Anger: Ego's fairest son.

Found my next film subject(s). This will be good. Hollywood, under me. Bring me a skull of lillies, a peach-coloured drum soda, a plant that borrows from the tree, the flower a thing that picks the bee's brains, a giving that's not really a giving, a soul-flashed willow tree paying for its very own appletree...

The Myth and Magic of Ajmer

Ajmer is a strange muslim town in the heart of Rajasthan. It is considered a very important place of worship primarily because of Garib Nawaz, who apparently was sent by Prophet Mohammed to introduce Islam to India. The Dargāh Sharīf is a fascinating place where the iron furnace apparently never heats up while the food is cooked, where the food stays fresh even after a year, where thousands of limb-less poor people hang around expecting to get food and money. The lanes are tiny, you can almost smell the brick that's cast thousands of years back. My friend Taj Hussain, the auto-driver, took me around and told me these tales of Ajmer. Quite fascinating.

The Dargāh Sharīf of Khwāja Mu'īnuddīn Chishtī is situated at the foot of the Tārāgaṛh hill, and consists of several white marble buildings arranged around two courtyards, including a massive gate donated by the Nizām of Hyderabad, a mosque donated by the Mughal emperor Shāh Jahān, the Akbarī Mosque, and the domed tomb of the saint. The Emperor Akbar, with his queen, used to come here by foot on pilgrimage from Agra every year in observance of a vow he had made when praying for a son. The large pillars, erected at intervals of two miles (3 km) the whole way between Agra and Ajmer, marking the daily halting places of the royal pilgrim, are still extant.

Come to Ajmer, feel the force.

It is the distance between the head and the heart that worries me the most. It is the distance between you and me that worries me second most.

A
very
private
machine:
A
study
of
the
aesthetic
&
acoustic
components
of
a
brain.

The significance of neti neti

In Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, god is questioned by his students to describe God. He states "The Divine is not this and it is not that" (neti, neti).

Thus, the Divine is not real as we are real, nor is it unreal. The divine is not living in the sense humans live, nor is it dead. The Divine is not compassionate as we use the term, nor is it uncompassionate. And so on. We can never truly define God in words.

All we can say, in effect, is that "It isn't this, but also, it isn't that either". In the end, the student must transcend words to
understand the nature of the Divine.

In this sense, neti-neti is not a denial. Rather, it is an assertion that whatever the Divine may be, when we attempt to capture it in human words, we must inevitably fall short, because we are limited in understanding, and words are limited in ability to express the transcendent. The original texts shed light on the practice of neti neti as a tool to Self-realisation aka Brahman.

The art of listening

Listening is an art which very few of us are capable of. We never actually listen. The word has a sound and when we do not listen to the sound, we interpret it, try to translate it into our own particular language or tradition. We never listen acutely, without any distortion. When you tell a rather exciting story to a little boy, he listens with a tremendous sense of curiosity and energy. He wants to know what is going to happen, and he waits excitedly to the very end. But we grown-up people have lost all that curiosity, the energy to find out, that energy which is required to see very clearly things as they are, without any distortion. We never listen to each other. You never listen to your wife, do you? You know her much too well, or she you. There is no sense of deep appreciation, friendship, amity, which would make you listen to each other, whether you like it or not. But if you do listen so completely, that very act of listening is a great miracle.
- JK

Joyless

You've got your 7-figure paycheck,
your 12-figure credit limit.
You've got your diamond-studded wristwatch,
offsetting your lizard-skin sneakers.
You've got your remote-controlled blinds,
and later, your climate-controlled jacuzzi,
You've got your computer-programmed carseat,
your chrome-plated wheel-rims,
and to drive to
your own fancy Starbucks,
You've got your white platinum cufflinks,
to match your black Armani dinner suit,
and over dinner,
to gift your girlfriend,
a precious oyster pearlset.

You've got all this.
All this and more, so why so sad?

Do-buy

Its funny I am saying all this when all along up until now I had compromised my energies for creating commercial logos and branding (which is always explained as something much beyond a logo) for rich companies, building graphic guidelines and things exquisitely called brand driver platforms. Although it did sting once in a while I always thought of (and also owned!) sports-cars with 6-speed transmission (I remember telling people that being in an Audi TT was like sitting in a cockpit), black and white minimalist Armani XL wristwatches, Paul Smith trousers (with that really gorgeous multi-coloured band that would stick out for people to see), Prada slippers and the very assumably not-in-your-face red strip with the Prada type offset to the left, the black CK underwear (oh, you could be clever and rest your hand on your hips in such a way that the Calvin Klein type could be readable to your fellow designer-conscious graphic designer friends). All very carefully crafted for the conscious pretty-faced consumer. I would walk into the boutique shopping malls with 500 dollars in my pocket knowing I was going to spend it, but not knowing on what. Its funny when I think about it now but it makes sense why I named my folder on my macpro Lavish. Ha! Its all adding up now. My subconscious mind was housing all this information and distilling it slowly through my fingertips as they pixellated my innermost fantasies. And I didn’t even know. My parents thought I was progress-personified. I lived in a housing complex called Greens where everything right from the lakes to the palm trees was man-made. Anything was possible in this wonderful fantasy world. It was every middle-class Indian’s dream to be part of a society that had its own private Costa’s, its own private swimming pool surrounded by trees. I remember texting my brother about my uber-cool lifestyle when I was lazing around in the pool in my Ripcurl swimming trunks. I used to take my Tarkovsky Sculpting in time book to the pool hoping to accidentally bump into a pretty girl who knew his films and didn’t think he was a famous medieval classical composer. Alas, it never happened. What was I thinking, God only knows. Now when I look back I can laugh. I was still sensitive back then, though. I had my own upright piano, an Eastern-european piano teacher and a filipino piano-tuner called Jun. I went through it all. I expected to find real happiness in buying all of Tori Amos’s piano transcriptions and working out my favourite songs. Unfortunately, I never got around to spending too much time on the piano. Was I in favourable environments? What was my motivation? I wonder.

