Experiences

This Nano Life

2012-02-11T23:27:00.001-06:00

30 sweet seconds to enjoy a winter full moon in an inky black sky framed by the bare branches of a tree looking like a Van Gogh painting at Lonavala. 30 alone seconds to watch the tops of the 100 feet casuarina trees outside our cottage at Dive Agar erupt into a confusion of yellow as two dozen Golden Orioles rose out of it to the accompaniment of a cacophony of twitter. 30 all-too-short minutes to enjoy the biting cold of early Delhi morning at Chanakya Puri, watching school kids bundled up in woolens going to school, like so many bees. Four achingly nostalgic hours to dash from Marina Beach to Saravana Bhavan to Mount Road to Besant Nagar Beach, remembering those crucial three years of shedding small town-ness, growing wings, growing up, falling in love, being betrayed, picking up guys at a fast food restaurant on a bet, pillion riding to Mahabalipuram on a bike...

Vignettes framed sharply by the strict confines of time to enjoy them--like looking through someone else’s photo album. No time to savor, no time to linger, no time to roll it around in the mouth like candy, making it last. No time to take that luxuriating bath in the marble bath tub set in the marble bathroom, watching TV through the transparent wall at the hotel in Delhi.

Books half read, things half said, hurts half mourned, sleep half slept, things half remembered. Stopped for 10 seconds outside TQMS at Pune, remembering the shy fish at the pool outside the strictly formal dining hall, adjacent to the teak and rose wood evening room with a grand piano, next to the library of endless dark wooden shelves where I borrowed Daddy Long Legs and read it in two hours.

Emotions dealt with quickly, like those time-bound tasks that pop up in the inbox. Three measly hours stolen from myself to get lost in a darkened theater and rethink responses to life’s persistent problems. Four truncated hours of being slapped around by the rough sea to come to terms with my all too palpable mortality.

Little chores piling up like plastic garbage. Three dense weeks before I can fully unpack the bag from a previous trip. One month to clear the laundry bins. No time to search for a missing top. Passport yet un-renewed.

Sleepy taxi rides to think of a hundred things to write about--pregnant thoughts that never bear any fruit. Haven’t written about how the ho-hum hills of the winter time Sahyadris magically transform into incredibly romantic dark hills cradling bejeweled valleys at night and how the winding roads take on a soft, dreamy aspect with some old Beatles numbers on the pipe. Haven’t written about the wonder of the deep red sun unsteadily hovering over a shallow still pool formed on the beach, a little away from the restless waves at Shrivardhan. Haven’t written about the stinging feel of the cold floor on bare feet and the late night chill that penetrated shawls and quilts on a winter night at Kolkata. Haven’t written about how much my colleagues enjoyed Murugan Idli Shop and how one of them tipped the teenaged waiter specifically for serving him unlimited quantities of sambar. So far.

Life strewn with many homes one made, but never lived long enough. The assistants at the beauty parlor in Kolkata remembered me from last year’s visit although I haven’t lived in the city for four years. Chennai looks like one of those sci-fi time warps--feels like I can reach across the transparent portal and touch 1998, so little has changed. Walked past my and V’s erstwhile flats at Yaari road last evening and thought of that time when life could have taken a different route. Shots of Chicago in a recent movie I saw constricted my throat with an unexpected pang.

I wonder how it will feel like to have a Hermann Hesse-esque moment of slowing down to listen to the flow of life. I wonder what I will remember of all this when I am old, retired, and my memory is failing. Damn!

Sundarbans – The Mystic Vastness

2011-12-07T22:49:00.001-06:00

You need to be in a state of preparedness to visit the Sundarbans. I suggest that you wait until you are over 30 and have experienced a few knocks, some heartbreak, and a little disappointment in life. It would help if you had ever searched for anything—God, happiness, truth, yourself. It might also be useful to believe that it is necessary to get lost to find your way. If you are the sort of person who finds music in the sound of the quiet lap of water against the tarred hull of the boat or the metaphor of life in drifting along endless waters on a little vessel, then you are ready for the magnificent mangroves.

Because the Sundarbans is not for the weekend holidayers, the types who would want to drink beer, scratch their bum/crotch/head/something, throw plastic and Styrofoam into the water with impunity, and hope to get laid. I only hope that the crocodiles that eat them would not develop indigestion.

It is important to find the right tour guide for the Sundarbans, as we did. Bikramaditya Guha Roy was our Noah, gently prising us away from the grit and greyness of the city, setting us tenderly down the brackish waters like newly hatched ducklings, regaling us with facts and stories about the world’s largest littoral mangroves, helping us adjust to the rhythm of the place that could almost slow down one’s heartbeat, and reaching deep into our souls with old boatman songs on occasion.

Before going to the Sundarbans, I never really thought about it. I knew from my middle school geography that it is the estuary of the Ganges and assorted rivers, comprise mangrove forests, and was famous for crocodiles and tigers. And my brush with Bangal had given me access to some breathtaking pictures clicked by friends, but nothing beyond it.

It was a good thing to have been so ignorant, I think, because it gave a chance to the immenseness of the place to comprehensively awe me. The journey started in a pedestrian way—we turned off left at the Science City junction, rode through the East Kolkata Wetlands, amidst strong smelling waste water tracts and vegetable fields, onwards over rural roads for a bone rattling three hours. The scenery was quintessential Indian countryside—bazaars and paddy fields and goats and cows and chicken and dust and marsh birds. We got down at Godkhali to board a boat. Even then, nothing was spectacular or distinctive.

It was after an hour down the river, which was like any other river I’ve ridden, that things suddenly changed. As we left villages and towns that showed advanced human colonization behind, the river suddenly widened—to three Hooglys wide. The water surface took on an enchanting haze and the vegetation around started looking unmistakably mangrove and different. Familiar things such as power lines and trees I can name disappeared and everything around were of and by water. This is where we started feeling really small and nature got very big. It was like being delivered into a different world, a different planet even.

Our feeling of smallness was enhanced that afternoon when we were taken to the confluence of five rivers—land was very far away and most of the time invisible. It was just us, the sputtering thrum of our boat engine, occasional birds flying overhead and vast waters around us. Conversations had a way of petering out into long silences, broken by the brilliant splashes of color different birds brought, especially the kingfishers. Our moment of excitement came in the form of a crocodile and later a crocodile-sized water monitor.

That evening, we were treated to a local folk theater performance of Bonbibi, a synthesized Hindu-Muslim goddess who represent the human advance on the territories of the Tiger Dokhin Roy. There are tensions and truces out here. Our resort, the Sundarbans Jungle Camp, is cozy and rustic and in the middle of the Bali village, where people seemed to be living a life that hasn’t changed much over the centuries. Farming, honey collecting, and fishing seem to be the chief occupation. Life is amphibious, a struggle with the clayish mud and brackish waters.

Later at night, after dinner, we went on a walk to the Japani ghat, led by the feeble light of our torches and a benevolent half-moon overhead. Silvery water and a silent ghat greeted us. We listened to the dying down of noises in our head and to Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne. Friendly village dogs paid us a visit and stayed with us. Anything could have happened that night—love, poetry, murder…

The next dawn saw us once again on the honeyed waters, visited by swallows, sand pipers, egrets, herons, and gulls, busy with the business of another new day. Mist was curling up from the waters. Mangroves with their breathing knee, buttress, and snake roots seemed to be in deep meditation. We drifted further away from the world as we knew it. Breakfast was on the boat, mustard flavored and delicious.

We went on a canopy walk, which is a big word for a middling 800 meters walk on top of the mangroves. Our guide familiarized us with the different mangrove colonizers and talked about vivipary. We didn’t meet any tigers, but we did see a lot of bright crimson and yellow fiddler crabs. In the afternoon, we saw archer fish and several more crustaceans. The day was punctuated by kingfishers—ubiquitous, startling, in six different varieties.

We set out for a full day cruise the next day. We entered the smaller, greener, and incredibly beautiful creeks, adjoining the deep and secretive reserve forests. We spent a lot of time squatting on the bow of the boat, sun beating down our heads and wind blowing our hair. We saw birds of prey such as white bellied sea eagle, osprey, and brahminy kites. A crocodile came swimming within 15 feet of our boat. We saw yet another water monitor lumbering after some lunch. We saw a lesser adjutant stork that spread its great wings and flew across the water and some aggressive rhesus macaques. Flocks of egrets raced towards our boat. It seemed like we had wandered into a bit of paradise.

As dusk was falling, as it does at 4:30 p.m. in these parts, we killed the boat engine and drifted aimlessly on the waters for a bit. The sun sank, first crimson and then pink.

There was only one more thing to do—to ride the small country row boats. We had this wish granted the next morning by our thoughtful guide. We took the boat through a small water way adjacent to the village, overhung by trees, lined by houses and visited by parakeets, bee-eaters, king fishers, and some frolicking geese. Being on the level of water gave us an entirely new perspective of the world.

We also walked through the village, overlooking golden harvests, observing morning village routines and peeping into a small thatched village elementary school. We encountered an enormous bee hive and said hello to tailor birds, orioles, ioras, babblers, woodpeckers, doves and drongos.

Not long after that, quietly, the holiday came to an end. The entire staff of the resort came to the ghat and waved us goodbye. We had said goodbye to Nobo, our superman spotter, a child of the village who speaks halting but perfect English, the previous evening. There was nothing left to be said or done but to board the boat one last time. The city came upon us and swallowed us all too soon.

You can see the pictures here.

Of Creatures Wondrous and Worlds Enchanting - II

2011-09-04T02:45:00.001-05:00

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

This is a gem of a movie—precious, joyous, enchanting and alittle sad. It’s about a childhood where there are adventures to be had atevery corner, spirits and creatures in the forests to frolic with, of cat busesand furry trolls, of plucking corns and driving sooty sprites away withlaughter. It’s about big fat tears and wonderful giggles. It’s about breathtakingvisuals and lyrical moments.

It’s about two girls—short-haired and lanky Satsuki (about10 years old) and her cuddly pig-tailed baby sister Mei (about four years old.)They move into rural post war Japan with their professor father to be neartheir long-term ill mother in a nearby hospital. Their house is old, rickety,falling apart in places and most importantly, allegedly haunted. There is a giant camphor tree in the yard thatlooks all mysterious. The girls are excited and just a bit scared.

They settle down to their new life with zest andcartwheels. Mei follows her sistereverywhere and wants to do everything she does. Satsuki is all grown up andresponsible. Dad is gentle and engages in all the stories of spirits andcreatures of the forest. Their visit to see their mother is a picnic on dad’sbicycle.

Mei, being the youngest, is the most intrepid of them all.She follows a bunny-like troll through a path under the bushes only to fall, ala Alice, into a rabbit hole under the camphor tree. She lands up on the furrychest of a giant troll who is sleeping. It is not scary or stressful—she merely goes to sleep herself. Satsuki laterfinds her asleep under the bushes.

Dad doesn’t discount the tale of the troll, whom Meimispronounces as Totoro. He just says one has to be very lucky to see thekeeper of the forest. Well, Satsuki’s luck turns shortly one rainy evening, asshe and Mei wait for their dad at the bus stop. The troll comes and stands next to her in a friendly protective way. Heseems to have a heart of a child too—he jumps to dislodge water droplets fromthe branches of trees overhead. He is then picked up by this wonderful cat bus,which has eight legs and two eyes as headlights.

Life goes on until one day, they get a telegram from thehospital. Dad is away at work so it is up to Satsuki to figure out what next.In the stress, she and Mei have a fight. Mei goes missing after that. Satsukiis convinced that Mei has gone to meet their mother. There is some tale about a sandal found in thenearby lake.

I cried and cried during this sequence. All ends well butthe movie left me with a bitter sweet taste.

As I have said elsewhere, Miyazaki movies are full of littletouches and moments. This movie abounds in them. Check the sequence whereSatsuki is turning cartwheels and Mei, following her tumbles on her head, allpink dress over white fanny and chubby limbs. Or the sequence when dad is crawlingunder the bushes with his daughters using his sandals to protect his hands—whenhe gets up, he drops them to wear them on his feet while talking. Or when thegirls go to meet their mother, there is a touching moment when mom brushes herdaughter’s hair.

For me, there are two absolutely beautiful moments in themovie—the first is when Satsuki at school glances out to find Mei standing atthe gate with the neighbor grandma. Grandma tells Satsuki that Mei wanted to bewith her sister. Mei, all trembling chin and tears rolling on her cheek, runsto hug her sister. Cut to Mei sitting cozily between Satsuki and her friend inclass and teacher telling the class that Mei is sad because her mother is inthe hospital.

The second is when the two sisters are waiting for theirfather at the bus stop. It is pouring and as it gets late, little Mei is sleepyand is finding it hard to keep her eyes open. Satsuki, without much ado, picksup her sister and carries her on her back.

I didn’t know that animation movies could be this fluid, subtleor nuanced. Watch the movie with your family. And don’t forget to keep a box ofKleenex handy.

Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (2008)

Ponyo, the simpler, Hollywoodized version of Miyazaki isalso my least favorite (for the same reason) of the three movies. It is alittle boy-girl version of the little mermaid for the post “Inconvenient Truth”world.

Ponyo is a little gold fish princess protected, along withher many sisters, by her once-land bound father, Fujimoto. Fujimoto isdisgusted with the way humans have been destroying the oceans and one daydreams of leading an uprising that would restore ocean’s rightful place. Hekeeps his daughters under a spell to protect them. Ponyo however, is spiritedand adventurous. She escapes the confines of her home one day and gets caughtin a trawling net.

She is rescued by a five-year old boy Sosuke, who lives withhis parents on a cliff-side home. The two instantly fall in love with eachother. But Fujimoto comes and rescues his daughter back. But by now, Ponyowants to be human and go back. She goes behind her dad’s back, breaks the spelland becomes human and rises to meet Sosuke. She unwittingly causes a tsunamibut she ends up with Sosuke and his mom.

It is now up to Ponyo’s father and mother, who is none otherthan Guranmamere or Goddess of Mercy, to bring back the balance of nature. Beforethat, she needs to test Sosuke’s love for Ponyo.

Thus begins an aquatic adventure of epic proportions, in thebackdrop of a tsunami-hit town. Viewing this mild and friendly tsunami from thepost 2011 tsunami in Japan might make us a little queasy, but as RichardCorliss of Time Magazine puts it, “But Ponyo… is a parable for children, andthey're entitled to the gift of hope.”

To those who thought the CGI of Finding Nemo was thepeaches, here’s a rethink on the power of hand drawn animation. The visuals arenothing short of breathtaking in this movie, from the garbage on the sea bed tothe majestic rising waves to a road submerged in water and freely used byancient underwater creatures resurrected.

Watch it for the fabulous visuals and for the visionary callto action against abusing our oceans.

Of Creatures Wondrous and Worlds Enchanting - I

2011-09-04T00:38:00.000-05:00

On the boundaries of my childhood territory was this ancientruined temple. Silent coconut palms stood over fallen granite columns andabandoned moss covered stone idols. The temple tank was but a small hole in theground, overgrown with weeds and laden with lily flowers during season. Peopleseldom passed through the temple premises. One heard of spirits and sprites.Even the lone pujari seemed frightened of it—he used to come early in themorning and leave not soon after.

Now, if I had but a tenth of the imagination of the Japaneseanimation master Hayao Miyazaki, I would’ve grown up to write wonderfullyenchanting magical tales about the place, full of woodland spirits and paganGods and friendly otherworldly creatures. But alas, I’m but an ignorant hackwho hadn’t even heard of the master until yesterday—and then only because my nephewset up a Miyazaki marathon to take my mind off my pesky flu.

Thefirst five minutes were enough for me to get completely addicted to themaster’s movies. They made me laugh and cry and marvel at them all through. So without much further ado, here are the reviews.

Spirited Away (2001)

The first thing one notices about Miyazaki’s work is howdetailed and lush it is. That the master still doesn’t work with CGI butpersonally draws thousands of frames of his movies is remarkable—on the otherhand, the love for the craft is evident in every single texture, shape, anddetail in the screen. The next thing one notices are the colors—all thoseshimmering, translucent, endless expanses of blues and greens and gold,interspersed with the more ominous blacks and grays and browns. Oh, it is rarevisual treat indeed! And thankfully, no gratuitous 3D in here to mar the beautyof the traditional Japanese animation style.

The third thing one notices (yeah,one notices a lot of things, like being exposed to Times Square for the firsttime) is the keen eye in capturing human postures and gestures (especially thatof children) and the little touches (like people stumbling and the grazed kneesand elbows of the protagonists as they go through the movie.)

The plot of Spirited Away is as layered and textured as thevisual treatment. On the surface, it isa coming of age tale of the 10-year old Chihiro, who has to abandon herchildhood and become an adult in short order. It is also about friendship andheroism and little Miyazaki truisms such as “don’t start something if you can’tfinish it” and environmentalism and a sharp comment on capitalism.

Chihiro is moving to a new town with her parents. She is notterribly happy about it. And to add to that, dad goes and gets lost on theirdrive there. They end up in a strange tunnel in the woods. Chihiro isterrified, but dad wants to go explore. Mom needs a little persuasion but shejoins dad. (I just LOVED the way Chihiro stamps her feet here.)

They do enter the mysterious tunnel and end up in a placethat looks a world apart on the other side. Dad thinks it is an abandoned themepark that went down with the bubble economy. They find rows and rows ofrestaurants. They reach a stall that has heaps of food but no attendant. Momand dad settle to help themselves (Dad has credit cards, as he nonchalantlystates before gobbling up food) but Chihiro wanders off to explore.

She comes upon a grand building across a bridge below whichtrains keep running up and down. Here she meets a young boy who identifieshimself as Haku, who warns her to leave immediately before it gets dark. Buttwilight descends as Chihiro runs to get her parents, whizzing past lightscoming to life and dark mysterious shapes creeping out everywhere. To her horror, she finds that her parents havebeen turned into pigs and she is trapped in an enchanted world of ghosts andsorcerers and a river that fills up at night. Mysterious visitors come on amajestic barge across the river. Chihiro is caught in a bath house for 8million gods, run by the witch Yubaba, who enslaves people by stealing theirnames. And Chihiro can get out only by working hard at the bath.

Such a turn of events would’ve daunted any other littlegirl—but gutsy Chihiro goes through her trials and tribulations with courageand common sense. She makes a lot of friends on her way, from the sooty Oompa-Loompalike workers at the boiler room to the six-armed cantankerous boiler manKamaji, to the teenage Lin, to the mysterious No Face, to name a few. Itemerges that she has strong values—she is not swayed by money but is a strongand loyal friend.

She breaks down for the first time half-way into the movie.And when those large tears form in those lovely Manga eyes and roll down hercheeks and she settles to have a good cry, you want to cry with her—surely suchhorrible things shouldn’t happen to a great girl like her!

But it turns out to be a minor setback for a girl who goeson to clean up the filthy river God single handedly. The most poignant andstrong sequence in the movie begins when river God walks into the bath. Nobodyrecognizes him and everybody tries to flee the stench. Chihiro, with help fromher friends, gives him a bath and finds something stuck in him deep. It turnsout to be a bicycle, followed by a mountain of waste that gets dumped in ariver. Rid of these, river God emerges pristine and happy. As a morality talefor children about environmental protection, I haven’t seen anything asmemorable or absorbing as this whole sequence.

After much more of such enterprising behavior, she does emergevictoriously from the alternate world and saves her parents too. There is abitter sweet parting with Haku who is obviously the love of her life, but notyet. Another beautiful moment happens when the two are sky diving and Chihiro’stears flow upwards and you’d think those tears have the power to break spells.In Miyazaki’s world, love does have the power to break them.

A word about the voice actors—although I didn’t understand aword of what they were saying, I really enjoyed the sound of their talking.

I have no doubt why this movie is the biggest ever grosserin Japan, even ahead of Titanic (made over $ 250 mill in box office.) Do watchit with your kids. If you don’t have any, watch it anyway.

You can read the reviews of two other Miyazaki movies here.

Me-oh-my-oh!

2010-12-05T17:46:00.008-06:00

O Babe of the Bayou, Big Easy on the Big River, Cousin of Cajun, Creator of Creole, Mother of Mardi Gras, Queen of Voodoo, Purveyor of Gumbo, I bow to thee! For indeed thou art the hope, succor, and ultimate recourse to the depressed and debauched, serious and quirky, prosaic and bizarre.

All my doubts about why New Orleans is called the Crescent City vanished as our flight descended. The mighty Mississippi (mighty indeed at this point) made a sharp U turn and formed a perfect crescent of a delta.

We are told ad nauseam that New Orleans is built on layers and layers of alluvial soil that the river has been depositing on the delta for centuries. Which means that the city has no rock bed foundation. It is built on mud, which makes everything sink--buildings, roads, anything that depends on terra firma. On the other hand, buried things come floating up during storm flooding, like coffins.

Which is why, as most of you might already know, the good people of New Orleans decided to build above ground, multistory vaults for their dead, unwittingly creating the most fascinating aspect of the city--necropolises, or little cities of the dead that have been the fount of macabre imagination in pop culture.

It was a wintry, cold day that I left behind in Chicago, so was hoping for warm climes in the south. But Friday evening was rainy and nippy. However, I was adequately warmed by the open friendliness of everybody in New Orleans, starting from other travelers standing in the shuttle queue.

It is one of the very few cities in the US that is not wary of strangers--I mean that in the sense of unknown people and strange people. I guess the more flamboyantly bizarre you are, the more you fit in with the mise en scene of the place.

The excitement (bordering on euphoria) of the tourists is infectious. Bourbon street seems to be that magical Trishanku heaven, suspended between heaven and earth, where all moral codes are dissolved and anything goes. It indeed feels like a vulgar version of some debauched paradise--loud neon signs, music from live bands blasting forth from every fourth door, people walking around with two-feet long cocktail glasses made in plastic, the touts of striptease joints (for men and women) shouting you in while standing in a miasma of XXX girls photographs, restaurants boasting of every cuisine under the sky, street performers in the most bizarre costumes you can imagine, and stores selling beads, feathers and other voodoo curios. All this along an eight block length!

And if you are a single woman like me walking through the throngs of the street after dark, be prepared to be hit on every 10 feet. Be it the two 30-something men who had obviously come looking for action, or the old (perhaps Texan, going by his cowboy boots, hat and jeans) man wearing a quantity of beads, or the black teenager hanging out with a bunch of friends, all of them will step in front of you or call out from the other side of the street. You can feel the peer pressure to get some action!

Bourbon street at 9:00 a.m. in the morning is quite another story. It is not awake yet as it had gone to bed only in the wee hours of the morning. It stinks with yet uncollected garbage. When the neon signs are off and the music has stopped, it looks--well, tired. Devoid of make up.

Nobody but the very hardy of souls are up and about at 9:00 a.m. in New Orleans anyway. Most of the ones who are can be found standing patiently in the serpentine line outside Cafe Du Monde on Decatur Street, which is world famous for its beignets (the New Orleans version of the doughnut) and coffee.

I unfortunately did not have the time to do this. I was taking the French Quarters walk tour organized by the Friends of the Cabildo group which started at St Ann Street, abetting Jackson Square, which is a garden facing the river. On its two sides are the upper and lower Pontalba Apartments which are the oldest apartment buildings in the US and are considered the finest examples of antebellum (prewar) architecture in the country. On the third side are a couple of baroque buildings, one of them housing the Cabildo, or the Louisiana State museum, and a beautiful church.

The French Quarter is an amazing potpourri of architectural styles all crammed into a small old-world neighborhood. French, Spanish, and Creole jostle with each other, with styles such as Creole townhouse and single and double Shotgun houses (called so because the sound of a shotgun fired at the front end will not be heard at the back of these linear structures.)

What you see is a surfeit of wrought iron balconies overhanging sidewalks, pretty pastel colored buildings, and streets with the most interesting nomenclature. Click here to see pictures.

Move away from the tourist trap that is Bourbon Street and the artists’ hothouse that is Jackson Square, you discover small quiet residential alleys, housing tasteful shops and quiet restaurants. Every other building has an interesting story or anecdote, which the very enthusiastic and knowledgeable guides are only too happy to tell you, including the street where Tennessee Williams wrote “Streetcar named Desire” and where Truman Capote lived.

One of the most interesting trivia I heard was an iron rod that passes through the top of old buildings, whose job is to pull up the sinking structures. Every 15 years or so, apparently, based on the measurements, these rods are turned appropriately to pull the building up!

I finally managed to have beignets at Cafe Beignet in the afternoon, the second best place after Cafe Du Monde to have them. At Cafe Beignet, they serve three large square fluffy as cloud beignets (pronounced ben-je) sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar for about USD 4.

I could have written a hundred lines of verse on each of them (channeling Mr. Marvel here: “Two hundred (years) to adore each Breast”) but my tour guide for the Cemetery Tour was standing outside the cafe already. So I gobbled about 1.5 beignet, dumped the rest in the trash (a travesty I know) and rushed out.
We were a small group--a family consisting of a middle-aged couple, their college going daughter and her long-haired, twig chewing, strange footwear wearing boyfriend, and a sprightly and bright 90-year old grandma made the rest of the group. We minced forth to the famous St. Louis cemetery.

Right at the entrance of the St. Louis cemetery is the alleged vault of Mary Lavaeu, the Queen of voodoo. That by itself did not interest me so much, coming as I do from India. But there was a coven of witches from Salem who were visiting to pay their respect. This group consisted of an old woman, dressed in some flowing black gown/cape from top to bottom, a plump young man dressed in black and wearing a quantity of chains and rings, and a Hispanic woman also dressed in black.

They were offering some food at the tomb, as well as flowers. The most arresting ritual they performed was to take a mouthful of rum, spin around three times and spit the rum on the grave! After that, each marked three Xs on the tomb wall. Now I know how the Indian pagan rituals should look like to monotheistic foreigners. Heh heh!

Popular media representation had made me expect dark and sinister tombs, embellished with gargoyles and dragons. Instead, what I found was neat freshly white washed tombs, with some Greek but mostly Catholic statues. It definitely looked like a small town, with rows after rows of little buildings and crisscrossing streets. Click here for the pictures.

We also made a visit to the Temple of Voodoo and sat at the feet of the priestess, Miriam Chamani as she gave a short speech. I unfortunately couldn’t understand anything she said, which sounded like a concatenation of so many new age words.

The hotel had thoughtfully provided me with a list of restaurants in the area, so I chose to dine at Cajun Cabin, deep into the heart of Bourbon Street. It is a casual, sports bar kind of place. Several TVs were following the much anticipated New Orleans’ Saints match with Dallas Cowboys. There was a huge fake tree in the middle of the room. Neon and serial lights illuminated everything from within.

My waiter turned out to be this really nice guy from Chicago who took good care of me. I ordered their New Orleans platter which consisted of sampling of gumbo, jambalaya and red beans. The waiter also quizzed me on my purpose of visiting Nawlins, and suggested that I must visit the Garden District. I am very grateful for his solicitude, which made me feel comfortable despite some interested stares from other tables.
Early next morning, the van from our bayou and swamp tour collected me from the hotel. The place we were headed was Jean Lafitte national park. Now like everything else connected to New Orleans, Lafitte is also an unlikely hero. He was a pirate and a privateer who helped General Andrew Jackson defend New Orleans against the British in 1815!

It was a 30 minute drive to the swamp from the city. I was joined by a French family with two little kids. I sat in the front next to the driver and dozed nicely through out the trip, which I think upset him, because he commented before coming back, “Pretty woman, you are not planning to sleep in the van again, are you?”

The bayou country is completely different from the hustle and bustle of the city. As most of you might already know, bayous are channels of very slow moving or still water found in the wetlands of the Mississippi River region. Nowadays, these wetlands have a many as six man made channels to a bayou and all of them form an intricate and unique ecosystem. Which, like every other place in the world, is under extreme stress, and the government, at least according to our boat captain, is messing up the conservation.
Whatever it is, the place is extraordinarily beautiful and one could almost feel how delicate and fragile it is. Most of the water is covered with duckweed, apparently the smallest water plant in the world. Swamp grass and wetland trees crowd into the blue green waters. On that nippy winter morning, there wasn’t much movement around.

A couple of gator babies swam with us while the grand patriarch of that bayou, the unconquered alpha male, the gator with the Hilton suite who has driven other younger whipper snappers to live in Motel 6 (as picturesquely described by our guide), the 60-year old Joe was basking in the sun. I saw a couple of blue herons, egrets and brown ibises too. Click here for the pictures.

I had no time to stop for lunch before setting forth to the Garden district, on the historic St. Charles Streetcar route. New Orleans’ streetcars, along with San Francisco’s, have been declared as moving national monuments. And like San Francisco, the street car cabs at NO are quaint, old world, and move at a sedate pace.

I found the bookstore where I was supposed to meet my tour group without much difficulty. I had a coffee and a muffin in the coffee shop next to the bookstore which was filled with the avant garde set. A middle aged gay couple there, a couple of women here, a good looking student-type young man in shorts reading something, and an old man with a pipe and some papers outside.

I drank my coffee, ate my muffin and let my eyes stray to the young man with idle interest. Then I realized I had competition. A single gay man on the next table was also giving him lustful glances. I realized that it perhaps was not a pitched battle, so made my exit quietly.

Our tour guide was this old gentleman who seemed to know everything that is to know about the Garden district. This part of the city is as different as it could be from the life in French Quarters. While the latter is the land of unfettered bohemia, this part is all about wealth and refinement. I haven’t seen such a collection of graceful, elaborate, and huge mansions in my life before. Click here for the pictures.

Emboldened by my success the previous evening, I decided to venture out further into the French Quarters beyond Bourbon Street, so I picked up a restaurant called Gumbo Shop. It is situated in a Creole townhouse in a quiet street and retains most of its old world charm. I elected to sit in the enclosed courtyard (a standard feature in these buildings) and was seated near a toasty gas heater.

I ordered their Creole dinner combo, which turned out to be a mountain of extremely delicious and wonderfully flavored local food. I recommend this place highly, both for ambiance and food.
Of course I had a perfect New Orleans moment there too. At the table in front of me was this affluent-looking all American family consisting of mother, father, a teenage daughter and a teenage son. Once when I looked up, the teenage son made eye contact with me and gave me this smile of stunning sweetness and friendliness.

I made my way back to the hotel through the quieter Royal Street. I felt a pang about leaving this highly colorful and eccentrically individualistic city. Chicago was going to look dull in comparison.

Foockin' Brilliant!

2010-11-14T20:29:00.014-06:00

The Ford Theater (a.k.a. Oriental Theater), a Broadway in Chicago theater, is a very entertaining building to be inside of. It was built as a movie theater in 1926 and is said to have been inspired by the temples of India. Its lushly gilt-edged art-deco interiors are a riot of South Indian temple architectural motifs: lattices, peacocks, swans, the south Indian version of the dragon called the Yali (I read somewhere that it was inspired by the sphinx of Egypt), lotuses, and decorative columns.

But what amuse me most are the statues, which clearly represent a western interpretation of “native” Gods. The designers must have gotten their inspiration from the paintings of condescending Raj painters, some of whose work are on display at the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata.

So, right above the stage on the roof is a sexually indeterminate divine who sits in the most unnatural pose, kind of squatting while bending his/her arms out, all of which look pretty uncomfortable. And at his/her sides are two abjectly praying men with rippling muscles, wearing garbs that look like a cross between an Egyptian robe and Roman toga. There are two Hinayana Budhas on the two front corners. As we move along, past the prominent Yalis who sadly have beards instead of terrible fangs their Indian counterparts have, and latticed walls, we come to the main dancing girl pieces on both the side walls.

These girls are hilarious—firstly, they look Amazonian: none of the Indian diminutive heavy breasted-narrow waisted-wide hipped look for these. Secondly they are wearing elaborate Egypto-Greco-Roman costumes that imply nudity but modestly cover their bodies.

It’s like wandering into a red velvet and gold world of Tintin. Have you noticed how Herge never gets the appearance of coconuts that fall from the trees and hit Captain Haddock on the head right (they look like pineapples)? Also, have you paused to think that in the “Prisoners of Sun,” the denouement hinges on a solar eclipse which only the learned white people know of, while the sun worshiping Incas have no inkling?

But as a post post-colonialist, I look at these displays of colonial anally-retentive cultural insensitivity and patronizing with indulgent humor. Oh you poor ignorant sods! Thanks for your industrial revolution, age of invention, railroads and climate change, but your time’s up. Please move over. We are itching to misrepresent your culture. Heck, we have already started—just come and see the Hiranandani complex in Mumbai—you can see how we have converted Roman architecture into a farce. Elsewhere, in our films, the Helens of the world have for decades successfully caricatured the degenerate western morality and paid for it with their lives.

Be that as it may, the Ford Theater is a magnificent place to catch a lavish Broadway production. The semi-circular hall has a capacity of 2,253. While the décor is old world, the lighting and sound are absolutely state of the art.

It is my experience that Broadway productions and concerts are a predominantly brahminical white pursuit. I have very rarely seen brown/black/any other color skins in such places, be it NYC or Chicago. Or it could be that afternoon shows are especially popular with the baby boomers.

Yesterday, the ushers greeted us with, “Welcome to the Ford Theater. You need to enter through the door on the left. Bathrooms are down the hall.” Yeah, that was the demographics of the audience.

The show in question was “Billy Elliot—The Musical.” It has been playing in Chicago since April 2010 as part of the multi-city national tour of the Tony award (10 awards) winning Broadway production. It is based on the 2000 film.

While I balked at the ticket prices, I was seduced by the "musical of the decade" moniker. So I gritted my teeth and took the plunge. I am glad I did, because the show is foockin’ brilliant!

It is as big as a Broadway show can get—47 artists are credited in the playbill! Music is by Sir Elton John, choreography is by Peter Darling, book and lyrics are by Lee Hall and direction is by Stephen Daldry.

In the musical, the 1984/85 miners strike in the UK is as much a main story as that of a little boy from a miner’s village in Durham daring to want to dance and going after his dream. (I understand that this was not the case of the movie, in which the strike was just a background.) The defeat of the strike allegedly rang the death knell to state owned industries, trade unions, and mining jobs.

The thing that most excited me about the musical was where its sympathies clearly lay—with the striking miners. Isn’t it clever, or rather insidious, for a show with strong socialist leanings to be such a success in capitalist environs? Here are some samples of the lyrics which prove my point.

The following is from one of my favorite numbers in the show, which captivated me mainly because of the choreography, followed by music and lyrics. In the number “Solidarity,” police are facing off with the picketing miners while little girls in tutu swirl between them, all singing “Solidarity forever,” and meaning whatever it does to them.

