COMMANDMENTS NOT RESOLUTIONS

Tis the time of year when resolutions get made (and broken) but till then, here are some commandments for those of you who are married and for the other fortunate non-married ones as well.

Merry X'Mas and A Happy New Year Too.

Enjoy.

Vish

Commandment 1.

Marriages are made in heaven. But so again, are thunder and lightning.

Commandment 2.

If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every word you say,

talk in your sleep.

Commandment 3.

Marriage is grand -- and divorce is at least 100 grand!

Commandment 4.

Married life is very frustrating.

In the first year of marriage, the man speaks and the woman listens.

In the second year, the woman speaks and the man listens.

In the third year, they both speak and the neighbors listen.

Commandment 5.

When a man opens the door of his car for his wife,

you can be sure of one thing:

Either the car is new or the wife is.

Commandment 6.

Marriage is when a man and woman become as one;

the trouble starts when they try to decide which one.

Commandment 7.

Before marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you said.

After marriage, he will fall asleep before you finish.

Commandment 8.

Every man wants a wife who is beautiful, understanding, economical, and a good cook.

But the law allows only one wife.

Commandment 9.

Every woman wants a man who is handsome, understanding, economical and a considerate lover, but again, the law allows only one husband.

Commandment 10.

Man is incomplete until he marries. After that, he is finished.

Bonus Commandment story.

A long married couple came upon a wishing well.

The wife leaned over, made a wish and threw in a penny.

The husband decided to make a wish too.

But he leaned over too much, fell into the well, and drowned.

The wife was stunned for a moment but then smiled, "It really works!"

KHOYA FRICKIN CHAND

Hi. Me again.

I just remembered something and thought i'd share it with you guys and gals (you have to be politically correct now-a-days you see)

Anyway as i mentioned earlier the movies here in UAE are released with both Arabic and English sub-titles. (Some English movies even have French ones so you can imagine how much 'fun' it is to watch a movie with half the screen filled with scrawlings)

Anyway I went to watch Khoya Khoya Chand the other day with some friends. Initially we were distracted and that distraction quickly turned to surprise and shock as we began to read the sub-titles. From what I understand, the sub-titles should be explaining the scene while trying to remain as close to the spoken word as possible. In this case the person doing the sub-titles must have been very angry on the day he sat typing.

The characters would be saying dialogues like, "Batameez, tum apne aap ko kya samajte ho?" while the translation would read "Fucking Bastard, who the fuck do you think you are ?". Even benign ones like "Naa, tum yeh film nahi kar payoge" became "No, you are not fucking fit to do this fucking film"

After a couple of the F words flashed across the screen, I thought i'd count how many and began but quickly gave up when i reached 18. And we were barely 30 min into the movie.

Granted that the movie is about loss, pain, despair etc but none of the characters seemed angry enough to warrant such liberal interpretations of their dialogues.

Does anyone check them before they are released? Just wondering....

And speaking of sub-titles, when they try to sub-title the songs, well sometimes it can be quite hilarious too...

I can't quite get it as yet.

In Jab We Met, a sad song is playing in the background as Kareena gets ditched by her boyfriend. They translate the full song hilariously and if that was not enough, at the end of the song there is a passage when the singer is singing the raagas. Pa Ni Sa Re Ga Ga Ma... Ni Ni Re Ga Pa and so on....

I looked down, and what do you know??? The english sub-title read Do Do Re Fa Fa Me... Re So So La La Ti

Unintentionally distracting and funny.

And I can't read Arabic but I managed to see that it's version of the sub-title too was keeping up.

I wonder what is Do Re Me Fa in Arabic ?

A Gift Of Gratitude

• Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose. ~ Tennessee Williams

I have been thinking long and hard about this post.


Initially I thought that this was a private matter and thus not necessary to be published in the blog. But as G.B. Stern said, “Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone.” Esp when there is already so little genuine goodness to be found in the world.

Faithful readers of my blog will know my friend, Ms. Jashoda Chettri from Sikkim.

Apart from being one of my biggest fans she is also the source of great encouragement and has, at many times, been instrumental in overcoming the writer’s block that seems to settle on me from time to time. Furthermore she has also managed to get my humble blog published in the newspapers.

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is 'thank you', it will be enough. - Meister Eckhart


Recently, I happened to be quite tactless when corresponding with her and I would have understood if she would have been furious. However she managed to see the positive side in even that gaffe and that just amazes me.


One can pay back the loan of gold, but one dies forever in debt to those who are kind. - Malayan Proverb


I am not perfect (seriously) and I can be quite quick to judge others. So it constantly amazes me when others surprise me with behaviour which is quite the opposite.

It cannot be easy for them.

So for all that and more I want to take this opportunity to say a humble “Thank You”

You are a wonderful person Jashoda, and deserve nothing but happiness.

Thank You once again.

A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked. ~ Bernard Meltzer

THE KING IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE KING.

CONDOLENCE:

Last week was a sad day in comic land. Personally I am not a big fan of comics and absolutely hate slapstick, which comics by the very virtue of their medium usually have to be. Most of the popular ones irritate me.

Garfield; too smug, Wizard of Id; repetitive, Andy Capp; 1 dimentional, Non Sequitar: Too long (anything with over 50 words is a story not a cartoon strip) and so on and so forth.

However there are 2 that I absolutely adore. Calvin & Hobbs and Dilbert.

Last week Dilbert's Pointy-Haired Boss made his most solemn announcement - Asok the Intern is dead. The IIT educated supergeek with telekinetic powers, who charmed millions of readers with his innocence and geekiness, is dead.

"I am sad to report that Asok the Intern died during a test of our moon shuttle prototype," the evil cartoon boss announced. "Before he left, he put a sample of his DNA in a jar," the Pointy-Haired Boss added. "His plan is to reincarnate into his own clone."

