I am also

writing a book. how grand is that. yippee, I have finally got a hang of the plot, I just have to fill up the pages for a grand grand fat novel to emerge from inside my mind.

Feeling extremely excited about it all.

lonavla

Never leaves me.

There is something about that haunted place that keeps coming back in my dreams. truth being told, I was working for this sad sad company and scouting the internet for pictures that could be used for the edit, when I had come across this picture, a snow clad mountainous region and three people with cameras and boom mikes etc, I had wished for one whole second despite the fact that I was in my dream city back then, that I be in a place like that, God sent me to Lonavla.
I have always maintained that whatever I have asked God, he has listened to my wishes. Maybe because I am the kind of person, who would never hurt a fly.
I am wishing for a job in Bombay nowadays.

Twas sucha

gala time I've decided to put on electronic paper.

It was the finale of Bigg Boss Bangla and the launch of Bigg Boss Hindi happening simultaneously.

What were the reasons for me being sad and decrepit. 

1. I had missed Papon playing live along with Kartik Das Baul and Anushree.

2. I had vowed not to smoke up on the studio roof.

3. The season was about to end.

4. My father was not well.

What were the tings I was happy about.

A lot of things.

I was happy about the prospect of getting to sleep for about two days at a stretch, finally. 

The editing corridor made me happy. I am calling it a corridor because it was. The air conditioners were not working because of some strange reason, the wide corridor had rooms on both the sides, the sound of the various different edits going on on the right and left hand sides of that corridor created a very sweet mayhem that was irritating for the editors, because the rooms could not be shut for want of fresh air, but for a very strange reason everyone was pretty excited. I was gliding through the corridor, sleep deprived and sad; until the rushes from the first day of shoot got in. 

I realized, I had not really missed Papon at all. I got to hear the rushes while trying to catch ten minutes of shut eye in a yellow room. The guy editing the opening sequence of Durga Dance inside that room was a good friend of mine who had attempted to flirt with me and had made me fall in love with him, because he had made a pass at me on a rainy Sunday morning, that had, somehow blown my mind. 

I have reached

the penultimate heights of being batshit crazy.
I have written a letter to my own self.

Dear Adrita

Stop feeling bad about the fb message group. So you had a crush on a guy that was, as a crush so massive that you had difficulty in letting go. But you have let go NOW and that is what is important. You need not feel embarrassed every time you check those videos. That guy is gone, you are in a different place. Its already dark here, the place where the guy is, its still bikel byala with the Sun shining strong. He is gone. GONE. So stop torturing your soul. Be happy about the childish amateur videos that you made. Whatever You did, you were honest. You said no lies. You did not mislead anyone into anything; God. You did not misbehave with anyone. You called her names but that was about HER. As far as the guy is concerned, this Adrita, as you clearly remember, this is not something that you have made up inside your mind. You were asked by him, “What do you want” and you replied “To have sex with you”.

Right? RIGHT??? RIGHT??????

Why did you want that Adrita? That and nothing else??? Because the guy had wanted that, having sex, some two months back.

Adrita, you do not get drunk, do you? If the guy had wanted that two months back merely because he was drunk and horny, that is his problem. Right? You know you were invariably crushing over him right? You did not go around telling anybody about it, because you do not do that.

Adrita, like you will remember, this very time last year, you were “pining” for another guy that you had “fallen in love with”.

How many guys have you crushed over Adrita. Just how many? This was the result of having studied in co-ed schools and colleges right?

Adrita, you have almost always pined for some guy or the other. What makes this guy a big deal, is that none of your former crushes have gotten horny and drunk or CONFIDENT enough to touch your aabrooo.

Please always remind yourself this, whenever you feel bad or embarrassed.

In October

I will be all of 27 years old. This fact is driving me a little crazy,

primarily because :-

I am not working.

I am dedicating this post to whining about how this makes me feel.

Sometimes it makes me feel good, because I remember all the things I have heard about how your twenties flash past you when you are too busy working your ass off, and one fine day you realize that ...ooops, you are thirty years old and all of your fun twenties years have gone by without you getting to even bat an eyelid. 

Now, about that, I quite agree with. 

