Lost........

Sigh........ If I hadn't gotten hooked to Lost back in 04-05 and If I wasn't such a wikipedia addict, I wouldn't be feeling so strangely sad right now.....Sparto - this is all your fault!

Deep within.....

"When is this movie going to end???" thought I, and buried my head in mummy's lap, all set to fall asleep right there on the floor below the sofa where she was sitting.

I was watching (and getting extremely bored with) 'Loudspeaker', a Malayalam movie starring Mamooty with ma and pa. But no, both mum and dad were too engrossed in the proceedings to notice that I wasn't even pretending to be interested anymore. And then, very unexpectedly, I heard a line from a song papa used to sing all the time when Sparto and I were kids... "Nammude nenjilage anuraga karikkin vellam......". I sat up instantly, hoping for a song as wonderful as the promise held in that one slowly sung line ..and I wasn't disappointed. This was one of those moments that define "serendipity" for me. A song that I would play atleast 30 times that evening was the last thing I expected to come across.

Beautifully picturised in a way that is bound to touch the soul of anyone with roots in Kerala and including many of the elements that define Kerala for me - water, monsoons, summers, ponds, sands, the sea, mangoes, boats, lush greenery, pretty girls with long hair and kajal-lined eyes, old houses with sloping tiled roofs to combat the rains, ponds filled with green water, dark grey storm clouds, men dressed in white dhotis, joint families, kathakali performances and of course memories of childhood vacations :)

For me, the answer to 'where do you come from' is always going to be Bangalore, never Kerala. I love B'lore, it's my hometown. It is the place that has shaped me. Kerala, I tend to think of the place where my parents come from, where my roots are, though I don't really 'get' or identify with the culture, the politics, or the complicated social relationships. It annoys me a little when complete strangers ask intrusive questions or decide give their opinions on personal matters just because they live in the same area! I should probably cut this here, as I can write pages about my feelings (good and bad) about Kerala. But thats just the point - I can't 'not react to' Kerala. It's impossible to do so. Because the place is meshed to my soul. Why else would music videos with dark clouds against green waters tug so strongly at my heart?
'This land is my land' as Sparto says, though if anything, he's even more a Bangalorean than I am....

Kites :-/

There's something to be said in favour of internet movie streaming. If I had spent good money on watching Kites in a cinema, I would have kicked myself!! This movie could not have been more predictable if they had tried to make it so!
For example, one scene goes like this:

HR, BM and a sidekick have just gotten away(again) from the goons who are in hot pursuit. Time for a song and dance break for HR and BM, while sidekick goes off to get fake passports made.
Sidekick rushes to HR and BM's house (by which time the song gets over), stands outside a window and screams "I have your passports"
HR and BM grin stupidly at Sidekick.
Sidekick grins back even more stupidly at HR and BM.
Everybody continues grinning stupidly at each other through the glass for a minute without making a move. (you can actually feel the next part coming, the way they all grin at each other through the glass)
And then - bham (surprise!) - sidekick's brain's are splattered all over the window, the goons appear and HR and BM make a run for it. [I had easily 30 seconds to turn my head away - it was that obvious!]


And eventually it turns out that the passports are completely irrelevant to the plot(except maybe as an excuse to finish of sidekick/third wheel). 

The rest of the plot(!?) was just as senseless. HR in the initial scenes as a small time crook/dance instructor, looks and talks like Brad Pitt in Snatch, but the accent and look change very quickly without any explanation. KB plays a casino owner who without hesitation cuts off the ears(before killing) of someone caught cheating in his casino, but says "you have to know when to leave the table" when BM and HR, who are engaged to his children decide to elope with each other, after knocking his son out cold!

The movie is hyped and sold as a "love has no language barrier" romance, but it turns into a chase-n-run after the falling in love bit is quickly dispensed with by using a song, even before the first half hour of the movie is over. The rest of the movie is only made up of not very heart pounding chase sequences.

Maybe I'm just ranting because there was no happy ending for consolation either!
 

@HR: There's a very fine line between having a greek god like physique and looking like Marvel comics mutant. Please tread carefully :)

....Fire in the Sky

Two very different, very spectacular sunrises - just a couple of days apart this week!

