crumbling kites

There was a pink moon,

that other night , which stole her seconds away.

Tick tick went the watch on her wrist.

But time wouldn’t budge.

Where had it gone?

The staleness of stagnation, she could sniff.

The hopeless drifter was

caught in the doldrums.

No wind to drift away into.

The sun came once that night,

to knock the pink dew off the moon’s cheeks.

And down it fell.

Like crumbling paper after

a hundred and seven kites got stuck

on the lone tamarind tree on that crater.

As the sun blew ,

crepe paper floated , flew, and settled down,

like a myriad magic carpets,

on the roadside curb,

on the edges of vulnerable minds,

and on a footpath that now crunched

with the sound of the crumpled pink,

torn hearts and worn out soles.

She walks.

She always does.

Along this vulnerable edge,

balancing on the yellow and black curb stones,

hands unconsciously reaching out,

fingers stretching out

like antennae trying desperately

to catch a signal,

hovering in the air, so clear and elusive.

A lost footing.

A crunch onto the crisp carpet,

her toes are now tickled by torn edges,

teased by the grass blades .

Hagard old brown petals ,

shorn of their rouge and youth,

cut into her skin,

like old empty vestiges of Broadway divas,

now orphaned and hurting.

The soles come off ,

bare foot, she trots,

crunching and stepping over

every oncoming hope of salvage.

The pink will destroy her.

Consume her.

Expurgate her.

her fingers now bleed pink.

As she touches the dew drop on her eyelid,

the sky splashes into rose and ice candy

The sun sets in her eyes,

a Monet storm raging through them.

And she hums, strumming a long lost tune ,

Across the two hundred miles of kite strings

that lie in between her and a few lonely kites ,

crumbling by the day, fading in pink,

Left behind ,

because they wouldn’t let go of the tamarind tree,

So easily .

Sitting on the sideline

Yellow stripes on mind,

Tarmac and gravel

Crunch under my hand,

There is no time that can measure me now,

Into the wild,

I go.

Each step I take

I get higher on land,

Each bow I break,

Sinks me deeper in sand,

Tangled in branches

In rapids I row

Humming birds and red shoes

See me go by

Into the wild

I go.

From Jantar Mantar to India Gate on the 8^th of April, 2011

As I woke up early Friday morning, I was engulfed by an anxious anticipation; an anticipation of something I had decided last night just before going to bed. That I would go to Jantar Mantar the next day. Considering how crowds can turn intimidating and lose their sanity in a matter of seconds, the act of going to the heart of it, did not sink in till I was actually on the way, on the Friday afternoon, when next to me came and sat an old man, who had brought along with him three young impressionable boys, who seemed to be from a small UP town. As one of the young boys asked the bus conductor to tell them when the stop to Jantar Mantar arrived, I felt re-assured. I was not alone. Slowly, as people climbed into the bus, stop after stop, I liked to think that all of them were co travelers to the same destination. For me, all roads, on that Friday afternoon, led to Jantar mantar.

‘Hamare Uncle ji humein le jaa rahe hain, udhar muft mein paani dilayenge .Kyun uncle ji!’, they said.

‘Ye Sheila dixit ka ghar hai’, they said.

‘Kiska ghar hai?.. padho…Hanumantaaya… haan wohi.. MLA honge.. idhar sare bade ministers rehte hain’, they said.

‘India Gate’, they said, as they gave each other contented smiles.

Everything outside seemed very normal. My whimsical expectation of seeing signs of protests and marches, or slogans, were dampened; the city was carrying about its normal business, like a quintessential professional. My voyeuristic impulse as a spectator of a possible spectacle was thrashed. As I hopped off the bus at the red signal on Janpath, I stole curious glances around me at possible fellows. Apart from the very mild traffic congestion that seemed plausible on any average working day, there were no jarring signs of security personnel with intimidating rifles, or volatile clusters of people . I took the left at the red light, that would lead me to Anna Hazareji , now on his fourth day of an indefinite fast for the cause of India Against Corruption.

