The Indian Idiot

Lot of things have happened over the last couple of days. I have finally decided on my next movie, it’s a non fiction film but I’ll write about that later, in greater detail.

I am currently on my internship and thanks to that, all of my other projects have taken a back seat. I do hope to return to them soon.

Also there’s this great new initiative that the students from my college are taking. It’s a short film festival meant for people in the age group of 16-24 and it’s called The East Side Story. The website isn’t ready yet. But the facebook page is out: https://www.facebook.com/TheEastSideStory

Go like it or whatever. And tell others about t cause that’s the right thing to do.

As for me. I shall go back to cutting. Bye.

Tell me.

No.

Why?

It’s not worth it.

Why?

Whatever happened. It’s dead.

Fuck you, I am dead.

Says the person who shot me.

It was a standoff bro.

Right, let’s go meet Jim.

Ya he was getting it on with Azazel’s Swedish concubine this morning.

 Richard and I were in Bangalore after a considerable amount of time. And as it happened we were out drinking at 2 in the afternoon. It was raining a bit more than we’d like. Laura offered to buy us a drink. Shit like that generally doesn’t happen at 2 in the afternoon at Pecos. Never. Add to that the only Hollywood stars Richard and I looked like were probably a brown Seth Rogen and a brown Samuel L Jackson. 

Being the pseudo-chauvinists we are; we accepted saying just one.

It was way more than one. I mean come on, it was beer.

As we drank and shared stories, we realised our differences. Our perspectives. If the day had to get any stranger, Ade and I found out the following commonalities between us:

Both of us loved Green Day and in effect Sex Pistols,The Stooges,Dead Kennedys and Bad Religion.

Both of us loved watching lame stoner movies even though we loved the work of Woody Allen.

And the best bit; her favourite book was The Catcher in the Rye. 

Laura on the other hand seemed to be more of a soul seeking French tourist, the kind that would get ripped off by those sneaky little traders who rip these firangs.

Ela was the mysterious one. She seemed warm but spoke very little. She was writing something in a rather small yellow notebook. She was in a different world. At least that’s what I told myself.

Richard hit it off pretty well with Laura. He was being just as sneaky as those traders, the difference was here he was trying to sell himself. I dunno, Richard always had a thing for firangs. He even dated one or claimed to have dated one.

I somehow found myself trying to piece together what Ela was writing in that yellow notebook of hers even though I pretended to be consumed by the conversation Ade and I were supposedly having.

One thing led to another, wait they didn’t. 

We went back to my place. Though I was back in Bangalore, I had been living with my parents. The place the three of us were at was my dad’s old apartment where I stayed at times. Times I didn’t want to be around others. That’s most of junior college life I guess. 

And to add to the subliminal messaging in all of this randomness. All of us had three letter name or at least we preferred it that way.

Ela was Ela. Adeline became Ade. I liked being called Avi. It was the identity I chose for myself.

Ade crushed, Ela pulled out her lil’ bong. 

“This is my pocket jesus”, she said.

“This is one religion I love”, I replied.

Ade looked up after handing Richard the bong and said;

“Why is there so much shit about smoking up in public out here, I mean Cannabis Indica belongs to your people. Haven’t they been doing it for centuries”

Ela replied, “Blame them colonists. They loved marijuana as much as they liked opium, but then opium made more money. India used to be a huge exporter of Opium at one point of time. And at about the same time marijuana users were somehow looked down upon because it was the drug of the poor. The rich loved their opium”

 Richard was hit and like always he lay back and closed his eyes. Wasn’t much of a stoner anyway.

I couldn’t hold myself, “Exactly, after opium came Cocaine. It was so popular that it used to be a part of the original Coca Cola formula. You see most drugs have been a part of the main stream before being banned into a subculture. The same can be said bout Acid”

In all of this I had manged to get hold of Ela’s yellow notebook.

“It’s raining, it’s pouring

The old man is snoring

Bumped his head when he went to bed 

And he couldn’t get up in the morning.”

And I looked up and saw Ela smile at me.

I sat down and wrote it all out over a glass of whiskey. I hate whiskey. I am no royalty like my parents.

My parents were entertaining guests in the rooms below my feet. I looked up. The sky looked beautifully clouded with charm and mystery.

Then I took all of what I wrote and burnt the page. The page burnt out fading my feelings and memories. I know this is temporary.

But fuck it. I ll wake up a happier man.

And with that Mikhail Sen ended it all.

They were all gone. Things had changed since I came here last. McLo was teeming with way more people than I’d imagined. The last time I was here, I was on the table next to this one. Tanya, Mia, Jeff and Ayush were with me. It was my last night at McLeod Ganj. I was to travel to New Delhi the next day.

I had made a few mistakes in my life;one of them being my decision to leave McLeod Ganj the following day.

Tanya and Mia were having issues and it was obvious, they wouldn’t look each other in the eye even while talking to each other. Things had changed so much since this journey had begun. Jeff was being rather happy for the condition he was in. He had just trekked down from Triund with me that day and it showed. He went up there for the first time. Tanya too came along. Mia and Ayush had decided to go down to the Norbulinka Institute instead. Ayush was understandably up-beat. He was finally living the life he wanted. He had quit his well paying but boredom embedding job and now he lived the life of a free man.

I must add that his life wasn’t all that free as yet. He called Gayatri, his girlfriend of 5 years at least 9 times a day. The other hours would go in guzzling whiskey and learning how to roll, for he believed he needed to be self sufficient. He had that opportunity that I would love. He had enough money to burn for a few decades.

I did have money but being a non established, alternately aligned filmmaker is hard in India. I would do a gig, save up some cash and then travel. That had become my life, I was just a slightly-richer version of Charlie Chaplin’s tramp sans the comedy. And as life would have it , I had to be in Pune for a rather big gig. I was getting enough to run myself for a year. It was one of those mindless films. Ya the ones I hated so much. But then the ghost-director of the movie dropped out and I got the job cause the producer liked a music video I had done for him. This was going to be another project I would ghost-direct for a star or a celebrity who understood films as much as a chimp on cocaine would.

I did it for the money. I needed that money. I told the folks at the table that I’d be back. But then that was the last time I saw all of them.

That journey of ours remained unfinished. That journey which started in Munnar and had no decided end point. Mia,Tanya and I started it without any set goals or objectives. We wanted a break from our crappy existence. We ended up learning more about it.

I told her last night. She said, that’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done but its still makes my girly guts melt.

I smiled. This was so worth it. Maybe things didn’t work out. Maybe I was being hasty  and stupid. I was broke but when she knew, she smiled.

The same smile I had in mind before being stupid.