To Shahrukhland and Kajolberg

This is a post on the Europe Trip day 5 afternoon. The previous post in the series that covered Lucerne is here..

After lunch in Lucerne, we were off to Engelberg. It was like a small town (maybe Village) on the base of Mount Titlis. A few people who could not climb high altitudes were dropped off by our guide to spend the afternoon there. The bus started climbing after that brief stop and we were treated to some amazing scenic views and we reached a parking lot of epic proportions. 

This was the gondola ride up the mountain. The Gondola takes you up to 10000 feet. Then there is a five story building with multiple restaurants where you get out of this ride. It is a rotating Gondola and that means amazing views of the mountains and everything below as we go up.

There were 8 people to a carriage and we were joined by another Desi family from Chicago and made pleasant conversation. They had grown up kids, with the youngest just finishing college and when we got out the guide promptly said "okay. We have fixed time here. There are many activities here. you can go through an ice canyon, go to an ice flyer to 13000 feet and then go for a walk on the edge of the ice. we will wait here. The last gondola down for you to make it to the bus on time is at 4:15 PM". 

Given how the traveling Narayanan family had done with such hectic schedules over the last 4 days, we accepted the challenge and walked to the ice flyer. On the way to the ice flyer, we saw a cutout that made Mt. Titlis a household name in India. 

I knew what had to be done. Gave the camera to our tourguide who was Swiss German and she goes "yes of course. you have to take a picture in front of Shah Rukh and Kajol!".. she said it so matter of factly as though they were local Swiss names. The world is full of wonders I thought and asked San to pose.. She was happy but for some reason, could not bring out the inner Kajol on time! Eventually for some strange reason she was doing that pose in front of the Hogwarts Express in UK and I was doing a facepalm! Where were we?! Yes.. Kajolberg..

We walked to the ice flyer. There were snow flurries falling pretty heavily... and then we had an adventure of a lifetime.. which is a post in itself. So we will skip the ice flyer for now and move on. 

We barely made it back to the five storied building again and were greeted by the sight of Pav Bhajis, rice, pickles, papad etc.  

While the family went for it, I grabbed a hot cocoa and while we were eating there was a realization that we were about to miss the ride down. So we scrambled and made our way back to the parking lot. Our guide was nice. She said "you can get some Chai and Samosas and other Indian snacks at a restaurant outside the ticket counter. We are still waiting on some folks.". So off we went and got Chai Samosa.

Life comes full circle I thought. Many years ago, we had Maggi noodles at ~10000 feet in the Himalayas at Manali and that was a Swiss company product. Now we were having Chai Samosa in Switzerland!

The panoramic view of the mountains from the parking lot was amazing..

Then the bus filled up and we were back on our way to Zurich and were treated to more scenic views.

The bus dropped us at 7PM. We went to a mexican place after going to our new Air B&B and dropping off the luggage. We had booked one walking distance from the bus terminus for the night. We went in at 7:20 and the waiter was nice enough to let us eat as long as we were out by 8 as it was a reservation only place. The food was amazing, the wall decor had some kind of masked wrestler photograph everywhere.. and were back in the Air B&B. On the way back we went to an Indian grocery store run by a Sri Lankan Tamil, saw a Sari Store, a bunch of Indian restaurants and realized we were in Little India in Zurich!

There was laundry to be done.. using a German washing machine in the basement that looked ancient and some precious sleep to be had before another all day adventure the next day. 

Here is a tip. Air B&B laundries are not reliable. After making multiple attempts to dry the clothes after washing, the thing promptly gave some fatal error. There was no one to help in that place at 11PM and I had to translate using google translate to find that it was a fatal error. 

While the family was sleeping, I hauled a bunch of semi wet clothes (practially half of our luggage) and put a cloth on every possible exposed surface in that Apartment. There were bras on the kitchen cabinet hooks, jattis on the TV.. think you get the picture.. I created surreal art and went to bed praying. Set an alarm for an hour earlier than we had planned. San woke up and I gave her the bad news.. 80% of the clothes had dried completely! 20% still needed some help. So we used the iron box and ironed out the moisture for an hour and were all set! 

Back to pictures and videos..

A video of most of the afternoons trip..

We were not coming back to this place the next night.. it was going to be another all day trip that ended in a different city! 

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.. 

Language barrier

Last weekend my twitter feed was going non stop, and most of those tweets were #chennaiexpress, the new Shahrukh Khan movie. 

Most of these tweets were taking offense to how south Indians were stereotyped in this movie and how the Tamil spoken by the heroine and hero were offensive because no one who speaks Tamil actually talks like that.

Think Apu of Simpsons. Indian's don't speak like that. Apu stood for all Indians which was a higher level of sterotyping. My grad student friends would say hello to me in the Apu accent! Initially it was annoying, but then again, I leant do come back with some pretty good comments on my own.

The world hasnt moved much in 20 years of my staying in the US. Twenty years ago someone asked me "so you speak Indian?" and as late as three months ago, someone asked me the same question. One would assume that in a place where 1 in 5 people is Indian and Samosa and Tea are as staple as Pizza and Soda at any birthday party, folks would know that there is no language called "Indian"... but one assumes wrong!

Was very busy with work and that meant waiting to watch Chennai Express. Finally got to see it and thoroughly enjoyed it.  There are some prerequisites to enjoying this movie. 

1. You should be an SRK fan. 

2. You should have watched all his previous films (or some of the jokes are lost on you). I was laughing out so loud when he says "I have done this earlier too" while pulling the heroine into a moving train..

3. You should not be easily offended by stereotype jokes. Watching a lot of Russell Peters, Maz Jobrani, Ahmed Ahmed etc. helps. 

4. You should get the jokes!

All that said, I had no issues with SRK who was his usual self which is what I go to watch in an SRK movie. A goofy ham of a performance. The movie was abmling along nicely till they decided on a 10 minute fight scene at the end. Why? 

In the hands of a better director, this storyline would have made a better movie.. and maybe he/she would have dubbed the heoines Tamil dialogues and it would have been a bigger hit with South Indian folks as well!

Just when I was telling San that the movie was fun, the little one says "I have an episode of our favorite serial called The Littlest Pet Shop and you are going to love it!"

So they play me this on Netflix online and it was a laugh riot. SRK being spoofed on a kid's serial!

Hopefully you clicked on all those links and immunized yourself from getting angry at language sterotypes and then watch Chennai Express.

You might enjoy it!

When you are compared to SRK, you should feel?

Legend has it that the wife said "I am okaying this guy. He looks like ShahRukh!" when shown this photo before she agreed to meet me in person. In south Indian brahmin parlance this photo is what you would call a "circulation" photo or "maaplai" photo, that is printed in the dozens, attached to horoscopes and circulated to temples and match making centers.

This comment refering to SRK, has never appeared even in foot notes, sidebar scrawls, or photo album legends in the last ten years from either side of the family.

The wife should be given plausible deniability for such important statements and to that end let me be the first to declare that chances are what really happened :

a. she was shown photo
b. she told her dad that the guy is ok and added
c. Wish you showed me Shah Rukh's photo

vs.

a. she was shown photo
b. she told her dad "This guy looks like ShahRukh!"
c. her dad calls my dad and says "my daughter liked your son's photo. She even said your son looks like Shah Rukh"
d. dad doesn't know who ShahRukh is and brushes aside this remark into fuzzy memory
e. years later he actually watches hindi Movies and knows that SRK is a big name and is a ladies favorite and goes "oh my god! my son was actually compared to this fellow.. should tell him next time this fact comes to the foreground" and continues to forget!
f. 8 more years later, he decides to relase this fact from the vault at 3:00 AM when he is delirious after taking heart medication

You be the judge! I am sticking to the legend version.

These days, SRK's name seems to be hitting a negative note, thanks to his involvement in the cricketing business. Wish he would stay king Khan..

Otherwise this post loses its point...

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God, the matchmaker

Sometimes, when I catch a glimpse of my wife, as she is doing something in all seriousness as part of her daily routine, there is this feeling, that is a mixture of elation, pride, thankfulness followed by a flutter that is heartfelt.

There is no valid explanation for why we ended up together, or what makes us tick as a couple or why this woman is my world. That is what makes it all the more interesting. We also have reason to believe that our match was made by the matchmaking Guru himself!

Why does one bring up ones appreciation for his wife or marriage or the matchmaker right now?

The one thing that has kept me deeply distracted from my fathers hospitalization and all the phone calls to India is the visuals and the soundtrack from Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, the latest movie starring one of my all time favorite heroes, ShahRukh Khan.

The story of a boring average man, marrying a vivacious young girl due to fate and chance, trying to win her love by living a double life that is partly his usual boring self and partly his wifes flamboyant wannabe dance partner.

If you read the reviews for this movie, the first thing you will hear is, how lame the heroine must be for not being able to distinguish between her boring husband and her flirty dance partner, essentially the same guy with only a different hairstyle and a pencil thin moustache to disguise him.

You will also read about the stupidity of the hero in trying to test his wife to see if she will chose the boring guy over the dancer because her husband loves her deeply and it is for her to see that love and realize that.

Then the reviews will go on to praise SRK for his acting, the soundtrack, the confidence with which first time heroine Anushka Sharma has acted and danced, the comedy of Phatak, etc.

What is most interesting in this movie is the realism. Okay, realism in an SRK bollywood movie is mostly seen as an oxymoron by most. So, I will have to explain, that too with a personal perspective.

Once upon a time, a young lad who came to the USA about sixteen odd years ago was a hopeless romantic. He did not even know that he was the hopeless romantic type because he had no time for girls or women till then.

One fine day, he started writing poems and started dreaming with his eyes open. As a girl put it, he hit puberty at 22 and went from 16 to 22 in two weeks and still had to learn the difference between love and infatuation. That is when another girl read his poem and quoted a russian saying "good love breeds babies, bad love breeds poems". That just confused him a lot more. He started saying cliches like "Women!"

