Goblins of my dream

Have you watched Constantine ?

Imagine you are the in the place of Kenau Reeves/Rachel Weisz as per your like or dislike, without the superpowers bestowed in lieu of being the protagonist (or a major hollywood star) and having to live through ordeal similar to the storyline of the movie.

That's what i lived through for over 2 hours (almost the runtime of the movie) of broken and disturbed sleep - haunted sleep if i may say.
I woke up at various junctures to realize its just a dream after all, and tried to fall back asleep coz i was so tired, but it was if the movie paused and replayed from where i left it (gosh, and i dont even have a tata sky plus subscription). Tried all i could in that state of inhibited consciousness and excessive sleepiness, i couldn't seem to shake off the goblins crawling all over the place.

And no there wasn't a sexy and all powerful Keanu Reeves to get me out of my sleepy hell. (Which would have completely turned it around of being a nightmare in the first place)

Hidden meanings and interpretations there . . . . well could be.
But on the more obvious side, it had been a bad start of the day with a lingering eeriness all throughout. . . .

Bits & Pieces Vol.14

Dil Kabaddi was fun but only in pieces. What a good pool of actors and potential flick wasted. Every bit of Rahul Khanna though was . . . oh so delicious!! ;)

I chocked on popcorn though, and coughed through a good part of the film.

Have u ever noticed, coughing in a quite room/hall is almost like an epidemic. Everyone takes a cue and wanted to clear their throat all at once.

Annoying and hilarious at the same time.
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The Galleria @ Leela Bangalore could easily become a favorite hangout. It has all that one can ask for an evening to unwind. My favorite though is to sit in Barista (Lavazza Now) have a tea/coffee/cooler depending on my mood and the weather and listen to the piano as along as possible. The sound of piano is by far one of the most soothing sounds I ve encountered in my life yet.

There's also Cha Bar, the Oxford Bookstore for conversation, variety etc, and the bowling alley and sports bar for something more vigorous and strong!

I ll sure be spending a lot more weekends there . . .
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If I wear white, I have to spill something over it – and not just "something" something, but something with haldi (turmeric) in it. And then I go jumping around looking for talcum powder, (its supposed to absorb the oil and the stain comes off in next wash).

If you have a better idea let me know . . . .
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Am not too happy with the Dec month right now. Its long, its cold, it has vacations when i don't have plans to meet. And it makes me crib - and nobody wants to listen to complaints.

My BESTEST friends have given up on me saying I crib too much. Doesn't make me feel too good though; if you guys also turn away, I ll have only my pillow to cry into.

The only good thing about the pillow is I don't have to use words with it - it quietly and patiently is always there to absorb my tears.

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Every time I am moving or arranging stuff around the house, I am bound to get hurt or scratched. My trophies of hard work which mostly goes unnoticed or unacknowledged. Last month i cleaned up the house for 3 hours 3 days in a row. Now i wonder why i did it.

Why do i pay so much attention to details, when the big picture is screwed up anyway.

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Its funny I havent put this up on the blog before, but this wedding season has been exceptionally bad for me . . .

I ve been receiving a bit too many wedding invites at least two every week, and there are weeks when I get one each day. Get a life people i would like to say - but i am sure that's what they want to tell me back.

All about the perspective . . . .

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I need the mp3 for following songs, if anybody has it, please send them to me....

L'Appuntamento - Ornella Vanoni
Uthale Ya Phenk De - Dil Kabaddi
Rise Up - Yves Larock (no remixes please)

And since we are at it, no harm adding to the wishlist - there was this ad for a certain brand of diamonds, starring Rahul Khanna and Sushma Reddy (it was her only i think), where he closes the blinds while she sleep and pushes a strand of hair back while she is painting . . . yeah i know stuff like that happens only in diamond ads (liars and cheats) but i want it nevertheless.

Thanks!! :)

Love in the times of Movies

Movies and the movie going experience - they are an important aspect of our lives, and a very important aspect of lives when you are dating, more so in the early days of the relationship, but nevertheless there all the time.

Thanks to all the multiplexes, it's a much improved experience. And you will notice the difference only when you revisit a non-multiplex after a long time and realise that no matter what you do, half the front screen will definitely be covered by the head of the person sitting right in front of you.

In such situations it definitely does not help that the movie is a little boring, very confusing and never ending. It might help though that its mushy romantic, and you can lean over to that special someone's side on the pretext of getting a better view, even if at the end of three and a half hours, you have a slight back-ache. Oh! The prices we pay for love!!!

All that is still fine - what is really wicked is that when you are on the "date-movie" you will always end up running into people you know, and more often than not they will end up occupying the seats right next to you. You will run into friends, family friends, colleagues, relatives, distant relatives - all of who will magically conjure right next to you. And don't even get me started of what percentage of the total population in the audience for that particular show for that particular movie will seem or BE familiar to you.

