My Visit to the 28th Kolkata International Film Festival and The Films I Saw (Part 1/2)

 Jean-Luc Godard is a man the world lost in September this year. I am positive someone like me is less than dust beneath his chariot wheels but before I even knew of French New Wave, I came across a quote which I later learnt were his words:

 “Photography is truth and cinema is truth 24 times a second.”

 These words left a mark on me and I saw them again in a dark theatre at my first visit to Kolkata International Film Festival in 2021. I was there for hardly a day and I went with some of my friends. I saw four movies and liked all of them. While my memory doesn’t allow me to recall the names of the movies and while I was yet to sit with a Godard movie, I had already begun my journey into the world of international cinema in 2020, when the world was in lockdown. I had started with Akira Kurosawa and then moved on in utter chaos, shape without form as Eliot says and ravenously devoured as many international movies as I could.

 I wanted to come back to KIFF again (and again, and again) and jumped at the chance to attend it this year, the 28^th iteration of the festival which wrapped up on 22^nd December, 2022. I am writing this post in the wee hours of 23^rd December, 2022 because sleep eludes me, for I am still wandering around the world in the darkened theatre of Nandan- I. Come walk with me through the fifteen or sixteen films I managed to watch over the course of December 19^th to December 22^nd 2022. I have my journal open alongside me, where I have noted down the names of all the films I saw.

 KIFF DAY 1 (19^th December, 2022)

Hot on the heels of the FIFA World Cup final, the day began with me waking up at cock’s crow and heading into the kitchen to make tea and some food to carry with me to the venue. After whipping up a lunchbox and feeling totally like a schoolboy off to enjoy his day, I arrived at the venue and walked into The Gospel According to St. Matthew, a Biblical drama directed by Pasolini (of Salo fame, the one film of his I had seen before and been traumatized by). The film was an intense experience with good pacing and showed a side of Jesus Christ that I had never read about or seen before. I refer to my friend Jeffrey Jacob’s Telegram message, where he told me that Pasolini’s take on Jesus is important to note because it was one of those representations that depicts hope and empathy over salvation. Pasolini was Marxist, gay and an atheist in 1950’s Italy and thus his take of the Gospel according to Matthew fits the archetype of a revolutionary leader. I got this message post the film’s ending and having read it understood the film a little better.

 The second film was Russian and called Pervii Sneg (First Snow), directed by Nathalia Konchalovsky. It was a beautifully shot film with great use of colours and angles. I was most impressed with the cinematography. It follows the tale of Kristina whose life is spent in daylight as a paralegal and in moonlight with her mother watching a TV series. Kristina is being nagged at by her mother to get a guy and at this juncture she meets Pavel, her upstairs neighbour who is a terrible “musician” and claims to be researching glaciers for his doctoral thesis. Kristina is also training in Aikido and as we are told later in the film, her Aikido coach is the husband of her boss at the law firm.

 The film progresses to show rebellion in Kristina, after she lies to her mother about having a date and going clubbing and how she feels suffocated at the firm she interns at. She chooses to coach Aikido to children at the dojo and sleeps with Pavel as well. Later she learns Pavel lied about his job to her and is underage. She confronts him and calls off their relationship.

 However, the film takes another interesting turn. Kristina’s mother tries to woo one of her clients and goes on a date with him as well, but it doesn’t work out. Pavel is underage. And the cherry on the cake is, Kristina’s boss is unable to spend time with her daughter due to the pressure of her work at the firm and is ashamed and angry about this, which is brought out very well in the form of two scenes where there are arguments between her husband and herself. Their daughter makes videos on YouTube and organises a fan meeting for her followers at which her mother comes. I found this to be a very poignant way to depict the relationship between the working mother and the young child.

 The film ends with Kristina leaving her apprenticeship, becoming a full time Aikido coach and the little girl joining the group of students she teaches.

 

The third film I saw was Mireasa Mortului (The Deadman’s Bride), which was a collaborative effort between Romania and France, directed by Cornel Gheoghita. I would not hesitate to rank this as the worst film I saw at this festival.

 A crew of French film makers wants to make a film about Romanian traditions. They decide to film a baptism, a wedding and a funeral, but are unable to film the funeral. Unfazed by this, they decide to fake a funeral by burying a living man (or rather lower a coffin into an open grave) according to Romanian customs. I found this to be highly odd and it made me uncomfortable to tell you the truth.

 There is however a love story being shown in this as well, where one of the French film makers falls in love with a deaf and mute girl and swears that he’ll come back for her post the shooting of the burial scene. Unfortunately, they are involved in a car accident and their decision to bury a living man is met with horror by the village priest who states that he must purge the village of this sin by prayer. The film maker injured in the car accident drives back to the village despite being told not to by his friends and is there chased by a mob because ominous things have happened in the village. Ultimately, both he and the girl he’s in love with die in a fire.

 This plot summary is deliberately shoddy because it left no impact on me whatsoever in the wake of the other films I saw. I went into it excited because I thought it was a horror movie and was bitterly disappointed.

 The next film to be screened was Beurokeo (Broker) directed by Hirokazu Koreeda from South Korea. I had heard great things about this film and was definitely not disappointed. In brief, Dong-soo and Sang-hyeon are child traffickers, choosing to pick up babies from a church’s baby box and then sell them under cover of Sang-hyeon’s laundry. However, when they intercept the baby Woo-sung, they find a note that says the mother will be back for the baby. Now apparently this is a regular affair and the mother’s don’t ever return for the abandoned babies. This one, does. Enter Moon So-young, whose basic statement is that “I did say I’d return for my child. Where is he?”

 What follows is the trio and the baby travelling to many places and trying to find a good home for Woo-sung. Spicing the pot even more is the police in form of two detectives, Soo-jin and Lee (both women) who are hot on the trial of the baby in order to shut down the trafficking ring run by Dong-soo and Sang-hyeon.

 Instead of delving deeper into the plot, and instead urging you to watch this movie pronto, I will say that the chemistry between Dong-soo and So-young is brilliantly brought out. This character development with Dong-soo initially looking down on So-young for wanting to abandon the baby, but ultimately acknowledging that she’s trying to do the right thing Is what for me was the best part of the movie. A solid performance by the child actor Im Seung-soo as Hae-jin, who brings a lot of comic relief and wisdom into the film make this a movie that’s not only watchable, but one that will leave you thinking for a long time.