That however, initially seemed doubtful, as Carol, the crazy secretary, had used the jar to store her candy.

Before he was sent to space on a prototype shuttle with a co-pilot who just 'happenned' to be a little bit 'grim', Asok had made his first appearance in March 1996 seven years after Dilbert was launched, and even though Dilbert's creator Scott Adams has never ever mentioned his nationality, in the website’s character sketch he does mention that “Asok is common name in India where it is spelt Ashok”.

Not only was Asok a geek he was utterly lovable as even the vilest characters in only Dilbert can be.

Today morning he has been cloned/reincarnated and is feeling a little nuts and you have to check out the strip to find out why exactly, or should I say why literally. Suffice it to say that the little dusky Indian intern has become caramelized, sorry, Americanized.

So Asok is Dead. Long live Snickersok

Speaking of cartoons, the animated movie is big business in Hollywood.

Shrek, Toy Story, Ratatouille etc have made huge bucks and so why should India lag behind. In the beginning the ‘animated’ movies were downright embarrassing and looked like they were sketched (drawn is too strong a word) by children. Initially underestimated as children’s movies the success of Bal Hanuman and Bal Ganesh and Koi Mil Gaya and Krrish (which were a success only due to the kids dragging the parents to the theatres) Bollywood has now woken up to the potential of animated movies.

Yashraj Films had teamed up with the biggest player in this genre, Walt Disney Studios and is making the first big budget feature length film titled Roadside Romeo.

The trailors of it are out and it is about a dog (voiced in true Hollywood tradition by a ‘star’ Saif Ali Khan in this case) who wants to be an actor. The clip is about his audition for a movie and like the proverbial hindi actor, Romeo dances, sings and recites soliloquies - both dramatic and comedic. The animation seems to be of very high quality and Saif’s unique Winchester School accented voice is quite apt to give character to the dog who is quite aptly named Romeo. It doesn’t hurt that current squeeze Kareena is voicing the canine love interest.

I don’t know how the preview was released in India but here in the UAE it also had English subtitles. And therein lies the interesting part as the English subtitles were not only different but in fact classic Hollywood quotes. Check out the difference between what Romeo says and what the subtitles read.

Romeo: Mere paas bungla ha gaadi hai bank balance hai, tumare pass kya hai ? (Amitabh Bachchan - Deewar)
Subtitle : I could have been someone, I too could have been a contender… (Marlon Brando – On the Waterfront)

Romeo: Senorita, bade bade desho mein aise chhoti chhoti baatein hoti rehti hain… (SRK – DDLJ)
Subtitle: Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are gonna get… (Tom Hanks – Forest Gump)

Romeo: Kitne aadni the? Sardar do. Phirbhi waapas aagaye… Khali haat .. (Gabbar – Sholay)
Subtitle: You want the truth? Yes. No. You can’t handle the truth. (Jack Nicholson – A Few Good Men)

I can’t quite get the reason for that but I am sure the international market is also being targeted. Let’s see how that turns out when the movie releases in Summer 2008. Maybe it is the time for Bollywood to finally emerge as a global player.

More Soon.

Hi,

Thanks for voting and do keep at it (by the way my best friend claims that most of the votes in so far have been by either his wife or himself)

I have been travelling all this week and so have been unable to sit down and blog even though i did manage to catch Saawariya and my review will follow shortly.

Meanwhile i did find a wonderfully caustic yet entertaining article about reality show judges and as usual i had to share it with you.

Enjoy.

Vish.


TTTT - Their Turn To Talk

A new species has established itself on our TV screens. This particular genus preens, struts, weeps, sulks and displays its hairy chest quite frequently. It is a diverse group but, cast as it is in this particular role, manages to behave with a degree of predictability. The judges of reality shows are a bona fide breed, having had enough time to grow in number and establish a pattern of behaviour.

The group today boasts of people as illustrious (and otherwise) as Javed Akhtar, Jeetendra, Himesh Reshammiya, Bappi Lahiri, Sonu Nigam, Abhijeet, Farah Khan, Shiamak Davar, Shekhar Suman, Alisha Chinai and Navjot Singh Sidhu, to name a few.

That list also includes Anu Maliik, who is one of a kind and needs separate mention. If not a major star from yesteryears, the celebrity judge is either a minor star in a major category (fringe actors such as Malaika Arora Khan, Isha Koppikar) or a major star in a minor one (singing, music direction, choreography, television).

Several subspecies have sprung up among the judges.

We have the “Chortling Cheerleader”, whose ranks include Archana Puran Singh and Sidhu.

Then there is the “Strutting Self-Promoter” who spends as much time glorifying himself as in pronouncing judgement. Maliik is the undisputed champion of this category, although Reshammiya might disagree and spend the next 15 minutes telling us why.

There is the “Passive Mutterer” led by Udit Narayan and the “Emotional Embracer” exemplified by Ismail Darbar and Abhijeet.

Nigam brings up the ranks of the “Always Agonized Expert”, Arora Khan spearheads the “Pouty Pandit” category, flashing eyes and legs at the audience, while Bappi plays the “Beached Whale in Bliss” (but then again he does this all the time).

Judging has two distinct elements—to judge contestants and for judges to project themselves as stars. The latter phenomenon produces a parallel reality show, where the judges put themselves on display, strutting about in resplendent plumage.

For, in reality, the reality talent show contains an arena within an arena. The judges watch the contestants and, in turn, are watched by a larger audience. There is a studio audience, but it is almost always one that has no will of its own and exists to wave banners and dance badly. The judges, in effect, become contestants and strive to outdo each other in terms of gaining audience attention. The stakes are high, being a judge catapults a Name into a Face; everyone today knows what Ismail Darbar or Abhijeet look like. In many ways, just as contestants are small-town dreamers waiting to be transported to a magical world of 70mm fantasy, the judges themselves are awaiting metamorphosis from being sort-of-somebodies to bona fide targets for autograph seekers.

