The 3 kings in the desert on christmas night, One is so thirsty he starts drinking the wine, the other one goes “That was the last one you, hic, idiot!!” and the third one takes his head out of the frankincense mug, looks up and goes “can you see that giant comet in the sky ?!!!”

“I think we should follow it!”

So its chrismas, and there’s a nip in the air and little decorations come up, people without plans, people who dread this month that symbolizes an end to another one in the wake of the 21^st century, some feel old, not enough shopping, not enough preparation, Retail woes like “Oh how will Christmas be complete without this item ?”, then again the weather isn’t giving much of an option, but in the midst of mid-life and quarter life crisis, and scattered bits and pieces of whatever of love has left behind and other uncomplicated emotions, one can light a candle I suppose. It’s the season of gathering I tell you. Laughter, tweets, choir songs, snowy movies and leftover joints. Take them, slow roast them. It’s probably the last chance to do or say something that you can to brand this year with, when you’ve to look back. All your transgressions should be forgiven, all your achievements should light up, your ability to heal shall take over, regenerate don’t regurgitate and LEAVE THE DECORATIONS ALONE. The Cigar box Christmas album has its own nice quirky and cute little indie vibe, it gives me hope, because they made instruments out of a cigar box and made it sound like ‘that’. I terribly miss someone I damaged for whom I’m glad she gets to eat her Christmas turkey and barbecue, and enjoy the bouncy castle with her family and friends.

You remember the warmth generated when a bunch down alcohol together and smirk and cozy up forgetting boundaries and doodle watching  something with snow in it, a movie or tv show or a home video ? It’s called Fraternization: In 1914, the scots, the French and the Germans tired of aiming their guns at each other decide to train their wine bottles, bagpipers and operatic voices (besides no sense of humour) on each other instead. They sang, made merry, exchanged addresses and buried their dead, besides playing football and a couple of rounds of rummy on no mans land.  The next day they couldn’t shoot at each other, the respective armies were pulled back, they went home as the scots hummed ‘I’m dreaming of home’.

So fuck all your built up expectations of pop/ideal Christmas, and lets deal with what we have, leftovers, few crepes, music, and cable TV and friends, like the cigar box guys and fraternize like them scot-german-french trio, ‘coz even Jesus was born in a stable and the three kings came for the party with gifts and they had fresh beef at their disposal .

Jay: People need to be jolted.
Morrie: No, people need to be comforted, and you don’t comfort them by satisfying your own curiosity about breaking down boundaries and rules. Some people really like their rules, they’ve chosen them, and you don’t get to choose what rules other people obey or not; they do.

There is this pleasure of watching a movie you have no idea about, but you sit down and watch it anyway because of it’s oddly sounding documentary-ish name.

The dysfunctional family has been the indie filmmaker’s whore for a while. But somewhere this movie stays raw and maybe doesn’t masturbate over itself. It’s fresh.

The film opens with an old photograph of an awkward teenager in his graduation suit at home, his two younger siblings on the side jumping over each other. This is Morrie (Mathew Perry) a repressed, kinda complacent, weird bowel-led teacher living with his wife in a house he inherited at 18 when his mom left and his dad committed suicide. He also inherited the responsibility of bringing up his younger siblings, which he doesn’t think he’s done a good job of. Flash forward to the present, Morrie wakes up to his neighbor’s dog shit in his garden every day. The dog-poop leaving neighbor/colleague Paul (married to Jennifer Garner) is at a ‘favorable’ position at work, so Morrie picks up the  dog-poop and goes on to prepare a nice warm Sunday brunch for them with career hopes in mind.

Then his free spirited brother Jay (Ben Foster) gets run over by a car and Morrie has to bring him home. This serves as an excuse for a seemingly concerned Ida (Ginnifer Goodwin), their junkie/broke sister, to come home too much to the chagrin of Morrie’s wife thereby re-visiting a dysfunctional setting.

Now, Sunday Brunch does not involve dysfunctional family members.

The siblings move around the house like asteroids doing their own thing, Morrie and wife are anxious, Jay is exploring the basement of the house, Ida is sunbathing on the lawn with a roach in hand.

 Morrie, risking his career, marriage is still drawn to whatever is left of  his dysfunctional family. After all he brought them up, the scene where he gets together with his siblings and smokes up leaving aside all worry is probably the only moment when all of them become one big tube of happiness spreading it to each other. Like family?

Our key characters face their own truths, and get a shot at redemption. Morrie deals with the dog poop situation interestingly (a metaphor on his life), Ida deals with her past and Jay decides to get arrested and freed in an outrageously hilarious finale.  More like a hint of a smile, so when the movie ends you complete it.