I was doing a little bit of maths the other day and I realized that I have been working for fours years more or less; that made me feel a bit better about NOT working now, I said to myself -

Hey! its okay to take a break, since I have been through some dangerously traumatic times during the last year; it is actually okay if I take some time off and ....relax, essentially.

Sometimes I get a little bored but then, I am really the kind of person who can literally spend days at an end reading and watching random videos on youtube (sometimes I even make videos for youtube) and yes, I have been trying to write things as well.

So I keep reassuring myself that I am just bracing myself for the long battle ahead of me. am I making good use of my free time???

Absolutely, because I spend so much time sleeping !!!!!!!!

Listlessness

There is no point feeling like that. There just is no point mulling over things or writing about them. What the heck do I write about then?
Errhem.
I dunno. Should I try and be funny?
Okay, here goes -
...............................................................................................................................................................

I think I lost my third nipple. Gah.
Gosh, that sounds gross.
Also, when people say "gross" as in "disgusting", is that the same word as "gross" as in "gross income"?

Is that pronounced similarly? Also, due to watching a lot of American films, I have gotten really confused about my simple Indian English Pronunciation of words.

I cunt pronounce cant as cannot any more.

Problems is my life; truckloads of them.
Virus in my old computer.
Music has been copied to new laptop but anti-virus will not allow me to SEE or HEAR those mp3s.
What the hell am I supposed to do?
NOT  listen to music via laptop. As simple As That .
Coz all the music on the phone is ACTUALLY from all the music in my old computer. Problem solved.
See?!?!?!
A little  bit of blogging can solve many problems. 

Dear Bombay

What is it about you that I miss so much in this city. The sea, for example; but truth being the fact that when I was working there, hardly did i get to visit a sea-shore. They say you are such an expensive city to live in; but when i started I would get all of ten thousand bucks in hand as my salary; still i was happy. you will know the problems I faced. You will know how I worked so hard. You will know how I started learning and never stopped. You will know how i smoked up to ease my soul. You will know how I was fleeced of money, emotions and GOD knows what all. 

Thats the thing right? so many "strugglers" in that city. You are not about the people . You will and will always be mine.

And that is that.

love
hobby
passion
profession
occupation
preoccupation

Everything turning, tossing in turmoil inside my mixed bag.
yet to be sorted.
also


SABBATICAL

writing

a majorly thrilling psychological thriller.

Four

slaps right across my cheek.
something bitter to remember, every time i need to cry.

Coming from a man who eyes girls, to say the least.
I know i am NOT WRONG when I say this.

The "blues" that turn red hot funny

15^th July

What was with the barging inside a bathroom because you want people to believe that you can “do stuff” to a girl, who, clearly, bisexual or not, is much more into the guy in question.

I get it sweetie; you don’t even know how, coz you know what, some people are so sensitive they stop thinking about themselves for three whole seconds when they see someone else, the person sitting opposite them, for example; in deep emotional shitty pain.

Please be happy honey, you’ve got it all. You have big boobies, disposable income from a good job in your choicest “field”, a husband, potential boy-toys (read big boobies), a “business” you can call your own, talent galore, exquisitely beautiful women at the nearest shopping mall and most importantly; INTELLIGENCE.

You deserve to be happy. You don’t need no people for that.

16^th July

So…. Moving on,

When I was in school, I wanted to be “popular”. I wanted to be known in the girl world as somebody who was capable of holding the attention of other “popular” girls. I was an Indian small city girl studying in a co-ed non-convent school. I did not understand the concept of popularity, whatever little I understood, I had gathered all my knowledge of “popularity” from watching Hollywood high school movies. From that little knowledge of “popularity” I knew that if you are a girl, you will be popular in the boy world if you are

1.       Good looking.

If you want to be popular in the girl world, and you do not have a string of boys vying for your attention and writing love letters to you, you can be popular by

1.       Talking about all the boys that are after you

2.      Talking about the rich life that you lead wherein you get to travel in air-planes.

3.      Talking about other girls who you are not fond of because they have a greater number of boys vying for their attention

4.      Cracking jokes about everybody under the sun starting with teachers and ending with your own self.

Therefore, in class eight, I, being an albeit very below average student as far as academics was concerned, I knew that students in the class who were serious about things like examinations; might be praying to God thusly,

“Dear God, please make this happen – I want to score one mark more in all the subjects, specially math, physics, chemistry, and biology and also computer science than so and so.

