title card
all characters in this film are fictional.
any resemblance to any person dead or live is an oversight.
the story of my fathers
a table in an editing suit, 10-15 audio cassettes all dated, ten or twelve mini-dv cassettes, some files and loose papers all lying in a carton, zoom-in. fade to black.
v. o. :(over black screen with a song playing in the background)
this date will appear in the same way in which the dates are marked on the audio tapes at the right hand top corner of the screen and linger on for sometime before fading away :-
19th april 2002
there is always a fear that tomorrow i will wake up with out a thought
tomorrow may just spring upon you without a thought
like something you didn’t want to bump into as you turn the corner
its like that sometimes
As this VO starts, scenes of the city keep coming. railway platforms, bus stations, cinema hall fronts, market places, inside of crowded bus.
but only sometimes
other times its just going to work
work is very strange
work is just sitting around
looking at people
out the window sometimes
occasional trips to the loo where i get a lot of time off
just for the view you know
i look over the rooftops of the city
ahhh…and i smoke my cigarette
with my tea and be thoughtless and have unfocused eyes
in front of me will be the haze of clear perspective
every night i lie down listening to the world
in these sounds
songs, cars, people, feet shuffling, tvs, wind
and i don’t remember a thing
all these things remind me of nothing
its such a hollow sound when it all adds up
A filmmaker is at the door of some flat, he rings the bell, the boom enters the frame and quickly exits, nothing seems to be happening on the other side. After sometime, the door cracks and a voice comes from the other side, “i don’t like to be filmed”. The guys plead but the man is adamant.
(overlapping over this will be the following )
21st august 2002
V.O:
hey wait i have to play you a song which somehow to me seems adequate for the moment
(the filmmakers voice): but you were going to tell us something
V.O:
i will, i will, with the song…
Beautiful freak by eels plays on black screen, we can overhear the filmmakers disappointment. At this point when the song hits a crescendo, a montage of badly edited snatches of 80-85 dd programs hits the screen. This lasts for a minute or so.
The song fades away and the room is revealed to us.
Window panes overlooking another flat’s wall in which a similar window is seen looking much smaller because of the distance.
V.O.:
this is something that i made with vhs footages recorded on my vcr
hard work you know
i have done lot of stupid things like this
i guess if i had some real friends i would have showed it to them
consider this my peace offering for not letting myself be shot
–the voice pauses for sometime–
A close-up of the window pane. Another close-up of a stereo system next to the window, gentle zoom on to the machine. The song from the hindi film Bazaar dikhayee diye plays on the sound track in a low volume, rising with the V.O.
22nd Aug 2002
my father used to work in the circus as an accountant
in 86 he went off with them on an all India tour
and while in Kerala a trapeze artist fell on him and he died
that was in 87 or 88
i am not sure now actually
somehow my mother seems more remember-able
but i remember this guy bringing the news of my dad’s death
i was watching saagar sarhadi’s bazaar at that point of time
the music now is in normal volume, the stereo dissolves onto a shot of a corridor where a man leans against the door frame and says finished. the television on which the film bazaar is going on.
but before he died thankfully he had bought me a television and a bicycle
there are other things that he did for me and my mother
but at that time these were the two things i valued the most
my mother took up a job and i have been living happily ever after
The school corridor with the hollow hum.
i was never that good in school
sometimes i felt like abusing everything
abuse and insult everything that kept me out of it
i was what you may call a wimp
that didn’t bother me so much
because the other guys were so desperate to be cool
i thought that was wimpy
i was just fine the way i was, getting by
and imagine that was seen as a bad thing
Rajiv Gandhi being sworn in as the PM after Indira’s death.
indira gandhi’s death was a really big event for television
there was nothing on tv but that shehnai guy, i think his name was bismillah khan
whatever
and those days i remember being really bored
i think my mother had a crush on rajiv
its one of the redeeming features about my mom
he was easily the best politician we had
he didn’t seem overly concerned
he seemed sufficiently bothered about people
looked as good as any other head of state while on foreign tours
my hero
maybe out of boredom
or maybe because of the urges to be “gora” “chitta” like Rajiv
Scenes of riots.
it was during that time that i had my first sexual experience
i was in this friends house and outside the rioters were burning this sardarji’s car
poor sardarji, the rioters also killed his Pomeranian dog
those rioters were such arseholes
anyways as all this was happening this guy
titutbhaiyya as he was known to me
made me hold his prick
all wet and sticky
and kissed me hard in the mouth
something deliciously repulsive about that memory
i like to think about it when i am really bored
Rajiv Gandhi with Amitabh Bachchan.
