diwali in bandipur

so after the torrid time in bangalore, we went off to bandipur...the most unusually quiet diwali it was...almost forgot it was diwali except when some locals burst some crackers late one night. but the night skymade up for all the missing fireworks!...a zillion stars up there tho' it was too cold to stay out to catch a falling star!

tusker trails - this really neat enclave of 15huts complete with dining room with all meals, swimming pool n recreation room. they'd wake us up early at 545am with bed tea n whisk us off in gypsy-loads for a 2hr safari deep into the sanctuary. (commander-in-chief mama noronha!)
hungry after devouring the sightings, we tuck into a huge breakfast n set off for a 2hour trek! back with just enough time to splash around in the pool, beer n lunch...and a well-deserved siestaaaahh! only to be rudely woken up yet again with chai at 3.30 in time for another 2hr jaunt into the jungle to hopefully see a tiger!
back at 6.30 all dusty n happy n onto a full game of tt!! some vodka followed by a light dinner, sit around a campfire (but no one told ghost stories :( zzzzzz n next morn the familiar firm rap on the door - saar goodmarning, bedtea saar!! o such blissss...
PS: c-in-c mama noronha sulked most of the time coz there wasn't any church nearby ;)

to accept

google found about 267,000,000 links for "to accept" in (0.11 seconds)...but i am finding it so hard...i turn to the buddha...but he ain't smiling...as yet :(

fire in the mountain run run run...

now for a break from the clan!

the volvo whizzes past these :(lalbaugh lovers forever!night dreams burnings you?
bengaluru pompidou?!

of nephews n nieces!

that is gaurav (aka baba), karen, rohit, pooja - our very own gen next! need to keep checking myself from calling them kids anymore!! for them, i'll remain ajoo...they'd spend at least a week with me during their summer vacations...and we'd go to the science centre n the beach or i'd show them "children's" films like bicycle thieves n lord of the flies which would upset them so much that they'd do katti with me :)
pooja's bit the bug n is doing film at shristi in b'lore. baba wants to be a writer tho his mum wants him to be a travel writer ;) rohit wanted to be an inventor and karen - she doesn't know!

hima-ben

hima - among my oldest friends...from xavier's. now, much married with two boys in b'lore.time n distance have never mattered ever since.
"Old friends,
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fears"...
mum would make jam sandwiches for her long train journey back home to dhanbad. she found us this super 3bedroom homely service apt in town, which soothed our frayed nerves at the end of the day.

family tree!

now, just how cool is that?! nagpore circa 1965 or thereabouts.

this, my fav pic of the trip...at lalbaug in b'lore. wished jim n pooja n c! were there too to "complete" the picture...or maybe i should just photoshop them in!!

had carried my minidv cam too but didn't end up shooting an inch of tape. dunno when i'll ever complete that film. by now, the family's gotten so used to me shooting them, there's hardly any resistance when i get them to do stuff like this ;)

bangalore sucks!

just back from the big family vacation...which save the b'lore bit was absolutely fab. bangalore, they had all warned me was bad, had changed for the worse, etc...but i couldn't have imagined just how bad it had got.

the traffic in bombay, i thought was the pits. but in b'lore, it's anarchy!! bad pavements force you to walk on the road. horns blaring, two-wheelers brushing past, choking on particulate matter, getting knocked down by a car n getting screamed at n blamed for by a passing-by middle-aged aunty!! not a word of apology or helping hand from the god-cursed lot.

i mean, the locals seem just so hostile to outsiders...or was it my imagination? the rick guys are another animal. i always thought delhi was the worst. but these guys win hands down. rude arrogant conniving pack of foul-mouthed thieves. o i hate them. the insane one-ways coupled with their refusal to speak any other langauage, made travelling around b'lore a complete nightmare.

