One or two things I know about Jean-Pierre Léaud

I just saw Jean Eustace’s ‘The Mother and the Whore’ and felt compelled to put some of my whirlwind thoughts into writing. I would have liked to slip surreptitiouslyinto the film, but the lead actor Jean Pierre Leaud is blocking my way. And even before I begin I will have to put my complex feelings and thoughts about Jean Pierre Léaud in some order. I encountered him first time in ‘400 Blows’ and admit that though impressed and a bit moved, Antoine Doniel had not yet cast a shadow over my mind. That came later when I saw a late teenage Jean/Antoine in ‘Antoine and Colette’ a 30 min short of Truffaut made for the film ‘L’amour a vignt ans’. I was well past my 18th year and was not particularly in love with any real person, but that is no excuse for not having a schoolboy crush on the film which is same as having crushes on its lead characters and Paris. In those days I was learning French, reading Camus-Sartre-Breton-Eluard-Rimbaud (mostly in translation) and had just discovered French new wave.

Antoine was slim, of medium height, having a shy charming smile and longish hair falling on eyes that had to be regularly flicked away, ‘My mom thinks you look romantic, it’s because of your hair’ Colette told him. Antoine worked at a record manufacturer, smoked profusely like any French or Bangali of his age, went to classical music concerts and public seminars, and lent books to Colette. There was no novelty in him as I realized later, but I was depressingly bored with my studies and milieu and Antoine conjured dreams of what I longed to be. My relationship with Kolkata was precarious in those days (now perhaps it is more so for very different reasons), I passionately loved certain parts of the city’s physical space, (once I was walking past Park Court building in park circus, the late autumn air and evening sunlight, anticipation of the philosophy seminar in Khaleel Munzeel AFC gave me the feeling of being in a different city, in a more lighthearted time); In turn I felt stifled by modhyobitto narrow mindedness, morality and mediocrity. Of course my loathing was also an act of unconscious self critique. ‘Intellectual’ was a magic word in those days, something very alien and enchanting. But Antoine was no intellectual. Although he had run away from home, he was a homely guy, spending time with Colette’s parents who adored him. I could identify with that nice guy image, being comfortable with parents of a girl or boyfriend. It’s endearing and disgusting at the same time. I could also feel Antoine’s sweet pain at Colette’s rejection, the romantic melancholy that he expressed physically so well. In sum I was in love with Antoine/Jean Pierre.
Some time later, after a violent argument with a guy about 400 Blows, I actually started to think of the younger Antoine, though not much. 3 films were released in 1959-60 heralding rebirth of cinema- Alain Resnais’ ‘Hiroshima mon Amour’, François Truffaut’s ‘Les Quatre Cents Coups’ (400 Blows) and Jean Luc Goddard’s ‘A bout de soufle’ (Breathless). I had already been haunted by Hiroshima mon amour and delighted by Breathless; 400 Blows came third in my list. In a couple of months I had seen most of Goddard’s pre May’68 films. But even in the midst of Goddard philia, I remained true to Antoine. During 2006 Kolkata Film festival when we came back home to recuperate from a terrible Brazilian film, I made Tua and Ranabir watch Antoine and Colette (and Chris Marker’s masterpiece ‘La Jetee’) while sipping some leftover red wine. Was I trying to vaguely enact my new wave icons? Belmondo was way beyond my league, his cool debonair mannerisms (alluding to another favorite screen icon- Humphrey Bogart) and heady hedonist characters too far away. But Jean Pierre was not wholly out of reach. Later that week we three-Suprovo, Tua, me came back home having seen some boring films at KFF and watched Goddard’s ‘Band a part’; While leaving Suprovo even enacted a scene, shooting a sub-machine gun dhish-dhish-dhish-dhish…. mimicking the sound of bullet shots. Some weeks later, we three walked out of Oly’ pub into luminous park street inebriated, puffing cigarettes and giggling on the day public drunkenness was made chargeable offence. When I look back, those moments seem no less filmic than the ones on screens. But most of the time I was alone with Goddard, Truffaut, Resnais, Marker, Léaud, Anna Karina and Jean Moreau. I was also watching and appreciating Fellini, Antonioni, Bergman, Tarkovsky et al. The ‘high priestess’ of cold sensuality-Monica Vitti had already drifted out of Antonioni’s depressing films into my reveries; but they were all distant stars on the sky, I couldn’t identify with them.
