సముద్రం

In the secondhalf of Premam, when Nivin Pauly meets Madonna Sebastian in his bakery and she tells him that she's Celine, the kid who used to deliver his love letters, there is a moment when it hits him and as incredulity spurts on his face, his eyes widen, he gasps as his hand involuntarily goes to his mouth open in astonishment. It is an incredible shot and I remember shuddering in that instant. As I write this, I'm still getting little goosebumps of pleasure. Another similar, equally unexpected shot, was in 96 when the young Jaanu looks at the young Ram in their class. I don't remember what happens in the scene but the actor who played the young Jaanu pulled off that reaction with such panache that I gasped.

In Three of Us, which Sravani and I just finished watching, there is a scene when we are in Shefali Shah's POV as a distracted Jaideep Ahlawat walks out of his office, his mind elsewhere, and we wait with her for him to look at her/ us. Avinash Arun masterfully holds the shot, and there is a good 5-second stretch when Ahlawat is right at the centre of our attention but we're beyond his periphery. I was anticipating his expression but still let out a cry of joy when he finally looked into the camera and his face went through micro-adjustments, almost like a low resolution video upscaling into high resolution in real-time which was probably what was happening to the character internally as well as this face he hadn't seen in 28 years triggered such complex computations that he was utterly bewildered with the speed with which he time-travelled and incredulous at the barrage of feelings unleashed upon him¹. In that moment, I fell in love with Jaideep Ahlawat. 

I've always been enamoured by him. From the moment I saw him in Gangs of Wasseypur, I've admired his screen presence. I was completely bowled over by him in Dipakar Banerjee's superlative film in Lust Stories, especially the scene where so ridicuously, so raucously, so inappropriately he and Sanjay Kapoor digress abruptly into the "Half fry, half fry, half fry" anecdote, and his face lights up as he bursts out laughing only to be as suddenly brought back to grimness and fear by Manisha Koirala's utterance. He was memorably good in Sandeep aur Pinky Faraar, and I beamed with pride (for having seen it before others?) as he was universally luaded for his performance as Haathi Ram in Pataal Lok. 

Yet what I felt today was different. It is what I felt when I saw Pankaj Tripathi in that kheer scene in Masaan. And with Irrfan Saab sometime during watching The Namesake for the first time. It isn't just admiration or awe for their art. I feel that almost always for Manoj Bajpai and quite often for Rajkumar Rao. Now as I write this, I realise that Gulshan Deviah falls between these two camps. Anyway, back to the love. It isn't respect and gratitude too. Like I feel for Vivek Sagar and Anurag Kashyap and Dibakar Banerjee and Vishal Bhardwaj and Javed Saab and Gulzar Saab and Richard Linklater and Charlie Kaufman and David Foster Wallace.. and others. I have no other word for it except love. And in true love fashion, it is not at the level of the oeuvre but simply at the level of the moment, impression, sensation. A mental photograph that becomes more and more loaded with every remembrance². It is very hard to express or analyse or even justify it. As much as I loved him in Masaan and Newton, I don't find Pankaj Tripathi as endearing or convincing in his more recent performances. That phase is over. Nonetheless, it would be false to claim the moment didn't exist. I don't even know what it is exactly that I've fallen in love with- the genius of their acting where even as one is aware of the aspect of 'performance', one can't help but be affected by it³? Or rather by the naked, vulnerable humanity that peeks through all the craft? Or that I've identified/ aspired to be the character so much that I have the parallel epiphany? Or something else? 

I don't know the answer, and don't really want to know it either. I'm so glad though that I get to experience those moments. One should keep falling in love. I don't think one can stay in love, so our best case scenario is to keep falling in as often as we can. I am, for all practical purposes, an atheist. Yet, I don't think these moments are less religious, less transcendental than what's experienced by a believer. I'm a believer too- in the beauty and surprises and complexities and magnanimity of life.

¹ "Reason is revelation from within; Revelation is reason from without" -From the gorgeously sophisticated thinker Waleed Aly's People Like Us

² Amit Varma and his exposition on the recursive nature of memory

³ You might know full well that Wasim's now going to bowl the reversing yorker but still be helpless to defend against it

tripping on recursion

Hypotheses:

I'm told I'm made up of cells. Trillions of them. What I call my body is essentially their planet. Some also say that there is nothing beyond the body. So the voice that I identify as mine, that tells me these things, must also spring from a physical entity. But if I'm made up of, and only of, trillions of these tiny, presumably intelligent, things and yet I believe that something called I exists, where does that reside?

