levity. caresses.

Right now my whole being feels like a pastiche of a million poetries. thoughts have melted into curving, dripping, flowing ideas. i close my eyes and it feels like i am dancing.. moving with the breeze... waltzing with dry leaves. levitated. light.
i am listening to Il postino's soundtrack which has neruda's poetry.
and its making me yearn to read some kundera all over again. maybe, i will read laughable loves once more. its worth it at any rate.
sleep, i have found a substitute for you. good night.

emancipation

just heard samuel barber's 'adagio for strings'. and put it on loop.
i had heard it earlier, maybe as OST of some movie or generally in my playlist at shuffle. but today it made me pause and listen to it alone. its so bloody beautiful!
it flies.
leave me alone.. let me dissolve in these sounds.. as it flies over cities, times, people; let me too experience the colors of the world mixing in a rain. the true fresh colors left after the rain cleared the greys and false shiny ones.
The adagio is like the first rays of the sun... going around the world... liberating it from darkness.

'adagio for strings' is the smell of wet soil. it is open spaces. it is so universal. it has that sublime quality of beethoven's 'moonlight adagio'. funny, because barber was more a brahms and bach guy.
its one of those pieces with strenght in them.. strength to lift a soul up by the sheer beauty of music. you want to submit to it at times of hardship knowing that it resurrect you.

men who live - I

Werner Herzog.
i see his work and unfailingly its such an inspiration.
firstly, he is a student of life. the way the camera stays, moves and even the way narrative is constructed, its as it were his humble attempt at understanding and empathising with a people rather than simply capturing and sensationalizing a certain emotion; like most others do. Without trying to compare myself to him - i am too small a cretin, yet, to do that - i would like to share an experience i had while watching his movie. a particular scene in his movie 'wheel of time' was so similar to one i had shot in mumbai of three children sitting by road. it was eery. and uplifting at the same time. i was touched :P
and he goes around the world and stares at people with open eyes and asks questions! his movie have been based in peru, antarctic, india, tibet, australia, africa.. !
and whats more, his politics is at the right place. his questions are humane. maybe its aborigines' struggle for recognition of their faith and land in his movie 'where the green ants dream', or his travel with dalai lama in a spiritual quest and the ensuing tibetan sovereignty question, or his excellent 'The blue yonder' movie narrated in a way that is so apt and so original.... all have strong politics associated to them, all with heart.

the first quarter of my life was pretty much sans a idol. i have begun finding a few now.. maybe because i have grown out of my cockiness and grown into being a little more humble. there are quite a few such ppl, will write about them subsequently here.

glittering rectangles

Dear TV,
you suck!
well not you exactly - what with flat screens and awesome contrast and sound.. the miracle of moving picture - but what you show through you.

its not just the inanity being reinforced and the vulgar being deified, but also countless many little things that is turning my fellow media addicts into little rats/rabbits (depending on your favorite chapter of alice in wonderland); seemingly in coma while in front of your glittering rectangular self.

due to you, my left hand thumb has got a weird disease which makes it go click click in infinite loops on the remote control.

well, in part my fraternity is to blame as well for your demise. but hey, we are earning our bread and trying to be happy while at it. we have right to both. sorry to strangulate you and the viewer in the process though. besides we only give what the viewer wants. its another matter that the viewer doesn't always know what he needs and what all this communication will do to him/her in the long run.

please die. for the greater good. or if you like swimming, we may arrange for a communal TV visarjan event. we would stand on bridges and help you with flight downwards. i will love that. i think you will love it too. how so ever brief, you would know what flying is and what sin you are doing keeping people locked in around you.

