parotechnics

I've started writing a column in Sunday Mid-day. It's weekly. My flirtation with commitment you could say. It's a general opinion column so can be about anything. Here's the first one, appeared Sunday April 18 and it's sort of about Love and Justice

My grandparents were both in the movies - but very differently. While my grandfather was very famous and is still remembered as an important part of film history, my grandmother is not someone people know of, nor did she do anything that anyone felt must definitely be noted. To a certain extent not even her own family. She acted in some films until the early 40s and subsequently became a producer, making about 6 films, the last in the 60s. By the time I came on the scene, she was just my somewhat glamorous and unconventional grandmother who had a cupboard full of wonderful saris and a painted tin box full of internationally acquired handkerchiefs - but more on that cupboard some other time. She played cards each afternoon, and the glowing colours of her plastic counters: pomegranate juice red, emerald green, the yellow of dal barfi, numbers written on them like varq on barfi in fact, seemed to be part of her very kaleidoscopic presence. Other ladies would come to play cards too - p...

After a saga and a half and rather too much fullness of time, finally, a website is up. I have no idea why it does not show up in Google searches, but it doesn't. Does anyone know why? I mean it's been up for a couple weeks already. Anyway, here it is: http://parodevi.com/ Times change alright....

I have a story in the Tehelka fiction issue on the stands now - in case anyone feels like reading.It has 12 stories all around the theme of injury. It can be read   here - but it's always nice to actually buy and read the 12 stories at leisure, in trains, in the loo or on the verandah or in bed or wherever you do these private things.

I've been doing reviews of documentaries for the website of Open magazine occasionally. Her e is a review of a film I really love - Sagira Begum, by my friend Sameera Jain. More reviews either by myself or Sanjay Kak are here.

"If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you're an idiot. " So says Umberto Eco in this interesting interview about how lists are the stuff of culture . (Nice decor huh?) I remember sitting, rather hungover, with a musician friend at Sea View in the early morning, and feeling a ching of recognition through the haze as he said this thing that a lot of Indian traditional culture is made up of lists - a list of kisses (Kama Sutra), a list of the types of relationships there can be between lovers (Gita Govinda - I think he said), and so on. The idea of an EDL, a film's edit, as a list of images perhaps comes very close to this idea and reminds us, to make that list with care. In every day life my propensity for lists has been talked about earlier, here. I often feel that if I make the list in the wrong order I never get through it and if I make it the right way then it orders my day. Perhaps that's just a...

If my dad were alive today he'd be irritated with me - always waiting till the 11th hour! he'd expostulate - why can't you do things on time? If you had to write me a birthday post why wait till the last hour of my birthday? And I'd be saying - but Papu I had to do that other thing - and I scanned the picture earlier and.. And he'd say - always excuses, dash it! Koi system nahin hai! And I'd say - that's not true! System hai. And it is being done before your birthday is over na! And he'd say - don't teach your grandmother how to suck eggs. And I'd feel like laughing but wouldn't dare. Every year on my dad's birthday I miss him more than other days - that's natural. But I feel it more - or differently - when it's the Sunday before his birthday and I see the horoscopes for those whose birthday falls in the coming week. It's a reminder that there isn't something to look forward to. I think about reading the paragraph under S...