Okay, get this. In the movie, Saajan, Madhuri Dixit aka Pooja is a bookshop owner in Ooty. Cut to her sitting at a piano on stage, with some 250 people seated there to watch her dance, sing, play the instrument, and off she croons: “Bohat pyaar karrrrrte hain tumko sanam…”. WTF!!!@@@@!!  When did she switch professions??!!

Haven’t you ever wondered (I went beyond wondering and pulled my hair out a time or two) how movies of the ’90s had lead actors and actresses who were cast as doctors, lawyers or even bloody businessmen, landing up PERFORMING on stage out of nowhere, with an audience to boot, and preferably with their better halves in the audience who fall in love with them because of their STAGE PERFORMANCE??? I am yet to come across such random stage shows hosted by artistes who aren’t that — they’re NOT artistes! I mean, can you imagine your dentist Dr. Anand Jejurikar excusing himself in the middle of drilling your teeth and bam! Landing in some Tejpal auditorium, taking his tie off, putting on a leather jacket and doing the whole drill (excuse the pun)?

How random is that!

Consider this. Dulhe Raja had Raveena Tandon break into ‘Ladka deewana lage, vaah vaah ji vaah vaah’ for no sane reason;  we all saw Shah Rukh turn into a rapper with ‘Ye Kaali Kaali Aankhein’ (Dude, he had gone to this restaurant in the movie to have dinner with his wife, Kajol. You dont just randomly start performing in a synchronised way with seedy looking dancers to flank you. Ever heard of permission at the premises? Nah. The world’s a stage!); aaah….the examples are many.

And let me not even begin with movies like Imtihan (Saif Ali Khan), Deewana (Rishi Kapoor), Dil Ka Kya Kasoor (who cares who that actor was) etc where, heaven forbid, the actor is actually a pop artist and his lady love falls for him after seeing his performance. Stage performance, that is, sillies. Which primary school did the scriptwriter come from again?

Think of more examples people, please!! This is not the time for stage fright. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to rush to Sophia Bhabha Auditorium —- you see, I have to fall in love with the billboard sign painter who’s going to perform there.

How many times have you heard these dreaded two words? I mean, you’ve been hearing it since you didn’t even know you could hear: from the time you were born, every day of your life someone new came to visit you and commented on how tall you’ve grown, or bigger, or fatter, or thinner, or naughtier or whatever-ier, from the last time they saw you.

This grew particularly annoying when occasions like marriages or family gatherings came about, and random people whose faces you can’t tell from Nam walked up to you and told you, “Itni choti thi jab dekha tha,” or the more inane “Kitni badi ho gayi hai.” Like seriously, we should’ve stunted when you last saw us. Heaven forbid, we grow a millimeter in height, or half a brain, since!! Yikes!

That’s that about relatives. What’s worse is when you’re forced to confront friends or other people you haven’t met in a while — who probably knew you from a different time zone — and they comment on how you have changed. Ditch specs and wear contacts, and presto! A barricade of ‘Contacts and all, huh!’ is unleashed onto you, followed by the dreaded duo: ‘You’ve changed.’

Some people take their love for observation power one step too far and drink in everything about you, from your hairstyle (longer, shorter, even the same length of hair will undoubtedly evoke a comment, even if it is to say, you have the same hair as before), to your toe nails, whether you’ve painted them (and whether that’s a diversion from the previous YOU),  to your dress sense, weight and, well, maybe even that extra hair popping out of your nostril. Er, okay, don’t distort your features on that, learn to take a perfectly intelligent, unbelievably funny joke, okayyy??? Hmph.

Ahem, yeah, so, continuing.

Sometimes we tend to avoid people we haven’t met in a while.

The point is, different people meant different things to you at various points in your life, and brought out clashing strands of your personality. You may have four distinct kinds of friends and you may be a vulture in front of one, while another may bring out the nerd in you.

And you DO change little by little along the way.  How can you not? A joke you laughed at five years ago, will obviously not evoke the same Hyena laughter now, will it? Just in the way you cannot listen to your favourite song on a loop for three months in a row. Or even three days. I’m sure it must be a form of punishment in some countries. There’s only so many times you can cry when DiCaprio dies in Titanic.

The point is, people change. Choices change. Circumstances, YES – change. The only difference is, sometimes you’re around to witness the change, sometimes you’re not. Sometimes you are able to accept it, and sometimes you simply cannot identify with it. But that doesn’t give you the right to have your eyebrows reach Lithosphere in shock when you see ‘that friend from school and how he’s changed’.

