A small segment that appeared on IBN Lokmat sometime back.
My 4 minutes of fame on TV :)
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
Vigilantes and Vigil Aunties
Published: Sunday Midday, 9 Aug 2009
When I was a little kid of six or seven and my Dad bought me the Phantom comics that were being published by Indrajal back then, there were a lot of things in them to capture my imagination. The Denkali jungle and the whole skull mountain thing was as enrapturing as ever, but the basic and most attractive element of it all was a man in a mask.
Likewise with Batman. Behind the dystopian setting of Gotham city, replete with the visually stimulating Bat-signal and the behind-the-waterfall-Batcave, is the alluring tale of a man who wears a mask. A man with a secret. A man who does things without his identity being revealed. What fun! It seems a particularly wonderful idea when you’re six and you’ve just broken Mum’s favourite flower pot. You hear her yelling from the kitchen, asking you what the ‘crash’ was and then you hear her footsteps approaching. You want to pull out your sword and yell ‘By the power of Greyskull!!’ and transform into He-man. You’re certain Mum won’t have the guts to ask He-man anything about a measly flower pot… But you’re wrong. Not only does she have the guts, she has the cheek to wring He-man’s ears as well! The problem is, at six, He-man is only four feet tall and wields a plastic sword.
But the trivial details are easily missed when the greater goal is having an alter ego no one knows about. You’re a few feet shorter than He-man and you don’t ride a big green tiger…So what??
We formed a secret superhero team once. We decided one of us could fly, the other could see through things and the third could turn invisible. The next time we broke a window pane playing cricket, Mr. Invisible simply stood there grinning at the grumpy uncle who came charging out of the house. We were all in for a shock when Mr. Invisible was hauled up before his parents by the scruff of his neck. Undaunted, we formed a G.I.Joe team a couple of days later. We took an oath of secrecy and utmost commitment on the terrace – commitment to what we weren’t sure of, but we took the oath anyway. We didn’t have cannons to solemnize the event, so we lit Laxmi bombs instead. For the next few weeks, I only responded to the code name ‘Torpedo’. An unfortunate fallout was, I was marked absent for a month in school.
Boys severely infected with the vigilante-hero bug, show symptoms well beyond the ages of six and seven. My immediate neighbour and I were thirteen when we decided to become superheroes. With secret identities of course! So one evening, when the lights went out, we went into his house to don our costumes. A couple of his old T-shirts with holes cut into them, became our face-masks. Then we put on old jerseys or something and we were ready! We strode out into the dark night – two vigilantes on debut.
There was a dearth of super-villains to fight with, since no crazy scientist or Martian menace was plotting to pulverize our housing society with harmful radiation. So we decided to ambush a five year old inching his way down the dark staircase. A poor substitute for a Martian but he would do on our first night out as superheroes. Besides, he was a bad mannered brat who always came cycling in the way when we played cricket in the evenings, so technically he qualified as a miscreant needing to be given a good scare. We hid ourselves in the passage till he’d passed us and then signalling to each other, pounced on the unsuspecting villain.
“Tejas! Rohit! Leave me leave me!!” he cried out. That hit us pretty hard. We were supposed to be superheroes in costumes!! Secret identities!! And a five year old had recognized us? In the pitch darkness?? Needless to say, that was the only night our housing society had its own team of vigilantes. We dropped our costumes, but it took a while to get over the heartbreak of having been recognized.
Roughly thirteen years later, I’m sitting at the Mahanaaz café with a friend of mine. A lady walks in and I realise I’m looking at my old seventh standard class teacher! Oh how fearful she looked back then! Intimidating, stern and steadfast in her mission to keep us from yakking, brawling, fooling around or indulging in any of the other scholastic pastimes. Our teachers knew us inside out back in Vincent’s. They always had an eye out for all the mischief we tried to pull and the same eye would turn moist at every batch farewell party. Years later, we coined a phrase for them. They were the ever alert ‘vigil aunties’. The vigil aunties who saw everything; who knew every boy in class by name.
I’m pretty certain she’ll recognize me and I’m smiling as I jump in front of her and yell “Good evening!” She only blinks a couple of times, a trifle stunned by having her path blocked by a bounding stranger grinning from ear to ear.
This time it’s the heartbreak of not having been recognized. How things change…
Likewise with Batman. Behind the dystopian setting of Gotham city, replete with the visually stimulating Bat-signal and the behind-the-waterfall-Batcave, is the alluring tale of a man who wears a mask. A man with a secret. A man who does things without his identity being revealed. What fun! It seems a particularly wonderful idea when you’re six and you’ve just broken Mum’s favourite flower pot. You hear her yelling from the kitchen, asking you what the ‘crash’ was and then you hear her footsteps approaching. You want to pull out your sword and yell ‘By the power of Greyskull!!’ and transform into He-man. You’re certain Mum won’t have the guts to ask He-man anything about a measly flower pot… But you’re wrong. Not only does she have the guts, she has the cheek to wring He-man’s ears as well! The problem is, at six, He-man is only four feet tall and wields a plastic sword.
But the trivial details are easily missed when the greater goal is having an alter ego no one knows about. You’re a few feet shorter than He-man and you don’t ride a big green tiger…So what??
