Drums and old Hindi film songs at 100 decibels

It's impossible to think with this din. I feel as if my brain is being battered. One wedding and two days of persistent noise. If the sound blares so on the 13th floor, what is it like for those down there, and how can they tolerate it? How can this be their idea of fun or celebration? I hate these people. I curse them, may their marriage never work.

There's pink and there's pink

Yet another thing that keeps me sufficiently and suitably distracted from film making is my obsession with lipsticks.

One of the things I like to do, when I really need to do nothing at all, as opposed to not having anything to do,

is chop up bits of lipsticks which are old, or the wrong colors, or simply boring now that they've lasted forever, and just won't give up their mortal existence,

and mix them all up.

I used to melt them over a pan of boiling water, now I just put them into a tiny tin and mesh them all together with the end of a nail file or a cut off ear bud. I mix in lots of lip balm too.

There, I have a new color in my life, which is usually the same color as most of the others I have, i.e. pink. Plus I satisfy my cheap, middle-class housewifely urges to recycle.

Grasshopper though has a different opinion about lipstick.

wrong place, wrong time

I did a series of short films on Mumbai for an internet channel in California, when internet movie uploading and watching was at an experimental stage, and so like a lot of my other work, the films were largely unseen. (My heart wails)

 I used to shoot the films on a small 3CCD mini-DV, sometimes by myself, sometimes with Teja, sometimes with any other cinematographer friend who'd oblige.

This is one of my favourites. I was wandering around Juhu beach on my own, and I could see from the corner of my eyes, these 2 men hovering just outside the edge of my frame. I turned the camera on them, and out poured this:

just nudging

you a bit to go read my post 'Pigeons and Papayas' on Upperstall Blogs.

last Sunday

Spent 1050/- rupees on 7 tickets for 'Fashion'.
20/- for parking.
Say a 50/- on petrol
300/- on popcorn and colas.
5/- odd rupees on Dispirin for everyone in the evening. Because all of us came back grumpy, with headaches. Having missed our afternoon siesta. Which the  scrumptious Parsi lunch at Dorabjees deserved much, much more than it did a dose of 'realistic cinema'.

It was just that it had been almost 3 weeks since we went to a theater.

Dhanno, who's 15 and could be 18, has been walking into adult films with us occasionally, when Teja and I deem fit to ignore the censors. OK, I don't see how 'Music and Lyrics' with Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant rates an 'A' certificate, and 'Tashan' or 'Neil & Nikki' rates a U/A. So, I'd rather trust our own judgment.

But the Pune multiplex was packed with kids. Golu, who's 11 and could be 8 walked in easily, as did a lot of other boys his age. And of course, he was bored silly.

Later, he said: "If it (i.e. the film) was a man, I would have kicked it hard."