Oscar Mania

I sometimes wonder if one can separate a product from its maker. Like Vidhu Vinod Chopra. 'Parinda', his first directorial feature film, remains one of my all time favourite movies and I remember long drives with someone who I had to keep telling to rewind an audio casette in the car tape. That audio cassette was the soundtrack of the movie WITH dialogues. His second venture, '1942, A Love Story' got killed at the box office for reasons I can't understand still. I liked that movie as I did the two 'Munnabhais' and 'Parineeta' that he made. I didn't have the chance to watch Eklavya though.

But this man, I remember one of his earlier interviews on one of those Shekhar Suman shows when he talked about his achievements as a young man, short documentary, ad film maker something, did seem quite impressive. Even then, he seemed more boastful than modest at that time. The last time around, when Rang deBasanti was chosen over Munnabhai MBBS as India's official entry to the Awards, he decided to go ahead and enter the film as a direct entry for the foreign film category, supposedly after the support he got from viewers across India. That was yesterday and then 'Eklavya' gets nominated this year as an official entry and it creates quite a ruckus for being a box office dud of no repute and yet get the nomination. An elated Vidhu Vinod Chopra, now, says people in India need to grow up.

City of Djinns

I came across this from here. Some of these photographs also occur in the latest issue of M.

William Dalrymple puts forth an explanation to why Delhi is today what it is. Renowned as a shallow and fake culture, accused of being a heartless city with a soaring crime rate, where weddings are as lavish as common are drunk brawls, William says it is in part due to the fact that Delhi today is a city reborn again and again throughout history. Over the years, the metropolis has been the most powerful seat across the whole of the Indian subcontinent, and therefore, has witnessed more wars, coups, 'power' killings, betrayals than any other city. The current set of 'Dilli-wallas' are a curious mix of people, right from Punjabis who migrated during the Partition to the Jats from Haryana and the 'Bhaiyyas' of UP who came to the city in search of a better living. Therefore, William says, the culture of Delhi has, over the years, been covered by veils over veils of these various cultures, each trying to stamp their authority on what Delhi should be. Who or what does Delhi belong to? I guess that is a question that will remain unanswered till more of history is made.

edit: with fond memories of the place...

The mind conjures up a Sunday evening. Sitting by the river front, perhaps across the bay, a patio laid with wooden boards, some grass around it and smooth pebbles of cold white marble drawn from a river bed. Watch the boats return from a sojourn, light emanating from the tall glass buildings on the other side. The deep sky a brilliant hue, crimson now, violet then, a spattering of misty clouds streaked across the wide canvas. The air just nippy enough to tingle one's toes as it twirls around bare legs, lying on the crisp cotton bedsheets laid out on the couch. Some Sarah Mclaghlan, Travis, REM, Floyd, Annie Lennox gently crooning inside the amber hued room. Perhaps, a fusion of Talvin Singh, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Michael Brooks could do too...earthy songs, sufi mystic, deep vocals...The world of written words of another time, another city left behind, as one gently returns to the present and lets it seep into one's spirit, like wine that draws strength from the wood of its cask, brought out once in a while to catch the warmth of the setting sun to give it the perfect blend. Time, the fourth dimension overwhelms the other three and yet time, that does not know where else it could belong, but this moment. Here, now, is where you belong, for tomorrow is another worry and it does not matter if you had a fast depleting bank balance, or that people were slowly drifting away, perhaps, on one of those very yatches across the bay, their course set. It does not matter that you are away from where you began this journey, and all that remain are memories that you bracket into something called childhood. And that you are still away from time that calls upon you for a debt that you must pay back and pehaps sell your soul so you could...

Here, now is where you belong....

Ganpati Bappa Morya!!

We were kids. There used to be times when we did not have the luxury of playing gulli cricket, courtesy, the Patel chap, who with his bald pate and heavy voice would drive us away. Old couple with kids who'd migrated to the States could not bear a few kids making a ruckus every evening. At such times, we used to take refuge on the flat terraces of an unoccupied tenement near our houses. No. 75 and 76 were our favourite terraces for it meant we could run around and jump over the parapet that partitioned the terrace of the adjoining houses, and no parent would bother us. On one end lay an empty plot while the next house was just as empty.

Religion was something that neither of us in the bunch understood quite well. Except that it was a series of rituals that elders followed. Ganpati was no different. Every year, this time would mean a few elder guys from the row house side of the colony would go door to door and ask for contributions. With that they would build up the Ganpati pandal with a blaring music system, daily evening aartis and prasad that drew us to the spectacle. That, and the chance of shouting Ganpati Bappa Morya at the top of our voice. One day, when we were old enough we decided that we could manage a Ganpati pandal of our own. We used to setup our own pandal on one of these terraces with the help of unused slabs of kota stone with jagged edges. The flattest piece formed the floor while the remaining formed the walls and the roof. The back of the one square foot abode was the parapet wall. We spent hours decorating it with colored paper. Someone contributed the motor that had been salvaged out of a broken remote controlled toy car. A circular cardboard piece colored in bright patterns with our sketch pens was stuck onto the shaft of the tiny motor that was connected to a single pencil cell. This formed the chakra behind Ganpati's head. Tiny electric bulbs from someone's electric play set enabled us to light up the tiny pandal. The idol itself was painstakingly carved from blobs of mud rolled and dried and held together by tiny sticks or paper pins. One big mound over which rested a smaller one, a curved rolled up bit of mud formed the trunk and two flattened flaps made up the ears of the great God. Beads stolen from elder sisters' trinket box made up the eyes.

