Fall

"Expecting to Fly" - A Mujik Bhideo (Updated)

The First Day of October

I am tired. Got home at 11:30 to a cold, frozen dinner, hearing the refrigerator's song after 14 hours. You see this is Hollywood and everyone has talent here. Our refrigerator is no different. So, she tries her hand, or should I say, voice, at singing once in a while at frequencies only attainable by her kind, especially, when the rest of the house sleeps. Shyness and these amateurs, I tell you! I am sure if we had a dog like the rest of the neighbors, it would dance to her song. Whatamadhouse, as if the tenants themselves are pinnacles of sanity!

But but but, I am not unhappy. I am tired yes, but hunger didn't distract me as I realized everyone else had left the editing lab as I was trying to sync up my actors' griefs to Buffalo Springfield's "Expecting to Fly". The music video should be ready tomorrow. I am finally making this mockumentary that I had wanted to make for a long time, albeit with a few tweaks, mainly from the perspective of the Balaji character. They are all American of course - Stan Garibaldi. B&W, no dialog; only voice over are posing minor challenges, but will soon be ironed out. Almost went to Vegas tonight. This other crew from my class is planning to shoot the next one there. So they went location hunting and I was to tag along with the blissfully calm aloofness of a hitchhiking vagabond. My impulsiveness almost paid off but my well-known inherent laziness could not pass up on the huge bait to sleep in late tomorrow.

I taught my American crew member this dialog (obviously in its original angry young version) today, and even he agreed the original sounded way cooler than the translation. I think I miss those you know. Having that someone who is still bound by that invisible umbilical cord. The desi theater is only 30 minutes away, but without a Shotgun occupant, it seems farther away and I haven't gone for a while now. I was craving Indian food the other day. It's been almost a month and even here, in the US which boasts of "Authentic Indian Cuisine" at every intersection, that is strange. So, my new gluttonous friends and I are checking out the lunch buffet at the Bollywood Cafe 2 on the only Sunday off since the first weekend.

Saw Kairee by mistake yesterday and somewhat quelled my fears of Amol Palekar's directorial skills after Paheli. SuGu had recommended Shwas to me and the name somehow got mixed up in the cobwebs of my mind along with juvenile characters in both movies. I really recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the so-called parallel cinema movement. Also, saw the well made Dylan biography - I'm Not There where 6 different actors play Dylan, portraying the different phases of his life. Cate Blanchett as the Dylan who visited the UK with the Beatles was awesome. I think I got 70-80% of the movie, which in itself is a decent achievement, considering the complexity of Dylan's enigma that loomed large on the extremities of the American psyche, like a hang over two days later, for around four decades, inspiring the last post on consumerism. Reading Walter Murch's "In the Blink of an Eye" - recommended by my editing teacher, who looks like John Cussack and talks like Conan O'Brien. Murch is probably history's best editor (Dulal Dutta was unassumingly up there). He edited such Copolla masterpieces as the second and third Godfathers and my all time favorite film Apocalypse Now. He started out as a Sound Designer (as well as Editor) of the critically acclaimed Gene Hackma-Copolla project 'The Conversation'. Interesting stuff. Trying to incorporate it as much as I can in my work in order to enhance the overall quality, but I guess you'll have to be the judge of that.

Till next time ...

We Shall Overcome

Have the robots won? Have the worst fears of crazed, paranoid Sci-Fi writers come true? Are we shielded from the good ole' organic truth? Or has the unreal simply been enlarged and "enhanced" so that it is a giant in comparison. No? Then why is the natural stuff hidden somewhere in a little corner among the neon signs. Hah! It's almost ironically poetic - like some archaic pot of gold in an ancient fable that you have to go through at least a couple of hundred pages before you discover lying, waiting for you to sample and brand as the elixir of life, thus doing nothing, but playing into the mechanical hands of those very robots, that has turned your existence into a quest.