When I got hold of Goddard’s ‘Weekend’ and ‘La Chinoise’ (The Chinese) forcible land acquisition in Singur was already over, Nandigram was looming over the horizon. In the late winter of 2007, I had forgotten Singur and got over Camus. It was time to be more ‘radical’ in thought, always only in thought. I will skip narrating the outburst of pure joy and admiration that ‘Weekend’ provoked; but a tiny anecdote can be mentioned here: recently, not even a month back when we were stranded in the jammed streets of Gariahat on Saptami noon Iman exclaimed ‘the scene stretching before us is reminiscent of 8 ½ ‘, I instantly retorted ‘I’d rather have burning train of cars as in Weekend!’. Jean Pierre had a couple of scenes in Goddard’s macabre satire, in one of which he is Saint-Just. Dressed in Napoleonic attire he strides along a green field in the French countryside reading aloud from the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1793, while the lead characters of the film (a bourgeoisie married couple who sleep around and plot to kill each other but manage to work together in their attempts to murder the wife’s father) look on flabbergasted. In the other scene he is seen wooing his girlfriend on a public phone, while the couple attempts to steal his red car. Jean Pierre is no alien to activism, he was there on Cinémathèque Française the day Henri Langlois was sacked, distributing and reading out from pamphlets written by Goddard. Curiously he appears as himself 35 years later in Bernardo Bertolucci’s ode to May’68 ‘The Dreamers’. In the opening minutes we see an old Léaud haranguing a crowd from the steps of the Palais de Chaillot, the scene cuts to actual footage of 35 years younger Léaud. It is an uncanny moment in an otherwise highly romanticized yet endearing film. Of course The Dreamers introduced me among lots of other things to two beautiful actors- Louis Garrel and Eva Green. It may sound ironic but La Chinoise was a more difficult film to digest. I was confused by Goddard’s intention, was he idolizing the naïve revolutionary youth or satirizing them? I still don’t have the answer. Jean Pierre played Guillaume, a Brechtian actor shouting slogans like “A minority with the right ideas is not a minority”, “It is necessary to confront vague ideas with clear images.”, “We must be different from our parents” and “Reactionaries are paper tigers.” The film portrayed a group of youth in their late teens or early twenties cooped up in a bourgeoisie apartment decorated with Mao’s red book and grand revolutionary graffiti, plotting violent revolution. They spend their summer holiday talking politics, making love, lampooning reactionary Soviet communism, American government and all capitalist-imperialist-fascists in sum all ‘ist’ except Maoist. For Mao was the flavor of the season, as Claude Channes marvelous mock pop song ‘Mao, Mao’ from the film captures, the lyrics go:
Vietnam burns and me I spurn Mao Mao
Johnson giggles and me I wiggle Mao Mao
Naplam runs and me I gun Mao Mao
Cities die and me I cry Mao Mao
Whores cry and me I sigh Mao Mao
The rice is mad and me a cad

It’s the little red book that makes it all move
Imperialism lays down the law
Revolution is not a party
The A bomb is a paper tiger
The masses are the real heros
The Yanks kill and me I read Mao Mao
The jester is king and me I sing Mao Mao
The bombs go off and me I scoff Mao Mao
Girls run and I follow Mao Mao
The Russians eat and me I dance Mao Mao
I denounce and renounce Mao Mao
It’s the little red book that makes it all move
The soldiers are the foundation of the army
Real power grows out of the barrel of a gun
All the monsters will be defeated
The enemy does not fall on his own accord.


