Athens

I slept throughout my travel and woke up with a start as the Air France aircraft hit turbulence nearer to Athens. I believe AF flights take it as a personal pride when their aircrafts shake and shudder in mid air. In fact, there had to be a procedural plug on the dashboard to be pulled to scare shit out of all aboard. At that moment however, I was glad it made such a commotion, coz dying in sleep is cool only when you are old and wasn't my idea of how I wanted to die right then. If I had to die, I rather look the death in the face, so I leaned and looked out with anticipation.

Downtown Athens, though inland, is in close proximity to Mediterranean Sea, and the offshoots thereof, such as Ionian & Aegean Seas. The aerial view of these islands is as beautiful as the names of these seas. Athens is located on the Argosaronikos Gulf, and it makes for a stunning seascape.

Everything I thought I knew about Athens from the newspapers and hearsay, I threw it in the airport dustbin the moment I landed. Two reasons: It was cold. It was posh.I hadn't packed much in the way of winter. I should have known the limits of European definition of 'sunny and hot'. For me it was still chilly.

The great thing about the Athens Airport was that it is open. Paris is dark and cold and makes a bleak appearance. Athens on the other hand made for an appearance closely resembling the Greeks as I was about to discover. I guess, the way a city welcomes you can be taken as a proxy for its overall disposition. I love Paris. But the carefree, sunny, relaxed disposition that Mediterranean climate bestows on the Southern Europe is sourly missing in Paris.

Northern countries make for better infrastructure though as they are less relaxed. Airport-Downtown Athens metros are every 30 minutes. I missed the frequency of Metros in Paris.

While loitering aimlessly on the train station, I saw this and I kept staring...

No way! This was seriously snazzy! Could I actually read Greek if I tried? The Greek alphabets were riding the flashes of my memory and all the highschool and college Physics started unravelling in front of my eyes. The shapes started making sense. Alpha, beta gamma, delta...so on till omega. So, I didn't always understand what it meant, but I could still read it! Can you? Try and you will succeed. Many of these words are of course similar to English. I love linguistics, especially the ontogeny and etymology of words, and it was a treat, these four days, just to keep reading and making sense of shapes, and then words. Another common word on the train station...ΕΞΟΔΟΣ (or Εξοδοσ)...Can you read it? It says, Epsilon-Xi-Omicron-Delta-Omicron-Sigma...Exodos...or exodus on more commonly, exit in English!

After a long train ride, I reached the heart of Athens. I checked-in, took bath, stepped out, got some food, ate, took a nap and then went out for a long night walk.

Every nook, every corner, in fact every road had something that was lying there since last 2000 years. Much of it is subterranean as the modern city has been built over the ancient ruins. Instead of making complicated pathways leading tourists to the sites of underground ruins, the Greeks have devised an ingenious way of exhibiting their treasure to the tourists. You will see glass portals on the roads and pavements through which people can look. It's a crazy contradiction. So, on my left and right were H&Ms, GAPs, ZARAz, MANGOs and C&As of the world, and below me were stones dating back to the BCs of the world. Are you fucking kidding me?!

I kept walking and came across a crossroad where a fellow was singing some folk songs and playing something like a Mandolin. I lingered around. I sat on a stone (who knows how old it must be) and kept listening to his sonorous voice. Gentle breeze, air strung with the smell of pizza and bread, and dim white light streaming from someplace. I looked up to see where is this source of light, moved a block, and met with a dazzling demonstration of architecture sitting snugly on a distant hill which we all know as Acropolis and Parthenon!

The Lunchbox..

...in a theatre in Paris! What a treat!

The French reviewers have been lapping up this movie...As you can see on the poster, someone said, un petit régal - one little treat; and une comédie romantique dans laquelle on se pend avec plaisir - a romantic comedy one spends time with with pleasure.

In one of the best arrondissements in Paris, the 5th...The theatre was this small quaint movie hall called Cinéma La Clef, and reminded me a lot of the M.G. Road in Bangalore in early 2000s before the onslaught of Forums and Garudas. All those vintage movie halls...Symphony, Plaza, Rex...

The theatre was full of firangs, and I was the only Indian.