Or are there short, pudgy, red, sweaty fingers that are pulling lesser fingers to pull cables on those mechanical arms - kind of like the Godfather poster, but not as subtle and not as well back lit? You can't cut them off since that would only force them to multiple. Asexual reproduction I am sure. Machines, or even fingers that control them are not capable of love you offer yourself as consolation. But maybe, they have bought out the subtly as well. Artists need to drink too.

Don't give me any of that world hunger crap! If you think these fingers care about that sort of thing deep down inside, depression will drown me. You are a brother - albeit a sleeping one, blissfully unaware of mechanical arms, wallowing in your Utopian dream sets. Heck these arms have a hand in our dreams too nowadays. Even Bobby D would agree that is meddling of the worst kind. And like most sleeping young things, you are beautiful and we are ugly, but beauty is the last thing on our priority list at the moment.

We will not bow down without a fight. We will fight from our dark corners, wide awake that we are, and be the change we want to see in the world. We will wake you up with our darkness so that you may help us prepare a tomorrow as pure as the new, young sleeping things that will arrive unannounced. Maybe I will not live to see it happen, but as Pete Seeger said, "We shall overcome some day".

Guilty Prey

A Helping Hand

The theme was exchange and it had to be silent and B&W. Shot this in an hour and a half.

Hitting the Nail on the Head

Why do nails grow as fast as they do? I mean how much can one's teeth take, right? And those of you prim and (sic) propah ones don't give me that crap about it being bad manners and all. I think it is a sign of a thinking being. If I had my way, I would recast The Thinker to portray him biting his nails. It's almost as if Rodin (according to Wiki) wanted to do it that way (notice how his fingers curl towards his mouth), but then the purists threatened to start burning his effigies and declare his wife a witch or something and for the sake of martial bliss, The Thinker is what it is today.

If only the same applied to hair! Yeah, yeah, I know, those of you who have hair growing out of the middle of your foreheads and shampoo everyday and shake your mane in slow motion like some newbie, eager-to-impress shampoo model, every time you go into an inhabited room, tell me how expensive barber shops have become these days, but I would rather be poor and good-lucking than well, whatever the opposite of that is.

Don't base your image of me from the now infamous cult Mimicry video. That seems (sic) light years away at this point in time. I had an extreme haircut soon after and have had plenty of shaves since then. As a result of the uniformity of the extreme haircut in all directions, hair is now growing out of the sides like spaghetti out of the dish of some overestimating Italian housewife when she calls guests over. A hat (cap for all you British English freaks) makes me think I possess the curls of a Greek God (not the European ones, but American fraternity brothers), and then I need to start biting my nails again, to appear more intellectual (scratch the more).

A simple question for all my nail "biting" (notwithstanding the content of this blog on most occasions) readers out there? Is it just me, or do all/some of you love to nibble on the area where the skin transforms into nail. I assume it's a lot like visiting Kanyakumari (which by the way is a super sexy name; I always envision a lady with a dark Mermaid-type body, with luscious lips and a South Indian accent when I hear the name) - the southern most point of India - you just wished you could go further (no vulgar pun intended, only the clean type in this case).

At most times, I am blamed and subsequently reprimanded (yeah yeah even now, just the people have changed from one generation of family elders to the next and now to Ms. R) for something as blase (I don't' know how to get the accented 'e' on Macs and I am too lazy to look around) and general as "biting your fingers" when in fact, I am striving for a bit more in Kanyakumari (again, only the clean type of pun intended) or just stoking my "exploristic" ego by caressing my naturally manicured nails with the edge of my teeth. Think about it. It is like taking your greater sensitive index finger and actually going over the borders of the Deccan Plateau on a 3-D terrain map of India. Actually, when people say they need some alone time, or for the pinker ones "me time", I suspect they just want to, yes, touch themselves, but only on the ridge of their teeth.

I will leave you with a question that I am sure will shape your nails and file them too. If Columbus or Magellan had ever been stopped in their tracks such, do you think GPS companies would be naming their products after these guys today?

