13th November 2013
Its the end of my second semester. Its a welcome relief. By the end of it everyone of us was so sick and tired of having to do all these assignments that on the last day of it we had one hell of a party and overslept almost missing our trains the next day. The new batch is soon going to be here. On that evening the results were out and we learnt that B Roy and Ask Pou were both in, in Producing and Direction respectively. B Roy threw a party. Ask Pou is A Pou's brother.
I decided to go to Kunju Thalona in Hyderabad. So the tickets were booked for the 1st of November. On 31st I did a little shopping for Chechi. I bought her three pairs of chappals, a hair clip, a stole, a top, a pair of ear rings, a sketch pad and some painting brushes. I bought a pair of chappals for Chechi's friend M also. All from Gariahat. Of these I liked the hair clip and the sketch book the best. My room mate NN had already bought two like those and I had wanted to buy them ever since. Its a tapering wooden stick with a beaded elastic string wound over it. You can tie your hair into a bun or a pony with it. I am soon going to have a hair cut here in Hyderabad but still I liked it so much so that I bought one for myself too. It looks like this.
The night before I was to leave I had one last assignment to write. An appreciation of any documentary I had watched. I had decided to write it on 'Chor' by Sourav Sarangi. For the screening the director himself had come and we had had a Q and A session with him. It is about the temporary islands formed in the bed of Ganga due to erosion. This erosion is caused by the construction of dams in the river. It is a very powerful documentary. It begins by quoting Nehru who started this whole thing that dams are the temples of modern India. This resulted in the displacement of many families in the banks of the rivers where these dams were constructed.
The documentary portrays in detail the lives of the people living in these temporary places of living. Their uncertainty. All of them smuggle goods from mainland India to Bangladesh. That is a main source of their income. Children even before they go to school start doing this. The BSF treats them like animals. There is one scene in the documentary where with a hidden camera we see how people in the black market are treated by the Border Security Force. A character in the documentary had lost his father in a firing there. The women are all abused, all of them are called whores. None of them have names. Its all caught on camera.
It is interesting that it is so blatantly against the Government and it got a national award. When Vi asked Sourav Sarangi if after the documentary the government had done something for the people there he said, jokingly, 'Rajak kamal diya muche, aur kya chahiye' [They gave me the 'rajak kamal', what else is needed']
Anyway in the written assignment I wrote none of this. I was partying and dancing till 4 am and then instead of writing I started painting the first page of the sketch book I was going to give Kunju Thalona. NN and others watched as I was performing this madness mixing the colours on the floor rather than on the palette. Then I crashed. Its only because NN banged hard on my door in the morning at nine that I got up. My train was at 11.15 and to reach Howrah in time I had to start from campus at around 9 45. But then I had to submit the assignment. I rushed and had tea at the mess and came back to the room and wrote some shit in half an hour. Now I don't even remember what I wrote. I left campus at around 10.30. I was sure that I was going to miss the train. But hail Indian Railways. It was late by half an hour. I caught it.
Now on 24th I have to give a presentation on Michelangelo Antonioni, the director I chose for my 'Director's Presentation'. Save for that all the work this semester is over and I am having a jolly good time here in Hyderbad. Do I miss campus? Yes, very much. But this is a hard earned holiday, what with the 'hard partying' and all, don't you think?
 |
| Kunju Thalona and Mohammed S |
|
 |
| Kunju Thalona facebooking. On the wall, a painting she made. |
 |
| Mohammed S thinks everything is problematic. The quintessential research scholar |
 |
| Moula Ali at night |
|
 |
| Times of India office reception, Banjara Hills |
|
 |
| A mask Kunju Thalona got on her trip to US |
|
 |
| Kunju Thalona and M, lunch. |
|
 |
| Kunju Thalona thinks people are all living in cups. |
|
 |
| Me, Mohammed S and others in Charminar |
|
 |
| Where i watch Kunju Thalona go to work |
|
 |
| General state of mind |
|
 |
| We played many a game of cards |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment