heartbeat - how to kill a gameshow!

...i wouldn't be suprised if you haven't watched "heartbeat" on starOne. my intial excitement has quickly faded to despair...they've killed it - the channel, the young turk eepee's and their infinite wisdom thought they'd get em life-giving trp's by getting celebs to play the game. so what if the game and its drama lay in hard-core quizzers playing against their own heartbeat...

so you get mostly thakela celebs, whom the world couldn't care less for...pile the viewers with long monotonous reminders of rules (like they're dumb), kill the natural pace of the game by re-editing and have enough time for just 2 qns in 22min of programme time ...and worse, stretch one player over 2-3 episodes...phew! finito!!

if this combo wasn't bad enough, starOne has been bumped off to the dim n distant uhf band, so you either don't get it at all or if you do, its all grainy and without audio.

the only heartening thing in this whole short-lived saga, is that we (the tech crew) had a blast lighting it and at the end of the day it remains a very differently lit show on indian tv today.

amen!

meeka n appa come home to stay!

meeka aka meenaka and appa with c! (or is it the other way round?) a few summers ago...this was at the sample flat then...and now they're back, like they were last summer to escape the torrid delhi heat n power/water cuts.

its so good to have them stay with us...a sobering effect on our otherwise wayward erratic lifestyle...kind of gets us into a sane routine. her dad all of 84 and mum 76...lucky girl to have her parents around and lucky me too!! yum sambar, rasam, kutt, curry, aplam, dosa, idli...meeka is such a treat to watch in the kitchen...nothing ever gets thrown away, tasty leftovers turned into even tastier snacks, some skins leave seeds are dried for days then ground to make a face pack or other...

appa - ramaseshan tatha, came to delhi from madurai in 1945! worked as the librarian in the lok sabha all his life post-independence. imagine a family album with b/w pics of him with nehru, mountbatten, dr radhakrishna et al! so many stories...recorded a few on cam...meenaka was 16 when she married him and came to delhi from kerala, where she grew up with tiger cubs!!

as kattar as my mum, he opposed the idea of us marrying...but that's another story for another day.

jupiter thrills!

saw jupiter thru our telescope for the first time tonight...no not as clear as this image above, but just seeing two dull-grey bands along the centre was enough to send me soaring.

right next to the full moon, it held its own...

Jupiter is the fourth brightest object in the sky (after the Sun, the Moon and Venus). It has been known since prehistoric times as a bright "wandering star". But in 1610 when Galileo first pointed a telescope at the sky he discovered Jupiter's four large moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto (now known as the Galilean moons) and recorded their motions back and forth around Jupiter. This was the first discovery of a center of motion not apparently centered on the Earth. It was a major point in favor of Copernicus's heliocentric theory of the motions of the planets (along with other new evidence from his telescope: the phases of Venus and the mountains on the Moon). Galileo's outspoken support of the Copernican theory got him in trouble with the Inquisition.

called some building boys too...more gasps...the beginings of the sai baba astronomy club?? err constellations ko hindi mein kya boltey?! heehee! big bear...marathi mein hum log sapt rishi boltey...haaan!

crash zoom!

"like the moment when the brakes lock
and you slide towards the big truck
you stretch the frozen moments with your fear..."

sang Pink Floyd in Final Cut and it was such a lucid album, i would visualise each song in my head early in my walkman days. didn't think one day, rather night, i'd be sliding sideways in an auto on the highway (mercifully not into a truck!)

so, we're in this auto back from hemu's place, hurtling unsteadyily down the western express highway. our auto guy had just missed slamming us into a tata sumo at the vakola junction and we had just finished screaming at him about his wavering ways. no, not that he was drunk, just a lil unsure n inexperienced it seemed.

at the santacruz airport signal, i see these guys on a m'bike turn into our path to go to parla stn. by now i know we're gonna crash into them. we must've been doing at least 50kmph. not a word emerges from our lips. my eyes locked in...watch us crash into the 2 of them on this blue 100cc bike and see the horizon turn and feel us veering onto my right. thump! my head hits the road n c! over me. we're sliding now on our side but that i do not see. black!

must've been a few seconds but it seemed like a long black leader... fade in, don't know if my eyes were opened but my sight came back. knew we were sideways on the road. get up, lift c! up, climb over n hop out. help c! climb up and out...my head's like a pile driver ramming it...i hobble to where the bikers are standing...motion a thumbs up, they reply with a thumbs up. c! meanwhile is giving the rick driver a piece of her mind...a lot of people have gathered by now...seeing we're, ok flag down another rick, i pull c! away, my head still pounding. and back on the road again...

