One Fleeting Moment

After a Three day weekend, I am back at work and can barely keep my eyes open. The first day of the week is usually horrible for me. By midweek I am much better and can actually get a lot done. Anyhow, this weekend was relatively crazy and that explains the drowsy state of affairs at this end.
Friday and Saturday were spent perfecting the numbers for the band's performance on Sunday. We reached the venue by 11:00 am on Sunday, only to find it desolate. By the time we had finished setting up, we saw a few people trundle in....we finally started playing at around 1:00 pm ( two hours behind schedule). The first few numbers were lost on the crowd as most people were busy eating. Sowmya's Telugu rendition of "Choti Si Asha" got the audience interested and after that we were on a roll. Amrit was a big hit with the kids, infact towards the end he had a quite a fan following. The food was good and yes...we are finally a proffesional band...wink wink!!
Yesterday we spent a lazy afternoon at home with friends and good food. By the time everyone left after evening tea, we just had enough time for a walk, a quick dinner and two episodes of ATGB.
Weekend Movie: The House of Flying Daggers is a visually stunning movie with little emotional impact. The colors in each scene have been balanced, fine tuned and perfected to such an extent that it looks like an ad for some image processing software. I was thoroughly convinced that they shot the last duel in snow because the red of blood looks better against the white of snow ( blood red and green grass don't look that good after all). Later on as we went through the extra stuff on the DVD we were informed that the film crew was caught in the middle of a freak snow storm in Ukraine while shooting the last scene and they just continued shooting...hence the appearence of snow. Overall the movie is just a Chinese version of any generic boy-meets-girl-who-is-estranged-from-her-lover story where the boy and girl fall in love, girl discovers she does not like old lover anymore which leads to angery old lover going on a rampage and loads of blood and gore ( we just love that red stuff splashing all over!!). Take this basic cliched storyline, throw in loads of sad Chinese songs with vague revolutionary lyrics (the lyrics are too fool you into believing there is something more deep, more Zen, more metaphorical about the movie), add some pretty trees and bushes, then dress up your actors in opulent color coodinated costumes and what you get is " The House of Flying Daggers". And another thing you should always start your movie with some Chinese inscriptions which read "859 AD China- The Tang dynasty was growing more corrupt and forcing people to drink tea out of smaller and smaller tea cups"...okay the part about the tea cups is a little overboard, but going by this movie...I think the audience would actually be a little more intrigued if they said that. I was willing to give this movie the"oh! so much is lost in translation" treatment after the first time. I watched it the second time over to make sure...sure it has some good moments...but nah!! don't go out of your way to watch it.

As I watched old episodes of As Time Goes By yesterday, an odd thought struck me...I hope we are half as adorable as Jean and Lionel when we get to their age. That should be lovely.

This blog is partly inspired by Subho’s on the topic and partly by a news piece on NPR today about how the President has threatened to veto the Castle Bill. I am not one of those people who can make very elaborate arguments and counter arguments but here are some thoughts that go through my mind every time I hear this inane babble:

• The last time I checked embryonic stem cells were not being harvested by torturing, killing and then trashing dead babies. The embryo that every one is so zealously trying to protect is just a clump of cells…true it has the potential to develop into a human being. But for that it needs a womb – which these leftovers (I am deliberately being callous enough to call them leftovers here – that is what they are) from fertilization clinics do not have. Apparently some folks have adopted these leftover embryos and conceived them and are raising these children just to prove that embryo’s are sacred human life…How self serving is that?
• Secondly no one seems to have a problem with the fact that with in vitro fertilization doctors are already playing God (isn’t he the one who is supposed to join couples in holy matrimony and give them the blessing of children). They can create redundant embryos(to improve chances of impregnation) but they cannot use those for research when not used as that would suddenly make them monsters trying to take over God’s job of taking life. That’s weird. Don’t doctors learn how to become doctors by practicing on cadavers? If we had been so pig headed about protecting our dead, do you think your GP would know what’s happening in your tummy when you went to him with an ache.
• Somehow any discussion of embryonic stem cells convolutedly leads to the issue of abortion. The pro life folks have done such a good job that the public in most cases thinks both issues are the same. The issue of abortion is a women’s rights issue (feel free to disagree, but if you have a Y chromosome don’t bother telling me) that affects women only whereas embryonic stem cell research has the potential to affect the course of our civilization. Abortions have been conducted for quite some time now…you make them illegal you take away the rights of poor women/poor single women (rich women will always find a doctor willing to do it for them) and relegate them further to the bottom rung of the society. You make abortions illegal you take all that women have fought for, for so long – the right to their bodies. These are different issues, keep them separate. Understand that Pro Life in this case just happens to be Anti Women – I guess the pro lifers understand this rather well, hence the insistence on merging the two.
• The government does not have any problems with private funding of these technologies. Let’s envision a very simplistic scenario here. Tomorrow Company X develops a revolutionary breakthrough in treating any of the thousand spinal cord disorders which are known to man. Great News…wow…but hold on….one bottle of their magic potion costs $ YYYYYY. End result only a lucky few who have all the money on earth to pay for it and get it. And why not, company X sank in its own millions into it and needs to recoup some of the costs doesn’t it. As I said earlier this is oversimplifying the issue, but doesn’t it make you wonder where that leaves you and me if we

These are just a random sampling of thoughts related to this issue that have been filed away in my head for quite some time now. I will probably write some more about it later – when I am not so angry.

Last evening I went for a walk after the evening drizzle had stopped. In the woods it was still raining as the trees tried to shake off the insolent drops of water clinging to their leaves. Apart from the surly cat by the bridge, all the other residents of the woods had taken cover. The blue birds went about quitely(for a change) trying to get their feathers dry. The quiet peace was only occassionally broken by the piter pater of rain in the tree tops. It was nice to have the lake all to myself for those few moments. One of these days I will upload some pictures and also find some time to look up some of the birds that I see on my walks. Talking about birds, this year there seems to be an unusual number of colorful birds in the woods...wonder why they stopped by this year...not that I am complaining.

Another in the list of New(s) from my end. Started this new blog for recipes and food. Its supposed to be a joint effort with some of our foodie friends sending in their recent recipes and reporting their latest culinary finds. It still needs some tweaking and will add some more links to it.

For some time now I have been planning on posting a bunch of shorter posts instead of long rambles - soundbites for the ADHD afflicted amongst us. So as the subject line says - its about this new restaurant that Subho and I visited this weekend. Mark's Kitchen is a cosy cafeteria style eating joint in Takoma Park. The food is Asian with a garnish of Fusion on top. Subho had the spinach tofu cakes with brown rice and soy-raspberry vinaigrette -Yummm!!! and I had the Royal Sampler box with chicken. I thought the sampler box was adorably cute...it came in box (duh!) with compartments (like the Japanese lunch boxes) and had shitake mushrooms, beans, soy nuts, teriyaki chicken and brown rice....Yummm Yummm!! We polished all these off with Ventian coffee. Though this place is known for its freshly made juices, I would highly recommend the Venetian coffee for dessert. Its 16 ounces of black coffee topped off with whipped cream and vanilla ice cream...they even made us two small 8 ounce ones instead of the standard size. And all this for the princely sum of 23 dollars ( with tips).

What McDonald's does to Food, WalMart does to Consumer Goods and since we share a terrible distaste for both we make it a point to stay away from both. But then off late people have been telling me how certain things are cheap at Walmart etc. etc. and on Saturday we were at Costco's which is next door to a Walmart -end result we went in and looked around. Things are really cheap there and I have to admit that I did land up buying a 9 $ robe (one of those towely things) from there...certainly not the best quality but definetely cheap. And another thing I did notice while I was there is the product lineup...most of the things on the shelves are stuff that middle class families need...no fancy stuff here. I think I will probably go back for some storage containers unless I am able to locate them at Target first!! May be I am not that impressed after all.

