year of living consciously

December has been an eventful month. Definitely feels longer than the others. I went to Goa, I finally wrote Only drowning men (and sent it to Vinoothna Geetha) mostly because of Sandeep's exhortations, I wrote exams and (sort of) attended interviews, I had an amazing (and hopefully eye-opening) conversation with Praveena and Ty. But most things are the same- I still frequently bunk Cult, I still sit in office half-heartedly, I abandon more books than I read, I haven't made much progress with Infinite Jest (and whatever I write is still enormously influenced by DFW's style), I'm still judgmental albeit more consciously now, and I'm still burdened by the massive weight of my oh-so-intellect. Still there, still stuck between confusion and indifference, between arrogance and impotence.

--

All philosophy comes from siesta

I’ve never thrown a punch in my life. Not until yesterday and even then only at a punchbag. And while I kept punching, I couldn’t help grinning like an idiot. Not because punching at the bag was funny but because it was incredibly liberating. Unbelievably, at 26, I’ve never hit someone or been hit. Being shoved away is my highest accomplishment. There are three reasons for it: 1. I’m fairly cowardly and will do anything to avoid confrontation (This could be because I don’t believe in things too deeply to burn with passion about them. More of a head guy than a heart guy if you are the type who understands those distinctions.) 2. I was brought up by a slightly over-protective single mother and I didn’t have enough male ego and pumping testosterone in the house to inspire and give me a route to follow. I still don’t know how to be macho. 3. Most importantly, as I entered adulthood, my assessment of myself and of my environment stereotyped me as a well-meaning, artistically inclined, sissy-ish nerd. It probably wasn’t accurate but it defined me fairly well and I was happy to play along. Now that image created a problem.

It made me want to conform to it. Forget breaking it, I was desperate to fit into it. Since the people in my world expected something of me, I did everything I could to live up to the image. Forget pretence, this was the mould I wanted to fit myself into. I couldn’t afford to ruin my reputation, ruin their expectations, afford to find new things about myself that wouldn’t toe the line with the old. It wasn’t a conscious choice but a subconscious mode of life I’d subscribed to. Comfort was more important than casualty, better safe than sorry, desperately guard my small island of neuroses than jump into the sea and be surprised by waves, maybe even drown. (Come to think of it, all of us are going to drown anyway so how does it matter if you die in your dank corner of the world or die riding the waves with the sun warming your face. Quasi Romanticism will lead us to our ruin one day.) So I set out to be different but within the limits of my defined personality, tried new things but nothing too radical lest I disturb the status quo, and tried to find my calling but made sure it isn’t too far away from where I thought I’d find it because then people will have to go through the extra effort of restructuring my image in their heads.

With all due respect, most of us are like this. We don’t probably give much thought to it as we go through the hurried repetitions of everyday actions, but which one of you hasn’t woken at dusk on a lazy afternoon and wondered why you are the way you are and how the hell you ended up here. Haven’t you ever thought what your 13-year old self would say about your present-self? We are obsessed with giving narratives to our lives. Inside our head, there’s a bloody film director sitting who’s constantly trying to fit our present actions and thoughts into the larger patterns and leitmotifs. How many of our current decisions are not based on ensuring the continuation of our previous selves? We are a byproduct of our genetic makeup and environmental factors, and nothing you ever do can alter it, but then why do we act like self-created, autonomous creatures whose plans and desires are objective and ideal for the fulfillment of our future selves. Isn’t addressing the existence of a bias the first step for moving away from it (or is the identification of a particular bias also the result of our other biases?)

I recently read a great article which convinced me into believing that we’re not who we think we are. The author argued that our images of the self are elaborate constructs based on the feedback we receive from the external world for our actions. People say we ought to learn from others’ mistakes; I believe we learn too much already and the wrong way. We can’t see the causes for people’s failures and so we pivot results around effects. In a repugnantly anti-poetic line, our journey is our own and the only parameters we need to hold ourselves against are ours. DFW once wrote that we’d worry less about what people thought about us if we realized how seldom they do. Everybody’s busy minding their own business, figuring out their own mess, making narratives of their own lives to really give much of a thought to you. Think about it, do you worry a lot about others? To summarize, and here I sound like a high school student writing his essay on some perplexing Biology topic, don’t worry too much about your self-image. You came before it did and it’ll go before you do. Living isn’t a noun that you have to subscribe to, your life is not a list of adjectives that others use to define you. If anything, to overstretch this grammatical analogy, life is a verb whose essence is in choosing the action over the image, movement over stasis, experiment over ill-fitting orthodoxy. And keeping up with our practice of eventually resorting to Zen proverbs, the journey over the destination. We’re all going to die and be forgotten one day.The least of our worries should be to wonder what petty, boring, impermanent people are going to have fleeting half-thoughts about us. Remember, even when we’re talking about someone else, we’re essentially talking about ourselves. And the same holds true for everyone else. Nobody gives a shit. Break the damn mould. Jump into the wilderness. Listen to your heart. Fear your complacence. Choose your own bloody path. Nobody but you is making your biopic.

Post-Script- I hate taking advice. The practical ones are fine (ex: what route to choose to evade the Traffic Policeman, how to retrieve the data in a corrupt hard disk etc.) but the philosophical/ lifehack advices are so full of bullshit. At best they’re entertaining and at worst are capable of taking you down the wrong road for a while. Either way, we don’t listen to anyone’s advice; We’re too full of hubris to believe that someone else is better equipped than us to make our lives better. So I don’t really have to warn you against taking this post seriously. You won’t.

సాయంకాలమైంది గురించి కొన్ని మాటల్లో

తెలుగులో చాలా గొప్ప సాహిత్యం ఉందని విన్నాను. వాటిల్లో చాలా తక్కువ వాటి గురించి తెలుసు. ఆ తెలిసిన చిన్న జాబితాలో కూడా కొన్నే చదివాను- చలం మైదానం, శ్రీశ్రీ మహాప్రస్థానం, శ్రీ రమణ మిధునం. ఇప్పుడు ఆ జాబితాలో గొల్లపూడి మారుతీరావు గారి సాయంకాలమైంది ని జోడిస్తున్నాను. ఈ పుస్తకానికి సాహితీ విమర్శ చేసేంత స్థాయి నాకు లేదు; అయినా ఈ గొప్ప రచన గురించి కొందరికైనా చెప్పాలన్న తాపత్రయం ఉంది. అందుకేనేమో పుస్తకం చదువుతున్నప్పుడు కూడా ఉన్న అనేక extraordinary snippets లో కొన్నిటికి ఎంత చలించిపోయానంటే చాలా మందికి ఆ screenshots పంపాను. చదువు నీకు చాలా నచ్చుతుంది అని అమ్మ అన్నప్పుడు దాని ప్రభావం నా మీద ఇంత ఉంటుందని నేను ఊహించలేదు. థాంక్యూ మా.

కథ దేని గురించి- శ్రీ వైష్ణవ సాంప్రదాయం లో పరమ నిష్ఠా గరిశ్ఠులైన ఒక పురోహితుల కుటుంబం నేపధ్యం. అందులో సుభద్రాచార్యులు అనే ఒక మహానుభవుడు. ఆయన తన తరంలో చూసిన మార్పులు- అలవాట్లల్లో, సాంప్రదాయాల్ని పాటించే తీరులో, సమాజంలో, కుటుంబీకుల మధ్య బాంధవ్యాలలో. దీని చుట్టూ ఒక అద్భుతమైన కథని అల్లారు గొల్లపూడి గారు. సుభద్రాచార్యుల గారి జీవితాన్ని పీఠం గా చేసుకొని చాలా విషయాల మీద సాంఘిక వ్యాఖ్యానం చేసారు. హిందూ తత్వజ్ఞానం గురించి చర్చించారు, అమెరికా వలసల కి అద్దం పట్టారు, తల్లితండ్రుల-పిల్లల అనుబంధాల fabricని దగ్గర నుండి చూపారు, సాయం గురించి మాట్లాడారు, గొప్పవాడెప్పుడూ మంచివాడవ్వాల్సిన అవసరం లేదని చెప్పకుండానే తెలియజేసారు. అంతమైపోతున్న సాంప్రదాయ ఆచారాల నిర్వహణ కళ్ళకట్టినటు చూపించారు.

వీటన్నింటి గురించి ప్రస్తావించటం ఒక ఎత్తు- ఇది ఆయన మేధా సంపత్తికి తార్కాణం. కానీ ఆ విషయాలన్నీ ఇంత మంచి కథలో ఇంత అందంగా అల్లటం చాలా మంది తరం కాదు. గొల్లపూడి వారి వచనం కైంకర్యాం చేసిన వేడి వేడి చక్కెరపొంగలి లాంటిది- రుచి అమోఘం, తన్మయత్వం నిశ్చితం. ఎన్నో పాత్రలు, ప్రతీ పాత్రకీ ఒక అనన్యత. రెండే వ్యాఖ్యాల్లో పాత్రని కళ్ళకు కట్టినట్టు చూపిస్తారు. ప్రతి మనిషీ వాడి వాడి మనస్తత్వాన్ని బట్టి, కర్మ ఫలాల బట్టి జీవితం నడిపిస్తాడు. అది నిజం, అదే నిజం- మంచి చెడులు నిర్ణయించటానికి మనమెవరం. ఆయన రచనలో judgement ఉండదు, sympathy ఉంటుంది- అదొక benign realism.

మారుతీరావు గారి మీద నాకున్న ఒకే ఒక చిన్న అభియోగం ఆయన అకస్మాత్ authorial intervention. కథ మధ్యలో ఆయన వృత్తాంతాన్ని తెంపుతూ ఒక పేరా మన ప్రస్తుత జీవనశైలి మీద చిన్న aside లాగా రాస్తారు. ఈ కథ ముందు సీరియల్ గా ప్రచురింపబడినందుకేమో అప్పట్లో ఇది అంత కొట్టొచినట్టు కనబడుండదు కానీ పుస్తక రూపంలో సరిగ్గా ఇమడలేదు. అయినా ఏదో పితూరి చెప్పాలని చెప్తున్నాను కానీ ఇది పున్నమి చంద్రుడిలో మచ్చలు చూపటం లాంటిది. అది మనలోని లోపాలకు అభివ్యక్తం మాత్రమే.

