If I manage to catch them

I've always loved those coming soon posters. Here's one of my own. Can't wait to see how things develop. February. The boy is back in business.

I have questions

This road never ends

Happened to walk back on a road long forgotten.

I know this room, I've walked this floor

will i remember the old house where my summer holidays were spent watching my uncle's car go by. the lone tree that threw shade askance on the footprints in the sand. the old canvasses that now are painted and forgotten like the skills of the one who splashed colours, shades, dreams. the kites in the skies, the whoops and laughs, the holiday club of an odd bunch, the mile long hikes into the berry country, the tales that grandma plucked and fed hungry souls, the old cooler that made grandpa's legs ache, vishnu, who then was called to massage. will i remember the milkshaked mornings, the lazy afternoons when we stole, milkpowder cartons, from the one who would not remember his cousins, the devils will i remember my brother who showed me the old well in the backyard and said dracula would rise from there putting fear in me that would last for years and wake me up in the strangest of nights when i would be haunted by memories that i try hard to find. will i remember the voices, will i remember the songs, will the red dresses float before my eyes will i ever be able to recollect what thoughts possessed me for hours, as i watched the armyman's rifle that hung on red velvet. will i remember the day when, many years later i would visit that house and my cousin, the dracula devil would make me listen to grateful dead to the ghost of jerry garcia as it sung from a vinyl that little men collected as cool long before the rolling stones became old men and paul mc cartney the wise fool. i try hard to dig and come up with this handful of desert sand, still warm enough to make my feet hurry. will i remember the old house where my mother grew up and bid goodbyes to a world she belonged. i suspect not.
but whenever i listen to cohen and hear his dark deep voice, i touch upon old dust, which, when i clear, makes me remember a life, with every asthamatic breath.

Leonard Cohen: Two concerts between July and November. A lifetime of wishes. Fulfilled.

Something's not quite right about it all

Sunita Narain's article made me think.

Flyover

Foretold

Once upon a time in Barcelona

Once upon a time in Barcelona a story was told on a wall. The story of two kings. The king of grass and the king of clay. It is said they had absolute dominion over their kingdoms.
No one could defeat them, let alone challenge them. And this made them lazy and fat and most of all sad. After all, what's life without challenges? Then one day they came face to face with each other. So they started to fight. And game after game they made each other faster,
stronger and better, ever after. (Translated from Spanish).

I'll remember her

There are two worlds. Time keeps taking away the colours of this world to the other. It drains souls colourless till they have nothing left but the unending blackness. Time is death. The ninety two year woman resisted time by her will, till time took the colours of her soul away into the other world. Lost between this world and the other, she could not make up her mind. To stay in the world she lived or follow the promise of the new world. But time. It just toys with you and makes you believe that you have a choice. And then it gets bored and moves on. With you in his sack of emptiness.

And no, it's not going to get any better.

Let's stop fooling each other and get on with the truth. We are all going down. And how.

Ravan. 1973-2002

The Hindi Belt

How can one not take the names of Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Nirala, Ayodhya Singh Upadhyaya in the same breath as Keats, Eliot or Emily Dickinson?
How is it that anything Hindi is looked down upon in our own country?
How is it that people like me write and speak better English than Hindi?
How is it that most of us grow up reading English translation of our own epics?
How is it that the two Indian ladies I met in London started laughing when I mentioned that thankfully we are over the worst phase of Americanization and at least we have begun to respect our own language a little more?
How is it that my dear friend says and believes that he will prefer a brand called Peter England over Vimal? (Vimal sounds so downmarket, he adds.)
How is it possible that most of us will offer blank faces if a poem by Nirala is recited to us?
And yet it is true. More than guilty we are perhaps the stupidest nation on earth not to respect our own literature and our own language.
Stupid because we are missing out on some of the most amazing writing that has ever been done on this planet.
Stupid because we equate one language with progress and another with decadence.
Ye hamne kya kar daala?
How did we let Macaulay succeed in his plans?
(Apparently the fact that Macaulay ever said it (click on the poster) is debatable. But here is the text of his education minute. Read points no 31-35, if not the entire text. A classic case of the phirangi attitude towards India which continues till today. Unfortunately.)

