wonderlust..

my life is a genre film

2009-11-14T11:40:00.000-08:00

earlier this week.. this friend of mine mailed.. yeh ho kya raha hai.. what happened in mumbai.. why are people protesting on fb?
actually she is off shore.. maane literally couple of samandars paar.. even as i write.. so.. obviously.. ghar ki yaad toh sataayegi.. but naturally!

maze ki baat hai.. english mein co-incidentally.. jiss subeh yeh mail aaya, uss din my paperwallah played truant wid me.. so i was mumbai-mirror-less that morning..
lo! ab mujhe pata hi na chale duniya mein kya hua pichhle 24 ghanton mein!

so maine usse waapas mail kiya.. thhand rakh.. i'll gat back to u wid the latest dats happening in my backyard (OUR backyard she whispered).. thou shalt not sleep uninformed.. yeh waada raha.

so then.. I found out.. to cut it short.. 4 MLAs of MNS manhandled another.. BECAUSE he took his oath in hindi.. and the assembly of 288 that was in session watched on.. later the CM said he will "look into the matter"
and I said to myself LOL... WTF..

now see that's the beauty of the SMS generation.. we're short n sweet. Bagful of emotions encapsulated in a tipful of letters.. brevity, thou art the art. Period.

to come back to the point.. when I read the news.. watched the video on the net.. i felt outraged.. not be'coz Ayesha Takia's sasurji was attacked.. not be'coz i like Samajwadi party.. and definitely not be'coz i am a migrant, so should show solidarity with apne-jaise-types.

i felt outraged be'coz i saw it coming.. we saw it coming. we've been in the know of this political drama in dress rehearsal for quite some time now.. the threats and counter-threats.. and i did what i was supposed to do.
read the news. get appalled.
see the video. feel outraged.
meet up friends. hold noisy discussions in high spirits. come back home. shag yourself. have a good night's sleep. deed done. duty over. tomorrow's another day.

fukk.. this is what happens when i catch the latest flick playing in FUN
boy meets girl - WOW
boy loses girl - O Fukkk
boy gets the girl - Thankfully (sigh!)

and we live happily ever after.

a short story about betrayal

2009-06-06T07:02:00.000-07:00

(Pic ©Michelle Rhea)

An 18 year old guy. Normal, straight, has a girlfriend.

Wins an acting competition and gets a chance to meet his childhood idol – The Superstar.

As a part of the prize, Superstar hosts a dinner for him. It’s the biggest night of his life.

Post dinner, Superstar shows him around his huge mansion. The guy blurts out how he always told his friends and family, if there’s one person in this entire world he could do anything for, then that was Superstar.

Superstar asks him with a smile – anything?
The guy says – you just have to ask
Superstar says – Will you strip for me?
The guy asks – Do you really want me to?
Superstar says – I just want to see how you look..

“What role did you play for your winning act?”
“A guy named Salim.”

The guy stands tranzfixed.

“This is how a muslim looks like..
.. and that’s how a hindu looks like…
.. When a muslim meets a hindu.. Magic happens.
Let’s create magic.”

The guy is wide-eyed.

“I don’t believe Superstar is blowing me.”
“I don’t believe Superstar is f'king me.”
“I don’t believe I f'ked Superstar tonight.”

He doesn’t sleep a wink that night.

Next day he breaks off with his girlfriend.

One day later he lands up at Superstar’s press conference and professes his love for him. Superstar doesn’t take kindly to this. He bashes him up in full media glare.

The guy is heart-broken. He has no one to turn to. He does what he thinks is the best way out. He jumps into the sea.

Mumbai mirror has headline the next day.
“Fan commits suicide for Superstar”

Mujhe mere TV se bachao - Part I

2009-04-28T14:26:00.000-07:00

If the first thing that comes to your mind post reading the title is a nude Kiran Kumar strutting in a '70s overlit bathroom..then sorry! no screengrab for your titillation..

scroll up.. click on Next Blog .. and leave.

if you have survived so far.. then .. (i have no words)

or maybe i do. basically I have become a roadies fan. It’s the 5^th season (or is it 6^th..) and finally it’s caught on. Earlier it wasn’t even an effort ignoring it.. now it’s an effort not following it.

I had even started watching Balika Vadhu (sigh.. even shed a tear in Sugna-mourning episode – Lakshmi bai, my kaamwali aunty would look at me with new found respect) Ya.. only till they launched na aana.. whatever

I get about 87 channels on my 14” Sansui. Without the expert help from nano sky or mittal-tel. still I manage to manage. Every month a shrek kinda guy knocks on my door (except that shrek was cute) and I pay him to have those 87 of them.. don’t recall how much, if one asked my flatmate the same question, he would not only come up with the exact amount.. but also add for good measure the exact difference between the number of times he paid the cable guy and the number of times I did.. in the last 19 months or so

And it’s begun to hurt. Is it really worth it that I cough up whatever amount to see what I get to see on tv these days! I mean my desperation can only be imagined by the fact that I am finding splitsville2 interesting these days.