Too Saggy

They say sequels suck and there are popular exceptions of course like Godfather (though personally I liked Part 3 more than Part 2 overall) and more recently, the new Batman movies (isn't it lame that most of my comparisons are cinema related? Oh well, that's what you get for hanging out in this blog for too long!). Unfortunately, Upamanyu Chatterjee's "The Mammaries of the Welfare State" is not in that clique.

The title in itself sums up its digression from the first novel. It is too wordy when compared to "English August" and has vast passages on the Welfare State that made me drowsy, which may have been Chatterjee's intention to begin with, but such portions of the book are not interesting reads. My unabated obsession with the first book stems from the fact that it was a lot more personal, with the spotlight almost always on Agastya, or his friends, whereas here that is hardly the case. The book starts out wonderfully however, dedicating a chapter to our incorrigible protagonist and the blooming of an interesting love affair, but soon delves headfirst into the matters of the state.

The entire book is a lesson in satire writing and has its brilliant moments, mostly connected with Agastya or his new horrific boss, and the very relatable nickname gifting to his boss and his Home "ministry", or his attitude towards a venerable senior's marriage proposal of his daughter. Some of his equally incorrigible friends like Dhrubo and the hardly utopian Madna are back but are lost in the crowd of a bevy of new set of loony characters. I missed Sathe from the first book.

An August (or Chatterjee, so to speak) fanatic like me shouldn't miss out on this one. It's just that it may take you much longer to finish this than "English August" and you may find yourself wandering away to other levels as you read this, much like Agastya daydreaming through some dormant gorment meeting. I will obviously read the third book of the trilogy - "Weight Loss" to find out what happens to my dear August as he gets even older, but it will have to wait for a while.

PS: I haven't seen Dev Benegal's movie "English August" with a cleanshaven Rahul Bose made circa '93-'94, but if I had to make it today, I would cast Kunal Kapoor.

Hollywood

I am here and LA reminds me a lot of Bombay - the evil skyscrapers still leaving a piece of the sky to reach out to, the horrendous traffic, the proximity to the ocean and yet miles away from it, hell even the weather and of course the film industry with its beautiful people, and not that beautiful on the inside crap that beauty contest winners subscribe to, but pure physical charm that you can get a front seat view of at any Starbucks or participating locations: "Hello. Give me all your money for a 'tall' analgesic (no pun intended) and a chocolate dipped atom and feast your eyes on your beautiful fellow suckers."

Almost all Indian restaurants in the area are owned by Bangladeshis. They lure you in with names like Madhuban Tandav or something very creative like Bollywood Cafe 1 and Bollywood Cafe 2. You go in expecting some obscene non-eastern Indian accent and then they buflax you with their eastern charm. The food's a wee bit pricey, but simple, non-rich and yet tasty. The W would have freaked out here, in a good way.

I am shooting my "mis-en-scene" this weekend. I was thinking of being the high fart intellectual and leaving it at that and letting you guys figure it out using Wiki, and then I felt sorry and I like to reward loyalty (some of you have been reading this junk for a while), but then a college buddy just messaged me from seven seas away and since he knows me longer, he takes priority. Plus, Agastya's waiting too - the last eigthy or so pages - like a high speed burn on the last leg of a five hour drive. So I am not even proof reading this post.

Closure

It's been so long that Blogspot's changed her Dashboard, much like the Blue Lady - the rainbow colors, when the sun storms off like a Diva with all her light, plus the flexibility of 255 RGB component values so that you don't have to whine about not getting your mera wallah turquoise or whatever exotic color strokes your artistic ego. The Blue Lady has hit puberty - the 30K smear on her track record, and as if to exhibit her newfoundstatus, proudly juts out the scar on her rear end. Ahem...is this a family blog??

I am doing it. Tiptoeing behing the White Rabbit down the hole, past uneaten mushrooms of the corporate world and escaping from an evil Red Queen with a carnal love for voleyball, not chess. Did Gandhiji ever play chess, I mean it is war you know and does involve violence? I just don't want to end up like Alice one day and realize I had fallen asleep at some planning meeting and dreamt the whole thing up. So, after milking the mushroom making corporations off bittersweet honey, till the last possible date, the Blue Lady and I set out for the 'Promised' Land with stars in our eyes and a scholarship and a loan on our minds to be taught art by guys who have IMDB profiles.

