A kute luv stories - Part 23

She come in to the class but she not look at me. My hart is beeting and crying. Why she not luking at me? She looking at Aryan always. Aryan rich boy. He come with his mummy in car. I poor I come in daady’s cicle. I goed to her and tell her – Myself Anand, yourself?
She starring at me. ‘My name is Priya’.
Then we becamed very nise frends.
Everyday I give my card rice and she give chapathi. Together we eated seprately.
One day, I went her house. Her mummy showed me her small age pichers. She looked so nice. When her mummy not looking, I stoled one picher. In that picher Priya wearing pink frock. She looked like Kareena Kappur. I hided the picher in my pant packet.
In the evening when I went home, my mummy changed my dress and gave me muruku. She cleaned my packets and saw the picher of Priya. I told her lies – ‘Priya gave it to me to remember me of her always’ – like that I told.
My mummy did not dowt me. She only laafed. Then I kept the picher in my book.
Monday I went to skool. Priya was already there. We talked about ‘Ra One’ movie. I singed ‘Kolaveri’ song. And priya was clapping. Suddenly someone calls me. It was Aryan. When I turned, my book fell on the floor. And Priya’s picher came out.
She shocked. ‘Why you stealed it? You dirty robber boy!!’.
I did not know what to do. I started crying. I told her ‘Priya, I luv you. Always I think of you.’
She was angry and said ‘But Aryan…’
I told ‘That day when you joined the school, I was praying like anything that you shud also join I-A. When you came in only I liked you so much. Will you marry me?’
At that time, Aryan also came nearby. He said ‘Priya, I will drop you in my car.’.
Priya was crying and walked with him.
But when she reach near the car gate, she turn and look at me. And then she look at Aryan.
Cicle or car – what she will choose?
…To be cont..

What's in a song?

Yesterday I was at a concert by one of my favourite Carnatic vocalists, called TM Krishna. My mother was with me for this concert and was whispering at the end of nearly every song that he had not sung any Tamil song so far. It’s a thing with the Tamil audience. Although we appreciate the fact that most of the songs sung in these concerts are bound to be in Telugu or Sanskrit, we expect/hope that the artist will sing at least one Tamil song. The concert was nearing the end, and TMK had already announced that he would be singing 2 more songs. Someone in the audience asked for a song by Subramanya Bharathi (or Bharathiar as he is popularly known), since it was his birthday yesterday. TMK obliged with one of my favourite songs by the poet, called ‘Chinnanchiru Kiliye’. He sang the song in a set of ragams different from the usual way it is sung. All the way back, my mother and I were talking about this song.
Bharathiar was known for his patriotic poems mostly. A very forward thinking person, he wrote poems about an independent India even before it became a reality. Bharathi was also a believer in the equality of women and men and spoke openly against casteism. We are talking about the early 1900s so it is easy to understand how revolutionary these thoughts were at that time. There are numerous sources about the man and his life. So I am not going to go into a lot of details here.
People interested in Tamil poetry have an emotional attachment towards Bharathi and his poetry. Although I never studied Tamil as a subject in school save for one year when I learnt the alphabets, my mother ensured that my siblings and I were taught the language at home. I was fascinated by some of the poems (or at least what I could make of them) by Bharathiar at a very young age. Some of these poems were used in Tamil films too.
Bharathiar wrote extensively on both nationalism and on religion. His favourite deities were Shakti and Krishna. And on Lord Krishna (or Kannan), he wrote various poems. Unlike any other poet, Bharathi imagined Krishna in multiple forms – a friend, a child, a daughter, a servant, God, a lover (male and female) and so on. This song I mentioned above is written treating Krishna as a daughter. I am not very good at translating poems since the beauty of any poem is not just in the meaning but also in the words used and the feeling it generates cannot be fully replicated while translating from one language to another. You can check this thread for an approximate translation.
This song represents a lot more than just a song for many of us. I remember my sister’s wedding. My senses were still dulled and the fact that my sister was getting married had not struck me at all. And then she walked out all dressed up for one of the ceremonies and my aunts were singing this song and all of a sudden it hit me – my kid sister who had been a child till then, was going to leave the childhood behind for good!! And tears welled up in my eyes. My mother who heard the song started crying too. For many years, every time she heard the song, she would immediately start thinking of my sister or me. Today the song reminds her of my little niece and gets emotional every time! I cannot sing the song without feeling a little emotional myself.
I have held my niece often from the time she was 10 days old and I cannot believe how beautifully Bharathi has captured the feeling of holding/hugging one’s daughter (‘Unnai thazhuvidilo Kannamma Unmatham aagudadi’ – When I hug you, I feel beyond myself). And I understand the feeling of bursting with pride when anybody praises my niece and Bharathi has experienced it too (‘Mechi unnai ooraar pugazhndal meni silirkudadi’ – When people praise you, I get goosebumps).
The song is so close to my heart that I am extremely possessive about it. I find it difficult to brush it aside as a ‘nice song’ or ‘nice lyrics’. The only version of this song that I can admit as being close to what I feel about it is the violin version by the genius Lalgudi G Jayaraman. So when TMK sang a technically perfect version of the song, my intellect was telling me to nod in my appreciation and my heart was telling me that this one shares the words with ‘my’ song, but it was not the same. The words were there, the tune was good (though not the same), but the emotional prowess that the song has, was missing.