At every phase in my life, TV has given me something. Always, without fail.

When it came to my house, the cute B&W Sonodyne, I had Khandaan. When I finally met Shernaz in person, I knew a phase of my life had come full circle. The first episode that I ever saw was the one in which she meets with an accident.

I must be 4-5 then, and I don’t think late Shreedhar Ksheersagar intended that age group as his TG. But I still preferred it to Buniyad or Hum-log reruns. Then it was Subeh. Kumar Bhatia was he.. who looked like a distant cousin of Anand Mahendroo? Wednesday nights, right after news bulletin. After Salma Sultan, India’s own rosemary baby, had shubh-raatried us.. did she even sleep with her blooming rose on – I used to wonder

Mann ek seepi hai.. asha moti hai – that used to be my anthem. Chunauti.. of the zakaria, ruparel, krishnamoorthi types.. ah! Those were the cradle days of mohan bloody-hell bhandari.. when jimmy had fun of the asexual kind with his magic torch.. and a Wednesday chitrahaar could well turn out to be the high point of an entire week.. tacky was the last word in mind when Indradhanush swept me on Sunday afternoons.. it was my introduction to the term Supercomputer.. and I could endure potli baba ki even after knowing fully well that the baba in the serial – his voice, makeup, costume – was nothing but tacky.

When malgudi days wasn’t just a hot ringtone.

Before bollywood discovered Mauritius.. tv did with stone boy. And Maine Pyaar Kiya rode not on salman khan, but Bhagyashree who had immense recall value from kachhi dhoop already..

the journeys of endlessening whatsoever - 1

2009-03-15T11:09:00.000-07:00

its that time of the year.

again!

its terrible that i need a b/g track wenever i.. (n' i just changed m 2 b) need to, or have th urge to live, or atleast have the urge to feel alive.. is it soc (stream of consciuosness-sicsic, but that's so paasse!!)

fugget it.

so damn stopped staring at the keyboard.. and went like this phut.

coz i have this terrible terrible need to spurt it out. it started a long time back.. can't name the years, but first time he felt the tug was even he dsnt remember when.

dil pukare.. aare aare aare.. jewel thief

probably it was the himmatmangoes.. or was it the anokha bandhan tears.. dunno wat or wen but the tug, that pulled stronger and stronger till it became an arterial constriction.. again it was sometime wen he ws growing up.. the fauxs had started pas-ing by then...

he threw a stroke, and the wall splatterd itself. slurp n' trickle n' a tiny thickle and just that the blobs stuck and he could no longer see beyond them.

his world, colored, went into deeper hues.. n' unlike the clan, the pallette effused crimsons of stranger tones.

xenophobia. the greater of all evils.

piss or blood, something trickled, by way of nature, which became gooey in no time, and saatoed the dreams for a long time to cum.

wen lines began to fade, and cracks began to show.. 't needed no manoueverin'.. the slope was set, and pressure was duly apparent from the nether end

n' so it began to flow.. route set but path still ND - not defined -

or so we had thought

ujla ujla mausam hai yeh.. devd

are us loosers?

2008-10-05T11:25:00.000-07:00

the way it's going... it seems i am losing it.. and mind u, it's all in the mind!

Ain't that smart.. that's what! that's what it boils down to.. fuckin' playing games with yourself, by yourself, on yourself.. democracy hai bhai! akhir dil, dimag, pet ka bhi kuchh haq banta hai.. itne saalon se saath hain.. and then you come across.. or rather stumble upon this film.. this piece of work that just stops u.. wherever u are, whatever u're doing.. just stop and think.. is this what it's always meant to be.. stark.. simple.. honest

honesty 'coz u can feel the urge.. the tug.. not giving in.. holding back.. just playing out what is there.. no push - no pull - not even a flick (flick without a flick!! hum nahin sudhrengey)

what do u call it.. verite? fly on the wall? documenting? non-interventionist?

or just pure cinema. the way home.

pic. courtesy, i stylus

2007-03-24T01:39:00.000-07:00

it's damn funny. rabbi is playing at reliance world, khar. am sitting, waiting for two humongous files to download. and wondering, what is it all about. i mean, what am i doing. in life, i.e. & it's no longer a strange question. it tickles me, day in & out.

