The Marauder's Map

2007-01-03T17:46:00.000+05:30

In the entire history of Hindi film music, has there ever been a song more annoying, more inane, more completely intolerable than Crazy Kiya Re? And must people insist on playing this paean to bad taste at varying distances from my window at all times, so that I can hear it wafting in in all its tuneless glory without a goddamn break? From all my windows, to be precise, so there's no removing oneself to another room. And to be honest, how much removing can one do in a two-bedroom flat? (and in the present rather large state where hauling myself out of bed is something I ponder over for hours, wondering if it's worth it.)

Getting back to Crazy Kiya Re. Apart from the obvious silliness of the lyrics, there's the belligerent, aggressive tone of it that sends me into paroxysms of irritation. Then there's the fact that each time I hear it, Aishwarya Rai in body-hugging leather rises like a vision before the eyes and is that something one can take with equanimity at the best of times?

As for the lyrics, I feel I must blame Gulzar for starting this trend of mixing English and Hindi words in Hindi film songs -- a review of Kajare Re with the sublime line 'aankhen bhi kamal karti hain, personal se sawal karti hain' becomes necessary at this point. The man's done it earlier too; songs like Do diwane shahar mein from Gharonda have the occasional 'of course' popping up here and there.

But does that mean lesser mortals (Sameer, I tell you!) must try it too? Most annoying.

2006-12-01T22:15:00.000+05:30

Oh well, look who's back. For those of you who have been consigning me to several hells reserved for bloggers who deny eager readers their usual quota of high-class entertainment, I have excuses galore. For one, I've been rather busy being pregnant.

Well yes. I am. I'm also sort of on my way to the finishing line, and apart from the fact that most of the time I've either been too tired or too sick to blog, this thing has weighed on my mind. As in, I've wondered whether I should announce it here. See, I never meant this blog to be the public confessional sort of thing (much as I respect and enjoy blogs of that nature) but at the same time it did feel a little weird to be going through something so drastic and then go on on your blog as if the jolly Marauder is still her carefree old self. Which dilemma has often stopped me from writing more often in the last few months, which means that the several posts that remained half-formulated in my mind are now (much to your chagrin, I know) lost in nothingness.

For instance, I meant to write about the reverse pressure I often felt NOT to have kids, because most people I know are either indifferent to the whole thing or feel unhesitatingly negative about it. It's completely their decision, but to everybody who deplores aunties who come up to you at weddings and ask 'when are you having a baby', I have this to say -- people my age have often recoiled in horror when I've said that I would like to have babies, and what's more, sometime soon.

I still look for excuses mentally, possibly to share with the recoiling-in-horror friends, about why this WAS the right time to do it and feel ashamed immediately. Though I have to say in all honesty, not too many people have really asked me. They've raised eyebrows, yes, and looked cockily and said 'you?!' and said stuff like 'you still sound so kiddish' but no one has been graceless enough to say 'my god, you behenji, you' (which, I admit here to exorcise it once and for all, has been the secret fear throughout). Mostly, people have been concerned and sweet and even very New Age -- one friend said I was doing something 'sexy and creative', which I admit had never crossed my mind, but like, wow.

Which is not to say I still don't have doubts -- about whether it's too early (I'm 28, I could easily have waited another couple of years at least), whether I am ready to give up the arriving home drunk at one in the night kind of lifestyle, whether I ought to give up smoking completely now that I've done without it for close on eight months etc etc.

Meanwhile, life's gone on much as usual. So ok, I look different and am sick of wearing the same five set of clothes that still fit me, I can't remember the last time I ate something and didn't feel nauseated immediately after, I can't turn from side to side in bed without groaning loudly enough to make R sit up with an alarmed look on his face, I have been mercilessly exploiting the current status to get a lot of TLC, I have tried to get used to people moving gently out of my way in office (for some reason this annoys the hell out me) and I visit the powder room (see how delicately nurtured I am?) a lot more often.

But apart from that? Things have been just the same and very predictable -- I hated Don, loved Yun Hota To Kya Hota and Sideways (both of which I watched slightly late in the day a week back on DVD), enjoyed Pyar Ke Side Effects and gave up my TV sabbatical to follow Nach Baliye 2 with enviable dedication. (On which: Did you feel glad Tanaaz-Bakhtiyar were out because their over-energetic chirpiness was getting on your nerves? And didn't you just love the way Shweta said 'main apne Raja ke liye nachungi' in total jab tak tere paon chalenge tab tak uski saansen chalengi style when 'mera Raja' was in hospital suffering from some mysterious liver ailment?) The show's over now and I go into TV hibernation till next year -- though something tells me I won't really have time to analyse my negative feelings for television for some time.

And that, in short, is that.

2006-10-13T11:44:00.000+05:30

Does this happen with everybody or is it only me and yet another global conspiracy to give me hypertension before it is entirely necessary?

My phone will remain silent and dead to the world for ages and ages. Then, just as I am about to go and kill myself from boredom, it will mercifully ring. And then, before I have spent two seconds talking to the person who has called, I shall start getting those insistent beeps which mean someone else is trying to call me. Subsequently, as I hastily cut off the first conversation mid-way and launch into the next, those beeps will sound again meaning a third person has now joined the queue of those who would gladly chop their arms off into little little pieces without the aid of aneasthesia for a chance to talk to me RIGHT NOW. Oh, and sometimes in the middle of all this my landline will also ring, meaning my mother has chosen this moment of all others to order me to send 5 SMSs to some TV program to help a girl from Jamshedpur I've never seen in my life win some crazy talent show.

And then when I have managed to juggle all the conversations and given Airtel the chance to rob me a bit more by calling back what feels like scores of people, my phone will fall silent and remain in that state for the next five hours.

Do tell me it's not something I have done to upset the universe?

On watching The Devil Wears Prada

2006-09-23T20:14:00.000+05:30

Ron and I (oooh look, even I have friends with hip names) went and watched The Devil Wears Prada this afternoon and had the most wonderful time. Clothes were ooohd and aaahd over and bad-boss stories were exchanged in a beautifully therapeutic experience.

We were both glad we hadn't taken the men along, I because of a couple of reasons:

1. R just wouldn't have got the clothes or the labels or why they were so important. He wouldn't have seen how the heroine looked different after she got a makeover. He would so totally have blanked out on the references to the big fashion names and probably thought Karl Lagerfeld referred to a brand of bottled beer.

2. We have finally acquired the car and he is totally convinced we are on the brink of everlasting penury, so I would have had to do without the popcorn and soft drinks or had popcorn and soft drinks plus long lecture on better financial management.

I don't know how many of you have read the book by Lauren Weisberger. My advice is don't, just go watch the film. This is one rare instance of the film bettering the book by a long, long margin. This of course has a lot to do with the fact that this is fashion you are dealing with, and in the book you just don't get enough of it. While the visual factor is obviously lacking, you also realise that the author is being extremely snooty and derisive about fashion (one reason her book got terrible reviews from a lot of New York critics), while the film maintains a nice balance between being derisive and a little, just the right bit, worshippy.

The characters too are much better etched out in the film. The heroine, Andy Sachs, is a whiny creature in the book, one whose problems you cease to empathise with after a little while. In the film, she's smarter and spunkier. And then there's the Boss from Hell herself -- Miranda Priestly (not-at-all loosely fashioned after Vogue editor Anna Wintour), played by a magnificent Meryl Streep. Her character's much more well-rounded and believable in the film -- in the book she's just this cardboard ogre-figure.

And the clothes, oh the sumptuous, delicious, utterly amazingly beautiful clothes. And, oh, the even more wonderful accessories. You know what they say about building your look around a necklace? This film does it with such style and aplomb (and here one can't help but make unfavourable comparisons with supposed fashion editor Preity Zinta's wardrobe in KANK).

I don't think I've ever revealed this, but I love fashion (though you would never know it to see me, it's that well-kept a secret). On the ride back home (in my new car) I daydreamed of heading Indian Vogue whenever it is launched and even contemplated adding R's surname to mine because I think it would make my name sound a little more glamorous and got a little angry with the parents for lumping me with such a very unglamorous name. But at the end I had decided it (my name) had just the right hint of mystique, so the Vogue guys wouldn't really have anything to complain about.

But more on that later. My name merits a post (maybe multiple ones) on itself and we shall save it for the day I hear the 108th version of it (we're on 88). Meanwhile, do watch this fun, frivolous, completely enjoyable film -- even if women's fashion is not exactly a passion. The man sitting next to me seemed to be enjoying it thoroughly too and I actually heard him thank his girlfriend for making him watch it and I'm really, really not making this up to teach R a lesson for dumping his wife in the middle of a Saturday afternoon.

Once more, Munnabhai

2006-09-12T10:42:00.000+05:30

What a brilliant, funny, touching, complete film this is to be sure! I watched it this weekend, late enough not to feel that I should do a full analysis that does justice to its utter brilliance, but I can only say that half-way through the film I was pumping my fists in the air and exclaiming how this is SUCH a slap in the face of all those directors who've been making silly and mediocre films for the last half century because 'the audience demands it' and because 'we can't make art films, who would watch them?'

I am glad to report that Hindi cinema has finally caught on to the fact that you can turn out a well-made, stylish, tight and totally absorbing film staying right within the limits of your genre. So DCH and Bluffmaster did it as well, but neither of these (and these are just two out of the top of my mind) had the universal appeal of a Lage Raho Munnabhai. [Digression: One point in favour of watching films at Rex as opposed to PVR: people clap, cheer and whistle and you can join right in.]

Only jarring note in the film: Vidya Balan's simpers and smiles (the woman is an Aishwarya Rai in the making). And her 'Good Moooorrrrning Mumbai' that made me feel intensely uncomfortable and extremely sorry for people in Bombay because I suspect that all radio jockeys in the city will now imitate her and imagine waking up to that day after day...

I suspect the likes of Subhash Ghai have already stopped churning out their half-baked melodramas out of sheer insecurity and this should keep them halted for another half century or so. Amen.

P.S. I was eager to see how they would explain away the last film's ending. In spite of Hirani's claims that this was a completely new film with just the same lead characters, I was a bit sceptical about how the audience would react to seeing Munnabhai single again and wooing another woman etc. Needless to say, what they've done is the only way it could have been done, underscoring the core of thought behind this zany caper of a film. Using those two lines from the previous film's hit song Mamu (Ek kahani khatam to dooji shuru ho gayi mamu) was a stroke of genius, I say.

Silly pic

2006-09-05T16:55:00.000+05:30

I've been tagged for that silly pig thing by Kung Fu Master (among other things) Samit Basu. I've hitherto been photonymous on this blog, but do not see why I should remain so. I mean, I'm not exactly writing the diary of a London call girl or anything even remotely scurrilous (interesting) here. So here goes:

Time: June 2005

Place: Royal Selangor Pewter factory, somewhere outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Why: Don't ask me. Possibly to save self from passing out out of sheer boredom after being taken through entire pewter factory and having to feign interest in dainty little ladies fashioning dainty little cufflinks out of (just imagine!) pewter. (My only brush with pewter till then had been the fact that Hogwarts students use pewter cauldrons in their first year, a fact that the savvy Royal Selangor guys were aware of since it was up with a bunch of other trivia about this wonder metal or alloy or whatever on a wall.)

What I would change about it: Photoshop the paunch.

And I tag: Ron, Our resident Poet, Rimi, Priya, The Cowlick and Lahar.

Is KANK really so lank?

2006-08-22T11:29:00.000+05:30

Well well, everyone's gone and panned KANK, so I must be contrary. Never thought I would say this, but it really turned out to be better than what I'd expected.

You can say clever things about having low expectations and you might be right. But the fact remains that in spite of having to clutch my head in agony at times, I still thought the film did get a few things right. And no, unlike this gentleman, I don't believe a film about infidelity in marriage has to be dark and sombre.

Yes, it was too picturesque. Rani Mukherjee got on my nerves too with her photogenic crying. Both heroines looked as if they'd had to spend the better part of the day putting on eye makeup. Rani's clothes were all wrong, magnificent though her bosom looks. Some of the attempts to make the film wholesome family entertainment, such as by including bits of a kiddie football match, are pathetic. Some of the humour is quite misplaced, as Jai has pointed out. As for SRK, we must all be inured to him by now and must not complain. On the contrary, I am tempted to forgive him for some of the funniest lines which I suspect came from him (like asking Rani in the last scene if she isn't a bit overdressed for the station).

And also, I still haven't figured out why the two lovers go off to make noble confessions to their respective spouses, after having decided to call their affair off. I mean, one of the partners might have such misguided honourable feelings but two people at the same time? That's stretching it a bit.

And yes, I am coming to the reasons why I liked the film. I loved the way Amitabh and Kiron Kher flirt outrageously, I like how Amitabh while dying doesn't hold Rani's hand and beg her to save her marriage, I liked Preity Zinta's character immensely (and that well-timed slap), I like the fact that even smaller characters like the kid Arjun are developed to some extent. Also, I like the way Rani and Shah Rukh delude themselves into believing they are meeting up to discuss their failing marriages, while their attraction towards each other become quite obvious.
Needless to say, people having extra marital affairs do need to have a high degree of ability and willingness to delude themselves , and I don't think it at all unnatural that they take their spouses out for dinner (though to the same restaurant is again silly and unlikely) and spend it staring at the each other.

Which brings me essentially to my main point. Which is that KANK is a majorly confused film made by a director who has a certain set of sensibilities, which he tries to sugar-coat for presentation to an audience that comprises (in a big way) of people with an entirely different understanding of such matters. Which then results in tedious and unnecessary explanations (like the one for Amitabh and Kirron Kher's friendship), several expository scenes (such as Shah Rukh and Rani finally taking the sexual plunge after she makes him jealous at the theatre) and lots and lots of contradictions and over-emphasising.

Clearly, Karan Johar needs to get out of the family entertainment trap before he can translate his 'modern' ideas into a really modern film.

And oh, I also wish he would quickly get tired of New York. I just cannot bear to see autumn leaves swishing around ever again or Shah Rukh Khan walking/shuffling/running with arms outstretched along a picturesque bridge.

Cinema hall rant

2006-08-05T16:55:00.000+05:30

Why the 200 bucks multiplex ticket is worth it:

1. There are no rats in multiplexes.

At least, not where one can see them. At Rex while watching Omkara the other day, five minutes into the film I could hear scampering sounds and what sounded like rat calls. Two minutes later there was an extra-large rodent two inches from my toe-nail. Putting to shame the many rats I had skillfully exterminated during my brush with Zoology, I screamed and shifted two seats down the row (thankfully empty. This was definitely not the time to worry about the Indian movie-goers' lack of taste as proven by empty seats for Omkara).

