...

love this painting by Toulouse-Lautrec!
...saw a special on him some days back on Channel 4

...was intrigued by the guy and his work...especially this one.

hypothetically speaking

Was just thinking how I 've always wanted to be one of those white-suited (why does it have to be white when they do a moon or space walk? - must have some logic) people walking on other planets, finding microscopic life on the same or getting to view the grandeur of the cosmos up close and personal...

but then, I'd rather watch them on the Net, the TV or read about their findings in some journal...

why? because I'm pretty claustrophobic...and the thought of being packed in a closed artificial environment with 3 or more other humans, with NO fresh air (and I mean the polluted emission-filled stuff I live on, not the pure stuff in the hills, if it exists), no way of opening a window or going out for a walk, basically having to live or simulate living *normally* in that setup, just freaks me out.

I'm sure they have ways around it, acclimatization sessions etc...but unless they give me a mosnter dose of a sedative, I don't see myself there....but never say never.

Long intercontinental flights kill me for the very same reason...I have to fight the urge to just saunter to the exit and try to bash my way through for a walk after every some minutes. And dont even get me started on seeing the same bunch of people around me forever in that lil space.

oh well, I guess science can wait for my 2 pence worth of contribution. :-D

./.

Nalanda - Revisited.

_________


Saw Dhoom-2 on dvd.

The script at best seemed like it was scribbled through by an over-imaginative 10 year old boy...only if viewed as a kiddie flick, the twists and turns might be swallowable...the effects and action pieces are all quite impressive...but... I preferred the first flick, as millions do too, I guess...less contrived and hyped...

the music was pretty average except for the Crazy kiya re number which is hummable...no idea why they opted for fultoo english lyrics for the title track tho...Abhishek is almost part of the wallpaper in this one...

must say tho Hrithik and Aishwarya look pretty good together!...and theres definitely some chemistry there! hope to see more of them together in future.

An okay time-pass.

As the year ends, from the flicks I saw that really stood out were:

Omkara, Rang De Basanti, Gangster and Corporate (tho it had a depressing n melodramatic resolution). Havent seen Lage Raho yet.

Golmaal made me laugh, a lot..so that was good. :-D

And yes, won't forget my only reason to visit the theatres this year, Casino Royale. :-)

2007 better be better!

time for some jazz

love this song...love her voice! slow smooth classy stuff...liked her version of 'under my skin' too...

its catching!

'So, here it is, a merry christmas, everybody's having fun...' :-)

hard to miss it...the jingle's all over the place...seeped through to every cranny...images beamed out from everywhere..nothing else on the telly except for maybe the fog.

the spirit is infectious...herds of early shoppers trotting to the superstore across the road....happy smiling faces, anxious stressed faces...unless, you live under a particularly big rock, theres no escaping it.

sometimes, have this strong urge to get off the posterior, stuff a turkey, haul a big tree home, splurge on gifts for anyone (which I might have done before around this time of the year before, and which really doesnt need a context :-), and generally do Christmas the traditional way...

but then the moment passes, I realize I really don't have to and I remain content in sharing in the festive feeling like any other non-Xmassy-human would, right here from my couch or maybe strolling through the mall in the weekend.

Hmm, but a chocolate cake, some wine, a tree for her and a gift should do it. :-)

Anyway, happy holidays and a peaceful sweet 2007 to all!

and yes, a merry Christmas....!

<&:-)

cheesecake and memories

sigh!...memories...can imagine trudging through downtown. my home away from home for couple of years.

a bright tomorrow?

Yaay! :-)

the world's shrunk amazingly, Web 2.0 or whatever they might now annoint this phenomenon...no stopping it...with all its bad eggs.

I can connect with an eskimo in Lapland and exchange angst-notes, through a blog or just simple visuals...

we're one race and hopefully all other superficial barriers will give way...one day.

must read, yes...must watch, not sure.

'Perfume' is a movie now...!

read it sometime back...an unusual, intense and disturbing story...horror at a rather sublime level. The protagonist born without a sense of smell, who goes on to be an ace perfumer and serial killer in the process. Completely amoral and beyond the pale of humanity.

The last scene is still vivid in my memory...abhorrent and yet justice delivered.

Am really not sure how it will translate onscreen....it just won't be able to capture the essence of the central character...tho it might be watchable for its performances.

Do I want to watch it...don't know.

___

Remembered loving 'Freedom' (90) by George Michael...the video was pretty neat too...all the supermodels lipsynching...

...grew up with the guy belting out his stuff right from his Wham days...Father Figure was another fave...had his poster on my wall...his and Boris Becker's... :-)

The sweet 80s.

