Wisdom...

A quote I recently came across: A slave with 3 masters is a free man. I guess this is an old Chinese proverb. How true!

Unforgettable

While living in Boston, my only link to Indian cinema and Bollywood, was a few hours of weekend Indian programming on a nondescript channel called AZN (thanks Comcast :-)). Apart from a few filmy shows that included extensive coverage of Bollywood stars visiting/shooting in the US, they also played a Hindi movie on Sundays. Two movies from then have lived in memory: Lakshya and Swades. I'd watched Lakshya in India earlier, but Swades was new. One of my friends who'd watched it in a cinema hall had commented that it was a glorified Doordarshan documentary, passed off as a semi-commercial movie.

But, I must admit, Swades is probably one of the best made Hindi movies I've seen. Luckily, it played twice on AZN and I was able to catch it both times. Earlier today, I came across this review/critique/defence which seems to incorporate a lot of the reasons why Swades is dear to me.

If you haven't seen it already, I'd suggest you do, just to be convinced that Shah Rukh Khan can surely act. He is marvellous in the movie... probably his best performance till date (better than even Chak De India in my opinion).

Word of the week - Interscapular

Chances are, if you aren't a medical doctor, you'd not know what Interscapular means; it's a muscle. I'd not know either, given my ties with Biology came to an abrupt end after class 10.

But, given that this muscle is the cause of much of my grief in the past week, I couldn't ignore its presence any longer. I am currently recovering from a Interscapular muscle catch. I never imagined that such a catch would be this painful. Luckily, the doc confirmed I din't have any other back related ailment.

Amazing what one moment of stupdity can lead to!

Mysooru flashbacks 2: Welcoming 1996

It was our first year at college. Just so we get used to the rigours of engineering, all the Internal Assessment tests (IATs) were held over weekends. Our BUDding therefore, din't start till the second year. (For the uninitiated, BUD stands for Bangalore-Up-and-Down). Bangalore trips were once a month or even rarer. The only means of entertainment were some cassettes Harry, Prom and I had at the time. Harry's collection were mostly new Hindi ones with a few Bappi-Mithunda era ones thrown in for good measure; Prom was the more western music savvy of the three (pre-1995, Delhi was already swinging to the tunes of Times FM); as to me, I had a small collection of old Hindi songs. The first tape I bought in Mysore though was DDLJ.

Prom had borrowed a socialist era National Panasonic tape(only) player (NPTP) from his Granny. That was what helped us retain sanity, apart from some gully cricket with neighbourhood boys. The NPTP would do its job admirably only if the tape being played was held in place with a 3kg iron box. Getting all this setup in place was an art the three of us mastered in no time.

IATs stared somtime in December, which meant we welcomed 1996 from the confines of our bachelorpad. For someone who (still) feels Jan 1 is just another day, it took some effort on the part of Harry and Prom to convince me to stay up. It was then, waiting for the clock to strike 12am, that I had tea for the first time in over a decade. Prom convinced me that tea was a sleep antidote. (I know he'll take credit for changing yet another of my habits.. I can picture you smiling as you read this buddy :-)).

About 11:30pm or so, disaster struck. The rubber band-like contraption that connects the capstan to the motor gave way. Prom challenged Harry and me saying we'd better fix the NPTP for we were studying to become Electronics Engineers. The tools we had were a screwdriver and a rubber band. We got to work, prying out star screws with a normal screwdriver... and time was also running out. Finally, we managed to use the low tension rubber band to fix the problem temporarily and welcomed 1996 with DDLJ playing at 12AM!

When this story reached Prom's uncle, he threw up a gauntlet... if all three of us managed a distinction in the First semester, he'd buy us a new tape player. And so we did and welcomed a spanking new BPL 2-in-1 to our abode.

Ball(er.. bath)room singers?

The surfeit of 24x7 channels has put paid to what one would consider tasteful programming. Serials especially are no different from one another; all they need is a scheming vamp or a totally obnoxious villan (or both). There isn't one iota of good values... only details of how to pitch somebody elses downfall. (Baa, Bahu Aur Baby though is an exception). I'd so much prefer one episode shows like Numb3rs or Criminal Mind anyday.

Serials you can afford to ignore, but when some two cent singer on yet another "discovering the next big singing sensation" type program murders a classic, it is too much to take. (An absolutely appalling set of performances are being played out on a Kannada channel even as I write this). Come to think of it, I fail to understand how these contestants are chosen in the first place (It does, however, give *me* hope of someday being a participant! But hey, more than a few people have said I have a very good voice ;-)).

There are a few such shows that seem to be good though. Currently, I'd say Voice of India Chhote Ustaad (Star Plus) and Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Li'l Champs (Zee) are truly good, the tragedy being their broadcast timings clash. My take is that the Hindi folks have a wider sample space to look for talent -- very few of the top contestants in these shows are native Hindi speakers.

Voice of Karnataka (ETV Kannada) will hopefully be a redeeming factor on the local front.

Mysooru flashbacks 1

Mysooru has always been a dear place. With so many great moments to cherish from the four years spent there, no wonder I still look for excuses to go back there :-). (My long term wish is to settle down in that city!). So, it is no surprise that I drove down there last Monday to attend Guru's wedding.

It was probably the first time Amma came along for a day trip where we had time to spare. Simha was also there with his family. I took the opportunity to show them around the places that were graced by our presence during the days Harry, Proms and me sleepcycled on our journey to get a degree.

For starters, the choultry Guru got married was on the same street we (well, mostly Harry [thanks buddy!]) used to cycle down to the "Mess" to get "Sambar" during our first year. Two streets up was the place where we lived during the time. (Oh! who can forget those cold water baths during the chilly December mornings. We did have a tiny 2lt geyser to start with, but our owner thought it was more important to have hot water wash his posterior than us taking a hot water bath... so the geyser was relocated to.. you know where. But I digress).

Driving around the familiar streets brought back a lot of wonderful moments and quite a few stories associated with them. You'll read about a few of them in subsequent posts.

PS: Since the new road was laid, I've driven down multiple times. This was probably the first time I did not see an accident on the Mysore road, which is a good thing. What distresses me though is, just a fortnight ago, a distant relative passed away in a road accident on that very road, courtesy a drowsy driver.