ARTHUR C. CLARKE

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."

LAO TSU

"The further one goes, the less one knows."

8 1/2 - FELLINI

"The truth is - I do not know... I seek... I have not yet found. Only with this in mind can I feel alive and look at you without shame."

BERTRAND RUSSEL

"Three passions have governed my life: The longings for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of humankind. Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness...with equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of people, I have wished to know why the stars shine. Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens, But always pity brought me back to earth...."

GEROGE HARRISON

"Try to realize it's all within yourself no one else can make you change, and to see you're only very small and life flows on within you and without you."

JOHN UPDIKE

"It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules."

I Won!

What are awards really about?

If they are anything like what my boss likes to give to her team members from time to time, then I think they are a farce. Yes, boss gives out cookies or vouchers to people she thinks have done a great job during a certain week. I have never recieved them during my 2 and half years of working here. Does that mean my work ain't great?

I don't care. Who gives a flying fuck about cookies anyway?! When I shoot stories with people, and when they call me to say they liked something I did, or when I am satisfied, there is no better reward for me.

Boss had better not be reading this.

So, I feel like talking about awards. I used to participate in hindi elocution every year in school from the 3rd to the 10th. I never won anything in those years except one "special prize" in the 5th. I felt like this old war-horse! Yet, everyone in school knew me as this serial-elocutionist. It was heartening, when random school kids told me they liked my oration of hindi poems. But I never won any prizes.

Recognition is important in any field. But for example, Van Gogh never got recognition in his lifetime. He sold only one painting. He was clearly ahead of his times.

Does that make my elocution skills ahead of their time? I doubt that. I had fun, but I guess, I just wasn't good enough. But I like this quote:

"I'll be forty in July, and I'm glad I never got recognition. It gives me time to develop."

---Basquiat (1996)

So I feel it really doesn't matter. Sometimes we discover great films, after they get recognised by awards at film festivals. Sometimes, films that blow us away never win anything at grandiose Oscar events and the like.

So, I am very happy that Slumdog has achieved all these nominations. For an indie to get this far, gives hope to a lot of other indie projects versus big studio productions.

But can we compare different films? A Benjamin Button vs Slumdog vs The Wrestler. A film about reverse aging vs an Indian underdog vs a legendary wrestler?

What about Taare Zameen Par? Can we lament it not being selected as one of Five in the foreign film category at the Oscars, when it had films from around the world to contend with?

Maybe its a larger debate about competition and success....

......Or just about the basic craft of film-making.

But then why didn't The Dark Knight get more nominations? It's great film-making with a universal appeal and brilliant undertones making subtle comments on society. And is a movie about a gay municipal activist in "Milk" too niche?

I feel that the popular and the niche---both have a tendency to achieve a cult status. And for me, that's when a film or any art gets truly rewarded.

TRANCELUCID

I landed in Pune at 9am. Took an auto to Koregaon Park. Got off at Osho Ashram and entered German Bakery. Nothing had changed. The wooden tables, the phsychedelic flourescent wall hangings of unknown creatures, the ads by new age gurus guranteeing a peace of mind, the coffee, the cheese crosissant, the spilt sugar on the tables, the flirty tibetan owner behind the counter, the tibetan lad handing me my croissant and coffee, a foreigner buying organic tea and tofu, a traveller having his breakfast of brown toast and eggs sunny side up, the puffing osho-ites in their maroon clothes, a dubious drug pedlar with stoned eyes.

All my characters were here. Change is over-rated.

But I was alone this time around. Three years back while studying in Pune, it was one of our favourite places to be. I remember one rainy evening in Pune. Me and Anjali came over for some coffee after a sumptuous dinner at Sweet Chariot's. German Bakery or GB was dimly lit. There was a general chatter and hum drum noise, clanking of coffee cups and spoons. While we sipped our coffee, a man on a table away from us was talking animatedly about the social character of GB. The tables of GB are not divided or separated. It's a sort of community dining. You will most likely be sitting next to a stranger while having your meal. We over-heard this man explaining to his guests, the importance of this community flavour of GB.

And here I was sitting alone on a table with my backpack as my partner. Not for long. An Osho-ite dude came over holding a glass of water and asked if he could sit next to me. Well, its true, there was no place around. Ah well, sureee I said.

It was not awkward. The clairvoyant senses in me knew what to expect. He introduced himself and asked me about myself. I lied about being a student from these parts. And then he asked me If I knew anything about Osho and his Philosophy or read anything written by him. Well, I admitted I was quite fascinated by him but had never read him deeply.

Did he see some disturbance on my face? Or was it simply because he saw me sitting alone, that he asked me if I was at peace with myself. He told me that Self-Love would liberate me and a person as young as me should not worry, and maybe join the ashram for a while. The man, whose name I do not remember, had left a well-paying job as an architect in Bangalore and moved to the ashram completely. Once on a visit to a friend in Pune, he was so enamoured by the movement, that he decided it was time to leave. He had long black curly greasy hair.

