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[sanayac]

To all the Poona boys

Hi, how's it going?

I've been gone for long enough

To wonder "do you still play guitar 

Or does your dad not approve"

Quite a daddy issue 

It's been a while, I know,

Since you got with your brood for a doob,

It must be scary for a dude

To be so far away

All the way in Bombay 

Are your spirits still high

Or your mood curiously low?

Maybe you've tried your hand at therapy

It's great for your attempts at poetry

And girls love a sensitive bloke

Do you still like to text

As many women as you can

Until they get together and plan 

A heist in your house

Or are you married now?

I thought I'd check in,

Poona's home after all

I visit every now and then

And wonder if I'll run into you at the mall

Seeing you would be nice,

Even if I wouldn't look twice

At the player turned has-been

Whose best years are behind him.

From all the girls who left the city

[sanayac]

Many lives, many deaths

I feel a shift within me

Am I really who I've been?

I feel my self slip through the years

Is the girl talking to the mirror

The woman staring back again?

I feel a swell within me

A pulsing shadow of my heart

I feel the edges cut so sharp

Its outline beaten out of shape

By ghosts who swung too hard

I feel a tear within me

Mourning all the lives I've lived

I taste the salt that burns through my teeth

All the dreams I once woke up for

Now accessories for a party dress.

I feel a death within me

Of everyone I've ever been

I feel my thoughts sieve through me

Fizzling out by the second

Only alive when spoken

I feel a hole within me

I'll be gone sooner than I'll know

And when it arrives,

My dead selves will ask why

I died so many times?

[sanayac]

It's giving sweatshirt but no coat

Lukewarm pasta, dusty softa

Dinner for breakfast

Sunshine melody, blue screen

Music on TV

'Spring Pop!' says the algorithm

Bright chords, loves lorn

Every tune a broken heart string

Tapping feet, clever disguise

It's the season for forgetting

Hands in the air toward pre-cautious skies,

Because what's lost never dies.

[sanayac]

Poison

A quest that trades cold blue screens

For warm flickers of candlelight through ice cube prisms,

What do any two people ever have to talk about?

Swirling intoxicants, hoping to catch my reflection in beads of condensation,

The sound of my voice is a seduction I fall for every time.

Mix my drinks with my signals and call for seconds,

I don't care who you are as long as I'm talking and you're listening,

Drink up my thoughts with me and remind me who I am,

Or what I can be or what I want or what I need.

Strange times call for a stranger's validation,

Look at me, pay attention to me, drink me until I discoverme,

I'll be your poison for tonight.

[sanayac]

Paris Street Style

[sanayac]

Mood: Romanticising interactions between strangers at a hair salon

[sanayac]

A Day in the Life

I wake up. 

Check my phone. Notifications: mom called (twice), Instagram says hi, Hinge asks if I’m lonely, a group chat seems to have exploded while I was sleeping (why haven’t I left it yet). I close my eyes again. I fall asleep for two more hours. 

I’m awake now. 

I could: get out of bed, brush my teeth, crank out twenty squats, make my breakfast, maybe take a shower. I take out my phone instead. There’s a top ten list of forgettable actors from the 90s who died of an overdose on YouTube. Look away from the screen. Now. Do not open the app. Definitely do not press play on the video. Shit. You’ve opened the app. The little buffer-circle is buffering. No, stop. Shit. You’re watching the video now.

Eight top ten videos later.

I throw my phone aside. Gahh, what time is it? I look around aimlessly, will somebody fucking tell me the time? I realise my phone has the time. Fuck, I’m reaching for my phone again. It’s 11:45am. Things I still need to get to: getting out of bed, brushing my teeth, cranking out twenty squats (maybe I can push that to tomorrow), making my breakfast, taking a shower (when was the last time I showered, maybe I can skip this). Instagram’s saying hi again. I haven’t said a word since I woke up. I scroll a bit, chuckle at posts of dogs being dogs once or twice. Oh, the people of some European country are protesting a new immigration law (remember the basic details so that you can contribute to conversations later). I toss my phone aside. Swing my legs off the bed.

I get out of bed. 

I suddenly feel alive. Standing up, my phone feels different in my hand. It’s become a thing again, what it’s supposed to be. Not a deceptive shaman that tricks me into believing I’ve woken up. Play music, start your day. Mental note to call mom when you’re done starting your day. 

I brush my teeth with uncharacteristic vigour. 

