Whatever happened to the values of humanity Whatever happened to the fairness and equality Instead of spreading love we're spreading animosity Lack of understanding leading us away from unity That's the reason why sometimes I'm feelin' under That's the reason why sometimes I'm feelin' down There's no wonder why sometimes I'm feelin' under Gotta keep my faith alive 'til love is found And ask yourself
Where Is the Love? Where Is the Love? Where Is the Love? Where Is the Love? Father, Father, Father help us Send some guidance from above 'Cuz people got me got me questionin' Where is the love (where is the love)
-Love, BEP
The song that first brought me closer to BEP. Connected from the first instance. It made sense then, and still does. This is one group that always inspires... Love you guys! Muah!
The air is too calm. Too still. I stand an look around. I can see the horizon A faint blue line. I no longer desire. I don't have the will to be there: to lie on sold ground - Its been burnt by the sun I no longer pine. All around me, people die Of hunger, of thirst, of heat And some like me survive Empty shells long gone. We don't move, we've stopped to try Thinking of it is too big a feat. Listless and still, I no longer strive. There's something in the sky - a spot. I watch it grow. And something, A faint spark - of interest? - Begins to flicker in me. There is a breexe now. Or not. But the feeling pushes me. Quite surprising. I make myself stand lest Another such time may never be. Even now, as I look back I really don't understand: Was it hope, interest or madness That made me to carry on? What ever it was, I'm glad. For though then my head was full of sand, Now I've taken control. And That's what really matters.
The world of glamour now has even more glitter in it!
How to get to this link:Go to Boschindia.com -> About Bosch in India -> Robert Bosch India Ltd. -> Jobs and Careers at RBIN and there I am! Or just click here.
Now this is one what Bosch makes its employees seriously happy :) We had gone for a corporate photo shoot in May. The sessions were from 9 till whenever the lighting was bad. I went for the shoot right after my German classes. The days were fun! You spend half your morning learning a new language so you can say "ich arbeite bei Bosch" and the rest of the day doing all the girly stuff like dressing up in petty clothes (er.. pretty 'corporate' clothes) and putting on makeup and smiling and getting your pictures clicked... Ahhh.... It’s a girls dream come true!
Those two days were nice and weird in some ways too... We were told which colors to wear by a dark guy who was bald and wore a earring, (not the stud but the ring) which was extremely cool, and getting our pictures taken by a guy named Sheetal (Yes! that's a guy! no other comments on the name :P) who btw “appeared on Page 3 of the Times of India exactly one week after the shoot with Ramya, the actress” ( in the words of one of my friend who was positively gushing! :) )
The down side was that there was so much time when all you had to do was wait and wait while people took their pictures in batches. Fortunately for me I had Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with me! (the fake version thought I did not know at that point of time) We also made friends there and had a blast. Krithi (the girl in the pic with me) learnt to be a professional make-up artist! And she was pretty darn good too! And I found out that Bosch does have cute guys (thank goodness!!) and that there are a lot of people out there who are as crazy about Harry Potter as I am... Though, after being called a 'kid' for the nth time, I started fooling people into believing that I was reading "War and Peace", which did give me some "Hmm, must be brainy" looks till I met this one guy who had actually read the book and I had to confess.. Darn him!
For all there was, it was a fun time... And now I’m a model! Today I’m walking on cloud no. 9!!
P.S. Couldn’t stop grinning while writing all this down. Still cant :D
I just lazed around yesterday. Eat, sleep, surf, eat some more and sleep again… And as it happens every other time.. 12 am and eyes wide open. Suddenly..
“Grrrrrumble…” (laughing) “Hey what was that pathetic sound?” (embarrassed grin) “Umm..” “Your stomach just grumbled…” “Ya da, I’m so hungry. Is there anything to eat?” “Um, I don’t know. I guess there must be something in the cupboard.”
And we started searching, searching, and searching….
“Great! Everything’s empty!” “Hey, there’s Maggi in the top shelf!”
Quick scramble to reach for it.
“Just wonderful! Now I’m even more hungry and nothing…”
All the mixture packets and soup sachets and Maggi noodle covers were empty! No restaurants would be open. And here we were, two people with our stomachs on fire.
“Hey didn’t we get those channa packets yesterday?” “Ya… what you want to make channa??” “Da, we have tomatoes, right? Onions? All the masalas?” “Ya…but-” “ok I’ll bring the stuff, you bring the vessels k” (muttering) “Stubborn female!”
