It all starts with a photo

Time to Love is a Turkish movie by Metin Erksan which I recently saw on MUBI. The movie was restored in 4K by MUBI and is a movie which is based on a folk tale where a person falls in love with a photograph. Well the end is something which I would not like to reveal.

In the movie, a simple painter falls in love with a photograph but he does not want to fall in love with the person. The girl who is very rich & does not believe in love at first sight falls in love with the man seeing her love and throughout the movie tries to win her love. The reason given by the painter is very insightful: he says “the photograph will always love me because her gaze won’t change but your love will change with time, you may not like my shabby look some day or the fact that I live hand to mouth and exist on contracts”. 

Reflecting on it I realise why we build a platonic / spiritual relationship with authors, directors / painters through the objects created by them. Or, maybe it is the character like Potter or Arya Stark of GOT or Holmes with whom we build that relationship - the insight is the same, they don’t talk back, the acceptance or rejection is in our hand. But in a physical relationship it’s a 2 way street and yes people do change & I am not surprised when someone says “How did I live with him for the last 15 years?”.

This also takes me back 23 years when my marriage proposals started coming in, in the form of photographs and ultimately one of those photo’s led to my marriage - 2 kids. And yes both of us have changed over these years but we have also learnt to live and let live with each other.

Time to love is a B/W gem where apart from the actors the landscapes which is essentially the Princes island across Istanbul, the turbulent sea, lakes, rain play and music play an important role in making this movie seem more like a photo essay where every shot looks like sketched and shot. This was made in 1964 so it’s all real, no effects. This is again one of the movies where you can just switch off the dialogue and see the movie & soundtrack and you can see it endlessly.

Postscript:

Isles of Passion on Notebook | MUBI

The Housemaid

“The Citizen Kane of Korean cinema” - This is what Bong Joon-Ho, now famous for Parasite, had to say for the movie. Kim KI-Young who is the founder of Korean Cinema. Made in 19 60, the movie was restored in 2008 by the Korean Film Archive. 

It’s a fascinating movie which has many parallel themes running in the movie. This is what MUBI has to say:

Gut-wrenching yet spellbinding, The Housemaid eludes any genre. Kim cuts abruptly from the preamble—a husband and wife musing on the nature of infidelity—to the main plot, in which two young factory workers fall for their music-club teacher. When one of them is suspended after passing him a flirtatious note, the other infiltrates his household pretending to want piano lessons, and then hires yet another wayward colleague as the family’s housekeeper.

What follows is a torrid tale of forbidden love, sexual aggression, blackmail, and, ultimately, murder. Ki-young handles this contorted plot with such assured brazenness—mixing social critique with elements of horror and grotesque—that it’s hard not see The Handmaid as a model for all Korean horror made since. Last to last years Palme d’Or winner, Parasite, by Bong Joon-ho, for example, bears great affinity with it. Both films portray a hard-working family whose frustrated economic ambitions turn the whole world upside down. To an extent, Bong’s film is a playful pastiche on the classic story of the unsuspecting family exploited by a social “parasite.”

Kim ironizes South Korea’s consumerism with blunt, at times outrageous wit, as Bong does. And like Bong’s prize-winner, Kim’s masterpiece evinces moral ambivalence: a fallen husband too eager to purge his guilt, a wife whose self-abnegation makes her—depending on how you see her—a martyr or a despot. Kim Deok-jin’s cinematography creates a claustrophobic universe full of spying and of hidden threats.

It gave me goosebumps and reminded me of Hitchcock and his movies. Older movies when VFX was not there and especially the B/W ones a lot depended on dialogue delivery, emotions portrayed by the actors and the overall cinematography of how the screen shapes in front of you. The shadows especially tell its own story. The quarters are cramped and to shoot in that place with cameras and people around must be a big challenge or maybe it was easier - because it’s almost like a theatre. 

In my life too maids were our safety net, we were lucky to have maids who were like an extended family and took care of both my daughters. We helped them economically and my wife would patiently hear their painful stories of husband getting drunk, taking money from her, beating her & children etc. This was 10 years back when mobile was still a luxury for them. But now things are different maids have as younger ones are more ambitious and want to fight for their rights and their place in society. Which is what Kim shows in 1960’s Korea is the new reality of India.

