Feb.08th 2011 Tues.

Some dark cloud is gathering over Ashramshala. Something is terribly amiss with our education system in general & Ashramshala in particular. Clearly, our accomplishments are in the area of getting children to pass tenth year exam so that our results show up as good 100%; which is happening. Children mug up, learn by rote and vomit it out on answer sheets. Many pass, some fail but all carry with them, not old fashioned ‘cog-sheets’ but pages torn our of exercise books and model answer to guess papers which flood book stores these exam time; pocket size booklets with miniaturized print. I have seen them throwing away heaps of shredded paper after each exam is finished.

More than 60 years during independent India, 300 odd years during subaltern education Brits put in place, thanks to Sir Walter Raleigh, and before that our own Gurukula system for thousands of years has used ‘shruti & smriti’ method of mugging up standard knowledge like Shastras and Samhitas, Puranas & the Vedas. So we had Dwivedi or Chaturvedi as last names of certain ‘learned’ people running in their families. All may have been well when there was just one book as in Islam or may be four or five scriptural texts in Sanskrit. The problem is with information revolution and a cloud burst of new knowledges that are mushrooming all around us. Even as such children need to know a quantum more than what we had to during our schooling. Earlier one learned some stuff for a while and played, gallivanted, looked after cattle grazing fields or indulged in culture, worship, festivals; or just gazed at star studded sky & dreamt. It is no longer the case. Then suddenly, in the wake of liberalization (read colonization at a distance, willing and voluntary) we became cheap labor force and found change jingling in our trouser pockets. But even for this there is a need for working with hands & brain at the same time which no body taught us. We need specialized ‘skills’ to do labor required of us. So today, after thousands of years of rote learning tradition has gone to our blood, when working with one’s ‘hands’ is considered infra dig; our Government & education Gurus want to do skill training programs. We want our youth to genetically alter their racial characteristics and start working with hands & mind in conjunction! Nothing short of a brain implant would do; open a slit in her skull, put a little chip in there and close the gap. There! You have a hardware maintenance man for your computers. Another chip and you have a software boy; another, and you have a patriotic MIG21 pilot. No kidding! MIG 21s & 23s are still used as training aircraft after nearly forty years of service. Out of sheer metal fatigue they are falling out of skies. Ejection seats, however, still work perfectly as they have to be used but once and many young pilots are able to save their lives.

Attitudinal change is never easy to foster. In development sector, this is one of the subtlest items on agenda. Even development activists can not alter attitudes. Vasant went to Bombay yesterday morning and saw an officer at Education Dept.; straightaway, he took a bus and came back to school to hold a meeting. After that, this evening, he came to see me. Deep in depression and travel fatigue. I simply hummed and hawed, told him to sleep over it. Rest will take care of everything. That we shall meet tomorrow and the good news that Saraf called me from Sony main store at MG road, Poona while he was making enquiries about prices of cameras. I stayed with him twice for ten odd minutes each and it was as though we were making the shopping trip together. I sort of whispering in his ear, prompted by which he will ask a further relevant question; didn’t make much sense to Vasant. I also said that I have been able to start using the photon for simple e-mails & that within ten minutes I replied to four parties in a row, each with five or six lines of text. It is a good beginning to me but made no sense to him, I softened my exuberance by saying that I still have to learn how to attach documents, do PDF & Picture transfers yet it didn’t even us up. I say that for someone to go up someone else has got to go down. And that is what seems to be happening here. Let me wait until tomorrow. Maybe this school will close down and we will be rid of all muck sprawling around like slimy algae. If that happens, in such an eventuality, we can make a clean slate and start immediately on fresh agendas; things that we are good at, viz. imagination. We shall, as I have said, make movies. We shall show what the shape of Konkan would be like when all plans we have, have been put in place and working without a trace of corruption.