Being a Ph.D. student, any methodical attempts to systematically understand women, what they want, why they want, how they want, etc. ended up consistantly with singularities, infinite loops, moebius strips and more cliches.

At the same time another profound piece of advice from an elder cousin, "If a girl says she is interested in you, kisses you, even sleeps with you, it still doesn't mean she loves you. It just means she wanted to kiss you or sleep with you!". Hmm, with advice like that, the Ph.D. in love had its graduation date moved indefinitely.

The quest for love or at least a simpler understanding of what consituted love continued. Then came dancing! Ballroom dancing is complicated. The music and the motions are easy, it is the emotions that are difficult minefields.

Once a famous dance instructor, taught a group of dancers a very simple lesson, when we were in the UK for a dance competition. (Yes, you could get paid trips to the UK to compete in dance competitions). He asked all the men and women to line up on opposite sides of the floor. Then the women got to pick a random partner. The men held the women with a single hand hold and the women were asked to move around the men, while still in that hand hold.

He would ask the women to move close in normal hold (1 foot away), then get close within inches of each others face, make the woman move away and turn her back (3 feet away), walk behind the man and around him, etc. etc. He asked the women to describe the emotion they saw on the mens faces, that too after we switched partners a few times.

The statistic was overwhelming. The men smiled when the women drew close and showed sadness when the women went away. They were so transparent! What was really surprising was that the women also smiled when they came closer to the men and stopped smiling when they moved away.

That whole statistic might be skewed by the fact that everyone in that room was a ballroom dancer. It is like looking at a fishbowl and explaining how all fishes like the water, so take it for what it is worth.

Based on that above experiment, one should realize that irrespective of chemistry there is some emotion that comes through in dancing with a partner. To top things off, if that girl happens to be gorgeous, skimpily clad or both, you have to focus on the dancing and tone down on the emoting! That part is easy if you respect the woman. There is no "Rakhi" required!

Is there a higher probability of dance partners falling in love? Maybe, maybe not. Dancing with a person doesn't make you fall in love. Falling in love with a person might make you want to dance! That part comes from the heart. Will swear by it!

After surviving years of dancing with women, with only a few scars in my heart, I did find the one destined for me, far away from a dance floor. To this day, the Mrs. and me have not danced together, although she was my best critic.

When someone goes through an arranged marriage with another person they know very little about, barring a few simple things like

a. a smile that lights you up
b. a voice that sounds soothing
c. gorgeous
d. a dress sense that appeals to you
e. gorgeous
f. come to think of it, really gorgeous
g. shy
h. c., e., and f., all over again...

It takes some time to build that relationship, till you realize one fine day that you are indeed head over heels in love, and it is usually for none of the reasons cited above! One can only give the male perspective here, as the female perspective cannot be found, put in words or explained in any language known to man.

Somewhere in the process of building that relationship as a married man, a "family man", even a hopeless romantic gets so caught up with the daily grind that he can become the boring average person, who simply goes about doing his job, making ends meet, getting into a routine, smug in his knowledge of 1001 things you can do on a silicon wafer or 101 ways to change a diaper.

The romantic streak is still alive, but much like a candle wick sucking on that last drop of molten wax, with the flame barely visible. A flame that barely threatens your fingers and tempts you to extinguish it with a simple squeeze. It is a flame nevertheless and given some more wax it can recreate the magic of what it once was.

There is also something to be said about the tacit understanding that passes for love when two people spend a decade together. There is love in mundane things that are said or done, without being specified explicitly. There maybe some love, even in boredom and monotony.

Rab De, presented all this with an amazing realism. The thing that touched a cord was the difference between explicitly expressed love, the type where a guy gets a chance to sweep a woman off her feet, something that is unique because it is not a daily event, something on a grand scale that can make memories, lasting ones, in sharp contrast to implicit tacit love, that is unsaid, given without any expectations.

Unconditional love that is as true in its abstract grandeur even though it has no voilins playing in the backdrop or firecrackers lighting up the sky. A bond that two people can share in silence, a truth that is self consistant within two souls, without the requirement for any reinforcement from anyone else.

Take heart, for there is hope for boring men, who screamed romance openly a few years ago, but have now been delegated to dishwashing duties and diaper changing and somehow don't say "I love you!" enough times in a 24 hour day, but still have that small romantic spark alive in them.

All it takes is some hair gel, sunglasses, tight fitting clothes, take a chance on your dancing and you too can be Jodi No. 1, as long as the Missus co-operates. If she likes to wear spandex, even better!

Loved this movie, and that was easy being an SRK fan. He consistanly manages to make me teary eyed when it comes to sentimental love stories and his goofiness and dancing are a treat to watch. The music is amazing. Your feet just start moving automatically. In the fourteen times I have heard "Tujh mein rab dikhta hai", got goosebumps all 14 times.

Go see it. Just take the moustache/sunglass part in the same spirit as Lois Lane takes Clark Kent/Superman! and you might come out with a smile on your face, and that flame might flicker and grow slightly bigger.

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