I saw middle aged women, mothers and aunties, in sneakers and caps, with bottles of Bisleri , strolling back and forth on the road. Slowly there were parked cars, and groups of people , trickling into the Hazare vortex . A yellow Delhi police barricade marked the site of entry into the place of protest, right opposite Jantar Mantar, which seemed dead and redundant in such a volatile context. I entered and was overwhelmed.

Here was a sea of people. An ocean. Yet a very sane ocean. Without any streaks of violent vandalistic vendetta , the people who had come to see Anna Hazare, the ex-army official now, a social activist, on his sangharsh , knew the depth of the cause they had come for. Many of them, I am sure, would have had to deal with corruption at close quarters, at several points in their lives, and carried an earnest cause for concern. Many others, like me, college students, and young blood, who were equally earnestly invested in the cause through their conscience and a baggage free a-historical perspective of this nationwide movement. A movement which they wanted to embrace into their own personal histories and re-enforce their own voice as citizens of a very vulnerably amusing nation.

Anna tum sangharsh karo, hum tumhaare sath hain!

Cried the ocean in lilting waves.

I suddenly felt the urge to want to be taller than the rest, having no idea which way I was going, I simply nudged my way in. Sliding myself through the ocean, overcoming one person at a time, at times, feeling myself surrounded by good humored middle aged men, telling me ‘Is taraf aao beti, aap andar jake baith jao, bohot bheed hai’ , at times, finding myself cordoned off at points of no return, where I was absolutely at a loss as to which was the way to get myself to the heart of Anna’s audience, I somehow, ended up in the area, where people were sitting since morning, listening, chanting songs, cheering, encoring to ‘bharat mata ki jai’ and ‘vande mataram’ , and ‘jo bole so nihaal’ .I was finally a part of the nation come together. I could see I was among bank employees, government clerks, NGO workers in crisp cotton sarees and round red bindis, engineers and software professionals with their Iphones and Facebook constantly archiving the moment to virtual memory, home makers and their 12 year old daughters in pink hair clips, impressionable and warm blooded college students , and hundreds of small town boys, like the ones I met in the bus, all had come here, many , not knowing their place in this scheme of events, yet, wanting to be part of it , wanting to sign on a page of history , their presence and solidarity.

As I recovered from the thrust into this overwhelming event that engulfed me, I noticed how, there was this unstated assumed role that everybody had taken upon themselves, and an amusing traffic pattern of the people, had emerged, as a constant flux of floating visitors moved in front of the makeshift dais, where Anna ji sat, to get his ‘darshan’. The more static audience sat in front. Rimmed on the periphery by more standing people, and finally edged by a thick line of fire of media and television crew, with their cameras aimed to shoot, and their reporters, like dispatched satellites, speaking from dispersed corners of the crowd, seemed like lost lonely men and women, speaking to everybody yet nobody, and constantly on guard to measure the pulse of event. If you saw reporters shift base, automatically, a cluster of people would turn their heads that way. If one spotted a lady reporter with heavy make-up, touching up her face for the ‘citizen journalist byte’ of the day, naturally, for few moments, Anna’s cause would take the backseat, and the amusing glamour of the TV performance would hold sway. The crowd responded like mercury to its surrounding. It was this mercurial power of people, that had, over the past few days, taken up the simple yet strong rooted cause of India against corruption, and proliferated it into a national mitosis.

I saw Anna Hazare, medium built, lean, in a white muslin cotton kurta pyjama, and pleasantly calm and smiling, but without his trademark Gandhi topi. He was standing at one corner of the dais, hands clasped at the back, looking curious and pleased. A black clad street play group had just infused thunderous encores and a man with a pony tail, with a saffron kurta, was playing the electric guitar and singing Bollywood bhajans! Now and then, the slogans turned sinister, as groups would shout ‘Bhrashtachariyon ko phaansi do’ or ‘Sonia Gandhi nikammi hai’ ; those few odd moments which made me cringe and want to mute the crowd rather than see the apparently sane crowd suddenly lose its temperament in a weak moment. On the fringes of the concentrated crowd, were the mobile and vibrant moving clusters of independent slogans and flag wavers, common men turned into performers, their shirts turning into canvases for signatures and an odd family now and then posing as a family banner for people to click their picture! Anisha had joined me by then, and I felt no longer a lone crusader.

