Mcleodganj. 2007. End of November. 

I miss those days. That divine week of doing absolutely nothing. I learnt so much. It's been too long, too long, too far off....

Pune. FTII. May-June, 2007.

These are some crude pics I took from my cell in the FTII campus during the one-month Film Appreciation Course in 2007. I find the campus and its inhabitants - a floating island.

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."

--- Charles Darwin

Women's Lib and Global Citizenship 

I had once gone to a Govt Liquor shop in east Delhi for a story shoot. This shop was next to a school and thus a nuisance. There was a bee line of men from a lower socio-economic status, waiting to purchase their quota of liquor for the day. But then I spotted a woman in a saree. She came quietly, went to a separate counter, slipped a bottle of rum inside her pallu and left. I was amazed, and bemused. It didn't matter if she was buying it for her aadmi or herself. I think it was admirable. 

Whenever I cross the Badarpur border on my way to work, I make it a point to notice an old feeble cobbler who always wears a smile on his face in the corner of the road. There is always a middle-aged dusky skinned woman sitting next to him talking. One day, I watched them smoking a beedi together. There was the utmost peace and joy on both their faces. There could not be two people so different from each other, enjoying a moment of unity. 

When I was in Mumbai, working with CNBC-TV18, life could not have been more lonely. Thanks to two college friends---Vijay and Lakshna, it was so much more easier starting out on my first job in the big city, living expensive but being poor. There is a very shady joint behind the Colaba Causeway called Gokul's. From outside it resembles a British Inn. Me and Lakshna went there at the behest of Vijay, and we had the most amazing beer, tandoori chicken and fried eggs, in that smoky joint full of single men having their drinks in quiet corners, away from their wives and the world. This was a moment, that none of us have forgotten. 

So, is there a problem here? A problem in spending time with people you like and eating and drinking whatever you enjoy. Isn't it all about community? Don't all our cultures, have a sense of community? During Eid, we cook. During Diwali, we cook. During Christmas, we cook and drink. During Holi, we cook and drink. 

This is why the attack on women drinking in a pub in Mangalore is a problem. Its not a debate about "pub culture" or "Indian culture". It's a debate about gender insensitivity and gender politics. It's about the equality of the sexes. Throughout history, women have not been allowed to be free to maintain the status-quo of male dominance. The reason why, attacks on women not just in pubs, but in the villages, and streets of our city occur is because of this psychology and social structure. 

It's true, that these get "footage" in the media, when the middle or the rich classes get targeted. It is the "we never thought it'd happen to us" mentality.  

A noted journalist wrote in her blog, that while we oppose the Muthaliks of society, we must also not imitate Sex and the City by sending pink underwear to him. This is a gross stereotype by a woman herself! I do not understand why she would equate modern activism with a commercial film. For me, this gesture of sending pink chaddi's to the scum of a man, is almost similar to bra-burning in the 60's and women's lib. It's an individual expression of a group of people, which include men. The only way to deal with people like Muthalik and his cronies, is embarassment. Gandhi wanted to embarass the British too. 

In today's world, where geographical boundaries cease with the easy flow of information, art and film, is there something wrong in imbibing ways of life that appeal to us? If I can wear Levi's Jeans, made in America, why can't I go to Hard Rock Cafe and have a mug of beer? Or for that matter, listen to African music, eat Tibetan food, and wear kohlapuri chappals.  

Why is there a hue and cry about Danny Boyle making a movie about India when an Indian director, Shekhar Kapur can make a film about an English Queen? 

"Imagine no country.........", sang Lennon. I don't know what is idealistic and what is real. What is plausible, is that we all became Citizens of the World. 

[Photo Credit: Claude Renault]

FLOWER CHILDREN 

I've been looking for this book for the past few months by Rory Maclean called THE MAGIC BUS: ON THE HIPPY TRAIL FROM ISTANBUL TO INDIA. If anyone can spot it in a bookstore in Delhi, please inform me. 

Do read this interview with the writer on worldhum.com. Below are some excerpts: 

"In the ‘60s, books—and song lyrics—were central to communicating ideas. Lyrics inspired, guided—or in some cases misguided—the search for a new way of living, expressing genuine concern for the state of the world."

