india on big screen: a movie review

a few hours ago i watched slumdog millionare.

It is like a greek tragedy: the story is known. an indian boy who lived in the slums wins at who wants to be a millionaire. but as my language teachers repeat like an ancient magic formula, its not what you write but how you do it, the suspense, the empathy, the "leserlenkung". slumdog millionaire fulfills this basic sucess formula. take a story that can be told in a sentence and make it somehting special.

I remember a few scenes where i turned to my accompaniment in horror, disgust, i just couldnt see it, didnt dare to see what i knew was coming: misery, torture, pain hurt. the movie has a strong undertone of what reality is like for "poor" people or people that arent as priviledges as we are. it surely contains all the above: loosing loved ones, hunger, interrogation, child labour, dirt. ...ouch.but its good that an entertainment movie talks about this.
of course slumdog millionainre is not the first, blood diamond, hotel ruanda, seven years in tibet etc, etc,etc. but for me slumdog millionaire has a take home message. i just have to work out what it means for me, but ill have the night to sleep over it.

then theres the touching scenes. the other part of the movie; a love story worthy of a huge bollywood export hit, and truely touching scenes.
one of the ones that sticks out goes somethign like this:, the protagonists favourite movie star is coming to his slum. of course like all the others he wants to go see him, but hes been locked up in the bathroom...shitplace or whatever the propper term is, by his older brother for taking too much time. he sruggles to get out but cant. what does he do? hes faced with the decision, shit and moviestar, or no shit and no moviestar. he takes the shit.

all is blended in with some great pictures of a very different place from here, the typical head nod which i couldnt destinuish fron a no until i realised it actually meant yes, the atmosphere of violence, dirt, tension comes across. so if you havent already, this is a movie well worth spending half your weekly pocket money on.

picture from http://dansemacabre.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/slumdog-millionaire-poster-full-1.jpg

avalanche

whilst pragathi over there was charming india (or at least bangalore) with her amazing english accent, I was out of the country once again- skiing with my mum in austria, in a pretty touristy place called ischgl.

driving there through a winding mountain road that sllthered its way through the valleys of giants, Ischgl was the second to last village before the high alpine road, which was not open due to snow.

the weather was wonderful. the right moutainside had no snow at all, at least not at 1300m (but surely above 1600m+). the left mountainside which was the one we skiied on, was still well covered in the white fluff.

you know that I dont especially like snow. it wet and sticks to you, is freezing cold and melts to a mush in your boots, down your back (if some ideot dared to do that) and well basically everywhere it gets. no usually snow really is not cool. but my attitude changes once im on the two long planks called skis. I all the sudden adore snow, find it the best possible invention ever and curse the spots its melted away from.

Ischgl was a completely touristy place: 4 star hotels basically made out the entire village. après ski bars lined all roads etc etc. cheese and getting money everywhere. but the pists for skiing were wonderful. great snow, nice and wide "highways" where you really could get nice speed,sun, and a big area which went over at least 5 valleys.

needless to say i enjoyed it, despite my slight sunburn on my forehead which came from not using any sunscreen...bad idea. travelling with mum is still great, (and cheap for me) and shes a plesant companion(most of the time;). plus shes also a pretty good skiier and has a car. two big bonus points. and no i dind not get covered in an avalanche. but so many had come down in the valley this winter that they were inevitable to notice-i even climed on one (without skiis).

on air!!!!!!!!!!!!

it was almost a dream..so exciting and pretty cool. it was just like any other day, got up early, walked around in a trance till my glass of bournvita (indian choco drink) jolted me to my senses, went to my door, shut the door and started studying.

i put on the radio, got fed up of why boron was a very inmportant element (some serious bore on stuff). so i sent radio 1 a message saying i wanted this song and that dedicated to this and that..and then i sent answers to a question on one of the only movies i have seen for a long time. hardly was i expecting it and then she called ---the RJ FROM RADIO 1!!!!!!!How COOOOL---!!!!

