Love, Sex aur Dhokha

Waited a while on this one for the rough, edgy-ness to wear off. Wanted the lingering flavour to come through rather than the tang of it.

I think what strikes the most about this storytelling format is the bluntness with which the punch is imparted. No drapes flowing in the wind, no oomphs and aahs, no picturesque-ness about anything…nothing larger than life, but life itself in it’s dwarfed, abnormal and commendable format. It’s like looking at oneself in the mirror, without the make-up, sans the look good angle…just the plain you…stripped down to your naked-ness. Thin, without layers, weak, vulnerable, open…you. But surprisingly, for me, what established the connect with LSD was not the ugliness or the grim, sordid reality. It was the ray of hope, the blossoming of something real in every un-really real, un-glamorous, no-options-but-survival options in life (and not life-like situations). In spite of the gore of truth and the ‘it is like it is’ intention to showcase murkiness of our capitalism which has replaced almost everything, there was a faintly blinking, now here and then gone, but still very much there emotional blip of human-ness in every character’s graph. The pure hearted and naive romance of Rahul and his Simran – Shruti, the faith and courage of Rashmi, the realism of Adarsh and the compromised but not unavailable morals of Pradhan…make them more real for me than the selfishness of the world at large. It is this honest tenet of the protagonists that make the cinema real for me rather than the perspective of the camera (the sutradhar, in this case). And that’s why LSD is a difficult film to make, as the story walks a very thin line of just sitting there in judgment with a sarcastic grin and a ‘dekh tere sansaar ki haalat kya ho gayi bhagwaan’ expression and on the other side is the ‘we still bleed and love’ vulnerability and for me, the latter triumphs. Just like in The Dark Knight…and just like in Spiderman….or just like in any good versus evil epic….that’s life.

Maybe it’s just the idealist in me…or then, maybe issi umeed pe duniya kaayam hai…

No movies to talk about...no books inside of me

And yet, here I am. It is so weird that without movies to write home about, without stories to deliberate on, it kinda all seems neeras…bland. It’s almost like I suffer from the Alice in Wonderland syndrome… this Alice doesn’t want to go home empty-handed from the party even after the lights have been turned off. She wants to carry the story, the characters, the touch, feel and smell of the land visited home with her. Not for a show and tell, but for keeps, inside of her. Writers borrow from the real world to spin their webs and the readers, consumers (if you may) borrow from these fictional worlds to stuff up their real world shopping carts. So it will all keep getting recycled till the boundaries become really blurred.

Don’t want to make the disturbance caused by an ugly dream immortal…want to keep it as transient as the dream itself…but somehow just not able to shake off the stirring visuals nor able to rinse off the after taste and the nauseating, gnawing feeling. Sometimes it’s the negative force, the sense of imminent loss that shakes you up to acknowledge the strength of the emotion that may have been lying tucked away in a corner, seemingly dormant…but really just ignored in the chore of living everyday …and hence, forgotten. Sometimes, its the ‘awake hours’ that sweep away your orgasm inducing triggers into the dark, un-looked, un-swept corners in the course of running the business of living and this is when, sometimes, that your dreams really shake you awake and acknowledge you – they bring back the real throbbing, pulsating, orgasmic YOU to life.

Road, Movie... Life

Some things, instances…relationships are meant to be bottled up and preserved…meant for some brewing and maturing time before you jump the gun and shoot from the hip. Some thoughts, actions and reactions need to be internalised completely, rinsed dry, before one attempts to spew them out. Some images and stories also fall in this category.

Vishnu is the quintessential know-it-better-than-though youngster who literally thinks that child is the father of man (the hindi translation, not the philosophical one). Chacha is the bridge between generations, the faint common code that binds. Apu (no name lad), the dis-passionate, disconnected but smelling real attachment (as real love is only as rare, if not rarer than water in the desert) from the dis-attached distance gen-next. The banjaran is the lure, maya…the motivation to be a better man…to find the one within you and wrench him out of hiding….just about reason enough…but then maybe not.

The desert is the real thing…the without make-up, real artist pushing all to their limits but always winning in the end. The travelling cinema is the magician we all crave for to set things right…or atleast forget the wrong ones…if only till the spool runs out. Even this mirage in the desert is a lil victory…a tiny blip that will carry through in the morbid days of battle.

The characterisation works… so the film works. It’s a travelogue of life…seep it in. sit back in the sand, sink in your elbows, let the wind blow the sand in your hair…and let the pctr begn.