ఈ పుస్తకం గురించి నేను చెప్పేదంతా superficial. కుండలో చంద్రుడి ప్రతింబింబం చూపినట్టు. నాలాంటి న్యూస్పేపర్ చదివే అత్తెసరి గాడికే అర్థం అయ్యిందంటే ఎవరైనా చదవచ్చు. మీరే చదవండి- మీలో వొచ్చే మార్పు కి మీరే సాక్ష్యం.

wondering what we're doing here

Today I asked Dheeraj if he considered himself a serious writer. He asked me what I meant. Somebody who takes his writing seriously in the larger context of literature, I replied. Then I asked myself the same question- Do I consider myself a serious writer. The answer came out- a resounding No. Ofcourse I crave the admiration and reputation but I'm too much of a post-modernist to hold categorical differentiations and a self-doubting skeptic to see myself in such elated company. No, I'm better off being a lowly blogger; the freedom is too succulent.

Anyway, I just shot off December's column yesterday. Again, more of the same. For all my talk of escaping external boundaries, like Sravani says, I seem incapable of seeing beyond the walls of my perpetual fixations. Too fuckin' bad. Read Nostalgia, Lahore, and the Ghost of Aurganzeb- the argument is heartfelt, the language is luscious. I'm stuck around page 150 of Infinite Jest. It takes a few pages in every sitting to get used to DFW's rhythms and idiosyncrasies but the investment is totally worth it. He's a writer of prodigious gifts and yes, I've quit dreaming I'd be like him someday. He's just to bloody good. Also reading Gollapudi's Saayamkaalamaindi. Surprisingly gripping. What else. Copied True Detective and Modern Family. Haven't started watching because a part of me deeply believes TV is lowbrow, too popular, too easy, too damn entertaining. Oh! I'm such an elitist douchebag. (I'm disgusted by my ability to rather not watch anything than enjoy an entertaining film. Guilt way outweighs Pleasure.)


After this month's column was published, I received a mail from a Mr. Nagaraja Setty (publishing the contents below) reading which I felt a rare pride. I was mildly surprised that someone actually reads some of the stuff I write but his letter touched a deep nerve.


Hello Sirish,


I am Nagaraja setty going on 82 years and lived in this great America since 24 years old. I enjoyed reading your article. Every word in it is "truth". That is why we say Truth is God, Truth is beautiful etc. You write very well. If you do not mind please e-mail me a copy. I want to share it with my some "wordly friends".


Thanks. Regards

----------------------

In the waiting hall

Why do we do what we do? Why do we wake up in the morning, get ready in a hurry, rush to work, spend hours doing mundane work that will only ensure we will have work to do in the future, try and please the right people to step up on an imaginary ladder, drive back during rush hour, curse the lines in the supermarket, gobble down food while watching news on TV, try to understand our teenage kids, wish we were more patient with our parents, look at our spouses with disappointment and go to sleep castigating ourselves for not spending our days better.

We did not choose to be here and we do not know how to be anyone else. We are surrounded by disappointment, frustration, helplessness, cowardice. Sure there is happiness- We cherish small achievements, take pride in the success of our kids, celebrate important events in friends’ lives, give to society what little we can and spend time on weekends pursuing hobbies. But I’m surprised with how little there is to life. Even if a few lucky souls transcend beyond this transactional, wrought form of living, it’s still eating and excreting, buying and wanting, working and procreating, playing and dreaming, talking and dying. Life would have been absurdly funny if it wasn’t so comically grotesque. Considering the fact that we know we’re mortal, I’m appalled by how we choose our priorities. We are obsessed with accumulation and consumption: of information and food and things, of power and money, of pets and goodwill. Traditional knowledge has repeatedly been trying to point us to the more important stuff but we consider it to be too banal. And that is a sad paradox because the reason for its banality is its prowess at being proven right over and over again.

I recently came across a philosophical position that actively discourages people from having children. The proponents argue that by giving birth to a child, you are condemning him to a lifetime of suffering. Assuming we are free-willed, rational, conscious beings and not micro-orgasmic colonies whose only function is the sustenance of those microbes, that argument makes a valid point. When people themselves have no idea what they’re doing on this planet, what it means to be alive and human, what our purpose and destiny are, do we have a right to give birth to another being who will have to pay a, literally, life sentence. Most people do what they do because everyone else seems to be doing it. For all our aspirations of intelligence and transcendence, we’re eerily similar to single-celled organisms whose only motive is safety until further procreation. It’s a pretty disgusting way to live actually when you think about it.

It is the mundanity of stupidity. I’m an admirer of the human ability to attain genius, glory, godhood. I am mesmerised by the flame of intellect even though it’s short-lived. Einstein and Ramanujan, Joyce and Mozart are not here to bask in people’s admiration. For all we know, they didn’t crave for it. But even they, not just us, were being driven by the lunatic inside their heads. The fact that they chose to follow the his directions even when the world around them was trying to crush their individuality is a mark of the strength of their character. Or maybe it was just that the madman was more insistent than he’s for the rest of us. Either way, we’re all going to die. God or No God, it does not matter. It’s tragic that all our lives are essentially ‘timepass’ until death arrives to guide us to places beyond our comprehension. The only upside being that it’s going to come soon.

Monthly Column- Part 4

It's only been like 4 iterations till now and it already feels like I've been writing this column for a long bloody time. I hate deadlines but a part of me can't deny that there's no better inspiration than last minute panic. If we weren't forced to bring things to a closure, we'd be making making more and more meaningless changes under the guise of perfection when it really is fear about not being approved. (I think we do all that we do because we want to be approved. Be unique in just the right proportions. ) I'm not a big fan of perfection, unsurprisingly, because it demands focus, commitment and discipline-- Comedy.. for me to be even dropping those words. Anyway, I'm here because this month's deadline is on me and I'm trying to procrastinate until the last moments to wake the fucking inspiration from it's deep slumber. Writing becomes so much easier the more frequently you do it but then again it's not probably always a good thing. I'm such a lousy architect of sentences, though come to think of it, shouldn't I go resculpt them instead of berating myself in more ugly lines.

I love being a pessimist, a wannabe-nihilist. In a world devoid of meaning, all attempts to progress are absurdly comic. Seriously, you can hardly disappoint a pessimist. Whatever good happens to him feels like a premonition for the fall but since he's expecting that anyway, he's jolly happy about being prepared. Try stopping to fight for a moment with life and just give in. It makes everything so much easier. But will that lead you to a worthwhile (again, someone else's standards of what you should be doing with your time here) life is another question. I was reading JM Coetzee's Lives of Animals yesterday (Master. Each one of his sentences emanates the heat of the anvil where they were wrought. Here is a man who is so accomplished in thought that even his most offhand lines have the power to rip you apart.) and (I seem to be using too many brackets for asides. Should I go the DFW way and opt for footnotes. Too bad I can't write half as well as him. His writing's a marvel. It's less what he's seeing and saying than how he wishes world was. ) (Actually, in a way, his footnotes ushered 'literary' fiction into the age of the internet. I used to worry about using ellipses because I thought it was the characteristic of a blogpost but the cliches are right again and it's not a gimmick if you aren't using it as one. You never know, someone might soon publish a 'serious' book with smileys.) I forgot what I wanted to say amidst all these asides. Where was I? Yes, Lives of Animals but I can't remember what I wanted to say. Fuck this gimmicks man. This apparent transposition of stream-of-consciousness is obviously false. And yet, I can't resist it because this seems like a good package to transport the nature of my thoughts. Weird isn't it: to embrace the truth, you have to walk down the path of falsehood. (I could be a really fucked person's 1st grade Zen Teacher.) All communication is spurious. However, all action that conveys it can only be the truth.

-Are you a nihilist?
-Not as much as I should be.


BEYOND INTELLECTUALIZATION

"How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it's just words" -DFW

Do you write or does the writing happen to you?

As I was waiting for the elusive inspiration, which wouldn't knock despite the encroaching deadline, Amma kept giving me topics I should write about- Old films, the incessant rains, about depressingly hilarious ads; anything light-hearted and fun unlike the my usual brooding, faux-intellectual pieces. I kept turning them down. I didn't want to write about something frivolous, something forgettable, something.. enjoyable. I wanted to come off as a suffering artist, as someone valiantly carrying the immense load of his intellectual gifts, someone who saw the world less as a visceral, grimy entity and more as an opportunity for analyses in abstract forms. Anyway, here I was getting carried away with my imaginary genius while unable to type a damn word when Amma reminded me of Lalitha garu. She said that I ought to thank her everyday for she ignited the spark, so to speak- nurtured the sapling, encouraged whatever little gifts I had, nudged me into the right direction. Too bad because I can't remember much of it.

Sure I see the fragments- her ferociously red henna-stained hair, her girth, their stunningly urban upper middle-class house, the day I sat in the backseat of their Premier Padmini while we drove somewhere, an old lady (her mother I think), the casual elitism I enjoyed among the other tuition students. I'd like to believe I remember her touch but all I can hear is the becalming tinkling of her gold bangles while she hugged me. It feels nice remembering these things now. I haven't seen her since the day we came back from Delhi. I don't remember saying goodbye to her; for that matter I don't remember seeing her for the first time. She's an ethereal presence. Somehow concrete too. I know it happened to me. I think I can remember her smell now. Maybe I should thank her for these memories. They're nice. They make me feel more alive, give my life a certain heft. 

There is nothing more amazing than gazing back at life with nostalgia. The past is glorious, I wish it was the present. Which one of you hasn't craved for school, for a childhood that wasn't, for a more innocent world. I remember school, the laughter, the favourite teachers, the lazy afternoons gazing out of the window, the simple pleasures, the nervous excitement of overhearing adult conversations, the dreams of "growing up". But there was probably more to it. I'm sure it wasn't just warm sunlight, dream defining English classes and the breathlessness of first romance. There was frustration, fear and Physics classes. There were teachers who you hated and others who hated you. I remember being taught Mulk Raj Anand in the classroom in the cellar, the melancholy that world instigated in me. I remember trying to impress Jayasree madam in her demo class because I was desperate to be a part of the worlds she was creating with her words and because I knew she was a human who'd understand the inarticulatable agony I was going through as a confused, dreamy child. I remember that day so vividly that as I write this, I have butterflies in my stomach. I remember the long, slow bicycle rides back from school. I remember the nights sitting on the stairs waiting for Amma to come back from office.

