Some concerts..Some thoughts..

The Chennai music season is almost here. Although it officially starts on December 15th, the first day of the tamil month Margazhi, the increasing number of performing artists and overwhelming public response, the music season of Chennai starts way earlier - by mid-November than in previous years.

Having resolved to attend at least 4-5 concerts this year and thereby make best use of being located in the musical hub of Chennai, I attended 4 concerts over 2 days last week at the Margazhi Mahotsavam series of concerts conducted by Jaya TV at Chettinad Vidyashram. I chose to attend these concerts because they were by my favourite artists - TM Krishna (on Friday) and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (on Saturday). Attending the other 2 concerts was purely incidental, since these concerts were held in the same hall before my favourite concerts and the only way I could get a seat was by attending the previous concerts as well.

Rather than dwell on the content of the concerts themselves, I thought I will jot down a few random thoughts that passed my mind while attending these concerts (In keeping with the Chennai tradition, hereafter in this post, I will be referring to all female strangers over 60 as maamis and the male strangers as maamas) :

• Chennaiites are persevering and resilient especially when it comes to supporting arts. The long queue consisting mainly of people over 60 waiting outside the concert hall, to be let in 5 minutes before the start of the concert at 5 pm was proof of this fact. Most had been waiting for almost an hour to be let in.
• Rules and Indians can not co-exist. Although the notice boards explicitly mentioned that outside food and drinks were not allowed, most had sneaked in biscuits, water etc to be consumed in between the first and second concert.
• The other perfunctory instruction ‘Silence Please’ was also royally ignored. On day 2, the maami behind me was giving a running commentary of the ragas sung in the concert to the older maami next to her who seemed to have a minor hearing disability.
• The Chennai concert hall audience takes great pleasure in identifying ragas and considers it a challenge to identify the ragam within the first 30 seconds of the song/alapana. So while I was silently battling between enjoying the beautiful alapana and identifying the name of the ragam which seemed to be eluding my mind, the others behind me were engaged in debating the ragam. Both of us struck gold at the same instant - Charukesi along with the songs I had heard and images of a bad dance in a movie (Ambika in Sri Raghavendra) flashed in my mind, while the person behind me enthusiastically yelled out Charukesi at the same time!! Needless to say, I was able to enjoy the rest of the alapana in peace!!
• Curiosity is a very bad thing, especially when it disturbs people around you. The maami in the front seat on day 2, was one curious dame! She was restless every time somebody entered the hall especially near the VIP entrance. Her head bobbed up and down almost throughout the concert and obstructed my view repeatedly. However after a few songs, I found a position where I would gain an unobstructed and uninterrupted view of the stage (although this does not really matter in the concert).
• People feel at home in concert halls. So while one maama one seat away from me on day 2, kept filling up the Sudoku grid while nodding his head to the music, the maami who sat next to me on day 1, made herself comfortable by folding her legs on the chair and enjoying the music.
• Most people in the audience have no compunction in visibly displaying their enthusiasm over the concert. I found a few maamas literally swaying from side to side, while remaining seated and letting out appreciative ‘Aahas’ and ‘Sabhash’ when the performance was particularly delightful. This could also be because of the average age of the listeners. People probably become less uptight as they grow older.
• People had come from other remote parts of Chennai, many after a long day’s work in the office and stayed till the end of the concerts. What, other than passion for music, could make them do that?
• For someone attending a Carnatic music concert for the first time, the scene inside the concert hall may some times remind him/her of the scene in Sindhubhairavi where the entire audience clap to the talam. Apart from the singer and the violinist, most members of the audience were tapping their hands to the talam.
• While the music was wonderful, the question and answer sessions with the main artists were delightful as well.
• Both Krishna and Sanjay were brilliant, although their styles were completely different. Krishna spoke a lot about each song before commencing the song and the effort he had put in was very visible. Sanjay, on the other hand sang one krithi after the other and stopped only in the end for answering the questions. His effort at singing compositions of a composer who is not very famous were no less than Krishna’s but Sanjay underplayed it completely.
• Criticism is easy, but the effort behind every concert is phenomenal. I simply could not get that out of my mind for the next few days (till this minute). If one concert requires so much preparation, imagine the effort required to sing in over 30-40 concerts over a period of 2 months, without repeating oneself, since the audience and critics are watching all the time!! Amazing isn’t it?
• As always happens with me, I was elated with the experience of live concerts and depressed over my not learning music. Elation was more than the depression, though

Chennai Music Season absolutely rocks!!!

Meeting and Parting

One of the unforeseen consequences of choosing to remain single is how you remain mommy’s little girl/boy all your life. This also means that more often than not, you are expected to accompany your parents to all weddings/betrothals/birth anniversaries/religious festival exclusively for ageing relatives to get together etc.

I usually do not mind these, for it almost always means free food (traditional and served on a banana leaf!) and a chance to observe a lot of different people from a distance. Also, the fact that I was forced to miss out on most weddings in the family, thanks to my job, makes me all the more expectant about attending these family functions, if not for anything else, at least to wear the glittery clothes which I can never wear to work. The obvious difficulties are questions from hyperactive elders on my life. However I have also learnt to overlook these minor inconveniences with the larger good (I do not mean the size of my tummy by that!!) in mind.

Now, as a few of you must have guessed, based on my previous posts, I am easily contented, especially when it comes to people. All I need to be happy in a crowd is to be left to myself. I do not get offended if I am not surrounded by admirers and well-wishers, nor do I mind if I am treated as another piece of furniture in social gatherings. However, some friendly souls insist on making me ‘comfortable’, no doubt with a noble intention. As a result, a few usually walk to where I sit with my mother, with an expression that is usually accepted as some kind of a smile (although my effort is to not look sullen) and introduce themselves.

Our first challenge starts here.

‘Do you recognize me? Tell me who I am?’ - Well, if you don’t know, who am I to tell you? - I usually tell myself, but give another expression and this time it is supposed to make people think that I am embarrassed, that I actually know the person, but simply cannot recollect. This too is expected and the person explains earnestly how one of my ancestors was related by marriage/blood to one of his/her ancestors. And every single time I admire them for their optimism. You would think that after all these years of introducing themselves to random relatives, they still hope that the listener will remember and recognize them the next time!!

Anyway, for a person who is as good as a stranger (although, you are supposed to know the person from his/her visit about 15-20 years ago, when you were just learning to walk!), the conversation cannot be endless, especially when the person is on the other end is a wonderful conversationalist like me. After asking after parents, siblings, work, location (are you visiting India or do you live here?) etc, the conversation slowly starts dawdling.

The next challenge - how do you get out of the place. This, I am proud to say, has not been a big problem with me, because of 2 reasons:

1. I usually do not move from my seat, so it is the other person who needs to find an escape route!
2. My conversational skills are anyway non-existent and I do not usually have a problem with silences in conversations.

However, there are occasions when I have had to go around and greet people (usually older than me) as a mark of respect and to prove that I am not a snob (this is very important and required with relatives, since I am expected to misbehave as a result of a high-paying job and foreign trips). And every single time, while starting a conversation is simple, since there is a template for it - Questions on the person, his/her health, his/her children/grandchildren etc. - there is no easy way to end the conversation and move away. And then the conversation comes to a grinding halt.

From here on, the following usually happen:

• I look away, he/she looks away. I hope to catch the eye of some other cousin and pretend he/she is calling out to me. I then excuse myself saying I am needed elsewhere.
• I hope someone, anyone in the vicinity asks for water and offer to get it for them and leave the place.
• I suddenly look into my purse and pretend to suddenly remember that I was supposed to give my mother something. I then request to be excused for 2 min.
• I pray hard for my mobile to ring (and it never ever does when I need it to!!)

To me, this parting is the biggest issue I have with meeting people. Nothing emotional or sentimental, mind you. I admit I am socially challenged (a euphemistic term I have coined for myself, others simply say I am unfriendly) and that is probably why something as simple as ending a conversation seems such a big deal to me. Like M.Night Shyamalan showed us with ‘Unbreakable’, I am assuming that for every person like me, there must be an antithesis - a person who thinks these are not issues worth writing a post over. And it is to these kind hearts that I direct my request towards.

How do you say goodbye or end a conversation? I would prefer it if you can give me a sequence of steps to be followed rather than simply dismissing my plea for help as frivolous!

Funny Minister!

Politics is not funny - not for those involved nor for those who watch! Politics is ugly, a drain, a necessary evil - the descriptions are endless.

Why then, is political satire so wonderful? Unlike other popular subjects of humour, the popularity of a political satire is directly proportional to the amount of truth in it! The closer it is to reality, the more it makes you laugh!!

My earliest memory of political satire (at least the kind I understood) is cartoon strips by a writer called Satya, in the tamil political magazine ‘Thuglak’. It probably helped Satya, that the editor of the magazine - Cho Ramaswamy, is the king of political satire himself!!

But popular media like movies and rarely TV serials approached politics with seriousness. Politicians were usually portrayed as callous and corrupt men, whose job descriptions included lying, smooth-talking, leering at women in general, raping the hero’s sister (who existed in the movie solely for this) and after having sufficient fun, dying a violent death at the hands of the hero of the movie.

TV serials were even worse. In the days of DD, almost no serial touched upon politics or politicians. Even the daily news was sanitized and doubled up as Travel and Living channel, showing the PM’s latest visit to a foreign country.

I remember that my father used to watch this series called ‘Yes Minister’ late at night (or it was probably 9 or 10 pm, which, at that time was late night to me). My father would keep smiling throughout the episode and the laugh track would play to provide important cues. I was really young and loved showing off my intelligence. But although I tried really hard, I simply could not:

a. Read large books without pictures.

b. Understand a word of ‘Yes Minister’ or ‘Bodyline’.

