missed a friend's bday!!

for the first time in nearly 15 years i missed my best friend's bday. and guess what, he called up. that's what true friends are like. great friends are like. i am honoured to have such a friend. there can be no other lucky guy.

where have you gone?

like the dewdrop
at the first hint of sunshine?
it is just not the same
without memories
of you around.

spaces

i seek you in the spaces
between want and longing.
now, these spaces are all i possess.

empty

what do you do after you have read the Fortunes, the BWs and assorted magazines? what do you do after watching movies? what do you do after logging in to mail, orkut and facebook? somewhere i presume there must be a void......

Andrei & Ivan

Drip. Drip. Drip…

The camera zooms in. To the shivering horror. Ivan’s face is grimy, with eyes that have lost their sense of time, ordering the Sergeant to inform HQ that he has crossed the line.

And all the time, like a recurring sound motif, the dripping water assaults the viewer’s senses. Grating at our understanding of War. Challenging us to stay aware. In the end, it is the water that leads Ivan back to his territory and death. No military school for him. Just a leaf’s existence behind Nazi lines, scout to Russia’s resistance.

Sun and sand dissolve into bleak montages of tepid rivers, a bell is used to pound our attention to the still-born angst of Ivan’s Childhood, as Andrei Arsenevich Tarkovsky weaves his camera between light and dark, shadow and sound, close-ups and profile shots to create magic in the movie that made the world sit up and take notice of the poetic film-maker par excellence.

Set in the tumultuous times of the Second World War, as the Nazis are gaining on the Motherland, as families such as Ivan’s are getting shot, as villages are being burnt to rubble, the film is war at its hurting best. Especially because it is seen through the eyes of the 12-year-old Ivan and his army protectors, who take turns to push him away from the front, into school. But school is not for Vanya, who has crossed the dreaded river, swimming into friendly zone to alert his handlers of Nazi positions across the line — using berries, roots, stones and twigs to determine columns and garrisons. And go back, he insists he must, to save other families such as his. That is his destiny. That is the end of him. He resurfaces only as a statistic post the war. Hung to death, we are told by the victorious soldier sifting through the scattered documents.

This is Tarkovsky striking at the root of all human conflicts, his narrative punching holes into every argument for war and its glorification. What a contrast to say, mainstream Hollywood fare like Saving Private Ryan.

This 1962 film was Tarkovsky’s first feature length film and the viewer gets a glimpse of what is to come in his later works, works that are visually brilliant and shorn of random symbology.

Like the surrealistic Solaris. Tarkovsky’s sublime interpretation of humanity’s struggle to retain its humanism in a world that deifies science and its achievements. How the director manages to marry two of mankind’s essential concerns in a sci-fi story that, by itself, is capable of asking some of the most troubling questions of our time, is where his brilliance lies. And why he is widely regarded as one of the most poetic film-makers of the last century. Adapted from Stanislaw Lem’s science fiction novel by the same name, it is probably Tarkovsky’s most visually enthralling film with its magnificent wide-angle outdoor shots, juxtaposed with shots of the confined spaces that make up the space station where most of the action takes place.

Beginning with a breathtaking shot of a leaf coursing through a rivulet in utter silence, and taking us on a journey from the nature that we see to the alien nature that we can only experience as manifestations of our own deepest longings, Tarkovsky’s camera pans, pirouettes and literally gobbles up the screen like a Shakespearean monologue. Till we are yanked into the minds of the scientists who have come to face their own fears that the planet throws up — one of them commits suicide, two are near schizophrenic, and the protagonist, psychologist Kris Kelvin, falls in love all over again with his long-dead wife, resurrected by the Entity.

It is a movie that defies categorization into any genre, although it is part sci-fi, consuming our thirst for understanding the human capacity to love in a canvas so vast that two hours and 49 minutes just dissolve into the mist of the froth bubble that is the planet core. For every one who wants to delve into Tarkovsky’s film-maker mind, this is a must-see. And for comparison, try and catch Hollywood’s take on Solaris, directed by Steven Soderbergh and featuring George Clooney in the lead role, on cable.

Tarkovsky’s kitty includes such gems as Andrei Rublev, Stalker, The Mirror and Nostalgia, shot in Italy, where he spent his last years escaping Soviet harassment.

Bend it like London!

Spit-filled subways. Red double-deckers that waited just long enough for us, before retiring gracefully a month later. An intemperate tabloid vendor who didn’t like the colour of our skin, maybe! And, Big Ben by the River Thames, lit up, helping grumpy Londoners keep their date with heady evening pints.

The capital of the Empire on which the Sun barely managed to set, rushed us about with brutal royalty, quaint cabs and cobble-stoned pavements — stopping only in front of red phone booths that reminded of Wole Soyinka’s “Telephone Conversation.”