POLICE
You fucking worms
You fucking moles
You fucking Geordie shits
We're here to kick your Geordie arse
You little Geordie gits

MINERS
Solidarity, solidarity,
Solidarity forever
We're proud to be working class
Solidarity forever.

And here’s my second most favorite number, called “Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher,” which rips into Mrs. Thatcher and her free market philosophy. The number is set at the soup kitchen (the year-long strike apparently sent most of the miners into great poverty), with a humongous balloon effigy of the lady in the background.

And they've brought their fascist bootboys
And they've brought the boys in blue
And the whole Trade Union Congress
will be at the party too
And they'll all hold hands together
All standing in a line
Cos they're privatising Santa
This merry Christmas time

This number ends in a parody.

Oh my darling, Oh my darling,
Oh my darling Heseltine
You're a tosser, you're a wanker
And you're just a Tory Swine.

All others were of yeah-blah variety. Find all the 15 numbers here.

As one of the reviewers puts it, the show is “energy incarnate.” With at least 20 – 25 people on stage singing and dancing at any given time, there is no dearth of energy definitely. But there are numbers when the 11-year old lead actor (four of them take turns as Billy Elliot) is alone on stage. JP Viernes, who played Billy in yesterday’s show, was so confident, surefooted and talented that he brought the house down. The entire ensemble of supporting cast also does a great job.

The choreography is fantastic. It brings together a sense of exuberant chaos and wit. It is difficult not to be charmed and mesmerized. There are dreamy pieces like the Swan Lake rendition in which Billy literally soars and flies, as well as an old 50’s style dancing in “We’d go dancing.”

Art direction is great too, with sets of the village square, Billy’s house, the Royal Academy, the giant dancing dresses, and the gym where Billy learns to dance. There is a set of the gym’s toilets which impressed me very much. Obviously no expense has been spared in creating the sets.

Once you get past the hurdle of understanding northern England accent, the dialogues are quite colorful, witty and warm.

The letter from Royal Academy is in. Billy’s dad, brother, and grand mom are waiting for Billy to come back from school to open it, with barely contained excitement. Billy comes home, sees the letter from afar, and strains to read the envelope: “Billy… Elliot…Queer.”

“ESQUIRE!” dad bellows.

The Gay Romp

2010-10-11T01:44:00.005-05:00

You know those fuzzy slippers-ratty PJs-limp hair-bar of chocolate-tub of ice cream days when all you want to do is to vegetate on the couch? You are perhaps depressed, lazy, anti-social, nursing a miserable cold, or confined indoors by inclement weather. You may be even celebrating a long awaited off after a particularly hectic stretch at work.

What do you do on such occasions? Me—I watch low investment-high entertainment feel good romantic comedies. I do declare that there is nothing like a warm, witty rom-com full of beautiful people, clever banter, and just enough sex to pick one’s spirits and restore one’s hope for humanity.

However there is one problem. They threw away the template of intelligent, edgy, and quirky rom-coms after they made When Harry Met Sally. And Woody Allen is definitely does not believe in knowledge sharing. So we are left with a dearth of good movies in this genre, with every new one failing miserably to get its act together.

In the straight world that is.

Disgusted with the state of affairs in the heterosexual world, I have been exploring the Gay/Lesbian scene in the past week and boy have I struck gold! I’ve watched a series of screwball, quirky, and gender-bender movies that has kept me chuckling and feeling warm and fuzzy.

So, without much further ado, here’s a list of five recommendations from me. Rent them this weekend and enjoy yourself.

Dorian Blues (2004)
IMDb rating: 6.9/10

Dorian Lagatos is a quirky, neurotic, and Woody Allen-eque teenager in a small town. According to him, “I find it's good to talk about everything. My therapist says I overdo that, that I overanalyze - course she's bulimic, so let's not get too preachy. “

He is having a tough time fitting in as he pales in comparison to his football playing, good looking, and popular-with-the-girls younger brother Nicky Lagatos and despised by his domineering, Nixon-loving dad. On top of it, he has discovered that he is gay. Luckily, he has gotten an admission in NYU for a liberal arts program, and a world of coffee shops, intellectual company, and handsome men await him.

But before that, he needs to get his head straight and come out properly. His brother is supportive, but warns him not to tell anybody. While saving him from a bully attack in school, he insists that Dorian should lie about his orientation.

Nicky Lagatos: “Remember what Hitler said: you tell a lie long enough and loud enough, eventually they'll believe it.”
Dorian Lagatos: “So your advice is to be more like Hitler?”

Dorian goes to a therapist to work out his issues with his dad. Not that it helps. Dad doesn’t take his coming out charitably, so Dorian huffs off to New York. What follows is a coming-of-age tale, with hits and misses and strengthening of family ties.

Tennyson Bardwell is both the writer and director of this film which has won eight awards. Michael McMillian as Dorian Lagatos has given a pitch perfect performance. Lea Coco (who I discovered is a Chicago-based theater actor) is adorable as the gorgeous, decent, and protective younger brother.

Bedrooms and Hallways (1998)
IMDb rating: 6.1/10

Here’s a movie which is engagingly intelligent and witty, in the dry Brit sort of way. Also, it picks up what seems to be a favorite theme in this genre—confusion about sexual identity and even a question whether these are water-tight compartments. The point the director of this movie (Rose Troche) tries to make is that all of us will swing any which way, under the right circumstances.

Leo (played captivatingly by Kevin McKidd), a good looking and vivacious gay man from West London, is having trouble hanging on to relationships. At the suggestion of a straight friend, he joins a self-help group for straight men. And promptly falls for a good looking and straight Brendan (played by the gorgeous James Purefoy) in the group, who’s come to get help after breaking up with a girl friend of seven years. Things get complicated after Leo announces his attraction to the group.

Eventually the two end up having an affair. But when Leo meets Brendan’s ex, he discovers she was his ex girlfriend before he had come out. Sparks fly and the movie rolls on as a comedy of errors and confusion, ably aided by the most atrocious of group activities. I didn’t quite like the way it ended, but that does not diminish the pleasure of this movie.

The movie benefits from great performances by the supporting cast: the very camp Tom Hollander who plays Leo’s flat mate (“Rub some compost in your face, straight boys love it”) and the whacky group facilitator Keith played by Simon Callow stand out.

The movie is consistently funny. Leo reads Margaret Thatcher’s biography in lieu of a cold shower and chants passages of it to help him keep it down in a Turkish bath session with the group. The group orders in Chinese food after going to camp in the forest where they were supposed to forage their own food and fail miserably.

If for nothing else, watch the movie for the revisionist Jane Austen dream scene. As one reviewer puts it: “handsome James Purefoy (as Mr. Darcy) striding about in breeches saying “I've been out all day whipping stable boys - would you like a whipping, boy?” to footman Kevin McKidd who nearly orgasms on the spot.”

Different for Girls (1996)
IMDb rating: 6.9/10

Effeminate Karl Foyle and alpha-male Paul Prentice shared an ambiguous friendship in prep school in the 70s. They meet by accident in present day London. Karl is now the prissy Kim after a gender reassignment surgery and works as a verse writer in a greeting cards company. She lives in a clean, orderly flat in a thoroughly respectable and middle class neighborhood. Paul on the other hand, seems to have been drifting, emotionally stuck in the 70s and teenage, and is now a delivery guy who zooms around London on his bike, clad in leather. She is financially secure; he is broke.

There is an inexorable attraction between the two. But Paul is thoroughly confused—he is alternatively attracted and repulsed by Kim. Every meeting ends disastrously, the low point being the dinner at Kim’s place. An argument flares between the two, and a drunk Paul ends up indecently exposing himself. The two of them are arrested. Kim is harassed by the policeman in the van; when Paul tries to defend her, he gets beaten up.

Now Paul faces charges of assaulting a policeman. His only hope is a testimony from Kim, who is so terrified by the experience that she goes into hiding. The two now have to work out their prejudices and fears to give their relationship a chance.

Rupert Graves as Paul gives a tour de force performance, dominating every scene he is on, with his boyish charm and volatile temper. Steven Mckintosh playing Karl/Kim definitely has a more difficult job which he carries out with great gravitas.

The movie is incurably romantic with its belief in love transcending differences. The dialogs are sharp and interesting. Do watch it, but only after the kids have gone to bed.

In & Out (1997)
IMDb rating: 6.1/10

You might be familiar with this Kevin Kline/Joan Cusack/ Tom Selleck comedy, which apparently was inspired by Tom Hanks’ Oscar acceptance speech for Philadelphia, in which he mentioned his gay high school teacher.

Howard Brackett (Kevin Kline) is a high school literature/drama teacher in Green Leaf, Indiana, the “great big small town”. He is engaged to the long suffering Emily Montgomery (Joan Cusack) and is going to be married in three days’ time. In the meanwhile, the whole town is following the Oscar run of local boy Cameron Drake (Matt Dillion). Glen Close, the announcer says: “Tonight he joins fellow best actor nominee Paul Newman for ‘Coot’, Clint Eastwood for ‘Codger’, Michael Douglas for ‘Primary Urges’ and Steven Seagal for ‘Snowball in Hell’.”

Cameron gets the Oscar and in his acceptance speech outs Howard. There is of course an upheaval. As gay network reporter Peter Malloy (Tom Selleck) reports: “A teacher in trouble. A town under siege. A journey to the heartland. Stay tuned.”

Howard tries to reassure the town and himself of his orientation. He even listens to a “How to be a Man” tape.

Voice on tape: “Now, repeat after me: ‘Yo!’”
Howard Brackett: “Yo!”
Voice on tape: “Hot damn!”
Howard Brackett: “Hot damn!”
Voice on tape: “What a fabulous window treatment!”
Howard Brackett: “What a fabu...”
Voice on tape: “That was a trick!”

But he figures out that he is gay at his wedding and things go haywire after that. The movie ends on a too Hollywoodish note, but it is very funny.

Watch it for that unending kiss between Tom Selleck and Kevin Kline and Kevin’s reaction. Hilarious!

Puccini for Beginners (2006)
IMDb rating 5.9/10

Here’s another gender-bender rom-com set in that cradle of rom-coms, New York. Allegra is smart, conflicted, addicted to opera, and lesbian. She had once published a book. She doesn’t believe in love or commitment: “Commit! Just listen to that word, it's what they do in insane asylums!”

Her girlfriend Samantha breaks up with her because Samantha wants a life of growing old together with someone, not just high romance. While nursing a broken heart, Allegra meets Philips at a party, who is one of the 10 people who have read her book. She asks him, “Sure you didn’t just read it ‘cause of the photo they put on the back cover? Cause now you can see I don’t look like that. That was a moment of youthful pulchritude—don’t ask me what pulchritude means!”

Of course Philip knows, as he is a philosophy professor at Columbia. Attraction sparks between the two and before long they are having an affair. Which confuses Allegra of course. Philip gets very serious and breaks up with his girlfriend. In the meanwhile, she meets Grace and gets into a relationship with her too. She eventually finds out that Grace is Philip’s ex.

So Allegra’s life gets terribly complicated as she toggles between her two relationships and gets tied up in knots. She hears advice from everybody—from the waitress at the coffee shop to the announcer at the subway. Her friend doesn’t approve.

Nell: “You got together with Philip as a way to get back at Samantha and then when your emotions got too strong you found Grace under whom you could project your conflict and who so conveniently was braking up with her boyfriend making her another unavailable love object which of course confirms your deep cynicism about relationships in general and keeps you from confronting your real problem which has had to be yourself.”
Allegra: “Jesus Christ Nell, all I did was ask you what you wanted to have for lunch...”
Nell: “Wendy's.”

It all resolves quite predictably in the end, but it is a very cute movie to watch.

I Dig Enthiran Dot

2010-10-01T01:45:00.004-05:00

Ladies and gentlemen, please stand up and pay your obeisance, for a new movie genre is born—the Sci-fi Musical. Or the Sci-fi Masala. Or perhaps the Sci-fi Spectacular.

I am truly speechless. As was the rest of audience who watched today’s preview show with me. It is saying a lot, because watching a Rajni movie with a Tamil crowd means you hardly get to hear the dialogues and return home with a ruptured eardrum from all the screams, whistles and applause.

Shankar’s latest outing is truly a paradigm shift in Sci-fi movies. This ambitious, intelligent, witty an entertaining movie picks up where the Terminators, Star Wars, Iron Men, and X-Men of the world left off and shoots off into the stratosphere. True, the film is homage to all these movies—a lot of you will have a great time spotting all the references, like the R2 robot.

But you want CGI? Oh we got CGI baby! 3X size! I haven’t seen anything like that climax in my life—I am still shaking with the adrenaline rush!

You want action? How much? You want cars, trucks, buildings, and aircrafts blown up? No problem. You want body count that rivals Rambo? Jujube—as Rajni would say.

You want outlandish costumes, unbelievable locations, and grand music? Duh! This is a Shankar-Rahman-Rajni movie, remember? They have scaled Machu Pichu to bring you a song that you will not forget that easily.

The movie is take-no-prisoners high tech. Shankar doesn’t stop to explain what robotics, android-humanoid, artificial intelligence, neural schema, electromagnetism, wi-fi streaming, and worm are. Yet all these are important to the plot movement and denouement. You have to agree that this is unheard of in Indian movies.

Even the jokes are high tech. A policeman corners the robot in the hope of hustling some money off him. So he tries to ruffle the robot by asking his name, address etc. Robot replies: “I only have an IP address: 208.100…” You get it or you die, for all the director cares.

Story-wise, Shankar has stayed within the classic framework of sci-fi: rogue robot turns against his creator, creates an army of robots, and tries to take over humanity, but humans prevail. Where Shankar triumphs is that he keeps the story in Chennai and the cause and effect small scale and native. So there is at once a certain credibility built into the narrative.

Not that you are complaining. You are too busy being stunned by what is unfolding in front of your eyes to care that it is a complete Rajni vehicle, with all other characters having practically walk on roles.

In the danger of being lynched, I shall table it that I am not a Rajni fan. I come from a family that is staunchly Kamal supporting for three generations. I have watched exactly four Rajni movies in the theaters in my entire life.

So this is not the usual Tamil exuberance talking when I say Rajni shines in the movie. He is terribly convincing as the Carnegie-Mellon-MIT bred robotics engineer, so comfortable he is mouthing all those tricky lines.

But he excels as the villainous Robot. He does a studied and nuanced portrayal of the transformation from a mere machine to a naïve, child-like artificially intelligent robot to the demonic antagonist. There are so many memorable scenes, like the scene where he first gets angry. Or the one where he starts getting attracted to Ash. Or the scene where he starts spouting poetry when his creator takes him for a presentation to the army. He is of course on his home stretch in the second half playing the nefarious robot, for he started his career in villain roles.

It is reported that this is going to be Rajni’s last outing as a main hero and he plans to do age-appropriate roles from now on. What a way to bow out, dude!

I pity all those people who are going to watch this movie in languages other than Tamil because you are going to miss all the exceedingly clever and contemporary lyrics. Vairamuthu is one of the finest free verse poets in Tamil today. His style is to use startling juxtaposition of thoughts and genres; to give you a whole new vision within a terse line of poetry. He is practically untranslatable.

In this movie, he has gone ballistic. His lyrics refer to Isaac Asimov, Isaac Newton and Einstein; it is peppered with electrons, neutrons, and other sundry quarks; the robot’s fire of love doesn’t get doused with the waters of Atlantic Ocean; and he wonders whether the lady’s love is the force as defined by Newton’s laws.

A.R.Rahman delivers. Three songs are fantastic: Arima, Kilimanjaro, and Irumbile Oru.

Ash is the most irritating thing about the movie. She is so unimaginative as an actress that she kills certain important scenes. But she looks breathtaking in all those out-of-the-world costumes and dances very well. A lot of characters kind of don’t know what to do, like the legion of policemen. But again, doesn’t matter.

The only thing that mattered to me was the tacky 3D animation in that birth scene. I don't know why corners were cut in a movie in which a Merc Convertible was totaled.

One thought was shared by a lot of people as we walked out of the theater: “Will people get this movie?” We’ll have to wait and watch whether the Indian audience takes to the sci-fi genre of this nature.

As for the title of this review—watch the movie.

Da… Dum… Dabangg

2010-09-24T23:02:00.001-05:00

It’s the stunt that introduces the hero.

He is pummeling one baddie when another baddie crouching behind him gets a call on his cell. The ring tone is a loud ridiculous dance tune. The poor fellow has a deer-caught-in-headlights expression—will the hero thrash him too, now that his presence has been so raucously revealed?

The hero turns to face baddie # 2 while holding baddie #1 in a vise-like grip. Baddie #2 swallows hard. Hero slaps his palm on his forehead. “Phone uthana!” he barks at him.

Baddie #2 sheepishly takes the phone out and checks who it is. “Kiska hi?” Hero asks.

“Ma sir!” baddie #2 replies.

“Ma ko mera pranam kehna!” the hero says and turns to Baddie # 1. “Ma se yaad aaya, teri ma…”

“Sir!!!!” baddie #2 protests, overcome with scruples now that his mother is on the line.

“Nahi, mein yeh pooch raha tha ki teri ma hi ki guzar gayi?” hero asks baddie #1.

The theater erupts in laughter. At least, I guess it must, if there are more than two people in the theater.

The same baddie # 2 gets another call during a high octane chase scene later. He is hiding with a knife to ambush the hero. But his toe-tapping ring tone gives him away again. The hero now stops and asks him, “Ma ka phone hi?”

Baddie #2 says, “Nahi sir, girlfriend!”

“Girlfriend?” hero asks. He then pats the guy affectionately on the back and moves on. An instant reformation happens to the baddie, who throws away the knife in disgust.

How can you not like a movie which never takes itself seriously, is always affable, and is so funny?

True, Dabangg is a ridiculous movie. Its plot is shallow; narrative is jerky, and logic a little tenuous. But it is not a stupid movie. Not by a long chalk.

It is obvious that new director Abhinav Kashyap knew what he was going for and never took his eyes off that target. He has not made a “gyanvardhak” movie, he admits in an interview. Neither is there anything new. He wanted it to be an easy-going entertainer and that’s what he has delivered.

He and art director Wasiq Khan create a beautifully detailed and highly authentic setting for the movie, complete with the dust, mud, colors, and cow dung cakes of rural UP. The director pays a lot of attention to populating it with authentic looking people too, down to a bored crotch-scratching constable in a political rally.

I liked the director’s light touch. There are no tear jerker moments in the movie –even with one number mother dying. It is reined in and more often than not dealt with a joke. Like the one Salman cracks when visiting his step dad at the hospital. “I met your doctor and he said you have only a few days to live,” he says. “I slapped him hard and immediately your life span increased.”

I notice that Abhinav assisted Mani Ratnam in Yuva. Maybe that explains the Tamil influence. The grammar of this movie is all Tamil—Rajnikanth and the later day contenders to his throne such as Vijay. The rustic tone, the larger-than-life persona of the star, the reverential camaraderie the hero shares with his friends who are obviously poor, lines that are designed to draw crazed reaction from fans, and humor in action sequences all made me sometimes forget that I was watching a Hindi movie.

Which brings me to the most impressive aspect of the movie: boy, is the action out of the world! There are three major action sequences in the movie, each almost 4- 5 minutes long. You should watch them to believe the quality of choreography. Each of them is deft and funny like Jackie Chan’s, bloody like Japanese action comics, graceful like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and full of special effects like Matrix.

Allegedly, it took them 60 days to shoot the action sequences alone and it shows. Action director S. Vijayan is on his way to an Oscar if he continues like this!

Mahesh Limaye’s cinematography more than supports the sometimes fantastic action sequences, like the one in the climax. Pranav Dhiwar’s editing is very slick in the action sequences, but I thought it could’ve been better in the other parts of the movie.

What struck me (as it did in Rajneeti), was the absence of a strong ethical core. Back in those days, the mother used to be that—remember Nirupa Roy who used to insist on integrity and honesty in her sons? Remember how those movies had a righteous hero with a just cause and a completely wicked villain? Those kind of clear dichotomies seem to be extinct now. Rajneeti glorified mob-like behavior of the “family.” In Dabangg, righteousness is altogether missing. Everybody is wrong—only the degrees differ. It is a celebration of lawlessness.

So really, the hero has no moral high ground to do whatever he does. There is no reason to like him. He carries grudges from childhood which directs his actions. He is arrogant and corrupt. His relationships with his family members are highly dysfunctional. And yet he fills up the movie, compels you to be convinced about him, and enjoy his antiques. That is what they call star power, I guess. I liked Salman in Wanted. And in this movie, I adored him. What charisma this guy has!

Sonakshi Sinha is so unlike any of the current heroines. She comes across as very confident. And oh my God, Dimple is adorable! She is able to fit so well into any role she plays—be it in Dil Chahta Hi, or Being Cyrus or this movie. Wonder why she doesn’t do more work. Sonu Sood is very watchable. Om Puri does a brilliant cameo role. It is so difficult to ignore VInod Khanna’s gorgeousness, even at this age. He does a great job as the step dad.

Here’s a little game for you: can you find out the number of Hindi/Tamil/English film references that are there in the movie? To start you off, here’s my list:

a. Sun glass flipping: clear Rajnikanth trick
b. Mote wale is taraf, patle wale us taraf, aur jo fit hi, mere peechey: I don’t even have to say the reference
c. Climax: The setting, music, and sunny wide angle shots on an endless plain are all clearly Wild Western

The Singular Case of the Odd Cavy

2010-09-19T22:25:00.003-05:00

She didn’t have a phone. In order to find each other easily, we decided to meet at the northwestern corner of the Bean at Millennium Park.

I told her: “I will have a white carnation pinned to my lapel and be carrying a back issue of the Wall Street Journal. Ask me this question: ‘What is a unicorn?’ My answer will be: ‘A unicorn is just a horse with a long—ay vey!’ Make sure that they don’t follow you.”

She replied: “Roger that Betty Boop. Look for a juvenile delinquent in a green shirt. Ask, 'Aasman mein kitne taare hain?' If you hear, 'Hum sab tumhare hain,' start jogging in the north westerly direction. Stop near the Inn of the Frantic Frog. I'll see you there.”

It was a nasty day to meet someone at a house of ill repute like the Frantic Frog Inn. Storm clouds hung ominously overhead, darkening the sky so much that at 10:30 a.m., it looked like it was 7:00 p.m.

There was a mixed crowd on the train. While getting down at Union Station, I made eye contact with a muscular man in a sleeveless red T-shirt, torn jeans, dread locks, and a skate board. I met him again at the Adams street entrance, trying to buy weed from a similarly dressed group.

I set out on the rain lashed street, holding on to my fragile umbrella which the wind was doing its best to rip off my hand, toting my bags and sipping on a Jamba Juice smoothie. There were but a few abroad. I walked a couple of blocks but the rain and wind made it a difficult task. I ducked under the entrance of a city parking lot. The man from the bus shelter across the street eyed me curiously. I ignored him and jumped on a ledge on the wall and sat there.

The man with dread locks and probably with freshly acquired weed walked past with another man. Our eyes met again. I watched his figure recede from my view. What wicked things were afoot this miserable morn?

I waited on my perch for some time, while the rain’s intensity went in a sinusoidal pattern. In one of the troughs, I dashed out again only to duck back again through a revolving doors of a bookshop called Books-a-Million. There of course were not a million books. But whatever they had seemed to be on sale.

I picked up a novel tracing the history of New York. As I grow older, my book picking criteria have become increasingly peculiar. While the back cover draws me to the content, the first paragraph is the acid test. If it doesn’t interest me, then my interest never revives. I am shallow—I put form ahead of content. This book started with a short sentence of five words. The first page continued with a first person account of a Dutchman canoeing up the Hudson with his half-Indian daughter born in sin on a blustery day not unlike the one outside, but some 300 years ago. My interest was piqued.

I walked on to Michigan Avenue to see that the tops of buildings such as Aon building and Prudential Plaza lost in the low hanging clouds, even though it had stopped raining. It was a remarkable sight. I sprinted across the street to enter Millennium Park. The famous fountain was not as crowded as it usually is on summer days, but a few hardy souls were still braving it out.

I strolled over to the Bean. The Artful Dodger in green was there. We spoke the code words and ran like hell in the northwesterly direction. We then caught a taxi to go to Lincoln Park zoo.

This 35-acre free zoo was founded in 1868 making it the oldest in the nation. It allegedly started when the park commissioners were gifted a pair of swans! Tripadvisor rates it 14 in a list of 527 places to visit in Chicago.

It is indubitably pretty and has an old world feel, despite all the refurbishment it allegedly had recently. The principal exhibits and the first to greet you are the lions and tiger. The lioness was very restless last, pacing up and down and vocalizing from time to time. The lion slept majestically on a rock of course. Are you sure the lion is just effortlessly good looking and doesn’t go out of its way to look picturesque even while sleeping?

After some 10 minutes of pacing, the lioness saw me. Our eyes met. She became very still, with not a muscle moving. She stared at me with an unfathomable expression and held on unblinkingly for a long 5 – 7 minutes. Did she see in me a fatted cow that she could feast on? Did I resemble one of the zoo keepers? Did we have a connection from a previous birth? It was bizarre.

T was in splits of course—she kept pointing to me, denying her involvement, and giving the lioness encouragement with thumbs up sign. With friends like this…!

The tiger was equally restless. He looked a little thin for a Bengal tiger (I’m an expert after rubbing shoulders with them in the wild at Kanha, you see.) Perhaps he was just working his bowels, because he peed with a very sheepish expression after a while, which we unashamedly captured on camera.

This kind of started a pattern that morning. All the primates we saw after that took a dump ceremoniously in front of us. Like the silver backed Gorillas.

By the way, the Gorilla enclosure is the best feature of the zoo. Lincoln zoo has been able to breed them successfully in captivity. Now there is a nice family of Gorillas there—Jojo, the patriarch, his mate, their son Azizi and two daughters. Jojo takes his responsibility very seriously and constantly watched his kids and petted them. The girls were playful. One girl teased another by extending a long twig to her. When the other tried to grab it, she took it away and they chased each other. It was totally cute to watch.

Did you know that monkeys and apes are divided into old world and new world? Old world monkeys live in Asia and Africa, belong to one family of Cercopithecidae and are closer to humans and apes. New World monkeys live in Mexico and South America and belong to the super family of platyrhines (flat nosed). There are several differences between the two in size, diet, physical attributes and mating habits.

Here’s the most fascinating trivia: apparently, the monkey family split into two 40 million years ago, and the new world monkeys might have migrated to South America on rafts of vegetation (like a storm broken piece of mangrove forest) across the Atlantic ocean! Scientists made these discoveries during the mapping of the human genome. How cool is that!

Whatever it is, I saw the curiosest types of new world monkeys, which I haven’t even heard of before. Like the Marmoset that are the smallest monkeys in the world. They were tiny, with a wizened face like that of an old man. Like most of the other new world monkeys, they form monogamous pair bonds. I saw another species, where the two lovebirds sat in deep embrace with their tails wound together. It was the sweetest of sights.

The reptile house was disappointing—the Thirvananthapuram zoo used to have a much better collection of snakes. We saw a couple of tortoises mating, which reminded me of the evergreen Ogden Nash poem:
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.

And the Alpacas we saw put Captain Haddock strongly in mind. Remember Prisoners of the Sun, where the Captain goes “Kilikilikili” on a Lama which spits on his face? Then we saw a Tibetan Takir (I hope I got the name right) who stood in such a dramatic pose that it put a Telugu film hero in mind.

T and I had a lively discussion on how to ride a double humped Bactrian camel and wondered how uncomfortable it must be if the camel decided to move the muscles in its humps. The poor creatures were huddled in the shelter—the early Fall-ish day must have been a tad cold for them. We tried to get them come out in the name of Genghis Khan, but to no avail.

The oddest creature we saw was without contest the Cavy. Apparently, they are rodents and include the guinea pig in their ranks. The one we saw was a creature that looked like the size of a Chital deer, with a rabbit face and thin, spindly legs.

We ended the day with a ramble along the brand new nature boardwalk. We didn’t see much of life on such a gloomy day except for a duck trio which chattered and followed T everywhere she went. What is it with the zoo and strange animal encounters?

The book I spoke about a few paragraphs before? Well, I left it behind in the park, along with my brand new umbrella and sunglasses. Now I will never know what happened to the Dutchman and his illegitimate daughter. Bah!

Anyway, you can see all my pictures here.

The Great American (Rail)Road Trip

2010-09-07T00:03:00.003-05:00

Ladies and gentlemen, would you care to take a little trip down history with me? We are not going far--just up to February 1764, to a small limestone bluff on the west bank of the mighty Mississippi, where Pierre Laclede Liguest’s (a French fur trader) men are erecting the first structures of a settlement, which is called Laclede’s Village for now.

Although his French style village is small, Laclede sees “one of the finest cities in America” there. The population of the village steadily grows over the years, aided by the French-Spanish-French-American ownership of the land.

Let’s move on to 1804 and be there to flag off the epochal Lewis and Clark expedition from Camp Wood, just outside our town. They are setting out to explore the land beyond the “great rock mountains” of the West, as decreed by President Thomas Jefferson. The nation’s westward expansion has officially begun.

Our town, now called St. Louis, becomes the last post before setting off to the wild west. By the 1820s, St. Louis has become a boomtown. Let’s jump to the 1850 to witness St. Louis becoming the second largest port by tonnage in the country, superseded only by New York. An English visitor in 1858 counts 170 boats at the St. Louis Levee. The city also becomes the terminus for stage coach lines heading off to find gold in California.

But wait, let’s usher in a newer method of transportation, which is going to ring the death knell to steamboats. We are of course witnessing the railroad system which is being built to the West and South of St. Louis. You might be familiar with some of the names: Pacific Railroad and Iron Mountain Railroad.

By the late 1800s, St. Louis has become the largest and busiest rail road terminal in the world! Let’s be there at the grand opening of the St. Louis Union Station, built at a cost of $ 3.6 million, being thrown open to the public in 1894.

St. Louis has become the largest city west of Pittsburgh, while Chicago is still a small town!

However, 20th century is not so kind to St. Louis--depression and wars slowly reduce the prosperity and significance of St. Louis. It’s population slips from the 4th to 52nd position in the country.

St. Louis today is like an aging diva who has got botox injections, very reminiscent of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (without the madness of course).

Everywhere you turn, you see remnants of past glory--noble courthouses, European-style buildings, and Romanesque museums. You also see the pock marks of decline--just walk two streets away from the arterial Market Street into Olive Street and it is very much obvious in old tired buildings, with graffiti and disrepair on their mien.

But then, this diva has enough spirit to make a comeback. St. Louis has been in the forefront of urban revitalization in the 21st century and even won an award recently. The result of this can be seen in swank high rises and some really cool parks in the downtown area.

I hope the diva finds the elixir of youth soon, because it will such a shame for this textured and interesting city that was so integral to this country’s history to fall into ruins.

The Union Station Marriott of St. Louis is definitely the most gorgeous hotel I’ve stayed in. The Union Station I mentioned a few paragraphs above was officially closed in 1978 (I can never forgive Americans for killing railroad and public transport to augment their automobile industry-stupid! Stupid! Stupid!). It went through major renovation in the 1980s and now has the hotel and a shopping mall.

The hotel has the magnificent Grand Hall - 10,000 sq. ft. big and three stories high, with intricate art deco interiors and some beautiful stained glass windows, with the grand staircases leading up to it from the grand entrance. My room was on the topmost floor, where the roof slanted, very like a castle.

This was perhaps the best place to stay in St. Louis, because one’s introduction to its glorious past starts right there at the lobby, aided by several well written signs talking about the nuances of the architecture and purpose of the building.

Walk out of the hotel to run into a beautiful fountain celebrating the confluence of Mississippi and Missouri across the street, designed by Carl Milles.

The thing is, I don’t get water fountains. Not even the elegant Mogul ones. I cannot see the aesthetic of squirting water in the air--let it flow as it should, will you? But this one in St. Louis was different.

The artist has envisaged the confluence like a marriage, so both the bride and groom have an entourage who are frolicking in the water. It is an elaborate fountain, exuberant, evocative, and brilliant.

The park that runs along Market Street for most of its length was full of seemingly homeless people on Sunday morning. It is an interesting park, with some cool installations and statues. The other side of the park is lined by what seems like the 60s style minimalist, utilitarian apartments. I’m sure they are expensive apartments and the lap of luxury, but from outside, they seemed like metaphorical characters in a European art house movie directed by someone like Goddard. Especially the one that was facing a beautiful red brick Irish Catholic church.

The first item on my agenda was to visit the Cathedral Basilica. Now, here’s why I like this city. You travel along Olive Street with its run down buildings, go past the St. Louis University which is an oasis amidst the desolation, and drive into a leafy neighborhood. There, across the street from a prosaic apartment building, tucked in a cozy corner, is a spectacular Cathedral Basilica, which claims to have the world’s largest collection of mosaic artwork! 83,000 sq. ft. or 2.5 acres of glittering, colorful mosaics depicting various aspects of the Catholic theology!

While the exterior is garden variety Romanesque (I am no expert), the interiors are Byzantine. Cruciform shape, marble walls indicating earth rising up to the domes and half domes filled with mosaics representing heaven all make you wonder whether you have wandered into Turkey.

We were given a free tour by a knowledgeable volunteer. Although it tends to be a little too long, I recommend taking the tour rather than looking around by yourself. It is completely worth it.

Next stop of course was the Gateway Arch. This was built in 1967 and commemorates the Gateway to Westward Expansion that St. Louis is. You might have seen its elegant arch in a million photographs, but like the Taj, nothing prepares you for its beauty.

It’s a 630 ft. arch, sleek, minimal, and streamlined. It’s exterior are made of stainless steel plates, giving it shiny, seamless appearance. Its reflective surface works superbly with changing light, making it look different each minute. There is a ride to the top. Although I got myself a ticket, I was very unsure of my acrophobia to risk it. I didn’t want to get a panic attack at 630 ft., sitting in a small car. Chicken, I know.

I happily went for the riverboat cruise along the Mississippi. Except for the thrill of sailing on the rapid and muddy waters of Mississippi, and listening to some nifty local trivia, the cruise was mediocre. The vast and steep steps that descend into the river were magnificent to look at--akin to the big ghats on the Hoogly (which is a very beautiful river, despite all the squalor that lines it, IMHO).

