The heat hits at you like a wave, scorching searing burning, even if you keep telling yourself it isn’t hot, it isn’t hot, just 43 deg C, the weight on your forehead and the sweat sheet on your back tell you otherwise. You look at words trying to read, to think to write but your eyes seem clammy and your head hurts, not comprehending.And this is without stepping outside the house.

When the train reached big city bright lights this dawn I was delighted to be back; delighted the first time in sixteen years.

The rare and much valued Rudrakhsh tree in the park is slowly dying, Acharyaji, the head gardener tells me.
The leaves are drying out, and the roots refuse to respond to cajoling.
I think the roots are not getting the space to grow, to push ahead.

Delighted to announce publication of a short essay in my local magazine, The Mahakali Voice. “Ode to green” is about the delights of walking round and round for an hour in a none-too-large park.

Last night I sneaked into a neighbor's house, duty-bound and much too late for a "Mata ki chowki", a prayer meet to the Mother Goddess.Left a few hours later, humming along and refreshed after an impromptu family-only singing spree, including two garbas that I sang, their bonhomie and boisterous cheer quite infectious.

The amaltas are fading out slowly, their yellow dimming, bidding adieu. Even in this a special kind of beauty, but you need eyes to see it. 

A one-and-half year old stuck at the top of a slide, too terrified to move—her mother  finally gives in to my pleas, climbs up and nudges her down, I catch her safely and hand her over. Makes me wonder how many times we need a gentle nudge in our lives. Or a pair of hands willing to pull us away.

Have gently coerced two of my good friends into reading the chapters; for burrs and thorns, and oddness of phrase that would SHOUT out to a non-native, but things that I would drive a road roller over. We shall see.

above: The Vishal Bharadwaj in conversation with Salim Arif
below: the verdant valley view from the open area... the silence has to be believed

Cinema 100 at Whistling Woods, May 11, 12

Installation art: A portrayal of Awara

Kaan/ Cannes!

Wall of the greats

Two views of the institute...so inspiring

Yearwise, the stalwarts

Alumni filmi achievements

Saturday was the first time that I’d ventured to tinsel town in sixteen years of living here, but 100 year celebration of Cinema is reason enough. 

“Fillum city?” I’d asked the man on the bike at the signal, our human GPRS better than any google maps. Incidentally, google maps place you in the middle of that green forest patch of Aarey milk colony, or what little remains of it. Before that I’d spent HOURS dredging up from memory the shortcuts the parent and I took in the 90’s and I was SURE one could reach Film city that way, but luckily better sense prevailed and I took the expressway. “Right and then sharp left and then…Follow me!” the man said, with a flourish entirely apt if he were galloping on a white steed instead of his bike, and that is how I  reached the sylvan, forest-like enclave. Locating the Whistling Woods Film Institute (WWI) was yet another adventure, since there aren’t any people around at all as the road winds and turns up and down hill, and but of course I reached the wrong spot—the set of Mr Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Saraswatichandra… what an immense, grand set. After parking under a generous banyan, and trying to cajole a guard to stay parked there, I finally trundled my way to the institute quite some distance away… and what a marvelous place!  The ebullient energy of the crowd, the neat installation art, a certain electric something in the air…the sheer confidence of the students--with all this wandering about I was late for the inaugural… but after waiting outside the auditorium, the guard was kind and allowed me in… jostling crowds that had to be seen to be believed. Was privileged to hear the greats—screenwriters Salim Khan, Subhash Ghai, Anjum Rajabali, directors Gauri Shinde, Anurag Basu, Amol Gupte, Vikramaditya Motwane, and then a special Q& A session with Vishal Bharadwaj…the evening topped up with a superhousefull screening of Bombay Talkies. Muchly grateful to Little Miss Blue, aka dhanno rani, for having steered me there and back safely, it was close to 9 PM when I got home… but what a treat!

A whirlwind week.

My friends Anju Ghangurde and PT Jyothi Datta, both excellent journalists worthy of the old school-drilled facts-journalism, co-edited and researched a book authored by  Shri MKB Nair (89), Anju’s father and Dy Editor of The Economic Times for over three decades. What a tribute, and what terrific documentation of some of the events that shaped India’s history, a ringside view of epochal events, with his trademark honesty and directness. I was privileged to witness the book launch, even though I went to the wrong venue, “something to do with cricket in Bandra”.

More later.

Mago sent in this link for the book: 
http://www.indussource.com/Product/General~Non~fiction/Biography/The-Unknown-Nair/122.aspx

Once again I take the roads I used to know well twenty years ago. It is dark, Sunday crowds throng the roads. High rises and office blocks have overtaken known landmarks. I ask for directions and am answered in Hindi, perhaps they aren’t used to seeing a tired woman with a backpack that hour of the night, but I’m supercharged, my first ever BRTS ride, zipzapzooom, and a stranger, a lady with a bandana covering most of her face, offers me a scooter ride, I ride pillion after  decades. The city is scorching even as it races after new new new, makes me grateful for the slow and plodding pace of change in the hometown. Between the tragic-comic drama of those two days, and the stranger in that second class compartment who mentioned assisting on several films but didn’t look the part-- these have given me enough “raw material” for a lot of tales.Mogambo khush hua.

