Favourite is a Strong Word

The great FC Ed series of blogposts on favourite authors has got me wondering. And quietly smiling. About how choosing favourite authors is always a confession; only ostensibly about the qualities of another person. Choosing a favourite author is always about choosing to see a part of yourself, to define yourself. Which is why (and my confession starts now), the sweet holiday-homework essay tone of My Favourite Author has evaded me all my life.
I've been tortured most of my adult life by this two-word 'favourite author?' question, sprang at me in polite conversation at parties, slambooks, author interviews - it sends out a flurry of question marks in my head, culminating in a pre-death-flash of scenes from novels I have loved. Truth be told, there is no single author I am faithful to (gasp), and in fact, there might not even be a single author whose entire ouevre I have read (me fake lit student). There isn't a doubt that I'm absolutely deliriously hungry for the gravitational pull of Amitav Ghosh's novels, that suck me eyes-wide, face-down into places and minds and eras at one go. But haven't I also lately been squealing out loud with excitement as I devour the maddeningly absorbing, superbly clever, articulate-to-the-point-of-heartbreaking ride that Vikram Chandra has set up in Sacred Games? Random scenes from Uzma Aslam Khan's novels flash so often in my brain as I go about the most mundane events of my life, that I can finally say I pretty much live with them now. I can't eat makhana without thinking about Tabish Khair's The Bus Stopped; I can't look at a raincloud without thinking of Andal's Natchiar Tirumozhi; I can't think about khadi without thinking about Nilita Vachani's Homespun; and I can't think of riverside havelis without thinking of Anuradha Roy's An Atlas of Impossible Longing. But are any of these people that Chosen One for me?

Erm. Not really.

I thought hard about this haunted question, and I did realise that although I'm a literary committment-phobe, there is one thing that makes me gush and blabber about the genius of authors like I just did - it's the way they choose to make sense of the world. Nowhere have I been more acutely aware of the presence of history, than in fiction, ironic as that may be. I don't mean it in the way of that awfully named genre of the Historical Novel aka You Can Believe it Coz it's True. I mean it in the way history is lived, understood, manipulated, authored - when an individual mind makes story-sense of the world. And very few people can convey that story to another - not by shoving it down people's throats, but rather, quite magically by evoking unarticulated experiences. And those are my favourite authors.

It is not just a convincing version of the world, but a story through which they reveal themselves. I don't love authors for revealing secrets of the universe to me in epiphanic wisdom, carefully encrypted in dazzlingly-constructed sentences. I love it rather, when their writing, whether show-offy clever or honestly simple, makes me revel in the magic of a book - that a sheaf of paper can reveal to me, in any place (a 3-hour queue, a cramped train compartment with wailing babies, a perfectly tucked in bed), an entire person in flesh and blood, through the visions it has chosen to create. When Amitav Ghosh dwells on the Irrawady dolphin's seasonal movements for pages in The Hungry Tide, I love the digression from the plot, cuz I know this is where he's letting me in on the almost-Brechtian moment where I rear my head from the story and take a look at him. It's where he's letting me write a little story of him - as I imagine him sitting in his writing room and reading a zoological tome on dolphins of the Indian subcontinent, thinking, 'I must write this into a novel some day. But how?' I love these meta-fiction moments in fiction, and I love authors who let themselves be revealed in this way. With honesty, and perhaps a twinkle-eyed smile. Without making a literary edifice of it, like Siddharth Dhanavant Shanghvi’s display-window tableaux of ‘see-what-I'm-trying?’ in his novels.

And so, the ‘favourite author’ question remains a perennial one for me, because maybe books are about fictional people who can let us conjure more fiction about real people; and as any author will tell ya, it’s hard to choose a favourite from among your own creations, right? So ‘my favourite author’ will be a happy torment I can live with (‘and purge my guilt periodically in the blog universe, hehe). Or y’knowhat, I’ll just surrender my twisted argument, take a bow and wriggle out of this tough decision, with the literary commitment-phobe’s classic metaphor-situation of convenience: All those lovely writers out there who still can’t make it to my Chosen One seat, all I gotta say is: I love you baby, but you’re not The One. It’s not you, it’s me.

punky pjs

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Words: They Transmogrify

Because I couldn’t, not in this lifetime, dare contemplate Joseph Conrad’s genius, I’m not blessed yet. Because the memory of reading Heart of Darkness is more vivid than most of my adolescence, and because, if Coppola could ruin it so, I’ll eat humble pie.