abrazo,
jinxieji

intimacy

my tavel to gokarna 2 weekends back, was fraught with long distances, delays and switch overs. the travel was made amusing thanks to jean paul sartre. well, amusing isn't the right word. hmm, can't put what i felt in a word. may be a para would help.. :P
His book 'intimacy' is very truely a very up-close study of us. us humans. our relationships. our emotions. by the time i read the third story, i actually was feeling a weird sensation... a mixture of hints of suffocation, paranoia and languid stillness. the kind of feeling one has when after having slept 14 hours continuously and being awake half wishing to be in dream, staring at the ceiling, one becomes so comfortable in the sheets that the idea of slightest movement is repelled by body itself. you can't will to lift your arms. the body in its languor decidedly becomes heavy.
sartre's words become the sheet on which we are lying. it knows us well. very well. in the little confines of the self, the sheet gets marked with our true contours, our true smell, our true warmth.
and being so intimate is not comforting when you are alone. the loneliness only more accentuated now. your own touch on the arm and cheeks now transforms from indifference to mild irritation cause your body knows it won't have the pleasure of anybody else's touch. a body is useless and would wither away sooner if it doesn't find love of a warmer skin, the cut of a longer nail, the softness of the more delicate soul.
i put the book away with an alarm after the third story. will only pick up that book much later in hopefully better days where intimacy is not a jail but abounds.

written on the body

Since a few days, i had imposed a self-censor. I wouldn't use the adjectives 'beautiful' and 'kickass' (to be forever on a quest for beauty is not normal. i must taste some normality too once in a while); and i would try not to be introspective all the time. (trying not to be so 'full of myself' all the time, there's the whole world out there that needn't be reflected onto me..)
but how else could I describe Jeanette Winterson's 'written on the body' but delectably 'beautiful' and what else can one do but reflect when confronted with such poetic mirror to our hearts. its one of those literary pieces which you want to hold unto yourself like your lover, for its beauty and for its truthfulness.
I read half the book the day I bought it. and then tried to resume it the next day on local train. Now local trains are a many things, but definitely not a temple to beauty and truth. And this book deserves nothing less. It deserves to be read on a sunlit day, sitting on green grass, unperturbed by anything other than the steady bustle of the river nearby. well if not that, the cot must do, but it will be utterly disrespectful to be distracted from it again and again.
so it had to wait quite a while until a weekend when i had some leisure time by myself to read it.

The book is a portrait of love. a love who's sighs and gasps you wish to cling just a little longer every time. what makes the work even more noteworthy however is the fact that Jeanette gets us under the skin of the protagonist turning us into accomplice while throughout keeping us in doubt about the protagonist's gender! what genius! imagine portraying love without letting ever know who you are actually empathizing with. you know his/her desires, fears, loves, vices, friends but you don't know if its a he or a she.

while being a brilliant innovation of narration, its such a strong political (humanist/philosophical/gender based... whatever label you want to put.. i am not good at that) statement. love, in its completeness, defined sans gender. get this copy in the hands of all homophobes, all cynics.. and generally everyone. why should anyone be robbed of experiencing such beautiful work?

In search of uniform

india is a free country. we are free to conform.

1. Khar Road Railway station - 10-15 women are squatting on the platform. curiously all are carrying exactly similar bags. grey squarish bags with black straps. quite fashionable actually in that abstract expensive way. i thought bulk deals only happened in MICA.

2. Santacruz Railway Station - strangely many men are wearing the dirty bronze colored full sleeves shirt. the shirt uniformly not tucked in. the cuffs linked. Surreal.

3. popeye - i don't get this at all... all of a sudden the market is flooded with shirts with popeye pictures.. t-shirts, collared shirts.. they are un-escapable. go to colaba's narrow galli fashion streets, all stalls will have a popeye T. which company is dumping all these popeyes on mumbai's youth? why popeye?

4. grown men in half pajamas and full sleeved untucked plain shirts. so many people adhering to this code. the color of shirt is usually light.. cream or version thereabout. these are mostly labourers. what confounds me, if they wear half pants for comfort, why are they wearing full sleeved shirts without even rolling them up?

creators

mark rothko, Sharmila irom, baudelaire, mclluhan, beethoven, milan kudhera, rob dougan, Fransisco Danconio, Muse, Bjork, Raza, Duchemp, Banksy, Doris Lessing...
creators.
some forgotten. some lost in the fog of memory. some fictional.
all alive.
their breath, their thoughts, their actions, their stories
shape our lives.
Like falling from clouds, leaving indistinct erasable marks on them. we are.
its people like these who piece us together, breath in us the life that strides confident on grounds concrete made of the fertile compost of once dead forefathers.
thank you for letting me walk. i owe my life to you.