I guess there was an innocence in the futile acquisition of things big and small. Of things beautifully designed, sensitively crafted. Before I bought my car I made sure the rims on the tires were the 19” ones and not the 17” ones. Attention to detail, eh? Talking of attention to detail, I remember spending hours and hours crafting the logo of Uptown Cairo, a 7000-home township in Cairo for the super rich. I came up with this really clever idea of positioning it as a fashion brand so people could associate their lifestyle with, say, Giorgio Armani or YSL. The brandmark was also inspired by the YSL insignia. A very sophisticated CA would drive the brand by appearing on cufflinks, shopping bags and 80ft billboards. Black and white with an accent of fuchsia-pink. It looked really nice I must say. But, wow, its hard now to understand my dedication towards something so trivial. The hours spent creating the brand driver platform, the hours spent sifting through images in Getty and Corbis containing the tags sophisticated, class, up-market, quintessential, etc. I browsed through thousands of images downloading comps of the ones that matched my verbal brand driver “Uptown Chic”. I also created a little film in flash with the music of Air. How sensitive I was as a commercial graphic designer. Did I somehow avoid questioning this or was I just too caught up in wondering what to buy next? When I think back now I really wonder what my real motivation was. On the other hand, I had to keep the social and artistic cylinders of my heart constantly full by having screenings of Bergman, Tarkovsky, Kurosawa films (and post-screening discussions) in my apartment. I felt this somehow made up for all the shit I was doing in my day-job. I constantly lived in that sense of denial that hey I wasn’t really doing too bad in the self-realisation department. I rarely asked myself the question, “Are you being true to yourself?”. Actually I don’t think I ever even thought of that. I was too busy drinking Belgian beer with friends, discussing Ermenegildo Zegna’s fall collection of men’s suits, smoking cuban cigars, making sure my 100 dollar Terre-de-Hermes cologne found its way through the smoke-infested interiors of the post-modern Blue Bar or the David Lynch-inspired Cooz Bar in the Hilton. These were the things that constantly were on my mind. I was the cool graphic designer working with the best Branding agency in town hanging out with really pretty women, some of them Mexican, some Lebanese, some French, some even as exotic as half-Danish/half-Rwandan. I constantly sent photos to my friends back in India, me in my Stone Temple Pilots T-shirt and brown Mexx leather jacket (with the minimalist red interior satin lining) hanging out with super-gorgeous women, their arms all over me. Oh, how satisfied I felt. This, for me, was the summation, the ultimate realisation of what I constantly strived for. It was me climaxing in the social circus. I was up there. As the night was coming to a close the only question on my mind was whether I was going to flash my Gold or Platinum credit card when the cheque came. Or maybe I was too drunk to think of anything at all.

In 2004, I began documenting my thoughts on a blog I called Scalable Deficit. Deficit is defined in the dictionary as being “the amount by which something, esp. a sum of money, is too small”. Ironically, subconsciously, I must have been talking of that something as being the soul, and not money. Quite an apt title, now when I think of it. I had to write what I felt. I had to be honest. I knew I was doing something wrong in my life. My life, for sure, was lacking something. Something real. Which is why the words came so easily. I needed to vent.

I give up
Its a horrible day. Never felt so alone. I think I am a bonafide misanthrope. The sound of the human voice drives me to insanity. Its all opinion right? Everything is. "Have you been to the packaging and promotions section of the website? You might want to check that out." No, I don't want to check that out. Its all bollocks anyway. Who fuckin cares? These people can stuff their opinions on advertising and how cool it is up their... My heart is filled with Castrol. I am a commodity. I am a whore. Famewhore. I am a sellout. I have nothing to contribute to society. I sell lies. I sell mouthwash. There are no stories I can tell my grandchildren. I am the lost rays of a forgotten sunrise. I am all that I never dreamed of being. Plastic and cute, all the way.
Monday, March 07, 2005

The turning point for me was when I made my film “Look here, Kunigunda” which was a kind of visual poetry with no words. Having a film-club was good because I met quite a few interesting people like Mark, the hero of my film, Siobhan, the heroine and Nick, whose camera I finally used to shoot the film. So, I guess that was an important turn of events. It made me realise that beyond the glitz and glamour of the design industry, there was a world of realism in the artistic expression through film, a kind of vocation that maybe I could pursue.

Oh, I remember this lovely little poem.

Once the poem leaves your fingertips
it is no longer yours.
It acquires new shapes
in the eyes of others.

All art rides on the vehicle of opinion. This is where the author is at his weakest, vulnerable most. At that point of time, the author either waits patiently for comments (diplomatically conveyed), honest criticism, praise or love. I have always been the sucker for compliments. This receiver of love. Accepting everything good like I deserved it, running from those who fail to think like me. Atleast when you are creating artwork without the business hat on you can choose to be elitist and ignore what people think and decide to keep at it inspite of all the negative feedback. If you honestly feel for what you do, why should you care what others think. Results are not really in your hands. Maybe someday they will get it, maybe they wont and maybe you will be written off as the weird one that no one got. Who knows.

But, its different when you’re creative expression is at the mercy of a client or, even worse, a blonde Lebanese client-servicing executive who seems to have the final word on your artistic expression. It has happened to me many times. I could be sitting there with my headphones blasting Godspeed, you black emperor, working on an advertising campaign for a very large client like American Express when suddenly I could be interrupted with something like this:-

“We just presented the work to the client. It went down very well. Instead of the black and white photographs, can we see an option with colour photographs? The client was not too happy with the font you used, can we just stick to, say, a Helvetica? Or even Verdana? The client really likes Verdana? So, two options, one with Helvetica, one with Verdana? Can you increase the size of the logo and can we have FREE written in caps, and maybe in red? Other than this its all fine. Well done, Prem. Your a star. Shouldn’t take you more than an hour to fix this, right? Shall I arrange to meet them tomorrow, in the a.m.?”

