I am amazed how the delivery of maternal love from across the Atlantic Ocean prompted me to leave work relatively early and run to Chhotu's. Of course you are going to say that the materialism in the form of the Chaklis, Shankarpadi and Besan Laddoos was the real magnet, but in my defense, I did not even touch the Laddoos. What is even more astounding is how this nicely prioritized itself over an invitation at the new University campus, highlights of which were a promise of mid-week Scotch accompanied by discounted ice extended by the Prof and Bouthan's magical chholay. As I sat munching, I realized this was going to be a close fight with little knowledge of how wrong I was. The owner of our gym popped out of nowhere with white wings while fat bald Shankar Halwai had grown two little red horns and was hovering around like uninvited hijras at a wedding.
I had even left my bag behind at work, thinking that would force me to return and thus enter the gym. However, self-will and all other such angelic qualities that motivational speakers like to harp on were subject to a mass genocide this evening as the laziness quotient, subdued for a while probably because of the perceived Brownian motion of the brain cells, struck back with incredible vengeance employing a plush spread on Chhotu's divan made in Iran, or some such exotic oily mess. The W keeps boasting about LSD from his limited narcotic experience and how it made him feel the various veins in his brain, which incidentally is the same effect on the listener. But who needs psychedelic drugs when you have such royal comfort for your behind. I am not at all exaggerating when I say I could feel each and every vein in the derrière.
At some point Chhotu noted that this was the height of laziness since we didn't even change the channel when ads interrupted a slapstick comedy sitcom of Brad Garret's, whose humor was exponentially increased by the spread. Well, maybe for him. Shankar wanted to have a little more fun and slipped in a KFC ad with buckets of nothing but copious golden fried unhealthy chicken. How I wished the chicken could walk up to me on those plush leg pieces and walk back the avian equivalent of Somalian refugees. Once the gym idea had been completely murdered, a phone call to KFC proved that they didn't deliver fried storks and chickens to your door in this country. Dunno why they even have a phone then? A few Renaissance Youtube moments followed with me introducing Chhotu to such neo-classics as GMD and the Sutta Song. Bionic woman had replaced Garret on TV but refused to take her jacket off while running, even after the many requests my current state of inactivity allowed. So there was no point watching her.
The KFC had closed its doors on our stomachs by 8:30. After some Harold-Kumar camaraderie, we ended up at Carl's, where to compensate for the gym miss, I had a jalapeño burger sandwiched with a delicious cow and some golden deep fried groovy aloooooo over an Avant-Garde discussion of incidents during the formative years when we had heard our Dads swearing. The Brownian motion intensified as we were about to leave and I just had to smuggle out some black jahar (as the Dawg has rechristened it) in my translucent cup meant for water. The sudden activity from running away from the chasing Mexican employee who was running as if reminiscing her border crossing days made me miss dope like I miss Tina. Failed at having stopped me, it's as if she invoked the memory of some ancient Incan God because the moment I sat in the car, I was overcome by an exhaustive bout of coughing. Or maybe it was the virus' continued (more than a week now) infatuation with yours truly, shattering the notions of possible withdrawal symptoms.
Without access to any of the herb, Chhotu introduced the idea of hookkah. We couldn't connect to any of the unsecured networks while driving around to access Local Google. Sheah! And they call this place the Tech Capital of the World! Once home, Chhotu started reading reviews of these places and expressed fear of large not so fair and lovely men at such an hour at these places. I acted like that pissed me off and walked out on his open jaw and door.
The Blue Lady was singing 'Under Pressure' to me when I noticed that the load from my bag from work was potent enough to signal the passenger seatbelt sensor sign. Deep isn't it? The White Lady though, scarred for life from the hurt of showing misguided blind sheep the way during dark shepherd-less moments, shining like a Crazy Diamond against a navy starless uniform was showing me the path home. On chaining up my light jacket as a feeble protest to the sudden and unannounced onset of cold after sundown these days, I realized I was dressed for a funeral - in complete black like Johnny Cage, a prisoner to the demons within his inner self. I just hoped the funeral wasn't for any part of me. Once home, had to feign mental sobriety and disguise the coughing for the sake of a long distance phone call from Aunta, who for a change, made no mention of our family fortune teller's latest predictions about me.
Maybe the meeting of an old friend who goes by the name of August has sparked this random laziness, or lazy randomness, as he calls in from the Welfare State, or maybe it is the unsuccessful anticipation of the mind to attain Nirvanic calm. August, you SOB, stop f!@#ing with my mind and trying to make me Comfortably Numb. I don't want to be like you. I want to scream from the rooftops about my struggle with daily mundaneness, reach out to the White Lady and share a tear or two of anguish while the rest of the sheep sleep. I saw her during the day today too - feeble and tired against a supposedly clear backdrop. No one else did. Only I did. The Blue one has competition again these days I tell you. The White one may be round these days, and not as ever beautiful as the Blue one, but she gives me warmth and I can cry out my fears and lose my tears in her scars. But for how long? Isn't it only a matter of time before she too will leave me. Of course she will return, but will it be her again? Will she be my White Lady, or some poetic teen sensation too drunk in her moonlight to pay her real Romeo any heed?
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Satyajit Ray's Speaking of Films
Finally got done with this amazing collection of essays by the great man last night. Most of the contents deserves to end up in a text book for film making, and there are very few parts where Ray expresses his opinion on matters, rather than explain his technique or thinking behind a certain method. Translated by the award winning Gopa Majumdar from the Bangla Bishoy Chalachitra, who has done great justice to this I am sure, much like Ray's Feluda stories. I am indebted to Jabberwock, on whose blog I first heard about this.
The first few chapters showcase the history of film-making, with a emphasis on Russian cinema and then gradually progress to Bangla cinema of yesteryears with sporadic mention of a few American directors of the pre-talkies era. It is apparent that Ray's favorite Russian film maker among a few geniuses he talks about is Eisenstein. Will try to watch his Battleship Potempkin which Netflix claims to possess in its vast collection. The biggest challenge these film makers faced in a controlled USSR was the lack of freedom of speech in its true sense. It is unfortunate to note that film makers today face similar problems in what is known as the world's biggest democracy due to the Censor Board's rape of creativity.
By no stretch of the imagination can I be considered a connoisseur of Indian classical music. However, the chapter on background music is enthralling and packed with useful information such as the use of certain ragas to portray certain a certain time of day. He talks about his artistic association with maestros like Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Vilaayat Khan for his initial films, before he gained the experience and confidence to compose music for his own films.
Ray maintains throughout the book that dialog should be a director's last weapon of choice after he has exhausted more subtle options like angles and lighting conditions. However, his admiration for Bibhuti Bhushan's writing is apparent as he says that the writer's stories are so descriptive that the art department's job becomes a piece of cake and even the script writer's. He stresses the need for natural dialog - lines that the character's equivalent in real life is likely to speak, thus far removed from over the top and histrionic lines of theater.
The chapter that got me thinking the most was the one on color. Today it appears as if every film maker takes color for granted. What Ray says is that this is hardly the correct approach. Directors should only use color if they are able to justify it. Citing examples from his work like a married woman's vermilion or the shade of blue of the sky, he talks of an era when color was new to the Indian and thus Bangla film industry, not to mention an expensive option.
A couple of chapters are dedicated to Apur Sansar and Charulata and answering a critic named Mr. Rudra, mostly justifying his methods and answering some ridiculous criticism in my opinion, such as the film's script not following the original story. Apur Sansar still remains one of my favorite for its sheer tragedy, paling even the classical Shakespearean ones. I have got to see Charulata. Didn't know Tagora had woven such an intricate spiderweb of emotions with so many human angles, long before Hindi cinema was smarting over the Pati, Patni aur Woh concept.
The last few essays talks about his experience of working with amateur actors and their surprising natural acting skills and unexpected lack of camera shyness, most notably Chunibala Devi (Indir Thakuran in Pather Panchali). I like these essays for they reveal the more or less down to earth man behind the strict facade of the dominant director, which mind you, is essential to the completion of a successful film.
Some interesting points that came through were his dislike for theater because of its confining of space, and thus the imagination of the director, his dislike for Shantiniketan because of its emphasis on Oriental art as opposed to modern art, his pragmatic approach to the question of success of parallel cinema (he maintains that it is a director's duty to be loyal to the producer, who, is really a businessman while remaining true to art), and finally his fears of the death of the art of cinema in India. When the essay was written there may have been a dearth of creative cinema, but I think he would have been fairly satisfied with the current state of cinema in India, notwithstanding the Censor board of course.
The first few chapters showcase the history of film-making, with a emphasis on Russian cinema and then gradually progress to Bangla cinema of yesteryears with sporadic mention of a few American directors of the pre-talkies era. It is apparent that Ray's favorite Russian film maker among a few geniuses he talks about is Eisenstein. Will try to watch his Battleship Potempkin which Netflix claims to possess in its vast collection. The biggest challenge these film makers faced in a controlled USSR was the lack of freedom of speech in its true sense. It is unfortunate to note that film makers today face similar problems in what is known as the world's biggest democracy due to the Censor Board's rape of creativity.
By no stretch of the imagination can I be considered a connoisseur of Indian classical music. However, the chapter on background music is enthralling and packed with useful information such as the use of certain ragas to portray certain a certain time of day. He talks about his artistic association with maestros like Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Vilaayat Khan for his initial films, before he gained the experience and confidence to compose music for his own films.
Ray maintains throughout the book that dialog should be a director's last weapon of choice after he has exhausted more subtle options like angles and lighting conditions. However, his admiration for Bibhuti Bhushan's writing is apparent as he says that the writer's stories are so descriptive that the art department's job becomes a piece of cake and even the script writer's. He stresses the need for natural dialog - lines that the character's equivalent in real life is likely to speak, thus far removed from over the top and histrionic lines of theater.
The chapter that got me thinking the most was the one on color. Today it appears as if every film maker takes color for granted. What Ray says is that this is hardly the correct approach. Directors should only use color if they are able to justify it. Citing examples from his work like a married woman's vermilion or the shade of blue of the sky, he talks of an era when color was new to the Indian and thus Bangla film industry, not to mention an expensive option.
A couple of chapters are dedicated to Apur Sansar and Charulata and answering a critic named Mr. Rudra, mostly justifying his methods and answering some ridiculous criticism in my opinion, such as the film's script not following the original story. Apur Sansar still remains one of my favorite for its sheer tragedy, paling even the classical Shakespearean ones. I have got to see Charulata. Didn't know Tagora had woven such an intricate spiderweb of emotions with so many human angles, long before Hindi cinema was smarting over the Pati, Patni aur Woh concept.
The last few essays talks about his experience of working with amateur actors and their surprising natural acting skills and unexpected lack of camera shyness, most notably Chunibala Devi (Indir Thakuran in Pather Panchali). I like these essays for they reveal the more or less down to earth man behind the strict facade of the dominant director, which mind you, is essential to the completion of a successful film.
Some interesting points that came through were his dislike for theater because of its confining of space, and thus the imagination of the director, his dislike for Shantiniketan because of its emphasis on Oriental art as opposed to modern art, his pragmatic approach to the question of success of parallel cinema (he maintains that it is a director's duty to be loyal to the producer, who, is really a businessman while remaining true to art), and finally his fears of the death of the art of cinema in India. When the essay was written there may have been a dearth of creative cinema, but I think he would have been fairly satisfied with the current state of cinema in India, notwithstanding the Censor board of course.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Bheja Fry's
Angelina Jolie once said “I felt beautiful when I was in Cambodia [for Tomb Raider]. I was sweaty, and my hair was matted and all over the place. And I was happy and hot and accomplishing a lot and running around, and I could feel my heart beating, and I felt beautiful.” The United States may not be able to boast of such orgasmic satisfaction to its tourists, but herculean efforts are made to keep the residents of this country happy. One such effort saw the birth of a chain of stores called Fry's Electronics in select cities across the country. The cities that were selected are proven to be the hot pockets of nerdy activity, according to demographic data. I have the great fortune of living in the hottest pocket of them all - Silicon Valley and needless to say the stores here, and the characters one meet there, are extra special.
As you pull up to any of these stores, it becomes very clear from the onset that the owners mean strict business and nothing else. Accompanying the enormous Fry's sign on the store is an equally enormous sinusoidal curve, with the middle wave being of the highest amplitude, signifying the heightened pleasure customers receive when they walk in. This logo ensures that no glutton ever mistakes this for a fast food joint, and the lack of a cutesy furry animal, which pretty much monopolizes all logos, keeps off the hot, dumb, superficial women, even if they err and end up there somehow. The parking lot is equipped with special security, armed with an alarm from the store itself no doubt. If any car that is not a Toyota or Honda make gets as close as twenty feet to the building, the alarm radiates a supersonic wave that propels the infidel cars out of the parking lot. If you manage to sneak in in a friend's Toyota or Honda, there are more surprises awaiting you at the entrance. There is a retina and feeler scan test that allows only entry to customers who pass either of two tests. The first test allows only people with less than two centimeter square of retina showing entry. The second test searches the customer's upper lip for more than twenty centimeter square of bushy growth. A few steps ahead an employee asks simple and basic science questions like the definition of Einstein's relativity theory and other such world changing phenomenon. I hear a question bank of such questions is now available on Ebay.
