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Back here again!

Just when I was thinking about started blabbering again on this blog, I saw this Insta post by a writer that I like (she writes deeply personal, really beautiful essays) about how the act of writing is such a cathartic experience and yet she often relegates it to the end. She asked why it’s so tempting to let everything get cluttered all over again.

I am just catching up with my somewhat regular life after being completely out of it for about a month. I went to my parents’ city to help them find a new house. As soon as I had accomplished this long-pending task with aplomb, we all got the big C. I am so fucking grateful that we all got a ‘mild’ version (it’s not that mild btw) and we had boosters. My mom was pretty sick for two days but thankfully, started getting a bit better on day 3. Anyway, don’t know when this fucking scourge will leave us all.

However, just right after we were all out of the isolation period, after a long time, I felt a bit carefree/relieved that now it’s done and at least for the next couple of weeks, I don’t have to constantly be on the edge/guard. It was freeing. (Don’t worry, I am still masking up and taking all precautions. I am not stupid, you know!)

I am now back to my city and to my favorite season (Bombay Monsoons! :)). 

BRB. 

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More soon.

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Morning Pages

It’s just been three days since I started doing the ‘Morning Pages’ - à la Julia Cameron’s ‘The Artist’s Way’. I got the book during the first lockdown and I barely read it. And then my brother took it. I started doing the Morning Pages even then but lasted just a couple of days. While Morning Pages are somewhat different but they are still essentially diary entries, which I absolutely fucking HATE. Anyway, I recently heard a podcast which was a conversation between Julia Cameron and Elizabeth Gilbert where they basically talk about both ‘Morning Pages’ and ‘Artist Dates’, and I decided to give the Pages another shot. For the uninitiated, you are supposed to do a longhand writing dump of sorts of literally whatever your first thoughts are in the morning. You are supposed to do this before you become the person you are supposed to become for the day. I usually never become the person I am supposed to be for the day, but I still try and do the pages as early as I possibly can - but only after using the washroom and brushing my teeth. Today, I even ended up making tea before I got down to it. The only way I have been remembering to do them is by keeping a gorgeous notebook right next to my bed (which has ‘American Gothic’, a 1930 painting by Grant Wood, on the cover!). Anyway, I want to give this a very real shot for minimum two months. Let’s see how it goes.    

I just started reading artist Molly Crabapple’s memoir ‘Drawing Blood’. I am supposed to be interviewing Molly soon. I have already done crazy amount of research on her. But I didn’t get a chance to read the book till our scheduled call. But fortunately or unfortunately, we had to reschedule at the last minute. So I am really hoping I can finish the book before we talk. I love everything I have read so far. Of course, I always knew her life is crazy interesting, but it’s so good to read it in her voice in a free flowing prose. It’s already transported me back to Shakespeare and Company in Paris. And somehow, also to Patti Smith’s Just Kids. 

I ended up seeing ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ for the first time yesterday. How could I miss a Nora Ephron 90s movie with Meg Ryan (90s Meg Ryan is my ultimate girl crush) and Tom Hanks! It was just such a sweet, simple pleasure for the dark, rainy afternoon. 

Anyway, back to work!

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I want the whole deal. I want the dead-on-my-feet-wake-up-and-I'm-40. I've spent my whole life chasing after things and knocking at doors... and I'm tired of running towards people. I want to be the place that people come to. I want to make a home for all the knockers and runners. I'm good at that. I'm happy with that. I keep the hearth. That's a word, right? Hearth?

Brooke, Mistress America

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The End of the F***ing World

I had planned to do around 5234 things yesterday. But as my heart started sinking without any fair warning, I spent way too much time inside Tumblr’s rabbit hole after a very long time. And then I decided to shut all the curtains and stay in bed to watch something I had seen before but something that was more than just white noise. I finally landed on ‘The End of the F***ing World’. I saw this show for the first time in yet another transition period - about three years back - and was wholeheartedly in love with it then. And I am completely in love with it now. I am still on season one - with the last couple of episodes left.   

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Where’s the friend’s home?

Watching Abbas Kiarostami’s ‘Where’s the friend’s home?’ gave me so much unadulterated joy. It’s such a beautiful and ultimate ode to friendship. I had seen the movie ages back and of course, had zero memory of it, so it felt like a completely new experience. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when the main protagonist kid (Ahmed) walks around in a rural Iranian village - where the movie is based - with the old guy who makes ornamental, “outdated” doors. The old man keeps talking about the charm of his profession and how nobody cares anymore at all, and then winds up back at home in his workshop to continue doing what he knows best and what he believes in. I am summing it up pretty crudely, it’s such a beautiful, heartwarming sequence.  

