Dinner for Six

So there's this tag going around and after a very long time one of these things piqued my curiosity and so here I am following instructions. What one has to do is basically invite six people for dinner (it's something like a hypothetical blogger's meet)...since there are several bloggers I've already met, my choice for the evening is going to only include those with whom I've not yet come face-to-face.

Invite :
You are cordially invited to dinner chez moi. Don't forget to bring along something to eat (it's potluck dinner people, I'm not in the mood to cook tonight), your biggest smile and last but definitely not the least important, your charming self :-)

Addressed to:-
1. Casablanca/Writing on the Wall - To unveil this mysterious blogger who's so open about her life, yet so zealously guards her identity. I would love to meet the person behind this persona...plus I'm sure you'd keep the conversation alive at the dinner table.
2. Wandering Dervish/Loud Thinking - He's a darling - I just know it and want to confirm it! Plus it would be great to meet this superintelligent guy with a poet's soul (and very warm generous one at that!)...can see the evening's conversation taking an erudite turn with him at the table...an extra request - could you bring along some music as well? :-)
3. Vaish/Apercevoir - She invited me to join her French blog (where I've not been very active) and then to her wedding (which I didn't attend) - apologies Vaish! I know you flew away but it would be great if you could hop into a plane and visit homeland for this cozy little dinner! J'aimerais bien te rencontrer!
4. Anil/Mottled Memories - He spins magic with his words and weaves a spell with his images...he also writes delightfully long emails and makes me feel dreadfully prosaic there as well! Like me, he's learnt French and landed up in Germany to study - I like people who do such things! I promise to visit Cologne if make it to Europe in the near future, but before that it would be great to meet you over wine, conversation and whatever else is on the dinner table :-) Tu viens?
5. Chamique/Momentary Muse - I've said it before - her's is one of the most honest blogs I've come across. No pretense there, no attempt to be anything but herself. Sensitive. Intelligent. Nice. It would be a great pleasure to meet the person behind those posts that make me smile and shed a sentimental tear with the same graceful ease!
6. Lotus - He doesn't blog much - not at all actually, but his persistent comments on my blog have piqued my curiosity. Besides I'm sure I can count on you to spice up the conversation by reading out your billet d'amour to his French professor - no chance of anyone getting bored with this flower gracing the table :-)

Alrighty then people...I'm sprucing up the place for you'll - bringing out the best lace table-cloth, the exquisite china plates and the silver ware. The wine's chilling and just waiting to be served...don't forget the food...and those smiles! :-)

Female Emancipation in P.M.T Keshavnagar

A year and half back when I moved from Bombay to Pune and went from using the sexy B.E.S.T buses to the run-down P.M.T buses I experienced what can only be termed as a culture shock. Accustomed to a travelling with people from all classes of the society in Bombay, I soon realised that 90% of the crowd in the P.M.T buses was from the lower class - which meant I now had to start thinking about what I was wearing when I stepped into a bus. I've hardly worn my shorter skirts since I've moved to Pune and every time I wear my wrap-arounds or the skirts with slits down one side, I get 'the looks' which I've learnt to ignore. That wasn't what really bothered me - what bothered me was the completely in-your-face blatant refusals by young able-bodied men to vacate their seats (reserved for women/handicapped/elderly) for an elderly man/woman. One instance I clearly remember is when I asked this guy to vacate the seat for this 'aaji' who must be around 70 - not only did the guy belligerently refuse to do so, when I started protesting vociferously, this aaji actually asked me not to bother unless I wanted to sit there! I was quite appalled and since I couldn't see myself sitting while she was standing, I let that guy continue to stay seated...and he stayed seated the entire way sending me a disgustingly sly smile of victory every few minutes. Over the year and a half that I've been here, I've witnessed many such scenes.

These days there's a new trend in the P.M.T buses, atleast those running from Keshavnagar. To start with, the newer buses have the entire left-hand side row of seats reserved for women. Around a month back, I got into a crowded bus and resigned myself to a long journey on my feet...only to suddenly find this woman nudging the guy sitting next to her, demanding he vacate the seat for me. When he tried to resist, all the women in that row all but pounced on him. Poor guy had no option but to vacate the seat for me....over the last few weeks the women have grown very fierce in their insistence on seeing the 'striyaansathi' rule applied. It's funny at times when the bus is nearly empty and there's this neat demarcation with all the women on the left and the men on the right - the conductor looks rather lost in no-man's land! Funnier yet - seeing them descend on the poor hapless man who's made the colossal mistake of occupying a seat on the left, specially when the women have also occupied quite a few seats on the right as well...the men are actually afraid of occupying those seats because they are sure a woman will soon descend on him screaming at him to get up!

It's almost as if they are venting the frustration of being forced into a submissive role at home, by bossing the men around in the bus! Sometimes I actually feel sorry for some of the men as they look on bewildered while the newly emancipated women commuters proceed to paint him a villain for sitting on the wrong side...most times though I'm busy chortling with unholy glee! :-)

P.S This was to be another movie review, but since some people are turning green with jealousy and others are feeling out of sort with my apparent spouting of cinematic intelligence, I decided to post about this first. Coming up - review of Little Vilma, the Last Diary.

La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher), Michael Haneke, France, 2000

The film is based on Nobel Laureate Elfried Jelinek's acclaimed novel The Piano Teacher. Isabelle Huppert plays the part of Erika, a respectable and rather stern piano teacher in her forties, who is staying with her rather possessive mother. The mother, with her refusal to let go off the umbilical cord, has smothered Erika to such an extent that she ends up with a repressed personality. Frustrated, she seeks voyeuristic relief in watching pornographic films and furtively watching couples in the act. As the film progresses she gets involved in a rather perverse relationship with one of her students, with a rather tragic end.

The film hits hard and it left me feeling very disturbed - repugnant, almost violently revolting at times I was left wondering why I subjected myself to the torture. It didn't help that I was watching the film in a rather uncomfortable position - the seats were all taken up when we entered so we took the 'best' seats...on the floor, two rows ahead of the first row from the screen. By the time the film ended my neck hurt, my butt hurt, my legs were beginning to go numb and my head was spinning with what I'd just seen. Most of the audience dismissed it as a terrible porn film - on the basis of the scenes that showed her going to watch porn and her interaction with the student. At that moment I didn't have much to argue against that judgement, so sickened was I by the film, but later as I thought more about it, I slowly began to see the film's merits - yes, it isn't an easy film to watch, even more difficult to digest - but I wouldn't dismiss it as trash.

There is no subtle way of representing a subject like this and like it or not, the subject is very relevant to our times and the societies we live in. Literature, infact art, is after all a reflection of our times and if our times are complex and spawn twisted personalities, can we really penalise the artists for representing it? Someone has to express the oppression, the physical and sexual violence, the twisted relationships...It's easy to dismiss art of this genre as trash and I, too, am guilty of having it done it with Alan Hollinghurst's A Line of Beauty. My first reaction to it was that the novel shouldn't be read at all, leave alone be acknowledged as serious literature and awarded a major literary prize. I am still not ready to give it a second shot, but then, I can be a rather difficult reader. There, ofcourse, isn't any direct comparison, since the subjects are very different. I have a feeling that The Piano Teacher has tried to delve into the psychological reasons for such a personality and its outcomes, not only on a personal level, but a social level also. I haven't read the novel so I can't be very sure, but having seen the film I think that is the case. There is a message in what Jelinek (and subsequently Haneke and Huppert) is saying - somewhere beneath those disgusting descriptions/scenes, she is trying to drive home a valid point.

This article in the Washington Post does good justice to the novel and the film, as far as the subject goes. Final verdict? Hard-hitting, depressing and disturbing. Acting par excellence. It's not easy to appreciate the film, but give it a shot...and approach it with an open mind.

