same same but different: parasailing in pattaya

It's a horde, a swarm, a rush of people onboard, rushing.
Tourists from across... the... well, from around India, queued up, or in the process of queuing up. Chitter-chatter abounds, backslapping, loudmouthed complaining, and lunch plans. Indians really appreciate conversation, of any kind. Pot-bellied, chicken-legged uncles, who've strangely decided to declare their Bangkok-vacation-mode by being in a constant state of undress. The few and far-between aunties in salwar-kameez, feeling breezy, in bright yellows, perky pinks and pistachio greens. Couples on their Thailand honeymoon trip ('honeymoon package or pleasure trip?', my travel agent had asked me, as if a post-wedding holiday and pleasure are mutually exclusive concepts!), discussing who's gonna go up in the air first, and if they're going to 'dip'* before. The odd braveheart kid, jumpy like a little puppy, perhaps unaware of the adventure that lies ahead of him. And me. Tickets in hand, life jackets-equipped, uniformly similar. In dirty orange.
I'm fifth in line now, and I as watch them up up and away, one by one, the emotion joyride is already in action. Losing nerve ('The rope broke. It broke! Why is everyone laughing?'), mulling on extent of bravado ('I don't think I'm gonna go for that dip, looks dangerous'.), slightly amused at self by self-indulgence ('Oh you think you're so cool, don't you?'), mildly irritated by display of India around (especially the literal kinds - 'Please cover up, uncle. Why VIP Frenchie? Get out of my optical range now'), and losing nerve again ('The rope broke, she fell into the water. And it's not funny'.) And action replay again.
I've smiled at the camera now and it's my turn all of a sudden. The instructors pull straps on the life vest, rough me up, mocking me I feel, ignoring all questions ('Is this how I should hold onto it?', is a valid one, I still think). They don't even pretend to listen to you and instead scream, 'I say one-two-three, you run across desk. Ya?' They've got handkerchiefs across their mouth, so I think that's what he's saying. It's all happening against the massive breeze threatening to blow us all away, lending everything a fluttering feeling, indistinct. So I give up and run across deck on one-two-three, ya. And then I'm up in the sky, I'm flying! But first, I'm pendulum-swinging madly, plaything to a wicked windy game, trying to block out the menacing whirr-whirr of the speedboat, cutting through the air, like a jagged glass shard. Until there's... equanimity. Wonderful, soft breeze, calm blue sky all around, a bluer ocean underneath, inviting. You suddenly forget you can't swim, you hover, you ease your life-grip on the sail, you don't notice the speedboat propelling you ahead, you turn your head around, the deck you were on is teeny-tiny, the throng of people that was so overwhelming even seconds ago, tinier. You think you spot the love of your life waving. You let the wind caress your hair, your face, gently. You close your eyes. The rush of blood has turned into an exhalation, a deep breath.
And now you land. Where zillions before you have. Nanoseconds before the zillions run across deck to take off. But you know you own the moment, it's yours. Echoing Bangkok's favourite T-shirt slogan. Same Same but Different.

* A parasailing option, in which the speedboat driver ensures that your feet (and sometimes your entire lower body), dips into the water before you fly up.

dev d: under the influence

I'm almost afraid to listen to the soundtrack now, after watching the movie.'Cuz between watching it last evening and my cellphone alarm going off this morning (and trying hard to dilute the mindfuck by watching something as unrelated to it as Bowling for Columbine in between, but obsessing over it with partner-in-crime-of-watching-Dev D was an often-said-always-felt subtext to Michael Moore's very competent docu about trigger-happy America. So much for diluting attempts), I also dreamt about it, see. I just didn't know it at the time. As dreams go.

