'nico and dani' / 'lady of the assasins'

‘nico and dani’

pleasant coming of age stuff as two 17 year old boys explore each other and their sexualities in a summer together in a beach town. two equally curious girls and an older male author help them along. dani loves nico longingly, nico cant decide exactly. nothing particularly new about the plot - the usual heartaches and burning jealousies, but with a burning chemistry between the delicate actors and the palpably authentic adolescent emotions. took me back to all the insecurities and complications of growing up. lovely and more than a little embarrassingly real.

‘lady of the assasins’

in medellin, colombia as law and order disintegrates violent gangs rule the streets arbitrarily dispensing justice with guns. a jaded author comes back to his hometown and falls in love with a beautiful hit man and installs him in his barren flat overlooking the sprawling city in the valley. through their relationship and the tragedy that was inevitable, the madness of the city and the surreal nature of life in it. we see a world gone mad - caught between the apathy of the government, the lure of easy money, the ambiguous role of the church, the casualness towards the value of a life, the machismo and the desires of the young men who now rule the city. it’s a complicated thing, showing us this place- and barbet schroeder mixing realism and magic realism, made it seem very frightening- this place where there was no escape from violence but death.

shahapur/ goregaon/allergies/’super size me’/tamil culture and me

shahapur - saturday monring where i had gone to the site with ganesh and his son sudhir. the survey work began today. there was also some debate on some land in the middle of the plot that seems to have run into some ownership issues.

on the way back i went to tushar and sharmilas place. he wanted some advice on a place in goregaon that he is thinking of buying to set up his studio. a mhada lig house that seemed to me to be in a very bad state. i said no.

this week i have been trying to recover from my holiday. i cleaned the office myself a few days back and promptly got a terrible chest congestion. my allergy does not seem to have gone. am completely antibioticked courtesy mrs prabhu – the pretend ayurved.

at home friday, saw ‘super size me’ with mukul. this guy ate mcdonalds food for thirty days- and predictably fell very ill. interesting and entertaining enough- if not very illuminating. at the end i wanted a chicken burger really bad.

and as an important footnote: as a good non practicing half tamil iyer i am suitably aghast at the affront to our tamil culture by that north indian actress khushboo when she advised us to have safe sex! sex? and us tamilians! doesn’t she know our species propagates when the monsoon winds blow pollen from stamens through pleated polyester trousers to pistils wrapped under folds and folds of kanjivaram saris?

quote from pink kanjivaram clad doctorni on ndtv: “tamilian culture is a truly great culture with hundred of years of great tradition; and should be respected and not insulted by making such comments.”

you go girl!

a s byatt, kate bush, madonna, derek jarman

a s byatt: 'still life'

beautifully detailed about the difficulty and joys of language, of words, of forms of speech and writing; the urge to capture the details of the everyday and the struggle to be able to express it. metaphors, poetry, art.

kate bush: ‘aerial’

on one half she revels in the erotic and the beauty of the everyday. a love song about a washing machine where her skirt swirls around his trousers and she walks into the lather. in the other half she exults in the shifting light in the sky through an entire day. lazy, loving, soft.

would i be sexist in calling both of them gloriously and unabashedly ‘female’? - Sonal help!

madonna: 'confessions on a dance floor'

the key words here are ‘confessions’ and ‘dance’. as she gives us her now usual platitudes about ‘finding herself’ she manages to tie it all together with some killer hooks and choruses. her sensibility as a pop diva- shameless borrower, eclectic sampler and tune queen does not seem to have diminished by her current domestic bliss- thankfully.

derek jarman : 'blue'

as he was dying of aids british director derek jarman made this experimental film that constitutes a soundtrack played to a completely blue screen documenting his illness and his coming death with painful detail- the difficulties, the fears and the ironies. sometimes it feels like he is right here talking directly to you describing every emotion, every image seen and imagined, every single ordinary act with exacting clarity. very pretentious it may sound - but it is also very moving.

