most bizarre other-wordly occurrence. Flies on the wall acquire such mystique and charm and grace that one could entirely forget their otherwise annoying existence.

Such is happiness - which i believe to be a sensation that originates deep inside the belly - a warm fuzz-like creeping sensation - always sneaks up on you and yet always manages to baffle, surprise and exhilirate.

Blogging : in retrospect

2007-04-07T12:24:00.000-07:00

I just realised that my blog is now a year old and doesn't have much to show for it! I have also realised that I dont use my blog in nearly the same way as do most avid bloggers worldwide - the sort who have taken information-sharing and web-logging to new levels. For me it still functions in much the same way as a notebook or a journal except that it is accessible to those who wish to go through it. The whole idea for me was to keep writing. To remind myself what a joy it is to express oneself through the written word. And to reaffirm my faith in my own literary abilities however limited they may be.

There have been many points in my life where I have (unsuccessfully) tried to maintain a personal journal. The sort that you hide from anyone and everyone simply because the palpable fear of discovery and the somewhat perverse pleasure of knowing something no one else knows provides fuel to the keeper of secrets. My journals were mostly mundane records of the daily trials tribulations of living. Peppered occasionally with instances of heartache and trauma, most often played up in writing to the level of intense melodrama. So much so that even the most banal argument could seem like something out of a Greek tragedy.

When I look back on those pages written with such diligence and candour, I often find myself grinning at the words that had burst forth in an unusually distraught moment. It amuses me when I realise again and again how time erodes much of the walls we build around us. The girl who filled those pages with intense emotion sincerely believed at the time that her life had ended for sure. Or in another instance made it abundantly clear that at that moment she was the happiest she would ever be in all the days to come. Even as I laugh at the childish proclamations of love lost and arguments won, I recoginise similar emotions in myself today. They have changed in degree but not so much in the intensity.

I am aware though that in sharp contrast to the days of journals and sercret diaries, I am far more wary of my own feelings and how their open expression leaves me vulnerable and exposed. So as the old walls become worn and weather beaten, we build new walls. And so it goes....

The Academy will rest in peace

2007-02-26T03:14:00.000-08:00

What a day! Scorsese gets a nod from the academy at last! I was reading my earlier post about The Departed and was in half a mind to take it off my blog. Not because the film won best picture along with Scorsese's long overdue accolade, but because having returned to the film after a good long break I realised some things. (Of course my all time favourites of the Italian-american's ouvre still remain Goodfellas and Taxi Driver. )This is for all those who may have some or the other misconception regarding my views on Martin Scorsese after reading the earlier post.

The Departed was perhaps the only film by the director to have garnered as much commercial success as crticial acclaim. And that for Scorsese, I believe would be a first. Scorsese said on being informed about his Oscar nomination for the 7th time, that although the recognition would be appreciated, one could never make films solely to win an Oscar. So much for my fear that he had sold out! What has impressed me most about Scorsese is his immense tenacity and creative stamina as an artist. The thirst for creative excellence and an uncompromising will towards nuanced storytelling has been his hallmark. 30 odd years since he made his feature film debut, the man is still going full throttle! With each project he seems to be aiming bigger and better.

Perhaps what chnaged my views to a certain degree was also that I got the chance to watch The Age of Innocence recently. What is essentially a story of unrequited love , in the hands of Scorsese became an elegy of a society stifled by its own hypocrisy and vanity. The astounding detail is made visible by the camera-eye - an eye that is discriminating but not disparaging. That is the genius of Martin Scorsese. A ceaseless exploration of subject matter through immaculate contsruction of the script and the mis-en-scene.

The range itself of his cinema is mind-boggling. Compare the ruthless and dark Taxi Driver to the eloquent Goodfellas. Or the opulent and decadent Casino to the brilliant insanity that was Aviator. Or the velvet veneer of The Age of Innocence to the enigma and pulse of The Departed. And you will know what I mean.

