Starry starry night

The plus point of watching a late night movie show is the fact that by the time one gets back, all is silent, still, enigmatic, mysterious, anonymous, magical and private. Before I sound like I wrote some book like ‘7 adjectives in 7 seconds’, let me elaborate. Rarely is it that the street lights happen to be mysteriously off even though there is no power cut. Seldom is it that apart from the artificial lighting (including nearby construction sites) being out, it also happens to be a moonless night due to the thin waning crescent moon. The sky right now, seems to be completely devoid of pollution. The occasional clouds floating by seem more like a bluish grey canopy near the horizon, resembling a distant mountain range. They in fact cover some of the inky darkness of the night and give it an even more surreal look. I can see all the twinkly constellations scintillate clearly. The big dipper, usually distinctly visible to the eye, has a starry blanket in the background tonight with zillions of stars peeping down at me. Star clusters can be made out without any effort. Some of the planets like Venus and Saturn are even more clearer than ever. Then there are the stars which look like they are winking at me. The whole creation of the cosmos looks so fragile that I am scared to even breathe, lest I blow the gossamer-like ethereal charm away.

Everywhere I look at the sky, it seems to be impregnated with stars and stars and more stars. Did I realise earlier that the sky is so full of those tiny little diamonds up above the world, so high? May be yes. But only as a subconscious memory of a nursery rhyme. No planetariums or artificial attempts can ever capture or recreate the mesmerising beauty of the sky tonight. So captivating did the sky appear, that I lost all sense of time, place or motion. I may have stood awestruck and gaping for several minutes before I realised that the earth does move. And when it does, it plucks ever so slightly at the corners of the sky and makes the sparkling veil that she wears, slither just a teeny weeny unobtrusive bit.

The star spangled night sky has put on a great show right now and I can only give it a standing ovation. With a spellbinding performance like this, I sure hope for an encore soon.



Free as a bird

This independence day is not going to be like most independence days I have had. I am not going to be lined up in school prayer, later indulging in mass throwing of the distributed, hardened ladoos on the blackboard, which are so hard that they stick to it, instead of crumbling. This year, I am not going to be dressed in Khaadi, roaming around the empty Lutyen’s Delhi, looking for good photo ops. This year, (though I miss that place), I am not celebrating Independence day at the Indian embassy of a foreign land, where I try to make some sense of the soft, lustrous, red petals of rose floating around the tricolour. This year, I shall just relax. May be entertain a guest or two. May be clink a glass or two. May be catch up on a movie. May be shop for myself. May be, just be. Free as a bird.

Hope we all have freedom. From our own thoughts which bind us down in so many ways.

Free as a bird,
it’s the next best thing to be.
Free as a bird.
– Beatles (Free as a bird)


My name is Anthony Gonzalves

Spoiler warning – plot revealed

Though Arshad Warsi kept uttering “My name is Anthony”, he may have wanted to utter “Mein Anthony Gonzalves nahi ban-na chahta” (I dont want to be Anthony Gonzalves) instead, as the first scene in the movie “Anthony Kaun hai“. Firstly he doesn’t even get to utter mouthfuls like “You see the whole country of the system is juxtapositioned by the haemoglobin in the atmosphere because you are a sophisticated rhetorician intoxicated by the exuberance of your own verbosity”. Plus there are people after his life because of the filmy name, which happens to belong to a journalist wanted by the local goon! He might as well have kept his name as Munnabhai. Talking of names, Arshad Warsi, is given a unique name “champ” (sounds like a dog), aka Champak Chaudhry, who lands up in one soup after another with the final soup being almost getting killed by a hitman. Like an innocent lamb, he unfolds his story to the hitman Master Madan (Sanjay Dutt) who has a propensity to shoot ppl as casually as swatting mosquitoes.

The story starts with a lot of twists in the tale. As filmy as it could get, I actually thought towards the end that Champ would be the real Anthony and would have been fibbing all this while to Madan. Champ is a local goon in love with a dame, but since there’s a love triangle here, Champ lands up in jail due to the efforts of his rival, just before he marries his lady love. In jail he meets another goon (Raghubir Yadav) who has a beautiful daughter and diamonds worth a gazzilion. Champ helps him out, falls for the daughter, gets the diamonds thru a series of twists and complications (including a change of ID aka Anthony) and just when he’s nearing his journey, he gets cornered by a hitman who listens to his story since he has nothing else to do, till he gets the supari to kill Anthony.