Atleast new for me. A pair of gigantic beavers (more like overfed groundhogs according to a passer by) were spotted on Saturday afternoon at the Greenbelt Lake. The pair of them were contently pecking and cleaning each other up till we humans chanced on them. These two were not very shy either, after throwing a couple of confused glances our way they continued doing their stuff and indulging in some more beaver coochie coo. A rather rattled Mama duck fussed over her young ones in the mud nearby. Continued on our merry way after saying hello to Mama duck and her brood. Our merry way lead us to the Greenman Festival...which was just another ocassion for the hippies who sit around at the Cafe to have some fun and sell some leather masks, handmade chappals, fairy wings and pixie dust amongst other things. Landed up buying a little puch from Sheryl - the nice waitress at the Cafe.

Last night we watched “Kaya Taran” at the University. The movie in the words of the director Shashi Kumar ‘tried to straddle two events – the Godhra riots and the 1984 Sikh Massacre”. Infact the Godhra riots serve as a platform to introduce the real story – that a Sikh mother and child who were saved by a group of nuns in 1984. The director digresses way too much and somehow dilutes the impact of the movie. The acting was wooden at times and the characters spoke this bookish Hindi which was peperred with big words. I found the Q and A session with the director more interesting than the movie. A left leaning journalist by profession, he provided some fascinating insights into the Press world in India.

Labels: Cinema

I hate cable TV with a passion. I watch PBS most of the time, for that is all my TV receives without an antenna. This makes me the person you don’t want to meet in the corridor or by the water cooler – I am not averse to returning hello’s and smiles thrown my way, but I utterly detest discussing the latest antics of the contestants on “ The Survivor’ or the sex lives of the judges of “The American Idol”. I am not at all interested in how mean a rich bloke with a bad hair style was to his lowly minions (read "apprentices") and whom he booted off his castle. I also don't discuss football, baseball or any other type of ball game!!

We watched the latest Sean Penn- Nicole Kidman thriller on Friday. Finally with the Bourne Movies and now “The Interpreter”, Hollywood has started moving away from the oh-so-cool-but- chauvinistic Bond movies with its myopic world view to more contemporary thrillers set in a contemporary world where terrorism comes in many guises. I firmly believe Sean Penn is one of the most under rated actors in Hollywood. He plays the character of Tobin Keller (a federal agent) with the perfect mix of anguish and restrain. As a man who has just lost his wife he empathizes with Nicole’s loss, yet he never lets us or her forget that he has a job at hand. Nicole Kidman is an interpreter at UN who happens to overhear a death threat being made against an African leader. Its been said that the character of the African leader is supposed to be based loosely on Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. The film revolves around Sean Penn trying to protect the said African leader as well as keep Nicole Kidman alive. Nicole Kidman does an African accent very well. After a lot of intrigues, half intrigues and nearly tottering on the edge of melodrama for a minute or two, the film wraps up rather well with a twist at the end. This is one of the first films shot inside the UN headquarters in New York and the director never lets us forget this for even one moment. Yet this movie could not have come at a more opportune moment – it reinforces the role of the UN in maintaining world peace and also demystifies the agency at a time when the agency has been coming under a lot of fire. This movie is worth the six dollars I spent on it.

Labels: Cinema

Yeah I am so bored that I was experimenting with the Caps Lock button on my keyboard. Its is 8:00 am on a Monday morning, what did you expect? But hopefully things will improve as I imbibe the last dregs of my coffee and the caffeine starts circulating in my blood stream. Till then I shall write down the boring details of my life:

Friday: Subhamoy and I went out and fed the ducks…since its mating season, the ducks were divided into the following groups- couples (would be mama and papa ducks) and the losers (the males without a mate). The male to female ratio was a dismal 6: 1 (all those BITSians who cribbed constantly about the lack of female companionship while in Pilani should thank their stars they were not born into a duck family in Greenbelt!!). Without any potential partners the loser ducks were more keen on the food thrown at them than the males with mates (MWM’s). The MWM on the other hand kept getting all the morsels, breaking them up into smaller bits and giving them to the female….that was really cute. Later in the evening we went out to watch "The Interpreter"...cool movie..will get around to posting a review later.

