yes, it really happened

Amitabh Bachchan came to town for the red-carpet premiere of The Great Gatsby at Lincoln Center. Tickets were invitation only, but quite a few of his fans went to the red carpet to support him. I head that we made so much noise that the media initially thought DiCaprio had arrived. Some of the "EF" ("Extended Family," the fan group from his blog) arranged three meet-ups with him, and I was in one of the Saturday groups. It was only ten of us, sitting in a circle with him in a meeting room at the Carlyle (where he was staying). He spent about half an hour or forty-five minutes with us, mostly answering questions. Then everyone got pictures taken and autographs signed, and gave him all kinds of gifts. (I made him a turquoise bracelet, and an agate-and-carnelian necklace for Jaya, who was in the city but not at the meet.

It was nice to meet some of the other EF. Rochelle and I were the only white girls there, and most of the rest were men. Everyone was quite lovely. Some had traveled from Atlanta, Rhode Island, Florida.

Amitabh was quite friendly and pleasant. It didn't occur to me until later, though, that he didn't ask anyone about themselves. I think he truly loves his fans but in an abstract way; he requires the ego boost, but has no intention of having particular friends among the fans. There are some he recognizes and knows of, those who comment on the blog and tweet with him every day. I've been somewhat absent over the past months, but quite a few of the EF knew who I was. I don't believe there are any other "Jennifers" in the crowd, and I certainly don't look like any of the others. He did pause in his recent blogs to say how much he appreciated seeing us all. We're a mirror where he sees what he likes. Still, it was no small thing to have met him, and it was nice that he created a relaxed atmosphere. Most of us were quite nervous beforehand.

The rest of my life goes well, busy. I passed two years at my job and got a nice raise. I'm traveling a little this month - to Jannah's over Memorial Day weekend, and the weekend after, to Philadelphia to see a staged reading of a play my father wrote. My uncle arranged the whole Philly thing, and is paying for our train fare and hotel. Joyce and Joe are also coming, which is really nice.

It turns out that one of the EF, Nimmi, lives in Yardley, so we'll keep a lookout for each other at the Memorial Day parade, although Jannah is not fond of Indian women. (She says all of their husbands beat them, and they permit it. She has certain views that I do not share, to say the least.)

It's going to be nice to get away. And I'm taking vacation the first week in July, just to have a break, and to take advantage of July 4 - one week's vacation for only four vacation days.

The bad news is that I have another bad trigger finger, and am seeing the doctor on Wednesday. The treatment for the thumb and pinky is usually a cortisone shot (which worked well on my pinky), but this one is a middle finger and I'm afraid it may require surgery. Bummer. I'm drawing a blank on any pain associated with the last surgery, but I sure do remember wearing the little brace and going for six weeks of OT (occupational therapy).

I've been back at making jewelry of late - had some repairs to do, and a few commissions, and I'm starting to gear up for the November crafts fair. The last one was so successful that we're doing it again.I gave myself six months last year, and the same this year. I had pretty much laid off for a few months after the holidays, but I'm really enjoying it again, although keeping wire and headpins stocked is tricky.I can easily use 60 headpins in a "fringe" necklace, so buying 100 doesn't even last two projects. I'm using only silver-filled pins now, and moving to silver-filled wire. I want to stay with sterling clasps as much as possible but am looking into filled and plated as well. Even though I'm charging healthy prices ($75 each for the two fringe necklaces I'm making), the cost of silver is pretty frightening. Even with the silver-filled wire, I'm measuring the pieces I cut, rather than just eyeballing them. Fortunately, I still have a LOT of beads, and a decent stock of earwires. I'm also using a little more gold-filled, since I have some sitting around and it's a nice look for earrings. Chain is a problem because there just isn't a lot of nice silver-filled chain around. I bought a foot-and-a-half of sterling chain for $23 some months back, and I'm totally hoarding it. The days of lavish silver chain-based bracelets and necklaces are a dim memory. I do still have plenty of shorter bits of silver chain for earrings, and I'll just have to wait for better silver-filled chain to come along.

That nice piece of sterling chain will probably become a necklace, dripping with some larimar nuggets I changed to find at a very good price. Larimar is obscenely expensive. I have a couple dozen faceted larimar beads I've been holding on to for dear life. I own a very few pieces myself: a small cab in a silver bracelet I bought in St. Croix in the 90s; a big pendant given to me by an old boyfriend in the 80s (he has family in the Dominican Republic, which is the only place larimar is found). And I have a pair of big heart-shaped stud earrings that my stepmother was nice enough to bring me from the Caribbean when she and my dad were on a cruise.

Well, the bad finger is nagging me, so it's time to relax a bit. I worked until eight tonight, so I'll have to finish the second necklace tomorrow night (it only needs about an hour). I was planning to ask the hand doctor to try cortisone, but I'm starting to think it's going to be surgery. The finger aches all the way down to my palm.

