In Transit - DXB

"The soda is included with the fries, sir", said the McDonald's employee. As I narrowed my eyes and tried to smell the conspiracy behind this forced soda binge, I smelt only the grease patented by McDonald's fries. I also realized the guy was as innocent as a young actress from a small town trying to make it big in tinsel town (the metaphor is a hangover from watching "Luck By Chance" on the plane), probably himself from the inner burrows of Bihar or UP. Like a good consumer, I accepted it of course, and having a no-waste policy, was forced to gulp it down, and am now sitting X calories stronger, X being a very large number, (ab)using Dubai airport's free wireless.

The airport is like a city itself. And I have no desire to walk about with the weight of my book bag, exploring it like Alice. It's very shiny. Vegas would be jealous of an airport like this. The only thing missing are the slot machines - those personifications of sin. I was surprised to find liquor being sold very grandiosely, looked on benignly by enlarged visages of fully clothed beautiful women selling different products from the advertising hoarding on the side of the walkways. And amidst all this sheen, you find the inevitable burkha clad woman, peering through that slit that allows her to take in all this. You also see the teen/early twenties woman clad in a shirt and not too loose jeans strolling about with her headscarved Mum. Then there is namaaz read over the loudspeaker, as if to keep the avarice of the people within check from the enticing clutches of all the duty free shops.

I feel like that little baby next to me in the flight - in a new arena, and tightly closing my fists, as if that will protect me from all the foreign matter in my new environment. I wonder if babies dream. I wonder because I noticed the baby smiling from time to time in its post-meal nap. I couldn't tell if the smiles coincided with slight turbulence. Maybe it dreamed that it was being catapulted into the air by strong arms. I have noticed babies usually like that kind of excitement, which isn't really strange, considering they spend most of their time on laps or prams. I would like to conduct an experiment. I want to get a special seat made in a rollercoaster for the baby. See how it squals with joy next to its parents, who would of course be screaming - terrified by the cathartic ride.

Waiting

It's been almost two days. Still waiting, like Romeo probably did in Shakespeare's head for Juliet (I have never read it; probably strange for a writer, huh?). I know patience is a virtue and all, but who needs more virtues anyway, especially when you have trouble writing dark, evil characters. OK, OK fine. I'll stop before this gets completely autobiographical. It's not that I have a choice but to wait. Without the music, or OST, if I may, "Silent Night" will remain very literally, quite silent, in some parts.

My new baby is all ready - cut and raring to go - to breathe in the air of our screening room on the Warner Brothers lot, filled with parental (not mine) anticipation and the wallah of the silently beating twelve hearts of the directors, mixed in with the vibrations of a few shaking legs, punctuated by flashes from brilliantly white teeth of the actors, and later hopefully the air of at least a few film festivals. The only thing she lacks is the music now, kind of like a newborn waiting for a name - that very first gift from its parents. "Silent Night" is a personal ode to Godard's "Breathless", well at least the cutting, and to an extent, the look, is. There are differences obviously, but revealing them may spoil things.

My composer (this brilliant guy in San Francisco) and I had been going back and forth over some section of some of the cues - creative differences during the last week. Now, all that's been ironed out and he tried sending me some of the tunes earlier, but technology revolted, and another attempt will be made (soon hopefully!). Till then it is just sitting around, watching the top left corner of the screen - waiting for it to say "Gmail - Inbox (1)", reading PFC, wondering about De Sica's brilliance in the just watched "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis", staring at Jeanne Moreau in B&W on my desktop, center punched in a deep, full shot in Antonioni's "La Notte", with those famous upturned lips - beautiful in her melancholic loneliness.

Drink Tea

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