Via Da(chilling)

The story begins in Darjeeling with Kay Kay Menon-- husband to a rich and agonizingly shreaky Sonali Kulkarni. The honeymoon is just about to be over when Kay Kay Menon disappears in thin air. Enter Vinay Pathak as inspector Robin Dutt to hatch the case, which finally gives in to a series of narratorial variables by each actor in the drawing room of a plush flat on a rain drenched night. So much so, that the reliability of the stories they concoct is something of a question? This indeed isn’t a soppy storyline but it is no doubt borrowed from films we started watching a decade back.

What happens is Sonali Kulkarni is married to her good-marketing-executive-in-her-father’s-firm husband (Kay Kay Menon). Menon watches a grizzly looking Sourav Ganguly on TV as Kulkarni takes a long shower. She calls out dotingly to her husband when her husband takes a mystery call on the phone and disappears from the hotel. The mysterious foreboding using minute details like Marquez’s novel on the bedside table ‘News of a Kidnapping,’ Kathy Lee’s ‘How to Kill your husband,’ Satyajit Ray’s first color film ‘Kanchenjunga’ and a poster of the movie ‘Confessions’ atop Parveen Dabbas (doing a cameo as the fugitive lover of Kulkarni) strutting a cigarette outside a pub are noticeable.

Rajat Kapoor is believable as a sensationalist who is also a journalist, while Simon Singh (his comely wife) is bearable. Together they give their versions of the murder in Darjeeling and end up revealing their own characters.

Narayanan, who plays the dreamy film student, has layers in his character and it reflects the story he narrates in the drawing room, while Sandhya Mridul an insufferable drunk, hams in with her role of Malvika (the previous wife of Menon). Vinay Pathak (the inspector who would smoke without ever lighting his cigarette) is again worth a watch.

The Kay Kay Menon, I have seen in Hazarone Khwaishein Aisi looks more matured in comparison to the amateurish Ankur Sharma. In fact the scene where he leaves Sonali in a forest to click nature photographs has some oh no moments. He exaggerates his expressions.

Sonali Kulkarni looks okay, but her moans and groans are again a bit over the top. Arindam Sil as the hotel manager is an event in him. The Bengali used in the movie is real.

The storyline is cohesive and works really well as a book. Darjeeling as a location is good for city-weary eyes, but the momentum in the first half goes downhill after intermission. The last scene seems to have gone terribly awry with Kulkarni answering the door with a come hither expression in a satin salwaar kameez, a la Bollywood masala ending. The ensemble cast of matured actors seem to try too hard to act. Otherwise, the banter in the drawing room is easy to gulp down with a can of coke.

A Sense of ‘Ah’

I owe something to Rahul Sharma’s music and I hope with this write-up I can make me owe him a little more. Rahul Sharma’s santoor is as profound and lively as his albums are experimental. Time Traveler a 2005 presentation is like a vagabound traveler’s journey across time with eight musically programmed tracks. I am not particularly fond of fusion, because, done hurriedly; it may sound kitsch. However, a track in this album - ‘1960- Travelling to New Orleans,’ where jazz instruments warps itself around the pahari sounds of the santoor creates a perfect jugalbandi. The rhythm instruments are tabla and drums. Livid in their presence, the tabla sometimes and quite strangely, plays first fiddle to the main instrument.

Often when I listen to Rahul Sharma’s encores I feel like I am cycling full tilt on a kacchi guli in a nondescript Indian village with the wind raking in my hair. It is fluid and extraordinarily beautiful. A feat that he achieves in this album is to transcend the boundaries of the santoor as a Kashmiri folk instrument to give it a universal flavour of a saxophone. Strange, often tangled, and unearthly beautiful. I found in his music all rights and pleasures due to me, even though the disturbance of new age instrumentals was sometimes a bit off, but finding it's own space in the entanglement. I have often heard that musicians have the power to transcend their bodies and lift their mental beings to a state of suspension; it is like spoonfuls of honey into the gullies of the mind. That is how dear readers I would define an ‘out of the body kind of an experience’ with my banality.

