If the DH is a doctor

A few nights ago, DH was slicing apples for a post dinner snack when I mentioned to him that I was looking for something to nosh on, too. He said I should eat apples and that he’d slice one for me. I made a face and said “I hate apples.I can eat all the apple pudding in the world, but no apples.”

DH quipped “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” and I retorted “If the doctor is handsome, keep the apple away.” He bantered back “Yahaan koi sundar doctor-woctor nahi hai (there’s no handsome doctor here). Yahaan to sirf main hoon, aur main hi tumhari dawa hoon aur daaru bhi.”

The last, might I add was delivered in rape specialist Ranjeet’s style with the biting of the lower lip and lascivious tone…*shudders*

If the DH is the doctor, can Meera run away?

Lazy Lamhein

It does not take a rocket scientist to determine this post is about this song from a pathetic movie called “Thoda Pyar Thoda Magic”. Though the movie did not make waves, this song sure did. For Amisha Patel’s sexy new avatar and the way the song was filmed.

I did not pay much attention to the song then. The movie was criticized so much that I didn’t want to sit through it just to watch this song. Well, I have to say I heard the song a couple of days ago and I loved it. I love it for the lyrics. I can happily listen to the song and not miss Amisha’s on-screen antics at all.

The lyrics are blatant,  Amisha’s basically inviting Saif for a romp between the sheets, yet they don’t sound crude or raunchy. She’s telling him what she wants fairly openly. And that’s one of the reasons why this song appeals to me. There are such few songs in Bollywood, where the woman will tell a man what she wants. We make musicals, exclusively and yet in all the movies we make, we rarely have a song where the  girlfriend tells her boyfriend, or a wife tells her husband what she wants. The leading lady will refer to her passionate side helped beautifully by the lyricist’s flowery language but its all couched in such terminology that it’ll probably take the leading man until next day to figure out what exactly she’s talking about. Or maybe, our leading men are intelligent enough that they’ll figure things out right away. All I know is, if I spoke to DH in the language used by any of our leading ladies in such songs, he will sit down to analyze my Hindi and criticize my poetry leading to a fight. There goes my night of passion. *sigh*

If ever, the leading lady gets “down and dirty”, it’s generally in the leading man’s imagination. And post the 3 minute song, she goes back to being the Sati Savitri* (SS). Better yet, such songs will have the leading man begging for some loving while the leading lady will keep trying to escape his clutches for the duration of the song before she gives in more out of a sense of wifely duty than anything else.

In most movies, the passionate songs are reserved for the second lead, who can be tossed aside for the SS before the end credits roll. Case in point – Amisha Patel in Thoda Pyar Thoda Magic, Jiah Khan in Housefull (here too, the passion was reserved for Akki baby’s dreams). If ever, such a song is filmed with a leading lady, her profession has to be suspect, she’s a pole dancer like Malaika in Kaante or a tamaashe waali ala Bipasha in Omkara. Or she has to be playing the negative character like Kat in Race.

Why this dichotomy, Indian women are definitely not that boring in real life. If we were all like SS’s, I’m sure our men would run screaming for the hills.

It’s perfectly okay for a Hindi film heroine to wear a transparent sari and do a rain dance but God forbid the lyrics reveal her lust. What is so wrong with ascribing passion to our leading ladies? When is it going to be okay for one of our heroines to state categorically what she wants on-screen and not be cast as the other woman, tramp, slut or worse, item girl?

Very few movie makers have accomplished what I am looking for and the songs were HUGE hits, did not tarnish the reputation of the women who performed those numbers. They all went on to have immensely successful movie careers. They are

Sridevi in Mr. India with Kaate nahi Kat Te

Madhuri Dixit in Beta with Dhak Dhak

Raveena Tandon in Mohra with Tip Tip Barsa Pani

If you can think of any more, please send them my way. I’d love to know if I have missed out on any such path breaking numbers.

*Sati Savitri – For the purposes of this post, I am using this term to refer to women who are the ideal Indian women, loyal to their husbands until their dying breath, fantastic moms, perfect daughters-in-law. Basically, they possess qualities that us lesser mortals can only aspire to and if Bollywood’s to be believed, they have no sex life, either.

