A much needed breath of fresh air!

Finally!!!! After the mega blockbusters that Bollywood's hottest directors had been handing out with great conceit and even greater hype, comes along a small budget movie that is such a breath of fresh air and and provides a much needed break from the ennui & scorn that I started to carry along each time I went to catch a Bollywood flick, almost like my very own special offer combo pack!

Simplicity is the glory of expression, said American poet, Walt Whitman. And that is what Peepli Live celebrates!! It is simple without becoming simplistic, it is poignant without turning into a distress-fest, it is humorous without being a comical farce and it is satirical without being intellectual or gloomy.

The movie looks at a pertinent issue plaguing our society - that of farmers' suicide due to poverty. Unfortunately, to be brutally honest, it is also an issue light years away from our world of MP3 downloads & Ipads & Twitter. But such is the beauty and brilliance of the movie, that it manages to draw us into the world of the protagonists and keep us riveted. It is brutal in tearing apart the circus called media, politics and bureaucracy and yet never strays from being funny; it is comical and yet it manages to touch your heart and make its point. It glorifies stereotypes and also breaks them to one's great delight. 

You cannot help but fondly smile at the brothers, their preoccupation with ganja and fascination with boiled eggs when their lives and land are at stake. And you cannot help but guffaw in the scene where the cameras go chasing Natha when he is out in the great open to answer Nature's call & when the reporters do insightful reporting on this phenomenon, when they solemnly dish out the percentages of people who follow this ritual on a daily basis, when they call in experts to analyse this phenomenon and its implications. This is satire at its best and most incisive!!! 

Other than a sharp & witty story and some superb acting, the movie also has a surpise up its sleeve - watch out for some really, really good music; "Des mera rangrez hai babu" is a splendid and fitting tribute to the chaos called India while my other favourite song "Mehngai dayan" is absolutely droll and hilarious and is a song each of us can identify with!

Finally would like to end by saying that this first attempt of writer-director Anusha Rizvi's is a slap in the face of all the Aditya Chopras & KJos & Sanjay Leela Bhansalis & Gadhvis that planet Bollywood is replete with. It shows how a good movie can be made without a superstar or for that matter, a superstar couple or a superstar family, without a director too puffed up with his own importance, without foreign locales that we would all like to have on our '100 places to see before you die' list, without skimpily clad women gyrating to a Hinglish half rap-half bhangra item number, without high speed car/bike/boat chases, and without the hero romancing the heroine in designer wear and in atleast 10 different picturesque locations!

Do watch Peepli Live! It is one movie you where you will find your money and time have been truly well spent!

The matter of the other woman!

Picture : Getty images

"The two women exchanged the kind of glance women use when no knife is handy". 
Oh well atleast inside my head they did! 

It all started on the day of the Vs vaccination, 2 months back. When I moved to console the howling V1 after his vaccine, he reached out- not for me, but his nanny!!!!! 

I came back from the doctor's clinic thinking, how could I have been so blind to what had been going on behind my back/ under my nose/whatever other telling phrase is used to describe this state and a feeling of a sharp, burning knife poking at my insides! 

But that was just the trailer; like a bad infection, things rapidly progressed to worse. Every time nanny left a room, V1 would rush to the door and sit in front of it, howling his heart out. And each time it was like the knife inside me was being twisted deeper and harder. 

"Where am I going wrong?", I obsessed for hours and then days and then weeks; looking for explanations, only to find that each one of them only made me feel worse than the previous one! Each time V1 cried, I could see only one and only one reason in his tears, "Oh he doesn't want me"!

The green eyed monster finally had me in its grasp. Now while I have my faults, and the family will tell you that they are many, jealousy has never been one of them. Till date I have been more than content living in the rarefied, self contained world that the thoroughly narcissistic tend to build around themselves. So this I was utterly unprepared for - both in experiencing and in dealing with!! 

Alarm bells went off and Code Red was sounded in the household. 

Tears were shed by the buckets.

Long (one sided) conversations were held with the husband; I cried, he listened...he tried explaining, I yelled at him.

Long distance calls were made to the sisters in the middle of the night and every aspect of the problem was analysed and then re-analysed.

Sergey and Larry were enlisted for help as always (Hullo!! Google search people!!!). From the odd 300,000hits that they showed me, I got to know this was a very common occupational hazard of motherhood, unfortunately its one that all the parenting books very conveniently forget to tell you how to handle!