Later a hindi version of the series also played on TV, called Ji Mantriji. It was then I realized that the issue was not only with the language but also the content. I gave up trying to watch the series and concentrated on the simpler ones.

After more than 2 decades, my cousin mentioned Yes Minister in passing. I was abroad with access to all types of American and British sitcoms. During these years, I had also become a fanatic follower of PG Wodehouse and fallen head-over-heels in love with the works of other British writers like Douglas Adams. I realized that the time had at last come to watch one of the most beloved series of Britain. I finally got the DVDs from Netflix, but could still not watch them then, for (wo)man only proposes, it is God who disposes!! I later watched the series months later. And this time, I was on a roll. I managed to finish all the 3 seasons.

Yes Minister is a series about the newly appointed cabinet minister for the Department of Administrative Affairs (DAA)- a fictional department, Jim Hacker and his daily struggle to carry out his responsibilities against the face of opposition (usually) from the Permanent Secretary - Humphrey Appleby. Stuck between the two is Principal Private Secretary, Bernard Woolley whose loyalty towards the minister is often in conflict with the need to grow in his career of a civil servant.

Throughout the series, Appleby instructs Bernard on the duties of a minister and that of a civil servant. He strongly believes that most ministers effectively govern for 2 years. The first year and a half is spent by the minister in getting a grip on running the government and in coming to terms with the appalling state of the economy (which is hidden from the public and the opposition). The last year and a half is to ensure that status quo is maintained, since getting re-elected and not public welfare is the priority. Effectively the remaining 2 years are the only ones where ministers can govern.

The civil servants on the other hand, are the ones that actually run the government, since they are permanent. Ministers exist to create policies and civil servants are the ones to execute them.

The great things about the series are too many to be written in a paragraph (also, I tend to digress and ramble more when I write in paragraphs!!), so here is my MS-Powerpoint experience at play:

a. Top-notch performances by the lead actors - Paul Eddigton as the well-meaning but confused, publicity loving Hacker suits the role perfectly. (Sir) Nigel Hawthorne as Humphrey Appleby is an absolute delight to watch and hear. The richness of his English and his six-sigma diction is like a breath of fresh air - it is like after listening to non-stop ‘hits’ of Kumar Sanu, you suddenly hear a song in Mohd. Rafi’s inimitable honey-soaked voice!! It is like a feast after a famine!! Let me stop here before my comparisons get more cheesy!! Derek Fowlds as Bernard Woolley is superb and his role is more difficult than those of Hacker and Appleby, since he speaks very little. But when he does, it is so funny that you tend to remember the lines long after the episode ends.

b. Dialogues - What can I say about the dialogues? Terms like razor-sharp, witty, funny etc., seem so trite compared to the awesomeness of the lines. Each of the principal characters has a distinct style of speaking and the writing reflects that wonderfully. (I need to keep a tab on the number of ‘wonderful’s and ‘awesome’s in this post!!). Hacker is a graduate of economics but is notorious for mixing metaphors. The funniest lines occur when Bernard takes a worried Hacker’s mixed metaphors literally and provides explanations on why they cannot be right.

(*Hacker - You have sent me into a typhoon without an umbrella!

Bernard - An umbrella is no use in a wind..

Hacker - Shut up Bernard !!

* Hacker - “Now, listen. I want you to go through the Whip’s office to get to the backbenchers and to the central house, to put a stop to this thing before it starts.”

Bernard Woolley: “I’m awfully sorry to quibble again minister, but you can’t actually stop something before it starts.” (from the episode The Writing on the Wall))

Appleby’s language is aimed at confusing Hacker (not that it is very difficult). His language is circuitous, flowery and usually meaningless. As a rule, he truthfully (mostly) answers Hacker’s questions, and Hacker can get true information, if he asks the right questions!!

The fun here stems from the difference in the way Hacker and Appleby speak - some quotes:

*Sir Humphrey Appleby: Minister, I have something to say to you which you may not like to hear.

James Hacker: Why should today be any different?

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Minister, the traditional allocation of executive responsibilities has always been so determined as to liberate the ministerial incumbent from the administrative minutiae by devolving the managerial functions to those whose experience and qualifications have better formed them for the performance of such humble offices, thereby releasing their political overlords for the more onerous duties and profound deliberations which are the inevitable concomitant of their exalted position.

James Hacker: I wonder what made you think I didn’t want to hear that?
* Jim: Who else is in this department?

Sir Humphrey: Well briefly sir I am the Permanent Undersecretary of State known as the Permanent Secretary, Wooley here is your Principle Private Secretary I too have a Principle Private Secretary, and he is the Principle Private Secretary to the Permanent Secretary, directly responsible to me are ten Deputy Secretaries, eighty-seven Undersecretaries and two hundred and nineteen assistant secretaries, directly responsible to the Principle Private Secretaries are Plain Private Secretaries, and the Prime Minister will be appointing two Parliamentary Undersecretaries and you will be appointing your own Parliamentary Private Secretary.

Jim: Can they all type?

Sir Humphrey: None of us can type Minister, Mrs McKay types, she’s the secretary.

c. Plot - Every episode is complete in itself and can be viewed separately. Most of the episodes end with usually Appleby saying ‘Yes Minister’, smugly or grudgingly depending on whether he succeeds in having his way or has to accede defeat to Hacker (rare, but happens in a few instances).

I am now looking forward to watching ‘Yes Prime Minister’ next, where Jim Hacker becomes the PM and Humphrey Appleby is elevated in ranks to Cabinet Secretary.The then PM of Britain, Margaret Thatcher was supposedly a big fan of the series. The series was enjoyed by both the public and the politicians. Funnily enough both parties (Labour and Conservative) thought the joke was on the other party although the authors Sir Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lyn were careful not to mention or point to any party specifically!!

After enjoying the series immensely, I chanced upon the book version of the series and now am reading the book. Unlike the TV series, the book is presented as excerpts from Jim Hacker’s diary. Interspersed are memos of Humphrey Appleby (which like all good civil servants, are always written on the margins of a paper, even if the paper is empty) and supposed interviews with Bernard Woolley later. This obviously makes the book funnier in some ways. The TV series depended on the actors abilities (well-placed, I have to admit) to elevate it to a different level altogether, while the book allows for a lot of interjections and comments by the authors and other assorted characters (much like my comments such as this one!). I am mid-way through the book and I thought I owed some explanation to my bursting out laughing during lunch at my desk, although most of you reading this would not have noticed it !!

Note: Some of the quotes were from one of the following sources:

www.somaliaonline.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/6/13223

www.uta.fi/FAST/BIE/BI1/khyesmin.html

www.yes-minister.com/ymseas2b.htm

What you leave behind..

My mother tells me often, that her Chemistry Lab Assistant in college, would frequently tell her (my mother) that her workplace in the lab was an indication of how her kitchen would look.

Coming to think of it, the condition of a place after a person has left it is a better indicator of the person than when she/he was resident there. As many mystery novelists will tell you, many criminals gain important information about you by going over what you leave behind inside the ATM room than by what you keep in your purse. Police world-over have discovered important clues from the scene of crime because the perpetrator of a crime supposedly leaves behind something about himself almost always.

Forget such grand things. I recently moved to my new space in a new office that is closer to the city than the previous one. I picked one of the deserted places and moved in. Well, partially moved in, because the draws here are still full of papers, including wedding invitations dating back to 2005 and 2003. It is possible that the junk does not entirely belong to the previous occupant, but is a legacy passed on over generations.

As a result of the junk, my belongings are still in my car although it has been more than 3 months since I moved in. I have not yet had the heart or inclination to clean up the junk or to throw away the papers, since somewhere deep inside, I am worried that these papers may mean a lot to someone else (plus I hate cleaning in general and cleaning others mess in particular!!).

Interestingly I am faced with a similar situation at home. After a short spell at a different locality with my brother and his wife, we have moved back to our old home. Our last tenant has vacated the house, on paper. But the remains of his life here stare at us from every corner of the house - from the poster of Mickey Mouse, to the rusted flower-vase on the stair-case, from the completely ignored and extremely dirty balcony (which he and his family never entered in the entire 1.5 years!!), to two boxes full of junk (to us) and a gas stove on the loft. As if these were not enough, he has also left behind the broken front portion of the car in the parking slot, where it serves as a threat to my car every day. His cupboards and study table had decorated the shared parking lot till last week.

When I first vacated a house in the US, I left behind some old furniture, simply because I did not know at that time, what to do with them. I thought I was doing a favour to the house owner - not only was I vacating his apartment, I was leaving free stuff for him !! The house-owner obviously did not think so!! As a result, my initial deposit was never returned, since moving the furniture out was considered part of the cleaning expenses.

Now, thinking about the drawer full of junk papers and the stuff we had in our house till a week back, I understand what a frustrating experience it must have been for the next occupant to find my stuff lying in the apartment. What may be memories to me, are just garbage to him! I know what I think about the tenant and the previous occupant(s) of the seat at workplace and I really do not want anyone to think the same about me!!

Entering a kitchen which resembles a town ravaged by a hurricane (yes, I have seen one!!), thanks to the previous cook, with all the jars of salt, pepper, chilli powder, the lighter, multiple plates, ladles and pans etc on the kitchen-counter turns me off completely. As a result, I strictly follow a simple rule - replace something immediately after use (it is also because I have zero trust on my memory to do it later!!).

Extending it to the workplace, a clean table gives a good impression to the others. A clean drawer is not only an indicator of an organized mind, but also shows that you are considerate. I am not known as the most organized or cleanliness conscious person in the world. But I frequently check my drawers to check the papers that I have accumulated so far and throw away most of them. This practice is more to make place for really important things than to keep the place clean. This also helps when you have to move to a different location, as you do not have to clean up the desk again, since everything is important.

So, leave behind good memories if possible. Take the other things with you or throw them in the trash before leaving. Do this as a favour and the next occupant’s blessings will be with you!

Bizarre is Funny!!

Now all of you- Ok, Most of you- Forget it, some of you know how I love funny stuff; about how I rave about PG Wodehouse, Kalki, Devan, Douglas Adams and Sujatha.

I envy these people who can make others laugh. It is the MOST difficult thing in life, don’t you think? With entertainment overload, two things have become very difficult for creators of any kind:

a. Scaring People - Fiction has almost lost all its ability to evoke fear these days for reality is scarier almost all the time!

b. Making people laugh - Now there are channels dedicated to comedy, but people are just weary. They watch it like they watch news. Forget making you laugh, many of the funny sequences don’t even make you smile!!

There was a time when a clown could make people laugh merely by slipping on a banana peel. Then talkies came and comedians spoke smart dialogues to make people laugh. Later one guy started hitting another and people laughed and after that one guy constantly got hit by others and people laughed. It takes a different kind of genius to make people laugh (and it requires a little less ego on my part to actually laugh at a joke )!!

Different things make us laugh at different times. One thing that made us laugh when we were kids seems extremely annoying when we turn into adults (and I am assuming this happens sooner or later in all our lives, although for some later than some others !!). On the contrary, some things that seemed pointless or sometimes even sad, may make you laugh a few years then on.

Bizarre and weird stuff may make us wonder, or may scare us, but very rarely they are also funny. Of late, I see myself drawn more and more to such twisted humour. Here are 3 such movies, where the bizarre situations make you laugh in spite of yourself.

a. Arsenic and Old Lace -

For a lot of us, who have always associated death/murder/torture etc with gloom (which it actually is!!), a movie where they are used to comic effect is actually a pleasant surprise. I am not talking about movies/books, where the situation is sad or gory and one takes pleasure in that, for that would only mean the person is some kind of a sadist.

The 1944 film Arsenic and Old Lace is a good example. This stars my other favourite hero of B&W English Movies - Cary Grant (the first one being James Stewart). Remarkably handsome, Cary Grant was great in comedy too. He, like John Cleese, was wonderfully funny with his facial contortions and physical humour.

Arsenic and Old Lace is the story of Mortimer Brewster and his two ’sweet’ aunts Abby and Martha. Mortimer, a chronic bachelor, finally falls in love and gets married to Elaine Harper, his neighbour. Mortimer and Elaine return home to get ready for their honeymoon to Niagara. While visiting his aunts he finds a corpse and thinks his crazy brother Teddy (who thinks he is Theodore Roosevelt) is responsible. He tells his aunts that his brother must be hospitalized before he kills more people. The women explain to him that they and not Teddy were responsible for the murder. In fact they consider the murder an act of charity towards the elderly and lonely gentleman! They go on to reveal that they have already murdered 12 other lonely people by poisoning their wine with arsenic and a few other poisons!! All the corpses have been buried in the basement, where Teddy thinks he is digging the ‘Panama Canal’. Matters are further complicated when Mortimer’s long lost brother - the cruel murderer Jonathan and his accomplice arrive at the house to dump their latest murder victim.

If you thought the plot sounded more like that of a murder mystery or a slasher flick, you need to definitely watch the movie. It is a laugh riot from start to finish!! The aunts are adorable and the Teddy character is insanely funny! All actors seem to have realized that they are a part of a madcap comedy and have shed all inhibitions and are happily crazy - a must for any comedy movie)!!

b. Ek Chalis ki last local - This is a 2007 Hindi film. This is one of the best dark comedies to have been made in Bollywood (a long long time after Kundan Shah’s brilliant Jaane bhi do yaaro)!! This movie once again proves that Abhay Deol is one of the most dependable actors in Hindi cinema. Say what you want about his acting skills etc, his choice of roles is simply superb and unmatched. Look at his list so far and you will find that every movie is unique!! Neha Dhupia is a mystery woman in Hindi cinema. She is not beautiful, she cannot act much, but she features in most of the offbeat movies in Hindi cinema!

Ek Chalis ki last local, is the story of Nilesh, a call center executive, who misses that last local train (at, what else, 1:40 am) and has to while his time away till the first train in the morning. He meets Madhu (Neha Dhupia) who has also missed the train and both decide to loiter around till dawn. The people they meet, the experiences they undergo form the rest of the story. Trust me, it is very hard to describe the story as it is a series of incidents and every time you think you have figured out what is going to happen next, you are thrown a surprise twist!! If your mind is as twisted as mine, you are likely to enjoy this movie!!

c. No Smoking - Well, how do I even begin to describe this movie! This 2007 movie by Anurag Kashyap cannot be explained at all. Many film-buffs read a lot of philosophy in the movie. People found subtexts for each scene. The news about the movie, more than the movie itself created so much hype, that I was a little intimidated by it all.

I am known for being a complete knucklehead when it comes to ‘intellectual’ movies. My rants against unintelligible pseudo-intellectual climax-less french movies are well known (among a couple of cousins!). But a cousin who knew something about me recommended this movie. Added to this motivation was the fact that I had watched AK’s Black Friday and thought it was simply brilliant. If a moviemaker could turn a facts based book on the Mumbai riots into a gripping movie, it surely meant he had a lot of promise!!

As I started watching No Smoking, I decided to clear my mind from all preconceived notions about the movie and its stars. Frankly I am not a fan of John Abraham - for his looks or his ‘acting’ talent!! I thoroughly enjoyed the movie!! Seriously, I had initially thought (from the title) that the movie was about the evils of smoking but the movie took me by surprise of the pleasant variety!! I could almost visualize AK convincing the producers about the ‘moral’ of the movie, all the while laughing evilly to himself!! I even remember the interviews by John Abraham prior to the release of the movie - how the story impressed him and how it was ‘not preachy’ but still had a moral!! Who knows what he understood of the story when it was narrated to him!! Maybe he understood it all and he was part of the con or maybe he didn’t understand anything and simply surrendered to the director’s will!!

The end of the movie was a little confusing, but overall the movie was very engaging and funny. If I tell you the parts I found funny, you may recommend a psychiatrist for me! Seriously the fact that one of the punishments for smoking include cutting off the person’s finger. If that sounds cruel on paper, you have to see it on screen!! Ranvir Shourey, that superbly spontaneous actor plays Abbas Tyrewala and there is a B&W sequence (titled ‘Kyon ki bachpan bhi kabhi naughty tha’) involving John and Ranvir, supposedly in their teen-age, that is wickedly funny!

Much as I try to describe how much these movies made me laugh, it is difficult to express it all in words. Try watching them and don’t blame me, if you don’t like them, because I warned you, somewhere in the post, that my mind is growing more and more twisted these days!!

Who do you respect more?

How many of the below statements can you relate to?

a. A person I know, once commented that since my mom was a home-maker, she was in all probabilities addicted to daily-soaps and did nothing ‘useful’. (Fact: No soaps except the ones that produce bubbles, in our home.)

b. Another person I know, is quick to dismiss opinions/suggestions offered by her mother-in-law - a homemaker, on issues like health, diet, finance etc. She prefers to ask her trusted circle consisting of working women for opinions.

c. My male relatives/friends, speak to me about ’serious’ things like the economy, bank interest rates etc rather than my mother. However, if my brother or dad is around, they prefer to speak to him.

d. A friend, I know, would chat endlessly with me on trivial topics, but she used to shrug off any opinions I offered on any topic and would agree only to what her friends/relatives, who were chartered accountants said on the topic. These topics ranged from the recipe for fried rice to whether a barometer measured temperature or pressure.

e. A person I know, who uses the term sophistication at least once a day, embarrassed me in public one day, asking me point-blank what I earned!

f. All of us at home, tend to talk down to my mother once in a while. Our tone becomes patronizing and we brush away any opinion she offers on work related stuff.

Why am I talking about some seemingly unrelated stuff?

Have you ever noticed how, that for all the education we have and the work experience we have, many of us mentally rank people and speak to them accordingly? We have already made up our minds on the superiority or inferiority of the comments from people from each rank and have, in many instances, dismissed away a response even before it leaves the mouth of the speaker.

The ranking would probably look like this:

1. Working men - with a professional degree (like Doctors/Engineers/Chartered Accountants etc)
2. Working men - Other professionals (Banks/IT etc)
3. Men who do not work (Educated)
4. Working women - with a professional degree (like Doctors/Engineers/Chartered Accountants etc)
5. Working women - others
6. Women - Homemakers - College educated/English speaking
7. Men who do not work (Uneducated)
8. Women-Homemakers - Non-English speaking/Uneducated

I am not saying that we do it consciously, out of a superiority complex or any such thing. This classifications happens at the sub-conscious level and you can notice it in the slight straightening of the back, craning of the neck, frequent glances at the listener expecting acknowledgment/approval by the speaker. The degrees of straightening/craning and frequency of glancing changes with the rank of the listener. I have seen the same speaker turn oblivious to my mother’s presence once I enter the conversation and later ignore me completely once my father and later brother start talking!!

Somewhere deep inside, we still associate education with class and sophistication. Not just education, we pay more attention to who is saying something rather that what is being said. Even men, who do not insist that their spouses work, tend to speak and listen with more respect to working women than their home-maker wives.

Having had the luxury of a home-maker for a mother, a science graduate, I have, with age understood and admired the degree of intelligence she displays right from planning for the month’s groceries, to handling guests, from packing my bags to accommodate enough grocery to last for my entire on-site stay, while still not exceeding airline baggage norms, to designing my clothes based on what she sees others wearing during that season, from theorizing how Dashavataram (not the movie) relates to Darwin’s theory to studiously noting down new recipes from the TV.

I have grown up seeing my father-a science graduate, learn more and more about computers and financial investments all by himself, so much that today, a few neighbours approach him for free advice on investment decisions.

