Way beyond the Ordinar-E

So I promised to write more frequently. Did anyone really expect it?

This Oscar season brings a lot of debate and a lot of people going out of their way to hate Slumdog Millionaire (which I thought was a decent movie). There are a lot of people saying that it is not a true representation of our country, poverty porn and what not. Well everyone is entitled to their opinion. BUT where I lose my temper is when a Priyadarshan or a Shilpa Shetty or any other dumbass related to Bollywood says that this industry makes movies which represent India better. Hell no. They make movies about 2 % of the population (not even those are accurate) and thrust it down everyone’s throats and then come up with this shit? Hell No.

Anyway, coming to the point. I did not think Slumdog was the best movie this year. The best one was not even nominated in the Oscar best picture category. And no I am not talking about The Dark Knight. I am talking about Pixar’s WALL-E.

If I had to describe the movie in one word, I would say -Art. Sheer poetry in motion. Now don’t get me wrong. It is also immensely enjoyable. The movie has trademark animation/Pixar characters. Adorable. And this is not just the lead characters, but even the side ones (MO!!) What is wonderful about this movie is the way it establishes WALL-E and EVE in the first half an hour of the movie without using dialogues. And anyway most of the dialogues in the movie are “Eve?” and Wall-e?” with different expressions and stresses.

The story is your basic love story. Between robots , of course.What makes the movie so marvelous is how EVE and WALL-E are so different and yet so perfect for each other. Now most movies try to do this and fail miserably. The animation and graphics are of course brilliant. And how can I not mention that ethereal dance scene in the space. Ah, perfection!

I don’t care if it was preachy or if it didn’t seem real enough to some people. No major movie stars, minimal dialogue, a story about robots( I absolutely HATE sci-fi.) But I still found the movie stupendous. And if years of Bollywood haven’t killed the soul inside you/ haven’t turned you into a cynic, so will you.

PS: Oh and I also thought Kung –fu Panda was cute. One of Dreamwork’s best, in fact. But who could have guessed Pixar would outdo themselves.

28th Dec 2008 - 3rd Jan 2009

Pardon the late post; this has been quite a busy week for me (seriously.) And looking back at it, I just remember a daze. But I know I have to come up with some details, otherwise there will be snide, witless remarks about short term memory loss (I can’t understand why people liked Gajani. Memento was much better.) So here goes.

The thing I remember most about last week was digging into box loads of crap trying to find something that could be reused. Now things like ropes, pins etc. which can be useful were missing (how could anything be made easy for me?) Instead I found dried up paint, biscuit packets from last year (don’t worry, they were appropriately disposed off ) and something with fungus. After that I must have washed my hands enough number of times to give Lady Macbeth a serious run for her money, in an effort to get rid of the stench (I realize I might be coming off as an obsessive compulsive, but I assure you, I am more normal than I sound.)After that I decided that the only way to combat this mortal enemy was to have a bath. At 7 in the evening. Winter. And the hot water had run out.

Which reminds me, I brought in this New Year with an ice cream. As soon as I saw that quality walls cart in the mess that evening, I could feel my throat go scratchy. And then I just had to have it. Well all I can say is that you can expect me to complain about a cold next week.

Anyway, the work I did last week was for this event. So it has been a week full of nagging people well past midnight, making excessive use of smiley’s in chats to make myself sound nicer than I really am and other such interesting exercises. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I had the best deal either. When you go to invite people for an event, you expect them to say “Sure I’ll come” with a fake smile or show you the proverbial middle finger. What you don’t expect is that they will make you sit down and give you an elaborate list of their personal problems.

Come D-day and I found myself on the front desk. So I spent majority of my weekend answering inane questions and trying to look interested in answering these questions. So much so for my New Year resolution. Not cursing. Didn’t even survive a week. But fear not, all is not lost. Not yet anyway. The weekend ended on a bright note, with a trip to KFC. And however much I do crib, it really was fun.

And talking about New Year resolutions, one of my friends to me her New Year resolution was to be happy. Now I would at any given time admit that I am quite dense, but I am sure that a lot of people had difficulty in swallowing this one. So you just order yourself to be happy? But hey, when you really think about it, it’s not that difficult. Now I can almost see everyone’s eyes dance with joy at the mere thought of me running myself into circles, so I shall be brief on this. One can be happy to escape diarrhea ridden birds. One can be happy just to feel winter sunshine on ones skin every morning. There is also happiness in being so exhausted at the end of the day, that you don’t even remember when your head touched the pillow( or your laptop, when you fall asleep in front of it as the case may be.) I can wax eloquent about the so called ‘parabola of joy,’ but then the question remains, why are so many people unhappy? Now since my other new year resolution is to remain useless throughout the year, perhaps this question will be addressed by the more intelligent and expressive( or so she thinks) Flotsam.

Dec 21- 27

I must confess, I have made my most stupid decision in the past two years by taking up a ‘spiritual’ subject. OK, OK maybe not the most stupid, but I was definitely acting like a retard when I made this choice. And no, it is not about to significantly change my life. So while it may sound like an interesting class from the outside to many (Well, with the professor talking about Old Monks and Hangovers!!) but in essence, the class is about as profound as Bozo, the clown. Sample this masterpiece- "Before enlightenment, Rivers are rivers and , mountains are mountains. During enlightenment, rivers are not rivers and mountains are not mountains. After enlightenment, rivers are once again rivers and mountains are once again mountains." So you see, we are supposed to absorb, not think an awful lot to truly enjoy our meaningless lives. But then again, toilet paper absorbs.

On Christmas day, our mess decided we need something special. I thought something was up when I saw what I later realized was a Santa puppet on our mess doors welcoming us. Now you may think why i didn’t realize that immediately, but you see this is Bengal. You see a man with a beard, you see red and your first thought is,’Oh! Karl Marx.’ And well that puppet and some artificial undecorated Christmas trees were the only sign of Christmas in the mess. The food wasn’t special, it was regular, by which I mean horrid as the mess is still not serving chicken.

While consuming a Sizzling Brownie, if you have finished all the ice cream, never attempt to have a go at the chocolate sauce. It’s flaming hot and burns your tongue. (Yes, yes it happened again. But not to me and not this week. Though this happens with me every week in winter. I am dense enough not to ever learn.)

It is so cold here, that I could see fog lift off from a lake. And yet, when you tell people who are not here they say, ”Oh, You have fog there because the humidity is high.” They conveniently forget that it has to be biting cold for all that humidity to condense. With my toes turning an unpleasant shade of blue, I cannot afford to make that mistake.

Watched Slumdog Millionaire this week. Good movie. But I seem to have a grudge against Mr Anil Kapoor( IS that how he spells it still?) So I shall proceed to say, that though he makes an effort in an attempt to not sound like a ‘dehati’,( rolls his r’s and all), his “Who wants to be a millionaire” sounds more like a “Who wants to be a milliner”.

~catchingupwitholdfriendsmakesforagreat week