Monday 29 December 2014

The Dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin

It’s a cold winter night when my friend and I decide to visit to Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya’s dargah. It’s Thursday and the entrance to the dargah is swarming with pilgrims. Wires twist like tendrils around a forlorn lamppost at a distance. Translucent-winged creatures whirl around like Sufi saints lost in prayer. There is a spell of the theatrics. In a corner, a shoe-shiner with weary eyes argues with a man for an extra buck; a hawker wearing a taqiyah slips off a slipper from his cart and offers it promptly to a passerby. Men stroll at an unhurried pace; women, burqa-clad or otherwise, bolt past, arms shielding their bodies. Perhaps they are wary, perhaps it is the winter cold. The air is laced with the smell of burnt popcorn and salted peanuts. As we needle our way through the crowd, we pass a busy bookstore, we pass a barbershop with pale yellow walls and circus mirrors, we pass the solemn and gated Ghalib’s tomb.

We delve deeper into this carnival. There are teasing whiffs of charcoaled meat and parathas. Brightly lit shops push and squeeze into one another. There are chadars—emerald green, tangerine, wine red, deep blue with golden borders on display. Rose petals, pink and plump, fill baskets. Shop owners sit cross-legged at the edge, handing out business cards. A few of them call out, asking if we would like to leave our shoes behind. “Ignore them,” my friend says. “There is a stall up ahead, closest to the dargah. We will leave our shoes there.” He then tugs my dupatta that I've draped across my shoulders. We are nearing our destination, I pull it over my head.

We reach the stairs: a descent we must make, and I am caught off guard. There is a sudden flurry of people. I hold on to a wall while my feet try to find grounding. When the crowd trickles away, it lays out a perfect image before me: worshippers, believers, curious tourists, pirs and pirzades, buoyant across the white marble like coloured boats. There is a startling energy here. As we descend, we see the shrine of Amir Khusrau, a gifted poet and Hazrat Nizamuddin’s favourite disciple. My friend directs me to a washing ground where men and women wash their hands and feet. A few feet away, I hear something: a tuning of a harmonium, a staccato of claps searching for a rhythm, someone clearing his throat, a shuffle in the crowd. I quicken my pace, steering myself in the direction of the mehfil.

In an open courtyard, facing the mausoleum of Hazart Nizamuddin, the qawwals have settled down for the evening serenade. About 80-100 odd people sit cross-legged in anticipation, framing the qawwals from three directions. We negotiate our way through the crowd, eyeing for a perch. Hazrat Nizamuddin’s tomb is a fascinating structure, characterized by marble pillars and trellis for walls. Orange threads weave in and out of the trellis. The threads symbolize mannats, wishes of thousands who visit the dargah. I notice a yellow board with a green border that hangs at the grilled entrance of the tomb. It cautions: "Ladies are not allowed inside." Outside the tomb, a few women mumble something repeatedly and kiss the walls; another cluster of women sits with children in tow, reading diligently from books in hand.

My attention is diverted. The qawwali has begun and I settle at the edge of the gathering. A man stands guard: his job is to ensure that a human wall isn't built between Hazart Nizamuddin and the qawwals. He ushers people to either sit or walk on. Tourists and onlookers slip out their phones to capture the experience. Others sit patiently, attentive to the words, absorbing everything. “They are singing Tajdar-e-haram,” my friend informs. I nod and take out my phone to quickly jot down the lyrics:

Kismat mein meri chain se jeena likh de
Doobe na kabhi mera safeena likh de 

Jannat bhi gawaara hai magar mere liye

Eh kaatib-e-taqdeer madina likh de

Tajdar-e-haram
Nigah-e-karam

Although, I am capable of grasping the basic gist of it, I request my friend, who is more informed about Hindustani poetry than I, to translate and he obliges:


Write, in my fate, the ability to live peacefully
Write, in my fate, that my paper boat must never sink

I would accept jannat (paradise), but for me,

Oh writer of destiny, at least write down the city of Madina
Oh, wearer of crown

Look at me with peaceful eyes and love.

The evening eventually comes to an end and the crowd disperses. My friend and I decide to take a long walk around the tomb, observing the people and the ritual of prayer. “I did not know that ‘safeena’ meant paper boat,” I tell him. “The word is beautiful.” He smiles knowingly. It has become colder now and we must leave. We make our way to the exit, merging into the crowd, passing Ghalib’s tomb, the library, the chaiwallas—returning to reality.

{walk, qawwals, dargah, Sufism}

Saturday 20 December 2014

A Salon that empowers Acid Attack Survivors

Masarrat Misbah was attending to a client at her beauty salon in an elite part of Lahore, when a woman, hiding behind her veil, stumbled in. There was a frantic energy in her body, a certain degree of pronounced nervousness. The woman asked whether she could speak to Masarrat in private and was led discreetly into another room. 

