Forgotten Treasure

There was a clear rule in my home growing up – Readers Digest and Nat Geo magazines were completely off limits, because ME in particular would cut up most magazines that my parents subscribed to for my school projects. I guess it was important for my father to issue such a decree because in an age pre-internet, these magazines filled with fascinating reports about history, travel and culture accompanied by BRILLIANT PHOTOGRAPHS were the only source of connecting us with the world far and beyond.

One particularly well-thumbed issue is about the "Women of Arabia" which to this day had a place of prominence on my bookshelf.

Read an extremely interesting bleacherreport today as to why Pele will always

stand above Messi and Cristiano and the whole WORLD. Hard to imagine that all these years later there has never been anyone who has come close to attaining the kind of glory the “Black Pearl” did. My day would beg to differ  on this point, as far as he is concerned is has got to be Maradona all the way. My dad maintains that when the Hand-of-God goal was struck I was shrieking at the top of my voice and celebrating with him (this being said the year was 1986 ,I was just a toddler and I would have happily joined in any kind of celebration with as much enthusiasm a 3 year old could muster)

Ok, back to the topic of the bleacher report, it brought back a long buried memory of a chapter in one of my school text books that described Pele’s debut match and how he shot to international stardom in a match where the Brazilian squad scored a goal against Russia(which at the time was one of the best footballing nations in the world) and that too when Yashin was at the nets. There was an entire section in the chapter dedicated to the brilliant Russian goalie called Yashin who till this day happens to maintain the reputation of being the best goalies the football field has ever seen.

It was a lovely feeling to open a fresh browser and search for Lev Yashin and see pictures of a man about whom I had studied a long time ago(for grades of course) . Guess it shows how much mystery the world has lost to the advent of technology. I guess it isn’t always wonderful to be instantly gratified.

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”.

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