Uh huh.
So, to recap. Spent the last four months generally depressed and unwilling to do anything about it. I haven’t taken a single photo or written a scrap of anything in that time, save for some mind-numbing work (which, oddly enough, seems to happen okay).
I owe many of you a very many things, not least of which are apologies. Let’s see if we can get this started up again.
It was an editorial illustration on the back page of an industrial company’s newsletter. The article (by Samir) was about plumbing in ancient Rome. Yes, I realise that the Venus De Milo is actually from ancient Greece, but hey, I’m an illustrator, not a historian (more on the Amputated Aphrodite here).
Did it in inkscape. I seriously can’t imagine going back to Adobe Illustrator anymore.
V
V for Vendetta finally released over here this week (but only in one multiplex chain, for no apparent reason). I’m going to watch it today with friends, but last evening we suddenly felt the need to watch a Hindi movie, and with only two choices in theatres here (the other being Humko Deewana Kar Gaye) we chose Pyare Mohan.
Now, I wasn’t too fond of Indra Kumar’s last film, Masti (which Vivek Oberoi described as “A sex comedy without sex” and that should be enough to tell you how lame it was), so despite the cast being the who’s who of underappreciated young Bollywood today (what exactly does Fardeen Khan have to do to get a hit?), I was wary. On the other hand, Indra Kumar also directed Ishq, which was hilarious, so maybe Pyare Mohan would be more like that.
I’m very happy to say that it is. Pyare Mohan is genuinely funny and frequently thrilling, there’s not a groan-inducing double entendre in sight, and it’s a pure distillation of the masala movie dynamic but with a postmodern, slick makeover. The majority of what makes the film work are the two portagonists. In what seems like an eternity, a normal masala movie actually has believable characters as the heroes rather than cardboard cut-out alpha males. Pyare and Mohan are fully realised, likeable, and strong characters from the get-go. Tushar Hiranandani and Milap Zaveri have written them fully aware of the pitfalls of disabled movie characters being iconic poster-chidren for their particular handicap, and strive to make them not only real, but admirable*.
*(so, basically, this means that since none of the disabled people suffer a lot, this film isn’t going to win any awards)
The film is shot in a sunny, wonderfully lit way by Sunil Patel (who did the equally good-looking Salaam Namaste and Hum Tum). Full marks to him for not succumbing to the usual Hindi film formula of shooting the romantic bits one way, the action bits another and a drama bits a third (which is kind-of a given in a masala-movie). There’s excellent use of match-moving during one song, Love You My Angel. See folks, this is why Hollywood slaved for decades to perfect complex special-effects techniques and equipment — so that Indian filmmakers could make their song sequences even more over the top.
The visual look of the film is rock solid, and this extends to the promo work as well (Samir and I are particularly taken by the film’s logo and posters — they make Darna Zaroori Hai‘s already banal posters standing next to them look even worse!).
Anu Malik’s music is good, hummable stuff but I hadn’t heard much of it before going to see the film, which is a rarity (we in India usually know the soundtracks by heart through radio airplay before a film’s release). I have no doubt that it will be getting more play now that the film’s released.
The action is exciting, well choreographed and believeable (filled with humour, too), and comes complete with a bloody climax straight out of a 1985 Sunny Deol movie. My only quibble is that in some shots the wires haven’t been digitally removed (they either ran out of time or money, or both).
If you want to watch a good, solid, funny movie with all the trappings of a masala movie potboiler from the 1970s and 80s — and something your kids will enjoy (the ones in the theatre around me were hysterical throughout) — then go watch it.
But, a part of me feels that Pyare Mohan is more, and that it will never be appreciated for its solid performances by Fardeen Khan and Viveik Annand Oberoi (to give him his credited name), the slickness and consistency of the overall package, the strong characters who really deserve a sequel (since those are in vogue), and the post-modern revamp of the traditional action-comedy-romance-drama masala movie formula that the film’s team has achieved, keeping the zany features of the old but cutting out all the dead wood and grounding it with touches of the straightforward and honest style of ‘New Hindi Cinema’ (like Dil Chahta Hai or Rang De Basanti). Pyare Mohan is crazy and hopelessly filmi, but it’s still manages to be believeable.
In striking this fine balance, Indra Kumar and Co. have managed to create a film that will hold up to repeated viewing and linger on in your head.
Dammit, all I wanted was a bit of fluff to tide me over until V for Vendetta, but now I think I’ll be quietly chuckling along to the memory of Pyare Mohan‘s blind car chase while the opening credits of V are running.
