“Interview Me!” Meme

The concept is simple. You read one of these posts. You put in a comment at the end that says, “Interview me!” and the author of the post sends you five questions — any five questions — to answer on your own blog or site. Dan answered some, and a bunch of us asked him to interview us (Spyder, Caren and Big Tony have answered already). Click on read more for my answers, which are, as usual, long and hence have to be broken into multiple pages:

1) Other than yourself, do you have an intended audience in mind when you write?

Saying “Everyone!” here would be a bit of a cop out, despite the fact that any human would (I hope) like to exert some kind of positive influence on all other humans (especially hot chicks).

I think I like to write for geeks. I’m especially interested in entertaining polymaths like myself (All polymaths are geeks, but the reverse is not true). I like to write stories that have the particular kind of chaos-embracing, seven-hundred-genres-in-a-single-bound style that I find completely satisfying. I don’t think there’s enough of it, and I’m sure there are others like me who think the same.

It’s a tricky thing to write well, because despite the fact that it very often has something for everybody, the lack of a traditional focus and a religious adherence to the tropes of a genre puts off a lot of people (this is especially annoying in Speculative Fiction genres because, hell, it’s supposed to mess with your preconcieved notions, not stroke it until a dull orgasm is reached).

The paradox of omnifiction — well, omnipunk — is that it’s the smallest genre in the world.

The only genre that has been wrestled by its very nature into being omnifiction friendly is conman and caper stories. All of them involve characters performing tasks of various skills from physical to mental and social.

I love con and caper movies.

2) If a Savant story had a soundtrack, what would it sound like?

Hmm, I think I came up with a songlist around the time I was writing Tale of a Thousand Savants (I think I still have it, …somewhere). It was basically a lot of Japanese Anime and video game soundtracks mixed in with modern Indian pop and other influences. So basically lots of Yasunori Mitsuda, Yoko Kanno and A.R. Rahman.

If I had to describe it now, I would say that like Savant and like the multiverse he plays around in, any soundtrack would have to be complex and varied. It would probably not be angsty (not even when he’s angsty), but it would be soulful. The kind of music that fills you both with joy and wonder. It would embrace genres but experiment, take bits from here and there and put them together in strange, unexpected and wonderful ways. No genre or type of music would be off limits, and no type of music would be treated like a sacred cow.

The three composers I mentioned earlier do exactly that. I find that composers who come from cultures other than the one in which a genre is born and settled, do wonders with it. For example, I think the work of The Teriyaki Boys and The Streets is much more interesting than any American hip-hop I’ve heard. Mitsuda does Celtic stuff with aplomb. A.R.Rahman does wonders with the entire gamut of Indian music (and beyond) because he’s a strange South Indian man with no Pavlovian training in the ‘right way’ to do a bhangra song (also, he’s A.R. Freaking Rahman, and sometimes genius can’t be explained).

3) What inspiration do you most wish Hollywood would take from the Indian film industry?

I wish they’d do things on a smaller budget. Seriously. Have you seen those Dead Man’s Chest DVD extras? Not only do they build a huge marina (a ‘tank’) to shoot boat scenes in, but on another untouched island they built a road across it and shuttle their small city of crew to the other end because the location scouts thought the palm trees looked cool there. Do you really need three hundred people on set to make a movie about a bunch of mangy pirates?

The philosophy in Hollywood seems to be, “Let’s just throw money at it!” rather than actually thinking a shoot through and doing it with the minimal impact. I’m not saying people should be walking two hours to their set, but really, when movies have “million dollar shooting days” something is seriously whacko.

And after all that, they still deliver a movie with no soul whatsoever, which, given all the mucking about with the Caribbean they did, is both a tragedy and exactly what they deserve.

Indian films are nowhere are sophisticated, we have sucky special effects and spotty technical work, but minute for minute I find myself being entertained more by the super-expensive 25 million dollar Indian film than the average budget 125 million dollar American one.

The unfortunate truth is that more Indian movies are starting to follow the Hollywood philosophy of money conquers all, but there are still a good bunch of people around who make nice movies. Also, all the good American movies are the ones made for relatively low budgets, so there is hope there too. Anything Wes Anderson does is bound to be less expensive than the average blockbuster, and is in no way lacking in the imagination and guts departments.

(And yes, I do know that the next Wes Anderson movie is set and shot in India, and I. Can’t. Wait.)

4) You have something of a knack for spotting plot holes and other problems in story structure. What advice would you give writers to help them avoid losing readers like you?

(Until this question was posed I never really thought of myself as being plot and structure sensitive, but after thinking about it — and noting the number of times I’ve discussed it in my old blog entries vis a vis both my own and others’ work — I guess it’s true: I’m a Plot Nazi!)

I’ve reached a point where I can watch a movie as a consumer of cinema parallel to appraising it on a technical level. So while I’m going, “Ooh!” at the latest special effects wizards (and/or Jessica Biel’s behind) I’m also thinking about whether or not the effect is working on a design level, a technical level and so on. I’m not one of those anal retentive people who submit things like, “His finger moves one inch between shots!” to movie mistake sites, but I tend to notice when there’s a sudden drop in pace (Casino Royale), characters behave inconsistently (Dead Man’s Chest), or that the director is masturbating behind the camera (Skull Island and everything after, Peter Jackson’s King Kong).

Weak plot points can be overcome with great characters, so keep your characters doing solid work and people may not notice the rough spots (which there inevitably tend to be). Last year’s Casino Royale did the stupid mistake of not only dropping the pace for no reason whatsoever (preceeding it was a poker game, and it despite being the most boring ‘sport’ in the world next to motor racing, was still written well), but after this drop the characters start spouting the most inane dialogue. Suddenly they’re going all Mills & Boons with cheesy lines about stripping off armour and all that. This is a James Bond movie — you can and should be romantic at times, but at least do it in character!