I live in awe of my 82 year old aunt, who was married off at the tender age of 14 and who taught herself English, Hindi and Carnatic music, in spite of an oppressive atmosphere at her husband’s house, and who to this day, reads the entire newspaper from start to finish.

I see so many other people around me, who may not have gone to college or school, who may not have worked in an office, but are great in their own ways and I realize that class and sophistication are just words that mean nothing. True class has nothing to do with education or wealth or occupation. It is something deeper, something you are probably born with and something that cannot be taught in any school or college!

What a Wonderful life !!

Ever wondered why you were born?

Ever been so frustrated in life, that all you wanted to do, was to drop everything and hide yourself from the world?

Ever felt so depressed, that you hoped that the past few years in your life never happened?

Ever wished you could go back in time and change every single action in your life?

The hero of the movie ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ - George Bailey, feels all the above and more. Within the first 5 minutes of the movie, you are told that George Bailey is contemplating suicide. What follows for the next 2 hours is a story of hope and eternal optimism.

‘It’s a Wonderful life’, - a 1946 film by Frank Capra, is one of my all-time favourites. In fact, I love the movie so much that I watch it at least once a year. More often than not, I cite the reason that I am introducing the movie to someone else. Two days back, it was my sister, who was my excuse to watch this awesome movie again. It stars one of my beloved actors of B&W English cinema - James Stewart (the other being Cary Grant).

The movie is some sort of fantasy, but apart from a pudgy looking ‘angel’, without wings, you may not find any other fantastic creatures!

The story is deceptively simple. George Bailey, our hero is on the verge of jumping into the river. God (yes, you read it right), summons one of his angels - Clarence AS2 (Angel Second Class) and gives him the responsibility of saving George. He also briefs Clarence about George’s life so far and the events that have led him to consider suicide.

The flashback sequence (as narrated by God) starts with George with his brother Harry and a few more boys, playing with a sled in the snow. By accident, Harry skids and falls inside the cracked ice pond and George does not think twice before saving him. Harry is saved but George falls ill and loses his hearing on one ear.

He later works for a pharmacist and one day, when the pharmacist receives a telegram on his young son’s death, saves the pharmacist from a grave mistake.

Young George grows up to become James Stewart, a young man, who dreams of leaving Bedford Falls, the town he grows up in. He dreams of traveling to different parts of the world, but circumstances force him to stay. George’s father who has been running the ‘Building and Loan’ company, is frequently threatened by the local bigwig Potter. Potter already owns most businesses in Bedford Falls and is irritated with George’s father for giving loans to the poor in the town to build their homes instead of renting apartments from Potter.

Time moves on - George gets married to his childhood sweetheart Mary, his brother goes to college and returns with a wife. George’s chance leave Bedford Falls increasingly becomes remote, especially after his father dies. George has children and is loved by the townspeople for his good nature. He is stuck with his father’s company.

One day, due to cruel twist of fate, George’s uncle loses the money that he was supposed to deposit in the bank, during a chance encounter with Potter inside the bank. The bank’s examiner and federal officials (called by Potter) reach George’s house assuming he has swindled people’s money. George is crestfallen and reaches out to Potter for help. Potter dismisses him off saying that the only thing that George has as collateral - his insurance policy, is worth nothing till he is alive.

George decides to commit suicide and it is at this point that Clarence comes into the picture (pun unintended!!). Clarence jumps inside the water instead and cries for help and George jumps in to save him. Later when both of them wait inside a cabin for the clothes to dry, Clarence tells him that he is an angel and that he had been sent by God to ensure that George does not throw away God’s greatest gift to him - his life. George, obviously thinks Clarence is crazy and refuses to believe him. He mocks him and asks him if Clarence can lend him the 8000 USD to save him instead. Clarence responds saying that they did not use money ‘up there’ and George answers with a smirk ‘I thought so. Well, it comes pretty handy down here!!’.

George then says bitterly that he wishes he had never been born and Clarence grants him that wish. George then gets a chance to see the lives of his family and friends without him in their lives. Harry dies in the accident, their mother becomes a bitter woman, their house becomes a lodge, his friend Violet becomes a prostitute, his wife turns to an old maid with no one to love her and the town is fully owned by Potter and is called Pottersville. George realizes his mistake and begs Clarence to take back his wish.

He rushes back home, happy to be alive. Meanwhile his wife, who has found out about the trouble, has already approached George’s friends, customers, neighbours etc. While the policemen wait to arrest George, the whole town walks in for the Christmas party and everybody contributes some money to bail George out. Seeing the amount of goodwill and love George has in the town, even the bank examiner and the policemen contribute! Clarence wins his wings due to the success of his mission.

Performances are uniformly good. James Stewart manages to look youthful and carefree in the first half of the movie and slowly transforms to the disappointed family man, with 4 kids, caught in the drudgery of a thankless business. Donna Reed as Mary Bailey is the sunshine of George’s life. It seems so believable that with love, even deserted mansions can be transformed to love and for all the beauty and fragility of Mary, you can easily see that she runs the house and keeps George motivated by being a pillar of strength.

If the movie belonged to an actor, I think that would be Lionel Barrymore, who plays Henry F Potter (not related to Harry Potter!!). Potter is one of the most interesting villain characters to be ever written. At the time I am writing this post, Potter ranks 6th in the list of Top 50 villains. Potter is greedy and nasty. His smile is enough to convince you that he is a fox in the garb of a man. All credit goes to Lionel Barrymore for portraying this character wonderfully.

It is very surprising but the movie was supposedly a failure when it released. Over the years, ‘It’s a Wonderful life’ has become a cult classic and a Christmas time favourite even after more than 60 years of its release!! And that says a lot about the movie!! Frank Capra is known for making feel-good movies with a message and most of them have been remade in many languages. Among his other movies are ‘It happened one night’ (copied by the original DVD ripper - Mahesh Bhatt, as ‘Dil Hai ki Manta Nahi’), ‘You can’t take it with you’, ‘Mr Smith goes to Washington’ (again starring a wonderfully naive James Stewart) etc.

In life and in movies, I prefer the approach that all people are basically good at heart and would not willfully cause harm to others. In the movie, apart from Potter’s character, which seems irredeemable, all the other characters are basically good at heart. Situations may make them mean or rude, but in their hearts they mean no harm.

Agreed, the message is obvious and the story not too realistic, but the strange thing is, every single time I watch this movie, I choke with emotion during the climax sequence, although I know exactly how George Bailey will be saved (Interestingly, my sister said there were tears in her eyes too during this sequence, so I am not weird!!). With so much negativity surrounding us in the form of news and entertainment, movies like ‘It’s a Wonderful life’ somehow reinforces my faith in mankind and makes me believe that, in spite of what media would like me to believe, there are more good people in the world than bad and that all good deeds always pay off!

Arrested Development

How do you describe a series like ‘Arrested Development’? Words like ‘Funny’, ‘Rib-tickling’, ‘Smart’ etc seem so inadequate!!

I was getting restless after watching dark, brooding movies and comedies like Seinfeld and Everybody loves Raymond over and over again. I needed something different - something like, well, like nothing I had seen till then!! Something, that could make me marvel at the creator’s intelligence, something that would make me go ‘Wow’! My cousin mentioned about the series a couple of times. He told me it was one of the best series he had ever seen, that it was very funny etc. Although he owned the DVDs, I never felt like watching it.

One weekend, he brought the DVDs along to my place and I told myself that I would watch one episode. In the end I had watched a third of the first season (about 6 episodes) back to back, non-stop and I didn’t want it to stop, although my cousin and his wife were getting groggy!

Thus began my love affair with the series, which I think is the best I have seen in my life. Unlike other popular comedy sitcoms that are episodic, this was a series that revolved around a single story thread. I had not seen any of the actors’ performances before (except maybe that of Jason Bateman in Juno) and I was blown over by the performances. I spotted many of them in movies later though.

The story is about the Bluth family, a wealthy dysfunctional family, that is made up some colourful and really dark characters like George Bluth Sr, his wife Lucille, sons Gob Bluth, Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman), Buster Bluth and grandson George Michael Jr. Add to this daughter Lindsay Funke, her husband Tobias Funke and daughter Maeby, and you get one of the funniest and weirdest family in TV history.

What sets the series apart from other sitcoms is not one but many things. The narrative, for instance, is documentary style, with an unseen narrator, offering insights into what the characters say and think throughout the series. The use of hand held camera gives the serial a realistic and interesting look. Acting is top-notch, but what rules is the script. For a comedy, the script is unbelievably intelligent and brilliantly layered. Like wine (or so they say), Arrested Development gets better with time and with every watch. The only movie that I remember having a similar effect is ‘Michael Madana KamaRajan, because I used to discover a new joke with every watch. But while the jokes in the movie were due to the constantly flowing dialogues, Arrested Development works at multiple levels. Several sequences in previous episodes make more sense in later episodes.

The writer Mitchell Hurwitz is nothing short of a genius. As I have said before, it is very very difficult to write 2 genres - Comedy and Thrillers. As we get more and more exposed to movies, books etc from all over the world, the overdose of entertainment makes us more impervious to comedy and the daily newspapers and news footages of murders and carnage have made us immune to bloodshed and thrillers. Writers have to struggle to scare readers and struggle harder to make them laugh. And that is why, a series like Arrested Development, makes me spellbound, by the sheer power of writing behind it.

Sadly, for all its merits, the series had to be ended abruptly in the 3rd season of its run. For all the awards and critical acclaim it garnered, Arrested Development did not get the magical numbers right in the ratings. Today the series is a big hit on DVD and has a cult following (with me being the head of the India chapter!!).

I own very few original DVDs and almost none of them are of TV series. But with one watch of Arrested Development, I ordered the series online and consider it a treasure that can be and will be revisited over and over again.

