'Kho Gaye Kahan'

Shabd hote hain pal-bhar k liye

Lekin Nishabd anantkaal k liye

Aaj is pahaad k peeche sunehri kirno mein lipte badal

jaise koi doorsri duniya ki daasta nishabd suna rahe hain

Ab ehsaas ho raha hai...

'Hum' nishabd the!

Into the Boats

Thinking about these little things in my long life

Its time we came back home

It makes me sad though sometimes

Moments being gone in a blink of eye

But then I travel…again

I laugh with people, kiss special and pronounce them local food

I know the way to the oldest lamppost

That little old man on last street of Plaka with a glass of wine in his hand

Them applaud God watching sunset at the bay

Laughter, conversations, amber wine, beautiful little lunches at the end of the dock

Life in its evanescence, shades of blue Mediterranean and large orange moon rose higher

One fine morning, brooding on an unknown new world

I am reminded some birds aren’t meant to be caged

And when they fly away.

A part of you that remembers the locks does rejoice

Those walls gone long…

Place you lived in is pallid and empty

But from my perfect irresistible imagination a dream springs which I could hardly fail to grasp

Thinking about these little things in my very long life

Its time there was no home…

' I WOULD ONLY CALL IT A MOTION PICTURE'

I admit not crying when I heard about 16th december rape incident in Delhi. I was in Los Angeles shooting in UCLA vicinity, read Los Angeles times next day, wiped a tear and kept the newspaper back. I didn’t remorse and I couldn’t be a defiant.


Watched ‘India’s daughter’ by Leslee Udwin last night and couldn’t stay inside four walls of my house, had to leave home, picked up the keys, sat under the sky very close to the full moon, I was stifling and then few tears rolled down the cheeks, for Jyoti singh or for the culture that makes rapes possible I still don’t know.


For an hour I wasn’t a screenwriter or a filmmaker, which is generally impossible for me while watching any form of art. Shooting a documentary is indeed difficult, film-maker travels through all the lanes of truth or that incident which is not easy. I have had a hard time myself shooting some of the heaviest and painful truths of life around us and after you are done with editing the final cut of the film, you are scared to go back to those neighborhoods, they haunt, they truly do. While ‘Born into Brothels’ stayed with me for several days, this film will vanish soon and didn’t work so well for me though it did transcend me in that bus and act resounded in my head but film didn’t let me through that non-fictional world fully. All notions of paradigms and foolproof film models for public stimulation are nonsense, this film has seemingly created connect with the victim and disconnect with assassins cannot excite audiences on the six continents and live in revival for decades. Every such film should enable audience to find similarities between the convict’s mindset and ofcourse each one of us. ‘India’s Daughter’ unearths a human experience and then wraps itself inside depicting victim blaming as an act specific to the rapist or his legal defenders and author an outrage over victim blaming not because victim blaming per say is problematic, but through building a narrative of the victim as one who did not deserve blaming because she had proved herself to be the normative ‘good girl’. What if there was a victim who was not so studious who perhaps was not as sensitive to the plight of the less privileged, or who had perhaps sneaked out of her house without informing her parents to watch a movie with a boyfriend? Well, the incident raised two core issues of rape culture was not an outcome of act of rapist but all those justifications and that every women has an unconditional right of not being raped.


Towards the last section, engagement with the statement ‘ hang the rapist’ only confirms this attempt and reduces the significance, remember Mukesh’s statements where future victims are pertinent and the juxtapositions. Master storytellers crave double-edged counter and Leslee you only proved to be a discoverer just when limit would tend to zero and not an explorer parting forest leaves, we step wide-eyed into an untouched society, a cliché-free zone where the ordinary becomes extraordinary where we don’t escape life but find life.


