Resolutions

1. To save myself crushing disappointment and the dreadful December slump, I resolve to make no resolutions for 2007.
2. There is no second resolution.

Paresh Rawal Interview

Five years ago I didn't know Paresh Rawal from Johnny Lever. I hate Hera Pheri with a passion, and the only role I've ever liked him in is Aankhen - on the strength of that movie alone he commanded a complete reassessment of his talents from me. :)

And now this interview comes along (it might be old, I don't know, it's new to me), studded with gems of plain speech and absolute honesty, and it solidifies my respect for the guy.


On having to do "lousy work" for money -

Take Amitabh Bachchan's ABCL Corp. Unfortunately, it did not work. But he has to earn his bread and butter. So he has no way out but to act. If that means doing Aaj Ka Arjun, so be it.

On his many villainous roles -

They are all caricatures, without much thought being invested in them. I know they are bad; I know I'll not repeat them. ... Our villains are foolish -- you never get scared of them, yaar. So I try to give then an amusing look.

On the rumour that he's stuck-up on set -

I like being aloof. When my costar is good, I do approach him. But if he happens to be a duffer, I stay away.

Even this man's taste for Amitabh corresponds exactly with mine -

I like Amitabh's silence. Watch him in any frame when he is just listening and staring at his co-artiste. He is incomparable.

Wah, ustaad, wah!

Woot!

(Via Karthik-1979)

Watching Birds

Every sixth DVD watched at casa de Wendelin these days is from a David Attenborough series called The Life of Birds. (I say every sixth: the number is precise because we've ordered our Netflix queue that way.) Now, why my dear husband looked at this DVD and thought, Just the thing for a snowy evening, I have no idea. I, personally, would have moved on to something with a title less soporific. I daresay any person with a normal-sized head would have.


But order that very title my husband did, in his typically giant-headed way. The first DVD in said series landed up in the mailbox unannounced (to me). I might have done an actual double take upon reading the title. I looked at its jacket, the blurb confirmed my worst fears.

Researchers traverse the globe, exploring 42 countries and examining more than 300 species of birds using a variety of techniques.

I mean, seriously! I hid the disc at the bottom of the to-be-watched pile, but the day finally came when there was nothing to do but pop it in the player, grit my teeth, prop my eyelids up with matches and prepare to watch The Life of Birds.

It was good. *gulp* Really. That Attenborough fellow may be a tad effeminate (and gay as the day is long) but he's brilliant. And what do you know, those birds turned out to be just the thing for frustratingly non-snowy evenings, at least, if not actually snowy ones.

Birds are creazy weird. Some, like the Shoebill Stork, make you wonder why there aren't any shoebill storks in horror movies, because, you know, you hear a name like "shoebill stork" and you think, aaah, a stork. Cute.

See, now that is the picture in your head when you hear "stork".

This, however, is what the shoebill stork looks like.

This picture does not even begin to convey the sense of ancient menace you get from a moving, hunting shoebill stork. Its eyes are beady, focused, calculating. Its gigantic beak doesn't even have the decency to be a blunt instrument; it ends in a deadly hook. You watch this "stork" open its beak to swallow an enormous lungfish whole (after crushing its skull first as a courtesy)... A bag of skin opens down from its lower beak, and suddenly you realise what this bird reminds you of: a T-Rex straight out of Jurassic Park. The resemblace, believe me, is uncanny. *shudder*

Fortunately for our mental wellbeing, the programme does not dwell on Creepy Evil-ass Dinosaurs in stork clothing for too long. It moves on to other birds that amaze in much pleasanter ways, like the Lyrebird, whose repertoire is 80% mimicry. This mad, weird creature (I mean, it's got twin bison-horns coming out of either side of its butt) began to imitate the sounds it hears in the forest: the calls of other birds like cuckoos and whatnot, animals, the gurgling of streams, and then - wait for it - the clicking of cameras. Even different types of cameras - whirring, mechanical droning, shutters, you name it. Perfectly imitated.

We were absolutely thunderstruck, and kept rewinding the disc to listen to it again. And then that crazy bird began to imitate a chainsaw. And then a car alarm. Wikipedia now tells me it can imitate rifle shots, barking dogs, crying babies, all kinds of machinery, explosions, and musical instruments.

