Experiences

I mean very free verse. So free that you might wonder whether it is verse. But I have been writing these poems regularly for a few months now, usually in the mornings. These little spurts of creativity help me face increasingly stressful days at work and give me a reason to feel good about life, on a day-to-day basis. The Ride Outside my balcony was a fluffy cloud "Hop on, time for a ride," it said. I jumped over the rails, nimbler than I thought Fell headlong into its cushiony softness. We soared towards the orange streaked sky Cold wind swept my hair, my nose tip froze I waved at a flock of birds, they nodded at me We swerved sharply as a plane passed by (Deafening noise, btw, I am now hard of hearing) We met a minor God, rushing to an appointment We talked, my cloud and I-- Water bearing is not as easy as it looks Bombarded by hills, zapped by lightning! It talked of the trauma, the hard life I talked, about nothing in particular. Eventually, silence bef...

30 sweet seconds to enjoy a winter full moon in an inky black sky framed by the bare branches of a tree looking like a Van Gogh painting at Lonavala. 30 alone seconds to watch the tops of the 100 feet casuarina trees outside our cottage at Dive Agar erupt into a confusion of yellow as two dozen Golden Orioles rose out of it to the accompaniment of a cacophony of twitter. 30 all-too-short minutes to enjoy the biting cold of early Delhi morning at Chanakya Puri, watching school kids bundled up in woolens going to school, like so many bees. Four achingly nostalgic hours to dash from Marina Beach to Saravana Bhavan to Mount Road to Besant Nagar Beach, remembering those crucial three years of shedding small town-ness, growing wings, growing up, falling in love, being betrayed, picking up guys at a fast food restaurant on a bet, pillion riding to Mahabalipuram on a bike... Vignettes framed sharply by the strict confines of time to enjoy them--like looking through someone else’s photo albu...

You need to be in a state of preparedness to visit the Sundarbans. I suggest that you wait until you are over 30 and have experienced a few knocks, some heartbreak, and a little disappointment in life. It would help if you had ever searched for anything—God, happiness, truth, yourself. It might also be useful to believe that it is necessary to get lost to find your way. If you are the sort of person who finds music in the sound of the quiet lap of water against the tarred hull of the boat or the metaphor of life in drifting along endless waters on a little vessel, then you are ready for the magnificent mangroves. Because the Sundarbans is not for the weekend holidayers, the types who would want to drink beer, scratch their bum/crotch/head/something, throw plastic and Styrofoam into the water with impunity, and hope to get laid. I only hope that the crocodiles that eat them would not develop indigestion. It is important to find the right tour guide for the Sundarbans, as we did. Bi...

My Neighbor Totoro (1988) This is a gem of a movie—precious, joyous, enchanting and a little sad. It’s about a childhood where there are adventures to be had at every corner, spirits and creatures in the forests to frolic with, of cat buses and furry trolls, of plucking corns and driving sooty sprites away with laughter. It’s about big fat tears and wonderful giggles. It’s about breathtaking visuals and lyrical moments. It’s about two girls—short-haired and lanky Satsuki (about 10 years old) and her cuddly pig-tailed baby sister Mei (about four years old.) They move into rural post war Japan with their professor father to be near their long-term ill mother in a nearby hospital. Their house is old, rickety, falling apart in places and most importantly, allegedly haunted.  There is a giant camphor tree in the yard that looks all mysterious. The girls are excited and just a bit scared. They settle down to their new life with zest and cartwheels.  Mei follows her sist...

On the boundaries of my childhood territory was this ancient ruined temple. Silent coconut palms stood over fallen granite columns and abandoned moss covered stone idols. The temple tank was but a small hole in the ground, overgrown with weeds and laden with lily flowers during season. People seldom passed through the temple premises. One heard of spirits and sprites. Even the lone pujari seemed frightened of it—he used to come early in the morning and leave not soon after. Now, if I had but a tenth of the imagination of the Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki, I would’ve grown up to write wonderfully enchanting magical tales about the place, full of woodland spirits and pagan Gods and friendly otherworldly creatures. But alas, I’m but an ignorant hack who hadn’t even heard of the master until yesterday—and then only because my nephew set up a Miyazaki marathon to take my mind off my pesky flu. The first five minutes were enough for me to get completely addicted to the ...

O Babe of the Bayou, Big Easy on the Big River, Cousin of Cajun, Creator of Creole, Mother of Mardi Gras, Queen of Voodoo, Purveyor of Gumbo, I bow to thee! For indeed thou art the hope, succor, and ultimate recourse to the depressed and debauched, serious and quirky, prosaic and bizarre. All my doubts about why New Orleans is called the Crescent City vanished as our flight descended. The mighty Mississippi (mighty indeed at this point) made a sharp U turn and formed a perfect crescent of a delta. We are told ad nauseam that New Orleans is built on layers and layers of alluvial soil that the river has been depositing on the delta for centuries. Which means that the city has no rock bed foundation. It is built on mud, which makes everything sink--buildings, roads, anything that depends on terra firma. On the other hand, buried things come floating up during storm flooding, like coffins. Which is why, as most of you might already know, the good people of New Orleans decided to bui...

The Ford Theater (a.k.a. Oriental Theater), a Broadway in Chicago theater, is a very entertaining building to be inside of. It was built as a movie theater in 1926 and is said to have been inspired by the temples of India. Its lushly gilt-edged art-deco interiors are a riot of South Indian temple architectural motifs: lattices, peacocks, swans, the south Indian version of the dragon called the Yali (I read somewhere that it was inspired by the sphinx of Egypt), lotuses, and decorative columns. But what amuse me most are the statues, which clearly represent a western interpretation of “native” Gods. The designers must have gotten their inspiration from the paintings of condescending Raj painters, some of whose work are on display at the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata. So, right above the stage on the roof is a sexually indeterminate divine who sits in the most unnatural pose, kind of squatting while bending his/her arms out, all of which look pretty uncomfortable. And at his/her sid...