Saturday: Got the fillings in my teeth fixed after which we went to Linens and Things to buy a shoe rack. After picking up the shoe rack, we wandered around aimlessly for some time( we are afflicted by this strange malady whenever we walk through the doors of a lifestyle/home furnishing store). Came back and watched some episodes of “As Time Goes By” – one of my favourite Britcoms on DVD. The evening was spent at Vinay’s place, annoying Rajesh and generally fooling around while getting drunk. By the time dinner was served (Chris made us some awesome chicken and rice), the group had decided to watch “Tango Charlie”- an utter assault on your intellect perpetrated by a bunch of half morons back home in Mumbai. Nandini made up our minds for us and we switched to “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”. In our semi inebriated minds Amrish Puri uttering”Shakti Deti Kali Ma” while pulling out beating human hearts with surgical precision, attained hitherto unknown pinnacles of pretentious buffoonery. Came back home and slept through the later half of SNL as usual.

Sunday: Had to babysit two kids whose collective age happens to be less than 36 months, for more than 8 hours…need I say more!!

This Weeks Movie: Walked out of “Black” on Friday evening (after “Black”, feeding the ducks was therapeutic).The director and the whole lot of actors somehow felt that a person without sound and sight is also without brains. As a result, the little Rani Mukherjee is played by a kid who had managed to walk off the sets of the Zee Horror Show and wander into this one. The Mom and Dad behave like a bunch of manic depressives. Amitabh is completely over the top- first as a near blind teacher and then as an old man with Alzheimer’s. I don’t know why most Indians gush over Amitabh – the guy only made box office masala hits in the 70’s. He was not the greatest actor he was just the most successful one of his times. The director should have watched Sai Paranjpe’s movie “Sparsh” for some insights before making this eminenty forgettable flick. But what else can you expect from the guy who gave us the horror called “Devdas” some time back.

And now that I feel caffeine coursing through my blood vessels, I shall get started- with work.

The Montgomery County Public School Systems efforts at being a forward thinking have been squashed once again. The new sex education curriculum apparently will encourage young men and women down the sinful path of homosexuality. It is really funny and it reminds me of this other situation. One of my projects in the past involved the installation of a traffic signal to improve traffic safety and operations on a State Roadway. The side street led into a little quite neighborhood. Half the neighborhood wanted the signal and other half was up in arms against it. This was strange, as in my experience the public loves traffic signals and no one ever says no them. At a public meeting the dissenting voices came forward and claimed that a traffic signal would increase traffic in their dinky neighborhood. Do you guys see a similarity here? I do. Let me explain- the only people entering the neighborhood were people who lived there. A traffic signal was unlikely to turn it into a tourist attraction and waylay harried commuters on their way home just as the new sex education class is unlikely to turn straight people gay. This silly (sorry I have no other word for it) way of thinking can be attributed to:

• Most people hate change (positive or negative) and the older you grow the more rigid you become.
• Most people have a totally misplaced sense of self importance. Heck people get a life!!

And what is this whole brouhaha about ex gays…how can you be ex gay? They probably mean bisexual I think? As in if they were gay and have recanted and are fornicating in the religiously correct way (with women that is) they are certainly bisexual. Let me go and read what Ayush says about this once more!! Thank God I am straight atleast when I am sober….under intoxication ….well that’s another blog for another day.