I would be praying to God thusly,

“Dear God, please make this happen – I want to sit next to Yasir Haque, so that I can be friends with him, because, God, I know you did not make me good looking and although I am very sad about that, I am okay with it, I know that the guy will never be “interested” in me, but if I get to sit with him and successfully make him my friend (which he already is, because we are in the same class since standard four) I will feel like I have been close to him and I have known him (which will happen because I will be sitting next to him, day after day, everyday)”

Cut to college.

Out of the plethora of senior guys and guys in my batch, I, according to my own standards of judging guys on the basis of their looks had chosen two people. A guy who I rated as the “hottest guy in class” and another guy who I chose to have a crush on. There was another guy that I met online who I had an “instant crush” on.

The guy I chose to have a crush on, was not only insanely good looking, and since he was insanely good looking and did sit right behind me in our first ever sociology pass class in college, I noticed almost everything about him; by which I mean, instead of listening to the teacher talk, I did not have a choice but to listen to what that guy had to say because he was “passing comments” ; the teacher did single him out to “scold” hence making him all the more popular, for me and for the rest of the class.

I started noticing the guy even more because

1.       He was insanely good looking

2.      He, I found out, was insanely funny.

I started noticing him –

For example, I heard him utter the word “blog” and I heard him tell another guy what the link to his blog was.

Later on, sitting inside the coolness of the cyber room, after checking whether it was safe enough, I checked out his blog.

It had a spectacular design and it had lyrics from a song of the band “lakkhichhara”

The guy totally surprised me and I thought there was a quick rush of blood through my veins and a certain ache inside my heart.

I remember another incident wherein I was coming back from college through the back gate with a group of two more girls who I wanted to be friends with and throughout the walk they had been discussing things like having sex and I’d decided I was “no match” for being friends with those two girls because I had learnt the day before that, to my utter horror, that girls have sex in real life before they get married.

I walked in to the college through the back gate and found that guy under a tree in front of the green benches strumming a guitar and very nicely and “passionately” singing a “Fossils” song.

There were a lot of things that ran through my head along with a by now familiar rush of blood through my veins and a certain throbbing ache inside my heart –

THE GUY IS A ROCKSTAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’d thought that bangla bands are not cool and Fossils is not a “cool” band because they “copy” western rock bands; everyone in the planet seems to be making fun of them and although “lakkhichhara” is my personal favorite band, I secretly LOVE Fossils also because I love their music and this guy is playing a Fossils song that I happen to know and I happen to think that it is an amazing song and OH MY GOD, I think I love this guy.

Moving on, battling the OCD inside of me,

Cut to

The very same day, when I was trying to have an over-priced meal at the canteen, the guy (who I am going to facebook stalk again, in a while) suddenly, asked me which school I am from etc, tried to make small talk with me. I was very happy. The guy happened to be very heavily hanging out with the “cool group” i.e the students from my department in college.

The very next day while I was frantically trying to run up a flight of stairs in order to reach the class before the second bell, I found the “hottest guy in class” running along with me, we made small talk and he happened to know my name, which, for reasons very intricately deep and intense, made me very happy indeed.

So, that’s life. I should move on and facebook stalk the red bantoo.

Moving on,

I could not stalk the guy because I could not find him. Since I am not a child anymore, I am not going to stalk a college crush when I can easily and always stalk a grown-up life crush even though…… well….he is NOT EVEN ON MY FRIENDLIST.

I deleted him from my friendlist because I did not know how to stop seeing feeds from a specific person on your list. That’s Facebook, because the website understands that even though you keep adding people as your friends, there might just be some people on your list who you want in your list but not necessarily on your mind, or vice-versa; whatever.

Since my internet connection is sort of suffering from menstrual cramps, which I know about because it is very dear to me, I have a million different things that I could be doing (read books) but I am also battling a very strange addiction problem with my new laptop, so, I will be continuing with the saga which is my life.

This brings me back to the person, who I chose to have a crush on, in college.

Many years later; by which I mean four years later, I was in an office with free internet connection, I decided to Facebook… actually stories about my different workplaces are too passé for my health right now; therefore let’s talk about something else.

So, my college crush was/is similar to my grown-up life crush in many different ways. Herein I would like to assume that I have very cunningly established the fact that I Facebook stalk almost all of my crushes. Therefore I have often realized that both these crushes are actually facebook friends and very similar to each other.

They are similar because –

1.       They are insanely good looking

2.      They are insanely funny.

3.      They seem to be into this thing called “music”

I am getting to the point.

Once I was a part of a whatsapp group which comprised of eight members, one member out which (read me) was in Kolkata, seven members were Bombay residents and another member (read my elder brother) was travelling to and fro in between Bombay and Kolkata.

My crush was a co-member; I was very happy to be a part of the virtual social group without having any intentions of trying to virtually make a mark as a member of that social group which was also a social group very non-virtually.

A girl, founder of the group actually, decided to crack a joke on my crush’s SENSE OF HUMOUR saying –

“Please ask your sense of humour to go visit a doctor”

I was so enraged, I wanted to quit the group immediately; but then I calmed down because my crush replied to her and said –

I am SURE you haven’t watched “Madagascar”

This calmed me down because I started feeling insecure about the fact that I was unsure whether I have watched “Madagascar” or not.

I kept calm and decided that its better if I don’t quit because if I quit then I would not be able to “stay connected” to my crush and other assorted not-so-important people in the virtual social group because then I would not be able to basically check out my crush’s extremely hot selfies (read gym selfie).

Moving on

I cannot keep talking about my crushes.

Right

So yet another guy has managed to break my heart into pieces that float and do not sink in. Not a big deal. I can handle this. I am a grown-up now. Not even a virgin. Shucks. Look where life got me God, I believe in you, how can you make me think that you are unfair.

hung up

on the night time musings that run through your head and make you play one song over and over again till you make those images inside your head just about right.

Nocturnal musing

I am sure I won't be sleeping tonight.

Please eat shit

and die.
Instead of living in my mind; you do not deserve space inside my thoughts.

I cried again

early in the morning today. I was remembering an incident that occurred in the month of January. Incidents are remembered on the basis of emotions. We were taught in college about a certain school of acting that believes in remembering a sad incident from the actor's real life in order to generate real tears as opposed to using glycerin. I found a faint similarity between this school of thought and the phenomenon of a "patronus" from Harry Potter - something that wizards were supposed to conjure out of a happy memory in order to defeat the Dementors who were out there to suck happiness out of a soul.

The incident involved me, almost drastically. I faced a true dilemma. To be or not to be. To get involved or to get out of the room. If I had chosen to rush out of the room, I would have been doing the right thing. Instead, I chose to get involved because of underlying emotions that were brought to the forefront of my mind that was already at a war with my bodily biology. I suffered heavily. If I had walked out the room, I would have suffered equally heavily. I would have cried my guts out. I would have felt bad for myself; mainly for losing somebody as a friend.

Ironically, that is what ultimately happened.

Something that I was afraid might happen; happened. Instead of happening in December, it happened months later. The very fact that I cried early in the morning today proves that I am still affected. Friends are important.

I lost another friend way back in college. It involved insane jealousy on my part that drove me to bitch about things that that friend had told me; she had confided in me, I had bitched about her morality behind her back to my closer circle of friends. People had turned against her because of my bitching. That friend, an awesome person, fun to be with, deep and intense, insightful and funny to the core had always hated me after that. I forgot her, got on with my life and she kept hating me for five years. I think she still hates me.

There is nothing that makes me feel as bad as the thought of someone, a good friend hating me; when I am absolutely sure that yes, someone out there hates me enough to delete me from a friendlist.

A newspaper film review

for Rockstar
""The storytelling pattern of the film is needlessly intricate for a simple romance-drama genre. While it is very much linear, the frequent use of multiple montages can have you confused. Initially the montages aid brisk storytelling but subsequently there are so much of them that it gets puzzling. Editing the film would surely have been a difficult task"

Really? the storytelling pattern is very much linear? 
I am a little doubtful about this.

I am missing

My world History books. 

Also, World History classes taken by Mrs. Ranu Chakravarty ("Ranu Miss" in short). She was an extremely beautiful, charismatic and utterly well-dressed teacher. One of my all time favourites.