Because The Chosen One is a pastiche of thoughts, much like that wall…was it a door? the Glass brothers wrote on (oh, a ‘beaverboard’, I just checked “decorated with four somewhat gorgeous-looking columns of quotations from a variety of the world’s literatures”), where epiphanies ring to and fro, because we’re so verbal and needlessly eloquent, such wordy people need those that can tell you what lies between

"And" was the next word I lost, probably because it was so close to her name, what a simple word to say, what a profound word to lose, I had to say "ampersand", which sounded ridiculous, but there it is, "I'd like a coffee ampersand something sweet," nobody would choose to be like that. "Want" was a word I lost early on, which is not to say I stopped wanting things – I wanted things more – I just stopped being able to express the want, so instead I said "desire", "I desire two rolls" I would tell the baker, but that wasn't quite right, the meaning of my thoughts started to float away from me, like leaves that fall from a tree into a river, I was the tree, the world was the river. I lost "come" one afternoon with the dogs in the park, I lost "fine" as the barber turned me toward the mirror, I lost "shame" – the verb and the noun in the same moment; it was a shame.

- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran-Foer

Everything I hope to know and remember is on that beaverboard; a beacon of light in my head’s dark, seamy, ringing hallways. Alain De Botton for love, Toni Morrison for hate, Nick Hornby for the music, JD Salinger for my childhood’s lost cause, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry' as my lucky charm, Stephen King to replace the actual silly task of living, Pico Iyer to breathe life back into the world and Milan Kundera to remind me that nothing will ever be the same again.

So that, once more, at the end of it all, I only find comfort, respite, my final resting place, with

Go(ld): “Did you know that “Philip Sandifer, who uses Calvin and Hobbes as the main example for a reading of comic strips based on the psychoanalytic theories of Jaques Lacan, draws parallel between Hobbes's status as an imaginary friend and the Lacanian concept of the Imaginary, suggesting that a given comic strip is an attempt to construct a momentary and ephemeral present that will be dismantled by the punchline (which he allies with the Lacanian Real), wiping the slate and allowing the process to begin again the next day?”

Phish: "I'll say. Hey! What time is it?? My TV show is on!"

go(ld)phish

Damn the chosen ONE: thoughts on the CHOSEN one

Being solemnly faithful to The Chosen One is, unarguably, a near-impossible task. I’m still reeling from how the writers in our First City’s June Special obliged us so. A favourite writer changes so often. You read a book, you’re swept away, and you hunger for the writer’s next one; in the meanwhile, another book beckons, you read it, and it captures you so subtly, you only know it days after you turned the last page. And even as you wallow in the bittersweet moments of having finished a book that’ll never be the same again (because now you can only re-read it, and you almost want to lock this time in that part of your brain that never ever forgets), there’s a dazzling new, stylish writer who could be new to the world, or just to you.
A favourite writer is someone who makes you giggle at first, perhaps, someone who shocks you later on, someone who reveals secret truths about experiences you haven’t had yet, someone who makes the ludicrous absolutely profound, and vice versa, someone who holds up a mirror to you, even, someone’s who’s simply hilarious, and someone who unleashes a sense of adventure and mystery. And all this could be accomplished by a single writer. Or a series of them.

There are a few first times you never ever forget, of course.

I’ll never forget reading, for instance, about Gregor Samsa’s overnight metamorphosis for the first time. It was a particularly hungover morning (not the best way to read it at all, because then the cockroach is forever fused in the mind with the sick feeling in your bloodstream), and being so struck, fascinated, discovering the word that could end and stop all conversations I figured, pretentious or otherwise - Kafka.
Or the first time I read about Salim’s pencil and a nation’s tryst with destiny, how the fantastical can even read like a book, awed by an author’s writing that is so markedly full of style. And again, the name conjures up everything good, bad and ugly about magic realism even today - Rushdie.
Or the first time The Famous Five entered my life and took over it completely. I’d seek out mysteries where there weren’t any (where was Maa’s purse last seen? Hmm?), and wished for a Timothy (what a brilliant dog!) to my George (never Anne, ‘cuz she was such a girl! Please, so not cool!), who would sniff-and-woof out the secret passageway to a mystery I could then crack. The famous five also introduced me to that feeling that only words in the hands of smart authors can evoke - of not knowing exactly what’s being talked about, but finding it very exciting nevertheless (Them eating bacon and ham for breakfast, is something I vividly remember as very tempting, until I discovered what it was and my vegetarian sensibilities reacted!). Ah, Enid Blyton!
Or reading Needful Things on never-ending bus rides, and discovering what compulsive writing is (when you can’t tear your eyes away from it and risk missing your bus at the stop hence!). And then going onto discover other greater works from the author who gives horror new meaning - Stephen King. Just the name’s enough to recreate unpleasant, spine-chilling moments.
Or spending days enamoured and seduced by Milan Kundera and the brilliant ways in which he converted all of life into an argument, intellectualising even sex. Since then, writers have tried and failed miserably trying to imitate him.
Reading Anthony Doerr’s memoirs on a Roman holiday, and falling in love with his love of nature and French nights, a reader’s vicarious living of Anthony’s parenting experiences too. Or reading Uzma Aslam Khan’s Geometry of God, a masterpiece, after being overwhelmed by her Tresspassing, and awaiting her next with something akin to a secret trepidation.