All of us are always trying to get away. Nobody likes the present, nobody knows the future. All we have is an imaginary past- made of collages of films and photos and myths and songs on cassette tapes. A past filled with interesting people, deep, long conversations, purity and joy and innocence, of freedom and play. A world filled only with first-hand experience. A world so real it can only be imaginary. I don't want to intellectualize; I'm beginning to believe it'll drive us to madness one day. But so will all this day dreaming. We are crazy. We are desperate. We are petty. We are kind. We are all daydreamers. We crave pain so deep that it'll relieve us of our pettiness, of our irritating squabbles. We want real, unadulterated experiences. We want life to drag us by the collar, punch us in the stomach, kiss us deeply, whisper in our ear. And yet we're too afraid of letting go of our older experiences, of our learnings and expectations, of our fancy jargon and fragile ivory towers. We're incongruous, we're absurd, we're doomed. We're human.

..and this month's column

This month's column is one of those increasingly rare inspired posts. I used to think it's very possible to separate your day job from the passion that you want to follow. Apparently no, since you're the same person at the end of the day and all those disappointments, frustrations and anxieties are going to find a way into your (my) writing. Yes, at this point in time, I want those "real-life" experiences. I'm far too cut out from the rest of the world already, or like Sravani puts it, spend too much time in my own head. So being forcefully evicted out of that haven is a good thing. For one, it introduces me to some assholes. People you wouldn't ever want to deal with unless your job forced you to. Incidentally, Sravani and I were having a discussion a few days ago about what it means for something to come naturally to us. And I went to great pains to elaborate how we should listen to our conscience and only do things that come naturally to us. While she argued vehemently against it, repeatedly stressing on the importance of attention and work, dedication and craft on all relationships (which come to think of it, any activity is really), it took a couple of days for the realization to hit me.

Driving a car is natural to me now because I spent days anxious at the steering wheel and had to pay a lot of conscious thought and effort to (l)earn it. The same's with writing. I enjoy it because I'm good at it and so I spend more time with it, which makes me better and creates this nice feedback loop. But I also see now, how easy it is to fall into the comfort zone and convince yourself that you mustn't leave it because this is what you were born to do. And that can be a death knell because the moment you become insulated from the real, messy, frequently unbearable world is the moment the art and passion will stagnate. The freeze will creep from within for the lack of a force to fight against. True, like the great George Carlin argues, it's important not to give a shit but it's more important to know what you're not giving a shit about. The human condition is always a fight against something- mortality, absurdity, insecurity, impatience, confusion, humiliation, impermanence and many other things. I fear the real world because I'm afraid it'll breach my expectations, surprise me, shock me which is an unpleasant experience. To give you an analogy, it's like building a software product and telling people they ought to change their habits because the system is foolproof in it's abilities. True, it is bug-free but it also can turn obsolete very fast. Anybody, anything, that doesn't accept the feedback it receives, most of it, admittedly, unintentional, misplaced and cruel but valuable nevertheless, will not survive (read interesting) for a long time.

We love listening to the stories of artists and other celebrities and wonder how they could've had so many interesting, rich experiences. True, a part of it comes from their ability and expertise in packaging well but all that wouldn't have been possible without them being open to experience in the first place. I understand the importance of this intellectually but to go out everyday and face the wrath of stupidity, arrogance and disrespect is a journey in itself; it's something I would never undertake if not forced to. Hemingway once said that experience is the ink that fuels his stories (actually I heard Imtiaz Ali say it), and there can be no true experience without conflict. No real change without internal strife. The world will not run according to my expectations and the sooner I fathom it, the easier it'll be for me. Life doesn't owe me anything; I should stop feeling so entitled.

I'm not a big fan of the real world. Yes, there are stunning examples of intelligence and grace, wit and charm, genius and perseverance. Except I see them few and far between. And all those worthwhile things were created as an opposition to all things banal and brutal about the world. They say comedy is born out of tragedy. Ofcourse, it is. The construction of a good joke, conscious or subconscious, requires a lot of insight into human behaviour which can only be gained from bone deep experience. And things are driven bone deep by struggle: A struggle to comprehend your inadequacies, your insecurities, others' actions and in your quest to create a more elaborate mental map of the way the world works. Which again, inevitably, will have to be tweaked. At worst, this is a power game between you and life, fighting until death, seeing who's going to come out on top. At best, it can be a Salsa, a Jugalbandi, a game, a collaboration to find a way to appreciate and adjust from each others' differences, a process to fuse into a unique entity. I know where I should be heading but it'll require courage, sacrifice, humour and conscious living. That should be fun.

Also, I should stop using so many bloody conjunctions but (duh!) I'm unable to find any alternatives. Any ideas?

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In Search of the Sacred

We’re living in a world where the old structures are falling and the new ones are yet to come up. Every day brings with it new possibilities, opportunities, horrors and disappointments. And it’s very easy to be lost in this torrent. Too much seems to be happening too fast. Advertisers are blaring from all sides, all your friends on Social Media are living amazing lives, so many people across the world are making new discovering and gaining insights, while fascists and psychopaths are placed better than ever to do most damage.

In times like these, it is very easy to give in to hedonism or despair. In any case, those seem to be the only two states I seem to be functioning in. I alternate between living in the fear of missing out or am too enamoured by the new contrivance that captures my inexpensive attention. Sociologically speaking, there’s apparently never been a better time period to live in. Psychologically speaking, mine own atleast, I’m not so sure. A part of my everyday goes into reading lifehack blog posts that try to explain how I can lead a better(?) life. You know, stuff life:

• Find your true calling 
• 7 tips to increase your productivity by 400% 
• Keep a Journal- it’s the best self-awareness tool 
• 13 things mentally strong people don’t do 

Don’t tell me you haven’t read any of them. There must be a reason my news feed’s filled with them. I also read too much pop-philosophy, spend hours reading habits and quirks of celebrities, and there’s always a tab open on my browser with life quotes from Feynman and Nietzsche. Every book I pick, I hope will change my life, will turn the damn bulb on. Every person I meet, I hope will be my Zen Guru. And obviously that doesn’t happen. In a universe where everything is infused with so much meaning, everything is meaningless. So when this feeling finally hits me in the evening, I just give up and watch standup comedy until I drift into a disturbed sleep.

This is where this post should end. This is where my previous nihilistic self would have ended it. Life sucks. Thank you. Period. I’d have said success is not a causality but a coincidence. Happiness, just bloody endorphins. But I’ve now turned into a more prosaic man. Unromantic, less vocal, definitely not as passionate, more corrupt even. However, I’ve gained something in return- I’m more willing to listen, open to learn, less desperate to show-off, confident enough not to constantly seek approval. Though the journey continues, there’s one learning I want to retain.
It’s this- Every person should have something in life that he’s deeply connected to, their personal haven. Something sacred. That when the world turns it’s back on you, which it eventually will, you can still go to your sanctum and stay there. Humans are solitary beings and I believe it’s life’s purpose to drive that fact deep into us, to feel it in our bones.

Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you -Rumi

What is this space, you may ask? It could be your prayers to your Gods every morning, it could be one hour of Piano practice, it could be running or meditation or writing a Journal filled with your thoughts, ideas and reflections, it could even be that time perfecting the cartwheel. It doesn’t matter what the activity is as long as it’s a world of its own. A place where you can shed all your personas and go in search of your true self. If the scriptures and sermons are right, there’s no true self. Then that must be the place where you just destroy all masks, erase all boundaries and become one with the cosmos.

All enlightenment starts from wistful thinking. I don’t know if this is the “ideal” way to live, provided there’s even such a way. My intellect tells me this seems like the right direction; my intuition seems to find resonance with it. I could be wrong, this could be another false revelation. But the best I can do at this point is to listen to my heart. In its longing to transcend me and return to the oneness, I hope my soul is leading me on the right path. There’s always a possibility that this is a faux-epiphany, maybe all epiphanies are wrong. Maybe enlightenment will teach me there’s no enlightenment. Till then though, I’ll have to learn motorcycle maintenance and inquire into values.

जलने में क्या मज़ा है, परवाने जानते हैं -Gulzar

Monthly Column- Part 2

This month's column. It's more or less a reworking of my seasoned tropes. Like DB puts it in this amazing video, "Auteur directors like you and me are making the same film again and again". That analogy fits perfectly to this blog. I handed the column late again. Hopefully will send it much earlier this month. Have an old idea I want to write about. Not sure if it'll be any good though.

Watch the video.

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Temptation of the abyss

I have a fairly pessimistic outlook towards life. I’m not very comfortable when good things start happening to me. No, it’s not a question of not “deserving” it. I don’t believe that we live in a fair world or that there’s cosmic justice. I don’t like it because when something good happens, it can be followed by something bad. Not that there’s any reason for me to believe it would but even when I’m very happy about something that’s happening, a part of me is going, “Dude, don’t get overexcited. Something terrible is just around the corner.”

I’d rather not have something than lose it. Yes, admittedly, it’s not the most appealing way to live but I get by. I don’t know if I ‘ve been hardwired that way or been shaped by life incidents but that’s how it is. Life is divided into these alternate phases. So for a period of time, you find help from the dark corners, inspiration strikes you at the right time, small helps come back as huge favours, your loved ones are more accepting of your faults. It feels like the universe conspires into making you happy. But the flipside is that you cede control. Since your fate is not directly dependent on your actions anymore and you’re at the mercy of the Gods, it can be unnerving to think what if the pilot crash lands. The difference between a normal person and a pessimist is that even in moments of pure bliss, a small voice in the pessimist’s head keeps reminding him of the crash landing.

The pessimist, however, starts enjoying life more when things are going awry. Stereotypical examples- the boss screams at you in the meeting, somebody rams into your rightfully parked car, you realize you’ve forgotten your hall ticket for the most important exam of your life, when your friends and family lose their trust in you. Now, the fac tors influencing all these bad ,things might be beyond your control, but again, you have the power to react however the way you want. You don’t have to be thankful to the Gods, nor be insecure about losing it all away. You’ve already started losing more than you ever thought you would. Reason and responsibility are replaced by self-pitying and self-loathing.

People tell me I ought not preempt failures. That I should be living in the now. But when I start doing the same, I’m accused of irresponsibility and frivolousness. But then isn’t the best way to plan is to hope for the worst and then take it from there? Which brings me to learning by experience. I believe all real learning is tangential. It is almost accidental. Everything that helps us navigate through life with astonishing alacrity (trust me we’re so good at doing everything that we do that we don’t appreciate its complexity) is something we picked up while vying for something else. The pull towards the trophy teaches us everything that’s needed to win it. It’s so deeply imbibed that we don’t appreciate the journey that led us there.

