Good Morning America!

Which nut wakes up at 5 a.m to do something that is not work-related?

Me.

Nice to meet you.

For one of those few times in my life, luck decided to favour me and I was selected to be part of 'Good Morning America', ABC's daily morning news show, yesterday morning. So if I had to get up at 5 a.m, then so be it! After reaching Times Square at 6 a.m and getting pissed off with the sidey characters who made random comments at me (6 a.m!! Eve-teasers need to get a life. The sun hadn't even risen yet), I was allotted to the group that was going to be in the audience for the 'Dancing for the Stars' segment on the show. Being part of the television audience for an American TV show is supposed to be one of those things that one must do if they get a chance (or so I'd been told - see, I'm a sucker for all these things!). The show tapes 7-9 a.m, but our segment went on around 8 a.m, prior to which there were a couple of trial runs in a little cement island in the middle of busy Times Square, which is where the segment was to be shot.

For those of you who are not familiar with 'Dancing with the Stars', it is one of those reality shows that pits famous people against each other in a dancing competition. I think it's one of the most-watched reality shows in the US, second of course to the all-pervasive 'American Idol'. Yesterday's show had some hot salsa dancers to showcase the programme, and the co-hosts of the show, Tom Bergeron and Samantha Harris (who had some of the younger members of the audience screaming and fervently asking for autographs and photos) revealed the participants for next season.


So, what was it like being there? First, the show taped outside, so there was none of the 'ooohhh I'm in a TV studio with real sets' kind of feeling. Second, all that was seen of me by the one person I know who watched the show, was me waving and screaming enthusiastically, standing on the top row of bleachers right behind Diane Sawyer (the anchor of the show) and the sexy-looking co-hosts. I'd only ever seen posters of Sawyer with her fellow anchors while riding on the subway - never really watched her on TV before, but she was all made-up and gave the air of 'I know I'm important', if you know what I mean. But with the sexy-looking Bergeron and Harris there, not to forget the salsa dancers (pictured above) who's going to look at the audience?!!! Anyway, anyone who knows me will probably vouch for the fact that if ever 'enthusiastic' people are needed, I can be counted on to pep up the atmosphere. Earned me the not-so-attractive nickname of 'enthu-pat' in college (short for 'enthu-pattani', translatable as 'enthusiastic pea' - whoever came up with it is DUMB!!!!!).

But (and there always is a but, pardon the pun), just being in Times Square at that hour was sort of surreal. The lights and billboards never stop flashing in all their glory, and I'm a fan of the bright lights - not just the billboards but the studio lights as well. It's all so exciting, and heck, I'm not a filmstar!!! :-D

The hot salsa dancers and the hot judges were worth it, in any case. The Johnny Cash-inspired soundtrack for the show which they played in between had the salsa dancers (and me) snapping their fingers, and was fun too.

So, yeah, an experience to smile about as I reminisce when I'm older, that's for sure!

'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' - A Review

My review of Mohsin Hamid's 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' which appeared here last week:

The politics of the Middle East and South Asia and the relationship of the United States with many of the countries in the region have been fodder for many journalistic articles and fictional books in the past. Post-9/11, the happenings in the region have taken on an even larger significance and consequently spurred a huge onslaught of writing by contemporary authors. Released earlier this year, it was only natural then that I was keen on reading Mohsin Hamid’s ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’, a book that many people I know kept talking about. The word on the street was that it was quite riveting.

I’m going to burst the bubble right here and say up front that I was slightly disappointed. I have not read Hamid’s first work, ‘Moth Smoke’ which was a Betty Trask Award winner, a PEN/Hemingway award finalist and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, but I will say that ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ certainly is a book that started out with a lot of promise, but faltered somewhere along the way. In today’s political climate, it had the potential to resonate much more strongly than it eventually did.

Hamid has chosen for his style of writing the first-person narrative, which is very courageous. There are not many books that immediately come to mind that are written in the first person – Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Never Let Me Go’ is one that came to me after some thought – and while it is a powerful tool in immediately engaging the reader, the writer also risks losing his attention equally fast if he is not crystal clear with his thoughts, because there is no opportunity to clarify what he means. It’s like being in a class where the professor does not allow you to ask questions, even if you don’t quite get bits of the lesson. In this story, the one-way conversation is between Changez (pronounced ‘Chun-gays’, the Urdu word for Genghis), a young Princeton-educated Pakistani who chooses to return to his home country following the turmoil that he is thrown into after the World Trade Center bombings in New York, and a nameless, voiceless American visitor, as they sit in a restaurant in Lahore one evening.