It was Monday all too soon and time to return. The last stop was lunch at Landry’s Seafood Place, facing a large man made lake, full of gold fish and traversed by people in small pedal boats. The seafood gumbo and shrimp kabobs were fantastic. In fact, this was the only tasty meal I had in St. Louis.

I traveled to St. Louis by the Amtrak train and felt I was going through my own Motor Cycle Diaries. On the way thither, track work forced us on an alternate route, cutting through the vast swathe of rural Illinois. Between Chicago and St. Louis, I didn’t see a single town, leave alone a city.

All I saw was sun drenched fields, flocks of birds, horses and cows, lonely houses or tiny villages, and thick forests that had secret green streams running through them. Six hours of going through the heartland of America made me wonder whether rural America is its truer identity than its too few cities. I almost understood its ethnocentricity--would you bother about other countries beyond your shores when you live in a lonely house with fields and forests extending in all directions as far as your eyes could see?

While coming back, the same track work forced us to travel to Springfield by bus. This small town, this one horse town, was where Lincoln came to find employment and found his wife. This is where he built his career. Apparently it was a growing prairie town in that time. Now it just looks, well, like nothing at all. The roads leading into town are unremarkable and downtown is quite characterless. The station is small with a leaking vending machine. Such is the march of capitalism.

This trip has been my most American experience. To view the pictures, click here.

The (Inscrutable) American

2010-09-02T01:51:00.005-05:00

Explain something to me. Is George Clooney a star or not? Is he a media darling, a celebrity, subject of many a female fantasies, and an impossibly good looking 49-year old or not? Is he a mainstream actor or not? Now what is he doing in a quiet, stark movie, doing a delicately nuanced character study of a taciturn assassin, dangerous and endangered (like the butterflies he likes to study)?

The American is a take-no-prisoners art house movie. It is minimalist. It is deliberate. It has very little dialog. It has even lesser action. It is visually stunning.

Even the plot of the movie is minimalist. Here’s an American assassin called Jack. Or perhaps he is Edward. He works for Pavel. We do not know what he is. It is not important. Only Jack (or Edward) takes orders from him without questions.

Jack is forced to kill three people, including a girl (perhaps a prostitute?) in Sweden. Now his boss has asked him to lay low in a remote Italian village. He is supposed to build a custom rifle for a woman called Mathilde. We don’t know why she needs it. Not important.

Jack is also not expected to make any friends. So he spends his days working out (very reminiscent of De Niro in Taxi Driver). He painstakingly builds the weapon. He is constantly on the edge because people from Sweden are after him. Perhaps other people too. He hardly sleeps.

He has wine and conversations with the local priest sporadically. Time goes in waiting, building, drinking cafes, walking through paved stone streets of the picturesque little village straining to hear footsteps that may be following him, and finding a private spot in the nearby woods. To try out his weapon. Or perhaps to observe butterflies.

He has sex with a prostitute called Clara (in a very European, sexy, and prolonged way). It is supposed to be functional but it is not. He is not supposed to, but he falls in love with her, even though he can’t trust her.

Now suddenly, Jack (or Edward) wants to build a life of his own. He wants the rifle to be his “last job” which sets the events of the movie into motion and take it inexorably to its end.

George Clooney’s performance can only be termed stunning. He is a “Very Private Gentleman” (the name of the source novel) and is generally inscrutable . The movie is unhelpful—there are no nifty flash backs, no narration, no cues on who he is and how he got to be what he is. All you see is now, this man, stony faced, purposeful, patient, and without question skilled at what he does. “I do what I am good at,” he says simply to the village priest.

You sense his desperate loneliness as he consumes cups of coffee or alcohol, always alone (to the background of Tu Vuò Fa' L'Americano in one very beautiful film noir-ish scene). You sense his alienation in his endless patrolling of the streets late at night. You sense his hunted soul during his sleepless vigils in his bed. You sense the emptiness of his life in his harshly unadorned house.

Does he feel anything? Of course he does. Didn’t you see that twitching of his mouth, the crinkling of his eyes, the curling and uncurling of his fist, or the flashes of hope/doubt/tenderness/desperation on his face?

This is a very good actor at the very best phase of his career. Watch this movie to enjoy his pitch perfect performance. Even if you are the sort of person who doesn’t like slow moving art house movies and like your action big, fast paced and high decibel.

If you are the sort of person who likes to watch a movie that is all form, then this is a treat. There are so many moments to savor in the film: the scene where Jack is descending the steps (perhaps into his own hell?) while the priest is ascending them and stops to regard Jack thoughtfully from the summit; or the many aerial shots of Jack making endless trips in his car up and down the winding roads of the mountain, very like a mouse in a maze; or the scene where a beautiful butterfly descends on Mathilde during their pseudo picnic at Jack’s favorite spot in the woods.

Sip it slowly like fine wine.

Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast

2010-08-23T19:28:00.004-05:00

In the interest of transparency, let me admit upfront that I love Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, made in 1991. I mean, what’s there not to love about the movie?

There’s its (richly deserved) Oscar-winning music--every song, up until the last extremely romantic waltz number is joyous and bursting with life. This was an animation movie made before the era of CGI and yet, can there be a more satisfying enchanted castle? Just watch the spoons doing synchronized swimming in the soup!

Disney’s Belle is a bookish, kind hearted girl with an easy ability to make friends--be it the Beast or his enchanted minions. And she can sing like a lark. The Beast is more like Ebenezer Scrooge--ill tempered, cantankerous, and achingly lonely.

But the most fun is the Disney staple of absolutely endearing supporting characters, be it the charming Lumiere (the candelabra with an evil eye for a duster); the uptight clock, Cogsworth; the buxom teapot, Mrs. Potts; her chipped cup of a son, Chip; or the footstool which uncannily behaves like a dog. They want to be “human again,” so they set out to entertain the hell out of Belle and drop not-so-subtle hints about the Beast.

Now what would a frothy, happy Disney musical have in common with a French film made in 1946 by the poet and surrealist Jean Cocteau?

A lot more than I expected. The Disney team seemed to drawn visual inspiration for their enchanted castle and creatures entirely from this film. The scene where Belle’s father first enters the castle seems completely modeled after the Cocteau’s classic. The ramparts of the castle, which are guarded by sculptures of ferocious animals is another instance.

But no, Cocteau’s film is no children’s film, although he asks us to believe in the tale in a childlike manner and be drawn into its magic, right at the beginning of the film. It is a visually stunning film, a triumph of expressionism, full of light and shadow, texture, mood, and trick shots.

There are two distinct worlds of the film. First, the everyday prosaic world where Belle lives with her shrewish sisters, a wastrel brother and her beloved pere, who seems to have the rottenest luck in business. This is a beautifully detailed world, created for us with wry humor. Check out that scene where Belle’s vain sisters, putting on airs, depart in their chairs carried by footmen. Unkempt, drunkard footmen with hay clinging on their backs--the only type that they can afford.

There is also Avenant, the wastrel brother’s friend, who proclaims love for Belle and wants to marry her. Belle seems to be attracted to him, but wouldn’t leave “mon pere” for the world. Things are normal here, with scrubbing and washing and sewing and bickering.

The second world is that in the enchanted castle. Nothing is normal here. It has a dreamlike quality: things are slower and movements seem suspended as if in space. Night is day, day is night. Candelabras are dismembered human hands and all statues seem alive, following the character’s movements with their eyes.

Belle, the pure maiden with a good heart and unwavering sense of duty, seems as curious as she is scared. In the stunning scene when she first enters the castle, after sneaking away from home, she seems to be rushing forward. In slow motion. Her clothes billowing behind her. To meet a beast she’s never seen before, but who owns her now.

She runs up a flight of stairs and is in a corridor lined with windows, on which diaphanous curtains are fluttering in a breeze. She is not running anymore. She is not even moving. She seems to be inexorably drawn.

Is this a dream?

Enough and more has been written about the sexual subtext and the bold Freudian motifs of this movie. I had read them all before watching it. But still, I found this scene jaw-drop-worthy. So was almost every scene that ensued.

Take what happens next. Belle comes face to face with the Beast and crumples down in a faint. The Beast kneels over her, his hands hovering over her body briefly. He then lifts her, turns and walks up a flight of stairs that is bathed with light from above while the rest of the room is in shadows. It is not clear where he is taking her. He is a Beast, after all. It looks like he is taking her to his den to devour her.

Turns out that he was just taking her to her enchanted bedroom. In a shot unbelievable in a 1946 movie, as he carries her over the threshold, her commoner’s clothes turn into finery. The Beast seem to have only one request: he will meet her everyday at 7:00 p.m. for dinner. She will not see him otherwise.

Which brings us to the much celebrated scene of the movie. Belle is sitting on a high-backed chair near the fire place, dressed in her finery and waiting to meet the Beast for the appointed dinner. He emerges out of the shadow from behind her. She immediately senses him. They talk and she looks--orgasmic. Even without seeing him. Or was that fright?

Much has been made about the knife that she toys with in this scene, but I shall leave it to your judgment. The Beast asks her to marry him, and she refuses. “Because you are a Beast, la bete!” she tells him.

The Beast, some critics say, is our Id. Primal, wild, and unsophisticated. Given to natural urges. Although he walks on two legs, he is more animal than human. Carcasses of his kill are strewn on the castle grounds. Belle sees him returning from his nightly kill, his hands smoking, and she doesn’t seem too disgusted or frightened. She is fascinated.

And yet she turns him out of her bedroom night after night. One night he turns up at her bedroom door, fresh from a kill, splattered with blood, mad with jealousy because she had told him about the handsome Avenant, his entire body smoking. When she tells him off, he staggers away, with his flailing hand briefly cupping the naked breast of a statue.

Oh boy!

Despite her growing friendship with the Beast, Belle is bored and longs to be with her family. She begs him to let her go back. He lets her go for a week, warning her that he will die if she doesn’t return.

Now we are thrust back into the regular world. Belle’s darling pere is ruined and on his death bed. Creditors have taken away all the furniture. When Belle returns, nobody but her father seems to be genuinely happy. Her siblings and Avenant plot to kill the Beast and usurp all his wealth. The real world now is ugly and too human.

Belle is unaware of all the roiling conspiracies around her. She is perhaps torn by her emotions. She keeps denying that she is in love with the Beast, but nobody, not even herself, is convinced.

The Beast sends his magical horse with the magical mirror to get her back. The conspirators hide the horse but give Belle the mirror. Which takes us to another brilliant, bold scene. When Belle gets the mirror, she doesn’t look into it. Instead she caresses it and holds it close. Then she sets it on the side table and lies down. We see her face through the mirror. I have never seen a scene so potently sexy when all the woman is doing is lightly touching the mirror with one hand.

While Avenant and the brother gallop away on the magical horse to kill the Beast, Belle decides it is time to return to him and uses the magical glove. She finds him dying near the pool. She pleads him to fight death but it seems like a lost battle.

This is where the plot twists in a brilliant way.

Avenant and Belle’s brother are trying to rob the Beast’s treasure trove. Avenant gets killed and turns into a Beast. The Beast comes alive as the Prince and looks like--Avenant! She doesn’t seem too thrilled with this new face of the Beast. She loves the Beast, she says. She loves Avenant too. She is just, well, complicated, the Prince concludes, before taking her away to his kingdom.

Photography and Direction are the real heroes of this film. Jean Marais kills as the Beast. I found Josette Day "naka", as the Bengalis would call it and reminded me of Sharmila Tagore a little.

Many many great directors have interpreted the medium of cinema in many many ways, but to me, European expressionism and film noir would always remain the zenith of the form. This genre and era celebrates cinema as no other time can. There was a boldness, a willingness to explore, and a focus on visuals without distracting colors that do it for me. And this Jean Cocteau’s classic is a shimmering example of this.

Priya's Day Out!

2010-08-01T18:37:00.007-05:00

I believe that there is no other city in the world that is as embracing to the alienated and broken as Mumbai is. I sensed it in 1999 when I first washed up on its grimy shores, tottering on a fine line, in a state of primordial soup than a fully formed person. It enveloped me in its fragrant bosom, pooh-poohed my self-pitying whining, told me in its no-nonsense way not to wallow, and placed me in the middle of the unrelenting rat race with a twinkle in its eyes.

Exactly 10 years later, in 2009, when I went back to being the primordial soup, it simply held my hand and waited patiently for me to form myself again. It let me maraud its congested alleys like a Genghis Khan gone rogue, giving me a sense of belonging among the heaving masses. It offered me newer surprises, like the graceful flamingoes on the viscous waters of Sewri or the multitude of birds in the entropic disorder of Powai lake. Its denizens offered their brand of casual and kind support.

I was thinking about all this yesterday as I was pottering around Chicago downtown. If Mumbai is the city of hope, Chicago is the city of friendliness. I don’t think any other city in the US is as non-threatening and full of smiles as Chitown is to newcomers.

True, for me, Chicago had suffered from being not-NYC for a long time. I found it too pretty, too touristy. Its streets didn’t smell like NYC’s did. People dressed frumpily. Chicago was nice where NY was edgy.

That was before I learned about Daniel Burnham and his great Chicago plan, which sets the benchmark on how a stinking, polluted city ravaged by a great fire could be rebuilt to become “Paris on the Prairie.” And save itself from urban decay for a hundred years thereon. Today Chicago bears the pock marks of its economic distress, but is still elegant and beautiful.

I now know that it was Burnham who opened up the lake shore as permanent parks, but didn’t really understand the magnitude of this until yesterday when I took a bus ride to the Museum of Science and Industry. 16 miles of unbroken parking trail is definitely a big deal.

It was a crowded day at the museum yesterday. I had to stand in the line for 45 minutes before I could even enter it. But then, it ranks second in the top cultural attractions of Chicago, so I shouldn’t be surprised. Its exterior is very Roman with tall columns, vaulted ceilings and regal proportions. The museum interior looked “Back to the Future.” I’m sure it is deliberate.

My first foray was into the exhibit containing 35 digitally enhanced photographs of the solar system by Michael Benson. He apparently uses a method called mosaicing, where he collages single frame images taken by various space probes to make seamless photographs.

Whatever he does, the result is beautiful. A few photographs really impressed me. The first was a series of picture of the earth, with India and Australia visible. Hoo boy! Picture of an impact crater on the moon’s surface, enhanced picture of the sun (how can a ball of fury look so beautiful?), and this astounding series of three pictures of Jupiter crossing the sun (a small black sphere in front of a huge angry star) were the others.

From thence, I wandered into the maritime gallery. Have you been to the Ballard Bunder Gatehouse Navy Museum? It is tiny in proportion, housed in a restored bunder once lost behind a wall, but it has some really interesting models and photographs, including HMS Trincomalee, the oldest ship of its kind to stay afloat .

The gallery in the MSI is slightly bigger and has a cool collection of ship models from around the world. There is a scaled model of the Mayflower, with a tiny stone from the steps that the pilgrims walked on when they landed in Plymouth. There are models of Columbus’ ships, the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. There is Leviathan, a German ship. There are all kinds of boats that we have read and heard about in songs: the banana boat, river boats, tug boats and barges. There are Navy ships from seafaring countries around the world, with serious canons, oars, masts and sails.

I admit that I am an incurable romantic. I had goose bumps when I saw these models of ships that accelerated the industrial age and global trade. I felt the weight of legacy of the adventurers and entrepreneurs, pirates and merchants, slaves and the desperate, who tumbled, roiled and toiled, endured sickness and storms in these ships. Hard a sta’board! Steady as she goes!

The next gallery was that of cars. I thought of all my friends who would’ve salivated over the antique cars, from Model T to Aston Martin, Alfa Romeo, Rolls Royce and Mercedes. There are some interesting photographs and movies on the earliest car race in Chicago, Ireland and elsewhere. Most entertaining.

I walked through some pointless exhibits for the very young. Ironically, one of them was this elaborate exhibit on traveling circus. First, I didn’t understand what it was doing in a science and industry museum. Second, I was saddened that a great form of entertainment is dying out in our lifetimes and we have already put it in museums. True, it was cruel to the animals, but haven’t our lives lost some of sparkle without the trapeze artists? Or the high wire artists? Or the clowns? Having clowns in malls and birthday parties is just wrong.

This is when I wandered into the piece de resistance of the museum—the U 505 exhibit. The capture of U 505 has all the lip smacking elements of a good Alistair MacLean novel. Think Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare.

1944, World War II: Germany has practically conquered most of Europe, except a defiant England, on which Germany has enforced embargo, cutting off all supplies. The Americans and the rest of the allies are suffering huge casualties, especially from the deadly U boats (and other reasons such as inexperienced and poorly trained troops, but that’s not relevant to our story).

Captain Daniel Gallery, a son of Chicago and commander of the anti-submarine task force Hunter Killer 22.3, has a vision: he wants to capture a U boat. His chance comes on May 15, 1944, when his task force consisting of the escort carrier USS Guadalcanal and the destroyer escorts USS Pillsbury, USS Pope, USS Chatelain, USS Jenks, and USS Flaherty are patrolling the coast of Africa. At 11:09 a.m., they make a sonar contact of the U boat, U 505. Acting swiftly, the task group overpowers U 505, making the crew abandon ship without scuttling it properly.

A eight-men boarding party reaches the partially sinking U 505 on a whaling boat and goes aboard, rescuing the boat from sinking fully. 52 crew members are caught as POWs. The U boat is towed with great difficulty to Bermuda. It gets embroiled in controversy as its capture broke the Enigma code, but later that year, with allied forces landing in Normandy, war is over. TG 22.3 gets Presidential Unit Citation and its participants are variously decorated.

U 505 is rescued from scrap metal death and is gifted to the Museum of Science and Industry, which has converted it into this huge-ass exhibit that covers an entire wing. It is a benchmark as far as museum exhibit design goes. Period posters, mannequins, office recreations, wonderfully recreated movies played on large screens at strategic locations, actual voice accounts of the eight men of the boarding party, and other visual displays build up the story gradually, whipping up excitement and patriotic fervor. Then finally you come to the boat.

Which, by the way, is huge.

The only technically science exhibit I saw was the Science Storm exhibit. Here, finally, there was the recreation of the Focault’s pendulum, proving the rotation of earth. Along with a three-storied column of air demonstrating the principles of tornadoes with multiple controls. And a giant rotary disc filled with garnets and soil to illustrate the principles behind avalanches. A big harmonic waves installation. Another installation on reflection, diffraction and refraction of waves.

I am filled with admiration of the countless clever men and women who unlocked the secrets of nature, overpowered them, and landed us smack in this technology era of nano bots and RFID. None of your discoveries or inventions is completely clear to me, but I am thankful that you sorted them all out.

I finally headed to the Omnimax Theater. It is an Imax theater, only it is giant in size. The screen is five stories high. The theater can seat 340 people. There were showing three different movies there and in my enthusiasm, I decided to watch all of them. I enthusiastically climbed as high as I could and found myself a choice seat.

Only the first movie was Legends of Flight, a quasi-promotional plug of the building of Boeing 787. It was overall quite boring, with the script meandering all over the place. However, there were some spectacular flight scenes. Now, I am a bad flier, with both acrophobia and claustrophobia. I shouldn’t have selected to watch this movie or if I did, I shouldn’t have sat that high up.

While my rational mind assured me that I was sitting in a theater, every time the flight took off and flew dizzyingly high, flirting with high mountain-tops and vast skies, I was scared to death. It felt as if I was going to tumble down uncontrollably, breaking my neck in the process.

This considerably diminished my enjoyment of the next movie, Ultimate Wave Tahiti, featuring nine-time world surfing champion Kelly Slater. I wonder why they spent so much time under water exploring the coral reef if the bloody movie was about surfing. When they did come up for air and rode some spectacular (or perfect as they claim) waves, it was breathtaking. Imagine being drowned by a five-story high wave!

My claustrophobia and imminent hyperventilation subsided as I moved to an aisle seat, stretched my legs and dozed through the coral reef sections (yes, I can sleep through even an Imax movie). I was relaxed and fully prepared for the best movie of the afternoon, Hubble.

Narrated by Leonardo Dicaprio, this movie is a nail-biting documentary of space walking astronauts who went out to repair the Hubble telescope for one last time in 2009. I died of anxiety as these astronauts did some minute repairs such as changing a circuit board after unscrewing multiple tiny screws with as much dexterity as afforded by their bulky gloves, all the while floating in space. Phew!

The movie went on to show why Hubble is important to us, as it helps us see deep into the space and enables us spot galaxies from 100 billion years ago. It also helps us peep into the star nursery of the Orion constellation, giving us hope that perhaps in a few billion years from now, a galaxy similar to the Milky Way might come into existence around these infant stars.

Our ride back into town was quite slow as Bon Jovi was in concert last evening. I missed the train I was aiming to catch, so I pottered around a little bit and dove into Barnes & Nobel on State street, mainly to use their restroom. A process which, unlike other stores, was quite complex. First you have to surrender a picture ID. Then they give you a key, which lets you in, one at a time, into a hugely disappointing restroom . If I have to surrender my passport to pee, shouldn’t the loo have some cool gadgets such as retina scanner and metal detector, in the very least?

Bah!

Happy Birthday to Me!

2010-07-18T22:01:00.014-05:00

I am writing this blog post sitting cross legged on a dainty white bench, under the shade of tall trees, surrounded by the chirps of birds on their dinner route and the racket of cicadas, who seemed to have hatched a little late this year. Chipmunks are bounding around, standing on their hind legs and gnawing at the food they find from time to time.

In front of me is about 50 yards of gently sloping lawn, a longitudinal patch of greenery tucked between wooden picket fence on one side and a line of trees which look like the seven trees that Ram sent his arrow through to kill Vaali treacherously on the other. It is a balmy evening, cool under the trees, with a soothing breeze. Wireless connectivity is excellent.

I’ve found meself a little piece of summer idyll, right at the back of my hotel property.

This is the sort of perfectness that has driven lesser mortals to write poetry. But I, gentle reader, shall desist. I shall give you an account of my week-long birthday celebrations instead.

I do feel like a state, or at least a minor royalty, to have such distributed festivities. But life is a lemonade stall and such things happen. (It means nothing--I just wanted to say that.)

S (male) helped me usher in my birthday on Tuesday evening. It was another beautiful day like this and we went to P.F. Chong’s, an evidently popular Chinese sit-in restaurant chain. The place was thronging with (mostly white) people as we went in. I still can’t get over the fact that I am living in very white area--strange for a suburb of Chicago, no?

That aside, the evening was exceedingly pleasant, as S and I discovered some common interests and were talking long after the (mediocre) dinner was cleared from our table. He also lent me a bunch of books by my favorite Tamil author, Sujatha.

On Wednesday, I had just enough time to respond to a deluge of affectionate, tongue-in-cheek, or just plain nice birthday wishes that came via Facebook and e-mails. I love FB for facilitating this and making me feel like a celebrity with 100+ wishes. What’s a birthday without people making a small fuss about it?

On Thursday, I left work early and took the Metra train to downtown, where S (female) and I were attending a music concert at Millennium park called “Music Without Borders.”

Chicago has been experiencing a tropical summer this year--hot and humid. It is the kind of weather that makes us Indians curse and long for the monsoon showers. But here, coming as is does after a cold winter and a wet and gloomy spring, people revel in it, hanging outdoors in the migraine-inducing sun in a way that makes us desis go, “Seriously?”

Its like a festival here in Chicago. Everybody is outdoors, there are events of all imaginable kinds every 100 yards, and all public transport is filled to the rafters. It is exhilarating.

Before the concert, we stopped to have dinner at Pizano’s, a “Chicago Italian Restaurant,” just off Michigan Ave. It was an all American place, with a nice bar, walls chock-a-block with sporting memorabilia, not very fancy decor, but thick with crowd and conversations. Food was very good.

After dinner, we walked to the Jay Pritzker Pavilion where the concert was underway. The “Music Without Borders” is a series of double bill concerts by music bands from literally around the world. That evening, the first concert was by a band from Columbia and Latino music was pulsating through the giant speakers. People were dancing in clusters all over the place. The music was top notch--especially one vocalist had a rich voice that did calisthenics at his bidding.

The second band was from Cotonou (Capital of Benin, a West African country). Their music was very different, but energetic and infectious nevertheless. But I was like Cinderella with a train to catch to my distant and not very well lit suburb, so had to leave soon.

The bus to take me to the station did not arrive at all, so had to do a mad dash to Union Station in a taxi driven by, well whaddyaknow, an Ethiopian. Luckily he didn’t propose marriage--perhaps the drive was too short. But he did tell me that he is an elementary school teacher and just drove taxi for the summer, had many Indian friends, and knew all about Tata. I made it to the train just in time. The walk back to the hotel from the station was not half as hairy as I had expected it to be.

The original plan for Saturday was to go biking/hiking with S’s family at Salt Creek Trail. However, while reading on it, I discovered that the trail ended in the Brookfield Zoo. I begged S whether we can go to the zoo instead, and she gracefully agreed.

Well, here’s the deal. I grew up in Thiruvananthapuram, which has India’s second oldest zoo (established in 1843), surrounded by the beautiful museum gardens, which also encompasses Sri Chitra Art Gallery, featuring some of Raja Ravi Varma’s most spectacular paintings. I’ve visited it a million times and have encountered wonders such as one week-old lion cubs, which we saw in the smelly and dark maternity enclosure, sub terra. Zoos, even now, take me back to that happy childhood place.

So I was as excited as (if not more) S’s six-year old at the prospect. We reached the Zoo at 3:00 p.m. and learned to our dismay that it would be open only until 6:00 p.m. that day. We set forth gamely, determined to partake of as much entertainment as could be had in the time we had.

The first stop was at the dolphin show--which by itself made our day. It was not a very long show, with the standard jumping, splashing, swimming backwards, playing, fish bashing and vocalizing elements. But what fascinates me and warms the cockles of my heart at such shows is how adorable these playful and intelligent creatures are. And how like dogs in behavior--loving and demanding attention. I look at the palpable affection between them and their trainers and wonder, can there be a better job in the world?

We then went to see the underwater showing-off of the dolphins and then the sea lions. I’m sure they are just doing their thing, but they are obviously aware of the onlookers and seem to be doing one extra graceful lap on their backs just to put up a show, like that lion in Madagascar.

Going above ground, we were faced with a somber reminder of where we were--there was a news item about a sea lion that died of complications from swallowing a coin tossed by onlookers into the pool. Damn!

We then set off to the stingray pavilion, at the excellent suggestion of T, S’s six-year old. I had no idea what we were going to see there and was quite puzzled when they asked us to wash our hands before entering. I also didn’t understand why everybody was leaning into an oversized tank with their hands inside the water.

S told me patiently that we have to put our hands inside the water and the stingray would come and nibble at our fingers. It was then I noticed the two or three stingrays, excellently camouflaged under water, swimming up and down.

Oh dear! The stingray feels like suede, soft and velvety. It’s little body is so soft that one feels one might puncture it if not careful. I don’t know about you, but the thrum of life in little creatures’ bodies always renders me speechless. How? How? Makes a great argument for Intelligent Design, non?

We saw lions, tiger, and snow leopard, but it was time to leave by then. We were exhausted by the heat and sweating as well. We had covered only about 20% of the zoo, but it was a very satisfying experience.

I set back home, emboldened by my piece-of-cake journey on Thursday, even though S and her family were suggesting that I should go back in the morning. I got into the train by 8:50 p.m., befriended the Swedish gentleman sitting next to me, and we had a nice conversation going. I have met very few Europeans, but the difference has always been stark--this man, even with his halting English, had a much more intelligent conversation than could be expected from an average American. (There, I am a snob, I accept.)

Things were going swimmingly until 9:15 p.m., when our train screeched to a halt and the power went off. We were two stops away from my station. Those who have traveled in American suburbs would endorse the surprising lack of streetlights. So the scene outside our compartment was feeble illumination cast by few lamps on the platform and darkness beyond.

The young Tamil man, sitting in front of us with his family, boldly stepped out of the train and came back after some time with the news that the engine and the first compartment have been detached from the rest of the train and are about 20 ft away from the rest of it. We saw conductors running up and down the platform, but no news. They then closed the gates so that we couldn’t exit from the train.

We sat there, in darkness, completely devoid of options of getting home if the train wouldn’t start again. Teenagers made their laughing way to the front of the train to take pictures. Oh to be that carefree and irreverent again!

The Swedish gentleman asked me, “Does this happen often?”

Does it?

I thought it was better explained by my “Calamity Jane” aura, but held my peace. I didn’t want to scare him. After about 15 minutes, the conductor came and said, “We are trying to connect the train back.”

Impossible as it might sound, they did manage to connect the train and we were off again. We reached my station 20 minutes late, but luckily there were other people from my hotel in the same compartment (what are the chances, I ask you), so I reached safely.

So this, gentle reader, is a faithful (well, mostly) account of the first week of the rest of my life. You can see all the pictures at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=229850&id=547851114&l=aaf812e74c

Sweet Things are Made of This...

2010-07-05T18:07:00.013-05:00

We all know that summers in the western hemisphere are made of long bright days and balmy nights; endless blue skies and glittering waters; disappearing clothes and abundance of skin; playful little boys and girls; big bad bikers and innocuous bicyclists; open air concerts and handicrafts fairs; and cold sweet ice creams and tangy lemonades.

And July 4 is gloriously in the middle of it all. This weekend was sun, sun, sun. People and fireworks too. Not to mention food and books. Sprinkled with music and movies.

Sweet things are indeed made of this.

Saturday, 9:00 p.m., Deerfield: This year, 4th of July fireworks came to me. This is my fourth in this country and I’ve had the privilege of joining the festivities in four different locations: Torrance, LA in a trailer park, Peoria, IL on the riverfront, Chicago at the Navy Pier, and the football field across the road here in Deerfield.

The crowd as usual was awesome. People started trickling in with their folding chairs and picnic blankets from 7:00 p.m. onwards. By 8:30 p.m. when I got there, the place was overflowing. I found a small bit of grass which had an uninterrupted view and squatted. Dusk fell very slowly--excruciatingly so for the little boys around me. We knew we were edging close to the festivities when several lantern-like balloons were set out to float up, up, and away against a pink twilight sky. And then at 9:25 p.m., without much ado, a single rocket went up the sky and inundated it with sparkles. The crowd screamed.

For the next 20 minutes, the sky was a riot of colors and lights red, blue, pink, gold, and green. I clicked away like crazy. The man sitting next to me tapped my shoulder and said, “Isn’t that light pole getting in the way of your pictures? Why don’t you move here?” He pointed out a better place. Well, that’s midwest for you--people are generally so darn nice to complete strangers.

More pics on http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=225453&id=547851114&l=ec5872141a.

Sunday, 3:15 p.m., Grant Park, Chicago: The Taste of Chicago festival allegedly attracts 6 million visitors annually. On Sunday, the last day of this 10-day festival at Grant park, at least a 100,000 people were there, braving the 90+ deg F temperature and debilitating humidity. The atmosphere was indescribable.

There were food outlets as far as the eye could see on all four sides. All stalls were doing brisk business. There was a sea of humanity engaged predominantly in the act of eating all around. The air was thick with chatter, music, and bewildering number of flavors of food. The place felt like a small steaming valley, surrounded as we were with the towering Chicago skyline on three sides.

The heat considerably diminished my enjoyment of the day, even though I am from the tropics and should have a little more tolerance. I was embarrassingly very close to swooning/throwing up/having a heart attack within five minutes of being at Grant Park and continued to be so for the two hours I did spend there. I was also hamstrung by the fact that the festival was trying to be the Beef of Chicago. I think a small city of 10,000 cows would’ve been expended on July 4th alone.

I stuck to African cuisine of red beans, coconut rice, fried plantains, and goat. (Ok, so I was sticking as close to Indian cuisine as I could--so shoot me.) The food was surprisingly good. I also had 4 - 5 measly shrimps on a stick which I thought was daylight robbery.

Sunday, 4:30 p.m., Petrillo Music Shell: Without planning to do so, I accidentally wandered into the tail end of a concert. The performers were Passion Pit, a Massachusetts-based band. The performers looked like college kids rather than musicians but whatever I heard, I liked. Not that I am an authority on the subject.

What really rocked my boat was the crowd. This is my very first open air concert of this size and youthfulness. Or the sheer number of bare bodies. The crowd was obviously having the time of their lives.

I clicked to my heart’s content and tapped my toes to couple of their songs as well. Did I mention I liked what I heard?

More pics on http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=226028&id=547851114&l=35272ec1ee

Monday 2:00 p.m., Deerfield Public Library: Some books make you cry--with gratefulness that such magnificence, such beauty exists in this world. For a book to be in this category, it must be: (a) Hard bound (b) bulky (c) should have soft beautiful paper (d) should have beautiful illustrations/photographs if it can help it and (e) should be well written on an interesting subject (obviously).

At the very nice Deerfield Public Library, I wept over three such books. One was a sexy, sexy annotated compilation of Sherlock Holmes, with period illustrations/ paintings and detailed margin notes. Another was a book on the history of religion in the world by Mircea Eliade. It was so lucidly and crisply written. My later research shows that Mr. Eliade is quite a dude. The third one was that epochal publication by Time - “Chronicle of the 20th Century.” Page after page of award winning photographs; history caught in a frame. Oh man!

Saturday at the movies: Watched Knight and Day. The story was obviously written on a piece of paper napkin folded twice over at a bar while guzzling beer. But who cares? Tom and Cameron share a great on-screen chemistry, the movie is continuously funny, and the action sequences are fantastic. What more can one ask for in a summer movie?

Sunday, Random strangers, Metra Train: The best part of traveling in the midwest is the warmth and friendliness of random strangers. The young woman traveling with me into Chicago told me that she lived in downtown, had come down to the suburb for a party and stayed over at her parents’ place in which she was not comfortable as it is not “home” anymore. Did I say friendly? Make it willing-to-share-personal-details-with-alacrity.

Take this mother-teenage daughter duo who sat in front of me while coming back from downtown. They caught my attention with the way they talked to each other like girlfriends, rather than mom-daughter. Then the mother turned and included me in the conversation. Within five minutes flat, I knew all about their Indian pediatrician, her late husband who died of brain cancer, her in-laws who blame her for his death, and the state of entertainment at Fox Lake. I was thankful when the train reached my station.

Three more months of such perfectness. Sigh!

Vikramaishwaryeeyam

2010-06-30T00:36:00.005-05:00

The movie works because the story does. So the first credit should go to Valmiki, and for the Tamil version of the movie, Kamban. These two gentlemen gave not only a solid story to work from, but pages and pages of beautiful poetry, full of metaphors, similes and poetic nuances.

