Culture Clash

Om beach. About an hour's walk south of Gokarna, which is a lovely little town on the northern coast of Southern India. Pretty peaceful like that. Lots of establishments along the beach with cheap, simple and clean accomodation and an attached restaurant/chill-area overlooking the seafront. No one's in a hurry, nobody's blasting crazy fast music, nobody's shouting their heads off, and everybody's friendly and all.

But man this place is a circus. First one of the local guys who runs one such establishment doesn't want to give me a room because I made the mistake of speaking to him in local dialect - I should have of course spoken in accented English and pretended to be from Haifa for the best in obsequious Indian service. Eventually I do get the room - don't take it personally, Don Corleone would have said, it's just business. Indians don't fit in here. And just to prove the point, some local boys from nearby towns show up and make a big spectacle out of staring goggle-eyed at every bikini in sight from point-blank range. Wow this show's starting to warm up now. Most of the (non-Indian) backpackers are of course here to unwind after their tryst with the mountains earlier this summer and spending their last few weeks in India chilling out on the beach, learning yoga, wearing meditation beads around their necks, rolling spliffs, looking for spiritual connections and enjoying open air showers under banana trees. Discovering India. Some bizarre pocket of India devoid of anything which most Indians know as India. Don't go to Half-Moon beach today, one girl says, lot of Indians coming in boats. Ah ok, thanks for the warning. But then the Indians show up again in throngs and start photographing the bikinis and striking up elegant conversations - Hi frand! Where from? Superb, the Plutonians are striking up conversations with the Martians on Jupiter. Angel thinks it's just one big slapstick comedy - if you can separate yourself from it a little bit, come enjoy the masquerade! Go to hell says Lord K, back in Bangalore this morning, Gokarna is for people who can't deal with reality. We laugh like mad cos he's just jealous and he's just joking. But no doubts, it's a lovely beach, and I met some lovely people, and inspite of having just an extended weekend there I'm feeling a lot better today.

High horse

Well I don't know much about djs and dance music and all but I do know about John Digweed and I just saw him play a set last night at a club 30kms out of town! Wow it was KILLER - this has been dance/dj week for me! And I was so impressed and happy to see someone like him come into our own little town to do a set. Av thinks my attitude is patronising. "Bangalore isn't some backwater village you know", she said indignantly over a sandwich later that night (or early the next morning), "we've been getting some big-name acts and we'll be getting several more over the next year or so". But it's not about big names is it? If this is such a cool city I'd like to see some counter cultural music scene developing, hell it would be nice to actually be a fan of a couple of local bands who are producing interesting sounds from right here in Bangalore, trying to cross boundaries and taking risks with their music and songwriting, working hard playing regularly at venues around town. It'd be kicking if I could follow them around the city and go crazy at their shows! But if big shows are what defines a cool city (music wise) then I'd be impressed if I saw Radiohead at Maya. Or Bjork at Taika. Or John Digweed at Club Cabana. Not Deep Purple at Palace Grounds. That's just my opinion though. But maybe the city's in transit and we're at brink of something big? Possibly maybe.

Hopeful Confessions of Shame from Home

(out of breath)

(in disbelief)

(in utter joy)

I've just finished a rough cut for the documentary. I've spent 14 hours a day for three or for days each the last two weeks, forsaking my health, relationships, and chances of winning this past weekend's New York City marathon in order to get here. It feels great. I can't believe it. It was waaaaaay too much work. I'm already planning my next film. I'm kidding. kind of.

The experiment of making a documentary feature with no plan is a good idea. But such a keen plan requires having a pimple-faced 17-year-old assistant editor available to do the hundreds of hours of logging, searching for rushes, and syncing video to the Pro Tools sound track. I am, in fact, having a baby made immediately so that I will be ready for the next film in 2024. Just kidding. We all know that the world as we know it will be destroyed in 2012, and the future of filmmaking will go back to its roots in mother earth. I'm talking about clay-mation.

