February 14, 2009
The "Penguin Law" Holds
Here's a new one for the school rule-book: "If you want parents during the Annual School production to stay till the very end and not leave once their child's part is done, you must put on a musical with penguins and make sure that each child wears a penguin mask".
Each year, a gaggle of parents collects at the front of the stage during the Annual Day musical in the Don Bosco quadrangle, waiting for their son (or daughter, depending on what their son is that day) to make his appearance on stage. As soon as that happens, all of them become camera trigger-happy hoping to catch their respective sons at the "right" moment.
This year, all these “parent-proud” Kodak moments had to take a pause.
Last week, Don Bosco staged the musical, Happy Feet, which as most of you know, is all about penguins. Though the kids all spoke in human voices, except for a few cardboard fish that were shown as food, everyone on stage was a penguin. In a penguin suit. With a penguin mask. All the kids looked the same; they looked like penguins.
So here's where the parents had a problem. Except for the main cast of about 6-7, who obviously were "known" kids, the rest of the 200-300 odd penguins on stage, the "extras" and "dancers", were unidentifiable. Sure they came in different shapes and sizes and depending on their class, had different color patches on the front of their suits, but it was still virtually impossible to spot their sons.
Which was both, an advantage or a disadvantage depending on the parents' outlook. If their sons had not been cast in the production, the parents could still click a couple of photographs of the penguins and point to any one of the penguins proudly as their sons. If however the parents actually wanted to know for sure which penguin was their son, they had to wait till the very end, when all the penguins/kids finally took off their masks, during the credits. And even then, if the son was short and thin, it was still difficult to spot him in the huge crowd of penguins on stage.
And what a stage that was. It was up for at least a week before the production, stretching all the way from one end of the quadrangle to the other, with sloping ramps and convoluted passages, painted in white to simulate a snowy Arctic environment, with a faux-sea at the bottom with cardboard fish. In the evenings, my kids used to have a ball on the stage, playing "hide-and-seek", while using the ramps as slides to move deftly from one level to another.
My son was one of the penguins. My wife was the trigger-happy parent. From the rehearsals, we knew where he would be standing during his two songs, but even then it was difficult to spot him. Once he was unmasked, she did what all helicopter moms do these days - hovered over all possible vantage points to get as many pictures and videos as possible.
Now that we know that this law works really, really well, perhaps other similar musicals can be tried in the subsequent years
1. The Lion King - there will be different animals, but put them in masks and the parents will stay till the end
2. Madagascar - same logic as Lion King
3. Bee movie - all kids dressed as bees
I guess the list is endless
Posted by bhavinj at 09:02 AM | Comments (0)
February 07, 2009
The Screams of Rock On
Exactly 2.51 minutes into the album version of "Pichle saat dinon mein", which starts with "Meri laundry ka ek bill", Farhan Akhtar, in typical rock-star fashion, screams out the word "roya" at the end of the line "kabhi khud pein hasa main aur kabhi khud pe roya".
My twins know exactly when that scream will occur and while singing along with Farhan, they too, strumming on their imaginary guitars, slung over the tummies, get that scream just right.
Having miserably failed in my attempts to inculcate an understanding of rock music in my 9-year olds over the last year or two, it's amazing how Farhan has been able to effortlessly get through to them; all it needed was one viewing of "Rock On" and a playing of the CD a couple of times at home and in the car.
It's quite funny. When we are all together in the car, there is an invariable tussle about the kind of music to play. My wife and kids want to listen to the latest Hindi film songs, whereas I usually want to put on my classic rock compilation. No guesses for who prevails and we always land up listening to whichever Hindi film songs are the current flavor of the month. On the rare occasion that I am actually allowed to exercise a choice, the kids immediately start wailing in the background "Dad...can we listen to something better?" It doesn't matter whether I am playing Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" or Floyd's "Comfortably Numb"...the kids' reaction is always the same.