"Much of the travel market has become aspirational, rather than inspirational, meaning travelers aspire to do as others have done: to walk alone in the Hindu Kush, to find a forgotten house in Provence, to discover that secret, deserted Thai beach. No one dares to point out that there are no more undiscovered beaches. That the world has been mapped. That every country on the planet is described in one or another book. Despite this, every generation discovers the world anew. Its young men and women that redefine the foreign and so come to know themselves better."

Like I've been telling two of my friends off late, that I feel my soul is from the 60's. Yeah, I am an 80's kid and I do identify with some of the madness of that decade. But I saw Woodstock (1970), and I haven't gotten over it yet. I knew I was there....in my last life! :)

The Art of Doing Nothing

And nobody does it better than the French

By Joel Achenbach

Sunday, August 13, 2006; Page W11, Washington Post 

In Paris, you sit in the cafe, like Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Sitting in a cafe is one of the main activities in Paris. It's what Parisians do instead of working or jogging. They have a natural talent for it, the way Americans are good at going to the pool, grilling meat or driving interstate highways.

The crucial skill in a cafe is the ability to gear down, from second to first, and then down yet again to a special, Gallic gear that is nearly paralytic. It's a bit like being dead, but with better coffee.

The chairs in the cafes are lined up in rows, facing outward, toward the theater of Paris street life. Or perhaps it is the patrons who are on display. Their posture says: Here, look at us, full in the face, as we sit in the cafe so brilliantly, thinking our big French thoughts.

Like the other day, I was nursing an expensive thimble of wine in a cafe on the Rue de Something, near the Avenue des Whatevers, and to my immediate left sat a Frenchman in a pose so relaxed he might have been modeling for Toulouse-Lautrec. He was doing nothing, and doing it with panache. Between two fingers dangled a cigarette that remained lit even though he never did anything so animated as puff. It was hard to tell if he was truly drinking his glass of red wine; the level went down so slowly it may have been merely evaporating.

Why did he not try to achieve something? The cafe advertised WiFi, but no one had a laptop. This was not Starbucks. There was no American compulsion to multitask, to use the cafe as a caffeination station and broadband platform for another increment of accomplishment.

Conceivably I could have spoken to the Frenchman, but the language barrier is significant; I am afraid to attempt anything in French in a cafe lest it be incorrect both grammatically and existentially. Perhaps the Frenchman was dreaming up an elaborate sociohistorical theory, positing that human civilization has been in decline since the invention of the croissant. Or perhaps he was just enjoying the Latin Quarter, a section so old that I am pretty sure its residents still speak in Latin. The nearby Notre Dame Cathedral was built in the Middle Ages, when the European idea ofcomic relief was a stone gargoyle. Parisian commerce is quaint, which is to say, hopelessly inefficient, requiring that shoppers pay the equivalent of a charm tax. You go to one little market to buy your cheese, another to buy your jalapenos, another to buy your corn chips, another to buy your salsa; only then can you make nachos.

I had an urge to blast the Frenchman out of his reverie. "Excuse me, I'm from Wal-Mart," I could say. "We're putting in a superstore right over yonder on the Rue Dauphine. Gonna kick some serious retail derriere, ya dig?" Then, as though he could hear me thinking, the enervated Frenchman finally did something: He looked at his cellphone. Action in the cafe! He didn't make a call, let's be clear on that, but he studied the cellphone. It dawned on me: He was going over all thespeed-dial listings of his mistresses.

Now we're getting down to business. Sure, he ponders the big Frenchy thoughts as he camps in thefront row of the cafe, but he's also scoping out the Parisian femmes, who are tres magnifique! That is French for "bodacious." These women tend to be slinky and stylish and sophisticated, and they make American women look, by contrast, as though they just fell off a hay wagon. The femmes have an air of saucy liberation. You can imagine that they are writing Volume 4 of their projected nine-volume encyclopedia on les artes erotiques. They're on the chapter about the webbing between thetoes. That lovely muscle tone in the upper arms? That's from all the time they spend on the trapeze. (Conceivably this is a projection from the tourist's subconscious: We've seen those subtitled films where a layabout Frenchman does nothing but smoke cigarettes and all the women take off their clothes.)