Craig Lucas’ direction is subtle, no one gets lost in a single character, the cinematography is playful and faded, the music uplifting, a laid back film. Nice to see apna ‘Chandler’ subdued for a bit. Ben Foster  and Ginnifer Goodwin kill it in their own subtle spaced out style. They make me laugh.

The name is based on a book, something their dying father left behind and then you feel every character is like a different bird mentioned in it.

A sweet, funny, genuine and fresh little film that tells me that no matter how independent we are we can get lost and then always find our way back through family (however they are!).

Ravi Vaswani, played the anxious phtographer in Jaane Bhi Do yaaron and the roguish bachelor in Chashme Baddoor, both roles that got him recognition. I grew up watching him in ‘Just Mohabbat’ on Sony and years later the pleasure of meeting the man once who was tripping with the fact that JBDY had a packed theatre release in 2006. He had a pony tail and the same wide eyed expression if you asked him anything.

Leslie Neilsen, the bumbling agent in Naked Gun series, Shirley from Ariplane, Agent WD40 in Spy hard, played his age with grace and had the most ridiculous things happen to his characters. I saw few of them but I’ve never seen a funnier old man.

What connects all three ? they were funny. Then they left.

When people are laughing, they don’t beat up on you. You’re secure and safe. It’s when they stop laughing that it’s dangerous. – Leslie Neilson

Somewhere in my mind I re-imagine their deaths as they would enact it. I won’t describe it, but maybe they’d see the humor in their deaths, heart attacks and falling off a horse.Some geek wrote a comment on the article of Manish Acharya’s death saying “it was his time”. Which got me thinking about the way we were beginning to look at the end.

I’d attended a  grandfather’s birthday party, he was turning 90. He was alright, the usual bent with age, and grumpy wrinkly face. The grandfather’s sister turned up she was probably a bit younger than him.

She bends over to him looking at his aged face and his distracted eyes, just like her and patting his shoulder and says “You’re 90 now, that’s enough. “

Grandpa replies “Haan, eat something and then leave.”

I guess by then you’ve waited for it for so long, that life starts surprising you and you can start kidding about death.

My friends talk to their grandma who is probably the last surviving oldie in the neighborhood, like this.

“Granny did you hear about the old lady down the road, on the left ? She kicked the bucket.”

Granny’s eyes widen and blink.

“…and the old uncle who was almost blind, he got run out too. He was watching the cable. Last week.”

Granny’s still blinking and turns her gaze at the boy.

” And your best friend the one you went to church with but never went to her house ? She’s out too.”

Granny wrinkles her brows.

“Shouldn’t someone start getting ready?”

The granny wrinkles her nose and her eye angles her ear, looks at him and says “Mmm… I’ll wear the diapers the next time, I can’t find the damn thing every time I look for it.”

I don’t know if this retelling is funny but I’ve listened to this while the kids sat around and spoke to the clueless octogenarian and I guffawed. Later I thought maybe they weren’t being mean, maybe  despite being partially deaf and blind she got it and played along.

Once, my cousin brother was dying of  a tumor in his brain.It had been a while and everyone knew it, he was bedridden and it was coming. Till his moment of death he had paralysis, his face was slightly contorted (like  Stallone), lying in bed he’d smile like a baby who had no control over his facial muscles, when spoken to. Everyone sat in the room, one of the brothers played mellow gospel songs on the guitar and other favorites of the dying cousin. His son who was five tumbled around and looked at everyone’s faces.Suddenly my cousin starts breathing uneasily, he was dying , in a few minutes he’d be gone, but 15 minutes  later he still struggled for his last breath. As if he was holding on to life.  His grieving wife rushed to his side and held his hand, but nothing made the low grunting stop. One of his brothers who was playing the guitar was not an emotional guy, I mean he didn’t even cry at his father’s death either, but he couldn’t bear to witness this and anxiously asked a friend present there, what should he do, because he felt like doing something. Make it easier maybe. So the friend whispered into his ear long and hard. He listened, looked at his reassuring friend and went over to his dying brother, bent over him and whispered into his ear.

The paralysis seemed to leave his face slowly as he relaxed. The room was quiet everyone watched him close his eyes and be still. He’d left. Somewhere, like any family they were conflicted, sad that he was gone, happy he was relieved and then getting slightly freaked out with someone dead around them.

The wife, later asked the brother what he’d whispered into her dying husband’s ear.

He turned around and calmly replied ” I said leave, it’ll be fine.”

Absolutly bad lighting.

An amateur stand-up show held at Cafe Goa.

Show And Tell, Bombay Elektrik Projekt

A small informal interactive event where travelers get together and share their experiences and give tips.

shot, directed and edited, composited by me.