Changez, the product of a once-rich Lahori family that enjoyed elite status in the city, sails across the seas to study at Princeton University in the US. He is the beneficiary of a scholarship – but he tries to hide this from his fellow schoolmates as he feels it betrays the fact that he once used to belong to their class – a social class that can afford to pay their fees at the elite university they attend. He is at the end of his four-year undergraduate degree in 2001 when he begins his story, and goes on a trip with a group of friends to Greece before he starts his first job with Underwood Samson in New York, an extremely competitive valuation firm that he is fortunate to be selected to join. During the trip, he falls in love with Erica, a fellow Princetonian and a budding writer with problems of her own. As New York comes together in the aftermath of 9/11, Changez is forced to face the doubts that lurk in his mind over the happenings in his home country and the increasing possibility of a war with India, as well as the inaction of the US with respect to Pakistan. He finally throws up all he wanted – his well-paying job, the security and status it offered, and returns to Pakistan, even as he is not wholly convinced that what he is doing is right.

The book is not so much a novel as a novella – there is an interesting reference to Erica’s writing in the story which is an accurate reflection of this book itself, of how the novella is a ‘platypus of a beast’ – and ultimately this was perhaps its undoing. With a little more exploration of the theme – the book clocks in at just 184 pages – Changez’ character could have been developed better, and that would have made for a smoother flow of the story. All along, all we see is the confusion in Changez’ mind. He truly is constantly reluctant, as the book’s title asserts. But his evolution into a so-called fundamentalist is less evident. Given the political atmosphere in the US, it is understandable why he felt the eyes of suspicion, being a brown-skinned South Asian. But why did he suddenly feel pushed to make his ethnicity so evident – going so far as to grow a beard, and invite attention? There wasn’t much explained about Changez’ views on Afghanistan and American intervention there, but he was clearly against India and lack of American intervention there – so where exactly was his anger against the US coming from?

On the positive side, Changez’ romance with Erica was sensitively written and that bit of the story, not what one would typically expect. Hamid’s knowledge of the corporate world also comes in handy when he writes about Changez’ experience at Underwood Samson (Hamid worked at McKinsey & Company in New York for a while, after obtaining degrees from Princeton and then Harvard). All in all, ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ is a book that is worth a read, but that will in all likelihood leave you with unanswered questions in your mind when you finish.

Lager Beer

To my Ol' Faithfuls who visit here:
I dedicate this poem to the husband dear
Whose drink of choice
- Thankfully not a vice -
Is (for those who still want to ask)
Lager beer, brewed in a cask.

I should be a poet, no?!!! OK, fine, NO!!!

__________________________


Lager Beer
- Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

I lafs und sings, und shumps aroundt.
Und somedimes acd so gueer.
You ask me vot der matter ish?
I'm filled mit lager peer.

I hugs mine child, und giss mine vife.
Oh, my dey was so dear;
Bot dot ish ven, you know, mire friend,
I'm filled mit lager peer.

Eleetion gomes, I makes mire speech,
Mine het it vas so glear:
De beoples laf, und say ha, ha,
He's filled mit lager peer.

De oder night I got me mad,
De beoples run mit fear.
De bleeceman gome und took me down
All filled mit lager peer.

Next day I gomes pefore de judge,
Says he, "Eh heh, you're here!"
I gives you yust five-fifty-five
For trinking lager peer.

I took mine bocket book qvick oud,
So poor I don't abbear;
Mine money all vas gone, mine friend
Vas gone in lager peer.

Und den dey dakes me off to shail,
To work mine sendence glear,
Und dere I shwears no more to be
Filled oup mit lager peer.

Und from dot day I drinks no more,
Yah, dat is very gueer,
But den I found de tevil lifed
In dot same lager peer.

What Happened To Us?

