At A Loss For Words

What do you call a couple of conversationalists who’re afraid to speak?

“Lost in translation.”

I grieve for the words we’ve lost.

Time Travel

Channel-surfing. Wait. Stop. Backtrack.

The Time-Traveler’s Wife is on, just started on one of those channels that comes and goes. Just like the protagonist in the movie. Hmm.

Odd flashes of nostalgia. The book was a birthday gift from my parents in 2007. Birthday gifts are special. Books are special. A good book on a birthday is well…you know. It was a Friday the thirteenth (just like the day I was born) which curiously enough, always bodes well for me. My birthday (just like my boyfriend and other friends) had been hijacked by another closely-birthday’ed person whom I loathed. I spent the weekend following, curled up with the book, the rain pelting down outside the window behind me. I’ve received books for every birthday of my adult life but I think this was the most memorable one.

Flash forward two and a half years. The movie came out without much fanfare, at least in India. I spotted it in an ad, by pure chance. The only show I could find was at 11:30 p.m. Normally, I’d probably have watched this particular movie by myself. But given the timing and the opportunity that it presented, I did something different and asked a guy I’d met recently, out. It was the first of what I thought of as pleasant conversations. And this is how that story turned out. Well, then.

Snap. The screen’s gone blank. The channel’s vanished on another of the cable-operator’s mysterious whims. And just like that, The Time-Traveler vanished.

Ideamarked Jan2011: Astrology, Fiction, Photography, Music, Technology, Poetry, Social Rules & Life Lessons

The first month of 2011 has whooshed by slipperier than the icy roads we Mumbaikers nearly came to expect with a rare winter! I’ve been poking around into a lot of corners and old places, nostalgia washing over me with this old blog URL and template. After the daily post pressure of Reverb10 and a demanding December calender let up, January has been packed in a different way. I’ve been enjoying it and hope that it’s an indication of things to come in the rest of the year. Here’s a mixed bag of goodies to cheer you along at end of the first month:

• Ugly Christmas sweaters by sun sign! (via Astrology.com)
• Extra short stories for 2011 (via Sakshi)
• A secret can be a burden. And someone who shares your burden has to be a real guardian angel. Like the one this postcard is about. (via PostSecret)
• 1000 Life Lessons or How to stay alive forever (1000 secrets)
• Doocing may loom high even on our sheltered desi selves as we all get connected. Here’s five ways to tread with caution on Twitter and Facebook (via EconomicTimes, tipped off by Gautam Ghosh, who is quoted in the story)
• Mumbai through the eyes of my favorite Bangalore photo-blogger. No mains and crosses in Claustraphobicity, I’m afraid! (Mumbai Paused)
• In marketers’ hell! Swoosh Eyebrows (via FoundShit)
• An old favorite of mine and mamma to twin boys, this time she gets a sharp lesson in watching her words in front of the kids! (via Mamma of Twins)
  
• A History of Nudism – short story at Daily Fiction‘s new blog.
• So bad, it’s good. Move over French maid fantasy, Mmmbai is here! Aye Hiphopper by Ishq Bector (via Youtube)
• Memorable moments and traditions from wedding ceremonies across countries, religions and social systems. (via Matador Network)
• How technology/ mobile connectivity is helping Indian education (via EducationTimes, tipped off by Moksh Juneja, who is quoted in the story)
• ‘Social Rules To Not Making Empty Promises and To Mean What You Say‘ – I can think of a helluva lot of people who need to know this and not one of them is shy! (link courtesy Arcopol Chaudhuri)
• “Echoes fade and memories die, Autumn frosts have slain July“….gives me goosebumps. (Lewis Carrol at OldPoetry)

Three Dots

The life of a writer is chaptered in unfinished stories.

Tiny Tales: The Interview

The two women stared at each other for a moment of mutual sizing-up.

The younger one had had enough practice at not flinching but the urge to look around the colourful room was strong. She clamped her back teeth together, the action producing the faintest tremor of flesh but no noticeable difference in expression. Her hostess noted it with approval but she didn’t let on. She was too busy staring.

“What do you think? Shall I move in?”

