Still Waters

In the constant state of flux that life is in, there is always a fear of losing out if we stop, if we don’t make that one call on our list, if we don’t work, if we sit around and do nothing. I, for one, can’t deal with not working for more than two days. It just freaks me out. I can’t sit still, I constantly complain about losing the precious time of my life and can’t help dwelling on the fact that I am not growing any younger. If I am not working, I have to write something atleast or see, like six films a day or do read a book or just keep at something until it is done. I even prefer completing my camera report books to relaxing. I guess I am a certified workaholic lunatic.

Last week, the Monday was no different than one of these restless break days. My hard working self was troubled as usual and the Monday blues weren’t helping either. Imagine having Monday blues even when you don’t have a 9-to-5 job or a five day week… Anyways I was at the window of my bedroom looking out at the non intimidating vastness of the sky against the meritless insolence of the high rises. Just then a crow caught my eye as it flew down from the 14^th floor of a high rise to its 5^th floor. It fluttered around a bit, pecked at a few potted plants and then flew down to the 3 ft swimming pool in the center of our housing complex that had recently filled up with muddy water. I kept watching as this crow touched the tip of the water and flew away…I didn’t follow it any more…instead I began to stare at the blue color of the swimming pool that permeated through the brown mud in the water. So strong was the blue that the brown couldn’t keep it down. Memories of the water camp that I visited almost five years back came flooding in to drown me.

There in the midst of the summer, on the outskirts of Bangalore we frolicked in the waters by the beachside all throughout the day. This remote, idyllic place loitered just outside of a wilderness that we had trekked through on the previous day. It was so much fun that I refused to come out of it even when it was time to go back to the camp before the darkness fell. But one of my friends lured me out with the promise of showing me something spectacular that happened only at the moment of sunset. There was no time to lose he said; he looked so excited that I couldn’t refuse him. I reluctantly dragged my feet up a small hill after him. He was a good trekker; he kept leading on while I tried hard to keep my balance amidst the flailing stones and pebbles. At one point I seriously considered going back to my merry, effortless frolicking but he kept edging me on.

I was almost uninspired for this hike until nature decided to set me up for competition. Suddenly the sun began to set rapidly as if the other side of the world was exorcising the night and the overall ambient light dropped like it were on a high impedance dimmer. I took the cue; I was racing against time. In my imaginary movie - like rendition of my life, I began rushing dramatically to catch up with my friend; background score (ref: Carmina Burana) running in my head, fierce expression on my face, ‘against all odds’ suddenly becoming the catch phrase of my life et all. Soon I caught up with my friend and then we raced together to the top of the hill. As we neared it, the sun had almost set. A minute later, we were standing on the flat top plain of the hill but the light had been just whip lashed from the sky. Almost. I turned to look at my friend, both of us still trying to catch our breath. He looked at me for a moment, smiled and then looked back at the horizon. In a split second, the light on his face brightened up. I turned to look towards the sea as the sun spilled out in its one last minute of eternal golden glory. In that moment, the sea became a resplendent green blue like a seamless sheet of floating diamonds and the sun ever so gently touched the diamonds but not the sea and made them sparkle; the sky became a canvas of all the beautiful magentas, oranges and pinks master stroked into each other lovingly, the air became heavy with the silence of the unspeakable beauty, the birds stopped chirping as if to gaze in wonder and my heart altogether forgot to breathe. I felt a lasting sense of peace, I smelled inspiration, tasted belief; things I couldn’t describe but only know inside. And then just like that, in the next moment the sun set. And everything went back to the time before that moment.

I turned back towards my friend. He was staring at the ground, still trying to catch his breath. He then looked up at me and said, “I am sorry, we missed it I guess.” I couldn’t understand, what did we miss? Then we walked back to our camp base without a single word, as if nothing had happened.

But till date that one moment exists in me like no other. And the deep blue of our swimming pool brought back the memories of that still life etched in time dwelling inside of me; a token of a miracle, an impossibility, an improbability; one of nature’s spectacles meant for the exclusive audience of me, my own personal brand of elixir. Was that the first night of the many dreams of celluloid I have had ever since? Maybe it was. Maybe not. I don’t know why but I feel that those still waters run deeper inside me than I can ever comprehend because I felt at peace thinking about them. I stayed relaxed all through that Monday and for the first time not working seemed much more productive than working itself. Just being still made sense and at the end of that day, I wrote much better than before….

In the impossible jurisdiction of words

Have the words forgotten their way from my mind to my mouth? It certainly seems like that. They are lost somewhere deep inside the innermost recesses of my mind; their screams for help slowly smothered away. They used to define me; my thoughts, my perceptions, and my persona, skewered as it might be. And now they are just gone. Sometimes I think I have found a word or two to define, without any circumlocution, my transient thoughts at their moment of prime but those turn out to be just shadows, just hollow, pronunciation-less echoes in place of the words that used to exist in that mindscape. If I don’t crystallize what I feel, if I don’t understand what I think, I risk the chance of not changing into someone I could become. These words, these little indestructible chips of a language used to help me crystallize, solidify, assume and over a period of time, become.

This month, I finally found some time for myself, a time for introspection of what I have become. And at this very crucial time, my words have deserted me. I am unable to describe what has happened to me; it is a tragedy so unique and personal that it has no remedy or relief and quite ironically no description. Stranded amidst my nameless predicament, I scream but no sound emerges for the vocal chords have no phonetics to carve. Cause there are no words.

Sometimes I get the feeling that I am in a spotlight standing in a disgruntled, dingy place vaguely smelling of rotten wood. I am unaware of myself in a partial amnesiac way. And there are these non-entities staring down at me from all the sides. Breathing, moving non-entities whose shapes can’t be described. They don’t speak; just stare…as if incriminating me, admonishing me for some unspeakable crime. Daring me to confess, to admit that I had wronged them, repressed them someway….are these my words? Am I in their court?

Closer to home..

I recently got hooked onto to the TV series 'House'. Bought five seasons of the interesting medical drama from a pirated DVD shop and began a marathon viewing of the shows back to back; surprised to find all of life's varicolored dilemmas - emotional, psychological and physiological being played out boldly in most of the episodes. And to top as the icing on this cakelicious experience was the fact that I could absolutely relate to the central character of Dr. Gregory House - cold, bitter, misanthropic, calculating, a terrifyingly insightful eccentric genius, an intellectual with a sarcastic, witty and caustic sense of humor, a narcotic - addict who likes to push the limits till it all borders dangerously on murder or suicide and inspite of all of this still remains endearing, respectable and above all humane.

And it shocks me...that I can find House relatable. Its like saying 'I am a nun and the Texas chainsaw massacre villain feels like a soulmate'. The metaphor is a tad over-exaggerated but the feeling isn't. What really gets to me about the character is that even though it is written in a way that is too smart for it to be a real person, the flaws and the progression of the character's psychology and emotional maturity are unflinching and hard cored. And this growth is somehow fulfilling. House is generally Mr. Smartest Pants for most of his screen time, the "I-know-what-goes-on-in-your-mind-at-all-times" person. And more often than not, he's right.

He's right about people, about diseases, about diagnosis and almost everything under the Sun. But then there's always someone, a colleague or a patient or a relative, who cuts through House's defensive wisdom and reveals his vulnerable, tortured inner self. The smugness, the cocksure, rude, maverick, arrogant, defiant exterior of the character vanishes the moment he confronts his personal demons and in place of that we see an unsure, self-loathing, troubled individual who has difficulties accepting himself and his life, who questions his own judgment and fights against his own survival instincts to end it, once and for all.

And it is in these well-timed moments that the show's brilliance shines through and so does Hugh Laurie, who embodies Dr. House with his amazing emotional range and impeccable American accent. He's the reason for the 'all the way up" in the 'two thumbs all the way up' review that I'd give to most of the episodes in a true Roger Ebert style.

Also the way he talks is really sexy...like for example he has these dialogue Wimbledon matches with his best friend Dr.Wilson (who, by the way is modelled on Dr. Watson from the Sherlock Holmes. Ah, by the way did I mention Dr. House is based on Sherlock Holmes? Holmes - House, see the connection?)

Wilson: "That smugness of yours really is an attractive quality."
House: "Thank you. It was either that or get my hair highlighted. Smugness is easier to maintain.

Wilson: "She's hot, so she's a hooker? What kind of pathetic logic is that?"

