bergman rip

..seldom do you wake up feeling orphaned...first, they took away sven dada...n now the master himself - ingmar bergman! wondered how long he might've been playing chess with death...wonder what magic the two will conjure up now when they meet up again...

"there are moving pictures with sound and light which never leave the projector of the soul but run in loops throughout life with unchanging sharpness, unchanging objective clarity. Only one's own insight inexorably and relentlessly moves inwards towards the truth", he wrote in his autobiography.

may his soul rest in peace!...well n truly!

krvia workshop pic post

krvia workshop

..."hey ajay, we want you to conduct a 4day workshop for our students...do anything you feel like or wish to explore with them". ya sure, i said without thinking too much. and then the panic!...i hadn't done anything like this before, for architecture students at that! thinkin'thinkin'thinkin'...couldn't go beyond stuff i was obsessing about while working on the edit of my dad film ...memories...photographs...spaces... the opening of wim wender's film "notebook on cities and clothes" provided a perfect start:
we live in the cities
the cities live in us
time passes
we move from one city at another
from one country to another
we change languages
we change habits
we change opinions
we change clothes
we change everything
everything changes. and fast
images above all...

i wasn't working with a hypothesis...just kept it open end-ed and exploratory. hadn't a clue what to expect but very excited n nervous. talked to them about my film about my dad n took it further from there. introductions, perceptions, self-image n fav spaces... the first day was the hardest...had to talk a lot more than i had wanted to. wasn't able to get on top of things. the room was stuffy, the students reticent, the av equipment ng. i was exhausted by the evening...but from the second morning on they were flying n by the third morning they didn't even need me!

each evening on my long rick ride back home, would think how lovely n lucky these students were to have a faculty who valued these inter-disciplinary exchanges. there was ashok sukumaran and rahul srivastav who tripped along with another bunch of students taking them to other heights of experience n experimentation...

enjoyed every bit of it n learnt so much...esp how lame i am in my idea of the sacredness of an image...learnt how much more my laptop can do! o it was such fun! showed them hiroshima, mon amour and metropolis and blue...we struggled with how this would all come together on the last day as a presentation to the rest of the college. but they did fine...as you will see in the next post!

the last sip of koffee!

untitled2

...so there's this really beautiful bright soft warm knitted sweater stuck high up on this cliff's edge...n there he is hanging on to it for dear life. it's a little frayed at the end, something he didn't notice at first... n he's clutching on to all but one thread...he pulls on it and the woolen thread just goes fraaaap un-knitting itself in circles around...the harder he pulls the more it unravels...he can't feel the softness or the warmth anymore but he's still clutching on...

i'm back (yet again!)

damn! that took a long time recovering...not much happened since...though most significantly,my editor d got into srftii for editing. most kicked that she got in. but which meant that we've taken a break from editing. all well-timed coz i got busy with the last sked of koffee.

i think i'm gonna miss shooting this show more than any other. enjoyed it immensely! everything about it - the high profile ness, the look we achieved, the easy pace of the shoot, the absolutely wonderful kjo, the most understanding producers...and some good fun guests.

then, classes began at sophia's...some not-so-happy changes there...not as bright a batch as last years. but i enjoyed my first two classes immensely...my thirteenth year there!!!... and am now to take a 4day workshop at krvi...for about 40 architecture students. most nervous since i've never done anything like this before. cannot think of anything besides what i am already obsessing about these days while working on my own film - identity, images, memories and the city.

there's more...but by n by...am sorry if i got some of you worried...better now...cheers!

write/don't write

...i've been meaning to write, but also don't want to write...scared of committing to words what i don't want to remember. want so hard to forget what happened on the night of the 26th...when past-life whizzed by in flashes...in seconds i was staring at the blackest black...either i tip over into the precipice or walk away "cleanst". the fever raged at a hundred n two...while sleep eluded me...my second half life had begun...