The Magic Flying Lawn Chair

....just like the Magic Carpet of yore. Check out the mode of transport Kent Couch from Oregon used to fly. Quite unlike us boring NORMAL people who use, duh, aeroplanes!!!!

Presenting...Mr.Al Booda Gore

While on the topic of Live Earth, I couldn't help but laugh at this. Paul Atroshenko has done quite a job with Photoshop. As he says,

"This man can make global concerts come alive! I understand he also invented the internet. Obviously, he has God-like powers."

LOL!!!!!

Love in all its beauty

One of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard is ‘Tumse Milke’ from Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 1989 film, ‘Parinda’. The film was one of the few Hindi movies of the 80’s that were genuinely well-made, with powerful performances from pretty much the entire cast (notably Jackie Shroff, Nana Patekar, Anil Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit) and a strong, original storyline – in fact, it was probably one of the first few films on the Bombay underworld ever made (correct me if I am wrong, anybody). I thought the ending was absolutely brilliant, but if anyone reading this has not yet watched the film, I’m not going to let the cat out of the bag. Motivation to go watch! I’ve watched it a few times since it first released way back then - I was probably too young to realise its full impact till I saw it again when I was much older anyway.

I didn’t realise till today, however, that the music director of the film was none other than R.D.Burman. That immediately explained a lot of things to me – the soulful music, meaningful lyrics and classy picturisation. I had to search quite a bit to find out who wrote the lyrics – they were by Khursheed Hallauri, who is a woman, by the way (how many female lyricists do I know? Not many) and whose other works I have not been able to track. Very simple lyrics – about ten lines which repeat, but the way they are set to music, oh to be sung to like that!

Some things I like about the song: it is filmed solely on the lead romantic couple, Anil and Madhuri, (which is what a real love song should be about - the two people involved), it is NOT a dream sequence with a hundred other girls in trashy costumes doing one-two-three-left-hand-up-right-leg-out (I always think that is ridiculous, when I watch songs like that), and is shot in the night with minimal lighting which makes it all the more lovely to watch. Madhuri looks divine, young and innocent (she was all of 22 when the film was shot), and Anil looks quite smitten (even though his moustache looks like a bushy caterpillar!!).

I knew when I heard the song the first time that if I ever felt that way about someone, I would have found true love. The kind of love that makes you feel like a goddess when you're looked at just over a cup of coffee even if you're sitting in your night clothes, the kind of love that you know you want to grow old with.

A concert to remember

Keith Urban and Alicia Keys perform at Live Earth at the Giants Stadium in New Jersey 7/7/07
Image courtesy: BBC

The best way to avoid an overdose of anything is to insert different kinds of whatever it is you are overdosing on, into your programme. For example, to avoid a movie overdose, switch to comedy in between your mafia drama marathon and you’ll enjoy the genre again instead of getting sick of the black ties and trigger-happy honchos swaggering about. That said, Live Earth was an excellent way to start off my concert-viewing, because the sheer range of music ensured no music fan would be disappointed. There was something for everyone. Of course, the rock fans probably gagged when Kelly Clarkson, KT Tunstall and Akon came on stage, but to be fair, they played some excellent songs as well and anyway no one is trying to compare them to The Police or Roger Waters anyway. That would be sacrilege.

So. I attended my first ever music concert yesterday, and that was Live Earth and it was fantastic. Hey - you there - I can hear you saying ‘Did she just say FIRST music concert’, and the answer is yes, you read it right. It certainly made up for the concerts I haven’t been able to go to till now though because I had the chance to listen to close to twenty artists in one day and most of them were jolly good, so I’m certainly not complaining!

We thought we’d be a bit smart and go ‘early’ (read an hour and a half before the show was scheduled to start, because it was all ticketed anyway), but the plan was not so successful because the queues at Secaucus Junction to get into the shuttle buses which would take us to the Giants Stadium snaked along for quite a few miles. After waiting for an hour, we finally got into a bus and reached the venue at about two minutes to one, which was when the show was supposed to start. It was a hot, sunny day and I amused myself by taking in the atmosphere as people trickled in to the massive stadium and reading a book for one hour and seventeen minutes, because that’s how long it took for the show to finally kick off. The Scottish folk/pop singer-songwriter KT Tunstall was one of the first people to take the stage. I love her songs, humming along to them on a regular basis when I listen to them on the radio. She didn’t disappoint. She sang three of her most popular numbers, ‘Black Horse and the Cherry Tree’, ‘Suddenly I see’ and ‘The Other Side of the World’. People unfamiliar with her music may have heard some of it in the background in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, ‘Ugly Betty’ and of course Katharine McPhee’s version of ‘Black Horse and the Cherry Tree’ on season 5 of American Idol, which contributed to pushing it up the charts.

She was followed by a band that was introduced as having come “all the way” from Long Island :-D Taking Back Sunday apparently got their name from the lyrics of a band they listened to called The Waiting Process. The rock group is a band I wasn’t familiar with, but I found out later that in 2004 they were the opening act for Blink-182 at one of their concerts, and they also contributed a song to the soundtrack of the just-released ‘Transformers’, though it didn’t feature in the movie.

Keith Urban came on stage next. Again, I know him more as Nicole Kidman’s husband of drug-snorting fame, but the country music star obviously has a pretty illustrious career of his own, with seven number one songs in the US. One of the songs he performed at Live Earth was a cover of The Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’ with Alicia Keys. Alicia took to the stage on her own later as well.

Then of course, it was time for some yo-yo’ing by Ludacris. I know I’m writing a lot of trivia in this post, but who would believe Ludacris’ real name is Christopher Brian Bridges?! Anyway, one thing that no one can say about African-American singers (I like being politically correct hahahahaha) is that they are NOT entertaining. They know how to play the crowd, they know how to get the crowd on their feet and let’s face it – hip-hop is rad, y’know?!!! Kanye West performed ‘Gold Digger’ which was obviously supereffingtastic, and I was up on my feet, as was most of the audience, through most of it.