I went for a similar concert at Max Mueller Bhavan by Tanmoy Bose a few years back, where he created a bizarre yet poignant mix of an Indian instrument like the ‘dhak’ and a western instrument like ‘brazilian drums.’ The audience grew from a dwindling crowd of five to six people to an auditorium full of listeners, people who could hardly attend their language classes downstairs. The rhythm interfused in my mind a number of extra-musical memories. Something I would fail to describe in words. Out of my right mind!

Up in Splitsville

If I was George Orwell writing a sequel to Big Brother, I would be all over the place now. MTV India recently released its brand reality show Splitsville and it's not news anymore. A clutch of girls fight it out for two sickly sweet chocolaty boys on an exotic location - perfect for a holiday. With dialogues like 'Main pyaz katne wali bharatiya nari nahi hoon' (mind you this is one of the participants) I couldn't help fathom if the archetypical bharatiyanari ends up teary-eyed with slices of onions and tomatoes in both hands. The guys get to dump one girl per episode, an example of the game element in any game show.

There's something gladiatorial about game shows in that the participants make an irresistable public spectacle. MTV's Roadie 5.0 was a laugh riot with a single episode airing all possible combinations of inglis galis. Channel V's Get Gorgeous (a model hunt) has the Bitch Diaries an antecedent to a rather bitchy elimination episode. Our home-spun version of Big Brother - Big Boss was a lesson in raunchiness. What with Rakhi Sawant's razor-sharp tongue and frequent abuses to Bhowjpuri superishtar Ravi Kumar I can only feel sorry for the other stars who joined the show to save a flagging career. Separting the real from the 'act up' is a challenge, really. I would personally prefer a CCTV (close-circuit tv) in the neighbourhoods to capture footages of our daily misadventures or even fly-in-the-wall docusoaps with matter-of-fact names like 'Airport' or 'Shopping Mall.'

Not too long ago AXN aired a gameshow on a forelorn island 'Survivor' with a number of challenging and unpleasant tasks. However, as a caveat, one of the edgy competitors later featured in a movie called 'The Animal.' The overtly theatrical 'Big Boss' tempted our theatrical lachrymal glands and aroused the conscience of the human right activist in us (now that's another story.) Pop Idol in the west was followed by Pop Star in India--a hunt for talent among the ordinary college goer and later a degree of voyeurism into the plush hotel where they were stationed, the makeover has something of a Cinderalla fairytale syndrome. Bindaas TV's Dadagiri every bit as obvious in its lift from AXN's Fear Factor format starts airing in early July. And, paradoxically, my sequel to Orwell's is on the way.

Ballack and Euro 2008

Michael Ballack rattled the crossbars with a masterful header in a clincher of a match with Portugal and I almost rattled a nerve in my forehead. Ahem, trying too hard to avoid any discussion about the boyish striker-turned macho-Deutscher oozing chutzpah, Ballack hasn't disappointed me at all.

However, any die-hard football fan would admit that watching football in a paltry television telecast isn't half as magnificent as watching it on the grandstand. I root for the German team and I take time to watch every match that the Rhinelaenders play. There's something blond and lively and tall about the German team that takes away some of the Bavarian brashness. I would infact, wager to watch them on the field and so would my, soccer affectionado father.

Oli Kahn at a recent match in Kolkata--Mohunbagan vs Bavarians(that turned out to be more of a feel-good match) convinced me that soccer matches are meant to be watched on the grandstands only. The Salt Lake stadium seething with fifty scores of moving masses shouting Kahnda as our humble home-team suffered in silence. (It's another story that Mr. Kahn's gigantic legs gave way to excessive sluggishness after he could hardly see the ball pushed within twenty yards of the goal post).

The psychedelic colors of fans, a sheer sense of atmosphere that television can hardly capture, outcry among opponents and the defeaning roar after every cut or pass, where every spectator doubles up as the supporter. And every goal is a lifesaver for the fans. Every fan has the advantage of offering physical homage to his favorite player on the field; every fan on the field experiences a sense of autonomy when expressing his disapproval on a shot. What a view from the turnstils!

