Like I didn't have enough to do...

... I've also taken on daily attendance at the 11th Mumbai Film Fest, don't you know. I believe that it would have been wrong - really, really bad juju actually - not to go because, you see, the largest venue is hop-skip-and-spit away from my workplace. As in, I could trip out of the office and fall into Fun Republic. Honest!

Unlike the last time I was at a film fest, I'm not on holiday and can't be watching films all day. I'm, in fact, in the middle of setting up a store all by myself. Yes, you heard me - ALL BY MYSELF! And most certainly going whatever comes after insane - this is not the time to go running off to watch films. And so, I settled for one film per day, the 8 p.m show. I figured that if I could get even six films through the fest, the delegate pass would have been worth it.

But most fortunately, I completely forgot about Sunday. I'm four days down and I've already watched six films and there's another another three to go! I cannot tell you how happy that makes me.

More details from me later but you can get more details about the fest here.

Dim. Diffuse. Filtered.

This is how I feel. I don't like it.

Should be back in a few days. You see, I am going to fall very, very sick. If you get my drift. :-)

Laugh like you've never laughed before

My mother's 58th birthday just ended an hour and a half ago. We threw her a surprise party that we nearly ruined a hundred times over. Happiness is such an alien feeling with extended family. For an evening with the family, we got through a serious amount of laughter and alcohol. Strangers who are family who are strangers, for once, bring the most delicious feeling of belonging and joy. For an evening with family, we laughed like we never have before. I want to show you the pictures that George took but perhaps not now. My heart constricts with thanks for the laughter caught by someone I'm getting tolerate better. The night has broken down into an impending allergic cough and a whole lot of contentment.

May the rest of this year bring the same benediction.

Meet George

This is George.

The elder sibling hates the name and the ex-reviewer thinks I stole his dog's name. But there's nothing I could do, you know. I lifted him out of the box and I just knew — this was George. He's about eight months old now and I'm still in the process of getting to know him and what he's actually capable of.

Truth be told, I'm still more than a little scared of him. I know, I know. Time and practice and all will be well. I've got to admit that for a camera that I've wanted a long, long time (a DSLR and not the 450D), I am bizarrely reluctant to use it. After having used three cameras over the past four years, I know every camera has a point after which it is yours.

I don't know if this reluctance is a function of not having much to say with my camera or just plain intimidation - you know, the variety that comes calling when you, in a terrifying instant, realise that you're in so far over your head that there's no way but forward.

I took six months and a fourteen day trip to Goa to make the elder sibling's camera "mine". I took a trip to Takhatgarh and Jodhpur to become less frightened of George. I'm jinxed in Rajasthan, you see. Another one of A's cameras bit the dust in my hands in Rajasthan. Don't ask what happened or don't ask how it did but suddenly, I was much, much closer to George. Everything looked rosy on the surface of it but suffice to say, the results leave much to be desired. And for once, I really think that the less I say about something, the better.

In the days since, I have spent nights with my camera manual and the guide book. I now hope for work to leave me alone enough to go out and experiment with what I think I have learnt. I save up for macro and telephoto lenses and badger professional photographers at store events for tips. All things remaining equal, in a lifetime or so, George and I will have no secrets between us.

Pray for me, won't you?

Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi...

I want to laugh like I've never laughed before.
I want to go for a long drive, in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain. I want to describe the majesty and the grace of Mehrangarh with my camera and with my verbal fumbling. I want to stop wondering if my decisions three years ago could have made things different... in a sense, less complicated. I want a two-day weekend — I want my Saturdays back. I want to show you the peace of walking on Ashwem with my soul sister, hoping that these ten solitary minutes will last me until November. I want to sit in a breezy living room in sultry Hyderabad demolishing a tub of ice cream and laughing like... sometimes, I fear, never again. I want to stop feeling like I'm choking. I want the greatest of all professional pleasures — surfing the internet on company time. I want to walk down the B "quaters", into the A quaters and then finally out through the beautiful path down to Ladies Hostel 1. I want to be smack in the eye of an intercollegiate festival. I want the ex-boss to take the ex-reviewer, me, and some bottles of beer three quarters of the way to Nashik. I want to stop wondering what cool is. I want a random man in the Madras flower market to demand that I take his photograph. I want to exchange looks with the girls as the DJ dedicates a song to the Click Clicks instead of the Lit Clit. I want to chat with Gerzgal until the wee hours of the morning. I want to sit at Brittos in the tepid winter sun, pontificating about how, in the winter, the sun in Delhi and Goa is so different. I want to do more than just 1-2, 1-2 on the ordering system. I want to spend four days in bed reading. I want a bowl of cornflakes with hot milk but so much more than that I want a cup of Milo in the ex-reviewer's cup. I want the camaraderie, love and oneness of Room No 6. I want to believe in the goodness of the Project Director from my old company - it hurt so much that he was just any other corporate arsehole. I want to watch Pirates of the Caribbean - The Black Pearl with A, eating the dinner he's just cooked me. I want a weekend in Udwada with the boys, making fun of each other only the way boys can. I want to spend 3 days in Fort Kochi and 3 days in Munnar a few weeks after the rains have abated. I want to talk about all the new books that give me such hope for publishing in India. I want to be woken up at 5 am to be told the stories of a budding romance. I want my dream to stop taunting me. I want to spend three hours dressing up for a 21st birthday party. I want to take smiling photographs in the Nalla Park in Pune. I want to wake up in a Portuguese villa in South Goa while the rain comes gently down. I want a breakfast of beef roast sandwiches and dessert wine in Aarey Milk Colony in the dewey dampness of the oncoming rains. I want to stop avoiding the confrontations of the past that will come only in the future. I want the winter to bring me to Pune again. I want to be pompous and superior with the elder sibling. I want to sit in a balcony and smoke a cigarette while the evening deepens around me. I want to spend one perfect day — exactly the way I described it to Mota Seth. I want to tell you about my love affair with wine. I want to spend a week in Agonda and Palolem.
I want to laugh like I've never laughed before.