How true was that story, I do not know. He could either be a salesman or a mystic. It made me think. But I did not understand him and I did not bother. I was disturbed. I was agitated. Was my job worth it? What was I seeking, What did I want? Where was I going? Those were questions that haunted me then, and whose answers I still do not know. I munched the last remains of my cheese croissant, thanked him, and walked out.

I walked past the ashram. Its a beautiful green stretch where time seems to stand still. An Indian man and a foreign lady dressed in Osho robes walked past me holding hands and seemed to be on the verge of a kiss. I wanted to click them from my camera hanging in my neck. They walked past and I turned around. The moment was gone. I walked around, and saw an old woman dressed in an osho robe sitting outside the ashram. I asked her if I could click her. She refused and said no photography was allowed outside the premises. Just as well. I ambled and ambled by myself. It was so peaceful.

I think about him right now, while I attach meaning to his banter. Sometimes people leave you with prophetic words, that make sense only later, when they need to.

"A child has nothing to do with age. Childhood is a state. You can be old and yet a child. You can be a child and yet old. Childhood is a certain attitude deep inside you, of your being ready to learn; that from wherever and whatsoever source life comes, you will be ready to receive; that in your heart there is a deep welcome; that you are not afraid; that you are not yet crippled by knowledge, information; that you are still in a flow and not frozen."
----Osho

[Photo Credit: Harmanpreet Kaur]

Ying and Yang

Beautiful Wide Unknown - Pahalgam

Somewhere in Gulmarg

Monk - Leh

Barren Flowers - Leh

Pray - Leh

Woolies - Pahalgam

Mystery in Leh

There is a God - Gulmarg

Cafe on top of the world - Leh

Sea of Poppies - Srinagar

[Photo Credit: Harmanpreet Kaur]

Hello Nonsense!

Not everything we say needs to make sense. Nonsense can be such a profound liberator. In fact it is the exact flow of thoughts in our mind...one thought off shooting onto another and further on to tangential planes. Funny on the surface level, and deep on another.
"I am the Walrus", the 1967 song by The Beatles is one such example. Penned by John Lennon on separate acid trips, he combines three of his poems on different subjects into one. He says, "I was writing obscurely a la Dylan in those days." Thank you Johny, for this crazy song, that trips me out without the acid. A cover version by Bono for the 2007 film "Across the Universe" is a great tribute to this song as well.

I AM THE WALRUS - THE BEATLES
"I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly. I'm crying."

"Semolina Pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel Tower.
Elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna. Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe. I am the eggman, they are the eggmen, I am the walrus,
goo goo gajoob ga goo goo gajoob(rhythmical speaking along with juba's). Juba juba juba, juba, juba, juba, juba, juba, juba juba. Juba juba....."

Next up is that awesome dude called Beck Hansen. Where does he get all the energy into his lyrics from? The first ever song I heard of his was in the early 90's called "Loser". I never got it then. I revisited the track a few years ago, and I was struck, I was hooked! It's surrealistic nonsense. Some people refer to it as 'stoner rap'. The experimental video of the song is a mash-up of home videos. Beck says, "We weren't making anything slick – it was deliberately crude. You know? It wasn't like one of these perfect new-wave color soft-focus extravaganzas."

BECK
"In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey
Butane in my veins and Im out to cut the junkie"

"Im a loser baby, so why dont you kill me?"

"You cant write if you cant relate
Trade the cash for the beef for the body for the hate
And my time is a piece of wax fallin on a termite
Thats chokin on the splinters"

"It's only tears that I'm crying, it's only you that i'm losing. Guess I'm doing fine.
Most depressing thing ever, but it's so amazing."

"I think I'm going crazy
her left eye is lazy
she looks so Israeli
Nicotine and Gravy"

"Talkin' trash to the garbage around you."

"Perfunctory idols rewriting their bibles
With magic markers running out of their ink"

"Now I'm a seasick sailor
On a ship of noise
I got my maps all backwards
And my instincts poisoned"



Then, my all time favourite is Alice. I understood her when I was old enough to. Where is that mushroom now? I wanna eat it, go down the rabbit hole, and be mad with the mad hatter at the mad tea party. Off with your Head! And I cannot wait for the movie with the DEPP man as Mad Hatter!

ALICE IN WONDERLAND - LEWIS CAROL

"I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!"

"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary-wise; what it is it wouldn't be, and what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?"

Pure gibberish requires pure genuis. And No, you don't have to "get" it all the time. It's avant-garde!
I find interesting nonsense on www.verybadpoetry.com, a place I visit on a bad day at work or when the brain is dead. Here's a gem from there:

"we're gonna be best friends forever

forever until we're not

we're gonna have the same dreams

date the same kind of dudes

until we don't

we dont even date at all

we don't have dreams

we don't have dudes

we're not even friends

not friends

not forever

oh and one more thing

i dont even like you

not even a little bit"
:)