..:)

woke up to this wonderful piece of news..

'The Other Song' won The Best International Documentary Award at Pusan International Film Festival, South Korea. 

The festival is one of the key asian festivals and shows some of the most vibrant works.

So congratulations Saba!

This was the second film I had worked on as an assistant in some capacity. 

The first was 'The City Beautiful', with Rahul Roy.

The memories that old projects carry...

Those were times when I would just get up in the morning, sit around the house, catch a blue line bus and go to work and come back whenever. No worries about social security applications, the jumble mix of codes and numbers to doors, what and when to do groceries...

'The City Beautiful' was also the film on which I literally learnt the non linear editing, both conceptually and technically.

I am a random technophobe. Sometimes I just won't want to learn out of a strange resistance.

But at Saba's..all this was easy..coupled with rather generous servings of kebabs and Kadhi for lunch, that sweet Mangal Singh smile!..and Reena's little lunch packs full of melons and papaya..:)

How I wish I had a picture of us..

but am going back in december and there shall be time to make them now.

Thanks for this...:)

I am reworking Nilofeur completely.

This has helped me so much...

thank you all for these lovely bits of scribbles.

wish you a happy divali...:)

:) It is just so cold!

Salsa, Diana and I

while D dances, I make pictures.

This was a great place to just sit back, watch and listen.

So, I just let it be.

A day at the auditions...

It was just the thrill of experiencing something like this.

The moment an actor looks into the camera, with a line of directors sitting in front of her

and think of nothing but the camera in that moment.

How else is it possible to perform?

I saw some brilliant character performances.

Some really fine actors.

My script has gone for a toss in the meanwhile.

Not one South Asian (read Indian)

So maybe..now the chances are that am acting.

Biryani

This is what it looked like.

China Town

Back to School

In the past one month, I don't know how many times I have been asked this question.

So after a handshake, "how does it feel to be back at school".

Good! Awesome!

But there is something that remains to be said and am saying it here..

Be prepared to roll your own chappatis, wash you own clothes, chop vegetables, buy groceries, make a list of things that are about to end, make separate shopping lists for the Indian Store and the Local Store, catch up on writing/reading assignments, learn to wax, thread and the works because the damn thing is just too expensive here ..

 

the only thing am not going to do here on my own is a haircut>

So I have been told that they thread in New York. 

Something on which I have never spent more than Rs 20/- now, possibly could be done at $12/- that too if I go to New York

I am still badly oriented to the dollar. Very badly. And miss the ease of understanding the lovely Indian rupee with the familiar Gandhi ji on one side.

I feel as if I am directing a road show..Live.

As my friend some days back said, " I wish I had multiple hands like Indian goddesses..so with one I could lug the mac, with the other I could clutch the grocery bag and with the third I could pull out the house keys and somehow get into the house".

I am Here...

I got to Philadelphia on September 1st, 2009.

I know after a while remembering dates like this feels truly cheesy and overloaded.

But some dates just need to be given the space to be remembered more than others.

After having finished 'Four Women and a Room' and getting a 'permanent/government' job at what is called one of the most well reputed media institutes in India, life could have just been like that. Grounded. I could have done more documentaries. Pretended a bit more. The way I had done in the past.  With every new film, I had felt more and more uncomfortable with the idea of pointing the camera for my purposes. I tried 'participatory' work soon to discover that though very relevant, it cannot escape questions of power and issues of morality in totality.

And so I was with a one way ticket on a plane to Paris. My first visit to the US.

Charles de Gaulle Airport is like a true monument in the sense where a 

monument stands up purely for its 'monumenatlity' and nothing else.

It cannot stand for concepts of 'functionality' But goddam this is no war memorial. It is an airport. There are some hundreds of strangely connected terminals that take hours to get to and get from. And I spent some deadly eight hours there without being able to get hands on a simple phone card with which I could kill time.

Anyway, on the Paris to Philadelphia flight I sit next to a fellow Indian who is grinning all through. He is too happy because the flight attendant has just called us a 'family'. He has no idea how he bugs me. It was after landing, on my way home, I was to realize the importance of being discreet and not letting my irritation show through. He was sweet as a pie and lugged my 26kg bag only to park me in the car and go and pull his stuff. Thank you..:)

As the plane takes off, he is shifting in his chair to catch a picture of Eiffel Tower.

Disappointed at not being able to do that, he thrusts the camera in my face and takes a picture of himself.

I reach home to a person I have never met before and feel at home.

