Defining gratitude

The scorching heat in Delhi can get to you faster than a lightning bolt if you are not paying attention and hydrating yourself. If you are a first timer here then this process can get harder while you are looking for directions.

I could not wait to get out of the train that was already late by three hours. I had but a matter of a few hours to spend in Delhi on my first visit there. Before I had to catch an overnight bus to the mountains that night. This had been the longest solo trip of mine yet. A two night long trip from Bangalore had killed my phone and any trace amount of freshness that could be retained with mere deodorants.

What I wanted now was to deposit my big box of camera equipment in a locker. Charge my phone to make 3 maybe 4 calls. See the India Gate and get a beer and some filling quantities of food before it gets too late to get back to the station, pick up my big box and head to the bus station at the other end of the city.

In all this jam packed list of things I had to do. My number one priority was the India Gate. Watching it every year religiously at the Republic Day parade had never been enough for me. I was this close to it. I picked up a rickshaw that would take me there. It was one of those pre-booked rickshaws where the fare was already discussed. For matters of convenience to the driver, two of us with separate destinations were allotted one rickshaw.

The passenger along with me was from my parents’ hometown and it had to be pure coincidence. We struck up a conversation in our native language. The auto driver who had no clear grasp over our language still managed to understand the basics. He got to know that I was here for the first time and that the other guy was a regular to Delhi. He obviously knew we had one too many things in common. Before we could know it, all three of us are in deep conversation about the environment, politics and even choosing wives.

Almost reaching my destination, the driver, summarized our conversation, our little trip, and made a suggestion to the co-passenger about dropping me closer to my destination that previously agreed upon. This would delay both of them by quite some bit. I was surprised that a person with whom I have more in common did not think of this and a complete stranger thought of this. Heck, I did not think of asking this myself.

They politely agreed and dropped me off at a spot where the rickshaw shouldn’t ideally be spending too much time halting. I don’t think I had enough time to thank them enough before the vehicles behind us started honking and the driver made way, waving me goodbye. Leaving me staring at the magnificent India Gate, an ocean of emotions gushing in.

I have a problem with remembering names,  for this one time I wish I didn’t. I want to think these two strangers. Probably the most remembered strangers in all my journeys. I hope to recognize you if I ever spotted you some place and thank you in person.

Thank you.

Also, thanks to small-town girls midnight trains for refreshing this memory in your post.

Never Too Late
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noodle surprise

There are some things that are known for the convenience that the bring to our lives. You could not have them any other way. One such invention for convenience is the instant noodles. It comes in a packet. All you need to do is boil it. It has been the quickest breakfast, an instant snack and a quick hunger buster from as many years as I can remember in my life.

There are times when you’ve been stuck in traffic for an extra hour. Times when you boss has been such a jerk, times when your office computer just refused to cooperate. Times when you have been just so tired and all you needed was some food to go down your mouth. A packet of noodles is ideal for these times. A small twist is to add an egg to it just to amplify the mouth feel of it.

To appreciate the little things in life that give us so much pleasure and return the favor, I decided to add a small surprise to this simple recipe.

To show my appreciation to the noodle packet, I present to you, Gooey Noodle Surprise

 

Shaken and Stirred

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It’s time to call bob

Chris scampered to his cupboard to find his little wooden box.

As he tries to open its lock, his bloody hands are shaking. He can feel the blood loss taking away his senses. The world begins to slowly spin, one missed footstep at a time. He can feel one shoe soaking with the blood from the bullet in his thigh and the other one from the one in his hip.

Coming to terms with his condition, he realizes that there is no time to be wasted wondering if this is the right thing to do. If he is in this state, this has to be done. The point of compiling the best interest of everyone has passed. He was the best at his job and that is why he had been given the box. Because, nobody expected him to fail.

