A mad-dash , a sprinkling of luck and the last available ticket …………….

……………. and voila I got to watch Prashanth Nair’s cleverly penned “ROMEO AND JULIET” at the Rangashankara.

The plot which includes 4 puppets who are bound by strings and have played Shakespearean plays all their lives, decide to break free from their stings and perform Romeo and Juliet (their way) one last time before they can enjoy their newly found Freedom as what they like to call it.  What unfolded over the following 90 minutes is a intelligent volley of words that alternate between the ones Shakespeare penned all those years earlier and the words we get to hear at a coffee table in any office cafeteria or a college parking lot (“FIGURE KOUN HAI BE?” would be a good example of what I mean) 

The delightful connection built with the audience with references to Arnab Goswami’s painful tirade to the brainless hogwash namely “Chennai Express” kept the audience in splits. The narration by Chris and generously peppered with the excellent guitar playing if I may say so, is extremely effective in setting the tone for the entire play. Avinash Pathak is brilliant and I can safely say that laughs would be a lot lesser if not for him. His expressions and timing marks a talent to watch out for in the future. The multi-faceted Shashank Purushotham who plays Lord Capulet and Juliet’s nurse and Montague and the Friar and an angel and ARNAB GOSWAMI with surprising ease was a pleasure to watch.

The dance sequence which is a take on the famous balcony scene deserves a special mention here. The lighting is superb and the choreography beautifully executed. This sequence in particular took my breath away. Rijul Ray gives voice to Shakespearean words the way it should sound to our ears. His command over lines was something that didn’t go unnoticed.  Kalyani in her brief role was beautiful. Her highlight moment was ofcourse the balcony scene.

So in review , I spent a delightful evening laughing(for the greater part. A few moments of the play seemed a bit prolonged. Personally as a viewer, I would have just loved to see Juliet answer Panauti’s question 

The best introduction to a movie ever!

My version of the the Zulu part was “Maaaa sesenyaaaa mamasissii babaaaa” until Googleruined it  corrected it for me years later. My heart still goes ‘aww’ everytime I see Simba sneeze when Rafiki pours sand on his forehead . Even though this movie is about Simba, Mufaasa will always remain “The Lion King” for me, he was way cooler than Simba ever was and I guess once you’ve heard him , you can never look at the stars as just regular balls of gas burning billions of miles away. I guess my childhood was as awesome as it was due to movies like these.

Oh and what a cool character Rafiki was – he was as crazy as he was cool. I remember watching a clip of the show on Broadway performing “the circle of life” on the Oprah show a long time ago and burst into tears right there in the living room.

I saw a puppy shaking water off himself after his bath this morning

…………….. wish I could shake this damn writers block off me in a similar way. I know I am scraping at the bottom of the idea barrel (with my extremely overdue for manicure hands nonetheless) when I am actually writing about the fact that I am not able to draft a blog. I’ve always considered that I am the cats pyjamas when it comes to my oratory skills (invariably every person who has ever offered me a job has heard me describe my “effective communication skills” listed under the strengths category) .

You see the problem is, I’m not much of a thinker. In the sense that I cannot come up with a creative thought overnight (even if you readily offered me all the oil in Saudi Arabia to burn), but give me someone else’s original thought and I can stretch it , modify it and otherwise extend it to a magnum opus (with my copious amounts of research thanks to my high speed internet connection at work). Once I’m done researching about it you should listen to me talk the donkeys hind leg off and while I’m at it, I can sometimes talk the arse off it too.

It’s a good thing this blog is anonymous , primarily because even though it is an illegal practice since 1750, I believe that there will be a witch hunt commissioned to find me and put a swift end to my ramblings once in for all if my identity was made public for even putting up posts of this nature.

