I think I am part of the demi-monde. It just happened, I didn't do it. I have deep pools of desire that masquerade as eyes...I too could write the Great Indian Novel. I dont wear brown on my sleeve but my heart, mostly. I love pithy racial stereotypes, with pith hats and safari suits, mosquito nets and quinine-heavy gintonics. I could defend Indian film with my last drop of blood and often have to. Am a sortakinda champagne socialist and wish that Leftist salons still existed. I love when people speak with fervour, with possession and with clarity. NYC coursed/courses/will course through my veins. I appreciate fluidity and frission. I am passionate about cinema, it defines who i am to some extent. Have run some gamut of job experience having done everything from being a human rights advisor to a lowly underling in a mammoth advertising agency. The latter has professionalised my tea-making skills. I am very indian and very not. Verily.

I am silly, soulful, and sometimes snide.

I struggle with Enlightenment values/'impositions' and the modernity its brought. I am very good at accents.

UPDATE ( which is kinda self-involved no? as if random strangers would care? still...): am on a hiatus/project away for the 'West' - it was sucking out my very soul. Back soon but if you find yourself in Asia, specifically Malaysia/Singapore...please bring me some Cherry Twizzlers and 2 bottles of Monkey 47 Dry Gin/ Tanqueray Rangapur.

I start a PhD next year somewhere seasonal. In 'kulcha' but i suppose the classicists amongst you would call it anthropology. In the meanwhile, because its such a challenge (and because otherwise I'd go stir crazy) - I work as a creative producer - film division for a broadcast network that thinks they are the BBC. They are not the BBC and this is not London - but through my miasma, there is light...

pontification, talking, thinking, singing ( to self - mostly cheapy hindi songs and also the great Manilow/Rod Stewart classics) and enjoying. I am also very good at procrastination, finding new and good music, train/trendspotting, getting accents down to a pat, looking for Johnny Cash on jukeboxes, getting myself upgraded on flights home, attending obscure conferences. Watching cinema, anything, everything... it can only make me a better filmmaker and i would argue, person. However, I will not watch anything with Nicholas Cage in it. save for Raising Arizona.

what a strange question? the fact that i like to soundtrack moments in life? That and my deep-set love for Katherine Heigl/ Katie Holmes/Kareena Kapoor.

books: thirwell's politics, all brett easton ellis, love in a cold climate, hamid's moth smoke, manju kapur. evelyn waugh, martin amis
poetry: Plath, Ghalib, Hughes, Rilke, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Amrita Pritam and e.e. cummings, William Blake.

by director - roman polanski, guru dutt, sophia coppola, scorcese, mani ratnam, zoya akhtar, nadine labaki, whit stillman, noah baumbach and nora ephron.
by film: The Romantics, Circumstance, Cinema Paradiso, Natural Born Killers, ZNMD, Great Expectations, Caramel, Donnie Darko, Nacho Libre, Rachel Getting Married, Nayagan, W.E, Shooting Fish, Dev.D, The Last Days of Disco, Kandukondeinx2,Metropolitan, Dil Se, Luck by Chance, Pyaasa, Mother India, Sex and Lucia, La Reine Margot, The Princess Bride and Billy Madison.

Hindi film music, ghazals, m.s. subbulakshmi, kasabian, feist, joy division, ocean colour scene, the verve, jeff buckley and bob dylan. The lightening seeds, beat the devil, gomez, the all saints, jose gonzalez, cheb mami, abba, vandaveer, robbie williams, coke studio - pakistan and edith piaf.

BBC shows like Sherlock, Mistresses and I loved Lost.

I don't like cooked peppers or spare parts or star anise. I detest ouzu/raki/pastis and jaegermeister. I am partial to indian food, which i just really call...food.

1. Blind Idealism
2. The ONE song that strikes my momentary fancy that I will play on repeat for two weeks at a time.
3. Irony
4. Flat shoes after gin. or gin with flat shoes.
5. Indian cinema and film in general
6. Bacon

when I will be swept off my feet. I like/love romance even though I have this completely falsified steely exterior. I like period romances you see and doomed love type stories.

other such inanities like - visas, why colours have the names they do, etymology, directorial shot choices, nihilism, why I'm so obsessed with race and the postcolonial (the answer might lie in itself, indeed), why Frieda Pinto is famous. why there are not enough cross-town subways, why american academia is so oak-panelled and smoke-filled, why i can never get a well made cocktail in nyc except when at death and co, why people talk in cinemas, why India was partitioned, why everyone blames the british...why i don't have grey eyes even though my grandmother does and why i always ask so many questions. why I don't really care about answers...yet.

in love. ( from the Cure , lest you think I'm overwhelmingly swooney)

Once, in boarding school - i put an 11 year old first former/ 8th grader down the laundry chute as part of rag week. Institutionalised bullying. When she got to the 12th grade/UpperVIth, she got her own back dropping another 'fresh one' directly into a cushioned pile of fluffy cotton towels. Her name is Victoria. Three months ago, we had drinks...

if you seek to find. If you are nimble at navigating dichotomies. If you know what the Beaufort is ( if only to debate)