Uncool: Fights, Camera, Action

CHAPTER 01

Film opens on a white wall. There is a soft-footed, sleek creature crawling stealthily along the wall, unnoticed by anyone. Suddenly, a shriek pierces the air!

Okay, let’s start again. I’m telling you about a film. My film. Because I am going to be a documentary filmmaker.

I must ignore the critics. So, I am starting with this film about inner turmoil and dark politics. About injustice and disappointment. About moments of utter terror. In brief, it is about my life in Class VIII.

This is the level of imbecility in my class. I push my glasses up my nose and my nose up into the air, and walk away. I wish I could cast no one in my class, which is difficult when it’s a film about my class. Sigh! I should cast the chairs and desks and walls.

Which takes me back to the action on the wall! Camera flip to wall. Zoom in to the slithering creature … it’s a lizard. A shriek pierces the air, while a hysterical girl called Rinku throws a fit and jumps up on her chair, yelling and pointing at the lizard.

I tell her patiently, ‘It’s on the wall, not the floor. By jumping up on the chair, you’re raising yourself to eye level with the lizard on the wall, and you do know that reptiles hypnotize their prey by staring into their eyes?’

Rinku jumps onto the floor again and bursts into tears. Surya the Stud gives her his handkerchief. All he gives me is an angry look.

I was going to cast him as the hero in my film. I will not now. I will cast the lizard. I think it might be winking at me, but lizards don’t have eyelids—so it can’t wink—and I can’t have a hero without eyelids. Bye bye, hero, you were so close to stardom.

CHAPTER 02

Camera on selfie mode, while I introduce myself. (Oops, delete first seven attempts – I look terrible in selfie mode, my nose shines!)

Okay, here goes: I live in a high-rise in a crowded residential suburb in Bangalore (I’m not supposed to say where, in case I get famous and fans start stalking me) in a normal three- bedroom, three-person apartment. But that’s where normal ends.

I don’t have the normal, happy mom-dad family. Just my mom, who’s always at work. And my 18-year-old sister, Disha, who’s just joined college. We also have Manju Didi, who helps with the cooking and cleaning, but she goes back to her own home, which she’s told me a million times is a million times cleaner than the way I keep my room. Huh!

You’d think we’d be a close unit, just the three of us. But no one agrees with anyone else.

Normal scene from when I’m going out:

CHAPTER 03

Cut to my sister, Disha, who is always protesting against something or the other.

Disha enters frame from left. ‘We are going to run a marathon tomorrow to save lakes.’

I ask (intelligently), ‘How will that save lakes? Will you all carry buckets of water from the sea?’

Disha reacts irrationally. ‘Mommmmmm! DD’s being a pest.’

‘Mommmm, Disha’s bunking college to go running.’

‘I’m raising awareness. Raising awareness is more important than raising my attendance.’

Mom yells from the other room, ‘DD, stop being a pest. Disha, you’re not running tomorrow. Unless it’s to college.’

Disha storms into her room, banging the door.

Scene ends with a drum roll. (I wonder who will play the drums for my film. Abir? I must ask him tomorrow).

I yell after Disha. ‘Disha, can you come back out here and repeat that door slamming? I didn’t get the timing right.’

Silence. Disha is such a non-cooperative actor.

Mom emerges from the bathroom with green stuff plastered all over her face.

Camera zoom in on Mom.

Mom reacts violently. ‘DD, put that stupid mobile phone away. What’s wrong with you? You can’t take pictures of me with a face pack on.’

I explain slowly, ‘I’m making a documentary film. It’s true to life. I have to portray reality even if the reality is that my mother has a green face.’

‘The reality is that I’ll confiscate that phone if you don’t switch it off!’

‘You’re worse than the censor board,’ I tell Mom.

I’m slightly worried. How will my documentary film get made if the actors refuse to get filmed? Do you ever see wildebeest in the savanna refusing to get shot? Oh well, they have every right to refuse to get shot. With a gun, I mean. But not with a camera.

Phew! Saved the facepack scene. Mom allowed me to use it with ‘minor adjustments’ as below:

CHAPTER 04

By the way, Mom is a bigshot Head of Sales at IMTIMC, a fancy-schmancy tech firm. I’m so proud of her. She works really long, late hours at the office, then drives through ‘the traffic’s a demon’ every day. And the only reason she drives so far to her office is because she wants to live closer to where my school is, so I don’t have a long drive.

See what I mean? She’s awesome!

She even works after she gets home. Her phone is always ringing and beeping. This is how it goes at dinner time:

Mom starts, ‘So DD sweetie, how did your day at school go? And will you please eat your sabzi, not stare at it. Did you have your science quiz or …