MAKE US MAKE IT BETTER FOR YOU

We are constantly striving to improve the content of this blog. I am very thankful (not to mention surprised, pleasantly i may add) that so many of you spend time logging in and checking out my random musings on this blog (when infact you could/should actually be working).

However i would really appreciate it if you could just click on what topics you would like to see on the blog by voting in the poll (see top-left-hand corner). Multiple choices are also permitted.

Go On... Do the right thing...

And by the way, Thanks too... for everything.

Vish

OM SHAH-RUKH OM and SNOOREWARIYA

This blog has always been about posting anything randomly interesting. As the head-line and tag-line says, this page is just about being a comma in our hectic lives, a pause before we get back to the rat race. Nothing profound… (not that you’d know it with some of the topics).

Anyway the point is that it is not ONLY about me and my views (though that too does sometimes seem like the case). I just try to be a medium for interesting (hopefully) bits of random articles.

If anyone of you follow news from Bollywood (and in this case even if you don’t) then you must have been swamped recently with the over hype of Saawariya and Om Shanti Om in the media. I haven’t managed to watch Saawariya as yet so I can't personally compare the two.

Shyam Upadhyay, a very good friend of mine from College and a cine-buff & writer himself however sent me his views on them. With his permission (as I don’t want to be sued for plagiarism) I am reprinting his email here with my own inputs marked in red.

Enjoy and if any of you have other views on them then do feel free to write in to me at vishalsubba@hotmail.com . We will try and include your views too.

Ciao & Enjoy.

On Saawariya…..

“I have been very cagey about SL Bhansali and his grandeur, opulence what have you. The last film I liked from him was Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam- it had a soul - everything after that was mere perfection in execution- no soul. I walked into Sawariya with a lot of trepidation expecting to be assaulted by perfection, more perfection, rich colors, la-la land if you will. I did get all of that for sure- but to be fair to Bhansali- his opulence this time around was warranted. It is a dream-like setting for almost a fable of unrequited love. To me the beauty in the settings cancelled out the fundamental sadness of the story- and that is always a good thing. It did not happen with Black for me- it did with Sawariya….I actually liked the movie. The 2 star kids- are clearly better than lots of the star kid debuts we have seen in a long time….Ranbir has a boyish charm that I liked and Sonam has wonderfully expressive eyes. Do they act well?? Its too early to judge….but it did not feel like they will turn out very badly in the long run….Sonam though can do a little better by giggling lesser. Zohra Sehgal was an absolute delight…there are moments in the film that stand out- the scene when they meet for the first time; jump around water puddles and talk inane stuff, the last sequence when Ranbir walks away, Zohra’s singing, the Mughal- e- Azam encounter….it does not compare to the magic of HDCC; but this was definitely a better effort. The film is almost poetic- but is uneven as one of the reviewers put it so well. Salman Khan was a total let down- and amidst all the perfection – he could have done with a shave and lesser facial hair in his brief appearances. Rani in the role of the narrator was adequate. The music for such films needs to be memorable- and in my mind except for the title song everything else was very pedestrian and that is my big grouse with Sawariya……

I will write about Saawariya soon but even before I have watched it I am getting pissed off at SLB for acting like a petulant child and lashing out at all critics for having an ulterior motive. Khalid Mohammed (a flop director of movies like Tezheeb and Silsilay (not Silsila) who now writes 'personally motivated' reviews for the Hindustan Times in puns which he thinks are fun.) and Taran Adarsh (a wannabe intellectual writer who reviews for IndiaFM and who incidentally was deported from Dubai 2 yrs back during one of the Award ceremonies for trying to ‘rub himself against’ a Filipino maid in his hotel) are critics who are not worth taking seriously or even paying attention to but when almost every other critic (even respected ones like Raja Sen) slams your movie then it does help to turn inwards and analyze if something did go wrong. Instead SLB is so shrouded in his self perpetuated aura of perfection that he cannot stomach anyone else challenging it. Grow up already.

Om Shanti Om…….

The tribute to the 70s era seems more like an MTV spoof….I was not born during the Rajesh Khanna period- but I cant remember people wearing sideburns and garish clothes so uniformly in films from that era. Yes- the stars did- but not everyone else. Farah Khan has her own sensibilities- and she pulls off Round 1, pre intermission with a lot of panache- the jokes, the styling, tributes to some of our stars et al. My problem really started with Round II which is post interval- where the film looses its semblance of being a spoof and takes on a Subhash Ghai kind of feel. If you watch closely- Mr Ghai always made films that progressively got terrible after intermission. While Farah may want to believe that this is very much in line with her tribute approach with OSO- my sense is that she is plagued with the same problem as Mr Ghai. Deepika was eye candy- very confident for her first film- but so were the star kids in Sawariya. Quite honestly- I don’t know what to make of SRK- he was good in Chak De- here he was who he is – SRK the star- he looked so comfortable in the second half because it was probably him……and you know I have always had a problem with that. Shreyas as always was consistent. The music of OSO though has the right mood and every song does justice to the plot.
Overall though- OSO did not work for me. If the second half carried on in the same vein- maybe it would have- the first true Hindi cinema spoof- alas it did not. Khalid Mohammed saying Arjun Rampal was first rate as the devious villain….was a rude joke on our sensibilities. For a non-starter like Arjun; even a tolerable performance seems to warrant a first rate review.

For me OSO was just about average. There are just 3 reasons to watch OSO.

1. Subash Ghai in an (unintentionally) hilarious cameo as himself, where the poor man seems to be oblivious to the fact that he is being mocked not celebrated.

2) SRK in a side splitting scene, dressed as a south Indian cowboy, Quick Gun Murugan, spouting “Mind It I Say” and fighting a stuffed tiger doll even as he puns every possible pun on the word pussy & cat.

