The Child Who Never grew Up - My short film - First cut

Title: The Child Who Never Grew Up
Voiceover by Manoshi Nath
Written, directed, illustrated, edited and sound engineered by Pushkaraj Shirke

My CV - 2009

Full Plate Reddy!

Don't really know what is it with me, but every year i turn into FULL PLATE REDDY!
whats that? well actually a term developed from Shri. Quick Gun Murugan, but contextually, it means having too much to do and too little time!!!!

Here i am again. with the 2009 episode of Full Plate Reddy!
At work, there's work to be done. And then there's pro-active work to be done for the KRA's!!!!

Besides that there's my book/script that i have to complete. Need just 30 days to do that and yet havent found enough time to find those 30 days within my weekends!!!

Then there's my bike that has blown its engine and just dosent seem to get repaired - Bloody TVS!!!! Already spent 11,ooo on it!!!! I'm so never buying a TVS again!!!

Which reminds me, i need to re-organise my finances - too many investments all over the place!!! need a good CA to look it all up!!! Don't even remember where i kept all my investment papers and all the idiotic cheque books of the n-number of banks that every salary account brings along!!! Shitty Axis bank i'm stuck with!!!

That's not all!!! need to see a lawyer for some copyright issues and shit like that. When do i do that? Weekends? no they are busy!! Weekdays?? no, im at work!!! Crappp!!!

And then there's my little pet Film Direction project - need to keep that going too!

And then ahead still there are my idiotically trivial pursuits of trekking, painting, short-film making, pampering my dog, gymming and travelling. When???? How??? Damn I need to organise all this!

I'm so going and getting one today itself!!! Enough - time to pull these reigns and set them straight - time to put FULL PLATE REDDY to rest!!! Let's start by taking it one day at a time -on a brand new Alarm Clock and a sparkling new WHITEBOARD. (and maybe about a hundred POST-ITS soon!)

Phewww!

To a road less travelled

Pic: Going with the gravity. The rock waterfall trail down the fort.
It didn't take much. Just a weekend, a few calls to some old old friends and the will to go just anywhere the road took us. No plans. No reservations. No formalities. It's surprsing how anything you do with friends who are comfortable with your crazy side just turns out to be way more amazing than expected.

Pic: Water-fallinngg!!!! ah joy!
We trekked out to sudhagad fort - the other way round. Not the path that tourists take, but through the jungles, the rock faces and the waterfalls. One hell of a trek -all the way up, the overnight stay at the temple of the fort and the perilious way down. Catching an Indian Rock Python in the wild was obviously a topping on the madness of the whole journey. And so was getting lost in the fog at night. And finally the attempt to cross a river without a safety line. All in all, if a sane person or most of the other people i know had been on this trip, it would have been a hell less fun. The "ah no", "yeh nahi", "woh nahi", "this is too uncomfortable", "cant you behave yourself", "are you nuts???"etc etc etc. Pisses me off!

Pic: Going up the crazy rock walls.
The thing is, it feels good to be back. Back to the old madeness of being yourself. Feels good to know that you are still the crazy creature you always were - and that your friends have remained the same too. Its god, no, GREAt to know that your friends, are still your crazy friends, no matter how whacked out insane you may be.

Cheers guys!
To many more insane trips and escapades ahead!
-Pushkaraj Shirke


Pic: The Indian Rock Python. Which btw, we didn't harm. Just caught it, studied it, made a video of and let go back into the wild :) we named him 'Cutie' :)

Honesty Vs Truth

"Satya Meva Jayate" Truth always Triumphs.

These are the words of eternal truth printed on India's most commonly found medium of eternal dishonesty - the currency note. How's that for a lesson?

Honesty and Truth. What's the relation between the two? Are the two words so close that we can overlook the difference? Is it all so subjective?

