Tag: ritika bhandari parekh

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Become

Talking weddings with The Wedding Filmer

Vishal Punjabi started working in the wedding industry purely by chance – and today, most weddings are incomplete without him.
by Ritika Bhandari Parekh

He has converted ‘Look-here, look-there’ static wedding videos to marvellous, organic and personal wedding movies that every bride dreams of. Vishal Punjabi, with his boyish charm, is the go-to guy if you are looking to have a treasure trove of shaadi memories. His company, ‘The Wedding Filmer’ is on the wish list of every to-be married couple.

An NRI, Punjabi was born and brought up in Ghana before he moved to England for further studies. Having visited India a couple of times, he definitely didn’t know that his destiny was being planned here.

Their video ‘Heartbeats’ was the first Indian marriage video to enter a film festival. The original background song ‘Din Shagna Da’ in the video, is oft heard today when a bride and groom enter the reception hall.

The Wedding FilmerHis soaring popularity has kept him away from the annual family Christmas dinner, which is a ‘big deal at my place’ he confesses – for the past 5 years! But despite the bane of working in the chaotic and evergreen wedding industry, Punjabi is all smiles. Today he teaches youngsters from various cities how to make wedding videos while capturing the essence of a family. He believes that a wedding is a perfect time to invest in family portraits. And if you call Coldplay to perform, he will be there for sure.

In an interview at TWF’s Andheri office, he reveals his roots, the reason for having workshop sessions and why an original soundtrack is the next big thing in the wedding industry.

How did ‘The Wedding Filmer’ happen?

I was trying to make a film based on an Indian wedding but didn’t have a proper script or well-etched characters. My only connection with weddings till then was my sister’s wedding, and Bollywood, which is not real and so glossy.

So I thought, if I shot a wedding, I would get to meet these people first-hand and know them. So it was a kind of script research while shooting. And while doing that, I fell in love with the whole process. When I did my own wedding video, I realised I loved the feeling of watching other people watch their own film.

It has been four years, ‘The Wedding Filmer’ has taken off but my script is still in process. Despite the time, I am sure the material will be very rich in content and based on human understanding.

15 years in the industry…tell us how you started?

In London, I was designing websites for an Indian company. One such website won a couple of awards. At that time, Shah Rukh Khan wanted to make a Bollywood portal and asked me to come down and design it. But that company soon shut down. So I moved to his production house, Arclight Films and Dreams Unlimited.

Over there, I worked on the website and VFX work for the film Ashoka. Doing Ashoka was fun as it was my first time on a Bollywood set. I had never seen anything like that before. I started doing a lot of VFX and found a niche in advertising. I also did quite a few product designs for SRK – who sells anything and everything from pants to pens. We did commercials for every known product to mankind – including Mankind.

One day my director didn’t turn up for the shoot and that’s how I started directing the commercial. I went on to do some 20 to 30 commercials.

How did the transition from commercials to weddings happen?

When you work for SRK, you get spoilt as a director. You get the biggest budgets, the best DOP, the sets and costumes are always amazing. But when mail.google.comyou need to shoot on your own, you realise you know little about the nuances of film-making.

So I went to visit my father in Ghana and over there I tried making documentaries. That’s when I realised I didn’t know much about film-making. So I started learning about smaller camera formats, editing, bringing down the cost of the project and doing most things on my own. You buying the costumes yourself, go for the recce yourself. This got me more involved with projects.

That is why when I started doing weddings. The purpose was to make really good cinema in a very low budget. At TWF, we try to make a nice film, which if we could release in the theatres, we would. We try and find a story that is so powerful, it can move you to say, “Agar yeh theatre mein hota toh kitna achcha hota.”

Tell us about your shooting process.

It is organic because we capture it from a distance. My beautiful team is the one shooting it. We just try and interact with the family as much as we can and give them their space.

The idea for us is to not direct them. We don’t make them act like SRK and Kajol. These are real people, so we honour their ceremonies, respect their guests and their space.

Today, brides demand that their family or fiancé set aside a budget for a wedding shoot by you. How does that feel?

It is very exciting. You know, earlier we would think we wouldn’t be able to shoot more than 12 or 15 weddings a year. But we are doing these workshops and training sessions and are trying to expand as a team, so that a lot more brides can have their dream come true and we can make it a lot cheaper for everyone to afford something like this. We want to shoot it very nicely and package it the way they want it.

Tell us about your workshops, ‘The Classroom of Love’.

We get thousands of requests every year and we can’t shoot them all. So somebody needs to shoot them because everybody needs a beautiful memory. It is exciting to know that so many people like your work and want to learn from it. So I wish to inspire the participants with the fact that I didn’t learn at any film school. I learnt film-making on my own. In these workshops, I just guide and teach them that they can also learn on their own.

What would you say is the easiest and the most difficult part of the job?

The easiest part is shooting, anybody can shoot. But the difficult part is editing and cutting. Finding the right song, the right mood, the right emotion, the words and to keep doing that over and over again and staying inspired every time – that’s the difficult part.

What do you enjoy the most about TWF?

Meeting different people and the different cultures I get to experience.  I hardly knew much about India, now I get to travel the world. We get to make a difference to people’s lives. We get to work with them and learn from them.

You think music makes for a great theme at weddings. Why?

Because if you record your own song for your wedding, that song will be yours for life. It will be the song which you danced to, it will be the song you walked to, the song that your father gave you away on. It could be the song that will play in the lobby of the hotel when your guests arrve. It could be played on every anniversary.  It is your song, so music becomes the theme of your wedding and it is way cheaper than any Moroccan fibre palace.

Hear the song recently recorded by The Wedding Filmer:

Chal le Chal | The Wedding Filmer

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Trends

Book trailers: ‘Watching’ stories

There is something so inherently wrong about book trailers. This is a book geek’s rant, but it bears thinking over.
by Ritika Bhandari Parekh

Ours is a generation of consumers. We are not just fashionably materialistic but also nerdy in our hoarding ways. And so, books aren’t meant to be passed on from one sibling to another, not unless they are super expensive. With the advent of the Rs 99 only book, everyone is a reader. And thanks to the marketing gimmicks which are meticulously planned, one hears more about the book even before anybody reads it.

The story of the IITian writer is now legend; he wrote a book categorically with a marketing vision in mind, and the woman editor of a prominent publishing house rejected his draft for reasons quite literary. She stood her ground for rejecting his supposed magnum opus. But his book finally found a home, and his first ‘blockbuster’ book created a furore. This gave many Dalal Street writers and IITians with scant knowledge (and regards) for the rules of English grammar and sentence construction the impetus to start writing books. As long as the cash registers are ringing, who cares!

After the books, come book trailers

The latest to join the marketing brigade are the book trailers. Yes, you read it right – forget waiting for a plum movie deal to come their way, the over-imaginative publishing teams are giving the readers a sneak video peak of the upcoming books. Animation, visual effects, voiceovers by stars and a launch pad for the trailer attended by Bollywood stars…this is how future ‘successful’ books are anticipated and marketed these days.

Amish Tripathi’s no-holds barred Scion of Ikshvaku trailer had set tongues wagging even before the hugely successful book launch. With the slick animation, one feels the book might have been written for a television adaptation in the future. There are other book trailers wherein the protagonist narrates crucial paragraphs to intrigue the readers among the viewers. And there are a few authors who like to question the audience on the perplexities of the character’s situation – thus building the suspense.

 

Do we need to market books like this?

But these marketing ideas rob away the charm of a book. Each book, I believe, has a unique voice. And that voice is the one given by the reader. The world an author creates with his words can be interpreted in myriad ways by each individual reader. Our experiences and circumstances give the book and its character a unique shape in our imaginations. This silhouette will forever be etched in our mind and that is what makes books and their stories memorable.

It is said each book comes to you at the right time. So while a Romeo And Juliet will be taught and read in school, it is only when you experience the first throes of love will you grasp the true meaning of Shakespeare’s words.

By releasing book trailers, marketing teams are subtly telling the readers ‘how’ to read. These dictate what kind of voice the book’s protagonist should talk in, how they should look and much more. One of the reasons movie adaptations of books are disliked by many readers is the loss of the unique voice. With every reader being forced to imagine the book as interpreted by the director, it loses its charm.

Your mind’s eye is what binds you to a book. A few exceptions to the movie-book adaptations are the superhero and sci-fi fantasy films. Their futuristic world is undoubtedly hazy in everyone’s mind and hence a clear image of the author’s writings is appreciated.

JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series is another exception. The happiness and thrill a reader feels when Harry enters the magical realm of Hogwarts and seeing it on the screen is what makes the series more lovable.

As for the Indian book trailers, only time will tell how profitable they are for the publishers. Till then, let us just wait and ‘watch’ these books.

What do you think of book trailers? Tell us in the comments section below.

(Picture courtesy indianexpress.com. Image is a file picture of Amish Tripathi’s book launch)

Categories
Hum log

Finding the new ‘Normal’

Arathi Menon was divorced at 35, and wrote about the experience in a humorous book which dispels the ‘taboo’ from divorce.
by Ritika Bhandari Parekh

Mumbai-based, Bangalore-bred Arathi Menon doesn’t strike one as lady who would write about her bad experiences. Everything about her spells ‘happy’, from the pixie haircut to the cute elephant earrings matching her red dress. Her debut novel Leaving Home With Half A Fridge’ has received uniformly positive reviews and it was launched recently at a Kemps Corner bookstore with much ceremony.

Arathi Menon Armed with a post-graduate degree in Journalism, 38-year old Arathi started as a copywriter in advertising. Her last job was in corporate communications at The Times of India. The only child of her parents, Arathi found her way into writing through short stories and poetry. But during the trying times of her divorce, she realised that there was little literature on the sensitive subject. “I did not find any books that could help me through it. I had to figure out a lot of things on my own. I simply wanted someone to say that divorce is not all that melodramatic as our society and television makes it to be,” she says softly. “Sometimes bitterness happens in real life and though all of us feel sad, how is one to deal with it in a normal way?”

“So after I reached my ‘happy place’, I decided that I wanted the society to know that divorce is kind-of the new Normal,” she declares.

Writing the book

Two years after her divorce, she started off with a column for LiveMint.com. Readers’ feedback helped her realise that she should write a book on her divorce. She saw that if ever another person needed to talk or read about this ‘social taboo’, Leaving Home With Half A Fridge would be of tremendous help.

“I made sure that the content was not duplicated so the book got more structured. It starts off when I was contemplating getting a divorce and moves on to when I find a lawyer, then a place of my own. It talks about the many emotions a divorce puts you through like dating again after marriage, with all its complications,” she explains. “And then the point where I am happy, whether alone or with someone.”

She laughingly says, “People don’t realise the pain a divorced person goes through and one should spare them a moral judgement on the topic.” Her writing Arathi Menon book Coverhandles the sensitive topic with a feather’s caress and that is what readers are currently hooked on to. “I didn’t want to write any nasty things about my ex, because he is a nice person and though things didn’t work between us, he was not the villain,” she emphasises. “It was always about if you ever get stuck in such a situation, how you can move from the point of divorce to the point of happiness.”

Being a not-psycho 

Talking about the quirky title, she says, “If you go to any house, there is one fridge, one television, one washing machine, one microwave. So when you are leaving it, you cannot take half of these things, can you? While a divorce is emotional, it is also chokingly practical. You look at bed sheets and you wonder how many to leave behind and how many to take…So I just kept everything behind!” But she acknowledges that she wrote the book in a healthy frame of mind. “I had fought my demons and two years later, I decided that the book is for someone who might be going through the same nonsense.”

The author admits to being quite honest in the book. “I have spoken about how I stalked my ex or did mean things to his stuff, because I just wanted to say that it is normal to do something like this. No, I am not a psycho but I was not happy back then.”

In the process of writing the memoir, Arathi started writing a set number of words every day. “It is not a time thing, as initially I thought of writing from 10 am to 1 pm. But that didn’t happen, as I keep dreaming and the time would go. So now I write regularly.”

She posts a fantasy story on her blog Nothing Beastly About It, every Wednesday. Arathi reveals, “As publishing takes a lot of time, instead of waiting for this book to come out – I just started writing my second book. So I am done with that and I am working on my third book now. As most of my topics are dark, I wanted a ‘happy’ space which is where my blog comes in the picture.”

What inspires her? She says, “If you want to be an artist, there is nothing like inspiration. It is simply hard work. You get up every day and you sit at your table and you do your work. I think anybody who says ‘I wait for inspiration’ is lazy. It doesn’t work for me!”

She believes working in advertising has made her more professional, while being artistic was intrinsic, and that being in Mumbai has given her a sense of freedom. “I loved Bombay the minute I set my foot here. The city allows you to be anything you want.” She credits her editor Pranav Kumar Singh for handling the book with sensitivity and kindness. The author finds Akhil Sharma’s Family Life to be her recent favourite book and counts Flannery O’Connor and Alice Munro as her much-loved authors.

As I skim through her book before buying it, I chance upon the last chapter titled ’12 steps to a divorcee’s tango’ – and I realise that Arathi is not just the survivor who told her tale, but the one who danced and happily sang the sad, but true note.

Categories
Trends

On your marks

There is more to life than marks, everybody says. Then why don’t we let our children rise above the marking system?
by Ritika Bhandari Parekh

It is that time of the year when Mumbai colleges get divided in the stream of SSC, ICSE and CBSE boards. Leading newspapers publish the toppers’ round-faced photographs, thanks to their cheeks being stuffed with laddoos. Coaching classes print cropped images of their students with a sidebar proclaiming their percentages.