Some uber cool movies..

As I start writing this, I am silently hoping that the post is not very long. It is not my intent to give a comprehensive list of all cool movies, but I just couldn’t resist the temptation to list out a few that I watched in the last 2-3 weeks.

a. Sankat City (Hindi) - An extremely intelligent and wacky comedy. I kept thinking throughout the movie and later - Just how could anyone think of a plot so circuitous and still manage to keep the movie engaging and entertaining !! One of the better comedies (unlike those churned out by the Ekta Kapoor factory or the unintentionally funny ‘ghost/Nisha Kothari’ movies by RGV). The characters were wonderfully over the top and acting was top-notch!!

b. Alibaba (Tamil) - Now, I would never have thought I would enjoy a tamil movie, made by some obscure guy and featuring 2 new faces who don’t even look all that good - especially if it was touted as ‘India tholaikaatchigalil mudhal murayaga’ (for the first time on Indian Television!!). But this was one of the rare finds that don’t make it big and still have a catchy story line. My only complaint was that the hero looked and acted really bad! But for a direct-to-TV movie (I am just guessing), this was a pretty interesting thriller, except for the usual climax with a lot of senseless ‘dishoom-dishoom’.

c. Diving Bell and the Butterfly (French) - I should really dedicate a separate post for this one. This is the film-adaptation of a french novel of the same name (Le scaphandre et le papillon) and is the awe-inspiring story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, former editor-in-chief of the ‘Elle’ magazine, who as a result of a massive stroke, suffers from a locked-in syndrome, where he can only move a single eyelid. Bauby narrated the entire book in this condition to his transcriber by blinking his eyelid!! The story is wonderful enough, what makes the movie even better is the way it is filmed. Right from the start, we see people around as Bauby would have seen them. I loved a particular sequence where Bauby’s estranged wife comes to meet with him and talks to him and his eyes mist over. You can feel it because the shot of the wife’s face becomes hazy too!! A brilliant movie!!

d. 99 (Hindi) - This was on my list from the time the movie released. Frankly I had not expected it to be as good as it was. The cast comprises of Kunal Khemu, Cyrus Broacha, Soha boring Ali Khan and the amazing Boman Irani. A very interesting script and pretty sharp dialogues made this a very good watch.

e. Kaminey (Hindi) - What do I say that the media has not already said before? Forget performances, the script rocks. Of all the actors, I thought Amol Gupte playing Bhope was just so very cool !! The movie, reminded me a lot of Guy Ritchie’s ‘Lock Stock and Two Smoking barrels’ mainly because of the similarity in style and multiple tracks running in parallel. It absolutely rocked!! I simply loved the sequence between Bhope and Mikhail where they keep pretending to shoot each other - it was so surreal and filled with tension. You know both of them are maniacs and you know something is going to go terribly wrong - a brilliant brilliant sequence.

This seems like a great year for Hindi movies. Some really offbeat movies are being made. I hope, for my own sake, that the trend continues!! Meanwhile I still have Quick Gun Murugan, Achamundu Achamundu, Eeram, Sinthanai Sei and a few others lined up!!

And for those, who, like me, cannot stand Yashraj movies, this review is a delight!!

The land of the Merlion

It had been a really long time since I had had an actual vacation. You know the kind, where you don’t think about work, just laze around, visit some places when you feel like it. No pressure of schedules, missing the train etc. I decided to take mine, which was long overdue, some time in the third week of August. The target location was Singapore, where my sister and family had now moved. My biggest draw there was my niece who is now almost two.

Tickets were pretty cheap, thanks to the Swine flu scare and my father and I boarded the Tiger Airway’s flight on Janmashtami (thus ensuring that all sweets and savouries were packed for my sister). The aircraft that we flew by can actually be called an Airbus, for it was nothing but a bus that could fly. The only thing they did not do, was let additional passengers stand in the passage-way. But then, they did mention on their website that theirs was a low-cost airline (i.e., uncomfortable). Thankfully the flight was only 4 hours long and the torture ended soon. Like good Indian passengers, my dad and I waited for exactly 2 minutes after the take-off and promptly opened our packed dinners (it was almost 11:30 pm IST then, but then when you have a responsibility at hand, who cares about the time?). With our handkerchief’s doubling as masks (cheaper than the 300 bucks one and just as ineffective!!), we tried to make ourselves less uncomfortable.

My boss and a lot of others here had told me how strict the checks were at the Sg airport and had warned me that getting out of the airport would take longer than usual because of the thermal scanning process that had been put into place. But all the warnings were unnecessary. The government of Sg strongly believes that people coming by budget airlines did not deserve to be checked for flu etc and that using a thermal scanning machine on these people was a waste of time (Tiger airways was definitely not going to pay for it!!), so we got out fairly soon. Singapore welcomed us in tamizh, (Tamizh being one of the official languages of the country), the weather was sultry (just like Chennai) and we felt at home immediately.

My sister had been given expert instructions to blend in with the general public and one of the lessons she had received was to call cab drivers ‘uncle’. So we had a barely-out-of-teens cab driver, who became our adopted uncle for the duration of the trip home from the airport and I was already feeling younger by a decade at least. I liked the place !!

The 12 days went by like 12 minutes. I hardly remember what we did each day. Most of what I remember is about my niece, who is now learning to speak and was hence a constant source of entertainment and delight for our entire stay. I would beg my sister to leave me alone at home with my niece, but she was bent upon showing us different tourist attractions.

I will list out some of these places, simply for the fact that I have many photographs that I will be uploading at the end and this list may give some context.

a. Sentosa Island and the underwater world - This was not as big as I had imagined it to be, but was still quite good. My sister refused to come in and waited outside, while my dad and I conned my niece and took her inside. The poor thing had all along thought that ‘incy-wincy spider’ is a small thing and was really scared when she saw huge spiders in cages. She kept saying ‘Don’t come here, stay there’ to all the fishes (the sizes of which, had again exceeded her imagination) to all of them. It was really funny and cute!!

A casino is supposedly getting built here to improve tourism. There is a model of the tourism icon, the Merlion here and since it was night and I was tired, I got some not-so-good pictures of this one.

b. Jurong Bird park - A wonderful tourist attraction. There was a great show called Birds and Buddies show, which we arrived late for. The park is a bird-lover’s paradise and is constructed on the slope of the Jurong hill and houses thousands of birds. I did not know what to do - look at the birds or capture them on my camera, so that I could look back again and again. The only hindrance was the weather. It was extremely hot and we grew tired very soon. A superb exhibit is the Lory loft which is a 9 story loft with free-flying birds like Lories, parakeets etc. We were totally exhausted by the time we reached this place and spent very little time here.

c. Night safari - Now this was the best part of the trip. I don’t want to write much about this. There is a very detailed article in Wikipedia. But this was one of the best tourist attractions that I had ever seen. We chose to take the tram, since the zoo was pretty big. But mid-way, we were given an option to get down and take the trail to see some animals like the snow-leopard etc which could not be spotted from the tram and then return to the station and take the next available tram. This was a spell-binding experience, and since the guide had requested us to refrain from using flash photography, which would disturb the animals there, I did not take a single picture and instead enjoyed the entire safari. An unforgettable experience was a small trail where there were some fruit bats. I entered this one alone, since my father and sister were not very keen (i.e., a little scared) of entering this trail. After I checked it out, they went later and found that it was a completely new experience.

d. Merlion park - We visited this one purely because otherwise our Singapore trip would be considered incomplete.

Some things to note about the country:

a.Connectivity - This reminded me of UK. The whole city is very well connected by trains and buses and it is easy for a newcomer to settle down very quickly. Unlike the US, where it is difficult to survive without a car (except NYC, SFO etc), Singapore has a great public transport system (I guess that is the main criterion for me to like any place!!). The trains and buses are air-conditioned and a single pass works for both. Eating/drinking is not allowed in trains, buses or train stations. Of course, there are a few law-breakers, but the number is quite low. The government encourages the use of buses and trains instead of cars, to keep the pollution low.

b. Cleanliness - I used to hear about how clean Singapore was, that you didn’t need a plate and could eat directly from the road. I guess that is a thing of the past. Sure, it is way more clean than Chennai or any part of India, but not quite what I had expected. It is sad that the learning has happened in the opposite direction. People stash away trash in nooks and corners when no one is looking.

c. Green - In spite of the population and the industrialization, I found a lot of trees and plants everywhere. Many places resembled some of the posh areas of Chennai.

d. Food - Another thing in common with Chennai. People seem to be food lovers and every other shop is a restaurant (selling interesting things like Octopus etc). I loved the fresh soymilk that they sold in most places. The coffee there is very strong and is close to the south-Indian filter coffee, only stronger. It is called Kopi and instead of milk, condensed milk is used. Another great thing was the Thai tender coconuts sold in the beaches and other stores. I really thought they had injected some sugar solution into the coconut.

e. Tourism - for the size of the country, the number of places to visit is quite high. In spite of going out almost every day, we still missed a few like the Singapore zoo, the orchid gardens etc.

A good blend of eastern and western culture, my 12 days in Singapore, made me very depressed, in a manner that a couple of years in the US or a few weeks in the UK had failed to do. I never compared India with the other countries, because we were so different. But Singapore was definitely something that Chennai, India could be.

And now for some pics:

a. Some of the smaller fish




b. The Merlion in Sentosa


c. An orchid in the Bird park


d. Another beautiful flower in the bird park.


e. Birds (!??!) in the bird park


f. The glorious Flamingos


g. Their fairer cousins


h. Reminded me of the Liril Ad


i. On the Lory Loft


j. Didn't note the name of the birds, but look at their colour!!


k. The real Merlion


l. The Esplanade

Of Soaps and Handkerchiefs..