If you have not had that you ve been an absolute aberration from the norm I tell you - so you are either exceptionally blessed or really cursed; but the statistical studies have proven that more than ninety percent of the times - when you want to go unseen and unheard, you will be spotted by people you know, and talked about and maybe even questioned about at a later date.

Oh yeah, and for all you well-connected-via-cell phone people: remember your mom, dad, granddad, great grandmother and all the likes, will definitely call you in the middle of that one movies, and even if they don't generally ask you , NOW this one question will surely come - 'Who are you with?'

So either make sure you call all your relatives before the movie, or have a very convincing blatant lie ready at all times. And gals, there is a hell of a higher probability of it afflicting you than your guys. Yeah Mr.Murphy also discriminates against the fairer sex.

It all sounds funny and makes a great blog post at a later date - but it's one hell of an experience to go through. And even though this post has been inspired by a friend's recent sojourn in the aforementioned tricky territory . . . . . . am sure all you readers will agree that each of the incidents mentioned are quite inspired by the real life, and any resemblance to any person alive and kicking is so damn intentional.

Jab We Met

( It's not a review, only my very personal experience)

Cute, fun, perfect date movie !! Nothing heavy, not getting-on-the-nerves stupidity.
Has Shahid Kapoor started to look hotter, (now that he is single and available again) or is my taste in men undergoing a change. And Kareena was bearable too. Surprise!

I didn't have great expectations honestly, mayb that helped. But after a really long time the movie experience was good, the place, the people and the mood all of it helped.
I think the last romantic movie I had enjoyed to this extent was Socha Na Tha (Ayesha Takia and Abhay Deol in 2005).

Sorry, cant stop raving about Shahid again !!!
I ve always bee a great fan of his dancing skills, and even though this movie didn't have his best moves, I think the music and settings were pretty good to have left a lasting dancing impression on me .

Confession: I was grooving in my seat through at least three of the songs, ha ha.

Okie, take a look for urself here : put on the headsets and get grooving.
Afsoos, I couldn't find the entire song on youtube. :(

The Namesake

I fell in love with the story. . . . . not in a way that it made me laugh rapturously or cry hysterically through it or that it left me angry or flying high, but like a love affair that grows subtly and quitely below the surface, till you wake up one fine morning and find that your life has changed in a way you cant explain.

I was very excited and had been waiting for this one movie for a long time now, more so because I had read the book and had heard such rave reviews of it.
I will not go into explaining how the movie looked and felt, coz that is a very personal experience, and i am here only to share a part of mine . . .

I had the read the book a long time ago(2003), and there were many aspects of it, and now that I look back at the time and age I was in , I am sure I could not have felt or realised the depth of many of it intricacies - coz then I was not so well versed with the world and life and the way life flows, and I can't blame myself for not being able to appreciate it its true dues then. Yet it did not fail to touch a chord, and I recommended it to my mom, as I do with all things I like. And what she shared of her experience reading it, surprised me. She was moved in a way I did not know then, but now can at least begin to comprehend now . . . . . .coz it talks of lives uprooted, reworked and weaved a tapestry into. It may look simple from a distance, but only when you close u can feel the waves of threads and the unique texture every inch of it has acquired.

Curiously somewhere between watching the movie adaptation, thinking of the book and munching cheese popcorn, a relatively simple and funny memory reared it head . . .
As a kid, often exasperated by things as little as power cuts, I would ask my dad the question that why did he not settle abroad when he had the option and opportunity to. And he would always reply back saying - " Because of your mom, she can not bear the cold there."
And maybe for the first time today I can smile at his reply, and be glad for the decision he took. Yes life would have been interesting no matter where i would have been, but then today i don't want to trade any bit of it for a flake of snow. And cold of the body may be cured somehow, but the of heart might have killed all of us.

"Living the bliss", reminded me of the Patronus in Harry Potter, and realise it or not may we, those happy moments don't just come and go in a fickle, they leave imprints for a lifetime and turn out to be such surprising reservoirs or strength and peace.
And that was also an example of how the mind remembers what the heart felt, it ties unsuspecting ends together, and nurtures the color of the that fabric I mentioned a little while ago.

And I have a lot of reasons to remember this one . . . a very long time.

Book-keeping

umm.....
I guess I have lost some count of the days, or weekends to be more precise, and I was made aware of the fact by one very nasty fact - something a lot of people would simply recognize as "The Credit Card Bill".

I guess......the name's enuff. Am sure I needn't add nything more, coz we all know what follows.....

And, now for the rest of the weekend updates......