Absolutely. In the next few days, I go around Philly, window shopping ( my third love) and street hopping. I go to a feature shoot on my first weekend here. Join classes the very next day and as the weeks pass, my little diary that contains a list of works I see and people I meet just grows and grows and grows.

Tuesday is a day of postings. I absolutely love writing 'The Eiffel and the Itinerant'. And today see some exquisite e-literature concepts with Rod. 

Revisit Hiroshima Mon Amour and fall in love again.

Am sure that in the next few months my ideas about why I am here and where I want to go shall change. But at the moment this opportunity to just be and see is great.

Am just finding it a bit hard to fit in my Salsa classes...with so many lovely old houses converted to dance studios, that's something I would die if I miss.

HARDLINES/SOFTLINES

The abstract for a piece I shall be doing for the Sarai Reader titled 'Fear' is done. Phew. 
I like the way I have titled it: Hardlines/Softlines.
A friend has read it and liked it.
So that means a good beginning atleast.
This month is going to be a relaxed one before I finally leave. 
Am driving/walking through parts of Delhi/Lucknow..lot more places to go still. 
Taking pictures/recording sounds/listening/watching.
Beginning work on two new films!!
Work at Mass Communication Center wrapped up and over.
Feel nice at the prospect of being a student away from home.
A totally new place..and yes I have found my first home on my own.
The mad thrill of starting afresh and free.
Yes..you do carry the past. 
It is never like a foreign country as they say.
But with so much going on, so many new beginnings..I just want to find someone to say thank you to!

Four Women and a Room wins Best Documentary Silver at IDPA, Mumbai, 09

What an evening I landed on.
Dry Delhi almost reaching 48C to rainy rainy Bombay.
No taxis, no autos at the airport. 
A never ending line of passengers ready to pay triple the amount and get home or where ever.
And I never shy away from saying that I tend to overpack.
So there I was stranded with a big red suitcase with two hours to run to my Bandra home, get dressed and be back at Orchids, Ville Parle. Mohammed, my taxi man for the evening, came to rescue. 
An incredibly sweet person ready to help.

But despite his sweetness, the music he was playing made me want to jump out of the cab.
Songs I had overheard from the little garment factories in Zakir Nagar, where I grew up.
Songs that brought memories of countless terrace romances , of mine and others.
The traffic jam extended from the airport upto Lilavati. Phew. 
And I had given up hopes of reaching anywhere that night.
But finally as the blue neon Orchid sign loomed out of the dark, I knew I was there.
And now, as I hunt for my wallet, I don't find it.
I ring up home. 'Yes the red thing is here...right on the bed you've left it.'
****.

Feeling guilty, feeling stupid, getting late, feeling more guilty. All of it together.
I pleaded with Mohammed if he could come home the next morning and collect.
'Madam..aap mere ko itna bhi nahin samjhe? Paisa Kya hai...
I wanted you to reach safe and sound', he said with that sweetest smile ever.
This was the city where I had been robbed off a mac on my last visit be an autowallah.
This was a city where there was Mohammed.

This was the first red carpet in my life. Yes. There was red carpet everywhere.
I was happy for 'Four Women and a Room' for it is the film that has taught me so much. 
Has challenged me to more than my limits. 
Has given me endless sleepless nights. 
Has for days put me to unrest.
Has forced me to look inwards before looking anywhere else.
And has repeatedly said, 'let your passion drive me to where it takes...'.

I don't feel the need to make pictures strangely enough.
Not of any moment/person that evening. I meet long lost friends.
But for some reason, I can't stop thinking of Mohammed and his life in the city.
If at all, I need his picture.
And then on my drive back home with a friend, as we discover that we have a lizard as our fellow companion, all I can think of is my drenched copy of 'The Namesake'.

So there I did it again.

I was trying to combine the 'Untitled' pictures with the 'Untitled After a Long Time'.

phew...

Untitled

Untitled after a long time...

Am back after a long break.

For a while was finding managing and editing blogs a bit tiring. 

I still have to literally spend hours doing something simple. But am figuring out.

This evening has done something. Have finally found time.

My leave application at MCRC feels a bit like 'Waiting for Godot'.

These "corridors of enlightenment" suck F says.

She calls up to ask how things went today. 

Am uncovering long lost secrets in my old/new home. 

Old photographs, LP records, memorabilia, things from time past.

It is a rainy evening.

Please register your slight discomfort if you please

I am calling him CM because I fear that he might lose his job.

CM works as a book vendor for Bahri Sons, Khan Market.

At this point, a couple of words about Bahri Sons.

It is one of the oldest and well reputed book stores in the posh Khan Market, Delhi.