Wonderful walk through Dharavi Nature Park y’day, the dumpyard-converted-to-miniforest. The kadamb was in bloom, the arjuna in a leaf-and-seed-shedding phase. Made my acquaintance with lots of trees, textures and scents I didn’t know before.

Season’s special: Tadgola, that raw, no-taste fruit of the palm.

Chilled,  a shortcut to bliss. Almost makes up for not being able to eat mangoes. Almost.

Datura, the killer, solanacea

ashwagandha, withania somnifera, the brain tonic

kailashpati

%%%% I typed this morning, no cooking no walk, chapter 25 closed and done, now for the version three of the translation. Long nights of trying to stay awake almost asleep at the keyboard, the TV droning on  slumber antidote, of half an hour here, an hour there, early mornings, keying in over oats, over tea, coffee, ignoring the sweat on your back and the inquisitive crow who’s missed his tidbit… thanks to P who’d ask every other day. “You finished?” “Not yet.” Now for the battle with the *shabdakosh*, the relentless digging for shades of meaning, not this, this, maybe this… Hell I’ll self publish if push comes to shove but I’m seeing this one through, in true Scarlet fashion, “As God is my witness….”

Only in Mumbai would you traipse into and out of two urban villages, walk beneath a highway, take a shortcut to the commuter station and then walk again a good fifteen minutes to listen to classical music from two centuries ago, perfectly rendered at a free concert held in the memory of the truly great.(Ustad Allaudin memorial concert). Only in Mumbai would the old gent sitting next to you say I have no knowledge of musical notes—and then correctly identify every raga presented, and he’d tell you about listening to the national program of music on radio Akashwani every weekend without a break for the last SIXTY years. Yes, only in Mumbai would you have to push your way out at your station at eleven in the night...

While I’ve been a big fan of IWW for years now and forever beholden, I’ve stayed away from facetime. Until now. Yesterday afternoon I sat in traffic (in an auto and then a shared cab v interesting) to reach a new part of town, but it was worth it, bonding with strangers and text over a cup of tea, all discussions pertinent, focussed, the people gentler than on the workshop. Thank you, caferati

An almost-perfect poem in neat copperplate

Tripped

By a word. A single word.

Pulled out from a shabdakosh, a language dictionary

unused tome dusted, the alphabets scrambled for, hazily

magnifying lens scanning the letters, impatient

just a single word

the entire color changes, somber

The cassia 
by the deserted factory
(even windows ripped out)
doesn't care
All it knows is spring

 Reason to celebrate --

The amaltas are blooming

On that stump of an almost white bleached-out tree

Mold on the bark

Dismal, stunted, ignored

Dwarfed by the profusion all around

Yet a sprig, yellow-tipped

profusely yellow, the buds spilling over

A sprig yellow-tipped

Sated by who-knows-what sap

Drawn, drawn from deep beneath

Sings

Spring

It was almost night when I stopped to speak with you,

Exchange a word of greeting

shifting my bag of groceries, eager to step home, hungry.

A casual encounter with a neighbor

When did that conversation move past bhajans that you’d just heard

and meander elsewhere?

Perhaps it was the way your lip trembled

Even though you held your grey head high

Picking at the hem of your simple dress

Looking all around from time to time.

When did that tale step past politeness

To sibling abuse and mental torture?

Too familiar a tale—elder abuse, and yes this my India

My valiant, ancestral India

I listened only too conscious of my grey

And covered up grey

And, yes could money run out

And one’s own turn away

All the whatifs

Rushed down upon me

Trailed me home

Now I wear them, like a second skin.

"Jacaranda. Wo jacaranda hai..." Acharyaji, our park  garden expert told me this morn when I described the awesome carpets of purple.  So beautiful. Yes, I managed a walk on this short a visit also, in that interesting place sandwiched between snooty town and the villages of Khizrabad and Taimur nagar.
Tried not to be impressed at the roads, after all that's all our money being used there while we negotiate potholes with a prayer and light brake.
That child dressed in a pretty pink dress and toothy grin  who tugged at my hemline, "Didi..." Lifetimes!

“Austy, but Krishna’s telling Arjun to go ahead and fight a war!” AM says

“Yes, the sermon on the battlefield. A case of last minute jitters. The decision to fight’s been taken quite some time ago.”

“But…”

“To understand this, you have to go into the back story, the story of the banishment and ‘not a needle-worth of land…', sometimes the only choice is to be brave.’”

AM’s Canadian, a smart kid, trying to come to terms with the Bhagvad Geeta.

Maybe I needed this reminder too. We’re alive only once. Lifetimes will come and go.

Though I caught only the tail end of this tree walk the view of the first amaltas sprig on an almost dry, barren tree was well worth it.