A humming word

If you have watched Chhichhore, please pardon me when I say this: wash your eyes with scenes from Dil Chahta Hai (what a wonderful movie with a believable story line). The premise of the movie Chhichhore, speaks of an IIT aspirant unable to bear failure and taking the extreme step of suicide; he slips into coma and his parents (Anni and Maya) doing the most atrocious thing to keep his zeal to live, alive: talking of their past and a reunion. The premise seemed like an improved version of Student of the Year where Rishi Kapoor gathers everyone to meet him before his last breath. Oh, sure SOTY is set in a galaxy far far away where everyone is party-ready and sings atrocious remix songs at the drop of the hat, and Chhichhore seems closer to reality and yet, seems far from it. And yes, it is not all that bad when compared to movies by KJo who directed movies about college and reunions wearing neon-tinted glasses and drinking some concoction that steered him from reality and logic. Howev...

/an ode to Bhagat Singh on his birth anniversary/ They wrap death as their headgear, Even Yama weeps at their willful gait when marching on a carpet of will, grit For a nation, their death doesn't seem fit The deathly noose reluctantly tightened; their stubborn, proud heads hanged low fierce in their revolt; in their rebuke, kind, What a fine example of the human mind!

Location: your room, somewhere in India Time: early morning Shut your eyelids and place your palms over it. What do you listen to? Rumbling of the monkey mind? Pressure cooker whistles. Whirring fan. Vociferous gargling of a neighbor. The running tap. The rustling of the newspaper. Now, stand in your balcony. You might hear a parrot screech or a sparrow chirp; the wind blowing past your eyes; the cacophony of the street. Perhaps, these are the notes from your room. Now, go into the lanes and by lanes of your surroundings and record what you write. These could be the notes from your room. Ruskin Bond, the master storyteller, chose a familiar fabric of his surroundings and stitched 39 beautiful and colorful notes with them.  The 171-page starts with “It’s the simple things in life that keeps us from going crazy.” The things we oft ignore are magnified and you cannot help but observe the small things around you. Like the red ant that lands o...

The resplendance of Ramayana is in its simplicity and celebrating this is Sriram, a dance drama, by Sriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra, celebrating its 66th year after 2000 plays. Ramayana is a known linear narrative but what makes this theatrical grandeur unique is the juxtaposition of significant scenes without losing its essence. For example: The heated argument between Kaikeyi and Dashrath, after the instigation of Manthara, was performed with such elegant theatrics. Ravan was introduced in a song-drama without the ten heads (his ten heads being a metaphor for his intelligence is often gaudily displayed) and dressed like a kathakali dancer. How refreshing! **  What I thoroughly enjoyed was: the debate during the swayamvar when Parshuram displays his rage over the broke arrow; Lakshman wages a verbal war while Ram pacifies him. Parshuram, convinced of Ram's divinity, leaves; the golden deer and garuda, the eagle, have their own portion of thunderous feats which emp...

Remember those afternoons in the pre-Internet days when your head would sink in the lap of your grandmother and while stroking your hair, she would narrate tales of here-and-there to you. The stories would often be mundane but her animated telling and retelling would spice it up. Afternoon Raag is a story that has been narrated in books before – about lonely students studying in a faraway land and pining for their country, but what makes you turn the pages are its brevity, and his poetic and lurid narration. The 175-pages book, published by Penguin Books, with an aesthetic cover lures you to pick it up. Amit Chaudhuri is a classical singer from the North Indian Classical gharana and it shines through the book as he narrates about his affair with the quiet, pigeon-holed streets in London and with two different women—Mandira and Shehnaz. A student from Calcutta in Oxford, the narrator misses the call of the crows in the busy streets of London, where shops are shut and ope...

How often do we collect bill slips? How often do we save old letters and read them and re-read them till we soak up the words? For those of us who love vintage paper or vintage records, here's a display with a lemony twist: Bakula Nayak, an architect turned artist, chose simple vintage articles that we seldom ignore as the canvas for her art work.  The exhibition, that will be held till September 2, 2019, at Kalakriti Art Gallery, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, is a double treat: for those who love to rewind back in time, look at that gramophone or read a letter neatly hung on an examination pad; and for those who like Indian poetry. Bakula has painstakingly included the verses of Ritusamhara by Kalidas. The book is an epitaph to the six seasons of India. I call it an epitaph because we don't witness six seasons anymore. I have read a few verses of the book, translated by Ranjit Pandit, spouse of Vijaylakshmi Pandit, and it is a hard read. I had the fine opportunity to spea...

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder And stories lie in the words of the narrator There's something about Ruskin Bond's stories that make us pick his book again and again. Having read his two books, Delhi Is Not Far, and Railway Stories - a collection of stories around the Indian Railways, I wondered why and how does Ruskin manage to weave the simplest of incidents into a fantastic paragraph that makes the reader seem he is reading a fantasy book. In Delhi Is Not Far, Arun, a struggling writer, befriends the barber, Deep Chand, a leper, Suraj, Pitamber, wrestler and a prostitute, K, and like a colorful mural, he paints a mosaic of stories around them. The Mohalla, a chowkidaar, Arun's patience with Suraj's fist and his deep affection for the prostitute. Arun's life at People-nagar (Pipalnagar) is far from interesting. The dusty roads where people exist comes alive in these 100 odd pages. And in the Indian Railway Stories, Ruskin makes us fall in lov...