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.

I can't really get into it, but...

My family is a disaster. Have I mentioned this? Divorced parents always brings some level of dysfunction into the picture, but a couple of years ago, just when it seemed we were all older and more mature and could put the past behind us...something else happened that ripped everyone up and severed lines of communication and just made everyone a million times more troubled and miserable. And, as the only person in the family still speaking to all of the other members, I spend a lot of time saying that I don't want to be put in the middle. But I live in the middle. Everyone seems to have different kinds of misery and different levels of misery, but we're all miserable. Probably every relationship and every dynamic has been altered, so my place and function int he family is radically different, which is good in some ways and dreadful in others. I am heartbroken for everyone who is disconnected. We're not all that big a family, and we're a disaster.

Guess it's a little more on my mind because I've actually spoken to all parties over the past couple of weeks, which is a little unusual, and the last of those conversations was tonight and with the person I believe to be most damaged. It's just all so sad.

It's an understatement to say that there are not enough hours in the day. There aren't even enough hours in the workday. There were a few really dead weeks at the office, sometimes spaces where there was literally almost nothing to do - the kind of days where you send the interns home early - and all of a sudden it's overwhelming. In fact, it was so overwhelming one day last week that one person I work with said something to another, and that person called a third person, who called me (and she was the appropriate person to make the call), and said, "What's going on, are you OK, and how can I help?" I really love the people I work with and for. But things are still insanely busy and will probably stay that way until mid- or late June. Then it gets kind of dead until mid-August.

Things are even busy in my non-work life, with quite a few dinners, visits, and events coming up. All good things, but I still don't have any time for some of the kinds of relaxing I seem to need. I want to see an Indian movie; I want to spend a little time on Twitter; I want to while away a couple of hours on YouTube. (However, I should say that a week from Friday is planned as a movie-in-the-theater night: Rochelle, Barry and I are going to the opening night of Department, the new Amitabh movie. The last two movies I saw in the theater (I can't remember which order) were Spiderman (fell down a few steps in the auditorium and sprained my ankle) and Lord of the Rings (I fell asleep). I'm too lazy to check when they were in the theater, but it was some time ago. I mean, aren't they about to reboot Spiderman?

Last thing: I have to give a shout out to Mental Floss, which is a simply fantastic website and blog and Twitter with all kinds of fascinating and nerdy and odd facts and lists. I entered a sweepstakes there, forgot about it, then won: twelve tee shirts of my choice from their store. Please click on this link, because these tee shirts are outrageously cool and not very expensive. I've had my eye on a few of them for a while now, but could never choose which one to actually buy. I love tee shirts and could easily spend stupid money on them. I've actually earmarked half of them for Barry, because I don't really wear them as much as I used to, and he does. (I actually wore tee shirts to work at NYU for the early part of my work there, and always wore them on weekends and to the gym. Now I wear them sometimes on weekends and mostly sleep in them. But this has not diminished my tee shirt lust one whit.)

I've fallen a little out of touch with some people, which is kind of a bummer, but I never seem to have any time. Shiva and I haven't emailed for a while; it could be six or seven months since I've been in touch with Rafael; and I owe phone calls to Winnie and to Joyce. I need more hours in the day, I'm serious. And perhaps a mite less family drama.

a So Here's What day

So here's what: one of the committees at work had two big programs recently, the second of which was this past Saturday, and of course it's part of my job to help them. But I guess they thought I went above and beyond, because they presented me with a $150 Visa gift card. Nice, nice people.

Here's another what: someone around work asked me today when my birthday is, and although it might have been a want-to-show-my-appreciation thing, it felt a little like a boy-liking-girl thing. I mean, he put it in his phone. I don't even have my family birthdays on my calendar (which is not in my phone). Of course, sometimes I think these things and I'm way off base. But sometimes I wonder if one or another guy is looking to make my life complicated.

I finally saw the original Agneepath this past weekend, with all the subtitles. (I'd had a copy before where the STs vanished and then appeared again 20 minutes later, but not matching the scene.) Maybe the Amitabh fans built it up too much, but I thought it was just OK. His characterization was quite good, if somewhat overshadowed by his eyeliner, but the plot was not too exciting. Plus, at least in 1990, fight and action scenes in Indian movies were really cheesy. They use loud slaps as sound effects for punches, and in generally it's all pretty creaky. The saving grace was Mithrun Chakraborty (hope I got this right) - although his character was what seemed to be a dreadful stereotype of southerners (waiting for confirmation from Shiva on this one), it's clear that he's an excellent actor and dancer. I d*wnloaded another of his movies yesterday, and am very interested in seeing it.

most trayf thing ever

Gotta be shrimp wrapped in bacon. With a milkshake.

OK, students of Yiddish and Yiddishkeit (Jewishness), Let's talk about dietary laws and the words attached to them. (Of course, you can just skip this and read Wikipedia, but I bet this this is more fun.)

The big one is kosher. Kosher means in accordance with Jewish dietary laws. Informally, it can be used to mean "on the level," "honest," "proper," etc. "I'm not sure if this deal is exactly kosher." Trayf" means non-kosher, but colloquially can also mean "unclean," "no good," etc.


Actually, read the rest of it on Wikipedia. There aren't too many other good words, except "fleischig" for meat and meat foods and "milchik" for dairy foods, which may not be eaten together. Foods which are considered neither, and can be eaten with either, are "parve".

Anyway, I'm going to Jannah's this weekend, and will pretty much be maintaining internet silence. I don't have a smartphone - the one I have is actually called a "feature phone," although of course I just call it a "stupid phone." And it doesn't seem particularly polite to ask my hostess to use her desktop. So no email, no Facebook, no Twitter, no blog, and no EF comments. I suspect I will not be dreadfully missed, not over such a short time. I will be back on Sunday but mostly likely buried in the Oscars.

Had a little tweet back-and-forth with Mary Lynn Rajskub the other day and today with Josh Malina. Way cool in my book.

And of course the big news - well, maybe not for everyone, but for a few million people - is that Amitabh went home yesterday. He'll be recuperating for a few months, but he's safe and sound.

Speaking of which - I seem to have a bit of a readership here! The hits on my blog have increased some, and definitely more folks from India. Hi, folks from India! Welcome!

I'm taking two movies with me this weekend, to intro Jannah to Indian films, if she so chooses. Most of my movies are on my hard drive, but I have a dozen or so on DVD. I'm bringing Don (which version do you think? take a good, hard guess) and Ek Ajnabee. Haven't seen Ek Ajnabee yet, but I read the notes on the cover, and what do you know! it's Man on Fire! And by the way, anyone who wants to watch Man on Fire, the 1987 version with Scott Glenn is way better than the 2004 version with Denzel Washington. But almost any movie is better with Scott Glenn in it, except The Keep, which would suck with anyone in it.

Scott Glenn is one of my favorite actors, though he's not super well-known. Movies to see: Urban Cowboy, The Right Stuff, Silverado. Similarly, David Strathairn. I like him even better than Scott Glenn, and he can be seen in: Good Night and Good Luck, Silkwood, Limbo, Eight Men Out, A League of Their Own, and I personally adored him in The Return of the Secaucus Seven, kind of an uber-indie.

So, have a good weekend, watch movies, have fun.

disappointment

Bad on so many levels, being disappointed. Something didn't happen, someone wasn't heard from, something good was given and received without comment. There should have been a surprise but there wasn't. Someone didn't accept, didn't answer, didn't thank you. Someone didn't do what they usually do, or what they might be expected to do. Something wasn't where you expected it to be. Something did not arrive on time. Something wasn't as enjoyable as it should have been. You didn't sleep well after a long, tiring day. A mystery went unexplained. A secret was not revealed. A film, a show, a song did not live up to expectations. A distraction did not distract. Good news did not arrive; bad news did not fade away.

It throws such a gloom over what could have been good times. And yes, I know that my disappointments are mostly my fault, the result of that pesky habit of expecting something. Mea culpa.

And apart from suffering over various disappointments, things move along. Wendy from The Village Scandal was not as unconditionally thrilled with my work as I'd hoped, though she did take 2/3 necklaces and both pair of earrings. Robin is in the middle of something...I can't even begin to talk about it, but it's distracting her from everything. When I saw that she spent a good time of our evening together texting someone else, there you go. But she did take a moment away from texting on her phone to take a picture of me:

Probably one of the better ones taken in a while.

We also went into an Indian store on Second Avenue, and I bought some pink print silk "harem" pants and eight glass bangles. And then ate on Sixth Street, as we have for so many years, this time at Taj: lamb madras, garlic kulcha, and two guys playing sarangi and tabla.

I did not feel right on Friday and I don't know why. I was somewhere in the neighborhood of dizzy and exhausted, for no good reason, and I called in sick. Barry went out and got me a handful of tulips, late valentine's. And then we wrapped up valentine's by going for dim sum yesterday. There are several excellent places not far away, and we ate like crazy.Sticky rice, pork siu mai, shrimp dumplings. beef rice rolls, lion's head meatballs, shrimp in bean curd skin, and so on. I drank a lot of jasmine tea. Felt a little food-drunk after, but that's dim sum.

Made a necklace and two pairs of earrings yesterday, which is  a big chunk of work for one day. I'll try to do more earrings today - I want a bunch to bring to Jannah on Friday.

Last piece: Ranban. This is the first Tamil movie I've seen, and I have to say, I like it better than I liked a lot of Hindi movies. It was not very glossy and very unpretentious. The characters and relationships were novel, and I was very taken in by the character of Pari; I felt he was someone I'd like to know. Sathyaraj was impressive as the school principal "Virus"; he was silly but also substantive. Vijay as Pari was a casual, charming star. It was pretty much a buddy movie, and the obligatory female character didn't jar the script off track. Apparently this is a remake of the Hindi film 3 Idiots, although my understanding is that those remakes mostly go the other way, Tamil or Telagu to Hindi.