So Dadu, our resident blue heron has found a mate methinks...good for him, now we have Dadu and Dida to look forward too on our evening walks around the lake. Subho wants them to have lots of babies who can form their own flock in our lake. Yesterday at dinner we sat around watching the Godhra movie-Final Solutions. It just made me angry so I left half way through. The others stopped watching it after sometime and we had a discussion about what we were doing on the 6th of December 1992...the day they toppled Babri Masjid. I remember clearly that my sister and I were at school when curfew was declared. We refused a ride home from a friends father as we were sure Mom would come to pick us up and she would be mad if she did not find us there. Dad was out of town as usual. Mom came with her friend who had to pick her daughters up too. The autorickshaw's were not running, so our party of five decided to walk back...it was eerie. On the way a police van picked us up and dropped us home I believe...or was it some neighbour. ...can't remember. But after that we had a week of holidays...the irritating part of it all was that you could not go out and play as the curfew was on. But we did manage to figure out innovative games to play in the stairwells of our apartment complexes.

Now that I reflect back on it, the toppling of that ancient Masjid was as barbaric as the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, but when we Indians talk about it we talk about the religious fanaticism,Hindu-Muslim riots, state sponsore terrorism...we never bother to think about the destruction of a part of our history, our heritage by people who have no understanding of it.

On a more positive note, Theron is planning to go to grad school...another bites the dust.

I finished “Reading Lolita in Teheran” yesterday. What do I think?...I think the author is a really intelligent, passionate woman- a bibliophile to the core. But these same qualities are also her stumbling blocks as a writer.

Basic Storyline: Life for women in Iran changes drastically after the Islamic Revolution; stripped of their rights, cloaked in black these women look to books and literature for an escape to the world beyond reach. Even this is fraught with danger as western literature has been denounced as decadent by the regime. These women get over their anger and resentment and quickly adapt to the new system. They form new friendships, some of them clandestine and learn to enjoy what little freedoms they have. A very human story with an universal appeal.

Azar Nafisi-the author of the said book took the above mentioned storyline, added a PhD dissertation on her favorite books to it, dazzled us with her brilliance and left us quite confounded and confused at the end. We are too caught up in analyzing Nabokov and trying to figure out how Austen is relevant to the sexual politics of the Shiaite clerics in Iran that we forget that is supposed to be a book about the lives of women under a totalitarian regime. Once in a while the true feelings of the writer, her hopes and fears do come out (specially towards the end)but most of the time, the experience was that of reading a text book written by a brilliant mind focused on giving American Universities reading material for their next Liberal Arts course. It also has questions for the inquisitive reader and some suggested reading material at the end– the perfect pretentious novel cum text book…doesn’t get better than that does it.

I have been trying to figure out this set of traffic plans and impact studies for a county school intent on improving its parking and onsite circulation. Seems to make sense on the micro level, but there is something that just doesn't seem right.Decided to take a tea break and blog for sometime to clear my head instead.

Off late I have been too imersed in planning- planning for the new place, planning for the impending wedding ( which is still a year away), planning for a surprise party. I am terribly proud of my detailed plans for the new place. I just can't wait for June 15th when I can take possesion of the new apartment. I will miss the present apartment though, but the fun side to all this is that I figured out that I love the ritual of planning( specially the part when I get to make notes and spread sheets and then comparison shop for stuff).

The tea's over and I need to go back to my plans.. ciao.

The weekend was purr..fect. Helped Nandini and Rajesh move to their new place on Saturday. Moving out on a rainy day is not fun at all. In between moving furniture and chowing down pizza, we did manage to find time for a heart to heart P’nPC (gossip for the uninitiated) session. Also met this lovely black feline neighbour of Nandini’s… reason enough to go back for a second visit. Subho and I came back home pretty tired and decided to stay home for dinner. Improvised a lovely Thai meal of wheat noddles with Asian pesto and stir fried tofu. Have to write the recipe down before I forget what I did.

Sunday was spent shopping. Landed up buying two books after a long time. I really miss the used book stores of Amherst. Barnes and Noble just doesn’t evoke the same feelings in me that a good used book store does, probably because:

• the latter are mostly run by people who love reading and the former by paid store managers.
• used book stores smell warmer, cozier and mustier; hence they are more inviting.
• the latter just sells books and does not try to peddle the whole experience complete with coffee, cake, reading lights, headrest, lap desk etc. etc.
• most importantly used books are cheap.

Hmmm...that's enough for now..need to get back to work.