During my undergraduate years one of my friends told me the distortions that nostalgia creates in ones mind. I was too immature to understand it then. I am beginning to understand it now.
As a kid, I used to live in Dalli-Rajhara. I am sure that even people in Bhilai-Durg would be hard pressed to locate it on the map. The high points in our lives were the visits to Bhilai. One could travel by road or by train. Since we always traveled by train, I had a marked fascination to travel by road. Another reason to prefer the road journey was a fantastic small eatery which sold amongst other items - "Gulab Jamuns". Now, nostalgia has created a memory of taste and smell which not even the best Gulab Jamuns from Kolkatta or Delhi have been able to displace. Sometime back, Amma and I decided to go on a long drive and went all the way to Gunderdahi after a singularly bad lunch at Brindavan. Gunderdahi is one of those 10 shops, a railway station and a bus stand kind of small town in interior India. A quick scan of the 10 shops enabled us to locate the dhaba of my childhood memories.
Alas! the Seth who used to run the show had gone into retirement and allowed the standards of the dhaba to fall. The Gulab Jamuns did not match the taste that Nostalgia had registered in my brain. It made me regret my journey to Gunderdahi and shatter the memory of "The Taste". I guess I will now not go to Pulla Reddy in Hyderabad and shatter a few more of my "Tastes".
Friday, February 4, 2011
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Back home...at last
I had forgotten what it was like to stay with parents and in a small town. Bhilai amazing as it is has its own peculiarities. I was trying to do a pros and cons of living in small towns (and I am trying not to be cynical here)
Pros:
1. Fantastic home food
2. A home that resembles a wild life sanctuary for insects and reptiles. (Why was I ever not interested in becoming a naturalist?)
3. Reconnect with my Bhilai relatives and friends
4. Become a minor celebrity for having traveled beyond Raipur
5. Movie ticket prices not exceeding Rs. 50
Cons:
1. Excitement in life: Snake crawling and climbing up the mango tree
2. My Mom not realising that I am not 15
3. No newspaper :-(
4. Conversations on how others kids are growing up
Pros:
1. Fantastic home food
2. A home that resembles a wild life sanctuary for insects and reptiles. (Why was I ever not interested in becoming a naturalist?)
3. Reconnect with my Bhilai relatives and friends
4. Become a minor celebrity for having traveled beyond Raipur
5. Movie ticket prices not exceeding Rs. 50
Cons:
1. Excitement in life: Snake crawling and climbing up the mango tree
2. My Mom not realising that I am not 15
3. No newspaper :-(
4. Conversations on how others kids are growing up
Monday, May 10, 2010
Airport blog
Yesterday I finally resigned from Cognizant. It felt weird after working like a dog for 5 years. I am still not sure why I resigned. Is it because I want to do a PhD or is it because I needed a break? I am right now in the airport and have to catch a flight to Delhi. There is barely an hour for the flight. I am in Starbucks and slowly all the pent up emotions and feelings are starting to catch up. Last night I was frantically trying to pack with Reena really doing the bulk of the work for me. I now have leisure in a long time to actually look at my decision with a degree of scepticism and maybe fairness.
I have long felt like a failure in my job not able to do anything well. This I guess stems from two things – a certain amount of perfectionism and also a craving for approval from everybody. While perfectionism is good to a certain degree, it is the craving for approval that scares me. I have always been afraid of failure. I thought I had overcome it when i was in my early twenties and even tried to live it up, this failing has caught up with me again.
During my entire stint in Cognizant I was trying to be something that I did not want to be. Obsessed with success, not taking time to do things that I really wanted to do, basically not balancing my life. It is always easy to blame somebody else for one's failures, but if I take a hard look at what I was in the past 5 years, I was obsessed by success, wanting something more than what others had-completely greedy.
I think I wanted a break from that. Even now, as I am sitting in the airport, I have nothing left in Cognizant. However, I am still scared of the legacy that I am leaving behind, what others think of me. I am worried if I cleaned my laptop effectively. I am worried if I inadvertently left back any personal data. I am worried about the minutiae of life rather than see the grand picture.
In my last stint as well, I think one of my failures was to get involved in details and not see the big picture effectively. With all these failings, do I have what it takes to be a good researcher? Will I ever be able to give gyaan aka the late Mr. Prahlad? Is it worthwhile making all these sacrifices if I am not Mr. Prahlad? Should I have been just satisfied being a middle manager who is good in some ops activities and making some presentations?
I am not that good at networking, do not make friends easily and feel very conscious giving lectures (although I cannot stop once I start). Am I taking the right decision?
Friday, July 31, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Hyderabad & Me
I had a very interesting weekend. My brother visited me after his recent trip to the US. His "pilgrimage" to the "chosen country" certainly lived up to my expectations. He had a lot of comments to make on everything including the research system, which I personally, think is superior to the Indian system.
The "pilgrimage" however brought back a lot of memories of the time that I lived in Hyderabad. I was working in Satyam at that time and used to live on my own. At that none of my immediate family lived there and I was dependent on second cousins and a whole lot of distant relatives for "home" comfort. My family is distinctly middle class with its own concerns about education, software job and the dream was of course the "holy pilgrimage" to the US. Just as in the previous days, places like Varanasi and Rajahmundry were aspirational cities, so was the US. Everywhere that I went, I used to be asked sympathetic questions if I were unsuccessful in getting admission to graduate studies in the US (never mind that the university/course was not my aspiration) or I was unsuccessful in getting a job in the US via a good consultant or I was unable to snag a groom settled in the US.
It seemed odd that I was continuously defending my choice to remain in the country of my birth. I felt battered every time I attended any social event. I never understood the obsession with "settling in the US" with "US returned" being a distant second choice.
There were however other things that more than compensated for my relatives.
I worked with an amazing team in Satyam and made some very good friends. I found common friends who agreed with me that "gult" guys from Andhra ought to be the last choice for husbands. They helped me discover amazing restaurants and movies. Till date I believe that Hyderabad has the best "value for money" restaurants for all kinds of cuisines. I can still remember the taste of the biryani in "Persis", the dhabas after Bowenpally, the shopping in Paradise, Sultan Bazaar and Ameerpet, the movie theaters in Abids, RTC X roads, Sangeet and the Sunday second hand books market opposite Santosh.
I am planning to go to Hyderabad this coming weekend to meet a few of my cousins. I do hope I will have some time to rediscover my old haunts, but I am almost scared to go back and discover that all these have changed.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Parugu
I read "My family and other Animals" a long time back and the first thing that struck me was the aptness of the title. I and my brother have very diverse opinions among others about Telugu cinema. He is the true "mass follower" of Telugu movies. It is my personal opinion that he and Raju sustained the commercial viability of all Telugu theaters in RTC cross road between 1999 and 2001. His endorsement of Bhadra type movies further alienated his taste of Telugu movies from mine. I started an internal ranking of his reviews.
My brother first recommend the songs of Parugu, which I did not find too appealing. Later, when I saw Parugu, I was struck by the songs and Allu Arjun's dances. I enjoyed most of the songs except "Parugulu". I also liked the village sets and the comedy track in the movie. It became my movie of choice to watch while I stood in pasport renewal queues.
As I watched Parugu multiple times, I was struck by a few things. One of the major "revolutions" brought out by Chiranjeevi in telugu films is gendar role reversal. In older movies, heroines were asked to dress down (literally) and given complicated dance steps for song sequences to cover up "obese" heroes. Chiranjeevi changed this aspect completely. Now heroes perform all the complicated dance steps and the heroines are further marginalised to just shedding their clothes.
The other point that struck me was that the heroine in "Parugu" did not have a voice at all. She kept following the lead of the hero and her father at all times without developing her own opinion. The one time that she expresses an opinion and shows the spunk to follow through with her actions, she is over-ridden by the hero. Infact there is just one song in the entire movie to express the heroine's thoughts. It looks like she is continuously in need of an overwhelming force in her life. This characterisation is so unlike the director's first film heroine - "Hasini in Bommarillu". Wonder if this change is due to the story line or the fact that he was working with a hero like Allu Arjun and interference from the first family of Tollywood.
The story was run of the mill - girl eloping with her lover in the face of family opposition. A tried and trusted hackeneyed plot, it also opened interesting threads due to the excellent interpretation from the director. There was one thread of the consequences of elopement on the couple, weakening of caste rigidities due to education and urbanisation (not explored at all). Instead the focus was on the impact on the family due to elopement ( a la Chiranjeevi's daughter). The director could have done away with the entire second half and still made a good movie. movie.
I am now looking forward to see Bhaskar's next movie without the first family's influence.
My brother first recommend the songs of Parugu, which I did not find too appealing. Later, when I saw Parugu, I was struck by the songs and Allu Arjun's dances. I enjoyed most of the songs except "Parugulu". I also liked the village sets and the comedy track in the movie. It became my movie of choice to watch while I stood in pasport renewal queues.
As I watched Parugu multiple times, I was struck by a few things. One of the major "revolutions" brought out by Chiranjeevi in telugu films is gendar role reversal. In older movies, heroines were asked to dress down (literally) and given complicated dance steps for song sequences to cover up "obese" heroes. Chiranjeevi changed this aspect completely. Now heroes perform all the complicated dance steps and the heroines are further marginalised to just shedding their clothes.
The other point that struck me was that the heroine in "Parugu" did not have a voice at all. She kept following the lead of the hero and her father at all times without developing her own opinion. The one time that she expresses an opinion and shows the spunk to follow through with her actions, she is over-ridden by the hero. Infact there is just one song in the entire movie to express the heroine's thoughts. It looks like she is continuously in need of an overwhelming force in her life. This characterisation is so unlike the director's first film heroine - "Hasini in Bommarillu". Wonder if this change is due to the story line or the fact that he was working with a hero like Allu Arjun and interference from the first family of Tollywood.
The story was run of the mill - girl eloping with her lover in the face of family opposition. A tried and trusted hackeneyed plot, it also opened interesting threads due to the excellent interpretation from the director. There was one thread of the consequences of elopement on the couple, weakening of caste rigidities due to education and urbanisation (not explored at all). Instead the focus was on the impact on the family due to elopement ( a la Chiranjeevi's daughter). The director could have done away with the entire second half and still made a good movie. movie.
I am now looking forward to see Bhaskar's next movie without the first family's influence.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Ashta Chamma Review
There have been some terrific movies adapted from novels. Classics in English like Gone with the Wind and the Lord of the Rings series demonstrated how an excellent novel can be adapted into equally smashing movies. Hindi novels like Suraj ka Satwaan Ghoda and Shakesperean plays MacBeth and Othello have been successfully translated into the big screen. Movies adapted from classical Telugu literature like Kanyasulkam also proved equally adept at the translation from literature to the big screen. However, my personal favourite is Ashta Chamma. Directed by Krishna Mohan Indraganti, this movie is a faithful adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play "The Importance of being Earnest".
Although the movie follows the plot of the Oscar Wilde play to the "T", it also updates the props and the context of the play to modern times. Where the movie adaptation scores is in introducing the various characters and providing the background to the plot. "Colours" Swati plays the role of Lavanya a young girl madly in love with Mahesh Babu. The director was spot on in the characterization of Lavanya. The one scene of young Lavanya in school providing the inspiration for Puri Jagannth punch dialogues in Pokiri is brilliant. Similarly, the insistence of Lavanya to marry a person whose name is Mahesh is perfectly understandable to an ardent fan of Mahesh Babu. I could completely empathize with the character. In fact, the movie has inspired me to insist on this condition in my personal life as well. My life partner will have to change his name to Mahesh if he already has another name.
With this background, the rest of the twists and turns that the movie takes following the plot of the Oscar Wilde play faithfully are understandable and do not seem out of place or ridiculous. In fact the satire on Telugu film industry's "faction" inspired movies to set the background for the double-life of the hero is outstanding. The attention paid to the details especially support characters sets this movie apart from other regular Telugu movies. The chronology of Mahesh Babu movies however does not seem correct and the movie seems to have conveniently forgotten Mahesh Babu duds like Sainikudu. The songs especially the title song is beautiful to listen to. The cinematography could be better. The editing is good except in one of the songs where it is extremely jumpy - quite needlessly so. The supporting cast of Srinivasa Avasarla and the late Bhargavi is very good, with Srinivasa Avasarla standing out heads above the rest of the cast both in terms of height and acting skills.
This movie also continues the tradition of movies like "Guddi" in highlighting the impact that movies and especially popular romantic heroes can have on the lives of young women. The point where this movie differs substantially is in not trying to recommend a cure or sitting judgment on the women's choices but empathize with the character. This ends up as a feminist movie without being preachy or boring.
Although the movie follows the plot of the Oscar Wilde play to the "T", it also updates the props and the context of the play to modern times. Where the movie adaptation scores is in introducing the various characters and providing the background to the plot. "Colours" Swati plays the role of Lavanya a young girl madly in love with Mahesh Babu. The director was spot on in the characterization of Lavanya. The one scene of young Lavanya in school providing the inspiration for Puri Jagannth punch dialogues in Pokiri is brilliant. Similarly, the insistence of Lavanya to marry a person whose name is Mahesh is perfectly understandable to an ardent fan of Mahesh Babu. I could completely empathize with the character. In fact, the movie has inspired me to insist on this condition in my personal life as well. My life partner will have to change his name to Mahesh if he already has another name.
With this background, the rest of the twists and turns that the movie takes following the plot of the Oscar Wilde play faithfully are understandable and do not seem out of place or ridiculous. In fact the satire on Telugu film industry's "faction" inspired movies to set the background for the double-life of the hero is outstanding. The attention paid to the details especially support characters sets this movie apart from other regular Telugu movies. The chronology of Mahesh Babu movies however does not seem correct and the movie seems to have conveniently forgotten Mahesh Babu duds like Sainikudu. The songs especially the title song is beautiful to listen to. The cinematography could be better. The editing is good except in one of the songs where it is extremely jumpy - quite needlessly so. The supporting cast of Srinivasa Avasarla and the late Bhargavi is very good, with Srinivasa Avasarla standing out heads above the rest of the cast both in terms of height and acting skills.
This movie also continues the tradition of movies like "Guddi" in highlighting the impact that movies and especially popular romantic heroes can have on the lives of young women. The point where this movie differs substantially is in not trying to recommend a cure or sitting judgment on the women's choices but empathize with the character. This ends up as a feminist movie without being preachy or boring.
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