The Matador is a great example of good characters breezing past a few plot holes and structural inconsistencies with aplomb. So is, on a more magnified level, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Shaun of the Dead is pretty-much perfect and you can study that film to see why it works.

I think in all this seperation of plot, structure and character, I’ve failed to mention that absolutely everything in your story should be treated as these three things. Your protagonist is as much a character as he is the plot and the structure; the latter two are defined and shaped — and will appeal to you audience — based on how much they gel with and seem to be extrapolated from that character. Your world is also more than just a stage to put your stuff in. Describing it, in an indirect and abstract way, also shapes your structure, plot and character. Transmetropolitan and Kieron Gillen’s Phonogram spring to mind.

Most of these aren’t things you can plan ahead, but if you are a writer and have written enough shit you start to have strange hunches and gut feelings that won’t make sense, such as, “My character shouldn’t be eating pie here, he doesn’t like pie.” Stuff like that is your inner supercomputer crunching things far beyond your conscious thought, and you’re well on your way to being better writer.

Or, maybe you’re just a sick bastard who doesn’t like pie.

As far as technical advice is concerned, keep things consistent, first and foremost. If people speak a certain way, have them speak that way unless you wish to use a different style to generate comedy or surprise. Understand that the audience’s imagination doesn’t enjoy being thrown around, and that language is key to that: if your character is in the upper canopy of a tree don’t use language that describes the tree from the bottom up for one line. It immediately puts the mental camera at the ground level and throws the reader out of the story.

Storytelling is a magic trick. You’re using words and language to form pictures and sounds and people and smells in someone else’s head. Any magic trick needs to be well done or it won’t be as effective, even if the audience doesn’t consciously percieve it. The sloppier it is, the more attention your audience is going to pay to the funny lump in your sleeve.

Don’t limit your idea of plot structure to a particular genre. What I’m trying to say here is that you don’t necessarily need to learn all of storytelling by reading more novels. Comics can teach you a whole lot about the economy of storytelling, and both comics and movies can teach you about the way imagery affects perception, about pace. There’s a reason a panel may be seen from an askew angle (it unsettles you without saying “SHOCK!” in big red letters), and a large close up that takes up much of the page can be translated into prose structure as a large, descriptive paragraph.

Storytelling is a lot like graphic design: you’re using the symbology and syntax of a medium to deliver information in a smooth, interesting and pleasing way (while also hopefully being unexpected and engaging).

Songs are a great way to learn plot structure too. I’m not just talking about single guy with guitar wailing about his love life and the state of the world type songs that use polysyllabic words (singer-songwriter stuff as it’s called) — you can get good stories in techno!

A song appeals to us on an abstract level, just like a good story does. Try to take a song and write it as a story, and usually, if you can manage it, there you will find a well-structured plot.

The basic advice here is write, write, write. Everything you write is gold, and everything you write is shit. Look for plot, structure and character in your emails. Observe and try to deduce why some real-world conversations are memorable and entertaining without being in any way literary or theatrical. Sooner or later you’ll be able to tell what in a given story is shit and what is gold, and then rearrange the shit to enhance the look of the gold.

Then you’ll write another story and be back to square one.

Enjoy!

5) Despite already being a skilled polymath (Gosh, thanks!), what talent do you most wish you could add to your repertoire?

This is the kind of question a polymath will never give a single answer to, but off the top of my head I’ll say I’d love to be able to tailor my own clothes. (Being able to sing, super yogic powers or growing my own food were my first answers, but Spyder already beat me to the last one!)

Lemon Pepper Linguine

While scouring the pasta aisle at the hypermarket the other day, I came across a range of flavoured pastas. Now, these aren’t like instant ramen which are regular noodles with a flavour sachet of some kind, nor were they the usual coloured varieties of pasta (green and red, which are supposedly spinach and tomato or beetroot coloured).

This particular brand of pasta, Catelli Bistro (it’s made in Canada by Ronzoni Foods, Montreal) comes in flavours like ‘sundried tomato and basil spaghettini’ (which I’d tried before) and ‘lemon pepper linguine’ which is what I prepared today.

The recipe on the back of the pack was for a simple snow-pea and shrimp sauce, olive-oil based. I generally cook vegetarian at home. The relative lack of preparation — no marination or gutting and cleaning — and easier storage of vegetables gives me more flexibility (most meals are prepared last minute). Also my dad’s a vegetarian and I have no great craving for meat on a daily basis.

The flavours of the pasta are the main attraction here, so smothering it in a heavy tomato or cream sauce is not a good idea. I decided to stick to a light olive oil sauce and adapt it with whatever I thought might go well with lemon. To complement the tartness of lemons I went for red bell pepper (capsicum), olives, fresh basil and parsley, with onion and garlic to add crunch and sweetness.

The olives were pre-sliced stuff I got at the market. I know, I know, they’re not as nice as unpitted ones, but the last time I got some good Moroccan olives they were lovely but very salty and overpowered all other flavours (this was with the flavoured spaghettini). These cheap ones aren’t as intense so they go better with this dish.

I used one large red bell pepper, both for colour and because unlike their green and yellow cousins, these are pretty mild. I cut the pepper into strips as you can see here, to go better with the linguine. Since it’s a long, flat noodle-like pasta (but not as wide as fettucine) I kept the strips thin enough but not too thin. I wanted the vegetables to retain some crunch; if you cut them too fine they go limp.

