Ru-ba-ru

GUESS what I’ve been doing? Having tea with Aamir Khan!

Aamir has been blogging for a while and, I think, finds it an excellent way to interact with his admirers directly without being interpreted by the media or other filters. He is in Hyderabad now, shooting for Ghajini, and asked last week if some of his local readers would like to meet him. Guess who put up her hand? Moi.

He was nice! Affable, articulate, attentive. Asking questions, seeking opinions; telling us his own with startling frankness. There were about 15-18 people in all – a diverse, well-informed, interesting gathering. Conversation flowed, flitting from Indian mythology to the state of our media, lingering on AP politics, staying quite a while on movies.

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We met on location for Ghajini and that brought a chance to see Aamir Khan in action. He invited us in to see the filming and sync-sound demanded that we keep quiet as mice. It has been a while since I was on a set, and the small exposure had me yearning… the dust, the heat, the cables underfoot… the ordered mayhem of it all.

It has been years since I was involved with TV and film, and I had, in fact, been itching to see how the years have altered film-making. It was a lesson to see the changes – sync sound, super light-sensitive cameras, the recording process. AR Murugadoss, who directed Ghajini in Tamil, directs this project as well. With him flew out my idea of the director as a loud presence. Diminutive, almost retiring, he sits in front of the monitor, closely watching the frames, darting off now and then to have a quiet confab with his star. The commands for silence, camera and action, in fact, came from a bossy (sounding) assistant.

Do you know, they don’t necessarily say ‘Lights, Camera, Action!’ any more? They dropped ‘Lights’ altogether on this occasion, it’s ‘Roll Video’ now, but mercifully, they say ‘Action’ still. They lit the scene entirely with ‘normal’ lights yesterday – wall mounted lights, lamps throwing pools, which apparently were more than adequate for the moody indoor ambience they sought. No sign of the heavy duty arc lights that have for so long been such evocative symbols of cinema.

Also, a great number of young women in the crew! Director’s assistants, sound recording and mysterious other jobs. All of them frightfully efficient.

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So much has been said about Aamir Khan’s perfectionism and it is indeed true. His concentration is phenomenal and he sees very clearly what must be achieved, I should think. Once that is clear, he spares no effort in achieving it. If another take and twenty more minutes must be spent in producing a shot a touch more menacing, or attain movement a little more beautiful, it must be done. Not to do that, to settle, is intolerable. It is an admirable work ethic.

जो देखे से निखरता जाए...

Summer heat
Sun-gaze so warm,
the mango blushes

From Camelot to Tashan

इस दश्त में एक शहर था, वो क्या हुआ, आवारगी...

Let the record show that the last movie the Vyases watched at Sangeet-as-we-know-it was Tashan.

It could’ve been better, but then I suppose it could’ve been worse. Silly movie. I can see why it angered so many reviewers. But then, there was Akshay Kumar, who manages sparking chemistry with most of his leading ladies and does so here with Kareena Kapoor, quite under the nose of her bulked-up beefy beau. Hee hee. Really, must Kareena Kapoor be so thin? Quite worrisome.

Anyway, so it ends. Sangeet 70 mm has been here for nearly four decades. Only across the street from my school St Ann’s, this was where we were taken to see Gandhi and Born Free. A cinema hall full of school girls in navy blue uniforms, chattering and laughing in excited anticipation. We watched Jungle Book here. There were others: first day shows, pushing through milling crowds, trying to inveigle tickets from the staff, or the tele-booking man; leisurely late night shows with the hall only half-filled, lounging in the best seats.

On May 1, the cinema closes down. The structure will be knocked down to make room for what else but a multiplex. We went a little sentimental, Shweta and I. Made it a point to buy the famous sandwiches one last time, said our goodbyes to the ticket-men, the canteen people and the parking gent. I have the ticket stubs and I think I’ll keep them.

Hazaar baar

Plaintive,
again this summer,
the cuckoo.

A dash of blue

The thrillingest thing!
I had no idea they even KNEW we existed, but evidently they do! Our humble garden, or rather Radha Aunty's excellent shrubbery, which is the same thing, has been flattered, exalted, ennobled by the presence of a Tickell's Blue Flycatcher! Yes, yes, but I have photographic proof.