7/7 was just a Jungian archetype now, it seemed, until we met furtive glances that forecast it was probably the city’s first of many-to-come festering wounds. Not to forget tough-looking air hostesses, famed for their British matter-of-fact politeness, sandwiched into their training manual demeanour.

London in November was unusually sunny, not a spot of rain, and definitely no late evening crabby fog to sheath your morbidity in. Just perfect for a slice of history!

And history began at the waterfront, with the Thames shimmering in the yet-to-be-night soft lights — with democracy drifting past, bathed in almost sepia tones, behind a thin film of mist. The boat that cut through the start-up cold was a picture of gaiety, forgetting for a moment the Kings and Queens who had let go of the sceptre to usher in the commoners. And Big Ben striking at each of those passing hours, nay centuries, and its craggy face always impassive as yet another Knight was beheaded. The uneasy republic barely coexisting with the Empire. Slipping in and out under London Bridge, with its peaceful orange glow, blissfully amnesiac about the blood on its sidewalks.

Morning brought in coffee and eclectic conversation, interspersed with the old English habit. But the daily had stories of gore, of death by asphyxiation and Blair’s battles in the Commons. Stepping out, with windows for sight screens, stone edifices everywhere helped retain both the warmth and the chill of the stiff, upper-lipped English. The great London fire having destroyed whatever wooden balustrades there were at its heart. A king’s command ensured Englishmen would henceforth swear by stone. And thus was the famed Street and others by its side, rebuilt.

Or so the condescending tour guide told us, all the while admiring an Aston Martin that had snuggled up alongside the bumpy London thoroughfare that snaked past sundry fashion boutiques, and the Mayor’s hall.

The capital of a nation that, by turns, revered its footballers and loathed their coaches, seemed a touch lazy on the senses, that supine November day of the azure blue sky filled with memento hunters from the former colony. Eagerly walking the spotless sidewalks, with just a blur of faces for company, some with laced hats, and gloved hands that had seen, perhaps, the cold, meatless days after the War. In retrospect, it seemed just like a scene out of 84, Charing Cross, minus the conversation and the damp, cavernous bookstore that Anthony Hopkins made it his own. To us, from a land that still keeps its Imperialist transplants in its railway platforms, old Victorian houses and Post Offices, it seemed just like home — a cleaner, more orderly place that one visits during a summer spent escaping the grind.

Everywhere, the quiet bustle of feet as commuters jumped over cobble-stoned pavements, hurried through traffic lights and slipped in and out of city stores like stage sets straight out of the Opera. Like Phantoms, in a place known to be cold to friends and slightly less than freezing to its many acquaintances. London, by turns was dazzling, insipid and clammy, just like the Webber play, snatching its lady love before love could distract her into submission. Except, when it turned on its charms at the Change of Guard. Performed like a Beethoven fugue, all precision and muted to begin with, but unleashing its crescendo in a spark of feet that lent a speck of art to a military march.

The feet that conquered diverse lands, could also dance to the tunes of a lady, it seemed.

clockwork want

you strip time of its minutes,
even as i dredge your face up
from memory

one day i noticed...

...you were gone. it was not gradual, but more like, i wake up and find you are no longer a part of me. as if the invading sea had swallowed us up, memories and all. and before i could rush in to claim at least the last vestiges of you, the sea itself had disappeared. now, where do i go looking for you seashell?

i miss you

or, at least someone like you

am free to write

that just came as a godsend. when editor saar told me i could write for the mag, i was thrilled. this gives me some space for jotting down thoughts that relate to the other India. yipppeee!!!

two things on my wishlist

a really high-end digital camera that allows me to break into traveller mag, and a bullet 350 cc to travel the world clicking away at innocent bystanders and craggy hills;-)))) does anyone have a hundred thousand bucks to spare???

world wide worry

this www came much before the web i guess. everyone i see, hear about or know of even vaguely has surfed this way. to all of them, just remember the 80s smash pop hit, dont worry, be happy!!!

five years in July

time steps back into the
yesterdays like a quiet cat
on soft legs,
and i sit,
drawing the night up close
like a blanket
to hide memories of you.

Running From Hell

The seeping cold invaded us slowly. We were sipping on kulfis, a chocolate-flavoured poor man's version of softy, only harder and colder with every bite, and more drippy after the favoured first few bites. She was staring at the lights. She was always staring at something. Some ice-cream vendor blocked the majestic view of India Gate, through the beginnings of a smoggy, chilly night. We had not spoken for about half an hour, when the scathing argument had petered out into a gravelly, troubled silence, like the interlude between one ambush and the next. She looked quite beautiful, flaming hair, set in curls, tied at the top loosely. I was sititng cross-legged on the pavement, trying to marshal more arguments to convince her. None seemed adequate to the task...

want to write a novel

reading Outlook's cover story has rekindled a desire to write a novel, even a novella like heart of darkness, pithy but for all time. will start by serialising the same thru this blog.