Barely Surviving

I had two terrible dreams and i don't need to be Freud to decode them. 

One featured Dee, a married guy with whom I had an affair last year. In the dream, Fay, the only person i call a friend in its true sense, and i are in a beautiful cottage somewhere. She and i are by a glass window, laughing and chatting, when i glance outside and see three figures in raincoats walking on a concrete pathway. One of them looks at me. I can only see his eyes. I am almost certain it is Dee. I am scared. 

It's morning. I am just waking up. I realise i am being smothered with a pillow. It's Dee. He is sitting on top of me. Fay is nowhere in sight so i assume she is in the bathroom. I am hopeful she will come out any moment and see what Dee is doing, and finally realise what i have been trying to convey to her about him for a long time now. I also feel i might not get killed by Dee because he doesn't know i am with Fay. He hadn't seen her when he looked at me through the glass window the previous day. I struggle with all my might against him and manage to overthrow him. I pin him to me with my legs and call out for Fay so that she can see for herself what i have been talking about all this time. She comes out of the bathroom and sees me and Dee. 

I tell her how he tried to murder me. She says, 'but i just saw that you have trapped him with your legs.' The familiar fear rises in me. Of being told that i am not to be believed. I tell her he was trying to murder me just a while ago. That i overpowered him. I am now hoping Dee has escaped so that he wouldn't hear the doubt in Fay's tone. He will get to know that i have no one on my side. He will feel triumphant. Fay believes me, but only reluctantly, i feel. I can tell that she thinks i am reporting everything wrong. The dream ends. 

 

For some months now, i have been trying to get back the money i lent Dee. There was no response from him even after repeated requests. I had to send a legal notice to him after which he promptly called the lawyer and told her that the majority of the amount i was asking back was his remuneration for edit work he did with me. I had already explained to the lawyer that he had made the claim in the past too and that it was not correct. I had added his name to the credit list not because he did the work to earn it but because of my feelings for him at the time. It was an unprofessional act. Fay told me that i had sunk low in the cesspool of my actions of the time. It is true. If this particular act was unprofessional, the rest betrayed feminism. Dee's friend refused to believe me when i told him that Dee had not done the work, pointing to the fact that i never contradicted Dee when he claimed otherwise, and stating my memory issues. He said that i had agreed to pay him for the work when we were together. I told him that Dee had later told me he would return the amount. Fay told me it could be because Dee felt insulted when i later went back on my payment promise. She too, pointed out earlier instances of my memory issues.

 

The incident triggered me endlessly. It brought back every little incident in that relationship where i was humiliated and lied to by Dee and i failed to question it because i was so emotionally entwined. It was easy for everyone to state that i never contradicted him when he made claims regarding edit work. It's natural too, as i am known for calling out people and confronting them quickly. However, I avoided confronting Dee on numerous occasions in that relationship, not just regarding edit. In fact, i went to great lengths to claim that he did the edit with me so that people, especially my teammates, would respect him. He was always complaining that they didn't consider him worthy of me because of his lack of higher education and complaints of discrimination by a female teammate. I avoided confronting him regarding his lies not just in front of others but even when i was alone with him. Whenever i dared to confront him, it would result in lengthy disrespectful debates at the end of which he would withdraw love and affection for days. He was especially touchy regarding money.

 

His withdrawal of love at will was my perennial fear in that relationship. It started when he started exhibiting a pattern of showering me with love for a brief period and quickly withdrawing it for long periods (called 'love bombing' and 'bread crumbing' in today's lingo). I would cling on to the spurts of love and would be grateful for it. It's only very recently that i even broke out of my emotional attachment to him and this is when i was finally able to analyse the incidents that transpired. This does not justify my favouring him and adding his name to the credit list when he did not deserve it but i now know why i put up with his lies about it and many other things. Why i tried my best to not hurt his ego.   

 

Fay told me that i would be among the people who called my actions sexual harassment if Dee was a female and if a complaint was made. That's true too. In my case, i do think that the power he had over me, which arose from the pattern of showing and withdrawing love, overrode the power i had over him due to professional hierarchy. In fact, after the relationship and the pattern commenced, i was unable to even reprimand him on more than one occasion when he committed dereliction of duty. He would just brush it aside and not take accountability. I now even suspect that some of his love showering spurts were strategically placed to coincide with other personal events in my life. If, despite this, it really is sexual harassment, i do think Dee should file a complaint. After all, at the point when the relationship started, the only power equation that existed was the professional one. It's only when it progressed that the emotional equations emerged. The law now permits men to make complaints. I was, in fact, one of the people who lauded the amendment. 

It will take much more time for me to get over the fact that he has 'chosen' not to return me my money. That he 'chose' not to respond when i asked it back. Even without the amount he now claims is his remuneration, he owes me. People have asked me to let go of it as it is a small amount. It was not a small amount when he borrowed it. Neither for me nor for him. The fact that i was not respected in that relationship makes it worse for me. 

The second dream featured an ex-professor of SRFTI. Following complaints of sexual harassment from female students including me, this professor was found guilty by the ICC and was dismissed from service. He and another professor who received the same punishment challenged the order in Calcutta High Court. The court ruled in their favour recently. We appealed against the order but don't have the emotional energy to follow the case up and have lost hope. They might return to teaching any day. During our fight against these professors, we were hounded by the administration and fellow students both. The students especially were very violent. 

