Right. I have taken to blogging once more, after a drought of about two years. As with everything else, my fascination for the weird and unconventional extends to the cyberspace too. So, do pardon the abrupt, seemingly unconnected , non-linear narratives, which (I sincerely assure) will culminate into comprehension, like Guy Richie movies.
JD: ab. Jane Doe (also see John Dorian, Scrubs and J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the rye, The). There. That should put an end to the inquisitive pings. I kind of want to try Appletini. Know where I can find it?
P&P: So, WIMNI has been buzzing with more than it's fair share of activity, with a third of the star-struck, wet-behind-the-ears freshmen who've already erupted upon our quiet environs. And I don't mean 'erupt' in a disrespectful way. It's just that the shock and suddenness of finding ourselves as people to whom other human beings look for advice on anything from academics to lizard troubles, is a little over-whelming. Not to mention the assault of new faces and names (a ginormous 420 of them), the empty food containers (because one wakes up late for a class and finds one's breakfast options severely curtailed to 2 ounces of milk and horse grams. Taklu was understandably wild), the jam-packed mess tables...the list goes on.
With the advent of these young 'uns, other, er, activities have consequently seen a meteoric rise as has the stock of the freshmen fairer sex (who will henceforth be known as, valuable things in short supply). For instance, there's this really prestigious event in November, for which both the Freshmen and final year students team up. Ergo, senior teams have been fighting tooth and nail to snag the "right fit" Freshman. What "right fit" is, is a million dollar question. Of course, as with most valuable things in short supply, the valuable things in short supply call the shots. So, you could be Warren Buffet or Seth Godin and have unimitable credentials, but the Ladies Luck will smile benignly upon the rugged/boyish charm of a random rake.Sigh.
Grease Paint:
I'm super excited about being part of this play staged by our theatre group. I generally exude as many emotions as a lamp-post, but this should be a welcome change. As The Boss said, from a singing diva to an emerging actress. Us blushed and mumbled "aww, shucks", my precious.
Flea Market: In the interest of evoking student interest, thinking out-of-the-box and such kookiness, our profs here have resorted to a variety of scatter-brained antics. The latest one was a compulsary visit to a local flea-market to "understand unorganized retail" and "apply lessons to Mordern Trade" or something to that effect. By unorganized, I mean roofless, shifty, fly-by-night operators in the flea market. Sigh. I wonder how we could have achieved the objectives with the delicious smells of road-side junk food wafting through the air and making any sort of research impossible. I made best use of the time and bought a jhola and a terracota Durga. Research be damned. But I loved the thrill of the haggling- it made me a little sad in the end, because I realized that the proprietors of these establishments hardly make any money. Curly bought sunglasses quoted at Rs. 350 for Rs. 50. They say "Ray Bun" though. But you can't make out the difference unless you look very closely. And Curly has other attributes to draw attention away from the contraband glasses. e.g. uber-cool, rock-star like, unkempt hair.
Right. So, after we trudged (I actually danced like a nautch girl, given my heart-wrenching stint in Gurgaon) back to campus and registered ourselves as became law-abiding inmates of a WIMNI, a bunch of us (namely RG, Sick Boy, No-Longer-Hairy, Lurch and yours truly) decided to go give the much touted Rajneeti a look-see. Apparently, my Bong credentials made me a potential Rajneeti tout, convert and gun-gaan-gaoing groupie of the movie. Here’s to shattering stereotypes:
Grouse1: (Yeah, yeah knee-jerk, belan-wali, mahila-mukti bunkum spouting feminist) Seriously, do independent, educated women let themselves be pawned just so that their men-folk (and this includes daddy and bhaiyya dearest) could play kursi-kursi ? And resign themselves to their pawn status without so much as a mummy, I mean, an ouch? Are these the Middle-friggin'-Ages?
