Green Cover and the Naked Sun

Taken from a cab a couple of days back

While returning from work last evening

Useless Feet :P

Bangalored - II

Deep in Conversation

My Sis-in-Law Kanchan

& Ma

Check Bangalored - I  here.

Books

Some books have a meditative quality.

They make you forget the surroundings,

the colour of paper, fonts, dog ears or any such thing.

Just words and thoughts therein revibrate inside.

Taking you closer to bliss.

Bangalored - I

Manish working from home - shaken not stirred (I mean the pic)

The Couple - Kanchan & Manish

Ranveer guiding me on the ramp

Quenching the thirst

Father, Son & the laptop

Jai obediently poses for me

Not so heavy traffic in the by-lanes of Kormangala

Truckloads of Joy

I tried clicking some trucks parked in and around Willingdon Island while returning from work. It is amazing how mundane sights become interesting when you have a camera with you.

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.

A torn poster and a hoarding

Watching film posters is a weakness from childhood (this was clicked while going to work sitting in an auto).

And, this while coming back...



(was trying to get this hoarding of Biennale on the Thompampady Bridge for a while now).

Happy 2013

Under Construction

A multi-storey housing complex coming up next door. They had brought down an 'old world' tiled house there. I regret not having a camera with me to capture the old structure for posterity.

On the clothes line

എന്റെ പ്ലാവ്‌ പൂക്കുന്നു (കട ചക്ക) My curry jack-fruit tree is flowering... 



As clicked by Ma (below):

Caught the setting sun

In fluke, from the auto rickshaw while returning from work yesterday. I was just trying to click and see if I could maintain my balance without really focussing on anything particular. Lucky Me!

Effort to capture a Hibiscus

In the end Ma did it very effortlessly

Kochi Muziris Biennale/ Fort Kochi

Visited Fort Kochi yesterday afternoon with friends Sendhil, Raju and Raju's brother Nitin to see what Kochi Muziris Biennale is all about. We had been planning this kind of outing for a long while now and it just coincided with the Biennale.

Against the empty walls in the David Hall:

with Sendhil

with Raju

It is a black wall for a change

Books in the background

In the Parade Ground

A fallen tree

On the walkway

with artist Mrida Joshi

This is her website.

These photos are clicked by Raju, Sendhil and Nitin (who refused to face the camera) random order.

Guilt

Guilt feeds on your innards

It is easy to forgive others

When they err

but tough to pacify your own soul

If you are the one who has erred.

It's a tightrope walk

Being aware of your limitations yet not letting them depress you or stop you from doing what you can takes effort.

After the coming of twitter and facebook single line posts have disappeared from blogs, otherwise I remember many popular bloggers posting single line thoughts or recommending something to read many times in a day.

The above thought came to me in the afternoon and as usual I saved it in my phone with the intention of copying in fb and twitter later. Then this idea struck me why not use the blog? I've always felt that a blog deserves respect and it shouldn't be used unless you've something substantial to say. So, I've posted this thought here just to fight my long held notion.

I'd started preparing the background for a longer post about how this thought sprouted and the vague experience behind it. Then said to myself "What the hell...".

Anyway, this has become a long post of respectable length for this blog.

Hand-Eye Coordination – My Experiments with the Camera

I have admired and envied sports-persons like Virender Sehwag and others who are said to have great hand-eye coordination that helps them bring magical charm to their game. For me let alone hand-eye coordination, my hands most of the time refuse to move on my wish. But, I do try to push myself once in a while I like to try something that feels though at the onset.

Trying to click photos is one of them, like I tried last weekend in the break between watching two films back to back in Saritha Theatre,  it helps the place is wheelchair friendly by default and I can reach all the three screens without being physically carried much.

Da Thadiya - One of the most eagerly awaited X'mas releases

Corridor leading to the theatre

Apart from watching movies, I love to see the pics of forthcoming attractions while being in a theatre

Being pushed to my seat

Seats next to mine

Thanks Slogan Murugan for the idea of taking pictures of my weekly visits to the theatres.

A Poem

Wishing that a poem comes to me now.

Just to let you know how precious you are.

To describe the effect your crackling voice has on me.

And, to be reassured that true love

doesn't diminish with the distance

or the lapse of time.

What I could click

Serious Men, the Amul Girl & of course a couple of movies on my table

Picture on the wall

Typing the previous post.

Getting a grip of the new Canon Powershot A2300

Education: By Mani Ratnam via Baradwaj Rangan

The religious significance of Vijayadashami is well known, the day is also known as Vidyarambham when young ones are initiated into the world of letters. In my school days Ma used say that you'd learn something today as it is an auspicious day, at least do your homework. I've carried on that ritual to this day – not because I'm overly religious or something. It just makes me feel good to read or write something new. So, this year I picked up Conversations with Mani Ratnam by Baradwaj Rangan. And, one of the most interesting passage I read that day was: 

This shift from paper to film, this metamorphosis, is the chemistry that makes or mars a director. That was the first day, and by the third or fourth day I remember telling Balu Mahendra, 'I want to run.' And he said 'Don't worry, I felt it the first day when I started directing a film.' He said that the disillusionment would pass soon, and he was right – in the sense that you slowly start learning that this transition from paper, from the abstract to reality, is your coming to terms with a different medium, that you have to rediscover everything in this medium. You actually reinvent your ideas on film. There has to be a leap from paper to screen. That's the job of a director – to elevate what's in the script to the next plane. You have to put in an effort to bring in other elements to make it alive. That is the key – to make it alive, to make it magical. You have to take the elements around you and invest them in that scene. You have to be able to draw the actor into that particular moment, so that he will bring something of himself into the character he is playing. It is like shedding one skin and taking on another. The most difficult thing in the first phase was this transition. And then you discover that there are some things that you cannot write and can only capture. Whatever you write, the magic of capturing the moment, a face, an expression, a bit of light, a movement – and you really discover that while making films. You discover that those are the things that really elevate a scene on the page to the next level. 