Wed Feb. 09th 2011

Meanwhile, this website of graftii, it has to be filled with materials. I culled out an article length from these notes and they have put it up alongside a picture of mine. I have now a space assigned to me to put up whatever I consider fit for consumption of the alumni as well as current and future students of Cinema. We can all make improvements to our selves wherever we are at all times in any walk of life. Cinema happens to be an art where we have to really know our subject; the people. It is the kind of cinema I know that I am talking about. There are many for whom ‘subject’ could be a caterpillar, not me. I like people and I like people to see & recognize themselves in my movies. I like to interfere with reality in order to change it. My reality, the reality in my movies and the reality of my viewer, all of them I like to alter. This is my work and my tool is cinema. With my film I want to change people’s lives, including mine. 

So, what I think can be done is that I share with my readers the thoughts and inspirations of great men of Cinema from whom I have learned. This kind of material is available with me as I consolidated it for my teaching purposes when I was ‘professing’ at ftii. I will start to re-type some of that and alter it to suit current climate while at it. Then serialize it into the website. This is quite a handful of work but I am sure I shall enjoy doing that. There are materials relating to areas other than cinema per se; position papers and general observations on work ethic & procedure. I shall include them as well. I was looking into some old files when Vishu turned up, hoping to find me madly web browsing! He sat around for a while till I called in Arti & Shriddha who I espied loitering out side my window. When they came in, he left. I fixed Vishnu’s number on my mobile and let Arti have it out with him in the other room; meanwhile I said to Shriddha that I should like to see her father as I wish to paint all my furniture. I showed them some pix that Murali had sent to me and enlarged faces till the grains started showing, yet from a distance the picture would look sharp & cogent. The girls left after dark for dinner carrying my dabba. I then started to play a game and soon Raju dropped in. We looked at all pieces of furniture that need polishing and he left saying he will come again during day tomorrow and bring Panchal, our art teacher with him. Then he will make an estimate and paint the stuff by & by, as & when time permits, piece by piece; or that is what I thought they could do; let me see what they have to say about it. It can easily make an assignment for children’s ‘skill training’!  I must remember to ask them about ‘topla’, the huge big cane basket and see if making that too can not be construed as another ‘skill training’ program! Otherwise I shall just have it all done professionally and pay market price whatever that may mean. I must also remember to ask for an estimate for digging a bore well and fixing a submersible pump etc. Soma has proved to be a dumb bell in this area. His family keeps him strictly under control and displeased as they are with me, would like to divulge as little information as possible especially about things as basic as land and water; which are exactly what will make me a darling of those who live upon this land. Ghanta Guru would be loathing seeing me achieve this so he has gagged Soma’s mouth.

11th Feb. 2011 08pm

All this may be set aside. It is of no consequence to anybody, whatsoever. It is merely hampering progressive effort and is a waste of time, that’s all; because sooner than later what is good and useful to the community will have to appear. Thinking that someone is stealing limelight one may just delay the inevitable. Why didn’t Dagar / Ghanta Guru himself do it? He should have been taking limelight today instead of running like a scared mouse still hankering for a morsel of free food.

Despite, beside or alongside all this local banter, what one should have been doing is elaborating upon the state of education in greater India; especially in context with RtE. Everybody has a right to come to school. They need not do anything at school as exams till std.8th have been abolished and kids are not supposed to be held back (fail); they just have to go on learning as they go, I hope; because ‘teaching’ can not happen without exams and the dread of failure. Learning, however, can go on under all life situations. This can be applied to FTII as well as Ashramshala. 

My contention is that if we are crystal clear as to what we mean by Cinema as a working definition, a working model; then I have a syllabus ready which can be used with those good at learning skills online. It requires no buildings and salaried ‘faculty’ who must grow ‘old’ & retire. This can be a floating population of thinkers, professors, visualizes, poets and practitioners of Cinema who could join debates, exemplify what they mean by showing details of their work or point to works of Great Masters. What I mean to say is that we must table a working definition of “what is Cinema” & “Cinema Art Practice” according to us; then develop a manifesto and support that with materials that we could stand by and defend. This can spread; more ideas could embellish, enrich & amplify the said definition. More work and eventually a sizeable body of work by this ‘virtual’ CACA (Centre for Advancement of Cinematic Articulation) which may really be a repository without vaults, a school without walls, involved in distant learning essentially cloud computing on the ‘net’. Those who learn do learn. What we can do is to create a cloud of knowledge on Cinema as we see it. Create an illumination with creative energy, for everyone to see. We cherish good cinema, we enjoy looking at it, talking about it and often making our own for sharing with other likeminded men women & children; and we enjoy this entire process we call ‘good life’. One myth we would have shattered is what our Colonizers were led to believe, “that Film is a Mass Medium”. Only the crudest, loudest and the most vulgar appeals to the Mass, so to speak, which can be said of all arts, crafts & manufacture; refinement, cultural phenomenology, traditions of best practice, ‘Gharanas’, are for select few. This we shall have to agree as given, a non-negotiable. Not every Tom, Dick or Harry has a right to be educated in these arts and these disciplines, these cultures & tastes. Slowly and gradually, they may come about ‘where it’s at’ but we can not promise each one of ‘them’ a Rose Garden, I beg your pardon! 

