Life in the City

Do you think that a life of a hippy is a better one? There are certainly less responsibilities.
The Indian version of a hippy is to take sanyas. And my mother's views on sanyas have always been, "It's more difficult to live in a society. Taking sanyas is taking the easier way out." Which, perhaps, is true. To lead a good life in these times filled with Blackberry and Google and Facebook is definitely the tougher choice. So, my point is, what's wrong if you decide to pursue your more primal instincts such as food, air, water and shelter rather than the intellectual?  Why is it frowned upon? Why do we choose to lead a more difficult life? Because of the more material pleasures we get? But do those things really give us pleasure? Is living in a small apartment in the city with barely any space to move let alone live with only a few hours of sleep every night really a good lidea?
Now, I'm not saying that we leave society, wear orange clothes and go live in the jungle but maybe we should stop trying to squeeze tiny drops of happiness from Mango, Vero Moda and Zaara. Maybe we should go beyond that. And by that, I don't mean Gucci but I mean just normal clothes. Cause the point is to protect yourself from the harsh weather, right? Not to decorate yourself.
By writing this article, it does not mean that I have given up on Mad Over Donuts or Subway but its just a thought to ponder on, you know?

Dhobi Ghaat. Finally.

So, I finally saw Dhobi Ghaat. I was supposed to when it was released but I got terrible reviews then. Those reviews, however, were totally unjustified. I loved the movie. I think Indians are spoilt by clean endings. Bollywood doesn't leave much to the imagination. It ties everytthing in a neat little bow and presents it to us.But Dhobi Ghaat sort of defies this unspoken rule and maybe thats why it didn't do so well in the box office.
They've tried to make it as realistic as possible but even they had to see what a chiche the character of Arun was. Every painter lives that way, doesn't he? But, one does desire the life he leads. The cliched artisitic one.
However, I was happy with the relationship between the dhobiwala, Munna and the umerican, Shai. It was very believable.
Overall the movie was a good one. A believable one. A good attempt.

A Betrayal

He rang the doorbell and waited.  It was a double doorbell like always. His top two shirt buttons were open after a long work day like always. His tiffin was in one hand and his office bag was slung on his other shoulder like always. His specs had finger prints on them like always. And his hair was shabby from running his hands through it so many times just like always. However, this was not an ordinary day. He had betrayed his wife. Again. He had felt no guilt in doing so. He was angry at himself for not feeling any guilt, for not having a conscience. He felt pity for his wife for she did not know what an asshole he was. He knew he was going to do it again.

 She opened the door took his office bag from his hand and told him that the dinner was ready. He came over to the table just like always. It seemed like a normal evening. It was a normal evening in his wife’s mind. But not for him. His wife wasn’t aware of his betrayal. Yet. And maybe never will be. What if she found out? No, he didn’t want to think of the consequences of that. His wife told him of her day and how their son wasn’t studying enough. He made a show of listening but his mind was elsewhere. His wife served him vegetable and roti and sat opposite him. His wife had already eaten.

She lay awake, knowing what activity her husband had just taken part in. Again. She had known for a long time. The tell-tale signs were always there when her husband fucked whoever she was. She felt no curiosity in finding out who that woman was.  She had decided not to confront. She didn’t want his pity. No, she would keep her pride intact and not raise a fight to grab her husband’s attention. Let him get his fuck from somewhere else. Good riddance. She wouldn’t have to partake in the physical act from which she got no pleasure from. Her husband technically raped her everytime they had sex anyway. If all was great then why did she get no sleep and her husband slept like the dead in their matrimonial bed? He was the sinner. Shouldn’t he be the one brooding? She turned around and tried, in vain, to get some sleep.

Nobody Is A Nobody

He was an ordinary nobody. No, that came out wrong. He was ordinary but not a nobody. He was the captain of his college football team in 1998. He was hired by Zee Cinema as a Sales Executive and that started his career. He moved up the corporate ladder but couldn’t go too much further because he didn’t have the required MBA. At the ripe age of 28 he got married to a pretty South Indian girl of age 24. His parents were happy for having found a match in their own community and so was he because he’d finally get to have sex. She worked from home which was just perfect so she could look after their children and their house. What? Did you expect an ordinary Indian boy to do his own laundry? Like I said, he was ordinary but not a nobody. At least not to the people who knew him. He was predictable, would catch the 9 47 AM train to Churchgate from Andheri and the 5 55 PM train back home. Today was just like any other ordinary day. He was catching the 5 55 PM train to Andheri from Churchgate. It was rush hour but he knew it would empty out at Dadar. He suddenly remembered the new Fast Food joint that had opened near his house. He did something unpredictable. He felt his pockets for his phone to call his wife to ask her not to cook for he was going to take his family out to dinner. But when he searched his pockets there was no phone. He traced back the events and remembered seeing the phone last on the counter of the canteen when he had removed his wallet to pay for the meal. He prayed Ramu had kept it and got off at Elphinston Road to go back to Churchgate to get his beloved phone. Later that night, he couldn’t go to dinner with his family for the entire city was in panic.  There was a bomb in the same compartment that he was in. It blasted at Dadar, killing 30 people and leaving many more injured in the process. That day he realised that he and all the others in that compartment were ordinary but nobody is a nobody.

My First Baking Lesson

I went for my first baking class. We learnt how to bake cupcakes. If anyone out there knows of LSD on Carter’s then they also know how awesome their cupcakes are, well, the same person taught me.

Anyway, getting to my experience: It was a good experience for a first baking lesson. I didn’t know a lot of things cause I’m such an amateur in the kitchen but it was surprisingly easy. You just have to mix stuff in a big bowl and then bake it. OK, it’s not that easy but you get the picture.

Can I complain about how many calories go into baking please? Its all about, butter and cheese and sugar and chocolate.  But the result was worth each calorie I too in. It was all a blast of soft, spongy and creamy and chocolaty all at once.

One more thing I realise today was why baking is always differentiated from cooking. Baking is more about measurement and ingredients and flour. Those who bake aren’t necessarily good cooks and the reason was obvious, we never went to the gas once. It was all about mixing and then putting the batter to bake at the right temperature and for the right amount of time.

So I had a blast on my first cooking lesson, sorry baking lesson and I hope they turn out to be as good as they did there.

Thanks for reading. I like comments even more than the Gooey Chocolate Cupcake I made today. So please leave some.

She Is A Lesbian

She is a lesbian. A lesbian. Lez-bee-uhn, she pronounced slowly in her head, didn’t like the ring of it and didn’t like the fact that she was one. Was she one? She had always wondered why she was never attracted to boys, why she never craved male attention like the rest of her friends did. They would cry about their break-ups to her and she would always listen and behave sympathetic but she never really felt any sympathy. Of course she tried dating. Even though she didn’t crave male attention she got a reasonable amount of it but the relationships never lasted more than a few weeks. The reason obvious: she never felt any physical attraction and so she broke up with them, thinking that the chemistry just wasn’t right with that particular one. Being a middle-class Indian girl, the concept of homosexuality hadn’t crossed her mind. She wasn’t a homophobic but she did think that some of them did it for the attention. But there were genuine ones in there and she knew that. Was hers genuine or was she imagining things out of sheer desperacy for company now that all her friends had settled and her parents were pushing her towards marriage? No, she thought. She had felt the pull towards Radhika when she kissed her. She had felt the…the chemistry. It was right. Her lips, her hands, her body was…just right. Well, obviously telling her parents straight away was out of the question. Her mother would consult an astrologer and her father would have an aneurism. Any friend she could consult to? No, they behaved like educated smart career women but they were more orthodox than her great-grandmother. What was she going to do about Radhika’s kiss? Was she to just go to office tomorrow and behave like nothing happened? She was her boss, after all. That posed another problem: she was her boss, dammit. She couldn’t possibly outright reject her. Did she want to reject her? Maybe she should just play it by ear. Maybe Radhika will make the first move. The possibility of that was less. She already made the first move by kissing her and leaving her in the deserted office, stunned out of her mind. No, she will have to do something tomorrow. The question was: was she going to make the move or was she going to go straight home and get married to the first man her parents found for her?

Kissing Jessica Stein

When I saw the trailer I was intrigued. The idea of not one person is your soulmate has been introduced many times but this was a very different way of showing it. I suggest you watch the trailer and then read this review but if you don’t wish to then it’s pretty self-explanatory.

Let me start with how well the characterisation of Jessica Stein was done.  Jessica Stein is one of those people who are very smart, talented and beautiful. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? But the problem is that she knows that she’s smart, talented and beautiful. A little too well. The first few minutes into the movie they show her home. All you notice will be books and books and piles and piles of books. It is incomprehensible how many books you will see in her apartment. Yes, she is an avid reader which also adds on to how smart she is. She is a control freak, always has to keep moving, anxious all the time, good at her job, an insomniac. Her complication is that she is looking for The One. But obviously Jessica thinks that nobody is good enough for her. Either they are not smart enough or funny enough. It’s always something. She’s twenty-eight and she’s getting worried that she will die alone. But the funny thing is that even though she thinks so highly of herself she doesn’t exactly believe in her work. She is an artist but she wouldn’t work towards that so she’s working as a copy-editor in the Tribune. She hasn’t given homosexuality a thought-­­­­until Helen comes along.

Now let’s move to Helen. I’m not exactly sure what her job is but from what I understood in the movie is that she promotes artists and is a curator of sorts. Helen oozes sexuality. She is very attractive and as her gay friends puts it in the movie, “She’s had more cock than he’s had.” With Helen, she’s not judgemental about other people’s opinions. The complication with her is she wants to have sex with a woman. Just for the experience.

It is a twisted love triangle. The third corner of the triangle is Josh Meyers. Josh and Jessica dated in college for a year. They broke up because Jessica dumped him saying he wasn’t following his obvious passion-writing. The real irony lies where Josh and Jessica work with eachother at the Tribune.  You see very little of Josh in the movie. OK, not little, but just not compared to how much you see of Helen and Jessica.

The beauty of the movie lies in the ending. The ending is unpredictable and that obviously was surprising. It has been so long since a romance comedy has been unpredictable. It’s a lot like Vicky Christina Barcelona. Helen being Christina and Jessica being Vicky, except that Vicky and Christina weren’t lesbians and in a relationship. The movie ends on a positive note and should I say a realistic note?

I like comments as much as I like this movie so please leave me one. Thanks for reading.