"When she lifted her veil, I had to sit down," Masarrat recounts. "In front of me was a woman with no face," she says. The bridge of her nose had collapsed, one of the eyes had sunken in and her chin merged indistinguishably into the folds of her neck. "I could not believe what I was looking at," Masarrat says. "Acid had been thrown on her face and body."


The woman, Masarrat recalls, had one plea: to be made beautiful again. "When I got a grip of myself, I told her that no beauty products could do any good. It would be a job of a surgeon. I asked her to come next day." But the woman refused to budge. Shunned by her own family and thrown onto the streets, she had trekked from another city to seek refuge in Masarrat’s parlour. Masarrat opened her doors, arranged for an extra bed and the next day, began calling doctors and friends for help. That was the beginning of the Depilex Smileagain Foundation.


Women working at the salon
Since 2003, over six-hundred acid attack survivors who have been turned away from their homes have found a new threshold at the Depilex Smileagain Foundation. Masarrat has been carefully gathering the survivors and helping them regain their footing in the world. The women receive reconstructive surgery, psychiatric support and are trained to fend for themselves. At the parlour, they earn a livelihood by working as beauticians. 

Bushra Shafi has been working as a hairstylist and a masseuse at Masarrat’s salon for a few years. She came across the Smileagain Foundation when she saw their advertisement in the newspaper. "I remember calling them immediately…I was married to a very greedy man," Bushra confides. "My in-laws physically tortured me because I didn't bring enough dowry after my marriage. One day they asked me to bring money from my parents, but I refused. That day they tied me up and threw acid on my face. My mother-in-law and my husband held me, pulled my tongue out and poured acid on it. They wanted to make everyone believe that I was suicidal, so they hanged me from the ceiling fan and set my room on fire. My neighbours saw the flames and rushed me to hospital." When Bushra joined the Smileagain family, she was greeted by forty other survivors who were willing to share her suffering and lay her inhibitions to rest. "It gave me comfort in realizing that I wasn’t alone."


Bushra attending to a client
Whether on busy streets or behind bolted doors, acid attacks have become an everyday episode in countries like India and Pakistan. The product is readily available in local stores where a 750 ml of acid bottle can be purchased for a meager sum of thirty rupees. The motivations for the attacks are extraordinary and illogical in range. ‘Dishonoured’ families, jilted lovers, inadequate dowries, lack of a male heir, failure to adhere to an appropriate dress code—are few grounds why women are subjected to violence. In 2014, there were 160 acid attack cases that were reported in Pakistan. There is however, an astounding discrepancy between the cases registered and the actual number of incidents that occured in the country. Human Rights organizations claim that most of the complaints go unregistered because the victims are too afraid to speak up, fearing a subsequent assault. The silence, however, reverberates through the country and is almost deafening.

Beauty and confidence form the currencies of the world. To be stripped of these then, to be denied a voice, to be robbed of an identity, is the most debilitating form of existence. The consequence is world shattering. While some drift to the peripheries with their stories silently brushed into darkness, the coterie at Smileagain Foundation is like a relentless tide slowly gaining momentum. Rather than relying on men for their financial means, they have transformed into confident, independent women who are working effortlessly to make their own living. 


Masarrat (right) with two survivors

There is an irony however, in acknowledging that though physically disfigured, the survivors work day and night assisting others towards looking beautiful. Has this ever psychologically affected the survivors? "They are human too," Masarrat responds. "I have seen it in their eyes—the urge to look beautiful when they are dressing the brides, but the supporting staff makes sure that the survivors feel positive about themselves. Our survivors are beautiful from the inside and are lucky to make others look so beautiful."

Refusing to retreat, the survivors consider their disfiguration to be a crutch, not an impediment. Their vigour and ardent will to survive stand as indisputable testimonies to that. Take the example of Sabra who met Masarrat in 2003. It was a minor domestic feud that prompted Sabra’s husband to pick up a bottle of kerosene and set her ablaze. Within a few moments, her entire world had collapsed. Two months pregnant at the time, she lost her child and spent months recovering in the hospital. "Sabra came to me as a victim over 10 years ago," says Masarrat. "Since 2003, she has undergone more than 35 surgeries and has never given up. At Smileagain, she works as our patient coordinator. She accompanies the survivors from the time they arrive at the hospital to the time they are operated. She also stays with them till they leave the hospital. Back home, Sabra has an ailing mother of whom she takes care. She is the bravest individual I know. She is my hero!"



Depilex Smileagain Foundation
For Sabra and the other six-hundred odd survivors however, Masarrat is their hero, their anchor. "It is a mammoth responsibility," Masarrat accepts, slightly overwhelmed by the task. "However, since I’m chosen to do this, I am doing it to the best of my means and abilities." Of course, she has encountered dissent, of course she has been threatened by families who are involved in the cases–they bully her to step back so that she cannot help the survivors scrounge for attorneys. But Masarrat is relentless in her mission; there is an irrepressible need to weed out the insidious culture of acid attacks once and for all. "When I look back now, I know that my only regret in life is that I didn’t start this earlier," she says. "It was happening long before I started my career as a beautician. I hope God gives me enough life and strength so that this abuse and crime can be eradicated. Only then will I sleep peacefully."