4 days in goa (and two days driving)

10 hour drive to goa and living at fountainhas in panjim at rias opposite the exotic panjim inn. from our room we could see the rising hill and the small church on the hill along with the pedestrian bridge over the canal.

dinner at venites with italian portuguese french scrawling all over the interior. our table was on in a balcony overlooking the streets and in the distance the lights of night cruises.

day 1 we drove to colva to find a hotel in south goa. ‘amigo plaza’ it was - on a side street with a view of the palm trees along the beach. satisfied, next stop was the margao railway station with the huge overhanging roof on the correa columns that we saw again at dona sylvia. then a strange visit to a heritage house- the braganza house in a nearby village- chandor. judith, upright and proud on one side with stories of glory days and ball room dances; and on the other side a drunk man mumbling incoherently to three irish young men on their india trip. then the rachol seminary where in the interior of the high ceilinged church we found a group of young men practicing to play music. by the time we got to the shanta durga temple we were exhausted and skipped old goa and the mangeshi temple for a drink at venites again- this time as the sun was setting. night at colva and dinner on the beach at ‘boomerang’ where we had our first close up look at a ‘bbb’ (boy bed bike) a young goan boy who offers all of the above mentioned to lonely european traveling women.

day 2 we walked into the sea before and after our first english breakfast of the trip. then a long day lounging in and out of bed. in the evening we set out to the southern tip of the colva stretch to betul and cavellosim. the betul bech is pristine white sand and has almost been completely usuruped by the leela hotel. had a fight with the watchman there and also saw akshya kumar and twinkle khanna taking a casual walk along the shore and playing volleyball with the kids. the water was gentle and soft and the sky was a glowing slab of pink marble. that night we took a walk in the moonlight at cavellosim.

day 3 we decided to move hotels to the far touristier north goa beaches. after driving past aguada we found a place on the main calangute road : shelsta. a little room with a garden in front. more driving afterwards- a lunch of rather awful “authentic” goan food at o coquieros and a rather disappointing trip to the ‘houses of goa’ museum by gerard. its like the area around this museum in gerards equivalent of disneyland with the architect playing the part of mickey mouse. you can buy models, postcards of the house as if it is a new taj mahal; or you could even get a guided tour of the museum by the architect himself. all very well, i suppose if the building is something special- but to be quite honest after the eccentricity and love that i remember seeing at nrityagram, i have not been able to enjoy his work for a while now. what was once a peculiar gentility has now this baroque overexertion which can be quite off-putting.

‘dil chahta hain’- that epic of upper middle class adolescence had one of its key scenes shot at the chapora fort- a spectacular ruin overlooking a river meeting the sea just north of the anjuna beach. sure enough, we found hordes of young men posing for photographs like aamir, saif and akshay swarming all over in the hot afternoon. wonderful location though. the anjuna beach was quite disappointing and we decide instead to swim at calangute instead. the water was yellow from some strange seaweed, and the sky still spectacular.

day 4 was visiting day after a swim. anita, sumanand guru at their miramar apartment and then lunch at the ritz classic- brilliant seafood. gave up a search for the wendell rodricks showroom- as if it was going to be open on a sunday afternoon.. that evening we met ajay for dinner and drinks. he took us to brittos at baga. i perhaps had too much feni. and that was the end of the saga.

the drive back was as the drive to, quick, comfortable and uneventful.

jigsaw puzzle

under construction a week back

its done. finally. mom and me patiently have put together a 1000 piece renoir. you really get know the nuances of the brush strokes and the colours while doing it.

it was great fun. and now we need to get ourselves another. shall buy one when i get back.

.. and, oh yes, am leaving for goa in two hours. driving there. shall write more later..

completed

'komal gandhar'

the’ komal gandhar’ is a woman is a nation is a note.
a theater troupe is preparing for a performance of ‘shakuntala’ as jealousies and love start tearing into the lives of the actors. this time the poetic and mind numbing allegories and metaphor were a little more obvious than those in ‘subarnarekha’ or ‘meghe dhaka tara’ and perhaps that is why a little less effective. still tremendous in parts though.
some images i cant forget, the half completed railway track leading to the other side of the river and the newly created nation; the rattling of the toy on the pavement behind anasuya in the arcade at night.

