The best and the most unexpected stories are found or told in the mostunexpected locations and times. The narrow stretch of beach where the GrandHyatt stands, was once full of plantations. It was a sultry night. The gazemoved from Dona Paula to Vasco, in vast swathe across the ocean. It’s afull moon night. The day gone past has been baked with the sunshine of minds,the finest conglomeration of world citizens, who have made our cosmos richer.
What emerged was a fine evening in conversation with an extraordinaryfilm maker and one of the nicest folks from so called “Bollywood”, AnushaRizvi. Here I was on the sands of Goa, chatting like old school friends,(having met for the first time) about life, friends, films and of course PeepliLive. Sitting in her faded jeans, kurta and speaking animatedly with me tryingto get a word in sideways, (all women are the same), I had a momentarysuspension of belief – that I was with a director, whose film was actuallynominated an entry for the Oscars. Arguably one of the finest contemporaryfilms on the travesty and sham of our electronic media and the politicalprocess, the comic satire revolves around framer suicides, the politics aroundit and the how the media works around it to gain TRPs. That night at Bambolim,Anusha spoke of none of this, but gave hilarious insights on how apredominantly Muslim crew (purely incidentally), including her academic andco-director husband Mahmood Farooqui, got into “situations” while filming inMadhya Pradesh, a BJP ruled state.
The core crew was hunting for locations in and around Bhopal. One daythey headed out of Bhopal and were in the outskirts when Mahmood wanted to getoff and take some pictures of the roadsides. Suddenly they were surrounded bycops. Mahmood went on clicking pictures and when the saw the cops he quipped‘Arre police bhi hain” and started clicking them. They soon realised that theyhad got into a mess when they were hauled to the police station and told theywere terrorists. “I heard the inspoector tell his superior “Sab musalman hain”,said Anusha. It so happened that a local BJP office was attacked a few days agoand there was a high alert. A group of Muslims taking pictures, wereobvious targets. The group was then asked ‘Gang ka leader kaun hain? ’ (who isyour gang leader?). Anusha, in order to protect the young boys on her teamannounced that she was the ‘gang leader”. Looking ahead at days in prison andnot on her film set, Anusha and her team waited for hours till reason dawned onthe Bhopal police. They were finally let off with a warning not to takepictures without permission.
The “gang leader” and me laughed and rolled over, thinking about thesilly policemen. Anusha is a brilliant mind, a new crop of film makers (and onewho incidently lives in Delhi), doesn’t drive fancy cars, reads andwrites voraciously, belongs to a family of learned historians matched only byher husbands’ family and overall someone like us, who wants to tell storingstories and make great films.
THINK2012 in Goa was about these characters, many of whom were not onpanels or anything as important but just came to just be. Gurjit Singh,political advisor to a minster from Scotland, who lived on bhelpuri and chaatwhile here. Mayank Malik, the head of Citibank in Jordan and thesurrounding Gulf countries, (and one of the senior most Citibank officialsworldwide) telling stories of banking in Baghdad (Iraq). “I go in there andlive in a protected home surrounding by G4 security guys, one of whom literallysleeps with me. There is fear of getting kidnaped all the time. I may be desibut I work for an American giant.”
It was surreal. Meeting such diverse specimens from all over the world,all together, and all so comfortable out of their comfort zones. This was timeaway from village politics, demonstrations, petty fights, mud-slinging – aglobal bubble, which was so real.
The fest was a reboot of thoughts, ideas and beliefs that are away fromour everyday Goa connect. We believe that we bask in splendid isolation butmiss out on key connects – the splendid world of wonderful outsiders.