Have I avoided telling you any more what the documentary is about? No big surprises, it's still about Abhi and I traveling around the world making music with new friends we meet along the way... but it also has gained more of a "personal touch". And given how much most people like to touch people, I thought that would be a major selling point.

So enough!! The rough cut is now being seen by a handful of various insiders, outsiders, and critically-eyed folks. From there I shall make revisions, seek to fill in the few remaining holes with animations and the like, and, once-and-for-almost, complete the film.

Still in Transit?

Clack!!

Like a dream

Still nursing a throbbing headache and a fever I look out of the airplane window as the flight lands in Delhi close to midnight. I'm not in a mood for this at the moment. The plan requires too much energy over the next few days. Nevertheless it's Thursday night, I have a day off from work tomorrow and it's too late to go back so here goes everything. I take a taxi across the city to Sector 35 in Noida where the great host Mr Ambu lives. And in his parking lot I say a quick hello to my motorcycle which has been sitting there for the last five weeks refusing to start. Should I try and start it tonight? No way, I just go upstairs and pass out - hoping that something will wake me up early tomorrow...

At six I happen to wake up and it looks like the stars are cooperating. Pack bags and head downstairs groggy. Ambu's with me. We spend the next two hours trying to start the bike. Cockroach is sulking. A change of spark plug, a jump start, some minor tuning, and relentless kicking, demonstrates though that my love is real and eventually we coax Cockroach to start - yay! Step 2 is Delhi rush hour. By the time I actually get out of the city and hit the Jaipur highway it's past 11. But slowly a kind of elation has been rising within me and I'm actually having conversations with Cockroach now - just happy to be riding and reunited I guess... At mile marker 135 I run out of gasoline and no one around me has any. Well it's four kilometres to the next gas station but these guys are nice enough to give me a ride - although it takes a while to get there. The ride back is a little faster but not by that much and time doesn't really matter anymore anyway. So I continue onwards (seeing some strange sights along the way).

I have two objectives: to load my bike on a train to Bangalore from Jaipur - where I hope the officials relax (unlike their Delhi counterparts) and to find "Moondust" (a five day psychedelic trance music festival featuring djs from ALL over the globe set amidst the dunes of the Rajasthani desert). It's too late for Jaipur now so I decide to go look for the party. Soon enough I find people who give me directions to get off the highway and head inwards towards Moondust. I get lost for a bit but with the motorbike everything's easy and eventually I find the place on a farm 4km from Ramgarh which is a village 20km from the highway. The party hasn't started yet but people are starting to roll in and so I get inside and pitch my tent (yes I'm all prepared for this) and relax with some guys from the next tent till about nine when suddenly the air around me starts to pulsate with beats. The party's started. Great music that night and it goes on and on into the next morning and in fact I'm told it's not going to stop for the next five days! Somewhere during the day I take my bike and slip into Jaipur to load it on the train. Everybody's relaxed, everything's smooth and nobody even asks me to show my documents which I spent an entire day forging at "Jas Forgeries International" before I left from Bangalore. A cycle rickshaw takes me around town making random stops to eat (the most delicious) kachoris and badam milk. I manage to meet my friend Aditi briefly before I head right back to the party. More great music that night, they've now setup a chillout stage and there's a really cool live dj from Delhi who plays a nice extended set that night. Also meet some friends from Bangalore and get to talk to a couple of the superstar djs and get some perspective into their lifestyle which is totally nuts - nonstop touring, jetsetting around from one party to the next. Ma Faiza says she hasn't stayed in one place for more than two weeks in years! More psychedlia and madness that night and unfortunately the next day it's time to leave. I stretch it till about 11am and then I pack up and hit the road. I hitch a bus to Jaipur and then another one to Delhi gets me to the airport well in time to catch my delayed flight back to Bangalore. I land at 2am. Whew, what a weekend.