Clearly digiscoping is not my talent but of the lot I have just two, may be three pictures that are reasonably clear. Yes they do come to gardens but of all the gardens, in all the world...!


This place buzzes with Red-vented Bulbuls, Tailorbirds, sunbirds, White-headed Babblers... but never before have we seen a flycatcher. Perhaps this little patch is gaining a reputation. The word, I fancy, is going around that there are lemon bushes here, and flowers, flies, juicy worms, and the odd predatory cat to add spice. Alas, this is not the first time I have let such hopes soar when vagrants come a'callin'. Why let that stop us be aux anges.

Alila seve*

This post is for my mum; on her behalf, almost.
She is deeply upset about this IPL–ICL stand-off and is doing all she can to make the underdog, the Indian Cricket League, a success. She watches every match, convenient or no, so this is my bit to her cause.

BCCI’s bullying tactics of course are abominable. That they feel threatened by a new league is understandable. I do think it is smart of them to move so quickly, to put everything in place rapidly, to create such a buzz around their own league. The IPL has big bucks, big names, official status, glamour, clout – everything that gives them assured success. Which makes it even more surprising that they should stoop to choke their competitors so unfairly, denying them playing grounds, threatening to ban players, forcing young talented players make hard choices: to pick between playing some cricket and making some money while they can, or warming BCCI benches waiting for calls that never come. Why shouldn’t BCCI allow its players to play in other leagues? Why shouldn’t they use these platforms to scope out young players? I don’t see the ban lasting very long, though – there is room, I believe, for both leagues.

Anyway, the ICL season started this week and games begin in Hyderabad this weekend. The schedule is here. Luckily, they’re being aired on Ten Sports as well as Zee Sports and the first few matches have been good fun.

I have a grouse with the ticketing, though. In Hyderabad, the Lal Bahadur Stadium is located advantageously enough to tempt many people into wandering in, just to looksee. I would be. But Rs 500 or 200 per head is prohibitive, given there are ten matches scheduled here within the next month. So there is absolutely no way you can make a habit of swinging by on match day and enjoying a thrilling two hours before heading off to dinner. Short-sighted of the organisers – they do want full stadiums, don’t they?

The link to ICL’s website is here.


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* Kannada for ‘the squirrel’s contribution’, from the episode in the Ramayana when the squirrel carries pebbles and building material for the bridge to Lanka.

pull? yank?

How come I've never before seen this testimonial to our best-loved traditional sport? Bollywood's choreography standards have fallen, I tell you.
Now just remains for me to see Naseeb with English subtitles, "Catch, catch, catch..." what's angrezi for "jakdo, jakdo, jakdo"?

Tag tag

It has tagged us and we are bound to deliver.
As it happens it is not a tag that requires very much original work but instead seeks ze introspection, much surfing of one’s own pages and regurgitation. So it is done and we present results of this exercise.

The Ask
Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words given (family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like). Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances (if not, your current blog buddies will do) so that you get to know them each a little bit better.

The Answer
Family
There was much to choose from. We are tending to go on at length, so why not give you posts per family member?

Sibling. Here where we talk of what it means to us, and more amusingly, here, discovering what it means sometimes. Another post on our enmeshed lives.
Mother. Stray references only I am finding here, no post, alack. Shocking. How this has happened? Light of my life, is mater.
Father, again, I have spoken of not very much at all. However, there is this, In Which He Is As Provoking As Usual.

Friends
I find one post which talks of friends from several circles, and reflects happy times of many kinds and includes coffee.

Myself
Now this is really difficult, because there is three years’ worth to choose from. However recently I talked of me, of words representing me, and wondered if in fact they do?
And this something which is not poetry but captures a nihilistic state of mind that occurs quite a bit with me.

Love
Of that, there is nothing here; we have been most discreet. There is an Anand Bakshi song I blogged about though, if you will settle for it.

Something I like
I once wrote a post on religion and politeness that I’d like you to read again.

