My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Finally watched 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' yesterday night. I seem to be catching up on a lot of pending movies and tasks now that I have the time.....
The craze for John Corbett sort of petered out due to lack of good movies to watch.....After watching 'Raising Helen' a coule of times for the full 3 minutes role he has, I had somehow given up on him......
And so, I was surprised when I came across him in this movie.....I was even more surprised when, 15 min into the movie, I realised that I dint like him much anymore.......But as his character developed, he sort of regrew on me......and then I realised that of course it was his character (Aidan) combined with his looks and personality which I had liked in Sex and the City......Shows that I am not shallow enough to be impressed only by looks......

The movie is supposed to be romcom.....the rom and com part do come up in some scenes and the movie is definitely a one time watch on the whole.....The heroine leaves a lot to be desired, though, both in terms of looks and acting......

The heroine comes from a very traditional greek immigrant family which clings to its traditions.......and hence she is forbidden from marrying a non greek guy or do anything which shows that she is an independent woman.......The whole journey of how the convince her parents etc is what the movie is all about.......

There is only one point which remained in my mind after the movie......The things the hero did to be allowed to marry the heroine....Can someone really do all those things? If any of my numerous boyfriends had put in even 30% of the effort this guy put, then I wouldn't be single today. Well, its also true that if I had put even 2% of the effort, then I wouldn't be single today......(waise I wonder that if the heroine also loved him so much, why she did not at least offer to disobey her dad and leave home- yaar ek romcom bhi thoda to credible hona chahiye!

The review is pretty short as there was nothing in the movie to right home about........

Note -- Why, why do we get a thing only when we have convinced ourselves that we do not want it and have stopped ourselves from wishing for it anymore?????

Random Musings and Updates

• I have no work in office these days....well ok... I mean no interesting work....and I am a person who has to keep busy.....
• If you are not busy, you have time for a lot of unwanted thoughts.....kya din aa gaye - leisure se dar lagta hai ab!
• It is very important in life to do work you like
• Rains still give me pleasure. Last friday I was feeling very melancholy - It rained while coming back from office - luckily I decide to get drenched and .......
• Nothing is so soothing as a walk in the woods (ok park). I am lucky that London is full of places to walk.....
• I love nature and open spaces but essentially I am a city person......not even the suburbs..... I need all that the city offers. I think the dream of the farmshouse in Lonavala was an ideal one.....But seeing the rate at which I save and my views regarding marriage, it is firmly going to remain a dream....
• Whats with this place and my matrimonial status? After the ICICI issue, it was NHS's turn. The receptionist at the GP asked me why I had left the 'previous surname' field blank. When I told her that was because I did not have a previous surname, she gave me an incredulous look and confirmed twice that I was not married!
• My fortune in TOI today - "something may happen that my improve your state of mind. You are incapable of taking a decision or standing up to your colleagues. You should listen to their advice, as it will help you make the right decisions. Try to find some balance and calm in your love life." - I am eagerly waiting for this something, but given the "may happen" and my luck, I am sure nothing will happen! Me -not able to stand up to colleagues? they are the only people I stand up to without fail! and to find balance and calm in love life - I would first need to get one! I would rather find balance and calm in my non love life - that will be enough for me.
• I missed one thing here when I was talking about being there.....my sis has always been there for me.....in her own way, although her and mine ways may sometimes differ.....and it has meant a lot to me although i do not share personal stuff with her......and although our conversations generally are on lines of discussing what is wrong in her life....the updates on Beth make me look forward to these conversations more than anything else......
• Without my sister, I would not be the heroine I sometimes am....I realised that on Sunday, when I had to go back to my place alone at 12 in the night. I had to change 3 buses and my brother in law looked up the route, bus numbers, timings, stops etc on the internet. Without this real time information, I would have had to pay a higher price for my zidd than I actually did.....
• Nothing keeps you busy as the responsibility of knowing that a person is fully dependent on you. In Pune, I was so busy cooking three meals a day and looking after dad's needs and demands that I did not have time for myself. When there is no time to relax or read, you cant really afford time on depression and melancholia.
• My fortune recently - Stop living in the past. You think you can learn from your past mistakes but it is the new thoughts and ideas for the future that will take you to happiness. Frankly, I dont see anything in the future which would motivate me to leave the past.....although that is so long gone.....and although what happened later was the worst part of my life till now, what happened before was the best part of my life.....since it is impossible to remember one and forget the other, I am still to decide whether to remember both or forget both......
• The conversion of currency does not work for me. I had thought that everytime I spent a pound, it would be 75 rupees for me and I would save, at least initially. However the reverse happened to me. I spend 10 pounds on worthless things and feel sirf 10 pound hi hai, never 750 rs. I have ended up spending more (if that is possible).
• I still dont like shopping much - esp if there is a crowd. I hate trying things on.
• I still love getting gifts. Not from one person, though! However, with two out of three people who gave most gifts no longer in my life, I have to start getting away from this love......
• I did not really want to come here but had been forced in a corner and this was the only way out.....I somehow wanted to believe that I would go back after the July release (although I knew that it would not be so).....so when July passed and it finally began to sink in that I was not going to go back anytime soon, my first reaction was of panic.....However, since I have to behave like the big girl I am, I tried to resign myself to the circumstances. I could not get over the feeling that I was just an outsider visiting here and I felt sick of everything here - the tube, the food, the commute, the whole way of life....For me loving (or at least liking) the place where I live is important (P's funda of 'company matters' does not apply to me maybe because I never have any company!)....so this feeling of not liking London was very unsettling .....This weekend I was alone at home after a long time. Sunday morning I got up and was getting ready to join others at Waterloo for our bournemouth trip.....The whole process of getting ready alone made me feel I was back in Pune where I did everything alone. The familiarity made me feel better instead of nostalgic. It also made my heart open up to this city......I used the tube journey to absorb things around me without the interference of the ipod or novel.....and it was during the ride from Baker Street to Waterloo that I finally fell in love with London......