blackout

listen to this track..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tpE33fNMaw&feature=related
turn down lights. switch off everything around you. sit in a corner. preferably with friends at the tail end of a party. drinks would be good, but are wholly unnecessary. close your eyes. and just listen.
muse has this enigmatic energy about every single track of theirs. but blackout stands out for its ethereal calmness that masks the contained energy within. the lingering vocals hold you and take you with it to a world different from here and now.I love muse's music. it in a way questions and then celebrates our existence. the music has fatality to it. the music struggles and fights the inner commotions and eventually rises supreme over every other thought.
Another musician whose music is shaped with forces of fatality and virility in celebration of our existence is Rob Dougan. listen to his 'one and the same' track from album 'furious angels'. or the more famous and one of the best tracks ever 'Clubbed to death'. (even the vid is one of the most inspirational vids in a long time.) the music as if fights and lifts from the mundane and shines.. shines with the brilliance that needs no testimonies, shines with brilliance thats rare and pure and most importantly honest. its tattered at edges, its real and at the same time its as if from another world.
This music singularly flows from a conviction, from a faith so strong that the world flows around it into a salute of eventual acceptance.

please muse and Rob Dougan.. never stop creating music. please. we need you.

Colors

I usually seek creativity in form, innovation at structural/conceptual level. So, though i appreciate content, its usually the medium that attracts me more. Thats perhaps the reason these days I am heavily into digging for good installations. I have mentioned my love for work of Olafur eliasson earlier. But then we come across works which are simple and yet so profoundly creative.
Yesterday, I saw Anuradha Thakur's exhibit at Jehangir Art Gallery. The first bias set in due to her choice of theme. She has depicted adivasis and their cultures through her work, something which I am keenly interested in appreciating. What really attracts you to her work is her choice of colours. The colors are so natural to indian sensibilities and yet its as if its a new discovery. I haven't seen use of these colors and combination thereof in recent art works. to get an idea of these colors, take out crayons from your sons/daughters/nephew's color boxes and start mixing.
Apart from division of spaces, the choice of colors and combinations thereof, it seems to me, is a good indication of the maturity of the artist. S. H. Raza symbolizes that clarity, the focus that makes art sublime. hmm... if only i could afford his work! :P
The other thing that is noteworthy of her paintings is her choice of black or dark colors to describe human features. its as if, humans are the blank alien travellers in the world of colors. its amazing on several levels.. the painting while being about the people, is also in a way, putting them in transience with apparent shift of focus to surroundings. the surrouding nature, social complexes thus standing out while forming a backdrop. certainly a wonderful balance is sought here.
___
also, exhibited were the works of Prafull Sawant. his series of work with depiction of pensive women were brilliant. excellent artmanship. the emotions come alive with his mastery with light and shadows. in one of his paintings he depicted reflection and light wonderfully. its a pleasure to see such work.
but, more importantly, his work reminded me of the great tradition of water color paintings of maharashtra. I have had the good fortune of seeing many excellent works depicting the beautiful landscapes of maharasthra in water colors over the years. Sawant's work adds to this body of work.

intrigue

i came across a video about the number stations, essentially a broadcast of seemingly random numbers or words being monotonously spoken.
About 7-8 years back, in the night while supposedly preparing of an exam the next day, fiddling with the radio on my stereo, (used to love listening to foreign stations on short wave. different music, different programmes.. i even got to listen to a russian elvis presley) i had stumbled on similiar gibberish. the feeling of stumbling onto something utterly incomprehensible but of some obvious consequence is awesome. i can't forget this one instance as well. this was a time when i was heavily into astro physics, Carl Sagan, marcia bartusiak, SETI, drake equation, wow signal and what not.. here i am researching in free time about life outside our planet n shit, and lo and behold you hear stream of possibly encrypted data. btw, at that time with a group of friends we were trying to build an interferometer.. so that should give you a perspective.
people familiar with the story of discovery of LGM (little green men, or pulsars to be honest) would understand the rush of excitement that this broadcast brought me. i quickly tried to jot down whatever i could hear. the reception was pretty bad. it was a stream of random words.
'bats. umbrella. boots. iron. ...' shit like this.
quickly i typed the same words i had heard on the browser. a site returned with a continuous stream of the same words written in a marquee. nothing else on the page. no links. nothing. tried to dig behind the page, address. nothing worthwhile. i didn't dig further, thought it might be some ham radio club's secret game or something.
end of story.
then i read information security and warfare by dorothy dennings. it was a revelation. i was into minor programming n hacking then. this book showed me the possibilities. but that sadly made me stop doing hacking shite, cuz i started feeling small and guilty for no reason. at times, u are better off not knowing something.