The onion and garlic I cut up just like the peppers, long (the garlic was sliced along the length of the clove, and this turned out unexpectedly well. I’ll tell you why later).

The basil and parsley next. It’s a chore to get basil here. Parsley and coriander are readily available, as is rocket (arugula), but it’s alway hit and miss with the lemon-scented local basil. Even when it’s around you’re likely to find a half-wilted bunch, or worse, a good bunch that is all purple and nasty the very next day despite being properly stored in the fridge.

I had an unshakeable feeling in the back of my head these past few days that by the time I’d get a chance to cook at home it would be long past usable, but I lucked out this time. The bunch was not bad and despite a few wilted leaves it was actually okay. The basic rule for basil: buy it fresh, use it as soon as you can, or learn to make a lot of pesto.

The most time-consuming part of this entire recipe was picking and cleaning the basil and pasley leaves. Now, with coriander (and to a lesser extent, parsley) you can and should use the stalks as well. Good coriander stalks are sweet and crunchy like bean sprouts, and the mistake people make is to only use the leaves. You’re only getting half the flavour, a somewhat bitter, mint-like flavour that the leaves have. Chop up the stalks nice and small and watch the flavours balance out. Same goes for parsley, but sometimes the stalks can be unpalatably chewy, so make sure what you put into the dish is tender.

The local basil stalks are downright inedible, and the bunches are usually sandy (not as sandy as the rocket, which can take 20 minutes to clean properly). So, I spent a lot of time picking only the leaves of the basil, and the leaves and tender stalks of the parsley. Thankfully I have a salad spinner I got at IKEA (it’s a simple hand-crank centrifuge for your food) so cleaning and drying the leaves was a cinch. Lots of sand settled at the bottom after washing, though, so clean thoroughly. It may be wise to do this step ahead of time (when you buy the basil) and keep the leaves in an airtight bag. Still, as with all green leafy vegetables, use it quick.

I don’t think you can use Indian Holy Basil for this dish — it’s far too strong. Maybe a few leaves as a garnish, but nothing more.

One final touch: On an early episode of The Naked Chef Jamie Oliver made a spaghetti dish in a light wine, lemon and butter sauce with shrimp, and used a wicked garnish. Since this dish would be similar I employed the same garnish here.

I had an old piece of baguette laying around. The good thing about old baguettes is that they don’t ever seem to spoil. The bad thing is they go rock hard and can only be used as breadcrumbs, croutons, soup sticks (if you somehow manage to cut them evenly) or in french toast. I just started slicing my bread the same thickness as the onions and peppers, pressing down on it with a regular chef’s knife (as opposed to sawing away at it with a serrated bread knife). I did this on purpose since I didn’t want clean slices. The trick paid off — with every cut the bread shattered as the knife came down. As you can see I ended up with a bunch of uneven chunks and crumbs.

Onto the cooking!

I cooked the pasta as per the instructions on the packet. The minute they hit the water a strong aroma of lemon filled the kitchen. At least the name on the box wasn’t just for show (unlike some red and green pastas I’ve had).

Once done, put them aside with a little olive oil to keep them loose. When I was growing up every pasta cooking lesson (even from TV chefs) was the same: boil water, add salt and oil, cook until al dente, then drain in a colander and rinse with cold water. Nowadays everyone seems to have done an about face, and from my experience the pasta tastes better.

So, the only thing that goes into the water should be salt, the heat should always be high and the water briskly boiling (except for the minute or so when you first put in the pasta, when you should stir continuously until it comes back to a boil so that nothing clumps up), and before you drain it keep a cupful of the water aside for later.

Once you do drain it don’t put any water on it, cold or otherwise. Transfer it straightaway to a covered bowl or pot and put some olive oil into it to keep it loose.

You shouldn’t keep the pasta for too long, as any pasta will get dry and clump up a bit and need to be loosened later (this is why the cup of pasta water was kept aside). You can time it so that the sauce is ready just as the pasta is. It usually takes 20 minutes from a cold pot of water to finished pasta, which, if you’re ready with all the ingredients, is more than enough time to make the sauce.

First, into a cold pan, put in a bit of olive oil and half the garlic. Get the heat up to high, by which time the garlic will have started frying well. Add the bread in and stir it around. You can put in dry herbs like oregano or thyme here. They help. Fry the bread until golden brown.

Remember what I said earlier about cutting the garlic long? The slices not only fried, after the bread was added in and it soaked up the olive oil the garlic also roasted and went all sweet and crackly, which I loved.

Unfortunately a total meltdown in timing occurred, and my pasta was overcooked while I kept watch on the bread. By the time I’d drained it and kept it aside the breadcrumbs had burnt. They weren’t charred so it was still usable. The lesson is that you should keep an eye on things or they can get out of hand very quickly.

Keep the fried bread aside (don’t cover it or it may go soft) and after cleaning away most of the stray breadcrumbs return the pan to the fire. Add in a good amount of olive oil. This will form the base of your sauce and has to further coat the noodles, but I’ll leave the definition of how much a ‘good amount’ is to you. Experiment and see what you like. You can always drizzle a little more over the top at serving time.

The actual sauce is simplicity itself. When the oil is hot put in the onions and the rest of the garlic, then fry them on medium-high heat until they’re cooked to your liking (I kept everything a little crunchy so the onion wasn’t browned before adding the rest of the ingredients). The garlic you add here won’t crackle like the one in the garnish, and adds a softer garlic flavour to the oil/sauce.

Put in the pepper and the olives, and toss.

