Chapter 2: Red against White - a Mukt & Jia scoop

The Delhi weather was uncharacteristically hot in the October of 2006 and Jia’s evening coffee sessions with her friends this month had been all about the ozone layer getting depleted and how this newly founded company called Tesla was deservedly the talk of the town with the upcoming design reveal of its first all-electric vehicle product called the Roadster.

Ever since Jia had graduated from the reputed Institute of Technology at the University in Varanasi four years ago in the discipline of Materials Sciences and Engineering, she had been fascinated with innovations in technology and more particularly, in nanotechnology, which had started driving a lot of computing hardware progress globally. Added to that, her views on climate change and the need for balance between growth and sustainability had hijacked many meetups of her classmates while she was a resident on campus.

The setup had changed since then but Jia’s enthusiasm for environment-friendly technological innovation remained undiminished, as her friends and colleagues at NanoIdeas often ended up figuring out, especially whenever they took a coffee break with her. NanoIdeas was the nanotechnology research and innovation startup that Jia had joined as a young co-founder and research head last year. Jia loved working at and staying close to the brand new NanoIdeas office, located in the emerging metropolis of Gurgaon, part of India’s National Capital Region and sister to the globally better-known city of New Delhi. The studio apartment that she shared with her brother, Mukt, was cosy and comfortable and more than anything else, a stone's throw distance from both her and Mukt's places of work.

Unlike her brother, who was more of a dreamer, Jia had always been more practical and action-oriented. Despite four years in Varanasi or Banaras, as the locals call the oldest living city in the world, Jia’s idea of a night out still remained being focused on creating a new composite in the “nano lab” and testing its properties, as compared to many of her friends or even her brother who would be happy gazing endlessly at the dwindling lights of boats in the distance, sitting at the steps of one of the ghats by the Ganges, and almost compulsively smoking/ingesting something illegal.

Today, Jia was a little lost though and not really enjoying the conversation with her friends as much as she should have, especially considering the topic being discussed. Her thoughts were with Mukt who had left for Paris last night for one of his stage demonstrations of Hypnotherapy. She was immensely proud of her brother and of how he had built a reputation as one of the leading voices in hypnotherapy not just in India but globally, and that too in an extremely short span of time. More than that, she was thankful to him beyond measure for giving her a new lease of life after she had almost given up on it five years ago following the death of their parents in a plane crash.

At the time, Jia was preparing to start her final year of college. It was actually in the middle of her first lecture of the session when she was called upon by the Dean’s assistant to receive an emergency phone call from a distraught and nearly incomprehensible Mukt who broke the news to her. It was only due to Mukt’s consistent and often, annoyingly persistent efforts subsequently that Jia could survive the year and finish her course. Even after her graduation and the convocation ceremony she had intentionally missed, Jia had continued to live a listless life till Mukt ended up rediscovering himself through his interest in hypnotism and more particularly, hypnotherapy.

Jia often chided Mukt when he credited her for changing his life just because she was reading a book that introduced him to hypnotherapy when it was actually Mukt, who had brought Jia back from the brink of her decision to end her very existence, by making her the first subject of his hypnotherapy practice.

As Jia looked at her expensive watch that Mukt had gifted to her on her birthday this year, she realised that it was really late and nearly half a day had gone by since Mukt was supposed to have landed in Paris. He hadn’t called yet to tell her that he had safely reached India House where he was staying, and this was troubling her a bit, knowing how particular Mukt normally was about these things. While he was only a couple of years older, Mukt had completely taken on the role of a responsible parent when it came to Jia. She knew that Mukt was not carrying the new mobile phone he had bought recently because it was with her. Despite her protests, Mukt had argued that the international roaming charges on his India number and the hassle of getting an international sim card for a temporary Paris number made it illogical for him to carry the mobile phone. Jia knew that her ever-sacrificing brother just wanted her to have the phone despite any inconvenience that he may have to face.

Regardless, no mobile phone meant that Mukt might just be struggling to find a public phone to call, given the extraordinarily bad weather Paris was having recently, yet another example of where the world climate was headed. While Mukt clearly enjoyed parenting her, Jia didn’t give up any chances of mothering her brother either. She had spent hours on the internet preparing for this two-month trip of Mukt’s, and this preparation included a list of all nearby public phone booths near the place Mukt was going to reside at. In fact, she knew that there was one right at the corner close to where India House was located and the only reason that she wasn’t panicking by now was the real possibility of a disruption in telephone services due to the incessant snow that Paris had been seeing for the last few days.

