tom cruise's become the latest cuss-word...feel bad for the poor guy...so he has a few screws loose, who doesnt?! the higher you rise, the more chances of you falling with your posterior on your face....

why don't i like catherine zeta jones...hmm...theres something that puts me off...she was totally not needed in ocean's 12...not like the movie itself made any sense....the first was an ace.

quite some to-dos hanging around....damn!

so this is the article that enraged a whole lot of people...women, mostly... sparked off debates all over the West...seems like no matter how liberated we think we are, it just takes a silly man to get our hackles up...the article itself is not as full of lies as is made out to be...tho yes it does generalise and simplify stuff to the point of being ridiculous. like the notion that a professional career woman will most probably vamoose with her slick colleague...duh, yes, if her spouse happens to be an uncouth slob....michael noer works on the premise thats the fantasy of most unevolved men in the world....a perfect wife is the one who stays at home, happy pottering about with the duster, whose only aim is to please her lord....:-))) sheeeeesh, beam me back to the 21st, scotty!!

what ultimately matters, feminism, chauvinism and all isms be damned, is free will...whether you choose to marry or not, have babies or not, be a stay-at-home mom or a working mom (thats another sticky issue that never seems to have a resolution)...and live through the consequences....

marriage will forever remain a project between two adults that requires immense amounts of patience, respect, tolerance and compromise....especially when you marry the one you choose and love...
and motherhood, wow kaboom, thats just a huge life-altering dimension altogether....exhausting, mind-numbing, exhilarating, never-ending, frustrating, reducing-t0-abject-tears, humbling, enlightening experience which can age you 65 one instant and make you feel like a 2 year old the other...its like signing away the next 16 years of your life at the very least....ah, life!

sad. hrishikesh mukherjee dead. a genre dies with him. natural, humorous, subtle, light, true-to-life with some home-truths woven within. gems like chupke chupke, golmaal, namak haram, bawarchi, chhotti si baat, khatta meetha, so many more...they don't make people like him anymore...but his humour, his take on life would be lost on the masses salivating on KANK and its likes. he will live on in the zillion reruns of his movies...God bless.

*****

i salivate on bags...oversized totes, anything...the bigger, the roomier, the more pockets the better....like some lady said she likes to carry her life around and hence her need for a giant momma of a bag...i've had bagswhichhave been virtually bottomless pits with stuff of all classification floating around from every moment of my short life...my hubby, like any mere XY, cannot understand my craving and tries to steer me clear of any accessories section anywhere...but like a true bloodhound, i find my corner. at last count there are three i am happy about...others that fill in on the odd days. Not abt the brands, naah...just the bags themselves that get me going...

***
one bloke fed up to his gills with all the brands that have taken over his life has decided to burn all the goodies and lead a brand-free unadulterated life. hope he succeeds in his quest. i myself have never understood the mania for brands....i find it rather air-headed honestly....just weird ole me, maybe. i do have the odd kewl brand but was not deliberate and was more functional and primal actually....i like something and buy it. i might or might not use it more than once...thats just its fate. the stuff i like, i wear out to the bare bone.

'emily's cat can beat up your cat'.

- seen on a T-shirt on the tube

so, yes, that was funny....bumping into a hindi movie shooting bit at waterloo station and who shd I spy but the young turk himself, abhishek bachchan and preity zinta!! shes pretty but much shorter than you'd have thot...and he, well, was dressed in rather outlandih garish clothes, beard and all...hair all greasy but sweet....made eye contact with him for about 2 seconds...they were all, like backslapping distance, from us tho the bouncers kept asking everyone to keep moving so theres no blockage...wonder which movie it was....the scene involved him walking with some extras (crowd scene) and the lady walking past him...must be the ubiquitous intro scene of the flick....scene over, people rushing for pics and autogs and they both left separately....didnt see them getting much chummy...he was busy on his cell for a bit, guess who, hmm!?!

could have easily stepped up with the rest of the gawkers and asked for a pic or shook hands but didnt....not that star-struck yet....but was a sweet experience...

hyde park was gorgeous,,,lurved the giant trees, the autumn leaves all over, green and serene...

the foreign film crew at the queen's walk....wonder where they were from...

the tube...smelly, no AC, crowded....but wonderful mix of ppl from all races and spaces...a people-watcher's paradise...