... ke har khwaish pe dum nikle.

The Word of the Day

For many, many years, I thought AWAD (A Word A Day) was the way to enrich my vocabulary recently when the elder sibling showed me a whole new way out. In the few days that I've explored My First Dictionary, many, many wonderful entries I've encountered but this be the one that appeals to me most.

Go. Explore. Enjoy. :-)

The Storyteller's Back!

Idea Smith told the story last year but this year, as Lord Jeffrey Archer returns for the Landmark Jeffrey Archer tour a second time, you'll need to settle for my patchy version of it. As I am sure anyone but me can imagine, it is impossible to take in an event when you're in the thick of organizing it. I tried very hard, I promise you, but between running around for stock, flowers, and signing pens, the two hours that he was in the store just passed me by.

Lord Archer entered about fifteen minutes past seven, by which time the book section at Landmark, Infiniti Mall was completely packed. There might have been a moment or two when I doubted if as many would turn up as last year. But I needn't have worried. All of Archer's fans were there - some new ones too. They came to be charmed, to be entertained... and no one went home disappointed.



While it's been a while since I last read Archer (the last one I read was Twelve Red Herrings in 1994), I don't doubt that the books are engaging - going by the stories he told at the store. He told stories of joining the Samajwadi Party and being Transport Minister, but my favourite was the one where his American publishers , Simon and Schuster, tried everything in the proverbial book to get him into the top 15 of the NYT bestseller list.

It was 15 minutes of a lovely, animated saga of how they flew him on the Concorde, put him up at the Waldorf Astoria, and got him two minutes on the Good Morning America show. Despite being instructed to mention the title as often as he could, he spent all of it describing the Concorde. After many botched attempts, success in the American mainstream came when Johnny Carson, while introducing Lord Archer, told his 53 million-wide audience,

Kane and Abel is one of the best books I have ever read. I stayed up all night turning page after page and I would recommend that each of you buy a copy.

A week later, Kane and Abel was #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, and stayed there for 6 weeks.


The thing about being backstage at these events is that you catch the authors/artists as they actually are, egoistic, eccentric, or not at all. But whatever Lord Archer's personal faults be, there is no doubting that he's truly happy that so many people show up to see him. He doesn't leave till every last book is signed, no matter if it takes two hours and that he's pushing seventy. He always has a smile for you and your camera, no matter how many flash bulbs have gone off in his face. And that makes everything okay as far as I am concerned.

You can still catch him at Landmark Pune, Moledina Road on the 17th of May. The last event is at Landmark Bangalore, Jaya Nagar on the 18th of May, Koramangala. Both events start at 7:00 p.m.

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Cross posted on Mumbai Metblogs

My Kingdom for a Watermelon Martini

Right now, my kingdom for a watermelon martini, the beach, butter garlic calamari and those bright yellow Goa french fries. Or perhaps for the peace of contemplating silence, maad (palm feni), and a plate of baked crabs. The mere idea of sitting in the Goan sun, writing, pulling and pushing, and then may be finally smiling... Dear God, so much more than my kingdom.

I'll be back in a week.

Memories of Madras

I have, I think, reconciled myself to an ambivalent attitude towards Madras. I don't know if I will ever be able to articulate correctly or even coherently what I fully feel about the place. I swing like a monkey on crack, I tell you, in my highs and lows in Madras. And I always leave with more than just a pang of regret. I suppose that's mainly because I don't have enough time to resolve my space there... but in any case... I'm sure I'll mull this over some more until I know.

I didn't take very many photographs in Madras this time but what I did take, I am really quite happy with. This is only a sampler. The stories and proper photos should follow next week. I hope you're checking the photoblog though. There's an entire series on Mahabalipuram going on right now. I'll get to the flower market and other stories shortly.

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My sincere thanks to Plain Jane, who found time in her insane schedule, to make the collage for me.