Sunshine and Fire
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
The love of my life ;)
My husband did not take me for Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (KANK). It was not deliberate. He did not say "No way!" or "Why don't you take your mother out for this movie sometime". Just the casual busy at work, busy weekends but bottomline is: it did not happen. At least he didn't say "If I knew you'd expect me to take you to KJo movies, I wouldn't have married you". I'm sure quite a few women have heard that the past month. The dating ones are luckier, their guys will grin and bare it :)
So that sets me thinking (been doing that so much since i started writing this blog.... I'm proud of me ;)) why would I want to watch KANK? Opulence and beauty....yes.....there's a lot of that in KJo's movies. Amazing houses, beauiful landscape, beautiful women made up to blend into the oppulence sorrounding them, men in lavish designer wear. That is it.It's not because I want to see the director's take on the issue of extra-marital affairs. I've seen enough of his movies to know he is incapable of handling a subject as mature as that. Acting? This guy has a team of the biggest names in Bollywood today wedded to his banner. With the exception of the very talented Kajol who somehow seems to hold her ground and be herself even in his movies, this is my take on the rest:
When we were kids we hardly went for the movies. It was only in 1990 that I saw QSQT (1988) on VCR. Then I made a conscious effort to make up for lost time. Watched all his movies whether hit or flop. It wasn't all that difficult.....considering he did only a couple of movies at a time.
¶ 7:01 AM 0 Comments
So that sets me thinking (been doing that so much since i started writing this blog.... I'm proud of me ;)) why would I want to watch KANK? Opulence and beauty....yes.....there's a lot of that in KJo's movies. Amazing houses, beauiful landscape, beautiful women made up to blend into the oppulence sorrounding them, men in lavish designer wear. That is it.It's not because I want to see the director's take on the issue of extra-marital affairs. I've seen enough of his movies to know he is incapable of handling a subject as mature as that. Acting? This guy has a team of the biggest names in Bollywood today wedded to his banner. With the exception of the very talented Kajol who somehow seems to hold her ground and be herself even in his movies, this is my take on the rest:
- Abhishek Bachchan: He's the newest addition to the clan. Also my current favourite in Bollywood. I hope he does not get sucked into this genre....he's been doing so well recently.
- Preity Zinta: She's pretty, full of energy, hip....quite belongs in a KJo movie. Not sure if I'm giving her a compliment there...but i like watching her.
- Rani Mukherjee: She's been there in all KJo movies....so sickly sweet....it kills me. So much so, I found her a big miscast in Bunty aur Babli, an otherwise great movie.
- Amitabh Bachcan: This man is great!!! I'd chose him over anyone else. Movies are being made just so as to cast him. Remember Sarkar,Khakee etc. And then KJo goes ahead and make a fool of him....always.... I heard Sexy Sam in KANK is the pits.
- Shahrukh Khan: Finally, the object of my hatred. But at least I can't blame KJo for this guy.
When we were kids we hardly went for the movies. It was only in 1990 that I saw QSQT (1988) on VCR. Then I made a conscious effort to make up for lost time. Watched all his movies whether hit or flop. It wasn't all that difficult.....considering he did only a couple of movies at a time.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
A lot can happen over 3 years
On October 19th, I came back to this blog & noticed that it had been 3 years since I last posted. On Alex's birthday. This October 17th, Alex celebrated his birthday with our son, Joshua. They share their bithdays. I know Joshua will find that very interesting over the years. As of now he's busy making life interesting for us :)
¶ 3:35 AM 0 Comments
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Friends Forever
Been wanting to write this post for long but a training program at office every afternoon for the past 2 weeks had me drained of energy. We had classes on Saturdays too :(
The weekend before it started was fun though. On September 30th we attended two weddings. The first wedding was of R & A. R is my closest friend from IMI and A is also a close friend and classmate. It's really exciting to be at a wedding where both the bride & the groom are your friends. Somehow you can't help thinking of how they used to fight, talk at length on the phone, made excuses to be together, made you the messenger :)
The second wedding was of AB & S. AB is one of our batch of 15 MBAs who joined this organization last year. S is his college sweetheart. For more than a year now, we've all seen AB glued to his mobile phone every free second. Wonder if marriage is going to change any of that.
So do love marriages really happen? I was surprised!!! For four years at CET, my friends & I had watched numerous couples in the acacia patch in front of the Ladies Hostel (LH). It was a great source of entertainment. You could set your watch by the time some dames left to meet their boyfriends. Its a different thing that the guy they went out to meet would probably change every semester. A few intolerable SFI/ABVP guys would start dating some female at the LH during election time (gave them more visibility and votes-effective campaigning). Then there were the extra cool females who'd date only guys with bikes.
