Say anything

Disclaimer (July 2016) - When I read this post now, I sound judgey...not my proudest post on the blog. I guess I've grown a bit more mature and tolerant now. Everyone has their story....let's not judge them...but it applies both ways.

Have there been times in your life when someone was extremely rude to you and you were just too dumb-sruck to retaliate their rudeness? I've got plenty of such incidents in my own biograophy.

A few days back I went volunteering at a place in town. This is a huge non-profit and hence has a lot of volunteers working for them part-time. As it happened an elderly lady (app. 55 - 60 yrs) and I ended up doing some stuff together in the office. I tried to start a conversation with her. As the conversation progressed, I realized she was a unhappy kinda person. May be life was not exactly fair to her, but I felt it wasn't unfair to her either. Anyways, I told her why I normally volunteer and where my husband is employed(in an American-Indian IT services company) etc. After a few minutes she said that one of her friends was worried about losing her job because her work was being outsourced to, you guessed it right, India. And she said, "I hope it's not the company your spouse works for". For a few seconds I was stupefied! I was too shocked for her way of expressing dislike for "Indian companies stealing their jobs": saying it in the face of a stranger from India who was happy to volunteer her time, for free,at an American non-profit. I didn't think it was fair of her to be so direct, especially with a person she met just an hour ago. But I din't utter a word back to her. Later, I was so angry with myself for not coming up with a good response.

And then as time passed by she asked me strange questions about Indian culture: how she thought people in India force their kids for arranged marriages, how she thought we can't speak English and how people normally live with their parents. Here I took matters into my hand and explained the reality in India: how parents now-a-days trust their children to make their own decisions life partner or otherwise, how 80% Indians have their entire education from English medium schools, how we in India respect family and stick together till death.

It was also shocking to see her recalculating the money she "loaned" to her sons! You know your life is a reflection of your actions, if you are calculative in lending money to your kids they expect you to live in a nursing home later in life. I'm not saying that people here are all like this. I've mets of tons of people here who take care of their parents in a better way than I've ever seen in India.

Relationships work only when love and respect are requited. And that's why the Indian family system works in my opinion. At the end of the day I just felt sorry for the dear old ladie, for it's her attitude, and not her pay at job or not her retirement benefits, that needs to change in order for her to be happy and peaceful in life. And I'm glad I am in a position to make this discretion.

movie marathon

So with the spirit of Academy awards last Feb, my hubby and I decided to embark on a marathon of watching academy award winning movies. Why this? First of all, for fun :).Second, I am curious to see the transformation of movies over the past few decaded. Third, I wanna understand the reasoning behind the academy of motion picture's picking a movie as the best-movie of the year? What makes a movie a best movie - is it story, is it the actors, is it the social message it carries, is it the relevance of the movie to its times?

So as I embark on this, I will duely report my reviews here. So keep watching people!

Romance for any season -Dirty dancing

I watched Dirty Dancing today. For the second time (yeah yeah, just the second time...). And I loved it all over again. Just a few days back I put 'Before Sunrise' at the top of my most-romantic movies list. But now I think it's a tie between Dirty Dancing and Before Sunrise.
DD has all the key ingredients necessary to make a romantic movie: music, sensual dancing, beautiful protagonists and an almost fairy tale like story. May be it was DD that created a benchmark in the first place. Patrick Swayze (may he RIP) is an amazing dancer, he is a trained of course. And the chemistry he has with Jennifer Grey is simply so real!It's hard to believe that they were both actually "not-so-fond" of each other when filming DD. But I love the way this off-screen animosity transltes into on-screen passion.
DD is a typical rich girl meets a poor boy story. At least it looks like that on the top. But underneath it's more than that. It's a story of the experiencing the pains of growing up and facing the truth about the real world. Jennifer Grey suits the role. I can't imagine any other 80's actress but Grey in Baby's role.
As for the dance numbers, I love all of 'em; starting with what has been described 'one of the most goose-bumpy movie dance sequences ever' , the climactic dance to 'The time of my life', to the parody of 'Love is Strange'.
Although it's referred to as 'the most watched movie by women ever' and 'the Star Wars for women' I think DD is worth a watch of any guy too :)

Pic courtsey:Wikipedia.org

Hello world- reloaded

I keep doing this...I hit the writer's-block once in a while and then say 'hello-world'...it's like putting an end to an ackward pause. Nevertheless, if any of you out there has been missing by blogs....there's good news for you. I'm gonna blog more frequently. Past one, sorry two months, have been busy busy busy. I moved across the country from the quaint beautiful side of MA to the dry but cheerfully warm west (AZ). New place, new apartment, new furniture blah blah blah - long story short I was busy. But am back now! So keep watching this space.

Worcester,je t'aime!

I look out of the bedroom window and see the snow-covered swings and toy-cars in my neighbor's yard. I know the scene will change soon. Spring is just a couple of months away.
I know the quiet Bean Counter on college Highland St will soon be crowded. The students of the university will soon come back and flood it.

But I won't be here to see it all.
It's time for us to move. I embarked on this journey when I first moved from my home-town to my college-town. Then to Chennai and so on. After relishing the charm of New England for nearly 15 months it's time for us to make our next stop. These days every place I visit in town makes me think, "Will I cross paths with this place again?". I've a lot of memories here. After all it's the place where I started my own family life. The city library, the place I worked, the parking lot I learnt to drive, the beautiful homes on Salisbury St, the small home on Old Mill Rd with its uncountable Christmas decorations, the Saturday evenings spent in the Border's cafe', the restaurants on the Shrewsbury St, I'll miss them all. But the excitement of the new voyage is keeping my spirits up. Who knows what's in store?

P.S. For the first time ever I'm feeling nostalgic about something before being seperated from it :)

A song I love

My 50th post and I like it's this :)