In Memoriam

Now Playing: Mozart – Benedictus

My paternal grandmother died last month, of complications resulting from angina. Amachi was 84, and had been mother to 12 children, and grandmother to 16. It was a quick death, in that she slipped into unconsciousness and thence into death – she would have hated a long, lingering illness, not least because it would have induced her to rely on someone else, something she would have hated fiercely.

Amachi was a remarkable woman – practical & tenacious to the point of stubbornness. She’d been ill on and off – diabetes, heart problems, glaucoma – as long as I can remember, and in early 1991 things had reached a head, with her doctor recommending a bypass operation. She refused, despite recommendations and exhortations from all sides. In particular, Velleappan, my uncle on my mother’s side, told her she should get it done. In a moment of high dudgeon, she replied that the doctor’s mother could get the operation, his dog could get the operation, but she would not. Ironically, Velleappan himself was dead within six months of a heart attack, while Amachi lived another fifteen years.

We were never able to communicate very well, as she only spoke Malayalam, and my Malayalam is terrible. In the two weeks we spent there every year, she did try and make sure I learnt something. I remember once responding to her calling me with “what?” in English, and she’d said, in Malayalam, “don’t say ‘what,’ say ‘endho’!” After that, I always did.

She loved watching Malayalam movies, with a passion. In the evening, after the work was done, she’d watch the evening movies on one of the Malayalam channels, and nothing could shift her from this routine. Before the movies started though, as dusk was drawing, every evening she’d cut up cucumbers and tomatoes to go into a salad, and we’d sit on the porch as she’d pass me bits to eat, and Safi, our dog, would nose around, hoping for some sort of treat before he’d give up and curl up next to us.

She was fiercely self-reliant, refusing invitations from her children to come live with them, preferring to remain in the house she and her husband had shared for more than fifty years. On the wall of their dining room was a picture my brother had drawn of them when he must have been seven or so – Chachen and Amachi in front of their house, with a well – and everytime we’d go, this would be pointed out to my brother, who was deeply embarrassed to have such a visible reminder of his lack of drawing skills displayed so.

Every year when we left, the ritual was the same – she’d take my hands in her cool, dry ones, and kiss me on the cheeks – and that is the last memory I have of her; a tiny bespectacled woman, hair in a bun, watching as we got into a Jeep to leave.

Amachi is survived by her husband, eight children and sixteen grandchildren.

Bombay Rhapsody

Now Playing: Mobile - Outta my head

You know some of what I am going to tell you – but not all, or that would be boring and obvious, and is there any sin more cardinal in a writer?

More than two weeks ago, seven bombs went off.

Khar, Bandra, Jogeshwari, Mahim, Matunga, Mira Road, Borivili - in the space of eleven minutes, seven bombs.

There was another bomb at Borivili - found and defused by policemen - forcing the architects of the carnage to content themselves with a nice prime number's worth of shrapnel and death.

When I heard - or rather read the news - my heart caught in my throat.

A small digression – an overactive imagination can completely spoil one's appreciation of certain metaphors. Heart in throat, heart in mouth – I know what these phrases are meant to invoke, but instead the dominant image is the ridiculous, macabre, obvious one – a heart, beating & muscular, tangled in the gristle and tubes of the human neck; or even worse, that same heart in someone's mouth, monstrous and disgusting.

Now that I've put you off your food, let's continue.

I was – let's dispense with the flowery language – worried. I have family in Bombay. My mother was born and brought up there, and two of her siblings still live there with their families, as do my grandparents. Many members of my family take the train to work or school. Given the timing of the blasts, it was entirely possible that they might have been on one of the doomed trains. It was only after I got the text message from my uncle telling me everything was alright, the entire pultun was safe and sound, that I realized that none of the stations targeted were on the rail route we travel by. I remember thinking - and my thoughts were treacly slow and obvious as my brain slowed down from impending-heart-attack mode – fear is so fucking irrational.

The thing is, though, I'm just not attached to Bombay because some of my family's there. No, for the longest time, Bombay was my hometown; my point of reference.

Waitaminute, you say. Aren't you malayalee?

Um, yes. Both my parents are malayalee, born to malayalee parents themselves the offspring of malayalees. My mum, however, was born in Bombay, and grew up there, a mumbaikar to the bone. She and her siblings spoke more marathi than malayalam at home - it allowed them to talk right under their parents' nose and not be understood - and to this day, whenever they get together they speak this patois of english, malayalam and hindi with sprinklings of marathi on the side. My parents were married in Bombay, my brother and I were born in Bombay, and had things gone a little differently, I'd probably still be there now.

You're thinking that birth and maternal attachment are tenuous links to an entire city –

and you would be right. I was pushed into loving Bombay; if not for that, it would be just another city where my relatives lived, with nothing else to bind me to it.

