DAS: bringing adventure sports to the Masses

I went rafting this weekend. I Bumped, flew out of my seat, hung onto handles for dear life, nearly fell out and barely escaped with my life. Whatever people tell you about White Water rafting let me give you my personal word that it cannot compare with Rocky Road Rafting.

So how does one go Rocky Road Rafting? Well first of all, you shouldn’t have a plan and definitely no tickets, plans and tickets are fatal to road rafting. What you need is a little bit of crazy and a burning desire to drop everything and run away (run anywhere…… but not Rajasthan, the roads are good in Rajasthan). Land up at ISBT, Delhi (that’s the inter state bus terminal for those of you who are jet-setters, and not bus-sitters out there) in the middle of the night, look for the rattiest public bus (the smellier the better) driven by the most enthusiastic looking driver (the smellier the better, though investigating this too closely is not recommended), into Uttar Pradesh (or Madhya Pradesh, the roads are terrible for driving ergo excellent for road rafting in these two states). Scramble on board elbowing out of your way the paan chewing dude, the 80 year old grandma, Bunty, Babli and their kids Chunnu and Munnu. Make for the back seat (you may sit in the middle or front if you have heart problems), secure your luggage, secure yourself and hang on for the ride of your life as your driver takes you 80 miles per hour over potholes 80 inches deep. If you did your research carefully and picked a craz- I mean experienced driver, you can be assured of the fact that not a single crack on the road will be missed (despite the fact that the busses headlights aren’t working) and if your driver is a real sport he’ll speed up as he approaches the really good pot holes.

If you reach your destination in one piece, thank god …………. profusely. Then proceed to take part in the nearest adventure sport available, Hang Gliding, River Rafting, Bungee Jumping, Mountain biking on narrow dirt roads or temple stampeding (the other less acknowledged but extremely popular Desi Adventure Sport (DAS)) trust me the experience, the thrills and the heart rate levels will fall way short of Rocky Road Rafting.

Books Versus Movies (No Contest)

I can’t sleep. So while I wait for the latest episode of “How I met Your Mother” to download, allow me to practice my Acceptance Speech for winning best adapted screenplay (preferably a Tamora Pierce Novel adaption) at the Oscars, on you.

“Well…… this is unexpected (audience laughs because I had all five nominations). I’d like to thank the two most beautiful women in the world (camera pans to my two beautiful sisters……. Audience gasps) for never letting me doubt my own beauty (audience snickers as Joke falls flat), my friends for encouraging me to follow my dreams and being true to myself (audience goes awwwwww……..) and lastly my parents for making me who I am.
Thank You for making me the Girl who thought books meant novels and only novels. That a book was not a book, unless it had a story, non-fiction and textbooks being in a category unto themselves. The Girl who did a double take because the text books outnumbered the fiction books in her senior school library. The girl who never understood the families who proudly displayed their entire book collection consisting of a row of untouched Encyclopaedias in their Drawing Rooms.
And Thank You most of all from teaching me to learn from stories. . Thank You for treating a good story with the respect it deserves no matter what the medium. For treating movies and books the same (Movie Making Audience Cheers), the stories they tell and the lessons you can learn from them being the important thing (Clapping Starts). For treating serious and frivolous alike – for you can always find something to be learnt.

I learnt everything from my Values to my Geography from Movies and Books. These Stories have served as the starting points of Deep Introspection into weighty issues like "Is True Love never Having to say Sorry?" and have jumpstarted Extensive Research on Trivial Bits of History such as "Schindlers List" which might have otherwise gone unnoticed.

This is the reason I do what I do (adapt screenplays) I’d like to thank the Academy for recognizing my genius at it. ( Orchestra starts playing, is drowned out by the Standing Ovation, somewhere in the audience George Clooney starts to fall in love with me)”

Thank you for your patience, I am off to learn How Ted Mosby met his Children's Mother.

Whats wrong with us?

