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.

What's your DNA????

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

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

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.