What was conspicuous to us two wide eyed JNUites was the stark absence of a JNU voice in this whole issue. On campus, JNU was sleeping, JNU was watching Saas bahu serials on Colors tv, JNU was playing cricket on the field, JNU was feeding dogs, JNU was sipping chai with an eerie nonchalance , and Anna Hazare was conspicuously absent in the voice of JNU. The question still haunts me. My reasoning led me to wonder if JNU found this issue too banal, too grass root level, too ‘non-intellectual’ to be dappled in? Why were there no posters, no leaflets, no talks on this issue? Why did the parties not find any enterprise in this cause? I missed the JNU voice at Jantar Mantar that day, and I wish, we were more in number for that sake. But I was content, Anisha was with me. After having tried several ‘view’ points from which we could see Anna ji, we were tired of peering above a million necks and standing tip toed. So I took a Kulfi-falooda break. Kulfi, with slimy worm like falooda turned pink by Rooafza ; topped by a sprinkling of guilt ridden conscience of eating in the vicinity of fasting satyagrahis!

It was time to march. Anna was giving his press conference, and things seemed to be looking up. The deadlock with the government seemed to be opening up in his favor. My job seemed to be done. I had given him my salaam, on behalf of all my folks back home, and now with a candle in hand, I decided to take the walk all the way to India Gate. But little did I know that half the crowd there had decided to do the same. So I found myself walking at brisk pace, with a sea of people that swarmed the roads, firmly yet very peacefully. Their pace was elusive. At times I was either too fast, or at times too slow.

What was appreciable was the nature of the march. They chanted slogans, encored, but all in goodwill. The roads seemed to make way for the sea. The cars stopped. The traffic police cheered and let the sea march. The security guards were there, not to restrict but to allow these people to exercise their freedom of expression. The police facilitated by rerouting traffic. It was a wonderful moment of collective jubilation of the wonder of the democracy that we are. The state did not, for once, curb and disrupt the flow. The state seemed to be listening.

with the others. Somebody had pointed out ‘Why do people light candles? Be it mourning or jubilation?’ I would like to think that it is the power and hope of light, in its more primal, innocent form, a small flame, that turns the space and therefore the idea it inhabits, sacrosanct.

As we took our place under a crescent moon , the monument seemed to benevolently accommodate its fiery and energetic people doing seemingly funny things in its shelter, all in the cause of an ‘idea’ of the ‘people’ , everything revolving within man’s sphere, watching him embracing the space around him to help him inscribe his own history, in hope of a solace that he will feel remembered as part of it, forever trying to give himself an irrational hope of the impossibility of death and evanescence.

It was time for coffee. The old man who came with his flaming kettle, asked for the plate and spoon we had been clanking the night with. He seemed happy. He had earned plate to eat from that night , like many others, who would find more spoons, dented steel plates and half burnt candles that they could take home and light. The sea had stormed the India Gate grounds and gone. Families with their 8 year olds trickled back to normal pace, the moongphali chana wala got back to his place, children started crying for balloons, and the family cameras and camera phones where back to clicking memoirs of the monument of the capital. It was calm again and the heat of the evening made way for a cooling breeze. Anisha and me had a subtle smile of self pride written on our faces. ‘The deadlock is over, Anna is to end the fast tomorrow at 10 am’ we heard from the news.

We were in a flux of the 21^st century awakening, or so I would like to think. The corruption that had been seeping into the system, and corroding the foundations of the Indian machinery, seemed to be finally on everybody’s mind. It is just the beginning. But it is evident. People have become aware, and have taken the effort to express this awareness as a whole. And I have hope that this active awareness, instrumentalises and proliferates in the social conscience as a way of life.