Once you enter the store, begins an Alician journey through a maze of cornucopia of electronic gadgets, ipods and tripods, wires of all species mating with each other to produce more interracial breeds, and of course the famed piano in the middle of the maze played by the epitome of female beauty, robotic that is - Screw. Screw is surrounded by giant LCD and Plasma screens hooked up to the latest versions of man toys. Young nerds, started out early in this noble way of life by their parents can be seen peering onto these giant screen through glasses whose power dominate their ages and holding wannabe mini guitars and 'dancing' with intense aerobic fervor that would shame even the khatiya used by Govinda and Karishma in their famous song. If you listen very closely, you can hear proud parents gloating about how many kills their wards have amassed on the latest mindless violence games. The kid's sections of Fry's can boast of a lot of cute things on display, like the robotic Barbies and energy saving light sabers. Around a few aisles, you might meet smiling young mustached Indian men. Do not fall for their charming smiles. No, they are not Agents, but worse - they are Ambay folks, and before you know it, they will trap you in their inclusive love and pyramidal money making schemes with long winded talks which start innocuously about things like homesickness and end up with you handing them blank checks, like a gay spider that terminates its victims by first seducing it and then devouring it.
Fry's has as stringent a hiring policy as Microsoft, except that they do not compromise unlike Microsoft. All the candidates are chosen from the MENSA pool - the rejected lot from the superhero schools, presidents of chess clubs in Ivy League colleges, and of course, the members of the 4.0 club. Inside sources claim that your chances of landing a job there increases exponentially if you are armed with a unibrow and poor communication skills and lack any kind of knowledge other than in the technical field. If you meet all of the above criteria and still manage to turn out hot, you are instantly rejected. The working environment is as productive as that of Dilbert's with the same dress code. The tie has to be tight enough to make you squeak and your shirt has to be tucked in either at the back or in the front, not in both places.
The best time to visit Fry's is during Thanksgiving. It is full of vibrant, colorful, sleep deprived 'people', literally fighting over handicrafts made by little hands in China, India or some other Asian country that has to deal with the ethics of child labor. Last year, Wired Magazine reported that the Engineer brothers - Shahrukh and Sagar, found each other there after being separated in the same exact spot twenty four years earlier. Incidentally, both of them had tattoos of capacitors inscribed on their left arms. Amit and Rekha (names changed) met here five years ago. Amit says he fell madly in love when he saw Rekha running past valleys of discounted DVD's to grab the last 12-feet S-Video cable in the store. Three years back, Nirupa Roy (name changed) went into labor while waiting in line to checkout her purchased goods, and the line took so long to move that she delivered by the time she got to a cashier. Ms. Roy also holds the distinction of having given birth in the parking lot in a shopping cart during a different Thanksgiving. While this wonderland has given life, it has also taken some. Every year, about 25% of shoppers lose their lives in the ensuing stampede on this fateful day leading historians to name it Black Friday. I do not know if Mars has life, but all I can say is that, if Fry's was another planet, it would have the ability to not only sustain life, but also recycle it, thus producing a thriving environment for generations of nerds.
As you pull up to any of these stores, it becomes very clear from the onset that the owners mean strict business and nothing else. Accompanying the enormous Fry's sign on the store is an equally enormous sinusoidal curve, with the middle wave being of the highest amplitude, signifying the heightened pleasure customers receive when they walk in. This logo ensures that no glutton ever mistakes this for a fast food joint, and the lack of a cutesy furry animal, which pretty much monopolizes all logos, keeps off the hot, dumb, superficial women, even if they err and end up there somehow. The parking lot is equipped with special security, armed with an alarm from the store itself no doubt. If any car that is not a Toyota or Honda make gets as close as twenty feet to the building, the alarm radiates a supersonic wave that propels the infidel cars out of the parking lot. If you manage to sneak in in a friend's Toyota or Honda, there are more surprises awaiting you at the entrance. There is a retina and feeler scan test that allows only entry to customers who pass either of two tests. The first test allows only people with less than two centimeter square of retina showing entry. The second test searches the customer's upper lip for more than twenty centimeter square of bushy growth. A few steps ahead an employee asks simple and basic science questions like the definition of Einstein's relativity theory and other such world changing phenomenon. I hear a question bank of such questions is now available on Ebay.
Once you enter the store, begins an Alician journey through a maze of cornucopia of electronic gadgets, ipods and tripods, wires of all species mating with each other to produce more interracial breeds, and of course the famed piano in the middle of the maze played by the epitome of female beauty, robotic that is - Screw. Screw is surrounded by giant LCD and Plasma screens hooked up to the latest versions of man toys. Young nerds, started out early in this noble way of life by their parents can be seen peering onto these giant screen through glasses whose power dominate their ages and holding wannabe mini guitars and 'dancing' with intense aerobic fervor that would shame even the khatiya used by Govinda and Karishma in their famous song. If you listen very closely, you can hear proud parents gloating about how many kills their wards have amassed on the latest mindless violence games. The kid's sections of Fry's can boast of a lot of cute things on display, like the robotic Barbies and energy saving light sabers. Around a few aisles, you might meet smiling young mustached Indian men. Do not fall for their charming smiles. No, they are not Agents, but worse - they are Ambay folks, and before you know it, they will trap you in their inclusive love and pyramidal money making schemes with long winded talks which start innocuously about things like homesickness and end up with you handing them blank checks, like a gay spider that terminates its victims by first seducing it and then devouring it.
Fry's has as stringent a hiring policy as Microsoft, except that they do not compromise unlike Microsoft. All the candidates are chosen from the MENSA pool - the rejected lot from the superhero schools, presidents of chess clubs in Ivy League colleges, and of course, the members of the 4.0 club. Inside sources claim that your chances of landing a job there increases exponentially if you are armed with a unibrow and poor communication skills and lack any kind of knowledge other than in the technical field. If you meet all of the above criteria and still manage to turn out hot, you are instantly rejected. The working environment is as productive as that of Dilbert's with the same dress code. The tie has to be tight enough to make you squeak and your shirt has to be tucked in either at the back or in the front, not in both places.
The best time to visit Fry's is during Thanksgiving. It is full of vibrant, colorful, sleep deprived 'people', literally fighting over handicrafts made by little hands in China, India or some other Asian country that has to deal with the ethics of child labor. Last year, Wired Magazine reported that the Engineer brothers - Shahrukh and Sagar, found each other there after being separated in the same exact spot twenty four years earlier. Incidentally, both of them had tattoos of capacitors inscribed on their left arms. Amit and Rekha (names changed) met here five years ago. Amit says he fell madly in love when he saw Rekha running past valleys of discounted DVD's to grab the last 12-feet S-Video cable in the store. Three years back, Nirupa Roy (name changed) went into labor while waiting in line to checkout her purchased goods, and the line took so long to move that she delivered by the time she got to a cashier. Ms. Roy also holds the distinction of having given birth in the parking lot in a shopping cart during a different Thanksgiving. While this wonderland has given life, it has also taken some. Every year, about 25% of shoppers lose their lives in the ensuing stampede on this fateful day leading historians to name it Black Friday. I do not know if Mars has life, but all I can say is that, if Fry's was another planet, it would have the ability to not only sustain life, but also recycle it, thus producing a thriving environment for generations of nerds.
Friday, November 23, 2007
ThanksGIVING?
I don't know why but I get the most philosophical when I am working out. *Flexes calf muscles. Maybe my gym should market themselves that way - 'Think while you Stink' and have that muscled ancestor of John Abraham - The Great Thinker be the brand ambassador (the thinking got lost genetically somewhere I guess). Let me stop before I continue any longer on these tangential roads. The reason may have something to do with the fact that the mind is not really used when you are running for your life as if some product of a canine breeding experiment gone sour, is after you.
The television was playing the local news showing people who had nothing better to do on Thanksgiving randomly giving out food to homeless people. Let me stray a bit here and stress how much cooler homeless people in San Francisco are, compared to the rest of the country. I have met men (ever wonder why most homeless people are male? I bet it has something to do with patriarchal society. OK feminists, don't kill me; I love you all) who held up signs so proudly that they could have read 'World's Greatest Dad' or 'Arnie for President' (the Cali Guv, not me), but then this is not a post about paternal love, or politics (don't ask me what this is about - I wont be able to answer). The signs said 'Why lie? I need the money for beer'. I guess they were all hippies during all the Summers of Love.
So anyway, this led to severe introspection. What was I doing for others this Thanksgiving? Well, I could say I was working for my boss, but then my boss isn't homeless, and I was really doing it so that she didn't have to interview new candidates soon for my job. What else? Let's see. I was working out, but that too wasn't to render the stock of my gym bullish. Was I really better than those scores of people who cheat sleep every Thanksgiving to buy themselves expensive little electronic sidekicks that tell them when their coffee is getting cold or find them adult entertainment stores? Maybe I am getting soft with age and maybe one day my heart will become cookie dough like that generous old pink wrinkly woman's heart who left all her money to her dog, well, comparatively speaking at least, but when I saw those hot, kind otherwise homemaking women (this should sway the feminists) hugging those poor homeless souls and lighting up their faces along with their joints, something stirred inside me, or maybe it was just the heart working out on the cardio machines.
Granted they don't have Thanksgiving in India, but what did Satyajit Ray ever do for the homeless of India? Maybe he did a lot financially, and the fact that most of you, and I don't know about it just glorifies anonymous charity. Or maybe his Pather Panchali which ran for 34 weeks in The Big Apple (according to his Speaking of Films {Bishoy Chalachitra}, which I am reading at the moment) did generate enough sympathy in the Rich White Man (aastey leddiss {ack. JAP}, and Woman), henceforth known as RWM/W for the rest of the post, to generate a lot of charity for our nation, which of course pisses the f!@# out of a few overtly nationalist friends of mine. They feel that Ray's only contribution to the world has been to tear apart the shawl covering the nudity of India's poverty. Of course, they haven't watched his Calcutta trilogy - Jana Aranya, Pratidwandi, Seemabadha (my favorite of all his films that I have seen, in that order) or the children's double delight - GGBB and Hirok Rajar Deshe. Or maybe it is the RWM/W that chooses to glorify exclusively these poverty showcasing works of the greatest artisan ever born.
PS: If you have managed to labor through to the end of this post, you will realize that there are too many things going on in parallel in my (not so humble, by this admission at least) mind. I only have the manufacturers to blame for this, for not manufacturing any siblings. PJ alert! Maybe I will perform a Norton/Thevenin analysis to simplify things. If you got that, please go shoot yourself (which should really be very simple if you live in this country with its awesome gun control laws). Thank you.
The television was playing the local news showing people who had nothing better to do on Thanksgiving randomly giving out food to homeless people. Let me stray a bit here and stress how much cooler homeless people in San Francisco are, compared to the rest of the country. I have met men (ever wonder why most homeless people are male? I bet it has something to do with patriarchal society. OK feminists, don't kill me; I love you all) who held up signs so proudly that they could have read 'World's Greatest Dad' or 'Arnie for President' (the Cali Guv, not me), but then this is not a post about paternal love, or politics (don't ask me what this is about - I wont be able to answer). The signs said 'Why lie? I need the money for beer'. I guess they were all hippies during all the Summers of Love.
So anyway, this led to severe introspection. What was I doing for others this Thanksgiving? Well, I could say I was working for my boss, but then my boss isn't homeless, and I was really doing it so that she didn't have to interview new candidates soon for my job. What else? Let's see. I was working out, but that too wasn't to render the stock of my gym bullish. Was I really better than those scores of people who cheat sleep every Thanksgiving to buy themselves expensive little electronic sidekicks that tell them when their coffee is getting cold or find them adult entertainment stores? Maybe I am getting soft with age and maybe one day my heart will become cookie dough like that generous old pink wrinkly woman's heart who left all her money to her dog, well, comparatively speaking at least, but when I saw those hot, kind otherwise homemaking women (this should sway the feminists) hugging those poor homeless souls and lighting up their faces along with their joints, something stirred inside me, or maybe it was just the heart working out on the cardio machines.
