I am expecting you to raise your eyebrows in puzzlement after reading this piece.
My thought process began with the folk melodies from Peepli Live that have become the nation’s rage. Composed by my college day favourite Indian Ocean & Raghuvir Yadav, each tune of this film reminds me of the many reporting trips through hinterlands of Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, interior Maharashtra & even, the brightest shade of green that comes alive in Assam's villages.
I am not alone in loving the sound of the hinterlands. Or the sounds of the distant cymbal, dholak & chorus vocals echoing in the twilight from temple or tree top gatherings. Almost everyone in my work place is either humming these songs, or uploading them on their ipods and phones, or discussing their charm.
For me though, the connect of Peepli Live's music brought back memories of another kind. When I was in college, in Delhi's university's most colorful institute, Hindu College, I had started penning down a story. A story that chronically found its hands, feet, heart...went on to stretch out it's limbs... then proceeded to kick me hard.. and then decided to be born on paper one night of frenzied typing on a battered computer in the Delhi monsoon.
My story is still not perfect enough for me to write it out here. But its ending can be shared.
I have a tragic end in store for my protagonist, the heroine of my plot. (For people who know me well, I know this much is predictable!)
My heroine has her brains blowed out to smithereens with blood and parts of brain matter splayed on the wall behind her head with a standard issue police rifle. The bullet goes through her head and splays the thin, lightweight plaster of paris coated wall of a government inspection bunglow in Arunachal Pradesh.
Her death isn't brought on by anyone else. She shoots herself. When the slug goes through her brain, she has a shell shocked witness who is muted by what he just saw. The only sound that one hears apart from the bullet wound are the night sounds of crickets & the distant cymbals resonating with the deep rumbling of many buddhist monks praying together.
My protagonist ends her life simply because her battle with the system leaves her defeated. Besides, she lives her select years chasing a forbidden, doomed love that society would never let exist.
My story is set in interior assam, delhi's hot, stuffy bylanes where students burn the midnight oil to clear civil service competitions & travels back to interior Arunachal Pradesh..Every location of my story is weather beaten, either by slushy, endless rain or agonizing, white heat that Delhi faces for six months every year.
My protagonists wear regular terry cotton clothing and my lead character is always sporting cotton sarees.
Will you watch a film like this?
I know that I can't lend my minds eye to any reader ever. But somehow, I think, this will connect.
For, Hrishikesh Mukherjee's protagonists or the Eighties parallel actors never dressed up in designer chic or spouted remixed, thumping songs. Those films have breathed on celluloid only with basic lighting, simple streetside outdoors & absolutely basic make up. The songs in these films existed in linear, double track numbers riding on the power of the lyric.
What is the Indian Ocean connect, you say, as your rub your head distractedly ? (That is, if you have come so far)
Well, the idea of my doomed heroine and her doomed, but unique, romantic life was born while sipping the umpteenth cup of chai on the Ramjas playground as Indian ocean strummed out a tune very much like Des Mera Rangrez Hain Babu (the title track of Peepli Live).
I knew that my heroine, as I envisage her, will find sympathy in at least a 1000 hearts. For nothing connects to us better than the raw, earthy realities our generation has emerged from. And the process of evolution-with all the kicking, fretting, & wriggling- has come after decades of pain & dissapointment.
We, the blackberry addicted., internet linked, cyber bonded, 21st century Indian, is a generation without precedent. The saree is in the museum & the pagdi ,a memory of our grandfather. We don't cook, usually we order. And tea has started to smell or taste green, camomile, lavendar.... It isn't the corner shop, viscous yet fragrant, brown hue anymore.
But somewhere, our inner self still remembers the echoes of the thumri, the jura naam, the lullabies, the lok geet & the bhajans from our childhood. Somewhere, deep in our inner sanctum, these distant sounds unlock memories of the smell of fresh earth in the first rains... the long, forbidden frolic in thundering showers... the constant sweating on the balconies of our college dorms on nights without electricity... the pallid, yellow face of our first, school life crush as illuminated by a petromax lantern... and countless such experiences.
Perhaps, if you have come so far, my uncompromised telling of the Indian Ocean driven, doomed tale of a simple Indian woman will find an audience or a reader.
Or will you shake your head and go back to the blackberry instead?
(right now, the background noise to this piece is the cacaphony of an overexcited, screaming news legend...and his legendary, white noise filled newroom. So I feel a sense of stolen, smug achievement here).