Interestingly few years ago like every other Delhi girl, I found myself in similar situation with one of my boyfriends, we offered those bunch of drunk men some money while they threatened us and thus avoided the mortal situation. I felt so alone in those very moments, I didn’t want to be a girl. And then there was this portion from my film ‘Baano’ where I played protagonist and shot this long rape scene, it was a mere emblematic shot but hell broke with those re-takes. A much heavier and stronger man strangling me and I hardly could retaliate on account of being physically weaker and then those few seconds where you give in as you cannot struggle more, you can hardly move, you really cant. I said ‘CUT’ myself after the scene and just left the set for the whole day. For the first time in my life I could empathize with all those stories I read about rapes and little girls, I felt iota of that misery and I didn’t want to be a girl once again.

Algaav

Do judi hui
alag kahaniyan

algaav kab tak..
judaav kab tak..

Do masoom
khamosh
humshkal kahaniyan

I was building a dream

Like a toddler pregnant mother she walked in the room
there she,with her cries opened the windows for sunset
much of her pain was self chosen
last night, walked through the woods
and then the streets of London, she danced with the man
playing trumpet
only the trumpet, she and the man
and then another man asked for a dance

A few years earlier her face was causing suicides
it could neither be reached nor renounced
even if she acted to be a foil to provoke exposition
beginners walked her,they could hear
Blue Velvet
they could hear Bobby Vinton

Her eyes smiled entwined together in
silent heart of earth
all the judges wished to ax her when she left their beds
and you judges who would be just
remorse upon the innocent
But all agreed she made corner stone of their temples
their God-self

Empty walls of her house, have her paintings hung
by the fireplace it is like her Venus of Urbino
she lit by white sheet on right spaces of her body
and brushstrokes with one hand on canvas
just after invasion, woven as sun
All the men who passed by smelt of
them burning her lips
wife,she was not...free from husks
sufficient unto love

Nakedness
sheer bare breast and portions of heaven
writing echoes of love beckoning to her
still born child in hands,she reaches
under sacred fire,makes her child's grave
How content she seemed
rotten blood all the way
Alone,closes eyes with silent knowledge of the beyond
She is building a Dream
Now she become...

Earth displaced

Abida Parveen kaano mein,
Los Angeles ke aaspaas kahin upar udte hue
bahut khubsurati se phaila shehar..roshni
aage peeche bus angrezo ki tashreef
ye kaisa jaadu hai Abida ke kalaam mein!!

Had aur anhad k beech
achanak rubayat si ban gayi hai
mere mulk se judi har cheez
jald hi khatm hone wale
chote se chehre ho
ya sookhe ujde khet
aur phir kathhai rang se dhuli hui
Ganga hi kyu na ho

Yahan
itne nashe hain bahar
ki ek hi aayat hona mushkil hai
bus akhbar hi hain
padha,dekha aur rakh bhi diya
par parat barabar utar rahi hai
pole dance par latakte hue bhi
chupke se bistar theek karte hue bhi

Sab safed chehro par itna sukoon hai
armaan..khayal koi karvat nahi badalte
vaise tou mere mulk mein bhi koi bechaini nahi
jal tou na chulha raha hai..na raat..na aankhein
sukoon se udaas baithe hain ghar par sab

ye jo chadarein hain safed rango ki
chalti phirti chadarein
inme daag nahi lagte
chahe taaro par sukhao
ya ghar le jao
naali mein geela laal rang sirf mere yahan hi behta hai

vaise ab main bhi
pani se zada coke peene lagi hu..


(To be continued)...                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

During the memory

Stories I see,full..half..integral..incomplete, but stories. Perhaps no one can take those away. They are there always gliding in space. Preserve memories, foster them..burn them,ours they are..as true as death, b'ful part of us..death too sometimes. But can't be codified after an amount of time.
So many banyan trees around my house..'memory of mother'.I have no moon, no stars but there's this white hue. The clouds are gone..some clouds..more clouds..only clear white sky...Clear
I still have that dust of my hair..that rooted gap between words. Writing memories is easy, they can make a song, shows softened shores but brings a moment that doesn't pass all night long..life long. And sometimes the entire life passes in moments.
He is about to leave home to get those thousands of pages bound by a nearby stationary shop. Oh but! somebody's at the door ..not so rich , wants to make a film with him...on Alzheimer's patients

'Ashwathama udaas hai'

