Happy Birthday!

Most of us send and receive more New Year’s wishes than Birthday ones. In less than three hours I would finish two dozen years of my life. Since I hardly got any New Year’s greetings I expect very few people outside of my family and pet to acknowledge this feat of mine and congratulate me. Not that it’s a huge cause of concern for me, and I am not going to exploit this to vent out some serious angst.

Maybe this is what it means to grow old. I’m hardly excited about tomorrow being the 24th of January at all. There was a time when January itself meant gifts, and cakes, and a party. And in college it involved treats and huge quantities of alcohol. Right now I don’t feel anything about tomorrow, which makes writing this post fairly difficult.

So I’ll just resort to much randomness…

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If any of you have been waiting to read about the U-tab, well, I don’t know… Initially I was so kicked about the stories that I considered not putting them up lest the ideas were stolen by devious scouts from major Hollywood studios. I can’t spend the rest of my life suing people. But then I grew lazy, and then even more so. However, when the trickle of traffic that makes it to slowtum-yayaya began to dry completely I sprung into creative action. Only to realize that even though my ideas were fairly interesting, I didn’t know how to put them into words very well. So the project has been postponed. I promise to put the post up soon. In the meantime, an excerpt –

Johnny Depp said that he used the tab on a visit to India. He spent almost a year living in a slum in India as a penniless traveler. Then he returned to his French villa but carried back the person he became while he was there… This helped him remain true to his character in Shantaram during the one year of filming, as he would have long conversations and spend entire days with the lonely wanderer from India captured inside the tab. And much to the delight of RSA the makers of the U-tab, he attributed his Oscar for Shantaram to their invention. Of course psychologists blame Depp’s bizarre use of the tab for his recent depression and anti-social behavior. (He sent his tab and an output docket to collect the Oscar, along with a note that said, Give it to him, he wanted it, I didn’t. So in his Oscar speech Johnny, wearing an Orange cotton kurta and sporting a dirty long beard apologized for not being there in person.)

So that’s that. Hopefully the rest of it will see the light of the day…

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Hmm – as I turn 24, I am fighting back certain truths of my life and at the same time maybe getting used to them. It seems more and more unlikely that I will eventually make movies someday. I am growing increasingly comfortable with my job, liking it often. The money is an even bigger comfort and a growing addiction too. Yes there is this great faith in myself that someday I’ll just snap out of this. But that faith is dwindling bit by bit. But that’s fine; it’s not making me unhappy or anything. Oh, also I think I am losing a lot of hair, and that I may not actually be sleeping with 20 women before I am 25 as was the plan mutually agreed upon by us friends at school. Also my body has been sending out dangerously firm suggestions that I might have to start excercising, get further root canal treatments, and use exercise and not hostel grub as a means of avoiding an ugly paunch.

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The last month or so has been crazy – it feels like I have been held by my ankles and spun around in the wildest possible manner. Things have come and gone and I have sat through them dazed, reacting appropriately but without much thought. To make matters worse all this happened along with some serious travelling.

Patna – Calcutta – Delhi – Patna

Patna – Delhi – Patna

Patna – Lucknow – Calcutta – Mumbai – Cochin – Kumarakom – Cochin – Mumbai – Delhi – Patna

Patna – Calcutta - Patna

The sheer variety of experiences and location makes the last month seem much longer than it actually was. There was much joy, alcohol, meeting up, tension, life altering moments (near), boredom, fear, guilt, gluttony, transit, bitterness, anger, luxury, fighting…

Desperately need things to slow down.

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There is a strange skill I have, which I slowly developed into a way of life. For as long as I can remember I have carefully segregated the events of my life, and its acquaintances from one another. I guess everyone indulges in this a bit, but I am certain that the precision and severity with which I compartmentalize my life, the ease with which it comes to me and the extent to which I take this sets me apart. I don’t know why I am talking about it, surely not to sound deep and intelligent. (I swear!) This actually leads to very funny situations. For example I go to great lengths to keep different sets of friends completely exclusive. I lie, I plot and I connive and sometimes it gets all too confusing and then I blame it on being absent minded. I don’t really know why I do it, maybe because I am a different person with each separate group of people, and I like that. For example I am this really dedicated, hard working and enthusiastic actor when I meet some people and with others I am just a regular bum. I am both, actually, sometimes both together, and sometimes neither, but if the two sets of friends were to meet then I’d have to give up one personality of mine. I even noticed I have a different tone with each group of people. Hmm maybe everyone does this, but only I choose to give it so much thought and then mention it on my blog?

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Why is it that as an art form, Cinema is most mutilated? I mean most people think (with significant legitimacy) that Cinema is actually a medium for entertainment and not really art. Well that’s not a debate I want to enter – I think it is something that needs to be decided by the director of the film. He needs to decide what the purpose of his movie is and why he is involved in it. I guess the reason most films are closer to entertainment than art is mostly economic. Cinema when compared to photography, writing, painting, sculpture, design etc. is probably on average the most expensive medium. In the sense that on average a decent movie costs more to make than any painting, photograph or a book. I am sure Titanic even in constant money terms was a more expensive venture for Mr. Cameron than any of Picasso’s painting. (Ok I am thoroughly clueless about how much a painting could cost, though I’m certain 5000 rupees is sufficient for a huge canvas of great quality. Yet, my hands are trembling after I made that comparison, art aficionados forgive me if my statement is flawed, plus it is of no consequence to the point I eventually want to make.)

Now, what I mean to say is that not only did Picasso have to buy only a little paint, a few brushes and a canvas and sit in a rented studio or just at home sipping coffee while he painted the Guernica, he didn’t have to care whether his servant or the barber down the street understood the nuances of analytic Cubism or the touches of Symbolist influence in his work. A painter needs one person to understand his work and he gets paid handsomely. He needn’t create a product that is understood and liked by as many people as is possible. For the director of a movie this is a continuous headache.

And therefore Titanic must come with packaged with a love story, and therefore we must live with a continuous stream of trashy senseless cinema.

I don’t know is there an economic solution to this. What if a director were to make a movie and then just release one copy like a painting or maybe only five? Say it’s Wong Kar Wai or the Coen brothers or some other fancier director like Kieselowski – what if they release just one DVD of their movie? Wouldn’t it go for a lot? And then the movie could be played in select theatres just like a painting travels across museums?

Or maybe we needn’t release movies in all theatres. What if movies by top directors were released only in a few theatres where they ran for only a week at very expensively priced tickets? And the director’s toured with their films just like playwrights do?

Hmm I guess this is fanciful, but it’s unfair for just one art form to be subjected to the vagaries of economics in this manner, for only cinema to depend on mass approval. What is most heart breaking is that this is what I would want to do. Why is it not painting or singing that makes me happy?

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Cooking is about the most enjoyable thing I do these days. Just made Dhansak; well only the caramelized rice part of it. Hmm it’s about the only thing I do these days which grabs my attention entirely for as long as I do it. Tomorrow there will be time for some Awadhi delights.

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Less than two hours now; I will be 24 when I wake up. Not going to proof read this… too tired. Sorry folks. And by the way three people have already wished me – kind of. So I break the trend of more New Years vs birthday wishes..