Tag: General Nonsense

god, God and g*d are sitting in a bar…

hair pinsIt’s that time of the year again; natural disasters and diseases hog the headlines more than political intrigue (notice the trend over the past few years); you have to update your copyright watermarks (or maybe it’s just me); you just found that long-missing piece of Christmas cake under the sofa, and it’s now home to a civilization not much older than the year.

Oh well, might as well let them live until April so that they may have a chance at an industrial civilization. Gaw’on, play God for a bit.


rear balconyGod tends to be remembered a lot this time of the year: Oh my god it’s a new year; oh my god I didn’t do a thing last year; oh my god I don’t know what to do this year; oh my god I might actually do something this year.

Oh my god there’s a whole year to go before the next Star Wars. Oh my god the next Spiderman comes out in a few months. Oh my god there’s no Lord of the Rings movie to look out for this year. Oh my god there just might be a sequel to Lord of the G-Strings (hubba hubba).

folded sariI’m in Mumbai this month, and I’m glad because it’s the place I call home. This time I managed to drag a crusty old laptop here with me (it barely runs Windows) so I can type at home and hopefully upload a few blog entries.

Writing in Mumbai is about as good as it gets. To be constantly drenched in stimulus might be overwhelming for an outsider, but now that I am more Mumbaikar than N.R.I. (Non-Resident Indian) with the current visa setup I find that there is a zero adaptation time when I arrive here (something that was a bit of a problem when I was younger). Ideas flow more freely here; the feverish want to write and do and create in general is much more.

towelNot that Dubai is any less interesting; the clash of a hundred different cultures always produces fun results, but my response to the place is a bit more muted. It takes me a week back in Dubai to get into the flow of things, to start getting ideas and images.

I’m a city boy, and Mumbai is just so much more of a city. I’m glad I’m spending all of January here, and with a laptop, a digital camera and a ton of unrealised projects it’s going to be busy busy busy. I intend to make the momentum continue through the rest of the year, and, if possible, even ramp it up back in Dubai.

Hope you have a prosperous year too, even if you aren’t in the best city on earth. God agrees with me.

And don’t touch that cake.

Vishal

lightbulbs

wad of paperIdeas have ruined me. They have taken more out of me than seems humanly possible, made me less human, made me less whole. I love ideas. Ideas are my opiate. Ask me about my life and I’d sooner give you a rough chart of what ideas I was having at any given point in time. I can’t remember the names of most of my friends (did I even have friends? They seem like a fiction now) or teachers — hell, I can’t even remember the faces of my few enemies.

When I was sixteen I wanted to become a graphic designer. I had it all figured out in my head, right down to the way I’d introduce myself to people when I was said Graphic Designer. “Ooh,” they would say, “you’re that Graphic Designer.”

I’m nearly 21 and now I’m a lousy Graphic Designer.

When I was seventeen I wanted to be a novelist. I was going to be the best damn novelist in history. I had it all figured out in my head, down to the dedication on each and every novel, how the covers would look, where the ISBN would be placed. They were great ideas.

I have yet to finish a manuscript, let alone publish a novel.

When I was twelve I really wanted to own a restaurant. A big restaurant. I didn’t know what kind of food we served, but I wanted a big restaurant.

Then I wanted a small restaurant. This was for a few days.

Then I wanted the big restaurant again. I had it all figured out in my head, right down to the way the menu looked and what all the staff would wear, how the people would react to eating the self-designed food and how I’d sit in the corner grinning with my mother, co-owner.

I can cook a grand total of five things including tea. I always over-salt. My mother is dead.

Sometimes my memories seem to be less firm than the fantasies and ideas that swirled around them. I barely remember the trip to Mangalore when I was nine. I do remember in exact detail the point-and-click adventure game I planned to make when I got back home. I had it all figured out in my head, right down to the tagline on the box. What? No, I don’t remember the tagline, but I do remember that I had the idea figured out. Memory’s shot to hell.

Bah, who needs memories? I have ideas.

I have so many ideas. I have two notepads full of ideas. I have a three page long list of titles of ideas that I haven’t written down yet; movies and novels and TV shows. I have them all figured out in my head. I could narrate most of them to you verbatim. I don’t remember anything they taught me in school. I don’t.