The transgressions shown in this movie are more heard in Mumbai where the rich and famous fall, at least 2 cases are well documented. Hope there are not more. 

Postscript: 

About Kim Ki-Young: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Ki-young 

Transience of Memory

As I write this I read a post-it stuck on my soft board. It says ‘Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers it in order to recount it’ & on my shelf is the book ‘The Memory Police’ by Yoko Ogawa. Our memory in many ways determines our current day, our reactions to what we speak & share with friends & family. 

The transience of memory is a central theme of Alain Resnais's french movie ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’ of love and horror in Hiroshima.. The movies was made in 1959 14 years after the bombing which was carried out on 6th and 9th August 1945 in Hiroshima & Nagasaki. We are in November 20 22 - 77 years after the bombing nuclear war rhetorics are again in media with multiple conflicts spreading across the world. 

I saw the movie more as a cinema buff and found it not only a poetic & a beautiful love story but a masterclass in cinematography, music, acting and story telling - hitting you with a striking message on the impact of the bombing. What the civilians went thru, for the first 30 mnts it’s almost like a documentary where it shows the effect of Hiroshima but intertwines beautifully  with the voiceover of Emmanuelle as she is talking to her Japanese lover - telling her what she has seen in Hiroshima.

I would love to see it again without reading subtitles - since now I understand the story just to admire the photography. The parallel drawn between the memory of Hiroshima & the love story of Emmanuelle (the lady) is beautifully told. In a way as we see in the concluding scenes the love story equals the place where it takes place i.e. Nevers in France. So, the story is of Nevers and Hiroshima and what happened.

When we love someone or something and it gets taken away - initially the brutality of it hits you so hard that it knocks you off in the movie it makes her mad (almost) but over a long period of time you forget the memory of what happened the actual images or the scene which played out in front of you. At moments, you hate yourself for forgetting this memory. You question yourself - How can I forget the memory of a person who was my life or played an important role in making me what I am. That triggers a rage which sometimes self destructs you or spoils the current relationship. That is the essence of the movie.

While love is a personal memory. Hiroshima is a collective memory like partition in India’s case. Many of us may not be there but even now there are books which put a lens on what happened during partition. A recent book - Remnants of partition talks about objects which people carried back to India and the story behind it. 

Do places have a memory? This thought stuck me when I was in my return journey from Delhi, As I was emptying the divans, and double beds of quilts (i prefer rajai), dolls  with which I played 50 years back, photographs, shirts I had gifted but not worn…objects almost each of them had a story. As the taxi moved from various lanes of Vikaspuri so many memories got triggered from things as mundane as a place where I made my specs or puja shopping or ram leela ground and places from where I used to take the bus for my college. So many trips and so many memories of love and grief which faded away long back but now comes back as the flight takes off from Delhi. I settle down for a movie in my head 

‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’ is a slow languid movie alternating between love and grief imitating life. See it and you will feel your story come alive after the credit rolls. 

Postscript:

Read about the movie here: In the below note I liked the fact that the movie was made on a brief

Scores on Screen. The Obvious Necessity for Memory: Music and Memory in "Hiroshima, mon amour" on Notebook | MUBI (it was a seminal movie for those interested google endlessly but mubi and criterion has the best articles) 

Read about the bombing here: It made me realise how history is depicted as a rational and factual note, that’s the way we have read history books. This education or history completely overlooks the human side of it & that is why non of us could relate to it. It was just memory of dates and events.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

The idea of Focus

In my current setting this is unsettling and raises many questions. To focus is to choose. But, if you have made up your choice you are not exploring other things which means you may not have made the right choice. The context is not buying a shampoo because that is where the paradox of choice comes in and people spend hours online without deciding, the context is life decisions.

For most part - deadline pushes you to make a choice, a college admission deadline makes us decide the college which our children go to. What if we do not have a deadline, will we go on trying new things or will we exhaust and choose ? 

For many who are lucky, serendipity plays a big role, being in the right place at the right time can make the choice for you and those who are unlucky, mother nature, or a decision made somewhere in the echelons of corporate makes the choice for you.

Some really don’t care.