2. People don't keep opening and closing the side doors.

3. You can actually hear the dialogue without placing your bum in the last two cms of space on your seat and almost putting your head on the shoulder of the person sitting in front.

Actually, even then you can't.

4. Blame it on extensive spoiling by multiplex viewings, but in a large theatre you just don't get that enclosed, intimate feeling -- the delicious feeling that there's nobody in the world except the screen and you (and the irritating stranger sitting next to you who refuses to share the armrest and the one on the other side who refuses to pass the popcorn).

Maybe I started off on a wrong footing here, but I was just very restless throughout the screening and irritatingly, intensely aware of everything around me, including a giggly couple at the back who got shouted at by me just after the interval. If you've got to giggle, go watch Shadi Kar Ke Phas Gaye, why come for Omkara for fucks' sake?

5. The film-watching experience is longer at a multiplex, thus making it worth the money.

At Rex, not only did they open the doors two minutes before the actual intermission came on, they didn't even let the final credits roll out before they just turned the screen blank and switched all the bloody overheard tubelights on. I mean, the final credits! I often stand and watch until the last person has left the theatre, in the vain hope perhaps that one day they will reward my dedication by revealing something special right at the end when the morons have filed out thinking it's over. Nope, not happened yet, but who knows?

2006-08-02T21:03:00.000+05:30

I asked my good friend Samit Basu (you know, the celebrated author) a few months back why I was such a loser as a blogger (as opposed to a star candidate in everything else in life). He, probably not wishing to hurt my feelings by saying rude things, said it might be because I didn't blog often enough. Keep at it, he seemed to say, and one day you will have a blog to rival this and this and oh, maybe even this. (Reminds me of that story about a million monkeys on a million typewriters etc, but maybe that's not what Samit had in mind).

So anyway, I've been thinking about it (nah, I've not, just wanted to name-drop about the only celebrity I've been thrown out of Rodeo's for suspected under-ageness with) and so I've decided to blog more frequently.

Also, I've been going through old posts of mine and decided they're not half bad and that I can be pretty entertaining if I put my mind to it. So this, my loyal readers who still bother to check or are too lazy to delete my stub from Bloglines, is The Marauder's Map Redux (and of course I had to do it when blogspot seems to be blocked again. It's called perversity).

Anyway, so I shall leave you with a little anecdote from my scintillating life. Warning: autowallas feature.

R has been extremely uncooperative about buying a car, no matter how many frantic and tearful stories I tell him about how the autowallas in this city are treating me. So today when we were out together I wanted to show him how tough it is for a lady in this city who doesn't own a car. We were waiting at a crossing for an auto and I turned to him and said 'Now you just watch how painful this process is' . The next second, I'm not joking, an auto screeched to a stop two inches from my toe. Not to be daunted, I asked him most belligerently if he wanted to go to (the unfashionable end of most posh) Benson Town, turning towards R and saying with my eloquent eyes: 'Just watch this'.

And would you believe it? The bugger nodded his head and promptly started turning down the meter! That has not happened to me since I had a minor op for an ingrown toe-nail and asked the doctor for an extra-large bandage and kept it on for longer than necessary and looked at it most piteously when begging autowallas to take me home (mine not theirs).

R is of course convinced I make up all those sob stories about recalcitrant autowallas. There go my car buying plans for another year. If I didn't have Harry Potter 7 to look forward to I would just put my head in the oven and all.

2006-07-18T18:39:00.000+05:30

"The DoT is of the opinion that some of these sites were being used by banned organisations to transmit messages to their colleagues. Blog entries cannot be tracked as easily as email."

Of all the bizarre statements the government issues from time to time, that has to be the bizarrest. They mean to say finding out somebody's e-mail id and host, cracking it open and then tracking the mails is easier than reading something that's just sitting there for all to read and is meant to be read? Ludicruous as this whole ban issue is (as someone said, would the government block all phone calls because terrorists use phones?), this one is just a scream.

Of course, all this has a lot to do with the government's inadequate knowledge about new technology and its applications, though I know most bloggers wouldn't feel blogs particularly represent new and emerging technology. The DoT obviously just don't know enough about blogs, and certainly can't keep pace with the way things change around here.

I am reminded of Fahrenheit 451 with alarming frequency these days.

Kabhi Alvida etc

2006-07-05T20:45:00.000+05:30

Am I the only one getting surer and surer that Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna is going to turn out to be a heart-wrenchingly sickly sweet film about extra-marital relationships in which the errant couple fall in love and suffer agonies of attraction, but, o gosh, never have sex? That while their hearts yearn for each other, they remain physically untouched by (dirty) extra-marital romps? Of course, not counting those passionate, passionate embraces on Brooklyn Bridge, with autumn leaves swirling around their feet (deja vu strikes, now where did we see that earlier?) and impossibly agonised expressions on their faces. And lots of kissing around the neck and shoulder region, obviously, Shah Rukh Khan being the lifetime holder of the world title for Neck and Shoulder Kissing as Expressions of Lust.

But wait. Remember what happened last time I predicted something about a soon-to-be-released film? Ok, so maybe I'm being biased and judgemental and one shouldn't judge a film by its trailers and KANK will have sex pouring out of Rani Mukherjee's anguished -looking ears (whatever). Stranger things have happened.

Word verification

2006-06-30T14:16:00.000+05:30

The spammers have gone. They realised bloggers were smarter. You don't get comments asking you to check out the HairyCat Blog anymore. You only get a lot of negative energy on your blog from people sticking their tongues out in concentrated effort to copy mtghbscgt into a tiny box and hating you for making them do this. So now will you please turn word verification off? It, I am pleased to announce, has lost its relevance is a fast changing world.

P.S. And those of you who have both word verification and comment moderation on, you do realise you're being a pain, don't you? Not to mention paranoid and obstrusive?

Second 'Men!' post

2006-06-26T16:58:00.000+05:30

Me to R: Don't watch football. Come, let's have a meaningful conversation. Lets read poetry to each other.

R: Not watch the MATCH? Crazy or what?

Me: What will happen if you don't watch the match one day? Bloody silly game, 22 grown-up men pushing a ball around with the poor referee running like headless chicken risking his life. Anyway half the time these guys are rolling about on the ground clutching various body parts and groaning. Bloody uncivilised.

R: (Shocked silence)

Me: And anyway you fall asleep in front of the TV. You watch it only so you can talk to your colleagues about it.

R (acknowledging a hit): Well, even if it were so, you would still have to watch it no?

Me: WHY?? Why can't you tell them you don't watch it, that you don't like it?

R: Are you mad? That's like admitting you are impotent.

Announcement

2006-05-18T17:21:00.000+05:30

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to lead you to this new sun on the poetic horizon, this new talent that has been festering in sad (but necessary to creativity) oblivion till now but will soon be as popular as, say, a certain Capped Crusader whose immortal songs are on all our lips.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you Abiban and his epic song of love, desire and the pain of parting.

First, in flagrant defiance of accepted conventions, you are urged to read the footnote.

And here, then, is the inspired Creation.

All hail Abi!

Make friendsip wid me?

2006-05-08T17:55:00.000+05:30

I was studiously ignoring the social networking website into which I had registered myself in a moment of blind insanity some time ago. I was even blithely deleting mails from people wishing to make themselves near and dear to me without even reading them. Till, that is, I realised how much pleasure they could give on a lazy afternoon when I, having just spent another manic Sunday writing a story, was taking some justified time off. Well, it's all too good not to be shared, and I'm not a big enough person to resist the temptation to, so here we go:

1. i m aman. i from bangalore. i want to be your friend. would you give this pleasure.

(Pithy, aren't we? Those short, crisp sentences. Reminds me of Hemingway. And pleasure, eh? Of course! I EXIST to bring a ray of sunshine (and pleasure) into lives such as yours.)

2. hi S,

This is RC (naming no names, you see. I have an angelic side too) from Bangalore.... Then hows life?? Im from Bangalore, a software engineer in a MNC... Where are u at present?? Im looking for a nice friend....
What else to pen in my start up mail??

(What else, indeed! And looking for a nice friend, you say? Did you try the nearest Westside?)

3. hi,
was looking for some friends... ping me sometime...
a.

(Which friends? How many? When did they disappear? How? PAN numbers, please.)

4. hi this is v and i want to friend ship with u

v

(speechless)

5. S king: would love to befriend thee.....

(Aha! Reading Shakespeare, are we?)

6. Sam urs: hello,
im from delhi, like to make new friends add me in ur list & see my photo gallery hope u all like the hot pics.
bye...........

(Oh yess yess, where where? Can't believe I LIVED till now without your hot pics to sustain and comfort me!)

7. SG: Hi
I would like to be ur friend. If interested u can add me as your friend.

byee

(I would like to be your friend too. Maybe when you've learnt to punctuate, spell and not use out-moded abbreviations, yes?)

8. (unlike all the other mails which had boring little subject lines with variations of the word 'Hi', this one's was a to-the-point 'friendship'. I like.)

MGK:

Hi,wss up just came across ur profile i have done my B.E in Bangalore Institute of Tech as of now working for e4e how abt a friendship i saw u in one of community and wee to have our bar and resturant which brand u like most to unwind on week ends cheers!mate

(Dear mate, please allow me to congratulate you on your innovative use of the English language. This particular use of the word 'wee', and that spelling of the word 'was', I think, has been unrecorded since the year 1227, and as for 'resturant', I mean, what inspired simplification! And abt that friendship, yes, why not? Maybe we could meet up in Australia?)

That was, I think, a Monday well-spent. What joy!

Going! Going! Gone!

2006-05-03T12:17:00.000+05:30

Now that Kaavya Viswanathan's book has been withdrawn from bookstores, I foresee a mad scramble to find any copies that happen to be lying around. Usually happens, in such cases. You know, that whole demand-supply thing.

So the point is, I have a copy of the book with me, bought in the days before the scandal washed up in the fond hope that no matter how cliched the cover looked, it wouldn't quite be rehashed Princess Diaries. But now, I am glad I did, for I wish to make my fortune. So I hereby announce the intention of selling/renting/auctioning the book to the highest bidder.

You know where to get in touch. Ok, pip-pip.

Oh, and yes, will you please return said copy? I can already hear them beating a path to this door.

2006-04-12T20:31:00.000+05:30

This is one hell of a crazy city. An aged superstar, well past his prime, who had a massive heart attack a couple of months back, dies. And the whole city is thrown into a frenzy of grief -- or a show thereof.

I mean, why would you burn tires, stop buses, close down shops, stop autos from running and bring the city to the brink of riot out of grief? Where's all the anger coming from? More importantly, who is it directed against? A cruel fate that takes away the hero at, well, the time of life when it was not quite unexpected? The doctors who couldn't save this one precious life, Karnataka's pride? Veerappan, for kidnapping him years ago and possibly causing enough trauma to take away a few years of his life?

Even as I write, there are groups of young louts on the streets, circling around the neighbourhood on bikes and crying slogans that sound positively bloodthirsty. They would be frightening if one could get over the absurdity of the situation. All shops around my place are shut, even the chemists. Maybe they are all mourning, too crazed by grief to stand there and sells Crocin. It is possible.

Earlier in the day when the news just broke, I sniggered when people said 'let's go home quickly. The city's going to turn crazy very soon.' I was condescending towards a friend who called to ask me to stock up on supplies because the shops might be shut for the better part of next week. I thought, secretly amused but very happy to leave office a whole hour early, how we unwittingly contribute to general panic.

They seem to have known what they were talking about, for they had all lived through Rajkumar's abduction when schools, colleges, markets and cinema halls were shut in the city for a fortnight.

There was this man on TV standing outside Dr Rajkumar's gate who started keening 'annnnnnnaaaaa' the minute the TV cameras turned towards him.

Grief?

2006-04-09T16:23:00.000+05:30

Writing a long and convoluted feature story is amazingly like taking an exam, I have discovered in the course of a long and illustrious career. There’s all the build-up, the talking to a million people, doing research that seems worthy of a Ph D thesis, getting different perspectives and wondering what angles to take… it’s all so much like the last-minute scramble for notes before an exam and the actual sitting down to do the mugging that I am a complete nervous wreck by the time it comes to actually writing the damn story.

It’s not quite surprising, considering I tie myself into knots about something as simple as getting clothes stitched by the tailor or having a haircut. Needless to say, exams used to turn me into a quivering mass of jelly-like substance, and I have never felt happier than on the day I answered the last exam of my life. Actually it was a bit flat, as such much anticipated moments are wont to be, but on hindsight it was quite the happiest day of my life, completely surpassing other momentous occasions such as topping a subject in the 10th boards or the day I got married (oh, by far. In fact, that had a rather exam-y feeling too).

I sit on the computer on a Sunday afternoon while the world frolics, goes out to lunch and plans a nice evening out with friends, digressing into writing a blog post in spite of the distinct fluttery feeling running up and down my middle that comes from the knowledge that sooner or later I will HAVE to turn to that MS Word document containing exactly 212 words of the story I started writing this morning. And finish it.

My research is complete and rather thorough, even if I say so myself, I have all the facts arranged quite neatly in my head, and I have even gone to the rather uncharacteristically methodical length of arranging all the quotes in a separate document for quick and efficient reference. Now all that’s left to do is put it all together.

Friends call and I lament about the situation, they tut-tut knowingly and suggest various remedies—go for a walk, take a nap, SIT DOWN AND FINISH IT OFF. Meanwhile, I slowly learn to live with the fluttery sensation, wonder how bad it would be if I wasn’t able to produce the story at all (I mean, they WOULD manage somehow, no?) and tell myself ‘this time tomorrow, it’ll be done’.

And instead of doing something to further this cause, I read another chapter of Down Under by B Bryson which manages to distract me for a bit but not as thoroughly as I would have wished, play endless games of Minesweeper, pounce upon the phone when it rings, glad for the legitimate distraction it provides. And sit down and write a post for a blog I blithely ignore most of the time.

No, no, no, this will just not do.