Suhasini’s dialogs sound fantastic because she has done a brilliant job of adapting poetry into simple rustic and colloquial language. Vairamuthu’s lyrics soar in this context. The movie is packed with delightful and fresh visual interpretations of the scenes we know so well—be it Sita pining under a tree, or Hanuman meeting her bearing Ram’s message, or a Bacchanalian celebration of the Asuras. Watch the movie for the fantastic cinematography by Santosh Sivan, if nothing else.

Kamban is also responsible for the humanization of Ravanan that we see in the movie. In the Tamil Ramayanam, Ravanan is depicted as a fantastically talented man and a great king. His single weakness which leads to his eventual downfall is that he falls for another man’s wife.

The movie works well because of this premise. And especially because Vikram gives such a controlled, nuanced, and studied performance of Ravanan. His triumph is that he uses his single head and body to bring out 10 shades of personality—angry asura, thoughtful leader, loving brother, playful young man, and a heartbroken lover, to name a few. There were moments of his performance which gave me goose pimples—that scene at the river, where he asks Sita about her relationship with Ram and talks about this all consuming jealousy he feels for Ram; so much jealousy that it makes him expand and feel bigger than anybody. Just look at the myriad of emotions that flit through his face—his eyes! Oh man!

The movie works because Mani has pushed the envelope and explores the possibility that Sita falls for Ravanan too. I read a review which called it Stockholm Syndrome, but really, I believe it is written by a moron who never asked the following questions about Ramayana: Why is Sita so passive? Why is she so dull? Is she a human being at all, or just a male chauvinistic interpretation of the ideal womanhood? Why does Sita, as depicted by Deepika Chiklia, cries all the time?

Mani presents a much overdue alternative: a fiery and feisty Sita, a well read and talented Sita, a Sita who has strong opinions, and a human Sita who can be conflicted and who can have complex emotions. A Sita who looks at Ravanan and tells him, “My life is not yours to take. It is mine and you have no right over it,” and “Why are you making a woman a pawn in a game between men?” Kudos Mani. And Suhasini for that bit of emancipated dialog!

Which brings me to Aishwarya Rai Bachan’s performance: like most of us, I hate her on principle. She is pretty but she is cold, plastic, and an extremely mediocre actor. And she is married to Abhishek Bachan. Enough said.

But oh boy, has she worked hard in this movie! A lot of physical work definitely--she jumps into ravines, clambers up rocky mountains, runs barefoot in the forest, digs a man out of a hole he is buried into with her bare hands, and so on. And also a lot of acting work—it is a complex and difficult part and she does a good job of it. She looks her age in some angles, which makes her more acceptable, I guess. :-)

Prithviraj as Ram looks handsome, and he plays his character with such single minded ruthlessness. My complaint in the movie is that while it explores the psyche of Ravanan and Sita so well, Ram is merely a Terminator kind of presence, who tortures a maimed man, does encounter-type killing with impunity, and sends his wife as the Trojan horse to get his man.

The movie is fantastically cast. Prabhu and Karthik share the screen in a Maniratnam movie after 24 years (since the epochal Agninatchathiram). It is a treat to watch them as always. And Karthik as Hanuman—gosh, that is brilliance itself! Prabhu somehow gets cuter with every passing year and every kilogram of weight he adds to his expansive person—Ranga Rao’s mantel of the genial Asura has been passed on to very capable shoulders. Vaiyapuri’s underplayed eunuch character is lovely.

ARR’s music is great. Here’s my humble submission—ARR’s music sounds the best with Vairamuthu’s lyrics. They share such a wonderful chemistry. And for those of you who don’t understand Tamil, it is a big loss.

One big relief for me—after a long, long time, Mani did not screw up a climax. He doesn’t stand on a soap box and give a lecture; he is not obsessed with a “social consciousness”. Instead, he keeps it personal, tight, and very effective.

Of course I have my share of issues with the movie: the first half is jerky and settles only in the second half. The metaphors look very obvious—like the hawk that represents Ravanan’s presence. Seriously? Surpanakha’s story is done in broad brush strokes, in a hurry, and very unconvincing. The narrative sags in some places.

But overall, the old lion roars once again!

Columbus and Cincinnati, OH

2010-06-17T00:51:00.009-05:00

An Ethiopian taxi driver in Columbus, OH, offered marriage to me.

He felt that his US Citizenship made him irresistible. When I laughed, he chided me: “No no, I am serious. Take my card.” It took some amount of firmness to dissuade him.

He was driving me from the Columbus airport to the Greyhound bus terminal. The meeting was at Cincinnati, but the airfares had been prohibitively expensive. So the smart of idea of flying to Columbus and taking the bus from thereon had been hatched. It was thus I landed in Columbus, bright eyed and busy tailed, on Tuesday morning.

My driver handled my rejection gamely with “You Indians only marry Indians no?” He then proceeded to show me the meager and underwhelming landmarks of Columbus downtown. It was disappointing really, because from the air, Columbus looked like the modern day cousin of the “village we know so well”. There were neatly arranged houses in tidy neighborhoods everywhere. From 20,000 ft, it certainly looked like peace was reigning.

But downtown was characterless, a little helter-skelter, and overambitious. An all too short a ride through its streets later, we landed in front of the Greyhound terminal.

Have you ever driven through poorer neighborhoods in the US? Have you felt the unspoken menace in the air, even though there is nobody around and everything is ominously still? Well, Greyhound terminal was rife with such danger.

It was in a gray alley. It was tucked about 50 ft from the road. The walkway was charmless, with litter fluttering around. Two or three youth were insouciantly hanging about the entrance. With a sinking heart, I pushed the door and entered a harshly lit but poorly upholstered interior. The first sign I saw was “firearms are not allowed on the buses.”

The next poster I saw was “It’s not too late to go back home,” addressed to at-risk teenage runaways. There seemed to be a few of them at the terminal. The young man in a jaunty hat, his girlfriend in seriously torn jeans, that young lady on the floor who had a shock of bright green hair accentuating her blonde tresses , all looked like they escaped the sets of Trainspotting 2.

I had about 90 minutes to kill. Realizing that spending them at the terminal was out of question, I ran out and started wandering around downtown Columbus in an aimless manner. The very first thing I ran smack into was the Statehouse building—a sprawling beautiful monument. I don’t what Columbus-ians think of it, but I thought it was a tad too big for the city. I found the 7 ft statue of Columbus holding a globe in his hand pensively on its grounds deliciously pompous.

I really shouldn’t be irreverent to the building or the state because of the role it played in the Civil War. I found a very interesting plaque on the Underground Railroad that was active in Ohio before the war.

As I walked around, I was accosted by a group of Vegans who were spreading awareness. When the lady said, “there is Vegan chicken available!” I couldn’t resist responding: “What? I am a vegetarian!” The ornate Ohio Theater was screening John Wayne’s Rio Bravo (1959) as the premier show of the summer movie series. I was charmed by Columbus’ answer to Times Square on High Street. I decided to have food at Cinco’s, a regular Mexican place in a fancy building, overlooking the video walls.

By now, it was time to go back to the bus terminal. We were shuffled on to the bus, which lived up to expectations. While not being overtly dirty, the interiors threatened to unravel in that direction any moment. We were asked not to sit on a couple of seats because “they are broke”. I found chewing gum stuck to the a/c vent below my window.

I was joined on the next seat by Bunty, an unmistakably Punjabi young man, who insisted that I should watch Veer, the DVD of which he was carrying. When I demurred, he rummaged through his collection, anxious to find something that will suit my taste. But since he only had “Pakistani drama”, we settled that he was just not destined to provide me with entertainment. Luckily, he didn’t propose marriage, which could be because of this girlfriend in Jalandhar with whom he talked nonstop for two hours. He said she fights with him “too much” because of “shaq”.

My ride to Cincinnati was otherwise eventless and quite brief. The rest of the evening was spent in preparing for the meeting next day. Things flowed in the manner of these things—we started out with total confusion, got some clarity after a couple of drinks, got hysterical at some point, and then ended in grunt work. We also ate a lot of food in the meanwhile, including a latish run to the nearby Chipotle.

This afternoon, after the meeting, all of us set out for our respective destinations back home. S gave me a ride to Columbus. I wanted him to stop at some place so that I can take some pictures for my website (http://futloose.com/blog for those who haven’t still seen it). S had been running a fever for the past two days and justifiably wanted to just get back home.

But I cribbed and cribbed in the car and made him stop at a rest place. As we walked around in the small woods, we found a lot of dog poop and mushrooms. Within an area of 50 sq. feet, we saw about a dozen species of mushrooms. Perhaps dog poop is the best manure for mushrooms. After capturing these colorful little fun-gis on my camera, we set out.

Unbeknownst to me, S had another surprise in store. A few miles down the road, he suddenly exited the highway and entered seriously rural environs—long roads amidst woods, fields, grazing horses and goats, scattered farm houses, and dairy farms. It all ended in a scenic little lake called Caesar Lake. Summer sun was making the sky an endless expanse of blue with painted on plump clouds, the water jade green, and the trees a lush green.

After spending a happy 20 minutes there, we sped back to Columbus. As usual, our flight was delayed. S started looking very ill indeed. We finally stumbled into our plane. We landed in Chicago literally under a cloud conglomerate. The city looked like some gothic painting, all grays and smog and a smear of scarlet in the horizon.

It all looked gloriously complex and inviting.

Holland on Macatawa, MI

2010-05-31T20:34:00.010-05:00

In Holland, Michigan, single female travelers of my skin color are clearly a rarity.

The old man sitting at the window of one of the many downtown restaurants nudged his wife and pointed at me. The old couple on my left at the restaurant couldn’t stop staring at me or the food I ordered. The middle-aged couple on my right were startled when I requested them to take a picture of me with my camera. The vacuous young woman at the counter of the local museum asked me, “Have you come to look at the museum?” when I entered. The lady at the cafe couldn’t understand my simple request to open a juice bottle. Hell, a lot of people didn’t understand me in Holland.

It was all mildly racist or I am just spoiled rotten by Midwestern hospitality.

I should cut the Hollanders a little slack really. This is a small town the size of Peoria, (population about 250,000) on the western side of Michigan State. It is situated on the eastern end of Lake Macatawa, a dinky little lake (6 miles long and 1.2 miles wide), perpendicular to and feeding into the Lake Michigan. It is 80% white and was voted one of the best places in America to retire. It is also not so much on the regular traveler’s map.

Holland was established by Dr. Albertus Van Raatle, a Dutch separatist Calvinist in 1847. The Dutch heritage is central to the place’s cultural identify, and they get it off with the Tulip festival, an authentic windmill imported from Netherlands, a Dutch village and various other exotica. It is firmly a Bible town, with 170 churches, if Wikipedia is to be believed.

You get the picture.

I picked Holland as a holiday destination using the scientific method of playing “inky-pinky-ponky.” Memorial Day weekend was fast approaching and the vague plans I had of visiting friends fell through due to various reasons. D, the friendly shuttle driver at the hotel suggested Michigan when he overheard a couple of us discussing the weekend in the van. “How does one get there?” I asked him. “Train,” he said. And had me.

Anybody who has visited the US would agree with me that there is never a more exciting or wondrous sight as the gleaming, aerodynamically designed Amtrak train thundering past. And if you are in NY/NJ, you will find that the passengers are usually these sharply dressed professionals pulling their smart roller bags and matching computer cases, walking purposefully with not a hair out of place, casting disdainful glances at all the losers traveling by local trains.

I have always, to quote Liz Lemon of 30 Rock, “Wanted to go to there!”

So I came to my room, Googled “weekend trips to Michigan” and came up with several destinations in the Grand Rapids-Holland-Grand Haven area. I chose Holland because I liked the looks of Big Red, the beautiful lighthouse. With a fast beating heart, I booked my Amtrak tickets.

The Amtrak region of Union Station at Chicago did not disappoint at all. It was like the port at any great city of antiquity as described by travelers such as Megasthanes. It was teeming with people of all kinds of denominations. There, a Texan ranger--was that a saddle that he had thrown on his shoulder--walking past a group of Amish people, in their archaic attire! Oh there, a couple of pretty Indian nurses (or doctors) walking past with, “Mujhe nahi pata tha ki itni lambi line hogi!” Of course--a multitude of Latino people with their beautiful children, mingling with pretty/handsome college kids. Oh, to have the gleaming tresses, tight asses, and lithe bodies of youth! Would the picture be complete without the harried looking professional type with his briefcase and frown?

It was all very diverting.

The interior of the train was all swell, although the cafe car was disappointing. (I really didn’t know what I was expecting though.) My neighbor was a young man with a distinctive accent which he later explained as Scottish. He slept most of the time but we managed to pack a lot in the brief time we did talk. He also did something that pleased me very much--as soon as I said I write a travel blog, he searched for the URL on his phone an even graciously read some parts of it. He also complimented me on it. J, if you are reading this as you said you would, thank you!

I reached Holland at 9:30 p.m. but thankfully, there was a taxi waiting for me and I was whisked off to my hotel. The hotel, belonging to the same chain I am staying in Chicago, was away from town, in the middle of nowhere. Only lonely roads and distant factories surrounded it. It was full.

The next day, in my determined way, I found out that there is a local bus service, not unlike the one I used to patronize in Peoria, and one lone bus came near the hotel at 20 minutes past the hour, from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Monday through Saturday. I trudged along the lonely road and stood near the bus stop sign, with not another human being in sight. I was expecting a sinister trailer come up the road to the accompaniment of harmonica music any moment.

I was the second passenger in the bus and we made it that way to the Padnos Transportation Center. Luckily, the Windmill Island was just off the bus station so I walked thither. I have seen prettier parks. But the 250-year old De Zwaan windmill, imported from Netherlands as CKD and put up together in Michigan actually works. The flour they grind there is for sale. The tour guides are young women dressed in traditional Dutch costumes who also entertain visitors with traditional Dutch folk dance from time to time. The tour up the windmill alone was worth the trip.

The park is full of other Dutch exotica, like a recreation of a 13th century way side inn, a 19th century street organ, and a supposedly Dutch carousel. The signs are what really caught my attention, like “don’t touch the turtles--they bite!”

I walked around the gardens for a couple of hours and was getting quite fatigued by the heat and humidity. I set off in search of downtown for some food. On the way, I met a couple of women, who again did not understand me, but were curious about what I was doing there alone.

Downtown Holland is determinedly pretty and quaint, with a lot of interesting shops (not one chain store), lovely old buildings, and many restaurants. I had a very American lunch at Alpenrose. After lunch, I set out to explore the town a little more. The older parts of Holland are lovely, with old buildings sitting there like art pieces, a sylvan garden at the center and a surprisingly good museum. It is also a college town (Hope College) with the usual sprinkling of young people on bicycles, playing Frisbee at the park, or roaring around in fast cars.

I think I had a mild heat stroke by this time as my legs were cramping, my head was beginning to throb, and I was exhausted. I somehow made my way back to the transportation center by 6:00 p.m. The driver recognized me. This time, I was the only passenger.

I had planned to go to the Dutch village the next day morning, but two things stopped me. One, I realized that the buses don’t run on Sundays. I was unwilling to spend money on taxis. Two, I was still exhausted from the previous day’s excursions. I decided to conserve my energy and aim only for the dinner cruise I had booked myself into that evening.

The Holland Princess dinner cruise is on a 65' Victorian style paddle wheel river boat, done up quite tackily with plastic furniture, plastic crockery, and even plastic lei (sigh!). It docks at the eastern end of the Macatawa lake, near a scrap metal factory, on the very unimpressive Dutton park. My heart sank at the sight of all this.

But despite all this, the cruise was most enjoyable. It is a two-hour ride, during which the old boat sails sedately along the length of the Macatawa lake, toots merrily as it crosses the channel, sails a little bit in the open waters of Lake Michigan, and then returns even more slowly than it was on the way out.

All through our journey, we were outpaced by all sorts of recreational water vehicles known to man--speed boats, launches, sail boats, and yachts. People and dogs of all ages who were riding on them waved at us vigorously. Teenagers screamed in mirth when the boat tooted its old-fashioned siren. Cheerily fat people looked at us with great affection from under their colorful umbrellas on various scraps of beaches. Huge holiday homes of local and national millionaires with their private piers and assortment of boats lined the entire length of the lake on both sides.

But the sight most unforgettable was that of the Big Red. This lighthouse was first erected in 1872 at the mouth of the channel between the Macatawa and Michigan lakes and was improved upon until 1880. It is bright red and is one of the most beautiful sights in Holland. It is no longer in operation, but is a “protected” monument. They say the best view is from across the channel from the Holland State Park, but I say the Holland Princess cruise has the best, as it goes much closer. Pictures at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=215450&id=547851114&l=77c4ca71fa.

The Holland Princess was started very recently and I hope that people patronize it more so that they graduate from plastic to something more classy. I wish it all the best.

I was all ready to get back this morning, but had forgotten that I am Calamity Jane. While it was very warm and humid in the past two days, dark clouds gathered early this morning. The first crack of thunder was heard at 5:30 a.m. After about half an hour of light and sound show, the heavens opened and it poured. I haven’t seen a thunder storm like this in the US. My third floor room seemed much closer to the elements. I rode to the station in a torrential downpour with visibility of probably five feet.

I was wet and cold when I stepped into the station, along with a bunch of equally wet people, all exclaiming about the weather. There is something nice about waiting in a pretty train station with a bunch of people while the rain lashes at the window panes.

It eventually stopped raining. The train was a little late but I had a very pleasant journey back to Chicago, though Chicago also was very gloomy. I got back to my dear old Deerfield and was picked up by the hotel shuttle promptly. Ah, the comfort of familiar things!

Of Travelogues and Movies

2010-05-23T21:55:00.012-05:00

When you secure yourself a table at the sunlight-flooded coffee shop at Borders, overlooking the modest spire of the Northern Suburban Church and the uninspiring mien of Stein Mart, trying to find a little corner of peace on this summer-adjacent Saturday on which you have been stood up by not one, but two men, to ruminate about how it was thus, Bill Bryson’s “Notes from a Small Island” is the last book you should choose to read.

You were perhaps going for sombre. What you end up is being this bundle of unholy mirth and almost toppling over in the effort to laugh silently so as not to make a spectacle of yourself.

I like Bill Bryson. I found his “Short History of Nearly Everything” the kind of science book I wished I had in school (he explains Avagadro number as the number of popcorn kernels required to cover all of US nine miles deep!). His “Made in America,” a densely packed account of American history examined through a linguistics prism, was unputdownable. I love his breezy style, his ironic sense of humor, and fascination with things that are slightly quirky.

But “Notes from...” is quite simply the funniest. It is a travelogue and a loving adieu of an anglophile to an island that was his home for two decades. He meanders through towns and cities and unheard of hamlets, trying to locate the soul of the country. It is unhurried, observant, and makes affectionate jokes about everything.

His fascination with the British names of places inspires a slew that sound syntactically correct but obviously tongue-in-cheek: Little Puking, Buggered Ploughman, Ram’s Dropping, and Great Shagging. He describes an obscure castle in Corfe as “everyone’s favorite ruins after Princess Margaret.” He gets positively Mark Twain-sh about the kind of stories he used to handle as a sub-editor of Bournemouth Evening Echo: “Mrs Evelyn Stubbs honored the assembled guests with a fascinating and amusing talk on her recent hysterectomy,” and “Mrs Throop was unable to give her planned talk on dog management because of her recent tragic mauling by her mastiff, Prince, but Mrs Smethwick gamely stepped into the breach with an hilarious account of her experiences as a freelance funeral organist.”

My favorite lines so far are how he picks up the flowery language of a certain restaurant’s menu: “I asked him (the waiter) for a luster of water freshly drawn from the house tap and presented au nature in a cylinder of glass, and when he came around with the bread rolls I entreated him to present me a tonged rondelle of blanched wheat, oven baked and masked in a poppy-seed coating... I dressed the table top with a small circlet of copper specie crafted at the Royal Mint and, suppressing a small eruction of gastrointestinal air, effected my egress.”

It is the kind of travel writing that you never want to end because it is like having a vicarious vacation, especially in a country that has become so much part of our post colonialist consciousness.

Which puts in mind another probably obscure travelogue of the UK written by Helene Hanff. Most people haven’t heard of her, but she is famous for her humorous epistolary novel called “84 Charing Cross Road,” an account of her 20-year correspondence with the Frank Doel, Chief Buyer of Mark & Co., a mail-order book store in London. By her account, she seemed to have been a poor writer living in an unheated brownstone in NYC, and could never afford to travel to England. Eventually, Reader’s Digest sponsored a trip in 1971. She couldn’t meet Frank, as he had died a year earlier and the store had closed, and her travelogue is a bittersweet, shy yet passionate ode to UK. It is called “The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street.” I cried when she wrote how moved she was when she visited the pub patronized by Shakespeare, touching the walls with the wonder of being there.

It’s been a pleasant weekend weather wise. Mercury has been climbing boldly, and hit 86 deg F today. I formally set the thermostat in my room from “heat” to “cool.” The pool at the hotel has been opened and our first batch of bikini-clad PYTs were out. I too have decided to go slinky this summer. I did my first summer wardrobe shopping and treated myself to a pair of Calvin Klein trousers. There is something life assuring about spending a bomb on big brands.

Summer also means summer release movies. I kicked it off by watching “Shrek Forever After” in 3D. It is definitely darker than its predecessors. It is an ogre-dom version of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but it looks like you don’t need imminent financial ruin and an unraveling of everything you believed in your life to bring on a crisis anymore. All it takes is one year of fatherhood and a place in the mainstream for our Metrosexual ogre to long for the pre-commitment days of terrorizing villagers. And since he is an ogre, it is only natural that he will have a meltdown at his kids’ first-birthday party and walk out, leaving his wife to handle the boring family details. Nice, papa!

(On an aside: I do wish people will leave that old classic alone. It seems it is unremakable. Have you watched that travesty of a remake called “Family Man” starring Nick Cage? Hell, he doesn’t even have a crisis there. His Gordon Gecko-ish existence as a Wall Street millionaire is visited by the ghost-of-all-Christamases-rolled-into-one-black-stereotype Don Cheadle just like that. And then the narrative gets into the “Idiot America” territory--in the alter-life, our hero is a used-tire sales man because he didn’t dump his girlfriend to go and study in UK, and ultimately realizes that in a universe of binary choices, it is better to be dissatisfied and frustrated but WITH family instead of being a millionaire. Really.)

Coming back to Shrek, if you don’t mind our beloved hero’s immaturity, then the movie moves fast and strong. I liked it that they have created dystopic Far Far Away, with stark, desolate landscapes, and an underground movement. The supporting characters are all, as usual, heartwarming and funny. You should see Eddy Murphy belting out songs including “Papa don’t preach” as the official radio of the witches’ carriage. Puss is too fat now to get into his boots, but he still has the eyes. What I liked most was the number of ways they have used the broom--I especially loved the way they have been used as enemy fighter planes. In 3D, it all looks fabulous.

But there is a paucity of the sly jokes that the first two editions (even the third for that matter) were filled with. You can hear the clink of the spatula as it hits the bottom of the creativity pot when they use that old Carpenter’s chestnut of “I’m on top of the world” for a musical montage of Shrek’s newfound freedom. Seriously? I know nothing of music, but even I found that song eweth! It is good that this is going to be the last outing of the franchise. Watch it as it definitely has a sentimental subtext.

I shall end this long article with many digressions with an account of a very unusual movie I watched called Mulholand Drive. Directed by David Lynch, this weird little thriller is a combination of film noir in color (what a delightful notion) and a study of surreal expressionism. Roshomon-like, it deals with multiple versions of reality, but unlike Roshomon, the lines between dreamscape and reality blur, with unexplained meanderings and stops now and then.

But who cares about the content--this is a triumph of form where the camera moves with the characters, where street corners and doorways are menacing because you don’t know what lurks beyond, and the camera never explains because it stops when the character stops. It hangs hesitantly behind a supine body, too scared to walk around to see its face. It turns and sees people who are not there the next moment.

Naomi Watts as one of the two female protagonists is brilliant. Laura Herring is voluptuous and mysterious. For the sake of certain sections of my readership, I have to say that the movie has two very sexy lesbian scenes--so sexy that it seems European. There is a performance of a lament song called “Llorando (Crying)” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIpkMg9sh6Q&feature=related) in the middle of the movie which is the most chilling song and scene I have ever heard/seen.

The movie requires a little mental contortion to understand, but God, what an experience!

Very Like Summer

2010-05-16T22:15:00.005-05:00

Dandelion. Dent-de-lion. Lion's tooth. What a heavy name for an ethereal weed. If only one could swing on its many parachutes and float away into some magic world, as Disney characters very often do. If only they didn't make the back of the throat itch.

There were thousands of white gossamer dandelion seeds in the air this surprisingly summer-like weekend, floating silently and gracefully like first snow flakes of winter.

"They cause allergies," S frowned and warned her son and me to steer clear.

"Here, blow it," six years old T brought me a seed-head in the park this morning, while his mother was away. He watched me blow it with delight. Then he took the stalk from me, ran with it like it was a live cracker, and threw it away in the air some distance away.

Sun dappled shade in the park, inquisitive chipmunks and sparrows for company, a friendship sealed with a gift of dandelion...heaven!

S lives in Oak Park, a western suburb of Chicago, established in 1902. Unlike the seriously New England-ish Evanston I visited last weekend, Oak Park, to quote S, is "eclectic". It has a mish-mash of building styles--red brick buildings jostling with gray stone buildings, lovely cottage-like houses interspersed occasionally with simply utilitarian apartment complexes, and maple-lined residential avenues giving way to paved pathways of a cheerful downtown.

Well, it has to be, since it has the largest number of homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (including his own) in the world. He apparently spent 20 years of his career in Oak Park. It also is the birthplace of Ernst Hemingway.

When I set out for Oak Park last evening, it wasn't very promising. Remainder clouds from Thursday's thunderstorm were still hanging low in the skies. It was cold at the Lake Cook Road Metra station. Nothing of Chicago RTA's glam here--just a functional station like the NJ Transit stations. Depressing. The little station building smelt strongly of smelly cheese. The ticket counter was closed.

The train was half-an hour late. Metra is a double-deck train supervised by conductors who look plucked out of the 1920s. Especially the one who stood outside our compartment, with his little mustache, round blue metal-tipped conductor hat and blue button-down coat. The thing is, he didn't do anything conductorly. I traveled ticket-less to my destination.

The train sped through some industrial suburbs and some quaint neighborhoods, the cutest being the Village of Golf, Est. 1928. But none of them were as barren and intimidating as the station I got down. Gray Land station had uneven platforms, barbed wire fences, and heavily graffiti-ed shelters. A factory with serious silos loomed on my side of the tracks. A straggly, characterless brick building stood mutely on the other.

Two Hispanic youths in low slung jeans and a quantity of chains were sitting in the shelter across the tracks. They gave me the eye and resumed their conversation. On my side, at a distance, a young Hispanic couple were either having a loving conversation or a fight. An old lady in a shocking pink coat stood, undecided, at the top of the stairs leading down to the measly parking lot on the street level on my side. Then she walked past me with a cheerful hello, crossed the tracks, had a brief conversation with the eye-giving youth and walked back. Sporadic shouts of some bacchanalian group could be heard from the street level on the other side of the tracks.

Time stood still.

Fortunately, S reached before it all could play out into a scene from one of those stark, violent movies from South America I watched at the MAMI festival.

After some Wii and a glass of sweet wine, we went to a Thai restaurant in the evening. The ambiance was cozy, the waitresses (or rather one of them) were pretty, the clientele was mostly families, and the food was delicious. Except that my sea food soup was spicy. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but my always-on-the-go nose and eyes started flowing and made a spectacle of me, making the pretty waitress furrow her pretty eyebrows in distress. "Oh is it too spicy for you?" she asked with genuine concern. Which could be only a good thing, right?

Anyway, all four of us enjoyed the meal thoroughly. We got back, had more wine, and talked into the night. This morning, which dawned bright and cheerful, S made us all yummy upma (garnished with nylon sev - never tried that combination before) and chocolate-chip pancakes. Fortified with all this goodness, T and I spent some quality time together. We read books, played with his cars, and did some sums.

In the afternoon, S and I sauntered towards Oak Park downtown. Alas, she had done similar shopping with me at Boston, so she knew exactly the kind of things I will find irresistible. I almost bought an 100$ linen top. I did buy probably overpriced costume jewelry probably made in India from a shop that boasted of being an NGO helping poor artisans in poor countries.

Then she took me to the "fiercely independent" Book Table. It reminded me of the City Light bookstore and Anarchist Book Archive in San Francisco. In Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Crossword, you might find one interesting book among fifty worthless trash. In the indie bookstores, away from the "corporotization" of reading, chances are that every other book you see is interesting. Filled with deliciously subversive literature, right from old-trusted Noam Chomsky to the unedited first version of Little Women (which was a vampire story allegedly), to a coffee table book on India opening with the line "Love it or loath it", the place was an absolute delight. I bought "Idiot America: How stupidity became a virtue in the land of the free". (Review in a later post.)

T and his dad came to pick us up. We hopped and skipped to a picnic at the Scoville Park, right outside the Oak Park public library. We had pizza, pop corn, chips, and sprite. T did some somersaults for my benefit. Intrepid (and probably trained) chipmunks scurried close to us and stood begging on their hind legs, their noses trembling. T ran into a couple of his friends and went away to play with his dad. S and I played throw ball in a most lethargic manner. A large group of all-white protesters went by in a procession, holding signs that read "US Stop Funding the War in Israel", "Stop Isreali Occupation of Gaza", and "Justice Starts With Peace".

We visited the public library. Seeing its fantastic collection of books and DVDs, I wondered why I never visited a public library before. I have resolved to visit the Deerfield one ASAP. Our idyllic day ended with ice cream for all. Unfortunately, the guy at the counter misheard me and gave me some kind of vanilla-malt-cookie smoothie which was barf inducing. Oh well, small matter on such a glorious weekend.

P.S.: I think the Gods of Gastronomy heard my rant about food, because this week has been delightful, food wise. I also checked out a near by Greek restaurant going by the name Demetri with an ex-colleague. Suffice to say that the food was lip smacking. Except that the chef's platter had too much octopus. The chocolate martini was out of the world.

Travails of the Much Traveled - VI

2010-05-10T22:34:00.002-05:00

Is good food too much to ask for? Is it unreasonable for a hard working girl to expect some consistency in the quality of food she gets everyday? Is it a crime that I can't handle bacon, salami and pastrami on a daily basis? (It may be because I was raised as a vegetarian, but too much meat induces violent and scary nightmares with possible sexual subtext involving ghosts, mobsters, zombies, and ravening beasts.)

I have been having a week in hell. It all started on last Sunday at The Claims Company. It is quite a nice restaurant with a fun looking bar at the local mall. It boasted southwestern fare, so I decided to check it out. As a lot of you might know, southwestern is an indigenous, heart-unfriendly cuisine involving indecent amounts of cheese, cream, animal fat, white/red meat, and spices and flavors borrowed from Cajun and Mexican communities. I went in expecting chowder, gumbo, barbecued meat, deep fried everything, and grilled something.

Apparently the "mother lode" steak burger is their signature dish. Their menu consisted predominantly of steak in multiple forms of sandwiches. There were some token chicken dishes. One soup, that too French Onion--their innovation being covering the bowl of soup with a layer of cheese and baking it. Bah! The grilled salmon came with one medium sized fillet and a teaspoon of rice. That's it! The meal cost me $30.

The food situation went into a downward spiral during the week with the caterers at office turning up one uninspired offering after another. This is how it panned out:

Monday
Soup bar: Yawn!!! Low sodium Mediterranean vegetable soup is the best you could rustle up? Could you please go easy on the carrots? Thank you very much.
Stir fry bar: Come on!! zucchini and broccoli? The best you could do?

Tuesday
Worked from the hotel. Self cooking could never be good.

Wednesday
Soup bar: Seriously?? Split pea soup that looks like that little girl's vomit in Exorcist?
Stir Fry bar: Dude, zucchini and broccoli again? Oh you've tossed in tomatoes to mix things up?

Thursday
Soup bar: Yuck! Bean soup? Who eats bean soup? Haven't you heard of all the scatological jokes about beans?
Sandwich bar: Where the fuck is the chicken fucking quesedilla? You served it on last three Thursdays! Is it too much to expect some consistency around here?
Stir fry bar: Heavens! Are these boiled carrots? Really? And who puts celery in rice? Who puts celery in anything?

Friday
Soup bar: Son of a married couple! (I picked that one from 30 Rock.) Soup got over?
Stir fry bar: Oh, Yan Can Cook medley today? Do you know that Yan Can't Cook palatable food? Who makes sweet shrimp? Who makes tangy noodles with peanut sauce? (Wait, I had a baby barf on that one.)

By the end of the week, I was exhausted and defeated. I had also run out of groceries in the room. Saturday saw me up at 4:30 a.m., hungry. PJ saw me on video chat and was alarmed. "How could you do this to yourself?" she asked. "They.are.too.strong!" I said, getting together the last dregs of my energy. "I am done for!"

SD and his wife came and picked me up later that day. T, bless her, had made mutton biriyani. My vision cleared and my light headedness subsided after partaking of it. Thus fortified, we went to watch Ironman 2.

Ironman 2 is definitely bigger in scope. Locations, characters, CGI, sound, and problems are all more exotic and serious. Our hero is dying. He is having trouble communicating with his lady love and his best buddy. US government is after him. The much tattooed Micky Rourke is after him. There is a mysterious and mysteriously brunette Scarlett Johansson tottering around in figure hugging clothes and high heels. There is the issue of the one-eyed Samuel Jackson. Enough to keep adrenaline pumping.

However, the first half sags a little. There is a point, somewhere 45 minutes into the movie, where you can grab 40 winks and not miss anything. But it picks up admirably in the second half. All the new characters settle in. Sam Rockwell becomes great fun to watch. It moves strongly to the finale, setting up the sequel. Robert Downey Jr is zanier, funnier, and charminger than ever. His banter with Gwyneth Paltrow has a new edge. In short, full paisa vasool.

After the movie, we went to the lake. SD lives in this very pretty lakeside neighborhood called Evanston. It is a New England-ish place, with quaint ivy covered brick buildings leaning on to each other, beautiful old houses, white colonial buildings like the Ladies Club of Evanston, and a sweetly seamless modern downtown. I guess the presence of Northwestern University in the neighborhood is the reason for this look.

