Precognition almost?

Michael Jackson, the undisputed “King of Pop”, died early this morning in LA, after suffering a cardiac arrest. This flash headline that I read on Times of India as soon as I came into work this morning turned out to be kind of eerie.

On my way to work, the taxis usually always play Chinese songs or the local radio relays some Chinese comedy talk-shows. But today before I got off, I listened to “Beat it”!!!. For those of you who know all about living in China will agree with me that its not every day that one gets to listen to an English song in a public transport and the chances of that song being one of MJ’s is a rarity in its own way!

This is not the only reason why I am calling this news as eerie. Late yesterday evening I was reading about Marlon Brando on Wikipedia (I actually read an article about Mohanlal and Priyan planning to start an IPL team – a question from V on whether Priyan had won any great awards got me to Wikipedia him out – that led me to read about Mohanlal – then about Mani Ratnam -then about Al Pacino and then about Marlon – all of whose work I am an ardent fan of!). Under the section “Final years and death”, I read this entire bit – “The actor was a longtime close friend of the entertainer Michael Jackson and paid regular visits to his Neverland Ranch, resting there for weeks. Brando also participated in the singer's solo career thirtieth-anniversary celebration concerts in 2001, and starred in his 15-minute-long music video, "You Rock My World", in the same year. The actor's son, Miko, was Jackson's bodyguard and assistant for several years, and is a friend of the singer. He stated "The last time my father left his house to go anywhere; to spend any kind of time... was with Michael Jackson.”!!

Now what are the chances of someone reading about Marlon Brando yesterday and that too his complete profile, life, death and chance upon reading about Michael Jackson on it, a day before his death!

..The In“sensitive index”?

For the last one month, like every other harrowed stock market investor waiting to “re-enter” the market, I have been waiting too – impatiently.

We were invested in the share market for long term but the sudden surge in the market immediately after the Election Result (The sensex witnessed its biggest rise in long time of over 2100 points, when it hit its upper circuit levels and trading had to be halted.) this year saw us liquidate our stocks for a handsome profit. We thought we were intelligent and made the most out of that moment, knowing that we would re-enter once the “Election Result Frenzy” died down and the markets go back to its earlier lows. The sensex however has mocked our intelligence. It has refused to show any kind of slowing down since then!

It has now been more than a month since the surge and everyday I study the market in hope of it getting “corrected”! Conversely, the number of points its shedding is way too less than its surge each day! Like any other average investor, I understand that the stock market’s rise during the last few weeks is no evidence of an economic recovery in the country but questions such as what must be preventing this bubble from exploding?, is the market going over-board in its feel-good euphoria?, is it making the stocks values go higher than their real worth?, are making me curious of its behaviour.

The market analysts and business writers have not been very insightful either. When we have a section of them predicting an imminent correction in the stock market, another section has proudly declared that there is no stopping back the sensex now.. its on its way to the 20K mark! I wish I was on the other side of the market now. I would have been preparing myself to laugh all the way to the bank if I was already invested in this. The waiting-for-the market-to-fall side is not a very exciting side to be in, especially when the wait seems to be “indefinite”!

As I write this, the sensex has gone up by 162 points from its previous close last Friday to hit 14667!...

Nihao Macau!

The 10th IIFA award ceremony at the Venetian in Macau was held last Saturday. I had never been to a movie awards ceremony and this seemed to be an ideal opportunity to grab a peek. 3 VIP passes for the event (the boss of our friend from Hong Kong got these passes for us) ensured our (me with both the Vinods) attendance at the event.

The 1 hour turbojet ferry ride from Hong Kong to Macau was interesting and eventful. The ferry area, on disembarking, has shuttle buses to all the casinos. We reached the Venetian by about 3:30 in the afternoon, collected our passes for the event and decided to try our luck at the casinos.

The 10,500,000 sq ft Venetian is a sight to behold! This place doesn’t fail to amaze me every time we visit it. The Venetian, with its 3000 suites, claims to be large enough to hold “ninety Boeing 747 jumbo jets” and houses the largest casino in the world! Now, that’s something. It feels like Venice, with its canals, gondoliers on their gondolas, food and the ambience has been created again for the Asians here! We walked around the place for a while, clicked a few pictures and grabbed a quick meal at one of their many restaurants. Lady luck did not accompany us this time and we were not successful in making any big fast-bucks at the casino, although I will remember Venetian as the casino where I made my first ever win last year!

Around 7pm we reached the Cotai Arena, the IIFA awards venue. The event “promptly” commenced at 9pm, almost 2 hours later than the scheduled event time. Come on.. its an Indian Awards event…what else did you expect! The event however was a huge success, thanks to the scale of the set-up and meticulous execution, which undoubtedly is one of China’s forte!

