Chez Moi

I reached that monumental mark yesterday - chalked up three decades of living. So I can no longer call myself a “girl”, no matter how inappropriate it was till now. But, as certain laydees, who are certainly rocking in their 30’s and 50’s attest, life begins NOW. So am hopeful of things to come. 

But not as far as my son is concerned. Left to him, I might as well go on the national OAP register. 

Anyhoo, the budday yesterday ROCKED. Totally! Hubby started things off with a bang on Friday, the “star” budday by giving me this amazing pearl set - gorgeous chain coupled with drop earrings. Celebration started properly by mid-Saturday, with a trip to the cinema to see Jaane Tu ya Jaane Na. We both had been real keen to see this flick, ever since the music charmed us. Plus, with the early birds who had been humming away since catching it on the first week egging us on, we simply could not put it off anymore. 

Happily, the movie did not disappoint. I actually want to see it again. The only part I did not like was the character of that Sushant character. Why did they have to make him so easy for everyone to dislike and get rid of? Wouldn’t it have been better had he been a regular, decent soul and despite that, Aditi loved Jai best cos that’s the way it should be? (Any of the Bollywood director types looking for a consultant - well, your search stops here!)

Sunday dawned bright and sunny - a marvellous day in London, which is a glorious thing in itself. For once, we left home quiet early so we could have a sensible day out. Started off with a spin on the London Eye. As P had only seen it from far, he was pretty excited. He enjoyed the Eye thoroughly. We had fantastic views of the city, spreading as far as the eye could see. A loud American was pointing out various landmarks (quite wrongly!) to his awestruck family. I wished he’d either shut up or pipe down. Of course he did neither! 

After that, we let P loose on the park where he proceeded to try all sorts of balancing tricks on the rope bridge and climbed up the rope column - thrice - before deciding enough’s enough. 

Next stop - BFI IMAX. 

As IMAX were showing P’s current favourite flick, Kung Fu Panda, there was no escaping this. After the miniscule multiplex screens of today, the 20 m X 26 m IMAX screen seemed MEGA! We were all astounded at the size of it and the sound quality was literally mind blowing. So much so I thought one member of the family would have big problems with it. The Bun proceeded to rock and roll through out the movie, making for some exceedingly uncomfortable moments. 

Once that part of the day was finished, we went in search of Ping Pong, a Chinese dim sum restaurant. The review said grub was good while the same cannot be said for the service. They were spot on. The location was brilliant. We got outside seats as it stank too much of fish inside and I couldn’t bear it. But flagging down the wait staff was an art we sucked at and most of the time was spent in waving furiously. I was reminded of Bill Bryson’s pithy remark: “… you cannot make a waiter see you unless he is good and ready..” 

Reared as we are on the Saravana Bhavan School of Hospitality, the service didn’t bother us much. Especially when the food they brought in was like pure morsels of heaven! The dim sums are served in individual wooden steamer baskets and each one contains three dumplings. Though our waitress suggested we order about three baskets each, we displayed rare (and in this case, misplaced!) caution and ordered one each. 

Presently, the farcical part of the routine started. There we were, with some amazing smelling, glistening morsels of food waiting for us and we were armed with two fiddly sticks. It didn’t help matters any when the brat mastered eating with chopsticks like he had been doing it all his life and polished off his dumplings with “YUM YUM” noises. Sighing, we stabbed, poked, prodded and generally mutilated our dumplings into submission. But man, was it worth it or what? 

The next couple of hours were spent in trying to attract the wait staff’s attention, ordering more portions and slowly coming to grips with the chop sticks. By the time we downed tools, we were absolutely sated. Three portions of dumplings, followed by a miniscule portion of yummy mango pudding, watered down by a strawberry and lemon cordial (for me- while hubby had jasmine tea and the brat OJ) constituted my budday meal. I was one happy bunny!! 

Needless to say, that was the best budday ever - if this is a taste of things to come, then bring ‘em on! 

I’m talking about Jaane tu ya Jaane na songs, of course. Thanks to MM, who’s song of the day is the Aditi number, I have been listening to the movie’s songs pretty much all day. But  my fave is Rashid Ali’s rendition of Kahin To Hogi Ho. Whilst I have always loved the head bangers, thumping beats that make my heart race up, the mellow numbers that sound like something else when piped into your ear drums via tiny speakers in the dead of the night have a special place in my fickle heart.

Now I cannot get the lyrics of this song out of my head! Do I want to? Not really?! Way to go, ARR!

You cannot browse the desi cyberspace these days without tripping over Abhishek B and Ash R related articles. If it isn’t one thing, it is ten other gooey things. If I thought I had seen all sorts of rubbish related to these two, then I had another think coming double quick.

Two things caught my eye that made me realise that this nonsense has just started and the closer we get to their actual wedding day, more number of inanities will crop up. So, it is time we all developed a healthy dose of immunity to this ‘Abhiwarya’ phenomenon lest we get whacked senseless by it. And to get our grey cells to start their work of insulating our brains against further doses of this rubbish, here’s two tidbits guaranteed to kick start the production of immunity granting matter.

I didn’t actually travel far to get the two news items that grabbed my throat. Just a short walk upto sify.com did it. First one proved to me that something has happened to the happy Oirish lot across the pond. Why? They have just gone and issued an invitation to Ash & Abhi to make the lovely island their choice of destination for their honeymoon. They could travel to Ireland for free, thanks to the lovely Irish taxpayers and stay at Ashford Castle, where the likes of George V, Ronald Reagan, Fred Astaire have stayed. Impressive!

Oh, I lie - the Irish proved to be au fait with desi sanskriti and sent the invitation to the Big B, as it should be done.

