On the awkwardness of a recorded number being taken cognizance of the morning after

Oh.

Him.

Hm.

Being open

Hi.

That's me.

#1

I overturn the cardboard box on the table.

I noted that the box itself, a shoebox from Nike, had no plastic/vinyl outer layer, but had the decals printed directly onto the cardboard. This was fortuitous, for if my recollection served me loyally, Nike had both before and after used an outer cover plastered onto the box for its purposes, only possibly having a brief flare up of its environmental conscience to not do so, during which time fortuitously (again) i had cone into possession of this box.

Having overturned the preciously nested stack contents onto the table, i note wondered why i had done so. It seemed a lot more voluminous when in chaos. Analogous, perhaps, to the grace of a sheets of paper floating onto the floor versus an improperly gripped book flung into the air, which resembles a bird disoriented because it's just flown smack into a window.

I think i feel like that. A bird that's sped into a glass window. I think they usually die. Even if they don't, they probably do eventually. Depends on whether they orient themselves in time to not fall to their deaths. Can birds fall to their deaths? They seem awfully light, much like cats. Though a falling bird and falling cat might mean the cat preying on the bird once it his the floor.

I, blind, have been directed to fly as fast as i can and with as much faith as can be mustered. The faith comes slowly, the speed still a searching one for invisible razor wires drawn across low-flying areas and whatnot, and of course transparent windows that make the people inside dream of freedom and serve as perfect obstacles to those with. It must be by design. The faith is finally in bloom, the speed soaring and trust given in to. And then comes a window, soundtracked by a comically sad horn section as i ooze down its side, shedding feathers and life force, deposited at the bottom, perhaps still alive but only stunned, but nevertheless at the mercy of circling cats. The first one pounces for my neck...

The papers are one such mauled heap on the table. I'm irritated with myself. But, they're not just papers. I sort through the pile and pick out those materials that won't burn. I contemplate leaving the plastic in, but i don't fancy having to live with a singed smelly reminder. Then again, I'm not going to be here all that long either. Decisions, decisions. Ultimately, it's probably best to leave them out, if only because they're less culpable. Actually, no, they're equally culpable. Only tacit. I create a small heap of these non-paper items, and with one expansive sweep of my arm throw them all off the table and into a waiting bag below. Some spill over.

Are they to be read? I think back to something i once loftily claimed, no doubt pinched from a motivational poster or a cynical TV show. The past is behind, and the future not yet born. All we have is now. I'm pretty sure it was worded differently when i told her. Worded to sound less pompous, at the least. But i meant it. I couldn't guarantee her a future, not then, though i might say different now. I couldn't rest upon what we once were, for that we weren't, or hadn't been, for some time. We should make the most of what we had, and all we had was now...

...all we had was then. There's nothing now, and they wouldn't be any emptier now than they would sitting undisturbed in the box, unthumbed and forgotten. The words don't live by themselves. Any life they had was leeched out, slowly. Once she abandoned them, they died. Only their shells remained. Like fossils in the crust their imprint was clear but motives now thoroughly inscrutable. i reasoned that if she didn't stand by them anymore, they don't deserve the indignity of being disturbed.

I haphazardly pile them back in and set them alight. I wish i could say that the ink teared out of the paper, but it merely crackled and turned over.

I sat beside, weeping sullenly the whole time, embarrassed at my lack of control.

The box lay charred and inwardly curled. On second thought, a plastic lined one might have better retained its integrity.

Hm.

As it transpires, if one person has blocked another on Facebook, neither can see anything of the other, including posts on common friends' walls... which must be a curiosity for the common friend(s) in situations such as both people commenting on a status msg, mutually oblivious, but only to each other.

Knowledge is power. France is Bacon.

For 2012, i think I'm going to try sincerity.

And blogger app for Android.

Those two.

Ra.One (2011)

I realise, with some curiosity, that the last three films I’ve seen have all been Bollywood films – an indication of how my watching routine has changed, more than anything else. Three in two months (the other two being Meri Brother ki Dulhan and Mujhse Fraandship Karoge) is more Bollywood seen than in the decade that preceded it, I daresay. So, Bollywood tropes are lost on me, as are any winks at its history. Only the most axiomatic of pharmoola conventions may register with me.

Irrelevant, in any case, as Ra.One would seem, as per SRK’s rumblings, to want, much like various films saddled with the tag in the recent past, to be Bollywood’s coming out party to the rest of the world. At any rate, to secure a bigger slice of the worldwide (and not just the NRI) box office pie, so that its bloated production budget could be recouped.   