PIFF 2006 Report

Well I said I'd be back in a week, didn't I? And I'm back - older, wiser and more mature! Well, not exacty, but definitely more educated and with my grey cells scrambling around frantically, processing all the information that was being fed to them in the past one week. PIFF 2005 was a new experience. My first foray into the realm of serious cinema, my introduction to world cinema. There were films that shook me, others that I didn't comprehend at all (W.D will vouch for it, having left his first comment on my blog after my rather juvenile interpretation of one of the movies I'd seen!), and some that I enjoyed alot.

PIFF 2006 was more of an education than last year. The focus, but obviously, was on catching as many French films as I could. I can't say I regret seeing any film - though some of them left me with a bad taste in my mouth, it wasn't because it was bad cinema. Far from it...with a selection that comprised of very few light films, I've come out of this year's experience having learnt so much more and with a new list of topics for reading. I saw quite a few films all by myself this time - and without feeling wierd about walking into a movie hall alone. Ironically my friend who introduced me to PIFF and without whom I'd have never registered for it last year, didn't catch half as many films as I did (and I'm being generous here - I don't even know why he registered in the first place) - missed having him next to me to discuss a film as we waited for the next one to start...and that by no way means that I didn't enjoy the company that I had as replacement for Titu Dada. :-) My only complaint is that they don't organise the schedule in advance, allowing the delegates to plan which movies they want to watch according to the multiplex it's being screened at, not to mention their work schedules and that they randomly change film screenings at the last minute...

There was a focus, this year, on Isabelle Huppert, one of the finest actors of the French cinema, who believes that the art of acting is living out one's insanity. The films selected under the retropsective genre were mostly adaptations of classics - disturbing and even repugnant at times, but excellent cinema nevertheless. I didn't catch all the films, but from the few that I did see, I think I'm beginning to understand why she has won so many accolades for her work - either she's truly brilliant or truly insane that she lived those roles as she did!

• La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher) - adapted from the acclaimed novel by Nobel Laureatte, Elfried Jelinke, Michael Haneke, France, 2000.
• La Dentellerie, (The Lace-maker) - adapted from a novel by Pascal Laine, Claude Goretta, France, 1977
• La Cérémonie (A Judgement in Stone) - adapted from a novel by Ruth Rendell, Claude Chabrol, France, 1994.

...and here's the rest of the list :-

• Le Coeur des Hommes (The Frenchmen) - Marc Esposito, France, 2003 (repeat from last year - it's such a fun film I couldn't resist)
• Un Homme, Un Vrai (A Real Man) - Jean-Marie Larrieu, Arnaud Larrieu, France,2003 (repeat again, for the same reasons)
• Les Égares (Strayed) - André Téchiné, France, 2003 (a war film that focused more on relationships than the war itself, it's a beautiful and very sensitive film!)
• Violence des Échanges en Milieu Temperé (Work Hard, Play Hard) - Jean-Marc Moutout, France, 2004
• Un Amor Silencioso (Silent Love) - Federico Hidalgo, Canada, 2004 (interesting comment on the difficulties in finding love, the right partner and marriages arranged through match-making agencies between citizens of the 'first-world countries' and those of the 'third-world countries')
• Child Star - Don McKellar, Canada, 2004 (the only English film I saw - cute and fun!)
• Naplo Szerelneimnek (Diary for my Love) - Meszaros Marta, Hungary, 1990 (heavy, grey, depressing - set in the politically charged atmosphere of Stalin's USSR, it's part of the Dairy series.)
• Little Vilma, the Last Diary - Meszaros Marta, Hungary, 1999 (heart-breakingly poignant and beautiful film, it made me cry - the last of the dairy series, it's set in war-time USSR)
• Arizona Sur (Arizona Sun) - Miguel Angel Rocca, Daniel Pensa, Argentina, 2005 (fabulously fun!)
• Cabra-Cega (Playing in the Dark) - Toni Venturi, Brazil, 2004 (hard-hitting and very disturbing...equally enlightening for me)
• Bulutlari Beklerken (Waiting for the Clouds) - Yesim Ustaoglu, Turkey-France-Germany-Greece, 2004 (incredibly beautiful film set in Turkey & Greece)
• Bad Be Dastan (Empty Hands) - Abdolreza Kahani, Iran, 2004 (hilarious, despite the bleak backdrop of rural Iran)

PIFF 2006

Pune International Film Festival is here again :-) (Check out last year's experience)

Here's to a week of pure, undiluted cinematic pleasure and taking up temporary residence at Esquare...please to be excusing me from my blogging duties for a week! I promise to be back in a week's time with a lovely report on this year's experience!