“Girl, you know that this is not a typing center, no?”

Girl moved her weight and a flash of teeth showed in the new light.

“Yes. I also know that the work needs hands, not feet.”

The matron on the sofa rolled her eyes, giving up the struggle and snorted,

“Arre, but, you don’t even…I don’t have the money to hire an ayah, okay?”

“I don’t need an ayah. With this wheelchair, I can lie down and get up by myself. I can do everything for myself.”

It was an idea. This one wouldn’t be in such a hurry to leave as the others. And yet, how could she do this? The idea was ridiculous. The older woman smoothed the edges of her sleeves, thinking.

“Listen. How many of your customers look at the girl’s feet? Face is good. Everything else works.”

“Some men may not like it.”

But she was really thinking, whatever you displayed here, found some takers. In her career of thirty-five years, if there was one thing she’d learnt, it was that there was no accounting for tastes.

“No man likes to admit what he likes. But that’s why we have a job, no? Because we know how to give them what they like without asking. Madamji, what more do you want?”

Another long pause while she shifted back to the left arm-rest.

Madamji displayed a visible tremor and then she looked away and pulled herself together. She hadn’t risen to the top of the chain, being queasy. The girl was tough and beautiful. And she was right.

She smiled.

“Seventy-five percent commission for me. Baki twenty-five for you. Start on Saturday.”

The girl wheeled out, creaking, but with forty percent. Madam was frowning but she approved. Many women had soft bodies, even perfect bodies. But only a hard mind could survive here. This one’s mind could run as fast as other people’s feet. Someday.

Maybe someday a legless girl would be the madam of this palace of pleasure.

Patience

How do you teach someone to love you the way you need to be loved?

I ask.

Baby steps.

He replies.

Quoted In Mid-Day FourSquare Story: Shraddha Jadhav Isn’t The Only Mayor

Mid-Day has a story by Kasmin Fernandes on Foursquare today. Moksh and Daksh Juneja have both been quoted while I provide a counter-perspective on this social media game that’s rapidly gaining popularity. Here’s what I said:

Virtual rewards aren’t for everyone

If you don’t like being followed, though, location-based apps and the virtual rewards they offer are not for you. Blogger Ramya Pandyan (right) aka Ideasmithy (http:// ideasmithy.wordpress.com) joined Foursquare in 2010, but deleted her account within a week. “During that time, I must have ‘checked in’ twice,” says the 31 year-old who found the format “engaging and attractive, the way Twitter was, when it first made an appearance”.

“It was a deliberate decision to delete my account. I realised that I could soon be drawn into frequent usage and I didn’t want this level of information about me to be in the public domain. For instance, my favourite haunts, where I was, for how long and how often. I value my privacy and the freedom that the Internet offers me.

Keeping the balance between accessibility and privacy is really tricky. Twitter and Facebook fell in my permissible range while Foursquare didn’t,” says Pandyan.

Ask her why she didn’t forsake the location-based app instead of deleting her account on it, and she says, “It would have been risky to leave the account unused, especially if an option to tag other people came into existence. Other people would be able to point out my location even if I didn’t.”

I must add, reading what the Junejas had to say on this was like facing temptation all over again! I was an avid ZyngaGamer after all so I’m a natural target for any community-based online activity. But I’ll stick to my stand and keep off the lure of mayorship for now!

Movie: Dhobi Ghat – Mumbai Musings

Movies are a big part of weekend planning. Realistically, what else is there to do in Mumbai? Let’s not go into the notions of what a ‘happening’ city this is. I’ve been active on the cultural circuit for the past year and a half and gone to everything I could find. Poetry slams, Open mics, music gigs, stand-up comedy, workshops, book readings, board game meets…to my utter disgust, all I found was the same frenzied networking, the same desperate need to be cool, the same petty politicking and hard-nosed business dealings, in place of any real interest in the event/field or depth of thought. I’ve struggled with this but had to conclude that Mumbai lets you make a living, not a life.

