Aparna’s Blog

Even as I am typing this post, I am listening to a wonderful Nalinakanti by Mandolin Srinivas. This raagam is one of my favourites. Raagas like this one always fills your heart with happiness and transports you to a state of bliss.
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After hearing every other person rave about this movie, I finally watched it some days back. It felt great to watch a good Hindi movie after a long time and it also managed to help me forget the bad experience of watching Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, the last movie of Shahrukh that I saw. That is one movie that I wished I had not watched. It made me lose interest in watching Shahrukh’s movies!

Now, the storyline of Chak De is quite predictable right from the start to finish. You know Shahrukh is going to make the girls team eventually win the World Cup. You see a whole bunch of stereotyped people who are still not willing to believe that women do have a right to succeed in their chosen career and you know that at the end of the day, these very people will come forward and feel proud of the women achieving success. So, what’s there in this movie that makes it special? It’s the moments like the one where Shahrukh tries to make the girls from different regions and diverse backgrounds start playing together as a team, the one where he makes them understand that they are playing for their country and not representing their own states, the one where the girls unite and beat up the men at McDonalds (Those sort of men deserve that ), the one when Komal passes the ball to Preeti in the final match and lots more! Considering the standard of the current Hindi films, I wish more films like this one were made!

I recently read Jane Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’. I had earlier tried unsuccessfully to read her ‘Pride and Prejudice’. I didn’t read beyond 15-20 pages. I found it so boring. That experience made me think twice before starting to read this book. Since Rajeev Menon’s ‘Kandukondain Kandukondain’, one of my favourite movies, is based on ‘Sense and Sensibility’, that is the only reason why I wanted to read this one. Though I did manage to read the book quickly, I did find it quite boring.

The characters in the book didn’t seem to do anything apart from partying and gossiping (It’s written that some of the characters are facing a money crunch, but do they do anything to earn more money?) and all the female characters except the Dashwoods seemed to be so dumb. Reading about Elinor’s and Marianne’s sufferings didn’t move me even a single bit. Did any of you like this book and enjoyed reading it? If the answer is yes, then what did you like in this book?

From the afternoon, I have been repeatedly listening to the remixed instrumental versions of Thee Thee and Jiya Jale, remixed by the bands of Ooh La La La! In the last episode of Ooh La La La, which I, as usual, watched only on the net much later, the band Track 1 had played Thee Thee and the band Oxygen had played Nenjinile/Jiya Jale. The violin in Thee Thee got me hooked to it immediately! Though I was not able to find any fault at all when I listened to it first, after hearing H.Sridhar’s comments, I realized the things that they should have improved upon. But, anyway, the violin is so good that it’s hard to divert your attention to other things at all!
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Ranjhith has come up with a photography challenge, aptly named 1two3ty1. The challenge is to photograph numbers corresponding to the date of the day and post them online. What makes it interesting is the numbers should be found only on objects present in your house! Imagine finding an object having the number 23! (That is the one of the numbers I have been unsuccessfully hunting for in my house ) Apart from posting the pic of the number, you also need to write a short description of the object on which the number was found. 1two3ty1 starts on 1st October and ends on 31st. To know more about it, go here. I am sure it’s going to be lots of fun participating in this challenge. More the number of participants, more fun it’s going to be. Do spread the word about this photography challenge to everyone you know. With hardly 10 days to go, I have already started searching for numbers. What about you?

Last Saturday, I went to Tiruneermalai, one of the 108 Divya desams, where there is a perumAL temple atop a small hill as well as one at the foot of the hill. The hill is very small and it will hardly take 5-7 minutes to climb it. After climbing about 40 steps or so, there is an Anjaneyar sannidhi too on the hill. The specialty of this place is that perumAL is in four different postures here: ninRa, kiDandha, naDandha, irundha - ranganAthar representing kiDandha, thiruvikrama representing naDandha, sAnta narasimhar representing irundha and neervaNNar representing ninRa. The first three deities and ranganAyaki thAyAr are present on the hill-top temple and neervaNNar, aNimAmalar mangai thAyAr, rAma, sitA, AndaL and a few more deities are present at the temple at the foot of the hill.
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Thanks to Bhagavathi Mohan, member of The A R Rahman Fan Club, for this old, rare video of Rahman in his studio. Watch it here.