KANK revisited

I just watched this video again (for the zillionth time), and it got me to thinking about the impression Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna made the first time I watched it.

It was the first Indian movie I ever saw. I particularly enjoyed this song, because it was exactly the kind of thing Americans identify as "Bollywood." I knew nothing about the actors at all: no idea I was watching father and son. Clueless about the beautiful woman in pink who was in no other part of the movie. Hadn't the vaguest notion of how well-known or popular any of the actors were...though I remember thinking that "the older guy" was probably very famous. There was just a certain ease and charisma about him that suggested a great deal of experience. I was very taken with Shah Rukh Khan, although I found his movie character shockingly obnoxious. I thought it was kind of cool the way this song mixed some English in with the Hindi. I thought the older woman was splendid, and loved her chemistry with the older guy. I couldn't believe how long the movie was. I'm not sure if I noticed that no one kissed on the lips. Since the movie didn't have American-style credits identifying the characters and the actors who played them, I'm not even sure how I learned Shah Rukh's name, although I believe his was the first actor's name I learned. I thought he was quite cute, and made a point of watching a few of his movies in the month or so after. Then I didn't watch another Indian movie for about two years.

Two years later, I remembered how novel KANK had seemed to me, and I watched it again. I  believe that was October 2011. I don't really remember how I went about researching and finding out who these actors were and what Indian films were all about. (I get so wrapped up in new passions so quickly and deeply that I often can't remember where they began; they fast seem to be things I've always done and known. I can't remember for the life of me how I started making jewelry, for instance.)

What happened the second time I watched the movie was that I was fascinated by Amitabh Bachchan. I had been right the first time I watched the movie: he was the real deal. I expect I learned his name through my film bible, the Internet Movie Database, and I simply began to follow him; I started watching his movies almost exclusively, and branched out from there. It took me about two weeks of tooling around on YouTube before I learned how to pronounce his name; I also had his name written on a piece of paper by my computer to aid my searches, since it took a while for me to get the spelling down.

My second start with Indian movies was the real one. I knew there was a lot in the movies I didn't get, and did exhaustive internet research to learn some of the social context. I started to some some of the major actors I enjoyed: Shah Rukh, of course, Abhishek Bachchan, Kajol, and so on. I started to learn about playback singers and item girls and some of the top producers and composers and directors; I found out that no one ever kisses on the lips. I discovered Amitabh's blog, and started to make some internet friends in India. (Most particularly Shiva, who kindly pointed people to my blog via Twitter, and translated an interesting Twitter conversation for me between Amitabh and Ram Gopal Varma; also Pankaj, who recommended Aamir Khan's films. Another friend dear to my heart is Moses, an Israeli who learned Hindi from watching 3,000 Indian movies, and proclaims daily, "I love Amitabh Bachchan!")

I have one friend of Facebook who always calls me "Aunty," which I hate, but I love him anyway.

And of course I met Rochelle, an Amitabh mega-fan - a Jewish woman one year my senior who lives two neighborhoods away. Never imagined that Indian movies would bring me a new in-person friend who shares a lot of my tastes and background.

Barry noted that I have had far less depressive moods since I began watching Indian films. I am deeply appreciative of being led to so much fascinating study. I probably know about 40 or 50 words in Hindi. I have discovered some amazing Indian musicians, film musicians or non. (And I am including Adnan Sami in that group, although he's not Indian - if I have it right, he is of Pakistani descent, born in Canada, raised in England, and now living and working in Mumbai.) I taught Shiva some Yiddish via email, and recommended American films to Pankaj.

It's been a pretty fruitful nine months.

I've also become active on Twitter during this time; I joined a year or more ago, but never really cared for it. I found the 160-character limit stifling. Now I adore it, way more than Facebook. Neat little jokes and messages and information fly through the ether, and I can reach out to people I would never have encountered before. And of course it's always thrilling to get a reply or retweet from someone I admire from afar. I've had replies from Amitabh himself (only one, but that's plenty), from Raghu Dixit, and often more than once a day from Adnan Sami (brilliant man with a great sense of humor). Some nice replies and retweets from one of my heroes, Dick Zigun, "the unofficial mayor of Coney Island." (I used my blog name as my handle, @northofconey, so I'm followed by a lot of Brooklyn-based people and organizations.) I've said hello to Dick here and there over the years when I've seen him around Coney, but last Friday night, when I introduced myself at the Mermaid Parade volunteers meeting, he knew exactly who I was. I've had some nice replies from the actor John Ortiz and former jockey/actor Gary Stevens. I've also had some Twitter exchanges with a couple of the "Deadliest Catch" captains. In fact, on that week's "After the Catch" (kind of the postgame show for "Deadliest Catch"), they put my live-tweet on the air! (Not having a smartphone or laptop, I had to run to my computer to live-tweet during the commercials, but it was well worth the fuss. It was a pretty major moment, seeing my tweet on TV.)