Yeh Bata De Mujhe Zindagi

I know this is too early in the morning to write about this topic....but this song has been ringing in my head since the past week - how we sometimes wish for the chance to get answers to questions which will haunt us throughout life....if only someone would tell us 'phool kyon sare murjha gaye' then dealing with this murjhana would have been so infinitely easier.....but sadly more often than not, we have to live through each day for a lifetime knowing that these answers will never be forthcoming and the only thing you have are empty platitudes......"it was not meant to be" is a very poor balm to my desperate need to understand where I went wrong along the way, what made the path which seemed so rosy in the beginning suddenly be left only with thorns.

The eternal question of "what could have been". How desperately we wish for a second chance - if only the clock would turn back once, we would do things differently and make everything turn out right, what we would not give to undo our actions and not end up where we are now.....all this cycle of questions, desperation, pain and then nothingness - and even this emptiness is a bliss after all the turbulence....

All of us know that in the things that really matter, life does not give us second chances. But that doesn't stop us from wishing for it. What is it that makes us so prone to regret? Are we not able to bear the consequences of our actions? Or is it God's twisted sense of humor? Does He make us take the wrong decisions and then not give us strength to bear them? Why are we not able to put a thing fully behind us - why does it have to take up permanent residence in our thoughts? And again, as I always ask, HOW do we put it behind us, even if we want to?

During the placement interviews in college (by college I always mean engg), one of the popular questions was 'where do you see yourself 5/10 years from now......At that time, whatever the places I could imagine myself to be in, this was definitely not of them! I wonder why the interviewers ask this question? Do they not know that we are helpless in front of our fate - that all plans, dreams, promises everything sacred to us is held in deep contempt by the fickle seductress called Fate. Would we better off to reconcile to the fact that however hard we wish and try, we cannot change what is in our Fate? Or better still, if we could somehow know what the future holds for us, then we could mould our hopes and dreams accordingly. I know this defeats the whole concept of what is called life.....It is the uncertainty which keeps us going.....the fact that we hope that although today is not that good, tomorrow would be better is the key to our existence.........and if we know beforehand that tomorrow in fact, will not be better, then who would actually want to see that tomorrow.......