As I came to know from my father, during pre-televised times, football was a gentleman's game to it's quieter cousin cricket, somuchso that the penalty kicker would stroke the ball and then throw it to the opposing player, simply to affirm that the foul occasioning the kick was not malicious and therefore, the team to whom the kick was made would not misuse the advantage. But I'm going to admit that even wrestling isn't as telegenic as fouls in football matches are- theatre par excellence, a-not-so-recent-example from Zizou's farewell match. A profligate kick can attract a disapproving fan's discontent and make him switch allegiances. But even then, it doesn't appear 'scripted' like a WWF match. The theatre here might be entertaining, but it doesn't have any choreographed fakery. Meanwhile, I'm going to make a paradigm shift from this discussion about the rivalry and instant ness of football matches to watch wonder boy Ballack head a quick riposte!

Resonant Spaces

What do I sing to you today, through notes, chords, blotting pens

These unstated words and lost chords I find

The chords that did us bind and fastened the strings of our life

Through rain and shower and summer suns, we walked together under a thousand suns

Remember the day? When we first saw our reflections on the moon

How we sang the same John Denver number on that hot summer noon

Seeking peace on a northern chilly night, a busy arena with bobbing heads

Our asides on the musical kid who brought warm strings into your life

Do you remember our secret language during rehearsals?

And the exactitude with which it set itself on our creations

Today we breathe in separate spheres and we think different thoughts

Though words still return, to weave our thoughts in equal spaces

On threatening looking rainy days mother earth weeps

For me, in writing I find a solace, that puts my worries for you to rest

Ghum Kimono

They call it Devbhumi - the land of Gods, Godliness, and Purity. Purity that emates from the top of the Kailasha and comes gushing down the rudraksha-strewn mountain slopes. Purity that drapes itself in the saffronness of the sanyasis' gamcha and sparkles from a Sphatik.

I often wonder, if it is the jitteriness of fellow rafters at the face of impending danger, the evening prayers offered by the bhakht, or the mendicant's monotone that create such a rush of devotion. Or is it, in the mind? I can wear a navaratan and feel empowered to face the wrath of clashing planets; walk down the mountain slopes of the himalayas with a clutch of followers of the hippie movement; or sail across the ganga as a deep and soulful Om resonates from the gaping hole in the boat, the pillars of the mansa mandir, or the rustle of leaves enroute to Kedarnath; would I, then be called a devotee? I guess, mine is a loaded statement. As Tru says, "I believe in God and, therefore, he is." Thus far, it has been a pot pourri of sights and sounds -- the aroma of incense, the loud sound of gongs, and the lone garland of flowers floating hurriedly past the zillions of visitors sitting along the banks of the raging ganga, giving me a picture of devotion.

I now feel at one with the procession for Guru Gobind Singh; the procession that defies the silence, settling with the crowd gathered around Harkipyaari Ghat. I feel at peace with the multitude that raises their hands to invoke the Gods. I invoke too, without inkling...

5 things you don't do on a cold delhi morning:

--listen to Fuzon's 'Akho ke Sagar' it might seem bland to bite into the insane chill that permeates every nook and cranny on the walls and window panes

--take up philanthrophy; it might hurt to even think you can't run that extra mile to bring a smile on someone's face. I mean how do you run, when you can barely walk?

--eat super spicy sambar and then have a friend offer a hanky to wipe off the errr...streaming down your nose. Ok, you are free to make exotic noises to express your disgust on the 'nose debacle'

--read Media laws sitting amidst people gurgling English dictionary words and looking at you suspiciously as you furiously take notes. Those looks are chilly, seriously...

--take a cup of roadside shoup served with a half tooth grin, a ladel dripping with sticky somethings, and a dose of 'yeh dilli ki speacale soup hain madam.....pijiye phir batana....' What butterflies I feel flies in the stomach........Eweeepsesh! Skkpikt!