The concept of crashing a wedding, or any other large and noisy gathering of human beings for that matter, is very clear and well understood. The crasher tries to gain access to the said public gathering without the luxury of approval in the form of an invitation. So clear is this phenomenon in the minds of the general population that this complex social interaction has been reduced to a single representational term that is fathomed by even the most naive citizens of the world. They named a mass-market romantic comedy after it, for God’s sake. How complicated can it be?
(Read more…)

A trip to India usually includes a very liberal dose of cinema tickets for me. On this trip the first film to catch our attention was Babel. So on a random day when the mood struck us, my Dad, Vishal and I took a long bus ride to South Bombay and stepped into the historical Regal Cinema for our fix. The next day Babel won the Golden Globes Best Picture award. But a few hours before that I had walked out of the darkness of the cinema hall and I loved what I had just seen. In spite of the minor vandalisms by the Indian Censor Board, Babel was quite simply a beautiful piece of cinema. Movies are very much like people, and very much like people we can love them for many different reasons. There are those people who make us laugh, and those that make us feel special, and those that inspire us or make us proud. But if you look carefully you eventually find a small minority that we like not for these sometimes self-centred reasons, but essentially because they are simply impeccable human beings. They are bright and shining standards for the rest of us to live up to. Babel is that kind of movie.
(Read more…)

The listing in the newspaper sounded innocent enough:

EYE YOGA…
If you wish to get rid of your spectacles, attending Sampoorna Eye Yoga Camp can do it the natural way. The camp will teach you eye exercises, Vedic in origin, that will help in relieving you of eye disorders. Register for a free lecture in South Mumbai. On January 17. (Tel: 98xxxxxxxx)

My vision is quite normal and I don’t wear spectacles, but my brother and father do, and so this was of interest. We decided to go, and I went along for moral support, and for remembering any useful details as the member of the clan officially interested in this sort of thing.
(Read more…)

My last real post on this blog was more than two years ago (the March calendar post was a page from my static site added here for archival). It was a different time, a different site, and different blogging software. Much has changed and much as happened since then, but I though it was finally time to get back to the much postponed updating and building of my site.
(Read more…)