How curiosity didn’t get this cool cat killed and other stories

Everywhere I saw in Paris I saw memorabilia that showcased cats … Big fluffy ones swishing their tails to small balls of fur peering with big eyes with their tails wound around them. And everywhere you see there is a particular big-black-as-thunder-cat with piercing eyes I might add, perched on a compound peering at you from postcards to magnets to posters to bookmarks. By the end of day 2 ….. I dont know if curiosity did anything to the cat but it definitely got the better of me and I ended up having an animated conversation with a French woman (in mime language mostly) who told me that the poster was of a very famous cabaret in Paris which was closed before 1900. Would have been cool to visit it if it was still open. Beaver was "more than" interested in visiting the Moulin Rouge up until his beedy eyes roved over the section explaining the entry fees  .......... Up until then, his formerly mentioned eyes were roving all over the poster of "the artists" performing at Moulin Rouge. 

 If cats were piping my curiosity in old Paree , It was donkeys when we reached Greece , to a point of overdrive … There were donkey keychains , donkey stuffed toys (I cannot imagine an Indian kid asking for a donkey soft toy) , donkey bags and what not. Didn’t remember to ask anyone what’s with Greeks and the love of donkeys??

Do children today even experience a REAL childhood the way we did??

I studied in an all-girls convent school with 50 uniformed girls in a class. I remember all of them distinctly by type—- the chatterboxes, the enthu cutlets, the Mother-may-I’s , the bright-as-a-pennny ones, the book worms, the notorious back benchers, the ones who always were on the track field, the ones who sucked up to the teacher at all times (remember the kinds who would sit in the front bench, clean the teachers table, get them flowers, carry their book to the staff room), the Barbie doll clones(we actually had girls who would brush their hair a 100 times), the rebels with a cause  , the rebels without a cause ….. Among the sea of children dressed in Blue&Blue uniforms the only thing that differentiated us were our qualities. The same qualities that we remember someone for to this very day and the same qualities that attracted one child to another sometimes laying foundations for life long friendships 

I cannot even begin to imagine the pressure of being an introvert  kid in today’s overly extrovert world where kids as young as 5 have Facebook profiles. I bet it brings with it an untold pressure to look a certain way, act a certain way and most certainly to have a FUN life wherein you take “FUN VACATIONS” which you prove is “COOL” by bombarding everyone with Instagrammed photos.

………………. it brings me back to a saying by Steve Furtich which inspired this post – “The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel” and in my opinion what is Facebook if not a documentation of every person’s HIGHLIGHT REEL.

I have a friend who recently told me he let go of his Twitter account because he used a software that let him measure his online time and he realised he was active for 17 hours a day on Twitter and Facebook. Where does that leave one time to live a REAL LIFE and make REAL MEMORIES??

Dont get me wrong… I do have a Facebook account infact I used Orkut too back in the day  …. I still log in to FB once a week to be bombarded with new born babies shot at 100 different angles , expectant parents kissing their pregnant wives belly, photographs of a broken iPad and a description of how it broke, a dude posting a picture of the toast and omelette that his new wife made for him a week after their wedding  .

Most recently I saw a woman, who at best can be called an acquaintance posting a picture of her husband holding her during labour and thanked him in the middle of labour “ON FACEBOOK” – It read like this “Hubby love you for holding my hand through the most beautiful moment of our lives — Pray for us everyone” …. the horror continues – the photo immediately got 124 likes and her online “friends” immediately started commenting as follows – God Bless You , Congratulations, You in labour?? Which hospital are you in??  —————- isn’t there anything called PRIVACY anymore?? Isnt it beautiful that there are moments that 2 people share and the world is not privy to??

I do understand the value of social networking …. The recent protests that followed the beastly act against a 23 year old girl in Delhi gained attention due to Twitter, the arrest of a politician in Hyderabad on charges of sedition was made possible due to public outcry over various social media platforms, the uprising in the Middle East even the raid in Abbotabad that executed Osama Bin Laden’s were first reported on Twitter. While I am at it I couldn’t hurt to mention that even the rise of the phenomenon called Justin Bieber is due to Youtube.

It is a force that cannot be denied and as they say “with great power comes great responsibility” but more often than not what I see on social networking sites is “UNNECESSARY DRAMA”.

