Philosophy in nine minutes

The short film Dinesh and I were working on is now officially shelved. The story of a street-smart beggar winning the sympathy of heterogenous crowd in an evening training, though was a good idea, seemed way beyond our budget. The logistics just wouldn't work.

Perhaps we may dust it out again when we make it big at the national scene. For now, it has to wait. Currently we are working on a ghost, yes ghost, story. I won't reveal the story till it is released or shelved. We wanted a story that can be simply shot inside a house without spending a lotta money. Horror is the best genre for that kind of comfort. Darkness doesn't cost much you see.

The 3-15-minute slick, in-your-face film format has taken an obsessive fancy in me. I especially want to make a mention of a short film called Inter-personality. It's a 9 minutes piece about a guy masquerading like a girl, Nisha Roy, on the Internet to win some friends. Nisha indeed wins a lot of friends. It's funny, interesting, deep and philosophical. In the end, when he visits his mom, she asks when he's going to bring a bahu home. He tells her he has already chosen a girl. Mom is thrilled. When are you bring her home, and what's her name. Soon mom, and the name is Nisha Roy, he says.

Shangri-La

No one else makes me feel as sophisticated like Mark Knopfler does.

I went to Eloor Library and asked for Charles Bukowsky. They didn't have. I still haven't bought Knopfler's Shangri-la. After a few pages, the script for the short-film is resting in the shelves. Dinesh is just as busy. I bunked two consecutive classes. Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.

How much I hate Lennon for those words!

Devika Frost

When I was young, I knew how to fly
not knowing how to land, decided not to try
Now I can land, but forgot how to fly

The above poem (or what is it?) is by Devika. I've promised that I'll write about her. But looks like it will take some more time. Meanwhile, check out this poem. Isn't it amazing? She swore that it wasn't plagiarised. I ain't sure yet.

Nevertheless, I think it's very philosophical, nostalgic, deja vu, or whatever you want to call it. Personally when I read it, I kind of get a feeling that something is staring at me quite hard with an accusing look.

You sure must be joking, Mr. Sridhar

I had to do a featurette as my class assignment. For the uninitiated, featurette is what you get in Life's Like That, and various other pages of Reader's Digest. It's supposed to occupy little less than half-page of Digest, narrate a real life event interestingly with a twist in the end of the tale. The twist shall preferably be a humorous one.

Till the last minute I couldn't think of an idea. Finally I picked out a leaf out of my life, wrote a serious romantic piece and I asked Devika to review. I'll write about her later. For now, about my featurette. She was surprised that it isn't humorous and asked me why I can be so witty in person and can't write humour.

That set me thinking. I've rarely written humour. Even in those cases, they were quite accidental and not due to my efforts. Devika's reasoning is that I'm not being myself while I write. It's Yes and No. It's yes, because I'm bad at humor and No because I simply want to refuse this feedback.

It's also because, over the years, I've grown to like issues that matter and of importance and began to dislike humour. Those who claim that I've never written humour, I'd like to invite them to my house to show the in-house journal I was running in First Computers. But what happened after that Mr.? I hate to use the cliche lots of water have flown...

Phew.

That's not, however, is an excuse to write seriously and badly today. I must revive the sense of humour in me as soon as possible. So in the coming days there's going to be lot of such attempts in this blog. If you're following me, be prepared for a truck load of bad jokes.