In the fight against the corrupt politicians of this city filled with history, the resistance had laid out many traps to stop their atrocities. One such trap was Chris, 32 years old, abandoned at a dead end by the corrupt hands of the law. He was supposed to stand up for the new form of law. The law of the righteous. He was going to bring to light, the dysfunction brought about from having power hungry men representing the people.

Chris had successfully gathered all the evidence that was required to put the king pin in jail. He had been working underground for 7 years now. He had forgotten who he really was. He hasn’t had a girlfriend or even just a girl who hadn’t ended up dead in an alley. Just as he was going to get the tape recorder he put in the king pin’s office, he had been made. They knew he was a spy and that they cannot let him get out.

He had managed to dodge all but the two bullets that have fatally wounded him. He had lost the tape in the struggle. There was only one way to end this now. Time to call uncle Bob. No more of going undercover, sacrificing time or lives of precious people. No more tapes, no more letting someone else serve justice. There aren’t anymore people who can put themselves through what Chris did. Nobody that believes in the same exact methods and values of achieving them like Chris did. He only knows now of the one person who cares exactly enough if not more for the end result, the end of King Pin’s reign.

He opens the box, takes out the little cell phone from it and sends the one word needed for Uncle Bob to fix this, to fix everything “KILL.”  Chris might have never trusted Uncle Bob for his methods or for his beliefs. But Chris knows that he can trust Uncle Bob to do this one thing. Chris had his word that Uncle Bob would avenge him.

Calling Uncle Bob

Featured

When you desire of something, it is said that the entire universe conspires to help you achieve it. I think that is bull! The means of you achieving something or not is by you doing certain things or choosing not to do certain other things. Nov 8th this year, I launched my first documentary, a one man cross country mountain biking race documentary film on youtube. I wanted the film to go to festivals. I submitted it only to one. I wanted to host free screenings with bike shops in Bangalore. No one found the time to schedule one.

I wanted this film to go places. And I believe that its journey has just begun. I’ve gotten very good responses to it. Great feedback and now a bonus too.

The story behind the making of the film has gotten to become so compelling that a complete stranger of a journalist from Deccan Chronicle wanted to feature it.  And feature it, she did. She made sure she got a hold of me to answer her interview and then went the extra mile to get me to do a photo shoot because us introverts behind a camera rarely have good pictures of ourselves.

You can click on the image to read the full article.

If you cannot fathom what this whole thing is about and are not challenged with the internet attention deficit. You can check out Meeting Mountains here

For everything else there is Mastercard

The best things in  life are allegedly free. The best thing in the world is an Ice cream cake and it is not free. I would know. But there are things that are free if you do not count the cost of the efforts taken to get to that point.

If you want to climb a mountain, you leave home, get on a bus, possibly trek. Even if you live on the side of this mountain, you will need one meal, minimum. Perhaps an Ice cream cake? Are you brave enough to only drink straight out of a stream? Then you have saved some money on that dubious bottled water. The mountain top is going to be cold. You bought a sweater for say 100 bucks, socks for 20 and a cap for 30 making your grand total to get on top of the mountain 170. Assuming the mountain is yours and you ate no ice cream cake for a meal but some daal chawal instead.

The view on top of the mountain? Has to be good, right? Would you care to spend 170 bucks on this adventure otherwise? That right there is the payoff, the part that is free. The experience of this end result. Anybody could question your motives, but it is a matter of perspective. One man would say that you are nuts for spending time and money to climb a mountain. This man might be the actual owner of the mountain and is fed up of the view. Another might say that this isn’t the mountain you should climb and point to another one. He likes the view from that one. You don’t know it for sure. If you just take his word for it, you did not spend an additional 170 bucks on that second mountain and neither did you get that second view for free.

Is it really a loss when you lose something that was free to being with? Depends. Was it Ice cream cake or was it an incredible view? Because incredible views are always free and worth the effort.

If someone is missing out on an incredible view and that little moment of peace. As human beings, it becomes our job to be unselfish this one time and guide them to it. It adds to your bucket of peace that you have been carrying around.