sloane street, harrods....gods of consumerism...anti-fur protesters asking us to boycott the latter....
**
hollywood size 00?!!! saw a pic of nicole richie - the princess anorexia - in a glossy....she looked like she was just abt to give her ghost up in a bikini, the bones sticking out - she'd have made a great bio lab prop...and thats fashionable?!!! funny, there are lots of unfortunates the world over who have a body like that and can't help being so...and who could like manage a week's food with what the bikini cost!

saw 'one fine day' last night...one of the few romcoms i genuinely like...something really frothy and loveable abt the flick....michelle pfeiffer is gorgeous (if i would ever get the option to be a white woman, it wd have to be either her or kim basinger) and clooney does his yummy bit rather well...the whole NY backdrop just fits in....the kids are cute without getting cloyingly so....and yes, the sparring which inevitably leads to love... :-) and the funny thing abt this movie is that there is no making out, no kisses...just the teeny first one between the hopelessly-attracted-to-each-other protagonists at the very end. clean and yet not kiddie-stuff.

remember seeing it the first time in the theatres with some people....no idea where they are now. come to think of it, remember seeing quite some movies with quite some people in the late 90s (wow, that sounds so chronological) and no clue whats become of them. hmm.

other flicks i like in the same genre wd be 4 w and a f, notting hill, while you were sleeping, 2 day notice (hmm, or was it 2 weeks?), my best friend's wedding and some more I'm sure I'm forgetting...sandra bullock's perfect for these bits...something really daft and loveable abt her...

anyway....

Hope things work out for her. Feel bad...going thru a grey patch. Shes a brave positive strong full of beans gorgeous person with so many dreams...hope they come true and she wrestles her way out of the mud. She will, i know.

still.... :-(

afghanistan, iraq. lebanon. iran, north korea....israel, US, Londonistan...the foreign policy that alienates. We're all sitting on a huge A-bomb waiting to happen...the third world war when it does announce itself officially at the door, won't surprise anyone. i would think from my lil layman's corner that the world finds itself in the most hostile environment ever...hotspots everywhere...just needs one mad man, one slur and kaboom! terrifying thought but pretty realistic. megalomaniacs return through the ages.

the brits are rethinking their immigration policies...about time too...in the last few years, they have had as many as 500,000 ppl from east european countries coming in!....with bulgaria and romania joining EU soon they will be making their way to the Ben too...open-door policy? they've trampled the door down, hinges and all...! its a regular stew here alright....but the immigrants dont seem to be that integrated into the mainstream as it might be in the US...

and how expensive is this place!! and obviously i'm not the only visitor who thinks thusly. healthy discussion on the same, there...okay, so those guys go down to the lil details of how much a bottle of Pantene costs somewhere but on the whole it is pretty steep....where's all that money going to....america's much more developed on the face of it, and cost of living there is pretty decent....transport, eating out, entertainment etc...

this nice old man's happening!...his debut and a gazillion hits n comments....got covered in the news too....good for him...83 and finally his 15 mins of f.

___

lady in slinky red dress, rushing off to work...talking to an invisible other. not very pleased at who she was talking to either...didnt find it strange...i find myself talking to...well...myself, quite a bit too...seems like the only other intelligent company I have found to date...another time, another place, saw this man on a bus, with one hand cupped around his mouth, whispering to his 'friend'...weird n fascinating....

maybe we all talk to this other in us but are not so out-there abt it and hence not labelled nutcases by the common folk...madness and sanity are just constructs...successful rich ppl are 'eccentric'and 'creative', the not-so rich successful are plain bonkers and need to be in a padded room?

my lil right foot still doesnt feel happy...twisted it gloriously some weeks ago...the agony and emotional vortex accompanying it - yet another experience to be filed away....

so anyway, have run out of stuff to say, as always...so I shall ooze back under the sand.

so, the brassy driven estate agent won the 1000 pounds....he surprised everyone by getting soft abt it.... missed watching his turn as host...the anthropologist and the warbling singer-actress tied at 4th posn...not surprisingly...though, the bravest of the lot was linda, the anthrop, with her exotic what-the-hell-is-that dishes which didnt taste or look very right, and her South Indian prawn curry...fishmonger came second while the perfectionist gay interior designer proved its not all abt the packaging...too clinical in the end..he came 3rd, thanks to john's clever stingy 6! will miss this bunch...they were a funny lot, totally different sorts...especially the girls...had got hooked in a sort of way.

