For those who don’t know: Sawai Gandharva is a music festival started by Pt. Bhimsen Joshi as a dedication to his guru – Sawai Gandharva. It’s now a 56 year old tradition. The greatest of musicians perform here. The genre is purely Indian classical. About 15000 people attend the festival every year, but it could be much more. The festival has grown to be larger than life. It’s also interesting to hear the conversations of people around you, they know their artists and talk about their idiosyncracies, they also know their music. It’s an experience worth taking and revisiting.

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Thank you A & H for introducing me to this.

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While there, i wrote a few music scapes. Haven’t edited them much. So execuse the mistakes.

Here they are:

During the performance of the brothers Rajan & Sajan Mishra (vocals)

The casual droning of the tanpura muffles the voices of a soulless melody that emanates from the heart and reaches the Fingertips.
God lets man supersede him at times. Reluctance of being a man falls apart. Bit by bit it becomes the beats of a tabla. Accompanying the tanpura they leave the man they occupy. They become what lesser mortals will never be.
Ants – They Crawl over what remains, releasing a sigh that grows into a moan. A moan that slowly grows wings and flies. And in its flight it meets another bird, another bird that’s emanated from dead skin, a hint of desperation and a rhetoric gone mad.
Together they fliy over a sea, a sea that has been thirsty for years. They are the bashirs of a never ending rain. But it is still far – the droplets will take their own time to come. For now there is only hope. But unlike before, this hope comes with a promise. The birds Slowly land on to the parched land. And wait in peace.
For only when war is over, will man see who he really is.
The rain will come.

During the performance of the brothers Rajan & Sajan Mishra (vocals)

The dust gathers dust
It’s been a while since someone has even been here
Centuries may be
Seth was last seen here
May be this is what he saw
And decided to be the progenitor of mankind
He too had seen hatred
brother killing brother
He Foresaw The bleakness
he also foresaw the beauty
A Beauty that
Even Methusaleh couldn’t have managed to see in all his llfetime
A beauty that would need at least a billion lives
And yet
The eyes would be hungry
The ears unsatiated
He would have to risk a hundred  Kanes
Killing a billion Ables
For the few SethS
Who would assimilate this beauty
And use it
To recreate paradise
The few Seths who would die a billion times
And a hundred More…
And Survive..

During the performance of Ronu Muzumdar (flautist)

The bird soars high
Slowly but surely
Sure of  What it’s doing
Sure of the eventuality
Sure of its proximity to the sun
Sure of its descent
Sure Of its eXtraordinary fate
UnKnowing of the outcome
the higher it flies
The lonelier the illusion
The emptier the arena
What it seeks?
A desert  in the sKY
For its death is foretold
But its life still a mystery

During the performance of Pandit Jasraj (vocals)

An opening in the sky
A ray of light passes through
Banished from the Kingdom
It seeks to find a meaning
A meaning so ordinary
So simple
That
The puzzle is solved
But what mystifies the man whose eye it enters is the need for demystification
Thus the puzzle is passed on
Only its form changes
an incessant cooing of the cuckoo catches the man’s ear
In an attempt  to find the beholder
The ray of light leaves his eyes.
It travels thru the branches of a tree
Who embraces its very being and breaks it into a million pieces
Thus the puzzle prospers
It blooms and bears pollen
Travels on the back of a bee
And discovers honey
For what it thinks is sweet death
Is but humiliation
A theft of freedom
It desires to break free once again
It counts a million moments
And then jumps into a cup reluctantly
Trying to enjoy its freedom between two cages
The last it remembers is hot water flowing over it and the gentle aroma of camomille
Which picks its burnt soul
And rises
And resuscitates it
The awakening-
The cloud opens up…
An angry demeanor hides the wisdom
And lets A ray escape
Another puzzle bears wings
A potter awaits,
the clay is wet …

The movie fails for me because it is a piece of fiction. I wish it had touches of an Indian rock band. Say a Parikrama or an Indian Ocean, even if it was loosely based on them. But it wasn’t and then it became more a hindi movie than a movie based on rock music.

The music itself was disappointing. Making a hindi rock song is probably as difficult as writing a ghazal in english. So I feel for the crew. To expect Shankar – Ehsaan – Loy, Farhaan Akhtar and the likes to aspire to be Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, or Led Zepp and to even come remotely close to them is probably harsh. I did that and I was disappointed. I was also disappointed with Javed uncle’s poetry. (Javed uncle has heard me read at Oxford bookstore and I have high regard for him. My usage of the term uncle is a mark of respect and I don’t attempt to make fun of him. He has written great poetry and will continue to do so.) My disappointment ofcourse was the music and the lyrics weren’t going well together. I actually liked everything that other bands were singing than Magic themselves.

