V for Vendetta; A for 'Anna'rchy

A former colleague of mine put my blog post headline.
I think that it's apt.
While I'm sure that Anna Hazare believes that what he is doing makes perfect sense,  what I've gauged from what India is today, a lot of people believe that he is doing the right thing as well. There are dharnas, candlelight vigils, messages, Tweetups, NRI gatherings - you name it, it's there.
But then, I think of what happened in Egypt and Libya earlier this year. So far, the protests in India have been non-violent, but it can take a snap of a finger to instigate a mob. We have seen riots in India in the past. While riots in general are not pretty, they can get quite gruesome here because the mob is huge.
We have peaceful mobs wanting the government to go, corruption to come to an end and let ultimate power remain with the people. If we look at it, we are the ones voting for the government in the first place. If the current government falls, who will they vote for? People are going to say the NDA and it's an obvious answer, given that there is nobody else. The Congress and BJP can never individually come to power for a while, unless there is someone who will change the face of either party.
The protest has also been an irony. From whatever I remember, people have always told me that Mahatma Gandhi was the worst thing that happened to India. They attribute that he was one of the principal people who got the British to leave us, but then he was blamed for playing what many have called 'dirty politics.' Suddenly Hazare, who claims to be Gandhian, is a national hero.
Hazare will be remembered most for his work in his native village. However, reports of his team assaulting villagers who did not abide by the rules have also come up. If the Jan Lokpal is passed, will we meet the same fate? Will it be the perfect case of 'Annar'chy? Only time will tell.

People's Republic of Bandra

There was once an empire called Bombay.
Bombay was then changed to Mumbai and its citizens, barring a few rebels, started calling it Mumbai.
Nothing happened to the rebels. They continued calling it Bombay and since Bombay believes in the system of democracy, barring a few protests, nothing happened.
Then came the characterizations of the Mumbaikar or Bombayite.
People living in town were called the people of South Bombay or SoBo. Geographically, South Bombay begins at Peddar Road and goes all the way up to Navy Nagar.
However, people living in Dadar and Sewri that fall in Central Bombay thought that they should be considered as residents of South Bombay.
The rest of the city laughed at these people.
Then there are the suburban people, who live from Khar Road to wherever Bombay ends.
And then there is the People's Republic of Bandra.
Bandra is like Harlem. I say this not because crowds are similar (although there are a select group of people living in Bandra who believe that they are black hip hop artistes and are seen sporting baggy jeans that start at their knees and end after their feet), but because for the resident of the People's Republic of Bandra, there is Bandra and the rest of the world.
When I say People's Republic of Bandra, I specify Bandra West. For the citizens consider Bandra East an area outside civilization.
I work at the People's Republic of Bandra. It has apartments, branded department stores, roadside stalls, fancy and expensive restaurants, expensive roadside food, street markets, two colleges, several schools, a few police stations and a huge fire stations - everything that is necessary for a city. There are mosques, churches and temples showing that everyone is equally tolerant of each other's religion. Yay for secularity.
Another thing where Bandra stands out is the fact that the main language spoken here is English. While the rest of India has Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Sindhi and Sanskrit listed as some of the official languages of the country, Bandra's official language is English. The police speak in English, rickshaw drivers speak in English (I remember one of them telling me, "Sir, why do people say fuck off? Why can't they say fuck on?"), shopkeepers speak in English, hawkers speak in English. The best bit is that even if they speak one or two words, they think that Shakespeare was their ancestor. As a result, they speak to you in English.
The People's Republic of Bandra is an emerged economy. People who own homes here are the rich and famous, that is if they are not the earliest generation of Catholic settlers, who moved here. Because Bandra is an emerged economy, things are 200 times costlier than the rest of the city. One pomegranate costs Rs 50 in Bandra, while two cost the same price in the rest of the city. What makes this convenient for the store owners is that people come to buy because there is no life outside Bandra.
Despite all its idiosyncrasies, there is still a charm about Bandra. It has the only dingy bar where you can drink and smoke at the same time, while listening to crime branch officials discussing their latest case; you have an overcrowded 'garage' that makes the best vodka chilly, despite the fact that it is really expensive; you also have a place called Boat Club, which used to have a cheap beer deal until alcohol prices shot up.
The best thing about it is the craziness you can see. Where else in India will you see a woman, who looks 60, sporting bubblegum pink hair and wearing a leather skirt? Where else in India will you see a toothless old man, walking barefoot and wearing a t-shirt that says 'Good looks can kill too."? Where else would you see people not giving a fuck, while the rest of the country is raising slogans against corruption, but doing their own work to ensure that their area is the best in the city? That's The People's Republic of Bandra for you.

