Before Sunrise

Just finished seeing what must be one of the romantic movies I ve ever seen... in fact right up there with Casablanca and Bridges of Madison County... why are all great romances ones which don't work out.... thats besides the point

I had a slightly similar experience... obviously without any kissing, or promises to meet in six months... I was on my way from Florence to Venice... when I met this girl from Romania on the train and we spent the entire day together going all around Venice... in fact it was carnival time in Venice with hundreds of people wearing Venetian masks all around... there was hardly any romance but it was quite an experience to see a new place with someone totally new.

This brings me to another point of why I like to travel alone. The obvious one is that when you travel with someone you know, you are far too closed and you only sight see, you hardly ever interact with people. One of my joys of travelling alone has been that I have been able to meet people from different places in different sorroundings... be it Romanian in Venice or Mexican in Paris or Pakistani in Chicago. The other is that you are never in conflict on where to go and what to see. You don't have to explain to people why you want to go to spend half a day to go the second part of Kennedy Air and Space Museum in Baltimore. You don't need to explain why you would much rather go to Musee De Orsay than Euro Disney.

The beautiful disney musicals

The beuatiful Walt Disney musicals can easily be called my favourite genre of movies.
At times I have wondered how in spite of being more than a quarter century old and well on my way to becoming a cynic how is it that I still adore these movies so much. The answer I think I lies in what I ve lost that this world of disney brings back to me. The values they teach, the simple love they show, the innocence they celebrate, where good wins most of the time in the end and music is all pervading is probably not very far from the dream world that I would have created myself if I could have started all over again.
What I will endeavour to do here is give you a sampling of the amazing lyrics. The rest unfortunately is a discovery you have to make yourself. So here s what I suggest. Spend about Rs 1000 and buy 5 of these VCDs- Lion King, Alladin, Pocahontas, Beeauty and the Beast, and Finding Nemo. Sit down one Saturday afternoon after lunch and instead of going drinking to the nearest watering hole watch these movies one after another.
If you are a man who can still feel and get moved in spite of everything you ll find yourself a better person at the end of the experience.
Now for the samples

Lion King
"Some say eat or be eaten
Some say live and let live
But all are agreed as they join the stampede
You should never take more than you give
Some of us fall by the wayside
And some of us soar to the stars
And some of us sail through our troubles
And some have to live with the scars"

Alladin
"Can show you the world
Shining, shimmering, splendid
Tell me, princess, now when did
You last let your heart decide?"

Pocahontas
"You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you,
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger,
You learn things you never knew, you never knew"

Tehzeeb... Lucknow

Finally went to a new place. I had been to Lucknow over the weekend and spent a day going all over Lucknow. It’s a city soaked in ‘tehzeeb’ where kebab walas when rushed don’t say ‘ek minute’ but say ‘janab thairiye tho sahi’.
This visit was a gastronomical delight where I feasted on the best non vegetarian food from gilavati and kakori kababs, to nihari gosht to bhuna gosht, from dum biryani to chicken avadhi with generous amounts of rabri and thandai.
I also had a few very nice experiences during the trip, like being present at the chota imambara during the namaz with an elderly gentleman guiding me on what to do, listening to ghazals in a bar called mehfil with the singer asking me ‘kya farmaish hai aapki’ to even chatting up with a Bengali construction supervisor in La Martineire, Lucknow.
I immensely enjoy sightseeing and so went all around Lucknow, both the Chota Imambara and the Bada Imambara. In fact in the bhool bhulaiya there the guide showed me the origin of the term ‘deewaron ke bhi kaan hothe hai’ by speaking in the opposite wall over a hundred feet away. I also managed to get lost in the bhool bhuliya when the guide asked me to lead him. The place I liked most was the Residency. In fact there s something about our family and ruins, as we all love exploring ruins. So I spent a lot of time going through every part of the residency including cemeteries covered in weed. I also ended up disturbing quite a few couples who were enjoying the secluded lush greenery prevalent here. I ended the trip with a drive around the old parts of the city and a visit to the famous Lucknow zoo which I was surprised to see is in fact very well maintained. Oh yeah not to forget the kababs I picked up for my friends from Tunde Kabab in Ameenabad.
This was a city I had been wanting to visit for a long time and if nothing else will endeavour to bring a little bit more decency into this crazy city of ours.