Also the name Magic for a band is exceptionally lame. And it’s reasoning is a very hindi movie reasoning. What the director forgot is probably the meaning of a ROCK Musician. Rockstars have auras about them, the only person who manages that faintly in the movie is Arjun Rampal. A hindi movie on a rock band is a disconcerting thought. By Hindi movie, I mean the mainstream movie makers like the Chopras and the Johars. They know it as well as me that they are not making movies, they are doing business.

And yet I liked the movie. I am a weird person. There are reasons for it. The intentions were good. Debbie played by Shahana Goswami stole my heart. She was the true rockstar in the movie. The rest of it didn’t quite come together. We need to take lessons on making movies on music having influences like rock and rock and roll – That thing you do, Almost Famous, Across the Universe are good movies to start with.

This movie was half baked but probably served with love.

Chaitra is based on Tagore’s lyrical play and has sufi touches to it. Needless to say I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It was performed in two acts. One act was in the lobby and the second was in the theatre. The play was being shown inside Pune University at an auditorium called Namdeo Sabhagriha. The theatre was packed on both days and it just tells how beautiful an audience Pune has. Pune is probably culturally at par with Calcutta. Both the cities have an intellectual audience and love art. I am glad to be in this city.

In the first act I particularly liked the character of Kavi Rakhshasi Bhushan, played by a girl, playing man in a moustache, who for her dimunitive frame had a great throw of voice. In fact most of the students showed talent and the play was entertaining as well as thought provoking – like theatre of the absurd should be. Great team effort and it’s an absolute must watch.

Earlier in the day, I woke up from my afternoon siesta because of a loud bang. It almost felt like a bomb had exploded. But it was probably a cloud burst. Pune had heavy rainfall in the evening. I had bicycled to the auditorium. Oh! yes I have bought a bicycle . On the way back, I had to bicycle back in the rain.

As I was bicycling down a gentle slope of the university campus on a dark road with lots of rain splashin on my face, I wondered if that was what happiness in its purest form was. I was smiling and breathing through my mouth. Chaitra, which means Spring seemed to have paid a personal visit to me in another form.

I have always admired Batman for apparent lack of super-powers. But the movie – Dark Knight – reduced him to really a vain super hero. In this movie, he still has a nice bike and the best car ever made, a great utility belt and you almost feel he is a James Bond sans the women. What he completely lacks in the movie is good judgement. He is a reluctant super hero and almost pathetic at times. He would really be nothing if he didn’t have the butler or the gadget expert – Morgan Freeman with him. Even the letter that needs to be given to Batman, the butler decides to not give it to him and it is not his judgement call to know that it does not relate to him. No one seems to trust him with decisions. His ex-girlfriend seems to have seen the spiderman series and knows all about a super heroes fallibility. She forgets that spiderman has real powers. I hate how Batman is made to look in this movie, more like someone who takes orders, doesn’t even come out as a strategist.

The movies hero is undoubtedly the Joker character. It just seems that the movie is made around him and he is just playing with Batman, like a cat plays with a mouse. He creates so much mess and it seems without too much of trouble. And he still has the last laugh.

The movie is well made, but that is the least you can expect from a Batman movie. It fails at being a Batman’s movie.

It doesn’t seem like 3 years and the group in a way has experienced everything that a group of people does. But it’s still alive. 9 almost strangers came together and the only thing that bonded them together was writing.

Amongst us we cover the four corners of India and amongst us we have traveled to various parts of the world. We are largely an underground group but surface once in a while. Last weekend we surfaced at the Prithvi Cafe, showcasing some of our writings in an interesting manner.

Personally for me, it was a great privilege to be in the lap of Prithvi Theatre, not as an audience but as an artist. To talk to people about writing, share my writing, and try to sell it. I met a number of interesting people – from beautiful women who asked me to write poems for them to playwrights who expressed the possibility of working together. I discussed my fascination with the moon with a girl whose folks could never understand her fascination for the moon. Yes, one waits for conversations like that. I spoke to Dharini about how we could do this for a living. It didn’t feel real.

I am someone who procastinates till the last moment. I was rescued by my friends – Dahlia, Haribabu, Boy, Chandni & Neha, who not only helped me get my stuff ready by working all through Friday till early Saturday but stood like pillars when we faced a mini crisis. And amidst all this they would push me to do interesting things. The standards were raised and I for a while felt like the protagonist of a Hollywood sports movie, who literally rises from nowhere.

