Truth is in every leaf, every tear

God or truth cannot be thought about. If you think about it, it is not truth. Truth cannot be sought; it comes to you. You can go after only what is known. When the mind is not tortured by the known, by the effects of the known, then only can truth reveal itself. Truth is in every leaf, every tear; it is to be known from moment to moment. No one can lead you to truth; and if anyone leads you, it can only be to the known.

- J.K.

So, what can I call this?

Death in varanasi. Constant, continuous. The fire is on duty 24/7, 365 d-days of the year. Everyday vast amounts of energy, among other things, are expended in the Harishchandra and Manikarnika Ghats. My boatman calls Manikarnika Ghat the “burning palace”. Interesting image, that. Which is what Varanasi is. An interesting image which should be looked at like a mirror looks at things. Just observe Varanasi. Live in its time, in its faith, in its communion of Hinduism and you will enjoy the impact of what most people would call “Shiva Energy in Shiva City”. Its electric. Electric, since 3000 b.c. That sounds like a company. I should make a logo for that. The type within some sort of oval shape, electric in italics, b.c. In a beautiful serif with pretty edges at 5 pt. Yes. That is control. Ok, back to where we left off. Benaras. Today at Harishchandra I saw a set of very interesting scenes running in parallel. There was the respectable, well-loved person about to be set ablaze by his weeping son in white robes. He was holding onto three people and really crying his heart out loud. Face lost in a trance. The three or four people around his particular pyre crying into handkerchiefs. Man comforting another by holding him. So many emotions, cannot for certain say that all these were either genuine, heartfelt or the customised conditioning system of expected behaviour. But I am only observing and reporting. I dont really want to comment because all this is only opinion and opinion doesn’t really have much of a role to play in the bigger picture of, err, things. When you understand who you really are you will become a sort of throughness and a sort of thoughtlessness. Back to the scenes at Harishchandra, just on the otherside a baba carrying a trishul (a 3-headed spear) came and stood close to another burning pyre while standing on a rock. And just behind me a mother slept on a bench, her children running around under her trying to remind her to feed them. But they are also playing among themselves while trying to catch her attention. No time wasted there. Suddenly she smells something and wakes up and jumps off the bench and runs to sniff to see if she smells another dog in her territory. Pups follow. And on my way home, I stopped at dimly lit chai shop on I-dont-remember-which Ghat. Girl served me chai. A pretty thing, scarf around her head, English lettertype on red woollen sweater. Her brother and sister (I presume), about 4 and 5 maybe, making funny sounds of birds and randomness. Randomness and thoughtlessness are absolutely wonderful to see in this world of logic and opinion. Oh, just remembered I spoke to two gentlemen at Harishchandra Ghat. They spoke of Hinduism, about the children who take the little pieces of body, the ones that haven’t burnt out, to keep them burning till they turn to ash. They get a little fee for grabbing these pieces at the fag-end (no pun intended) of the burning procedure. One of them, a Marathi, spoke of how Bal Thackeray is useful because he keeps India from becoming a Muslim nation. Interesting perspective. I am not for it or against it. Just a way of looking at things, I guess. The other guy spoke of how large Muslim families are. One husband, four wives, some eight to ten children. A way to overpopulate the world so Islam becomes a majority and takes over once and for all. He also said that in his caste, death is a celebration. There is a 13-day party after the death where priests are fed. That was refreshing to hear. Atleast some of “us” hindu’s have celebration as a compulsory at some point in a man’s life , err, death actually. Oh, and the girl in the chai shop? It really seemed to me that Indra Okat was looking at me through her eyes. It was a strange, yet lovely feeling.

----

Excerpt from "Thoughtless Thoughts"

THERE DO EXIST ENQUIRING MINDS, which long for the truth of the heart, seek it, strive to solve the problems set by life, try to penetrate to the essence of things and phenomena and to penetrate into themselves. If a man reasons and thinks soundly, no matter which path he follows in solving these problems, he must inevitably arrive back at himself, and begin with the solution of the problem of what he is himself and what his place is in the world around him. For without this knowledge, he will have no focal point in his search. Socrates’ words, “Know thyself” remain for all those who seek true knowledge and being.

LIBERATION LEADS TO LIBERATION. These are the first words of truth—not truth in quotation marks but truth in the real meaning of the word; truth which is not merely theoretical, not simply a word, but truth that can be realized in practice. The meaning behind these words may be explained as follows:
By liberation is meant the liberation which is the aim of all schools, all religions, at all times.

This liberation can indeed be very great. All men desire it and strive after it. But it cannot be attained without the first liberation, a lesser liberation. The great liberation is liberation from influences outside us. The lesser liberation is liberation from influences within us.

Excerpt from VIEWS FROM THE REAL WORLD by G.I. Gurdjieff

Empire of Worry

Your smiles have shape, they're walking apart, you see the world and war apart.
To see my life upon my shoulder, shutting down it seems...