Another era, or two years ago

2006-04-07T22:36:00.001+05:30

Does anyone remember the Shubha Mudgal album Ab Ke Sawan from a very long time ago (actually, just about 6 years)? It had lovely songs like Seekho Na, Hai Pyar to Musafir, Dere Dere and my favourite, a song called Bairi Chayn. I heard this album so incessantly and obsessively back then that I still remember most of the lyrics and am very tempted to quote all of them extensively here. Don’t worry, I won’t, but it was quite an exceptional album – I could almost compare it to Rabbi.

I suddenly thought about it today and had a sudden urge to listen to it -- the kind of mad urge you only get when it comes to doing completely useless stuff and never about filling tax forms. And realized that though I still had the tape in my possession (a remarkable achievement in itself, considering I lose an average of two sunglasses a month), I had nothing to play it on. I have a tape recorder that has not been used in more than a year, whose head is so far gone that my quite basic cellphone has better sound. Incidentally, this tape recorder was acquired by us just about a couple of years back – I can only guess that we were planning to save it for a private antique collection, for why we would have gone and bought a two-in-one when it was at the very edge of its extinction as a species I have no idea.

Like most civilized people (who haven’t got around to buying a home theatre), we listen to music mostly on the computer. There are nifty little peer-to-peer music search engines that my most computer savvy brother installs for us from time to time, using which we download music illegally from the Net. Most of the time, though, my brother does this himself and we, lazy parasites that we are, just copy songs from his hard disk onto ours. I said from time to time because most of these engines help to positively colonize our system with viruses, so we are forced to regretfully abandon them after a time and reformat the comp or whatever.

Now, my brother is not quite as fond of Shubha Mudgal (what a voice) as me, so understandably the songs were not shyly waiting at some corner of the hard drive to be discovered and listened to. And I was quite determined to use the tape. Finally, I realized I have another almost prehistoric device at my disposal – my dictaphone (yes, it uses actual cassette tapes, yes, those brown spools you can actually touch with a finger).

So I am playing the tape on it right now. The sound emanating from its tiny speaker is pretty bad (very close to transistor radio sound), you have to actually rewind and forward to get to a song you want to hear, and it runs on unrechargeable batteries that have almost run out. My techno-junkie brother looks at me aghast, with a ‘how can you bear this’ look on his face, but I’m having a lot of fun.

P.S. On a not completely unrelated note, I happened to tune in to Vividh Bharati for about ten minutes on the two-in-one earlier this evening. A show called Aaj ke Fankaar was just starting with the evening’s host, Neelam something, singing praises of ‘Jumping Jake’ Jeetendra, who, according to her, belonged to a family of jewellers but was bitten by the ‘Glaymour bug’, necessitating an entry into films and dancing to such immortal classics as Taki, o taki, o taki taki taki re, jab se teri aankhon mein jhanki…

Blank Noise

2006-03-07T21:46:00.000+05:30

This post was meant to be part of the Blank Noise Project blogathon. With my usual inability to give deadlines their due respect, I am late.

This was not the worst incident of street harassment ever to happen to me, it wasn't the first, or the last. But somehow, it sticks in my mind because I was very young and very scared and it made me grow up in some way. No dramatic loss of innocence or anything like that -- it just made me feel I needed to be careful, cautious, that boys were not always nice guys. But anyway, here it is.

When I was young, we used to cycle to school almost every day. A few of us, mostly girls from the same colony, would get together and form a group, and each day, we would ride from friend’s house to friend’s house, reaching almost halfway to school. It was an interesting arrangement, one that led to a lot of gossip, back-biting and bitchiness, even. Group dynamics was not a term I was familiar with at that time, but this particular group definitely was very dynamic. People would feel left out and start falling behind, the more popular members of the group would surge ahead discussing ‘with it’ school stuff and the juniors would be relegated to the last row. Obviously, Jamshedpur’s roads were no highway, and we could ride barely two abreast. I think it was during these rides that I first discovered that I was a terribly indecisive kind of creature, lacking the guts to stand up to the dominant personality in the group who would be mildly snooty to the others and subtly demand all my attention, yet I wasn’t case- hardened enough not to feel a bit uncomfortable about the ones who didn’t quite make the mark.

Anyway, so this was the arrangement through most of the year. I did this from class 5th onwards till almost the end of my school years – changing a lot of groups and friends in between. Since class 8 or so, the boys ‘discovered’ us and would try to hang on and cycle back from school with us, but I remember we were not very encouraging about this.

Along with these boys from our school, who we could of course handle with ease, we soon realised that we had been discovered by other groups of young Lotharios. These were boys from colonies near our school and mostly ‘not our types’. They would start with following us on bikes and scooters, giving marked attention to one particular girl, then graduate to driving beside us and asking names etc. Occasionally, they also tried to pass on ‘love letters’. Not having accepted any, I still don’t know what they said (the one time a guy tried to pass me one, my fingers itched to take it if just to see what it said, I didn’t even know the guy’s name, but what the heck, I was 16 years old, but I didn’t take it because my cautious friend was watching and I knew she would strongly disapprove if I did it).

We found these episodes wildly hilarious. And quite exciting, though we would never admit that. We had the strength of numbers, and we knew nothing could really go wrong. Plus, we were quite wise to the ways of boys by then.

The afternoon I am talking about was a couple of years before this. It made me realise how much more intelligent it was to be with other people around you as far as possible, that you were asking for trouble if you were stupid enough to be on your own on lonely roads.

I was in the 7th that time, around 13 years old. This was during exams, so everybody left school at different times, and some people were picked up by parents. One afternoon, I was cycling along after a Hindi exam. Suddenly, this guy who seemed vaguely familiar emerged from behind a house and started following me on a bicycle. I realised with a sudden shock that I had seen him loitering around my house, and knew he lived somewhere there, and not close to school. Some sixth sense had already warned me that he had marked me out – I think he had tried to talk to me once at a puja pandal. Also, that he was slightly more dangerous than the ‘passing chits’ type.
I cycled as hard as I could, but he caught up with me soon. I can still feel the terror of that moment, when I knew that if I looked sideways, I would see him riding along next to me.

Soon, he started talking to me. I was ready to weep. I just didn’t know what to do. I thought of riding to a friend’s house nearby, but shrunk from creating a scene. I just wanted the ordeal to be over. For a good 3 kilometres, this guy followed me, constantly badgering me, asking inane questions, not seeming to notice how shit scared I was. No, I guess he liked seeing how scared I was.

Once, I stopped by the side of the road and tried to scream at him, but it was completely useless. He was a 20 year old lout, I was barely 14. I rode on, he right next to me. I kept hoping I would see someone from school, anyone I could latch on to, but amazingly, and I don’t know why, there wasn’t a soul around wearing the familiar uniform or any kind of uniform. A while later, I saw a man riding a cycle just up ahead, and I remember calling out to him, saying something silly like ‘please, dekhiye, yeh mujhe tang kar raha hai’. I swear, I can still remember the startled look on the middle-aged man’s face as he looked back once and rode on faster than ever. Then I felt scared, what if this guy did something because I had called for help?

But no, I guess he decided he’d had enough fun and it was not worth taking a risk for and rode on. Or maybe he went away because I was pretty close to home by then. I got back home sweating and terrified, and cried like crazy.

From the next day till the end of the exams, my father dropped me to school and I came back in an auto. He never asked me why, though I’d told my mother, of course. After the exams were over, everybody had the same timings and we resumed our normal cycling trip. I would feel so safe with all these girls with me, safe enough to laugh at the Romeos. In the next four years, though I must have cycled back alone from school a few times, I could never do it without panicking at least once or twice, especially on that particular stretch of the road. In fact, I think I started taking a different route if I knew I would be alone.

I feel so sorry for that 13-year-old me now, so protective. And strangely, today I can easily joke about far more important -- and at the time more devastating -- incidents from school, but the fear of that afternoon has not quite left me.

My love is a red, red rose

2006-02-17T21:11:00.000+05:30

Ashitechhe! Aashitechhe! Aashitechhe!

Coming soon! Coming soon! Coming soon!

The latest sensation in romance literature! This is a love story that will stay with you without your ever having to say you are sorry! The love story to beat all love stories!!

You've heard of doctor-nurse romances. Now get your teeth into the latest buzzword in romance -- Media-PR Romances. A sensational new debut by two gifted writers -- The Marauder's Map and Ronita Dutta of Life's Like That!

The Title: Passion's New Byline

The protagonists: Snooty but mild-mannered journalist from Delhi and ambitious young PR upstart. She is cruelly beautiful, but not a bimbette!

The tagline: He couldn't stand PR women, till he met Her.

The plot: The snooty man with a golden heart and a diffident manner thinks all PR people are dumb and vacuous. He is much given to rants against the entire tribe of PR people, but he doesn't know love waits to ensnare him just around the office coffee machine.

The vivacious young girl is out to reach the top -- and she doesn't mind how she gets there. Bitchy and aggressive, APP (Aggressive PR Person) thinks all men are wimps, till she meets MMJ (Mild-Mannered Journalist).

Exclusive excerpts for the privileged few readers of this blog. This is romance to set your pulses racing!

He carelessly whipped out the stylish dictaphone from his bag, muscles rippling in the golden sunlight. She quickly averted her eyes, but not before feeling her stomach muscles tighten at the sight. 'Get a grip on yourself', she told herself sternly. He's only a man, a journalist at that.

She handed over the press release to him, trying not to flinch. Steady, old girl, she told herself. She looked up, into his fine, sensitive eyes as their fingers touched. Her insides melted into an amorphous mass of desire. She drew back even as she saw a startled look come into his eyes. The atmosphere was electric.

The rose of romance blossoms during a shared car ride to an interview.

The confined space inside the car as they travelled all the way to Gurgaon seemed charged with electricity. The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. She looked across at him, brooding silently while looking out of the window. Suddenly, he turned to her. She raised expectant eyes at his chiselled features. "Umm, what's the name of this guy I am meeting again?" he asked. She wanted to kill him, she wanted, oh-so-badly, to draw his head down towards hers and whisper into his ear. But it wasn't the name of the CEO they were going to meet she had in mind.

About the authors: The Marauder's Map is a journalist who lives in the sunny city of Bangalore. Happily married to the man of her dreams (who, unfortunately, is NOT a PR guy), she spends her time between cutting edge articles and romance writing, which is her passion. She loves dogs and cute, cuddly children.

Ronita Dutta also lives in Bangalore and works in the PR industry, which gives her a ring-side view into the dynamics of this noble profession. She is going to be

happily married to the man of her dreams soon (who, alas, is also not a PR guy) and hopes to fill her home with the red rose of romance.

Watch out for the book at a gleaming, marble-and-glass chain bookstore near you soon. The authors are open to interviews, but only international publications with circulations in the millions need apply.

Publisher's note: All characters in this book are entirely a product of the authors' collective imagination. Any resemblance to persons living, dead or working in the media are completely coincidental.

15 Park Avenue

2006-01-14T10:44:00.000+05:30

Has schizophrenia ever been looked into more intimately than this? I don't think so.

The best thing about Aparna Sen's film is that it could have been told from so many points of view. As it is, 15 Park Avenue doesn't stick to one and though we largely see the story unfolding from the elder sister's perspective, it’s not through her eyes. Anjali, the older sister-caregiver character is played by Shabana Azmi and she, like most of the other characters and the film itself, is so many things at the same time. A successful physicist and lecturer, a good daughter and excellent sister, a woman with a failed marriage behind her, an attractive woman who obviously takes care of what she wears and how she looks, and who is attracted to a man even while she has a steady relationship with another, though that seems to be on its last legs. And what’s most attractive about this character is that she’s so human, not a sacrificing saint but someone who is often irritated, angry, frustrated at the situation life has dealt her.

For me, what makes a good film really good is wanting to know more about each of the characters, the back-stories, the stories you sense are there, but being ultimately glad that they are left untold. It's also when you can really see the same situation from several different points of view, and feel each of them are right in their own way, and yet understand why the others involved in the drama can deny that.

Take Joydeep's (Rahul Bose’s) antipathy towards Anjali – he sees her as this dominating, overtly forceful woman who's jealous of any man who might threaten to replace her in her sister's life, while she sees him as a young fool in love who doesn't realise the enormity of the task he is taking on and as the factor that could upset her sister's tenuous hold on sanity, hence is a bit more aggressive towards him than is necessary.

Then there's Mithi, who's beyond points of view. Konkona is... well... she’s also beyond praise, really. I loved the way she portrays the schizophrenic’s certainty that it’s the world, not they, that is skewed. The patience in her voice when she’s explaining things that are obvious to her to the incredulous listeners. “No no I know Palm Avenue, my uncle lives there. I’m looking for Paaark Avenue, not Palm Avenue...”

The way her story unfolds in the film is superb. Not one straight flash-back but a gentle peeling away that reveals the whens and hows and whys. Though it leaves the chronology a bit shaky, one of the weaknesses of the film.

Oh yes, there are plenty. The dialogue, predictably, flags in places. It's mostly in English, and one would rather Anjali and her mother (played by Waheeda Rehman, who is competent in portraying the weak mother who relies wholly on her elder daughter for strength and who is, perhaps, a little afraid of the younger) spoke in Hindi, as they're shown to be a Hindi-speaking family. The bond between this mother-daughter duo is beautifully drawn out, and yet doesn't degenerate into saccharine sweetness. Anjali lashes out at her mother for not being strong enough to take charge of Mithi and her mother tries to placate her with a few soothing lies.

The minor characters are so well drawn-out that they become almost as strong as the protagonists, though I felt Rahul Bose’s wife’s character (played with her usual thoroughness by Shefali Shah) was a bit over-wrought. I thought she was reacting a bit too strongly to her husband’s interest in his ex-girlfriend, though I do know women who are pretty irrational when it comes to their men's past affairs.

A film really works for me when it makes me inhabit its world so completely that I have trouble coming back to my reality after the credits have rolled. After this film was over, I kept sitting in my seat staring at the empty screen, trying not to cry, and so did a young girl sitting next to me, while the people accompanying us stood around patiently waiting for us to snap out of it. Finally, a woman accompanying the girl said “Let’s go. She’s not going to come back.” I realised with a jerk that she’s not, and walked out.

Quick, sister, look the other way. There's a man coming!

2006-01-13T14:33:00.000+05:30

Reading this post by Mridula about the cultural stereotyping of India, I was reminded of something I had been reading some time back on the Net. Had this written down somewhere, but had forgotten to post it. So here it is now:

Going through some tips for Western women travelling alone in India on this website, I realised with a sense of profound shock that I have lived out all these years in India in complete ignorance of my own country and its people. Some startling facts I have discovered about this ancient land where all can attain nirvana:

Indian women still practice sati

Indian women do not make eye contact with strangers

Indian women don’t even walk to the market-place alone, let alone travel to another city alone

Indian women always go around swathed in saris or garments that cover every inch of their bodies. Wearing things like sleeveless tops or shorts is punishable by law.

Indian women never, NEVER, smoke in public. In fact, the writer is inclined to believe none of them smoke at all

If faced with a problem on the rare solitary trip to the market-place, Indian women always pretend their husbands are in the next shop

Indian women are studiously ignored by other men when in the protection of a man. Shopkeepers, restaurant owners just avert their eyes and always speak to the man in charge

In India, and I quote: “…media saturation of the Clinton-Lewinsky trial, Hollywood movies and scantily clad models are the only source of foreign context and news.”

Indian women (the article makes no exceptions, so it must mean ALL Indian women) having their periods “cannot say their prayers or come in contact with men for fear of tainting others.”

And to think I actually had the temerity to look a man in the eye at the shop where I buy cigarettes. What a wanton, loose creature I am, what a cultural anomaly!

2006-01-10T23:20:00.000+05:30

Doing something you’ve wanted to do for a long, long time is so, so satisfying. I am also a boring, boring person for repeating words like this, but anyway...

I just told a man I would appreciate it if he didn’t call me any more. Thanks. Exactly those words. They might seem tame, especially after I tell you how much he has managed to irritate me over the last few months, but for sweet, please-one please-all me, that’s a major accomplishment.

So there was this Bengali man, in his late thirties, ugly, balding and a bore (these facts have everything to do with how I felt about him, and yes, I am a very frivolous person who is very partial to good-looking men) introduced to us, as in R and me, by a colleague from Delhi. He was apparently going to be in Bangalore for a year to do a course at an institute and wanted introductions to common friends. He called, I was at effusive hostess welcoming lonely person to Bangalore best. He called again, and then again. By third phone call, I knew just what I had let myself in for. He was such a bore. Not boring, which is entirely different, but a bore. Told me entire story of his entire life full of struggles by second phone call, if that helps you get his character and everything.

He invited himself over to our place one weekend some months back. I had of course primed entire gaggle of friends who all turned up on the said day to look at him. They pulled his leg rather badly, tried to shock him by flirting outrageously with each other’s partners, threw in-jokes at each other over his head. We were not a mean lot generally, but somehow, it was felt he deserved it. He seemed to take things pretty sportingly. But surprisingly, this did not lead to anyone’s liking him any more than I did. If I could say this without sounding very mean (I can’t, so what the heck) it sort of demonstrated what a loser he was.

Then he started calling me more and more frequently. Never R, who had been as much his host as me at the aforementioned 'party', but me. In the beginning it was always to invite us to his place and all, which I always replied to with an 'oh sure. will do sometime'. Then he started asking me to meet him for dinner after office. True to my Rude People Will Go To Hell beliefs, I hemmed and hawed and sounded vague, invented excuses about being busy. Didn’t take calls, didn’t reply to messages. Did this for about a week. He was nothing if not persistent. Friends egged me on to make him crawl back into his hole in misery. What sport it was. What a keenly watched match.

Finally, and I hate to admit this, I had to fall back on ‘R doesn’t like it’. [Scrrrratch! (Sound of name being struck from Register of Sometime Feminists)].

Which was bullshit of course, in the sense that R would definitely not like my meeting this guy, but that was just because I bothered to discuss it with him. Mostly, I leave him out of all this. So much work pressure, night shifts on top, poor fellow.

All quiet for a couple of months. Then messages of ‘can I call you’ – ignored for a couple of days. Then in new year bonhomie and good cheer, I took a call from him. After painful pleasantries were exchanged, the man, in very obvious defensive fashion, started off with ‘don’t take this otherwise, I hope you don’t mind my saying this etc etc’, then asked me (again R was not even mentioned) if I would meet him for dinner. Also said he had a ‘small gift’ for me which he had brought back from the US (of course it was a perfume, as he let slip. Cheesiness of it makes me want to puke) and would I meet him so he could give it to me?

Now I got seriously psyched out. Till now I was treating him as a sort of elderly bore, mostly harmless and slightly daft for not getting rather pointed hints. Again, and this should be noted, I refused to tell him to go to hell. Where did I read recently that some women have this sort of... umm... underconfidence... that makes them loath to see the worst side of things? Which, often enough, is the right side. Ok, so tell me all about how I am a popularity junkie. Stems from my repressed childhood, no doubt.

But equally, it’s about an aversion towards unnecessary dramatisation. Telling somebody to go to hell and all that is just so dramatic. I find it infinitely easier to ho and hum and be vague. Not give in, but not make a huge point of not giving in either. To my defence, I did say R would also love to meet him (heh heh) and WE would see him sometime, of course we would. Not much enthusiasm was shown to this statement.

He said he would call me early this week. Yesterday, I sat next to my phone for a good two hours, refusing to pick up the phone. He called some twenty times. On my cell, on my landline, from his cell, his landline, from an unidentified local number. Everything. I just sat tight. Called up R and random friends and acted psyched out (I was a bit, honestly).

Today, I get this text message from him: “U were busy yesterday, can I call you now? Also if you feel that I am going crazy let me know.”

That’s when those immortal lines were uttered. I would appreciate it if you didn’t call me. Thanks.

Sweeter words were never spoken. Aaah!

MSM bashing

2005-12-30T14:33:00.000+05:30

Much as I am disgusted with T R Vivek's unfair and biased judgement of bloggers in Outlook, some comments I have seen on this sort of issue, time and again, make me want to put in a word here for MSM. We (bloggers) often make the mistake of identifying one journalists's attitude with that of the entire MSM's -- and that's just not true, so let's not get excited about how MSM feels threatened by us. Even one publication's antipathy towards blogging does not prove that MSM as a whole is dismissive about or feels threatened by blogging. The Telegraph, to take one example closest to me, has regularly commisioned stories on blogging, and all positive ones, and so have other newspapers and magazines.

What a lot of people, including people familiar with the workings of the media, tend to forget is that a publication's perceived attitude towards anythingis shaped by the individuals who work for it. I don't think it's like tomorrow, if I or any journo blogger joins Outlook, we will be asked to write anti-blogging stories. Most of the time, it's an individual response.

As for Outlook's attitude towards this, I suspect Vinod Mehta is hugely amused by this whole debate and is indulgently letting T R Vivek, the in-house skeptic, fight it out with bloggers and laughing at him at the same time. The man is known to possess a quirky sense of humour.

Bluffmaster

2005-12-29T15:27:00.000+05:30

Bluffmaster is a terribly good watch. Even my dad, who watched a Hindi film after 15 years or so and ostensibly went along just to see what the brouhaha about multiplexes was about, agrees, though he was fully prepared to set his teeth and sink into the plush chairs, thinking of the various cruel and cutting things he would say to us after the ordeal was over. I was rolling in the aisles laughing, and no, I wasn't drunk. Crackling dialogue. Witness this one:

Nana Patekar calls his moll from a theatre (where they are showing Ramesh Sippy's Shaan -- loads of in-jokes in the film but amazingly they don't get irritating) and asks her to get Rs 2 crores because he's being held at gun-point. She obviously asks why he needs so much money, and he says, deadpan: "Picture bahut achhi hai, parde pe paise fenkne hain". And that's just one I remembered, since I was not taking notes by the light of a cell phone in the manner of seasoned critics.

In a year that saw one con flick after another this was without doubt the winner. The heists, so glossed over in Bunty aur Babli where most of the con jobs are packed up in the length of one terrible song, are well thought-out and superbly executed. And there are a good many of them -- the one thing that makes a film/book about con artists really enjoyable, just like people who like that sort of thing want a lot of car chases in films that have them (don't ask me why, though). I just like a lot of con jobs in films that have them. I loved Jeffrey Archer's Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less for the same reason.

Bluffmaster also gets my approval for steering clear of item numbers. Much as I like kajarare, I really hate to see a movie I'm enjoying interrupted every few minutes just so that Koena Mitra can show us how to act seductive with a wooden face. And apropos my rant about film-makers setting their films anywhere except the desh ki dharti they are supposed to be so in love with, Rohan Sippy proved to be an exception. The way he's captured Bombay in the film, realistically and lovingly, making it look sleazy and dangerous in one shot and impossibly beautiful in the next, is a slap in the face of the South Africa and Canada loving directors. Was anyone else reminded of Gotham City?

I hope the guy who made Ek Khiladi Ek Hasina is kicking himself strongly where it hurts. Or getting boxing champion Mitra to do it.

Monkeying around

2005-12-13T15:35:00.000+05:30

The Bald Monkey has come up with a rejoinder to my Men! post that would make Desmond Morris proud.

Let's have some India Shindia

2005-12-09T12:26:00.000+05:30

Neal N' Nikki, I hear, is set in Canada. It's supposed to be a about a guy who's getting married in 21 days and wants to get laid that many times before D Day. Whatever. Salaam Namaste, a film ostensibly about live-in relationships and actually quite a good rip-off of Nine Months, was set in Australia. There have been dozens of Hindi films in between that have been set in England, America, Honolulu, the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. For every Hindi film that pans out against the backdrop of a Delhi or a Bombay, there must be, I think, three that find it necessary to set the scene of action abroad. And have you noticed? Most of the films that talk about 'revolutionary' concepts such as living-in are set abroad. As if the film-makers want to show how progressive and broad-minded Indians have become, but only if they are living away from home.

I had huge expectations from Salaam Namaste. I thought, ok finally, here's a mainstream, commercial film that talks about live-in relationships, and gives every indication of talking about it in a healthy, matter-of-fact way. The disillusionment started from the first scene when I realised it was not set in Bombay, as might have been expected, but in far-away Australia, and continued right uptill Preity Zinta, nine months pregnant and looking like she'd been carrying the kid for eighteen, breaks into a jig with rasta rappers. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the film, I did, immensely, and thought it was pretty well-made with wonderful comic timing, but I couldn't help being disappointed in it. Australia had nothing to do with it, and wouldn't it have been more pertinent to show how young urban Indians living in Indian metros didn't think it was a big deal to go in for a live-in relationship? Take Kal Ho na Ho, for that matter. Did the fact that these people were living in New York in any way add to the drama? It was a story about relationships, and would have worked out just as well in India, and maybe even captured a changing country in the funny, tongue-in-cheek manner that made it such an enjoyable film (Shah Rukh Khan's wet shirt notwithstanding).

It amazes me how, with the Indian social landscape changing so rapidly and so dramatically, film-makers refuse to take advantage of it. When so much social reality can be captured in film -- whether it's in a serious, funny or even frivolous way -- they go and take the easy way out to show it's all happening abroad. When the 'abroad' adds nothing to the story, and is as much a static backdrop as a set cut out of cardboard. Is it just stunning visuals they are after, or capturing the NRI audience? I just don't understand it. Anyway, I don't think I'll watch Neal N' Nikki.

UPDATE, UPDATE: I read this post just now and since it happens to say similar things and was written much before mine was and is on a vastly more popular blog than mine, I am now certain mine will be the next name on the Blog Plagiarism Hall of Shame. And I'll be on holiday (yes, despite my self-proclaimed dislike of the same) for the next two days, and don't want to come back to discover my name is mud. Genuine, genuine coincidence folks. Or great minds thinking alike. Whatever.

2005-12-08T16:13:00.000+05:30

Today, I sat in the same auto with a very young girl in a burqa. I was waiting for an auto near my house in the morning, and there were these two girls waiting at the same corner - one wearing a school uniform and the other, a classic all-covering burqa with a veil across her face, leaving just her bright and rather fine eyes uncovered. Autos being scarce, and they having caught one just before me, I asked if I could share it, as it looked like we were headed in the same direction.

I fell into conversation with them - both were chirpy and very school-girlishly curious. Shyly asked my name and what I did and everything. I found out that they were Class 8 students at a Muslim girl's school nearby. The one in the burqa was the chirpier of the two, staring at me in a very friendly manner, and, I am shamed to admit this, I was completely fascinated by her. I tried not to stare too rudely back at her as I tried to understand what was going on in her mind - rather difficult, as I couldn't read her expressions.

The burqa has always fascinated me. I don't completely understand its dynamics, I don't know anybody who wears it regularly and I would really like to know. This is not about the politics of the burqa at all -- I don't think I could add anything coherent to that discussion - but I do sometimes wonder how these girls of 13 react to it, and how these reactions change by the time they are 21, 25, 30. I see a lot of young women in burqas near my house in Bangalore. We live in a locality that's almost equally shared by Muslims, Hindus and Christians, and every day, I see a large number of women going about their business, apparently unconcerned about the black garment that covers every square inch of their bodies. Some of the burqas are quite stylishly cut, some are embroidered and sequinned.. I find myself wondering if that is just a little touch of defiance. I could be completely wrong, honestly.

Anyway, so in the beginning, I was surprised by the sheer number of burqa-clad women I saw on the streets of Bangalore. I remember wondering if the city's Muslims were more conservative than the ones in Jamshedpur (where I grew up) and in Delhi. It took me some time to realize that if anything, they were much less conservative. The reason I hadn't seen so many burqa-clad women in the other places was simply because they lived in very compartmentalised little societies - one could almost call them ghettoes -- didn't venture out so much, didn't really attend mainstream schools, colleges and jobs (and the few who did didn't wear burqas). Whereas in Bangalore, they are everywhere. From the high heels and confident strides and smart handbags of some, I can make out they work at regular jobs, some zip around in two wheelers, walk away hand in hand with friends from school and college, eat out at restaurants. Most are economically and socially on a higher step of the ladder than their counterparts in Delhi.

And it makes me wonder, how do they get used to the burqa? Do they see themselves as different in any way from their friends whose cultures or families don't ask them to cover themselves up? Do they ever feel rebellious, at least in the beginning when it is decided that they too must now wear it? Do they feel jealous of friends who don't have to wear it? Do they sometimes wish they could show off the pretty dress they are wearing underneath? This young girl I met in the auto today, did she dislike it, or was it a given fact to her, something she had accepted calmly as part of her identity? Sometimes, I wonder if any of these smart, confident women ever wonder why they are wearing it, and ask if they can do without it?

Sometimes, I want to tear it off them.