The days of the sale I felt numb. I wanted to feel happy and elated but I knew I had to wait for the event to get over to truly experience the elation at peace. It’s almost 3 days post the event and I am finally writing this post. I do feel the elation and a sense of achievement. But more than that I feel fulfilled that I was at Prithvi and I called myself a writer. It needs guts to stand in that mosque and call yourself a believer. Saturday morning  I spoke to Sanjana Kapoor as some things needed to be sorted out and I was curbing my excitement of talking to a lady that I have admired for a long time. She is a wonderful person – exceptionally wise and reasonable. I have seen Shashi Kapoor many a times at Prithvi and have whenever I smiled at him have always got one in return. It’s easy to fall in love with such people.

For the garage sale, we had put up many interesting pieces for sale. One of the things we had come up with was a poetry jhola, which consisted of poetry written by us. It was only thing that people could not pay and take away with them. For people to draw out a poem, they had to drop a 5 Rs coin in a jar. If they didn’t like the poem they could have the coin back. I would love it when people would draw out poems again and again.

The poetry jhola is still with me. I have kidnapped Dharini’s bag which is serving as the jhola. But I didn’t have the heart to separate the poems from it. I think they are comfortable in there. On an idle evening, it will be great to sit with a glass of wine and draw random poetry from it and read.

It has obviously jumped to my list of top ten movies. Which currently, in particular order are:
Amelie, Ratatouille, Pyasa, American Beauty, Life is Beautiful, Andaz Apna Apna, Little Miss Sunshine, Rashomon, Jaagte Raho, Guide.

Amelie feels like a grown up Alice from the wonderland. How did I miss the movie when it came?

I love how the movie is made, with so much tenderness and care, like a litte baby with minute needs.

Last few days have been an interesting mix. Had gone to the idea camp pune and came across some interesting ideas. Felt bad that techies are a little emotionally challenged when it comes to Social Change related ideas. Anyways I won’t mull about it. Otherwise the event was great and had some great ideas. As usual there were some ppl trying to promote their companies. I was responsible for something like that in one of the earlier camps and I detest myself.

Also saw Clockwork Orange. What a brilliant movie. Kubrick makes you feel like the protagonist.

Also reading – Shalimar the Clown – so far the book has been a pleasure to read. Rushdie is brilliant with words and with how he makes the book flow. Read Hari Kunzru’s ‘Transmission’ before this and the difference in the quality is so stark. Very disappointed with Kunzru. Makes me feel nice about my book. I should try publishing it.

So overall, life has been interesting – at least as far as books and movies go.

While we may love some of them and hate some of them for various reasons, we can’t really say that they do a bad job of making a movie. More often than not the movies by these directors are technically sound.

Then, what makes the movie, good or bad? More often than not it is the story. ‘What is being told.’ I have realized that I can’t stand what Karan Johar is telling me, hence I almost never like his movies.

Khuda Kay Liye is a movie that is not technically perfect. There are editing mishaps, and it comes out as a movie that feels amateurish.

But it is a story that says something very important. And it’s a movie that I will hold very close to my heart. There are a few extraordinary moments in the movie. There’s one where Mansoor has newly joined the Chicago School of Music, and as an introduction he is playing his kind of music (Hindustani classical mostly), and as he is playing everyone begins to play and sing along. By everyone I mean students from all over the world. The effect is amazing and touching – and signifies how music unites the world.

After Sidd, one of my friends, saw the movie, he urged me to see it. And told me that while it might not mean anything to most people, it would mean something to me. I marvel at how well Sidd knows me .

The movie does mean a lot to me personally. I am a Muslim, but as Altaf says, “I don’t wear religion on my sleeve.” I do go through phases where I offer prayers regularly and phases when I don’t. I have learned more about Islam through my mom, who comes from a Hindu family, than my dad, who is a muslim. I have learned more about it through trying to understand Gandhi than trying to understand Mohammed. This is probably a bold confession to make, but it is what it is. I also drink alchohol and may some day even eat pork. But no one has the right to question my faith other than God. “Yes, let’s take it up there,” will be my response. This is a stand that I have not developed overnight. It has been structured slowly and surely. After reading the Koran over and over. After reading the GIta. After perusing through the Bible.

The deal with religion is that everyone chooses to mould it in their own way. So have I. But I won’t preach. The movie highlights muslim clerics who instigate the youth by citing them religious scriptures (fyi – it is never the Koran). I find the fear of hell to be greater than the excitement of life amongst people and thus they are led to believing these clerics, who primarily preach baseless aspects. The movie also highlights one cleric, who is more progressive and who says that one needs to be muslim inside first than outside. Emulating the prophet is secondary, to follow what he believed in is primary.

