Mansi

Phul Phul Bawara dole, man mein goonje tere yaad
Bhag mein papiya bole pihu pihu piya kahan

A young man, all of four feet, with a paunchy stomach, overweight (well fed) broke into this song while I was standing in queue to buy tickets. The words fell off his lips in unrestrained unadultered joy and just as the adults ahead of him swung around to look at him, he faltered and then crossed his legs awkwardly as the rest of his body froze in it's shameless burst of joy.

We were buying tickets to the rock garden at Chandigarh. Dedicated to the creative people of India, this was a treat. Recycling tiles, wires, plates, mugs, bags, sacks and just about anything else to create a populous world - the treat is not just on display but in the path itself. There is no clear pathway - instead it's like in a jungle, something inside me, quiet and wise, whispers the way. As I trudged along not sure, not clear, the path did twist, turn and lo and behold brought me to a spot that bettered anything I had imagined. And inside me, I heard that same voice giggle some more. Vistas are clues, depths delusional. Look but don't follow what you see. Instead listen, listen for that voice. The path might seem long, with twists, turns and more drama. It's the only path to the waterfall. The rock garden opens into a courtyard fashioned like a mela with tall swings, multiple stalls and a very loud dance platform with two Sardarjis playing punjabi music! We didn't hang out here long and that's sad because the setting was as delectable as the rest. Why, on a summer afternoon of 44 degrees Celsius will kids want to dance to Bhangra Pop, is beyond me! There were no kids, just the Sardarjis and their music blaring out loud speakers!

The Rock Garden was the last stop in a three day trip to the hills - McLeod Ganj. Though it was warm up in the hills, it didn't stop us from walking up, down, up, up, up, down and down. The first evening, I got to see the Dhauladhar snow peaked range. In a single moment, I imagined McLeod Ganj without the Tibetans, the Israelis, the shacks, the open drainage, the stoned /cement roads, the Indian tourists, the Monasteries or the Italian Cafes - All I had in mind was of this valley and peak set against the Dhauladhar. Then imagine your mind unrolling itself from your two feet all the way up to the heads of the range, rolling over and falling over, only to carry on to the next peak.
McLeod Ganj smells. It smells of the Israelis who are everywhere now. Walk into a cyber cafe and the keyboards have Israeli alphabets stuck on in yellow paper and tape. Walk into a street restaurant and you will be presented with an Israeli menu.
It mostly smells however of the open drain. It didn't seem to bother the monks. It did the Indians but they had the choice to leave and come back and then leave again. It didn't bother the Indian tourists who just zipped up and down in their cars, blaring their horns and looking for Punjabi Dhabas.
The Dalai Lama was home, this time around. He was to teach, starting Friday. Wendy and I went for a long walk down and up roads and lanes and in a round about way reached the Nangyal Monastery, or the Dalai Lama temple. The number of monks and visitors to listen in to the teachings was astonishing. I remember walking up the steps to a large courtyard of seated disciples. Each monk had two really big brown books open and ready for consultation.
To be continued...

I was very eager this morning to blog about the soundtrack of the movie - Parineeta (Saif Ali Khan and Vidya Balan) and in my search on the net to find the details of each soundtrack, I came across a review that is really spot on! Spot on with what I have to say at least... So go HERE to read the soundtrack review for Parineeta.

And Yes, I will still go ahead and repeat all that the review above says, that I also agree with. And though initially I wasn't going to speak about the movie, I now am going to do that too.

Why should you go to see this movie?
- To catch Rekha's item number. If ever a woman has defied age and had all the current kittens run hither, it is our ever dependable, ever gripping female avatar of the Big B - Rekha! Some months back, I caught her on the cover of a popular magazine and just like everybody else had just one word shape my lips - WOW! I just wish she had used her full name and didn't just go by her first name. (it makes her sound like a product than the classy actor that she is and will always be)
- To lose oneself in Vidya Balan's eyes. This actress can carry a whole film with just her eyes. Despite the patchy direction of a very 'expansive' story, Vidya through her eyes conveys every single lesson learnt in love - Be it fondness to predator possessiveness to that all embracing love that is not just for a lover but for humanity itself.
- To see Sanjay Dutt finally get to do some drama and wield it with oozles of charm and sensitivity - - what a dream character for Sanjay to play and except for in bed, everywhere else I think he brings it home for all of us.

What if I don't want to see the movie?
- Then go and buy the soundtrack. While none of the picturization hit me as special or spectacular (WHAT AM I SAYING - - EXCEPT FOR REKHA ..I MEAN YOU KNOW I MEANT EXCEPT FOR REKHA RIGHT????), this is a soundtrack for our ears, and our ears only.

I'd like to start with Chitra who the review says is probably the most under rated Bollywood female singer. Were this observation true it upsets me and should you too.
Chitra has the most haunting voice at a pitch where other singers get pitchy, tight or just too shrill (a la Kavita K). With Chitra, these oh so high notes are where she begins her climb. Her voice is deep on notes that will have my voice crack and that's where I mark 'high' when my mouth is open, my voice box vibrating but there's no sound coming out. But what I like about Chitra the most, in almost all of her songs and especially in Raat Hamari To (in Parineeta) is the emotional roller coaster she sets us off on. She doesn't really need instruments. Her voice bobs up and down all by itself and will have our cells doing the same jig inside our ears. And it doesn't stop there. With texture and her breathing, she breathes life into each note. Listening to this song, you will feel your stomach tugging or your heart fluttering or your head swimming like you're totally rockers on love, alcohol or just plain life - - The Simon Cowell in my head would say - great song choice!

Then there's Sonu Nigam who I am getting tired of BUT BUT BUT who with sheer work can take a song and blow! You can't miss him in this soundtrack (as much as you might want to). I am not trying to take anything away from his talent or his work. I am just tired of hearing him in every movie. In this song, Soona Man ki Aangan, Sonu blows in his so punjabi way, making us want to reach for some tissues...except for... and I'll get to this just after the surprice.

Surprice Surprice -- If you thought I was missing someone, yes, it is Saif himself. He does get to sing a bit in this movie and I liked what I heard. This man has a nice voice (now who would have thought that). He also plays that guitar and the piano (all very authentic - as compared to Mr. Dutt who gets 5/10 for musical skill and 8/10 for acting effort --but then who really wants Mr. Dutt to be musically talented, he's adorable without). Saif and his guitar - We've seen so much of that in ads, film festivals and now finally in a movie where it fits in really well with the role that he plays. But remember that exception I talked of earlier, yes, I was referring to Saif and how Sonu Nigam has no business singing for Saif. Soona Man ki Aangan is the song of a man who's heart is being wrenched out in every which way. As much as Saif tries to express all that melodrama (thank you Sonu), with all of his 5/10 acting skills, he fails. Melodrama is not Saif. Melodrama isn't the guitar either, now is it? But, that aside, we can listen him to sing 'la la la..hey hey hey ..mmm... you are mine.. .mmm ...la la la.... heyheyhey... say you mine' and then gladly give the rest of the song to Nigam (awful transition from Saif's deep voice to Sonu's sweet but younger one) and Shreya Ghoshal. I don't know about this woman (yes my ignorance is legendary!) but the review says that you can't have a Chattopadhyay novel without Shreya Ghoshal.

Piya Dole is dessert. If I were you, listening to the soundtrack for the first time, I'd save Piya Bole for the very end. Remove the terribly grandstanding instrumentation, and you have two lovely voices dancing about each other, like the pitter patter of rain just as the first monsoons arrive at your doorstep. This reminds me of Balan herself, in this one scene, where she lets the rain fall on her face and as she turns around with water on her face and shoulders (and in places you might want to find out for yourself even!)...here is where we will understand why Vidhu Vinod Chopra chose her over Aishwarya (Miss living with my parents is such a topic) Rai. While I don't normally resort to Rai bashing on my blog, Chopra's choice against Ms Rai was the best decision he made with Parineeta. We all know how familiar Ms Rai is with bengali movies - what with Devdas and then Raincoat (which she butchered) - one would have thought that she would be on the list of actresses Chopra had. Rightly she was. However, sense prevailed and the ice maiden was allowed to go do her dance somewhere else.

