Friday 27 February 2009

Resul, Rahman and Gulzar - congrats ! Rest of India - why the hoopla ?

I am not by any means a movie buff – I watch movies only occasionally and invariably, only when the trailers impress me enough to take the effort needed to go and sit through a movie in a theatre…
And for someone like me who doesn’t care or know much about movies, a movie awards night is not likely to be cause for much excitement….
Last sunday, however, it was slightly different… expectation, and a slight excitement made me sit through and watch the Academy awards, and I was almost squealing myself hoarse when first Resul pookutty, and later A R Rahman walked onto to the stage to receive their Oscars – a proud moment, definitely, for both of them personally and the whole country as well.

Resul was overcome with emotion, and was almost gasping, and could barely utter his acceptance speech – only understandably so. It definitely must have been a great moment for the physics graduate who decided to get into sound effects in cinema – more so because one cannot deny the fact that in the Indian film industry, the technical aspects and the technicians are not given the importance or recognition they deserve.
Well, one has to thank god that Resul didn’t decide to make a profession out of the law degree he started to do… instead of sitting at home and boycotting courts, his decision has now taken him to great heights and put an Oscar in his hands – way to go Resul, we are proud :)

Rahman – the man who has his fans raving and a whole country swaying to his music, is not new to awards – he has been picking them up right from his first film, and has won so many by now that he doesn’t really need an award anymore to prove his worth – but this one of course, must have been very special – one of the most famous awards of the movie industry, bestowed not just once but twice on the same day.
I was quite excited seeing him win the award twice, and his acceptance speech, with the simplicity known to be characteristic of him, was graceful and crisp.
To the man whose music has been working its magic on his fans long before it reached the ears of the Oscar committee – Congrats - Great job, just as always !

Gulzar – My understanding, and hence, appreciation, of Hindi is limited, but I do know that he is a veteran who has worked with the greatest music directors in the Indian film industry, from the Burmans(both SD & RD !) to Rahman and that awards are nothing new to him – from the Sahitya Akademi to various film awards, he has seen them all. Congrats to him for adding this latest feather to his cap, and of course, its quite unfortunate that he couldn’t make it to LA to receive his award in person.

Rest of India
- Why is it that since Sunday, the media has been making much ado over slumdog millionaire ?
Why don’t we bear in mind that it is just an English film, which had a storyline set in an Indian city and that the cast and some of the crew were Indian. It is by no means an ‘Indian’ movie, and I think we can restrict ourselves to being proud about Resul, Rehman and Gulzar, and offering our congratulations to the film makers.

Friday 13 February 2009

back after a break....

ok...here i am, trying to resume scribbling after quite a long break... hiatus, hibernation... could be called anything... there was no big reason other than that we spent almost three months in chennai, from end october 08 to mid jan 09...

nothing significant to write about the trip, except that i got to spend around 10-15 days (in bits and pieces!) with my mom, and got to be there at my best friend's wedding...

when we left from US around oct end, the major topic of discussion on every channel for a month had been the Lehman Bros bankruptcy and the aftermath of the chain of reactions triggered by it on the economy...
by the time we left India in jan,Satyam computers and Ramalinga Raju had hogged the limelite,with probably india's biggest corporate scandal so far...am sure politicians must be feeling a trifle threatened, with such unexpected competition from the private sector...

well, two countries, two companies, two events that sent the indices of stock exchanges plumetting and resulted in economic mayhem...a bad ending to one year and a bad beginning of the next...
hmmm....lets hope that as the year progresses, it has better things in store...