Kelly Clarkson, AFI and Akon are some of the other pop and hip-hop artists that played (technically AFI is supposed to punk-rock, but I don’t quite feel they played punk rock yesterday). My sister-dear is a big fan of Akon – I remember him most for his squeaky ‘Lonely’ which irritates me no end, but thankfully he didn’t play ‘Lonely’ and the songs that he did sing were pretty foot-tapping. Kelly Clarkson has a fabulous voice and showed that she was more than just an American Idol (she was the first winner of the contest in 2002, for those of you who are not big fans of Simon Cowell!!).

I’m losing track here – I don’t remember the exact order in which the bands came on, but I’m going to keep at it because I had such a good time and kept saying ‘I’m SO excited’ to the husband as the show progressed, in the manner of those giggly teenagers I sniggered at while we were waiting to get into the arena :-D The Dave Matthews Band, Fall Out Boy and the Smashing Pumpkins satisfied the rock fans and then there was John Mayer who again is an upcoming artist whose music I quite enjoy. I loved ‘Waiting On The World To Change’ particularly. I believe he is playing in London in September – if any of my loyal blog readers is there then, I’d say go listen.

I wasn’t sure whether Al Gore would be in the New York event or the Washington one, but he was very much there yesterday, and what’s more, he stayed for quite a few hours because he came on stage twice. Melissa Etheridge was of course one of the people he introduced and yes, obviously she played the Oscar-winning song ‘I Need To Wake Up’ from Gore’s own ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, as well as another compelling song called ‘Imagine That’ – I’m not sure if she wrote it just for the event. She spoke a lot about global warming and the climate crisis during her songs, actually.

The best acts were indubitably the last. There was Bon Jovi, who sang ‘Livin’ On a Prayer’,‘It’s my Life’ and ‘Dead or Alive’, each song brilliant (of course). By then the sun had gone, the lights illuminated the stage brightly, and with the faint smell of weed in the air (smoking inside the stadium was prohibited but someone definitely broke that rule!!), I felt like there was nowhere else I would rather be at that particular point in time. But then it only got better. Roger Waters (YES!) – I don’t know what to say about this legend without sounding like an idiot, but I was certainly comfortably numb when another brick in the wall was performed, if that makes any sense at all. And then – and THEN – the Police. Sting. Yes. Message in a bottle. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Kevin Bacon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin of Little Miss Sunshine fame, Petra Nemkova (the guy sitting behind me shouted out ‘Who are you?’ when she came on stage – I didn’t know myself but apparently she’s some Russian supermodel), David de Rothschild, the British adventurer and environmentalist who is one of 42 people to ever reach both geographical poles and of course Al Gore, were some of the people who introduced the acts in between performances and exhorted everyone watching to pledge to protect our earth.

Live Earth has been heavily criticized by a load of people – to those people I’d just like to say, please read this article that appears in Time today. I’m no proponent of the Save Our World campaign, but at the end of the day I wasn’t going to sit at home when legends were playing at a concert that I wanted to go to anyway, and if they were playing to make more people aware of an issue that could do with some discussion, I don’t see anything wrong with that! I’m going to quote from the article :

But would the Earth have been better off if we all stayed home and did nothing, literally? "That's a fair thought," Linkin Park guitarist Brad Delson told TIME before his band's Tokyo show. "It's also a cynical one."

That’s a different topic for a different blog post, though!

P.S I didn't take my camera because we were told that we were not allowed to but after I got there, I realised I was stupid not to have - so no pics UGHHH!

What if God was one of us?

The worst thing that anyone can do to themselves is play the ‘what if’ game, not realizing that ‘what if’ is neither past, present nor future. It didn’t happen, it’s not happening now and it won’t happen either, because the point in time that you keep referring to has already lapsed. The scenario you keep thinking of in your ‘what if’ game is a backdated dream. If it was to have happened, it would have. It didn’t. Forget it. Period.

What’s also important to realize is that ‘what if’ couldn’t have happened anyway because you were not then who you are now, which is when you’re asking the ‘what if’ questions. Change is intrinsic to life. It may or may not mean progress, but it happens nevertheless. Therefore, you’re not even talking about the same person, in a manner of speaking. Thoughts, hopes, dreams, beliefs – some or all of them would have changed for you. It’s like comparing apples with tomatoes. They’re both red, but that’s about it.

I see my cousin following a similar path, education-wise, that I followed years ago and I'm desperate that she doesn't make the same mistakes. She's grateful I'm there to dispense some so-called wisdom, having been there before, and I'm glad I can be there for her. But the truth is, she will probably listen to me but go ahead and do what her heart says is right. Which is the way it should be. I'm just petrified she will ask the 'what if' question a few years down the line, just like me.

I'm hopeful she won't, though. She's a smart kid. If she turns out to be a success, I will be one happy person.

An evening full of jazz

In ‘Sex and the City’, one of the characters (I think it was Miranda) once mentions the thought of leaving Manhattan and compares it to the feeling of falling off the ends of the earth. I’ve lived here for a few months and till today never really ventured beyond Manhattan myself, except twice and those were to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and back, and take the ferry across to Staten Island and return without ever really stepping off it. When you think of it, New York is so much more than Manhattan. The boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island are very much a part of New York City as well. Manhattan is like the spoilt child compared to its ugly-duckling siblings, with all the tourist attractions - Broadway, the Empire State Building and so on and so forth.

The JVC Jazz Festival has been going on in the city over the last couple of weeks, and this evening it presented free to the members of the public the Ravi Coltrane Quartet, in the open air and verdure of Prospect Park, which is pretty much in a part of Brooklyn I’d never stepped into. I was dilly-dallying over whether I ought to drag myself out of the house in the cloudy weather to go all the way to ohmyGodBrooklynwhereI’veneverreallybeen, but I’m glad better sense prevailed. So I made what I thought would be a long journey but in reality was hardly much of a trip on the Subway, to Prospect Park.

Brooklyn’s lovely, it really is, at least that part of it that I saw today. Prospect Park is like the Central Park of Manhattan, and such a nice family-friendly, runner-friendly, nature-friendly (by default-it’s a park, DUH!!) place, but what I loved best about the area is that most buildings I saw there were brownstones. Brownstones are so much more appealing to the eye than the looming skyscrapers one is more accustomed to seeing in New York – OK, Manhattan. They are more welcoming structures, and though I knew absolutely no one there, welcomed is what I felt.

