A few days ago, someone gave me a weighing scale for free. I summoned all my courage, stood on it and vowed to never do anything quite as self-esteem shattering ever again. When I told a friend of mine, she suggested I try Pilates. Watching a video of a Seiji Shimoda performance today, I figured I should take her advice. Whether or not I lose weight, I could always set up an alternative career as a performance artist.

Seiji Shimoda and the table

Performance art has a bad rep for being obscure, self-indulgent, a touch ridiculous and basically very, very weird. Because why on earth does a man put a banana on the floor, get down on his hand and knees, rest his head on said floor and then huff and puff at the banana as though he’s related to the wolf from the story of the Three Little Pigs? What point is made when a man wraps his head in pink wrapping paper and does a curious version of musical chairs? When a man carries a bucket around, asks the audience to spit into it and then upturns the same bucket on his head, what is communicated other than “get this man shampooed immediately”?  What is artistic about laying out a line of watermelon wedges, squashing them underfoot and then extracting the juice from the floor with a syringe? The only one I understood was a chilling one in which a man and his young son sit face to face and eat chips. Unexpectedly, from time to time, the father slaps himself and the kid follows suit. It was a somewhat frightening look at farcical systems of reward and punishment, ideas of self-worth and continuing cycles of self-inflicted violence. Shimoda didn’t do the self-slapping, watermelon-squelching and saliva hairpack. These were performances by artists who Shimoda has presented at festivals he’s organised and in which he’s participated. One of his performances that he showed had him doing some serious Pilates moves on a table, naked (naturally).

For his impromptu performance in Bombay, Shimoda had two pen torches, clear cellotape and two white plastic bags. First he blew some air into the plastic bags and let them fall to the floor, semi-inflated. He taped the torches to either side of his head. Then, he stuck some cellotape to the middle of his forehead. It dangled till his knees. He lowered the tape twice so that it picked up the two bags one by one. Then he swung the dangling cellotape around, complete with plastic bags, so that he had two plastic ears. While doing this, he coloured the bags with red and white markers so that they looked like they’d been scraped. He proceeded then to shred one of the plastic bags and stuck the ragged pieces to some tape that he had peeled off his head. The other plastic bag went around his shoes, tying his feet up. With his feet up like a baby, Shimoda stuck the piece of tape with the shredded plastic bag to the one around his feet, again demonstrating control over stomach muscles that would have made Joseph Pilates proud. Then in roughly this order, the following happened: Shimoda revolved on his back, shredded the other plastic bag and wound the dangling tape around his head again so that his face was shrouded by a plastic curtain; stuck a whistle in his mouth, and blew it while he spun around slowly on his side and then manically on his stomach. The performance ended with Shimoda on his feet, doing what looked like Buddhist hand mudras.

During the question and answer session at the end of the performance, a woman asked Shimoda what he had meant to communicate. He grinned and replied he didn’t know. Much to this woman’s irritation, he also said that if what he did was incomprehensible to his audience in some part, then he was satisfied. Which of course neatly sums up why performance art is so annoying — watching the more bizarre performances, you can’t help thinking this person is making a fool of you. While you’re there trying to figure out whether Shimoda whistling manically and spinning on his stomach symbolises a hunted animal, Bombay’s traffic, child’s play gone terribly wrong or something completely different, there’s actually no reason for him doing any of this. Except does a man end up discussing performance art in front of an audience with half a metre of cellotape stuck to his head and bits of plastic bags fanning around his ears for fun?

Weird as it was, there was something about Shimoda’s performance, much like the Pilates-on-table routine that he showed earlier in the evening. The table one, in particular, is riveting and not just because there’s a naked man with awesome muscular control lying on a table with his legs in the tabletop position. It’s strangely beautiful how the table is used, how it seems to go from being a prop to a part of Shimoda’s body and how he emerges from it as though being birthed into this world. But let’s just step off the Art planet, return to Earth and attempt to work this out logically and cogently. A man takes his table out of his house. He takes off his clothes and starts doing Pilates exercises on it. A man sticks cellotape in his hair, tears up plastic bags, wears them on his face, does a mean impression of an overturned turtle while blowing a whistle. If a kid did this, we’d say he’s retarded. A grown, good-looking man does it,  it’s art. Great.