Dhobi Ghat, Kiran Rao’s directorial debut was this weekend’s big feature. It started on a less-than-pleasant note. Considering that movies are the only standard entertainment available and the skyrocketing multiplex prices, I tend to frequent the second-tier theatres that are still ‘safe’ for a woman to go to alone but cheaper. Moviestar Goregaon was my pick. We entered about ten minutes before the start of the show, when the lights were still on, which is probably why the filthy seats caught our notice. I don’t mean a broken armrest or an undone stitch on the upholstery. I mean filthy, godaloneknows what black, smelly, gunky-goo streaked across all the seats that we could find. The manager was apologetic enough but there were no cleaner seats available and so we had our tickets refunded. While on this, I must add that the theater is now under BIG cinemas which to me, means that service levels can only plummet. My past experiences show that Fame Adlabs, also part of the same group, offers rude staff, smelly (and bedbug-infested) seats and stale food for its high prices. I bid goodbye to another of my budget alternatives. The boy was most appalled at the fact that the other theatergoers streamed in, blindly (and deafly) made their way around us and arranged themselves comfortably in those same filthy seats, even as we pointed them out to the staff. Mumbai, you could redefine the laws of robotics.

We managed to finally catch the movie at 24 Karat, another theatre down the road and I was glad we’d persisted. After the kind of tortures that Bollywood has been visiting on our senses lately (Sheila Kejwani, anyone?), it was a real pleasure to not have to shield my eyes and ears.

A number of things stand out about the movie. Firstly, there isn’t one concrete plot. What there are, are a number of strong, well-etched characters and the little (and big) incidents that constitute their lives. Secondly, the absence of background music is noticeable. Most Bollywood films use music to cue the audience into the mood of the scene, sometimes excessively. Dhobi Ghat, in comparison, is understated, stark and disorienting because it doesn’t offer any such hints, preferring instead to let the audience figure it out for itself. It’s hard to tell whether you’re supposed to laugh at Zohaib’s poker-faced filmdom dreams or empathize with them. It’s tricky to deciding whether Shai’s pursuit of Arun (and parallel ignorance of Zohaib’s attention) is pathetic or natural. You’re not sure whether to dislike Arun or admire him. And thus we respond to the characters just the way we would to people in real life. With confusion, with warmth, with respect and then derision, with conflicting emotions.

It seems counter-intuitive but its not, that when the viewer is given so much to think about, even deeper levels make themselves visible. I liked how Dhobi Ghat effectively portrays that Mumbaikers blur the social order but don’t quite erase it. Economic classes, gender barriers, cultural divides are bridged and broken in mysterious ways. Most of us flit in and out of the periphery with a comfort that sometimes baffles outsiders. Interactions happen in that twilight zone as so relationships – odd, indefinable and yet deeply intimate ones like those of fellow train-passengers, bais & dhobis & house madams and people who occupy the same flat at different times.

Prateek Babbar (underutilized in Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na) steals the show with a poker face arranged around brooding-animated-wry-resigned-intense-pragmatic eyes. A hundred emotions flit across his face in a single look over a brun maska. And most impressively, his very silhouette seems to evolve over the course of the movie, starting with an awkward, blurred  look to a more resolute, defined profile at the end of the movie. I don’t know if that’s good acting or good cinematography; I’m willing to bet on both.

Kriti Malhotra comes in second in terms of her performance as the anonymous face in a series of video-letters. She’s spontaneous, realistic and her voice washes over you with as much familiarity as the neighbor’s.

I was the least impressed with Monica Dogra. Considering the footage she has in the movie, (the promos say it’s four people’s stories but she seems to be around the most), she doesn’t stand out much, except as a moderately pretty face. Interestingly, her act is what made me think that Dhobi Ghat may have made a good movie but it would be a great book. The characters are wonderfully created and the script is taut. Beyond that, it falls to the people who don the roles to bring them to life and I’m afraid Monica as Shai, just didn’t do it for me.

As always, I checked what Meetu had to say before watching the movie. This time, I don’t quite agree with her, when she says that the movie could have very well been set in New York or London or even Pune. Dhobi Ghat doesn’t just pay lip service to standard Mumbai iconography like trains and movies. It snaps up an accurate slice of Mumbai life, from its crowded chaos jostling with glitzy glamour to the near schizophrenic behavior that these contrasts seem to bring out in the city’s occupants.

I started this post talking about the robotic behaviour of Mumbaikers but I also speak for the tangible, prideful emotion that we carry collectively. A city is no more than a group of human beings, after all. And I’d like to think that the unique situations that this group finds itself in, day in and day out, makes us uniquely who we are. Dhobi Ghat seems to agree.

If you love Mumbai, this is definitely for you. If you’re appalled by it and there’s still room for an explanation, maybe this movie will give you one.

Movie: Turning Thirty

I saw the movie yesterday, five days after it was released and at the unlikely time of 3:30 p.m. It felt sort of appropriate considering that the movie seemed to showcase the absolute freedom of the urban Indian woman.

The movie was strictly okay. The songs made me cringe, especially the one just following the opening scene with its done-over-to-the-point-of-nausea ‘couple in a convertible’ picturisation. It also felt a little too Sex and the City in a desi setting. And yet, I didn’t walk out of the theatre. I guess, it’s not the kind of movie I’d take someone on a date to, not one that I’d want to watch with my parents and not one I’d arrange a weekend plan around. But it is the kind of movie that I wouldn’t mind catching on an unexpected free weekday afternoon, by myself just like I did.

I don’t think the problem was the story itself, even if I did overhear a guy tell another, “It should have had a board saying Only For High Profile Women”. That just strikes me as typical Indian male horse-blinkeredness. We do drink and cuss. We are ambitious, ruthless, confused and non-comittal. And yes, casual sex, sex-without-feelings, revenge sex, premarital sex, illicit sex, gay sex…all of these things and more are a realistic part of our lives. Maybe this describes only one kind of Indian woman but that kind definitely exists, and not just in the high society pages.

But I thought the dialogues and the acting left much to be desired. It wasn’t like anybody was wooden. But the theme was fairly complex and new in the purview of Indian cinema. None of the actors really seemed convincing. They just looked…awkward. Except for Tilottama Shome (remember Alice from Monsoon Wedding?) who I thought carried every moment of even her very limited footage with ease.

Something struck me only towards the end and I don’t know if the makers even intended this. Naina, the protagonist faces the standard issues that one would expect from this movie – break-up, heartbreak, parental pressure to get married, societal perceptions towards ageing. But the one subtle issue that underlies the story and the only one that really satisfactorily reaches resolution, both in the situation and in her mind, is her career.

It got me thinking. The world has always struggled with integrating women and ambition. The generation before ours had jobs and within overwhelming barriers like lower pay, stereotyped roles and automatic prioritizing of family over career. My generation has careers but still within standard norms of what will impress the marriage market, what will be conducive to the partner’s own career and eventually, motherhood. Even today, it’s hard for us to admit that we worry about our jobs, employability and career path as much as, if not more than the way our relationships are going.

The boy often points out how hard and cynical I am about many things about my past. It stands out that he seems a tad more understanding about my bitterness over failed relationships than he does about my dashed hopes at the workplace. But maybe that’s not the typical male dismissal of my ambition, as I’d like to think. It is possible, just a wee bit at least, that I’m more bothered by the lows of my career than my love life.

This is not to say that I’ve loved any less or that my relationships mattered less to me than my career. But when I look back, I’ve more or less made my peace with the relationship failures, even the ones that were disasters. I’ve been able to do so by finally accepting that people, emotions and relationships are uncontrollable and that there’s no logic or rules or framework to follow. They happen and if they happen well, I count myself as lucky.

Career on the other hand, seems a lot more logical and structured, which means my expectations are nearly higher. Pettiness, politicking, theft, sabotage are each more difficult to forgive (and impossible to forget) when it comes to my workplace. And whether this is actually true or not, my expectations are still that I’d be able to right such wrongs or seek justice in some manner, when it pertains to work-related issues.

The same obviously doesn’t hold for relationships. Leading someone on, cheating, stealing another woman’s boyfriend and lying are not crimes punishable by law. And hence, my only hope for resolution is to accept and move on.