On top of everything else, her voice was this crystal clear and sparkling bubble spring that gushed and gurgled and smoothly flowed from point A to point B; and when she spoke, it was like listening and sweetly surrendering to music. 

This magic also applied for Indian History, but then that was a different well-trodden mysterious pathway that went one step down in my inner "hierarchy" of concentric circles the moment I was introduced to World History.

On top of everything else, Ranu Miss reminded me of one of my aunts. Almost everybody I meet reminds me of someone from my family, seriously. Its like the family in itself is such a huge vortex of people and skin and body language and gestures and idiosyncrasies that I have a lifetime supply of memories; of people who inevitably remind me of someone or the other from my family. It is like pick a random far flung person in the universe, just pick anybody, I will have one person from my family that that particular random far flung person will remind me of. 

Anyway, I was always a ....what should I call it, a "costume-noticer"? I remembered what all my teachers wore at school because I used to be very pepped about these things in school. I had my pick of well-dressed teachers throughout the thirteen years of one school and two years of another school; this constant preoccupation  (among thousand others, so as to speak) about noticing what teachers are wearing would stem forth from the simple fact that we had "uniforms" and teachers did not. So World History classes, I will always associate with colours; the yellows and the greens and the blacks and the reds of all the beautiful taant sarees that Ranu Miss used to wear and I used to gape unabashedly at her while listening to her talk musically about ferocious politics and propaganda.

22nd June 2014

You have always loved me. No matter what you say, no matter how you convince yourself otherwise; I do not care. I used to care a long time back. Time flies and how. People change too, you know. I am a different person today. I was a different person that day in 2008 when I saw you and my mouth was left agape; staring surprisingly at what had become of you, the transformation that hung on you. From every word you spoke to every glance that you stole.

You still steal glances; don’t you? I still shed tears; don’t I? How times change and how some things within us still are the same. It’s a pity and a wonder how we live and keep living with such conflicts, thoughts and words. Words can scar very heavily you know. Words that people just fling aside, making up for silences that are uncalled for. Must we keep speaking? Must we keep affirming that indeed we have changed, when in reality; we are just shallower, diluted, less intense shadows of our own past.

They call it “growing up”; but do we really grow “up”? I think we grow down. Stooping down low below all kinds of depths; resurfacing with might, strength and an added scorn to throw light on the ironies and humiliations that our lives throw at us.

They call it life; yet we die every day, maybe an inch closer towards what we like to think of as goals. Slowly but surely we keep killing our hope as we go to replace it bit by bit with despair and loathing. The years pass us by, we lose track of time. We forget so many little details about things that make us happy or sad.

It is very difficult for me to forget you know. I don’t have to make an effort to remember. That is because I feel. I feel so much that sometimes these feelings overpower my present tense. They cast their tall shadows on my everyday life you know. They threaten to eat me up from within, these feelings so fierce. They do not make me forget. They make me remember all things of the past. They haunt me night and day, reminding me so much of the things that I have said or heard or done or felt.

They say there is no use dwelling in the past. But the past is what tells you things about everything. You throw some light in retrospect and you are handed an objectivity that lands you in just about the right perspective. Plus you have grown right? Down or up, you might have changed, might not have refused to change, but surely you have grown a year, a month or a day older. That cannot be denied. Change is the only constant and the only things that keep changing are the years and the numbers and the seasons; yet everything is almost always the same, just like people.

There is nothing that I should feel bad about. I should not feel about the bad person that I might have made people to believe is me. I should not feel bad about the things that I think I have done wrong. I should, surely, keep on believing that since I cried those real tears for my father when he was alive, I should not, after his death, feel bad about anything that I did wrong. Whatever happened, whichever way I behaved, I should keep reminding myself about all those real tears that I shed on my own. I had nobody by my side right? I did not feel alone. I felt pain. The same pain that was dwelling in my father; within his body and mind, a disease that was eating him up from within, and I was here to witness that and feel his pain. Why should I beat myself up about the kind of things that I have said or done, losing people and projects and “professionalism” on the way? For all I know, I witnessed my father howling and crying like a child because he was feeling his mother’s pain from the same disease that took her away. I have seen him squirming from the fear of death and the pain in agony right before his heart failed. I showed him pictures. I showed him photographs the night he passed away. That is the last remembrance of a communication with my father that I chose for myself. Nobody told me what to do. I did that myself.