Oh My Gawd, it’s my entire life in ten bullet points.
There’s a nice interview with Aamir Khan on Tehelka where the actor chews the fat about the state of the news media in India today (here’s a hint: it sUXX0Rz). It’s nice to see somebody who’s not afraid to finally call the whole thing stupid, and Khan does it with trademark meticulousness while still retaining an easygoing manner.
Granted, Tehelka itself is not what I would call above petty sensationalist journalism — this is, after all, the same organisation that kicked off the whole Defense Department bribery sting operation stuff, then started moaning when they were called up on bribery charges themselves (look, there’s a tape of you giving someone a bribe — you can’t expect not to be arrested just because you’re a journalist) — but thankfully the reporter is forced to take a back seat to AK. It isn’t really eye-opening for anyone with a brain who has switched on any news channel in the past few years, but it makes for good reading, and hopefully a few who had got caught up in the frenzy of tabloid gossip that passes for news *coughcough*dad*coughcough* might finally switch the channel to some good, honest belly dancing and save me the annoyance of the day’s ‘hot stories’.
Almost forgot, but a while ago I finished up the Kamon (Japanese family/house crest) for Dan. It’s not the Heraldic crest he initially requested, but during my research into the subject I was intrigued by the minimalist style and thought it would be a good starting point for teaching myself this kind of illustration, which I’ve never done before.
I’m 60% happy with it. I like the otter and the general yin/yang effect between it and the cock, but I’m not happy. The design of the cock bothers me (stop giggling!) and one day I’ll refine it. Now, however, I have other things to move on to, not the least of which is the heraldic crest, which I realise is going to take quite a lot of effort to get right, and I don’t just want to palm off a shoddy product because I think I’m not good enough.
The other day my brother was discussing a design with a client who mentioned that it was far too good for what the thing was, and he replied that doing a bad job was not an excuse just because the people who would see it didn’t know any better, or he wasn’t getting paid much for it, or for whatever reason.
There is a lot to be said taking pride in one’s work (frankly there isn’t nearly enough), for getting things done to the best possible level you can achieve. I’d like to live my entire life that way.
Hence, the cock still bothers me.
I said stop giggling!
Yipes, it’s been a while since I updated! It never feels that like a long time until you look at the current date and the date of your last post and the relative enormity of the period yawns before you. Granted, this may never be a 10-posts-per-day blog (if I did that, I’d only be blogging and nothing else — and I’m quite smitten by the ‘else’ bit right now).
(Click on read more, but be warned, minor Bleach spoilers, and Ginormous LOST spoilers/rants/etc)
The ‘else’ that I should be doing is not really happening. I’m falling behind on things, hemming and hawing about what to do next, what to finish up, what to keep aside for awhile. This usually ends with me prioritising everything to Level 1 AAA ASAP and then not doing any of it.
I’m such a jerk.
Have been watching some TV, or at least what can be classified as TV since it’s primarily broadcast somewhere but I can’t be bothered to sit at home at the time and wade through mind-numbing commercials to watch them. I enjoy some of the late night slots as they tend to be lighter on the ads — or entirely commercial free — and this is integral to keeping the interest up in a show that requires concentration, like LOST. I’m not one of those obsessive LOST junkies (LOSTies? LOSTers? LOSTophiles? The LOSTettes?) who freeze-frames every moment to search for new clues to the Big Secret™ — I just like the characters and the way the show is written, but more on that later.
I spent much of last week putting a bunch of Bleach episodes behind me, namely the latter part of the Soul Society arc. I had stopped somewhere halfway through when Ichigo was trying to find his new sword — had to go on vacation — and since the plot didn’t seem to be resolving itself anytime soon I decided to wait until it did and just watch the episodes in a batch, which I have now done (this was one of the great things about watching Lost season 1 — I just binged on the episodes and finished the season in a week. Waiting for each new episode now — for more than a fortnight sometimes — is very testing, especially with the current state of the show. But more on that later).
I’m glad I waited for the entire arc to become available before watching it. Bleach is a show that has more than 40 characters who could be considered actual three-dimensional people, and keeping up with who’s who and what’s what with one week gaps is not easy. I’m not saying that there should be less characters, however, as the main reason I love Bleach (other than the frequent sudden left turns into out-and-out slapstick or farce) is the sheer number of characters.
