When NN Left

NN doesn't read my blog. She likes it that way. I like it that way too. This time even when it's her i am writing about i don't expect her to read it. We were always better off not reading each other. NN and i had been living together for more than two years now. We had been sharing a room for a year and a half. Recently i came to know that some people even took us for a couple. We weren't lovers but i miss what we were. Yesterday she left for Mumbai, where her home is. She might not come back.

Ever since i moved into the hostel with NN i had been frustrated about not having a space of my own. I was very uncomfortable with sharing a room and tried everything possible to get a single occupancy room. At a point i felt i was at the verge of a nervous breakdown for the same reason. I missed a workshop lying that i had chickenpox and went to Hyderabad, to Kunju Thalona just to spend time alone. 

Now i practically have a room of my own. It is much cleaner. Like how i liked it. No NN like music or lights and i can fart or masturbate whenever i want. As for space, yes, i have enough of it. Not much talking, like how i preferred it. Yet when i woke up in the morning and saw that NN's figure wasn't in the bed next to mine i felt a large mass of sadness settle in my chest. After two and a half years of being here and around her i realized that i had actually loved my roommate.

I never knew it. She was one among the very few people with whom i talked here. What little she knew of me was probably the only thing anyone here ever knew about me. Even then i never thought that i loved her. When i loved her i didn't know that was what i was doing. When i thought of it only differences came to my mind. We had differences in opinion about most of the things i believed in. From caste to gender to career i couldn't have had a conversation with her. But we laughed a lot together. In the end that was all that mattered. May be i would have been more at peace if she had the same perspective as me. May be i would have liked our relationship as roommates more. But i think what i felt in the morning was real.

She made me like dogs. She is who introduced hair conditioner in my life. She was good in everything i sucked at. Remembering roads, faces, names. We had names for most people on campus for the ease of talking about them when they were around. Among them were 'cornered guy', 'continuity', 'hairy movie guy' etc. We girls had our way with things i should say.

I want to write more. Impart our combined wisdom in pages and pages. I won't because after a point it will seem like NN died. I hope she doesn't kill me for having written this.

NN was my sound designer. With the playback project approaching her departure is going to cost us dearly. I hope she will be able to make time and come back. If not this is a definite goodbye and a late realization. Ms NN, much love from an empty room and ex roommate. You go girl.

Documentary Diaries #1 On Parting Ways and Patching Up

I had started thinking of the subject for my documentary shoot soon after the short film.
There comes the short film project and there comes the day after the shoot of the short film project. Believe you me, it is the worst day of production and the only competition is going to be from the day you watch your rushes. Till a day ago you were the busiest soul alive. You had so much to do, think, execute, there was not enough time to even dream let alone sleep. Then you crash after the shoot and wake up to a day so blank, it looks white, like a paper. You don't see people, you only see faces. Thus it was that i set out to my department asking for guidelines for the documentary project because i had to do something, soon.

As usual, the department had a set of guidelines which sounded shitty. I like the pressure that those guidelines give, sometimes. But shooting within 20 kms of the institute sounded ridiculous to me. So did the ten minutes restriction. I took a break and went to Hyderabad to Kunju Thalona. She told me about a lady don there and i got interested. Farah Khan. I made up my mind to steal equipment from the institute and shoot her in Hyderabad. It was then that Salmaan Mohammed, a student from Thiruvananthapuram got released on bail. He had been arrested for the charge of not respecting the national anthem. International Film Festival of Kerala was around the corner and some of my batchmates were attending. I thought it would be a good cover to elope and shoot him. During all this D Jeet, was being updated about the change of plans and ways and means to execute them. He was in agreement with both these ideas. He came all the way to Thiruvananthapuram to shoot Salmaan. As usual is the case with me, it didn't work out. I left shooting only a small bit. [I intend to go back to that project with more funds and to widen its arena to the concept of nationalism itself]. D Jeet left even before i did.

While D and i were in Thiruvananthapuram i had got this idea of shooting a girl going to school. I thought of juxtaposing such visuals with the photographs from the attack in the school in Peshawar by Taliban. It was a vague idea and D Jeet too wasn't too impressed.
Back in Kolkata, we nevertheless decided to go ahead with this idea. I found a girl with the help of a professor from editing, S Karmakar. After a day of shoot i realized the inevitable. I was not able to work with D Jeet any longer. I was too dazed by this realization itself that i went straight to him and told him the same. I was so close with him in terms of everything related to my work here that i didn't know who else to go to!

It was Republic day 2015. It was also Sports Day at the institute. Men were playing boring cricket and Vi, my classmate and Ki, my senior were giving a comic commentary which made me laugh aloud in spite of myself. I laughed. I watched the damn game. I went to D and said i was unable to work with him. I couldn't hear the players or the winners' and losers' shouts of joy. It was as if i parted ways with my ego. Was that even possible, i thought.

For me, working with someone was nearly impossible. From the time of mise-en-scene exercise through the short film project and the various documentary endeavours i was surprised that D and i were getting along quite well. Most of the time when i had an idea he would complete it. It was too good to be true. In terms of aesthetics it seemed to me as if we were in sync. When ideas were dropped in the bin we were equally upset. When something seemed appealing to the work we were equally excited. What had happened?

Politics.

For the rest of the campus and may be D too, it sounded unbelievable that difference in opinion about issues could make someone take such a decision. Yet it wasn't the first time i was getting hurt thus. The first ever problem which pushed me into depression here was my batchmates' insensitivity towards things happening around them. When VK from editing called Anand Patwardhan's Jai Bhim Comrade propaganda of dalits, a professor cracked a joke about SC/ST, OBCs. 'Sound recordists during a shoot are like them. They would be in some dark corner on set and nobody gives a damn about them', he had said. Another earnestly wanted to know how Tarun Tejpal could have raped his employee. It wasn't that i had never faced such remarks earlier. I had. And i had engaged with them too. The problem was that this place didn't offer me the space to engage with that. I stopped talking or avoided politics altogether in the rare conversations i had. It was a sad thing to do and it killed me.

Then i learned to live with it. Avoiding, sometimes arguing, sometimes being silent and later feeling like crap. With D when i saw that we had our differences regarding a lot of such issues i managed it well within myself trying all these. It wasn't affecting me during work. Later i realized this was because we were working on fiction. Enter non-fiction and i sunk deeper into my dark pit of helplessness. I wanted to question a lot of things but i couldn't. I didn't want to, but i wanted to. I was going back to the old phase of feeling left out. He must have felt the same about a lot of things, i am sure, and i have no idea how he was dealing with it himself.

So it was that on Republic Day 2015 i rushed to him to tell him. What i thought. I did. And i thought it had all ended. I had only a void in front of me. I couldn't think of working with another person. Yet i had to do it. I had to complete the project. I tried doing a lot of things. N, one of the professors of cinematography had a talk with me. So did P Mahmood of my department. Later N, D Jeet and i sat down for a talk. Parting ways was the most difficult thing for me, always.
She always told me to work, talk, live etc without getting involved with people. People were only ideas. Tried a bit and failed as always. So i suffered.

Later that night i again asked D what we could do. He said he didn't know. Nor did i. By then the HOD of Direction had told me about a place in Bow Barracks, the last Anglo Indian colony in Kolkata. He spoke to me about a family who had been running an undertaking enterprise for generations. I felt like giving it a try. I still couldn't imagine myself shooting with any other batchmate of mine. I told D about this idea and asked him if we should give it a try. He said okay. To my relief.
We went to the place and soon it was like yesterday. Where we had seasons in the sun and cinema and good fun. I could speak with him about the topic and get a high. No weed included. No substance abuse. Just cinema. We spoke to Florence, the woman who was running the business. Got permission to shoot. The next day we went with a DSLR. NN was there too, recording sound. More on the place later. We had again begun to complete each others' sentences. I was seeing his images and he was seeing my whirlpool of thoughts. It was as if Republic Day 2015 had received a local anesthesia.

D still makes fun of my getting offended about the difference in opinion on issues. I even think he is going to kick me out of his cinema life forever after this shoot. This was that bizarre. Even then i know what it feels like. I know the pit i was in and its dampness. It's like when you are busy preparing for the UGC NET exam and your folks call you to say they are seeking alliances for you. Nothing is bad about it. It sounds perfectly normal and there is definitely no need to get hurt. But i will. Get hurt. And in that process, hurt people i am closest to.

This is from one of our days of shoot. D Jeet and NN.
I hope we stay together because when we part ways, we lose a bit of our ego and the world loses a bit of our cinema. Ah, and i thought i could be modest!

Documentary Diaries #2: Madeira and Co. Undertakers

Moral Policing

It struck me as a little ironic that the Kiss of Love protest in Kolkata against moral policing had got over just a couple of weeks ago when i got moral policed for the first time in Kolkata. Kiss of Love protests which has its origin in an incident which happened in my hometown, Calicut, first happened in Kochi, Kerala and soon spread to other cities. I had written about it here. A post about various reactions on this movement can be read in English here. I am happy we are living in a time when scores of people across the country are unapologetic and up against all forms of moral policing.

I had been in similar situations many a time back home. The most recent one was when my male friend and i were asked to state the nature of our relationship including details of when we had met etc by city traffic police in Calicut, Kerala. It had never happened in Kolkata and i was in fact surprised about it in the beginning. Later i almost forgot that such a thing existed. I could roam around the place at ungodly hours and not be questioned by anybody. I could be with anybody i wanted to and not be asked what my business was at any place.

I got a whiff of it at Santiniketan. Had gone there on last new year's alone and was stopped by two men who weren't even police.

D Jeet, S Kar and i had decided to walk to S Kar's place a few kilometres from the institute. We had no purpose. It was a lazy early winter afternoon and we just felt like going some place. We walked for a couple of hours taking unnecessary detours and reached a vast expanse of land beside a huge pond. It looked beautiful and we rested for some time there. When we were on our way back two men on a motorbike stopped us and asked us what we were doing there and who we were. They were speaking in Bangla. S Kar and D Jeet said that we were film students and were there on a location recce. They were not impressed. S Kar's talk with them resulted in one of the men pushing him by the collar. They were rude and intimidating. They were arguing that the place wasn't safe at that hour (around 6 pm) and that we had no business to be there. D Jeet was trying to be polite and agree with everything they were saying just so that they would let us go. After a point i couldn't take their tone and the numerous accusations they were showering on us without any valid reason. I asked one of the men to show their id proof. Please keep in mind that this is the first thing that one should do if one was to be in such a situation. Most of the time they wouldn't be police, like the men who questioned me at Santiniketan. These people however, were police. I asked them what was wrong in us being there that being public property. They kept on saying that the place wasn't safe. One of them called their superiors and asked us to wait till they arrived.

The id card that one of the men produced when i asked for it showed his designation as 'sepoy'. I am not sure what it was of the superiors he called upon. They arrived in a jeep. They too were rude. They shouted at us for being there. 'Bhadro mohila', one of them said about me, suggesting it wasn't right for a 'decent', seemingly 'educated' woman like me to be there at that hour. Decency is supposed to be a good virtue. What is considered decent also matters when it comes to morality. Clearly for those men a girl being with two men at an isolated place with apparently nothing to do was indecent. This is why we need to be cautious about being called 'decent'. If indecent is the tag line one has to bear for just being oneself, then yes, everyone has to claim their right to be indecent. If it were just two men there and they were questioned it probably wouldn't have been about the decency but just about the audacity. To none of my male friends who were questioned in similar instances of moral policing was the question of 'decency' raised. Gender changes the aspects of morality and the accusations. Class matters too, so does the colour of your skin which translates to caste in India. Frankly i was quite surprised when they said that even with my dark complexion. It had to be the clothes which showed that i was quintessentially middle class.  

The new bunch of police people continued harassing us for several minutes. S was trying to explain how we were only going to check some scenery out for a shoot that was soon going to happen. He was trying to tell them how he had been to the same place earlier and had even shot there (this part was true. A lot of students from my own batch including S had been to the same place for a shoot as a part of a workshop that happened before our mise-en-scene exercise). D was again peacefully trying to agree and get us all out of the place. The men however came up with a new demand that we went to the police station with them. This was after we had all shown them our id cards. S had even given his address which was some three kilometres away from the place.

I asked them if they spoke English. I questioned the man who was speaking the most and asked him why we were being asked to do that, what prevented us from entering that place at any hour of the day and why we were being held that way. I asked them to arrest us on proper charges if at all they wanted to take some action on three people being at a place in the evening. Then when he started replying in bangla asking D to explain what he was saying to me i repeated the same in hindi.
After much beating around the bush and more harassment and exchange of words they tentatively uttered the words 'you may now go'.

I wasn't relieved or happy. Was enraged and felt violated. I will, however have to admit that if the same incident were to happen in Kerala, all three of us would have ended up in jail. They wouldn't have hesitated to even beat us up or molest us. So this is the plight we need to be ashamed of. One has to be happy that it didn't happen in a place worse hit by moral policing when it is a common practice. One is left with no choice but to compare and feel relieved. If there is some consolation it is in the fact that more and more people are openly protesting against it.

After some time all three of us started laughing and cracking jokes on the incident. We had some great ghugni, buttered bread and tea on our way to S's place. I thought about it for some time after reaching the institute too. I have decided if i happen to be in a similar situation with somebody hereafter i will just smooch the people with me in protest. Just kiss.

Two Deaths

14^th august 2014

I don't know if it's a coincidence that most of my movie projects happened during the most trying and mentally unfit phases of my life. May be it was the beginning. The first short film that I did was conceived in a hospital bed. I was there after a suicide attempt. I made two more short films and a music video thereafter and every one of them was during similar phases of my personal life. The first big project in my life as a film student is just two weeks away and once again I am grappling with a break up. No, it doesn't help me work better.

I try not to make a big deal out of it. It is also called being in denial. It is easier for me because I don't have many friends. I think it is right because it is only my burden to bear. The truth, however is that I know I am only fooling myself. I don't know if talking about my depression will help. It never has. At the same time this is the biggest hit I have had. The only good thing I see is that at least for the time being I am not suicidal.

It's a bit funny how people ask who dumped whom when they hear of a break up. I don't see how that is important. I don't think people can be dumped. You dump garbage not people. In my case no break up until this one had ever affected me because all of it had come out of hatred. This one came out of love. Therefore it hurts and it is unbearable.

I am grappling with the situation like a toddler. Falling, gathering, falling. I never planned to write about it even in this way but today something made me. Seemingly insignificant events affect you in inexplicable ways when you are depressed.

NN, my room mate was leaving for Italy as part of a student exchange programme by the institute. Yesterday while packing she casually mentioned that one of our common friends' friend had died that day. Today in the canteen, our graphics professor came up to me and said that he and I were both mourning. When I asked why he said that he said it was because both of us were wearing black. I thought it was a lame conversation. Sometimes during such conversations I feel very violent inside my head. Today I felt like smashing his head with a hammer when he said that.

Soon after when I was on my way out to grocery shopping S Karmakar HOD of editing called out to me.

“Do you remember a group of kids who were working there when we went for the film festival in Nandigram?”

“Yes”, I said.

“You remember the twins?”

“Yes,” I said.

“One of them-”

I knew it even before he completed the sentence. It is that moment in a movie, you know, when the epiphany happens. In most movies with puzzles I get the details right before it is shown on screen. I take pride in that. Movies which completely surprise me in plot impress me that way. Only this time, it was not a movie. Not everything in a film school is about movies. One of the twins had died. He was the same person NN had talked about.

I tried to force tears out of me while I received the news. I really wanted to cry. I was fond of the deceased. He was a sweet kid. Not more than twenty. He was only an acquaintance.

It took me back to that crazy night in Nandigram. I was totally unimpressed with how things were, there. The group of youngsters were all from Jadavpur University, as far as I can remember. It was a film festival organized for the people of the village. It was a success but I felt that the group was inefficient. There were people in love there. There was a lot of sex. Of course neither of it is a problem. Using a space for personal needs while holding resposibility however is a huge problem for me. If you are entrusted with a job and a space to do that job you cannot make use of it to run personal errands or have sex and thereby jeopardize the job itself. In Nandigram the youngsters were having a lot of fun and handling the screenings irresponsibly. I disapproved of it but I was nobody to comment and not in charge and it remained just a mental note.

The trip itself was the best one I made after coming here. For two whole weeks I was in a magic spell. I wanted to go back and stay there for a month. It was beautiful.

There was a drinking session at night. There was a fight between couples and friends of couples, the usual. I was observing all the people. That is when I talked to the twins. They had rhyming names. Same but for a syllable. I remember talking about it to my then lover and now ex and laughing. One was a poet and the other liked to paint. He showed me his drawings. He later came and whispered in my ear that one of the poets there was in love with me. [That was when I realized that in a bengali drinking session almost everyone is a poet]. Before I went to bed he stopped me in the stairs and with all the love in the world offered me a joint. He was proud of his rolling skills. I was a bit sad, seeing how young he was and how he was so much into weed. He was happy.

He died. I still remember the excitement and the life I saw in his eyes. He was on a train and was singing hanging by the door before his head hit a pole and killed him.

I am not sad. I want to cry. I want to cry all the time. Every time NN leaves the room I lock myself up and try to cry. Doesn't happen. I want to mourn the boy's death but I can't. When a person dies we have a defence mechanism of creating a picture of a perfect human being in our heads about them. It is because we think it is unfair to think about a dead person's flaws. The boy was like any other kid of his age. He was creative and mischievous and all things kids can be. He died and it made me sad. He died and made me want to write about my sadness. I did. Now I can go to sleep. Have coffee or something.

Stitched.

25.5.2014

I think everyone observes people. I had the habit from schooldays. Here I developed it as a practice and brought some order into it by making notes and doing it in select spaces and places. One of the common practices is to try to guess the story of the person you are watching. Suppose you see a man wearing just one shoe and is running behind a bus to Howrah. You try to construct a plausible story behind him by answering certain basic questions like where he is coming from, what his occupation is, where he is going to and what his purpose is etc. Sometimes you get a story or thought which stays, sometimes not. 
 

Yesterday, a Sunday, surprised us with rain. I sat in the room, sulking till late in the afternoon. Then the thought of tea got the better of me and when the rain showed promises of dwindling down I set out to the nearest tea shop, 'the hardworking's' [Because they open earlier and shut later than most places in the city]. As usual rain tricked me. It gained momentum as I walked towards the exit of the institute. After tea when I saw the nearest momo shop open, I decided to have lunch. Chowmeen.

In first year, in canteen when one of my professors was having egg chowmeen I remember making a wry face and asking him how he could eat that and telling him that I could never like chowmeen. He said I would in some months of being there. Well , it took a year and half of me being here, but yes, his prediction has been fulfilled. Of course, I make it a point never to have it in his vicinity. 
 

While waiting for my egg chowmeen I saw a woman, about 30, who had taken shelter under the eave of the shop. Peach was the colour of her shirt. She had an unusual headphone, with a microphone and I was wondering why she would use such a thing for a phone conversation or to listen to music. 
 

