A Day for Women

I know it's little late nevertheless I thought I should post this. Last month we celebrated Women's Day in our office. When I reached office I found a gift on my table and it felt really good to open a present on Women's Day, and that precisely was the idea behind the gift to make women employees feel special. I wondered loud, there is still so much that needs to be done at a workplace for women, we all are hypocrites. Do we need a day dedicated to women? Every day should be Women's Day!

I put aside all those thoughts and started preparing for the day's work, later in the evening  we had Women's Day celebrations in the office, men were also invited but not many came forward to participate. I was all geared up and won two competitions. Then we had a talk on positive thinking by Sudha Krishnan, co-founder and COO of Dialogue in the Dark . Then some games were arranged, in which I could not participate as I had work to complete and my deadline was fast approaching.  While all this was happening I posted a simple question on a social networking site out of curiosity and I received some interesting comments.

The question was what do you think is the role of a women in our society? Following were some of the best comments from friends and acquaintances.

RB (male) said Women are the building blocks of a society...
Men can earn but Women RUN the society...
Hats Off to Women Power
 
NG (female) said I think one of the biggest favour women can do themselves and other women is to believe that they are NOT lesser than men. By believing so, and by asserting their equality they are encouraging their sons to treat their wives as equals, and encouraging their daughters to demand being treated as an equal...

MN (female) said Completely agree with NG...The role of women is showing society that they are confident and comfortable in doing what they can. A woman plays many roles in society and playing it to the best of their ability should be their mantra. This does not include proving to the world that they are “super women”. There are many women in our society who are stressed, simply because they are in a constant rat race proving to others that they are the best.. (mother/ wife/daughter/ DIL/@ career.. d list goes on)… “Women be yourselves” ... that is all what society expects …

SA (male) said Women are considered the best teachers because of their natural skills and they earn respect for their patience and resilience. 

NP (female) said I think this topic has been on for ages....and has never been successfully practised though all love to preach it...Seedhi baat...A women takes up so many roles and the most important and beautiful of it is a Mother's role. A Mother's role has so much influence on her family especially children...As they look up to her all the time...off course Father's too play a vital role but a mother's behaviour towards her children will be how the children's character will be shaped...so it's our duty to see to it that we bring up our children well...Well brought up children pave way for a well functioning society...Women & Men must coexist to bring in harmony and peace in the society...And Men it's time you treat your women Better!!!! A lot of Men nowadays do help a lot - be it household chores or bringing up children or supporting and encouraging their wives to take up employment....but there are many men who believe it's not "manly" for a man to behave or do such things...Shame on you!!!!....

Barfii...Kuchch Meetha Ho Jai

          Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Ileana D'Cruz,

 Rupa Ganguly, Akash Khurana, Jishu Sengupta

Direction: Anurag Basu

If I have to box the story I will say it is a romantic comedy, a love triangle...but then saying so will generalize the movie...so for the moment I will say it is a beautiful movie. 

As it has been common knowledge, the hero has hearing and speech impairment, and the heroine has autism. But haven't we seen such movies earlier, be it Koshish (1972) in which Sanjeev kumar and Jaya Bhaduri had hearing and speech impairment, or in the recent past Black in which Rani Mukherjee is visually impaired, or Tare Zameen Par in which Darsheel Safary suffers from dsylexia. In each of these movies an effort has been made to draw sympathy towards the characters. 

This is where Barfii is different...to put it in Priyanka Chopra's words, it is not to arouse any sympathy from the audience,  it is just a story of two individuals with disabilities.

google image

 It is a simple story based in Darjeeling, the movie begins in early 70s and ends in the current day. As the name suggests the story is about Barfii (Ranbir Kapoor), he was named murphy by his mother but over the years the name changes into Barfii. Barfii has hearing and speech impairment, and Jhilmil (Priyanka Chopra) has autism, that means the lead actors have no dialogues. But inspite of this the movie tells the story of their lives and their love effortlessly. And there is Ileana D'Cruz, who comes to Darjeeling and falls in love with Ranbir. But the twist is she is engaged and doesn't know whether to listen to her heart or not.

Ranbir effortlessly transforms in to Charlie Chaplin, there is a scene where he takes his heart out and puts it at the feet of Ileana D'Cruz, which she kicks playfully. But Ranbir would not give up, so he follows her into a restaurant, and this time he presents his heart on a platter along with flowers. 