I did not know that he was going to die. I was praying to God for that. I was praying that he should die and escape the pain. I know what pain is. I have felt that. I felt his pain. Whatever I did for him were the right things. I played music for him. I told him stories. I tried to make him laugh. Pretty much everything that he has done for me during the most crucial formative early years of my life; he exposed me to music. Pandit Jasraj, Hemanta Mukhapadhyay and Pancham and Raag Malkosh are my earliest memories of music. I knew about Van Gogh biting off his ear before I turned ten. All thanks to my father.

Yes I behaved all batshit crazy. Yes I behaved unprofessionally. Yes I said and did the kind of things I could never imagine or associate myself with, I should remember that I have done things like help my father urinate, I have helped him walk, I have helped him read a newspaper when he was helpless. I cannot be a bad person. I feel for others. Sometimes I feel so much that I cry for salesmen and cry thinking about my own death or cry while cooking up some story inside my head.

I was always like that right? Cooking up stories inside my head? Stories that made me cry?  I was always a wee bit different from others around right? And this has nothing to do with my sister. I was that, different, a long before she was even conceived.

I would fight with my mother for scolding my father whenever he would want to lie down after fifteen minutes of sitting on a chair. I felt that if he wants to lie face up on his bed all day long, he should do that, just because he feels like it. I of course wasn't there for half the battle that my mother fought alone. Why? Because of that same “professionalism” that I so shamefully lost on the 3^rd of April; the person who recommended my name to hire me as her assistant had no idea what was going on inside my head. She does not know, they do not know what I went through, they have no idea how very fucked up I was. I looked okay. I behaved aptly from the 27^th of March to the 3^rd of April. I know EXACTLY where I went wrong. I know exactly why I went wrong. I was a mess. I was thinking and feeling, as usual, too much about the past and introspecting about myself, my being and the kind of person I was becoming. In the process, I was losing out on money, 20,000 bucks, and a sparkling clean reputation for a clear-headed “sorted” hard worker that I have always made sure that my employers maintain with regard to my work; I was losing out on a career prospect. I was compromising on work.

But they do not know what I went through, they are not aware that during the past few months of the last bygone year, I used to smoke grass only to realize that it had started making me cry as opposed to making me smile; like always. They had no way of knowing that I was not on the project because I wanted money or I was running after a career, as used to be usual, but to distract myself from the invariable thoughts about my father’s “condition”.  They surely did not know that “BB” was for me, a project, like the last one, “Hijli”, some kind of work to waver my mind away from the situation at home.

It was never about me. Therefore I reacted. I NEVER work for money. Yes I know that earning money is important. But hey!! I chose my profession when I was 21 years old. I was NOT thinking at that time about things like financial security or the fact that in the next five years I will keep being the broke girl who has to think thrice before buying herself a 100 rupee t.shirt or a 300 rupee eye-liner, forget about buying a car or a flat.

I was going with the flow and drowning deep into something I happily referred to as “my calling” inside my mind. What is this profession? This occupation I had so smilingly chosen for myself by simply going with the flow and doing things that made me feel like as if I was doing the right thing by choosing this so called profession.

What is my profession? What do I do for a living? I work for TV shows is a simple answer. Would have loved to work for films but then I needed a certain fixed “job” paying me a monthly fixed income so that I got to stay in the city of Bombay while chasing after some kind of a dream. What is that dream? What is the answer to a simple question that people ask themselves in the wake of choosing a profession – “five years down the line where do you see yourself??” – The answer is quite simple and ready-at-hand. I don’t know.

I do know one thing. I have some memories. The first project that I ever worked for, after passing out from college, I came to know a person who was Ram Gopal Verma’s assistant; he was the chief assistant director for that particular project, a short film with a budget of an estimated Rupees 1 Crore.  He was an extremely nice person, a Bengali, a person with a good sense of humour, he who had a lot of stories about RGV up his sleeve which he, like a very quintessential Bengali loved to regale people around him with. I, being an ardent RGV fan, lapped up his stories.