Our home is a soap-free zone. Now don’t raise your handkerchiefs to your nose. I am not talking about the soap that is a cleaning agent, but the soap operas that have become staple of every Indian household, irrespective of caste, creed, economic status etc!!

Our servants may lack money for food as the month-end draws closer, but the first thing they do with their salaries is to pay the cable guy his monthly rental.

My days of TV watching ended at about the same time satellite TV came into picture. Weekly serials with a story to tell were slowly replaced with half an hour episodes of crying, cursing and avenging. My mother became something of a social outcast amongst our relatives since she was the only one who appeared clueless about the difficulties faced by ‘Saro’ of ‘Metti Oli’ (a very popular tamil soap).

If we ever bother to enter a friend/relative’s house at 7:00pm or later we are spoken to like the characters in K.Balachander’s* movies.

Hindi soaps are equally and often more scary. I remember one day when I was visiting my friend who was staying at the Hyderabad guest house. She was watching some K soap with the guest-house cooks. The she-villain in the serial looked really scary, but wore some really expensive clothes and jewelery and even had a signature tune that played in the background every time she appeared on screen. She had some name ending with ‘ika’. (All these years I kept thinking the name was Kaapalika or Andolika, but my friend said it was Komolika!)

Well coming back to what I actually wanted to say - After a long long time, I was forced to watch/hear a soap, thanks to a visit from my aging relatives. True to our time-honored maxim - Athhithi Devo Bhava (Guest is God), my father changed the channel to the one playing the latest version of Ramayan. And my childhood nightmares returned.

It is interesting how some things never change !! No, I don’t mean the story of Ramayan itself, but the way our serial makers (or should I say serial killers?) dramatize it!! Some noteworthy points :

a. Sita and Ram still look well fed after 13 years of living in the jungle eating roots and fruits.

b. Ravan is still the same silly guy who laughs aloud for no reason. He seems to think he is intimidating - we don’t !!

c. The concept of time is taken very literally by the directors. When a person walks from point A to point B that is about 200 m away, the scene stretches for about the same time as it would take in real life to walk that distance.

d. However this concept is forgotten when a war sequence is shown. The guys separated by about 50 m shoot arrows at each other. The arrows take a few minutes to reach the other end or worse still collide with the other arrow. I remember the sequence where Ram had to lift the bow in King Janaka’s court, in the Ramanand Sagar version. That week’s episode consisted of showing a court full of kings who had come to break the bow and ended with the 3rd or 4th failed attempt. The next week’s episode had Lord Ram walking to the box where the bow is kept, standing near it and then ‘Mangal bhavan amangal..’ while the credits rolled. It took about 4 episodes for Ram to walk to the bow, lift it and finally break it !!The serial made award winning Malayalam and Bengali movies (of those days) seem like James Bond movies !!

e. Besides the slow-motion, Ramanand Sagar’s version had some hilarious advertisements for crackers in these sequences. The arrows would frequently collide mid-air and give rise to some colorful stuff!! While I was spared of the war sequences in the episode I heard more than saw (I had my back turned to the TV to escape from visual assault!!), I heard the bad guys planning an assault and harping on the same point from the start of the episode to the end.

f. Hanuman still looks constipated. But what else can you expect from the poor guy who has some contraption on his mouth preventing him from emoting in any manner? (P.S. I recently read Valmiki Ramayan and Hanuman is described as a very handsome person!!)

g. The music director seems to still take his job very seriously. He considers it his paramount duty to compensate for the lack of acting by the actors by giving appropriate mood music for different scenes. Thus if the hero’s mother offers him rice and he says he wants roti, our MD gets emotional and plays a music that would in pre-soap days make you think that the hero’s mother kicked the bucket.

h. The guy playing Ram still seems to think that smiling and looking like a complete moron makes him look noble. He seems to have taken his (non-) acting lessons from Arun Govil!!

i. Sita is still well made up in Ashoka vanam. Make-up probably grows on the trees of that forest!!

j. The villains still talk too much !! They keep saying what they will do, where as the good guys kill them in the end without too much talk.

k. It was very difficult not to shudder while listening to the voices of the characters. The tamizh dubbed version was playing on TV and I have heard the same male and female voices mouthing pretty much the same type of dialogues in ads and other serials that one comes across while switching channels.

Miracles happen once in a while to re-inforce one’s belief in God. Similarly chance viewings such as the one yesterday made me realize what I was not missing in my life - TV soaps !!

*K.B is a very very famous tamil film director in Tamizhnadu. Many of his characters have this habit of looking at the mirror or some obscure object while talking to another character !!

Hey You, Meet You !!

Intro 1 - A conversation with a friend of many years:
‘So what are you reading these days?’

‘I have suddenly developed an interest for classics. Thankfully the public library is not short of books by old masters. I have just started Tolstoy’s War and Peace. What about you?’

‘Me? It has been a while since I read any novels, but the last one I read was one by Frederick Forsyth. What about movies? What was the last one you saw?’

‘I discovered this site called filmsite.org a month back. It has a list of the top 100 English movies of all times. I am thinking of watching them one by one.’

‘Hmm.. Why are you like this?’

‘Like what??’

‘Well, why do you have to read classics and watch B&W movies? Do you really like them? I personally think that you are doing it because you think it is the right thing to do and not because you like it! Why are you not normal? Why do you strive so hard to be different? Why can’t you be like normal girls? Normal girls your age, would listen to film music or popular music, but you pretend to enjoy classical music!! They would watch what everyone else watches, not some obscure movies from the archives! What are you trying to prove and to who? Why are you restricting yourself? Why don’t you be more open and broad-minded?’

Intro 2 - Another casual conversation with a short-term friend:

‘So tell me this - Are you a vegetarian by choice? Or is it because of your upbringing?’

‘It was initially because of my upbringing. Now it is also a matter of choice.’

‘And why is it your choice now? Religion? Ethical reasons?’

‘Ethical reasons’

‘See, this is my problem with vegetarians. Why do you say ethical reasons? Why don’t you say that you do not like meat?’

‘What is the problem? You asked me why I did not eat meat and I gave you an honest answer!!’

‘No, but what you are doing is wrong !! You are making a non-vegetarian like me feel bad about myself for eating meat, by giving such an answer. You vegetarians, think you are morally superior to us !! We are human too!! We have feelings too!!’

‘Are you, by any chance, drunk or stoned? Whoever talked anything about you? You asked me a question and I replied !!’

‘But you should be nicer when you respond to such questions. If someone asks you why you are a vegetarian, you can simply say that its your choice! Why do you want say that it is due to ethical reasons? Do you mean to imply that being a non-vegetarian is unethical?’

What is common between the 2 exchanges above? Note how the questions were framed. What were the responses and what meanings were construed? Most people hear what they want to hear! The opinion about you or the subject is already formed and what they want is a mere confirmation, which they will derive irrespective of what your actual response is. The questions are merely rhetorical and are supposedly intended to prove to you what a hypocrite you are !!

Though not many, I have met a few such people in life. I can understand this sort of exchange happening with people you do not know very well, but sometimes, it is the ‘friends’ and ‘well-wishers’ who often end up annoying you in ways mentioned above.

Sometimes these ‘illuminating’ comments tend to destroy your self-esteem, especially when you are young. During my school days, I got into a quarrel with a boy in my class. The fight was pointless like most fights between kids. We were kids entering adolescence. During that short period, girls and boys hated each other and insulted each other at every possible instance. Things turned a little dramatic, when this boy and few of his friends sent home an abusive post card with choice expletives, complete with spelling and grammar mistakes (I was even called a ‘bloody bucket’ in the letter !!). My parents were upset and complained to the school principal who then asked the class teacher to give a stern warning to the culprits.

These were boys and as I had mentioned before, we had a beast who worked as the Sports teacher. He got involved in the issue too and supposedly gave the boys a sound beating (heresay). This was when my class teacher realized that she had to teach ME a lesson for provoking the boys. So I suddenly became a student who needed to be corrected. During one class, the teacher started talking about how people should behave. She spoke about a fictional person, who was good in academics and co-curricular activity, who belonged to a certain community (trust me, this happens in small-town schools in TN) and who was popular in school. But, she said, these things did not matter if she was vain. (Pride, I was told later, is when a girl of any age talks back to a guy of any age!!). The only thing she did not mention during the entire speech was my name! The entire class was now looking at me, for no one was fooled that the advice was meant for the whole class.

The issue did not end there. She supposedly asked to see my younger sister and asked her about my general behaviour at home, was I friendly with my father and my brother etc. My sister innocently told her that I would often fight with my brother. That is when the teacher told my sister something that I had not known all along - that I had always had a hatred towards men :) I was young and eager to please everyone around, especially my teachers. And this teacher affected me so badly that for the remaining years at school and college, I refused to participate in any extra-curricular activities. My self-esteem went for a complete toss, and I started believing that I was one of the most despicable people put on earth. I would tremble when I had to stand in front of people and had a few experiences of losing my voice totally when facing the mike.

Today, I find it easier to brush aside comments made by people about what I actually meant while saying anything. But as I said before, it still comes as a shock when people who you think you know well, still offer opinions about what they really think you meant!! Sometimes, it is better when people take you at face-value rather than try to find hidden meanings in every word you say or every action you do !!

Celebrating Women..

Take a movie, any movie in any language.

Now think of the female characters in the movie.

Think of what would happen to the plot of the movie, if the character did not exist. Will the story still survive?

Given how strong a medium movies are, it often surprises me that women are so inconsequential to the plots of most (almost all) movies. I was thinking of my favourite movies in all languages and almost all of them could be made without any women in them!! (I am not taking into account ‘regular’ romances - not ‘Brokeback Mountain’ or ‘Farewell my concubine’ - where there is a heroine solely to complete the love story or love triangle. I am also not talking about the mandatory mother characters that die in the arms of the son in the end. (Completely off track - try this link. The portion about Nirupa Roy had me in splits and I have read this one again and again and again!!)