I was recently contacted by some students there regarding ongoing cases of sexual harassment. The current ICC is treating complainants with utmost contempt and functioning illegally. 

In the dream, this professor is teaching us. It's an outdoor class. We are all going to be tested. I am excited. I want to be the topper. One of my classmates is a male student who turned out to be a gigantic hypocrite during my time there and whom me and my roommate used to call 'fuckrum.' I badly want to beat him in the test. 

The professor and i get along very well. I am enamored by him. I see that he is slightly flirting with me with his glances. I don't object. When the test is explained, two of the male students, including the hypocrite try out a video game which is somehow related to the test. They already know how to play it. I see that i don't. 

The test begins. It is not a video game but something like a pinball game. I have to use hand controls to bounce six or so balls into their places on pegs - all inside a glass case. Not only do i win, i beat others by a huge margin. I am ecstatic. Some of my classmates also celebrate with me. I look at the professor. He looks happy, eager and proud. I feel a butterflies in my stomach. 

It's night. We students have a bonfire in the lawn behind the old hostel. The professor comes up to me and says 'i love you.' I am disappointed. I didn't want him to hit on me. I think of making a complaint but feel that no one will believe me because I was openly in awe of him earlier. I am guilty of having butterflies in my stomach when i looked at him. This is what Fay talks about, isn't it? She would say that i initiated it? And if she says so, it would mean it's true? The dream ends. 

'I love you' was the professor's words to me all those years ago while i was a student. He said it over the phone, after saying, 'it is what it is.' He made repeated advances at me even after i told him on that call that i wasn't interested in him. Once at a party, he laid his hands on my waist, slapped me when i commented on a salad he had prepared. When i protested, he apologised and said i should go straight to the police for the mistake he made. He made comments on my body. 

I had been in awe of him when he started teaching. I knew he was slightly flirtatious with me with his glances. I had tried to impress him. Had tried to get him to notice me. From childhood, I always tried to impress my teachers, especially if i liked them. I used to pluck flowers from the garden and take it to my favourite teachers every day. 

I am constantly accused of forgetting things. I do have memory issues - a little more than most people. Someone could tell me their name and i would forget it in less than a minute. I don't remember faces. My brain subconsciously deletes entire episodes that it deems irrelevant. Certain memories associated with trauma are deleted. I believe this happens in a lot of people. Are we not to believe them at all? It really hurts when i am not believed even when i recall something vividly, when i am certain of what happened. 

 

I hit my lowest low this year. Depressed, constantly considering suicide, i am certain that my future is doomed. The weight of my terrible mistakes pull me down into dark and unknown depths of despair. 

Dreams, Yellow Notebook, June, July, Bombay

• Dream in which Appachan was taking me to a mental hospital. Anil maman and Beena aunty were in the car. I was noticing how abusive Anil maman was when he spoke to Beena aunty. All the while, i was trying to understand if it was day or night. I thought something and it turned out to be the other. It was scary how Appachan was betraying me. [By taking me to the mental hospital] He was not with me. Why?

• Dream: I went out telling Vai Viw that i'd be back in 5 minutes. Part from office met me at a kind of place like Calcutta High Court. There he started flirting and i did not object. Did not object even when he kissed me on my head. We were sort of cuddling also. Feel so yucky even writing it. Then someone who knows me and Vai Vow sees us. I tell Part that i have a lover and that we live in the same SRFTI hostel. Now it seems that the location was SRFTI. I rush back to Vai Vow. I see Sethuvamma and Kunju Thalona on the way. I deduce that something is wrong and that they have been alerted for the same reason. In the room i see Vai Vow trembling and making frantic phone calls. I hug him and comfort him saying that nothing has happened. I apologize for being so late. I am at the same time scared that the person who saw Part and me earlier has told Vai Vow how close we were acting in the court balcony. I repeatedly tell him that nothing has happened and that everything is fine.

[I hate it that i am still having these kind of dreams. It's even more pathetic now. The guys are turning into absolute strangers. Not even like Sal when i had the dream of me kissing him.]

