This isn't the ideal way to start a post but, what the hell, I hate coming back from Bombay. On Thursday, going down the Western Express highway, returning to my friend's house in Bandra, it suddenly dawned on me that that was my last evening there. And, like other reminders, at other times in the past, that my time in the city was coming to an end, it wasn't such a happy thought. But, let's start at the beginning...
The morning after I reached Bombay, we went for our recce to Alibaug. For those who may not be familiar with the area, Alibaug is a sleepy, weekend retreat of the rich. A beach town, it's a 50-minute ferry ride from Bombay. It's about 135 km by road and, depending on the traffic, can take up to three to three and a half hours. The lazy bums that we are, we went by road.
We clicked a lot of photographs at the location we've chosen for our first episode but, unfortunately, owing to the contract and all, I cannot post them here. Not at the moment, at any rate. We think it's a good choice of location because most of it has great visual appeal. In fact, parts of it are quite stunning. Wish I could say half as nice things about the person we met there, who, although a very willing part of the swish set, tries hard to convince you that he's not. But, I'll reserve this for another post. Anyway, when we got back to Bombay, all thoughts about work were consigned to the back burner and the more important task of watching films at the Asian Film Festival took over.
Between October 15 and 19, we crammed in as many films as we could. Some of the films were plain crappy (for instance, the film from Burma, which my friend was able to view a little more sympathetically because he has spent a couple of years there as a small child), some were just about okay (like the Sri Lankan film) and some were wonderful (like Gu Lian Hua, or Love's Lone Flower, from Taiwan). Shohei Imamura's Warm Water Under a Red Bridge was, well, a little weird in its choice of metaphor and a huge departure from the director's The Ballad of Narayama, which I had seen many years ago. And, then, there were the films of Majid Majidi...absoutely brilliant! Along with his countrymen Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Majidi is responsible for the great respect that Iranian cinema enjoys in the world today.
Of the five Majidi films that were on show, sadly, I could manage only four. Beed-e Majnoon, or The Weeping Willow, was the closing film of the Festival and we could catch it only because, in a rare show of generosity, the organisers decided to have a second show of the film. It's about a blind professor, who regains sight after 38 years and how this completely changes not only his life but also the lives of those around him. Pedar (The Father) is about a teenaged boy who comes back home to find that his mother, a widow, has remarried. Bacheha-Ye Aseman (Children of Heaven) is a wonderful story about this brother and sister who, due to their financial circumstances, are forced to share a pair of shoes to go to school. In order to buy a new pair for his sister, the boy decides to participate in a race being organised among all the schools of the area. His aim is to win the third prize, which is a pair of shoes. And, finally, Baran (a girl's name, it also means rain) is the story of a young, teenaged boy, an ethnic Turk, who falls in love with an Afghan refugee girl at a construction site. In view of her circumstances, however, he keeps a respectful distance and does not profess his feelings to her. A poor construction worker himself, he blows up all his savings, and even sells his ID papers, which are invaluable for non-Iranians working in Iran, to find her the money she and her family need to return to Afghanistan.
What is so incredible about Majidi's films is that while they are very real, there's also something magical about them. They tell simple, everyday stories about ordinary people but, visually, the films are stunning and have a lyrical quality about them...sheer poetry in motion. If I had to describe the experience of these Majidi films in one word, I'd have to say it was enriching. The characters, their stories and the wonderful visuals stay with you for a long time after you've walked out of the auditorium.
And, going by the sheer number of people who turned up to watch all his films, it's a little hard to understand why more such films aren't on show at regular, non-Film Festival times and why we can't make such films. Anyway, the best way to describe the crowd that turned up to watch Baran at Metro, now revamped as a multiplex, would be to liken it to a pack of hungry wolves...we were elbowed and kicked, even cursed, by old men and portly ladies, each of whom wanted to be the first to get into the auditorium!
The day after the Film Festival, I went off to Pune for four days. On my return to Bombay, over the next eight days or so, we slogged over the script and managed to finish it by November 1, two days ahead of time. This allowed me the opportunity to go to Udaipur for a day, for a meeting that had been on the cards for a long time.