In life there will always be that desire for ‘one more time.’ That second chance to do something. But if you never did it the first time, you will not have anything to compare it with.

Let me not go into sociology, but I think we might have evolved a tad bit too much in forming norms that have become controlling factors and make Ice cream cake inaccessible to all. The cheat code to this is to learn to bake. You will only be spending money on the ingredients that will help you get to that moment of free when you dig in to that first bite of the cake and it sends a small shiver through your teeth. You begin to feel its moist texture melting away in to the depths of your heart, illuminating your lungs and ribs along its way.

Spend on the ingredients of a great experience and the experience will come to you for free. Don’t bother if some one calls you cuckoo for doing it only for the experience of it and not seeing another form of benefit in it. For everything else, there’s Mastercard.

In response to Do You Need To Travel To be a Free Bird?

This is such bull

Wow. ways in which I’d spend an off day. Everyday for almost the last year has been an off day for me. I used to convince myself that I’m fun employed. But the F has been managing to give me another F back. In the light of these events, I’d like to reverse the topic and make today’s post an opposite day.

Yes! I’m an artist and I, like a dumbass, majored in History of Art and and I’d really like a 9-5, or 10-6 or even a 5-1 job at this time. Hurrah to the mental satisfaction you get when you do what you love. But what happens when that love begins to get saturated and so many people just love the same thing you love? You find new ways of making love and staying in love. Given the current place I’m in, which is a bad one. Let us just leave all that aside and let me take you through how much I’d enjoy a day of work right about this time.

It will not be still for anyone’s sake. Let’s assume it is a 10-6 job. I’d wake up at 5AM.

Hang myself on that pull up bar and pump out 10 solid ones.

Go for a nice short fast run.

Stretch out and do my favorite home workout that helps me keep my sanity in the days of joblessness.

Ice cold shower baby!

Milk, egg and sprouted beans for breakfast packed in between two sliced of bread.

Prepare lunch. Today, I shall make some rice and lentils.

Grind out my vegetable juice for a mid office snack.

Pack a few slices and some jam along with lunch for another snack.

Wipe the cycle clean, check the pedals and pedal away to work.

Reach office, change clothes after showing off my butt and legs to that cute chick at work.

Talk to my boss. Find targets, hydrate and get to work like maniac.

Drink vegetable juice. Flip the finger to a colleague for making fun of you for not joining for a smoke break.

Get to work.

Hydrate

Stretch out calf muscle.

Yummmmm. Lunch!

Hydrate

More work. Wait I’m all done? I need to talk to boss again. Let me walk by that cute chick while I’m at it and give her the head nod.

Yay, I have some more work to do. Belt it out, listen to free music. Charge my phone.

Work day almost done. Time for that second snack.

Hydrate

Flip the finger to another colleague for the smoking thing again.

Cute chick comes over and asks for help. She’s playing with her hair. I’m so in there bro!

Brrrring 6PM. Time to leave. Get changed,

Hydrate

 

Get the cycle out, nod to the pretty chick again and pedal off.

Reach home in record time.

Hot water bath!

Stretch out legs again.

Watch a documentary on the internet

Respond to The Daily Post

Eat some chicken I’ve made for the entire week with a little rice

Go to sleep. Admire biceps while I push my hands under the pillow.

Think of cute chick at work. Wonder if she’s single…

Fall asleep like a baby. Well, babies don’t just fall asleep. Rocks do! Feel asleep like a rock.

This whole thing is just a matter of perspective and huge amounts of imagination skills for the non-existent.

Sparkling or Still

Sculpture by the sea, Bondi 2014 (3)

A very cool collection of sculptures. Thanks to http://lignumdraco.wordpress.com/ for the effort of making them available digitally

From the garden city of Bangalore, Krishna Balboa

About 12 years ago, when I was a kid and was travelling to school by bus, I had a long way to go and no direct buses to get me there. I would change buses at a weirdly pleasant neighborhood.

