The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption

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I haven’t watched TV or read newspapers or magazines for more than a year now, with one exception — twice a month, I stop by at the roadside magazine stall opposite my house and hand over thirty rupees for a copy of Time Out Mumbai.

However, even though I have been buying the magazine for almost two years now, I only started to think of it as a necessity when I started my experiment.

The thing is, when you decide not to consume any paid entertainment, you need to know what free entertainment is available in the city, and, even in the age of free information via the Internet, Time Out Mumbai remains the most comprehensive listing of such events.

So, every fortnight, I pick up my copy of Time Out Mumbai, read the reviews of all the new movies and plays I wouldn’t watch, look longingly at all the live music gigs I’ll miss, and tell myself that the few free events during the fortnight are more interesting than all the entertainment I would have otherwise paid for.

Sometimes, that is not far from the truth.

This fortnight, for instance, I’m almost spoiled for choice.

Sean Penn’s ‘Into the Wild’ is a brilliant movie adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s bestselling book about the real-life (mis)adventures of Christopher McCandless.

I had been dying to watch ‘Into the Wild’ ever since I read about it in the April 2008 issue of David Report. So, I was delighted when GK brought over the DVD for our Saturday Night Movie Marathon session. It is such sweet serendipity that reaffirms my faith that the universe reaches out to give you whatever you ask for.

The movie itself is mind-blowing, especially in the context of my own experiment, and I went through an entire spectrum of emotions over its two and a half hour run.

Emile Hirsch is superb as Christopher, the idealistic, but troubled, twenty-something protagonist who, inspired by Tolstoy and Thoreau, decides to abandon his career and his family, give away his $24000 savings to charity and hitchhike to Alaska to live in the wilderness.

Christopher deals in extremes and evokes extreme reactions. It’s easier, therefore, to idolize him as enlightened or reject him as naive than to identify with him.

The Saturday Night Movie Marathon turned out to be exactly what I needed after working all day on another big presentation.

To begin with, fewer people turned up — and, while twenty is perhaps the right number for a party — five works better for a movie marathon.

Then, GK turned up with a few DVDs of his own and we decided to leave aside my lineup of classic World War 2 movies and watch ‘Into the Wild’ instead.

I have been dying to watch ‘Into the Wild’ ever since I read about it in the April 2008 issue of David Report. So, as we settled down on my futon with two bottles of wine, a bottle of Johny Walker Black Label scotch, and miscellaneous munchies left over from my last big party, I was already high on the sweet serendipity of being able to watch it so soon after reading about it.

It’s a mind-blowing movie, especially in the context of my experiment, but the spectrum of emotions it triggered off in the next two and a half hours deserves another post.

During my year of being off-consumption, I’m not allowed to watch movies, plays, or concerts, unless they are free.

However, I’m discovering that Mumbai has a wide variety of free entertainment to offer; all you need is the inclination, and a copy of Time Out Mumbai.

But it was not Time Out, but a flier someone thrust into my hand as I walked out of the Alliance Francaise auditorium after watching Godard’s ‘Little Soldier’ that led me to the Little Theater at NCPA on Friday evening to watch Surabhi Sharma’s documentary film ‘Jahaji Music: India in the Caribbean’.

I saw three stories unfold in front of my eyes during the evening.

The first story was the film itself, a musical road trip in which FTII alumnus Surabhi and academic Tejaswini Niranjana follow maverick Indian singer Remo Fernandes as he travels to the Caribbean to explore potential collaborations and create new work. This is the story of young women at an Indian wedding in Trinidad thrusting their pelvis to Bhojpuri numbers, like dancehall queens in Jamaica. This is a story of Chutney Soca artist Rikki Jai worrying about not sounding like an Indian singing Calypso, then asking his mother to write Chutney Soca lyrics for him in Bhojpuri. This is the story of Remo wearing his disdain for Hindi film music like a talisman, even though his most popular songs are from Hindi films.