Vidya Balan, even without her eyes, is so warm and in some scenes downright hot! She does not flaunt her figure, she does not even acknowledge it. Her sensuality is all around, engulfing, almost like a ghost that adopted this body for awhile. Credits to Chopra too for not exploiting that. I think Chopra likes to capture beauty that is unconscious. Who can forget Manisha from 1942, with her pearls and her laundry chores? Chopra tries the same with Vidya Balan but gives up. He then steps back and lets Pradeep Sarkar, the real director (Chopra is just producing ...yup, believe that if you will!)let Balan be, and she does a fine job, all on her own.
While I still maintain that the direction was decidedly choppy, the storytelling was not. It captured some wonderful themes. First off fate and how one can never really be prepared for what we are in store for in our lives. Second of unspoken truths, here Sarkar captures the essence of what is going on between these characters. Each character in this film says far less than what they mean - like it is in our lives too. We can't verbalize things, we don't even want to. We don't articulate ourselves when we need to even. We are all about silent messages, hidden contexts, sublimal signals...and for good or bad, this movie captures that. If you're wondering how - by being overtly directorial. In every scene of this movie, you can hear the director breathing over your back. However, he's not breathing down on you - he's just doing his best to push you forward, till you've got your nose pressed to the screen and you're also doing what you normally would, not listening or seeing or touching or smelling but just feeling and inhaling it all into some strange part of us that actually makes sense of it all.

And who gets the last word (certainly not me!) - - It's Big B himself who graciously sneeked up on us again, as the narrator. (How does he find his (some small, some BIG) way into so many films?? Ms Rai's PR firm - please take note! Then again, from an ardent movie goer, please don't, don't, don't - pretty please?)
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And some more last words (hehe) - The direction, sets had a shade of that chap who did Black and Devdas. The music did at places seem A R Rehman inspired. However, last and never least credits are due:
Novel by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhaya
Produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra
Directed by Pradeep Sarkar
Music Directors & lyricists - Shantanu Moitra & Swandand Kirkire
Singers: Sonu Nigam, Shreya Ghoshal, Chitra, Swandand Kirkire, Saif Ali Khan, Sunidhi Chauhan (Kaisi Paheli Zindagani - Rekha's item number), Rita Ganguly ( who did this wedding song, that we missed..must have been in the first two minutes of the movie)
Performance - Saif Ali Khan, Vidya Balan, Sanjay Dutt, Rekha (one item song but it was one HELL of a performance!)