Dear Santa Thatha

Hello Thatha,
I hope you don’t mind me addressing you in this manner. In Tamil, Thatha means grandfather. It can also mean ‘Give’ (Tha) repeated twice. Since this letter is essentially a wish-list, I thought this mode of address would be most suitable.
I wish I could be broad-minded and selfless like women winning the beauty pageants and ask for world peace or eradication of poverty or terrorists turning to peace lovers from December 26th 2011. However, from what I hear about you, I guess you already know that I am not a selfless person. I am one of the many people who are in equal (or unequal) parts God and Devil (and this idea definitely did not come from the song in the tamil movie Aalavandan*).
This list may seem silly to you Kris** Thatha, but do not doubt my intentions. As much as possible, I will give you options to pick from in each item of the list. The choice of picking the easier (marked E for your convenience) or tougher one (marked T for your convenience) is up to you (and I hope you see the goodness behind this idea and give me prorated extra points for being a good girl). The easy options may at times seem a little cruel and mean – again, the intentions are purely noble and (mostly) selfless. Here is my list:
a. Good roads that don’t dissolve in rain water in Chennai (T) (or) special magic car that can spot potholes underneath the puddles and can grow wings and fly at those spots alone (E).
b. Drivers with common sense who understand that cars are equipped with low and high beams and that low beams work most of the time (T) (or) a super powerful torchlight (that is more powerful than the stupid halogen lamps some of the morons on the road use for headlights), that I can use to blind the offenders for a microsecond at least.
c. Good eyesight to people who walk past me when I am waiting in a queue for the lift or to get my coffee as though I don’t exist (and much as I would like to think of this as proof of my exercise regime working, I know this is not true) (T) (or) the mental fortitude to push past them in exactly the same fashion and pretend they don’t exist (E).
d. Good conscience to people who spit and eject other bodily fluids on the roads (T) or a magic spell that I can utter which will have these people slapped on their faces every time they even think of such a thing. (E).
e. Good sense to people who spend 5 full minutes in front of the attendance swipe machine thinking that staring at it will shame it into changing the swipe-in time to 10 minutes earlier than the current time (T) (or) installation of Smart attendance machines that will kick the person away if he/she spends more than 1 second in front of it or will sense the person’s attendance based on biometric data.
f. Make me immune to spelling and grammar mistakes, love stories written by 10-year olds (T) (or) embed Spelling and grammar lessons in each person’s DNA before they are born (E)
g. And lastly, make me thick skinned and more accepting of faults in others (T) (or) Give me a magic wand that I can use as a vigilante to mete out justice to the wrongdoers and cleanse the world of evil (E).
Eagerly hoping you are real.
Love
Me
*A song that goes in badly translated English ‘Equal parts God and Beast – I am a mixture of the two’
**I know your real name since I have watched ‘Miracle on 34th street 4-5 times.

The Wire

Probably as a result of watching umpteen movies while growing up and the trauma resulting from watching even those movies starring stellar actors like Vijaykanth, Ramarajan, Satyaraj and other such horror-heroes, by the time I turned 25 (that should be less than a year back!), I have become very picky about watching movies and television shows – to the point of being called snobbish by my own mother (- I wonder about this usage though, why ‘own’, do ‘rental mothers’ exist?). I have become increasingly as intolerant towards pretentiousness in art as in life. I have stopped treating movies as ‘just entertainment’ and thought of them as art. This of course does not mean I enjoy watching neo-realistic nonsense movies that think showing paint dry is art. Like I said I can’t stand pretentiousness anywhere and can stand snobbery only when it is mine So much for being just!
Anyway, this post is not meant to be a sample of my obsessive navel-gazing (and contrary to what people may assume by that term in the context of Indian movies, I am using it in the usual sense of the phrase!). I have said it before and I will say it again – thriller/horror and comedy are the most difficult genres in art. With the deluge of entertainment we are faced with every day, impressing people with art – especially movies and television shows is becoming next to impossible. I am very very sympathetic towards the creators of today and totally understand their helplessness, but as a viewer I can not help being underwhelmed by most of their efforts.
I can’t believe I have written almost 3 paragraphs as prologue, so let me start the topic here at least. In my quest for good movies/television shows/ books, I am grateful for any recommendation from people who share at least some of my interests in them. Two years ago, my cousin had spoken highly about a HBO show called ‘The Wire’. She had heard about the series and had ordered the first season through Netflix. She was hooked and could not wait for Netflix to ship the remaining seasons. So she purchased the remaining seasons, just so that she could finish watching them as soon as she could. Recommendations don’t come better than that!
I started watching ‘The Wire’ about 3-4 months back. This was when I had just finished watching the last season of Dexter – another awesome series about a ‘good’ serial-killer. The next season of Dexter was to start in November and I did not want to wait between episodes to know what happened next. I was thinking of ‘The Wire’ as a filler. And boy, I was hooked!!
The series is centered around Baltimore, Maryland. There are 5 seasons in total with each season focused on one aspect of the city. Each episode has multiple story-arcs and the narration shifts between them almost seamlessly. Rather than talk about the actual plot(s) of each seasons, I think I will just list down some of the features that I found impressive and loved. (With this constant urge to put everything down in bullet points, I wonder if I can really talk in paragraphs!!):