I mentioned the Movie Brats in my previous post. Imagine my surprise and bewilderment when three of them turned up on stage to present the award to their long-time friend, collaborator and colleague - Martin Scorsese. A fitting end I think. Marty said he was moved. I was in tears.

Ways of seeing

2007-02-17T02:00:00.000-08:00

A dear friend after reading my blog asked a pertinent question - is it so necessary to have an opinion on everything? I couldnt answer the question but it set me thinking. This urge to write down my thoughts or voice my opinion - is it merely cathartic and therefore selfish or does it have roots in something larger of which I am still unaware? Do writers ask themselves this question before they set out to coin a phrase or frame a sentence? Are opinions damaging or constructive or both? Is criticism in fact easier than going that extra mile to do that certain something which we feel so compelled to comment on but would not touch with a bargepole given the opportunity?

"In life one must do." I cant recall who said it, but it definitely sums up the basic thumb rule that until its been tried it hasnt been tested. I think it was Milton Glaser who said that we must diminish the difference between work and art. And to that end "work is art and art is work."

Isnt it enough to simply experience a great film, book, piece of music or a work of art? Is it the politics of our time that breeds such creative contempt or is it the system of knowledge we belong to? More importantly, are we, while stating with such confidence our carefully thought out opinions, as tolerant to more diverse points of view? Is qualification the only license to an opinion?

I write because I feel most confident expressing myself in this form. Words provide a platform from where images take off. Writing is for me, as of this moment a tool at best. Not as eloquent or free from prejudice as the instinctive brush of the seasoned artist, but more like the strange and daunting piece of charcoal in the clumsy hands of one who is learning to draw and thus learning to see. I too am learning to see - and my image is made or letters and words and phrases and inflexions. It is an untrained eye that knows not many ways of seeing - yet.

Hundred Years of Solitude....and then some more.

2007-02-16T01:44:00.000-08:00

The last book I read was none other than Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magnum opus - One Hundred Years of Solitude. A book of epic proportions, it tested my imagination in unimaginable ways. In fact I had returned to the book a second time with gritty resolve since the unrelenting repetition of names like Jose Arcadio, Aureliano, Amaranta and Ursula had left me groping in the dark halfway through the book the first time I attempted to read it. But this time I kept pace with offspring after offspring, amazed at the uncanny fecundity of the fictitious Buendia clan. Time ran in loops and doubled up on itself as the miseries and fortunes of the various characters played out page after page with unceremonious candour. Each character lost love, found memory and eventually succumbed to a solitude that had an irrevocable finality.

The book is an ode to memory. Collective memory that in tireless remembrance of things past and a glorious time lost, erases its sinous connect with reality untill it is the stuff of legend. Truth obliterated by memory. Lives lived so much in retrospect that the present is forgotten and constantly committed to the past. No one in Macondo remembered the Banana Plantation massacre because the process of forgetting had begun even before the event had occurred.

One need not speak of Marquez's phenomenal prose for that would be nothing short of stating the obvious. But what must be mentioned is the sheer scale of imagination that the author has brought to the novel. The leaps in time, the collision of characters with history and the cyclical narrative is a feat never before achieved in the written form. This is one book I wish never to be made into a film, for as much as I believe in the possibility and potency of cinema, it is finite in a way that can never do justice to the images inspired by Marquez's infinite prose.

"Marty Goes Undercover"

2007-02-09T10:35:00.000-08:00

When I heard that Martin Scorsese had won the Directors' Guild of America Award for filmmaker of the year(post-super successful film "The Departed"), the inevitable smile crept up and was glued there for about the whole day. The talk of the town is that Marty is now more than ever in the running for the Best Director accolade doled out by none other than the Academy. This is more fact than fiction at the moment given that in the parallel history of the Guild and the Academy very rarely has the winner of the Guild Award lost out on the Oscar for the same picture in the same year. The precise number would be 6. Sceptics may refer to Wikipedia.

Martin Scorsese may have waited far too long for this one but the naked truth is that he should have won it aeons ago. Having lost out on films like Raging Bull and The Goodfellas, winning while riding on the commercial success of The Departed won't be winning after all.