This is what Jiddu Krishnamurthy has to say on  attention “As we said, we ought to consider what it means to be attentive. This may be the clue to a harmonious existence. As things are, the intellect, the whole activity of the brain, which is thinking, dominates our existence. This brings about contradiction, peculiar behavior in us. When only one part of our whole being is dominant, it will inevitably bring about neurotic behavior. Attention is awareness of this dominance of intellect without acting on the instinctive urge to control it or to allow emotion to take its place. This awareness brings about subtlety, clarity of mind. 

There is a difference between concentration and attention. Concentration is to bring all your energy to focus on a particular point. In attention there is no point of focus. We are very familiar with one and not with the other. When you pay attention to your body, the body becomes quiet, has its own discipline; it is relaxed but not slack and it has the energy of harmony. When there is attention there is no contradiction and therefore no conflict.”

I agonized over these lines yesterday so could not finish my post. K does that to me (and many of us) always. It’s his way of pushing you to find your own meaning. Some one had commented that he is harsh / rough and difficult to understand whereas Si Sri is much softer / easy - because he gives you an answer, K does not. 

Focus / Concentration is what I (many of us) do when I go to work.I focus completely on getting to the office, doing my meetings with all sincerity, completing my work and coming back - the dominant role is played by intellect or thinking. 

Attention is when I am cooking or running. Yes both of them have a goal but there is harmony in the head - heart and hand / legs when I am doing it and my attention is complete - all your senses are alive - I smell the food, taste the food, see that it looks beautiful. 

Circling back to my original question? Why is a break year (or a longish break) so crucial ? 

When we work our mind gets hardwired to focus and it’s difficult to get away from that circle. It’s embedded deep, even when u take a break - the pre break work / prep and the low of coming back and the stress of the pending work sucks you back with double focus. This is a pattern. Just like a circadian rhythm, this is a pattern which all of us fall into. Many people love it and they should enjoy it as long as it lasts. See TED talk: Danger of a single story (link below).

A similar story plays out after 12th, when we were looking for admissions for Joyee most of her batch mates children had a vague notion of what they want to do - one of the best things which I saw when the new set of colleges - Ashoka, Kriya & Plaksha who understand this and give complete flexibility to students in choosing the subject. They can choose the subjects, do projects, have a mentor who will guide the child on the projects and counsel her on what the application of what they are learning and the future may hold for them. It’s expensive and extends the study period but it sets the direction clear. 

Coming back to ME - it has been 2 months and I am still learning to defocus and just experience activities so I write a lot, shoot photographs (put out the story it whispers in my mind), cook, walk, run, travel, listen to long podcasts which dwell deep into the life of a person. I recently joined a painting class - to build my attention. I am still learning. 

It takes time. 

Focus is great. Attention is Bliss.

Postscript:

Read the full note on awareness by Jiddu Krishnamurthy here: https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/chapter-41-awareness-brings-about-subtley-clarity-mind 

See this TED talk ‘Danger of a single story’ by one of my favorite authors: https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en

Slowing Down

Did you know that it take 1mnt 45 seconds to heat the boiled water in your gas vs 45 seconds in the microwave.

1. Did you know that to cook a meal for 2 - a basic sabzi, dal & rice (where you are cooking looking at the you tube and making the sabzi) it for the first time take 1 hr all inclusive.

2. Did you know that, when you water the plant and touch the soil in your small piece you feel that you have touched a larger being and feel a connection - Really you can?

3. Did you know that you can buy groceries, biscuits without plastic - like 30 years back ?

4. Did you know that you will get paid if you give plastics out to an organization who will help you recycle it. 

I didn’t. 

The answer to all the above was convenience & reason today we need convenience is because we don’t have time. The reason we don’t have time is because roads are blocked / broken and at times filled with water and we have to travel to the office and that would take an hour or more. If you don’t go to the office you are hooked on to Teams call for the same amount of time. You want to reward yourself in the evening or on the weekend - so you binge watch (i can’t) have a drink, go out, order in - but wait there is no ice - no prob - you will get it in 15 mnts - thanks to Blink It.

 

I didn’t live by many of the things I mentioned above in italics all the time but I did a few things some time. But, it’s true I discovered the answers to all the 5 questions in the last 2 months. I am still trying to find creative ways of using time meaningfully in my 2nd Innings which is, after I took an early retirement - refusing to run the meaningless race.

