Chak de India: Five stars!

This past weekend DH, Thumki and I went for Chak de India with trepidation, our last three attempts to watch a movie with baby in public have been frustrating, with thumki screaming to go from the first frame onwards..but this movie, her first Hindi fillum in true desi style she enjoyed, she started dancing in my lap like a good Indian baby from the start, the pulsating, loud music of Salim-Sulaiman was great. What a great movie, I really enjoyed it alot...Shahrukh is great, much like the Shahrukh in Swadesh, very real..and the team of girls..I loved them, great characters very endearing and refreshing.

Kabir Khan(Shahrukh), ex captain of the Indian hockey team coaches a team of girls, after 7 years in hiding post a lost game to Pakistan for which he is blamed and called 'gaddar', paki in indian clothing and other dramatic stuff...The coach trains the girls hard and makes them the 'Indian team' from a rag tag mix of 'state players'. Its a great sports film, of course its predictable but that doesn't matter, the characters are so much fun to watch, I found myself getting totally involved in their pain and gain..biting my nails through the finale. Chak de is a very well made film, very convincing sports film, good production, YashRaj films of course. The dialogues are fantastic. The casting is brilliant. I really liked the commentary on the farce of an 'women's team', Anjaan Srivastav plays the jaded, chauvanistic bureaucrat to a T..I liked the mixture of the girls, representative of the different worlds India lives in. I liked the political commentary and the questioning of the typical slurs..'you are madrasi?' no I'm Telegu...Telegu Tamil same thing, no? No are Punjabi and Bihari the same? The girls from Manipur and Mizoram are not pleased to be treated like guests. The girl from Haryana, Komal and Balbir form Punjab with her garam dimaag were fantastic. I also liked Bindia and her strong negativity, she wasn't folding easily. the script is text book..but the characters and dialogue lift this film way above the ordinary. It has great spirit! I loved the girl power....yeah..CHAK DE!!

This film is a sure hit, I can just see people watching it multiple times and learning the dialogues. It is a young, fresh movie with great music too, I'm going to buy the soundtrack, so thumki can keep shakin' to it! Chak de India made me very nostalgic and happy...GO WATCH IT!

Craving India

Woke up early this morning, before the alarm went off. The sky outside my window was light blue with streaks of pink, it had such a fresh look to it. While I was still adjusting my eyes to the sight outside I felt a nudge on my back. Palu put his head under my arms and started purring..nice way to wake up. I went down, set up coffee, fed the cats and then stepped out into the balcony. It was cool and crisp outside. I looked at the pink tipped mountains in the distance and took a deep breath. The wind suddenly picked up and whipped my hair around my face..it always surprises me when that happens, when a sudden gust comes out of nowhere and assails me...

I sat down to work on section 5 of the film at 7:30 as planned and said to myself, let me just check my mail..and then of course I had to just visit my blog and some favorites..Man time flies quicly when you're reading other people's blogs, especially when you go to links of others, to others, before i knew it..an hour had passed. so ofcourse i decided to post an entry to have something concrete to show of my time.

When I read blogs of young people in India of their friends, their vacations to Goa or Uttarkashi or the koels out their windows or rickshaws, I feel like my heart will burst. It reminds me of too much of the lack of life I feel here. What I would give to look out of my window and see a gulmohur tree under which a smartly dressed child with wet neatly combed hair with a heavy yellow school bag stands and waits for his school bus, while a crow hops sideways to an abandoned piece of bread while a man on the street lights a beedi and another one feeds a brown dog a glucose biscuit. All the while a man is pushing his cart of peru to his daily spot under the tree. I miss India so much. Most times its easier to not go there at all in my mind...but at the same time I scour the internet for Indian writing to sort of pick at a scab...There is such a sad joy in reading a blog by someone in Bombay...It makes me miss having friends I can relate to at such a natural level. I know what they mean when they say things, I can see it. I crave that sense of comfort and ownership.