Ironic that the ones who pushed me to it were those who loudly professed their distaste for the city, no?

Children are rude, mean, thoughtless - and me and my peers were no different. It was only my malayalee classmates, though - when I told them I was malayalee, but my mother's family was settled in Bombay - who replied with, " Bombay? Chee! Bombay's so diiirty!" That cemented my attachment to Bombay like nothing else could have. How dared they insult my city? Clearly they were insulting half my family by association! Family loyalty - which I understood to mean that as bad as it was for me to call my brother names, for someone else to do so was beyond the pale - was one of the cardinal virtues of our family philosophy, and so my reply to them was to show my total disdain for their disdain and indentify even more completely with Bombay. After that, I was "from Bombay" - not, "from Kerala, but settled in Bombay", not "Bombay Malayalee" - but just from Bombay.

In the years since, I've come to realize that I can't escape being malayalee (translation - I can't outrun my relatives) and so I've made peace with the different aspects of my identity. But Bombay was and always will be special to me, though I know now it doesn't need me to defend it or protect it. It's strong enough to take the taunting of brats who've never stepped outside Sahar International, and it's strong enough to survive whatever the terroristes-du-jour decide to throw at it. Nevertheless - I feel I need to say something to the bastards behind the blasts: You're a bunch of fucks. I hope you die painful, horrible deaths and spend the rest of your cursed, god-forsaken existences in the most sisyphean of all hells.

Sorry, what were you saying?

A Tale of Two Movies

Now Playing: Partners in Rhyme - Teri Meri

Before we get to the main course, ladies and gentlemen, let me draw aside the curtain of my mind (is that a song lyric?) and give you some insight into my train of thought:

• Stephen and I are chatting.
• Stephen remarks on the catchiness of Bhangra, having just been introduced to it.
• I refer him to the Bend it like Beckham soundtrack, which has some very catchy bhangra tunes on it.
• I remember one non-Bhangra tune on the album that I like, a Partners in Rhyme' remix of a Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan song called tere bin nahin lagda.
• I decided to see what Partners in Rhyme have done since then.
  
• I stumble across a track called teri meri (literally, yours and mine).
• I press play.
  
• The song is ridiculously addictive. It's like musical crack.
• I can't stop playing it!
  

Which is why I've always said Bhangra is dangerous. No good can come of it, ever.

Anyway, saw two movies adapted from novels recently; loved one, was utterly meh about the other.

any guesses?

The first one I saw was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I have to admit that I was completely psyched for this one up front. The trailer looked amazing, the book has arguably the best twist in any of the HP books so far, and there was going to be an amazing bouncing ferret!!! So Linda, my brother & I trooped down to Paramount to watch the movie. We figured that if we waited till its second week of playing, we'd miss most of the crowds - a fairly logical idea, except that most of downtown Toronto came up with the exact same thing, and so we had to toss stray children out of the way in our over-zealous quest for good seats. After all of this, the movie has to be awesome, right? I wish.

In their quest to streamline the movie, Newell et al threw out whole chunks of the book, thereby junking some of my favourite scenes from the book. We don't get to see Skeeter being a complete bitch and Hermione figuring out her secret - and frankly, with what little screentime they did give Miranda Richardson, I'm surprised they didn't just cut her out entirely), we don't get any of the comedic gold that was S.P.E.W, and then they overextend the first task by having Harry be chased all over Hogwarts by that crotchety Hungarian Horntail. Pshaw. Also left out is the Defence Against the Dark Arts class where we find that Harry is mostly resistant to the Imperius curse, which is probably one of my favourite Harry-scenes from the book. Then finally, the confrontation with Not!Moody at the very end - they don't show the spyglass! Why go to all the trouble of pointing out the nifty little magical device in which you can see your foes approaching you - if you're not going to actually show the foes approaching in the damn thing??? That scene in the book always struck me as one that would look cool on film - three faces slowly growing clearer, until finally Dumbledore, McGonagall and Snape burst through the doors of Not!Moody's office - and they left it out! In all fairness, I should say the movie is really not half-bad, especially for those who haven't read the books. That first sight of the dark mark towards the beginning of the movie was effectively and entirely creepy, the acting was good, etc - but I have to ask: Why are the filmmakers shoving Harry & Hermione down our throats? I mean, c'mon anyone who's read the books know that Ron 'n' Hermione are the canon couple, so what're they playing at?

Anyway, the other movie that I saw - and loved - was Pride and Prejudice. Now, it's no secret that I adore this book. It's the one book that I have found impossible to "read-out" - whereby I read a book so often that by the end of the whole process, it's as if I've drained the thing dry, and there's nothing left on those dog-eared pages for me anymore. This is what happened with Oliver Twist, Sense and Sensibility, Jane Eyre even - I can't read those books anymore. Not Pride and Prejudice. I have read the book any number of times, seen all the assorted film versions - of the list on that page, I've seen all of them except the Mormon version & the assorted BBC versions pre-1980, and I'm here to tell you, this new version more than holds its own.