The fact is Truth is an object. Honesty is a behaviour. If truth is a sword. Honesty is the skill of weilding it. Truth by itself can be explained in various ways by diverse views of philosophy. Some would say that there is there is no objective truth. There are only perceptions. Linguists would agree saying that truth is in the way it is put across. The same would go for honesty. You can be a honest person if you accept the truth and deal with it. You can be a honest person if you reveal to others a hurtful truth. You can also be a honest person if you confess to a truth.

But that's where the subjectivity ends.

There's no way you can lie and be a honest person. There's no way you can hide a hurtful truth and be a honest person. There's no way you can lie to the face of a person just to keep them happy and still claim to be honest. EVEN IF YOUR TRUTH IS COMMUNICATED PURPOSELY IN A MANNER THAT IS PERCIEVED DIFFERENTLY BY ANOTHER - YOU ARE NOT HONEST. Yudhistra from the Mahabharat is the best example: He stated the truth when he said that Ashwatthama is dead. and then muttered to himeslf, that it is Ashwatthama the elephant. What he said was the truth. but what he COMMUNICATED, was a lie. which is why he was dishonest - and for the first time in his life, his chariot which floated above ground, suggestive of his aura of honesty, tuched the ground. His honesty was stained, even by a truth - because it was communicated with malice.

The truth is lifeless, it has no concern for anyone's emotions. which is ironically why it will prevail. It is a blade of adamantine. Never bending. All conquering. It is a power. And with every great power, comes great responsibility.

Many a times when we discover truths, we can fumble with what we do with them. We are not born ready to deal with truths. We are not born with that skill. We learn to use them. And how we learn to use them is up to us. Take the example of a Ninjas and a Samurais. Both use the same weapons but a Samurais used their weapons for honor. Ninjas used them for executions and mercenary causes.

Truth is the same. A honest person will use it with honor, without malice. A dishonest person, will use it to misguide people by covering it in pieces, or witholding it entirely. Yes diplomats fall here.

The one thing that matters most in the relationship between truth and honesty is the effect it has. A honest person is one who lives his life with every truth, good and bad, out in the open. No 'truth' from the outside can ever break the life, work, relationships of a honest person, because they are already known, accepted and penanced for if necessary. They are unbreakable. So ironically, honesty is the greatest sheild against malicious truths. And if broken down to bits, just like a martial art, it simply is the skill of accepting the truths of your life the way they are, gracefully. And that' what it is.

'Satya Meva jayate'

Dying Mice in a Poison Gas Chamber

If you take off those pink glasses that cover your eyes, you see that every one's life is just a huge delusion of convenient truths and elaborate lies. In such a world, you realise truth is hardly an anodyne. On the contrary, it's the sledge hammer of Thor, capable of destroying everything it touches unless wielded with responsibility and caution. Especially to those who are healing their wounds with their magical potions of delusion.

It's not the first time in my life that I've come across crumbling people bandaging themselves in miles of delusions. To state the fact, i myself have been one. A very big one at that. So i am hardly any one to advise anything about the same. What i share, is just a collation of my experiences and the lessons I've learnt from them.

Yes of course, those who still continue to live in their delusions would like to continue thinking happy thoughts, wondering about nice places and creating their own sanctuary in their mind. And deriving totally different perspectives of the same experiences. And they have the right to do so, after all, it's their self preservation - struggling against the truth like white mice trapped in a small gas chamber quickly filling with poison gas. Struggling to take the only vent out - and later realize that it only leads to a chamber with slowly heating boiling oil that'll let them live a while longer while it sears them down to their flesh. And bone.

The catch is, the poison gas is one that our bodies can get accustomed to and learn to adapt to. The poison gas is the truth. The poison gas is oxygen. Too much of it in isolation, is highly combustible. It will burn our lungs apart. The suffocation we feel is our incapability to accept it.
The truth will hurt. The truth will make life uncomfortable. But it is the option i'd prefer to choose as compared to drowning in a pool of drowning delusions.

Over time it seems we learn to take that oxygen in moderation, with all else around. Overtime it seems, we eventually learn that the 'poison gas' is in fact what keeps us alive. What matters is how we take it.