The first time I got acquainted with ‘Contemporary Indian Art’ was in The Mint’s Saturday supplement ‘Lounge’. It featured a couple of Indian design companies which create quirky / kitschy home and fashion accessories that are essentially Indian. I immediately googled all these firms, looked through their products and since then I have bought several products from their range, and they have all been smashing, beautiful and definitely unique. After that I came across similar write-ups and features in Elle Décor as well as Femina. And it has been one awesome revelation.
After my initiation into ‘Contemporary Indian Art’, I have come across several such firms which promote ‘Indian’-ness in their designs.
Check out the links and get bowled over by the eye-catching collection each one of these have.
Design Temple
Happily Unmarried
Loose Ends
Play Clan
Fluke By Design
Art by Aarohi
And well, I have also designed a few things for my home, which I have talked about earlier, and which I will surely showcase on my blog some day.
Image courtesy: Happily Unmarried
‘A Wednesday’ has been on my wish list for a long, long time now. Unfortunately, every time I would catch it on TV, it would be somewhere half way through. I really wanted to see the complete movie. As the luck would have it, hubby went out partying for the financial year closing, so no IPL matches to dominate our living room, as usual I started surfing channels and as luck would have it, ‘A Wednesday’ had just about started on Doordarshan. Yipee!
It is a wonderful movie. Right from the casting to the narration of the story, the screenplay, the whole mood and essence of the movie, everything was good. Though everyone did justice to their characters, including Deepal Shaw (I’m not sure if that funny voice is really her’s), I think Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher matched each other too well. Anupam Kher as the Commissioner of Police and Nasseruddin Shah as the common man were absolutely effortless. Aamir Bashir did complete justice to his role. Jimmy Shergill was good too but may not be perfect as the no-nonsense tough cop. The other actors playing terrorists did not look too menacing but that was not the point. The main thing was that the movie did drive home the point.
My thoughts on why you should watch this movie?
• It is not run-of-the-mill song and dance routine drama, it is different
• The story is engaging and completely hooks you on, even though at the back of your mind you know where all this is going
• It translates the exact same thoughts that haunts everyone today all the time, into words
• It speaks out the feelings of a common man – you, me, us!
• I absolutely loved the monologue by Naseer where he speaks out for common man
Mumbai has always enticed me but I never really explored it when I was here during my first job for more than a year. Whenever I come back, I always feel there’s so much to be explored, to be seen, to experience. Mumbai is so huge, unlike any other city. One gets overwhelmed by just sheer size of it. I have promised myself time and again that next time I am going to spend more time hunting for great deals on books to build up my ever growing collection, some more time for all the quirky stuff I have located in hordes of shops in the length and breadth of the city, some more time catch to the Irish coffee at Prithvi theatres and a little more time to just gawk at the endless, restless crowd of people who are perpetually in mad rush of their life!
Image courtesy: http://travelgyan.wordpress.com
These days with so much time spent at home, I could not save myself from the hordes of serials on the tube! Here’s a round-up on what I have been watching since last 1 week:
Sania – Shoaib marriage controversy - Yes, I’m guilty of encouraging the intrusion of News channels in the private lives of celebrities, but it does hook you on! And it is getting wilder day by day. If you ask me, I don’t know what is wrong with Sania? I mean, all of us know it is never going to work. But well, all the best to her if after all this, she still wants to go ahead!
Mann ki Awaaz, Pratigya - Briefly, it is the story of a small town, where a goonda-type guy Boy A (rich Thakur) falls for a middle-class girl Girl A and who keeps following her everywhere, and literally makes her life miserable. Finally, she decides to save her family from all the trouble the guy causes, and marry the guy to put an end to all the misery. Well, the girl’s brother, Boy B, asks to get married to the 1st guy’s sister, Girl B. I missed the earlier episodes in order to really throw light on why he does that. But anyways, Girl B is a pretty thing with a hot head and a colorful language. She calls her brother as “kutte”, “sale”. The conversation between brother-sister duo is quite entertaining, though filled with a lot of abuses.
I think they should not have shown marriage between Boy A and Girl A. It will surely give wrong signals to young people in small town and villages, and they would think that through this way they will be able to marry the girl of their choice! I truly feel that in the wake of showing the wrong things prevailing in the society, well we are ending up showing all the wrong things, if not encouraging!
Pavitra Rishta - Ok, there’s this girl Girl A, who is married to Boy A, but they are in the middle of a divorce, so Boy A can get married to Girl B, who is pregnant with Boy A’s deceased brother's child, phew! Strange, isn’t it? Not if you regularly watch these serials.
Dance India Dance - This is the only programme which I really watch….sometimes! All the finalists are amazing, but I absolutely love Shakti. I totally bet on her, she is going to win hands down!
Well, that’s that, I have consciously stayed away from rest of the grind. Those are totally intolerable and extremely, extremely slow-paced. I lose all my patience.
