Mad in Mumbai- Memoir ’

I remember the early morning bus to Mumbai. Landing up in mist and seeing the sea for the first time. It was such a shame to finally arrive in Mumbai at 25years of age. But it was magic too. I didn’t know what awaited me, but I was in love and felt quite blind. So I parked myself in a city where nothing blew off in alarm when I looked at it absentmindedly. They didn’t know what the alert and same me was. So they wouldnt question me during that zonked period .I would stay here till this sudden blind spot that filled me with wooziness lasted. Till the static of 5000 gongs buzzing in my head died down. Or at least settled itself!

I imagined that’s how elephants fell in love. Madly. Truly. Deeply. There were other ways of falling in love too. Slightly, romantically, flirtatiously, moderately, sexually but none of those options were available to me. I dived into it straight like an elephant would jump into swimming pool. Clumsily. The whole of me at one go, without keeping any other eggs in any other basket. In retrospect it looks like a suicide mission for whatever could go wrong did go wrong. But at that time the earnestness kept me afloat. It was the first time my mind had been pulverised by anything other than mathematics. And it felt GOOD and made me feel blind. As blind as driving a car with front mirror covered in mixed fruit jam would make you feel.

The big authoritative voices that kept shouting at me all my life suddenly became well wishing whispers that would just creep out of mouse holes and whisper and disappear. Career Careeer Career? Where is it going where is it going? Money Money Money. This money will run out run out run out. As soon as I turned to look at them they would freeze like they were hollow echoes’ and had nothing important to say. Anyways listening to them all my life hadn’t made me any smarter or richer. So now I could tell them ‘Fuck you’ at least let me try for happiness.

Suddenly I felt like pretty girl who walked like a drunken elephant on the streets of Mumbai with friends who only thought she was lost because she had no job!I had proposed a man finally after all these years and he had agreed to ‘give it a shot’. I had for the first time in my life walked across a city wearing a blood red skirt with a sleeveless blouse and not felt conscious about it. I had for the first time smelled the vast sea at Versova and breathed the creamy texture of the freedom sitting around the little barista at seaside.


It was another world into which I had unknowingly arrived. What freedom it was from the days of reporting everyday to my mom on the phone truthfully. Every little detail of what was happening. Who I went out with and why I got late and how I got safely dropped back home.Why for the first time in my life I could walk out on the road at 1pm to look for chai and sit beside the sea and then come back home without having to look at any disapproving faces! I could even not come back home for the whole night and next day find that approval from friends who were growing impatient with my oh so platonic notions of freedom! It was the first time I encountered pregnancy kits in the bathroom and it gave me a strange wicked pleasure. Someday I would use these too. I thought boldly.


Then one morning I felt all washed up and cleaned and rebirthed on the 16th floor of a building. I was wearing my electric blue lycra jeans which had a skull on its butt pocket and my Faiz Ahmed Faiz people’s tree Tshirt. It read my favourite poem ‘ aur bhi hain gum zamane main mohabbat ke siva’ But I wasn’t thinking of escaping sorrow! I lay there wanting to just be able to see clearly what was I doing with my life really? I knew it wasnt anything bad, evil or immoral or anything. Just that this wasnt the pace at which I had lived and I had to go back to the old mirror to see the new face.


Too much had happened in a month’s time. I had run away from home. My uncle had died of paralysis. I had hopped on a train reached Belgaun to visit an aunt I hadn’t seen in eight years.

There were pigeons outside and the January morning reminded me of playing with shadows in my childhood home veranda. This wasn’t the city of verandas and I had to rush to office but just getting up that morning it looked like I had gathered all the small playful shards of sunlight to last me entire life to play with. That morning that clarity hasn’t come to me again. But every time I open the little purse in my heart all the little shards start dancing again. I wonder if the will last me till I am old and ugly.
Who knows they just might.

An Achkan for Achkan Mirza

For a minute I didn’t believe that he had called me for this! He wanted an Achkan for a wedding he had to attend!

Long back I had teased him sarcastically about being like ‘Achkan Mirza’ the character from my 5th standard CBSC Hindi reader. An elderly misanthrope who was completely adorable for his suspicion that the whole world conspired against him to take away his Achkan. The Achkan to Achkan Mirza was all that he had earned in his life. Choosing not to have wife and kids but only integrity and honesty and character. As he grew older and became delusional he started believing people would steal away his Achkan because it was so precious. To the world it was an old piece of cloth that was too dusty and bobbled to be welcomed inside their houses.