Ok, it doesn’t matter how much you dislike Jhumpa Lahiri’s writing, how can you not fall in love with her dad making pulao? Personally, I’m not entirely convinced about either the recipe (no black peppercorns, really?) or Amar Lahiri’s assertion that it’s not buttery, but as a wise person said, “It’s hard to go wildly wrong with an entire stick of butter and some harmless spices.” Listening to Amar Lahiri talk his way through the recipe was rather sweetly nostalgic. It reminded me of my father who will always say chocOlate (chocolate) and obhAr (over). He, of course, managed to burn an egg in an attempt to boil it so there are going to be no videos of him making pulao. My mother is a seriously good cook though. In fact, I think I survived schools in foreign countries mostly because while other kids wanted to beat me up, they wanted the lunch she packed me more. It never made sense to her that I wanted about 10 rotis and copious amounts of aloo jeera since I showed no interest in the same food when she gave it to me at home. But she gamely stuffed my lunch box and that gave me some amount of immunity from lunchroom bullies. Trip me up and I spill the aloo jeera, which means Bully nos. 1,2, 3, and 4 will have to stick to the crummy sandwiches their mums packed them. So I’d hand over my lunch box and scram. They’d tuck in. Meanwhile, I’d buy those horrible, rubbery, soya-sauce-sticky chicken wings from the cafeteria and ogle at the hawker-stall chicken rice that Nikki from New Zealand (whose mother couldn’t be bothered to cook lunch) brought every other day.

Somewhere near the last part of “Leaving India“, Minal Hajratwala talks about Indian-origin kids in America who steered clear of the kitchen before going to school so they wouldn’t smell of “curry”. It’s a fantastic image: a girl dressed in whatever is cool at the time – leggings? Sweater in a single colour that hasn’t been knitted by gran? – inching her way out, desperate to not carry a whiff of India on her. It’s such a futile exercise because, whether or not she smelt of curry, she was still going to be brown and thanks to that colour, she was still going to carry what Hajratwala calls “a history of skin”. No matter what she wore or how far she stayed from the kitchen, those who had to smell curry on her would smell it anyway.

A family pic from the slide show on Minal Hajratwala's website

“Leaving India” is the best book I’ve picked off the diaspora literature shelf in a while. If there’s one thing that studying postcolonial theory and literature has done to me, I’d have to say it’s instilled in me an exhaustion at the mere thought of the personal memoir because they all tend to sound the same after a point. Even the fictional ones, like pretty much all of Jhumpa Lahiri’s writing, seem to be that one unchanging story with a few occasional tweaks. But “Leaving India” is not about a person finding themselves through the retelling of her family’s tale or a trip to the homeland. Hajratwala’s book is a wonderful reminder that all immigrant stories are different even if many of our experiences seem to be the same (which is why I’m curious to see what desi friends in Amrika think of the book). She traces the journeys of a few of her family members in an effort to chart out how they’re today scattered over five continents despite having all started off in the same one village in the easily-recountable past. The shops they start, the homes they build and the friends they make don’t exist in a little bubble of their own making. Even though Hajratwala emphasises and re-emphasises theirs is a very tightly-knit, conservative community, the world that they create for themselves is in response to all that is happening around them. So the personal story is alternated with snappy history lessons on the European hatred for coolies, the biases in American immigration policies and how the Patel motels began.

It’s a tough job to create portraits of people, emphasise how distinct they are and yet not lose sight of how they are also representative of the community they belong to; Hajratwala does this superbly. She never lets you forget that this is the story of one family and one community; it’s not a stereotype and while aspects of the experience may be typical, the story itself must be different because its powered by the characters. By the time you’re halfway through the book, you know that her dad’s side of the family has an angry streak and that her mum’s side has a gritted-teeth determination running through them. Hajratwala shows how qualities like this have helped her family members survive in some rather inhospitable circumstances but she doesn’t shy away from showing the Indian community from being selfish on occasion and frequently cruel. You sense an intense feeling of disappointment when she’s able to find only one person in the South African branch of her family who supported the ANC in the days when the system of apartheid was being cemented, for example. There’s a certain longing when her mother and Hajratwala speak of Hajratwala’s maternal grandfather who walked with Gandhi to Dandi. He was arrested and soon after he came out of prison, he had to leave the country he loved so much to become a small-time businessman in a distant island. Hajratwala’s uncle Ranchhod, one of the most endearing characters in “Leaving India”, rebels by not learning or speaking English for years. It’s impractical, quite silly and ultimately he does have to give in to the language but this is the closest we come to seeing someone be political and fight the good fight.

It was wonderful to read a book that was unsentimental, honest and not trying to disguise the fact that we’re not a heroic bunch by conventional standards. In fact, we’re pretty unlikeable in many ways. We do obsess about petty details, we’re often narrow-minded and happy to exploit if it serves our end, and we have a seriously unhealthy need to please people (which generally lands us somewhere between over-eager and subservient). The idea of flaunting convention is not thrilling to most of us and we tend not to appreciate it in others. Indian heroism is reserved for little victories. It’s in our ability to adapt, perhaps. In the fact that Hajratwala’s mother would write a letter to her son and daughter telling them they’re ungrateful because her son wants to marry a white American and her daughter says she’s lesbian; but then go all guns blazing when organising her son’s wedding to the same white American. In the fact that there’s an Indian diaspora on almost every continent and that Amar Lahiri makes pulao for Thanksgiving even as his Bengali accent, with time, curls into American around the edges.

Here are what went streaking through my head while watching Vampire Weekend’s video for the song “Cousins”:

1. Are Vampire Weekend channelling their inner Bappi Lahiri with that “Eh-eh-ooh-aah!” bit in the beginning of the song? (The link is just an example, by the way. Those who have know Mr. Lahiri’s discography will know that he’s done this stuff in an alarming number of songs.)

2. Shooting pigeons is on Ezra’s list of things to do in 2006. Along with “learn french”, “write a novel” and “steal gold”. This could be my 2009 list of things to do.

3. Despite being reasonably fluent in English and accustomed to a variety of American accents, I understood exactly 14 words of that song. Which is actually more than how much I understood of “A-Punk” or misunderstood of “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance” so go me!

4. Where have I seen that fluorescent tape thing before?

It turns out I haven’t seen precisely what’s in the “Cousins” video but I have seen pictures of something remarkably similar when I came across the work of a guy called Aakash Nihalani. Of course, long before my sluggish brain got its act together others had picked up on this resemblance. In the comments to Stereogum’s post announcing “Cousins”, someone jubilantly said Nihalani had worked on the video and then someone by the handle “m” corrected them: “this tape art was definitely NOT done by aakash nihalani. Vampire Weekend totally ripped him off (poorly) without consent or compensation. how’s that for supporting the arts?” From the sound of things, Nihalani isn’t particularly amused by this ripping off either. Do I hear a chant of “FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!” in the distance? (Probably not but hey, it could happen.)

Street art is a tough thing for which to claim provenance. It’s out there in public, often without any signature other than the style in which it’s been done. If the production of crew didn’t exactly copy one of his shapes, then there’s nothing technically wrong with having stretches of luminous pink, green and yellow tape stretching across walls and roads. As someone said to me, “What was the crew supposed to do? Call Nihalani and ask his permission to go out and buy bright pink tape?” Yeah well, I bet everyone thinks a hundred times before showing sliced livestock or sharks in formaldehyde, especially since Damien Hirst decided to sue Cartrain.  So if Nihalani is feeling miffed, I think he has every reason to sulk. I’d like to believe that if they were asked about that tape art, then the crew of the film would have doffed their hats to Nihalani but it doesn’t seem like they did. All that is said about the tape in this behind-the-scenes thingie by MTV is that the tape stuff are supposed to be “little signifiers” (I mean, really. Signifiers? We’re going to drag Levi-Strauss into a music video?). And the chap saying this keeps his bandanna on. Tsk tsk tsk.

After watching the first 5 minutes of “The Flying Wallas: Opera Noir” at the Prithvi Theatre Festival a few days ago, I decided thin people can get away with anything. I was listening to a (bald) man reciting poetry in his gravelliest voice and a (bald) woman who spoke her lines in high-pitched song, as though she was an Indian version of Bianca Castafiore (only scrawny instead of buxom). When she wasn’t singing, she looked like a homeless junkie who had found a Swan Lake dancer’s costume in the trash.  My seat was in the centre of a row so I couldn’t even get out. Unable to understand what she was warbling and able to predict most of his rhymes, I decided to focus my energies towards causing the forces of the universe to do painful things to the friend who had said this would be “interesting.”