Dan Perjovschi, Bucharest-based contemporary artist, concludes his first site-specific installation in the United States at the Museum of Modern Art in New York this weekend. I've been to see it a couple of times. On one level, as the husband will insist on saying, it is just a series of random cartoonish scribblings, the kind you or me used to do on the last page of our notebooks in school. Well, maybe not me, but my more artistic friends probably did! Anyway, it is a satiric reflection of American society, and even more generally modern society today, and some of his cartoons are amusingly profound. You can see a printable version of the installation here, (seriously, go through it and tell me what you think!) and watch Perjovschi as he installed it in MoMA and explained his work here:

Pornographers are not bad

I bet THAT blog title made you sit up and take notice - !! Anyway, as opposed to what SOME of you might have thought, this isn't a dirty post. Sorry. You, you and you, please take your business elsewhere :-D

I chanced upon the name of The New Pornographers , a Vancouver, British Columbia-based indie band somewhere this morning on the web, and curiosity led me to their site. The name for the band is assumed to reflect a quotation by televangelist Pentecostal preacher of the 80's, Jimmy Swaggart, who once called music the new pornography (Seriously, what random facts one learns every day!).

This music video of theirs features an unexpected twist, and the music itself is quite decent. Ah. I feel happy when I unearth new artists like this.

Attack of the Rat!!!!

I still don't know the significance of this massive rat on Sixth Avenue in New York (it's been looming above pedestrians in the same spot for a month now). I don't know if it has anything to do with the fact that there are apparently three rats for every human in NYC! EEEYYEEEWWW!!!

Photograph credit: Me!

The Devil Came on Horseback

‘The Devil Came on Horseback’ is not an easy film to watch. Documentaries in general run the risk of being pedantic, in my opinion, but that is not the reason why this particular film will be difficult to digest. For me, maybe it was the images of the rotting corpses, the dried blood, the burning villages and the images of the truly evil-looking militia, or janjaweed, who killed civilians in cold blood. Or maybe it was the jarring knowledge at the back of my mind that what I was viewing was not fiction or special effects, but actual images of death and devastation caused by people - not hundreds of years ago, but today. The same world in which I live myself, unharmed and untouched by the savagery on screen. Roughly translated from Arabic, ‘janjaweed’ means ‘man with a gun on horseback’, but in the film we are told that it means ‘devil on horseback’, and hence the title.

I will be honest and say that prior to watching the film, my knowledge of the happenings in the Darfur region of Sudan was rudimentary at most. I’d seen bits and pieces of articles in newspapers or events that publicized savedarfur.org, but that was about it. This film, with footage shot by former US Marine Captain Brian Steidle, served as a huge wake-up call. Activate interviewed Steidle post the release of ‘The Devil Came on Horseback’ and they have given a concise background of the events that mooted the making of the film, for those of you who are unfamiliar:

‘In 2004, Steidle spent six months as an unarmed military observer with the African Union to monitor the ceasefire of Sudan's decades-long civil war. But as the war between north and south cooled, the Arab-run government launched an ethnic-cleansing program, backing attacks on African blacks in Darfur by nomadic Arab militiamen known as the janjaweed. The regional politics are a complex mix of racial rivalries and resource grabs, but more perplexing, Steidle says, is the world's inaction.’

In 2005, Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, a family friend of Steidle’s, helped publish his first-hand images of the genocide in Darfur. What followed were rallies and public events where Steidle spoke about what he’d seen in Sudan. The film shows all this, and follows Brian and his sister as they traveled to Chad later and spoke to some of the 250,000 people who had been displaced as a result of the genocide. Brian also went to Rwanda to see how the country was renewing itself after the equally devastating genocide there in 1994.

I can only imagine the emotional turmoil that Brian Steidle must have gone through as he witnessed the happenings in Darfur, and the courage and patience it must have taken to finally take his story to the public. (The Sudanese government tried to cross the border and capture Brian and his sister when they went to Chad, and when they were back in the US, he got notice through sources that they would try and kill him if he tried to return to Sudan.) As he said in the film, Rwanda was in 1994, over ten years before Darfur happened. The world should have learnt something then. But one can only postulate about what it did, because today we have Darfur to deal with.

As of today, Sudan has agreed to accept a joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force in the region, and we should be grateful for that. But is it, as Steidle says in his interview, too little, too late?

UPDATE: I found this article on Al-Jazeera's site just now - a Darfur militia leader has warned that if the UN has a 'colonial agenda', they will face stiff resistance.

Alcohol in a land of prohibition

No, I'm not talking about Saudi Arabia. I'm talking about India's frenemy and neighbour, Pakistan. Read here about a 150-year-old brewery in Pakistan that is preparing to bring the Muslim world's first 20-year-old single malt whisky to the market. Murree Brewery, however, can only sell to non-Muslims, who comprise 3 percent of Pakistan's population.

