Saturday, February 20, 2010




From a recent trip to Timbaktu, more on Mutyalappa's work as Sarpanch of Mushtikovela village, supported by NPO Asha for Education, www.ashanet.org

Kerala percussion

Vibhat was in India and invited us to join him while he was in Kerala. I went with Siddhu, since Priya and kid are at her parents place. Vibhat's mom organised a cool music concert at the house. The video of of this. As a matter of fact this is pretty rare footage. This particular instrument is not common and is rarely played in public. The musicians here are students from Kala Mandalam -- a university for traditional arts in Kerala. We visited the place later, pretty impressive.
Let me know what you think of the music:

Friday, February 19, 2010

The vegetable pushcart man as hero

As you drive on the streets of Bangalore you often come across vegetable pushcarts. These are flat 4 wheeled contraptions, loaded with vegetables and being trundled around the city. Sometimes its just piled high with tomatoes and potatoes, sometimes its a wide range of vegetables. Consider the life of the vegetable pushcart man:

-- the daily pollution and dust
-- being completely at the mercy of the weather ; from hot sun to sudden showers. Imagine trundling your way home maybe 5 kilometers away in one of Bangalore's thunderstorms in roads running full of water with your business day washed out.
-- reducing business as the big shops like Reliance undercut everyone else
-- negotiating Bangalore's traffic and intersections where to the man in the CAR the pedestrians and pushcarts are irritants to be honked angrily out of the way as they interrupt the smooth flow of traffic.

Despite all these obstacles, the pushcart man endures. Why does he do it? Does he go home to a loving family that makes it all worth it for him? Does he feel he has no choice? Or does drink do the trick? Where does he draw the strength from, to continue his useful but uneviable role? Does he fall prey at some point to the many options for a spiral into self-destruction that a city offers? Does he feel a proud sense of dignity in doing a honest day's work?

Vegetable pushcart man: I don't (yet) have the humanity to stop my vehicle and have a real conversation with you, so I just have to imagine all the above. But I salute you.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Notes on "3 Idiots"



I saw it today, long after everyone else. (Impusively went to it Everest near our apartment ; was passing by at 9:20 pm and saw that they had a show at 9:30pm! I and Siddhu have been planning to go together sometime and he was genuinely shocked that I ditched him. I'll have to make it up).

Too long and loosely edited. Maybe I've just seen too many good movies but I get impatient easily at the movies.

Definitely didn't live up to the hype and good reviews. But was quite nice.

Stuck too much to stereotypes with Chatur Ramalingam and Suhas. Would have been interesting to make Chatur in particular much more serious and accomplished (that's what successful Indians in the US tend to be like) rather than an easy-to-dislike clown.

Nicely made its points about the education system including using old legends (urban or otherwise) like the NASA pen. We should have had this movie made 20 years ago, and maybe it would have saved me :-(. Delivery scene was far too contrived.

Scene where Farhan convinces his father was genuinely moving.

Gorgeous Ladakh scene at end. We don't need no Switzerland!

Would have made the movie lot more cool if they'd situated it in IIT like in the book. Campus they used looked very nice.

Kareena was weak in places and looked overawed at the star cast she was competing with.

Handling of Raju's parents was pretty good.

Song sequences were mostly a pain.

How do Aamir and Madhavan manage to look reasonably realistic as 20somethings ?!

After all the controversy with Chetan Bhagat ; I felt that while the movie was irrevocably situated in the ideas of the book, there was a huge amount of original stuff overall. Which doesn't say much I guess !

And they had some truly atrocious product placements. Shame on you Vidhu Vinod Chopra