In 1969, a park ranger, Neville Fenton, recorded a lyrebird song which resembled flute sounds in the New England National Park near Dorrigo in northern coastal New South Wales. After much detective work by Fenton, it was discovered that in the 1930's, a flute player living on a farm adjoining the park used to play tunes near his pet lyrebird. The lyrebird adopted the tunes into his repertoire, and retained them after release into the park. Neville Fenton forwarded a tape of his recording to Norman Robinson. At first, the tune sounded jumbled. But because a lyrebird is able to carry two tunes at the same time, Robinson filtered out one tune at a time and put it on the phonograph for the purposes of analysis. The song represents a modified version of two popular tunes in the 1930's: "The Keel Row" and "Mosquito's Dance".

I'll let you catch your breath, now, but after that you people have got to watch this series somehow.

The Year in Review, 2006

Hope you guys are having a nice Christmas - fa la la, and all that. Me, I want to hole up in a dungeon and not come out till the beginning of a shiny new year. What a year it's been!

And now for a meme snagged from Fernwithy:

Go to your Calendar and find the first entry for each month of 2005. Post the first line of it in your journal, and that's your "Year In Review."

January: ... Count the adjectives, pay attention to them, but they don't do justice to Talyn.

February: Spread the holy picture.

March: While I was busy avoiding my blog, a debate of moderate heat seems to be occurring over on an old post quoting from the Bible and the Koran.

April: Taxes are done!

May: So Kaavya Vishwanathan plagiarised passages in her Opal Mehta book.

June: Muslims in space - a problem you may not have anticipated.

July: The title of this post is quite redundant, of course.

August: The CEO of EBay wrote me an email today, and she seemed really pissed off about something.

September: I'm trying out the Beta Blogger.

October: Some weeks ago, Kris Reisz made me an offer I didn't refuse, viz., would I please read and review his book in exchange for - hear this - a free copy.

November: You people are crazy to have picked that, I know nothing about pearls.

December: A light dusting of snow fell last night.

HP7 TITLE!

Wow. (For more hints, just go to Mugglenet or something.)

First thoughts - I don't know, the title rings somewhat thin to me. The "D-" word, especially, I'm not a fan of... why the general cheap melodrama? OTOH, at least the title isn't "Harry Potter and the Attack of the Clones".

Second thoughts - so, she's only now releasing the title. In a recent update she said she was still writing major scenes in the book, which means she hasn't begun to edit yet, so there go our hopes for a 07-07-07 release date. Why the woman would pass up that opportunity is beyond me, however. I mean, she goes through so much trouble to make the number 7 important to the crux of the matter (haha, almost-pun), and then pffzzz.

Now, before you read ahead, know this: HERE BE MAJOR SPOILERS!

I thought I should mark for posterity that a Google search currently turns up NO results for (are ya ready for it?) "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows".


And may it be known that I was the first person in the WHOLE OF HISTORY to notice that the two words "deathly" and "hallows" are both seven letters each! Yaaah!

Sexism Tr(i)ump(h)s

An emotional Miss Teen USA (does anybody even know her name?) slobbered all over Donald Trump's jacket this morning as he forgave her her trespasses and allowed her to keep her title. Was anyone else thinking, in exchange for hittin' that, you mean?


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Watch where you're looking, old man.

Also, am I the only one bothered by the godawful blatant sexism involved in this scandal? The Today Show, which admittedly I cannot hold up as an example of fabulous reporting, had an entire segment about "Young People Who Come to New York and Go Wild" hosted by the atrocious Ann Curry, and every single name they threw in the program as an example was female: Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, yadda yadda yadda. Miss Teen USA's crimes were apparently "sexual indiscretions" shooting up cocaine. And we all know that sort of behaviour is only appalling in young women.

Bah.

Orkut, and the Loafer

Kr!sh, the man commonly known as Krexclamationsh on this blog, has resurfaced in my neighbourhood of this vast virtual sea via a scrap on Orkut and a funny post on the intricacies of interpreting profiles of females on said networking website. (Man, I am hittin' those 100-word sentences today!) The post, and subsequent prodding by Krplingsh himself, move me to vent on the subject of the men on Orkut. What follows may not be news to the MoFS reading this blog (be they "I" or not to Kr!sh), but it is my fervent wish that Interested Members of the Supposedly Less Fair Sex will read with an eye out for pointers on What Not To Do.