Do the cells belong to me? Where is this me? So there must be an extra-biological entity- atma? What is the atma made of then? Is it the body-version of a higher, more subtler dimension and needs to wear this physical body to participate in this world? But 1. why would my atma (me?) need to be in this world? 2. if I'm the atma, why wouldn't I have that knowledge with any surety? Why would I be conjecturing? Also if my atma is wearing this body, then, wouldn't the atma also just be inhabited by a subtler, higher-dimensioned something that'd be using my atma as its body in that dimension?

On the other hand, if the body is everything, then what I call I is not something separated from the physical component of my existence but an (illusion of) intelligence born from the complexity created by the trillions of self-interested interactions? In this Dawkinsian reality, my genes want to propagate and are forever haggling and trading in this bizarre marketplace. I am the Invisible Hand.

getting along by my rules

As I sit down now to publish after about a fortnight, I can't find a unified theme to talk about. So, I guess I'll write about everything that's been going through my head these days.

There is something about poets. They are those humans of the rare breed who have an extremely simplified way of looking at the world. I was listening to Nuvvostanante Nenodantana songs yesterday and for the first time I paid attention to Ghal Ghal. Trust me I almost wept and if I can meet Sirivennela now, I'd fall on his feet straightaway. I mean see this,
"premante emante cheppese maatunte
aa maataku telisena premante
adi cheritanu saitam chadavani vainam
kavitanu saitam palakani bhavam".
The day I heard Enthavaraku, I was hooked to Sirivennela. Infact even chakravarthiki from money is like awesome. And then there are always the likes of Veturi and Athreya. It always makes me smile at Arudra's irony when he says,
"Ee punya bhoomilo puttadam mana thappa
Aavesham aapukoleni amma nanna de thappa."
The problem with people of my age is that we consider anything foreign to be cool. Fortunately, the trend's changing and more than a few people are acknowledging listening to Indian music. Something to be proud of ain't it. Because,
"Ye kulamu needante, gokulamu navvindi
Madhavudu yadavudu maa kulame lemmandi."

Infact, talking about songs reminds me of the music I grew up listening to. A lot of Indian film stuff. Right from Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Mukesh to KV Mahadevan, Ilayaraja, Rahman right to our very own SP Balasubramaniam. I feel so proud acknowledging the fact that I'm lucky to have been born in a kind of lineage which produced geniuses like Bapu, Viswanath and Jandhyala. We were talking about it today. Yashaswini is really good to talk to about topics like these. There is a lot of romanticism in the voice when she's talking about her language, heritage and kind of upbringing. I'd say Bapandanam. And yeah, before I forget, thank you Gummaluru Shastri and Jandhyala for giving us Padamati Sandhyaragam. I feel so good about being a bapan and all whenever I watch Jandhyala or Viswanath at full flow. That Kanyasulkam dialogue, "Prathi gadida koduku naa intlo thini nannanevalle." And Padamati's
"Thalli dinam ento thaddinam laga." and "Tindam nanna. Intikellaka iravai kilola biyyam mingudam. Mee amma hidimbi..." Look at these terms, 'Sarva Bhakshaka'and 'Suputra, Saindhava'.

There is something about Kaushik that is refreshingly honest. He isn't brutal but he's powerful. He is on-the-face but also polite. Ages after we last spoke, I didn't think we'd hit off as well as we did. Behind that image of a carefree, another-guy image lies so much passion and restlessness. To the unknown genius in you, Kaushik, let me tell this, I admire you.

I know this post is rather wayward. Taking me a long time to finish this. I don't feel like writing but I do want to write.

By the way, I got into metal this week. Kaushik's influence. Iron Maiden, Slipknot, Black Sabbath, Def Leppard. Interesting but not my type. But then maybe it'll take me sometime to like it. Downloaded Pearl Jam's Ten, having loved Into the Wild OST and boy, Vedder doesn't disappoint. That rage, torment, pain in his voice is so raw that its almost seducing. And am watching this Sam Dunn documentary on metal, will write about it soon. Been planning to write a lot of things. Both for Vidyouth and here. But am not. I'm writing everything down on my new Linux terminal and on a scribbling pad. Will post all the finished works soon. Hopefully.