The great Sawariya- OSO battle

There s a meatloaf song "Is Nothing Sacred Anymore"? Are our movie critics now so easy to buy that an absolutely useless movie like Om Shanti Om is proclaimed as a better movie than Sawariya. Or are we so much hypocrites and losers that we actually like a movie that just blatantly copies and parodies compared to another which truly creates a dreamworld that you can get lost in.
Om Shanti Om is a remake of Madhumati, where the humour is not original but derived from mimicry of the past or greats like Rajnikant. It even borders on offensive. The saving graces of the movie are its music and the lead actors. Shah Rukh Khan as usual can make any role special and Deepika Padukone brings a Vidya Balanish freshness to the screen.
Sawariya on the other hand has a visual brilliance hitherto unmatched in Indian cinema. This movie is the brilliance of Sanjay Leela Bhansali all the way. The way he tells his story, the way he ends it beautifully, the magic he weaves with colours, and the detailing of his sets, all make it an uniquely pleasurable experience. He creates Paris, Venice and Mumbai on screen in one frame and transports us to dreamland where love and music could be enough for sustenance. The two lead stars do a good job of not getting in his enough. In fact Ranbir Kapoor has every bit of a budding star in him while Sonam Kapoor is refreshingly beautiful, almost innocently beautiful one can say.
Guess am no good at movie reviews but thats an honest opinion.

Faces- Love Stories- Beauty- No link

Just finished watching a movie called "The Lady Eve" starring Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck. There s something about watching pretty women and simple love stories that appeals to all of us. I just am a part of the few who accept the non machismo in saying I like a love story and the machismo in saying I like a pretty face.
Anyway, this movie along with Sawariya which I saw yesterday has shown such hopelessly beautiful stories of love and such astonishingly pretty faces that I offer these film makers the classic Jack Nicholson line :"You want me to become a better man".
There s something about these faces that I like a lot- Ingrid Bergman, Barbara Stanwyck, Donna Reed, Jodie Foster in Hollywood and Madhubala, Waheeda Rehman and in recent times Sonam Kapoor. I keep trying to find the common factor so that I can give to anyone who asks me next "what kind of women do you like" but alas this simple exercise also fails me and I end up giving some gibberish or smart ass answer to basically avoid the question.

A rather interesting day

Every time I decide that I will stop my wild ways and get back to a little bit more semblance of decency there comes along a day which makes it all so worthwhile.
So here was a Friday when I didn’t do a lot that I could have done, hardly touched alcohol, came home in time and went to sleep.
The next day was truly memorable. I woke up with a very stiff back coupled with pain in the neck. The fever of the past few days had also not subsided. However I somehow managed to pull myself through the morning and after a few medicines was feeling a lot better. So went over to a friends place for lunch and then ended up having a few tiffs with a friend on unwarranted comments. Came home and watched a decent movie and as I was feeling better came a call to tell me that a project that I had been very interested in was lost and hence my future was again uncertain. Out went the resolutions, the rum bottles were opened and normalcy was restored. Post dinner, another friend wanted a few discs from my car and so I gave him the car keys. The poor guy ended up banging my new car and it will cost me quite a few thousands to get it repaired and will leave me without a vehicle for a few days. In fact we were planning to drive the car down to Kashid for a holiday but don’t know if it will get repaired in time. Oh forgot! Anyway we didn’t get hotel reservations in Kashid.

A few new songs

Ok I ve found a proxy through which I can access youtube in office and needless to say I am exploiting it to its fullest but I usually use it to play songs while I work.
So here are four songs that I feel you could give a shot to:
Kailash Kher- Saiyan (For some reason whenever he screams saiyan it seems so hearfelt)
Silk Route- Sabse Peeche Hum Khade (The ultimate losers song and hence mine too)
Rmember Shakti- Sakhi (Shankar Mahadevan simply rocks it even though legends like Zakir Hussain, Mandolin Srinivas and John McLaughlin are present on stage with him)
Salam-e-ishq- Ya Rabba- Kailesh Kher (Once again Kailash Kher excels in this lament of lost love due to circumstances. The best part of the song is the Indianness in it where unlike Eminem and GNR we do not want to today kill the person we loved yesterday. If anything we are willing to take more pain so that the one we love can be happy)