its back! i'm back!!

yaay! god its been ages!...and i've been to kanyakumari, villupuram and ahmedabad...and there have been those awful serial train blasts...that made these blogs drop outta sight for a bit...

but yes, i can say, i did miss writing...got quizzed the quintessential blogger question - so just why do you write and for whom??...bugger them!! we'll just keep writing as n when we feel like and whoever wants to can dip in n out...

but right now i'm tired...tired that c! ain't home n away in chennai on a shoot. tired of our hide-n-seek...wonder how radha n gopa (our friends in dubai) are so at peace with their own away lives...worse, shooting tensions get amplified when one is away n tend to disrupt normal lines of communication...that's when you want to slam that handset into the ground when the line drops...buddha ain't smiling no more...and me is sad...

whatthefuckk!

...can't seemto connect to my blog for days now...so much happened so much to write about....godcursed!

NG NGO's

Been some time since i last wrote...inordinately long, i'd say! kinda brooding and uninspired to write. then, one phone call changed all that...a docu shoot on microfinance n women to be shot outside pune, kankyakumari n outside ahmdabad over 25 days in july! i jumped to it...

i don't want to write about insecure clueless loud bong women just yet...the villages we went to in the fertile plateau betw pune n nashik were a treat in the rains. all green n bountiful, bursting with grape, tomato, groundnut, pomegranate, sugarcane, bajra, rice, cucumber, mango...where it wasn't green, the dark gray basalt spewed swollen frothy streams into a hundred waterfalls...and to complete the bliss, this misty cool fog and rain....aaaah it was good to be away from bombay, away from cities where the people are so generous and inviting.

but consistently marring this idyll, was this ngo - chaitnaya - their field level workers definitley didn't share a rapport we had expected. worse, they'd lead us to a "case study" only for us to discover that she ain't there or that she's not been "doing" the "activity" they claimed she'd taken a loan from the self-help group for. on day two after four such "cases", we lost it! this was one big scam n we've been taken for one long ride! that night, suresh - the recordist n i drank even more in despair n frustration n anger.

but then we wondered....was the problem with them or our director n her communication with them about what she wanted and expected from this shoot...i mean, she was/is clueless about what she wants and don't even bother about the how!!

day three wiped out the memories of the previous two days. i even got some wonderful looking interview frames in this very overcast directional soft slow fall-out light coming in from doors n windows...and the colours indoors!! pink walls, blue door frames and a green saree...no pics unfortunately...it seems like, in shoots like these, you get only enough time to shoot in the best light and all the best moments, but never enough to take some stills...to post on blogs like these ;)

fifteen years after i quit cry and the whole developmental field, i find little had changed...they speak the same thakela jargon n sing the same thakela songs..and if one more person breaks into hum hongey kamayab, i'm gonna smash their face!!...at night, pondering over the day, a dawning!...when you get funded in rupees, you call it bacchat gatts (saving groups) and when your funds pour in in dollars, you call it microfinancing!! so much money to be had ....to be made...

the corporate sector, the mainstream suddenly seemed so much more honest with no pretensions and baggage - Amen!