Lina, the beautiful Lebanese client-servicing executive disappears saying she needs to run into another meeting in five (she probably needs those five minutes to do her eyes). I sit looking at my monitor not really knowing what hit me. But I try to calm down by going to the pantry to make myself a strong Nescafe in my own branded coffee cup. It all boils down to this. These are the moments that really make you go “WOW”. And little did I know it would get a lot worse than this.

Turquoise boy

No?
I say no to corporate magazines. I say no 9am meetings. I say no to 9-5. I say no to cubicles. I say no to annual reports. I say no to tea-parties. I say no to sushi lunches. I say no to group hugs. I say no to the ladder. I say no to the institution. I say no to institutional leeches (who use the ladder). I say no to team-building picnics. But I still sit here in my cubicle, staring at a computer screen designing and branding corporate institutions. Fuckin hypocrite, I wish I could go to sleep and never wake up cos I am saying yes, secretly.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006

In 2006, a branding consultancy called Turquoise headhunted me and offered me a job as Senior Designer in their London offices. It was a very exciting time. I always wanted to live in London, one of the three cultural Mecca's of the world. Turquoise was run by three women, the superpowers of the new world. The Creative Director, the senior designers, the designers were like little poodles on their lap or like lilliput men stuck in their hair. The studio was in a converted Victorian building in the very very expensive Holborn area. To keep up with my exquisite Dubai lifestyle I took up a tiny (like really tiny) studio apartment in Notting Hill for an insanely exorbitant rent. Why? I wanted to tell everyone I was living in Notting Hill, just like Hugh Grant. I also made it a point to tell everyone how much the rent was, which in Indian rupees was about one hundred thousand rupees a month. Er... I didn’t realise the coming one year would be me selling out completely in the corporate world, but also the year where I would write my most honest music to date. So, once again, I managed to offset the humdrum of the branding world with a sincere artistic expression through music.

Turquoise really started to kill me. I was dying a slow death in the Sylvia Plath sense of the word. By the end of six months, I had lost every bit of soul left. I lost a lot of weight too. My artistic and social cylinders were running dry. I had nothing to say. So, I started walking the streets of London alone. I began discovering a lot of new music, new artists, new films. I went to exhibitions in the TATE, Whitechapel Gallery and Serpentine regularly and began spending my money acquiring the paraphernalia of the artists I loved. Pierre Huyghe’s “Celebration Park” and Fischli & Weiss’s “Flowers & Questions” really inspired me to look within and find my own voice and make the exit from corporatism quietly. Like those signs in concert halls that read “Please leave quietly”.

Still

I stopped to look at the sky and the clouds,
I stopped to listen to the birds and the bees,
I always stopped,
became still, really still.
Motionless.
Sometimes for a minute or two,
sometimes for hours.
But I remember I always stopped.
Always.

Letters from Hinterland

There is a definite artistic minority in the world today. What is considered mass culture today mostly constitutes of art and expression made purely for a commercial cause. And, sadly, of very bad taste. Dangerous to generalise, I know, but what you see around you, be it commercial cinema, commercial music, commercial graphic design all contribute to a very uninspiring visual and aural landscape.

The need of the hour is of a place for like-minded people and artists to come together and live in a sort of utopian society where each one contributes to the growth of the society and in the process also learns and grows artistically. A growth within, a growth of the soul, so to speak.

This place, which we would like to call Hinterland, is the brainchild of L, a mysterious yet optimistic version of Kurtz (Marlon Brando in Apocalypse now). The Hinterland book comprises of letters from residents of Hinterland to L. These letters are from random residents who have written and documented their thoughts. The letters have one thing in common. A coming of age of these very distinct separate lives. And that is what connects them. They may be artists, teachers, architects, orphans, musicians, cooks or filmmakers. But they all come together to bring to life this utopian dream. Hinterland, at its most fundamental level, is a collective of people living in harmony in an environment where there is no concept of money, no concept of automobiles, no concept of day-jobs, no concept of time.

Posi ti vi ty

i am positivity.
i am 6am. i am hollywood under a purple sky.
i am the sound of your silence.
i am the reflection on glass.
i am the turn on a road, i am also 120kmph.
i am the 17 seconds within a "moment"
i am the air between your head and the noose.
i am the water that falls.
i am the sound of the night. i am also the color of dawn.
i am the decomposed version of your heart.
i am the curve, the line and the shape of your thoughts.
you are one of the faces in my mirror.

Sans-inspiration, sans-common sense, sans-real joy, sans-sincerity, this city is truly sans-life.
I have no love or interest for this city anymore.
Cant wait to go back to Benares, hundreds of miles away, anywhere but here...
I'd rather be drowning with the fish.

The Mexican & The Korean

Two faces of music,
Two phases of thought,
One violin, one sitar,
One, she wears her Buddhist dress,
The other, she wears her funny little chin,
One thinking, one laughing, one hoping, one dreaming.
The two girls of Mona Lisa.
Two phases of thought.

BHU

I visited the wonderful expanses of one of India's oldest universities, the Benares Hindu University. Walking through the greens was refreshing. And with Gabriel, the laughs, my boatman on the fringes, a lassi spiked with Bhaang, every step, every second seemed like it contained a million different moments. Riding back, the images started to kick in. Every second was new, fresh. Getting off at Godolia and walking back to my room on the Ghats, I seemed to observe every single detail, every face that passed me, every little scene in the minutest of details. The world of Benares is truly something else. There is an electricity here that I cannot express in words.