And every evening, just after dusk, when we heard the chant of the 'aarti' over at the colony's bigger organized pandal, we would gather at our little pandal on the terrace, with a small cup of sweets that would make up the prasad for our little Ganpati. A bunch of four five kids, one of us was the wiser kid who knew the aarti by heart and would therefore guide the rituals. We would light a small diya and incense sticks, agarbattis and chant His name over and over again. After the shouts of Ganpati Bappa Morya had died down we'd greedily divide up the prasad amongst ourselves and gulp it down. Cut fruit, sweetmeats, et all.

One year there was a feud and our group was divided into two. Each decided to have their own pandal on the very same terrace and an unspoken competition was set off with the aim of building the better pandal. That event brought about use of actual cement stolen from some construction site in the colony and therefore better constructed pandals where the air could be kept out of God's abode and the flame of the diya would not be at risk from the stiff September draft.

The dipping of Ganpati into waters was a problem every year since none of our parents would let us go by ourselves and carry the Ganpati to the nearest water body for 'immersion'. It would be left up to one of us to find a family who would take our Ganpati with the family one and immerse that too. Sometimes, when that was not possible, we would gently lift Him and place him in the empty plot of land nearby, consoling ourselves that we were returning him to his natural abode. The pandal would be gently dismantled and we would have the use of the terrace again for our daily evening games. Games with large balls held by the knuckles, 'Monkey in the Middle', 'River or Mountains', 'Sattodiyoo', 'Color, color', 'I Spy', and a dozen others.

Kids. We made up our own games, our own religion, our God and our own politics...

From the drafts in my mail..unedited

The perfect way of pretending to be working while Im actually blogging. Open a word document or a powerpoint, the better if it is the current project you’re working on, start typing somewhere in the middle in the same small font. When you are done, just open blogger, copy paste the post and publish. Whoosh! Important point is of course, not forgetting to delete it from the report / presentation you pretended to be busy with. Or else, it could lead to you being fired and your company sued. Ghastly a thought to imagine our clients reading the melancholic and sometimes downright cribby posts right in the middle of a feasibility study for a multi-crore real estate project. :D But I can’t help it. The new workplace I am seated in is situated right in the way of a busy walkway towards the pantry and the loo beyond, which makes it very easy for bored employees to just have a peek into my comp while on their way to another leak. As was proved by the senior from Bschool I chanced upon and who has since commented more than once on what I am doing. Searching for more seniors on Orkut??, she purrs coyly, while I am flabbergasted as to how did she see what I was doing on Orkut. Yeah, I was checking her out, among others. It was definitely easier in the Delhi office where I simply pretended I was drafting an email to a friend. The only raised eyebrows I had to encounter were those of Tania, who kept grumbling why noone ever wrote her so long mails. I finally had to tell her that it was in fact a post for my blog. That made her curious and she wanted to read me. I politely refused.

By the way, my new maidservant speaks English. Sis did warn me of it when she called to tell me that she’d managed to fix her up to clean the place and wash clothes. Next morning, a Saturday, a groggy me hears the knocking on the door (the doorbell doesn’t work). I get up and peer through the peephole to see a thinly yet cheery woman on the other side of the door. I open it up and I am greeted by a ‘Good Morning’. That drove half my sleep away, my Saturday morning. The next day she took out the newspaper from the latch and handed it to me on the way inside. Bade bade shehero mein aisi chotti chotti baatein hoti rehti hain.

I am enjoying the new house. It is, as written earlier, the first time I have a place to call my own. The cosy one room apartment is something I look forward to at the end of my day. Even as I right now have no means of entertainment, courtesy the broken Thinkpad, I still yearn to get back to it. I have yet to figure out the Internet and the daily newspaper, a fridge to keep milk, water, fruit juice and beer (in that order), a television sometime later this year and a music system. But it has my bed and sky blue bedsheets, the few books Ive managed to keep with myself and a few trinkets. By the next week I shall also have a few potted plants.
And as I stood by the window of my place, watch the rain beating down the tin roofs two floors down, a few words kept looping in my head.

Aazmaale aazmaale aaj khud ko aazmaale

Phirta hai kab se yeh dil sambhaale

Bol ye lab pe ruke hain

tere sajde mein jhuke hain

Pal pal bhikre hain kitne ujaale

Kya karoon kya sochta hai

chain dil ka dhoondta hai

Apni kismat ko jagaale

beech ka parda uthaale aazmaale

Aazmaale aazmaale aaj khud ko aazmaale

Phirta hai kab se yeh dil sambhaale

Bol ye lab pe ruke hain

tere sajde mein jhuke hain

Pal pal bhikre hain kitne ujaale

Apne gham se khelta hai, dard kitne jhelta hai

Sochta tu aur kuch hai, aur kuch tu bolta hai

Apne dil ko tu manaale

beech ka parda uthaale aazmaale

Aazmaale aazmaale aaj khud ko aazmaale

Phirta hai kab se yeh dil sambhaale

Bol ye lab pe ruke hain

tere sajde mein jhuke hain

Pal pal bhikre hain kitne ujaale

Kashmakash ko chhor de tu,

rukh hawa ka mod de tu

Khaali pe maana hai tera,

ho sake to tod de tu

Ek nayi mehfil sajaale

beech ka parda uthaale aazmaale

Aazmaale aazmaale aaj khud ko aazmaale

Phirta hai kab se yeh dil sambhaale

Bol ye lab pe ruke hain tere sajde mein jhuke hain

Pal pal bhikre hain kitne ujaale

Kitne ujaale, kitne ujaale, kitne ujaale

- Taxi 9211