Some notable facts that I discovered : The Murree Brewery is situated in the same locality as the residence of Pervez Musharraf, it is owned by a Pakistani Parsi, and apparently the biggest market for Britain's largest gin is not the United States, but Saudi Arabia, which is of course another country that is 'officially dry'.

Line of the day

Seen on a placard held by a bum in New York this evening: 'I need money and women to help America breed.' :-D

A Thousand Splendid Suns - A Review

I'm reproducing here my review of 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' that I wrote for Hafta Mag last week:

Right from the beginning, Khaled Hosseini had something to live up to. When you author a first book as critically acclaimed and widely read as ‘The Kite Runner’, you know expectations will be running high for the book that follows in its wake. With ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’, Hosseini has successfully managed to meet those expectations. Judging by the fact that apart from the political setting of Afghanistan there is not much else common with ‘The Kite Runner’ and Hosseini has still managed to weave an extremely compelling tale, I would even say that it surpasses those expectations.

Hosseini has stuck to a backdrop that he knows well, and that also worked well for him in ‘The Kite Runner’. As the story moves across generations, Afghanistan is painted as a country with a once-rich past which starts disintegrating rapidly as the rule of power moves from the Soviets to the Mujahideen, the Taliban and finally the US-backed government with Hamid Karzai at the helm. You feel for the innocent civilian who is forced to bear the brunt of each attack as the wars between different factions progress, as his life falls apart with his loved ones dropping by the wayside or his home and possessions being destroyed in the shelling. But this is not the story of just any innocent civilian, though the protagonists are very much innocent themselves. In that respect, just as ‘The Kite Runner’ was primarily told through the eyes of males, this story is about women, whose condition can be argued to have been much the worse of the two. One reading of the rules of the Taliban for women in Afghanistan makes you grasp this reality at once – and these are only selected lines:

You will not, under any circumstances, show your face. You will cover with burqa when outside. If you do not, you will be severely beaten.

You will not wear charming clothes.

You will not speak unless spoken to.

You will not make eye contact with men.

You will not laugh in public. If you do, you will be beaten.

You will not paint your nails. If you do, you will lose a finger.

Girls are forbidden from attending school. All schools ofr girls will be closed immediately.

Women are forbidden from working.

If you are found guilty of adultery, you will be stoned to death.

Listen. Listen well. Obey.

And so, this is the story of two remarkably strong women, Mariam and Laila, born about nineteen years apart, and the strange kinship they come to share after being thrown together under extenuating circumstances. As we are taken through their initial years – Mariam first, then Laila, we realise that their pasts could not be more different. Education, the harbinger of intellectual curiosity and freedom, is the key distinguisher, with the city-bred Laila actively encouraged to speak her mind by her progressive parents, and Mariam not allowed to be educated at all, coming as she does from rural Herat. When their stories converge and they finally meet each other, the bitter, lonely Mariam is understandably antagonistic towards the much younger Laila, unaware of all that she has been through. But they begin to realise that as women, they share more than just their ill-tempered, scheming husband Rasheed, whom they are both pushed into marriage with as teens. The increasingly bloody wars have left both women without family and friends, and as Rasheed’s rule of tyranny within the household begins to tell on them both at the same time as the Taliban takes over Afghanistan with their impossible rules, Mariam finds a strength she never had, and Laila a saviour.

Khaled Hosseini’s language is tellingly lyrical as he depicts the Afghanistan of yore (‘vines pregnant with plump grapes’), but as the novel moves forward it is his story-telling abilities which carry the book through. Once I started reading it, I could not put it down till I reached the last page, and then to ruminate over what it must be like to be an Afghan woman today. This is after all fiction and therefore, in itself, part of the book’s success – if I was pushed to think about the issue because of a fictional story, then there must be others who will be too. And for that, Hosseini must be applauded.

'My Cousin Vinny' in Hindi? That needs to be seen!

'My Cousin Vinny' is the husband's favourite movie. When I read that Ravi Chopra has bought the copyright of the 1992 comedy for which Marisa Tomei won an Oscar, my first thought was 'I don't believe this!!'. Hindi movies ripping off Hollywood ones is nothing new, but for Hindi mainstream film producers to actually buy the rights of a movie before making a movie that was 'inspired' by a foreign one, is not very common. If you click the link above, you'll be surprised at how many 'inspired' (as opposed to 'inspiring') movies have been made. In fact, while searching for information on whether there have been cases of producers actually buying the copyright before making a film that they, for all practical purposes, copied, I found that non-compliance with copyright laws may land the David Dhawan-directed, Govinda-starrer 'Partner', released earlier this year, in trouble. Apparently Sony Pictures Entertainment and Will Smith's Overbrook Entertainment House, makers of the romantic comedy 'Hitch', plan to sue Eros and K Sera Sera, makers of 'Partner' for $30 million over copyright infringement.

