Vanity control

A year or two ago, one of my nieces was telling me about her kid sister - about how the eight year old knew exactly what she wanted in terms of clothes, that she would visit the store and demand for a certain style of garment in a certain colour - the one Kareena Kapoor wears in the first part of the song XXXX in the movie YYYY etc. It was funny for sure, but I was also surprised at how fashion-conscious our kids have become when compared to what we were as kids ! This whole thread of memory was probably born from reading another post on beauty consciousness among today's kids.

When I was young, the world around us made sure we were never vain about our looks. First, our school and the school-uniform they strictly enforced. Girls were to wear a navy blue skirt and a white shirt. That sounds nice enough, doesn't it? Well that was not all, we also had to wear red ribbons on our hair and not in any manner we thought which would reduce the blow of having to wear red ribbons - but with 2 braids that were folded such that the red ribbons looked more like brightly painted horns on two-sides of our heads. To complete the costume, we had to wear black shoes and white socks. I sometimes think that the uniform was formulated by a group of people who had varied tastes and the uniform was actually a kind of compromise to accede to everyone's individual requests and tastes!! The interesting thing about the whole thing is, that never once, during my school days or even later when I was at college, did I ever stop to think how ridiculous the costume was!! In fact, I rarely bothered to change my hairstyle or remove the ribbons in the evenings, when I would go out and play. Not just me, none of us at school ever thought it was uncool to wear a totally uncoordinated costume to school or about going to school with hair soaked in oil.

The next influence was of course our families. Anyone born in a family with sisters/brothers know the torture that we go through in the name of uniformity. Our parents thought it would reduce competition and my sister and I would always be dressed in clothes that looked exactly alike ! If I call it torture, I can imagine the plight of my sister, who had to wear her clothes that were identical to mine and then My clothes, which I had outgrown, thus reliving the pain!! As kids, we did not suffer from any sort of pride in accepting hand-me-downs from our other relatives, which the relative always assured were 'never-worn' and were 'like-new'. How a 'never-worn' dress had multiple hand-sewn patches never struck my mind till then! And we didn't care!! After all, we got to wear what grown-up girls wore (salwar-kurtas) instead of the drab skirts that we had to wear then !!

Make-up was a strict no-no. My mother would braid my hair and fold the plaits with red-ribbons (later we got the 'luxury' of black ribbons too), would put kajal in my eyes with two tails at the edge and would say that I looked like her favourite heroine in black and white movies. I was a child and would innocently take it as a compliment and would return to play. Only later, after growing up did I realize that this 'favourite heroine' was actually middle-aged and looked ridiculous with her two braids and a saree. My mother meant well of course !

The influence of media was not as much as it was today. Our heroines were seldom fashion-icons. If we had to look like our heroines, we had to eat more and exercise less (I am talking about our well-fed south-indian heroines). Their fashion-sense, if it can be called that, if imitated would have people around us in splits. Most heroines I remember from then wore really shiny and gaudy looking clothes and pink or other horrid looking hair-pins right next to the partition in their hair (wigs). But then, the movies that we got to watch (about 52 a year), were the outdated ones that played on Sunday evenings in DD, where the heroines had a permanent bump on their head and 3-4 inches of makeup on their faces. Some styles were probably copied by a few, but this never reached children. We were allowed to dress as badly as we wanted.

This was till an actress called 'Nadiya' was introduced to tamizh movies. She was considered hip and cool and became a style icon. As I said, our exposure to movies was still very limited, but we had the other kids talking about hair-styles and skirts and ear-rings named after her!! My most funny memory of our 'fashion-sense' is about some plastic ear-rings that my aunt had bought for us in Chennai. To us, in the small town Coimbatore, Chennai was the fashion-center. My aunt had bought these ear-rings on the suburban train and had sent them through my mom. The colours ranged from bright yellow, to copper sulphate blue. There were a couple that would reach till my shoulder and I used to wear these regularly to school, not in the least bothered about how I looked!! I must have looked like a walking rainbow !!

But coming to think of it, we were not assaulted from every direction with 'fashion-shows' or movies with heroines who looked like their food-plate was snatched from them even before they started eating and clothes like they were dragged out of the bathroom before dressing up! Eating was encouraged and mothers repeatedly told us that we were growing children, who had to be fed like pigs !! Exercising was never enforced, because we were playing the whole evening, after school. At our school, we had some wonderful teachers who never believed in homework and who thought that the child's time spent in school was good enough and that homework was an unnecessary burden.

Clothes and accessories were necessary evils, nothing more and were only distractions from the more important concept of playing and having fun. We were not subjected to peer pressure when it came to appearance. We did not have televisions and magzines talking about losing 20lbs in 20 days or how actress A achieved size zero! We didn't care about size and thought that to pose for a photograph, the red lipstick that we had literally smeared over our lips (and around it) and the very obvious layer of powder were necessary and had to be washed off afterwards !!They were truly to me, days of innocence !!

