The Idea-smithy

One of my most memorable experiences of this year was The Kala Ghoda Art Festival was held in February. These posts were written for the blog covering the festival. Here they are again, as a reminder of sparks of beauty in this otherwise dirty city.

Happy Mother’s Day to my maddening, delightful, one-and-only mom!

(Click on thumbnail to see the comic)

More idea-toons!

I’m not usually inclined to writing movie reviews, given I tried it on one of my other blogs and failed miserably to write anything interesting. But I just had to put my thoughts down on this just to remember the funny idea if not the movie.

Seen The Forbidden Kingdom as yet? Or have Iron Man, Khuda ke Liye and Race overwhelmed the once raging appetite for Kung-fu flicks. Speaking of which, where have all the Kung-fu lovers gone? Times were when Star Movies ran a series called Friday Fury telecasting the grand works of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Now that’s been reduced to a once-in-a-couple-of-years Chan release or (horror of horrors) dubbed versions on Filmy.

Cadet Larvell Jones of Police Academy was an expert at imitating all sorts of noises and one of the series had him do a routine of the typical Hollywood-dubbed Chopsuey flick, delivering chop-chops and complete with un-lip-synced psuedo-Eastern wisdom like,

The snake does not bend its neck. The mongoose will still catch it!

(….or something like that)
Read the rest of this entry →

The thing that makes a city interesting is the fact that there could be a surprise waiting for you at any corner. I often think I’m jaded with the proverbial ‘I’ve seen it all’ attitude to things that are supposed to catch my interest. And then I’m proven wrong.

Here’s what I spotted on a late evening in the local train. Orange transparent plastic sandals fastened on with a fat ribbon in a matching hue. How could I not stop and stare?!

Anjani, the owner of those tangy toes (I love aliterations!) works in merchandising a fashion retail business. She was also gracious enough to let me take a photograph for this blog. She isn’t a Mumbaiker (still bothered by the weather and the crowd) but she isn’t new to the city either. But in my mind she represents the colourful panorama of this city, shifting smoothly between outsider, newcomer and seasoned local.

Ooh, the sheer audacity of the design, the spunkiness of the colour..it totally made my otherwise dreary day! Notice the contrast between the shoe and the surroundings - a typical dark-and-dingy platform on a Mumbai railway station.

In fact, now I think I’ll start a section where I report interesting fashion ’spottings’ in the city. (See an earlier sighting here!)Thank you, Anjani, for inspiration and for the colour!

You are mine.

You are right.

But it doesn’t feel like it.

Because you only have possession, not control.

Do you not want me?

I do. But not as much as I should. Not as much as I could. Not yet.

Does that matter?

You can own my body, my mind and even my emotions.
But until my will is you, you will never truly own me.

I don’t wish to force you or bend you to my will.

Well-spoken, dear one. You are as wise as I have hoped.

And yet, I don’t have you.

This is true as well.
Possession without control is but a cage.
And cages can be broken.

So can control. What I want is mastery.

They are not different.

Yes, they are, my sweet. You aspire to give me surrender, oh yes, you do. And it might a sweet reward, especially to one starved for so long. But what I want is mastery. An abdication of the hunger for any more such delights.

You lie. Or perhaps not.
If you lie, this beginning is over. Rather, you misphrase.
You desire surrender as much as I do. But what we both need is release.

And you think the answer lies in postponement?

Well, indulgence hasn’t worked, has it?

You’ve had others, then?

So I have. Did you think I would come to you unpracticed?

I suppose not. Even the beginning wouldn’t have happened, then.

Right, I don’t believe in spontaneous miracles.

And I am skeptical about love at first sight.

Cynical, chere! Give the mortals their flash miracles, it keeps them occupied. You and I have forever and beyond to negotiate.

It’s just an illusion.

So am I. And you. A figment of the other’s imagination.

That’s not logical. You can’t be illogical in this game.

But I’m not. When we cease to be our illusions, we cease to be. And what if we swap illusions, every now and then?

And what if we just ended this here?

If we do, we’ll just be two people who killed the conversation and had great sex.
But if we don’t, we continue to be you and me,
mutual enigmas, perpetual unquenched desire, the eternal emptiness.

Touche, my love and adieu.

I thought you didn’t believe in love.

Not at first sight. Nor first conversation. But this is the end of our beginning. The first of whatever comes next.

When I was a kid, I remember a huge tin drum standing right next to our kitchen sink. It was taller than I was and was used to store water. Water, precious water, worth everything in summer.

Do I exaggerate? I was around 5 or 6 then. Old enough to feel the shortage, too young to do anything about it since I couldn’t even lift a full bucket by myself. Moreover a thick pall of gloom lay over the household. Mum, harried at the thought of having to fit cooking, cleaning, drinking water and the household’s other needs within a limited water budget. Dad, brooding over the questions of plumbing, drainage, borewell fittings and tankers, not to mention having to rush to work.

Everyone woke up early to catch the running water before it ran out. Vessels were scrimped on to avoid washing. Clothes were doled out as per strict hygiene requirments to save on laundry water. I also remember tempers flying high and getting scolded for a lot of things that never otherwise bothered the adults. Water-shortage time was always a period of suffocating, dark, depressing gloom.

What a sweet, unparalleled relief it was, the day the water shortage ceased and we were back to having 24-hour water supply! In the years to come, the water supply and plumbing systems evolved. Read the rest of this entry →

An old post…one that I didn’t deem ‘good enough’ for publishing. But now I think the rawest, deepest expressions are probably the best. And anonymous or not, this blog has been about my personal expression. So here it it…the year that was. I’m glad to get it off my mind. Thank you, all of you, for reading.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

If Fridays are a turquoise tango, Sundays seem to be an orange orchestra. No, a solo piece actually. Sundays, for a long time, have been ‘me’ days. first, out of a lack of options, then exhaustion and now with a sense of anticipation.

I wander down bookshelves that I’ve only been glazing over these last few weeks and moving away, hurriedly, from. It seems almost wrong to be here alone, like something vacant. And the environment matches my mood. What was earlier opulence, seems to have run into decadent indifference. Books lie piled on floors, some with their skeletons ripped. They’re all in the wrong racks. I suppress a grimace. Ah well, things shift, staff changes. My favorite bookshop is my haven of clean, tidy ideas no more. And I miss Precious.

Read the rest of this entry →

I stopped by this pavement stall last evening. It has been…oh, so very long..since I visited this place. Getting to be a real book-snob, are we, patronizing only the big bookstores? Yet, the bookseller recognized me in trice and his eyes bore no rebuke.

There’s one at every corner, if you know where to look and I’ve given away a few of my secrets before. This is (or used to be) one of my favorite haunts before convenience and credit cards took over.

From the evergreen Sidney Sheldons, John Grishams and Jeffrey Archers to the ubiquitous management books, this place still holds its charm. It’s hard to supress that innate sense of superiority in pulling out a book and placing it in the ‘right’ stack along with others in the genre. So pop fiction to the sides, classics in the middle, bestsellers on top. Then realisation strikes that the dynamics of cataloguing work differently in a street-stall.
Read the rest of this entry →

I’m not happy. I’m just not totally completely, wildly happy.

And there’s this bad habit of picking on scabs, self-inflicted or otherwise. Oh, who am I kidding? It’s always self-inflicted.

I finally have an answer to…

Jinn zakhmon ko waqt bhar chala hai
Tum kyon unhe chede jaa rahe ho?

and it is…because it feels good to feel something, that’s all.

Pain, like wine, must be consumed in moderation and deliberation. Isn’t that why you nurse a drink and you nurse your wounds as well? *Hic*