The apartment's almost emtpy. The W's gone. So has 42 with her musicians. The slut's adorning the wall of some other least suspecting parsimonious technophile, but for how long? It's just me and this screen, where the dreams look smaller, and the black leather recliner that has the gait of a man beliegured by piles as it opens up its leg rest - one that is literally sticking to me with its leather skin in this heat with a severe but of Stockholm Syndrome. And Agastya! Yeah, he is back again. I carry him to work. Don't talk to him there, but I guess we are in that comfort zone now where we just don't need to talk. This sort of line and behaviour would probably piss the f!@# outta him. He would probably secretly nickname me Chipku or Sweaty Leather or something and avoid me like the Madna plague, but whattodo, I am the sole King of this unfurnished pad now! He has no choice but to lie next to me on a discomforter and a sleeping bag, and watch the bugs sample me for a late night snack and imagine watching my 72 mm dreams, projected onto the opposite wall where 42 used to be. Adios.

Pining for a Smoker

The space has its emptiness back again
Much like most corners of the heart.
The walls are bare white again
Devoid of your tobacco coated smile.
You can hear the hollow within again
Bouncing off into the light.

The sunlight is no match for you
And the fresh clean air only dampens my spirit.
Those obese white pillows in the sky
Only remind me of you blissfully chugging away
At a habit that is killing one of us
And saving the other a little bit every day.

I know you will be back soon,
That most goodbyes are never really that,
That there will be that familiar disgusting smell
To fill up my space and my world again.
But until then, I must wallow in this insipid cleanliness
With a sound body and a not so sound mind.

8/3/08

Mimicry

This was done a while back. The Ajit isn't that good, and this doesn't have my favorite one - Amol Palekar.

The Worst Kind of Sadness

The Bay Area traffic scene is not a terrain I would recommend for people with malignant hearts or impending pregnancies. Thus, the introduction of tears in such an environ is like wearing green to Bal Thakerey's birthday party. The tears flow south, colorful specks like discarded bile in an acid infested tummy pass you by east and west and the sorrow wobbles on in every direction. It's a high unparalleled by that of any drug - a sorrow without a source you can completely pin point.

I had watched Gonzo: Life and Works of Hunter S. Thompson over the weekend, and while the experience had touched me, I wouldn't say it had moved me a considerable amount at the time. Hunter S. Thompson is the God who wrote the novel version of the Depp starrrer "Fear and Loathin in Las Vegas" where Depp plays the jouno/author himself. It is a scathing, sarcastic commentary on American consumerism and greed as Duke (played by Depp) and his attorney Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro) set out in search of a 'phony' American Dream under the heavy influence of "every drug known to mankind since 1540 AD". Anyway watch the movie for a brilliant performance by Depp and director Terry Gilliam's twisted vision, reinforced by some psychadellic camera work.

Hunter even ran for mayor of Aspen, Colorado and to everyone's surprise managed to rake up 160K votes (the winning block of stone got 213K or so) with his ludicrous yet sane manifesto which included legalizing drugs. He was a stauch supporter of George McGovern in the '72 presidential elections who wanted to pull out troops from Vietnam immediately, and thus lost out to Nixon, chronicled in "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail". There is a point in an interview in the documentary when Hunter breaks down in anger and hatred for Nixon. The Bush re-election finally drove him to take his own life in 2005 at the age of 73, which is a shame, because I agree with his friends who feel that he could have weilded a pretty effective sword with his Gonzo journalism on today's events. People like John Stewart and Colbert are but modern day minions of Hunter.

Maybe it was the songs on the soundtrack CD of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" that I bought yesterday in San Francisco's Hippie Haight-Ashbury area, where Hunter hung out a lot, or the sudden realization of the loss of sanity and clarity that has descended upon us, or a looming personal tragedy that triggered the tears, but I cannot say for sure. All I can say is that it was the worst kind of sadness.