In it, it was very all dark, darker than the film, even, 'cuz there was no neon-lit Paharganj. There was depressing, helpless, tragic but for the sick energy required for necrophilia. It was like I was watching draft 1 of the film, the original planned ending, before the producers bought it. It's the only place left for Abhay/Dev to go - a graveyard - to finally get off and release the pain. Something to end the vicious self-destruction. I remember his eyes, in the dream, as dead and revealing as in the film. And I remember that sinking feeling, the spiralling down into nothingness, as in the film.

It was that rare morning. One where I was so glad to wake up.

ny haiku

new york
today you are a throbbing vein in my left temple

this book is brain damage

But it's also about lucid prismatic clarity.

A history of conflict and violence in Afghanistan, the tortured no man's desert, a land deserted by all, it pins you into a corner, forcing you to choose your stand, and exorcise your ghosts.

Or face upto the those haunted by the ravages of History in the book.

And they haunt you, for long after.

cheating on delhi

They should make a place for people like us.

For those of us who didn't know how a place, a city, equal parts wicked and exhilarating and extreme and even been-there-done-that in a way that's almost tame, can get under your skin. And stay there. Not budging. A permanent mark, like a tattoo, except that that still only pierces the skin surface. Something seemingly superficial (capitalistic invasion someone said), but all substance. Breathing through the life blood in your veins before you know it. Wicked, hence, because it sneaks up on you, before you know it.


Nobody tells you it's going to be a thud back to life. Albeit a silent, heartbreaking one. (and this when I love Delhi, it's home, I miss it when I'm away, it's where I belong, I know it). That it's going to be a bit of a challenge to breathe, to focus, to wake up in a city that's not that city.

That one alive with museums and parks and blocks and cafes and pubs and clubs (for comedy, for gentlemen, for psy trance knockout, for straight up shots, for 200 kinds of beer on tap). The one as bling as the naked cowboy strumming a guitar on Times Square amidst hi-fives with the very photogenic NYPD chaps and Wednesday Broadway matinee mayhem. And as understated and mellow as a solo saxophonist in Battery Park. When you can feel the uptown, downtown, midtown-ness of it in your head. And sense the air that breathes different around Fort Tyron and then again, in Brooklyn.


Not that you weren't warned, really. Since age five, or therabouts, you've heard, eavesdropped, crashed into information. On how cool it is. How rocking it is. How alt it is. How mainstream it is. How it's "the centre of the world", even (Sting at the last Police reunion concert at the Madison Square Garden). Information overload, almost, from movies and music and television. Lots of television. It's not like you weren't told all of this. And more. It's not like you don't see it coming altogether. If you think about it. Deconstruct.

But nothing, nothing, prepares you for the real thing. 'Cuz it is even better.



New York. I miss you. (But don't tell Delhi).

word of the day (i'd like to ban)

Stalwart.
I mean, there's wart in it.
Though we don't need to ban wart, it's useful. For 'warts and all'.

