Of meeting childhood icons

I was a little chit of a girl when Qurbani was released. All I know of the film from those days was the cassette which I put into my ‘foreign’ Sony player and listened to. And a song, Aap Jaisa Koi, immediately grabbed my attention. It was funky, different and had a je ne sais quoi quality to it which grabbed my poor western music deprived ear. The singer was a cute teen in pigtails and overalls called Nazia Hassan, and the composer was a long haired guy called Biddu. An Indian from Bangalore, now settled in the UK after hitchhiking there. Composed music for greats like Tina Charles and more. And yes, I always got weak kneed at long haired men with deep voices. It’s part of my genetic programming.

I heard more of Biddu as I grew. He came out with an album called Disco Deewane with Nazia Hassan and her brother Zoyeb. He did more music for India. Shweta Shetty’s Johnny Joker, Alisha Chinai’s Made in India. Music for movies like Star. Lots more that I dont have on the tip of my typing fingers right now. But the music was always foot tapping and acutely dance-able.

It is a bit scary when people who have been big when you were young and impressionable write autobiographies, and when you trill to your nieces about them, you realise they have absolutely no clue who you are talking about. Like you have to go google up a creature called Lady Ga Ga and spend a furrowed moment figuring out if this is male, female or hermaphrodite and concluding that the last option is probably the most probable.

It hits you that you are now officially over the hill, and ready to hang up your dancing shoes and anyway, the last time you danced your heart out was over eight years ago, and therefore you are automatically disqualified from expressing any coherent opinion on current standards of music, except to qualify it as it definitely is, as incoherent noise.

So I meet Biddu tomorrow for a feature I am to be writing on him. And I’m terribly excited because I loved his music. I grew up to it. And yes, I need to thank him for all the times I listened to Disco Deewane on a loop.

Why I might just be travelling by local train again…

It has been a while since I travelled by local trains and buses. Ten years perhaps. Ten years in a city like Mumbai is a very very long time. Things have changed drastically. The trains have also changed. Drastically. In the years I travelled by train, they were a dingy yellow and brown. The trains I see now when I pass on roads parallel to railway tracks are spiffy purple and have their destinations in electronic text format on the front. They look so sleek and graceful, and probably need the same amount of pushing and shoving, and stamping on toes skills to get a foothold on. I have lost all my Mumbai local train survival skills. Once upon a time I would jump into trains as they slowed down to stop at Churchgate station and grab window seats on the return home every evening. With stilettoes. Now of course, I would want the seat furthest from the window, what with folks randomly showering the ladies compartments with stones and resulting in eyesight being lost and such horrors.

None of my immediate friend circle travel by train too. We discussed this in hushed tones the other day. Just imagine, one moaned, we could have bumped into Rahul Gandhi. We could have shaken hands. We could have seen him jumping off the train. And if Rahul Gandhi can do it, why cant we? All we need to do is join up at a commando training course before hand. Change our diet to include more protein shakes and strengthening foods in order to push our way through the impenetrable flanks of women who solidify into a concrete wall in fast trains and become a door guarding mafia. Spend some time getting used to dark dingy smelly places like sewers etc, to be able to keep from barfing when the nose is crammed into an armpit, or some random beggar has used the ladies compartment as a public loo. Self defence to keep the druggies from cutting us up and taking our handbags and jumping off when the trains slow down between stations. It would also save us petrol. Given that every time I fill the tank up, I faint at the final amount that comes up on the machine and have to be splashed with water in order to sign on the charge slip, taking the train might be a good idea too. Then comes the issue of my world renowned clumsiness. I have been known to stumble and twist an ankle while just off the bed in the morning. I kid you not. This has happened. If there were awards being handed out for Ms Most likely to trip on the Red Carpet I would win it hands down, no contenders. Railway station overbridges therefore are contraptions I approach with a fear approaching panic. I have been known to remove my heels and walk down barefoot on one particularly precariously angled stairway on Dadar station (all the steps sloped downwards), and this was ten years ago when I was at my peak physical prime. Now it might be easier for me to just park my rump on the top step and have someone push me from the back.

