Red oxide tiles alternating red and green. Teakwood doors, century old iron padlock, hand-made, crude and transports you in one touch. Sunlight streaming from Kerala windows, through India red curtains. Semi conscious, nostalgic about the present. And on the back of the teakwood, sits a cut out from a magazine. On Brando. Best Italian mafia don ever. Large forehead, hair combed back, horizontally striped Italian men’s cardigan. And the article talks about how Brando is black coffee. Smile.
And now, Indian psychedelia. If that is not enough to make you sit up, get this: peppered with rock meets underground, slick, jazz funk boogie, earthy rustic sexuality, firang waif prettiness and tall strapping undescribable. Pimps, bright satin shirts, huge rings, black lips, crassly emulated moghul architecture, noir, asbestos shutters, garbage, Indian decadence. Solitary, spoilt, rotten, spoilt rotten. Gorgeous. And all this worn simply.
The movie begins and sucks you into the real real world. The phone conversations you’ve had. Hopefully you’ve had them. The extravagantly flattering wastrel. Sans ego, fully delicious. Beige trousers, beret, 70s flower power on eyes, ankle socks and oh-those shoes! Cruising life chewing salted carbs.
Teach the nation how to wear denim. Unhealthy thin, wiry, lean, lazy. Indian trance to Underground. Psychedelic anger. Stumble, stop, move, stumble. Yet slick. Oh to walk through noir streets. Vodka carton, leaning saunter, unashamed. Crusted lips, stubble. Rock music.
Brilliant musical. Unabashedly Indian, touching UK underground with rusticity. I mean think about it. Think about music which actually uses slick underground baseline percussions with rustic Indian vocals, throws in a bit of the Beatles India Tour after effect, a little bit of a grown up Kurt Cobain vocal sensibility, with a Mojo Risin attitude. Brilliant! Our own foolishly brave, Indian, manic depressive, addictive, bipolar – in all the Indian grandeur possible. The music rises up pointedly and then lingers above in space, undulating and sinewing across and around. Topple, tumble, revolve, trip. And then guess what he does. He wham bams the Indian shaadi brass band in your face. And that too, because it is supposed to signify ‘his’ whole world crashing down and clankering apart. Stabbing you with the perfect ‘emosanal atyachar’. Ridiculously over done bollywood lyrics, modern swear words and qawaali bravado in tight elvis suits. I mean come on! Such musical incest and incredibly evolved humour directed at self cannot go unnoticed. It IS the Devdas, Indian Ishtyle. And this is the new psychedelia. Bright, garish, colourful and obsessed with the grand fall. It’s simply unfair. To get it so right.
Smearing turmeric on sleeve and chest. Active colour. Leave the stain. Smile. Dimple. Hurt.
Misunderstood love, misplaced arrogance. Smile. Poignant. Lose innocence fighting for it. Extravagant out there drag queen in waif. Bright. Red. Gold. Loud. Pornographised silence. Loud loneliness. How brilliant! Face paint to make him smile. I can’t write anymore.
Jyenagar Jalajamba is back.. without a bang, but then who cares... grand entries are over rated.
Today she bought bags. Just out of the blue. And its kitsch.. kitschhhhh... kitt-shhhhh... kishhhhh... such a pretty word. A failed attempt at edgy curtness. Like you're sliding out of control. I wonder how the word came about. I'm sure it happened in a new york penthouse... in a late night house party.. with anorexic pretentious women.. russian ones.. with harsh flat pronunciation... in a minimalist setting with synthetic electricity and long cigarillos stuck onto silver pipes.. only they weren't breakfastattiffany's. they were ceramic vaccuum.
Anyway, one must not stray so much from the topic at hand... no... wait... i have more to say.... just remembered that I never took to the word 'bling'. I'm sure it was invented so it can be the new 'with it' word. Convenient tickets to acceptance. But something about the word is so bland. So 'tchain'... like a bunch of useless keys falling onto a plate. But then I digress.
So yea, Jyenagar Jalajamba spent a bomb on poor quality over sized embarassingly loud kitsch. How comforting a feeling. Almost like you're wild enough to be cool. Mind you, where I come from... big fat over priced kitsch bags ARE wild.. especially if the most unpredictability in a tambram's life is the consistency of their daily cups of curd. And even THAT we know how to tame.
Right so the bags are basically big and have huge prints on them. But I love them. My bags are rexine meets Andy Warhol in asymmetric poor stitching. And the fabric is not tweed coarse... its rexine coarse... not natural coarse.
And it can hold my entire world in it. All the comfort goods that a woman needs. Her own portable weaponry - face wash, tissue, comb, deo, chap stick, kajal, another comb with thinner teeth, another wad of tissue, old bills, dirty wallet, pens, pencils, pretentious reading, random keys, lacto calamine, everything. It hangs right under her shoulder and hangs pretty... and loud.
To measure one's days by the coffee cups. Such prettiness. Such vacuum.