{strength, hope, inspiration, acid attack survivors, empowerment, women, combating gender violence, Pakistan}

Images courtesy: Depilex Smileagain Foundation

Friday 7 November 2014

Thursday 23 October 2014

BioCouture: Clothes That Are Grown




There is fantastic work happening in the realm of fashion. Materials (texturally translucent and as stunning as leather) are being grown using bacterial cellulose in laboratories to create beautiful garments. "Imagine growing a dress in a vat of liquid using bacteria," says Suzanne Lee, founder of BioCouture, a London-based bio-fashion consultancy that is the first of its kind. It collaborates with scientists to create organic fabrics—fabrics so versatile in character that they can be cut, shaped, folded and sown.

The Kombucha recipe—a mix of cider vinegar, sugar, some luminous green tea and a shot of yeast and bacteria—is used to make the textile. Through the process of fermentation, the micro-organisms work as tiny powerhouses, spinning thin nanofibres that merge over a period of time and transform into a layered, film-like sheet of cellulose. The sheet is then harvested, washed and dried to eventually create chic, wearable outfits.

 

Suzanne Lee, who is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Fashion/Textiles at Central Saint Martins, London, first learned about this phenomenon while researching for her book, Fashioning the Future: Tomorrow’s Wardrobe. Other than speaking to designers, she also interacted with scientists and engineers, and it was during one of these interviews that one biologist introduced this revelatory process to her. 'So we started to collaborate; we got some funding and worked on a project to see if we could grow some material using microbes,’ she says in a documentary titled, The Next Black. The success of the project convinced her that they were standing at the threshold of a new fashion era. 

Since then, BioCouture has created a middle ground where path-breaking science and innovative design come together to form a cohesive whole. From Kimonos and Bomber Jackets to shoes and luxury sportswear, BioCouture is creating excellent prototypes (see images). The home-grown materials are sustainable and bio-degradable, which means that they are great companions of the environment. Their longevity though, is questionable. Each piece of the garment is destined to undergo the natural process of decomposition, but the team at BioCouture is working with scientists to address this drawback.

The future of fashion is constantly evolving and brimming with endless possibilities. It’s only a matter of time when the luxury stores and boutiques in your city will be offering rows of algae, yeast, bacteria and fungi to choose from.

{fashion, innovation, science} 
This piece was written for Platform Magazine, India

Sunday 12 October 2014

With love



Dear R,

You asked me to describe how I felt when I saw the Arabian Sea for the first time at Marine Drive.

It was like falling in love.

Like the time when your heart begins to pace at a speed you imagine never existed. When you cannot peel your eyes away because you are taken by the beauty that lies in front of you. It was that vastness, that sprawling empire of blue which made me realize that I was nothing but a tiny speck in the entire cosmos. 

I remember being mesmerized by her as my car drove past. I hoisted my chin on the window to see miles of blue go on and on with a determined endeavour never to end. Arching my back, I had leaned forward, stretching the view of my eyes ever so much so to see that thin line of indigo where the two magnificent halves met. The driver was in a hurry that day; I remember the wind slapping against my cheek, my hair unfurling and lashing, and my desperate attempts to discipline my billowing shirt. 

I had gestured the driver to pull up on the side, for I wanted to meet this majestic beauty. On the concrete boulevard that necklaced her, I found a spot and settled there. And I remained there, fascinated by the fearlessness with which the water broke against the rocks, by the salty froth that threatened to, and did, drench the by-standers and, by the crabs, smooth black capsules crawling across the sun-seared boulders. And all I could think of at that moment was my fierce wish to be accepted in the institution I had come to Bombay for. 

For I had fallen in love with the city, and Marine Drive was fated to be my anchor. 

{memories, remembering, letters, love}

Photography: Raj Lalwani

Saturday 11 October 2014

And Then One Day

In Conversation with Naseeruddin Shah:



Naseeruddin Shah is something of an enigma—the coiffed silver hair, the measured drawl, the charming wit and the overpowering intensity with which he holds you, is something else. And Then One Day {Penguin Random House, India} is a beautiful memoir and a remarkable debut for the 64-year-old, who was recently in New Delhi for the book’s launch and subsequent publicity. 

In the book, Naseeruddin lays it all bare. As he waltzes with the past, he uses the pages to map his journey into cinema and reveals with nuanced detail, the achingly painful roadblocks and the triumphant milestones. He speaks about his fractured relationship with his father and how he ‘disappointed’ him with his Icarus-like fervour to become an actor. He also tries to reassess his complex relationships: the impetuous first marriage to Purveen, a woman almost twice his age, his ineptitude as a parent towards his first child {Heeba}, and how the release of his first film Nishant wasn’t as exhilarating thanks to a love affair {with the mysteriously named, R} that'd gone sour. As he sifts through three decades of memories, he talks about the friends he meets on the way and the undoing of a friend named Jaspal, who at one time was an inseparable companion.