Now Rahul Gandhi, in his detergent commercial white kurta pyjama can risk the encrusted layers of dirt on foot over bridges and such like, I might just have folks pelt stones and cart me off to an institution. Maybe I can just get myself on of them clear plastic raincoat kind of thingies to wear while doing the local train route and fold it and pack it up once I manage to extricate myself from the chaos that manifests itself outside every station. Also, would help immensely in protecting self from hands which move independent of their owners to suddenly touch random body parts. Maybe this is an idea which can be patented and marketed: Train travel Plastic overcoat. Arrive at work as crisp and sparkling clean as you were when you set out from home. Added benefit: administers low voltage shock to unsuspecting gropers. I can just see this getting sold out and long waitlists for orders to be fulfilled.

Seriously though. After his election campaign which had him go to thousands of villages, and break security cordons and do the grassroot reaching out thing with a fair amount of sincerity, Rahul Gandhi had got me admiring him grudgingly. When he hopped onto a local train during his recent Mumbai trip, I swooned and passed out with admiration. To me this is the equivalent of John Rambo, stitching up cuts with needle and thread in the midst of tropical jungle. It does take a fair amount of courage given that your grandmother and father have both died under very gruesome circumstances caused by security breaches. And for those who had their black flags handy, they can go fly them in their own backyards. Thats the best they can do, given that doing anything to improve the city is much beyond their capacity.

For starters they might read this. Especially the part which speaks about the fundamental right of the citizens of India to have the freedom to reside and settle in any part of India.

Of LPG cylinders getting more expensive…

There should be some serious limit be set about how expensive things are going to get. I mean, I go vegetable shopping these days to the local sabji mandi and come back looking like a train wreck, and counting out the small change in my pocket to decide whether I have enough money to make buy a hardboiled sweet if I feel faint with the shock of spending all my money on vegetables which will barely last half a week. Or even less given that my family is not a great fan of them veggies. I’ve given up asking the veggie vendors what the price of a particular vegetable is by the kilo. Should they do that I might just faint and fall with a thud on the rotting vegetable encrusted floor of the municipal veggie market and perhaps rise a la Uma Thurman as the new improved Poison Ivy, and become the plague of all the vegetable vendors intent on fleecing us honest consumers of our honest earnings. Well forget half kilo rates, some veggies have them vendors telling us the quarter kilo rates, because buying an entire kilo would mean we need to prise out our fillings from our teeth, sell them in the silver shop next door to said municipal market and then wander in woozy with the prising out, and get conned into buying even more of the stuff that none of us puts on our plates and ultimately is given to the maids, speaking of whom, one notices that the stick insects who had joined work a couple of years ago are now pleasantly rotund matrons in our employ. I now stand hawklike when the cook gets into action, swiftly halving all the raw ingredients she removes to create a meal, and then insisting that eating a restricted diet is good for longevity. As has been proven on mice. Some telomeres get shortened or lengthened or something resulting in them living very long. Mice dont have to shop for vegetables. They might just have their lives cut short by the stress of paying what was once the cost of a nice meal out for two in one shot at the vegetable market.

Inflation is catching up with restaurants too. Noticed the portion sizes recently, anyone. I carry a magnifying glass with me to figure out whether I’ve actually been served. And then all those restaurants which have shut down their all you can eat buffets. Do they even realise how much such harsh decisions affect sensitive souls like me, who lived on all you can eat buffets? Do they realise what a trial it is to order a la carte and have the rest of the good folk at the table sniggering behind their menus at such rabid display of gluttony. All you can eat buffets are lifesavers, you make a couple of trips to the buffet by which time folk stop keeping count of how many times you make additional trips and you can eat happily till you snore in your plate.

