Stories and Laughter!

14 years back. It was a bright sunny day. I was sitting on the window sill.

Everything looked perfect until the telephone rang. I didn't understand a thing.

Later that day I saw you lying on a weak bed, wearing a white red bordered sari, hair parting smeared with sindur, a bold round laal tip on your forehead.  Like you used to look every evening. Dadu, you and myself sitting on your lap. You looked the same. Just that you were asleep a little too soon. No one tried to wake you up.

That  night, you didn't sleep beside me. You didn't come. You never came.

Now, when i laugh out loud, they say it resemble and sound like your laughter!

If that's true, I will wait a little longer to hear stories from you! 

Cold Noisy Nights! Colder Noisier Days!!

Cold breeze! It's soothing. It brings along a whiff of nostalgia.

It's not cold here in Bombay. 24 Degree Celsius at 2 in the night! It can't be more pleasant.

But it is cold, colder than those January nights when it used to be 3 degree celsius, inside a room. Only a little hole in the window would bring in a shrill thin blow of chilly winds.

Those were cold January nights.Those were cold January noisy nights.

Under 2 blankets, covered from head to toe, feet covered in woolen socks, a scarf tied on the head, ears covered! Still, these sounds crept in, in the middle of the night, under 2 blankets and a scarf.

Whistle of the passing train, a goods train, bapi told me once. It crept in from a distance, blowing whistle at intervals and then while crossing the station, it chugged slowly, but the whistle screamed loud, louder. As if telling the natives the pain of carrying tons of weight. Every night.
It took 2-3 minutes to pass by, the whistle a little mellowed at a distance, slowly but steadily merging into the silence of the dark cold nights.

The silence soon was intervened with rhythmic snores coming from the rooms of the house. Bapi, Chorda, Sejo Kaka, each one had a different rhythm, but maintained their rhythm. Rhythmic rise and fall, in perfect coordination with one another, as if they had planned the pattern at the dinner table! Trying to decipher the rhythm, waiting for a rhythm to rise and another to fall, was a game I indulged in.

Then the watchman came with his whistle, hitting the lathi on concrete road, moving it through the corrugated shutters of the shops, jaagte raho ... all lent a pattern to the soundscape. Everynight meeting of the dogs. At times, they were shooing off a dog from another street, at times a lazy bark, a fun hoof or just a shrill cry in unison, like wolves! A leaking tap in the bathroom, a tip and then a top as it fell into the pool in the bucket kept under it!

Sound of the bell from the nearby temple, and then few more bells. It grew louder and louder...followed by the 'azaan'. These sounds were scary, these cracked the night to the dawn, dawn to the morning, to the moment where Ma would soon knock the door and run down the stairs screaming 'uthe poro', soon followed by the struggle to move out of the blankets, move out of a world which was defined not by vision but by sound!

Those cold nights...warmer than the days today. Those shrill of whistle...softer than the noise that rings in the head today!

Those cold nights. Not as cold as today's.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep!

I'm not a student, faculty or parent of a student studying at Whistling Woods International. I have been to this institute, because this is one among those few places which welcome film enthusiasts just for the love of Cinema. I remember the first time i visited. An educational institute dedicated to Film, Media and Fashion!

In a country where every second youth aspire to be a part of this industry, how many such institutes do we have? Not many, right! So here, I was in an institute that was catering education in the field, which is growing manifold every passing year. Training, grooming students in subjects that many would wish to study but cannot pursue because of a huge void in terms of educational facilities offered in this sector. Great, so this institute is providing educational support to all media aspirants and enthusiasts, alright. But, the next thing that caught my attention was, how many educational institute with an intent to cater formal education dare to have a motto "Do What You Love"? Needless to say, i was floored and that's the spirit, the vibe i thoroughly enjoyed while in this sprawling campus.

8 years old and their achievements as an educational institute surpass many other institutes' promise to deliver a lot more. The way they operate makes it clear that it's not financial or political support that makes an institute flourish. It's the students, their achievements, their love and support for their institute, a bevy of experts as faculty, hands-on experience on equipments students get, internship with acclaimed media houses, international collaboration for student-teacher exchange program and a lot more.

I have been following the news closely and being a regular on social media platforms, i can very surely say, that such relentless support from far and wide, students speaking for their institute, alumni sharing their experiences, cinema enthusiasts standing by, can only be because of what the institute has done over the years - they have touched lives in some way or the other, they have inspired and nurtured many a creative soul, they must have done a lot more, as it keeps reeling in my head.

My wishes and prayers for you because you have inspired me somewhere, in some way. Keep up the spirit, the flag will fly high in days to come. 

One to Live In? or, The One To Die For - Bombay!

Some days remain etched in memory - Today is one such day. I landed in Mumbai on this date, exactly 4 years back - June 20, 2010.

