Happy Never After

Watching Ottaal, I wonder when I last watched a movie with a bleak end. Must've been Court and Sairat before that. I guess pessimism is a taboo for commercial cinema and I know only Puttanna Kanagal who successfully merged both.

I wonder how much of Sairat's success is due to the ending. The story is not really new. To me, it appeals because it beats the expectations at every turn; the lovers beat the odds when you worry for them and meet the doom when you think the worst is over. In Ottal, the end bites me hard even when I sit in anticipation of tragedy, while in Court, I hardly notice it because the tragedy there is the all-pervasive, business-as-usual kind.

Hit Hard

It's like all of late night Bhootada Kola, campus roaming, beach frolicks and forest walks are hitting me together now, I feel so drained out. And I have Anu's birthday celebrations today, which we postponed from yesterday. I just want to sleep, forgetting the messy house.

I suppose Anu's threshold for pain is higher after that burn incident in 2013. She fell and had a bad cut yesterday evening but she seemed hardly troubled by it.

I went to college and yet didn't meet Sir. College was closed for holidays and he might not have been there but had I told him that I was visiting, we would've surely met somewhere. Feeling very guilty.

Summoned by the God

Roopa was my classmate and friend in Primary school. She was born with both hands small and weak, with palms turned inwards. She managed her affairs, including writing, fairly well and if somebody troubled her, used her hands to emotionally blackmail them(her fiery elder sister must've been the other deterrent). Our houses were not too far apart so we walked home together most times with Asha, another friend. Roopa's family wasn't well-to-do to begin with but things changed. Her mother started going into a trance and we heard it was the Goddess Durga who was speaking through her while she was in a trance. Before we knew, there was a temple constructed nearby, Roopa and family had moved into a comfortable house next to the temple and she now had a powerful defense up her sleeve.

I continued accompanying Roopa to school but things had altered somewhat; Roopa was not so timid anymore, she was proud of her mother and I was wary of her. I did encounter her occasionally when I called out to Roopa in the afternoons and she seemed normal enough except for the open hair but I always prayed that I didn't have to see her. I was a little scared of Roopa too.

I must've been around 10 year old then and Roopa's temple was celebrating anniversary. Roopa said they wanted me to sing the prayer at the programme. I remember my parents getting uncomfortable at the prospect and I myself had a feeling that I was somehow being part of a scam(opinion of my immediate neighborhood too). But soon enough we came to know that Pappa was invited to be one of the guests at the function! Pappa hardly believed in God those days but he couldn't say no to anybody. Anyway I felt comforted more than one way by his presence.

The day arrived and I had butterflies in my stomach as Asha, Roopa and I sang the prayer. Pappa's speech got over too. It was a school day and I was anxious to get to school, looking to say bye to Pappa when Roopa's mother got into her trance state. It was scary and I was trying desperately to catch Pappa's eye when the 'goddess' caught mine. She ordered me to join the worshippers who were chanting something and moving in circles around her. At first I pretended I didn't see it but there was no escape; someone conveyed her wishes to me and I had to join the gang. I wished the earth had swallowed me and even today I'm pretty sure that I saw sadistic pleasure in Roopa's mother's eyes.

I finished a couple of rounds before Pappa rescued me and I bolted towards the school, still smarting from my embarrassment. I was half way through when I realised that I was barefoot and I had left my shoes back there! This was a terrible dilemma; to return and risk being spotted by the dreaded eye or to lose my footwear. Monetary consideration won in the end and I did return to recover my shoes. But happily for me, I escaped unseen. I don't recollect talking about the incident in school.

The Moving Population

As it happens usually, we are already dreaming of our next long journey. If things go according to plan, which is a big if, we'll have a family vacation around Pune. Rishi is keen to take his little cousins along but it requires multiple levels of approval so keeping our fingers crossed.

V and my brother-in-law are planning a trip to Jordan. My mother is upset that they gave native place a miss. But I'm happy that it's in character.

Now that we took AT to our college, L has told him that it's his turn to take us to Kumaon. Hope it happens some day.

I feel so content and happy when I go home, I wonder myself that I don't go there often. I travelled by bus most of the time locally and didn't spot any familiar face, which is a strange experience. Yet, I have the constant feeling at the back of my mind that I'm among familiar faces. And Bangalore, where I've spent the most of my adult life, offers me that sense of anonymity.

While clicking the wooden fruits hanging from the ceiling of this traditional house in PilikuLa, I spotted the cashew fruit missing. Couldn't tell if the caretaker was impressed with my discovery or annoyed.

There and Back

One of my shortest trips home I guess. Different in other ways too. I visited only one family to begin with. Then L and family were here and we went around the alma mater and rejoiced at the relics from our times. Took the kids to PilikuLa and planetarium was fun. But didn't like the zoo much, though. I guess I won't like any zoo where tigers walk along the fence pensively, looking like us walking around our building complexes. It's a sad sight.

We rounded it up with a visit to Panambur beach today morning. It was nice but I think Suratkal beach is the best. It's cleaner and quieter and of course, I still feel that I own it, along with hundreds of my fellow-students.