Then there was us!!!!!! My friends whose admirers didn't appeal to them would join me as we sat on the verandah watching this daily routine. We would bet on how long each of these affairs would last. By the end of the four years we had become champs at the game. Almost all those affairs did end right there in front of us. I can barely remember 4 couples who got married.
But things seemed to have changed now. Now my friends were marrying the person of their choice and most importantly with their parents' blessing (inspite of some initial hiccups). How did the world change in 4 years?
I guess its not the world that has changed but my friends. The set I now have is 4 years older. Its more mature, responsible & sure abt what it wants in life. Their choice of a life partner does not depend on how good looking the girl is or how nice the bike/car the guy's father gave him is. These are couples who started out as friends & later realized that they wanted to be friends for life......mutual respect, great camraderie, similar aspirations are the foudations of their relationship. They support each other both in personal & professional life.The change is amazingly refreshing.
Finally, a word of admiration for the parents who have had such immense faith in their children to allow them to make the biggest decision of their lives themselves. It speaks volumes of their confidence in themselves as parents. A big toast to them! Cheers!!!!
I have realized that while I started this blog with the intention of making it witty & fun.....it mostly swerves off to become serious.....but what can I say.... this is what i wanted to write:)
P.S :
Today is Alex's Birthday...... Happy Birthday dear!!!
As I am about to publish this post.......this news ( http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/oct/17mattoo.htm) abt the Mattoo case has just come in. Some more refreshing change in India. Makes me really happy.
¶ 2:53 AM 0 Comments
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Class of Boys!!!!!!!!
Recently I took a look back at my life…the whole quarter of a century that it has been (actually I’m older than that but I have “poetic” license). How it came about is that I had a lot of time on my hands while I was away on this two-day training at IIM-Indore. I walked into class on Monday morning only to realize that it had happened again….yet again….one more time…. I was the only female in the entire classroom.
The realization took my thoughts back to school 10 years ago (now THAT makes me sound old). As it would happen, we all had to choose some class for SUPW (that’s short for Some Useful Periods Wasted). Some of my friends chose Dance. I quickly struck the option out or else I would have been a more renowned name than Sunny Deol in that field. Some others opted for Music. I decided to do humanity yet another favour and drop the idea since I had already been declared unfit for bathroom singing by my family. Art was another possibility if only it hadn’t been for the fact that the teacher was scared of me. I wouldn’t blame him. He’d wasted a lot of his time and effort to figure out what similarity the blot on my sheet had to the Taj Mahal. But it’s not my fault either….he shouldn’t have made me draw it 10 times.
To cut a long story short, I ended up taking a class called clay modeling. That put me in class full of boys who had been taking the same course for the past 3 years. I can still remember them jumping gleefully at the site of the tub filled with wet clay. Our teacher gave us a topic for the day and left the class to go back to the main building to escape the heat of the asbestos roofed workshop. The moment he left all hell broke loose. Apparently wild boys running behind each other with clay in their hands, chunks of clay being thrown at the ceiling fan etc were a tradition in the class. This went on till 10 minutes before the class had to end. Then everyone got to serious work. My nice friends not only finished their own work but also helped me finish mine. The routine continued for the whole year. Week after week, hands smeared to the elbow with clay, aprons posing serious challenge to moms and surf we all worked on. Some weeks I managed to get better grades than most of the boys who’d actually made most of my model…..but they didn’t mind. That’s something I’ll never see when I’m with women L
Next year, I ended up being the only girl in Dramatics Club. The club had a tough time trying to find plays with single female characters because I found it tough to play Juliet, her mother, her maid etc. It was too much of running around behind the scenes.
I went on to engineering college. There were enough girls in class I thought my lonely days were over. As luck would have it, we got divided into groups for our lab classes…and yes…..you guessed it….I was the only girl. On the eve of the lab class, I was surprised by the unexpectedly high number of telephone calls I had received while I went out for my evening walk. Excited to think that it was some secret admirer, I waited for the next call. It turned out to be my classmate who wanted to borrow my lab record so as to copy it for class next day. I asked him why he’d called me. What I gathered eventually was that the girls always prepared the lab report and the boys faithfully copied it over. It was “tradition”. I apologized to him for being unaware of this tradition and thanked him for reminding me that I had to write my lab report before I went off to search for someone in hostel who could help me out. But at least the boys in my group gave up banking on me to be ready with the record every week.
MBA was a different story altogether. I deliberately opted for classes like Operations Management, Management Science Applications etc. which involved calculations and programming just to show I was as good as the guys. I was working on the assumption that being the teacher’s pet would get me a decent grade. I managed to scrape through with a B-. I have redefined “decent grade” ever since.
That brings us to the present. I joined my job last year. We are a batch of 14 MBAs. 12 boys and 2 girls….close shave I should say.
Then I went for this training at IIM-I and to yet another class full of men.
But things have changed. Now I’m not with a class full of boys who are close friends. In fact, I’m not in a class of boys. They are sophisticated men who are senior executives in their organizations. They treat me like a lady. I too have grown up. Wherever I go I have to be conscious of my own image and that of the organization I work for.
As I ponder more, I realize something else. While in school I ended up being the only female in a class by choice, college & work were different. Then it finally hits me: It really is a man’s world. The women here have to learn to be alone.
¶ 6:21 AM 0 Comments
Recently I took a look back at my life…the whole quarter of a century that it has been (actually I’m older than that but I have “poetic” license). How it came about is that I had a lot of time on my hands while I was away on this two-day training at IIM-Indore. I walked into class on Monday morning only to realize that it had happened again….yet again….one more time…. I was the only female in the entire classroom.
The realization took my thoughts back to school 10 years ago (now THAT makes me sound old). As it would happen, we all had to choose some class for SUPW (that’s short for Some Useful Periods Wasted). Some of my friends chose Dance. I quickly struck the option out or else I would have been a more renowned name than Sunny Deol in that field. Some others opted for Music. I decided to do humanity yet another favour and drop the idea since I had already been declared unfit for bathroom singing by my family. Art was another possibility if only it hadn’t been for the fact that the teacher was scared of me. I wouldn’t blame him. He’d wasted a lot of his time and effort to figure out what similarity the blot on my sheet had to the Taj Mahal. But it’s not my fault either….he shouldn’t have made me draw it 10 times.
To cut a long story short, I ended up taking a class called clay modeling. That put me in class full of boys who had been taking the same course for the past 3 years. I can still remember them jumping gleefully at the site of the tub filled with wet clay. Our teacher gave us a topic for the day and left the class to go back to the main building to escape the heat of the asbestos roofed workshop. The moment he left all hell broke loose. Apparently wild boys running behind each other with clay in their hands, chunks of clay being thrown at the ceiling fan etc were a tradition in the class. This went on till 10 minutes before the class had to end. Then everyone got to serious work. My nice friends not only finished their own work but also helped me finish mine. The routine continued for the whole year. Week after week, hands smeared to the elbow with clay, aprons posing serious challenge to moms and surf we all worked on. Some weeks I managed to get better grades than most of the boys who’d actually made most of my model…..but they didn’t mind. That’s something I’ll never see when I’m with women L
Next year, I ended up being the only girl in Dramatics Club. The club had a tough time trying to find plays with single female characters because I found it tough to play Juliet, her mother, her maid etc. It was too much of running around behind the scenes.
I went on to engineering college. There were enough girls in class I thought my lonely days were over. As luck would have it, we got divided into groups for our lab classes…and yes…..you guessed it….I was the only girl. On the eve of the lab class, I was surprised by the unexpectedly high number of telephone calls I had received while I went out for my evening walk. Excited to think that it was some secret admirer, I waited for the next call. It turned out to be my classmate who wanted to borrow my lab record so as to copy it for class next day. I asked him why he’d called me. What I gathered eventually was that the girls always prepared the lab report and the boys faithfully copied it over. It was “tradition”. I apologized to him for being unaware of this tradition and thanked him for reminding me that I had to write my lab report before I went off to search for someone in hostel who could help me out. But at least the boys in my group gave up banking on me to be ready with the record every week.
MBA was a different story altogether. I deliberately opted for classes like Operations Management, Management Science Applications etc. which involved calculations and programming just to show I was as good as the guys. I was working on the assumption that being the teacher’s pet would get me a decent grade. I managed to scrape through with a B-. I have redefined “decent grade” ever since.
That brings us to the present. I joined my job last year. We are a batch of 14 MBAs. 12 boys and 2 girls….close shave I should say.
Then I went for this training at IIM-I and to yet another class full of men.
But things have changed. Now I’m not with a class full of boys who are close friends. In fact, I’m not in a class of boys. They are sophisticated men who are senior executives in their organizations. They treat me like a lady. I too have grown up. Wherever I go I have to be conscious of my own image and that of the organization I work for.
As I ponder more, I realize something else. While in school I ended up being the only female in a class by choice, college & work were different. Then it finally hits me: It really is a man’s world. The women here have to learn to be alone.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Mrs. Alex
“At least change your name from Mrs. Alex, you moron”. This is the comment I got when I roped in a very close friend to be Victim No.2 to read my first ever post yesterday. I smiled yet again on her exasperation at this phenomenon that has divided us recently. When she went away to Canada 3 years ago, we didn’t feel the distance so much. After all the only means of contact was the net & then it didn’t make a difference whether she was in Kottayam or in Canada. But then I went ahead and did the unthinkable. I got married!!! So this dame who could effortlessly guess the cards in my hand (partly from watching the cards I played and mostly from watching my eyes and lipsJ) when we teamed up to cheat unsuspecting guys on trains in that ever enjoyable game of 28 (a card game typically popular in Kerala) feels that she doesn’t understand me all the time anymore…..Mrs. Alex oh puhleeeze…. I can hear her in my head again.
Hey…but it’s my nom de plume…my pen name for those great blogs I plan to write (Victim No. 1, Victim No. 2 and Victim No. 3 to wipe off that smirk from their faces). But then again it’s not my pen name for it is my name. I Am Mrs. Alex. I got married about 3 months ago (my husband, by the way, is very happy to have found a wife who doesn’t remember the exact number of days we’ve been married…..but I don’t believe I forgot our 100 day anniversary….can now see friend belch in my head…don’t worry kiddo…I’m just kidding). But the fact is more than 100 days up & I still can’t get used to thinking of myself as Mrs. Alex, which is not to say that marriage hasn’t changed my life. It has but then it hasn’t changed me. I’m still the same and so find it hard to believe that the name has changed.
What makes matters complicated is that Alex and I work in the same office. Everybody knows us here and being the first “successful office romance”, I believe everyone’s updated also. So when I came back from leave after my wedding, files marked to me bore the name Smt. Alex….(Smt. ?????? I wonder if my friend would have preferred that to Mrs.). Thankfully even after a year in this office my brain is fast enough to not blurt out “Who’s Smt. Alex?”. I haven’t even sent the IOM informing about this change in name but that’s just laziness on my part (so no feminists need to contact me to tell me that I have the freedom to not change my name). It’s just that I work in a Bharat Sarkar PSU (what!!!! you hadn’t guessed as yet???) and small things like these also have long procedures which I’ll have to discover first.
But it’s easy to do it on the net. I could easily change my name to Mrs. Alex and so I did. Amuses me to think that it probably conjures up the image of a 50 year old aunty writing blogs about cooking and the likes. Who cares?
Meanwhile I just like being Mrs. Alex. It also ensures that Victim No. 1 is by default the guy who vowed to be my side through “sickness” & in health. I really am bored sick man. So he has no choice but to read.
P.S: Victim No. 3 is my poor sister who’ll now make sure never to catch me online so that I cannot send her the links to my new post. I’ll mail it to her anyway. I’m also wondering if its possible to get my mother to become Victim No. 4 without having to first explain what a “blog” is…..frankly even I don’t know.
¶ 5:11 AM 1 Comments
Hey…but it’s my nom de plume…my pen name for those great blogs I plan to write (Victim No. 1, Victim No. 2 and Victim No. 3 to wipe off that smirk from their faces). But then again it’s not my pen name for it is my name. I Am Mrs. Alex. I got married about 3 months ago (my husband, by the way, is very happy to have found a wife who doesn’t remember the exact number of days we’ve been married…..but I don’t believe I forgot our 100 day anniversary….can now see friend belch in my head…don’t worry kiddo…I’m just kidding). But the fact is more than 100 days up & I still can’t get used to thinking of myself as Mrs. Alex, which is not to say that marriage hasn’t changed my life. It has but then it hasn’t changed me. I’m still the same and so find it hard to believe that the name has changed.
What makes matters complicated is that Alex and I work in the same office. Everybody knows us here and being the first “successful office romance”, I believe everyone’s updated also. So when I came back from leave after my wedding, files marked to me bore the name Smt. Alex….(Smt. ?????? I wonder if my friend would have preferred that to Mrs.). Thankfully even after a year in this office my brain is fast enough to not blurt out “Who’s Smt. Alex?”. I haven’t even sent the IOM informing about this change in name but that’s just laziness on my part (so no feminists need to contact me to tell me that I have the freedom to not change my name). It’s just that I work in a Bharat Sarkar PSU (what!!!! you hadn’t guessed as yet???) and small things like these also have long procedures which I’ll have to discover first.
