cotton candy and white noise

I am way behind on my reading. Also way behind on updating my blog. Also way behind on following some (most) of them. But first of all, I have for you this.

Today has been an absolutely delightful day. The weather outside was oh-so-perfect this morning. In fact, we’ve had pleasant weather for over two weeks now. But I’m not going to bore you with the details of the weather we experience on this side of the world.

I haven’t written in a while, that’s probably why I’m talking gibberish. Of late so many things have been happening around me. My friends are migrating. Most of them are married or getting married. Some of them have lil angels and dolls to play with. Some are expecting. Some others are changing jobs. I’m spending less and less time with my sister ‘cos she’s getting busier with her life. AND it’s frustrating to know that I’m getting no where. I promise I won’t sulk because none of this is life altering.

Here’s a little story for you.

A little girl lives with her 8-something-member family that serves as domestic help for a large house right next door. She sings her heart away every morning to the not-so-prefect tune of Dhoom machale. By the looks of her, I can bet she can’t be a year older than seven. I would even say she’s just about six. But you’ll never know how deceptive looks can be when children her age are malnourished. She’s probably older than that… I’m not going to venture into that subject though.

Coming back to the song she sings every morning. She probably knows only those two words, or she prefers to sing away only those two, but she definitely doesn’t feel the need to go any further. While I sit in my third floor balcony, the morning news on one hand and a mug of steaming hot tea on the other, she is already at work. She has to fill a large empty tub with water that she pumps out of a hand pump into a smaller manageable bucket. She carries this around to where the tub is kept, a few feet away, and pours into the tub which can hold about 400 liters. I can’t begin to imagine how many trips she would have to make to fill the tub which is little taller than she is.

All this I watch from my third floor apartment balcony and feel ashamed to wonder about the incomplete song. Why didn’t I ever ponder about her homework? Did she complete it? Isn’t she’s supposed to get ready to go to school in a couple of hours? Wouldn’t her school bus come over to pick her up soon? Why didn’t any of that thought enter my mind? Here I am wondering why she sings only two words of a song. The irony of it being, I conveniently considered her to continue her family tradition of performing menial work for well-off homes.

Oh did I mention she chirps away happily while doing her tasks? Not one morning have I seen her feel remorseful of what she did. That is unquestionably some lesson I must learn!

Not so long ago, with a little push from Times of India’s powerful campaign Teach India, I decided to do my bit to help the thousands of little girls like her to sing. Make noise. Or squeal in joy upon riding a merry-go-round in a school playground. Even if her school is run by an NGO and taught by an amateur like myself. TeachIndia isn’t a new concept, but I’m insanely excited about it.

So as soon as TOI contacts me with more information, I’m going to be spending 4 hours a week changing the face of our nation. Are you interested to give the country a little of what your parents gave you? Do you live in one of the metros with a little time to spare this 2008? I’m a Teach India volunteer! You could be too.

India is a unique song. But it desperately needs people like us to change the way the world hears it. Now, it wouldn’t hurt to shriek a little to help bring tens of thousands of voices together, would it?

While we’re on that topic, here’s a wonderful song for you. Added advantage if you understood Hindi. And this time, I promise to be back sooner to attend to those meme’s.

Happy National Day everybody!

Theatres Galore!

The New Year seems to be unveiling itself with a lot of plays this Jan-Feb.

The National Bestseller ‘Five Point Someone’ is being adapted into a play and is being performed by Madras Players at the Museum Theatre, Chennai on 5, 6, and 7 of January. I liked the book a lot and for those of you who haven’t read it, it’s a story about three young men and their lives during the years they spent at IIT.

In the author Chetan Bhagat’s words “This is not a book to teach you how to get into IIT or even how to live in college. In fact, it describes how screwed up things can get if you don't think straight."

If you want to catch it, be there on time because they are running only one show each evening at 7:15 PM.