Granted they don't have Thanksgiving in India, but what did Satyajit Ray ever do for the homeless of India? Maybe he did a lot financially, and the fact that most of you, and I don't know about it just glorifies anonymous charity. Or maybe his Pather Panchali which ran for 34 weeks in The Big Apple (according to his Speaking of Films {Bishoy Chalachitra}, which I am reading at the moment) did generate enough sympathy in the Rich White Man (aastey leddiss {ack. JAP}, and Woman), henceforth known as RWM/W for the rest of the post, to generate a lot of charity for our nation, which of course pisses the f!@# out of a few overtly nationalist friends of mine. They feel that Ray's only contribution to the world has been to tear apart the shawl covering the nudity of India's poverty. Of course, they haven't watched his Calcutta trilogy - Jana Aranya, Pratidwandi, Seemabadha (my favorite of all his films that I have seen, in that order) or the children's double delight - GGBB and Hirok Rajar Deshe. Or maybe it is the RWM/W that chooses to glorify exclusively these poverty showcasing works of the greatest artisan ever born.
PS: If you have managed to labor through to the end of this post, you will realize that there are too many things going on in parallel in my (not so humble, by this admission at least) mind. I only have the manufacturers to blame for this, for not manufacturing any siblings. PJ alert! Maybe I will perform a Norton/Thevenin analysis to simplify things. If you got that, please go shoot yourself (which should really be very simple if you live in this country with its awesome gun control laws). Thank you.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Arey Huzoor Wah Saaz Boliye
Was fortunate enough to see Ustad Zakir Hussain in concert today. The concert was marketed exactly that way, with Rahul Sharma's name appearing almost in fine print. However, as the concert started and with time, which flew by like an invisible being, it was quite obvious that Sharma was the literally the central attraction. Initially, I thought this had much to do with the tabla being a support instrument, rather than a lead one, which really shows my depth of Indian classical music, or rather the lack of it.
Rahul Sharma took some time to warm up, but once he had accomplished that, he seduced the audience with great finesse, taking them up to the crest of the musical wave, but not creating that explosion, alternating these with some troughs. In the first half of the recital, he played a purely classical raga whose name has been lost somewhere in those melodious pockets he created in my mind. In the second half, he played a lighter version of the raga Kirvani called Misra Kirvani. His performance reminded me of a deer out to fool the deadliest predators - elegant and enticing.
There is something about Zakir Hussain that will make you smile by just looking at him. He gives off that happy, warm feeling without stimulation that few people can boast of. At one point, you could see a smile of satisfaction light his already bright face up telling you "I love what I do, mate". He played the tabla like he was a lion - subdued for the most part, but roaring at times with some breath-taking hand action which has earned him the Grammy and world renown, almost as if to tease the younger maestro a little. Mind you, Rahul more than held his own during such moments. The humility of the great tabalchi was apparent as he sought to keep the limelight on Rahul at all times when the audience was applauding.
The jugalbandi between the two performers was akin to a long earned point in a tennis game between two equally good players - Zakir supporting Rahul first, then the other way around, sending each other volleys of musical notes, and each one equal to the challenge, and finally, what I had been waiting for - the fabulous fast rhythmic climax of a cathartic experience, in terms of treatment, which completely overshadowed the aalap in both pieces. During the alap, the mind, as trained by countless images of beautiful Kashmir against the backdrop of the sound of its santoor, did exactly that, but once the jugalbandi was in full swing, I felt like I was on a train somewhere warmer, looking out through the three horizontal bars of a non-AC berth into the passing greenery. I know it sounds clichéd but nothing else in the world mattered then. They even improvised a little - a flourish here and there, trapping the overall naive audience on more than one occasion by pausing, to be greeted by applause. The audience, which comprised of a lot of ABCD's (which speaks volumes of Zakir's international appeal and efforts at making the tabla a 'cool' percussion instrument), tried to unsuccessfully persuade the performers to do an encore a la rock concerts, thus again exhibiting their lack of knowledge of Indian classical recitals.
I was not too impressed with the theater logistics. My legs did not fit in the cramped space. And, it wasn't just my ogre ones that had a problem. Shorter friends were cramped for space too. Luckily there was no one to my left and I watched the entire concert sitting at an angle of 45 degrees. The lighting was very random. You would expect cooler colors initially when the performers were warming up and warmer ones once the jugalbandi got hot, but there was no such logic, and it seemed the lighting changed merely when the light guy was bored with his Solitaire game. Hot chocolate was over before I got to the cafe. Granted this is Bay Area, but it does get cold at night here in November, you know, and I have a cold, and didn't wear a jacket to show off my kurti and had to park three to four blocks away. Despite the bitching in the last paragraph, the concert was worth every penny I paid for my $25 balcony seat.
Rahul Sharma took some time to warm up, but once he had accomplished that, he seduced the audience with great finesse, taking them up to the crest of the musical wave, but not creating that explosion, alternating these with some troughs. In the first half of the recital, he played a purely classical raga whose name has been lost somewhere in those melodious pockets he created in my mind. In the second half, he played a lighter version of the raga Kirvani called Misra Kirvani. His performance reminded me of a deer out to fool the deadliest predators - elegant and enticing.
There is something about Zakir Hussain that will make you smile by just looking at him. He gives off that happy, warm feeling without stimulation that few people can boast of. At one point, you could see a smile of satisfaction light his already bright face up telling you "I love what I do, mate". He played the tabla like he was a lion - subdued for the most part, but roaring at times with some breath-taking hand action which has earned him the Grammy and world renown, almost as if to tease the younger maestro a little. Mind you, Rahul more than held his own during such moments. The humility of the great tabalchi was apparent as he sought to keep the limelight on Rahul at all times when the audience was applauding.
The jugalbandi between the two performers was akin to a long earned point in a tennis game between two equally good players - Zakir supporting Rahul first, then the other way around, sending each other volleys of musical notes, and each one equal to the challenge, and finally, what I had been waiting for - the fabulous fast rhythmic climax of a cathartic experience, in terms of treatment, which completely overshadowed the aalap in both pieces. During the alap, the mind, as trained by countless images of beautiful Kashmir against the backdrop of the sound of its santoor, did exactly that, but once the jugalbandi was in full swing, I felt like I was on a train somewhere warmer, looking out through the three horizontal bars of a non-AC berth into the passing greenery. I know it sounds clichéd but nothing else in the world mattered then. They even improvised a little - a flourish here and there, trapping the overall naive audience on more than one occasion by pausing, to be greeted by applause. The audience, which comprised of a lot of ABCD's (which speaks volumes of Zakir's international appeal and efforts at making the tabla a 'cool' percussion instrument), tried to unsuccessfully persuade the performers to do an encore a la rock concerts, thus again exhibiting their lack of knowledge of Indian classical recitals.
I was not too impressed with the theater logistics. My legs did not fit in the cramped space. And, it wasn't just my ogre ones that had a problem. Shorter friends were cramped for space too. Luckily there was no one to my left and I watched the entire concert sitting at an angle of 45 degrees. The lighting was very random. You would expect cooler colors initially when the performers were warming up and warmer ones once the jugalbandi got hot, but there was no such logic, and it seemed the lighting changed merely when the light guy was bored with his Solitaire game. Hot chocolate was over before I got to the cafe. Granted this is Bay Area, but it does get cold at night here in November, you know, and I have a cold, and didn't wear a jacket to show off my kurti and had to park three to four blocks away. Despite the bitching in the last paragraph, the concert was worth every penny I paid for my $25 balcony seat.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Last Night
I starved myself to sleep last night
Just to feel the poor man’s plight.
I slept on the pavement last night
Just to see if I could brave frost bite.
I ran into a wall last night
Just to feel the hindrance of might
Like a disposed little kite
Forced to stop in mid-flight.
I cut myself up last night
Just to see how it feels to get into a fight.
I fell on my face last night
Just to give my loved ones a fright.
I fell into a well last night
A space completely closed and tight
Where nothing but darkness comes into sight.
Just to see the world with no light.
I had a chat with a leader last night
Just to see if he was really that bright.
I toyed with a dog last night
Just to see if its bark was bigger than its bite.
I experimented with a prism last night
Just to make sure all colors did combine into white.
I looked down from a roof last night
Just to look at the world from that height.
I did things last night
To see all that is not alright.
11/19/2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Doom Bhulaiyaa
When Priyadarshan claimed he would stop making comedies after Dhol, he was being dead serious. What emerged was Doom Bhulaiyaa - something new not only for this director more at home with slapstick comedy, but a novel movie making experience very alien to Bollywood. Industry insiders claim that Activision, the makers of the famous video game series Doom, considered by most gamers as the Godfather Trilogy of all First Person Shooter video games.
The movie combined this First Person camera angle with a non-violent Indian touch. The protagonists did not carry guns, but had to play the juvenile Indian game of Eye Spy with the monster of the script. An innovative cinematography technique known as jitterbugging, which involves making a sufficiently malnourished cameraman run behind the subjects through 'Ramuly' lit long narrow corridors carrying a movie camera as heavy as the most elusive rocket launcher in the Doom series on his narrow shoulders was used in this movie. I hear the patent is pending.
Akshay Kumar arrives quarterway through the movie to Spy on the monster but the weak script does not do justice to his otherwise excellent comic timing on a regular basis. There are occasional flashes in the deadpan producing a few laugh out loud bullying scenes. Akshay, like Priyadarshan had also promised to explore other aspects of his acting persona. He does exactly that as he expresses his love for small, ahem, marbles and takes a one on one trip with the owner of these while throwing little yellow flowers up in the air a la Rekha in Silsila with a peppy, yet incoherent with respect to the script song playing in the background and playing another juvenile Indian game - musical chairs with little boats.
Look out - spoiler alert! The makers of OSO may be patting themselves on the back after the much hullabalooed 31 star studded item number, but Priyadarshan did another cinematic first as he got a huge (yeah OK, much leaner now) comeback star's self-designed ornament to do an audio guest appearance for his film. In order to publicize her latest film Aaja Nachle, in which she plays the ghungroo of a dancer facing mid-life crisis with irregular bouts of patriotism, Madhuri Dixit's payal plays the role of the monster with great jhanak (indigenous tautology anyone?) and impeccable Bangla pronunciation. Rimi Sen is proud of the latter achievement as she coached the ghungroo after Priyadarshan was impressed with her Dhoom performances, much like Salman Khan took the young unmuscular Hrithik Roshan under his wing before the making of Kaho Na Pyar Hai. Sen muses tangentially on the 'Pay It Forward' quality of the act, and hopes that the ghungroo will perform the favor for another struggling Bollywood actor or piece of inventory in the future after reaching cult status following Aaja Nachle.
Shiney Ahuja looks positively royal, as his character is meant to be, but gets too carried away with the whole Angry Young Handsome Royal image. He was screaming with almost the same regularity as the baby in the hall. I don't really dig horror films. Efforts to scare me end up amusing me, that is efforts involving supernatural beings. However, if the efforts involve deranged varieties of the human psyche, my laughter disappears, because that gives the entire story more of a realistic feel. As Tina knows, the fear quotient of my mind was scratched very early in life during a late night Doordarshan showing of Satyajit Ray's Teen Kanya, so much so that even today, a woman delirious with laughter without any apparent reason sends a chill down my spine. The feeling is exponentially aggravated if she is also unnaturally hot. Looks like Tina's been consulting for Priyadarshan.
Priyadarshan raises the question of belief in supernatural powers effectively, but falters when he attempts to answer that very question, chiefly because of a script inundated with holes that has way too many unnecessary characters (a Priyan signature I know) and thus is intense enough only in parts. However, I am feeling generous and the effort is transparent enough to be worth a slight nod.
The movie combined this First Person camera angle with a non-violent Indian touch. The protagonists did not carry guns, but had to play the juvenile Indian game of Eye Spy with the monster of the script. An innovative cinematography technique known as jitterbugging, which involves making a sufficiently malnourished cameraman run behind the subjects through 'Ramuly' lit long narrow corridors carrying a movie camera as heavy as the most elusive rocket launcher in the Doom series on his narrow shoulders was used in this movie. I hear the patent is pending.
Akshay Kumar arrives quarterway through the movie to Spy on the monster but the weak script does not do justice to his otherwise excellent comic timing on a regular basis. There are occasional flashes in the deadpan producing a few laugh out loud bullying scenes. Akshay, like Priyadarshan had also promised to explore other aspects of his acting persona. He does exactly that as he expresses his love for small, ahem, marbles and takes a one on one trip with the owner of these while throwing little yellow flowers up in the air a la Rekha in Silsila with a peppy, yet incoherent with respect to the script song playing in the background and playing another juvenile Indian game - musical chairs with little boats.