P.S: I think Lazy Lamhein has a great video as well (I sat down to see the song after I started to write this post). Although the location was a bit iffy. Disclaimer Alert: I’m not a big believer in Public Display of Affection so the pool party setting did not sit well with me, but hey, if that kind of thing floats your boat, go all out.

Chance pe dance maara

DH and I are watching a 3rd grade hindi movie starring Ameesha Patel (way before she got the hot body), Akshay Kumar (way before he became King of Bollywood) and Karisma Kapoor (before she started playing mommy in real life). We watch a lot of 3rd grade movies for the cringe factor and the laughs they provide us with.

Ameesha Patel says to Akshay Kumar very coyly, tumhaari zindagi mein mara kya number hai  or something to that effect. Akshay Kumar very gallantly says “tum meri zindagi ho, tum hi mera sab kuch ho.” You can imagine, from this dialog alone ki kitni acchi picture thi.  I complain to DH that you’ve never said anything of the sort to me.

5 minutes later Ameesha says “Humne tumhaare liye kuch sapne dekhe hain, tumhein unhe poora karna hai.” Or some such nonsense. I’m not paying any attention since I’m glued to Facebook. DH says “tumne aisa kabhi kuch nahi kaha hai mujhse.”  Absent-mindedly I say “Kya nahi kaha?”

DH: Yahi Ki tumne mere liye kuch sapne dekhe hain jo mujhe poore karne hain

Me: Haan, kahoongi na, tumhein apni biwi ke liye heere jawaaharaat khareedne hain, unlimited expense account provide karna hai. Maine yeh saare sapne dekhe hain tumhaare liye, bolo kab poora karoge?

What???? The guy asked for it.

Delhi Vs Bombay (it’ll never be Mumbai to me)

This is not an attempt to establish one city is better than the other or to claim that people in one city are “cooler” or “hotter” than those in the other. So, all of you can put those machetes, knives and swords away.

I have been listening to songs from “No One Killed Jessica” and was struck by the realization that lately Delhi has been getting the better share of Bollywood songs. The evidence can be found in songs like Yeh Dilli Hai mere yaar and Rahna Tu. Also, the song that got me thinking in the first place was “DDDDD Dilli – Mera kaat kaleja le gayi Dilli”

So, all you lyricists please put on your thinking caps and come up with some kick ass songs for Bombay. After all it is the “cooler” city (my birthplace, so I’m allowed to be biased).  Hey, hey, hey…. No violence. I was just kidding (not).

Road Trip to California – Part 1

I promised you details on my road trip to California and here they are complete with pictures.

This past weekend, we took off on a road trip to California; the occasion was a close friend’s nephew’s engagement. I wouldn’t do a 700 mile road trip (one way)  over 3 days for anyone, but this friend she’s special She’s one of the soul sisters I mentioned here. And how could I give up the opportunity to see said nephew get engaged? This kid (he’s all of 27 and speaks like a 20 something) keeps giving us oldies grief about our marriages and so it was time to return all that love, many times over.

We left on Friday night (to escape the long weekend traffic that would clog the freeways between the hours of 4 and 7 PM). We made a quick stop to pick up some dinner. Taco Bell ke chalupa, zindabad (long live the Taco Bell chalupa). One hour into the trip, we realized, we’d forgotten the iPod back home. DH cribs about not having music to blast on the road trip and I plug my iPhone in with a smug expression. The half hour I spent earlier in the week downloading all my favorite music onto my phone paid off – DH is suitably impressed. Post dinner, I offer to drive,  since DH has had a looong day and I’m feeling especially benevolent. So, with me at the helm, hamaari gaadi chal padi (our vehicle moved forward).  DH does a lot of back seat driving but he must’ve been tired so he says I’m going to sit back here and close my eyes, let me know once we get close to Grants Pass and I can take over the driving, DD, by now has finished dinner and is fast asleep. She’d had an equally tiring day that included a trip to the Portland Art museum courtesy the summer camp she attends.

