Some Nights

Some nights go exactly the way you'd hoped they would. Some nights are given as karmic presents for the good you must have done in another life, because you certainly can't think of anything you did in this one worth this smile sitting across from you. Some nights begin with that roiling cauldron of anticipation and dread and fear and longing - yet end with a quiet gratitude towards the powers that be. Some nights everything that could have gone wrong decides not to, and you start scratching your head wondering if you wandered into some body else's night, or even into a Twilight Zone episode staring you! Some nights you feel blessed to be on this here planet. Some nights you forgive God his mismanagement. Some nights are like a mosaic of faith's perfection, glittering in your mind long after they're done. Some nights make you search for the right words and actually find them. Some nights remind you that better times are coming, you just have to have faith. Some nights you go to sleep with a big fat smile and don't dream - at all, you don't need to. Some nights are just so sweet you want to smile and hug them. Some nights, you feel like the best possible version of you, instead of the ogre you normally see in the mirror. Some nights - are perfect.

Be Still

Be still young heart, at times there is nothing to do but be still. When the world becomes unknowable and the rhythms move in flux and the rains never cease. Be still, my dear, never will you have to fear. There is nothing you cannot move, nothing you cannot smile through. Watch the palms flicker in the breeze and the rain sussurate off the balcony tiles and the crows flap and twirl like tango dancers on the street. Forget where life is taking you, whatever it has in store, whoever you may have to face, whomever you are waiting for. For now be still. Take long sips of coffee and rest your head on the window sill, watch the sky and be still.

Another work rejection today, another path closed forever. Is there a worse feeling for an actor than to be found inadequate by people who don't know what they're looking for in the first place? To be judged and weighed and discarded just like that? Yes, there are worse feelings, young fool. The world is a dark place, yet your world is full of light and laughter and pretty pretty smiles.

Be wise, my dear. A rejection means freedom from waiting, freedom to step forward and continue. A rejection means - nothing, except that another person will feel regret one day for passing you by. Be wise my dear, never give in to fear, stride ever onward with a soldier's pace. Wipe disappointment off your face and show the world your truer cast. We all feel betrayed by our expectations and our hopes, but they are not to blame. They are the only renewable source of energy in the world. Even after a man has lost it all, he can still find it in himself to hope to rise again.

Be wild and free, young blood. Be more than the world around you, more than people expect you to be. Be yourself joyfully, and see the world bow and ask you for a dance.

"I hate that I like you!"
I didn't know whether to smile or duck from the expression on her face. Then she put her head down, with that cascade of black hair veiling her off from me like a purdah. For a second I actually thought she would look up with her eyes milky white and start speaking in ancient Aramaic with that Exorcist voice. But she just snorted a little wine out her nose trying not to laugh and looked up at me, mimed throwing something at me. Good sign. Anytime a woman seems to mime violence my way, or indulge in a little bit of slapping or shoving, I know things are going well.
"Interesting," I mumbled in my best channeling of Humphrey Bogart, with that sort of "you left your lipstick in my bathroom" expression.
"You really suck."
"I really do. Why exactly?"
"Because here I am, telling you I like you, and you're looking for a waiter."
"Only because this announcement calls for champagne."
"Shut up! I hate you."
"I know. You've mentioned that once or twice."
"I don't want champagne."
"I know that, silly girl. I want to pay the check."
"Why? I like this place."
"Well I don't. The lights are the wrong color for kissing."
"Who said anything about kissing?"
"I did, just now. Didn't you hear?"
"You're a bastard."
"No, my parents are happily married and very proud of their little puppy."
She giggled and took a long final swallow of wine and tottered to her feet like a queen who had gone slumming in a tavern and thoroughly enjoyed herself.
"Well I need to use the bathroom."
"Good luck to you, my dear."
"You're supposed to walk me there."
"I trust you not to beat up anybody on the way, love. Or to run away."
She slipped into my embrace, all five foot ten inches of delight and contrary to her earlier, rather militant views about public displays of affection, kissed me as thoroughly as I had ever been kissed. When she walked away, her step was steady and my head was rolling, like I'd done all the drinking. Goddess, what a delightful puzzle are your daughters.
The waiter came over with a knowing smirk that I returned like a happy fool. All around us were groups of people with their eyes glued to whichever football match was going on that night. Don't ask me because I wouldn't remember even on a night I didn't have a beautiful woman making my head spin. Paid the check, tipped the waiter a little extra, slapped him on the back and strode out the bar smiling at the maitre'd, and the hostess, and the hotel janitor sweeping in the corner, and the receptionist, and the door man, and the valet who took my ticket and ran off into the pouring rain.
It had been a perfect night. The kind of night that the gods decreed could exist only a few times in a man's life, I suppose. And as I waited for Her Gloriousness to emerge from the powder room, I felt that wonderful anticipatory murmur in my stomach. I smiled at that reminder that for all my charm, and all my experience, somethings should always remain unexpected and blessed.
There she came, hair flying like the banner behind a charging knight, and stride as determined. I didn't know whether to brace my feet or tuck tail and run. She click clacked down the stairs and click clacked into my arms again, once more proving that she really didn't mind the public so much when the affection came calling.
"My dear girl, you're drunk. And I am as sober as a monk in a well."
She giggled and traced her hands down my chest.
"You say the silliest things."
"Anything for a giggle."
"Take me home, sayer of silly things."
I tipped the valet, held open her door and put the car in gear. She grabbed a hold of my iPod and began to shuffle through my music. I loved when she did that. I don't know why. She seemed to have the closest taste in music I had encountered to mine in years. Pretty soon, we were cruising down on that long road by the sea on the wed roads, with our windows down, and that thick loamy air buffeting our faces, and the Roots' new album beating up the speakers.
"So how long will I have to wait before you ask me out again," I asked.
"Why do I have to ask you out?"
"Well we've established that you're the aggressive one betwixt us, so the onus of responsibility is on you."
Her laughter caressed my face as light as the wind, as soft as her hand on the back of my neck.
"Betwixt? Really? Who used that in proper conversation in the last century other than you?"
"Fair wench, as I tire of repeating, it is a part of my antediluvian charm."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It means shut up and kiss me again."
"You want more of that, you need to pull over or get me home faster."
"Yes ma'am."
Pedal to devil, and the metal on the floor. Behold, fair drunk lass's apartment door.
I parked the car in her building telling the watchman I only needed to go up to use the restroom, and would be down in fifteen. He grunted in disgust and waved me up and away.
She waited by the elevator, still and expectant.
"You're coming up." It wasn't a question.
"The Spanish Inquisition couldn't keep me."
"Good. Whatever that's supposed to mean."
Ding the elevator, bing she's pulling me in. Back to kissing.
She opens her door, and out jumps a fat labrador.
Pet pet pet, nuzzle nuzzle nuzzle. Get off me pooch, I've got work to do.
"Wait here," she points to the bed and smiles. "Don't move."
"Frozen in anticipation madam."
Tick tock tick tock tick. I lie back on the bed and stare at her ceiling. Then her hair appears and then her face. Fuck off ceiling I'm busy.
When we come up for air she says she wants some water.
I go to the fridge, push away the labrador from my ass crack. Pour two glasses, push away the labrador from my crotch. And smiling enter her room.
And there she lies, as perfect as only the Goddess could make her - snoring softly under her lazy fan.
I nudge her with my foot. I put the glasses down and kiss her cheek and call her name. She smiles in her sleep and her snores fade away, her breathing deepening into the tempo of true slumber.
A laugh escapes me and I don't begrudge it. I leave the water straighten my clothes and head down.
As I drive off the guard smiles and waves.