You can chop up the basil and parsley, but I chose to keep the leaves and sprigs whole (not many stalks, so nothing to chop). Toss these in and they’ll start to wilt. You can add salt and pepper here.

I don’t cook the leaves too much. They should still have some crunch left in them. Add in the pasta and toss again. You probably will have to put in some of the pasta water here to unclump it and give a little liquid to the sauce.

Toss until it’s all well mixed up, then put some in a bowl, sprinkle a good handful of the garnish on top, some grated Parmesan cheese, and serve with a wedge of lime or lemon on the side.


(click on this image for a 1600×1200 wallpaper)

The fresh lime juice, I find, adds that final touch to the sauce. All in all it tasted good. The flavour of the linguine itself is lemony and peppery, though it’s not as strong as the aroma I got when it went into the water. This stuff definitely will not work with a heavy sauce.

The sauce itself was tasty; the ingredients worked well together and I didn’t have to use as much oil as I thought I would (a quarter cup is fine, though some extra goes into the fried bread). The fried bread topping is fantastic enough to be considered more than just a garnish, and the smoky flavours are a perfect counterpoint to the fresh, zesty and tart taste of the rest of the dish.

A couple of weeks ago, as I mentioned earlier, I had also tried their flavoured spaghettini (basil and sundried tomato, which was served in a sauce of Moroccan olives and green beans) and was generally impressed by it. The flavours weren’t by any means overwhelming but they were significant enough to warrant the extra price, once in a while.

It should be noted, however, that the flavoured pastas aren’t a substitute for actual sundried tomatoes, basil and lemon.

In fact, if you’re using regular pasta, I would suggest getting some (unwaxed) lemons and slicing them fine or zesting them and adding that and the lemon’s juice into the sauce. It should make a fine enough — and probably superior — alternative to this dish. You can also use other kinds of pastas. Fusilli and penne will also work, just dice the vegetables instead of cutting into strips.

You can serve the pasta as a side to grilled fish or other meats. You could even turn the whole thing into a warm salad by reducing the amount of pasta and not adding the parsley and basil to the sauce. Put it in a bowl with assorted salad leaves (or rocket) and pour the hot pepper and olive sauce/dressing and the fried bread over it.

Either way, mission accomplished!

allVishal.com runs Drupal

The site’s had no activity over the last week or two because I’ve been spending my time switching over to a whole new content management system, Drupal.

It took me this long to convert all the content over from my old CMS, Pivot. Drupal is a much more robust (and much more complex) system which is what I need keeping in mind what I would like this site to be over the next few years. I doubt that I will ever need to switch again.

You will also note that the blog has changed to ‘journal’ and that there are now RSS feeds for pretty-much everything.

Also, the biggest change (and the thing that took up most of the last two weeks’ work) is the inclusion of every single blog I’ve had since 2001 into the journal. More on all this stuff later, because now I need to go out and buy myself a new camera.

spamalot!

Honestly, if Dan hadn't pointed it out to me, I wouldn't even know that there was anything wrong with comments. Since switching to the new version of Pivot I've been happy to have the increased spam protection. Now I don't have to spend an hour every day hunting through posts and reporting fine interwub robots who comment on my site's "nice professional design" and then try to sell me viagra. To catch the few that did still manage to squeeze through I put in a human indentifying, spambot nixing question on posts older than ten days, and that did the trick too.

Alas, it would seem that my CMS also blocks a huge list of words, including normal, harmless words like 'animal'  and 'business' and (!!) 'xxx' (!!) At least a couple of you were victims of this overzealous spam blocker, and to you and everyone else reading, I'm sowwy.

I think I've solved the problem. I just got rid of the blocked phrases list. Now you can comment to your heart's content using words like 'bouncingboobs' and esoteric phrases and proverbs like "interest free credit card" and "paris hilton"

I've also put in the spambot combatting question into every post. I think I'll still get a little spam now and then which I'll have to watch out, but hopefully it'll be of the entertaining 'bouncingboobs' variety or the flattering "nice professional deign" kind.

Nobody blocks my readers! …um, reader. Hello, you. That's a nice shirt you're wearing. You have a professional designed site which is just what I was looking for and if you enjoy bouncingboobs I–

(Vishal will shut up now).

V

PS I think all this flagrant use of 'bouncingboobs' is going to get my site blocked by my wonderful ISP. And I don't even have any nude pictures up yet!

PPS Well, go on then, test it out, and be as filthy and spamalicious as you can. The best, most creative entry gets their finely crafted words
turned into a crappily crafted sketch.

garvan redux

When I last drew Garvan the Lapine I had to go back and read the text where he was first mentioned, because it always helps to freshen up on the details. I'm glad I did, because otherwise the picture might have ended up looking like the one above. It's true: the first time I read the story I actually thought Garvan was a giant rabbit. Personally I like my misconception better. The possibility of a giant magic rabit wearing a kilt living next door to you is a comforting one, and so this sketch has more heart put into it, even though technically it's all over the place. I don't think I'll ever want to draw him as a human again.

Sorry, Dan!

pyaar ke side effects review

I don’t know about your schools, but in mine (Indian School Muscat, or ISM for those of use who have survived that enigma) Drama and Theatre weren’t big. Oh sure, you did have the odd teacher who’d come along every few years, fuelled by passion and memories of his or her golden youth (usually five years past) in some sleepy hill station boarding school where ‘The Classics’ were paraded out — bedsheet togas, pathetic iambic pentameter and all — and put on show in some august hall whose seats were varnished every other week. They’d pick up everyone who ever scored in the top five in English in every class*.

