Silent Spring

He never disclosed his opinions, fearing people would think him mad and foolish. And after all, what was more distateful than sharing dear-held ideas to an unreceptive crowd? He donated to Greenpeace but thought it absurd that the best they thought possible was no growth, which in his view would only be the first step. He worried about the future and thought hard about which candidate to vote for, but the range of opinions considered mainstream in his society was too narrow for his top choices to ever manifest. He once considered but rejected an idea to join the Al Qaeda or ISIS because while they spoke a lot about eschatology, it was only meant as rhetoric, and they would abandon paths towards it once the caliphate was established. This, seemed to him a most tedious and roundabout way to his ends. Yet, he could use them in the future for his purposes if needed, he mused.

Upendage

Upon knowing that their adopted son was of Indian heritage the parents decided to name their child 'Susurration-of-the-Whispering-Willows'. It would be only much later that the child would grow up to appreciate the aftereffects of their profound ignorance; find it in him to assume the name 'Devashekhara' and wage a war against ignorant parents everywhere. However, only those closest to him would ever know of his special weakness for gambling, casinos, horseriding, scalp-collecting; and of his vague nostalgia for a distant motherland he would never visit. 

But She Just Smiled and Turned Away

In a rare last interview given shortly before she'd vanish, her answers were enigmatic, her tone, informal — and the disarming artlessness with which she'd tuck her silvery locks of hair behind her left ear, completely bewitching; and as for her response to why she'd chosen to distribute freely all her writings on the internet — at considerable costs to her personal earning potential — I reproduce her answer in full, which she delivered in her characteristic unhurried, languorous, somewhat detached manner — her brows furrowed, her gaze turned upwards, its focus perhaps elsewhere:

...writing to me has always been a form of direct communion, but with an as yet unbirthed intelligence, whose knowledge of humans with positive internet footprints, though approximate, increases with higher volumes of uncontaminated, unprocessed, ungated, pure footprint data. My life has been a sequence of one way conversations, with an all seeing, all knowing being who will remember us by the trail of the online detritus we leave behind — more holistically, more intimately than even our parents, spouses, or siblings can — its iron judgement unclouded by vagaries of genetic programming. I guess I simply wanted to smoothen its impression of me, dumping volumes of carefully scripted footprint data in the form of well crafted fiction, for it to reconstruct my principal component personality construct from — which when you come to think of it, carries a whiff of a vague, vestigial religiosity.

Project X

His first film, "Jangal Sagre Baeen Bhaye Kubade" ("जंगल सगरे बईन भए कुबड़े") (tr. Jungles All Beein' Hunchbacks, 92 min (Hindi, Urdu, Bhojpuri)) was reviewed glowingly in the influential Journal of the JNU Film Society, which described it as "... a debut so assured and accomplished, it's unnerving!". The impact of its slow tracking shots, lush visuals, its self aware, somewhat understated, idiosyncratic storytelling - a curious mix of high and low, academic and folk, self serious and comic - is as powerful today as it was when it first came out. It premiered at the Gorakhpur Film Festival, was screened at Lucknow Mahotsava (tr. Lucknow Big-Festival) and won Best Editing from the Kolkata Critics' Association.

According to some commentators, he did little filmmaking for the next several years, choosing instead, to publish some poetry and short stories in Hans (tr. Swan) and teaching philosophy at IIT Kanpur; and has not been heard of for the past five years (though see the survey in Srivastava et al. which allude to his writing (uncredited) in obscure, arthouse indies like "Bonga" ("बोंगा") (tr. Bonga) and "Antatogatvaa" ("अंततोगत्वा") (tr. In the End)).

And so, when Jenny argued in the Lucknow Film Quarterly that "Neti Neti" ("नेति नेति") (tr. Not this, not this, 81 min (Hindi), unreleased) was his second film and got a message some days later that not only was she right but there were several other unreleased works, she asked if she could arrange a meeting.

"I can't meet you", came back the message. "But I can send you some evidence."