What I Like These Days

Long hours on an empty road, and a cup of cutting chai at the end of it. Hip-Hop music bleeding through my speakers, loud enough to shake my soul : Common, 2pac, Nas, Jay-Z for the obvious choices but I bump The Roots new album, my iPod serendipitously played the entire Doggystyle album while on shuffle! And my car transformed into '64 Cadillac, chromed out and rollin'. I play B.O.B. and Drake and J. Cole and my smile gets wider and wider. I've even started flashing the peace sign coupled with that New York head nod 'Sup to people stuck in traffic around me. Bombay City knows not what to do with the kid.

I love my new Chevy. Twenty years old, but she still got it. A little love, a little paint and a whole lot of toil, and you should see her. Girl looks mean. Can't go too fast but like Kanye said, "Ain't no rush to get grown, pump your brakes and drive slow homie", which is exactly what I do (plus she can't really go that fast). But when you drive a car like that, with the joy she brings me, I don't need to go anywhere - I am the destination.

The monsoon, brothers and sisters, the monsoon. I had forgotten what a Monsoon (capitol absolutely) used to be before I moved back here to the tropics. We're talking wrath of God rain, wash you down and knock over trees rain. It's so beautiful when it catches you out on the street. For the first ten seconds you hate the world, and then it washes even that hate away until you're left smiling, wet, and fucking care-free. The world's problems and your day's stresses just do not matter for that moment. Granted it turns Bombay into a fucking nightmare but we're Indians - we get used to it.

Did I mention coffee? I must have. There have been many odes to Coffee that I have written, and yet...it's never enough. How I adore thee, I refuse to count the ways. You wake me up, and supercharge my days, you fill me more life than the absent Sun's rays. You make my breath smell like coffee bean trays. And my poetry stinks even after I drink you, but I find I don't cares.

The fact that I'm writing again. God bless the ghosts of Hemingway and Billy Shakes, and Shelley and Yeats, and my main man Wallace Stevens. God bless them for watching over me and making sure I strayed not too far away from our beloved Pen. I'm grateful that I found my way back to this art I love, and this desire to be better at it. I love it. Now I just need to dust off the old sketchbook and get that sketch hand strong once more.

The trailer for the new Stallone movie "the Expendables". Damn! Have you fellows seen that shit? Looks friggin AWESOME! It's probably going to suck but best believe this man-child shall be at the first day first show with coffee (of course) in hand and a giggle prepared. Nicholson can act his ass off, Spacey and Pacino ain't no slouches either, Bardem is the dude and Robert Downey Jr. is the king - but Stallone? Stallone is the ultimate dude. Ay yo Adrian, I'm back! Word! Welcome home Sly, welcome home. Show em how it's done, because his action scenes aren't blurry and annoying like all Hollywood action scenes have become, with the camera shaking so hard and fast you get a headache before you get a clue. Stallone don't speed the camera up, he slow it down. He wants you to see him knock a mother#$#!'s teeth in.

And many more things, but I'd rather be doing them than talking about them. So I'm going to go and do that right here, and I'll tell y'all about it tomorrow.

One love...