So many tigers

I.Q.P

The power of water harvesting

Every roof is a potential water harvesting structure. Use it to solve your water problems. This is how simple it is:


For more information: www.rainwaterharvesting.org

What model of economics is this?

This is pretty much the template for development in the new super India. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Up next, there's 1620.361 ha of discontent brewing. And for good reason.

Veg Roly Poly: Just what we need for a revolution.

I have been wondering why we never protest. Nothing makes us unhappy. Forget poverty, forget inflation, forget that the country is heading towards chaos, forget that everything than can go wrong in the country, is. Forget that the politicians have actually taken time and effort to piss over our collective selves very recently. We are not going to protest. Or so I thought. Until, on my carbon emitting internet journeys I stumbled across a very angry Indian. Reproduced here is the fiery complaint she lodged at a site dedicated to complaints. I have taken off the name of the airline to avoid any action against myself. I, like all the other countrymen, am happy in my little frog well of no protest.

Lessons in global advertising

I have been dealing with an unusual dry patch. Obviously I was doing something wrong. And it wasn't till today I could put a finger on the problem. Simply put, I wasn't subverting. Enough. More about that when you click the image.
Oh yes, one more thing. Here is some subvertive music to enjoy. This subverts the mp3 and brings back the mixtape charm. I am calling this collection: Up shit creek again. Borrowed from Tom Waits. Very subversive. Just press play.
For some strange reason if this cassette doesn't work, you can listen to the music here.

London Diary 2: The Elusive Fox

Boredom, pen and acrylic on paper.

Subscribe to common sense.

The biggest environmental problems can be solved by common sense. But why do we look the other way?

Boxes and Cities

Neatly packed cardboard boxes, underlined with polythene to make them waterproof so that the books don’t get wet. Brown taped. And again, for added strength. And yet every time some books get destroyed.
My Louis L’amour collection was handpicked by the movers and packers for a particularly twisted fate.
And if my life over the last eight years can be summed up in boxes, so be it.
Though ‘summed up’ doesn’t feel quite right as the number of boxes have been getting fewer by the year.
I am beginning to get obsessed with these boxes. What strength. Which tape. Should I call the movers and packers or should I just call the movers and pack it myself.
The brand of the boxes and the look of them have come to signify cities for me. And vice versa.
Delhi is a thin box. Careless. Money saving. Useless. And you can expect life to become lazily twisted, like my books, once you are done unpacking.
Mumbai is a thick skinned box. But kinda wet and slimy. Can’t trust it from the appearance. But it will surprise you once you unpack. Luck will decide if the surprise will be pleasant or otherwise.
Amsterdam is a pile of neat boxes. Nicely designed. Matter of factly. Even the packing tape is great. If you pile up the boxes it looks like avant garde architecture of Rotterdam.
London. Damn. I am dreading my first move. Within the city and then eventually out of it. It promises to be an unnerving experience. But I am sure I will get to the bottom of this box too.

© Hemant Anant Jain

Er..who is Enid Blyton again? Read. It helps. Part2

In this follow-up to the read it helps campaign we got a little bolder and more political. But first up was Madonna, who writing her children's book, feigned ignorance of Enid Blyton. Interesting Guardian article here. The other two were bold political posters taking a dig at two of amazingly stupid comments made by Indian leaders. If a healthcare minister underlines the importance of shamans, the country is seriously sick.