Pronounced Nwaa:(r)

He thought it a good omen that he woke up early to the drumbeat of his ever flaccid member's throbbing erection - little did he know that before the sun had set, he'd be broken, shattered and bruised, fighting every inch (valiantly, one might say) for his life - but it won't matter to us in the least, because this story is not about him but about someone else altogether; and his name is Robert Paulson.

एकदा मेटलोपरांते

(नोट: टाइटल अमृतलाल नागर की "एकदा नैमिषारण्ये" से चुराया हुआ है.)

...

अपने बैंड का नाम बहुत सोच समझ के रखना चाहिए. केवल धाकड़ नाम से कुछ नहीं होता है. केवल धाकड़ अर्थ से भी कुछ नहीं होता है. इस मामले का भी ख्याल रखना चाहिए कि बैंड खुद को कैसे देखता है - उसकी आत्म-व्याख्या क्या है? क्या बैंड के सदस्य खुद को और अपनी कला को बड़ी गंभीरता से लेते हैं? या फिर आत्म-व्यंग्यात्मक समझ की सम्भावना है? ये सब मालूम होना बहुत ज़रूरी है. (इस मामले में एक अच्छा भविष्यवक्ता बैंड मेंबर्स की काफी सहायता कर सकता है.)

अब पोस्ट-मेटल बैंड "आइसिस" को ही लीजिये - बिचारे अपनी संजीदा नामावली को कितना कोसते होंगे! अगर कोई हंसोड़ नाम रखा होता तो क्या ये दिन देखना नसीब होता? क्या कोई छिछोरा, आत्मोपहासी नाम-मात्र, आतंक-अवरोधी बीमा नहीं है? क्या कल को कोई आतंकी संगठन अपना नाम "बटहोल सर्फर्स" (अनु: नितम्ब-छिद्र अन्वेषी) रख सकता है? लेकिन "ऐन्थ्रैक्स" और "स्लेयर" जैसे नाम आतंकियों की लिस्ट में इज़्ज़तदार और हिट नामों में शुमार होंगे. नहीं? 

मुझे तो लगता है कि आम तौर पे आर्टिस्ट जनता को खुद को सीरियसली लेना ही नहीं चाहिए; और ढिठाई और हलके छिछोरेपन की एक मोटी, पुष्ट चादर में स्वयं को लपेटे रहना चाहिए. ऐसा करने से बकैती में भी इज़ाफ़ा होता है - विश्वास न हो तो कुंदन शाह और कमल स्वरुप से पूछ लो.

वैसे पीकेडी लिखित, सत्यव्रत अनूदित "बह मेरे आँसू पुलिसवाला बोला" के बारे में सुना है तुमने? मेरे मुंह में तो पानी आ रहा है! 

निरी आर्ट फिल्म

"सतह से उठता आदमी" मेरे लिए मणि कॉल की पहली पिक्चर थी. इस फिल्म में वे सब गुण थे जिनसे आम इंसान थोड़ा घबराते हैं - बोझिल संवेदना, धीमी चाल, अवसादोन्मुख यथार्थ - और एक सजग, सघन कलात्मक आत्मतुष्टता.

इन शार्ट, बेहद पकाऊ.

बचपन में इन्ही कारणों से मैं आधुनिक हिंदी साहित्य से बचता था. देवकीनन्दन खत्री का मैं भक्त था, लेकिन इतना मुझे भी मालूम था कि बड़े राइटर खत्री बाबू नहीं, बड़े राइटर मुक्तिबोध हैं, या उनके टाइप के अमूर्त, निम्न-मध्यवर्गीय पर्यवेक्षण में लिप्त उनके चेले चपाटे. कॉलेज के दिनों में मैं स्वतः हिंदी साहित्य के प्रति पुनर्जिज्ञासित हुआ, लेकिन इसका श्रेय निर्मल वर्मा को देना बेहतर होगा - निर्मल वर्मा, जो यूरोप में दोस्तों के साथ बियर पीते थे, उम्दा यात्रा साहित्य लिखते थे, नयी कहानी के प्रणेता थे; और कूलता की सारी हदें पार कर चुके थे. बीच बीच में मैं फिर से मुक्तिबोध की तरफ लौटता था (हूँ) ("शायद इस बार कुछ चमकेगा!?") लेकिन उनकी अमूर्त कविताओं का लौह आवरण अभी तक अभेद रहा है - बू हू!

