Now and Then

Now: Watching a movie means a new release at high-end multiplex, popcorn and pepsi in a mall on a crowded weekend…
Then: Watching a movie meant a black-and-white Bengali classic on Doordarshan at home with family with home-made papad or alubhaja…

Now: Shopping means casually picking up new clothes from a branded shop because I am upset/happy/preparing for a trip/preparing for a job interview/preparing for a festival/it’s on sale/it’s just too pretty/I have to have it…
Then: Shopping meant an annual ritual with family before Durga Puja…

Now: Eating out means piling on the junk food and alcohol on weekdays/weekends because friends insist/it’s a treat/there is a new place which has come up in Bandra/we are celebrating something/we are distressed about something/there is an IPL final…
Then: Eating out meant semi-annual Chinese food at Barb-Q with family…

Now: Traveling means jet-setting to eight countries in four months…
Then: Traveling meant sleeper class train to Kerala once a year with family…

Now: Communication means being constantly connected on whatsapp, texts, gtalk, email, facebook…
Then: Communication meant waiting for thirty minutes anxiously at landlord’s place to receive a long-distance STD call from dad…

Now it's a colourful umbrella of events, people, activities. Then it was just about letting the raindrops spear through the clouds straight on me...

The Joker

All my life I have believed in humour; You can get tired/bored of everything (romance, friendship, drama) but not humour; humour is something that can be entertaining, romantic, thought-provoking or all at the same time. But by humour, I mean the witty, tongue-in-cheek kind and not the slapstick/physical expression that is so common all around us.

Still, this weekend, I think I had an overdose of humour. What began with the movie Fukrey and ended with a Vir Das show, with Hangover III and Pakistan batting in the middle, seemed a bit too much, even by my standards.

If you thought Fukrey was yet another bubblegum movie about college kids, designer clothes, picturesque locations, you couldn’t have been farther away from the truth. Imagine Student of the Year. (pause, while I puke). Now imagine the exact opposite of it. Here were three below-average kids and a talented musician with modest dreams which most of us take for granted: dreams of having a normal life with college and fun and friends, dreams of making it big as an artist, dreams of finding the perfect girl or dreams of looking after your family. But they are broke, they are stupid and they are unlucky. So far so good. Who doesn’t love a bit of light-hearted North Indian humour garnished with some Punjabi abuses? And then comes the twist: they also have a gift, which lands them into trouble and then more trouble. The second half is a fast-paced journey which eventually reaches its destination of a feel-good comedy, endearing in its own way.

Then yesterday, I braved heavy rains and bad traffic to watch History of India- VIRitten by, surprise, surprise, Vir Das. Now, I am an absolute Vir Das fanatic and every year I make sure I watch at least one of his shows apart from the random stand-up comedy that I witness through the year. But this was one show that I have been craving to watch, simply because it served up the delicious combination of two of my favourite subjects: history and humour. So I traveled all the way to NCPA, taking a variety of transports to make sure I don’t get stuck in the rains, when a friend suddenly conjured up the tickets for the show, just sneaking in on time. While parts of it was indeed funny, at the end of the day, I left a tad disappointed, asking myself if it was just me or have I seen better before?

May be I was too close to history to have it made fun of… (nahhh)

May be the focus was more on visual expressions and less on script…

May be after a wait of more than a year, my expectations were too high…

Or may be, just may be, as absurd as it sounds, humour was finally losing its shine to the glare of the joker called life…

Purple Rain

Rain fascinates me. It always has. Even as a kid, I simply adored H W Longfellow’s poem “Rain in Summer”, I wrote long essays about rains and as I grew up I fantasized about dancing wildly in the rain with an equally nerdy but romantic guy.