Corporate was a disappointment. Looks like Madhur Bhandarkar had outsourced it to some Donal Trump who let a bunch of aspiring apprentices mess it over......and I am wondering who deserves to be fired for the shoddy work.

What hell of a corporate were they talking about anyway, where laptops cant even be damn password protected. And we develop solutions here for the world's biggest banks.
Diya tale andhera, re baba!

One of the highest points of Saturday was, I met a school friend after ELEVEN years!! It was magical a feeling, as if meeting someone from the past life.
And what was even more surprising was that, he said I had the traits even then, which I claim I have worked hard to cultivate now!
Looks like I was the only one oblivious to myself.

Of the many fun things I (re)discovered, one that tickled me the most was, I ll quote the speaker's word -

"In our group of six,yours was the voice heard most. Finding Deez was always easy, simply look where's the maximum noise is coming from."

Unbelievable !!!

But simply zero pretence and complete freedom to be my-worst-self; gosh.....old friendships have a magic nothing can ever come close to.

And then Sunday, was another fun day. What started as a lets-catch-up-for-coffee with a bunch of friends, ended with a full flegded dinner complete with ice cream, and yeah we also got Italy to win the World Cup........and late night tea, and a mountains of laughter........
(Ah! btw, the coffee, never happened.)

Well, so much so for the week that went by, back to some work now.

Dodo & The Mistress of Vices

About The Mistress of Spices ...

(watched with my roomie on 30th apr 06)

Not too great a movie, and I had been warned. Yet the temptation was too great, and the curiosity..... For I wld have forever wondered what's there in the movie. Sometimes we just do things coz we want to know more.
Explore.

And then sometimes we do find something to make it a trip worth the while. At other times we don't. Yet chances have to be taken in life.

Well the movie was a bit about the same, a battle between confirming and non-confirming, something about being rooted and not rooted. I don't think the root (as in the mind) has got much to do with geography. Though I agree, away from home the avenues are plenty, but then again I feel it becomes mostly a matter or choices.

Two dialogs only I remember from the movie...

Dough: I am not rooted like you.
Tilo : But then too deep roots can also strangulate.

And .... love cannot be wrong.
(this one's in the trailer too, and honestly it was the hooker)

Well, they are both true. In changing times, it is about wise choices, and the world will not always seem to understand. But then as I always say, bigger games involve bigger risks.
The second bit - sounds like from alchemist.
Sure love cannot be wrong, but then how does one know when it really is love?

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It is about my life and my ambitions.

Well, do I know what is it that I am really looking at? A li'l clearer I can say though.
Finding what u don't want is also a way of getting closer to what you do want eventually. So if it hasn't been a clear answer in terms of my being able to solve that problem, at least I clould go by the process of elimination. And yes it does get the right result too.

All try, but at the end of the day, the winner is the one who finishes first. I don't want to tell stories later in my life of how hard I tried. Coz stories of lost battles do not make good reading. They only show how weak human character is; they do not explain how humans managed to live by overcoming their weaknesses. They are stories of those who died, and dodo is called a stupid bird today.

I am too intelligent to go the dodo way. And I want my story to be of a survival.

I want to write a movie review

But my damned head screams - bachaa u need to watch a movie first to write a review.
Last one I saw was An Unfinished Life, which failed to spur even an iota of interest enuff to think or write about.
And the next is yet to come....on top of which (read jale pe lal mirch) the weather forecast says, the sun does not seem to be coming out of the clouds any time soon.

My list of movie to watch runs oh so long.....it has always been that way though.
So even if I exclude the older ones, I still have on my list

1. Memoires of a Geisha
2. Pride and Prejudice
3. Crash
4. Maasala Maalamal Weekly
5. Taxi No. 9211
6. Brokeback Mountain
7. Being Cyrus

....and growing with every passing week!!

:((

15 Park Avenue

A movie review. Something I dont often do.
But this is a movie I ve been thinking about. Coz I can't claim to understand it perfectly. There were a lot of grey areas in the physic of the flick.

Let's get the technicalities out of the way first. Great actors, Shabana Azmi strong as ever, Waheeda Rehman wasted, Rahul Bose - I like him too much to consider him not wasted. Shefali Chaaya, I liked her role and the way she delivered. Konkona Sen - awesome as ever in her acting skills.
A very human portrayal of humans. Realistic emotions and characters. Storyline could have been a bit more streamlined though.

What really caught me was the thought behind it all. The reality we live our lives in, that which we perceive as the truth. And what if someone else's truth or reality differs from our own. Differences and handled and managed almost everyday in our lives...but what if they grow bigger. And how big is big enough? How much would we accommodate? And don't we stretch and pull and manipulate our own realities by our conveniences.

It got me thinking and I ve liked it more ever since.

Not an entertainer in the bollywood style....but if u have a thought to invest, go watch it.