Infatuation

Infatuation is the most important high in romantic love; it is also its biggest lie.

Returning Awards

How can you return an award - its like getting a cake, eating it too, and returning the yellowing receipt years later. Meanwhile the bakery has new owners who don't like those cakes.

Of Animation and Live Action

While I was studying at FTII, I never knew a word called 'live-action' - its only after coming to NID that the term came to me, as a means of dividing cinema into animation and otherwise. While this division does help in according due respect to the drawn moving image in the larger pantheon of cinema, it also perpetuates its divorce from things cinematic.

Cinema

Cinema, like other art forms, seeks to restfully unfold those parts of the real which are familiar and therefore fable.

Indian Animation

Till the time Indian Animation does not resist an uncritical worship of the West, an unthinking celebration of the fantastic or the funny and a larger-than-life image of drawing skills for their own sake, it will remain a secret-brotherhood of on-the-margins-of-cinema artists extolling the periphery.

Truth

Truth is tiny and comes in delicate wafts of ephemeral insights. Truth is immense in its short supply and a longer high.

Your best friend

Your body is your best friend; give it the hugs it deserves, for what it preserves - the idea that is you.

Arrival

With violence you arrive at your objectives; with peace you arrive.

Of Success

The most successful way to achieve success is to taste defeat - the latter induces you to seduce the former even more arduously, or better still, change the object of ardour.

Appreciating a film

Appreciating a film is understanding the teamwork that went into it - cinema cannot be done alone, nor is it fun alone.

Turning 55

The thing about turning 55 is that you are past 50 and not yet 60 - a la la land before 'senior' starts to become an enigmatic noun and an uncertain adjective.

Chronology

Writing a film is about what you see and hear, and what you don't, and in which order. Chronology is the boon and the bane of cinema.

Character assassination

Writing a character is about assassinating one, in order to bring to life one who had lived.

What you see is not what you met

Writing a character is as simple as standing in front of a reflecting mirror - what you see is not what you met, off the set.

Patriotism

Patriotism is a construct, and like all construction subject to wear & tear, and additionally fear.

History

History is a tale - of true lies and false truths - a retrospective past in affirmation of a prospective present.

Scriptwriting

01. Characters, conflicts, resolutions all reach an end in a film script, unlike life.

02. He said. She said. They left. And thus began the story.

03. Scripwriting is not a technique, nor is it a talent; its travel down a protracted path with patience, pyaar and eventually a plot.

04. Writing a film and making it is like love and lust - the former is a leisurely long drawn exercise in longing and the latter its hasty & abrupt consummation.

05. Writing is Life in measured cups; just enough to quench, and occasionally wrench.

06. Writing is like beer; bitter at first, but better as you get along.

APJ Abdul Kalam

Death reinvents the person - more so in the eulogies thereafter - truth is always greyer.

27th July 2015

Education and Knowledge

Education and Knowledge can be synonyms if Teaching and Learning are that themselves.

(Ahmedabad / 05-07-2015)

Wisdom Tree

The business of education is a tough one - you have to be old enough to understand the young and youthful enough to stand their wisdom under the tree.

(Ahmedabad / 19 June 2015)

Real Education

The purpose of education cannot be the 'real' - a learner (and an educator) is necessarily a dreamer. The audacity of the leap now positively influences the probabilities of safe landing later.

Appeal of the Authentic

Appeal is the beginning of the authentic, not it.

(Ahmedabad / 27 March 2015)

The Periphery and the Circle

Mainstreaming the margin is always problematic - the periphery cannot be part of the circle which defines it thus.

(Ahmedabad / 26 March 2015)

Documentaries

I think the big problem in documentaries is confusing them for documentation - if your point of view is not out there - and with some verse and verve - if you haven't just captured but made free - then you should stick to covering - weddings and funerals.

(Ahmedabad / 26 March 2015)