It’s a book that has an equal measure of poignancy and levity. And Then One Day is cunning, confessional, witty and wistful. It’s also conversational. He denies you the role of a mere reader or of a spectator who is privy to the events in his life. Rather, you feel like an old friend listening to him over a cup of coffee in the comfort of your home. 

On an early Friday morning, I had the opportunity to speaking to Naseeruddin Shah at the Oberoi Hotel, New Delhi where he spoke to me about his experience while writing the book, how he was able to come to terms with his past, and the hopeful probability of a film on his life. 
With And Then One Day, you explore a new realm that is, writing an autobiography, which strangely, took you over a decade to write. What was the experience like?
Oh thrilling! Absolutely thrilling. Much more than the release of my first movie, Nishant, I have to say that.

Really, how so?
Because there was a great deal of anxiety attached to that first movie when it released in 1975, and I was terribly anxious because on it depended my future prospects—whether I would be able to feed myself or not, because theatre could not do it in those days…it probably still can’t, which is what determined my move from the National School of Drama to the Film and Television Institute of India. And as I have written, I went to the Film Institute with a very condescending attitude, but to my surprise, it really opened up my mind being in that place. I suppose there was a terrible urge within me to learn, which is why there were 22 others in my class to whom the classes meant nothing. Only two students made it: Shakti Kapoor and me.

And I was very wary of the kind of roles I would be offered in Hindi movies. I was sure I didn’t want to play the doctor who has one line, though you know, I had somewhere resigned myself to the idea that these are the roles I’m going to get, and as it happened, I got absolutely nothing after Nishant. I didn’t enjoy the release of Nishant—even though it was a success, it was acclaimed and my performance was praised, but the anxiety just consumed me. Also, I was going through a very bad time personally as I have written in the book. So, the release of Nishant didn’t mean that much to me, really. But this [the response to the book] is something else. It’s a reaction I had never expected. I was of course, very curious to know how people would respond to this and whether my writing would be engaging or not, and my heart is completely overwhelmed by the positive response.

So now that you’ve got a positive response, do you consider writing another book after this?
I’m sure, though, I will be judged much more harshly {laughs}. I’m pretty sure because since this is my first time, they are saying, “Ah, first time” and all that. But unless the next book turns out to be as engaging as this one, I’ll be crucified I know that. So I’m not so keen to write another book {laughs}. Although, I have enjoyed writing this one, I have to say. When it was over, I felt kind of lost. Like how one feels after the rehearsals of a play; when the play gets done and the next day there are no rehearsals, then you wonder, “Now what?” There is a kind of empty feeling. So I’m searching desperately what to write, but I haven’t found it yet.

You’ve spoken about some very trying situations in your life. We learn about your first marriage, about your indifference towards your first child, Heeba, about how you were betrayed by your best friend, Jaspal, and so on. How challenging was it to excavate memories and pour them onto paper?
Not very, because I didn’t write it for anybody’s consumption; I was writing it for my own enjoyment. I started writing because I just wanted to wallow in memories a bit. I was getting very bored in Prague; I had no friends there and the film was a huge bore. I used to spend hours and hours waiting for the next shot, because there was so much blue screen work that they used to take up one whole day to set up a single shot sometimes. So I just started writing it to amuse myself, really. And as I kept on writing, it started grabbing me more. And it took a long time; it’s not been written in one flow as I wish I could claim it was. It was written painstakingly over 12 years; bits were written at a time—2 pages, 3 pages, 4 pages—I don’t think I’ve ever written more than 10 pages at a stretch. 

And I revised things, went back on it, deleted  things which I thought were a little too vehement, and I was advised by a very good writer, Ramchandra Guha who pointed out things which he felt were extraneous. Like there was an incident about a school friend’s dad who tried to bugger me, which I wrote about and he said, ‘Eliminate this because this has no connection to the rest of the story.’ But he said that it was a very interesting incident and that I should save it for another book.  Then there was another incident where my pocket got picked, which was a completely fascinating event, which I have to film someday because it’s quite unbelievable the way it happened, but again he said, ‘Don’t have this because there is no connection.’ He said, ‘Just follow the thread of your development.’ So that’s what I did. And the thought did occur to me that so-and-so might feel offended if I write this, but that was not as much consequence as the obligation to put it down, with as much clarity and straight forwardness as possible. Because if I wasn’t going to be straight forward about it then what was the point of writing it?

And was the process cathartic?
Very. Extremely. I was able to come to terms with finally with my dad, with Purveen, with the other girl, R. And I could look at their point of view also, and I tried very hard not to wear my heart on my sleeve. And I’m impressed by myself and the self-control I’ve been able to exercise.