 

When you slow down,the first thing you discover is that there is a lot of time which is such a luxury - but it takes time to get used to it. You are so used to being busy and multi-tasking that you feel like a student who is caught cheating in his exam. You have this constant urge to do something - you need some goals, some milestones to feel worthy. 

 

How can someone not do anything? This is the expression I get when they see a guy with black hair who has retired. I used to feel very insecure when I said(say) - I don’t know - Am figuring out? It’s a kind of break year for me. You know I want to do sustainability but I also want to do photography, paint, go to Japan & meet Murakami. Before I can finish - I can hear it “He is nuts? He is worse than my 12th class son”

     

I continue walking & when I see the next person approaching I adjust my volume and start listening to Kabir - Ud Jayega Haans Akela….

Ode to Columnists

When we embrace change, it is always followed by a churn. It can seem hard and confusing. We may worry and begin to second guess ourselves. Wise leaders recognise that transitions are hard. They create space for uncertainty and chaos. It is the dark tunnel that eventually leads us towards the light. Stay committed to the purpose and give it time for the fog to clear. These lines are from Natasha Budhwar whose columns I read with a lot of interest in Mint Lounge. Thanks to Amit and his circle of friends and his podcast that I heard her speak (for the first time) on his show Seen & Unseen. 

This was one column I would look forward to every Sunday - I still remember 1 particular article which talked about turning 50 and re-reading it I felt like someone had taken a pen and transcribed what was there in my mind in the most beautiful and poetic way, It's very rare that someone can speak to you and arouse this feeling of friendship without being there. I remember because I turned 50 and I had pasted the cutting on the door of my cupboard which I used to open every day. There were portions of it I had highlighted and dressing up getting ready, I would just read those lines and leave my single room cubby hole in Mumbai.

Staying alone away from my family for a long time the cutting was like a friend who was there, a kind of reminder that said - this loneliness, this struggle, it’s worth it. 

Another columnist who I go back and keep reading is Game Theory by Rohit Brijnath. This is what he wrote on Practice and on Pete Sampras’s retirement. “The practice arena (Court 16 where he would practice)is a factory of repetition,a polishing workshop and it can be boring but it’s also a privilege. He is playful and purposeful, all flick & whip,mobile and still. In matches they would do super slo-mo shots and we could see his head still, eyes tracking the ball on to his racket. An expressive Federer searching for precise self is unforgettable. He quotes a famous choreographer - Practice means to perform, over and over again, in face of all obstacles, the act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the person desired.”

Comparing a game with choreography and it’s importance in sports is an arc which you can cross as visuals of an orchestra or ballet floats in front of you or Maradona dribbling past defender and scoring a goal or Pele coming up at the right time to predict the ball and hit it into the goal. This is magic which we can see but writing it down - that’s the power which columnists need to have for their readers to be true fans. 

Book is a long read - we all have our time slots, cuddling in bed in rajai, sitting in the winter sun (being winter it is evoking these images in me), you have to get into the plot and remember what you read and what you thought would happen etc. It’s like a sapling which grows and becomes a creeper which is slowly spreading on your balcony net. A book is like a creeper which grows on you as you keep reading. 

A column is a fast read, a slower version of browsing. To hold the attention of the reader till the end is a challenge which makes it like a T 20 game vs a 1 day. It’s a lifetime of learning (in sports for Brij & psychology & visceral observation in case of Natasha) which the columnist uses to put forward his / her opinion in front of an unknown audience. 

I believe it’s an amazing work of art & practice which the columnists do week after week and helps us in giving words to our thoughts which lie buried in our heart or mind. 

To me and I think to many others - the column gives meaning to otherwise a mundane day.

Postscript:

Listen to the podcast here:

https://seenunseen.in/episodes/2022/10/31/episode-301-natasha-badhwar-lives-the-examined-life/ 

Some articles here: https://www.tribuneindia.com/columnist/natasha-badhwar-81 

Subscribe her to substack here:https://natashabadhwar.substack.com/

Gargi n Mirch Masala

I saw Mirch Masala, a 1987 film which is based in the early 40’s as part of the Smita Patil retrospective on MUBI. She is one of my favourites in the parallel movie universe who unfortunately met with an early death due to complications during childbirth. Because of which we could not see much of her like we do of Shabana Azmi who was her contemporary.

