photopost old friends from abroad visiting

tabrez at home sunday night / chaitanya at tushar's on monday

photopost college

dressed for dandiya / post jury saturday chill / third year jury / interior design and some chairs

pune housing society - the exclusive amenities

don't people find it strange (and scary) that almost all of the features concern technology as surveillance tool?

the birthday party

at manoj's office on saturday

photo post street shots

new sra on link road

barbers borivili station

dharavi celebrations


mill land high rises

the namesake

spa exchange photos

the saturday before the last... great energy. more bombay / delhi differences. nimish patel and 'craftmanship' revivals . arunav

hellboy 2- the golden army / the glass palace

on the eve of my birthday mukul and me chilled out my simmering temper
by watching a good old fashioned actionfest. i much preferred the
earlier, more confused hellboy to this one, but the special effects
and the non-stop action made up for all emotional emptiness. why in
the world was a expecting more? i guess the dark knight raises
expectations from superhero films.

also finished reading amitav ghosh's 'the glass palace' and could not
help but think of mrs makhijani- the french teacher in our school who
used to sell us eggs when she first arrived in bombay from burma.
'shiva' she used to call me- and she loved me. wicked little boys that
we were her strangeness and the fact that she sold eggs door to door
were material for a lot of vicious jokes in school. how nasty little
boys are!

link road metro protest

this on the local public toilet on link road at kandivili protesting the metro yard that is going to 'squash' the locality under it.

the thursday in town

showing ujjan and arunav the sights of the city that include bkc, dharavi, dadar parsi colony, phoenix, haji ali, ambani house, marine drive and the fort in quick succession. the only real bombay ujjan saw was in marine drive... :) bought a camera next from reliable in bora bazaar. canon eos. this is the first shot.

later at mohammedali road with the help of antoine's gastronomical expertise ate succulent kiri, boti, kaleja on side streets anf walked underneath the flyover to minara masjid for malpua and baida roti. lovely.



phone cam




neocam

bombay/delhi again

the bombay delhi debate again and this time within the studio. not really a debate, more of a discussion, as the spa faculty and students are here for a week long exchange with our 3 semester masters students. arunav showed us the results of the concentration of power in the hands of a few in delhi. as national capital a national pride is summoned up as justification for the most gruesome evictions. first the asiad games, then the commonwealth and somewhere it is whispered the olympics are next. these events are used as reasons to clean up the city of everything that is seen as unwanted- or unaesthetic. today a slum along the river tomorrow a riverfront promenade. the master plan is the apparatus of planning the city. but it stays far above the everyday realities of the needs of the citizens. these have to find ‘illegal’ methods of finding space within the city. as long as it does not mar the unspoilt wide roads that separate more than connect the various fragments no one seems to bother. it is this distancing that i found so incredible. arunav said that as delhi wants to recreate itself as a global city it has to find ways to attract investment. but being so top heavy a system the only way it can do it is by top-down brutality. being so used to the insidious cunning of the developer lobby in mumbai i was pretty struck by that shameless brute force. Considering the difference between the two cities I cant help but believe that The spa course can afford its classical urban design bias while we in Mumbai absolutely cannot. but this is the kind of development that the middle classes seem to favour. this urge for a fascist dictator who will make everyone fall in line and create that simpler sweeter utopia where their children can run free and safe in green fields with butterflies. it is no wonder then that the hero of the middle classes is narendra modi. then there is the supreme court that seems to have decided it is the executive power in deciding the directions of development across the country- and for mumbai. first it was the mill land verdict, then the overturning of the 33/9 cess building case in favour of the builder, then it says that it is unrealistic to imagine sez’s (in spite of farmers complaining) only on non-fertile lands. according to today’s headlines it looks like it is heading to overturning the rights of slum dwellers in favour of the original property owners. the avenues of new delhi only seem far away from the slums of mumbai.

i'm not there

as soon as you pin him down, he’s not there. fickle, sardonic, irreverent and honest. this is a mad warped maybe too-clever-for-its-own-good biopic of sorts that i loved. 6 actors play different versions of the man- each a different characteristic from a young black runaway kid, to cate blanchett’s spot on impression of the electric dylan to richard gere as the rebel in hiding billy the kid. heath ledger and christian bale play glam struck film star and moralistic poet- folk and gospel singer respectively. sick as i am of art that targets the usual suspects lined up (finger pointing art is what a dylan says at some point of the film- and he has only ten) i am glad that sometimes the finger is pointed at an earlier version of himself. i wish there were more like him- willingly rebelling against all expectations of what he is supposed to be or say. the rebel rebels when art is supposed to serve society by preaching messages to help improve society or when art exists only for its own sake. and while listening to the songs again i remembered again that are still beautiful brilliant incredible. i was on the verge of tears too often. maybe my dylan phase begins all over again.

photo post

avon panorama / juhu beach / new studio tables / fourth and third year students / council conference at rang sharda / oberoi mall saturday evening