Monthly Archives: September 2005

Moo

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What is it they say about judging a person by the crackpots they hang out with? Here’s a conversation with friends. Apparently now, cows too have dialects.

Friend 1 (from Kanpur): <blah blah> .. and the cows would go maaaaaaaa.
F2: Must be a bhaiyya thing. Cows in Nagpur say hammmaaaaa.
Me: Andhra cows always say ammbaaaaaa. Unless they are out-of-towners.
F3: I remember a cow in my locality that went ammaaaaaa.
F2: Must be a part-bhaiyya part-Gult cow.
F3: American cows say moooooo though.
Me: They’re very fancy-shmancy. That’s why they wear jerseys.
F1: So when a desi cow comes to the US, does it start saying mooooo?
Me: You’re a desi gaai. You tell me?

And you thought *I* was from Crazyville.

Geek dreams are made of these

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I don’t dream much. No no, not in the philosophical I don’t have any dreams and aspirations sort of way. I have as many realistic plans of world domination as the next person, not to worry. But for someone who is a reasonably light sleeper (too much information that nobody wants to know) I don’t dream much. And on the occasions I do, I never remember them when I wake up. Which, if you ask me, (let’s pretend you did) is most annoying. I remember that I dreamt, but I don’t remember what happened in it. It is much like remembering the name of a lousy movie you’ve seen — you know it was bad and you never want to see it again. But but but .. you cannot remember the story! So you don’t remember WHY it was bad. Most infuriating it is. Leads to conversations like this in the desi store —

Friend: Should I watch Gunaah?
Me: Oh, good grief, don’t watch THAT!
Friend: Why? Who’s in it?
Me: Um, er .. I dunno. Sridevi maybe? Or was that Gumrah? Not sure.
Friend: *eyebrow raised* What’s it about?
Me: Um, er .. I dunno .. *trying to distract friend with mega-pack of Maggi*
Friend: You don’t like the movie, but you don’t know what it’s about?
Me: Um .. but I know that is a bad movie.
Friend: *second eyebrow raised to match the first*
Me: No seriously!
Friend: Yeah. Sure. *snigger*

Yep, the brilliance you exude at a moment like that can put Edison to shame. Does this ever happen to you? Please say it does? By the way, Gunaah is a Sunny/Dimple starrer while Gumrah is a Yash Johar flick starring Sridevi/Sunjay Dutt. Both humbug movies — one is a crime against movie-making, while the other is a lost cause. Both 1993. Both directed by that pompous windbag Mahesh Bhatt. So my confusion is valid, no? Yes, this is the same Bhatt who once had an evil twin that made decent movies like Arth (1982) and Saraansh (1984) so he sold him to the devil. And if you’ve watched his recent Paap (2003) or Zeher (2005), it looks like Udita Goswami’s clothes also went along with it. Such a nice guy, this chap.

On that note, here’s a bit of interesting trivia. Gunaah has an Amit Kumar-Anuradha Paudwal number — ye raat ye tanhaaiyaan, liptii huii parchhaaiyaan with music by Rajesh Roshan, whose tune was inspired from the theme music of the Charlie Chaplin film — Limelight (1952). Now Limelight‘s music itself has a bit of unique trivia associated with it. Despite being a 1952 film, Charlie Chaplin along with Raymond Rasch and Larry Russell (source:IMDB) won the Oscar for Best Original Score for this film in 1972. Funda being that, since the movie had never screened in LA since its release in 1952, it still met the Academy’s eligibility rules for an Oscar. This is incidentally the only competitive Oscar that Chaplin ever won, the rest being honorary/lifetime achievement type awards. Neat eh?

The seeking of inspiration from the Limelight theme itself has two predecessors — Salil Chowdhury in Maaya (1961) in a Rafi number — zindagii hai kyaa sun merii jaan, and R D Burman in the rollicking fun film Bombay to Goa (1972), with the sweet Kishore-Lata number — tum merii zindagii mein kuchh is tarah se aaye. But make no mistakes, these aren’t ‘inspirations’ in the what-Anu-Malik-does-for-a-living sense of the word. In both cases, while the inspiration is certainly there, the distinct trademarks of Salil Chowdhury and Pancham are very apparent, making them excellent songs in their own right.

Okay, all movie references for this post are done, so we can all breathe freely and move on to the crux of the matter. I really like the word crux. It has such a nice crunch to it, like biting into a freshly fried appadam, don’t you think? But I am digressing.