the bangalore palace, lavishly portrayed in all the tourist brochures was firmly on our radar. so off we went after much haggling in 3 rickfulls. no other tourist in sight, save the prince himself n his guest, the portly ex rail minister jaafer sharief. entry fee 100rupees! no printed literature they had nor guide book. but enough arrogance to say take it or leave. n if u don't pay 100bucks you cannot take pictures either! so a huuuge showdown with this really rude security guy who actually kept shoving us off...by then the entire noro clan had had enough and piled on mercilessly. o it was such fun, but left us feeling just so bitter.

it must've been a nice place but now hurtling towards imminent disaster :(

family holidays!

not since we were kids, did we go out of bombay for the vacations...the family with the familiar military green hold-all. we'd troop to dadar station by noon to take the train to nagpore each christmas holidays. i still remember waking up to milk vendors yelling dodh-dodh-garam dodh at wardha jn in the wee hours of the morning. nagpore would always come after ajni eeaarrllyy in the morning, foggy n cold...n me always reluctant to get up. aziz bhai our "regular" cyclerickshawwalla would always be there for us...we'd pile up the rickety rickshaw n poor ol azizbhai would heave us from the station to mohannagar postoffice.

waiting impatiently at the gate, were my dad's two sisters n niece...this was the family house! we were all born there which made it so special to go back there each year. a huuge house it was, tho' just half of it was now occupied. a back garden with fruit trees for us to climb n me to chase squirrels. a front flower garden overrun with weeds and a ritual task to clean up! the living room opened out onto this garden. my favourite room. here were these big bw portraits of my dad's parents looking down on us. an upright piano which propped more family pics. n there within this wooden case - the music system! a grundig 78rpm turntable, a tape spool deck, a warmly glowing tube radio and this really big unweildy amp...of course i couldn't lay a finger there...i'd look intently digesting every glowing lamp n moving needle...

sometimes, my uncle - dad's brother would be visiting fro germany. he was a priest there n travelled a lot. after dinner, me tucked into my razaai, he'd hang a white bedsheet on the wall n pull out this really neat projector n slide after slide he'd bore us with stories of people he'd met...i'd wait for the scenic shots...remember seeing my first snow! i'd sleep till late morning often refusing to get out of bed coz it was too cold n still dark! my aunt - anna (no not aa-naa but un-naa) would dip her finger in her glass n let me lick it...i'd cringe but it warmed my insides ;)

i'd run up n down the approach road rolling this truck tyre (or at least it seemed like that then) all morning till lunch!! then there was the club. singing, fancy dress competitions, dad playing billiards (dunno if i actually remember that or from what i've heard!)...and one mandatory trip to mahrej baag (which i discovered so many years later was maharaj bagh). mica, so much shinny mica we walked on. and one trip to seminary hils...again poor ol azizbhai was summoned n again he'd pull us uphill n we'd jump off n push the cyclerickshaw up...on the morning of our departure, we'd go to jubilee bakery for cardboardboxloads of the best ginger biscuits n macaroons on this planet! sometimes, we'd carry back to bombay sackfuls of oranges...but olly, my cousin sister would get really upset when the time came for us to leave...she'd grit her teeth n start to cry...n then we'd all cry before leaving for the station...

tomorrow, we all go to bangalore to spend diwali with my niece who's studying there. missing in action: my dad, my bro-in-law anil, my brother jim and c!

absolut blissssss!

o completely forgot about the one biiig highpoint on the otherwise dull sweden shoot - an evening at the absolut icebar in stockholm!!! maintained at -5deg, made from the purest clearest waters of the river kurna in the north of sweden, this bar is all ice!...an absolut dream. most unusual mixes combined with exotic berries, extracts or flavourings...served by this cutie in a hoodie ;) in a glass made out of ice! even her tip bowl was carved out of ice! i decided to go bare hands n had my fingers glued on to the glass!! 3 swigs down n i wasn't ready to leave!! shoot? what shoot?!!

pirates of the subcontinent!