SD lives in this especially lovely apartment overlooking the lake. The Michigan lake is the most beautiful water body I have seen, taking on a myriad of shades between dark green to cerulean blue depending on the time of the year and time of the day. On Saturday, it was blue-green mostly, reflecting the cloud laden skies. It turned blue when the sun broke away from the clouds, going to mossy green in the shaded parts. (Pictures on Facebook.)

There wasn't much crowd except for an Alpha Chi fraternity (since 1880) mixer from the University. All the movies we've seen and all the books we've read on the subject made it easy for us to guess who was going to get lucky and who wasn't that day. Definitely that hot blond
playing Frisbee. No, not that nerdy Indian girl, looking lost.

It started raining on our way back to the car. We tried standing in the meager shade of pine trees, but we got quite wet anyway. On an already cold day, it froze us. So we went in search of hot beverages and got to an Ethiopian restaurant, which evidently was my hosts' favorite haunt.

It is the kind of restaurant I like -- cozy, full of texture, and with exotic looking (probably Ethiopian) women around. An Ethiopian pop music channel was blaring on the TV. I don't know why, I looked at the women and thought of female genital mutilation and subjected my hosts to blood curdling accounts. I think I was hungry again.

We had sambusas (samosas) and Ethiopian coffee. The TV continued with its music and a strange type of dancing. We figured out that it must be some sort of Ethiopian folk dance, but it looked like somebody having fits induced by Strychnine poisoning (if you don't get the reference, go read your Agatha Christie again). The music sounded a mix of Bedouin and Indian.

I begged T to pack me the leftover biriyani for dinner. She gracefully packed some for me and they dropped me back.

I have done not one, but two grocery runs today, but I am hungry and weak as ever. By the hammer of Thor, will this ever stop? (Did you get the 30 Rock reference? Didja? Didja?)

Travails of the Much Traveled (XL Edition) - V

2010-05-02T22:33:00.000-05:00

Came across this trivia: the etymology for Orchid is from Orchis, which in Greek means testicle, so named because of the shape of the plant's roots. Roots? Dude these are orchids? Plants with the most exotic flowers? You couldn't see them? Oh well, it was Carl Linnaeus who named them so, and we all (at least all of us who have read Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson) know that he almost entirely named things with explicit genital names.

Ok, now that I have made a sexual reference to catch your attention, let me move on to the main message.

Mercury rose steadily through the week - from low 8 - 10 degrees last weekend, it burgeoned to up to 17 degrees and even touched mid 20s a couple of times. Viva el sol! Weather Channel was sensationalizing a storm system caused by Jet Stream that was going to sweep across the south west and come up to Chicago with tornadoes and hail the size of golf balls, but it all came to bupkis. Now that they have got the Louisiana oil spill, Weather Channel has abandoned issuing panic warning on the impending storm. One feels sorry for a channel that needs national calamities that requires federal funding to get its TRP.

So we have been having crisp sunny days with strong winds which sometimes stepped on gas and got up to 45 mph. Emboldened by the weather, I set out walking one day after work and discovered the Deerfield Village, about 1.4 miles away from the hotel.

If you look up Deerfield IL on the Net, you will find that it is almost entirely a white town. They even diabolically and successfully plotted a project meant for poor black people out of the town, earning the nomenclature "Little Rock of the North". Be that as it may, it is a typical affluent white town - you know the type. European style village square with brick and stone buildings, prominent church with its tall stone spire and stained glass windows, paved stone walkways, multitude of cafes and restaurants, nice boutiques, exclusive Elizabeth Arden salon and day spas, and exotic gourmet food stores. Radiating from this heart on all four sides are quaint tree-lined residential areas, containing gingerbread houses and wooded mansions.

When I said gourmet food stores, you might think it must be a small store with bells above the door and an Italian/Greek proprietor. Ah well, this is America. What they have is a big-ass Whole Foods store, the kind of monstrosity that has 50 brands of goat cheese, 60 of Greek organic yogurt, and things organic and natural that you didn't think was possible or decent to use, such as coconut coated dates and pro-biotic dietary supplements. Isn't breast milk supposed to be rich in pro-biotics? Ye Gods!

The best feature of the store is of course the biggest hot and cold food aisles I have seen in stores of this category. An acquaintance in the hotel said that a pound of vegetable biriyani costs about 2.5 $. Ah yes, organic means you will find a variety of Indian foods and stuff in the store, renamed and bottled and probably patented, making your blood boil. I haven't tried the food yet, but I will.

On the first day of my walk thither, I of course got lost on my way back. I walked merrily along a residential path until I noticed that I have passed nothing that I can recognize yet, so I asked an old man with an energetic dog for directions. He looked at me as if I landed that minute from Mars when I said I was walking. "Oh dear!" he said, "Best of luck!"

The next day, I took Saroop there, thoroughly confusing him with my navigation. But we discovered Chipotle as suggested by Jaya. We were supposed to be having a serious discussion about account management, but I was so lost in the big fat burrito that I was useless. Saroop gave up after my initial grunts approximating a ravening beast with its kill. He only reminded me that the tortilla was made of maida. Hah! As if I care! The cafeteria at office serves the yummiest chicken quesedillas on Thursdays that literally melt in the mouth.

The weather held up until Saturday (except one alarming spell of rain on Friday night) so I set out to the Chicago Botanic Gardens. Spread across 350 acres and containing 34 specialty gardens, it is mind blowing. It is the kind of place where you generally wander around with no particular agenda and stumble into one delight after another. Oh, here is a little garden overladen with tulips. Oh, there is the bridge across a lake into mysterious woods. Hey, I am in an English garden. Oh up these steps is coniferous woods? Oh look, that brook leads into the Japanese garden. Oh wow! this is the Sensory garden?

It is spring of course, so 75% of the garden is in bloom. There is a riot of color everywhere. Two places I really liked were the Greenhouse and the Japanese garden. The Greenhouse was a intense sensory experience. It was warm when I first I stepped into the cactus enclosure. Not as impressive as the cactus sanctuary I have seen in Kalimpong, but most of them were in bloom - nothing gets more elegant than cactus flowers. Then I wander and step into the tropical enclosure. Now it is not only warm, but I am sweating. But what caught me was I could smell the earth and flowers too! Oh, heady tropics! They have a good orchid collection.

I didn't expect the Japanese garden to be such an exceptional and almost spiritual experience. Well, I admit that my opinion of anything Japanese has been colored by their unapologetic war crimes, the cruelty of their bonsai tradition, and their mind numbing tea ceremony. But the garden has a stark beauty, a quietness that cannot be stirred. Of course the cherry trees were in full bloom, adding to that dreamy look. As I sat under a cherry tree for a spell, I was moved to compose a Haiku (although I never understood the form.)

World waits respectfully with folded hands
A moment under the cherry tree.
Petals falling.

I hope this doesn't set Vineeta off into a frenzy of nonsense verse. :-D Sorry for offending the sensibilities of Haiku lovers.

The only thing that mars the experience is the pseudo-spiritual shtick they have put up all over the garden. Sample: "In a Japanese garden, the path is your guide. It leads the way and tells you how to behave - uneven paths makes you go slow and take in the surroundings. Wide paths encourages you to be free and look up at the sky." ROFL MAO! (Ask Payal for the expansion if you don't know already.)

If you haven't already, check out my pics at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=207539&id=547851114&l=564c5d925d. Some of them are kick ass.

Travails of the Much Traveled - IV

2010-04-25T22:31:00.001-05:00

It was a pissy, rainy, cold, and gloomy weekend. Everything was gray and wet. The sun didn't even make an effort to come out of the clouds. Breath condensed. Just the kind of weather that depresses M. It made me want to burst into tears as well.

The rain ruined my plan of going to the Chicago Botanic Garden. I went to the mall instead. Northbrook mall is a fairly large, upmarket mall just about 1.5 miles from the hotel. Very unlike its namesake in Peoria. Rohan, Ajay, Monji - do you remember that depressing excuse of a mall? The clientele used to be mainly black, seemingly at-risk teenagers from the projects near downtown, who used to ride the bus with me.

Anyhoo, the plan was to stay AWAY from the shops and watch a movie at the amc attached to the mall. Both plans went quite awry.

Well, although I stopped before the "Date Night" poster (Steve Carell, Tina Fey), I chose to watch "Back Up Plan" instead. I like J Lo, so shoot me. I should've read the reviews, but I didn't, and put my blind faith in Good Movie Fairies. Alas, they didn't come through for me this time. The opening animation as the credits rolled should've been enough for me to walk out. But I didn't. I stayed. And endured. I guess was more fascinated by the middle-aged Sikh gentleman who had evidently come on a date with a middle-aged black woman, sitting right in front of me.

Then I walked into the mall, which was the unraveling of Part II of my plan. But here's the deal. I had had left my old pair of walking shoes in Mumbai because I didn't have enough room in my bags. They were my trusty old pair, companion on many an adventure, and had at least 200 miles on them. I had left them with a pang, sure that nothing, but NOTHING would ever replace them.

And as I walk out of amc into the mall, what is the first thing I see? A shop called "The Walking Company". I hear the siren song. There is a rush in my ears. I walk in dazed. And lo and behold, under a single spot light (it seemed to me) were this pair which I am sure is the second coming of my old shoes. Reborn. Waiting for me. I pick up and tried them on. They fit my feet as if they were never away. No bites. No blisters. So what if they cost 120 USD?

Sunday was gloomier than Saturday but I was itching to try my new shoes on. So I walked over to the Deerfield Mall which is about 250 yards from the hotel. It is a gigantic strip mall, the kind you see in those road or indie movies. Totally lacking in character or cheer. The type of mall where the female shop assistants have pancake makeup on and the boys are surly and uncommunicative. The kind of mall where there are those nail places with garish neon signs and manned by Hispanics. The sort of mall that wears the war wounds of economic slowdown in the form of empty shop spaces with sad little notices on the window saying "shop space for lease".

I found Baja Fresh there. For the uninitiated, it is a national Mexican fast food chain. When I was in LA in 2003, we used to frequent the place quite often. I had not found them ever since, so I walked in driven by nostalgia. Predictably, there were two Indian families. You know the type. Why do some Indians think that eating out at a fast food place is dining out? There were a couple of Mexicans. Some of the tables were not cleaned. The Quesadilla had nothing but cheese and chicken in it. The big hombre from the kitchen decided to hang around and stare at me. Sigh. Memories shouldn't be meddled with by trying them out in reality.

I watched two beautiful movies on Netflix: One is "Peggy Sue Got Married" - a small, warm movie from Francis Ford Coppola, full of little moments and great acting by Kathleen Turner and Nick Cage. The other is "What is Eating Gilbert Grape?" - a sweet, sometimesS poignant movie directed by Lasse Hallstrom with a sweet tender performance from Johnny Depp and a brilliant portrayal of a mentally retarded boy by Di Caprio. Highly recommended, if you haven't watched them already.

Hopefully it warms up in the next week.

Travails of the Much Traveled - III

2010-04-18T22:30:00.000-05:00

It is your average conference room. Long oval table. Profusion of gray upholstered chairs. Gray carpet. Gray everything.

I am sitting on one of the long sides of the table, facing a gentleman across. He is a study in brown -- shaggy sandy hair, brown shirt, brown horn rimmed glasses. He is not the only one I invited for the meeting. The other gentleman is late. Or MIA. We don't know. We had decided to start the meeting without him because we don't know whether he is going to make it.

Oh he does, although it is more of an entry. He is a tall, lanky gentleman with Spanish good looks. He stops at the entrance and announces, "I will sit by the lady!" And walks to my side of the table, pulls up a chair next to me and sits down, even as his colleague is going, "Of course! You must! Heh heh!"

The man next to me shrugs and says in heavily accented English, "You know - to help her," and turns and flashes his pearly whites at me. (He is one of the shoulder-touchers I mentioned in my previous e-mail.)

I am giving a great impression of a guppy by now. Not because I am unfamiliar with flirtation. I am just not used to it in corporate America. Hell, I have read official policy on McKinsey's Intranet about how "the firm" frowns upon fraternization at work place.

While I am still doing my share of "Heh heh!", he walks up to the board, draws a crappy diagram and starts explaining some pointless concept with great gravitas. The meeting proceeds with "don't scare the poor lady," etc. etc. from my handsome charmer.

I frown and frown until I hit on an epiphany. Hell, these are marketing people! I am doing a project with the marketing team. Of course they are all reasonably good looking, very charming, talk mile-a-minute of crap, and are openly flirtatious! That's how they treat their ad agencies. And that's where they have pegged me.

Oh well, lucky me!

I need to urge TIS sales people to sell more to such fun people, rather than to those fuddy-duddies in the training department. The people I usually meet are so crashingly boring that it makes me weep.

The admin person at office is trying to integrate me. She is talking about team lunches. She claims that she has talked to my program manager (the good looking one I mentioned in my previous e-mail, not the aforementioned Spaniard) to invite me home. Mommy!

I am happy to inform you that I have figured out my way in this labyrinth. However, my one mishap seems to have made the headlines. I was walking back from lunch on Friday when I encountered a group of sharply dressed people walking towards me. Suddenly, the lady who seemed like the queen bee calls out to me, "Hello Priya! You are in the correct floor and walking in the correct direction! Looks like you have figured it out!" She breezes past while I am still doing my "Heh heh!" (I seem to be doing a lot of it nowadays). I then realize that it is the VP Marketing I was briefly introduced to the other day. Phew!

I am feeling much better. Today was the first drug free day. Not even the rescue inhaler was employed. I am left with a slight wheeze, inability to laugh (needs too much lung capacity which I don't have yet), and an occasional cough.

Spring is all around me. A lot of trees and shrubs are blooming, although there still some trees that haven't greened yet. The birds are very busy and vocal. There is a nest on the tree right outside my door. Of course, I picked up my camera and roamed around the property on Saturday morning, although it was freezing. Caught all sorts of colorful birds, including the Cardinal. It is one of the most stunning birds I have seen. If you have not done it yet, go to my FB profile for the pics. Discovered that the 385-acre Chicago Botanical Garden is 3.5 miles from my hotel. That would be subject for another e-mail, some other day.

I finally got myself a subscription to Netflix. I am on a two-week free trial period with unlimited, watch-all-you-can paradise. I squandered it all this weekend on a litany of feel good rom-com movies. It must be my illness and jet lag, but I feel that I can't handle anything deep or cerebral right now.

Anyway, that's it from me now. Auf wiedersehen!

Travails of the Much Traveled - II

2010-04-14T22:28:00.001-05:00

Finally got a laptop, cube, network access, and e-mail ID at office. I love the standardization in this country - it is as if I have never been away. I feel like a plug in component, ready to play. They use Dell laptops, Lotus Notes, and a cafeteria that works on exactly the same principles as Cat.

Only the office building is nightmarish. It is spread out on the three limbs of a quadrangle. In the middle is the parking lot. All buildings are interconnected with walkways, staircases, and corridors. They are all strangely named as 53e and 64w. They don't use elevators in this office - they walk. Everybody must be putting in at least 2 - 3 miles of walking everyday. So here're the directions to the cafeteria from my cube:

1. Start at cube

2. Walk straight along an indistinguishable corridor for 3 mts

3. Turn right

4. Meander until you find a staircase

5. Climb down to 42 W

6. Walk left for 2 mts along another indistinguishable corridor until you find the walkway

7. Walk across to reach cafeteria

Total walking, climbing, getting lost, finding yourself again time: 7 minutes

This afternoon, I set out. Got lost on the second floor. Went round and round. Asked a clearly non-English speaking gentleman. Overshot his direction by two feet. Found self in a corridor leading away from the building into the parking lot. Couldn't get back in since had no access card. Followed directions and got out into open air. Went back to the reception. The girl at the reception got so hassled because she couldn't let me in on my own (I have no idea why she got so stressed). Called up people in my group who asked her to let me in. Phew! One of these days, I'm going to get irretrievably lost in this building. Like Tom Hanks.

Did I say this before? My client is very good looking. He has the most gorgeous eyes I've seen on a man. He also spouts management/marketing crap like it is going out of fashion. In this morning's meeting, only 25% of what he said made any sense. Really. All else sounded like a concatenation of words done by a AI system gone ape on Philip Kotler.

Midwest hospitality rules in this office too. People have been very friendly. More than that, I think they are curious about me. Several people walked up to me and introduced themselves and wanted to know what I will be doing. Like Cat, this also seems to be like an old-fashioned, no nonsense behemoth. One curious thing I noticed - these people are great shoulder-touchers. It's been only 1.5 days in office and already three people touched my shoulder. It is a non-sexual, friendly gesture, but you know how corporate US is on these matters. Hmmm!

Now let us cast our gazes outside office and see what is happening otherwise.

I have been sick. Enervating, aggravating, stupid, acute asthma attack. Everything brings on a coughing fit - bending, turning upper torso, climbing up a flight of stairs, inhaling spices, eating oily food, standing on cold kitchen tiles, opening old files, getting near strong perfumes/odor and facing the infamous Chicago wind. I HATE it! I don't know when I am going to be alright.

Last evening, went to the neighborhood Borders. It remains as ever. They still have my name in their rewards database. Whoo hoo! There was an Indian social at the hotel last evening. The dining area was converted into some sort of Bandini budouir, with some strange hindi music on the pipe and lots of Indian eats, such as samosas, tandoori chicken and stuff. Couldn't partake of the splendor. Some other Tuesday.

Travails of the Much Travelled - I

2010-04-10T22:27:00.000-05:00

The first half of my journey was sheer agony as I had a middle seat, migraine, swollen feet in uncomfortable shoes, and minuscule portions of really bad food. Watched 17 Again - Zac Effron made is just bearable. I know I do not fall into his target group of tweens, but my thoughts tend to get very naughty indeed!

Landed in Heathrow. Had to chuckle loudly to myself as all the fancy shops (including Harrods) had 50 - 60% off on all items. Recession is a great leveler! I had this major craving for chips (or crisps) and downed four packets of them! Perhaps my body needed the calories, fibers and vitamins of chips right then. :-D (Does it remind anyone of Carlin and plastic? It did, to me.)

The second half of my flight was bearable as I had an aisle seat, nobody in the middle seat and a Finnish Anthropologist on the window seat. We bonded and exchanged cards.

Landed in Chicago and had a major issue in immigration. (Ajay and Anup - you can skip this portion). Due to terrible miscommunication, I had landed with an extention approval letter but no valid visa. They let me in this time with a hefty fine of $ 540. However, they were super courteous to me.

Have checked into this very pleasant hotel called Residence Inn by Marriot. Ajay, Monji - remember Staybridge? Same template, but nicer. Rooms are bigger, and they are spread out like an apartment complex (two-storied buildings), so it feels like staying in serviced apartments rather than a hotel. It is a little expensive but have decided to spend my stay here, since it eliminates all the jhanjat of arranging house, furniture, TV, cable, Internet, phone, and commute. And especially vacating at the end of six months. (Never again, I promised myself this time in Mumbai, but that's another story). Like Staybridge, these people also offer shuttle to nearby places. Have agreed to cart me to office as well.

And what do you know, Chicago land is crawling with people I know. Sanjay Eshwar has invited me home for lunch/dinner sometime. Shilpa Patwardhan has invited me for her son's b'day next weekend. Does anybody remember Saravanan, a techie who used to work with us like a million years ago? He works just across the street, and has offered help for anything. I have recommendation to a Indo-Italian restaurant owned by a friend on Chandrima (a PM who used to work with us?). This is how colonization feels like then. Jolly good show, what?

It is colder here than I had expected. While highs are in the 12 - 14 deg C range, the lows go as low as 0 deg C. And of course it is windy. All this has given me a slight sore throat. Praying that it doesn't devolve into a full blown asthma attack - I don't need that, on top of everything! I am religiously taking an assortment of my inhalers, sprays, and tablets.

My final note is on American television. From C-SPAN to CNN to USA to Disney, all are well and kicking. There is a hot debate on how Labor is getting bad press and not aknowledged enough for their role in healthcare reform on C-SPAN as I write this. Caught pretty much the same episodes of Hannah Montana and Law & Order SVU, Subway's five-dollar-foot-long commercial, and pointless breaking news on pollen attack in southern America in all news channels, announced by the same familiar faces. Ah, the duller of the senses and opium to the masses! I bow to thee - to your powers of staying the same, no matter what happens to the world!

The Recruiters

2010-02-27T02:27:00.009-06:00

Retired Bank officer Ramasubramaniam sat at his table near the window overlooking the courtyard of his building complex, rolling the shells in his hand thoughtfully. He looked outside with unseeing eyes, his brows furrowed. The unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon caused sweat to bead on his forehead, but he seemed oblivious to it. His lips moved silently in a chant.

The air hung heavily around him, oppressive. He thought that he could feel a menace in it. He was worried. Not in the familiar, prosaic, petty way that a middle class man with a bank job and two kids worried, but in an inexplicably bigger, deeper way.

He looked back at the shells in his hand and reluctantly arranged them for another reading. He came from a family of astrologers, experts who mixed the science with an ancient knowledge. As an educated man and rationalist, Ramasubramaniam had tried to deny his lineage, his unfortunate gift of natural intuition, but its force had been too strong. He usually did his readings for friends and those few who somehow heard of him and came to him. He hated it, but he was very good at it.

However today, he was not doing a reading for anybody. He had merely succumbed to an anxiety that had been eating him up for the past week, keeping him awake at nights. He looked down at the reading and felt a punch of anxiety in his solar plexus. Bad. Very bad portent. Anguish. Death. Loss.

A sudden breeze ruffled the papers on his table. He looked out to see the woman walking by the swimming pool that had its pride of place in the quadrangle. She was of an indefinite age, anywhere between 35 - 50. Her wild hair, lowing clothes and jewelry made her look like some exotic bird of paradise. Ramamsubramaniam had encountered her several times around the complex, always feeling a slight unease at her presence, enhanced by the derisive smile she always gave him.

Today, she looked up and met his eyes. Even though Ramasubramaniam’s apartment was on the sixth floor, he thought he could see her eyes flashing. He definitely felt the energy of her glance. And unbelievably, he could sense her smiling at him. She then walked on, her skirt fluttering in the bright sun, her hair ruffled by the breeze that rose from the hot surface of the swimming pool.

Ramasubramaniam wished he knew why he felt that she was behind all the anxiety he felt. The swimming pool glittered blindingly below him.

--------

Navin switched off the television, overcome with a terrible ennui. Gosh it was so warm! He was sweating despite the overhead fan going full speed. Maybe he should switch on the a/c, but then he would have to engage in a pointless conversation about why he did with his wife. He had rather not, so he slumped back on the sofa, picking up a newspaper and fanning himself.

Maybe he should go for a shower, but that also would engender a conversation with Harini. He had decided long ago that discretion was the better part of valor. He could hear her talking on the phone. He was happy as long as it kept her in the other room and not where he was, asking a hundred questions and dispensing half a dozen unsolicited advices.

He sat there, undecided about what to do. Inertia was his besetting sin, along with a mild, gentle personality that thrived on avoiding confrontations. Which is why he had had let his parents make most of his life decisions--what to study, what to wear, who to befriend, who to marry...

Left to his own, he would’ve never married Harini. He knew they were incompatible going into the marriage. They were like chalk and cheese: she of the narrow perspective and dogmatic views; he of the sensitive nature and intellectual bend. She had had laughed at all his choices, coined him useless, and set out to reform him. He had given in and sunk into a deep, secret hatred for her.

Perhaps he could walk out of this farcical marriage. Perhaps build a new life for himself. Perhaps he can start the process now, if only he could force himself to get up from the sofa.

The conversation ended and Harini walked into the living room. “Why are you fanning yourself? You could’ve switched the a/c on. You are so lazy!” she commented and proceeded to close the windows and doors to switch the a/c on.

Navin sat unmoving. She plopped next to him and picked up the TV remote. “What, nothing interesting on TV? When are you going to finish those stupid books you bought last month? I never see you reading them. I don’t know why you buy them!” she commented and switched the TV on.

Navin tried to movie away from her. “I wonder why it is so hot! Summer hasn’t even started!” Harini continued, as she watched the weather report on the news channel. “Mona was telling me that a boy in C Wing had a heat stroke. Can you believe it? Heat stroke in March! Global warming, what can one say?” she said.

Navin felt an irrational prick of anger. ‘You know nothing about global warming! Nothing! So don’t pretend and add it to your repertoire of shallow, little-understood conversational refrains that you pick up to make you look oh-so-with-it!’ he screamed in his head.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” Harini asked and turned back to the TV without waiting for an answer. He felt the heat of her body as she leaned back and cozied up to him. He was repulsed. He got up with a start.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Out. For a walk,” he replied, a little wildly.

“Walk? In this heat? It’s close to 40 degrees outside! You are so impractical at times!” she commented, keeping up with the litany of character judgments that she had started on the second day of their marriage, three years ago.

“I... I need to pick up a razor,” he said.

“We just bought a pack last week!” she frowned.

“I... I am planning to change the brand. This...this one seems to give me a rash,” he stuttered.

She looked at him but refrained to comment. He quickly made his escape. He pulled a T-shirt on top of his sweat pants, picked up his wallet and got out of the house.

She was right, that hateful woman. It was terribly warm outside. The brightness was blinding and the heat hit him like a physical blow. He pressed on, making his way around the swimming pool, across the quadrangle to the exit of the complex.

He went to the store just outside the gate and bought a razor. Otherwise Ms. Hawk would notice and start another diatribe. He stood there, undecided about what to do next. He saw autos lined up in the shade, their drivers playing cards on the roadside. Maybe he can take an auto and go--where? Visit a friend? Go to the airport? Leave the country?

He noticed the tender coconut stand near the store and bought one. It was such a hot day that even the coconut water was lukewarm. He drank it, paid and turned around and started walking towards his complex. He was trapped. In his own cowardice.

---------

Navin saw the woman just as the lift doors were closing. He held it open and she walked in, all billowing clothes, flowing hair and jangling jewelry. She met his gaze and smiled. “Thank you,” she murmured.

Navin was struck by her eyes. They were large, light brown eyes with yellow flecks in them, and rimmed heavily with kajal. They also had a curious energy to them.

They rode up in silence for a bit. Then the woman turned to him and said, “I sense a strong unhappy aura around you. I would like to help you.”

Navin stared at her.

“Would you like some help?” she asked, a faint amusement crinkling the corners of her eyes.

Navin continued to stare at her. Unexpectedly, she reached out and took his left hand and held his palm between hers. Navin struggled to take back his hand, but soon gave up as he felt some kind of energy spreading up his arm and entire body. He felt light for the first time in many years. He met her gaze in wonder and couldn’t look away.

He was faintly aware that the lift had come to a halt. “This is my floor. Would you like to come to my house?” she asked. Navin nodded mutely. She lightly held his arm and took him down the corridor, in front of a door that held strange insignia. She took out a key that jangled in an elaborate key chain and opened the door.

The first thing Navin noticed was the smell--incense overladen with a chemical flavor, not too strong, but unmistakable. He then noticed that the house looked something like the inside of a boudoir, exotic and filled with unusual knick-knack. On one wall, there was a strange map, plotting something that he hardly recognized. And for a woman, she seemed to possess a preponderance of electronic gadgets.

She motioned him to a sofa. He sat down and looked at her. He had seen her about the complex many times, but other than her exotic appearance, hadn’t thought too much about her. Harini had and had carried bits and pieces of gossip that she gathered from her equally jobless friends: how the woman kept to herself, had no visitors, but came and went at all strange hours. About how she frightened the kids once. About how someone had noticed her walking around talking to herself.

“All of it is true, you know,” the woman said and sat near him.

“Sorry?” Navin looked at her uncomprehendingly.

“All the gossip your wife carried about me--all of them are true,” she said.

Navin noticed that she had a deeply seductive way of talking and moving--a little languorous, a little knowing.

She laughed suddenly and put out a hand to touch his cheek. No touch had affected Navin so profoundly as this one ever.

“I... I don’t even know your name,” he stammered.

She fixed him with a look. “Does it matter?” she smiled slowly. “Let us work on that unhappiness first,” she said.

Navin nodded wordlessly. She held out a hand. He diffidently moved his own out and took it. She drew his hand to her chest, closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

“What do you want to do most? Run away or kill your wife?” she asked. She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “You can choose either or both.”

Navin almost choked. “What...what are you saying?” he blurted out.

She leaned over. “They leave in two days. You can kill her and leave with them,” she said.

-----------

Rajiv removed the headphones and rubbed the back of his neck wearily. His eyes were smarting from staring at the computer screen for a long time. Gosh, it was hot like hell. And that cheapskate husband of his mom wouldn’t fix an a/c in his room.

The house was silent. He thought of opening his door and taking a look. He then decided against it--it was possible that he would see his mother crying her eyes out. Again. He was tired of holding her after she fucked up her life for the nth time.

It was not as if he didn’t love his mother. He did. Despite all her other flaws, she was a terrific mother. But he had suffered her stupidity for far too long.

How many times would she make the same mistake? How did she hone into jerks like this all the time? He was 19 and he could see how bad she was at judging people. She never learnt. She trusted them over and over again and got hurt.

Well, the same nature that made his mom sensitive and creative also made her needy and vulnerable. She needed someone to support her. Rajiv grimaced--he was more than capable of supporting her, but she thought he was still a baby. How could she look at his 6 foot and 80 kgs frame and think that was beyond him.

He contemplated going to bed. His digital alarm clock showed close to 11:00 p.m. Maybe he should take a shower and go to bed.

There was a knock on the door. “Raju?” his mom called from the other side.

Rajiv groaned. “Come in,” he called out. It was too hot to have this session!

His mom opened the door and walked in. She wasn’t too tall to begin with--but today she looked small. She walked around his room, her long artistic fingers flitting over surfaces, like dusky butterflies.

“For God’s sake, sit down mom!” Rajiv gritted his teeth.

She looked at him in surprise and sat down on his bed. She played with the edge of her kamiz.

“What did he yell at you today for?” Rajiv asked.

His mom tried to smile, but her mouth quivered. “He had asked me to get something at the bank. I...I messed up,” she said.

Rajiv felt like punching something. She tried very hard at messing up. Really. His friend Savitha told him that this behavior was called passive-aggressive.

“Now what?” he asked her.

“He...he’s in his office,” she said.

An awkward silence prevailed. He knew his mom wanted him to say something, make her feel better, but he had no patience to do that. Fuck, he had so much college work to do with his exams coming up.

“How...how is college?” she asked.

Like she cared! Gosh, she’d stopped caring about anything ages ago! Her easel and paint brushes were gathering dust somewhere in the attic. Now she was an indifferent cook, a terrible housekeeper, and generally totally useless. Trying hard to please that asshole but failing at it miserably.

“Ok,” he answered shortly. He suddenly felt sad and lost like a little boy. Where did the bright, funny, and spontaneous mom of his boyhood go? Who was this dull lifeless woman?

“You want something to eat?” she asked.

Rajiv felt a vein throb in his forehead. “Oh please, stop talking crap to me! Like you cared if I ate or slept or washed!” he hissed.

His mom looked at him with hurt eyes. Strangely that made him see red.

“For fuck’s sake mom, stand up to him! Ask him to take a freaking leap! Do something! Don’t just sit there and whine and look hurt!” he realized that his voice had risen.

His mom looked apprehensively at the door and shushed him. He felt like hitting her. He swore and got up. His mom watched him as he found his shoes and wore them.

“W...where are you going?” she asked.

“For a walk,” he growled and went out.

------

Rajiv had intended to go for a long walk. Far away from all of it. But the heat knocked him off. At fucking 11:00 p.m. at night! Unbelievable!

The courtyard was lit like a Christmas tree but deserted. He walked around the pool and found a cement bench near a flowering bush. Its night blooms scented the air with their fine fragrance. He sat looking at the rippling water.

Again a deep sadness enveloped him. Tears started coursing down his cheeks. He had nobody other than his mom in this world, and now even she was lost. Irretrievably. That asshole husband had robbed him of his mother--the flighty, great fun mother who painted and made things with her hands. Beautiful, colorful paintings and curious fun things. And had turned her into a dithering, good-for-nothing secretary.

He vaguely noticed another person walking in his direction. He bent his head, ashamed of his tears and hoped that whoever it was would pass him by. But the person stopped and stood in front of him. He could see two legs, clad in white pajama and Kolhapuri chappal. He had no choice but to look up.

There was a man of about 30 in front of him, dressed entirely in white. He was of medium height, had already thinning hair and wore glasses, through which two warm, friendly and sympathetic eyes looked at him. Rajiv vaguely remembered seeing him in the complex before.

“Hi, can I sit here?” the young man asked. Rajiv wiped his tears with the heels of his palms and nodded.

The young man sat next to him. “Extraordinarily hot, isn’t it?” he asked pleasantly.

Rajiv didn’t answer. The young man threw him a glance and then held out his hand. “I am Navin,” he said. Rajiv shook his hand after hesitating briefly. The young man’s grasp was firm and curiously energetic. Rajiv muttered his name.

“Good to meet you Rajiv,” Navin said.

Rajiv remained silent.

“I can sense your pain. Can I help?” Navin asked.

Rajiv looked at him in surprise.

Navin touched Rajiv’s arm lightly, near the wrist. Rajiv tried to move but was stunned by a curious energy flowing into him, spreading and soaking up the hurt. He looked at Navin in wonder.

“That asshole husband of your mother is easy to get rid of. Would you like to do it and go away with your mother?” Navin asked in a soft voice.

Rajiv swallowed and stared at Navin, inexorably drawn.

Navin smiled at him pleasantly. “We are leaving in two days. You can come with us,” he said.

--------

Ramasubramaniam was having a curious dream. It was filled with blinding light. It was like standing next to the sun, scorching and burning. There were curious sounds, heavy footsteps, and the inexorable pull of something very powerful and strange. Several people, known and unknown, flitted through like a maniacal montage. He knew at least some of them were dead. They were coming. No escape. He had no powers to resist them. He screamed.

“Wake up! Wake up!” he was being shaken awake.

Ramasubramaniam opened his eyes with an effort. It was his wife. “You are having a night mare! Wake up!” she said, her voice half fearful. “Have some water,” she said, picking up the bottle from the night stand and holding it out to him.

Ramasubramaniam took the water from her like a child and drank thirstily from it. His heart returned to its normal rate. “Ennachunna? You never have bad dreams! What happened?” his wife asked.

Ramasubramaniam looked at her familiar face--the diamonds on her ears and nose flashed sporadically as they caught the lights coursing in from outside. He was relieved to be there, in their bedroom, in the familiar, soothing presence of his wife of 37 years.

