IF YOU ARE A MALAYALI, YOU NEED TO SEE DRISHYAM

My head throbs from the blood rushing to it right now. It will probably give me a nasty headache at work tomorrow, tired for want of more sleep but I can’t not write this now. A film that had you rooted to your seat should get the praise it deserves. That’s the least a writer can do.

It is 2.15 am. I just finished watching Jeethu Joseph’s masterpiece called Drishyam and I am mind-blown.

The first half of the film is slow. No, call it draggy. Like chewing gum that has been in your mouth longer than you would prefer. I complained to my wife about the slow pace and the unreal, saccharine-sweet dialogues the protagonist Mohanlal and his wife shared.

Little did I know that this pace and tone was not only intentional but also meant to be the calm before the storm that the second half was going to be!

When the central plot of the story kicks in, the film develops automatic seatbelts and binds you. I was stuck to the floor as I watched it on my laptop (from an original DVD). I couldn’t pry my eyes off the screen as Lalettan masterminded the most brilliant game of chor-police I have ever seen.  

The Wikipedia page for the film modestly calls it a drama-thriller. The film is so much more! It is a fitting tribute to the world of cinema in general. It shows an illiterate but smart person who learns the ways of life from the number of films he consumes…no, devours every day…and often every night. His thoughts are from his movies, so is the voice in his head. His brain concocts devious plans based on learnings from all these films…all to protect his family from every danger he can foresee.

Director Jeethu Joseph has managed to eke out stellar performances from all his cast members. I am sure the crew was at its creative best too when they worked on this project. You will appreciate their hard work once you see the graph of your own opinion of the film go from base level to boss level.

I recommend Drishyam to you. I would love to spoil it for you but I won’t because I want you to experience this awesomeness by yourself. I will await your reviews and will wait to know if like me, your jaws dropped too when you realized why the construction of the new police station was so integral to the story.

Meanwhile, Mr. Joseph, you have a new fan.

Love for Clay

I discovered claymation with Taare Zameen Par’s dazzling claymation titling. Enamoured by it, I wanted to study under the man who had made it - Dhimant Vyas. While that did not materialize, I decided to make myself a clay selfie. It wasn’t too bad except that I looked inflicted by some serious skin and bone disease.

In college, I took a clay snake on a trek to Tungareshwar.

More of Saamp here - http://on.fb.me/1gVCjVz

Recently, Anthony had taken up a commercial project – a bunch of claymation films to promote a VoiP brand. Forever interested in claymation, I turned up at the set just for fun. I watched them shoot, ate free food and played with the leftover clay. I got to see tools that professional clay modellers use – nothing fancy but highly functional.

Spending time pressing the soft dough and watching the clay figures become the Shahrukh Khan and Madhuri Dixit of Anthony’s film one still at a time inspired me to start playing with clay regularly.

I set up a page called ‘A Lump of Clay’ with a seemingly philosophical bio that reads – ‘The world is changing and so is this lump of clay’. Every day, the lump becomes something new.

I started with a dice and went on to do some more. Do tell me what you think. See the rest on the Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/alumpofclay 

The Lump of Clay

                                      

Shakuni's best friend

Thinking of the grandfather of claymation - Pingu

About time we made our bones

Pheess

When you become old, your kids don’t talk to you much. Even your body stops listening to you.

Be nice to old people. 
They’ll appreciate it.

The Great Indian PM Shopping Festival came to an end today!

I got disappointment. What did you get?

Use this straw to have some thanda thanda paani -http://bit.ly/1qXNFMD

THE SINGING WELL

There was once a tiny radio.

The elders always called it transistor.

I don’t know why.

Its name was radio!

The radio was tiny but the sound it made was big.

So big, that if it was played in one end of the big house it was in, it could be heard at the other end!

The five sisters in the house loved the radio.

They would all sit together listening to songs while they helped their mother with her chores.

They would memorize the songs and sing along with it.

Sometimes, it would play even while they studied in the light that the kerosene lamps threw on their books.

The radio was their friend and companion.

There were books of course. And children’s magazines.

But if someone asked them who their best friend was, they would all say, RADIO!

There was no TV then. Or telephones.And no electricity.

But no one noticed because their radio was always there for them – to entertain them, to tell them stories from all over the world and to sing them to sleep.

One day after school, when they turned the radio on, it began to cough, stutter and stammer.

Father walked over to the radio and removed its batteries.

It had four huge batteries.

Father put in four new batteries and turned the radio on.

It groaned at first and then began to sing as usual.

“There. Your radio will never stop singing now,” he said.

