What is not to like?

Finally managed to watch Dilwale this afternoon. It was as high on my watch list as the Star Wars movie. There was really only one reason I wanted to watch this movie. It was a  Shah Ruck Khan movie.

One needs to have a certain mindset to watch an SRK movie.. don't expect much of a plot for starters. Expect very predictable twists and turns. Great visuals and a background score that goes with the visuals, SRK hamming his way through the movie with the few scenes where he is actually doing more comic timing than anything else. 

The hopeless romantic in me always comes home humming the background tune from the movie and this one is no different. 

SRK movies for me have become the equivalent of Nat King Cole songs for baby boomers or so I am guessing. Somewhere some neurons fire in your brain and make connections between the past and present and you get all emotional for reasons that you cannot quite put a finger on. 

Don't understand why people were working hard to set my expectations really low for this movie. Yes, SRK and Kajol do look a little ridiculous in some scenes trying to pass for folks a good 20 years less than their age, and in this day of special effects they could have spent some more effort to make those scenes look natural but it was just another SRK movie. 

The locations in Iceland for the song "Gerua", where Kajol is running on a black beach in a yellow nine yards saree (it has to be at least nine yards), were just breathtaking! See for yourself..

Need to add every place on the backdrop to our travel list. The gold threaded designer sari that Kajol was wearing will be the next big hit for Dilwali.

As for me, I am happy as Yoda, still humming.. 

Sport vs. Entertainment

Many many years ago during a world cup cricket game, I was in a heated argument with my dad that the game was fixed. There was no explanation for what we saw on the screen including the "thiruttu muzhi" of Azharuddin which was there for everyone to see. He did not even do a good job of faking regret at losing a very easy catch. My father, a die hard fan of cricket and countrymen did not agree. In fact we did not speak for a few hours after that argument. 

Years later, I was proved right when the whole match fixing scandal came to light and that very game was included in the list of games that was fixed. While it felt like vindication, I had stopped watching cricket. Occasionally I would come back and catch something that was genuine or go to Youtube and watch recorded videos of some truly great bowling or batting performances where you knew the chances of it being rigged were low or none. This was mostly limited to watching a select few videos which I can pretty much list here :

Sehwag and Tendulkar hitting double hundreds in ODI's

Sehwag's 195 against Australia

Sachin and Sehwag in the 2003 Durban World cup match against Pakistan

Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram bowling reverse swing and deadly yorkers on infinite loop

Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh getting batsman out clean bowled 

Shane Warne and Muthaih Muralidharan at their great moments

The occasional Benson and Hedges games in Australia and the ICC games also in Australia which bring back old memories from my middle and high school.

But, to be honest .. mostly Waqar Younis and the yorkers. 

Money or not, no one could have played those balls even if they were offered a jillion dollars.

That said, I stopped watching football for a different reason. Everytime I watched, my favorite teams lost. It was a superstition of sorts that would make any statistician jump up. Even San decided it was best for me to not watch any game that involved our favorite team(s). It was also because I thought the football games were rigged as well. Where there is money involved there is corruption and if Cricket can have that level of deceit, I concluded "what chance did football have?". Was told many times by my friends that "No, football is above all that."

Today I got to watch the second half of the Niners game with Seattle. I could not help think that it was rigged! It was just a feeeling, after watching the player's and coach's body language as well as some of the calls made by the referees with today's abiilty to do high tech action replays. 

Today my folks in India tell me "we now know it is all fixed. We just watch it for pure entertainment! There is no sports in it anymore!" 

So if there is a match fixing scandal that breaks loose 5-10 years from now and this match gets mentioned.. this time I am putting it on the record! 

Just saying..

Barnum and Bailey

We made it to the circus today. My parents heard there was a circus in town and started going into deep nostalgic drives of the old Kamala three ring circus and how I could not stop talking about it for months after my first (and possibly only) childhood circus visit.

Have taken Jr. to the circus when she was very little and most of her memories of the circus were from reading the blog post.  Amazing what a blog post can do to jog a kids memory!

Looks like they have changed the show a lot. There was one man with six tigers before. Now it was one man with 3 tigers and 4 lions. The elephants did not do as many stunts as last time and didn't have to walk across pretty ladies.

Two new items which were really amazing were the Shaolin Kung Fu demonstration and the motorcycle dare devils. They fit 8 guys on bikes into this steel cage and it was simply superb. Have seen two guys inside the cage in the Indian circus (actually remember it). This one must be some kind of record.

The animals didn't do much and they are mostly captive born and trained and today we should be happy that Barnum at least brings elephants to big cities to show they are not "wild" creatures that are to be shot for trophies.

The protesters outside were shoving pamplets into my kids hands that said "stop going to circus, stop the cruelty" etc. they had gory pictures of dying elephants etc. This kind of upset me. No one gets to push such things to my kids. Was downright rude to one of the ladies.

This is soliciting in a way and don't understand why this is allowed. Millions of turkeys are grown in really horrible conditions in this country and slaughtered every year.

The three creatures that are supposed to be able to feel a human being accodring to old indian sages are cows, crows and snakes. They say these three creatures can sense the human vibration and a cow can actually shed a tear when it commiserates with a human.

Cows are in horrible conditions in the US. Not that they are slaughtered for food but the fact that most of them are cramped into a confined location for their entire lives and are fed things that are not normal and are not even slaughtered in a quick and relatively painless way.

It is impossible to show kids elephants, tigers or lions these days. You go to Chennai and you cannot find even the occasional temple elephants! Forget lions and tigers. Now who is responsible for this? Barnum and Bailey? Think not. These folks should go protest outside upscale chinese restaurants that serve tiger penis soup as a aphrodisiac or sell ivory products as art.

Yes! Elephants may be prodded to make them learn a few tricks. Do not know how extreme it is with this circus but the animals we saw today were all hale and healthy and looked like they were well taken care of. Same thing from last time where they were smiling as all ten of them walked past us in the back street. To me this is a better way to show kids that elephants and lions and tigers are valuable to us in some way!

My little one wants all bees dead because one little bee stung her! It took me months to teach her that without bees there will be no flowers and without flowers no fruits and vegetables and we will all starve to death pretty soon.

Same thing with spiders. Told her that we have lot of baby moths in the bathroom because she asked mommy to kill many spiders. Now the spiders are not eating the moths anymore because they are dead and instead of one spider there are ten moths!

Again, way too much digression from what started off as a post on a great show! It is still a great show. Maybe not the greatest show on earth.

That title has been conferred to the Disney pre fireworks Castle display in Orlando by the Traveling Narayanan's.