 A delight!

 The final film on day one of Kolkata International Film Festival was A24 Studios’ offering The Whale, directed by Darren Aronofsky from the United States of America. It stars Brendan Fraser as I’ve never seen him before. Morbidly obese, rocking a blood pressure of 200/138 or so, gorging himself on pizza, soda and confectionary, this man is a teacher of literature. And how. However, he does not turn on the camera in the meetings he takes where he teaches and he urges his students to think out of the box. You will find yourself instantly connecting with Fraser’s portrayal of Charlie. Add to that his nurse Liz, played by Hong Chau who is more a friend and less a nurse and even says so in the film many times and you’re almost set for a treat. I say almost because there’s two more characters- the missionary Thomas (Ty Simpkins) and Charlie’s daughter, Ellie (a staggering portrayal by Sadie Sink).

 The long and the short of it is that Charlie was married to his wife Mary (Samantha Morton) and Ellie was their child, but then Charlie developed feelings for his student Alan and left his family when Ellie was eight years old. He’s separated from Mary and lives by himself and teaches said online class, until one day Ellie storms back in, now seventeen and then the fun begins. Ellie’s not been doing well at school and needs him to look at one of her essays. Charlie offers to pay her to come visit him and she agrees. The angle of the missionary Thomas is that he feels Charlie needs saving and that God has brought him to Charlie to help.

 The twist is, Alan is Liz’s brother and the church that Thomas says he’s from is not very popular with Liz or Charlie, seeing as Alan died. That’s why Charlie has spiralled down to this state in the first place.

 Ellie also meets Thomas and proceeds to rag him left, right and center. It is revealed that Thomas is no longer in the employ of the church, that Thomas has stolen from the church and is ashamed. It is Ellie who finds all this out through sleuthing and confronts Thomas about this, recording a confession on her phone.

 On the other burner, Charlie urges Ellie to write what she really feels about her schoolwork. She mouths off Walt Whitman with panache. We also learn that Charlie has kept aside a very large sum of money for Ellie and in his own words, that money was always meant to be for Ellie.

 The core theme of the film is honesty. Honesty about what you feel about a piece of literature, honesty to yourself and it’s an amazing and heart-warming tale. You will need tissues; tears of joy will flow at the ending of this movie. Do not miss it!

 

 KIFF DAY 2 (20^th December, 2022)

Since I was not very impressed with the Pasolini movie the day before, I skipped the screening at 9AM and arrived to watch the 11:30AM show. The movie being screened was Mezhsezone (In Limbo), from Russia, directed by Alexander Hant. This was about teenagers and their angst with their parents and followed two teenagers, a girl and a boy who ran away from home and started to vandalise public property and even stole a police car containing guns and counterfeit cash and took off for a joyride.

 Eventually, they holed up in a cabin and refused to surrender, resulting in  the S.W.A.T team attacking the building and both of them dying in the encounter.

 Plot wise this film did not do too much for me, however the cinematography of the film made it stand out clearly. The night shots were especially great. The theme of teenage angst is explored fair enough here, but it is not a very thought-provoking film. I just got the impression that the two teenagers Sasha and Danny could have just gone to therapy for their problems, not stolen a police vehicle and guns.

 The 2PM offering was Travels Inside Foreign Heads from France, directed by Antonio Amaral. This was again a strange film about three aliens who had come to the Earth for a certain purpose and were using human bodies as vessels. When the body was dying, it would turn to soil and the extra-terrestrial would find a new host.

 Things turn sour when the Rare Visitor commands them to return home and one of the aliens doesn’t want to do that. Since it was science fiction, I tried my best to like it, but once it ended its second act, my interest perished and seeing as the next film was Saim Sadiq’s Joyland which I absolutely wanted to catch, I left early.

 

I don’t think I have it in me to speak too much about Joyland. It is a good film, with solid acting and given that it is from Pakistan and given that the theme is about a transgender woman finding love of sorts with a man, I’d say it is bold and what keeps it afloat is the brilliant acting done by the entire cast. I really would also like to say that the hype for the film led to nearly 200 people not getting entry into the auditorium and that there were a lot of people sitting on the steps to watch the movie or lying on the floor because of lack of seats. I also vividly remember that I watched it right from the front seat with my head at a 60-degree angle. Thus, more than the film, the experience of watching it stood out more for me.

 The 7PM screening was Neighbours directed by Mano Khalil and for me this was the film of the festival, although that honour was shared between two films, neither of which was this film.

 We follow the journey of a boy called Sero. He is six years old and his village is on a checkpoint. The two sides of the checkpoint are occupied by those who will not let you speak in any language but Turkish and those that won’t let you speak in any language but Arabic. Add to this a new teacher who won’t let you call him “teacher”, but insists on being called “Comrade” and you have a recipe for another nuclear bomb waiting to go off.

 Sero cannot understand Arabic and so does not understand why “Comrade” hits him with a stick. He goes home and cries to his mother and asks her why his father and mother created him. She tells him he is the brightest star in their lives and the kindest boy in the world. This is a brilliant way of contrasting the culture shock that is Sero’s school life.

 Sero’s neighbours are Jewish and their daughter Hannah is in love with Sero’s uncle Aram. This brings a breath of fresh air to the film and the courtship is shown beautifully. However, when Sero’s mother is accidentally killed by the soldiers, his world turns upside down. Uncle Aram goes ballistic and is taken away by the secret police and whipped and tortured. He is then given 48 hours to enlist in the military and he chooses instead to join the resistance.

 In school, Sero keeps getting in trouble and “Comrade”, not “Teacher” is planning a play where the so called “Jewish menace that stole Palestine” must be vanquished.

 I remember the director speaking to us before the film started and saying that he wanted to show how easy it is to hate and to sow hate in young minds. That is what this film portrays and portrays magnificently.

 I will wrap up this review with a quote from the movie: “Mr. Teacher, what would your life be like without Israel as an enemy?”

 Look out for part 2, coming soon! 

The Bilge Master

 

 

 

 

Failing Van Gogh: An Article About AI Art

 

I think the greatest injustice in this world is that Vincent Van Gogh was not able to sell any paintings when he was alive and somehow posthumously his work is regarded as the work of a genius and he is hailed as the greatest painter to have ever lived. If such was indeed the case, why would you be so cruel to the man and allow him to die penniless and depressed?