But there are certain situations where you can really feel the anger.
Ah yeah, particularly the description of the Film and Television Institute?

Yes.
That is something that will just not go away, and I’ll tell you why, because that event created a complete isolation for the acting students. Now the acting course was closed after that because the actors caused too much trouble. This was the excuse. After the acting course was closed, you know…and this is for the record…there was a strike every year. There was strike in the institute every year. The institute was paralysed after that. There were no actors causing any trouble; it was only the direction students who were getting more and more demanding. First it was only, “We must cast who we please.” Then it became, “We must film whatever we please.” Then it became, “We should be allowed to take as much time as we like.” So what’s happened today is that the students of direction stay on for 5 or 6 years in the hostel, without paying hostel charges.

Are they allowed to do so?
Yes, because they’re all geniuses! The moment a student walks into the Film Institute having been admitted into the Direction course, he starts growing his beard and his hair, starts wearing a khadi kurta and starts scratching his beard. So he becomes a genius!

You’re being cynical.
I’m not, it’s the truth! Immediately he feels he’s transformed into Federico Fellini. And the films they make, you would get a headache sitting through any of them! They are so atrociously bad. And all those filmmakers of the ‘70s who were students at that time, who were protesting against what we were asking for, time is witness to the kind of films they are making today. All of them. Whether it is Ketan Mehta, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Kundan Shah or Saeed Mirza—all of them! They are all making pot-boilers with song and dance and they are all bowing and scraping to the star system, and casting the star who they are told to cast.

So it’s destroyed a generation of filmmakers, I believe, because none of those guys have made anything worth watching over the last 10 years. So I feel that it has affected the future. The whole ‘70s movement started by Shyam Benegal and Mrinal Sen, Basu Chatterjee and people like that, would not be carried forward by these shams. I cannot think of a better word for them.

You talk about your strained relationship with your father in great detail and how he considered you to be a disappointment, how he hadn’t supported your dreams or your choice of profession. Do you believe that if your father at the time did support you, you would have still gone out with the same degree of vengeance to become an actor? 
I can’t answer that question because I don’t know. I’ve often felt that facing resistance is perhaps a good thing for a young actor because he then learns to fight for what he wants. I think it would have made life much easier if my dad had a wider worldview and if it had occurred to him that this could be pursued as a profession. He would instead employ tutors who would bore the life out of me! And they would try to teach me Physics and Biology, and I wouldn’t listen to a word those tutors would say {smirks triumphantly}. So it might have been easier…but the thing is that he, despite protesting vehemently, never forbade me. I think perhaps he knew that I wouldn’t listen. But he didn’t try to obstruct me in any way, that much credit I will give him.

And he was going according to his beliefs. He was from a time where you did not show affection to your children, where your children did not speak up in front of you, they could not crack jokes in front of you; they kept their mouth shut unless they were spoken to. His own father, that is my grandfather, was one hard creature whom my own dad could not meet without an appointment. He had to address him as ‘sarkar’, not as ‘abba’ or ‘baba’. So my dad came from that tradition. So he may have considered himself to be a very cool guy, for all you know.

For the longest time, you grappled with your sense of self image and felt you never looked like a ‘hero’. You’ve mentioned how you felt “discriminated against by nature” and how you had a “strong attack of resentment at nature” for not having a face like Rajesh Khanna. There is an underlining sense of under-confidence that is evident in your early years. When do you think you finally overcame that? Or did you ever overcome that?
{Laughs}. Yes, I did, because time was short and I knew I had to get cracking on fulfilling my dream. So this was more or less in school that I came to terms with it. In school, my reflection in the mirror disturbed me a great deal, and when I saw myself on screen for the first time in the Film Institute screen test, I was shattered. But by searching for any vestiges of handsomeness of myself in the mirror, I stumbled upon the fact that, okay I may not be Gary Cooper, but I could be Jerry Lewis. I have a malleable face; I have a face that I can change. Because I used to observe myself after getting a haircut, for example, and I noticed how different the face looked. With women of course, it’s even more startling; if they get a haircut the entire framing of the face changes, but for men it’s not so extreme, but still. Any guy who’s had a haircut looks like a plucked chicken for a couple of days! So I would ask myself, "How would I look with hair down to my shoulders? Would I look like Jesus? Would I look like the Wild Men of Borneo?" And I imagined myself in these disguises, and I think I stumbled upon my strength. Which is that I have a face that is a) expressive; b) capable of change—and those have been my strengths. So the fact that I didn’t look like Shammi Kapoor didn’t hurt because I realized that it’s not that important to look like him; it’s more important to be able to do what he did…or something approximating that. 