As I'm grappling with a story idea for a film for the last few months, having virtually no idea about how  to put my vision on to the paper and then transposing it on the screen, I feel that this passage may prove to be the guiding light for me. 

Here is an old post about Baradwaj Rangan's interview with Rajiv Menon. 

PS. I've completed reading almost hundred pages of the book (upto the chapter covering Anjali) till now. 

PPS. Sorry, if this post sounds dated as Vidyarambham has become history now and Diwali is upon us. But it is better late than never, na? 

Happy Diwali!

Why?

Why do bowels play truant?

Not letting me focus.

Reminding me to invoke Gods

And, pray that this night passes off without disasters

Or making me take refuge in sleep

Or endless games of Solitaire

Just as a distraction.



PS: experimenting to be creative about a mundane situation. Sorry, if it sounds crass to you.

Blog Impact

The title of this post is inspired from newspapers/channels, it is used when their report or a story gets positive response or makes powers to be act to redress a grievance or correct a mistake.

I always thought that my blog is just read by a few people close to me or people I coax to read by mailing them the link of a new post (blowing my own trumpet, in short), never thinking that it would be of any consequence as such. 

More than anything else, it is writing practise; trying to make an incidence in my life or articulating my own thoughts or just putting the words rambling in my head into this space. The most common thing behind all these things is timidity or you can call it laziness, I've to force myself to type word after word as if some fear is holding me back.

This post about how a breath analyser played tricks  with my cab-driver friend Robert was similarly written. But, surprisingly it has put him in the Caravan Magazine.

It so happened that I'd put additional info that Robert performed Chavittunatakam. Reading that Minu Ittyipe (one of my first writer-journalist friend) mailed me asking his me his number and came out with this beautiful write-up about him.

In fact, Minu has helped in alleviating my guilt  a little as I'd talked to Robert and one of his uncle at length about their passion for Chavittunatakam wishing to write about it somewhere but, somehow couldn't do it. Above all, Robert is very happy and excited to see his story in print, he says: “now, I can show this book to friends who tease me as being a king when I refuse to join them in fun and frolic citing a rehearsal or a performance”.

So, thank you Minu Ittyipe.

Take the plunge

Take the plunge

Burn the bridges

Be like the trapeze artist

Who doesn’t care about the safety net

Once the act is on

Just articulate your thoughts

Give your emotions a free run

You live only once

So don’t let regret be your soul-mate

Rather make joy your constant companion.

Death has its own charm

Death has its own charm

Not the thoughts of another world

Or the joys promised therein

It is just dropping the burden of guilt

Or the craving for love

And, experiencing the calm buzz

Of a motor that has just been switched off.

Note:

The first line of this was throbbing in my head from early last week. I kept adding and deleting lines to it, not wishing it to have negative connotations. And, yesterday I came across these lines from Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, which gave me the impetus to finish it:

The reason death sticks so closely isn't biological necessity – it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.

Age and wisdom: residue of a review – a strange connection between Chattakari and Run Baby Run

Read it here.

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.

Something Beyond

There is something beyond exhilaration and numbing sorrow.

Making pain and pleasure feel petty.

As if the soul is just floating through life.

It is the time you spend with someone who is really in love.

Dichotomy

Dichotomy was one of my favourite words when I started learning this language seriously in my mid or late teens. I used look at it in the dictionary without really being able to grasp the essence of it. So, this word never came into my (don’t know everyone who aspires to write may be having a wish to use a new word he/she comes across) writing.


Recently, it struck me again; I was talking to a friend and out of the blue he asked ‘how do you sustain your cheer?’ (people dealing with me closely do know that I’m not always cheerful, I become sad, depressed, angry and even vicious sometimes), I just said ‘it is my normal state, I don’t do anything special for it.’ Still, the look of enquiry was in tact on his face, so I continued ‘look at the bigger picture, be grateful for what you have, be focussed, try not to think of things that are beyond your control etc. etc.’


Then ‘dichotomy’ resurfaced from somewhere inside, whatever I said was opposite to what we are conditioned to think ‘live in this moment, here and now’. In fact, we reverse the thought process of ‘here and now’ when the individual moments become miserable, fooling ourselves that everything will be hunky-dory once these miserable moments pass. Basically, we are just expected to carry on even if we are miserable in this moment or the future looks bleak.


Isn’t this the real essence of ‘dichotomy’? Which no dictionary can explain...


A similar post is here


I wrote the poem Lost to use the word oblivion.