3. Akshay Kumar as himself in an imagined future flick called Return to Khiladi firing a gun from and with (there is no other way that trigger could have been squeezed) his genitals.

Over to you readers now.

To read Raja Sen’s incisive review of OSO click here http://www.rediff.com/movies/2007/nov/09oso.htm
To read Raja Sen’s brilliant review of Saawariya click here http://www.rediff.com/movies/2007/nov/08saawariya.htm
To read Taran Adarsh’s hyper-bole review of OSO click here http://www.indiafm.com/movies/review/12950/index.html
To read Taran Adarsh’s confused review of Saawariya click here http://www.indiafm.com/movies/review/12780/index.html
To read Khalid Mohammed’s punny review of OSO click here http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=4c53bac6-5c3d-4821-baa2-230c15d5569b&&Headline=Review%3a+EMOm+Shanti+Om%2fEM
To read Khalid Mohammed’s jealous review of Saawariya click here http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=fef9bb56-b22b-4bb9-96da-6f99322ec9a5&&Headline=Review%3a+EMSaawariya%2fEM

THERE IS A WAY TO BE GOOD AGAIN


In the truest sense of the word, you can say that I am the ideal audience.
Be it a movie or a book or even just a cartoon strip in the daily newspaper, I get totally involved. I laugh, snigger, cry, sing along… you name it… I do it. As a result I am more forgiving towards even amateur works (as long as they entertain) as compared to pretentiously highbrow pseudo intellectual crap (read: Arundhati Roy)

I can read Kafka with equal delight as I can a Sidney Sheldon or enjoy The Godfather as much as a Sarkar.

Recently I read The Kite Runner by Khalid Hoseini.

It is the winner of the Penguin Readers Choice Award but surprisingly nothing else.

No Pulitzer’s or Bookers etc. The book is widely loved and the movie of the same directed by Marc Foster (Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland) is coming out in December (it was supposed to release in Nov but the 2 kids playing the principal characters had to be relocated to UAE for their safety as the rape scenes could have gotten them ostracized and even harmed in Afghanistan).

One reason for its omission from major western awards maybe is its tendency, as one of the reviews put it, to not be afraid to use every method to tug at your heartstrings. In other words it isn’t constipated enough for the pseudo intellectual shrinks to find layers of imaginary meaning. Aaah Yes, and it is also melodramatic, they said.

The truth is that the book is as Asian as you can possibly get.

As much as we try to ape the west externally, in our hearts and souls we are inherently native.

We enjoy skimming over news about Britney and Brangelina but it takes a SRK or AbhiAsh to get us really reading.
We may hum and sing along to the Madonnas and Mariahs but it takes Alisha and Kajra Re to get us dancing in the aisles.
And the only reason we don’t have a Justin here is simply because in Asia, Sexy never went away.

Like Bollywood everything in Asia is heightened. Emotions, Actions, Characters are all larger than life.

We dress in more colours than the rainbow, our food can blow the taste buds off almost all non natives, and most of our festivals can seem like a higgledy-piggledy mess to the uninitiated.

Take the 3 most important events of a person’s life and compare how they differ: Birth, Marriage & Death.

In the west celebration as well as mourning is characterized by restraint, while in Asia it is accompanied by lots of either dancing or shouting or crying or music or beating of chests or in some cases all of them together.

So why do we base our appreciation of local cinema & literature on western notions of what it should conform to?

Cinema & Literature while universal in its appeal is actually very local and cultural in its foundations and it has to be so, or else all movies and books would be the same homogenized version.
If Asians are so demonstrative of their emotions then it is only natural that their Cinema, Literature etc will also be reflective of the same. Why should that be looked down upon?

If The Kite Runner has a moral redemption and makes you reach for your kerchief like all folk tales then why should we apologise for it.

I recently read 2 novels on Bombay, Sacred Games by Virkam Chandra and Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts.

The former was appreciated but never really got its due because it was unabashedly colloquial. Shantaram meanwhile was lapped up by the media (the Indian contingent following the western lead stopped just short of comparing it to the Mahabharat) and is even being made into a major Hollywood movie. To be fair, it was an engrossing read but which reader can honestly say that they didn’t find the principal character, Karla, to be a pretentious bitch. She spends most parts of the novel spouting inane (here comes the dreaded phrase again) pseudo-intellectual crap. Infact her character would fit right into any of the numerous daily soap-operas. Yet because it is about a ‘foreigner’ who is ‘experiencing’ India, it becomes the must read book of the season.

I have to confess that I never bothered to read a book I didn’t enjoy (except if you count textbooks in school).

And I can honestly say that I could not stand to complete reading any of Salman Rushdie’s books and it had nothing to do with his religious or political leanings. It’s just that I didn’t want to plod through it just so that I could make conversation at parties. It was quite another matter that I managed to distract the conversation at the same parties, quite simply by admitting that I hadn’t read the book. Irony anyone?

The Kite Runner is simple in both its style and format. My English teacher in school always impressed upon us that good writing is one which can say something in short, simple words. Advice, which I have to admit, I myself do not often follow but it does not stop me from appreciating it in others. Hoseini's language is simple & wholesome and yet it evokes images that some authors struggle to do with long tirades. It begins with the tag line of the novel which is short, succinct and doesn’t have a single word a 5 year old can’t understand:

“There Is A Way To Be Good Again”.

After the young characters, Amir & Hassan, grow up on a diet of dubbed western movies, one fine day the realization dawns on them that “John Wayne didn’t speak Farsi and he wasn’t Iranian. He was American, …” and later a wise old man tells a character that “Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.”

When asked to go retrieve the falling Kite by Amir, Hassan the hare lipped and loyal servant says, “Amir agha, For You A Thousand Times Over”.