that was then.
building interferometers (halfway through) and telescope (complete :) though my friends did most of the work.. i don't have the patience to grind mirror over mirror for hours)).
and now.
a few months back in MICA, enthu Akshaya proposed that we set up an online radio station. all excited, but i never got around to do anything about it. maybe it was the fact that we were too busy partying being the last months in MICA. whatever...

old hindi songs

whats about them old hindi songs!? they are magical. its only old hindi songs that spring into the media player of my head for any slight emotional gear shift.
some of these songs i have never heard in original. its as if the collective memory of the world around me seeded that song in me. a big pool from which this memory draws these songs is antakshari. through numerous games of antakshari, i know so many old songs that i have never heard in original. some others i had heard as background score in movies. mostly its people around me humming those songs. my dad's singing is another source of this memory.. though he is just as bad with remembering lyrics as me, so its the tune mostly that sticks.
Speak about viral! these are bloody the best virals ever. which viral ever lasted for decades?
yesterday i was humming geeta bali's 'taqdir se bighdi hui ...' what a wonderful song. and i had never heard it myself! i googled straight away and found it on a obscure website.

woody allen

woody allen. watching his movies is like gazing at a lake. its beautiful, its easy, it needn't be turbulent, and after spending enough time with it you actually feel content with a light buzz (that a glass of shiraz wine (nasik's \m/) would lend).
the movies may not be realistic but it always portrays a certain reality. the reality of life through a narrow lense, a narrow politics. this lends a simplicity to his movies which lets it wash over you without any undue excitement. its like having a nice conversation with an old friend, comfortable in the contradictions/arguments and with a confirmation of knowing each other a little more better.

cheers! and go watch manhattan.

p.s. : i have written about conversations and movies here.

resistire

i woke up today with 'happy together' by the turtles going on n on in my head. what a song! i heard it on loop for quite a few times before i got sated.

and then while on train, another song started doing rounds. i didnt even know the song. it was something i heard a while back while watching almodovar's 'tie me up tie me down'. god bless google and imdb. the song is 'resistire' by el duo dynamico. what a wonderful song. its one of those songs which makes u roll up ur sleeves and draw in the fingers into a fist to punch the air above.
now i want to know of resistance songs from south america. south america has a dynamic history and present of resistance and its poetic legacy is unparalleled. it would be a surprise if we can't find out some kickass stuff in this sphere.. resistance songs from south america.
even better even we could lay our hands on some native music.. that would be kickass. afaik, the conquistador's have been very successful in eliminating the native population. the very few who are left, if we could know their views through music, that would be awesome.
ppl, the two of u who read this at times, :P , please send across any thing in this regards if u find.

abrazo,
ajinkya

ease

usain bolt.
i feel happy to be alive in this era to see such great athletes as usain, phelp, Yelena Isinbayeva...
just saw usain's 100m sprint world record. its amazing. it seems as if he didnt need much effort to break that record. while gay was furious at himself, and others panting, usain seems at ease... this effortlessness, this freedom and control of oneself is amazing and a sure sign of true genius.
watch maksim play piano (his compositions are ok but his performance, spectacular! watch him play 'bumblebee'. awesome shit! wish to c him on stage). His fingers dancing passionately with the keys of the piano. its as if his fingers are part of a ritual of ecstatic celebrations.
ease. i desire ease. they tell me it only comes after immense devotion n practice. damn!

end

i have no sense of end. i start on an idea/dialogue/work/whatever with full steam and then as the brain empties its thoughts into the receptacle of words/artifact/whatever, the steam now used up, the pen stops and thats my end. like here... with three dots... done...

front row seats

chandan cinema. what charm! breath the warm smells of pop corn and whistle along the geysers of whistles blowing from all around. even amol palekar mentions it in 'golmaal'. lovely movie it was, god bless Hrishikesh Mukherjee. he perhaps has been responsible for billions of minutes of hearty laughs, content smiles and happiness throughout India.