"Intellectual work is important and has an undoubted place in the scheme of life. But what I insist on is the necessity of physical labour. No man, I claim, ought to be free from that obligation. It will serve to improve even the quality of his intellectual output."

M.K. Gandhi

One of the hallmarks of a man of self-esteem, who regards the universe as open to his effort, is the profound pleasure he experiences in the productive work of his mind; his enjoyment in life is fed by his unceasing concern to grow in knowledge and ability – to think, to achieve, to move forward, to meet new challenges and overcome them – to earn the pride of a constantly expanding efficacy.

A different kind of soul is revealed by the man, who, predominantly, takes pleasure in working only at the routine and familiar, who is inclined to enjoy working in a semi-daze, who sees happiness in freedom from challenge, struggle or effort: The soul of a man profoundly deficient in self-esteem, to whom the universe appears as unknowable and vaguely threatening, the man whose central motivating impulse is a longing for safety, not the safety that is won with efficacy, but the safety of a world in which efficacy is not demanded.

Still a different kind of soul is revealed by the man who finds it inconceivable that work, any form of work, can be enjoyable, who regards the effort of earning a living as a necessary evil, who dreams only of pleasures that begin when the workday ends, the pleasure of drowning his brain in alcohol or television or billiard or women. “The pleasure of not being conscious”: The soul of a man with scarcely a shred of self-esteem, who never expects the universe to be incomprehensible and takes his lethargic dread of it for granted, and whose only form of relief and only notion of enjoyment is the dim flicker of understanding sensations.

Still another kind of soul is revealed by the man who takes pleasure, not in achievement, but in destruction, whose action is aimed not at attaining efficacy but ruling those who have attained it: The soul of a man so abjectly lacking in self value, and so overwhelmed by terror of existence, that his sole form of self-fulfillment is to unleash his resentments and hatred against those who do not share his state, those who are able to live as if by destroying the confident, the strong and healthy, he could convert impotence to efficacy.

From The Psychology of Pleasure by Nathaniel Branden

The Simplest Question

...to ask yourself is:
"Are you really true to yourself?"
If you know the answer to that, if you can answer that in all honesty, you've got all it takes to make a real change. That's when you will find harmony in your work - a deep sense of satisfaction, a clear sense of you.

The man who has stolen in order never to thieve again remains a thief. Nobody who has ever betrayed his principles can have a pure relationship with life. Therefore when a film-maker says he will produce a pot-boiler in order to give himself the strength and the means to make the film of his dreams - that is so much deception, or worse, self-deception. He will never now make his film.
From "Sculpting in Time" by Andrei Tarkovsky

“Everyday life is surrealistic”, says Jodorowsky, “made of miracles, weird and inexplicable events. There is no borderline between reality and magic.” Using a flurry of archetypal symbols to tap into a collective unconscious becomes his means of transcending this borderline. But for all the “objective art” supposedly produced in this way, Jodorowsky's films are also very personal pictures (often featuring him and his sons in central acting roles) reflecting his spiritual development. Foremost is his belief in making films into books of sacred symbols inducing spiritual illumination; reminiscent of Artaud's ideas about transforming the spectator, everyone making and viewing his films (himself especially) should be destroyed and reborn as new people. For this reason, he shoots his films in sequence from beginning to end, using the filmmaking process as a search for spiritual illumination, beginning with an initiation rite (i.e. violence, for he believes that art must be violent) and moving toward enlightenment. In Fando y Lis, the key to illumination (Tar) lies within oneself, and this belief is maintained throughout the subsequent films in various forms: El Topo represents Jodorowsky's negotiation of Zen Buddhism, while The Holy Mountain is based in Sufism and the writings of G.I. Gurdjieff, Tusk deals with Hinduism and Tantrism, and Santa Sangre springs from “psychomagic”.

More here :)

Hinterland - the film?

The story of a man, K, and his teenage daughter, M, beginning an expedition of India on a couple of bicycles. Inspired by the themes of Zen & the art of motorcycle maintenance and Motorcycle diaries, the film would follow the journey of father and daughter through the hinterlands of India. Breaking away from the city life, they begin the epic one year long journey to learn about life, family, oneness and love in the heart of India. The map is one that K is familiar with and has undertaken many many years ago. So, this time around he goes in search of his old friends in the villages to introduce his daughter to them and also give her a taste of the real India.

India could really do with a film like this. It has mass appeal, could easily be a box-office success, and would, most importantly, be a vehicle or even an inspiration for people to break away from the monotony of their 9-5 lives and explore what this wonderful country has to offer. Coinciding with the release of the film, a website containing the detailed map could be launched. The film could also spur on a concept for an ongoing TV-series where every fortnight, father and daughter go exploring another little hidden gem, another diorama.

Aesthetic components of the brain is a nice name for a band.

Mr. Burn got bit by an elephant

Two days of intensive discussions on film, life, art in general, cities, society and the future of humanity. And within those, interludes of Rat and Bear, Holy Mountain and El Topo. A very rich two days thanks to a chance meeting with Gabriel, a Belgian writer-thinker-violin & miniature guitar player. Oh not to forget he rides a cycle-rickshaw in Barcelona. And the best thing - he listens. Carefully listens, asks questions, reads the synopsis of my films in extreme detail reading everything out loud. Its been refreshing to have met him. And his sense of humour, wow. Really like Alice in wonderland, but Alice on LSD. Among other things, we spoke of the insignificance of a life spent buying Prada slippers, Armani watches & ck underwear (to think I was all that!), of a society that has lost the plot, of a people living in a time where they have no connection with their own inner selves, of the foreigners who come to India and cycle around everywhere with their children - the richness of that, the inward arc, of selling out working in commercial graphic design - making rich companies richer, of "flaunting it" a book about the power of shopping and owning and above all flaunting it and women wanting to be with someone purely on the size of a man's, errr, bank balance, of the floating man productions and its rather absurd logo, of being bit by an elephant!