My thought process began with the folk melodies from Peepli Live that have become the nation’s rage. Composed by my college day favourite Indian Ocean & Raghuvir Yadav, each tune of this film reminds me of the many reporting trips through hinterlands of Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, interior Maharashtra & even, the brightest shade of green that comes alive in Assam's villages.
I am not alone in loving the sound of the hinterlands. Or the sounds of the distant cymbal, dholak & chorus vocals echoing in the twilight from temple or tree top gatherings. Almost everyone in my work place is either humming these songs, or uploading them on their ipods and phones, or discussing their charm.
For me though, the connect of Peepli Live's music brought back memories of another kind. When I was in college, in Delhi's university's most colorful institute, Hindu College, I had started penning down a story. A story that chronically found its hands, feet, heart...went on to stretch out it's limbs... then proceeded to kick me hard.. and then decided to be born on paper one night of frenzied typing on a battered computer in the Delhi monsoon.
My story is still not perfect enough for me to write it out here. But its ending can be shared.
I have a tragic end in store for my protagonist, the heroine of my plot. (For people who know me well, I know this much is predictable!)
My heroine has her brains blowed out to smithereens with blood and parts of brain matter splayed on the wall behind her head with a standard issue police rifle. The bullet goes through her head and splays the thin, lightweight plaster of paris coated wall of a government inspection bunglow in Arunachal Pradesh.
Her death isn't brought on by anyone else. She shoots herself. When the slug goes through her brain, she has a shell shocked witness who is muted by what he just saw. The only sound that one hears apart from the bullet wound are the night sounds of crickets & the distant cymbals resonating with the deep rumbling of many buddhist monks praying together.
My protagonist ends her life simply because her battle with the system leaves her defeated. Besides, she lives her select years chasing a forbidden, doomed love that society would never let exist.
My story is set in interior assam, delhi's hot, stuffy bylanes where students burn the midnight oil to clear civil service competitions & travels back to interior Arunachal Pradesh..Every location of my story is weather beaten, either by slushy, endless rain or agonizing, white heat that Delhi faces for six months every year.
My protagonists wear regular terry cotton clothing and my lead character is always sporting cotton sarees.
Will you watch a film like this?
I know that I can't lend my minds eye to any reader ever. But somehow, I think, this will connect.
For, Hrishikesh Mukherjee's protagonists or the Eighties parallel actors never dressed up in designer chic or spouted remixed, thumping songs. Those films have breathed on celluloid only with basic lighting, simple streetside outdoors & absolutely basic make up. The songs in these films existed in linear, double track numbers riding on the power of the lyric.
What is the Indian Ocean connect, you say, as your rub your head distractedly ? (That is, if you have come so far)
Well, the idea of my doomed heroine and her doomed, but unique, romantic life was born while sipping the umpteenth cup of chai on the Ramjas playground as Indian ocean strummed out a tune very much like Des Mera Rangrez Hain Babu (the title track of Peepli Live).
I knew that my heroine, as I envisage her, will find sympathy in at least a 1000 hearts. For nothing connects to us better than the raw, earthy realities our generation has emerged from. And the process of evolution-with all the kicking, fretting, & wriggling- has come after decades of pain & dissapointment.
We, the blackberry addicted., internet linked, cyber bonded, 21st century Indian, is a generation without precedent. The saree is in the museum & the pagdi ,a memory of our grandfather. We don't cook, usually we order. And tea has started to smell or taste green, camomile, lavendar.... It isn't the corner shop, viscous yet fragrant, brown hue anymore.
But somewhere, our inner self still remembers the echoes of the thumri, the jura naam, the lullabies, the lok geet & the bhajans from our childhood. Somewhere, deep in our inner sanctum, these distant sounds unlock memories of the smell of fresh earth in the first rains... the long, forbidden frolic in thundering showers... the constant sweating on the balconies of our college dorms on nights without electricity... the pallid, yellow face of our first, school life crush as illuminated by a petromax lantern... and countless such experiences.
Perhaps, if you have come so far, my uncompromised telling of the Indian Ocean driven, doomed tale of a simple Indian woman will find an audience or a reader.
Or will you shake your head and go back to the blackberry instead?
(right now, the background noise to this piece is the cacaphony of an overexcited, screaming news legend...and his legendary, white noise filled newroom. So I feel a sense of stolen, smug achievement here).
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