And once again from the very lovely S a poem i just fell in love with.

Any Prince to Any Princess
~ by Adrian Henri



August is coming
and the goose, I’m afraid,
is getting fat.
There have been
no golden eggs for some months now.
Straw has fallen well below market price
despite my frantic spinning
and the sedge is,
as you rightly point out,
withered.


I can’t imagine how the pea
got under your mattress. I apologize
humbly. The chambermaid has, of course,
been sacked. As has the frog footman.
I understand that, during my recent fact-finding tour of the
Golden River,
despite your nightly unavailing efforts,
he remained obstinately
froggish.


I hope that the Three Wishes granted by the General
Assembly
will go some way towards redressing
this unfortunate recent sequence of events.
The fall in output from the shoe-factory, for example:
no one could have foreseen the work-to-rule
by the National Union of Elves. Not to mention the fact
that the court has been fast asleep
for the last six and a half years.


The matter of the poisoned apple has been taken up
by the Board of Trade: I think I can assure you
the incident will not be
repeated.


I can quite understand, in the circumstances,
your reluctance to let down
your golden tresses. However
I feel I must point out
that the weather isn’t getting any better
and I already have a nasty chill
from waiting at the base
of the White Tower. You must see
the absurdity of the
situation.
Some of the courtiers are beginning to talk,
not to mention the humble villagers.
It’s been three weeks now, and not even
a word.


Princess,
a cold, black wind
howls through our empty palace.
Dead leaves litter the bedchamber;
the mirror on the wall hasn’t said a thing
since you left. I can only ask,
bearing all this in mind,
that you think again,


let down your hair,
Reconsider.

Thank You Shradha for sending me this very lovely poem...

Every fourteen days,

a language dies.

Does it count

to fourteen

until it expires,

or do others

do the counting?

Every fourteen days,

a language dies.

No more rocks

for it, no more skies;

no more love in it,

no more time.

The world

becomes unconstricted

from it, untied

from sound.

How many

Adams had to point

to how many things

and say how many

names and smile

at how many aptnesses?

Every fourteen days,

a language dies;

can one imagine

the night

before it does?

To say:

“This is the last tear,

this is the last sigh, this,

the last of the last.”

Every fourteen days,

a language dies.

This, even a Scheherazade

cannot stop.

MICA - ek chhoti si love story

Posting pics from our 10th alumni visit (last year).. just coz i saw them.

Alcohol and maggi... small pleasures!


MICA shoes


and.. Evam (AND EVAM.. Did you get that.. clever huh). Tickets of the first play i was ever part of - Evam Indrajit.


My happy place just got happier - watching the WC Final win in the Audi. (you can't see me - i am in the cream t-shirt behind all the limelight hoggers)


Oh happy happy!

Isn't she a doll. She fell down and her teeth cut in to her tongue.. so freaking scary. she is okay now though.

Theatre debut and such like

Diary notes so i dont forget.
I directed 3 short plays (10 minutes each) in the last 1 month. The first was a play called "Meet cute" and was showcased at the Short and Sweet Theatre festival in Bangalore. That was the first time Short and sweet is being hosted in Bangalore - its origins are in Australia and it has been hosted also in Malaysia, Singapore, Dubai, Chennai, Delhi and now in Bangalore.
The other 2 were for Evam's 'First Rush' batch. First Rush is an acting workshop whic Evam runs for people who are interested in giving acting in drama a shot. At the end of the workshop they get to be part of a production. So as part of that production, i directed 2 plays - 'Floored' and 'The Pillow'.

All of it was such great fun. No big promises - just.. I will try and do more.

Revisiting Rockstar

I watched Rockstar again today. Actually that’s again and again. The DVD has just released and I watched it once with documentary from Imitiaz Ali and Ranbir Kapoor and once without.

This is late for a review but I had to write this anyway because this movie is special. So let me not call this a review – it is an ode to a film that has shaken me up every time I have watched it. I’ve been thinking about why that is –What is it about this movie? I am not completely sure yet… I don’t think it’s a movie you connect with because you relate to the characters or a movie that brings back memories.
You may or may not have been part of a love like this or a journey like theirs but this is movie unfailingly reaches out to a space within you and not only makes you feel everything that Jordan and Heer must have felt but makes you imagine that you have been through it with them – all their heartbreak, pain and overwhelming emotion becomes yours. And here is my salute to Ranbir Kapoor and Imtiaz Ali for making that happen. Very early in the movie when you see Janardhan getting advise from Khattara-bhai on how to become successful and the necessary pain you must feel to get there you make a connection to this “halka aadmi”. From there his journey becomes your journey.. all of it - his failed attempts at impressing a girl he is not even interested in, his friendship with a girl so out of his league, his inability to grasp how ahead of him his emotions have gotten and his overwhelming all consuming love.

I think the greatest disservice done to this movie was its title, leading you to probably believe what I did before I watched it – that it would be about a Rockstar’s journey from being a nobody to fame to the expected final debacle, with alcohol and drug abuse thrown in for good measure. Rockstar is about a journey but thankfully not the journey I described above but a far more real journey… The journey of a boy who does not even like drinking – he only pretends to drink throwing a little alcohol on his face and collar and then acting drunk. This endearing confession in the beginning of the movie - cut to – the latter half of the movie where Jordan is drinking from a hip flask and throwing up at parties.
For me ‘Rockstar’ was all about these transformations.
A boy who has nothing to complain about, who doesn’t know the meaning of pain to a man who has been thrown out of his home, lost the only person who he is “set” with and whose pain becomes the anthem of a generation.

And Oh the music! Nothing has played on my mind more than this set of songs – they are songs that have lifted me, flared me up and soothed me. Never has music played such a role in telling a story in Indian Cinema before. God Bless AR Rehman and in some of these songs – truly, God is AR Rehman.

For me the most beautiful moments in the movie were - the moment in Kashmir before the wedding when Heer asks Janardhan to hug her and insists that he really hug her, the conversation on the day of the wedding when Heer answers a question even before he asks it, and then leaves it hanging when he does ask it. The moment when he meets her in Prague and asks her to come with him, she says a lot of things about her health but he already knows she is meant to come with him and come she will. The foresight of experience when Shammi Kapoor’s character sees Jordan and recognizes him for what he is – a bada janwar, who will not be caged in mediocrity and the constraints of society. The meeting after she comes back to India and admits that all she wants is to be hugged by him – I have to say truly, the hugs were so beautiful and so much more spectacular than even the kisses… The hospital scene.. and so many more.

This movie was special also for the little little touches that make a movie stand out -> the orange rockstar sweater in the 1st half, the powder on Khattara bhai’s neck, the beautiful authentic Kashmiri wedding. All so beautifully done!

And Imtiyaz Ali, what a stroke of genius to come up with a story that has such a remarkable ironic touch to it. Jordan is her medicine with his magic touch but he is also her illness. His love will make her feel life and also cause her death.

But I have to admit, I wished for more. I really wanted one cathartic moment when Jordan breaks down and weeps for all that he has lost. Some may feel like this would be too much but for me the build-up of this angst that Jordan was going through was too much, I would have loved for a moment of release for this character (and for us). Also this is clearly pain that will bring you to your knees and I would have liked to see that happen physically to Jordan.

I know a lot of people who didn’t like the movie and really didn’t see what the big deal was – and then there were others like me who were just in love with the movie and everything it made them feel. In that sense, this is a true cult movie – you may / may not have a hit but you have created a very loyal fan base. It’s a movie I want to watch again and again and always privately – because of how exposed parts of it make you feel. I am still on a mini journey of my own discovering things about the movie and the music.

(Back to viewing the Bonus DVD now.)