But it’s easy to do it on the net. I could easily change my name to Mrs. Alex and so I did. Amuses me to think that it probably conjures up the image of a 50 year old aunty writing blogs about cooking and the likes. Who cares?
Meanwhile I just like being Mrs. Alex. It also ensures that Victim No. 1 is by default the guy who vowed to be my side through “sickness” & in health. I really am bored sick man. So he has no choice but to read.
P.S: Victim No. 3 is my poor sister who’ll now make sure never to catch me online so that I cannot send her the links to my new post. I’ll mail it to her anyway. I’m also wondering if its possible to get my mother to become Victim No. 4 without having to first explain what a “blog” is…..frankly even I don’t know.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Will Start Blogging
I have decided to start blogging. I browsed into this guy who writes amazingly (Sidin if you must know & guessing you already did) jumped onto Silverine and then to If I Tell Ya I'll Have to Kill Ya. Have seen a coupla others I want to jump to.Can I write these names here? Am I supposed to link them through if I do. Are there any rules to the game?
In case anyone thought that the decision had anything to do with my creative genius....the actual reason is I'M BORED!!!!! I'm at work....(which is to say I'm in the office building with nothing to do). Where else did you think I read all those blogs...(yeah! but I do work in place where I can easily do that...read them I mean. Not sure whether that is a good thing or not). Then I started wondering whether if I started writing a blog of my own, would my life become more interesting? Not that my life is not interesting but whether I'll be able to notice & appreciate (in some cases) the small things that we let pass. And of course, I want it to be funny. So what do I do? Will probably walk around with a notepad like Chandler (when he was trying to prevent Ross from stealing his jokes) so that I can note down funny dialogues & somehow weave them into a blog. Don't think it'll work though but at least I'll get to use at least one of those notepads which my office so generously issues every quarter. They are generous with the stationery...can't deny that. Its only the salary that they are not very generous with :)
Methinks this has been a smart move. I've written almost half a page about not being able to write. Reminds me of this time in school when my house mistress made me "volounteer" for a small talk on any topic for the school assembly to cure me of my stage fright. Totally lost and with a single evening to prepare for it, I decided to talk about "Stage Fright" itself. Next day morning, shaking inwardly, I went and delivered the talk. Managed to get a few laughs (not at me guys....the funny lines in the speech). And guess what? It did cure me a bit of my stage fright. Hope that posting this will help me get onto blogging. At least I don't have to face a sea of faces trying to make me laugh......like on that morning....o so many years ago.
P.S: I was trying to create my profile. Cannot find the right option for “Industry”. This job is tough man!!!
¶ 2:47 AM 2 Comments
In case anyone thought that the decision had anything to do with my creative genius....the actual reason is I'M BORED!!!!! I'm at work....(which is to say I'm in the office building with nothing to do). Where else did you think I read all those blogs...(yeah! but I do work in place where I can easily do that...read them I mean. Not sure whether that is a good thing or not). Then I started wondering whether if I started writing a blog of my own, would my life become more interesting? Not that my life is not interesting but whether I'll be able to notice & appreciate (in some cases) the small things that we let pass. And of course, I want it to be funny. So what do I do? Will probably walk around with a notepad like Chandler (when he was trying to prevent Ross from stealing his jokes) so that I can note down funny dialogues & somehow weave them into a blog. Don't think it'll work though but at least I'll get to use at least one of those notepads which my office so generously issues every quarter. They are generous with the stationery...can't deny that. Its only the salary that they are not very generous with :)
Methinks this has been a smart move. I've written almost half a page about not being able to write. Reminds me of this time in school when my house mistress made me "volounteer" for a small talk on any topic for the school assembly to cure me of my stage fright. Totally lost and with a single evening to prepare for it, I decided to talk about "Stage Fright" itself. Next day morning, shaking inwardly, I went and delivered the talk. Managed to get a few laughs (not at me guys....the funny lines in the speech). And guess what? It did cure me a bit of my stage fright. Hope that posting this will help me get onto blogging. At least I don't have to face a sea of faces trying to make me laugh......like on that morning....o so many years ago.
P.S: I was trying to create my profile. Cannot find the right option for “Industry”. This job is tough man!!!
