This and That

This week’s post consists of interesting things I read / saw / heard and wanted to share. Am just adding brief notes to pique your curiosity so that you click on the links given. So, without further ado:

1. A part of this article by Neelesh Mishra in the Mint Lounge yesterday. The article is about Vishal Bharadwaj and his journey to success makes for interesting reading anyway, but the anecdote reproduced below really grabbed my attention.

‘You could say that where Bhardwaj is today is the result of a journey he began hesitantly with a script in his hands, pitching it to Shabana Azmi a few weeks after the 11 September terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, asking the veteran actor to play the role of a witch. Azmi’s response wasn’t quite on expected lines. “Why are you doing this to yourself? If this film fails, then your career as a music director is also dead,” Bhardwaj quotes Azmi as having said at the meeting that became a turning point in his career.

If he was thrown off balance, it didn’t show.

Bhardwaj asked Azmi to imagine a man on the 90th floor of one of the towers of the World Trade Center, who has just come in to work and has switched on his laptop. He sits back and begins sipping a cup of coffee when, outside the window, he sees an aeroplane coming right at him. “Poof! It’s all over in the next second! We don’t know what’s going to happen in the next minute. We have to live our dreams as much as we can.”

Azmi agreed to act in his debut film Makdee.’

Dream On !

2. This article titled ‘Thank God for Politics’ by Shekhar Gupta in the Indian Express yesterday defended Dr. Manmohan Singh and his recent press conference. Being a big fan of the good Dr., I had to include it in this post. I really liked the way Shekhar Gupta defended Dr. Singh’s speaking style :

‘His style is like that of a professor caught in the complex detail of a problem rather than that of an expansive Atal Bihari Vajpayee. And his method and moods? I have often said that even at the best of times Dr Singh seems to come across as Rahul Dravid batting at 39 for 3. He is not given to flourishes of any kind whatsoever………………
can you deny that Dr Manmohan Singh is honest, capable, well-intentioned, wise and, most importantly, re-electable? So what if you do not exactly find him to be a rock star in front of the camera. That was never promised to you in the first place. But one thing you can be sure of. Whatever his countenance and style, like the dour but indispensable cricketer we compared him with, he is at his best at 39 for 3, which is how the scoreline looks for UPA 2 right now. You can trust him when he says he isn’t going anywhere midway through this innings, and you can also be sure his party will now cut all the clutter and confusion and work with him rather than at cross-purposes.’

3. As some of you may have figured, am a big fan of weekend newspaper reading. And I recently found out that the Hindu is now available on the same day in Mumbai. So now Sunday morning newspaper sessions can be spun out longer with the Hindu too. (Surprising that the paper has such stiff and turgid prose on a weekday but is thoroughly readable on Sundays.)

4. Watched Raell Padamsee’s production of the evergreen ‘Sound of Music’ at NCPA yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Delna Mody as Maria ably held the play together; Marianne D Cruz Aiman as Mother Superior was sensational in the song ‘Climb Every Mountain’; Dalip Tahil as Captain Von Trapp was a total surprise – he looked dapper and handsome and quite unlike the villain of so many Bollywood films of the 80s and 90s, and he sang really well too. Where have these people been hiding and why don’t we have more musicals being staged in Mumbai ?

Suggest you give this play a dekko if you liked watching the movie as a child, or if you have a young child at home.

p.s.I couldn’t find any clips from Raell Padamsee’s version of this production, but just for kicks, here’s a video of an unusual performance of Do-Re-Mi, for a commercial by Belgian brand VTM in 2009.

By,
Zen