• I have never seen any movie or tv show with so many African-American actors in major roles as this show. And the roles they play are not the token ones they play in mainstream movies/shows nor are they the stereotypical portrayals (family loving, loud, gun-toting lowlifes etc). Of course the series has African American gangstas, but it also has the Greeks, Polacks participating in crimes and contributing to the ruining of the city. In that sense it is an equal-opportunity show!! Whatever the reason, I found this a very refreshing change.
• Memorable characters : It has been more than a month since I watched the last episode of Wire and I still cannot forget most of the characters. Full credit to creator David Simon to have created unique characters among the good and bad guys. Avon Barksdale, Omar Doolittle, Stringer Bell, Kima Greggs, McNulty, Daniels, Prybylewski, Lester Freamon, Bunny Colvin, Burrell – it is amazing how I am able to recall most of the character names without much effort after so many days. Excellently etched, completely rounded characters who, like real people are in equal parts good and bad.
• Language : The lingo is supposedly authentic street language and for the uninitiated, a little difficult to understand. I had to watch the entire series with the subtitles on. Although I watched the first few episodes by myself without troubling my parents, there were a few that I watched in the living room when my father was present. He was not actually shocked but sort of tired of only hearing colourful language and some form of the f word repeated at the end of almost each statement  by every character . Yet, the fact remains that the language spoken by the characters adds to the authentic and gritty feel of the show.
• Story, Editing, Screenplay etc. are just fabulous. I have not seen anything like this so far – not even in movies.
• Idris Elba : I consider myself fairly old fashioned in many ways. I rarely describe men (or women for that matter) as ‘hot’. I do describe many actors as cool and for me the actors I like most are those with a high degree of effortless coolth – like George Clooney (before Oceans 12), Robert Downey Junior, Samuel Jackson, Kevin Spacey (often, not always). I reserve terms like dignified and classy for actors like Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington etc. However right from episode 1 of ‘The Wire’, I could think of no word other than ‘Hot’ for Idris Elba, who plays Stringer Bell in the series. I am embarrassed to admit, but I still cannot think of any other word to describe this guy. Maybe it is his role of a cool, confident, suave and ruthless gangster that made this impression, maybe like my mother says, I have this weird (according to my mother) fascination for African American actors (only) or maybe I am just normal ) In any case, when Stringer Bell was killed in Season 4, a part of me died (and later resurrected after my mind consoled it that while Bell may be dead, Elba is very much alive!!). I admire this guy!!

While I can go on and on about Idris Elba ‘The Wire’, a word of caution here. The series while wonderful is not for everyone. It is not a ‘wholesome entertainer’ meant for the family. It is dark, gritty and very realistic – which means that it does not end with all the cast members posing for a photograph with fake smiles pasted on their faces. The fourth season is particularly heartbreaking because it is about the school system and hence about how the children enter the criminal system – Kids who start out innocent and are constantly let down by the system, teachers who cannot be described anything less than God’s messengers who fight against all odds to try and keep the children away from the criminal life that their parents are pushing them towards, the politicians who see everything only as a means to stay in power. While one of the best seasons, this was the most depressing of all.
In the last episode, I was hoping for some miracles – hoping that all the children that we were introduced to in the previous system succeed in fighting the pressures of the world to succumb to the life of a criminal, hoping that they would realize their potentials and start believing in themselves. The ending is beautiful, sad and true to the spirit of the series. There is hope and there is despair. Some kids make it, many don’t. The last 10 minutes of the final episode is a montage of scenes showing the fates of different characters of the series and many of them mirror the lives of other characters at the start of the series – the (mostly bleak) message being that while the players change, history repeats itself over and over again and not always in a good way.
The only side-effect of watching ‘The Wire’ is that the bar is set very high, and it is highly unlikely for me to find any other TV show that is better than this one!! Highly recommended.