“Da, you did not finish your milk or what? There’s some left over…” “Er… I don’t want it da..” “So what should I do? It will get spoilt.” “Did you not buy custard powder long time back?” “Ya, but I never made any. Why you want to make that too??” “Umhmm…it will be like dessert!” “But do you know how to make it?” “Yep, I am an expert! (I pat my back) I made it for T and the others too” “ok.. but if its bad, you are eating it all… I wont touch it” “What? (mock horror) you are questioning my cooking skills?” “That’s not all I’m questioning. (giggling)” (I just stick my tongue out)
So here we were doing this. Somewhere along the way, we decided that we were going to have not just channa masala, but rice too. Thankfully there was some channa kept for sprouting :) We cleaned rice and cooked both the rice and the channa in one go. Then, while N cleaned up the utensils, I started cleaning and slicing the tomatoes. Next were the onions (hey I chopped them without crying!!) and the chillies. So here is what it looked like after all the slicing and dicing.
Then we waited for the rice and channa to get cooked. Once that was done, I started mashing some of the channa while she fried the onions. We added the garlic ginger paste, tomato puree, and let it simmer a while with the masalas till the raw smell of the turmeric and the puree went off. Then we added the channa and the chillies and voila..Ourchanna masala is ready…
So rice and channa masala. That’s what hungry girls make at 2am. It was yummy! Just spicy enough for me :) But I think N was a little red from all the chillies I put in :D
When we finished gorging, we realized we still hadn’t made the custard. So out came the sugar, the spoons to stir, the milk, and the custard powder and 10-15 minutes of stirring later- Heaven! Sorry, I don’t have a picture of it right now. My sweet tooth did not wait any longer.
5 minutes after we finished our binge fest and keeping the plates for washing (who has the energy to clean them up after all that), we were off to dreamland… right after promising ourselves we’d start our diet plans tomorrow. (Fat chance!)
To many of my friends, the monsoon brings to mind the smell of wet earth, playing in the rain, the greenery and all those things that make you go aah, but to so many others it means losing their homes and their means of livelihood. Images I see in the papers about families on rooftops waiting for relief, about farms totally flooded, about people packing all they have and moving somewhere else, some where drier, just like they do almost every other year, disturb me to the core.
Now a serious question t whoever knows the answer, because even after knowing so much, I’m totally bewildered. We may not be good at predicting the exact day of the onset of the monsoon, but haven’t we found a way to predict whether it is going to be a good or a bad monsoon? Even if we haven’t, don’t we know that every year we have to be prepared for the eventuality of either a drought or a flood? Given the fact that approx 60% of our people engage in agriculture, shouldn’t we take the situation more seriously? Then why aren’t we doing anything to contain the situation?
We, as a nation, have put a lot of emphasis on remedial measures time and again, but are we so short sighted when it comes to planning for all this? Despite monsoon matrices being plotted out, and all the big, big studies being carried out, what has been done? Flood control an Flood management programs were put forward in 1954 and yet in 2007 we still see houses submerged. I read in the TOI that “In a rain year, the average loss of life is 1590 and the collateral damage is Rs.800 crore.” Yet why do we let this happen year after year? Why let so many die? Why throw all that effort, all that we made away? Why?
I’ve been living with a shadow, over head I’ve been sleeping with a cloud, above my bed I’ve been lonely for so long Trapped in the past, I just can’t seem to move on
I’ve been hiding all my hopes and dreams away Just in case I ever need them again someday I’ve been setting aside time To clear a little space in the corners of my mind
-“Way Back into Love”, OST Music & Lyrics
The 1st time I saw Music and Lyrics was sometime in the 1st quarter of this year. And my heart was captured from the moment they sang
“I said I wasn’t gonna lose my head but then POP goes my heart, I wasn’t gonna fall in love again but then POP goes my heart... And I just can’t let you go, I can’t lose this feeling!”
It was sooo retro, I jus loved it! The movie can’t really be “classified” as a great movie, nut it has these amazing dialogues and these super retro / popsy songs like “Pop goes my heart” and “Way back into love”. Well, I have watched the movie many many times after that. I was just listening to “POP!” right now, and that’s when I thought, “Hey, lots of people out there haven’t even heard of this movie”. And that’s what brings me to the keyboard today, when actually I should be visiting the doctor like I promised to my family, most of my friends and my colleagues (who actually threatened that I will not be allowed to come for the trip this week if I don’t get better!). ok, first this, then I meet the doc, k?
When the movie started, I was all enthusiastic, but what made me really “fall” for this movie was the dialogue that follows. Its from the scene where Hugh Grant and his manager (Brad Garrett, from the “I love Raymond” show) are talking about why Hugh keeps plants.
