The Voice In My Head…

Mervyn once told me that the way to spend the ‘Sabbath’ is by being with God & by being with loved ones, especially family.

I had a great Sunday. Started it off at Holy Mass with Mum & Dad (missing Simone more & more these days). After Mass, we tried to call Simone, but somehow couldn’t get through. After a long time trying, gave up

Following that, we went and visited Nana (mum’s mum) - who was looking Absolutely Great!! - and Grandma (dad’s mum), who’s also looking good & recuperating really well after her operation. Took pics with both of them, will post. In between these visits, also dropped in at A. Alice’s for a bit.

In the evening went out with Gail, for a lovely walk on the Land’s End Promenade (yes of course, thought of Delu). From there we walked towards McRonald’s rooftop (yeah, the pounds are just dropping Gail, lol) to visit with Edward’s parents who were down from Calcutta.

After that Gail & I spent some quality time over Thai Dinner at Thai Ban. Had a lovely time & got back early enough to watch the end of ‘The Life of David Gale’ with Mum & Dad, nice different sort of movie.

Will go & sleep now Ciao!

Ajay spent the day over working on the MC site - we were both so zonked as we finished off late last night at the movies - so I really appreciate him coming over and working anyway. Thx Aj!

Had to do my presentation at Bible Class today. My topic was ‘Order in the Church’ based on 1 Cor 14:26-40.

I had already prepared for it last week, so it was just a question of brushing up a little on it. I spent maybe a half hour before class just composing myself & getting into His Presence… it was so great, I got so many new insights & thoughts on the subject that I could have taken an entire hour to explain them briefly! [When I get the time, am going to paraphrase & post here].

The presentation went off well and the entire class (other presentations too) was great fun. Got a bit of sad news, we’re having only 3 more classes this year, as we’re taking a break during the holiday season.

Still, it’ll give me a chance to brush up. Praise God.

Austen it is not! Yet even for the most avid Austen fan I know* (*me), watching Gurinder Chadha’s ‘Bride & Prejudice’ was a lovely way to spend an evening.

I knew before I saw the movie that I would either love it or hate it and I’m glad it was the former. Chadha innovatively changed the setting of the original plot (into a whole new continent) and in doing so I thought she would have some trouble keeping to the essence of the story. Not so! While the characters remained practically identical to their originals, the story stayed within the general parameters of the original script.

Certain changes were bound to exist & these were seen in Mr. Darcy being an Hotelier & the Bennets becoming the Bakshis (with one less daughter!). Jane is Jaya (Namrata Shirodkar), Elizabeth is Lalitha (Aish), Kitty is Maya & Lydia is Lakhi.

The book had Jane being the extraordinarily beautiful one while Lizzie was the witty one. However, Aishwarya Rai is simply so stunning that Chadha very sensibly didn’t mention this.

A couple of things annoyed me like Lalitha’s extreme rudeness to Darcy for half of the movie. I think perhaps more wit and less grit could have been used keeping with in line with Austen.

The movie is also a musical, with several songs just happening everywhere for no reason whatsoever - true Bollywood style! My favorite was the ‘No life without wife’ number between the four Bakshi siblings, though the surfers & Baywatch lifeguards in the Lalitha / Darcy number were excellent too. Maya’s ‘Snake Dance’ was just hilarious.

I loved how Chadha used the change in location to her advantage by sending her Amritsar born characters to sunny Goa, London & L.A. Wickham was the obvious ‘villain’, unshaved & stubbled throughout. My favourite character in this movie had to be the pastor Mr. Collins transformed into ‘ABCD’ (American born confused Desi) accountant Mr. Kohli, who was just hilariously fabulous “Wassup”…

Lakhi’s fate was considerably better than Lydia’s and I suspect that settling the Lakhi/ Wickham deal wasn’t too much an imposition on Mr. Darcy as he simply had to resort to Bollywood ‘dishum dishum’ rather than settle the issue discreetly.

Chadha was at her ironic best: the cliched hero/heroine dancing around the sprinklers, the rape scene in the Bollywood movie theatre coinciding with Darcy & Wickham’s showdown (so typically Bollywood; had she been alive, Austen would have dropped dead) and the Desi Mrs. Bakshi surfing ‘Matchmaker.com’.

The colors were a bit much - I think Mira Nair achieved an amazing color balance with rich & sober colors interspersed in Monsoon Wedding - still Chadha isn’t noted for her sobriety. The songs were in heavy English accents as opposed to the normal Desi accents of most of the cast (which made it all more unrealistic).

Given the few hiccups however (& which movie is perfect?) I think Chadha’s done an excellent job. Remaking an Austen into a Hollywood movie would have been enough of a daunting task. She’s gone the extra mile & transformed it to Bollywood. My thumbs are up!

Hopefully Emma’s coming too.

After ages went out for a movie! Was dying to see ‘Bride & Prejudice’, partly because my all time favourite (fiction) book is ‘Pride & Prejudice’ [I love Jane Austen, own all her work] and partly because I like watching Indians do English films: Loved ‘Monsoon Wedding’ & ‘Bollywood/Hollywood’ was great too.

Went with (R-L) Gail, Ajay & Dinesh to Globus. I loved the film (will do a review). Ajay & Gail enjoyed the movie as well but Dinesh absolutely hated it - “It’s a chick flick” says he!

After the movie, we went to Kobe’s for Steaks. Had a lovely time & we all were enjoying ourselves so much that we didn’t want it to end. So we decided to do Coffee & Dessert at the Carter’s Cafe Coffee Day . Got dear Sean (who had just gotten back from a late shift) to join us. Had a great time again.

This time we were thrown out

Decided to call it a night finally, making a virtue out of necessity. Praise God for good clean fun & great fellowship