So everyone teased the old man and started calling him Achkan mirza. The man mad about his coat.

‘He’ was a lot like Achkan Mirza. But I was really shocked when he actually declared that he would wear an Achkan to that wedding he had to go to. He wanted me to find an Achkan for him. From a piece of literature it became a practical commodity that had to be shopped. I became nervous about finding an Achkan. After all what was an Achkan? No one knew for sure. Google had no answers and my entire knowledge system collapsed.

Surely someone in Jamia would know. (With all the Urdu they had flaunted and used like a weight against me to keep me down in the elitist divide) I started with Javed. So Mr Javed with all his love for Javed Akhtar’s Urdu poetry still did not know what an Achkan was and where to find it. My asking however aroused his curiosity to infinity about why would I bother about an ‘Achkan’. Was it some kind of Islamic chicken that Punjabis exported to Canada? Was it some kind of a sex toy used by the fast girls who wore torn pants?

I rushed off swearing not to ask anyone else in my office about ‘Achkan’ come to think of it. It did sound like a bawdy chicken!

Running against the deadline I called ‘him’. Although I dreaded it. What would he think? I didn’t even know what an Achkan was! How would he trust me about buying him the best one in town?
Tring Tring

Me-‘’ aa. Err . Listen I know what an Achkan is but do you mind telling me what exactly do you mean when you say it. I don’t want to get you the wrong kind you know!’’

Him- Smirk. Ok it’s a gents garment, the kind Ustad Bismillah Khan wears.

Me – Stunned Silence

Him- Hello! Hello!

Me- Umm errr BBB

Him- Listen Do you even know Bismillah Khan? Were you born while he was alive?

Me- What do you mean! Off course I know who he is! Ok Bye!

Secretly I  was thinking- But what did he wear? They never showed us his long shot. All everyone ever watched was the Shehnai in his mouth. Maybe he did those 1hour shows on DD when I was young. I only remembered the Nehru Topi.

So I went to the market absolutely clueless. Just hoping that it wasn’t some flashy kind of Arabic Thong that men wore over their trousers superman style.

I thought surely Jamia Nagar was my best bet to find an Achkan. Some old elite Urdu stylist/store would surely have a vintage collection in that magical Aladdin market. So I sat on a rickshaw and felt like an old duchess. For wasn’t I going out to shop for antiquity so antique that half the ignorant world dint even know what was I talking about.

Within 5 minutes of the bumpy rickshaw ride my insides were levelled. I asked the first man who looked to be living above poverty line about where I would find an Achkan. He looked right back at me and asked ‘a what?’ A chicken I gulped! ‘ yahan nahin milega madam’ He looked at me angrily and went away!

I didn’t mind an unpleasant stranger but more and more came. And no one told me what an Achkan was. Maybe it was a chastity belt that was tied around men. Maybe it was a diamond studded coat. Who knew? It was like that Hanuman underwear that bachelors wore.

Finally I found a man. I mean I found a man who assured me that He knew what I wanted. (Although I didn’t know it myself) So he pointed to this skin coloured garment with garish orange embroidery and then said. This is the closest thing I have. It’s called OUTER. I have this last piece. Buying that was out of question. Bismillah Khan was surely not to be found dead in Bappi Da style of stuff!

I struggled more. Found a shop which said they had it. But it was in their workshop and it would take those 6 hours to get it. I was almost tempted to invest so much time. After all I would have finally seen that male garment which in all my 27 years had never seen on a man. What’s more I could have seen ‘him’ wear that male garment.

This was becoming exciting I thought. Almost in the way the Native American tribal EVES must be hunting for a tiger and then making underwear out of its skin. To gift it to the alpha male But I knew I was stretching it. With so little know about the garment most probably only arcane nawabs felt alpha wearing that thing called Achkan. And Bismillah Khan was dead too (God bless his soul)

The next day I and he were back the regulars. We went to Chun Mun Garments and got him a super cool Burberry coat.