That’s one of the many reasons which enamoured me about Bombay when I first moved here ten years back. The splashing waves on Marine Drives, the beautiful sea, as dirty as it is, and of course, the dreamy combination of Haji Ali swept by the windy rains and puchka (not Panipuri) by the guy from Kolkata who made it the way I like, just brought me closer to the city in my early days. Over the years, while my relationship with the city has been reduced to a strictly live-and-let-live equation and as we have grown apart, the rains still manage to captivate me the way it did when I was a teenager, reminding me of the crackling chemistry we once shared.

All the crumbling infrastructure, the traffic, the breakdown of public transport notwithstanding, the rains in Bombay remain one of its eternally charming facets.

A surprise day off from school/college/work…

Getting drenched to the skin…

A hug from behind…

Slight tug of the pigtail…

Playful teasing…

Some warm hot chocolate to go with the unhealthy pakodas…

Laughing till you have tears in your eyes: tears which merge with the raindrops on your cheeks creating a heady concoction which is more addictive than the entire bottle of Black Label…

When it rains, it pours and how…

Ugly Betty

So I watched Yeh Jawani Hai Diwani over the weekend. To begin with, let me warn you that it’s an extremely crappy movie which drags itself (and you) to a slow death. Add to it the painful second half which is entirely about an elaborate destination wedding which never ends and of course, the typical filmy dialogues, the complete lack of a storyline, not to mention the forced climax (why is Bollywood so obsessed with happy endings) do make you want to run out, get drunk and watch Hangover III.

There was nothing new about it and we would all agree that it was a rehash of some of the popular Bollywood movies: Dil Chahta Hai, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara among others.

Friendship, check
Finding your dreams, check
Ugly duckling turning into a swan, check

Having said that, I cried in the movie. Yes, I am hypocritical that way. But there is something endearing about the Ugly Betty (Jassi) especially since I have spent most of my school/undergrad days in similar circumstances: nerdy, awkward, shy, uncool, bespectacled with no social skills. Of course, this being Bollywood, she HAD to transform into this hot chick, while I have remained in the nerd club, complete with the books.
And then you also have the familiar story about seeing the world, living your life and dreaming big as opposed to surrendering to the mundane mediocrity of societal parameters.

All of it you have heard before and all of it resonates with you and if you have ever been in a relationship which didn’t work out because of this very reason, you would identify with it more. However, what does NOT convince you is the abrupt happy ending, forced for the sake of happiness. God forbid, if Bollywood had the courage to bend the rules, to explore the dark side of the moon, to portray reality without sugarcoating it.

And speaking of Ugly Betty and making dreams come true, Serena Williams still manages to dominate WTA, as she romped to yet another Grand Slam title, defying age, competition and her first-round humiliation in 2012 French Open.

We Ugly Betties have dreams too, and sometimes, just sometimes, they also come true...

Around Eastern Europe

The last couple of weeks flew by (literally) as we traveled across Eastern Europe by trains, buses and cabs, braving the weather, living outside our inadequately packed suitcases (which carried very little warm clothes), hopping from one hotel to another and admiring the plethora of cobbled streets, churches, gardens, rivers and architectural wonders on our way.



For a journey which began with boarding the wrong train from a desolate Munich station on an unusually cold May morning and ended with arguing with the crew on Lufthansa (I would strongly recommend avoiding the Frankurt-Mumbai Lufthansa route for multiple reasons which don’t really deserve a post on), there were a host of experiences in between, some of which left us spellbound, some of which shocked the very core of our beliefs and some of which made us realize how fortunate we are.



So we traveled from Munich to Salzburg to Vienna to Budapest to Prague to Krakow to Berlin, finally boarding our last flight from Frankfurt, covering five countries in a span of two weeks. While we didn’t do justice to each of these countries, especially Hungary (I definitely need to go back there again), I would rather remember this trip for visiting six different cities rather than their respective locations.



