Phantasmagoria

He ran his fingers gently over the rough grey wall while trying to soak in the beauty of the structure to which it belonged. Churches always fascinated him, but this one, for reasons he couldn’t explain, felt special. He looked around. The lawn was so green that it looked alive. The spire of the 17^th century fortress in the distance made him forget that he belonged to the age of the iPhone. The moat snaking its way around Churchill Park made him happy in a way that only a vast expanse of water could. He walked slowly around the periphery of the church, afraid to go in. He then decided that since he had all day, he could come back later if he so felt like it. He took one last peek inside before turning away.

As if in a trance, he began to make his way across Churchill Park; across fountains, monuments and even a museum dedicated to the Danish resistance. He stopped at a lonely spot, where stood a bronze statue called Valkyrie. Within seconds, flashes of a furious Fuhrer and a one-eyed man were replaced with a sense of hypnosis that even looking through a viewfinder never caused. He was mesmerized by the dull green hue of the century-old statue, the expression on the face of the Norse Goddess who was the subject of the statue and the sheer force of the composition of the sculpture.

He stood still, absorbing every tiny detail of the statue, for much longer than he realized. It was only when the blue of the sky began to change hue that he realized he needed to move on. He decided to make another visit to St Alban’s Church, to see if he could muster the will to enter it.

He looked towards the grey limestone-and-flint structure in the distance, overcome by its power. He walked towards it, excited and nervous at the same time. The tiled roof reminded him, strangely, of home. He couldn’t shake off the inexplicable feeling that nothing would be the same once he entered the church. He stopped, pondered over whether he wanted to enter or just leave the park for the day. In spite of a strong, almost cowardly urge to leave, he plodded along.

In the distance, the entrance to the church looked like a black hole. Human shapes began to materialize in the blackness as he neared. When he reached the entrance, he paused. Finally, he decided that he was going to go ahead with it, even though he hadn’t the faintest idea what to do once inside. He looked upwards and began walking. As he passed under the arch, the dull grey ceiling covering his field of vision felt like a strangely cinematic transition. He looked straight ahead. And then he saw her.

He stopped in his tracks, unable to believe it. It had been years since he had spoken to her, perhaps a decade since he had laid eyes upon her. It felt like reading a long-forgotten page from one of the earlier chapters of a monumental epic; a page gently dog-eared because of one beautiful, life-changing sentence contained within. A few moments later, she saw him. She stopped too, staring at him like how he was staring at her. No one knew who spoke first, but the first word said was,

“Hello…”

The other responded. After a pause, they walked closer to each other. He knew nothing of her life now, but he didn’t ask her why she was in Denmark, and more importantly, why she was alone.

“How have you been?”

She smiled and replied,

“I’ve been good, and you?”

“I’ve been great. Doing what I love doing, traveling and…”

He paused and chuckled.

“…and eating,” he finished.

She smiled again. They began walking together, without saying a word. They walked in complete silence for the longest time, each not knowing what to say, but neither willing to say goodbye just yet.

Eventually, they made their way out of Churchill Park and onto Esplanaden. They walked along the cobbled sidewalk, still silent. Suddenly, he spotted a quaint little bakery. The delicious smell of baking bread wafted its way gently over to them, making each of them smile a different smile. He looked into her eyes, opened another page in his mind, unfolded another dog-ear, and asked,

“Pastry?”

She stopped walking, smiled and nodded in the affirmative.

A few minutes later, they were seated on old, rickety, wooden chairs, with steaming hot coffee and delicious looking pastries in front of them. Still, no one spoke.

Finally, she said,

“He got busy with some work. Hopefully he’ll be done in time for dinner.”

He smiled.

“Where do you live now?”

“Perth. Australia,” she replied.

He sipped his coffee. He could sense that she wanted to say something. But he didn’t try to get her to say it. He had the feeling that, one way or another, he would get to know what was on her mind before they parted tonight. One’s eyes, after all, said far more.

Suddenly, without warning, she stood up. She hadn’t touched her coffee and pastry. She looked directly at him with a surprising lack of any emotion whatsoever. Gently, in the only manner she knew how to speak, she spoke.

“You know, I get the feeling that you have not changed one bit. I do hope you are really happy, no matter what. I know for a fact that you are with someone. I don’t know how she had it in her to trust you, but what I do know is that as long as it lasts, she will feel special.”

With that, she left money on the table and walked away into the dark. His eyes followed her, and he did not avert them even after she was long gone.

He opened his eyes, lying still for longer than he realized. Eventually he got up and walked over to his bathroom. He could hear birds beginning to chirp. He paused to hear all those familiar, morning sounds of his overcrowded city; ones that he had been hearing for the past seven years day after day, every single day. He looked into the mirror, paying special attention to the dark circles under his eyes. Then, he smiled, thinking of what had just happened.

“Brutally honest, even in a dream. What a woman.”

He smiled again and turned his back on the mirror.

Thank you

Anees Bazmee made a marvelous blockbuster this year with the same name as the title of this post. While some day I’d definitely like to thank him for showing us how not to make a film, thankfully this post is not to thank him. The greatest thanks, then, go to my parents. God simply doesn’t make them like that anymore. Every second of my existence is, in some way or the other, spent in thanking them. Especially after I realized what a pain it is to peel potatoes. (Ma, I can’t believe you did that for me all these years. I love you!) In any case, thanking them would be a task of a lifetime and I’m too small to attempt it yet. My grandmother deserves as much thanks as my parents. But she fills me with so much joy that if I attempted to thank her by writing, I’d cry buckets. Considering that the warranty for my MacBook expired ages ago, I won’t take that risk today. No. Today, I want to thank some other people.