But the thoughts of looking for an Achkan for him have stayed with me. Maybe it’s just a stupid idea that was passed on to my head by him. But I often dream of haunting the streets looking for that perfect Achkan.


PS- My guess is they stopped making Achkan when the old world gallantry of being a gentleman died.

Confessions of an Adrenaline Junkie.

1- Vipassna @ Dehradune Centre
Starting the year with the most extreme form of mind enema. Its called Vipassna. Millions swear by it. Some for its torture value, others for the healing it brings for them, still others like the VOID and CLARITY brought by it. For me the High would be spending 10 days alone without contact with the outer world. Just struggling with the devils within. If this inner war doesnt supply enough Adrenaline I dont know what else will.
I can almost imagine myself in the overnite bus to Dehradune. Boarding from ISBT. Those last few messages to friends lovers and flames saying BYE. Finally going for it. 'May all being be happy' 'May all beings find their light.' 'May all  agree to share their darkness with me'' May all beings know their true relationship with me.'

2- Chilling @ a Nude Beach in Goa
Goa. I am told that the only Indian place to do it. Now I am myself figuring out where this strange heretic idea of being on a nude beach has come to me from. But what can you say about kinks and madness. They may be just lurking in your bloodstream tilll someone brings out the idea( and the assets on the surface) So I read this super exciting tale of a women on a nude beach with her husband and her sudden adrenaline rush when for a minute she entered a bar of fully clothed men who all smirked on her. Bang on. Thats just my idea of  a highesh high or a lowest low. It took one back to those nightmares of puberty where I would walk into class room only to realise that I had forgotten to wear my underwear. In those wicked days everyone from the boys to the girls mocked the fat ugly me because of this little slip.( ok not so little slip you moral prude)
Now talking about myself I am not quite vain. And I dont think on a nude beach I would be any sight. And frankly I dont have any previous experince of public nudity giving me any high. The furthest I must have gone this way would have been with an open fly(that too unintensional I assure you) But what the hell I want to sun my interiors and let some fresh ideas strike me on the skin. I am sure there is also something extremly liberating will happen to let the whole of oneself stare back at the cosmos. So nude beaches here I come.

3- Paragliding @ Bir Billing in Himachal
Something about gliding in a small sleepy himachali village with mostly monks as inhabitants is extremly exotic. I like exotic. I like enlightening. I like lonesome.. I like flying...
So after the flying I go the deer park institute and examine whats the big shout about the lama who lives there.

4- Aero Model flying @ outskirts of Delhi in winters.
I love planes. Small Planes. I love the dexeterity of assembling together something that can fly. So it'l be quite a adrenaline spurt to go out of the city and dare ones engineering no? Anyone game?( looking for company for this)

5-Ferris wheel @ Kalindi Kunj in Delhi
Asia's largest ferries wheel just in my background@ 250 INR per ride. I am game. Specially because I was never allowed on local ferriwheels because they were too small to accomodate me.
So lets see if going up and down and round and round helps in better circulation of adrenaline.

Closet Blues`

I don’t know if you think its flimsy. This feeling of ‘I have nothing to wear today.’ If you’re a woman you may know what I am talking about. But the strongest empathy I have received on the subject is from a man. Maybe we are a breed of people who change so fast that there is no way our clothes can keep pace with us. Maybe it’s an ungainly/unwomanly thing to not have stuff to wear that makes you feel good. It can be excused if you’re man but not if you’re a woman!


So this Sunday I open my cupboard and find there is nothing, absolutely nothing that will represent on the outside what I am feeling today. I haven’t been checking inside often enough to keep in touch with who I am. Not worked hard enough at buying clothes to suit the new me I am becoming. And Boom one day the ignored little me explodes in outrage and rwants to throw away everything inside the cupboard!Pushing the Big me into a well where the first thing I can manage after getting over the shock of it is to wallow in self pity.


Imagine the feeling of ‘I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH CLOTHES’. Even when your closet can’t quite contain everything you have. Its not low esteem. Its just not having enough clothes that you like. That fit you and that will cover you!

For a long time now I kept hoping that I would go out shopping for myself; but didn’t know any stores that keep the kind of clothes I liked wearing( I have grown out of fab india and they dont keep my size) Or when everything I liked was more than what my wallet will let me consider( Have been broke for last few months) All that I liked and kept wearing again and again is now been worn so often that everyone has seen it and is tired of seeing it too! ( not that blue print again pleaaseee my friends shriek everytime I turn to the comfort of that tried and tested attire!)