Salzburg: For a small city overshadowed by its more glamorous and cosmopolitan cousin, Vienna, it has its own charm, most famous for being the birthplace of the noted musician Mozart. So everywhere you go, you would find something named after him, be it hotels, streets, cafes and of course the elaborately designed Mozart Square which takes your breath away. But the irony lies in the fact that Mozart never really liked Salzburg and spent most of his life traveling around, since he found the city too deficient in terms of arts and culture. The other reason which makes Salzburg so popular is Sound of Music. If you have seen the movie, then you would identify with the landmarks where parts of the movie were shot: for instance, Mirabell Gardens and Mirabell Palace, where Maria and the children sing 'Do-Re-Mi’, Hellbrunn Palace and the beautiful Lake District. While the film is based on a true story, Hollywood being Hollywood changed bits and pieces of it, which were more evident now that we visited the real house of the Von Trapp family, heard the real stories and understood the real characters a little better.



Vienna: To begin with, you can be in Vienna for a week, and still not be able to explore the city the way you would want to. So in the two days that we spent in the city, we probably just got a glimpse of everything that it has to offer, without really savouring it the way we would have liked to. From the grand buildings of the Rathaus [City Hall], the Austrian Parliament, the Natural History Museum, the Museum of Art History (Kunsthistorisches Museum), and the State Opera House, the treasure trove of paintings and carvings at the Schönbrunn Palace, the leisurely walk by the Wien river while exploring hidden gems like the St. Stephens Cathedral or the Anchor Clock, the tragic history of Mayerling in Vienna Woods to the Austrian delicacies at Rosenberger, it was all too quick, too little and yet too much crammed in too little time.



Budapest: I shouldn’t even be writing about it, since we barely spent a day here, rushing through both Buda and Pest, only stopping for a little while to enjoy the authentic Goulash soup by the Danube river. But Budapest really has much more to offer than the impressive Heroes Square, Fishermen's Bastion with the Mathias Church or the House of Parliament that we saw. After all, it IS the Paris of the East. And like they say, there are two kinds of people in Budapest: one that lives in Buda and the other that WANTS to live in Buda (i.e. the Pestians), but typical tourists as we were, we didn’t manage to see either very well.



Prague: Now this is one city which was definitely one of the major highlights of the trip. I simply loved everything about the city: the old world charm with all its impressive architecture, the St. Vitus Cathedral, the boat ride through the Vltava river, Franz Kafkas’s birthplace right in the middle of a busy street, Ivan Lendl’s presence all over the city and the Astronomical Clock which is as astronomical as the people and their appetites. In our eagerness to devour Czech food, we ordered three dishes, managing to finish only half of all the pork ribs, trout and goose preparations. We also visited the slightly creepy but nevertheless attractive Bone Church in the UNESCO heritage site of Kutna Hora, about an hour away from Prague. We also managed to lose an entire bottle of Black Label, and like seasoned alcoholics, my parents argued over whose fault it was, while I maintained a pious and detached silence, though it was killing me inside.



Krakow: Some time back, if you had asked me to go to Krakow in Poland, I would look at you the same way I would look at Salman Khan. On a cow. But not anymore. Apart from being a popular low-cost nearshoring destination for MNCs, it does have a lot of history too. Like the Wawell Castle, Kazimierz (the Old Jewish town), the Cloth House (Europe’s primitive shopping mall which is still one of the best places to buy souvenirs), St. Mary’s Church and the salt mines. And then you also have the place where Pope John Paul II, the first Polish Pope, used to meet his followers.



But of course, the main reason to go to Krakow is Auschwitz, just about an hour away. Nothing, I repeat nothing you read on the internet or the books or the movies/videos you watch on TV/Youtube can prepare you for the blood-curdling atrocities committed in this place. As I listened to the grave narratives of the tour guide, as I saw the left-overs of the inhuman torture barely seventy years back (the human hair, shoes, clothes, teeth) and the remains of the traumatic conditions (bunk beds, wooden planks, toilets) and as I put the pieces together trying to get a picture of what the victims were going through, I failed hopelessly, numbed by a cold shiver down my spine. Work does NOT set you free, rather it makes you a slave. Auschwitz is NOT a tourist place, rather it’s a solemn reminder of the millions of people who not only lost their lives, but lost it brutally.