• Tia and i both get some sort of disease. Our bodies get red spots and it hurts and burns. It's like flesh burning. I apply ice on it and it heals for a while. Then on Tia, the veins start showing under the skin. Veins start bulging. I apply ice on it. It seems like it is working but suddenly a vein bursts open. My veins have started behaving the same way. I am unable to decide if i should still try and save her or myself. At the end of the dream i thin i was about to leave or had already left Tia on the road and was running with blood streaming down my arms.
• Vai Vow and i are in a hospital. I am taken by someone somewhere. When i come back i see that Vai Vow is not there. I start searching and i am almost sure that he is sleeping under one of the bags or a bundle. I keep that place for later and when i do search in there in the end, it is someone else sleeping. [in the film avoid showing the face of he person, which is supposed to make them understand that it is not Vai Vow.] I am desperate. Scared. Start searching the whole hospital but Vai Vow has disappeared.
• Rahu from office. I am sleeping and Roshn from office is my roommate. [Just remembered a scene in which she asked me to trim her anal hair and i did. She was behaving as if it was the most normal thing.] Part calling me by another name. I say thrice that my name is kunjila. A girl from office - in reality there is no girl like that - comes to the room. I pretend to be asleep. Rahu does not even check if i am asleep. He fucks the girl. Later i ask Roshn if that office girl was Rahu's wife. She says no and also says something to the effect that everyone knows that they are having an affair. I am relieved that it was not a secret that i witnessed. I confirm that Rahu is an asshole with this incident.
• Kunju Thalona and i living together in a house. Me asked to take care of a young cancer patient. I have to do something with a plant's roots. I am shown how to do what by a christian family. I am scared that i destroyed the roots while examining them. It seems to be an area around Providence Women's College, Calicut. I see someone i make out to be Rosily aunty over there. We are all standing (there are many other young candidates for the post) like in a prayer meeting and singing or something. There is a scene in some kind of restaurant which could be the juice shop at Chevayur junction. Han, Deep etc. are there and we are all talking when i suddenly ask myself why i am in Chevayur. Wasn't i at home with Kunju Thalona a while ago. Then i remember i was sleeping. Someone (I now suspect Han) had asked me to go to Chevayur. I had done all of this in my sleep. I frantically call Kunju Thalona. She will now be mad at me. I'm sure. I remember I'd seen her phone at the house while leaving and hoping she's in the house and that i hadn't locked her out, i call her. She picks and starts yelling at me. I cry in front of everyone at the shop and ask her to forgive me. 'I only have you here. Don't you know that?' She asks. 
• ^ In the same sleep i had a dream in which i orgasmed. Don't remember what it was about. Just remembered that Hamn was in the dream. I hugged her and congratulated her. She was on her way to some TV programme and she had tears of joy.
• Very terrifying dream. Vai Vow and i live in Bombay. I am taking part in some sort of online discussion or something. It's all BBC people. One of the people seem to be paraplegic to me. BBC panelists start questioning this man. He wants to know why they are asking these personal questions, their privacy policy etc. It is not yet my turn to speak but i observe in awe this man fighting.
  
  Then i am at some sort of big traffic junction in Bombay. There, i ring the bell, i see a person, a fair, tall man going towards a huge house. He seems very familiar to me. I am certain that he is the man who was in the BBC discussion. He has just had a fight with the auto driver and is marching towards his house and shuts the door with a bang. I am in two minds but run behind him and ring the bell. An annoyed him opens the door. I hesitantly ask him 'Are you' He says 'what?' arrogantly. I say 'BBC are you.' He says 'What are you talking about?' I say 'were you on BBC today morning?' He stops for a while and smiles and says 'How do you know?' I tell him that i was there as a silent listener. He says 'oh!' I say that i wanted to tell him how in awe i was. I wish i could've said something etc. i say. 'They were really atrocious and i did all i could' he says, rather modestly. 'Well it was a lot, what you did,' i say.
  
  He continues smiling and asks if I want to have coffee. Alarm bells ring inside me and I quickly think and say no. He is still smiling and looking at me and I feel he is an asshole. I am not sure for a while what to do and I am still there standing looking at him his phone rings and he picks it up and says 'no I am not back yet there in a minute.' He then looks at me and ask again if I am sure I don't want to have coffee. This time I really feel that he is an asshole and I hardly say no and I leave. He shuts the door. I walk back a bit but something in me ask me to go back. I go back and when I look through the door i see that he is standing right there and waiting to open the door. I am terrified and I run back I am now sure that he was not the man i saw on BBC and I want to go back to go back home immediately and tell Vai Vow what happened. But that night there is a party at this friend's house. She is actually Vai Vow's friend and I have a feeling that he likes her. When I go back home I see that Vai Vow is texting someone and he tells me that it is the same girl and that we had to go to this girl's party or something like that. I suspect that they have gotten back together. I mention the man on BBC and what happened at the big house at the big junction.
  
  The girl we are going to is the daughter of some important person like a judge or something. There I tell Vai Vow that this happened and in the dream I actually spoke something which was going to give away that I had this encounter with this man. I come to know that this girl with whom Vai Vowwas talking is actually this man's girlfriend and they're living together and the conversation that he had had with me in front of me saying that he is going to be back in sometime was with this girl the girl also realizes this. All of us panic. I hear a joke that's being cracked at one of the tables. This man and the girl's father were joking about this girl who had come and had asked him if he was on BBC and how he thought that he could sleep with her and everything. They all laugh all the judges and all the important people at the party.
• Sabari (SRFTI) Karthik (school friend) Ms Sunith (school teacher) Ms Sunith is giving a class or kalarippayatu training. I keep delaying. Sabari is attending it.
• S (SRFTI classmate) spotted in a jeep. Some place like campus. People are sitting in groups. When i pass they point their fingers at me and make noise as if making fun of me. They are trying to provoke me to do something. Then i notice that the one in the middle, leading them is Nilot. Majum. ex dean.
• Appachan dies. He entrusts me with certain memories before he died. On a bus. This becomes my novel but it is extremely painful and i am depressed. Somehow chechi comes to help. Nothing is helping though. She says that Salma is still harassing her. I am deeply saddened. No rage. Just sad. Something about Appachan's biscuits. In the dream i am thinking about weight.
• Dream: Death of papaji
  My father has died and we (Sethuvamma, Kunju Thalona and my cousins) are going to the funeral. It is like a film in which Sethuvamma is narrating their love story. When certain incidents happen in the car she laughs. Later in flashback we see that the same sentence was said by some character (nothing funny about it in the past) Use this in films. We go to sites where they'd loved. A house after three rows of steps in the path to it. Sethuvamma remembers a lot. We are given food at a tea shop. Anil maman is taking care of it. He is nice to us unlike in real life. He has a fight with the shop owner regarding what we ate. In the end, me and Kunju Thalona fight. She talks to me like how she talks to me now.