Madonna, Top of the Pops, Eurythmics etc...in school, we all had lyric books from Archies..I remember getting mine a bit later than the rest of the crowd... :-)

Lost track of music somewhere in the Noughties I think...quite a few CDs gathering dust, literally...waiting to be remembered...some great instrumental tracks too...

Alanis was the last artiste I remembered getting buzzed about, her Jagged Lil Pill...not that I don't know whos who and whats hot...but just not that into it.

Have my eye on certain artistes whose time to entertain me will come. New people. And some old aces.


oh well.

Dense fog continues today...frosty days.

Manu Sharma convicted of the murder...finally. So was Santosh Singh.

Hopes for justice in countless other cases where the victim might not have been a high-profile person, from the middle-class even or as in some fast-track cases, a foreigner.

This is a start...! And kudos to the people whose outrage made sure justice was not just a laughable concept or a topic to be discussed at socialite evenings.

+++

India beat SA...finally. First ever on SA soil. :-)


+++

Really like the 'Pal' song by K.K....one of his old ones...'hum rahe ya na rahe kal...'

Also, 'Aadat' by Jal...

+++

Its all about personal choice and circumstances but thinking about it clinically and in a lucid moment, people who choose to remain single or not to have children seem to be so much more sane and sensible than the ones who have toed the old and crumbling ways of the world. Not spreading themselves thin etc etc...

It needs courage to stick to either one of the decisions. To jump into sharing a life and people the world as messed up as it is, as much as to stay true to oneself and not jump into the first boat because everyone else is doing it.

I live by my self-willed choices and am pretty busy, deep into and happy with them, but the point remains, that if I hadn't, would I have led a less full life? Not really. I would have that much less baggage tho. Like the movie 'Sliding Doors'. What if.

But, the grass is never really green anywhere, I realize that.

ho-hum, its just one of those existential-angsty moments that crop up and its really grey outside. A cup of chai should cure me of any pretensions of profound thought. :-)

his folks

The other day, on one of the morning shows on a channel, the male anchor while chatting with a psychologist on the christmas phenomenon and how to stay sane through all the motions, quipped that his wife gets kinda claustrophobic when they visit his folks on Xmas, and needs atleast some time on their own in the middle of all the family bonding stuff...

which was pretty harmless tho the female co-anchor ribbed him abt whether his folks knew his wife didnt like them and even if they didnt they would now thanks to his blurting it out to the nation. he just shrugged and grinned it off.

What struck me was that it will take atleast another century for the average Indian male to evolve to this level of casualness and acceptance regarding his spouse's feelings about his folks.

Forget joking about it or in this case talking about it casually and unintentionally on national TV, its a pretty sensitive mine-field for most couples in private conversations too, especially the M-I-L factor...and I'm talking urban, well-educated, supposedly with-it people here...lets not even go to the small towns or rural belts...though I'm sure there are exceptions there as everywhere...

Personally, I'm pretty okay in that my hubby knows exactly what I think about my in-laws which is mostly good n loving and sometimes fodder for a nasty row...we keep our communication channels open all the time and talk everything out like adults or atleast pretend to till I fling sharp-edged objects at him and he looks fit to burst all his blood vessels out...

but the fact remains, that for an average Indian man, his parents and family are haloed topics who should not be talked about casually...and definitely not to be analyzed as human subjects.

Its changing, I know, from personal experience, with my brothers and from some of the couples I've known...but its still too tiny a percentage.

You don't marry a man back home, you marry his family and thats true whether its the old traditional arranged setup or the fell-in-love-individual-choice-cool inlaws bit...

but our men are slowly getting weaned off from the old mindset and treating the wife as a separate human entity who deserves as much respect and consideration as his folks.

And it all works wonders or should, if his folks realize that its not about cutting down the old family tree as some rather regressive saas-bahu soaps and tear-jerker movies state, but having another sapling grow near somewhere but in its own little patch of soil, water and air.

Space and respect are pretty damn important in any relationship...and especially in the one, which sees you through more than half of your life-span in this world!

Getting that buzz again!

Being a grown-up isnt all that fun, is it? all that getting buzzed up on mad projects that was part of childhood remain faint-ish memories.

I used to love running down the stairs at school, dangerously jumping 6-7 steps at a time, the feeling of now-I'll-fall-and-break-my-front-teeth getting the ole adrenalin pumping...a teacher wrote she'd always remember me as a girl running madly in the halls with someone in hot pursuit trying to pull my hair...but well I was a huge tomboy and thats just another post...:-)

I love roller-coaster rides, the gorier the better...5 yrs ago, on a Vegas trip with a bunch of people from work, I was desperate to try da bomb of the rides at Stardust, but really lucked out cos that day was really windy and they'd closed it down temporarily.

