Filmiholic

Does anyone else do this too?  You’re on the train or bus to work and you’re reading a book, and then you start scrolling through the albums and playlists on your MP3 player, sommelier-like, trying to find the perfect musical accompaniment?

For Melanie Abrams’ sometimes very steamy Playing, I chose an amorous playlist of that included Bob Marley, Mary J Blige, Janet Jackson, Kailash Kher, and so on.

Then, while moving through Manil Suri’s The Age of Shiva - a lot of which takes place in film-drenched Bombay through the 1950s, ’60s and onward - it was some five CDs’ worth of historical movie music from a collection called 50 Golden Years, with oldies sung by the likes of Sonu Nigam and Anuradha Paudwal.

The last book read, V.V. Ganeshananthan’s Love Marriage was a bit more challenging. 

Aside from MIA, no other Sri Lankan Tamil artists came to mind, as my knowledge of Sri Lankan music is sorely lacking.  The next best solution I could come up with was the soundtrack to Mani Ratnam’s Kannathil Muthamital (the tale of an adopted girl and her search for her birth mother in northern SL), and after that I just wandered off to A.R. Rahman’s Golden Collection 1, and then finally the soundtrack to the Surya/Jyothika starrer Peralagan. 

True, the connection between the music and the literary subject matter is tenuous, but in does help to create an aural environment. 

Part of my Friday night was spent dashing between two PEN World Voices panels.  First, in the old B. Altman department store, now part of CUNY, there was the Sex in Literature panel.  After that, Rushdie.

Had to depart before the Q&A ended to zip up to the 92nd Street Y to try and snag a seemingly elusive press pass (or last minute ticket; anything!).  Once that was sorted out, I got a seat in the balcony between the competing scents of a woman wearing Tendre Poison and a man wearing a leather jacket that gave off a very abbatoir-y smell.  (Ugh.)  (more…)

Seen around the city:

Who says shopping can’t lead to enlightenment?

While ladies are buying bangles, husbands can rest:

Bombay and Hollywood, closer and closer always:

Hungry Rajasthani camel on Fifth Avenue:

After sliding the Welcome DVD into the player the other night, before the movie started rolling, this video appeared.

It’s a spot against human trafficking, and after a few fragments of vignettes pass by, we hear John Abraham, then Preity Zinta, and finally Amitabh Bachchan, all speaking out against it.

What I found rather jarring, given the gravity of the subject matter, was Ms. Zinta’s choice of eyewear:

 Look at that lush cover.  Playing, indeed.

Today was the official release date of Melanie Abrams’ first novel.

When you read about it in coming days and weeks (my review too, soon), you will likely hear a lot about the S&M in the relationship between Josie, the American grad student, and Devesh, the older Indian doctor.  And yes, those parts of the book do often crackle, but there’s also a lot of heavy psychological issues going on too, and, most important, a well spun tale.

The filmi connection comes in two places: first, in the novel itself.  As the relationship between Devesh and Josie begins to grow, he introduces her to Hindi movies, even driving her miles away (the story is set mainly in North Carolina) to catch a movie at a cinema.  Another night, they watch RGV’s Company at home.

The other filmi filament between the author and the Maharashtra-based (ahem) movie biz is her hubby, Bombay raconteur Vikram Chandra.  The couple now both teach at University of California, Berkeley, when not writing or spending time back in India, in that salty, cinematic city by the sea, where Melanie and SRK have a hair stylist in common.

Some of her favorite Hindi movies:  Satya, Lagaan and Parineeta.

While she’s not crisscrossing the country right now to promote Playing, you folks living in or near San Francisco and Berkeley will have a few chances to see her during April. 

In the months after the first Abrams-Chandra co-production arrives (the baby’s due date is in May), Melanie will be out and about to meet her readers in the US and India.

Rajni, Kamala and Maddy have all joined forces on a one-day hunger strike.  They’re doing it to protest the attacks in Bangalore on cinemas showing Tamil films by people angered over the Hogenakkal water scuffle.  More here. 

 (Note:  This is a story I wrote for India Abroad that appeared in the Oct. 5, 2007 issue.  There’s nothing filmi about it, though a young life suddenly cut short has been depicted often enough on screen.  But I wanted to post this story here, in the hope that more people will learn about Navroze Mody’s life, and to counterbalance all that’s been written about his violent death.)

In 1987, I worked at the Argentine Embassy’s trade office in midtown Manhattan.  It was my first proper job while starting college, and it was fun.  Most of the handful of staff there were very young, and we were always laughing. 

I would come in from Long Island and catch the E train at Penn Station to the stop under the Citicorp building at Lexington Avenue and 53rd street.  I often noticed an intriguing-looking young guy, in a sharp suit and aviator-frame eyeglasses – it was the Eighties - who would get on one stop after me every day.  He stood out because he was completely bald, years before it was in vogue for men to shave their heads, and I assumed he must have been undergoing cancer treatment.  He looked about 30 years old, and he was Indian. 

He would occasionally be with someone he knew, chatting in a British accent.  We both got off at the same stop and headed in different directions.  I even commented to Alfredo, a co-worker, about this unusual guy I kept seeing on the subway, leading him to pester me often with “¿Cómo está tu hindue?  Did you speak to him today?”  I’d blush, saying “No way!  I’m not approaching some total stranger on the subway.”  And we’d leave it at that.  I never imagined that I would try to track him down 20 years later.

(more…)

Here it is, late Thursday night.  I’ve just put in a full day at the office, finished a novel I’m reviewing on the way home on the train, spoke to the author for close to an hour for the same article, made some pasta for dinner, chatted on the phone while The Celebrity Apprentice wrapped up in the background.  (Well played, Piers and Trace.)

And before turning in, I was in the mood for some light entertainment, some filmi song and dance.  Hey, where’s the stash I brough back from Bombay?  What will it be?  Partner or Jhoom Barabar Jhoom?  Well, I’d seen chunks of JBJ over and over on a long flight a few months ago, so I opt for ChiChi’s fedora-clad megahit from last year.

After I unwrap the cellophane, still bearing the Rs 399 sticker from PlanetM in downtown Bombay, where I plunked down a considerable amount of greenbacks on my last trip back, I open the silly cardboard cut-out flaps of the DVD box, and see the hot pink T-series DVD laying there.  I lift it up and - don’t ask me why - flip it over, and I don’t believe it:  the disc is SO scratched and dusty, it looks like it’s been left on the Juhu Tara Road and driven over by rush hour traffic.

Call me optimistic (anyone who knows how long I endured through a certain relationship can attest to that), but, after some gentle cleaning with an appropriate dry cloth, I pop the scarred disc into the tray of my player, hoping beyond hope that it will go.

But, alas no. 

Shame on you, PlanetM, for selling such damaged merchandise, and/or shame on T-Series for packing such crap to sell to the public.  I’ll be over to see you one of these days.

The Miami Herald reports that the KJo Dostana entourage has touched down in Florida and begun shooting:

The production is expected to have all the kitschy trappings that have made Bollywood movies such a hit worldwide, including a zany musical number to be filmed on Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road.

Filmi fans will get to see a rematch of Bluffmaster jodi Roy and Simmi (AB 2.0 and Priyanka Chopra).   

How could I let March 17th go by without some reference to the small island that gave us The Commitments, Into the West, The Pogues, and those guys who sang “Two Hearts Beat as One“?

The question is how to link the country where I spent all those summers as a kid (in the same neighborhood that was/is home to Neil Jordan, Phil Lynott and Gerry Ryan) to films from another one of Her Majesty’s former colonies?   Hmmm….

The two countries have so much in common (beyond the colonial past): green, white and orange tricolors, a love of story-telling, a history of people leaving home and settling thousands of miles away, a certain conservatism and insularity followed by the liberalism and social upheaval that accompanied an economic boom, and just see if the architecture in Belfast doesn’t remind you of Bombay (or vice versa).  We know who we both have to thank for that…

But filmi Ireland…..  Well, let’s see.  In ‘06 the Trib carried a story about a concerted effort that Ireland was making to court the Indian film industry and entice people away from the ubiquitous Old Blighty to greener shores for those song picturizations when a phoren location is required. 

(To date, some seven or so films have touched down in Eire.)

On the non-filmi front, Madras-native-now-settled-in-Kildare Cauvery Madhavan has penned a novel several years back that told the tale of an Indian med school doing his residency in Ireland. 

The last I heard from her, she was working on a book about the Indo-Irish link, from the time period when the men of Erin touched down on Indian shores, boat tickets courtesy of HRH.

On a day like today, most people think of Ireland, and picture an image like the one at the top of this post (Yeats’ beloved Ben Bulben, in County Sligo), but the ones I have from home are more urban (and still make me as sentimental as the Irish tourism ads on TV):

But, oh, how far the country’s come since I went to see Maureen Potter in the panto and ate Choc Ices with my little playmates….while listening recently to a podcast of morning drivetime personality Gerry Ryan, I was amazed to hear him compare notes about Indian food with a man who called in to rave about a meal he just had in Cavan, of all places!  As the conversation progressed, I came to learn that Ryan’s place of residence, the Dublin suburb famous for the Good Friday battle between the Vikings and Brian Boru’s men, now was home to, not one, but two Indian restaurants.  Holy cow.  We didn’t even have Chinese food when I was growing up there, only the chipper on Vernon Avenue.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone.