Kaleidoscope: Of Some of My Favorite Moments

I came across this wonderful website/tool through my friend Manu's blog. His blog is linked to mine and I would recommend a visit there in order to learn about cool Internet things that he chances upon every now and then. I am sure some of you will be tempted to try this out on your own blogs. Happy exploring!

Thoughts from a Cafe

I am sitting in a café I have just discovered in Moscow. It’s called Sisters’ Brew. The walls are red, orange and black. The floor is tiled and carpeted alternately. There are comfortable couches, cane chairs, and straight backed chairs with desks. There are Van Gogh-ish paintings on the walls, and focused as well as dim lighting around me. And there is a gigantic bookshelf packed with books. The overall ambience is one of ornate yet casual comfort. The best part is that just because it’s a Saturday and warm outside, there aren’t hordes of wanna-be-mod couples piled on top of each other. The staff knows what it is serving. (They certainly serve excellent chocolate cake and iced mocha. By the way, the mocha came in a gigantic beer mug.) I am on a green upholstered sofa myself, half sitting, half lazing. A local musician will be playing here in a few hours’ time. I am excited about that. Until then, I will blog, read a bit, work on one of the four pieces of writing I am currently involved with, touch base with a few friends, and maybe if really motivated…take a nap as well.

I saw several movies in the last ten days or so. Here is a quick list of them:
1. The Namesake: For the first time in my experience, the movie was almost as good as the book. Wonderful performances, the same joys and frustrations as in the book, a better understanding of what Ashima means when she says, “I don’t want to bring up my son in this lonely country”, and immense appreciation for Tabu’s very authentically Bengali looking hair, if you know what I mean.

2. Shrek 3: Super awesome, the best Shrek movie ever, the scriptwriters have such a wicked and sarcastic sense of humor, I bow my head to them. It’s a full 10/10 movie so no more to say about it, just watch it.

3. Bheja Fry: Hilarious. Nutty. Wonderfully fresh and new.

4. Tara Rum Pum Pum: Rani and Saif, aside from other stupidities in this movie, have two children as well. They are called Champ and Princess. WHO, really WHO, gives their children such pet dog like names?

5. Pirates of the Caribbean- The End of the World: So much for rushing to catch the first day first show given my obsession with the first part of this trilogy and my appreciation for the second part. But this one? I did not understand a word. It was confusing, it was silly, it was boring. I yawned and nearly dropped off to sleep at some points. My advice: Do NOT spend money on it.

I listened twice to my favorite piece of contemporary Hindi film poetry yesterday. It’s from Lage Raho Munnabhai, and this is the piece with which Vidya Balan makes her appearance (remember she is a radio jockey in the movie?). Not only are the lines beautiful, she narrates them so wonderfully that their beauty comes across even more effectively.

Sheher ki iss daur mein daur ke karna kya hain
Agar yahi jeena hain doston, to marna kya hain
Pehli barish mein train late hone ki fikr hain
Bhool gaye bhigte huye tehelna kya hain
Serial ke kirdaron ka saara haal hain maloom
Parr Ma ka haal poochhne ki phursat kahan hain
Ab reth mein nange paon tehelte kyon nahin
Ek sau aath hain channel par dil behelte kyon nahin
Internet pe duniye se to touch mein hain
Lekin pados mein kaun rehta hain jante tak nahin
Mobile, landline, sab ki bharmar hain
Lekin jigri dost tak pahunche aise taar kahan hain
Kab doobte huye sooraj ko dekha tha yaad hain
Kab jaana tha shaam ka guzarna kya hain
To shahr ki iss daur mein daur kar karna kya hain
Agar yahi jeena hain to marna kya hain?

Simple, easy to understand, and straight to the point, just the things that according to me make good writing. Now, if you will excuse me...I have an iced mocha to go back to.

One, Two, Three, Four

Picked up a tag from Richa’s blog. There were twenty questions, I skipped five to bring it down to fifteen. As with tags I have done before, answer at least one question here too. All the best!

1.Pick out a scar you have, and explain how you got it?
A spot on my right cheek thanks to chicken pox at the age of twelve.

2. What is on the walls in your room?
Posters of concerts and readings I have attended in Moscow, a silver ribbon from the first University of Idaho sporting event that I attended, and a couple of sketches made by me.

3. What does your phone look like?
The same as it used to in Delhi. Difference being that then it worked and now it doesn’t.

4. What music do you listen to?
Will listen to almost everything at least once. Currently, I am listening to a lot of Western Classical music.

5. What is your current desktop picture?
A National Geographic photograph of a tigress.

6. What do you want more than anything right now?
A ticket to Delhi, and the next Harry Potter book.

7. What time were you born?
Around 8 pm I am told.

8. What are you listening to right now?
Mozart’s Requiem.

9. What’s something people may not know about you?
That I recover my temper faster than I lose it.

10. The last person to make you cry?
Someone who reads this blog.

11. What is your favorite perfume?
Anything lemony.

12. What is your favorite pizza topping?
Ham and pineapple.

13. If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?
My mother’s jhinge posto.

14. Who was the last person you made mad?
My roommate, because I insisted this morning that Aishwarya Rai is beautiful and Abhishek Bachhan married right.

15. Is anyone in love with you right now?
That’s really not for me to answer, is it?

"The Return of the Native"

It’s been a month long hiatus and now I am back.
Was it an interesting month? One that I should tell everyone about?
Not particularly, but it was undoubtedly the busiest. There were these mountain loads of assignments to finish; a few cartloads of grading work to submit; last minute books to read, analyze and ponder over; some stuff to edit and proofread since the student council that I am a member of decided to bring out a newsletter and I was made its editor; friends to meet before they went off to their homes for summer vacation (and no I cannot come to Delhi simply because I can‘t afford to), and in the midst of all this business there was also an inability to blog and the words just seemed to dry up here (perhaps because I have to write so much in my daily, ordinary course of life anyway). Yeah, that doesn’t make sense to me either.

One of the finest things that happened last month was getting a handwritten, proper letter from my dearest friend Suvena. I came back home one cranky evening, hungry, homesick, and horribly tired only to open the letterbox and find an envelope for me marked in familiar writing. The letter and the gesture, they both made my day, no, actually they made my week and several days thereafter, just as Richa’s had in my second month in America. I really appreciate the effort that goes into writing letters these days given how all of us are so computer dependent. Thank you, ladies.

For one of the classes this semester, our teacher had chosen political memoirs for us to read. They were thus books seeped in tragedy and all against a backdrop of turbulence and political crisis. The places were therefore just as varied -- Cuba, Rhodesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Germany.
They were tough books to read, tougher to find faults with, and even tougher to return to when it came to doing assignments based on them and then reading them out loud in class so that fellow writers could analyze, discuss and rip apart every word that you held dear while writing it down in the first place. But they were incredibly fun and challenging as well. During one of our discussions, our teacher wanted us to think about a possible revolution in the exact surrounding that we were living in right now, that is our tiny university town, to which I countered by saying that revolutions weren’t possible anywhere in this country simply because it is such a lonely society. She said, “Convince me. Write it to convince me.” And that therefore is one of my projects for this summer vacation. Why revolutions cannot occur in lonely societies where there are just way too many boundaries between one person and another. Let’s see how that fares.

More later. And thanks to everyone who enquired about my disappearance and sent reminders via email, messengers, scraps, comments, etc. that I need to re-emerge, if not anywhere else, on Kirrin Island at least.