Currently listening to 12 poètes Francophones (chanté par Bernard Ascal) - lovely poetry some of it...am posting some on FranceSay for the Francophiles.

Je Suis Fatiguée

When I took up class with kids, I knew I was in for a challenging ride, especially since I've never really had the kids eating out of my hands. Expected them to be mischievous, talkative, over-smart and yes even brattish - and was prepared to deal with all of that. Insolence, I had neither expected nor can I stomach. The red-alert danger signs had flashed in my head last week, with my first adolescent's class, but I chose not to over-react, figuring the kid needed time to settle in - but today I came so so close to throwing something at him. Never before did corporal punishment seem so appealing! Still fighting the urge to go to higher authorities with the matter but don't see how else to settle the issue, since the brat obviously isn't interested...

That was stressful enough, but when I had to spend nearly two hours commuting home after that (no, I haven't moved back to Bombay, this is Pune I'm talking about!) I was so god-damned tired. Oh please let me get the regular courses soon...and please let us move out of the back-of-the-beyond soon!

Je suis fatiguée. Je veux dormir. C'est tout.

PS Don't anyone dare welcome me into the real world - I shall growl. That's a promise!

New Beginnings?

*Cough splutter* I can't believe I'm actually using that corny title..what the hell I simply couldn't resist. New Year's Eve was abysmally dismal (I like the sound of that) - was angry, upset, frustrated, cranky - went to bed before midnight and got up almost equally grouchy. That frame of mind stayed till afternoon. Luckily it started clearing up after a couple of phone calls from some adorable people.

A week into 2006 and I feel like so much has already happened. So many rendezvous with friends - so many lovely new memories. Tossing for a favourite moment in the past one week - the choices would be:

• Peeking through the fingers at a perfectly horrifying scene from Doom, while my rather huge male friend chortled at my distress.
• Surprising another male friend with a double-entendre. Not my first, but definitely the first around him...it was quite a pleasure to make him stall in his tracks. :-)
• That amazing day - just all of it, from the open conversations to the fabulous meal, to the long randonnée around one of my favourite places in the world, to that journey back home.
• My friend hugging me in the middle of a busy street, insisting we have "our own fun" - encircled by those loving arms, I actually didn't feel my usual pang of distress in saying good-bye to someone I adore beyond reason and get to meet so damned less!
• Crazy meandering conversations with a lovely new friend (I wish I could be as poetic about her as Saurabh - hope it's enough to say that I'm glad I stumbled upon her. Ironic how many 'champs' we seem to have known!)
• Even crazier and more meandering conversations with bum-chum pals - nothing like old pals is there? Where else would I find that absolute understanding & acceptance. Who else would live through my ranting, raving, cribbing, bitching & wounding and yet give me a hug the next time I met them?
• Being pampered silly by friends when my stomach decided to play truant and refused to let anything I ate/drink stay inside my body. Nothing heals the wounded soul more than the knowledge that there are people out there who care...better yet, that they are people you adore...and do I adore them! :-)
• Patching up with yet another friend - we still have issues to sort out, but I think I can stop fretting about losing a friend. Merci bon dieu!

A week back I was at my misreable best - am I happy that's passed. My soul ain't healed completely, I haven't found what I'm looking for - but there's definitely a skip in my steps since the past two days. Oh yes, this year has taken off alright...and on that note :

Happy New Year! Bonne Année! Gutes Neues Jahr! Feliz Año Nuevo! Nuovo Anno Felice!Naye Saal Ki Shubhkaamnayein! :-)