Sunday 8 September 2013

Love Unknown



Love Unknown

Caught in the convulsions of thought;
I wonder…
You have that man waiting
I got that girl sighing
Yet…
What is the cause?
Of this ecstasy of imagination
What is this tremor?
This thought and that idea,
Makes us uncomfortable
We run in the rain, to find that pane.
And, the jest just goes on.
The music of your laughter
And the rhapsody of my words.
The world going round;
And the birds flying high.
Our eyes meet, at that infinite universe
Yet, the reluctance of this Earthly endurance.
The mad man writes on,
The hopeless romantic dies alone,
The Absurdist goes back on his own.



Saturday 13 July 2013

Film:Revolution:Friday:Theseus

                                                                      Film:Revolution:Friday:Theseus

  The first film I remember watching was 1942: A love Story in a shabby single screen theatre called Payal in Siliguri, and ever since have been watching movies with a great religious zeal and a spiritual fervor. I think, this mania can be attributed to a genetic fault, as every family member were ardent moviegoers, with my father frequently sporting Bachhan haircuts and my mother wearing that same Devdas sarees in marriages. Nevertheless, cinema was always considered entertainment, a pass time with no acknowledgement of its trans-formative power and magic. It was a strange dialectic, with movies always being  part of a live oral national discourse, yet remotely significant. Cinema is an important aspect of the cultural landscape, yet has been consciously ignored/subsided/censored/poisoned.
  With the injection of progressive Jesuit Education, and passion for movies and quizzing in my life, the edge of horizon of perception and understanding was ever expanding. The addiction of movies as a past time with consumption of kitsch Bollywoodish garbage, metamorphosed into the quest of the science, language and art of cinema. However, there were two problems, accessibility and lone viewing. The accessibility problem was mitigated to a certain extent with the great piracy boom in the early 2000’s and with torrents and Internet, the accessibility question remains a non issue. However, the other problem was a serious one. In a small town like Darjeeling, of which I am sure applies to a number of other places in the country is that cinema is not serious/art/meaningful; I remember this teacher telling me to take real life more seriously than reel life. I did not understand this remark then, but when I think today, about the remark, I strongly feel  that Indian cinema and its flag bearers are themselves  responsible for films being perceived as something which is non cerebral/jokish/frivolous and rather trivial. However, coming back to the question of cinema as art, I find the insight by the great Satyajit Ray very helpful, “Cinema is often not perceived as art, as many argue it lacks the purity of a painting, abstract qualities of music, analytical scope of the novel and the intensity of the theater.” However, with an ever expansion in cinematic geography and landscape, it has the scope of all the above virtues, and moreover, in a synthesis of all leads to the ability of cinema being most powerful and profound  of all art forms.

  

 My first dialogue with cinema began with a film called Black Friday, which I saw on a pirated print with Chintoo Candy ads scattered all over, and then, years later when it was released, I saw it on a big screen with another 6 people in the audience, and I was transformed.  As I sit down to write this post, after a stint of liberal education at Stephens, where a group of us in smokey rooms and empty stomachs, cultivated a taste for the language and idiom of cinema. The aesthetic poetry of WKW, the pathological edginess of Scorsese, the genius of Kauffman and the visions of Satoshi Kon were considered important landmarks/inventions/discoveries in the history of the mind and the mankind. However, on this rainy day when I type, I feel a strong remorse at the state of the Indian cinema multiverse. Though I do not deny that there have been some good films but being the largest producer and consumer of cinema, the number is too minuscule and microscopic. The apathy towards cinema being art/serious/meaningful/relevance is similar to politics being distant/impersonal/non participatory in the collective consciousness of the majority population in our country. In the long process of self delusion and maintenance of the existent cultural and psychological status quo, I can safely say we have become ‘harmonious schizophrenics’.

  Using the revolutionary rhetoric, this era whether to be considered archaic/medieval/modern or post modern, where surfing and torrents mean different things altogether, we are heading towards a crucial stage in human evolution/development/progress and this will extend to the domain of Indian cinema. The Director’s rare will become prominent; the breed of movie makers belonging to parallel cinema will continue its profound quest for art/language/science in cinema and other frivolous mainstream in its race for ascent of 100/500/1000 and so on crore mark will be forever afflicted by the Sisyphean curse. The contours of cultural landscape are changing, and will get a head start with one of the most important films of our times, The Ship of Theseus, and I guarantee new paradigms will emerge. Like the Theseus’s paradox, the parts of the old ship are being replaced, with new ones, and Indian cinema will change forever. 