So it's a good sign that the industry is waking up to the importance of copyright laws in India. Now my only hope is that Chopra doesn't make a total mess of the brilliant 'My Cousin Vinny'!

RD Burman flashback - 2 : Yeh Vaada Raha

I blogged about one of my favorite songs from 'Parinda' recently, and today I randomly thought of this other very lyrical song from 'Yeh Vaada Raha' which I like a lot - I remember watching the movie years and years ago, a love triangle where Poonam Dhillon emerges as Tina Munim after plastic surgery (or maybe it was vice-versa!). Rishi Kapoor is the hero but I don't recall much else. Anyway, I was quite unsurprised to find that R.D.Burman was the music director - the man was a genius I tell you, and upon further digging, I found that the lyricist was Gulshan Bawra, whose two most noteworthy songs, for which he won Filmfare awards, were 'Mere desh ki dharti' from 'Upkar' and 'Yaari hai imaan mera' from the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer 'Zanjeer'. This particular song, the title song from 'Yeh Vaada Raha', is one of his few songs that became hits, amongst the 240 that he wrote in his 42-year career. Long live YouTube!

UTI Bank is now Axis Bank

I must admit, I have never really associated UTI Bank with being a modern bank. I used to think this was my own fault because no one ever really told me that it is not, like ICICI, Citibank or ABN Amro. It's all in the mind though - when you think of Air India or Indian Airlines (now Indian) and then the glossy, sassy Kingfisher Airlines or the business-like Jet Airways (who also went in for an image change recently) which airline would you rather choose? Image has a lot to do with how you perceive a brand. In the marketing-oriented, consumer-driven world of today, it is more important than it ever was. You get out of your house and your visual senses are assaulted with billboards of all sizes, neon signs, small posters on road dividers, banners and so on and so forth. If you stay at home and switch on the TV, then there are the numerous commercials between your daily dose of your favourite serial or reality show or news broadcast.

Anyway, UTI Bank has officially changed its name to Axis Bank, though there has been no merger or take-over. It's just gone in for a new look with a new name. Turns out I was not so far off the mark after all, because listen to what is being said about the change:

The new name, experts say, will help the bank shed its unintended association with public sector banks and also give it an modern, global feel that could appeal to younger consumers.

I rest my case.

You can read more about the change here, and watch the ad, which features a very cute pair of little twin girls to illustrate the fact that UTI and Axis are the same except for the difference in name, here:

'Exit Wounds' by Pankaj Mishra

For those of you who have time, Pankaj Mishra has written a thought-provoking piece in The New Yorker about how the British Empire's shoddy handling of the partition of erstwhile India in 1947 helped sow the seeds of a war that is now leaving people as far away as Europe and the US scarred for life. This chilling conclusion is perhaps what is most noteworthy:

Meeting Mountbatten a few months after partition, Churchill assailed him for helping Britain’s “enemies,” “Hindustan,” against “Britain’s friends,” the Muslims. Little did Churchill know that his expedient boosting of political Islam would eventually unleash a global jihad engulfing even distant New York and London. The rival nationalisms and politicized religions the British Empire brought into being now clash in an enlarged geopolitical arena; and the human costs of imperial overreaching seem unlikely to attain a final tally for many more decades.

Citizen 123456: You didn't update your landlord's phone number. You will be arrested.

And the technology take-over of the world continues.....police surveillance cameras being installed in streets is old news now, but starting this month, China is issuing electronic cards to help them keep tabs on citizens in Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people. These cards will have computer chips which will record all of the following data: the citizen’s name and address, work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status, landlord’s phone number and last but not least (I was waiting to read when this would come up as the article progressed, given China's strict one-child per family policy) even personal reproductive history. It doesn't stop there. The article states that 'Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.'

Good. In a few more months, maybe the number of times they go to the bathroom will be logged too. %$#@@^&*!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Every two or three days I find myself blogging about some technology-related article or the other and I say 'That's it. This is the end of the world as we know it'. I'm learning better now. There IS no 'end' to this technology explosion drama. I'm just going to shut up and blog quietly!

Koothu time!