My decision to watch Ra.One was whimsical. I was walking past the theatre to catch lunch, and just decided. The box office told me that I could just show up and pick any seat I wanted, because the hall was empty. Of course, this was at 1 PM, and the eventual headcount was around twenty people.

More significantly for my recent Bollywood watching habit, this was the first that I was watching alone, without a translator guide. Not that it made much of a difference, but some of the punch that the dialogue may have aspired for would have been lost on me due to ignorance of the language, rather than comprehension and then falling flat.

I haven’t followed much of the negative/positive press surrounding the movie, though I haven’t been ignorant to it either. Not watching much TV means I haven’t been subjected to SRK’s constant pimping too (though, a toothpaste advert running in the theatre before the film started was one such pimp role). I also don’t (or, at the least, try) not to judge a movie that I plan to see before I see it.

I have seen it, and now I judge it.

Well, just as I type this, someone on twitter responded to a tweet of mine that called the film a cinematic abortion with “Ppl lik these r the reason India wil nevr see bettr movies. If som1 tries new stuff, they fart with their pessimist ass!” Oh, wait, this was a response to a tweet where I poked fun at a Bombay local train being too fast. Nevertheless, this reply is a good starting point, as is an earlier tweet of the user: “The problem in India is that, people are so used to the shitty movies, that they just don't want to accept better technology.”

Ra.One is not original.

Starting with the title animation that has been nicked from Transformers, the movie is not original, chucking any genre convention it can get its hands on (hell, creation coming to life is at least as old as Shelley’s Frankenstein) into its melting pot, regardless of whether its tone fits with the overall scheme.

Is that a problem per se? No. I am perfectly capable of having an enjoyable time with a plot that’s nonsensical (Hitchcock, anyone?), and even when the characters behave in a nonsensical fashion independent of what the plot dictates [such as digesting the central conceit of the plot with barely a shrug, or barely (beyond one rainy funeral) grieving a dead husband/father (keeping with the South Indian stereotyping, let’s call him Da.One) and gleefully accepting Da.Two, much improved/ North Indianised].

Let me start with what I liked about Ra.One.

Arjun Rampal is yummy. I want those cheekbones and abs. The music in the film (the score, not the songs) is suitably cinematic, and the ‘dun dun dunn’ ominous riff caught my ear back when the first teaser dropped (during last year’s IPL? Can’t remember).

Note that I didn’t include Rajnikanth’s cameo. Being South Indian doesn’t mandate me to do so, unlike what the producers might think. I’m not even going to go into the deeper socio-universal repercussions his appearance as Chitti bodes (it would mean that the film was taking place in a universe where at least one robot is acknowledged and at large), because clearly the producers weren’t thinking beyond a nudge-nudge wink-wink moment. But, even within those goals, it’s such a completely non-sequitor and downright random scene that is preceded by absurdity and ends with an edit away. No context/closure provided.

What sucked? Everything else.

I’m not going to criticise it for the things usually left at the door in this genre (boom-boom action family flick, oxymoronic as that may seem) – tugging at the heart strings, kid that deserves to be slapped, dumb explosions, monkeys at typewriter script etc.

Though, one thing to be mentioned is its nihilistic view towards life – whatever happened to the incidental people walking across the street not being reduced to collateral damage? Here, both Ra.One (ok, fair enough, if to establish how dastardly the character is) and G.One gleefully indulge in damage to person and property.

I’m going to engage this film on the plane that SRK wants the watching public to – technology. Better technology, as the twitter user would say.

Is the technology better? (better than what? It’s not being judged against… Peepli [Live], is it?) Perhaps it is, but so what? It’s still painful to watch, and no amount of F/X wizardry is going to change that – the CGI is quite evident in a lot of places it’s not supposed to be (i.e. discounting the nature of the video gaming beast), and it’s inconsistent in logic too – flesh and blood characters within a CG world in the video game. 

Being pretty to look at does not make it something people should want to watch. Call me old school, but I believe (as do a large number of people) that the technical aspects should never eclipse the story of a movie. The makers shouldn’t feel that they deserve a pat on the back merely for making something nice (even if absolutely masturbatory in its overblown nature) to look at, and they certain shouldn’t try to actively solicit it.

 

This is not a Western hegemonic critique where I feel that Ra.One is trampling on Hollywood’s toes. I don’t like brainless action films from Hollywood either. It also doesn’t mean that boom-boom movies don’t make money – of course they do, whether it’s the Jerry Bruckheimer oeuvre or this one. However, of note is that this film goes beyond its call of Michael Bay duty and does not treat most of its characters with even a modicum of respect, and has no heart.

