Tuesday, November 29, 2005

The Calm
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
- Langston Hughes

Suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools. They never ask why build.
- Anne Sexton

Monday, November 28, 2005

Now that I have coloured my hair red, I guess I can take on the world. Open your arms, let me in.

Sunday, November 27, 2005

A little bitter

Every passing day i realise i exist, i dont live
I realise i have hands but they are dead
I realise i have eyes but all i see is complimentary colours
I realise how far i am from myself
how forgiving i am of my surroundings
how accepting i am of mediocrity
I realise how shallow i am
in thinking this is more than i will ever need
in thinking by owning material things i have character
what a fool i am to sit with my head in my hands and do nothing about it
I realise i have a lot to say but i am here and now and all i am is a little failure.

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Thursday, November 24, 2005

The disconnection

In a word full of mouths, a closer star,
the dependence
becomes
a kindly light.

In a shotgun filled with blood, an uncontrolled mind,
the frailty
becomes
the darker son.

I am open, there are three big exits,
but there is just one small entrance
into
the
everlasting gaze.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Not about love

Conversation once colored by esteem
Became dialogue as a diagram of a play for blood
Took a vacation, my palate got clean
Now I could taste your agenda
While you're spitting your cud

And it doesn't make sense
I should fall for the kingcraft of a meritless crown
No, it doesn't seem right
To take information
Given at close range
For the gag
And the bind
And the ammunition round

----

Fiona Apple. Need I say more?

Monday, November 21, 2005

...and what I thought was the sound of a cricket in the grass was actually the sound of my fridge buzzing. :(

----

I am back in Dubai and all the glass is eating me alive.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Switch opens

Thanks JP for tagging me. I can "livestrong" now.

10 years: November 1995.

Hmm, the golden years. It was the beginning of the best 5 years of my life. Atleast till now. I hope this is not as good as it gets. I met Aparna in August 1995. November 1995 I had a little party at my flat B33 in Indranagar. I hadnt still discovered alcohol so I knew how to enjoy life without a support system. Innocence, truly. JP, Virat, Arun, Madhur, Sachin, Nester & Nelson, Sujit, Nandita, Aparna, Devendra... yeah, there were so many of us. I remember introducing Dave Mathews Band "Under the table and dreaming". A fantastic new sound, then. Aparna gave me this book on The Doors and I remember holding her hand while she flipped through the pages. I better stop now, I might start crying. :(

5 years ago: November 2000.

Erm, nothing exciting. I had just moved back to Dubai after a year lost (gained?) in sex, drugs and rock n roll. 1999 was the year of if... and my parents werent too excited about the way I was living my life (if being the middle word of life and all). So I was back in Dubai working with a recording studio and managing an artiste called Sukhbir. I had fun at the studio. I had three pretty girl hifen friends. One of them now is a hotshot model in Mumbai after becoming Miss India Earth and all. I lived with my parents and had also met Ameeta by then with whom I had my shortest relationship ever.

1 year ago: November 2004.

I was in Bangalore. Spent a whole year in India - 6 months in Mumbai, 6 months in Bangalore. I cut my birthday cake in my brothers office, Hundredhands. It was a pleasant day. I also took the office people to Hypnose. It was fun. I was going out with a girl from my brothers office. She was very sweet and I will always smile when I think of her. I remember her asking the DJ to play Jamiroquai's "Blow your mind". We had fun, danced, drank, dot dot dot. I also remember accepting the job with Ogilvy Dubai and getting ready to come back.

Yesterday.

I just got back from Bangalore and was in bed all day. Slight virus attack.

5 yummy things.

Chicken Tikka Masala,
Cola pop at casa's,
Sweet lassi at papa pancho's,
Bhel puri at kartiks and
Bailey's.

5 songs i know by heart.

Nirvana's "Dumb" (remember singing this on the bike, JP?),
Alice in Chains' "Rooster",
Radiohead's "No surprises",
Salif Keita's "Madan" (An african song - I dont have a clue what he sings but I know it all by heart) and
Fiona Apples "Criminal"

5 things i would do with a lot of money.