 It is not just Van Gogh. Look at the story of Galileo. Sentenced to death by the church because he stated that the Earth revolves around the Sun. I wonder then, do humans fear original ideas so much?

 This brings me to the recent and disturbing trend of using apps which make what is being called AI art. But before I proceed further down this rabbit hole, let us digress again and talk a little bit about the words “talent” and “practice”.

 We often hear the words “You’re so talented!” or “He’s an amazing writer!” don’t we? I was having a chat with an artist friend of mine who told me categorically that more than talent it is hard work, practice, blood, sweat and tears that is what is used to get someone to the point of being amazing. I am not saying being talented is a bad thing, I am pointing out the immense dedication and sincerity it takes (not to mention patience and a certain amount of bravery) to make something of those talents. When I started FLTM 12 years ago, I had no idea what to do. But I stuck to it. I read books, I read other writers. I practiced. I tore my hair out in frustration and I wept. But suddenly, 100 people read the stuff I wrote. Suddenly I had been writing for a year. Suddenly, writing became my way of dealing with my issues. Today I have a portal where I have spent 12 years of my life’s time.

 And what the advent of AI art is going to do is, it is going to replace this time and blood and sweat and tears with an algorithm and a microchip.

 Do you now understand the anger of so many artists and creators out there? What AI art means is that a person’s entire livelihood is at stake. Michelangelo started out with grinding colours together at an art school and he spent years there honing his craft before becoming one of the most renowned sculptors in the world. Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa still mystifies art critics and connoisseurs even today. Their work is studied by artists past and present so that they can themselves create. Imagine if this was just tossed into a bonfire and that bonfire was lit.

 What is next? Robots in the Olympic Games? Andy Murray vs The Terminator?

 In an age where everything we want is available at the push of a button thanks to the Internet, it is a very essential tool for learning and honing one’s craft. I know I use the Internet a lot. But the flip side is that if everything is indeed available at the push of a button, what happens to human curiosity? If fifty years in the future, a bot is going to serve you breakfast in bed, will you be curious to know where that breakfast came from? Children these days cannot imagine a world of telegrams and letters. Talk to them about telegrams and they will point at their phones and talk about the app’s latest update. While I do understand that technology is always adapting and changing and growing, it is doing so because humans are curious, because humans want to challenge themselves, because they want to do better.

 It would be terrible if this curiosity was no longer there and if indeed the world as we know it would be run by algorithms and AI as opposed to creators and innovators. I can only hope that what today is AI art does not become tomorrow what is governing the planet.

 If it does, we have failed Van Gogh again.

The Bilge Master

Musings On What COULD Have Been...and What Has NOT Been

 I was reading Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba just now and remembered how special it was to me and how I read it in less than an hour and a half with my good friend Gayathri (admin and Sorceress Supreme of the Paperbacks and Backpacks book club) and suddenly my very organically random mind wanted to write so here I am at the keys again.

What teenager has not wanted to be a guitarist? I'm sure everyone has a story about how they got introduced to the sound of a six stringed instrument as was I. My story involves my friend Soumya Basu aka Choru Da who made me listen to Slash and Knopfler when I was in sixth grade and set me on a path that nearly made me a sound engineer, nearly made me a guitar player and gave me a place to hide when I was low. Choru Da, you will read this, I know and you will smile and text me from Down Under and say it means a lot to you. I think what you should know is that you mean a lot to me. Thank you for showing me the beauty of a part of the world that makes me want to seek beauty even in the darkest of times. 

But then again, my random mind, forever a slave to Brownian Motion now wants to talk about Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken, specifically the lines 

"Oh, I kept the first for another day

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back"

What has this got to do with me not becoming a guitarist? Well, after pestering my parents for ages and ages, I did not get a guitar. Come on, this is me! If the story were to write itself the way all stories have so far then it would not be my blog would it? So yes there is a twist in this tale. I scored highly on the analysis question set for the poem The Road Not Taken and I've written about the significance of the poem when I wrote a farewell post for my seniors in college when I was in 3rd year. I felt the poem's message was most appropriate and I think I will have to link that post at the end  of this one so that you can revisit it!

Anyway, I did not become a guitarist. But I did become something else. I picked up a camera that my father got from his maiden trip to the USA back when Obama was the POTUS and I decided to go Dexter's Laboratory on it. What were the functions on the camera? What did the wheel do? Why these logos? I took that camera with me on walks and I clicked so many photos. I was enthralled. And then, I got a phone (a Sony Xperia E3, my second Android device) and that camera was stellar. I clicked away to glory. In between, I'd used a CyberShot DSCHX100V and the kind of creative and expressive power that camera gave me was out of this world. And so, a romance began. I became The Guy Who Has a Camera and my college batchmates used to ask me to photograph them and I learnt and learnt and learnt and expressed and expressed and expressed. 

I am still enthralled by the sound a guitar can make, I am still in awe of music and still use audio to unwind. But the road to being a guitarist is the road I did not take. I became a camera user. I will not say I am a photographer. That is a road I have not walked down yet. 

Ah, the point of this post? Nothing. Follow me on Instagram! (@shoshamitra)

The Bilge Master

Why I Read...

  “It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. . . . Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why."

~Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings 

Those of you who know me even slightly will know that I adore stories. I spend fifteen minutes or more on Instagram checking the stories and comics that the creators I follow have concocted up and most of my feed is filled with their talent. 

But the title of this is "Why I Read..." and to be honest I do not know the answer. I just know that if stories were to be taken away from me I would be devastated. Stories have gotten me through so much. I was five years old when my mother gave me a book to read and in the womb when my mother told me of the things we would do together. She taught me that the world is both beautiful and dark, and also that life is not about the Lamborghini in the drive way but the child begging for alms at a street corner, who hasn't eaten for a while and maybe a small packet of biscuits means more to him than any money his family will steal from him and use up in drinking themselves silly.

Stories are all around us. That's why I've been keeping a diary for a while now. From the moment you open your eyes, a story starts. How you spent your day is a story, the security guard in your complex whose WhatsApp you configured is a story. 

Grandparents told the best stories if you ask me. Their world was so different from ours. They didn't have access to books as freely as we did. They were a living, breathing treasure trove of experiences from the past; our first history teachers in a sense. I wonder why we are taught so sparingly about history. In reading William Dalrymple's City of Djinns I fell in love with Delhi all over again. My endeavour to learn Bengali is to read stories in my mother tongue, a practice I feel I should have started a long time ago.

