Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Movies, Music, and the Mumbai Monsoons

Watched a handful of 5-minute movies on TV today. One was called "The Sunshine Girl". In the movie, a little girl is coloring the sun. But her crayon gets over (I think… was in an attention-fluctuating state of mind just then). So she tries to take the color from the sun. She stretches her hand out of the window, towards the sunny skies. As she draws her hand back in, however, the sun comes in too, seated on her palm. Instantly, the world is plunged into darkness. Her parents panic in the other room: "What is to be done?" A newsflash on TV: "Sun is missing". It isn't missing. It has rolled underneath the little girl's bed. She squeezes her hand in under the bed, reaches for the little sun, drags it out, walks over to the window, places the sun on her palm, and stretches her arm out of the window, into the darkness of the sunless skies. The sun is back in its place. The catastrophe is no more.

There was another one called the "Glass Eye". A man loses his glass eye, and it starts seeing the world in color. Of course, then his dog eats it up, and will probably poop it out the next day. Ughs for that thought, though the movie was rather sweet.

Yet another movie, "The Orchard" showed horror from the perspective of a tree. You might get scared if you are a bougainvillea or something. If you aren't, you'll just have to make do by appreciating the art direction maybe.
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As I was getting home today, I was listening to this really catchy song. It gave me this sudden almost overwhelming urge to get half out of the auto, flay my hands about, and sing at the top of my voice. I would happily have run around a few trees singing myself hoarse for the 30 remaining seconds of the song. Then the music stopped, an annoying RJ began jabbering, and my urge to make a scene vanished into the moisture-filled monsoon air over the flyover on the Eastern Express Highway.
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The rains in Bombay (Mumbai... It's Mumbai!... But Bombay sounds more prose-worthy somehow) are pretty dull. There is hardly ever any sound and light show (Read: "thunder and lightning"). It rains on and off. It is almost as though the people in charge of the monsoon showers tell each other: "There has to be a lot of rain. So let's just cut out the drama and give them some."

However, it is not the lack of drama that makes me hate Mumbai rain. It is the slush on the road. The rain water mixes with the sand and gravel of roads being constructed. Slippery mud gets formed. Toilet-deprived slum kids get rid of last night's dinner on the side of the road where the pavement should have been. And I have to walk through all that, in addition to braving puddle-water-splashing vehicles, to reluctantly get to the jailhouse we all call office.
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3 comments:

~Moo-lah Buz!nezzz~ said...

I like the idea of "the orchard" movie.....sounds wierd....but nice...
...and i thought bombay rains were more of the stormy types...!!!damn!!..rain without lightning is no no fun!!!!!

Llama said...

Even i had that idea y'know.. lotsa thunder, lightning.. but it just rains... much harder than in Kol... umbrellas are helpless against the rain... but hardly any thunder or lightning.

Try watching "on the lot" on star world... usme dekha maine.

~Moo-lah Buz!nezzz~ said...

On the lot amio dekhi majhe majhe time pele....ohh,so u were talkin about those 5 min movies which were done in 1 hour,rite....i missed that episode...