The Routine

Gal (Giggles, gives ‘cute’ looks!): Are you angry with me?
Guy (Appears surprised!): No.
Gal : Something is wrong, you are angry.
Guy : No, really, I am not.
Gal : I don’t believe you. You look serious.
Guy : There, I smiled, enough.
Gal (Now she is alarmed!): Now, I am sure. What did I do?
Guy (Still amused, not irritated): What do you mean - ‘What did I do’? About what?
(Giggling friends turn silent).
Gal : Why are you raising your voice? I knew it, you are definitely angry about something. (A little more alarmed!)
Guy (Thinks - “Friends are giving strange looks. Time to change tacks”). : I told you - No!! Hey, by the way, did you watch that interview with Kamal last night.
Gal: Why don’t you tell me what is wrong? Is it because I spoke to R today morning?
(Friends leave one by one, Gal’s voice trembles slightly)
Guy (thinking - Need to think of something soon) : Who cares about R? He is a rich guy, owns a car etc., obviously Girls will flock to him.
Gal (now with tears) : So you think I am one of them?
Guy: Oh come on. I didn’t say that!
Gal: So, that’s the way that is!!  Well, thanks for showing me your true colours today.
Guy: What did I do?
Gal: Nothing.
Guy (thinking - her smile is more dangerous than her tears. I seem to have screwed it up!) : Forget all this, this weekend is Abi’s birthday, what gift do we get?
Gal: I have not yet decided.
Guy: What do you mean ‘I’?
Friends return - No shouting, things seem to be okay.
Gal (ignores Guy, face lights up all of a sudden): Look who is here!! Hey R!! Long time no see!! Nice shirt!!
R (taken aback): Hey, what are you guys doing?
Gal: Oh nothing really! R, remember that module I was working on? I need some help with it. Can you help me? Please !!
R : Sure, I will come to your desk after lunch.
Guy: Hey, I can help you!!
Gal (ignores Guy, looks at R):  That’s so sweet!!
R leaves. Friends, watching this drama realize the next episode is about to start and slowly excuse themselves.
Guy: Are you angry with me?
Gal: No
And it goes on….
(Note : Heard the beginning of the ‘Are you angry?’ routine a few minutes back from a set of young people sitting near where I sit and my imagination took flight! Do I even have to add, that unless one is the ‘guy’ or the ‘gal’ involved, this routine is really annoying to those watching/hearing it??)

Parting with dignity

The word ‘death’ evokes different emotions in different people. For most, the word spells doom, the end of everything good, for a few it is something that happens to others, rarely to oneself or to those close to oneself. Hinduism says that death is merely a stop where the soul changes bodies and not the destination itself. In spite of all these logical and philosophical explanations of death, few of us like going anywhere near it. We are either scared of the dead people or disgusted with the idea of touching a corpse. Still death also means business for some people. I am not talking about professional hit-men here, who make it their business to cause death. I am talking about people who work with the dead all the time - the undertakers, the coroners, the employees at a funeral parlour etc. Rarely have I read a book or seen a movie that portrays the life of these people. The only movie I remember watching  that has a main character who works as a graveyard keeper is the tamil movie - Pitamagan. But the story was not about the profession itself, and the graveyard keeper was portrayed more as an animal like person than someone who understands deeply about death (and I was perplexed by the suggestion that he grew up that way because he grew up in a cemetery!), but I digress.
I am not a great follower of Japanese cinema. My only foray into Japanese movies have been some of the movies by Kurosawa (and I will be looked at with disgust if I say that I switched off ‘Dreams’ - the movie that Kurosawa considered his most personal one, midway - somethings should stay personal, I think!!) and more recently one called ‘Confessions’. I also watched one or two of the anime movies (Tokyo Godfathers and another one whose title I cannot recall). I had watched some of the remakes of Japanese movies - The Ring, The Grudge etc. One conclusion I had drawn was that as far as the crown for ‘creepy movies’ goes Japanese and South Korean movies had a stiff competition. In fact after viewing the highly disturbing ‘Confessions’, I had vowed to go nowhere near these movies for a while.  But thanks to Roger Ebert, I had been holding on to this Japanese movie called Departures (Okuribito) for a while now. After more than a year of non-cooperation, my mother had also slowly softened a stance against watching English and other world movies that she did not understand. On a sudden whim, I played this movie yesterday and I found it to be one of the more rewarding movie watching experiences.