this was one introduction i'd been forgetting to make...naman rs! my old pal from my tv18life...a walking talking encyclopedia on cinema...so what if he couldn't sing, he knew all the lyrics! n dialogues, the year the film was made, which film it was a copy of, etc!! back then, in bangalore he had a wall to wall collection of vhs tapes arduously copied in real time. now in london, his apartment is stashed with dvds, cds n old hand-painted film posters. i wasn't there for long this time round...but long enough for this... two dvd burners n a macbook didn't get a moments break that day!...25 dvds n 25 audio cds!!! :) back in bombay, i get a boxful of slim dvd covers, download film covers from cdcovers.cc print them out and voila! i have a film collection going!

but why?

you can add links, you can add photos n video...but why can't you add audio clips??! :(

untitled 3.1

Daddy's flown across the ocean
Leaving just a memory
Snapshot in the family album
Daddy what else did you leave for me?

johnny g!

i just about caught the last day last show of johnny gadaar last night...and boy wasn't i glad i didn't miss it. unreal it was, i had to keep reminding myself that this was a bollywood flick i was watching that too from the yashraj stable!...slick pacy n relentless, all without emotion! incredible performances matched a totally hatkey script n plot. the unclimatic end didn't matter after the roller coaster you've been put thru. three cheers, thumbs up n whatever else!! but sadly, not many takers... :(

nothingness

wenders on nothingness...

" There is no name on ozu's gravestone, only an ancient chinese character, mu, meaning "nothingness".

nothingness. i'd often tried to imagine it as a child. the idea terrified me. nothingness couldn't exist, i kept saying to myself. only what was there could exist, reality.

"reality". everyone knows what the perception of reality means. everyone sees reality with his own eyes. you see others, esp people dear to you, the things around you, the cities and landscapes you live in, you see death, the mortality of man and the transience of things, you see and experience love, loneliness, happiness, sorrow, fear: everyone sees "life" for himself.

(can you feel nothing?)

wenders extravagance!

my one biiig purchase on my europe trip was on my second last day in london...there it sat on the hmv dvd shelf - a box set of 10 wim wenders films...promptly grabbed it without hesitation. until now, i had resisted the temptation to buy n own dvds...room666, lightning over water, wrong move, scarlet letter, a trick of light, notebook on cities n clothes, tokyo-ga, wings of desire, paris texas, american friend.

was most excited about trick of light n that was the one i saw first...just brilliant! made in collaboration with the munich film school students, the film is a celebration of the lesser-known film pioneers - the skladanowsky brothers. these 3 german brothers perfected their bioscope projector around the time that the lumiere brothers broke thru with the cinematographe. a fabulous mix of verite, dramatised b/w sequences and original footage told in a simple story firmly reclaims their place in cinema history.

this afternoon, i watched tokyo-ga, wenders' tribute to ozu!...i just love his spirit of inquiry. almost childlike...which is why i love his films so much. i haven't seen much of ozu...the great japanese master of the simple static 50mm lens story-telling. tokyo-ga plunges you headlong into present-day tokyo with some mind numbing contemporary japanese images, before getting sentimental about ozu, his actors n his cameraman for life!...most moving!!

searching but not finding

One day Mullah Nasruddin lost his ring down in the basement of his house, where it was very dark. There being no chance of his finding it in that darkness, he went out on the street and started looking for it there. Somebody passing by stopped and enquire:
- What are you looking for, Mullah Nasruddin ? Have you lost something?

- Yes, I've lost my ring down in the basement.

- But Mullah Nasruddin , why don't you look for it down in the basement where you have lost it? asked the man in surprise.

- Don't be silly, man! How do you expect me to find anything in that darkness!

sleep...

...eludes me tonight-

form re-form

went into town last evening after ages...correctly timed to walk down marine drive as the foggy orangy winter sun was setting. destination: piramal photo gallery for what turned out to a really arresting exhibition by delhi-based jogi singh. an architect by training and a photographer by choice...he was exploring the play of light n shade on monuments...and the jantar mantar in particular. repetitive at times, but some gems that had me captivated.
go see! on only until 28th.

so close, faraway

i doff my hat to wenders...as i make some random offerings...