And now they tell us LPG cylinders will be up by Rs 100. I think this is the ideal opportunity to switch my diet mode to raw veggies and fruits. Given the cost of raw veggies and fruits, I think the ideal diet would best be channa and sing. You know, roasted on coal sigris. healthy nutritious and filling. And cheap. Or maybe we can learn new and interesting things to add to water so we can fill our stomachs with water. I do remember reading about a gentleman from Kerala who had survived on water and sunlight. He was studied by NASA and had the phenomenon named after him. And there were two nuns who were documented as not having eaten any solids for decades and were supposedly in ship shape.

Or like another gentleman who claimed to have survived on air, liquid and fruits. 

I think this is a good option. This would be a strike back at them cruel vegetable vendors who laugh evilly when your heart pops out of your mouth when they tell you the quarter kilo rate for tomatoes. If everyone adopts a fruitarian, or a liquid diet, we could soon have the vegetable vending mafia on their knees, throwing in a free pumpkin for every few veggies we buy. We could even start dictating terms to them, rathering than wilting before them like hapless victims.

I’m so going to try out this today itself. Right after lunch.

A tag. Dialogues. And a book to be won!

Seeing as I am such a sucker for anything that is ‘free’ and involves a contest and writing and dialogues for movies, Aneela’s tag came as gift from movie heaven to a woman sitting and twiddling her typing fingers with acute writers block. Yup. Writers block so acute that I’m actually going through web portals and news sites to drum up some angst about some issue so I can come in guns blazing and write a post that rattles everyone’s ears off. Or given one reads the posts, eyeballs would be more accurate.  Its what I have been doing since the morning. The five minutes I give myself to write my posts is long up, and I have moved from news sites, by osmosis to the Louis Vuitton site the courtesy of which I now have deposited around a liter of drool onto my keyboard which impedes speedy typing.

This here is what I have to do:

http://greatbong.net/2010/01/31/may-i-hebb-your-attention-pliss-contest-1/

These are the rules:

Here is the first contest for “May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss”.

The rules.

1. On your blog, provide a link to this page. (http://greatbong.net/book). Embedding the above picture in your blog would be nice but not needed.

2. Then write down your top 10 Hindi movie lines or top 10 English movie lines (You can do both if you want. Only one set is required for the contest). If you cannot think of top 10, make it top 5. Cannot think of even 5? Make it top 3. No problem. Only restriction: no two lines from same movie. This done to make it fair for other movies so that they dont get swamped by Gunda or Loha or Sholay.

3. Tag five friends to do the same.

4. Come over to the comment-space of this post and post your blog’s link so I can go and read it.

Remember: Before starting the tag, paste points 1 and 4 on your blog so that the rules are available to anyone who wishes to pick the tag up from your blog.

What if you dont have a blog? Put your “Top list”  in the comments section of this post and tweet the link to your friends (No need to tag specific people). Please use #MIHYAP so that I can pick it up. No twitter? Link to your comment from Facebook/Orkut status message and add me as a friend @Facebook or at @Orkut so I can see the message. [Prefer Facebook if you have accounts in both places]

Prizes:  Two prizes will be given. One prize will be the post I like the most. The other prize will be a random drawing among everyone who picks up the tag. Note a blog entry will be considered valid only if a link to http://greatbong.net/book is provided AND 5 people are tagged [They do not need to pick the tag up for your entry to count though], a “comments-in-RTDM” entry will be considered valid only if the link is tweeted with #MIHYAP tag or posted as status message on FB that I can see.

And what’s the prize? No it is not an iPod, iPad or [insert fictitious prize item here]. Prizes will consist of a copy of my book “May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss” which will be sent to the winner once  it is published.

Note:  Very important. The prizes will be delivered by Harper Collins ONLY to addresses within India. If you are outside India, you would need to provide them with an Indian address.