Storytellers such as Neil Gaiman wax eloquent on the importance of libraries and the experience gathered from children's literature while storytellers like Charles Dickens (although in my opinion his characters are unrelatable) tell us long stories about good vs evil and how good prevails. John LeCarre will take us into the world of espionage. Alistair MacLean will enthrall us with thrillers. 

Edmond Dantes and his quest for revenge, Dustfinger and his desire to return home, Markus Zusak showing us a war torn landscape and Exupery telling us how important our child self is. All stories, all about the world we live in and all capable of teaching and giving us armor to use.

A story teaches you how to be good and also how to be evil. It gets under your skin (if you let it) and it shows you the world of words and their power from the perspective of someone else, someone who like me was perhaps born in the arms of imaginary friends.

I still cannot resist walking up to a person reading a book and asking, "Hey, what are you reading?"

Stories have been there for me longer than people have. My teachers told me I read to survive and my parents gave me the responsibility of taking care of our library. My friends say it is a bibliophile's paradise. I just think of it as a house full of stories.

And yet, some stories haunt me. Some stories break me and leave me a bleeding mess on the floor. Some stories give me the power to get out of a sticky situation.

I read because I do not know what or who I'd be if I did not.

The Bilge Master

So Long, Easy Rider

 He liked long drives a lot. Out on the road, with the top rolled back and cruise control keeping the car smooth. He was what Baez called Dylan in Diamonds and Rust- the original vagabond. Most at ease on highways- places he called home.

 But a few months back he had called a different place home. His home had a body, it had a voice He had wanted that home. Maybe it was the loneliness that made him seek out that home again and again. He felt like the un named boxer in Simon and Garfunkel’s song when he was at that home, lonesome and the New York city winters cutting into him, wishing he could go to the home of his youth. He had tried to find that home wherever he went and sometimes he succeeded. But it was always temporary and before long he was travelling on. I do not mean to imply that he did not have friends. He did and they cared for him. He felt at home with most of them, but the home he sought eluded him, always on his cusp and never his.

 He took to many hobbies- writing, reading like a man possessed, ordering and buying books like anything. His family thought he had a bad attitude so he kept away from them. However, his other family, the people he had met on his travels, they told him it was a pleasure being in his company and they introduced him to other people like himself.

 But still, home eluded him. Until he made his peace and realised that he liked being on his own. He liked the freedom of choosing his company, of having nobody tell him what to wear, what to eat and how to work out. And this was one freedom he hesitated to give up. Such freedom was magical and allowed him to sate his wanderlust. He started to look for photos and updated his camera with two new photos each day. He found a coven of readers and he chatted with them. He made friends who fuelled his creative side and gave him the courage to experiment and to express himself.

 And tonight, is like the other nights. He is on the highway, his favourite Uriah Heep song is playing and he’s on his way. He does not know where, but he’s on his way. I do not know if he will find home, but I do know he will not stop looking.

 “So long easy rider

I know I’ll miss you for a while

But sooner or later

I know that I’ll forget you”

The Bilge Master

 

The Roadmap to Bibliophilia

 Golpark has changed so much these days and yet you can find so many books there even now in the age of the Ebook and the piracy and the Kindle rising like a behemoth and everything going binary. In the future not so distant we will recall Orwell’s Big Brother and not Asimov’s R Daneel Olivaw.

 Since Samhain will shortly rise, I must bring to your attention these diaries about a library that has been built a long time ago and continues to evolve. This is a family story. It has suspense and ghosts in it or rather the dedications of those not with us, the post cards sent to a wife from another hamlet by her husband and the telegram a son got from his mother, away on holiday in Darjeeling. The hand written dedication in an Asterix comic which a grandmother scrawled before gifting the book to her grandson on his birthday.

 If you look at one of the three copies of To Kill a Mockingbird in this library, you will find one in which a mother now dead has remarked that the copy is for her, for “She tried to teach To Kill a Mockingbird. On his last birthday, the son of the house let his dear sister add a book to this library when he accepted the delivery of Tamas by Bhisham Saini.

 It is almost as if this library has a life of its own, a protector of its own and needs of its own. Every now and then, just as a woman craves attention and a man likes his smoke or his beer, the library likes it if someone stands in it and flits from shelf to shelf, picking out a book here, putting back a book there or jumping into the room and noticing that this shelf of books could do with some dusting.

 Where did it all start though, this haven of bibliophilia? I think it started sometime around the time a woman walked into a library and the librarian told her that her usual chair had been occupied by someone else. This disturbance in the Force must have led to a massive lightsaber duel, or did it? What if the woman was not inclined to violence and instead found that the man sitting in her usual chair was a PG Wodehouse buff and liked Bertie Wooster more than Lord Emsworth?

 Or could it have been the time that someone walking along College Street suddenly found a copy of Sons and Lovers going for about 6 paisa and grabbed it and ran home in the rain and put it up there with Emile Zola’s The Kill?

 Where is this library, you ask me? Why? Do you want to meet its custodian? Would you like to add something to it? Do you just need books like a sword needs a whetstone or are you just curious about which wand chose this wizard and if the wizard slew a Balrog or not? Or maybe the wizard in question is akin to Destiny of the Endless, always writing the Fates of Mankind in a book while his brother Dream gives William Shakespeare another idea to cure him of his block?

 You would be surprised to find both Gaiman and Shakespeare in this library, as well as Asimov, LeCarre, DH Lawrence, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Jane Austen, Erica Jong, Irving Stone and Alistair MacLean.

 And so, one day I will take you there and you can meet the person who curates the library now, dusting it and arranging it and he will tell you more about the books his mother left behind, the books he got from Romania and the books he has had his eye on for some time now. What say you? Would you like some tea with this man?

 I warn you though, just as this library seems too good to be true and while I know it exists, there are a few things about the custodian you should know. He knows of witches who are adept at curses and hexes. He knows of a person, advanced in years who is not your average warlock and he himself keeps a record of the books in it on a certain device and makes sure those who borrow from him give back the books they’ve taken.

 A friend to those who want to read, this library’s stories have been handed around to a group of listeners and he always knows which story to tell. Just ask his friend AP, who had no idea of Gaiman before he narrated Sunbird or Jay who found a fellow Arthur C Clarke fan hiding in the ship of the Ramans.