I often get into this mode of thinking about such absolutely useless topics not only when I have nothing better to do, but also when I have loads of pending work! But thats just me and my almost always idle mind!!. If art reflects life, how come most of the interesting stories portrayed in movies seldom require a female character to make it complete? Thats not the case in real life!! How many movies have realistic portrayals of women and have them play central characters (No Vaijayanthi IPS or other Vijayshanthi types please!!)? Or even if not realistic, atleast relatable characters?

These questions had been on my mind for quite a while, till I watched a 2006 Spanish movie, titled ‘Volver’ by Pedro Almodovar. I had heard about the movie because of the Oscar buzz surrounding it. The stills for the movie did not look very inviting. The image of Penelope Cruz wearing a low cut dress and wearing red lipstick, did not seem like an interesting prospect. However, since I was watching other Oscar nominees for that year and also since I had started watching foreign language movies recently, I rented this one. Only after the movie ended, did I realize that there was just 1-2 male characters in the movie with very little screen time. Otherwise the movie was ruled by women of different ages. Unlike most of the big budget hollywood flicks, this movie had a strong story, even stronger characters and was very touching at the same time. The movie explores mothers of different ages and shows how times change but some things like a mother’s love for her daughter and her protective nature never change. The movie, like our good old Indian movies has a lot of other things, black humour, emotions, maternal love, a murder and yes, even a song !!

After watching this one, when I spotted another movie titled ‘All about my mother’ by the same director, I rented it without any second thoughts. This was even more beautiful. The movie is dedicated to every one who is a woman at heart, even if physically they are different from a ‘normal’ woman. Once again, this movie has a lot of really strong women and men, who are women at heart. Apart from the central character Manuela played by Cecilia Roth, the movie has a lot of interesting characters including a tranvestite prostitute, a pregnant nun and a lesbian actress who Manuela comes across in her search for her lost husband. Again, a really touching movie.

A word of caution though, both the above mentioned movies have some strong adult theme and content and are not suitable for all types of audiences. After this I started exploring Almodovar’s older movies and gave up after watching 2-3 because of the overdose of homoerotic content!!

Are there any more movies that you can think of that have used women as more than props (wives, mothers, sisters, girlfriends etc of the hero)? My cousin recommended an old movie by Gulzar called Ijaazat and I am yet to watch that. Any other recommendations?

Broken Window - a real threat

I take guilty pleasure in reading paperback novels by popular writers of paperback mysteries. But when I grow tired of bloodshed, murder victims and weapons, a know-all hero, I switch to the offbeat books. I am usually against novel ’series’ that feature the same set of characters. But a very interesting and unlikely hero called Lincoln Rhyme, a former cop, caught my attention in the book - The Bone Collector. The interesting thing about this guy is that he is a quadriplegic, i.e., has no sensation and control in any of his limbs and is hence restricted to his bed all the time. This is the same condition the original superman - Christopher Reeves suffered from. What it also means is, that he solves mysteries purely using his brain and the stories usually involve very little action from the hero’s part.

When Jeffrey Deaver, the author wrote this novel, he initially intended to kill the character at the end of it, but decided against it. Due to the large success that the novel enjoyed, he turned this into a series. So for paperback mystery enthusiasts, the characters Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs - the redhead detective and Rhyme’s partners are as familiar as a blood relative.

The thing with such series is that it is extremely difficult to sustain the interest levels of the reader. The characters are the same, their functions and characteristics are things that readers already know by now. The mystery is usually a murder and the way the characters will go about solving the mystery is usually the same (since they are the same characters from the previous works). So what can the author do? Simple, create newer and meaner villains !

The more the series extended, the meaner and more invincible the villains became and the lesser was my enthusiasm towards these books. However, my dad picked up the latest in the series the other day and since I had nothing else to read and since I literally go crazy without a book in hand when I am eating, I started reading this one.

This is not great literature, so this post is not about the merits or demerits of the subject or the style of the author. I was more struck by the actual subject of the novel. The villain in this time is computer literate and is involved in identity theft.

Given how much everything around us is computerized these days and given the fact that most of our day-to-day transactions are recorded electronically somewhere or the other, the events described in the novel don’t seem too far removed from life. The possible repercussions of data mining are described in great detail and some of the events described in the novel seem to real to be ignored as a writer’s fantasy.

Purchases on the internet, resumes on job sites, seemingly innocent survey forms, swipe cards to get in and out of office, RFIDs to track product usage, understand customer psychology and study patterns - there seem to be so many details that we seem to be giving away about ourselves and it is a very real possibility that there are twisted minds out there who can and will misuse this information to serve their purposes.

How secure am I in today’s electronic world? How anonymous can anybody be? Take the example of any blogger, say me. My neighbours know me by face (and that too is not a certainty), but those I interact with through my blogs probably know more about me than a neighbour who is physically closer to me. Given sufficient time, access, an intelligent mind can probably piece together all information about an individual and use it too.

Just the other day, my brother and I were discussing about this. He was telling me that according to him, many of the marketing SMS that we receive on our mobile phones were because of our resumes on job sites. This, I realized was not always true. I returned only 3 weeks back from onsite and hence have a new number. Now this number has been published to a few selected people (about 5-6 of them), but I have already started receiving calls from banks about personal loans and SMSes on various subjects including massage services in the area and homemade food that can be delivered at my doorstep. Hypothetically, if I did post my resume on a website, I would not have updated it (-I have not-posted my resume, I mean!!), then how did these guys get my mobile number AND my details!!

Although I keep reminding myself that I am not a character in a mystery novel and such things don’t usually happen to me, reading this book at this time has made my imagination more colourful and wild! I am worried what else these people know about me and whether anyone will really worry enough about me to wreck my life by stealing my identity (whatever little is left after working in IT for so many years !!)

A language for every mood

We Indians, are really lucky - almost all of us are bilinguals. Many of us are tri and multi linguals. Besides the obvious benefit of having access to literatures in all the languages one has knowledge of, I think languages serve a very important purpose. I have experienced it every time I try to put down my thoughts when I see something of great beauty, like the Niagara or the Grand Canyon or a picture of my cute niece - the lack of words to express EVERYTHING I feel, in English.

I guess I am not the only person, but English seems to me, very inadequate when I have to express something from my heart. My preferred choice would be Tamizh, my mother tongue or even Hindi. Somehow, calling someone, who unmindful of you or the traffic light, decides to cross the road and worse still, pauses to grin like a complete idiot, names in English, does not help in expressing all the anger, irritation, the urge to get down and murder the person as well as I would want it to be!! What can I call the Niagara except beautiful? How shallow the word sounds in front of the majesty of the falls!!

Switching between different languages is a very big convenience in such situations. So when I am upset, I use English, especially when I want to soften the blow. When I am really angry (usually due to road-rage), I switch to Tamizh. Hindi is a rarely used language, and as a result is pretty rusty. Besides, I don’t know cuss words that are moderate enough for me in Hindi. English has a lot of them and most of them are meant for the person’s mother than the person himself, so I rarely use those !!Calling names in my case is using the names of different animals in my case. It is a different thing altogether that in many instances, these animals behave better than people in general and me in particular. In Indian languages, since we tend to sing, rather than talk, changing the tune a little also changes the tone (wow, that sounds like poetry !!). Stress the ‘r’s a little and most words can be converted to cuss words, without really meaning anything harmful.

I am not including the newly evolved languages like Hinglish (’The other day, my papa was telling me ki I should not ghumafy in the scooter’) or Tanglish (what most of our RJ’s speak). Those to me combine the worst of all languages and are absolutely useless in conveying emotions.

What is the best language when you want to ‘pet’ babies? (See I could not find anything better than ‘pet’) That is the language I love most, since there is no limit to your imagination in that language. Although there is no grammar, I think this language too is a derivative of the mother tongue of the petter (is there such a word?) or the petted. As a result ‘chunnu’, ‘munnu’ make sense for kids speaking Hindi and related languages and ‘kutti’, ‘pattu’ along with a combination of different fabrics etc for Tamizh kids. I heard my Kannada speaking friend calling the baby ‘bangara’ (meaning gold) and am guessing that telugu speakers would use a minor variant of the term. What kind of baby-talk can I try with English speaking kids?

What languages do you prefer for your different moods?

Children of Heaven

I have been wanting to write this post for quite a while now. In fact I wanted to write it as soon as I finished watching this gem of a movie by Iranian director Majid Majidi. My friend at work was the first one to recommend ‘Children of Heaven’ to me. Sadly he only remembered that it was an Iranian movie and the story. He promised to find out the name of the movie from his wife, but forgot about it. I chanced upon the DVD in the library and without knowing that it was the same movie my friend had talked about, I went ahead and watched it. This movie is a proof to my theory that to make a good movie, you do not need a complicated script all the time. A simple story executed with a difference or a different story executed simply usually results in a good movie.

‘Children of Heaven’ is one of those rare movies where the characters are very real and the situations are very relatable. It is also one of the few movies where children behave like normal children and their issues are dealt with love and seriousness.

The story is unbelievably simple. The movie starts with a shot of young Ali (about 6-7 years old) getting his younger sister Zahra’s shoes repaired with the shoemaker. On his way back, he leaves them outside the grocers while he picks up vegetables for his home. Unfortunately a blind salesman who collects used things picks them up and Ali goes home without the shoes. Ali tells Zahra about the shoes and tells her not to tell their parents since they both know that their father does not have the money to replace the shoes.