I love how the movie highlights that everyone is wrong. And we should all bond by that fact. The only thing common between all of us is that we are all wrong and we should never assume that we are right because we will never know.

• The people who call themselves jehadi muslims are wrong. Because jehad is conquering one’s own ego not someone elses.
• The americans who say, “all terrorists are muslims” are wrong. There is an America that I love and there is small part that itself is terrorizing the world.
• The Indians who hate Pakistanis (and vice-versa) are wrong. You have had history, you were once lovers and you had a bad break up. But it’s past now, grow up.
• Hitler was wrong (most times). Gandhi was wrong (at least once)
• If you think you are right, you are most definitely wrong.

This will all be a paradox if I say, I am wrong. But that’s how our world has turned out to be.

I saw the movie at Pune. The auditorium wasn’t very big but it was full. I hope more people see it. The movie didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know but it will surely tell you a few things — particularly if you haven’t seen Islam from inside and outside, the way I have. The movie is dear to me, because it reassures my faith in the world.

One of my cousins has studied the religion formally. He knows the Koran by heart and he even understands the meaning in Arabic. We are about the same age and used to play together as kids. He leads prayers, sports the attire and wears a beard. He does not see TV and avoids photographs. I recently met him and joked with him. Took many pictures of his with my camera. When he complained, I told him that he is my friend first and then a maulana (priest). We are an interesting contrast, he hopes that I pray more often and I hope he sees things with his own eyes, make sense of them with his own mind and with simple common sense (which he does). I was reminded of him yesterday. I was also reminded of Gitika and how the world’s view on Islam disturbs her greatly. I can imagine her watching the movie and sobbing throughout.

See the movie if you haven’t.

Great performances  by the cast, I hope the troupe keeps performing. A few shows more and the crew will grow in chemistry thereby making it a totally outstanding play.

Post play, when I had a few minutes to myself, I began to think…

If I had the chance to live life again. Will I want to change anything about it?

My father studied Urdu as a child, something that I never did. But Urdu is very similar to Hindi and I realized that with a little bit of effort I could understand it. And so began my relationship with the language. I would read Urdu ghazals and short stories and would love how they would sound to the ears. The language has a rhytm of its own and it really is the language of love. If someone shouts or abuses in Urdu, it’s as sweet as an “How do you do?” (The way the English say it, without any real concern or expectation of an answer.)

I realize all that the English language has given me and understand how it has provided for my living and comfort. I do love it too and yet when I look at people who perform in Urdu, and how they make it seem so extraordinary, I can’t help but feel a little jealous. I could have been them, you know.

You would say, “it’s never too late to start.” But frankly I know I am someone else, a happy someone else maybe. But I think it would be interesting to go back in time, take to the language more keenly so today I wouldn’t be the person in the audience clapping in glee, but rather one on the stage performing. And may be I could write a few things of my own, fight for daily bread, wallow in penury… sigh!

I guess the circle of life has caught up with me, I have loans to pay.

I knew about the movie. And I saw the first show at an auditorium I love as soon as i realized it was playing.

You should watch it if:
- u love the beatles
- u love music
- u love someone (a dog or a cat even)

I have to make adjustments to my top 5 movies of all time, now that i have seen this movie. when the “let it be” song appears in the movie, i cry. (yes i will cry again when i see it again.) those who love giving me movies, should think about gifting me the dvd of this movie. or better still a divx version (big boy are you listening?)

people please go and see the movie, when a movie like this gets such a poor response my heart aches. it feels like there are only ppl in this world who see karan johar movies. if this continues, movies like these will stop coming to india and i will need to take up the profession of psychotic murderer. (hope i have scared you enough.)

do see the movie, am saying it nicely. just a request. see it before it disappears and i am guessing it will be this friday. i don’t see theatres keeping it on for more.

It’s a beautiful play. What’s remarkable about it is, it has been written by the director himself. For something that’s contemporary, it has a shine of brilliance to it. It is a musical. And it does not fail as a musical. In fact it is a musical with great music, with great choreography, with great drama, and great energy between the performers. It also has a lot of philosophy blended in with humor. I have not seen a more complete play since Charandas Chor by Habib Tanvir.

Go watch it, it is playing at Prithvi tonight (9 pm) and tomorrow night (6 & 9 pm). I have half a mind of going and watching it again.