 Yes, this man lives in the world of make believe more than the world of things to believe in but he finds a curious safety in the realms of the elves and the faeries, talking to ghosts about if they can eat food when they’re dead or trying to decipher his grandmother’s recipe for mutton.

 Come, let us go make our visit!

The Bilge Master

"Hello Lamp Post, What'cha Knowing?"

 I turned 28 two days ago and there's so many things that made my birthday special. The party, the wishes and the camaraderie. I still cannot spell that word, so thank you Dictionary feature on Google Chrome. 

It's been a strange life for me so far. I've loved. I've lost. I've become a rage filled monster and I've changed to become a mellow person but someone who has massive panic attacks sometimes and needs to do something with their hands to calm down. I've had a lot of struggles and I've been so messed up that I've not even acknowledged my achievements. 

Anger is all I've known for so long, so very long. And yet, here I sit, hands flying over a keyboard, phone humming as someone in London wishes me on Instagram, as an email arrives for me from Dubai, as the person whom my mother considered a friend drops her number in my WhatsApp and as my book club repeatedly, repeatedly laughs at me, with me, sings for me, dances for me and shows me, I don't need to be angry anymore.

It was my birthday two days ago. Two days have passed and yet people still wish me. They say they feel bad they couldn't on the day itself. Another message arrives from someone who is a first year sociology student and says he has ordered a book for me and wants to hand deliver it to me with a birthday message. I finally found the confidence to tell someone in my life that I value them as much as The Little Prince valued his rose. 

I do not know how it came to be that someone who saw only red and nothing but red, someone who was bullied in school because of his prowess in English and his skills, by those people who would just take advantage of him and blackmail him and take advantage of his loneliness to pass their exams...someone who lived his entire formative years in survival mode, is today sitting at this computer writing about how he turned 28, weaving a story about it in real time.

When I was about 20, I wrote a poem where I said that for a long time I've been staring into a face in a mirror and I do not recognize the face staring back. I repeated that experiment on my birthday, just before I walked into the kitchen and cooked a chicken dish. I came face to face with someone else. He was taller. He was fat, but he was not as fat as back then. He felt fitter and he felt he was breathing better. The child who stared at his 28 year old self could only wonder..."Is this who I've become?" 

What has this birthday taught me, you ask? I have learnt that I deserve love. I have learnt that I am good enough. It's easy to say haters gonna hate now. It's easy to say, I matter now. I may not matter to those related to me by blood, but I matter to someone in Romania. I may not matter to the racist Hindi teacher who made me fail ten times in Hindi and was instrumental in me feeling like shit throughout class nine and ten but I matter to the English teacher whom I've found again after more than 17 years, who called me twice on my birthday and who waits for my visits with a cup of coffee at the ready as I curse her laptop for making her life hard and ask it to grow up. I matter to the computer teacher I have not spoken to for over ten years, who I reconnected with and who remembers my birthday and wished me. I matter to the girl I met and who yelled at me on the phone because I had removed my birthday from Facebook and who couldn't wish me on the day.

I matter to the people who don't want me to look back anymore. I matter to the people I am going to grow old with, to the people who will share their milestones with me. I matter to the Instagram stories I'm gonna see, the ones from the accounts I follow, where there's a potpourri of artists and humans who make amazing content and need to be seen.

I matter to the Spotify playlist I'm making. I matter to the book I've finished writing that someone very close to me is editing now and that needs to see the light of day. I say I am not good enough and yet I am good enough to find three jobs in a pandemic situation and decide to leave two of them because I realised that they were not good for me, that they were affecting my mental health and not letting me be me.

How can I still be an angry person in survival mode anymore? It is time I realized that life is something to be loved and lived, to be spent with the people I've found along the way who love me and want me to live my life and share my life with them.

The friend who told me I gave him the confidence to write a blog of his own

The bookstore owner who calls me "babu" and has always told me I can come and have tea with him

The oldest friends in my life, friendships lasting 17 years now 

The stories I have to tell

The journeys I have to go on

The artist who sends me presents because I hugged him

The January baby who has her own scars and yet is always smiling, always growing, always full of ideas and always creating 

The bespectacled, long haired, little goofball, with the Honda limited at 140kmph who calls me a brother and says I'm an amazing DJ (and makes fantastic gin and tonics)

The two people in a far away land whose kids aren't here yet but who want me to be around when they come by and I can share books with them

The elder sister whose father has the same name as my father and therefore has opened her heart to me 

The younger sister just discovering Prufrock, with a rapier sense of humor who said I don't look as old as I am and nicknamed me

The person who helped me over one of the hardest losses in my life and set me back on my feet and wants to be at my wedding 

The doctor who fought by my side and brought me back my sanity

The other people, in the shadows, waltzing with me, smiling at me, blessing me, sharing my life with me

And lastly, the life I have not lived yet.

Time to live, time to love.

Hello! Let's live a little! 

Vamos!

The Bilge Master

An Apology

 For a moment my mind goes totally blank and then my hands find a few keys to strike. I strike them and suddenly this, whatever this is, starts to write itself.

I once had a nightmare when I was little. I feared I would be forgotten. I wanted to remain in the minds of some people. I wanted to not be forgotten. But then, I read The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and I realised that Joker was on point when he said that memory is treacherous. We remember a lot of things without wanting to and we forget a lot of things without meaning to. I wished for a powerful dagger like the one Prince Dastan had in Prince of Persia, but that would have been me giving vent to my hubris and even in Prince of Persia if you run out of sand for the dagger, you die. 

I grew older and people whose corporeal forms I had interacted with became ectoplasm in pockets of my mind and I stayed a dreamer. I dream of them and of their stories and I tell others of their stories. 

I am not a good writer, but if you take away stories from me, my mind will revolt and trash and struggle like a cornered animal, a deer that freezes in the headlights of a speeding car driven by a man who has had one too many beers and is driving home in the cold sleet of an oncoming European winter.

I think I've realised what this is. This is an apology to the nightmare I had when I was little. I think that somewhere is a house and in that house resides all the ideas that I have forgotten about. They are cripples. Some do not have legs or hands. Some do not know how to talk. Drunk on the ambrosia of creative adrenaline, I went too far with some of them, danced with only Diz and Dante and left Lucy somewhere in the sky without any diamonds. I think those ideas hate me. They feel they were not good enough for me. But then again, they forgave me and did not make me forget that I could learn to be a good writer. Those abandoned ideas sent more ideas to me and some of those ideas turned into non treacherous memories. 