I went home, having participated in my first peaceful and victorious protest , and a utopian vision of a 21^st century Dandi march that had just taken place on the real and the virtual roads of the country, and in my city. I heart this country.

s r a j a n a k a i k i n i .n e w d e l h i, a p r i l 9^th 2011

Dhobi Ghat , Address unknown

Dhobi Ghat succeeds in yet another canvas of the Mumbai myth, and sensitively so. What shines in the film is the screen presence of Prateik, who plays Munna, the dhobi wala, and the interlinking thread weaving the various ‘shattered’ spaces of the realm of the film. Although the film seems to be about four lives that are tangled in the cobweb of the concrete jungle, it is more, in the distances, the imbalances and the pulsating equations between them that the film germinates. There is a very conscious effort towards an image building of the entire narrative, which begins , not against expectations, with the opening shots of construction workers and a city under process, almost in mental continuity to where we left Peepli Live. As the blue sky presents a stark ‘dhobi ghat’ in modest Arial font, the Bollywood mould is straightaway broken , with shaky continuous handheld camera shots introducing itself to a soaking Marine drive , where people come for fresh air and little street urchins readily dance to Mera piya ghar aaya for the camera . This is through the eyes of Yasmin (Kriti Malhotra), an absent presence throughout the film.

Arun , the painter, (Aamir Khan) is the stereotypical recluse artist who talks less, seems a misfit in the elite chic art world and has just moved into a new house, which gives him a view of the old city. But that is where , the stereotype ends and it ceases to matter even, because here are mere pawns of a larger checker board of an urbanscapewhich is constantly shuffling. Shai , a high society investment banker from New York, who is on a ‘sabbatical’ and not a holiday, as she points out , to click photographs in Mumbai, encounters two different beings on this graph of Mumbaihood . Munna ( Prateik) , is the common link between Shai and Arun, and yet, the link being only in terms of acquaintance and not any more. He is the dhobi boy who delivers each their laundry everyday. And through this daily narrative, equations emerge. All three equations work independently and uniquely. While there is a constant mystery about the recluse artist that keeps eluding Shai, a bond evolves between Munna and her, as he takes her to the dhobi ghat to photograph the dhobiwalas in action , in return for a favour that she click pictures of him for his acting portfolio. Yes, Munna dreams to act in the movies, and somehow this fact appears agreeable to us despite the trope of the ‘dreamy eyed Bombay immigrant with hopes to become a filmstar’ being an overused one. Kiran Rao uses the handheld camera shots from the Yasmin plot line, to make the film more ‘real’ in texture , more near in narration and encashes on the emotional memories that personal archival images produce. Yasmin , is present only through her videos that she had taken in order to send them to her brother. A newlywed girl who sees Mumbai as an outsider trying hard to make it her own city, Yasmin becomes intrinsically entwined into Arun’s mental and physical space.

The documentary style footage of Mumbai life that we see through Yasmin’s naive lens, and the crisp freeze frames of the ‘faces’ of Mumbai that we see through Shai’s probing lens , turn the film into, a larger statement of the film as a chronicle of the collage of Mumbai. Hence , one supposes ,the subtext of the film ‘Mumbai diaries’. The cinematography captures colours poetically , rich in texture and being partial many times to blue hues, which sets the rather laconic temperament of the film. These have the quality of a Walter Salles’ ( the director films like Central Station and Motorcycle Diaries) narrative mode of depicting faces of a landscape which themselves exude the character of the spaces they inhabit. And leading from that, it is imperative to highlight the music score composed by Gustavo Santaolalla , who has given life to films such as Motorcycle Diaries and Babel. Gustavo intelligently molds his guitar to the Indian lilt, and yet manages to hallmark poignant scenes with his universal notes. Strings don’t sound like strings anymore. They resound the voice of the characters. At points , the Yasmin narrative tends to lag a little , and could have been edited more tightly ; however, overall, the film clocks good time at 95 minutes ( with no intermission!). Not to forget, that, being an ‘uninterrupted’ movie itself is flashed across the posters as a USP of the film, and to ones distaste, the announcements in the multiplexes become a cue to rush to the popcorn stalls at the beginning of the film.

