CHEENI KUM HAI !

Here it is ! CHEENI KUM HAI, the interactive short fiction film me and Prahlad guided as part of the Open Elective course 'Boy Meets Girl: Kal Aaj Aur Kal' we were conducting recently at NID, Ahmedabad. Have a look and share widely.

(Note: Interactivity features will not work properly on mobile/tablet platforms)

Cheeni Kum Hai ('Boy Meets Girl' Open Elective)

Bull shit

01
Tamil pride rests on teasing the bull ?

02
The 'educated' youth of Chennai want animal welfare bodies to be banned, court decisions to be circumvented, and the 'ancient' culture of Tamilnadu saved by twisting the holy tails of already scared & agitated four-legged creatures.

03
India is a great country, and we are bullish about bullshit.

Patriot and Nationalist

A patriot loves his country; a nationalist hates the other's - well said Ramchandra Guha, chief guest at the recent NID Convocation ceremonies !

Ramchandra Guha @ NID Convocation 2017

Blast from the Past

Blast from the Past - My Song Picturisation (Playback) Exercise at FTII was a Robindrosongeet - Noyon Chhedey Geley Choley (I was intensely loyal to Bengal in that phase of my life) - I recorded the song (with Kedar Awati forcing music out of an off-tune piano), as well as shot its visualization (inside the 'Forest' and the dry 'Ayodhya' Pond opposite the Boys Hostel) - Anik Ghosh (then my immediate junior in Direction at FTII) and a young Bengali homemaker from the city played the leads. Here is all of sincere me explaining the nuances of my would be masterpiece to my female lead, in the much-loved dappled light of a Pune winter.

(Posted earlier on Facebook on 24 December, 2013)

Mughals and all that...

One of my great retrospective resentments once I was an adult was the shoddy way we were taught history in middle and high school. The indifferently written and produced text books thought of history as an unending saga of kings, queens and successions, bereft of day to day lives of the people and the society at large. This book does something similar, but in a slightly more sophisticated and engaging manner. I am also quite confused after reading it – Akbar was great and secular but could be cruel and narrow-minded; Aurangzeb was cruel and prejudiced but could be great and liberal, and so on and so forth. The book (The Great Mughals and their India by Dirk Collier) seems to look at the Mughal period of Indian history as one long-running blood-feud, full of remorseless brutality; where kings and courtiers, concubines and consorts did their licentious things, in-between killing and getting killed. Average, or worse.

The Talk Fest

The talk fest is about to begin. The listeners are ready - with their ear-plugs. All is well.

Strong Leaders

We have a sickening regard for 'strong' leaders, especially when they die. Death does not change the nature of the crimes - the arrogance, the disregard, the manipulations, the megalomania... And standing tall as a corrupt woman amidst other similarly 'tall' corrupt men is no achievement at all.