So it went on inside long before it broke open as a crisis today! As if my own morning struggle to find something to wear wasn’t enough a friend whose dressing sense I admired made a joke about (the only) White Jacket I was wearing (which I also wore on my last three dates!) saying it looks like ‘your cricket jacket’!

Smiling while gritting my teeth at that one I really think he had a point!

To my horror I realised I have JUST 2 jackets one is black and the other is white. One 2 year old pair of black canvas shoes which I wore everywhere I went (as you too would if you were in my place!) And I dint even consciously acknowledge that they were ugly till a skinflint friend I went shopping with offered to buy me new ones. (They must be really over the top ugly for him to make an offer like that to me!)


The only compliment that I received in the last three weeks was on a mauve top that I wore that a friend gifted to me. (Mind you gifted and not purchased!) That compliment must have really filled in some void that I had been avoiding noticing (the void of wanting compliments on what one is wearing) so like a fool I again wore the same color that had got me the much cherished compliment.

This time though the effort fell flat on its face. ( Me too along with it when I realised that far from suiting me mauve actually made me look fat!) So all the hardwork of mauve sweater, blue jeans and white jacket(again white jacket!) made a very sorry day. And I kept hoping he wouldn’t notice my shoes( which were the same black old canvas shoes which he had proposed to replace!) And thank god he didn’t! But I did!

I having being housetrained in modesty and the value of being simple and thus havent ever ritually gone out to shop for clothes. Consequently I never have anything to wear every time there is a wedding looming. So mostly I don’t attend the looming wedding. Sometimes when I strike some jugad I borrow lovely clothes from my generous friends end up wearing them with the wrong accessories (saris with wrong shoes or saris on the wrong side or with a wrong colours blouse!)

Meanwhile envious thoughts of women who manage to sizzle in clothes are tormenting me. You know those women who always manage to look good in whatever they wear.Those women who on sudden impulse can produce and flounce the finest silks and find matching earrings and bangles. Women who can carry briefcase full of fineries when they go out to attend weddings. Imagine living in the plenty of owning some 10-12 complete pairs of clothes which look good and yet don’t make you feel fat! Its cornucopia. Unbelievable with my present height weight money karma.

Sometimes I think this dressing well is some kind of rocket science. Only some women who have some special kind of grey cells that can handle it. (Just like only some women can handle maths)I have struggled with both as much as I could but just to be at par takes 8 times more effort for me!

I don’t know whether just to give up on ever getting the knack of it or keep striving hoping someday I’ll know where to buy that one thing that will not make me wrinkle my nose in the mirror. Something that I will love at the first sight of it will be my favourite colour; will look good at me without making me look too fat. Something that wouldn’t be more high maintenance than I can handle and something that rest of the world will by nod their heads in liking too.

Too much to ask I know. And therefore I dont ask.

Days of being young

"Childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it.”

Ah those days at ‘Nani ke ghar’. They come back to me on crisp winter mornings when the sun shines on me while eating curd. Those days we would visit nani during winter holidays. It was a large farmhouse that came after long weary travel from Bareilly. When we travelled on bus I hated the long journey from Shajahanpur to the Farm. It pained my butts to sit for so long and still inside the bus where ugly men would blow beedi smoke all over one's face. They werent a bit nice or smiley towards my mom and Dady on the bus! Why they didnt even know us or who we were!

At the farmhouse there was a neat row of peach and pink button roses along the boundry wall of the farm house. We would sleep next to that dirly yellow lime boundry wall that divided the house between nanaji's younger brother and nanajis house. Mama and Nana would go to the Rice Mill and fields to sow paddy at that time of the year and nani and the guests (my Dad when he visited along with us) would stay at home and read newspaper and go for long walks and go for fishing to the river Gomti which flowed nearby. We never caught any fish! At night we would have elaborate mosquito nets mounted upon our beds and the bed sheets which were shiny white would smell of sweet sun. It was nani’s efficient superclean laundry management. It made for a very peaceful night of sleep except for the times when kids wanted to go to Pee.