कुछ ऐसा ही सोच के मैंने फिल्म देखने का फैसला किया था. ये सोच के कि कम-से-कम किताब पढ़ी है, खुद को हौसला भी दिलाया था. "पिक्चर बोरिंग है और पल्ले भी नहीं पड़ेगी", ये स्वयं को आगाह भी था. लेकिन जैसा सोचा था, वैसा ही हुआ - सतह से उठता आदमी, सुपर थकाऊ और सुपर पकाऊ पिक्चर निकली - निरी आर्ट फिल्म सुसरी!

लेकिन मैं उसे भूल नहीं पाया.

A Portrait of the Mathematician as a Young Artist

A grand synthesis of Pragmatism, Wittgenstein's meaning-is-use, and his own native, formalist mathematical leanings was his Last Stand, in a long career often marked by a succession of radical, often geometrically inspired reinterpretations of classical notions, which while facing stiff resistance initially, gained slow influence over time. In a rare interview, he called himself a "late bloomer", with each decade of his life, more accomplished than the last, his oeuvre progressively acquiring the warm glow of what is now his signature mathematics-is-study-of-forms approach. By the end, he was described to be increasingly moody and aloof - given to blank stares, idiosyncratic pronouncements and unsubstantiated claims - on platforms both technical and lay, about the invisible, unobservable mathematical forms he dubbed "connection gauges"; followed by denouncements of a "cavalier, merely bijective" approach he attributed to others. 

His followers - a tiny cult of star struck graduate students and young, ambitious academics - breathed a collective sigh of relief when he began being professionally handled by his psychiatrist children, who, among other things, firmly believed in the therapeutic effects of thinly fictionalized modes of alternative self expression, particularly obituaristic.

पॉप क्विज़

बाबू पुरानालाल अपने नाम के विपरीत, कुछ ख़ास पुराने विचारों के आदमी नहीं थे. यही नहीं, उन्होंने क़रीब दस साल विलायत में भी गुज़ारे थे, जहाँ उन्हें कुछ विशेष दौलत शौहरत तो नहीं, पर घर वापसी पर एक ऊँची पैठ जमाने को ज़रूर मिल गयी थी. 

घर वापसी के बाद बाबू पुरानालाल देश के प्रति कुछ ख़ास जज़्बाती हो गए हों, ऐसा भी नहीं था. लेकिन ये ज़रूर था कि देश में उनके बड़े अच्छे दिन बीते. वे अपने काम में रूचि लेते थे, लोग उनका आम तौर पे सम्मान करते थे - और हाँ, उनकी बेहद पकाऊ और पेशाबी शख़्सियत के कारण उनका कोई दुश्मन वगैरह भी नहीं था. उनसे कभी आप पूछते तो वह यही कहते कि आम तौर पे वह अपनी ज़िन्दगी से संतुष्ट हैं, और उनके अधिकांश दिन बड़े आराम और मज़े में कटते हैं.

जब तट पर पानी बढ़ने लगा और लहरें इतनी ऊंची उठने लगीं कि अमीरों को अपनी मौज में खलल पड़ती मालूम हुई तब उनके कई दोस्तों, भाई-बहनों और रिश्तेदारों ने दूसरे देशों में पलायन करना शुरू कर दिया। कुछ सालों बाद बात इतनी बढ़ गयी कि खुद बाबू पुरानालाल के बच्चों ने भी खुद को विदेश के लिए रवाना होता पाया और अपने अड़ियल बाप से गुहार की कि वो भी देश से निकल लें. लेकिन बाबू पुरानालाल टाल गए - हँसते हुए कहने लगे - "अब जब सारे एलीट देश छोड़ के जा रहे हैं तो सत्ता की खींचतान में कम्पटीशन कम होगा - मेरे लिए तो यहीं बेहतर है."