Anyway, Ravi Coltrane, son of the great jazz musician-couple John and Alice Coltrane, played some jazz music that was totally worth the visit. Ravi, named after India’s very own sitar guru Ravi Shankar, is a jazz saxophonist who has come into his own. One of the best compositions the group played was by Alice Coltrane herself, and the guy sitting next to me very wisely said he ought to play more of his mother’s music. Ravi acknowledged that growing up in a household where he came home after school everyday to listen to jazz melodies - his mother performing at the piano - was something very special, though he didn’t know it then. Also appreciable (at least to me) is Ravi’s team spirit. There were multiple solos woven into the group performance, more by the other members of the quartet than by Ravi himself, and that made the performance all the more interesting, because let’s face it – sometimes listening to one instrument for too long can bore a large audience.

Jazz is a genre of music I absolutely love listening to. I can listen to jazz for hours and not get bored. There’s something magically uplifting about the way the various instruments – saxophone, bass, drums, piano, even the native African drums incorporated by the Craig Harris Ensemble, the act that preceded the Ravi Coltrane Quartet – come together. Of course, improvisation is inherent in jazz, and that’s another reason it is really sweet music to my ears (pun intended!). The spontaneity is what makes you want to listen to more of the music, to see whether it ends in a crescendo or tapers off, or what other little tangos the instruments will come into in pairs or threes.

Brooklyn treated me well this evening. Maybe I’ll end my love affair with Manhattan for a while and start exploring the rest of this fascinating metropolis!

You complain and you will have to deal with me !

Apple is giving free iPhones to its employees.

According to this article, the 'bad' news is that they will have to wait till the end of July to get them, because Steve Jobs wants the first wave to go to customers.

My friends at Apple: if I was getting an iPhone within less than a month of its release date, I would hardly call it 'bad' news, kapish? Kapish. Just freakin' enjoy the phone, OK, and let us lesser mortals salivate in jealousy.

^&%$!!!!!!!!

On a related note, I was outside the Fifth Avenue Apple store last evening, and people had already started queuing up, fully equipped with umbrellas, raincoats and folding chairs to keep their places in line!

Frank Sinatra and alcohol

This quote was displayed in one of our favourite pubs in New York for months. The first time I went there with the husband, he immediately directed my attention there.

"Alcohol may be man's worst enemy but the Bible says love thy enemy."

Of course, it was quoted by the wonderful Frank Sinatra, who by the way was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, just a few miles from where I live now. I ought to do the Sinatra tour one of these days.

Another gem from Sinatra: "I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day."

I've been hanging around way too many non-alcohol-drinking people lately, who as good-hearted as they are, are not much fun in the evenings when the sun goes down and you want to let your hair down. Drinking alcohol is fun, fun, fun. (Why did I think of Jack from Will & Grace when I just wrote that?!! I've been watching too much TV!!)

New York Vignettes-2

1. Walking down Fifth Avenue alongside Central Park
2. The facade of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum - I love the myriad of colours!
3. Museum Mile Festival 2007 - Jazz players inside the National Academy Museum-Huntington Mansion
4. The Yankee Stadium from outside
5. 'Have Nice Day' trash bags on a bus from Boston to New York!

New York Vignettes-1

1. A New York Water Taxi on the East River
2. View of the Brooklyn Bridge
3. Target : on-target advertising in Times Square
4. No need for directions to this Subway station!
5. The New Jersey skyline from the West Side Highway

The Boss!!!

May I point the numerous Thalaivar fans that exist worldwide in the direction of The Boss' movie site. Shankar is certainly moving with the times - Yash Raj Films, you have competition from the South! I tried to do a bit of Googling and could not find anything to prove that Sivaji - The Boss is NOT the first Tamil movie to have a website, that too highly technologically advanced, with legal downloading of songs, trailers, cast, crew, story, etc etc. As The Boss himself would say, "Coooooooool!"

Random thought: As lavishly picturised as the very lyrical song 'Sahana saral thoo' is, did the angels have to be inserted here and there?!!!

And here, my friends, is a camera print of the song! Crazy fan who did that, thank you - hehe!

Ah, New York, New York!

Seen on a small street in Greenwich Village, New York.

What does a 'drinking consultant ' do, though? Tell one what to drink, how much, or when or why? Hmmmm.....

Love, Actually

I don't know what it is about the movie Love Actually that turns me into a perfect soppy fool. I've watched it...what...5 times to date (maybe more, I'm not counting), and each time I watch it, I turn into a tear-mill at the end. I mean, it's not a sad movie at all - it's a poignant, funny, touching one, and all the love stories woven into the movie are just portrayed and written out so well. And I KNOW what's coming, and how each person is going to react, and all the rest of it, but I STILL watch it, and shed happy tears of joy for a few seconds at the end. It's a real feel-good movie. You can't help but feel at the end of it, that there's more to life than the strife and bloodshed and rot that surrounds us in the papers, or on TV.

There is love.

And while I'm on the topic, may I point out that Colin Firth is one reason I watch this movie, Pride and Prejudice, and Bridget Jones' Diary again and again. He's one romantic personality!!!

.....and 'Notting Hill' just started on TV after Love Actually...and oh OK, Hugh Grant is rather dishy as well, I must admit!!!!!!

She Rocks!

Loley enda moley....I can't believe I know this girl from college!!!

For the Malloos out there, plees check out the video effects and other Melayalee idiosyncrasies!!!

Carrie Bradshaw on Life

'You cannot let who you are mess up who you will be'
- Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City

Sometimes these telly chicks are quite smart, I tell you.

The Beautiful Hospital vs. The Ugly Hospital vs. The Real Hospital

Sallie Tisdale in Salon on the medical realities portrayed in television shows : House vs. ER vs. Grey's Anatomy vs. Scrubs. She's a real-life nurse in a real hospital, by the way.

