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 !!