The girls clapped their hands in glee.

One day, the girls put the radio on the wall of their favourite well.

Their house had three wells but this one was their favourite because they had seen it being dug and

there was a lot of room to run around near this well.

They were playing ball today.

Do you know what happened next?

That’s right.

While the girls were playing, the ball slipped out of a hand and fell on the ground.

But it did not stay there.

It bounced.

The girls looked at the ball with horror as it bounced towards the well.

And before they could stop it, the ball hit the radio and fell into the well.

Splash.

The radio moved and fell sideways into the well too.

SPLASH!

The five girls ran to the well but the radio was nowhere to be seen.

Sadly, they walked back to their big house and stayed indoors for the rest of the day.

That night, father saw them all sad.

They told him about the radio.

Father quietly stood up, opened the big door of the big house and stepped outside.

The girls followed him.

It was a starry night.

They saw their father’s shadow walking towards the well.

“Listen carefully,” father said.

The girls stared at the well and tried to listen.

They could only hear the tadpoles and the crickets.

Father looked at the youngest daughter and asked her to sing her favourite song, the one she had heard on the radio.

She started singing.

The other four sisters joined in.

Father only knew the first few lines but he hummed beautifully for the rest of the song.

Mother looked at them from the kitchen and smiled.

Years have gone by.

The four younger sisters have grown up and work as engineers.

The eldest sister however got the best job.

She became my mom.

And till date, she tells me the beautiful tale of the singing well. 

Instant photo, bees rupya

I have a theory. If you visit the Gateway of India on a Sunday or on a public holiday, you will easily appear in at least a thousand pictures. People click pictures on their phones, smartphones, tablets and cameras both compact and DSLRs. Among those using the DSLR cameras are the 300 odd photographers who'll give you a piece of your memory for twenty rupees a print.

When I last visited the Gateway, I was struck by a thought. These photographers click everyone. No one clicks these photographers. I tell this to M.K. Das, one of the many photographers. He laughs. Quickly, he finds someone to click us. 

With Mr. M.K. Das

I reached the Gateway today, armed with my Nikon Coolpix and a random set of questions, hardly a questionnaire. The objective was to catch these memory-makers in action, talk to them and know who they are.

It wasn't easy to get them talking, especially on a Sunday. Today is when the monument gets the maximum footfalls. A good day for business. I overheard two photographers discussing how there are more locals than tourists today. Not so good a business day then.

Das has been clicking tourists here since '88 when he was twenty. He roars with laughter when I tell him I was born in 1986. An average working day begins at 11 and ends with daylight at 8, the last few frames aided by the yellow beam on the heritage structure. 

With Mr. Tulsi Rai

I talk to Tulsi Rai who's been clicking at the Gateway for 15 years. Where's he from? He takes a bit to respond, Jharkhand. I made a mental note to avoid similar questions at the very beginning of the conversation. Both Mukes (M.K. Das) and I are from the same village in Jharkhand. I tell him about my photographer-clicking spree. He smiles and nods and gets another photographer to click us. Does he do only this? Rai works in a pub sometimes, clicking at their events. He gets a hundred rupees per photo there.

How did he end up here? There were relatives in Bombay. I used to come here with them whenever I visited. Then one day, I just stayed back, Rai says.

Ranjit, sipping tea from a plastic cup approaches me with the usual sales pitch. Bolo sir, instant photo, bees rupya. I tell him I want a picture with him. He shakes his head and says Mein sirf apne biwi ke saath photo khichaata hoon. It was my turn to laugh. I raised my hand for a hi-five but he had the cup in one hand and an umbrella in another. He gave me a fist bump with the umbrella hand.

Babu saw me trying to talk to him into posing for a picture. Ranjit ran. Babu and I chased him and got this one. Win win situation. I got this picture. He did not pose.

Chasing Ranjit

On a good day, Rai says he makes an average of Rs. 450. Paisa kamaane ka apna apna line dhoondhna padta hai. I agree with him. I wish I could find mine. I ask Das if he manages to make a living with this money. Chal jaata hai, he says.

Maqsood came to the city 4-5 months ago after passing his tenth. He has to send money back home in Karimganj, near Silchar in Assam.

Maqsood

He lightens up when I tell him I was in Guwahati and Silchar last year. He lost his father. His maternal uncles work on boats at the Gateway, he says. Is that how he got here? There are more maamas here, photographers. Idhar sab maama hai he says.

What do I do? Das wants to know. I tell him I am a jobless writer. He nods knowingly and says he knew I was ‘something like that’. Apparently my questions gave me away. So you make stories. I nod, somewhat glad that he put it that way.