After watching The Departed, exhilarated as I was, I couldnt help feeling a little cheated. Seems to me that Scorsese had lowered his guard a bit too much to deliver a star-studded big banner production that fell far below the bar he had previously set for himself with films like Taxi Driver, Raging bull, Goodfellas and the heavily underrated Casino. Of course The Departed is not comparable in genre or style to Taxi Driver. I'm not suggesting that. But what I am suggesting is that Scorsese was next to invisible in the film that is being touted by some as his magnum opus. Save for some recognizable tropes like use of voiceover and familiar gangster territory, the watermark blazed into each work with astonishing cinematography and a powerful screenplay was nowhere to be seen. A critic put it eloquently when she wrote, "Marty went undercover on this one."

But to give due credit to the director and the film, the soundtrack was vivid and the editing impeccable as always (thanks to long time collaborator thelma Schoonmaker). Sound performances by both Leo Dicaprio and Mark Whalberg. Frank Costello's transformation from the smooth overlord to an absentminded close-to-senile overlord is remarkable. But cinephiles ask yourself this - does Costello surpass in character the likes of Jake La Motta, Nicky Santuro, Ace Rothstein and Tommy DeVito?

So if Marty does win, I'll be cheering myself hoarse but it'll be for a victory won long before when the Movie Brats were still bratty enough to believe in a producers' nightmare like Travis Bickle!

P.S. - The Movie Brats were Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Brian de Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and John Milius.

Orchestrations at a red light

2006-05-15T00:29:00.000-07:00

" A city without a soul" , said a writer about the national capital. About delhi. About my home. Coming back to delhi after a long break was enough to have the wind knocked out of me. The city is undeniable in its insolence. It provoked me each time I confronted it. Each confrontaion left its mark. But each encounter brimmed with the possibility of a story......

The teeming millions were milling about right here on the ITO crossing. They leapfogged from Tilak Marg onto Sikandra road and onward to the local train that would take them home past the slums and shantytowns - wastelands beyond which lay towers of glass and cool air. But the teeming millions breathed the sticky air ripe with scent of sweat. The city breathed in tandem with the rhythm and pulse of traffic signals, the movement of buses and the chugging of the trains. And so the urban drama would play itself out - a silent musical with an unseen beat.

The old man clinging to his polythene bag for dear life, trying to brave the merciless traffic. The crude man beneath a veneer of sophistication in his big car, cursing the old man who totters shamelessly in front of his expensive self. The traffic policeman in his stuffy uniform who watches the charade and thinks of his tenement in choked West Delhi and the power cut that awaits him. The young college going girl, aimlessly chewing gum and ignoring leering men with studied indifference. the scrawny urchin who momentarily forgets to beg as he is distracted by the burst pileline under Tilak bridge that is spouting jets of water and wetting motorcyclists. The bus conductor who shouts destinations at his flock - the passengers - while chewing on his cigarette and simultaneously tearing those coloured bits of paper marked 2, 7 and 10 Rs. The daredevil hangs perilously from the footboard of the bus hoping the girl chewing gum will notice. The auto-driver ignores the boy and concentrates on his unsuspecting passenger who he has successfully fleeced. He adjusts his rearview mirror to get a good look at the smooth-skinned lady even as she inwardly rebukes her own insolent driver for not having showed up that morning. Visibly upset at being caught in the sweltering heat, she eyes this alien mass of humanity about her from behind her dark shades.

A sick boy throws up on the side of the bus. A rickshaw driver pulls up under the drooping laburnum tree and proceeds to doze off, apparently oblivious to the heat and the stench from the festering drain nearby. The man selling cold water out of a hand cart for Re. 1 only, pours himself a glass of water. The old man has made it to the other side of the road. The traffic signal blinks green, everyone moves on gratefully. Elsewhere, a biker picks a fight with an autowallah. A cyclist wins the fight.