Now peeing was a little difficult thing on those starry nights because the toilets were far far away and there were the farm dogs lurking in the darkness between the bed and the toilet.(big tibetan mastiffs or 'desi' as we called them) So often nani would ask me to haunch and shoot right next to her bed. The 5 year old me would feel part embarrassed and part disgusted but did it there all the same. Strangely in the mornings one never smelled urine. It must have been the cowdung swept floor that soaked in everything or another of nani’s magic tricks.

In the mornings when one started showing some movement in the bed between the white starched blankets the whole household would be warming up to the day. The kids could disappear for some more time in the blankets till the warm bottle of milk arrived. When it arrived it always tasted of ghee and was thicker than was familiar to us city kids. One took ones own sweet time in gulping it down making gurgling sounds in the throat.

Then the house helps arrived. The beds would have to be put back in the storeroom that smelled of kerosene. One would grudgingly wake up and be deported to the toilets with a toothbrush.Since the toilets were unfamiliar to the me as I had only experinced compact toilet of our Bareilly home Nani's toilets looked like monster toilets. I always had the morbid fear that I would fall inside the that wide Indian pot and will have to be painfully cleaned up of all the muck that would stick on me by nani(who had a cleanliness streak) I hated the Handpump that one had to struggle with to get water before going inside the toilet. It made me feel small and incapable and away from my home in Bareilly. It was unfamiliar territory where none of the loving attention of the whole family cushioned poor little me!

I hated the huge steel tumblers and buckets. They had a strange pungent smell. They smelled of Farm. Unfamiliar Wilderness. No one even said GOOD JOB done after I had successfully dealt with them. For all my mom's love for this place it was still unfamiliar territory for me! I wasnt ever given any space to adjust into this new territory. It was always thrust on me it seems in retrospect. For there wasnt much to hold the attention of a 5 year old. And It was soo far away from my home in Bareilly. Sigh!

In nani’s village I had no friends other than the cousins who were visiting. Most of the times there were unwritten rules of conduct for even little children to not mix too much with the laborers who lived in straw huts. I hated their prejudice and rules being forced on me. I didnt know what to do with those 1 and half foots of me. After all there had to be more in live that taking rounds of green fields, picking up berries and running after chickens and collectin g eggs in the morning. Sometime's the Hen wouldnt even lay an egg shattering my world! So there was nothing to do except play all the time with oneself and while keeping elders happy!

The thing that always surprises me is that even in those days of being so green behind the ear’s I felt terribly self conscious. Always hated it when people laughed at what I had to say in my lisping voice. I thought I was an important man(trapped in the body of a plump 5year old girl) They never saw me for who I really was. I surely wasn’t somebody they ought to have told to go to pee before I came to sleep on that bed. Maybe it’s got something to do with having an old soul even inside a kid’s body.
 

The cynical crinkled wrinkled old soul inside the plump smelling like a sparrow’s nest kid hated Nani’s home because everyone oooh aaahheed at her. In retrospect I wonder why  wasnt it as happy then as it looks now. Maybe Childhood is in fact a difficult period for those inside it but off course Roses havent tasted so sweet and pillows havent smelled so delicious as they did when I was as nani's home.

Strange Songs'

She slowly shuffles the radio in the next room. Adjusts to AM. Stops at the station playing old songs. Last two days I have been very irritated at her. Dont know why! Just something she did to cross over a boundry while I was under work stress. Maybe she came to my room and laid down next to me while I was dressing up and made one or two disparging comments 'Wear a sweater! Its getting cold outside' I looked at her pissed banged the bathroom door and told her to bite her tongue. How many times must I tell her DONT TELL ME WHAT TO WEAR! she just never gets it!

When Dad is around they sleep inside a mosquito net and are in deep sleep by 9pm. I never have to engage with them much when they are together these days. They're quite a romantic pair really. I shudder at the thought of engaging with either of them alone. I am growing old and have started worrying about eventualities. They are growing even older and have planted those 'eventualities' in my head. Just to tell me what they think should be done when they are no more.(Thats forward planning for you!)

