Devdas Trilogy

Paro Next

Village belle with fire
Radiant like a sunflower
She touches herself and feels no guilt
Dumping centuries of self flagellation
Chats on the web and shoots herself in the buff
Pleasuring the loverboy in London
Cycles to fecund mustard fields
Mattress in tow for a tryst with her man
Gives him head with aplomb
That comes when you ride your sexuality
The aggressor, the giver, the defiant
A mind that makes the body swell
And pride that’s sincere and audacious
When he spurns her, she moves on
With a quiet dignity and dances at her marriage
While he plunges into a spiral of psychedelia
She is today’s woman
Real and fleshy, diva and dragon, flower and fire-eater
Balancer of many things, accomplisher of more
And proud to be so

Got a problem with her?
Fuck you.

15 February 2009


Chandramukhi 2.0

Peony-mouthed face lights up
When the Sun dances on her body
Did you see the twinkle in her eyes?
Short skirt, floppy socks, and an MMS later
She fades into the blazing sepia of scandal
While voyeurs feed on her innocence
A childhood condemned, a girl interrupted
She resurrects in a seedy Xanadu bar
A nirvana for the drug-addled
A kitschy Soho pretender
Where neon and moon mix a heady cocktail
And women peddle their wares
An ass, a tit, or leather, if you like
A warehouse of phantoms
A Phoenix, a dominatrix, a pleaser on phone
A master of languages, s’il vous plai^t
Collegian by day and whore by night
A girl unsullied in her hunger for love
An anchor to an addict, a lover to a loser
And when love nibbles its way into her fragile heart
She surrenders to its whimsical tyranny
And becomes one with it
A woman who crossed the Rubicon
Only to return

Chanda
You whore in a made-up world
You slayer of men's demons

You eternal virgin.

18 February 2009
Title thought by Saumya Verma.


Devdas 2009 A.D.

A wiry village lad goes to London
And gets an education
Rings up childhood sweetheart
Getting off in cold suburbia
In town, all he wants is to grab her
Butt, boobs and the rest
Love?
When she gets married
He sinks in booze and broads
Wastrel of a man
Lusting for love, running from life
A creature of the dark
An epic tragic hero?
Call him Dev D or Joe
He needs a woman
A mother, a lover
To rescue him from phantasma
A loser in the city of women
Sounds familiar?
Get a new fix, man
Your body stinks
And your soul is drowned
In a bowl of tear-stained heaven
Paro is gone, so may Chanda
If your breath smells
She may dump you
Before your next Vodka

Dev D, cool dude
Smell the coffee.


19 February 2009

Trilogy inspired by Dev D.

A tale of two films

This weekend I checked out two films of differing styles and character. In a way, it was a journey from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Chak De India
Even if I discount the immediate post-viewing mass hysteria, Chak De is not just a film. It’s a revolution of sorts, hitting at the centuries of obscurantism in traditional Indian society that viewed women, for obvious pecuniary and sexual reasons, as second class beings, existing only to satisfy the whims of the superior and powerful patriarchal class. So, when SRK, subdued, unshaven, sober and refreshingly restrained, gets down to create a world cup winning women’s hockey team, he puts a minor but significant foot in the door for women to assert themselves as individuals. Though it begins as a private battle to redeem himself and regain his lost pride, it ends up breaking a mould, and what a rotten mould it was!

In this lies the true triumph of the film, besides the obvious winners in terms of a taut script, invigorating cast of actors and a never before seen SRK minus his customary stutter, cultivated drawl and over-the-hill flamboyance. The film tugs at your heart and makes you want to do something for this much maligned, much abused country, desperately short of heroes and good tidings. In a subliminal way, Chak De is very much the story of the underdog that too deserves her moment in the Sun.

RGV Ki Aag
On the other hand, RGV Ki Aag is a self indulgent fantasy unfolding without any logic. Looks like the film was made when RGV was in a prolonged state of daze and most definitely had ear plugs on. For the soundtrack is so loud and pompous, it is designed to wake up even the dead. RGV has managed to accomplish an almost impossible feat of making AB and AD look trite and wastrels as actors, not a minor achievement by any score. Urmila’s pelvic-in-your-face movements notwithstanding, the film does everything in its power to make your spirits droop to a new low. You begin to get angry at the sheer stupidity of it all.