An excerpt:

Like a lot of people who work in healthcare -- I'm a nurse -- I started watching "House" because of the mysterious diseases involved. Everyone loves a rare disease. And I was perversely charmed by the title character's nastiness. House says the kind of things I sometimes want to say -- mostly, to doctors. (Dr. Weber: "I know I know you." House: "Sure you do, Dick." Weber: "The name's Phillip." House: "Oh, my bad. Something to do with your face. I always think your name is Dick.") I kept watching in spite of his flamingly litigious behavior: He calls one patient "Mrs. Nympho" and says of a Chinese woman, "Not the sharpest chopstick in the drawer, is she?" I watched for a whole season, in spite of knowing that the crude passes, Internet porn and Vicodin addiction meant that any doctor like him would be both bankrupt and imprisoned.

The P Problem

Why do I have to pee so much when I drink alcohol?

Question: Why do I have to pee so much when I drink alcohol?

Answer: Alcohol is a diuretic--the overabundant urge to urinate while drinking is caused by the alcohol's diuretic properties. Specifically, alcohol causes your body to expel water. Since your body is persistently excreting more water than is ingested you run the risk for dehydration. Being dehydrated is the main reason you have a whopping headache, feel fatigued, and thirsty the next day.


OK, all that is fine. I have a question: has ANYONE - anyone - ever had the experience of becoming completely sober (or at least 80% sober) the MINUTE you go to the washroom (why am I bothering to be delicate anyway?!!!) after ingesting alcohol???

Responses appreciated :-)

Offside

Sometimes I take my freedom for granted. My freedom to act like a woman, do the things I want to do, see the things I want to see, be the person I want to be. The reality is that there are women and girls out there who don’t have that freedom. Watching ‘Offside’ today reminded me of that.

‘Offside’ is the story of six Iranian girls who try to sneak into the qualifying match for the 2006 Soccer World Cup between Iran and Bahrain. In Iran, for those of you who are not aware, it is banned for women to attend men’s sporting events. With loose shirts and caps covering their heads, their attempted camouflage of their female selves does not work, and they are all caught and put into a small barred area outside the stadium, pending their transportation to higher authorities. I wouldn’t call the movie startlingly brilliant or any of the other glowing compliments that movies of this genre often do receive (and this one has, in fact, received a postive review from the New York Times as well). I’ll be completely honest: it was funny in parts and did not shock the sensibilities of the viewer, nor did it attempt to draw the viewer in with an overdose of emotion. ‘Offside’ has been made like a documentary, indeed it IS one – the actors are all first-timers, unpolished and therefore largely realistic, and it was shot for a large part during the actual qualifying match between Iran and Bahrain in 2005.

Surprisingly, this is one movie I was completely neutral about. But I thought the premise that the director based the movie on was good – lots of people today are probably not aware of seemingly simple issues like these being, well, issues, in countries like Iran, because they have never needed to fight for their rights to watch a live match in this day and age. Jafar Panahi’s movies are in fact banned in Iran because he shows the country for what it is – one of his earlier movies, ‘The Circle’, followed a group of women around Tehran as they tried to evade injustice.

Something I thought was interesting, though, was that there was a young girl, no more than 13 or 14 years old, watching the movie with her parents. The movie is rated PG-13, and at that age, I thought it was noteworthy that her parents were bringing her to a movie about girls in a part of the world that is so removed from where she is. She’ll probably grow up to be a sensitive adult, and we need more of those in this world.

The Wonderful Years

I watched the Wonder Years last night and was transported back to the age when everything was simple and innocent and yet so different and full of angst. Growing up was a hard thing to do. The Wonder Years is one of my favorite TV shows, and I haven’t watched a re-run in years and years. I couldn’t help but smile longingly as I watched Kevin, Winnie and Paul at the start of their teenage years. I remember the confusion I felt when you know those people from the other planet – BOYS – started talking to me a bit more than usual. I remember trying to be haughty and avoid listening to their taunts as I rushed along the corridors to get to class. I remember getting into a fight with that girl who talked to boys all the time and who threatened to ‘report’ me because she thought I was the one spreading rumors about her. (Star TV had just about made its advent into the country and my hometown was more of a homevillage back then – girls talking to boys all the time – how SCANDALOUS!!!!)..and no, it really wasn’t me. I remember playing Hide and Seek in my grandmother’s huge house, and Dark Room and other such fun games with my classmates when they came over one day. Even Name Place Animal Thing! India was still so new to me then, I’d just moved from Saudi Arabia where society was even more closeted and at that age, I felt like it was a new world. With my pigtails and big spectacles, I was certainly not part of the cool gang on my first day. But then, India back then – or at least my school, didn’t have those group labels yet. I misheard a proper South Indian name like ‘Sugalesini’ as ‘Subbulakshmi’ (probably one of the few names I was familiar with), who was the girl sitting next to me on my first day at school. I remember asking K to be my ‘best friend’ because you know, everyone had a best friend back then and she was new too. I probably figured it would be my best shot – but you know what? Fourteen years later, she’s one of the few people I can still really talk to, and she still lives down the road from me. Just as she used to in India. In another country. How’s that for Providence?!!!

I hated a lot of what I went through back then, but they probably were a large contribution to who I am today. I’m glad I went through my Wonder Years, even if I was not as enlightened then as my Big City Sisters. Those are the kind of girls who later became my college classmates, but that’s a different story altogether!

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil!

Pictures speak louder than words!

YouTube...OurTube

Read this article on why human rights activists in the future are going to depend more and more on online sites like YouTube to change the legal landscape, and the cultural one as well.

Also see my earlier related post about waterboarding, a phenomenon also mentioned in the above article.

Presenting...

......the 2007 Bentley Continental GTC Convertible!

I saw this baby on the road yesterday.....and wished I had some extra cash to spend..or 'bend' ;-)

It's a Brit thing, maybe?

Do Americans have a thing for British accents, or am I missing something?

Here's one ad that's airing:

...and here's another:

Shi(f)t Happens!

Take a look at this video. It talks about what the future’s going to look like for us, with some pretty interesting facts. I’ll name just a few, most of which we know but I think it’s just that it never really hits us (well it didn’t hit me anyway) till we see it all put together like this.-

- The top 28% of people with highest IQ in India is greater than the total population of America

- If all the jobs that exist in the US were currently shifted to China, China would still have a labor surplus

- Job-hopping is on the rise – 1 in 4 people today work for a company which has employed them for less than a year

- We perform 2.7 billion searches on Google each month – where did we go (and I like this abbreviation) B.G (before Google)?

