Shondhe Naamar Aage

I saw the movie last weekend. I had tried to look up the movie on the internet before watching and could not find much.

A NRI girl is convinced her father did not kill her mother, and feels her father was wrongfully hanged. So tries to find out who was the killer.

So much for a one line story which was interesting. When I checked out the cast it had Palash Sen, the singer doing his Bengali cinema debut and Rahul Bose as the main lead. The NRI girl was Nusrat, the Bengali actress. So anyway, I decided to watch it.

Bad Acting. Nusrat with a forced american accent. Rahul Bose who is supposedly dumb (and not deaf) was not good either. And the movie was a bad thriller. There was no suspense. Towards the end you did not really care who the killer was.

It is not easy making a thriller. It has to be tight. The editing crisp. Well, the story wasnt that great but it could have been built up in a better manner.

So If nothing better to do, watch it. Better than a time pass movie, but not a thriller.

Maid Woes

The Maid issues continue. She comes for two days. Then two days off. On the second day, she will turn up in the evening with a story of being very sick and say she will come from the next day.

Searching and getting new maids is also a pain. Have to do something for sure.

Story Telling in Epics

Mahabharata as we have grown up on, has been the story of the Pandavas and the Kauravas with Krishna playing a big role.
That is we read and saw on Television.
Mahabharata is much more than that.
For one there nested stories - stories within stories.
In a forest Saunaka asks Suta about the story. Suta starts from the begining. He mentions something, and Saunaka wants to know why and so another story within that.

While the Pandavas have the main role in the epic, they do not make an entry in the begining, but much later in the epic.

Ramayana is straight forward. It starts off with the main story and hardly deviates.

The Puranas follow the style of Mahabharata. Incidentally the main Puranas and the Mahabharata have all been attributed to Vyasa as the writer.

The Naimisha Forest or Naimisharanya play a role in both Mahabharata and the Puranas. This is the forest where Saunaka and the other rishis are performing sacrifices. This is where Sauti comes and starts telling stories.

Back to Work

Today back, after 4 days of break. Christmas Break. Where I was home sick all through out.

.... And Santa

How could I forget this old man? We never had anything about Santa at home, but used to read a lot about this big fat man, who could, with some magic , squeeze himself down chimneys and leave gifts for children.

Schools used to have some very ugly people dressed as Santa. I am not sure why they never had any rolly polly old men as Santa in the Cathedral. They would have these dark young men who would be the total opposite of the Santa, in the books.

Celebrating Christmas

Thinking of my Christmas celebrations. Since childhood, I used to celebrate Christmas. Not because this was Jesus Christ's birthday or anything like that. No, in Delhi, among friends, we used to have our tree decorations.
Not sure how it started. I was not in a missionary school initially and my friends were not Christian. Anyway, so we would go around collecting big dried branches of trees. Would put the branch in the ground, and then would start hanging things on the tree. It used to usually milk bottle caps (made of foil) which hang with trees and then there would be the cut-outs from the Amul Butter boxes of the smiling Amul girl.

When I was a bit older, schools changed, more because we moved around. This was a missionary school and here we had Christmas decorations. They would set-up a big tree in the Cathedral and decorate that. And Mass in the Cathedral, which my Christian friends would go and attend.

In US, I thought I would get to see celebration, but I was surprised. This was a time for people to spend with their families. So Christmas actually meant solitude and silence, empty malls and empty roads.

Poinsettia at home

Thursday morning I got a pot of Poinsettia. It wasn't intentional , but this is a gift that is given by people as gifts during Christmas/ New Year.

I got the red ones, which look very nice. Will post a picture later