There is a very good reason why whisky though ….

My parents had newly shifted to Sharjah, U.A.E in 1983. They’d married on 14th Feb and I was born around 25th November. Yes, yes..wipe the smirk off your face.

By the time she was two months pregnant, my naive mother had this initial inclination to burp it out. Yes, I was gas or maybe it’s one of those hormonal moments that drive a woman crazy, because she didn’t immediately understand how she got here. I’m trying not to think how my dad (an engineer) may have sat her down and explained it before they….  I just did.

I’m sure she must’ve faced a dilemma while on the ‘throne’, to poop or pop, while closing one eye and holding her breath for long till she probably would’ve let one rrrip.

“It must be the same feeling while birthing” she may have thought to herself.

4 months and double size later

D-day: My naive bloated mum is so tired, everything looks magnified, her heartbeat rate on a machine, the clinical scent, white and olive green sheets and an Egyptian doctor gripping her hands yelling “HELLO, I’m DOCTOR, PLEASE PUSH HARDHER.”

And of course a Malayali nurse giving a nervous toothy smile.

Mom inhales hoping for some gaseous relief that she’s been waiting for. “Just fart the little fucker out.“ she could’ve thought.

Black out

Mom wakes up and the first thought that comes to her is “Damn! I missed it.”.One can understand the irritation if you missed a fart that was building up for 9 months. Then watch yourself unbloat.

Then she saw lots of blood around her, her legs still up , the sheets, the scent, the nurse’s toothy smile and seconds before passing out she sees the Egyptian doc holding me upside down,-a flash of an image of the doc with an apron holding skewered meat at a shawarma stall later – she waits for me to cry, waiting for her screechy bawling lullaby.

 Black out. 

My dad is generally a person of intense expressions, what kinda kills it are those girly eyelashes he’s got. And he was expecting a girl.

The Egyptian doctor informs my dad with a grin “Hello, I’m doctor:  your son is grey. And wife need blood.” (Think Borat)

“How did that happen?  I thought I explained it properly!” my engineer dad may have exclaimed

“Or did I?”

A distant relative who lived around had the same blood type, so dad approaches the prospective donor with ease and dignity. And then he realised how distant and henpecked he was. Lady hen said it was Jesus and not blood that could save my mom. The cock refused to rise so no blood from this one.

 What does a  26 year old man do when he’s got a bloodless wife and a breathless baby ?

Get drunk. Atleast thats what dad did.

So my dad sat on an ornamental rock (they had turned off the fountain) outside the hospital and like any man who’s about to lose his wife and child to fate/flawed technique, started drinking from a hip-flask.

A drunken man suddenly and mysteriously appeared out of nowhere and scratched his head with a sheepish smile. Misery loves company, what happens next ?

They drank and noticing my dad’s puzzled and melancholic expression Mr.High asked slurringly, “whasmaurrrm..onay (son)?

My dad “waaaaaaaaaaaa hic aaaaaaaaaaaaa”

Mr High “That’s it ? Here, whydonutakesummamy blooddu. Same type, hic.”

There’s something exciting about being shoved in a wheelchair, zooming past confused patrons in a hospital. “whooooooo” whooed Mr high as dad pushed the heavyset drunkard seated on a wheelchair. The grinning Egyptian doc says “Leetle alcohol good for hearth.” As he prepares mum and Mr. High for some bloody exchange.

I understand now why she’s got a stupid smirk on her face while she sleeps.

Anyway, mom gets enough blood to keep her alive, meanwhile they’re still working on me. I’m still convulsing. My dad and his new found drunken saviour are advised to go home. Dad drives home after dropping the man off, and 5 minutes later gets booked for drunken driving.

“For dinner, they serve biriyani” he’d admit later.

 Next day: 9 am

Dad, dressed in the same clothes as the day before, slightly smelling of whisky and wide awake stood at the entrance looking at mom and the empty space next to her and then back at her. They look at each other, a look which for the next 25 years or so will symbolize a situation where something’s tragically not right.

…..

“Stop looking like that, he’s in the other room.” said my mom.

“Oh…ok” my dad rushes to the other room and identifies me as I lie in my incubated glory.

“It works” he may’ve thought.

I’m breathing, my skin is brown, I’m a healthy little hairball. Of course there was one thing, everybody was uncomfortable that I didn’t cry. And as I grew up they’d try, whenever they got the opportunity. You know the ‘just in case’ joke by Russell Peters, I know what he’s talking about.

We never saw Mr. High again, I call him ‘St Whisky’ now.

So, every year at my birthday my mum gets drunk and dad has biriyani, as a tribute to, the man, the night.

ME.