In trying to elevate itself to whatever testosterone explosion porn level of Hollywood, Ra.One has imbibed all the wrong lessons from it – marketing blitz, super-saturation of screens, utter contempt towards its characters, and being a cynical cash grab. Amongst other things.

Making a pile of money doesn’t mean it’s any good. 

Sri Lanka #2

Part One here.

There was a wee bit of confusion over the documentation that was required to enter the country. Calling the Sri Lankan embassy yielded only a sing-song voices that seemed to differ, based on the person spoken to, on everything except that the new Visa regulations, announced two days before we were to depart, would come into effect on the first of January, 2012.

My father told me to carry passport photographs, to be safe, and asked me to remind Ka to do the same. I didn’t want to be a nag, and assumed that Ka would carry them anyway, having travelled to Turkey and Vietnam/Cambodia in the recent past, and so (I assumed) fairly fluent in the language of immigration. Just to check, I asked him after he had landed up in Chennai whether he had any passport photographs.

Uh… Oh. Well, a couple can be produced at a pinch.

Good enough.

He’d told me that he was lurking around the SpiceJet counter, and asked me to meet him there once I entered. I was semi-trotting, trying to be quick about it, hoping I wouldn’t miss the flight due to the serpentine immigration lines that are the bane of international travellers from Chennai.

The first thing I noted was that it had been a really long time since I’d flown international. The last time I had flown international, or so I think, the international check-in counters used to be what are now the domestic counters at the airport. The new space given to the international terminal feels like an installation space – a vast room, with some puny (by comparison) counters scattered over the area.

The second thing was the ubiquity of students from my college. Literally the first person I see as I’m trotting in is a junior. An involuntary (and entirely unfair) curse floats through my thoughts. It gets better – turns out he’s headed to Colombo too, with two others from college. Oh, goody. Not that it affected me at all – I recognised even then that I was being churlish about wanting this to be my holiday, and not having it sullied by them. They probably felt the same way about me. In any event, they were headed to another part of the country. I did, however, extract an affirming second, third and fourth opinion from them about the passport photograph.

I find Ka. He’s wandering around like a lost puppy, dead phone in hand and ukulele in mouth. He comes up to me and paws at my backpack for my charger – I still don’t know what he was up to the night prior, but he’d just barely made it out of Bangalore with his passport and ticket. Like a puppy that’s just dragged a bird into the living room, he’s wagging his proverbial tail and glowingly proud that he foraged out two passport photographs.

Where are they?

In my backpack.

Where’s your backpack?

Um… I checked it in.

Right. That bridge could be crossed at the appropriate time – never, as it transpired; they weren’t required.

I check myself in, and join the immigration queue. We spent our time staring at a couple of men in front of us, one of whom was a dead ringer (and I do mean completely) for Paul McCartney, circa 1966. His companion looked the non-descript slightly scruffy and greasy type who would’ve played bass guitar for second-tier mid-90s BritPop band like Suede. Ka started humming ‘The Drowners’, and was impressed when I correctly identified it.

We’re filling our Departure Cards while standing in line, and come to the box labelled ‘flight number’. We look at our respective boarding passes, and under flight number, standing in proud, bold, black solitude, is ‘1’. That’s it. Just… ‘1’. It was the same for everyone, of course. We weren’t about to write ‘1’ in the six odd boxes provided, so presented the empty spaces and boarding passes to the lady at immigration – turns out it’s SG001. But SpiceJet are kool like dat.

The immigration lady asks the standard questions – what do you do for a living, why are you going to Sri Lanka, when are you coming back etc. She asks for proof of return, and I produce it. Ka had checked his in, and was in a bit of a pickle. I told her that he was with me, and she let him through, at which point I say, ‘wait. No. I don’t know you. Do I? Who are you?’ He grins sheepishly and scurries away, his passport having already been stamped, while she starts to have second thoughts about letting him through. I was informed immediately that this was not appropriate behaviour at an immigration counter. Oops.

Seated next to me on the flight was the sort of world-hopping Frenchman that I long to be. Though, not as smelly. Let’s call him Henri. Henri had his hair slicked back over his balding head, had really bad smoke-tinged breath, wore a ratty tee, shorts and Hawaii chappals, and was fiercely protective of his jolna, in which he was carrying Mysorepau. We were sitting in the emergency exit row, and he was muttering darkly about opening the exit out of spite because he had been forced to stow the bag in the overhead compartment, the air hostess stony to his protests of his ‘soft cakes’ being squished.