With Nishant, Manthan, Sparsh, you became a part of the New Wave and were heralded as ‘an exciting new talent’. If the streak to Art-house films hadn’t hit at the time, what route do you think your career would have taken? Do you think you would have made an extra effort to find your niche in mainstream cinema then?  
I did make a big effort to be a part of mainstream cinema—little as I enjoyed it, but I certainly wanted to be a popular actor. I can’t deny the thought of being a hero. You know, the thought of beating up the baddies, wooing the heroine and so on. I don’t know what turn my life would have taken had Shyam [Benegal] not entered my life. But I think the universe conspires, and that’s what happened. And if this meeting with Shyam had not happened, something else probably would have. I needed it so badly, I wanted it so badly, that I deserved it. Shyam would have found me, I feel, even if it had not been for Girish’s [Karnad] intervention and recommendation, because apparently he was looking for the “right actor” for many months and he had turned down many, because they were too good-looking {winks}. There you are! They were too good-looking and I got the role because I looked like a funny gunk and he would have found me, you know? 

I think my life would have been more or less the same…If it hadn’t been for Nishant, it would have been for Manthan, because if I wouldn’t have done Nishant, I would have camped at Shyam Benegal’s doorstep and would have got his next film! So people say it was ‘good luck’ that I met Shyam and all, but I feel good luck is a combination of factors that you create for yourself. So yes, it was good luck, but Shyam cast me because I deserved to be cast. He wasn’t taking pity on me and casting me, you know?

Your memoir inhabits all the essential elements required for a Hindi movie. You have drama—literally and figuratively. You have a string of disappointments balanced with an equal measure of success. You have a strained relationship with your father, initiation into manhood at 14 by a prostitute, a series of love affairs and heartbreaks, and you have a best friend {Jaspal} who stabs you in the back, literally. If you were approached one day to have your autobiography made into a cinematic biopic, would you allow it? 
Tell me where the song and dance will come in! {laughs} Well, I have kept the filming rights to myself because I don’t want anybody to just stand up and acquire them and start making some rubbish, where Brother Burke {a character from his school days} sings a song to me or something. I really don’t know…I’m not a filmmaker by temperament; I do not have a visual sense. I can’t tell a story through pictures, I can tell it through words better. So I don’t know. I will be very, very careful if a filmmaker approaches me to film this because it can so easily go wrong. It can be misconstrued and presented cornily. I wish someone like Victorio de Sica was still around, then I would let him film it without a question, but if Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra comes to me, I’ll send him away!

What about Raju Hirani? You seem to admire him a lot. 
Yes, Raju Hirani! But I don’t think that the form Raju Hirani uses would be right for a story like this. Raju makes wonderful movies. I love his films. And I’m dying to work with him and I know I never will…He likes Aamir Khan for some reason!

But what if he got Aamir to portray you?
Oh, I would nix it immediately! The actor who would play me needs to look like a rabbit badly in need of a meal, as I have written in my book…a frightened rabbit badly in need of a meal. Aamir Khan looks like he’s just had a huge meal! 

And Then One Day is available on stands. The story appeared on 6th October for Platform Magazine, India. 
Photography by: Hansika Lohani.

Tuesday 30 September 2014

Remembering



Every Sunday morning, Yoginder visits this particular restaurant and sits by himself. His thoughts sweep him to another time. Fifty years ago, he met Zaira for the first time here. She had come with her family for breakfast, and he had instantly been smitten by her eyes: pale blue, curious but intense. She had caught his gaze and dipped behind her father's shoulder, watching him suspiciously through the crescent cut of her burqa. He smiled unknowingly, holding her for a few moments with his eyes; the staff occasionally disturbed his view with the haphazard scurry of early morning. She looked away, of course, but her eyes kept returning to him, like a person curious to know the end of a spinning top.

Distracted by her presence, he took a sip from his chai and accidentally burnt his lip. There was a momentary scuffle with the saucer; the tea leaped from the cup, broke against the glass table and made thin lines of dirty brown. Zaira giggled noiselessly, bowing her head. Embarrassed, Yoginder struggled to wipe the table clean with the corner of his sleeve, smearing it further. A waiter with bushy brows and dark eyes rushed to his rescue. As grunted he cleared the remnants of the chai. Zaira had not looked in Yoginder's direction after that, behaving like strangers ought to, ignorant of the other's presence. Yoginder began to wonder whether there was something between them or if he had unnecessarily made up stories in his head. 

A few moments later, the family finished breakfast; the father licked the final crumbs and lifted himself from the chair. His wife and daughters followed suit. With bowed heads, they formed a line behind him and discreetly disappeared behind a door. Yoginder remained in his chair, speechless, watching the wiped tea stains vaporise like ghosts on the glass table.