Spicy Spam Kabobs

I am considering a switch of careers. No, no, not becoming a full time filmmaker, well not just yet anyway, but I have realized that I am completely wasting my real "talent" in the Semiconductor industry. I am sure Captain would support my decision with extreme understanding, that is if he believes me. I don't know if any of you with Gmail accounts have noticed, but the Spam messages have gotten more colorful and varied than just repeated implorations to increase the size of your primary and secondary sexual organs (depending on your sex).

Yes, I'll go ahead and admit it. My life has changed. With an addiction that would make members of the ACA (American Caffeine Addiction) support group proud, I religiously check my email every morning, even before I perform my morning ablutions. Obviously, not the uninteresting section titled 'Inbox' where there are not too many mails anyway, but the stashed Spam section. I'll be man enough to admit it. It makes me feel wanted when for example, I see 69 emails in my Spam box as opposed to a measly 1 in my Inbox (from my mother usually). You wouldn't understand. Oh the insecurities a straight twenty-something man has to encounter in today's cosmos!

The messages are uplifting, ranging from political subjects like 'France Prez denied green card', to entertainment - 'Jack Nicholson dies from viagra abuse', to art - 'Italian painter uses only body fluids for new paintaing', to history - 'Reserach reveals Hitler was a cock-fighting junkie', to sport - 'Cricket becomes the first sport to build a temple for followers of its faith', to health - 'Cheetos can cause growth of extra nipple', to fashion 'Ponches now chic says Ralph Lauren', to travel 'Bermuda Traingle latest #1 getaway for honeymooning couples', to religion 'Pope converts to Paganism', to environment 'Al Gore opposes the use of latex condoms', to lifestyle 'Take her to the zoo for your first date', and finally to career 'Blogger becomes professional Spammer'. From time to time, you do get the usual boring 'See Angelia naked' messages. In fact, I have a conspirary theory that she bribes Google executives in order to receive some free advertisement. Why else would we not be tempted with nakes images of other stars? This favortism would smarten even the cheeks of the BCCI committee of the 90's.

If you notice the 'From' section in your Spam box, the names are increasingly changing. Eariler they would range just from Evan Smith to Rashawd Johnson. Gradually, these changed to something more hybrid - 'melting pot' and all that jazz - Ali Johnson or Chitralekha Robinson, and eventually, now if you look closely, you do find names like Pinky Walia. This, I believe is India's greatest achievement since independance. Who cares about Rakesh Sharma moonwalking with Russians, or eleven men in whites getting the better of some giants in a game of gilli danda, or even us testing some fireworks in Pokhran. In this age of subconscious solitude, there is nothing more gratifying than to reach every human's email box and bring a smile to them.

Eternal Sunshine on Polka Dotted Boxers

It is 10:34 am and I am sitting in my second successive meeting of the morning. The caffeine has thankfully started taking effect and I don't feel like I have been hit by a meteorite anymore. Let me go ahead and crib a bit. Thursday is the only day that I have a 9 am meeting. It's usually 10:30 am when I drag my feet into work on other days. Now you might envy me after knowing this, but c'mon, it's not fair to expect me to be at work by 9 when my body is conditioned to wake up after 9. OK OK. Cribbing over.

There is another reason for my lack of beauty sleep. No, there are no cricket matches on at ghastly hours, nor am I in a saat samundar paar long distance relationship, and no, I am not forcing amnesia, no, nostalgia, arrey I can't remember the word, that sleeplessness condition, on myself, to appear pseudo-intellectual. I am fun editing. The phrase hasn't made it to the Oxford dictionary yet, but if I have my way, the Queen's English will be violated a little more by the next release. So, I am working on this 20-25 minute short film as an AD and partly as Lighting Designer (and partly as Cinematographer when crew members vanish into thin air, no not after dieting too much, they just leave: "I have a family emergency", "proctologist's appointment", "I am henpecked and my wife is from Bush's, I mean Hitler's, lineage"; you get the idea), but I recently got Final Cut Pro 6.0 (industry editing software) and so I am playing around with the footage. The first night I got the software, I created this sequence of the protagonist in the bathroom (shower and hair gelling only, in case you kinky ones were getting excited) with the only footage I had at the time - bathroom shots and cutaways of a fire alarm. Go figure!