trip photos five

chamba and the chowgun

chamba from way up

mountains

morning mist on khajiar 'lake'

rambunctious boys in the train

dalhousie mall road

chamundadevi temple- chamba

the waterfall at the hydro electric plant at chamba

laxmi narayan temple: chamba

the ravi river

the lobby at astoria, amritsar

golden temple at night as we swam

sachin and nikhil and a big tree, ram baug gardens

the lobby as our living room late at night

bicycling to swim, amritsar

trip photos four

siddarth and the pink drink

the golden temple complex from the tower

amita ina amritsar

amita, nikhil and sachin taking a nap in the tower

the summer palace of ranjit singh in the ram baug garden

the university building at guru nanak university

langar at the golden temple

rickshaw: sachin and nikhil

nikhil and amita in a chamber in a tower in the temple complex

trip photos three

martyrs well at jalianwala baug

the phallic monument at jalianwala baug

dyer depicted at jalianwala baug

bullet holes

nikhil at kesar dhaba

an akhara near the golden temple

a street with a bridge like gurudwara in amritsar

a view down the street from the bridge

the entrance of the golden temple from our site

a gurudwara in the inner city

trip photos two

the bicycles and the boys on the way to wagah

shanker dhaba at the cantonment on g t road

shanker dhaba

nikhil

sachin

trip photos one

nikhil. sachin in a yash chopra film on the way to wagah


wagah

saluting sitting down at the border

sachin, nikhil: the way back to the hotel

the grand trunk road from the top of the bus

'goodbye lenin'

a mother falls into a coma and when she wakes up germany has been unified. her son goes to ridiculous lengths to recreate the earlier berlin so that his mother does not have to cope with the shock of unification.
though i was a little annoyed in the beginning by the incessant cuteness and the irritating piano background score; the film suddenly became far more when the premise of the film becomes merely a backdrop to explore the languages and ideals of the two radically different worlds; from the clothes, the television shows, the food. why was all the paraphernalia of the east so summarily discarded? what happened to the world that had created it? what happened to those people?
suddenly the film, from being an ingratiatingly sweet piece of fluff became a fairly moving look at a world suddenly vanished.
my memories of childhood are also full of these images of state sponsored stuff, that is nowhere to be found nowadays.. a ridiculous nostalgia grips me for the days of black and white tv, and chaya geet on thursdays. and how we longed for more then.
beautiful image: the bust of lenin floating over the streets of the city being carried off into the sunset by a helicopter.

‘a talking picture’

in manoel de oliveira’s ‘a talking picture’ a history teacher and her daughter are on a cruise to india to join the girls’ father in bombay. the ship makes stops at marseilles, naples, athens, constantinople, cairo and aden on the way to india.. as the ship passes we are given a stilted informative history lecture with postcard like shots of monuments. characters step into the frame merely to supply us with legends, myths and narratives from the troubled history of western civilization.

after leaving aden the movie shifts gear into a series of staged dinner table conversations between three women from different countries – a french business woman, an italian ex-model and a greek actress; and the polish american captain of the ship played by john malkovich. these conversations rotate around the themes of nationhood, language, war, love and longing- the tower of babel, the tree of goodness… until an arab terrorist bomb blows the ship apart, killing the mother and daughter.

a fantastic film.. bending any preconceived notions i might have had of film making. a travelogue and a history lesson and a serious exploration of the state of the world today.. except , at least it seemed to me, to be from a completely eurocentric point of view. while the first few shots do dwell on the portuguese colonization of the world and there were many references to the faded glory of the value systems of the west; the easterner or the oriental was always treated as the alien outsider.

perhaps there is a truth to this. maybe the value systems of the west along with democracy and christianity are completely alien to the value system of the arab world- and therefore threatening. what was i expecting from a portuguese film maker looking at the state of the world today?

perhaps i was expecting the self flagellating guilt that we are so used to whenever someone from the west begins to talk about the relationship of the first world to the rest of the world. always slightly patronizing. thankfully, i did not get it. instead the film sketched out the impossibility of mutual understanding between different nations all attempting the create their own ideas of civilization through the exercise of power. every civilization has been and will be genocidal.

perhaps there are many more readings of the film.. maybe it was about the death of western civilizations and a paean to it… maybe it was a wake up call i have read a review that completely inverts my own reading of it.. and it sounds convinced .. i don’t know.. confusing.. but very very good.

baby photographs

in the corridor of the breach candy hospital this monday

kuntal and nandita

diwali and three films

diwali lights

every diwali there is a ritual that we have in our lane. headed by shyam and my mother we light the entire lane up with diyas in the evenings. the girls draw a rangoli in the morning on the badminton court. shyam and me go to the railway station to buy 500- 600 diyas and lay them down in a line edging the lane. oil is collected from the buildings and lamps are lit through a collective effort of kids and older people.