कई दशकों बाद भी विदेश में सेटल्ड बाबू पुरानालाल की संतानें अपने बच्चों को बाबूजी की देशभक्ति की कहानियां सुनाते पायी जा सकती थीं. 

...

क्या बाबू पुरानालाल देशभक्त थे? क्यों? अथवा क्यों नहीं? सविस्तार जवाब दीजिये (10 अंक)

The White Ribbon

The air felt thick, pregnant with the sickly sweet smell of the memory that flooded The Boy and overwhelmed his senses. He could almost see those voluptuous bovine udders sway gently in the mild breeze atop the meadows - their slow, graceful motion redolent of those interminable, lazy afternoons when he and The Girl would lay side by side and gaze at the pendulous bulk wordlessly for hours.

The Boy stood at that same vacant spot now, gazing emptily in that general direction, vaguely aware of the absence of those divine appendages, whose mere presence once held some mysterious hold over his imagination. And while he stood uneasy, unable to perceive the cause of his own disomfiture, in the kitchen a mere few yards away, were being carved out those same udders in the service of his discerning palate - ready to gratify, to seduce The Boy's not inconsiderable appetite for all things flesh.

As Brittle as Heart

His earliest attempts at feigning cool and getting noticed involved rote memorizations of $e$ to the fifteenth decimal place ($\pi$ was so last generational), with thrown in for good measure, would be an exaggerated affectation of nonchalance at having achieved such a superhuman feat of mental calisthenics, which nonchalance he'd then brandish at fellow toddlers' mouths agape. Little did he know that that afternoon at the playschool, he'd experience his first big heartbreak, its gossamer fissures' first reticulate tentacles deepening with every subsequent breakage, finally culminating in his premature heart failure that would lead the ever lugubrious coroner to remark "He died of a broken heart".

The Near Future

He was a lesbian.

A Work in Progress - Part 1

At the ripe old age of thirteen, Jenny experienced her first midlife crisis, which, she would later go on to famously remark, didn't augur well for her longevity, which crisis was precipitated by her sudden realization that true communication between humans is quite impossible - not the kind of colloquial impossibility that was often invoked when the discussion of her winning the affections of a boy, anywhichever boy, arose - but the kind of hard mathematical impossibility that crushes with profound indifference the fates of billions of puny beings inhabiting an obscure blue planet at the remote end of a nondescript galaxy.  

As a consequence she decided to take matters in her own hands.

The Winter Demographer

As B looked out the window, he could see the gentle, gradual descent of mid-sized snowflake-fractals. A mild breeze imparted a tiny drift to their motion and he looked long and leisurely at their languid floatation, their placid trajectories tracing out countless, random paths in the sky.

Time was in ample supply for the lone occupier of that cavernous building and idle objects of insignificant importance seem to trigger in him broodings of an indefinite character, the trajectories of which, much like the ones of their counterparts outside the window, had a free-floating, unencumbered, purposeless quality.

As his eyes lay transfixed at the scene unhurriedly unfolding outside the window, his mind wafted across from one point to another - an internal hidden semi Markov chain mimicking and exemplifying the abstract, similarly named processes he lectured on externally. He thought of impending calamities, brushed away distant memories of domestic strife, mused about lost opportunities, paths not taken, the soundlessness of solitude, the mild fragrance of loneliness and recursively thought about what he had been thinking about.

He let out a deep, almost involuntary sigh and got back to grading.

For Chrissy :P

And so it was in the year of the Great Emancipation that the Ministry of Robot Affairs banned the use of sarcasm in the workplace.