- A week’s worth of NYT contains more information than a person was likely to come across in his entire lifetime in the 18^th century.

- The amount of technical information is doubling every 2 years – this means that for college students, what they study in Year 1 will be obsolete by Year 3. (The computer language I studied when I was in school – BASIC, is not even spoken of, anymore!)

***

I also watched a TV show last night called ‘Spotlight 25’ where the host of the show spoke to a group of 25-year-old women about their values, beliefs and aspirations - thoughts on life, love and sex. Some of what was said actually just confirmed what the video above said – most of the women on the show had already switched jobs at least 5 times, for example – they didn’t want to stay in a job which didn’t give them as much satisfaction as they were looking for. But more importantly, the show revealed us for who we are: things like moving up the career ladder being important, but getting married and having a family being as important – there was one 25 –year-old on the show who was married with 2 kids, and had a hectic but well-managed schedule getting the kids ready for day-care in the morning, getting to work and being a top performer, picking up the kids on her way back home, and then going for a run in the evening before her day ended. Another one gave up her six-figure salaried job to set up a firm of her own, yet another went to Africa to build homes for underprivileged kids there while putting her own full-time job at risk.

It IS true that a lot of the time I think about where my peers are and try to assess whether I have been ‘left behind’, as one girl said on the show, but at the end of the day every person is unique, and comparisons are odious. What makes you happy may not make another person happy, and you have to go for what YOU want, because that’s the only way you’ll be happy yourself.

We are, after all, a generation that should be known as trailblazers to our future generations. There is so much we have that our mothers didn’t – like the Internet, for example!

Media Consumption Meme

I figured this would be an interesting exercise to do – taken from Jinal via Anastasia at YPulse. I am not highly tech-savvy at all, but here goes anyway:

Web: Plenty, plenty of websites, especially now that I have some time on my hands. I usually go to NYT, The Guardian, Salon, Slate, Rediff, BBC and NDTV for current affairs and generally interesting articles. The NYT Arts, Style and Travel sections have some good stuff going as well. For a list of events that are currently happening in the city, I check out Flavorpill. The blogs I usually read are linked to in my own blog.

Communication: Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail (yes I still use it, inspite of V’s repeated digs at me that I am probably one of ten people still using it!!) and to a smaller extent Gmail. I got a Gmail account when they were handing them out free and everyone’s opinion, since Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail had limited mailbox sizes then, was ‘You really should get a Gmail account, you know’. So I did, but then Yahoo and Hotmail woke up and that leaves my Gmail inbox quite empty now, mostly! I use Gtalk more than MSN Messenger or Yahoo Messenger though, funnily enough. I used to like Orkut, but I don’t anymore, though I still have an account. I find it a bit too intrusive, though it also helps re-discovering people you knew years ago (if you want to re-discover them in the first place, that is!!). I’m not on Facebook, mySpace, linkedin, Hi5 or any of the 100 other networking sites that exist – one exhausts me enough.

Music: I belong to the Stone Age, my friends, I admit. I do NOT own an iPod (for Heaven’s sake don’t shriek in shock so loudly, people!!). I rely on the good old ancient radio, and the computer as well – I just listen online. Viva Radio and 106.7 Lite FM are my current favorites. I don’t have a CD system at home yet, so I don’t listen to too many CD’s at the moment either. I used to, when I was in India.

TV: My saviour, LOL. I watch just about anything that can hold my interest for longer than 5 minutes, or else pique it. Of course, I always go back to the millionth re-run of Friends, Sex and the City, Everybody Loves Raymond, Home Improvement, Will and Grace or Full House. V likes Seinfeld and though I didn’t think it was THAT entertaining earlier, I think it’s pretty funny now. I also like Grey’s Anatomy and ER, and thanks to V again, House MD. I used to watch Desperate Housewives, but have lost interest now. That could also be because I’m not sure when it comes on in the US, so if anyone knows, shout out – thanks. I like watching cookery shows on occasion, and if I’m extremely jobless, What Not to Wear on Style. Yeah, that’s right.

Movies: Anyone who’s been reading my blog lately knows that I’ve been overdosing on them, so of course I love movies. I’m not going to repeat the names of the last few movies I watched - please scroll down to my last couple of blog entries and that should fill you in.

Magazines: The web pretty much covers most of it, but when I get my hands on Outlook, India Today, Femina, Cosmopolitan, Glamour and The Economist, I like reading the hard copies as well.

Books: I recently read Freakonomics (Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner), Passion India (Javier Moro) and Shalimar The Clown (Salman Rushdie), and am now devouring Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book. I’d also like to read Snow and My Name is Red by Pamuk, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Capote), On Beauty (Zadie Smith), Sacred Games (Vikram Chandra), and Lord of the Flies (William Golding), soon. I went into the Strand the other day and can’t wait to go back to buy some of them. If anyone hasn’t read Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram, that’s high on my list of all-time favorites.

Newspapers: In India, I used to read The Hindu and The Indian Express, and FT occasionally. For a good laugh and some entertainment, there was always The Times of India. Here, the NYT sometimes, but seriously I think in America the printed word is a slave to the internet. Check out what the Freakonomics blog is saying about the growth of newspapers in – where else – India!

Yes, and that’s about it for now. Ciao.

Ooh la la!

This one is for the guys - two seriously hot women in the same video, Shakira and Beyonce. I wish it were two hot men, though, for my personal viewing pleasure ;) !!

Movie Nights!

So, since I HAVE been watching quite a few films of late, I thought I might as well scribble down my thoughts about two other Oscar-nominated movies I managed to catch over the last week – ‘The Queen’ (Best Actress for Helen Mirren) and ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ (Best Supporting Actor for Alan Arkin and Best Original Screenplay for Michael Arndt).