Where to start? Okay, it's not a romantic comedy, a la the Olivier and Garson version; this one is a romance, from start to finish. But before my male readership decamps in alarm, they should know this movie is really well made technically - long, lovely tracking shots a la Serenity, and wonderful piano music by Jean-Yves Thibaudet. And the script - now, this is how you condense a novel well. Gone are the Hursts, the little Gardiners, the sundry Lucases (Charlotte, obviously is indispensable, but the only other Lucas one sees is Sir William at the Assembly Ball, and only in passing), Mrs Phillips, etcetera - the story and the cast is pared down to the barest essentials. The acting is wonderful - I really hadn't expected Keira Knightley to be able to pull it off as well as she did, but how glad I am to be wrong. Her Elizabeth is clever, irrepressible and girlish - something that could not be said of her predecessors in the role, Jennifer Ehle and Greer Garson. Matthew MacFadyen is perfect as Darcy - taciturn, intrigued & passionate by turns. Comparisons to Colin Firth are inevitable, but MacFadyen more than holds his own. The supporting actors - Donald Sutherland, Brenda Blethyn, Rosamund Pike, et al all do justice to their parts. Quite seriously, it is a wonderful movie, and one you ought to watch.

Wow, I've really run on here, haven't I?

Yours garrulously,

Sharon

A Month Till Christmas...

... and the tree is up!

Update, I must!

Now Playing: Serenity - End Credits

I've had another birthday! Woohoo! Over the penultimate solar sojourn (Steve, I know you'll get this one) I've grown even more decripit and useless! Yay!

*sigh*

I'll just go off into this corner and die, shall I?

Anyway, Linda, Julia, Mimmie, Steph and I met up on a Saturday to jointly celebrate both Linda's birthday and mine. But what was to be done? The cinemas were bereft of quality viewing (NB - this was before Pride and Prejudice opened) and we were at a loss. Bowling? For a lark, I say, "hey, why not karaoke?" and am horrified when they take me seriously (honestly, don't you hate when that happens?) and soon we are on our way to Echo Karaoke in the middle of Chinatown.

Chaos ensued.

By which I mean, we spent six hours at the Karaoke place, screeching our lungs out. :D To be entirely fair, I was the only one screeching; Linda, Julia and Steph were remarkably tuneful, while Mimmie (oh, wise, sage, most august Mimmie!) refused to sing at all. In any case, it was a delightful time, despite my incessant mike-hogging and yowling. We only stopped because the place was closing, and also towards the end, my vocal cords were tap-dancing in an attempt to get me to shut up. Oddly enough, the next day, I was still in possession of my voice, though attempts to sing in Church failed miserably.

Before that, though, the frater and I went to see Serenity. For those five of you who've been living under a rock (heeey! what's it like down there?) Serenity is the movie continuation of Joss Whedon's untimely cancelled TV show, Firefly. The movie is pretty damn awesome and the fact that it did poorly at the boxoffice is, I think, a damning indictment of the tastes of moviegoers in North America today. I mean, you know the universe is fundamentally unfair when the Scooby-doo movie gets a sequel (wtf? seriously, wtf?), and this movie tanked. Anyway, if you get a chance and it's still playing at a theatre near you; you really ought to watch it - it's different, daring and pretty gorram entertaining.

Really, really want to watch Pride & Prejudice, but alack, have no one to see it with me. It's really odd how none of my female friends here have read the book. (Hem, I'm going to assume you have?) I mean, this is quite possibly my favourite book ever, and yet I am surrounded by people who have never read this seminal text! My anthro prof over the summer, Ivan Kalmar, pinpointed this book as the ancestor of all those romance novels in which Guy meets Girl, they hate each other and then fall in love and roll around in haystacks, or whatever it was people did before the internet. Its TV descendants include tropes such as "Will They Won't They" and the niftily named "Slap Slap Kiss." What's particularly funny to me is how guys recoil utterly from the idea of watching this movie. To wit:

Guy: I want to see Pride and Prejudice this weekend.
Me: *goggling in shock*
Guy: It doesn't seem to be playing at any of the big theatres downtown
Me: *even more shock*
Guy: Yeah, my girlfriend wants to see it, not me.
Me: Ah.
Guy: Yeah.
Me: All is made clear.

I don't think there'll be the same paucity of companions when I go to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I was dismayed at first to read that there had been significant cuts to the novel, but my fears have been assuaged - they left the ferret scene in! How awesome is that? The amazing bouncing ferret is in!!!

*ahem*

must be off,

Yours distractedly,

Sharon