Look out - spoiler alert! The makers of OSO may be patting themselves on the back after the much hullabalooed 31 star studded item number, but Priyadarshan did another cinematic first as he got a huge (yeah OK, much leaner now) comeback star's self-designed ornament to do an audio guest appearance for his film. In order to publicize her latest film Aaja Nachle, in which she plays the ghungroo of a dancer facing mid-life crisis with irregular bouts of patriotism, Madhuri Dixit's payal plays the role of the monster with great jhanak (indigenous tautology anyone?) and impeccable Bangla pronunciation. Rimi Sen is proud of the latter achievement as she coached the ghungroo after Priyadarshan was impressed with her Dhoom performances, much like Salman Khan took the young unmuscular Hrithik Roshan under his wing before the making of Kaho Na Pyar Hai. Sen muses tangentially on the 'Pay It Forward' quality of the act, and hopes that the ghungroo will perform the favor for another struggling Bollywood actor or piece of inventory in the future after reaching cult status following Aaja Nachle.
Shiney Ahuja looks positively royal, as his character is meant to be, but gets too carried away with the whole Angry Young Handsome Royal image. He was screaming with almost the same regularity as the baby in the hall. I don't really dig horror films. Efforts to scare me end up amusing me, that is efforts involving supernatural beings. However, if the efforts involve deranged varieties of the human psyche, my laughter disappears, because that gives the entire story more of a realistic feel. As Tina knows, the fear quotient of my mind was scratched very early in life during a late night Doordarshan showing of Satyajit Ray's Teen Kanya, so much so that even today, a woman delirious with laughter without any apparent reason sends a chill down my spine. The feeling is exponentially aggravated if she is also unnaturally hot. Looks like Tina's been consulting for Priyadarshan.
Priyadarshan raises the question of belief in supernatural powers effectively, but falters when he attempts to answer that very question, chiefly because of a script inundated with holes that has way too many unnecessary characters (a Priyan signature I know) and thus is intense enough only in parts. However, I am feeling generous and the effort is transparent enough to be worth a slight nod.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Jimmy Boy
They call him Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in China; Aston Martin, BMW, Omega and major International fabric companies vie against rivals to ensnare him as their brand ambassador; he is licensed to kill. In short, he is every straight and bisexual man's dream idol. Since the readers of this blog also include unmanly men and women (both manly and unmanly I assume), let me go ahead and define what James Bond movies are all about - loads of action and tons of semi-clad singeing women, not always in a mutually exclusive setting.
I don't know if anyone else has got this very homophobic feeling from the most famous of the 00 agents at His Majesty's Secret Service. And, you know what they say about homophobes: they are homosexuals still living in the closet. At this point you are thinking ArSENik has gone mad (or more mad, depending on how well you know me), probably a poor victim of his own poison, but before you email me the directions to the Ranchi penitentiary, let me provide some proof of my claim.
We have had six Bonds so far, and all of them start behaving like a hungry Jerry around cheese, whenever they see any woman. I mean these are able bodied men with Baritones as silky as the fitted suits they wear. You would assume that they can bed any woman in the world, and yet, when anything with a sixth sense walks by, they loose all their five. This act can only be as genuine as Chandraswamy's hermit life.
Think about it. Who is James Bond in reality? He is a 30-40 something British widower. Need I say any more? All the women here will agree that British men are so boring that they make Gujarati men look like Elvis. And these are those rejects of the British society that have passed their 20 something Westlifish pop appeal and Hugh Grantish floppy hair. All they have left are their stiff upper lips, and M only knows what they use them for!
Most heros need sidekicks - Sherlock Holmes had Dr. Watson, Batman had Robin and Amitabh had Shashi Kapoor, but what about Bond? This conspicuous absence of a male bosom buddy is alarming, isn't it? He isn't Superman you know. In the mid-seventies, Felix Lighter of the CIA did team up with him often, but that was because of the hangover of the American producers from the Summer of Love.
A highlight of the Bond movies is the title song as the credits roll. While the British have their flaws (like bland food, thus calling the curry a British dish these days, and weak governments, to name a couple), they can certainly play music like the pyromaniac Nero. Have you ever wondered why great musicians like Elton John, or the members of the band Queen were never approached to write and perform a song for these movies? Yes, the creators of the series were worried about Bond's image and the supposed harm the sexual orientation of these musicians would cause it.
What is the most common pose you have seen any of the Bonds in? Slightly bent over, holding up a long cylindrical gun vertically, with an overtly long silencer attached to the head. I don't know about you, but if I was Bond, I would not go around that way if I was getting so much Love in Russia in the form of Thunderballs and Goldfingers from the Man with the Golden, ahem, Gun with a License to Drill, "Moon"raking for My Eyes Only, even if he was a Spy who Loved me. I rest my case.
I don't know if anyone else has got this very homophobic feeling from the most famous of the 00 agents at His Majesty's Secret Service. And, you know what they say about homophobes: they are homosexuals still living in the closet. At this point you are thinking ArSENik has gone mad (or more mad, depending on how well you know me), probably a poor victim of his own poison, but before you email me the directions to the Ranchi penitentiary, let me provide some proof of my claim.
We have had six Bonds so far, and all of them start behaving like a hungry Jerry around cheese, whenever they see any woman. I mean these are able bodied men with Baritones as silky as the fitted suits they wear. You would assume that they can bed any woman in the world, and yet, when anything with a sixth sense walks by, they loose all their five. This act can only be as genuine as Chandraswamy's hermit life.
Think about it. Who is James Bond in reality? He is a 30-40 something British widower. Need I say any more? All the women here will agree that British men are so boring that they make Gujarati men look like Elvis. And these are those rejects of the British society that have passed their 20 something Westlifish pop appeal and Hugh Grantish floppy hair. All they have left are their stiff upper lips, and M only knows what they use them for!
Most heros need sidekicks - Sherlock Holmes had Dr. Watson, Batman had Robin and Amitabh had Shashi Kapoor, but what about Bond? This conspicuous absence of a male bosom buddy is alarming, isn't it? He isn't Superman you know. In the mid-seventies, Felix Lighter of the CIA did team up with him often, but that was because of the hangover of the American producers from the Summer of Love.
A highlight of the Bond movies is the title song as the credits roll. While the British have their flaws (like bland food, thus calling the curry a British dish these days, and weak governments, to name a couple), they can certainly play music like the pyromaniac Nero. Have you ever wondered why great musicians like Elton John, or the members of the band Queen were never approached to write and perform a song for these movies? Yes, the creators of the series were worried about Bond's image and the supposed harm the sexual orientation of these musicians would cause it.
What is the most common pose you have seen any of the Bonds in? Slightly bent over, holding up a long cylindrical gun vertically, with an overtly long silencer attached to the head. I don't know about you, but if I was Bond, I would not go around that way if I was getting so much Love in Russia in the form of Thunderballs and Goldfingers from the Man with the Golden, ahem, Gun with a License to Drill, "Moon"raking for My Eyes Only, even if he was a Spy who Loved me. I rest my case.
Friday, November 09, 2007
D - The Festival
D is the Indian festival closest to my heart. No, it's not because of countless memories during my formative years, or any sentimental jing bang like that. Nor is it because the great Lord Ram kicked Ravan's ass since he could make out with ten apsaras at the same time dirty south style, aided by the mythological version of the cast of Animal Planet's reality shows. Nor is it because of the new jobs it creates in fire departments all over India every year. Then why is it, you wonder, that godless souls like mine revel in hypocrisy every year-end and wish fellow Indians 'Shubh Deepawali'.
My reason is simple. It's the godfather of all Indian festivals with enormous national appeal. The women love it and so do the men (the only other thing in this world enjoyed by both sexes). In fact, if D was actually a Don, I bet you women would bend over backwards to be made offers they couldn't refuse by D. New clothes, new presents, new coital promises or threats, hardly digestible delights and all the merriment aside, it is an excuse for people to meet and greet each other and show off their thunderous fake laughter and compare the starchiness of their kurtas and sarees.
A very disturbing recent trend in this regard, orchestrated mainly by the fag, I mean tag team of Rituporno Ghosh and Karan Johar has seen that very same maternal dupatta that has historically wiped our tears as we failed board exams or wet our beds, has found its way to cover the abs of many a fine young man today. Call me conservative, but coital promises had no role playing involved back in the day when the virility flouting Ravan hit the Colombo night scene.
Before you get all judgmental on D, let me point out where he scores over all his communalistic little rivals - the Pongals and the Durga Pujos and the Onams and the Bihus and the Guru Padwas and the Karwa Chauts and the Baisakhis. D brings all Indians together. Sure, there are those awkward moments when friends of other faiths wish you a happy D and you just smile silently like your wife's pregnancy has just been discovered. The Prof. after years of research at deca-annual House Pujas, came up with a response last year that stunned all 72 virgins when he handed an unsuspecting Captain the arti thali. Yes, there are the Eids (of various sizes) and the Christmases which are nothing but wannabe D's when we gulp down umpteen bowls of shirkhuma and disillusion the children about a fat old man with a reindeer fetish. These don't hold candles, or rather, phuljharis to D simply because we, the very people who celebrate D, have shown these peaceful influences, over years of loud fireworks (leftovers from the previous year's Chinese New Year's celebrations by the Left) that Might is indeed extreme Right.
My reason is simple. It's the godfather of all Indian festivals with enormous national appeal. The women love it and so do the men (the only other thing in this world enjoyed by both sexes). In fact, if D was actually a Don, I bet you women would bend over backwards to be made offers they couldn't refuse by D. New clothes, new presents, new coital promises or threats, hardly digestible delights and all the merriment aside, it is an excuse for people to meet and greet each other and show off their thunderous fake laughter and compare the starchiness of their kurtas and sarees.
A very disturbing recent trend in this regard, orchestrated mainly by the fag, I mean tag team of Rituporno Ghosh and Karan Johar has seen that very same maternal dupatta that has historically wiped our tears as we failed board exams or wet our beds, has found its way to cover the abs of many a fine young man today. Call me conservative, but coital promises had no role playing involved back in the day when the virility flouting Ravan hit the Colombo night scene.
Before you get all judgmental on D, let me point out where he scores over all his communalistic little rivals - the Pongals and the Durga Pujos and the Onams and the Bihus and the Guru Padwas and the Karwa Chauts and the Baisakhis. D brings all Indians together. Sure, there are those awkward moments when friends of other faiths wish you a happy D and you just smile silently like your wife's pregnancy has just been discovered. The Prof. after years of research at deca-annual House Pujas, came up with a response last year that stunned all 72 virgins when he handed an unsuspecting Captain the arti thali. Yes, there are the Eids (of various sizes) and the Christmases which are nothing but wannabe D's when we gulp down umpteen bowls of shirkhuma and disillusion the children about a fat old man with a reindeer fetish. These don't hold candles, or rather, phuljharis to D simply because we, the very people who celebrate D, have shown these peaceful influences, over years of loud fireworks (leftovers from the previous year's Chinese New Year's celebrations by the Left) that Might is indeed extreme Right.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Jab We Met Review
I should have listened to my heart, as the protagonists kept telling each at various parts of the screenplay, and left the theater in the interval. Then the experience would have been nice, for now, as it turns out, the aftertaste left by the second half, reeking too strongly of the age-old funda of the generic Bollywood romantic date movie, is too strong to even loose oneself in the nicely shot peppy song with phirang women in coolie attire, accompanying the end credits.
The first half of the movie is well made. The screenplay is fast paced and manages to hold your attention. Just when you think you have it figured out and start abusing it for doing a DDLJ in 2007, you realize that it is only meant to pay a little homage to the mother of all romantic Indian movies, and nothing more, as can be seen in the subtle differences. Jab We Met shatters the perception of Romeo being the roadside loafer and Juliet the shy little maiden and reverses the roles, which is the case with a sizable portion of real-life couples today.
Kareena is undoubtedly the central character, so much so that, the film could even have been called Geet (her character) and still worked, but 'Jab We Met' is meant to represent the love story of GenX, with their sprinkling of Angreji in the local dialect. Besides, I have a fetish for women with unisex names. She does an excellent job. One of the best scenes, in terms of acting, of the entire movie is when she goes all red as her character is supposed to be embarrassed. Shahid Kapur has a difficult supporting, yet probably meatier role to play. He is very believable and sincere - a huge improvement from his previous performances. Your heart goes out to him when he talks about the broken marriage of his parents since he went through the same thing in life. Their accents sounded authentic enough to me - the Punjabi accent with a little Mumbaiya in it and the Mumbaiya accent with bouts of affected Punjabi. I believed the casting was good till the lips and tongues of the protagonists decided to take the title of the film too seriously towards the end, granted a improvement from their MMS days. I am no Shiv Sainik and have no problems with people displaying their 'laav' for each other in public, but there are few things more disgusting in this world to the bystanding observer than two people making out, especially when you are forced to watch it on a 72mm screen. The actor playing the Anshuman character (who reminded me of the W - physically and otherwise) makes most of the second half tolerable with his matter of fact yet hilarious expressions, especially during moments of personal emotional duress.