Two Acrobats by Alexander Calder (Sridhar & Thayil are much thinner)

Which goes to show that I’d do well to curb my enthusiasm for being unenthusiastic. Because “The Flying Wallas: Opera Noir” by Sridhar/Thayil ended up to be good fun and rather intriguing. In fact, many of us in the audience wished it had been longer. “The Flying Wallas” is about a pair of acrobats or trapeze artists. He in his white suit haunts her. She, glittery and wearing something between a tutu and a corset, was his partner. They were The Flying Wallas, a pair of trapeze artists known for performing death-defying routines without a safety net. One day she changes their routine slightly, he isn’t able to reach her or perhaps she doesn’t catch him, and he falls to his death.

Most often, Thayil walked around casually and flapped his hands a few times. Suman Sridhar sang beautifully but her movements was either as mannered as a wind-up doll or slack. Thayil has great stage presence and a bad head for remembering his own writing. For the better part of the play, he was reading from a script he carried on stage. He’d finish reading a page and then it would ripped out, and left to flutter to the ground. Sort of poetic and very obvious that Thayil needed his lines before him. Sridhar’s songs alternated with Thayil’s elocution. The background music was occasionally too loud and frequently discordant, possibly as an homage to John Cage. There are some delightful musical moments in “The Flying Wallas”, not the least of which is when Sridhar, in perfect tune and using her wonderful, unwavering classically-trained voice, sings, “What the fuck?”

“The Flying Wallas: Opera Noir” was not particularly good theatre. It had a lot of cool music, some interesting poetry and it didn’t spare a thought for the conventions that generally govern the structure of a play. The stagecraft was unimaginative and smacked of sloth. The play began with a drum, a platform, a chair and the chalk outline of a fallen figure; all of which were in a bluish circle of light. This looked lovely and left the stage to be used by the actors but randomly strolling around counteth not as “using the stage”. The one element that was used was the square, black  platform in centrestage. A few times, Sridhar stood on it, as though poised to leap. Now and then, Thayil sat on the chair, turning the platform into a table or perhaps a judge’s desk.

But I don’t think Sridhar/Thayil were looking to give Complicite a run for their money. Sridhar/Thayil is a band. She’s a singer with a Macbook, he’s a poet with a guitar and if Prithvi Theatre Festival deems this to be theatre, then it’s not for Sridhar/Thayil to argue. The city’s many English theatre companies, like Rage and QTP, may feel miffed but there’s one thing that Sridhar/Thayil did with “The Flying Wallas” that most plays aspire to do: tell a story engagingly. The idea of a vengeful ghost haunting someone isn’t particularly novel and neither is the story of being racked by guilt when your loved one dies. However, considering the fact that one of the city’s better-known theatre groups decided to put up a theatrical adaptation of — brace yourself — Pedro Almodovar’s “All About My Mother” recently, let’s not start beating our chests about being unique.  “The Flying Wallas” never lost sight of the fact that they needed to make the audience interested in their story. So there we were, wondering, did she actually kill him? Is he just taking out his anger at not being alive upon her? Is he blaming her because he can’t accept that he, the founder of The Flying Wallas, made a mistake? Has she gone mad or is that just what he’d like to believe? Is she imagining the whole thing? Does she realise he’s playing with her? Is she really there or has he conjured her to keep him company in his limbo? Just for the possibilities in the plot, “The Flying Wallas: Opera Noir” is more engaging than 90% of the theatre writing I’ve seen in Bombay this year.