Ali asks Zahra to wear his shoes to her school in the morning and then hand them to Ali who would wear them for his afternoon classes. This difficult arrangement gives rise to some interesting adventures. Ali hears about an interschool race in school where the 3rd prize is a pair of sneakers. Ali decides to participate in the race, win the 3rd place and gift the sneakers to Zahra. He is by now very good at running, thanks to his daily runs to school to be on time and so begs his way into the race, even though the selection of boys from the school for the race is already over. What happens in the race? Does Ali get the sneakers? These questions are answered at the end of the movie.

Iranian movies are held in high esteem in movie circles, for their visual appeal, simple storylines and artistic approach. My first taste of Iranian new wave movies started with ‘Baran’, which also happens to be by the same director. I picked up the movie without knowing anything about it except what the cover of the DVD told me. I wouldn’t say I was blown away by the movie, but it was a movie with very little dialogues and a very pretty heroine who used her eyes to convey all the emotions. ‘Children of Heaven’ is the best of all the Iranian movies I have seen (only 4 )

The kids are extremely cute and their eyes convey everything. When Ali and his father go to the city looking for work, Tehran looked really beautiful with skyscrapers and beautiful buildings. The movie moves at a leisurely pace and it is a welcome break from movies and media where there is a lot of negativity.

This movie was nominated for the Academy awards in the best foreign film category in 1997 but unfortunately lost to a worthy opponent - Life is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni. For those interested in world cinema, Children of heaven is a must watch.

The Music Teacher

Warning : A long post !!

“My brother wants to learn guitar and my mother and I want vocal music classes in carnatic music”. - That’s how my first conversation with the music “teacher” went. This was after complaining to anyone who made the mistake of bothering to listen to me talk, about my difficulty in finding a good music teacher to continue with my music lessons. My brother too would keep telling me that he wanted to learn to play the guitar. I finally thought I had found my Guru when I saw the ad in the local newspaper. The ad said that guitar, keyboard, vocal and mridangam would be taught at my doorstep and where required, the music instrument would also be provided. After thinking a lot, I finally called the number provided in the ad on Saturday. It was almost 5 pm and the person on the other end took down my address details, gave me his name (Mr. Kumar) and told me he would come the same day. I was not mentally prepared (you have no idea of the mental preparation that goes into learning music !) and asked him to come the next evening. Only after replacing the phone, I realized that both of us had not talked about the fees !

Sunday came and we were returning from Tiruttani ( a temple town near Chennai), when my brother’s mobile rang. The music teacher wanted to know when he could come and my brother told him to come by 4 pm. I have to admit that I started feeling a little like Swami Vivekananda ! (It is said that Swami Ramakrishna Parahamsa literally waited day and night for his disciple and prayed for him to come soon ! It is one of the rare cases where the Guru was more desperate for the disciple than the reverse!!) .

I had just started napping after reaching home, when my brother announced that Mr Paramahamsa was here. An ordinary looking person with kumkum on his forehead smiled at me. After some initial small talk, he declared that he liked ‘Kisore kumar’ a lot. It was not everyday that you would hear a Carnatic Music teacher declare his love for a film singer* and I was, well, surprised ! The teacher then went on to explain that he had lived in Delhi all along and that he knew Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi etc. Then he turned to me and said - ‘Indi’ theriyuma? (Do you know ‘Indi’?)

‘Theriyum’ (I know), I said.

When we read the ad, we had all thought that this was some sort of a music school and that there were different teachers for each instrument. Here was a one-man-army ! Mr. Kumar told me, without any attempt at humility, that he was like TV Gopalakrishnan (a very popular mridangist, who is also a vocalist and plays a lot of other instruments !!).

I told him that both my mother and I had had some basic training in Carnatic music and that I had learnt a few varnams and some keerthanais. (Varnams - small compositions usually performed at the beginning of a concert. Subject of varnams is usually romance. Keerthanai - Devotional songs set to a ragam and talam and sung as main pieces in a concert). Mr Kumar said that he would start with the basic lessons to understand our capability and then proceed.

My mom gently asked him about the fees and he said “2500 for the guitar and 3500 for vocal lessons for both of you (my mom and me)”.

Our expressions changed - “6000 a month for just music classes !!”, we were both thinking. As if we were not enough, I had invited my cousin who lived next door to join the crowd. The teacher thought for a minute and said, “Ok, 5000 for the 3 of you”.

My mom hesitantly told him that it was too expensive, given that we were learning music as a hobby. My brother interjected and added that the cost was nominal for guitar lessons. So we asked the teacher to start training my brother, while the 3 women (my cousin, mom and I) retreated to the kitchen to ‘discuss the next steps’. My mom finally came and announced that my brother could continue his lessons and that we did not need vocal lessons. Secretly I was very relieved that the deal did not succeed, since for some reason, I was beginning to have doubts about the person’s capabilities.

About 5 minutes passed and I was back in the hall to check how my brother was doing. Mr Kumar turned towards me and asked me “What was the discussion about? Do you think the fees is very high?”

I felt guilty for having wounded his artistic temperament and proceeded to clarify -”Sorry sir, we are casual learners and for us, this seems high, but then this is not a market and I cannot bargain with an artist. That is the reason why we said we don’t need the classes. We do not want to put you in an embarrassing situation.”

What came next was really unexpected !!

“How much are you willing to pay?” - he said.

“God !! This is really turning into a conversation at a vegetable market!!”, I thought.

My mom, in the hope of dissuading him, said “3000 for the 3 of us”.

And Mr. Kumar immediately agreed !!

He said “This is Saraswati and let us not bargain much. I had to rent a car to come here, since I had to come all the way from Vadapazhani. This is what I usually charge my other students. Let us agree on this price and start the classes”. I now had a sinking feeling that we were trapped. I also felt uneasy about the fact that he had come all the way from Vadapazhani. Why would a person from Vadapazhani advertise in the local paper for Tiruvanmiyur (which is 15-20 km away)? How can you tell the person delicately that we did not want the lessons! My mom was not looking at me either and the deal was struck.

He had been teaching my brother to pluck the strings of the guitar and he turned to us and said “Let us start with the basic exercises. Shall we sing ‘Sa Pa Sa’?” (Sa, Pa and Sa represent the base note, the middle note and top note in an octave. This is sung first in a class to ascertain the ’shruti’ or pitch of the singers. In Carnatic music, unlike Western Classical Music, pitch is relative.)

I noticed that he did not have a shruti box - a must for music classes, to maintain shruti. He asked me to sing first and I did. And he remarked “Aaha, you sound like a shruti box!!”. I had totally given up on this person and decided that he had no idea about music!! He was resorting to flattery and I totally detested it !! No guru praises the disciple for singing Sa Pa Sa and that too in the first class !!

Then he started singing the sarali varisai - fundamental music sequence involving all the seven notes sung in sequence in different permutations. We sang along. The interesting thing was that we were all singing in one shruti and he was singing in something completely different. It is a very difficult task for a person to sing in a completely different pitch, when someone else is singing in a pitch! It is impossible !! And this man managed to do that. Also, the initial exercises were to be sung in the 1st speed and our man was racing along.

In between he stopped the actual talam (beat) and was generally tapping (and that definitely resembled the way some of my aunts make rotis). After some futile attempts to follow him all of us stopped the talam. My mom, who is ever curious and outspoken stopped him midway and said “Why is your talam different? You did not teach us this one!” and he responded “I am a mridangist also, thats why I tend to switch!”

We took a short break while my mom went to fetch him some coffee. I had already started having doubts about the person’s capacity to sing and wanted to confirm my suspicions. So I hesitatingly asked “Sir, please teach us some small song as it is the first class.”

And the man started thinking and said “The problem is, I am able to recollect only big keerthanais. Ok, let me teach you a very small shloka on Ganapati. It is a very simple one.”

And he sang !! And I cried (inside) and sang (outside)!! Trust me, you have to listen to the song to believe what I am saying !! It was a little more than a nursery rhyme and the teacher sang even that with a lot apaswaram (off-key) !!

We somehow managed to wind up the class and were literally waiting for him to leave. There was silence for exactly one minute and my cousin slowly said, “I don’t know about you, but I was not very convinced.” That was it!! The floodgates opened and we were all talking at the same time. My brother said that when he came in he was breathing heavily, for he had probably walked all the way from the bus stop. Then what was all the rot about renting a car !! We also started laughing uncontrollably ! But after a while I grew really angry! How could a person dare to cheat people like this!! You did not need a degree in music to understand that he was a fraudster !!

The highlight of the entire episode came later !! My mom called him on Monday evening to tell him that we were not interested in the classes as we were not satisfied. The guy simply said ok and disconnected.

In 5 minutes, he called again and said “If not guitar, please take up vocal lessons at least !” and my mother felt sorry and gave him some reason about me going onsite again etc.

The guy did not hesitate and said “But what about yesterday’s class? You need to pay me for it.”

My mom said “But you did not teach us anything!! We were singing along with you and you did not even bother to correct us when we went wrong. ”

Mr. Kumar said, “You need to pay at least Rs.250 for my conveyance”.

And my mom said “The max I am willing to give is Rs. 50 for your bus charge” (I can’t control my laughter!!)

And the guy thought for a minute and said “But I did not take a bus, I took a car!! I will think of this as a donation. I can’t spend 100 bucks to get 50 from you!!”

And my mom thanked him for his generosity and put the phone down unable to control herself!!

On Sunday and Monday, I was beside myself with frustration. I had lost all hopes of my ever learning music well enough. And I simply could not digest the fact that people were capable of cheating in this fashion.

I later had to convince myself to stop this foolish search for teachers. I believe in rebirths and the concept of karma. For the kind of life I have been leading I am undoubtedly going to be reborn. So I am now thinking that I will spend the rest of this birth in only listening to music and devote the next birth to learn it !!

*Not to be construed as demeaning Kishore Kumar or film music. This just represents the usual mentality of Carnatic Music enthusiasts.