There are many scenes which can be picked for their sheer brilliance. The movie is a montage of beautiful scenes captured brilliantly on camera and sewn together with crisp editing. Be it Priyanka Chopra's jealous for Ileana which is shown in subtle ways, where she stares at Ileana's waist and later tries to have a look of her waist in the mirror. Or Ileana who transforms into a Bengali married women with elan, the way she carries her saree and the way she walks, every bit adds to the character.

 The movie is full of life, there isn't a moment where one will find it dragging. All the actors have contributed to make it a perfect entertainer.

Call Me Don

Movie: Don 2

Directer: Farhan Akhtar

Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Boman Irani, 

Lara Dutta, Om Puri, Kunal Kapoor

Don 2 is SRK’s style statement. The way Dhoom 2 was overshadowed by Hrithik Roshan, so is the case with Don2.  Those of you who watched Don 1 and liked it will like Don 2, those who did not like Don1 will surely like Don 2.

The movie begins with a narration in SRK’s voice, he gives you a recap of the movie Don 1 and what has happened in Don’s life thereafter thereby setting the stage for Don 2.

The plot goes somewhat like this, the Don having conquered the Asian drug market is now planning to take over the European market, and this has ruffled too many feathers. Various mafia gangs have started combining their efforts in a bid to eliminate Don forever, and the trap is laid.

It’s time for Don to make an entry and he makes the grand entrance in the Bollywood style driving his motorboat through a picturesque lagoon of  Thailand. Little did the Don knew that people are vying for his blood, but even if he knew it would have hardly made any difference to him. What follows is an action sequence where the Don slaughters the attackers with such agility that even the Superman would have fumbled, welcome to bollywood here the hero has a larger than life persona and highly developed senses which he uses to his advantage.

Now it’s Roma (Priyanka Chopra) turn to make an entry, she is working with the Interpol and her aim in her life is to put Don behind the bars. And then there is Om Puri her mentor who decides to ‘retire hurt’, he has only one regret that in his career spanning over 33 years if there was one criminal whom he could not put behind the bars was Don. With heavy heart he hands over this responsibility to Roma.

But Don being the magnanimous one comes and surrenders just a few minutes after this conversation as if he knew what was going on in Om Puri’s life. While Roma arrests her no one tries to find out what made Don surrender.

Now begins the actual plot of Don 2, Don surrendered so that he could break out of prison along with Vardan (Boman Irani, his enemy). Vardhan agrees to come along, rest of the movie revolves around how Don plots and executes the plan of stealing currency printing plates from one of the central banks.

Performance wise SRK is at his best, Priyanka gets very little space to show her work, Lara was convincing in the limited space, Boman Irani and Kunal Kapoor did a fine job of supporting cast, it was Om Puri who was wasted, that role could have been done by anyone.

There are few loopholes but again considering it’s a Hindi-masala movie those can be overlooked and coming to the songs the lesser said the better. Treatment of the story is good (there are enough of twists and turns), editing is crisp, dialogues are catchy, beautiful cinematography, and some reasonably good action sequences make it worth watching.

My favourite dialogue: Don tells Kunal Kapoor, “Don’t call me sir, bahut sareef sunai deta hai, call me Don.”

 

Life Is Stranger Than Fiction

It is said don’t judge a book by its cover, but there are certain books which live upto their cover page…The cover page of  Nine lives I bought in 2011 had eyes of a Kannur dancer wearing a red head gear with silver serpent heads on it, a very intriguing picture exuding immense energy.

That's the cover of my copy

The look said it would not let me keep the book down without finishing it, it would stare back at me to remind every single day that the nine chapters based on nine characters needs my attention.

What is fascinating about these characters is that they are not fictional, they are real people just like us, but as I navigated through the chapters the line delineating facts and fiction blur, every chapter left me with a collage of images which look stranger than fiction.

I could not continue reading two chapters back to back...I would leave the book for a day before I began a new chapter every time. It felt as if I would be denying every character its due if I moved on to the next immediately.

William Dalrymple talks about nine different characters following different paths but there is a common thread running through each of these characters, all these characters have immense faith in life irrespective of the path they have chosen for themselves. And somewhere on the way all of them have found their share of happiness.

The author takes the reader through the travails of a Jain nun, a Kannur dancer, a Devadasi, a Rajasthani epic singer, a Sufi, a Buddhist monk, an Idol  maker of Tanjore, a Tantric practitioner, and a Baul singer.