(OK, my "Read More" button thingy seems to not work for multiple cuts in the post. So the following three paragraphs serve as an overview of what is to come... Once you click the "Read More" button, everything will be in its right place, so no worries.)

(In which I describe the Loafer - Genus: Very Possibly Homo Species: Certainly NOT Sapiens)


Orkut is awesome: an old-friend locator device with a built-in time sink, just the thing for the immense wasteland of Sunday afternoon. It is populated almost exclusively by Indians and Brazilians, but the two sets do not intersect much, and therein lies its drawback. The relatively secluded environment, free from foreign (in all senses of the word) scrutiny, emboldens the slimiest of the slime of Desi loafers to rise to the surface and operate with impunity.

Loafer. Now that's a long-forgotten word in my vocabulary! For a long time I made the mistake of thinking that this species of the male human is confined to its native habitat: street-corners in urban India. I was disabused of this comforting notion quickly enough - upon my move to Singapore at the age of 14, the only other person from India in my secondary school there turned out to be a loafer of the first order, even though it took upwards of nine years for the full extent of his loaferdom to reveal itself.

I need hardly tell my sizzlin' sistahs*: beware the loafer. I have had the opportunity to experience almost the entire life-cycle of one specimen, so allow me to enlighten you. Step One is, as Krexclamationsh aptly observes, the request for "fraansip, pls". (The loafer is a poor grammarian and speller. He is usually a poor almost-everything.) Never respond.

If you do, the loafer moves into the second stage of operation: making conversation. This is a critical time that will serve to cloud your judgement about the loafer for years to come, because the conversation will actually be mildly interesting. Loafers often have a deep, if bizarre, interest which makes for good conversation. Note: this interest will in no way be a useful one, which serves to distinguish the loafer from the geek (a highly desirable type of male). The loafer I knew was very "into" Michael Jackson. (I know, I know, it should have tipped me off, but in my defence, this happened in the mid-90s when the whole wacko pedophile thing was new.) Ah, my loafer and I, we had long conversations about the "meaning" of Michael Jackson's music and dance.

Stage Three is when the shark music from Jaws begins to play in the background. After making conversation for about a nanosecond (relative to what's about to happen next), the loafer will, out of nowhere, spring The Confession on you. "I love you, Wendelin!" he will declare, if your name happens to be mine. Non-Indian readers of this blog, please note: this is not as weird as you're thinking, given our cultural context. But it's pretty freakin' bizarre anyway.

This is the stage when you, the hapless girl, will find the exit and take it, because let's face it, the "friendship" isn't worth saving or anything. But to the loafer, your relationship doesn't end until at least eight years after this, not even if you get married somewhere along the way. Out of nowhere, the loafer will send you emails ("Tell me now if you love me or not! If yes, let's get married right away. If not, fuck off!" - true story), haunt your blog and generally make a pain of himself. At this point, the only therapy proven to work is to completely ignore his antics - which is what you should be doing right from the start and that's the moral of this story.

*phrase originally by Juice, who makes up the most delish ones all the time.


Now, why do I say that the "secluded environment" of Orkut is what allows loafers to thrive? (Warning: this section turned into something unfunny and vent-y, I don't know how.)


You see, globalisation and exposure to the world at large has reached the loafer, too. Out in the world where other people can see him, people who will judge based not on a closed, Indian context but a progressive and international one, the loafer turns shy and hides his weirdness away.

In India (in my time and my city, at least), if you spotted a loafer you crossed to the other side of the road and kept walking without making eye-contact, all through the whistles and the catcalls. Some of my more daring friends spat at them from the other side of the road, but these girls were quickly labelled fast pieces of baggage by our parents... and ultimately the loafers were only encouraged. This is the environment the loafer thrives in: an environment of people who have lived in the same culture (even if they don't subscribe to it)... people who accept the loafer as an annoying fact of life and move on.

