transience

I'm in transit. Sometimes, when I'm by myself, I feel like a passenger at the airport who's been offloaded and told to wait in the lounge. I collect my baggage and sit down to wait for the announcement. Wondering when my flight will be announced, when I'll get on board and then fly away. I don't think of the destination just yet, it's the journey that I'm fixated on. Sometimes I feel my life is in that stage, a state of impermanence, of transience, of flux. There is no sense of immediacy, of getting up in the morning to go somewhere, of a deadline to catch. Each day has its own rhythm and I allow myself to succumb to it. Some days I am in control of it but some days I just give in. I feel like I had a life, a job, a sense of rush and then someone deplaned me. I got off the bus, and I sat down, I slowed down. And I waited. Now, I'm still waiting, not for an external announcement but for the voice in my head to tell me that it's OK to get back on the plane. To fly. I don't know where to, but it's the journey I'm interested in. It's not as if I'm completely lost, with no work to keep me busy. You know how you walk to the book store, pick up a couple of magazines to kill time, grab a coke... it's the same feeling. Killing time, passing time, bidding time, all in an attempt to concise the waiting. It's a temporary relief but it's not your calling. Your heart and mind and your ears are still tuned into another frequency. You're reading the book but half of you is elsewhere, waiting for that announcement.
A part of you knows this is a good life, you're at the lounge, you're reading, you're sipping a coke, and getting on the plane is only going to put you back into the rut, the same old mundane routine but you crave it somewhere deep inside. It's a part of who you are. You know your baggage just got a bit heavier but does that mean you leave the old bag behind?
You aren't even sure of what you're trying to say any more. Or what you're thinking. It's not just about the work. It's as if you've reached a point where everything is running in slow motion. Like a Hindi film you were watching at the airport lounge just froze on the telly. With no attempt to defreeze.
You feel you're in the chiller. You need to take no decision whatsoever. You will neither freeze nor remain the fridge temp, you will stay in this half freeze mode, subject to the vagaries of the electricity department.
Even your analogies are lame, at best. Time to switch off.

The Bilkis Bano Rape Case

i just read the details of the bilkis bano rape case in the paper. don't ask me why but the details just eluded me earlier. Maybe i didn't pay attention, maybe I didn't have a daughter and therefore it didn't sound as gruseome as it does now. Imagine being pregnant, raped by your neighbour, as someone else shoves his foot in our mouth so you can't scream. Imagine seeing the same people toss your three-year-old in the air so her head will smash on imapct. Imagine being alive after all this to fight for justice. First reality eluded me, now it's my imagination I want to elude.
And, oh yeah, Happy Republic Day

Dus Kahaniyan

I saw Dus Kahaniyan recently. Enjoyed some of the stories, pretty thought provoking, though some could have been better simply by being longer and better etched out. The Aftab Shivdasani story, for example. It tried to put in too much into one story and couldn't therefore do justice to it. It's on the theme of serendipity, but then you can't show it in 10 minutes, that too when you want to include a dead mother, a love angle betwwen this dead mother and Aftab's father apart from the main love story etc. Even the Mandira Bedi story called Matrimony was short and sweet but could have been better played out.
The stories that I really liked were Rice Plate; interestingly it was directed by newbie director Rohit Roy (TV and now film actor). Starring Shabana Azmi and Naseerudin Shah it was a beautiful take on the sensitivities of an orthodox Tam Brahm who is loathe to even touch something which has passed though the hands of a Muslim. It is her own insecurity that makes her believe that Naseer, a Muslim she encounters in a railway station canteen, is eating out of her plate. Short on money, since she has left her wallet at home, she berates him and then driven by desperation and diabetes, ultimately snatches the plate and starts to eat before coming to the realisation that her 'dharam' has been 'bhrasht'. She runs out and only when she returns to reclaim her baggage does she realize that her plate is lying on another table uneaten and it was she who pounced on his plate. It seems to validate one of the theories expounded in The Secret, that when a thought is prevalent in your mind and you keep repeating it in your head (even if you're say let this 'not' happen to me), the universe does not hear the 'not'; instead it just sends you what you are asking for. So Shabana almost invited the situation upon herself by constantly hoping it does not happen.
The other story I liked was Zahir, between Manoj Bajpai and Dia Mirza. Without going into the details, I'll say that though the theme was a bit hackneyed, (divine intervention or tit for tat) it was salvaged by a taut script and good acting.
Watch the film for some off beat stories too like the Apurva Lakhia directed one on Dino Morea and Meghna Gulzar's Pooran mashi with some fantastic acting by Amrita Singh. A very well written story too.