I’m heartened to note that popular culture (even it if is a somewhat offbeat movie like this one) portraying such issues. Pop culture does reflect how we are, how we think and how we behave, after all.

My favorite words in the movie were in the very last scene.

“Turning thirty is something I learnt to accept and appreciate only after I turned thirty-one.”

That means a helluva lot more than I can say. I’m tiptoeing towards the end of my 31 and I’m still learning to articulate what the big three-O has brought into my life.

I Wear: Coffee And Sunshine

You know what’s the best thing about being on a sabbatical/freelancing/independently employed? Apart from the being able to sleep in on a Monday, walk on the beach in the middle of the day, catch movies at more reasonable rates on weekday afternoons, spend more time with family, friends and whatever else..? Yes, there’s one other thing. It’s being able to wear exactly what I please, when I please!

I’ve always loved colour. I have a thing for stuff that doesn’t commonly show up in my environment like boots (oh, way before every filmi type made it popular and with heels…ack!), scarves (no, that’s not a rasta mawaali style!), headgear, funky jewellery et al. I Style! was an attempt to capture similar moments in other people’s lives. But my life, when it’s up to me is like this all the time! And now, it truly is up to me. I revel in the fact that I am not bound to black/blue/grey or trousers/salwar kameezes.

I guess I really am indulging the long repressed chick in myself. I’m not really a big shopper. But there’s plenty of stuff I’ve accumulated over the years (yeah, I’m a packrat) and I enjoy experimenting with different, innovative ways to wear them.

So, it occurs to me, that this (like so much else in my life) lends itself to a series of posts too. Here’s presenting a new section then. I toyed around with various names. Idiva? Naa, that sounds like Apple launched a brand of clothing. I’ll settle for I Wear. Feel free to boo and hiss at my lack of imagination…only if you have a better suggestion.

First up, this is a month of sales as shops try to get rid of their Christmas/New Year stocks. It’s a great time to go shopping. Footwear is a major thing with me and not because I’m an SATC fan. I have rather large feet which means finding a comfortable and nice-looking pair that will fit me is difficult. This means, I shop when I find something in my size and not when I need a pair.

I’ve been seeing this pair on the shelves of Catwalk for ages now and wondered who’d have the nerve to try them on, let alone actually buy them. My theory proved right since they were available in every size in the clearance sale….even mine! The boy insisted on buying them for me as a late Christmas gift, even if he had to suppress a shudder. They make me SMILE though! Take a look:

They’re made of orange elastic straps woven together with shiny silver threads. The soles are rubber and of the sort that line the light slip-ons that the bigger sportswear brands sell. They’re immensely comfortable and if they didn’t make so many people look my way on account of their colour, I’d probably forget I was wearing them at all!

Of course, finding the right look for an unusually striking pair of footwear like that is tricky. Since the shoes are so brightly coloured (and blingy to boot), I downplayed the rest of the look. Here’s what I wore today, to meet a friend for coffee.

Navy blue tee-shirt with old, old, you-wont-believe-how-old pale green cordruoy trousers. The outfit still looked blah ending with a huh?! at my feet. So I added my favorite accessory of this season – a shawl/scarf. Mumbai is having a rare winter, chill enough anyway to protect my sensitive neck/throat. This is a silky-cotton shawl thingy that was available in heaps at every street stall, a few years back. I have a whole stack of them. This particular one is made of big squares of yellow, orange, brown, red and blue. It doesn’t go with most of my clothes but it was a perfect match with this outfit.

I flung it over my neck like a dupatta, brought the ends back around and knotted them down the front. I think they add an element of interest to the upper half of the outfit. The neutral trousers give one’s eyes time to adjust before they’re snapped up by the shoes again.

I went minimal on the accessories, wearing just my steel watch (not seen in this pic) and thin silver hoops in my ears. And my bag was a plain beige cotton tote with black straps (featured on I Style! earlier). Overall, I thought the effect was colourful but not outrageous (my usual style). Even so, Moksh gave me a puzzled look and asked,

You dressed up to come meet me for coffee?

Oh well, dress the way you feel. I was happy on this gray evening and my attire showed it!

*Cross-posted to Divadom.