Talking about Linux, I did install Ubuntu on my other computer and trying to act all programmer like. Really intellectual and all. Been fun. Reading a lot of stuff. Everything from Economics, Game Theory, Music, Gogol, a bit of Telugu literature and everything else. I drew myself a GRE chart. 100 days left for my GRE. And next to it, I have a young Venkatraman Ramakrishnan photograph. I was reading his autobiographical essay and boy, does he inspire me. So, am reading A Beautiful Mind to get a hang of numbers and ideas. Anything to get a good score in GRE. More importantly, to go places and do work that really matters.

I guess that's it for now. Have been doing a lot of things but I want to focus at one thing at a time. Kinda hard for someone like me to do. Got back to my guitar. After that breathtaking experience in Ciencia Viva. Hope I'm gonna stick to it atleast this time around. And have been writing quite a few story ideas. God, wish I could stop postponing stuff. Off I go then. To CN(which I'm loving so much. Thanks mainly to Ram Mohan sir). Will try solving some algorithms. Probably Spanning Tree or the Distance Vector Routing now.

God Bless.

Oh! fish..

What have I written? Barely an hour after I proclaimed myself to the world that I'm a hippie with all that crude language, I'm retrospecting on whatever I have written.

Ahm, for one, the language used is pretty low-profile and for two, I'm pretty confused on those stance myself. I was caught up in that nasha of Dev D thingy and wrote all that. Maybe a part of it is true but not all of it. I'm not really so anti-cultural after all. I have some principles (approved by the 'society') and will follow them. And, I don't break rules on purpose. Just when rules act as an obstacle for my freedom yearning spirit.

But still, at heart, I'm an adventurer and at all times am constantly looking forward to discover myself. And life is still one heckuva journey for me..

Hippie

Yippee! I'm a hippie. Or rather, at last I'm proud to admit that I'm a hippie. Reason- Overdose of everything about Dev D and other related people has led to these high frequency convulsions. Trust me, right now, as I'm writing this, I have Dev D at full blast in my ears and am involuntarily shaking unobtrusively. And this flowery language is probably an adverse affect of all that.

Now as to why I suddenly am yelling at the top of my voice that I'm a fuckin' hippie. An excessive dosage of Anurag Kashyap and Franz Kafka in a short span of time. Now, as to why I consider myself to be a hippie. Irresponsible, Carefree, Wild, Fearless, Curious, Self-obsessed and most importantly, Virgin. I consider myself so pure that I'm proud to have remained unscathed by this rotten, messed up and scared world(read society). Am I truly a hippie or is all this a result of all I've read? I don't know. But, hey, let me tell you something. I've always been trying to discover myself and in the process try everything I can. I realise that my life(no matter how screwed up, filthy and lost) it may seem, is still the one chance I have to find myself. And trust me folks, no matter how hard the process is, its still a lotta fun.

Now, suddenly why this urge to tell the world that I'm a hippie. I don't know. Maybe I don't care if anyone will read this. I'm just writing this to satisfy my bloody ego. Or maybe, I'm just a fuckin' loser who's trying to justify it to the world that he isn't one and is still trying to find himself in this coming-of-age process. I don't know. I really don't.

But maybe that's what coming-of-age is all about. That concocted drink of everything in the world that is and everything in the world, that isn't. I'm all confused. I'm all mad, right from what to wear when(all the time) to admit that I masturbate 5 times a day and from deciding what cartoon to draw now to whether I can use the word 'masturbate' in my blog. But trust me, this experimenting is loadsa fun. You should try it sometime too. I mean, if you do have the fuckin' balls. Shit! Censored language again.

And hey, I forgot to mention. I had been to the Royal Enfield garage today with Ani and bboi, did I love it. The feel of it when you actually touch a Bullet and kick it to glory is inexpressible. The beast is full of life and is waiting to be unleashed. Anyways, I am telling you about this because even then, I was planning to drive away to nirvana on my Bullet (For one, I'm a pathetic driver and two, The Motorcycle Diaries largely influences this thought). Whenever I want to be another simple, everyday guy with duties and all those responsibilities, my life hits me really hard in my face and reminds me that I'm a hippie.

Hey, this is all a part of growing up, ain't it?