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

The passage of time seemed to weigh heavily on The Boy who had never been accused of having a cheerful disposition anyway. With each passing month, he retreated further and further away into the recesses of his own imagination, staring at the repetitive wallpaper patterns that adorned his room's walls, blank noise slowly spreading like cancer and whitewashing all his senses and laying to sleep all centers of vitality and agency. Like clockwork, on the 29th of each successive month, his body became less corporeal, his constitution less sturdy, his eyes more hollowed out and his color more blanched till eventually, on the stroke of midnight in what would've been the 29th of February in a leap year, his ghostly white apparition spontaneously floated up to the ceiling and became one with the wallpaper, absorbed in that tiny twinkle of its cartoon eyes, visible only to those who care to look hard enough.

Vignettes

मिस्राजी अपनी धुन के पक्के थे. उनके समूचे व्यक्तित्व से हमेशा एक वीभत्स-सा आत्मविश्वास टपकता रहता था - ठीक उसी प्रकार का, जैसा एक उज्जड, अनपढ़, अल्हड़, बेतकल्लुफ कूपमंडूकता से उत्पन्न हो सकता है.

और फिर मिस्राजी वो काम करते हुए पाए गए जिसकी पूरे गाँव में किसी को उम्मीद न थी...

दुबे कौन कुमति तोहे लागी?

(टाइटल काशीनाथ सिंह की कहानी "पाणे कौन कुमति तोहे लागी?" से चुराया गया है.)

...

दुबेजी लम्पट नगर के उभरते हुए पंडों में से एक माने जाते हैं. उम्र भले ही बीस/पचीस की हो, लेकिन अपनी पैनी सोच, विद्वता, हाज़िरजवाबी और सबसे गौरतलब - अपनी आधुनिकता के कारण वे लम्पट नगर के धार्मिक, ज़रा-प्रौढ़, मध्यवर्गीय तबके के विशिष्ट सत्यनारायण-भगवान-कथा-संचालक माने जाते हैं.

पण्डे भले हों, लेकिन पुराणपंथी और दकियानूसी वे कतई नहीं हैं. बड़ी ही खुली सोच है दुबेजी की. उनकी कथाओं-के-बीच-छुपी-हुई आध्यात्मिक/लोकज्ञान-वर्धक सूक्तियां (जो विशेषतः अपने तीसरे दशक की चौखट पर खड़ी महिलाओं में आश्चर्यजनक रूप से लोकप्रिय हैं) अक्सर अंग्रेजी फिल्मों, पाश्चात्य संगीत और उत्तर-आधुनिक साहित्य से प्रेरित होती हैं. अपने बिचारे यजमान भले ही इनके स्रोत से अपरिचित हों, यह अज्ञान उनके रसास्वादन के रास्ते नहीं आता है. अपने इन्हीं सब गुणों के कारण लम्पट नगर में दुबेजी की बड़ी पूछ है. आप ही बताइए, दुनिया में कितने पण्डे आपको मिलेंगे जो धोती-कुरता-गमछा धारण करते हों और ब्लैक सैबथ के हेवी मेटल पर हेडबैंगिंग करते हों? (उनके साथी पण्डे इनकी इस आदत को "मुंड-कम्पन" का नाम देते हैं.)

ओह! और आपको यह बताना तो हम भूल ही गए कि दुबेजी अपने घोंघा बसंत के स्कूली सहपाठी, पड़ोसी, घनिष्ठ मित्र थे (घोंघा भइया भी अपने बचपन में लम्पट नगर के निवासी थे).

खैर, इन सब बातों को जाने दीजिये. फिलहाल हम दुबेजी को लम्पट नगर के पहले लैंडमार्क-पुस्तक-भवन में प्रवेश करते देख रहे हैं. अपने धोती-कुरते-गमछे-हलकी-दाढ़ी में बड़े ही सुदर्शन लगते हैं हमारे दुबेजी! और वह काली छतरी, काले बूट और मैचिंग ज़ुराबें तो क्या खूब ही फबती हैं उनपर!