I had seen Mirch Masala probably when I was in 12th and I guess I would have slept through most of it except for the last part where she is fighting to save herself from the subedar who wants her for obvious reasons. And, how Om Puri plays the hero albeit an old man who fights against the subedar because his majhab / principles do not allow him to give Smita to the subedar. He fights knowing very well that it’s his death wish.

Seeing it again with after 25 years you understand that the movie portrays everything which was wrong with our society (and true for all others as well) - women cannot study, cannot go out, but man can have women beside his wife, the uneducated get their lands taken over by zamindars and have to pay lagaan - tax. In the current context - Om Puri is a muslim but he gives up his life to protect a dalit (in all probablity) Smita. A job in govt is a coveted need in those days which takes away Smita’s husband. 

This was pre-independence, whatever stats I read the penetration of education is still abysmal in rural areas, law and order situation is still driven by the rich and powerful lobbies. The rich and poor gap is only increasing with the right wing making their voice felt more strongly than ever and tech has now given power to all but also taken our independence and relationships with nature and people around us.

The above may be a very simplistic picture but if we summarise all the articles and books in recent days and the articles I read it may not be very different, which made me stop reading news and engaging on social media. 

I also saw Gargi, a Tamil movie starring Sai Pallavi, in which a daughter fights a legal battle against the society to prove that her father is innocent. This is set in 20 21 and it portrays the true picture of our courts and what it takes to fight a system. More importantly the power of press and social media to mobilise people against you. Jai Bhim, which one many awards, portrayed a similar picture of what’s happening in a city. 

If you read Logical Indian, Better India - there will be many stories of how someone has decided to make a change and went ahead and made it. Recently I was in a seminar where the founder of an organisation was threatened with death, or acid being thrown on her and her family and even her tyre was punctured because she wanted to fight a legal battle against the land owners. She is a computer science graduate and has been working in the US for 20+ years before she decided to come and do something for India.

The kind of resilience and perseverance needed to follow this path is immense and very rare. 

Like my friend said yesterday, most of us are reluctant activists/change makers / entrepreneurs. It’s easy to get bogged down by constant negative news and lift yourself up to do something within your sphere of influence. In the same seminar I mentioned earlier a young girl in college asked ‘how do i understand the nuances of these changes and how do I create change’. There were many suggestions made by people on dais. 

For me, the change starts with me and my mindset, once that is clear, path will follow. As someone said - The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Start Walking.

Musings on Mirch Masala

Seeing Mirch Masala in 2022 at times made me feel bored, put in a different way at time it felt out of place in the current scenario when Putin is waging war against Ukraine, we read about the economic turmoil of UK, and the antarctic ice melting, floods in pakistan, COVID no’s of 1 million death in India and so on.

I had to restrain and control my patience to see it at times and I was reflecting on it later - our interest and consumption of news has changed so much over time that the the key concern of those with money is mostly around issues created in last 10 - 20 years while on ground things would not have changed much.

My visit to a village in Assam in 2018, showed that there is no power for more than 2 hrs, schools are understaffed, medical facilities are available only at towns and that too for anything like a complex surgery or you have to travel much further. 

There are too many issues out there, everything looks too big and difficult to solve. There are issues which you want to solve but the practical reasons like language or location, you will have to rule out. Our years of time spent in corporate forces us to think big and scale. 

No issue is too small - as long as it impacts even a single person.

The Relationship Puzzle

2 powerful movies which dig deeper into relationships but are too close to our daily life. You have to have the patience and the desire to discover something new to see both the movies.

Everything is Cinema - Don Palathara (MUBI)

This is almost like a podcast with visuals mostly black and white and shot with a hand held camera during lock down. In brief a new director shoots his wife surreptitiously and tells whatever he has in mind about their relationship (his views). The guy is arrogant and the girl is normal like any other actress. 

What’s new? Well the format is very different, you may or may not like it. I was OK, like I mentioned above it’s like his diary & hence a peek into the person’s mind and what goes on in it. It’s typical in all relationships that we speak 25% and keep 75% inside. For many it may be just the opposite, I belong to the 25 % category hence I coils relate to many of his thought process but I found the character to be a MCP which is not my type and at times jarring. 