The songs are all nice, except the first one, but all of them are unnecessary. I am sure they add to the commercial appeal of the film as the almost 100% seat occupancy for a Tuesday show indicates. A special mention must be made of the diligent Julie Andrews who did the English subtitles, not letting even the 'Sa Ga Re Sa Ga Re' in one of the songs go and turning them into 'Do Mi Re Do Mi Re'. I also learned today that 'Morcha Nikalo' in Punjabi means 'Rock the Party'. Another commercial aspect was the Punjabiness of the film. The color, the loudness and 'Laav' with a capital L of the larger than life Punjabis proved to be the right tonic for my semi-depressed mind - an extension of yesterday's state and helped by a shitty day at work. I was also glad Chhotu went along so that we could take the second half of the film apart with wise-crack first row (aka the rickshaw wallah row) comments. I found myself reminiscing about those Bhangra house parties from half a year back and suddenly had a momentary impulse to join the little ABCD kid with the bling bling 80's light emitting shoes in the front of the theater doing a homosexual rendition of the folk dance.
The most important thing for me was that I left the theater is my usual high spirits, without even consuming any. So, if you aren't depressed, I suggest striking up a deal with the theater wherein you can pay half the price of the ticket and leave by the interval.
PS: 'Goal' had gotten me senti last time I saw the trailer appealing to memories such as solidarity et al with the inspirational music. Didn't happen this time.
The first half of the movie is well made. The screenplay is fast paced and manages to hold your attention. Just when you think you have it figured out and start abusing it for doing a DDLJ in 2007, you realize that it is only meant to pay a little homage to the mother of all romantic Indian movies, and nothing more, as can be seen in the subtle differences. Jab We Met shatters the perception of Romeo being the roadside loafer and Juliet the shy little maiden and reverses the roles, which is the case with a sizable portion of real-life couples today.
Kareena is undoubtedly the central character, so much so that, the film could even have been called Geet (her character) and still worked, but 'Jab We Met' is meant to represent the love story of GenX, with their sprinkling of Angreji in the local dialect. Besides, I have a fetish for women with unisex names. She does an excellent job. One of the best scenes, in terms of acting, of the entire movie is when she goes all red as her character is supposed to be embarrassed. Shahid Kapur has a difficult supporting, yet probably meatier role to play. He is very believable and sincere - a huge improvement from his previous performances. Your heart goes out to him when he talks about the broken marriage of his parents since he went through the same thing in life. Their accents sounded authentic enough to me - the Punjabi accent with a little Mumbaiya in it and the Mumbaiya accent with bouts of affected Punjabi. I believed the casting was good till the lips and tongues of the protagonists decided to take the title of the film too seriously towards the end, granted a improvement from their MMS days. I am no Shiv Sainik and have no problems with people displaying their 'laav' for each other in public, but there are few things more disgusting in this world to the bystanding observer than two people making out, especially when you are forced to watch it on a 72mm screen. The actor playing the Anshuman character (who reminded me of the W - physically and otherwise) makes most of the second half tolerable with his matter of fact yet hilarious expressions, especially during moments of personal emotional duress.
The songs are all nice, except the first one, but all of them are unnecessary. I am sure they add to the commercial appeal of the film as the almost 100% seat occupancy for a Tuesday show indicates. A special mention must be made of the diligent Julie Andrews who did the English subtitles, not letting even the 'Sa Ga Re Sa Ga Re' in one of the songs go and turning them into 'Do Mi Re Do Mi Re'. I also learned today that 'Morcha Nikalo' in Punjabi means 'Rock the Party'. Another commercial aspect was the Punjabiness of the film. The color, the loudness and 'Laav' with a capital L of the larger than life Punjabis proved to be the right tonic for my semi-depressed mind - an extension of yesterday's state and helped by a shitty day at work. I was also glad Chhotu went along so that we could take the second half of the film apart with wise-crack first row (aka the rickshaw wallah row) comments. I found myself reminiscing about those Bhangra house parties from half a year back and suddenly had a momentary impulse to join the little ABCD kid with the bling bling 80's light emitting shoes in the front of the theater doing a homosexual rendition of the folk dance.
The most important thing for me was that I left the theater is my usual high spirits, without even consuming any. So, if you aren't depressed, I suggest striking up a deal with the theater wherein you can pay half the price of the ticket and leave by the interval.
PS: 'Goal' had gotten me senti last time I saw the trailer appealing to memories such as solidarity et al with the inspirational music. Didn't happen this time.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
A Tale of Two Depressions
I am sure you haven't been able to sleep at night for the past few days. I have received many an email, reeking of tears and other bodily fluids, imploring me to post something, anything. I received missed calls at ungodly hours waking me up from surreal dreams. Well, I exaggerated just a little bit there, just like any sincere blogger would, but you get the drift. Comcast (ISP and Cable provider) would like to extend their apologies to you. I came home one day from work to find the W sprawled on the floor looking at the modem like it was a Rubik's cube that was winking at him with its six little lights (LED's for geeks) in random order and the 42 displaying a depressing "There is no service" or something morose like that, which was more suited on a tombstone.
The W went into depression, thus exhibiting the 21st century man's extreme reliance on the World Wide Web, much like an addict's manic craving for a hit during withdrawal. The Internet has trapped the average non-suspecting citizen of society (bespectacled and otherwise) into its Web (Ever wonder why its called Web?). While I was feeling bad about not being able to blog and thus spread yuletide and joy among my readers, as I have come to do in the past month or so, the sadistic mind wanted to see the W writhe in mental agony as he fidgeted from the couch to balcony, and then back to the couch with periodic mutterings of 'Life is so depressing'.
This reminded me of those days back in Calcutta, almost two decades back when we were hit by regular bouts of what was commonly known as "load shedding", when I got breaks from mugging up Bangla chhora (children's poems) about bullock carts in lands that existed only in my reluctant imagination to carefully make my way up to our terrace with the help of a candle to cuddle up next to Amma (my paternal grandmother) and watch the often star studded sky. She loves the sky and actually wanted to christen me Akash (and still refers to me that way in moments of extreme affection) but my parents thought the name was too common and shot the idea down, but that's a whole different family controversy.
An improvement in the economic situation meant that inverters gave us the feeling of pseudo "load sheddings" since only certain lights were allowed to be on but no fans, before we officially broke into the upper middle class with a generator which took away the whole experience altogether. Along with the summer sweat of "load sheddings", also disappeared the romantic charm of the darkness and the clear sky. Net failures are the "load sheddings" of our generation, albeit with a less cooler name. Who knows, maybe I will recite the story of the W and the lost Net to my grandchildren some day when the Internet will be replaced by something stronger, faster and more secure, unless we manage to destroy the world before that.
Came across Anurag Kashyap's blog today (Jai Google!). I have become a fan of the man after watching No Smoking recently. Reading some of the blog postings did nothing to lessen the sentiment. The postings are as honest as his films and his writing, often written after a few pegs have been downed, thus often without apparent regard for grammar. He can come across as bitter and arrogant, but I think he is just angry and frustrated more than anything else, and the reasons he spells out affected me a bit the same way, surprising me.
He talks about the sorry state of independent films in India and being a cinema enthusiast, I could only reflect how empty life would be without delightful little indigenous films like Bheja Fry, Johnny Gaddar and of course No Smoking being made; about how this discourages paranoid people like me who go to bed with film making dreams in their eyes every night to abandon their current semi-luxuriant lives to give shape to their abstract ambitions; about going through life without ever coining the words job and satisfaction in the same breath. I was so absent-minded, I even honked at a pickup that did not turn when the light to go straight turned green.
To make matters worse, right now Born Into Brothels is showing me the half-baked dreams of the unwanted children of the sex workers of Calcutta on the 42. Its showing me hope in their eyes that has a very slim chance of being converted into reality, even with the filmmaker's magnanimous attempts on a relatively small sample space of such individuals. What are striking are the matter-of-factness of some of the children when talking about their dead or socially reclusive parents and some of their artistic talents. The W laughs at my theory that some of the kids are so talented because their fathers are gifted individuals of the high strata of society we reside in. Damn! why did Comcast have to correct their mistake?
PS: Thanks to everyone who had a hand (or should I say n fingers, n being the number of fingers you use to type, assuming no one has this saved in their favorites) to play in making the Number of Visits counter in my blog hitting four figures.
The W went into depression, thus exhibiting the 21st century man's extreme reliance on the World Wide Web, much like an addict's manic craving for a hit during withdrawal. The Internet has trapped the average non-suspecting citizen of society (bespectacled and otherwise) into its Web (Ever wonder why its called Web?). While I was feeling bad about not being able to blog and thus spread yuletide and joy among my readers, as I have come to do in the past month or so, the sadistic mind wanted to see the W writhe in mental agony as he fidgeted from the couch to balcony, and then back to the couch with periodic mutterings of 'Life is so depressing'.
This reminded me of those days back in Calcutta, almost two decades back when we were hit by regular bouts of what was commonly known as "load shedding", when I got breaks from mugging up Bangla chhora (children's poems) about bullock carts in lands that existed only in my reluctant imagination to carefully make my way up to our terrace with the help of a candle to cuddle up next to Amma (my paternal grandmother) and watch the often star studded sky. She loves the sky and actually wanted to christen me Akash (and still refers to me that way in moments of extreme affection) but my parents thought the name was too common and shot the idea down, but that's a whole different family controversy.
An improvement in the economic situation meant that inverters gave us the feeling of pseudo "load sheddings" since only certain lights were allowed to be on but no fans, before we officially broke into the upper middle class with a generator which took away the whole experience altogether. Along with the summer sweat of "load sheddings", also disappeared the romantic charm of the darkness and the clear sky. Net failures are the "load sheddings" of our generation, albeit with a less cooler name. Who knows, maybe I will recite the story of the W and the lost Net to my grandchildren some day when the Internet will be replaced by something stronger, faster and more secure, unless we manage to destroy the world before that.
Came across Anurag Kashyap's blog today (Jai Google!). I have become a fan of the man after watching No Smoking recently. Reading some of the blog postings did nothing to lessen the sentiment. The postings are as honest as his films and his writing, often written after a few pegs have been downed, thus often without apparent regard for grammar. He can come across as bitter and arrogant, but I think he is just angry and frustrated more than anything else, and the reasons he spells out affected me a bit the same way, surprising me.
He talks about the sorry state of independent films in India and being a cinema enthusiast, I could only reflect how empty life would be without delightful little indigenous films like Bheja Fry, Johnny Gaddar and of course No Smoking being made; about how this discourages paranoid people like me who go to bed with film making dreams in their eyes every night to abandon their current semi-luxuriant lives to give shape to their abstract ambitions; about going through life without ever coining the words job and satisfaction in the same breath. I was so absent-minded, I even honked at a pickup that did not turn when the light to go straight turned green.
To make matters worse, right now Born Into Brothels is showing me the half-baked dreams of the unwanted children of the sex workers of Calcutta on the 42. Its showing me hope in their eyes that has a very slim chance of being converted into reality, even with the filmmaker's magnanimous attempts on a relatively small sample space of such individuals. What are striking are the matter-of-factness of some of the children when talking about their dead or socially reclusive parents and some of their artistic talents. The W laughs at my theory that some of the kids are so talented because their fathers are gifted individuals of the high strata of society we reside in. Damn! why did Comcast have to correct their mistake?
PS: Thanks to everyone who had a hand (or should I say n fingers, n being the number of fingers you use to type, assuming no one has this saved in their favorites) to play in making the Number of Visits counter in my blog hitting four figures.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Shaken Not Stirred
Off late, California has been in the news for all the wrong reasons - first the crazy forest fires in SoCal (as people from there like to call it, making it sound like a capsule you would take for indigestion or some such ailment), then the hurricane again down south, and now finally the mini-quakes that have caused sympathetic vibrations here in the Bay Area. While I don't particularly care about the first two incidents (mainly because I am a localist), the third matters to me since it affects me directly.
The religious among us would ascribe it to the wrath of God, the superstitious would ascribe it to too much sun, and subsequently, sunscreen, but I smell a conspiracy here. Those of you who have seen the Simpsons' movie that was released recently will remember that the President of the country was my near-namesake Arnie. Arnie, having not much to do at work, saw it too and quite liked the idea of him doing the most laid back government job in the country. My theory is that Arnie has a secret pact with the cosmos. His relationship with her goes back a long way to the 70's when he was crowned Mr. Universe. In fact, it is believed in some political circles that he is the illegitimate child of her and the omnipresent and popular Mr. Steroids.
Please note that he has not made any announcements of his candidacy to run for the Office with the other good ol' white Republican boys. I wonder why, oh yeah, that's right, because he is not one of them! He is playing The Protector of all Californians right now, and thus by extension of all Americans since California represents quintessential American anyway - bad traffic, great taxes and a large number of illegal Mexicans, and will swoop in to the Presidential Race right before Judgment Day in the wake of lack of strong (not just physically) Republican candidates.
