Looking for Mr Almodovar

His film titles  — Tie Me Up Tie Me Down, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, High Heels — give you a sense of the universe he inhabits: dark, eccentric, off kilter and iconoclastic —they are every thing that Hollywood is not, and so it is only fitting that on my one day in Madrid I comb the city for signs of my favourite film director the Spanish born Pedro Almodovar.

On Google his name elicits 3,25,000 sites — but here on the ground in Madrid he is slightly less accessible

But still in the by-lanes of Chueca famous now as his happy hunting ground his presence is hard to miss.

This is Madrid’s underbelly. The place to where the misfits, the alternatives, the individualists congregate. Outside the metro, it is evening and Almodovar’s people are slowly waking up and limping their way towards the main square to have their first drink of the day. In Cheuca they are all are there-characters from his films come to life: women with shaved heads, nose rings, tattoos and body piercing.

Men in pink shorts with biceps the size of Africa. People with bad hair days and bad hair lives. Every one in Mohawks, every one with beards — even the girls. It is a celebration of armpit hair, chains, black nail polish, and spectacles held together with band aids. It is a circus of the soulful.

At La Dolce Piazetta, around the tapas bar where the cooks are frying pieces of meat served with chilies on toast, the boys are wearing leather and day glo sandals and rings around their belly buttons.

There are wrap around glares and Gandhi glasses and beaded bags. And every one is drinking Tintos and Vodkas and Sangrias. But Almodovar is not here.

At the Trucco, there is loud music and crazy dancing and wild laughter. And there are pomades and buzz cuts and bracelets. And a man with a mangy pup by the bar. And a girl with a scar which she shows off like a prize.

And everyone is in jeans, and everyone is in shorts and everyone is wearing chains, and everyone is cool and label free.

Finally at the Bocaito his favourite restaurant, I see the table where he likes to sit, I talk to his favourite bar-tender, eat his favourite tapas. I search yearningly for him in every face I meet.

But though I do not see Almodovar on this trip, I see him everywhere.

s_malavika@dnaindia.net