Just as Jia was losing her patience and had decided to call the India House reception to figure out if Mukt had checked in, her mobile phone rang. It was a call from Paris but as she connected, not the voice she was expecting to hear.

A stranger responded to her excited ‘hello’ in heavily accented English, “Mademoiselle, may I know who is this?”
“You have called me; shouldn’t you know who you have called?” Jia couldn’t resist it, especially now that all her panic buttons were well and truly activated.

“Oui Mademoiselle, you are right! I was just trying to confirm if you are the sister of Monsieur Mukt.” The stranger was getting on Jia’s nerves now and his casual mention of Mukt’s name only made it worse.

“Yes, I am Jia, Mukt’s sister. Please tell me who you are and what this is about. Where is Mukt? Is he ok? I want to speak to him,” exclaimed Jia in what was perhaps a shriller tone than what she would normally use with someone she was speaking to for the first time.

“Mademoiselle Jia, please don’t worry. Monsieur Mukt is fine, just a little shaken after the recent events. I am…,” Jia didn’t let the stranger complete whatever he was about to say as she jumped in. “What recent events? Why is he shaken up and why are YOU calling me? Why don’t you let me speak to him?” Jia had a lot of questions and her head was already spinning with numerous possibilities, each worse than the other.

“Mademoiselle, please hear me out,” pleaded the voice on the phone. “My name is Sebastian Dubois and I am a captain with the National Police of France. I have just been called by the Campus Police at the Cité Universitaire to a crime scene and Monsieur Mukt was the first witness and the caller who first reported it. He is not hurt and is absolutely not under any threat but for obvious reasons, we are not allowing him to speak to anyone before he can complete his statement for us. I am calling you on his request to just let you know that he is fine and will call you as soon as he is done here.” Captain Dubois had probably just managed to improve his personal best when it came to speaking in English at a stretch, given the increasing heaviness of accent with every word towards the end of his explanation.

Chapter 1: Red against White - a Mukt & Jia scoop

One would think that red against white is something that a keen eye could never miss. Add to that however, snow falling in balls of cotton, and all signs of the blood would vanish, red buried under layers of white. Be that as it may, there was enough blood and quite freshly spilled, to leave dull brown marks that Mukt could only stare at in amazement…it was clearly the scene of a crime, a high passion one at that, given the amount of blood all around.

Mukt had missed it all in the beginning as he had kept his bags down and rushed in to the phone booth he saw at the corner. Cooped up in the small box trying to call his sister Jia to tell her that he had reached Paris safely, Mukt had stopped short of dialing the one telephone number he didn’t have to look up his phone diary for. He had finally noticed the red marks on the notice stuck next to the telephone receiver. The red stain was at his eye level and quite remarkable, if you actually come to think of how uncharacteristic its presence there was.

It wasn’t just any red mark either, but clearly blood that was just beginning to dry up. There was more, further traces of the red on the phone booth’s door knob, on the floor inside the box, and extending all the way out in the direction of the building Mukt was planning on entering after his call, a clear trail of a body having been dragged, a body that was losing or had already lost a lot of blood.

Having just reached Paris a few hours ago on a connecting flight from New Delhi via Dubai, Mukt had been cursing the airline ever since he landed, for messing up his bags. It had taken him nearly a couple of hours after all immigration formalities, just to sort his luggage out. He was at his wit’s end, irritated and as was usual in his case, gritting his teeth. As soon as he finally stepped out of the terminal though, he couldn’t help but loosen up and smile at the weather that greeted him. Unlike his sister Jia who was the more practical of the two, Mukt would often lose himself in his environs, watching raindrops patter against the window-sill or simply feeling the breeze in his hair.

Today, it was snow…a lot of it. It wasn’t the usual time for snow in Paris, almost the beginning of October as it was. Mukt knew however, that it was just the beginning of what everyone was predicting could be a prolonged, cold, and harsh winter. Jia had literally forced him to pack the heaviest of woolens, knowing fully well that Mukt tended to ignore such things, busy as he was in preparations for the real reason he was going to Paris.