House: "The envious, jealous, I-never-got-any-in-high-school kind of logic, hello! "

And then ofcourse there are those nitrous oxide suffused philosophies:

House: " take risks; sometimes patients die. But not taking risks causes more patients to die, so I guess my biggest problem is I've been cursed with the ability to do the math."

House: "There's an evolutionary imperative why we give a crap about our family and friends. And there's an evolutionary imperative why we don't give a crap about anybody else. If we loved all people indiscriminately, we couldn't function."

Apart from Dr. Wilson, there's hospital administrator, Dr. Cuddy, a feisty female match to House's witticisms. Also there's his team of fellow diagnosticians, who act as perfect foils to his character and somehow are unrealistically but needfully effective at witty dialogue delivery.

For most part of the series, House convinces you that he hardly cares about curing the patients, he only wants to cure the disease. He only wants to be proved right, wants to establish that he is somehow the wisest of the lot. He talks about his unconventionality as a doctor, refuses to wear a lab coat and sneers upon all the typical patient-doctor emotional bonds. And he does that very well. But then he also is unafraid to take a beating, go to jail, give up his medical licence just for a glimmer of hope based his wild diagnosis, which eventually may or may not cure the person. These contradictions to his character make it more mysterious and unpredictable, yet you never tend to dismiss it as fickle. And that is what makes the writing of this show truly impressive.

If you could overlook the fact that there is a barrage of really complicated medical jargon bombarded at you for most of the time at the speed rivaling that of light, I think everyone will find House really entertaining. More often than not, I find he says the kind of things that make you question the fallacy of your steadfast beliefs. I find to my amazement that he sometimes voices arguments and passes comments that I dare not speak out for the fear of hurting someone or being rude. The nasty tone, the hilarious gestures, the outright insults camouflaged as witty twits, the absolute disregard for authority and the non-existence of moral, respectful or even dignified behavior just makes for such compelling, vicarious entertainment that I am completely hooked on for hours... Plus there is a regular dosage of strong debates over issues of belief, faith, God, afterlife; its intriguing because both the sides of the argument are so strong that sometimes you root for the side opposite to your current ideology...and ofcourse there are those outrageous sexual and sexist innuendos...but never offensive, always 'guffaw'cious...And its fun for most parts..

Will soon be getting over with the five seasons I got...But this will go down as one of the best TV series I have seen in a really long time...Go Team House!!

Hitting the big 1ohhhhhhhhhhh!!

One senseless...another egomaniacal...third prude and upright...fourth brain-damaging...and the list just keeps growing as I come down to my 100th blog.

More than 3 years later, I have finally arrived at the big 1-00. Actually had I made blogging a regular event in my life, I would have made it to this point earlier but never mind. I generally take my own sweet time with all the things up, close and personal to me and this blog is just one of those things.

For better or worse, I blogged about movies, books, poetry, prose, writers, directors, artists - all the things that caught my fancy. I made a conscious attempt to keep my real life experiences from becoming too detailed and have never put down much about the people, new and old whom I encountered in the last three years. I admit that it would have made the blogs more interesting and more intimate but it might have ended up hurting people because not everyone likes to see themselves in the light of others' perspective of them. I wrote about my life (or something like it) with a tone of self - deprecating humor cause I will always view it that way. Taking it seriously just doesn't go down well with me; plus that's the only way I have any fun with it.

I am a much different person than I used to me; my perceptions and ideas about the world and the people living in it have undergone a meteroic shift but at the core of it all, I still believe; I still have my faith. And I am still a kid at heart; ever trusting to the point of being suicidal. I guess I have a natural aversion to growing up and acting all high and mighty. I have to be the female Peter Pan, happily gliding about in my imaginary Neverland without a goddamn concern about my advancing age (its always at the back of my mind though) and no idea on how to get down to the business of earning a fabulous living and sorting out my priorities in the real world. I can't still bring myself to tell the nerve-wreckers to 'fuck - off' to their faces and absolutely hate being rude and uptight even when the situation demands it. But then that's me...though I have to say I have become stronger, I can handle more stress - both emotional and physical and the experiences have made my instincts sharper. So not all that bad, huh..I guess not.