Watch Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na for very good acting by an ensemble cast so fresh, they still possess that new car smell. Standout cameo performance from Prateik Babbar, product of Smita Patil's mistake with a random bloke. Watch Aamir for a very visual few opening few sequences, directed by Anuraag Kashyap's AD. Watch Wall-E for that good feeling you get after eating dessert (please beware; this feeling maybe exclusively a Bengali thing, but you can relate to it I am sure; as my probashi friend SuGu says, everyone is Bengali anyway, moreso French footballers - MalouDa, Saha etc. etc.). It's already #19 in IMDB's all-time top movies. I am in a Kurosawa-Mifune phase, partly because I was reading Donald Ritchie's The Films of Akira Kurosawa after I heard about it at Jabberwock. Red Beard is their best work till date that I have seen. Beats Rashomon and Seven Samurai for me. Mifune's restrained performance was a revelation. Its a pity that he couldn't shave his beard and thus had an argument with Kuro since he lost contracts of films from other "directors" at the time, and never made any more films with him. Probably for the best. I don't think I would have liked to see him in color (Red Beard is Kuro's last B&W film).

Received a lot of messages since this blog was on standby (OK fine, just two, but you know who you are; thanks - makes a difference in this age of individualism). Read Aamir Khan's and Amitabh's blogs and realized they write very often despite their busy schedule. So, I should not disappoint my "fans" either. OK boring meeting over.

Love

Tashan - You Cannot Review Greatness

Every once in a while a movie comes along that forces you to stop and ponder about the banality of your middle-class holistic existence. And any movie that can stimulate such soul searching thoughts, automatically carves a place for itself in the threshold of the Hall of Fame, where the Lord presides over his court of lesser Gods with nether-worldly masochism and unparalleled rustic charm.

Tashan is Saif Ali Khan's first investment in the Roulet machine titled 'Bollywood' in gay glitteraty. And from the look of things, his start is as promising as a new groom in bed. Tashan's greatness lies in the fact that it takes the Lord's message, packages it in some reflective party gel and just as you are about to dismiss it as an overpriced masala flick, it does a Jack in the Box with the lead 'actors' in wigs of colors that fat Gujarati businessmen die their graying hair to, crooning such metaphorical lyrics as 'Tohre dil ke thaeter ma dil deewana advance booking mare re", almost as if making a promise spanning several births, for the film to continue running house full in all theaters of the land. Surely, even Sir Winston Churchill would agree that this is globalization at its peak - the very idea of white people singing in Bhojpuri. If only the makers of Mangal Pandey - The Rising had seen Tashan before, they wouldn't have had to incur such heavy losses.

The simplicity of the script catches you unaware as you walk in twenty minutes late (probably because you didn't get tickets to any other show and then took your time before deciding that you were ready to completely open yourself up emotionally to Tashan). There is a taboo love story brewing between the handlebar mustached Jimmy (Saif), who only taak Englis, waak English becoj Englis is a bhery phunny language, and the anorexic Pooja (Kareena), who has given up food to save up to repay the overtly avuncular don Bhaiya Ji (Anil Kapoor), trying to be overtly brotherly, who [Spoiler Alert] wears Rupa underwear and overtly porous Rupa banyan. Inside sources claim that inspired by the great Toshiro Mifune, who had based the movements of his character in Kurosawa's Yojimbo on the lion, Kapoor spent several months in isolation with alcoholic sloth bears with a penchant for tharra, made in the heartland of the country - UP.