Each of them are, firstly, designed really well. Each is distinct in looks and personality while fitting familiar yet quirky archetypes, but what really makes them special is that each and every one has a back-story of some kind that is illuminated during the show. Any one of these side-characters could have a series of their own with the stories they are given. Like Lost, but on an entirely different level, people are interconnected and have real relationships, so the Soul Society doesn’t seem like just a video-game level with a number of opponents to be dispatched by the central protagonist (who doesn’t even appear for entire episodes). By the end of the arc I was quite sad to see the main characters leave the place, and the end of six concurrent plots running at once. Although I know that the ‘Gotei 13’ will keep popping up through the rest of the series, a part of me wishes that the funny extra segments at the end of the episodes are not all that we see of that world.
Bleach and Lost both represent a style of storytelling that is more literary in nature, and that too a more ancient, epic style. The last time I saw a show like Bleach with its dozens of characters it was the TV serial version of the Mahabharata — I wasn’t sure why subsequent mythological shows about Krishna or Hanuman failed to keep my interest (okay, so they all had terrible acting, direction, special effects and dialogue, but so did the Mahabharata serial), and now I seem to have found the answer: they just weren’t dense enough. Even 26 episode limited animé series have more dense plots than entire ten season runs
of American TV shows (I’m not taking about Soap Operas here — those are an entirely different breed), but that’s primarily because almost all animé is based on a manga — a literary root that is free of the need to pander to the three act structure, to have something big during the sweeps period, to be pre-empted by sports at the drop of a hat (come on, this is the 21st century — don’t you guys have dedicated Sports Channels?).
When I first started watching Bleach I was somewhat uneasy with the fact that it was the first anime series I had watched with more than a finite 26 episode run. I wasn’t sure if it could sustain my interest over a great length, that it would, at some point, degenerate into some kind of ‘creature of the week’ show with minimal character development (a bit like Smallville), doubly so because of the tiny 24 minute run compared to most 50 minute American drama shows, where a finite effects and guest star budget means that they just have to shoe-horn in some character development purely because it’s cheaper (unless you’re CSI, in which case your central cast have no back-story, and woohoo, that’s why I like that show — it’s pure whodunnit/howdunnit). Now that I look back at everything that has happened over the last 64 episodes of Bleach, I’m convinced that anything less would be a severe disservice to the characters.
On the other hand, the show that is currently doing a great disservice to its characters — the one show that shouldn’t — is LOST.
(btw, it is now, as mentioned earlier, officially ‘later’)
The first season of LOST is nothing short of spectacular. It’s marvellously written, well acted, put together with wit and precision and has enough surprises and play to make you enjoy the ride. The second season, however, is trudging along quite pathetically. The show seems to have got mired in its central premise — that of the mystery island — and has almost completely ignored the what made LOST great in the first place, which was the character development. It’s as if somebody stepped back at the end of season 1, said, “Hey, hold on, we’re getting feedback that there are all these sites and communities
online poring over everything we’re doing, and some people say the flashbacks are getting the way.”
Taking this to heart, the current show is recycling wholesale character traits we all got to know last season, thereby putting its central dozen characters in a state of flux. We get more facts about them in flashback, but nothing more about the characters. Sawyer is a con man, only now we know he’s… a con man? Hmm, I knew that already. Jack is a doctor with a saviour complex, but now we know… he has a saviour complex? Charlie’s still a shifty drug-addicted maniac, Claire is a talking head who is always screaming something about her Baby, and Micheal is sort of like Claire only replace baby with, “WAAAAAAALLLT!”
They killed off Boone (cardboard cutout), they killed off Shannon (cardboard cutout), thereby leaving the show with a severe lack of pretty, and they replaced them with one stoic black guy who turns out to be a Nigerian drug dealer (no!), a testy woman who is a cop with a past (the shock is killing me, it is, friend), and a vaguely creepy psychiatrist who will probably turn out to be ‘one of them’ soon, if they don’t kill her too, just to prove to us that having your name on the main cast doesn’t exempt you from reducing you to appearing only in flashbacks and as a ghost/spirit/jolt device (which, when you you add it up, is about as much screen time as some of the cast is getting anyway, so no biggie).
There have been a couple of good episodes in the vein of the first season; the one about how Jin met Sun is sweet, but the one that actually got close enough to season one’s greatness was the Hurley episode where he’s fussing about the rations in the hatch as well as when he won the lottery. That one was good. There’s a Sun episode that I haven’t seen yet. Hopefully it won’t disappoint, but then again Jin and Sun not being the alpha characters in the group they tend to get better characterisation from the beginning — something other than ‘noble/misunderstood hero with dark secrets in past’ which describes
Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Eko, Ana Lucia and Locke as well (I’m pretty-sure that in some upcoming episode we find out he ran his no-good daddy over with his wheelchair, probably 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42 times).
