Monday, December 29, 2008

Small eyes and big screen

The only thing that is left for me to see is to have a just born baby taken directly to the theatre. You know how the new borns look all shrivelled up, that is the only stage of baby I haven't seen in the theatre. As of today, I have seen 3 months to five year old kids in Indian theatre.

I don't care if you judge me because I know I love Kids. Every one who knows me knows that. That is probably why I am writing this post. Yes, sometimes sitting in TZP and JA, I have enjoyed the questions some kids have screamed out loud. It is kind of cute when a five year old asks it mom if the kid in TZP is getting punished because he has been a bad boy.

But it is another to have a 2 year old girl standing right next to you and staring at your face right as you are watching a movie for 15 minutes. That is still between me and the parents. But when you bring your 3 year old to vettayadu vilayadu, a movie where a friend commented with all the 19 murders you got 2 murders free in end title and to top it, you let him stand right next to the big screen and he watches as you close your eyes to avoid the gore on the screen, that is the limit.

Another violent movie like Ghajini, you bring your 3 month old baby and sit in the first row. That baby shouldn't even be allowed to watch T.V for God's sake.

Every one I speak to condemn this. The couple of parents I know take extreme pains to avoid this scenario. They even go to the theatre alone so that the other can take care of the kid. Yet, I find parents all the time with kids in the theatre. If you do want a romantic night out(with Vettayadu vilayadu, I mean if that is your kind of romance, who am I to question it), can't you get a baby sitter? Yes, it is money, so is raising the baby. I mean you signed up for raising the baby, didn't you?

As my brother mentioned, it is somewhat understandable when people do this in India. The awareness and understanding is lesser but here you are aware and there are other alternatives why not use them? Who are these parents who in spite of the raging dispute do the same mistake? What makes them do it?

Should I call child services and tell on them next time?

Monday, December 22, 2008

Airtel supersinger

I have been watching Airtel Super singer for a month now. It has become the one TV show I look forward to. Not the office, the hills or desperate housewives who by the way did a retelecast last Sunday. I mean can you believe it, the whole summer they go on vacation show some poochandi shows after that and then start repeating the episodes again, the nerve I tell you. Anyhow back to the Airtel super singer.

I like the show, something to look forward to. The quality of singing is quite good which is what made me sit up and notice the show in the first place I suppose. I have also learnt couple of pointers on singing.(I am not a singer, for that matter, please note, am not a writer, I am not a cooker(!), cleaner in short I am somebody who should not be credited with anything). For example, why I never comprehend shruti easily(it is inherently not there), why I have to sing 10 times before going to the next class and all that good stuff.

The compering is usually done by chinmayee. This week 's comperers were Yogendran, Malaysia Vasudevan's son and his wife making me realize that Chinmayee does a decent job.

Now Chinmayee, her fashion sense reminds you why chennai is never going to host the annual fashion week ever but she is usually in the background and is just a conductor of the show. Yogendran, on the other hand, ventures in with a mike every few minutes. I do not mean this as a rude remark but his singing wouldn't have gotten him through the first round of Airtel super singer.

He probably knows that which is why he grabs this opportunity to sing.

The show has had varied Judges from Mahati, Mathangi(who a famous blogger has a crush onand there by fell some 100 points below in my estimate) to Sriram Parthasarathy, who hugged two contestants, guys ..hugged them for singing well atleast that's what he claimed. I quite like Sriram's singing so I shall not talk about this further.

And then there was Deepan Chakravarthy, who my mom referred to as the stage show singer. During Illayaraja's period of reign, SPB and Chitra ruled the roost, I bet you guys know that. Illayaraja for whatever reason liked him but know he wasn't worth singing movie songs, so this guy got delegated to stage shows. Atleast that's what mom said. He was also a judge during the same hugging session and when Sriram Parthasarathy said that these guys had done a fab job and should definitely sing for movies, he was like, yeah only after correcting themselves and with lot more practice.. you know sour grapes sort of..

Now it is predominantly Srinivas, Sujata and Unnikrishnan. They should be given decent rating, though I refrain from giving Unnikrishnan any sort of rating after last year's Kutcheri debacle for me.

Srinivas, that is a singer who I love, so I will go easy on him. I like the way he says too much.