It’s too much to expect anything out of us, but it is nothing to expect everything out of others. I am not a model student by any means, I day dream, I don’t take notes, I don’t pay attention in class, (I’m writing my blog post instead), I don’t come to class and often I am openly insolent to my teachers. I am not alone. That’s the rest of my class for you as well. How did we get this way? We got jaded, by teachers who are terrible, who are biased, who know nothing, for whom teaching is the last resort. Agreed, and then for some of us there are the rest of us as well. If our teachers are bad, we are worse. We wallow in self-pity and self-entitlement and refuse to take charge of our lives and our futures. I don’t think we deserve any better than the teachers we bully, dominate, look down upon and deride.
In my three years over here I have compered conferences and numerous lectures, and I am appalled by the Student behaviour at these occasions. Here is an opportunity to learn, to listen to others, to people from across the world who have flown into your measly little town with the thought of sharing some of their knowledge, and all the students can do is sleep (if they’re nice) or gossip loudly, interrupt the speaker, distract her, ignore the jokes and laugh at the wrong times.
So you don’t listen to the lousy teachers because they’re lousy, but why don’t you listen to the eminent scholars? Because they’re good?
Make up your mind or change your reason. Maybe you don’t listen because you don’t give two hoots, because despite what you told (actually yelled and cribbed) your teacher, “that you want to learn, go beyond schoolroom teaching” you don’t care about anything beyond who’s going out with whom or what Blair wore in the last episode of gossip girl. Maybe you don’t listen because the eminent speaker rambles on and is hard to understand. Well didn’t you just tell (read yell and crib) your teacher that he wasn’t capable of moulding your superior minds, well possessor of a superior mind what good is that damn thing if you can’t use it to unravel one simple lecture. Maybe I’m wronging them, maybe they don’t listen and sleep instead because in their dreams they are visited by much more eminent and interesting persons (like Blair or their crush) who are much better suited to mould their magnificent (superior) minds.
You want to be treated like an adult, “no more classroom teaching”, “We’re in college!”, “We’re 20!” “the teachers don’t know a thing” “ the teachers are biased” “I’m jaded” “the teacher needs to be engaging”.
Well what about us? Do we behave like adults? No, my dear young adults, our behaviour in the conference hall would put even kids to shame, we act like babies. Do we truly not want classroom teaching? Of course we do, we want everything handed to us on a platter, the syllabus, the test questions, the model answer, a perfect lecture. The brave teacher that tries an interesting discussion based syllabus gets shot down immediately (yaaar...... We’re adults, with busy adult schedules, we don’t have time for this). The teachers don’t know a thing.......................... and neither do we by the way (because we haven’t listened to a word all semester, we passed because of the one poor kid who listened through our disturbances and painstakingly took down notes which we photocopied). The teachers are biased................................ and we’re cheaters (we get our 8 CGPA by copying those photocopied notes hidden under our table while the kid who took those notes struggles to remember what the teacher had said because the class had been so noisy that day).The teacher needs to be more engaging, and we need to .......? oh yeah, we need to do nothing.
I wanted to be a teacher, I foolishly mentioned it in front of my professor grandparents, aunts and uncles. They made me cry that day. I would still like to be a teacher, I know the pay is lousy but the deal breaker isn’t that the pay isn’t enough to live on, it’s the fact that it doesn’t compensate for the lousy students.

How to.........

Does anyone else feel the need to be witty, sarcastic and self deprecating while blogging? I do, most blogs which are successful have a certain flowing, natural level snark. Without which your blog is apparently doomed to some sort of virtual limbo (is a blog a blog, if no one reads it?).

And it’s not just blogs, this need to be witty is seeping down into our day to day lives, sundry conversations you might have with your dhobi also need to be funny, worthy of repeating for the hearing pleasure of the world at large, blog worthy in fact. The pressure to be witty and acerbic is on! How do you deal with it? If you’re anything like me, you can only think of something witty or biting long after the moment has passed, yet I am considered scary for the things I might say, allow me to let you in on my little secret.

It’s a look, you need to develop a look which combines pain, loathing and sympathy for the vermin (who should be) squirming before you, bite your lip, like you’re trying hard to control what you want to say (though you don’t know the exact words yet), sadly shake your head and turn away, It’s (will be) too horrible, too acerbic, too true! If you say what you want to say (when you actually figure it out) the poor person it’s directed at might not recover, with a heroic sigh refuse to say what you want to say. It works! Your reputation for witty verbal dexterity and scariness will shoot up. This isn’t enough of course, you need to back the look with actual lines or you might end up receiving more constipation medication than you have enemies to poison them with. This is done in two ways the first is rather simple, Hours later when you have thought of something appropriate. Refine it! Work on it, and then try and drop it into conversation casually, “I kept thinking that his head looked like a turnip..... but you know, I couldn’t say it.......anyway as I was saying to my dhobi the other day...”. The second is simpler, when you actually think of something witty on the spot, say it! (Everyone is given a break from their nobler impulses once in a while......)