Barring the absence of the King Khan and his “friends”, there was a good “star” attendance which included the Big B and his clan, the Roshans, the Chopras, the Kapoors (Anil Kapoor this time) etc. The hosts Boman Irani, Ritesh Deshmukh and Lara Datta managed their tasks well and brought the house down on splits with their humour. Abhishek and Ash’s public proclamation of their love for each other, and Hrithik’s act to credit his “style icon” award to his wife Suzanne appeared to be desperate efforts to swing the media in the “right” direction away from the controversies of Ms.Ciesla and Ms.Mori respectively. However, Boman’s imitation of Anil Kapoor, Antakshari by the stars, spoof of the movies that were nominated under the “best film” category and good stage performances by a lot of the actors and actresses ensured a lively and eventful program.

.... A Red Salute!

Today is Fourth June and also the sensitive twentieth anniversary of “The Tiananmen Incident” in China. For all those who do not know what this incident is, I suggest you Google or Wikipedia it out to learn more! One is not supposed to write (or read or talk) about this “taboo subject” here lest fall under the watchful eagle eye of the “big brother”.

Leading up to this day, a lot of websites (and a lot of popular proxy sites such as kproxy.com) including youtube, hotmail, twitter, flickr, blogspot, wordpress and bing are blocked in China, to ensure there is limited searches and online protests demonstrated by the local nationals in commemoration of this day. I have observed that, particularly in China, internet is a very important platform used to discuss or criticize issues and blogging is a la mode. A lot of people take into blogging and chat forums passionately. The sentiments will definitely be high around the date of the incident and hence this move by the concerned to curb that “right”. It appears that the News channels such as CNN and BBC are blocked for most part of the day due to the frequency of words such as “In China today..”, or “In Beijing today…” or “Twenty years ago in Beijing…” etc used in their news relays. Of course, RTI and FoS can be controlled here!

I read that the capital city of Beijing will be heavily guarded with a lot of people being asked (read forced) to stay indoors today and foreign journalists & newspaper teams are not allowed to go to “the Tiananmen square”, to ensure the day passes by “peacefully”. I read further that, every year the last Sunday prior to the fourth day of this month will see the people of Hong Kong demonstrate publicly calling for justice. Being a former British colony, Hong Kong is probably the only place in China where matters such as these can be venerated openly. A local group there called the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movement in China (Yes, their website is also blocked), supports this demonstration by designing standard t-shirts for the event. However, this year they saw a lot of people design their own t-shirts with “protest slogans” and the “incident-related images” on it and share with others online. During the day, a lot of protests and candle-vigils will also be held in various parts of the city, in their attempt to force the Mainland government to acknowledge and apologize for that day. Although I am tempted to include images of the t-shirts here on this post, I refrain for the same reason I mentioned earlier.

I for one do not quite believe that these protesters dare wear these t-shirts anywhere in Hong Kong (or China) after the protests are over!......Lal Salaam!

Candlelight vigils in Hong Kong

From Picture Courtesy: BBC ....

From Picture Courtesy: BBC....

The day of the "Dragon Boat Festival"

It was the “Dragon Boat festival or Duanwu” in China yesterday, and thereby a holiday for all of us. When we enquired with a few of our colleagues on its significance and how was it going to be celebrated in their homes, they explained that the most famous theory of its origin was that it is celebrated in the memory of one of their famous poets (I later googled and discovered his name as Qu Yuan - a patriotic poet who lived more than 2,000 years ago, and who according to legend, drowned himself in the Miluo River in Hunan Province to protest the then corrupt kingdom) and it is usually celebrated on the 5th day of the 5th month in the lunar calendar. People eat zhongzi (a sticky/ glutinous rice ball wrapped in bamboo leaves), drink realgar wine and race dragon boats!

Zhongzi

From Pic courtesy:china.org.cn....

The legend behind the festival can be read here

All our excitement to watch the Dragon boat race on the Pearl River, from our riverside home dampened along with the continuous rain, when there were no races scheduled on that part of the river yesterday.Nevertheless we decided to step outside even though it was raining pretty heavily.