I hereby tag The Marauder in hopes that it prompts a post on her still-hibernating blog and Mahesh Nilakantan, the Icarus man who hasn’t piled on those frequent flier points of late.

Whirligig

My friend Sudha’s visit to town coincides with the Krishnakriti Art Festival and so this past week has been a whirl of sensory experiences replete with food, drink, music and an extravagant visual feast – all very well in their own place but together manage to leave me sleep-deprived and not a little stunned. All this has also gripped me with a desire to blog about it, so I shall in exhausting detail.

The first of the Kalakriti events was a play based on Mahashweta Devi’s short story Stan Dayini. The play was called Choli ke peeche kya hai and it began by playing the entire song – all six-odd minutes of it – with one actor keeping beat (or rather following it, because his rhythm was a bit off) with cymbals and the rest of the cast all wandering in and out of stage looking meaningful. I muttered to Shweta that they were going to spoil this song for us and that is almost what happened. Pretentious drivel! We saw the play through to the gory end and removed to Kamat next door to calm our nerves, where tasteful coffee and tasteless jokes set us to rights.

*

I missed the jazz concert the next day but went instead to dinner at Barbeque Nation, and I was completely delighted with it. Kebabs are the speciality here and the fun part is each table at Barbeque Nation comes with a hollow centre which is cleverly designed to hold a brazier. The kebabs are brought and you can cook them as you please, choosing from herbed and flavoured oils, and garlic butter. Rs 400 includes all the grills you can eat as well as a nice buffet. Wasteful you would say, seeing as I am vegetarian, but they had five vegetarian kebabs for us types and I appreciated the thoughtfulness.

Hyderabad cannot pretend to a winter but the chill in the air makes you glad of sitting around warmth and eating hot food. We staggered out and meandered towards Taj Deccan, not because we were hungry, I assure you, but merely to uphold a long-held tradition of midnight tea.

*

I was determined to go to the Kalakriti event on Thursday. I have a special fondness for folk music and the Manganiyars of Rajasthan I admire very much. Even had they just lined up to sing in a sedate row I would’ve considered it a high treat but this was something special. Called The Manganiyar Seduction, this was music propped by such drama as to be astounding. As we settled in the open-air auditorium at Taramati Baradari, the set drew all eyes. A tall four-tiered affair with 36 cubicles, each box curtained with scarlet cloth, each box lined with golden bulbs.


It began quietly. A small box at the left corner was revealed and highlighted, and a diminutive musician on the sarangi drew his bow across string to set tone and mood. Slowly gathering force, other curtains were parted and voices joined in, as did sarangis, harmoniums, kamanchas, dhols, morchings… it was spectacular. They sang sufiana kalaam drawing from Bulle Shah, wove in and out of other pieces all in one fine, continuous, well-coordinated piece. The lights dipped and grew bright, highlighting now this box, and now that row as artists had their say in the amalgam. How talented these musicians are, how mature and sound their grounding in their art! Is this what Rajasthan is like? Minstrels hidden behind every sand dune? I want.

Taramati Baradari is a goodish distance from where I live but it is a gorgeous place. There was another reason that made going all that way worthwhile – a tea place called Finjaan, where they serve 36 varieties of tea. Very elegant it was and I chose an infusion of rose buds, a delicate tasting drink that made me feel very regal. We had stopped at Finjaan before we went to the concert, and as I listened to the Manganiyars, a faint waft of roses clung to me, as if there was still something more the evening brought out for me.

*

Yesterday, a reading of poetry by Ranjit Hoskote – he deals image-rich, musing phrases with a light hand. We missed the introduction, alas – mea culpa, I was caught up with work and Shweta, who keeps me waiting nine times out of ten, muttered at me all the way there and back.

Dinner then at Aromas of China – jasmine tea, some fabulous crisped vegetable starters in pepper-garlic sauce, butter noodles, gently flavoured clay pot rice, potatoes and corn in some sweetish sauce and for dessert, date pancakes and mango jelly pudding.

That is all.