And let’s not forget the gossipy angle. If I had a cap, I’d doff it to Jeet Thayil for having the courage to go on stage with “The Flying Wallas” because every single person in that audience who has heard of Shakti Bhatt must have wondered how much of this “play” is autobiographical. When Bhatt suddenly died and her family chose to be very tight-lipped about the cause of death, rumours flew about what killed her and there were malicious whispers about her relationship with Thayil, her husband. The fact that he hooked up with Sridhar (romantically and professionally) very soon after Bhatt’s death didn’t help his reputation much. Watching “The Flying Wallas”, it was impossible not to wonder whether the memory of Bhatt’s death had inspired Thayil to write the helpless rage of Sridhar’s character as she tries to explain her innocence to a ghost that refuses to listen. I’ll admit it: It didn’t strike me while I was watching but once it ended and I was outside the theatre, I couldn’t help wondering whether the ghost, who is bitterly furious at having lost life simply because of a tiny slip, was Bhatt. Or was this all that was left of Bhatt after the rumourmongers had taken over the memory of her life and death?

Apparently, if you’re a guy from South Mumbai — sorry, SoBo; for South Bombay, naturally — then there’s a new way to hit on a girl. You go up to her and pretend to be a dude from Andheri. This involves saying things like, “Hey, wanna dance?” (with dance pronounced with a Texan twang) or “You wanna form a friend with me?” Girl dissolves into laughter, friendship is formed, happily ever after is beginning already. If you think this sounds idiotic, cast your eye at how some recent Bollywood heroes behave when striving to be attractive to the opposite sex. Salman Khan wore cut-offs that were so tight and skimpy that ladyboys on Bangkok’s Walking Street would have second thoughts about them. Aamir Khan had to say, with a straight face, the naïvete of a slow 6-year-old and fluttering eyelashes, “You cum cum, madam”.

For a mind-bogglingly patriarchal society, it’s weird how stupid and juvenile a hero has to look in our movies. Cases in point, this week’s new releases: Jail and Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani. In Jail, which I have not seen, Neil Nitin Mukesh has to strike this pose —

Now explain to me, what the hell is he doing there? It looks like a) someone took a video into a primitive locker and b) he’s trying to do a dance that mixes up Govinda’s thrusts with the funky chicken routine. Forget the ignominies of being strip-searched in prison or having to pee in your cell, that’s just way more humiliating. Inexplicably director Madhur Bhandarkar believes this is going to make us more sympathetically inclined towards the hero of his film. In Ajab Prem…, Ranbir Kapoor is supposed to have studied till Class IX, which means till the age of 15 he had some sort of formal schooling. God bless our education system if by that time we haven’t taught our students how to string one sentence in even vaguely-correct English. Setting that aside, he spends the first half of the film (that’s all I could watch before leaving in order to prevent my brain from self-destructing) behaving like an idiot adolescent. How is this attractive and to whom is this attractive? Another character claiming to be an adult was the guy called Tony Braganza, who is briefly rivals Ranbir Kapoor for Katrina Kaif’s affections. While attempting to flirt with Katrina Kaif, “Little Tony” gesticulates the way deranged people did in eighties’ Bollywood flicks (the particularly bad ones, I mean). This, according to Little Tony, is masculinity.

It almost makes me wish for the return to the time of polka-dotted bow ties and white shoes when men were men (albeit in polyester shirts) and boys were played by mullet-headed little girls in shorts.

Guess what was reportedly the first buy at the business centre of the Mumbai Film Festival (which is known as MAMI but is actually the MFF)? Lars von Trier’s Antichrist. Meanwhile, on IMDb, Antichrist’s popularity fell by 71%. Sharmila Tagore, who heads up the Indian Censor Board, must feel like she’s just eaten crow. Just months ago, she had said that she didn’t think Indian audiences were mature enough for Antichrist. Recently, she reiterated that there was no way in hell (I paraphrase) that she would let Antichrist have a commercial release. Enlighten Film Society buying the home video rights isn’t a commercial release but hey, the point is that an Indian company decided that there was money to be made with distributing this film.  It isn’t entirely surprising. Everyone knows that 99% of the people at film festivals watch foreign films for their uncut sex scenes. But from the sound of things, Antichrist isn’t quite what you turn to when you can’t access Savita Bhabhi. On the other hand, there was uproar and minor violence across Maharashtra because actors in Wake Up Sid said “Bombay” instead of “Mumbai”. So von Trier’s twisted brand of attention-seeking chauvinism that brands the woman as Antichrist and prescribes as a cure some slicing in the nether regions (with a rusty razor) is ok. Colloquialisms, however, are not allowed. Who needs The Onion when you have true facts like this floating around?