March 14 2007. Terror unleashed on Nandigram. It is perhaps too early to tell what that date meant for Bengal and India, but for me the day changed quiet a few things. I cancelled a date to attend students and intellectuals protest demonstration, my first. I can’t go into details of those times, of what I saw, heard, felt and thought. It requires more time and thought. But those days were colored in two very different emotions-that of outrage, helplessness and of lightness and euphoria of being finally witness to an event. In demonstration I joined my voice to clichéd and grandiose slogans like ‘hate hate comrade gore tolo barricade’ and ‘lorai lorai lorai chai, lorai kore banchte chai’; there were meetings and web campaigns. I didn’t even realize when I had surreptitiously gotten over all the heady political activism; perhaps mid-term exams put a break to my already fledging enthusiasm. But I deeply suspect that behind most of my activities loomed cinema loomed Goddard, Jean Pierre Léaud and Bertolucci. I was slipping from ‘reality’ to ‘cinema’ and back again. Barricading Dharmatala crossing, shouting slogans at RAF while holding hands of pretty girls, wasn’t I enacting an unscripted film made from assemblage of those I adored? Many youths gathered there spoke proudly of their Naxal genealogy. These children of 70s radical Naxals turned bourgeoisie perhaps felt some connection with those times of our parents; but I, felt primarily the halo of May’68 Paris-a time reconstructed from films, graffiti and posters. Those moments didn’t last long. Grand old pa, Marx wrote that history repeats itself-first as tragedy, then as farce. Later a friend of mine brilliantly likened the demonstrations and meetings to a quick orgasm, momentary, necessary yet wholly self-fulfilling. Above all the time marked periodic return to naïveté, rebelliousness and unapologetic grandiloquence. Jean Pierre was there with me through it all.
‘Masculin Femina’ is a film much closer to my heart. One of its inter-titles read: “This film could be called The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola.” Jean Pierre plays Paul, a romantic young idealist and wannabe literary star that chases budding pop star Madeleine. Despite markedly different musical tastes and political leanings, the two soon become romantically involved. It’s a tale of 60s French youth and has reality styled interviews with lead characters about love, love-making, art and politics. Perhaps this is the Goddard film I identified most with, the Léaud character I felt nearest to. Though I don’t really know now, I will have to watch the film again to realize my current feelings. In a way Masculin Femina leads on to The Mother and the Whore (released in 1973). Of course they are by different directors with very different cinematic sensibilities and separated by the momentous events of intermediate years, but still there is something similar in them, something that I am not able to pin down right now. Perhaps it has to do with one’s relationship with self and the other. Both films depict relationships between youths of opposite sex and are filled with conversation. But there is something beyond this male-female dichotomy that fascinates me. The relationship with ones own self is brilliantly yet never explicitly sketched. What mask did I wear in front of myself?
In one and half years I had forgotten Jean Pierre, for I wanted to forget a certain parts of my past, for various conflicting reasons. I know the intellectual/pseudo-intellectual games I have occasionally played with myself and others, the long heated debates and conversations, the defensive walls I had erected against love and romantic attachment. I wont call that folly, never, but with time I have come to realize the sweet yet at times dangerous naivity of it all. Beyond all the name droppings, elitism and confusion there was still a dominant wide-eyed-wonder boy inside me. It was not difficult to believe that you could change your life and sorroundings even the world if you tried hard and intelligently enough. Is that time irrevocably lost? Alas! I suspect so. But when I look back, there is less of nostalgia and more of wonder and amusement comparable to that felt for certain Jean Pierre films.
The long haired, bare chested Leaud seating on the bed of his mistress, listening to Edith Piaf record brought back memories of bygone times, of his and my past. Thus trying to write about this film The Mother and the Whore, I have drifted into labyrinths of my memory. It is a detached, calm, un-dramatic yet devastating film; As if its purpose is silent annihilation of all 60s romanticism, idealism and optimism epitomized in films. Perhaps it can also be read as heralding belated demise of French new wave cinema. The mother and whore treads ground where May 68 slogans like ‘Demand the impossible’ sound hollow, for here, now, even the possible turns out to be impossibly lost. I live in such a time. On my recent visit to Kolkata after 6 months, the principle topic of discussion among friends was disillusionment with work and marriage plans. A friend said that he was depressed; the world was falling apart- Nano was leaving from Singur, he was still single, finance markets were crashing, friends were getting married and Saurav Gangully was retiring. He was half joking, but had hit upon some real anxieties. We were getting old and our life blending into comfortable bourgeoisie banality. It is then that I remembered young Antoine, Jean Pierre of 400 Blows.
Lately I have been thinking a lot about him; the type writer stealing, expertly lying adolescent. 14 is a good age to run away from home. According to the hero of a Murakami novel 15 is the perfect age. As my 24th birthday draws near I often wish I could go back 10-11 years. Perhaps I would never have had the guts to run away from home for a long stretch, but I could prolong those hours of swift flight, throwing aside the good boy image I could be a bit ‘bokha’-smoking cigarettes, bunking school, kissing boys and girls. Ah! Wishful thinking, what would Jean Pierre say to that?