We formed a secret superhero team once. We decided one of us could fly, the other could see through things and the third could turn invisible. The next time we broke a window pane playing cricket, Mr. Invisible simply stood there grinning at the grumpy uncle who came charging out of the house. We were all in for a shock when Mr. Invisible was hauled up before his parents by the scruff of his neck. Undaunted, we formed a G.I.Joe team a couple of days later. We took an oath of secrecy and utmost commitment on the terrace – commitment to what we weren’t sure of, but we took the oath anyway. We didn’t have cannons to solemnize the event, so we lit Laxmi bombs instead. For the next few weeks, I only responded to the code name ‘Torpedo’. An unfortunate fallout was, I was marked absent for a month in school.
Boys severely infected with the vigilante-hero bug, show symptoms well beyond the ages of six and seven. My immediate neighbour and I were thirteen when we decided to become superheroes. With secret identities of course! So one evening, when the lights went out, we went into his house to don our costumes. A couple of his old T-shirts with holes cut into them, became our face-masks. Then we put on old jerseys or something and we were ready! We strode out into the dark night – two vigilantes on debut.
There was a dearth of super-villains to fight with, since no crazy scientist or Martian menace was plotting to pulverize our housing society with harmful radiation. So we decided to ambush a five year old inching his way down the dark staircase. A poor substitute for a Martian but he would do on our first night out as superheroes. Besides, he was a bad mannered brat who always came cycling in the way when we played cricket in the evenings, so technically he qualified as a miscreant needing to be given a good scare. We hid ourselves in the passage till he’d passed us and then signalling to each other, pounced on the unsuspecting villain.
“Tejas! Rohit! Leave me leave me!!” he cried out. That hit us pretty hard. We were supposed to be superheroes in costumes!! Secret identities!! And a five year old had recognized us? In the pitch darkness?? Needless to say, that was the only night our housing society had its own team of vigilantes. We dropped our costumes, but it took a while to get over the heartbreak of having been recognized.
Roughly thirteen years later, I’m sitting at the Mahanaaz café with a friend of mine. A lady walks in and I realise I’m looking at my old seventh standard class teacher! Oh how fearful she looked back then! Intimidating, stern and steadfast in her mission to keep us from yakking, brawling, fooling around or indulging in any of the other scholastic pastimes. Our teachers knew us inside out back in Vincent’s. They always had an eye out for all the mischief we tried to pull and the same eye would turn moist at every batch farewell party. Years later, we coined a phrase for them. They were the ever alert ‘vigil aunties’. The vigil aunties who saw everything; who knew every boy in class by name.
I’m pretty certain she’ll recognize me and I’m smiling as I jump in front of her and yell “Good evening!” She only blinks a couple of times, a trifle stunned by having her path blocked by a bounding stranger grinning from ear to ear.
This time it’s the heartbreak of not having been recognized. How things change…
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Sculpture sketches
Another trip down memory lane...
Sketches of sculptures done in Sasavne at the museum of the late sculptor Shri Vinayakrao Karmarkar. We spent several hours sketching here. Karmarkar was a remarkable man and an unbelievably gifted sculptor. A lifesize stone buffalo in the lawn outside looks like it'll move any second. The sculpture of a young adolescent girl - Hira Kolin - in the museum upstairs frequents the imagination of boys fifty years after it was sculpted. The two sketches here are of sculptures of JRD Tata and a young lady.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Mandai
Outdoor sketches besides being a lot of fun, have the power to rediscover the beauty of places that have lost their charm because of over-familiarity. When somebody in Pune mentions Mandai, people think vegetables, the maddening crowd, the cramped little lanes, the horrors of trying to find a parking place, the annoyance of having to go there on an errand...
In the midst of all this, the inherent majesty of its architecture is easily lost... Park your bike across the street, pull out your sketch pad and there's a good chance you'll find it again...
Sunday, July 26, 2009
The Eiffel Tower
Did this one some years ago.... It was a lot of fun but it was basically a Parisian drawing made in Pune... I hope some day there'll be one I've done actually sitting in front of the Eiffel :)
Monday, July 13, 2009
The Fiasco that wasn't
About six years ago, I met a nutcase one evening; he recognized me as one of his own kind and we collected others of our tribe. We quickly decided we wanted to come out with a satirical humour magazine. We were all a bunch of firebrand comic supporters and creators... but what we weren't were marketing people. Our baby 'Fiasco' died a one issue death from want of incisive R&D, marketing know-how, and promotional enterprise. Not-to-mention finance :)
Much later, whenever I spoke to people about it, I always joked that 'Fiasco' lived up to its reputation...
Today I realise not everything can be measured in terms of its epidermal success. Fiasco gave me things that have stayed with me long after the pinch of the magazine not taking off died away - A bunch of friends with whom I've done some kickass work since; the taste of things not working out first, so you really relish the times when they do; A pretty good education in what looks good, bad and quite ugly on paper and several other lessons...
When you look at it that way, Fiasco may have lived up to its rep in terms of not kicking off... but as far as its importance in my scheme of things goes, it was the Fiasco that wasn't :)
The above image is a Fiasco poster I'd done back then. Real freak show
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