I’d be somewhat alright with all of this stupid lack of character development if the actual plot was going anywhere, but that too just seems to be playing out in slow motion, adding in Gilligan’s Island-style ‘guest of the week’ plots and not being patricularly interesting. Now everything important seems to happen within twenty minutes of the campsite (the good-old days of shuttling between the caves and the beach are long gone), and that sense of scale and travel, of this relatively huge island that was glimpsed from the raft at the end of season one is gone, replaced by these set locations of Hatch,
Beach, Veggie Patch, bit of Jungle, and more jungle. They hardly ever go to that nice golf course anymore. They don’t explore because, of course, the scary Others people might get them.
They even showed us the monster — it’s a particle effect. It chases people who run. You look at it, it stops. Okay, let’s move on. There’s this whole thing about other hatches, how some of them are seemingly gutted or abandoned, and a million other things that the show has either forgotten or is struggling to juggle long enough that it seems to be relevant, but it has to stand still to achieve this.
There’s that silly thing about the guy in the weapons locker who seems to turn Locke’s screws so easily the entire bit belongs in a third-rate soap opera. If this season ends up with another series of abductions and the discovery of another hatch, I’ll firmly recommend that someone just put together a twenty-minute cut of the entire season and just skip the thing.
I think it’s confirmed that I’m a character person. I really don’t give two hoots about plots as long as the characters are worth watching. Which is why I liked the Sci-Fi miniseries The Triangle. The plot is pretty normal, and later it develops a few holes, but overall I was quite satisfied with it because it’s got great characters (written and played very well). It harkens back to an older, simpler era of pulpy SF that owed more to detective fiction than Kung Fu and Mythological epics (which have their place, like in Bleach) — straight-faced, adult characters with nary a hip pop-culture reference or a fetishised
unfurling of shiny technology and gadgetry. I miss that.
The Triangle also has one heck of an epilogue, and leaves the series open for the characters to maybe be spun off into their own series or returning adventures (please please please) instead of the usual way of leaving the major plot open for reissue so that you can churn out asequel without returning the cast. Plots are notoriously hard to make sequels out of, characters less so. Look at James Bond.
Plots are tricky because they have no inherent qualities that endear us to them. It’s a plot, it’s a device, a structure. Rang De Basanti doesn’t work because of its plot (which is more silly than superb), it works because of the characters. Bleach doesn’t have any single plot moment where I went ‘Whoah, what a story!’ but it has tons of moments involving great characters — witty, funny, smart, serious, emotional, farcical moments — that make me want to re-watch the whole thing eventually. The Star Wars prequels aren’t disliked because humanity has an allergy to Trade Federation politics, it was because there was no freaking Han Solo and no Princess Leia. There was no “Yes Your Worshipfulness” and “I love you.” “–I know.”
I think back to Primer, which I liked and was happy with plot-wise (heck, it was fuckin’ brilliant), but the characters were as bland as their white shirts, and I have no desire to watch it again.
Someone needs to tell LOST to lose the plot and get back to the characters, or it will just end up as another show with some cheap-trick plot ending that isn’t fully revealed, and even if it does everyone will forget it when the next show comes along.
V
As if one piece of dorkgasm-inducing news wasn’t enough, here’s two.
I know bad news comes in threes but know no such rule for good news. On
the other hand, I know of enough people who would consider the above
two pieces bad news, so here’s hoping something similar arises!
(Prays for Nowhere Man Season 2 Greenlight)
V
It’s raining outside, and has been since around 8 am. The first shower was a good long one — not heavy by Mumbai standards — but certainly the heaviest rain I’ve seen here in a while.
Now it’s down to being ‘scattered’ as the weathermen say. I’m Indian, so we love the rain, and we look forward to it no matter what. If an Indian says, “It’s a gorgeous day!” they probably mean that it’s overcast and raining, vis à vis the traditional warm and sunny definition of the term.
It’s a gorgeous day.
The tennis open is going on across town. Yesterday the papers were plastered with pictures of Maria Sharapova playing tennis in a makeshift court inside Ski Dubai, which is this town’s latest hot thing. When the Burj Al Arab was the hot thing they had Tiger Woods teeing-off from the centre of the suspended helipad a few dozen storeys up. Now all that is passé, apparently, as the Mall of the Emirates (*huge exclamation point*–third biggest in the world–*huge exclamation point*) with its attached ski-slope and snow park has taken centre stage. From the top level parking the ski slope looms above you, a pulsating plasma display of lights along a strip in the side. It
looks like the giant nacell of the Starship Enterprise, and from that angle it’s very impressive, and immediately brings up earnest desires of building and owning starships — instead of ski slopes.