Fridge Magnets

Fridge magnets. LOVE them. Making it a point to get one (AT LEAST one) from shores visited beyond India (within the country, so many planets rolled into one, the concept hasn't kicked off. But thankfully so! Am really NOT looking forward to picking up a fridge magnet on a beautifully obscure pahadi trek!).The Fridge Magnet. A marker, a memento, a rite of passage, almost. To me, it's about having lived (almost 30) years on this planet. And in this world. With all its places and destinations, some stuff of wishful fantasies, to be fulfilled unexpectedly (waddyaknow!) even. Reasons that pull you towards life, in your darkest, bleakest, dullest moments. Trippy travelling!
Your life flashing before your eyes. Except in a good way. Because of a fridge magnet. (Plus, a practical side-effect - The kitchen's brightened up, more alive).
Fridge magnets. I have an engraved one from Venice, a day of walking around a city that changes with the light of the day. Dreaming up, almost instantly, a floating feeling of Venezia, being on the Ponte di Rialto (so much more magical than The Rialto bridge), standing on that very place, staring down at the calm but sinister waters, boats parked outside homes, like cars, smiling back at the flirtatious gondoliers ('Solo?').
There's one shaped like a ship, a headrush of a memory of being on a cruise (so blurry it almost didn't happen, but for my fridge magnet!), imagining sharks beneath us (way way beneath us), in the blue between Sydney and Melbourne. Discussing the nonchalance of the seagull (and so
much else, as always) with a friend who aptly calls herself goldphish (and I must be floatin' for a reason). We promised never to bring up Jaws or Titanic, but eventually did, of course.
Another of a Singaporean trishaw, which I almost didn't ride, presumptuous of things I don't
even remember now, but there it is, to remind me, as I shut the door of my loyal refrigerator, having taken out the milk, the tomatoes, the eggs, etc etc. A funny, fun, almost absurdist instant of culture amidst a packaged Singapore (where even the white beach sands are manufactured
so as not to stick to your hair), comes flooding back, between the banalities of life everyday.
And then there're many, many from New York. Sharing a city after months (that felt like years) of being alone-not-lonely (an intriguing exercise not thoroughly recommended), and yet,
having it all to myself, NYC poses in my kitchen, being oh-so-photogenic. In obvious ways (Staue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Broadway), and personal ways (the Subway at Times Square 42nd Street).
Trippy Fridge Magnets. Can't wait for the next one...

Love the Beatles

A stimulating trip that takes off from the bird-twitter (from Across the Universe), and goes from morbid-dark to Here Comes the Sun shining bright, and flirts with joy, sheer ecstasy, Sgt Peppers, Lady Madonna, Jude, Lucy and diamonds, tangerine skies, coming together, strawberry fields, and course, love, all in one non stop album.

Euphoria, goosebumps, soaring melodies, searing melancholy, all here.

Perfect for days that are all tangerine-trees-kaleidoscopic-eyes. Hell, even for Mondays, actually!

time warp: notes on jetlag

Shaken, not stirred. Dunno about martinis, but it's not how my insides wanna feel again. Ever.
When I glanced at the flight plan initially (across continents, 3 days flat), the enormity of it didn't hit me. Only when I had that time behind me, no on me, did that word (are those 2 words?) begin to make sense (or not make sense, rather).

Jet Lag.
Jetlag.
Lag caused by being inside jet.
A TIME lag.

The feeling that if you were back home, time would be on your side. You'd be sleeping when you're meant to. Watching back to back movies when you're meant to. As god and time intended it. Not in this topsy turvy way, when you're wondering if headstands would help. And how long could you look at the world like that?

And how very Pink Floyd it all is. What is it about the sun being the same, relatively, but you're older?! By staring at a flight screen that shows you the three diff time zones - where we left, where we are, where we're heading etc etc - you can feel your body clock getting warped by the second.

Swooshing, stumbling, not floating, across 3 countries in 4 days, you realise how much you cannot trust.
Your watch.
The sunshine outside.
The smiles on rested faces.
The way your body feels. (gawd, no! that's the biggest bitch!)

And when you're back home, lord and master of time, or so you think, suddenly there's this wave of sleep that crashes through. That you gotta succumb to. No matter where you are. Who you're with. Days after.

extraordinary machine

I felt sad about a machine yesterday. I felt bad for it. It's a sound mixer, I was told, from the days when there used to be those around.

When cutting edge was not such an amazing thing to be, perhaps. And state of the art was just a cool phrase to use. Along with
future shock.
As everybody moves on and goes digital, will it survive, I wondered? Will people still use it? Give it meaning? Or will it be cleaned up everyday and then ignored? Like a museum artefact? And even then, will they lovingly dust around the knobs, gently brush the equalizers?
I couldn't tell and I funnily didn't want to leave it until I knew.

And now, I can't get it out of my head.

