Riz smiles with Reason

There once lived a man named Tarantula. And a woman named Quentin. Tarantula’s parents had been avid aracnomanics (Spider lovers) and Quentin’s parents were movie buffs. Quentin’s parents were film school graduates. In the early days of their career they has started a company called “White and Black Feather films.” Unfortunately the company couldn’t survive after some south East Asian countries banned film making and American film maker Quentin renunciated the US of A for Buddhisism in Tibet. So as a tribute to much of their success, they pledged to name their only child, a girl Quentin. Tarantula’s mother was a lucid dreamer, she could control her dreams. She loved her spider named “Spider” so much that it even over shadowed her love for her husband. She once dreamt of making out with Spider in a webby situation. Nine months later, when a son was born, she was disappointed and refused to even look at him. Weeks later when two eunuchs, named Shola and Shabnam came on their regular roun

When frogs rain from the sky, things can get really messy. Each slimy, slithery, green, orange, brown, and black thing falls flat on its soft belly, bursting into even slimier squashed liquid splashing on everything around. If you have children playing outside, “its advisable to get them indoors” says the met department. Frogs hate kids. ‘It is best to keep tubs of hot water in your garden and on roads,’ says the article in the First and Only city magazine. Frogs can fall in, dissolve and become jelly, gooey and slippery. You can then eat that stuff. “Rain frog topping” or “whipped frog Irish cream” on a simple day with coffee and conversation. Or fill it up in bottles and gift it to your child to throw it on frogs. Why did you think frogs hate kids? One frog cannot take another frog in semi solid/liquid state on its skin. It’s creepy for the poor thing. They hate skin on skin, that’s why they mate when they are extremely bored and have nothing else to do. So imagine that much skin! No

Six years in Delhi introduced me to three types of people; Big towners and small towners. And Prashant introduced me to the really small towners. Go***d is a big towner. I am a small towner and Prashant, in his own words is a really small towner. So that should be Delhi, Lucknow and Faisabad . This distinction is not really as bad as the caste system, but almost nearly. While the big towner is curious, whether Lucknow has internet, the small towner and poor cousin, the even smaller Towner, are wondering, “how’d we make it to your terrain?” But the big towner insists and “I say, of course!” “Do you have Mac Donald’s?” “No.” “You have Cable TV.” “Listen, I don’t know what impression you have of small towns, but I think you should really go and have a look yourself.” “So if everything is so cool there, why do you have to come to Delhi?” No answer to that. One year in the film industry has taught me the “other kind of small towness.” This one is a residue of the “struggler, Andheri-surburb

some door. if it opens.

She was really ve ry b o ssy. But that's not the first thing I want you to know about her. But now that it is the first thing you already know about her, I'll tell the other first thing you should know about her. She's very much like me. And that's not of much consequence either. I guess you don't know me either. The girl in the picture is not who i'm talking about. In fact, this photo reminded me of myself, and not her. I was nervous and shifty at that age, not her. She could have been the camera and I could have been her. Feet in nervous togetherness and g a ze in distant indifference. Hate being watched. Actually, she should know I'm talking of her, because she knows me well. We grew up together, acting out names, guessing the parts we played. It was always a fight for the story books we both wanted to read. The ones she sneaked into the toilet, and the ones I could never get myself to read again. T

Thak gayaa hoon yaad karte karte tujhko Ab main tujhko yaad aana chahata hoon...

this is my island in the sand

I've been in and out of jobs for a while now. A glorified labourers job got me to Delhi recently. Not being able to keep up with the sheer weight of my job, I quit. Telling myself I would never again want to work with an American DoP. I also consoled myself by saying I could get another job anytime I wanted. So, I rushed myself into some "research type" of work this time, no lifting moniters and running for apple boxes or messing with messy film inside the changing bag. I am very serious about professional photography. I also work with a very established cinematographer in Mumbai. I had never before thought making camera my professional choice would be so shaken because of not being able to lift it long enough for others to feel "she can do it" This film of course had a very unlike bollywood work culture. Here, the Assistant camera person, in my case, camerawoman ( a term no one quite uses) does all the work a camera attendant does in Mumbai. That work involves