But I digress! This is about The Chosen One. It’s going to have rephrase as two’s company, in my case, though.

Douglas Noel Adams
So, here’s a writer (a favourite writer), who had a legendary reputation for not writing. His publisher had to move in with him, holding him imprisoned almost in a hotel room, so he wouldn’t miss the printers’ deadline again (And to him, we owe the priceless quote ‘I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by’). He’d always insisted that 42 ‘has no significance in relation to any other previous uses of the number 42’. He was also known for his huge collection of electric guitars and how he once performed at Earl’s Court with his mates, Pink Floyd. Man, was he cool! (And it’s still weird to use the past tense for a writer whose writing’s so alive, how he used technology in such writer-ly ways!)
His radio series started the year I was born. A year later, the book version appeared ‘based on the radio show’, still a good 16 years before I would lay my hands on it -The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - and find ultimate religious conversion. Here was humour, wit, meaning, ridicule, making a whole lotta sense, a pattern he followed in all of his books, through Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and The Meaning of Liff and The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul. Who can forget The Electric Monk (a labour saving device that believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe), or the cow offering its different parts to a horrified set of diners at the restaurant at the end of the universe (and that’s ‘end’, in all its meanings)?
Douglas Adams was also a writer for whom existing words were never enough. How do you explain that feeling of ///, except by inventing that word, ///? And so he did, he changed the way people spoke, and gave us shortcuts - We all need a Babel Fish in the ear, some days, when the Boss speaks in one of his inscrutable meetings. We never forget to carry towels on trips, or at least, we joke about it. We all frown at the brew in cup, on some days, that’s almost but not quite unlike tea. (Club that with Babel Fish boss day, and that makes it a Monday). And after helping us understand life, the universe and everything (or just the bizarre randomness of anything and everything disconnected), he had an asteroid named after him. (Other writers on this list include Antoine St Exupery, Nabokov, Dickens, Tolkien, Milan Kundera, CS Lewis, Dostoevsky, Kurt Vonnegut, George Orwell). But Douglas Adam’s the only one, I think, who’s had the honour of having one named after one of his characters. Yup, Arthur Dent.
“I wanted to be John Cleese”, he once said, “It took me some time to realise that the job was taken.” No one can now even attempt replacing Douglas Adams. (Oh, go away, Eoin Colfer!).

Amitav Ghosh
I’m always at a place in life where I can say, ‘Well, the last time I read Shadowlines…’ Because it’s always different from that first time I read Shadowlines, when it was always about Ila and only Ila. The resonance of the journey, the ‘going away’ and the ‘coming home’, still mark impressions on the mind.
Amitav Ghosh writes books that are Melville and Conrad washed, but with such a distinct style. You can always tell it’s Amitav Ghosh, even in his travel writing, even in The Imam and the Indian, even in his essays on the Andaman and Nicobar islands. It’s difficult to describe it, but it’s careful and deliberate, each word and expression weighed such that never is a page, a letter superfluous. He’s like the curious chronicler of our times, nonchalantly charting his own path through his novels and putting it out into the universe. Creating wonderful characters, people, who end up, in Sea of Poppies, as jahaj bhai and behen, on one ship together, almost impossibly, but also inevitably. (“Because people are inexhaustible”, he’d said in a First City interview). A breaking wave in The Hungry Tide, the Sunderbans rituals, are as alive as Piyali and Kanai and Fokir and the unlikely bond that forms between them in the pages of the novel. His books echo with a sense of the place (In an Antique Land, most memorably), all the while dealing with human emotion and the drama of life.
If you think about it (and blogposts clearly urge you to!), he’s an anthropologist, a gifted, meticulous, extremely hardworking observer, really, but the best, the most superior, kinds. And this is Amitav Ghosh’s biggest achievement. (Bigger than even his tryst with language, which transforms and throbs with its own sonority in each of his novels, most brilliantly in Sea of Poppies). He’s the only writer I know who can ease all that research and knowledge into wonderful, beautiful, compelling fiction - ease being the operative word. Because he makes it so effortless, you’ll think he was born speaking Laskari. That mammoth, gargantuan, academia that has gone into it never ever weighs his work down; it only sets it free. (A great sense of humour helps of course, something Amitav Ghosh has only perfected, in the journey from Shadowlines to Sea of Poppies).
Curiously, the only Amitav Ghosh I still haven’t read is his first one. And when I met the author during his recent book tour (the brilliant opportunity that First City is; thankyou, No Moss, for keeping this curious publication afloat for so long!), I bought a copy of The Circle of Reason, so he could sign it. Which he did, of course, very (what’s-that-word) graciously. (Though he already had me at hello and crackle chocolate). But now each time I open to finally start it, I read and re-read Amitav Ghosh’s inscription, and put it back on the bookshelf. And I secretly know it’s because I want an unread Amitav Ghosh always lying around somewhere, in my reach. Life wouldn't be the same, else.