But somehow only to be a tad disappointed. She puts me on air for a show called Dosti Fatafat (roughly translated to FAst Friendship or something on those lines). basically a girl (or guy) asks a whacky question and the guys try to impress and then she exchanges phone numbers and you can become friends.. Well, the thing was she kinda called me at the wrong time when i was about to go and eat lunch. biut how could i refuse. it was the CHANCE...so we had a conversation,..sort of interesting. but i really couldn't scream or jump up and down with excitement cos my mom was just outside wondering how long i would be on the phone. so the disappointing thing was that i didn't sound all that excited (actually mayb even a little morose). so teh question of the day was

If you were to compare a mother-in-law(saas) and daughter-in-law(bahu) to a vegetable which ones would it be?

Point no 1 she gave me the topic
POint no 2 she gave me the question and askes me to ask it
Point no 3 if she had given me some time, i could have come up with an original question, mayb not quite as good but still..
Point no 4 it felt BOGUS!!!!!!!!!

anyways some guy called teja came on air and compared saas to potato and bahu to beetroot. they are good when cooked seperately but a disaster when mixed. i think the guy had a pretty good imagination (i hope the RJ didn't tell him t tell that..i don't think so). so we came on air again and talked again. and that was it. no contact with that guy again. no phone no. exchanged as promised on air (not that i've the time 4 tat)... but after all i came on air. AWWWWESome..(now i actually respect an RJs job, it's pretty difficult to handle people like me on air. you did a good job pavithra)


so that was one differnt thing that happened in my monotonous life.Since im learning physics right now, id like to add...

my life (right now) is like a monochromatic light, while yours julia is the visible spectrum...

apart from this my life is a constant rush, rush to the auto stand, rush to classes, rush to catch the bus, rush to college, rush to the phone, and sorry have to rush again..mums calling..!!!

pragathi.

sushi with lassi and hummus

I have gone to ISS for a very long time. If anybody knows what ISs stands for or what it should stand for then its me: commitment, diversity and openmindedness. these should be the true values of ISS society.

Sadly enough some recent people at the top of things messed this special spirit up a bit, but its slowly resurfacing. and even it the big guys do bullshit, there are always plenty of parents, kids and teachers willing to fight for their right to put in energy to make ISS life more enriching.

one very special event is the multicultural evening. In the past years it always was a performance paired with some food at the end of it. this year both the events got split up, and today was the food part. I helped in between piano classes with setting up, an d later of course with eating :) "julia you are a stomach!" was one of Blandine's remarks a couple of days ago. o:) yes I do eat a lot but its not that bad. I just adore food. especially indian food nad i havent had that in some time. so of course i raided the indian table as soon as i got there. I had mango lassi, and the infamous rice that had kept me alive, as well as the bread and chickpeas and samosas...it was all soooooo good. but i also had sushi, thai, hummus, chocolate "kisses", and at the end, a shotglass of red whine. and of course a handfull of henna. no multicultural evening without that.

I always love these events, you really notice whats in such a school like ours. a few parents bringing in some dish, setting up some tables and putting effort in decorations, and voila! a great evening, and one of the yearly recurring events i will always remember as being part of ISS.

season ends

last saturday was the last of the series of 5 tournaments, which we had worked out buts off for- well at least the fat off our buts.
It was a great tournment. apart form the fact that the team is pissed off at some few undisciplined individuals that think they can do everything and anything but train, and that come drunk to the tournaments, and despte the fact my shoe opened in the first round, it was all good. we got the expected 4ht place, and an awesome party with the entire league afterwards in a weird club in bietigheim. all in all i had 3 hours of sleep (and am still trying to get enough rest into my system: not working well) with the 3 hours sleep on a tiny shared mattrace in our club home. but it was so worth it.

on the donwside, now the seasons over what will i do with my weekends???
ill think of somehting...

