parotechnics

I've got high nostalgia for film festivals. I seem to remember them as a time of timepass and adde-baazi, all about films and friends. You took chhutti from whatever you were doing, you watched films, sometimes you dressed up a bit, you hung out, you met old friends and you made new ones. Then, perhaps there was a sense that there were very few people and very few avenues and we weren't all in the game. Now, as things get easier, and in some senses they have, festivals feel very un-festive. First there's the PES- Promiscuous Eye Syndrome - where, as people speak to each other, their eyes are actually looking slightly left of shoulder in case there's someone more important to be talking to. Then there's the RMS -Relentless Marketing Pressure. Pressure to be savvy, to make that ephemeral deal. I know - these things are as old as hierarchy and viability. I know, we need to grow up, fund raise, network, sustain ourselves, not be smothered by our middle class gentility.

LA is lined with tanning parlours - 19.99 all day tanning! they declare. It has a retro kind of look about it - I feel bad I never got to see anything and I don't know if I will go back again. While driving I spy the Ripley's Believe it or Not museum and every inch of my Indrajal comics educated (true) self wants to go there and not to the county museum to see, well, Indian miniatures. But you never know what lies ahead and at least I saw this miniature which I loved. Fond memories of Mithunda happened. Oh yeah! Krishna was a disco dancer...

It's a relief to be some place WARM!! Who'd have thought a good Indian like me would crave some sun? But as soon as I step onto the LA street in a T-SHIRT, no jacket! I feel like I am bloody reborn. The snow is nice for drama, but not for real life I have decided.

There are airplanes, and then there are airplanes - the teeny tiny Cessna which flies from Boston to Provincetown is just a limousine with wings. And if you fly on a cloudy day, it's a roller coaster ride that leaves you queasy for days. Flying east to west is like international flights - airports to change in, day when you start, night when you reach, the piquant edge of marginal jet lag because of a 3 hour time difference..

On a walk after the storm, the trees look olive green, people and dogs seem nonchalant, and the beach has blown itself onto the road!

So after my musings about how the rain don't really show in these parts, we had a doozie of a storm up here. At midnight while chatting with Madhusree who was in New York complaining it's wet, the wind had been pretty noisy, gaining in speed and sound. And while we spoke I kept trying to turn the lamp on with no success. Took a while before it struck me the lights were out. In a while, so was the phone. My love of nature was severely tested. I could see wires all fallen down, trees that looked like deranged dervishes, all whirling, no grace, and I kept waiting for the lights to come back and not think of being alone on Commercial Street, about movies like The Perfect Storm (although the thought of George Clooney did momentarily distract me) and also about ghosts and serial killers. Finally I reacted to crisis in time honoured way by going to sleep. Lights came back on only around noon. Phones are still iffy. The sun comes and goes. And already people are out jogging. Needless t