|
|
for writer/directors
to look artsy enough.
brothers and sisters,
let me tell you
one secret knowledge—
“half of art is appearance,
and whole of it talent. ”
if you have half the appearance,
you will look fully talented!
You may say—
“this is mumbo-jumbo nonsense gibberish!”
But I will reply—
“Exactly!”
Brothers and sisters, far flung and flung afar, it is Mr. Suresh
Dhital, Writer/Director, making his third guest appearance into your
neat and sweet lives. I hope your lives are in full color, and not
in black and white, or even in those bleached or underexposed prints
of the artsy type. I hope none of you has the life of an artsy type
in struggle, because that life is mostly underexposed, and only key
lights shine off harshly, and aren’t wholesomely fun filled, funny
to live. I hope your lives are colorful like an outdoor garden set,
not like the corridors of a dank prison scene. I hope you are all
looking out of windows, not out of bars, like you would have to if
you were working the entire week as spot boy for a large budget
number on a prison set. I hope you have penthouse view of the world,
not ground floor view. But that is too much to ask for, isn’t it, my
brothers and sisters in places of earth I wouldn’t be able to spell?
Who would be the brothers and sister to occupy the floors between
the ground and the roof before one of us had a penthouse view of the
world?
Brothers and sisters, I have been called a person with brains. Not
just on one occasion by one particular person, but quite a few
people at diversely different times. So, I decided to show how
clever I am, and I wrote the poem above.
First, the unnamed person running this site said “our readers aren’t
stupid.” Then, he added, “and don’t go writing about this in the
column.” Since Nepal is not a democracy, I will have to be
threatened by him. So, without telling you what he told me, I will
tell you about the poem. If, my brothers and sisters in all corner
of the world who love arts and support struggling artists like
myself—if you have been reading my column, you will recognize that
the poem for today is simply a few sentences from the column before
this. Now—isn’t that clever? Now—don’t I have brains?
As my brothers and sisters must know from last week—I was
unemployed for a very short while. Although my mornings, afternoons,
evenings and late night were occupied with cleaning the residential
quarters—I was helping the erstwhile star and heroine of my movie to
clean up my place, and as she hails from the female multitude of the
species, my kind readers need not be worried that I was exploiting
her. Indeed, she harked me around! “Reach lower,” she would
say sometimes. “Push harder, dig deeper, hold on longer”—such were
her abundant instructions whilst we toiled hard at shifting the
heavy table, cleaning out the toilet and changing the curtains,
respectively. But, she soon found better accommodation elsewhere,
and, as she snuffed me as she walked off—better company. Once
abandoned by my heroine, I sought shorter term work, and put ashelf
my project —that is, putting aside on the shelf. Since I couldn’t
make it, it got canned. That is a joke, brothers and sisters—since I
can’t, it is canned. I hope you will be entertained by my joke, and
I hope you laugh with your belly rolling all over the floor.
And working in a big budget number has taught me few valuable
lessons—the lamps are generally heavier and hotter to handle, the
heroines do not like being stared-at at specific parts of their
body, nor do they like accidental touching. It is important that we
treat every struggling artist as a struggling artist with a
struggle, because there is no telling when the boy you mistreated
and made to bring tea to you and your friends from village will be
the key grip in a big budget number with laughing-talking terms with
the heroine, and you demoted to being only the handyman around. In
American movies of special repute, it is the handyman who comes
handy, and the plumber who reaches difficult corners to unclog
disturbances. The pizza man always delivers—but not in this unnamed
but very famous Indian city. During my earlier struggles, when I was
struggling as S. Kumar, I had the misfortune of putting my hand on
the wrong shoulder, and letting it fall. The more experienced
brothers and sisters will realize easily that I am talking about
erotic matters, and therefore I am trying to be subtlety, subtlety.
Well, to make little of a lot of matters—I found myself well
seasoned. That is a joke, my brothers and sisters. It means I found
myself in very hot soup, so I thought why not season it well also?
“While we are at it,”—that is what I have taken to saying. But to
simply point out the main points—I had misadventures where I
sacrificed one more of my struggle names, and from that episode in
my life there was a character in the set, aforementioned—if I may
add, where I worked and felt like a prisoner. I yearned a life this
side of the bronze plate dream—with my myriad heroines, my agreeable
diversion of cut and paste digital artistry, and the occasional
respect to say “action!” and “cut!” to an attentive crew, even if
they were mostly the lecherous producers themselves.
But to arrive at the main idea, my brothers and sisters, I am
willingly reiterating whole story to anyone asking for personal
interview. Of course, money will matter. To find me is not difficult
if you remain vigilant about the multiplicity of my various struggle
names. I hear there are people who succeed by making documentaries
about people who fail. “Well,” you may say, “it is marketing, it is
packaging, it is enterprising, commercializing, advertising,
globalizing.” I say—“it is mumbo-jumbo, nonsense, gibberish!”
But, if you want to make a documentary about me, it isn’t difficult
to find me. Of course, money will matter. I am Mr. Suresh Dhital,
Writer/Director, in this unnamed but famous city with a bustling
film industry. What more can I tell you, my brothers and sisters?
Recently, I received a warm email, still wafting with the warm
appreciation of the gentlemanly person, a certain gentleman who I do
not know, stating matters of various concerns to the general effect
that he thought I wrote in English that sounded like direct
translation from Nepali. This prompts me to promptly prompt you,
dear anonymous reader, of this peculiar knowledge—like my fellow
struggling writer and close but bitter friend Nagendra Sharma said,
“I owe nothing to the English language.” Although I have no certain
and credible understanding of what that means, I mean only to
convince you, O! brothers and sisters in distant and disputing
realms, that I am Mr. Suresh Dhital, writer/director, trying only to
fulfill the “writer” half in “writer/director.” My greed is
limited—in limited editions of passion and envy, in chow-chow masala
packet size ambitions, in one Bharbhare momo size bite.
If one day there is peace in Nepal, Mr. Suresh Dhital,
Writer/Director, promises you an enormous bounty of Nepali
cinema—like you’ve never seen before. But, before that, you must
extend me your trust and affection.
My brothers and sisters, what pearl of wisdom will I unearth before
you before you see the light in my words? My words are playful; they
chase each other, nip at each other and howl after each other. So
playful Words are—these free spirits that have play only in chasing
each other—that I will say something and take happy pride that I am
not bereft of poetic meaning, while you will sit before your
computer, glancing up and glancing about, and muttering with
vengeance that “Suresh Dhital is a fool!” and thereby killing the
only poet in me.
But, this is a matter to mark, my brothers and sisters, for every
mark that we mark upon the world is a mark of our own growth—we live
in the assaults we make upon this world, to decisively steer it with
our savage blows, not the fantasy to nudge it with foolish
delicateness. And now, trusting my words are a mark equally
priestly, full of proclamations and prophecies, I will say these
ever important words—good bye! I wish your prosperity and a little
happiness, just as we all deserve—not a flood of it, but the
sustenance from having just enough happiness to love life immensely
and with gratitude. And, no dark cloud like faces, no sour
countenance from you, O! dear reader brothers and sisters who I have
come to cherish in my gratitude and loathe in my narcissistic
affliction, my affection—no sore note of departure from you! I will
not tolerate the tears you shed in bidding me a short adieu!
I will go voluntarily, my brothers and sisters, before the tears of
our departure sting your eyes! And, Celluloid ki Kasam! Mr.
Suresh Dhital is writer/director! |