And given my luck, at least for myself, I think it would be better not to know what the future holds for me......I dont think I would be able to bear seeing my dreams crumble before I have a chance to fully dream them.....

God, if you cannot give me answers, just give me the strength to face life each day in spite of the questions.......

Message in a Bottle

Just finished reading this book by Nicholas Sparks. I had been planning to read it for a long time after Ashvini had praised it so much but somehow had never got around to it......Last week, I wanted something very different from my usual routine and finally got around to reading it.

The book deals with the theme of finding love again after having loved and lost......The part about having loved and lost is something with which everyone can identify. Unfortunately, the part about finding love again is not something with which everyone can identify.......The book addresses the bigger question of whether we have the guts to move on and acknowledge the newly found love. Two people in different points in life - although both have lost in love and have a broken heart, they are in opposite frames of mind - the hero is still in love with his dead wife while the heroine has been cheated by her husband........They find each other but can they recognize love and dare to embrace it? The ending is very predictable and the book is too sentimental for my tastes, but it definitely touches a chord.

All of us have gone through the pain of losing a loved one at some point in our lives and the pain never goes away although we learn to ignore it. Why are we so scared of giving up the past even though it hurts so much......We are scared of hurting ourselves again and to avoid it, we make ourselves bear the continuous hurt of the previous relationship.

I have always felt or rather hoped that if you meet another person with whom you have the wavelength and chemistry, it would automatically erase the hurt we carry and that person would help us move on with life. This cannot be forced. And I always wonder what people exactly mean when they say that you have to move on - I also know that and do you really think that I am like this by choice - I would have 'moved on' to the other part of the hemisphere if it could be done by force.

The book reinforces this belief. However, if I remove the melodrama in the book and place the situation in a practical context, I am not able to believe that love will be enough to conquer all. Heck, love is almost a commodity now. Will we really be able to try and invest so much in a new relationship in the first place? And without that, we cannot hope to create a meaningful existence with anybody. The Indian style of going for an arranged marriage after a break up is just an escapist attitude which only proves that you are not able to face yourself and the fact that you are not emotionally prepared for another relationship on your own. Is this fair on the spouse who may not carry such a baggage of his/her own and might end up being an innocent victim of the circumstances?

I was a bit disappointed with the ending. It was too predictable which is fine in itself. My problem is that the author brought up a pertinent issue, dissected it properly, showed us the problems we face, but unfortunately did not give a conclusion. I know that it can be argued that the reader is free to draw other conclusions of her own. However, this reader had been grappling with this question for a long time without reaching any conclusion of her own and would have loved to see one practical and acceptable solution.

And of course, in the end it is fate. 'Jo hona hai wohi hokar rahega'. the following lines say it beautifully:
"In a world that I seldom understand, there are winds of destiny that blow when we least expect them. Sometimes, they gust with the fury of a hurricane, sometimes they barely fan one's cheek. But, the winds cannot be denied, bringing as they often do a future that is impossible to ignore.
Like a cautious traveler, I tried to protect myself from the wind and lost my soul instead....."

May such a wind blow in all our lives and give us what we lost along the way - a heart capable of loving again.

Clash of the Titans......

Before you get the idea that I am referring to some nail biting match of the grand slam, T20, FIFA ilk, let me clarify that I am just writing about a local Dumb Charades match. Although I say local and viewership was nothing to write home about, the stakes were much higher than the high profile events. In fact the stakes would have made a professional bettor sweat - after all it was the age old fight personified- girls vs boys.

Like all big things, it started as a mere idea. We had been playing dumb c on and off for quite a while now and it was getting repetitive with the same movie names being acted out and guessed at in the same way. Like all big things, the trigger was also something very different - the main reason being that everyone was playing cards which was pretty boring (for me). And as everybody learns in bskool, packaging matters a lot - take an idea, add a flavor, wrap it up and it sells like hot cakes. This is what happened in Masala Zone (no, we were not there to add flavor to the idea but to have a scrumptious dinner) - we made up the rules of the challenge and everybody was hooked. And you can imagine the level of hooking by the fact that Sandy was up till the end even though he had a very hectic afternoon. And if Sandy is up past his bedtime, it is definitely SOMETHING.