Many photographers like Fulesh (from Bihar) and Ranjit refused to be photographed. I don't know whether to file that under 'You are afraid of what you don't understand' or ‘the ghosts of past experiences.’

I'm glad some of these people spoke to me. I wish I could ask them more questions. They were busy and I was growing tired of walking in the rain. After spending around three hours clicking and talking with my flashy friends at the Gateway, I left for a late lunch.

P.S: Both Both Das and Rai refused to accept money. They said this is the first time someone thought of clicking them. Isko aap gipht samjho.

Some more clicks from today:

The poor man's bubble bath.

Their equivalent of a 'water-cooler' chat.

Families taking pains to convince their baby to look into the camera and smile.

This is how photographers have fun in their mundane job: Make tourists do stupid poses.

This is how photographers have fun in their mundane job: Make tourists do stupid poses.

Sometimes, they pose too.

The printer that has made 'photography' easy. Apparently, people who used to do 'monkey-business' have now become photographers.

The Grand Taj.

The End.

Pitla Pitla Ping Ping

I regret not clicking the pitla Suhas Deo made (conjured rather, because it was magical) on Saturday at the Indus Paragliding Base Camp at Kamshet. But then, I'm glad I don't have a picture because the picture could never have done justice to the deliciousness the pitla was. I will now try to describe it with all its juiciness intact.

For the uninitiated, pitla is nothing fancy. It's just a paste of gram flour, some onions, tomatoes and salt for taste. The contents of pitla might differ according to the ingredients you use. For example, Mr. Deo surprised the mixture by squeezing half a lemon into it. Rahul Sharma diced the onions and tomatoes and the garlic that I peeled by the thousands.

I must have been sitting outside and staring lovingly at Indrayani when a fragrance beckoned me to the kitchen. I saw Suhas at the stove, stirring a thick yellow paste thicker on medium flame. I could compare it to a lot of yellow things but that would be a misfit when I'm trying to appeal to your appetite here. Food wasn’t off the stove yet so I went back to what I was doing.

After what seemed like a thousand light years, our vegetarian meal of rice, dal makhni, dudhi-dal and pitla was ready for consumption.But Mr. Sharma was yet to add his finishing touches. Deciding that the pitla needed to be greener and creamier, he scooped the creamy top layer off a milk container and hit the pitla with it. For the greens, he grabbed a bunch of struggling coriander, wrung their necks and threw their heads into the kadhai as well.

He was stirring it when I entered and grabbed a plate. I took as much rice as I could and draped it with the dal makhni. On the side, I took the dudhi-dal and then a few blobs of the thick pitla.

My mother says hunger is the best tastemaker. Old wisdom but it wasn’t just the hunger that had made the food so delectable. The two men just knew what they were doing. Maybe their wives make them practice at home, I don't know. The dal makhni was better than what you have at an average restaurant. It wasn’t overcooked or underdone but I thought it would taste better with some more salt and it did. (Note to self: Tu high BP se marega beta.) The dudhi, cooked with its skin, was crunchy and the dal kicked many a protein shake in the perineum.

Fine, i'll tell you about the best part, look at you holding on to every word waiting for me to describe the pitla! It was simply delicious! I had spooned a brave spoonful of it into my mouth and just when it touched my tongue; my eyes closed involuntarily and let my taste buds soak in the taste. The creamy consistency, the sweet bite of the onions, the tiny pricks of green chilies and the fight for soury supremacy between the diced tomatoes and squeezed lemon juice...I know Mr. Deo would want to describe it as 'Sex on Toast' but let me tell you...it was way better. All I can add more is that if you popped some mint right after having this pitla, you would be destroying the amazing aftertaste.

I have had Sindhi kadhi before and it was nice. But many thanks to Suhas and Rahul for the pleasure of pitla. I don't know if Barney Stinson will like Pitla but if he did, he would say it was legen...wait for it...dary!

10 reasons why we badly need a good 'Ghost Who Walks' film

When I was in Class VI, everyone around me was talking about what to become when you grow up. A lot of them wanted to become doctors and engineers. I guess I was a bit looney then as I am now because I was the only one who wanted to become Phantom – the Ghost Who Walks (but only those times when I didn’t want to become Tipu Sultan). While I did like Superman and Batman and He-Man later on it was for the Phantom that I would still vote to be my childhood hero no. 1.