Eventually, I reached the obvious conclusion that the man beside me was a professional sensualist. It's a job that doesn't exist in America outside of certain Zip codes in California. For the sensualist there are long recessions, even depressions, as the economy of romance goes into a dive. One sits in the cafe and hopes for an upturn in the market.

I sympathize: It's hard work. A grind, at times. But it sure beats the heck out of doing nothing.

FALLING OFF THE MAP

What do you think of if you reach a place, beyond which there is nowhere to go? You would have reached the end of the world. Literally and figuratively Werner Herzog travels to such a place in his documentary Encounters at the end of the World.

Herzog lands in Antartica, and spends time with the people living there from physicists, zoologists and lorry drivers to travellers and lost souls. A young fella in an ice-cream vendors attire, squeezes out a vanilla cone while he is credited below as being a "Filmmaker, Computer Expert". These are your professional dreamers at the end of the world.

"Where else do you find guys with Phds doing the dishes, or linguists on the one place on earth where there is no native language."

You find them in a Herzog Film.

Herzog talks to a zoologist, an expert in Penguins about certain mysteries regarding the mammal. The zoologist has spent his whole life studying the life of Penguins, so much so that he has little to talk about to humans. And it is so evident while Herzog makes conversation with him. It makes you laugh, and yet it filled me with a strange kind of sympathetic joy. Herzog's question: "Can Penguins be driven by insanity?" The answer comes in the form of some amazing footage of a lone Penguin adventurer.

There's a deep sea diver who is certain about the end of the human race and loves to show doomsday B-movies to his colleagues.

And the jellyfish are hauntingly psychedelic.

What captures my feelings for this film, is when a female scientist studying seals says, "I can't describe the sounds of the seals below me, below the frozen sea we are on. I don't know, It's Pink Floyd."

Antartica can very well be a space station. It could even be the Moon.

I'm off the Map.

BOHEMIAN EXPRESS

"I love the way this country smells. I'll never forget it. It's kind of spicy."

I'm swinging listening to the soundtrack of The Darjeeling Limited. Such an eclectic mix of The Kinks, Satyajit Ray's themes, Merchant Ivory themes, the sweet Les Champs Elysees, two classical symphonies and a hindi number by Asha Bhonsle and Kishore Kumar called 'Typerwriter tip tip tip'! It goes, "Typerwriter tip tip tip tip tip tip tip karta hai, zindagi ki har kahaani likhta hai".

Oh I am so blissful. What a film. What a gem. So random, so beautiful! I love these lyrics from The Kinks number.....

This time tomorrow where will we be

On a spaceship somewhere sailing across an empty sea

This time tomorrow what will we know

Well we still be here watching an in-flight movie show

Ill leave the sun behind me and watch the clouds as they sadly pass me by

Seven miles below ma I can see the world and it aint so big at all

This time tomorrow what will we see

Field full of houses, endless rows of crowded streets

I dont where Im going, I dont want to see

I feel the world below me looking up at me

Leave the sun behind me, and watch the clouds as they sadly pass me by

And Im in perpetual motion and the world below doesnt matter much to me

This time tomorrow where will we be

On a spaceship somewhere sailing across any empty sea

This time tomorrow, this time tomorrow

Trains can be so symbolic....they are so metaphorical. Be it in Ray's Pather Panchali----a steam engine oozing black smoke cutting across the fields of the Bengali landscape. Jamal and Salim stand aloft a train as they cross the vast stretches of the Indian landscape in Slumdog Millionaire. And Francis, Peter and Jack carry their life's baggage while junking savoury snacks and cough syrups in a luxury train with hot female attendants in Darjeeling Ltd.

I am crazy about the last shot of the film when the end credits roll-----you see a train window, and a long winding train chugs and ambles on the tracks to Shankar Jaikishen's melody; and you can imagine the sound of the tracks----jhik jhik jhik jhik------beat with the theme like gentle drums.

Makes me want to go on a train ride across the length and breadth of this country, savouring tea and lots of sweet lime!

Let's go get a drink and smoke a cigarette.