the reasons i have odd dreams at the end of the month: madame butterfly . invisible cities . city shots (interior and exterior) people

how can i be expected to sleep well after being assaulted by the sawdust in the air from mustaq’s enthusiastic carpentry on the terrace (it gives me a severe allergy); and phone calls in the middle of the night to trace the whereabouts of our very own artist=engineer. in between bouts of trying all the way from 2 o’clock to 5.30 i had to have two ridiculously cinematic dreams- one that definitely bar-coded me as film snob and the other as a hollywood action fan. to enter a gallery for a derek jarman art exhibition and be confronted with huge painting –projections of paul klee like drawings of golden haired boys. these are annotated with the poems of tarkovsky’s father. and then running like hell from a strange shadow who is abut to kill me up a steep hill of dust and then sliding down on the other side into a village. running like hell. and as i run the word gets around ‘supandi is coming’ and panic films the air. as i run looking for shelter from the shadow behind me doors start shutting on the street. ‘the supandi is coming!’. a clearing at the end of the street where i hide in the bushes and watch supandi come in – who turn out to be dark me in grass skirts doing a hindi film version of a tribal dance.

as incongruous a phenomenon must be watching a russian woman and an italian man play a japanese woman and an american man, singing in italian with english subtitles with an orchestra that’s called the ‘symphony orchestra of india’ and is made up largely of musicians from kazakhistan. but the music was beautiful. the tragic heroine and her maid had voices that could make you cry (in spite of the danger of creating an embarrassing ‘pretty woman’ scene); and for all its feminized asia being ravaged by the ugly american- was pretty interesting as a study in orientalism.

or maybe all this oddness has to do with the beautiful cities built as riffs on calvino texts by the first year. cities where meanings disappear as soon as you let go, or signifiers tease you into imagining patterns, or memories are found and made, or lie like unattainable utopias.

palak

kruti

anuj

pratyusha

jeenal

reema

sonal

or maybe its the streets of this city.

highway

i-flex goregaon

kharghar

juhu

borivili

kandivili

powai
--

or its rooms.

avon

mandapeshwar caves

red box

santacruz community hall


dharavi workshop

dharavi house
---

or people?

dad

aaji, usha maushi, mom

ranjit sonal

muk

prachi

deepali benita rohit paul

rupali

chetan - reluctant architect back from australia for his first novel.

paro surabhi

me