Disconnection

Is it just me, or is there a general disconnect between people my age and their parents?

There is no doubt that I’ve learnt a lot of things from them, and a lot of moral values and behavioural patterns have rubbed off on me. But when one looks at the differences and variations, it’s hard to believe how much of a disconnect there can be between people living under the same roof.

For starters, me and my brother are almost always in our room, where our computer, guitar and other personal stuff lies. My parents are always in the drawing room, watching television. Meaningless, mind-numbling television. Cookery shows featuring dishes that are never going to be cooked in my kitchen for the rest of the future of mankind. Travel shows featuring places that no one of us will ever visit or ever desire to visit. Marathi soaps that feature the most arcane plots and simplistic characters to reaffirm the viewers’ existing beliefs and ideologies and faith in the great, infallible middle-class moral system. If there’s something I really hate about my evenings at home, it’s the thought of sitting in the same room as the television and watching television with my parents. I shudder at the thought of my parents watching this kind of television. And yet I can’t do anything about it, because I’ve come to accept that given the social conditions and environment they were brought up in, that’s precisely what they’d want to do on lazy afternoons and free evenings.

In general, my parents have no clue what’s going on in my academic, social, personal or professional life. They more or less have a clue, but no details are ever shared. I’d like to say that there has never been an environment conducive to a free sharing of ideas and narration of the day’s events in our drawing room. This has led to tragically funny situations, including a time when my father didn’t know whether I was studying advertising or journalism in my media course. They have never had a clue, and still don’t, about the upheavals, however minor, my life has gone through in the past four years. They harbour, I strongly feel, a misunderstanding of my opinions, beliefs, tastes, character and personality, and this misunderstanding along with the lack of efforts to destroy it, is a major reason for the disconnect.

For example, yesterday night my mother called up a colleague of hers whose twenty-something son studies Indian classical music – he plays the tabla – and requested her to ask him to come teach me to play the tabla at my house. Today out of the blue, I’m supposed to call up this boy and not only display interest in learning the tabla, but also fix up timings and fee structures with him. To top it, she doesn’t know the guy’s name. She doesn’t even know that my college starts in 5 days and that there is no question of starting a music tutorial right now. Oh, and please note: I DON’T WANT TO LEARN THE TABLA in the first place.

All these things – not just these seemingly trivial examples, but more important things in the same vein – reaffirm my faith in the belief that in any relationship, a careful understanding and respectful tolerance of the context and ideology of the ‘Other’ person, is the only way to keep the relationship open and strong and warm. I, for one, would definitely be more open and more “connected” to my daughter (or son, for the sake of gender equality). One of the tasks of parenthood should be the constant attempt to dissolve the notorious “generation gap” – which is actually the reason for the disconnect that got me ranting on this topic in the first place.

/Time/

If you don't heal me, Time,
Who the fuck else do I turn to?
I'm counting on you.

Making-a-film

After years of thinking and talking about films, I finally directed our very own first short film as part of a college project. My earlier ventures into short filmmaking were private, local, amateur affairs, but this time it was (more or less) the real thing: a professional cameraman, crew, lightboys, electricians, all the assorted equipment that’s such a pain to handle, and a very serious restriction of time.

And what an experience it was. Out of the millions of things I learnt over the past week of attending four film shoots (including my own), one thing will stand out: our professor Vikas Desai’s assertion that “filmmaking is easy, but making a film is a ...” He never completed that statement, but I’m sure what he meant to say was, “...motherfucking pain in your fucked-up ass.” And it is.

After every shoot, I deliberately went to the respective directors and flashed a smile so as to ask, “So... what say?” Everyone gave me the same answers. “Thank God it’s over.” “I have no words to describe what I feel.” “It was a humbling experience.” “My knees are going to break anytime.” It amazed me to realize that all directors, including me, went through the exact same feeling. It bound us together.

And that’s when I realised the difference between “filmmaking” and “making a film”: filmmaking is the arty side of cinema, that part of cinema that exists in your imagination, that part of cinema that you dream of making, that part of cinema that is up there, that part which you want to be proud of in the end. But “making a film”; now that’s the part that no one knows. That’s the part where you break your back shifting up heavy flowerpots to the third floor and back, carry beds and mattresses from one building to another, sweat like a pig but have no time to wipe it off, hurt your ankle but don’t even pause because the set-up is ready, blow your lid because a fucking pencil in the shot isn’t sharpened, bite your nails hoping the crew likes the food you ordered, get into a fight with the parking guy who’s giving you problems at the last minute, and generally wonder when the hell this ordeal is going to end.

When we were carrying heavy goods and props around like construction workers, I found myself saying to a few fellow students, although in jest, “Does this look like anything close to filmmaking?” Now I know the answer: what I was doing was ‘making-a-film’ not ‘filmmaking’.

And now I’m a little bit wiser, and I realize that, in order:
1. scripting is ‘filmmaking.’
2. shooting is ‘making-a-film’ and
3. editing is ‘filmmaking.’

And that’s the reason all directors heave a sigh of relief at the end of the shoot day: they know that now they can finally stop being mindless manual labourers and get down to ‘filmmaking’ proper; get down to becoming artists again. ~

Politics

[Something I wrote on April 26, 2006]

I think I've realised an important facet of my personality. I hate politics. Not the kind that goes on in Delhi, not the kind of party-hopping and manipulation that our leaders play (although I hate that too), but I'm talking of the very existence of politics in our day to day lives. I hate politics in all its forms. Maybe I don't actually hate it; maybe I just don't like it beause it seems to be the root cause of most interpersonal, intercommunal, intercaste, interreligious, international problems and arguments.

Or maybe... it's just something else. The solution to solving these problems isn't the removal and banishment of politics from the sphere of relations. I don't think it's possible to banish politics away, much less remove it entirely.

I think the trick lies in RECOGNISING the kind of politics that's in play in any sphere of relations... and once it's recognised, one can sidestep it, tolerate it, subdue it, and control it, I'd like to believe, even control it, yes.

Politics is a play of power, it is the agreement or forcible stamp of the fact that in any case, one will be the controlling factor and the other will be the controlled. Maybe this is a little too extreme a definition, but most situations can be logically boiled down to this. Politics is the interplay of power, between two parties or more, each of which wants to be more powerful and controlling the rest, and the other not wanting to allow them to do so.

I've decided to consciously attempt to reduce the politics innate in all my relationships with everyone - probably frankness, politeness, humour, and love will take its place.

I want to recognise the politics involved, and then try to negate it or make the others aware of it, and bring it out in the open so that we can consciously keep it aside and move on to more important things, like a feeling of warmth. ~