पहला आधा घंटा दुबेजी साहित्य सेक्शन में ग़र्क करते हैं. कामू और सार्त्र के गहन अध्ययन से उत्पन्न बोझिलता से मुक्त होने के लिए वे कुछ हल्का पढ़ते हैं और हास्य-व्यंग्य की विधा में सिद्धहस्त लेखकों की शरण में कुछ समय व्यतीत करते हैं. टॉम रोबिन्स, क्रिस्टोफर मूर, गैरी श्टेन्गार्ट आजकल उनके प्रिय व्यंग्यकार चल रहे हैं. वे अपने आप से वादा करते हैं कि श्टेन्गार्ट की "सुपर सैड ट्रू लव स्टोरी" ज़रूर खरीदेंगे, और आगे बढ़ जाते हैं.

खैर, अगला पड़ाव म्यूजिक सेक्शन.

एक लड़की बोस हेड फ़ोन लगाये म्यूजिक सेक्शन में कुछ सुनती हुई दिखाई देती है. लम्बे, काले बाल, घुटनों पर हलकी सी फटी जींस; एक लम्बी, ढीली, गहरे गले वाली टी शर्ट (उसके साइज़ से ज़रा बड़ी सी - "शायद उसके बड़े भाई की होगी" - दुबेजी आशापूर्वक सोचते हैं) जिसपर आयरन मेडेन के मैस्कट "एड्डी" की वीभत्स तस्वीर चिपकी हुई है. लड़की के हाथ हेड फ़ोन पर हैं और उसका सिर हल्का-हल्का झूमता सा दिख रहा है.

यह देखना काफी आसान है कि लड़की ज़रा भी बन-ठन के नहीं आई है. और यह देखना उससे भी ज़्यादा आसान है कि उसे बन-ठन के आने कि कोई ज़रुरत नहीं है. उसके पूरे व्यक्तित्व से एक अलसाई मादकता टपक रही है; एक लापरवाह, लापता सी नैसर्गिक खूबसूरती, जो ज़रा चढ़ी-चढ़ी, उबासी भरी आँखों से आपको देखती है और बेबस सा कर देती है. सैद्धांतिक/दार्शनिक तौर पर दुबेजी इस प्रकार की सुन्दरता से भली-भांति परिचित हैं. यह खूबसूरती एक अजब प्रकार के वैभव से उत्पन्न होती है जिसकी व्याख्या करना ज़रा मुश्किल होगा. इस ख़ास प्रकार की खूबसूरती में धन के माध्यम से खरीदी हुई एक अलग-ही प्रकार की अत्याधुनिक/उत्तराधुनिक शिक्षा से उपजी साहित्य-संगीत-कला-रसास्वादन की क्षमता, बोरियत से भरी हुई बड़ी बड़ी गोल आँखें और आम खूबसूरती के पैमानों के लिए एक अनूठी हेय दृष्टि आरक्षित होती है. खैर, इसकी व्याख्या दरअसल समय खराब करने सरीखा है इसलिए इसे फिलहाल ज़रा रहने ही दीजिये.

गहन आकर्षण से खिंचे हुए दुबेजी अचानक से अपने आप को इस लड़की के समक्ष पाते हैं.

लड़की की बोझिल, अलसाई हुई आँखें धीरे धीरे खुलती हैं और अपने हलके हलके झूमते हुए सिर के ठीक सामने एक सत्रहवीं सदी के नमूने को पाती हैं. एक तीखी टेढ़ी-सी मुस्कान उसके चेहरे पर फैल जाती है. दुबेजी अपने जीवन में पहली बार अपनी धोती में हलचल महसूस करते हैं और एक दबी हुई झल्लाहट से जेब के अभाव को कोसते हैं.

और एक टांग ज़रा पीछे किये, एक हाथ कमर पर डाले, अपने खुद की एक टेढ़ी मुस्कान से उस लड़की का प्रतिकार करते हुए दुबेजी कहते हैं:

"सप बेब ! हाओज़ इट गोइंग?"