More importantly, the graveyard where the ideas that didn't even see the part of the world I had created for them and died in birth lies to the north east of the house, in permanent repose. Those corpses haunt me in a different way. They make me run to books, and through books to stories. They fuel the ever consuming fire in me to make love to the written word, to disappear into a mythical world when the real one is too unkind. My love for stories lives on, as my attempt at winding up this apology slips away from me. My tired mind sips lukewarm tea and my phone reminds me that I need sleep. 

But I can't sleep. I have promises to keep.

I wonder if the ideas will accept this apology. 

The Bilge Master

Using Omegle to Build a Spotify Playlist

 Greetings, people of the page. 

We all know of the site Omegle, where mostly it's men trying to impress other men who are pretending to be women or bots going on about hookups. Woe betide if you're a girl on Omegle. There are so many very straight up horrible things you'll have to deal with, such as this one time I was chatting with someone and they had the audacity to ask for my sister's number.

However, I am now playing a little game on Omegle, where I log in, set my interest to "Music" and ask whoever connects with me to simply suggest  a song. 

Here are three examples of what happened the last time I did this (which was today)

So that. 

However, I did succeed to start building a playlist on Spotify which is liked below and will be updated now and then. Stay tuned! 

The Bilge Master

75 Years Independent- What Unity in Diversity Prompted Me to Jot Down

 It is the 75th Independence Day of India today and I am an Indian. The one thing that I have always found striking about India is the phrase “Unity in Diversity,” which I came across first in a geography textbook sometime in the 4th standard and this is a small writeup inspired from that phrase. 

I do not wish to make this political or religious. I just want to talk a bit about that term, factoring in my experience of a recent trip to the capital of India, Delhi; in April this year. I also read an excellent essay by Pico Iyer, in which he stated that the difference between a tourist and a traveller is that a traveller will visit a restaurant in Bali and order some food and realise that the food being eaten is not so different from food the traveller has had before, whereas a tourist will draw a comparison between the food being eaten and the food back at home and will in that comparison complain that nothing in that restaurant in Bali is like what the tourist had to eat at home.

I have been fed by the farmers of this country. This country has given me roads to walk on, it has taught me its languages and made me literate and I owe this country the paper that it gave me to write my exams on, so that one day I could stand on my own feet. This country has created doctors who have cured my illnesses, it has created film personalities who have entertained me with their craft, tailors who have made the clothes I wear and so much more.

This brings me to the things I experienced while on the train to Delhi. The way a stranger offered his bottle of water to me because he saw I was perspiring, the way a little boy was pulling the dupatta of his mother’s salwar kameez because he was hungry. The fact that an old woman of a different faith wanted to buy her grandson a samosa because he was hungry and since I was sitting by the window, she passed me some money and she asked me to get the samosa from the vendor and give it to her.

The clothes I wore were expensive. I was wearing a branded pair of jeans and a t-shirt. And yet, the person sitting right in front of me, talking to me about how he had a job interview coming up was dressed in a jeans and t-shirt too. He did not shy away from speaking to me because I was more fashionable, infact he complimented me on my Hindi. 

Travelling in that train, surrounded by these people from all walks of life, from different backgrounds and with different stories to tell, I realised something. At the end of the day, we all bleed red (although cricket fanatics will be quick to say that its blue), we all drink water, we all eat food. That is our unity. And yet, in that unity, we have people from different faiths and exposed to different languages, foods and spices and who have seen different parts of this country and are from different parts of this country, which they were either travelling to or travelling from. This is our diversity. But at the end of the day, we are all Indian and human.

And I am promptly reminded of Rabindranath Thakur’s poem  , “Where the Mind is Without Fear”, specifically the line: 

“Into that heaven of freedom, my Father 

Let my country awake”

Welcome to India and Happy Independence Day

Special thanks to Surbhi Jain who helped me to edit this at literally a moment's notice. The time stamp on her last message reads 21:47!

Dear Violet: A Love Letter to Violet Evergarden

NB: Post number 555! It's been one helluva journey. Now onwards 

Dear Violet,

I do not know when you came into my life, just that I didn't know I was capable of forgiving myself until I saw you. You were doing the rounds among the people I knew, the new kid in town with the blonde hair and blue eyes and mysterious case. Nobody knew where you were from, what your story was, just that you were beautiful and mysterious and somehow you didn't seem to exist, except in our hearts and minds.

And then one chance night, wracked with insomnia, I pulled you out and I talked to you and I listened to you too. And Violet, you have my heart now. I saw your journey, of how the Major came by you, of how you fought by his side in the war and how he ordered you to live, how his choice to treat you with dignity and not as a tool affected you, confused you and set you off on your quest to find out about emotional quotient and empathy and in that process, how you found yourself.

At first, you made me cry. It was as if I was watching A Farewell to Arms unfold in front of my eyes. Then, I found out about the things you did in the war and I was reminded of your elder associate Battousai the Manslayer, although in his time things were different. I remember tearing up when the Major bought you that brooch and how you would keep it tied about your neck at all times.

It is difficult to describe how I feel about you, there are layers to you I have yet to discover. I think I will have to go back and experience meeting you again even though I'm told that the first time is always the charm with things of beauty such as you.

Most of all, what you did as an Auto Memory Doll stayed with me. How you learnt to respect your work, how you proved that Hodgins wasn't wrong about you and how, in the process of writing those letters you learnt to come to terms with your humanity and proved to your own self that yes you do have a right to live. And the crises of faith, when you were in the war, holding a gun and taking lives, the memories that haunted you, the ghosts from your past- you overcame all of that and proved you are not just a tool to be used for killing.

It is quite evident that writing letters is important, delivering them is important. Just today, I am slated to get a book in the mail. I appreciate the courier that will bring it. 

I love how you make simple things seem so profound and I am reminded of O'Henry when I think back to the experience I had while watching your story being told. I have now mentioned one of my favourite books as well as one of my favourite authors in this letter. 

I also owe you one for reminding me that when I started this now 12 year old site, I did it because I was arrogant and angry and wanted to prove people wrong. I was acting under orders. Like you, I have come to find that in my own way, by being able to touch so many lives through this site, by communicating with many like minded people and by making friends who appreciate the written word, like you, I too no longer need orders.