My article on the web

2006-04-30T06:18:00.000-07:00

I wrote an article for the in-house NID Film Club publication Cut Here on the documentary film Jang Aur Aman (War and Peace) made by documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan. Anand read the article (thanks to Arun!), liked it and decided to post it on his website. And that is how I now have a web presence! Do check out the article at the link given. Also worth reading is the magazine Cut Here the pdf version of which can be downloaded from the NID website. Both links are given below. http://www.nid.edu/download/cuthere4nov05.pdf
http://www.patwardhan.com/reviews/WP_NID.htm

Nizamuddin Dargah May 2005

2006-04-28T02:40:00.000-07:00

Ahmad Raza, along with a friend, watches the crowds in front of Amir Khusro's shrine at Dargah-e-Nizamuddin, New Delhi. This picture was part of a photo essay that I did for my Field Study. You can check out more pictures at www.flickr.com/photos/thinkaloud/ .

I used a Pentax K 1000 (which belongs to my father), Fuji crystal 200 ASA film and a telephoto lens. I am a patron of analog photography. Its so tactile!

Songs of the Mystics

2006-04-28T02:28:00.000-07:00

It is impossible for even the whimsical visitor to remain untouched by the energy and vitality of the Dargah. It is in every way an assault on the senses from the moment you enter the crowded lanes till the time you leave the complex. One dare not hurry through it all lest one misses a whisper from beyond the grave. Turn a corner and Mirza Ghalib rests in an unfortunately unnoticed complex. Stop for a moment and you might be waylaid by the insistent perfume seller. "You must try Khus today", he says. Little grubby urchins with an impish sparkle in their eyes tug at your clothes. "Spare a rupee in the name of Allah!" The heaps of roses, the bright green chadors and the pulsating throb of the crowd engulf the unguarded visitor. Just when it seems too overwhelming the first strains of a Sama (traditional Sufi musical assembly) in full swing reach ones ears. That is what one came for. The calm within, despite the chaos without is always a welcome surprise. The Sufi way has revealed itself already. Order in chaos, unity in multiplicity.

Littered with the graves of long forgotten saints and dusty ancestors, the small complex betrays its many liaisons with the ghosts of yesterday. A vagabond mogul and a beloved princess share the same space (if not the same glory) as the mighty poet and his mentor. Many lives thrive within these walls. Some have made this place their home simply for sustenance, others in search of emotional and spiritual reassurance. But each one whatever be the purpose, is tied to the other in their acknowledgement of that Truth that none can deny- the truth of the Universal Spirit. The core of being itself that unites all things on earth. It is this that one sees embodied in the myriad faces of the Dargah-e-Nizamuddin. The water- bearer, the flower seller, the shoe keeper, the qawwal, the fakir, the pir, the sheikh, the pagan, the Hindu, the Mussalman, the rich, the poor, the woman, the child, the old, the young, the dead and the alive. Sufism is a prism through which the unity in the multiplicity of Beings becomes plain for all to see.

The crowd that throngs at the gates of Dargah-e-Nizamuddin each day bears testament to the living legacy of Nizamuddin Auliya and Amir Khusro, and also to the continuing relevance of Sufism. As a poet has rightly said, "In these senseless times a faith that makes you look within is a faith that makes sense". Synonymous with Sufism in India, Nizamuddin Auliya and Amir Khusro stand for values such as tolerance and humanism. Khusro’s contribution to poetry and music is not unknown. His verses have often been a eulogy of a country that he likens to heaven on earth, and a celebration of the diversity of Hindustan. His devotion to his teacher, Nizamuddin Auliya is unmistakable in his work.

I shall be set free from the bonds of the two worlds
If you become my companion for a while.
By your wanton playfulness you must have destroyed
Thousands of hearts of lovers like that of Khusrau.

What is remarkable is that Amir Khusro is perhaps more alive today than his mentor. It is customary at the Dargah to visit the smaller (but no less significant) shrine of Amir Khusro before proceeding to the main shrine of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. Khusro lives in the innumerable verses, riddles, qawwalis and sayings he penned. He was indeed an ambassador of an India that was assimilative and inclusive. The foremost exponent of a spiritual and literary movement that rose above parochial concerns to reflect a truly cross-cultural sentiment.