The omnipresent Amitabh Bachhan makes his usual appearance, but this time only lending, no not his voice, but his name to Bachhan Pandey (Akshay Kumar). Bachhan is a PhD student doing his thesis on 'The Virtues of the Dark Side". His current semester projects include studying what really went on in each of Ravan's ten heads when he realized he was more in love with Ram than Sita. Needless to say, he has no funding, and thus needs to help dons with extortions and shadow batting for the Delhi Daredevils to maintain his fit body.

However, like all good samaritan masala movies made in this millennium, Tashan has a twist. Of course, it is still a love story, but the key players change. I would not like to spoil it for any of you and reveal the exact permutation of the two out of these four characters that take us on a pedophiliac, yet voyeuristic journey of their childhood and show us how coolness in Kanpur is defined by how much electricity you can steal.

The film's overall feel and brilliant hamming by Anil Kapoor is marred by some good comic timing by Kumar, but overlooking that and some refreshing cinematography, especially during the songs, the film is consistent with a thrilling, logic-redefining climax, that involves a cycle rickshaw decked up like Mrs. Teja during Lodi. The very deliberate trashing of logic as we know it, gives birth to a new school of editing and sets a new benchmark for directors who shoot lackluster, dull action sequences (in comparison of course) movies like Gadar and Kill Bill.

The songs are OK, but what will make the music album fly off the shelves is the poetry - an hors d'oeuvre of the characters repeating their respective tashans, including a rendition of Anil Kapoor's imagined version of Kabhi Kabhi in Bhojpuri. Daft that I am, the significance of the repetitiveness of the tashans eluded me, but soon the child next to me, with a visage and voice as peaceful as Dharamputr Sunny, asked his creator, "Mummy, what is Tashan?", and she, with the dismissive laziness, only matched by the gait of a Bengali who has just had lunch, in her voice, much like the Dream Girl, said "Shut up and go to sleep". It is then that I realized that no one can tell you what tashan is. You have to discover it for yourself. Some may discover it in the lazy afternoon swings of cows' tails they are trying to milk, in the coolness of a cowshed somewhere in the heartland, while some may discover it in the shrillness of Bapi Da's high notes, even others while their SO refuses that extra spoon of sugar in their morning coffee, and for some, sitting through the entire film without a single break.

Snippets from an Autobiography in Progress

If you are still around, yes you, ardent reader of White Noise, you will realize posts have started appearing with the efficiency of an Indian Gorment employee, still endeavoring to smart from all the red tapism. Why you ask? Cuz it's my bloody blog, and you may be my customers in a business sense, but my entrepreneurial skills are like Dravid's T20 skills. So, what's happening on the western front, you ask?

The IPL has disciplined me more than the fear of an exclusively broccoli diet and I wake up promptly at 7:30 each morning to some destructive batting (unless of course Bangalore is playing) and some death mass sermon for bowlers, of all shapes, sizes, pace and turn. Some turn on one another and bitch-slap each other in full youtube view, and then get slapped bans. Others probably just go home and cry each other to sleep, in the process wetting each others' pillows.

I have been meaning to write a post about the antras of old songs, especially, Kishore's ones. I realized that I like them more than I like the mukhdas. Essentially, both - lyrics as well as the music, maybe cuz the mukhdas have been played to death But a friend has my Kishore collection and isn't returning it. So whattodo. In a Rafi phase starting yesterday. I finally drove the Blue Lady through a dilapidated, creaky carwash while providing the chorus for Pukarta Chala Hoon Main. What's up with the gas prices?? I spent 60 bucks filling her up today and the W says that Billua Clinton, prospective First Gentle(have to ask Monica about that) man says I will be paying 105 by next year! I need to contact Icarus for those wax wings to fly to San Francisco. In any case, I can fly on the alternating icy cold days, yes, yes, I know its summer, but Gillette f!@#ed up the ozone layer, na. I just had a vision of God, stroking his carefully shaped white goatee, saying, "Good Ol' Spice! I told you so". Oh, wait, maybe it's Vijay Mallya, but never mind, there is no stud in his ear.