There is something terribly amiss with society when couples and unwed mothers abandon children at a time when they need them the most. In a majority of unwed mothers(age 12 - 22), they are all treated as consenting adults by the men they associate with and by their own perception of themselves.
As per law, a man found having consensual sex with a woman below the age of 18 can be charged with statutory rape. This is lost to this part of the world. Least aware of this is the unwed teenager who is encouraged to abandon her child. Get her empty as quickly as possible. Private nursing homes can pull babies out of their mother's wombs when they weigh as less as 900 gms. Span your hand on the table and you've probably exceeded the size of these babies. Secret phone calls to the orphanages in the middle of the night is the last act of this hideous performance. Then there are those who endure the nine months and give birth to a child with no vision in two eyes, only to abandon him at a railway station. The orphanage retrieve this baby forty eight hours later. He's in ICU for two days and yet like most of the little troopers I saw today survived. The vision won't come back but this child's life is strong and willing. Sadly, we cannot say the same about his parents.
Orphanages don't hold out anger, disgust or even deep pain towards the guiltly life givers. Instead, in front of them, they see opportunities. For every child abandoned, even were it for a cleft lip, their goal is to locate the child in a family. First choice is given to Indian couples, but I'm afraid there aren't too many takers here.
Toddlers require equal amount of food and medicine. The government of India doesn't support infants. Orphans about five are provided a generous sum of five hundred rupees per month.
So in time, agencies look to beyond our seas. Unites States, Spain, Australia - to name a few.
The economics of inter-nation adoption is quite lucrative. Couples who've not succeeded in having their own child, others who missed the boat or some who've woken up to the need for a baby, from as far away & as exotic as India, Adoption becomes a very real road to walk down.
Money serves the purpose of the orphanage and meets the desires and needs of the parents to be. Some will even pay for their children to be escorted to their country. The first meeting for the child is in a foreign airport. Children (these very troopers) will survive anything.
I don't understand how parents adopt children who are from countries miles away from their own. Yet again, I think, adults exert their authority to displace, relocate and dramatically alter the experience of a child they bought, like they would have a car, a house or even a spouce.
Yes, the child has parents, ones who will support, love and offer it opportunities he/she mgiht not have had in an orphanage.
However does this in any way address the malaise that has adults abandoning their helpless & disadvantageous children? Does it justify the notion that we can buy and sell human lives?
There is a whole industry that lives off these sales, a larger one that fosters an environment of popular acceptance of such a value-less practice.
Were a foreigner to adopt an Indian child, it is natural to think ' wow, what a lucky kid - Is nark se toh bache!'
Who do we fool when we think the child will have a 'better life'? Who we turn to when we foster directly and indirectly the business of human lives?
Where in the budget can we find the government's revenues related to this business of human lives? And how does it juxtapose against a generous sum of Rs 500 per month per infant (> 5yrs)
There are mothers & fathers out there who are desperate to experience parenthood. Is it possible then for them to think of relocating themselves to their future child's country? How would that make as a statement for life and for every individual's right to choose, however small, handicapped or fragile?
Wouldn't adoption, the possession of an infant below the age of eighteen constitute for statutory kidnapping? Of course not, because the default guardian, the government is counting on keeping it's generous sum of five hundred rupees.
What constitutes a better life? The oldest child at the orphanage I visited is pursuing a Masters in Social Work. While her counterparts & children of the head in charge of the orphanage are studying in Australia with no plans to return to India. Children who are not abandoned and grow up in 'normal' families, who had the 'better lives' are ignorant perpetuators of this large malaise. Worser still they are the custodians of good morality when applied only to others. They refuse to let unwed mothers take a chance at motherhood, sans guilt and a deep sense of failure. They couldn't even imagine let alone put their lives & fortunes in front of another life.
In the US, I heard that some couples who are pregnant are just not ready for motherhood. They instead, if they play the game well, can have many 'parents to be' get into a bidding monetary game for the unborn child. Those who can't afford this game, instead turn to countries like India where for as less as quarter the original sum can get them a baby with just about everybody cheering them on (what I now call the 'better life' syndrome). The mothers in these cases are long obliterated from the picture. In India you don't have to worry about a mother showing up to claim her baby. It is just not an option. In a current issue of Frontline, the inter-nation business of human life has become so lucrative that babies are being stolen and then sold to foreign families. While some of the cases has been exposed, the adopted family are now worried that they might have to return 'their' child to it's natural parents. This child is now living the life of another nationality and yet, think back, on the plight of the natural parents and on every day of the 180 day gestation period.

A week end spent at an orphanage and it has been as intense as I initially thought it would be. While my role has been that of a supporter, the tolls of the business of adoption have exhausted me. Never having been an advocate of the spirit of altruism that everybody laps up in the context of adopted families, this trip certainly did add more to my understanding of the subject. While I don't go back with contempt, my value of human life has been recharged. I hope to draw from this energy in the years to come.

