Saying bye ....yet again

So I've been avoiding this one post that has been weighing down on my conscience (for not writing it yet).  Emotions have been running high and almost everyone has left Syracuse for either NYC or LA. It's the end to me of an era in a way.

My tryst with grad school ended on 14th May. Wearing that black gown and cap and taking the walk with fellow TRFers was painful, literally and metaphorically. Barely awake, suffocating in the heat with those polyester cloaks, not only did I have to really focus on Richard Edleman's soliloquy on new media but also on fighting back my tears. I probably have stated this in my earlier posts and if I try harder, I"ll risk sound cheesy, but graduation week was beautiful and yet awful. Everything just sped up in two days and next thing I know, I am helping friends pack and having to say bye - and to some it was probably a bye forever.

Let's pretend for a moment that as an adult one matures with separations. When you are 8 or 15 you cry when you move a city or your friend does but you get distracted by all the other overwhelming things that occupy your life then. When you grow older and settle into a rhythm with a group of people you can identify with and work with productively, separation is like losing a limb. You know life will have to go on, but that missing piece will always remind you of what was lost.

I can barely do justice to recollect all the moments of saying bye to some of my closest friends here but for the sake of nostalgia, I"ll do a few. Jack left first for Chicago. I realized that I would be an idiot to cry given the amazing friendship we developed so I wrote her a letter (something I love doing as parting messages) and packed the 'grape' cap along that she always teased me with. She choked up when she read it and gave me  hug so hard, it squeezed the wind out of my ribs. It's ironic, how perfect our plan for living together in NYC was and yet how I am drifting towards the west coast. But that's how life is I guess. 

Jess was next. Always good with hiding her emotion. She was so overwhelmed with this beginning of our 'byes' that she wanted to cry and yet she wouldn't let herself. So four days later, when I hugged her bye the night before she left 'cuse, I was so relieved to realize she was sobbing. We held each other and cried for what seemed like eternity and then just like that she held me away, said goodnight and refused to look back. I don't think my goodbyes to any of my ex- boyfriends have been that emotional :P

Carm left for Montreal a day later and I did also try helping her pack but we just ended up talking more. She is headed west coast as well so it wasn't that bad saying bye. 

Persian kid is leaving for Europe day after to meet his girlfriend and while we did have our talk about missing our friendship, I am so sure I will be working with him in the near future. I"ll miss his nerdy, dorky craziness and our long conversations about nature and our cooking sessions.

For the last one week or so, I have been hanging out a lot with Jerry. I never realized before this, how much I enjoy his company. We spend close to 13 hours just driving in the last two weeks and he's probably the reason I passed my road test. He's been vouching that I won't leave for another week or so and truly enough, I decided to stay another week before I head out. Looking forward to more fun times together. I almost am tempted to move out with him and Lee to the city.

Which leaves Ryan. The elder brother I've never had. His family has adopted me as their own. Watching him around his kids and Steph, spending time over our projects, our film and now our quality time together in the yard gardening and over meals has helped me pull through some really tough times this year. I can't even imagine saying bye to him so I am not going to talk about it.

The people I met, worked with and spend my weekends cooking for and hanging out with in general, have shaped me incredibly. If someone asks me what was the most memorable aspect of my one year in the US, it will have to be the time with my classmates. The word 'school' will never be the same again and as the chosen grad speaker said on commencement the word 'orange' won't either.

I am heading out to LA in a week for an internship and from thereon I have no idea what's next in line. There's barely any savings, the loan's almost run out and I don't have a job. I've been denying how much this stresses me but somebody said to me the other day "What's the worst that can happen? You will head back home to India". How do I explain to him that my understanding of the word 'home' is not the same anymore.

Epiphany at 1 pm at Newhouse

A walk down the edit suites of Newhouse at 1 pm , close to a week before we are set to graduate made me repeat two crucial lessons to myself that I learnt this year in my Master's program. 

**The people who work the hardest - not just the creative ones , but those who plod on tirelessly - are the ones who will survive this industry. 

** "Making movies" (as Morgera says) is what I need to remind myself constantly, even in my weakest moment of doubt about whether this industry is really what I want to remain in

A year and half earlier......switching career streams was not an easy decision. Leaving Mumbai was not a very convincing one either. Coming to a new country and starting from scratch almost at the bottom of the pyramid in a new field.... that has been the toughest of them all.