Leave 

A sight from my past confronted me last evening………..

and I immediately wanted to scream “BANTAAA??”(in Kannada) … (according to my Hindi speaking friends it was AAYA KYAA?? in their respective households) …. .. brought this up during lunch at work today and everyone had their own stories to tell about the “ANTENNA”. The crowning accessory of every TV owning home in the 80’s and 90’s.

The Antenna that brought back memories

Each story was more hilarious than the previous one. Everyone seems to remember manually turning it 1 millimetre at a time so that we could get a CLEAR SIGNAL. So the routine was as follows …. switch the TV on…. if the signal is not clear run to the terrace …. climb the ledge and hang on for dear life … brave the raw earthly elements namely the sun, the wind, the thunder , the lightning (I may be completely exaggerating  here  …… )  move the antenna one mm to the right …. scream … BANTAAA?? … if the answer was in the negative … you move it another millimetre…. if the signal quality worsens then you start turning it mm by mm in the opposite direction ….. then when you hear a positive response to you AAYA KYAA’s .. you run downstairs and watch Chitrahaar…

Imagine as  you plonk down in front of the TV to watch Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan …. a naughty gust of wind would change the painstakingly-checked-rechecked-triplechecked-antenna-co-ordinates and all hell would break loose …………. The drama that unfolded after this would be equally worthy of being directed by the dear Mr.Ramanand Sagar himself………. remember when the two arrows would take up an entire serial slot of time to collide with each other in mid-air and nullify each others effects….. and both parties who let the arrows loose would dramatically say “Chee” and slap their thighs 

I went to the terrace and consciously scanned the rooftops in my neighbourhood. All that I saw were a range of Dish TVs , Tata Sky antennas…………………… Finally found one house at a distance that still housed the old antenna but in a poor condition.

On that note …… BANTAAAA???? 

People can be likened to food ….

….. or fruits specifically. The girls have been discussing this at length in the most recent mail chain. Prav detests STRAWBERRIES …According to her, it was always the most incredibly goodlooking, red, unaffordable fruit and when she eventually ate it…………. it turned out to be the biggest disappointment ever. Don’t we in life also come across such situations where we build people up in our head and present such a glorified image of them to the entire universe, then in reality when we do interact with them and get to know them better we see them for what they are and feel disappointed. On the other hand they could turn out to be a yumm Mango too!!!

I guess that’s how life is served, a bowl full of cut fruits which have all ripened at their own pace  (and some most definitely haven’t ripened)….. Thankfully I got a generous sprinkling of NUTS on top!!!

There is nothing like an Enid Blyton book …….

………….to make a day when you are ill start looking all better again (in my opinion)

Found my 2 decade old battered Famous Five book and as I stayed in bed all day and read the adventure that these kids went on ….. it made me see life in a more happy and positive way. My favourite part was this passage:

“A wonderful smell came creeping into the little dining-room, followed by the inn-woman carrying a large tray. On it was a steaming tureen of porridge, a bowl of golden syrup, a jug of very thick cream, and a dish of bacon and eggs, all piled high on crisp brown toast. Little mushrooms were on the same dish.

‘Toast, marmalade and butter to come, and the coffee and hot milk,’ said the woman, busily setting everything out. ‘And if you want any more bacon and eggs, just ring the bell.’ “

Got me thinking of a discussion I had with someone who is a new age mother a while earlier , who was of the opinion that Enid Blyton books hold no relevance to a child growing up in todays world and that there is no real take back value in these books. I distinctly remember thinking that only an ADULT with such a strong sense of self-importance would be capable of making a statement such as that ……. I believe a child any age in any generation would find the idea of going off with their friends during their holidays, giggling silly with their friends, gorging on yummy food, playing pranks, solving mysteries(atleast in their small imaginative heads) extremely exciting.

I remember watching the movie on Enid Blyton and though I have my reservations about the woman and her choices , I especially remember one statement where she says ” I dont care for any critic who is over the age of 12 and they love my books”

Such clear Perspective.