"For You A Thousand Times Over"

Many chapters, incidents and a lifetime later in another continent on another cloudy day a grown up Amir tells another little boy “For You A Thousand Times Over” and brings the novel a full circle.

Now if you are not moved a little by this gem of a novel then you don’t need to check out another book, you need to check your humanity.

In this fast paced world even avid readers sometimes don’t have time to sit down and really read. If you haven’t read this (or any book in a long time), try and pick it up soon. Believe me, there is a way to be good again.

As winter approaches with its cold misty tentacles, grab a cup of Darjeeling, snuggle under a warm blanket and lose yourself in this heart warming tale of paradise found, lost and regained. Move over Milton.

Hiya,

I thought i wouldnt be blogging till after Diwali but came across an article about Indian Idol Prashant Tamang's visit to Sikkim. Nice witty article by Mr. Daniel but the thing that caught my eye is the pasty makeup on Prashant's face. I know stage requires a little more makeup (to make sure that you don't get lost on the huge stage) but poor Prashant does not look like he has been made up; he looks like he has been painted. Enjoy!

And once again, Happy Diwali!

Vish

Gangtok welcomes Prashant Tamang, Indian Idol
Text and photographs: Vaihayasi Pande Daniel

\

Monday was a dry day in Gangtok.
But alcohol was hardly required to buoy the local spirits.
There was a gigantic buzz in this prosperous hill station, the capital of Sikkim located at about 4,700 ft, up in the Himalayas. Indian Idol Prashant Tamang was paying his very first visit to the Darjeeling-Sikkim area since winning his national title.
It was an enormous moment of Nepali pride.

with Pawan Chamling, the Chief Minister of Sikkim

Tamang may hail from Darjeeling, but is a Nepali like much of the population of the mountainous state of Sikkim and massive Indian Idol voting -- organised with fierce regional loyalty -- in every town and hamlet in Sikkim, in part by Sikkim's Nepali chief minister Pawan Kumar Chamling, helped propel Tamang towards the crown.
Tamang had now come to say dhanyavad.

The newly-minted star had not yet been to Darjeeling and could not go on this trip because his organisers anticipated problems there after the flare-up post his win.
All of Gangtok's picturesque, winding, up-and-down roads led to Paljor Stadium where Tamang was to perform at 5 pm under the shadow of the snowy Mount Kangchenjunga.

Stylishly dressed youth from all income groups and lots of middle-aged and elderly people -- even a few monks -- poured down the roads towards the stadium. Posters welcoming Tamang dangled from every electricity pole. Tickets -- for Rs 150 -- were being sold at each street corner.

Hundreds gathered, from hours before, outside the gates of Gangtok's best hotel Nor-Khill, where he was staying. Once a royal lodge belonging to Sikkim's King, and now people were waiting for a glimpse of new royalty -- a simple Nepali police constable, now turned a singing hero.

Inside the hotel and outside his room, aunties, uncles, cousins, wee kids, students, friends, reporters from Darjeeling's Nepali papers, acquaintances (some of them as distant as you can get), hotel guests, including a few foreign tourists, hung around waiting for even the smallest glimpse of Tamang as he bounced energetically between rooms, being extremely polite and accommodating allowing photos, hugs and handshakes by the score, much to the exasperation of his handlers.

with fellow Idol finalist Charu

Tamang is a gentle, shy, and modest young man; very likeable. He is soft-spoken and extremely courteous to his fans and admirers and repeatedly acknowledges their support that got him his win.

One sari-clad auntie-type character, staying in the hotel, having come from Mumbai, sat on a sofa nearby declaring over and over again loudly and excitedly like a child, "Kabhi humaare naseeb mein nahin tha ki hum Indian Idol se mile. Aur idhar aake humko ye mauka mila!" (We never thought we'd have the luck to meet the Indian Idol, and got the chance after coming here) She gushingly praised her good luck about 50 times, while she waited to get a picture of Tamang.

A young man, accompanied by a female friend, who had studied with Tamang patiently waited outside his door to meet him. He said he had always gone to hear Tamang sing when he gave concerts in Darjeeling, and loved his voice. An English tourist -- and mum to a few brats -- delightedly chuckled at the fact that her boys had infiltrated Tamang's room.

Loads of his relatives, dressed in the finest saris and Nepali outfits, had journeyed from Darjeeling, 94 km away, to congratulate him. Tamang was meeting his mom Rupa and pretty sister Archana for the first time since his win. And it was an emotional moment.

As it edged beyond 5 pm, and the crowds of friends and well-wishers outside his door swelled, the atmosphere got a bit more electric as thousands of fans waiting for him across the road at the stadium began chanting "Pra-shaaant, Pra-shaaant!"
It began to rain and the energetic bellowing only grew louder. Tamang was bundled across the road to the stadium at lightning speed by his minders and an exuberant bunch of police officers, as eager crowds chased him. A deafening roar went up in the air as he made his entry. A ceremonial white silk scarf was wrapped around his shoulders, a Nepali hat propped on his head and the chief minister personally welcomed him. Together they released his thank you album, Dhanyavad.

Tamang quickly launched into a Nepali song. The surging, ecstatic crowd of about 20,000 went hysterical with glee. Tamang has a very folksy, lilting voice. You can almost visualise the countryside -- green fields, tea gardens and mountains of Darjeeling -- in the happy Nepali song he croons.

Hot cups of coffee were passed around. Bikas, minding the coffee machine, a Bengali hailing from Sikkim, said, "I must have voted for him on SMS at least 1,000 times! I wanted him to win because he is from here." Bikas is very happy to be here and hear his hero sing.