And here I go:

My Top 10 Bollywood Dialogues:

“Mai feke hue paise ko nahi uthatha.” -Deewar

Sara saher mujhe lion ke naam se jaanta hai – Kaalicharan

Hum jaha pe khade ho jaate hein, line wahi se shuru hoti hai – Kaaliya

“Kitne Admi The” Sholay

“Tera naam kya hai, Basanti,”  Sholay

“Arrey oh baabu mushoy hum to rangmanch ki kathputliyan hain jiski dor us upar wale ke haathon main hai kab, kaun kahan uthega ye koi nahin janta ” Anand

” Don ko pakad pana mushkil hi nahin namumkin hai”  Don

” Main jhoota to kutte ka janaa main sachaa to teri maa ka khasam” Omkara

“Kabhi Kabhi jeetne ke liye harna bhi padtha hain. Harkar jeetne waley ko Baazigar kehte hain” Baazigar

“Picture abhi Baaki Hain Mere Dost” – Om Shanti Om

And I tag: Sunayana

Suki

The Mad Momma

Dipali

goofy Mamma

Dont drink and drive. Please.

No matter how many public service ads and police driven initiatives you see on this, there will always be a Nooria or a Sanjeev Nanda or an Alistair Pereira or a Salman Khan or a Puru Raaj Kumar. There will always be the nameless victims with their families snatched of a breadwinner. These victims are not powerful, influential and connected. They just wipe their tears and get on with the gritty business of living. The case will drag on for years. Lives will go on. A Puru Raaj Kumar will pay Rs 35,000 for two lives. And yes, the perpetrators will be out on bail. Living their lives as they did before. Perhaps even drinking and driving again. It makes my blood boil. It really does. How difficult can it be to take the decision to just flag a cab if you have had a drink or two? How difficult can it be to be adult about drinking and driving?

Over 650 people have died last year in Mumbai alone thanks to drunk driving. How many more people will need to die before people stop driving under the influence? We are not even talking about those who have been injured yet, whose lives have been changed completely with a limb gone, with eyesight ruined, with injuries so terrible that they will spend the rest of their lives just trying to cope with the cruel hand fate dealt them of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The spouse is, thankfully, very particular about not taking the car out even if he has just a beer in him. I dont drink. But then I dont drive too, so I’m pretty much not in the debate except for refusing to sit in a car being driven by anyone who I know has had a drink or two. I detest the sheer irresponsibility of it. I’ve been in some fairly major accidents. Yes, once when the husband was a few beers down. The car was totalled. The lower half of my face needed to be sewn back on. I still have a few scars I carry. My front upper teeth chipped away unevenly from where the pieces got embedded in my lower lip from the impact. A neck that hurts still thanks to the whiplash. A fear of driving that no amount of teaching and practice sessions can get me rid off.

Thankfully no one was hurt seriously. Thank god no one was killed. The man learnt his lesson. He has never since touched the wheel if he’s had a little to drink. It is terrible that it would take such a severe accident for him to learn his lesson.

This is what the cops should be doing for everyone they catch driving with alcohol in their system. This is what is on the anvil. And if Nooria has any decency in her, she will ensure the children of those she has killed get an education. If she has any decency, that is.

Links: http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/jul/20/delhi-hc-to-deliver-bmw-hit-and-run-verdict.htm

The Seven Signs of Ageing…

With apologies to Olay, here is a lovely tag passed on to me by Itchy. Ageing to me has always been the big boogieman standing right at my door, waiting to sink his scythe into me. All that age builds character lines, and adds beauty and such like doesnt cut any ice with me, because frankly, after you get them wrinkles, no one calls them character lines any more. They’re wrinkles. And they age you. And they make you invisible in a public setting. It makes one angry and sourfaced, and leads to puckering and frowning, and therefore, more wrinkles. The horror, the horror.