So, as twilight turns into night, I am driving. It’s quiet in the car except for the music that is suitably toned down in consideration of the 2 most important people in my life. In the 4 hours plus that I drove, I heard some gems that I had forgotten existed in my music collection – for instance, the following melody from Welcome to Sajjanpur.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxc7izlalWQ

It was an eerie feeling to drive the stretch between Salem and Grants Pass. For one, this was the first time we were making our way to California by road. To be totally honest, we’ve done a road trip to California before, but that was back in 2003, before DD came along and we took the scenic 101 highway back then. So DH did all the driving, while I went click happy with a Canon camera that I inherited from my dad. And that was a trip with a lot of stops just to admire the scenery. We had a week off then so we could afford to stop at quaint little shops and look at knick knacks. This trip, though was different. We had to be in Sacramento, CA by early afternoon on Saturday since the engagement was on Saturday evening and we’d need enough time to beautify ourselves.

The road was sufficiently windy with twists and turns and keeping me company were 18 wheeler and 25 wheeler trucks carrying essentials that a lot of us take for granted. These behemoths would stick to the right lane for the most part since they have a lower speed limit than cars but every once a while one of them would move to the left lane to overtake one of their fellow truckers who was slow, even by their standards. I needed to keep a careful eye on the road and adjust speed to accommodate the above. We finally made our way into Medford, OR (the kind soul that I am, I did not wake up DH at Grants Pass, and drove all the way to our first stop point) at about 12:30 AM on the strains of this song which I think is the perfect road trip song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7tEqapymU8

We reach the hotel and to our surprise find 4 people ahead of us waiting to check in. It took us a half hour to check in and it was 1:30 by the time we reached the room and had offloaded all our paraphernalia. A quick change and we all were in bed. The hotel room was nothing great and offered hardly any amenities for the outrageous price they were charging us. But the hotel’s at a location that makes it very convenient for campers and people like us driving long distances to stop for the night. So the parking lot was full and we had a hard time finding parking close to the room. We closed the drapes in the room and told each other we’d wake up early and get out so as to not worry our hosts unnecessarily. Well, the drapes at the hotel were great, since when we finally woke up the room was pitch dark although it was 9:30 AM. The sun was high in the sky and most of the other hotel guests had left. The parking lot was empty. We scrambled and I am happy to say we were out the hotel in a half hour. A quick stop at Starbucks for breakfast on the go and DH was ready to drive the 350 miles it would take to get us to Sacramento. More music, some conversation and some word games with DD and numerous are we there yets later, we reached Sacramento. Also, DH did his best to entertain. Listen to the following piece in his inimitable voice where he sings Incy Wincy Spider in Tip Tip barsa paani style.

Incy Wincy Spider

We checked into the Hilton in downtown Sacramento. Another shower (it was a 100 degrees in Sac- we needed another shower) and an hour of primping later, we coordinated with another friend staying at the same hotel and made it to the engagement venue that was a mere 2 miles from the hotel. The venue was superbly decorated and the guests even more so. This was our first experience with a Fijian engagement. It is surprisingly similar to an Indian wedding. In fact it was like a North Indian wedding on a smaller scale. What’s interesting is the girl and boy legally marry each other during the engagement but consider themselves engaged until the Hindu marriage is solemnized. This can take up to a year sometimes, as is the case with my friend’s nephew. Some of the Western (read American) rites have also been included such as the cake cutting and the first dance. But they danced to a Bollywood number. The couple looked beautiful. She was shy and nervous, he kept wiping the sweat off his brow which led to a lot of good-natured ribbing about abhi se yeh haal hai toh shaadi ke baad kya hoga (if you are sweating now, what’ll happen to you after the wedding)?

After dinner (all of which was home cooked for 300 plus guests and yummy to boot) we hit the dance floor to dance to the usual suspects – see links below and some Bihari numbers that I’ve never heard before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcKtDXUb6Cg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpnohT_a-2I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0EReETeKyc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOE3g3jufAg

The party wrapped up at 11:15 AM but we weren’t finished so we made our way to my friend’s brother’s house where the drinking and dancing continued till the wee hours of the morning.

We came back to the hotel suitably sloshed and exhausted and fell into bed.

This is just the first day folks, more to follow in the next installment (Pictures in the next one, I promise).