Blah Blah...!

I saw ‘Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith’ two days ago. It was hyped as the best Star Wars movie ever, and I of course was dying to see it. Mom wanted to see ‘Naina’ instead, but I vetoed the idea and we went off to the distant suburb of Andheri to watch ‘Star Wars’ in Fun Republic, one of the many multiplexes populating Bombay suburbs.
The movie was really good! Hayden Christensen could have been much, much better unfortunately he was not. I thought the fall of Anakin Skywalker would be far more dramatic. His descent in to Darth Vader was quite impressive though!
But the actor who STOOD OUT was Ewen McGregor. Not only does he look good and has a cute accent, but also acts very well!! :D
All in all, the movie was worth traveling all the way to Andheri in a crowded local train compartment!

GO 92.5 FM, a radio station in Bombay is holding a contest called ‘Bollywood Badshah’. I’d taken part in this contest last year, and had actually qualified to be in the round that comes before the semi-finals (what do you call that??!). It was a really nice experience, going to their studio and actually being quizzed on air! I was so nervous! The RJ saw that and started singing “Urvashi Urvashi”, that famous Prabhu Deva song. Well, that did not help matters, as that song was the bane of my existence when I was in the sixth grade, as most people in my school would burst out into this song to irritate me!!
Anyway, I didn’t do very well, getting only five out of ten correct. I actually even forgot who the director of “1 2 ka 4” was!! And I’m a huge Shah Rukh Khan fan!! (In case anyone’s wondering, the director’s Shashilal Nair).
But it was quite a nice experience anyway.

I’m going to Kerala this week. Yay! I’ve always wanted to go to Kerala. The backwaters look so wonderful in all those “Kerala Tourism” ads! And I will be going at last!! As you can see, I’m very, very excited!

And here I’ll just end my ramblings. Nothing very exciting or interesting to report. Hopefully, I’ll be full of adventurous, funny, scary, or other ‘adjective’y stories to fill my blog and bore everyone to death!! Ha ha ha! Hmmm… but seriously, I don’t think I write about boring stuff, well except this once!

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!

Where is the Stepney?!

Last night my aunt had invited us for dinner at her place. I actually wasn’t very keen on going because I’ve a ton of college work to do. But my brother D said that we better go because we haven’t seen our aunt since she fractured her backbone. So I decided maybe I should take a break from my non-stop record writing, give my right hand a rest and go out for a change.
So we went. And we were late as usual. And D was freaking out as usual about the time I take to get ready!
We had a good enough time. Lots of jokes were cracked and lots of laughs were shared.
It was about 11:30 and D decided that we better get going as he had a 5 am shift the next day. Then my cousin A said something about some Canadian Indian, and he asked us if we would like to see a clip of some sort. We said, “yes”, and were taken to the computer. The clip was about a Canadian Indian who was a standup comedian. He was hilarious! He did accents so well! Chinese, Indian, Jamaican, African etc. etc. after half an hour or so D thought that we really should be going, and A offered to drop us home in his jeep (later I found out why exactly D wanted to rush home – he’s sitting and talking to his girlfriend right now!!).
The jeep was cute looking (D and A would freak out if they read this :D). But the ride was anything but smooth! It was terribly bumpy. I was feeling nauseous in the front seat and D echoed my feelings from the back seat. We were just 15 minutes away from home when a car passed by and a guy in the passenger seat leaned out and shouted something. I didn’t get it, but suddenly A shouted, “the tyre must be punctured!”
We got out of the jeep and saw much to our dismay that the tyre was indeed “punctured”! In fact, it was so hot that the rubber had melted in a few places! A did not know much about changing tyres and I knew naught about the whole business! But thank God my brother; D knew exactly how to do it. He asked A if he had a jack and a stepney. A replied, that he had no idea. They checked the jeep and found everything that they needed. Then they set about changing the tyre (thank God there was a spare one!). It was about 12:30 now.
And while the guys were changing the tyres, what did I do? Felt foolish is what! That’s because I had no idea at all what was to be done, and the guys seemed to have had everything in control, and there really wasn’t much for me to do anyway. But yet I felt kind of silly just standing there looking at them working at changing the tyre. Just then I received an sms from a friend, and began replaying to her what was happening. She replied, “Maybe a good-looking good Samaritan would come by and help you out!” I replied that D and A seemed to have everything in control, and that we were in an area, which really did not boast of “good-looking good Samaritans”!
But a taxi driver did come up and tell D that he should place a rock in front of the jeep so that it does not roll away once the rear tyre was lowered. I pointed out to a rock I saw lying on the pavement, and that was the extent of my contribution to the whole process!
After about 15 to 20 minutes the tyres were exchanged, the nuts bolted on tightly and the jeep was mobile once more! When A started up the jeep we could hear the voices of some men coming out of the speakers. I was wondering which radio station we were tuned into, when I suddenly recognized Sanjay Dutt’s voice. A then realized that the ‘Munnabhai MBBS’ CD was playing (yes, the jeep is equipped with a little screen on which CDs could be watched)! All of us heard Sanjay Dutt’s voice asking, “Was that a tyre bursting or a gun shot?!” D started laughing from behind. How coincidental is that?!
By now we had reached home and we sat in the jeep for sometime watching the movie, till I asked D whether he intended to sit in the jeep the entire night. He suddenly realized that he had a 5 am shift (more like, he had to call up his girlfriend!), and we got down and walked up to our apartment. And 20 minutes later, after having changed my clothes and brushed my teeth, I’m sitting on my computer, typing out this whole daastan!

This is the last entry that I will be posting for sometime now. I couldn’t post anything before too because I do not have the time to do anything except write in my record book. My practicles are in two weeks time, and I still have so much to write, and my exams start in a month’s time and I’ve to start preparing for them too! How I hate studying! Even if the subject is interesting I don’t like studying for it! :( What a bother!
Anyway, I’ll definitely post my next entry as soon as my exams are over. This is goodbye for a while now! :D