When I try to gather up my memories I feel like a young man. When I gather up my ideas, all of them, all the stages and the reworkings and reimaginings of older ones, I feel old.

Old.

Oh, but the ideas are just great; they’re your future, you never get the same idea twice, and if you lose it it’s gone forever. That idea can make your life…

…I can barely remember a life beyond my ideas, beyond the holding and nurturing of them, beyond the power fantasies of a time when those ideas would come to be.

Someday.

You know when Someday is? It’s the day right after you die. Your ideas die with you. This, believe me, is a good thing. I don’t want my ideas hanging around after I’m gone. They’re perfectly good ideas, mind you, but they’re ideas. They’re like cancers. Perfectly efficient, marvellous things when you look at them on their own, but put them in a body and you know what happens. I have Idea Cancer. Hey, that’s a great idea for a…

idiot. stop.

Ideas, they say, are Free. The fuckers couldn’t be more right. Ideas are so free they should be given away.

Here’s an idea: A man walks into a diner and sneezes onto the classic jukebox. The jukebox, coated with his germs and transdimensional energies develops intelligence, then sets out on a world-wide quest to find the defunct manufacturers who created it. Somewhere along the way it realises that it is, in fact, not seeking it’s manufacturer, but in reality is searching for the family of the man whose snot it was that triggered its ascent to life, his memories and thoughts being transferred to it. The man is now dead. His family is still there, the children — The Children! — need a father, the wife needs a husband. The jukebox moves in. He plays tunes for a living by the side of the road.

A lonely jukebox that plays in the middle of a highway just to feed its human family.

…pretty good Idea, huh? It’s yours. Take it. Do what you want with it, make some money off it; I don’t care, I have a million more ideas where that came from, and each one is potentially as good.

When you suffer, as I do, from Idea Cancer, there are only two options.

Option 1:

You get a Job. A job lets you live a life, make some money and still have your Idea Cancer; you can have as many ideas as you can fit into your testicles, and you can shape them in as elaborate a fashion as you see fit, because you have a job and you hate your boss and if only — If Only! — you could quit your job then all your great ideas would be unleashed upon the world.

Someday.

Option 2:

Don’t get a job. Don’t settle for the easy way out with the security of getting up every day and going someplace where someone else tells you exactly what to do and how to do it. Don’t settle for the fact that you can marry the slightly agreeable person of opposite gender who works two cubicles from you just because, well, you’re getting old — thirty — and you need someone to be with you, to take care of you.

Take care of yourself you idiot.

Do something. For once in your life do something. Pick one idea, any idea, you have a million of them and they’re all gold, right? Pick one and do it. There you go.

Well, now, how do you do it?

I have no idea.

This is going to be fun.

Vishal

stop monkeying around!!

ooka ooka ooka -- it's a picture of Monkey Brand Black Tooth Powder!Ah, my childhood. A place filled with paper airplanes, paper airplanes, paper airplanes…. okay, I was obsessed, I admit it.

But somewhere before we all assembled in my grandmother’s balcony to pelt the neighbouring compounds with our aeronautically exquisite creations (gnats, darts, flat gliders, helicopters, plain vanilla concordes) we had to brush our teeth.

Children need to do that, else they will get no sweets.

Adults need to do that, else they will get no Sweeties.

Brushing your teeth in India is a tradition that is far, far older than when Proctor and Gamble decided to open a branch in the colonies. Indians, being slightly off in the head, would get up every day at the crack of dawn to chew on loose bits of the azadiracta indica tree, which we call neem. Azadiractin, by the by, is one of the most potent natural anti-microbial agents known to man.

Yes.

Even post-paste there are people who still chew on the stuff, and while civilized folk will ooh and aah about their minty fresh gels and “herbal” based toothpastes, nothing says “Hello, Gorgeous, you’re teeth are clean!” like washing a black powder from your gums.

Yes, it is a black powder.

No, it doesn’t stain.

Yes, it’s minty fresh.

No, I don’t think it contains monkeys.

I don’t think…

Vishal

back from obscurity

So I finally remembered that I do have a blog. Editorializing in my head was getting to be so much fun again that it kinda had me there.