The movie opens with a poignant and a strangely funny scene of Daigo Kobayashi, the protagonist working with his boss Sasaki in what is called encoffinment.  The title and the credits roll and we are taken back a year or so in time. The scene shifts to a ongoing concert in front of a largely empty hall. Daigo works as a cellist in the orchestra in Tokyo. Soon after the concert is over, the manager of the orchestra comes backstage and tells the band that the troupe has been disbanded. Daigo decides to move back to his village with his young wife, where he thinks he will find a job while living rent free in the house his mother left for him.
On seeing an advertisement  to ‘assist departures’, he answers immediately assuming that the job would be with a travel agency. He is hired on the spot by the boss, who only asks him if he will work hard. Only after he is hired is he told about the nature of his job. At first Daigo is reluctant. On his first day, he is asked to act as a model for a promotional video, in the role of a corpse while his boss explains the procedure of encoffinment.
Daigo initially hides the true nature of his job as he thinks his wife will hate him for it. Things get worse when the first body that Daigo is asked to help with, is that of a two week old decomposed body of an old woman who died alone. He breaks down at home, unable to share his thoughts with his wife.Gradually however, as Daigo watches his boss preparing the dead bodies with respect for the dead and sees how the kin of the dead people end up feeling grateful for sending away their relative with dignity, Daigo grows to respect and later love his job.
The movie is about this journey of Daigo and later his wife towards understanding the beauty of death and the job of encoffinment. A small note about encoffinment. When I saw this word in the subtitles, I thought this was one of the standard spelling mistakes you find in subtitled movies - a word coined when nothing else matches the meaning of the original word. Seems like I was wrong. Encoffinment is supposedly a Japanese ritual that involves ‘preparing’ the corpse for burial. The Japanese method of disposing (for the lack of a better word) off the dead bodies is interesting. It appears to involve placing the corpse in the coffin and then cremating the coffin in an electric crematorium.
The encoffinment process itself, involves cleaning the body with sterilized cloth, putting on new clothes, applying makeup etc. - all this in front of the family and then laying the body inside the coffin. While this high-level description sounds morbid and even perverse, if you think about it (and you will when you are watching the ritual play out in the movie), it is about how a loved one is remembered in the end. Most of the scenes involving the encoffinment were without any BGM and my mother and I watched transfixed. Strangely the whole ritual seemed somehow pure, serene and extremely beautiful!! All credit goes to the director for composing the scene so well and to the actors for enacting it with so much poise! Apparently the lead actor Masahiro Motoki studied this art of encoffinment in preparation for his role!
For all the seriousness of the subject, there are small moments of fun in the film too. The opening scene that I talked about provides some unexpected laughs. This scene, later continued in the middle of the movie, culminates is a very unexpected and poignant fashion. In spite of the subject (or maybe because of it), the whole movie is really life affirming and positive. It views as death as a gateway to the next life and that was fascinating . Dialogues were very good (at least what the subtitles read!!) and I was wondering if the impact would have been even better if I knew Japanese. One of them stuck in my mind. The assistant at the funeral parlour has this to say about coffins -  ‘Our last shopping in our lives is done by others’ (or something to this effect).
For those interested in offbeat movies and do not mind subtitles, this is a must watch.