Today, nearly a year since I last penned (typed, whatever) my thoughts, I feel like writing again. I feel like writing about a few people who played massive roles in shaping me. Before anyone thinks that I am shirking responsibility for the disaster that I am, let me clarify - everything bad about me is my own fault. But a large part of anything good, in any aspect of my life, is due to them. Mind you, I am too small to thank them as well, but there isn’t any harm in taking the first step.

Yes, they are teachers because they taught me. But they are much, much more than that. They are like a little speck of light that one sees far in the distance, when on a dark, windy night one attempts to navigate a treacherous road with thorns on either side. They are those who one thinks of when one is almost about to give up. They are beacons of everything right, when everything seems to be going wrong. While I often pretend to have answers, what I only truly have are questions. And what drives me is the quest for answers to them. While these wonderful people may or may not have given me those answers, what they have definitely given me is a tiny prod in a direction that might yield them, those elusive little answers. In short, me being me, these are the people I have enjoyed disobeying the most!

Undoubtedly the person to start with, chronologically and otherwise, would be Mr. Chandrakant Mahajan. To the world, he was my art teacher in school. (Art & craft, to be precise.) But what I will never be able to thank him enough for is teaching me how to think in three dimensions, for teaching me the importance of colour and composition, and for being the first truly creative influence on me. Later in life, engineering was a breeze in no uncertain measure because of him. But most importantly, today, when all I can think is cinema, his early influence is what helps me think in a language that is not English. (Spatio-temporal?) True, I have suffered my share of scolding and insults from him, but all of them contributed to the spellbinding experience that was Mahajan Sir.

At around the same time that my classmates and I were being influenced by Mahajan Sir, there was another adorable delight in our lives. Mrs. Cynthia Torcato. (English and History.) Yes, initially I was absolutely petrified of her. She has referred to me as, amongst other things, a dead duck. And once, when I proudly wore a class monitor badge on my chest, she looked at me and, in the most incredulous tone, said, ‘He is the monitor?’ But slowly, when one looked past the exterior, one realized what a warm heart she had. Observing her, I realized that perhaps being like the idiomatic coconut would hold me in good stead. It truly has, in ways that I can’t reveal here, for fear of defeating its very purpose! She made me smile because of how pure she was. In fact, thinking of her still makes me smile, as I’m sure it does to her other students. I don’t know where Mahajan Sir and Torcato ‘Miss’ are today, but I sincerely thank them for what they have been responsible for.

And then there was a drought. Not in terms of excitement, fun or learning because Fergusson College, All India Shri Shivaji Memorial Society’s College of Engineering and XL Dynamics India Pvt. Ltd. provided plenty of that. One fell in love and visualized breathtaking videos for romantic songs, in one’s head; one suffered heartbreak and walked alone through the Grand Canyon, again in one’s head; one thought of heart-thumping action situations, wove stories around them and reached new emotional and intellectual highs; one realized, through and through, that one wanted to be a filmmaker; most importantly, one learnt to let go. What one did not have is that tiny speck of light in the distance, that strong influence to guide one in the right direction. Perhaps this was possibly the deepest trough in the journey of my life.

Then, suddenly, came Symbiosis Institute of Media & Communication, Prof. Anupam Siddharth and a phase where the best of what Mahajan Sir taught me, that which lay dormant in the deepest recesses of my consciousness for over a decade, began to magically resurface, active like never before. If Mahajan Sir was a gym, Anupam Siddharth was undoubtedly a steroid supplement. Strangely, I hardly had a few hours of classes with him and I have had no personal interaction with him whatsoever. So it is quite hard to pinpoint how and why he has been such a huge influence. Perhaps it was because words like script, story, screenplay, colour, composition, lighting, music, sound, editing - words which have been around me since I can remember, began to make a little more sense. One of my favourite movies of all time, Apocalypse Now, was shown to me in a new light. Hitchcock’s genius was pointed out to me in places where I had not known to look. In fact, how to look, where to look from and what to look for, became painfully obvious, though not any easier. I could have either lamented over how little I interacted with him or I could have considered myself blessed for whatever little I eventually got. Predictably, I chose the latter and marched on.

I love trains. To me they symbolize the ultimate journey. A railway platform does no justice to them. Try standing on plain ground just a couple of feet away from the Deccan Queen when it is at top speed and you will know what I mean. (I did this during a location scouting exercise for a disaster that a tiny number of people now know as ‘Train of Thought’.) When running, a train seems unstoppable, destined to reach wherever it wants to go. And then there is Superman, who can pick up a train, mid-run, and place it on another track, pointing in the opposite direction. While this paragraph so far has aptly demonstrated just how creatively deficient the writer *cough* is, what it has done is speak a little bit of the last person I want to talk about - Mr. Ravi Deshpande. If my dream of being a filmmaker is akin to a train (Scooty, whatever), Ravi Deshpande is Superman. Be it the 20 minutes spent listening to him tell me, in his deep baritone, what was lacking in my short films or the hours spent with him discussing character briefs; every second with him has contributed to me respecting and loving cinema more with every passing moment. I know for a fact that I will never forget what he said in the first five minutes of the first proper shoot that I was a part of, when he assembled the entire unit for a bit before the start. Having said all this, me being me, I still don’t write character briefs. But I do think a little bit more about my characters than I used to. More importantly, I invest emotionally in them. He has played a monumental role in shaping how I perceive cinema and for that, amongst other things, I shall forever be indebted to him.

Job 38:11. Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further. I feel painfully inadequate, as does this post. There is so much more to say about these people. Indeed, there are so many more people to thank! Not having bothered to read what has been written so far, I have a feeling that all of it is inconsistent, probably incoherent. But then, feelings are the ultimate fodder for hearts and minds like mine. (If you haven’t guessed yet, I’m sleepy.) Some day, I’ll do more. Till then, all I can say to them is thank you…