Dame Damned: Starring Agatha Christie in & as Graphic Novel

Was a mixed trip to spy this one with my eye. Lounging, posing, in the kids section of a bookstore, was it? is it? could it be? An illustrated Agatha Christie? Stacks of them, murders all, right from the one on Orient Express, on the Nile, the one that's announced.
Glee (layered with memories of waiting for library time in school), and a trace of sadness (is this what it takes for children to read it?) got me picking up my favourite, And Then There Were None, and led me upto the cash counter.
So, it was probably a question of sooner, rather than later, that Miss Marple, Poirot, their razorsharp minds, and the mind-bending crimes, find themselves illustrated, graphic novel-ised. And there are, unarguably, so many ways in which an Agatha Christie works on your senses; powerful characterisations, plotlines and loopholes, written about so vividly, that you can see everyone - the suspects, the detectives, the victims, the murderers, the settings.
And perhaps this is exactly why the series fails to deliver. The Agatha Christie we’re familiar with is just so brilliant, that a retelling of the classic case simply does not live up to expectations. Featured story, And Then There Were None, one of my all-time Agatha Christie favourites, disappointed me no end, with its forced prettiness (a glamorous Vera Claythorne, a chiselled Mr Rogers!), lack of atmosphere (the haunting presence of the lurking killer on a deserted island, the disappearing nigger-boy statues, the mind games that the 10 players find themselves entangled in, the shockingly powerful nursery rhyme, the mysterious Mr UN Owen), and quick run-throughs (flashbacks, murders, confessions, all done with, under 50 pages).
Packaging is everything, they say, and in the dreaded days of the latest, yet another, Harry Potter (the last one, I'm told, so the longest queue to buy it, I'm guessing), this one could be great initiation for ze kids.

the eraser: brain clouds

When you want your music to be hazardous again, potentially mood-altering and tilting towards the shadow side of sunshine,
all-encompassing, dangeorus to play (especially on an unending loop), try Thom Yorke's Eraser

on for size.
Bit late in the sheer sunshine of cruel Delhi days to say it, perhaps, but plugged into a Thom not unplugged is a delicious way to induce
clouds in the brain. Not the exact opposite of clearing up your head, really, 'cuz it's not clutter. But then again, it's not mindspace, either.
The power of the equipment and well, software, coupled with Thom's vocals, with that peculiarly disturbing quality about them in that faint way that they spiral down, unwind, an anti-clockwise whirlwind of sorts, is a spirited, lethal combination. Taking itself seriously,
deathly, deliciously enough, to kill.

rooms

2B : jaded
He walks the last 10. The bus has broken down again. But the groceries must be bought. How else do we feed the new people? Those who’ve appeared unannounced almost? These days, he can’t really tell the difference between annoying, demanding guests and his nerves, figments of his own imagination. Like the apparitions he swears he can sometimes actually see on his walks. Carefully cultivated over the years.
Nothing ever changes in the mountains. Not even the colours of the sky. Not that it is better in the city. In the city, sometimes, he knows, that there is no sky. Lesser of the two evils has always meant staying put. But the resort’s killing him. Not enough money, and things falling apart. Its not even called something normal like mountain view or hill fairy or something, and he has no idea why.
It ‘s slowly deadening him and his head. He knows that. He can feel it in his veins proper. He doesn’t still have the time or the inclination and the what-all he needs to set his poetry to music proper. He’s written so many over the last few years. Some, he feels, are worth being recorded. He’s even made the adjustments according to the local metre, something he can hear through the houses sometimes. When the boys aren’t blaring up Bollywood, which only means Himesh Reshammiya reloaded. Maybe he’ll go see Tewariji gain in Almoda. For some more advice on the original compositions. After he’s bought everything for the week. He quickens his pace.

almost auster(e): travels in the scriptorium

He even looks it, austere, Paul Auster.