Now if someone would please share their secret to bitchy blogging with me ...............

A New Shade of Green

I’m a museum tripping, fort viewing kinda girl. I like guides (the printed and the breathing), pamphlets, badly written ASI Boards and random pieces of trivia, this is best exemplified by observing my school trips to museums. I will for the sake of brevity (hah!) limit myself to one example, our class 8th trip to the arts and handicrafts museum in Delhi. While the rest of my 200 classmates and companions in their quest for learning and knowledge ran through the museum learning essential life skills such as social networking, physical feats of multitasking like walking talking and eating while dodging the random teacher or two and of course little snippets of actual fact – “I swear I saw them holding hands .....”, I went around trying to learn about the Ikat sarees of Orissa. Solitarily staring at the plastic reproduction of an authentic weaving handloom from the early 1990s, Fascinated by the moth eaten Puppets from Northern Rajasthan and cribbing to anyone who’d listen (mostly myself or the unfortunate teacher who had to trail me) that there wasn’t enough written up about the wonders of tribal peacock fans.

In London the storybook Cottages, the Lush greenery, the clean streets, the big shops and the spell binding stage shows all made me wonder and marvel, but none made me want to move to London. It was only as I wandered through the 13th museum and passed a gaggle of high school students being instructed on the colours in a painting that I realized that a delicate hue had begun to colour my countenance. The Instructor called it Fern Green, I call it museum envy green.

I don’t care for their Castles, we have our forts and they can keep their Princes, I prefer Farhan Akhtar, I don’t need clean public loos while I have my home and the Delhi metro will catch up with the London tube eventually. The promenade by the Thames is tempting but the cold and rainy weather means you can never enjoy it. Their Food is blah and bland after a while and so long as the Big Chill exists I won’t miss their cheesecake either. Who wants green everywhere when we have green, reds and browns and a whole rainbow of colours in our landscape and who wants picture perfect cows on Rolling Meadows when we have our sacred mud and dung caked cows on pot holed roads. If I move to London it will be for the museums. So that I can spend hours roaming those vast magnificent halls, reading every line, hanging onto every word of the nice lady on the audio guide. So that my kids can learn to draw stick figures and tear paper to make kites surrounded by the masters. So that I can learn everything I want to know about mummified cats in front of a genuine Mummified cat. The knowledge, the visuals, the atmosphere, the thrill (I am thrilled by museums, thank you very much) call to me, they beckon to me, come to London they whisper seductively in my head (stop feeling sorry for me, I have fun!). But I think I will wait for the day when these museums will come to India. Until then I will content myself by advising my kids to (like my friends) focus on life skills, physical dexterity and gossip when they visit Indian museums and petitioning The Arts and Craft Museum to correct their Ikat Saree label, Ikat Sarees come from Gujarat.

of Devs, Dads, Dimples and a Deol

I did two things over this weekend, one that I never thought I would do, and one I never should have done.
I never should have gone to see Dev D with my Dad. My dad is pretty chilled out about the movies, he likes arty, serious cinema which my mom does not (my mom can watch only mindless action mixed with humour, or Mindless romance mixed with humour, or Humour, real life is arty and serious enough for her), which is why my dad now looks to his daughters for company if he wants to watch something serious. So I figured, what the hey! Here’s a chance to show him bold new Bollywood, even if he doesn’t care for the story he’d like the technical accomplishments, the songs, the direction, the production values, the acting. Aaaaaaargh! I forgot about the Sex, the drinking, the language and the fact that the protagonist is a self pitying loser who we are supposed to sympathise and cheer for after he has run over and killed an entire slum (by the way, said actions are perfectly acceptable in English Movies). It was awkward to say the least. Perhaps I could have pulled it off better had I not already seen the movie (“the reviews were so good..... but this is ......”). But now my dad thinks I identify with Dev D so much that I want to see it twice! More than that it’s a serious lapse of judgment on my part (my daughter doesn’t know what I’ll like or not like). We drove home in silence. When we got home my mom asked us how we liked it, my dad grinned and said it didn’t pass by him. Maybe it’s ok...... but he is never going to take another movie recommendation from me.
I never thought I would fall in Love (this is not a crush) with someone from the Deol family. Abhay Deol is not John Abraham (my long time crush), in all senses of the word “not”. The guy can act, he can pick movies, he does his own thing, he takes avant-garde art courses in New York (steel welding anyone?) he thought of Dev D (the movie I liked so much, that I had to watch it again, Dad or no Dad), he has dimples (Ok John Abraham has dimples too)! He is smart, a smooth talker (swoon) and utterly cute. I know we are soul-mates, no one loves the movies as much as I do, I like art, I like Dev D, I like dimples and have some vague ones myself. We’d be perfect together. I’d help him pick movies to act in and he’d help me with my job as an art museum curator. We’d talk (about smart things ya’know) and take art courses (Blowing glass in Budapest, Tile glazing in Turkey......) and do other things (smart things ya’know) together. Papparazi shots of the two of us would feature our adorable dimples, awwww........ they could call us Soudeo or Rambhay.
John Abraham (should you ever read this blog), I may crush you to death, but for Abhay I’d gladly Die myself.