Many of my loyal readers (you know who you are, yes you do!) have probably watched the movie by now - many times over even - but since it is now officially on YouTube, here's presenting one of the best Koothu songs in a while.... SAROJA SAAMAN NIKAALO!! Please note the 'Spiderman' interlude - good fun.




Random fact: One of the actors in the movie was the choreographer for a dance in which I performed while I was in college. Haha.

Kid No. 007 : Reporting to Secret Service School

If you are pushed to invent things like this for your kids, maybe you should just home-school them. Agreed, it's a dangerous world out there and there have been one too many of these school shooting incidents like those in Columbine and more recently Virginia Tech (hell, one IS too many), but where are the carefree, simple joys of life, of climbing trees and playing ball? They are supposed to be kids, for God's sake, not secret service agents.

Tragic, but true.

Meanwhile, in the USA, I won't be surprised if there are quite a few takers for the new backpack created by dads Mike Pelonzi and Joe Curran.

Another claim to New Jersey's fame :-)

Image credit: Patrick McMullan, New York Magazine

Not that I particularly care for her, but O.C fans, guess what - Mischa Barton has taken up residence in Hoboken apparently, for the duration of the filming of a movie she is co-starring in with Bruce Willis.

Bollywood - finally a force to reckon with

Bollywood is different things to different people. It can be Madhubala’s perfect face in black-and-white, Madhuri’s jhatkas in ‘Humko aajkal hai’ in ‘Sailaab’, Amjad Khan menacingly saying ‘Thakurrr’ in the classic ‘Sholay’, Shah Rukh Khan hamming ‘K-k-k-kiran’ in ‘Darr’, Kajol at her effervescent best in DDLJ, Amitabh Bachchan in his Angry Young Man avatar in ‘Agneepath’ – oh hell, I’m not even going to try to continue this very futile exercise. What I want to say is this – there is no other film industry the world over, apart from Hollywood of course, where the sheer number of films, and the revenue they generate, is as big as India’s. The heightened fascination of the Western population for movies made in or about India is evidenced by the growing number and popularity of diaspora film-makers, whether it is Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta and Gurinder Chadha or the more mainstream Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Karan Johar and Yash Chopra.

Most of the films they make are captured on a canvas that is larger than life. Think ‘Monsoon Wedding’, ‘Bride and Prejudice’, ‘Devdas’, ‘Munnabhai MBBS’, ‘Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham’, ‘Chandni’. To some, there isn’t much common between these films. But to me, they are all pulsating with Indianness, whether it is tradition, costumes, politics, romance or day-to-day life. I remember watching Bhansali’s ‘Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam’ sitting in one of the first few rows of the theatre in one of the first few days of its release in India. The colours were what overwhelmed me first and foremost, the sheer brilliance and glory of it. At the end of the day, those are things that stick in a movie-goer’s mind. What a sensible director should do is capture these Indian sensibilities in a sensible story (like Nagesh Kukunoor’s ‘Dor’, for example), but even if they don’t, even if it is just Govinda and Sanjay Dutt pairing up to make the masses weep with laughter in one of David Dhawan’s nonsensical laugh-riots, the Indian movie-goer is a willing audience.

Hollywood has finally understood this simple fact. Of course, with business in mind, because they know the kind of receipts Indian films generate. Nevertheless, cinephile that I am, I was impressed and extremely happy to read that Sony Pictures Entertainment will be the first American studio to produce an Indian mainstream film with eight of our acclaimed song-and-dance routines – Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s ‘Saawariya’, scheduled for release this November. Walt Disney has also partnered with Yash Raj Films to make an animated film called ‘Roadside Romeo’, and Paramount and Warner Brothers will be in the fray soon.

This is the true coming-of-age of Indian cinema. Indian movie lovers of the world, rejoice!!

Are you a virgin? Go to New Jersey!!

This country is REALLY weird. My convictions get stronger as the days go on. Check out this gem - apparently, a New Jersey festival uses virgins to help guarantee good weather.

&*%$#@^!*!!!!!!!!

I really don't know what to say.

'I want to practise a new yoga posture'

John Tierney of the NYT writes about a University of Texas-Austin research project which aims to document, of all things, why humans have sex. Seriously, is it something that needs to be researched?!!! Some people have time, and some people have money to help them spend their time one way or the other, I tell you. Imagine getting paid for something like this!

Anyway, some really funny and stupid answers came up (as I would have expected!), such as 'I wanted to feel closer to God' (WTF?????!!!!) or 'I was drunk' (well, mate, at least you're being honest!). Tierney has also invited readers to nominate their own reasons at TierneyLab.