Of Red Rocks and Vortexes

No, you did not read it wrong ! Don't pride yourself on catching me making a grammatical error !! I know that the usual plural form of Vortex is vortices, but not so in Sedona, AZ. You will hear people talking about spiritual 'vortexes' in Sedona and that is where I went on Saturday!

Sedona is about 2 hours from Phoenix and is known for its breathtaking sandstone formations called the Red Rocks of Sedona.These red rocks were formed due to deposits of iron oxide over layers of sandstone and limestone over millions of years, that later started rusting giving the rocks a bright red colour. We started pretty late in the morning and like all drives that initiate from Phoenix, found the landscape really dull and boring with endless rows of cacti lining both sides of the freeway. However we did not need any board announcing Sedona to us, the town announced itself. All of a sudden, we saw red rocks all over. Nature or God, depending on what you want to call the creator had literally painted the town red. Even the soil on the road had turned from a drab brown colour to bright red !!

To spirituality and metaphysics enthusiasts, Sedona has a little more to offer. Sedona supposedly houses 4 energy vortexes. These are supposedly places of high cosmic energy concentration. Spiritual energy is supposed to flow upwards from the earth much like a vortex. Many people claim to experience a heightened awareness of spirituality on visiting these vortexes (that's how they are called here, instead of vortices. All my friends and most of you who have read my posts regularly (Pride, thy name is Rathi !!), know that I am anything but subtle and sensitive! I have been initiated in Reiki, but have never felt the 'tingling sensation' that most Reiki practitioners claim to experience. Similarly, with TaiChi too, I have heard my fellow students talking about 'out-of-the-body' experience or energy flowing through them while practising TaiChi. Not so with me. I generally tend to smile stupidly (I like to think it is mysterious), when people talk about such experiences and usually leave the other person confused about what I felt (if I did feel anything at all!). So I was hoping to experience this energy that everyone was talking about and chose to visit one of the energy vortexes called The Bell Rock in Sedona.

We parked our car a little distance away from Bell Rock and took the trail that went around the rock, which is actually a misnomer, since it is more a hill than a rock ! It was quite chilly that day and I was cursing myself for having believed weather.com on the weather forecast ! While I was dressed in jeans and t-shirt and was cursing the weather, I saw many mountain bikers who wore shorts and sleeveless tees and were biking away to glory !

There are multiple beliefs about the energy vortexes. Each energy vortex is supposed to enhance a certain kind of energy within a person. One of them is believed to increase energies associated with strength (and hence called masculine energy) and power. A second one is supposed to enhance the feminine side of a person, like kindness, goodness etc (Men please note !!). The other two are supposed to increase the balance, i.e., both energies. Bell Rock is supposedly the vortex that works on improving the balance in the two types of energies. This worked for me, for I have no idea whether I am strong (I would like to think so), or good (I hope others think so !) and increasing one of them alone would have made me deficient in the other one!

I had done my homework about the place and had read that the juniper trees that grew here were twisted from the trunk, thus proving the theory of energy vortexes. My main aim during the short trek was to take pictures of at least one such tree. I managed to find not one but quite a few of them ! I would have given anything to be able to climb the cliff/hill/mountain, but had to satisfy myself by climbing over a few rocks to get a better close-up of a beautifully twisted juniper tree. Unlike trails in the Grand Canyon which are treacherous and scary, these trails were easy and safe, because they were on the base of the hill. There were people who were climbing the mountain though. I saw at least 3 people on the top of the hill - 2 seemed to be walking on the hill while the 3rd guy seemed to be actually climbing ! Since I was with my mother and there was no one else to whom I could show off my 'courage' I did not attempt or pretend to attempt the climb up the hill.

We chose a flat rock on the way to sit down and practise reiki to see if we 'felt' anything different. Unfortunately my mom is as (in)sensitive as me and the result was that we were sitting with our eyes closed palms open for a while, hoping something would happen. My palms became warm, but that could also have been because of the sun ! Meanwhile I badly wanted to open my eyes and glare at the hikers who were passing and were commenting about us (I think it was about us, because I heard them saying, 'it scares me', 'don't go near' etc. ! I remember thinking, How dare they say that !! Bloody racists !! etc), but had to control myself because I wanted my mother and those idiots to think I was deep in meditation !!

My original plan was to go to the Red Rock state park after this trek and trek there for some more time till sunset and then return after the sunset, but this trek had tired us, not because it was a tough one, but because -

• we were out of shape
• it was quite sunny
• and frankly I was quite tired of seeing red rocks everywhere !!