I haven't quite been able to figure this out, but I guess their affinity for Hindi film music has to do with comfort levels and what they are exposed to day in and day out, at home, in school, in their friends' houses and in the neighborhood. Hindi films songs are ubiquitous and pore out of every possible musical orifice in our environment; be it FM, Worldspace, television, the car stereo, elevator music, background music in restaurants, clinics, hospitals, during birthday parties and from Ganesh and other religious pandals.
The rule of Hindi film music is now complete. Time was, in the 80s, that all parties and "socials" had only English dance music mixes and if anyone even thought of dancing to Hindi film music, he/she would be an instant outcast. Today, it is a rare party where you hear English songs...it's much simpler and faster to get the dance floor alive with the remix version of any popular Hindi song as compared to an English number.
And yet, I don't really despair. Even when I was growing up, it was all about Hindi film songs; AM radio, Binaca Geetmala on Radio Ceylon, Chhaya Geet on Doordarshan and cassette tapes. My first exposure to rock was when I was way into my late teens after I had joined junior college, starting with the Beatles, but quickly moving onto Tull, Led Zep, Sabbath, etc.
What Farhan Akhtar and Shankar Ehsaan Loy have done is to kick-start my kids' appreciation of rock as part of a routine Hindi music phenomenon. To me that's terrific, the language be damned.
The funny thing is that their favorite "Rock On" number, the one where they love to jump and scream through the entire song, has not been sung by Farhan, but is actually the sole Suraj Jugan number called "Zehreelay", a snake-idiom parody. If Farhan's numbers are more Deep Purplish, "Zehreelay" is actually Metallica or AC/DC. So go figure the kids' choice!
Posted by bhavinj at 04:33 AM | Comments (0)
January 24, 2009
Open-Air Haikus
"Simple soft leaves
And branches holding them
Hey, don't pluck them"
This is a haiku that my 8-year old daughter wrote, with help from her guide (thanks Anita), under a large tree, in one of the "Five Gardens".
When I was 8-years old, I didn’t even know what a haiku was, let alone trying to write one and understanding its rules and cadences. Is this the same generation I talked about last week that is supposed to be living in a digital world? Or are these a different bunch of kids who will embrace everything equally and turn out to be more holistic that today’s 20-somethings and 40-somethings?
The haiku writing was part of a multi-weekend art and writing course called “The Flying Carpet” that my twins have enrolled in. To make the exercise really interesting, the haiku writing and painting were conducted in one of the Five Gardens, in the open-air. Though activities like these are extremely common in the Western world, we rarely find our public spaces being used for such purposes; there aren't too many gardens around and those that are available are often just too crowded or dirty or sometimes just not open to the public.
The Five Gardens have no such restrictions. Nestled between Wadala, Matunga and Dadar, they provide much-needed greenery to the residents of these central suburbs and are an integral part of the daily lives of a large number of people, having something for everyone, throughout the day. To illustrate this, in haiku…
In the mornings,
"Walkers, show-offs
Seniors and their bowel-talk
Breathing the air"
As afternoon comes...
"Stragglers catnap
The rhythm of life ebbs
And lovers hide"
And in the evening...
"Children on slides
Balloons and cheap China toys
Horse rides in traffic"
The commonest activity is walking. Some walkers are serious, some are just out for the fresh air and some use the perimeter as a place to preen in and to be seen. The central garden is out of bounds, but the other four are open to all. One of the gardens has decaying and decrepit slides and swings, but is still very popular with the kids and goes full in the evenings. Outside this garden are the horse-rides and toy-vendors. The other three are used for a variety of activities including football, cricket, exercising, sleeping and sky gazing. The railings are popular too, used mainly by teenagers, who again are often just hanging around, doing nothing really in particular, chatting, smoking and sometimes eating from the food-carts, which in turn are quite popular at night for those out for a quick bite. Lovers find their small, little niches as well and though some well-meaning, “social-worker” types have often tried to curb their “menace”, inventive couples always find a way of coming back. Let’s face it; they are also an important part of the scenery.