Then play on

Another valued tape gone. I have a considerable number from the dark ages when there were only magnetic tapes, and now my player is eating them and I’m faced weekly with a tangled wreck of what once used to be lovely music. It was Amjad Ali Khan’s Bhimpalasi last week, a leisurely evocative double-sided exposition that used to part of my travelling collection. Today it was Mian Tansen torn to shreds, quite beyond patchwork.

I’m struggling to digitise my tapes. I’ve found some excellent lessons online which seem doable if only I could discover why, after making all the connections I’m supposed to make, the output doesn’t pour out of my system’s speakers. The alternative is to take them all to a new-fangled electronics wala, which means some effort, time and money.

Then there is the dilemma. Should I indeed carry over all this – about 500 tapes – into the future? Or resolve to buy only digital music from here on and let these go? All these Mehdi Hassans, these Nusrats, the only version of ‘Nit Khair Mangan’ I have?
Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Bismillah Khan, Prabhakar Karekar.
Noor Jahan, Farida Khanum, Nayyara Noor.
My grandfather’s collection: MD Ramanathan, TV Sankaranarayanan, Maharajapuram Santhanam. Kadri Gopalnath and U Srinivas.

Even writing this makes up my mind for me. It would be criminal, I think, to not at least try. I find the task daunting: the very idea of lugging these over, deciding how to sort and lump them… still, let us put it down in my list of things to do.

From all I’ve said…

…let them not seek to find who I've been.*


My sister was at the computer today with some yellow web pages open on her desktop, and she said to me, somewhat regretfully, that when she had time on her hands and in search of something to read, she went to my blog – not to the current pages but the archives. She was in fact saying, this used to be a better blog.

It is quite true, of course. I have known this for a while, indeed realised it while it the slide was occurring, but I quite lacked the mind to force it. My posts then were spontaneous, more honest, more generous. I was not afraid to be quotidian, trivial or silly. But then, you see, I was not expecting to be read. Or at least not by anyone outside my family, one cousin and a few friends. What done me in was the audience, the unexpected audience. People I didn’t know, or worse, people I did. There is a paranoid, secretive streak in me and I held back, became more formal, more stilted and wrote only one of the half dozen posts that sprang to mind.

Also as I read more blogs myself, I saw no point in repeating sentiments or making points others had already made so well, or lower myself to be yet another voice in the clamouring crowd. What I had to say would have to be distinct or otherwise, very strongly felt. I feel now that this “sitting in the stalls” was unwise. What did it matter, after all?

A blog, a personal blog, is more than the sum of its posts. If it is written honestly and there are discerning readers, there is very little that can stay hidden – prejudices, leanings, irrationalities, inconsistencies all are laid bare. The best blogs of this sort are those that tell you what the writer is about; by including her moods and varying attitudes, the range of her swings, they tell you in essence the best as well as the worst of her. The mosaic of posts can introduce you to a person that you couldn’t possibly discover through several social encounters. If a blog can do that, I’d count it a success. Sadly, however much I like some posts, I must say this is not quite the blog it could have been.

Does this sound like an epitaph? No, there’s some writing in me yet. With infrequent updates and boring-as-all-hell posts we have driven off more than half our readership, hopefully taking with it all the ghostly readers who make me uncomfortable. Anew, we can pretend that there is no one around but us friends and now we may be cosy.


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*What can one say that a poet can’t say better? This is from a much-loved one by Cavafy:

Hidden
From all I've done and all I've said
let them not seek to find who I've been.
An obstacle stood and transformed
my acts and way of my life.
An obstacle stood and stopped me
many a time as I was going to speak.
My most unobserved acts,
and my writings the most covert --
thence only they will feel me.
But mayhap it is not worth to spend
this much care and this much effort to know me.
For -- in the more perfect society --
someone else like me created
will certainly appear and freely act.
~Constantine Cavafy

Hyderabad BirdRace

Sorry for the hasty post but it's BirdRace time again. We had one last year and it was terrific fun!
It's on 2 December this year - do do come. You'll need to register with Siraj Taher (32936937) or Sushil Kapadia (9393319333) of the Birdwatchers' Society of Andhra Pradesh. The official site is here and Ludwig has all the details here.