The people of California are reacting to the quavers in different ways. Stressed out middle-aged Asian software engineers combating the combined forces of the waning of close-range vision and mid-life crisis feel it is good stress relief and provide reasons to laugh (as a colleague told me today). Illegal immigrants from south of the border who have hit puberty are using fear as an excuse to put their unwanted, yet hard-working genes to good use by passing them on. When the author of this post used his two semesters of college Spanish and spoke to the average such specimen on the street, what filtered through the translation was an allusion to the proven theory that man, when threatened with extinction only thinks of continuing his race. It is a corollary to the Survival of the Fittest Theory. I, not being a middle-aged Asian software engineer or a horny illegal immigrant, am definitely shaken, but not stirred, and no, not from the quakes, but from my near-namesake's chess skills. After all, isn't life just an extension of the addictive board game?
The religious among us would ascribe it to the wrath of God, the superstitious would ascribe it to too much sun, and subsequently, sunscreen, but I smell a conspiracy here. Those of you who have seen the Simpsons' movie that was released recently will remember that the President of the country was my near-namesake Arnie. Arnie, having not much to do at work, saw it too and quite liked the idea of him doing the most laid back government job in the country. My theory is that Arnie has a secret pact with the cosmos. His relationship with her goes back a long way to the 70's when he was crowned Mr. Universe. In fact, it is believed in some political circles that he is the illegitimate child of her and the omnipresent and popular Mr. Steroids.
Please note that he has not made any announcements of his candidacy to run for the Office with the other good ol' white Republican boys. I wonder why, oh yeah, that's right, because he is not one of them! He is playing The Protector of all Californians right now, and thus by extension of all Americans since California represents quintessential American anyway - bad traffic, great taxes and a large number of illegal Mexicans, and will swoop in to the Presidential Race right before Judgment Day in the wake of lack of strong (not just physically) Republican candidates.
The people of California are reacting to the quavers in different ways. Stressed out middle-aged Asian software engineers combating the combined forces of the waning of close-range vision and mid-life crisis feel it is good stress relief and provide reasons to laugh (as a colleague told me today). Illegal immigrants from south of the border who have hit puberty are using fear as an excuse to put their unwanted, yet hard-working genes to good use by passing them on. When the author of this post used his two semesters of college Spanish and spoke to the average such specimen on the street, what filtered through the translation was an allusion to the proven theory that man, when threatened with extinction only thinks of continuing his race. It is a corollary to the Survival of the Fittest Theory. I, not being a middle-aged Asian software engineer or a horny illegal immigrant, am definitely shaken, but not stirred, and no, not from the quakes, but from my near-namesake's chess skills. After all, isn't life just an extension of the addictive board game?
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
No Smoking
Just got back from the theater after watching it. It is a fantastic film. Indian cinema has finally grown up. I am so glad films like these are being made in India. Definitely not everyone's cup of tea though, which explains the horrible reviews. Recently read somewhere Karan Johar feels that Anuraag Kashyap needs psychiatric help. As they say, there is a fine line between genius and madness, and not knowing Kashyap personally, I do not know if he is on both sides of the line or not. This surrealistic Alician journey through the Wonderland of one's psyche is punctuated with indigenous humor and bouts of lousy acting by John Abraham, but Ayesha Takia in her bit role is good and Paresh Rawal is just about right. The editing is abrupt, but that may very well have been intentional to capture the true state of the protagonist's mind. The many significant yet little things are subtly showcased to make this a true film connoisseur's delight.
I remember reading an interview of a very frustrated Kashyap some time back. He was saying things like Yash Raj Films are a bully and talking of the double standards in Indian cinema, after Black Friday was given an R rating, releasing after months of squabbling with the Censor Board and Dhoom II with all its semi-nudity spared the label. He concluded the interview saying that he might give up making movies if this continues. I just hope he doesn't give up so easily and deny the 3% or so of the Indian audience that are fans of his work such creative ecstasy.
PS: To add to the whole surrealistic feel, a mini-earthquake shook all the seats in the theater I was watching it in at a critical juncture in the movie and the other eight people in the theater were momentarily shaken, literally.
PPS: The promos of Ashutosh Gowariker's Jodha-Akbar look promising enough to be Indian Cinema's first modern war movie with believable yet exhilarating action sequences. Ash, with a mellow look, portraying the Rajput princess looked less glamorous (effectively) than the hip handlebar mustached Hrithik playing the Shehnshah.
I remember reading an interview of a very frustrated Kashyap some time back. He was saying things like Yash Raj Films are a bully and talking of the double standards in Indian cinema, after Black Friday was given an R rating, releasing after months of squabbling with the Censor Board and Dhoom II with all its semi-nudity spared the label. He concluded the interview saying that he might give up making movies if this continues. I just hope he doesn't give up so easily and deny the 3% or so of the Indian audience that are fans of his work such creative ecstasy.
PS: To add to the whole surrealistic feel, a mini-earthquake shook all the seats in the theater I was watching it in at a critical juncture in the movie and the other eight people in the theater were momentarily shaken, literally.
PPS: The promos of Ashutosh Gowariker's Jodha-Akbar look promising enough to be Indian Cinema's first modern war movie with believable yet exhilarating action sequences. Ash, with a mellow look, portraying the Rajput princess looked less glamorous (effectively) than the hip handlebar mustached Hrithik playing the Shehnshah.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Fall
The source of contents for this post is a set of notes I had written a while back, when in a different zone, for a mocumentary that I never got around to making.
What does the word 'fall' conjure up in your minds, dear readers? The Fall of Man perhaps, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the beautiful fall season with colorful leaves raining down on a couple looking for a little intimacy. But every time the last image has popped up in my mind, the man has been bald, and that is what 'fall' has eventually come to mean for me - the fall of hair.
Dr. Rohit Bal, the foremost of the has-been fashion designers of India, feels that the rise in MPB (male pattern baldness) has its shaky roots in the evolution theory. Monkeys had hair all over their body and man has evolved from monkeys. Most men (yeah OK leave Anil Kapoor out of this) have lesser hair than monkeys. So, logic says that bald men are more evolved than normal men. This is illustrated in their great survival instincts as portrayed by rumors they spread among womenfolk such as causes of baldness being a byproduct of too much testosterone.
A recent survey of randomly chosen individuals yielded interesting results on the outlook of men and women on MPB. While 98% of the men believe that as long as hair lasts till marriage (the other 2% are still trying to pry open the closet), a whopping 98.1% of the women believe that men should have hair till they are old enough to use Viagra (the other 1.9% are blind). Another important fact to result from this survey was the high-handed attitude of the men with receding hairlines with regard to the already bald men. Balaji (name changed), who has a receding hairline believes that bald men are at the bottom of the dating chain and hopes to loose his virginity before he looses all his hair, thanks to the meteoric rise off late of the cult website shaadi.com.
Dr. Bal feels that there is hope for optimists like Balaji. Here are some very practical tips he told us. The number one method used by balding men to hide their less foliated areas is called 'real estate management'. This involves placing the remaining strands of hair in such an arrangement so as to give the scalp as uniform a look as that of the grass on the other side for these individuals. For those optimists who do not wish to wake an hour earlier for work and manage their real estate every day, Dr. Bal prescribes alarming changes in facial hair with regularity to distract female gazes from the scalp. Limited research that is available on the female psyche suggests that women are intrigued by facial hair since 75% of women worldwide lack this luxuriant growth that men boast of. Other techniques include endorsing Baba Ramdev's method of sitting at lunch tables and rubbing fingernails in a group for no less than 20 minutes every weekday. Another technique is in the R&D pipeline at the moment. There is already a drug called Rogaine in the market which is supposed to replenish hair growth. What the scientists at Johnson's Johnson are working on are the blueprints of the design of a cannon for this product, which may be used by retired social workers in public places indiscriminately showering passersby with the drug. Market research only confirms the great demand for the drug all over the world.
Hope is the only universal truth that bonds men with receding hairlines and bald men together. So thank God for hope. At the end of the day, nothing except hope lasts forever, least of all, hair. To quote a George Bernard Shaw with a receding hairline, "He who has never hoped can never despair".
What does the word 'fall' conjure up in your minds, dear readers? The Fall of Man perhaps, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the beautiful fall season with colorful leaves raining down on a couple looking for a little intimacy. But every time the last image has popped up in my mind, the man has been bald, and that is what 'fall' has eventually come to mean for me - the fall of hair.
Dr. Rohit Bal, the foremost of the has-been fashion designers of India, feels that the rise in MPB (male pattern baldness) has its shaky roots in the evolution theory. Monkeys had hair all over their body and man has evolved from monkeys. Most men (yeah OK leave Anil Kapoor out of this) have lesser hair than monkeys. So, logic says that bald men are more evolved than normal men. This is illustrated in their great survival instincts as portrayed by rumors they spread among womenfolk such as causes of baldness being a byproduct of too much testosterone.
A recent survey of randomly chosen individuals yielded interesting results on the outlook of men and women on MPB. While 98% of the men believe that as long as hair lasts till marriage (the other 2% are still trying to pry open the closet), a whopping 98.1% of the women believe that men should have hair till they are old enough to use Viagra (the other 1.9% are blind). Another important fact to result from this survey was the high-handed attitude of the men with receding hairlines with regard to the already bald men. Balaji (name changed), who has a receding hairline believes that bald men are at the bottom of the dating chain and hopes to loose his virginity before he looses all his hair, thanks to the meteoric rise off late of the cult website shaadi.com.
Dr. Bal feels that there is hope for optimists like Balaji. Here are some very practical tips he told us. The number one method used by balding men to hide their less foliated areas is called 'real estate management'. This involves placing the remaining strands of hair in such an arrangement so as to give the scalp as uniform a look as that of the grass on the other side for these individuals. For those optimists who do not wish to wake an hour earlier for work and manage their real estate every day, Dr. Bal prescribes alarming changes in facial hair with regularity to distract female gazes from the scalp. Limited research that is available on the female psyche suggests that women are intrigued by facial hair since 75% of women worldwide lack this luxuriant growth that men boast of. Other techniques include endorsing Baba Ramdev's method of sitting at lunch tables and rubbing fingernails in a group for no less than 20 minutes every weekday. Another technique is in the R&D pipeline at the moment. There is already a drug called Rogaine in the market which is supposed to replenish hair growth. What the scientists at Johnson's Johnson are working on are the blueprints of the design of a cannon for this product, which may be used by retired social workers in public places indiscriminately showering passersby with the drug. Market research only confirms the great demand for the drug all over the world.
Hope is the only universal truth that bonds men with receding hairlines and bald men together. So thank God for hope. At the end of the day, nothing except hope lasts forever, least of all, hair. To quote a George Bernard Shaw with a receding hairline, "He who has never hoped can never despair".
Monday, October 29, 2007
Late
With each passing day, I find myself wishing more and more that I had been born thirty years earlier. Look at me! I hate clubbing and my definition of entertainment is watching movies in a theater, so much so that, my single ambition in life is to wait for every Friday to see which movies the critics have ripped apart with their sharp as bed-edge comments. In the India of the late 60's and 70's, these were the only forms of entertainment. Would have loved to don those bell-bottoms and watched Sholay in the theater.
Now, I will never perform a sit in in a college campus with fellow students, or attend Woodstock. Never pen any political poetry with any meaningful significance. Also, it would have been fun to be a college buddy of my father. From the stories I hear, I think we would have hit it off quite well and terrorized a lot of lesser suspecting individuals. Will never be able to watch all the Beatles live in concert, or imitate the Angry Young Smuggler Bachchan walk without being ridiculed.
Classic rock is pretty much the only music I listen to, which of course has been stopped producing, replaced by its stuttering cousin - Hip Hop. No one writes lyrics like Dylan and Lennon anymore with today's "poets" just advising you to drop it like it's hot and calling out to promiscuous girls. I would have missed the Internet though, and definitely blogging! But then, how can you miss something that you haven't experienced, or anyone for that matter? I rest my case, dear readers, Time handed us a ticket into this theme park called Life a little too late.
Now, I will never perform a sit in in a college campus with fellow students, or attend Woodstock. Never pen any political poetry with any meaningful significance. Also, it would have been fun to be a college buddy of my father. From the stories I hear, I think we would have hit it off quite well and terrorized a lot of lesser suspecting individuals. Will never be able to watch all the Beatles live in concert, or imitate the Angry Young Smuggler Bachchan walk without being ridiculed.