Buy some land in the Fiji Islands and get Bijoy to design a house for me,
Buy a Porsche Cayman,
Buy lots and lots of equipment for Hundredhands ie G5's, 65 Autocad licenses, books on architecture, etc etc. (Bijoy deserves it),
Buy a nice house in about 5 states in India so that my parents can live where they want and how they want,
Buy a grand piano and a studio with lots of equipment so I can record with musicians from all over the world.

5 places to escape to.

Coorg,
My mothers arms,
Himachal Pradesh,
Antwerp and
Those cabin houses in Finland.

5 things i'd never wear.

A Tuxedo,
A pink shirt,
Baggy jeans,
Those small tight swimming trunks (yuck!),
Mink.

5 favorite films (instead of TV shows).

Tarkovsky's Solaris,
Scorsese's Taxi Driver,
Kurosawa's Ran,
Kubrick's A clockwork orange and
Woody Allen's Annie Hall.

5 things i enjoy doing.

Listening to music,
Driving,
Composing music (the moment I crack the structure of a song - its better than sex, really),
Watching films and
Writing poetry.

Favorite toys:

My TT,
My little iPod shuffle,
My Ti book (uff, cant think of anymore right now).

----

Goodnight, sweet dreams.

Friday, November 18, 2005

Time

I want to close my eyes and sink into the warmth of your palm. I also want to open my eyes and understand the reality of pain my future holds. But I want to sleep now and dream of angels till my hair turns grey and my hands grow weak because only then will I know what I have missed.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Lost In Space
A bubble drifting
Into a place
Where planets shift and
The moon's erased
Its features lift in the glare

But I'm the stuff
Of Happy endings
Though mostly bluff
Belief suspending
But close enough
For just pretending to care

And I'm pretending to care
When I'm not even there
Gone, but I don't know where

----

Aimee Mann (Lost in Space)

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Dub on my landscape

Now that I am officially thirty, I got to do the following 10 things this year to make it magical. No, Sandeep?

1. Finish my film "Look here, Kunigunda",
2. Record with Christa, my violinist friend,
3. Realise that branding isn't everything,
4. Work on my documentary on Graphic Design & the city (inspiration: Bijoy),
5. Buy a Tag and a Paul Smith suit,
6. Start jogging regularly (I am becoming a fat old man)
7. Start a filmclub with XVA gallery so more people can connect with art,
8. Buy more vegetables for my fridge,
9. Play "A comme amour" and "Mazurka in F Minor" effortlessly on the piano, and
10. Update Pleasurecuts and write to Michael Bierut at Pentagram asking him to hire me cos I think in bubbles. :)

Thursday, November 10, 2005

'I feel an irresistible desire to wander, and go to Japan, where I will pass my youth, sitting under an almond tree, drinking amber tea out of a blue cup, and looking at a landscape without perspective'
Letter from Oscar Wilde, 1882

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Strange Meeting 2

Deep down in the depths of forgotten dreams, so far away so long ago it seems,
the memory comes of a distant beach, pale sand stretching far from reach,
it was then I found my princess of the sand.

As I traced the foam, pebbles beneath my feet, I looked behind, I saw this one so sweet.
She came to me and I saw in her eyes the heavy toll of a thousand eyes,
I called her my princess of the sand.

She stared at me and my mind was in a maze as we moved along in a summer sea-dream haze.
She moved her mouth but there came no sound, the message she brought can never be found but I called her my princess of the sand.

One moment we walked with the night breeze in our face,
then I looked, she'd gone, of her presence there was no trace.
Where she went or came from, who can know or if she'll ever return to help me know.
Who she is, my princess of the sand?

Sometime when the summer nights come back, I'll go back to the sea, follow that sandy track.
I'll look around, hope to find that strange young dream, close behind.
I'll call her my princess of the sand.

----

This song kills me. I miss Nick Drake. :(

Friday, November 04, 2005

...and as I walk into an Indian terrain I realise memories are powerful things.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Last KMPH

The last ten days of my twenties. The last sound of youth. The last hours of bad tv and thrash metal. The last rays of the inconvenient sun. The last fingerstains on the passenger window. The last wrinkles on my bedsheet. The first steps into immortality, fame and film. Come in.