mohammedali road. 7 islands and a metro. radhas wedding. velocity

i know, i know.. a long time since the last post.. but i have to blame that on my performance anxiety as often people i know even marginally claim to be reading my blog. all of a sudden the audience has become much larger and this frightens me. for a while i was wondering what that meant for the content. but i have now convinced myself that if this was about entertainment of the world, i would have never started writing. instead, i guess, it will continue to be what it was.. random thoughts on whatever i have been doing over the past few days including unnecessary diversions into my personal life and pompous pontifications on stuff i might have recently experienced.

the past few days have seen a lot of activity and it bores me to cover it all completely- but yet i must for my sake if not for anyone else. i think i will begin with the lunch that kausik, mukul and me had at a corner restaurant below the flyover at mohammedali road. after the flyover has been built it seems like the noise factor seems to have doubled. the movement of people, cars, handcarts, bicycles below had also gone completely chaotic the last time i was there but now seems to have settled into a pattern of sorts. the snaking twisting underside of the flyover is like a reptile that’s finding its way to eat up the cst.

madhus film ‘7 islands and metro’ premiered that day at yashwantrao chavan center in nariman point. i don’t think i have seen a crowd that large for any screening of a documentary in bombay. a who’s who list of filmmakers, artists, ngo workers and organizers, students was milling around schmoozing in the lobby before and after the film. i had seen the film before in a longer version and without the music and had loved it then in spite of the theatrics. this time i liked it much more but really had some reservations about the end sequence ‘faith’. the documentary bits of the film where she looks at the new forms of labour emerging in the city and the claims to legitimacy in a city famed for its ‘cosmopolitanness’ were fantastic. how in the world did she find all those characters. i guess the city is full of them. ironic, cynical, tough minded, hard working, intelligent and very sophisticated. each of them were iconic ‘bombay people’. they were mythologized, deified and made heroic by the film. never once did i feel that the film was exploitative in any way or a ‘freak show’ as madhu said it might be seen as. mukuls work, as usual, was fabulous throughout, especially in the window washers sequence. i have thinking whether the fiction and documentary intercutting was necessary after someone asked me whether it was necessary for the film. i don’t know whether the larger than life myth of the city could be represented by any other means. so, it perhaps did not work in some places, but all is forgiven when there is so much kida attempted.

the post screening party was a rocking affair at ‘starters and more’. after a slow start and a few drinks, i think i did my bar boy number on too many songs, danced with almost everyone there regardless of marital status, gender or age. my favorite song was definitely ‘aa aa aashiqui mein teri’ from 36 china tow. himesh rocks- he just should not sing.

on saturday i had to go for radha, my cousins wedding at matunga and as is expected in all family functions was cornered into meeting a girl i was to be married to. and as is to be expected she was an attractive tall fair marathi phatakda. i smiled politely and extricated myself out of there as soon as i could without seeming to be too rude.

spent some time with amit at the office yesterday and after a long time had a nice talk. it will be strange when he leaves.

two nights in a row i shook my booty. last night at velocity with madhu and mukul. all the strange underage, weird people around. a disco is one of the best places to people watch.

and yes, the rain has started.

the infamous mithi river on thursday when i drove to dads college

thakur complex