In my head, I think by now I should have been at a certain place, with certain privileges and a body of shining achievements but I am not there. I am not where I began but in a limbo somewhere between these two places. Time somehow takes its own sweet course with me while I am racing along its side and yet it still wins. Its not fair but then with time you can't always win. So many of my friends are married now and have gone away to their own separate lives with their new priorities. Time has beaten me there too; I couldn't be with most of them on their special days and now a huge chasm of lost moments stands desolately and unforgivably between me and them. I can't seem to bridge it, making fumbling attempts to throw ropes across but in vain.

Between shoots, when I come back to my family I often hear of births and deaths in the families of relatives, all of whom are just wisps of blurred images as if from another lifetime. I often lose track of days, dates, festivals, wedding anniversaries, birthdays when I am shooting and when I am not, I really don't know what to do if I remember them at all. Life has become disjointed in ways; exists between certain periods and at other times, it seems to have smoked away. Amidst all the hustle and bustle of the shoots and the disquiet of the non-shoot days, I wonder if I am going down the right way...And ironically, only my dear friend and worst foe - Time can tell for sure.

This whole self-introspection trip is not the stuff that should ideally make up the 100th blog. It should be more of a celebration, a kind of achievement or something but I think of it more like the way I think of a birthday. More than a day of fun, its a day of thinking of life at that point. And that's what I did with my blog today...

What did you guys think of my blogs so far? Let me know...Promise to come back with something really funny. :)

Since the last blog..

which was really a long time back, I have realized that it is not a good thing to take a long hiatus with an uncharacteristic blog like my last post. 'A vampire boyfriend is fine by me' is probably my worst-conceived blog idea which I managed to put down quite well and immediately regretted posting. The fact that I wrote it so passionately added to my woes because all the people who read it couldn't believe that my ideas about men had undergone a paradigm change from intellectually stimulating to physiologically divine, a perception that couldn't be further from the truth. I guess it was just a fit of hormonal overdrive that made me react to Edward Cullen in such a mindless fashion and I remember that the minute I finished my last blog, I snapped out of it and began to question my basic sensibility about writing it. Still, I went ahead and posted the blog and never bothered to delete it inspite of being ashamed of it just to serve me as a reminder of the really bad choices I am capable of making even in my sanest moments. But I shouldn't have waited so long to post another blog. It is like having a bad aftertaste in your mouth, having a Listerine nearby and not bothering to gargle with it....Anyways moving on...

Since reading the crap called 'Twilight', I have thankfully moved onto better books. Starting off with the incredible 'The Manchurian Candidate' by Richard Condon which boasts of being a controversial and nightmare-inducing thriller given its premise of brain washing (absolutely original at the time of its first release in 1959), it more than stood up to its fanfare and high expectations. This is not the stuff that Booker winners are made of, but it is certainly high entertainment, devilishly narrated by a man whose sweat stinks of the waters of Hollywood. I read it feverishly, sinfully delighted by its melodramatic plot that meanders expertly through themes of war, terror, spies, brainwashing, cold war, incest, megalomaniacal motherhood and then of course, quite unexpectedly a little fervent love. The characters are well-etched and the mother's character is probably one of the most demonic ever written. Definitely a must-read. Needless to say, it spawned a movie and then another....Hoping to catch the original one with Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury soon.

On a friend's recommendation, I got hooked onto J. M. Coetzee's 'Disgrace' and have been grateful to him ever since. Its an eloquent narration of an aging Professor's life as it spirals into web of disgrace and compromises when his torrid affair with a young student is exposed. The language is exquisite without being flowery or overwhelming and the conflicts are very real and humane. There is no extraordinary message of "triumph over all odds" that the author is trying to relay; he's just telling a story as if it has happened and his unpretentious, unassuming writing makes this Booker winner poignant. A recommended read for people who enjoy pure, unadulterated literature.

Right now, I am onto Orhan Pamuk's 'My name is Red' and from the first few pages, its hitting all the right notes with me...I can't quite describe the joy of reading a truly wonderful book; even if I decide to exhaust all the superlatives known to me, I don't think I can ever come close to documenting the ecstasy and its after-effects that accompanies a real good read. Maybe someday when I have accumulated enough literary wisdom and have the power of effective vocabulary at my finger tips, I might begin to put together a blog dedicated to the immense, varicolored joys of a good reading...

Maybe someday....

A vampire boyfriend is FINE by me...