We’ve all seen the crap the Man of Steel film is. Here are 10 reasons why a good film on the Ghost Who Walks is the need of the hour:

HE’S THE KNOWN NEMESIS OF ALL POACHERS

You can’t just go to the forest and claim something as your own! That’s one thing the Phantom drills into the heads of poachers with his skull ring, be it an evil forest guard or foreign smugglers…he’ll take them to task.

HE TEACHES YOU TO RESPECT WILDLIFE AND THE FOREST

– Phantom’s holiday home/ farm house is an enchanting island called Eden where carnivores and herbivores live together in harmony. It is almost as if the Phantom messed with their food chain. I am suddenly not so sure that is a good thing to do. But he does make you believe in it for some time.

HE TELLS YOU THAT DOLPHINS ARE REALLY FRIENDLY CREATURES

When the young Phantom’s girlfriend comes visiting, they all go surfing with their pet dolphins called Solomon and Nefertiti! 

HE’S REALLY FIT

Even though you’ve never seen him work out, you know that he’s just a man with amazing physical capabilities when you see him bash a gang of goons with his speed and adeptness at firing his two revolvers. He hardly ever needs to use more than two shots at a time. Superman is from another world where the average man is stronger. Batman makes use of technology. Spiderman is lucky to be bitten by a radioactive spider. But this guy is a normal human being who has trained himself to be this fast-moving lean-mean-machine. I think I would readily hit the gym if he gave me tips.

HE LIVES OFF THE GRID, #LikeABoss

The Phantom lives in a Skull Cave deep inside the forest, the one his forefathers built and he just maintains, albeit professionally. He grows his own food and lives off forest produce. He doesn’t use electricity but depends on huge candles. We don’t know much about the plumbing system in the Skull Cave but it’s not difficult to conjure a place to attend nature’s calls when you are in the forest! 100% off-grid and environment friendly living!

HE’S A GOOD SAMARITAN

For generations, he has helped people in need and has never wanted anything in return. He does call on people when he needs them to help others.

HE LOVES DOGS

They say judge a man by how he treats his lesser creatures. You know he loves his dog (or should we say wolf?) Devil. We need more of these animal loving superheroes, don’t you think?

HE USES AN ECO-FRIENDLY MODE OF TRANSPORT

As a kid, when I started to school, I wanted to switch to something faster. There was no way I was getting a bike but I would’ve loved a horse. Phantom gets around so splendidly on his steed – Hero. The only exhaust it probably exhausts is the dung which is awesome manure.

HE’S PROBABLY AN AUDIO ENGINEER OF SOME KIND

Knowing well that mobiles won’t have network in the Deep Woods, Phantom set up the dependable and fast Jungle Drums that are used to send and receive messages. Based on the Morse Code, you think?

HE UNDERSTANDS PEACE

They say that ever since the Phantom, the tribes inside the forest haven’t fought each other. The Wambesi and the Llongo have learnt to mind their ways. Often they come together for the healthy inter-tribe Olympics, which also acts as a brilliant place for show of pride and power. Everything else is good with the Ghost Who Walks around.  Unlike the society then, Phantom made sure that slavery was abolished and that no discrimination took place based on race or colour of skin. He himself has a lot of dark-skinned friends. 

 What I do not understand is why the Pygmy Poison people are called ‘Bandar’. Was that Harbhajan Singh’s idea?

They tried making a Phantom film in 2010 but it looks so tacky! If they can make the Dark Knight look slick and sexy, what did Phantom do wrong? A Phantom film will at least have some take home message, something that the yawny Man of Steel lacked.

Our Nagaland Story

We arrived in Dimapur early on the morning of 28^th November. How early? Well, it was 5 when we stepped out of Dimapur station and were hounded by cabbies who wanted to ferry us to Kohima right away. We had spoken to a member of the Rotaract Club of Dimapur but we were supposed to call another number at ten in the morning. What would we do for five hours? And what if we still didn’t have a host after that phone call?

We checked into Hotel Maple, something we had found the night before, online. They gave us a single room with a single bed, promising to upgrade as soon as there was more space. After an uncomfortable sleep (read Anthony’s wheezing and my snoring and a few million power cuts) we decided to step out of the depressing room and go out.

So in Nagaland, the sun wakes up early and by ten it feels like 2 pm in Mumbai, bright and sunny. We ambled slowly through the market area, looking at shops, reading signboards and trying not to stare at the very pretty Naga women (Statement: Naga women are very pretty!). I have been craving to have some south Indian breakfast for a long time now and my tongue fell on the ground when I saw a board that said Dosa Plaza. I almost dragged Anthony along to find this place when we accidentally saw Café 77.