That kind of constant judging — er, which we all fall prey to every once in a while, either giving or receiving it — only leads to mindless chatter. And for some people, that constant judging is so, well, constant, it should be some sort of a job qualification. Or placed in a matrimonial column under the sub-head ‘Hobbies and Interests’.

These are some outta focus shots taken from my camera phone in a moving rickshaw on my way to Bandra station, at 7:30pm on June 7, 2010. A fateful evening when Mumbai witnessed among its first showers of blessings for the year doh hazaar das (which was becoming doh ‘hazar-dous’ without the rains). The rainshower lasted all of ten minutes but hey! Presto! We see little water tanks  ’flooding’ the streets already.

But the weather put me in such a good mood, I swear I was grinning like an absolute idiot on my way home from office. After the heat and pasina assault for MONTHSSS ….. the poultice effect of the cool wind on my face, the yellow flickering candle-flame sky, the slush-slush and woosh-woosh of my rick plonking ahead, the feel of a cool drop or two on my palm….t’was truly a blessing.

Small mercies, I say! :) Praise the Lord.

It was all the same.  The swish of the revolving door as I entered, the dimly lit room, the anonymity of the corner table I always went straight over to, the all-too familiar bourbon going down my throat as the time on my watch showed 1:03 am.

It was an unusually cold night at the resto-bar, and I saw people pull their coats around them a little tighter. I revelled in my body quivering. Had grown used to the cold. In more ways than one.

Oh yes, this was the one place I could bare my soul and walk away, and no one would even look up.

As I downed my drink — and it felt good — it was her voice that first caught my attention. I turned around to look at the makeshift stage in the other corner of the room where she sat at the piano, wearing a faded dress. And I couldn’t look away.

Her fingers floated over the keys with grace. Her fingers floated over the keys in pain.

It was the most beautiful music I had ever heard.

She sang out softly, throatily, about love lost, and I was entranced by the light ripples her music was making in the stillness of the night. I forgot where I was as she took me to another time.

Then she turned her face towards me, and I really saw her for the first time. Dear Lord….she looked……exactly like …..

I couldn’t believe my eyes. The same willowy frame, black hair curtaining her face, the proud chin, the all knowing look…like she could see right through me. My head was pounding. Could this be real? This couldn’t be happening.

This place was giving me a glimpse of the same bittersweet hell I came here to forget.

She played a magical tune then, looking at me – or through me – all the time. An hour passed, maybe two. Or just a moment. But when I found the strength to look away, I noticed we were the only ones left in the room.

She finished with a flourish the piece she had been playing, its soft notes fading away into the night, and stood up.

Like a vision, she walked towards me till we were standing just half a feet apart. To anyone watching in through the window, we’d probably look like lovers sharing a moment.

Ever so slowly, she lifted her hand and touched my face….tracing the rough stubble, almost as though memorising the contours, and her eyes followed her every move till she finally met mine.She was even more striking than I had thought. A painful reminder. Jesus, she looked just like her.

She said something before she walked away, leaving me with me.

Her words, “You look just like him…” stayed with me long after she had gone.

My life is full of Thwack moments. The uh-oh kind. Dropping things around, bumping into things, dropping things ON people….the day I don’t have one, I wonder if something’s seriously wrong in the universe out there. Below are some of my choicest Thwack moments, the shortlisting of which was more of a procedure than the Oscars and Grammy’s put together. I’ll call mine the Whammy’s, while the trophy will be called Thwack (like the Academy Awards and the Oscars? You feelin’ me??)

Phew…believe me it was TOUGH, but these take the cake away. The cake that I’m sure I’ll somehow manage to land headlong in. Here goes:

1. Setting: At a seminar at a five star hotel.

I’m holding my lunch plate in one hand, and a folder and a bag in the other. Ahh, bless me, my fone beeps. Right jeans pocket. I transfer the folder from one hand to the other, placing it below my plate for balance and grab the phone: it’s my photographer trying to locate me at the venue. The plate quivers precariously like a wobbly boat on my raft like folder, and aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrgghhhhhhhh! Before I know it, in SlowMo, I watch the plate move away from me….down down down towards the floor where it crashes into three exact pieces. Boooooooooooom!!!!! This is unreal, this didn’t happen, I tell myself, looking up to meet the stares. “Oops!” I say. My photographer, in the meantime, says, “Found you. So you’re the one who dropped the plate, huh??”

Thwack.

2. Setting: A Mumbai cab.

I’m hailing a cab in the middle of the road. There are cars behind me honking non-frickin-stop, and I’m struggling to open the door which chooses that exact moment to be jammed. Ugh!! I push and pull and try all sorts of tricks, finally removing my ire on the cabbie…”Ye kaise darwaaze …” and all that, after which he calmly turns around and, well, unlocks the lock.