Something else I have to mention: the movie was meticulously subtitled. I felt at if they were trying to make the English understandable, but also get across the various nuances of the Tamil. For instance, there was a sequence in which the protagonists substitute different words into a speech to be delivered by an annoying fellow student, and it was all made perfectly clear by the subtitles. I mentioned recently that I missed a lot in ZNMD because the subtitling was so poor, and had to stop watching Rockstar for the same reason. It's a little weird that some Hindi movies, the big commercial mainstream in India, are so poorly titled, and that a Tamil film (I assume it's a smaller industry) did it exactly right.

Anyway, the film was delightful, and I would consider forgoing 3 Idiots entirely if Aamir Khan weren't in it. I've gotten to be something of a fan.

Yaarana, K3G, and a nice start to the new year

Between last night and this morning, I watched Yaarana (1981), which I found to be a very sweet and entertaining movie, despite the confusing and sometimes bizarre plot.  So many of the Indian movies I've seen focus on family, but this was different: all about friendship.  There is something very old-fashioned about the movie.  Early on, Amitabh plays the country-boy-in-the-big-city, which I like just as much as the angry-young-man.  His relationship with his best friend's son is charming; he works really well with children.  And he looks so very handsome in this film.  I've also become very fond of the song "Sara Zamana."

I also finally finished watching Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gham (2001), which was very much to my liking.  Since Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna was the first Indian movie I ever saw, that became something of a baseline for me, as far as "masala" movies (that is, Indian movies that mix comedy, drama, romance, and a lot of music).  KANK is packed full of wonderful stars, a lot of color, and some great music.  K3G is very similar, with some of the same stars.  And I cried a lot at the end.

For those of you who are reading this for the film-related content -- I wanted to mention that my number-one online reference is the Internet Movie Database.  If you need the year of a movie, the name of a cast member, and particularly to see what other movies an actor or director has made, you can't do any better.

This has been a great long weekend -- unexpectedly long, since I didn't get the OK to take today off until Saturday night.  (Email issues.)  I've taken some long walks, watched some movies, and have been generally calm.  My mind seems to be free of static and of bad thinking.  Terrible how badly I can upset myself with the junk between my ears.

I made eight bracelets yesterday.  In looking for some cheaper materials to conserve my supply of silver, I went back to memory wire bracelets.  I made a set of three with soft fluorite nuggets (which is green and purple), a little amethyst and a few Thai silver beads, and then a set of five with small faceted round rock crystal and smokey quartz.  I love wearing bracelets, since bracelets and rings are the jewelry I can see best on myself; I can see and enjoy what I'm wearing.  I'm also a fiend for earrings.  I wear fewer necklaces because sometimes they just seem too busy with printed tops and being so close to the earrings.  But that's just me.  I also love anklets and can't wait until they're back in season again.  But it's December...I'll have to wait a bit.

Also -- right under the wire for 2011 -- Barry's gotten himself a bit of work.  Our lovely downstairs neighbor, Johnny, who died some weeks back, was on disability; since the landlord doesn't live on premises and this building is too small to have a super, Johnny was kind of Carmine's assistant.  He did things like put out the garbage, washed the floors in the hallways, let the meter-readers into the basement and let Carmine know if there was any problem in the building (blown light bulbs, etc.).  I had suggested to Barry that while he isn't working, he could ask Carmine if he could take over these tasks.  I didn't know if Carmine was paying Johnny anything (although I guessed that he was), but I figured it would at least be a goodwill gesture.  So Barry is now the new Johnny, and will get $100 a month from Carmine, off the books.  Even though it isn't a significant amount of money, Barry will feel good that he's doing something and bringing something in.  I'm very glad about it.

Oddly, I haven't heard from the "EF" woman who offered to take me to the MOMA movies on her membership, although I posted my email address some days ago.  Don't think I can afford any $12 tickets if I don't hear from her -- $5 is hard enough, this time of the month.

I've also decided to pinch pennies even more and join the gym -- there is a Lucille Roberts in the building where I work, and it doesn't get more convenient.  It's under $30 a month, which even I can afford.  I dropped my Filesonic membership, which I mostly used for downloading ebooks (I have more now than I'll be able to read for years and years), which puts another $9/month back in my pocket, and will probably also drop Pogo (the casual-games site I subscribe to, also around $10 a month).  I'll make it work.

questions about Indian ("Bollywood") films

Indian film question:  what is the significance of dancing with a red scarf?  I've seen it in a couple of movies.

Indian film question number two:  Why is no one making (basically non-musical) films as good as Sarkar and Sarkar Raj?

Indian film question number three:  Back to the "Sarkar" films:  what does the chant "Govinda, Govinda, Govinda" mean?

To what extent is "Bollywood" considered an insulting term by the Indian film industry?  I know that certain industry people don't care for it at all, which is why I tend to say "Indian film."