{Fiction, Scribbles, Notes, Stories, Tiny Visual Tales, Love, Memory}

Sunday 21 September 2014

Birds on a Wire

As a kid, while I was still grappling with my ability to write and artfully sculpt letters, I remember the daunting feeling of flipping through the school notebook which came streaked with dotted lines. I remember how I would try to precariously balance my wavy, uncertain letters on them. And I still remember my mother holding my hands, waltzing the tip of my pencil from the dotted line into the white space of endless possibilities above it, weaving a loop to make the perfect 'l' and gliding it back to the line to end the performance with a celebratory sweep. Back then, I recognized my love for the theatrics of writing letters--of assembling them to make words, and putting the stories that I mad up in my head, onto paper.

I made this picture while driving the other day. {Don't worry, I parked the car on the side}. The birds on the wire somehow took me back to my kindergarten days and reminded me of the letters and the dotted lines. I don't know why I made this picture, but perhaps something is telling me to rewrite the story I set out to write for myself, or alter the plot a bit. It's funny how some things you come across in life, bring back some of the most unintentionally related memories. Thankfully, this was a happy one.


{longing, memories, love, photography, writing, happy incidents, notes to self}

Saturday 13 September 2014

Note to Self

Be effortless at taking risks. Let go. Imagine, dream and then attack. Get after it. Draw out a map. Write down that one thing you want and then make love to it like there is no tomorrow. Don't protect yourself. don't deny yourself that risk you must take. taste it. bite into it. devour it. be instinctive, intuitive. make mistakes. accept imperfections, your shortcomings, your flaws. {you'd be boring without them}. dream, but don't falter in imagination. think, but don't over think. live, but don't float. dive. take the plunge. take that leap of faith. dream crazy big! get that lion out of the cage and let it roar. let the world hear it. no one can deny you what is already yours. just open that cage. and leap.

{revelations, realizations, inspirations, notes to self, reminder}

Unmade



In unmade beds we lie unmade
naked, sweaty palmed
wet eyed with wet insides
lying across the wrinkled sheets

moments ago
you had dug your fingernails
altering the lines my palm contained
becoming the cartographer of my world

outside
the owls hooted and spied wide-eyed
inside
I feel into your arms and you slipped
into mine

I gave you my world in kisses and rhyme
and you gave me
memories--

memories
that lie on my bed
like torn out pages

crumpled, abandoned, silent,
unfinished

{love, stories, heartaches, scribbles, remembering}

Friday 12 September 2014

Around the Corner



She walked passed him, unaware of his presence, but his gaze followed her. It was love at first sight, even at this age. And as she turned around the corner, he realized he would never see her again. Their eyes would never meet, her heart would never skip a beat like his did moments ago. They would continue to exist in their own little worlds, and that's where their story would end. He accepted, lifted his gaze, and moments later saw the next love of his life, walk past him.

{stories, lonely series, travel scribbles, lovers, tiny visual tales}

Sunday 10 August 2014

Bookmarked: Call Me Ishmael

Remember that crazy, indescribable feeling that you experience when you've just finished reading the last page of a book? That feeling when you cannot wait to tap your friend on his/her shoulder and say, "Oh, you absolutely must read this book!"   Books are a necessity for the soul, I believe. There is some overpowering sense of magic that exists in them. The magic of touring our fingers across the book's spine; in opening the first page and reading the first line; of living with the characters and imagining ourselves to be like those characters; of escaping our world and existing in another one, just for a while. And sometimes, just finding ourselves in those pages and smiling while sipping on a cup of masala chai.

Call Me Ishmael is a website that is a quasi-book club which also functions as a repository of beautiful human stories and experiences. It invites anonymous people [bibliophiles like you and me] to call from random parts of the world and narrate an experience about a book they read that changed their lives. The callers are nameless, yet all of them share that remarkable bond of treasuring books and keeping them close to their heart. Every day, Call Me Ishmael handpicks one voicemail, transcribes it and sends it out to the universe, for souls like us to listen to. 

To me, each voicemail is like a billet-doux dedicated to the unceasingly imaginative and phenomenal world of literature. These letters exist, I believe, to inspire us...to the extent that, in some strange, inexplicable way, there is always something that hits a chord within and I always have something to take away after I've finished listening to an experience. My favourite is the one on The Diary of Anne Frank, and I think that a lot of people are inspired to survive in this terrifying world through the books they've read. 

I managed to reach out to Logan Smalley, a TED fellow who is the Director at Call Me Ishmael. Thankfully, he was ready to give me his time of day, so I picked his brain about the inspiration behind this simple, yet beautiful idea. 

What sparked, Call Me Ishmael?
Call Me Ishmael actually has a somewhat bohemian origin story. At a pub in the West Village in New York City, some friends and I were discussing books and websites we love over beers. We were riffing on an idea about creating a blog named, Call Me Ishmael, and thought: what if Ishmael had a cell phone? We launched the site six months later. 