I will be seeing him everyday till I leave. We even jammed last night at his place, him on the violin, me on the miniature while my boatman was rolling the J. I am having too many ideas these days. Its got to be the electricity of Benaras, one of the strangest yet inspiring places ever. How about a series of films like "The Belgian in Benaras" - peoples ideas of the place, what it means to them, etc. Go on then, do it Mordecai! Knives out...

X-two-oh!

I'm speaking in tongues with the pilgrims
who are shadowing the cylindrical sun
casting their way on the path to the invisible.
Breaking the circumference of the self
and opening their heart to whats really there.
Revealing themselves only to some,
hiding from the burdened ones.

Red, Green & Blue Mountains

The three adult-oriented learning facilities are called Red Mountain, Green Mountain & Blue Mountain. These complexes house the Architecture, Music & Film centres respectively. The three structures are built pyramid-style(cylindrical cones) with branches going out into semi-circle domes housing the production facilities within each of the modules. People living and learning in these complexes carry colour-coded armbands which then facilitate in the inter-mingling of the fields thereby opening up numerous avenues for collaboration. A design for the living (triangle) & learning (semi-circles) wings is underway.

A New Hinterland

In the near future, there will be a new kind of society where the urban mentality meets the village landscape. In these hinterlands of the future, every living entity or society would consist of the village and attached to the village in places near and in the jungles would be institutions. A list of 9 institutions have been outlined.
1/ GLASS OF GRASS. A vegetarian restaurant set in the heart of the forest.
2/ Soul (The School of unconventional learning): A school for city kids and village children that teaches fine arts and performing arts, conducts festivals, abolishes the concept of examination totally and follows a different approach to the convention of academia aiming to provide an alternative to it. The school houses camps with artists, musicians, sculptors, dancers and organises field trips into the village homes understanding their way of life.
3/ HQ: The recording studio that collaborates with artists from all over the country working on music projects and song compositions to be released quarterly. HQ also houses a venue for concerts. Apparently this is where The Strangest Band became popular with their 7 feet high animal constumes and acoustic sounds.
4/ Filmrose: A structure modelled on the design of a rose; each petal housing rooms and secret spaces for film screenings. Here, film enthusiasts meet, watch movies, collaborate on projects and have access to world-class shooting and editing equipment. (I saw a very strange film there once called Buickgreen about a white man in Varanasi falling in love with a local girl, falling out of love with her, strangling her with his lungi and very cleverly covering up the murder by having her secretly burnt in Manikarnika)
5/ The Interactive Kitchen: A restaurant opened by four friends and ace chefs. They cook live for their customers and in the process also detail the whole process right from vegetable farming to ingredients. Cookery classes and field trips contribute financially to this venture. This kitchen also is responsible for the food supply to planets of this Hinterland.
6/ Ode, The home for the Orphans, the Disabled and the Elderly: A structure set in the serene expanses of the mountains, housing an elaborate botanical garden that is maintained and taken care of by the residents. The orphans are taught in Soul.
7/ A childrens film & drama centre: This space screens intelligent cinema for children upto the age of 17. The films are categorised and discussions with adults follow screenings. The children who visit this faculty also have the option to study drama and puppeteering. Their performaces are showcased in the HQ and at the special auditorium at ODE.
8/ Yoga Cafe: This is a hotel where all the rooms have glass structures cantilevered into nature. The rooms are thin and long with high ceilings. During your stay here, you can begin your study of Yoga, understand the learnings of Advaita Vedanta and of spiritual Guru's like Sri Aurobindo, Kabir & Ramana Maharshi. Throughout their stay they are provided vegetarian food from Glass of Grass.
9/ The Library housing a large collection of art books, books on film and music & books on spirituality and philosophy.

This could be elaborated into a book with illustrations and conceptual drawings of the aesthetic of each of these planets. The book would read like a visit to a new utopia in the future. A visit to a self-sustaining society built on the grounds of humanity, learning and peace. The book could be called "Hinterland: Ideas for the government, Ideas for the developers, Ideas for people".

I'm watching everything... the buffaloes, the dogs, the parakeets, the pilgrims, the monkeys, the tourists, the water, the sky... watching everything without perspective.

The Yak

3 days starting trouble really. Dharamsala somehow didn't do it for me. Was fed up looking at all those lost Israeli spiritual-types, dread-locks and all, walking around with all of their psychotropic mentality. Yawn. I booked the bus to Manali on 26th night. The bus journey, wow, another nightmare, I was beginning to feel no good about this trip. And the fourth day as I woke up in Dragon guesthouse and made my way to the gorgeous Hadimba temple things started happening. I overheard two chaps talking to a man with a Yak about the possibility (!) of having the Yak sent to Kerala and housed in an air conditioned room. I laughed out, we three connected. Instantly. Two mallu boys, painters. Joy, expecially, top chap. Then the journey began and I just tagged along with them. We went to some really lovely environments, the Manu-rishi temple, its wonderful vibes, gorgeous wood-stone houses all around; then to the beautiful little town called Naggar. I can never get enough of the gorgeous pine-trees Himachal has. There's something very heavenly-looking about them. We first went to the castle, more gorgeous wood and stone. We visited Roerich's place nestled in the wilderness, never knew such places existed and then the highlight of the day - a rather post-modern looking temple built in a time when there was no modernism to be post about (!). The scenes and the views... I better not put it in words. I got to have all these photos added to the Hinterland website of photos from journeys. So much in this beautiful country. Oh, almost forgot had a lovely breakfast at Sheshbesh, a trippie-hippie restaurant by the Beas River. Managed to swing some Manali cream. X-genome, here I begin. Evening I sent one and went to Joy's guesthouse, a very old wooden structure in the lovely town of Vashist. I am now beginning to experience Benares-type hits part deux. We spoke of films and I browsed through his library, he has a space for guests to watch arthouse. He calls it "Inward Arc: Transvisionary centre for Art & Aesthetics". What fun. As I was leaving, he showed me the hot springs near his place in the Shiva temple where people dip. Lovely town, I am coming back. For sure. Funny how a Yak brought the three of us together. Eh?