Sujata, god knows how she ends up singing up and that too does a good job of it because she seems quite out of breadth even while talking in the show. She also suffers from this I will talk Malayalam and since in my head it sounds like tamil, it is tamil. It is quite surprising since she has stayed for quite a fong time in tamil nadu.

Unnikrishnan starts of by commenting on the dress. In one of the episodes, he said I like the color(the contestant was wearing) and the contestant got stunned for a moment. This is his way of lightening up the contestant before passing the judgement, I suppose. It stumps the contestant(females have been the only recepients of this honour so far) more than the judgement itself.

None of the judges have had any startling moment so far. By far, Singer Shylaja,one of the judges last week, has been the only impressive onre. Proper feedbacks provided without much a frill, I liked her style.

On the design of the show itself, except the last week's unplugged round, there hasn't been much of variety but as I said the quality of the singing is quite good which glues you in.

The other aspect is I find old gems which either I had forgotten(ullathil nalla ullam from Karna) or wasn't even aware of (Pon ondru kanden). I didn't quite like the 70's or songs before that era much as a kid. But now I quite like them for their musical depth(? ... whatever that means).

And then there are viewers and then there are their thoughts, reminding you of the word democracy. Does democracy means detoriation of quality, of intelligence, intellectualism? why does a good term like democracy result in such massive detoriation of quality.

They have all been yelling in different forums about how the some of the singers should have never been eliminated. Sometimes, Indian female film songing, I feel is like some sort of olympics for pitch. There is some sort of high jump competition in terms of pitch that is going on. I am bored of this single tonal voices. People who have been eliminated will well fit into this category. I am glad Airtel super singer is not olympics for pitches and I am also glad it doesn't believe in democracy.

Yeah, there are other things one has to be thankful for. The camarderie between the contestants, the lack of drama like calling judges and other contestants names when one gets eliminated, overall, the show kind of tells me the ugly disease called reality drama involving bitching hasn't yet hit the shores of our Madras. So, all's well till then:)

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Ravana

It makes sense when people question Rama for making Sita walk through fire to prove her chastity and still sending her on exile on the same chastity business. People tend to do with a rigor which is only natural when you find a flaw in a character you have been told to idolise all along.

But why heroize Ravana in the process? I mean didn't the man kidnap Sita and put his country in a war for the sake of his lust for a woman?

Or is it that people can't reverse their opinion on one hero without reversing on the villian.

I think of Ramayana as a part of History that has been coated with the divinity paint. I still chant my hanuman chalisas and vishnu sahsranamams.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Pongalo Pongal

Bush... Came the sound and I rushed to the Kitchen. Milk had spilled again for the nth time. Actually, every single time I was told to look after the boiling milk.

Mom would be back from wherever she was soon and then... ?

I called EB2(Elder brother 2) and appraised him of the situation. He understood the gravity of the situation and also understood that the situation is only natural.

Tell me, who could wait for what seems to be two big bang cycles in front of the stove, waiting for the milk to form froth, then for the froth to reach the brim of vessel and turn off the stove at that exact moment.

Hello, You lost me at the waiting part. But Mom depending on the thousand parameters one of which also includes how me, her only daughter,the laziest samarthyam less bum, is going to survive in the world, that seem to dictate her mood will definitely not get it.

So Ann2 asked, how much money do you have?
I replied," Two Rupees".
Ann2," I have five, I will go buy the milk".

But now the question of the kadankaran/Palakaran having the requiste milk arose since this was the pre-arogya and pre-madras days of our life. Luckily,he did.

I poured the milk into the vessel, turned the stove on. Two minutes later, Mom entered the house. " Eppo than katcharaya?". With all the sweat of being outside in the sun and god knows what queues she had to encounter depending on the place, she said, " Seri, enime naa pathukren, poo".

I ran off from the Kitchen with nary a concern for the mom or the spilled milk just with the satisfication of a sucessful coup pulled off.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

In other news....

Rahul & I: I will get married to Rahul Gandhi. He will be the pretty one and me, the intelligent one(relatively, pah!). No more Prime Ministers from Nehru family, I assure you. I won't become one coz I immensely prefer browsing the whole day with background pressure of work to be done. I will also get lasagnas and gnocchi for lunch. :) Win-win situation. No comments on beauty(him) & the beast(who?) are allowed.

