23. Karma Baby

The new semester began with a new verve, new subjects and new faces on the campus, of our immediate juniors. Though we were drunk that night but we remembered what we had pledged, that we would try to achieve our dreams. All of us began making parallel efforts with all enthusiasm; Depesh joined a high class gym and spent long hours working on his body. Bhupi came down hard at jotting down lyrics, composing them on his guitar and rehearsing even harder, looking for avenues where he could perform, cultural shows around the city and functions in various colleges. Joining some college band would have been a good thing but then all these bands were those interested in funky rock type music which he didn’t like. He was a more sufi type, so he continued to sing alone. For me it was time to learn the skill of filmmaking, since I could not leave engineering to pursue film studies, I sought Tazzy’s advice.
“You can begin with writing small scripts… and maybe buy a digital camera, start photography.”
“Yes that would be a good start.”
“The most important thing in filmmaking is the skill of storytelling and you don’t need any coaching for it no need to spend money or run around, just get a pen and a paper, explore your own ideas, observe, think. Let us start cheap and easy, with a pen and a paper writing short scripts…”

His advice was brilliant ‘cheap and easy’ no panicking, patience and perseverance. I shopped for a special pen and a colourful smooth bunch of papers. The first short script I wrote was a love story of an air-bubble and a water-drop. The air-bubble is the lover and water-drop the beloved; they live in this big deep-deep ocean. Water-drop sees the air-bubble after a very long time in the ocean, and she is mad at him,
“Where have you been?”
“O baby I tell you my tragic story, after the last time we met I was gulped in by this big whale, huge, three days later she farted and I was launched through the backdoor into the sky, there an eagle breathed me in. Instead of the lungs I fumbled into her stomach, it’s a bad place I tell you full of rotting rat meat, two days later when she let out from the backdoor I fell into the ocean and here I am” the air-bubble says proudly narrating his adventure.
“O honey….puchi puchi puchi, but why is that you always come off the backdoor?” she asks confused. The air-bubble twists his nose, thinks for a while and says with a snap,
“Karma, baby”Ha ha…so went my first script.