You know those fuzzy slippers-ratty PJs-limp hair-bar of chocolate-tub of ice cream days when all you want to do is to vegetate on the couch? You are perhaps depressed, lazy, anti-social, nursing a miserable cold, or confined indoors by inclement weather. You may be even celebrating a long awaited off after a particularly hectic stretch at work. What do you do on such occasions? Me—I watch low investment-high entertainment feel good romantic comedies. I do declare that there is nothing like a warm, witty rom-com full of beautiful people, clever banter, and just enough sex to pick one’s spirits and restore one’s hope for humanity. However there is one problem. They threw away the template of intelligent, edgy, and quirky rom-coms after they made When Harry Met Sally. And Woody Allen is definitely does not believe in knowledge sharing. So we are left with a dearth of good movies in this genre, with every new one failing miserably to get its act together. In the straight world that...

Ladies and gentlemen, please stand up and pay your obeisance, for a new movie genre is born—the Sci-fi Musical. Or the Sci-fi Masala. Or perhaps the Sci-fi Spectacular. I am truly speechless. As was the rest of audience who watched today’s preview show with me. It is saying a lot, because watching a Rajni movie with a Tamil crowd means you hardly get to hear the dialogues and return home with a ruptured eardrum from all the screams, whistles and applause. Shankar’s latest outing is truly a paradigm shift in Sci-fi movies. This ambitious, intelligent, witty an entertaining movie picks up where the Terminators, Star Wars, Iron Men, and X-Men of the world left off and shoots off into the stratosphere. True, the film is homage to all these movies—a lot of you will have a great time spotting all the references, like the R2 robot. But you want CGI? Oh we got CGI baby! 3X size! I haven’t seen anything like that climax in my life—I am still shaking with the adrenaline rush! You want...

It’s the stunt that introduces the hero. He is pummeling one baddie when another baddie crouching behind him gets a call on his cell. The ring tone is a loud ridiculous dance tune. The poor fellow has a deer-caught-in-headlights expression—will the hero thrash him too, now that his presence has been so raucously revealed? The hero turns to face baddie # 2 while holding baddie #1 in a vise-like grip. Baddie #2 swallows hard. Hero slaps his palm on his forehead. “Phone uthana!” he barks at him. Baddie #2 sheepishly takes the phone out and checks who it is. “Kiska hi?” Hero asks. “Ma sir!” baddie #2 replies. “Ma ko mera pranam kehna!” the hero says and turns to Baddie # 1. “Ma se yaad aaya, teri ma…” “Sir!!!!” baddie #2 protests, overcome with scruples now that his mother is on the line. “Nahi, mein yeh pooch raha tha ki teri ma hi ki guzar gayi?” hero asks baddie #1. The theater erupts in laughter. At least, I guess it must, if there are more than two people in the theat...

She didn’t have a phone. In order to find each other easily, we decided to meet at the northwestern corner of the Bean at Millennium Park. I told her: “I will have a white carnation pinned to my lapel and be carrying a back issue of the Wall Street Journal. Ask me this question: ‘What is a unicorn?’ My answer will be: ‘A unicorn is just a horse with a long—ay vey!’ Make sure that they don’t follow you.” She replied: “Roger that Betty Boop. Look for a juvenile delinquent in a green shirt. Ask, 'Aasman mein kitne taare hain?' If you hear, 'Hum sab tumhare hain,' start jogging in the north westerly direction. Stop near the Inn of the Frantic Frog. I'll see you there.” It was a nasty day to meet someone at a house of ill repute like the Frantic Frog Inn. Storm clouds hung ominously overhead, darkening the sky so much that at 10:30 a.m., it looked like it was 7:00 p.m. There was a mixed crowd on the train. While getting down at Union Station, I made eye contact ...

Explain something to me. Is George Clooney a star or not? Is he a media darling, a celebrity, subject of many a female fantasies, and an impossibly good looking 49-year old or not? Is he a mainstream actor or not? Now what is he doing in a quiet, stark movie, doing a delicately nuanced character study of a taciturn assassin, dangerous and endangered (like the butterflies he likes to study)? The American is a take-no-prisoners art house movie. It is minimalist. It is deliberate. It has very little dialog. It has even lesser action. It is visually stunning. Even the plot of the movie is minimalist. Here’s an American assassin called Jack. Or perhaps he is Edward. He works for Pavel. We do not know what he is. It is not important. Only Jack (or Edward) takes orders from him without questions. Jack is forced to kill three people, including a girl (perhaps a prostitute?) in Sweden. Now his boss has asked him to lay low in a remote Italian village. He is supposed to build a custom ri...

I believe that there is no other city in the world that is as embracing to the alienated and broken as Mumbai is. I sensed it in 1999 when I first washed up on its grimy shores, tottering on a fine line, in a state of primordial soup than a fully formed person. It enveloped me in its fragrant bosom, pooh-poohed my self-pitying whining, told me in its no-nonsense way not to wallow, and placed me in the middle of the unrelenting rat race with a twinkle in its eyes. Exactly 10 years later, in 2009, when I went back to being the primordial soup, it simply held my hand and waited patiently for me to form myself again. It let me maraud its congested alleys like a Genghis Khan gone rogue, giving me a sense of belonging among the heaving masses. It offered me newer surprises, like the graceful flamingoes on the viscous waters of Sewri or the multitude of birds in the entropic disorder of Powai lake. Its denizens offered their brand of casual and kind support. I was thinking about all this...