God must be looking at the world today and thinking to himself
"My my, what have I done? These people are killing my trees, polluting my oceans, murdering my animals in the name of progress... my, my what have I done?"

A compendium of the world's wonders, curiosities & esoterica, Atlas Obscura, here &
Pocket films for travellers, here.

Residue

On a bus, looking out
I see the 80 ft billboards of an upcoming all-in-one shopping mall, happy families, smiling faces, fitter happier, children playing, a few cultural references thrown in like the done-to-death Kathakali cliche, ambient graphic shapes and bubbles,
I also happen to see the lines of construction workers running to their bus trying to find a place to sit on their long journey back to wherever they live - in the outskirts of the city
Like marching ants, so many of them with their yellow construction helmets, in queues, queues of yellow,
Faces full of sorrow, anxiety, trouble, thoughts of their wife back home, or child, fees to be paid, groceries to buy...
In front of them, Corolla's and Honda's passing by the busy road, music blasting, latest sound systems flashing neon pixel lights,
Such a world of contrasts, the equilibrium met,
Another take on humanity and its flourishes,
And a window into the lives of those workers, the residue of our society, the unwanted children of mankind.

In a milieu of strangers, the people who witness one's actions, declarations, and professions usually have no knowledge of one's history, and no experience of similar actions, declarations, and professions in one's past; thus it becomes difficult for this audience to judge, by an external standard of experience with a particular person, whether he is to be believed or not in a given situation. The knowledge on which belief can be based is confined to the frame of the immediate situation. The arousal of belief therefore depends on how one behaves - talks, gestures, moves, dresses, listens - within the situation itself. Two people meet at a dinner party; one tells the other he has been depressed for weeks; to the degree the listener as audience can judge the truth of such statements only by the way the stranger enacts the feeling of depression, to the degree appearances like this have an "urban" quality. The city is a settlement in which such problems of enactment are most likely to arise as a matter of routine.

- From the chapter "Roles" in The Fall of Public Man by Richard Sennett

To think that I was all these things...

I constantly went after the latest Paul Smith perfume, the latest Paul Smith trousers with the little multi-coloured stripes sticking out so people could see, the Paul Smith hat, the oh-how-cool-it-is black and white Giorgio Armani watch, the Audi TT with the 19" alloy wheels (17" wasn't good enough), the Prada sunglasses (but it didn't have the red Prada strip so I was disappointed - but instead I coloured my hair red to show people how cool I was), the CK underwear, the Ikea furniture and its funny spellings. I had to get my hands on the new Adidas limited edition shoes with the lovely green laces and the 1971 Mexico emblem.

And now when I look back at all this I laugh. I guess I have grown up. A little. But I am only scratching at the surface. The journey starts here, more or less.

To see that the mind is conditioned

All that we can do is to see that the mind is conditioned and, through self-knowledge, to understand the process of our own thinking. I must know myself, not as I would ideologically like to be, but as I actually am, however ugly or beautiful, however jealous, envious, acquisitive. But it is very difficult just to see what one is without wishing to change it, and that very desire to change it is another form of conditioning; and so we go on, moving from conditioning to conditioning, never experiencing something beyond that which is limited.
- JK

"Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you." - Marsha Norman

Labours of love

It takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a skilled carpenter or musician - but what makes a true master? Richard Sennett on the craftsman in us all.

The word "craftsman" summons an immediate image. Peering through a window into a carpenter's shop, you see an elderly man surrounded by his apprentices and his tools. Order reigns within: parts of chairs are clamped neatly together, the smell of wood shavings fills the room, the carpenter bends over his bench to make a fine incision for marquetry. The shop is menaced by a furniture factory down the road.
The craftsman might also be glimpsed at a nearby laboratory. There, a young lab technician is frowning at a table on which six dead rabbits are splayed on their backs, their bellies slit open. She is frowning because something has gone wrong with the injection she has given them; she is trying to figure out if she did the procedure wrong, or if there is something wrong with the procedure.

A third craftsman might be heard in the town's concert hall. There, an orchestra is rehearsing with a visiting conductor; he works obsessively with the string section, going over and over a passage to make the musicians draw their bows at exactly the same speed across the strings. The string players are tired, but also exhilarated because their sound is becoming coherent. The orchestra's manager is worried: if the visiting conductor keeps on, the rehearsal will move into overtime, costing management extra wages. The conductor is oblivious.

The carpenter, lab technician, and conductor are all craftsmen because they are dedicated to good work for its own sake. Theirs is practical activity, but their labour is not simply a means to another end. The carpenter might sell more furniture if he worked faster; the technician might make do by passing the problem back to her boss; the visiting conductor might be more likely to be rehired if he watched the clock. It's certainly possible to get by in life without dedication, but the craftsman exemplifies the special human condition of being engaged.

Continue reading.

Touch

God doesn't really bother revealing himself to many people.