There's something amiss with the scale of the buildings at the Mayfair lagoon, Bhubaneshwar. Like with the people at the restaurant and around, who all seem to be living a larger life. I feel like I'm caught unaware in the middle of a play, and every now & then I feel the need to touch something.
Bhubaneshwar, the little of what I've seen, is a town coming together in a rather large, yet wild and unpredictable way. The humid head doesn't help me register vistas clearly, despite my shades and cap.
I did get to see a temple, the kind who's receding top halp resembles the tresses of a dark, wholesome woman.
Bhubaneshwar with Cuttack are twin cities. The vegetation is akin to coastal, hot and humid climates. The advertisements are like most small towns, painted on walls like official stamps.
There is construction abound, in odd places. I also learnt on the flight over that Bhubaneshwar was planned by none other than Corbusier himself. I have not seen any suited examples of it though.
Coming back to the sprawling lagoon I'm at, scale issues apart, I really like the plan. Low and sprawling, with a lagoon swanked by two arms on either side. Each arm is dotted by cottages that on one side opens out to the lagoon. Walking down open corridors, more rooms open up to common spaces, a swimming pool, a pool table, all of which culminate at the Spa & Sports center (tennis, squash and billiards).
This trip is not going to be about explorign Bhubaneshwar. That will need to wait till our next trip here.

The morning after:
I wake up to Venkatesh Suprabatam. It's quarter to seven and already the sun is up and blazing. There is no wind and the lagoon for it's exoticness is not doing anything to battle the heat. Red ants are plenty here, a few of them trying to make a snack of my feet. Smaller beings always come with twice as much ambition.
I don't feel like I am in India. I don't mean that this in the 'This is too good to be India' sense. Thats for the defiant foreign bound citizens and the cocky inward bound NRIs to claim.
Since we arrived yesterday evening, I've felt removed. The vegetation, the advertisements, the traffic, the faces all look familiar. Yet I feel displaced.
There are differences here that I can't tap into. There is a certain closed off attitude of people who consider themselves the sweetest race of all. Yesterday I learnt that if you put a rasogolla in your mouth and speak Oriya, it will sound like Bengali. There is a deep rooted pride in this region, that isn't like punjabi pop. I haven't toasted the sweet part yet. There is also a place of distinguishments, as dense as the vegetation, as permeating as the heat. While I do not feel like a foreigner, I have yet to distinguish myself.
I'm now listening to 'Choli ke peeche kya hai' in a spiritual remix attributed to our many Hindu goddesses. The ability of humans to ponder and arrive at solutions is remarkable. On the highway, yesterday, I saw a sign - 1258 km Chennai. That was comforting and also helped orient me to where I am.
Art on the other hand asks all the exaggerated questions.
We do have a small temple jutting out into the center of the lagoon. The priest just did a water abhishekham. It is just too hot to be morning anymore.

A friend pointed me to this article called 'When silence kills' which is on the cover of the Time - Asia edition. It is an exclusive on AIDS in India.
Interestingly I spoke with the head of an Indian health NGO and got some very different sentiments, all of which I will share as soon as I have the time to put them all down in a post. For the time being, go ahead and read the article.

I have been interested in AIDS for a long time now. I read about it. I watch programs on it. I talk with other people about it. I have on two seperate occasions written to NAZ, volunteering my time except the emails always bounce back. There are times when it seems like a life dedicated to AIDS in India appears like my calling and that for the most part, I am not listening to it.

I created this community to then put (at the very least)words to this calling. Starting with just putting down my thoughts on the subject in addition to reporting on what I've seen/read/heard about it - All of course, with a single purpose: How can all of this information help us understand AIDS in India?

I want to try hard to stay away from 'propagating' solutions. I am more eager to look at the different approaches to AIDS prevention and cure and understand how they can apply to my country. Most of all, I want this community to churn up creative to-dos that reflect a clear and deep understanding of the many implementation roadblocks we are facing in this country.

I invite all of you who have opinions, thoughts and reporting skills to join this community and together we can build a repository of understanding around AIDS in India.

How to contribute to this community: You will need to have an account with blogspirit - the blogging service provider. (Go to www.blogspirit.com to join). Next you will need to log in, navigate to the POSTS section and click on the sub-heading - Communities. This page will allow you to search for the community you would like to subscribe to. Last, every time you post on something relevant to this community, please be sure to mark your post to the community(which will appear on your 'new post' page template if you're subscribed to the community already).

Thank you folks and happy calling!