When The X-Files started airing on tv, I remember a grand aunt of mine told us very solemnly that watching paranormal activity on television attracts ghosts, ghouls and other supernatural creatures. Since you like watching this stuff on tv, they figure that you want them in your home too. Having spotted a suitable habitat through a family’s taste in tv programmes, they would slither their way in through the smallest crack and the thick glass of the tv screen was no protection against them (I was having good fun imagining ghosts careening towards the screen and going splat like paintball bullets). Fear and horror were an insidious thing, she said.

Not that I’m telling you to stop watching The Twilight Zone and instead start sinking into Gossip Girl, but my batty grand aunt may have been on to something. Because the way Antichrist snuck its tentacles into my world right after its screenings at MFF/ MAMI is just plain weird. Antichrist radiates sex, violence and weirdness. When you survive watching it, you carry a little bit of its discomfort and eeriness with you. Only one person from work had seen it and that was obviously not me, given the fact that merely reading the reviews had made curl into a foetal position and rock myself to sleep. My colleague was considerate towards our delicate, innocent minds and refrained from detailed descriptions. But despite this, within hours of the screening, I noticed that things were a bit alarming at work. The same thing happened with the only other person I know who saw the film and so I offer examples from conversations with these two separate arena.

An innocuous question about a random vegetable ended up as a prolonged exploration of how the Sindhi delicacy sai bhaji “looks like shit. Like that runny stuff when you’ve got a really bad case of loosies, you know the kind that makes you puke and crap constantly.” I’m not going to go on (because I’m the sophisticated sort) but they did. For what seemed like hours. A corny joke about geometry and Halloween (pumpkin pi/e) resulted in a gruesome description of how to slaughter, sorry, carve a pumpkin. And the tour de force: an extended conversation about unicorns, which included the following statements/ comments/ observations:

“A fondle of unicorns? That’s just way too horny.”

“It’s like there should have been unicorns in Monsoon Wedding.”

“I never thought of unicorns as fondlers or fondlees, frankly.” “What despite that horn?”

“There’s a single horn, there’s a mane. Use your imaginations.” “Don’t forget the virgins that people believed could lure the unicorns while you’re using your imagination.”

“There’s a lot of mounting by virgins in the unicorn world.”

“But the horn’s pointy!”

“Did you just turn the unicorn into a sex toy?” “No, no! Look, Wikipedia says that they’re symbols of virility and the horn is obviously phallic. That’s not a toy.”

“You’re ruining My Little Pony for me!”

“The unicorn was actually a rhinoceros.” “It’s still a horn and it’s definitely not prettier for the virgins.”

For the rest of the day, decency was bludgeoned in every conversation, much like Willem Defoe’s genitals are in Antichrist, and I’m blaming Lars von Trier for this. Obviously. I’m happy to report that the effects last about as long as a hangover. Hallelujah.

Bitch and Whine by Rodney White

I couldn’t think of a better image to illustrate this post in which I will inform all ye gentle readers that in a couple of days, my book will be in bookstores near you, provided you live in India. But you will not know that you should look for it because, unlike most books,  this one will not have a launch party. Consequently, there will be no e-invites sent to friends and strange journalists, asking them to come over and drink cheap wine while listening to a poncy person read an extract from said book. The good part about this is that I don’t have to get out and pretend to be sociable. The bad part is that now I’m going to have to take friends (whom I could have fed free and cheap wine) out for a drink. The worst part is that everyone asks me, “So when is the launch?” To which I reply that there is no launch and they proceed to give me a confused smile that I imagine people proffer those who tried to qualify for the Special Olympics but failed. Some cluck sympathetically. A few friends are a little more blunt: “Dude, how bad is your book that your publisher can’t throw a single party for you? I mean, that Keep off The Grass guy got a launch party.” Or my other favourite, “What the f*&% is the point of you writing a book if there isn’t a big-ass opening that I can go to as the author’s friend?”