Till the night before I read the book, "Twilight" I was absolutely flabbergasted by the amount of fervor this series has caused worldwide...The movies, the characters, the actors playing them, the memoribilia, the dialogue, the author, the production house, the release dates, what happened on the sets? Who's romancing who? Who should romance who? Who should wear what? Are RobPatz (male lead) and KrisStew (female lead) dating? Why aren't they? Why should they? Why shouldn't they? If not them, then who? What are they wearing to the premiere? What should they really wear? Why the hairstyle like that? On which airport was RobPatz mobbed again?...each and every thing associated with 'Twilight' series is chewed, ruminated, spit out, then chewed again, debated about, comprehended, re-evaluated, re-examined, cross verified, questioned, scruntinised, glorified, idolised and it then starts all over again.

It all seemed so frenzied, crazy, unjustified - what is all this? And what for? A teenage romance between a human and a vampire...I mean what's new here? Haven't all the vampire stories been inspired by the singular thought that humans, in general have this irresistible, fatal attraction towards vampires and the struggle lies in the ultimate choice between tempestous desire and life preserving logic? The last time I recall, such a literary furore was caused by the Harry Potter series and the atleast the basic idea of a boy wizard and his adventures was original. (The rest however was heavily inspired by JRR Tolkien, Terry Pratchet's original imaginative tombs about alternate worlds) I loved the Harry Potter books till I reached the No.4 - HP and Goblet of Fire and then I realised that the creative Rowling is merely writing endlessly, minus any real plot or conflict to add to the pages (to justify the big price label it came with) and catering to the whims, fancies and sky-high, ridiculously unreal and conflicting zillion expectations of a million fans. No wonder the story meanders, the plot thins out and the characters are sublimely lost in their own oxymoronizations. No.5, 6, 7 are not much salvaged either. But that's another blog story.

So the moral of the story is that the premise of Twilight isn't even as original as HP to begin with, then how come it caught the fancy of so many people? I set myself to the task...and opened the first page of Twilight. For the rest of the night, with the exceptions of the uncontrollable gasps and embarassingly audible "Oh!" and "Oh my God!"I didn't spend a second on anything else but the page and finished the novel by morning. To call it a literary achievement by any standard is plain ignorance talking but I must say it was a hell lot of entertainment and the 'picture-perfect' vampire boyfriend that she resurrects to life is wolf whistle - worthy. ABSOLUTELY!!

He's the embodiment of all Godsent boyfriend virtues: he's drop dead gorgeous, old world charming, intelligent with witty banter, well etiquetted, mysterious, funny, sarcastic but not hurtful, loves you to death (can't resist a chuckle here for the pun unintended - vampires loving humans to death, hehe), has a good handwriting, great dancer, blessed with a terrific family that will stand by him and his choices, fabulously rich, zooms around in expensive, shiny cars at Schumacher speeds, doesn't mind being an extremely punctual pick-up and drop guy, carries you around in his arms or on his back whether you are hurt or not, sneaks stealthily into the house at night just to watch you sleep and doesn't wake you up by moronically dropping something, helps pack bags, grows jealous of other men's unsavory attention, stands in the path of your fatal troubles and most importantly - LISTENS TO YOU AND ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS TRUTHFULLY!!

And then ofcourse since he's a vampire, he runs faster than the wind, is ageless, agile and superhuman in strength, well versed with most of the subjects, his skin sparkles in the sunlight with the light of a thousand diamonds, has a special talent to listen to people's thoughts (this is not always welcome but whatever!), lives in a magnificient, era-appropriate mansion, is seductive to the point of leaving you breathless and make your heartbeat sound like a nanosecond ticker....ufff the list is endless. To top it all, he does not even have his characteristic, unvoguish fangs. So no accidental/scary/embarassing social revelations and reduced chances of injuries during ballistic tonsil hockey. And all that goes against him is that he's a vampire, irregularly moody, has temper issues when others hurt his loved ones...a few things here and there. Again, his vampirism is only animal-oriented, no humans preyed so that's like almost being a non-vegetarian. There you go, that's the character...now which girl wouldn't want a guy like this? So what if she has to deal with a few age and race problems? I mean you are getting to be with God for the price of a few minutes spent penancing. That's it!!

