There goes the neighborhood

I'm sitting in my room with my telly on full blast. My mum sits on the floor, with her jaw on the floor. The serials she watches drive me to distraction, and i know there's nothing i can do about it. I try and see whats there to like about all this, and i cannot last more than 5 minutes. The hyper dramatic zooms and pans make me dizzy, and the all too over the top soundtrack makes me envy the hearing impaired. The women and their garish whore like makeup, the insignificant men and their rosy cheeks, the daft-as-rocks kids, the pseudo intelligent elders...how on earth is shit like this on air?!
what aspirations do they project?the sprawling bungalows?the 2 tonnes of jewelry per person?the costumes?the exciting lives?The bungalows are rented,and purpose built sets, and often have 3 or 4 production companies shooting in different rooms simultaneously, the jewelry is plastic...so there.
And the soundtrack, lets see, close your eyes and listen to what's going on,try and figure out what happens. here's what happens:
scene 1 (typical evening)
3 women are mumbling something in the back,in walks another woman.
cue-rapid zoom in,rapid zoom out on each face in the room,pan in,pan out on same faces.fade to white,fade in,fade to white...
music-drums,funky final cut pro stock effects, vedic shlokas,more vedic shlokas
dialogue
1st woman from group(pallavi):oh
woman who enters room(kamini):oh
cue cue-rapid zoom in,rapid zoom out on each face in the room,pan in,pan out on same faces.fade to white,fade in,fade to white...
music-drums,funky final cut pro stock effects, vedic shlokas,more vedic shlokas
2nd woman from group(shalini):tum yahaan kya kar rahi ho?
kamini:kuch nahi,bas yun hi.(echo)
cue-extreme close up,rapid zoom in,rapid zoom out on each face in the room,pan in,pan out on same faces.fade to white,fade in,fade to white...
music-drums,funky final cut pro stock effects, vedic shlokas,more vedic shlokas,
kamini:tum log yahaan kya kar rahe ho?
3rd woman(ragini):kuch nahi
cue-extreme close up,rapid zoom in,rapid zoom out on each face in the room,pan in,pan out on same faces.fade to white,fade in,fade to white...
music-drums,funky final cut pro stock effects, vedic shlokas,more vedic shlokas
kamini:oh
freeze frame,extreme close up,blanch,polarise,drum roll,slow mo
-cut to commercial-


nice na?

The Sound of Music

Why do i like jazz so much?Interesting question,i'm bored. It's something that none of my friends take too kindly to. And still i persist!I was enjoying an interesting performance the other day that i had this epiphany and i wasn't surprised that i was alone-it's better that way!I think jazz is much more palatable than painful genres like hard rock and metal, it's something one can chew on and savour, and not just gulp down like the rest. You have 3 or 4 people on stage, each playing their own instrument, on their own,and yet there's harmony, u can still distinguish notes. No growling, no nasty snarls, no homoerotic long haired dudes banging their heads around.
Jazz in Bombay is often considered a little elitist, which might be true because the passes are always beyond my reach!But what i realised the other day was that jazz unfortunately has been projected in that manner. Foreign bands are very expensive for organisers to bring in, and the only people who will support the ticket sales are the moronic hoity-toities. They patronize the performance because they can afford it, and be seen with their 'peers', not necessarily because they like it so much. Jazz, in India, has caught on very late. And thanks to 'dude rock', almost underground. Whats new is uber cool, whats uber cool is uber expensive.
That's why i say piracy truly is power to the people.
Well i guess i'l just have to wait till things become cheaper. Till then its 'bitcomet' all the way.

Sexy Eyes!

So i got arrested today...
And so did 3 of my friends who were with me,cringing under the hot noon (winter?) sun,beginning to enjoy an iced lolly. We did notice some heavy duty 'bandobast',and one of them was nice enough to ask us to stay inside the college campus,in rolled the senior officer's car and suddenly we found ourselves cramped in a pseudo cosy Bolero,quiet,and me still going at my lolly.Upon reaching the station,we were placed at the office and lined up, still not knowing just what on earth was going on,and i had just finished my lolly. They said we looked Tibetan,and the government wasnt too fond of them right now.The Alpha Chinky was in town,the chinese premier-Mr.(drop the utensil) wasn't all to impressed by the protests put up by the Tibetan population in Delhi,and wanted to make sure his view of the sea wasn't marred by masses of similar looking faces,pink out of anger and the sun.And all he did was just take away their country,bleed it dry,kill half their people,ruin their religion and turn them into refugees overnight, he obviously didn't think he deserved such a violent welcome.
So while we were sipping government funded tea at the cop station,we were told we would be kept in for a few hours,until Mr.(drop it again) had reached his air conditioned comfort. The television streamed repeated footages of peaceful slit eyed strangers getting thrashed left,right and center.One's pants caught fire(liar?liar?),so his peers were trying to douse it by slapping the flame with super inflammable Tibetan flags(Tibetans are by nature a bit...slow).They tore his pants off and dragged him away.I doubt if he got his acre of land in Lhasa.
So their efforts at questioning us brought froward strange results. One of us answered in chaste Marathi,why shuldn't she?She was born and brought up in Maharashtra...oops. The other answered in a marathi like garble-another maharashtrian...double oops. The third hails from Jammu & Kashmir...triple oops. I'm half Nepali,half Gujju,from Darjiling...hmm. So where did all them damn Tibetans go?!The cops swooped down on all creatures slit eyed(do i smell sheer ignorance?).To their joy they managed to catch hold of 3 true blue Tibetans,but i still cant figure out where the other 10 came in from-because they were Manipuris,Mizos and Nagas.Well they all look the same!
They did let us off after 2 hours, we weren't entartaining or tainted enough for them to keep us any longer. But I'm not too pleased with the way they picked up unsuspecting chinkies at random,just to satisfy the whim of Mr.(one more time) Everybody deserves a good old fashioned ultraviolent procession, because every significant leader has a lot of dirt under rug swept. They deserve a little spot of cowpat on their windshields every now and then. A few grenades here and there aren't all too bad,everybody needs a reality check.
We were lucky enough to have been treated nicely by the cops there.One of them asked me what Tibet was all about,I said it gets a tad bit nippy up there.
Well they gave us tea,I wonder why they didn't give us any food...