Twilight Review

Wanted: Male, aged 109 years, with looks of a twenty year old Greek god, raincoat model, for a clumsy, plain girl not good enough for his godlikeness.
Apparently that’s the personal millions of women and teenage girls all over the world want an answer to. How else do you explain the success of twilight? The writing sucks, the characters are characterless and the story is trite.
I daydream a lot, about the books I want to write, about the movies I want to make, and the things I want to do (awww.........hell even about the blog I want to keep). I wanted to write this book, it was buffy inspired and it was going to be brilliant. An ordinary girl falls in love with a vampire, a vampire who while also attracted to her must fight his temptation to suck the blood and life out of her. The girl was going to be kickass, the vampire suave yet tormented, sexual tension would abound, there would be witty repartee. It would not end in the conventionally happy way, the girl would eventually realize that vampires and vampirism (which are obviously subtexts for some deeper gender issues) aren’t for her, but she’d emerge a better, more confident and stronger (emotionally and physically!) person from her experience. I was going to write that book, it was going to be a best seller. My heroine was going to be the heroine to match. Millions of girls all over the globe inspired by said heroine would dump their idiotic boyfriends even before they reached the last page and millions (minus a few) of the dumped boyfriends would wonder what the entire fuss was about, a few sensitive boyfriends would get it and change themselves accordingly, the world would become, all in all, a better place.
Then Twilight happened, apparently Stephanie Meyer a mormon housewife, mother of two in America also had the same dream, and instead of daydreaming about it and writing her booker acceptance speech (they do let you give a speech right?) like I did, actually wrote the damn story and then a sequel and then another one and then another one. So there they were, four gorgeous black books with mysterious symbolic imagery and seductive titles like Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn, what could I do? I bought them, all four in one go. Went home curled up in a sofa glad to have an excuse to not put the more feasible of my daydreams into action (if I went ahead now, Stephanie Meyer could sue me) and started to read, tried to read and then ultimately after several pages of descriptions of Edward “looking more like a greek god than anyone should possibly be”, and finally “so beautiful that he looked like a raincoat model standing in the porch in the rain in a raincoat” I gave up, of yeah I was about thirty pages in. Thirty pages of how beautiful Edward is, of how plain Bella is, of how clumsy Bella is and how graceful Edward is, of how dull Bella is and how interesting Edward is. I gave up! The dumb ass heroine was one of those perfectly irritating girls who say they’re skinny and whine about their pallid skin (translation: I am slender and have great porcelain skin, all the “nerdy” boys keep trying to talk to me, and I’m too nice to put them down! Boo hoo poor me). Do Bella and Edward find true love? Yes they do, does Edward display signs of an obsessive abusive possessive husband? Yes he does, are the books a success? Yes they are, and now millions and millions of girls all over the world have dumped their un-godlike boyfriends who are incapable of modelling raincoats. They sit around being perfectly dull just like Bella, waiting for a Vampire who looks like a greek god to come and bite them and control their lives completely! Millions (minus a few) of the dumped boyfriends wonder what the fuss is all about while a few who catch on go from being nice normal blokes to utter jerks a la Edward and his masterful ways . I weep. And wish that I hadn’t been so lazy. If only I had written my version first! Lesson Learnt: fuck up your Ideas before someone does it for you.