unstructured & prosaic

I respect the works of Dibakar Banerjee and Anurag Kashyap. Because their movies respect my intelligence as a viewer. Oye Lucky... for instance was brilliant. I am one of the few who liked No Smoking and wouldn't mind saying it when among friends.
No, this is not a reflection on how discerning a critic I am, or how I am the only one to 'recognize the diamond for what it is' yada yada!...
We have enough people who can sit and "analyze" a movie for ages, insistent on finding korean philosophy in a ghati bhojpuri flick, unsatisfied if a documentary lacks subtitles and pleasure themselves over Bolivian noir cinema (Gupta, I am looking at you!)

This post is to acknowledge the intensely relieving fact, that there are writers out there, film-makers who make the movies that I like to spend an afternoon watching. And my afternoons are very precious to me. Where are the discussions on Firaaq, Gulal and Barah Aana? I didn't find Khosla funny, bittersweet more likely...and I felt vindicated when I read an interview of DB saying that he never intended to make that movie a comedy... Anurag Kashyap wrote Satya, boss! These people take a concept, break it down, deconstruct it to its very elements. The screenplay takes you by your balls and twists it around... grabs all your expectations and jumps on them. They discard the bloody predictability and make the final product, a part of their very essence...unafraid, unmoved.

Would love to chat with DB and AK one day...

ummm...lovely weather!
A certain place on the Nilgiri terrace has become our haunt...

Addabaazi till the wee hours of morn...

Has it happened to you too?

residual travel fever - part III - One Night in Brugge

It was a 14th century townhouse converted into a cafe. The cobbled streets refused to reveal their ancient secrets. And under a dark sky, millennia old, I brought the mug to my mouth and sipped the cold beer slowly..

This was Bruge. Bruges to the English. Brugge to the defiant Dutch who were pained at the massacre of their pharyngeal grunts.
The Jupiler beer was only 1.90 - the cheapest I had in whole of Europe. B seemed very happy, giggling over a colourful cocktail. T had gone to escort G back to the hotel, because he was convinced he would be raped in Europe. I saw M poring over the menu, contemplating his next poison of choice. Friendship with him, here on a different continent, surprised me. He was wonderful company, especially drunk ;) !

I settled deeper into the cushioned settee, comfortable in the knowledge my packing was done. The Bell Tower glowed in the distance. Someone cursed in fluent french. The other responded, just as enthusiastically, in lusty Scotch broth. Aaah it was sweet!

I had done churches. Seen the only Michelangelo sculpture outside of Europe. Wept at the sight of Belgian chocolates, custom-made to titillate even the least decadent of us. Soaked up the sun in the square, watching students of architecture take notes...And kicked myself for not carrying more money.

Good trip. And this last bit sums it all up for me -

residual travel fever - part II - The Tube

The

London deflowered me. I lost myself in that city. It was all they had said it would be - noisy, gray, yellow teeth, bad breath, brown overtones to the essential ruddy heartiness. It was all that and more to someone who was so new to travelling alone. In that moment, when I took the first left to the Underground from Heathrow, I was, completely and absolutely, in love with myself!

The Tube. After changing trains so many times, befriending ticket-sellers at every imaginable stop,not only can i tell you about the unpredictable tantrums of the Victoria line, but I could teach you how to jostle your way to the best seats.
Fell in love with that crazy jazz they call the Tube, listened to buskers playing in the station all day long...even threw a precious pound to one of them who had the sexiest voice...befriended a Russian lesbian artist on my first night there, when I had yet to step out into the much-maligned London air...

I used to choose any station..on a whim!...step out of the Tube, run up the stairs (I hate taking the escalator..I am convinced it will eat my foot! You have a certain X-file episode to blame). Baker Street, to me, shall always be a lane of pigeons, postcards & endless charm. Oxford Street is for the warmest waffles and costa coffee. And oh Covent Garden! that quaint ancient vegetable mart, now with its immigrant punk attitude, crazy jugglers, jazz musicians, pashmina shawls next to pictures of a masturbating Christ. It was wild in there! Liecester Square with its falafel shops and the smoothest humus filling.
I spent a lifetime in the London Tube...once or twice over

(to be continued)

residual travel fever - part I

Quotes open. Enter obscure quote by famous author/feminist/poet/quirky film-maker on travel. dot.dot.dot. Quotes closed.

I realized I love to travel. In the middle of the Red Light District in Amsterdam, surrounded by gorgeous women peddling their stuff in neon-blue bikinis;inebriated Scot fans yelling "Amsterdam, Amsterdam! YAAAAY" and me, neatly stepping over dog poo, I had this brilliant moment of clarity. The kind that only strikes alcoholics.
I REALIZED.

with the smoke of dutch grass burning my urban angst...
In a coffee shop which was so freakingly sterotypical that I almost laughed! Faded graffiti on peeling yellow walls. Thick sweet fumes. Loud Russians, and Clapton coughing on an asthamatic telly.
First drag. A resounding disaster!!! Let no one fool you into thinking otherwise...Smoking is a science! People don't smoke because they are worried about their lungs, they don't because they don't know how to!
The owner of the coffee-shop...Sheeba...if i remember the name of the place correctly, smiled at us indulgently, teaching me to suck in the air the right way. Awww, he looked like such a proud papa when I took a successful drag!

S said it looked like I was making love to the joint, puffing it so languidly with my feet perched on the table and my head thrown back. Clapton wheezed on. It did feel like love...