Berlin: If I had to describe the city in human terms, it would Cinderella: a city which is different from the picturesque landscapes of its more fortunate cousins, a city repeatedly ravaged in wars, a city which has been through enough struggles, a city which has stood like a wall, in spite of the making and breaking of another. So despite the awful weather (probably as bad as the worst November day), despite the plastic sheets and machines (the city is under a major renovation) and despite the horrible traffic which moves slower than Ravichandran Ashwin, Berlin stole my heart: Checkpoint Charlie, the Reichstag, the remains of the Berlin Wall, Potsdam Platz, Hitler's bunker and of course, the historic Brandenburg Gate, all of which made me laugh and cry at the same time.



It was a trip of conflicting sights and emotions, it was a trip of the ghosts of past blending with the angels of the future, it was a trip which merged hopes and promises with despair and anguish.

It was a trip of a lifetime...

Chaos

Being a manager is a thankless job. No, I mean, really. I am one of those people who simply hate responsibilities, but the more I run away from them, the more intricately involved I get. I like my work, but I am not obsessive about it. I come to office, do my thing, surf around a bit, listen to some Punjabi music, bitch about people and go home early enough to have a social life if I choose to. It’s altogether another matter that I don’t really have a social life. And for the last couple of years, it had worked wonderfully well. Until a few months back, when I was made the team lead and asked to take responsibility of two guys, who, frankly speaking, behave like kids, providing me with a taste of premature motherhood, sans the joy or the baby-sitting money. And now that we are again in the middle of some mindless restructuring, with looming uncertainty and volatility, the restlessness has just magnified manifold, leaving me completely clueless about pacifying them.

Even my hectic weekend, splashed with alcohol did not help much in calming me down. While Friday night, we drowned our impending unemployment fears in cheap alcohol, Saturday night was spent in celebrating D1’s birthday with more alcohol and cheesecake. It was our first get-together since the December wedding: all eight of us, huddled together abusing each other over a really long game of Pictionary. As always, I was my competitive screaming best, and as always, I finished on the losing side, but that’s not important. What is important is I am good at it. Sunday, we decided to get out of Powai and get some fresh air. In Nehru Science Centre. At times like this, I really wish I had paid more attention in school and got into some IIPM equivalent of an engineering college, just for the heck of it. As we stood in front of the different exhibits, reliving the nightmare of 10th standard Physics, the Amazing Caves Space Odyssey show appealed even to a completely science atheist like me. After my painfully educational afternoon, I thankfully retired to the familiarity of jarring loud music, expensive showrooms, seafood lunch, fat-free icecream, yet more alcohol and IPL on big screen. This was followed by a much-needed stand-up comedy show which had me holding on to my stomach for two hours. Life would be so meaningless without the frivolity of urban life. And Palladium.

But most importantly, I have decided to do deal with the crisis like any self-respecting, escapist corporate manager would do, i.e. go on block leave for two weeks (the employee is forbidden to access work-related emails/phone calls) and distance myself from the situation. Well, not really. But my Eastern European holiday begins tomorrow and since we had already made all the reservations, I did not have the heart to cancel it. It’s not the best time for a vacation, but it also gives me the much-required distance from the chaos.

So, next couple of weeks as I discover a different world, I would be oblivious about my rapidly crumbling reality…

Anything for a Hat Trick

Being an Indian MBA, I have this inherent knack to fix what’s not even broken, pretty much like our government. So even though the major aspects of my life are in a mess, I decided to focus on trivial things which frankly don’t really need any attention.

Like my hair, for instance. Ok, may be I do not have perfect hair, but it certainly did not deserve to be treated as unkindly as it was over the weekend.

When I started working four years back, and did not know what to do with money, I had decided on a whim to straighten it, which turned out to be a disaster. Not only did it cost me a bomb, I suffered from major hairfall and the flat, poker straight look did not even suit me. So when the effect finally wore out after a year of struggling with expensive shampoos and spa treatments, I was too happy to embrace my curly natural look back.

