Sunday, January 20, 2013

The two weird fests

1. The Book Fest

Well, few days ago I created this book fest and gave it an effortless name of 'the Milan Kundera book fest'..Only four people (including me) consented to participate, out of which two of them were a couple (probably in love with each other). Thankfully, I owned four Kundera books in my pint-sized library. All of us four took one book each (through a lucky draw). I got my favourite "The book of laughter and forgetting". Two of us sat on the beanbags in the cozy winter sun and the couple sat on my mattress in the sun. All four seemed like islands in my terrace; each had his own universe, immense only to himself, far beyond the grasp or interest of others. We read and read profusely in the sun. Between the gaps, I occasionally drank some droughts of water, the couple looked at each other eyes trying to locate the protagonists in each other while the fourth guy (who had Laughable Loves) just laughed out loud and clapped in tandem. My neighbors whosoever looked at my balcony, looked at we four, and tried to gather what really was happening. When the sun reached the horizon, we stopped reading (similar as in the war of Mahabharat the fest ended at the sunset), no matter how much had we read. We kept the 3 books back in my tiny library except for the Laughable Loves which by mistake kept lying on the bean bag which I had forgotten to take it inside and thus remained in the open terrace. In the night came the hailstorm (yeah it had hailed in Delhi) and laughable loves got all wet and hit and bathed by the hail. Since next day, the book lies drying up in the sun, trying to regain those lost alphabets about love, humor, women and lies......

“Love is by definition an unmerited gift; being loved without meriting it is the very proof of real love. If a woman tells me: I love you because you're intelligent, because you're decent, because you buy me gifts, because you don't chase women, because you do the dishes, then I'm disappointed; such love seems a rather self-interested business. How much finer it is to hear: I'm crazy about you even though you're neither intelligent nor decent, even though you're a liar, an egotist, a bastard.” 
― Milan Kundera


2. The Movie fest

Well I stumbled on this movie fest being held in Chandni Chowk area (according to me: the only alive parts of Delhi) on the ubiquitous Facebook. It was showcasing movies from this director named Fatih Akin. I could not help but give up to the temptation of going to the fest because of the area where it was being held and the director whose movies they were screening. When I reached that rickety building where it was being held, I strarted getting real doubts about the invitation. But then when I reached the top floor, I saw few girls sitting on the rug with a projector infront. The only occasion I faced such a situation (the only guy amongst so many girls) was wen I had accidently climbed up a women's college bus during my engineering internship days in DRDO, Delhi. Hesitatingly I just sat down and enquired one of the girls whether it was really the venue of the movie fest or a prank. She laughed on my face and said that it was a prank by these college students of Delhi University and I was the only fool to be caught so far. I knew she was joking because the aura in the room smelt of restlessness for the start of the first movie (title:The Edge of Heaven). The fest went on fine without any goof-ups and was a wonderful experience.
Well, let me inform you that it was the same girl (who said that the fest was was a prank) went on to be a part of the couple who sat in the serious book fest mattress in my terrace reading Kundera and seeking the protagonist in her partner's eyes...

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” 
― Goethe (the writer often quoted in the movie The Edge of Heaven)

1 comments :

Shubhendu Bhardwaj said...

these posts have amazing quality of making the reader to first fall for the title and then somehow trick them into reading the whole thing !!!

the left book under hailstorm reminds of Bhishma Pitamah left over on the bed of arrows when the war ended