At The Edge

Releases tomorrow, 2nd April, 2010. -0- Zindagi soz bane, saaj naa hone paaye saaz-e-dil jab bhi baje aawaaz na hone paaye  As the opening credits start rolling, the camera, maybe of a visitor, catches the usual sights of Delhi. But then the film is about music. We hear the sounds. The usual sounds of Delhi. Buses honking, deep hum of trucks, musical horns cutting wind, the steel buzz of autos, the rush of a passing car, the slow turning of a cycle rickshaw, a train, a car stuck at a red light, screaming, people shouting, laughs, radio playing an old melody, street vendors and their business hymns. Someone beating on a metal sheet. The general noise of Delhi. But then as the credits reach the end, you start to realize that the heart of this noise is now slowly beating to a rhythm. The noise starts to fade in with the music. The music of Indian Ocean. We hear the band jamming in an old decrepit house at Karol Bagh. Their pad. A house that once housed Faiz.

First Leela Naidu and now I read about passing away of Gayatri Devi . [ A fine obit at TOI remembering Gayatri Devi ] As my mother heard the sad news on TV, she couldn't help remembering that a cousin brother of my nani was a friend of the queen and that the great lady had often helped him with the business. She was a queen. -0- Came across some rare photographs of Gayatri Devi at Flick: Pic1 , from a time when she was called Princess Ayesha of Cooch Behar . Pic2 ,  poise. Pic3 , Maharani Gayatri Devi at Rambagh Palace, 1943. Pic4 , After the wedding of Princess Gayatri Devi of Cooch Behar and Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II of Jaipur. Rampur Palace, 1940. (uploader  Doc Kazi has a great collection of  pre-partition era photographs of Royals from India ) -0- Image: An article in The Hindu about Gayatri Devi's biographer Dharmendar Kanwar

Window and the Sky. Took this photograph towards the end of May. -0- Since last few weeks, there's hardly any cloud in the sky. Sun is melting tar off the roads. It sticks to the sole. Monsoon is late. A bird living nearby has gone mad, everyday, sharp at 2:30 in the sharp afternoon, it starts chirping mad. It's not koel. Delusion. Cuckoo. Not even a cursory dust storm greets it in the evening. I saw an old woman walk straight, face first, into the cold glass wall of a cool mall. Disorientation. It broke her beak. I yay ya suku suku . -0- I am seeing a rise in queries leading to that old rain song: 'Allah Megh De'. Call it summer effect. I am again listening to ' Lapak jhapak tu aa re badarwa ' from Boot Polish (1954). Classic. [ watch] . Yes, it's a funny song. Just wait for the song to end and for the rains to start. It turns tragic. I am looking at photographs of rain clouds and then their video . I am gazing at Bollywood water fairies...

"A man in my village got made a talaab that cost him two Crore rupiya. " And a dark man, mid-thirties, with pencil thin mustache, cycled right next to the cycle-rickshaw I was being driven in. "2 Crore!" It was a terribly hot dusty day and the time was well past four. Sometimes people just want to talk. He was talking to me. I thought he said something about taala . A lock that costs two Crore! "Why?" The man put his arm on the iron side-rest of the rickshaw and told me about the rich man of his village who order made a lake completed at the cost of Rs. 2 Crore and *** Lakh. Once complete, the rich man then donated the talaab to the villagers. "You see he was doing it all for his son who had no children. And lo! A year later his son got two boys! Blessing of all the villages worked for him. One must give. It's important. Money it goes around. Even one rupee. May be I have something to do with that one rupee." "Yes, it goes ar...

Last year ended with me flying in a plane for the first time in life. As the plane was seeking higher elevation, on its way to the invisible pathway guided by some Einsteinian equation, I looked out of the window and saw the city I live in. The high roads, brightly lit at geometric intervals by yellow sodium vapour street lights, look like one giant incandescent caterpillar keeping guard of its billion glowing eggs and feeding its tiny crawling larvae. At four past midnight into the start of this year, I found myself walking all alone on some unknown dimly lit road, with a plastic Bisleri Bottle in hand, somewhere on the outskirts of the city of Panjim in Goa, looking for an open petrol pump. -0- City That Does Not Sleep          By Federico García Lorca In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody. Nobody is asleep. The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about the...

I say let the women in their twenties take over the world. Of course, that would mean the end of the world after 25-30 years because its around this time that they would hit the menopause. With all the world leadership ‘hot’ and experiencing psychological conditions like mood disturbance, irritability, fatigue, memory loss and depression, the possibility of nuclear holocaust is very high. At least we would have 25-30 years of peace. We men, we don’t need psychological conditions like these to nuke someone. No way. We would nuke someone just because “the other guy guzzled two more beers than I could. Teri toh …How dare you!"Tie the A-bomb around the guzzler guy’s waist and air drop him on the brewery. That would bring peace to the world and more importantly to the pub” (Really got in trouble with some women after wrting it. Still don't know what the fuss was about!)

Untamed Love: summing up a beautiful documentary by National Geographic. Could well have been a Bollywood movie or a Pearl. S. Buck saga. - Shot somewhere in South India. - There are two tribes: The Mountain Tribe and The Old Temple Tribe. - The tribes usually fight over the limited food. - Story told in first person by a She monkey from the Mountain Tribe of monkeys. - Jeela is young and beautiful. - She falls for Bo-Bo a young handsome monkey Prince from her tribe. - Bobo, being a prince, is dear to all. - Bobo, the dear son of tribe chief Nine Fingers, is even allowed to climb the throne of the Chief - the lone tree a top the mountain. - Bobo and Jeela spend a lot of time together playing around. - A scheming powerful male Longtooth wants to be the Head. - The monkey tribe of Temple attack the mountain. - Nine Fingers and Longtooth give them a tough fight and they retreat. - Nine Fingers and Longtooth follow them, but only one, Longtooth mysteriously returns. - Nine...