4th april 2003
amitabh bachchan was always a good guy
i could really understand him then
he was like a kid always treated in a particular way which was not pleasing to him
in all his films he seemed to never have gotten a break from life
i am talking about the onscreen bachchan
not the other abcl logo walla guy
onscreen, bachchan died a natural death
i was a bit sad when he made toofan anhd jadugar and ajooba and shit like that
after that bachchan got senile and paunchy
i guess i am also paunchy now but not the same way
People drinking beer and sign by ace of base playing loud.
around that time my father was working as a con artist
he also starred in a stupid amateur theatre group as othello
he died at 37 when a man from a trapeze fell on him
Asian games / L.A. Olympics video comes up on screen, silently, only the VO is heard.
20th aug 2002
to be honest i feel i am lying most of the time
my mother used to tell me that i am mad
she even forced me to see 2 psychiatrists, one de-addiction counselor
and innumerable father figure dudes who wanted to save my soul
cut to :
Father figure dudes : eminent citizens will give their assessment of the current generation.
then she gave up when one of the psychiatrists told her that
he needed to do sessions with her and not me
even i was scared that i am mad sometimes
you can never be sure that you are not mad
so i stopped thinking about it
anyway i like being the way i am whether i am mad or not
Interview chunks from krishi darshan, will keep incessantly coming over this VO.
Back to shots of Rajiv Gandhi inter cut with shots of Johnny Soko and his flying robot.
my father was a nice man
he managed to impress me without assaulting me
he kept away didn’t bother me much
if my father were a circus artist
i could have said that a trapeze artist fell on him and he died
but he didn’t
–laughs-
my father married a TV star and is settled in Kuwait right now
i don’t know what to think about him anymore
Giant robot firing missiles.
3 may 2002
Giant robot dissolves onto montage of beef factory.
v.o.:
why is it seen as such a problematic thing if a man just sits in his room
being content with himself
Grunge music plays on this sequence.Images of early nineties music videos from MTV.
when someone played Seattle grunge music to me for the first time i was amazed
i thought this kind of music is so strange here
now i think of it
i was a middle class Indian kid listening to bad music
made for white trash Americans
the streets of the city are awash with all kinds of such stupid white trash rejects
i still listen to all that stuff
it brings back fond memories of a time when i thought i will grow older and smarter
Stills from 90’s films, ads, print media etc keep flashing over this.The streets where college guys and girls are hanging out. Macdonalds kind of places, disco fronts, pubs, theks etc.
i think that from after i got out of white trash music
things have reached some sort of an impasse
i wasn’t stupid
i too read some books
in one film i saw with this film society i am with
i saw the devil tell a new vampire
that all the philosophical problems posed by his vampirism
will have their answers in the books
and he quoted a line from Rimbaud to illustrate his point
what do you say when you have nothing left to say
writing appears on screen over images of film society screenings, nandan, railway platforms, trains, metro, burra bazaar, sealdah market, inter cut with tv images of contemporary shows from television.
writing:
i will tear out all the qualities of underdevelopment that dystopic insecurities i have
i will dwell upon the possibility of making my own language
assuming that it is the majority language
the most important for human beings
the attempt is to scrape of the little image of myself that has been projected onto the vast geographical relief of the sum total of memory
when i die i don’t think i will leave any space in the world
the gap will be easily filled
well traipsing along
saying things convolutedly
because there is no other way to say it
but
inferiority as an effect is good fun
its mental s and m
my father committed suicide
you see he was a suicide artist
upon whom a trapeze artist fell
on a commercial theater stage
my father was superman and clark kent
only there were lots more alias that worked in various worlds
like amitabh bachchan, kurt cobain, rajiv gandhi , jim morrison, william burroughs,
i have seen my father with cotton stuffed all the way up his nose
i have seen him lie peacefully in the fire
ironically happy with whatever fate
he died peacefully like a stray dog
soundtrack of akira will play over this as handwritten lines scroll over the images.
filmmaker’s v.o. :
after collecting all this material from him, we were still nowhere. we knew where he lived and we knew nothing else bout him. the neighbors never talked to him, he didn’t get anything delivered to him, and he did his own laundry and housekeeping.
after having edited this much of the film we wanted to meet him again and just talk to him once again. but when we went there we realized that he never lived there. we searched out the owner of the flat who was an old lady whose children were in Germany and for whom she is supposed to be holding the flat.
this man seemed to have disappeared in thin air, and we started feeling like we had made up this man. probably there was no such man, probably we were just projecting.
images from the morgue where unidentified dead bodies are kept.
–titles over burnt pride by latyrx