I remember one particular story which made me think about RGV the director. The story went something like, during the shoot of the film “D”, the crew was tense about a sunset shot. Sunset shots are very tricky that way. You have only about five minutes of actual roll-time because you have to shoot the sun, a natural element in all its glory; you have to make sure that the shot is ready at a precise particular time so as to assure a smooth shot-taking. So, this particular shot was a jimmy jib shot, therefore a lot of people had to work their nerves off trying to get the shot ready on time for the obvious things and also because nobody wants to piss off a director at any given point of time.

Ultimately what happened was, the chief assistant was shouted at and called a “bhenchod” and a “bhosdi ke” etc by the great RGV himself because this shot was not ready in time.

I was working as a production assistant in this short film. It was my first time ever as a “professional”. My job was to take care of film stock and to prepare reports for the producer of the film after each day of shoot stating what went wrong and why. It was very simple. I was not being paid for the job that was a seven day shoot that saw me grow seven shades darker just like a fair and lovely ad gone reverse. A veteran production boy showed me the film stock and told me that one can of stock contains some few feet of film roll which is four and half minutes and costs some 12,000 bucks. He also imparted this jewel of an information to me “always keep pai pai ka hisaab about the stock” because after all four and a half minutes cost a lot of money. He taught me how to pull out stickers and label the used cans. He taught me how to keep an account of how much stock is being used up in a day; feet-wise and rupees-wise.

Every time the cinematography team ran out of stock, I would have to run from the shoot spot to the vanity van and fetch the particular kind of stock that they had run out of and they wanted.

I remember this incident when while sweating profusely I had entered the vanity van to collect a can of stock so that I could run back to the shoot spot ASAP, I found that person, the chief AD and the producer chatting inside that particular van. Both of them looked at me and smilingly told me “have a look, please check yourself out in the mirror adorned with many a light-bulbs, please, here! We are switching on the bulbs to give you a full-blown actress treatment!”

What had happened was, I had while rubbing my face with a much used tissue paper not taken into account that the paper was tearing up and my whole face was marked with tiny bits of tissue paper that were stuck on my face with sweat. The person I am talking about, I remember clearly, after having a good laugh at my expense, told me “Here, have some ice-cold water, sit in the AC, clean your face, there is some time in hand, take a break from wildly running around helter-skelter in the scorching sun”.

After I cleaned my face and everything, he smiled at me and looked at the producer and told her “there! Now she looks pretty”.

After around one year, when I was working for a TV show, I got the news. That person had committed suicide by hanging himself from a ceiling fan. I remember having got this news from a friend over the phone, when, ironically I was inside a vanity van checking myself out in the glamorous mirror with the light-bulbs.

Things that my Father

has made an effort to teach me; meaning, has gone out of his way to teach me.
1. Maths.
2. The essence of saving money.
3. Why Sourav Ganguly makes a mighty good cricketer.
4. Bank work.

Things that I have learned from the above list -:
1. How to calculate whether I will pass the maths exam before submitting my paper.
2. Nothing.
3. He made and nurtured a team that won the World Cup (one day) after many long years, for the second time.
4. Not much, I am still trying to learn.


Things that I have learned from my Father.
1. Stay calm and composed and brave it out.
2. Work hard.
3. Maintain a low profile in a room full of people.
4. Be strong and sturdy.
5. Be witty.
6. Crack jokes at my own expense and still be funny.
7. Respect people for what they are and who they are.
8. Beware of the "so-called" kleptomaniacs.
9. Read books in order to obtain entertainment.
10. Never be shy when it comes to being proud.
11. Love everything around.
12. Click photographs if something looks beautiful.
13. Never consider travelling and seeing the world as a waste of money.
14. Appreciate the beauty of nature by capturing it in photographs.
15. Always try and make everybody happy; at the cost of my own happiness.
16. Be polite.
17. Do not raise your voice while arguing and trying to make a point.
18. Do not raise your voice unless absolutely necessary.
19. Smoke Marijuana; but good quality.
20. Do not consume alcohol.
21. Never look down upon anybody.

Things I loooooooove

are the things that I loooove. I love funny people. This post is about awl the funny people who I have been lucky enough to be acquainted with.

Lets start from the beginning. 