Whiplash change of topic: it is now apparently considered old-fashioned, when writing, to put two spaces after a period or colon) instead of one. It feels weird. Makes me feel a little old (though not quite like being called "Aunty").

Yes, I had my first volunteer experience at the Mermaid Parade, and sad to say, it didn't go well. I was assigned to sell merchandise, went to the meeting the night before (Rochelle was there, too), signed in on Saturday morning, got my free tee shirt and a bottle of water, and was told to go to 21st Street. Met up there with two of the people who were also supposed to sell merch (we were told there would be three tents with four people each), but there was no one to tell us where to go or what to do. The three of us sat under a tent, where there was a cooler with bottled water and a porta-potty, and waited for an hour and a half. We kept asking staff people what was going on, and some of them radioed in, but we never got any information. A couple of times, one or the other said, "I think you're supposed to go to 22nd Street," or some other location, but no one at those locations knew anything, either. (I very much enjoyed meeting one of my co-merch-volunteers, a woman in her late eighties, who had sold merch in 2011 and had some very interesting stories to tell about her life.) We didn't get the lunch that was supposed to be provided. It was an extremely hot day. After and hour and a half, one of the staff said something about a problem with the merch set-up, and I walked the ten blocks back to the volunteer station. The woman there said that there wasn't going to be merch, apologized and gave me lunch and another bottle of water. (I have to say, they were very on top of having plenty of water.) She said I could carry a banner, but I knew that was beyond my stamina limit at that time. Barry and I found each other, but it was already a half-hour before the start of the parade and impossible to get a decent place to watched. We tried to watch a little, then went home.

I emailed the volunteer coordinators about my experience. The next day, they sent a group email to all of the volunteers, and apologized sincerely for any glitches. A day later, I got a very lovely personal email from one of the coordinators, apologizing again. So I kind of got to be part of the event; tried my best. At least I got the tee shirt. I think I'll give it another shot next year.

bad fingers and Bol Bachchan

Amitabh shows how it's done, in the title song from Bol Bachchan. The young man with the mustache is Ajay Devyn and the cleanshaven young man is Junior Bachchan, Abhishek.

I have a bad trigger finger and a not-so-bad trigger finger, and it's back to Dr. Patel for me on Monday. If you weren't around for last year's trigger finger here's what it's all about. So it's either going to be a shot of cortisone. or what I had done last year:

"Percutaneous trigger finger release:  Trigger finger release can be performed in the office under local anesthesia using a percutaneous technique.  Numbing medicine is injected in the hand near the base of the finger.  A larger needle is then placed through the numb area and is used to divide the pulley that is causing the triggering.  Advantages of this procedure include that it can be done in the office and does not require an incision.  The main disadvantage is that the surgeon cannot see the pulley or nearby nerve and there is a possible higher risk of injury to the nerves or an incomplete release.  While these complications are unlikely, patient should take them into account when choosing to have a procedure."

It's gonna hurt like hell if he has to do this again, especially on two fingers. I remember being in howling pain the day after. The bad one is the right-hand pinkie, and PTFR is usually done one the middle three fingers. The not-yet-as-bad one is the left-hand ring finger, so it may be a wait-and-see, or a PTFR. And if I have the surgery, there's physical therapy after, for maybe six weeks.

So I may be very limited as far as using the computer, although of course I'll have to at work.  Send good thoughts for a nice needle full of cortisone.

Recent reading: The Leftovers by Tom Perotta. Surburban folks try to get along after a Rapture-like event. Love the way he writes, and the post-Cheever look at surburbia. See also, his Little Children.

Somehow, I hopped into another post-apocalyptic novel right after, Stephen King's Cell. Just started it, and it's pretty much as un-put-down-able as most King books. I am an unabashed fan.

Too much to write about with hurting fingers: out in Yardley with Jannah last weekend, Saturday night party on her boat (six boats all tied up together), and then slept on the boat. The whole deal was kind of like camping but less grubby. Relaxing by the pool on Sunday, parade on Monday. I dearly love the Memorial Day parade in Yardley...I hate to use the word "quaint," which it isn't, quite, hut it very old-fashioned and I look forward to it every day - I've been going there for Memorial Day the past 4-5 years.

Very hard, busy season at work, what with classes ending, getting evaluations from teacher, updating transcripts, trying to get a second summer intern, overseeing registration, orienting new faculty, etc. If I must say so myself, I've been coming through like a champ, but I'm seriously exhausted. Part of me (no lie) is kind of hoping to spend Tuesday in bed, on painkillers.