(* – Thankfully, despite achieving this, I was never taught by one of these imbeciles or was considered too uncharismatic. The few times I was pulled up I stood very still at audition and read in a continuous, droning whisper.)

The result would be a huge number of very bad ‘Indian Victorian’ accents (I can’t describe this any other way, except that it is so excruciatingly bad it makes me want to punch someone while simultaneously drilling into my eardrums through my sphincter with a frozen echidna), a great number of puffed chests swelling already overfilled gasbags, and then either the exams or periodic tests would crop up (as they do in Indian schools, every other week) and Mummy and Daddy and Mr. Vice Principal would put all rehearsals on hold because little Bunty had to study all the time and get 99 marks in everything (Mr. Vice Principal wanted everyone to get 99 in everything so that the overall grades of the year would surpass the rival Indian school across town), or Mummy and Daddy would realise that they don’t give out little trophies or certificates for a play and tell Bunty to go back to athletics practice so he’d get some on Sports Day.

End result: not many plays.


More frequent would be the Middle or High School Alpha Female, destined from birth to break free from the shackles of Savage India and be educated in ‘The States’. Hence, she played softball (when we didn’t even have a team or anyone else who knew how to play it) and only dated people on the basketball team, rolled her Rs and used various words as punctuation (“Like, I mean, rrrruuuhly.”)*

(* – This, I realised, was much more endemic in Dubai, where the glut of private Indian schools led to each institution developing its own accent based on how expensive it was (more fees = more States-bound little munchkins). I can still spot an Indian High School girl in seven words or less. Anyway…)

Alpha Female, no doubt feeling the twitch of alienation in her anorexic little bones after watching the ‘school play’ episode of Beverly Hills 90210 (or any of the various high school shows of the time) would burst into the classroom the next day, gather her gang of like-minded cool folk the rest of us steered well clear of (the smart ones, anyway. Most just couldn’t even understand what language they were speaking, and vice versa) and set forth her plan of action. This usually involved buttering up the same kinds of teachers I’d mentioned before (freshly burned from the previous term’s adventure of trying to teach Bunty that “How” in Shakespeare did not mean, “How?”), only instead of the classics they’d think of putting on West Side Story or something else that would give a proper vent to all those rrrruuuhlys they had stored up over the year.

Alas, exams would come about, maybe Sports Day. Or, as would usually happen, Alpha Female would have a fight with Alpha Male — the hitherto default male lead of the Extravaganza(!) — and Beta Female would act as ambassador between the two parties while hitting on Alpha Male as she always wanted to. Big Muscle, Intense Guy, Comic Relief and various Lesser Females of the pack would run helter-skelter and gossip or hit on Alpha Female, and then the winter vacation would come along and people would go back to watching Beverly Hills 90210 or NBA Inside Stuff.

End result: not many plays.

There were, however, two kinds of theatrics that one was bound to encounter in a year. One was the school elocution, a torturous affair during Lower School because the entire class had to stand up on stage and belt out some kind of silly poem written by an absinthe-addled Englishman, in forced Indian Victorian that the teachers thought was the proper way to speak (bastards).

In Middle and Secondary Schools it became torture only for the audience, as the best and brightest of each class was picked up to subject the rest of us to more prolix, absinthe-addled verse. Worse, the elocution always seemed to take place on the same day of the week we’d have our only art class (bastards). The sole highlight of these affairs was when someone would flub a line and whisper a terse — but eloquent — “Shit!” (I think they got extra points)

The Second, more free-form method of theatrics was known as a skit.

Skit.

Skit.

The very term sounds mediocre and transient. Skits were usually performed by five man or woman troupes on Teacher’s Day, Children’s Day, those five days after the exams but before the winter vacation when people would come to school but nothing was taught, and at various Scouts and Guides thingamajigs (I only ever attended the three day camp in the desert, staying well clear of any regular meetings involving spurious knot-making instructions and disturbingly cheerful renditions of Anna-na Cycle-a Belle Yillee Seat Yillee Mudguard Yillee Yillee!)

First problem — and, to be frank, most damning: Skits were usually written by the students themselves. Oh nooooooo.

Oh, the horror of watching five people you sort-of get along with during the week suddenly turn into giggling, lobotomised train-wrecks of ‘thespians’ making some kind of unoriginal five minute monstrosity (that always ended with everyone saying the catchphrase of the ‘show’ at the same time)! I remember one was a direct rip-off of a supposedly popular — I’d never heard of it — Hindi sitcom (a term always used lightly) except to stave off nonexistent copyright lawyers they changed the show’s scene/episode ending catchphrase (Hindi sitcoms and school skits seem to share much DNA, hence my loathing for both) to something else (Genius!). The term they came up with was “Oof!”, which by the end of it the audience was saying anyway.

Second Problem: Skits were perfomed by students with no Pavlovian input from teachers, and so while it did finally free them from the curse of Indian Victorian, the delivery ranged from dead (Bunty) and bored (Mallu girl) to overboard (Elocution Boy) and requiring subtitles (Like, rrrruuuhly). It was not even bad enough to be good, if you know what I mean.

The one time I somehow ended up becoming part of a skit (I was bored, the group was sitting one row in front of me and their comedic stylings were, how shall I put this, skitshit), I added in bits of writing to what was supposedly a guy’s radio set tuning to different channels at random, with crazy — I said, Kerrraaaazy! — results. I’ll admit, even my 14 year old self couldn’t come up with anything too interesting or good (I did do something I was proud of a few months later, but that’s another story for another time) and mainly I streamlined a few jokes and helped things along.