Thwack.

3. Setting: Eternia shopping centre, Breach Candy

It’s that kinda shopping place where these Gujju salesmen are in no particular uniform, thoroughly comfortable in their non-MNC ways, clad in sirt-jince (shirt-jeans) and proudly sporting chipped nail-polish on index fingers. Anyway, I see this pot bellied salesman in sirt-jince doing pretty much nothing, and I signal to him to ask him about an item on the shelf. He looks the other way. Really, now!! I walk up to him and say, “Bhaiya, yeh kitne ka hai?” To which he shoots some ‘akhiyon se goli maare’ daggers my way and thunders, “I’m NOT a salesman.”

Thwack.

4. Setting: A get together at a pal’s place.

For a group snap, I take out my age old digicam, the first invention of its kind methinks, as it runs on batteries, the rechargeable kind (have changed the cam now, thankfully).  Everyone poses with cheesy smiles but I can’t see a damn thing on the screen. Black. I click a tentative snap, and I’m able to see it after clicking it, but then the screen promptly goes black again. I tell me pals my cam is spoilt, launching into a speech about how much I hate it on a scale of 1 to 10 and how badly I wanna change it (whiney whineeeyyyy whining) when a friend coolly takes the camera from my hands, turns the ‘Display’ setting on, and hands it back to me.

Thwack.

5. Setting: My home.

Yeh bachpan ki baat hai. I’m positioned behind our age-old Sony TV (the kind without a remote, with only ten buttons on its right side for channels), trying to fix some wiring (yeah that’s joke enough, but allow me to continue), when I realise I need to budge the TV somewhat to gain greater access. A little push, a bit of a shove, and CRRRRRRRAAAASHHHHHHH…..the TV set lurches forward and settles with a thud on the ground, its screen into pieces.

Thwaaaaaaaack!!

(If it’s any consolation, my family distinctly thanked me, else we wouldn’t have gotten over the inertia of not having changed it for centuries)

6. Setting: Nani’s kitchen in Delhi.

It’s breakfast time at the table, when I sink into a chair and ask cheerfully, “What’s for breakfast?” My cousins exchange looks, and before I can reach out for the Poha, someone serves it on my plate.  Further, my cousins position their plates as much on the edge of the table as they can. Some even rearrange their seating, while another gets up and takes the water pitcher away. “There, that should do it,” he says. “Sab relax karo. Now there’s no chance she’ll spill the water. AGAIN.”

Thwack.

Meanies. Wanna thwack them myself.

Enough ho gaya, ki aur sunna hai?! :D

So how many Thwacks do you have adorning your shelf?? I need to construct a new room for them.

I cannot tolerate ‘jham jhoom’ music. Seriously.

I’m all for soothing, soft, romantic melodies. Preferably old Hindi movie songs! Yeah, it is often joked about that I belong to another century (millennium even), but really, nothing can quite match up to timeless music.

I guess I owe my love for English classics to my momma, and Hindi movie songs to Papa. Often, at evening, when I’m sitting in my living room working on a frantic story, clutching my forehead and wrestling with words, an old tune wafts out towards me from my parents’ room….it’s my dad, who has an enviable collection of old songs on his computer….and I find myself getting momentarily lost in the mood he whips up for me without even knowing it.

An old song can make me feel (in the record time of one instant) like I’m walking through dark, misty woods by myself, taking a pause when the music does, increasing my pace swiftly when it reaches a crescendo, and feeling the drops from a stream slip past my fingers when the music piece reaches its conclusion.

Often, I sing old songs softly to myself at night just before going to bed  (yeah, I sing my own lullaby, huh?) …and get the most peaceful sleep ever. Can’t help it: I’m a sucker for all things timeless, all things old world, all things with a profound history behind them.

I never tire of songs from the following movies: Aandhi, Umrao Jaan, Arth, Abhimaan, Ijaazat, Silsila, Hum Dono, Nau Do Gyarah, Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi, Padosan, Madhumati, Muqaddar Ka Sikandar…let’s not even begin on how many movies I’m unable to fit into this para.

And of course, I’m always game for Kishore Kumar, Rafi, Jagjit Singh, Pankaj Udhas, Talat Aziz, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle…apart from Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghoshal, I think very few current singers can be in the same league today.

Speaking of calm, mellifluous melodies, how can one forget the poultice effect of Ghazals (ahh, those lyrics full of meaning, the use of the Santoor ….such mood enhancers…much like the smell of perfume!).