Sometimes

Sometimes I wonder why I wonder so much, when all my muscles get weighed down just by the pressure of my thoughts. Sometimes I drink one coffee too many and start feeling ants crawling around behind my eyes and an itch right under my foot. Sometimes I leave the lights off in the bathroom so I can't see the mirror. Sometimes I write so badly I vow never to write again. Sometimes I can see my name in lights and a beautifully wrapped book with my name on it in the hands of a pretty girl. Sometimes I'm just plain shallow. Sometimes I can spend the day reading Batman comics and think it a day well spent. Sometimes the loneliness and anticipation that go with my acting job get so heavy I want to sink into the ground and give it all up. Sometimes I drive into rush hour traffic just to feel like I'm part of the herd. Sometimes I want to leap out of my car and start dancing on the roof. Sometimes there's a whisper in the air just behind my left ear, like someone said my name and then disappeared. It's always a female voice. Sometimes I wonder about that. Sometimes I actually believe in destiny. Sometimes I feel ridiculous for having done so. Sometimes I accept party invitations just to remind myself why it's better to grab a good book and stay home. Sometimes I actually have a lot of fun. Sometimes I catch myself thinking Bombay is a good city to be in now and then. Sometimes I look and love every single thing I see. Sometimes I walk into my apartment and for the first time since I left home at seven years old, feel like I'm returning to MY home. Sometimes I feel like shit, and wish I could forget, and just be normal for a bit. Sometimes I can count the number of friends I feel I have without raising a single finger. Sometimes the love overwhelms me. Sometimes I pick up my phone and go through my contact list, and wonder who I should call just to hear another human voice, then I switch the phone off. Sometimes I watch silly Hollywood movies and eat chips and feel completely at peace. Sometimes I actually slow down when walking in the rain, while everybody dashes around. Sometimes I dream of her, sometimes I actually see her face. Sometimes when I sleep I do so on the floor with no quilt and no pillows. Sometimes I wake up and feel like I've slept for a week straight and the most important moments of my life have been missed. Sometimes my phone rings and I refuse to answer it or look to see who's calling, imagining instead who I wish it was. Sometimes I wish I wouldn't think so much. Sometimes I wish I wouldn't smoke so much. Sometimes I wish I wouldn't write so little or sketch so rarely. Sometimes I actually believe I'm gonna rule the world with my eyes closed, in slippers sipping Sangria wearing a black robe. Sometimes I want to leave the country and travel to the Shaolin Temple and ask them to teach me kung-fu. Sometimes I want to pick a fight just to get knocked out. Sometimes I have nothing to say and I just stare and smile and wonder when the other person will figure it out and shut the fuck up. Sometimes I write without pausing, like this, and read back what I've written and start laughing. Sometimes I think - time to look for a good shrink. Sometimes I smile and start over.

Lonely Friday Night

i get lost in these streets,
with no one looking to find me,
every night's another trial,
that I lose, guilty of crime, me
and all I used to think defined me
dissolved somewhere between goodbye
and the first time you kissed me and smiled
we broke curfews and drew shadows
like curtains and breaths like sips of wine
we poured into each others mouths
everywhere we huddled was a little shrine
to hope and love and a future and all
the silly little things that seem sublime
to a boy whose sixteen lost in first love
with the scent of your hair on my mind
that still hasn't faded. i never touched
your heart, you never returned mine
now these girls wonder why my
eyes never return their smiles, and we
never seem to make it past the point
labels get attached and roles defined
i'm sorry i kill us quick, darlings, before
your smiles shine in my eye likes hers shined
and fills me with that traitorous hope
that broke my heart and left me blind
wandering these streets hunting for a scent
i know to be hers but hope never to find.
dear god i'm strong but helpless under these
chains you chose to bind me.
release my heart, release my love,
and let a jasmine breeze find me.

Tongue Tied Up

They leave me reeling, women do. Tongue tied up and hurting. I know this may not be the most original subject for a piece. It certainly isn't an original predicament for us men. But I swear to the Goddess, every time I talk to these here girls feels like the first time. Each conversation begins with me not knowing a damn thing about speaking to women. Like I'm sailing in uncharted waters with no map, no depth awareness and no destination in sight. And if I like her, let's through in some shallow reef beds and a squall on the way, shall we?

I wonder if there will every come a time when I can breeze through a conversation, hitting all the right notes with precisely the right rhythm. Instead, even when a conversation is going well, and her hands keep fixing her hair, and my smile keeps getting Cheshire wider, I feel like I'm a musician performing a piece that I've never played before, but one the audience knows intimately and refuses to let me look at the sheet music. Too dramatic? Well how about a song they've requested only without telling me. I'm supposed to guess what they want to hear. And I can't mess up neither, because then smiles will disappear and frowns parade out the door.

Dear Lord, if I didn't love the delicious awkwardness and slow conversation tango of it all, I would no doubt have taken vows of chastity and secluded myself upon a forbidding forbidden mountain-top with only my ice-hard nipples for company, the second I hit puberty. Now there's an image! I still remember the first time I saw that first girl smile, when I was a boy, and had no idea why a girl I've seen smile before, has suddenly smiled like she's never smiled before. And what's going on in my pants? Do we ever really outgrow puberty, or does it all get camouflaged under practiced poise and what-we-think-to-be Humphrey Bogart swagger?

I can get them to smile. I can get them to laugh. I can stare into their eyes without feeling cliched, and with absolute certainty, and absolute joy, get lost amidst the twinkles. What I wanna know, what I'm writing to understand, is what in the name of Cupid's waxed testicles happens to me after that? Is it that I snap back to a banal, unpalatable reality so abruptly that it ruins my optimism and poise? Does my cynical mind fast forward through scenes of the entire relationship/association to come, up until the ultimate undramatic uninspiring end (whichever end of the uninspiring spectrum it may fall) and revolt in denial, and in desire for an Indiana Jones romance complete with bullets whizzing by and fisticuffs aplenty and hot Nazi torturers and eternally witty banter throughout?

I know not. But I need an intervention, or a clue, right fucking now. Life cannot be a Milan Kundera novel, and it shouldn't. I don't think I have the maturity or the joie de vivre to see that much drama through. I'd probably ask for the check and chicken out at her doorstep.

Ha! At least I amuse myself. It's either that or prescription pills and a silly looking psychiatrist. Pray for me...

Soul Scraping

I haven't been writing. Everyday I sit myself down and say "today" only to find myself on my bed and night with all my thoughts unsorted as sleep takes me under. It's been months.

It's always struck me as strange and a little disturbing how swiftly my attention shifts from intense and riveted to uncaring and superficial. There are many things that I was good at, that I loved to do, that I felt I had real talent for, that simply fell by the wayside on my journey towards today. Talents lie dusty in my attic, cobwebs stretch across my dreams, and the man I am today is not the man I'd hoped to be.

I loved writing this blog. I don't know why, and I know it wasn't the sort of content that most people wanted to read or even had any interest in, but that even a few did and responded and question made me feel a little more confident about the dearest of my talents - writing.
So after many many unforgivable months of ignoring my metaphoric pen, here I sit, fresh out of the shower with the taste of coffee still thick on my lips, wondering just what the hell it is that I have to say.

