From a Monday Dawn to a Friday Dusk...

It's 3 in the afternoon...perfect siesta time, and I am horribly drowsy after lunching on a dosa and a sweet lime juice, from Janata Cabin, the common man's lunch hub around the corner. With workload on the lighter side, and the client still contemplating on whether to go ahead with the project under such difficult economic conditions, I decided to look up dinner recipes....a completely retarded way, I agree, to while away time. It is then that it suddenly struck me, what an accomplished cook I have evolved into, over the last couple of years...thanks to marriage, thanks to my man's gastronomic over-enthusiasm and unique disability to cook, thanks to the non-availability of a decent cook across the length and breadth of Tamil Nadu, thanks to situations... But trust me, things can get quite out of hand, if you are managing a nine-to-eternity job, cooking, and, general household chores all at once. So I decided to be a little philanthropic. What follows, is a guide for a wife-cook-employee-woman (let's coin a better term...but later, maybe) from Monday morning to Friday evening:

• Get up at 7...if possible, earlier, but personally, I can't manage.



• Get the bread, the cheese, the milk, the cornflakes, the banana etc. out of the refrigerator...if you have to buy it fresh, maintain a phenomenal rapport with the watchman...or else, pluck your man out of bed...ignore the scowl.



• Steal some time for exercise...I cannot believe I am preaching this...but yeah! Adipose needs to disappear.
  


• If the maid comes early, mug up the morning newspaper while she is doing whatever she is doing.



• Get the breakfast ready...gobble and prepare for a bath...if possible, get your office clothes ready, the night before...this includes matching accessories, if that's your type...or better still, forget about your looks...that's simple!



• Have lunch at work...I mean, don't carry lunch...that's one chore gone…make do with the burnt chapattis, the not-so yellow dal, and the completely orange rasam that the dabba walla gets!



• Before taking a bath, make up your mind for dinner...should be light, to finally cut down on the flab, and should be tasty, to satisfy the taste buds...mostly his...dal and chicken, or dal, sabzi, and a boiled egg!



• Remember to switch off lights, fans, gas knobs, and water taps before you plan to leave for work.



• At work, slog it out...there are no two ways about it...is there?



• Return at 8...I know this one's a dream....but hypothetically speaking, return at 8... get the frozen meat out in the kitchen sink for defrosting...wash and cut the vegetables watching Everybody Loves Raymond. (That reminds me, I completely agree with the general belief that marriage is a non-funny version of Everybody Loves Raymond...only that it does not last for 22 minutes)



• Cook...unavoidable...however, cook a large quantity....so that you cook on consecutive days…or even less...ask people to get used to refrigerated food.



• Freshen up....this is your time....watch the news, read Arvind Adiga, watch Michelle Obama on TV… yada yada yada...



• Have dinner once the man is in. Fiddle with HBO or Discovery...or whatever.



• Call up in-laws, out-laws etc. to give them updates of your life.



• Have nightmares of a busy Tuesday and snore.



• Continue this way till Friday night, and let your hair down a bit after that.

Weekends:

• On Friday night, order pepperoni...ignore the flab...get some beer.



• On Saturday, have chello kebab for lunch...catch a late-night movie...do the grocery shopping for the next week in between.



• On Sunday, get a pedicure/massage/sauna...get physical (no pun intended...ah well, if you have time...that too)

Anyone with a better guide is free to catch me at dasgupta.debanjana@gmail.com

Slumdog...the Buzzword of the Season!