so the brit big brother's pete...i couldnt care less...havent watched it ever...just some snippets of couple of dodgy-looking people sitting around talking abt someone whos been evicted maybe, and girl shaving in the bath etc...am not being snobbish...just wasnt gripping me buds...tho theres a huge fan following here, it seems per the sun etc...intels are already dissecting its socio-cultural meaning etc....yada yada....gas.

its raining again...

i love how the brit media's so irreverent abt their political heavyweights, especially the PM...they just stop short of throwing pies at his likeness...the writing style very tongue-in-cheek...generously doling out sarcasm and wit ...

'snakes on a plane'...another critter-disaster flick....trashy and entertaining, per the review...hmm, my kind of brain-on-a-holiday stuff...

ta!

rainin again

grey rainy wet...the sun's cowering somewhere...ready to bluster forth when the tides turn....

that was funny yesterday...an unlikely bitchin partner...both of us just spewing angst like some tiny red button had been pressed somewhere....different people...shes just 20 for cryin out loud and a mum already...been quite sporty about it all...a kid herself...i surprised myself, like i'm wont to do...confiding is a totally new thing for me...but being strangers, well, sort of, helps...we're all united in the shit we face....

life's funny.... :-D

http://www1.yashrajfilms.com/d2/d2_theatrical.htm

velly velly nice! hope it lives upto its teaser....

was just remembering the few times in my life when i have just laffed my posterior off...literally. that one time with a friend from work during lunch...we just kept guffawing and guffawing (tho she had a more feminine giggle, mine's not pretty...more like a cross between a donkey in heat braying and a mad cockatoo, actually thats one of the many I have in my armoire)...and what do you know on the way back home, in the cab, we just looked at each other and yes, went at it like maniacs...with the rest of the ppl bemused and then not so, when they couldnt understand what the fuss was all abt....that was one laff that just went on and on...

another time in the hoary past, my brother and I, my second brother who always knew just how to get my funny bits shaking, went hysterical at home when one of my dad's visitors, a forensic guy came over and sat on the sofa which we hadnt dusted on that particular day...so both of us holed up in the kitchen, seemingly making tea for the poor chap, started tittering abt the 'prints' he would leave behind when he bade his farewells...soon giggles became howls...the guest left hurriedly and our dad did not find it all that funny :-D

there were others...and i somehow always had a partner in crime to share in the repast....i remember stuffing my hanky in my mouth, in one particularly violent episode trying to push the stuff back...didnt succeed...

there was a girl i knew in school who used to have laffing fits which became hysterical bouts of crying and we'd have to slap her or throw water on her face to quieten her down...rather dramatic it all was...

but yes, nothing like a full-blooded, spittle inducing laff that keeps ticking your insides like a persistent worm...

i love the carry on series, the mind-numbing comedies, silly stuff that just gets ole Vesuvius started....theres this series on BBC One is it? 'Come DIne with me" where 5 or 6 random strangers are asked to play hosts and cook for the group in turns and the winner with the most votes gets a 1000 or is it 10,000 pounds...they have an anthropologist, a rather ditsy global traveller woman in this group and an old woman whos an eccentric singer...funny...the anthropologist got sloshed with the wine yesterday at the fishmonger's place and couldnt stop giggling....i totally got her. :-D

Q.E.D laughter, like yawns = highly infectious....

eeyu...cobwebs!

hajaar cobwebs in this place, man. khandhar only you have become, sweets.
i will try to come and give you company, some.

been ages, yes?

like being in a reality tv show...with crappy lines and crappier weather.

was fun.

people watching. miss the hole in argyle street. old man and the dog...scratching, reading, smoking...portuguese family downstairs...full of life and lovely food smells. the loner in the studio across the road...chinese couple. the black queen. the burqa clad women and the bearded muslims. the goras, the desis. a melting pot of cultures, sounds, colors, fabrics, smiles.

moved to more polite parts...greener, emptier, duller. smiles on an evening walk.

cheers, mate.

rambling.

i return to the blog. did i miss it? maybe. but i didn't die without it. what was that line in 'heat' abt vamoosing....got it:

"A guy told me one time, "Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner."

great soundbite but how easy is it?