this year mukul and me bought diyas from the railway station and the older people watched on as the ritual was taken over by the kids, who organized everything.

this year as always, the lane was lovely.

l’avventura

antonionini’s film about a woman who disappears suddenly on a yachting trip leaving her fiancé and her best friend to find her and meanwhile begin a new relationship with each other. the film seemed to be attempting a dissection of the male ego; as the jilted lover immediately proves his own virility to himself by storming into an affair with the next available woman. the woman falls after initial pangs of guilt, and the man then moves on to the next conquest. meanwhile he craves for creative expression (he, we learn, was an architect, but now only does valuation of buildings), for youth and energy (he wickedly spills ink on a young mans sketch of a window, etc).

all in carefully composed black and white, seaside landscapes with lone figures and crashing waves; long silent lovemaking sequences and ornate interiors of hotels. it seems that claudia- the other woman- was antonionini’s wife. that explains why she is in the film. i thought she was wooden; and thought the movie far too long for such a flimsy premise; though in the final reckoning it was not completely unwatchable.

the blood of a poet

jena cocteau’s 1930s film about art and its sources, the artist and his sacrifices. surreal images of death, self-immolation, mirrors, games- a mouth on a canvas begins to speak and is wiped on to the hand of the poet as tries to destroy it; leading him to kill himself- then in another sequence he walks along a corridor of a hotel peeping into various rooms with strange happenings; then a snowball fight in which a child dies; and at the end a game of cards between the poet and his muse / creation(?) watched on by spectators in overlooking balconies.

50 minutes- almost silent. brilliant images (for its time) interesting, but not fascinating.. surprisingly.

shaadi no 1

three frustrated men seek three separate affairs with the three hot daughters of their employer after their three wives refuse for one reason or the other to sleep with them. enter one fiddler dispensing ‘misaals’ like missiles’ one for each character constantly making the most ludicrous similes. marriage is like a .. closed bisleri bottle/ salwar kameez / .. whatever..

tedious in parts, hilarious in some.. not enough silliness.. and actually not that much fun.. even if we overlook the sexist premise.. the actors pulled the film down.. the khan brothers have no timing and sharman joshi is too bad looking. the women (wives) are hot and the girls (temptresses) are naked…. and the music sucks.

amritsar – chamba – chandigarh (linear / non linear)

chapter one : linear

october 17^th

night train- the golden temple express to amritsar

october 18^th

the train journey

october 19^th

morning at amritsar.
the golden temple.. langar.. distribution of work load
the guru nanak dev university to meet sarabjit singh behl in his office.

october 20^th

jalian wala baug and more meanderings in the walled city.. sarabjit singh behl’s lecture at the university..

october 21^st

exploring the city and its gates on bicycle.. kesar da dhaba.. the bridge gurudwara, , the ranjit singh museum and the baug at night. the big trees, the midnight swim.

october 22^nd

amritsar – wagah border- the bicycle ride.. the performance at the border.. on top of the bus on the way back home

october 23^rd

bus to chamba via dalhousie. tibetan market.. the mall road.. the new jackets.. the bus ride at night down into the valley.. girls with motion sickness.. hotel aroma palace

october 24^th

the chamunda devi temple.. the bajreshwari temple.. the hydro electric water peoject.. finding our way to the water.. swimming in the cold water of the ravi river.. laxmi narayan temple complex in the middle of the city.. playing football on the chowgun with the boys.. looking for momos on the streets at night and failing.

october 25^th

morning hike to khajiar lake.. uphill all the way.. the short cut that ended up being very long and very tough. nimita, ajay and me lost and found. the landscapes of the mountain.. chicken chilly dry on a verandah overlooking the clearing. the camping site overlooking the eastern mountains.. the cold air and lying down on the clearing in the evening light.. the campfire party.. singing and dancing.. sleeping.

october 26^th

early morning drive to evening driving to chandigarh first in mini bus to chamba and then in our rickety old one. stopping at various places for food.

october 27^th

chandigarh - panchayat bhavan hostel. walking around making fun of pseudo corb-ness.. the secretariat, the assembly and the high court.. nek chands rock garden in evening light and swings.. dinner at hot millions 2 – sector 17 and hunting for a drink and finding one at ‘wild wild west’.

october 28^th

morning train to mumbai. the paschim with all the crowds

october 29^th

mumbai at 3.30. screaming kids.