Was this Sholay revisited? Bull! Even if you don’t compare it to the original classic, it’s a waste of a film. Things happen because a crazy self-obsessed director willed them to be, with absolute disregard to the intelligence of his audience. The script is almost non-existent, and whatever little is, is banal, pedestrian and overly pretentious in trying to evoke gutter-like and guttural quality from its lead protagonists.

The film is shot with dark overtones and darker undertones, in the belief that it’s the new mantra of gangsta flicks, and each character is like a caricature of his or her self, bereft of dignity and conviction, choking on his or her brooding intensity that seems so whacked out and unreal. If it was meant to be a spoof, it falls flat on its glitzy egg-splashed face.

What the hell was RGC thinking? That he would crap a truckload of stars and the audience will lap it up? Loud, pretentious, contrived, it’s shit served on a silver platter with a generous dash of stale perfume which simply doesn’t work. The audience has moved on; RGV needs to move to a rehab.

Check out Chak de India. It will restore your faith in good cinema, and hopefully, in India.
And check out RGV Ki Aag only if you lack self esteem and want to feel sorry for yourself.

Am Back

My last entry was on Valentine’s Day, and so very aptly, in a recent comment on my blog, a friend exhorted me to “wake up, rise and shine, pal.” May be I am suffering from a writer’s block, but I was not much of a writer, to begin with. Even the well of poetry seems to have dried up. I guess a lot has happened in the last 3 months. I moved on from Indiatimes (at a time when I had begun to feel settled) and joined NDTV on March 12 to head NDTV Convergence, their dotcom and mobile venture. Our house got completed and we moved into our home on April 1, dot on the target date set a year back. Since then, between managing a new job and a new house, perhaps I am more than consumed. Is that an excuse not to pen down a few lines? Am not too sure. I do miss the stirrings of poetry and now that a semblance of order has been restored on the home front, plan to catch up with some reading and writing.

As a student of new media, I am quite fascinated by the changes we are witnessing in India’s media landscape. My take is that Convergence is more than a buzzword and is going to happen, take it or leave it. I remember attending a workshop by Al Ries some time back in which he sort of mocked at Device based Convergence. Sounded logical. A Radio-Tv combo has not really worked, has it? However, the Convergence of Content is already happening and is bound to gain currency as the consumer is moving on and demanding content based on the ‘appropriateness’ of moment. The challenge for content creators /publishers will be to address the concerns of this consumer on the move and realign/ repurpose their content portfolio and make it available on multiple platforms in an optimised and cost-effective manner.

Not in a mood to pontificate, so shall take your leave...:) Take care…

Happy Valentine's

My daughter wished me Happy Valentine's in her typical "gothic" Photoshop style. Here it is...
Have a great day!

Happy Birthday, Soven

Today, Soven turns 14. I am very proud of the way she is shaping up into an intelligent, sensitive and creative person. Here’s wishing her lotsa love, joy and enrichment.
Do take a look at her another Photoshop creation. Her (nascent) work is slowly assuming clarity.
Wrote ever a virgin. What do you think of it?

Daughter Rap

Do take a look at Soven's webpage. Looks like she is truly a Web 2.0 product. Also posting her recent photoshop creation. Here she is experimenting with merging 2 pictures. Cool, eh!
So, Shilpa has won Big Brother, and I am happy for her, and India. Isn't it strange that though it's only a game show win, it's assumed such a huge proportion (in Indian media) in a hero-starved country? We need to keep our perspective right. Take care all of you.

Web vs. TV: No contest

For some time now, I have believed that the Web will be bigger than the idiot box in the coming years. Bigger because it will be more pervasive, is more democratic and equalising, is more interactive, has better depth and content (and real-time context), is truly multimedia enabled, can harness communities better and is far more cost-effective. Today, when I read this report about Bill Gates comment on the same subject at Davos, I do feel sort of vindicated. I am increasingly becoming a sucker for Web 2.0.
On another subject, it’s springtime, metaphorically speaking, in India, and we are gonna rock.
Check out how the prelude to Appassionata is faring at Caferati. Take care…