Frankly, I’m not sure. No one writes a book because they want a launch party (I hope) but suddenly, I feel jipped and in some weird way, that party has become indicator of how good a writer I am. It suddenly feels like I’m 25 again, with every aunty in the planet asking my mother if she’s found a “nice boy” for me. Just as there were no nice boys, there is no launch party. But the expectation is intense. Everyone reacts sharply, as though the whole point of writing and publishing a book is having it launched rather than having it read. I had no idea one catered event could mean so much but it apparently does and there are times when the fact that I don’t get one gets to me. Occasionally, I want to holler at my publisher, “I am worth a crate of cheap wine, dammit!” But I’m not and, considering all the people who have been considered worth it by their publishers, that’s pretty sad. The only thing more pathetic would be to follow an acquaintance’s suggestion and throw my own launch party and I’ll admit it, I did actually think about it. (No, I’m not going to do it; aside from being lame and expensive, it’s way too much work.)

So this is my launch, complete with the cheap whine. You now officially know that the book, like the truth in The X-Files, is out there. You are, naturally, stunned by my brilliance, eloquence and general awesomeness so you will rush to a bookstore near you and ask, nay demand, that my book be handed over to you right now. If you live outside India, you will either book yourself a holiday to India or you will go to my publisher’s website. In a matter of a few months, I’ll become rich and famous because the millions of you who clicked on my launch will have bought my book. Publishers with fantastic offers will bang at my door as will postmen bearing my fat royalty cheques. Malcolm Gladwell will pull at his hair and bemoan the fact that he hadn’t thought of DIY book launch on a random anonymous blog. Nassim Nicholas Taleb will cite this little post as a Black Swan Event that makes the others look grey. Generally, life will have altered forever, and all because I launched my book. Cheers!

Two reasons to love the New Yorker this week:

1. Anthony Lane’s review of Antichrist.

For every promise of affection, there is a snap of wrath, and the woman who declares, “I love you, darling,” is the same person who, not long after, fetches a drill to bore a hole in her beloved’s leg, plus a pair of scissors for herself. If you have eyes, prepare to shut them now. A word to the squeamish: there is no shame in leaving as the tools—and I use the word advisedly—come out. … Dafoe is game but wearily baffled, as if he were only just realizing what he signed up for, and how it adds to his list of screen punishments: first he had hot wax dripped onto his sternum by Madonna, in “Body of Evidence,” then he suffered the intense humiliation of being beaten up by Tobey Maguire, in “Spider-Man,” and now he has a log being used as a battering ram on his private parts. Even Madonna would have frowned at that.

Those who are sick of Freud will be happy to know that as of Antichrist’s release, there is no such thing as penis envy. Miraculously, Antichrist is going to be showing in certain Mumbai theatres during the coming film festival. I’m going to take Mr. Lane’s advice and head for the exit as soon as “the tools come out”.

2. The Cartoon Lounge’s attempt at trendspotting.

When the preferred brand name in Internet video communication, Skype, found out that a large percentage of the world’s population was lactose intolerant, they were outraged, and quickly introduced legislation in California that made it a hate crime to think negative thoughts about dairy products. Their next move is rumored to be Skype Milk. It makes a lot of sense, because calcium will give you good posture, and you need good posture so that you won’t slump off the screen right in the middle of a video conference. But there’s more—did you know that, in addition to having a unique fingerprint, every individual also has a unique milk moustache? It’s your automatic password.

It’s worth pointing out that in the real, non-fiction world, PETA has discovered that cows can suffer from humiliation if people laugh at them. The bovine reaction to cows being revered by manic Hindu fundamentalists is not known.

HR and the love interest (with whom he doesn't sing "Mehbooba")