Friends were called and experiences were shared - I learnt that almost everyone is fighting a similar ongoing battle and that competition is inevitable, if its not the nanny, its the mother in law you got to compete with!

And thanks to Freud and the in-house shrink (sister 2 is a shrink by occupation), the long forgotten childhood was delved into, possible traumas were looked for with a microscope;  and since there is no expiry date on blaming one's mother for one's problems, my mom was squarely held responsible for this sudden attack of insecurity.

Reason took the long much needed holiday that I should have been taking. 

Nanny, who till some weeks back, had been referred to as my Angel of mercy, fell from grace faster than the gates of Heaven could have banged shut on Lucifer's face! After the tears dried out, I decided it was time to declare war! 

Detailed to-do lists were made and put into action - 

• Spend more time with the boys. Check. Twice a day, everyday, a couple of hours of quality time with the boys, even if that meant I needed to cram in 30hrs into a 24hr day! 
• Take on some of the primary care giving activities. Check. Took on half of nanny's job responsibilities! So what if it left me exhausted and with no time for myself? After all, no pain, no gain! 
• Do more activities alone with them. Check. Joined a play gym where we would go alone with the boys every weekend, took them to the park, long walks.... the works. You name it, I tried it!

It worked, but only to a point. The situation continued to remain tense. So maybe it was time to pluck this weed from the roots! "Sack nanny." said the voice in my head, louder and louder each day. 

But a tiny seed of doubt would creep in every time I struggled to give the boys a bath or put them to bed, and I thought of how she did the same with such ease. "Hold on" said that little voice of reason that still seemed to exist somewhere inside my head, "Use your head!!! Can you really manage the twins without her? Remember, its not 1 kid you will be doing everything for, but 2!!! Think twice before you act!!! And anyway this is happening because she is so good at her job!" 

Sensing doubt, other voices then joined in, making the dialogue in my head, even more complex and complicated than Christopher Nolan's multi-layered dream-vision! 

The Secret said, "You are focusing way too much on the negatives. No wonder you are attracting more of it to yourself. Happy thoughts! Happy thoughts are what you need". 

"Acceptance" said sister1, a working mom, who had long back made peace with the fact that her child preferred her Nanny to her Mommy, "is the key! Accept that this is a truth of life and then see how it becomes easier to deal with". After jostling for space in a 3 hr commute each day in a crowded Mumbai local, she obviously was left with no energy or spirit to engage in a battle with her Nanny! 

The in house shrink, sister2, pitched in, "The problem and the insecurities lie within you! Do not seek it in extraneous factors. By sacking her do you REALLY think you are dealing with the REAL problem?" 

The men in the family, after acquiring infinite wisdom that comes from years of successfully balancing the wife and the mother, said, "Think 25yrs from now... if the nanny is stressing you now, how will you react when he comes home with a woman you absolutely detest? You can sack the nanny but sacking a girlfriend or a wife, now that wouldn't be possible, would it??" 

"S@# off, all of you", I said with every intent of ignoring all of them. 

Finally it was the shrink sister who managed to break through. 

"You are the template, the stencil on which he will base all his future women. Do you really want him to have an angry, insecure, thoroughly irrational woman as the role model for all his future relationships?"

Huh????? 

What?????? 

Hold on for a second there! 

You mean to say that if I don't get my act together now, 25yrs later I will have to put up with a replica of me from the future, who you tell me, will be a hundred times worse, and I will have no one to blame but myself??? 

No, way!! 

No, No!!! 
Now that ain't happening, not if I can help it!!! 

So that is how the turmoil ended, not with a bang, but with a whimper, not with evolution and maturity but with a dread of having to fake - bond with a clone of me in the future!!

Now as I sit back and watch V2 otherwise known as His Royal Fussiness, take an hr of howling to finish his lunch and the nanny managing to feed him without losing her temper even once, I sigh and acknowledge the wisdom of my choice!

And as to my status as the "next best thing", I console myself by telling myself, one day he will be back in my arms! Till then I shall listen to Nina Simone sing.....

"The other woman finds time to manicure her nails
The other woman is perfect where her rival fails
And she's never seen with pin curls in her hair
The other woman enchants her clothes with French perfume
The other woman keeps fresh cut flowers in each room
There are never toys that's scattered everywhere
And when her baby comes to call
He'll find her waiting like a lonesome queen
Cos when she's by his side
It's such a change from old routine
But the other woman will always cry herself to sleep
The other woman will never have his love to keep
And as the years go by the other woman
Will spend her life alone"

Its raining needles!