anyways.. (unlike my other blog, here i am going to let myself drift away in the thoughts and the language they come in as i write.. 'anyways' would represent getting back to what i wanted to say in the first place :P)

and top it with front row seats. a sure fire combination for a great 3 hour ride.
i remember watching 'bheja fry' in fun cinemas in ahmedabad. we were some 14-15 of us. all front seaters. after a few minutes from start, all came down and made themselves comfortable on the carpet beneath. people were sleeping, rolling around, sitting at the front while watching the movie.. what an experience it was.

anyways.. :P
yesterday we saw kaminey in chandan cinema.. front row seats. the screen towered over us.. the images looks curiously distorted with lower half ballooned and the upper half narrowed... its like movie of moving potatoes or sacks or something.
we had to pan from edge to edge lest we miss some thing in the movie.
nevertheless, what a wonderful experience. first time in last 4-5 years i saw someone selling the tickets in black.. wonderful! it brought old memories back, to watch those action english movies in 'circle cinema' in nasik. people hooting and cheering during the movie.. never a dull moment.

but watching Kaminey (which is a kickass movie btw.. it strangely reminded me of amores perres for some reason :P) made me realise something. there is a certain cinema best viewed from front row seats, and certain others which are best viewed on your laptop and then some to be seen from the last row gallery.
I have seen 'Beta' from front seat.. 'Hum aapke hain kaun' from front row seat twice.. once from left end and the other time from the right end and then once from the last row of the gallery.. i can visualise the movie in 3D!
Kaminey is not a front row movie.. extreme closeups, stylized cinematography, saturated colors.. it puts quite a bit of an effort on the viewers to make sense of the scene. it made me dizzy at times.
masala movies in which you would rather break out in dance with the hero are best viewed from front seats. also, the steady non-exceptional cinematography doesnt strain you. instead, it helps feast on the vision of your screen idols.
i saw 'godzilla' in vishal theatre (which now has been broken down into multiscreen muliplex.. what a shame.. to replace such huumongous screen with 3 puny ones.)in Nasik... the screen of that theatre was huge..even sitting at the last row, one at times had to pan from end to end. the grandeur of godzilla was supposed to be seen in such screens only. or the madness and grandeur of 'fitzcarraldo' would have been so much more with big screen.
and then ... there are laptop movies. movies not necessarily social.. by that i mean, u watch masala flicks with ur friends and they are fun for that social experience. as against 'Khadosh'(bloody scary movie.. one of the most violent movies i have ever seen. made me go numb for a while)... these kind of movies are not supposed to be enjoyed at all. they are introspective and thought provoking. these. are. laptop movies. (or small hall movies)
hm.. need to buy kaminey dvd.

La Complainte de la Butte... or 'that french song which is so good on ears'

there's this french song in 'moulin rouge' called ' La Complainte de la Butte '. i don't even fucking understand the language.. but the song's been going on in my head since a while now. its beautiful. well, the amazing vocals of rufus wainwright did help ofcourse. but the beauty of it, i believe, lies in the simplicity of it all.

the simple melody wafts about and coils around your head, feeding in ears the delight of the luxuriantly sweet notes every now and then.

a while back i got introduced to edith piaf. her 'Non, je ne regrette rien' us absolutely fabulous. i mean, firstly hearing that almost guttural and lively voice is surprising & a pleasure in itself, but the melody.. its one of those compositions which take you, lift you and and then never leaves you through the life. it alights on your soul on a certain occassion and lifts you up everytime u feel low.
other such compositions are ennio morricone's music for cinema paradiso.. god its so beautiful. or the il postino theme. its orgasmic.
these compositions are soul food. i could die without them.
and what to say about moonlight adagio by beethoven. its sublime. it simply is. its life. its death. its earth. its moon. it is sublime.
it slowly envelopes all around and dissolved in the experience, it doesnt remain just music, its as if all senses closed in a singular ecstasy born of the adagio. oh! what is existence if not for such experience.

mad genius

the craziest man i have ever seen has to be Klaus Kinski. just the image of him. god! god is one kickass artist, to chisel out such amazing creatures.
those scavenging eyes. the unkempt hair. the mad un-contained energy. its bloody infectious. wish, i had known him, met him. it would have been something.
was watching his film fitzcarraldo yesterday. what a movie! and more so due to klaus. the mad plague of an idea starts from klaus and grips you. the sheer magnanimity of thought. its such an inspiration.
god/s, please make more people like him and werner herzog.. we need them.