Young Kuber, a local restaurant owner, explained that he had minded an SMS-stall during the Indian Idol campaign. "I manned about 15 cellphones. I must have voted myself over 50 times! Every one from 5-year-old children and up voted for him. We had booths set up in 200 places in Gangtok alone, and then in every village. Grass-root people as well as the wealthy all turned out to vote for him. A poor man even sold his cow so he could vote!"

Tamang, who shared the stage with Charu, a fellow Indian Idol contestant who had accompanied him to Gangtok, sang for 3 hours through bouts of cold rain, cheerfully, playing to the crowd and belting out top Hindi numbers as well as local songs. The crowd lapped it up the cheers, never diminishing till the end. The evening was probably Gangtok's proudest moment since footballer Bhaichung Bhutia returned home.

FOR YOU A THOUSAND TIMES OVER

Hey Guys,

I am sorry but have been Crazy/Busy with work and havent been able to reply to mails or even blog. I will do so as soon as Diwali gets over.

I also just completed reading "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini, which incidentally was my B'day gift (hint hint) from and highly recommended by the immoral Ms. Tashi (immoral becoz she for some reason does not like to be called Moral)

It is definitely one of the finds of the year. If you have read it you will have got the title of this post and if you havent read it as yet, then run out and grab a copy. Guaranteed to make even the stoniest (HRH) heart melt.

Will post my views about in the next blog.

Meanwhile here's wishing you a very Happy & Prosperous Diwali 2007.

May your ventures all be profitable.

(This must be the only festival where asking for Prosperity & Wealth doesnt make you guilty)

My Prayers and Wishes will always be with you .....,

my family, my friends & my fans.

Always!

For You A Thousand Times Over

Nothing profound or preachy today just some profound examples of logic, South Style.

Four very interesting examples of audience gullibility... Rajnikant style.

Movie 1) Rajanikanth has a Brain Tumor which, according to the doctors can't be cured and his death is imminent. During one of the fights in the movie, Rajani is shot in the head. To everybody's surprise, the bullet passes through his ears taking away the tumor along with it and he is cured!

Movie 2) Rajanikanth is confronted with 3 gangsters. Rajanikanth has a gun but unfortunately only one bullet and a knife. Guess, what he does?He throws the knife at the middle gangster & shoots the bullet towards the knife. The knife cuts the bullet into 2 pieces, which kills both the gangsters on each side of the middle gangster & the knife kills the middle one.

Movie 3) Rajanikanth is chased by a gangster. Rajanikanth has a revolver but no bullets in it. Guess, what he does. Nah? not even in your remotest imaginations.He waits for the gangster to shoot. As soon as the gangster shoots, Rajanikanth opens the bullet compartment of his revolver and catches the bullet. Then, he closes the bullet compartment and fires his gun. Bang... the gangster dies.

Movie 4) The 'climax' finally arrives. Rajanikanth gets to know that the villain is on the other side of a very high wall. Rajanikanth has to desperately kill the villain because it's the climax. Rajanikanth suddenly pulls two guns from his pockets. He throws one gun in the air and when the gun has reached above the height of the wall, he uses the second gun and shoots at the trigger of the first gun in air. The first gun fires off and the villain is dead.

SORRY, BUT I'M BACK AGAIN.

Dear All,

Hi,

I just got back from a hectic but wonderful holiday in Darjeeling.

Fortunately I will not bore you with my personal adventures suffice it to say that I have come back with what Ms. Streisand once called “misty water coloured memories”.

The impossibly green and lush hillside, crisp fresh pine scented air, walking along narrow lanes enveloped in layers of mist…. I’ll just post the amateur pics taken during the trip for you.

On the way up the hills

However 3 things stood out from this trip that I am going to share with you.

1) Bang in the middle of the bazaar, besides one of the busiest roads in Darjeeling is a makeshift stand where a group of Lepchas (an ethnic community originating in northern Sikkim) are staging a protest against a huge hydro-project that is being built in neighbouring Sikkim on sacred Lepcha land. The protest was in the form of a relay hunger strike where one group would fast for 24 hours and be replaced by another group of volunteers the next morning. I don’t know about you but the whole "relay" thing rather defeats the whole purpose of the fast for me but anyway moving on….

It had been going on for 55 days (as of 24th Oct) and maybe it was the fact that the people on “fast” were chirpy, alert and chatty or that they did not look tired or hungry but anyway the whole protest was not really attracting any attention or sympathy from the local people in Darjeeling.
This is sad but the whole absurdity of it became clear only in the evening.

After 7pm once the shops have downed their shutters, the deserted road around the bazaar comes alive in a wonderful example of local economic endeavor.
Dozens of small carts open shop as mini-mobile-fast-food-stalls selling hot steaming egg rolls and spicy chilly sauce covered noodles. Throngs of locals gather in the cold with their woollies and fleece jackets sharing the day's news and gossip in misty breaths that meld together to form a familiar atmosphere which seems to be so inherent to hill stations.

However the funny thing was that one of these stalls happened to be parked right beside the fasting Lepchas

The 'Fasting' Protesters.....

....and the fast food near by

What was even more astonishing was that the volunteers inside didn’t seem to mind or be affected by the fragrant aromas floating about.
I don’t claim to be in possession of great will-power myself but I know that people who are really fasting would be traumatized by the temptation/distraction of hot food so close by.
In such a case can the locals be blamed for not taking them seriously.