Henri was a bum kind of Frenchman, flitting between Pondicherry (but not Auroville) and Sri Lanka over the year, living off undisclosed means (though he did mention something about an Army pension). He was a diminutive man, extremely talkative and effusively theatrical, possessing an entirely misplaced confidence that nevertheless sat well because of his infectious gregariousness, slippery accent and wholeheartedness, whether recommending the sandwiches served on the plane, the king coconuts on the streets of Sri Lanka, or encouraging me to bang someone in Trinco.

What does he do with his time?

Oh, you know. I sit on the beach, I read, I hunt women. I hunt them… never Sinhalese though. Never even look at them, because you will get shot. But, the tourists. Aah, the tourists…

He flips open the in-flight magazine and looks at an ad with Priyanka Chopra.

Oh, who is she? I must have her. She is in Bombay, you say? I will go to Bombay, and I will have her. Just you wait.

An in-flight announcement is made.

This is a page for Mr. Mohammad. Mr. Mohammad?... Uh, Mr. Mohammad sitting in seat number XX.

Ka was sitting behind me. We both burst out laughing at the perfect ambiguity of it, and spent the next few hours being gleefully PI – whether the same page on a flight to Dubai (Mr. Mohammad.. Yes? Yes? Yes? Yes? Yes? Uh.. Mr. Mohammad… Abdul? Yes? Yes? Yes? Yes? Yes?), or a page for Mr. Singh on a flight from Punjab to Canada.

And then we landed, went through baggage, and were out.

Colombo. 

(to be continued)

Sri Lanka #1

The concretisation of my Sri Lanka trip was pure chance. It’d be incorrect to call it the ‘concretisation’, because there was no real plan to begin with. When this gentleman informed me (due to a different number showing up on WhatsApp) that he had relocated to Colombo, on a whim I decided that now was as good a time as any to head there. And that decision was just about the only thing that was concrete, cemented with the booking of tickets. Nothing else had been resolved, whether who to go with, where I/we’d be staying, or what I/we’d be doing once in the country.

The only ‘vacation’ time I receive for the first year of work is a six day break over the Durga Puja holidays – it’s a break stencilled into the calendar; I’m not allowed any time off per se. The original plan was to mope around at home doing nothing, but then I decided to take charge of my life (to whatever extent), aided by newly infused income, and go somewhere.

There was no planning involved, apart from picking the date. The flight tickets from Chennai, to and from Colombo, cost less than a one-way ticket from Kolkata to Chennai. The airline was SpiceJet. The duration of the flight was an hour, which is barely more than flying from Chennai to Bangalore, and considerably less than Chennai to anywhere that is not South India. No visa was required, so no pre-trip jousting with bureaucracy was called for – all that was needed was a printed-out ticket and passport in pocket. My father, veteran of travel that he is, helpfully slipped me some foreign currency and an international travel cash card before I left – things that would prove invaluable once there. Nothing about it felt like an international trip.     

I told a couple of people that I was planning to go. The purpose wasn’t as much to find travel companions as it was to commit myself to the trip – I have known myself to be quite flaky about going to places that, while thoroughly enjoyed once there, had problems of inertia in the get-go. One of them, let’s call him Ka, said the equivalent of, "oh, cool. I’ll come too." And that was that. He proceeded to attempt to recruit one or two other people, but all of that fell through, and so is irrelevant to the narrative.

The next question was what we’d do once there. Constrained by time, we could either attempt to cram a whole lot of things in, or try to do one thing leisurely. Initial suggestions of travelling to caves and palaces and other such ‘cultural museum type shit’ were shot down. I asked an acquaintance who’d been there about interesting things to do, and she suggested whale watching. But, alas, the whales had fucked off to other climes. Ka’s colleague had been a month prior, and he highly recommended Trincomalee, and so we decided to be beach bums. One of the failed recruits in this journey had suggested a Scuba diving course. The two aligned. Ka mailed a couple of people in Trinco about the diving course; the response was "It’s the end of the season, and everything is shutting down. But… we’ll see."

‘We’ll see’ was probably the motto of this trip, for me at least, for that’s what I told my father, who constantly badgered me about details and itinerary.

Where are you going to go from Colombo?

We’ll see.

Do you have tickets to travel to Trinco?

We’ll see.

Have you made hotel arrangements in Trinco?

We’ll see… if we get there.

And so on.

Two days before the date of departure, Ka calls me from Bangalore and asks me to book a bus ticket for him to Chennai, as he was otherwise occupied. In tune with the vibe of the trip, I book him on a bus that was scheduled to reach Chennai at a time that would’ve cut getting to the airport very close – I’d booked it assuming that the time to be allowed was the forty-five minutes required for a domestic journey, and not the two/three hours required for an international one. The ticket was rectified.