And so, the ground rules were set.

1. To give a fresh flavor, each team would be allowed some time on the internet to build a fresh stock of movies - the major sacrosanct rule being that you were not allowed to use a movie which had been enacted in our earlier games.

2. As usual, only hindi movies would be allowed.

3. Time limit of 4 mins - Additional flavor that the opposition would not be allowed to say anything during the first 3 and to compensate, no holds barred in the last 1 min.

4. The 3 golden rules - cheating nai, cheating nai, cheating nai. And this time really cheating nai. The girls gang had been besmirched by the 'lanchhan' that they won by cheating in cards. This was their chance of redemption.

5. The bigger question of judge was resolved by the presence of 'Rajmaata' who would be player cum refree.....and for all you non believers - Rajmaat ke integrity par shak karne ki jurrat????

6. The biggest question of all- the STAKES -well the official one was that the losing team would treat the winning team - the venue and cuisine would of course be the winning team's choice. And as to the unofficial stakes - let your imagination run wild.....it encompassed every competitive feeling you can imagine - both teams took up the challenge in every sense of the word - it was as if each team felt that their winning would be the ultimate solution to world peace......

The guys team had 5 people and the ladies had 4 - although we were not evenly matched in number, we were more than even in team spirit and I will not talk about skills at this point.
Well, we reached home and P and B quickly jumped on to the internet and had quite a substantial list by the time me, A and D freshened up and logged on the net. We three worked together, looking at each name and deciding if it made the cut. So, by the time, we were ready to start, girls team had one sheet of names while the guys team had two (one each by P and B).

And then it started. The opener from the guys team was Palash and we gave him 'Rashtraveer Shivaji' and sat with bated breath for the first 3 min (although there were restrictions only on speaking and not on breathing). 3 min later they had Shivaji but were stuck in Manmohan Singh and Prime Minister and the last 1 min was nail biting where each second counted for both the teams. This point was the most precious in the whole game. It instantly affected the confidence of both the teams. It was like tendulkar getting out for a duck in the good old days.

The first candidate from our team was Jenny. She was given 'Johar Mahmud in Hong Kong'. We got to the point where it was a place in Asia and we said everthing except Hong Kong......Suddenly somebody said hong kong and from there it was easy.
It was plain sailing after that. They did not even get time to raise their heads (leave alone performance) for quite a few rounds after that. And we - we were on a roll. It took us 10 seconds to guess 'Zari' on a saree and Zarina from Zari.

We won by 8-0.

Lets see how the guys handle a royal defeat and how their team spirit stands up. Some examples of 'sportsmanship':

1. When the game was about to start, both teams took their win as foregone conclusions. I was asking one of them about smthg - and his answer 'let us beat you first, uske baad dekhte hain'.
2. They made two lists while we made only one but as the game progressed, they started cribbing about their list.
3. When we started teasing about the score, they gave the childish response of 'thik hai hum 20-0 se haare, ab khush! arey yaar, khush to hum 8-0 mein hi the, 20 kyon de rahe ho!
4. Each member of the guys team felt that the others did not work hard enough. The truth is that they lost in almost everybody's turn.
5. When the game was getting boring towards the end, we gave the proposal of reducing time to 3 min to spice things up. They were scared of agreeing to such a small change to something which was being termed as 'Clash of Titans' a while ago. They put a caveat of allowing 10 min to replenish their stock before that. Did they really think that they could cover up their weakness in guessing by giving us tougher names!
6. Their claim that although they had a longer list of names, it did not have much substance, esp one of the lists. The fact that we guessed equally well from both lists was ignored.
   
7. When we finally won and the venue was being decided, they refused to help with the excuse that tum log ko decide karna hai, hum kyon bolenge. In spite of knowing that we did not have any idea about the good restaurants.
   

