Cosmetic Cinema

I have a Sardar friend called TP Singh. He was one of the most famous guys in the campus; most notorious among girls and the officers. There can not be a single guy in four batches preceding and succeeding ours at AFMC, who can forget TP. He is one of those guys who come in a decade. Yesterday, I met him after a gap of two years. For a change, here was someone who wasn’t too surprised by the change in my ‘look’. I was. The TP Singh, today, sports short hair, and trimmed beard. This was the most striking feature when I saw him. But then we sat and talked. His peculiar voice and accent, and hilarious stories – all are still in tune with the guy at campus. Perhaps always will. Some things are difficult to change. We had a tour of Town. Spent hours at Café Leopold, where he gulped down three litres of beer, and we both agreed that it was still nothing. Listening to him talk about the Indian Army, really felt I’m not a bad listener at all. You can have a hell of a time with a guy like him around, with or without his turban. Looks matter, but only at the recognition level – when you greet the person you have just met. After that, it has nothing to do with looks. Yeah, voice does matter – storytellers do need to have the perfect voice for storytelling, as much as they need dramatic pauses, coherent narration, and most of all – a story deserving to be told. Premise can be interesting, but holds interest only for a while, just a little more than the ‘look’. It is all that follows that matters.

TP Singh stayed at my place and joined me for the first show of ‘Raavan’. Thanks to him, we did enjoy ourselves. It is always good to have a ‘bakar’ friend when your movie turns out to be like this. But then, I never expected anything different.