To catch the 5.30 flight out, I had to wake up at 3.30 am, which is bad enough under normal circumstances but feels much worse when you've only gone to sleep after 12.30 on the previous night. Thankfully, I was able to make it in time quite comfortably, although I have to confess I wasn't so kicked about the idea of making such a rushed trip. Anyway, while a cup of coffee and fresh lime are always welcome, I'm not so enthused about breakfast so early in the day. Therefore, I politely turned it down...only to regret it deeply. I was sitting next to these English ladies, who, as far as I could tell, were mother and daughter. After I'd refused breakfast, and they'd finished half of theirs, the old lady couldn't resist saying, to no one in particular, just how delicious she thought the stuff was. Being made of stern stuff, I was able to ignore the very audible lip-smacking the first time over and turn my attention to the view from the window, which, owing to the time of day and lack of sufficient light, didn't amount to much. But when she turned to her big-made daughter and repeated the d word, I felt the first pangs of regret stirring inside. Then, perhaps because she felt this overpowering urge to share her joy with her son/son-in-law, who was sitting across the aisle, she let out another loud proclamation of her appreciation. Everyone has a breaking point and this turned out to be mine, as I proceeded to kick myself for having missed out on a delicious meal. Pride, the single biggest failing of human beings, then reared its ugly head and stopped me from asking for breakfast...that, by then, tables had been cleared and the 54-minute flight was getting ready to descend, didn't help either.
As we neared our destination, the view from the window was rather nice: of neatly divided and cultivated farm holdings, of black, tarred roads, winding their way through the hills and snaking their way through the plains, of little water bodies and a largely, rocky terrain, dotted by clusters of houses. The drive from the airport to the hotel was incredible; at least the first half of it was, when the view on all sides was that of the lovely hills, which, at one point, stand just by the side of the road.
I was only there till the evening, spending almost every minute of my time either in the client's office or in my hotel room and, as a result, didn't get much opportunity to explore this city of lakes. However, I did get a good look at one lake and had a fleeting glimpse of another, which stood next to our hotel. Besides the view from the air, the lovely drive to the hotel, the two lakes, the undulating roads, especially in the part of town where we were staying, my other abiding memory of the place is that, in the total of one hour I spent on the roads there, I saw more women driving two-wheelers in Udaipur than I think I've seen in Delhi and Bombay. Isn't that amazing? Of course, this is quite common in Bangalore and Pune but, honestly, I didn't expect to find so many women driving scooters and motorcycles anywhere in Rajasthan.
It was while I was on my way back from Udaipur on the same evening, going back to my friend's house, that I suddenly realised that I had only little time left in Bombay. That I would be back there in ten-odd days was a minor consolation and helped to lift my spirits. I've been back in Delhi for three days now, which means there's only about a week or so to go before I leave again. In the meantime, we've had some feedback from the channel about our script and all seems to be going well...so far. Apparently, they have some suggestions, which they will put forth in our meeting this week.
While I was away, I was tagged by Kundalini to blog about my current playlist. In no particular order, then, the songs I've been listening to most frequently these days are:
1. Walking on Air - King Crimson
2. Buckets of Rain - Bob Dylan
3. Music of the Night - Phantom of the Opera
4. You Don't Know How it Feels - Tom Petty
5. What If - Coldplay
6. Mary's in India - Dido
7. Not Dark Yet - Bob Dylan
8. The Ghost of Tom Joad - Bruce Springsteen
9. If it Be Your Will - Leonard Cohen
10. A Case of You - Diana Krall
11. Ice Cream - Sarah McLachlan
12. Away - Kathleen Edwards
13. Fade in Me - Imaad Wasif
I guess one was supposed to list ten songs but, I think, thirteen is a better number :-) Let me say just this about the playlist - if it isn't already obvious, it reflects the heavy Bombay hangover I'm still carrying.
Before I end this long post, let me also tell you about one of the highlights of this trip. My friend in Bombay has a dog...he's always had dogs...and when he's cooking her food, if I'm around, we've often discussed how attractive her food looks. And, how nutritious it must be. Of course, being vegetarians, we've only eyed the food before chicken stock and pieces of chicken/fish, etc., are added to it. So, to get back to the story, watching all those films at the Film Festival, which also meant a lot of travelling, we were often left with no time to cook or even grab a bite elsewhere. One day, just as we were getting ready to leave, wondering what to do about lunch, we decided that Girlie wouldn't mind if we had some of hers. And, that's exactly what we did...served ourselves some of her rice and veggie mix (pulao), which we then had with curd and pickle. Of course, we also had to add a lot of salt to it but it worked out quite well. Funnily, everyone we told this story to, including the friend's mother, was aghast. In fact, his mother felt so bad for us that on the following day, she cooked a very elaborate lunch for us. Wonder what the fuss is all about and why people are so shocked! It's only food after all, isn't it?