So, Birthday recap:

On the whole had fun. For the first time in years I actually got presents from people who aren’t my family (and, in both cases, thank god for that). The presents I couldn’t choose (which were probably — I shudder to think — hand-picked) were three shirts.

Unfortunately these were trendy shirts. Indian Fashion Movie Star Trendy shirts. I swear, that black one, I’ve never displayed more cleavage than in that. The tan one is nearly a short sleeve kurta but the proportions are all wrong; I look like some kind of peasant from 12th century England, and hell, even back then I wouldn’t look good in it. The white one is the same as the black, only, you know, white. And it itches less.

Needless to say I haven’t worn any of them out of the house. I may be a freak, but I’m a freak with taste.

The second present-giver let me choose, and so we ended up at the Book Corner in City Centre. You wouldn’t expect the best bookstore in Dubai to be dab-smack-center in the most crowded mall in the city. It’s a shame that in five years it’s still the best book store, shelf-space wise. Our raddi-waala opposite Ranade Road has a larger selection of books (and frankly, a more interesting selection), but it was just nice to be around books in this town. And in one corner at the bottom of the children’s section, I found my birthday present: a Watchmen TPB. I was chided for buying ‘comic books’ but I didn’t care, because, well, WATCHMEN!!!!

Now when I actually get some money to burn you can expect me to buy up as much Warren Ellis stuff as I can manage. DC comics, please restock now.

Dinner was nice that day, at the Chinese place down the road; highlight was the Honey Chili Prawn (which present-giver, who was footing the bill, didn’t particularly like). Not as good as its chicken variant (prawns just don’t absorb sauces the same way). All in all a fun Birthday, and a nice way to ring in a new decade of me.

And I did not get a single kiss!!! Yahoo!!!!

Professional:
Let’s see… since then I finished Dolly’s flash portfolio. Not completely satisfied with it, but certainly more than any of my student work.

Personal:
Wrote an outline for Sansaarika that didn’t sound completely stupid. God, I would so like that movie to be made. I will probably have to settle for a graphic novel — movies are not the easiest of things to make properly — but I can imagine it so well it hurts to know that I’m not waking up tomorrow to head to the set and inform people on a megaphone to, “Ignore Kareena Kapoor, she’s supposed to be invisible in this shot.”

Maybe I’m just deluding myself. Outline was decent, though.

Ooh, and I finally got an opening!! Sansaarika had been floundering for a while because of its lack of a solid opening. The one that’s there now is a little surreal and not very exciting, but I love it anyway, and I unconsciously re-worked it in such a way that it fits in perfectly with the second-to-final scene. I’m still unsure that the final scene is necessary; audiences may not be too big on villain redemption, but hey, it doesn’t hurt to keep it in there. That’s what editing is for.

Sansaarika as it stands now would be a 3-4 hour film, which is alright for a Hindi film, but on the long side if it was made in English. I don’t ever want to make it in English. I would be able to stand a graphic novel version in English, but not a movie.

Meanwhile I’ve reworked Jaadoo into a very appealing, if Hollywood-ish plot. Gone is the thinly-veiled Video Girl Ai in a Salwaar romantic comedy, replaced by a pretty straightforward but nonetheless fun Urban Fantasy detective/action/comedy thing. And I can use the same opening without changing a bit!! It’s a very character-centric tale, like all my work, but still a bit of an American Movie. Scratch that; it’s still an Indian film plot, it’s just more like a western graphic novel than anything I’ve seen succeed in India.

But then, I’ve never made my films, so you never know, people may actually like them.

Yeah, right.

I’ve been coming up with a few good saleable plots. By saleable I mean that they’re English 90-120 minute stuff that doesn’t require songs, and are very America-centric. I come up with these because if I do write them one day I will try to sell them to US studios; they pay the most, I assume.

The plots themselves are pretty tame: Legal Dramas, Romantic Comedies, Disaster type things which are character-centric. Only one of them is remotely Indian, and that one is more Merchant Ivory than Yash Raj.

I have also been coming up with more mad and crazy Indian film ideas that have no chance of attaining commercial success, but I love them like my kids anyway. The latest? Something called Beat-em-Up Babumoshai.

Yes. I know.