Intellectual hob-knobbing and idea shopping is what the best of Delhi does there.

It is a much loved hangout place for a lot of us.

But when CM is asked to deliver books at places often more than 20 kilometers 

from Khan Market, all he is provided with is a BICYCLE.

Please note the mad traffic on Delhi roads, the heat and his age.

He is thin and gaunt. Nearing late fifties I say.

And so I overheard him say, " Main to cycle chalate chalate mar jaoonga".

(I shall die with so much cycling).

The store insists that he wear a clean blue uniform.

An embroidered tag on his shirt pocket reads "Bahri Sons".

I am still wondering are they mindless about this negative publicity if nothing else?

In the past, CM has protested but nobody at the Store has listened.

He cannot leave this job because there is no other way...

even this job came after so much wait and effort and he cannot go through that again. 

He says no energy now.

My friend Ramesh and I are appalled. Morally appalled.

Because the order was to be delivered to him, he dials up Bahri Sons 

almost fearing for the old RP.

He is connected to one Mr. Manager who speaks with an affected twang.

He pretends to know nothing.

CM has a glass of water and leaves.

Ramesh and I talk of him and Slumdog Millionaire.

And it seems so trivial. 

So when you go to Bahri Sons next, just think of yourself being there...in a kind of reflexive way.

Protest such that CM does not lose his last job.

This sucks.

How I Never Forget Certain Places...

Or, how certain places will keep coming back to me.
Lately, I have been travelling and I miss home.
But not one particular corner of a cranny in the mortar and rubble that builds the walls of my home..
I miss Zakir Nagar. My notion of home extends into the lanes and bylanes of this neighbourhood where I have grown up.
And so, it reaches Batla House through a winding road lined with kebab kiosks with a flat five minute stroll.
Following is a piece I wrote late into the evening of September 19th, 2008, the evning of the Batla House encounter killings.


I was at the Mass Communication Research Center, Jamia, when the news
of the 'encounter' came in.
Late into the afternoon, when we were absolutely sure that the
gunshots fell silent...(because we were constantly getting
'eyewitness' accounts that two 'terrorists' had been killed and their
bodies had been dragged into the PCR van)...I was walking towards
Zakir Nagar through Batla House.
The road that leads to Batla House from Jamia Nagar was being manned
by some six hundred policemen at the turn-about. People in the
neighbourhood are now tensed about the possibility of policemen
dressed as civilians combing the area.
As I walked, I overheard the policemen say.."Ram-Ram bolo..Ram-Ram" .
Some of them directly looked into my eye, gun toting and
macho-posturing, and muttered some extra words under their breath.

Apart from the media battery and police force, the roads were largely
deserted. In one of the bylanes, a group of some eight year olds stood
awestruck... they believed they had been witnesses to some film
shooting. Earlier in the day, their teachers at the Batla House
Government School had asked them to leave immediately once the news of
the encounter came in.
And one of the kids wondered what could have happened if one of the
'terrorists' (out of the two the police claimed had fled)...got into
the school and held them at gunpoint? Others said they felt equally
scared outside because there was so much chaos, Nobody knew where to
go..and what could happen.
There was an unmistaken awareness of 'narratives of terror' and the
bunch of eight year olds endlessly predicted the outcome.

The neighbouhood is far too familiar with circumstances of young men
who come to Delhi from remote corners of UP and Bihar to 'build' a
life. People here are casting doubts over the operation and claim that
Atif was as normal a boy as any twenty-four year old could be...that
anyone of them could be easily targetted and made out to be a
terrorist in the future.

This morning between 8am-9.30am, Headlines Today was running a story
about the surrender of Zeeshan (the other 25 yr old student who the
police claims is one of the two terrorists who managed to escape)at
its headquarters.
"His surrender itself raises questions about the claims of the
police"...and while we were discussing this, the channel went on to
scramble mode..and the transmission stopped. It is still stuck.
One hour later, It is a still shot of Atif's elder brother in
Headlines Today Studio. In his interview he had said that he did not
believe the police claims. I checked all the other channels...nobody
was running this story.
All of them were mourning the death of Mohan Chand Sharma; the
encounter specialist in Delhi Police. Patriotic scores like 'aye mere
watan ke logon...' form a poignant backdrop against which a nation is
made out to mourn.
I am also deeply saddened by his death like everybody else but am
wondering how certain other stories that are emerging since yesterday,
have been..or will be.. hushed up.
POSTED BY AMBARIEN AT 7:49 PM 1 COMMENTS