Right now, I’m in the mood for ‘Aisi bhi baatein hoti hain’ and ‘Ae Dile Nadan’ ….lovely, soulful songs…perfect for sitting back, closing your eyes, taking a deep breath and dousing yourself in their balming abilities………..aaahhhh………..the sound of music!!! :) Sigh……

I’m settling  into my comfy seat at Cinemax to watch Wake Up Sid,  fully expecting it to be bullshit, armed with the theory that the only thing I’ll remember about the experience is how nice the AC was.

I hadn’t heard a single song of the movie, and the few promos I had caught on TV had me sure it’ll be this senseless, kiddish, full of forced ‘youthism’ movie, with high-pitched, hammed performances and a sub-standard story.

Uh, ookay. the screenplay and story is sorta predictable…lazy, spoilt, aimless guy ‘sudhrofies’ and turns over a responsible leaf during the course of the film. And of course, the ‘opposites attract’ angle. Yep, Konkana Sen does look older to Ranbir Kapoor. And the college life bit is a bit too cute at times. Some call this the Hindi equivalent to a chick-flick.

But let me also tell u this: I surprised myself by really liking the movie.

WUS is a feel good film (don’t know why that word brings out the critic in us!!) but here’s a wafer-thin plot where I enjoyed the wafer!  For one, it has kickass songs….I found Iktara, Aaj Kal Zindagi and Kya Karoon quite hummable and suited for long drives!!! :) Not chartbusters, but just pleasant, soft melodies …  the kind that you don’t mind playing in the background when you’re going about your chores. The last movie track that brought out the same reaction from me was Life in a Metro.

The movie and its characters are almost like pages out of someone’s everyday life….a simple story, nicely told….although the pace could’ve been a bit crisper. Konkana as Aisha is fresh and real (I do admire her as an actor, ever since Mr. & Mrs. Iyer). Her screen presence and sparkling eyes put life into her role. Of course, the fact that Aisha’s mad about writing made me see a bit of me in her!!! And I so wanted to live in the house she rents…(er, after it’s done up of course).

Must put in a mention on Sid’s college gang…the motu girl and the best chum…they look like real life pals and not the bubble gum variety. And this is the first time I didn’t cringe on watching Kashmira (Kashmera, Kashmir, Cashmere, whatever) Shah on screen. She’s passable as the horny next-door neighbour…reminded me of Lillette Dubey in Kal Ho Naa Ho.

Hell, yeah, there are some irritating cliches like the way the young gang helps Aisha ‘paint’ her new house (I’m yet to come across a single person living in India who has painted a whole house by himself/herself without official painters). And the part about Aisha’s khadoos boss (Rahul Khanna) falling for her eventually was an event anyone could’ve eventually evented, er, invented. After watching Love Aaj Kal and WUS, methinks Rahul Khanna should write ‘Side actor who’s just there to ensure the heroine EVENTUALLY realises she loves the hero’ on his CV under the sub-head ‘Specialisation’.

Ahh, surprisingly, Ranbir as Sid didn’t ham (I fully expected him to go over the top as the carefree, spoilt brat).

Anupam Kher is good (as usual) as the daddy, while mother Supriya Pathak reminded me a lot of my own….always worrying whether I’ve eaten on time and stuff!! On returning home after failing his exams, when Sid takes it out on his mum saying she has no right to be angry considering she never studied a word, I wanted to kick his butt. But the moment kinda made me introspect on the innumerous times I’ve been horrid to my momma…the movie does that to you: makes you identify with characters and situations.

Hmm…let’s wake up to the reality that not everyone will like Wake Up Sid…I did, I did.

I love books. No, make that I looooooooooooooooooove books.

I love the smell of books….in the case of a spanking new copy, the smell of fresh paper and fresh ink. And in borrowed books, the smell of yellowed paper, worn with time, but yet doing it’s job to enthrall me. I love the rustling sound of paper when I turn a page. Or the sigh of longing when I reluctantly place a bookmark in between its leaves when it’s time to sleep. Or when mom calls out for lunch.

I’ve had a fascination for books since I learnt the written word. Barely five or six years old, my mother (a bookworm herself, God bless her) introduced me to our local circulating library across the road, Shemaroo. I remember my little hand engulfed in hers as she scoured the Barbara Cartland series, following which I was taken up the winding staircase into the children’s section. My first set of books was the Mr. Men series (the stories of Mr. Happy, Mr. Greedy, Mr. Grumpy never ceased to amaze me….the sweet ‘Once upon a time’ types, accompanied by painted pictures of beautiful cottages…you get the ‘picture’).