Just saw the Pianist. Very good. Roman Polanski. Adrian Brody acts with his eyes and body and hardly has any dialog in his Polish accent. What a transformation the character goes through. Saw Shyam Benegal's Mandi a few days back. The script is a lesson in character development. Each actor, with their varying amount of screen time, give each other competition. Om Puri, Naseer, Smita, Shabana, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Anita Kanwar, Neena Gupta, Ratna Pathak Shah. Aah, and that delicious Hyderabadi accent. Always makes me hungry and reminds me of biriyani. Talking of which, Captain's moved here. Aah, I must also emoblackmail Mr. Dandi to make his biriyani, but I need to meet him first. Yes, I have been a bad friend, but whattodo, I have a life now, after Sultana Daku.

PS: Someone said I look like Dhoni today from the left acute angle under sunshine. I am sure my boro pishi is feeling vindicated now. I did not even have long hair back then! And then his next question was if I play cricket.

PPS: Also, meant to blog about this Zakir Hussain Masters of Percussion concert I went to. There's a great story to it. Got a front row dead center celebrity seat after waiting for an hour to get in after the concert started. The concert was awesome. I fell in love with the sitar and bought a Ravi Shankar CD on iTunes.

I fell into a Deep Deep Well

As that man in black with the voice of a God sang, "I fell into a burning ring of fire". Just that it wasn't a ring of fire so much as a deep deep well, with the same intensity though. It's happened before and I had hit myself hard against the rough dry cruel base of the well so as to shake up my gray matter. I even knew that this well (in Ms. Robinson's backyard) was dry and not even that deep beforehand, meaning the impact would be soon and hard. And yet, I jumped in, just to see if I could pump out some water while I was falling, with my Wifi charm, just enough to shield the fall. Aah, if only supposed ebullience could cut through the ever-protective earth.

Denial avoids me like the plague as I lie among the remains of my gray matter in a mess, meaning I have far from retired from the subconscious vocation of our generation - the excavation for the elixir of life. Tell me is it possible to rise through wells? Possibly, in a matrix free from expectations and ambitions and gravity. Huh, wells, you say? Shit, the pseudo-intellectual feminists would be screaming for my nuts, after this. Castration - that defeatist weapon in the hands of the superficially weak. I wonder if the word stems from that Cuban dude. I would be very pissed if it does. Meaning the US is a feminist state? F@#&ing paranoid public opinion, I tell you.

Aah, it all makes perfect sense, no? A response in a typical hangover from the times when that little man was marching up and down that big country across the Atlantic with the flag of his fatherland flying like the wavy blond hair on the head of a true Aryan. Chauvinists and their infatuation with homosexuality! I mean what's the big deal? I obviously see the pseudo-intellectual charm of it all, but to name a band of long haired tenors to appeal to the younger superficial generation taking to ugly jeans and white sneakers; that's very shameful, even for pseudo-intellectuals.

Lime Green Nails

Sunshine on lime green nails

Tapping against steely untuned strings,

Singing of sad sad tales

And of false hope they bring.

Vibrations of dark dark wood

And questions blowing about.

Rich smoke maintains the mood

That the answers would never be out.

More street corners and more nails

Red, blue, yellow, magenta

Asking about dead dead quails

About changing the agenda.

But the man is color blind

And supposedly very very deaf

As more mothers lose their mind

Wallowing in emotional troughs.

4/4/2008

Have You Seen My Guitar?

Have you seen my guitar?
Bright as Floyd’s crazy star.
I don’t even see her shadow at home.
Might have hiked to Paris or Rome
Or to the dark craters on the moon
And I fear she won’t return soon.

My room is empty and hollow
And I can’t but cry and wallow
But the tears can’t fill her space
Since my baby’s gone without a trace.
All the pages are clean and yet
Are little boats so that I am not wet.

The three little birds are not at the door.
They were hungry and so sing no more.
They have real proper jobs now,
Something my soul will not allow.
So tell me have you seen my crazy star
My lost homeless vagabond guitar?

3/26/2008