Shadows: What will we be without them?

My friend, Shaili wrote a brilliant piece on shadows.
Like she has said, we take advantage of the fact that we have shadows.
Unlike mirror images, shadows follow us everywhere.
Mirror images come close as we come closer and move away as we disappear.

Now look at the image above and imagine your shadow doing something like that to you.
Imagine your shape saying, "Ah fuck you. I want to have some fun and destroy you."
If you've played the original Prince of Persia, you'll know what happens. The shadow comes and takes out his sword. You have to put your sword back into your sheath for your shadow to do the same thing. If you choose to fight, you die as soon as you kill your shadow.
If you haven't read the link that I posted at the beginning of the blog, it says that our shadow defines us. It is an extension of us.

I remember one time, my sister and I went to the Gateway of India at night to shoot. I was having a lot of fun playing with the light and decided to take a picture of my sister and I as shadows. It's one of my favourite pictures because despite the simplicity, it says a lot.
Indian mythology told us about shadows. According to legend, the Devas did not have shadows, while the Asuras did. The sun and the moon notice this when the Asura Rahu disguises himself like a Deva, so that he can drink the Ambrosia of immortality. Lord Vishnu cuts off his head and they chase the sun and moon, which is why they 'hide' during a solar and lunar eclipse.
Shadows are a mystery, which will never be solved. They follow us in an almost creepy-like way, yet we feel comforted when we're walking down a dark alley knowing that they are around. We can sense someone is following us because of shadows, but yet despite all of this, we take advantage of them.
I don't know whether things would be different if we took them seriously, but think of this simple thought: what if you woke up one day knowing that you don't have one? What will you do then?

RIP Shammi Kapoor

If there was anybody I would have considered 'cool' in the 1950s and 1960s era of Hindi cinema, it would be Shammi Kapoor.
My earliest memories of him was on this show called Movie Mahal that would be aired on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom.
The show opened with a creepy old man wearing a dark blue kurta and beads talking about something. And then it would move to this guy dancing and sliding down the snow, screaming 'Yahoo!'
When my brother and sister tried explaining that the two people were the same person, I refused to believe them.
But that was Shammi Kapoor's life.
From the cool dude, he became the reclusive hermit after Geeta Bali's death. He made rare public appearances , but still became the first Indian to have an Internet connection in 1996 when there were options of TCP/IP and Shell Accounts. He had several followers on Twitter and despite staying in most of the time, he kept himself occupied and connected with the outside world.
When I heard about his death this morning, I was happy. The man had suffered from acute renal failure and was suffering.
He will, for me, be the true Junglee
Below are some of my favourite Shammi Kapoor songs.

Main Chali from Professor

Taarif Karoon

Yahoo!

Notice one thing in each of these songs. Shammi Kapoor has an expression for each word. And that was his genius.

Doggie Days

Some recent study said that man's new best friend is the gadget.
I think that the survey is full of shit.
If you own a dog, you'll know what I'm talking about.
Books come a close second, but that is for another blog post.
I've had two dogs in my life. They've been part of my life for the last nine years.
Nothing can beat a dog's company.
You can tell them about your day, knowing that sit in judgment of you if you fucked up.
They sense when you're down. They come to you and comfort you.
They give you an ego boost.
They give you unconditional love.
Sure there are the downsides: they snarl at you when they're sleeping and you try and wake them up. They snarl at you when you mention the word 'bath' or 'walk'. They piss you off when they want attention. It's like they burn you with their look.
But despite all that, it's good to have a dog.
Rani, my dog turns 8 on Monday. If I made her life into a movie, it would be a comedy. My sister and I make jokes about her weight and the number of necks she has. Rani gives us a look to shut us up and it usually works.
She understands us. She swears at us. And unfortunately, we don't understand her at all, except for the swear words.

Colours

Colours are strange things.
They are there all the time and we take them for granted.
When we go about our daily chores, we don't acknowledge the blue drinking bottle, the white plastic cup that contains shit brown froth that was machine coffee. We don't notice that a pink transparent bottle, with enough light on it can actually form a pink shadow on the white wall, thanks to the light around.
Colour is beautiful.
I never appreciated it so much, until I took up painting as a fun hobby last week. I've always been decent at drawing, but in school, I was appalling at painting.
Surprisingly that has improved and I have a little something here to show my improvement.
It's the banquet scene from Asterix and the Black Gold:

We think and appreciate black and white and sepia images, but imagine waking up to a black and white world.
Whenever I think of that, I always think of this Calvin and Hobbes comic strip where he and his father discuss a world in black and white.

And I'd love to follow Hobbes' philosophy :). Click on the image and enlarge the strip, if you believe it too.