How to train your Dragon

Loved it! H2TYD was (too?)short, sweet, funny, witty and sarcastic, poignant, moving, layered, beautiful, and so very visually stimulating! The flight scenes were spectacular! - specially when Toothless, Hiccup and Astrid soar through the clouds and the Aurora Borealis. I loved the hot air balloon/plane ride scene from The Mummy Returns and before that ages ago the flying carpet scene from the Disney movie Aladin. And this one was just as exhilarting!
S was just as engrossed as me for the full length of the movie, and that says a lot about H2TYD . This is the guy whom I've to nudge awake during Ice Age, Shrek and other such movies :)
The only tiny little complaint - I wish the dragons themselves had a little more IQ, rather than ending up as "pets" finally.

Going to watch it again, this time in French with subtitles, if I find one uploaded on the net :)

Someone: "But those ships never return..."
Someone else: "We are Vikings, it's an occupational hazard"

P.S. I watched the 2D version

The PNRs have landed!

Mr. and Mrs PNR are here! And since the moment they've landed I've been going overboard saying things like "Look Ma, I can cook, I can clean, I can organize,....... I can manage a house (petite apartment to be exact :)". To the extent that Mr.PNR who is normally my #1 fan, made a sharp "Ma's been doing this for 30years" comment, when he caught me giving mummy some cooking "tips" :)). The last 3 days have been simply awesome. It is soooo great to have them here with S and me. Pa btw celebrated his 65th b'day travelling more than 6000 miles over 2 continents and transiting through 4 countries. Ma though wasn't two happy about the 2 beers and couple of glasses of wine he indulged in along the way :) But they got to Lux safe and sound and happy :)

The crazy Luxembourg weather has been playing spoilsport though - grey and dreary doesn't begin the describe the unexpected cold spell we've been having. And after this morning's walk around the city centre, I get the feeling Pa and Ma would rather sit indoors and drink lots of hot tea than venture out in the cold again :((


@Sparto: Wish you were here - it's the only only thing keeping this reunion one notch below perfect.

The aftermath of Eyjafjallajoekull

Found this picture on FB today :))

A volcano who's name I can't even pronounce has turned Europe into Mordor since the last few days, but alteast one person sees the funny side of life :)

On a serious note: Ma&Pa are travelling to Lux in 3 weeks time. Here's hoping that the ash over Europe clears by then and they have a smooth journey here.

Parle-ing Francais!

It's now the third week of French classes for moi :) And it is easily the most fun I have had in a classroom. Sort of like being in a live version of that old British comedy series where a group of foreigners are learning English in the UK. This is like the French version :) The class composition is something like this - 2 Indian women (including me), 3-4 people from South America and Mexico, 1 Serb, 2 Russians, 4 Arabs, and a couple of eastern Europeans. There is no single common language that the class speaks as yet :) So Prof. Alex teaches the beginner's French class in French!! A very very animated French, to be precise. Like French+dumb charades. For example, "J'aime le chocolat" is accompanied by a 'yumyumyumyumyum' and a tummy rub! And as for the rest of us, each of us speak French with our own unique accents :) Poor Monsieur Alex! (He's quite a linguist though - we've come to realize he teaches English too and probably speaks a few other European languages as well ) But I've realized that this is quite an effective method of teaching. We've quickly developed an ear for the language and we have no choice but to use French to communicate within the class :)

For the love of books :)

Somewhere in her email today was this line - "Sigh! sometimes i wonder y i read those classics...its so hard to ignore the heroes of yore..". I smiled. Because I blame the books too, for many many things :) For things ranging all the way from incurable romanticism to hypochondria. For the rose tinted glasses and the real ones too :) For the love of happy endings and for the depths of misery when things end no-so-happily :(. For being a bit of a drama queen at times. For the total inability to take things at face value. And of course like she said for expecting men (S to be accurate) to be Rhett Butler, Roark, Darcy, and many others all rolled into one :))))

The speed of Truth

It is the instant reponse that forms in our minds. But in the time that the answer is articulated, it has already evolved to be more palatable, polished, or even disingenuous. 

Patriotism

"Jab yahan ki reth nahi tickthi, tho log kya tickhenge" (when even the grains of sand here don't have any cohesion, why would the people here stick together?) said the stranger to me a few months ago, kicking the desert sand in Dubai around with his feet.
The words came back to me suddenly while walking in the city centre this evening watching people go about their lives in the gentle snowfall, insulated against the cold and against each other as well. Make me an Indian everytime dear God!

The thinking man :)

A little ingenuity goes a long way :) The ancient Egyptians built the pyramids and S moved a large wardrobe the same way last night :). I'm impressed!

Now this wardrobe is made of wood, is 6 feet high and just as wide, and used to stand right next to our bedroom door in a very annoying manner. Apart from creating the visual illusion of a much smaller room, it prevented the door from opening fully. Not to mention the risk of walking right into it in the dark. I knew moving it wasn't going to be easy, but obstinate person that I am, I simply had to try. So I went to S about how it's a 'husband' job to move furniture at home and how I would do it on my own, with just a little help from him. I had all my 'bad vastu/feng shui' arguments ready, but S decided trying to move the wardrobe was easier than trying to talk me out of it, and agreed very quickly. 

So I emptied the wardrobe and threw the entire force of my 5'4" 54kg frame against it. Not too surprisingly, it didn't budge an inch. The furry rug it was standing on didn't help matters either. Then I decided wrecking either of our backs for this was not worth it and gave up. S figured that brute force wouldn't work, then tried tilting it forwards and back (!?) and said it could be done, that we just needed the right tools, and went off to look for the said tools :) He came back a few minutes later with the rolling pin, a round handled wooden cooking spoon and a couple of wooden rods from the towel rail in the bathroom. Clever, thought I, and had to smile :) He tilted the wardrobe and I squeezed the makeshift 'rails' underneath it. And within a few minutes the wardrobe was at the other end of the room, with barely any effort! Very very impressed with S right now :)

With a Big Fat Grin on my face :)

1:00 o'clock in the afternoon on very wet, grey and cold Monday. And I'm at home, heating up fish-biryani for lunch, that S made over the weekend. Have downloaded a movie to watch with the biryani, and have a book to finish curled up in bed afterwards. Do I miss working? I think not :)

P.S. Does the voice in my head make me feel guilty about it? sadly, yes :(

The ties that bind

Found it. Finally.
http://thedjinn.blogspot.com/

There is always someone

I've found that many a times life sends us exactly the people we need at the time - whether we're aware of it or not. Posting this now, because yesterday there was another such incident for me.

I recently decided to sign up for French lessons at a popular institute here. Yesterday was the first day of registrations for the new semester. I turned up at the institute at 8:40, anticipating some rush for the registration, maybe a 100-150 people, since I knew the low tuition fee made the course quite atractive. I walked in to find a queue that had already wound itself over two floors and two corridors before breaking up into a mob at the entrance of the hall where the registrations were happening. The institute had called in their biggest and most intimidating looking staff to hold back the crowd at the door. I raced to find the end of the line before I lost another dozen places. Maybe this is going to take 2-3 hours I underestimated as I joined the queue :)

Directly behind me I heard a couple speaking in English and occasionally in a language that sounded like Hindi, but was not quite Hindi. "Indians! or at least of Indian origin", I thought. In Luxembourg finding yourself right next to other Indians is quite something. The man left for work, and the woman and I started a conversation about the queue. Was the best thing that happened to me yesterday!

The wait in the queue turned into an unanticipated 8-hour marathon, the first 4 hours in the queue patiently crawling along to reach the doors, and the next 4 as part of the mob at the doors, where it was definitely each man for himself. Things heated up when the staff shut the doors for some reason and the space we were in got quite claustrophobic. By then most of the people there had been on their feet for about 5-6 hours, were hungry and thirsty and tempers were really starting to flare. Someone started yelling at the staff for not organizing things better, and a section of the crowd started chanting "Let us in" :) Every time the door opened even a crack, we would be packed in tighter by the crowd pushing in from behind. Some policemen came in, for crowd control in case things got ugly, I suppose. And someone with a very professional looking camera came up to the front and started clicking away. Maybe we'll all be in the local news in a day or two :)

If it hadn't been for my new found Parsi friend, the registration would have a horrendous experience. I get panicky when pressed in by crowds and probably would have given up and gone home hungry and tired as many people did after a while. If her husband hadn't come in at lunch time and stood in the queue in our places for a while, I wouldn't have had the respite of sitting down for a while and getting some food and drink. Incredibly when we came back, we found that he had even managed to move us up several places in the door mob. Quite a feat, considering the shoving and elbowing that was going on. And most of all if it hadn't been for our animated conversation about Luxembourg, the crazy rush for registrations, life, the universe and everything, I would have felt every minute of the 8 hours of standing in the queue.

And yes, we finally got ourselves registered at 5:30!

P.S. The award for the most cool headed people in the crowd goes to the group of Chinese students next to us who kept their smiles throughout the whole thing, didn't shove a single person, and even managed to teach some Chinese to the Cambodian girl with them :)

Suryodhayam!!

Some daybreak shots taken from my balcony, while experimenting with exposure settings (thanks to kiwi for telling me about this), and the neighbour's cat who seems to like the view too :)

Changes...

"Your hair is really quite curly!” said S.
I was in the middle of cooking dinner, and hadn’t had the time to brush out my damp hair. Since we've been married for almost 4 years now, the keen observation made me send a mock evil glare his way. Maybe it’s just a casual remark, I think, and reply (with some pride), "Yes, I get it from my Dad - my hair curls just like his".
"It's hard to tell, coz your dad is quite bald!" laughed S.
This time my evil glare and indignation were quite genuine "My dad, bald!!!, how can you say that!! He has curly hair!”. S (looking quite perplexed now) tells me that it is true that my dad is quite bald and asks if I hadn’t noticed yet. So I think about it and reluctantly agree and then redraw the picture in my head of my dad. Sigh! Sometimes the passage of time sneaks up on us quite stealthily... And I'm left wondering if I need to redraw the picture of me I have in my head as well....

"Burning an effigy"

From an article (about the latest hungama created by Deve Gowda and his vocabulary) that I just read on the NDTV news website:

"But BJP workers did what party workers the country over seem to do at the drop of a hat - burnt an effigy or two. That very phrase 'burning an effigy' is certainly used more in the Indian media than anywhere else in the world"

How true :)) and how very funny somehow :)) Still laughing :))

See http://www.ndtv.com/news/blogs/freedom_of_choice/politically_incorrect.php

Ravan in a new light and Shobana's Maya :)

Thank God for Shobana!! Was what I was thinking after watching Maya Ravan last night (on DVD :( - wish I could have watched the live performance ) Not because she is such a brilliant actress and so good at Bharatanatyam, but because she brings so much creativity and artistic freedom to a very traditional dance form. Though so much of the dance is based on Bharatanatyam, there are so many deviations from the classical form, that the DVD cover says 'musical dance ballet' :) But the combination of unconventional elements works - the English narration, the voice-over dialogues, the bollywood style dream sequences, the humour, the attempts at cuteness, the costumes, and everything else in it! Really enjoyed it!! Like my childhood dance teacher used to say - there is nothing that a dancer can't depict through Bharatanatyam.

Loved the costumes, loved the music (specially the 'Shree ramchandra kripalu bhajman' in Rama's introduction scene)

Most memorable parts for me - Rama's introduction scene, the scene where queen Kaikeyi is possessed by Ravan, Sita's wedding, and the forest scene with Soorpanaka. And also the debate on the concept of Dharma between Ravan and Mandodari.

The only issue I had with Maya Ravan was that it begins brilliantly but loses its momentum somewhere in the second half and the end though good doesn't live up to the promise of the opening scenes. And for me this was true for the dance, the music and the narration :( I've watched the DVD a couple more times since, and each time until the 'Sita's abduction' scene though. Not that the second half wasn't good, just that the first part is so good, that it leaves you expecting even better things afterwards...

But Shobana and Nasseruddin Shah together as the face and voice of Ravan are the highlights of the performance. Never has Ravan been so charismatic, charming, good looking and so very witty in any TV serial or comic book :)

A new start ....

Here's hoping that 2010 will be a wonderful year for everyone! That Ammamma will recover from her hip surgery. That those of us looking for love will find it this year. Those of us starting out on new ventures will find success. That P, S, papa, ma and I will get to spend some holidays together. That the wedding bells that we are waiting for will chime this year. And good luck and good health will be with all of us!