So anyway, I managed to scrounge out a tamer but still cool ride ( in one bit, it went up on a vertical slope and then whooshed back breakneck, breakfast churning inside the stomach) the next morning minutes before we were starting on our way back, at the Sahara, I think it was and went alone on it...the rest of the gp chickened out....the only guy in the gp couldnt since he was eitehr chicken too or since his wife wasnt going herself, protocol etc. and did I love it...! :-D I still wouldnt think twice taking up on a bungee jumping invite...

Just remembered being on this infuriatingly slow crawly merry go round and there were these 2 other strange women with me from work again, one of whom was actually yelling for the ponderous thing to be stopped and that she wanted out...she was in tears and thought she was going to die....no accounting for people's fear factor!

but anyway to return to the drift of my post:

having a kid (yours/sibling's/neighbor's/friend's/colleague's/anybody's) in your life, really helps to visit that mad juvenile part of you which isnt really dead and decomposed.

so my having a feisty 2 year old really helps...you see each grand step through their eyes and revisit the wonder and the glee...

almost got the same buzz from running down the stairs, tinier tho when I went down the huge blue slides with her at an indoor play centre couple of days back...we went thrice, and not just cos she loved it :-D

Am waiting for her to grow up a bit more so we can take on the theme park rides anywhere...if she has my DNA bits, the right ones, shes going to love every blood-curdling moment!

Hopefully!

we the acquisitive

there goes the neighborhood...we've pretty much screwed up this planet and now we're eyeing another. No wonder any intelligent life out there (much much evolved, am sure) is staying light years away from us and our grubby hands.

Of course it is a great find for science and we need to keep on searching for more answers, and this might sound faint-headed (actually, not), BUT I can bet on my toenails that need to be clipped asap, if our race finds even a corner in this cosmos that can be colonized and made into an apartment complex, it will.

___

Really hope the Mara comes out unscathed from all the recent hype and noise. Please don't gate off any part of the great migration route. It has been the object of much fascination and wide-eyed wonder, no matter how many specials I see on the topic. Fingers crossed.

telly stuff

Any sociologist wd say a good measure of the zeitgeist of a place, among other indicators, is of course to sample its dailies, tabloids, streets, and its favorite soaps (and now, reality shows).

During my 5 month long (till date) stay in England, I've gathered from the print und electronic media that the hot topics any given day are: global warming, anti-ageing, crusty politician shenanigans and Kate Moss. And not necessarily in that order.

The classic sitcoms like Are You Being Served and Keeping Up Appearances remain my faves...we got to see them way back when DD ruled, thanks to the BBC connection. I recently saw another oldie, Last of The Summer Wine...and loved it. :-)

I admit I'm totally hooked onto Deal or No Deal (good ole Noel) and Countdown.

But am yet to delve into two of its longest-running soaps, Coronation Street (46 apparently!) and Eastenders (21). I realize I might not get whos doing whom, whos having whose baby or whos breaking whose house by just tuning in one fine day.

I imagine, this would be the n+1 generation at play in the current instalment and their antecedents are zilch for a newbie like me. I could go online and ferret out the details, but I really don't care so much and I am not writing a paper on it anytime soon. Just an idle curiousity...

Also, I forget the essential truth behind a soap: the history doesn't matter. And it really wouldn't need a rocket scientist to figure out the details. Human drama has had the same key elements since the birth of story-telling.

Someday, though, before I leave, I shall sample. :-)

here's a first

well, I never stop surprising myself, do I now?

never been tagged and never dug tagging or answering too many questions about myself...
saw this in The Pawnshop and decided to try and see what I came up with...might or might not be the truth, but what the heck! :-D

... one-word answers required.

1. Yourself: weird
2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend (spouse): solid
3. Your hair: horror
4. Your mother: achiever
5. Your father: erudite
6. Your favorite item: none
7. Your dream last night: surreal
8. Your favorite drink: tea
9. Your dream car: none
10. The room you are in: living
11. Your ex: who?
12. Your fear: boredom
13. What you want to be in 10 years? me
14. Who you hung out with last night? usual
15. What you're not? fake
16. Muffins: well?
17. One of your wish list items: tote
18. Time: gone
19. The last thing you did: blinked
20. What you are wearing: rags
21. Your favorite weather: stormy
22. Your favorite book: many
23. The last thing you ate: cracker
24. Your life: changing
25. Your mood: mercury
26. Your best friend: me
27. What are you thinking about right now? "when does this damn thing end?"
28. Your car: sweetheart
29. What are you doing at the moment? duh!
30. Your summer: hot
31. Your relationship status: cooked
32. What is on your TV? nada
33. What is the weather like? grey
34. When is the last time you laughed? today

cool is

...Steve McQueen. :-)

saw 'the great escape' again yesterday... great flick.