Posts

Showing posts from January, 2011

trembling silence

Tonight while walking on the street out of my place for dinner, I saw a guy at a distance standing in the middle of the road. He seemed weird, standing like there, staring at some place. Nodding head at times. Walking and stopping. Looking back. Staring again. Hesitation personified. Gathering faith in his fists. My brain is like an ajax-less 1990's browser. I have to refresh my conscience to join the dots.I was left confused by his behavior. I tried to ignore it and went ahead and put my earphones on to 'the dangling conversations'. A little ahead, while crossing him I saw him a little more clearly. Apprehension was written all over him. His eyes were wide open; mouth half open, as if he wanted to say things but words were not yet ready to come out. I followed his gaze to find they were squarely trained on a window in an apartment nearby. The window framed a silhouette of a girl. she was holding the bars on the window, quite dramatic really. A silent persuasi

buddha makers

Sigur Ros makes me cry and then their music fills me with contentment and equanimity. Like everything in the world is beautiful and so wonderful and true. It paints the world in the colors of innocence. Makes me want to hug all and everything. Sigur Ros's music is sheer beauty. Buddha would have loved them.

the transient and the ever present.

"A favourite pastime in summer is watching the sand dunes whirl and inch their way right through the twisting narrow streets of the old town, to exit back into the desert again." so says an article in Outlook. Must sit there, roll a joint and stare out at the desert again. Pushkar had its charm, but I have never yet given deserts it due. I must spend some time in awe of the magnificent Thar soon. Reminds me of the lovely, dreamy movie 'road,movie' . Its not a movie actually. Its a dreamscape on celluloid. Watching it felt like watching ' 2001, a space odyssey ' when high. Its feels like flying in infinity. over vastness. being part of something great yet being just a mr. nothing. The vast expanses of dry land and blue skys. What a movie.

of a dead golden city

I saw two Mumbais this weekend.One through the movie- ' Dhobi Ghaat ' and another through ' City of gold' ; two completely different mumbais but all the same. Completely different narratives, but still gave the same stale smell of mumbai's stifling sea of humanity. While one movie had its politic about mumbai, the other was completely personal and intimate. Both talked about classes, but while one made me glad that I am from the privileged class the other once again filled me with nostalgia. I found 'City of Gold' to be very dark and over powering. I couldn't help but identify with the narrator's constant disgust, this sense of suffocation throughout the film. Even the scenes of happiness were quickly curtailed with the knife of cynicism laced violence. The movie laid out its politics, its helplessness, its accusations bare. The rich mill owner's disgust of the workers ("Bhikari" he keeps on barking, even before his imminent death) a

getting my act together - I

As a kid I always loved cartoons. I would watch them all day and I would buy those disney/painting books to copy draw those characters. Every single cartoon character that I found interesting would promptly get reproduced on one of my drawing books. exactly. I was messy with water colors and like. so I would stick to pencil and sketch pens for these. I would not bother about the colors, but the form was something I could exactly replicate. with pen you can exactly draw what you want. but with brush it requires discipline, something that nothing i have tried my hands at has been able to bestow upon me.  So it was a little weird for me when I first started attempting to use water colors.  With paintings, the colors take primacy (especially in landscape or imagined drawings) over how the image is to be created rather than the boundaries as would be the case (or i thought) with pencil drawings. That is a huge learning i had much later, until which i had given up on painting. If you are

what if

what if all the body hair is essentially flags of little organisms living on our body. dividing us up in territories, fighting for flags.