i'm mystified by all the italian furniture stores that have sprung up in hyderabad. a while ago, an aunty reported walking into one of them and leaving in a horrified hurry on getting quoted 15 lakhs for a couch. i figured that would be the end of the italian experiment, but what did i know. they dot every major road in the banjara-jubilee area. who buys this stuff? are their tashreefs delighted?
one of the beauties of waking up early in the winters (*cough*) is being able to watch a steaming hot cup of chai do its thing. for about a minute there, it was magic.
until someone in the neighborhood started doing his thing - gargling his guts out.
was just listening to the english vinglish soundtrack when that word came up again. aflatoon. sounds so much fun and instantly recalls akshay kumar in orange pants.
anyway, i finally looked up the word, and found this great article on how plato turned into aflatoon.
how often do you find yourself discussing a 20+ year old movie? i find myself talking about kshana kshanam a couple of times a month. something about that movie always comes up in conversations. a line here, a scene there, a song, a character, ram gopal varma, paresh rawal, paresh rawal's sidekicks, venkatesh, brahmanandam's 2-minute side-splitter of a scene. and where to begin with sridevi?
of so many movies before and since 1991, why does kshana kshanam endure so? it was one of the freshest, funnest movies of its time, and in the context of telugu cinema, it was a huge surprise. for once, here was a movie where people spoke and behaved like regular folks. the locations, language and characters were so familiar, the movie could be unfolding down the street from your house. no other filmmaker has managed to capture hyderabad's languid casualness the way varma did with kshana kshanam. the scene where sridevi haggles with autodriver makes me grin every single time. it's a nothing scene. a casual throwaway of an exchange that could've only been written by someone who knew the city intimately.
then there was the music. it was quite the rage in my school too, where most kids didn't speak any telugu. andanantha etha was performed on stage and brought the house down. sheetalvyas has more to say about the movie and the music here.
and then, the humor. always deadpan, to ROFL effect. paresh rawal's telugu dialogues: "music sense ledu", "dabbu ante andariki ishtame", "iddaru chaala... friends aipoinattunnaru... mmm", "bridge evaru kattaru ra, ikkada?". brahmanandam's "nenu, neeeenu, neeeeeeeeeenu pedatanu", "changing room antee... just ala, snanam avi cheskoni..." oh heck, why don't you just watch them?
all this was a big deal for its time. it gave us a glimpse into what the future of telugu cinema could be like. but unfortunately, those years from 1988-93 ended up being just a blip. after the promise of geetanjali, shiva, kshana kshanam, nirnayam, aditya 369, govinda govinda, jagadeka veerudu atiloka sundari, telugu films inexplicably pivoted to crassness and misogyny. the exceptions have been few and far between - okkadu remains a standout in the last decade. it's pity, for there couldn't be a more movie crazy place than hyderabad, and surely the local industry could do better. so while we wait, we go back to the precious few films that we love. again and again.
just caught anupama chopra's front row special on bond films. she had a hilarious segment on bollywood bonds. i think i saw a sheikh being hauled up into the sky by a bunch of balloons - not entirely sure if that's what i actually saw, but surely i'm not creative enough to imagine such a thing. now i want to find all of them and do a bolly bond marathon! here are some of the names if you're feeling similarly inclined: farz (jeetendra), agent vinod (the one from the 70's, with mahendra sandhu), mr. bond (akshay kumar), suraksha (mithun's famous gunmaster g9). i have vague memories of a tolly bond as well - krishna's gudachari 116.
but before anything, i need to beat out fellow hyderabadi crazies and book first day first show tickets to skyfall. craig vs. bardem should be ridiculously fun.
is that it catches you unawares. you can be totally indifferent the first time you listen to his songs, maybe hate them even. and then when you're absently looping them, one of them breaks into you. and then they all make sense.
case in point: the yuva soundtrack. and it just happened with the jab tak hai jaan soundtrack.
it’s dasara. it’s hard to tell. except maybe from the lack of traffic on the roads. used to be a time when we used to count down to the big day. new clothes. the big feast. spotting the paala-pitta. the jambi gathering. 100 rupee notes in exchange for bangaram leaves. time was when dasara used to be special. we never managed to create an alternate city tradition.
every year, it's the same story. as summer intensifies in hyderabad, it takes over everyone's minds. the heat is all one can feel, and the monsoons are all one can dream of. so after at least two months of yearning, and at least two weeks of obsessively willing the clouds to gather, the monsoons have arrived today. lazily at first (prompting my mom to taunt the clouds with 'oh, that's all the rain you could muster?') and quite determinedly later, as if to prove a point.
i was supposed to meet a friend this evening when it started pouring. knowing hyderabad's roads, setting out in the rain wasn't the smartest thing to do, but i went ahead and drove out anyway. three hours later, it was still pouring as i drove back home. there's something indescribably beautiful about driving in the rain at night while listening to old hindi film songs like this one on the radio.
have you ever felt like bottling a memory so you can sip from it later? this post is that bottle.
well, right now it is paimona by zeb & haniya for me.
how excellent is coke studio pakistan? such a beautiful effort. focused on making great music without any nonsense marketing or pandering to folks on social media. they do their job well, and that’s all that the audience cares about.
