Heard at last

Read about it here.

I too am a filmmaker now

Steven Spielberg made his first film in his early teens and I touched a real camera only in my very late thirties and shot my first video just last week as I’d mentioned here. But, as they say age no bar when it is the question of passion.

Discussing the process of editing this video and adding background music with Adithya, who helped me with it was equally or more exciting than the actual shooting.

PS: The title and the first paragraph is written the tongue-in-cheek manner. I don't think I'd be any good in the next ten years.

Water Wars

With the summer blazing in its full glory water has become an important commodity for me (no I'm not a compulsive water drinking person for obvious reasons), apart from the 'killing' thirst, the fear of the return of Renal Colic, which I fought nearly eight years to get rid of, makes me think and drink more water these days.

Water as such is the flavour of the season with politicians asking the common man if they should be peeing in the dams in order to fill them up...

Then there is this blog, which quotes Nestle's top honcho saying that water is not a human right that I read during the last week.

The other article that I read is by Shekhar Kapur, it talks about the consequences of privatisation of water resources. We may argue that he is just publicising his long awaited film 'Pani', yet it strikes a chord somewhere.

The most striking thing that has appeared about water recently is the series of TV spots done by Bisleri that are meant to scare us from sharing our bottle of water with fellow human beings, it conveys in no mild terms to have your own bottle of Bisleri (500 ML costing Rs. 10 only) if you are thirsty.

I'm under no delusion to believe that we will switch on the reverse gear after making so much progress as the human race and begin to live organically and share natural resources with every living being.

Going at this rate the day isn't far when we will have the choice of buying perfume enriched oxygen in numerous variants or simply die breathless.

Happy Earth Day should we say?

Surviving in the daily life

Sometimes while trying to survive in your daily life you tend to miss out noticing what big transformations you have been through over the years. Last Sunday I happened to spend a few hours with two college boys (they may become filmmakers or writers in the future,who knows).  In between the conversation I asked one of them the year of his birth, 1994 he said. His reply made me  wonder aloud 'what was I doing in 94?' I was 22 then, had just joined the Degree Course (or was it my 2nd year?), wishing to make my life worthwhile. But, whatever I'm doing today seemed like impossible dreams at that time.

On Monday, I received a message from a friend saying that 2012 also passed in a jiffy, his son became 8 years old and daughter 4 years old. It made me realise that I’d no such scale to measure my own ageing (even though I'm for almost 15 years now and writing for at least 12 years). So, I feel mentally stuck in my teens or early 20s believing that life is yet to begin.

This video taken in the early 90s further shows the transformation in the physical world as well, these days PCs don't have floppy drives as floppies have become extinct and PCs have began to be replaced by laptops or tabs.

So, looking back can be fun sometimes.

Two Men Two Videos

There are two men I admire the most in films; one is   Clint Eastwood, after watching Million Dollar Baby I started digging his material, mostly the films he has directed rather than acted and I'd say that I haven't felt disappointed once. The other is Anurag Kashyap, we are of same age and I always felt that we shared a brotherhood of struggle (or whatever you may call it), he has surpassed that phase now but I'm still stuck there. And, the other thing we share is our dislike for Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Black.

And, if you're wondering what makes these two eminent men to share space here, it is just that I saw  two videos with these two guys in the last few days:

The first video is of Eastwood's speech at the Republican National Convention in Florida a few days back.

I don't have much knowledge of American Elections, so, can't really gauge the impact of this show but it brought into my mind the Malayalam saying 'however old the squirrel may be it never forgets the skill of climbing trees' (the Hindi equivalent of this borders on being an insult, so not mentioning here), same way Eastwood never stops being macho. Here is Roger Ebert's take on the whole  thing.

The second video is of Anurag speaking about his film Black Friday in Brazil last year.

Here is my short take on Black Friday the book from which the movie is adapted.

PS: As Anurag mentions in the video I too had seen the film on DVD sourced from roadside vendor in New Delhi, when my brother had gone there.

PPS: Special thanks to my Facebook friend Binu Narayan who'd posted Anurag's video there on the tenth (Arurag birthday).

Indelible - The Film

I'd thought that my association (or obsession if you like to call it that) with Down's Syndrome had come to end with the publication of this short story. But, the link got revived a couple of nights back when I chanced upon a short film titled Indelible directed by Pavitra Chalam through twitter.

The film shows glimpses of life of seven persons of different age groups having this syndrome:

PS: Another coincidence connected with this film being that I knew Akshay Shankar, the production manager of this film as a toddler (pre kindergarten age) as he happens to be the son of one of my teachers in the special school. In fact, we both learnt being on all fours together, while I was made to do it on the physio mat with my crooked hands tied with gaiters, it came naturally to him.

Where are we headed?

A fabulous music video on Environmental Activism; I love the earthy tone and the acoustic music.

Got it from Salil Bhai’s blog, my second best writer hero after Alexis Leon. Can any post of mine be complete without his mention?

Read their life stories here and here.