“I am scared, Veni,” he said.

“About what?” she said, wiping the sweat off his brow with her saree pallu.

“About all of us. Our safety,” he said.

Veni looked at him thoughtfully. “What is going to happen?” she asked, familiar with her husband’s flashes of intuition.

“Some strange force. Something very powerful...” he muttered. “I don’t know what it is, but it scares me,” he said.

Veni sighed. “Must be the heat. It has been so unseasonably warm! Let me reduce the a/c temperature. Pray to God and go back to sleep,” she said.

----------

Bhargavi stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror for a long time. She had three of the five signs of aging that the puerile ad on TV enumerated--black spots, sagging, and faint crinkles around the eyes. Thank God for her brown, Asian skin that didn’t age as much! She looked down at her naked form. She was in no great shape either. Everything that shouldn’t sag or bulge, did.

Bye bye, youth!

She buried her face in the palms of her hands and swore. At this rate, she was never going to get out of the bathroom, leave alone the house. She tasted the salt of her tears. Damn it! She thought she had done crying! Fucking hell!

She took in a deep breath, looked away from the mirror determinedly, and pulled the towel from the ring. She wrapped herself in it and stepped out into the bedroom.

She picked up her mobile phone to see if there were any missed calls. There were none. And that made her want to weep all over again. She was tempted to fling herself on to the bed and do just that.

The rational side of her brain knew that unraveling like this over a worthless man was fucking insane. But try convincing her hormone ridden, biological clock driven, emotional side!

Had she really thought Gautam was her safe harbor, the home she had been looking for all her life? Had she not known that he was a philandering, two-faced son-of-a-bitch going in? She had known. Oh she had. That was part of his charm. The Casanova complex.

How damning to be defeated by a cliche!

How many lies she had accepted, how many humiliating little escapades in the last two years. Theirs was an open, modern relationship, wasn’t it? Hadn’t she “understood” all the scars in his psyche, the impact of a troubled childhood, and some of the things that he couldn’t help? The lost little boy who needed to be held when he came back, crying crocodile tears after every transgression, begging for her to forgive him and just love him. Tiger fucking Woods of the East!

Bhargavi took a deep breath. She hated this familiar direction her thoughts took nowadays all the time. She needed to get out of it. Break away from it. She had been married to a womanizing dick head. Now no more. End of story. Beginning of a new life. She was a woman. Women were supposed to be strong, weren’t they?

She selected her attire for the day with some care. She had read somewhere that grooming was an important indicator of being integrated with the mainstream of society, a sign that one understood and lived by the common rules and etiquette. The days of going to work in mismatched footwear were over.

She bit her lips as she caught herself contemplating before the mirror again. This is what she hated most of the fiasco. That he had been able to rob her off her self confidence.

When she had had met Gautam, she had been a confident young woman--confident about her worth, her attractiveness, and her place in the world. When he was done with her, she was turned into this quivering mass of self doubts, this pathetic creature who spent too much time in front of the mirror.

She felt a searing, white anger rise in her. How dared he? How dared he take away from her the most important of virtues? How dared he chip at it little by little, with every woman he got involved with, with every disparaging comment he made about her to people he thought wouldn't bring them back to her?

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She will conquer this. She will regain her glory. Fuck him!

The basement was like a furnace when Bhargavi went down to get her car. She was perspiring by the time she reached her Honda. She slid in to the driver’s seat, wiped the sweat from her brow and switched the a/c on. Even the powerful a/c of the car was not going to be enough for such a hot day. Strange it was so hot in March.

She started the car and came out of the basement. She drove around the building and exited. That’s when she saw him. A teenage boy waving at her for a ride. She normally didn’t offer anybody rides, but there was something about this fresh-faced boy that made her slow down. She stopped in front of him and opened the door lock.

He smiled at her and got in to the passenger seat.

-----------

The beach was deserted. High tide was in. Although there were no lights on the beach, the sky was bright enough to give the feel of an extraordinary full moon. It was still sweltering hot.

There were about a hundred of them. They all stood in a huddle, but they didn’t speak to each other. They were strangely calm, as if in a trance.

The woman was there. Tonight, she was dressed in all white. He hair was piled high on her head. She looked like a high priestess. She stood in front of them, bathed in the mysterious light, eyes closed, focusing on something.

She opened her eyes at length and looked around the group. “Its time,” she said. As if on cue, the sky lit up with a very bright light. The people on the beach squinted when they looked up.

“Step forward, it’s time to go,” the woman said and held her hand out.

------------

It rained the next morning, cooling things down. Its gloom hung specially over the apartment complex as the chilling discoveries were made one after another. A young woman found dead and her husband missing. A middle aged man dead and his wife and step son were absconding.

Based on several leads, police forced open the woman’s apartment. They encountered an empty flat. Nobody had seen when she had moved her things out.

If the police found a trend of dead people and missing family or friends across the city, they didn’t seem to do anything about it.

The incident found traction in the local and regional news channels for a day. As leads petered down to nothing and no arrests were made, everybody moved on to the next sensation.

Four years later, a bright young MBA student did a project on the real estate bubble bursting in the city. He hypothesized that the inversion point occured when a cluster of unsolved murder cases happened curiously on the same day in residential buildings across the city. When he submitted his report to his guide, that worthy professor laughed until there were tears in his eyes on the student’s implication of an alien abduction theory. He advised the student to do some “real” data analysis if he wanted an A.

------------

Vengeance is Hers

2010-02-23T03:41:00.005-06:00

“Madam, you are not eating?”

Bhuvana looked up from her book. It was the man sitting across. He was big—barrel-chested, heavy shouldered, and strong. His dark pitted and scarred face sported a bushy mustache. His hair was closely cropped. He was wearing a white shirt whose first two buttons were undone to reveal a bushy chest. There was gold all over him—thick gold chain with a tiger-claw pendent, a thick rope-like gold bracelet and an enormous ring on his left ring finger.

Bhuvana smiled slightly. “No,” she answered shortly and tried getting back to her book.

“You will get nothing past Chenagalpet,” he continued. The train rattled on through what appeared to be pitch dark and desolate landscape, endorsing his words.

“It’s ok, I’m not hungry,” she replied. “Thank you,” she added as an after thought.

The man and his wife exchanged glances. She was a thickset woman in an orange saree. Faint yellow of the turmeric she must’ve applied in the morning still clung to her ebony cheeks. She sported prominent tiruneeru (holy ash) on her forehead and an enormous amount of heady jasmine flowers on her well-oiled and neatly plaited hair. Like her husband, she wore a quantity of gold. She also seemed to be in early stages of pregnancy.

“You can share our food if you’d like to,” the man pressed on. His wife smiled persuasively.

Bhuvana sighed silently. Avoiding their kind concern was going to be an impossibility. “That would be nice,” she smiled slightly.

The wife brought out a paper plate, carefully served lemon rice and potato chips and held it out to Bhuvana. She accepted it with murmured thanks.

“Are you from Chennai?” the man asked, friendship and familiarity established with the exchange of food.

Bhuvana could guess why he was curious. She didn’t look anything like a regular Chennai girl traveling to Madurai by Pandian Express. In her sleeveless vest, cargo pants, printed stole, sneakers and backpack, she looked more like a foreign tourist. Not to mention her green eyes.

“No,” she said briefly.

“Must be from Mumbai,” the man smiled. Bhuvana noticed that despite his looks, the man’s smile was charming.

“You can say that,” Bhuvana offered and crossed her fingers discreetly.

“First time to Madurai?” he asked, wolfing down his dinner. His wife held out water even before he asked.

Bhuvana paused, contemplating how truthful she should be. Her last visit was so long ago that it appeared to be many eons ago. Maybe it was.

“Yes,” she settled for an easier truth.

“Planning to visit the Meenakshi temple?” the man smiled.

“No,” her head said. “Yes,” she told him.

The man nodded, approving her answer. “No temple as beautiful as our Meenakshi temple. Thaye Meenatchi,” he closed his eyes and prayed briefly.

Bhuvana looked down at her half eaten food. She constructed a bubble around her, trying to keep these kindhearted intrusive people at bay.

She looked up to see that the man was looking at her curiously. She met his gaze blandly. Yet his eyes narrowed. Bhuvana noticed the shrewd glint in his eyes.

“If you need any help in Madurai madam, please get in touch with me. I work there,” he said. His wife looked at him with what perhaps was adoration in her eyes. “I’m Chockalingam, Inspector of Police,” he said. “Take my number,” he said, but somehow it sounded like an instruction.

Bhuvana took her cell phone out and saved his number. The last thing she wanted was to make a police officer suspicious.

“What else are you planning to see in Madurai? Tirupparankundram? Mahal?” Inspector Chocaklingam continued in a friendly tone.

Bhuvana shrugged. “All of it, I guess. And some of your god men -- they seem to be making the news,” she pointed to the Tamil daily she was holding. It bore a picture of a middle aged god man with a up and coming film star. “Popular Film Star Anand Visits Jai Guru!” the headline screamed.

Inspector looked down at it briefly and snorted. “Jai Guru? He’s a fraud!” he wrinkled his forehead in disgust.

“Really? But the website on him proclaims that he is the 12th birth of Yogananda, a saint who lived during the later Chola period,” she said, watching the Inspector with amusement.

The Inspector shook his head. “The things people would believe!” he said. “He was an accountant till four years ago. He is a fraud if ever there was one!” He looked at Bhuvana seriously. “Don’t get involved with him madam, I guarantee you that it is a racket!”

Bhuvana lay staring at the ceiling of the train compartment later that night. She usually liked the top berth, as it was as much personal space as one can get in a train. But the narrowness, the sleeping form of a stranger across and the night light close to one’s nose ensured minimal sleep. She could hear the Inspector’s gentle snoring from below. Someone slammed the bathroom door closed. The train made a stop somewhere and some passengers got in. Somebody groaned somewhere along the long compartment.

Bhuvana fixed her eyes on the revolving fan blades and thought. She was running out of time.

* * * *
It was 11:00 a.m. when Bhuvana stepped out of her hotel situated in the heart of the city near the temple. The room she had gotten herself was decent, although the receptionist was agog when she’d checked in earlier that morning. Bhuvana had been roused to fix him with a stare which made him falter and stutter. What an idiot!

Now, the heat hit her. She must’ve been really mad to choose end of April to visit the city, but she had no choice. It had taken her almost six months to make a contact and to fix the visit.

Madurai was as crowded as she remembered it from all those years ago. So many shops, so many people, so much noise! The imposing temple tower was visible almost immediately. Bhuvana avoided looking at it.

A cycle rickshaw cruised along her. “Rickshaw madam? Rickshaw?” the rickshaw puller looked at her hopefully. Bhuvana said the address she was looking for. “Come on madam, I’ll take you there. Fifty rupees!” the rickshaw puller said.

Bhuvana hid a smile. They did treat her like a foreigner. “Twenty,” she negotiated. They finally arrived at 25 and set off. The man took her through labrynthine alleys that characterized the old town.

“Oh you come to visit Jai Guru amma?” the rickshaw puller commented when he finally reached his destination. “Actor Anand came here a few days ago! I saw him. Very good looking,” he shared.

Bhuvana got down silently and paid him off. She was in front of a traditional row house in a typical Brahmin locality. The doorway was open and led into a short corridor, where Bhuvana left her shoes and entered into an open square courtyard. The house was built around the courtyard, with a narrow staircase on the left side leading to the upper story. A tulsi bush stood in the courtyard. A copper cauldron full of water was also there. However, there was nobody in sight.

Bhuvana stepped forward and took some water in a metal mug (sombu) and splashed cool water on her face.

A shadow moved in the farther side. “Yaaru?” a woman’s voice floated through.

Bhuvana stood there silently. An old woman, probably in her sixties, attired in the traditional nine-yards came out slowly. She looked at Bhuvana and said, “Vaango,” a little uncertainly.

“Jai Guru?” Bhuvana asked.

The woman looked at her searchingly. “He is not here,” she said apologetically.

Bhuvana felt a snake of anger twist in her stomach. “Where is he?” she asked quietly.

The old woman sighed. “I don’t know. Nobody tells me anything,” she said. “You can sit in the meditation room if you want,” she offered.

Bhuvana thought about it and then nodded. The woman hobbled her arthritic way to a closed door on the right of a courtyard and opened it. Bhuvana entered it. It was unmistakably a prayer and meditation room. It sported all the paraphernalia of a holy man--images of different gods on one wall and a small silver pedestal in front of them, which was obviously the focal point of Jai Guru’s devotion. There were fresh flowers on the idol in the pedestal, a silver kuthu vilakku still had a burning flame and some voluminous text was open in a wooden stand in front of it.

The floor was in cement and cool to Bhuvana’s bare feet. She looked back to see the old woman watching her. “Are you from abroad?” the woman asked her.

“No,” Bhuvana said and walked around the room, checking the date calender on the wall, a small bookshelf laden with religious texts, a CD player, some saffron robes on a clothes line close to the ceiling, and the small window that opened into the street outside.

Nothing. She felt nothing. He had left her nothing. The snake twisted in the pit of her stomach.

“Would you like some coffee?” the old woman offered.

Bhuvana paused undecidedly and then nodded. She needed some time to gather her thoughts. She followed the old woman out who made her sit on a wooden bench outside the room, facing the courtyard. Bhuvana examined her surroundings after the old woman disappeared in what appeared to be the kitchen. The walls had some photos of family members, posing awkwardly. Bhuvana realized with a small surprise that the old woman was probably Jai Guru’s mother.

The old woman came back with fragrant coffee in the traditional tumbler-dabara. Bhuvana sipped it and looked at the other woman. “You have no idea where your son went?” she asked her.

The old woman sighed and sat on the ground. “Who informs me of anything in this place?” she said. “I am just the cook.” She looked up at Bhuvana. “He had a good job, you know. Paid well. Suddenly, one day, he gets a vision. His guru visited him, he says. Only son, became an ascetic over night,” she said, wiping her eyes.

Bhuvana nodded. Immature ascetic with a faulty vision. Hackable like a computer without firewall. Child’s play. She looked at the old woman, willing her to talk.

The old woman looked up at her and swallowed. “Now, I am just scared. I can’t say who comes and goes here anymore. Strange things come in and go out of the house,” she said.

Bhuvana narrowed her eyes. “What things?” she asked.

The old woman sighed. “What do I know? Who tells me anything?” she said.

* * * *

She sensed him following her almost immediately after she left Jai Guru’s house. She wandered around, getting lost in the maze of narrow alleys opening into main streets and disappearing into narrow alleys again. She ignored the touts who called out to her to buy sarees, footwear, gold jewelry, and even gift items. She went past small street-side temples, old choultries, swarms of Gujarati tourists, crowded tea shops, and crazy traffic through all this chaos. She felt him clinging to her trail persistently.

Maybe it was time to confront him. She ducked into a small shack-like restaurant. The personnel and customers all gawked at her. She sat at a plastic topped table overlooking the street. He entered the restaurant behind her, looked around, spotted her and casually walked over to her table. He slid in to the chair across her and grinned at her.

He was a lanky young man with masses of wild, unkempt hair and beard concealing most of his face. He was dressed in saffron kurta and dhoti. He wore bathroom chappal on his feet. His forehead was plastered with holy ash and kum kum. Two bright eyes shone through all the hair and they were contemplating her as if she was the biggest joke he’s ever encountered.

Bhuvana stared at him.

He grinned again. “You will not get it,” he said simply.

The waiter hovered, ogling at both of them with fascination. The hirsute young man ordered two coffees. The waiter left their side reluctantly.

“Who are you?” Bhuvana asked.

The young man leaned forward. “You surprise me,” he said and pulled out what looked like a joint and lit it. The sweet smell of the smoke confirmed it was marijuana.

Bhuvana smiled derisively. “If you are trying to scare me, you are doing a poor job of it,” she said.

The young man guffawed.

“No Bhuvaneshwari, I am not trying to scare you. I know better,” he said. The waiter arrived with the coffee in miniscule glasses. The young man sipped his with obvious enjoyment.

Bhuvana assimilated what he said. “Where is Jai Guru?” she asked at length.

The young man shook his head. “Jai Guru is an idiot and a coward,” he replied.

Bhuvana felt the snake rise and constrict her chest. “You cannot keep me away,” she hissed. “Not this time!”

The young man took a pull of his joint and closed his eyes. When he opened it, there was a curious sharpness to his gaze.

“Let go of the anger. You’ve clung on to it for too long,” he said quietly.

Bhuvana’s eyes burned, the snake having reached her head. A curious pity filled the man’s eyes. He reached out to touch her hand. Bhuvana snatched it back as if burnt.

“I will find Jai Guru, make no mistake of it,” she said, her voice cold.

The man threw a few coins on the table and got up. “Just watch where you are going,” he said and walked out. He stepped out on to the street, walked a few paces and disappeared.

* * * *
Inspector Chockalingam had a nightmare. In it, he was caught in a kind of inferno—a raging fire surrounded him. Its hot tongues leapt out at him and burst on his face, almost singing his eyebrows. He tried to run, but he was trapped. He turned back to see the fire turn into the face of the woman he’d met on the train. She opened her mouth and he saw that she had fangs. Blood dripped from them. He heard inhuman wails. He felt suffocated his eyes thick with the smoke, his body burnt. And strangely, he heard bits and pieces of some song he’d never heard before. He woke up drenched in sweat.

He turned to check on his wife--fortunately, she was fast asleep. He got up from the bed, went to the fridge and drank a whole bottle of cold water. He was not a man who was rattled easily about anything. He had seen his share of violence in his career as a policeman in Madurai, but nothing had ever affected his sleep.

Melappudur Neeli. The name suddenly rang clear in his head. That’s what he had heard. In that folk song that he heard in his dream. A folk song unlike anything he had heard growing up in a village near Madurai.

His wife was sitting up groggily when he went back to the bed. “What happened?” she asked.

“Nothing. Went to the toilet. Sleep now,” he told her and settled back to a sleepless vigil.

“Are you allright?” his wife asked him the next morning, as he was getting ready for work.

“Just work pressure,” he told her and set out, after instructing her to be careful and not open doors for any strangers. He set out to the station on his bullet.

The station was in its usual buzz when he entered. However, there was something unusual -- someone was singing. About burning fields and dead animals. About destruction. Inspector Chockalingam realized with a start that it was the same folk song he had heard in his dream.

He searched for the source and found a young man squatting in the lock up. He was hirsute, with wild hair and flowing beard. He was dressed in saffron kurta and dhoti. And he was singing in a loud voice, completely oblivious to where he was.

“Who is that?” Inspector asked the constable.

“Nuisance case saar--was walking around singing loudly in the neighborhood in the middle of the night. Someone called up. Just kept him in for the night. Dope head,” the constable replied.

“Get him out, I want to talk to him,” Inspector said and went to his seat.

The young man was produced before the Inspector. He met the Inspector’s gaze with a curiously sharp gaze of his own. “My singing kept you awake all night too?” he asked.

* * * *
Bhuvana had come back to her hotel room in a towering rage. A rage that had become a second nature to her, like the pain of an inoperable cancerous growth—there always, burning, burning...

How dared he? How dared he ask her to let go of it? What did he know of it? Who was he?

She stood under the shower without taking her clothes off. How long! How long had she lived with it! How long had she waited, pitied as the hapless woman, laughed at for her helplessness, weakness, her inability to Do anything! How long had she let it grow inside her, unable to express it, powerless to channel it!

She felt her anger washed away by the water a little. It simmered down and coiled like a dormant serpent at the pit of her stomach.

She removed her clothes and showered properly. After she finished, she came out into the room and went to her back pack.She removed something she had taken from Jai Guru’s house -- a saffron angavastram (clothe draped on the shoulders). She took it in her hands and sat down on the floor and closed her eyes, focusing. She held the piece of clothe lightly in her hand, feeling Jai Guru’s aura, energy through it. Trying to get in touch with him. Locate him.

It was a tough job. She felt energy oozing out of her every minute. Her head ached, her chest ached, her whole body ached. She felt as if someone was putting a huge stone on top of her head. She felt sinking, sinking.

Then she remembered. The betrayal. The heinous breach of trust. The serpent uncoiled.

She found him finally, but his location made her frown with pain.

* * * *
Inspector Chockalingam sat immobile. The story told by the young man through his song was chilling.

A cruel and abusive zamindar at Melappudur. His young bride. He suspects her of having an affair with a farm hand and tortures her to death. She is reborn so is the zamindar. In this birth, she is the angry soul. Her parents notice her cruel streak and abandon her in the forest. She grows up there, her anger and her vengefulness growing with her. She roams around in search of the zamindar and kills him. Her anger does not die with this. She waylays travelers and drink their blood. She kills cattle. The story continues for many births. Finally, a Brahmin priest tricks her into giving away all her powers, traps it in a copper plate, buries it in some secret place and sends her north. It is said that Melappudur Neeli still tries to get back her powers so that she can wreak more havoc.

The Inspector looked at the strange young man suspiciously. The story was a folklore, one of the many that was passed down from generation to generation. It was unimaginable that the woman he met on the train could have any connection to this Melappudur Neeli.

The young man smiled as if reading the Inspector’s thoughts. “Those who can open the secrets of the copper plate know all the answers,” he said.

The Inspector frowned. Then he looked at the young man incredulously. “Jai Guru?” he asked.

* * * *
The bus smelled a mixture of neem oil, jasmine flowers, and sweat. It was crowded and loaded with all sorts of paraphernalia. The air was thick with conversations in the unmistakable Madurai dialect.

Bhuvana shrunk to her window seat. Jai Guru’s saffron angavastram was wrapped around her left wrist. Soon. Very soon, she told herself, her green eyes flashing.

The old woman sitting next to her observed her with interest. “Where are you going?” she asked.

Bhuvana turned and met her gaze. “Melappudur,” she answered. The old woman’s expression changed.

* * * *
Kathirvelan, Inspector, Crime Branch and a personal friend, observed Chockalingam through the haze of smoke he exhaled. “Why this interest in Jai Guru? Has some powers-that-be in your beat lost some money?” he asked.

“Oh, is that his racket?” Chockalingam asked.

Kathir shrugged and sipped his tea. “No proof, but his devotees are a mixed bag. Money laundering, funding subversive outfits, extortion, smuggling… We think money and other things exchange hands at this Guru’s place, but have not been able to prove anything,” he replied.

“Enemies?” Chockalingam asked.

Kathir took another pull at his cigarette. “Possibly. Who knows? Political thugs, naxal groups, underworld -- can’t rule out anything,” he said at length. “Or he could be just a simple holy man.”

Chockalingam nodded. Kathir fixed him with a hard stare. “Don’t get involved with this. Connections lead everywhere. Big mess!” he warned.

Chockalingam nodded again, but later that day, he found himself going to Jai Guru’s house.

It held the appearance of a funeral home. Jai Guru’s mother was sitting, shell shocked, leaning on one of the pillars supporting the courtyard. A few people were milling in and out. Chockalingam realized with shock that part of the house had been seriously damaged by a fire. It seemed recent, as there was still debris everywhere.

“It’s lucky that amma saw the fire in time. Otherwise the whole street would have burned,” one man told the Inspector.

The Inspector approached the old lady. She looked up at him.

“Vanakkam amma. I just wanted to ask you something,” he said.

She continued to look at him silently.

“Did a young woman come here yesterday?” he asked.

The old lady’s expression changed to one of terror. “She did it! She did it!” she whispered.

* * * *

The temple smelled of bats, stale oil, and tiruneeru. Like all old temples did. And this one was at least 1000 years old.

Jai Guru tried to focus on the blue flame between his brows. He wanted to be lost in the infinite blue, submerge in its bliss. But he was finding it difficult to concentrate. A strange breeze ruffled his clothes and hair. He knew she was there. He felt the pull like that of a magnet. He would not able to resist it once he got out of the temple, he knew. He sighed.

Footfall nearby made him open his eyes. It was the temple priest, dressed in dhoti that had lost its whiteness ages ago. “Swami, it is time to close the temple,” he said diffidently.

Jai Guru looked at him. Yes, it was time to go.

* * * *
The few men at the tea shop near Melappudur bus stop looked at the bearded young man with interest. Twilight had given way to a warm summer night, with a waxing moon throwing some illumination.

“This is the way to Melappudur sami,” one of them told him. “You will have to walk for two kilometers. Dei Sammugam, go with sami and show the way,” he instructed a teenage boy dressed in shorts and torn vest. A cloud suddenly obscured the moon above head.

The boy and the young man set out on the poorly lit dirt road to Melappudur. “Did you come to see the holy man in the temple, sami? He came two days ago. Stays in the temple all day long. Doesn’t eat anything until someone gives him something to eat,” the boy informed.

The young man smiled at him.

The boy walked along with him silently for sometime and asked, “Is there something bad going to happen, sami? People are talking about bad omens,” he said.

This time the young man did not smile.

* * * *
Jai Guru walked towards the river bank in the darkness. The temple was situated near the river, a little away from the village and was mostly submerged in darkness, save the dull illumination from the light at the entrance of the temple and the moonlight.

She was waiting for him, eyes flashing, hair flying, and half shadow, half human.

“I was waiting for you,” she told him.

“I know,” he replied.

“I need it back. Give it to me,” she said, unmoving.

Jai Guru shook his head. “I don’t have it,” he replied.

“Liar!” she hissed. “You have it! I know! Return it!” Her voice turned hostile, ominous.

“Go back. I have nothing to give you,” he repeated.

Her demeanor changed. She seemed to grow in size. He could feel the heat of her anger. “You cannot keep what is mine away from me!” she said and lunged towards him.

The bearded young man was picking his way gingerly towards the temple alone (his young guide having refused to accompany him beyond a point) when he heard a scream. It sounded like a growl; it sounded like a wail. It sounded inhuman. He broke into a run.

* * * *

Two days later, Inspector Chockalingam saw a news item which he had been half expecting.

“Gruesome Murder! Jai Guru Dead!” screamed the local Tamil daily.

“Jai Guru, the popular holy man from Madurai was found gruesomely murdered near the Melappudur temple. He was allegedly staying in Melappudur for the past two days. It is not known why he went there or what was he doing there. Local sources told us that a suspicious young man in saffron clothes was seen in Melappudur on the night of the murder. Police said that they are investigating the crime and are confident about nabbing the killer soon. Meanwhile, several important personalities, including film stars, have expressed their shock over this event.”

Chockalingam frowned and scanned the paper some more. His search was rewarded with a two-line news item on the fifth page. “Unidentified young woman found dead on the railway tracks 70 kms from Madurai, near Melappudur. Police suspect suicide and are trying to trace her family.”

“Breakfast is ready,” his wife called from the kitchen.

“And I am very hungry,” Chockalingam replied and got up with a sigh.

(Pazhaiyanur Neeli is a popular folktale/ballad from southern Tamil Nadu. In it, Neeli gets killed by her husband on the behest of his mistress. She is born again and goes on a rampage, killing her husband and about 70 people. She then becomes a local Goddess. I have heard about it second hand from the stories of other popular fiction writers, especially Sujatha and Balakumaran. This story has freely taken some inspiration from the folktale.)

Love Shack on the Beach

2010-02-17T01:16:00.001-06:00

I don’t remember when it got dark that evening. The coconut palms lining the beach were silhouetted against a pink sky first and then pitch darkness, punctuated by dim lights flickering here and there.

Our Beach Villa was definitely not on the beach. It was in a narrow lane up a hill away from the beach. We drove past the deceptively cheerful white picket gate down an all-too-short drive in front of a squat two-storied bungalow. We were greeted by a man in a T-shirt and shorts, who turned out to be our ethically-challenged caretaker for the next two days with a curious staccato way of speaking.

We deciphered two things eventually from him--we were the only guests at the villa for the weekend and there was no dinner. While spreading ourselves all over the villa presented no problem, food was a definite problem.

We intrepid city slickers set out to find food. To our chagrin, there was no food in Kashid and no food in Nandgaon, the next village. We found a kitschy bar complete with serial lights and a garden gazebo, occupied predominantly by foreigners and local men. Definitely not a sit down place and there was no food there either. The local gharghuti turned us down.

We stood there undecidedly on the village crossroad, near a closed temple by a sleepy lane, with our taxi driver insisting that we should share his dinner that he brought from home, when inspiration hit us. We will make our own dinner.

We found a small grocery shop where empty space overwhelmed the miniscule merchandise and bought Maggi, eggs, and two onions (the last being the triumph of P’s negotiation skills). We rushed back home and entered the kitchen, checking this and opening that, which brought our evil caretaker running. “Not allowed,” he told us and promised to get us Chinese food from somewhere.

We had a chance of examining our environs while waiting for our dinner. The place was enthusiastically ugly. Hideous furniture fought for their place in the Hall of Shame with faux stone facade in which two adjacent doors within a foot of each other proclaimed completely different garish designs. Our bedroom was done up in all shades of purple and tucked under weirdly sloping ceiling. (Yes, you guessed right--our villa had a faux tiled roof too.)

However, the best feature in the house was revealed to us as we were turning in for the night after a couple of drinks, salty Chinese dinner, a halfhearted attempt (from my side) at playing cards, and general chit chat. As the lights went out, the ceiling lit up with a thousand fluorescent stars and a crescent moon!

Love shack, baby, lo-o-ve shack!

The next morning saw us chirpily stepping out, armed with sunscreen, cameras, and that bible for weekend travelers, Outlook 52 Weekend Getaways from Mumbai. This despite a depressingly bad breakfast. Our first destination was the Revdanda fort.

When the book said it was in ruins, we didn’t think that a new township would’ve sprouted on them. We stood at the massive gates topped by massive banyan trees, disappointed with the normal buildings within. Then we saw a narrow dirt path going around the outer wall of the fort. We set out that-a-way without a second thought.

The path was narrow, overgrown with grass and bushes, barricaded sporadically by small stone levies (probably to keep the sea water at bay). We ducked under this branch and brushed away that cobweb and kept walking when suddenly, unexpectedly, we were surrounded by hundreds of butterflies! We stood there, too stunned for words, as bright orange and blue butterflies swarmed around us, like bits of colorful dreams.

We left our winged friends reluctantly and pressed on to the beach. We found a narrow gate that afforded an entrance into the fort. We stepped into a coconut grove which was adjacent (finally) the ruins. A little huff, puff, and heaving over short parapets later, we were in the middle of some serious ruins. Imposingly high walls overgrown with bigger trees whose gnarled roots snaked their way down to the rubble underfoot juxtaposing some half broken buildings whose vaulted ceilings still held vestiges of paint.

We explored them to our hearts’ content and then lightly jumped over the fence to get out. We walked back to the fort entrance where J and I once again scampered up the ramparts. Our efforts were not in vain--we encountered what looked like an enormous canon ball embedded in the fort wall and two abandoned canons on top. We also saw the coat of arms on the fort entrance--a distant memory of some bygone splendor.

Our next stop was the Korlai light house and fort. We drove past a fishing village where the strong fragrance of huge patches of drying fish accompanied us until the base of a serpentine narrow cliff path. It is a tricky drive--no cold rolled steel barricades to stop one’s way down to the rocky beach if one takes a curve too fast.

However, this road leads to one of the prettiest light houses I’ve seen. Short and gaily painted, it looked more like the extension of some fairy tale castle rather than a Government of India building, as the board indicated. The friendly caretaker/guide encouraged us to go up, using narrow iron ladders for the last two stories. The view from the top is spectacular with a high hill topped by a big fort to one side and cerulean sea on all other.

After we came down, J scurried up the hill to check out the fort, where he (allegedly) encountered a Narnia-esque world, replete with enchanted goats and magical lakes. P and I sat in the dappled shade of a coconut palm, overlooking the sea down the cliff. The rustle of breeze and the restless crash of sea against the rocks below soothed our city-bruised souls.

From thence, we drove all the way back to Nandgaon, to the gharghuti place where we finally had managed to wangle a meal. I love Konkan villages with their coconut, arecanut, and mango tree groves sheltering colorful little houses. It reminds me of my childhood in Kerala. The food at the gharghuti was simple but delicious.

We spent a somnolent afternoon in the mango-blossom scented sit-out of the villa (the ONLY nice thing about the place), entertained by geese fighting with chickens chased by dogs around us. A lamb cried all afternoon somewhere.

As the sun came down, we wandered towards the beach, an unimpressive affair between two rocky cliffs and as crowded as Juhu beach. We hung around until sun set, entertained by scantily clad ill-maintained men frolicking in the water around us.

Early next morning, we set out for the Phansad Bird Sanctuary: Binoculars? Check. Salim Ali book? Check. Cameras? Check. Bird watching capability? Zero.

The sanctuary is breathtaking, with dense tropical jungle traversed by trails. It was easy to get off the trail and walk around among the trees, feeling like cousins of Dr. Livingston twice removed. There were a million birdcalls around us, their decibel levels increasing as the sun rays filtered their way to the thick undergrowth here and there. We even saw a nest or two. But birds? Alas, we could see only three during our three-and-a-half hour trek.

What we did hear was a low guttural growl. I remembered the leopard warning at the beginning of the trail and was ready to flee. But “adventures-r-us” J pooh-poohed our trepidation, assured that we three were good enough to tackle a hungry/angry leopard, picked up a little stick, and led the way deeper into the trail.

Fortunately, we didn’t encounter any annoyed feline, although the growl followed us for some time. We did see huge trees, bright flowers, enormous vines, wild mushrooms and dried leaves that carpeted the ground under us. We didn’t see any fellow trekkers anywhere.

We came back exhausted, famished, and dehydrated. The burji paav at the Kashid beach shacks tasted delicious, so did the simple yet expensive meal our nefarious caretaker served us at the villa.

We set back to the city, feeling sadder and sadder as the traffic thickened. A very different kind of holiday was finally at an end.

Maxus Moviecus

2010-01-30T05:47:00.002-06:00

“Who’s the next of kin that needs to be informed in case something happens to you?” V was only half joking. We were indeed intending to go where no man/woman/child/dog from the civilized world had ever attempted to go before.

Are you familiar with Saki Naka? It is a junction in hell. It is where the trying-hard-to-be-cool-but-failing-miserably Andheri-Kurla Road meets gateway-to-hoity-toity-Powai Saki Vihar Road meets just-hold-your-breath-we-will-soon-be-in-middle-class-heaven-Ghatkopar meets seriously-blue-collar-but-builders-are-fighting-to-make-middle class Jari Mari. It is where the stench from open sewers rise to mingle with the dust from monstrous constructions, fumes from thousands of vehicles, and sweat of a million people picking their way nimbly through garbage dumps, open craters, hawkers’ wares and uneven roads. It is where if the combined road rage of all commuters were to explode at the same time, it would be as devastating as a minor H-bomb.