Came time for the audition, for the Teacher’s Day show, and our boring bunch of nerds got up on stage (these guys weren’t nice nerds: they thought Transformers was a three mark Physics paper question). The year previous I had been a part of a sickening white-shirt/black-pant/red-bowtie group song recital that made it to the final show, where I had left the stage with a leap and a fist pump that got more applause and laughs than the entire performance, much to the surprise and embarrassment of my colleagues. Heh. Anyway, we got into our skit (being one of the writers I was also, unfortunately, one of the ‘actors’) and we lasted all of two minutes. I think it was the unpalatable juxtaposition of a cooking show with a news report on a famous (at the time) murder involving a tandoor oven that sealed our fate.

Needless to say, I didn’t write that one (or if I had, it would have been filthier).

Skits are terrible. You can do them well, but the chances of that happening at school are about zero and, well, zero. About the same amount of chance that you’ll be able to bang out a rollicking Musical Shakespearean TrageComedy Event in between exams, periodic tests, unit tests, Sports Day and private tuitions in an Indian School.

I’d pretty much forgotten about either, um, ‘art’ form, until today, when I saw Pyaar Ke Side Effects.

I’d missed it in theatres because the trailers didn’t look interesting. The teaser poster was much more promising, but the subdued nature of the TV promos made me take it off my “Watch it in a theatre” list. There were a lot of Hindi movies coming out last September, and I like to watch as many of them as I can even if they seem in the slightest bit promising, because Hindi movies are my opiate and without watching one or two every week — any movie — I get grouchy and depressed.

Now, a lot of people had to told me, “YOU MUST SEE PYAAR KE SIDE EFFECTS!” in a voice roughly approximating all caps. It seemed to be a movie that instilled the kind of wide-eyed, excited feeling that I rarely see in people who, unlike myself, aren’t movie nerds.

So yesterday when I was browsing through the racks of my DVD rental store I came across a copy with that same alluring teaser poster I had seen a year or two before. Rahul Bose is usually hit and miss for me: good in Jhankaar Beats, great in Chameli, and Mumbai Matinee looked so bad I didn’t even bother. Mallika Sherawat is not usually a memorable actress (she can, in fact, be quite terrible) and I don’t find her sexy. Still, all those enthusiastic recommendations plus the thought of seeing India’s most clearly defined mainstream Sex Symbol acting with a guy who is known for never dancing and singing on screen, being in practically every ‘Hinglish’ and Crossover movie of the past ten years, and playing rugby, piqued my curiosity enough rent the thing.

Note to self: don’t listen to anyone. Ever.

The movie is as awkward as any of those skits I saw in school, and is full of the kind of vapid, overbearing characters I avoided (and who are now, unfortunately, possibly tormenting my geek friends in America. I feel for you guys). When the protagonists aren’t acting like idiots they’re delivering punchlines to technically funny jokes as if they’re sliding dead fish under their neighbour’s porch. Granted, I’m not the target audience for this kind of movie — I have a brain and not the pretence of one — and I know enough people who would relate to this stuff (worse, they are this stuff) but that’s still no excuse for the kind of amateurish direction that runs through the production. Once in a while the cinematographer wakes up and gives us a five second shot that isn’t boring. Once in a while a line that is funny is actually delivered that way, and for those few moments you think the film might actually turn around and start behaving like, well, a movie.

Alas, we’re stuck with Rahul Bose playing the standard commitment-phobic, confused urban man he usually does, with none of aplomb of Jhankaar Beats, or the quiet sincerity of Chameli, and Mallika Sherawat, while never as bad as she was in, say, Kis Kis Ki Kismat, is never any better than just okay. It doesn’t help that her character is flat and unlikable.

Side characters come and go. Ranvir Sheorey plays the crazy roommate (because nobody has a normal roommate, of course) and does so quite well with what little he’s given. Then they go and ruin it by ramming in a clumsy attempt at a character arc towards the end. Other people play other stereotypes and are quickly forgotten or just annoying enough to make you hit fast forward.

About the only character who actually comes off as having a brain is Sophie Chowdhury, and she’s the damn item girl. When your sexpot has more sympathy than your lead, there’s trouble. This, of course, leads to the same thought I had after watching Dil Se, which is, “Oh thank God the two crazy people got together and the sane one is left alone.”

[Dil Se SPOILERS ahead]

Unfortunately, Pyaar Ke Side Effects does not end with the two protagonists blowing themselves to lovelorn smithereens by triggering a suicide bomb with their embrace.

[END SPOILERS]

In fact, it barely seems to end. Suddenly there’s an even clumsier (than everything before it) attempt at slapstick, guns and horses and a chase are cobbled together for fifteen seconds while the DOP goes off for a smoke and leaves the camera on ‘landscape’, and the credits roll while the final lines are still being spoken. They don’t even resort to the good old Hindi sitcom and school skit formula of ending on a catchphrase (the Sidey Stud’s oft-repeated “It’s not a big deal” could have been trotted out one last time, thereby summing up the whole experience nicely, just like that school skit ten years ago!).

I’ve learned a lot of things from Pyaar Ke Side Effects. Never trust the movie recommendations of Indian High School Dubai girls. My classmates could write better. Hell, half of them could act better, even Elocution Boy. Never has “Written and Directed by” meant so little. The quality of Cinematography does not increase with the amount of cleavage on screen. All those vapid kids you knew in school will go though a similar experience as the characters in the movie, and just like them they won’t actually learn something, get married and have kids anyway.