Short of using a steam iron to keep the face wrinkle free, and staying clear of all the fancy creams on the market promising to do so and actually just succeeding in keeping your wallet wrinkle free (my favourite cream? Johnson’s Baby Cream. Works the best. Better than all the anti wrinkle/anti ageing stuff I’ve tried and I tell you I am a skin care product junkie), staying wrinkle free is also a matter of attitude. Here’s where I think the years are catching up with me:

1] By the time the man says let’s make a night of it, I am already snoring with my mouth open and drool dribbling down my chin.

2] I wear sunglasses not to look cool, but to protect my eyes from hurting in the bright sunlight. And also to prevent the wrinkling that will happen from squinting in the sun.

3] My greatest moves on the dance floor are getting out of the way quick and finding a comfortable seat by the side.

4] My idea of exercise is bending down to tie the shoe laces to my sports shoes.

5] I still remember the words to inane radio commercials of my childhood “mahabaleshwar ka Fountain hotel, phone number yaad hain na?”, TT Underwear Aur Banian, Raju tumhare daant motiyon jaise chamak rahen hain,  but cant, for the life of me, remember the lyrics to a song in a movie I watched yesterday.

6] My idea of roughing it out is staying in a hotel without 24 hour room service.

7] I look at myself in the mirror every morning and think, for an almost forty year old, I’m in damn good shape.  Thinking this as a youthful me, intent on starving myself into anorexia would have been blasphemy.

And for my tips on anti ageing:

1] Eat a well balanced diet. Take a multivitamin daily. Take enough Omega Fatty acids in your diet or through supplements. Drink enough water to keep your bowels clear.

2] Stay out of the sun or use sunscreen. Use sunglasses and a visor in the sun.

3] Get a complete night’s sleep every day. Stay away from late nights as much as you can.

4] Cut out or cut down the sugar, alcohol, cigarettes and toxic negative thinking. Stay away from toxic people.

5] Spend time with children. Pray every night.

6] Get some exercise daily even if it is just a walk around your block.

7] Laugh as much as you can. And try to make the people around you laugh.

I tag:

Monika

Mama Mia

sands

Eves Lungs

Poppy

JLT

Ronita

Haffun girls.

Mile Sur Mera Tumhara…

I have some memories of this and of the man who made this. Suresh Mullick of Ogilvy and Mather. I was a young trainee journalist with The Asian Age. And duly packed off to interview Suresh Mullick. It was a good thing for me that back in those days we had no internet and google baba and I was appropriately raw to not be overwhelmed by the great advertising and marketing gurus I interviewed. So I interviewed Suresh Mullick and Shunu Sen and S M Dutta with the kind of insouciance that comes from extreme youth and ignorance. Had I been doing those interviews today I wouldnt have been able to get the questions through from chattering teeth.

Back then, I think I wouldnt have been overwhelmed by anyone except Bon Jovi and Michael Jackson, I was at that age. So off I trotted to the Ogilvy office, hoping to wrap up the interview in an hour max. I learnt, to my surprise, when I landed there, that my subject had very different plans. In fact, my subject dapper in a suit and a very oldfashioned pair of spectacles had kept his entire day free for the interview. Which was not an interview of him, but an interview of me. We went out for lunch to the Library at the President. Lobster was ordered. I was a greenhorn at managing cutlery to attack the crustacean, he laughed and ordered me to use my hands. He asked me about my childhood, how I grew up, my family, I could barely get in a word edgewise to ask him my questions about himself. I drew out little bits of information in the course of our conversation which I had to commit to memory. I was not allow to jot down notes. Mullick was a nice avuncular gentleman, and someone completely different from anyone I’d interviewed earlier. He had a subtle sense of humour, a slight Woody Allenesque look and a gentle interest in what I planned to do with my life, quite flattering for a little nobody just out of college, and who had wandered into journalism quite by default. He knew and knew about things. Music, books, art, cricket, I remember feeling quite awed by the breadth of his knowledge. And his words still stick in my head, “Always do what you enjoy. The moment you stop enjoying something, move on.” I didnt quite understand him then, but I do now. And I think its a maxim I’ve adopted. He would call up occasionally. Chat a while. Always asking what I was working on, if there was anything interesting I was writing. Asking me to send in copies of the interviews I’d written for him to read. Discussing articles I had written, dissecting them in the most gentle disarming way.

