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For a change I want to write a happy post. I was trying to figure out how? Its hard nowadays for people like us to be happy. We aren’t happy about anything – right from our 9-5 jobs, trains, people, sound, crackers, no smoking, saawariyan etc. And so I start my post on a happier note.

:-)

:-)

:-)

Hmmm. So am I actually happy? I had written a long post/rant on how people are finding it hard to make a single film without thinking about its repercussions. When I was in college, my mind used to keep working round the clock. We used to go about hiring a DSR cam and go about shooting, without thinking of location permits, editing suites, film festivals etc. Just go and make a film. Once done, automatically we used to find a source to edit it and then we had the final product which we used to show at a weekend movie night screening. Short films followed by Godard, Michealangelo films. A healthy discussion to keep us awake the whole night and the subsequent morning we used to go back to our respective houses. As days and months passed, these weekend movie outings started dwindling due to increasing work load from college. And slowly one day, it came to a grinding halt. People moved on. Some stayed where they were, some ran way ahead of themselves. Some preferred to wait for the bus. The other day I was trying to figure out which one of them was me.

Alright, so there I go about cribbing as usual. I am trying to find out why are we so angry? Why are we so unsatisfied with anything that the world offers us? We cry that we don’t get ‘interesting’ cinema our way, and then we get one, we cry that ‘Oh it wasn’t that interesting’. The film-maker has lost all his hair trying to figure out the answer to the question that I’ve asked in the second line in this paragraph. If you think my post is not making sense so far, then go back because further down it won’t make any sense. I am waiting for a synopsis - a one page synopsis to show to some people. The wait seems endless and I am trying to explore other avenues so as to not let my mind rust.

What do I do to kill time? I go and sit on a film shooting set that was happening near my house. A friend is the cinematographer, so he ‘invited’ me to the set and offered to pay me 1000 bux for just being around. I was there and seeing the way it was conducted, I was revisiting the days when I had worked on a film last year. I was silently seeing the shot divisions being explained to the ADs and then seeing the same divisions being completely destroyed visually when the actual shoot was going on. After a few hours of seeing ‘100% commitment’, I sat down in a chair kept aside for the producer, who hadn’t shown up. I was given tea and I was sipping it and looking about the proceedings. At the corner of the garden (where the shoot was happening) a tea cup was placed carelessly. As I looked closer, I saw a rat run upto the glass and with its two paws on the cup, sip it rather happily. I don’t know how, what, where, why and when – but I found myself in a David Lynch-ian film, where I was the rat. I suddenly snapped out of the ‘film’ and found myself staring at the tea cup in my hand.

I walked out of the set with Rs. 200. “Chal le le na yaar, tereko baad mein deta hoon main!” assured my friend. As I came walking back home, I was ashamed of my desperation for money. I was angry at my constant failures of trying to ‘make’ something. I was depressed, waiting for people to get back to me.

I felt like that rat.