BISWADEEP GHOSH
“Hello, can you please…?”
“Yes, definitely. Right now, oh, please hold on for a sec…hello?”
If the question makes no sense, the reply doesn’t either. All I can hear on the other side are incomplete sentences as I try to speak and get some information from a girl in a hurry. At least ten others like me are talking to her at one time; she needs to keep each of us posted on each and everything; and, well, that explains why some sentences convey less, and others even lesser. Her cooperation means a lot of us; only, I don’t know what she means once in a while. But, I understand.
Have I experienced so much traffic at work? Living in an era of speeding up of time –whose repercussions I had dealt with in my previous article – I definitely have. Sometime or the other, and usually when the day ought to end, one of our phones rings ominously. Someone we know, we know, is at the other end, and about to unleash a spell that will decide the course of our night. The menu for dinner promises to have one recipe: WORK!
“Hello, how are you doing?” A familiar voice starts a familiar prelude whose subsequent chapters are unknown to us. “You know, since we intend to create a mountain out of a molehill, we would like you to find about one million living moles in the next one hour,” the voice continues, “All you have to do is assemble the moles in a lunchbox and courier them by email.”
How can one courier by email? How the hell does one find one million moles? How will they fit into one lunchbox if we do? Questions torment the weary mind which knows that impossible things can be achieved, but not what is more than impossible. But then, failures being the pillars of success as they say, we motivate ourselves to make a pillar during the next hour. Once that is achieved, we take some flak back home, waiting for the next night. A job badly done, a battle that wasn’t won: life can be so distressingly simple that we hope and pray for easier complications that rarely come our way.
During my birthday last week, I received a lot of lectures on why I should be getting married. Guys, here is some news. I intend to do that very soon, by paying a fat dowry and getting a wife who will view me the way she will look at SRK or Brad Pitt: a cute laptop.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
WAS AT HOME DAY AFTER TOMORROW...
BISWADEEP GHOSH
Shocked by the headline? Was, and day after? Sounds comically nonsensical, isn’t it? It does, till one fine day you wake up and confront life with its gift-wrapped bag of tragedies that assails you just any about anytime, anywhere. Time shrinks such that a day ends in a minute, a yesterday turning into a today with the guarantee of becoming a tomorrow very soon.
Sitting in a contemplative mode, my mind returns to that phase of my life when the clock’s palms used to turn with maniacal glee. About four years ago, I remember sitting inside my office in Mumbai, oscillating between writing and editing, editing and writing, writing and editing, editing and writing…God!
A book was being published with another waiting to be written; an 8000-word magazine article needed to be trimmed to an end product with 7,000 less words; another article needed to be written by yours sincerely, a short one of about 2,500 words: such a life was a creation of my choice as always. Did I meet all my deadlines? Mostly, yes. Sometimes, no. Did all those who knew me know what I was up to? They did not since they couldn’t have. Madness can be identified but not understood, you see.
I had lost sight of tense. Obsessed with the thought of seeing another book on print seemed so alluring – and, seriously, I don’t know why – that I went on and on like a typewriter high on dope. When I stopped to breathe, I checked how many words needed rewriting. When I relaxed, I rewrote chunks of what I had already written.
Everything must end. And, so did the books, one after the other. What was it that stopped me from writing one more, and another, when I was a lucky rarity who had scope on a platter? More than the fact of being stressed out, I guess I had realised that writing just about any book wasn’t a great idea. Some of these books did enjoy commercial success, but they were incapable of satisfying anyone who could stretch a little bit more to deliver a little bit better. Writing star biographies wasn't fulfilling when one realised that the stars continued to shine well after the books on them had lost their glitter. At least, the average one surely did.
Does that mean I will deliver a classic some day? Definitely not. But I thank God for giving me the courage to leave that life. For, if I hadn’t, life might have left me for good.
As I say that, today is today right now.
Shocked by the headline? Was, and day after? Sounds comically nonsensical, isn’t it? It does, till one fine day you wake up and confront life with its gift-wrapped bag of tragedies that assails you just any about anytime, anywhere. Time shrinks such that a day ends in a minute, a yesterday turning into a today with the guarantee of becoming a tomorrow very soon.
Sitting in a contemplative mode, my mind returns to that phase of my life when the clock’s palms used to turn with maniacal glee. About four years ago, I remember sitting inside my office in Mumbai, oscillating between writing and editing, editing and writing, writing and editing, editing and writing…God!
A book was being published with another waiting to be written; an 8000-word magazine article needed to be trimmed to an end product with 7,000 less words; another article needed to be written by yours sincerely, a short one of about 2,500 words: such a life was a creation of my choice as always. Did I meet all my deadlines? Mostly, yes. Sometimes, no. Did all those who knew me know what I was up to? They did not since they couldn’t have. Madness can be identified but not understood, you see.
I had lost sight of tense. Obsessed with the thought of seeing another book on print seemed so alluring – and, seriously, I don’t know why – that I went on and on like a typewriter high on dope. When I stopped to breathe, I checked how many words needed rewriting. When I relaxed, I rewrote chunks of what I had already written.