This week that year

i was sitting in the red room in i stylus in jangpura, new delhi. sitting on edits is a gratifying experience. there u see, brick by brick, your dream coming alive, taking shapes you hadn't even thought of. 2 months ago, i was at the same spot where this picture was taken, early jan morning. what a world this was, a world within a world. just like this image. frozen in time.

and now

rabbi has stopped. am hungry, have ordered for a veg classic pizza from Ali Pizza. will catch a rick back to borivali from santacruz at night (becoz i can't carry the office laptop in the local), and think..what am i doing

2007-03-03T05:49:00.000-08:00

at precisely 5:23 in the morning what do u write. having been up the whole night, out of choice, now i want to write something..'coz i have a feeling the words will flow...unhindered, unbiased, unregulated.

wrong on all three accounts.

whoever told me to think that the "stream of consciousness" mode results in the maximum reality one can extract from life. balls. i feel the tug as i write. to police my thoughts.

its been almost two months since i moved to mumbai. two-full-life-altering-months. delhi still doesn't seems so distant in the past, and i am still carrying the baggage. all my reference points seem to originate from that city, almost as if i am trying to justify the 7 years of my existence there. fair enough i suppose. nothing is more unsettling than a life in flux. and we do latch on to the comfort zones, sort of just to retain sanity. and i miss my balcony in dayanand colony, lajpat nagar.

i don't want to make great music

2007-02-05T11:11:00.001-08:00

it was hot in there
Originally uploaded by vikschandra.

what was the brief for hotel california? did they write a mission statement that they shall act to move generations after another before they penned 'the wall'...then what is it that some of'em just touch and go, and then some enter the protoplasm..
do you write great novels, or do you write novels.. when you squeeze the open eye into the viewfinder, what do you seek.. the sight, the frame or something else... what makes taxi driver work till date, even with the same you talkin' to me and you must be a virgo routine... and chinatown still a revelation.. did they happen to cult, or did cult happen to them.. why did you cry while watching love story when you had already read it...
do you take great pictures or do you just take pictures.. there's nothing more subjective and more debatable than aesthetics, or taste-choose your term- and nothing that polarises the world of art more.. where does my approach to art lies..
what music diffuses in my bloodstream.. and if i could make music.. what would i make..
if i were to write fountainhead, would my hero still be roark? or would i plot for a keating or a wynand to take over... when i choose to release the shutter the next time i feel like, this makes me think.. would i really want my frame to be a rembrandt..

2007-01-31T09:03:00.001-08:00

its wonderful, this 17mm wide lens that offers such a wide vista of vision...for once it's become easy to be in front of the camera. otherwise it was a pain to expose roll after roll in all sorts of places... at home, in college, in your brother's wedding, at your previous office, or the last trip you took to a place you never wanted to come back from.. and later while sifting through the moments to find that you are never to be seen as a part of those wonderful times, it really is irritating. otherwise it's a joy visiting photographs.. not because they evoke the same feelings as you had lived them while clicking/being clicked, that's a myth. it never is, the same sort of feeling. you cant step in the same river twice. music does evoke the same feelings somewhat, with strains you've heard or even when you hum the song.. but only in successive spurts of fractions of seconds, while which you float in a limbo, and just when you try to name it and feel it.. it goes, the feeling. photographs on the other hand act like printed text, and cover themselves with transparent layers of time and age. it feels like they have been acted upon.. so it never is the same reality that you recall so fondly... and yet that imagined reality gives the real joy of lingering on old albums. it's said that for every book there is a particular phase in life , and probably for every phase in life there is a photograph waiting to be visited.

2007-01-31T09:03:00.000-08:00

august, if you love the monsoons, and october/november (check with back home) if you wanna avoid the pre-post diwali madness of delhi, or any other city for that matter. delhi because it's just overnight, and two bumpy bus rides away.

tashi jong. A tiny monastery hamlet that breathes PEACE.

stay overnight, within the monastery premises, in the guest rooms, at less than 300 ir for a room of two.

morning halt at mcleodganj, or upper dharamsala. chill for a while at the terrace cafe of nick's italian kitchen, order hot ginger lemon honey tea, then strategically use the loo there. and then just sit back . you'll find yourself getting in the groove, your rhythms slowing, and a sort of hypoactivity building inside. just before it peaks, pick the bag, pay the bill and head for the bus depot. just short of four hours from Dharamsala..an incredible ride in the state transport bus will, what else but transport you to a tiny cluster surrounded by hills.

the small shack at the roundabout where you have to get dropped, serves tea and namkin. and you can't refuse the tea-with-floating-leaves 'coz aunty has made it, and aunty when she smiles, her 60 odd years seem to melt away in your should i-shoudln't i worries. so have the tea, start a polite conversation, and then sit back to listen. even though you might not get what she says in her pahadi-hindi lingo, you feel blessed that you have made her day. and becoz she made you feel like that, so thank her before leaving.

(for more episodic vignettes of my tashi jong trip, visit http://flickr.com/photos/45575795@N00/)