tham thika thika thai..

finally...! i did it. after years of talking about wanting to dance, i finally took the crucial step and attended my first lesson. it was good enough to get me grinning gleefully for an hour on end. i was so excited that i came back and decided right away to buy a full length mirror so i can practice at home. i've decided right away to practice an hour each day. oh boy, oh boy!! and to think that the source of all this happiness was away from women until just five decades back. hmmm. that kind of makes it even more exciting. i never could bear the - women can't do this talk. and it was the - "men should lead and women follow" philosophy of salsa which irritated me no end in the beginning. eventually though i couldn't really help loving the rhythm and the flow. so on that note, here is to the hope that i live and love kuchipudi!! yaaay!!

of ramblings and rumblings..

we took a trip. an all girls no-shopping, only sight-seeing trip. to the places we have all been to before. but found something new anyways. so, the trio visited trinity church & st.paul's chapel & museum of american history & battery park & finally wound back home in the very same path train. we saw innumerous memorabilia which celebrated the spirit of america that kicked in after the 9/11 attacks. riding on the back of all the osama controversy, i could see to a degree how much it mattered to the teenaged crowd which chanted "U-S-A U-S-A" just this last sunday. i'm sure all the memorabilia i saw had some of their tears or pain in it somewhere.

the find of the day was however this pic. of all the statues and figures this is one i totally love. when the twin towers crashed a decade back, this sycamore tree was uprooted right by the trinity church. and its roots ensured minimal damage to the adjoining graveyard. later an artist created a figure of the roots of this uprooted tree and this is placed right by the trinity church. and somehow, i cannot but love this one. this here is the budday gurl gundu and arya right by these roots.

oh yeah.. the rumblings were solely of the empty tummy. there was no discontent brewing in these hearts. the word was added to the post as a poetic liberty to maintain the rhyme and the meter. maybe i should have called it the ramblings and only the ramblings. anyways.

i'll blog, coz i can..!

i think of my wildest dreams about having a fun time. it'd definitely involve - NO WORK, a new place, new people, doing a 100 things i had always wanted to do. and now, for the very first time, i have the time to do it. :) joblessness means that i've finally run out of excuses not to do the things i always said i'd like to. see new places, learn a foreign language, learn dance, help out in a social organization. and most of all. blog. why? coz i've all the time in the world. so what would be a jobless day if you've not stopped by to admire a beautiful scene, read a line that just shook you up, seen a movie that you felt so damn good about. especially if the only task you're entrusted with is to make your days fruitful without a single money making activity involved in it. so, today i hereby declare that i'm setting off to do exactly that. i've also decided that i'll share at least one thing a day which i liked. life changing or otherwise. like today's non-life-changing series. a musician who had perched himself right next to a trashcan in the middle of central park. his music on the other hand was very non-trashy. i sat there and enjoyed his strumming for a while. quite some while. a very very long while. eventually i decided i might as well repay him in a very small manner. without drawing attention i grabbed some money in my hand and stooped discreetly to drop it into the black bag at his feet. at this point, this oriental gentleman who played divine music, snapped back at me as he took me for someone about to steal his well earned money. ah well. i later comforted myself that he was saying "thank you" in a chinky accent. i'm still not sure.




this entire sweet lil drama also gave me enough time to snap weird angled shots of this imposing building right across the street. the next time, i'll make sure to find out what this was. meantime, tomorrow and today, it's Gundu's b'day. here is to all the b'days we have spent together. including the one in hostel when we gifted you what YOU thought was a frog. hahahaha.. :) happy 25th b'day!!

lost in my memories..

goodbyes make you want to somehow take everything around you and preserve it all. for posterity. it makes you fonder of the places and the faces you'll soon leave. makes the people seem gentler and nicer and the place more beautiful. most of all it just makes you look with new eyes at this place you may never see again. and so it was that i ended up taking this photograph of a place which would be my idyllic dream spot on any starry night.
but while i was there, i've never spent a nite out there. the fact that this is in the middle of a golf course with 'no trespassers' written in bold, is just half of the reason. the other half is that i never really realized it. until goodbye.

all through it i took comfort in the truth that i wasn't the only one. i remember this takes-a-goodbye-to-make-it-priceless is an endemic collegiate sickness. found particularly in all final years. i say this from experience when i say that no one loves college the way someone does who is about to leave it. people who have left it, well.. they don't love college. they just love their memories of it. the nostalgia and feel.

dispensable..

being on the wrong side of 25 has its fair share of advantages. one of which is that you've said enough number of goodbyes to make it a non-subject and a known subject. but it takes a while to realize that nothin makes it less painful. not even having sad more goodbyes than one can care to count.