In my family, I take all the good and bad initiatives. Now this, for Slumdog's sake is not a lie. Be it making a list of groceries needed for the week, or killing the odd cockroach in the kitchen, launching a verbal assault on the indecipherable Tamil watchman, or getting a couple of movie tickets over the net...I wear the pants in the house, willingly or otherwise...I swear on Slumdog, I do!
So this time around, I got the tickets for Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle's much-talked-about baby...and boy! I liked it.
Before readers jump to conclusions, let me clarify, I am a bit confused. To praise Slumdog whole-heartedly is too common a response to the film. To question Boyle's sleazy portrayal of slum-life in India is fashionable. But I don't want to indulge in either of the two trends completely.
Slumdog has impressed me with the storyline, to start with. You'd of course say, go and read Vikas Swaroop's Q & A...why give Boyle a chance? Well, now that I haven't read Swaroop, and now that I have seen Boyle, let's go with that.
The movie begins with a battered Jamaal (the quite adorable Dev Patel) at the police station, having to answer for his brilliance at the popular game show, Who Wants to Be A Millionaire. He is a 'slumdog' (I guess we will ignore the British audacity in that word, for the time being) who has had a dream run at this game show, and won an obscene amount of money (I am not quoting the exact sum because I cannot count beyond two zeroes). The game show host (a smarmy Anil Kapoor…pretty disgusting) thinks Jamaal has pulled a fast one. Being a slumdog, he has no bloody right to know the answers to all the questions...and we have our young hero with the cops.
The story unfolds in flashback, as Jamaal tells the police inspector (a thoroughly under-utilized Irfan Khan) the story of his life. It is here that we learn...Jamaal is no prodigy. He is a mere Chai Walla at a call centre. He just knows the answers to all the questions due to some incredible coincidence. Each and every question is linked to some phase in Jamaal's slum life, and each, as it unfolds, leaves you moved...at least I had a lump in my throat.
I will not disclose the climax, or even the story...no point in that absolutely. All I can say is that the pathos in the film has left me speechless at times. There is this incident, where little Jamaal is in the lavatory, battling it out in the wee hours of the morning. His brother Salim locks him up from outside. Suddenly there is a roar and we hear that Amitabh Bachchan's helicopter has arrived somewhere nearby, where the superstar is shooting for a film. Young Jamaal, like any other filmy Indian, is desperate to meet his hero. He fights an internal war, and jumps into human excreta, to escape from the bathroom, and have his tryst with his idol. The theatre screams with laughter, as Jamaal fights for an autograph, smeared with muck. However, what I couldn’t help but notice is the pathos of the scene. This is what poverty in India is about. Fighting for what you need…for what you desire. Never mind if you’re a six-year old. Grow up…quick!
There are countless such moments, where you feel, Boyle has come up with a well-researched film. The Alexander Dumas reference that runs through the movie, culminating in the climax, is brilliant. However, as any westerner would, Boyle goes back to stereotypes at the very end of the movie, where we have a song and dance sequence…a very predictable Bollywood touch.
Even otherwise, the sore point of Boyle’s project is the absurd obsession of the West, with Mumbai and slum-living. It reminds me of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bombay Dreams, where the hero, Aakash harbours dreams of escaping from a Mumbai slum-life to a world of riches. Coincidentally, there too, we have A.R. Rahman, crafting the background scores. That brings me to Rahman. Slumdog has good music. But not for once do we find it mind-blowing. Not for once do we hum it…worth a Golden Globe? I wonder why we, Indians, lap up anything that the West decides to give us! Should we accept a Golden Globe just because the critics out there suddenly decide to listen to this brilliant musician from India? I mean, for Slumdog’s sake…just because you’ve never listened to a Lagaan, or a Rang De Basanti, or a Roja does not mean this man was quite plain and unnoticeable all this while!
Enough of my opinions I guess. In all, Slumdog Millionaire is enjoyable and moving. But it would be interesting to see Boyle making a movie about Indian urban middle class…settled in…umm, say Delhi…having decent jobs…having sufficient money for food, money for shopping, money for an occasional trip to Maldives, or even the Great Barrier Reef, money for the latest mid-segment car in the market…would he do that? Not sensational at all? Or at least not as stupidly alluring to a westerner, as poverty is, I guess. Poverty for them remains an aphrodisiac!

New Year

Before I begin, a very Happy New Year to everyone....this post is on request. I have approximately 3 fans in the entire blogging community, and they have been urging me to come up with a new post. However, going by the present state of things, there is hardly much to write home about...if you know what I mean. So I decided to come up with a couple of lists...just random feelings...do not indulge in domestic warfare or lose sleep over it. They are not even worth a goddamn migrane...trust me!

Things that will change (read 'increase') in the new year:

• Your age



• Your paycheck (marginally...maybe an over-optimistic 5%...April's coming!)



• Your patience (This better increase...traffic on Indian roads is getting worse)



• Your spondylitis (With recession, you have to spend longer hours in office...on that impossible chair...all this just to prove that you're interested in work)

Please feel free to add on to this list.

Things/people that/who will remiain the same in the new year:

• The neighbour's dog who religiously does 'it' at your doorstep every morning



• The Chennai heat



• The hunger pangs at 4pm (for the junkiest samosa)



• The wait for 6 pm on a Friday evening



• The sadness at 8pm on a Sunday evening



• The depression at 6am on a Monday morning



• The numbness at 10am on a Monday morning
  


• The wait for the 31st of the month
  


• The shocking bank balance after the 10 th of the month
  


• SMEs ...recession or no recession

(Added by Sanchari)

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