I'm having a really good time on Twitter, especially when I get replies from (can't deny it) well-known people. This past week: Raghu Dixit and Adnan Sami. Both good dudes, and Raghu is supposed to come to the US in the fall. I also have a little joke-topping thing with @Disalmanic, who is a damn funny guy.

more jewelry news, for one thing

Robin and I went out Wednesday night for Indian food (something we've been doing for many years, way before my Indian film/music mania).  Good food, and there are a man playing a sarangi, which was quite wonderful.

But before dinner, she took me to see a little accessories store that had hats she liked, called The Village Scandal.  It did indeed have a lot of nice hats and other accessories, kind of faux vintage.  We ended up at the counter looking at jewelry and chatting with the owner.  Robin mentioned that I had made the earrings she was wearing, and I showed off the necklace I was wearing, and the woman said, "I could sell something like that in choker length.  Do you ever sell your jewelry?"  So it looks like, without trying, I'll be doing some consignments there.  I wasn't even trying.  Very cool; made me feel great.  So even though nothing of mine is there yet, please do visit The Village Scandal, at 19th East 7th Street (I believe it's between Second and Third Avenue), New York City.  Or tell your friends in New York.

I actually made my first-ever consignment deal some years back on another night that Robin and I were in the east village to eat Indian food, at a store called Back from Guatemala, a south American craftsy store that also had nice jewelry.  On a trial basis, they took a Y-necklace with oval ocean jasper...funny that I remember the exact necklace.  I was going to do more business with them, but the manager got sick, and then the store closed.  Robin seems to bring me luck as far as jewelry sales. 

Robin has of course always been a huge supporter of my jewelry, but she's always worn very simple, petite pieces, so that most of what I make didn't suit her.  At one point, I made maybe half-a-dozen pair of earrings for her with a simple, one-small-bead drop.  But she's decided to get more adventurous, and I gave her a couple of necklaces for her birthday and she's wearing them a lot.  One has amethyst up one side, citrine up the other, and a kyanite drop in the middle.  The other has tiny fluorite beads with a big Thai silver orchid pendant.  I actually have a reasonable photo of the former at home and will post it here.

The other thing I did on Wednesday was buy bangles.  I swear I'm not an Indian wannabe, but I've been looking at women in Indian movies wearing piles of bangles, and it's a great look.  I never used to be too crazy about bangles because I was afraid I'd squeeze into one and not be able to get it off...which didn't stop me from eyeballing jade bangles down in Chinatown.  (I still wouldn't mind having one of those.)  But between an accessories store near work, and a Tibetan store in the east village, I ended up buying about 30 bangles in silvertone, goldtone, and some blues and greens.  They don't hurt my wrist when I use a mouse (which some bracelets do).  They are super-wearable and comfortable, they look great, and they jingle when I move around.  I LOVE them.  Now, of course, I need red ones, and some other colors.  (What I really need is more storage for my jewelry.  The big jewelry box I've had for many years is stuffed, several other little boxes are stuffed...I probably need an entire shelving system to keep it all.

My past and near-past office intern, Sarah E., just said goodbye, and it's truly heartbreaking.  She interned for me last summer, and called a couple of months ago to say she'd be in town in January, and did I need some help?  She was here for a few weeks, and not only helped a lot, but was wonderful company.  Very sweet, very smart, very sane.  I'll miss her a bunch.  She'll be back from Smith for spring break in March, and said she'd be in touch.

It's supposed to snow tonight, and I'm looking forward to a nice weekend indoors, making jewelry and watching a movie or two.

Since the friend who's fallen in love with Amitabh is waiting for her copy of KANK, I decided to rewatch a little of it last night.  It's actually kind of cheesy and silly.  Interesting to see my own reaction compared to the first time I saw it (around three years ago) and the second time I saw it (about two and a half months ago).  I'm starting to think I may have overestimated Abhishek...although I did like him in Delhi 6.  I don't think I can bear to watch Dostana, which apparently involves a couple of guys pretending to be gay to get girls or something -- I mean, ew.  I'd like to see him try his hand at remaking one of his father's films (he might have to tie up SRK and Hrithik to get the roles), and then we can see if he's got the goods.

Ram Gopal Varma has been posting some very sexist and negative tweets of late.  My friend Shiva said something about RGV being or seeming drunk...and that must be it.  He thinks like a drunk.  On the other end of the spectrum, I've been following Anupam Kher, and he seems like a wonderful man.  As soon as I can scrape up $30, I'm buying his new book.

SOPA/PIPA:  Bad.  Indian government not protecting Sir Salman Rushdie:  Bad.  Italian cruise ship captain ordering food after the crash:  Bad.  Johnny Otis and Etta James dying:  Sad.  Sorry to short-change you on news and politics, but it's not really my forte.