His new book, Travels in the Scriptorium, immediately springs up in mind, the story of that other old man who began to lose his mind slowly but surely, when he decided to mix things up one not so fine day, and labelled the ‘table’, ‘window’. Or some such. In a similar theatre of the absurd vein, Travels in the Scriptorium narrates the singularly unspectacular tale of an old man, tellingly referred to as Mr Blank, who’s probably already lost his mind. Or, at least, that’s the version we’re reading. Other versions include almost everything in the realm of the possible, featuring in meatier roles, the other characters that Mr Blank and the readers encounter. Some of whom appear in the narrative, some who seem to. Anna, David Zimmer, Fanshawe, James Flood, Peter Stillman Jr, Sophie. But, of course, these stories, you craft only in your own head.
In the meanwhile, we watch the drama of Mr Blank unfolding, unable to read between the lines, as we watch him going about the mundane activities that build his life, his day-in-and-day-out, the hours. He’s fed, bathed, cleaned up, is given hand jobs, medicines, all so he can get on with it. He feels unwell, gains some strength, looks through piles of photographs scattered around him, questions the circumstances he finds himself in, and battles constant feelings of despair, guilt, anxiety and a mild but dangerous form of paranoia, all of which seem determined to engulf him. In a parallel universe that throbs in the subtext, there’s a sense of foreboding evil that links with Mr Blank, a history of horror that looms large in the background, which he, in some way, is responsible for. Although there’s no explanation for the where-how-why of the situation he finds himself in.
In the league of Camus and Beckett, shortchanged on the humour factor greatly, this is Paul Auster’s austerely minimalist existentialist non-drama. Creepy, precisely because of the lack of any unravelling, or disarray. Peopled with ghosts.

eric forman=venom?!

Anybody else out there reeling from this piece of info? Eric from That 70s Show is the new Spidey villain.
My problem isn't that he's all grown up and 'exploring his dark side' (Hell, we've had to survive Daniel Radcliffe in the buff, haven't we?). I'd gracefully come to terms with an Eric (real name: Topher Grace) who's no longer a virgin. No longer so obviously besotted with Donna. Pretty much an adult doing adult things. I'd almost come to terms with it. (I mean, I still marvel at myself doing adult things sometimes. And in a weird quirk of fate, Topher and I share birth year and zodiac sign, so then.) I've seen Topher in Traffic, snorting and smoking up, planning intricate sexual manouevres such as 'coming together as we take a second hit'. And standing tall, sharing frame with Michael Douglas. Hell, I even noticed him in Ocean's 12. Mumbling-explaining to Brad Pitt. (Hah! Dare anyone to remember?!)
So, no, that's not the problem. It's just that I think it's time we should ask ourselves: Are we ready to see him as a Marvel villain? As Venom? Evil incarnate? Parasitic and vengeful? Lethal? Everything the name Venom suggests, basically. Kicking Spiderman's ass? Is it time to watch this unfold on screen?
Not like we have a choice, but but but...

thank you for smoking

"You know that guy who can get any girl in the room? I'm HIM. On crack."

When that's the VO for the lead, and the lead's called 'Naylor', and this, right in those crucial eyeball-grabbing 10 minutes, you know this smart cookie's setting himself up for something. Something that's gonna be fun to watch. And, sure enough, the movie does NOT disappoint. You're hooked for good, as soon as Tobacco Man has shaked hands with Cancer Boy on yet another silly-yet-serious talk show. A very American morality tale turned upside down, if you please, Thank You for Smoking
gives you the worldview from the "bad guy", and leaves the
"good guy" in a bit of a fix.

Leaving everything questionable, and open to the affirmating spirit of the sun never setting upon an argument. Smoky,
complex, delicious greys, here, no simple blacks and whites.

Premise, no spoilers: Nick Naylor, tobacco lobbyist, played brilliantly by Aaron Eckhart, is a smooth operator, talk-talking his way through a system that places a huge premium on 'flexible morals', all the while hatching plots to make you pay a high price for it too. He never once says, 'you must smoke', but he sure as hell implies it. While Senator Finistirre has aboslutely no qualms in saying 'do NOT smoke'. Again and again. Also played brilliantly, by William H Macy (in that tight-assed way he pulls off so well). Their face-offs are some of the best moments in the movie, which plays like a string of well-edited, well-directed moments, actually.