When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.
Saint Jerome (374 AD - 419 AD),

Stopping for tea and momos on the way beside a gurgling stream

2) Before I narrate the second story let me give you a brief background. Tashi is a good friend of my sister and very intelligent too (I don’t know why I mentioned both in the same sentence). She is very outspoken, moral and has just passed the magistrate exams and will be taking the oath of a Judge soon (Lord bless the convicts who come to her court). Her boyfriend Wangchuck (a wonderfully polite and cultured person as only an alum of my Alma Mater can be) has a 15 year old boy who works in one of his shops. The boy, Sam-phel (don’t ask me for the origin or meaning of the name) has been with the family for decades (which in his case is almost his entire life) and is almost like a member of the family. Hailing from an impoverished family from the remote hills of Nepal he never had any formal education. He picked up bits of spoken English from the tourists and customers who frequent the shop and bits from Wangchuck.
However in the last year Tashi has taken to tutoring him for 2 hours every morning. She is doing a great job but however this is where I differ with her. She teaches him the full school curriculum while I felt that she should concentrate on lessons that he would be able to use in practical life. Since he only has 2 hours a day and just a couple of months before she goes off on her judicial duties, I felt it was a waste of valuable time to dwell on topics like ‘photosynthesis’ or ‘columbus clouds’ and the ‘spanish inquisition’ . Anyway that’s not the point of the story. The “point” is that Sam-phel speaks English better than many others who have been blessed with English medium education. I know countless others his age who cant speak English half as clearly as he can. He has acquired not just fluency in language and grammar but also diction and pronunciation.

The question is HOW?
As fond as I am Tashi and as tremendous a job as she has done, the final credit can only go to the boy. He is a true example of what determination and effort can accomplish.
If any of you get a chance to go to Darjeeling, do visit Fancy Market Shopping Arcade, go to the first floor and ask for Sam-phel (everyone knows him there). You will be in the presence of a true achiever.

I don't measure a Person by his achievement but by his potential.
Shirley Chisholm (1924 - 2005)

view from my bedroom window

3) In Delhi a day before my flight to Abu Dhabi, I was invited to dinner by a friend. On the way there while I was stuck in Delhi’s famous traffic jam, a brand new Mercedes Benz drove up alongside. As the cars inched forward I could see a young boy about 18 in the back seat chatting animatedly on his mobile. After about 15 minutes in the busy crawling traffic, the boy suddenly got out and walked to the pavement on the side and began to pee. The driver stopped the car in the middle of the road while a man dressed in a safari suit and who I presume was a body guard stepped out to hold up the traffic till the boy finished relieving himself. After what seemed like an eternity he sauntered back to his car and arrogantly spat on the road before getting back into his car.
Faced with such blatant disregard for law and for others, it is miraculous that more Jessica Lal’s aren’t being shot by spoilt little rich kids.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

My friends have constantly accused my blogs of being too filmy and that too Bollywoodish so no lengthy discourses here. Just try and watch Jab We Met for 2 wonderful sweet innocent hours.

Ciao till next Time

Of Holidays and Vacations and Festivals.....

Dear Friends, Readers and all You Wonderful People,

I will be going for a short whirlwind vacation to Delhi and then to Darjeeling for a few days. I probably won't have time to blog during then so my next post will be up after i get back on 25th October.

Meanwhile to all my muslim friends here's wishing you

EID MUBARAK

And to all the others, a very Happy and Prosperous

Vijaya Dashami.

I hope you all have a lot of fun and may you be showered with a lot of blessings.

As I always say, my wish for you is very simple.....

May You Dream A Thousand Dreams

And May Every One Of Them Come True.

Salaam - Namaste

- Vish

Do You Know The Queen's English?? Or Is She French

England (not the UK), America and Australia must be the only countries where English is the mother tongue. Many other countries (including India) have English as one of the official languages but it isn’t the predominant primary language spoken there.

In this modern world however English has become the indispensable lingua franca.
Almost all business, the internet etc are all predominantly in English.

And every country speaks it with its own inflections and accents as do Indians.

Among Indian education, the convent system is not only one of the best but also produces what is inarguably the clearest form of spoken English.

And yet we can’t seem to get over our fascination with everything ‘phoren’ and unfortunately that extends to language too, or to be more specific, the Accent.

Last week I was watching two different programs on 2 different channels and somehow both the hosts were ‘Accenting” away to glory.

The first one was Urmila on Jhalak Dikhla Ja (a dance program based on BBC’s Dancing With The Stars) who tried very unsuccessfully to clip her vowels and round her consonants (or was it the other way round). She hasn’t had any convent education unlike the other star children and I have always been fairly complimentary about her grasp of English. However on JDJ she feels that just fluency in English isn’t enough and that she needs to mimic Angelina Jolie’s american drawl.

Yeah and she does the pout too.

Then of course you have Mr. Obnoxious himself. Himesh Reshamiyya. I never liked him or his music or for that matter his hats and caps but have always defended him staunchly when people said he should be a failure simply because he was not classy enough. Give the man some credit for trying against all odds and star sons, was my argument.

However with success he is getting more and more cocky and is beginning to lose his underdog status and is now instead just an accented dog. His sentences are peppered with lots of ‘I feel you are gonna win’ and ‘I wanna hug you’ and if you thought his superlative laded battle-cry of “Awesome, Fantastic, Mindblowing” wasn’t corny enough you just have to listen a little more carefully and you will notice that it has now become “Oosome, Faataaastic, Mindblowin”.

Yeah and he chews gum throughout a la Britney too.

And when we are talking about accents in India, can the biggest of them not be mentioned?

Salman Khan, unlike other star sons like Fardeen, Abhishek etc was educated primarily in India but who now speaks English with an accent so pronounced that in his debut English language flick Marigold they had to put special subtitles in English for his dialogues alone.

Meryl Streep who is arguably one of the finest actors of her generation is known for her fine grasp of accents in her movie roles. She can do Irish, South African, Zimbabwean. Southern, Jamaican, British, German….. you name it she can do it.

But even she cannot do what Salman can because he must be one of the few actors in the world who can do all of the above accents. And sometimes in the same sentence itself.

And these are just the film fraternity. I personally know many people who speak what me and my friends call Transit English.

They seem to pickup an accent just by holidaying or transiting through a country. The talented ones among them even manage to pick up the accent of a country completely different to one they are in.