Let me give some examples of both teams performances:

Rashtraveer Shivaji -Palash - As I have mentioned above, they got Shivaji but somehow got stuck in Manmohan Singh and Prime Minister. I really did not know how P hoped to connect M S to rastrapati and then veer.

Ittefaq - Bali - and very confidently he gave the hero names as Akshaye Khanna and Akshay Kumar. Imagine how Kunal's confidence must have shaken up when he realised that there was a movie starring these two AKs and he did not know it. Well, as expected, it seems that B had got confused with Ajnabee, its a different matter that even Ajnabee did not have these two. I think that for Kunal, being right on this point mattered as much as the tournament.

Ganga Tulsi - Nikhil - He started off well, waved his arms about like flowing water and got 'nadi'. What I dont know is why he stopped his team after that and did not make them guess names of nadis. Anyway, now for tulsi. He started off with what was supposed to represent a small tulsi plant but his action resembled a female figure more. If you stretched the point, you could say that he was showing a tree -but never a small plant (which tulsi plant reaches above your head!). Then he got more innovative - he showed Kunal's mom as coming on plane from India to London. I will buy a drink for whoever can connect Kunal's mom to tulsi. agar ganpati rahta to baat bhi hoti!! Of course, they lost it.

Maa Durga Divya Hathi - Nikhil again - Hathi was a 1 sec affair. Durga also turned out to be pretty simple as S guessed it immediately. Maa ke liye Kunal ki mom was conviniently available. Divya ke liye he was spreading both arms wide to show smthg big. Frankly, i would have guessed a bomb blast, not divya. It might have helped if he had given some sort of expression on his face but that would be too much to ask.

Dada -For the people - poor Nikhil, yet again. For and the were pretty easy. Dada ke liye sourav ganguly bhi ho gaya. But nobody, not a single person in his team came up with dada for ganguly. I dont blame nikhil here - with SG, dada is a must. However, they never got around to people - the closest they reached was 'sab log'.

Sej Piya Ki - Kunal - Ki was obviously easy....Piya proved more difficult....started off with Bali and Daksha and their marriage and before their marriage and hindi word for it.....I think finally they managed it -sez was a different ball game though -bed ke sare synonyms ho gaye sez ke alawa. I dont know why he didnt think of breaking it up - after all who remembers the word 'sez'.

Sampoorna Shivleela - Palash - Shivleela was done pretty easily (which I hadnt expected) but sampoorna was memorable. He started off with some (shown as a pinch) and people guessed thoda, small, everything except some. Then he abandoned that and moved to food stuff where roti, chapati, naan everything came up. I had not given thought and in the excitement of the last minute, blurted out poori (which was right) still sampoorna was a long way off. In desperation, P ran to the kitchen to get sampoorna namak but luckily time ran out other wise judge would have had to rule that props were not allowed......

Charas - The Joint Effort - Palash again -Charas, the, joint were easy. Effort he tried to show fort first. Although they started off on a different note - raja, king, mahal, villa etc somebody got kila finally and then fort was simply english for that. The 'ef' part proved to be more difficult. P used (some very obvious) code words and poor N desperately tried all the words he could use in front of ladies but he never thought of the F word (and hence F) even when P desperately showed that it was in english. And Kunal and B were like two innocent spectators - as if they did not understand what was happening at all. I would like to know whom they hoped to fool (or impress?)

Not to be deterred, we decided the venue and made the bookings without any help from the clashed titans. We have the 'Clash of the Titan's party at Fakhreldine (www.fakhreldine.co.uk) today.

P.S. - I will be updating this post with some of the ladies' cool performances later on.

Deja Vu

I have been away from the blogging scene and this time it has been deliberate.....This is because the things going around in my head were not something I wanted to put here.....but sadly, things dont go away if you ignore them - in fact the harder you try to lock them up, the more they appear in front of you. And today, I had a very depressing sense of deja vu and in the blind need of support, I have come back to my blog - which never fails me.....