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The movie was amazing. Liked Nimrat Kaur! She reminded me a lot of an old friend from PU. Gentle, soft-spoken, expressive eyes, and vulnerable. Irrfan Khan was good too but you can see the casual manner that has kinda become a technique now. Nawazuddin was fucking brilliant. Effortless and smooth. Everytime he came the audience cracked up. And yeah, Bharti Achrekar! She cracked up the crowd too. I loved the idea that (minor spoiler!) she is not visible, but her voice makes the presence felt every 10 minutes in her dialogues with Nimrat Kaur. What a brilliant concept to signify the isolation in cities. The french subtitles were well done, the crowd was responding fine, and they gave an ovation at the end! And then the most unusual thing happened that never happens in Paris...people were turning back and looking at me and smiling, most probably acknowledging my Indian presence, and probably acknowledging how much they liked the movie. It was a moment of great pride.

--

Parisians love movies, and Paris is a great city for movie buffs. They especially love movies from 40s, 50s and 60s. The movie tickets are printed on the back with images from old classics. Here's the ticket for Lunchbox, and what do we have at the back? It's a famous Hollywood movie of the 50s with a translated French title of course! Have a look!

Music From The Heart

Once in a while comes a movie which has an unattractive, cryptic title and looks utterly desolate and depressing, but is about music and that keeps casually tugging at your sleeves to give it your time of the day, that you eventually melt and relent. Two hours later when you come out, you realise it has been a fascinating experience. The movie doesn't have a plot to sustain for two hours, but the director, the lead actor and most of all the music manage to hold your attention all the while. I was completely drawn in, and enjoyed Inside Llewyn Davis.

One of my favourite genre of music is Irish and English Folk which is what features predominantly in the soundtrack. Reminded me of my childhood when my brothers and I would spend watching countless re-runs of Disney cartoons like Robin Hood which were full of Folk music of the isles.

Listen to Oscar Isaac singing 'The Death of Queen Jane'. One sad, lilting song. It's a treat to watch Isaac sing this in the theatre.

500 miles features on the soundtrack too. A slightly faster version with amazing harmonies by the three singers. This is a more commercial version as compared to the original 1961 recording by The Journeymen. Reminds you of a Hindi song, doesn't it? :)

Lost and Found

Every generation has to bear a curse.

Our generation was fortunate enough to have everything going for us. We had good education, have good work, good money. We are well travelled. We have resources at our fingertips. We have means to get most of the things we want.

The curse is lack of respite. 
--

Even with a fast pace of life, there are some things which have the power to bring everything to a halt. A sudden standstill. Like memories. Memories of childhood. Of Aai and Achcha. Of Akash, Bai and Pitaji. Of Gopuri. Of Shanu and Shweta. Of friends. Of Kerala.

Those memories are not always happy ones, but the sieve of time has filtered out all positive and negative connotations attached to them. Some memories bring smiles. In most cases however, there's absolutely no emotion attached. Just neutrality. As if it the story of someone else's life.
--

We didn't have a television while growing up. I watched movies in theatre or on the office VCR, always in the cosy company of family and friends. Everyone in my family has been a movie buff. Even my grandparents. I remember countless re-runs of Anand, Jaagte Raho, Shree 420, Boot Polish, Jagriti, Disney Cartoons on the office TV. I don't remember much of what I thought of these movies. All I remember is the AV room cum library. The musty smell of the pillows and rajais. The onslaught of mosquitoes. The Good Knight-Kachhuachhaap-smoke of half burnt green neem leaves combo to drive the mosquitoes away.

And the warm glow of the flickering screen in the quiet darkness of the room where the five of us would huddle together. For me that's still the true semblance of a family.
--

The movie 'Anand' was a staple. The highlight of the movie was always the song Kahin Door Jab (despite everyone ridiculing Mukesh's voice). I guess I must have realised even then that there was some magic happening there on screen. Those 5 minutes where Rajesh Khanna (sans his herogiri) reveals himself before us made a lifelong impact. It struck a chord. The song is one of the best examples of revealing your deepest self to the world, done so in privacy and solitude of one's own company. There is no crude, coarse desperation in that sadness. If anything, it comes forth in a simple display of words, melody and acting, that misery can be poised and elegant.
--

My day ends today with this song in the background, my nose pressed against the glass pane of my room looking out on the Paris skyline, and the blue night beam of Eiffel in close grasp. Everything together reminds me once again how important it is to live every single moment, whether happy or sad, and that nothing is worth sacrificing little bits of time for yourself.

How does one save one's children from the big bad world? You can empower them and then release them, like seeds bobbing in gusty wind. You can not hold them back, but you don't want to let go either. You can never know what is gonna happen to them and how they will turn up. But you can't keep protecting them too. I just want to empower my kids to stay happy and positive whatever the extrinsic situation be, and not just keep it to themselves, but take out some time from oneself and make a difference in others' lives too. A streak of sensitivity is a must, especially when more and more people around you won't be. I guess the most difficult part will be to teach them how to be balanced and open. My mind goes back to what my parents did. I know it sounds like a self-compliment, but I guess Aks and I turned out to be quite okay. And if I could manage at least that much, I would pass. Sometimes I think I will make a good father when my kids are younger, but will be ghoulish when they will enter teens. That'll be the problem of being born to a control freak.