Main bachpan mein doodh nahi pi saka
aate(flour) mein paani hi mila glass mein
Dekho main kaun hu
main peeda ka van hu
main shrapit hu
main peedit hu

Peeda ajar hai...amar hai
sukh bik gaya hai abhi abhi
main krishn nahi
main abhi bhi jeevit hu
ranbhumi mein bhi hu
garbh mein bhi

Aao jhaanko mere andar
dekho ye teheniya kahan badh chali
wo dekho anginat saanp k bacche narmada k tat par
wo bachpan k anaam bacche kuchalte hue kechue ko

Dhyaan se dekho krishn
humari nayi khoj..
camera phone hai

Its about those stairs

Other day it so happened, i was a watching a video i made on my father and i felt helpless sitting far away from ma parents. And then me..ma frnds talked about it, i shared why it sensitized me. It is sumthn which shud not be absent even in devliest minds. But its unfortunate for broods I wud say if they do not experience the joy of respect, love and givin them happiness. It makes u feel complete and a human if we could repay atleast iota of what they have done for us. And may be even not abt repayin,like dey do coz we were their children now dey are ours.It shud be dis feeling after a point of time dat now we are a step ahead. Its not the time dat we expect from them,now the time is to understand them like a kid, pat them sometimes, kiss on their forehead, lay our fingers in their hair when they are sad and find innocence in their stubborn choices sometimes. We are their part...part of our mother...our father.

The wounds

The black holes in our original wholess renewed time and again. Once a beautiful surprise to us, now a case to be healed. Our emotions now limit the range of responses. Serenity is far away. Mind is no more a beautiful pond. Opaqueness and translucency are passions of past. What we have with us now are torn pieces of virues. We are all going to die and one day our planet would evaporate and disappear. But somethings that would remain forever are the wounds of suffering..the wounds encrusted with rock.

I found

Become a lover, not of somebody in particular, just become a lover in general. It shall not be just a relationship with somebody because whenevr love becomes a relationship it includes one but excludes the whole universe. I know whole world belongs to me and i belong to the world. I ought to act and choose if I could be grateful to the whole universe. If love as a meditation is followed then it is not focused on any object but it is just a state of being. I know these forms but where does the truth lie, i dunno...
Can I practice that love where nothing confies it, when it is unlimited...well, here i have to decide what is more important for me. Being center of the universe or just a small atom of it.
Conflicts come now and then in this shifting mechanism..I havnt got the result yet..
Lets see.

Wahan...unke peeche

Band darwaazo ke peeche
Jaane kitne ghar roz jalte hain
Kabhi kabhi raakh milti hai
tou kabhi phaili hui raakh par bane hue pairo ke nishan hi dikhte hain

Darwaazo ko band karte hue
kabhi kuch aankhe dikhti hain
phir kisi din wo aankhen
bin paani sadak par kahi padi milti hain

Peeche ki cheekho ka sira kabhi mila tou
kuch nahi hua bus,
aawao ka jhund badhta hua dikha
badhte hue gali se guzar gaya

Darwaaze kabhi khulenge lagta tou nahi
kabhi koi khula reh gaya tou
milega tou wohi sab
andhere mein kone par baithee hui Bina aur kuch kapde

Shayad isiliye in galiyo mein kabhi
andhera nahi hota
bus diye bujh jaate hain
kuch kamro mein ek waqt ke baad...

Days of world around me

Days are passing with much light.I am questioning my true instincts for my future life.How do i see it, i cannot draw but may dream/plan. Films have become my support system but i do feel scared of the abnormalities the life finds here. I can see myself changing everyday with a different Kasme-vaade with myself and about my life. The beginning is crucial and also the matured learning of life, history, psychology, traditions, relations, society etc. Philosophy seems to be one of my favourites and hence i would like my films to be close to philosophical realism. Books are necessary as well as interaction with various lives. Lets see, i am working on a script, very sensitive, rural atrocities, human mind and much more. I'll start the shoot soon once i start finding it close to the earth
But i am happy, this phase is interesting not very pleasing though but i am learning...