Off this devil’s own Saki Naka, down a rapidly narrowing and darkening road to Kurla, in one cutting is a little known mall and multiplex called Maxus. We got to know about it only yesterday. We decided to watch Ishqiya there.

Wise people pleaded with us to give up such a foolish endeavor. But S and I, the intrepid duo, were in a mood for adventure. So we set out last evening after work with a militant spark in our eyes. After begging and running around for a rickshaw (oh the cursed place!) S got us into a taxi. The driver scratched his head when we said, “Onward to Maxus!” But we somehow found it, passing Mallika Restro Bar and various industrial compounds.

It was a brave modern building, trying to hold its own on the 90-ft road strewn with lorries and a very mixed crowd. As we neared it, we realized that only the multiplex was operational. We stepped through the gate noticing that in the modest crowd milling around, we were the only women. We got out tickets and went through the metal detector threshold and smack into the dragon security woman.

Now I understand that it is a sign of our times that we go through security checks even to have fun, but where does it all stop? This woman at Maxus went through my bag with more diligence than the personnel in American airports who, mistaking me for a South American, used to check it for drugs. And her frisking stopped just short of a cavity search. All this to the accompaniment of an inhuman wail, as if emanating from a poltergeist caught in a door hinge. As I stepped out of the little frisking enclosure, I noticed that the cry was from the deserted gaming consoles that were blinking eerily.

The theater was big, comfortable and modern. The audience was all male as we walked in. Several pairs of eyes watched us as we took our seats. As the theater filled up, we were heartened to see that a few women also trickled in. This seemed to be a strictly couples or unaccompanied males type of crowd. No families. Definitely no kids.

As the lights dimmed, I noticed a phenomenon I had not encountered in Mumbai ever before -- a raucous audience. This was going to be a movie annotated, underlined, and footnoted by the audience. Luckily, they were loud but not lewd.

But then, Abhishek Chaubey’s Ishqiya is a movie that is perhaps most comfortable with this sort of watching. Earthy, witty, sometimes steamy and with chockfull of cuss words, it may come covered with the dust and mud of eastern UP, but it is definitely rural chic. It is unmistakably Vishal Bhardwaje-esque movie. It is also, in many ways, a cowboy film.

Khalujaan a.k.a Iftikar (Naseeruddin Shah) and his nephew Babban (Arshad Warsi) are a couple of smalltime thieves, living by the seat of their pants and their wits, somewhere in UP. They have now attempted a serious crime--they have stolen a substantial amount from their boss Mushtaq and are on the run. Their mission--cross the border and get into Nepal. In their quest for a safe sanctuary, they seek out Vidyadhar Verma (Adil Husain) in Gorakhpur. But Verma is dead. His widow Krishna (Vidya Balan) allows the two to stay on for a few days.

Things are idyllic for a while, with Krishna engaged in looking after her diary farm, household chores and practicing music. Khalujaan thinks he has found his soulmate. Babban befriends a local teenager, who seems very knowledgeable about firearms and where to find prostitutes. Unfortunately, the duo’s boss track them down in Gorakhpur, but the money is missing. The boss gives them a month to pay it back. Krishna hatches a daring kidnap-and-ransom plan to get the money and lure the two into it.

What follows is a tale of double, triple, quadruple crossing, of love and sex, of humor and violence. We get a flavor of caste violence, arms smuggling from Nepal, and the kidnapping racket.

What makes the movie eminently watchable, without a doubt, is the acting. After a long long time Naseer gets a role to sink his teeth in. There is something tragi-comic about his Khalujaan, who had a musician hanging on his family tree, giving him more refined sensibilities when compared to his philandering nephew. Watch the song “Dil toh baccha hi ji” and you will understand what I mean. Every gesture, every twitch, every breath of Naseer is studied and played to perfection. No wonder we loved him during the heydays of parallel cinema!

Arshad Warsi must be one of the most underutilized actor of our times. His Babban is simple minded, sailor-mouthed, and witty. His chemistry with Naseer is as potent as his chemistry with Vidya Balan, giving way to very memorable lines and scenes, of which “tumhara ishq ishq, aur hamara ishq sex?” is but one of the highlights. But dude, what’s with the jeans?

Vidya Balan is of course a revelation as the scheming, sultry Krishna. But for some strange reason, she put Raquel Welch of 100 Rifles in my mind more than an earthy Indian village woman. It must be either the refined Hindi diction or the very western seductiveness. I mean, while the long, hot, open mouthed kissing scene was definitely steamy, it did feel very “sexually arrived,” if you know what I mean, to be a convincing village belle.

Which brings me to my gripe about the movie: On one hand, it looks and feels like a western, with lines like “apne pichwade ko uthao” sounding like the literal translation of “move your ass,” and much gun slinging. We even have renegade caste army to replace renegade Mexican/Indian characters. Vidya Balan’s house looks like a mud hacienda, seemingly standing on its own in the middle of nowhere. (Fortunately there are no horses.) All this would have been fine if it weren’t for the very predictable plot of a heist/caper.

I have nothing against the genre. It’s just that I wish Bhardwaj and his ilk would get out of this fixation and make some other genre of movies. I am getting a tad bored.

Music is very good, with “Dil toh baccha hi ji” and “Ibn e batuta” being the most memorable. Of course, Gulzar’s lyrics is the tops. Cinematography by Mohana Krishna makes the film look authentic and colorful. I need someone to decode all the swear words used in the movie.

You don’t need my recommendation to watch the movie. It is fun.

Priya’s Must Watch Movies List

2010-01-13T11:14:00.006-06:00

(Warning: a long post)

“Why don’t you write a blog post on Tamil movies that non-Tamil people can enjoy?” Arif asked me the other day, perhaps in a bid to stop me from going on and on about a recent Tamil movie I watched. It was a capital idea. I decided to take out couple of hours from a week that is killing in its work load to write the post. I knew I was going to have fun.

Thank you Anup and Anil for helping me come up with the list!

The Tamil Milieu
“Frank passions of Tamil cinema”, said Nisha Susan in a recent article. How true! Hot headed, vocal, simple, loyal Tamils with centuries of unbroken performing arts tradition embraced cinema as early as 1897. It was the beginning of a long, passionate, earthy love story, making cinema an extension of our identity, a part of our popular culture, intermingling with politics and daily life. 50-feet cut outs are but a small expression of our love. We make countless stars and worship them with pure hearts.

Our whole hearted approval of the form has rewarded us richly. Countless great artists, be it actors, directors, cinematographers, music directors, singers, or technicians have altered our popular culture forever, for the better, IMHO.

But making this list presented a singular challenge: Tamil cinema, as with any regional art form, is steeped in the regional context. In our case, it is 2000-years of experiences, art, and literature. In many ways, our culture has been practically unaltered for centuries. Our form of kadi (morkuzhambu) finds mention in a Sangam poetry. The wedding ceremonies described in an 8th century poem are followed, completely unaltered even today. Almost every phrase, idiom, or pun has a hoary context. It is difficult to imagine anybody enjoying Tamil cinema without this knowledge.

But I have tried. This list is not at all exhaustive – it is purely my personal choice.

Thillana Mohanambal, 1968
Movies like this get made so rarely that it seems totally serendipitous. How else can one explain the happy confluence of almost 20 best actors in Tamil cinema in one glittering movie, supported by a strong delightful storyline (the movie is an adaptation of a novel by Kothamagalam Subbu) and fantastic music?

Set in the turn of 20th century feudal Tanjore and Madurai, it is at heart a tempestuous love story of short-tempered, temperamental nadaswaram (pipe instrument) artist Shanmugasundaram (played memorably by Sivaji Ganesan) and the very talented dancer Mohanambal (Padmini is just awesome). Sparks fly between the two from the first meeting. Through out the movie, they banter, fight, make up, fight again, and finally get married. In the meanwhile, Padmini is battling the nefarious advances of various zamindars and small-time kings who want to set her up as their mistress, while Sivaji is dealing with an attempt on his life.

What makes the movie so entertaining is the ensemble of supporting characters, each etched out perfectly and performed with aplomb. I haven’t seen another movie where so many actors are having a ball! Balaiya as Muthurakkan, the mischievous thavil (drum) accompanist; Nagesh as Vaithy, the oily agent (pimp); Manorama as Jil Jil Ramamani, a minor dancer-turned-drama company owner; A.V.M Rajan as Thangarathinam, Shanmugam’s brother—the list goes on.

Watch it, not for cinematic or technical value, but for the sheer brilliance of performance. It doesn’t get better or bigger than this!

Apoorva Ragangal, 1975
This is a clever film by one of the most prolific and significant directors in Tamil cinema, K. Balachander. Intelligent, opinionated, and fiercely pro-feminist, KB was forever fascinated by people and relations. And this movie perhaps is one of his extreme experiments. This was also the movie in which Rajnikant was introduced.

Prasanna (a very young Kamal Hassan) is a fiery college youth with naxalite leanings. His dad (Major Sundarajan in a difficult role) is disapproving of his ways and hands him over to the police. After getting released, Prasanna walks out of his house, gets involved in a bloody street fight and is rescued by Bhairavi (Srividya) a 40-year old singer. She takes him home. While recuperating, Prasanna falls head over heels in love with Bhairavi, who is 20 years his senior. In the meanwhile, Bhairavi’s estranged daughter Ranjini (Jayasudha) meets Prasanna’s dad by chance and falls in love with him. How does this complex knot unravel is what the rest of the movie is all about.

While this movie has all the standard ingredients of all KB’s movies, such as very clever dialogs, unexpected plot movements, humor, and strong performances, what really made the movie work for me is the palpable chemistry between Kamal Hassan and Srividya (they were rumored to have had an affair which started during this movie) and the way the director milked it.

Watch it to see how a movie can be sexy without skin, heaving breaths, or noisy kisses!

Mullum Malarum, 1978
A debut directorial venture of J. Mahendran, this film combined realism with commercial success. Most notably, this is one of the rare movies in which one could see Rajnikant the actor, as opposed to Rajnikant the star.

Rajnikant is Kali, a poor cable car operator in a mining village. He and his sister Valli (played by the inimitable Shoba) have been orphans from a very young age and are very close. Their stable life is shaken by the entry of the site manager Kumaran (played by the suave Sarath babu) and Manga (Fatafat Jayalakshmi sizzles in the role), a migrant laborer. Kali develops a hatred for Kumaran born mainly out of his angst about the unfair advantage that he thinks Kumaran has over him. Kumaran falls in love with Valli, complicating matters. Ego clashes and hardships follow, all resolving well at the end.

I haven’t seen another movie that explores impotent anger and angst like this movie does. Rajnikant gives such a nuanced, sensitive performance as the man constantly butting his head against an unfair fate, holding on to the dregs of his pride and ego.

Watch this version of the Angry Young Man, who unlike the Big B, doesn’t win with his fists. He keeps losing and only triumphs in his relationships.

Varumayin Niram Sivappu, 1980
The movie title translates to “The Color of Poverty is Red”, which tells you its red leanings. Another gem from KB, this explores unemployment.

It again stars Kamal Hassan (KB’s favorite actor) as the idealistic unemployed youth who doesn’t want to compromise his principles for anything. He arrives in Delhi in search of a job, after vowing to his father that he WILL find a job that suits is character. He meets Sridevi, an impoverished theater artist and they fall in love. But employment proves elusive to the hotheaded idealist who finally settles down to be a barber, which he believes is the only job that enables him to uphold his integrity. The movie ends with him and Sridevi living happily in an abandoned van.

For the uninitiated, Kamal Hassan and Sridevi were the golden on screen pair (Kamal Hassan says that their off screen relationship was that of siblings) acting in several movies together. They come together once again here, giving a great performance, supported by wonderful music.

Watch this for a deglamorized Sridevi who puts her head down and acts, a commodity that became well nigh impossible to find after this movie.

Mudhal Mariyadai, 1985
I consider this artistically the greatest movie in my list. Directed by Bharathirajaa, the man responsible for taking Tamil movies out of the studio and planting it firmly in the mud and dustof villages, this features one of the greatest performances of Sivaji Ganesan.

Sivaji was 58 when he acted in this movie. By this time, he was considered over the hill, his dramatic (sometimes melodramatic) acting style obsolete and highly criticized. Tamil cinema had moved on. And then he puts in a breathtaking performance, reined-in, under-played, and so sensitive that it rendered the audience dumbstruck and awed.

Sivaji plays Malaichami Thevar, the head of a small village somewhere near Madurai. Although he is revered and loved in the village, he is unhappily married to a shrewish wife Ponnatha (played excellently by Vadivukkarasi). Into this life of quiet desperation comes Kuyil (Radha giving the best performance of her career), the young daughter of the boatman. The two connect and eventually fall in love. Their relationship raises eyebrows in the village and is socially awkward. Kuyil commits a murder to protect Malaichami’s honor and goes to jail. Malaichami moves out of his house and starts living in Kuyil’s hut, waiting for her return. But she returns only to his deathbed.

Ilaiyaraja is in his home stretch (he hails from the region) and he uses folk music to its fullest effect. The simple sounding melodies touch your heart, bring tears to your eyes, and make the movie lyrical. Almost every frame of this movie is well thought out, with the director using visual metaphors and music to tell a nuanced tale that is true to the soil and people.

I am very proud of this movie! Watch it for me.

Mouna Ragam, 1986
Here is a little gem of a movie directed by a young Maniratnam, before his national/international pretentions.

Divya (played vivaciously by Revathi) is forced by her family into an arranged marriage to Chandrakumar (Mohan can act!), a Industrial Relations manager in a Delhi-based firm. She hates the marriage and feels alienated in Delhi. Chandrakumar discovers that she is still haunted by the memories of her former lover Manohar (Karthik defined nervous energy before SRK did) who was killed in a police encounter. He was an anarchist activist (erm… looks like Tamil directors love this stereotype). The couple decides to separate on Divya’s insistence, but the court asks them to stay together for a year before separating. Of course Divya eventually lets go of her past and falls in love with her husband, which is what the rest of the movie is about.

The movie is full of Maniratnam touches and is very entertaining. All young girls in Tamil Nadu still fall in love with karthik’s character and want someone like him in their lives. Ilaiyaraja does a bang up job as the music director. P.C. Sriram is the cinematographer and gives a fresh new look to the movie.

Watch this gold standard for love stories.

Vedham Puthithu, 1987
The late 80’s were the zenith of director Bharathirajaa’s career, as this film indicates, which is a look at the caste system.

In an idyllic village in Tirunelveli district, society is clearly divided along the caste lines. Balu Thevar (Satyaraj in his career best role) a prominent man in the village belonging to the Thevar (kshatriya) community, is an atheist and rationalist. His wife is Pechi (a phenomenal performance by Sarita) and his son is Sankara Pandi (Raja), who is studying in the city. In the same village lives Neelakanta Sastri (played by Charuhasan) a poor Brahmin priest. He has a daughter Vaidehi (the beautiful Amala) and a young son Sankaran.

Sankara Pandi, while visiting his parents meets Amala and falls in love with her. Their romance blossoms until Neelakanta Sastri finds out and decides to marry Vaidehi off to a Brahmin. Vaidehi stages her death and runs away. Neelakanta Sastri blames Sankara Pandi and in an encounter, both of them die accidentally.

The boy Sankaran is orphaned. Balu Thevar takes the boy home, causing a major furor in the village. The boy slowly fits into his new home, accepting Balu Thevar and Pechi as his parents. However, villagers believe that this will cause bad tidings and attack Balu Thevar and kill him.

True, it is a movie with a message, but it is an artistic triumph as well. Be it the breathless love scenes, anguished moments of loss of dear ones, or the heart warming moments of the boy discovering love and family once again, the movie is lyrical.

Watch it for Satyaraj and Sarita’s performances.

Thalapathi, 1991
Here is a very interesting interpretation of Mahabharata, set in a modern context. Directed by Maniratnam, the film features strong performances from Rajnikant, Shobana, Srividya, Jai Shankar, and Arvind Swamy.

Surya (Rajnikant) is the prototypical Karna, abandoned by his teenaged unwed mother and sent down the river. He is adopted by a lady living in a slum and grows up to be a goonda. He is discovered by Devaraj (Mammootty), the prototypical Duryodhana, a mafia lord. A great friendship flowers between the two. Surya meets Shubalakshmi (played by the lotus-eyed Shobana) the daughter of a Brahmin clerk. Life is fine until the new collector Arjun (Arvind Swamy) arrives who wants to cleanse the city of the crime. Arjun is of course Surya’s half brother, but nobody knows this. Shubalakshmi is forced to marry Arjun. Surya eventually gets to know that Arjun’s mother Kalyani (Srividya who by this time had moved on to mother roles) is his mother too. In the final encounter, dharma prevails over crime, Devraj is killed, Surya is spared, and is united with his estranged mother.

Ilaiyaraja excels once again. The song “Rakkamma Kaiya Thattu” went on to become the trend setter of item numbers in Indian movies.

Watch this movie for its style, bold interpretations, bizarre homage to Kurosawa in a song sequence, and very credible performances. Two thumbs up!

Thevar Magan, 1992
You might have watched Virasat, starring Anil Kapoor, Tabu and Amrish Puri. Well here’s the original. Written by Kamal Hassan and directed by Bharathan, it was one of the landmark movies in Tamil.

It was also one of Sivaji Ganesan’s last movies. The world was afforded a rare spectacle of two living legends, Sivaji and Kamal, together in one great movie. Revathi is brilliant in her role as the rustic innocent.

Watch this for great performances and a nativity that you might not find in the remake.

Chennai 600028, 2007
This directorial debut by Venkat Prabhu is a surprising film. Low key with unknown actors, it looks and feels like a slick and stylish indie film, although it went on to become a blockbuster.

The milieu of the movie is firmly local – it is the story of a gali-cricket team in a very middle class suburb of Chennai. While the game is a strong presence in the movie, it is essentially a buddy movie, tracing the dreams, loves, fights, and escapades of the team over a period of a year in which they are preparing for the Radio Mirchi gali-cricket tournament.

The movie has its side-splitting moments, such as the bet match they decide to play with a bunch of school boys, where they get thulped out of shape! The movie is clean wholesome fun and is very relatable. It could be happening in your mohalla!

Do watch it for it is the new, stylish, and heart warming voice of Tamil cinema!

And just when you thought 2009 had no redeeming moments...

2009-12-25T23:58:00.002-06:00

I am saying this from the perspective of having watched 13 movies from around the world in the MAMI festival, in addition to all the movies that were released until November this year - Raju Hirani is a genius. His ability to let the light of positivity and hope shine through in even the darkest of material is probably unmatched. He spins fairy tales out of our frustrations and helplessness and make us believe that redemption is just one attitude adjustment away. His gift is doubly precious because it is so rare in this world of strife, violence and “artistic” art.

Not that he isn’t a great storyteller. Remember that thug with a heart of gold and a naive faith in fellow human beings? You were so busy being charmed by him and his irrepressible side kick, laughing, and wiping the occasional tear that you almost didn’t notice the oxymoronish nature of the protagonist. Neither did one have any quarrels with the simplistic plot.

3 Idiots is artistically a greater film than the Munna Bhai series. It is a lot darker, it has more delineated characters with very real, seemingly insurmountable problems, a more complex narrative structure, and more nuanced performances from much stronger actors. And by God, it is a lot funnier.

Only Hirani, with his ironic humor, could make a film about demeaning ragging, pressure of dreams and hopes of the entire family on young students, two suicides and another attempted suicide so side-splittingly funny.

The matter under discussion is the plight of students in the current education system. Which puts another film by the same actor very strongly in one’s mind. Where 3 Idiots scores over Taare Zameen Par is the light touch with which the director handles the material. While Aamir felt the need (annoyingly so) to stand up and lecture many times in TZP, here Hirani restrains him to a few nuggets here and there, invariably followed by a joke that indicates that the director was determined not to let Aamir take himself seriously.

Before Aamir afficianados take umbrage, I am not being disdainful of him. He is most definitely the pivot of the movie, effortlessly morphing into a young student with limitless wonder for everything, mixing gyaan with pranks with great elan. Most importantly, he gives enough space for other actors to perform and shine.

Which brings me to Sharman Joshi. His character in the movie is perhaps the most well developed. His journey from a boy cowed down by responsibilities that are perhaps too big for him to carry to a man who is sorted and confident is also the most affirming story arc in the movie. There is a certain air of aching vulnerability about Sharman that makes his character entirely believable, lovable, and unexpectedly funny. Watch out for his answer to the question "How does an induction motor start?"

Madhavan's understated performance is the cornerstone of the movie. His Farhan is no hero--and he is the first one to admit it. He is scared to stand up to his father, is upset that his friend scores better than him, and doesn't want to sacrifice his life by marrying a paralyzed Sharman's sister. But as the narrator, his open mindedness and ready faith perhaps colors the entire movie. Great job Maddie!

Kareena is a treat to watch--she exudes confidence from every pore, fills the screen with energy whenever she appears on it and does a bang up job as Pia. The much talked about "dhokla" scene is definitely the highlight of the movie. And watch her delivering instructions to assist her sister's delivery over web cam - she is in a space that is a long long way (in the positive direction) from the body-painted, size-zero-bikini-fitting, brainless bimbo of the Kambakhth Ishq-s of the world. Yay!

I was disappointed with Boman Irani - he plays his character as yet another variation of the medical college principal on Munna Bhai. Expected a lot more from you, Boman!

In a movie that weaves back and forth like this one, editing becomes critical. Raju Hirani does a great job, past seamlessly flowing into the present and then jumping back again, somehow making this tizzy chronology the most logical way to tell the story. And unlike the dramatic transitions in Rang De Basanti, these are more on the lines of, "so where was I?" jumps.

If there was a low point in the film, it is the assisted delivery scene. Using child birth as a metaphor for new beginnings is so yankee! Hell, women give birth in train toilets and lose the baby through the hole here! And this childbirth is perhaps the cleanest in the world - you don't see a drop of blood anywhere. And to have a bunch of Indian men going metrosexually emotional about the first kick of the baby is a little too difficult to swallow. The only thing I liked about this segment is the spontaneous slap Mona delivers on Aamir who asks her to push. :-)

Two songs stand out - Behti hawa sa tha woh and All izz well, but you don't need me to tell that. Kudos to music director Shantanu Moitra and lyricist Swanand Kirkare. Rest of music is unremarkable. Cinematography by CK Muraleedharan is good to stunning in the Ladhakh sequence.

All those who say that the movie has improbable segments and a fairy-talish ending--you have missed the point. Really. Perhaps the best tribute to the power of this movie is that my dad, with 50% vision and much lesser grasp of Hindi enjoyed the movie thoroughly and not once asked me to explain a scene to him!

Go watch it, I say!

A Movie and Some Madness

2009-10-27T08:17:00.006-05:00

One word of advice about Julie and Julia: don’t!

Meryl Streep of course is fantastic. Doesn’t she look much taller than she looked in Mamma Mia? How does she manage it? She is delightful to watch. But Amy Adams is disappointing as the single-minded young woman who cooks 524 recipes in 365 days. Roger Ebert wonders when the couple had time to eat. I wonder how come they did not die of atherosclerosis. My God, so much butter!

I also wonder why the movie got made. I mean, wow, Julie made all those dishes over a year and even wrote about it. But what was the compelling reason to make a movie, which might as well have been a documentary on Julia Child and her obsessive fan?

The movie left me cold. No, to be honest, it left me peck-ish. After seeing dish after dish, I most certainly wanted to eat something, although I had supped earlier in the evening.

We tried to assuage it in Costa at Juhu.

As coffee shops go, I like only two of them. There is this place in Hiranandani called Aromas. It is my kind of coffee shop – a very nice menu, lovely ambience, and what’s more, the place is open until 2:00 am! What more can you ask for?

I am making Costa at Juhu a very poor second, because the food there is middling corrupt. But great ambience, lot of beautiful people walking in, and has the universal brotherhood aura that distinguishes good coffee shops from bad. (For a bad coffee shop, I invite you to visit Mocha at Galleria, Hiranandani – it looks and feels like the parlor of Adams’ Family! Brr!)

So we hung out there, sipping iced tea, playing with a toddler from the next table, and desultorily discussing mankind’s puzzling penchant for hatred while love was an option; in other words, typical late night coffee shop conversation. By 12:00 a.m., the hunger pangs couldn’t be kept at bay anymore. It was more like a craving – for hot steaming noodles.

M assured that Tian next door is just the place. The restaurant was of course closed, so we went up to the pub. Have you ever walked into a pub which is desperately struggling to be cool and failing miserably? You can tell that by that depressing guy with a baseball cap on his head, dancing alone to the beats of some Hindi song remix, totally ignored by all of six other people huddled in various corners. And noodles? Hahahahahhah!

We did an about turn, walked out and came to the streets. I was damned if I was not going to eat something. I turned to M and put up this proposal: how about hopping in a taxi and swinging by to Taj Shamiana? That is a 24-hr coffee shop isn’t it?

As we sped along empty roads to the old land’s end (or the beginning, provided which side of the Gateway you stood at), I resolved that henceforth, I will try to fit all my road traveling in Mumbai between 12:00 midnight and 5:00 am. Do you realize how fantastic the express highway is really?

I have a theory that everybody has a Taj story of the happy variety. Mine involves my initiation into the ways of the city. As a naïve, fresh off the boat immigrant, it all looked terribly grand to me then. Meetings and midnight snacks and 4:00 am breakfasts… I remember my first visit to the Sea Lounge was so momentous that I called home.

I was happy to see that much of the lobby is unchanged. So is Shamiana. We had pasta and biriyani at 2:00 am in the morning. I decided that having come this far, we should look at the Gateway at the crack of dawn. So we hung back, drinking cups of tea and talking about—oh gosh, who remembers what we talked about? I’m sure vital secrets were exchanged.

Somebody must’ve told me about birds and bees and sunrise timings.

Dammit, we are averaging 6:38 a.m. these days! No wonder then, when we walked out at 5:15 a.m., it was dark outside--very. All-night revelers at the Taj were still leaving, with one very drunk guy stumbling from car to car trying to find his.

We walked to the Gateway, with me muttering, “Wasn’t there a garden here? I am positive there was a garden here!” over and over again. Was there or wasn’t there a garden where now there is only a vast expanse of cobbled stones? It was just us, myriad of lights, and garbage, garbage, garbage everywhere, left behind by the previous evening’s visitors. But despite that (call me clichéd) there is a special thrill standing at the Gateway, looking back at the Taj and wondering what King George saw when he landed on December 2nd, all those years ago.

Thanks to 26/11, the place is lit up like a Christmas tree, with a few searchlights trained into the waters for a good measure. We started walking down the promenade, encountering a hardy old couple out for their morning walk. Silent boats and barges were bobbing quietly in the water, a few strings of light strewn here and there in the horizon. It is true – the city does sleep sometimes!

We decided it was time to go home. Did I tell you that the city sleeps sometimes? Well, not in the burbs, where the real life of Mumbai is now. At the Khar subway, at 6:00 a.m. in the morning, a group of at least 30 women, dressed in their sparkling fineries, were walking by, singing some song. They didn’t seem they had slept through the night. Chhath puja apparently!

The bloody sun rose when I reached Powai lake. I bowed my head to its superior whimsicality, over the heads of at least 200 women still doing their pujas, and went home.

Aum Ranbirayah Namah!

2009-10-09T04:29:00.002-05:00

Over the Gandhi Jayanti weekend, I visited my sister in Bangalore. My nephew, our baby, wanted to “hang out” with me and tell me everything that has been happening in his life.

As I listened to him talk about college, cinema, art, summer internship that he found for himself, screenplay workshop conducted by Kamal Hassan that he attended, and a certain sense of alienation that he felt among his peers, it hit me forcibly that he has grown up tremendously in just a year. From an indulged, cosseted boy, he has transformed into this enterprising young man capable of taking care of himself.

There was a minor celebration between my sister, my mother and I over the very creditable driving skills he demonstrated when he drove us to Nandi Hills and back. I was almost choked up when the boy sat through Naseer’s Ismat Aapa ke Naam patiently and without complaining, although he didn’t understand a word of it.

It is truly a privilege to witness the coming of age of someone near and dear to one.

Perhaps I saw my nephew in Ranbir’s Sid - maybe that is why I liked the movie so much.

”Wake Up Sid” is not a great movie. It is not nuanced, it is not profound, and it is not even particularly funny. There is no directorial brilliance on display. It is so slow paced that it might induce ennui in some. My friends were able to enumerate at least half a dozen movies it reminded them of.

On the other hand, it is enormously relatable. It has no designer clothes, foreign locations, stars who are more bothered about their hair than their roles, blaring music, firang dancers (a burgeoning trend I equate to the rise of Russian prostitutes in the Middle East and hence find equally disturbing - don’t you think so?), and long, unending mushy sequences that one has come to expect in today’s race for “blockbuster” movies. It is also a continuous, if not so elegant, ode to Mumbai.

Most of it happens in a poky little studio apartment in Bandra in a dingy building. I know that cheerless matchbox with minimal comfort but great neighbors that passes as a building - I have lived in similar apartments elsewhere. Watch the shots of Ranbir entering the building - his head almost touches the roof of the portico and not even the lights used in the shoot could illuminate that claustrophobic lobby!

And of course, the movie is of and by Ranbir.

The thing is I love the guy. I found him pretty darned compelling even in that horribly pretentious and plainly horrible Saawariya. I watched that monstrosity for almost an hour just for him. I agree with all industry pundits that he is the most promising face in Hindi filmdom.

Even without these rose tinted glasses, the charm of his performance in WUS in undeniable. He is totally convincing as the spoilt, clueless, lost Sid. Catch him crying on Konkona’s shoulder after storming out of his house – he does it in such a boyish way that inspired an involuntary “Aww!” from me. He looks delectable in the scene where he is sleeping hugging his shoe. And when he gets his omlette perfect after days of trying, you feel proud of him.

All in all, he plays his role with refreshing subtlety and quietness.

The movie is not about big dramatic moments or confrontations. It is about the small, everyday matters: you feel Aisha’s (played by Konkona) irritation as she keeps walking into the apartment that has been trashed by a Sid who had servants to do the cleaning up for him at home. You know that she is going to lose it sooner than later, because perhaps it has happened to you too.

You totally get the look which is a mixture of love, exasperation, and hurt that Supriya Pathak gives her son, because perhaps you have seen it in your mother’s eyes too. Your first paycheck was probably as exciting.

Konkona is great as usual. It is not a role that taxes her much, but boy, she is a study on nuances. That slight curving of the lips to indicate jealousy and displeasure, that subtle sigh to show boredom, that slight widening of the eyes to show happiness – she is a treat to watch. Even when she blurts out to Rahul Khanna that she didn’t expect him to be so handsome or when she is bounding with excitement on being asked out on a date by him, she does it in way what I can only term as minimalist.

Quietness being the theme of the movie, the music is quiet too. I liked the “Ektaara” song. But I loved the re-recording in many scenes including the one when Sid goes to meet his mother. Even club scenes are strangely devoid of din in the movie.

When everything else is quiet and underplayed, how could the sexual sub text be in your face? The scene where Sid discovers a tattoo that Aisha has on the nape of her neck is probably the most sensuous scene in the movie. Although I did feel that the two took too much time to confess their feelings to each other.

To sum up: do watch it for Ranbir. Don’t expect anything else, but really, Ranbir is enough.

And this is how we make “wholesome entertainers”!

2009-09-29T01:15:00.002-05:00

Have you watched a good Tamil “mass” movie in the last 15 years? If not, here’s your chance. Go and watch “Wanted”.

Directed by Prabhudeva, it has everything that we have come to expect as de rigueur in Tamil movies (and which hitherto hasn’t quite come together for Hindi movie makers): Slick direction, breathtaking cinematography, flawless editing, toe-tapping music, complex dance choreography, stunt choreography that looks almost like dance choreography in its detailing and nuances, and delightful performances all around -- in short, technical perfection.

Story? Oh well, it’s like the Mahabharatha - you know where it is going, you know whose side the hero is on, you know that the villains may pull the heroine’s vastra, but her savior will always arrive in the nick of time, sometimes running faster than a speeding train, and you know the bad men are going to die. This comfortable familiarity means that you don’t have any anxiety or fear while watching the movie. You need not deal with equivocal ethical dilemmas - you know, as the Navrathri festival shows us every year, that good will triumph over evil. Dharma will be established.

So you sit back, eat your popcorn, sip your soda, and get thoroughly entertained. And if you are the kind of movie goer who doesn’t want to grapple with “the greater creative question” and “artistic integrity beyond commercialization” and “Indian cinema - quo vadis?”, or doesn’t get queasy with a body count that exceeds Rambo and Terminator put together, here’s a full paisa vasool experience for you.

Why am I being so effusive? Well, I’ve always considered Prabhudeva a dancing genius (you-tube “thirupathi ezhumalai venkatesa”, “kasimettula kathadikkuthu”, and “vennilave vennilave” to understand what I mean), but he was an eminently forgettable actor. And he has made some horrors in his time. So I really didn’t expect much from him as a director.

How wrong I was!

“Wanted” is nothing if not the director’s touches through out the movie. Sample this:

Salman and Ayesha are trapped in a stuck elevator. One thing leads to another, and the two come very close to each other.
She says, “Oh it is very hot in here!”
He gently blows on her face. She gets excited and her eyes widen.
“Vicco Vajradanti?” she asks. He nods.
“Me too!” she simpers.
“Show?” Salman invites. She grins and her teeth twinkle - just as it did in the ad.

Or that fight scene in the climax. The hero is fighting with the villain and his never-ending supply of henchmen (yeah, that old chestnut) and you almost doze off in ennui when suddenly the villain takes a big fall -- and goes deaf. For a full minute, all you hear is the strident, piercing ring of tinnitus while this very violent stunt is being played out. I don’t know about you, but I felt every bit of the disorientation the villain felt.

Wait for the moment when he takes another fall and his tinnitus clears and all the noise comes through, like an explosion. You’ve got to love the modern theater sound system for that kind of experience.

Or, oh, the Salman disrobing moment: You knew it was destiny. You had even apportioned 20% of the movie ticket value for that revelation.

But five songs and 90% of the almost three-hour movie later, it still hasn’t happened. What? Salman has turned over a new leaf? you wonder. And then in the very end, when you have given up all hope, he takes his shirt off. Why? Not because he is dancing or exercising or I don’t know, those million pointless reasons he takes it off for. He does it because the villain throws a burning bottle of chemical on him and his shirt catches fire.