And so, Violet Evergarden, I ask that you live. For in living you have taught me how precious life is and that the life given to us should not be wasted or frittered away. 

In Gratitude 

The Bilge Master

Why I Like Fantasy Fiction

As an avid reader of any genre on the planet I’ve often come across an argument from people slightly senior to me about fantasy fiction. My parents for example, never understood my fascination for vampires and werewolves and zombies as a teenager and they thought I would “outgrow it”; my mother particularly, and read real literature like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (which I found to be unreadable) or War and Peace (which she bragged to have read 17 times and probably had, who knows?). While I am aware that these books are considered to be and are perhaps some of the greatest works ever to have been written, I must with all due respect say that I did not enjoy War and Peace and I feel that as reading is something very personal and intimate (for me almost as personal and intimate as sex) it’s up to me what I want to give time to or time for!

 Does this mean I did not like any of the “classics”? No. I loved Jane Austen, I adored Bernard Shaw. I found Of Human Bondage by William Somerset Maugham to be fascinating and humane, despite its length. I was so affected by it that immediately upon finishing the book, I picked up The Moon and Sixpence and lost myself again and refused to be found until the book’s last page had been turned. I think Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights is one of the most complex characters I’ve ever come across.

 So, I do read classical literature. But- and this is a significant but- so I’m going to rephrase it. But.

 I also believe in faeries. I believe in Ents and in Balrogs and dragons and wizards and swords that can suck out your soul and spellcasters and tantrics. Why do I do so? It’s as Neil Gaiman points out

 

 

And now we come to a part of the writeup that makes you the reader understand why fantasy matters so much to me. I was diagnosed with depression in 2014 and I am still on medication for it. So, the quote above about fairy tale dragons and how they can be beaten resonates with me on a very personal level.

 I was nine years old when Gandalf broke the Bridge of Khazad-Dum and took on the Balrog. I am now 28 and I’ve read the book again when I turned 26 and my mother passed away. What changed was that it wasn’t Gandalf on that bridge, it was me and it wasn’t a Balrog, it was my depression. And the bit where Gandalf tells the Balrog that he is a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor and the Balrog will not pass and that the dark fire will not avail it…before demanding of it that it goes back to the shadows, yes that was also me, grieving the loss of a parent, dealing with severe mental strain due to the COVID pandemic having left me unemployed…I turned not to Wuthering Heights or Sherlock Holmes but to The Fellowship of the Ring. The book told me that I should hold on, that like Frodo, I would one day be able to destroy the Ring and reach the Gray Havens with the elves and that gave me hope.

 I recently tried to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn again and revisiting that book as an adult with a condition made me weep at the blatant racism in it. I did not face this problem before and I am aware that as you mature, your mind grows with you and the mark of good literature is that it grows with you as well. So, it was for Huckleberry Finn and also for Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky whose protagonist I found to be a totally idiotic over thinker with too many silly decisions under his belt.

 So, if you will excuse me for this somewhat blasphemous post, let me point out that the world in which my parents grew up was one that was limited in terms of access to the kind of books we, the new generation has access to and therefore perhaps they are better versed in the classics and in the whodunit series of novels than we are and conversely, we are better versed in fantasy literature than they are.

 In an ideal world, we the next generation would reach an understanding with our seniors and they with us but there does exist a generation gap after all, and thus we must simply live, let live and read what makes us happy.

 And should the fancy strike me, maybe one day when I am about 35, I’ll revisit War and Peace and this time I’ll like it!

The Bilge Master

In Conversation With Oracle's Eye

 On the day I decided to leave Facebook for a bit, a young man reached out to me and asked me to listen to a song his band had composed. Seeing a lot of potential sounds in the record and the in your face influence that Mike Portnoy (Yellow Matter Custard and formerly Dream Theater) and John Petrucci (Guitarist- Dream Theater and Liquid Tension Experiment) had on the record, I offered to interview them.

What follows is a brief interview with the talented musical act that is Oracle's Eye!

The Bilge Master

 

•       Tell us why you like music

 

Prince : Well, for us, music is more like a part of our personal and professional life both, so I guess answers like "Music is a really good way of stress relief" or "It makes us happy" will be understatements. So, for us, let's put it in this way, music is the very language or mode of expression that suits us, being a fundamental part of our lives now.

 

•       How were you introduced to music? I want each of you to answer with the song that made you fall for music and later influenced your decision to step into music

 

Prince : I was introduced to music at the age of 3 as far as I can remember, as my family has a cultural connection to Classical music, thus it's hard for me to pin point a particular thing which drove me into doing music, but I can definitely pin point the thing that drove me into Metal and Rock stuff. It was my elder cousin brother who first asked me to listen to an Avenged Sevenfold song, it was the title track of their album "Nightmare", and in seconds, the guitars, drums, bass, vocals everything made me speechless.

 

Baron : For me it was an influence by some of my known seniors who were into band music and stuff, I can still remeber the day I was invited to one of their jamming sessions and there I heard "Ghost Of Prediction" by Opeth for the first time. Before that I used to unknowingly listen to stuff like Linkin Park, Alter Bridge, etc... while gaming in my local cyber cafe.

 

Debarun : I used to be really into Bollyrock and Rap ( stuff like Eminem ), I remember one day YouTube randomly played song by Necrophagist while I was listening to some underground hip-hop, I believe that was the song "Stabwound", that was the first time I heard a metal song. Then curiosity made me listen to stuff like Bullet For My Valentine, Metallica, Nirvana and much more and it never ended.

 

Devjit : My Mom was into music very much which made me pickup my first instrument ever which was actually a guitar ( not bass that I play right now ), so that made me listen to western bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Avenged Sevenfold and more. The first song that got me really intrigued was 'Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica.

 

•       What’s the most frustrating thing about song writing according to you?

 

Prince : I generally write the lyrics for our songs, but considering what our genre is and how much the time signatures of our songs get twisted, it's really hard to directly write the lyrics for the songs. So I have to write the full story and progression of the song first, then we proceed with the composition and arrangements ( I know this sounds really weird ), and then it comes on me to somehow formulate the lyrics that fits the musical complexities and time signatures, out of the story script.

