Passing by

The drum roll on the tin plates draws everybody's attention.
They all knew but turn their heads to look.
Minimal entertainment in a local train.
The little filthy girl starts to dances.
She wears a rusted iron loop from her left and drags it through her down to her feet.
Her spins her hips like a well trained dolphin.
There is pause in beat while the girl's mother scratches herself.
A tiny pause in air
The girl is trained. She continues her mute dance
The woman adjusts her sari and continues to drum roll.
The pause continues
Her sari has mud crumbs at the end and tiny mirrors all over.

The train approaches a station gingerly.
Doubting its own decision.
When it brakes, people want to get out and people want to get in
Going elbows rub rough against coming elbows.
Tiny arguments in the fraction of a second
A hand is stuck in somebody's armpit.
A human howl echoes in the chaos and the train starts.

The collection game begins
The girl moves from one carriage to another
Her arm extended, only to go to her mouth and stomach indication hunger
Some break their conversations to tell her to go
Some lift their butts high enough to pull out some change
She finishes her rounds.

Wait for the next batch.
Keep dancing to the drum beat. 

New Knowledge

Here are some of the points I have learnt from a Professor cum Director I have met at Tech Mahindra college on Saturday

1. A shot is not the time frame between a camera's operation. It is a projected series of images having a finite time and space.
2. A play and a film differs in two aspects. Viewers of a play have a physical sense of a play's surroundings and environment. In a film, the viewers are made to imagine it. I forgot the second aspect. Hopefully, I will remember it later.
3. Any film that has a cut in between becomes a fictional narrative since real life does not have cuts.
4. Read a lot. Understanding Marxism helped him with his films. Watching films is only 10 percent of the work.
5. Forget all this and understand how to make films first. The personal style will grow later. Film making is an craft than art. No matter how small the video, learn to make it good.   

THe Old Go and the New Don't Show Up

In the anime series 'Code Geass', one of the main characters, Lelouch, moves the king piece along with the others, instead of keeping him in the sidelines while his subordinates scheme and kill each other. "If the king does not lead, who else will," he would say. A valid idea, although no body in the 3-dimensional world follows it.
Taking Tollywood as an example, and also assuming that the person with the big bucks and big connections is the king/queen, they are usually last ones to lead a change. The so-called four powerful families of our Telugu industry lie in silence while the rest of the world is keen reaching out to new visual methods of storytelling and also new stories to tell.
But for obvious reasons, the reasons for disappointment are obvious. Fine, you are rich, you have grown tall and strong and now can not afford to get hacked down because they are too many people dependent on you. Or maybe, rich people are just plain lazy.
But what happened to the so-called beacons of future Telugu cinema. Not just the directors but also the artistes.

... to be continued

Few words before I end the day

To,

all the anger among the words,

I am tired but also angry, and I don’t know what to choose. But I saw others voting for anger.

He stood among them; among his underprivileged brothers and spoke (read as shouted) about their rights. He spoke about poor parents. He spoke about the hungry nights. He spoke about self respect and honor. He spoke for all of them. But I didn’t (read as couldn’t) see the picture he drew. I just saw his anger and the loud noise anger makes. I stopped trying to understand and came back. My anger is different from his.

Now isn’t that a universal problem? We just can’t see past our anger. Our temper rises to a temperature which reduces everyone else to a distant mirage and we slip past the gaps into a lonely dimension. 

Worthless dark confused city – population 1.

Other people become waves of irritable dust that flies around us. Can you find peace in a never ending sandstorm?

I guess I lost my step. See that’s what anger does! But what is more dangerous than anger? A state of no anger. Not a paradox. Just one of my observations so far. No anger leads to a comfortable life. Happy spouses, happily living in their duplex and raising two kids and a fat account in the State Bank of India. Spare me. If a man be judged by his wants, you are going to judge me by the house I live in, the girl I’ll marry, the clothes I wear and the kids I raise. Fuck that. My anger keeps tearing my possessions from time to time. Consistently living one life after the other. Thank you, anger.

Is my sand disturbing you?

Look at my handwriting, so dirty (can you see?). Am I tired or angry? Are my hands shaking or steady? Are my eyes fully open red or semi open watery? Ha! Pass this test. Not for me or for you but for the sake of anger. Anger, the burning end of the soul. Drown it in fuel.

My hint: Do think of anger coz’ it is always thinking of you.

Regards

Angst.     

Visual appeal

Some evening I was cycling to the reading room. It was downhill so letting the cycle do its work. On my right, the sun is setting behind the clouds. Not the everyday cover of white clouds at a distance but floating mountains of bluish orange soft cotton. They will wring themselves dry any minute. I wanted to keep looking but I had to watch the road too. The choice of selective sight goes deeper. The undeniable limitations of our sight can only help us with one direction (or perception). At any point of time, we have the choice to stay with what we want and ignore the rest. We may never even know that 'the rest' exists. But 'the rest' does exists. It is very much alive and well.
The question... How can we know what we don't know (Ontology), and more importantly, how can we know about one thing when we are looking at another? 

Infinite

I caressed all the raised dots but can’t understand a word. Damn I say and I can hear him giggle. I open my eyes, ‘It is not fair’.

He takes the paper from my hand and reads it out. ‘Friends Romans countrymen, lend me your eyes’.

Giggles into laughter.

‘Here, catch’ I throw a sponge ball at him which kisses his forehead. He sees the joke and keeps laughing. I see him laugh, I miss the joke.  

I hold his hand and walk back into the house. The sun is too bright on the verandah.