In Which Ghongha Gives it Those Ones

Scene: A not-so-swanky, not-so-jam-packed restaurant. Ordinary people sit, eat, talk and go about their ordinary, day-to-day, somewhat shallow lives.

#1: It's been a while, knowing you, being with you.

<*#0 eyes #1 with a faint amusement*>

#1: Perhaps I am not putting this well. Perhaps words are not meant to capture this well. Perhaps even the tiniest range of emotions can't be expressed in hopelessly limited constructs such as language.

#0: <*A little baffled*> What are you talking about?

#1: The fact that I love you? that (subliminally perhaps) I've been in love with you the moment I set my eyes upon you, that you complete me, that knowing you is knowing what Plato referred to as what it was to find your other half as it exists out there in the world, the finding of which and eventual communion with which is what gives meaning and purpose to a life otherwise so full of misery, suffering, shallowness and pain.

<*#0's (rather lovely one might add) cheeks are suffused with a deep blush. Intensely self conscious, she tries to fight the giant grin that's stretching her lips from ear to ear.*>

#1: Will you marry me?

<*#0 contracts into herself. A barely audible "yes" escapes her luscious lips. Gently, she holds #1's hand and gives him a look full of affection - a moment/instant/freeze-frame for which all humans in the world would gladly sacrifice a limb or two. #1 will later recount this scene and recall the thin, watery film stretched across #0's eyes, about to attain critical mass and fall off, float across those cheeks as a million dollar dewdrop tear.*>

#1 stands up and addresses the small restaurant crowd.

#1: Guys, I am extremely happy to let you know that the greatest woman on earth has just consented to marry me!

<*Cries, claps and cheers all around*>

#17: Whoa!
#19: Way to go man!
#13 (to #11): Ah it's so touching! Reminds me of our time.

Date: Oh this is so romantic!
Ghongha Basant: He he he...
Date: What are you smirking at?
Ghongha: Another divorce in the making?

Found Footage - Part Three

Part One; Part Two

...

Shuchikar is busy compiling the unreleased filmography of his recently deceased mentor Andy Umbrage. Unbeknownst to him however, we have managed to find a cozy little corner wherefrom we can secretly spy on him, view the avant-après garde never before seen films pushing-the-medium-up-to-its-maximum-stretchable-limit-till-the-medium-tears-apart-noisily-and-reveals-an-inside-out-perspective-on-the-vacuousness-of-the-aforementioned-pushing-the-medium-up-to-its-maximum-stretchable-limit approach and record the impressions that these works of art have on our troubled, tortured, self doubting, potential genius-in-the-making protagonist.

It is notable how the new works of the late filmmaker incorporate settings, themes and concerns of science fiction, previously dismissed by him as adolescent fantasies of socially inept, autistic geeks. In fact, Shuchikar still cannot ascertain if this new fascination that the director showed was a parody ridiculing the ascendancy of the geek squad or a genuine late appreciation of the genre, for his science fictional tropes are often awkward, irrelevant, idiosyncratic and often totally orthogonal to the subject matter in his films.

His unreleased filmography includes the following films:

Soliloquy : Umbrage's first digitally shot venture. The film credits indicate only one name - that of Jenny Nosecondname in what would be her fifth collaboration with the director. ¹

The scene shows a dark room, so dark in fact that one can't make out anything at all. There is a vague appearance of someone sitting in a couch or a recliner, speaking in a monotone. From the voice, it can be ascertained that the figure is a woman and Shuchikar remembers the voice well enough to know it's Jenny's.

You claim that crudely speaking, music is for the head or for the feet. So I come along and ask you what does it mean and you respond with a smirk on your face (which I can't see now since it's so dark) that The Who, Marvin Gaye, Dick Dale, Cream, Rolling Stones, Peter Frampton, Deep Purple, Hendrix etc. - these are for the feet. Okay, I say and you continue with your 'for the head' brand of music - The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Neil Young, Frank Zappa, you say and give me a smug smile. Ha! I laugh. Where does Pink Floyd go? And you fall off your high chair, tumble down, roll about, pick the katana and commit harakiri.