The India House at Cité Universitaire or as the French would call it, Maison de l’Inde at La Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris had invited Mukt to perform at the annual India day celebrations on campus and be their guest in-house consultant for a couple of months thereafter. Mukt was an artist…well, sort of. He specialized in Mass Hypnosis and was also a trained hypnotherapist, not only performing spectacular shows that amazed large gatherings but also working with individual subjects facing deep psychological problems and helping them deal with those problems and often, recover.

There was a lot that Mukt had to thank Jia for, least of them the shape his career had taken. Mukt had initially started exploring hypnotherapy only as a tool to help his sister recover from the loss of their parents who had passed away in a plane crash five years ago. Jia had taken the loss pretty hard, hadn’t uttered a single word for nearly a month. Even when she started talking, she would hardly initiate a conversation; speak only when spoken to and even then, in monosyllables. It was extremely difficult for Mukt to see his livewire of a sister like this, especially when he didn’t have any one else in the whole world, he could call his own. He had lost his parents, too. Indeed, he had taken to the eventuality much better but it didn’t mean that he wasn’t impacted.

It was Jia who had indirectly given Mukt the idea of studying and using hypnotherapy. She had been reading a book on the subject, more like flipping through its pages, hardly paying any attention to what she was reading. Mukt had just come back from his day at work, advising a big-ticket client on her advertising strategy, something that was more routine for Mukt now, as compared to the excitement he used to feel when he had started out as a rookie in the creative agency that he now headed Creative Strategy for. Mukt was bored, and while he didn’t know it just yet, a new life for him was just there for the taking.

Jia had finally flipped the book shut and had started staring into nothingness, possibly remembering how her parents used to laugh at one of her many jokes. There was the hint of a smile at the corner of her lips, a smile that had none of the mirth that it was trying to remember, a sad smile and even that was not developed fully, lurking yet not showing.

Mukt had learnt to read the signs, knowing when he could leave his sister to her memories and when he needed to shake her up. Assessing that she was fine by herself that day, Mukt had left Jia to her thoughts and taken up the book, unable to leave it till he finally finished a couple of hours later. Jia was still staring at the fading lights of the city skyline but Mukt’s eyes were gleaming, reflecting the last of those twinkles that signify the end of another day but more importantly, the imminent beginning of a new dawn. He knew he was on to something, something that could not only help his sister but something that could bring back meaning to his own life as well.

While it wasn’t exactly the same time of the day in Paris, what with its longer days, but the lights had just been turned on, all around the part of Cité Universitaire that the India House was located in. For Mukt, perhaps those lights had triggered memories of the day he had taken up Hypnotism for the first time. It was also possible that all the blood and signs of violence had taken him back to when he had seen his parents’ bodies for the last time, permanently still, and made him remember what it took for him to not lose Jia, the one thing he had in his life that could still make him smile.

Regardless of what was the cause, Mukt seemed to be lost for the moment, able to appreciate but unable to act on the urgency of the moment. He could feel the need to act, do something about the situation he was in, what with all the blood around him. He couldn’t move though, not for the moment. It was as if the snowflakes outside the booth were telling him something, as they fell in slow motion, only to be absorbed by the thick layer of snow on the ground, losing their existence and yet becoming part of a larger consciousness. Mukt could feel his own body floating with the snowflakes, falling to the ground, slowly. Unlike the snowflakes however, he didn’t just smoothly become part of a bigger being. His was a sharp fall, metaphorically jolting him out of his reverie.

One of the things his study of Hypnotism had taught Mukt was the importance of process. Having often practiced the same mechanical step hundreds of times to get it right, Mukt was used to breaking down any problem into a number of steps and then diligently executing each of those steps, one after the painstakingly similar other.

The first step for now, of course, was to call the emergency response number and tell them what he had seen. Thankfully, Jia had done the requisite online research and prepared a list of important information and contact numbers for Mukt for his Paris trip. The pan-European emergency response number ‘112’ was marked in red, right at the top. As Mukt dialed the number, he tried to mentally brush up on his basic French, assuming that would be the language he would have to speak in.

Fortunately for him, the operator on the other side was comfortably able to switch to English once she realized that Mukt’s French wasn’t adequate for him to clearly explain what had happened. Mukt gave a brief note of what he was looking at and where he was. While he kept his suspicions to himself, the facts were telltale enough for the operator to ask Mukt to not touch anything, move out of the booth and without stepping on anything, stand by for the emergency response team stationed at the Cite Universitaire Campus Police station.

My friend Setu

The inevitable, some say, took its course last night and Vikhyat, one of my closest friends from B-school, breathed his last!

As news of his struggling to stay alive started trickling in the day before and soon, as it became apparent that his was a losing battle, there was a mix of different feelings that went through me. Sadness and despair, anger and frustration, guilt and pain...they all struck me as one, immobilising me. Even when I saw people who hardly knew him gearing up to help him and his family, visit him at the hospital, trying to raise funds for his treatment, I sat in my car silently crying, knowing in my heart that it was already too late.

I couldn't bring myself to talk to his brother or wife, even if it were to just offer some meaningless words of comfort and as Vikhyat passed away last evening, my guilt at somehow failing him made me not do anything, not even bidding him a final farewell.

For some reason though, I started going though all my past interactions with him...phone messages, chats, emails, social media...stuff that memories over the last 15 years were made of. And I realised that my friend Vikhyat, or Setu as he was fondly called by his family, was more than just a dead body. He was a dear friend, a vivacious bundle of infectious enthusiasm, a starry eyed dreamer who wanted to invent, create, do what was never ordinary and somehow make you believe that all this was possible.

I was writing a small formal obituary for him when thoughts from many of my and Vikhyat's classmates started pouring in. It was strange and yet obvious how each one of us were remembering the same thing about him, his disarming smile and his dreams, his enterprise and his brilliance.

Having worked closely with him at the two editions of Backwaters, IIM Kozhikode's cultural fest, the team and he had become family. Endless nights of discussions and planning and activities, heartbreaks and successes, arguing and celebrating together...his face keeps flashing by and gets blurred only by the tears that spring up so unexpectedly. His long and funny emails to the team on how we need to pull up our socks, his undying hope of getting sponsorships from local businesses despite one rejection after the other, his fooling around on team meetings and then turning all serious for the job at hand, his insane and seemingly impractical "Yana Gupta" ideas and even more impossible execution...how do I let him go?

It's painful and tears me apart as I think of him playing the role that he had no clue about in that flop of a play we had at the Freshers' Party, him proudly holding the banner of "Bloody Freshers Rock" at our farewell, him fighting with me over rules of the Konnect Antakshari, him telling me at countless mess parties, of his frustrations with life's ordinariness that he wanted to overcome, his ventures that worked and didn't, his funny experiments with dating apps, him getting married not even a couple of years ago, him rushing to meet me to advise me in person on the startup idea I apparently had.

Perhaps he was headed this way for some time, perhaps he could be saved, perhaps whatever anyone did wouldn't have helped, perhaps something would have...I will never know and neither will many of my friends who won't sleep for a few days without him in their mind. What I do know is that I cherished the time that God had given me with Vikhyat in this world and that I will never forget what it was to know him. I will remember him not as what he had become in the hospital photos that I saw over the last few days but as the unbeatable spark that he was...my friend Setu!

Some thoughts from some of our friends came to me and I am writing them here so that others who couldn't write can read and remember Vikhyat. Please feel free to send me anything that you would like to add about your memories of Vikhyat and I will put them up here so that we can keep reading this post whenever we are reminded of our friend.

Sandeep Reddy

I have lost a brother today. We have shared so much of our lives together that I feel I have always known him from childhood and we have grown together. We have lived together, started a venture together, dreamt together, seen ups and downs of life together. I will always want to remember him as a dreamer and fighter with a smile always on his face. May his soul rest in peace. Bhai I will miss you.

Saurabh Goswami

Vikhyat to me was that bubbly guy who wanted to be an entrepreneur from day 1 at IIMK. I still remember, he coming to ask if one can use SMS for sending messages for credit card transactions. I had a previous background in telecom coding before coming to campus and maybe he thought that would help. His enthusiasm forced me to go back to the specs and find out. It was that infectious enthusiasm that he showed when were part of backwaters too - hunting for sponsorship from the random shops in Calicut. Post college, we were not in touch too often, but I always felt proud that my batchmate was featured on CNBC young turks. We again got back about 9 months ago when he called but in that conversation it never occurred to me that he was suffering. Still had great ideas. That was Vikhyat - he had an invisibility cloak that prevented us from seeing his suffering. Our world will not be the same again.

Qaynat Sharma

Vikhyat was the life of every group he participated in. He always brought positive thought and encouraging influence to the people around him. His calm smile and bright ideas endeared him to people across his academic and work life. Vikhyat means known to all, and he stayed true to his name, both in life and in death. We will always remember you Vikhyat. Rest in Peace and Happiness.

Malini Pande

It’s still not sinking in. I have been in denial ever since I saw the message for the first time. Initially it was it can’t be the same Vikhyat and then it was like he should be fine soon. And the very next day he has gone. We spent endless days and nights planning for backwaters at K but my most vivid memory of him is one night in Mumbai when I was dropping him after a party in Sandy’s house and thanks to Mumbai traffic a 20 min drive stretched to 60 min. It was the best time I had spent with him. He was his jovial best and full of life and I remember telling him that we need to meet more often. Wish we had! God bless you Vikhyat and hope you are in a better place now!

Rohit Gupta

Vikhyat was true to his name...VIKHYAT..well known..loved by everyone who came in contact with him...a brilliant mind but childish at heart..a guy who started even when the concept of start up was yet to start up...a guy with a mission for backwaters...will miss you my friend!!

Surabhi Prasad

I am tearing up as I write this for Vikhyat - “The most striking memory I have of Vikhyat is how full of life he was. Be it academics, organising Backwaters or simply entertaining us with his wit and humour, he sparked life. I cannot believe this spark is gone. Rest in peace, dear friend. You will always be remembered”.

Rahul Ranjan

That boy from Mankapur is no more. I always used to tease him as Mankapore is new Singapore. He told one day he would go to Singapore and write to me. That can't happen now.

Madhu Smitha

Vikhyat will always be remembered as brilliant person who always converse with cheerful smile and make others laugh.Felt proud of him when he made it to CNBC Young Turks though we aren't in touch with each other.Feel he would have achieved a lot more and brought lot more accolades to K.We will all miss him!

Sandipan Roy

Vikhyat, one of the few guys from campus who embraced me with my follies and became my best buddy. He was different – effervescent yet brooding, charismatic yet crude, loving yet nonchalant all at the same time. He was amongst the brightest minds I have ever met, a man brimming with ideas, a man who could see the future and knew how to disrupt it.. He lived for his friends and family and never cared about his own well being. I remember how he once missed my birthday and next day turned up with a guitar in a restaurant just to surprise me, even strumming and singing happy birthday much to the surprise of the people around. That was Vikhyat, living life on his own terms, rules were not meant to be for him, the world could wait while he orchestrated his own symphony. I guess geniuses self-destruct, so did he in the end, just too soon, too fast. Farewell my friend, do well wherever you are now…will miss you buddy, will miss you sorely..the world doesn’t make your kind any more Vikhyat!

Sharika Munshi

Vikhyat was the brightest, most enthusiastic person in our batch at IIMK. His energy and enterprise were infectious. He was loved by everyone. His adventurous, entrepreneurial drive inspired many of us. I have the fondest memories of spending time with him on campus and during our trips to Goa. He was always smiling, fun and kind. I am too overwhelmed by this news Vikhyat. You were a shining star and your light will continue to shine on all those you touched and inspired. Lots of love always to you and to your family!

Aditya Chaturvedi

Vikhyat is no more. And it feels sad, heart-breaking even, and yet a shade inevitable in some ways. The sudden news of his critical condition and subsequent passing brought back a flood of memories from campus. In a group of 130+ classmates, Chhote, as some of us and particularly I called him, was definitely among the few who were notable. Possessed of a winsome smile what stood out to me was his audacity of hope. He was irreverent, bordering on arrogant, but was also brilliant and a true entrepreneur at heart.

As somebody who shared with him three bonds - IIMK classmate, brotherhood of ITI employee children, and life membership of the longitudinally challenged club, I spent a fair bit of time with him during the two years we were together on campus. If there was something that defined him for me, it was the countless instances of him declaring 'Abe Saale tu dekh abhi' to declare his intentions of conquering many a challenge.

Not a guy without flaws, Chhote truly burned the candle at both ends as he tried more endeavours than most would even dream about. Issac Mizrahi said 'When you're a young person, you have these prescient ideas about the person you want to be perceived as, and so you act like this person. And then later you become that person..". Chhote lived this credo to the max but didn't live long enough to become that person.

Rest in peace brother!

Falling in the ditch and other tales

It's not often that you find your wife yelling at you for getting into a 6 ft deep ditch to look for one of your slippers, especially when the truth is that merely a second ago, your head hit the ground and you have just started coming to terms with the fact that you have fallen in a ditch perfectly camouflaged with some shrubbery on your way to answer the nature's call.

Your efforts at finding that elusive slipper are only representative of the defense mechanism that has kicked in upon realization of the free fall and not knowing what to do next. You have no clue as to how to explain that though, not to your yelling yet concerned wife, and definitely not to her brother (and his fiance, for extra comfort) who can't make up his mind about what to do first...try to help you out of the ditch or feel amused about the entire situation.

It is also not often that you spend the new year's eve at one of the coolest hangouts in town, an open air club on a hill playing some absolutely fantastic music to an absolutely awesome crowd in a setting that's replete with fireworks, drunk people dancing in the swimming pool (and everywhere else), and absolute strangers wishing you a happy new year (and getting a back-handed push and shove in return).

So yes, you may come back to me and say that you have been there and done that but I am sure you won't have too much to say when I tell you that post this party, you may stand to lose keys to your little rented villa where you had planned to continue the celebrations with some good old Punjabi music and Maggi. Your tongue is likely to be tied even more as you realize that at 4 AM on January 1st, there is hardly any chance of encountering the stray key-maker roaming on the streets or expecting help from the otherwise lovely, nail-clawing, and suspiciously paranoid facilities manager of the villa society.

And God help your chances of speaking ever again as I tell you that not only were we not fortuitous enough for all this, we had to spend six hours sleeping on the villa's tiny little gym's floor, all dressed in our new year party finery...and oh yes, with the Villa's entirely unhelpful guard commenting on our bad luck on the first day of the year, if only to help us see the much obfuscated obvious.

I can almost smile benignly at your slow nodding of the head when you hear of the little spats we had with the local taxi mafia...I know, happens everywhere right, all these tourist places have gone to the dogs, you say! That they have, and spats we did have...some mildly irritating and others almost life-threatening but all part of the game.

It's just that these little spats assume those gigantic proportions in your mind, inching towards top of the mental billboard when they follow something even more interesting that happened just a couple of hours ago. What can be more interesting than a few North Indians getting potentially beaten up by locals, you ask? Well, not much...just that half of the shack we were sitting in got engulfed in fire within minutes and the doped staff and perennially semi-naked firang hut-dwellers started throwing water on open electric wires jutting out from all corners (thankfully, after the fire was doused by some by-standers throwing sand over it).

Well, that's Goa for you!

And oh, we had fun on the beaches too, the complete Christmas-New Year-Goa treatment with foot massages on sun beds, sun sets...one more bewitching than the other, waiting for hours for food, watching waves crash against your table laid out at the beach, guitar next to the roaring sea under the moon, and the occasional hijacking of the DJ at a beach shack party.

Mann kasturi re, Jag dasturi re...

There are movies that give you a route to escape the monotony of life and take you along on the journey to nothingness and larger-than-life experiences. However, there are others that have a meaningful story to relate, quite often and unfairly dubbed as the serious movies. Piracy and TV screens unfortunately make such movies fall short of ringing the cash registers. There are markets for both these varieties of cinema of course, just that appreciation may center on the moolah in one to the standing ovations in another.

Masaan does tell us a serious story and yet it is a saga of escape. Not escape from reality a la cinema, but what it seems to significantly tell us is that entrenched within reality is escape from it, sort of a catch 22. The movie talks about the ultimate escape though, the "KashiYatra" (final journey to death and salvation) and how even that is not enough to get free of the stranglehold that life and its customs have on you.

Set in the lanes and ghats of perhaps the oldest surviving city in the world, Varanasi, the story stays clear of stereotypes despite the strong allegory across the plot. Varanasi is not just another picture perfect image here of tourists, backpackers, and junkies smoking up their lives but is more of an important character in the movie, a confluence of life and death...of livewire ambitions and silencing destiny.

There are various sub-plots that make up the story and you watch spellbound as they keep coming together, each thread almost touching the other shyly before intermingling completely. Fire and water, the two elements that the Varanasi of Masaan is made of, are up and about throughout the story...the subtle yet simmering father-daughter relationship playing perfect foil to the fiery ambition followed by consuming sadness of the underdog. At the cost of appearing a bit muddled to the average cine-goer, this interplay between the tracks is effortless enough to actually add to the movie's narrative instead of taking anything away from it.

A professor in Sankrit at the local college has come upon bad days, selling trinkets and trivia at the ghats, that confluence of religion and spirituality that only a few cities are blessed with and Varanasi perhaps most well known of them. His daughter embodies the spirit of youth in India's small towns who is confident in her own skin, not ashamed of getting caught in the middle of a sex scandal except for the problems it is causing her father...cornered but defiant. Even the unlikely little hero who assists the Pandit at his shop is unafraid of diving deep and competing to win every gamble placed at his cost.

The other track, even more poignant, relays the story of the emancipation that every small town looks up to. Education is widely identified even in the darkest reaches of the society to carry hope and yet, it also makes a lot of promises, some kept and yet others totally lost in fires of the crematorium. The lower caste boy dreams to fall in love without drowning under the social stigmas and associated drag. Unlike in the small town India of old, he gets support from his friends and partner, the facebook generation having come up the curve. All he needs to do to make his dream come true is within his reach...or so he thinks. Plans to escape the reality go back to the earth from where we all come into being. Destiny strikes and strikes hard enough to break the skull that can’t be destroyed even by the holy fire.

The acting is top class and the sheer personalities that the protagonists bring to the table are outstanding. Richa Chadha's undefeated fight in slinging over her bag to Sanjay Mishra's hunched shoulders, the debutantes Vicky Kaushal and Shweta Tripathi with their joie de vivre and cute idiosyncrasies, the unambiguous and uncaring evil of Bhagwan Tiwari's blackmailing cop, and even the vulnerability shrouded in boastful swagger of the child artist Nikhil Sahni...the screen is brought alive by these artists and more.

Masaan, the local colloquial term used for Shamshaan (crematorium) is wonderfully titled and brilliantly executed. Generating and retaining its own brand of charm, the writer-director duo of Varun Grover and Neeraj Ghaywan give a local flavor to the movie. References to popular culture notwithstanding (even those meshed into the local milieu of a small town with cyber cafe owners glaring away at facebook explorations), the story keeps referring to poets from the Hindi and Urdu heartland. As the background tracks and songs take you on their unique Kashi Yatra, you can only wonder at the play with words.

Added to the story and its intricacies, what also impresses one about Varun Grover is the striking color he gives to the songs, perfectly creating bright and inviting cocktails which get you high once poured into the soulful music that only Indian Ocean is capable of. The director's debut is as mature and sensitive as it could have been and given the challenging non-linearity of narrative, his handling of his characters and the story are remarkable.

Masaan burns in your mind for hours and even days after you have watched it, the pyres dying down to embers, and embers proving to be genesis for life as they power the cooking stove. It is so pretty, the way water, glorious in the afternoon sun enlivening one ghat ends up being just the background for death being consumed by fire on the other.

In Fantasy Land

The six-legged dragon is spewing dark fire black as night, chilling your bones contrary to the heat you would expect to be seared with. As it flies across the hills of mist, light seems to fill the underdog and even his silhouette as he lifts his eyes towards the sky to see the dragon better and say a silent prayer. But is that simply a prayer or did he raise a wand in the air and say something more potent, one wonders as the dragon is shot down from the sky, hit by an invisible arrow. The Black Creature's hound's shrill cries envelop the air as he hits the ground along with the dead dragon. The dragon was vile but even viler was this hell's child for whom the beast was not just means of transport but something he had always used to spread terror, rooting fear deep into the minds of hapless humans.

Haven't we all read something like this at some point in our lives? Haven't we all lost ourselves in vivid imagery of this sort while watching some movie or the other? Haven't we all wondered? It may not have been...well this fantastic all the time. It could have simply been a story of boy meeting girl in a setup that you can only dream of and that of the events that follow, stuff that even nightmares are not made of...finally resulting in a climax that is so far fetched as to make you visibly cringe.  

Be what it may, fantasies often end up giving you that escape route you have always been looking for. The madness in this world notwithstanding, there is enough and more that goes on in our own minds for us to need some mechanism to forget everything. Driven into a different world, we laugh and cry with its inhabitants, barely managing to hold our sides at jokes that would otherwise have been outrageously bad, being free with that lump in the throat at events in their lives that seem equally preposterous. We forget our own worries somehow and even the most insurmountable of odds for us look like child's play for the characters that come alive in this fantasy world.

The characters are all etched so clearly, in black and in white with hardly any scope for the grey in between. There are silent characters and those who are hilariously loud...people too good and those who can't be any more of devil incarnates. Life goes on however, despite the extremes and you are swept along on the journey to fantasy land not wanting to come back...ever. Alice managed to lose herself, didn't she? And wasn't there a platform Nine and Three Quarters for Harry and his friends to escape to Hogwarts? Didn't the kids meet Aslan more than once on their journeys to Narnia? Didn't Peter Pan start living in Neverland?

And then you are back...back to the skulduggery that reality is. All the filth hits you as the unscrupulous ways of life take you away from the sweet and tangy fantasy, as you get mixed in the greys, not being able to decide the good and bad of it. How you wish things were as simple here, being able to call a spade a spade, being able to have no pain that can't be healed, no problem that can't be solved! 

As the mind wanders those lands today trying its best to break free of the monotony, I thank all those books and movies that have taken me to my own Narnia, my own Hogwarts, my own Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, my own Age of Legends where I am the Dragon Reborn, my own Gotham and Metropolis and Star City and Central City where I know all the superheroes on a first name basis.

GoA - Go Away?

Goa has always been one of those vacation destinations that endear themselves to you not just for what the place has to offer in terms of visual treats but also for the overall experience. Experience, which each one of us looks at as per our own idiosyncrasies, may be composed of myriad facets, some emotional and some circumstantial. However, of all these facets, the local ecosystem plays a big role - the kind of food you can find, the character that the destination's cafes and restaurants hold, the kind of hospitality its hotels offer, and most importantly, the vibe that you get from the locals.

In numerous visits to Goa that most of us have had in the past, I am reasonably certain that its score card has always had a big tick mark on this one...but not any more perhaps? Over the last two years, I have been to this place some 5-6 times and have never had to think twice about the Goa experience - something that has always been taken for granted when it comes to this place. The sea has been the same and the nature still at its beauteous best but there are some things that seem to be changing, though and certainly not for the better.

Over the last two occasions that I have been to Goa, there clearly seems to be a certain negativity in the air. It seems as if Goa is tired of the people that keep coming to its shores, month after month and day after day, season or off-season. With travel having become affordable and something that is part of the middle class budget now, there are all sorts who do travel. At the cost of sounding snobbish and somewhat elitist, there are norms that you need to respect when you travel and which are often not preserved by the amateur traveler.

It is no wonder therefore, to see the discomfort and in some cases, even angst that the locals feel towards such tourists who are careless with how they treat Goa...those who throw garbage in the open, those who bring their road rage infested traffic sense to the place, those who get aggressive at the slightest provocation, those who do not believe in sharing Goa with its actual natives, thinking they own all the beaches and the greens because they have paid for it.

Moreover, if you actually look at the Goa landscape today and compare it with what it was a few years ago, you will also realize that the mainstay of the hospitality industry here, the foreign tourist is slowly doing the vanishing act. From finding foreigners lounging at sun-decks on the Baga beach 4-5 years ago to now seeing them only at off-course beaches either in extreme south (Palolem) or extreme north (Arambol), things have changed and so have the earning capacities of locals who used to cater to this segment of the tourist population and make big margins out of it.

While the locals do understand that such margins can not be made of the not-so-gullible Indian tourist, the grudge they have is not this alone. Once again at the cost of sounding elitist (this time on behalf of the locals), perhaps the Indian tourists are blamed by the Goans for exodus of their foreign counterparts. With cases of hooliganism coming to the fore once too often and things far worse such as lootings, murders, and even rapes forming the news headlines, Goa has not had it easy recently.

Many tourists (Indians and more so, foreigners) have, if not sworn off Goa, been easier with other destinations like the South of India (Kerala and even Sri Lanka) when they make their travel plans. As is true in cases like these, the cause and effect get lost somewhere over time and things that Goans believe have led to this downfall are the ones that they are indulging in themselves now. Out and about to teach a lesson to the boorish Indian tourists who have allegedly brought bad name to Goa, the locals are not sparing anything to use diamonds to cut diamonds.

For a state that depends on tourism for a major portion of its economy, it is an unfortunate set of circumstances, seeing things come to such a head. As the clouds gathered during the Goa Monsoon bring out the violent shades of the sea to the fore, one can only remember the blue and green waters when the weather was calmer. While this cycle will complete its course and once the Monsoon is over, Goa's beaches will again have the hues to calm and soothe rather than those to excite and awe, one wonders if the Goa experience will follow some cycle as well.