Dreams April, May 2017, Bombay

• Vai Vow dream about me. I am trying to save a mad woman who has come to SRFTI because i think SRFTI will treat her inhumanly. I run here and there and switch off the main power of SRFTI. Vai vow is running behind me worried and panicking asking me how i will be able to see if i turn off the power etc. The mad woman runs up a tall building. I get on a crane and go up there. Putul ma'am is on a bigger crane giving some instructions. I do some trapeze sort of act while on the crane etc. Vai Vow is worried. 
• In the dream, Kunju Thalona and i were in a slum in Bombay. We were living there happily. Like Saroo and Guddu. Then, i get lost. Like Saroo. I ride a bike without knowing how etc. Auto driver - fight. He's trying to find out where i live. I am trying to trick him. 

Notes From the Leaves Diary

• When you get tickets from conductors in buses you hold out your hand with the money. The person doesn't get it from you when you are holding it out like that. You will do that three times. Meanwhile you will look heare and there, talk to the person next to you and take your hand back etc then hold it out again. 
• Leaf falling scene has to be incorporated because it's the end of SRFTI and people need to see it. Appachan/ Gee uses it as a bookmark.
• Sketch: Kozhikode beach. One of those things has grown wings and starts flying. 
• Kid dusing play calling out അമ്മമ്മേ and everyone laughing
• Sketch's name will be എനിക്കും പറക്കാൻ മോഹം.
• Instead of beads you can have mercury spheres. Her touching it and it giving irth to tiny mercury balls. Name can be രസം Mercury
• Shoot a film in Alipore jail
• 23rd June Terrifying dream. Whole campus under the control of police. They are all armed and are employed by the majority of students and faculty and administration. Us 6/7 are stuck in our rooms and don't know what to do. It looks as if we have lost everything. Shubhadra is seen walking the corridor in front of cafe bar holding a paper. I charge at him and hold him by his tee shirt's neck. He tries to shake me off. I don't leave. I see that the paper in his hand is that of my FIR on Neeraj Sahay. All students have been empowered by the armed police. Terrible terrible feeling. 
• 24th June Dream in which i tell Chee please bring me something when you come back from China. She says that it is offensive and i cannot say things like that. It's not right. I am hurt but i apologize and shut up. Han argues with Chee about this. I am not sure what i feel about that.
• 25th June Dreamed that Sabari was getting married. 
• 26th June Dreamed that Rita di was really happy to do the role, that once she was offered a role and couldn't do it because she was called on work or something. 
• 4th July 2016 11.40 p.m Depression of first order before beginning shoot at the house. Cinema will kill me. 
• 12th July 2016 Shoot over. Was the worst shoot i've been in. Humiliated and tortured like mad. Still alive and it's a miracle that i've completed it. Need to write in detail about how film schools try to kill cinema. 
• 21st July Brutal treatment from Sethuvamma and Kunju Thalona. She intervenes. Situation worse. Feel orphaned. In any case they were highly abusive. This had to happen one day. Hope one day when i am famous or something they'll come back to me. I hope they do. 
• Most dreams are shoot related now. Had two in which i was shooting in a similar house as diploma. Kutty and kutty lookalike bitten to death by dogs in the dream. 
• The chapter Sexual Violence in Seeing Like a Feminist has to be written about in the context of the case against Neeraj Sahay. 
• Feeling like shit due to Sethuvamma's behaviour. There is a reason, i keep telling myself, there is a reason. There is a strong reason. 
• 25th July 2016
• Terrible terrible dream about Kunju Thalona. Appachan present and declared dead in the end. Kunju Thalona was venomous and violent. Physical violence on me. She had to be carried away by people from a mental asylum or something. So disturbing and saddening the dream was. 
• Bela Tarr: What a filmmaker. Late discovery
• Note to self: Do camera testing in all locations including vehicles. Eg. A bus. 
• Preparing myself for the ബോഘക്ഷയം after first cut 1st August 2016
• Surveillance- ATM episode of drunk kissing *an abuser* Starting of a film. 
• Breaking of knuckles can be a good transition from dream sequence to reality. Sound of knuckles breaking in dream. Visual of hands of girl breaking knuckles in sleep lying next to him (in reality)
• Beginning of a film. The incident with Han and Ouike. Police asking us to catch a man. Beating. All three of us go back to our respective lives but the incident does not leave us.
• *an asshole* kissing in green room. A person entering and saying sorry. The girl is petrified and the boy doesn't give a shit. 
• Papaji dying-choking on food. After a nice joke mother goes to heat water and then he dies. He calls for help but no sound comes out.
• Death of Biren sir. Start with students going in groups.
• What happened at the tea shop. An elderly person drinking tea and saying AAAAH. Our girl gives him a look and he says 'not to you'. I did it for the tea [in bangla] The girl gets tea for herself and makes a similar sound (sexual? decide) The whole road and everybody including the old man turn and stop and stare. (stylize) The girl says 'Not to you. It's for the tea'. 
• 15th September 2016
  Biren sir died. Remember his face when he was brought in the mobile mortuary. Elle here to shoot me. Very nervous and uncomfortable. 
• 1922 Dracula-funny now. 
• Herzog's Dracula - liked. Watching it the same day was really good.
• Film Pinchu's kid as a ball and breathing for some time. Then let it be revealed as a cat.
• Life in SRFTI. The calendars. The dusty ones in the end.
• Metropolis - Really good. The principle idea behind the film is that of between head and hands there should be a mediator called heart. It has a happy ending which i didn't like. 
• Pulp Fiction
  -very funny
  Racist and sexist!
  This time no problem with non linear narrative
  Shyamal Sengupta and something about the gun - Travolta and Butch scene.
  Really liked Butch's girlfriend. 
• It reflects on your face. That is how people get to know you and your vulnerability.   
• Documentary shoot by Elle. I thought Elle would be a sensible person but Elle was just trying to use me. Why is nobody sincere. What a horrible experience...What a bitter experience in court today. Crying and police etc. need to write about this in blog. On top of that, ragging again in SRFTI

Idea Repository: From Long Ago

II Semester SRFTI

1.  My grandmother used to say that the folded edges in a book is a sign that the student is lazy. [The girl is unfolding the folded edges]. Am I lazy? [The girl tries to reach for the switch from a distance with her foot.] or a long pole]. These days i feel my life is a long session in which i am intently trying to unfold the pages of a lazy girl’s notebook. My grandmother is dead now. These days when i think of her what first comes to my mind is that time when i drew a design with mehendi on her palm. Our house was being painted then. When she went to the loo she forgot she had mehendi on her and brushed past the freshly painted wall. The mark stayed there till i painted the house four years after her death. Her palm looked beautiful in mehendi. She liked it. But the only thing she said to me was ‘How will I attend the mass with this on?’ [Go to the picture of jesus christ on the wall.] Zoom in on the bright red mehendi on her palm. Her smiling, expression changing abruptly and then she says the dialogue. Then we go to christ.

2.  Remember when the principal asked you how your father died and you said he choked and she couldn’t understand what it meant. Look at the irony of the situation. All of them insist on talking in english. Then you, with all the language learning you did say he choked. She keeps on asking ‘what?’ And finally you say he was having food and it got stuck in his throat.

3.  Remember the dream you had tonight. There was a scene in which the mother character who had the face of Irs goes to the security and gives him a hand job.

4.  A kid watching/playing one of those video games in which everybody kills everybody. His parents are fighting. Some activity like that always going on. In the night the kid is sleeping alone and is still listening to the fight. He opens his eyes. Suddenly the mother rushes in hugs him tight from behind and starts crying or something. Noise from the video game flood his ears.

November 2013

1.  സേതുവമ്മയ്ക്ക് ഇന്നിട്ട sweater ഇട്ട് photo അയച്ച് കൊടുക്കണം. മമ്മിക്ക് സന്തോഷാവും. എന്ത് മാത്രം ഉടുപ്പുകളാണ് സേതുവമ്മ എനിക്ക് വാങ്ങിത്തന്നിട്ടുള്ളത്. ഓരോ പുതിയതിടുമ്പഴും അങ്ങനെ ഫോട്ടോ അയച്ച് കൊടുക്കണം. ചെടികള്‍ക്കിന്ന് വെള്ളമൊഴിച്ചില്ല. വാടാതിരുന്നാ മതിയായിരുന്നു. കറിവേപ്പില പ്രത്യേകിച്ചും. എഴുതണം എഴുതണം എന്ന് വിചാരിച്ചിരുന്നിട്ടൊരു കാര്യവുമില്ല. അത് എത്രയും പെട്ടെന്ന് ചെയ്യാന്‍ തൊടങ്ങണം. ആ Hyderabad write-up തീര്‍ക്കണം. ബാക്കി തീര്‍ക്കാന്‍ നിക്കണ്ട. എന്തൊരു വെഷമാണ്. Next work on Calcutta Chromosome. Places.

[Should send Sethuvamma a photo wearing the sweater i wore today. How many clothes has she bought me! Every time i wear a new one should send a picture to her. Didn’t water the plants today. Hope they don’t wilt. Especially the curry leaf plant. No use thinking ‘should write’. Have to start doing it as soon as possible.. Don’t wait to finish up the rest. How sad. Next work on Calcutta Chromosome. Places.

2.  That thing which happened during the production workshop. You were watching a movie on the screen. In the movie someone opened the door. At the same time Sengupta opened the classroom door. If you were to shoot how’d you have done it? Screen-open door-sound+real door open+ its sound and then the person who came in through the real door. His bewildered expression? [There was also S. Kar laughing seeing this. Is that your character? Right now i feel it’s not important. But there will be one person who noticed it. [in this case sad that it wasn’t you]. Is that person who noticed it your character?

3.  Will you walk into my shoes.

4.  In theatre (main for Sum Majumadar’s screening, diploma). Modhu and Mule talking on the phone. They are some rows away from each other and Mule calls to ask Modhu why she is sitting behind. They make comments on people coming in, out etc. You could use the curtain parting over this.

5.  Vi is standing and reading what S is sending on his phone. Completely unaware that i’m seeing him seeing him.

6.  22^nd December
That thing which happened in metro. The door closing just in time. Conversation happening. Extended hand. Two people outside. One left inside. What could they have said? Stay? Get off?