bruised right knee with one surfacial cut and c! too bruised knee same place. rattled nerves calmed slowly by the breeze and a cautious driver. just thanked the gods above and whoeever else watching over us tonight. so what were your thoughts while we crashed?, asked c!...nada, i replied. blank - i was just looking...looked just like those road race games one played, save for that momentary fade to black!

yaay!

for weeks now, i've been struggling to get my laptop and my desktop to talk to each other...no big deal, just that one's a pc and the other an ibook! chewed several friend's ka brains, crawled the net, called the comp guy and finally it works...phew! never imagined it was so complicated, tho' now on hindsight, it seems pretty simple - you enable appletalk protocol on the pc, make appletalk active on the mac, assign ip addresses of one on the other, connect a cross-cable in the lan card slots and voila!...

yipee, so now i can download songs onto my pc, import them into my itunes on the laptop and transfer the whole load into the ipod!!

science da kamaal papaey! - as vineet would say!

travelling rainbows

watched (for the third time!) this absolutely beautiful n moving animation film - "printed rainbow" by geeta rao. a spanking new 35mm print in dolby surround, at that! now that she's won the national award at miff ...and her film's in competition at cannes and annesey (the oscars of animation)...way to go...just so happy for her.

its the kind of film, the talent and the person she is, you wish the sky for...

"don't get me wrong huh"

i've read about it, heard about it...never experienced it. but its for real - these goans don't want us indians, just that they won't tell it to you on your face. they'll ignore you, make you pay up for the entire stay on their resort (altho the norm is one day tariff in advance). so i sit this tony guy down on our last morning there in this really nicely laid-out desolate beach resort in south goa.

"arrey you know how these indians are no...bloody nuisance they are, get drunk, create a scene, don't pay their bills...and one chap, you know man, got drunk and started firing his gun in the air. i mean it could hurt the foreign guests no. then there was a big splash in the papers the next day. che don't want all this mess."

so i say to him then, that you either learn not to generalise or then just say sorry we don't want indians. "no, not like that, don't get me wrong, i am telling you all this very openly because you said you are also a goan"!!!!

when will they ever learn
o when will they ever learn??!!

while checking out, i learn that "tony sir has said it is ok not to pay the food bill". i scribble a thank you note and leave beaming broadly!! heehee!!

shooting chitrakoot editing bombay!

...my gang of five from chitrakoot came in to edit what they had shot over the last 5 months during our video workshop. this is to be the grande finale of the 4part journey we had begun in sept last. it took me a while to adjust to the fact that "they" were here as opposed to me being there...looking distinctly uneasy navigating bombay, i wondered if we were doing the right thing...(maybe they were doing just fine n it was me being my usual self?)

...at the onset of the workshop, i felt that video being such an energy-intensive medium, it just wasn't the way to go in a place which had electricity for just 6-8 hours a day and that too wildly fluctuating. they seemed to have such a rich tradition of song and dance, i wondered if it might be better to enhance their story-telling skills and expression using their own indigenous visual art forms.

but then, video being this "sexy new" medium and "who are we to deprive them of this sexy new techology?", i went along...but today, that feeling crept right back. sitting in a tiny, under-renovation edit studio in central bombay got me thinking...maybe we should've gone low-tech (vhs-vhs cut to cut edit) staying back in chitrakoot...instead of this city-based appleG5 mumbo jumbo.

afterall, this was to be their first editing experience...but then funding pressures require a "presentable" end-product...

which took me back to my days at cry..."giving children a better tomorrow"
...because of which we had our todays!

kaput!...just like that...i lost my thought(s)...

off to goa again tomorrow but more about that on sunday!

introductions contd.

calf meet sanah!...sanah meet calf! sanah, my newest bundle of joy. her parents - george n sur you'll meet by n by. twenty years ago, sur's extended family were convinced we had a scene going! n i wasn't even one and twenty!!

some introductions are in order now

"ok now stick your finger in your mouth and blow hard, the cap on your head will rise!"...applause applause!!

terryQ, tee, tq, santaQ, terryfique, father terrence, baal thakeray...all of the above he is. so many things to so many people. i haven't come across ONE other person who has touched so many people in such a deep and lasting way. and people include 2-3 yr old people too! he's truly fantastique...

baby-sitter, story-teller, song-writer, singer, guitar-player, watch pen camera phone-repairer, student counsellor, hostel warden, basketball-er, psychology professor, poster artist, preacher, peanuts lover, camper, vintage biker... i could go on, but he's blushing already...o ya and a jesuit priest as well!

'twas one humid autumn night some 22 years ago under this canopy of stars in a warli-land, we spoke about sin and god and beliefs. i was in my late teens then and he was fr terence...it meant a world to me then and now he means the world to me.