In the world of open scrutiny by outsiders, he would be ridiculed by flabbergasted folks. That's like a blast of cold air into the warm, humid armpit of cultural condonement occupied by loafers. Not suitable for thriving. This is why you'll never see one of them anywhere but in an Indian context.


And finally we come to the site at hand: Orkut. The annoying male scum that infest its waters are easily recognisable as loafers at first glance, and a closer inspection reveals three subspecies.

1. The Slacker
The Slacker's profile will give you almost no information other than his favourite method of getting jiggy. Occasionally, his profile photo will be obscene, but mostly he just can't be bothered to upload anything. He will scrap you with "Hi" (just that) every few hours for a couple of days, and then move on to the next kill if you don't respond. Or else he will simply try to add you as a friend (in spite of your prominent warning to all jackasses to STAY AWAY), repeatedly, even after you reject his invitation. But he melts away after a few tries. This is the least bothersome type of loafer on Orkut.

2. The Arrogant Berk
A. Berk's scrapping methods use a bastardised version of reverse psychology, following a pattern of condescension, insult and prodding. Here's an example:
Scrap No. 1

Hy lovely whts up?

Scrap No. 2

hi dear u didnt accept my friendship request. accept my request or not as i see 4m here u look very sweet, but cant saywhat type of gal u r. i mark u full 100 marks for ur sweet face,but only 4 face. bye tired of sending u request . being sweet makes u feel proud & not to merge with me. anyway this is my last scrap 4 u. ur proud attitude doesnt matches mine,so bye and forever,.this face will go awy with the dust, what will remain is good and loving persons 4ever

Scrap No. 3

I am waiting...

Scrap No. 4

Hy where r u?

3. Creepy Old Man
This guy's intentions may not be as black as both the above versions... but what the hell do I know, right, because how come it's never an older woman who scraps you randomly? The Creepy Old Man's profile prominently advertises him as being married, and may well feature an honest photograph, bald spot and all. This, however, in no way dampens his enthusiasm to set up connections with young female Orkutters regardless of their relationship status. This guy believes almost as fervently as the Arrogant Berk that he is God's answer to said young female Orkutter's prayers. He fancies himself an irresistible conversationalist, and is almost appealingly naive in his decidedly internet-of-the-late-90s attitude of "I want to make more friends!", but in reality he's just another dirty old man, creepy as they come.

What hope, then, for non-scummy males who are interested in finding women on Orkut?

You want the truth? None, really, if the women are anything like me. Come on, my sizzlin' sistahs, let's take a quick poll: how many of you would be interested in a scrap by a random guy, no matter how polite it may be? Honestly, these days I wouldn't trust strangers on the internet an inch if I was in the dating pool (good, parent-approved desi matrimonial sites are the exception).

Or maybe I'm just an intolerably smug old fogey who didn't practice what she now preaches, huh? I'll shut up now.

Jokes Aside

(I don't know why I lit upon this rather than anything else in that gem of a website as being hysterically funny.) Quote from a perfectly serious site:

NO EXPERIMENT HAS SHOWN THE EARTH TO BE MOVING (MUCH LESS AT 30 TIMES RIFLE BULLET SPEED IN SOLAR ORBIT AND 250 TIMES RBS AROUND A GALAXY!) ONE WOULD THINK SUCH SPEEDS WOULD FLAP ONE’S [sic] COLLAR A LITTLE EVEN IF THE "SCIENCE" ESTABLISHMENT SAYS NO....

Yikes!

Movie Review: Zeher

Apalling, appalling movie. Ugh.

Apparently it's (euphemistically) a "remake" (i.e. scene-by-scene copy) of Out of Time starring Denzel Washington, itself a modestly entertaining almost-B flick. So the main plotline is quite a lot better than most Bollywood naach-gaana dozers. But of course, not content with wholesale plagiarism, the screenwriters of Zeher had to add their own culturally-correct subplot to "Indianise" the movie, and that my friends is the root of all evil.

(Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD)
Nauseating is the only word for it.

Emraan "I'm too speshul to spell my name right" Hashimi plays an effeminate, sulky, adulterous, abusive, MCP of a copper who begins a steamy affair with a random, not-very-beautiful woman about ten minutes after his wife walks out on him (unsatisfied with just keeping house, Shamita Shetty wants a career - whatta bitch!).

