dancing fiascos et al...
The other day at the Latin/Salsa club, I was dancing with this gentleman when all of a sudden my otherwise very right foot turned into another left one! Quite strange, this guy just got his Salsa wrong, I thought. Imagine my embarrasment when my dance teacher went through the same sequence of steps the next day and called it Merengue! No wonder the guy told me"I'm gonna teach you Merengue the next time your are here, lady!" and I was thinking"Huh, right! First get your Salsa right Mr.Geek!" So much for Merengue ignorance!
an awesome weekend
I had one of the most splendid weekends in my recent recollection.Friday saw me gorging on icecream from the coldstone creamery at Mill Ave., drenching in the rain which is one of the most cherished of one's experiences in Tempe, especially in Summer which returns to its undescending glorious heat almost instantly regardless of the rain. The night culminated with a late show of "Wedding Crashers" at the Harkins Theatres .I had never been to a show with more people around and have so many laughs in the US. It rained on Saturday too, and a nice walk around Scottsdale couldn't have been more pleasant.And as a great finish to a memorable weekend, I went clubbing for the first time to a Latin/Salsa club at Scottsdale, Club Tropicana, where I took a few lessons and had a few dances before I returned home.In my excitement to look classy for the night, I attempted to straighten my hair which ended in a pathetic fiasco but nevertheless, curls rule and curls rock!Let my hair down anyways and how!
Avada Kedavra...Rowling!
After the much hyped release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, I finished reading the book nearly after one week later.Sad to say, it was the worst investment in my life.Even after i had expected much lesser after the Order of the Phoenix, it has turned out to be a shocker.Nothing much happens in the book until the end and it carries on a disgustingly dark feeling throughout the book.More or less, it had been a Cruciatus curse to have been through it.I am sorry, dear Rowling but you need to have a heart.I can never forgive you for letting two of my dearest characters die..
Pakistani rock
The first time I got to know that Pakistanis ever had musical talent was when I heard the phenomenal singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, whom I , needless to say, miss dearly.But the first time I ever got to know they had talent for rock was when I heard "Junoon".Armed with a really good sense of music, they pretty much bashed it up but what I never really understood was why would every band have to compose music which relied heavily on classical hindustani when they did not have singers who had the potential to deliver it.A classic example was the song "Durr" by Strings.Atrocious singer..simply atricious ..but with due respect to my friend who believed it to be an all-time classic, I do agree with him to the extent that it was composed well.Even the recent hit from "zeher" goes to prove my point.The singer(Atif)'s voice seemed to swing every which way...was he singing at gun point?
Of multiple personality disorders and the fight against injustice
Of late, I had been on a spree of movies with the theme of schizophrenia, each one shadier than the other.Probably I should have seen Me, myself and Irene for some comic relief.The Tamil concept is far too unbelievable (confusing actually)for me.
For starters, I watched(re-watched actually) the malayalam classic "Manichitrathazhu" , a Fazil movie released in 1993 which won Shobhana the national award for best actress.A very well directed movie with excellent casting and a narration which was precise, it did seem preposterous in a few scenes but was far-far more realistic than the tamil version of it.Chandramukhi, the Tamil version of the movie, was flashy and strayed away from the plot quite often to display the "histronics" (antics would have been a better word but I dare not insult the superstar of TamilNadu for whom even I have a lot of respect) of Rajnikanth.There were too many incongrous scenes which made me wonder if the director of the movie even understood the plot himself or not(What's the deal with that giant Anaconda for Pete's sake!)Nevertheless, I had fun watching it although I had to freeze my grey cells for a coupla hours to avoid any severe damage.My sister and I did have our share of fun screaming each time Rajni made an outlandish entry which gave me a high.Its something that I dearly miss in the US theatres.The audience never exhibits any kind of mania for any star or movie barring the release of Starwars for which I heard people actually camp outside the theatres for tickets!
Anniyan on the other hand was quite a weirdly directed movie.The hero's clothes kept changing as if it were magic each time a different person possessed him.So much to the point where the audience didnt even understand the plot of the movie. Even the message it gives out is ridiculous. One man trying to judge other people and taking law into his own hands is not in any way an example to follow."Change must come from within" as the Zen saying goes.Plus, the music score wasn't complementing the plot either.Rumor has it that Shankar had an ego clash with Rehman as he was taking away all the credit for his movies with his music although thats a point I cannot agree with.Anyways, I would give the movie credit for a novel concept of a mixture of a multiple personality disorder and the "Indian" concept of the fight for justice.Way to go, Shankar..and of course Vikram for a brilliant potrayal of a seriously messed up character of Ambi!