If all the experiences in life can be plotted onto a graph, it’d be like a Sine Wave; The crests representing the successful happy times and the troughs denoting the sad times and miserable phases. We learn only when the graph is going down, and reach the bottom at that point when we’re going to stop fighting and are ready to give up. Then the upward rise starts and we get to splurge on all the experience and knowledge we’ve gained. Ad infinitum. There could be amplitude differences but I believe the lives of all people are more or less like this.

The rise can be intoxicating but it comes with a burden. The fall can be relentless but it helps us throw the unnecessary baggage and search for the real self. And it is in that pursuit for the real and concrete that all true learning happens. Learning from life seeps so deeply into us that it’s less something we follow and apply, and more what shapes us and makes us. Leading a lifestyle that avoids the temptation to jump off the edge of the cliff is precautionary living. It is bound to fail.

“Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is..” -CS Lewis

Only a man who’s fallen into the abyss, fought with the demons and crawled back is more confident. Now the edge beckoning him is not something to be afraid of. It is a story he tells others, feeling neither proud nor relieved, because failure is not something foreign. It is within him and he knows that one day he will have to face it again. Till then though, So long Charlie.

For beauty and honesty against bloody selling out

I want to watch #Pellichoopulu. I don't want to watch #Pellichoopulu. I want to watch it because of the rave reviews, because of the word-of-mouth publicity, because of the love and personal pride with which people are endorsing it, because of Tharun's astounding Sainma, because of Sravani's review, because of Dheeraj's succinct homage in this message he sent me: "hit anna hituuu. . 100 days iga . . House full". But I don't want to watch it because I'm afraid it'll be better than all the hype, better than everything people have exaggerated about it, better than Sainma even. Because if it is, a part of me will die.

The day I saw Sainma, I knew if I was able to reach half of what Tharun'd been able to do, I could dream of a career as a filmmaker. It is a film I admire, adore, love and keep getting back to. When I first wrote about it all those months ago, I called it a "not perfect" film. If you'd asked me then what was missing, I wouldn't know what to say. I guess that review was was a refraction of my jealousy. I knew what I'd seen was a masterpiece. I also knew this guy was no Kubrick or Herzog. I actually once stumbled upon a blogpost which raved about Tharun the man. One man couldn't be all that. He couldn't be fun and humble and successful and a visionary and dedicated and passionate. That would be, in some strange way, pretty Ashok-esque. And I couldn't let that thought sit in my head. I knew this man, sort of. I reviewed his film (which, funnily, is how I unashamedly bask in his reflected glory now). I would allow him to be good, not great. Yet when I sat down to watch the film again recently with two first-time viewers, I couldn't help but love his work. They laughed and hooted, paused and repeated, remembered lines and loved characters. What else could any artist ask for? If my one short film experience could be counted for anything, I would like to believe I understand the genius in conception and passion in execution of that two-and-a-half minute eloping scene right before the 'Sainma' title.

I meet a lot of people who want to make films. My flatmate regularly makes short films. These folks don't lack passion or conviction. Or sometimes, even discipline. Craft can be learnt as well. Right from Journey, through Anukokunda till Sainma, even if he's lacked sometimes in something, Tharun's film's have been driven by an inner voice. I'm sure he must've put in hours of learning behind being able to choose a certain shot, or a particular casting choice to even picking locations. But I'd like to believe they're the work of a natural filmmaker. Quentin Tarantino is a natural filmmaker, Woody Allen not so much. Anyway, that's a discussion for another day.

Now to the point I have to confront. Why do I feel an inexplicable jealousy for him and not, say, Binny Bansal who I see quite regularly at work. I know he makes a lot of money and that he was incredibly successful at 28. Yet I feel nothing because of him. What could be the reasons for my grudging admiration for Tharun's work- the fact that cinema was an early love, or that his life right now was my dream a few years ago, or just because filmmaking is a more romantic idea of a life than entrepreneurship, or simply because somewhere deep inside I believe I can be him if I choose to. All of them, definitely, contributes to my feelings. But as an undercurrent to all that is the feeling that I seem to be selling out while he's still holding to his ideals/ dreams tightly. Mind you, this isn't about Tharun in the real objective world, more about the mythos I've created around his career in my head. Not so long ago, like Amma reminded me so recently, I was standing-still and asking a lot of Whys. These days, I'm running as fast as I can without asking any questions at all. I can't believe how, last week, I was worried, if for only a few seconds, about losing my job. When did a job I do for the money become so all encompassing?

Agreed, all boys should grow to be mature, sorted men but at what cost? I don't read anymore, I hardly write anything unconvoluted, gave up dreams of filmmaking, find time to learn fuckin Python and spend all weekdays doing jobs I care nothing about. Again, I'm not saying it isn't right to grow out of fanciful, unrealistic daydreams but I'm afraid to know what's at the other end of the spectrum. Vasishta sent me this amazing, marathon interview and in it, Bharani says that artist's shouldn't be all that calculative. I don't know if you can consciously choose to do something about it, stop the corruption of the soul if I may, but that's a brilliant explanation for why most people, in most dreary jobs become so mean and petty. Where's the innocence to marvel if you're obsessed with keeping scores. Where's the imagination to appreciate poetry if you've drawn such rigid boundaries. Where's the ability to bask in glory if you're so hellbent on getting the upperhand.

I hope I haven't turned petty, yet. I hope I have enough purity and goodness to truly appreciate things I love. I hope that soon I do work I believe in and enjoy, and leave the rewards to the 'Creator of the Cosmos'. I'm so bloody confused right now that I can't even state if the confusion's a good thing. Tharun's had a dream debut and I hope to watch the film soon. But, more than that, I hope I will have the courage and strength to appreciate with all my heart when I see something truly luminous.

Monthly Column- Part 1

Apparently, my photo came on a American theatre screen. Varun told me. And that's thanks to this writing gig Bujjimama got me. He just started writing this column and he wanted me to furnish a bio for him in third person. I did. Then he told me to contribute a monthly column as well. I said I couldn't because I didn't have the discipline. He told me that's precisely why he wanted me to write. So here's my post for July.

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Life as a Checklist

People daydream a lot. It is their one way to escape the seeming pointlessness of everyday life. And to replicate the movies inside their head in the real world, they invariably consort to the checklist. You know, stuff like:

1. Learn Data Science to get a high paying job
2. Talk to S's father about our marriage
3. Backpack around Europe
4. Exercise regularly and have a great body
5. Read the Proust oeuvre before I die

You know what they're like. All of you have them. Checklists are great, they give us a purpose in life, a list of objectives to achieve, carve a path through the wilderness. But they are the most foolproof way to get depressed. Show me any man and I'll show you a list of unmet goals. We know better than to assume that all our lives will be awesome if we check every one of those goals. And yet we keep writing them down, keep pushing the timelines, keep scratching them off. I suppose we don't know any other way to live.

As kids, our parents and the social circle created those checklists for us. And the method of implementation was coercion or castigation. Either I'll give you something if you achieve this, or if you're not a certain way we will not let you enter this exclusive club. And so the primary focus of childhood and adolescence is to achieve the goals already set out- learning to play the guitar, breaking in to prestigious colleges, buying that fancy bike and the like. But as we grow older and become more entrenched in our real selves, whatever they may be, and are comfortable in our little social circles, we are faced with the daunting task of taking up new targets and reaching them.

"I— finally, I have the body that I want, and that's a thing people really covet. It's a hard thing to achieve, and I did. And I'm going to tell you how to have exactly the body that you want. You just have to want a shitty body. That's all it is. You have to want your own shitty, ugly, disgusting body." -Louis CK

That's one way to get through the problem- With hedonism and indifference. If I have to have ambitions, let me be insouciant about them. If I can't achieve them, let me look down upon them. I call it The Dude Way (for those of you uninitiated, I can't recommend the Coen brothers' The Big Lebowski enough). It's simply letting the Id take over. I think it's a great survival mechanism only if the bloody Superego didn't intervene from time to time.

We want to achieve things in life because our advanced minds keep telling us there's more to life than just Self-Preservation and Reproduction. We seek acceptance of people we look upto, we try to build narratives around our lives so that we are remembered even after we're gone, we yearn for freedom from the repetition of everydayness. And for that we want to be a certain way. Which is precisely the root of the problem. We don't want to do something as much as be seen doing something. The focus of our lives has shifted from the being to appearing. Geniuses are exempt from this problem because they seem to be enamoured by the act. But the rest of us mortals aren't passionate enough to be obsessed by one activity and lack discipline to work on it at the cost of everything else. And so we seek to emulate them. When an act becomes play, it is ego-annihilating. When an act becomes work, it becomes ego-inflating.

All of life is, essentially, a balance between surrender and discipline. How do we reconcile previously decided goals with present temptations? If my past me wanted to ride around the country on a motorcycle because of a romantic image in his head, and now that I have the bike and the time to do but don't have the inclination to do it, is it because I've outgrown that phase or I'm too scared to get going?

I once knew a man who said the moment you get something is the moment you lose it. The pursuit gives meaning to the thing being pursued, gives purpose to the pursuer. And that's how I see checklists too. They're just a random collection of traits and things we wish we had. Once we've achieved them, all that remains is the void. So all that we can do is keep making new ones. For what we intend to seek and who we wish to be defines the personality of our beings.

the answer is not enough

Thanks to Purnima I met Venkata today. I wanted to do something in Data Science and ever since she told me about his startup, I've been pestering her to introduce me to him. And now that I met him today and had a long conversation, I guess all that will be justified if I apply even 20% of what he's said. A passionate man, an intense man, a very intelligent man (you don't need to be smart to recognise it; you'll realize when you're looking upto him), a man who's failed and fallen, a man who's dived deep enough to be confident of his swimming abilities. After my brief intro where I told him about the stuff I've done over the years, he got into the driving seat and lectured for over two hours, with me acknowledging with "right" and "yeah", about the nature of technology, about finding the purpose, about trying stuff, about failing and having your ego bruised, about the nature of learning, as we walked round and round BDA complex. A couple of times, as a reaction to something he said, my mind wandered in search of an interesting response (I was tempted to quote this wonderful line, "..because people act like homing missiles towards their deepest desires"), but I consciously pulled back because I wanted to 'empty my cup'.