Time Flies

There is only one thing that never lies besides King Harischandra (of course, since if such a person even existed, he is long gone by now, so the present tense does not apply; also I am not sure if the King would want to be called a ‘thing’ (damn, I should stop this ugly habit of writing between the lines!!)) - the Mirror. So while our actors try to put on a bold face (and a rather stiff one, thanks to all the Botox), in front of their fans - the women wearing lesser and lesser clothes every passing year to divert the attention from their faces and the men hiding behind large sunglasses to hide their eyes and wearing impossibly warm suit buttoned up till their chins to hide the creases on their necks, at night, when they are all alone or with accepting (compelled to otherwise) spouses, the mirror tells them the truth. While we love to talk about how age is just a number, we usually say that to others who complain about old age. When we start growing old, we start complaining too and it is at that time, we realize that age is not just a number!!
Coming to think of it, I think every person’s life (or almost every person’s life) can be divided into two parts. The first where one  always wants to grow up and the second where one is wistful about getting what one wanted earlier ! It is one of life’s little ironies that the first half with a dream that can be realized is shorter than the latter with the impossible dream (unless of course you consider going completely loony as a return to childhood).
You may ask why all this talk of old age etc. at this point. (And may I humbly point out that ‘You’ are only one of the thousand plus readers of this post who may come up with this question!!). Is it because the blogger is growing old too? Does she struggle with the pangs of middle age (or old age)? Does she find herself frequently checking the mirror for signs of old age? The Answer? None of the above. This blogger is still at the prime of her youth, even if you may think otherwise looking at her or her experience. The reason I am writing this is because I am reading this book called ‘Time Flies’ by Bill Cosby and while I was reading the book, I was wondering how poignant humour can sometimes be. Before I start waxing eloquently about the beauty of growing old etc., a few lines about the author and the book.
My library is a very strange and enchanting place. In terms of size it is smaller than our kitchen (which is larger than many other kitchens!!). While most of the racks are filled with the popular paperbacks, organized by either author or genre - when the author is not popular enough (according to my librarian at least!!) - there is one rack that is full of books that do not fall under these categories. It is here that I often strike gold. So last week, I had gone to the library promising to get just one book for my mother, I started wandering (figuratively of course, since in my library, there is hardly enough space in each ‘aisle’ for one person to turn). I saw this book with Bill Cosby’s picture on the cover. The face - I did not recognize, but the name-I did.
I had heard the name Bill Cosby before (along with names like Bob Hope). I sort of remember reading somewhere that he is a very popular American comedian. I had not seen any of his shows, so I started reading this book with no preconceived notions on what to expect. I am glad I picked up the book!!
Time Flies, as the name indicates is about Cosby’s take on growing old. He had just turned 50 at the time of writing this book. The book is full of hilarious personal experiences and thought provoking comments on mankind’s fear of turning old.  For example, Cosby talks of getting his trifocals and getting intimidated by them, wondering which part of the lens to use, without knowing where the person he is looking at is in the room!! . This is one of the most hilarious episodes in the book (at least of what I have read of it). Other episodes are on his memory lapses, changed food habits where he is forced to eat celery stalks and other vegetables, his reduced athletic abilities, his struggle with his ever increasing girth and reluctance to wear a bigger sized dress. The part where he describes how he tries to fit into his size 15 shirt although his size has increased to size 17 1/2 is bitingly funny!
Besides his personal experiences, Cosby also talks about how as a country, Americans dread growing old and do all sorts of funny things like using beauty products, undergoing painful surgeries, herbal supplements etc to ward off the imminent old age. While this was probably true only for Americans at the time this was written, I think this is becoming a norm across nations - at least among those who can afford it. I remember this particular line he had written about a woman he knew, who applied the pollen of some flower on her face regularly - a sneeze from her would pollinate an entire garden!!
I may find fault with the Americans and America for a lot of things, but one thing I really like about them, is their ability to laugh at themselves. This is something that we probably lack as a country. We like laughing at people as long as we are not even remotely related to the targets of the joke.  Cosby’s sense of humour is different from the others that I have encountered and importantly, it has a sense of warmth along with all the humour. Cosby does not talk from a pedestal and the personal experiences, while being funny, also convey the confusion that a person would face at seeing himself change, without his noticing.  Middle-aged or not, it is easy to relate to Cosby’s writing. There is a lot of compassion and love in Cosby’s writing. And underneath all that self-deprecation, is genuine bafflement at seeing the man in the mirror change!!
I don’t know if my increasing interest in books/movies on humour is to do with my growing age. I do know that my ability to find humour in almost everything around me is definitely due to it. I also like the fact that unlike before, where I would find only a certain type of humour funny, I am able to understand and laugh at different brands  of humour - PGW, Douglas Adams, Fry and Laurie, Friends, Everybody loves Raymond, Seinfeld, Simpsons, Dexter (yes, it is gruesome, but also has dry humour!!),  movies by Tarantino and Coen brothers (same as Dexter ) etc.  (although I still don’t find Akshay Kumar and Govinda funny!!). I am learning to go beyond tolerance and have learnt to accept faults in others (and in me) with passing years. If these are perks of growing old, I would not mind old age at all