I was looking through my Grand Plan file and sometimes it makes me feel a bit useless. All those plans and things to do, and here I am still fighting to sit down at the keyboard or the desk or the pad and do something towards achieving at least some of it.

Samir was looking at it the other day and we both agreed that if I stop thinking up new ideas right now and only flesh out the titles that are in my plans folder I’ll have a remarkably prolific lifetime career. I mean, 40 novels, 30 films in at least two languages, ten comic series and a few dozen miscellaneous bits is a good career, right?

I’m penis-waving. Ignore.

Currently writing a Savant story. I’m saying ‘Damnit all to hell’ and just writing from the heart; this one deals with his first visit to Xaus Vassa during the Nepaari days. It’s thick with dialogue that doesn’t go anywhere, and its plot is iffy, but I just like writing Savant so much that it doesn’t matter. It’s a backstory piece, throwing Savant and company into a light that they have never been publicly seen in before. I know about the sordid history, but what few readers I have don’t; they still think these people just got along from day one and all was hunky-dory. I’m interested in seeing the responses, if any, to this gargantuan story (I predict, at this rate, to finish around 10K words). One day I may be able to just transplant the story directly into First Days, the book in which it would logically take place. That would be good.

V

Achievements:
Finished Dolly’s Portfolio. My first professional assignment ever. Whee.

Also-Rans:
Sansaarika outline.
Jaadoo reworking.
3000 words of rambling Savant.
Lots of miscellaneous good ideas.

Entertainment
Star Trek, TOS, Various Eps
Perfect Blue – if you haven’t seen this anime, you must do so at the earliest
X2: X-Men United – not perfect, but still a damn fine movie, unlike some other second parts *cough*TwoTowers*cough*

the unfortunate side-effects of being me

The column (ha, column!) goes up earlier today, due to the fact that I’m sure I won’t be able to sneak it in without a bunch of people looking over my shoulder with the worst words you can ask a writer, which are: “What’cha writing?”

Yes, friends have decided to drop by. Another friend wants to come over and do unknown things to me.

I use the word friends very cautiously, because they’re more like Dada’s friends, and they sort of have a passing interest in me.

The only friends I have except for my brother are either dead or in another continent. The latter I have never even physically met.

Didn’t do much yesterday. Stayed up late watching Star Trek, then followed it up with a dose of culture, which, in this case, was that kooky Taiwanese channel.

They were cooking Tiramisu. I never want to eat Tiawanese Tiramisu. Not that it looked bad, it looked pretty much like normal Tiramisu, it’s just that it was made in such a wholly impractical manner (like most things Taiwanese) that I’d rather have something more traditionally Taiwanese.

Meanwhile the Arab chef was cooking something involving large chunks of meat. The show’s hostess looked on in feigned admiration. Everything is normal on Arabian TV.

I sincerely hope nobody’s going to kiss me today. Both friends have a habit of doing so. Geh.

Hmmm… coffee breath… maybe I shouldn’t brush my teeth.

On the other hand, God may fling me a present in the form of the much awaited Blonde Back-scrubber or one of her equally welcome associates. Or Rani Mukherjee.

Hell, I’ll settle for anything right now. Who says birthdays are about what you want?

V

Achievements:
Nil. So Far.

Also-Rans:
Formulating devious plans about how to get out of kisses and other social stuff.

Entertainment
Star Trek, TOS, The Enemy Within (All in all, Shatner is nowhere as bad an actor as people say he is. Tom Cruise acts exactly the same way and people fawn all over him.)

Prayer of the Day:
Lord, give us this day our finished flash portfolio (again)… and no kisses!!

nil day

This is how it starts. Today is a Nil day, which means that since I woke up until now (7 p.m.) I have done nothing worthwhile. I actually logged more sleeping hours during this day than anything else.

Still, the night is young, and though it will technically encroach on tomorrow I still mark days as the times between long sleeps.

Sent out two versions of the letterhead Dolly wanted. Haven’t heard from her yet, but she usually calls right about now. The rest of the night will be spent completing her portfolio. It’s the eleventh hour, but by my track record that’s the perfect time to do things. I really need to change this eleventh hour stuff. It’s getting to be a habit.