I realize now that I missed out the sunset which is supposed to be glorious. I plan to go again soon and catch the sunset in one of the other vortexes and see if that one has any effect on me.
Below are some pictures from the trip. I am sorry for the number of pictures of the juniper trees. I was fascinated by them and could not stop clicking away !!

1. The crop of the state

2. The lone climber - a long shot


3. The lone climber - a closer shot


4. A close-up of the bell rock - makes me think of red cheese !


5. I call these Shaivaiite mountains - note the streak of vibhuti on them !


6. One of the many twisted juniper trees

7. Another one ! - I climbed on a few rocks to click this one.


8. And Another !!


9. The trail with the play of light


10. The Bell Rock


11. Red Rocks all the way !






12. A twisted family !



13. My mother thought this rock formation was like Lord Ganesha !


14. The trail



15. Picture perfect

King of Suspense !

For a long long time, I thought Alfred Hitchcock was a writer !! In fact, I almost made a fool of myself when I was in class 8 by going to a library in Hyderabad and wanting to show off in front of my cousins, asked the librarian if he had any books by Hitchcock. The only reason I was saved that day was the librarian was ignorant either and thought I was a child prodigy or something, who read books by unknown authors !! Once again fate saved me from disgrace!

I started watching some of Hitchcock’s movies, without knowing they were his. ‘Suspicion’, ‘I Confess’, ‘The 39 steps’ and ‘Vertigo’ were some of the first few movies that I watched. My casual interest turned to admiration and later to a sort of obsession, thanks to the roadside DVD vendor in front of the Wipro office in Chennai. For a mere 50 bucks, this guy was selling DVDs that had 5-6 movies! I jumped with joy when I found some movies that I had already watched and bought 3-4 of them. The more I watched them, the more I loved them and my respect for Hitchcoke grew exponentially.

For some reason, in our country, at least in the past, ‘good cinema’ was usually a bad thing. I talk from my personal experience of watching almost every single movie screened on Sunday afternoons in DD, in the regional cinema section. If the movie was touted as a National Award winner, it was bound to be very very boring. Today when I get appreciated on my patience and tolerance level, I remember these movies with gratitude. I remember a Malayalam award winning movie, where the director spent about 15 minutes of screen time on showing the hero’s morning activities. Hero wakes up, brushes his teeth, takes a bowl of oil, applies it to his hair, and later body.. you get the drift.

Why am I talking about this? Its because I realized after watching some of Hitchcock’s movies, that good cinema can also mean interesting cinema. Hitchcock or Hitch as he was fondly called made movies that were critically acclaimed and were commercial successes. Although his favourite genre was suspense and thrillers, his movies had a lot of humour, mostly the gallows variety.

Hitchcock usually adapted his screenplays from short stories. It is also said that he usually roped in the original writer to collaborate on writing the screenplay. His movies had razor-sharp dialogues and a brilliant background score. Many of the techniques that he introduced in film-making are still used today and some of his movie sequences like the shower sequence in ‘Psycho’ have achieved cult status today. Movies like ‘Rear Window’ have been referenced in many subsequent movies and modern day remakes like Disturbia have been attempted.

One thing I discovered while watching (or re-watching, if there is such a term) many of his movies, was how well he used the celluloid as a visual medium. I was amazed and still am on watching quite a few sequences that are more than 2-3 minutes long where there is absolutely no dialogue and yet the viewer hardly realizes that. The script is taut and there are no unnecessary sequences. Most refreshingly the climax is usually very crisp and to many of us used to a grand finale for every movie, almost abrupt. That does not mean that they aren’t grand. For instance, the climax of ‘North By Northwest’ was shot at Mount Rushmore (and a set of it); in ‘The Man who knew too much’, there is a brilliant nail-bite inducing sequence of a concert where an assasination attempt happens and so on.

Having said all that, the fact remains that almost all his movies entertain! As a viewer, you don’t have to understand the nuances of film appreciation to appreciate movies by Hitchcock. His movies are first and foremost entertainers. With every watch, you will realize a little more of what has gone into making the movie what it is. I am now watching many of these movies for the 3rd or4th time (and this time the excuse is my mother!!) and I find them getting better with each watch.

Here are some of my personal favourites not necessarily in sequence:

a. Rope - Story of 2 psychopathic homosexual (subtly indicated) people who commit a murder at the beginning of the movie and invite people over for a party to prove a point.

b. Birds - Strange things start happening with a woman. Birds keep attacking her all the time.

c. Psycho - I dont have to talk about this one.

d. Dial M for murder - A husband plots to kill his wife to get her wealth.

e. North By Northwest - An advertising company executive is mistaken for an intelligence agent and abducted.

Coming to think of it, I think the success of his movies were because of the scripts which usually involved ordinary people getting into extra-ordinary situations and most people could relate to it. The actors and their popularity are secondary to the script and Hitchcock made sure that in all his movies, the script ruled !!