But I didn't start this blog to say anything at all. I'm no preacher, no expert on any subject, nor very interesting in the important ways. I'm just another flawed wanderer searching for an oasis in this here desert of life. I write to understand that wandering. I write to understand the journey. And in the end I write just to write. This isn't soul-searching I do, it's soul-scraping.
Writing takes me away. And where I go there are no truths, nor any lies, and words can describe and overcome all evils. Where I go I am forgiven my false, and my suppressions, and my constant pretending. My skin doesn't writhe with the inertia of this life, and my dreams don't scratch at the insides of my eyelids, like good dogs locked in bad kennels.

I go to a place where she never walked away from my disregard, and she smiles slowly like I remember. And we walk down fragrant, monsoon-wet streets, our bodies fitting like jigsaw pieces side by side, her chin on my shoulder and her laughter in my soul. Then I return...and take a breath. All I can hear is my unquiet silence, and the traffic outside, and the petulant staccato of my keyboard, as I struggle to finish writing before my mind wanders away again.

That may be the truest reason behind these posts - the desire to nail my thoughts down. To make them sit still long enough for me to have a look at them. Will that interest anyone? Doubtful. But I'll be here, now and again, scratching at my third eye, wondering if there're any eyedrops for my condition.

Going through my old notebooks....

I came across these fragments and unfinished pieces. The notebooks themselves are falling apart with age and neglect. Thought this would be a good place to preserve and clean them up.

***

Lonelier than the people I see
Feeding pigeons in the sun
Whistling to the squirrels
Begging them to come.

I sit in a crumbling tower of dreams,
Behind a forever-locked gate.
Staring at the empty pages
Smoking the cigarettes I hate.

Trying hard to capture a moment
Feeling unworthy every time.
I look into mirrors to remember my face
Reading words that can never be mine.

Who am I pretending to be today?
A poet, an actor, a wandering flame
Trapped in a stillness of spirit
Looking for something to blame

Searching for my corner of Beautiful
Somewhere to hide the love I keep.
To greet the dawn with a smile
And dive a thousand kisses deep.

***

You remain hidden from me,
Like all the hopes
We dare not breathe.
Sometimes I catch your scent
Lingering. A wisp of magic
In a mundane day.
I see a smile I recognize
On an unfamiliar face.

I search through Coltrane
To understand the meaning
Hidden just beyond the words
I don’t quite understand.
All these words…
What happened to my voice?

I can’t force a picture to smile
Or a glass of wine to be truthful.
We are all locked within
Parodies of ourselves.
Searching not for a way out,
But to trap another within.

***

Where do your dreams take you
Love?
Into the meadows we were banished from.
Into the songs the Seraphim hum.
Feathers on the summer wind,
Where do your dreams take you
Love?

Do you see my face, there
just beyond the Light?
Where all the things you wish for dwell.
Waves of hope against the darkness swell.
Do you see my face there
Love?

I cannot make the words beautiful.
I cannot make them sing the songs I hear.
You are the beauty and the song
The flame of my hearth.
You are my burning bush,
my desert cave.
My brimming cup of nectar.
You are my final goddess
My last loss of faith.

The Silence of Us

There are silences within us
We, who reflect only moonlight.
Silences they cannot drown
Or wash with television,
Silences that never whisper
Music that never stops.
I do not remember
My dreams.

I search the faces,
For the bright ones,
With eyes like drops of nectar.
We gather the sheets, and
Whisper “Good night,”
to empty beds.
Linger with the shattered
Things, and whimpered dreams.
Away from the silence.

This begins with guarded smiles
Safe distances, excuses wrapped
In Hookah smoke and Turkish coffee,
And two perfect cups of lemonade
Wearing matching smiles.
Words dancing to her voice.
Fingers weaving around each other
Like dragonflies in the sun
I take her eyes in mine
And forget to look away.

A song sung by this woman of quiet,
Distant places, and desert suns.
And hair that curls and flows
Like the pen of an Arabian poet.
A woman deeper than all of this,
A sound vanishing beyond itself

She sprinkles me across her sky.
Jasmine dreams in a secret garden.She gives me the wordsI told my ears to forget.
A prayer calling its priest,
As I take her in my arms,
And welcome her home.

This Is It

I decided to finally stop procrastinating and go see Michael Jackson’s “This is It” tonight.

Moment of silence…………………………………………………………………

Words cannot begin to describe the nostalgia, the euphoria, the overwhelming shaking of the booty, and the heartbreak I felt whilst watching. I have loved that man’s music ever since the first day I heard “Thriller” playing, in July 1991. In Swedish House Dormitory at Kodaikanal International School. I was all of seven and a half years old, and I had told my parents the year before that I wanted to go away to boarding school. I have no idea what had gotten into me to leave my comfortable home and my doting parents and move to the other end of the bloody country, up a mountain, and into a boarding school.

I remember the green stucco walls of the dorm. I remember the alien sounds coming out of the Tamil maids as they cajoled, pleaded, screamed, and jovially pushed all of us into the cafeteria for dinner. I remember the white tiles on the floor that smelled like spilled spaghetti sauce and Coca-Cola spills. I remember the heady aromas wafting out of the kitchen which wasn’t really separated from the cafeteria by anything except one of those saloon doors that they show in the old Western films. And every now and then, Mary, the chef’s wife would step through like Clint Eastwood and thump unidentifiable stuff into the bowls in front of us.

I remember that first dinner, sitting at a table alone, watching everyone so comfortable with each other and themselves. I tried to understand all the jokes, decipher the stories being told and the references they used. I knew nothing, and noone. I had grown up on a pretty secluded farm, with my only contact with kids my age at the local public school where we all had worn uniforms and not really talked to each other.