Thank you Mr Mullick, for your kindness to a trainee journalist. You made me believe that true greatness is in making the other person feel good about themselves rather than tom tomming one’s own achievements.

I’m not going to write about his work, there are folks who have done that better and more indepth than I could ever hope to in a five minute post.

Sridhar, (ex Director O&M India), has just launched a book on  Suresh
Mullick, the Creative Director who directed Mile Sur. Read it here: http://periscopedesign.co.in/index.html

A study after my own heart.

And no, I havent paid them to conclude this.

I could also add in the pursuit of slimness that the more time you spend sleeping, the less waking time you have to eat or forage around for leftovers, or call for takeaway.

Therefore, goodnight. I’m headed off to get my recommended zzzzz’s.

I can just see the dietiticians and obesity management clinics so going out of business.

Am I a behenji?

Had this rather interesting discussion the other day amongst friends and I’m still to arrive at a conclusion.

Two friends who I considered the ultimate of coolth have labelled themselves behenji. I thought I was too. Though I am most uncomfortable in a saree and a salwarkameez and I can count the occasions in a year when I wear both on my fingers.

This is what the Urban Dictionary defines behenji as. And in the colloquial speak, Mayawati has become synonymous with the word behenji.

I dont fit in the salwar kameez wearing bracket. Nor do I always speak in Hindi or Punjabi. Nor do I pile on the gold.

But I do think like a behenji I argued. And I meant that in the most positive sense. I have what some might consider terribly old fashioned values. No alcohol. No cigarettes. No using foul language. Monogamy rocks. Respect your elders. Doing your puja paath. Lighting the diya. Doing the occasional vrat. Celebrating festivals. Touching feet. The works. I might not get the sindoor on, or wear the shiny blingy sarees but I could be a character from one of them television serials. Except of course, you wont find me in the kitchen.

So what is behenji according to you? And do you fit in?

A tag

From Doli.

Tell your readers 10 things about you that they may or may not know, but are true..

Tag 10 people with the award, and be sure to let them know they’ve been tagged (a quick comment on their blog will do).

Link back to the blogger who tagged you.

Now after so many years of blogging I am almost sure there is absolutely nothing that the readers of this blog dont know about me. Even down to my nose hair greying.  And I think I’ve done this sort of thing before. Listing out stuff no one knows and some stuff no one would care to know about me. Therefore this is a tough task, Doli.  But in my recent spirit of not sitting and hatching tags, and awards and such like till the hatchlings are ready to leave the nest.

So, without much ado, here are ten things I bet no one knew about me.

1]I am terrible at telephone conversations. I cannot make long pleasant conversation for the life of me. I keep it short, crisp and over and out.

2] I am a horror movie addict.

3] I cannot step into public without lipstick on. If I’m stretched on the bier without lipstick, am sure my corpse would sit up and apply some on them lips.

4] I believe in ghosts and the supernatural and the paranormal.

5] I couldnt be bothered about coordinating what I wear, therefore I live in jeans and black tshirts.

6]My waist size at age nine was the same as it is today. I was, erm, a very healthy girl.

7] I pray every night before sleeping.

8]I have a before bedtime ritual that I never skip. Wash face. Apply face cream, body lotion, cream on the feet and socks. If this is not done, then I am at the point of dying and couldnt care less what I look like tomorrow.

9] When I develop a dislike to someone, I cannot even pretend to be civil to that person. 

10] I have never worn a strapless or a spaghetti strapped top or dress.

And I tag:

Sunayana

Itchy

Dipali

Eves Lungs

Poppin’s Mom

Chox Box

Suki

Mama Mia (Abha)

Gypsy Girl

Golkamra

Get down to it folks.