I had a friend in school. The earliest memory I have of this friend was in first grade, when I while being regaled with his funny-ness was showing my thighs to him by lifting up my tunic. He was funny in first grade, more funny in seventh grade while making fun of teachers. He was my partner from sixth grade to the second term of eighth grade; when quite abruptly, his section was changed; which left me friend-less and quite frankly lost in a class full of people. I had to make new friends. This incident brought about a HUGE personality make over in me. I realized, I could be funny and people (namely, the popular girls) would accept me in their group. Thus, I discovered the funny bone within myself. I also discovered the blatant truth about being funny, which is "MAKE FUN OF YOURSELF INSTEAD OF OTHER PEOPLE AROUND YOU, THAT WAY, ITS MORE FUN, AND ITS MORE FUNNY BECAUSE NOBODY GETS HURT; AND YOU GET TO BE.....WELL....FUNNY!!!!"

During the second term of eighth grade; I found, rather, I noticed two more funny people in the class. I immediately went about making all sorts of efforts to be friends with these two people. One out of these two people was a guy who was brilliant in his studies; and very very funny. I always, sort of nurtured a secret crush on him, but obviously I kept it to myself and did not tell ANYBODY because I noticed this guy had a sort of crush on my all time best friend.

The other guy was also, incidentally, brilliant in his studies and also very funny; but he sort of was obsessed with this wierd-ass LETS BOYCOTT ALL THE GIRLS IN THE CLASS revolution that he stirred up and had sort of all the effing boys in the class backing him up in this "revolution".

This had me confused and HOW. I obviously, had no doubts about the fact that I am, obviously, a girl. But I also found myself enjoying this so called revolution because it was...well...funny...and it made me laugh out loud. During this time in eighth grade, another incident occurred. 

Our classroom had a window which faced the parking lot of an apartment complex. Some random men had been spotted ogling at the girls in our class who were ...well...visible to those men in the parking lot. Therefore the authorities had come up with a mastermind gameplan to handle this issue. They covered up the window with stale newspapers and made a rule about all the girls in the class sitting on one side and all the boys on the other side, namely the side on which the window was placed. Now this new rule broke a previous rule practiced by the authorities which was, to not make more than two girls sit next to each other because girls sitting next to each would mean a lot of talking and "discipline" which was THE word in our school, would be at stake. 

I remember, during this time, I was so placed that I got to be (somehow owing to geographical and strategic positioning of students ) the only girl sitting among a whole lot of boys. I thank God, that happened; because it taught me a major lesson in life. Boys are a lot more fun than girls, because, as opposed to constantly talking about boys and bitching about girls; boys just about make fun of EVERYTHING and keep it very, very, very, VERY simple. They make fun of girls while secretly ogling at them. They make friends with girls while secretly judging them by their looks; also going by their judgement, they prefer ogling at girls according to their own secret judgement. They make friends with pretty girls in order to have access to her prettier friends. yada yada yada.

Now WHY I am blogging about this when I have like so many problems in life including lost money, lost habits, lost passionate love making sessions, lost healthy and hale and hearty father, lost friends (over secret crush and losing virginity to secret crush), lost gifts, lost study notes, lost freelance work projects, lost time, lost soul-time, lost money over bad bad habits, lost relationships, lost boy-friends, lost sanity etc, is because I am a forever lost soul. I just have to look at a pretty window and sort of lose all problems/responsibilities in life. Sigh.

Why? Why? Why?

I have always been taken advantage of.

I am dumb. I am too soft-soul of a fool. bloody fool.

VIDEO BLOG

which will not be this post because i am not looking good enough for a video right now, although tis' something i want to experiment with very very very much, after watching "a nightmare on elm street".

I cannot do anything about getting influenced by movies. i love watching movies. especially horror/psycho-thriller, comedy, rom-coms.

What exactly does the "com" imply in Rom-com???? why do we keep referring to this genre as "rom-com"??? oh, because we are conformists.

What kind of film will I want to make/write a full blown script for??? A comedy. Is it going to be even remotely FUNNY?

we will see.

A new chapter begins

on an old un-updated blog. old blogs can do wonders, when they have to. I sort of reinforce my own faith in myself by going over and over these dusty pretty blogs.