Ever since then, I haven’t really experimented much, settling for shoulder-length layers, happy with periodic trims, occasionally indulging a blow-dried look or the schoolgirl-with-a-hairband look which apparently did not look nice. Anyway, the point is that I have been too scared to mess with my hair and even in Manila, while SH forced me to get it shortened, the style remained the same.

Until this weekend, when I committed hara-kiri. Yes, it’s extremely hot in Bombay, yes, I am bored with my life in general and my hair in specific and yes, I need some excitement. But I could have just got an AC, or visited Colaba Causeway or simply turned on the TV for some IPL action. That would have solved my inherent need for comfort and enjoyment.

But no, I HAD to chop off my hair, and pay through my nose to let some fancy hair-lady take out all her frustrations on MY hair. Usually, whenever I visit a salon, I ALWAYS go for the cheapest option, i.e. some junior stylist who runs his scissors over my hair and tries to sell me a range of expensive hair products. But this time, since the junior stylists were ALL busy for the entire week, I had to go with a senior one, i.e. someone who simply HAS to overhaul my entire look and turn me into this alien from Avatar.

And the timing of this tragedy could not have been worse since tomorrow I have a video shoot for my company, even though it’s comforting to know that nobody will really watch it. What’s more depressing is that since my vacation is barely a week away, ALL my photos would be ruined, thanks to this stupid impulsive decision.

Time to bring out the hat; if only it was magical enough to produce a rabbit to turn back time…

If You are Out There

So Alex Ferguson retired. After 26 years, after becoming a legend, after creating history. It’s not often that you come across a personality who makes a name from the sidelines, without actually being on the field. At least I can’t think of anyone so larger than life in modern sports.

So what is it that makes him wield so much power even without playing the game? Charisma? Leadership? Passion for the game? Being a shrewd strategist?
And that makes me wonder about the qualities of being a great leader, the age-old debate about whether leaders are born or made.

Yes, leaders have to good at what they do and lead from the front? But the reverse is not necessarily true, i.e. even if you are the best in your field, you may not be a good leader. Case in point: Sachin Tendulkar.

Leaders also need to have a keen mind, listen well and be receptive to ideas, stay calm, be humble and not take themselves too seriously. Which is why I admired Mark Taylor as a captain even when he was struggling for form.

Leaders need to be inspiring, articulate and fearless enough to believe in their dreams against all odds. But you may be all of those things and yet not be a sustainable leader despite the initial wave of success. Who better than Adolf Hitler to exemplify that.

Most of all, leaders need to respect the people, win their trust, stand up for them and put their interests ahead of his/her own. But you can only do that when you are completely secure as a person and secure about your acceptance. History is replete with examples of insecurity and mistrust playing havoc with the psychology of an otherwise good leader.

Thus the question remains: are people like Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela rare gifts to humankind or can you actually groom leaders?

Can the B schools over the world, with all their fancy jargon and smart shoes, actually impart leadership skills to students or do they simply churn out ‘managers’ instead of leaders?

And can Manchester United really replace Sir Alex Fergusson, not just as a coach but as an eccentric yet inspiring personality with an uncanny ability to bring out the best in people?

With great power comes great responsibility, but can you be responsible even without resorting to power? And can you command respect without demanding it?

When Bombay Talkies Makes You Listen

You know one of those hot summer weekends, when all you want to do is stay home with a big bowl of ice cream (ok, a family pack), lie around and watch movies NON-STOP, because you are too lazy to even change the channel!