But on days like this, as I saunter in to school way past midnight, with other TRFers (as we refer to ourselves TV, Radio and Film students) barely awake and still holed up in their Avid suites getting the rough cuts ready for our big day of screening , I am struck by what a blessing it has been, to have met these people who have evolved from being merely fellow classmates to teachers, to becoming my closest friends and now almost a family of its own. The sheer joy of collaborating with them to create something from the germ of an idea, to furtive scribbles on bar napkins, to a script and then breaking it down visually to piece into one organic story... I could start this process over and over again.

Newhouse.....you have been the best decision I have made so far.

Here's to TRF 63

Of a film that made me want to return to Mumbai...

Dear N,

Trust this finds you well. I could not make it to Kiran Rao's screening of Dhobi Ghaat at Cornell. However, I finally found time  to watch it today and I am stunned to say the least. The narrative was so strong and the potrayal of Mumbai's ethos so realistic.... The editing was seamless and almost every frame felt like a beautifully composed still picture that had a story to tell of its own.

I think I was overwhelmed because the film resonates one of my strongest beliefs about human relationships..that they all overlap in concentric circles or sometimes in ripples. More often than not, we have little control over who we meet and what transpires thereafter. And if pondered upon carefully, almost all our encounters with people who come and go is anything but sheer co-incidence.


Seeing Shai stand alone at junction in South Mumbai - in between confusion and epihany -  bathed in the light of the street lamps and the first light of daybreak, reminded me of some of my most difficult days in that city. 

Thank you so much for putting together such a beautiful film. I miss Mumbai sorely and this movie gave me yet another reason to want to return.

In Limbo

I am two weeks away from graduating. Two thesis films yet to be completed, numerous assignments with overlapping deadlines, 3 finals within two days of each other and my dream internship at Focus narrowly missed because of my being engrossed with a multitude of things that weren't in a priority list.

A year back on this day, I was sauntering across the garden back at home in India  absolutely ignorant of the whirlwind of an experience this year would turn out to be. And here I am, almost at the threshold of a possible life in another country, a career and a future and yet that visible catalyst to triggering that off seeming so elusive.

Reality checks of having to return to Mumbai and starting all over again and the anxiety of a loan ridden future has me turn to 'Parks and Recreation' for comfort. Leslie Knope give me hope :) It's 6 AM and I am up, writing, watching pretending that worrying is unnecessary...

 R reminded me that the worse that could happen would be to return to a country that offers me countless options when it comes to work...... Perhaps he is right. Perhaps not. If only I could go home for a brief while, be with family and friends and meet those I need to before I start my life here.

For now it's one day and one step at a time ..... I lack the luxury of wanting, missing or needing...

Of Fathers and Sons

Yesterday was the last class of my Light & Lens course. I am so very grateful that we had a fantastic professor like Coffeay. In my previous job, I observed my cameramen work effortlessly to get the light right and being a very very very amateur photographer...well someone who loves visuals, colour, light in short, this course was my hands on practical training in setting up lights, understanding the various aspects of key, fill, green screens, shadows, pools ...the works basically.

Which brings me to why I am writing this post. Coffeay showed us a documentary called "Tell Them Who You Are". It was about the eccentric or some would say radical American cinematographer Haskell Wexell and his difficult relationship with his son who happened to be the documentary's director. The film was shot mostly and narrated from the perspective of his son and captured Haskell in his 80s, fit as a stick and still dominating as his reputation in Hollywood testifies. For those of you who are wondering why Haskell is famous, he was judged as one of history's ten most influential cinematographers and has iconic films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, America America, Bound for Glory, Medium Cool (which he directed), The Thomas Crown Affair, American Graffitti amongst many others. Not just this,  Haskell was an avid documentary filmmaker and attached himself to causes against the establishment's much criticized activities in developing countries. 

The film starts off as a 'talking heads' piece with the likes of Lucas, Jane Fonda amongst many other illustrious Hollywood personalities recalling their memory of Haskell. But upon the latter's suggestion, it evolves into a moving piece (albeit torturous to watch in places because of the arguments and taunts that Haskell subjects his son Mark to repeatedly) of a father's relationship or the lack of it with his son. As I watched Haskell bicker with his son on camera, arguing about creative differences, I was reminded of my father's relationship with his father. Dadu, my grandpa was what would underestimate by referring to him as "persuasive". He was loved and admired for his knowledge and generosity. But to those who had seen his temper and stubbornness, one would perhaps not hesitate from labeling him as a difficult father and a husband.

Needless to say, this attitude must have left a deep impression upon my father. My grandma tells me they never my dadu and baba never got along and come to think of it, I am able to look beyond a lot of my father's unflattering characteristics with this knowledge. I understand my dad's frequent short temper and his impatience with us. How can you grow up without not being affected in some way or the other by the eccentricities of your father. Yet, growing up I saw my father do everything possible that a loving son would do for his father. To the extent that every summer, my father would insist that we all spend the month long vacation with my grandparents. "No sight-seeing, no new states and no summer activities", as my mom remarks to this date.

For many years now, I've also seen my sibling's perspective of my father as very different from mine. And I didn't relate to it until much later when I understood how his attitude to her growing up had led to certain characteristic traits in her personality she wasn't proud of. Of course, we've had open discussions/arguments over how better of a father figure he's been to me than to her. But in the end,  she understands that she has always idolized him subconsciously and emulated his values and that as children (not daughters vs sons but children) we couldn't have been more blessed to have him as our father. 

I think the men from my grandfather's generation and to some extent my father's, where hardened by the severe disciplining of their parents. You weren't required to be a nurturing parent but more so a taskmaster to a child.

As I see it, men have softened, become more domesticated, nurturing and equal partners in the process of parenting in the last two decades. and as ironic as this sounds with the rising number of divorces I see, families today have more nurturing and compassionate male figures than they did before.

Haskell at one point in the documentary, called his son "a mess". As much as I wanted to dislike him, I also wanted to admire him. I think he came a long way by agreeing to open his life's secrets and allowing his son to go public with the honest truth of the scars, the resentments and finally the forgiveness that his son experienced in their relationship.

Tom Hayden (Jane Fonda's ex husband) summed it up pretty well when he referred to what he and many sons experience from their difficult relationships with their father . I can't recall word by word but it was on the lines of "one has to cut off the toxic transmission that one was at the receiving end of to become a more responsible adult to your children". Couldn't have been better said.

So this is an ode to all the fathers who weren't quite what they were required to be for their sons - ideal role models; to the fathers who found courage to admit their mistakes; to the father who has learnt from his past and changed himself.

To my grandfather in the end who despite all his flaws gave me my father; someone who puts his childrens' need before his, protects them from the worst risking his own life and who has despite all that he may have once not been, has always been a true friend.

Thank you baba

Of orange love scenes and perfect Saturdays

I am jumping up high, higher and higher. No...literally, Florence and the Machine has that effect on me.

That and the fact that I must surely have the best combination of very gifted actors, a brilliant Director of Photography and a very versatile Producer. The first love scene for my thesis film went off well today. I had butterflies looking at M and J kiss n our tangerine lit attic room.....

Later we unwinded with a bottle of wine and idle banter with Adrienne's duck Dexter and four dogs

Days like this remind me why I should never give up on my long term dream of directing...

And oh yes, the London-US call was the best 3 hour of non-stop laughter I've had in a long time. 

Thanks A :)

For once.....

I don't like updates. As in I don't like giving updates in the form of a blog post (shouldn't I be maintaing a super secretive journal in that case ?) but I am making an exception tonight.

Because.....I had a marvelous evening. Six weeks away from graduating and wrapping up this dream of a bubble/ blissful academic experience that Newhouse School at Syracuse has been, I am grappling with the potential to make the best of the time left.

How am I doing that? To begin with, I took up two thesis films. That's right TWO.

I am Producing a short fantasy fiction for children and Directing a coming of age story about a young woman's effort to break through the stereotypes associated with exploring one's sexuality. Yes. They are completely different at the opposite ends of the spectrum. And that's the beauty of being involved with this craft.

The real challenge is directing two very crucial love scenes in the second one. C my Producer/Writer called  our lead actors over for drinks today and I swear I am not advocating the use of alcohol, but it did make a difference to creating a very nice comfort level between our actors. 


It's a bit bizarre at times at how involved you have to become as a director helping your actors shape a mood or experience that will dictate a scene and then detach yourself from it almost immediately and let that scene become theirs. 

The wine must have helped because I communicated what I wanted from my actors perfectly. And to my relief, M and J locked themselves away in C's room and rehearsed their scene. It's ironic, but it was my male lead who was more nervous about the intimacy than the female actor. Hallejuah!

Later, C and I decided to give ourselves a break and headed to the only Irish pub on campus. C's cell was flooded with texts from two different guys both wanting to spend the evening with her.


!!!

I am barely a feminist but for once, cheers to the women I work with. It was truly OUR evening. We danced away with each other barely concerned about the lack of male company in our river dance stunt

Salut!