Every creator has creations he likes, and creations he doesn't really care for. A painter would have works which he would consider un-100%. A songwriter, in a time of need, would write radio-friendly tunes to make some money. The artist would do a branding job to sustain himself. This theory, I think, applies to God too. So, in that context, what happens. There is greed, politics, war, bureaucracy, and all those things negative and stifling to the human race. The human race. Those he reveals himself to have certain jobs to do while they are here among you and me. They stand up, they start revolutions, they achieve independence of their own and of their country. Gandhi had a job to do. Krishnamurti had teachings to share, schools to found. Mother Teresa had people to help. Fidel Castro had an entire country depending on him, as did Gandhi. The Dalai Lama is here for a reason. So, all these people have had contact with God in some form or the other. There is also the other tier of people working at the grass-roots level. Like Lakshmikutty teacher in Wayanad. She sold her property to build a school for tribal children and also took it upon herself to fight for them when they are exploited by the materialists. There is the doctor in Atapadi who walks the streets everyday, going to the villagers homes and treating them for free. These people are among us. They are doing selfless work because there is a hidden force guiding them. I think that is God. But I am quite certain the percentage of people that God has chosen to touch is quite negligible. But when you are touched, He will reveal himself to you in all his living supernatural glory. He will look at you from the hearts of the simple folk, He will look at you from pine trees on cloud-covered mountains, He will look at you from the edge of the ocean, He will look at you through sunset. And that's when you will look. Inwards. And begin your work, silently. No hoopla, fan-fare free. :)

A little gorgeousness. :)

Herd mentality describes how people are influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors, follow trends, and/or purchase items. Examples of the herd mentality include the early adopters of high technology products such as cell phones and iPods, as well as stock market trends, fashions in apparel, cars, home décor, etc. Social psychologists study the related topics of group intelligence, crowd wisdom, and decentralized decision making.

People in these herds are broken up into two groups, explains Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopher who coined the phrase. One lended itself to the religious points of views- their beliefs and how those dictated their actions- while the other lended itself to influence by the media- more liberal and based upon what others perceive as 'right' (following trends, social norms, etc.).

Herd mentality results in the slow and gradual decay of not just our tiny circle of society, but the whole of humanity as we see it today. And to quote Ms. Rand,

"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision."

Reminders

Visit Dharamsala, visit Bookworm, hang out near Mr. DL, visit Dharamkot, get psychotropic, drift away
Visit Manali from there, black-out, then take the Rohtang La to Leh, see, smell, think, feel
Visit Varanasi (again!), begin learning the Sarod, walk the streets, sit in boats, wash clothes on the Ganges, observe, experience, listen
Visit the Bishnois, find out the 29 pearls, sit, learn, learn, learn
Visit Santiniketan, delve a little deeper into Tagore, hang with the Bauls, listen listen (maybe) jam?
Visit Kolkata, listen to people talk about politics, art, literature, walk the alleyways, sit under Howrah, look, really look (not see)
Visit Nagaland, check out the Naga metal scene, curiously look into the world of headhunters, remember not to panic
Document everything - write, draw, film, photograph (both digital and lomo) click click click.
Pointers for the year ahead... :)

Two poems from W

Cup of the sun
Circular
A space between the sky
made to see
a life gone by

----

Green on black, kids in a line
Hand to the leaf, rows and rows
Half empty glasses, white on black
One eye looking, one hand feeding.

Admonition

If you dissect a bird
To diagram the tongue
You'll cut the chord
Articulating song.

If you flay a beast
To marvel at the mane
You'll wreck the rest
From which the fur began.

If you pluck out the heart
To find what makes it move,
You'll halt the clock
That syncopates our love.

- Sylvia Plath

"It is often assumed that those who wander are condemned to restlessness, and that the certainty of identity and self are the markers of surety, confidence, success that all of us must strive towards. There is security in solidity, in strong foundations and structures, in finding your groove and being set in your way of life. In following tradition, in keeping within boundaries, within the womb of your society and its ways.

Wandering, on the other hand, is taken to be inconclusive, an indication of confusion and unknowing. Yet, isn't it through our wanderings that we chance upon insights and experiences that teach us in ways our regular lives wouldn't, and isn't our confusion often what provides the impetus to grow in a new direction? In transcending tradition that we come to know the real scope of our potential, in breaking boundaries that we catch a glimpse of our true nature?"

- Swati Chopra "Dharamsala Diaries"

Lullaby in three

An orange blossom breeze twirls in circles, dervish-like
One hand taking, one hand giving
Blue in green, hat and the like, pointed to the sky
Heaven-faced, fantastical
Viscera sera.

Have a guava. :)

The Music of the Spheres

A universe harmonious as a harp.
Rhythm is repeated equal times.
Heartbeat.
Day/night.
Migrant birds' arrivals and departures.
Star cycles and maize cycles.
Mimosa opening during the day
and folding when night comes.
Moon and tide rhythms.
And crabs who know the tide is on the ebb
and before it goes out have their hiding holes.
A single rhythm in planets, the sea, atoms, apples
which ripen and fall, and Newton's head.
Melody, arpeggio, chord.
The harp of the universe.
that is music.
Difference between music and noise...
The bell's sound is in its form.
Or girls' legs, come to that.
Matter is music.
Matter in perpetual motion in space and time.
Rhythmical are hearts and stars.
The universe sings and Pythagoras heard it.
The music of the spheres,
rather than classical music, jazz.

- Ernesto Cardenal.

Never to forget

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity for life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

- Arundhati Roy

The conscious, the unconscious & conditioning

What is the mind? There is the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. The conscious mind is occupied with the everyday duties—it observes, thinks, argues, attends to a job, and so on. But are we aware of the unconscious mind? The unconscious mind is the repository of racial instinct, it is the residue of this civilization, of this culture, in which there are certain urges, various forms of compulsion. And can this whole mind, the unconscious as well as the conscious, uncondition itself? Now, why do we divide the mind as the conscious and the unconscious? Is there such a definite barrier between the conscious and the unconscious mind? Or are we so taken up with the conscious mind that we have never considered or been open to the unconscious? And can the conscious mind investigate, probe into the unconscious, or is it only when the conscious mind is quiet that the unconscious promptings, hints, urges, compulsions come into being? So the unconditioning of the mind is not a process of the conscious or of the unconscious; it is a total process which comes about with the earnest intention to find out if your mind is conditioned.
- JK

Ashes

The story of siblings discovering the death of their mother. They are both in their 40's. Brother and sister. The mother's only two wishes are - one, that they scatter her ashes in the Ganges, Varanasi, and, two, take the long journey from Trivandrum all the way up to UP by bus/train. She leaves behind a diary and a map of the places they need to visit on their journey. With each visit, they discover something new about their mother. A road movie where a brother discovers his sister's soul and vice versa and also in the process realise their inner worlds and the interiors of India, the villages, the people, their simple lives - a contrast to their corporate mundane city lives.