"i'm looking for roses

roses in the sea

just for an honest chance to live

an honest chance to be free.

i'm searching the wide world over

for life, for liberty

its much easier to find

roses in the sea"

ya, he wrote that! and sings it too plucking on his guitar...i feel bad for all you guys out there who haven't met him.

gulp!

...the irony was inescapable...the guy reading over my shoulders let a smile slip...there i was on the train back home reading p sainath's article on water privatisation in the latest frontline, clutching onto this chilled bottle of "mac blue" packaged drinking water!!

scary!...however much you may read about it, however closer we may inch towards a crisis, it still seems incomprehensible...overwhelming! they've sold a river in chattisgarh! (price of seperating from MP?) ... water sold to companies who default a Rs12/kilolitre payment and get bailed out by the courts at Rs6 a kilolitre!!

what next? the next monsoons perhaps?!...

i was in goa researching for a film on the effects of mining in the interior villages...the iron ore mines are almost exhausted now...the
5-6 families who until now controlled goa's land and industry, now sit pretty plump over the huge reservoirs of water that their mines gorged out...out of surrounding village wells n rivulets. they've now entered into jv's with coke, pepsi, kingfisher...

the image that stayed in my mind of that trip was of this mining company tanker supplying water to the very people (queueing up)whose wells have run dry thanks to the mining...getting fucked twice over...first, their land rendered useless due to mining silt wash-off and now...

"..to those who have more shall be given, and those who have not, the little that they have shall be taken away"...or so says the bible.

ra ra americana!

watched "munich" last night ...no, night before...seems like spielberg has taken off from where he left off with "saving ryan's private"...so much voilence and in such graphic detail...a big turn-off. i hadn't expected the film be a series of carefully planned eliminations...of members of black september. the much hyped questioning of purpose by the protagonist coming right at the end feels like some desperate guilt-cleansing...and that too in far-away "safe" america (where else??)...the saviour of the new world...my ass!

disappointing to say the least but geoffrey rush is brilliant. missed "walk the line" and "crash" of this years oscar crop...when will we ever have just ONE film award here in india?...and the oscar goes to...as opposed the manikchand femina star screen award goes to...or the dabur vatika zee cine award goes to...sigh!!

music video debutt

...want to post my 4nhalf min music video debut...how??

april...

April come she will
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain
May, she will stay
Resting in my arms again
June, she’ll change her tune
In restless walks she’ll prowl the night
July, she will fly
And give no warning to her flight
August, die she must
The autumn winds blow chilly and cold
September I’ll remember
A love once new has now grown old.

on teaching!

...watched some final year student films of srishti school of design, bangalore today. was so impressed and now want to see more. such a strong foundation of sound n the visual...must be a function of time...a 3yr course as opposed to the 1yr course that i've been teaching at SCM- Sophiya's (for over 10 yrs now!!).

never imagined i'd enjoy teaching so much but over the years its been a case of "diminishing marginal returns", or some such thing! with each passing year i'd end up feeling more dissatisfied...with the students' seeming cavalier attitude, the v blinkered course agenda, their final films...

but am begining to think that the problem is perhaps with me n not them. hearing myself, i sound like my own profs or parents or seniors (back then) ...old n crabby n malcontent...so that seems to be the challenge - to re-invent yourself...make it as exciting n relevant...and cut your losses by lowering expectations...

i remember one of my fav profs saying...ajay, even if there is one student in class, start the class!...this was in response to my cribbing about how they don't come on time n how pissed i get after having shot the previous day till late, gone thru assignments, woken up early to be in class on time at 8.15am only to find 3 out of 40 students in class...grrrr!

(a few days later)...lost my train of thoughts there...ah yes...also, after seeing a few student final films, have begun making some generalistions about a few institutes...like, ftii - films made with a huuge burden of world cinema, very formal in shooting style, mostly fiction short story adaptations. nid - more form than substance, slickly executed poor scripts. jamia n scm - laboured socially relevant archaic story telling, mostly documentary. sristi - i found most exciting with new high-risk-taking ways to telling their stories. next to see - symbiosis...

cut!

dream!

i'm at aamir khan's house!...a huge house with a high gate. am here to learn acting!! aamir greets me at the gate and takes me inside, into this unending house briefing me about all that i'd need to do )forgotten details here :(

we walk outside into an out-house where there's this lady hair-stylist - short hair blondish, fair, sharp nose...(oudhna?) and instructs her about the look for me. she immediately proceeds to foam the back of my head and starts to shave/trim my hair off. not waiting to see how my hair's turned out, we walk out...