My flight from Kolkata was delayed by an hour and a bit, which meant I arrived in Chennai only around midnight. Completely exhausted, I nevertheless did not go to sleep, staying awake till 3 AM emailing people. Not packing – that was hastily done the next morning, with colour commentary provided by my parents and grandmother, egging me along. I threw a bunch of clothes into my pink tote (easily distinguishable on a baggage belt), made sure that I had the two things absolutely essential (ticket and passport), and ran for the airport, hoping I wouldn’t miss the flight. 

(to be continued)

because i'm bored/ones littering my margin are cuter

Graph Shark!

well, i never

I’ve almost entirely stopped watching sport on television, for whatever reason, but on occasion I do venture into places where the fanatical types in college watch and cheer – from where my room is, if there is a fairly unambiguous (in terms of support in the common room) match happening (an India v. someone cricket match, for example – it gets tougher if it’s Federer v. Nadal or something), I only need count the cheers for wickets fallen or the general state of the match.

However, tonight I’d eaten out with two such characters (R and P here), Tendulkar fanatics to the core,* who’d left the Sri Lanka v. India match for the sake of food. As far as they knew, SRL had made 239, and India had progressed with the loss of Sehwag. The plan post-dinner was to head to an ice-cream parlour nearby for dessert.

But then, as we walked down and were just about to leave, R peeks into the Café Coffee Day next to the restaurant, and says ‘dude, we need to check the score’.

He takes a step towards it, exclaims ‘Dude! MASTER IS BATTING!’, and they both run into the CCD, dismissing suggestions of heading to the ice-cream place with a scoff and wave of the hand (it should be mentioned at this point that R refers to Sachin Tendulkar as ‘Master’ with no sense of irony; he’d sound like Peter Lorre if only he snivelled a bit more).

They enter CCD, and promptly plonk themselves at a table that was occupied by a couple (couches, so the couple were canoodling on one, leaving the other free) because it was right in front of the TV. Eventually, they see reason and proceed to a table a little less optimal for viewing, and loudly pontificate on the state of the match and SRT’s prowess.

The state of the match by this point is almost a given – India were comfortably winning, with 7 wickets in hand and 40-odd runs required of more than enough balls in hand (that’s what she said) to trot home.

They, of course, don’t give a crap about that (well, not as much) – they’re frantically calculating the run difference between those required to win, and the number SRT needed to reach his century.

At this point, he was on 75-ish, and given the balls in hand, they were absolutely confident that Dinesh Karthik (who was at the other end) would do the right thing and defend out while given ‘Master’ the strike and means to win.

It wasn’t yet tight vis-à-vis runs left for victory, so they spent their time berating Chandigarh and the residents of Mohali, who deigned to not show up for matches where ‘Master’ was playing, whereas on the other hand this place knew how to celebrate when he scored a boundary (Mohali doesn’t put their back into it), and also that Yuvraj Singh doesn’t have sufficient respect for ‘Master’, and clearly, playing in this Indian team, you’d better have it, or else..

Now it boiled down to India needing 14, ‘Master’ requiring ten at the end of the 41st over. SRT takes a single of the second ball, moving to 91*.

These two are convinced that Karthik knows his place, and will defend out the remaining four balls, allowing SRT a go the next over. The first two balls he faces seemed to stick to the (or, their) plan – he defends, and didn’t really seem interested in scoring.

And then, fifth ball of the over, steps out and smacks one over the top and across the ropes for six runs.

I almost fell out of my chair laughing, while they’re staring at the screen, mouths agape and eyes blazing bloody murder, swearing that he must be dropped from the Indian cricket team forever, nay, from even the Tamil Nadu state team and be condemned to playing for India Cements the rest of his life, how dare he!

Now it’s seven to win, nine needed for the hundred, with SRT on strike. They settle down when he hits a boundary first ball of the over and a single of the second, when they realize that now he’s on 96* (two to win), and if Karthik takes another single, it allows SRT to hit a boundary to seal the victory and his hundred.

The ball is delivered, going down leg side – Karthik tickles it down to fine leg for four.

No dice.

The closing reaction, before the bill was paid with disgust and they stalked out: ‘Dude, he should’ve blocked that ball with his pads!’



* R is someone who, faced with a submission deadline, spat that ‘dude, where are my priorities? Master is batting and I’m sitting in the library footnoting’ and stormed out, and once refused to leave on time for a place we had to be at because Master was batting, and compromised by leaving when Dravid (at the other end) was dismissed instead.