The water level in the river had risen considerably due to the incessant rain that has been lashing the city during the last couple of weeks combined with a possible release of water from the reservoir. As we walked beside the river we noticed a group of people with motley umbrellas gathered near the river-steps, which increased our curiosity too. Apparently, the high tide on the river had attracted a lot of enthusiastic people who had brought their pet dogs for a swim and lots of pet-owners too decided to jump in to enjoy the river. Most of the Golden Retrievers and Rottweilers seemed to be enthusiastic in jumping into the river and retrieving the empty water bottles and plastic slippers that their owners were using as baits. However, the much smaller poodles had a tough time trying to let their inconsiderate owners know their displeasure in such activities that were thrust upon them. It was a pity to watch these small dogs that were forced into the water, desperately trying to swim against the tide and reach the safety of the river bank and some shivering in fear of the water.

The Rains:

From Vani Menon....

People with their pets:

From Vani Menon....

Amidst all this, oblivious to these things happening around, there was a sweeper lady who was clearing away the riverside walkway quietly. It was raining heavily and she was undeterred on her task! She was happy to pose for our picture and acknowledged us with a happy “nihao”!

From Vani Menon....

We shopped around a while and had an early dinner at the Tiger Prawn, a Vietnamese restaurant. Just outside the restaurant in the mall is an indoor Ice-Rink. The vast rink had many skate enthusiasts practicing or learning. We watched some of them in action for a while, especially one of the young coaches there who was displaying his skills in ice-skating very well.

We ended the day with a movie in the theatre.. Yes! the first time we were watching a movie in a theatre in China!! We went to the Qinggong Cinema and watched one of the English movies that was being played there, Night at the Museum-2. The movie had a lot of attendance and I think most of them watched the movie since it had Chinese sub-titles while a vast majority could have been there because they understood English!

Chicken a la Carte

I recently came across this video in one of my fellow blogger’s post and I must admit that it is very touching.

This 6 minute short film made by Ferdinand Dimadura in 2005 won the “People’s Choice” award at the 56th Berlin International Film Festival, in the Most Popular Short Film category.

http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/1081/Chicken-a-la-Carte

Every time one wastes food, this reminds you of those lesser fortunate people for whom food is still a “luxury”. The children crowding around the food bag, the lady of the house setting out the dining table for their meal, the man ensuring they thank God for the food they received that day, before they eat, are all heart wrenching.

A large portion of a society lives merely in the “hope” of food everyday!

Take a look at the video. I am sure it will move you too.

A Tale of a Movie.....

In recent times, the most discussed topic in India after the Satyam debacle is the movie Slumdog Millionaire (SM). This feel-good, rags-to-riches tale of a Mumbai slum dweller has stirred the nation and its filmdom. Lots of opinions have been flowing for it, lots against it, analysis on why it won all those awards including the 8 Oscars, was the movie a complete “poverty-porn”, was it a brilliant work of art by the movie-maker, did it win only because it was made by a non-Indian, is it the portrayal of the real India, etc have been some of the topics in contention.

The poverty ridden slums of the infamous Dharavi in Mumbai…...prostitution…...communal violences..….children forced into begging have been exposed to the Western (and our Eastern neighbours!) audiences. I agree that it shows India (or rather a part of India) in poor-light and I will also join the voices that speak out stressing on the fact that India is not made up of only these. We have a lot of good things to showcase too. But, most of our “Bollywood” movies are shot in foreign milieus, with the protagonists wearing the Guccis and the Pradas and the Armanis, driving flashy automobiles, working on dream jobs, enjoying holidays and singing songs in the most lavish locales. Can all these be classified as movies which showcase the real-India!？If the same people who thrashed SM are contented with these movies, then is it hypocrisy? If movies such as these are the movie-maker’s artistic freedom that he has willfully taken as a part of being in the creative arena, then why can’t movies such as SM also be seen in that frame? We are the world’s largest democracy and the primary rights of a democrat are freedom of expression and speech. So if a movie-maker has exercised these rights in creating something, purely for entertainment (..and to rake in the moolah), why are so many of us crying foul?

I recently read an article on TOI which mentioned that the movie Mission Impossible 3 was called to be banned by many Chinese since it had a scene shot in Shanghai where apartments were shown with clotheslines outside their windows!! That’s typical China for you. They do not tolerate (err.. their Government do not tolerate) even a slight alteration to the way they want the “others” to perceive them…and they can afford to do that since they are not a democracy yet!

Shantaram, a novel by Gregory David Roberts, paints a similar picture of Dharavi, where he has expressed his shock and dismay at the condition of people’s lives in these 10000+ houses. What is our government and the average Indians (and not so average Indians such as Mr. AB) who are ashamed of a part of India being projected that way to the West doing about these slums? This “underbelly” of India is showcased in the movie only because it exists in reality!! Instead of being “reactive” to such movies and books, I hope now that these people step forward to revive these slums, so that more movies featuring it do not crop up again, reeling a section of the country into unwarranted dissensions.