The Night Worships

I watched Bhootada Kola yesterday night, my first time ever. It's a good experience but I had expected a little more dramatic performance, may be just because Bhoota is involved. The noise of the accompanying drums is deafening and rousing and I may have just mapped it to Yakshagana, where such beating brings on a spirited dance. As the performer moved back and forth, he looked at people in the eye and the first few times I almost dreaded that he would summon me to dance along. It was weird but I remembered the reason for the fear and soon got used to it.

Journey Time!

Home after an unexpectedly and unnecessarily long journey and as usual the buck stops with me for the mess. Hope to be wiser every time.

It was all fine till Hassan, actually. For long I've been travelling home by train and with train you tend to miss the real picture because it's after all one vehicle. But when you are on a bus and you look around waiting for the enormous line in front of the toll booth to clear, you kind of get some idea of the numbers leaving Bangalore. All sorts of vehicles carrying a promise of deliverance...Anyway,the red bus that we got was full with mostly IT-like crowd, silent and minding their nap or mobiles. Except for the lady next to me who was incessantly on calls and almost taught me MalayaLam in the process. Her 5 year-old son was an angel though, putting to shame Rishi and P, who couldn't sigh and curse enough, especially after we hit the rough patch.

Hassan started off with a nightmarish traffic snarl, as if we were those sinners who even a river couldn't swallow. The river Hemavati in fact looked impoverished and even in the ghats, there are signs of yet another year of diminished rainfall; browned and thirsty-looking fauna, dried up rivulets and waterfalls. The brown dust is also added by the road-widening work happening all along the coast, the hillside carved up and looking like the claw marks of a giant tiger. I wonder how long it will be for it to grow green again.

Going Silent

If a SRK movie is being altered 'not to hurt sentiments', I don't know what the future of theatrical productions is going to be. How much more can one be publicly correct? There won't be a need to have censor board anymore; all you need are community boards who will review and satisfy themselves that they are not being shown in 'bad light'. Nobody wants any mirror to society anymore. All we want is to forget the society for 3 hours, eat popcorn and come out to get into a fight because somebody stepped on your toes. With every petition like this, you may have already killed a few interesting characters right before they were born in a story and all you end up getting is songs and dances and some unbelievable characters like those in Padmavat. 

Colours of the Class

When did bright colours get associated with the working class and the dull, 'sober' colours with the elite? This is so much nonsense! Not that I care, though. I love colours. 

Just Another Tranquil Tuesday

The gang which has been dissecting a problem for a month gets into a call to conclude on the issue. High-pitched, confident, this-is-the-only-way arguments happen for some time and then a hesitant I'm-new-to-the-issue-but-shouldn't-it-rather-be-this-way interrupts them. The loud voices fall silent for a while and soon it turns out that we don't need to do anything at all! It feels lovely.

The sick note today - "I'm feeling unwell and will not be able to come to the office. Please regret the inconvenience.". No problem!

Tabu is a gem of an actor. Makes even crappy roles so much watchable. Unlike many others who rely a lot on their eyes to emote, she makes her mouth act so much more!

Upset at Congress' choice of CMs for Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. A wasted opportunity and I can't help feeling terrible for a grimacing Sachin Pilot.

The Lone Eater

Plum cakes have mushroomed everywhere. I've been longing for them yet buying them has never been this difficult, because people at home have gone eggless! I tried hard to get the eggless types and when I couldn't, bought the egg cake thinking that at least kids wouldn't be able resist it anyway, just like me. Turns out that it was a myth and I've ended up eating the whole cake all alone. I don't know when I last ate anything all by myself but plum cake?! It's a surreal feeling. A sad one too, I may add. I don't know how many more I can eat like that.

Bitter Pills and Sweeteners

L went to Kerala to listen to some Guru this week and I am dismayed. I'm prejudiced against anybody who dishes out discourses like that and I somehow can't imagine L benefitting from such things. She is charmed by the theory of past births and rebirths now and I find it difficult to swallow. I guess I'm just too mired in my worldly worries right now but I would definitely prefer to be this way than any other.

Yesterday Anu mentioned that she had some sort of ailment in her foot sometime ago and I asked her why she hadn't told me when it happened. She said she didn't want me to fuss about it. Ha! Is this the same girl who not so long ago would get upset if I didn't express enough worries about her getting hurt? Alright!

My dreams are weird and wonderful. I'm sure it's for the best that I can't recollect most of them.

Mumbai Life

My Mumbai-born-and-bread boss and I were discussing something the other day and he mentioned his previous job and SEEPZ. I told him I was in Mumbai and SEEPZ too, for about six months. His tone immediately became apologetic and he started, "I know Mumbai can..." and I cut him short hurriedly. I told him I loved my time there and it was wonderful. I could sense that he was relieved and happy and the next few minutes we spent talking about every nook and corner of SEEPZ that we could recollect. Actually we worked at the same time there and who knows, I may have seen him in at least one of the ICHs!

I truly had a great time in Mumbai, that of a bird free and confident of roaming on its own. Mumbai office was supposed to be full of people who were snobbish and terrors(which mercifully I came to know only after returning!) but I found them all extremely nice, friendly and caring. The guesthouse was cosy and I felt so much at home that I hated to come back to Hyderabad. I haven't visited it after that and sometimes I wonder if I should at all, you know, just to keep it that happy place...like Manto.