‘The Queen’, I felt, is not your typical movie, being as it is a biopic of Queen Elizabeth in the days following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. It has a lot of shots of actual events that occurred when Diana was alive – such as Princess Diana’s interviews on TV, flowers offered by the public at the gates of Buckingham Palace and paparazzi shots of Diana with Dodi Al-Fayed. Helen Mirren is certainly brilliant – her mannerisms, gait and restrained acting all contributing to the Oscar that she was awarded, but so are Michael Sheen as Tony Blair and Helen McCrory as Cherie Blair. Very few people probably even spared a thought for the Queen in the uproar and media attention that followed Diana’s untimely fatal accident, but here you see her as someone very human, who had to take on a huge responsibility at a very young age (‘duty first, self second’, as she says, is what she's been taught) and understandably finds it difficult to move with the changing times, coming as she is from an entirely different generation altogether.

As for ‘Little Miss Sunshine’, I’d say this – it is totally a movie worth watching, because it is so WEIRDLY entertaining, something I certainly haven’t seen in a while. Following the not-so-trodden path of movies like ‘American Beauty’, it is the story of a completely dysfunctional American family, as we track their lives over the span of a couple of days. Well-written and edited (the movie won Best Original Screenplay, don’t forget), it follows the lives of young Olive (Abigail Breslin) who has won a chance to participate in the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant in California, her perfectionist father Richard (Greg Kinnear), her harried mother Sheryl (Toni Collette), Nietzsche-reading brother Dwayne (Paul Dano) who has taken an oath of silence till he achieves his goal of becoming an airforce pilot, heroin-snorting, invective-spouting grandfather (Alan Arkin), and gay suicidal uncle Frank (Steve Carell). I mean, 'how much more dysfunctional can you get!!!!', was my thought when all the characters came into their first scenes! Still, as the family rushes to get Olive to the pageant on time in their rundown van (which they call a bus), a number of quite crazy events happen, all adding to the madness. All in all, if you manage to lay your hands on a copy of this movie, I’d say go for it!

Paradise Lost? - and 'Paradise Now'

I passed the erstwhile site of the Twin Towers four times yesterday, as I traipsed around this teeming metropolis. And no matter how many times I go by, every single time I look at the rubble, one thought flashes in my mind: how can people be so ruthless as to fly entire planes into buildings when they know it is civilians that will be killed? People like you and me, who have done no great harm to politicians and governments (even if the reverse is not true). And at the same time, they have absolutely no value for their OWN lives either. They may have had their own reasons, but in that case go target the people who have contributed to the problems, not people who just want to go on with their daily lives, their small joys and sorrows.

Right? Wrong?

I don’t know if it was a coincidence that with all these thoughts crowded in my mind, I walked up past what is left of the WTC, to a screening of Hany Abu-Assad’s ‘Paradise Now’ by the School of Continuing and Professional Studies of New York University. A Palestinian film released in 2005, it is the story of Said, a suicide bomber whose father died when he was 10, executed for being a collaborator with the Israeli authorities. He grows up in a life that he feels is asphyxiating, humiliating and pointless – when we are introduced to him, he is a car mechanic. His friend Khaled is keen on being a martyr for ‘the cause’, and Said is confident that this will give his life some meaning as well. When the call comes for them to jump the line from Nablus to Tel Aviv to execute the so-called mission which will send them to paradise, they both walk into the plan comfortably. But (and there is always a ‘but’ isn’t there – this is where the movie picked up pace), the operation is botched and Khaled manages to get back to safety while Said walks around with a bomb plastered to his chest (only the people who put it on him can deactivate it – and they did not foresee that possibility). After a day of frantic searching, Khaled finally manages to locate him with the help of Suha, a customer at the garage that Said has a soft spot for (and vice-versa). She is the daughter of a Palestinian martyr herself, but grew up in France and Morocco and is completely against the principle of suicide bombing – ‘you are only giving the Israelis another reason to continue with their oppression’, she says, and ‘I’d rather he was alive than be proud of him’, in response to a comment by Said about her father. Said steadfastly believes, however, that suicide bombing will at least draw attention to the atrocities that the Israelis are committing against Palestine, and that at least then he will have freedom.

After he is given the green light by the group leader post his return, Said insists on completing the mission. Khaled tries to warn him against this, by now having second thoughts after his conversation with Suha. But Said is unwavering in his determination. Khaled, unwilling and unhappy but determined to stick with his friend till the end, reaches Tel Aviv with Said. At the last minute, Khaled calls the driver of the taxi who dropped them and asks him to return to pick them up. Said, after arguing with Khaled, finally agrees to go as well, but when the taxi arrives, Said packs Khaled in and mouths one word to the driver ‘Go!’.

We last see Said sitting in a packed bus in Tel Aviv with – well – people like you and me, but with a couple of soldiers for company also. A white screen fills the end - perhaps Said has reached his paradise.

The movie was submitted for the Oscars last year under the Best Foreign Film category, but the Academy rejected the nomination because it did not subscribe to the rules for films under the category – it has to be forwarded by a government, and what government, technically, does Palestine have? Finally, this year it was accepted when it was submitted again, though it did not win. It has, however, won numerous awards at the Golden Globes and film festivals in Berlin, Vancouver, Netherlands and Germany, among others.

I’m no film expert, though I love cinema – not just movies, but the art of it as well, which is why I am interested in watching smaller, independent movies like these. I think life is about expression, and everyone has a viewpoint. It only makes my life richer when I see, hear and learn about people that may or may not think like me. That’s what it’s all about isn’t it? Knowing what’s going on outside the comfort-cocoon we tend to create around ourselves.

Viva La Radio!

For people interested in electronic and alternative music, with a bit of rock thrown in sometimes, check out the sounds at Viva Radio. It's new, it's different - and no it's not Maggi Hot and Sweet !

All that glitters is gold

I had a rather 'rich' morning viewing tons and tons of gold bars in a vault...it's true, really! OK, it wasn't like I came into some super inheritance or anything, before anyone gets any ideas!! I went on a tour of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. I'd recommend it for 3 reasons - it's short, it's interesting, and it's not on your usual tourist list of 'Things I must do/see in New York'. It's free, and all you need to do is reserve a place in advance.

