photo post - friday saturday

mukul and meha in town before flop western classical music concert at ncpa. we walked out and went to kuntal and nanditas HUGE house on malabar hill for dinner instead. that looong living room with chinese art deco detailing all over.

mukul, meha and kb was muki shoots kausiks hilarious 'balwan' at the ncpa on friday.

kb in the big house

the first day of the first years. the questionnaire thie year was pretty much the same as it always was. lots of people read 'harry potter', favourite films are '2fast 2 furious' and 'kal ho naa ho'; and everyone talks in sms language 'pix' and 'kinda'. how at the end of five years they start spouting marx is anyones guess.

prajna with her new haircut left for cornell yesterday. bye bye love. come back soon. bombay is not the same without you.

the red brigade last night as sonal, jassi and me all were wearing my red t-shirts to bed. jassi is here from delhi for the past few days.

querelle

in ‘querelle’ , fassbinders last film in a sweltering set thronging with sweaty bodies in heat, desire only exists in power games. love has no meaning at all except as an act of lurid possession. there is a persistent violence underpinning all the relationships in the film, whether it is the love between the two brothers who resemble each other more that they know, the obsessive love of lieutenant for the young sailor; or the attraction of a murderer for his mirror image.

this violence is claustrophobic and made more so by the theatrical presentation interspersed with quotations and at least two parallel voice-overs. desire manifests itself in acts of becoming by imitation or by possession as same sex love is expressed through acts that provide a foil for a love that cannot be named. these include desiring the same woman as the object of ones desire or killing that object of desire (and a part of oneself). Or as a song in the film goes ‘each man kills the thing he loves’… is that oscar wilde?

rakhis and heritage

prachi in ecstacy after the meeting
on wednesday the long running heritage listing project which led to so much drama finally came to an end with a presentation in the mmrda. the debate around the issues ranged from the silly to the sillier. heritage was seen as a savior and protector of everything within the city.. including the green spaces even while the heritage committee itself lies completely powerless.

anyway in celebration after the presentation i bought a rakhi for my sister in return for the one she tied on my wrist in the morning. this one was in velcro and plastic and shifted through all the colours of a rainbow with a turn of a screw. gorgeous.. and only for 10 rupees.

the bitter tears of petra von kant

in a claustrophobic interior with a white shaggy carpet and a renaissance painting overlooking the film was a psychodrama of love and power in five acts. a fashion designer after two failed marriages falls madly in love with a calculating younger woman as her besotted silent housekeeper watches on helplessly. like the mannequins all around them the actresses pose as representations of characters in the endless cycle of manipulation and obsession that make us fall hopelessly in love, and help us to use all means of devious emotional blackmail to imprison the objects of our desire.

shree 420

more than the story of the corruption that the city brings to a simple man from allahabad, what i loved about the film was the way in which it never equated poverty with innocence. too often in films of this genre this subtlety is lost.

raj kapoors bumbling simpleton was as much an act as his smooth suave rajkumar. like all of us, he uses a mask either of stupidity or of sophistication to enter places where he will not be seen as a threat or as an outsider. it’s a clever move as we all know and gets him where he wants to be.

this play of masks is admitted as such in one of my favorite scenes when he replaces one for another in front of nadira- the seductress into the world of riches and naturally -the vamp.

another of my favorite scenes has to be the political speeches on the beach where at one end a politician is ranting about the value of swadeshi and spiritual goodness and at the other end wearing a ‘japani joota’ and ‘russi topi’, raj kapoor is ranting about the value of a simple roti…and after getting the audiences attention ends up selling sand as toothpowder.

at the end of the film rajs conscience (via nargis’ upright uptight schoolteacher) makes him choose the mask of the simpleton on the way to a happy ending where the couple steps into a valley in which a modern city glistens in the new sunrise. beautiful and moving.

omkara

strange how sometimes even a well made film with everything working in it seems to vanish from your memory an hour after you see it. i had nothing to complain about with ‘omkara’. the acting was great, konkona and saif especially, devgan and kapoor were what they were supposed to be- intense and wide eyed – respectively. the story was well told, the dialogues clever (though i did have problems with the dialect) and the music good. still, an hour after the movie as i was walking around with sonal in inorbit i had hardly any after taste of the tragedy. still the best hindi film i saw this year.