This idea can certainly be circulated on the GraFTII net. The CACA idea is basically a good idea, and like all good things in life it is ‘free’. Talking about what our Central Government can or cannot do; we shall come to that knowing fully well it is wasting our time and that of well meaning citizenry.

Feb.12th 2011. Sat

Vishu came and took away the Photon and he hasn’t yet returned it. I am doing fine, I am not yet hooked on net. I may get badly ensnared for voluntarily starting up a process of net based learning / sharing ‘good’ cinema practice, theory and gas.  I looked into many an old file for notes, bibliographies, and excerpts from Grand Masters & found enough to make a start. There is Tarakovsky & Ritwik Ghatak also available in my collection although I have not yet tried to take them out of the shelves. I know they are there, along with Sir Charles Chaplin. They will all be good forever; no hurry to get them out and use them as currency; classic is evergreen, will always make the right meaning & impact any where across cultures and times. Imagine! If all that comes up and we have a good Center going and a lively international Forum around it, then we have a success story here. CACA will be a reality. 

13th Feb. 2011  08:10 pm.

It has become fairly regular & routine, this sitting down to write an entry in my laptop. It comes up practically around the same time each day. Things are also getting intermingled as private and public domains are blurring, at least in my imagination they are diffusing. I already feel as though in tacit understanding with the editorial board of our site, I am actually writing for it. There is already a sense of perspective and certain objectives are coming in sharp focus. I am also copying (very boring & slow) with slight updating to account for time lapse, things that bothered me while I was teaching and being expelled. Those days were tense and characteristically spontaneous. Those reactions were also being watched by a number of parties in their own interest. Just as it is happening here at Ashramshala; no body is bothered whether Rahat lives or dies, but every body is keenly riveted to what happens to Rahat day after day. Even my sickness, this seasonal cough, the phlegm I’m spitting all day & all night long is a source of entertainment for the community. Similarly at FTII, especially those last days after the notice had been served and I was fuming, making a writ petition; having breakfast meetings with Jafa, secy. Mi&b at that time; a good sardarji, with plenty of spunk. People were watching very closely and carefully. 

Anyway I feel, the boundaries are blurring and if it has to go it has to go this way, blurred. There are no clear cut, black & white tapestries. No designs to be superimposed. There are only emergent properties no one can predict. There are bifurcation points and I think one is arriving soon; which way the wind will blow at that moment, no one can say.

Monday 14th Feb. 2011  08pm

Every evening I sit around the same time and key in approximately the same things. This whole thing regarding CACA in virtual space of internet and our GraFTII website hasn’t made much impression on either Vasant or Vishnu. Vasant was talking, this morning, about virtual class rooms and connectivity while Vishnu was talking (on phone) about taking up a piece of land and doing something on the ground. I am taking a safe position of ‘do nothing’ and wait & watch! There are some changes; they must happen with every one’s consent. Who am I to blow against the wind? Saraf is calling in from Poona. Maybe Science & technology Park has some money to burn before financial year ends. All these sort of things are in the air and it sure is getting hot & thick. The Greek revolution is kicking those who watch news. 

Vishu brought back the Photon. I could have used it yesterday night or even tonight, but I am not in a mood for connecting with outer space. I want to settle home affairs forthwith and then look around for connections and commitments to causes such as the FTII, which is a dead & gone horse anyway.