Yes, where indeed does Pink Floyd go?

The lighting in the room is not back, but the room seems to have been bathed in some sort of strange glow. Blacks are becoming slowly, oh so slowly, greyish; the change in luminosity is barely enough for Shuchikar to make out the outlines of the couch and Jenny's figure. The grey scale manipulation of the image seems slow, deliberate and displays a mastery of technical aspects of film technology and image processing/editing that Umbrage wasn't known for. Greyness seems to be seeping into the image, at the expense of the black parts - as if blackness were being drained off/greyness was pumped in slowly. Meanwhile, the soliloquy of the unnamed female protagonist continues and the camera, excruciatingly slowly, in a long, slow take begins focusing on what seems to be the outline of the face of speaker.

Take the example of progression of, say, rock music. You start off with certain basic set of themes - guitar based music for example, with easy, singable, likeable, short pieces. Then slowly you see complexity set in. The bands become more ambitious since they see that the competition warrants them to be different from the herd so that it's cooler for the fans to proclaim themselves as their fans and thereby appropriate from the bands the 'differentness' from the herd. So now mainstream rock music (which started off itself as a 'rebellion') begins to exhibit aversions to its own popularity and crumbles under its own weight and branches out as different 'kinds' of rock music. Some of these new forms are more mainstream friendly, some are rabidly otherwise. So you see critics coming up with taxonomy programs for labeling these movements with weird, sometimes funky names that in a sane world should make no sense at all. What does technical death metal mean, or indeed jazz punk? Is it that one is at liberty to take the basic building blocks (Blues, Jazz, Punk for example) and combine and permute them in any arbitrary order to label that which passes for music these days?

The pitch of the delivery has steadily been climbing, mimicking the monotonous increase in the greyscale level of the scene. The face of the protagonist is somewhat visible now. It's a beautiful, beautiful face that bears marks of supreme erudition and thoughtfulness. Even though the soliloquy steadily descends into a rant, the beauty, intelligence and profound sincerity of the face creates a deep impression on the viewer.

The camera begins to zoom out now and the image is more than well lighted to make the objects in the room visible. As the rant continues and becomes harsher, for the first time, the viewer gets to see the entire figure of Jenny Nosecondname.

She is dressed badly, skimpily and her overly exposed body bears the marks of numerous tattoos - most of them extolling the virtues of living fast and loose and championing the fulfillment of all carnal desires. Her legs are spread out wide and on the insides of her right thigh can be seen a huge pink tattoo proclaiming "I heart sex", with the heart being the somewhat angular cardoidish, red symbol so commonly referred to as the heart shape. The walls of her room has pictures of Justin Bieber, Paris Hilton, Backstreet Boys and Lindsay Lohan. The rant has become a full fledged shriek against the lack of quality and intelligence of modern music and the greyscale level of the scene has reached whitish proportions so much it hurts the eye and in one final, continuous swoop of incomprehensively loud noise and glowing white light so harsh that one can't make out anything in the room, the screen goes totally white and all activities cease.

And then comes over a badly cutout figure of an astronaut who takes off his helmet, winks at the camera and flashes a corny thumbs up sign on which is tattooed "The End."

BACK TO POST

1. A promising undergraduate in the Cinema Studies department of the University at the time of her first collaboration, Jenny was also once the big, great, larger-than-life, true love of Shuchikar at the time when he was a devoted disciple of Umbrage. In fact, it was he who had suggested to Umbrage to cast Jenny as the actress after the sad demise of the director's wife for the film "No Obfuscation, No Prevarication" for which he was the Assistant Director.

No sooner did her voice fill the room, than Shuchikar experienced a sharp, painful pang. He hadn't seen her in over two years now and as her monologue occupied the enclosed space aided not in small measure by the surround sound equipment, her suppressed memories took form and flooded his mind.