incursion into dreams

There is this old house, mossy green and dark, visible slightly through the large trees around. Perhaps someone inside is playing old records or a piano, no, better still, she’s not playing anything at all but singing. She maybe a witch, cooking chocolate fudge. Only the chocolate is flesh and bones of children. Quick, hide! She may see us. What flavor would you like to be?

Collecting pebbles by a tiny lake. A large white building on the backdrop. The pebbles look similar to the stuff the building is made of. But we are too little to notice the building; the pebbles are great enough to hold us enchanted. Some of them are larger than the grasp of your palm. Are you angry about that? Do I see your lips curling? Come on now, stretch your hand, place your palm on mine, don’t giggle, I won’t sing monsieur Shakespeare’s dialog a la Juliet. See, my fingers are longer than yours. Though not so thin, nor do my knuckles make sharp tiny sounds on being cracked. They make blunt noises, blunt like the tip of my fingers. Don’t laugh. What? they are like paws? So if I fold in my fingers inside like this and say ..grrrahhhhh…will you be scared? Laughing again? You just wait, you’ll be screaming soon! Ha! Why are you swinging back? Petrified huh?

Good night, sweet dreams don’t fall down from the bed. Not on me, please. At least not without warning.

This familiar town by the river or sea, have we been here before? Or will be? Your clothes are pretty, blue like cellophane paper, only they are opaque. Stick this white wild flower over your ear. Does that mean No? But why?

Can you hear the song? Is it September? Does this path lead to the fair? what are they singing. Can it be …. Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme?

Are you going to scarborough fair?

Yo-Yoing

I spent half of Sunday deciding what to do but could not think of anything in particular that I wanted to. Meditating that this lack of purpose calls for an attempt at yo-yoing I got up from my lair. The hot afternoon gave way to a cool breeze from the hill as I stepped out. Tentative destination: Bandra and then where the path leads. Every time I almost believe that Sunday locals will be what on weekdays they are not- roomier, secluded and windy. As always, I am wrong. So hustling between a street smart dude and plump mother with a roaring bundle of clothes in her arms I start mentally rehearsing old and new Hindi songs those that may or may not have any connection with Mumbai locals. Dadar arrives at last, then changing tracks to western. As the train to Churchgate was leaving platform I was about to run after it being caught up in a sudden panic attack, totally unworthy of a yo-yo, only to realize that Bandra is opposite Churchgate. With a sigh of relief and tickling of shame I turned backwards and soon another local arrived, the right one this time. One thing needs to be said about western line locals: if not conforming to my fake nostalgia for roomy and secluded early 20^th century metros, they are far better than their central line counterparts. This is hardly surprising since western line runs thorough the richest suburbs of Bombay: Andheri, Bandra, Worli, Parel and Marine lines. If you are lucky as I wasn’t that day, your coach will have fluorescent green LCD display showing the next station.

Bandra, queen of suburbs, home of the nuveau rich, compulsive shoppers and diners, not to forget the showbiz glitterati; in opposition to detached demeanor and aristocratic elegance of Colaba is more of a Zeenat Aman than a Sharmila Tagore. Welcome to link road, paradise of the inanimate where even the animate effortlessly make a transition to the other side. From jazzy undergarments to bead belts, fake Rolexes to faker designer shirts, you name it they have it. Is it my delusion that the line between inanimate and animate is fuzzy, that not only the fashion wrapping beautiful bodies but also the bodies themselves or what is visible of them (and there’s quiet a lot) are part of the same shimmering in-animation. But it could be the other way also, that these objects and fashion wrappings are equally or more animate than the bodies which are not really visible in their exposure nor are hidden. And if any of the above is more than mere fancy of my compulsively disordered theorizing brain, what can be said of the eroticism they provoke? Fetish, is that the word?

I thought I’d skip the Mary Mary episode, but then again as the place came up on my yo-yoing map, let’s give a passing reference. It’s a basilica, old but how much I don’t really know, neither do I feel like going through the wikipedia article devoted to it. So it’s an old basilica, facing the sea, the sun rays falling directly on the entrance, illuminating the path to the shrine. There were only three things that caught my attention: A crimson glass chandelier with tiny gold stars, the ornate icon of Virgin holding child Jesus and a marble sculpture of Mary mounted on a structure directly opposite to the basilica. I tried hard to decipher the look on Mary’s face. But through the fumes of candles and incense burning bellow and the sea behind everything seemed fragile and gloomy.

Band stand is a perfect place for wannabe yo-yo’s, for the simple reason that one can walk endlessly in S.H.M with the sea breeze and crowd for company. The street is on higher ground, park, pavement and black rocks descend in steps to the sea. This is one of the few places in Bombay where the sea appears to be real, not a Hollywood studio simulation resembling a lake. I like it here, the roughness of the waves as they swoon and crash on the filthy black rocks. Perhaps they were once more alive, lesser skeletal than now, having even their bones peeled away by the sea to reveal black skin underneath. The sun is setting and the time is ripe to sit down following a ritual feet dipping. A girl stands by my side on the concave surface inundated periodically by foam white wave tails; she is urged by her lover behind to move forward but is content or afraid and stands her ground flashing sweet smiles. By the time I sit down on a chair like rock formation, the sun has lost her glory. The brilliance with which she was bathing the sea surface has faded, that dazzling voyeur is gone, and a halogen lamp impersonation is being played out. It is time for her to be viewed, in all her nakedness. But the waves still pay her homage, rise up to catch amber rays, a green-black-ochre sheet with hues of orange rolling into foam. I taste my lips, salty. The spray gathered on glasses creates peculiar filtering effect. Pseudo-reality increases as the sun goes down, halogen street lamps burn brighter, Andheri -Juhu high-rises on eastern horizon very slowly light up like a million unblinking eyes, lovers get a little insecure and embrace tighter, children so long frolicking return to their mother and bums get ready to prowl the streets. Sun goes down, the moment passes and I remember her.

Odysseus shipwrecked on the island Ogygia while returning home from Troy, was imprisoned there by sea nymph Calypso, daughter of none other than the Titan Atlas. Calypso held the hero captive for seven long years. She was in love with him but her love was not reciprocated, Odysseus being drunk on his nostalgia. She shared his bed perhaps longer than Penelope, promised him immortality if he stayed back. But Odysseus wouldn’t, he had to return to Ithaca, reclaim a kingdom and wife, ret-tell his own epic journey. Calypso was left behind on Ogygia, alone again, with memories of unrequited love. Did Odysseus tell her of his travels, his wars, his lovers? Was she not the ideal audience, absorbing each tale into her body, tales that revealed parts of her lover, parts that were untouchable in their lovemaking? In the end what need drove her to keep him hostage? What desire was greater, sexual or of an ecuteur? Tell daughter of the sea, the one who weeps concealed.

Odysseus won’t take you with him, perhaps you wouldn’t have left. But millennia have passed, you are immortal and this world has enough inanimate goddesses to have any need of you. Your home is now a site of successful tourist industry, with signboard “Calypso’s Cave”. Where are you? Perhaps somewhere near this evening, do these black rocks of a one time island remind you of Ogygia? For all I know you could be the marble statue with her back to the sea, or not. I await you Calypso. Rise from this sea, come, embrace me and tell me the tales of your loneliness. I won’t refrain from your body like him, will surrender my amateurish yo-yohood to your voluptuousness. Come Calypso, take me into your lair or let me take you into the labyrinthine streets. There is space enough for loneliness to be shared.

My myth making attempts were not quiet satisfied, but I was starting to get bored and a little light headed, drunk on salty spray and pulp epics. The sea had receded a bit, it being low tide. Three boys and girls were singing with a guitar: tu sagar pyar ka / tere isi pyar ne humko diwana banya / gaherai mile sagarki, uchai mile asmanka / tere pyar ke sagar main hum tairna chahte hai…..clichéd? You should have heard them singing by the sea. Having failed to find Calypso it was time to walk the streets again. The garden leading to Bandra fort walls was closing, so I missed the view of Worli. Back again through Bandstand to the other end, where to now? Link road stacked with fetishes was beckoning, but I had forgotten the path. So I entered a plebian looking Lane with bikes and autos whizzing by my side. This must lead somewhere and if not what the heck. The best thing about evening is that she makes even the routine look mysterious. As if the buildings and villas around possessed something more than brick, iron and glass. Dogs in heat, dogs pissing, merry bikers and not so merry lovers quarrelling inside a stranded car, having wiped away sea spray from glasses, I was itching to turn the voyeur. Alas, there wasn’t much to see or rather things that I wanted to. Before I realized it the bungalows and fancy apartments had given way to suburban flats. A park on the corner, turning left the cityscape changes again. Shacks selling tea, cigarette, and fish vendors line the dirtier lane. Onwards and downwards the path leads to ramshackle houses and dead ends to a slum. Well today’s yo-yoing turns out to be a walk down class hierarchy in the heart of 1^st world suburb of Bombay. But there is more than that; I have really completed a harmonic motion, if not simple then at-least periodic. The monstrous Worli sea link looms overhead as sewer water run bellow my feet. Taj Lands End is on my right, towering over the slums. I have passed by Taj many times without ever suspecting that another world lies underneath. Dead end, the lane winds down bellow but doesn’t rise, it gets lost into the shacks built of eros, thanatos and dust.

While returning I found a roadside vendor selling kebabs-sheek, boti, kalija, sina. They are delicious and unbelievably cheap. In this city of pow-bhaji, vada pow, missal pow, over stuffed sandwiches and dhabeli, finding a shack selling kebabs is more than fortunate, it’s a minor miracle. I bless Bandra with all my heart and find a way back home through jammed roads and packed trains. An evening of successful Yo-Yoing?

V

The shop is mid-size, roughly square with bookshelves on all walls except the little space where the proprietor’s desk stands. Cozily lit, intimately spaced, it is easy to get lost in the books staring at you from all sides. And instantly the vaguely known yet mysterious emotion overcomes you, a rush of blood flows to your face and a little dizziness enhances your senses. Try to hold back the desire of reading the spines, for a while just run your hand carelessly along them, seek to touch the letters and images with your fingertips. There are a million worlds, and you have to be patient. Once the dust of un-held books has rubbed into fingers with the odorless shine of cover laminations, you focus your gaze on the titles. You scan them in order, left to right, then down, take a quick glance at the upper shelf, and again concentrate on the shelf you left behind. Are you searching for some patterns, key to a yet unknown puzzle, or perhaps an aberration, a title you did not expect there?

You take out a book out randomly; flip the pages, read the back cover or flyleaf. It can be a book you have never seen or heard of, or a known and even favorite title, a different edition perhaps than the one you are used to. But the most interesting are the ones that you were not actually looking for, but came upon suddenly and now want, like Thomas Pynchon’s V. Before you recollect what you know about this book, the scant yet suggestive title of the novel arrests you. On the pale pista colored cover with a white grid, a multicolored giant V is printed. THOMAS PYNCHON written in bold black font is superimposed on the V. Bellow that is written again in multicolor “few books haunt the waking or sleeping mind, but this is one” with TIME written bellow. And on the bottom left corner is another sky blue V but not a reprint of the title, just the symbol of the publisher-vintage. The decision is already made in your mind; you are going to buy it.

in search of a book...