Since the movie has nothing else to offer, you have to be psychiatrist type or someone who is inherently interested in ‘what goes on in that min’ type to like the movie.  

The Humans - Stephen Karam (MUBI)

This is again a movie where a family gathers for Thanksgiving and as the movie & the evening progresses one discovers the fault lines in the family. (Like I mentioned above) The 75% which is kept inside a person’s mind comes out in certain moments & The Humans is a brilliant portrayal of the same. It was just too close to my reality and hence was a bit discomforting.

Unlike Everything is cinema, this was almost like a play, the stage was a rundown apartment in lower Manhattan, just like a play. Each and every shot, dialogue, background sound has been choreographed to create a perfect symphony. It’s a movie I would like to watch again just from an education on making a perfect movie. 

Relationships: If I keep aside the animation and sci-fi and superhero kind of movies which will form 10% of all movies made. Rest 90% of movies are made around relationships. In Bollywood this may be 99%. For all the research which  has happened on relationships, there is no perfect equation of a relationship. Most relationships are flawed which is natural, because all of us are changing every moment, our mind and hence our biases and views are also changing rapidly especially with so much information floating on social media.

There is another extreme which we have been discussing between us (friends of similar age) that our parents and many of their contemporaries do not want to change. Even though they have a deteriorating health they refuse to shift base because of their emotional attachment although it may be life threatening. Or, they still treat us like guests or children and insist on making different dishes despite telling them not to.

Relationship is a puzzle which unlike Rubik’s cube you can master. But we can keep trying.

Pujo in 20 22

After 2 years we visited a Pandal of Durga Puja and also gave Anjali. While I did my pranam & turned back I found my wife rooted to the place almost in a meditative state. Later she explained that this was a place called Durga Bari in Bani Park, Jaipur where she had first come in tiny frocks and pony tails and played around with her friends innocently without actually fathoming the significance. Seeing the kids zig-zagging in the pandal reminded her of her childhood. 

None of us are deeply religious, in one of those debates I had asked my younger daughter - Does she believe in God ? No, she replied and she specified that she does not believe in idol worship but she does believe in some higher power and celebrates Pujo or other festivals because of the shared love and sense of community.

Looking around as I was reflecting on these thoughts I found an extremely frail women holding crutches and waiting to give anjali, A mother & a family posing along with the Durga idol to take photos, youngsters busy with their phone and many families lining up for having spicy bong food in the multiple stalls which is generally put up in any pujo.

In Kolkata I read about a special place and provision made for cancer patients & a replica of the twin tower of Malaysia created as a pandal. I am sure there are many such pandals where the karigars & decorators start work almost 1 month back to create these innovative pandals. People will buy jewellery, clothes and cars - A per today’s paper the online companies have done a business of Rs. 3.5 billion in their first wave of sales. 

As I was leaving the pandal I was trying to answer the question why religion existed or exists in today's world and the relevance of it. The celebration has been taken over by marketing hence promoting consumption. There is actually no sense of community and feeling of brotherhood (neighbourhood) because except for a core group of maybe 25 - 50 families, it is more to see the decoration and enjoy the food & have fun. So, again driving consumption.

The true believers don’t need the razzmatazz of the pandal, they are like the old lady whom I saw who is probably disconnected with the rest of the world and this is the only connection left in the world. 

Only Murders in the Building

I always look at lists or reviews  to select a particular movie to see. At times some of the movies which are highly revered make no sense but 7/10 times these movies are what I was looking for and enthral me, give me my moment of bliss in an otherwise chaotic or mundane day. 

But sometimes I just rely on instinct - where the past memories of movies / reviews / actors or whatever defines instinct I choose a movie or documentary but rarely a series Because series needs investment in time. 

Only Murders in the building was one such series I whimsically picked (I think driven by the combination of the 2 of the most underrated funny actors Martin Short & Steve Martin) and saw the first episode enroute to Bangalore. I loved it so much that by the next day I finished the series. It was much before it garnered good reviews from many many people. I just finished Season 2 and I quite liked the way S2 built the past stories of the lead actors into the present. I think most of the reviews were not very favourable (season 1 was better according to the press) but personally I liked it. Of course S1 had the novelty which any 1st season of a series has..It’s like most marriages / relationships - 1st year is the best because there is no benchmark. 