last week was my last week with my firm. well ah.. just a job change. but then, this was my very first job and the only one i've ever known. kinda made it a real big deal. it also made me think a lot. about people, places and goodbyes. more importantly, it made me think about the word dispensable. a colleague of mine told me what he thought of it - most people who once thought they were indispensable are now resting in their graves. :) but when you're 21 and at your first job, you're naive enough to disbelieve that. four years into it, when you first decide to call it quits, in your heart of hearts you know nothing is going to stop or change. but somewhere deep you also wish something would. eventually, nothing does.

incomplete..

not everything in life needs to have a beginning, a middle and an end. in reality, there is always a story before the actual story. and a story after it. what any writer or script writer or director or musician tries - is to tell us what happened in the interim. between one page and the next, one scene and the next, one note and the next. if i were to tell you the story of my life, i may begin by tellin you where i was born. but the truth is the real story was set in motion when my parents were born, or their parents or in fact, the real story would have started millions and millions of years back. my story would then be just a piece cut out from the fabric of time. and this is what dhobhi ghat was to me. it did not begin coz there was a story even before the characters came to life on screen. and neither did it end with the last scene. coz the characters continue to live even after the movie ends. it was just a slice of life. of four different people - bound together by the fifth and the strongest element of the movie - mumbai.

the name of the movie should give one an idea about what it has to offer. coz doesn't it blatantly say "(mumbai diaries)" right in its name? and a diary it is. there were stellar performances and even lack lustre scenes. most characters seemed intensely real. each character a study in itself and worthy of review. and even when Arun couldn't quite pull it off, i thought it was the actor and not the character itself that was to blame. each character evoked memories of people i know and emotions i have felt. i went for the movie with friends who bemoaned the lack of story, the lack of a purpose behind the story even. but to me the purpose was the story telling itself. and i loved the story, incomplete, as it might seem. so would i have preferred to know if Shai did get to meet Arun again and maybe realize her infatuation with him? would it be better knowing if Munna did become a famous actor or not? would it be better if i knew whether Yasmin did kill herself or if she survived the attempt to end her woes? well, if you were to ask me, i would rather not know any of this. for it is not always that one knows all answers. i dont know what became of people i knew, things i had treasured. i dont know the motives that drive people to act the way they do or the result of their actions. for the most part i live on in spite of not knowing. and that is what life is. like someone rightly said - 'maybe life does not give one all the answers. maybe life itself is the answer'. i'm not much o a film critic , but i know i like a movie when i come out o the theater thinkin - 'i want to go right back and watch it all over again'.

disclaimer : love for the movie may be also be induced by love for the city. didn't help that i went with this hard core mumbaikaar whose face definitely lit up when Arun says - "to my muse, to my whore, to my beloved". and this one was definitely for mumbai!!

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow..

"Looks like we are the first to walk this way."
"But soon our footsteps will be covered with snow,
and it will be like no one has walked here before."

it's white! :) all thru. all the dirt and wreck is now covered in a smooth layer of white. at night when i walked this way everything looked dingy and old. but by tomorrow mornin everythin will have a new sheen. last night in this snow storm, we trudged on from the train station to our home. singing - "excuse me, kya re??" we could ve taken a cab. but once in a while craziness is its own reward. i remember a time when it used to be rain instead of snow, girls instead o this guy. but craziness was the same. it may seem to have mellowed with age. but on a snowy day, when everyone seems to be running for cover, craziness rears its sleepy head and whispers in ur ears. go out in the snow, coz u never know. kal snow ho na ho. :D

lost n found...

i remember the last time i walked out of a movie hall after a hindi movie and was glad. about d movie and d changing phase of indian commercial cinema. and today it happened once again. i went in to watch no one killed jessica with very high expectations - having heard it was great. and it surpasses all of it. in spite of the fact that the story is a bollywood version of fact (hybrid of fact and fiction, says the disclaimer), the movie has its own strength of character that can be believed.

it made me wonder if in the past 25 or 26 years there has ever been anything that has made an activist out of me. that would make me take to the roads and crusade. it reminded me o that scene in rdb in which someone asks - "mujhe laga kisi ke liye mar matne ka jasba humme ho hi nahi sakta". and the truth is - "mujhe bhi aisa hi laga". and i've not been proven wrong until date. the only ever time we literally took to the roads was in college first year. as freshers had who to follow everythin that was told blindly, i remember going to secretariat and joining an impassioned march. the cause. i really can't remember. maybe it was against declaring CET as a deemed university. who knows. and i'm not really sure anyone knew the truth of it to care. but march we did.. a far call from the "justice for jessica" march. and a sad memory when seen in this light. :)

something else that touched my heart is the fact that there is power. there is power in being the biggest democracy. when ridden with derision and disbelief that we the people can make a difference, it takes reminders to show that we really can. from the candle vigils to the pink chaddi campaign.. it reminds me that after all we are all NOT in our own insulated universes.

so while the critics may complain that the movie has cliched characters and is melodramatic at best, it did touch a few notes in my heart and for that alone i really like the movie.