floatin'

Flawless with Flaws : JD Salinger

I was introduced to the concept of light bearers by Thom Hartman and his book, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. He rightly pointed to the older, tribal culture of men and women, who walked lightly upon the earth and who, in today’s world, effortlessly keep that light and innocence intact, despite the constant upsurge of an unnatural noise surrounding us. An idea, a concept, germinates a seed inside and then, you view the world from a special lens. Every time, I think of a light bearer, my heart goes out to Seymour, a fictional character created by Salinger (born in the year 1919), omnipresent in four of his books (and Salinger sadly published five, from 1951 to 1965).

What does brilliance in writing not have in common with literature that’s mediocre? It is the ability to flesh out a character or characters without the presumptuous pomposity that bends them towards fiction and little reality. In my opinion, it is a gift to introduce a character that becomes a reality for the reader. A rush, a chain of thoughts that rattle you from sleeping in the night because you’ve been communicated your own thoughts (that you couldn’t word for the longest time) through a character. It has a visual quality and as these characters and images swim in your sub-conscious mind, they make your body bubble with extreme human emotion. The illusory drama comes alive and for a while, you look around you to meet them in person as you walk the streets because these characters are presumably flawless or flawless with flaws. The reason we connect with them is because we see a part of us in them or at least we wish to.

Salinger is prominently known for creating The Catcher in the Rye, which is the first book I ever read by him and don’t get me wrong here, ‘it killed me’ and I was taken aback by the crude honestly and cynicism of a 16-year-old Holden Caulfield, ‘horsing around’ or sitting in his chair with a red hunting hat on his head with ‘very, very long peaks’ and mumbling to himself the irrelevance of having to go through conventional learning in school {which is fairly common for all the other young characters, brought to life by Salinger, as Buddy points out to Zooey - we thought it would be wonderfully constructive to say at least (that is, if our own “limitations” got in the way) tell you as much as we knew about the men – the saints, the arhats, the bodhisattvas, the jivanmuktas – who knew something or everything about this state of being. That is, we wanted you both to know who and what Jesus and Gautama and Lao-tse and Shankaracharya and Hui-neng and Sri Ramakrishna, etc., were before you knew too much or anything about Homer or Shakespeare or even Blake or Whitman, let alone George Washington and his cherry tree or the definition of a peninsula or how to parse a sentence)} but the miniscule opening to the Glass family through Franny and Zooey introduced me to a diaspora of characters, practicing profound self-inquiry about themselves, though these self-aware characters didn’t know where to go from there. In my opinion, that is the reason why Seymour committed suicide and was mostly, communicated to me through letters and other members of the Glass family. Speaking of letters, in Franny and Zooey, Zooey is introduced to its readers when he is sitting in a bathtub, reading a stained, torn in two places letter that Buddy sent him nearly four years ago. I feel that if it was a real letter and not part of the book; it would be in a similar condition, considering I go back to it so often. The deep marks of my blue, ball point pen on these books, remind me of what tremendous self-assurance these sentences gave me.

The other two books by Salinger (without counting his last book, Hapworth 16, 1924, which I surprisingly discovered in the process of putting together this blog entry and yes, I found a copy of it online and I’m yet to finish reading it), who is arguably considered a recluse and stopped publishing his work in 1980, are Nine Stories and Raise High The Roof Beam Carpenters And Seymour An Introduction. The simplistic and conversational tone in Nine Stories (a collection of short stories, including A Perfect Day for Bananafish, wherein Seymour shares a random conversation about catching a ‘bananafish’ with a four-year-old girl) and a grand read about the Glass family is Raise High The Roof Beam Carpenters and Seymour An Introduction (you’re going to have to read the book to figure out the title).

In the words of Holden Caulfield (which I’m literally paraphrasing), "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though." And as a symbol of approval to my first blog entry, please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of very early-blooming parentheses: (((()))).