The not-very-beautiful woman soon tells him she has cancer and will die in three months if she doesn't undergo very expensive surgery. Poor widdle baby Hashimi is temporarily unbalanced (because he's just seen his ex-wife having dinner with another man - bigger bitch!), so he steals some cash he has lying around in the police station, even though this is money confiscated during a drug raid, money he will be required to produce in court. And he simply hands over all this cash to his lover.

Are y'all enjoying this yet?

That night, the lover and her husband (oh, did I not mention that she's married too, and Our Shining Hero knows this?) perish in a fire that burns their mansion down. Now is not the time to ask why people who can afford this veritable palace cannot pay their own medical bills.

Since the cuckolded husband who died in the fire was somewhat "known" (not in a good way) to the local law enforcement, special forces are called in to investigate the fire. The officer in charge of this investigation is... drum rolls, please... Shamita Shetty, the bitchy ex-wife of Pujya Emraan. DUN DUN DUN DAAAAAAAAN!

Interval.

The investigation has begun. Explosive wires are discovered quickly at the scene of the fire! Forensic labs examine the bodies of the couple, and find no smoke in their lungs - they died before the fire! Murder! DUN DUN DUN DAAAAAN!


Shamita Shetty walks pointlessly down a corridor to nowhere, giving instructions to underlings in an "I'm such a bitchy bitch" voice. And she's delegating all the research and sleuthing. WTF is she getting paid to do?

Our Peerless Hero yells abusively at his underlings because the poor guy is so tense now that it looks like he fell for an evil woman who took all his money and then was indecent enough to die anyway, depriving him of fulfillment to his manly needs. Also, it seems he could be fingered as the murderer, because he had a secret affair with the dead woman and she's named him the beneficiary of her life insurance policy. He frantically alters her phone records that show multiple calls to his cell-phone, and tries to cover his tracks in several other ways - generally acting such that his behaviour could be held up in court as evidence of guilt. A brilliant policeman indeed.

Things happen. Hero gets deeper in trouble, bitchy ex-wife gets closer and closer to finding out the truth. In an insanely stupid sequence Emraan Hashimi recovers the lost money from some random guy who has no reason to be in possession of it. Oh, and he kills this random guy while recovering the money.

Then Our Glorious, Swashbuckling Hero finds the dead lover. DUN DUN DUN DAAAN! She's not dead, and neither is her husband! Never mind that forensic experts identified and autopsied their bodies earlier! She's alive, and she's eeeeeevil, and she wants the money, and she's about to kill Darling Emraan, but bitchy old Shamita Shetty shows up and shoots villain instead. What a party pooper!

Epilogue: Shamita Shetty is packing her clothes up, getting ready to leave. Now is not the time to ask why she's doing that if she already moved out weeks ago, because baby Hashimi is about to make a speech.

"I won't let you leave," he tells his ex-wife creepily, but he has tears in his eyes so that makes it OK. Then he says, "I'm sorry I didn't let you work. If you hadn't been in the police force, then you couldn't have covered my ass. Please forgive me."

And so the bitch's cold heart finally melts and they hug and kiss and whatnot. Happily ever after, the end.

Oh wait, there's a reepilogue with a song playing in the background. What's that? The moon! And hey, look, now there's a sieve covering the moon. The camera pans to show... the smiling, effeminately baby-faced Emraan Hashimi. And there's Shamita Shetty in a proper wifely saree at last and sindoor as long as my grandmother's hair, reaching down to touch Pujya Emraan's lotus feet... and he rouguishly sweeps her into his arms and carries her off to bed. We hope he's changed the sheets since he and his dead lover slept in it.

Le sigh. How romaaaantic!

Snow At Last!

A light dusting of snow fell last night. The drab little rows of apartments around my house are pretty with frosting on their roofs and ledges, and suddenly, there's a bit of romance, a bit of sparkle to winter.
And the kids these days are cuter than ever, round bundles ambling along outside my window, stamping their feet while they wait for the school bus. The kid in this picture stopped for a second just after I took the photo to try and scoop some of the snow into a ball, but it was only a dusting of very powdery snow. He'll have to wait.

This winter is already turning out to be better than the last.