On Christmas eve we had the yummiest traditional Christmas dinner. The stuffed turkey was amazing & the pudding was delicious. We even had Christmas carols playing in the background :)
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Merry Christmas
On Christmas eve we had the yummiest traditional Christmas dinner. The stuffed turkey was amazing & the pudding was delicious. We even had Christmas carols playing in the background :)
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Why I love big cities
When I first came to Dubai I was quite surprised to see how many Arabs love Indian movies, how many Europeans love sheesha, how many Lebanese are not Muslims, how many Brits think Chicken Tikka is a British recepie, how many Americans live in Arab countries, & how Indians & Pakistanis are considered the same nationality everywhere expect in India & Pakistan. The beauty about big cities is that they manage to create a mishmash of so many cultures & nationalities to create a culture of its own.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Fire & Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,~ Robert Frost
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Dubai Film Festival
Whew! A week of extensive movie-viewing at the film festival just got over.
Paris Je T'aime was the best pick from all the movies showcased at the fest. The producer commissioned 21 different movie makers from across the globe to make 5 to 10 minute movies staged in Paris & has put all those mini-movies in one movie! Some stories were very romantic, some funny, some sad and one was even scary. It was a brilliant movie!
Bobby was good, but over-hyped I thought. Its a movie about the optimism that Robert Kennedy brought to USA in times of the general gloom over the assasination of Martin Luther King & the Vietnam war; and what the death of RFK meant to the people of the country. The question-answer session with Joshua Jackson (he is cute!), Lawrence Fishburne & Joy Bryant was quite good.
Beirut Diaries is a documentary made by a young Lebanese girl about life in Beirut after Rafik Hariri's assasination, the demand for truth by the youth & how the campaign fell apart for political reasons. The story, I thought was eerily similar to the Indian story (inter-faith tension, politicians blaming all mishaps in the country on neighbouring countries, bomb blast every couple of years, a youth which inherited the legacy of communal disharmony). As the film maker said in her introduction to the movie, this movie raises more questions than finding solutions.
The Namesake is based on Jhumpa Lahiri's novel, and I thought nobody could've portrayed Ashima better than Tabu. She is the star of this movie. She is so beautifully complex as a simple-minded Calcutta girl.
Paris Je T'aime was the best pick from all the movies showcased at the fest. The producer commissioned 21 different movie makers from across the globe to make 5 to 10 minute movies staged in Paris & has put all those mini-movies in one movie! Some stories were very romantic, some funny, some sad and one was even scary. It was a brilliant movie!
Bobby was good, but over-hyped I thought. Its a movie about the optimism that Robert Kennedy brought to USA in times of the general gloom over the assasination of Martin Luther King & the Vietnam war; and what the death of RFK meant to the people of the country. The question-answer session with Joshua Jackson (he is cute!), Lawrence Fishburne & Joy Bryant was quite good.
Beirut Diaries is a documentary made by a young Lebanese girl about life in Beirut after Rafik Hariri's assasination, the demand for truth by the youth & how the campaign fell apart for political reasons. The story, I thought was eerily similar to the Indian story (inter-faith tension, politicians blaming all mishaps in the country on neighbouring countries, bomb blast every couple of years, a youth which inherited the legacy of communal disharmony). As the film maker said in her introduction to the movie, this movie raises more questions than finding solutions.
The Namesake is based on Jhumpa Lahiri's novel, and I thought nobody could've portrayed Ashima better than Tabu. She is the star of this movie. She is so beautifully complex as a simple-minded Calcutta girl.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Happy birthday to me...
Its my birthday today!! The friends in Dubai showed up at midnight & woke me up with a cake, some alcohol & a loud rendition of 'Happy Birthday to you'.H had planned a romantic hot-air balloon flight this morning but the rain played spoiler. Have been answering calls & checking emails all morning. Thank you everyone for the phone & email wishes!
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Kashmir
I watched last evening on NDTV, Parvez Musharraf’s interview on the Kashmir issue. It was a relief to see peace being discussed as an option.
As an Indian I had been conditioned to thinking that the fact that 80000 people have been killed in Kashmir since 1989, has been part of a war we have fought for decades defending our national boundaries. I’m sure there is a similar conditioning in Pakistan or even in Palestine/ Israel where people are led to believe that dignity and pride lies in defending the national borders and not the lives of the people within those borders.
Its time more of us realize that it is not patriotic to assert our claims on the borders; but it is patriotic to stop this wasteful loss of lives in our country.
As an Indian I had been conditioned to thinking that the fact that 80000 people have been killed in Kashmir since 1989, has been part of a war we have fought for decades defending our national boundaries. I’m sure there is a similar conditioning in Pakistan or even in Palestine/ Israel where people are led to believe that dignity and pride lies in defending the national borders and not the lives of the people within those borders.
Its time more of us realize that it is not patriotic to assert our claims on the borders; but it is patriotic to stop this wasteful loss of lives in our country.
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