So I had a rather weird dream a few nights ago which led to my singing thorny felt last week. And unlike my usual dreams, this one I nicely remember. In full 70mm Eastmancolor even. Pah. Yep, this was one of those, where you wake up and think to yourself — Maybe mom was right. Maybe inhaling too much petrol as a kid IS a bad thing. Sigh. So here are highlights of my geeky web developer version of hell —

  • It had a <dream> and </dream> tag surrounding it.
    (But no namespace definition for it. Yikes!)
  • It had one of my blog commenters in it.
    (I am not telling which one, so don’t even ask.)
  • I was a variable trapped within an infinite loop in my own code.
    (Even my dream-code has bugs.)
  • I was hitting the Reload button to check for updates on my life.
    (Yeah, very profound. Bleh.)
  • It ended in my hitting the ‘Save Draft’ button before waking up.
    (So it is not yet over. There is more to come, or so it seems to suggest. Much joy.)

Gaaaaah! Sympathies and offers of Kleenex will be appreciated. Interpretations too.

Thorny felt

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Maine dekhaa ik sapnaa, kya dekhaa, bolo naa, bolo naa, please bolo naa .. *giggle*

That be a Lata-Kishore sung and R D Burman composed song from movie Samadhi (1972). This song also reminds me why I don’t like Lata’s giggle, but that is a different story. For those whose exposure to old Hindi film music comes from remixes, may you be tied to a chair and be made to listen to endless repeats of Sridevi singing. There, now that I got that out of my system, let’s continue with what I was saying. This is the same Samadhi of thorny felt, yes felt, come o king .. behind your bungalow, under the berry tree, haay re drunk, aha re drunk fame. That’s kaantaa lagaa, hayy lagaa, aajaa raajaa .. bangle ke peeche terii, berii ke neeche, haayy re piya, aha re piya for you.

Of course, the original song has Asha Parekh singing to garam-Dharam. Which leads to one of the most disturbing visuals in Hindi cinema — Asha Parekh being coy. No seriously, there are few sights worse than Ms Tanpura trying to be cute. This is a lady who cracked one of the eternal unintended jokes of Bollywood when she went to the temple in the climax of a film (any film, specifics don’t matter) and said — bhagwaan, main tumhaare dar pe badi ass leke aayi hoon. Yep, priceless moment.

But moving onto pleasanter things, Samadhi has quite a listen-worthy soundtrack. One of those wish-more-people-knew-of-it types. Has the middle-eastern influenced, Asha crooned o yaaraa yaaraa (whose second line I can never understand), another exceptionally sung Asha solo — jab tak rahe tan mein jiyaa, vaadaa rahaa o saathiyaa, the racy Kishore solo jaan-e-jaanaa jaao kal phir aanaa besides the bubbly Kishore-Lata maine dekhaa ik sapnaa and of course, the most famous of them all — Lata’s kaantaa lagaa. Whether you can blot out the accompanying visual of Shefali Jariwala’s thong or focus your attention on it depending on your preference, the song (and we are talking of the original, thank you very much) is wonderfully composed and sung and a winner through and through. Kudos to Pancham!

Samadhi also has the distinction of being one of the only TWO movies I know of with Dharam-paaji in a double role — one moochwala (not to be confused with Detective Moochwala from Target) and one without (paired with Jaya Bhaduri). The other movie being the Dharam-Rekha starrer — Ghazab (1982) where he plays a buffoon with buck teeth, one of his underrated comedic performances. Thanks to Sagnik for the Ghazab trivia. Interestingly enough, neither movie was much of a hit. Twice the usual number of doggy-abuses can be too much to sit through, I suppose.

The original point of the post was about more earth-shattering matters. I intended to tell you about a weird dream I had last night, hence the opening song and all. Ah well, will save it for the next post instead. By the way, as good readers you are all expected to head over to Musicindiaonline while reading this post, listen to the songs of Samadhi and come back and write comments full of effusive praise for R D Burman. In return, I promise not to giggle like Lata-bai. Thankoo.

Short Shorts : Two : Train of Thought

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!
?
Hmm!
Huh?
Niiice!
Grrr!
*grin* Babe!
*scowl* Creep!

The inbound and outbound trains whooshed in onto the platforms from opposite sides.

(Written as part of the 55-word story tag from Rajesh. As this is my moment of sweet revenge, I pass it on to past tag-inflicters — Dharmendra, Kaashyapeya and Anshul as well as other bakras who I think will enjoy this — Sagnik, gvenum and Anurag. If you’d like to play this game of tag, holler and I’ll do the needful.)