Everything must end. And, so did the books, one after the other. What was it that stopped me from writing one more, and another, when I was a lucky rarity who had scope on a platter? More than the fact of being stressed out, I guess I had realised that writing just about any book wasn’t a great idea. Some of these books did enjoy commercial success, but they were incapable of satisfying anyone who could stretch a little bit more to deliver a little bit better. Writing star biographies wasn't fulfilling when one realised that the stars continued to shine well after the books on them had lost their glitter. At least, the average one surely did.
Does that mean I will deliver a classic some day? Definitely not. But I thank God for giving me the courage to leave that life. For, if I hadn’t, life might have left me for good.
As I say that, today is today right now.
Monday, October 08, 2007
HI WHY BICEPS?
BISWADEEP GHOSH
Everyone is talking about SRK, including SRK himself.
Whether or not Aamir Khan likes it, people are talking about him because of, yes, SRK.
Even Salman Khan has an opinion about SRK, and not on his movies!
The last time I saw SRK was quite sometime ago: we were flying back to Mumbai, the city where I worked. Shah Rukh had grown his ponytail because his “hairdresser had taken leave” (that is what he had told me in a typically funny mode). Being the sort of writer who has always believed that stars are celluloid cut-outs who walk out of a screen, and melt inside it, I chatted with him for about half an hour while knowing what he was. The time being merely few months after my book on him had been published, my concern (naturally!) was that he hadn’t liked a few things that had been said about him. It was an unauthorised biography – the sort of book one must write if one wishes to call a spade, a spade – but SRK spoke about it quite positively. Very positively, as a matter of fact, which was good.
Although time has flown, I distinctly remember how SRK looked then. And, today, while being in Pune, I can see the way he does. The moment he makes an appearance, with his new set of rippling muscles, he makes me think of Hrithik Roshan, Salman Khan…you know, guys whose physiques have propelled them to fame. Even though SRK’s Build Himself initiative might have convinced many guys his age that they, too, can do the same, the new SRK does not look what he ought to. The biceps have changed the focus of concentration and, since that has happened, he suddenly seems to have become someone else. He is simply not the guy whose smile and wit piloted him to the top. Even when he had grown his ponytail, his USP – that of being that extraordinary regular guy – hadn’t abandoned him. (One television channel has been going on and on about how he has copied Amitabh Bachchan’s look in Cheeni Kum. What rubbish! SRK had that look well before Balki had started the film).
But, the new look. As someone who has followed his career very closely, I sincerely believe that this look will not work even if Om Shanti Om does, and will. The attention will shift from his natural charisma and, the moment the masses watch a film in which SRK isn’t SRK at all, chances are they will end up watching the movie without liking the guy. OSO has to work – and I said that before – but how the new look can appeal is a riddle no SRK fan would wish to solve. For, the only answer isn’t a great one. And, who wants to think of it?
Will SRK manage to come out of a low if the masses don’t take to his new look? You bet he will. He has done it a million times before, and with unimaginable success. While saying this, I sincerely hope he is back to being Raj Malhotra. And, I hope, so do others.
Everyone is talking about SRK, including SRK himself.
Whether or not Aamir Khan likes it, people are talking about him because of, yes, SRK.
Even Salman Khan has an opinion about SRK, and not on his movies!
The last time I saw SRK was quite sometime ago: we were flying back to Mumbai, the city where I worked. Shah Rukh had grown his ponytail because his “hairdresser had taken leave” (that is what he had told me in a typically funny mode). Being the sort of writer who has always believed that stars are celluloid cut-outs who walk out of a screen, and melt inside it, I chatted with him for about half an hour while knowing what he was. The time being merely few months after my book on him had been published, my concern (naturally!) was that he hadn’t liked a few things that had been said about him. It was an unauthorised biography – the sort of book one must write if one wishes to call a spade, a spade – but SRK spoke about it quite positively. Very positively, as a matter of fact, which was good.
Although time has flown, I distinctly remember how SRK looked then. And, today, while being in Pune, I can see the way he does. The moment he makes an appearance, with his new set of rippling muscles, he makes me think of Hrithik Roshan, Salman Khan…you know, guys whose physiques have propelled them to fame. Even though SRK’s Build Himself initiative might have convinced many guys his age that they, too, can do the same, the new SRK does not look what he ought to. The biceps have changed the focus of concentration and, since that has happened, he suddenly seems to have become someone else. He is simply not the guy whose smile and wit piloted him to the top. Even when he had grown his ponytail, his USP – that of being that extraordinary regular guy – hadn’t abandoned him. (One television channel has been going on and on about how he has copied Amitabh Bachchan’s look in Cheeni Kum. What rubbish! SRK had that look well before Balki had started the film).
But, the new look. As someone who has followed his career very closely, I sincerely believe that this look will not work even if Om Shanti Om does, and will. The attention will shift from his natural charisma and, the moment the masses watch a film in which SRK isn’t SRK at all, chances are they will end up watching the movie without liking the guy. OSO has to work – and I said that before – but how the new look can appeal is a riddle no SRK fan would wish to solve. For, the only answer isn’t a great one. And, who wants to think of it?
Will SRK manage to come out of a low if the masses don’t take to his new look? You bet he will. He has done it a million times before, and with unimaginable success. While saying this, I sincerely hope he is back to being Raj Malhotra. And, I hope, so do others.
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