My face looks weird when it’s screwed up like this. I get really close to the mirror and stare at my eyebrows. I raise them so that worry lines form on my forehead. Wow, my eyes are really big. Are those blackheads on my nose? I forgot about them. That’s because you don’t really ever look at yourself this close up. Easy to forget your flaws. But what if someone else notices them? What if they get really close to my face like that? What if they’re about to kiss me and they see my blackheads and get grossed out and decide not to kiss me? What are you doing? Finish brushing your teeth. 

I enter the kitchen. 

I could eat: a banana, eggs, a sandwich, or some cereal. Maybe all of those things. That’s a regular, healthy-person breakfast. I reach for a banana, feeling pretty good about myself. I fill a saucepan with water, plonk some eggs into them and put the stove on. I eat the banana and stare at the water, waiting for it to start bubbling. My legs have started to feel a little weak and I’m feeling lightheaded just standing there. Am I dying? Oh, I just need to drink some water. I grab a bottle of water and gulp it down. I’m feeling really good about myself right now. I run my fingers over my stomach. It feels not empty already. And eggs on top of that? This is going really well. I let my fingers wander to my hip bones. Do they usually jut out quite that sharply? No, I’m not losing weight, don’t be stupid. 

I settle down in front of my laptop with my boiled eggs. 

I want to say I know what I’m doing. Today’s a Saturday and I don’t really need to be on a laptop. So why am I sitting in front of it? Are there things that people can do on a Saturday that don’t involve sitting in front of a laptop? I could: read a book, paint something, watch something, write something, go for a walk, take a shower, call my mom, clean my room, think about lunch. 

I pick up my phone and call a friend. 

My friend’s happy to hear my voice. We talk for a bit, I find something to laugh about. I forget about my eggs for a bit, but eventually get to them. My stomach’s feeling wretched right about now, but I’m on the phone and I’m laughing, I can’t leave this to be not on the phone and not laughing. I’ll just eat really quickly while I’m talking. There, all better. My friend brings up something I have an opinion on. I feel validated. I jump up and pace up and down as I explain my opinion emphatically. I explain things well. I feel validated. 

It’s lunch time and I’m eating instant noodles. 

What should I do with the rest of the day? I decide to watch something. I disappear for a while in someone else’s story, a made up life. It feels good not being in my own head. 

It’s evening already and I’ve done nothing with my day. 

Fuck me, fuck this, fuck everything, there was so much I wanted to do. There’s no escape for you, maybe this is just who you are. Maybe all you want to do is nothing all day. It’s easy to want nothing, it stops you being disappointed all the time. Fuck you. Snap out of this. Tomorrow’s a new day and all that. And guess what! It’s a Sunday! Fuck today. Start fresh tomorrow. Wake up early.

I take a shower as the sun sets and think about drinking a beer and ordering dinner. 

My mom called me again while I was showering. I call her back this time. I’m on edge, because the past ten hours of nothingness are yawning widely behind me and I feel like they’re going to suck me in again. My mom asks me a question and I get irritated. I feel like every second I spend talking on the phone is a second wasted even though what does it matter when the whole day was wasted? It’s not her fault. I try to calmly end the conversation. I make a mental note to call her again when I’m not in a bad mood. 

I’m sipping a beer and I have company. I’m not thinking about the day that’s just gone by. We’re laughing together and everything feels bearable. There’s a lot I need to get to tomorrow. I feel anxiety pierce through the haze a bit, making everything clearer and foggier at the same time. Not now. I wrench myself back to a happier place; there’s lots of time tomorrow. I’ll wake up early. 

I can: wake up, brush my teeth, crank out 20 squats, make my breakfast, shower (again), read something, watch something, paint something, write something, go for a walk, eat regular healthy-person meals, chat with my mom, drink beer, and relax. I can do it all.

[sanayac]

Why I love the 6.7 movie

This is entirely arbitrary.

What is the 6.7 movie? Well, simply put, it’s a movie with a 6.7 rating on the Internet Movie Database (also known as IMDb to the casual, Internet-movie-researcher). It’s a movie I like to describe as uniquely average, but charming nonetheless. There are no complex calculations behind this figure, no sum of all ratings divided by the total number votes times the weight of the film’s historical impact. The number rolled off my tongue and made sense to me, so I went with it.

The 6.7 movie is the perfect movie. Not because it outperforms other expertly written, universally acknowledged “good” movies. But because it’s a possible prototype for what you want to watch when you don’t want to watch anything.