Actually read a newspaper today. Nothing much changed since the last time I read a newspaper over a year ago. Same stuff, really. Shame I’ve been reared on comic books wherein every headline was either an earthshattering discovery of alien life or a picture of a flying guy in spandex doing something violent to the side of a building.

…you know, that last line came out kinkier than I thought. I’m improving.

And I’m just totally blank-expressioned about tomorrow. What a way to enter a new decade of your life, huh?

V

Achievements:
Nil.

Also-Rans:
Nil, unless you count consistently posting to a blog for two days in a row an actual achievement.

Entertainment
Star Trek, TOS, Mudd’s Women (For rich lithium miners, these people sure live like slobs)

Prayer of the Day:
Lord, give us this day our finished flash portfolio… and cheese!

phule

[This is the first post of the Restart Twice Blog]

Odd, it is, that I start this blog on April fool’s day. Rather fitting, I suppose.

You would suppose that, with a war on just a few hundred miles away, I’d have something to say about it, but I don’t. It seems even less interesting than the last one; at least back then I had little plastic toy soldiers. Back then I could pretend that, GI Joe style, all the good men with the red lasers were going to go in and do that thing they did with all the evil men with blue lasers, the thing where they shoot but don’t kill anyone.

Nobody dies in GI Joe. Well, unless the plot expressly demands it, and even then it’s usually due to some horribly vague internal disease.

Not sure which world I prefer…

This blog was started expressly because I didn’t like the last one; it was full of long gaps, lots of unfinished things I’d rather not be reminded of, and in general made me sound pretty inept.

I need a restart. Again. Hence the title. This will serve as the (hopefully) daily repository of my thoughts, my deeds, my renowned sex-life. You know.

I’ll editorialise. A lot. I won’t use profanity, not the regular variety at least, because regular profanity is tedious.

And I will end every column with one of these, to summarise what I did in the day that I consider soemthing worthwhile. If I don’t do anything, the following will say “nil” and I’ll feel very bad about myself for being a lazy petri-dish swilling yak herder and bingo impressario.

There, I told you; profanity, but not the usual stuff. And that’s it for today.

V
Achievements:
Thumbnailed a few letterhead things for Dolly’s Portfolio
Character Sketches for the way overdue Spyder Birthday Present (I’m still not sure what to do)

Also-Rans:
Put together a pizza.
Made a fine desert of cake, banana, peaches and vanilla ice-cream. In retrospect, it weighed more than the pizza.

Entertainment
Star Trek, TOS, The Corbomite Maneuver (Clint Howard!!!)
Sandman comics (something about cats; pretty good)
Diamonds Are Forever (“Hi, I’m Plenty.” “But of course you are”)

Conundrum of the Day:
What on earth am I going to cook for lunch tomorrow?

the sign that led to nowhere

Mother dead. 20 July 2002.

I think that sums it up quite nicely…

Current Projects:
None at the moment.

¡Vb!

box populi

NaNoWrimo sure is fun. The message-board is just overwhelming sometimes, but hey, that’s what you get with 2000 people participating.

One thing it has taught me even before I put pen to paper on my NaNo-vel is this: Aim Low.

For months — heck, years — I’ve been trying to go from 0 to Da Vinci in no time flat, which usually leads to a lot of badly done, half-finished drawings and tons of frustration, followed by the “I can’t draw anymore!” thing.

Aim low, the sage says. Quality? Fuhgeddaboudit! Quantity — you bet!

You know those parts in the art books where they tell you to draw simple skeletons? Too complex for me, to wishy-washy, especially the way I draw.

Boxes.

You heard me, boxes — from now on until God knows when, I’ll be drawing boxes. Or rather, I’ll be Cube-i-fying people. Taking their curves and dips and nasty looking contorted expressions and turning them into boxes. One for the head, one for the body…

I did two sketches — haven’t drawn boxes in years, so the lines and perspective were a bit off (I’m still prone to ‘curving’ the boxes to make them look more like body parts) — but I’m getting there.

Think out of the box? Heck…

…The Box is your damn Think.

¡Vb!

live and in naked colour

So I finally went and created one of these. Hello world, I’m Vishal, and this Blog will be used for displaying the stranger excrements of my mind every few days/weeks/years.

Please, stay, and feed the beast.

¡Vb!