For example, in the Singers of Epic chapter he talks about an Epic Singer Mohan Bhopa and his wife Batasi. While a small part of the story is about Mohan, rest of the story revolves around the history and evolution of bhopas-the singers. The detailing and the attention to nuances makes it fascinating.

He has covered the length and breadth of India and has brought to the fore the stories behind many of those characters whom we know superficially, the story of their lives we never bothered to find out because to us they seemed too trivial. Each of these stories shows a different India, an India caught in a time-wrap, a country where different worlds co-exist side by side, visible worlds which remain invisible.

The finesse with which he intertwines the story of practices and the lives of practitioners leaves you mesmerised and you are simply gripped by the narrative.

Delhi Belly

Director-Abhinay Deo

Producer-Aamir Khan, Kiran Rao, Ronnie Screwala and Jim Furgele

Starcast- Imran khan, Vir Das, Kunal Roy Kapoor, Shehnaz Treasurywala, Poorna Jagganath, Anushka Dandekar and VIjay Razz

Delhi Belly was a laugh riot I thoroughly enjoyed the movie…it was fully “paisa wasool”, although I questioned my sensibilities how I was not put off with the use of toilet humour and dialogues interwoven with expletives. What made it interesting was the situational humour unlike the humour seen in other movies which are forced into the storyline along with background laughter track

What was good about the movie was crisp editing and sleek pace, and the very few songs which were run as the background score instead of the hero-heroine being shifted to the foreign locales with a blink of eye and, dancing and singing with each other or many a times with a bunch of accomplices.

And the bad part was there was nothing new to the script, have not we seen story of mix-ups umpteen number of times- people being caught up for wrong reasons and trying to sort it out.

But performance wise, the villain Vijay Razz, cartoonist and bespectacled friend of Imran- Vir Das, and photographer Kunal Roy did a good job…of course the landlord, jeweler, parents, ex-husband of special correspondent, pop singer played their bit with aplomb to keep the storyline running.

Coming to the lead Imran Khan is definitely trying to shed his chocolate boy image and has done things which none of the commercial heros have tried so far. And last but not the least Poorna Jagganath the new found by Aamir Khan imported from Los Angeles, looked far younger than her age and played her part with finesse.

So that was Delhi Belly full of MC, BC and many more idioms used by the hero and his friends generously…though I wonder why no one uses BaapC and BhaiC???

In between stations

I have been travelling alone since time immemorial and during many of my train journeys I have met many curious passengers. I have come across many curious uncles and aunties, curious men in their late twenties to fifties who try to gel despite my cold response.

I have learnt to maintain distance with strangers and at the same time not get restless during long journeys, I always carry novels which are atleast as thick as the best available encyclopedia, which I use as a means of self defense as soon as I sense that people are getting ready to start their 'let's know' session. I try to give an impression that I am lost in the world of magical web created by the words. While reading, I do manage keep a tab on the happenings taking place around me.

I wonder why people are so curious to know about strangers and especially if it is a single woman, people just cannot control their urge to "inquire". Most of the times I have succeeded in discouraging people to start a conversation by using simple defense mechanisms like giving cold stares and holding onto ‘my encyclopedias’. However, every now and then, I have come across curious passengers who believe in ‘never say die’ motto.

I remember one such incidence, when I was the only woman travelling with seven male co-passengers out of which six were in their mid-forties, shady-looking men, travelling as a group. On day one of train journey, they tried their best to start a conversation, but with my state-of-art devices I defeated them. 

On day two, they started encouraging the male co-passenger who was not part of their group and was seating beside me to start a conversation. So I realized that I need to device an ingenious method this time to ward off the evil. Thanks to advances in technology and the network connections which follow wherever you go, I dialed a friend’s number and started a conversation which was not very loud, but loud enough to be heard by the guy sitting beside me. My friend on the other side asked, “How are your co-passengers?” To which I replied,“People can be so shameless, even after you give them all indications that you are not interested in having a conversation, they still keep trying.” To my luck the guy seating next to me, who by now was almost ready to invade my private space, had some social sense and upon hearing my conversation he was somewhat embarrassed and decided to retrace his steps. Thank God!

Well I had a couple of good experiences also with uncle and aunties, who were nice enough to start a conversation not out of curiosity, but because it's a long journey and sharing travel stories helps one forget about the time during long journeys.