Stolen Moments

A mouthful of overheard gibberish water cooler Arabic, those indecipherable yet beautiful conversations in the barbershop, the imperfect tip of a McDonald's $1 vanilla ice-cream cone, drive-through desserts on three full stomachs, liquid body soap, revolting against this to maternal authority, the magnificence of Cirque Du Soleil's "Love" in Vegas, clandestine "Please Please Me" on the black double deck stereo system during Geography homework, watching The Graduate in Directing Class, Simon and Garfunkel listening for the sounds of silence on that very first CD, speeding tickets, the impotent little electronic screams of the new Cressida when driven over 120 kmph, two whole CD's of Kishor's sadness, the orphan gray cassette that turned up in WNJ 6666, advanced cinematography, the Alipore Zoo pictures of a 1988 early morning on that first Kodak, girlfriends, ICQ, Godfather II on the Xbox 360 on a black futon, Xcite Bike on Super Ninetendo on a grayish pink sofa set, momentary bursts of singing in the shower when the mind suddenly soars for no apparent reason, a year of tabla classes to get the basics down, ugly storyboards, a pair of comical ears on a bird flying by, Hulu, the Crystal Maze, Pandora in IMAX 3D, Indy's last few hops and skips on an invisible bridge, the overworked community treadmill, the first Oedipal chess victory, this impulsiveness, the dull chrome of Sunshine.

Your Inheritance

You like to wear your hair short

And your mother is in full cohort,

Having forgotten our matted days

Of picketing for Rosa through the haze.

Your little girl wears tight jeans today

As blue as the free misty ocean spray

Which wet the hems of our bell bottoms

Before the man jailed us and got 'em.

You shout against animals and ozone

And while I may not have an iPhone

Count me in when you sign your petition

To bring my voice - that invisibly loud gun.

Sapphire

Originally published at PFC: http://passionforcinema.com/sapphire/

Claudia

It was a usual hungry chilly morning

When you waltzed in through the window

Wading through the specks of sunlit dirt

With pure lyrical Felliniesque fluidity.

Then you changed into something rich

Red like the torn petal of a discarded rose

And we made love in one another's sweat

Scared to close our eyes lest we woke up.

And then the moon appeared in a starless sky

And pulled you away from my tight embrace

To take you through a different open window

Into another pair of welcoming arms.

Rain

I love it when it rains. And no, it's not just the smell of the wet earth, because I live in a concrete jungle. Like most recent things, it is aesthetic in nature. And not just any damn drizzle, but I am talking about mother pouring rains like the kind Maharashtrian farmers pray for. The roads are wet, throwing back at us our very own luminance - the red, amber, green of the traffic signals, mixed on this black shiny canvas, with the different neon signs of the curbside shops.

It's better late at night when you don't have to share the canvas with the other voyeurs, creeping on the veins of the highway to death with their little signals of red paint, to stop and stare. You creep on, like a newly transmitted virus into the veins of a busy lawyer's body, taking in more and infecting more with your illuminating gaze. The wipers disturb you with their loud whirring with the sustained punctuality of a Chinese factory worker.

But if you happen to step out earlier, as the pink and transparent umbrellas vie for the uniform grayness of the rainy sky, you catch that smile that escapes the creased zipper of a pair of tight thin painted lips, as her beau steps into a puddle and gets his boring white socks wet, while she shows off her new furry boots to him. But he ignores her fur and only curses at his wetness, knowing little that he would revisit this scene later all by himself and wonder why he hadn't clung to her instead of his shoes.

Then there is the whole menagerie of shiny colors composed with the pink and the transparent through your windshield, through the whirring Chinese wipers. And when you turn the wipers off and let the cascade of the pureness of the rainwater wash your vessel down, your pupils open up welcomingly at the brilliant fluidity of the oil painting that looks like it's still in progress and is the product of the creativity of some artist's under-worked hand using some musty water colors.

Classic Ménage á Trois – Jules et Jim

Originally published at PFC here: http://passionforcinema.com/classic-menage-a-trois-jules-et-jim/

Thank You Dear Amnesia

"too many locations", "too little money", "not enough time", "too many characters", "too many scenes"! Self doubt raised its ugly head in the midst of all the nay sayers, and hung around for a couple of days. Consecutive winter afternoons of searching for that elusive self-confidence in vain, resulting self-loathing and that sinking, helpless feeling that you aren't good enough to swim with the baby sharks. The commitment was shaken off my rocker.

A child was born to combat the depression. A little girl in a red dress craving some ice-cream on a park bench from her miserly grandfather. An accordion playing street musician offered himself to me, but refused to jam with a fellow street guitarist. The red and yellow and blue of the park sky helped me weed out the gray musicians, but deep down it still hurt. Friendly advice, like good alcohol taken on a full stomach, took its time being potent.

Cut to the last critical studies class this afternoon. "We'll watch something weird today". I had watched Eternal Sunshine before and let myself sprawl on the black, wooden yet cold desk. Sometimes amnesia can be a wonderful thing. It had been a while and the sheer brilliance of the film had evaporated from the cauldron of my conscious memory. As I sat there in the uncomfortable black plastic chair, causing what I am pretty sure is long term damage to my spinal cord, the resolve returned gradually as the film progressed, culminating in the nontarnishable white clarity I find myself in at the moment, the same white that Jim Carrey and Kate Winslett playing together like little children on a misty beach in the last shot of the film dissolve to. The girl in the red dress died and the story with the "too many locations, characters and scenes" and with "too little time and money" to make, about forgetting the past returned, for good, I think. Thank you Dear Sweet Amnesia.