Mumbai

Madness. Rain fallen madness. The overflowing drains, gutter smell madness. The madness that rises with every high tide and rises and rises till it consumes us. And yet there is something about it. Something not quite seeking the asylum. Yet. Something which says the madness is a welcome break in this great cosmic order. The order which makes us wake up and go and sit on those desks, stare at computers, aggravate our sciaticas and annoy our carpal tunnels. You can’t find this madness even if you go looking for it. It comes to you when you are done hating this great mega of a megapolis called Mumbai. You have to hate it. And yet you end up loving it. Madness.
Every square millimetre of this city is brimming with it. Expensive square millimetre. Rented out, rented in, unaffordable square millimetre. And yet if you are unlucky you could be in Mumbai and get nothing of this beautiful madness like your life was subjected to a low interest rate. Most of our lives are. Deposits lying in bad accounts, accruing nothing. But then again. If you have stared at the lights before they say camera and action you’d know you are mutually funded and stock marketed your life in the right place. For Mumbai is tinsel. Make believe. Dirty, whoring, gigoloed make believe. Isn’t life too? Then why complain. Breathe in and walk about and touch the grime that turns to moondust and sparkles in the imaginative mind. You could be wading neckdeep in the gutter water in a flood in Mumbai and yet and yet feel lucky to be there. Madness. And it comes after you have hated and hated Mumbai and run out of hatred. And run out of it like the arrows thousands of years ago, when, having run out of arrows you were subject to a long tortuous death by Genghis Khan’s army. This is going to be the same. Your reason will bleed itself dry. No logic will help you as you fall, knees first in love with Mumbai. And you will look at the moon hanging over Haji Ali at 2am and your soul will confess an undying love to the city. And you will move out of the city and out of the country. You will become a gypsy living in enchanted lands. You will get drunk on Amsterdam and dazzled in Paris and become a beggar in London and you will return, by accident, to Mumbai and you will get down from the plane and walk out of the airport all ready to hate it. You have seen the world you have seen reason you have walked the famous boulevards and those musty seats of the taxis will make you fall out of love and you will be free of Mumbai. From Mumbai. And you step out arrogantly and you step out and you feel the first kilo of the foul stench at reclamation and you shout with joy and the words come out in a victory march and you know you have lost. For you hear how much you love Mumbai. Madness.

On the road.

Get your own - Open publication


"They danced down the streets like dingledodies,
and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life
after people who interest me, because the only
people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are
mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous
of everything at the same time, the ones that never
yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn,
burn, burn..."
- Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 1, Ch. 1

Independence Day

A pocket sized war against prejudice

Get your own - Open publication

A pocket sized war against prejudice. And some other pocket sized crusades.

But, it's only politics.

A short story in 3 parts.

London Diary 1: Blackbirds

A tale of two deathly attacks and how I almost survived them.

Munna on the run

if I walk my foot breaks down
if I smile my mask's a farce
if I cry I'm just a child
if I remember I'm a liar
if I write the writing's done
if I die the dying's over
if I live the dying's just begun
if I wait the waiting's longer
if I go the going's gone

From 'Mexican Lonliness'. By Jack Kerouac.

And another one of those things

One of those things

Our darkest hour

And I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Which book are you reading?

Many years ago I was refused entry into an art college.

And rightly so. I did not know how to draw
a straight line. In 2005 when this idea came to me,
I looked at all the hot shot art directors to help me
do these books. But no one was interested.
So I did them myself.

And now they say I am an illustrator.

I still can’t draw. All I know is, I want to tell stories.
And like those cavemen who drew all those hunting
scenes thousands of years ago, I too will get my
stories across to people.

I take hope in the fact that those cavemen probably
never went to an art college either.

Read. It helps.

Shouldn't a bookshop use its bags to communicate about the power of reading? This was my first project for Midland Bookshop. Deepak and I scourged the Chawri Bazaar to get the right bags for our clients and screen printed the messages on them. Those were the days.

Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and 169 Rampura Bazaar.

© Hemant Anant Jain, 2008

Climate Camp 2008

A few good people. Are they enough to put some sense into the heads of the powers who don't seem to have any common sense? We are now moving back to the dark ages of coal powered plants. Even the Guardian Climate Change Summit is sponsored by E.on, who propose to take the world into dark ages by building a modern age wonder - a coal powered plant. What a mess. The Climate Camp 2008. Be prepared.

Let's never get lost again

A film for Nokia Navigator. Produced by Wieden+Kennedy London for India as a part of their Let's never get lost again campaign.

The Water Crisis

Solving the world water crisis isn't that big a problem. It's common sense really. Here's a place where you can find out more.

It all began when