Movie review time
I was never a crazy fan of the movies( think I can attribute that partially to my genes..My Mom's head starts splitting at the mere mention of Television!) but I have appreciated any movie which had a good story artistically told. And of course, original comedy.
I watched "Batman Begins" a few days ago after hearing rave reviews about it and sorry to say, it was a huge disappointment for me. I guess I was partially prejudiced though, or probably I went in with high expectations hoping it would turn out to be a bit like Spiderman.It was a dark and shady movie and the plot was actually funny, objectively speaking!I would rather have had a mutant bat bite him and give him superpowers which would save mankind from injustice for eternity!The the part where Liam Neeson makes a statement about the League of Shadows "whenever the world has reached the peak in corruption, we descend to restore peace and justice" aka Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita totally cracked me up(do u catch my drift..eh..eh? lol!)!!
Yet, there were parts that I really admired..like the part where Batman uses his fear as his power and where Michael Caine always replies to Bruce's question " You haven't given up on me yet" as "never" in a very Britty accent.And Bruce's line in the opening of the movie when an Asian hunk says " I am the devil" , "No, you are practice!"..boy that was a sure winner.
On the contrary, "War of the Worlds", of which I got to see just the first hour seemed quite thrilling.It may not have had a plot or anything serious but I did think the visual and sound effects were exemplary and the potrayal of human fear was quite realistic at times...and like a critic of the movie said, with which I agree, directors like Steven Speilberg are simply incapable of bad film-making(wah-wah kya baat kahi hai!).
For the love of language!
For quite some time now, I have been hooked on to the language bug, it being one of the many passions I had no clue about until a few months ago( to be honest I get hooked on to the weirdest of things for no reason whatsoever quite often!) I don't know how this one started but of many things, I think the reason could be my fascination for the varied forms of beauty in literature that's akin to each language which cannot be tapped from the other.
I discovered this when I actually started to make an effort to learn the meanings of the many verses and songs that I used to/still sing in varied languages. Being a
Tamil by birth whose mother was born and brought up in
Kerala and being brought up in
Andhra myself, I grew up learning songs in Telugu,Tamil, Malayalam and
Sanskrit but I never cared much to know what they meant until I attended one of
Prema Pandurang's Narayaneeyam discourses conducted by
Kshetropasana and discovered the immense poetic prowess of the 1034 verses condensed from the Bhagavata. My belief until then, which was that English was the one and only language capable of rendering every form of literature most rapturously, was challenged.Never had I come across such beauty in literature , never in the hundreds of books I had ever read(all in English..thats the only language i am completely comfortable reading!) That's when I decided to discover the beauty in the literature of every language I was even faintly familiar with.Although it's too late for me to go deep down and absorb everything, I have begun to understand the beauty of Tamil through the compositions of Ootukadu Venkata Subbaier and Papanasam Sivam, thanks to the help from family and friends.
Telugu and Malayalam are derived from Sanskrit and follow it quite closely.My only exposure to Telugu was from compositions of Tyagaraja, a few lessons from my Telugu classes( which did manage to create a sort of "mania" for a very brief span of time) and a few random Telugu movie songs.My mother swears by the beauty of Malayalam literature but nothing attracted me more about Malayalam than the outrageously funny array of movies of the nineties which had incomparably original themes in comedy which used to tickle me to death!
I do not think my latest fad to learn French has been spurred by a similar interest though. More probably because of the 'jour -ish posh accent in the language that makes it sound....gorgeous! A mere effort to speak in French magically transports me to the delightful city of Paris I wish to see someday!
But probably, I feel, deep down literature boils down to just one thing- the beauty of the mind.I never have been able to assess the practical value my current fad and where its taking me but as long as its not costing me something better, i think I'll enjoy it for as long as it lasts!
My first blog!
Eh bien! I have finally set my foot into the world of blogging! What I have to offer to it, I do not know but atleast I have attempted to give my braincells some incentive to start working I guess