- hope-a-holic

The Chosen One: Neil Gaiman

On an adequately violent monsoon afternoon, I lay on my bed, silent and choked, listening to Tori Amos sing about the Dream King, the hollow feeling in my chest sinking deeper and deeper into my stomach. My bedroom doors were bolted shut. The air was soaked in melancholy – and it was an atmosphere I had deliberately and easily constructed, because I had known what was coming and I had prepared myself for it. I was going to spend a few hours wallowing in twilight darkness and mourning.
I had just finished reading Neil Gaiman’s The Wake, after going over every panel twice, unhurriedly absorbing every word, unwilling to get to that last page but equally determined to see the story through to the end. And I did. But it was the end of an epic tale, y’know, and although the invisible voice of its creator had left me with some vestige of hope, I felt the loss of something very close to me. The grief seemed bottomless. Heartbreak is doubly acute when you’re 15.
Ah, the dangers of fiction.

My initiation into the world of adult comics had been in the form of the Sandman, by way of Dream Country to be precise, when my brother had left a copy lying around his room. It was a collection of short stories, and I read it in one sitting, cover to cover. I went on to read Doll’s House and Preludes and Nocturnes, and put simply, I was hooked. Alongside, I read Warren Ellis’s Transmetropolitan, as well as Garth Ennis’s Preacher, and although I love both on a deep and personal level, there is a kinship I feel with the Sandman that cannot be touched.
That is the talent of Neil Gaiman, and it is the power of intimacy. He has the ability to conceal his narrative voice so as to bring the story closer to you, the ability to eliminate the space between reader and text, the ability to involve. And anyway, you’ve got to love a scruffy British man who can wear a leather jacket with such panache.
I read more of his graphic fiction in the coming years, lukewarm over Black Orchid, fairly engaged by Signal to Noise. And then I found The Tragical Comedy or the Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch, and my awe returned anew.
In a perfect world, it occurs to me now, I would write this in blood, not ink. One cannot lie, if one writes in blood. There is too much responsibility: and the ghosts of those one has killed will rise up and twist the pen down true lines, change the written word to the unwritten as the red lines fade on the page to brown. That’s why deals with the Devil must be signed in blood. If you sign your name in blood, it’s your real name. You can’t change it.
He called it his masterpiece, and I’m inclined to agree. It tells the story of a boy – a solitary type who seems more conscious of the adult world than the child, but also very conscious of the divide between himself and most adults – who’s staying with his grandparents in Southsea. It’s a delicate construction, one where the real world edges in almost imperceptibly, until the story becomes a truth.
And many of his non-graphic short stories use tools of a similar vein, no matter how mysteriously supernatural. Coraline, for instance, albeit a children’s novella, spooked me out in adulthood as if it were a Stephen King. That description of the unblinking button eyes warranted enough discomfort. But if I had to pick my all-time favourite of his novels, the prize would go swiftly to be American Gods.
Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough and looked don’t-fuck-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time. So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks, and thought a lot about how much he loved his wife.
Now that’s one hell of an opening, and it’s a hell of a book. A dark, mesmerising adventure that leads to the most unexpected of places. It’s modern noire at its best, twisting in directions you never realised existed. And Gaiman orchestrates the con like a pro. But no matter what genre, horror or fantasy, straight fiction or myth, he brings an element of humanness to his storytelling, of universal closeness. He creates the illusion of being truly connected to something, and there’s not much else I’m looking for in the world.

- meanie b

Hemingway's spelt with a single m: June Writers' Special 2009

An enlightening May this has been.

One where we learnt how Hemingway is really, truly spelt with a single m.

One where we discovered new (to us) writers. Like Dawn Powell. (Thankyou, Jennifer Vandever!).

One where we learnt that if the www (read Google) doesn’t know what a writer (especially an ancient writer) looks like, they immediately turn up a face that’s Shakespeare. (Yes, try it. You know you want to.)

We asked the impossible of our Chosen List of writers - to write on their Chosen One. And they did! As personal eccentricities were laid bare (such as the typeface they sent us the essays in, a revealing personal font of sorts. And sorry, but we had to standardise it!), we marvelled at choices, exclaimed at a few, and read them all, stunned and tickled, grateful. Especially for that main, singular feeling - So many books, so little time.

The First City June Writers' Special. Out on the stands just before June does us all in.

And then, the in-house writers on respective Chosen Ones. (Including our latesht team player, hope-a-holic).

High and Dry: Notes on Dev D

Dev is riding the Metro. He's lost and unmoored, going nowhere in particular (Paharganj, yes, but that's not the point), and there's no solace in the speed with which he arrives there, even.