Mumbai was also the place I witnessed for the first time two women quarreling in public. I was in the crowded local train and I guess it's common knowledge that they are famous for their crowds. If you want to get down at the station, you've got to put yourself into the eye of the crowd that's forming near the door and you automatically get pushed down. So there was this woman trying to do that and I guess she stepped on the other woman's foot(only a guess). And before long it had resulted in a war of words which were supposed to be Hindi by their texture but I had loads of trouble comprehending. I had heard a few of those expletives near the boys hostel during Engineering and whoever uttered those words never used to show their faces and over the time I had deduced their meaning. So I couldn't believe what I was hearing at first and I looked around incredulously. But the other women were as immune to it as if it was a beggar singing.  Anyway, soon one of the women fell silent and stood there like a stone while the other went on ranting, possibly annoyed at the other party's lack of response and trying her best to rile her up again. It felt terribly funny and if I was not afraid of becoming a target myself, I would've laughed. 

The Mumbai Connections

This makes me think of Mumbai. 

The Baby Blues

If there is one community which lives in paranoia, it is of first-time mothers. Especially the first year. I really think there should be a course on how to cope. You don't know what to say when even the most rational ones struggle when it comes to their child. You try your best to help because you've gone through that yourself. I had my worst fights with my mother when my son was small.

The Missing Link

P's fellow-villager who visited us the other day said he was missing Hyderabad, where he stayed for a while. He said Bangalore's food(he stays in one of the PG accommodations) was terrible and Hyderabad was like a piece of heaven in that regard. I have heard this from many people, from North and South alike and I find that I'm not qualified enough to ratify those claims. Andhra cuisine is too spicy for me by default and I missed Hyderabad for the easier access to food rather than the food itself.

P thinks people from his side find food the safest ice-breaker, that's all. He says they may not really mean it, except for missing the spice-quotient. 

Saturday Night Live!

There is hardly anything pretty about Mowgli except for the Cristian Bale lookalike Bagheera, the eyesore Freida Pinto and the carrot of a conflict that Serkis promises but mercilessly throws away in the second half. I didn't find myself excited about anything.

I think Manto left Bombay in a hurry because he was scared he would end up hating his beloved place, his utopia. He wanted to make sure it remained that way in his imagination.

If you love paneer, eat it home-made! There is nothing easier to make.

Memory Loss

Sometimes I forget that I have two aunts. After my mother it's been aunt G for me and it's as if the other one doesn't exist. The one who's my aunt G's twin, the one I remember as the silent as opposed to the talkative G, the one who took it badly that G got married but my uncles couldn't find a good match for her in time, who couldn't get along well with her resident sister-in-law and attempted suicide at least twice and had to be fished out of the well(I have dreamy memories of that), then got married into a torturous family(I remember her big-mustached) brother-in-law coming to my grandmother's place and Manjanna telling me that it was to extract money from my uncles), couldn't have children and that became the centrepiece of her existence...innumerable trips to fertility centres first and then to psychiatrists, apathy and even cruelty of her husband who is still well received in my native place because he's a cook and helps during functions, her demand she would adopt aunt G's daughter....but my defining memory of her is her standing in knee deep water in the canal hurling abuses at her parents, siblings and sisters-in-law one-by-one and me watching her from the banks, unsure if I should run home to fetch someone or stay put and watch over her...I think she is one memory all of us push to the bottom of our brains and it is strange and not so strange that I think of her much less than I think of my dead uncles. She's a living apparition.

Annoyed!

One thing I hate in workplace is people(that too my team!) sending huge attachments without zipping them! People who've been in the industry since the dinosaurs!  

Channelling the Prejudices

I watched cable TV after a long time and switched to news. The first channel had cow vigilante mob killing a cop who was trying to control them. In the second one, Prannoy was asking Raje if she felt sad when mob lynched somebody in her state and before she answered it, I was thinking such a non-question it was. But she said he was putting words into her mouth. When he insisted, she replied nonchalantly yet warily that mob lynching was like murder and it was a bad thing. It reminded of our movie stars when they are quizzed about one of their own caught in an offense. Anyway, I moved onto the third channel expecting to shut my eyes and mind to the depressing cow developments and I wasn't disappointed. It felt like I was in the euphoric days of 2014 again!

Why is it bullshit and not cowshit? Are they too different?

The Upward and Downward

I found Anu's horoscope while cleaning up and it says her husband will come from the northern direction. That's such an open statement! What, north of Bangalore, North Karnataka, North India, North of the continent, Northern pole? I've got to be patient.

Rishi is becoming difficult. There is nothing he can say yes to, except when he hasn't done so well in exams. That's the only time he's vulnerable and nods to anything I say. But that doesn't last.

Is there a way to find how many people have watched a movie on Netflix? I'm hoping enough people watched Tamhane's movie Court because the box office numbers are unbelievably abysmal.

We had a guest today. After a long time. A youngster from my in-laws' place, who's working here. Even P was meeting him for the first time.