Planning the Unplanned

I’m a preacher of planning. It’s different, that most times things don’t go as planned, but for the times they do, I can proudly say ‘I knew it’. I live for those special moments.

There are times when I’ve been completely satisfied with the turn of events. And yes, sometimes they have been unplanned. “So why not just let it be?” friends ask. I’m a creature of habit. And plus, I think planning gives you purpose, a sense of direction. Sure, you can be that leaf that drifts away with the wind, only too happy to land wherever, or you can plan your landing.

Yesterday, I had a plan. I was to finish my meeting and then head home. “Why don’t you come here instead, and we’ll drive back together”. As I headed to town, further away and in the opposite direction to home, I wondered, what about that sentence was so utterly convincing for me to trade a sans clothes & pollution air-conditioned apartment to a rickety hot taxi! Maybe, it was the fact that he was leaving town the next day.Hmm. The plan therefore, is to have an unplanned evening.

So here I was, sitting at Sky Café munching on an unplanned roast chicken mustard sandwich, accompanied with salad and fries. In my defense, the fries were hidden under the salad, I didn’t even realize they were there until they were, well, gone. Post which, we decided to walk the streets looking for cameras. Sounds like fun, except that I had turned up post a meeting so, I wasn’t really sporting the most comfortable footwear. That’s why I say - plan!

He excitedly ran towards a store that collected ancient stamps. I always considered those things a time pass of the pseudo cultured , but suddenly I was transported into Alice’s Wonderland. There were stamps dated to Hitler’s time and some even before that . They had stamps with Gandhi ji in a western attire signed off in English and then him in Khadi signed off in Hindi. They had Khadi stamps. They had collages, Berlin, China, Japan, Australia of a time even before you’d ever know. Small A5 size prints of scenery, Buddha’s face, village backdrops etc amazed me. Each of these prints had embedded in them numerous smaller perforated stamps. The beauty of which was each stamp when separated held its own identity, it didn’t even look like it belonged to any bigger picture. Fragrant stamps with pictures of flowers, representing each one respectively. There were stamps that cost Rs 5 before, now being sold for Rs 900. Collections were divided as per Countries, Social, Culture, Events, Hobbies etc. No wonder the owner was even particular about the way you looked at each stamp, ensured it was placed back in the pile, always face down and in order. Wow!

Really happy, he handed me the envelope of purchase, as if my heels were less to worry about I was now walking around with an uncommon packet. I crossed the road, clinching it hard, looking for suspicious eyes, all till I reached a camera store and dumped the packet and my cell on the counter.

We flipped through catalogues aspiring to buy a Canon 7D and a 300 fixed lens. And that’s when I fell in love. Unplanned again. The new Canon digital – 30 X Zoom. “How much?” and that question was repeated every ten minutes for the next one hour as I walked bare feet around the store. We looked at tripods, assembled them, shook them hard, to test durability against wind, camera weight etc. Toyed with different kinds of ‘heads’ – ahem, for the tripod. My favourite was the ‘Pistol Grip Ball Head’ now this one actually has the handle in the shape of a Pistol Grip. (I know I sound like duh! but stay with me here!) So you actually feel like you’re holding a gun and revolving it all around. It even has a trigger for you to press and hold onto for stability! Pouting, I randomly aimed it around the store. Felt like the answer to the next Bond Girl.

Next we looked at some binoculars. Did you know that after a certain altitude, nitrogen leaks out of the binocular and causes the lens to fungus? Well neither did the shop owner selling the binoculars? I’d started seeing my friend in a new light now. And I was liking! What’s nitrogen doing inside a binocular anyway, isnt that stuff explosive?

We debated over buying a battery charger - with or without a wire, well It seems like an important decision when you’re already carrying a circuit mayhem. He grazed some more, I did too. Brushed up on how the same picture can be treated differently with different lenses – from off a rubber mat on the counter.
And then, came the perfect climax, a click button. Now this device can either be wireless or attached to your camera. In low light situations, the lens almost never captures what the naked eye does, the flash goes off, or the camera shakes or there is only a trail of light suggesting movement.
Now, with this device attached to the camera you can stand at a distance and click away. You’re not in contact with the camera body, so shake free pictures are ensured. Sure, you can do that on a timer as well, but that doesn’t work on continuous frames. After every click you’ll have to come bck and set timer again. With the clicker, you set frame, set timer and go click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click.

We proudly walked back to the car with our treasure in tow. Shared a coffee, some more jungle stories, how after today each picture will be different, and a lovely ride back home. All unplanned. Shocking! I must look a little more closely into this theory.

I Am

I AM, is one movie I can confidently claim was not made for a cozy Friday night at the theatres. This film and its subjects are purely what Onir, the director believed in and wanted to share. It appears to be somewhat of a private gathering for himself, the cast and a select few audience.
I AM is a fusion of four stories, of individuals in modern day society who feel defined at some point by the callousness and the cold bloodedness of the former. It is their struggle to break limitations, and a desire to regain their lives and individuality.
This film is not about some answers to societal pressure, neither does the director promise a contemporary standpoint to issues like, sperm donation, child abuse or being gay. It promised nothing. All it said was I AM Afia/ Megha/ Abhimanyu/ Omar and this happens to be my story.

