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.

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"
:)

D. It is Written

"I fly like paper, get high like planes......."

Slumdog Milionaire makes me a slumdog in my heart. In my mind I am running with the children of the slums, through the colorful riot of garbage and filth, smelling their dreams and fear. I am there afraid, waiting and watching and running for my life, running for my dreams, running to catch my love. 

This is Life. This is Cinema. 

Get on top of a train with Jamal and Salim, and feel this country at its very raw core. Feel their childhood and yours. Feel innocence and the gangster in you rising at the same time. 

Feel Hope. 

Feel complete with all the senses coming together to embalm you with joy and passion. 

Its a rush of blood to the head which flows effortlessly from the present to the past and back. While you wait in anticipation for the hints of the future in your head to come to life. 

Chaos Theory 

In my 25^th year I wrote a post, titled 25 things to do on turning 25. The way 2008 turned out - makes that list prophetic! 

My quarter-life crisis year. Crisis it sure was! But all my travels and my experiences put together make me feel fresh as the year ends. I feel, I have seen the highest high in Ladakh, and the lowest low in the plains at home. Just like the implosion in the American economy and the explosion of bombs closer home, life too had bloated and busted, and anger had reached a tip. 

But I feel pure now. As if, the trip to Rishikesh and the clear pristine waters of the Ganga cleansed and washed my soul, clearing it of all its negative energies and filling me with happiness and hope. It’s as if, I am shedding my skin and a new child is being born. Or maybe it’s just the old one, dissolving and evolving. 

With a certain radiance, I think about the times when my mind was agitated, and there were no clear answers. When nothing made sense, and there was no control. Ironically, I dwell in the same feelings in my moment of peace now. The very same mysteries are beautiful and give new hope. In the words of George Harrison, "It's all in the mind." 

All you need is Love, and a change of camera angle. :)

It’s been one heck of a tumultuous year! Like the chaos theory – random but with a pattern…

What will 2009 be like? 

Another passage……another dream….another highway! 

Awaiting winter with misty scenes of Delhi in the mind

Through my office window fog clouds an office building opposite me as sunlight trickles through it. It reflects from the windows and makes myriad patterns on the wall outside. 

Cold breeze washes over my face and others – faces known and unknown as I walk out.

It’s cold but lovely. In a strange way it makes you warm…thinking about how warm you could be right now with a cup of coffee in your hand, or the hand of a loved one.  

Cold is nice. Cold is good. Better than being warm and left out cold.

It’s the death of a year, a cycle of life. Someone dies, someone unites, someone falls in love, someone breaks up. A cycle of mist that envelopes me like this one or clears up as I move along. The end of festivities and a harbinger of new ones. 

Yes, winter is a sweet season. 

School children wrapped from head to toe, fresh eager rosy faces rushing to make it in time. I was like that once, hating the number of clothes on me especially the stockings on my legs. Winter is about the past. Reminiscing what went by in the year and gloating in it or letting go. 

It’s a magical way of rounding up life by God. The snow, the Christmas hope, the New Year party…. 

So let's stop by the woods on a snowy evening like Robert Frost.....

The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.....

THE VAGABOND

Music: Air

Singer: Beck

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9u4rh0V7Mk

Golden waves
In all directions
I could lose my soul right here

Colour lights
On the runway
Makes a stranger feel unchained

I'm running after time and I miss the sunshine
Summer days will come happiness will be mine
I'm lost in my words I don't know where I'm going
I do the best I can not to worry about things

I feel loose
I feel haggard
Don't know what I'm looking for

Something true
Something lovely
That will make me feel alive

I'm running after time and I miss the sunshine
Summer days will come happiness will be mine
I'm lost in my words I don't know where I'm going
I do the best I can not to worry about things

(Like a vagabond in the distance
Looking for a song to sing
A song that lasts all night
And for the rest of our lives)

I'm lost in my words I don't know where I'm going
I do the best I can not to worry about things

I'm running after time and I miss the sunshine
Summer days will come happiness will be mine
I'm lost in my words I don't know where I'm going
I do the best I can not to worry about things
I'm running after time and I miss the sunshine
Summer days will come happiness will be mine

(insert mad laughter here)
oh shit

[Photo Credit: Harmanpreet Kaur]

The Dark Joker

Pleasures are always dark. And Sinful.

Admit it, you walked out of The Dark Knight with pleasure written all over you. The pleasure of confusion, the pleasure of anarchy and the pleasure of Heath Ledger dead but alive on the screen you just watched breathtakingly for the past 2 and a half hours.

I have seen this film twice now. I was awed by the whole experience the first time, with a mad rush of admiration for the Joker. Second time around, it was like understanding your lover. I have fallen in love with Mr Joker....as a whole. Character and Actor as one.

And because Heath is dead, I couldn't help but reading his performance as his alter-ego. He will forever haunt me.

The best part about the story - is when Joker says, "Do I look like a guy with a plan?" Yet, all his moves are so well planned...his actions and his lines. And his performance. There is no chaos there...but anarchy...a dare to differ attitude....yes.

Like I said...there is no greater pleasure than to do what you are not supposed to do. The Joker makes us gloat in that feeling the whole time. Does that mean we become criminals in real life?

No, but to take inspiration to upset the set up...definitely.

Joker is a genius, but his brilliance does not get recognised or appreciated by anyone in Gotham. It is only admired by us sitting in the theatre. The villains in the film keep calling him a "freak". Just as in real life, anyone would call someone a geek. He is a character on the edge who can see through society's hypocrisy and finds the rules of the established order meaningless.

The Dark Knight, Batman on the other hand is confused about the "righteousness" of his job.

This paradox....of the "good" unsure of its reasons, and the "bad" having no reason....isn't that life? Yet everything ties in and ends are still loose.

And as the audience we take refuge in the darkness of this theatre.

Angsting in Kashmir

There is something about simplicty. When the sufis sang...they sang about simple things with a depth that touched the soul. And sometimes this art of simplcity reflects from faces.
Kashmir is a land bestowed with natural beauty. No matter how long you look at the landscape, you will not have enough. No amount of pictures can capture what you feel when you look at the rivers, lakes, flora and fauna, mountains and.....the people.

Just people doing everyday things. We go to work day in and day out, follow routine after routine. But here in Srinagar, I’d look out in the morning from my car window at the people of the valley going about their daily businesses....as art. Chidlren being rushed to school....or a man smoking a morning hookah in his shop....I found something so serene and simple in these passing images.

But every image that passed by me, was intersperesed with a figure. A solitary figure. An omnipresent figure. Of a soldier. Every 2 minutes you could spot him...looking at you....alert. It’s when I realised the price of the beauty around you, the price that it was paying and has paid. The conflict hits you in the face.

But sadly as life is - if there was no conflict...there wouldn’t be a story. Like everything else, this bittersweetness takes a character of its own in the Kashmir Valley.

Just go on.... that’s what I learnt here.

[Photo Credit: Harmanpreet Kaur]

RUMI

Those who don't feel this Love

pulling them like a river,

those who don't drink dawn like a cup of spring water

or take in sunset like supper,

those who don't want to change,

let them sleep.

This Love is beyond the study of theology,

that old trickery and hypocrisy.

If you want to improve your mind that way,
sleep on.

I've given up on my brain. I've torn the cloth to shreds and thrown it away.
If you're not completely naked,wrap your beautiful robe of words around you,

and sleep.

--

Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing,

there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other' doesn't make sense any more.

--

All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.

--

Something opens our wings. Something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us: We taste only sacredness.

--

The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.