HG: Well I had date come over once and she said that she finds plants soothing. BG: Maybe if I had plants, I’d still be married. HG: Ya. What broke your marriage was not your wife’s raging nymphomania, but your lack of vegetation.
And I love what Drew says when she gets the lyricist Hugh hired really angry. (lets call him the Indian guy)
Sophie: I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten involved. I have no filtering system. (hmmm.. I should remember that the next time I put my foot in my mouth)
Or this
Alex: The best time I've had in the last fifteen years was sitting at that piano with you. Sophie: That's wonderfully sensitive... especially from a man who wears such tight pants. Alex: It forces all the blood to my heart.
Or when the ‘Indian guy’ acts as if he’s shooting himself in the head in the concert when he realizes that Cora sings the song the ‘correct way’.
Or this, when Sophie’s sister, Rhonda, is cautioning her to be careful and only go on with Alex if she’s sure he’s passionate about her
Sophie: And besides, how do you know he’s passionate? Rhonda: I think, I think you just see it in their eyes, feel it in their touch, or in Gary’s case (her husband) when h said to his mother “I’m marrying her anyway”.
Or (one of my faves) when Alex and Sophie finish the song and they are trying to catch a cab before Cora leaves.
Alex: [Hails taxi] She's going to have a baby! Sophie: [Taxi continues driving away] Hey! What if it were true?
These short dialogues and the songs in it are what make this movie so close to my heart! And please, please, please listen to them…
And for those who haven’t seen the movie yet, here’s what the story is.
Alex Fletcher (Hugh Grant) is this old guy who used to be a pop star, of a band named POP! (no less :P ). Well he’s just trying to make a living by doing whatever gigs he can, which by the way are just singing his old songs at reunions and theme-parks. Then he gets this awesome chance to sing with Cora, the latest sensation in the music world. But there’s a catch: he has to compose a song for her in a week. Plus, the song has to be called “Way back into love”. But there’s no pressure of course
He ends up asking Sophie Fisher (Drew Barrymore), the girl who is temporarily taking care of his plants, to help him out, because she has this amazing ability to come up with rhyming lines. (Kind of like Fatty in “The Five Find-outers”). Sophie and Alex stay up for hours and think about lyrics for the song. Some of the best lines come up here. I especially loved this one:
Alex: It doesn't have to be perfect. Just spit it out. They're just lyrics. Sophie: "Just lyrics"? Alex: Lyrics are important. They're just not as important as melody. Sophie: I really don't think you get it. Alex: Oh. You look angry. Click your pen. Sophie: A melody is like seeing someone for the first time. The physical attraction. Sex. Alex: I so get that. Sophie: But then, as you get to know the person, that's the lyrics. Their story. Who they are underneath. It's the combination of the 2 that makes it magical.
They do write the song in time, but the movie also gives us insights into their lives. Like how Sophie has low self-esteem because her literature teacher broke her heart and then went on to write a book about her being a needy person. Which surprisingly enough won a National book award. And about how Alex is at such a low point in his virtually non-existent career that he even thinks of considering joining “The Battle of the 80s Has-Beens”, where the old singers fight and the winner gets a chance to sing!
Anyways, getting back to the main plot, Cora loves the song, but turns the popsy number into something “steamy and sticky” with Indian sitars in the background! Plus she says she needs one more stanza to the song. Alex and Sophie fight about the portrayal of the song, because Sophie thinks that it spoils the whole mood, but Alex thinks that they should just do whatever Cora wants as long as they get the part. Well this makes them part! Alex goes to make excuses about the last (unwritten) stanza, when Cora says that Sophie had already faxed them over.
The concert starts off with one of the steamy Britney/Christina “oh this skimpy thing IS a dress” kind of songs. Then comes the announcement that there will be a special song by “Alex Fletcher” (no “Sophie Fisher”!!) and Sophie feels betrayed and starts to walk off. And that’s when she realizes that this is a different song! Something touching, called "Don't Write Me Off" (cheesy, but so goes with the mood). Well they end up patching up, Cora sings “Way back into love” they way it was originally composed and everyone lives happily ever after.
(Hey, it’s a feel-good movie, how else do you expect it to end?)
I’d recommend it for the times when you jus want to curl up in your bed, munch some popcorn and have a few laughs and generally feel good :)
P.S. If you do end up watching the movie after reading this, and still dont like it, don't clobber me, coz i just got paid $1000 by Warner Bros. for writing this (just kidding!)