A tea shop where there are puppies and old men for friends. A tiny shop that cannot be categorized as any specific kind of a shop, selling sweets, to fresh juice, to cigarettes, to stationery, to condoms. Yes, this is where I first saw a condom packet. Seeing a condom itself would take some more years. The bus stand I had to wait at was indefinitely under construction and was never a concern to anyone. Everyone using the vicinity regularly, knew which slab of stone was loose and shaky and needed to be dodged. Everyone else was a source of sadistic entertainment.

For me to get out of my first bus and get to my second bus stop there is a distance of about 200-400 meters that I need to walk depending on where I was able to jump off the moving bus. I practiced jumping off buses like it was a talent that I needed to hone for the future like my life would depend on it.

All this has been a routine of mine for some time now with variations depending on when I need to be at school. There is also another person in this story with a routine and his routine is what matters to us.

I have never really seen his face fully. Will I be able to recognize him if I saw him in other clothes? I do not think so. He always wore grey cotton sweat pants, a matching sweat shirt and a checkered towel wrapped around his neck, covering his face and head and just leaving his face open enough for him to see where he is going and to breathe well. What was he doing all the time I saw him? He was always running, pacing himself depending on the terrain. He always had a consistent sweat pattern on his clothes. I never saw him pant for breath or look exhausted. He went like his life depended on it.

As a much younger child I had watched Rocky. My father had made me watch it even though I was too young to understand anything that I saw in the movie, all I found amusing was that two people were allowed to beat each other up in public. I think my father had conspired to lay down suppressed memories of a man’s conquests to achieve his desire, so that when I grew up and watched this movie again in desperation, all of it would come back to me and I would lay down my struggles.

This man reminded me of that very same rocky. Grey for grey, the skull cap replaced by a truly suspicious checkered towel. If I managed to wake up early for some reason, I would hear from my friends from the second bus about his location and speed. If I got late which was mostly because I was too lazy to wake up, I would see him chugging along the side of the road when my second bus was reaching its destination. I never found out his full running route, where he started or ended. But I saw him in so many different sections of that part of the city. I saw him for three years doing this, everyday I managed to see him, he was at it. After I left school and did indeed catch Rocky as a grown up to find a way to lay me troubles to rest, I was immediately reminded of the man in grey I saw around Malleshwaram. When I tried narrating this story to someone, I never had a name to refer him by, perhaps his name was Krishna.

Presenting to my memory glands, from the Garden City of India, Krishna Balboa.

Let’s finally meet the mountains

I began making this film with the layman in my mind as its audience. Over time, I have realized that there are no more laymen and laywomen watching movies on the internet or elsewhere. Everyone is a fucking critic, a cinematographer, an editor or god forbid anything other than a fucking director. Even more so, no one wants to be in production. So, I’ve finally made this film for me and the magic of cycling and obviously dedicated to my family. But mostly because it has been hounding me, and for me to be done with it and move on.

Here is the film, whatever it is, this is how it is. And what it is, is a great teacher. One that taught me more of how not to do things than how to do things. I only look at this film as the best piece of practice I’ve had as a broke ass film maker. I’m thankful for every thing that happened in my life until now that has helped make this film the way it is. I also thank everyone in my life, friend, foe, stranger or companion.

I entertain all degrees of feedback but I shall never tolerate any form of mockery!

All the cursing aside, Presenting Meeting Mountains my debut documentary that makes your life a little bit simpler and a lot more serene. Enjoy.

Yes, it is 37 minutes long and no, I don’t think it is too long.

Butterflies

I have been much of a rebel my whole life. But I mostly rebel with courtesy or omission.  two years ago when I had just got out of Art college having majored in History of Art and seemingly underemployed, I chanced upon an opportunity to go to the Himalayan Mountains and help film a mountain biking race. From Bangalore to Himachal is a great journey, one that I took three days by a combination of train and bus, hauling my personal luggage with a lot of warm clothes in a backpack. A tripod and a home made portable aluminium 4ft Jib in another roll of a cotton bed cover and the highlight of the trip, the steel trunk!