I dreamt up this cinematic pseudo-rule-of-thumb after watching a little(ish) known movie called Starter for 10. Starter for 10 is a British comedy, set in 1985, that follows a working-class, full-scholarship-to-the-University-of-Bristol recipient, Brian Jackson (played by James McAvoy) as he fulfils his dream of appearing on the beloved British quiz programme, University Challenge. I didn’t read this synopsis or watch a stray trailer in my YouTube suggestions before deciding to scan all streaming platforms for the movie, failing, and ultimately downloading and watching it anyway. The movie was released in 2006, so it was by no means a movie that had the advantage of hype and newness. If I really strain my memory, I had probably stumbled upon it while looking up James McAvoy’s pre-X-men career (going back further along this memory chain is not advisable).

No, I decided to watch this movie because: it stars McAvoy, Rebecca Hall, Dominic Cooper, James Corden and Benedict Cumberbatch and this key, I had never heard of it. It was strangely thrilling to discover a movie that included actors, who are now successful in their line of work, all cast together in a single movie before any of them had their big breaks. It was like the movie was a graduating class, peppered with young, bright-eyed students who were going to change the world and you had the special privilege of knowing that they would go on to fulfil their potential before even they did.

The movie left almost no impact on me, except that it was mildly strange, but mostly pleasant. It had me engaged the entire time, but nothing about it was heavy. This wasn’t the kind of movie that had you sitting at the edge of your seat; no, this was the kind of movie that allowed you to recline as far back as you possibly could without being completely supine. It was the kind of movie that made you chuckle, gasp, and smile at all the right moments. Once the movie was over, it struck me that the movie reminded me of another McAvoy movie that left me feeling similarly soothed with the knowledge that nothing alarming was about to happen in the next 90 minutes: Penelope (also released in 2006), a movie about a girl who had been cursed with a pig’s nose by a spiteful witch (no, really). I casually hopped over to the movie’s IMDb page and discovered that this movie too, had a rating of, you guessed it, 6.7.

So what is it about the 6.7 movie that was so alluring to me? Well, that goes back to an emotion I still struggle with: disappointment. When I was a fresh-faced teenager, eager to dive into whatever cultural product I could lay my hands on, I discovered that I wanted to be blown away and completely absorbed by every book I read, every new song I listened to, and every movie I watched and because this world is far from perfect, this thought process had left me in a constant state of disappointment. That’s the magic of the 6.7 movie: it doesn’t disappoint, because it isn’t trying too hard to be great. It knows it isn’t going to shatter any records and therefore, doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a humble serving of ice cream, which at its very best, leaves you pleasantly surprised at finding a creamy, chocolate centre.

There are movies that completely reject this notion of being just slightly above average (every Christopher Nolan movie since Inception, I’m talking to you) and there are movies that are proverbial trash. But it’s the nebulous middle class of movies where the 6.7 movie resides. I love the 6.7—or 6.6, 6.8, maybe even 6, like I said, this is entirely arbitrary—movie not because it’s good, but because it’s interesting. What makes a movie passable? Either it’s a star-studded film that fell slightly flat, like 2017’s Battle of the Sexes, for example, or it’s a movie that nobody expected anything of at all, but it managed to inch past audience expectations anyway (like Starter for 10 and Penelope). Either way, it’s interesting to inspect why and how a movie manages to wedge itself into the stubborn right side of the middle. Far more interesting than uncovering why it’s brilliant or why it shouldn’t have been made in the first place.

Then there are the 6.7 movies that you don’t know quite what to make of, because they’re just meant to be fun. They’re the movies that immensely successful, serious actors make seemingly when they’re taking a break from all the seriousness. These are movies like 2001’s Bridget Jones’ Diary or 2010’s Love and Other Drugs, both starring once and future Oscar nominees and winners. They’re the movies that are sure to entertain and funnily enough, you have no problem revisiting them in spite of their apparent ordinariness.

I love the 6.7 movie, because I think mediocrity is underrated. Mediocrity defines a majority of the lives of most people in the world and instead of railing against it, I think all of us as movie-goers (and as fellow human beings) should embrace it more fully. Life isn’t lived out through scintillating conversations as much as it is in awkward pauses, unproductive workdays, and naps you don’t deserve, but definitely take. It isn’t a string of achievements as much as it is a string of routinely spent days, marked perhaps, by the little joy of watching an unremarkable movie.

If for nothing else, I love the 6.7 movie, because it makes the process of selecting a movie to watch that much easier.

Explore more 6.7 movies for your viewing pleasure.