And, uh, no - I haven't submitted any reasons yet - but you can feel free to ;) - and don't forget to let me know what they were!!

Wikinomics

There is no doubt that the world is changing. The rapid advances that technology has made over the last few years have rendered so many past technologies obsolete. I studied this computer language called BASIC in high school which was dead and gone even before I passed out of school. It really was a beginner's computer language, as the expansion of the acronym stands for. The younger generations probably have not even heard of BASIC - they are too busy learning Photoshop or Java. There was a day and age when I would have to wait patiently for my parents' weekly call in hostel when I was in college, and now I talk to my parents in India everyday through GoogleTalk on the computer. Forward-thinking universities like MIT have made their course information available on the internet for free so that an economically poor but academically bright young child in rural India can have access to all their courses, as long as they have access to the internet. The world as we knew it is gone, and the new one is changing every minute.

Don Tapscott, Toronto-based speaker, author and consultant, is working on a $9 million research project to show how people today can participate in the economy like never before, and it is called Wikinomics. The introduction and first chapter can be found here, and I can tell you right now that I can't wait to read the entire thing, whenever it comes out.

Two paragraphs I especially liked:

Twenty years from now we will look back at this period of the early twenty-first century as a critical turning point in economic and social history. We will understand that we entered a new age, one based on new principles, worldviews, and business models where the nature of the game was completely changed.

And, like open-source software, this idea which I have often thought of myself, that is today even more of an actionable possibility than it ever was:

Why not open source government? Surely we would make better decisions if we were to tap the insights of a broader and more representative body of participants.

Governments would definitely be more efficient then. That much I can say.

Karlus Trapp

The other day, we walked into this pub called The Red Lion in the West Village. I've been there before and already knew that you get to listen to some pretty decent live bands there. Of course, Bleecker Street is THE street if you want good music and good (=cheap!!) drinks all in one place, in my opinion. Some of the pubs in the area have been music venues for artists like Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Wonder, for example. Back in the day, I mean. When the flower child ruled, and it was all sex, drugs and rock-n-roll.

The day we went, there was this musician called Karlus Trapp playing. Originally from Staten Island, his blues-pop-rock mix was easy on the ears, and he did some pretty good covers too.

Give him a listen - you may like what you hear.

Flavors Beyond Borders

There is an Indian-Pakistani food festival called Flavors Beyond Borders happening on Aug.14th-15th in New York. I know one of the organizers and they have requested that as many people as possible try to leave a goodwill and peace message for the two countries on
http://www.ifood.tv/node/5118

They are trying to get 10,000 messages so that they can gift a huge poster to the two countries' consulates.

Please fill it in and then forward to anyone you think may be interested and everyone you know in New York! To leave a message, you don't need to be based out of NY, by the way.

The lawbook looms on Facebook

With the advent of all these social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook et al, I often wonder whether I would be in touch with more people than I am now, if the sites existed when I was in university. My younger cousins, for example, have close to 300 people on their lists, and most of them are people who go to the same university (the number tends to increase exponentially if it is a foreign university, as opposed to an Indian college where the student body is often less). As it is, a lot of random people who were no more than acquaintances then, keep popping up quite randomly on these sites. It's sort of a voyeuristic thing which has its negative repercussions (let's be honest), but it has also been nice to catch up with a few people than I genuinely had good times with a long time ago and then lost touch with.

The story of how Facebook started is now common knowledge - Mark Zuckerberg started it with a couple of friends while at Harvard, so university kids could connect with each other online. It soon became a big hit - recently they turned down an offer to be bought out by Yahoo! for $1 billion. That's a lot of money. But of course, there is controversy - 3 other people, founders of another site called ConnectU, say that he illegally used the source code they had asked him to write for them.

And that's why I was interested to know that Time did a piece today on whether Facebook could be shut down because of a lawsuit.

Highly unlikely, in my opinion.

The wain in Spain

The wain in Spain
Fell down the pane
And nostalgia came

Love-hungry burglar

And this little burglar went home......after getting some hugs.

I wish we had more such friendly fellows around, what say?!

Passion-curbing?!!

'China takes steps to curb passion', reads this BBC headline. Obviously, the Chinese authorities have not seen Indian movies. Don't they know that the more they try to keep young people apart, the more they will succeed in pushing them towards each other?!!!