While you wait for the tour to start, there's a very detailed collection of monetary coins and notes of the world, dating back to the days of the barter system, courtesy the American Numismatic Society. Of special note is the 1933 Double Eagle coin, which is basically a gold coin which has a value of US$20, but was sold at an auction for US$ 7.59 million!!! It has an interesting history which I'm not going to get into right now, but I wholeheartedly suggest glancing at it - HERE!

The vault of course is the most attractive part of the tour, and it does not disappoint. The Federal Bank of New York essentially holds gold bars belonging to about 36 foreign governments, central banks and international organizations - only about 5% of U.S gold reserves are actually held here, the majority being in Fort Knox. The vault rests on the rock bottom of Manhattan Island and is 50 feet below sea level. The door to the vault (there is only one), which was installed in 1914 and has not been changed since (except for regular maintenance), consists of a 90-ton steel cylinder which is rotated 90 degrees to achieve airtight and watertight sealing. It is completely manual, which means that even if the electricity were to go off, it would not hamper the security of the bars. I went through this door and while I was there, a bank official was showing some other officials how the cylinder moved, as a result of which I got to see the entire contraption in motion - and it certainly did seem a 'masterpiece of protective engineering', as the brochure I later on read, noted. And it needs to be, with US$140 billion in gold currently being held inside!

Mostly for the entertainment of young visitors (I'm not ancient, but I mean schoolkids here!), there are a range of interactive educational games once you finish the tour, and I had a blast with them. I certainly learnt my bit about the monetary system for the day!

The monster that lurks beneath - another war for Afghanistan to wage

As if Afghanistan doesn’t have enough problems to deal with, this New York Times article profiles another : AIDS. It is struggling to rebuild the country as Taliban forces resurface, and the pandemic is kept shrouded in stigma and ignorance. Bordered by countries which have the fastest-growing incidence of AIDS in the world – Russia, China and India, and another two which have known problems of drug addiction and a growing HIV-positive population – Pakistan and Iran, the country is crippled with multiple problems that we can only pray are solved sooner rather than later. The situation clearly does not look good though, with ‘health workers remaining ill-informed and careless, often reusing needles even when they know it risks spreading the disease’. In a 2003 survey of 126 women working in the sex trade in Kabul, an NGO working in Afghanistan also reported that only one was familiar with condoms and only one had knowledge of HIV/AIDS. Five years down the lane, one cannot hope for much change on that front - there are too many battles being fought in the country as it is.

And so another Monday morning in 2007 commences....

Picture by Aaron Huey/Atlas Press, for The New York Times - Heroin users shooting up among ruined buildings in the old section of Kabul. Injectable heroin first hit the city’s streets about five years ago.

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Beautiful. Taken from Disjointed Outpurings' latest. Try yours.

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Mira Nair's 'The Namesake' (based on the book by Jhumpa Lahiri)

Mira Nair’s ‘The Namesake’ has come in for some criticism, and there are some interesting anecdotes about some of the occurrences during the shooting of the film as well. I managed to catch a screening at New York’s indie-film-focused Angelika Film Theater, and was one of the 9 people that were assiduously waiting outside at 10 a.m for the theater to open for the 10.30 a.m show.

I read Jhumpa Lahiri’s book a few years ago, and have always had this thing for watching movies that are based on books, perhaps to see how closely the movie script has been able to stay true to the original story. In most cases (the Harry Potter series, the James Bond series, A Good Year, The Da Vinci Code, Pride and Prejudice, for example), the movies by themselves are reasonably interesting to watch, but ultimately, due to the pressure that a movie has for sticking to a reasonable time-limit, it does lose some of the essence of the book. Mira Nair, director of the highly acclaimed and entertaining ‘Monsoon Wedding’, does a fairly competent job with ‘The Namesake’, and is assisted by a repertoire of very able actors (Irrfan Khan, Tabu, Kal Penn, Zuleikha Robinson).

It could have been a typical ABCD movie (‘Flavors’, and the very unimaginatively titled ‘ABCD’, anyone??), but with the script of a book already in hand, Nair’s job is easier. The movie starts off in the Calcutta of the 1970’s, and has some excellent shots of the city (like statues of Goddess Kali during the festival, the Hooghly, and the crowded streets of the City of Joy). Ashoke Ganguli (Irrfan Khan), traumatized by a near-death train accident near Calcutta where Nikolai Gogol’s ‘The Overcoat’ was his traveling companion, makes a quick trip from New York to India a few years later, in the midst of his doctorate, to have a happy, traditional, arranged Bengali wedding to Ashima (Tabu). She accompanies her husband to the States, where she slowly settles into the American way of life. There are some well-captured scenes between Ashoke and Ashima in their first few years of marriage in New York – images of cold, wintry days in the City make you feel for the fresh-off-the-plane Ashima as Ashoke does his best to be a good husband. Many years and two children later, the couple moves to the suburbs where Ashoke has a job as a professor and Ashima takes up a job at the local library. The story then starts focusing more on Gogol/Nikhil (Penn), who is trying as best he can to be an American lad inspite of his very traditional Indian parents. A visit to the Taj Mahal during one of his family holidays to India motivates him to become an architect a few years later, and his life seems to be going well in New York, with a pretty, rich, well-educated American girlfriend Max (Jacinda Barrett) to boot, short for Maxine. (Ashima, when she talks about Maxine to her librarian-friend : ‘What kind of a girl has a name like Max?' ‘Maybe she isn’t a girl’ – and the subtle shock on Ashima’s face!!)

At four, Gogol insists on his pet name being adopted as his real name, though his parents had settled on ‘Nikhil’. Years later, when he finds out at high school that the writer Gogol was a frustrated, lonely, sexually inactive man, he changes his legal name back to Nikhil. His father gifts him a copy of ‘The Overcoat’ for his graduation, and there are many instances where he almost tells Gogol the real reason for his naming him after the author, but the words die on his lips. Finally, one day, just before Ashoke is due to leave for an academic position at Ohio for six months, he tells Gogol the reason.