Dhobi ghat is about shifting realms, lives simultaneous in one moment of the city shuffling through different paradigms. Each is moving constantly in a desperate attempt to get somewhere, something or get away from something. And yet the city has its own way of creeping upon you and letting you know that, you need to chase your dream and give it your postal address . Otherwise even dreams get lost in this city of human labyrinths.

‘Zentropa’ rehashed

(Film: Zentropa /1991/ Director : Lars von Trier )

Zentropa, a film by Danish director Lars von Trier, in 1991, could be called as cinema that has been created in the realm of intersections; intersections of space, time, histories, identities and crises. The film is on a superficial premise set in Germany Year Zero, 1945, post World War II, when Germany is getting back to its feet after its ruinous debacle in the war. However, if one is to inter-textually read Zentropa , then it is the story also of Europe in the 90’s and its impending crisis. Zentropa released a year after the Berlin wall came down, and a year before the Maastricht Treaty was signed by the European nations. It was a time of uncertainty for Europe as ‘Neo Nazism’ threatened to resurface and Europe , as an international identity, was facing an identity crisis. In this light, Zentropa, through its texturally layered form, addresses ‘Europa’, Europe in general and with a double edged sword, cuts back to 1945 Germany, with a historical premise.

Displaced Realms : the ‘interstitials’

The film’s existence occurs in a continuous ‘displacement’. This ‘displacement’ can be further explored. The main character , the American , Lee Kessler, is presented as a subject under hypnosis. The hypnotic non-diegetic voice over that begins the film, introduces a ‘lag’ between knowledge and action, which till the end is never reconciled as the subject ultimately dies. Kessler, who comes to Germany, to help it in its nation building process, becomes a guard in the railways. The ‘train’ again is used as a medium of displacement. Rosalind Galt in her essay points out that Leo is never directly in touch with the landscape of Zentropa, but constantly mediating it through the train ; he is constantly on the train. All those junctions where in fact he is on the ground, form the crucial cues in continuing his ensuing disconnection with everything , ultimately leading to him getting killed in the space of the ‘interstitial’ , the drowning train.

The sequence of Max Hartmann’s suicide, is a key grounding factor and also a lead/ premonition of where Kessler will ultimately end up. The character of Max Hartmann is shown to be or have been a Nazi sympathizer, and his daughter Katherine Hartmann, also, is a former member of the Werewolf terrorist group. This is the sequence where the crucial secret of Katherine’s identity, is revealed in the narrative, and the ominous implications of it , henceforth, are also hinted at. As Katherine asks Kessler to ‘show her some kindness’ as they are poised before a vast expanse of a miniature network of the railways on the German landscape, one is certainly given signs of a certain power relation inherent in the mise en scene. Here is a former Werewolf, toying with her American ‘puppet’ Kessler, and using the railways to her whim , ultimately , crushing it with her own weight ; (as the toy train falls off the disarrayed tracks, it is an ominous sign of the fate of the actual train in the film). Meanwhile, downstairs, her father in his state of despair and helplessness ( out of his Nazi connection) grotesquely cuts himself up to his death , in the bathtub. The heightened use of a singled out ‘red’ colour of the blood, fills the mise en scene with an infusion of violence latent within the characters. The characters in Zentropa are almost never directly in connection with their surrounding contexts, except in this sequence where the immediacy of blood is effectualised to the highest measure.