There, north west of Nelson Mandela road: Priya PVR and Basant lok market complex. From the top: a C formed by the north end of the complex, surrounding a fountain. Along the south end of C extends the right rectangular wing and parallel to it the left wing. a spacious walkway runs in between, paved in grey stone. Both the wings are L shaped, the left one having a longer stem. South of the right wing is assortment of cafes and fast food centers. The grey lane leads to a large rectangular building that houses the cinema. Facing the west side of this building is another rectangular slab of market complex. On Priya's south east corner stands Holy angels church. Further south, a little on the west: an impressive building, rectangular in shape-Vasant continental.

You get down from the bus at the juncture of the two streets, your eyes start searching for a market complex. It is there, on the left of the road. you enter through the north west part of the complex, cross the fountain while directing languid glances at a pair of lovers embracing; a kid sitting on his grandfathers’ lap who perhaps is telling him a story; a pretty girl in her mid-teens sitting alone, facing the fountain; a couple eating burgers with bored expression on their faces. You make a mental note of the Axis bank ATM on the corner and move down along the central walkway. on your right: a Citibank, ground floor, the right turn will take you to Adidas showroom, sugar and spice bakery and modern bazaar that sells smoked salmon, food coloring, dried and tinned goods, fish and meat. But you are not interested and pass by the right turn, further south. Your eyes scan for a bookshop. Look towards left, there is a junk food stall selling buttered corn in various flavors and candies. they don’t look too appetizing.

All the top fashionable brands like Allen Solly, Van Heusen, Levi's, Benetton, Lacoste, Reebok, and Nike are here. Take a left turn, move along lower end of the right wing, there are café’s here: somber looking Barista and very chic Hookah. Groups of fashionably dressed youngsters stand before its mahogany doors. Perhaps there is a party, or a jazz performance. A couple comes along, she is dressed in a V neck low cut red T-shirt, a bronze-brown leather jacket with fur collar and cuffs, a crimson mini skirt, cream colored nylon stockings and knee length black leather boots with high heels. The jet black hair complements her pale skin and brown frowning eyes. The man is dressed in off-white designer shirt over which he is wearing a mustard colored cord jacket having brass buttons on cuffs. The faded denim is of a pale blue hue with a touch of ultramarine. His brick-brown leather boots are dusty. They come walking with hands around their waist, his hands slip down provocatively to her hips. They join their friends waiting near the door. From the outside the eatery has a colonial Franco-Arabic look. The evening’s special menu written with multicolored chalk over a black slate board reads:

Chicken Ceaser salad

Chicken in lemon and carrot sauce

Baklava

Baba Ghanoush

Falafel

You have tarried here for long; you will see many more beautiful people dressed in high fashion, rich and flaunting their assets, wearing hundred different styles yet somehow familiar in their alien ness. So move along now towards Priya, crossing the junk food stalls, the crowd listening to a popular DJ mimicking Bollywood stars. A queue has started forming for the evening show of Tare zamen par. Turn left, a narrow alley runs down. On the corner is the theaters exit, dark and shabby. Perhaps this is the only remnant of one time Priya which in pre-liberalized India was one of the few theaters showing Hollywood movies in the capital and was one of the first halls to be converted to a Cineplex. Bellow the exit a street urchin is sitting with around 10 drawings spread before him. They are all done on roughly A4 size white sheets with cheap crayons. One depicts a yellow hut with brick colored roof, beside it stands a tree with both trunk and leaves colored green, though of different shades; above the hut are some blue lines, signifying sky and clouds. Another drawing is of a child having a blank look not unlike the one who is sitting before it, wearing khaki pants and a dirty green pullover which is obviously a couple of sizes too big for him. The urchin is trying to sell them to the audience coming out but none seem interested in these crude sketches of an unknowable poverty. They flow past him, leaving behind traces of perfume, satisfied smiles and sympathetic tears shed on the touching film. He patiently collects his merchandise and goes to a hollow cheeked, sari and tattered shawl clad woman who could be his mother. Both of them are barefoot. It is now, while looking at them that you notice the signboard bearing name of FACT AND FICTION behind. There it is the shop you have been looking for, just around the corner……

to be continued