Most of it is stuff you get to listen to all the time. You know, one of those "I wish I'd known this when I was in my 20s" thing. But what enamoured me was his zest for life and learning despite all the setbacks he must've gone through. Not that he explicitly mentioned many but I knew what I was seeing was the tip of an iceberg made up of failures and successes, setbacks and serendipitous discoveries. He told me that it was a good thing I'd tried diverse stuff. But that my learning was shallow. I admitted, saying how it caused a crisis in confidence because I didn't know if I knew any of this stuff or was just using jargon. He nodded, claiming how it took him ten years to even figure out what he wanted to do. And then about how your pursuits keep changing every 5-7 years, that there was no soulmate-y job. That it takes atleast 5 years of dedicated work to even be decently good at something. At the end of first year, you go, awesome, I know everything. At the end of second, you're frustrated because nothing works and you think people must be really stupid to do these things (He repeatedly insisted, "People are not stupid"). Year three is when you realize what things are like and see them in a new light. And years four and five to capitalize on what you've learnt to work on a problem. And then you'll know if you like it and want to pursue it or try something new. That is the investment you have to make.

He kept indicating how it is imperative to find a deep motivation that'll act as your compass even if the rest of the world is saying you're wrong. And then I spoke about my short-lived motivations and he said which is why the time is now for self-reflection. To learn to think. All our lives we've lived in auto-pilot. Somebody's done the thinking for us. But if you really want to learn and grow, conscious thinking is a skill you should learn and apply. It won't come in a day, it's a process but it is something that'll lead to where you want to go. He said to be a good Data Scientist, I should focus on three things: Domain, Tooling and Statistics. That ML is not as sexy as people are making it out now but 80% of it is brunt work: gathering data, cleaning it, making it suitable for analysis. He also spoke about why context is king and how when he was studying Economics, he read biographies of economists to understand the conditions which prompted their thought processes. He also kept using the phrase 'Intellectual Horsepower' which I fell in love with.

I can't remember everything because it was too discursive but the takeaway I've gotten is that learning is bloody work. It demands dedication and practice and effort and sacrifice. And so it is important to find something that you're motivated to do. Making a film, writing a book, starting a company; doesn't matter but you have to find your calling. He said by the time I was 30, I should've started something on my own. Where I've invested either time or money or effort, or all those. Because "at 30, you've seen enough but you're not yet cynical. At 40, you are no more motivated enough to try and change". And for that I should start converging now. That if I got lucky and had a great, supportive wife, like he said he had, it was going to be slightly easy. Otherwise, that'd be another problem to contend with. I had to start preparing for it from now. To be confident enough about something to be able to lead people. He told me that better than attending training and MOOCs, it was better to take an anchor problem and work around it. To try and solve it. That ML and NLP and Statistical Algorithms and stuff like that were just tools and what use would they be if I didn't know what to do with them.

Contentment is a very short-lived feeling. The only thing we can do is keep running to the next marker. To keep running towards something a long distance away, you have to have desire for it. To love it. To be driven by curiosity. Because you think it'll be an interesting destination to reach. And the only way to be able to do that is to work and learn, work and reflect, work and gain perspective, work and live.

..this is just a banal platitude-  but the fact is that in day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance. -DFW

As is the norm these days, DFW's saying what I've been thinking in way better sentences than I can ever come up with. I want to say it was a much needed talk. But to know if it's just surface level or if I'm going to learn something from it, only time will tell. Life is this struggle, between the comfort and dead-end of certainty and the fear and temptation of uncertainty. I still think the bloody lessons aren't seeping in. They're just surface level. However, I hope that I'm going to learn and grow and laugh and tell stories and be a better person. How I choose to deal with life will, eventually, be the story of my life.

ఆడెందుకు తీస్తాడో, నేనెందుకు చూస్తానో..

This post has been taking shape in my mind since the first minute of A.. Aa. It was supposed to be a longer, more elaborate criticism of everything I find fucked about Telugu Cinema, and specifically Trivikram's work, but this came more out of feeling than thought. So it's quite befuddling for the uninitiated but I guess I've done enough Trivikram ranting to expand further. As per Gattu's suggestion I sent it to ChaiBisket but after 36 hours of silence, I guess they don't care for it. So here's another post that finds place in my own little lamakaan.

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అ..ఆ లో ఒక డైలాగ్ ఉంది- వాడికి సిగ్గు కి స్పెల్లింగ్ తెలీదు, మర్యాదకి మీనింగ్ తెలీదు, నవ్వు కి టైమింగ్ తెలీదు అని. అలానే త్రివిక్రం లేటెస్ట్ సినిమాలకు సెన్స్ తెలీదు. Structure ఉండదు, form అవసరంలేదు, tone అంటే అర్థం కూడా తెలీదు. అయినా మనం చూస్తాం. ఎందుకంటే మనకి బుద్ధిలేదు.

ఇదో సినిమా, మళ్ళీ దీనికొక హిట్ టాకు. ఒకప్పుడు నేను త్రివిక్రం వీరాభిమానిని. రచయిత అంటే ఇలా ఉండాల్రా అనిపించేవాడు. He was my generation's RGV. And then like RGV, he lost his way. కనీసం రాము ఏం చేసినా రాము మార్కుంటుంది. ఒరిజినలిటీ ఉంటుంది. రాము సినిమాల్లో, more often than not, నిజయితీ ఉంటుంది, they follow atleast his own fucked up logic. త్రివిక్రం, and ఈ మాట అనటం నాకు చాలా బాధాకలిగిస్తున్న విషయం, sellout అయిపోయాడు.

త్రివిక్రం కెరీర్ ని మూడు సెక్షన్లలో విభజించొచ్చు:

The breathtaking ascent- స్వయంవరం, చిరునవ్వుతో తో తెలుగు ప్రేక్షకులకి షాక్. ఇలా కూడా రాయొచ్చా అని. నువ్వు నాకు నచ్చావ్, మల్లీశ్వరి తో రాష్ట్రం లో ప్రతి కుటుంబంలో ఒక వ్యక్తి అయిపోయాడు. నువ్వే నువ్వే, అతడు తో దర్శకుడిగా సక్సెస్ సాధించాడు.

The surprising plateau- జల్సా, ఖలేజా, జులాయి. టి.వి. లో ఈ సినిమాలు ఎప్పుడొచ్చినా జనాలు టీ.వీ లకు అతుక్కుపోతారు. గొప్ప సినిమాలు కావు, కానీ self-sustained సీన్ల పరంగా చూస్తే stunningly accomplished. Despite his best attempts to undermine his own voice, his genius can't help but seep through.

The unsought decline- ఎవ్వడూ దిగజారాలని కోరడు. కానీ అది సృష్టి ధర్మం. పైకెళ్ళింది కిందికి రావాల్సిందే. But what's so surprising about Trivikram's disastrous last two films is the sheer lack of his essence. నిన్న నా ఫ్రెండు థియేటర్ నుండి బయటికొస్తునప్పుడన్నాడు, "అసలు త్రివిక్రం సినిమాలానే లేదు రా" అని. ఒప్పుకున్నా ఒప్పుకోకపోయినా, మన auteurs వీళ్ళే- పూరీ జగన్నాధ్, త్రివిక్రం శ్రీనివాస్, రవి బాబు, శ్రీను వైట్ల. వీళ్ళ సినిమాలు రెండు నిమిషాలు చుస్తే వీళ్ళది అని తెలిసిపోతుంది. There is a tonal consistency. ప్రపంచాన్ని చూసే ధోరణి ఇట్టే పట్టేయొచ్చు. త్రివిక్రం అనే వ్యక్తిని తన సినిమాల ద్వారా అర్థం చేసుకోవాలంటే ఇవి అలవోకగా కనబడే లక్షణాలు- Irreverence to authority, deep-rooted middle class values, hyper-confident protagonists, కోపాన్ని వ్యంగ్యం లో కి మార్చగలిగే పాత్రలు, మొండి తనానికీ- మూర్ఖత్వానికీ- అసమర్థత కి మధ్యలో కొట్టి మిట్టాడే హీరోయిన్లు. త్రివిక్రం బుర్రలోనుండి చూస్తే ప్రపంచం ఇలా కనిపిస్తుందెమో. s/o సత్యమూరి, అ..ఆ లో కొన్ని కోణాలు పరుధులు దాటుకు పోయాయి, కొన్ని మొత్తానికే మాయం అయిపోయాయ్.

ఒకప్పుడు త్రివిక్రం సినిమా అంటే దాని గురించి మాట్లాడీ, మాట్లాడీ అమ్మకీ, ఫ్రెండ్స్ కి పిచ్చి లేపేవాణ్ణి. జల్సా లో నక్సలైట్ కథకు చూపిన insensitivity తో కోపం మొదలైంది. ఖలేజాలో తన వేలితో తన కంట్లోనే పొడుచుకున్న చర్య కు చిరాకేసింది. జులాయి సబ్జెక్ట్ కాస్త frivolous గా ఉండటంతో పెద్దగా ఏమనిపించలేదు. కానీ s/o సత్యమూర్తి, అ..ఆ లతో "నీతి" సినిమాల్లోకి మళ్ళీ అడుగుపెట్టి నాశనం చేయటంతో థియేటర్ లో కూర్చున్నంత సేపు కచ్చ, కడుపుమంట తో గొణుగుతూ పక్కనున్న వాళ్ళని ఇబ్బంది పెట్టాను. ఇలాంటి సినిమా ఇంకోటి తీస్తే ఆ లెవెల్ కూడా దాటేసి పట్టించుకోవటం మానేస్తానేమొ.

ఎదో fantasy, escapist ప్రపంచాల్లో జరిగే తెలుగు సినిమా కథలను తిరిగి నిజమయిన పాత్రలతో, సన్నివేషాలతో, సంభాషణలతో నింపింది ఈ త్రివిక్రముడే. కానీ ఇప్పుడు తనే ఇలాంటి దిక్కుమాలిన సినిమాలు తీస్తూంటే బాధ ఆపుకోలేక పెడుతున్న ఘోష ఇదంతా. 

గురుగారూ, ఇది మీరు కాదు. ఇవి మీ సినిమాలు కావు. ఈ సినీ ప్రస్థానంలో మిమ్మల్ని మీరెక్కడో కోల్పోయారు. దయచేసి మీకోసం కాకపోయినా, తెలుగు ప్రజల కోసం ఆ అన్వేషణ ఆరంభించడి. మీరు చెత్త సినిమాలు తీసినా పర్లేదు, కానీ honest సినిమాలు తీయండి. మీరు మాకు ఎలా బ్రతకాలో చెప్పనవసరం లేదు (ఇప్పుడా భారం శ్రీకాంత్ అడ్డాల తన మీద వేసుకున్నాడుగా), ఎలా బ్రతుకుతున్నామో చెబితే చాలు.