So this was one of THOSE weekends. What started with Men in Black III in the morning, continued till late night, as I just kept watching and watching and watching. Now, MIB I has been one of my all-time favourite movies, not because I am secretly in love with Will Smith (especially in a black suit), but because of the awesome chemistry between J and K (Tommy Lee Jones) and of course the humour is one of its kind. While MIB II was a big let-down, I quite liked the third part, though it’s nowhere close to the first. This was followed by Madagascar and Madagascar: Escape to Africa. Well, you can just never get enough of “I like to move it, move it”, though move was the last thing I did! Then came Jerry Mcguire. Yes, I am slow. I need to watch some movies fifteen times (ok, seventeen) to appreciate them properly, and this one is one of THOSE movies. You.just.can’t.have.enough.of.it!

And when Dorothy tells Jerry, “Shut up! You had me at Hello”, you just want to rewind the scene and watch it all over again.

But the highlight of the weekend has to be Bombay Talkies. Four directors, four independent stories, strung together by the common theme of Mumbai, Bollywood and the common man. Take a bow, Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar, Dibakar Banerjee and Karan Johar. Especially Karan Johar. For someone who has made a name for wasting crores on mind-numblingly stupid movies, this was just a glimpse into his creative genius, who can weave stories even out of a dirty railway platform in Mumbai and not necessarily snow-clad mountains of Switzerland, who can tap into the complex relationship of an urban couple as opposed to half-baked college romances and who can bring out the talent in a small street urchin with dirt streaking across her face instead of dressing up star kids in designer clothes.

Add to it Rani Mukherjee’s portrayal of the hapless woman trapped in a marriage, blaming herself for everything that is wrong with it; the little girl with a voice of an angel, not shy of peddling her talent; Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s brilliant one-act show without dialogues; the cross-dressing dancing queen king performance of the little boy and of course the single-minded obsession of the UP youth from Allahabad with his signature statement, “Aap Kanpur se hain na. You won’t understand!”

Bombay Talkies lives up to its name: for a change, here is a Hindi movie that does make Bombay talk, while the audience listens, enraptured…

Resurgence of the Pigtailed Girl

Ever since I had moved to my new place a year and a half back, I had strictly used it as a convenient house to crash after a long day at work or a long night out, but never really as a home to stay in, relax and enjoy. While I did have friends coming over for a drink or outstation people staying over, I had never felt a strong connection or sense of belonging to it. Quite contrary to the place I shared with S right after we passed out, which was the quintessential bachelor pad, which we looked after as our own, decorated and took pride in while entertaining guests. From simple pizza parties and birthday parties to bachelor parties and new year parties, it was our escape zone from everything. While S was the more domestic one, setting up the kitchen, making it more colourful and cosy, I enjoyed all the benefits it had to offer.

But my current place is the diametric opposite to it. I could barely live in it, but continued since it was so close to work and the main Hiranandani area, saving me a lot of time and headache of commuting. Even when friends came, they got the alcohol along, while we ordered pizza. On the rare occasions when we cooked, it would mostly be JB1/soulgoat who would do all the hard work, while I simply criticized and ate.

However, with soulgate finally getting married this weekend (I can heave a sigh of relief after being subjected to extreme emotional torture over the last five years) and me having a holiday yesterday, I decided to do the unimaginable. I INVITED a friend over for dinner, and by definition, an invitation means complete ownership of cooking, serving and in general, being polite and host-like, i.e. things that you would normally not associate with me.

Armed with a brand new cylinder refill, not only did I buy chicken and vegetables, cooked a flawless chicken curry AND daal, I also made sure there was soft drinks, snacks and desserts and Maggie as back-up just in case everything else got screwed up. But things were perfect as I could have imagined! I got up early in the morning, spring-cleaned my apartment, bought new plates and bowls, while doing up my hall with bright cushions and rugs, just to make it a little more cheerful. Then I cooked for FOUR long hours: a personal best for someone who lives on bread/milk/fruits/kurkure.

I don’t know why I was suddenly so motivated: may be the long-hidden woman in me is finally coming to terms with age; may be it was the rare moment of being pleasant or may be it was about discovering my passion for cooking!

On second thoughts, may be it was the resurgence of the little girl in me who used to love playing house raising her pigtailed head…