I never understand their logic of loving . At 27 everytime I come late(9pm is bloody late if you dont know) they pout like some great bond has been broken by my disrespect. Everyday however they look up for men stationed at the farthest corners of the world to bring their Baraat so that they can happily say Good riddane to me. The idea of marriage coming from them always reminds me of a sad Rabindra Nath Tagore story. It was perhaps called 'Sujata's dream' where a young girl being pressed to get married sleeps by the river and dreams that a boatman takes her with him only to drown her in the middle of the river!( I know Its a dramatic analogy but anyways!)

As I grow older and cynical I realise how much hardwork Love really is. If loving my won parents has started looking so daunting I dont know what hope does any other individual have with me around to be able to deal with it!(Arent we all better off in the Himalayas?) Its always scared me this distance between people who love each other too much. Its that complicated way intimacy circles us. The challenges are always hidden behind one thousand other things that dont really matter. And all those bruises marks and blues on our skins coming from trying to be close to each other. I never get it how some people find the courage to be reckless in love. I can hardly spare enough though for it on some days!


I have seen my dad cry only once in my life(when dadi died). I think second time will be when he will get me married. But I cant imagine him hugging me in public. All these years he has scarcely even come close to 1 meter of where I sit. Its the patriarchal/ feudal legacy that we take forward. I hate public displays of affection myself. I cringe everytime I see hugging couples in public. Maybe this is how my dad's stiffness has carried forward in the cycle of life.


My sister who was my little doll now lives in another city. Even when we meet after months she finds is too much to hug publicaly or privatly. I dont mind her really. Most of the days I dont even remember that I have an irritating sister(who takes away all my favorite kurtas with her) I sometimes worry when we will be older with families of our own if it will be strange to meet each other. She is so lovable and distant at the same time. A little bit like me writing this piece instead of talking to any of these people I am talking about. A little bit like my Dad travelling all the time and never calling me to tell me where he is. A little bit like my mother resentful that I dont spend enough time with her while she always refuses to go out with me(its too late, its too far, dont drive at this time, its too costly, its not worth the price) and is now playing her favorite song from GUIDE 'waqt be kiya kya haseen sitam''


Ironic I think...and quite strange too...

The Film School that ruined my chances to be normal

The old dreams were good dreams. They didn't work out, but I’m glad I had them.”The Bridges of Madison County (1995) –

Jamia was the kind of Film school that middle class journalist/documentary types like me fell for thinking it would our direct entry to the highways of super consciousness of Television Journalism. The way you could to make a difference (ouch!) The one profession that helped you in transcending the middle class rules that fettered meaningful living. The only licence in cutting through those traditions was intellectual licence( Money and Glamour used to be dirty words then!)

So I chose a film school that by my standards looked pretty much unattainable. But I really ached when I dreamed of going to the same college that Barkha Dutt and Sharukh Khan had gone to. It was a complete act of fantasy for an average student whose only claim to enter there was burning greedy passion to be there. Someone who was zilch in extra curriculars, was painfully shy, found public speaking painful and didn’t like looking in the mirror more than twice a day! Whatever made me choose Television!

All of this was the blue sky. Where did I step into it I never quite know! Perhaps the day of my interview when the director of Jamia asked me ‘You could have gone to FTII why you choosing Jamia’? I looked at him disbelieving! FTII! That place for stupid people who want to make mainstream trash!? Whoever aspires for something like that! Dont you see I am so thoughtful that I want to be a Jholewali for the rest of my life. I want to be poor and gritty. I want to be great! I want to make a difference. I will be Barkha Dutt not Subhash Ghai! Huh! The panel smirked between itself. Another one blinded with stardust. Take her in!

And In I went booming, swooning, derilious but with a poker straight face. We were to be trained in serious world-changing life altering practises.We would be the Medha Patekars and Arundhati Roys. We were to set the world straight! From the beginning it was made very clear that you would be a middle class filmmaker for the rest of your life! You don’t like it? You shouldn’t have come in and wasted someone else’s seat! Now for two years please keep your daintiness and love for glamour in your AC car. This was a place that would teach you to rough it out big time.

I knew no one in Jamia who openly admitted to be aspiring for a happy balanced love life? There used to be walls painted with Faiz Ahmed Faiz’z ‘Aur Bhi hai Gham Zamane main Mohabbat ke Siva’ So you could have a lot of unrequited love to fire you into being intense but happy love life’s was always to be looked down upon! Then there were those love nests in the neighbourhood which were rented by generations and generations of MCRCites. Other than the people who lived there they also served as shacks for other friends who would need it for a few hours. These love nests were such nice personal History Monuments I wish someone had maintained a register of who all went there. They used to be so inseparable for those 2 months of peak of passion and all (ok most of them) of those affairs would fall out like a pack of cards. All of us needed our creative space at the end! All possibility of love ever being a straight road was abandoned there!