Am so much more sympathetic of my parents now than I was in my 20s. I understand more and more the challenges of parenting. You want to do enough, but just enough. Man, it's difficult.
--

My stay in paris is equivalent to a terminally ill patient who has eaxctly 365 days. He is sad, but anything but complacent and every fucking second counts for him. I am glad for this feeling without actually having to die coz it makes me hungry for newer things all the time. No day is like any other. Yeah, I am tired much of the time and sleep a lot in my spare time, but I think boredom can be the worst thing that can happen to life - it's worse than tiredness.

I thank whatever it is that brings me to experience such amazing places and people. Every time I think it can't get better, it does. I seriously don't know where does one go though, from Paris. The saturation point will come some day when new experiences will stop moving me coz I have been to enough number of unique places and the tiredness will come when I will not want to meet new people, and that will be a depressing day.
--

When you yearn for something very strongly, there's a tinge of sadness associated with the achievement of finally making that thing happen. One of the most unattainable things for me in life was watching a Grand Slam, prefereably the Roland Garros. I did that this summer. To top it, I watched Martina Hingis play. While I am still not over that excitement, in a very very small way, I am feeling complacent. I don't like that feeling. I think I have a clue why that might be happening. Though it was never listed, once I experienced it, it became a strike in my to-do-list. I need to forget about the strike and just remember the experience. But there's another thing. The joy of first time is always different from the subsequent ones. The first analogy that jumps to mind is that of the first kiss. While the feelings about the person you are with now might be the same or even more fervent, there's something about the first one that is always special.

Maybe rightfully so. If one keeps obsessing about a single thing throughout one's life, how does one focus on other experiences? Feeling a little satiated about tennis makes space in my heart for some other joys I would like to pursue. So after all, it's not such a bad thing.
--

My natural state of mind is not positive but of perpetual questioning. Fortunately, I have a tendency to gravitate towards more positive outcomes and thoughts rather than the negative ones. If I face a problem, I wouldn't say, 'forget it yaar, be positive, everything happens for a reason.' I will try to fathom out those reasons in excruciating details. But rest assured, those answers are almost always going to be positive. The secret is that I know where I want to go, so all this reasoning and logic of answering questions and arriving at answers is a big farce. It's like working a problem backwards. So, though I am not a very positive person naturally, I seek positivity, and hence arrive at that. On one hand, I know that I am deceiving myself, on the other I let myself do that coz I feel more empowered, coz the reasoning is not half bad, and coz it allows me to keep my logical swords sharpened.

Mini Reviews 2

Frances Ha:

This is the season of black-and-white movies. Though I couldn't enjoy Oh Boy as it was in German with french subtitles, I definitely enjoyed this one. You would think B-n-W will hide stuff, but that's not true. I kept focussing on cracks, crevices, folds, wrinkles. The distractions of the colour are absent and you take in the frames much more. It gives a nostalgic feel to the proceedings as well, an old-world vintage charm. I wish the movie could rise above the visuals. The trailer was lot worthier than the movie. What was good was Greta Gerwig.

Man of Steel:

It was a mistake going for this movie. Waste of my time.

We Bought A Zoo:

Nothing great. Predictable.

Stoker:

One of the creepiest and more graphically violent movies I have seen so far. People are made off with for absolutely no rhyme or reason. However, very stylised and aesthetically made movie. Which makes it creepier.

21 Jump Street:

We don't have to feel inferior. This one is a witness to what trash Hollywood can produce given a chance.

Mini Reviews

A quick thoughts on the movies I watched recently:

Before Midnight:

I was so looking forward to this movie. You know what's coming. Yeah, I didn't like it. I didn't like it coz I was expecting something else. Though connected to the the prior two, I wish Linklater had made this movie not part of the trilogy, but as a movie on its own, without any past baggage. And what a tremendous baggage it must have been. Don't forget. The trio (Linklater, Delpy and Hawke) had been nominated for Oscar in the best adaptaed screenplay category. Credit to them, they embarked on a completely different journey of the couple, which for me was unacceptable. It's way too depressing with a tiny hope at the end, which is not enough. As an independent movie however, I liked it. On a tangent, I like movies where the characters don't change their clothes. It gives a sense of intimacy and regularity vis-a-vis cinematic fantasy and grandeur.

