Short story Stick no bills
Answers
I loved walking to school in the morning, mostly because there was less chance of getting molested by the desperate male mallu desperados!
So I walked.
And my walk took me on KK road and I had to pass the Kottayam district hospital on my right side. The hospital boundary walls were built with laterite stones and were covered with peeling cement and green moss. And every few feet there were hand written signs that said ” Stick no bills” And every often you would find colourful movie posters stuck on top of the sign..so as you walk you see stick or the end part of the bills written on the wall, the rest covered by the posters. It was the first act of blatant disobedience I saw in my life ( apart from what I practiced day to day at my own home).
I wasn’t much in to malayalam movies. What with Amma on her mission to save money for dowry? But the movie posters on the walls, the cousins who saw the movie and then tell me the stories and the write ups in the newspapers all helped me to keep abreast with what is happening with the Malayalam movies.
From Prem Nasir to Jayan to Mammotty..and then there was Sharada..
Years ago, When I was about 3+, Appa took the whole family to watch a Malayalam movie ( Murapennu). It was hot and muggy and I kept awake till intermission to get my glass of naranga vellam ( lemonade). The seller came holding a rack that held 8 glasses. each glass was covered with something like a wax paper. ( There was no way my father would have bought viral juice ( the seller holding few glasses using his fingers!)
I make good lemonade, but I have never managed to replicate the flavour of naranga vellam ( lemonaid) to this day. After drinking the juice, I slept happily. Occasionally I woke up, stared at the screen and went back to sleep. One scene in that movie is imprinted in my brain.
The house is a bit elevated from the road and there is huge line of steps leading to the house. Prem Nasir is walking up the stairs, meanwhile the camera pans inside the house and you find Sharada wearing a mundu and blouse ( sarong and top) and is running helter skelter.
Prem Nasir climbing the steps, sharada running here and there..it goes on for a while..building up the suspence.
Eventually Prem Nasir reaches the house main entrance and surprisingly the door is kept wide open!Meanwhile Sharada finds a hiding spot, behind the clothesline, hung in the corner of the room. Prem Nasir enters the house and is searching for Sharada and notices her feet sticking out from all the clothes on the clothes line. He walks up to the clothes line and push away the clothes and you see a full shot of Sharada..and her eyes..I can still see the myriads of expression in those eyes..
In one of the Dosai Diner outlets in Mumbai, there was a huge poster of Sharada and each time I took my kids there to eat Dosai, I remembered the movie..and her eyes.
Of all the actresses, Sharada holds a special place in my heart..
Today is her birthday.
Happy Birthday Sharada chechy!
Stick No Bills Poster Art & Poster Design
The story behind the launch of STICK NO BILLS™'s latest retro poster made it onto the front page of the Daily News features section on Friday. We cannot thank British author Juliet Coombe enough for writing this dazzling article. We are equally grateful to the editors of the island's most read newspaper for publishing this piece on the very date our poster design enterprise goes international. With much thanks also to our local partner Liam Hill and his wife-to-be Natalie Rogers for stepping into our STICK NO BILLS™ CEYLON executive/managerial shoes, thereby enabling us to start building the business overseas.
"I find out why, in a matter of weeks, “Goodnight Ceylon”, the Galle Fort Heritage Masterpiece by STICK NO BILLS™ soars to become the island’s most iconic travel poster.
Walking down from the Dutch Reformed Church in Galle Fort, while the moon is on its ascent, its incandescent light catching the colonial rooftops and dancing past the aged colonnades overlooking the harbor, one can feel the heat of the warm red terracotta tiles sitting on wooden beams protecting the shaded coral and shell historic walls below. A gallery storefront glows, drawing you into a vintage world of humor, danger and romance. A couple leaning over a balustrade seem as real as the owners of this fascinating enclave, who sit enigmatically surrounded by nostalgia. One’s eyes will be captivated by a handsome bride and groom basking in the sartorial grace of a bygone era, gazing with dreamy curiosity at a shadowy paradise, a magical place they are both bewitched by and yet know they must leave.
Flashback to the 1930s twilight in the Dominion of Ceylon, a crescent-shaped moon bathes the vast dark Indian Ocean in a silvery light. The platinum-blonde bride in the mermaid-like, pearl-coloured wedding gown is the picture of imperial elegance as she leans against the open railings of the upper deck of the cruise ship that is departing Galle Harbour. She gazes with detached curiosity, extra-long Bakelite cigarette holder in hand, across the wide-open bay christened Boa Vista by her Portuguese predecessors, towards Galle Fort; its silhouette unmistakable with its high Dutch ramparts, its lighthouse, mosque and palm trees. The bride’s tall, dark and tuxedo-clad groom stands by her, his hands stretched out to either side behind him on the railings of the deck. His striking profile cuts into the night sky as he too looks reflectively over his shoulder, bidding a penetrating farewell to the island. The last embers of a sunset on the western horizon show that the night is still young. The story of these lovers has just begun. At their feet, the instructions inscribed onto the lithograph in italicized French are clear:
“Restez au Fort Bazaar et immergez-vous dans l’heritage du Fort De Galle” [In English: “Stay at Fort Bazaar and emerge yourselves in the heritage of Galle Fort.”]
Goodnight Ceylon is a showstopper. The image encapsulates the seductive romance of Ceylon and of Galle Fort specifically, like none before it. The poster is the latest in a series of Ceylon-centric art directed by Sri Lanka-long-time-resident British photographer Philip James Baber, Creative Director of Stick No Bills™ and the world’s greatest living retro-style poster illustrator, Mads Berg. Mads has never set foot in Sri Lanka. Yet, inspired and meticulously guided by Philip, the Copenhagen-based poster artist has, with seeming effortlessness, produced no less than five best selling images for Stick No Bills™ since he first won their open-ended No Bill Piece Prize design contest and began producing posters exclusively for them in Sri Lanka. The pair has devised such a winning creative formula that they have since embarked on designing a series of Spanish retro travel posters together that will be released later this year.
Stick No Bills™ is donating proceeds from all sales of Goodnight Ceylon as posters and postcards to the Galle Heritage Founda