We watched Nayagan today on K TV. This time, I managed not to cry at all. The last time I saw the movie was about 7 years back. k and I were good friends back then and I managed to convince k and his roommate, Swami to watch Nayagan with me. Although Swami's mother-tongue was Tamil, he was a typical Bombayite like k - meaning, he began all his sentences with, "Abe saale...". So, anyway, we started watching it and all of us became quite involved with the movie (Of course, such is the nature of Nayagan).
There was this really touching scene in the movie where Kamal Hassan asks to see his grandson for the first time and his daughter refuses and Kamal Hassan tries to deal with the denial, hide his tears while hoping his daughter would change her mind and he would catch a glimpse of his grandson. I watched this scene and started crying silently. k and Swami were caught up in the scene and one of them turned to share something about the scene with me. Once they realized I was crying, the intense emotional scene was soon forgotten and I became the target of their attention. Not that they were nice and they consoled me or anything. They mainly made fun of me. And that was when I realized I would never ever watch this movie again with people who do not get as seriously involved in it as I do.
And today, I forgot all about that resolution and watched the movie with k. After the very same scene, he suddenly looked at me and said, "Wait! Isn't this the same scene for which you started crying that day? Ha haaaa!"
And the moment was lost all over again.
I swear, I will not watch Nayagan a third time with k. And if I ever do, it will only be because I know he is going to cry seeing the same scene again!
Anyway, he agreed that it was indeed a good movie and that mollified me a bit. This whole discussion reminds me of another incident.
Many years back, when k was still a novice at everything Tamil, I used to tell him that I could not marry him unless he was familiar with "Mouna Ragam". I was very excited when k sat down to watch the movie and I made sure he caught all the nuances in the movie. And since then, whenever the topic of Tamil movies comes up, k goes, "Whaaa? You haven't seen Mouna Ragam, how dare you exist?" and so on. Serves me right for wanting to share Mouna Ragam with him :p
The other association that he makes with Tamil folks is "Thayir sadam". He makes this ridiculous gesture of slurping gooey rice from his hands all the way to his elbow as if to say we eat thayir sadam like that! Jeez! How can someone not like thayir sadam? Beats me! A year back, we had gone to Atlanta to visit my maama. k, my cousin and I were shopping and we decided to take a to-go for dinner. We were at this amazing desi store called "Shayona" and k got really excited seeing home made kachori, samosas, chola etc in the store. So, he picked up a bunch of "tiffin" items and looked at my cousin and said, "Cool! Let's have this for dinner!" She gave him a weird look and said, "Saadam?" The concept of wrapping up a nice dinner with thayir sadam is lost time and again on poor k. But after the Atlanta incident, he remembers that "Tams" don't do dinner without their beloved thachi mammam :p
December 28, 2008
December 25, 2008
Murphy baby,
Edited: Thanks to Rushu's comment, finally found the picture:
Edited: Thanks to Shanmugapriya, here is a nice picture of Murphy baby!
Below is a tiny photo on the left of the radio:
Photo courtesy: Santhosh
Do any of you remember the phrase, "Murphy baby"? I vaguely remember seeing a black and white photo of this really cute, chubby kid on advertisements. My memory is probably served more by my mom's descriptions of the baby rather than faded images that I saw in my childhood. My mom said the baby was the advertising mascot for Indian radio.
So, do any one of you happen to remember how the baby looked? I looked on google and couldn't find one and for some reason I feel like looking at a picture of this baby.
 |
| Murphy baby (Source: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=364681406908569&set=a.323079557735421.80608.100001001383459&type=3&theater) |
Edited: Thanks to Shanmugapriya, here is a nice picture of Murphy baby!
Below is a tiny photo on the left of the radio:
Photo courtesy: Santhosh
Do any of you remember the phrase, "Murphy baby"? I vaguely remember seeing a black and white photo of this really cute, chubby kid on advertisements. My memory is probably served more by my mom's descriptions of the baby rather than faded images that I saw in my childhood. My mom said the baby was the advertising mascot for Indian radio.
So, do any one of you happen to remember how the baby looked? I looked on google and couldn't find one and for some reason I feel like looking at a picture of this baby.
December 24, 2008
Men don't ask for directions.
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to fix the garage shutter."
"Look up yellow pages."
k rummages through pages and pages of old manuals to find our garage manual, "No, I think I can fix it. Give me a few minutes."
A few hours later, I find k sitting on top of our car squinting at the motor hanging from the ceiling of our garage.
"Are you coming to dinner?"
"Give me a few, I am trying to figure this out..."
An hour later k eats dinner in silence poring over the hefty manual.
I give him a gentle reminder, "You know you can have someone fix this for you, it's not worth your time."
"I can get the part for it. I think I know what the problem is. If I get the guy to fix it, he's going to charge $170 unnecessarily."
It's midnight and I still hearing sounds of metal clanging in the garage. I resist the urge to advise and wait. k comes up in a few minutes with something in his hand that looks like a jagged wheel made out of paper balanced on a pointy steel stick.
"You see the problem?", he says pointing to the wheel, "This, here has worn out. So I just need to get a replacement for it."
Next day, k finishes his coffee in a record time of 5 minutes and rushes to the store to get the part. He returns in a couple of hours waving the parts victoriously (Amma, naan paas agiten style).
"I should be done in half an hour."