-ఒకప్పటి అభిమాని
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The above post is, in a lot of ways, a spiritual successor to this facebook note published on Sept 27, 2013:

start chese mundu, okati dhruvikarinchali: nenu pawak kalyan hater ni kadu. panjaa flop talk ochinappudu i was one of it's most vocal supporters. ipudu matladadam. atharintiki daredi anedi, despite tollywood's low standards, is a bad film. star image ki thagattu commercial film rayali, fans ni satisfy cheyali antaru konthamandi.. i totally understand, nenu david lynch ni expect chesi vellaledu.. but naa uddesham lo, commercial formula ( hero-villain definitive characterization, 6 good songs, good looking heroine, first day fans expectation pulse telisina director, simple story ni dramatic ga cheppagalagadam and larger-than-life image unna hero comedians ni yedavalni cheyadam ) use chestu engaging cinema teeyagala samarthudu consistent ga rajamouli matrame..

and i loved gabbar singh, despite having watched dabangg.. simply because harish shankar ki telusu thanu elanti cinema teestunnado, fans expectation ento, and aa genre ki stick ayyadu.. again, gabbar singh tv lo bore kodathadi but strictly for theatre, its a very clever piece of work.. on the other hand, trivikram's forte has always been tv viewership.. even his best directorial ventures ( for me: athadu, khaleja ) are better when I'm watching them at home than at the theatre.. kishore indaka annatu, naaku trivikram meeda etuvanti paga ledu, and yes, naaku khaleja huge disappointment in the theatre but the reasons are not the same ( antha manchi story ni cheap comedy petti dilute chesadu ani baadha ).. and this is for all trivikram films, his biggest weakness is that he is a very, very clever dialogue writer. which is great but dialogue, no matter how good, should always stay subservient to the story. thana best writing till date are swayamvaram and chirunavvutho ( dialogue suits characters and keep the story moving forward ). as long as he was dealing with light-hearted comedies ( malleswari, manmadhudu, julayi ) , it was great.. but then the problem crept in when he started writing great stories ( nuvvu naku nachav, nuvve nuvve, khaleja ).. i love those films but sadly the dialogues are so awesome that people didn't even get below the surface to dig at the main story ( engagement taravata ammai preminchocha, prema ki possessiveness ki line ekkada, devudu antey enti ).. maybe adhi thana thappu kaademo, audience ki antha manchi story recognise chese capacity ledemo.. kaani jai chiranjeeva is inexcusable screenwriting ( oka chinna pilla chanipoindi ani paga teerchukovadaniki ochina mavayya sameera reddy tho romance cheyadam ento naaku artham kaledu).. of his other noteworthy films, athadu and jalsa are purely star-driven enterprises..

ee sodhi antha ipudu cheppindi oka context provide cheyadaniki.. ipudu atharintiki daaredi.. Pawan Kalyan's acting is unmentionworthy ( PK is not a great actor but a brilliant screen presence, very underutilised in this movie ).. unna comedy kuda extremely repetitive, annoying and lifeless.. inko actor gurinchi cheppalsina avasaram kuda ledu.. DSP music chaala bagundi, but paatala picturization redundant.. story- there's hardly a story, illu odilesina athaki kallu teripinchi intiki tevali, thatha kosam.. screenplay- trivikram's screenplays are usually very patchy but this is easily the worst.. scenes enduku unnayo, asalu vaativalla eam use undo naaku emi artham kaledu.. ( gabbar singh type comedy tevadaniki try chesadu, but asalu pandaledu.. srinu vaitla chethlo aa gauthama-indra-ahalya scene inka baga pandedi anipichindi ).. and direction.. i have nothing to say, but i can rate trivikram's directorials in the following descending order: Athadu, Nuvve Nuvve, Jalsa, Khaleja, Julayi, Atharintiki Daaredi..daani batti artham cheskondi.. a big, big disappointment from a writer i hugely admired once..

cinema antey entertaining ga undali antaru- antey ento naaku telidu. naa uddeshamlo cinema navvinchali, edipinchali, aalochimpacheyali, mana kalalaku fuel kavali.. but annitini minchi manalni involve cheyali.. cinema anteyney abadham.. manaki telusu thera meeda chupinchedi nijam kadani, natana ani.. jeevithanni theatre bayata suspend chesi kalala lokam loniki praveshinchedi jeevitha saaransham telusukodaniki.. like someone once said, art is a lie that leads us to the truth.. fans cinema chusi adirindi antunnaru, naaku enduko artham kavatledu.. gabbar singh definite ga goppa cinema kadu, kaani daanini theatre lo chudadam, fans madhyalo, pandaga laga anipichindi.. and nenu chaala enjoy chesanu.. panjaa is a superior film, and i liked it, though i understand why fans were disappointed... but AD is a failure either way.. PK ishtam antey, thanani oka laga chudadaniki ishtapadatharu fans.. adi sahajam.. kani i like that he's experimented, johnny, panjaa, puli ( shitty movie, but a try nevertheless ).. kani appudappudu anipistundu, tana stardom tanaki oka rakamaina prison emo ani..

mana desham lo problem enti antey manam politics ni cinema laga chustam, cinema ni political event ga marchestam.. anduke mana deggara politicians rockstars laga ishtam ochindi chestaru, kani mana heroes ki manam oka giri geesesi stars ani katti padestam.. politician ki ideology undali, artist ki conviction undali.. kala lo nijayithi untey, adi manani challenge chestundi, elevate chestundi, involve chestundi, inspire chestundi.. kaani ala cheyadaniki kalakarudiki chance ichey dammu manalo unda?

Tooth lost, Wisdom gained [Presumably]

People do adventure sports on their birthdays. I had my wisdom tooth pulled out. Today morning as I was thinking of my last few birthdays, I couldn't remember what I'd done since the 2011 birthday. I can be assured that that won't be the case next year. My first experience with any sort of surgery, if you ignore that incident where I had my head stitched in the presence of half of IT, has been pretty okay. The jaw's numb because of the anesthesia but the doctor promised pain after it wears out. If it's too bad, I'll do an update post.

As I was sitting on that fancy contraption at the Dentist's, first to have cavity filled in another tooth, I couldn't help but think about this blogpost. I was trying to store my feelings and impressions so that I could vent them out here but I could only think of the opening paragraph. If your only thought during an incident is your framing of the experience for later reenactment, are you really having that experience? In one of his Woody Allen film reviews, Ebert says that the Allen character lives only to talk about living. Even this thought popped up in my head while I was thinking about this post. It's all so convoluted inside that its impossible to have a firsthand, unadulterated, virgin experience anymore. Real is not interesting. And even if it is, it is only because of its association with something we've read or seen before.

.. literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters... -Gone Girl

The helpful thought for which you look is written somewhere in a book -Edward Gorey 

I kept looping four keywords in my head while walking back home: Cause and Effect, Claustrophobia, Cartesian Self and the thoughts of writing this post in the process of collecting material for it. And then hovering over all that was DFW's image (actually Jason Segel in DFW Avatar with that benign smile), which I took to interpret as my ideal image to become: of a genius, self-effacing, interesting, funny, pithy essayist a la the writer of To Consider the Lobster and Other Essays. What a book. He's so bloody alive on the page. I'm pretty sure the Maine Lobster Festival isn't half as good as he makes it out, even after applying Hofstadter Law here.

So yeah, to elaborate on those topics, I don't really believe in Cause & Effect. Probably too little Indian Philosophy, too much Nassim Taleb. As much as I tried telling myself that I ought to take care of my health, ensure I'm not treated like a malfunctioning machine in the future, I also thought of Moni Mama and how a non-smoking, teetotaling, extremely disciplined man had to suffer all that he did. Not only is it unjust in a cosmic sense but also utterly bizarre. That's the thing about life: Heads it wins, Tails you lose. You can never win it, can never figure out the game because its so unjustly balanced against you. Consider them rules sacred and you are constantly tempted to trespass. Take them flippantly and you'll be left adrift in the middle of the ocean.

Yes, I felt slightly claustrophobic because of the close proximity of the doctor and the nurse limited my vision, and their hands affected my breath but it had more to do with my helplessness in that situation. Fittingly, I was reading Venkat Rao's Breaking Smart Season 1 before going in, and the episode I was reading was talking about the eternal ubiquity of the internet and how its almost impossible to get off the grid atleast for a while. For all the good internet's doing (I'm a fan, seriously), I guess it's also making us less nimble in the real world. It's an obvious side-effect but in times like these, when you are in an uncomfortable situation, left with just your thoughts, the pining for a phone or a tablet really shows. There's a fantastic video where Louis CK (that master commentator of first-world urban living) talks about how this connected world is making us feel more secure at a surface level but making us lonelier and insecure deeper within.

The tooth splintered into 3 pieces before they pulled it out and as I saw the blood soaked thing lying on the table, I tried to analyse if that pulled out tooth was taking some part of me with it, but apart from the uncomfortably numb physical void, I don't think I really felt a part of me was gone. Which reminded me of this very interesting Daniel Dennett essay which I'm yet to finish. I was talking to Amma the other day about Zen Poetry (ofcourse, as usual, I presume I know more about it than I actually do) when I mentioned what they say about expanding yourself to envelope the rest of the universe, or annihilate the circle of the self to fuse with the other.. I forgot why I started this sentence (Amma'd come to give medicines and this thought bloody fizzed out). Anyway, thanks to the painkiller and the sedative, I'm dazed, which is why I was able to write all this in a flow after a long time. Writing's become a chore of late, something to live upto and its in times like these, when there's no unnecessary meddling on the path between thought and type, that it feels really exhilarating.

All writing is a frozen capsule of space-time. The reshaping of certain experiences sculpted by the time/ mood of writing. But equally importantly, when the gaze of the reader falls on it, it becomes something else entirely: an indelible fragment of that space-time. We don't write, the writing comes to us. And that's all we know about it. I feel good today, slightly buzzed, masochistically pleased about going through the pain to reach this feeling (Fuckall protestant work ethic is the way of our times), and happy about getting my ass down to blog. Thoughts are fantastic, until they strangle you. Today's not one of those days.

On Trivikram Srinivas, again

I was contacted a few months ago by a lady who was working with Trivikram to set up his official website. She had stumbled across this blog while searching for anyone who wrote on Trivikram and we had a couple of long telephonic conversations where she told me how there was more to Trivikram than was evident from his films and that that website was going to act as a two-way channel- for Trivikram to discuss things that were close to his heart and for his fans to approach him with their thoughts and opinions.