7.  Use: The scene from demo film I in Indian Coffee House. The girls clicking themselves. The photo should പതിയല്‍ [get captured]. There should be flash. Your protagonist could walk past these two girls in the next shot. We could follow him/her.

8.  Use: The guy forgot to take his sweater from the girl while getting off. He remembered just before getting off, came back and took it from her. (expressions).

9.  That thing which happened while coming back from Birla Academy of Art and Culture. Two girls were playing badminton. Their shuttlecock was tattered already. When once it fell a car passed by and the cock went with it. (Must have got stuck under the tyre). The two girls ran behind the car. Calling out ‘Uncle! Uncle! Uncle! Then she saw that it’s a woman and she started calling ‘Aunty! Aunty! Aunty! (They got it back and resumed play?) But let’s leave them there and go.

10.              What happened when you cycled. Two people opening the car doors at the same time and passing a box of cake. One man said sorry to you. You laughed.

11.              In the metro station-anywhere, everywhere, a woman-why should it always be young girls-teenagers? A woman, say is smiling the smile and walking texting or reading a text-reading a text She is drifting-unaware of surroundings. Just the message and that moment for her now. Your character is the one watching her. She is the kind who smiles seeing this smile. And does she get a call soon after and get into a complex conversation of her life while taking a last look at this texting woman. Do her responses get affected by the emotion that is created by seeing this woman?

12.              A fly on the nipple. Doesn’t budge even after ‘phoo’ing
മുലക്കണ്ണില്‍ ഒരു ഈച്ച
ഊതിയിട്ടും പറക്കുന്നില്ല

13.              When you light something with a matchstick it’s not the stick’s sound that you hear. It is something else’s. Next we can show the source of that sound. In Nandigram what AjMa heard and S did not.

14.              Abdhi: She talks like a song (a lullaby) the girl who talks like a song. Drinking session-an episode. She and her lover. Does she write poems? Probably not. But why does she pretend to write one all of a sudden. On a cigarette packet. Whisper it in his ear. His reaction. She throws it (Me-who am i) gives it to him. He puts it in his pocket. Her sudden reaction ‘see darling, how much even i am in love with you don’t fuck with me when i am drunk’ (how muchever i am in love with you)

15.              In the car- me trying to find a date to quit smoking. Now the month is January. So you basically want a far away date. Asl S. He first says somewhere in April. You are mildly happy. But he reads your face. He understands what you are trying to do. So he changes it to February 27^th-you catch him. As AjMa. January 7^th-it’s already over. Karmakar August 19^th. You are very happy. Now you can ask the reason for each of their reasons for having said these dates.

June 2014, Kozhikode

[Short film time, Break-up with Jay]

1.  Germ: A robber on train. His loot. A chained iron case. He steals it. But when he sees the contents of the box he wants to meet the girl. Starts stalking or something.

2.  An old couple on train. Ever so beautiful in the morning light. This was after III A.C had become the Sleeper class of the middle class.

3.     വെള്ളത്തില്‍ നിന്നു പറിച്ചുമാറ്റപ്പെട്ട മീന്‍ പോലെ ഞാന്‍ പിടയുന്നത് നീ കാണുന്നുണ്ടെന്ന് എനിക്കറിയാം. ആര്‍ത്തവസമയത്ത് പുറത്തുപോകുന്ന രക്തം ഒരു കഷ്ണം മാംസം അടര്‍ന്നുപോകുന്നതുപോലെയാണെന്ന് നമുക്കറിയാവുന്നതുപോലെ.

I know that you can see me writhe like a fish out of water. Like how we know that menstrual blood feels like a chunk of flesh falling apart from the body.

December 2014

1.  The woman next to me. Her oranges and apples falling, ripped bag, തട്ടം. [veil] yellow saree. Maroon sequins. The woman in the next seat passing a bag and fallen oranges via me.

2.  Like two lovers against the whole world. One person with a cat against the whole world. Explore. One idea/ideology against the whole world.

3.  A man in 60s booking ticket to Chennai from Trivandrum. He asks for side lower berth. Not available. Asks to look for middle berth. Looks at me and smiles. എനിക്ക് പിന്നേം കൊഴപ്പല്യ. [I am still okay with it] But she cannot manage. Smiles. Asks to check if it is available in ‘senior’ quota. The counter person says ‘yes’.

4.  A couple talking in metro. By the 2 glass manes windows/door. Smiles when in love. This is the POV of our girl.

Dreams: February 2016

• Vi Ve on campus. He has Ry's face. We go to D Quarters and peer in. See Vi Ve. I hide. Vi Ve comes out and looks at me. I ask how is Chennai. He laughs. We all laugh
• Dream in which S and AjMa touched their balls and said something offensive when i was passing. They were with a police person. I told the same police person that i wanted to file a complaint against them. 
• A scene in which i had a lot of pimples on forehead. 

20th February

• Something about an incident with a car going over tar or muck. It was the way from Medical College/Kavu to Thondayad.
  Remember someone's penis. Green veins or something. Gross and foreskin hanging down. 
• Dream about me going in search of an author. I find him. The search (khoj) was exciting and interesting. 