Half an hour later, I find k in the now familiar on-top-of-car position again, squinting at the wheel in the motor.
I give up and walk back in.
3 hours later, k comes in looking somewhat exhausted and defeated, his hands black from whatever it is that motor ejected on him.
"Want to call the guy?"
"If my test run fails, yes, am planning to..."
Men are like that. They will not ask for help if their life depends on it.
Five minutes later, k walks in looking somewhat more exhausted.
"Want to call the guy?"
"Let me wash my hands first and then clean up and then..."
And so on. Postpone the asking-for-help bit as much as possible.
Finally, surprise! k calls the guy after a record 8 hours of working on the garage.
"He said 70 bucks. If I had known earlier, I would have probably called him yesterday."
Yeah. I bet you would have called him.
"Trying to fix the garage shutter."
"Look up yellow pages."
k rummages through pages and pages of old manuals to find our garage manual, "No, I think I can fix it. Give me a few minutes."
A few hours later, I find k sitting on top of our car squinting at the motor hanging from the ceiling of our garage.
"Are you coming to dinner?"
"Give me a few, I am trying to figure this out..."
An hour later k eats dinner in silence poring over the hefty manual.
I give him a gentle reminder, "You know you can have someone fix this for you, it's not worth your time."
"I can get the part for it. I think I know what the problem is. If I get the guy to fix it, he's going to charge $170 unnecessarily."
It's midnight and I still hearing sounds of metal clanging in the garage. I resist the urge to advise and wait. k comes up in a few minutes with something in his hand that looks like a jagged wheel made out of paper balanced on a pointy steel stick.
"You see the problem?", he says pointing to the wheel, "This, here has worn out. So I just need to get a replacement for it."
Next day, k finishes his coffee in a record time of 5 minutes and rushes to the store to get the part. He returns in a couple of hours waving the parts victoriously (Amma, naan paas agiten style).
"I should be done in half an hour."
Half an hour later, I find k in the now familiar on-top-of-car position again, squinting at the wheel in the motor.
I give up and walk back in.
3 hours later, k comes in looking somewhat exhausted and defeated, his hands black from whatever it is that motor ejected on him.
"Want to call the guy?"
"If my test run fails, yes, am planning to..."
Men are like that. They will not ask for help if their life depends on it.
Five minutes later, k walks in looking somewhat more exhausted.
"Want to call the guy?"
"Let me wash my hands first and then clean up and then..."
And so on. Postpone the asking-for-help bit as much as possible.
Finally, surprise! k calls the guy after a record 8 hours of working on the garage.
"He said 70 bucks. If I had known earlier, I would have probably called him yesterday."
Yeah. I bet you would have called him.
December 18, 2008
Twinkle twinkle little star...
So baby r~ decided she didn't want to nap like babies are supposed to, she decided to stay awake all afternoon today and I was running out of ideas to entertain her. k decided that nursery rhymes would do the trick and lull her to sleep. So he did what every dad would do - he looked on google :p and he came across this rendition of "Twinkle twinkle little star". I had a feeling k enjoyed it more than r!
December 15, 2008
Being a parent.
If you are one of those people that wondered what it feels like to be newbie parents and what the big deal is about, you are reading the right stuff now :p Or, if you are just being nice to me and reading my post just for the heck of it, that's cool too :)
Remember how we used to consider couples with kids a whole different set of people? People with hefty bags filled with diapers and related paraphernalia, people that were concerned more about their baby's spit-ups rather than their appearance, people that could not talk about anything other than their baby, people with a somewhat needy little one clawing for their attention constantly? We were not them. We even found it hard to imagine how life would be when we became them. Some of us even wondered what "unconditional love" meant. We heard words like sleepless, poop, diapers, doctors and wondered how we would ever inhabit a world filled with those words...
And guess what? Suddenly we are very much in that world. We are now parents that, no matter how interesting a conversation with someone is, always have one eye tracking our baby, we hardly give a second thought to what "poop" used to mean in our older worlds, focusing rather on its texture, smell and contents to smile or frown with concern, we talk less about "I" and more about the baby, we learn that absolute happiness has to do with a lot more than just some "me-time" and we worry. We worry all the time about the little life that we created and hope that it smiles back at us with that adorable, charming, heart-melting, lopsided grin today, tomorrow and forever...
We are now the parents.
Remember how we used to consider couples with kids a whole different set of people? People with hefty bags filled with diapers and related paraphernalia, people that were concerned more about their baby's spit-ups rather than their appearance, people that could not talk about anything other than their baby, people with a somewhat needy little one clawing for their attention constantly? We were not them. We even found it hard to imagine how life would be when we became them. Some of us even wondered what "unconditional love" meant. We heard words like sleepless, poop, diapers, doctors and wondered how we would ever inhabit a world filled with those words...
And guess what? Suddenly we are very much in that world. We are now parents that, no matter how interesting a conversation with someone is, always have one eye tracking our baby, we hardly give a second thought to what "poop" used to mean in our older worlds, focusing rather on its texture, smell and contents to smile or frown with concern, we talk less about "I" and more about the baby, we learn that absolute happiness has to do with a lot more than just some "me-time" and we worry. We worry all the time about the little life that we created and hope that it smiles back at us with that adorable, charming, heart-melting, lopsided grin today, tomorrow and forever...
We are now the parents.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