amritsar – chamba – chandigarh (linear / non linear)

chapter two : non - linear

places

amritsar has seen so much violence from the jalianwala baug massacre to operation bluestar. important moments in two freedom movements one successful and one abandoned have occurred within 100 meters of each other. after having committed a violence on the center of sikhism the center does not know its role in the city anymore. it now takes a back seat as the monetary power- canada born- and the considerable clout of the akal takth evict complexity from the once thriving commercial portions of the city. the evicted include markets, akharas and other subcultures. the houses and markets around the golden temple have recently been flattened by the state as per the wishes of the temple and has been replaced by a gated walled garden with seating areas and red sandstone steps. an urban designer is earning a lot of money destroying a city yet again. our site for the next third year project overlooks this clearing.

the golden temple lies in the center of the walled city of amritsar. it is beautiful. amruta called the movement within organized chaos, it seemed more to me like a ritualistic dance that people entering learned by watching people around them move. heads covered and footwear off, you enter below the huge clock tower and walk down to the amrit. the golden temple lies in the middle of the pond glittering as sikhs donning the five k’s are seen moving around it clockwise.

amita, nikhil, sachin and me went for an evening walk one day in amritsar to the ram baug gardens in the middle of the city. in the dark we found the derelict summer palace of ranjit singh in the middle of the charbaug. there were the largest trees above us that loomed in the night light.

i remember the fervent nationalistic jingoism at the wagah border where we sang along on tiers to ‘mere desh ki dharti..’ and ‘yeh desh hain veer jawanon ka..” and anuj danced along with a fat mustached man for a few photographs on the road. the choreographed cries we were made to repeat and the performance of the armies on both sides now shaking hands instead of pretending anger. the moment when the doors between our nations opened made my hair stand up on end. i did not know that i cared about boundaries that much.

chamba is a beautiful city. in a valley surrounded by mountains, i can still see it nestled in the distance way below me, with the green chowgun clearly. directly in front of me snow peaked mountains and the shade below the tree where we took one of our many rest stops.

i got to know the landscapes of a mountain on the walk up to khajiar. every face of it has a new facet. the pine tree forests, the fir trees, the terraced agricultural fields, the underbrush and the barren bald areas criss crossed by zig zagging paths like scars.

some short cuts are tiring but generous in what they show you. Distant snow peaked mountains.

I met a school teacher on the way to khajiar lake. friendly and amused by our adventure. I also saw his students – little kids in military green, running wildly on slopes that we were trudging over.

chandigarh cant make up its mind whether it is a city or a dark garden. the roads at night are dark and gloomy. shadows everywhere and the lights from passing vehicles blind you for moments after the cars pass. we walked down unknown roads that all looked the same (doesn’t all darkness?) looking for food and found tacky restaurants in the heart of the city serving bad punjabi food. in punjab!

the capitol complex - the secretariat has a roof like an urban park. many levels and the ramp up has randomly coloured windows. the assembly is churchlike and brutal in its domination of the human body. the high court was alive and kicking the other buildings’ ass as it was teeming with black clad lawyers below its gigantic wave like roof and twisted fluorescent columns. while the secretariat was modernist housing complex, the assembly a medieval church, the high court was a true public space. its too bad the plaza in front is as barren… but so dramatic.

there were kids playing cricket in the monument of the open hand. the sun was setting.

nek chand’s rock garden is a twisted counter point to the pristine clarity of the master plan of the city. convoluted paths, grottoes and waterfalls.. a little bit of lonavala at the base of corbusiers stark masterpiece. the class was swinging in the clearing for a good half an hour before we went for a walk through the bungalows and empty open spaces in a residential sector.

at khajiar the lawn rolls like it does in a yash chopra movie. i was rishi kapoor to amruta’s sridevi. couples found their way to the remote corners of the evening light and walked back to the verandah for a long dinner.

what i learnt from corbusier was that there is a joy to being free from dogma. the only rules he had for himself was his imagination- problematic as it did turn out to be for so many of us. for me the ease of hand and the playful madness, along with the complete disregard for an over articulated form were refreshing and beautiful. so different from the anal overproduction that we adore so much in mies or kahn. more baroque and classical in approach than truly representative of the “spirit” of modernity. it is about the people, dammit! not about the palaces that they build!

the hotel astoria at amritsar has a central double heighted lobby that was our living room for three days. our sheets were everywhere, and there were kids lolling around on the chairs until 4 in the morning.

jalianwala baug, the scene of that massacre is now the site of a phallic gruesomely ugly monument in an axial garden. you can either stand where a small stone pyramid marks the spot where general dyer stood to give his orders; or walk around landscaped paths with neatly trimmed lawns and shrubs to a wall where bullet holes have been marked out in white chalk on a wall for us to appreciate. a travesty of a memorial.

the chamunda devi temple overlooks the city of chamba with ritual bells and stone walls rising in cascades to protect the white plastered sanctum. the shikharas of the temples in chamba have a double roof to protect them from the snow.

people

the class has too many couples. at last count there were 11.. that is 22 students out of 40 are seeing each other. you can imagine the train rides and the romantic night walks.

the class is also boisterous and rowdy and a lot of fun. they seem to be all together and peaceful but it does not take long to see the tensions right below the surface.. also they sing a lot.. if i hear the class singing ‘happy birthday to you once more’ i will scream.. amita and amrithi had birthdays on the trip. and then there was the entire hour before the trip ended at borivili station. the continuous screaming, the gang rape of the boys, the rambunctious mad behavior. and i was in my firing mood more than once and was a little bit of a dampener on their spirits… especially poor dishita, and anuj whose obsession for photography got on my nerves.

perhaps the most articulate person we met who set the stage for the design project at amritsar was pauls friend mr behl, who teaches at the architecture school in the city. the department is in a large oppressive modern atrocity on the central axis of the green university. his room is on the top floor of the central axis of the building shaped like an inverted pyramid with chains hanging down its sides (to drain the rain) the khalsa college was on the way to university and we decided not to see it.

whenever nikhil and me came back to our room we turned on the tv for background noise and ganesh hedge was on channel v. i liked and it was my anthem for a while.

sachin, nikhil and me sat on top of the bus with our bicycles as the sun was setting, heading back from the wagah border. the wind was cold as we ducked electric wires and the boughs of trees. our bicycles shuddered on the roof top behind us. the bus conductor joined us on the roof for a while. i remembered s v road from the front of a double decker bus.

the langar- or the free food that is served in the golden temple in a hall was not nearly as nice as sachin had made it out to be and nikhil and me held it against him throughout the time that he was with us.

night swimming in the amrit sarovar. 2 o’clock in the morning, sachin, nikhil and me on our bicycles drove to the golden temple to strip and cleanse our sins in the freezing soft water of the lake. the golden temple glowed ethereal in front of us. the coffee at bubby’s was fabulous later.

speaking of swimming, the ravi that flows though the chamba valley thunders blue frothing. We stopped along it on the first day there to dip our heads in the freezing water; to stand on top of rocks and admire the young man who swam across the flowing river; and to photograph semi clad bodies drenched in the morning light.

amita had a problem with cycle rickshaws. the closeness of out relationship with the sweat of laborers was too much for our city bred sensibilities. we took them only when absolutely necessary.

i have been reading poetry throughout the trip. languages that emerge from a completely different one from that i was experiencing. this acontextuality was strange and beautiful. the words has presence purely for themselves and therefore the images a purity. i finally was able to really love t s eliot and w b yeats- though i still cant claim to have understood either of them.

kesar dhaba was what saved sachin from being murdered after he fooled us into too many vegetarian meals. after leading us down many alleys, he took us to a vegetarian restaurant with marble tables and friendly self confident waiters. the parathas! the gulab jamun!

the food was fabulous in amritsar, whether it was the ice cold lassi near the lahori gate that was had in the early morning, or the chicken at friends dhaba, or the strange chicken and bread thing that siddarth, nikhil and me had one evening in the old city. chamba was a disappointment gastronomically and chandigarh a disaster.

whenever we started driving our bikes the first thing sachin used to do is sing ‘main nikla gaddi leke…” really loud much to our amused embarrassment.

i played football after, i think 20 years. it was never really a sport i liked. the chowgun is a large green space in between the hill town houses of chamba and the ravi river that flows in the gorge. i must have touched the ball 5 times, but ran around and screamed like i was diego maradona.

around campfires the songs are either boisterous and rowdy like sing-alongs; or they are sung in soft falsettos. hindi film ballads or 70’s rock. rajiv was our backstreet boy doing his dance number. kausik imitated a rickshaw’s music and s p balasubramanian, shetty did a cool elvis act. i danced a little and drank a little. the night was freezing.