Then there was that hedonism that came with being is a company of Pan India Intellectuals. There were North easterners, Punjabis and Crazy surds. There were Toppers from Bengal and there were the cut your throat women of Indraprastha College and LSR offcourse. There were dour Jamia Category students and there were the SC’s and the ST’s. Being a General category (1 of the 14) meant that you had mastered a Handicap in the India of 2005’s.

You could even be forgiven for thinking that you had arrived! For in a certain way you had. You would be a stamped Jholewala with the Kolhapuris( even though they don’t save you from electric shocks) You would wear with élan vegetable dyes and Fab India Kurtas even while the rest of the world had passed into Ganjis and Mango and Bananas and other such labels(forgive my dismal awareness about Fashion Trends for I am still a Jholewali as per my cool friends) You could even become a celebrity in a small town surrounded by teenage girls who would blink at you with doe eyes and ask you all details about how to crack the entrance. You become cool in an old doordarshan Kind of way.

Then there were those crazy assed friends. The ones who lived with you 24 hours . For a film school means no boundaries about where work begins and where it ends. I loved that Blurring of boundaries. 9 to 5 is the end of passion and beginning of Sanity. I would any day choose to be passionate 22 year old gone crazy with work than a 35 well settled decent woman with Gelled hair (yikes!) The thing about those 24 hours friends that it was difficult to draw their attention to urgent practical things of one’s life( Shifting houses, Buying LPG cylinders, Fixing Computers, repairing the Coolers etc.) for those mundane things of existence you depended on the other supporting world! A world which understood you sometimes after they had run out of being freaked by your crazy hairstyles and piercings and ideas!

It made me the real world that supported the mundane existence becomes the other side of the divide. (Well meaning people like parents, cousins and landlords (please note the power structures here) became the other’s who would never understand one. The ones whose advices and pressures had to be managed. You weren’t a normal human being looking for happiness! You were now a thinking filmmaker!

Then there were friends who were in different fads and phases. E.g. a Rishu Beri who would suddenly feel the compassion of Lord Buddha and take up the task of feeding you breakfast and dinner on herself. There were also seasons when she would be so much in love with Papayas (yes the same orange stupid fruit that’s found across the year) that she would give it to you as a medicine for everything you could possibly suffer from. Heartbreak, Constipation, Viral, Hangover, Cold and Headache. (I apologise Rishu But it didn’t work for no 1 and 6) I am only glad that she didn’t serve it as lunch and dinner in her shoots!

Then there was this other one Safura who suffered at the hand of her own superactive imagination. (We suffered more than she did!) In the course of two years we heard such great stories that I blush when I think I believed them. From having a tumour in her head to going to France without a Visa she has seen and done it all! She used to be a Kashmiri with a bungalow near the Chenab with an export business in walnuts and saffron till I met her real family from in Allahbad. I must have been a surd back then to believe all of it. But incidentally she is my best friend now. We haven’t let reality of who we are, where we come from , come in the way of where we are going!

Then there was that Illogical concept that was passed on by our teachers that stories and how you tell them mattered more than the technology you used or the money that you spend on them (or on yourself) this illusion broke on the first job-interview that I gave.

The world (of employers) dint want stories. They had plenty of their own festering for want of the chance to bring them out. They wanted cheap, hi grade, good-looking, polished labour. That ennobling difference that John Ruskin talked about ‘The ennobling difference between one man and another is that one feels more than the other’ was to be thrown out of the window. It was obnoxious to have any bearings other than cut throat sharpness in discharge of your duties. All creativity and passion worked against you. Passionate people are difficult employees. Period.

So we are a bunch of difficult employees for the most of the well doing media world. There are some sad looking places and corners left. Where that ‘make a difference’ shit is still practised. I worry that I am doomed in that soggy corner. Thanks to the film school I went to.

PS-“Whoever tells the best story wins.”-Amistad (1977) - John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins)