This Weekend….

Firstly, thank you for reading my previous post. A bigger thank you to my pals who told me I sucked at being verbose:) I appreciate it, no, I seriously do:).

This weekend was fun. I watched a movie I was anticipating for a while, had dinner at an amazing restaurant, the following night was spent at an Irish pub in San Francisco, dinner at 3AM and a brunch get together with a dear friend, the following morning, whom I had not seen in a long time. This will hence forth be pretty much a review of the places I was at this weekend with some thoughts sprinkled in for meatiness.

Friday night, I got to watch Jodhaa-Akbar. Good movie. Screenplay- very good, script- good, acting- well, one guy simply stood out from the rest, Hrithik Roshan was very, very good. Music- one song stands out, Kwhaja…stupendous music. Art- Nitin Desai-very, very good. Support cast- Average. Duration- about 45 minutes too long. Compliance with history- who cares. Thats my beef, actually, with anyone who expects a documentary from artists who tell stories. Why can’t we just grow up as a nation and understand that many a time, other Indians can dream and, some, like the director Ashutosh G, are gifted enough to get it across to you and me(I have a beef with the director as well, but I will get back to it later). Whats the point in preventing a movie from getting screened? Why, are we as a country, moving towards becoming a place where Hussein can’t paint, Taslima can’t write, Rushdie can’t live, Deepa Mehta can’t screen a movie. I just want to know, what makes us that sensitive to almost any sort of social debate…Whats even more appalling is a collective sentivity of a mob, I mean, how can you explain ten thousand mobsters(all, by definition are seeking an identity) all sharing the same grouse with a work of fiction. To me, that seems quite irrational. Not surprisingly, their acts are irrational. All these manifestations, just reinforce my belief that compulsory education for everyone in the country is the way ahead, otherwise I fear, we as a nation may become unsustainable. My other beef is with the director, and not only him, a vast majority of people who make movies is that they try to humor you all the time. I think a majority of Indians are smart enough to get a point made with subtlety. There are instances in the movie where you feel he is trying to slam a point across your face!! dude, we get it. The additional hour of screenplay wasn’t worth it. I wish I could go on with a critique of the movie, am just not good enough at that.

Moving on to some good stuff, I was at Salang Pass, an Afghan restaurant in the bay area, CA. I simply blindly recommend the place to anyone who wants to give a shot at different cuisines. They serve a large percentage of vegetarian dishes, which might be quite against perception, I was pleasantly surprised. Great food, good ambiance, option of sitting on the floor, good service, quite and peaceful. Good part, generally don’t need reservations. Oh yes, not very expensive;).

Saturday night…dropped a friend off at SFO, lucky ass was going to India:(. Went to Sally Tully, an Irish pub at downtown SFO. They always have good live music there, yesterday was even better cuz they were playing floyd, cream and some dream theater. At about 2AM hunger kicked in and we just landed at some random pancake and omelette’s place, not before an eventful pit stop at a 24hr Starbuck’s. I’m just happy that I got home, whenever I did:)

A FIRST FOR ME!!!

Here I am, simultaneously whipping my brain into two new realms of operation, concurrent processing of thought and a reasonably coherent translation of the said thoughts to words on a post. To say the very least, this is a new experience to me and am very unsure what to expect out of this whole experience. In fact, I am not even aware what probably has motivated me to write a post now, given the fact that I have the least amount of time to devote to sensible thought processing and a subsequent translation thereof. Nonetheless, I am here on the web with substantial trepidation and excitement in equal measure and I realize it is not such a bad thing after all to get someone else to see something/anything through your lens into the world.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been following rather closely the politics of the migrant against native in Mumbai, India. It is easily one of the most blatantly myopic view of the scenario I have encountered in a while. For all its political ramifications, I would perversely seek a scientific explanation for a theme thats pretty much repeating itself on every single piece of inhabited land on this planet(OK!!we can discount Anatartica). I just wonder if there is a Darwinian under current to the way we humans are evolving. Is survival going to be achieved out of blatant seclusion of a set of humans from another. As we evolve, by progressive segregation are we moving forward or back in civilization? I just wonder, can we survive as a race through seclusion? A few hundred years of scientific evidence tells us otherwise(across the animal kingdom). No wonder the most ignorant and hence, susceptible sections of our society are the only ones who seem to be getting carried away by such rhetoric to banish people from a place based on their alien geographic origin. It is just plain sad that, this pattern is being observed in more places than one wishes to acknowledge. Having said that, I seriously wish this trend dies a rapid death, else I ask God or whoever maybe the higher power to allow me to witness the gradual decline and eventual extinction of this sect of humans who purport native protectionism. In any case, God/the higher power in her infinite wisdom is not going to afford me that bit of sadistic pleasure. Heck, so be it:)