That’s when I heard the music. Michael Jackson playing on the most beat up tape recorder I had ever seen. But this kid called Dhanus Nair, who would later become my room-mate and my friend, put it on and did an impromptu jig in the middle of the cafeteria. Our dorm parent, Mrs. Lazarus, a tall statuesque, Amazon of a woman (who later become as close to me as my own mother, through my time in that dorm, and later, as I moved on, grew up and grew out) come storming through the doors like one of the ghouls breaking down the door in the video. But I, sitting alone in the corner, was the only one who noticed her smile when she turned away again to walk out after chastising Dhanus.

That smile was the first moment I felt the weight and the fear lift off my chest. And I’ve always associated that feeling with Michael Jackson’s music. It’s one of those strange psychological associations that happens. Doesn’t have to be logical, doesn’t even have to matter to anyone else.

Till this day, all I have to do, to feel like a kid with an entire universe of adventure ahead of him, is to play Michael Jackson.

You were an angel Michael. An angel we raised up then tore down and threw away. How we wailed when you died…how we beat our chests. But what we cried for wasn’t that you were gone, we cried that we had ever known a moment of doubt about you. That the world made us stop loving you as much, even for a little while.

Forgive us.

And thank you.

For the music, for that feeling, for the love.

You were it.

Have fun teaching the angels how to Moonwalk.

Something in the AIr

I feel the weather changing. There was a promise of relief in the wind, just the barest brush of better times ahead. Bombay never really gets cold, but the wind tonight seemed to promise some respite in the future. I hope so. I am not a man suited to this humidity and dust. It’s been only a week since we all came down from Rishikesh, and every morning I wake, I can feel the siren call of the mountains throbbing against my eyes just after they open. In that half moment betwixt slumber and when I toss aside the sheets, I can almost taste the thickness of the mountain air in my mouth.

It’s strange how I’m always wishing to be somewhere other than I am. I wonder if it’s my own personal purgatory, or do others have a similar ache in their hearts now and then. When they look around a room, or stop at a red light and stare outside their cars, do they long to be anywhere but in their present circumstances. I’ve been working at not being so disconnected with my present, and am proud to say that there have been mostly successes on that front. But my rambunctious mind and it’s endless, bounding energy to skip and twirl and disappear into fantasy, like a pup chasing into a thicket after a rabbit, it always takes me by surprise and snap! I’m away in another world.

I found myself doing that very strongly this last Thursday night. I was invited to attend the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image’s Eleventh Film Festival. Truth be told, I went more because the opening film was going to be Soderberg’s “The Informant”, a film I’d been jonesing to see ever since I saw the trailer earlier this year. But before the screening, there was a long drawn-out introduction and opening ceremony, with many speeches and many moments of applause. It was very well done, heartfelt, a bit sloppily staged, but sincere. And yet for the life of me, I couldn’t bring myself to actually pay attention to my surroundings.

Thankfully the movie started and gripped me from the first moment. Matt Damon who, after watching him in the “Talented Mr. Ripley”, I have come to greatly admire, was unbelievable in “The Informant”. The man altered everything about himself, body-language, mannerisms, idiosyncrasies, tics, speech pattern, even his body shape. It was a humbling experience watching an actor inhabit his role so completely. Realized I have a long, long way to go before I can even claim to be an actor worth the mentioning. If you get a chance, watch this film. Aside from “Frost/Nixon” it’s probably the best film I’ve seen this year.

After the screening was a dinner, but everybody seemed to only want to head home. So I peeled away too, took in a nice quiet meal at a nearby restaurant. Something very relaxing about eating alone in a dimly lit joint, with smiling waiters and perfectly decanted port sparkling crimson in a glass. There’s definitely something in the air these days. I don’t quite know what it is, only it fills me with the oddest surge of hope. As if something’s coming, or has already arrived. I keep walking into rooms hoping to find IT there, or turning corners hoping to glimpse it.

Now to be away. Brand new book sitting on my bedside, and a steaming cup of kahwa. My apartment smells like champa, and the wind’s tapping softly on the windows, asking to be let in. I think I’ll oblige. Excuse me…

Regret

She told me that her favorite song was “Again” by Lenny Kravitz. Her voice was a soft whisper in my ear, and her body a softer one beside mine, separated only by the arm of one chair and every fear that glistened in her eyes. We were both high on more than weed, and we were both exhausted, and we weren’t alone, but we might as well have been. The laughter of the other’s around us, their jokes and their back-slapping camaraderie merely added to our isolation. They were no different than the moon flitting in and out of the swaying branches of the trees above, and the moths and the candles locked in their deadly tango. The night it seemed, and all its children were there for us, and for us alone.

Or at least, it was so in my mind.

Now it’s the following day and I’m listening to the song, again and again. “All of my life, where have you been? I wonder if I’ll, ever see you again. And if that day comes, I know we could win. I wonder if I’ll, ever see you again.” And I wonder about a girl who could love those lines so much. Where every pleasure was deferred, every wish was killed by negativity before it could ever take flesh. The search for the perfect love, the finding of it, only to cast it back into the wind hoping life and destiny and chance bring it back into your arms again. It’s a great song, but a sad one. How you can meet someone completely amazing and yet you can let them pass you by without saying…anything. Then you wonder why you never meet anyone truly amazing. How could I have let last night pass me by without fulfilling it’s promise? How could I have been so stupid?

I wanted her that night, from mind to body, follicle to toenail, but I did nothing. And she wanted me, inexplicably to her and to me, and hesitantly for sure because she didn’t trust that part of herself that was drawn to me, and she trusted the world not at all. So she pushed herself away from me, from the table full of kindly laughing faces, and away from that night of seductive shadows. She pushed herself away with a snapped “Good night” and fled down the hallway. The moths flitted after her, drawn by the dying heat between her and me. She pushed herself away, and locked herself away in her room, alone and wondering. And I sat outside, with my laughing happy friends and felt myself seized by the oddest mixture of rage and sadness and lust and loneliness.