Evam, the entertainment company that started in 2003, completes showing 150 plays this February. To mark their third anniversary celebration, they’ve scheduled to stage four plays (old and new); Art, Love Letters, The Odd Couple, and Oh God, in January and February. They are calling their new production 'Evam150'. Visit www.evam.in for play schedule/timing and venue.

Music Festival 2006

While browsing this morning, I found this interesting website with details on the December Music Festival schedule in Chennai. Better late than never, but I thought this would be extremely helpful for all those Carnatic music lovers out there.

Here, you can look for the music schedule either by sabha or by artiste. Contact/tickets/reviews et al can be found in the same site.

Have a musical month (Dec-Jan)!

The Open Door: A Mature Effort

The Open Door, the music album by rock band Evanescence, released in September 2006 is arguably a very mature effort by the band after their first release Fallen.

A friend of mine, Beta, was good enough to drop the album with me a few weeks ago. Although at first, honestly I was a little disappointed to hear their tracks, listening to this album for the second or third time, really made a positive impression on me.

The Open Door, which is certainly not another Fallen, has more bold lyrics as opposed to the edgy ones in Fallen. “Call me when you’re sober” referred to most people as their most successful single, didn’t sound catchy to me. Lyrically biting with dark music, I didn’t think it would be accessible to a wider audience.

Either ways, I like Lithium and Good Enough a lot. Lithium has very nice piano work and it’s undoubtedly Amy’s best vocal in the album. Sweet Sacrifice reminded me of Haunted from Fallen and Like You was written by Amy Lee in memory of her sister; a rather boring song compared to the rest.

Taken as a whole, although Fallen was a classic, I have to agree that The Open Door is an amazing piece of work by the entire band. With its distinctly dissimilar lyrics and music, it's a great album to listen to.

Rock on Evanescence!!!

Only in Bollywood

I watched yet another one of those mundane Bollywood movies last night. Mundane, because I can almost tell what is going to happen in the next 3 hours before they present the first couple of scenes.

Come to think of it, almost all Indian movies follow some conventions. There are certain rules that are a mandate and should be followed with strict diligence. Others may or may not be followed depending on the screenplay that has been adopted from one of the other Indian movies, or from Hollywood.

• Rule #1: The guy and girl will hate each other on first sight; Or, the guy and girl will fall in love at first sight. They will not fall in love gradually! [Note: There is no surpassing this rule.]


• The hero and heroine would run across a narrow road to meet each other for a full two minutes (with violins playing in the background) her silken hair falling over her face under the scorching sun!!! And we, like retards wonder why it takes her such a long time to run across or why any other vehicle hasn’t passed through yet.


• When the hero is 20, the heroine (18) would move in right across the hero’s house (Rule of thumb: the heroine should have lost at least one parent before moving in.) Rule #1 follows…


• The show cannot run without a villain. The hero evidently gets into trouble with the villain, mostly because of the heroine.


• If either the hero or the heroine has a child, you can bet your last buck, that the spouse is dead or the child is not theirs. Otherwise, how can you justify them falling in love? After all, we are Indians, extra-marital relationship isn’t typical yet!


• In the event of one of the stars having lost his/her spouse, there HAS to be a classified story behind his/her death. That is mandatory! Much to the frustration of the movie-goer, the story will not be told almost till the end of the movie.


• The villain, who has been wanting to kill the hero for a full two and a half hours (off late three hours), once encountered with the hero toward the end of the movie, pistol on hand, will keep talking (giving gyan) to our hero until the hero comes up with a brilliant idea and be-hold… the hero not only gets away, but all of a sudden, the tables turn, and the villain is dead!


• That’s not all… at least six songs (one needs to be romantic and another needs to be feet-tapping), sing and dance around trees with music in the background, beach, bikini, mountains, get transported to Mars within seconds (NASA needs to stop spending all their time and money and simply take classes from Indian cinema makers).

Now, aren’t we morons???

All the same; don’t miss DHOOM 2 and Don; you’d be missing a lot in life if you didn’t watch them hunks and babes in wide screen! [grin]