Oops! I did it again!

I know, I know! I've done it again! Almost a month without a post. I am sorry (mostly to myself and to the six people who read my blog!). So, my post this time is a tag I got from Nags. Here are the rules:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into any mosaic maker.

Questions:

1. What is your first name? Vaishali
2. What is your favorite food? Paneer
3. What high school did you go to? St. Michael's Convent
4. What is your favorite color? Brown
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Edward Norton (sigh. sigh. double sigh)
6. Favorite drink? Martini
7. Dream vacation? Tuscany
8. Favorite dessert? Gulabjamun
9. What you want to be when you grow up? A lawyer (for what age group was this tag made? 'When you grow up' indeed!!!)
10. What do you love most in life? Books 
11. One Word to describe you. Energetic (couldn't risk anything else)
12. Your flickr name. NS the Menace (err... yeah)

Book Review

The Memory Keeper's Daughter

As promised, this is the book review. 

Written by Kim Edwards, this book is mainly about choices that are very human but that take over life like a drop of ink in water. 

Edwards gleefully picks up fistfuls of stigma and prejudices and scatters them in the winds of this heart-breaking story. When I say heart-breaking, I mean it. I have always felt that it is easy to make your readers cry. I will not take names but this is probably why I did not like some best-seller books. It is difficult to make readers laugh (PGW) and it is difficult to make them think. This book makes you think. It makes you want to see your life and choices differently. 

Let's start with an excerpt [Please don't read it if you are drunk (which means S can never read it!) or if you are in a flippant mood. Read it in a solemn mood and you will know what I mean]. 

Her voice, high and clear, moved through the leaves, through the sunlight. It splashed onto the gravel, the grass. He imagined the notes falling into the air like stones into water, rippling the invisible surface of the world. Waves of sound, waves of light: his father had tried to pin everything down, but the world was fluid and could not be contained. 

Leaves lifted; sunlight swam. The words of this old hymn came back to him, and Paul picked up the harmony. Phoebe did not seem to notice. She sang on, accepting his voice as she might the wind. Their singing merged, and the music was inside him, a humming in his flesh, and it was outside, too, her voice a twin to his own. 

I'll not take up much of your time. I'll highlight the highlights. :)

Snapshot: The year is 1964. On a windy, snowy storm of a night, Dr. David Henry is forced to deliver his own twins, a girl and a boy. The boy, he sees, is fine. But in the girl, he instantly recognizes Down's syndrome. His own childhood saddled with the sorrow of a terminal sister, he makes an irreversible decision and asks his nurse the take the baby to a home.  

1) Language: 

Probably the first thing you'd have noticed anyway is the fluid imagery that Edwards uses. Everything is poetic. The dappling of light, the flowing of water, the running of blood in veins. How often do you see comparisons between a tulip petal and the delicate veins of an eyelid? Page after page takes you to mundane everyday happenings but keeps you absorbed with every minute detail. Like the colors on the street, the scraps of conversations, and the play of shadows. You live everything the main characters go through. 

2) Narration:

This is all I have to say about the narration: The jacket of every book nowadays has the words 'But when the killer starts targeting her friends and associates, she can't help but get deeper and deeper into the mystery.' The 'engross-factor' of your book is directly proportional to the number of murders/deaths in your book. Compare it with the narration in this book, where the heroine removing a wasp's nest is given 3 pages of attention, complete with details. But a death is not actually depicted. Just the sorrow.....

I could probably go on and on. But you'd have got the point at around my sixth sentence in this post :)

Let me just end by saying this. You know how they say that some books really stay with you long after you've read them? This one's still staying with me and my landlord is not gonna like it.... :)

Official site for 'The Memory Keeper's Daughter'

If you read it, please comment. 

Weekends....

Hello!

See. I did three notable things last weekend: 

1) I finished reading 'book.' Units: one.

2) I saw 'movie.' Units: two.

3) I got my hair straightened ('Bio-straightened' as Mayo puts it) 

Seeing as the third one has to do with my appearance, this post will be dedicated to my hair appointment (I'll review the book and movies in subsequent posts.)