In my formative years, Enid Blyton was my key to a magical, fascinating world: a world that led me by the hand, away from my own. I dreamt of English countrysides where people had tea with scones and blueberry pancakes, and went hunting/fishing, and vacationed in farmhouses.

Over the years, I did the usual set: Nancy Drew, Famous Five, Mallory Towers, Secret Seven, Agatha Christie’s mysteries (Poirot and Miss Marple: evergreen characters with their quirks), Sweet Valley High, Sidney Sheldon, Danielle Steele, James Patterson (he is my favourite author, by the way. That’s another blog entry for another day!!!).

A good book, like a good movie, resonates with its reader long after putting it down. There are many books that have made me cry (Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, Love Story by Erich Segal, and mostly all titles by Nicholas Sparks). Some books make me laugh (Hey Whipple, Squeeze This by Luke Sullivan, and the entire Diamond Brothers series by Anthony Horowitz), while others show me characters that bring to me life’s lessons.  Crime thrillers and periodical romances are what I dig currently….the former appeal to my sensibility (my window to gut instincts, human behaviour and forensic science), while the latter appeal to my sensitivity! :)

I have a looong way to go….I’m yet to read some of the best authors out there. Let’s just say I read a lot, but I’m not well-read. Hoping to change that with time.

I dream of being a book-reviewer someday….and writing my own book someday………

Someday………….

:)

Anyway, I’m staring out the window, thankful for the breeze whizzing past me on a humid evening, looking forward to the shower that awaits me at home, when she speaks up (the lady next to me, that is).

“Has Bombay Central passed?”

“No, that’s two stops later.” I turn away.

“And Charni Road comes after Grant Road, right?”

“Yes.”

“I see…so Charni Road is four stops away?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you getting off?”

“Grant Road.”

She nods.

The train slows down. The sound of the rumble of its wheels are interrupted: “I’m confused what to do…” she frowns, rubbing her chin elaborately.

“Why?” I ask, in standard fashion.

“Well, my home’s at Bombay Central, and the club I go to is at Charni Road. The ladies there play Housie, but the game will get over at 9:15…so I don’t know where to get down.”

“Ahh..” I mumble, all-knowingly (although I know not why she is telling me all this) and turn back towards my window.

Silence. A second passes. Then another.

“So… what do you think I should do?”

Ookay. Eyes-wide moment. I turn to her, surprised, noticing her for the first time. She’s a decently dressed lady, speaks English well enough, looks presentable, and even sane. But I’m mildly, mildly uncomfy now. Hell, my overactive mind conjures up all those stories in the papers of well-dressed people duping others at knife-point in lonely train compartments.

I shrug. “I don’t know…umm…I guess it would depend on whether there’s someone waiting for you at home or if you have other work.”

“No. You see, my husband’s out of town…he’s in Delhi, and I’m all alone at home.” Silence. ”So?” she continues. I stare questioningly. ”Well, so what do you think??” Yikes. Back to that.

“Well, if there isn’t somewhere you need to be, go to the club I guess. You have half an hour of the game to catch.”

“Hmm, I was thinking of the same thing…I’ll catch up with my friends there. Gosh, it’s so hot, no? I’m sooo thirsty…” (all said with the dupatta-flapping-on-the-neck routine). I dip into my bag and give her SOSO: a wannabe Bisleri brand that I bought at Mulund station, which lives up to its name. The train lurches while she’s taking a swig, and voila! Her lipstick’s all over the bottle rim as she sheepishly looks at me. Not that I was ever planning to take it back, but I tell her she can keep it. She stares like I’ve given her a Lexus.

Bombay Central passes away. “Decision made, I guess,” she smiles. I smile back.

30 seconds later, my stop arrives. “Oh you’re getting off? See you!” she shouts out after me. I wave and get off, feeling a bit strange about the whole conversation.

In the span of some four minutes, I had judged her several times: from a stranger, to an overly inquisitive woman, to a creepy psycho, to the final assessment that she was just a lonely person out for some conversation with just about anyone.

Some stories don’t have conclusions, just abstract endings, huh??

Ever had a conversation with a stranger?

Read on folks:

1. My husband is humble… and when he says, “Why do you love me? I am so ordinary,” it hurts, because I can never find the words to tell him he is my whole world.

2. When you are away too long, I put on your ancient gardening jacket and sit wrapped round in you. (Pam Brown)

3. One of the oldest human needs is having someone wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.

4. A husband is a man who when someone tells him he is hen-pecked, answers, yes, but I am pecked by a good hen. (Heheh….)

5. The story of a love is not important. What is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.