So, what do I like:

I like the lightness of the series - In a stupid parallel I thought it was very much like the Rishikesh Mukherjee / Basu Chatterjee + Amol Palekar movies of 70’s. You come out feeling good and happy and a smile automatically comes to your face.

The characters are fallible, they all have a problem past, like all of us which haunt us, we run away from them & in most cases unknowingly drives our present. 

The fact that both lead actors are 70+. At 53, I can relate to the relationships they have with their families, their need of feeling loved and cared for & a kind of silent rejection by society as people whose time of fun & frolic is in the past.

I also like the overall production value, the Aconia building and the beautiful houses with rugs and interior designs done in a fashion that each house looks different but very upstate NY. 

Lastly I love the pets & special appearances by Sting, Shirley Maclaine and many others which brings in a change and also lifts the show from it’s regular rhythm.

When time stands still

I entered our Delhi house after 4 years. The last time I entered was to do baba’s shradh in 2018. This time when I entered, It was like time stood still - the photographs from my childhood to my kids early teen, the kitchen with utensils and plates in which we made and had food, the toilet broken because of misuse, the beds & chairs dusty, with a layer of sand - it was like when you pause a movie while editing it. Only difference is that here we didn’t have the actors and could not unpause it.

Except in memory of course. But then memory also is like the fishes hidden in the crevices of stones deep in the ocean - difficult to retrieve. But when I came into our home it was like a tsunami of memory which hit me and stunned me. I stood still for a long time till I got my senses back. My mind had to move from heart to mind - because I was here to empty the house. To remove the physical baggage once and for all. 

In my journey from Delhi to Solan as the flat lands gave away to hills, the ebb and flow of thoughts also reduced or did they go numb. I reflected on this, what is the trigger for any recall, objects, photos, songs & movies heard and seen together - shared spaces like a house. When we grew up in the 70's & 80 there was mostly nothing called personal space. All the fathers friends were uncle & their wives aunties & their children were our friends - we went for picnics, saw movies together, we huddled together in a TV room (called ante room - i still don’t know why ?) to see Star Trek and Spiderman. We played all possible games from pitto (7 stones), gulli danda, football, cricket. Then there were all the festivals & programs - everyone celebrated all festivals. 

That’s the way it was in Air Force cantonment areas - I am hoping the same continues even now. Unless the mobile has intruded and divided the children. When my children were growing up in Bangalore the apartment also had a similar culture and I am happy that the kids were mobile free and enjoyed the friendship, many of which they still maintain - yes on mobile :)  

As I lock the house, heavy winds start blowing and very soon rain follows. I walk in the rain with tears in my eyes and rain on my face merging the past and present in a single stream.

Khosla Ka Ghosla

Last few months, in fact for a year now, I have been trying to sell baba’s house in Delhi. Speaking to brokers is the first because without them nothing moves especially if you are selling a DDA flat. 

So there were brokers of all kinds

• one who is based in Uttarakhand but has someone who will get it done - Ho Jayega Sir! Don’t worry! Was a common statement and after they visit the house they will list out all the reasons why it will be difficult to sell and try to get the price down.

• One who stays below & got someone to agree to buy and after the discussion quietly said - ‘Mujhe 1% dena’ For what I asked. Introduction Ke.

• There were few brothers - every time I called their wife would pick up and say - haa ghar dikhane haye, which was complete nonsense - because no one showed up. 

Operating out of Bangalore and having stayed here for 16 years I was a soft spoken south Indian who did not speak any south Indian language but had lost the Delhi swagger. All those who stayed in Delhi will understand what I mean. Slowly I moved from English to Hindi not only in speech but also text (W app) and I could immediately see a change in the response.

Thankfully, the broker was soft spoken, while I was prepared for a war it was armistice right from the first call and thanked my stars that I got a level headed guy to deal with. Even the buyer was good so was able to close everything - My Bangalore gentleness was appreciated by both :)

Postscript: Khosla Ka Ghosla is a 2006 film which was directed by Dibakar Bannerjee and won the National Award for the best feature film. Kamal Kishore Khosla is a middle-class man living in New Delhi where he has purchased a plot of land to build a house. It's a black comedy also starring Ranvir Shenoy & Vinay Pathak duo. You can see it in Disney.