For a while now, I've been wondering whether to straighten my hair or not.  [Hey! For a woman, it's an important decision, alright?] There were people who told me 'Your hair will look like straw' (thank you, Maya and Varsha) or 'If you straighten your hair, I will tie you up in the straightened hair and present you to the Spartans on a spear.' There were also people who told me I'll look tolerable. So there was only one way to find out, wasn't there? * (The asterisk means there is a footnote)

So, there I was. At the parlor at around 4 p.m. on Sunday. There was no one else there, and there were two women who looked like they'd rather be frolicking on the beaches of Puerto Rico. I told the woman what I want, I did not quite take to the conspiring look she gave her companion.

Anyway, I tried to look like 'I've done this a zillion times before. I know how it goes.' But I guess they kinda understood when I asked in the middle of the procedure 'Can I go and get some coffee?' and they said 'Can you please NOT move your head?' On the whole, I think I handled the whole '4 hour hair-pulling, combing, yanking, sizzling (at some points)' session quite well. Here is a brief 'summary' of what I did (mind you, not they) at the various stages of the procedure. You will know why I am a delight to style. 

1) Stage 1 (Hair wash): I went to sleep. 

2) Stage 2 (Hair straightening using an electric straightener): I kept shrinking away from it. So my roots are not what you would call ramrod straight.

3) Stage 3 (Hair straightening using strips of plastic with chemical on it): This took an hour. To while my time, I 'organized' a 'race' between the woman working on the right side of my head against the woman on the left. The woman on the left won, but the woman on the right did not appreciate my comments like 'Buck up!' or 'You can do it!' ** (see footnote. Did I not tell you what these star thingies meant?!) 

4) Stage 4 (40 min wait): I ignored the glares from 'woman on the right' and instead focused on talking to S who I insisted on inviting to the parlor :D. He thought I was joking. So did the women actually, come to think of it...Hmmm...

5) Stage 5 (Hair wash YAY!): Refer to 'Stage 1' above.

6) Stage 6 (Dumping of some other chemical on head accompanied by vigorous brushing of hair): See I thought Stage 5 was the last. So I was taken aback and started accusing 'woman on the right' of making up extra stages. [errrr..]

7) Stage 7 (15 min wait): I sulked.

8) Stage 8 (Hair wash and set): The triumph of the... of the... well, of the me!

With all of it behind me, I look sexy! (So what if it is just me who thinks so?) When I come out of the bath now, I can tilt my head and towel my hair like Hindi film heroines. And NOT look like a bristling porcupine in the process. 

So, you let me know what you think of my new look. OK? And coming up in the next episode.... Book review. :D

Footnotes:

* [ This is also how you will find the problems of your life. there will be people who tell you this is right, and others who tell you it is not. When it comes to you, you will have to try it and see for yourself. No other way. Kind of like face foundation ... or lingerie. Don't waste your life thinking whether or not a bikini will suit you. ]

** Around this time, I also asked for the coffee. :D

I love.....

• the way you laugh - like a child...wide grin, head cocked to one side.
• the way you twist your nose and sniff midway in your endless chatter
• the way you can go on and on and on about tsunami, investments, gadgets, and housing plans, and interest rates.. (how very interesting!..)
• the small mark on your right cheek
• the way you always hold my hand while crossing the road 
• the way your face slopes into a cleft chin.....
• the way you get dizzy after eating lots of sweetmeats, but you'll still eat...
• the way you get high after just one drink
• your hands
• the fact that you hate reading books, but you'll wait patiently while I read a book cover to cover.
• that you are as crazy about movies as I am
• that if I forget to give the old lady at the street-corner a coin, you will.
• the way you frown angrily when I put my head/hands out of a running cab to wave
• the way you are conscious of your nose (it's NOT big!) 
• the way you smile at me
• the way you dance (so awkward, so very cute)
• the way you take me to the temple on my birthday
• the way you make up excuses for my excessive shopping when I start feeling guilty, e.g., 'It's OK. This is the first shopping spree this month...' or 'It's OK. We'll not eat anything for the rest of the month...' :)
• the way you love my family
• the way you love me.....

Monday blues...