Solo

Solo cello
A kind of drone
Enveloping time like molecules to a frame

Solo piano
A kind of peace
Absorbing air, pressing metal and wood

Solo guitar
A kind of flutter
Fingers and palms singing in absolute unison

"YOU ARE GOD", a graphic novel

A revolutionary begins a sort of experiment with currency. He starts spreading the word to followers of the concept of awakening to the new earth and the new man through money notes. The project begins with a website - yagoroued.com. There are concepts and ideas classified into numbers and letters, such as 12C and 1300F, etc. Each letter stands for a concept, like light, education, family, life, death, love, etc. 12C would be 12th discourse on C. These could be subjects, ideas, opinions - all signalling a sort of change to bring about a new man. So, over time these numbers would be written on the currency that keeps spreading. For those who know how to use the internet, the message “12c, yagoroued.com” is enough. And this goes on and goes bringing about a revolutionary sort of change to the way people things. Currency is the only medium which can reach everyone. This is a fictitious story of the start of a new revolution.

This commune of sorts is also involved in the publicity of their messages through guerrila advertising tactics. People basically come together to spread the concept of inner awareness, self-depth and a new consciousness.

Slow

I have slowed down time,
Real slow.
Everything is done slowly, patiently, meditatively,
Even if it is pouring mugs of water into the bucket.
Slow, real slow.
Time stands still.
To this very moment, to the present.
There is only stillness and a slowness to things.
Beyond that, nothing, absolutely nothing.

Who are you?

Atom-green, we are all that. Matter and inner-mind, body and soul. Self and no-self. There is a place where you can go. Everything is clear there. There are no covers, no curtains, no identities, no possessions, nothing. Just nothing. Here you can hear the silence of infinite space, you can feel the space of infinite silence on your fingertips as you move your hand along the waves of the vacuum. A spectrum of seven colours, a song with twelve notes. A moment of nothingness transforms and moves through this space like hours, days, years, centuries. All time is meaningless because the only time that is there is now. The moment. Past and future all illusory now, meaningless.

Where is this place? Distance-wise? It requires a second to go there. Maybe less than a second. Suddenly everything drops from your hand, your mind drops from you. You are then all in one, one in all. Moving, changing, from second to second. Every moment is new, every moment is you, without you. You are then not Mr. so-and-so, Miss so-and-so, Mrs. So-and-so. You are not your bank balance, you are not what you own, you are not what you know, you are not who you know, you are just an is-ness. You is. That’s all. You exist in the oneness with earth. You are one of the elements of life, a simple moving coloured-dot in the ocean of worldcolour. This is the door into you, into the centre of you. Who you are. Who are you? When you cannot answer that, you are finally you. Your central core. A nothingness beyond words and images.

Letters to (from) friends

The Professor Scarfman writes:

Dude, to be honest thyngZ are not so good. I cannot find work at all. My days are as random as anti-structure itself. All those promises to come viziT you in India. I am going through life openly saying I'll do this and I'll do that and it is not happening. It is not a good time for empire.

But I do have a Mac now, so that's useful for communicating wherever I want. Freed from the desktop regime. Remember at your place in Nott Hill when the upstairs bastar* banged on their floor cuz the music was too loud?

Well, our neighbour next is playing this bullshit carribean music at 6am and it makes me fuQQyn* sick. Never have I heard such shi* musiQ. Really. I thought music was about respecting and organising sound carefully, but this reggae-type stuff is just some of the poorest forms of music I ever heard. I thynQ I am culturalist. I cannot and do not accept West Indian music. Instrumentation, formation of rhythms and harmonies. Just really poor sounding indeed. It's worse than kid's chart stuff. It's like being asked to listen to the same song over and over, but someone else has it on repeat just at a time when you wish to rest and dream about imaginary swans and their cubes. It's sickening man. Life is about loving each other, but love is corrupt man, but imbeciles ruin the sophistos who know how to use their mental gifts in bringing joy to others. Not this asshol*. He plays this dreadful mess and it enters my perspective, destroyingwhat was a peaceful state of mind. One of life's most disturbing yet oblongular concepts Prem of Prem. Imagine being forced to watch the most disturbingly poor movie over and over again, watching the pathetic direction, terrible editing etc...This level of torture should be collected in a glass vesicle and sold as evil, cuz it's evil alright!. People don't have to kill or terrorise through destruction as reported by the evil media. Artistic distortion from a disrespectful mind makes me wanna hurl huge chunkZ of vomituous nonsense from my post digested history.

This concept of feeling love for all. I wish I could feel love for all. But all around me there is incompetence man or PREM. Sure, I might be the world's most undiscovered unrecruited circus performer, but I still get angry at human ineptitude. Constantly in my received perception day after day. Focusing on this supposed negative makes me feel so sad for the species Homosapien! Are we not supposed to be skilled, respectful of each other? Capable, intelligent? Yet, cretins exist Prem, whether it's there in your home town or here in mountainous yet villainous Brixton.

Not all is bad, just that a quality of life spans many dimensions of experience, no? Not just the creative and social, but the PEACE dimension!

Peace Premjit R aka DirectoR.