Grouse 2: Just when we thought Indian cinema was coming of age with groundbreaking film-makers like Anurag Kashyap, Vishal Bharadwaj and their ilk who don’t feel the need to ape the Boyles, Scorceses and Tarantinos of the world, Mr. Jha (who is otherwise a pretty dependable film-maker) goes and lifts not one, but two classics , churns them through his very own Transmogrifier and comes up with this Godfather-meets-Mahabharat , confused mongrel of a movie. Not a single original idea in it. Even the blast which prematurely ends the lives of two characters, is lifted directly from The Godfather. Kya yaar.
Grouse 3: Language like “jyeshtha putra”. Need I say more?
Grouse 4: Superfluous, unnecessary un-PG-13 scenes. Why, pray, why? Just to titillate the audience?They could have been easily done away with without affecting the plot. Apparently, we’re being all grown-up and evolved and reaching new comfort levels with er, un-PG-13 behaviour in the public domain. Two of Sick Boy’s 4.5 stars generously showered upon this movie are attributed to the said scenes. So, my argument of titillation stands vindicated. Also, the nick name Sick Boy. (To be fair to Sick Boy, one of my 2.5 stars for this movie was for Ranbir Kapoor and the rest for Arjun Rampal (a.k.a His Hotness, Dreamy McSteamy and other nick names ,of which good girls from good families would refuse to own authorship))
Grouse 5: Katrina Kaif. Sweety, you’re pretty as hell, but you aint gettin’ no prizes no time soon for them dead pan dialogue deliveries. Although, she does carry the entire glamour quotient and the fragile dreams of the Sick Boys and other boys on her shapely legs, er, shoulders. And the firang chick is hardly competition. I mean, give our girl a real challenge. Seriously, what were you thinking, dear Mr Casting Couch?
Grouse 6: Which ones of our politicos, even the I-hurl-anything-that-isn’t-nailed-to-the-floor-at-the-speaker variety, actually publicly come out and accuse the opposition of killing their husband/wife/son/daughter/father/mother/uncle/aunt/sister/brother/milkman/postman/pet canary, for votes? Isn’t there such a thing as cases being sub-judice/ And, oh, the Election Commission? And, when are these rivalry fuelled killings so public? Unreal.
Grouse 7: The Krishna character. Real, slim shady. So, he can’t kill the Karna (Jyeshtha Bhrata) character himself, but eggs on his nephew to do it-the nephew being a temporarily unhinged PhD candidate (in which field, you say? Ballistics? Nope. Art of War? Nope, guess again. Exploits of Machiavelli? Nah, Victorian Poetry, silly! So, obvious). Such hypocrisy! Totally unworthy of our respectable deities. I’m sure it hurts the sentiments of some community or the other. Sue the blighter, I say. And the Bhagvad Gita reference at the end- how did Mr. Victorian Poetry suddenly develop a conscience when his sole purpose was to annihilate opposition? As if he exhibited nobility of thoughts before, that his enemy’s being unarmed would have sufficiently deterred him from harming said enemy. Completely inconsistent with his ruthless form. It was merely an untenable justification to somehow get the “good over evil” angle. But, really, who was absolutely good in this whole mess? It all happened because a couple of babies had their fragile egos hurt (remember the resounding slaff, sorry , slap?)
Grouse 8: Oooh, my burly husband man-handled a female journo (half his size) who cast aspersions on my character. Oooh, what nobility! Oooh, he stood up for my honour! Ooh, he must really love me. Oooh, what do you know? I love him too. So what if I have been pining for his brother all my life and married the boor only out of spite? So what if the boor has been accused of other heinous crimes against women? Love can happen in four scenes. Can’t criminals be in love? If you prick them do they not bleed? If you tickle them do they not laugh? If you poison them do they not die? Unka dil to saccha hai.
Grouse 9: The moral of the story. So basically, a man kills everyone and goes back to Victorian Poetry. And the pretty lady runs the state. The End.
Needless to say, this was not worth wasting precious slumber (we went for the late night show) and 150 bucks on. (which reminds me, I still owe Lurch)