Hello Monday! :)

Back in office after the eventful (NOT!) weekend. I did see a movie though - Jaane tu ya jaane na. Hindi - romance/comedy. I think you should know this about me (if you don't already, you should talk to me more.... really!) - I am a huge movie buff. Movies for me is an experience. Not for me your dvds/cds/online versions (you pirates!). I love going to the theater and watching it with real people around me. People who watch movies at home, or wait for it to 'premier' on television, are escapists. Me? I need the challenge of making it to the movie on time (hey, it's difficult! ok?), I need to see the opening credits rolling over my head, feel every thump of the music (digital surround sound, hurray), I need the intermission to contemplate on how the movie is 'so far', I need the popcorn, the coffee/pepsi, I need to smile at the couple with the cute baby, need to observe people, note their reactions to the movie, have a 'SRK rocks, Aamir sucks' kinda conversation. 

So, here's my take on 'Jaane tu ya jaane na.' - youthful, breezy, and real. 

The story is nothing new. Haven't we seen this before? Two friends - inseparable.. they fight, they make up, they laugh, they cry. The whole world, including all the cats and mice in it, know they are perfect each other except the protagonists themselves. And we have the indispensable other girlfriend, other boyfriend (for symmetry), the 'omg, i love her/him moment' and the ubiquitous 'airport scene' in the end. (OMG, guess what the airports should ACTUALLY place tax on?.. the next gudda-guddi in love who disrupt the procedures)

Anyway, I liked the movie because of the way the director has handled it. He didn't have much to work with, but he did well with what he had. Here's what to watch out for: 

• Imran Khan and Genelia - The chemistry crackles. QSQT revisited (almost). Genelia is a little measured with the diction but she manages to pack a punch. Imran Khan is cute (does he shave yet?) and thankfully, does NOT shamelessly imitate Aamir Khan. He actually does a very restrained and original job. Observe especially his interactions with his mother, Ratna Pathak Shah and with Genelia of course.
• The talking Ranjod ke Rathod portrait (Naseeruddin Shah)
• Jai has just neglected to attend Aditi's birthday in favor of going to his girlfriend's house. He comes to wish her and meets her brother instead. The story could have segued into a 'ah! now you come' lecture. But the director instead makes the hero and brother run around after a tiny mouse. 
• The treatment of heavy-duty stuff. For example, when Jai visits his girlfriend's house and senses the tension between her parents. His expressions are priceless. 
  
• The songs, especially 'Kahin tho hogi'. You have to listen to it a couple of times to like it. But then, all AR Rahman songs are like that. This one's a gem and succeeds in building a melancholy imagery of unreachable love.

Also, here's the official review of the movie. My rating is 'Go watch it!'

I miss.....

What I am missing RIGHT NOW (if you are in this list, and you see your name, AND you don't call me, you will bite your tongue today) 

•  someone who is very very far away (in miles) but very close (to my heart). She talks non stop but talks right to your heart. Talk of the town, queen of hearts... I am sure she is making 'ripples' where she is.
  
•  someone who 'deserted' my ilk (that's the single/unmarried ilk btw) very recently. I feel I have no sense of direction without her. Plus she does not come online (hmphh)
  
•  OK. This someone is very astute. I miss her barbs and comments. I love her for her '6 min wedding ceremony.' (Why was I counting? hmmm). I like to say she 'ripped the bandaid off' very quickly :). But I do miss her... 
  
• I miss my father. He is miles away too. It is weird. I know I am like him. I recognize his likeness in the way I behave. I believe I understand him more as I understand myself more. 
  
• I miss bicycles
  
• I miss Physics
  
• I miss having crushes. I do. I do.  :D
  
• I miss my brown jacket. (BTW, if my 'brown jacket' is reading this, I'd really really appreciate a call)
  
• I miss my 'brother when he was 4.' (He is now 19!)
  
• I miss a friend from my childhood. Ringlets of curly hair (why did you straighten them?!)  framing her face. Dimples.... (Hey, isn't there a nursery rhyme describing you?). She's a great fan of Aishwarya Rai (Why, why, why?!)
  
• I miss going to my dad's office and gawking at the computer
  
• I miss NOT having a cellphone (cheee)
  
• And how can you miss someone when they are right beside you? (How how how?!) :(

<3 

:)

This is my first post to this blog. I hope to write more often and promise to keep it updated.