All in all the dialogues are quite entertaining (for eg. the dig on Air India), songs are REALLY bad (what can one expect from a-song-a-day-reshamiya), the dances are equally repelling, nubile nymphets showing skin are ample, Sanjay dutt and Mungeri Lal (Raghubir yadav) are wasted. It’s an out and out Arshad warsi movie. I like the way they have 2-3 styles of presenting the same shot. Anusha Dandekar can obviously not act. Minisha Lamba pouts and tries to look masoom in the whole movie. And yes, I like Sanjay Dutt’s car too. And Ravi Vaswani brings back the good old ‘Jaane bhee do yaaron’ memories. A good entertainer and yes, though you don’t need to leave your brain behind at home to find it funny, you can shut it off during the scenes where Raghubir Yadav does magic.


DBM XII

The Delhi blogger’s meet (XIIth) concluded on 29th July’06 in Cafe turtle, Khan market. Some highlights :

1. Cafe turtle is a cosy place (read it’s good for twosomes or even threesomes but not 22somes).
2. I had made reservations for 20 ppl which was double the number I had expected to turn up and the eventual number overshot even that. As they say, the merrier it was.
3. After making the reservations I was informed that the cafe closes at half day (read 7:30 pm) but nothing could be done at that point of time. “Shaadi cards already distributed” kind of situation. Though we have had the experience of changing the “shaadi venue” just before the “pheras” earlier too.
4. The organiser who got us to hold DBM XII got stuck up in a crisis at his workplace. Eventually he never turned up. Do you ever remember being in school and a certain teacher not turning up for class? How noisy was the place? How was the organised chaos with no agenda on hand? I wouldn’t be wrong in saying that we resembled a bunch of school kids creating ruckus. We even had backbenchers!
5. Some old timers came after a long long time. It was like the DBM’s of yore all over again.
6. There were bloggers, former journalists, future journalists and even theatre artists. Thankfully no sting operations.
7. The ppl at Cafe turtle surely got boggled when I made reservations. I spelled out “Delhi bloggers meet” for them because they just couldn’t understand the words I was uttering. Eventually I got a call from them confirming the “Daily bogglers meet”.
8. During the round of introductions, where everyone was supposed to start with “I am xxx and I blog at yyy”, the restless mind-boggled waiter silently shimmied on to the terrace like Jeeves and introduced himself in a jiffy – “I am Jason and I am here to take your order”. Do I need to add, he was the most sought after member of the evening. Oh and Nikhil ordered himself yet another fan, but this time it was the sorts that creates a current of air.
9. We had our own share of celebs in this meet. “NDTV called me””CNN IBN asked me to express my views” were very common phrases uttered quite frequently. We will soon have our own P3 coverage too. :p. Unfortunately, this time our cameraman was busy taking footage of the food instead.
10. The back benchers were having a mini blog meet of their own. Some updates anyone? :).
11. Masala chais, coffees, cakes and pastas. These were a few of the favourite things that the bloggers ordered. Who says you need booze to make you feel like you are having fun?
12. I spotted “Lazy lunch” and “lazy pasta” in the menu while Lazylump spotted “Fairy cake” in the menu!
13. I finally got to meet toinks after 3 years of virtual interaction! The grand mommie of rediffblogs is onto blogspot now.
14. At 7:25pm a bill was duly waved under my nose. All and sundry paid for their own consumption and some more (read tax).
15. Those who were still interested in hanging around moved over to the Yellow brick road .
16. A good turnout and a good funfilled DBM!

 


Moonlight sonata 5


My hands taper gently and effortlessly. My feet come into motion ever so lightly as if things work on feather touch. I glide as we dance to the symphony of the magical music that we make together. I get intoxicated with the handsome facade and the smoothness of noiseless movement. The gibbous moon stares at us from above as we waltz together, the waltz turning allegro at times. But stopping gracefully was never a problem. Not a sweat on my brow, not a hair out of place. The litheness is remarkable. My head is still giddy with the vitality. There’s a jig in my step and a song in my heart.

If I can nestle comfortably in the lap after a long day, get wisps of my hair blown out of my eyes, get mesmerized by the dazzle of lights when we are together – why would I even agree with a darling friend of mine who insists that a brand new car should be treated like a newly wedded bride? My brand new car oozes gentlemanliness.