Thoughts from Wayanad (4-9 August, 09)

4/8
Back on a journey to Wayanad. Not expecting anything. In the bus, around Mysore, I experienced an intense sense of lightness. A text to Bijoy read -
"Man, I'm experiencing an intense and overwhelming sense of happiness. Something has entered. Its like time, fear, longing, sorrow are things of the past. Like being a quiet observer. Wish we were in it together seeing and learning, not judging. Wow. Feels great. Paradigm shift in its most basic sense."

It was quite something. And listening to Reich, reading some JK. Spot on. All connected. Like a rewiring of the brain. I think this maybe what I have been looking for all my life. Jiji picked me up from Mananthawadi. It was like we were meeting a day later. True, sort of, kinship. He told no one at the shop about my arrival. Lovely to surprise Jamesettan, Benny and Gautam. They were so happy. Felt like a homecoming, laughing, govoreeting. Such a lovely energy in this wonderful town. Its funny no one from the city seems so real, so unpolluted, so real to themselves. JK's words ring true here. Live examples of his teachings. God is great. Thanks to him I am now walking the visceral path.

Thoughts saved in my phone:
"Food, clothing, shelter" - A set of films about people from the Hinterland like Benny, Josettan, Jamesettan. Happy. Content with what they have, the basic food, clothing, shelter. Could be an interesting juxtaposition to the materialistic tendencies of the middle - upper middle class.
Do not renew thought, cancel all subscriptions now.

Muthuraj
At the shop, I finally met and spoke to Muthu, the drinker (thinker!). He had just downed a pint of rum, a regular activity behind the opposite bank. He spoke of his rather unfortunate existence. Over 50, unmarried, abandoned from his parents and siblings in Trivandrum living in an abject state of poverty, but having enough to buy a bottle of cheap booze daily. And over the years, it doesn't hit him anymore, intoxication and such things of the past. He told us about his strange experiences with a hypnotic pickpocketer who twice picked his wallet by making him go to sleep. He also spoke about not having had a single friend or anyone to talk to sincerely for over 8 years. Living in the absolutes of silence and alcohol, disconnected from everything. Strange. Asked him if I could film him and he said he wasn't special and didnt have anything special to say. I took some photos of him which will one day go into my book - "The Quiet Observer".

Back in the serenity of the house on the hill, Jiji and me opened a few beers. I sent some x-genome. Blast-off. We spoke of so many things from the lack of soul in most people to commitment. A lot of fun. Earlier, we went to meet the mad Paris Mohan at his place closeby. He is too caught up in himself, its hard to be around people like him. I always have the urge to tell him "a good man is a great listener". We spoke of his pretty maid, who has been unlucky, stuck with a drunkard. Very sophisticated but alas. What would life have been if she was married to a cultured, real human being. Hmm...

6/8
So, Jiji and me decided to go to the One-teacher Alternative school in the hill. Mathanchettan joined us. It was quite stunning, this small structure set against a marvellous mountain backdrop. Something bit Jiji's feet. Mathanchettan walked into some bushes and plucked some turmeric that Jiji pasted onto the bite. People of the earth, really. "Inspiring, something I would have no clue of", my cityhead realises as I quietly observe. The kids were a bit nervous, at first, to see us, the people from the otherworld. As soon as I got the camera out, it was a whole different scene as everyone wanted to be in it, laughing, jumping, pushing. Very refreshing to see this innocence, still uncorrupt by the commercial world. Took lots of photos (which will go into the book?), and filmed them eating their kanji and payar. There were two striking girls. One seemed like Bhagawati, one like Kali. Two faces of the same person. Both such beautiful faces. Wonder what it is that makes one child smile and laugh and another frown. Could be an interesting study, eh?


7/8
Nature is the essence and the landscape of the heart.

Its truth, its oneness is its harmony with the trees, the birds, the rivers, the lakes, the sea, the sky, the clouds, the stars. Over time as one is influenced and preconditioned by the two pillars of society, ie parents and teachers, the poor vulnerable heart gradually loses all sense of realism. The heart then, controlled by the mind, is taught to dissolve into an infinite grid of the second-grade, of monotony, of the dullness of acquisition, of the expanses of greed, of wanting to be this and that - to compete. The mind now begins to think like a machine, not questioning, not probing, not asking. It quietly works within a mechanical pattern and follows presets. This pattern eventually kills that landscape.

When will all pre-existant, pre-conditioned, preset thought end? When will the real observation begin, when will the real meditation begin, when will the real introspection begin? When? In time, now is the only choice you have. The landscape is waiting to be discovered.

----

Visited Mathanchettans gorgeous 10-acre property nestled right in the heart of the forest. Quiet, real quiet. The apt place for "Hinterland". So Jiji and me made a business plan to propose to "we dont know who". And a secret voice inside me tells me to give up all motive, give up the silly pursuit of these things. But, no, hinterland is special, its important. Its my responsibility to the next generation, our only link to the future. All JK-inspired.

8/8
Funny how Gautambhai heard my "Vertigo" ringtone and immediately felt it was the Koyaanisqatsi theme. Classical music, basically. Bernard Herrman vs Philip Glass. Hmm...