...into a courtyard with a kund with steps leading down to the water. kiran is there routinely supervising things around...i say hi, she responds without recognising me...but she seems to know why i am here...blindfolds me, holds my hands and runs me down the steps through the water and instructs me to run up the steps n stop at some point. i run up fast unhesitatingly and stop just before the top...applause!

aamir then takes me in and out and into another outhouse, where these two guys ask me strip naked...its all happening v fast...i'm aghast but obey...the two guys burst out laughing looking at my thing(?) murmuring loudly to each other about what i could do to make it bigger...i'm getting really mad. momentarily, aamir's disappeared...they keep at it and i scream, "aamir, what's going on? is this what i came to you for?"...i pull up my pants...

we walk out and into yet another outhouse...there's vandana there in shorts and tee, going thru some excerise routine...greets me but without suprise at seeing me here. another woman puts me thru the paces...he then takes me to another outhouse with a lot of people...his family,all holed up in one closed space. seems like they're eternally grateful to aamir and in true filmi-style, that they are here only coz of him!...and how we (they n me) are now in this together, we'll go for shoots together, hang out, wait for our bit roles.

it dawns on me that i'm going to be an "extra"!...i'm horrified and try to escape, but aamir's huge dog pounches on me and begins to sink his teeth into my neck. i relax and get the dog to relax too and ask aamir to tell his dog to ease off...which he does...he's taking the dogs for a walk and asks me to come back at 4.30 later today having written some stuff. i'm suprised that he wants me to come back today itself...ask him about how much this is going to cost me, scared its going to cost me a bomb... he doesn't reply...

i'm in jeetu's red innova...its pouring heavily..water already up to door level. the car throws up a wall of water...get cursed by the people wading thru the floods...drive fast up this flyover and i suddenly spot those two men up ahead trying to block the car...i plead with jeetu not to stop just keep driving...we out-manouver them...

bye aj, i'm off! i wake up...and remember the dream :) my first celeb dream n that too in colour!...good mornin!

:(

...so it happened today...finally...this monster ate up my sunset :(

goan ramblings

just got back from goa after a breezy 3day trip...a lot happening there...like,

- this IT park that the govt wants to set up on a plateau 10lakh acres wide. just that its the natural reservior for 3 villages at its base.
- worse, there's this disinfo campaign on by the IT minister, which a friend is trying to counter n me's helping him.
- stuff like educating the villagers what IT is and that park is not like bageecha...serious!
- and "lila", this cool new happening space for the "panjim intelligencia" (not my term!) where rahul screened one of his students' films on irani cafes.
- 25people crammed into a small living room. identity, ownership, history...
they even asked rahul how they can save themselves from non-goan bhailey!!
- staying in sucorro village with these friends and their 5kids, dog, cat and parents was most educating...all 5 home-taught! no tv, enough computer(s) - 3!! an entertainment night a-la ssl camp, everyone shares the chores, no one has to be told things more than once...ok, twice! n how much they know about the plants n birds n trees n life around them...saala city slicker!!
- and if you thought bombay's real estate prices were ridiculous, goa's catching up fast...what to tell you men, all these bombaywallahs!... (picking up left-overs the goras didn't dig)
- met some real nice people this time round...like nereus n his wife reena (bom to goa interior designer turned real estate punter married to a photo-journalist!). pune to goa - tino n donald - artists, stained-glass restorers, ceramic experts, triumph fanatics, bicyclers...the cherry on top was that they're good friends of eddie n terence!...its just keeps going round...
-zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

voila!

...there you go!...heartbeat - the new tv gameshow i'm working on. goes on air 1st may star one...let me know what you think...

event-ually screwed!

i hate doing live events and don't do them often... but then i forget why and so have to regret at leisure. back-to-back with heartbeat was the kstar kparivaar kawards...hey ajay you ARE doing it (as easy!). the unease hit as soon as i entered "tha temple of theaatre" - jamshed baba audi. the same ol "black" umang trademark-edly awfully finished sets, the same ol atul chagmak moving lights, the same ol filmy acts, the same ol awards presentation drill, 12cam set-up, 1 jib, 5 handheld, 3 frontal, 1 track trolley err no track trolley, 1 centre fish-eye low angle ...but hey at the oscars they.....sigh!

the same ol fight about chak-a-chak lighting vs moody spot-lit varying with each act lighting and ...AUDIENCE LIGHTS AJAY!! and of course, the budget's never enough and so what if the setting guys screwed-up and lighting gets no time to vary the looks for each act and that there's no time for camera rehearsals coz its well past midnight by now and the thheaatre rental is way too high...but the show must go on! chal yaar we got to make the most of what we got...rockin'

the only difference... this time i had this calm detached demeanour, didn't scream at anyone (not even setting!) even as tempers flared and blood boiled in the control room...is anyone even going to say cut?!!