"Call Me Ishmael" is the opening sentence of Moby Dick by Herman Melville. We have, of course, taken a bit of liberty to re-imagine that line as more of an invitation to pick up a telephone than a mysterious start to a Great American Novel. At his core, Ishmael is the perfect narrator. He's open-minded, has a constantly evolving view of the world and doesn't judge the characters and stories that unfold before him in Moby Dick. Likewise, our Ishmael (or at least, his cell phone) isn't a critic of the calls and stories he receives, but a curious observer and collector. The CMI team is also fascinated with the lore of Moby Dick, so yes, if you spy a stray wale tail, it's in homage to that great book! 

Many callers use Call Me Ishmael as a medium to share their feelings, narrate their darkest secrets or talk about a life-changing moment. Do you believe this project is therapeutic in some way?
Sometimes the best therapy in the world is simply to say something out loud. However, it can be very difficult to share secrets with friends, family or people who see you on a regular basis. Call Me Ishmael is anonymous, so there is a freedom to say things that might otherwise be very difficult to communicate.

How do you curate the posts? What draws you to a particular voicemail?
Our favourite calls are the ones that tell a very specific story about a book. We get tons of enthusiastic, intelligent, funny calls that review or summarize books, and those are amazing too, but what our listeners are really drawn towards are the calls that tell one unique story that no one else in the world has experienced. We like calls that answer questions like: How did you come to own your copy of the book? Were you in a public place when a book was so powerful that it made you embarrassingly burst into tears? One of the best examples is a caller who loved a book of poetry so much that she decided to read it out loud to the trees in a public park.

How many calls do you receive on a daily basis? Have there been instances where the callers have returned?
Our call volume varies; on slower days we average about 25 calls, but when one of our favourite authors shared the site with his Facebook fans, we got over 400 voicemails within an hour of the post. All calls are anonymous, so it's tricky to tell for sure if the same storytellers are returning to talk about different books, but readers have repeatedly asked if they, "can call back again?" The answer, of course, is yes. 

Where all have the readers called from?
We've added stories from all over the world to our library of calls. Everywhere from Ecuador to the UK to the Philippines. None from India yet, though, we'd love some of your readers to be the first!

Lastly, where do you see this project heading? Do you intend on compiling these letters and publish them in a book?
In the coming weeks, we will be launching a new program that inspires our community to call in about specific themes, authors or books. We've been imagining how Call Me Ishmael could use technology to reinvent book clubs. In a way, a book of the typed transcripts is always in the works. We just haven't bound them, yet. The typed pages are currently scattered all around my walls and living room, like a bookish version of A Beautiful Mind

If you have a story to share about a fantastic book that you just read, you know who to call

{books, Call Me Ishmael, narratives, stories, voicemails, anonymous}

Friday 1 August 2014

Notes from a Diary

Sometimes we sleep open-eyed, thinking of what is to come, or what may have been. Sometimes we listen to the words of a poet and fall in love with him unknowingly--not because of who he is, but what he thinks. Sometimes we fall like torn out pages from a book of an unforgiving author. And we lie on the ground, crumpled, abandoned, silent, yet unfinished. Sometimes, we build our worlds around the past and live in the moments that have gone by, loving lovers who are now ghosts. And when we have finally assembled our memories and tied them neatly in a bow, when we have mustered the courage to become citizens of the present--we realize that we've become too old to fall in love again.

Thursday 24 July 2014

Store Alert: Eye Candy

The thing about stationery is... you get greedy. It's never enough, is it? I am a compulsive hoarder, I confess. I can never have enough of those classic moleskines, those mulit-hued post-its or those gorgeous fountain pens. Le sigh. So, if you are a hoarder like me {I like to use the phrase: a collector of good things}, you must stop here. 


Or, you could just continue reading. 



The other day, I came across an online store, dedicated in all its entirety, to bespoke diaries. I spent {I kid you not} a good 20 minutes surveying the goods. I'm a bit bothered about the name though: the store is called Eye Candy. But I suppose for folks like me who get weak in their knees at the sight of stationery, the products are quite... well, eye candy-esque. The rich, ivory leather journal presented in a neat bow took my heart away {I can almost hear myself saying, "My precioussss..."}




Next up on the Eye Candy shelf is a special family of distressed leather diaries [very classy, I may add} which come with an elegant orange band and a charming brass trinket. What I particularly like about these stationery gems is that their design is subtle; nothing is too over-the-top. These are the perfect companions for a travel-junkie like me. 


While the vintage, hand-crafted journals are absolute stunners, there are also paper-notebooks which carry quirky quotes {When Life Gives You Hands, Make Handmade or It's Time Again for Another Saturday in the Office} written in playful type and graphics. 


There is a bit for everybody, I believe. There are journals in classic black or beige for those important {read: serious} meetings, as well as those easily-fit-in-my-pocket notebooks for Saturday afternoon scribbles while you wait for a friend at a cafe. These are definite keepers.


Here's the way to the candy store or follow them on tumblr

{design, stationery, diaries, notemaking, store, Eye Candy, journals, classic, writing}