To think about it, I had no plans to come to Mumbai.. Once here, I had no plans to stay in Mumbai for more than a year, if not less... and today, after 4 years, such a thought looks as distant a dream as visiting Mumbai sitting in a distant insignificant small town in Jharkhand, when i was a child.

Mumbai to me was busy broad well-lit roads, Mumbai was people always on the move, Mumbai was people boarding and alighting running trains, Mumbai was tall buildings, Mumbai was Bollywood, Mumbai was flamboyant, Mumbai was mafia, Mumbai was money, Mumbai was Bombay, Mumbai was a sea-laced city, Mumbai was a dream, which had come true.

A hot humid day, I landed in this city, nervous and slowly finding my way out of the airport, boarded an auto, paid more than double (realized a few days later), went looking for an accommodation to stay, met a long lost friend and extremely tired, retired early for the day while still trying to analyse whether taking this plunge into an unknown, bigger than the sky city would do any good! 

Next day I woke up to a soothing continuous sound of water flow, to figure what it was, I got out of bed and opened the curtains to see a dark, black, cloudy sky pouring like on the whole of earth and since times immemorial this was the only place that it was raining for the first time ever.

The rains continued but Life didn't stop. People were hanging from the window rods of the 'BEST' buses, trains brought in thousands with dripping clothes, children splashing in the puddles with floral or transparent rain coats and passers-by with their trousers folded upto the knee and drenched from head to toe, were on the move with a spirit that can't be defined. This rhythm of rain and Life struck a chord in me, which still rings vibrant and throws hues of colours that has kept me dancing to the tune of this city.

Since then, the city has been a place, which i'm still so mesmerised with that i can't call it a 'Home', but so dear that it's just not a city - the madness, zeal, zest, love cannot be bound by just a name!

Will Sparkle Forever!

A sudden whiff of a strange weird thought. But think of it, it’s some thing that affects each one of us everyday in someway or the other – the sense of Loss – Death. A term that takes away from us something very dear, very familiar.

This struck me very distinctly with the news of Farooque Shaikh passing away. Instant reaction, must be someone I don’t know. A second reaction, how? A third and so on and so forth as news kept coming and confirming that it was this actor, whom we always praised both as an actor and a person, but never spoke of it so verbally as we are doing now. Later, i also thought about his family. What the family must be going through. A healthy, hearty person goes to Dubai for a concert, with his family, and a few days later the family returns without him. It’s scary, incomprehensible.

While mulling over the news, I started to think about him in terms of what he did best and was widely known for, Acting. I distinctly remember watching him first in ‘Katha’, which was aired on Doordarshan. To which, I remember my aunt’s reaction to Farooque Shaikh’s character – ‘issh, erom lok hoyeche keno? Onno shob chobi te ki bhalo bhalo paat kore’ (why is he playing such a character, he is such a nice person in all other films.) She was not liking the fact that Farooque Shaikh, an actor with an established image of a next door, well-behaved neighbour, someone who would never go wrong by principle & choice, was playing such a character. This, I’m saying gauging the impact that reel has on real life.

Taking the point from here, I also thought of many such artists who we have known through our parents; and to sit and reflect back, most of them died in the past 4-5 years. People whom we knew and grew up to only to admire & respect, leaves all of a sudden, and that struck.

There were these set of artists about whom my father would selflessly and forcefully pitch for. They were the icons he grew up with. He, given the bleakest opportunity would praise and show his fondness and respect for Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor & Dev Anand over Amitabh Bachchan and Sashi Kapoor, Sachin Dev Burman over Rahul Dev Burman, Md. Rafi & Mukesh over Kishore Kumar and so on and so forth. With progress of time and era, even the lesser preferred artists in the above equation were GOD when compared to the ilk of the modern day artists, who were, the Khans, the Maliks, the Sanus & so on. But, keeping judgement aside, our choice and taste are influenced by the contemporaries, which, as we grow keep changing and evolving to eventually die down.

I’m saying all this because of the number of deaths we have heard in the last five years. We have heard, known and learnt about them from our previous generation, they actually belonged to that generation. Still, we relate to them so much that news of death does leave in us a sense, a realization of irreplaceable, irreparable loss. In that case, how do our parents feel about these losses? What’s the magnitude of void that they experience? How difficult is it for them to hear and accept such news? Do these news create in them a sense of despair and helplessness of having to face an inescapable truth – sooner or later! Do they long to go back to the times when only the characters died but the players evolved successful!

Sooner or later, such a day would dawn on us too. We would wake up to hear that our screen icons are no more. They have left back only reels of memory and would never ever play a character whom we would get a chance to despise or admire. How will we deal with that?

Everything cannot be  put in words, but the best that one can do is to live the moment, ease out, be content, do good and make merry – for Life, is not what you can plan.