Would love to have a pipe with you man!
nic.K aka nic.K

----

And I, the Deractor, replies:

Ouch to the creaturefoot of civilisation, this wondersoul does not bringeth joy. This rubbersoul brings pain simply cos its made of rubber and not love. Love bringeth love, hate does not dispel hate, only love can. :)

I think you should begin reading some OSHO. He is amazing. A brilliant new journey for me. I am still in Benares, I will be here for a while. Its real and very simple, I do not have running water, there is a bucket outside my room with water and I have to step out and fill my foam bucket with clones of water in order to fulfill the duties of my super son. Frugality at its best. Love it. Very meditative, like thoughtbuckets into the everlasting you of me.

I thought you moved to Swiss-er-land man? Why you back in London? I dont think London can give you any joy, only clones of cheap love found on soulmates and the like. Remember how we used to arrange dates and go on them, wow, those days seem so alien to me, now that I have taken the visceral path of the discovery of self, an awakening of sorts, like fruits, like roses, a blossoming out of time, out of words and messages.

Come to India whenever you can man, I will welcome you with open arms and brotherly love, guaranteed. I am very sorry for having told you earlier about keeping your brighton-esque mentalities aside etc, that was very childish of me. What you are, you are now, the past and the future mean nothing. You are now, you are love, you are all that you can ever be only in this one moment. So, do come and we will live like brothers discovering ourselves in this oneness of life on this new earth.
Love and lots of good wishes to you my brother.

The Deractor.

Welcome to Hinterland, Mr. Isaac Niemand. :)

I can safely say that I have found the centre of me. And I have never been happier. I am aware of every second, also aware of the uncertainty of the next. Every moment can be special, its all in your mind.

Yesterday: The silence of infinite space.
Today: The space of infinite silence.
Tomorrow: ?

by Indra Okat

The Birth of Bashwa Dara Okat (a.k.a B.D. Okaath)
The man with the green heart, the golden eyes, the silver smile.
(Pokhra)

Russell / 11/11

It is very singular how little men seem to realise that they are not caught in the grip of a mechanism from which there is no escape, but that the treadmill is one upon which they remain merely because they have not noticed that it fails to take them to a higher level. I am thinking, of course, of men in higher walks of business, men who already have a good income and could, if they chose, live on what they have. To do so would seem to them shameful, like deserting from the army in the face of the enemy, though if you ask them what public cause they are serving by their work, they will be at a loss to reply as soon as they have run through the platitudes to be found in the advertisements of the strenuous life.

Consider the life of such a man. He has, we may suppose, a charming house, a charming wife, and charming children. He wakes up early in the morning while they are still asleep and hurries off to his office. There it is his duty to display the qualities of a great executive; he cultivates a firm jaw, a decisive manner of speech, and an air of sagacious reserve calculated to impress everybody except the office boy. He dictates letters, converses with various important persons on the phone, studies the market, and presently has lunch with some person with whom he is conducting or hoping to conduct a deal. The same sort of thing goes on all afternoon. He arrives home, tired, just in time to dress for dinner. At dinner he and a number of other tired men have to pretend to enjoy the company of ladies who have no occasion to feel tired yet. How many hours it may take the poor man to escape it is impossible to foresee. At last he sleeps, and for a few hours the tension is released.

The working life of this man has the psychology of a hundred-yards race, but as the race upon which he is engaged is one whose only goal is the grave, the concentration, which is appropriate enough for a hundred yards, becomes in the end somewhat excessive. What does he know of his wife? When he leaves her in the morning, she is asleep. Throughout the evening he and she are engaged in social duties which prevent intimate conversation. He has probably no men friends who are important to him, although he has a number with whom he affects a geniality that he wishes he felt. Of springtime and harvest he knows only as they affect the market; foreign countries he has probably seen, but with eyes of utter boredom. Books seem to him futile, and music highbrow. Year by year he grows more lonely; his attention grows more concentrated and his life outside business more desiccated.

Excerpt from Bertrand Russell's "The Conquest of Happiness"

Oh, and I begin my journey into the minds of Bertrand Russell, Erich Fromm, Carl Jung and Albert Einstein. :)

Gabriel-ities

So Dr. Libinski left today. A wonderful 4 days with him, his thoughts, his ideas and his (the strangest till date) sense of humour. We had wonderful exchanges on life, humanity, creativity, utopian societies, violins, flutes, 21-gear bicycles, dot dot dot. I took his room (and all its positive energy) to begin a more disciplined way of being. One thing he said really made me think. A very very frail poor boy came to us asking for money and he said that most people dont deserve the bodies they have because of the way they abuse it with drugs, alcohol, cigarettes. Its time to wake up. A simple thing to say, yes, but a valid one. One for thought. Not only thought, action too. Act. Or die. There's no other way forward.

Survivors of the mind / Heartlatitudes

The geography of the mind separates itself phsyically from the latitudes of the heart. An awakening of the mind is the only (visceral) path for the real self, the potentiality of self in the oneness of mind and heart, in full colour.

A Tendency

To own, to want, to think, to perform, to achieve, to kill, to talk...
Tendencies so disconnected, so disembodied
from the landscape of your heart.

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