*** ALERT: Boys, the following might be out of your comfort zone****
I have been getting them for a long time now. Perfect 24-27 day cycles. Symptoms change, before it was leg pain to stomach pain to what my roommates termed as life threatening pukes. Now it is PMS cry. Once in a month, I will cry for something that most probably occured 15-25 days ago. For like 5 minutes. Logical me will be wondering why am I crying for or even getting upset over this? a day or two later, I will know the answer. Puh..

**
If you are from India, you would definitely recognize these set of people. The ones who always look south from your face while talking to you. If you are a Girl from India and you haven't met them, the smoke that you are smelling is due to the fire from my stomach! Anyway, couple of years ago, i encountered it at work. From the guy with much acclaimed European skin, blonde hair, brown eyes and yet cutting an ugly picture with that weirdly structured face. For like half an hour he was in my cube. These days it only amuses me anyway. Must be an unmarried loser, I thought. I came to know later that he is married with two kids. Surely he must have seen dozens of them considering his cultural background. So, why? why do they do that?

I am off to watch Wednesday. Does anyone else find Irfan Khan, Naseerudin Shah Hot? Irfan Khan did after watching Maqbool and Naseer did after rice plate in das kahaniyaan. If not and you find this wierd, remember what you read here, stays here.
Ok bye.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Mumbai terror - part 2

I wanted to avoid another post lest I sound like a broken record or pretentious but I react to what I read and Mumbai terror attack still occupies a major portion of that.

1. Every body is calling it India's 9/11. From what I know, we have had one of these bomb blasts quite often starting from 1993 Bombay blasts. We might even have covered all the 365 days if somebody listed them all. What makes this our 9/11 and others not? If you are talking in terms of importance of the place, hello, we have had one in our Parliament 7 years ago, in terms of lives lost or property lost, Bombay blasts would score big time no?
I think people who have this utter fascination with US are the one's who would be calling it India's 9/11. I am not complaining atleast we are reacting strongly for once.

2. US says Pakistan should help India, Pakistan says terrorism is bad and will provide all support to India and then says that there is no proof that all these people are from Pakistan. India keeps saying there will be Military consequences and does nothing. This routine has been going on for 7 days now. I must say I have it all memorized that tomorrow if one of the spokepersons gets sick, I can cover for him.
With Global recession, nobody has any money for war anyway except for the terrorists.

3. I read in Dawn, a Pakistani Newspaper, in their letters to editor section, India must have done this all to herself to avoid the focus shifting to Kashmir. That is too much of intelligence to attribute to my country's RAW. We are RAW not ISI.

4. CNN, I swear I switched it off last Monday as soon as I heard Obama say that every nation has to do what it has to protect its soverignity in response to some reporter's question about doesn't India have the same right to attack Pakistan as US does to combat terrorism, you know ending on a good note.

But before that I heard some intelligent guys* at CNN say that they should solve the current terror problem in US by solving the KAshmir problem. You know like India is a moron and let us help him with the problem. Irritating, especially considering US's track record in solving problems in the recent past, in Iraq and Afghanistan is abysmal. If at all, US and Britain are the top countries that should be prevented from poking their nose into another country's business.
They have already created enough mess, time to pass the chance to other countries.

5. I left a comment at NDTV that they shouldn't cop out by saying there was no guidance from government, people are probably more interested in lives saved than live coverage itself. http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/mumbaiterrorstrike/Story.aspx?ID=COLEN20080075194&type=opinion

That comment wasn't published but comments thanking NDTV for the live coverage were. I left another comment saying people, NDTV is not doing us any favor by doing a live coverage, after all they are doing it for the ad money for which we pay indirectly. Also, nobody is asking them to stop the live coverage just do it wth responsibility. That was also not published.

*Morons, what are the other synonyms of this word? Idiot & stupid have been declared uncool from second standard. Please take your time and provide answer within 7 days, all your comments will be published, unlike you know other places.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Beautiful

What constitutes beauty, she wanted to know. Is it the eyes, the aquiline nose, the shape of the lips, the high cheekbones? or is it the expression that comes through the eyes - something like the eyes are windows to the soul. beautiful soul, beautiful eyes?
That one moment, when the not so cherubic person makes the cherubic face and says a sorry, did she really have such good thoughts in her mind? Then why does her actions not reflect that?

Not me, she wanted to know.