First 'Men!' post

2005-12-02T16:10:00.000+05:30

A friend (let's call him Y Chromosome) who is seeing -- no, is in a serious, committed relationship -- with another, very close, friend (X Chromosome), just came back to Bangalore after a month visiting his parents back home. He called me to ask if I would like to join them on M G Road for coffee. Now, I knew X Ch had been missing him terribly and had a million things to talk to him about, and I had no wish to be de trop -- or as we elegantly put it back in school, kabab mein haddi. So I made a gentle excuse, whereupon Y Ch, guessing with unusual perspicacity for his sex my real reasons for refusing, informed me that they were not meeting tete-a-tete in any case, since his room-mate was also dropping by.

Since I know both these people very well and sort of look upon them as children who have to be hand-held through the delicate moves of a serious, committed relationship, I asked why he was not meeting his girlfriend alone. After all, they hadn't met for almost a month and must have been looking forward to seeing each other without hangers on. Y Ch, to my utter surprise, started off on how he didn't see why he should have to meet her alone. Meet her, yes, but why alone? As long as he was seeing her, how did it matter if there were other people joining them? I suggested, though I should have given up by then, that they may have stuff to talk about that would be difficult to discuss in front of others, even close friends. The man refused to see my point! "Come on, we are not those ultra-romantic types, like soppy teenagers or something," he said, or something to that effect.

I was hopping mad by this point. At him, and at all men. I cut him off on the phone, almost rudely I suspect, and turned to vent my spleen at the only man I know who will take it, who had all along been making exaggerated gestures expressing exasperation at my 'interference'. I raved and ranted about how insensitive men were, how they had no concept of privacy, how this guy could at least have acknowledged that they need to meet alone while admitting he couldn't refuse to meet his friend etc etc.

At which point, the Light of my Life replies: "Listen, it's not as if they are going to get much privacy in a coffee shop anyway. I mean, it's a public place after all."

I stood there with my mouth hanging open for about two minutes. Was he suggesting, was he by any chance suggesting, that a couple needs to meet alone only so they can jump each other's bones? That if you are meeting in a public place, it hardly matters whether it's just the two of you or the entire extended list of your friends, since you can't do anything much other than hold hands anyway? He had the good grace to look sheepish, but he couldn't deny that yes, he had sort of meant that. Then he tried to backtrack by saying that this guy probably didn't understand all this yet, that you do need to talk and all, but give him time, he'll get more sensitive (like me) -- all the time implying that he had been browbeaten into sensitivity over the years he has known me and wishes the same fate on all other men.

What does one do with them? Really?

GOF

2005-11-21T16:03:00.000+05:30

Am too lazy (not to mention too busy) to write cohesive, nicely structured post about Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, so just a few points. Oh, and it is by far the best HP film ever, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to crib:

1. Why do they always, but always, sacrifice the story for the spectacle? Can't a balance be found, ever? They just race through the parts of the story in which nobody is fighting anybody and then take their lazy time over the bits where they can show off their sf talents.

2. Is it probable that a real live dragon would be allowed to fly around Hogwarts with some five thousand potential victims around ?

3. How is anybody who doesn't almost know the book by heart supposed to understand anything if there isn't even the semblance of an effort to explain things? What happened to Barty Crouch, Sr? How did Barty Crouch Jr get out of Azkaban? How did he manage to make the switch with the real Mad-Eye? And come on, at least explain why he keeps taking swigs from his hip flask!

4. Emma Watson gets more and more irritating by the day. She has this terribly affected way of speaking, wears low-waist jeans to show off her trim figure and she's just SO not Hermione, and don't believe all these boys who keep raving about her. That's just because she's pretty.

5. Ralph Fiennes has super sexy feet and hands. He'll make a good Voldemort.

6. Draco Malfoy gets sexier and sexier.

7. The lake scenes are simply awesome.

8. The part where Sirius' head pops out of the fireplace was done totally wrong, methought.

9. There is much better chemistry between Harry and Hermione that between her and Ron. How will they resolve this problem later, I wonder?

10. They'll probably change Ginny in the book 6 movie, unless the current one suddenly blossoms or something, poor girl.

Business as usual

2005-11-15T17:26:00.000+05:30

Sometimes, just sometimes when I stop thinking about myself, I wonder what a celebrity's life is really like. I come across them so often in my line of work, but most of the time I am looking at them from my perspective. Like, how long it took me to get them on the phone to answer some silly question, what they must be thinking at being woken up in the middle of the afternoon (after an international flight) by a frantic request (by me) for photographs and how they must have cursed me, what a bitch this one was and what a pompous ass that one was etc. It's only rarely that I stop to look at it from their point of view, really think about what goes on in their lives. I thought about this yesterday on my way home in an auto (really, the way I'm getting obsessed with this word, a Google search on 'auto' will lead people straight to this blog. Not bad, really) and was more puzzled than ever.

First, let me clarify. I am not talking here about the kind of celebrities who were reared to be celebrities, who knew what it was to be one because they had seen Mummyji and Papaji be celebrities and knew that no matter how ugly they were, there was still a fair chance they would get their own shots at celebrity-hood. You know the guys I mean. In fact, these days you can't even really tell how ugly they were to begin with. Neither am I talking about the designer-socialite types who, in spite of frantic Page 3 attendances, are still so next-door.

I was thinking of the celebrities who have normal childhoods like yours or mine, with the usual growing up no-one-gives-me-attention pains. In fact, what started off this remarkably unselfish (for me) chain of thought was reading Great Bong's post on the sting operation of the decade. Now this Tanushree Dutta, I thought, what does it feel like to be born in a small town, go to a regular, rather small-time school, be brought up by regular middle-class Bengali parents and suddenly find yourself being lusted after by most men in the country? (If you happen to be a man and don't lust after her, blame it on the abysmal quality of the men in my life).

Now why her, you may think. Well, because we come from the same pocket of cosmopolitanism, Jamshedpur, (no sniggers, please) and amazingly, we went to the same school as well. She was a few batches junior to me, but knowing my school as I do, it seems incredible to me that someone with that background could one day become a terribly confident exhibitionist. From there, I went to how her parents must react to her celebrity status and to the fact that she seems to have chosen as a prototype not a Nandita Das but that Jhunjhunwala girl from Kaanta Laga. Here I am, cringing while writing a story on modern couples because I'll have to write on stuff like lack of sex and extra marital affairs and my parents will read it, and here's this girl, baring her bosom for
all to see. Just imagine!

Now, don't get me wrong. I have no problems with T Dutta cavorting around in handkerchiefs -- in fact, I rose vociferously to her defence when my mom started telling me all the nasty things they were saying about her in school (and these the same people calling her a chip off the old block and what not when she became Miss India). I'm just talking about the invisible ways your parents continue to influence you even when you are well past the age of caring a damn about what they think. But apparently, being a celebrity, and especially an actress, removes these irritating roadblocks to immortality.

Then there is all this getting used to being recognised everywhere. It happens to all of them – top line, middle line, even the dregs. Somewhere, to some people, they are really big. How DO these people deal with it? I mean, on a daily basis? Take this girl, for instance. There must have been a time when she could just be a young person enjoying the Pujas, but this time, Jamshedpur was all agog because she had given a quote saying she would try to be there for a day. If she had made it, they would probably have attempted to seat her next to the idol or even in place of it. What must it be like not to be able to indulge in a bit of nostalgic revisiting without attracting noisome attention? To not be able to walk down to the corner store to buy a toothbrush? To have to take journalists seriously and repeat the lines the director fed you a zillion times? And say ‘we are just friends’ about five hundred times in your life?

If anybody knows any celebrity who would be willing to submit to really searching questions like these from a nosy journalist, who, for once, only wants to satisfy personal curiousity, you know where to get in touch.

Seven tag

2005-11-14T15:54:00.000+05:30

Halleluia! Somebody tagged me, finally. I have arrived in blogosphere. I am now officially tagged person. People know me. Hell, they even read me. What's more, they really want to know things like this about my life. I am amazing. I am god.

Getting back to the Seven tag:

Seven things I plan to do:

1. Update this blog more regularly. As Jabberwock once said to me,
this prima donna-ish behaviour will just not do.

2. Start reading five newspapers a day. Or at least one. You are
surprised there are that many to be read? Hell, so am I.

3. Buy a two-wheeler so I can stop devising excruciatingly painful
ways to kill Bangalore autowallas

4. Read the 107 books gathering dust on my shelves

5. Stop buying books till I finish the above-mentioned 107

6. Cut down on my mobile phone bill. Convoluted conversations through
SMS cost money, I have realised. It's just cheaper to call

7. Have a baby (blush blush). No, it's not time for the bouquets just
yet, thank you.

Seven things I can't do:

1. Buy the right kind of shoes

2. Learn how to say 'no' graciously in manner of refined society hostess

3. Understand what makes rock music so special

4. Keep my cupboard in any kind of order and REALLY throw out clothes
I don't wear instead of stashing them away in a corner

5. Remember where I put glasses after removing contact lenses, rendering myself temporarily semi-blind

6. Decide whether I really miss Delhi or not

7. Finish work way before deadline so I don't have to look at the empty computer screen on D-Day and whimper softly

Seven things I say quite often

1. "Benson Town chalega? Ten rupees extra"

2. "Hi, this is (me) from (the paper). There is this column we have... umm.. do you have a minute?"

3. "Where the FUCK did I keep my glasses?"

4. "Oh my God!"

5. "Whatever"

6. "The story's working out fine, really fine, really"

7. and all that, you know

Ok, now I even get to tag other people. Feeling of awesome power! I hereby tag:

Tridib

Fool over the Hill (oops, sorry, that's on the hill :D)

Roshomon

Sheetal Vyas

Raconteur

-- A much-empowered me.

Holidays? I'll pass, thanks

2005-11-05T17:04:00.000+05:30

Have been giving this some serious thought, and have finally decided to declare it: I hate holidays. I've had this suspicion growing on me for quite some time now -- that I am that freak of nature, the hater of holidays, but this time, I just know it. Returned from one about a fortnight back, not even one of those three-month American style ones but actually just a week-long quickie, and am still reeling from it. As in feeling the after effects. It's not just being overfed sweets by loving relatives and para-tuto kakimas (which, incidentally, has increased my chances of acquiring diabetes by age 30 by 50 pc). It's not even being unable to get back to work in earnest after the teensiest break and being told that I need a fire lit under me. And it's definitely not because I love coming back to a dysfunctional city where the autowallas and I wage constant bloody war on the streets.

I hate holidays because they disrupt the quiet routine of my life. Those who know me well may be surprised to know I have a quiet routine in my life, but I do. I love getting out of office at 6 or thereabouts, quietly sauntering down to Blossoms to look for a cheap second hand Georgette Heyer or to Koshy's to meet a friend and bitch about work over two pots of tea, or heading to the circulating library near my house that stocks old, old copies of P G Wodehouse novels. On holidays, I can't do any of that. Although I never suspected this till now, I have realised that I am very much a creature of habit. All that talk about loving an unpredictable bohemian life is just so much bullshit. Like most of the stuff I had convinced myself I like in my impressionable youth.

I hate the fact that I can't check my mail during holidays, and can't catch up on the latest controversy to hit blogosphere. I hate missing out on the familiar and comforting phone conversations -- sometimes with the very people I am meeting on my holiday, like my mom. I find myself thinking nostalgically of fighting with my Kannada-speaking maid in the morning, whose only redeeming feature is she makes my tea just so. And if I miss Bangalore at all, it's because of the weather.

Sure, it's fun to meet up with friends in Cal and sneak out for a drink when you know mom-in-law will be asleep by the time you get back. And it's fun to go to Jamshedpur pujas and have terrible chilli chicken at the stalls. But is it worth missing one whole week of obsessive Minesweeper playing? Nah!

In short, I find holidays extremely upsetting and unsettling. Must be a sign of advancing age or something, but then how can that be? My parents used to be inveterate holidayers, packing themselves and the kids off to just about anywhere practically every vacation. One reason could be that any kind of travel, be it by air or train or road, has me convinced it's going to be my last. There must be a word to describe the kind of person I am -- I get sweaty palms at each landing and take-off, can see portents (sentimental ones) in every corner that convince me I'm going to die soon and generally behave in a very morbid, Isadora Wing-kind of way. I have even woken up people travelling with me at the dead of night to make them listen to the sounds made by a speeding train and figure out if it's making the kind of sounds a soon-to-be-derailed train would make.

But wait, there needs to be an amendment here. I wouldn't dislike holidays so much if all I had to do was sit at home and read and watch movies and check up on mail and blogs and everything. Just don't put me on an airplane. That's all I ask out of life, really.

You naeka person!

2005-09-30T12:02:00.000+05:30

Did you know that people in Indonesia have a word that means 'to take off your clothes in order to dance'? That there is a German word for the disappointment you feel when something you were apprehensive about didn't turn out as badly as it might have? And my favourite: the Malay word for 'combing one's hair in anger'. This man has gone and compiled a dictionary of the world's most apt words that describe really obscure and esoteric activities, emotions and events.

Even more hilarious are the alternative answers in Guardian's quiz on the book. For the Indonesian word neko-neko, which actually means... well take the quiz... one of the options they have invented ( I presume) is 'A woman who appears pretty when seen from behind but not from the front'. Unless there IS a word to describe just this in Indonesian, in which case they are the most brilliant race of earth.

I don't know if any Indian words make the list, but am certain that some Bengali ones would have been shoo-ins. Take the much-quoted 'naeka' for example. I don't think there is a word in any language of the world that encompasses all the nuances of this word that describes a coy, sometimes-scheming young woman who is very likely to flutter her eyelashes at men and speaks in a typical vocal intonation that can be extremely grating on the nerves. Or my grandmother's favourite 'dhankach', as in 'don't stand there like a dhankach', which essentially means a person who keeps lounging around foolishly and can't figure out how things are to be done and consequently gets on the nerves of the person who is rushing about doing things in their usual efficient way.

There are many, many more. Readers are welcome to pitch in. Till then, let me speak to my grandmother and get back.

Do I have to?

2005-09-27T14:48:00.000+05:30

Blogger ennui has set in. Am trying to convince myself I still do want to blog, for even as I write my mind is turning off the whole thing and... I ... don't... know... if .... I... really... zzzz

Gosh, that last line sounds right out of a Barbara Cartland novel, in which the swooning heroine shows a marked partiality for ellipses, those much-misunderstood punctuation marks**. "My... Lord... Duke... I cannot conceive how... you ...can bestow... such an honour... upon one... so undeserving ... as... I" she goes before she swoons right into the arms of My Lord Duke, and has her lips and sweet upturned face smothered with ardent kisses.

As is apparent, I have been reading a lot of trash lately. Not Barbara Cartland, thank heavens, but her slightly more upmarket counterpart Georgette Heyer. Actually, she is quite a bit more upmarket, for a quick search tells me people have taken her seriously enough to write research papers on her. At least, her heroines are mostly spirited, almost hoydenish, and extremely bold creatures who never swoon. One thing they are not is 'missish' and to know the exact connotations of that word, one would have to familiarise oneself extensively with Ms Heyer's works, which is more than what I can expect my readers to do.

Can't bring myself to do more serious reading these days. Am telling myself it's just a phase and I'll turn back into my literary self but there's a horrible feeling deep inside that I'm turning into my mother who reads Sidney Sheldon at age 50 with great gusto. A common fear, I am told, as one approaches 30 -- that one is turning into one's mother. But seriously, though I haven't sunk as low as Sidney Sheldon, anything that needs more than one-tenth of my attention while reading is not being read. Hell, the only thing I'm doing these days with any amount of enthusiasm and animation is playing Minesweeper. My score is at an all-time high (141 seconds to complete the expert level) and constant efforts are being made to improve it.

Ok, so Minesweeper. My dedication to the game surprises me constantly, for I am totally those non-game types, I can't begin to understand why people would spend hours playing Bounce Ball on their mobile phones or Motoracer on their computers. But put me in front of a PC and watch me reach inexorably for that Minewseeper icon, in yet another effort to beat J K Rowling whose expert time is somewhere around 120, I believe. I write two lines of whatever crap story I am working on at the minute and play a game. I can't talk on the phone without clicking away simultaneously (and some of my best times have been achieved while this huge multi-tasking experiment is on) and I've been doing this for well nigh a year now. What it is about this game when worthier interests have been gleefully abandoned is something I'll have to figure out while I'm playing the next game. I have no doubt there are people who have better records but I don't think they can touch me on dedication.

P.S. Started playing Minesweeper even as I wrote this, prompting a long-suffering colleague, whom my click-clicking must drive crazy, to say 'They should give you a Loyal User Award, these Minesweeper people'. Ha! Anybody know of international tournaments, or anything? Can already see myself as Sania Mirza-type celebrity, including visions of interviewing self for the ol' paper.

** Lynne Truss, I have failed you, for despite your best efforts the right way to use them eludes me, too.

Take foot, insert slowly in mouth

2005-08-30T13:51:00.000+05:30

Watched Iqbal yesterday. As I am fond of saying, I live in hope. And this time, it was justified. Eating crow, eating crow. Will refrain from doing full-length analysis of said film, but suffice it to say is eminently watchable in feel-good, pulling-at-heartstrings kind of way. Heck, I always knew Nagesh had it in him ;)

And please refrain from pointing out that that's the most shamelessly barefaced turnaround of the century.

Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi

2005-08-24T17:21:00.000+05:30

This post was brought on by one of the comments to my previous post about Nagesh Kukunoor. Sinfully Pinstripe (and one day you'll explain to me the significance of that intriguing blog handle) said, "I almost physically assaulted my roommate when he said that the only recent neo-hindi movie he could compare Hazaaron with in terms of quality was Teen Deewarein." It was also brought on by the fact that I finally watched Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi this weekend, after being exhorted to do to so by friends for four months. I watched it on a VCD with scratchy sound, in a cacaphonic drawing room that had, among other things, a noisy dog. I watched enthralled, engrossed and haven't stopped thinking about it ever since.

I would want to physically assault anybody who compared Hazaaron with Teen Deewarein, too, Pinstripe. Teen Deewarein – well, you just feel like saying 'poor guy, at least he tried'. The raw passion of Hazaaron is something you take away with you – it sticks on you the way a passionate kiss does long after it's over. No PhD on the frustrated angst of the Naxalite movement, the JP movement, the fear and the paranoia of the Emergency could have done a more thorough job of explaining what it actually meant to live in those times. What it meant to be young in those times. I didn't, and I have had a very apolitical youth, but the film has a way of getting under your skin, of making you restless and frustrated and just a bit more aware of your world.

Then, hardly ever have I come across a film title that so magnificently captures its essence. A thousand desires – the impossible desires of youth and that youthful arrogance that there is nothing in the world as important as them.

The film traces the lives of three students from Delhi University (and it felt strange to be back in the Hindu College corridors and hostel lawns – I kept expecting to see friends popping up into the screen) from 1969 to 1976. Siddharth is an idealistic young man born into a privileged background (money and idealism weren't as completely irreconcilable back then, it seems), Vikram an ambitious small-town, middle-class boy with a Gandhian father, and the third is Geeta, the girl they both love – a sophisticated Stephanian Tam Bram with foreign education behind her.

The way the movie unhurriedly, subtly yet thoroughly goes into the backgrounds of these characters – their families, beliefs, motivations and antecedents – is in itself a treat to watch. Settings are recreated with such complete attention to detail that you can almost smell the breakfast coffee in Geeta's house – though the scene is less than a minute long. Yet, there is none of that fake sophistication in terms of set design one finds in many recent films – that maniacal wish to make everything look picture perfect. When Siddharth and Geeta make love on the floor of what looks like a college laboratory, there is none of that orchestrated, almost choreographed love-making one has come to expect from movies. It is as clumsy as these moments almost always are – but it unambiguously and beautifully conveys desperation and urgency.

Then there are the host of minor characters you keep wishing the director had explored more extensively – so full of potential are they. As fellow blogger Fool on the Hill said in his post on Hazaaron, these characters with their typical (though not clichéd or overused) regional idiosyncrasies recreate the environment perfectly. The police officer looking for Naxalites hiding inside the village school, the old man in the hospital bed next to Siddharth’s, the college friend who backs out of the village project at the last minute, Siddharth’s father the retired judge, Vikram’s father the Congressman. Also, as a friend pointed out, the treatment is not heavy handed or overtly sombre – there’s a wry, self-effacing, very Bihari, humour that alleviates the seriousness throughout the film.

And beyond the politics of the time, the love story. How each one of the protagonists realises their desire in the end, though in ways they had never dreamt of. And the music – ah the music. Bawra mann haunts me day and night –those of you who haven’t heard it yet, please do so at the earliest. The lyrics are simple and poignant and so beautifully poetic.

In fact, they carry the essence of the story in them. Sad, even tragic, but ultimately hopeful.

Not again!

2005-08-11T22:35:00.000+05:30

Nagesh Kukunoor has directed a film. Again. Much as one would want him to go back to being an environmental engineer or whatever he was before he started this unfortunate tryst with movie-making, the man perseveres.

This time, it’s a film called Iqbal, said to be about a deaf and dumb (ok, verbally challenged) village boy who wants to join the Indian cricket team and is trained by a character portrayed by Naseeruddin Shah, who for some inexplicable reason seems to like Nagesh K and the films he makes. He acted in Teen Deewarein before this.

I don’t know what Iqbal will be like; I only have the power to pre-judge it by the other Kukunoor films fate has consistently thrown my way. I saw Hyderabad Blues when I was in first year of college – and along with Bombay Boys, it had seemed, that time, like a breath of fresh air. Yet, there was a nagging feeling somewhere that something was not quite right. I was not in raptures over it, as I was over the infinitely better Bombay Boys. And a second viewing a year later told me why: it was such a shoddy film! I mean, it is all very well to have snappy dialogue in a few scenes, zoom in on a few typical characters of middle class India (eg the pallu-dropping aunt) and talk about NRI angst. But whatever happened to acting, and what about a good script, and some decent production values? Ok, so it was made on a shoestring budget, but is that a good enough excuse for turning out a film that could have been made better just by raising the standards of the few things you don’t need money to: screenplay, dialogue, acting? The dialogue, for instance, though effective in parts, was in general very trite – especially in the scenes that were not meant to be funny. And the standards of acting were lower than those of C-grade Bollywood skin flicks. (An aside here: Nagesh’s partner, professionally, is this charming woman called Elahe Hiptoolah, who likes to remain behind the scenes but is probably forced to do cameos in his films time and again. She has more acting talent in her little finger than most of the other cast he assembles for his amateurish ensemble movies. A genuinely under-used actress, for I haven’t seen her in any other films.)

Ok, but the film still had a breezy snappiness about it that washed down not so badly. Then came Bollywood Calling, again a film that had moments of genuine funniness but the deplorable tendency to sink into complete bathos. I mean, what was all that stuff about that firang guys having stomach cancer and all all about? Sheeesh!

In Teen Deewarein, Kukunoor was clearly out of his depth. And it would have been a better film if he had not made Jackie Shroff’s character spout terrible poetry and had refrained from acting in it himself.

But the worst film Kukunoor has made, till date, is the sequel to Hyderabad Blues. Those who have been unfortunate enough to watch it will know what I am talking about when I say there can be no worse film. It was a travesty of everything film-making has ever stood for, believe me. It had no script, no depth, no genuine insight into marriage (which it was supposedly about), no good acting to redeem it (again, the great director couldn’t stay away from the greasepaint) and was the most unintentionally funny film I have ever seen. Even the unintentional funny moments became a bit tedious after some time, it was that bad.

Now, what amazes me in all this is, how has this man who has consistently churned out bad cinema manage to sustain his credibility not only as a well-known film-maker, but as a ‘serious’ film-maker who is ‘committed to cinema’ and grandiose stuff like that? How does he get people to take him seriously, after making one amateurish film after the other? When it must be apparent to all that ALL his films have that feel of school skits hurriedly put together for a moral science class?

Listen to him go about the underdog in an interview (http://www.indiafm.com/news/2005/08/09/5604/) about his latest film: ““I’ve watched a number of sports-based movies in U.S. (sic) and most of them revolved around underdogs. By an uncanny coincidence, I would be rooting for the underdog in the film, you want him/her to succeed at the end of the day. That’s the essence of IQBAL as well.” What erudition! What insight! What an uncanny coincidence that ninety per cent of us also find ourselves rooting for the underdog ninety per cent of the time!

Even though all this vitriol may give the impression that the man has slighted me personally in the course of my illustrious journalistic career, I actually liked him the one time I met and interviewed him. A bit too full of himself with a tendency to take himself too seriously, but a genuinely likeable fellow in all other ways. At that interview (just after Teen Deewarein was released), he had told me some really great-sounding ideas that were festering within him. One was about an Indian cook in London who falls in love with a white woman; another was about Indian immigrant workers in Florida orange fields. I sincerely hope he turns over these ideas to a more competent film-maker than himself – for he knows how to kill a good idea like no one else.

And with my kind of luck, Iqbal will turn out to be a great film and everybody will hate me for being so mean to Nagesh. Sigh! I live in hope.

After the flood

2005-08-03T14:18:00.000+05:30

Came all the news reports. And the inevitable stories of celebrities stranded without baths and cars and deprived of prized cabbages in back gardens. You had a picture of a dead baby killed in an unnecessary stampede being carried to the burial ground by its father, and next to it, Jaya Bachchan feeling thankful that she had a tall son whom the 'flood' in their house couldn't drown.

Next day, a newbie Bombay paper carried a full investigative report, with research worthy of a PM's state visit, on whether Ekta Kapoor's BMW 7 series had been damaged by water flooding her basement parking lot or not. They spoke to her, her brother, her colleagues, the garage mechanic, the garage owner, neighbours -- everybody. There were quotes that went something like 'a green BMW 7 that certainly looks like Ekta's did come in for repairs, so it must have been hers that got damaged' and Tushar Kapoor vehemently denying the allegation that their cars, THEIR CARS, could be vulnerable to something as trivial as 944 mm of rain.

I was reminded of the Delhi Times report that came in just after the Tsunami tut tutting about how Sandeep Chowta's back garden in Chennai was washed away.

Am scanning the papers for more such frustratingly hilarious items. Please report.

Meets and all

2005-08-01T21:52:00.000+05:30

There was a bloggers’ meet in Bangalore. Last week. Wednesday. Have been putting off writing about it ever since. Not because there was nothing to write about or anything, but was in very lazy mood. Also, was enjoying attention received by Harry Potter post, so didn’t want to distract people from it with yet another scintillating post about the evening that was the Bangalore Boggers’ Meet Episode 1.

It was scheduled for 1900 hours Wednesday last. When I walked into the best Barista outlet in India on St Mark’s Road (no, the coffee is as predictable as ever but it’s in the huge ground floor hall of an ancient colonial building with old stone walls that used to house, I think, the Bible Society), there was a group of four boys (sorry, boys) sitting awkwardly on and around the sofa in the corner below the TV.

The weird thing was, when I had built a mental image of what the blogger’s meet might look like, that’s exactly where I’d placed the entire group in my mind. Which goes to show, I suppose, that velvet sofas are really good for stimulating conversation or how boring and predictable we are (I mean, why didn’t anybody think of plonking themselves on the Barista counter?) or some such sad truth. Anyway.

So the group was all there. Arka, who was the only person there whose appearance I was vaguely familiar with, and Mandar and Sanket and Sridhar. All they needed was a little bit of spark that was duly provided by me. Soon other people joined, such as Sunayana, Venks and Jayashree. Lot of stimulating conversation happened (velvet sofa contributed, am sure) – on variety of topics such as each others’ blogs, other people’s blogs, when next blog meet would be, Harry Potter… my memory begins to fade. Age, must be.

On the whole, not bad. We’ve even started a Bangalore bloggers’ Google group. The next meet was on Saturday, which I missed because of demanding friend from Delhi. Another meet scheduled for 15 August weekend, and am fervently hoping the date just happens to be convenient because of long weekend and all and has nothing to with patriotism etc. I mean, dedicated as I have become to all things blogging, I draw the line at sitting down and talking about the state of the nation and how the economy is doing and things like that. Can’t imagine anything more corny. *Shudder shudder.* (Am at heart deep social thinker and all, I’ll have you know, but prefer to keep my thoughts for deep PhD am doing on said subject.)

To make up for lack of social insight I might have provided, have offered to turn up in Tricolour sequined mini-dress. How’s that as mark of deep and unwavering patriotism?

Well, I have to do this. Just check the name of this blog, for heaven's sake!

2005-07-18T18:23:00.000+05:30

I did speed-read Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince through most of Saturday night. It was worth every minute of it. Thought of a good many things to write about on the blog while I was reading it, though it all eludes me now.

When you read a book like that, not letting go of it for even a minute, not even for loo breaks, the inevitable happens. You finish it too soon. When I had just started reading it, there was this terrible decision I had to reach. Should I take it slow and easy, read it chapter by chapter, savouring the feeling of actually reading a new Harry Potter book – one which holds surprises and unexpected twists and turns, one that I didn't know like Jack and Jill went up the hill, or should I just whoosh through it like I always do? This whole tortuous decision-making process lasted all of two seconds while I continued gobbling it up like I always knew I would.

When I had finished it less than 24 hours later, I felt classically bereft and lonely. (Ok, anybody who thinks this is sinking into bathos obviously doesn’t understand a thing about Harry Potter and can leave right now). And what irked me most on Sunday morning was the fact that nobody I knew had read the book – so I couldn’t discuss it in excruciating detail like I was dying to. People just kept calling me to ask who had died – although not really expecting me to play spoiler -- but which I did with much relish.

And then I realised that there wasn’t much to discuss about the book, actually. I mean, there aren’t too many surprises left anymore. I can sort of guess what will happen now. I’m sure it will happen as startlingly and uniquely as everything happens in HP, but what I mean is, most of the really big questions have been answered.

Really, I could be quite cynical about it at one level, and still thoroughly enjoy it in another. I mean, there were some things I could sense coming from a mile away, rather, from the second chapter onwards, but it was still a kick to find out that it was so. I knew there couldn’t be such old-fashioned, unworldly, un-sexed up 16-year-olds in all of England, that Harry and Ron seemed more out of Tom Brown than a school in modern-day England, but somehow I was just glad they were such gentlemen and not vandalising perverts. When a book can suck you into its world like that, I think it’s quite, well, magical.

It’s rather like reading a satisfying Agatha Christie – if you stop to think about it after you’ve finished reading, there are a million highly improbable things you can point towards. But most of the time, you just close the book with a satisfied sigh and don’t want to think about the million improbable things.

There are some books you can’t classify as good or bad, and you don’t even want to decide their merits or lack thereof – you just love them for being there. Well, I’m a bit like that about Harry Potter.

Be prepared!

2005-07-14T14:15:00.000+05:30

Just came across an online guide to blogging safely. Have discovered that I have flouted all rules of safe blogging, especially by giving away name of organisation I work for etc. Hell, and my url is actually part of my name! The guide tells me I haven't made myself anonymous enough. Am shaking in my boots now.

Given my track record for indiscretion and landing myself in several hot water situations (though only in Real Life, yet) through over-enthusiasm and general lack of paranoia about what-will-people-think, I have a sinking feeling this may also come back to haunt me one day.

On a more serious note, not having to check over your shoulders constantly was what blogging was all about initially, wasn't it? It's frightening how the system catches up with us subversive elements of society. Whatever happened to a little old-fashioned system-bashing? Died in the London underground, I suspect.

P.S. This is slightly out of the above context, but just discovered something that's so terribly ironic I had to tell someone. The spell check on the posting field of blogger.com doesn't recognise the word 'blogging' and wants to replace it with flogging! On BLOGGER.COM!

2005-07-12T15:02:00.000+05:30

Am slowly getting sucked into Harry Potter 6 obsession. Am thinking of little else these days. Have told friends to lay off this weekend since will shut myself off from society. Will lock myself into bedroom and speed read my advance copy booked two months ago. Am constantly worrying about how to get through next four days. Am re-reading two-year-old stories in Guardian on HP and OOTP. (Just came across brilliant review of OOTP -- go read).

I have PR woes too

2005-07-08T15:49:00.000+05:30

I am just sick of telling PR people in Bangalore that my newspaper (oh and I'm also sick of maintaining this anonymity and gravely saying 'my newspaper' as if I bloody own the place) so anyway, I'm sick of telling PR people in Bangalore that The Telegraph does not have an edition in Bangalore. I am sick of admitting to them with an involuntary guilty twinge that no, it does not have an edition in Delhi, and no, not Bombay either -- and hearing successively more depressed ohs. If that makes me rank somewhere close to my defunct school magazine in PR and media value, well, as they say in the corporate world, they can take their business elsewhere.

But seriously, why are these people so abysmally ignorant? I'm sure even the average readers of newspapers on the streets of Bangalore know that there is no newspaper called The Telegraph published here, some may even vaguely be aware of its actual geographical location, so what excuse do people working in a media-related industry have for not knowing this basic fact?

Hello Mr PM? What did you have for dinner last night?

2005-07-06T17:20:00.000+05:30

Of all the things I hate about my job (and there are several: they pay me peanuts, they pay me peanuts, they pay me peanuts) there is one I absolutely abhor. And that’s having to call up random celebrities and asking them embarrassingly personal questions such as what they like to do on their weekends, what’s their favourite cuisine /drink/vacation/brand of shoes, hair gel, shampoo… what kind of music they like listening to while negotiating killing traffic on the road and what’s their partner’s favourite sexual position. Ok, not the last one, but I’m sure we’ll get there some day.

I don’t understand why lifestyle journalists are made to make such fools of themselves. You are expected to just call somebody you don’t know from adam, simper a bit, repeat the name of your newspaper thrice (unless you work for the TOI or for my paper in Calcutta), be told rudely that the person you are calling is busy shooting/partying/attending another fashion show or whatever, asked to call up later – which, in the terrible unfairness of things, you just have to do unless you want to join the unemployed millions. There is nothing in the world as humiliating, ignominious, demeaning and frustrating as having to do this week after fucking week. How I cringe and blush and swear – but I just have to make that call and sound sweet and charming and interested.

Looking at it from the celebrities’ point of view, what must it feel like to be called up in the middle of the afternoon and asked about the ‘turning points’ in their life? (Yes I just did that to another hapless Bollywood type actually Arshad Warsi I quite like the guy think he’s very cool and he was very sweet on the phone but that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing the guy was in Goa for heaven’s sake!) Do they get a kick out of it? Do they have a chart for every day of the week, keeping count of how many journalists called to ask inane questions? Do they make fun of us after they’ve been thoroughly sweet and understanding on the phone – turn to their friends and say ‘what suckers’? I suspect they do. I would.

Now I know this has a larger purpose and is not merely a tactic devised by editors to divest young, idealistic, swollen-headed journalists of their egos. Not only do celebrity quotes act as great space fillers and breakers on the pages, you also get to decorate the said pages with pictures of pretty people. And I admit, when I’m reading other magazines and newspapers, my eyes automatically wander to the bit where we have John Abraham expounding on the merits of his latest brand of shoe polish or whatever. I just resent the fact that I should have to do this – that too in the middle of working on a tough story on Bangalore’s retail history and suchlike. I mean, surely I’m above this? But no, even my colleague who’s spent 10 years in the company and gets all these difficult stories no one’s even dreamt of has to stoop to this.

I know these reader fellows might like this stuff (though you won’t get a single soul to admit this, but believe me, they’re lying) but must the deciders of newspaper content submit some of their best talent (ahem) to this kind of ignominy and discomfiture? And whose life would be enriched by knowing that Rina Dhaka likes wearing white cigarette pants embellished with crystals? Why don’t these reader types also get a grip on their lives and stop being so celebrity crazy and take out dharnas and all to make newspapers (at least mine) stop publishing such tripe, especially when most of them keep cribbing all the time about how frivolous the content has become and all that?

P.S. Was just told they don’t have a picture of Arshad Warsi so I’ll have to get someone else. Tell me why I should go on living.

Batman Begins (Yawn! Must it?)

2005-07-04T11:38:00.000+05:30

Went for Batman Begins last night and fought overwhelming sleepiness all through. Now, I have nothing against the movie: in fact, I have absolutely no opinion on it. Blame it on the lateness of the hour -- it was the 10:15 pm show -- and the fact that the night before had been spent in a drunken stupor and not the refreshing, invigorating sleep I usually require to drag myself from day to day, but I just couldn't help nodding off and waking up with starts whenever there was a sudden burst of noise, which there was rather a lot of. All I remember about the last half an hour of the film is that lots of buildings were calamitously crashing to the ground, bridges were breaking impressively, a manic train was plunging to the ground and then suddenly all was calm and there was Batman (in Bruce Wayne avatar) chopping wood or something. No, sorry, he was actually boarding up a well.

It would have helped if Batman had been better looking -- that Christian Bale character looked more like Ratman to me. The only passable looking guy in the whole film was that psychiatrist character, and then he was wearing a gunny bag mask most of the time.

According to Roger Ebert, "Batman Begins at last penetrates to the dark and troubled depths of the Batman legend, creating a superhero who, if not plausible, is at least persuasive as a man driven to dress like a bat and become a vigilante." The absurdity of it makes me want to laugh. Ok, so here's a man who wants to dress up like a bat and save people. Now if you want me to believe he's not, well, batty, put him in a less serious and less earnestly dark setting, for heaven's sake! Make it more like the frothy and cheerful Superman, I say! On one hand, you have this gloomy city -- very believable in its tales of corruption and its dark, miserable depths --and on the other, you have this totally absurd and fantastical thing of a caped crusader fighting evil. Who goes to Tibet or wherever to seek a blue flower that makes people see fire breathing dragons and all. Which is ok in itself but not if it feels like these guys were trying to make a Gangs of New York with a caped crusader.

Do film-makers who make superhero movies need to take their subjects a little less seriously? Anyway, whatever, they do at least need to find better looking leading men, if you ask me.

Book tag

2005-07-01T11:53:00.000+05:30

Nobody ever thought of book-tagging me. Why am I so unliterary and dumb? Why? Why? (Said in the desperate manner perfected by darling Bridget Jones, my fiction alter-ego. I know, I know, all women say so, but with me, it’s like, uncanny. But more on that later). The point is, NOBODY, not even my so-called friends from Delhi’s lit journo circle (in a very loose sense of the word; what I actually mean is the people, including myself, who used to frequent sundry book launches together to get drunk on free booze and laugh at everybody else present and act fashionably cynical) thought of book tagging me. Sniff.

So I will do it on my own. Firstly, though, I must confess that like every one who likes to think of themselves as ‘serious readers’, I haven’t read half the books I feel I ought to have. And most of the time, when I get my hands on such books, they turn out to be completely unreadable. I'm not saying they really are, but maybe I’m too dumb to enjoy them or something. (God, how I love being self-loathing and uncomplimentary towards self). Lately, I have decided to give up the pretence and just read what I enjoy reading. Like Harry Potter 5, which I am currently devouring for the third time in preparation of Book 6, the coming of which is one of the high points of my life right now.

So here goes:

Total Number of Books I Own: Between the pardner and myself, anywhere between 1000 and 1500.

Last Book I Bought:
Them by Joyce Carol Oates. Had never read Oates before, haven’t finished the book yet and am not likely to. On the other hand, I just might. It's a bit depressing, but I think I will give it another try.

Last Book I Read:
Re-read Bridget Jones’s Diary and was astounded by similarities between said diary writer and self. Oh, I’ve said that already, haven’t I?

Five Books that Mean a Lot to Me:

I think when you talk about books that mean a lot to you, you tend to go back to the ones you read when you were growing up. I was surprised to find how many Bengali books I was thinking of, though my Bengali reading has been pretty erratic of late.

1.Badshahi Aangti by Satyajit Ray: One of the first Feluda books I read (was 10 or so), which led to my falling promptly and violently in love with the then 28-year-old Feluda, for whom I’ve nursed this secret passion all my life. Was very disappointed by Ray’s not talking about Feluda’s love life at all – used to spend hours imagining myself as this grown-up female side-kick who has a subtle yet passionate romance with him.

2.The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger: Quite possibly my favourite book of all time. What can I say about it? Only how it touched me personally. Read it when I was 16, just the right age, I should think, and found it so impossibly funny and touching that it quite broke my heart. Resolved then and there not to grow up to be phoney – only suave as hell.

3.Pather Panchali by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay: Those who have seen the movie have only appreciated Ray’s craft, not too many people know what a great, great writer Bibhutibhushan was. Even today, Tagore and Sarat Chandra are probably the two names people associate most commonly with Bengali literature, but Bibhutibhushan is in a different class. His writing is very undramatic, very understated and unlike in Tagore and Sarat Chandra, there are no larger-than-life characters. Just very ordinary people made unforgettable by this amazing writer.

4.To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: Usual reasons. Loved Scout Finch, loved Atticus, loved the undercurrent of sadness (but sadness minus morbidity, which is the way I like it) running through the book. It made me understand how all childhoods are a bit sad, when looked back upon.

5. Fear of Flying by Erica Jong: Again, read this at a very impressionable age. But Isadora Wing has always been somebody I have been lovingly indulgent towards and exasperated with all my life. The sequel was terribly disappointing, though.

2005-06-28T17:43:00.000+05:30

I have promised so many people to write them personal accounts of my recent Star Cruises trip (ahem) that if I actually sat down to do it, I would have to transform into the kind of super-efficient superwoman who actually keeps promises who I passionately hate. So here's the low-down that appeared in my newspaper (that should explain the plug-speak littered throughout -- but if you've been wined and dined in the best tradition for three days, well, why wouldn't you give them some free publicity?). I love junkets -- except when they turn out to be like the one to Malaysia in which we were taken to one-lion safaris and cheesy carnivals with dancers from Belarus and bike-riding chimps and cowboys with Oriental features and American cheerleader-type dancers with pom-poms and all. And fed Indian food throughout. I am thoroughly sick of the sight of dal makhani made Malaysian style which is no style at all. Anyway, I digress. More on that later. Here goes Star Cruises -- which was also tacky in a way, but a nice, luxurious, red-carpet sort of way.

Living it up on the high seas
It’s a great life once you’ve made it up the gangway.

Halfway up the gangway into SuperStar Virgo, I suffer a moment of panic. Where are those sea-sickness pills I’d packed away so carefully, I mutter, rifling through an over-stuffed bag. (None of this actually happened, not really, but what the heck, you’ve got to start with a bang. And nothing like an impending disaster to get the readers, you know, like, involved). Having grown up on stories of sea-crossings in which delicately nurtured ladies are reduced to being ignominiously sick all over their hot, cramped cabins, I knew those pills would probably save my life on this three-day voyage from Singapore and back.

Seeing me about to disembark in search of the nearest pharmacy to stock up on the pills that I have left on the bedside table of the hotel room, a gallant co-passenger who has been on this particular ship before comes to the rescue. “Never fear. No sea-sickness on this baby,” he says, pointing to the huge mass of the luxury liner that is to be home for the next three days and nights. (PR plug! PR plug!)