The trunk that later on turned to the liquor cabinet/bar table

Customized grip handle with wrapped cloth. Simply because, it is just so damn heavy

The race was a meeting of many minds. There was a team of film makers coming in from Delhi and equipment rental there was so expensive that I had to haul equipment they’d need as well all the way from Bangalore. Hence the money spent on the steel trunk. Once I got there, tasks were assigned, equipment was handed over and I issued a huge word of caution since all the equipment was registered under me and was never all going to be used under my supervision.

I was immediately hit by the fact that everyone else around me was able to have fun and I was the only dud who was climbing the side of a cliff, running around with the jib and its counter weights not to forget, my most loved camera in the world for DSLR film making then, THE CANON 7D trying to get not just usable footage. But footage with that little extra narrative in it, a little bit of environment in it and not just shaky footage of a racers face who zoomed past while I fiddled with focus.

If you have read this far, you know that this is a rant. But, what I did not do then was precisely this. I did not rant. I did my work the best I could and the rebel in me stopped adding my footage into the pool and I did declare that I will make a stand alone film with what I shoot myself. You must understand that by doing this, I am denying myself footage shot by two other teams with a total of four people, one 5D mark II, an ENG style camera and most importantly a GoPro camera. Call me cocky, but I knew that the footage I gather will be enough for me.

The organizers agreed and I returned home to find myself in the shittiest job market for a creative who won’t sell out. Not only did I not convert the footage for editing, I deliberately ignored its existence, all 500 odd Gb’s of it shot over the 10 day race and I moved around to fins sustainable sources of income.

Some day it struck me that I might after all be sitting on a gold mine here and began looking at the footage I had. I started piecing it together. I even found a great band to write the music for it, I made its first teaser. I called it Meeting Mountains and then, I lost faith in the people who were throwing me work all this while and I parted ways only to get into more lack of a job. And hence, the film stopped developing again. Then my computer paralyzed itself . Then I felt that it has already been a year, nobody wants to see this film. I won’t make any money out of spending hours looking for shots and piecing them together and never be able to render in anyway because of the computer situation. I don’t have the money to pay for recording the music. I can do the voice over at my house, but the music? And yet again, the film finds itself sitting in a dark corner of my hard drive.

The year of 2014 started with a bang. I was on fire. I ran my first 10K. I started looking incredible, (simply by virtue of not being lazy anymore) felt amazing and yet was still underemployed, but I managed to get my hands on a kick ass new laptop and decided that the first thing I do with it will be to churn out the film! And I did. Entered it in precisely one film festival. Because, still broke.

The experience of filming this event in the mountains has been a giving tree.  I have seen so many sights and met many people and learnt so much more about them. I wrote my first ever documentary, narrated it (I was never meant to be a vocal person) edited it and this is where I even learnt editing and what it can do. Remember, I do not have any film school gyan to begin with. I’m just someone who picked up a camera and shot a few short films before I started doing this full time.

This film is what I am proud of now. Still broke and not having enough money to buy my father a present for his birthday. I decided to launch the film online on his birthday. Tomorrow, Meeting Mountains is going to be online on Youtube and I will be done with this film and I can finally move on.

There have been only a handful of people who have seen this. Even fewer who were able to identify mistakes and provide feedback. I know I might get some 5 views when this film hits the internet. I only care to know that I did even a remotely good job with it. ii simply have butterflies in my stomach. I have been so tunnel visioned with this film that I have forgotten if I have done some of the basics on it. As much as I am excited for the film to be out there. I have that feeling that John Carter has, that he left a light on after he left home.

When you watch this film, all you need to know is that it was made out of random footage from the race with no story or script in mind until after post production began. I have a shitty voice for narration. This is the first time I have done things like editing, sound levels and color correction and that as much as I’d like to hate this film, I love that I’m done with it. For now.