It looked like a good breakfast place with a graffiti name plate and all. So I killed the dosa dream right there and walked into the café only to be welcomed by the smell of amazing coffee. A little part of the South Indian in me got satiated there.

As we order breakfast, we see a stand that props up a magazine called GreenCache. I pick it up. It’s good and it’s only their first volume! Crisp pictures, amazing sequential stories and illustrations. I learnt a lot from that one magazine than a lot of Biology lectures in college. I quickly wrote a mail to the magazine, introducing ourselves and telling them how we liked their magazine. Next, I called a number that was on the panel.

Sentinaro Alley, who picked up the phone patiently listened to everything I had to say. Then, she introduced herself as the publisher and promised to meet us at Café 77 in another hour.

What happened next is straight out of a dream. Sentinaro came, we spoke, she rang up a few numbers and three hours later, we were in a cab to Kohima with five pine saplings that she sponsored!

We are now in Kohima, where Richard Belho is hosting us in one the many bamboo houses he has. Richard is an architect. He’s also one of the many forces behind the Kohima Komets – a football team. His dream is to see Nagaland’s Under 19 football team kick the posterior of India’s national team. He believes this will make the authorities comprehend the immense potential in the youth in the state.

Richard, along with help from a lot of people like Bazo Kire and all of his colleagues, is now setting up a football academy which will serve as the home ground for the Kohima Komets. Project 35 Trees planted ten trees in Meriema Village, where the academy will soon come up. We wish the Kohima Komets and the forces behind them all the best! We can’t wait to see them in action!

Anthony loves the food here. Yesterday, he had one of those green piggies from Angry Birds. Today he devoured a distant relative of Donald Duck. As for me, I am glad I’ve started eating eggs and that my hosts generously make me an omlette for lunch and dinner.

We just heard news that there’s a bandh in Imphal. If that’s true, it means we will still be in Kohima when the Hornbill Festival begins!

Age No Bar

We had the good fortune of meeting a 65-year old young man recently.

Call him ‘retired’ and he’ll dunk you head down in one of his many vermicompost pits. Mukul Varma believes he’s making headway in his new career and he is, we saw. Having seen all of the corporate world’s rigmarole of structures and processes and having grown to Managing Director position, he has a dream.

He sensed lack of employment as a huge problem and wanted to fix it. His objective – to help a few villages find their economic feet and become self-sustainable.

Chachaji (as he is fondly known by everyone there in Mohammadpur – one of his villages fifty kilometres from Patna) has a family house there which had been long neglected. He nursed it back from its dilapidated condition to a lovely village house, retaining its true structure but adding amenities such as a modern bathroom and curtains on the windows and so on.

Simultaneously, Chachaji started developing the family property they had. With the help of a few locals, he began cultivating radish that wholeheartedly grows in the rich soil there. Along with that, he’s growing potatoes, brinjal, turmeric and coriander.

What he is really banking upon, though, is a polyhouse full of Gerbera flowers. He hopes to get business orders from the three major flower markets – Delhi, Kolkata and Benaras.

There is a dairy farm in the offing. He’s experimenting with more vegetables like bottle gourd. There is a successful vermicompost unit that not only makes enough organic manure for the entire farm but also sells it to nearby farms.

All these ventures provide labour to the people of the village. Students studying in nearby junior colleges and living in the village are being encouraged to take care of the Gerberas and other crops and taught how to manage the water-efficient drip irrigation system. Chachaji has roped in two girls who are studying Chemistry in college to take care of the chemical additives. He hopes it will help them gain confidence and inspire more girls to join these two. He has planted teak trees along his vegetable plantations.

Sometimes, Chachaji stays in his house in the village. Sometimes he only visits. With every visit, he watches his crops grow, he sees the leaves of the teaks grow bigger and bigger. He won’t admit it but he’s proud of what he has managed to accomplish in two years that included deciphering complex government schemes and working around babus who do not lift a finger to help.

Chachaji also understands that he is far from attaining his dream. While the villagers have only just started warming up to his efforts, the first crop of Gerbera flowers in the polyhouse are almost ready to bloom and there might be a purchase order around the corner. He hopes people will see value in this work once they see the financial benefits.

Chachaji is living every urban man’s dream – to have a house in the village and grow vegetables.

For me, I seem to have found another personal hero. If at the age of sixty five, this naughty man can pull off everything we saw in his village called Mohammadpur, imagine what I can get done!

Maybe I can’t wake up at six every morning like Chachaji but that is only a small war and I know I’ll win it and many more big ones.

______

This story is part of an epic journey across India called Project 35 Trees. Know more about it here - http://www.facebook.com/35trees