Revealing more about the story would be unfair to the reader who hasn’t had a chance to watch the movie yet, and to the viewer who hasn’t read the book but would like to watch the movie anyway. Nair inserts a couple of fun scenes in the movie that are not in the book (Gogol and his wife Moushumi (Zuleikha Robinson) on their wedding night, where the Indian- American boy and the British-Indian Francophile girl do a parody of typical Bollywood movies, for example). The movie brought out all those emotions that a modern yet well-rooted, educated young person of today would feel – empathy for all the characters, sadness, joy (I laughed out loud twice and wept a few crappy tears, yes, where applicable!!), but more than anything I’ll tell you what ‘The Namesake’ left me with – the almost-definite, almost-palpable knowledge that no matter what, I wouldn’t want to live in a country that is not my own, for the entire length of my life – maybe a few years, to ‘travel, see the world – you won’t regret it’ (as they say in the movie), but not forever.

Interesting facts: Jhumpa Lahiri actually has scenes in the movie, and Sahira Nair, who plays Ashoke and Ashima’s reel-life daughter Sonia, is Mira Nair’s real-life daughter.

Movement, expression, randomness - dance

"You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls."
Merce Cunningham

Dance need not be co-ordinated, beautiful, or set to music. It can be random, powerful – almost theatre, and exist with music which does not necessarily lend much to the dance itself. This is what Merce Cunningham believes, and it is what I saw at a performance by students of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company last Saturday. It was a dance in nine pieces, and none of them was related to any of the others. It was not dance in the usual sense of the word – not a classical art form like we are used to seeing in India, like Bharatanatyam, Kathakali, Kathak, Kuchipudi, or Mohiniattam, nor was it typical western choreography like that in Broadway plays. Merce Cunningham’s dance form is very influenced by Dadaism and the Zen philosophy, and as is quoted on his website, he is ‘not interested in telling stories or exploring psychological relationships: the subject matter of his dances is the dance itself’ – the viewer is free to interpret the dance however he or she wants. The dance would look random to the untrained eye, but there was a definite intention in every movement. That was part of the craziness of it all, and the beauty.

Art with a dash of history - The Salmagundi Art Club

The Salmagundi Art Club in New York is one of the last brownstone buildings on Fifth Avenue, and is the venue for regular exhibitions of painting, photography and sculpture by its member-artists, as well as regular classes for the public in art. It started as the New York Sketch Club in 1871 and moved to its current headquarters in 1917. The building’s history, heritage and architecture lend a fitting charm to the place of creativity that it is. It is open to the public from 1 to 5 p.m every day of the week, and admission is free. For lovers of art, I’d suggest a look.

Any guesses on the origin of the name ‘Salmagundi’? The word means ‘potpourri’ and was adopted after Washington Irving’s paper of the same name came into existence – it was intended to refer to the mix of wit and wisdom that the paper was supposed to be. Interestingly, Irving also used the term ‘Gotham’ to refer to New York City in his Salmagundi Papers in 1807, with reference to Gotham, England where wise men acted as fools in the hope that King John would change his decision to settle there and consequently burden the village with royal upkeep. And Gotham City, of course, provides the setting for a very famous comic book – no prizes for guessing which!!!

Weirdness!!!

I got this from the Elf's blog - how weird are YOU?????!!!!

You Are 40% Weird

Normal enough to know that you're weird... But too damn weird to do anything about it!

How Weird Are You?

Thoughts on Rushdie's STC

The first time I tried reading Salman Rushdie, I was still in school and I couldn’t get past the first few pages. The book was ‘Midnight’s Children’. I just finished my second attempt, and I’m glad to say I made it through the entire book. This time it was ‘Shalimar the Clown’, and though the first few pages were not as engaging as I would have liked it to be, by the time I reached the middle, I was engrossed.

Writing novels is truly an art – in my opinion, if it does not have a generous dose of creativity, you might as well be reading the paper - and Rushdie moves between modern politics and history with the ease and gracefulness of a tiger hunting its prey in the open fields of Africa. He lays bare the basic human emotions of love and hatred with words that are so lyrical and evocative, you can visualize them as he writes. I especially liked that his characters are well-etched – though each character has shades of grey, clearly, the sympathy of the reader is meant for one person only – Shalimar the Clown – and that person does get it. That is another rather difficult goal to achieve when you set about writing a novel, I would imagine. If your characters are not well fleshed-out, you lose track somewhere along the way and then the end is never exactly what you imagined it would be. Some would call that part of the beauty of writing as well. Perhaps, but I feel that though the writer is free to express himself however he or she wants, in a story, you have to be clear about your characters – you have to convey your thoughts in a way that the reader is not left wondering about the direction you are trying to take him or her in. Many writers make that mistake, but Rushdie did not get caught in that trap in 'Shalimar The Clown'.

I don’t want this to be a book report, so I’m not elaborating on the storyline (I don’t like the people who give out the ending of the movie or book before you’ve had a chance to watch or read it yourself!!), but it should suffice to say that with names as interesting as Shalimar, Kashmira, Boonyi and Maximilian, the story lived up to its characters. A story with a Mary or John could be boring, after all, but with names like these? He didn’t have a choice!

Grand Central Terminal

Grand Central Terminal (yes, THE Grand Central), is a beaux-arts building in the heart of New York City, and, as anyone who has seen it will probably vouch for, it is impressive from the outside. But what I found even more impressive was the inside of the building. During the days when steam locomotives chugged around the United States of America, Grand Central was essentially a rail yard. Hence the name ‘terminal’ (and not, as many people believe, ‘station’). Interesting note: in the olden days, ‘stations’ in America denoted post offices and not, as they are now commonly perceived, railway stations!

The inside of Grand Central is an example of architecture in its true sense. As our extremely well-informed guide informed us, architecture has to do with people and spaces, and the Grand Central Terminal reflects exactly that. It is designed to inspire awe. It is designed to enable people-watching during those long waits for trains, with plenty of comfortable spaces, railings and balconies at different levels. It is designed so that people who run to catch their trains have enough space to dash so that they do not bump into other commuters. In fact, each slab of stone on the floor of the building is exactly the length and width of a human-being – a wonderful example of the involvement of the building with the people it was constructed for, and the stairs are built with the human body in mind as well – each step has been built so that a person can walk down the stairs without even requiring to look down, because it is exactly the height and length of a normal human step.

I spent a very interesting afternoon walking around Grand Central. Truly an afternoon well spent – away from the cold!