Saturday 18 May 2013

The Documentary of Progress



The Documentary of Progress


Harbingers of Development;
We bring Growth!
Let’s Dance with Pop,
Drop your tools and;
Be a Man.
Kill that Innocence,
Wear the cosmetic.
Don’t die of starvation,
Waste the food.
Lose your meaning,
Google the information
Give up all your love;
Take our charity.
Sing with us our chant,
What is there in your folk song?
Off with that smell,
With this Musky scent.
Change your only cloth,
With this labelled Gem.

Harbingers of Development,
We bring growth!
Leading to the abyss of progress
Lose yourself!



Sunday 7 April 2013

Which Street? That Street!

Which Street? That Street!


This street in the place.
Souls twining on naked bodies,
Spirits flowing through the veins;
All dance in this place.

This street in the place.
Where perfume lingers,
Ghosts dance in neon lights
Music fills the silence of the night
Where all want to be One,
And One can’t be None.

This street in the place.
Lust in the beats.
Greed in the feast.
One desires Peace;
But settles for his wish.

This street in the place.
Wisdom is Epicurus;
Pleasure is all fair.
People go, Ghosts return.
Music changes, History Alters.
Water remains blue,
Sun beats still.
The night is drunk.
The day is tanned.
I, died, We Live.
The Bottles are refilled,
The ghosts resume their dance
Neon Lights burn on.
Which was this place?


Sunday 17 March 2013

The Fall


The FALL



The Volcano erupts, Dawn awakens...
Cry Foul! Respect seek Justice;
The poor despaired, the rich fast asleep
The music plays on...
Volcano erupts...
Erupts Red again,
Stones Fry Dead;
Gluttons Die, Starved Live;
The Game Still on...
All Fakes Sold
Music is dead;
The Stone is rolled away
The Day is over…
The heretics stabbed
Ghetto stands quiet;
The Child Flies!
Phoenix Rise
Modernity Darkens,
   We Fall!!


Sunday 24 February 2013

Sari...Burkha...Bombay...Man


Sari...Burkha...Bombay...Man

  
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds   
At the meeting of my thighs?
(Maya Angelou)

  I belong to a Marwari family, some prefer to call it Baniya, makhichoos, kaiyaan, etc all designated as a metaphor/hyperbole/exaggeration of the world famous lust of a Marwari householder to earn more and spend less. What may be the credence to this assertion or myth, is mysterious and unanswerable. Another stereotype which goes with such households are ladies post marriage can be seen only in saris. I have seen many women now turning to salwaar kameez, which mind you is considered a very radical garment by the older generations, as it has less scope for a bye gone practice of covering your head and sometimes even the entire face with the garment; especially in front of the masculine gender and elders. Though I did not belong to such medieval times, my mother along with other ladies in my family wore a sari by choice and occasionally Salwaar Kameez but were not instructed to cover their head all the times, other than religious or family gatherings. I personally do not have any problems with a sari, it is actually quite an elegant piece of garment if wore properly and also, its multipurpose usages are quite admirable.
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  Mumbai/Bombay is an incident that happens to you. I came here to the city after my graduation, to work with the schools in the slums. One of my schools is an Urdu School by the name of Shahji nagar which is located in the Trombay area of the city which is considered notorious for both its crime rates as well as incredibly pathetic living conditions of the marginalized sections of the society. My work is challenging, exhilarating, adventurous and spiritual if I can call it so. But this  is not about my work nor is it about Bombay. It is about that one day under the grey sky when the sun hid behind the clouds, when something so peculiar yet not so extra ordinary, so every day but still once in forever happened.