The ‘interstitial’ film form

Zentropa’s interstitiality is foregrounded by Lars von Trier, through the use of his filming techniques. He makes use of selective colour against black and white photography, uses the wide angled lens with the telephoto lens, 35mm with 70mm , makes use of back projection techniques , and a wide variety of contrasting camera angles. With this variegated palette of polarized ingredients of film form, von Trier , skillfully stitches it all up into a deeply layered, pan-temporal, textual narrative. By making use of the back projection technique he effectively disconnects his characters from their contexts, ( since the characters are shot in isolation and the backdrop in isolation). By using a selective chroma scheme, the effect achieved is not only that of surprise and shock for the viewer but also, it acts as a coding system, like markers that make the anticipatory sensibility in the viewer alert. The use of various layers of foreground and background, also allows von Trier to play with scales within the mise en scene. Thus the ‘razor’ in Max Hartmann’s hand and its impending violence gets exaggeratedly fore grounded when it is shown in a scale larger than real, against the bath tub. The whole idea of a comfort of ‘spatial depth’ that the audience enjoyed out of deep focus photography is completely destroyed and the film constantly disorients the viewer’s preconception of space.

The use of symphonic music and the melodramatic tinge to the dialogue delivery by Katherine Hartmann, allude to the director’s simultaneous citation of classical film form, post war history, and the contemporary context. There is a graphic textural quality to Zentropa which is at odds with the seemingly realist plot narrative that Zentropa tries to deal with. Yet, till the end, ‘identification’ with any specificity is the one thing the film stays far away from. This kind of a non-identifiable, non-existential film form is von Trier’s larger critique of its times, of the crisis of a national ( read personal) and an international ( read social) identity of Europe. A crisis that may or may not be reconciled with on the count of three.

One…Two…Three…….

Elaichi

Petals, in my pages.

The scent of a scene.

The road is taking turns,

In misty expectation.

In the air wafts

Elaichi.

White blooms from northern land,

Why do they smell so?

On a winter’s day,

There is always chai,

Masala and Elaichi,

Standing in the middle of

Intersecting memories,

Floating petals, and

Wilting trees.

'New York Herald Tribune, New York Herald tribune'...

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? Yesterday, I caught one.

On the pavement of Champs Élysées. She was calling out to an invisible buyer, ‘New York Herald Tribune! New York Herald Tribune!’ Her lilting voice floated about in the air a few feet around her and vaporized into the afternoon sun. Her petite figure walked the pavement of Champs-Élysées like a daydream , calling out to sell the stories of the new world to grumpy Parisians on a Monday morning. Violins played a certain melody tinged with ennui. It was an ennui of a beautifully fatal lady, in trim trousers and a sweater with New York Herald Tribune written on it.

I sneak into her tiny apartment, and watch her proliferate.Her nape is her fortune. Her face is a myth. She flits and jumps across the bed, over my shoulders, and under the sheets. Her gramophone plays symphonies that turn her into Cleopatra, and her nose glistens in the sunbeams filtering in though the shades. Renoir immortally froze her, before she could turn around in restless boredom and make up a frown. She dons the mafia of the enigmatic bohemian. Her cigarette smells American. Her striped shirt is the scent of crisp newspaper.

She takes my dreaming hat, and grasps a reverie in the midst of a radio commentary. She cant shut her eyes hard enough to make everything turn black. The red plays around like the flame of her heart behind her eyelids. I sit here and gaze. It is all I can do. She stares back with competition. Who blinks first? She couldn’t care less. She is too busy making her way through Dylan Thomas and William Faulkner. Her head is up there, in the clouds. Breathless. Now I see it, now I don’t. She is Napoleon , now pinning me down with her telescope. Now hiding from the world by simply turning away.

You tell me to make you smile. And smile even before I begin. You ask for a reason , and then don’t even care for it. You close your eyes, and I lose you in an instant. You turn around to look, and ask why I look at you.

‘Between grief and nothing’ , did you choose grief?

What did you choose? Patricia, What did you choose?

Newspaper seller . Daydreamer. New Yorker in Paris.

la femme fatale, what did you choose?