Next up is that Gurinder Chaddha (of Bend It Like Beckham fame) is pregnant with twins, who are expected to put in an appearance in July. Now that isn’t the news - she is planning to name her babies after Ash & Abhi, if she ends up having a boy and a girl.

Good grief! Does this mean that from now on, we can expect mums-to-be to go a little loco and name their kids after these two as well? Whatever next?

My biggest question is: why? Why are we getting so hysterical, so caught up in this romance? Who gives a shit if Ash is going to become the Bachchan bahu? Don’t we all have other important things to do?

The next one that decides to name her twins after this way too famous couple will get beaned on the head with Maneka Gandhi’s Book of Hindu Names.

A bunch of has-beens trying to give their sorry careers a kick up its backside so they can give it a much needed boost if they were to be rescued from oblivion - this is the state of the inmates (so they seem to me!) that take part in reality shows like ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Here!’ and its evil twin ‘Celebrity Big Brother’. Most times, you never recognise any of the so-called celebs, save for the presenters and ratings generally plummet after the opening night. [Aside: Channel 4 must have paid the people bucketloads of money to stand outside the BB house and scream their guts out - I really cannot imagine any other way by which so many honest folks could be persuaded to stand in the cold in Herefordshire day and night and exhibit their lung capacity.]

This year is no exception - two former so-called singers from two bands best forgotten, an ageing filmmaker no one knows, a cheat beauty who slept with one of the judges to win the Miss Great Britain crown and couple of Americans were all part of the lineup - joining them soon enough was ‘Big Brother’s First Family’ (as host Davina McCall pronounced them!) - former regular show inmate, loudmouth Jade Goody, her mouthy boyfriend and lesbian mum. In order to spice things up, they threw in our Shilpa Shetty in. In the beginning, it was said that she would be urged to flirt with the male inmates and be involved in a romantic situation. When fewer and fewer people turned in, they decided to ditch the softy-softy approach and pull in the ratings by pitting the catty Danielle, intelligently-challenged Jade and looking-for-an-excuse-to-release-a-single Jo O’Mara against la Shetty. Shetty was coming across as this beautiful, composed character and what more could incense a trio of thickos than that?

So they have been goading her, calling her names, Danielle showing her knowledge of geography by commenting something about China and India and ‘I am so dumb I can’t even spell my own name’ Jade carrying on in her trademark style. Their biggest advantage is that to a non-English person, they are virtually ununderstandable - they could be prattling in Yiddish, for all Shilpa knows, so strong is their accent. Maybe that’s why la Shetty has taken to simply bawling her eyes out, waving the white flag at every opportunity and sobbing on Cleo’s shoulders. But she showed everyone that underneath it all, she has some sharp claws when she shut Jade up with a well-aimed ‘Your only claim to fame is this show. What does that say?’

This issue is seriously getting out of hand, with House of Commons entering the picture for some strange reason. Even Gordon Brown, gallivanting about in India, has commented on this ,Third world debt, greenhouse effect, inter-country relations, Iraq etc, aside. The only sane voice in the middle of all the brouhaha seems to be Shilpa’s mum, who’s reported to have said, “I hope that she will be able to handle the situation. It is a game and there is a life beyond that. I understand her emotions but I really hope that she is not going to get too affected by this treatment that is being meted out to her.” Well said, mum!

The only ones to come out of this laughing is Channel 4. From the brink of disaster, by means of some canny tactics, they’ve made their show the talk of the town - sponsors threatening to pull out, Ofcom’s investigation, hue & cry about racism all translates into ratings; ratings that are slowly going through the roof. Welcome to the new era of ‘anything goes’ - where ratings is the only thing that matters and target ratings would be achieved by hook or by crook.

It is an institution in Britain (well, the housemates are more like inmates, anyway!) – every summer, it is customary to eavesdrop on twelve of the most moronic people you can find in the country, cooped up inside a swanky house, who have nothing more interesting to say other than “fuck” and “shite” and other assorted easy enough words. Then, a few years back, Channel 4 decided to make more money out of such a wonderful concept and came up with the Celebrity Big Brother.

Now, Celebrity Big Brother is like the last chance saloon for the so-called celebs before they hit Obscureville. Winners usually end up with a recording contract, millions of pounds and a couple of apes, ivories and peacocks thrown in for good measure.

Why am I prattling utter nonsense about Big Brother, here, in DC world? Well, ‘cos ladies and gentlemen, one of the celebs in this years show is none other than our very own Shilpa Shetty! When she sashayed down the red carpet, clad in a pink and green saree, looking every inch a glam Bollywood star, I almost fell off the sofa! What the hell was she doing here?

In her intro bit, she wondered how she was going to carry on minus her entourage; my question is: girl, have you got any idea what you have let yourself in for? The only thing worse than a BB house is the I’m a Celeb jungle, where ‘having grub’ takes on a new meaning. Every day, for the remaining three weeks, la Shetty would be watched, her actions judged and any gaffs splashed all over the media. Living with a geriatric movie maker, a wannabe punk rock star with Attitude, a disgraced model, a catty newspaper journalist, couple of former pop stars and a startled looking Jackson – no, not Michael, his brother Jermaine.

Now this bloke, Jermaine, he sure looks like he’s going to provide us with hour after hour of fun. Being the first one to enter the house, he had the unique opportunity to size up every one as they came in and you could see, as more and more nervous folks joined him, more and more bewildered he got. Being American, he didn’t have a clue who any of them was but looked so sure that they all knew him and was so surprised when one celeb went ‘And who are you?’ The looks on his and Ken Russell’s faces as Shilpa Shetty sashayed into the room were absolutely priceless!
And the glazed look on her face, as she was sat on a couch, watching all these people was like she was asking herself what the hell she has let herself in for. Well, the only thing she hopes for, apparently, is to keep her self-respect and dignity.

Good luck, girl – you’re gonna need it!