And the exercise in schools is meant to help control obesity, for heaven's sake! What if the dance lessons succeed in making them look good AND help them to snag a boyfriend/girlfriend in the process? God forbid!!!

Retail faith

I was shopping at Forever 21 the other day, and when I got home, I noticed the words 'John 3:16' written on the underside of the bag as I was putting it away. I was quite intrigued, looked it up, and this is the Bible passage quoted : "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." Why would anyone put that on the bag of a large clothing store, I wondered.

I found more in this 2005 article. Apparently the founder of the chain is deeply religious and according to a corporate spokesman, it is "evidence of faith". He is, in fact, not the first one to subtly insert religious references in consumer goods: other chains that tried to do so (or still do) were Starbucks Coffee, In-N-Out Burger, Alaska Airlines and craft chain Hobby Lobby.

Even a basic knowledge of American politics or society is enough for anyone to know that there is a large population that is very religious in this country - abortion and gay rights are key points in differentiating between Democrats and Republicans, for example. Was this retail chain trying to appeal to its Christian consumers, or say something to its non-Christian ones in this subtle manner? I don't really think so. Perhaps it is nothing more or less than a profession of faith. This particular instance was unexpected advocacy of Christianity so I was momentarily surprised, but then I thought : he's not doing anyone any harm, is he, and its his clothing chain after all. And a pretty successful one at that!

Seats for boxes, boxes for seats

Is India the only country to do this or are other countries as intelligent? (snort)

Next time, remind me to buy a ticket for my toiletry case, will you?

Algerian rock

One of the reasons I like randomly reading blogs is that you never know what you're going to chance upon. I first heard about this singer from Mangs' blog, then went into YouTube for the song - here it is. First time I ever heard Algerian rock. The tambourine (I think) is especially cool.

Starry starry skies

Why do Jennifer Lopez's parents have an attachment to New York?

- Because she was Maid in Manhattan.

Hair-raising stories

Why did the founder of the Mughal empire like experimenting with his hairstyles?

- Because he was Babar.

Ready.....Mets.....Go!!!

I like sports, but baseball has never been one of my favourite sports to watch. Tennis, basketball, football – no problem. But baseball? I’m not so sure. So yesterday when we got free tickets to watch the New York Mets play against the Cincinnati Reds, I was in two minds. Should I go for the experience of watching a US Major League Baseball game at the well-known Shea Stadium and give the husband some company, or should I give it a pass, seeing as how it was baseball that was involved? Well, I’m not one to forgo new experiences, even if they happen to be baseball-related, so I said okie-dokie, and there I was.

Half an hour or so into the game, I realized one thing about American baseball – it is highly entertainment-oriented, guaranteed to ensure that even a person who is very disinterested in the game will have some amount of fun. Of course this, as the husband quite rightly pointed out aghast, is against the very principle of sport. His exact words were ‘What a travesty! You would never see this kind of thing at Old Trafford!’, and he is quite right too. Every three minutes, and I mean three minutes, the huge LCD screen began to display advertisements, pre-recorded messages from the players, or music trivia as a song played in the stadium – and they were mostly hip-hop, with one jazz number thrown in for good measure. Playing to the mostly young audience? You bet! Primarily though, there were audience games where they’d show random sections of the audience on screen while a voice said they had to do such-and-such a thing. Such as the Kiss Game, where the couple shown on camera had to, yup, kiss. Or they’d show some audience members holding up T-shirts given by one of the sponsors. Or they would play this karaoke song with the words flashing on screen that everyone would sing along to – one was a version of ‘Sweet Caroline’ with the words modified to the benefit of the Mets, and another was the Mets anthem, ‘Let’s Go Mets’ (!!!). They also interspersed the game with bits of songs which were clap-friendly, such as ‘We will rock you’, ‘Everybody clap their hands’ etc etc etc, every three minutes. And of course there was the mandatory chucking of free T-shirts into the audience every now and then – at least thirty, I would imagine. It was almost as if the game itself was a side show!

So, as I said, more entertainment and less sport. It would have been very difficult to get BORED in a game like this, which is one of the reasons I’m not a big fan of test cricket, for example. That’s probably why there were so many kids around as well. So as much as I hate to admit it, I'm going to be honest and say that I did enjoy myself, while simultaneously being amused to see the consumerist nature of American society.

And if anyone is still interested, the Mets did win!!!

P.S : Does anyone know how to create those photo-mosaic things? Please let me know if you do. Thanks!

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.