21st February

• Hugging and kissing D Jeet. Vai Vow sees me. 
• Cousins, Nileena and Meghna at home in Calicut. Meghna wants sketch pens. 

Sometime later

• Dream about Veeran being spotted. He is running. He goes to Puthiyastand. Burns things. Modhu is on camera. She cracks jokes and everything.
  That terrifying moment when you were taking bath, looked like Anil Maman's bathroom where you overheard the things he was telling Mother on phone. About your relationship when you were 17. Veeran on top looking at you and smiling. Vicious smile.

Dreams, January 2016

2nd January 2016

• I find the ring of the pressure cooker which fits. [the one i had had fallen loose and i was not able to fit it back that night]
• Gi, childhood friend falls into a mud puddle in front of me. Her father whom i hate stands watching and says something to me.

3rd January 2016

• Dreamed that in some statement that i gave in court there was inconsistency and i was questioned based on that.
• Another dream in which S Choudhari, one of the professors who got suspended for sexual harassment charges had summoned all of us direction students in a room. He was very well dressed and he said what the charges against him were. Then he pointed to three female students including me in class and said that he knew that it was we who had complained. 
• In another dream Jay was trying hit on me saying that i was always his true love 
 

21st January 2016

• A dream in which i brushed against Han's (junior) hands. Looked like we liked each other. 

27th January 2016

• A dream in which N. Sahay was there. He was going to the ICC Chairperson saying that he had got a signature from some high authority, probably a professor. I see this and conclude that it is O. Hazra who has signed in his favour. ICC Chairperson doesn't acknowledge the paper. O Hazra is again teaching us and doing her bullying. Sethuvamma tries to protest.

Diploma Ideas From SIGNS Diary

• After violence from son it should cut to muslim butcher cutting beef Dhak. He looks up and is surprised because now we get to know along with him that his customer is Lakshmi.
• Inside house scene can be there. Just make sure you cut with boy's violence. Mother helpless.
• The khabaredukkal of the dead muslim man is happening when the woman passes by with beef from the market.
• Dream sequence of horse. People hiding in the horse and coming out of it from Greek mythology. Find out name etc.
• Einsteins's table and room on the day he died. The photo Vai Vow showed you. It should be titled death and in film the photograph should be replicated and the title 'death' should appear across it.
• Old man drooling child drooling : Just use.
• Visual from dream. The big tree. Three people swinging on it. This is Lakshmi's dream. The big tree elsder brother, her in pettycoat and another small kid swinging. In the long shot at first nobody understands what that thing is which is moving. Later the girl jumps off and runs. Paavada and blouse. She should wear it and should be like Shabana's costume in Ankur. [Chuck this. Make it pettycoat]. This dream should be splashed with snoring sound of the potbellied husband in the end. And it should be in black and white? Creaking sound of the aalmaram. 

Dreams, December 2015

• Ms Priya [Math teacher from higher secondary school] in the dream. She had three children. I picked one of them up. She said she had had four. Then i deduced that one had died. Quadruplets. There was a train catching scene. Running behind moving train. I catch it. 
• Crazy dream about Sethuvamma murdering a child. In the new house or something. Then there is Deep, junior, who is in the mes and gets emotional and says thank you to me. Then i turn to him as if to whisper and kiss him then. He is very moved. Then there is house warming kind of thing where all relatives have come. They are all helping. I can't do anything properly thinking about the girl she killed and put in a trunk in some bedroom. Scene of Hari [junior] coming on a motorbike. It is pouring and yet i lie on the ground in the rain and bawl. Aware of the possibility of my nipples which are hard due to cold showing, my breasts showing in the rain. I just couldn't stop thinking of the girl she killed and just lay there and cried. 
• 25th Decmber 2015, Night.
  I am at Vai Vow's room. I see that there is a thief inside. I wait for him to come out. He does and i see it is Pal, a junior. He is ashamed and takes a rod like thing, a mop or something which he had stolen from the room to hit me. I ask him to please not kill me. Vai Vow arrives. He aims the rod at Vai Vow. We don't speak anything but cower in fear. Pal doesn't have the strength to kill us. He drops the mop and leaves. I get up and run behind him. I hug him tight and say that it is all alright. He cries but doesn't say anything. I tell him that he can sleep in my room that night. Vai Vow and i go to my room with Pal. When i wake up i see Vai Vow next to me. By then i have started thinking that i am with Jai, my ex lover. I get up and when i am about to say goodbye to Pal i see that Jai is also leaving with him. I call out to him. Jai, Jai, where are you going. He turns and i see that it is not Jai, it is a junior whose name i don't know. Pal laughs an evil laugh and says that it was fun for both of them to rape me. He says that that would shut me up about his robberies.
  I am next seen with the chairperson of the sexual harassment committee of the institute. She is giving me confidence to fight against the juniors who raped me. I have to appear for a medical examination. I go to a lot of places with her for the purpose. At one mall i see that Jai is working and he says that the ride on the elevator is free of cost for him because he works there. I ask something about the possibility of him testifying for me. The dream dissolves or fades out of memory. It was terrifying. 
• Mother comes into the room when i am taking bath. I am naked and embarrassed and ask her to please go out. She stands there and tries to talk to me. I beg her to please go out because i am naked. She doesn't. I feel very helpless.
  Vai Vow said that the same night, i shouted, 'Daivame! [god!] how did you do that? He asked, 'What?', I said, 'Not you, Debja Ni', 'What did she do?', he asked, and i said, 'She sung this malayalam song so well.' He asked me which song and i even sang it. 