 

Baron : As our genre suggests, we use a lot of Polyrhythms and Polymeters with twisted time signatures in our compositions, which is really cool and all, but on stage or even while composing, I become the one who is tasked to backup every individual time signature at the same time. Generally while using Polys, everyone in the band plays their own time signature which doesn't really complement each other, thus creating a really confusing pattern / musical illusion, but as the drummer it's my duty to  stitch all those different time signatures together to form one pattern that backs up everyone individually and also the song as a whole ( I know it sounds even more confusing but trust me that's how it works).

 

Debarun : Those filthy riff transitions man... it literally takes me a lot of time to figure out how to properly stich together all the very different verses, chorus sections, pre breakdowns, breakdowns, bridges and all the other ( don't have enough words ) parts that each sound like parts from different songs; to formulate one single song that makes sense. I know Prince being another guitarist, also faces this same issue. But it also makes the composition procedure much more fun.

 

Devjit : My brothers do have a weird fetish ( which I do like very much btw ) that is they prefers to have parts in the compositions that only has the bass accompanying the vocal and ambience, which is cool and all. But these dedicated bass parts also play a major role in formulating the storyline and progression of the song, which sometimes become a headache as our compositions do have a lot of twist and turns in the storyline itself, but I enjoy it too no doubt.

 

•       Why metal? Why not rock or pop?

 

Prince : Well, as listeners we do prefer both Rock and Metal, as they are more or less like long lost brothers in terms of expressions and feel of the music. But we do metal exclusively as it is a bit more expressive and aggressive and helps us portray our themes in a much bolder fashion which we intend for. Talking about Pop, with due respect to every artist from every genre, as musicians, we find Pop to be a genre targeted towards simplicity and mass appeal which actually restricts the growth and playability of a musician in general. And being a fan of rather complex music, we don't really prefer doing Pop. Although personally as I am a vocalist too, I do prefer some old school Pop stuff while practicing as being a vocal driven genre, it really helps me maintain the melodious aspects of my vocals.

 

•       I’m getting a lot of influences in this song- Mike Portnoy, Behemoth, a little Judas Priest…fill in the blanks

 

Prince  ; We are indeed somewhat influenced by bands like Dream Theater, Opeth, King Crimson, Tool, The Dillinger Escape Plan; a little bit of Gojira, Jack The Joker, Leprous, Symphony X; and artists like Mike Portnoy, Marco Minnemann etc.

 

•       What’s more important in a song- lyrics or melody or do they go hand in hand?

 

Prince : For our compositions, they are both equally important to us, as besides of all the musical complexities and twisted arrangements, it is really important to us that our song conveys the emotions and progressions of the theme and storyline properly.

 

•       What’s the way you approach composition? Melody first, lyrics second? Both at once?

 

Prince : It is a bit more complicated than that actually, we generally decide the tonality and overall theme of the song first, then I write the story, and after that we proceed with compositions and arrangements that fits the storyline progression. And then like crafting a statue out of a chunk of stone, we craft the lyrics fitting to the composition out of the story script.

 

•       Does your music have a message?

 

Prince : Definitely, it's one of the main goals that we keep in mind while making every song.

 

•       Let’s say you had to sell your song to a record label in 30 seconds. Pitch it

 

Prince :  We are Oracle's Eye, a Neoclassical Symphonic Progressive Mathcore band from India, Following the musical paths of bands like Dream Theater, Opeth, Tool, King Crimson, Porcupine Tree, Pink Floyd, The Dillinger Escape Plan we aim to form our own signature combining modern Mathcore with the essence of neoclassical melodies and classic symphonies presented through extensive storytelling that revolves around the darker corners of human psychology, self contradictory morals of society, dark alternate outcomes of human civilization and much more weird stuff like that, overall a dark atmospheric vibe some pronounced uplifting moments here and there. Being the very first kind of our genre from this country, we aspire to pioneer these musical influences of our kind if we're given the perfect opportunity.

 

•       Why should we listen to Oracle’s Eye?

 

Debarun : If you want to culture complicated musical stuff.

 

Devjit : If You want to hear something that defies the norm.

 

Baron : If you like brainstorming while listening to music.

 

Prince : I guess all of the above, but mostly, if you love picturing a living breathing story with complex emotions and conflicting phases, ups and downs, rise and falls, while listening to a song, and if you love to imagine that you are actually a character in a story, then you are in the right place.

 

•       What’s next on the cards for you? Where can we see you or where do you see yourself in 2 years from now?

 

Prince : More songs to come, more stories to tell, several national shows to hit, and an entirely new era of musicality to form. 2 years from now, nothing will change really. Yes we will improve a lot, and a lot more people will know us at that time, but other than that, we will be the same band after all.

 

•       How important was the patience of your elders when you came home and declared that you wanted to make music?

 

Prince : None of us really faced any issue telling our families about our ambition, in fact, we do have direct or indirect influences by none other than our family members that helped us take the decision that we want to do music for the rest of our lives.

 

•       What is the one thing they don’t know about making music? (Does not have to be one thing. It can be multiple things)

 

Prince : Why the hell does it take this much time to make a song, seriously, sometimes I feel they know the answer but they are acting this way to passively motivate me.

 

Debarun and Baron agrees to the above.

 

Devjit : What exactly my instrument ( the bass ) does to the songs, they know it is important but don't really seem to understand how exactly.

 

•       In the age of rampant piracy and unaffordable music due to low financial strata, where do you feel the line should be drawn?

 

Prince : We do agree that music is and should be for everyone, but pirating music or anything for that matter is a slap in the face to those who are making the music for you It is exactly like not paying your bills or for the food at a restaurant etc. Thus, we think streaming companies need to be more strict in this matter. It's not like they don't know about the piracy, in fact they kind of let it slip under the table just to get people addicted towards their services as we do love free stuff even if it’s illegal. It is like a paradox of commercialisation which is kind of passively created by those very authorities who should stop these things.

 

•       How would you propose music is made more accessible, seeing as we have access to the internet?

 

Prince : As of today, music is already very much accessible to anyone in this world due to internet and technology, so no issues there, but we as listeners have to make a moral decision that art should not be free.

You can connect with Oracle's Eye on these platforms 

Facebook 

Instagram

Oracle's Eye can be found on these streaming platforms 

Spotify

Apple Music 

Contact Prince Samael @ +91 8240533061 for queries and bookings!