I remember us, and our canted postures, our breaths doing what our mouths wished to, our hands finding reasons to brush up against each other. It was our last chance for a dance; our last night together before the world intruded and work took us away. And we did nothing. I sit alone now, drinking teas of regret, while she lies in her room, surrounded by friends and familiar things. I wonder if her thoughts are straying, stumbling their way towards me. I know they are not, why would they? She is a woman that ever will ask “Why”, never “Why ever not?”

But what galls me is my restraint, my petulant insistence that the next move be hers. The things I could have said, the things I should have done, all carefully and brightly wrapped in my mind, of no use now. Just extra clutter in that room we all have in our heads, the room full of things we never said. Mine’s more a mansion than a room now.

It amazes me how much we think we’ve matured, become scarred veterans of this bloody war of the sexes. Then lightning strikes and we’re left just as blind and scared as we were the first time it struck. How pathetic this must sound? How weak and despondent? I’m writing now to turn my face away from the mirror. I don’t need seven years of bad luck. I’m writing because my disgust must not be allowed to ruin the fragile castle of patience and faith I have erected. I’m writing because out in the real world, I feel like a coward of words.

September

Almost exactly one year after we made “Sikandar” in Kashmir, I find myself once again under the ageless gaze of the Himalayas. This time it’s Hrishikesh that’s playing host to this wandering soul. The undying Mountains and the undying fires of faith being assailed daily by the polluted river of humanity, that crash against it without pause, without pity, and completely without thought. It hurts me to see the garbage heaps we’ve turned our holiest and most beautiful places into. But that’s what we do, I guess. I might as well try to change the Sun into a gentler watcher, than tell my species to stop befouling their surroundings. Probably have more luck with the Sun.
Been shooting for a new project for about a month now, and have been quite underwhelmed by work. Not been working as often as I would like. And nothing saps my energy quite like inactivity. Pathetic excuse for the lack of any blogs I could have posted, but it’s the only one I’ve got.
I’m just grateful to be working again, even if it’s a relatively small part. I’ve had a great time working on this one. The crew and the directorial team are all oddballs and fun spirits. And a truly blessedly wacko bunch of co-actors which always is preferable to the stuffy, stiff-shirts that one can across. This bunch is all young and funny, and uninhibited and chilled. It’s a great atmosphere for work and contemplation of nothing much at all, just sitting in the evening light on wicker and plastic chair circles with laughter and coffee fumes floating up and startling the birds sitting overhead in the temple trees.
I went white-water rafting today for the first time and had myself a big, bloody blast. Half way down the trip the guide told me that I could jump out of the raft and body-surf the next bunch of rapids. My companion hit the water wrong and swallowed a rather unpleasant mouthful of the Ganges and then panicked in the water. But I reached him in time and propped him upright, after which he laughed and got the hang of it. So barring that first terrifying minute until the smile reappeared on his face, the rest of the body-surfing section was the about the most fun I’ve had in a long, long while. I highly recommend it to all of you.
This is what I love so much about my job. To go routinely travel and stay in all these places, the nomadic life, the life of new faces, strange tasting waters, odd-smelling rooms, and the bonds I make with all the people. Some which will last only until the filming lasts, and some a ways longer, but all dear and all interesting. Life is grand.
The only thing I miss from the city is the cinemas. I’m craving a dark auditorium and a bucket of popcorn. I was hoping to be able to catch the new Tarantino flick in the cinema adjacent to our hotel in Delhi on the last free day before we travelled to the mountains, but there was a party and there was tequila and pretty girls dancing, and much Mary, Mary, Mary… So yeah, that plan didn’t get executed quite as smoothly as I had anticipated.
I feel strangely blessed to be where I am right now. It’s not a deep or moving feeling, simply a quiet satisfaction with my present. I’m coming closer and closer to living in the moment only. I still manage to stray from it, but I’m gaining my stillness. The more I wander, the more I work, the more calm I seem to become. Bless you Lords and Ladies for blessing this unworthy fellow.

I'm Like...

Green tea left brewing far too long.
Long walks on a dirty street, hunting for a patch of green.
A young dog with the eyes of an old wolf.
The literary equivalent of a harmonica before Bob Dylan picked it up.
Sleeping on your side of the bed in an unfamiliar room.
The first cup of coffee after a great night.
The first page of a great novel, written by a writer you’ve never heard of before.
The first night in a lonely city, watching the lights twinkling below from a window you can’t open.
Full moon thoughts in the Delhi sun.
Watching the prettiest girl say the ugliest things in the sweetest voice.
A lost soul in disguise.
Where the lost and the forgotten meet and toast to the setting sun.
The last thought you have before you fall asleep.
That dream you need to but will never recall.
A New York State of Mind thinking Indian thoughts.
That new Jay-Z album playing on blast in a black and yellow cab, and even the cabbie bobbing his head. Like this.
Finest wine drunk off the wrist of the finest dime, with her eyes on yours.
Muddy Waters’ “Hoochi Coochie Man” playing everytime you walk into a room.
An irresistible force on vacation in the Mediterranean, sipping MaiTais, head resting on glistening thighs.
A Spanish Guitar played in the middle of a Bombay traffic jam.
Technicolour dreams in a sepia print.
Sinatra singing with a broken microphone.
The illest shit smoked on a wet sticky night.
An insomniac dreamer…
Forever Young….
Forever I..
Forever.

Adrift

The wind reminds me that change is coming. The moon whispers goodbye and the clamor of the street hates me tonight, but I refuse to cry. I spoke many words today, each one was a lie. When I tried to tell the truth, she began to cry. I couldn’t stand her pain, knowing it was my only gift to her. And all I could think about was the way she smiled at the other man today. The way she laughed, and touched her hair, and made excuses to reach out and touch him. She knew I was watching. She was testing me. But she didn’t expect this, now, here, with the windows open and the cacophony of the devout dancing in the streets below us and blowing their ridiculous pipes and horns and shouting “Morya” with more rage and anger than devotion. I wonder if they realize that their god cannot hear them tonight. Tonight is when he’s turned away. That was unworthy of me. This day was unworthy of me. Rather I am unworthy of this day, and all the ones that came before this.