So what is this fascination with accents?

Is it a leftover from the colonial days when many Indians strived to be more British than the British or is it some deep insecurity that makes us covet everything western or ‘phoren’ ? Should our bench-mark for everything be from a western point-of-view?

And all said and done, in the end does it help that with our newly acquired accents, the British, Americans and Aussies themselves dont understand us now.

There is English and there is English.

I was writing a blog but have not completed it yet, as i have to go back to conducting training now and so i will post it later. It is about Accents and the following clip is as self explanatory as it is funny.

Enjoy.

A STRANGER IN ONE'S OWN HOUSE

It is against all personal predispositions that I am sitting down to write this blog today.

As a fellow nepali I was not sure that I could be fair and balanced when discussing this topic and it is only after a lot of rationalizing and waiting (hence the delay in the article) that I have finally decided that I CAN be fair & non judgmental. So here goes….

A few days ago after Prashant Tamang had won the title of Indian Idol, along with his hometown of Darjeeling, spontaneous celebrations had erupted in many places in neighboring Nepal & Sikkim as well. And apparently the other people in the world's largerst democracy could not stomach this.

Initially it was all fine even though the mainstream Indian press and TV News channels (who usually lap up these kind of stories) did not cover it apart from the mandatory blurb.

Bias against a Nepali winner??? Naaa the Nep’s were too magnanimous to think that way. So they kept on celebrating….

Then two odd things happened.

First the Hindustan Times (which incidentally has been fighting for years to prove that it is a national paper of repute like The Times Of India) came out with an article that somehow seemed to suggest that the title was won by a ‘nepali’ because of some deep seated desire of the ‘nepali-speaking’ people of Darjeeling and Sikkim to be associated with Nepal. It went on to dig up some obscure treaty that the British had signed which had robbed the current Darjeeling area from Nepal etc and also mentioned how there was a Gorkha agitation a decade back.

It had no relevance to Prashant’s actual win but the article was quite clear that it was the secessionist tendencies of the nepali-speaking people that won the title.
In short the winner and his supporters weren’t actually ‘Indians’.

Now to set the record straight, Prashant is a member of the Calcutta Police as was his late father before him.
The ‘nepali speaking’ people of Darjeeling had fought for a separate state but even at the height of the agitation they had never threatened to secede as have the ULFA etc in the other North East states.
And scores of nepali-speaking people from the hills have fought and been martyred during many of India’s wars including Kargil.

Which begs the question; “What else does one have to do to show one’s loyalty to the country?”

The second incident was even more prejudiced & bigoted.

A day after Prashant’s win, a dim-witted RJ of some FM station in Delhi (both the RJ and The FM are too obscure to name) decided that this would be the right time for him to debut his stand up comedy and cockily mentioned that now since Nepalis were becoming Indian Idols there would be no one left to guard their houses and work as watchmen.

Following the expected uproar among Nepalis the Indian media dished out the usual freedom-of-speech crap in his defense and made the protesting Nepalis sound like some intolerant hot-heads.

At this stage, I must mention that as far as Freedom-of-Expression goes, there cannot be a more passionate fanatic than myself. I have always believed in the Freedom of Expression and against any kind of censorship. However in this case it simply does not apply and not because I am Nepali.

I remember as a child we used to play a game where we used to annoy our friends by wriggling our fingers right near their noses or eyes and claim we had the right to do so as long as we were not touching any part of their face.

This argument is, I guess, the basis of the whole Freedom of Expression thing and as the childish game recognized that said freedom ends the moment we touch any part of the other person's face.

The RJ had every right to express his views (and prejudices) but he ceased to be just ‘expressing’ his views the moment he insulted the other party.
That’s precisely why there are anti-defamation laws.

And I am just speaking about a small incident involving a small group of peace loving people residing in the hills of India.

When seen on a bigger scale this prejudice and bias is all prevalent in India and esp North India.

Against the North East (Chinkis I believe is the nomenclature used), against the South Indians (or Madrasis as they are commonly clubbed together and referred to as) and most of all against the Muslims (Pakistan being their umbilical cord which can never be severed)

Is it then any surprise that they do not feel part of India?

Not because they don’t want to, but because they are always reminded that they may not be…

And on a completely different note:

Almost all Indians know (or weren’t allowed to forget, depending on your perception) that the Indian National Anthem was written by Rabindranath Tagore but most people don’t know (or weren’t told) who actually composed the song.

It was Captain Ram Singh Thakur of the 1st Gorkha Rifles.

Captain Ram Singh Thakur, extreme right, playing the violin in Gandhi's presence, possibly during one of Gandhi's visits to INA prisoners at Red Fort.

Why am I bringing this up now???

Because he was an Indian of Nepali origin.

Can you imagine if he had stayed back to just become a ‘watchman’.

Jana Gana Mana would have a Bollywood tune….

Kajra Re anyone?

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_Singh_Thakur

AGE IS JUST A NUMBER...

HI Again,

Was reading the newspaper today and came across this article and i had to cut it out and scan it for you guys.

Yesterday was the birthday as well as the release of the autobiography of my best friend's favourite actor. DEV ANAND.

I like him too, esp his older movies like Guide, Johnny Tera Naam etc while H.R.H prefers his later ones like Awwal Number (where Dev played a cricket captain-cum-police commissioner-cum-lawyer-cum-commando who his a direct line to the P.M) and Mr. Prime Minister (where he is a P.M who raps a song in front of the Gateway of India)

Whatever your feelings about Dev Anand and his movies you have to give the man credit for the way he has maintained himself and for his joie di vivre.

They say a pic is worth a thousand words and just look at it.

Of the three, Sonia is 61, Manmohan 75 and Dev is 84.

And guess who is the only one who does not have a single white hair?

Happy Birthday Dev Saab! Happy Birthday Indeed