And before that, Paro’s fucking the hand-pump furiously, out of its living daylight, and some of us cringed, rolled our eyes, ‘cuz now we had to deal with the shock, didn’t we? We were watching India’s first film for adults.

You know how, when Daniel Craig came along in Casino Royale (exploded onto the screen, I mean), and we were all forced to rethink the legacy of James Bond (such that Pierce Brosnan turned almost comical overnight, in hindsight)? That's exactly what Anurag Kashyap and Abhay Deol have done here, in this, their rethink (and how) of the Devdas myth in Dev D. (Such that, needless to say, Bhansali and Shah Rukh Khan, are sort of faded out in comparison, almost comical, but thank you for that spectacle, Bhansali! And for Madhuri 'course.)

For a movie that knows it’s a movie (and if you don’t get that, it’s having just too much fun at your expense; half-expected Abhay/Dev to talk into the camera, or point out cigarette burns on a spool, like Brad Pitt in Fight Club, but since he was crafted from the stuff of Hamlet-like inaction, he obviously wouldn’t and didn’t. But we had that fabulous trio of dancers instead. And Anurag Kashyap making his Hitchcock-ian appearance as Chanda’s client), Dev D is such a snug fits-like-a-glove pose of a phillum, just so right, so what we needed. Despite and for the catcalls that sprinkle this movie-watching experience even in the very select Select Citywalk’s PVR. We needed it because this kind of irreverence sets us all free.

And gives us nightmares. Somnabulist, dark thoughts that stayed with us for, atleast, 48 hours after the film was over. On alternate endings, which didn’t include a wind-in-my-hair bike ride. One that petrified us such that we couldn’t press play on the OST again. Just to stop our skin from writhing, our thoughts from spiralling into despairing chaos...

... Of course we did though (and before the 48 hours were up), ‘cuz man, it makes so much sense now on the player than before. Warped emotional attyachaar self-pity-never-sounded-this-good trip is ultimately irresistible, while you’re drowned in Nayan Tarse, and then liberated with Pardesi.

And of course, there's the familiar ghost of a storyline, haunting our filmmakers for so long now (As Anurag Kashyap said to us, in the FC Interview, Feb 2009, “It’s because self-pity is genetically engrained in Indians.”) - a protagonist’s woe tale, at the crux of it. Devinder Singh Dhillon (London-returned Dev with a taste for vodka and fish, keeping his Punjabi roots at a distance, nonchalantly, 'cuz, you know, it's not cool to do bhangra to Hiknaal) turns into Dev D via the Smirnoff & dope route, spiralling into the nothingness, giving into a misery, self-constructed at best, and yet your heart bleeds. You wanna jolt him out of it, shake him into doing something, anything, or you wanna help him understand the world, the pain, or you wanna sleep with him and put him out of his misery and face the consequences of that (last option only for those of us who find junkies irresistible).

This is Anurag and Abhay’s take, style and statement on it all. (Maar daala ji!)
Take it with a pinch of salt. ‘Cuz they want you to.
Helps with the revelling.

floatin' go(ld)phish (with a punky pj's voiceover)

It's official - Feb's Delhi's best month

The last days of a sunny winter. A special exclusive with inde India's next big thing, a newcomer who has Luck on his side, with a readymade Bollywood history to boot. An in-depth conversation with actor Abhay Deol. Featuring cake, chaos, and other unusual suspects.
And the rockstars keep coming, in true stadium-style glory, with the South Asian Bands Festival in FC2. While the gospels, choirs and musical wanderers of the world meet for the first time in Delhi (where else?) at the International Festival of Sacred Arts.
Also, enjoy the weather while it lasts, as FCInside takes you through the myriad streets and parks of Dilli with adventurers, history buffs, nature children and guides of all kinds, in walks through Adchini, Mehrauli, Nehru Park and Sultan Garhi.
But if it's a hot day today, stay in, with Netherland. And read what the author, Joseph O' Neill, has to say about it. In FCBOOKS. Or curl up with our high five selection.
Plus, sex, Paharganj and "Wim Wenders ka poora keeda" in a Devdas deconstruction with Anurag Kashyap on Dev D. In FC2 Film.
First City. February 2009. 40 bucks. On the newsstands now.