Documentary Diaries #14: Nth Dream

I have got used to dreams about film making. On Holi day, 2015 i woke up to a rather peculiar dream about Florence Madeira. In it D Jeet, NN and i were again at Madeira and Co. This time we had gone with a cut Aalyalam had made with the available rushes. I showed it to her and she responded to me. She gave the interview i was after. From it i learned that she was a striptease artist. She also gave erotic conversations on phone for money. There were more than two women who worked under her. In the dream Florence was afraid of men. I didn't like it one bit and woke up to the festival of colours.


Documentary Diaries #15: Patch Shoot but not Patch Shoot

Appachan Dream

I had to write about her because i loved her. When in pain i mostly think of her and her pain. Love always came with pain. She was love the way she was also pain.
There was, for me, one love which did not hurt except in death. I never speak of it to anybody. Even when in love i hesitate to share Appachan. Appachan was mine and he was not to be shared with anything related to pain. He never hurt me and his love was precious.

For the past two days i have been dreaming of Appachan, my grandfather. Appachan, who gave me reading, his many word games, who said that i could use his lines and it still wouldn't be plagiarism (he chucked copyright away much before i learned the term), who knew meanings of all words i asked him while i sat with a book and he with another, who said gadget meant കുന്ത്രാണ്ടം and made me laugh yet understand what it meant, who sung me to sleep, who read me to sleep, with whom i slept for the most part of my childhood, who said that my arm on his back was like a feather.

Appachan, who grew up in Veethulikkunnu, Kunnamkulam, Kerala. Twenty years of his life there before he left for Bombay. Like how later his grandchild left for Kolkata after twenty years in Kozhikode. He gave all of those twenty years to me with his stories of Veethulikkunnu which got its name because of the shape the hill was in. A broad chisel. He lived in a house which was named Hillview by himself and his brother. They had a sister who died of cancer when she was 20. There was a cemetery behind the house which was close to the church. All of my dead are buried there. Most of my love went to people there.

When Appachan was a little boy one of his uncles gifted him a tennis ball. Yellow and bouncy, the children loved it. Their evenings which were usually of football turned around to new games with the little yellow ball. A happy little thing, unlike the tattered cloth ball they had earlier. One of those days the happy ball bounced up a path they failed to foresee. It bounced its way to the cemetery. Past the Kanjiramaram (Snake-wood) and the iron gate which must not have been rusted then. They looked for the ball, all of them and Appchan did in increased desperation. He loved the ball so. They never got it.

When he told me this story i tried comforting him saying 'It's a vast place. It could have been anywhere in there. Not your fault that you couldn't find it'. He smiled. His upper lip had a small bump. I once tried getting one such by biting my lip ritualistically. It bled and gave me no bump. I got in the habit of biting my lips till they bled. Still no bump. So he smiled his bumpy lipped smile and said 'No, it's not that. Nothing and nobody who went in there ever returned'.

His sister didn't. His brother didn't. His son, my father, didn't. His wife, Amma, didn't. He didn't, like how his tennis ball didn't.

Kaanjiram (കാഞ്ഞിരം) bears poisonous fruit. That is the tree which stood guard to the cemetery. It has been a few years since i visited the place but i can feel its shadow on me. Once when we visited the place with Appachan and Amma we spotted a peacock there. It cawed and fled when it saw us. On that hill where a man spent twenty years of his long life of 89 years was where his perakkutty (grand child) sprouted wings to soar her skies of sadness. Kaanjiram shed its fruit. I was earth and took the poison in. The casuarina trees (ചൂളമരം) up there made for the strange music to which i danced. Oh all my life was one stolen line which Appachan wrote. No copyright. A captain-less ship.

Kunju Thalona once made a painting of me and Appachan which said everything about us. That was how i slept beside him. I would place my arm around him and ask if it bothered him. That was when he would say it was light as a feather. That was why i asked him that every time i hugged him. He kept a torch beside him on the window sill. On it were other things as his medicine box, his fine toothed comb and always a book. My years of blissful sleep were the ones in which i slept beside him. Never after that have i had unperturbed sleep.

Appachan and i. Painting by Kunju Thalona

Last night i had the second consecutive dream about him. I don't remember the first one. In my dream i had made a music video with some of my photographs on instagram. There were a lot of dogs and cats. I was shooting. I shot a lot of footage which i could use in some film i was making. Later i saw that one of the kittens was killed by a dog. I witnessed that murder. I shot it. I held the dead kitten and i was bloody. A lot of animals were dying around me and the Pink Floyd like music was playing all the while. Then i saw my photographs being projected on sky. The closest to the music i heard would be High Hopes by Pink Floyd. I ran. I ran to Appachan like how i used to in my childhood when i got the spellings wrong and Amma ran behind me with drumsticks to spank me. Appachan was on a chair in a room under the ground which i learned was where we lived. There was a film camera there. Purnendu da who took care of cameras in the institute was there too, dusting it. Appachan spoke to me and i started laughing. I saw D Jeet there in some time.

When i woke up i only had blood in my head. All that blood from all those dead animals. A trail of blood which led to our house under the ground. We were marked, Appachan and i. Oh my!