How’s everyone else out here? 

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Coffee and Cigarettes

I had a truly terrible, depressing day yesterday. Then in the night, I realised I had watched like one fourth of Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes on Sunday on YouTube, and decided to finish that. I had seen the movie early in my twenties for the first time and loved it so much! It was my first Jarmusch. It might be my fav Jarmusch actually now that I have rewatched it. There is just something so profoundly beautiful about those conversations and silences about and around coffee and cigarettes, those black and white chequered tables and their paraphernalia, the waiting, the melancholy, the humour. Where else would you find Tom Waits and Iggy Pop talking about nothing and everything? Alfred Molina as the ‘genealogical’ distant cousin of Steve Coogan over tea and cigarettes and a phone call with Spike Jonze. Bill Murray moonlighting as a waiter, guzzling coffee, and declaring himself ‘delirium’ to Wu-Tang Clan's RZA and GZA. Punky, broke Cate Blanchett being the insecure cousin of famous, elegant Cate Blanchett over cups of coffee and cigarettes in a hotel lobby (GOD I LOVE HER - especially in ‘I’m Not There’, that Bob Dylan movie). Anyway, I can go on and on. 

The movie somehow made me feel extremely nostalgic about stuff. And to be honest, I don’t even know what stuff. I missed the time (in my early 20s, I am in my mid-30s now to give you some context of the time) where we used to not watch this mindless whatever-the-fuck-is-streaming stuff. Atleast in my life, because of the friends I lived and hung out with at that time, watching movies was almost a sacred ritual. One of our friends used to have this huge ass collection of pirated CDs of world cinema. Just even seeing the covers of those CDs was like entering into a whole new world of stories and possibilities. We used to have these long drunk/stoned discussions about the movies. Long after they were over, they would linger in our wasted and sober minds. 

I am not making any point. I just feel fucking old. 

Anyhow, since the last few days, I have been forcing myself to clean up an interview that I so enjoyed conducting with an artist. It is about 25 pages long so creating even the first draft is taking so long, especially with the excessive doses of procrastination that I feed myself with. So I guess I should get back to work. I have a long night of work and procrastination ahead of me.  

PS: Oh I also re-watched Julie Delpy’s gem of a movie - Two Days in New York. Again I have seen both Two Days in New York and Two Days in Paris ages back, so it was really really lovely to see it again. It’s fucking hilarious. I’ll try to find the Paris one somewhere to stream soon too.   

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MOOD

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Wrote about this travel memory for someone’s newsletter

I was walking over painted rainbows on the crosswalks, looking at almost everything possible, photographing what intrigued me, dropping into a couple of bookstores, and exchanging brief pleasantries with strangers wherever required. This was a day last year, when I was walking aimlessly by myself in the Castro district, one of the liveliest areas and the LGBTQ mecca in San Francisco. Castro is also where the iconic, magnificent Castro Theatre is, which I became quite obsessed with. The walk eventually led me to Mission Dolores Park, a sprawling park in the city where humans and dogs come to leave the world behind. 

I claimed a delicious patch of grass under the generous and thoughtful November sunlight. Before I knew it, I had created my home in the grass. Spending hours and hours in parks doing absolutely nothing is hands down my most favorite thing when I travel, followed by aimless walking, followed by visiting cemeteries! The buildings surrounding the park slowly started disappearing for me. The jangling sounds of the city transformed into poetry of tranquility. Sometimes, I would squint a bit to see happy humans and happier dogs just lying or traipsing around. The park felt like a warm secret we all shared that afternoon. I felt like my whole body was dissolving in the grass. I was floating. I tried to read a few pages of a random book I had picked up at a bookstore in Castro. It had a trippy green cover with the title - 'This is your brain on anxiety'. But I closed it soon enough. I just wanted to be in the moment and completely relish the rare peace and pure fucking happiness I was experiencing. I felt whole in those moments - not lacking in anything, not wanting anything. I was completely free of the phantoms of the past and unaware of the dystopia of the future. 

Amongst many, many, many beautiful experiences I've had while travelling, I used this particular one during the lockdown as some sort of a symbol to remind me of the life outside. It calmed me and made me feel tremendously grateful. Don't take me wrong though - I spent most of the lockdown blatantly cribbing about everything, ignoring 'pep talks', hating the government more vehemently than ever (especially for the hell they created for the migrant workers), complaining about spending the lockdown alone, and then refusing to step out when the lockdown was lifted. Basically, going through a rollercoaster of emotions, just like almost everyone else, before finally achieving the combination of feeling almost dead inside and yet pretty much functional. However, when things got way too muddled in my head, I held on to this one memory - may be because it was the most recent travel memory, may be because it involved a park, or may be because it involved unalloyed freedom and peace.     

Also, here is some of the stuff I watched/read/listened to that I enjoyed during this lockdown: WATCHED/RE-WATCHED: Derry Girls (THE BEST), Olla, Wild Tales, A girl walks home alone at night, Cleo 5 to 7, Kiki's Delivery Service, The Florida Project, Parts Unknown, Bored to Death, Mandi, Tootsie, Superbad, The Meyerowitz Stories, Can you ever forgive me?, Say Anything, Taxi Teheran, Enlightened   READ: Maus, My Brilliant Friend, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Kitchen Confidential, a lot of Roger Ebert online (IMO, nobody writes about movies the way he did) LISTENED TO: Gem Fletcher's podcast 'The Messy Truth', Women Who Travel podcast, I also made a lot of playlists on my Spotify for the first time actually. And listened to some of my favorites - Leonard Cohen, Yasmine Hamdan, Anoushka Shankar, Beyonce, Billie Eilish, Joni Mitchell, Peggy Lee, among others!    

Thanks for having me here. What an absolutely lovely initiative by Rohini/The Alipore Post! :)

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Lockdown Notes: Olla  (short film by Ariane Labed)

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Lockdown Notes: This morning

I am procrastinating. I brushed aside the jangling sound of my morning alarm. I slept for an extra hour. I had vagrant memories of the long, complicated and yet fulfilling dream I had last night. My tea got spoilt because of the over-ambitious use of ginger. I was almost relieved. I just wanted the morning, before it all starts, to extend its shelf life for me. The temperature is just so perfect right now. 

I put another batch on the stove, this time without ginger though. I munched on some soaked almonds, chewing on slowly, and while looking out the window at shimmering leaves, busy households, drying clothes, a lot of wires, restless birds and may be more. Last night, I tilted my head a bit more than usual and I saw the moon perched right on top of a giant coconut tree. For a second, I thought the tree would fall, taking the moon with it. It didn’t. I am never able to see the moon from my window usually, so it felt like quite a night after a lot of nights. 

I am really enjoying the rare peace this morning. Finally, I listened to some Lykke Li, washed my face (decided against my morning shower), changed my clothes, grabbed my laptop and came to the other room to work.

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Lockdown Notes: Mumbai Cyclone + US Protests

We are now inundated with massive cyclone warnings in Mumbai, which feel different from the usual 20,000 flood warnings we get every year during the monsoon. That’s because this is an actual cyclone, and something that apparently has never ever happened in Mumbai. Secondly, with everything that’s going on, it feels like such a high possibility that it will be pretty disastrous. And if it is, it will be so so so fucking bad for the people in the slum areas, in those makeshift homes and hospitals already dealing with the batshit crazy circumstances including covid of course. Hopefully, it won’t get so bad.   

I have been following the US protests, I mean how do you not follow it. While racism is a much, much larger and more deep-rooted issue that plagues us as a human race (and I know like probably 1 percent about it), what’s happening in the US right now reminded me of what happened in India recently (I mean it’s been happening since eternity but got fuelled like crazy recently) - pogrom based on religion, gross abuse of power, police brutality, most vicious and atrocious men “leading” the country to complete regression and disaster. Even though I just went for literally one protest in Mumbai when this issue was at its peak, I felt so fucking alive and almost connected to everyone in the city. Despite all my pessimism, I felt at least a tiny speck of hope. Every fucking thing is so horrible and painful right now in the world, but it’s sort of amazing to see people getting together in the US, expressing solidarity, and fighting for a crucial cause at a time when being out on the streets, being around each other is scary due to covid. 

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Lockdown Notes: Cleo 5 to 7

I really, really enjoyed Agnes Varda’s lovely ‘Cleo 5 to 7′ btw. 

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Lockdown Notes: My Brilliant Friend & Maus & Pigeons

In the initial chaotic days, my few minutes of assured peace would come in the form of sitting on my reading chair and escaping to a small poor town outside Naples, Italy and witnessing the evolving, complicated friendship of Lila and Lenu and all the other neighbourhood drama, through Elena Ferrante’s ‘My Brilliant Friend’. 

When the book ended, I actually felt a bit sad and directionless. This wasn’t because the book was so great or anything (it was pretty awesome just to be clear!). It kinda felt like losing a friend. I know it sounds dramatic but this is the fucking end of the world motherfuckers and I am not going to justify feeling deeply attached to a book or a family of pigeon.