Oh Lordy Lordy!

I am a true daughter of movie-mad, hot headed, reverential-to-movie-rituals Madurai -- I clapped vigorously. (The boys sitting next to me were shocked, but that is the subject of another post.)

As far as performances go, Prakashraj and Aayesha Takia compete for top honors.

Prakashraj as the villain just hits the ball out of the park every time he comes on screen - which he does quite late, in the second half. He plays the archetypal underworld don as a delightful mix of menace, charm, and comedy. His Ganni Bhai is essentially a spoilt brat - a fast-talking, cocaine-snorting, wheeling-dealing, joke-cracking, pouting spoilt brat. His incarceration by the police commissioner where he is kept on a sleepless vigil is a hoot. And you should listen to him reprimanding Salman for killing all his henchmen at the very end. “They were top quality criminals!” he bemoans. “I had hand picked them from the streets and trained them. Now where will I go for people like that?” Heh heh!

And I haven’t seen Aayesha’s Jhanvi in Hindi films in a long time. In the age of body-painted, designer-clothes clad, sassy, overtly sexual female leads, the clueless Jhanvi reminds one of simpler times.

She is a middle class girl whose world’s perimeter is defined by her small family, her job at the call center, and her aerobics class. She has no skills to deal with anything bigger or more dangerous than a missed train. She can’t even tell off her mildly obnoxious landlord who makes unsuccessful passes at her, leave alone the police officer who seriously harasses her. She is naive and gentle. She is tortured by her lover’s criminal activities. She loves him, she hates him. She harbors secret hopes of reforming him.

Aayesha builds all these layers into her character mostly with her large expressive eyes. And thank God for simple skirts and jeans and capris! She is adorable in the movie, although feminists might have an issue with a heroine who needs rescuing all the time.

And Salman. How much that man has worked in the movie! He dances (Raju Sundaram has made him do some very intricate steps), he fights (a lot), he romances, and emotes when asked upon. But I liked his Radhe most as the lover. In a radical departure from his suave, cute, mushy Aman and Prem, he plays this totally unemotional lover who is unswayed by his lady-love’s tears and uses petty bickering to woo her. The pasta gag that runs through the movie is refreshingly funny.

It was good to see Vinod Khanna after a long time, although he dies before he could do anything much. Mahesh Manjrekar does a bang up job too.

My only crib about the movie is that it could have very easily been two songs and 30 minutes shorter. And it had someone younger than Salman doing the lead role. And that Salman didn’t wear those jeans with them unfortunate patchwork in the crotch. But nobody’s perfect.

All in all, good show Prabhu!

World in a Grain of Sand

2009-09-20T05:55:00.004-05:00

We were standing on the sticky sands temporarily abandoned by the low tide on Juhu beach. It was a pink twilight. The sea was a placid lake, lapping at the edges of our toes. The roar of the city was subdued, far behind us. We could see the graceful white lines of the Sea Link to our far left. And a building blazing like a torch at its top to our far right. Amidst these and before us, an eternal quietness – old, all-knowing, and all encompassing.

Life seemed suspended. Is this how holding “infinity in the palm of your hand” felt like? It seemed apposite to ask philosophical questions: about the meaning of life; about the grand design. It felt like the answers were just out there, tantalizingly close.

And suddenly, the pink twilight darkened into dusk. The water rose quietly, quickly, inexorably. We walked back to the beach, exchanging bemused glances. It was an unusually quiet evening at the beach with very few people around. The nairyal pani-wallah had a surreal patio arrangement of a few plastic chairs around his stall, facing the sea. We joined the rest of his clientele, talking quietly, lest we broke the magic.

How long did we sit there? An hour? Two? Who knows! Who’d have thought Juhu beach could offer one such an intensely spiritual experience?

As we walked back to Prithvi, the Dandiya night at Tulip Star grew louder and louder, delivering us back to the city we knew and were familiar with. At the right time too.

Me, Kash and Cruise is a play about the city, viewed through the lenses of the three lead characters, over 25 years. Directed by Rahul da Cunha, the play features firecracker performances from Amit Mistry and Rajit Kapoor. The latter completely steals the show with a series of cameo roles, nuanced and deeply studied. However, the play left me dissatisfied, as it fell in a murky in-between slot, way short of a pithy commentary or an emotional drama. Better review at http://verbalsot.blogspot.com/2009/06/just-watched-me-kash-and-cruise.html.

We walked out debating whether Mumbai is the city of the immigrants or of the born-and-brought-up-in people. Is the Xaviers’-studying, Mood-Indigo-attending, never-traveling-into-the-‘burbs-by-local train SOBO perspective relevant at all to the discussion? Or is it equally snobbish to disdain the elitist point of view? Has the city become more divisive, menacing, and non-cosmopolitan since the 92-93 riots? Or is it as embracing and forgiving and supportive of starting-afresh-many-times-over as it has always been?

It was indeed an evening of questions.

The Dandiya night at the Tulip Star was winding down as we walked past it, with people in exotic costumes spilling out like pieces escaping from a kaleidoscope, the mirrors on their persons twinkling like a million tiny stars. We vowed to attend one of these dos soon.

Mahesh Lunch Home was abuzz with activity and renovation. As we settled down for Surmai fry and Thai curry (puzzling variance of cuisine in a place so Konkan), Rajit Kapoor, Shehnaz Patel, and Rahul da Cunha came in and sat down at the next table. What is Mumbai if not our regular brush-ins with major and minor celebrities?

As we stepped out into the balmy midnight air, we paused, unwilling to end an evening so perfect, so rare.

“Why don’t you come home? I have a bottle of warm port wine!” M invited.

“You do realize I am coming only because I like your building,” I told M.

“I will try not to take that personally,” M grinned.

We got into an auto and rattled our way to Bandra, joining the sleepless masses rushing around on the streets. After all it is Mumbai, where one can extend a day long after it is officially over. Where else can one fly about intrepidly in autos all night, seeking entertainment or enlightenment?

To hell with civic apathy, terror at our doors, interminable traffic snarls, smog haze, crumbling infrastructure—it’s the only place to live in the world! I can wait until it becomes the next Shanghai or New York, and have the time of my life while doing so.

An Inglorious Legacy

2009-06-16T02:24:00.001-05:00

Suppuni thatha—

I heard that when you died of cancer in 1961, all you had in your possession was a small trunk containing a few clothes. What then of the 75 acres of land, houses in three towns, and three-lakh rupees in cash that you seem to have had inherited in your 16th year?

I know your dissipation has the romance of a Bimal Mitra-esque cliché. You were one among the rich landed gentry in the Tanjore district, loyal to the British Raj, who were caught unprepared in the maelstrom of a social revolution accompanying the nationalist movement.

But why did you abandon everybody in your life? Why did you live alone in Tanjore, while your widowed mother waited for you interminably at your ancestral village and your family at Pudukkottai?

What was that demonic hunger that made you whittle generations’ worth of wealth in 40 short years, leaving your children practically destitute and saddled with the loans you had taken? I hear that 10 generations ago, our ancestor Nana Iyer came riding through our village and was annoyed by a dog that led him to a treasure trove. Were you then some kind of divine reprisal visited upon our family to take away wealth that was not ours?

Who were you? What shaped you? Were you a good person or bad?

I heard your mother did many poojas including eating off the floor to have you. Why did you not take care of her? I heard she died waiting for you to visit her from Tanjore. Yet, you were the man who never ate sweets in memory of a kid sister who died in her childhood.

I heard you were quite a bookworm and used to take rides to nearby towns in trains, just to read books. I heard that your favourite authors were Wodehouse and Munshi Premchand. I’m told that you could play the veena excellently. There is a wall in a cousin’s house in Thiruvaiyaru, on which, behind many coats of white wash, there is a picture of Varalakshmi you drew for a pooja. They still talk about the beauty of it.

But your legacy to us seems to be only of pain and dysfunction.

Why didn’t you like my grandmother? Why were her aspirations, dreams, and despair so immaterial to you? If they were, then why did you advice my dad to be a good son to his mother, more than to you? Did you at least like the “other woman”? Were you nice to her?

Why did you let your family live with your brother-in-law as hangers-on and poor relations? Why was it so difficult to shoulder your own responsibilities?

How could you have been ok with the fact that my dad grew up feeling like an orphan? It breaks my heart now to seem him hang on to a few words of affection and endearment you chose to throw in his way occasionally. It enrages me to see him defend you, although I know that if he didn’t, he has nothing at all pleasant from his childhood to hang on to. Did you know that you have created such a big void in his psyche that even 45 years of happy married life and constant love has not been able to fill up?

Who were your friends? You seem to have been a connoisseur of art and patron of struggling artists. Would there be someone from the ranks of the people you hung out with or supported remember you with fondness and affection? Because I haven’t met anybody in the family who does.

My dad says I have inherited your traits—leaning towards art, spendthrift nature, and irresponsibility. He is worried sick that his grandsons have chosen art over engineering.

You seem to live on despite everybody’s best efforts. It does not bode well.

Homecoming Queen

2009-06-02T01:04:00.005-05:00

I just started reading Maximum city by Suketu Mehta. I am sure the “brilliant”, “lyrical” and “the best bit of journalism to come out of the country” parts will reveal themselves to me eventually. At this point, I am mulling my way through his “Country of No” and “fucking city”.

It is not that I am bristling at these epithets. I am sure if a shit-laden diaper flew into my house, I would also be forced to find succor in the four-lettered word.

The thing is, Mr. Mehta’s Mumbai seems to extend only up to the Mahim creek. However, as an “aspirational middle-class immigrant” to the city, the area that the author defines as Mumbai is well nigh inaccessible to me. I am a child of the suburbs. Hell, when I came here first, I got down at the Kurla station—not even the famed Mumbai Central or VT.

I am proud to claim that I landed in Mumbai like the millions of immigrants do—with one suitcase full of personal belongings, 2000 rupees in hand, no job, and no prospect of one either. I am also proud to claim that I was one of those Mumbai decided to seduce. I was employed (albeit for peanuts) on the 15th day of my landing; had a completely new set of friends by month two; and by month six, had moved into a dusty 1 bhk apartment in a dusty alley in dusty Sher-e-Punajb.

However, my brave new beginning in Mumbai is not what I started out to write about.

I realized that my recent homecoming to Mumbai is vaguely similar to that of Mr. Mehta’s. Like him, despite all the places I’ve lived in, I always reach out to Mumbai for my identity. Like him, I came back on the wings of my nostalgia. And like he did, I find that Mumbai-scape has altered in undeniable ways, even within the short time-span of three years.

But our point of departure is that I came back to the suburbs. Here the demographics are far more mixed; everybody is as old or as new as you are in this city; and the limits of our Mumbai is the market on the west, workplace in the north, mall to our east, and temple/gym/park/tailor/station to the south. Love, lust, hate, games, catching-up-with-the-Joneses, family, identity, eating out, ill health, bad-roads-in-monsoons, suicide everything happens within this microcosm.

Unlike the author, my easing back into this city took no time at all. I walked into a fully furnished apartment, picked up where the previous inhabitants left, and was fully settled in two hours.

I had no angst or righteous indignation, nor a moment of shivery panic. Maybe it is because I still have my famed Mumbai middle class apathy intact.

Two weeks after coming back, I met up with a friend at Versova. We went to the beach, found a nice spot, and sat down on the sand to catch up with each other. At around 9 pm, I noticed that the inhabitants of the fishermen’s shanty were making trips to the water’s edge for—erm—their ablutions. I ignored it until one person got really close to where we were sitting.

The following is a true report of our conversation at that juncture—I kid you not.

Me: “I think we should leave—this guy is shitting too close for comfort.”

Friend: “Come, let’s go and have dinner.”

We did go and have a great big seafood dinner right after this.

Flying diapers? Pshaw!

Open sewers, cockroach menace, endless traffic jams, smog, bad roads, crowd-crowd-crowd, shirtless children begging at traffic signals, ridiculous anti-single people-policies of housing societies, farcically expensive restaurants, sweltering slums that abut every high-rise, window cleaners who hang outside your office window on a must-be-punished-with-death-sentence-for-negligence harness and nothing else—all this and much more fall into Douglas Adam’s Somebody Else’s Problem (SEP) field for me.

My last four months in the city, I am ashamed to say, have been exceedingly pleasant.

Everybody pretty much acted as if I had never been away for a longish period. My hot hair stylist remembered the cut she gave me in 2005 and wanted to know whether I wanted the same this time. At the Hiranandani hospital, they refused to give me a new file because they expected me to have the old file from four years ago. A bunch of people I met at a party told me “Ah, we don’t need introductions”, although I desperately did—I had no recollection of having met them before!

And perfect strangers have gone out of their way to be nice.

Like the couple we met at Forjett Hill, Tardeo. I had stopped them to ask for directions after being hopelessly lost. The building they showed us was at the top of the hill. As we stood there, overwhelmed at the steep climb, the couple came back and dropped my parents up the hill in their car.

Like the workers at the Sewri jetty: the crane operator who told us at what time the flamingoes arrive in the morning; the supervisor who told us that he would let us know when one of his cranes would stop working so that we can have a closer look at the birds; the man aboard one of the barges who gave us water to drink… Easy and warm hospitality where there isn’t even a signboard to help visitors.

Like the twenty people at Matunga who gathered around us to show us the way to a particular shop.

Like my neighbor who insists on paying my telephone bill.

Even my parents, freshly off the boat from Madurai and here for just a visit, have fitted right in to the scheme of things. My mom is feeding a bunch of sparrows because she read somewhere they are going extinct in Mumbai. My dad rooted for the Mumbai IPL team. Our Marathi cook has been taught to make sambhar. The paperwallah has been instructed to supply Tamil magazines. My dad wears new T-shirts from Cotton World and uses Axe aftershave because—well—this is fashionable Mumbai!

Where I live was not technically Mumbai to start with—it was a village that was annexed to the urban sprawl sometime in the past 50 years. It doesn’t have the history, legacy, or architecture of Bombay.

But it carries the germ of the city. It seethes with possibilities. It integrates city’s triumph and despair, dreams and frustrations. It is functional. It doesn’t take me too seriously. It makes me feel safe. It is home.

Tedha hi, par mera hi.

How do thee love Mumbai?

2009-03-01T23:10:00.002-06:00

“How do you love Mumbai?” I asked Vinay, native Mumbaikar and walking-talking Encyclopaedia Mumbaia. He looked out of our car window, considering my question. Dadar East was bustling all around us.

Perhaps it was a tough question to ask anyone. How does one love this mad, madding metropolis? Sometimes it feels as though, like the concept of infinity, it is difficult to gather it in the words known to us.

Our car was moving inexorably into the mill country. Old apartments and tenements loomed on to us from both sides, remnants of the most significant era of Mumbai’s history, now struggling for survival.

“The Mumbai I knew is dying,” he said finally. “It’s become unlivable and ugly.”

We both silently looked at the crowded alleys, crumbling mills, and lines of clothes hanging from every conceivable dusty balcony and window. Grand Central Hotel did look a little incongruous in the midst of this all.

“Show me your Mumbai,” I said, feeling a crazy sense of urgency.

What could’ve been a more poignant starting point other than the dilapidated Veer Mata Jijabai Bhosale Udyan (erstwhile Byculla Zoo) which also houses the newly spruced up Bhau Daji Lad Museum (erstwhile Victoria and Albert Museum)? Maybe only in Mumbai can the contradiction of a painstakingly renovated heritage building can co-exist with a gone-to dust-heritage garden side by side.

Nothing had prepared me for the luxurious art-deco splendour of the Museum. I stood at the entrance, transfixed by the graceful gilt edged columns supporting the richly painted and detailed high ceiling, beautiful chandeliers, sweeping staircase, and lovely painted floor tiles. I was surprised to learn that it is the oldest museum in Mumbai.

The exhibits reeked of the Raj, of the pointless variety. Where else would one find exhibits such as “Lord Krishna’s Embassy to the Kaurava Court”, “A Weaver’s House”, and “Peoples of Mumbai”, and “Coffee Set Made of Coconut Shell from Ceylon”?

Vinay insisted on watching the video made on the renovation project. It’s a must see, with its regulation montage of Gandhi at the beginning, the sonorous voice over, and the stock music one has come to expect as de rigueur in Films Division documentaries .

I insisted on visiting the zoo. It’s clearly the stuff nightmares are made of. I don’t think any decent human being can sleep peacefully for nights after seeing the state of the enclosures and the hapless animals subjected to continuous teasing by onlookers. I’m sure the place is haunted by the troubled souls of the 11 antelopes which died of stress there.

We walked out, disturbed and enraged.

Our spirits were still low as we drove over the JJ Flyover, an engineering marvel. “The snake-like flyover twists and turns its way through a labyrinth of old buildings on either side. It traverses through 22 small and big junctions and six curves. What is amazing about the flyover, the longest in Mumbai so far, is not its unique design but that Gammon India managed to build it in a locality that never goes to sleep,” claims Project Monitor.

“Hey look, that building has Star of David all over it!” I exclaimed when I spied a lone building amidst many mosques that dotted the skyline.

Vinay looked at me nonplussed. “So?” he asked.

“Well, this seems to be a heavily Islamic area,” I replied.

His face broke into a grin. “Well, this is Mumbai,” he said.

We smiled at each other, revived and ready for town.

“A pointless visit to Rhythm House is a must,” Vinay said, after we walked out of Jehangir Art Gallery, too depressed at the sight of Samovar to look at the exhibits. I acquiesced, although I’ve always found it too claustrophobic for comfort.

From there, we sped to a nostalgic drive-through Navy Nagar replete with tales of youthful love, make-out alleys, and golfing in the afternoons. Those definitely seemed to have been the days.

“So did you make out here?” I asked curiously, eyeing the shaded alleys – they did seem appropriate for the purpose.

“No, I was more interested in the booze,” he twinkled.

We ended up in a tiny park clinging to the land’s end at Cuff Parade, behind World Trade Centre. The sun was a big orange ball, dipping into the horizon over the bay. Mumbai skyline loomed on our right. A lone fishing boat was moored at a distance.

We followed what seemed to be the tradition of the place and sat on the parapet, our legs dangling on the sea side, over the rocks that were shoring it up. We sat there in companionable silence, enjoying the breeze and the view. The seething city with its people, problems, and craziness was literally behind us.

It seemed pretty close to perfection.

Tale of Three States

2009-01-25T01:14:00.027-06:00

Rohan suggested that we should go to the Smokies over Christmas. It had three great things to recommend it—the most visited national park in the US, part of the “American South”, and a range of the Appalachians, which had been giving me siren calls for a long time.

I was thrilled. My “am going to visit all the honky tonk bars I can,” made headline news at work, as it was discussed in a staff meeting with great amusement.

But two days before Christmas, Rohan gave me the bad news. “I need to work on the 26th, so Smokies is off,” he said.

I was bitterly disappointed.

“Come over, we’ll find something else to do,” he tried to be reasonable.

“I’d rather go somewhere warm!” I huffed. The month had been unseasonably cold.

“But wouldn’t you lose money on your tickets?” he asked, forever the practical man.

“Doesn’t matter—what would I do in Cincinnati?” I said with ill grace. But 24 hours of trawling the net and bugging my cousin in Santa Clara made it abundantly clear that the travel Gods didn’t want me to go westwards. I ate humble pie and told Rohan that I am coming over to Cinci after all. He laughed.

On the 24th, the day of my travel, disaster struck. Snow and ice at the Peoria airport made a landing flight slide, so they canceled the entire day’s flights. Clever airline people automatically booked me on a flight the next day.

One would’ve thought people would stay home on Christmas day—but foul weather and messed-up airline schedules across the country resulted in a mad rush.

But that was not the main problem. I realized that for the lure of discount tickets, I was conned by the airline people. Cincinnati was 290 miles to my southeast. To get there, they first took me 350 miles northwest to Minneapolis, made me miss my connecting flight, and left me stranded at the airport for six hours!

I finally reached Cinci at 10:30 pm, traveling for more than 12 hours to an alien-invaded airport. My footsteps echoed eerily as I walked and walked along garishly lit albeit deserted corridors of the airport. Where were my co-passengers and the crew? How could they disappear in the five minutes it took for my bio-break?

I finally made it to the exit—gosh, what kind of airport had u-turn signs for pedestrians navigating the labyrinth of its corridors and escalators?

“Look out for a bright yellow car,” Rohan said. Indeed, his Chevy Aveo looked like a big moth as it came cruising along the deserted driveway. Boy, was I glad to see him and his cheerful little car—the airport gave me the heebie jeebies!

It took us 30 minutes to reach our accommodation. Rohan, bless his soul, stays in a motel called Econolodge run by an Indian family in a seriously blue-collar neighborhood called Sharonville (Est. 1799) and had organized a room for me there. Visions from every American road movie, from Thelma and Louise to No Country for Old Men flashed before my eyes as I entered its cramped portals. It was a slice of America that I had always wanted to experience but would’ve never dared, if not for mon ami.

The next day, Rohan took me to the nearby McDonalds for breakfast. I didn’t know it then, but it was the beginning of our McD mania. We breakfasted under the beloved golden arches every single day of our holiday, both of us ordering the same things: breakfast platter for him and southern-style chicken biscuit for me. Oh how we love thee, Ray Kroc!

That evening, in lieu of the honky tonk bars that I missed, my host took me to an all-American restaurant called Sleepy Hollow Inn. While chain saw/axe murderers were conspicuous by their absence, there was much else that made it a great adventure—an all white crowd (we were the only persons of color that evening there), a shabby, hastily thrown together décor that made it look like someone’s garage rather than a restaurant, country music on the pipe, and a menu inspired by the great south and Baja peninsula.

I naively ordered the Iceberg Wedge salad. People, it is really just a big wedge of iceberg lettuce. Sprinkled with a pinch of bleu cheese, a smattering of onions, and accompanied by a dressing of your choice. And it is a specialty of the southern cuisine. Really.

Rohan looked at it and balked. “Send it back!” he urged me.

I smiled tremulously. “I need the fiber,” I said bravely and cut into the mountainous wedge.

“You are not going to eat all of it, are you?” Rohan asked me with horrid fascination, as if I was that guy on Travel channel who ate the ickiest food on earth. Luckily his fish basket arrived to distract him.

From thence, we headed towards the festival of lights at Sharon Woods. We paid 20 dollars for a truly unimaginative and uninspired display of Christmas lights.

“Why so many tents?” I asked, pointing to the profusion of the triangular arrangements.

“It’s the Christmas tree, you silly!” Rohan the interpreter of arts said.

“Oh! But isn’t that a tent?” I asked pointing to the bigger, unmistakably tenty displays with stars on top.

“Must be the nativity scene!” Rohan the optimist suggested.

“But wasn’t Jesus born in a barn?” I asked, ever literal.

“Bah!” he replied.

Later that night, we decided that we would make a road trip to the obscure Falls of Ohio State Park in Indiana the next day, which boasted Devonian era fossils. Rohan was dubious, but was sporting.

It was a serendipitously salubrious day, with temperatures in the 60s. We were bright and early. The GPS, in its dulcet voice, informed us that our destination was 90 minutes away. “Not bad,” we agreed, jammed the gas pedal, and set out.

On the 60th minute, we missed an exit.

Apparently in Indiana, it is a serious offence. We were sentenced to 90 minutes of drive along flat, frigid backcountry roads, where we occasionally came upon villages that zipped past us by the blinking of the eye. Our eyes glazed over, our spirits sagged, and our bottoms went to sleep.

Our GPS came to life suddenly after being silent for a long time and gave a flurry of directions. Following its confident commands, we turned left and right, as the flat countryside gave way to more vegetated, decidedly wilder terrain. We could hear the Ohio River roaring near us. “After 0.5 miles, you would have reached your destination,” the GPS informed us with great precision.

Only the destination was a rundown trailer park house.

“What the—!” Rohan exclaimed.

We exchanged stupefied glances and looked around us. It was a rather small trailer park on the banks of the river and seemed pretty much a dead end. Rohan finally overcame his manly resistance to ask directions and checked with a nice couple there. “Oh boy!” the man said. “You’re way off!” Like we didn’t know. We had to drive for 30-minutes more to reach our actual destination.

The Falls of Ohio State Park is a really beautiful little park, at the point of the Ohio River where it forms many rapids, caused by the limestone formations at its bed. Apparently, 400 million years ago, during the Devonian era (before the Jurassic), the area that is currently known as the Grand Prairies was the bed of a tropical ocean. And in its coral reeves, there lived generations of sea creatures, from trilobites to corals to fish. As the continent moved and the sea receded to make way for deciduous forests, the remains of these organisms were caught in the limestone, becoming fossilized.

Now, for a stretch of a few miles at this point of the river, there are fossils everywhere, right under one’s feet. Rohan and I walked along the river, feeling the spray from the rapids that rendered the silhouette of Louisville, Kentucky across the river misty, and being in the exact place where Lewis and Clark visited on their historic expedition 200 years ago.

I was enthralled by it all. “You know, we are disturbing the ecological balance of this place by just visiting it,” I commented, a little sanctimoniously.

Rohan stopped in his tracks. “After making me drive for three fucking hours, you are saying we shouldn’t have been here?” he asked, his voice brimming with injury.

Our drive back was relatively uneventful. Emboldened by this success, we set out for Dayton, the birthplace of the Wright brothers, the next day. It is hard to believe that it was in this sleepy little city that one of the most important innovations of human race happened, crafted by two men who were bicycle shop owners, not trained engineers. The museum is a must see.

Rohan insisted that I should get a taste of Cincinnati as well. Good thing that he did—Cinci, far from being a boring midwestern city, is full of interesting texture. It is a city built on Paleolithic Indian burial mounds and the first all-American boomtown. It has many colors and interesting old residential buildings of all denominations.

But it is a bitch to get on to one of those bridges across the river that are tantalizingly close from downtown if you don’t know your exits—ask us. We circled the city at least four times before figuring out a way. But it was worth it, because we had an excellent seafood meal at Mitchell’s Fish Market (“a wide variety of fresh fish is flown in daily”) at the Newport on the Levee mall, Kentucky.

For all the drama that happened on my way out, my way back to Peoria was disappointingly smooth. I landed on a bright, sunny afternoon, with no trace of the snow and ice from a week before—a fitting finale indeed.

Catharsis

2008-11-16T22:45:00.002-06:00

How relevant can a play that was first staged in 458 BC and won a goat as a prize in the Festival of Dionysius be to our lives now?

I was cynical. Damn it, the hole burnt by the 75 USD I wasted on that completely puerile, award-winning musical on Broadway with a far shorter history still smoked in my purse.

But it was a beautiful day outside – sunny and warm after 10 days of gloomy, cold, and wet weather. The play was happening practically next door and was priced at an affordable 14 USD. I’d never watched a Greek tragedy in my life and I had promised Geetha that I would come back and bore him with it.

So off I went to watch what I thought was an ambitious presentation of the entire trilogy of Oresteia by Aeschylus by the Bradley University Theater group.

Of course I had my reservations: I wondered how were they going to make me care about a story so bloody and unrelatable – hell, the plot outline sounded like a handbook on “How to kill your family and come up with convincing excuses.” It had a body count that would put Rambo to shame – Agamemnon, hero of the Trojan war, sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia, to appease goddess Artemis; Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife, murders him and his war-spoil Cassandra as a revenge; and so, Orestes, their son, plots with his sister Electra, and murders his own mother and her paramour. And this is just one generation – the events leading up to this miserable family is far too complicated to even get into.

Sure, I expected an experimental, new age, postmodern deconstructive treatment. Devices such as audio-visual insertions and Muppets have become so de-rigueur that they are conspicuous only by their absence nowadays. Modern language peppered with the “f” word – oh blah, that old chestnut has been around from the days of West Side Story. Graphic homo/hetero erotic scenes – yawn!

But this theater group had a greater activist agenda. To them, this play was “…not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” The play was merely a framework to contextualize modern day problems and their complex dichotomies; a platform to present the idea that justice is above a personal code of right and wrong; and a forum to hope that there is goodness in human beings that could raise them above violence and atrocities.

This they did not by dressing up Agamemnon and Clytemnestra in suits and pumps (thank God) and make their stories contemporary, but by the clever use of the chorus of the Greek tragedies.

The chorus here was made up of students playing students, sitting in the audience, interrupting the play often, and getting into spirited discussions about the plot, its implications and symbolisms.

“Was the Trojan War justified?”

“Hell, is the Iraq War?”

“The terrorists had it coming!”

“Tell that to the 95,000 Iraqi civilians who died!”

“Why is Agamemnon grunting?”

“Well, this is a post-modern play and we believe that war reduces men to animals.”

“Clytemnestra is a crazy bitch! She deserves to die!”

“Oh, because she is a woman, she is insane and her rage is unjustified? You men are threatened by women who can take care of themselves and will not take shit from you!”

“Who is Cassandra?”

“A victim of war, just like the millions of women who have been victims throughout our history.”

“Electra makes me cry!”

“Why?”

“Because she reminds me of me—when my parents separated, I blamed myself for it and I felt so lonely! I feel she is going through the same thing!”

“Is ‘an eye for an eye, blood for blood’ the correct way to go?”

“My friend was killed in a drive-by shooting, and instead of solving the crime, the police accused me because I’m black and hence by default a gang member. There is no justice in this world! Revenge is the only way to go!”

“So when does the blood letting stop?”

“Looks like it doesn’t—watch CNN!”

“What do we do then?”

“We have, over the last couple of millenniums, evolved a system of universal laws. We need to abide by them. We need to actively participate in the process of dispensation of justice. We should not tolerate injustice.”

“Is Orestes guilty of his crime? Should he be punished?”

“Jeez, he killed his mother! Of course he should be punished!”

“So, is punishing the only way to put an end to violence? Can punishment end the genocides in Darfur and Rwanda? Or is there another perspective to the problem—that it is a result of post colonialism, germ of which was planted by the western world for selfish reasons?”

“You mean?”

“That we human beings have a great capability to be good and we need to give that goodness a chance.”

“So how does this play end?”

“Is it important?”

(I am paraphrasing, of course.)

Idealistic? Hell yeah! Irrelevant? God, no!

Anyway, after today, I don’t want to be cynical about idealism. True, it is a small group, catering to an ultra-conservative small audience, but bless those twenty-nothings, they’ve shown that the torch of national debate has been passed on to able hands. And yes, I am feeling hopeful – unabashedly so!

I’d like a little less seasoning, thank you!

2008-10-28T19:38:00.009-05:00

Sunday, 10:00 am, New Jersey: It was a 36-month old boy, an 18-month old girl, a room full of lego blocks, and I. We built a car, an unbalanced bird, and an abstract building and transferred a basket-full of toys into a small box. I happened to look out of the room—the girl’s mom, who had entrusted me with the kid while she had gone to have a bath, had finished and was sitting in the living room browsing through a magazine. I think she was testing how far I’ll go without feeling suckered.

Sunday, 2:30 pm, New York Penn Station: I was at the metro card vending machine when I discovered that I had lost about 80 USD of cash to some kleptomaniac. Damn! Damn! Damn!

Sunday, 3:30 pm, West 49th: Could a hotel room be any smaller? Hell, it was so small that they had a custom midget iron table, no dresser, and a chair, which could be reached only by rolling across the bed. But what a location! Times Square was just two minutes walk away and it was next door to a Broadway theater.

Sunday, 8:30 pm, Eugiene O’Neil Theater: I couldn’t believe that I had spent a bomb for THIS Broadway show. Not even on-stage nudity, explicit hetero-and-homo-erotic scenes, and some head-banging and foot-stomping rock numbers could lessen the utter pointlessness of a musical about adolescent sexual awakening and bourgeois prudery of late 19th century Germany.

Sunday, 10:00 pm, Times Square: I accidentally made eye contact with the black guy who was selling what could’ve been theater show tickets or Obama/McCain condoms (I swear!). I thought he was going to hawk his wares, but what he said was this: “Why are looking so mad beautiful? Don’t be mad! Be cool!” I hadn’t realized that I had been looking what I was feeling about being robbed and the show. I burst out laughing, touched by a New York moment.

Monday, 9:30 am, 32nd and Broadway: The MTA person at the subway entrance told me to walk a block west to reach Penn Station. But which fucking side was west? I walked around in circles for 10 minutes, completely lost, until I remembered the GPS functionality in my swank new iphone. I had to get a route map for a 0.3-mile walk on the same bloody street until I reached the familiar Madison Square Garden-side entrance. I felt justifiably wretched.

Monday 1:30 pm, Saravana Bhavan, Edison: What more could a girl ask for if she gets to have an authentic South Indian thali at Saravana Bhavan on Diwali day? And how did they manage to get the tastes and flavors exactly that of the Saravana Bhavan in Chennai? And Rajnikant hits on the pipe to boot! Hallelujah!

Monday, 8:30 pm, 8th Avenue: Despite the chilly weather, John and I opted to sit out in the tiny patio of this tiny Italian restaurant on a narrow street called Restaurant Row. I looked longingly at the beautiful apartments in the old red stone/brownstone buildings across the street. We watched groups of people walked by, quarrelling over which restaurant to go to, and smiled encouragingly at those who looked in our direction.

Tuesday, 8:30 am, East 52nd: It was a cold, wet, miserable day in Manhattan – it never properly dawned this morning. I watched whiffs of steam, smog, and gloomy rain out of the 27th floor window and wondered what happened to all the fall glory that NYC is famous for. Drat! It was forecasted to snow later in the evening.

Tuesday, 2:30 pm, Mayfair Hotel: As soon as I stepped into the hotel to collect my bag, the guy at the desk asked me: “Did you lose your phone?” I checked my handbag and realized that I had. He smiled and said, “I recognized your picture on it, so I have put it in your bag.” And they say NY is a rude and unfriendly city!

Tuesday, 7:30 pm, TGIF, Newark Airport: I sat wedged in a corner, amidst three old men traveling to Seattle, whose flights had also been delayed by the inclement weather. We swapped travel nightmare stories. The old man on my right smiled calmly and said, “Go with the flow!” I nodded, munching on my Cesar salad.

Tuesday, 8:30 pm, water fountain, Gate 16: I was sitting on the floor, watching other irate travelers waiting for the same flight all evening. Are we going to make it tonight? I am a seasoned traveler, quite used to the vicissitudes, but I could do with a little less seasoning I thought.

(Written at Newark Airport, waiting for that blessed flight to Chicago.)