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

Oof!

~~~~~~~~
© Vishal K. Bharadwaj, 2007, All Rights Reserved

swamp crash sketch

The point of a sketch is to give you an idea of what a finished product will look like. It's a prototype, and all good prototypes leave room for changes. Take this sketch, for instance. It's my first attempt at a detailed sketch of an illustration, because while it has been fine for me to jump in on projects, previously, by just going direct to finished drawing without even a thumbnail sketch (I'll post an example later), those projects have usually involved computer colours (where the original pencils would never be seen), and have always been simple stuff — one, two, three figures at most.

Now, however, I need to expand, quite literally. I want to do a relatively complex, inked scene on a fairly large piece of paper. I had considered just going for it, but the feeling that if anything went less than well on the project (and I'd be stuck with a piece I didn't like and didn't want to complete) nagged me no end. So I decided to do a sketch in a small notebook, entirely in pencil and ball point pen.

The results were quite good, and I was happy even when it was bad. Confused? Let me explain:

Taking one look at this finished sketch, I can tell right away that it will make a good inked drawing. I also know that the composition doesn't quite work. I need to shift the 'camera' around a little. Now, I didn't know this before it was done, and if I'd have gone direct to the final I'd have a pretty but boring picture on my hands. The framing of the two silhouetted figures is also a bit forced, and composition-wise it makes the right side of the image too heavy — the picture is 'off-balance'. My inital plan on how to light the eyes of the creature is also wrong. You will note that the bottom left row of eyes appears to be lit from above, whereas the major light source is clearly the lantern the man is holding. The rest of the eyes are shaded right.

Also along the way, the scene has changed a lot. If you peek in the top corner of the pic you can maybe see a blurry pencilled mini-thumb of what I had initially planned, which was pretty-much the same scene but with a one-eyed monster and set against a moon-like outer-space setting. In fact, it wasn't even going to be a crashed ship, but some kind of ancient altar. Furthermore, I had planned more creatures attacking them, but I think I'll learn to draw creepy, gloomy swamps before I try to tackle hordes of anatomically correct running bipeds, thanks.

So hopefully when I'm feeling confident enough I'll put this one down on a large sheet of paper and ink it. Until then, I hope you enjoy the sketch.

V

back to crazy

It takes some time to get used to Dubai. It's been ten days since my return from India, and those days have passed by in a flash. I literally feel like I stepped off the plane yesterday.

Not that this sudden acceleration has in any way been caused by an overabundance of things to do — quite the opposite, in fact. I was in India for less than a month and I can tell you pretty much what I got up to on a day to day basis. Hell, I can probably give you a fairly accurate description of my daily itinerary from last year's trip to India.

I couldn't for the life of me tell you what I ate for dinner the day before yesterday, however. That's the thing about Dubai: for all the fast paced, jet-set lifestyle you see on the surface, the day to day of it is frustratingly uneventful. It's like sitting on a couch watching TV: what's happening on screen may be the most exciting thing in the world, but what you're doing is just sitting there, half asleep.

Time just slips away. The very fact that I've had ten whole days of uninterrupted broadband access and haven't even checked my email is horrible — worse, because I haven't even noticed.

Much of 2006 was like this, of course (I think I may have written around three emails, total) and I've been wrestling with myself to get off my ass and not do a repeat of that whole fiasco.

I felt more alive in India. The trip was hectic and much more 'event-oriented' than I would like. It always felt like I was either coming from, going to, or recoving between some kind of social engagement, but the few moments of just plain doing what I like were bliss.

Eating burning-hot vada pav by the side of the road and not caring that I had flecks of sticky chutney all over my trouser leg (which is far less erotic than it sounds). Slurping the inch-high foam off a cup of filter coffee in a restaurant the size of a small American car. Walking into Landmark bookstore in Andheri for the first time and coming face to face with five solid shelves of graphic novels and manga — the most actual, physical comic books I've seen in any bookstore. Turning a corner and encountering a wedding reception the size of half a football field. Staring a whole Mughlai Paratha with a side of potatoes in the face and actually consuming it, then realising that doing so more than once a year will kill me.

Walking and wading in the endless, innumerable and empty beaches around Shrivardhan. Discovering that the outstanding memory of me in a person I haven't met in ten years is of me cutting loose on a dance floor at some party I vaguely half-remember.

Fending off hordes of red-ribbon-pigtail schoolgirls to climb the bus. Dadar Station road — At any time. First Class Train Compartments, which are like regular train compartments, only without the full body massage and one inch cubed of personal space.

Realising that perfectly ordinary people with perfectly ordinary jobs in a city with perfectly adequate (but crowded) public transport and completely inadequate parking are now buying cars, and therefore going from Bandra to Santacruz by the four-lane highway (which in India, of course, is a seven-and-a-half lane highway) doesn't take ten minutes like it did a year ago, but one and a half hours.

Seeing more prime time TV ads for mutual funds and insurance/investment schemes than shampoos and colas combined, and realising that India is both a lot different and also absolutely the same as when I was a kid. Freaking out the branch manager of a prominet bank by just standing around and not looking like the world was going to end.

During the entire vacation either Samir or I could be heard saying, "When do go on vacation?" It was pretty annoying now and then, but despite it all we did manage a few moments of total fun. It's hard to explain to people that you go on vacation not to either:

a) Meet everyone you're remotely half-related to and stay for rice and curry.
b) Hole up in your place of choice, enter a semi-comatose state and eat rice and curry.
c) Eat rice and curry.

I have nothing against rice and curry. I do have a lot of ill will towards chilli-water disguised as curry that most people seem to think is some kind of measure of your Indian heritage. You aren't a pukka desi is you don't like at least six chillis in your dal*.

