And we're back after a short break

The two Floating Weeds were busy trekking in the Sahyadris the last couple of weeks to organise screenings, but this Saturday, 26th July, 6.30 pm, we are back with Wong Kar Wai's My Blueberry Nights.

And now for the mandatories:

Insurance is the subject matter of solicitation. Mutual funds are subject to market risk. And discussions, drinks and dinner can follow depending on the inclination. You are also welcome to use our space to share your work.

For those not in the know, we are located at B-11, Guru Kripa, off Veera Desai Road, Andheri West, midway between Belle Vue Nursing Home and Reliance Fresh. Let us know on 9920233732 (Kaevan) or 9820481356 (Vinoo) if you will be coming.

P.S. You're also welcome to join us on one of our foolhardy adventures into the Sahyadris where we give up our collective wisdom and well trudged paths for the path less taken.

And we're on air

A 2 minute edit of our first film, a corporate documentary for IBM worldwide on how they partnered Bharti Airtel on spearheading the Indian mobile revolution, will be aired today, 9th June, as part of the "Innovation @ Work" show on CNBC India at 7.30 pm. In case you miss it, you can catch it again this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, at 6.30 pm.

This week at Floating Weeds

Since last week's visual treats from Paradjnov left a few dazed and confused, this week we are screening something that's more approachable.

This Saturday, 5th July, at 6.30 pm, we will be watching Michael Haneke's French film from 2000 - Code Inconnu (Code Unknown). Discussions, drinks and dinner can follow depending on the inclination.

You are also welcome to use our space to share your work.

For those not in the know, we are located at B-11, Guru Kripa, off Veera Desai Road, Andheri West, midway between Belle Vue Nursing Home and Reliance Fresh.

Let us know on 9920233732 (Kaevan) or 9820481356 (Vinoo) if you will be coming.

Next change at Floating Weeds

- Full house?
- Not very...
...for an opening.

I found these lines from Ozu's Floating Weeds equally apt for our screening yesterday. We hope to see more of you at our next screening.

This Saturday, 28th June, at 6 pm, we will be watching two films by Sergei Paradjnov - The Legend of Suram Fortress and Ashik Kerib. Discussions, drinks and dinner can follow depending on the inclination.

You are also welcome to use our space to share your work.

For those not in the know, we are located at B-11, Guru Kripa, off Veera Desai Road, Andheri West, midway between Belle Vue Nursing Home and Reliance Fresh.

Let us know on 9920233732 (Kaevan) or 9820481356 (Vinoo) if you will be coming.

Floating Weeds at Floating Weeds

When we conceived Floating Weeds, our idea was to grow it into a loose collective of like-minded people, our friends and fellow drifters, pursuing our various interests on a commercial basis without compromising on what we enjoy doing. With that in mind, we have long been thinking of using Vinoo's extensive DVD collection, our 29 inch TV and the living room as an excuse to get everyone together and start talking. Finally, we are putting that thought into action by screening - what else, but - Floating Weeds, the 1959 Japanese film by Yasujiro Ozu from which we borrow our name, this coming Saturday, 21st June, at 7 pm. Discussions, drinks and dinner can follow depending on the inclination.

We plan to make screenings like this one a regular event at Floating Weeds. You are also welcome to use our space to share your work.

For those not in the know, we are located at B-11, Guru Kripa, off Veera Desai Road, Andheri West, midway between Belle Vue Nursing Home and Reliance Fresh.

Let us know on 9920233732 (Kaevan) or 9820481356 (Vinoo) if you will be coming.