Classic rock is pretty much the only music I listen to, which of course has been stopped producing, replaced by its stuttering cousin - Hip Hop. No one writes lyrics like Dylan and Lennon anymore with today's "poets" just advising you to drop it like it's hot and calling out to promiscuous girls. I would have missed the Internet though, and definitely blogging! But then, how can you miss something that you haven't experienced, or anyone for that matter? I rest my case, dear readers, Time handed us a ticket into this theme park called Life a little too late.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
A Portrait of Greatness
Bengal has been forever known for its arts, and music is probably the most blue blooded of them all. It is no surprise then that over the centuries, the state has produced some of the greatest musicians India has seen, starting from Tansen to the father-son duo of the Burmans (yeah OK they were from Tripura I know, but they were actually Bangali) to Kishore Kumar and finally to one of the greatest musical personas (and I am not just talking about the size here) the world has seen. OK fine, Tansen wasn't actually Bangali, but can you blame me if you decide to show the poor chap some love and bestow upon him a last name, constructed by splitting his bisyllabic name and freeing him from Cher's curse?
Bruce Springsteen may well have plagiarized the nickname of The Boss, but IMO there can only be one Boss in the entire music industry all across the world from the Mongolian monks nursing vows of lifelong silence to sissy little men in English choirs - the one and only (even though he may appear as two or three) Bapi Da!. Growing up in the blind lanes of Calcutta, Lahiri learned to wear dark glasses early in life. Contrary to popular belief, the blind lane theory is the actual reason for the progressive fashion statement, to be fortuitously popularized by Black rappers in America in the mid-80's. No, he does not wear them to keep the bling off his jewelery from affecting his foresighted vision.
When he took the Myers-Briggs test at an age when most of his friends were idolizing Gavaskar and Vishwanath, little did he know that the analysis report that classified him as a SNIP (Sensing iNtuition Introversion Perceiving) type personality was to be proven prophetically true as he sensed the niche market for Disco music in iNdia. The introversion was more forced than voluntary since his ideas were way ahead of their times. He perceived the appeal for the rise of Disco music in the late 70's in the US and just cut (snip) and pasted what was being produced there on to the Indian musical horizon.
In exclusive interviews to the author of this post, Lahiri has confessed that the music in the Indian Film Industry in his formative years lacked enthusiasm and the aura that he ultimately provided it. However, the humility of the man came through as he grudgingly expressed respect for monotonous yet popular singers of the era such as KL Sehgal and Mukesh. He has gone on record to say that the work of these artists was too melodious for the bad boy image the protagonist of Indian cinema was evolving into in the 80's. The Naxalbadi movement in Bengal, which included in its folds the most intellectual of Bengal's sons and daughter's sparked the fire in Lahiri's huge belly. This violent sentiment is reflected in the super duper title song of "Gunmaster G9". However, with the death of Marxism, Lahiri evolved as a person and as a composer, churning out such hits as "I am a Disco Dancer" stressing on individualism and leadership. Like a shepherd leading a set of disillusioned lambs, he led the revolution of moving over to the other side of Marxism by calling out to the average Jimmy with "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aja Aja Aja", relying on brilliant repetitive techniques. His work with the sex workers of Bombay is documented in his ode to them - "Rambha Ho Ho Ho" and is rumored to have catapulted him into running for next year's Nobel Peace Prize (I mean c'mon Gore just cares about the environment, not people and he gets a Nobel!)
No piece on Lahiri will ever be complete without a mention of that other thespian of the alternative movie watching experience - Mithun Chakraborty. Industry insiders, who do not wish to be named confirm that Lahiri was losing his way in his career after a promising start with lackluster songs such as the Kishore sung "Chalte Chalte" before Chakraborty arrived on the scene with "Disco Dancer", giving Lahiri's career as effective support as the wonderbra. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Nature never sends a great man into the planet, without confiding the secret to another soul." And how fortunate we are that soul turned out to be the angel, known to the world as Mithun Chakraborty.
Bruce Springsteen may well have plagiarized the nickname of The Boss, but IMO there can only be one Boss in the entire music industry all across the world from the Mongolian monks nursing vows of lifelong silence to sissy little men in English choirs - the one and only (even though he may appear as two or three) Bapi Da!
When he took the Myers-Briggs test at an age when most of his friends were idolizing Gavaskar and Vishwanath, little did he know that the analysis report that classified him as a SNIP (Sensing iNtuition Introversion Perceiving) type personality was to be proven prophetically true as he sensed the niche market for Disco music in iNdia. The introversion was more forced than voluntary since his ideas were way ahead of their times. He perceived the appeal for the rise of Disco music in the late 70's in the US and just cut (snip) and pasted what was being produced there on to the Indian musical horizon.
In exclusive interviews to the author of this post, Lahiri has confessed that the music in the Indian Film Industry in his formative years lacked enthusiasm and the aura that he ultimately provided it. However, the humility of the man came through as he grudgingly expressed respect for monotonous yet popular singers of the era such as KL Sehgal and Mukesh. He has gone on record to say that the work of these artists was too melodious for the bad boy image the protagonist of Indian cinema was evolving into in the 80's. The Naxalbadi movement in Bengal, which included in its folds the most intellectual of Bengal's sons and daughter's sparked the fire in Lahiri's huge belly. This violent sentiment is reflected in the super duper title song of "Gunmaster G9". However, with the death of Marxism, Lahiri evolved as a person and as a composer, churning out such hits as "I am a Disco Dancer" stressing on individualism and leadership. Like a shepherd leading a set of disillusioned lambs, he led the revolution of moving over to the other side of Marxism by calling out to the average Jimmy with "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aja Aja Aja", relying on brilliant repetitive techniques. His work with the sex workers of Bombay is documented in his ode to them - "Rambha Ho Ho Ho" and is rumored to have catapulted him into running for next year's Nobel Peace Prize (I mean c'mon Gore just cares about the environment, not people and he gets a Nobel!)
No piece on Lahiri will ever be complete without a mention of that other thespian of the alternative movie watching experience - Mithun Chakraborty. Industry insiders, who do not wish to be named confirm that Lahiri was losing his way in his career after a promising start with lackluster songs such as the Kishore sung "Chalte Chalte" before Chakraborty arrived on the scene with "Disco Dancer", giving Lahiri's career as effective support as the wonderbra. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Nature never sends a great man into the planet, without confiding the secret to another soul." And how fortunate we are that soul turned out to be the angel, known to the world as Mithun Chakraborty.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
400
I am obviously not talking about Sachin Tendulkar's record of most ODI's or guessing the title to the sequel of the cult film '300' where in a mood of gay merriment on having won the war, the soldiers interbreed and thus increase their population by 33.33%. This is about someone bigger than Tendulkar or the six-packed cast of 300 can ever aspire to be - me. I am talking about fulfilling my recent aspiration of burning 400 calories in 30 minutes on the Cardio machines in our gym.
Ever since I was a kid, I had a platonic fascination for long legs in straight leg blue jeans, preferably ending in dirty boots. The very first influence was undoubtedly the countless Spaghetti Westerns I was exposed to very early in my life, thanks to my father, who is a huge fan of one of the most stylish men ever to occupy screen space - Clint Eastwood. So, I became a fan too as I watched him walk his famous walk and shoot dirty Mexicans (looks like Dubya is a fan too) from under his shawl while squinting and moving his cigar around in his mouth. Then there was the Marlboro man with his horse and cowboy hat, riding through the dusty heartland of America. And finally, much closer to home, was our very own Jaggu Dada with his red Ramboesque cloth and ragged beard swooning women and me in "Hero".
Papa gave me a good head start in my quest by donating me long legs through his genes. Now it was up to me to tone them perfectly for those skin-tight, circulation hindering jeans. Mind you, I have no ambition to pump iron and grow muscles like our Bollywood heroes of today. That is child's play as has been proved by every Tom, Dick and Harry Bollywood male (and some female) aspirant, but maintaining the right amount of fat in your leg is the stuff of legends. One has to restrict the body to a complex state of balance and restraint rather than go overboard and have a six pack.
That momentous evening is still as fresh as dew that causes outfielders to misfield, in my mind. It was quite late by gym going standards. I had been forced to work late, but little did I know that I would channel my anger thus in achieving such great heights in working out history. The silence in the gym was punctuated by the whirring of the rotating table fan while a group of fat (oh, I mean big, with all the political correctness in the world today) people fought it out on the TV overhead to be crowed the 'The Biggest Loser'. With determination that would have made Rocky Balboa proud, I told myself that I had to show these sore (from working out) losers tonight who was indeed the biggest loser. And then I started.
Concentration was never a quality I could boast of, but I wish all those Swamijis who prescribed a few hundred different concoctions of different indigenous spices and a million expensive stones for me in order to induce that quality and still failed, could have seen me go on that poor machine that night. Sweat was trying to impede my vision, but it was as if Superman had himself flown down and lent me his X-ray vision for that half an hour, so that the figures on the machine never left my sight.
In the last five minutes, with victory peeking out at me like a new bride at her groom on the wedding night before this corrupt culture of dating before arranged marriages was in place, I could not stop. For my father, for all those Clint Eastwood westerns, for the Marlboro man and most importantly, for all the losers on the TV climbing some 400 feet building, I had to go on. And go on I did with sounds that would have made Jenna Jameson blush. As the thirty minutes were finally gone, and I fell on the floor with exhaustion and ecstasy, I was looking around for some admiring female glances by PYT's in pretty small things, but alas, there was not a soul there except for the bushy-mustached janitor, playing the Chariots of Fire tune on his harmonica.
I would like to take this opportunity to extend a leaf of gratitude to Jenna and all her fellow sisters who share the same profession as her. It was their creative verbal utterances in countless pieces of their work, that gave me ideas as I was beginning to see the white light of fatigue, and helped me maintain my stamina. It is not like I am receiving a plaque for my momentous achievement like that little man did, nor am I receiving pats on the back(side) from sensuous slim feme-fatale fingers, but like all great men, I am satisfied in my modesty. Who would have thought that I, from my chubby beginnings, would one day see 400 in all its low-fat 2% beauty. Where do I go from here? To quote the Little Ba!@#$%, 400 is just a number (in weak unmanly voice).
Ever since I was a kid, I had a platonic fascination for long legs in straight leg blue jeans, preferably ending in dirty boots. The very first influence was undoubtedly the countless Spaghetti Westerns I was exposed to very early in my life, thanks to my father, who is a huge fan of one of the most stylish men ever to occupy screen space - Clint Eastwood. So, I became a fan too as I watched him walk his famous walk and shoot dirty Mexicans (looks like Dubya is a fan too) from under his shawl while squinting and moving his cigar around in his mouth. Then there was the Marlboro man with his horse and cowboy hat, riding through the dusty heartland of America. And finally, much closer to home, was our very own Jaggu Dada with his red Ramboesque cloth and ragged beard swooning women and me in "Hero".
Papa gave me a good head start in my quest by donating me long legs through his genes. Now it was up to me to tone them perfectly for those skin-tight, circulation hindering jeans. Mind you, I have no ambition to pump iron and grow muscles like our Bollywood heroes of today. That is child's play as has been proved by every Tom, Dick and Harry Bollywood male (and some female) aspirant, but maintaining the right amount of fat in your leg is the stuff of legends. One has to restrict the body to a complex state of balance and restraint rather than go overboard and have a six pack.
That momentous evening is still as fresh as dew that causes outfielders to misfield, in my mind. It was quite late by gym going standards. I had been forced to work late, but little did I know that I would channel my anger thus in achieving such great heights in working out history. The silence in the gym was punctuated by the whirring of the rotating table fan while a group of fat (oh, I mean big, with all the political correctness in the world today) people fought it out on the TV overhead to be crowed the 'The Biggest Loser'. With determination that would have made Rocky Balboa proud, I told myself that I had to show these sore (from working out) losers tonight who was indeed the biggest loser. And then I started.
Concentration was never a quality I could boast of, but I wish all those Swamijis who prescribed a few hundred different concoctions of different indigenous spices and a million expensive stones for me in order to induce that quality and still failed, could have seen me go on that poor machine that night. Sweat was trying to impede my vision, but it was as if Superman had himself flown down and lent me his X-ray vision for that half an hour, so that the figures on the machine never left my sight.
In the last five minutes, with victory peeking out at me like a new bride at her groom on the wedding night before this corrupt culture of dating before arranged marriages was in place, I could not stop. For my father, for all those Clint Eastwood westerns, for the Marlboro man and most importantly, for all the losers on the TV climbing some 400 feet building, I had to go on. And go on I did with sounds that would have made Jenna Jameson blush. As the thirty minutes were finally gone, and I fell on the floor with exhaustion and ecstasy, I was looking around for some admiring female glances by PYT's in pretty small things, but alas, there was not a soul there except for the bushy-mustached janitor, playing the Chariots of Fire tune on his harmonica.