And he is all this to a girl, who's hilariously accident prone, suffers from low esteem, is decently smart but not exceptionally intelligent, doesn't have looks to kill for, is admittedly shabby at dressing, non-ambitious, not prodigious but with a surprising ability to accept shocking truths with a poker face. Their romance begins conventionally; damsel-in-distress meets the knight in shining armor, he rescues her and they fall in love. And then come the series of the top 100 most romantic moments (some original, some inspired, many cliched, less refined) which the DESPERATELY-in-LOVE couple share and we begin to be overwhelmed by the absoluteamazingfantabulouslovability of the hero Edward Cullen. Some of the dialogues are witty like "My car is like a grandfather to your car, so show some respect" but most of them are repetitive and nerve-tiring like the ever-boring 'I love you so much', 'I love you too', 'I just want you to be safe', 'I want to be with you forever' 'I really care about you' 'Me too...'etc. etc. If you remove these lines from the book except for once maybe, I guess the 260-page love tomb will be reduced to a 170-page supercrush dossier, maybe even lesser. But anyways gotta make it look BIG, I guess! So what if the plot doesn't spread out beyond 70 pages, somehow it should be stretched mighty to fool the reader into believing that they are witnessing romance of epic proportions...

But none of the above criticism can deny the fact that I was positively hooked onto the book and loved reading it so much that I finished it in one go. And the reason was ofcourse Edward 'Heartthrob' Cullen. There's such a temptation to him; a danger, a desire, all the while walking a thin line between thoughtless adulation and moronic idolization. It was one of the few times that I didn't want to intellectualize a character, find any reality or logic or even suspended believability to him. I just felt like I needed to let go for once and let my heart feel the abandon that comes with uninhibited reaction of the senses. I didn't want my mind to analyse any of those reactions and then carefully separate out the few dignified, justified and mature ones. For once, I let myself be childlike and unsmart. And it worked...I felt such bliss acknowledging this literary (??) supercrush after an enormous hiatus following my infactuations with Rhett Butler and Mark Darcy once upon a time. This is not to say that he's even a fraction as well-written as Rhett or Mark was, but just that he is the kind of ravishing boyfriend that every teenage girl wishes for and I caught myself foolishly drooling over his well-cultivated, manipulative awesomeness to realize that there's still a 15-year old kiddo inside of me who would scan the skies every night to chance upon a falling star.

And to top it all he's played by Robert Pattinson...God have mercy!!

The Lars Loneliness

Just saw the movie, "Lars and the real girl" and identified with it immensely. It tells the quirky tale of a sweet, innocent guy called Lars who begins to treat a doll as his girlfriend and lives the entire life cycle of a relationship with her, imagining her side of the conversations, her choices, her life story, her preferences giving her such emotional depth that in the end when she 'dies', people in his church congregation shed a silent tear for her. It is such an amazing, unbelievable plot made so freakingly acceptable that you are compelled to empathise with the characters inspite of their seemingly lunatic behavior that borders on the extremes of ridiculousness.

Even though the premise of the story is crackling, the real beauty lies in the fact that inspite of Lars' mooniness, people around him try and adjust to his new reality, patiently accepting Bianca (his doll girlfriend) as a real person, even getting her jobs as a model (cute!!), a school story book reader (with a tape recorder) and giving her makeovers. Ofcourse there is the initial discomfort and disquiet that a few of the them experience but eventually they go along with the pretense of it and somewhere I think, most of them feel a sort of companionship with the mute doll and a comfort in her inoffensive, unassuming presence.

There are also some hilarious mini-anecdotes about grown-up co-workers and their possessiveness over little action figures and teddy bears. I guess all of us have such affections for non-living things and I think that is the writer's way of saying that Lars is a normal person, just very lonely and socially inept, probably due to supposed-problems with his upbringing by a single parent, having had lost his mother at birth and that his attachment to the doll is just a magnified, blown up version of our own quirky, little, emotional ties with our lifeless possessions. I guess all of us are lonely; if not always, atleast at some point of time in our lives and not everyone is lucky enough to find a real person to share their troubles with, so we (as in we, the absolute irrational, illogical beings that we become sometimes) seek solace in the non-judgmental company of our little toys. And that's real...

Do watch the film...it is a little slow at times, but amusing and thought-provoking for most of it.