Tales from a recce - Pushkar

Tales from a recce – Pushkar Pushkar (born of flower which Hindu mythology has it comes from the Swan with lotus that was sent by the gods so Brahma could perform his Yagna) is one long stretch of open land and is located just 14 kilometres off Ajmer. You would wonder what makes this deserted stretch of land famous. It is essentially the Pushkar mela besides of course the only Brahma temple*. During any time but the mela, Pushkar would look no different from any other village or town in Rajasthan. Acres and acres of barren land, kids on swings, people walking past you, often Camel in tow, women in colourful outfits, folk musicians and of course a huge crowd headed for the Pushkar lake and the Brahma temple. The kids by the tea-shop are a regular fixture I would presume. They have made the tree with the swing their own and are joyfully playing totally oblivious to the world around them. Their smile can wipe out the tiredness from any face. The path to the Pushkar lake is lined by shops on either side. You will find hawkers selling all kinds of stuff, really interesting and curious stuff which will make you wonder how they think up some of these products with tourists in mind. As you walk past the narrow streets it would be difficult to miss all the colour and a passing folk musician's music will announce his arrival. Pushkar is definitely worth a visit, more so during the mela which boasts of the largest camel fair in the world. This is a favourite haunt for the foreign tourists and is rivaled in colour and scale only by the Kumbh mela. With Camel races to set off the event and also sale of livestock, textiles, trinkets and folk music and dance accompanying it would sure be a sight to behold. For those interested the Pushkar mela happens in November and begins on a full-moon day. But then you missed it this year when it happened between 18 and 24 November. You will have to wait another year to witness it. You won't regret being there. I sure hope to be there when it happens in the very near future. Until then I will take pleasure in the fact that I did go there. So what if I only imagined the Mela happen right in front of me. * Brahma was cursed, mythology has it, that he wouldn't be worshipped for reasons that have been passed on through various stories. One story goes thus : Brahma performed a Yagna with Gayatri, a local milkmaid. Incensed, Savitri cursed her husband that he would never be worshipped anywhere except in Pushkar and that too only once a year. Savitri left for Ratnagiri Hill after cursing her husband and immolated herself there at which location you have the Savitri temple. Another story goes : Shiva asked Brahma and Vishnu to find the end of the 'Linga' J. Vishnu came back tired. Brahma said he had indeed found the end of 'Linga' to which Shiva said there is no end or beginning to the Linga. And for uttering this lie he was cursed. After Brahma apologized he was allowed worship at one place, Pushkar. Any other myth any of you have access to please share.

'A Floating Weeds production'

Last night, as I watched this title card fade in and out of the IBM minimentary, the momentousness of it completely passed me by. An hour later, travelling back home in a local train, purged of the intensity that goes into making each film, it finally sunk in. Floating Weeds had just made its first film.

Young Rathestars fundraiser video

A Forgotten People: The Parsis of rural Gujarat

Last month, I accompanied the Young Rathestars to rural Gujarat. The Young Rathestars are a Zoroastrian charity in Mumbai that provide financial assistance to poor Parsis in Bombay and other places in India. The purpose of their trip was to distribute foodgrains, other essentials and financial aid to over 70 rural Zoroastrian families in the villages around Ankleshwar.

Unlike the Young Rathestars, I am not a social worker. I am a documentary filmmaker and for some time now, I have been documenting the realities of the existence of our community that seem all too obvious to me but somehow are not on the radar of those around me. One such issue I want to document is that of the people we love to dismiss as Dubras, the illegitimate children of Parsi fathers with their tribal mistresses. The history of the Dubras lies in the villages of rural Gujarat, and my purpose in accompanying the Young Rathestars was to take a first-hand look at the condition of the Parsis in these villages.

I had an idea what to expect. I had already made a documentary on the poor among the community in urban Pune. I had also seen an amateur video of the poverty in rural Gujarat, shot more than 10 years back. I had seen photographs of these people on the Young Rathestars website. I had been part of a Government-sponsored workshop that had discussed the issue of poverty among the Parsis in both urban and rural India. And yet, as it so happens, whenever I go on research for my films, despite knowing so much, I ultimately find out that what I know is oh so little. The situation turns out to be far worse than what I have heard or read about.

My perception of a rural Parsi village, and I’m sure it is of many others too, was of places I had visited before. Places like Davier and Tarapore and Gholvad and Udwada. Places with agyaries and dharamsalas, sanatoriums and old brick houses on whose porches old Parsis sit, lonely and forlorn. I expected that the names of the villages I was going to visit would be found in our surnames.

Instead we set out to places I have never come across in any surname. Lavet, Vankal, Boria, Zankhvav, Ambavadi, Ratoti, Devgadh, Jhakharda… Some of them weren’t even villages but tribal hamlets. Off the main highways, down narrow village roads, tucked away somewhere deep into the interiors, these places used to be parts of the jungle not too long ago. If I was on my own, I wouldn’t have been able to find these places. The large road map of Gujarat that I had with me didn’t even list them. In such places, I was surprised to find Parsi families, sometimes one, sometimes a few, staying there for generations, eking out a living.

As we went from place to place, it wasn’t the poverty of the families we visited that hit me – their tattered clothes, their houses of straw and wood and mud, their wasted-away lives – but the fact that we as a community had forgotten them. In our collective memories, these people do not exist. In our ideas of what Parsi identity should be, these people do not figure.

And strangely enough, it wouldn’t have been too long ago that our families too would have been in similar circumstances. The Parsi baugs and colonies of Bombay are less than a hundred years old. They were established to resettle Parsi villagers escaping the Gujarat famine. In less than a hundred years, we have forgotten who we used to be.