It has been close to three decades when my parents passed their 10th standard exams. And yet the focus of our modern and so-called westernised education has not gone beyond marks and percentages. My sister and I had to slug it out on paper to prove our worthiness for a seat in a ‘good’ college.

In a system of invigilators, moderators and rank holders, the final year of school becomes a trying and testing ground for the average student. Marks, marks and more marks is the mantra on every teacher’s lips. And when the results are declared, no one exists except the top three rankers from the school.

Next in line is the rush to fill the junior college admission forms. The serpentine lines of Arts, Commerce and Science stream is proof enough of our fledgling young population. Amidst chaos and a mixture of happy and sad faces, lists are read and students walk in their desired or not desired college. This year the same brouhaha will take place, albeit online and in a flawed manner.

But there is solace for the Whatsapp generation in the video by Vir Das. In his unique way, the stand-up comedian rubbishes the focus on marks. He flashes the entire life an average human being leads, and intersperses the plethora of emotions one will feel in this journey called life. Nowhere, he mentions, nobody will ask you – how much did you score in your 10th standard?

His words resonated with me, as during my SSC exams – I felt the pressure of delivering marks. I was a good student, but my Principal wanted me to commit a number above 90, to work on. Never to work under pressure, the undue importance given to my marks made me angry and my parents noticed a change in my behaviour. Their support and understanding of ‘we shall love you, even if you get less marks’ helped me overcome the tide.

But it wasn’t until my friends who wished to get in the Science stream and couldn’t do so because of less percentage and higher cut-offs – did I realise what a foolish system we have created. I can vividly recall the maddening desire of my sister to get in a particular Commerce College. Only because the entire family had graduated from this Juhu college and she wished it too. Her dejected look as she missed by a mark in the cut-off list broke my heart.

Am sure there are many such tales in every family, where the elders celebrate this passing ritual with a bittersweet smile and a mithai. As the newly-formed Government is so keen on reforming the education sector, why not start with a better way to embark the important phase of college life? A common exam wherein, all the boards get equal opportunity to showcase the knowledge imparted. But then, it is a money-making scheme – so it will remain. The SSC, ICSE and CBSE boards will thrive amidst all the confusion and students will be slaughtered with the numbers.

It starts out in the levelled playing field where your toddler runs as the teacher says, ‘On your marks’. But it ends in the competitive ground where the neighbourhood aunty has an advice – On your marks, on your choices and your entire life.

Do you have a marks-related story to share? Tell us in the comments section below.

(Picture courtesy indianexpress.com. Image used for representational purpose only)

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Read

Review: ‘Something happened on the way to heaven’

Sudha Murty’s ‘Something Happened On The Way To Heaven’ is a must read if you are looking to reaffirm your faith in human goodness.
by Ritika Bhandari Parekh

When famous comedian Robin Williams died, his fans mourned the tragic news. But the shocking part was that he ended his life after a long history of depression. As a stand-up comedian and an actor, Williams must have been surrounded by his fellow colleagues most of the time. And yet, he chose to give up on life after making the world smile.

It is strange and confusing to understand that despite all the riches in the world, one only needs a fellow being’s hand, for comfort and support to survive. A YouTube video about a girl shaming her molester gets the highest likes because it echoes every youth’s stand against the wrong. So in a world where according to mythology we are living in the Kalyug era, it has increasingly become difficult to affirm and reaffirm our faith in humans and humanity. As consumerism becomes a way of life, finding life’s simpler joys is a treat in itself.

Book coverReading Something Happened On The Way To Heaven, edited by Sudha Murty, brings together the varied facets of the human mind and heart which leave us fascinated. Scanning over 1,000 real-life stories, Murty coherently puts together 20 inspiring tales for the reader to enjoy. She hopes the experiences of the individual writers’ reignites our passion for living the beautiful life we have inherited and are about to make.

The stories weave a tapestry of desi emotions from Kerala to Orissa. Just like the Mumbai local trains, it traverses South Mumbai to suburban Lokhandwala. The themes of the selected submissions ranges from understanding the true quality of unspoken love among elders, to finding the courage to speak the truth as it is. An Alzheimer’s-stricken grandfather, a morally right plastic surgeon, a Dhaka girl from the Partition era…these are some of the interesting people you will read about in this book.

With an easy style, the book is easy to devour in a single sitting. The stories in the book adhere to the saying that ‘Truth is stranger than fiction’. So while the rebellious youth will understand about life from the experiences of their seniors, the elders will take heart from the caring nature of the younger generation which lives in the mobile era but still believes in love and togetherness.

Murty has caringly put the 20 stories together, which to a dancer’s heart resonates the 9 rasas (emotions). From giving a new and subtle meaning to Shringara, the emotion of love to bringing an evolution-like tale from the boroughs of nature and making us feel Adbhuta, the emotion of surprise. My personal favourite is ‘The Dhaka Girl’ story, which has innuendos of our communal history and yet makes the saying ‘ What goes around, comes around’ ring true.

Rating: 4 out of 5. Buy a copy of the book here. 

(Picture courtesy www.amazon.in, www.thehindu.com)

Categories
Places

On the money trail at the RBI Museum

Our coins are made of ferritic stainless steel, and have a mint mark which reveals where the coins were made. Read on for more.
by Ritika Bhandari Parekh

It all started when my cousin asked me to find out places in Italy which she could visit on her own. Her husband, who had work to finish said, “There isn’t much to see, except museums and more museums.” She retorted, “I don’t mind the museums at all.” This got me thinking and looking for ‘her’ kind of places, and I thought about the museums in Mumbai.

A quick search revealed that I had been to most of them as a schoolchild. But, wait! There was a new addition to the list – The Monetary Museum by Reserve Bank of India (RBI). While most of us in Mumbai are game to visit international museums, how many have actually visit this fascinating one in their own city?

RBI Museum 1This numismatic museum officially opened in 2004 at the hands of the then Indian President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. Situated in the commercial Fort area of South Mumbai, the museum building is located in the business district on Pherozeshah Mehta Road. If you wander a little ahead, the famous Strand Book shop is right around the corner.

After depositing my bag in a locker and being issued with a strict ‘No Photographs please’ warning, I started my tour alone.

The museum is divided into six sections, with each section enlightening us on different ideas. The first section talks about ‘Concepts, Curiosities and the Idea of Money’. It takes us through the era of the barter system and explains how grains, cattle, implements were used. The evolution to precious metals, coinage and paper money is also explained here. On display are curiosities like the Neolitihic stone axes from 10 millenium B.C, as also cowri shells and beads from the A.D. era.

What caught my fancy was a square-shaped miniscule coin from the 3rd century BC, a silver bar from South East Asia, as also one shaped as a knife served as a token of money. A huge rectangular Indian note of Rs 10,000 (I am not kidding) was also on display.

If observed closely, an early 20th century cheque book of the Bank of India (BOI) Ltd, reveals three languages on it – English, Hindi and Gujarati (an indicationRBI Museum 2 of how the Gujarati business class was always an important part of the city). A counting tray from South India for the many fanams or small circular coins and other interesting articles are displayed in glass boxes.

Section 2 on Indian coinage is vast and comprises every kind of medieval coinage used by the Indian Princely States. It also houses coins from the pre-Colonial era. A quick look reveals that metals such as gold, silver and copper were the favourites among the kings. So Akbar, Tipu Sultan and Shivaji had golden mohurs of different values. It is also interesting to note the inscriptions on these coins.

From deities to names to zodiac signs in which the coins were made, all have made their mark on the money trail. It is said that before the East India Company was taken over by the British Crown in 1858, there were over a 100 princely States that had the right to issue coins. So the museum and its curators have done a splendid job in bringing not only the famous Mughal era coins, but also the coins from the North-Eastern States and the koris and dokdos from the Kutch kingdom.

As we end the section, a display of Indo-European coins and the commemorative coins by the Indian Government greet us. For the uninitiated, 1988 was the year of Aurobindo Ghosh and his saying that ‘All life is yoga.’ And so, we walk through the third section of ‘From coins to bank notes’. My Organization of Commerce (O.C.) lectures started playing in my mind, as I read about promissory notes, bills of exchange and payment hundis.

Section 4 on Indian paper money, reveals the metamorphosis of the Indian currency. Paper money from the British and post-Independence days make their way to the displays. A peculiar and striking feature of most of the notes were the portraits of the British rulers, like King George, on them.

The fifth section talks about ‘Knowing your currency’. It helps us understand the difference between a real and a counterfeit note. I learnt that the motif of the tractor on the five-rupee note was to symbolise the green revolution, and that the two-rupee note had an Aryabhatta satellite. Interestingly, our current 500-rupee note uses raised intaglio printing for the blind community.

The last section is called ‘RBI and You’ and is devoted to the activities of the main central bank of India. There is also a wall of portraits of all the presidents of RBI, since its inception in 1937.

And then, just like that we come to the exit. The Monetary Museum revealed a lot and keeping all that in mind, I am back on the sunny, crowded and chaotic street outside.

(Pictures courtesy www.eumo.in, wannabemaven.com, strayingaround.blogspot.com. Images are file pictures)

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