this and that

Its 2 am in the morning. im sitting in front of my laptop in a fancy dress with smokey eye makeup and my hair gathered up in a bun and decided i should finally write again, about recent events. lets start with the neares first and lets see how far i get. so yesterday/today (tomorrow starts after you have slept) I went to a ball. I had the usual trainign today. we did some rumba improv, to get the "feel" and become more self confident and more present, so that we loose to be afraid of doing things becuase they might possibly looks stupid, learn to touch the partner and of course to be sexy. after the training i was about to go t stuttgart to have some food wiht jürgen, when micha, a close friend of the formation puled his car to the sde of the road we were alking on and asked the simple question: feel like some food? so we ended up having asian (thai ad chinese) in ludwigsburg.
Micha often plans his evenign with people from the formation. dance and movie evenings are frequent. so as I had nothing planned i enquired his possible occupations. he stammered somehting about drinking in stuttgat of a movie and alcohl at his place, so i told him id think abt it, apart from needing to explain it to my parents.
2 hours later the call: " what are ur evening plans?" "ermmmm...nothing yet?" "im going to a ball. I have one ticket, care to come?" "hell yeah!"
so i ended up at a ball with micha, his mom and some friends of his mom. the cool things about balls are that age deosnt matter. you can really mix under 20 and over 60 and its ok. even if you dance a rated R version of rumba, its ok. yeah and thats what we did. we used some formation techniques we had practised earier to do some improv. very nice! dancing is somewhat like acting. you are yourself but at the smae time oyou dive int a bigger better show version of yourself. even though you normally are good friends with your dancepartner, and only that, you all the sudden flirt like hell, nad go back to normal after the music has stopped. i think it belongs to it, to play wiht partner, yourself and your movements and the possible audience.

so what else have i been up to since my las communication?
I started single dancing wth jürgen. or at least tired it out.lets see how that will work out. its lots of fun even though i havent dacned enough with him yet to feel secure.
I visited jürgen in his "home" town heidelberg. a beautiful place which is serious competition to london for the colest place to study in.
I did a night shift with my mum, being in the OP until 1 am, seeing 3 operations and then sleep.
and last but not least i did another henna tattoo on my hand yesterday. I was in a fight with m paresnts and needed occupation to distract me, so henna was what came to my mind. so now half of my left plam is decorated with a darkbrown line design. I got it off the internet very pretty.

but now i need to go to sleep. its 0222 already and i have training tomorrow. hence good night.

Fasching

it is february, about a month before easter. so whats happening in the sleepy towns of germany? right the "narren are los". the annoying neverentding trarrii trarraaaaa which can only be endred in at least a half drunk state, the costumes, the food, the typical dancing, the parades, all that has started again.

Fasching is different to halloween. the costume are much nicer. you dont have to be something evil or nasty, you can go as anything, an indian, a belly dancer, a prisoner, an astronaut, a kangaroo, etc. i share a love-hate for it. I adore getting dressed up, eating berliner or "fastnachtsküchle" and i dont mind a bit of alcohol either, on the other hand it does get on your nerves: the music is worse than at the cheesiest mallorca ballermann, or après-skiing party in austria. and the perpetual tv parades which get bradcasted instead of the usual rubbish istn't much better.

now why am i writing this? yesterday I went to one of these fasching parties. well not really, we had a tournament (4th place) which i danced and afterwards we went to our club to shower and celebrate the bday of two people of our formation.
It was the wildest shower ever. three showers and at least 7-9 people at a time, plus sect, plus shower "colour" plus loud house music. it was fun. then we all got dressed up-i was a gene in a bottle, with sparkly blue loosehanging pants, and a rather short ans small oriental looking top. but there was an arabian oil "scheich", an indian, a prostitute, several playboy bunnies in different montures, indiana jones, a tourist, a bumble bee, the flintstones, a football player, an astronaut, an persian princess, a prisoner, and surely lots more which i cannot remember. anyhow the alcohol was pouring. I wasnt drunk, but certainly a bit tipsy, however in compared to the majority of both the b and c formation, that was still sober. then, we danced a "durchgang" of our programme, b and c mixed. te b formation dacned the programme 3 years ago, a lot more difficult, so there were some couples doing extra continuals, roundabouts, arms and lankenaus, then there were those that moved up from c to b last year, which had the landeslige programme, and then there were a couple of us that have the current version programmed into our muscle cells. It was chaotic, nobody really go the entire thing toether; dacing a few passages, leaving out some others, doing arms or not doing them, and 3 versions of the thing. the moral is: my dance partner dances better drunk than the one i danced with yesterday ;).
then there was more alcohol, some more dancing, some pizza and other food. at around 8 pm, i started making sure my fave dance partner stops the acohol tap that was dripping into his stomach- he was drunk as hell-but he actually listenend! how nice.
then at 2300 my parents picked me up :( involuntarily I again was one of the first to go. as always. yippie yippe yeay, almost 18 and still not trusted out late. but it was a really good day, a fun tournament, an even more fun party, which i guess the theme of fashing made even more crazy than it would have been otherwise.