The whole essence of this verdant circle of circles can be summed up in 14 syllables.
"Five green gardens
Circles of vibrant life
One lung, one thought"
Posted by bhavinj at 09:31 AM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2006
Flash from an SLR past
This was published in today's Mumbai Mirror.
Last Sunday, we suddenly realized that the one-year old, passport-sized photos of our fast-growing, six-years old twins, would not do for some visas that we were applying for. They already look different.
So, just before our biweekly Sunday Udipi ritual, we trooped to Foto Circle, which we have been frequenting for the last God-knows how many years and with a brief nod to the owners, mouthing the words “passport photos”, we promptly walked out through the rear entrance, onto the landing of the building that Foto Circle belongs to, and then climbed up to the first floor to their studio. Why didn’t we go directly up to the studio? I have no answer…I guess, just force of habit.
In today’s day and age of 5 and 6 mega pixel cameras and other fancy digital photography equipment, photo studios may seem anachronistic. But, as long as we need visas and as long as the visa people insist on 35mmx35mm or 45mmx35mm or 2”x2” or some such rubbish size, with a white background and blue shirt with the ears seen and shoulders straight, and teeth brushed with only Colgate and not Pepsodent, photo studios will live.
But there are photo studios and there are photo studios.
As long as I can remember, Ramesh Kandari (and I bothered to learn his name only this time), has been around shooting faces on his SLR. He exemplifies the saying “whatever you do, do it well”. Ramesh does not just click photos as if for a passport. He clicks photos to be treasured.
I have been to a few other studios and identity-photo shoots. You come in front of the camera, the photographer says “smile” and sometimes not even that, you hear a click and see the flash and you’re out.
Ramesh takes his own time. He first adjusts the bulbs and flash-stands for about a minute. He then fusses over your posture, making sure your shoulders are straight. Your chin has to be upright just so. He then looks through the view-finder to check whether everything is fine. Invariably, he is not satisfied and he makes a few more adjustments. Then comes the “please smile” followed by the click and flash. And just to be sure, he clicks once more.
He doesn’t have to do all this. But he takes pride in his work and that’s what counts. To the extent that he repeated the entire session with the kids, once again, when he found that one of the flash-bulbs had not been triggering properly.
This is the reason why, despite being personally reasonably photo-savvy, we’ve been going to him for other photographs as well. When the kids were six months old, we took them for a photo-shoot in their cribs. Then, when they were around three years old, and dressed to the hilt for a Navratri evening, we took them for a photo-session.
And this time, after the passport photos were done, we did another session to record my son’s first fallen left upper central incisor, which had been moving for the last six months, but finally came out, just four days ago, And since the tooth fairy had anyway left him a video-game in exchange for his tooth, we realized we needed to record for posterity his one-tooth-less grin as well. With a professional photo-shoot to boot.
And like the other photos shot by Ramesh, this one will also take pride of place in the photo-collage in the kids’ room.
Posted by bhavinj at 06:26 PM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2005
Ganpati Hopping
This is my new piece for Mumbai Mirror, that appeared today.
Saturday before last, we made a big mistake. We decided to take the kids out for Ganpati darshan, and unfortunately, we started first with the GSB Ganpati at the Cosmopolitan grounds. It was like starting an Agatha Christie book from the last page – every pandal we saw later that day seemed a little disappointing.
There were people everywhere, queuing up for long periods of time, just to be able to get a short glimpse of their favorite God. Ravi gave us a guided tour and some of the numbers he reeled out were mind-boggling - jewellery and gold valued at almost Rs 6 crores adorning the idol, more than 20 lakhs of people visiting in the five days that the Ganpati is kept for and more than 15,000 people fed every afternoon and evening. Maybe, if we ran our disaster management with the same logistics, the city would be far better off.
