Gold and Beautiful

Year: 1996 Location: Kirti Group Tuitions, Dombivli (E) Scene: I was in the 12th grade and was going to Pabrekar Sir for PCMB tuitions. One day after class he was talking to all the girls in my class, a real small number and said something like: Don't let guys distract you... चांगला शिका, मुलांची लाइन लागेल :-) Nothing extraordinary.... Being pushed for good grades and education was nothing new to me..... It was present everywhere, except at home (lucky me..... everybody should have my parents!!!!). I ddin't need him to tell me about guys! Year: 2009 Location: Somewhere in Andheri Scene: My cousin and I were talking and she mentioned a sister-in-law who was past the average age of marriage (among Maharashtrians), worked in IT, drew a very good salary, did not have a boyfriend and was trying for an arranged marriage. Following are the "responses" she got: Guy: I don't want a girl who earns more than I do. Guy's mom: We don't want a girl from IT. They have

I went to a saree shop yesterday, a fancy saree store in a mostly gujju neighborhood, I would guess owned by a gujju.... The moment we went in and sat down and spoke in Marathi, the guy understood almost everything about our needs.... Like he was a mindreader :-) He showed us sarees in a wide range (cost-based), but not a single saree was out of our budget. 4 women were sitting right next to us and he was showing them sarees that cost 4 times more than what I was checking out.. Needeless to say they were all speaking in Gujarati :-) The guy knew I was going to buy only 1 saree, he still made me shortlist around 15 (we were tired, but he did not want to give up.... It's usually the other way around... You have to keep asking for more designs and styles!!!). He draped more than 10 sarees on me and then finally when I could not select one from the final 2 shortlisted, he called another salesman and they both literally draped the sarees around them so I could get a better idea. It was

Has a song ever been stuck in your mind for days??? Its been a long time since I have had a chance to relax and think about music, but it used to happen to me frequently. Anyways, I was flying to Vegas and listening to दिल के अरमां आसुओं में बह गए । As I was listening to the song I remembered that I saw Nikaah when I was a kid. I did not understand the movie, it was too long and serious for me, I was totally bored. I hated Raj Babbar, he was never a typical, good-looking, dancing, fighting hero. I didn't like Salma Aagah nor her nasal singing. I would have never thought that so many years later I would actually have 2 songs from that movie on my iPod!!!! Anyways, the pilot announced that we were beginning our descent into the Las Vegas area and we had to switch all electronic devices off. Just as I turned off my iPod the few lines that I was listening to stuck in my mind. Its been 4 days and I can't get it off my mind. So I ahd to get them off somewhere. Obviously I can&

That's a Marathi movie (now it's called Sanai Choughade) produced by Shreyas Talpade's wife that I have been wanting to watch for the past one year. And I saw it today finally..... What do I think???? hmmm.... mixed reviews. Novel concept, handled well... but not really a great movie. Lot of melodrama (I guess you can't escape that in our movies). Unnecessary songs shot in the style of hindi movie songs (I guess to make it appear more modern??? It was weird listening to Sunidhi Chauhan sing "kaande pohe" in her high picth item number style...). Hated the acting. Inspite of all of this, it left a mark, felt like it made a connection, delivered the message, albeit a bit too loud, but that's OK, I guess. The movie raised quite a few interesting questions. The best part was that the protagonist did not have long monologues defending and raising those issues (remember Shahrukh in Swades??? preaching the same point again and again in 3 min long monologues, in di

M.J's death, its coverage and his funeral have sparked quite a few reactions. I recently saw a friend's comment on Facebook. I am not quoting her here, but it said that he was a pervert and did not deserve the attention he was getting, especially when so many soldiers are dying for our country. Well, everyone has an opinion... I just thought it was odd to call him a pervert when the law had found him innocent of all the charges. I did not follow his case and don't know what really happened, but I do know that he was an icon, especially in the 80's and 90's. I do not remember a single school gathering or fancy dress competition where an 8 year old was not dressed up as MJ and did not try to Moonwalk.... According to me he was a public figure, a singer and a performer, who was great at what he did and well... deserves the attention. Whether he was guilty or not is debatable (I am sure many people believe that he was guilty), but let's just show some faith in our j

... REALLY exciting right now. It couldn't get any better. I will get into all the details at some other time. For now just: "Thank God" and "Touch wood" :-)

Last weekend brought three educators together, Jam, Christine and I.... Obviously we all had to talk about our students.... I always feel that students don't want to read these days. They want me to tell them what is important for the exam and that's it. Not that I was a great student myself, but I loved to read and I loved some subjects. The others I knew I had to work hard if I had to scrape through. So one way or the other I worked hard. Most of my colleagues happen to think that students today can't read for too long and their attention span is too short, maybe 20 minutes. I strongly believe that today's generation is a twitter generation. More than 140 characters to convey something and you have lost them... completely!!!! With all the tweeting and texting that they do, they have no value for any kind of details.... Get to the point and get through it quickly!!!! Every time I have these conversations with my colleagues I kind of feel lost. I am always somewhere in