I think I just saw the greatest moviee ever made. No, that is not a typo. Aap Kaa Surroor – The Moviee The Real Luv Story has given me joy, rekindled my faith in Bollywood and reminded me that while spelling is sacred, it’s a distant second to fun. Plus, it’s got me out of my funk and blogging again. Hallelujah! And for this epiphany I must thank Gabriele Ammerman.
Aap kaa Suroor had a 28-day shooting schedule in Germany. Bollywood descended upon Deutscheland and hired an entire German crew of assistant directors and technicians. Ammerman hung around this bunch, following them around the country. The result is The Making of Aap kaa Surroor, a hilarious little documentary that is a must-watch whether or not you love Himesh.
Assistant director Michael Braun saw the script for the first time on the night before the first day of shooting. It was also the last time. Much like Freddie Mercury, director Prashant Chadha wanted to break free (Himesh’s role model for the concert scenes, however, was Robbie Williams, whose concert dvds were played on set for edification and inspiration). Chadha chose Germany because the he wanted “visuals that were fresh” for this story that is apparently very similar to Himesh’s real life; but for the bits that involve dead journalists, Mallika Sherawat as a Coyote-Ugly-esque lawyer and a chase through a German town complete with turtling cars and a crack team in a Hummer. Over the course of the shoot, the Germans went from being confused by the “improvisations” to being aghast and finally being overwhelmed by feelings of awe. Three Minis were harmed in the making of this movie.  The German crew couldn’t believe 6 men could cheerfully lug a Jimmy Jib all across a city and work 12-hour days. It didn’t make sense that a director would ask for an entire cathedral (in Cologne) to be rented and then, on the day before shooting, say that the enormous stained glass windows let in too much light so they need to be boarded up. What kind of production rents an entire airport for a 30-second sequence and then holds up shooting because there’s one less BMW in a convoy (which will be seen for less than a second)? By the way, there’s one less car because it’s the director who got the number wrong when talking to BMW. One of the Germans had to remind herself that it wasn’t a music video she was shooting but a movie; quickly she realised that treating the movie like a series of music videos was much better for her own sanity.
With an expression of appalled despair, Braun said he had to forget everything he had learned were basics and immutable. “We forgot continuity, we forgot all the rules that you are taught never to break in film school.” Instead Braun stood on a platform in a cathedral in Cologne and waved his arms manically in order to get a crowd of 350 extras to cheer. But for his efforts he was given chai.  ”I’ve never been on a set where there is a guy with a little cup of tea at your elbow all the time,” said Braun. “He’s always there, until you take it or say no about ten times.” Except no one said no. They were shooting in early winter. No sane person who has spent ten minutes arranging slushy snow over bare  branches says no to the little bespectacled brown chai-wallah who wears monkey cap and Arctic gear.

Mallika Sherawat (right) plays a lawyer in the film.

Ammerman’s documentary is a gem, and one that will make you want to see Aap kaa Surroor. In fast forward, it’s not a bad movie and Himesh might be among the few Bollywood stars willing to poke fun at himself (there are jokes about Himesh’s nasal voice and his cap). Plus, this is the most cosmopolitan movie ever. It operates in a world where Indian “rock star” HR has sell-out concerts in a Germany where all the white people have Australian accents.  Not that you’re watching what’s happening on screen. If Ammerman’s documentary is your starting point, then you’re actually looking for all the things off-screen giggles that the Germans smothered, which is a good thing because I’m still entirely clueless about what happened at the end. It seemed like Himesh got his lady love but then inexplicably, the film finished with him singing “Mehbooba” with a shimmying Mallika Sherawat. Just to confuse things further, the credits have a animated video running alongside in which cartoon Himesh falls in love with cartoon Mallika at first sight. I suppose the trick is to not impose logic upon Aap kaa Surroor. As Braun said, “If you learn to adjust, you are free of all the rules.” Aum.

Born in 756 CE, Abu Nuwas was known as “Master of Curls” and revered as one of the greatest Arabic and Persian poets of his time.

Abu Nuwas

A Boy Is Worth More Than a Girl

For young boys, the girls I’ve left behind

And for old wine set clear water out of mind.

Far from the straight road, I took without conceit

The winding way of sin, because this horse

Has cut the reins without remorse,

And carried away the bridle and the bit.

Here I am, fallen for a faun,

A dandy who butchers Arabic.

His forehead, brilliant like a full moon,

Chases away the black night’s gloom.

He cares not for shirts of cotton

Nor for the Bedouin’s hair coat.

He sports a short tunic over his slender thighs

But his shirt is long of sleeve.

His feet are well-shod, and under his coat

You can glimpse rich brocade.

He takes off on campaign and rides to attack

Casting arrows and javelins;

He hides the ardor of war, and his

Attitude under fire is magnanimous.

Comparing a young boy to a young girl, I am ignorant.

And yet, how can you mix up some bitch

Who goes in monthly heat

And drops a litter once a year

With him I see on the fly.

How I wish he would come

Return my greeting.

I reveal to him all my thoughts

Without fear of the imam, or of the muezzin.