rockstars are back! what we're listening to here

ONLY BY THE NIGHT
Kings of Leon
So okay, they sold out to stadium sound. This seems to be the biggest spanner in their ambitiously large wheel, this, that they don’t sound all indie and folksy and oh-we-discovered-them-in-our-trailer-parksy. Anymore. With their fourth album, the Followill brothers choose the popular glazed wood finish over the rough sandpaper that overwhelmingly defined this Tennessee band’s texture, lying in many a rock fiends’ subterranean hit closet (folder) in the shape of Aha Shake Heartbreak and Youth and Young Manhood. Kings of Leon a.k.a Caleb Followill (lead vocals/rhythm guitar), Nathan Followill (drums), Jared Followill (bass/synth) and first cousin Matthew Followill (lead guitar), have traded in camp for common, yes, but not at the cost of cult.
Mostly because, once you hear Only By the Night a second time (you have to give it more than one chance; for it to partially displace songs from your sing-along memory), you realise how long it’s been since your last great rock album - one where you can play track one through end and pick favourites for highs and lows, for sunny furies and cold. Caleb’s vocals, appropriately tainted by pain medication, is at his rockstar best, wringing his gut over blood, sex and loneliness, and the pride of US of A (in the definite album beacon, Crawl). Their much maligned Sex On Fire is what starts blending them into the rock history of the 2000’s, but they seem to enjoy it so, as if they’d had enough of their edgy, where-do-we-put-this-maverick-sound years, and have come on all out to embrace their rock heritage (U2, most noticeably, Alice in Chains, too). For those who feel the loss more acutely, Be Somebody, I Want You and Manhattan may provide some salve. Contrary to what its detractors have said, this album is not a cliché; it’s an experiment with one. Giving up on it will be a huge loss.

be seen: the must-watch movies of 2008

Rounding up the films that enthralled, fascinated, surprised, shocked, entertained, us this oh-eight. (Some on the big screen, and some on DVD nights - why don't they release them?!).

If you haven't seen 'em, DUDE, you got 24 hours. Tick-tock...

The Dark Knight. Knightmares of the most appropriate-for-our-times kinds. Heath Ledger lost himself trying to exit through that trapdoor locked inside the Joker's head, and we all got to watch intelligent superhero cinema. Mesmerisingly dark.

In Bruges. Think Snatch, but even better. A crazily comedic tale about two hitmen and a picturesque 'shithole' in Belgium. Called Bruges. Like Snatch with postcard cinematography and an arty dream sequence involving an American midget. Sorry, dwarf.

Wall-E. Romance with iPod lookalike? Check. Besides the obvious facts (Pixar is animation, it shows us a possible future, space travel is such kooky fun), this gives us probably the most lovable character in recent movie history.

Tropic Thunder. Guerilla moviemaking pushed to its limits here, to its hilarious consequences. Not to be missed just for Robert Downey Jr. And a surreal, sidesplitting cameo by a superstar (no spoilers, for those who haven't seen this. And if you haven't seen this, I wouldn't Google this. Seriously).

Juno. Nuff said here: http://www.firstcitydelhi.blogspot.com/2008/04/junebugs.html

Changeling. Because the phenomenal Angelina Jolie rivets you into dropping everything and paying attention, with her enormous talent and sheer screen presence. (She's almost channelling the Oscar thankyou speech moment, you can tell). And because 1920's LA looks like it's out of someone's well-preserved photo-album. And so, you can overlook the melodrama (I mean, it's directed by Clint Eastwood, what did you expect?).

floatin'

'dilli ka pyara aur kameena dil': an ode to oye lucky lucky oye (thankyou, Sunny Narang, Friend of First City)

My very good sardar friend
From a Karol Bagh gali
Remembered the time he bought
A beautiful chain, from a school trip to Goa
For the girl some houses away
A female Maharashtrian academician
Was reminded of her Punjabi neighbours by the Vet, so guilelessly, deny it all
Two bengalis saw no "story" How could they It was a slice of life with a "Tadka"
So many hidden sleight of camera.
The cafe with the "Modern" girls, The theory about the cotton in the nostrils of the dead boy, The little brother throwing things like his father, Eveybody wants the money, without touching it!Dibakar ki ho gayee Balle! Balle!
Dilli ka pyara aur kameena dil sab kuch want karda
Years ago some Rajput in rural Haryana told me,"These punjabis are really strange, When they need work done, they will talk the sweetest in the world, Like a dog curling up in your heart, But once their work is done, They will kick you in your arse".
I a Punjabi, born and bred Dilli, son of Partition refugees, hereby swear by Oye!Lucky!Lucky!Oye!
It has the smell of the aloo parantha, perpetual delight of the Punjabi makhan-chor,
For stealing hearts, I say Dibakar, Koi mane ya na mane, Ek Bangali ki ho gayee Wah bhai Wah!
Jhappi to all,
Sunny

change the channel. shift the planet. OR the idiot in the box

Unless you're a huge fan of the hyper hyperbole, are so stone-hearted that nothing affects you, or so hooked to reality tv that it's all reality tv now (some good, and some not so good), chances are the tv channels' reporting of the recent terrorist attacks at iconic places of Mumbai, and the aftermath since, is really, seriously getting to you.