mwah mwah

marine drive after the aiilsg meeting at horniman circle where we wiled away time before kausiks opening at the ncpa. a silly idea of cleanliness has removed all the hawkers there but we could yet find some chana and butta to snack on while sitting on the broad seats of the promenade.

kausiks work was by far the only work within the show that made me smile. most of the others were so grave. did like some of it though- like anita dubes flesh made into words performance piece or even- i know, i know, navjots urinal / tattoo / duchamp film. more importantly, the wine was wonderful and we hung around the fringes getting sloshed and watching finely dressed artists and critics and collectors take center stage.

opening to another one where we crashed in on some delhi photographers exhibit showing some general tibet/ladakh landscapes at the bodhi gallery. could not react to anything except the ips floor and the frosted glass that namrata built while working at rma; and the fantastic starters- little biscuits with crushed olives as topping, prawns, the chicken- and of course the wine. sublime.

but then there was joss where splurging happened as the eight of us drank gorgeous sake and delicate sushi with fiery wasabi. all you americans beware! .. if anyone is coming from the states.. please don’t bother with getting me ferrero rochere chocolates or nike shoes- a flask of sake will do just fine!

bye boy, boy bye

pictures for the last post

lubaina defending her thesis

ak, mj, nishy, shweta

the nook over borivili

amk, ak

tejas, mj, ak

the aajis and madhavi mami at pramod mamas place

me, sunita maushi, chaitra and anoushka

weekend parties . kamla raheja gold medal

first the all nighter saturday night at mukuls place where a small get together for ak/mj with tejas, nishesh, shweta, mukul, ranjit, sonal and me which we spent sitting in the balcony overlooking the borivili skyline drinking smooth heady irish cream made at home. in the morning we woke to tea in the same nook.

the kelwan for adheem, my baby cousin who is marrying sharon a girl from bandra was a sunday lunch at pramod mamas place. it is always a pleasure to meet sunita maushi who is here from himachal and looking as beautifu as ever. chaitra and her kid anoushka were there too and so were all the other cousins including chinmaya and anuja who showed us the powerpoint presentation they had made in honor of their mothers 50^th birthday. very cute.

i must say as an aside that i was most impressed with tony- sharons father who also came for a the party. adheem is so lucky to have a future father in law with a mohawk, a punk three column beard, a huge ear ring, gold chains on his chest and innumerable gold rings on all his fingers.

anand and me ran out of the madness for a good hour in the middle to hunt for tickets to see ‘omkara’. we needed 22 tickets and naturally only two or three were available in any of the theaters we went to. instead we sat with ak and had coffee at cac before joining in the general revelry again.

also on saturday the kamla raheja gold medal jury was held for the best thesis of last year. kalpit won the medal for his strange chemical mutations on falkland road thesis- well deserved, i thought. neha sabnis and namrata got citations. no real surprises here.

scenes from friendships . 'scenes from a marriage'

splurging on the night life in the city with ak, nish and teja at the 'vie lounge'. a lit dancefloor and wooden flooring that hangs over juhu beach. two standing nooks jut out from between the glass walls towards the sea. the ocean was wild and wind blew around our ears. it did not rain, except for a few bursts of showers- we were lucky in that way; so much better than being cooped up in the more plush but claustrophobic interior. a great night out. later - in the middle of the night sitting on the more plebian ramp nearby and singing sentimental hindi film songs loud in the gushing wind.

i sorely miss this relationship with the sea that even though i work ten minutes away from it.

earlier in the day, ak and me finally managed to pick up the gumption to enter the egyptian fortress like ‘marriot’. the location of the coffee shop is in the triple heighted lobby overlooking the landscaped lawns and fake pavilions that are placed self consciously in the courtyard. there was no way to see the sea. the detailing was tacky though the setting was grand- like they ran out of money (or imagination) in putting the place together. the food was good though.

it’s a strange time nowadays with friends. conversations are circuitous and meandering, touching upon the same themes no matter what crowd i am in. after all there are people leaving everywhere. we speak in circles and in clichés - the words actually might have meaning but end up having little resonance. familiarity means that sometimes we can sit in comfortable silences, but the impending departure means that everything that needs to be said – must be said – now! as if a ‘later’ does not exist.

paul young had this album in the 80s from which that huge hit ‘every time you say goodbye’ was taken. it was called ‘the great lost art of conversation’. i wonder what that art is.

the banal everyday conversations of the couple in ingmar bergmans ‘scenes from a marriage’ get gradually more violent as the once happy marriage breaks up but are still not able to escape from the tedium and formulas of soap opera dialogue. things are said between the couple that seem to come out of the endless cycles of truisms that every relationship is described in. this cul de sac of words and the feelings that they describe ends up being the death of the marriage, but giving the love in between them a new lease of life. as if in the non-describable space of illicit meetings, ‘love’ escapes the trappings of bourgeois ideas of marital bliss.

'pirates of the caribbean - dead mans chest' - 'hellboy'

spending quality time with ak meant that we saw a film at pvr today- together. ‘pirates of the caribbean- dead mans chest’. ak and me had seen the first part in nearby chandan when it was released a few years back. stuffed with more of the same as before i expected to be mind numbingly entertained by the new film.. i was, and then i was again,, and then again.. and again.. until the entire film became one long action sequence with hardly anything to tell the beginning apart from the end. and since there is a third part to the series even when the end does finally arrive it leaves you nothing much to take home.. except for a few gags and a really long swordfight. i would have liked a tiny tiny outline of a plot though.

like ‘hellboy’ which i saw again, this time on tv. the plot naturally has something to do with portals leading to other worlds from where evil beings shall emerge to destroy the world unless our hero can stop them. silly – but still a plot.

if i had superpowers i think i would like to be a firestarter. i always liked the human torch until the x-men film. liz in this film was cool burning blue fire roasting everything around.

madh party at rauts

saurabh watching

prasad, prajna and sachin (with ubaid butting in)

another madh party.. this time a goodbye.

saturday night by prasad and prajna.

the geography of these parties remains unchanged. it starts off at the road where we can never seem to find our way to the location- the dark road where every turn looks the same, the only locators being the gruesomely huge rcc luxury palaces.

once at the place the first layer is the muddy parking lot from where we can barely recognize the silhouettes of familiar bodies backlit by the tubelight in the verandah ahead.

then the dancefloor, where we dance in the rain. the two sides of the floor is where the tired groovers retreat to.. to cuddle close to each other or to ponder over lifes unanswered questions. this time these conversations were even more ‘heavy’, what with new loves emerging and the separations expected.

then there is the verandah where the party generally begins. the waiting area before the alcohol gets you out into the floor and the place where permanent watchers like dnyanesh perch nursing their drinks. this is also the bar and the djs haunt. the music is vineshs baby and he lets a song play for about three seconds before changing the speed or cutting the chorus out, much to all our frustration. the food is also piled up here with paper plates and plastic forks. the chicken biryani is dependably good.

the inside room is the last of the main layer of spaces. here piles of mattresses lie waiting for various drunken bodies to fall on them. i have not, for a long time, waited long enough to sleep on them. and this time mukul drove us home- ranjit, sonal, chitra, sachin- and sonals friend nidhi from delhi.


vinesh - the dj

ranjit

mukul, chitra, aditya

cake party . new fellows

yesterday after a visit to the borivili site amit and mayuri came home. amits mother was there too. this is almost definitely the last tiem they will be in m,y house together. a cake and sandwich party was thrown in that honour, and lots of photographs were taken. here is one.

today in the fellowship juries ateya and lubaina were chosen along with a girl called zohra to be in college for the next year. its great to have fellows in college. so much more fun to hang out with than faculty.

the blogs are back

hooray

moving on the highway

"make ups" . make overs

still banned but life goes on.

the jenagir jani film ‘make ups’ yesterday in college. nine minutes of loneliness and longing for escape. carefully made, zeenat aman as parveen babi, preeti jain as herself mythified and a gay typist looking for love/lust at churchgate station. "masks and make ups to find our own utopias"

and in the evening amit, the consummate metrosexual, got himself a new look for his american adventure – his ear was pierced; he considered a tattoo at al’s in bandra where a many holed boy enthusiastically showed us around. the new look also consisted of a brand new blonde mane. while he went through the complex process of hair therapies i got myself a pedicure – for the first time. a strange woman touching my feet and i was embarrassed to death in the beginning. it was not long before my foot was no longer my own. for both of us it dislodged itself from my body and we were looking at it fairly dispassionately as she scrubbed and massaged it. it must be the only way for either of us to deal with the situation.

and in the middle of of the day, a cancelled meeting left six of us in the bmc canteen eating samosas and dhoklas overlooking the two domes of vt and the bmc building through metal railings in gothic windows.

blog ban

i cant seem to access any blogs from my mtnl line. i can only post through blogger.com but cant read the post. mukul has the same problem from his hathaway line, kuntal from his computer at home and the college lines also dont allow access. nowhere in the city have i been able to get to any blogs on blogspot.com.
i have a feeling it has something to do with the bomb blasts- a form of censorship. the only other way to read blogs is through www.pkblogs.com which was a web site built by pakistani bloggers to access their sites when the pakistani government banned access to them.
can you guys read this? if so send me a comment. i want to know who else can read this.
i am seething.

the dark side of the heart . written on the wind

'the dark side of the heart' was a hallucinatory wet dream of a pimple faced twenty something who thought that having naked women cavort in bed while bad love poetry is recited over a droning soundtrack is good cinema. the storyline as it was sketched out had a droopy central character (definitely the film makers alter ego) who plunges into relationship after relationship with women hoping to find the one woman who can ‘fly’. yes its all very magic realism avant garde, desperate to be seen as ‘cinema'- making even peter greenaways pseudofreudian psychobabble of ‘the pillow book’ seem like tarkovsky. the one reassurance is that no matter what country it is, argentina or india, most men in their twenties have similar self centered silly delusions of grandeur about their pathetic failed love affairs.

‘written on the wind’ is the second douglas sirk film that we have seen. the first being the wonderful ‘all the heaven will allow’. rock hudson plays mitch - the overperforming perfect friend of a rich mans son called kyle. nothing kyle can do can ever be as good as mitch who excels in everything, academics, manliness; he even has the advantage of being born poor. kyle ends up being the drunk dilettante because it was the one thing he can do better than mitch- until he falls in love with lauren bacall – who makes a good man out of him. things get complicated when kyle learns that he cant be a father and when his sister plants suspicions in his head regarding mitch’s intentions. naturally a melodramatic and moving end follows. beautifully shot, wonderful characterizations – everyone seemed so human- and very touching. terrific.

dinner and lunch

last night at the chinese joint near 'pop tates' malad, with tejas the survivor, mukul and amit. lovely mad fun with wine and long island not quite iced tea. it was good to see tejas after the fright he gave us all by shamelessly coming so close to being blown up by the bomb at khar. there is a fine dust of shrapnel in his hands and his back. the doctor is giving him pills to dissolve it. gruesome it sounds. its good to spend time with amit nowadays.. just three weeks until he leaves. its been more than 5 years now that i know him.


after a long time i spent time with prajna, rupali aditya, saurabh and mukul and prasad today. we met in the design cell and then went to 'new yorkers' for vegetarian italian and mexican food. prasad insisted on having a veg biryani and rupali was full of very sleazy double entendres. mukul clicked a classic couple snap that did the blue tooth rounds around the table just before the waiter jabbed me with a fork on the wound on my finger. i screamed. but its getting better all the time.

rockstar - supernova

i don’t know how many of you watch ‘rockstar – supernova’. a brand new american idol wannabe that so desperately wants to be seen as its inverse. the resurgence of the dark against the light. while the contestants in ‘american idol’ pander to what they assume are the tastes of ‘middle america’ – clichés of love and loss sung in a bombastic fashion and/or covers of so called “classic” pop anthems by pop iconic divas of both genders, in rockstar the target audience wears dirty t-shirts leather and blue jeans.

in ‘rockstar’ a supergroup is assembled from the leftover remains of defunct rock bands who vanished even before the death of rock at the hands of teen pop and hip hop. these icons (as they are manufactured for us by being reminded every two minutes on the show by another such leftover who seems to have found a second vocation as reality tv host and a chick in designer bondage chic) lounge about, legs on top of tables in true rockstar style and pretend to evaluate the talent of a bunch of lead singer wannabes.

the contestants belt out that particular brand of music that comes from a handbook of easy-to-use rock. the right names are bandied about; the songs that are sung have now all moved from being great to being ‘legendary’ ; or come from that school of soft core ‘bryan adams with guitar and soulful eyes (and longer hair)’ brand of what passes as rock. tonic, coldplay, keane.. the goo goo dolls.. basically ballads with guitar.

legitimacy must come from what passes off as ‘authenticity’ through trite phrases declaring homilies like ‘being true to yourself’, ‘expressing oneself’, ‘finding my own voice’. angst and rebellion are displayed like calling cards during a performance, and disappear as soon as it is over to reveal eager to please teenagers in fancy dress looking for approval of their particular brand of impersonation.