How do we discern if a person has a story behind them or not? How quickly we compartmentalise people as ordinary, peculiar, weird, extraordinary et al. We trust our intuition and experience and take pride in it. Yes, we are right most of the time, but not always. 
 

Just before my half plate of steaming chowmeen was placed on the table, I saw the woman's wrist. It only had scars. Deep. One of them had not healed, or it never would. It had left a gaping hole. It was not empathy or sympathy that I felt. Pure vexation. I hated the world that moment. Lost appetite. You know how in movies it's a common technique to generate silence as soon as a big explosion happens, running everything in slow motion. Tried and tested method to convey the feeling, I suppose. It happened in real for me. I would never be able to understand the woman, her story or her scars. Didn't bother to think of what her story would be. If they were self inflicted wounds or not. Nada. She left before the rain stopped. 
 

It's an eerie coincidence that I had made this sketch only a couple of days ago. I will never forget her and her abused wrist, arm. Once in a year, I think all of us need disillusionment bouts which make us aware of our own silliness and insignificance. Once in a year we can all go to hell. 

Stitched: water colour and pen on handmade paper

 

Marked

After fighting a lot with the department we were successful in obtaining a long vacation among other things. Will be going home soon.

The most important event of this month for us as students was a workshop conducted on Lensing by N, a professor of the Department of Motion Picture Photography. I am being a little selfish and not sharing the key concepts and ideas that were imparted during the workshop. Suffice to say that I realized I was in an abusive relationship with lensing in filmmaking altogether.

N and I became good friends post the workshop. I made a bookmark and gifted him in return for the mindblowing classes. The lines are his, from one of his poems. I realized it's quite easy to make a bookmark and soon after i made this one, found some good ideas for it here. Intend to try some out. They make for good gifts for readers. 

anklet, water colour, OHP pen and paper.

 

May be of Change

The campus is in full bloom with May flowers, and many more purple, yellow and other colours. Yes, that is also a point I am trying to make. Most of us don't know the names of the trees and plants around us. Its also a coincidence that its in this month of the legendary workers' struggle that the first organized protest from the students of our department happened. Even though we had earlier protested against the haphazard way the course was moving ahead, this time we were more organized, our demands stronger. For the first time in our batch, a whole department of students boycotted a workshop.
I am documenting the progress of this students' protest.

On 2nd May 2014 we got a mail from the department informing us of a workshop to be held from today, 5th May, 2014. This was the immediate cause of the meeting which we held on 3rd May. In the meeting we decided that we will not go ahead with this workshop unless our pending work is sorted out and a proper vacation be granted. The pending work includes a workshop on lighting and lensing, one on sound design, post production work and screening of the III Demo film and the post production work of the mise-en-scene project. A letter addressed to the HOD was drafted. This was submitted today and the workshop was called off because we boycotted it. A meeting is to be held with other faculty after which decisions on these topics will be taken.

I, however, also had other proposals to the administration which are not academic in nature. Like I said, most of us are completely unaware of the trees around us. I went to the registrar and suggested that we place a name plate over ALL the trees and plants on campus, which is a handsome number for 50 acres of land, showing their scientific and common names. He was totally supportive of this and I am happy. The second suggestion, however, faced some scepticism. Throughout the year the campus has some contruction work or the other going on. The current ones in progress are the contruction of a studio and a new hostel. I suggested that photographs of all the labourers be taken (said that I am willing to do it, rather I AM doing it) and those be framed and hung in the buildings after the work is done. It didn't spring up from earth one fine day, did it. I think we need to value human labour in some way possible. The registrar said he wasn't sure about this. I heard the usual 'I have no problem, but don't know if others will agree'. He asked me to put forward both the proposals in writing. Going to do that.

Let the month of May be of change.

May flowers on campus. Photo, kunjila mascillamani henry