Other highlights include a visit to the Marlboro Man, a caffeinated California office dealing in the entertainment business, and a 12-year-old's learning experience in the fine art of 'negotiation'.

So, if you're a wee bit sick of the War Epic, the Rom Com, the Heist Flick, this one should light up the humour AND the grey cells. Must-watch!

tsunami-dream

Saw it all. Watched it happen. The waves, the blue waves, the natural swaying, cascading, even gently, at first. And the momentum it picked up. All of a sudden, at least in my dream. 'Just high tide', someone mutters, 'Someone wise', read the dream logic footnotes. Until it rose, the water, all of it, it seems. Rising high, very, very high. Like a wall of blue, and for a moment, it stays suspended, mid-air. Enough time for someone to notice a drowned city, a buried township, an entire plan of lives and lifestyles, ancient, to witness for those who can, who dare, who can't help but feel transixed. Transfixed to that spot on the ground, and not able to run. There's an archaeologist on the horizon, who thinks he's died and gone to heaven. Some part of my brain insists that this is not how tsunamis happen. This is not how IT happened. The part that had watched the news, heard the interviews, read the papers, gasped at the facts, in 2004 (Tsunami). But the dream overpowers, as always, a wave of consciousness overriding and diminishing everything else, every other little voice piping up in my head.
Morning after analysis of dreams such as these generally occur along with my real life equation with water. The water taps, the showers, the buckets, the face-washing, the tooth-brushing, the drinking. When water is stuff of everyday routine, sundry even. And so, I remember finding myself on Juhu-Chowpatty in Bombay recently. Staring at the sea, the word 'tsunami' rearing its ugly head in my head more than once. I remember thinking, how sweet it sounds, like a new Japanese doll, or some new Tokyo concoction featuring squid and sake yet again, and a special chef's license to cook it. Lest it kill you.

loopy gnarls barkley

Just a thought, but is it the hook that hooks you on? Or the incredibly profound lyrics, which make you think, 'How do they know all this'?
This came up in a chat I chanced upon (yet again) with a goldphish, the other day.

GREAT songs reel you in with the music, the
melody, the loops, the arrangement, the drums, the guitars, the vocals isolated from what it's mouthing. And they get you for good with the words, the words, the words.

Gnarls Barkley's Crazy is one such insane track. Right from that first missed-a-beat to the out of tempo sing-along, 'I remember, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind', so deliberate, so set to a composition, so brilliantly addictive, and deliciously surreal to karaoke with, it goes on,the mindfully mindless song about well, losing it. And knowing it.

So, it would appear that you're one or the other. The music TRAPS you. Or the words HIT you. The song claims you for itself, either way.

I'm talking truly MOMENTOUS songs, which don't come very often. But when they do, what do you do?

If you know, or think you know, ping me...

all hope(d) out:children of men

It's grey, definitely, the colour. But a shimmering, pulsating grey.

The muted sense of terror, looming, lurking, on the edge of Alfonso Cuaron's perfect frame.

For a movie that's grey, it looks very, very, VERY good.
Children of Men is one bleak movie you'll wanna see again.
The tenor and pitch is just right. The tension throbbing, palpable throughout. You really don't know what will, what could, (but surely, hopefully not?) happen next. It's not a safe journey you're on, smug in the knowledge that the protagonist (hero?) shall surely (hopefully?) survive the ominous perils. A wonderfully nuanced Clive Owen in a performance that's nothing short of perfect, by the way. The kind of actor you can watch for hours together, but I digress... That safety net taken away from the viewer's comfort zone, makes you feel the dystopia. Which unfolds before your eyes. In a dreary London, marching on.
'Does it leave you with hope?', is the viewers' rhetoric, when the boat bobs up and down with Theo and Kee, holding on. Maybe. A glimmer of grey, I'd say.