Song in My Head

I always have a song playing in my head. No matter what I'm doing; whether I'm working, or reading a book, or eating, or travelling to and from office, or talking to someone, or just lying in bed waiting to fall alseep or to wake up as the case might be! I always wake up with a song playing in my head. Right now, while typing, "Aaj ki Raat" from "Don" is playing in my head.

While growing up I always thought that everybody has a song playing in their head like I do, that everybody is programmed like that! But I have recently (pretty late, I must admit!!) found out that that is just not the case! I have met quite a few people who have debunked this theory of mine! Some people seem to have these long conversations going on inside their heads at all times, while others have nothing going on.

It is quite an entertaining thing to have a song playing in my head at all times, especially now that the radio on my cell isn't working!! :(( I don't have to try too hard on trying to bring a song into my head, one (or sometimes two-three) is always playing in my head. It also comes in handy when I'm stuck in boring company! ;) Of course, it can spell trouble when I zone out while a meeting is going on!! LOL!!

I guess I have a song playing in my head at all times because of my passion for music. I cannot imagine living without music! In fact my favourite quote is by Friedrich Nietzche, "Without music, life would be a mistake". I strongly believe that. Well that's about me and the goings on in my head. What usually goes on in your head?? I'd sure like to know that! :)

On an aside, I watched "Dhoom 2" last week, and was thoroughly entertained! It was a totally masala movie, and you just have to sit back and enjoy the proceedings and not question some instances that just don't add up! Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai have completely stolen show. I'm not a fan of Hrithik at all, but man! did he look hot or what?!! Both my friend J and I drooled over him throughout the movie! LOL!! Another friend of mine put it quite aptly when she said that he looks like a Greek God in "Dhoom 2".
Aishwarya has once again gotten bad reviews, but I thought she carried off her role with much aplomb! I did not expect Aishwarya and Hrithik to share such an amazing chemistry!
Uday Chopra was also kinda cute!! He was really funny with his "Mummy" refrains!
I thought that both Abhishek Bachchan and Bipasha Basu were wasted in the movie and deserved a meatier role.
And apart from all of these good looking actors, what I loved were the stunts carried out with flair and style by Hrithik. Those were quite mind blowing!
In fact I found them so mind blowing that I'm gonna watch the movie again ! :D

Sushi, Cheese and the Greatest Movie of All!

At last my exams are over!! YAHOOOO!!
They did get over quite a few days ago, a week to be exact, but the reality is just sinking in. This always seems to be the case; I feel free from the burden of studying only after about a week has passed since my last paper.
Anyway, lets move on to happier topics!
A few weeks before my exams my brother, D, celebrated his 25th birthday. Mom and Dad were also here, for their annual summer holiday. So it was decided that we would go to a nice hotel to celebrate his birthday. So we went to a hotel that had recently opened.
My entire family, especially Mom and I, are very fond of buffets, so we went to the coffee shop, which served a fabulous buffet (incidentally, is it pronounced ‘boo-fey’ or ‘buh-fey’?).
As soon as we were seated at the table, Mom, as is her wont, went off to inspect the food that was laid out. Dad, D, and I were sitting at the table, taking in our surroundings, when suddenly Dad asked, “What’s the name of this place?” D turned around towards me and went, “The name of this hotel is…” I, for my part, just gave each a blank look, and remarked, “Well! How nice! We are in a hotel, and we don’t even know the name!” and burst out laughing!
Mom arrived and we all turned to her and chorused, “Ma! What’s the name of this hotel?” I just knew it that Mom would know the answer (as she usually does!), and I was right! But for the life of me, I just cannot recall the name; it was something to do with Central. But that’s all I can remember!
Anyway, one of the things that were available was sushi. When I’d first heard about sushi and what it was made of, I almost barfed! But later as I heard about what a delicacy it was, I often wondered how a roll of boiled rice and raw fish would taste. So I didn’t hesitate in placing one of the sushi rolls on to my plate, and poured quite a lot of the sauce that accompanied it on top of it.
The only other person in my family, who had the guts to try it out, was of course, Mom! She was the first to pop it into her mouth and declared that it was “different, but quite nice!” So, I very gingerly placed the entire roll in to my mouth. At first, all I could sense was the bland taste of boiled rice, and then a bouquet of flavours burst in my mouth, and I almost gagged! There was a fishy flavour, a bitter flavour and some others I could not place! But I thought I’d be brave and swallow the damn thing, thinking that the taste (or tastes, as the case was!) would grow on me, and that I just had to get used to it. But as it turns out, sushi is not something that you fall in love with at “first bite”, so to speak! So I did the next best thing: I ran to the restroom and spit out the offending morsel on some paper napkins. A woman happened to walk in just then, and seeing what I was up to, turned around and walked right out!
Now, I don’t know if sushi usually does taste so bad, or it was just this one. I’ve even learned that there are different types of sushi. So maybe I just got a bad one! And I’m still game to try out any other variety of this popular Japanese delicacy, after all, millions of Japanese’s (as well as other nationalities’) taste buds cannot be dysfunctional; and sushi is of course supposed to be an acquired taste, just as caviar is. Though I don’t think I’ll be trying out caviar any time soon! That’s fish eggs for God’s sake!
This entire episode got me thinking of people and their different tastes. The saying, ‘One man’s poison is another man’s meat’ is so true, even in it’s literal sense! The vegetable I hate the most is cauliflower; I just cannot even stand the smell of cooking cauliflower. This one time, I was sitting around with my friends and I referred to cauliflower as “yucky!” and some other choice words, only to be chastised by my friend, F, who said that just because I hate cauliflower does not give me the right to refer to it in such a manner, as it still is food, and all food should be respected alike. Wise words indeed!
Most of us do have a predilection for weird food combinations! I love eating pineapple with chocolate sauce, but just hearing these two words uttered in the same sentence makes Mom want to throw up! When I was a kid, maybe five or six years old, I would grate cheese and then add spoonfuls of sugar to it, mix it up and eat this “treat” with much relish! An aunt of mine reminded me of this a few years ago, and said that she had asked me then, “But who likes to eat this?!” And I had very proudly replied, “I do!”
I haven’t tried the above combination in ages, but I can still remember the taste: cheese and sugar, who can not like it?! :D

On an aside, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge has completed 500 weeks!! That is 10 years! It is one of my most favourite movies, and I’m going to watch it in a theatre again! Quite a few theatres in Bombay are showing DDLJ to celebrate 500 years of the movie running to full houses every single day!
I remember Mom and I had gone to watch Sarfarosh in this theatre in Bombay called Maratha Mandir. We were waiting in the lobby for the morning show of DDLJ to get over, and Mom was wondering why they were still running this movie after so many years. “Who would still want to watch this movie?!” she had remarked. And I had said defensively that there are a lot of DDLJ fans, who would love to watch the movie again and again and again… I was right, and how! As the movie got over and the doors opened, droves of people walked out of the theatre! Even I was dumbstruck that so many people would still want to go to the theatre to watch DDLJ. I begged my mother to take me to the next screening of DDLJ, but she flatly refused.
But now, I insisted that this movie needed to be celebrated in its 500th week! I need to celebrate this movie that has made me smile, laugh and cry for ten whole years!

Romantic Comedies

I’d wanted to watch ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ since, I don’t know, forever! But never got the chance to. I’d asked Ma a countless number of times to borrow the video from the video library she frequents, but her reply always was that she’d already seen it, so she didn’t want to rent it out again. I could have rented it out myself, but somehow, it never occurred to me to do so! I guess that is what happens when you depend on your mother for every little thing, you don’t realize that you can do those things yourself.
After years of wanting to see that movie, I recently saw it 2 ¼ times this month itself. The first time, I saw only the climax, and when I realized that the ‘hero’ and ‘heroine’ hadn’t actually met throughout the movie, I was greatly disappointed. I was like, “What’s this shit? This was supposed to be one of the best romantic comedies ever, and the lead players never actually meet??”
Then later I got a chance to watch the movie again, from the beginning this time, and I loved it! I understood then, why some people swear by this movie. It really was a nice, feel-good kind of movie.
The scene in which little Jonah tells his father that he was beginning to forget his mother broke my heart! And then when Tom Hanks’ character (I forgot his name) tells him that his mother could “peel an apple in one long, curly strip”, that brought a smile to my lips.
Each and every scene was mounted extremely well. There were so many funny scenes, like those between Jonah and the woman his dad starts dating, Victoria. He is so painfully polite to her, it’s hilarious!
Also the scene, in which Rita Wilson’s character talks about the movie, “An Affair to Remember” and gets more and more involved and emotional with her narration, is priceless! I was howling with laughter when I saw it for the first time! And then Hanks and his friend talk about some other movie and mock-cry. That was very funny too.
Then there were the poignant scenes, such as the one in which Jonah calls up the radio station and Hanks ends up talking to the radiotherapist. She asks him what were the things that he loved about his wife, and he says. “How long is your show?” :)
Meg Ryan’s expressions were so bang on in each and every scene; you don’t think of her as Meg Ryan, you only see Annie Reed.

I just love to watch romantic comedies. They are so much fun! My favourite ones are ‘Notting Hill’, ‘Love Actually’, ‘You’ve Got Mail’ and ‘Chupke Chupke’, ‘Rules – Pyar ka Super hit Formula’… the list goes on! According to me, each of these movies is a gem!
I’ve even bought the ‘Love Actually’ VCD. And I’ve watched it quite a few times already, the last time being two days ago. That movie makes me laugh and cry every time I watch it. Some people think that it’s boring, too confusing and very, very saccharine sweet. But I think it is in a class of its own. How well are the individual stories connected to each other. I love ensemble pieces like this one. It is set around Christmas and so each time it gets a little chilly, I feel like watching it!
My favourite individual love story is the one involving Colin Firth’s character (Jamie) and his Portuguese housekeeper, Aurellia. It was funny, and dare I say, cute! Both cannot understand each other’s language, but they are on the same level. After she dives into a cold lake to save his manuscript, they are drying off inside Jamie’s home, and she’s talking in Portuguese, and he in English, and they are both saying absolutely the same thing! He first says that maybe he can name a character after her in his book, and she repeats the same thing in Portuguese. And then she jokingly says that or maybe he can give her 50% of the profits, and he says, “or maybe I could give you 5% of the profits!” Cheapskate! : D
The scene, in which he proposes to her, is both hilarious and so very romantic! It is set in the restaurant in which Aurellia works, and the entire town of Marseilles descends on it to see what this Englishman is up to. He actually learns Portuguese, and proposes to her in his grammatically poor version. He actually says stuff like, “things seems very transparency” and “I’ve come to you with the view for asking your hands in marriage with me” or some such stuff.
And even Aurellia had learnt a bit of English, “just in case”, as she puts it.
Then there is the love story of Liam Neeson’s character’s 10-year-old stepson, Sam. That was just adorable, and not portrayed in the very unbelievable way in which childhood romances are usually portrayed in Hindi movies. Sam’s mom has just passed away after a long illness, and he’s behaving in a moody manner. So Neeson asks him what is wrong, and Sam replies, “I know I should be thinking of mom and all, and I do, but the truth is, I am in love!” When Neeson asks him, “aren’t you too young to be in love?” The kid turns to him in all seriousness, and states matter of factly, “not at all!” And Neeson says that he is so relieved that it’s not something worse, and Sam replies, “What could be worse than the anguish of love?!” This is said in such a serious tone that is not overly dramatic, that you don’t want to laugh at the little boy, but it is amusing all the same.
Sam actually learns to play the drums to impress Joanna, the girl he is in love with. Joanna and some of the other kids are setting up a band for their school Christmas concert, and she is the lead singer. You don’t know what to expect when they actually show the concert taking place. I just thought that it’d just be some little girl singing in an ‘okay’ voice. She starts off the song without any musical backing, in total darkness, and her voice just rises out of the darkness, crystal clear, and it completely stuns you! You wouldn’t expect a 10-year-old to possess such an incredible singing voice. I’ve goose bumps all over my arms and neck, each time I hear her belt out that song, ‘All I want for Christmas is you’. When this girl is old enough she should compete in American Idol, she would win for sure!
All the other stories are also funny, sad, touching, except I didn’t like the one between Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman much. The one between Laura Linney and her co-worker was sad.
I could just go on and on about ‘Love Actually’. But am just going to end here because all this talk has made me want to see ‘Love Actually’, so I’m going to do just that right now!