I would like to take this opportunity to extend a leaf of gratitude to Jenna and all her fellow sisters who share the same profession as her. It was their creative verbal utterances in countless pieces of their work, that gave me ideas as I was beginning to see the white light of fatigue, and helped me maintain my stamina. It is not like I am receiving a plaque for my momentous achievement like that little man did, nor am I receiving pats on the back(side) from sensuous slim feme-fatale fingers, but like all great men, I am satisfied in my modesty. Who would have thought that I, from my chubby beginnings, would one day see 400 in all its low-fat 2% beauty. Where do I go from here? To quote the Little Ba!@#$%, 400 is just a number (in weak unmanly voice).
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Pot Pourri
The day started really really early, but very very well, thanks to Bhajan, Gambhir and Uthappa. Times of India managed to crack me up after the game with a headline that read 'India crush Aussies to maintain supremacy' or something to that effect. Yuvraj made 2 lakhs for three dives and two heaves. Rohit Sharma still didn't get to bat in front of his home crowd and the God Joginder Sharma, actually offered his fanatical followers (like yours truly) a little smile and provided teammates with insightful analysis of the game, mainly through hand gestures. Uthappa kissed the Aussies goodbye on live TV with a wink and smile, before Gambhir played an innings reminiscent of the Ganguly of the 20th century - the flamboyant timing and the consistent effective negating of spin. What's with Bangalore folks and their infatuation for Ponting's cheeks (remember the 'gentle'man at a recent charity auction) Shahrukh Khan was there, obviously neutral, since he didn't want to upset his Aussie fans who may have shed a tear or two while watching Kal Ho Na Ho. Oh wait, that was set in New York City, but who cares, all white people look the same anyway.
I had been converted from an Atheist to a Mithunist a while back by GreatBong, but today I actually got a darshan of Prabhuji in all his glory in the cinematic classic 'Gunda'. Thanks to a great rishi I met yesterday, who showed me this path of righteousness of the Lord. Needless to say I went into a fit and maybe, just for two hours, but I think I felt God inside my head (and don't believe people who say it's like an orgasm. It's a much more satisfying experience, I can assure you). He wrote white trousers and gyrated his hips like Basanti's Mausi's chakki. This extreme religious experience was preceded by some kirtan by that other great (aesthetically speaking, Sith) Lord - BapiDa. The W and I decided to convert some of our neighbors and provide some clarity into their mundane religious lives as we rolled the windows down of the Blue Lady to the beats of such classics as 'Gunmaster G9', 'Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aja Aja Aja', 'Rambha Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho', 'Everybody Dance with Mama' and of course our anthem - the evergreen 'I am a Disco Dancer'. Most notable conversions were those of a couple (the guy needed support from his better half as he almost slipped down the stairs they were climbing) and a young kid and his mom (we like to catch them young). We did receive a little infidelity from the mom's gaze, but who can deny the power of the kirtan?
Watched Wes Anderson's 'Darjeeling Limited' in the evening. My only background information on the guy was that he had made 'The Royal Tenenbaums', which I thought was one of those weird, but good comedies. Needless to say, I was surprised to hear Satyajit Ray's music playing in the background pretty soon after the start. I was also surprised by Owen Wilson's receding blond hairline, but that's a totally whole different story. And it wasn't just one tune, there were many from the melodious collection of his movies, and the ode to the great man was confirmed in the last scene when Anderson placed a portrait of Ray in a train called the 'Bengal Legacy' amid signs of the Royal Bengal Tiger (no, not Dada, the actual Tiger). This was a huge compliment since the Darjeeling Limited (their previous train) had a portrait of the Mahatma (who I think was a dude, in any case, he is probably India's most recognizable face internationally). Also, reminiscent were numerable train scenes from 'Sonar Kella'. This movie is unique since it is a road movie, and yet it is not. Anderson presents the very concept he actually pokes fun at. It is almost as if he is trying to prove the old age adage of 'It's the journey that matters and not the destination' very literally in a very unorthodox way. Irrfan Khan is wasted in the movie though, apart from a random Hindi abuse.
PS: People buy new clothes for Pujo, but coincidence sprung a fast one on me as I found myself buying some brand new underwear in Wal-mart today. Anyway, Shubho Bijoya dear readers.
I had been converted from an Atheist to a Mithunist a while back by GreatBong, but today I actually got a darshan of Prabhuji in all his glory in the cinematic classic 'Gunda'. Thanks to a great rishi I met yesterday, who showed me this path of righteousness of the Lord. Needless to say I went into a fit and maybe, just for two hours, but I think I felt God inside my head (and don't believe people who say it's like an orgasm. It's a much more satisfying experience, I can assure you). He wrote white trousers and gyrated his hips like Basanti's Mausi's chakki. This extreme religious experience was preceded by some kirtan by that other great (aesthetically speaking, Sith) Lord - BapiDa. The W and I decided to convert some of our neighbors and provide some clarity into their mundane religious lives as we rolled the windows down of the Blue Lady to the beats of such classics as 'Gunmaster G9', 'Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aja Aja Aja', 'Rambha Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho', 'Everybody Dance with Mama' and of course our anthem - the evergreen 'I am a Disco Dancer'. Most notable conversions were those of a couple (the guy needed support from his better half as he almost slipped down the stairs they were climbing) and a young kid and his mom (we like to catch them young). We did receive a little infidelity from the mom's gaze, but who can deny the power of the kirtan?
Watched Wes Anderson's 'Darjeeling Limited' in the evening. My only background information on the guy was that he had made 'The Royal Tenenbaums', which I thought was one of those weird, but good comedies. Needless to say, I was surprised to hear Satyajit Ray's music playing in the background pretty soon after the start. I was also surprised by Owen Wilson's receding blond hairline, but that's a totally whole different story. And it wasn't just one tune, there were many from the melodious collection of his movies, and the ode to the great man was confirmed in the last scene when Anderson placed a portrait of Ray in a train called the 'Bengal Legacy' amid signs of the Royal Bengal Tiger (no, not Dada, the actual Tiger). This was a huge compliment since the Darjeeling Limited (their previous train) had a portrait of the Mahatma (who I think was a dude, in any case, he is probably India's most recognizable face internationally). Also, reminiscent were numerable train scenes from 'Sonar Kella'. This movie is unique since it is a road movie, and yet it is not. Anderson presents the very concept he actually pokes fun at. It is almost as if he is trying to prove the old age adage of 'It's the journey that matters and not the destination' very literally in a very unorthodox way. Irrfan Khan is wasted in the movie though, apart from a random Hindi abuse.
PS: People buy new clothes for Pujo, but coincidence sprung a fast one on me as I found myself buying some brand new underwear in Wal-mart today. Anyway, Shubho Bijoya dear readers.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Pujo Blues
As I was driving back home from work today, I could hear drumming in the background of the Blue Lady's engine's usual humming. It took a moment to sink in that these were dhaak (traditional Pujo drum) sounds. Maybe it was this post by GreatBong that I had read earlier in the day that shoved my mind into the bright corridors of nostalgia. I pulled up to the makeshift pandal and relived my secret fantasy of referring to a stranger as 'Dada' with the excuse of asking about the Pujo in my probashi Bangla.
I rushed back after a quick shower, going for the semi-Bangla look of Kurti and Jeans. I felt I should hold back my total Bangla look of Pajama-Punjabi for Sunday since the average working class Bangalee may not have been ready for it, just like Zoolander's Magnum. The idols weren't bad with the colorful watery background and fake flame. I was admiring them silently when an obviously non-Bengali gentleman surprised me from behind with 'Do you know why they have dressed up that object like a woman's figure in a white saree with a red border?' I did not. So, told him the first creative believable thing that I could think of and moved away to admire the little stalls trying to emote the hullabaloo of Calcutta pandals.
The food was a huge let down. I had come expecting delights such as telebhaja, beguni and piyanji. What I found was a Sardarji serving what has come to define Indian food in this country, and I imagine all others except the motherland - your generic naan and some vegetarian sabzi. Where was the Phees Phry? Crestfallen, I was searching for solace in the faces of the Devis roaming around me. However, only a couple of them matched my definition of a Devi (which included wearing a flamboyant saree this evening), which I grant is very stringent off late since the Sharmila of Amar Prem and Chupke Chupke has been bothering me in my dreams.
Jhaal Muri seemed the closest thing to the culture since the guy selling CD's and DVD's did not have my request of Kishore's Rabindrasangeet (there were a lot of Anandamelas and other Bengali magazines, but I am not into them. I heard a gentleman joking with the seller that he would only pay the quoted price in Calcutta). The snack was very authentic and stung my nose like those countless jhal muris eaten on train journeys back home. Just as the sleepy voice on the jukebox was beginning to annoy me, an announcement was made that the evening would conclude with dhaak playing. Just like earlier, the quality was very good, but what surprised me was the main dhaak player. He was an ABCD (well not apparently C) teenager. The performance was so good that I found myself aspiring to do a dhunuchi dance to the beat. So, the evening was about to end on a good note, when I realized I was the only one there standing alone in a corner and not participating in adda with the average short, round, dark, bespectacled member of the crowd with shiny hair and that my only interaction with them had been to click photographs of couples with alien cameras while making sure the idols were "visible in the background", before disappearing into the night.
I rushed back after a quick shower, going for the semi-Bangla look of Kurti and Jeans. I felt I should hold back my total Bangla look of Pajama-Punjabi for Sunday since the average working class Bangalee may not have been ready for it, just like Zoolander's Magnum. The idols weren't bad with the colorful watery background and fake flame. I was admiring them silently when an obviously non-Bengali gentleman surprised me from behind with 'Do you know why they have dressed up that object like a woman's figure in a white saree with a red border?' I did not. So, told him the first creative believable thing that I could think of and moved away to admire the little stalls trying to emote the hullabaloo of Calcutta pandals.
The food was a huge let down. I had come expecting delights such as telebhaja, beguni and piyanji. What I found was a Sardarji serving what has come to define Indian food in this country, and I imagine all others except the motherland - your generic naan and some vegetarian sabzi. Where was the Phees Phry? Crestfallen, I was searching for solace in the faces of the Devis roaming around me. However, only a couple of them matched my definition of a Devi (which included wearing a flamboyant saree this evening), which I grant is very stringent off late since the Sharmila of Amar Prem and Chupke Chupke has been bothering me in my dreams.
Jhaal Muri seemed the closest thing to the culture since the guy selling CD's and DVD's did not have my request of Kishore's Rabindrasangeet (there were a lot of Anandamelas and other Bengali magazines, but I am not into them. I heard a gentleman joking with the seller that he would only pay the quoted price in Calcutta). The snack was very authentic and stung my nose like those countless jhal muris eaten on train journeys back home. Just as the sleepy voice on the jukebox was beginning to annoy me, an announcement was made that the evening would conclude with dhaak playing. Just like earlier, the quality was very good, but what surprised me was the main dhaak player. He was an ABCD (well not apparently C) teenager. The performance was so good that I found myself aspiring to do a dhunuchi dance to the beat. So, the evening was about to end on a good note, when I realized I was the only one there standing alone in a corner and not participating in adda with the average short, round, dark, bespectacled member of the crowd with shiny hair and that my only interaction with them had been to click photographs of couples with alien cameras while making sure the idols were "visible in the background", before disappearing into the night.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Memorable Memories
Recently, I have had way too many conversations with close friends about college days. So, a little blib about those magical days seems appropriate. What's strange though, is at the time they didn't seem so magical, but then again, magic is only apparent when you admire something from a distance, and in this case, time. Unlike the sale season at Mor Furniture, those days will never come back. It's not like you can go back to college and relive the times because chances are not more than 5% of your core gang will do the same at the same time, and let's face it, the only thing that mattered in college life were the memories created with those unsocial beings (like yourself) you befriended in the first year.
Georgia Tech hardly gave us the time to realize that Atlanta was a city that included places besides the campus. So, whenever I found myself not starting on a project due within the timespan between the commencement of labor and childbirth, I made my way to the infamous Third Floor of Matheson Dorm, which was usually as dirty as any Third World Country, and yet I loved it as much as I love a certain Third World Country. In the last semester it was the posher quarters of the ULC and fights over the PSP WWF game had substituted for cricket in the corridors of Matheson and breaking the overhead lights, thus showing a collective elevated standard of living as a result of the coops, internships and various on-campus jobs. There are a million such memories crystallized in the corridors of my memory, and I don't feel like trivializing them by talking about them here.
Georgia Tech hardly gave us the time to realize that Atlanta was a city that included places besides the campus. So, whenever I found myself not starting on a project due within the timespan between the commencement of labor and childbirth, I made my way to the infamous Third Floor of Matheson Dorm, which was usually as dirty as any Third World Country, and yet I loved it as much as I love a certain Third World Country. In the last semester it was the posher quarters of the ULC and fights over the PSP WWF game had substituted for cricket in the corridors of Matheson and breaking the overhead lights, thus showing a collective elevated standard of living as a result of the coops, internships and various on-campus jobs. There are a million such memories crystallized in the corridors of my memory, and I don't feel like trivializing them by talking about them here.
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