Given that I am excited with any serious discussion of Telugu Cinema and Literature, I loved the idea, especially since Trivikram has always been very vocal about his literary leanings and since this lady, Indira, was a journalist who seemed very passionate about Trivikram. I also introduced her to Neo, who I knew was as big a Trivikram fan as anyone. We had a few brain-storming discussions as to what sort of sections were to be included and I'd requested for a long Art of Fiction like conversation with the man himself.

For some reason the project fell apart, though the website is live now. She'd asked me to give her content for the About page, and I was sent quite some material and a deadline of two days. And the following is what I wrote. Admittedly, there are whiffs of sycophancy, particularly because I knew Trivikram was going to read and approve it, but most of the feelings were true; Atleast at one point in time. I still admire Trivikram for the work he's done and the image he's built, but mostly because he brought a certain respectability to intellect in an industry where oligarchic idiots rein. And for making writing sexy.

To Trivikram Srinivas: Maatala Mantrikudu, Sahitya Pipaasi, Gaddamunna Medhavi.

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About

Akella Naga Srinivas, popularly known as Trivikram, is among the most popular and acclaimed filmakers working in the Telugu Film Industry, Tollywood. Hailed by his legions of admirers as 'Maatala Mantrikudu', or the Wizard of Words, he started his career in the film industry as a dialogue and screenplay writer, and soon became the most sought after scriptwriter in the industry. Known for his famous 'punch dialogues', where the exchange of words between characters resembles a rapid chess match, his popularity as a writer was unprecedented to the extent where for the first time ever audience flocked to the theaters not because of the hero or the director, but because of the writer.

Hailing from a middle-class Brahmin family, he brought a certain literary sensibility to his films, and though for the most part he has made family entertainers, an undercurrent of social criticism runs beneath the surface and his films deal with important issues like marriage, tradition, social hierarchy, godhood, familial bonds among other things. For an audience becoming increasingly alienated with the characters portrayed on screen, his scripts have become life-affirming elixir. His characters are everyday people, their conversations real and their issues and conflicts are handled with deserving gravitas.

Not just as a writer, but as a director too, Trivikram has been in the forefront of the change that Tollywood has been seeing in the last decade-and-a-half. His films are technically superior, comparable to World Cinema which he deeply admires, and the action sequences in his films are equivalent to Hollywood films. Apart from his prolific output as a writer and a director, he is also a lyricist and a much sought after public speaker.

All of this, though, does not do justice to his immense talent and his influence on the Telugu culture, and it is not an exaggeration to say that people will talk about his work for decades to come. It is said that the most infallible indicator of the influence of an artist's work is the impact it has on the everyday lives of the people in the society. Trivikram's writing has seeped so deeply into Telugu people's lives that his most iconic lines are less film dialogues and more freestanding aphorisms. And he continues to do more inspiring work.

His legacy is already assured. The words will live on.

On growing up

I'm beginning to understand why it's so hard to grow up. Growing up means taking responsibility for your actions. Its about thinking through before you act and then standing your ground no matter what the consequences. And that's tough. Like DFW said in that convocation speech, its way easier to cede control to your subconscious persona and act on your default mode. It takes way more conscious effort, at every juncture in your life, to mould yourself and your life into something that is built on a foundation of principles. For all that's wrong with the universe, you have infinite control to change it, ever so slightly, into a world you want to inhabit. But that'd mean admitting you have free will, that you're not just a amalgamation of zillions of self-interested microorganisms. That you as an entity have power over your id, your fate, the gods. And I'm not sure if we can ever convince ourselves if we have freewill. Because not only is it easier to say we don't, but it also makes more sense. If you were born as a different person, at a different place, at a different time, and maybe in a different universe, wouldn't your principles and ideals be different. Then, doesn't it mean that the morals and virtues that you want to uphold are plain arbitrary? On the other hand, I could argue that since I was born here and now, and see some qualities and actions as worthy of honour and respect, I need to maintain them to be a better man myself.

Beneath all the layers of public guises and self-deceits lies a man who wants to be good. A strong man. An honest man. A man with integrity. A good man. The Chuck Lanes and Eddard Starks and James Donavans and Rahul Dravids are so idealized because they stand for something they believe in and do not let go even when a storms lashing at them. I also want to add Ivan Locke to that list. Yes, Tyrion is way more interesting but at the end of the day, he's a man who doesn't respect himself. He probably admires his own intelligence and is fond of his quick wit but would he trust Tyrion if he was somebody else? As much as I tell myself that I'm ruled by a power beyond my control, call it the subconscious or fate or just sheer bloody randomness, there's a part inside that refuses to believe it. That mocks me saying its an excuse I'm making to get away being half-good.

As much as I keep saying I don't know, I actually do at some level. Saying I don't know is liberating, it gives us access to do things our better selves warn us against. Saying I don't care, is in its own way, freeing as well. It protects us from heartbreak and failure. In a culture where insouciance is celebrated and the passionate are taken for fools, which come to think of it might not be such a bad idea considering the kind of idiots who are most vocal, it is indeed a tough task to be righteous ( as far as you're concerned atleast ) all the time. From what I've divined about the 1950s America from the movies I've seen, young men were taught to be loyal, brave, patriotic and to keep a check on their emotions. In a word, to be men of duty. And that is more or less what the Art of Manliness advocates. Undoubtedly, it is a romantic notion of what a man should be but how can we continue living without working towards becoming something that we love and cherish. From the Prahaar-infused warrior-heroism imaginations of childhood, to the Roark-esque ideal of purely rational individualism, to the late teen dreams of living the writerly high life a la Garcia Marquez, to the recent Lebowski justified mixture of hedonism and indifference, the idea of who I want to be has kept changing. And just because I know it will change sometime in the future, it's not an excuse enough to not think and understand what I want to be now, from this point in life. And the answer, unequivocally, is to be a good man. A family man. A man of the society. A man committed and responsible. A man who can be entrusted with important tasks. A man who thinks before he says and sticks to his word. A man doing the best he can no matter what the circumstances. From a passionate man to a prudent man. Is it a compromise? It could be argued it is. But all of us, at most times, are compromising. If being a certain way because that's expected by the people who love you and who you love is a compromise, I guess that's okay. And trade-off is the only truth of life. You want something, you let something go. Is that a sacrifice? Only as much as shedding an avatar to get into the new one.

All this reminds me of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. There's character called Sabina who prefers to treat life with a certain lightness, irresponsibility if I may. Because order frightens her with its rigidity, she consorts to chaos. Because responsibility chains her up, she betrays all those who love her. And about halfway into the book, when she's in a time and a place where she's emancipated from her past and future, where's she's literally free to be anything again, she feels a void. And Kundera writes wonderfully about how a freedom with nothing to fight against, with nothing to fight for, is like an abyss. And though I'm not claiming any sort of enlightenment, considering how short my epiphanies usually last, I'm hoping this'll be a new direction. To try, for a few days atleast, to live a life less ruled by whim and more by ideals. To let the Super-ego draw the boundaries in which the Id can be unleashed. To be my own bloody man.

January Diaries

This was the stuff of my childhood memories. Friends and conversations and food and laughter. And recounting about old, funny memories one more time. We missed Anirudh a lot yesterday. It was fun. This is what grownups do, right. I wish those guys were in India. Its amazing that we're able to be like that. After marriages and immigrations and lost opportunities and new experiences. But it was also bittersweet. Growing up has been disappointing so far. Mostly when childhood wishes aren't fulfilled. Sometimes because they do get fulfilled and you think, this is it? This is all? Why am I not ecstatic? Isn't this what I always dreamed of? --The context is our dinner with Usha Varun a week after their marriage.

Few things are comparable to the feeling of coming home after a long, hard day at work and taking a steaming hot shower. Relaxing doesn't even come close to it. If, like it is said, a man wakes up in the morning and walks into the war with the world, with every interaction being a battle, to come back home, having given it all and knowing today is one of those days when your effort wasn't wanting, that hot shower makes you feel alive and proud of yourself. Reminds me of that story in 6th class Gulmohar textbook when Jim Corbett writes about how coming back home to a hot bathtub after a hard day in the mines is the best feeling in the world.

I was disappointed by Anomalisa. I couldn't believe any film made by Kaufman and whose trailer opened with, "What is it to be human? What is it to ache?" could be so flat and devoid of feeling. It didn't help that my favourite 'good man' of Cinema, David Thewlis, who's Remus Lupin and Hospitaller mark him, for me, as one of those rare actors who convey a feeling of pure goodness, dubbed for the mean, egoistic protagonist.

Is it just me or do you also compare your lives with those who you wish you were. Like, there are times, when I'm just sitting there, my brain unable to process anything, that this thought hits me suddenly. That at this point in their lives, Farhan Akhtar and Wes Anderson were already working on their first films. I know there's no point fixating about things like those. That Richard Linklater was past thirty before starting work on Slacker. And Charlie Kaufman past forty before Being John Malkovich gained him such critical acclaim. And yet I can't help but think if I'm doing something wrong, if I'm not heeding to the signs, walking the wrong route, being a slacker. But I can't help it. If I have nothing to say when I'm twenty-five, I might when I'm forty. Or I mightn't ever. I don't want to end up creating empty art. Its insulting to both the art form and the audience. All I can do is go with the flow and hope I'm going where I'm expected.

They say you start reading Proust when you encounter your own mortality for the first time. Knowing that you too will die one day, despite everything, pushes you into contemplating what is special about you, what is unique about the life you've lived. And we put away all great books to read when we have time. But, paradoxically, we have time when we're starting out on life, not towards the end.

I signed up for MOOCs in CyberSecurity and Machine Learning. CS is pretty tough because its way outside my purview but ML is fun. I've been reading about Social Graph and I think its pretty cool. I think our brains also store information like that, all entities connected somehow, and when that final piece in understanding something falls into place, there's that sense of Aha! at the Big Picture view. Though how the brain builds a self-aware system from all those connections is the bigger question.

My Goodreads is flooding with books. I sign up for more MOOCs than I can possible complete even if I was doing just them all day, and later un-enroll feeling bad about my indiscipline and lack of commitment. I was reading recently that humans are not built for multi-tasking. That every time we complete a task, our brain squirts dopamine into the bloodstream which makes us feel good about ourselves. Now the problem with multi-tasking is that we start craving for instant gratification over sustained progress because the dopamine release is same despite the importance or level of achievement. Which, come to think of it, kinda sucks because we spend more time signing up for new things than completing the ones we ought to. The feeling of excitement at the prospect of beginning a new book is way higher than the relief and accomplishment of finishing it. Which is probably why the idea of starting something over, from a fresh page, is so powerful.