Maybe around the time when the 'live coverage' began and the countdown clock (terror clock) started ticking like a harmless icon on the lefthand bottom screen, or when the camera crew and anchorpersons were 'in the thick of things', talking into screens about it, treating the chaos like a backdrop, or when Barkha Dutt actually started discussing the locations of hostages, or when microphones were thrust into faces of rescued victims (who'll perhaps always be scarred for life because men with AK-47s strode into the restaurant, cafe, station, they happened to be in, like any other day in life, and shot down people who were not them, but they'll almost certainly be scarred because a reporter, a fellow Mumbaikar, even, asked them, seconds later, 'Tell us what happened. How do you feel?').

Maybe it was the time when Obama gave his soundbyte on 'the situation in south Asia', saying that India needs to protect itself, or the likes, and instantly, our channels played it like, on a loop. Freely interpreting it as the American approval (for...?). (It's that familiar Obama obsession that harped for so so long on 'Why isn't Obama calling Manmohan Singh after being elected?', or, more importantly, 'Why isn't Obama calling Manmohan Singh after being elected, considering he's already called Asif Zardari?'). Copy-pasting it next to Parnab Mukherjee's soundbyte (which was, in effect, 'let's see', but that doesn't make special tv time, does it?).

Or maybe it was when 'primetime,' 'max eyeball traffic time' was devoted to the criticism of Pakistani media, how it's misconstruing facts, and presenting a wrong picture of the 'tense state' of affairs. Of course, not something that applies to Indian media, right?

What do we need media and news channels for? Information, facts, details, straight on. Analysis, urging people to take a stand, moving nations to take one. Instead, we have Enough is Enough, and Whatever It Takes and Sachai Dikhaate Hai Hum or something. Right.

Since we can't them get off air (can we?), may I suggest, in the meanwhile, switching off the tv please?

floatin'

they're called the CURE for a reason

4: 13 Dream is what we're listening to here.
It’s somewhere around the time when Robert Smith is screaming, well, The Scream that you realise that maybe this is not The Cure’s finest. Just maybe. But then this is before 4.13 on track 12, and by then, you’ve also realised that you love Robert Smith’s voice too much. So then, wotcha gonna do, punk?
Celebrating the wild mood swings and bloodflower delusions of his Smith-self, the yelping rage, the fury (and the fury as relief), the relish and sensuality, in a see-saw pendulous effect is 4: 13 Dream, their latest, their thirteenth studio album, which sounds eighties-enough and yet is something that they could only have done today. Fat, strangling-vine guitars crash through Robert’s wonderfully voluptuous and wail-like vocals, as he plunges into a relentless refrain of ‘you’ve got what I want’, at one point, and brings to life the perfect boy, at another. There’s the solid alt rock/dark sound we know them for (Sleep When I’m Dead), but it’s almost like an add-on effect. Like a good dream though, this Cure album will work differently for you and that other Cure-lover you know. The Real Snow White and The Hungry Ghost work as one song, in my head, and Switch, I really really get (and I’m not sure why). Freakshow and Underneath the Stars also figure strongly in my replay list.
If you’re seduced and thrilled and enamoured and arrested by The Cure (and how could you not? If you’ve heard their version of Lennon’s Love even), then there’s something in this one that’ll work for you. And if you’re one of those who think (hope) that we’ll never see a time when they’ll be irrelevant or out of the gloomy, thrashing circuit, then this one beckons.

floatin'

Good to Eat

It's got What's New. What's Hot and Night Action-y. The best of it, in 2008, even as you make your New Year's Eve plans.
It's got interviews with those incredible, unbelievable, magicians of chefs, who also make good television. Anthony Bourdain, Kylie Kwong, Sanjeev Kapoor, and (some more than others) Nigella Lawson. While Ritu Dalmia pieces together the Diva story, Jiggs Kalra dons his 'tastemaker to the nation' hat with ease (today, it's green), and Bhicoo Manekshaw tells of emergency gateaus for Indira Gandhi, and the peculiar contentment inherent in peeling potatoes. Plus, a New York food critic, the Insatiable one, Gael Greene. And Charles Maclean on the single malt (how there is no perfect one, how you drink a piece of Scotland). Food Issue 9. Is good to eat.
Also featuring Tom Holt on The Better Mousetrap. Shashi Deshpande on In the Country of Deceit. And Sam Bourne. In FCBooks.
The Paranthewali gali and a flourishing farm beyond Manesar, for your nourishing. In FCInside.
On the newsstands today. 40 bucks.