 The day was Friday, when all the Urdu Schools of the city have a half day. The attendance which is different from enrolment (for those not acquainted with Government School terminology) was low as usual, and the children who came were not there to study and the teachers invariably were also not there to teach. A government school especially a school under construction does not look or resemble like a teaching learning centre, instead it is actually quite like a kaleidoscope or a montage of our country, teachers drinking chai and gossiping over soaps and serials, offices with files biting dust, children fighting and biting each other’s toes, government aided supply of shitty food being trampled, toilets stinking like chemistry labs, guards abusing like butchers, no electricity, undrinkable water, noise, cacophony...promise of Education in Shining India being betrayed, raped; everything happening simultaneously, is scary, absurd and worrisome. My job, if not to clean the mess, is to not add to it, and then maybe reduce it (a far distant dream). Though the above picture/description is not true for everyone and everywhere, and my description may be a slight exaggeration if not a hyperbole.
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Ms. Nilufar was a MA B.Ed from Baroda, and had taken to teaching in government schools since 1992, the year also when my sister was born. She was married to a government servant and had a child who studied in a Special School because he suffered from ADSD. Ms. Nilufar had taught various classes in elementary school and was an exceptional teacher, gaining her quite a recognition in the Ward as compared to her peers who were only cogs in a machine, completely lacking the human element in teaching. Watching her teach Social Sciences in elementary classes was a delight, a performance, an innovation which could easily surpass any teacher from the country. My first encounter with her was, when she was teaching the Freedom Movement in Standard 4, her lesson jumped from the meaning of independence to equality to concept of rights was ...was...I was speechless! I had never seen something like that. It was a religious revelation of sorts, meaning/purpose of education at display. Every visit to that school would be incomplete without a conversation with Ms. Nilufar, where I shared what I knew and she would listen attentively and then give me a completely different perspective on education which I was unaware or maybe had  never even thought about. She had about 36 children in her class, and all of them enjoyed Ms. Nilufar’s presence and performance.
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile that Friday (remember), the kaleidoscope/montage...Bombay now called Mumbai was sticky and humid, the day was grey and sun hid behind the clouds. The city was restless and less vibrant than usual, Sachin had retired from One Day Internationals, Bal Thackeray was dead, many and also, Yash Chopra died of Dengue, more slums were being demolished to give way to bigger enclaves and housing societies, food prices were on a rise and more and more Bahiyyas and Undu Pundus landed on the island. After the morning shift was over, Ms. Nilufar and I had planned to go to Dadar to buy various Teacher Learning and Teaching Aid Materials. We left the school around 1, when the sound of the Azaan could be still heard from the speakers of the mosque.
 
Before leaving the school she wore the burkha. This was the first time I would walk with a lady who wore a burkha. My house in Darjeeling is in a Muslim neighborhood but one wearing a burkha is a rare sight. A burkha and a sarei both wore by females, are something which is understood and is very different. Only the face is visible, the feet and hands, and everything else is covered. A sight of the eye or the lips is tremendously, profoundly, intensely; powerful. And the blackness of the garment, makes it extremely difficult to ignore. It was my first time, it was special and also strange. I have walked with females wearing different garments but never a burkha. It was a funny feeling I must say. It was not a provocative attire nor an intimidating one, and Ms. Nilufar seemed quite at ease in it. I saw the way some men looked at the lipstick on her mouth and the kajaal around her eyes. It did remind of many a lot women who I had seen covering their faces and head with the sarei in the presence of men. We bought the learning aids, stopped by for a soda, had a vada pav, and had endless conversations regarding school, education, children, books, Ghalib, Manto, etc, etc.
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  I am a man, who is sexually different from a female. I am also aware and at times also scared of my carnal desires. An act of copulation/reproduction/procreation is the basis of life in this world. It is a determinant factor in the way human beings are what they are. Wasn't it Freud who completely based his psychoanalytic theory of the mind on sex. Or are those ascetics who in their reach for enlightenment and knowledge have to pass the most challenging of obstacles kama/lust/desire. Pornography and Rape are on an exponential high growth rate. Have men not evolved from their beastly state of their forefathers and still are largely under its spell. And are we men not aware of it? Yes, Fuck We are. But what worries me today is this carnal desire which is inevitable is being exploited and deliberately made perverse contrary to its sacred, aesthetic and natural inception. Advertising, Billboards, Xnxx, Twilight, Pornography, etc and etc with rapes and pedophilia ..Man/Human/or An-ANIMAL. Men are probably with little historical or sociological research, have been a sort of guiding force of development, evolution and civilization. These same men deigned the burkha, the custom of women covering their faces and so on, a defense mechanism from one of the most powerful impulses in a man. Fear of one’s own desires. The danger that lay in looking. The powerlessness of that MAN...and  That Pornographic Ugly Propaganda....
                                                                    





Sunday 3 February 2013

Gibberish at the Chai Stall #2


Gibberish at the Chai Stall #2

This Narcopolis, Great and abound;
Shit and Sperm;
 Blood and Wine
Ugly and Sexy, 
Bore and Dope;
Teach and Unlearn...
Grow and Decay...
Fall and Rise;
Man and Wife...
Xylem and Phloem;
Justice and Corruption.
Give me Hope
Betray me not;
Strip me, not Rape
Truth Prevails, not Fake
Right nor Left
Dumb but Free
Live not Die
Sea please See...
Argo, Go fuck yourself!