For sometime now, I have been having this feeling of standing in one place while the world whizzes past me. All my 'mates' (a popular word here) have moved so much ahead in life -people have married (some more than once), had kids, changed jobs, cities and so on.....while me, I am still in the same place.....I dont have one milestone to my credit.......Although I know that it is only because of my own choosing but that makes it scarier - am I doing this to myself? Am I right? What makes me think that I am right? esp when everybody says I am wrong......

July has always been a terrible month for me. I seem to have said this earlier - Read this. Many of the events I want to forget have happened in this month, this year being no exception. I had resolved not to write during this month, hoping that this would make it pass more quickly, but today, I realized the importance of my blog. It is always there - only for me. And it is a big deal because you cannot say so much for many things, esp at this age, when you increasingly feel alone......

What right do we have to expect that someone will be there for us, when we need them (or even when we do not need them)? Is it ok to be upset that they are no longer there when you have got used to them and want them there or should we be just be happy that they were there for some time? And, why is it that they have to leave, just when you are not prepared and looking the other way....

I have always wondered about how we give others the right to hurt us. It is funny the way things seem to work - people who dont matter cant touch us.....And well, lets not say anything about people who do matter.....Well, I have always believed that we give people the right to hurt us, and the best way to avoid getting burnt is simply to cut out the root of the problem - do not give anyone this right! But, now my belief is shaken up - I wonder if it is in our power to give/withold this right in the first place....Do we ever consciously decide who is worthy? or is it too late by the time we realize that this right has been stolen from us, we have unknowingly bestowed it on someone and then we can do nothing about it except hope that this person cares enough not to use it against us sometime in the future.....

I have always tried not to commit the same mistakes again.....and hence this sense of deja vu is something I am not proud of.....I am not sure when I am going to learn, if ever.....Something as fragile as an oft broken trust should be more carefully guarded and I am ashamed to admit that in spite of all my vows and pledges and good intentions, I have let it be broken again. Shall I call it my foolishness of treading the path which I know leads to a place I don't want to go to or shall I call it the inherent optimism in human nature which makes us hope and tread on this path even when there is nothing to justify it? Well, the only consolation is that I got what I deserved - I had created a world of my own where I was happy and peaceful and I should not have allowed myself to venture out of it in the first place. Hopefully I will now make sure that my cocoon is strong and safe, where nobody can reach me. In this world, there is peace and you are sure of not getting hurt, although you pay the price of not having the good times too......

But, all is not bad in this world. I am getting an iPod touch for my birthday. Who cares about people when you have music and books. And as I have said earlier, I am more comfortable with these things - they are always there when you want them, they dont decide to walk out one fine day etc etc....I dont really need to repeat why I love these things, my opinion expressed here still remains the same (sadly). The only difference is that I have given away my 3 ipods and the jhintac laptop to someone, in the hope that giving him things I love will be somehow be equivalent to leaving a part of me with him. And that he will never forget me, and that if I close my eyes hard enough, I can imagine that he is still in my life just because my stuff is with him. Escaping the final division of stuff gives me an escape route - I dont have to accept that things will never be the same again. I bought a shuffle to force myself to accept the changes - I would have never dreamed of buying any gadget myself in the good old days.......

Now that all the loose ends are being tied, hopefully life will start taking some semblance of normalcy....All divorces, break ups and marriages being done, I can only say that divorce is NOT the solution.....and I really dont know what is the solution for me......

And yes, end of july is only a week away. At least I know that the worst in this year is over and can now relax.......In fact, while coming from office today, I was in a very melancholy mood and was trying to work off my frustration with myself with really brisk walking. Suddenly, it started raining and I struggled with my umbrella for a few seconds and then I simply let it go and started enjoying the rain for a change......after a long long time I was getting drenched.....and I took a longer route home......in those few minutes I relived all my memories of rain - the walks, the companions, the dances.......the cold wet fresh feeling freshened me up like nothing else could have done........

And this gave me the courage to force myself to watch Parineeta....some day I will write about this movie.....and what it means to me......