We then took a cab to the crossroad before Matunga Gymkhana and started our Ganpati hopping. Most of these were located in building compounds or on the roads and in a short 100 meter area upto the market, there must have been at least eight or so. The kids were excited with the first two or three, especially since they could see the idols from a close distance, but after that, Ganpati fatigue took over. In the end there are just so many museums, towers or monuments that you can visit when you are touring, just so many bars that you can crawl into at night and just so many chocolates that you can eat at one time.
Last Sunday, on Anant Chaturthi, we again took the kids out for Ganpati darshan, this time onto the main road. The entire place resembled a “mela” from an old 70s film with road-side stalls selling every thing from vada-pav to toys and even multi-colored bangles. Except for a small lane for cars, the entire stretch from Sion to Dadar was just filled with people. We clung to the kids hoping not to repeat a “lost and found” scene.
This is probably the only time when you see so many people at one time in Matunga. There were old ladies sitting on the road on their own plastic chairs, kids from the BJ Home sitting quietly in three rows on the kerbside, parents holding their kids up Ganpati style on their shoulders so that they could get a better view of the idols, bystanders breaking spontaneously into shuffle-dances when the idols came near, people scrambling behind the trucks trying to pick up some “prasad” and some people just circumambulating, trying not to miss any sight or a single idol.
Unlike a cricket match, this atmosphere can never be captured by live coverage on TV. Though it’s pretty hilarious when the commentators keep saying things like “See that Ganpati is going (or coming)” or “Now everyone is dancing” or “Now everyone is happy”, etc.
Finally after having had our fill of Ganpatis and the noise and the crowds, we went for dinner. At the table, seriously in thought, my son, whose current favorite superhero is Hanuman, turned to me. “Who is stronger, Bheem or Hanuman?”. I said, “Hanuman”. He continued, “Then who is stronger, Hanuman or Ganpati?”. I said, “Ganpati”. He slowly shook his head in disagreement and till we finished dinner, there was nothing I could say that would convince him. Can anyone tell for sure?
Posted by bhavinj at 05:39 PM | Comments (4)
August 06, 2005
Kids Find The Darndest Thing Funny...About "24" and Time Bomb 9/11
We are great fans of "24" and have already seen Seasons 1-3 on DVD, not wanting to wait till the show aired in India. In fact, my season 4 DVD set has just been posted by Amazon UK to my sister's place in London and I should probably get it by next week. "24" airs as 24 one-hour episodes where the action unfolds in real-time. It is a little difficult to explain the show...many people think it is a reality show, which it isn't...but one viewing of one episode is enough to make the concept understandable. "24" is basically a thriller and chronicles the story of a single day of importance (averting the assassination of the President, preventing a nuclear bomb exploding over LAD, etc) and stars Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer. The scripting and filming are terrific. I think AXN India has been airing "24" episodes, but at weird hours at night.
Zee has just started airing a show called Time Bomb 9/11, which is a complete rip-off of "24". Even the music that plays during the display of the time and the multi-frame shots just before the commerical breaks have been copied. Apparently Fox has sued Zee TV over this, though the show continues to air.
I saw 10 minutes of one episode on Monday and I was describing to my wife and niece, a scene that I had found particularly funny. This is how I described the scene to them. "There are two wan, pale-faced whites, probably Brits, playing a secret agent and the President of the United States, respectively. The agent draws up to the White House, in a stretch limo and goes to meet the President in his office. He enters saying "Mr. President, Mr. President, congratulations. You will be pleased to know that Osama has been killed." The President gets up and shakes the agent's hands saying "Wow! Thank you, thank you."" As I finished saying this, the twins (who I had not noticed, but were listening to me rapturously) burst out laughing. It must have been the way that I described the scene, because it is unlikely that they were laughing at the ludicrousness of the scene itself, but nevertheless they found it so funny, that they have made me narrate this "joke" at least five times in the last two days. Moreover, they have also started narrating the incident in their own way to others in the house.
Go figure!
Posted by bhavinj at 06:23 PM | Comments (0)
