Posts

Showing posts from March, 2007

Black friday & Mozhi

Image
Both were wonderful movies and watching them, the last weekend speeded by.

Black Friday

Meticulously crafted by Hussein Zaidi and directed by Anurag Kashyap, the movie has KayKay Menon doing the whodunit with his outfit of five. With Kaykay’s restrained acting the movie is taut and suspense filled even though many have been following the real life story over the last 13 years. The makers have not strayed away from the storyline, nor have they been hesitant about naming and going after the perpetuators. The movie completed 3 years ago, has just been cleared for screening after a court ban for fear of biasing the court verdicts. Don’t give the movie a miss, if you can’t see it in a theatre, see the DVD….It is very good.

For those who are interested in knowing if the perpetuators have been brought to justice, three of the main kingpins Dawood, Tiger & Yakoub are still on the run. Tiger was spotted in Dubai recently inaugurating a restaurant. Dawood was probably around for his daughters …
3 comments
Reactions:
Keep reading

Anyways

I started hearing this usage some years ago – probably three. It means ‘in any case’, but all and sundry are now legitimizing this usage….Of course, these things happen, it is, I guess, cool….but then…as Tina Blue says,

This is going to be short and simple.

Do not say or write "anyways"--not ever. The word is "anyway."

The form "anyways" is found in some dialects in the United States, but it is not standard English, and it should never be used in any situation where you want to be considered reasonably well educated.

That's all there is to it.

There are some who want to get to the bottom of this, if so read on….

Ben Wise wrote:
As ugly and juvenile as it sounds to these ears, which had almost never heard the construction until, perhaps, a decade or two ago, anyways now seems to have taken hold as common usage among the current generation of youth and young adults, at least where I live (New England). My guess is that it is a "juvenilism," lik…
9 comments
Reactions:
Keep reading

A movie and a concert

Image
Hariharan at San Diego

We have not been to too many live concerts, but I have been to ones performed by Yesudas, Chitra, Janaki, MG Sreekumar etc and we have watched a number of others on tape – Ilayaraja, Gangai Amaran, SPB….. So when Hariharan was scheduled to visit nearby San Diego, we jumped at the chance and joined the Raag & Taal academy here. It was worth it, Hariharan is one of those audience friendly singers, and the audiences truly appreciate and acknowledge the fact. He could easily get the mix of old and young going and singing with him, clapping with him. The Neurosciences institute auditorium was as Hariharan himself put it, a very good concert hall, acoustically. He regaled us last Sunday evening with some great numbers, Ghazals, Thumri’s, Hindi and Tamil movie songs. Chandrayee who accompanied him was passable, but then it was Hariharan’s evening – singing many of his popular Ghazals, movie songs like Tuhi re, Roja jaane man…Ennai thalattu varuvaya, Yadein, Woh Lamh…
2 comments
Reactions:
Keep reading

The Meisterstück

Image
I saw a wonderful video on NGeo a few days ago about the new Ferrari 599 and how they test it on their racetrack before delivery. Well, that has always been a desire – owning a Ferrari, but well, I own a number of bright red Ferrari micro models though, now consigned somewhere to storage boxes in the garage, for want of display space.

People have many desires in life – and I have my share of them. Decades ago, I carried this ‘so very true’ saying always in my wallet – wishes are desires, be careful of what you desire, you just might get it. (Remember the Midas touch story?)

Well, I desired a foreign sojourn, I got it, too much of it actually, I wished for many things like a Mont Blanc, Jaguar etc that I got…a few remain like the Ferrari, the space ride, skydiving, piloting a plane and so on..Who knows….But for now, I will pen a little on the Mont Blanc.

Lets start with a Fun Fact - Montblanc pens are tested by hand in absolute silence; their craftsmen listen for the "melody" of…
6 comments
Reactions:
Keep reading

You buy - we fly

Image
The last issue of Life had a very nice article -- order a pizza, but the dominoe's guy who comes by car is not the one at the door, you pick it up instead at the nearby airstrip - Believe it or not !the pizza is airlifted to you, (but not in LA or other places) a story from Nome, Alaska. Life in those parts of the world can be pretty tough, but the world adapts... A pretty nice read




The text in the picturePlease dont tip the pilotWhen a call comes in to Airport Pizza, in Nome, Alaska, for three large pepperoni pies going out to Savoonga (pop. 648), chef Matt Tomter, 41 responds much as Domino's would: He takes the order, pops the pizzas into the oven, and' sched­ules the next available delivery. Nothing unusual there, except that Savoonga is 150 miles away as the crow flies-flies being the operative word.

"Nome is just like any other little town in America," explains Tomter. "It just happens to be 500 miles from the closest city with a road." Most would …
5 comments
Reactions:
Keep reading

VK Krishna Menon (Part 2)- The reluctant politician

Image
Some months back, I started on a difficult project, trying to understand a forgotten luminary from the Indian political scene of the 50’s and 60’s, VK Krishna Menon. For a while it became a mini obsession, I read hundreds of articles related to him; I read autobiographies written by Janaki Ram and Madhavan Kutty and I discovered a man who was hated by many, liked only by a few and I wondered, why so? It is a tragedy actually; a great man who did so much for the country, only to be undone by the very politics he entered into…Because, in his lone quest for moral righteousness, he voiced his mind and started fights that he did not have firepower to fight with and lacked back up. Many a time, the finesse that he showed when he spoke on great pulpits like the UN, deserted him when he faced subordinates. The subordinates became his enemy.

In Part 1, I introduced him; in Part 2, I cover some matters related to his defense ministry days, the infamous jeep scandal and the latest MI5 files.

MKB N…
9 comments
Reactions:
Keep reading

Mannadey - on his muse

Image
‘Zindagi kaise hai paheli’, what a riddle this life is sang the great Prabodh Chandra dey – a.k.a. Mannadey (Song from the movie Anand), that was the number the car CD had picked up at random, just as I was ruminating about the vagaries of life…one has to agree, what a great song, tuned by the superlative Salilda. A song that was originally a background song as composed for the movie. Rajesh Khanna after hearing it wanted it to be picturised on him and thus the beach scene was added.

Which of course made me think about and drift to Mannadey’s other great number, a memorable one for us Malayali’s, ‘Maanasa Maine varu’ from Chemmeen (1965), a song that Manndey had to practice over & over before he went on to sing it in his own inimitable style. Mannadey comments fondly about the song, "Even if there is one Malayali in the audience, he will insist that I sing that song"

So what is behind the man and the song? The man is famous, there is plenty of writing about him on the net,…
4 comments
Reactions:
Keep reading