“You don’t love me?” she whispers, standing under the windchime and the flicker of the lights from across the street spying on us from between the swaying fronds of the palm trees.

“I never did.”

“Yes you did. You said so.”

“A man will say anything to get what he wants.”

“And did you get what you wanted?”

“No. I got disappointment, and this night. That’s what I got.”

“Why are you saying these things to me?” She shouts this, not because she’s angry at me. But because she knows I’m angry at her, and I have reason. She wants another. I hate for that. But I hate her more for wanting me to be angry at her for it. I refuse. He can have her.

I turn away to make some tea. She follows me into the kitchen. I say nothing, she says less. Just stands there under the disgusting white light in my kitchen wall, the one that makes me look like a ghoul in the reflections, but somehow she still looks like an angel. That, I hate her for, deeply.

She stands there, looking like an angel cast down from heaven, with my heart at her feet which she’s trying to put together again and she starts to cry. They say there’s nothing that can withstand the force of a woman’s tears. I want to disagree, and I try, but I can’t. Neither can I give in. I rip open the tea bags and stir the leaves into a gentle vortex. She sobs, I stir, she sniffs, I stir, she stifles, and I keep stirring. She stops.

When I turn around she is no longer the weeping angel. When I turn around she is smiling. And that is what finally lances through my pain, and my hurt, and my insecurities, right into my bleeding heart. It’s how she trapped me that first time. But her first smile was an invitation. This one is for malice. This is the smile that says she’s leaving me.

I’m left standing in my kitchen, under the white light besieged by moths, and two cups of tea in my hands. She doesn’t bother to shut the door behind her.

Introspective Corrective

Less than two weeks to go for “Sikandar” to release. The hoardings and the publicity started in earnest from today. Driving to and from my daily appointments I saw a few bus banner ads and a few big hoardings around town. Felt fantastic, felt like our dream is finally coalescing into a tangible reality, an expectant lover reaching out for a touch. Then I noticed something that filled me with my own personal, familiar cocktail of anger and amusement - I”m not on any of the posters!

Anger, disgust, self-loathing, ironic amusement, tear-jerking mirth, homicidal rage, dejection, resignation, and finally quiet introspection. I started to consider whether I should even bother getting so impassioned over what seemed to me a simple marketing decision. What’s more important to me? My own individual success and some pedestrian, egocentric need to be famous, or the success of the picture I’m a big part of. And I know I’m a big part of the film. The fact that I’m not on the poster shouldn’t matter, right?

But for a burning few minutes, it did. Any actor, or model, or performer, has within them a desire to be noticed, applauded, acknowledged. Sure we do, we shouldn’t hide it or deny it. We all love our crafts and are fulfilled by them, at least I hope “we” are, I know I am - but there is certainly a sprinkling of self-aggrandizement in the mix. When Dustin Hoffman asked Laurence Olivier why he thought they were actors, why anyone would want to be an actor, Olivier asked, “You want to know, boy? You really want to know why we do what we do?” Whereupon he stood up and leaned over the table, putting his face inches away from Hoffman’s and hissed, “Look at me, look at me, look at me.”

Truth be told, a few minutes later, I was quite disgusted with myself. I thought I had, long ago, wrestled my artistic ego to the ground and told it to behave. I thought I had convinced myself that the most important thing about being an actor, is the work itself - the becoming, the delving, the search. It was humbling to see just how far from that I am. But I refuse to give up the travail to reach that ideal, otherwise I am not in service to the craft of acting, I’m expecting the craft to be in service to me. And that is not how actors achieve that rare, thrilling resonance on screen. Someone said on a comment that an actor needs to connect with the audience. I disagree - an actor needs to connect with their own humanity, their own imperfections, and through that connection, help the audience connect with their own. A great actor makes you feel WITH him, not necessarily for. And to become that kind of actor, is my heart’s truest desire. My ego is just an impediment in the way, like a desert I have to cross to reach my ocean.

It’s amazing how easily the ego gets bruised, or offended, or affronted. What’s important, for me, is to learn to move forward despite it’s tantrums. No matter that I’m not on the posters - posters get taken down. I’m IN the film, and that can never be taken away, by anyone.

Blackbird

The prophecies must come true now, the dark demented ones, that promised our race nothing but pain and heartbreak. The world watches in horror as pig’s fly across borders. India as usual wakes up too late, makes a lot of noise and beats it’s chest, but it’s a hollow posturing, the contagion is already here. Panic’s first strains shiver through the air, as civilization peels back it’s civilized face to show the animal beneath. Dear Goddess, have mercy on my country. Show us how to be proud, prepared, and pro-active.

I run to escape the cigarette smoke that follows me like a stray cat I made the mistake of feeding once. Wherever I go now, there’s she is, rubbing against my legs, mewling to be scratched. The morning papers make my lips snarl, and my brows furrow. No wonder so many of us have mature lines and hollows in our youthful faces. How much weight can we continue to bear? We are not Titans, we were never meant to be. Where are the gods? Perhaps where they’ve always been, behind us, only now we’re too proud to turn around.

The snake has returned to me. It stretches and slithers around in the hollow of my hip, making it painful to even sit and write these days. Every so often it twists up my spine and licks the underside of my thoughts, hissing it’s sibilant seductions, commanding me to indulge it’s thirst for my self-loathing. But I refuse tonight.

Saw Johnny Depp become John Dillinger yesterday night and for two something hours I was reminded of just how great my profession can be when done by a master. Spirits were lifted, smiles were cured of their amnesia and reminded that they must come out and play more often, and coffee was had, sweet and black, so hot it burned the tongue and ached the teeth. But it went with the night, and the breeze that came in clean and soft, all it’s burdens cast aside, running free until the morning tide.