Love is the only intoxicant in these mystical alleys. A sublime truth; the eternal and immortal soul of being itself. It rests beneath pearly white and swathes of green velvet. Poetry has been put to rest forever in the company of He who inspired it. These marble walls do not bind him. These bloody roses do not bury him. He rises out of his stony grave each time a single voice of the many reverberates through the air. They seek him in pleasure and they seek him in pain. They seek him in ecstasy and they seek him in despair. He seeks no one and yet he turns none away.

A timid strain at first; a lilting melody. Crowds melt into oblivion. No one is spared the tyranny of love. It consumes the self in its wake leaving only the soul. Cleansed, pure, pristine, provoked by passion and yet forever at peace. The words float above, over, under, around and through the crowd, wrapping themselves around the agony and the ecstasy of those who give themselves freely in love. Spirits leave their fleshy confines and come alive in the guise of the flourish of a dervish’s skirt or the solitary tear on a weather-beaten cheek. They take forms so delicate that they defy the cacophony that inspired them.

The attraction of love won’t leave you unmoved;
Should you not come to my funeral, you’ll definitely come to my grave.
My soul has come on my lips
Come so that I may remain alive
After I am no longer - for what purpose will you come?

For some the shrine is the beginning of a life anew whereas for some others it is the culmination of a journey that has brought them closer to achieving a desired state of rest. Ahmad Raza, 8 years old, has left his home in Bihar to come and live with his uncle. He is the boy who collects the empty flower baskets and takes them back to his uncle's flower shop. He knows Nizamuddin like the back of his hand and his eyes betray the many stories that he has to tell. He looks at my camera with curiosity and bewilderment. "What can you see through it? Can I see what you see?" Obviously he knows something I don’t.

The water bearer has seen it all. He has seen the compound choked with people the day riots broke out in Gujarat. They came in droves, he whispers. Some held on to each other while others wept by the grave of their saint, their confidante. Baba Khusro listened to them all. Khusro ki marham jaisi is duniya mein aur koi nahi. Where are you from, he asks. Do you have something to say to Him too? I have come from Ahmedabad I say. And I have come to listen to Him and his people. God bless you, he says. We share a smile and already a moment has transpired between two strangers - a moment of compassion, a moment of truth.

Death is not to be mourned. Rejoice in death for it is death that will unite you with your Beloved. Let me die before I die! Urs is the death anniversary of the Sufi saint and it is celebrated with much pomp and glory. It was my privilege to witness one such celebration. Crippled as one is by the insufficiency of language and the inadequacy of words, it is futile to attempt to describe an experience such as this. To say the least it is a world where you are defined by what you feel and not by what you know. Look around and it is plain to see. A lone voice rises above the crowd. It is some tune you haven’t heard. But listen to it you must. Twilight approaches and the crowd is like viscous glue. The summer air, thick with incense is about to get thicker with the songs of Love. The Qawwali begins without warning. Before you know it your hands join the others in the maddening rhythm. Soon it has made a fanatic out of you. But you stand still while these waves break over you with unending force until you are spent. You wonder, what is the diaphanous glow that has suddenly come over all that you see? Blink. The glow clears as tears flow free.

The journey of the mystic is a tremulous one at first. But only to be transformed, with time, into the confident stride of the seasoned traveler. There are no tourists in these quarters, only wanderers who need no maps, who in fact despise all maps. The journey then is a journey within, an inexorable quest. Who can say what the end shall be in a journey such as this? But the rewards are plenty. Love, compassion, humanity, universal brotherhood, the innate potential of every being to reach a higher state of existence and the realization that God is after all a mirror of the Self, are what drive the Sufi towards greater consciousness. The Sufi proclaims in all earnest: love is the cause of all creation. Love of God is the love of humanity, because to love god is to love all that He has created.