Afia is a young, successful married woman, whose benchmark of achievement is motherhood. After her marriage falls apart, she decides to retaliate by raising a child on her own. The first story is Afia’s journey, her anxiety, her tribulations of finding the right sperm donor. Adoption could be the easy way out, but Afia believes that giving birth will help prove her point to society
A) there is nothing wrong with her biologically and B)You don’t really need a man to support you.
In her hunt of finding a perfect donor who matches her physicality, has good tastes and interests in life, is not genetically dysfunctional or has tendencies of being a serial killer, every man whether at a station, in the tube, at work or at a party starts to resemble nothing more than a sperm vending machine.When given a choice, you would want to ensure only the best of the X chromosomes.
The story treads along a line of vulnerability where even the donor is shown as more than just that. He too has anxiety, fears attachment and many a times, fears exposure.
Afia herself is torn between her maternal instincts and the judgment of doing the right thing, whether for her, or the baby. Onir, through this story has tried to reflect a few such moments inside the perturbed mind of a woman. In her moment, not wanting to go through this alone, when Afia suggests to Purab (the sperm donor) that he could come home sometime and meet the child, Purab retracts immediately. However after conquering mental battles and getting off the operation table, Afia looks at the note which Purab after all, left his number on, liberated and not scared anymore, she simply smiles and reduces the paper to smaller bits.

Meanwhile, Megha, has returned to the valleys of Kashmir. Her distress cannot be hidden under her oversized glares as she realizes how much or how little has changed in the last 20 yrs, ever since her family was forced to flee. Her childhood friend Rubina, overjoyed at Megha’s return recounts childhood memories, now only frozen in time. Megha however, chooses to distance herself behind the veil of gunshots, bloodshed, her family forced to flee under unearthly conditions, all circumstances that snatched away what she called home, peace and life as they knew how to live. She is now back, for business , to hand off the only remaining signs of her families roots. A Kashmiri Pandit handing over her existence to a Kashmiri Muslim family, could be no less a feat than our army placed at the Siachen.
A faceoff between Rubina and Megha towards the end of their story highlights a dual coin. While Megha was upset about her life being taken away, Rubina debated that the punishment of staying back in Kashmir , the carcass of a paradise that once was. Those that fled had a chance to pick up pieces again, but many that were confined behind, still live the aftermath of 1947 every day of their lives. Which sometimes makes me think, even when Kashmir receives a verdict, the wounds are too deep for generations to forget that above all, you are either a Kashmiri Pundit or a Kashmiri Muslim.

Abhimanyu is smart, manipulative and a social animal, who knows how to use people and is not afraid of doing so. The only person, who can see through this largely, is his colleague and confidant, someone whom he trusts enough to share a recurring dream with - a young girl and her mother, both dressed in white, walking through white orchids, the girl approaches a pond but is baffled to see only one reflection, that of hers, she turns around and finds herself deserted, all alone. At this point it’s hard to tell what’s more disturbing the fact that the little girl finds herself deserted or that the protagonist imagines himself as a girl! We see flashes of his childhood, a loving mother, a step father who gives into his every demand, and then the reason behind it all!
He finally decides to fulfill his step fathers dying wish for a last meeting, but reaches a day too late. Having taken a brave step to return hpme after 10 yrs he decides to take yet another one, and confides in his mother about being tormented as a child and sexually abused by the man she loved. Once again the little girl is left all deserted as the mother refuses to give into what she perceives as fiction. Abhimanyu returns back to the city, but this time we see the girl joyfully running through open fields, liberated, relieved, unfettered. This story is my favorite of the four, for not being a cliché and for the beautiful metaphors used.

I Am Omar, is what he said. And they got talking. A lovely evening was spent getting to know each other over dinner. Your place or mine was the next question which found its answer in a lonely deserted junction. The heat of the moment was mercilessly doused by a patrolling inspector on that unfortunate night. Article 377 (law under Indian Penal code which criminalizes homosexuality) was sited as a reason for harassment. Onir and Omar were both pulled out of the car. Since Omar was a struggling actor with no money, and Onir an established managing director, it was he who coughed up the bribe money. Digging a knife further into Onir’s soul and before leaving with Omar and the money in tow, the sub inspector insisted on Onir pleasing him down south. After being sexually assaulted he was worried about about Omar’s fate. Onir returned home, took his lawyer and searched every single police station for Omar, that night. Finally, he met that sub inspector again, but the inspector refused to recognize him, as if they’d never met before, as if the night had never happened, as if Onir was still living his worst nightmare. The others only laughed.

The movie has been doing the rounds of many film festivals and has received overwhelming response everywhere. The highlight of the film has been its 400 co-producers who funded the film post the request put up by filmmaker Onir on social networking sites! I would say money sensibly invested.