Haven’t been inside the snow area — somehow the fact that I’ve never seen actual natural snow makes me reluctant to try the manufactured version. Up against the large glass viewing windows some of it gets thrown by kids, our faces the target. I put my nose up to the glass and take a look at it, smeared there. Looks like ice chips. Doesn’t look like the crystalline fractal flake patterns I would expect from real snow.
All this for a romp in a large freezer?
I’ll wait for the real thing.
Sharapova’s quote on playing tennis inside an artificial ski resort in the middle of a desert kingdom is, understandably, “Surreal.” I wonder what she’s saying now, standing on the edge of a drenched tennis court in an otherwise parched desert kingdom. There have been more sirens heard in the streets in the past hour than in the past three months. Obviously all those top-of-the-line cars with their ABS and intelligently designed tyres are in severely lacking in top-of-the-line squishy flesh things operating them.
Unlike the rest of the world, Indians just love rain, so you can imagine how Indians react in this country where this is probably the only full day (if it lasts that long) of rain we’ll get all year. Anjali called me up in the morning, and she’s been calling everyone, rallying them with stories of masala chai and bhajias. The chai I can
do, but there’s no chick-pea flour in the house (or any potatoes or onions) so no bhajias.
My mind wanders to chill breezy monsoon evenings that seem both like yesterday and lifetimes ago, of slicing potatoes and whatever else we had on hand to experiment with (mushrooms, broccoli) while my mother mixed up the batter. I’ve eaten a lot of bhajias, and so have a lot of people I know, but all of us agree that my mother made the best ones. Crisp and crunchy with the merest, milimetre-thin layer of soft batter between the outer shell and the steaming, floury slice of potato. Salty and spicy with the slight unfathomable (umami?) taste of the chick-pea, the rounding, mineral taste of cumin and the metal tang of ajwain. We never had the need for chutney with those, even when it was around.
It’s funny, but you never really think of asking you mother to teach you her recipe for bhajia batter because she might be dead in a few years.
Meanwhile it’s sad, pudgy, spongy things from the local cafe. The closest I’ve ever had was this vada-pav guy opposite Fountain, tucked away under the arches of one of the buildings. It was great, but not quite the same. Too much salt, no ajwain. Also, 2,000 kilometres away. On my last trip to Ghadeshwar (pictures of the place are in the work page) I managed to snag the last batch of bhajias from the one stall propped up on the slope. Little yellow chips, gone soft in the damp atmosphere, but still bhajias in the rain. The classic combination.
I vaguely remember learning the recipe from her, and it was more of an hour-long experiment with different consistencies and spice-levels and the thinness of the slices. I get the feeling that each time she madeit she taught herself again, and it was willingly forgotten in the subsequent eating, the gulping down of too-hot, gingery chai and too-strong South-Indian coffee. Part of the fun of cooking I learned from her was the forgetting of things. To re-learn the process every time is a vital part of me. I get the same feeling when I’m drawing or writing or taking a photograph. The sense of discovery is as important
as the sense of successful operation.
The number of times we’ve been in the kitchen — especially in the later years when Samir or I were doing the hands on work and she was instructing — and and some point halfway through the traditional recipe we’d just decide to chuck something in or change something is far too many for me to recall.
When I look through her handwritten recipe books I am always struck by the fact that there are no ingredient lists — the recipes directly begin with instructions. Heat Oil. Add this. Add that. Cook it. A dash of this, etc, etc. There are some rudimentary measurements on the way, but that’s all. Again, it’s the very visceral nature of just starting up the fire and putting things into action; cooking as a private performance, as meditative self-discovery. She never started cutting things up before she lit the fire (I do. The onions are more evenly cut, but the food is a little dead, if you know what I mean). She never cut tomatoes on a chopping board, prefering instead to slice uneven chunks right over the pot.
No one can teach you how to cook. You have to teach yourself.
Hmm, the mosque-guy has started a speech. He never does that on Thursdays. Must be the rain. If you think we love rain, imagine an entire culture that is only used to seeing it once a year.
The rain, like good bhajias, is a very elusive thing.
Nevertheless, it’s a gorgeous day.
V