And looking up at the 13 decks (floors for you landlubbers) that make up the gigantic SuperStar Virgo, gleaming white in the hot Singapore sunlight, all fears recede. This is no rickety sail-boat from Pirates of the Caribbean — this is a true-blue luxury cruise ship, equipped to accommodate upwards of 5,000 people at a time and entertain them for every moment they are on board. Anything that looks so solid and secure could be nothing but impeccably safe, I tell myself, at least safer than those flying machines we keep gadding about in (genuinely funny comment, I thought). “Yes, that’s what the Titanic’s passengers told themselves,” a pessimistic fellow traveller says gloomily. “Yes, but are you expecting icebergs off the Malaysian coast?” I retort. (Lifted straight from conversation had much before I left on the trip. But what, do you expect me to tell the readers how we sedately went up the re-carpeted gangway and nothing remotely interesting happened, except ho-hoing arrival of a Garfield character who we were forced to pose for pictures with?)

On the opulent main deck of SS Virgo, we are greeted by kimono-clad women holding trays of bubbly (really, really, they did! I was so excited. Imagine – champagne on arrival!). This is the life, we sigh. The ship is yet to sail, and we are taken on a grand tour of all it has to offer. (Safely avoid rest of para – all plug speak). The list draws up to something like this: swimming pool with jacuzzi at each corner that would put any respectable five-star to shame, kiddies’ pool, sports deck with jogging track, basketball court and miniature golf, 13 restaurants and bars on board including four speciality cuisine restaurants that serve Indian, authentic Chinese, Japanese and Italian food, numerous watering holes including a karaoke bar and an open-air tavern, a gym, a beauty salon, an ice-cream parlour, a library, a business centre, a conference room, an auditorium, a casino — whew! (And may the man who insisted on taking us around to even the tiniest, littlest, tackiest entertainment the ship had to offer have to sing in his own effing karaoke bar for the rest of life)

Finally our tired feet are led towards our cabins — which, thankfully, are nothing like the cramped lodgings of the Moby Dick variety but come with double bed, attached bathroom, a TV (for those who draw their life-force from repeated re-runs of Friends) and, wonder of wonders, an honest-to-God balcony that looks right into the vast blueness of the ocean. (Nothing to complain here. How sad, I love saying bitchy things about things I secretly enjoy.)

(Avoid, avoid!) These are the Balcony Class rooms — one of the five kinds of rooms and suites available, the others being inside staterooms (no view), oceanview staterooms (with a porthole, those looking for some genuine shipboard experience should go for this), oceanview staterooms with a window (about the same size as the previous) and the junior suites and executive suites (for the luxury-minded).

Dinner is at the richly appointed Italian restaurant on board, Palazzo. Excellent food tastes better served in baroque surroundings, we decide, as the fettuccine in butter sauce I am having, literally melts in the mouth. After that, it’s time for sipping wine at the appropriately named Galaxy of the Stars, a glass-covered deck on level 12 towards the front, sorry, the forward, of the ship. (One night we stumbled upon some ‘adult game competitions’ going on here. No, nothing remotely naughty. Only fat Punju men from Delhi making fools of themselves playing a sort of musical chairs minus the chairs and plus some hats)

The 3-days-3-nights package on SS Virgo that starts from Singapore each Sunday and docks back on Wednesday takes in two pit-stops at Penang in Malaysia and Phuket, Thailand. The next day, we land into the blistering heat and killing humidity of Penang around mid-morning. This island state off the western coast of Malaysia was once a fishing port and is now a thriving business centre and beach-bummers’ paradise — thanks mostly to its stretch of sea-front shops and restaurants catering to the tourist crowd called Batu Feringhi. Famed for its much-rocking nightlife, the good Batu is denied to us as we have to return on board ship by early evening. Air conditioning never felt so good. (Penang terrible let-down. Was taken to batik factory. Wanted to tell them am coming from shonar bangla where batik was invented. I think)

The regular night-time entertainment on SS Virgo is the Lido show — a Las Vegas style live show with dance and acrobatic acts, the brochure promises. What it doesn’t inform is that these will take place simultaneously, with little Chinese kids pirouetting on hoops mid-air even as samba dancers do their thing on the stage below. (Horrible, traumatic experience. At one time, there were these three puny kids who had stuck themselves, bum first, into a sort of bin thing and that was supposed to be like really acrobatic) A bit of a hotchpotch, as one can imagine, but the men, apparently, have something to look forward to as there’s an ‘adult’ version of the same later in the night. The word ‘topless’ is whispered. The ladies look the other way as the men try hard not to look interested. (was told later old hags tried to look demure while showing nothing. Said men were severely disappointed)

The next day, we say land ahoy off the coast near Phuket. It will be just as hot as Penang, we are warned the night before, only to wake up in the morning to see the emerald Phuket in the distance through a mist of light drizzle and a lazy, cool sea breeze. After a few brief and unfortunately lacklustre visits to a cashewnut factory and a jewellery and artefacts store that reminds one strongly of the various state emporia back home, we are let loose into a departmental store to get a taste of the famed shopping in Thailand. This is where most Indians head to stock up on the gifts that they must take back for the three hundred and forty nine relatives back home — and it’s not difficult to figure out why, with T-shirts as cheap as 80 Thai baht and quality footwear for around 300 baht. Since the baht is only marginally higher in value than Indian currency (about 0.25 paise per rupee), shopping in Thailand is minus the constant headache of having to make impossible multiplications in your head to convert costs into Indian rupees, a fact that undoubtedly contributes towards its popularity. Besides cheap DVDs and Thai massages, of course. (Amazing, marvelous Phuket! Where else would one manage to get all the cheesy gifts one had to get for the loads of freeloaders at home? Oops, some of them could be reading this!)

It’s disembarkation time next evening, and we bid farewell to our own favourite nooks and crannies of the ship, armed with bottles of wine procured with left-over dining credit. (Undignified last minute scramble while moaning ‘why did I treat everybody to that last drink yesterday? why? why?’)It’s good-bye to the good life for us as we land into hot and muggy Singapore.

(Plug warning) The good news? The Star Cruises family is starting its first Indian cruise aboard the Super Star Libra. The ship will be homeported in Mumbai from September and after a series of one-night cruises from Mumbai, she will do regular four-night destination cruises to Kadmat in virgin Lakshwadeep and Goa, two-night cruises to Goa and 1-night weekend getaway cruises off Mumbai.

La Dolce Vita, here I come.

2005-06-21T17:34:00.000+05:30

In Bengali, parineeta means betrothed or spoken for. The root of the word is 'parinato', which means mature. It’s a word I would hesitate to use about the latest Bong weepie from Bollywood everyone's talking about. Sarat Chandra's novel, which has been ‘adapted’ for the film -- and Vidhu Vinod announces this cleverly before the Bong purists can cry 'cholbe na cholbe na' -- was a mature love story. Yes, even though the protagonists were ridiculously young by our standards. In the novel, Lalita is 15 and Shekhar barely older. (It's a different debate how on earth they could be so bloody precocious and that's a problem I've always had with Sarat babu but we'll settle that later.)

In all respects, Parineeta is a well-researched, well-shot and considerably moving and engaging film. But I have a few irreconcilable problems with it. Firstly, it is a tad too well-shot. I completely agree with my friend Sumit Bhattacharya who reviewed it for Rediff that it is just too pretty-pretty. It's a montage of set-pieces, each very eye-catching and picture perfect -- yet not really soul-satisfying. It is all very well to do that in a music video where you have to grab viewers in the split second before they switch channels to AXN Dhamaka, but Pradeep Sarkar seems unable to get over the music video hangover.

Which brings me to my second problem. Why are Hindi film heroines ALWAYS so well-dressed? I mean, it's a great change to see film-makers pay so much attention to the look of a character and not dress all the girls uniformly in frumpy frocks or loud salwaar kameezes, no matter who they are playing -- tough policewomen or idiotic college girls -- as was the trend in numerous Madhuri Dixit/Sridevi starrers till as late as the late nineties. But now they've gone and overdone it. These days, all the women look so bloody well-groomed it's difficult to imagine they are for real and do real things like take the bus to work.

All great directors pay attention to how their characters are dressed, but the difference between them and the mediocres is they do it without looking like they've tried really really hard. With these guys -- and you take any of them: SLB, Farhan Akhtar and now Pradeep Sarkar or Vidhu Vinod -- you just know they’ve spent hours with the image consultant to decide whether the heroine should wear a red-bordered dhakai saree in that scene or the plain blue one.

This happens in Parineeta too, besides the fact that Sarkar gets quite a few period details wrong. Back in the sixties, young girls wore short-kurta churidar ensembles but they were NOT crystal-encrusted J J Valaya rip-offs (so says the veteran fashion hack in me). There were Ambassador cars on the roads and people did not zip around in vintage baby Austins.

And once and for all, Bengalis have no pre-shaadi sangeet ceremony with old fat aunt singing bawdy songs. Not now, and certainly not fifty years back. What was Sarkar thinking? He could just have asked the many mashis and pishis and kakimas that abound in any Bong phamily! He is a Bong himself, though after seeing the film, I doubt it. How could he have let most of the actors get away with their own interpretations of how the name Lalita ought to be pronounced? They all have their own versions and not one, apart from the Bengali actors, gets it right. To put the record straight (on the off chance that Sarkar or any of his diction-challenged actors are reading this), the Bengali 'Lolita' is not pronounced the same way as the Nabokov Lolita is, which is how we hear it through most of the film and which really game me some serious ulcers. It's not Lolly-ta, it's Loli- (rhymes with goli, as in to ab goli kha)ta.

Finally, I hate this habit film-makers have when making a Bong-theme movie of interspersing the dialogue, which is mainly in Hindi, with choice phrases and snatches of dialogue in Bengali. What does that mean – that the rest of the time the characters are actually speaking Hindi? In a Bengali family in sixties Calcutta? They might as well be shown speaking Zulu.

I won’t even talk about the overdone climax here. It’s just too ridiculous for words and completely spoils the tone of the rest of the film.

But I do long to see one contemporary adaptation of a Bengali literary classic that doesn’t make me cringe every few minutes or want to get under the seat in sheer embarrassment.

Old and cynical

2005-04-26T12:22:00.000+05:30

Those who think the TOI in Delhi has plumbed the depths to which feature writing in this country can go have evidently not lived south of the Vindhyas.

This Sunday, that venerable old newspaper, The Hindu, carried a full-page story in its Metro pages that set out to prove that being caught with a book in one’s hand is the new sign of cool. Wistfully titled ‘Oh, to be young n’ reading’ (though it was unclear what the author was so wistful about - youth, or the habit of reading they presumably had when they were young?), the story asserted that young people, after Harry Potter and suchlike made it so cool, have actually stopped connecting the reading habit with nerdiness and other such unattractive traits.

The story was accompanied by a photograph of a teeny PYT apparently engrossed in the depths of a – and this really tells half the story – Sidney Sheldon novel.

At least the story prevented me from going catatonic when that same evening, I, having been talked into watching the God-awful Hitch saw people actually enjoying it. No, not just sitting through it with half-bored smiles and twittering occasionally but actually laughing at the predictable punch-lines. Some even (I do not exaggerate) clapped at the end. They did, really.

The film’s probably put me off romantic comedies for life. It’s seriously bad. It’s about this date-doctor (Smith) who helps people make headway with totally improbable crushes. And then he falls for a world-weary journalist type (groan) -- played by a terribly ugly actress whose name I haven’t bothered to find out – who finds out his vocation and is devastated etc etc.

It didn’t help that there was a chap sitting right ahead of me who kept saying ‘wow! wow!’ in hushed, awed tones to completely banal bits of dialogue. I mean, the high point of the movie was a one-liner by Smith which went something like ‘It’s not how many moments you breathe in your life, it’s the moments that take your breath away that really count’. AAAARGH!

I bet there were people taking notes in the auditorium to use immortal lines such as these in birthday cards or something.

Frdm of spch?

2005-04-22T14:54:00.000+05:30

They told us all the world would soon be tlkng lke ths. Well, they were wrong. SMS language came, ruled for a while and then people discovered the dictionary function on their cell phones.

But why some people still insist on giving readers of their e-mails and messages headaches by inventing vowel-less non-words, I don't understand. Just got a mail from a friend (who I used to consider quite literate) that probably destroyed two thousand cells from my retina. It read something like this: 'u wl b gld to know tht i am mried nw and lvng in th US...' .

It might be a pretentious way of judging people, but it takes me two seconds to completely lose any respect I had for anybody who can't make the basic effort of writing decent English. I mean, nobody's asking you to be Lynne Truss, but what does it take to write simple, basic English without resorting to linguistic short-cuts that don't make sense?

And while you are at it, MS Word has a function called spell-check. Do look into it.

2005-04-22T14:43:00.000+05:30

Procrastination is the last refuge left to those chronically bereft of ideas, I realise. No, that is not a modest attempt at self-effacement, that is a confession. After making grandiose plans of gushing like a sink-without-a-stopper, all I had was a clogged brain for more than two months.

If making a beginning is tough, making a beginning twice is totally excruciating.

Here I go

2005-01-12T12:19:00.000+05:30

Can't believe I'll be leaving Delhi, perhaps for good, in a month's time. Can still remember in vivid detail my first few months in Delhi - that was when I couldn't believe I had actually landed up here. Never really thought I would, actually. Seemed like some huge cosmic accident. And now it's time to leave. It hasn't really sunk in. I still catch myself thinking of something I'm planning to do here in a couple of months' time and then realise i'll be in sunny bangalore (i suppose it is sunny? I'm not going otherwise) by that time.

New facetious Outlook 'Happiness Survey' says Bangaloreans are wilting in unhappiness. Don't know why I'm being made to go there then. Still, the survey is terribly silly and I think I can safely suppose they got all facts wrong.

Is it bad manners to start one's blog by complaining continuosly for first two paragraphs? Maybe I should first enlist reasons for starting this blog. Peer pressure, in two words. Having Indian Blog Royalty as friends can do this to you. And lately, ever since I started thinking seriously of posting something here instead of merely using this address to 'pillory the great', I found stray phrases I would like to write somewhere wafting through my head at odd hours of day. Mostly in rattly autos on way to work I think.

Anyway, here I am. With a distinct sink-with-stopper-out feeling. Am going to gush like mad.

This IS fun.