Picture : Getty images

My first brush with Acupuncture!!!!

Have been suffering from this chronic cough for about 8 weeks now. Tried every possible thing - from dosing self with liberal doses of Benadryl; to gargling with quantities of Dettol that could disinfect an entire city; to half successful attempts with my usual tried and tested therapy, homoeopathy; to trying all sorts of home remedies suggested by the grocer to the handy man to my mother, ranging across cultures and food types, from the staid honey & ginger to the more exotic boiled oranges to plain yucky onion juice with pepper!!! Nevertheless all experimentation came to nought and the cough stayed on, invincible like the Himalayas.

Finally, like a drowning man, clutching at his last straw, took up someone's advice and decided to try TCM (traditional Chinese medicine). Having been a researcher for a good part of my work life, started with the usual round of Google search & stumbled upon Dr Mehmet Oz (for those who are clueless about who he is, you need to stop watching all the useless stuff on TV and start watching the mother of all general knowledge programs, Oprah!!) giving his thumb of approval to Acupuncture. Figured if its good enough for Oprah's doc, it is good enough for me!!

Buoyed by the confidence of Dr Oz's approval, immediately called up the clinic for an appointment, and was put on hold for 10 minutes while the lady on the other side went to look for someone who spoke English!! Undaunted by this insignificant little barrier called communication, decided to go ahead and try my luck with the power of TCM. 

Was expecting a shady little clinic on the lines of the "Baba sab marz ki dawa karenge" posters we see pinned up in small towns in India. So imagine my surprise when came across a beautiful, clean clinic, complete with a pharmacy, regular physical check up, blood pressure and even ECG type devices!! So the 5000 yr old discipline of TCM was quite modern even though it stayed firm to its roots! Now if that isn't impressive, I don't know what is!! 

Then came consultation hour, and found myself with the doctor and 2 interpretors, both of whom I had trouble comprehending. 

"Wass fowrem?" (What's the problem) they asked. 

"Yes this is my first time" I said.

Now that doesn't really bode too well esp when you are listing down your symptoms, does it? So fervently praying that my symptoms and case history don't get lost in translation, I soldiered on, speaking "sroowry" and listening "khayfoory"(slowly and carefully).

Then came the magic words I was waiting for, "U try Acupuncture" !!! 

Immediately I was ushered into this room with a bed & asked to lie down for the procedure. Before I could even make myself comfortable, zip, zip, zip, the needles went in with a speed that could make space travel seem slow!! And then came the hot cups, that I had only read of in magazines; apparently Gwyneth Paltrow is a fan of these. I was as thrilled as as a kid in Disneyland!!! They felt strange, I could swear I felt lighter and more relaxed, as if the suction cups were sucking all negativity out of my body.

The attendant came some time later and removed the cups. Holy mother of God, they were also a camouflage for needles which were sticking all over my body!!!! There were people in other beds nearby, some groaning in pain, some in near ecstasy, while here I was, like Bhishma Pitamaha, covered in needles, and all I felt was nothing, no heat, no pain, only a bout of drowsiness washing over my senses!!! 

Then the treatment was over, the interpretors arrived again with the doctor's instructions - "no chicken", "no citrus fruits", and my personal favourite, "cut down water to reduce your water retention"! Then like a kid at a candy store, I was given some green pills and yellow pills and some strange yet weirdly tasty liquid and asked to come back again after a few days.

So now I wait, eagerly for my next appointment, and plotting, what else can I go in for, if the cough gets better! And what about the cough? Its been a few hours, and the cough is already been cut down to size. But its a long night ahead. Lets see who prevails, my cough or TCM!! 

P.S

This post isn't complete without my mom's reaction to my tryst with acupuncture! Being an ardent advocate of all forms of alternate therapy and a obsessive fan of the healer Who Knows it All (or atleast claims to), Baba Ramdev, I thought she would be most excited by my new venture. 

So was left speechless when she said, "Eh?? Why did you go to a clinic? U have Internet; learn the pressure points from Internet & then poke urself with a needle @home". 

"What ???" I yelled in horror.

I mean she is weird and does take self sufficiency to its limits at times but this was definitely pushing it.

Hearing the horror in my voice, she softened & said, "OK, if u are scared of a needle, take a sharp tip pen & poke urself in the same places the Dr did. U will get the same outcome and think of all the money u will save"!!! 

Then came the words that just made the circle of horror complete!

"Baba Ramdev would have shown us how to do it at home, had he been doing the acupuncture"! 

Lord have mercy!!!