To take this idea further, think about the idiom, Well begun is half done. It means, "Once a project is well begun, you do not need much effort to finish it." And from all my experiences, I know it is not true. In that sense. It holds, in a perverse way, for all those tasks which were started with utmost sincerity and were dropped halfway through. Beware of the writer who sets his table, gets his coffee, disconnects from the internet, looks appreciatively at the stack of white papers and starts rolling one into the typewriter. Five minutes later, he is so restless that he has to pee, get coffee, go to the dentist, and wonder why he is such a loser. I can attest to that. Life is one messy whole, and no matter what we choose to believe in, it will be that. You can't start over, you can't transform, you can't wait for inspiration. You just have do what you want to do. In that sense, God is chaos and man is trying to find order within it. He's trying to fight against envy, temptation, mal du siecle. And like mythology teaches us, the gods will throw all they can at us. Which is a good thing because we'll stop doing what we think we need to be doing because others are, and do what we are meant to be doing. Having god against me teaches me more about myself than if he were with me.

GRRM writes, "He who hurries through life, hurries through death". And we're in an incessant pursuit of a 'better' life. But instead, only if we could sit down for a while and let life take over, wouldn't that be so much better. A man's baser instincts are the beast within. His conscious voice is the human. One is always trying to convince the other. But if only he stood in the middle of an empty field, and listened to the wind, and caressed the grass, he'd know what he really wants. That sounds like a good idea.

just wanted to say something.. anything

Time's flying. Fuck man. Its 4 years, 2 days to the day Kishore and I walked into Persistent Systems' offices, with high spirits and dreams of a colourful future. So much's happened, and nothing's really changed. I still love the same girl, I still work in IT, I still dream about making a film, Amma and I still have those long discussions, I still have great friends. Thatha's not around anymore but I guess we've gotten used to it. I dream about him a lot though, especially since the last few months.

I've been thinking about what exactly art is. Deliberately shaped in a series of drafts and it's a product. Just the first draft and its indulgence. I guess we need art to feel less lonely, to give us an escape route from the illegible mundanity of everydayness. I don't know. But I guess an average man is not an aesthete anymore. We've become consumers, from critics. Passive witnesses to active participants. We laugh half-heartedly, understand little, rarely go beneath the surface, sleepwalk through most days, never question, fear love, frown upon fantasy and strangle imagination. I don't know if civilization does this to you but I'd like to believe it was better in the past. Poetry was a way of life. Now we're content to be automatons. Free thinkers were prized, now they're accused of being deluded.

I used to share almost everything here once. Now I don't care. Nothing seems new or exciting or worth sharing. I tell myself, who the fuck wants to read this shit. Nobody cares. Everybody wants to make sense of his own life. No, not everybody, I guess.

I liked Tamaasha a lot. Rahman's music makes everything seem all the more special. I'm loving Paul Cronin's Herzog on Herzog. What a guy Herzog is. Philosopher, athlete, warrior, hustler, poet. That book is probably the 21st century equivalent of Aristotle's Metaphysics, where he asked What is the best way to live? Fuck I know about Aristotle. I'm just mouthing words I heard from tertiary sources.

I can see myself turning into a grownup and I hate it. Maybe its inevitable. And to be fair, its pretty organic. But I can't believe that the cynical, cruel, sinful man that's staring back at me from the future is me. I'm unable to give up on the pleasures of the past as easily as others seem too. The past is way more secure, more cozy, more predictable, sweeter, beautiful. The future might be better but I don't really want to leave the shore. I don't want to build a better life elsewhere, I'm happy with what I have.

Which, infact, might be the biggest gulf between us. She wants to see, to travel, to explore, to embrace the possibilities of the wide open world. I'd rather not have something than lose it. When you won't accept something new into your life, you will never be sad when it eventually, and inevitably, leaves you, right? I know its not a fantastic life but I'm a man of modest ambitions and limited needs. I'd live contentedly in a Malgudi or a Macondo than take a space shuttle and fly to Mars. Leaving something is so painful that I'd rather not even have it.

I don't know if any of it really makes sense. Back to good old blogging days when I ranted and let the stream-of-consciousness be. But this isn't art. Its everything art oughtn't be- boring and conceited and stupid and definitely does not celebrate the human spirit. Except its real and honest.

Why should anybody give a fuck though. Sucks.

The true story of Satya

This was one of Anurag Kashyap's posts on his PassionForCinema blog. My favourite. Now the site is down but I retrieved this from the wayback machine. His posts on No Smoking and In defence of the 'I' are great reads too.
For all the Ramu/ Anurag/ Vishal/ Manoj/ Gulzar saab fans out there-

Satya - The True Story by Anurag Kashyap

There never was a bound script..i did not write the whole film..nobody did..there i a whole lot of myth surrounding the film..it happened..like every other great film..like sholay happened..no individual created Satya..passion did..most of which came from ramu..his being open to moments, ideas, to instincts, created it..it was a different time..it was a different Ramu..

How it began..Ramu was making Daud..there was a new actor he was working with..it was manoj bajpai..i was there when he took that shot of Paresh going crazy and Manoj appearing from behind the door..Ramu fell in love with the shot..he fell in love with the actor..he fell in love with his intensity..he wanted to make an underworld film with him..he wanted to put Howard Roark in the underworld..thats how Satya started..

I met him..Manoj introduced him to me..i was supposed to be writing a film for Mahesh Bhatt which never got made..it was called GIRVI..Ramu asked me “have i read fountainhead..i had..i was an ayn rand fanatic then..i was twenty three..i said “yeah”..he said lets put him in the underworld..i said “wow”..he also had an ending in mind which he remembered from some James Hadley Chase novel..that ending remained..Howard Roark didn’t..

i started working on it ..he asked me how much money i wanted..i didn’t give a fuck about money..then..so i said “whatever’..we began work..whatever we wrote was not ther in the final film..anyways..after we started work Ramu left for Newzealand to shoot songs for DAUD..he disappeared from my life for two months..i thought this is not going nto happen..it was november 1996..February i got a call from him.. no mobile phones at that time..i had a pager..he paged me..he was serious..we made a one line order..Ramu has always worked with an one line order..never a script..this time he wanted a script..i still remember that first one line order..the opening scene was to be shot under the Milan subway..it never happened..

after the one line order was locked in..he wanted it to be written..he didn’t trust me with dialogues..he thought i was too young for it..he met vijay tendulkar for it..Ramu has been a fan of his since ardhasatya..

Vijay tendulkar wasn’t well..he wanted someone more mature..those days alot of people were talking about how Saurabh Shukla had done dialogues for ISS RAAT KI SUBAH NAHIN..saurabh has always brushed it off as just rumour..i had heard that too..but i knew him as a sometime playwrite from Delhi..i spoke about him to Ramu..Ramu offered him a double deal..to play Kallu Mama and write dialogues along with me .. he was to be the boss in that department..we were sent to Hyderabad..on his farmhouse..Ramu’s..At the Mumbai airport saurabh arrived late..he had the tickets..we missed the flight..we took the next one..

we worked more than a week ..we wrote something that looked and sounded like a script..we went back..we started shooting..we began in Goregaon with the chase sequence..the beginning chase..Gerard Hooper was the cameraman..i think i am jumping ahead..lets go back to naming the characters and casting..
but later..have a shoot in the morning..imagine doing this in the middle of my shoot..probably because i met Ramu today..later..

Saurabh and me wrote a draft..he was simultaneously writing a play called KAAL..after we finished we came back to bombay..another thing i forgot to tell you..when saurabh met Ramu for the first time and Ramu narrated him what he had in mind..Saurabh spontanously came up with that scene where bhiku comes back home drunk and shefali slaps him and he slaps her back..Ramu was so goddamned impressed with him..

When we were thinking how do we name our characters..Ramu called his boy to make coffee for us..he said “Bhiku teen coffee”..and i said nice name..Satya was named after a woman called Satya..Someone Ramu knew back in college days..He just wanted her to know that he still rememberred her..Ramu was an engineering student..in some naxalite area in Andhra..then, when ever he got into trouble, he would strike a brucelee pose and make a eeyah sound to defend or protect himself..atleast thats what he told me..slowly all characters fell into place..

Ramu’s screenplay writer of Daud had been to Boston University Film Course..Gerard Hooper taught Cinematography there..he still teaches there..his two students made “THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT”..the writers name was KANNAN..kannan recommended Gerry..as he was fondly called..
We started shooting somewhere in August 1997..three days of shooting..third day we were shooting..it was that sequence where Sushant Singh came to collect hafta from satya and satya refuses and slashes him..the way sushant reacted..he improvised or i didn’t know what..Ramu reacted in a way i never saw him reacting..he said now i know what my film is all about and he trashed the script me and Saurabh wrote..he fucking trashed it..he also cancelled shooting the next day and guess what.. Gulshan Kumar was shot dead..Ramu stopped shooting..Underworld equations had changed..script needed to go through a change.. somedays after that was Daud’s release..i remember..because it rained so much that day that noone could reach the premiere venue on time..anyways..Daud bombed..i still fucking loved it..I thought Neeraj Vora rocked in that film..

So Ramu threw our script in the bin and we started rewriting script..Ramu always treated me like a kid..he was fond of me but never took me seriously..i was the kid in the gang..only other kid was Apoorva Asrani..the editor..Bhiku Mhatre’s laughter was never written into the film..he just laughed one day when we were shooting at his fictitious house in bandra..we loved it so much that it became his character..The first day we shot with the lawyer Mule..Makrand deshpande ,who played the character overacted so nmuch,the scene was never kept in that film..it was the scene where chandar appears in court..just before “goli maar”song..Mule was shown sleeping in the court..his Yawn was louder than Shakti kapoor..it just did not work.. at that time goli maar was not even ther in the film..the whole party sequence was shot on “Mera piya ghar aaya oh Raamji”..later the songs came into the film..Goli maar song had a different version..it went“gham ke neeche bam laga ke gham uda de”..sung to the same tune..Gulzaar sahab wroteb “goli Maar”..we all including Ramu and Vishal prefeered the GHAM version..but who would tell it to Gulzar sahab..i was known to be blunt, so they chose me to tell it to Gulzar sahab..next meeting with him ..they took me along ..and i said “sir gum work nahin karta” and he said,”Gum nahin gham,Pehle bolna seekho” andi was out of discussion..everyone agreed to Goli maar and thank god they did..what a song..