A couple of weeks back, a super fat pigeon laid two eggs in the small area outside my bedroom where one half of the AC unit is. Finally the babies came out and stuff. Since the last few days, multiple crows had been trying to snatch the babies to eat them. Whenever I heard the pigeon fluttering to fight the crows, I would shoo the crows away with a broom. But I guess at some point, some kind of massacre took place. And this morning, the pigeon was gone and I saw one baby’s dead body lying on the deck. It made me sad and completely grossed out at the same time. 

In other news, I am now reading Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel masterpiece ‘Maus’, finally. And it’s everything I imagined it to be. 

Overall, things are still fucking weird but calmer. Overall, I am always low-key low but I have few decent spurts of energy/productivity when I try to pack in all the work I can. Overall, what the actual fucking fuck is happening.  

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Lockdown Notes - Derry Girls

The first few days of the lockdown (which began about a month ago) were fucking messy. Among many other emotions, I was overwhelmed with the thought of being alone even though I have lived on my own for the last 7-8 years. While I have now “settled down” into the lockdown, the beginning of the whole thing really felt like the fucking end of the world. 

Over the last one month of the lockdown, I have definitely not gained any life-changing insights or done any creative projects or spotted any wildlife outside my house except for the same old dumb pigeons, ugly crows and one lizard who had earnestly hoped to share my living room till I rudely threw her out with a jhadoo. 

Most of my time, like almost everyone I presume, goes in cleaning, laundry, cooking, and finishing bread & butter work etc. etc. Some of it also goes in having conversations and exchanging GIFs (my most preferred form of communication) with a few people from the friends and family clan. I mostly complain to everyone about my low blood pressure and low energy. The novelty - which is definitely not the right word to use in this context - of everything, including fear and anxiety, is wearing off. I feel almost functional and almost dead inside which is a good combination to have right now IMO. The only thing which gives me an adrenaline rush these days is when my online grocery order goes through after multiple attempts. It makes me feel things. But in the overall scheme of things, I am definitely doing okay and I am grateful for every single thing and person I have right now to get through this time. Okay, I’ll now stop weaving the boring web about my daily emotions during the lockdown and move on to talk about ‘Derry Girls’.   

‘Derry Girls’ is easily one of the best things I have watched ever, and it especially felt like a giant gift from the fucking universe during these times. It made me hear my own weird cackling laugh after so many days. And yes, I did question if the laughter was a result of me finally giving up on my few remaining marbles. But now, after what seems like a reasonable passage of time, I can confirm that it really was elicited purely by the show. ‘Derry Girls’ is raucously funny. On the surface, it is about the crazy-ass shenanigans of these four teenage girls and one boy in Derry (Northern Ireland), set amidst the sectarian conflict of the 90s between Protestants and Catholics. But there is so much more. Their wild plans and actions make them transcend the hard reality around them and land them into hilarious, hysterical soups which are completely unpalatable for their families and school authorities (all equally funny, eccentric characters). 

The show’s writing is brilliant. And in its own weird way, the show is also about writing (there’s personal diary writing; poetry writing about dogs, boys’ asses and glass dolls; editing a magazine; coming-out-of-the-closet essay writing etc.)  

Okay, without going all Roger Ebert on you (who I love so fucking much by the way), I highly recommend the show. It gave me hope and lots of laughs - both of which are super hard to come by right now. Sláinte Motherfuckers!!!

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Ghost World

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‘This is how I win’

I have been wanting to watch Uncut Gems since 31st January, the day it was released on Netflix in India. Everyday I kept postponing watching it because like a true-blue weirdo, I wanted the timing and setting to be perfect. I finally got a chance to see it last to last night, and it was so fucking worth the wait.   

The poetry of Uncut Gems is in its mayhem. Safdie Brothers have created a series of volcanoes that keep erupting with so much gusto and beauty in Uncut Gems. My heart was in my mouth pretty much all the time. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Howard (Adam Sandler) hides to surprise his girlfriend (Julia Fox), and because of the anxiety trip built by the movie’s rocketspeed drama till then, I kept thinking something is about to happen. Even when they start sexting, it took me a moment to believe that nothing was going to erupt. The volatile action and pace of the movie is just mindblowing that even when nothing tumultuous is happening, it’s hard to stay calm, and yet there is a comic undertone throughout the movie! 

The movie takes hustling to a whole new level. 

I have ALWAYS loved Adam Sandler especially since I saw Punch Drunk Love, and no shitty production of his has made me change my mind about it. He is incredible in the movie. This character was written for him!