* And believe me, dal is by far the mildest of Indian dishes. I think I've elaborated on my general dislike of the term 'curry' and what it has come to represent before, so the short version below will suffice for now.

Try telling these people that chillies were only introduced into India five hundred years ago, that Rama, Krishna, Buddha, the entire Maurya dynasty and most of the Mughals never, ever ate one and would probably look at you funny if you told them it was synonymous with India, and they'll give you the same expression of being genuinely affronted that most Indians get when any of their sacred cows are even slightly questioned.

It's a look I've come to know well.

Also telling people that this whole concept of eating a heavy breakfast of cooked food first thing in the morning is very unhealthy and that you'd prefer a glass of hot water and later some fruits provokes a similar reaction and cries of "That's not our culture!"**

** Actually, it is.

I go to India to be alive. It's easy, because you're thrust into life headfirst and see all of it, even moreso in Mumbai. I guess I'm trying to find life in Dubai, certainly of a verisimilitude that can be found over there. If not I guess I'll have to invent it.

Which brings me back to this site, and you. I've tried the whole designer thing for a while, and it's been nice — I worked on a couple of things last year that were fun and fruitful and I should post about them soon — but I've generally been frustrated and depressed and comatose. Not a great start for someone who wants to rule the known universe and outlying territories.

A couple of years ago I said I'd be better off a couple of years later, and since that hasn't happened — twice — I seriously need something that takes up a large amount of my time that the jet set lifestyle and bevy of beautiful, vapid girlfriends isn't taking up at the moment.

Forget 'back in the saddle' — I need to find me a horse!

Getting the domain was one step (it's allVishal.com for those who didn't read the previous post) and new content should be coming to the site. It's mostly silly stuff, but I hope that it's entertaining and you come back for more. I haven't drawn in ages, but there are fresh sheets of paper waiting right next to me so I should get back to that.

There may be a redesign at some point, but when is anyone's guess. If the content outgrows this current one, then yes (and I hope it does reasonably soon).

Until then, thank you for being here. Happy Valentine's Day and Happy Everything Else.

I'll talk to you soon.

V

allVishal.com

So I finally got my own domain name to go with the paid webspace.

The site now and forever onwards will be accessible from allVishal.com

Kindly update your links.

V

soft landings

(not my slippers, just borrowed for the duration)

still alive no.74563826

In India this month. Been here a week, generally out and about. Just settling in, so not much to report. Hope you are all well.

Oh wait, I've just been hit by an exploding fragment of a light fixture. No joke. There's a tiny hole in the thigh of my track pants.

Ah, India.

V

professor enoki niku


I figured, a superhero is only as good as his supervillain. Any veggie superhero needs a suffciently non-veg adversary, hence the good professor here.

Enoki is a kind of Japanese mushroom (although the ones I've drawn look more like porcinis), and Niku is Japanese for meat.

The pencils have been left in and aren't very visible except on his leg (I didn't draw as many construction lines as I usually do, for whatever reason). It was inked with both the fat and thin brush pens. As you use them each pen deveolps a unique 'signature' — a flaw or uneveness to the stroke that can be used for various effects. The large brush pen, being used less, still delivers a thick, uniform black, but the small one, perhaps though my overzealousness, has developed a U-shaped hook to small strokes (i.e. a straight line is black on the outer edges and less so in the middle). This worked to my advantage in the shading of the mushrooms, and you can also see the signature in the lines that run across the 'accordion' portions of his right leg and abdomen.

I also busted out my older brush pen, the first I bought. This is the pen I used to draw the image in the post "Man Thing" — you can see its signature in his hair. The pen is a little larger than the current one and has gone to grey unless I really press it into the paper. Here I used it to shade in the metal fingers, the abdomen and the right leg. I'm sure that when it's completely out of ink I may still be able to smoosh the thing against an ink pad and use it and its unique signature.

Colouring was done in the Gimp. I just flat coloured it because I liked the ink shading and didn't want to risk it clashing with any dodge/burn effects on the colour. Colour-based shadows and highlights work in a drawing which has bolder inks, like the Cosmocolli image, because the inks there are going more towards structure and texture and less to volume, but in linework that has many greys a simpler colour process works. It's like pen and wash techniques.

Unlike the previous veggie sketches I didn't use a vector process. Like I said, I liked the ink shading, and any conversion to vector would have resulted in:

  1. a loss of much of the grey tones and shapes that give the image its character in my opinion.
  2. a massive vector shape that would have destroyed my computer and be fundamentally useless to actually work with. Any simplifications to that vector conversion would have further destroyed the structure of the piece.

Elaborating on that second point, even in the Cosmocolli image (which was vectorised but not simplified, thereby preserving much of the original sketch — again, this was down to the bolder lines), the resulting vector trace was eating up memory like anything. I had to make a low-res bitmap copy to act as a guide for me to colour under, and keep the vector traced sketch on a hidden layer until colouring was finished and I could export the image to a bitmap with the vector trace visible.

It's a bit of a hack, but it works, and that's the important bit. All those seconds the computer takes to redraw a heavy shape everytime you zoom in and out of an area (which can easily be thousands of times) can add up to hours over the long run.

Here's the wallpaper version, a big close up where you can see many of the details not apparent in the small version above: 

Note that the wallpaper version (1600×1200) is around 500kb. Sorry Dial-Up users, but that's as good as I could get it without a noticeable drop in quality.

All in all I'm happy with the image. The shading style reminds me of British comics, for some reason, although I couldn't really pinpoint any particualr one. After colouring was done I chuckled at the resemblence to Bronze Age Lex Luthor. Always been one of my favourite villain designs.

V