photography in the age of digital cameras is no longer an art form or even a recorder of a special moment. it is documentary evidence of banal ordinariness. it is not about the moment in space and time as much as it is about capturing a representation of oneself having been in that space and time- once. all is image.

the bhangra on the roof top of a poor caretakers house at a temple, or the incessant posing for photographs wearing glares in front of buildings remove all wholeness of an experience in favor not even of the visual- but of the idea of the visual- ‘reality’ thrice removed.

shopping - a small kirpan and a amulet around my neck, two jackets from dalhousie and a shawl from the cloth market at amritsar.

amritsar to chamba

first post of the trip.. just to update everyone on the highlights- a more detailed boring description that will be (hopefully) lightened up with photographs later.
writing from the chamba hotel after a ride through wild flowers and fields; pine trees and barren mountains to dalhousie and then chamba. dalhousie was cold as hell and the mall road was a shopping spree for woolens. the way up and down had women puking every ten minutes.
yesterday was when i decided to live my twenties all over again when sachin, nikhil and me gave up our plan for a bicycle ride in amritsar and ambitiously rode 28 kilometers to the wagah border to watch the display of chauvinistic nationalism - dancing to 'mere desh ki dharti..', waving tricolours, bhangra on the streets, and lots of bharat mata ki jai. the rise was longer than we expected and though we had many breaks for food and photographs, we were exhausted by the end of it. on the way back, our bicycles were on top of a bus and us with them ducking in the evening light so that branches and electric wires dont cut our heads off.
the summer palace of ranjit singh is dark in the evenings and beautiful. the trees loom above you in the darkness spookily. the palace itself is tacky and needs lots of work. the road from the summer palace leads directly through the ram baug gate to the inner city and the golden temple. sachin, nikhil and me drove through many of these 12 gates - the gullies and the chowks on our trusty bicycle shired at a ridiculous price from an old sardarni near the bus stand. that night the three musketeers went swimming at 2 in the mornign in the amrit sarovar of the golden temple. cold water, cool breeze, the music was off and the temple was beautiful. the coffee afterwards was good too.
more later, i am tired now. see you guys..

the day of leaving

when everything that needs to be done has to be done in one day, it can drive you mad. the day started with a meeting with resul at 7.30 in the morning at his goregaon flat. in college all the odds and ends of the end of semester had to be sorted out; which included internship programs for the final year, thesis guides, third year studio programme, etc.. mukul on the highway and had lunch at thai ban.. then shoppers stop and bought some stuff for the trip. met amit at globus, went to ganesh’s house for a meeting. his son vinay, who studies law in bangalore was here too. then a kerala ayurvedic massage in borivili to set my nerves at ease. packing in 15 minutes- two light bags have been favored to one heavy bulky one. two books- the poetry compilation and 'soul mountain'.. nikhil, sachin and amita for company.. the train to amritsar is at 10 from borivili.. ‘the golden temple express’.. shall try to write from there.. shall be back in bombay on the 30^th. see you guys then..

cowboy

learniing some bad habits from my family. high on two vodkas, chocolate and almond cake and a beautiful cuban cigar at satish uncles place today at lunch. smooth lovely. another family event celebrating new entrants - meghana's ashish, siddarth's jasmeet and adheem's sharon. a gujju boy, a sikh woman and a catholic from bandra. our tradition of secularism continues in the next generation. fun time.

thomas hardy

i have always found it very tough to read poetry, except for the michael ondaatje’s relatively easy image heavy poems and a few more exceptions. i bought the book ‘the harvill book of twentieth century poetry in english' after deciding that reading poetry was a skill i had to develop.

i started the book with some thomas hardy poems, which i found very often sickeningly romantic, as he perpetually pines for places and times when he was happier. this constant nostalgia for bygone eras and quest to find happiness in the past was not particularly appealing to me, even though i always thought that i was a little sentimental in nature.

still liked some poems though – ‘a broken appointment’ where he is accusing a lover who does not love him about not having the politeness to keep an appointment; ‘heredity’ in which he examines his features and traces them in the future and the past; ‘thoughts of phena’ about someone who died; ‘afterwards’ about how he hopes he will be remembered; ‘during wind and rain’ about the last days of a home.