I was alone again, but once more reminded that often I prefer it that way. It does me good to hear no other voices but those in my head. I keeps me from getting confused, or at odds with myself. This city is a wonderfully diverting one, it can show you too good a time, and make you forget all that keeps you grounded and true. And though I like losing myself in it’s slow whirlwinds now and then, I always need to come back to the quiet corners and soft, patient moments, where there is nothing to prove and no one to impress. No masks to don, no conversation topics to avoid. No need for speech, no need for thought, just the breathing in and out, and the tasting, and the smell of the salt in the air, and the shadows cavorting on the walls like the dearest lovers.

I hear Billie Holiday sing over the speakers…
No one here can love or understand me,
Oh, what hard luck stories they all hand me,
Make my bed and light the light,
I’ll be home late tonight,
Blackbird bye bye.

And I tell her I understand, and I tell her it’ll be alright. Because the poets of the nighttime sky haven’t lost their gifts just yet. And she puts her arms around me and sings me to sleep, and makes sure I don’t dream at all…

Coming Home

I used to be terrified of the idea of working in the Indian film industry (I mislike the term Bollywood, too pretentious, too desperate, and far too eager to be noticed). Since I was six years old, I’ve been in an International school in Kodaikanal, India, where the language of both everyday life and the classroom was English. And rather than pick up Hindi as my second language, I opted to learn French. I wanted to be a citizen of the world. All my initial contact with cinema and literature were Western. I became a stranger to my own cultural history. A foreigner in local skin.

Then came the American years, the university, the first taste of a theatre as a career, the great loves, the great nights, the city of New York walking beside me, closer than love, closer than my own breath, telling me how long it’s been waiting for me. Those midnight slices of pizza when I was on the way to work, the early morning coffees at Moonshine diner with the remains of the previous night still stinging our happy eyes, sitting in Washington Square Park and watching all the people rush hither thither with their dogs and their children on leashes, shopping for old records in the Village…

They took all that away from me. I felt abandoned, exiled, discarded. That’s what I was when I limped into Bombay. Had nowhere to go where visa hassles for an actor struggling to find work wouldn’t plague me constantly, nowhere except where I’m from.

But going around Bombay, meeting the people I’ve met, restored little by little my confidence that there was work worth doing here, alongside people that love Cinema as much if not more than me. That here were some people I could talk with, share so many coffees with we could be declared toxic hazards. Work that may not be popularly successful, but that we enjoyed doing and believed in. Work that made us proud to be who we were and all the reasons we got to be that way in the first place.

That’s why I’ll forever be grateful to Piyush Jha and “Sikandar”. They brought me home, they told me that it might be a jungle out there, where everyone’s a cannibal and even the rabbits have teeth, but we are not alone. So I go around town and the Internet promoting this film of ours, in an effort to let the others like us know - you are not alone. We are all here, together, and we may stumble, or get it wrong, or fail, but we will never stop trying to be better, trying to become worthy of being called artists.

From the Heart

“Sikandar” releases in two weeks. There’s very little publicity and quite a lot of apprehension. It’s the first feature film I’ve ever been a part of and it’s the first acting gig I’ve done in India. Needless to say the personal stake I have in the film is quite substantial. But I feel that there is something greater on the line - the soul of Indian Cinema. I know that’s a grandiose statement to make, but I feel that from my limited though perspicacious perspective, cinema and the culture of cinema teeters on a edge of a precipice, one that yawns deep and bottomless.

There shall always be a need in a country like ours, where the average living conditions are so poor and the lack of infrastructure and the ambition to become a world power while ignoring the very real issues that plague the nation abound, for popcorn, “feel good” movies. Just because I have not enjoyed the majority of the films that have released recently, and from Hollywood too, before anyone can claim that I’m biased towards the West, doesn’t mean I don’t understand the hold they have over the mass consciousness.

What I’m concerned about, is that attitude of the producers and the distributors and the media towards films that aren’t packed tight with glistening, perfect bodies, or stunning women (the kind only India can make) gyrating to catchy music, et all. Someone (I’m sadly learning the art of vagary) said “Sikandar” that it would be easy to market the film had there been a major star in the cast. Really? That’s the reason you can’t market the film, there’s no super-stars involved in it?

Where does this attitude come from? It’s one thing to refuse to produce a quirky film, or one that has no “starpower”. That’s a legitimate stand to make. Making films is after-all a business, and a business requires returns and profit to be viable. Fine. But after producing the movie, after investing in it, endorsing it, to refuse to do absolutely everything possible to ensure that people at least know about the film and consequently, go to check it out, is unforgivable.
Then there’s the people that ask me why I haven’t opted for a conventional launch vehicle, rather than do a small (but substantial) role in a film like “Sikandar”. Is a launch the only way for an actor to get noticed? Does being launched guarantee your becoming a superstar, or even mildly successful? Does being launched mean you can even carry a role? And I’m not one of those people that pretends to support independent cinema while I’m getting work in it, only to run away and dance in a Yash Raj film the minute they notice me. I believe in what I do, and where I work. I believe in “Sikandar”, I believed when I read the script that this was a special film written by a unique mind, with a setting and a premise that was as far from the popular norm as possible.

Now what we need is for people to go see the film. Love it, hate it, be indifferent to it, but watch it. Talk about it, because I guarantee it’ll worm its way into your conversations long after the credits roll. That’s how you market such a film, you highlight it’s heart, it’s desire to inform, it’s shining a spotlight on the plight of children in strife-torn regions. You don’t need Aamir Khan or a Shah Rukh Khan or any other super-luminary to tell people to go see a film that’s about people like them, that’s about children like theirs. We have an engaging story, a suspenseful and thrilling story, we have a group of actors who tried hard to not only act but inhabit their characters. We have Kashmir like you’ve never seen it before.

I don’t know how many people read my blog, really. I’m grateful anyone does. But don’t read it if you aren’t going to see the film. Because the person that can enjoy my writing will enjoy the film. The person that doesn’t enjoy my writing, will enjoy the film too.

We need you. But in a way, you need us too. You need people like us, to show you the other side of the coin, the tarnished, notched side. The side that mirrors your situations, your turmoil, your fears. One cannot subsist on popcorn alone.