since the studio audience entirely made up of groupie-like girls looks doe eyed at the men and goes all 'girl-power' at the women, they might as well be enrique inglesias and the spice girls.

at the end of it all your rock credentials end up in the number and kind of body piercing your have and not so much your much vaunted passion for the music – or even what it means for you. did i mention that hardly any one of the singers actually can sing? and those who can ham the act till it hurts. image is after all everything – this is television.

high on spirits - 'dancer, texas. pop. 81' - 'the pillow book'

since i must celebrate the “indomitable spirit” that news channels insist exists in the city i live in (we all did go to work today) i can go back to my interminable but absolutely necessary for my own records, log of the movies i have seen.

it must be because it is the time of goodbyes. but a film like ‘dancer, texas pop. 81’ otherwise would have had hardly any effect on me. as so many people close to me for the past few years seem to be packing their bags up to go to the usa for their future studies, the story of four friends from tiny town facing difficult decisions after passing high school, rang too true. some decide to continue to live in the small town while others abandon it to head for big city life in la. the movie was able to evoke the envy, joy, sadness and hope that i see and feel with all these people leaving next month.

so much more honest and watchable that the pretentious arty mess ‘the pillow book’ that we saw today. a japanese woman in hong kong evokes the ghost of her father in all her lovers as she makes them write all over the body. kinky sex, lot of strained devices like picture in picture, slow dissolves, over performing actors and sets and lots of full frontal nudity (including ewan mcgregor- very ugly) . i assume the project proposal must have seemed very avant-garde and theoretical for the funders. sexuality, texts and sub-texts, the act of writing, language, cross cultural references ; and the worst of all the millions of references that i did not catch but suspected existed all through the film. another great example to prove that high brow theory often makes crappy art.

serial bomb blasts

anxiety as serial bomb blasts rip apart gents first class compartments on the western railway line. some of my students were in mira road and bhayander doing a site study. i just found out that they are all safe. thank god.

the television stations are going mad as i type. between cell phone clips of bloodied shirts and reassurances from the prime ministers office, cnn-ibn actually had the time to make a title card for the new reality tv show with a music score for the right mood.

its awful. july is the bloodiest month.

ak mj

amit and mayuri in their last month in india before the two of them fly off to texas- finishing some work at amits place.

devaa

dushmanon ke khoon se kheloonga holi...
mega star chiranjeevi

antonia and jane . the constant gardener . elektra . the fantastic four

since i cant type as well as i used to.. courtesy my hand.. and i still want to record the films i saw over the past two days- this post just for that.

antonia and jane – british buddy film about two close female friends – one frumpy and the other suave. each envies the other and talks about it to an uptight therapist. early nineties realism that would be oh-so bittersweet with its poignant human moments if it were not so drab and predictable.

the constant gardener – terrific film out of a good book. ralph fiennes breathes the courteous justin quayle diplomat in kenya as he follows the footsteps of his murdered wifes quest into the shenanigans of big business pharma in africa. and its good not only because of good politics.

elektra – the first of the two marvel comic book films. daredevil sidekick does not have enough of a personality or superpowers to hold this film together. trying to attract a young girl fan club it panders to girl power shtick that the spice girls did better. a young protégé and her older mentor.

the fantastic four - the second of the marvel superhero films.– all superhero films are only as good as the media myths that they are elaborations of. for the x-men it is the unbearable alienation of the odd in ‘straight’ society and for elektra – a silly coming of age story where a young girl ‘learns’ from her mentor as much as the older woman gains in return. naturally the x-men films rock while elektra suck. for the fantastic four the model of the drama is a daytime soap opera and therefore the film is characterized by cut out characters reciting stock lines and actors who would even be background filler in ‘the bold and the beautiful’- jessica albas’ invisible woman notwithstanding.

nail biting finished

i had my nail removed last night. the first surgery, no matter how minor on my body. the doctor asked me whether i want to keep the nail. i took it- the first artifact on a future wall of rejected body parts that i have planned for the house. but last night (and right now) was awful. for tonight i was a connoisseur of different kinds of pain. the searing heat tearing through tendons as a background upon which throb like heavy drum beats where blood still pumps beneath a non existent nail. it hurts still as i type with my one left hand still uninjured.