Mud:

Indie, small budget, big starrer movies. Simple stories. What they say about acting, also holds true about storytelling. Simplicity is more difficult. Mud is essentially simple. But not effortless. It is a forced simple story. Would I mind spending 10 € on it? Absolutely. Thank god for movie cards.

The Great Indian Butterfly:

It's a hybrid between Before Midnight and Before Sunset. In continuation of what I said about the baggage of past in Before Midnight (this movie doesn't have any), it also works coz we get enough time to see the softer side of the characters and their dormant but extant love for each other. It works as a road movie too, set in Goa. The movie has beautiful undercurrent with a meaningful message throughout, which is obvious to the viewers but characters are oblivious to it and are dicsovering it through the length of the movie. Loved it.

Sam and Cat:

Trash. If I had seen this poster before starting the 1st episode, I would have stayed away. Unfortunately, I mixed it up for I Am Sam.

Star Trek Into Darkness:

This was my first Star Trek experience. Being a somewhat loyal Star Wars fan, I was averse to the idea of watching all the earlier 700+ episodes and movies. I am glad I started with this. I am not gonna check up on all the past episodes coz watching them after watching such a superbly crafted movie is not worth it. I haven't had many 3-D experiences, so that was another bonus. That I was never into superheroes, stars, galaxies and aliens will be an understatement. I used to scoff at them. While watching this movie, I thought of front-benchers cheering for Govinda in a David Dhawan movie, but then such is life. As it gets more and more serious and hectic, fantasy becomes your respite.

Of Space, Sleep and Shade

University of Paris was divided into 13 autonomous institutes in 1971, and I am currently working in one of them. We are outside the Paris city boundary (but part of Île-de-France). I recently got a chance to see one of the other 12 universities. I have been there before but haven't been there recently and my belief just got reaffirmed that it's always good to work in a place outside the city. If inside, the least they could do is to give the buildings and people some breathing space with boulevards, cycle tracks and jogging alleys and make it greener by having patches of woody areas throughout. UPMC, the university I visited today is at best a concrete jungle. It's one of the best in Europe but it sucks to look at. The only good thing about UPMC is that it is built on the banks of the beautiful Seine river (with its dirty bottle-green coloured water). Thanked my luck that I didn't decide to come to UPMC.

The common thread in all the places I lived, worked and enjoyed has been that they were cushioned in their respective bubbles.. Though I did not decide on the places based on their landscaping, I enjoyed being there because they were spacious, wide, green and full of unadulterated oxygen. The Farm, Danagram, Auroville, IISc, and now Orsay and Maison, they are all places very near to civilisation but detached and buffered. That's what is endearing.
--

It's good to be in Paris and travel outside for work because there's no hustle-bustle of the city, metros are always empty coz you are travelling in the direction opposite to the swarm, and you come back in the evening to the dazzling array of activities placed before you on a platter. It's another thing that am shit tired by the time the evening arrives and don't feel like doing anything but sleep in my warm room, but I have devised an idea that works surprisingly well. I have to spend 30 minutes in the metro and sometimes more if there's snow. As soon as I embark, I find a seat and start my 30-minute long nap. It's not sound and deep but energises me nevertheless.
--

Last few days have been extraordinarily sunny and it was disappointing. If I needed sun, I would be in India. Bring on the cold! My moods in the morning depend on whether I open my eyes to direct sun rays or diffracted light. It never really pours here which is good coz one can leisurely walk around even during rains. Today while commuting, I kept observing the rooftops for some reason. They reminded me of some Indian houses, like our old house in Gopuri. We had windows in the roof for the skylight to come in. Of course, in summers we have too much sun in Wardha so one needs to have an exact reverse system. We first had a simple curtains-drawn and curtains-withdrawn system, but then my techno-genius dad came up with a wooden trapdoor system which was augmented just below the roof window, and could slide up and down over a wooden plate, effectively covering or uncovering the light outside. It was obviously up in the roof, so we would use a long bamboo to slide the trapdoor. It was a daily ritual which I had forgotten about, and these french roofs brought back the memory.

On a tangent, many houses in these parts are un-plastered and look beautiful because of the exposed walls that disclose the stones they were built with in a very aesthetic way. I have been a fan of the cobblestone streets of Europe (who isn't?). A house wall thus displayed looks just like extensions of the streets, bringing to mind 3-D arenas that Cobb and Ariadne walk (climb?) on, but this is way more beautiful.