Watching Jodhaa Akbar…

Hi world...
Caught up with the mughal-rajput couple yesterday late evening (18 Feb 08)…good show Ashutosh, Hritik, Aishwarya, and the greatest…Rahman…

The positives first…when I heard the songs, I was wondering how Gowariker would translate them onto celluloid…all songs have come out well and the best was khwaja mere khwaja…I think the best picturization of a sufi qawwali of all time…and I was delighted that the sufi song-dance was shot in the style of the Turkish whirling dervishes’ tranced singing-dancing…for me this itself was total paisa vasool…to see the emperor slowly coming down and joining the sufi singers in an impromptu trance whirl gave me goose pimples… the other songs too have come out well…mana mohana’s strains could be heard throughout as well as jashne bahara…personally, azeem o came across as too crowded and stagey…no doubt about the song though…the chorus, the percussion, the rhythm, the vocals, all were in good sync…

My missus suggested that Hritik gets lots of opportunities to act with his eyes…which shows that given a chance, he has the talent to break set acting moulds…Hritik was good…showing vulnerability, incredulity, bravado, and intelligence in good measures…wish he gets many more chances like this…Aishwarya is my major weakness…I will always defend her and her acting…I know she is not a great actress, but she tries hard…you only have to look at her in Iruvar (Mani Ratnam) and Kandukondein Kandukondein and you will know the acting she is capable of under good directors…I am happy that she has done well in her recent outings, especially Guru, and now Jodhaa Akbar…anyway, she is luminous in this film and comes across as a capable rajput princess who holds her own against the mughal emperor…the sword fights scenes are good…Gowariker has managed to get her eyes speak too…

Finally, this had to be a max 150 minute film…not more…too many palace intrigues, personal battles…a whole lot of Hritik’s personal fight scenes were adding to the length of the film…but what do you do with Hritik then…!!! The entire Ila Arun track kept dragging…it only made one specific point of planting some weird ideas in the emperor’s mind about his rajput wife…but we would have missed the rajasthani feast (oh…how hungry I felt when the scene was on)…and anyway Ila Arun was terrible… all these (and some more) tracks took the film away from its Jodhaa-Akbar-ish intentions…which was to show the love growing between the young emperor and his wife…amidst political expediency, fundamentalism, machinations, etc. Finally, the stolen glances, distant sightings, painful absences, electric touches… get lost in the crowd…but those brief moments are worthwhile…

Jai

Post with no specific title-1

Hi world...

I finished reading ‘The Thirteenth Tale’ a few days back. I can only say that the book is unlike any novel that I had read. As I mentioned in my earlier post, it is a book (novel) about books and from my meagre experience of having read 4 such books (and halfway through the fifth – The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber), I can say that these books about books have a major ‘whodunit’ element in them, which makes them so interesting and absorbing. Though The Thirteenth Tale is not a whodunit in the strictest sense, and there is no crime or detective searching for clues to solve it, the tale is a ‘search’ in many ways. There is this bestselling novelist, Vida Winter, who has worn a mask successfully throughout her adult life and now that she is dying, wants to remove the mask and come out with her true story…which she has kept secret all along…and she does not want to tell her story to just about anybody…she has selected to tell her story to an amateur antiquarian bookseller who is also a sort of biographer, Margaret Lea … and this biographer has secrets of her own…the novelist has specific conditions to tell her story…which, of course, the bookseller agrees to…the writer wants her biographer to find out about her, but wouldn’t allow her to ask questions…enough hints are thrown…in essence, it is a mutual search for …not as much as for truth…but solace...

I have started The Book of Air and Shadows…there are lots of books here…book binding, book selling, ancient manuscripts, codes, ciphers, a conned and failed academic and finally the ‘holy grail’…a search for the manuscript of a so-far unknown and unheard of play by ‘William the Shakespeare’ himself…lot of intrigue here…and interspersed with the story of the search is the 17^th c. manuscript which talks of the Bard being spied upon for being a catholic…and the chapters of the manuscript written by the 'spy' in 17^th c. English is interestingly placed in between the chapters of the novel…when everything we supposedly know about the Bard being mere speculation built upon a few scraps of information, this manuscript becomes the focus of rival searches and scraps among inheritors, this once-conned and disgraced Shakespearean scholar, and ‘the mafia’…all in all, a good read…will tell you more…I am halfway through…till then…ciao…

Jai

Fountain Pens of AP – Guider Pens

Hi world...

I was all along looking forward to owning a Ratnam Pen, and as usual was browsing the net for information etc…and I hit upon the website of Guider Pens…I was pleasantly surprised with the coincidence that here is another FP manufacturer in AP and that too in Rajahmundry…and they had a website which had pictures of their pens and different kinds of pens…ebonite, acrylic, celluloid, among others…there was a contact ID and I sent a mail requesting a catalogue…got a response, but no catalogue…but nothing further… I sent a letter through snailmail…no response…I had also sent my phone number and after quite a while I got a call from Mr G. Lakshmana Rao, the proprietor…I told him what I wanted and he was gracious enough to send the pens soon enough…

In the meanwhile, I had registered as a member in the Fountain Pen Network online and met a likeminded member – Hari – who gave me information and tips on what pens to order…and based on his tips I had ordered an ebonite, an acrylic and a celluloid fountain pen…According to Hari, Guider is almost the only FP manufacturer who has still some raw stock of celluloid purchased back in the 60s and these pens are rare and Mr Lakshamana Rao himself suggested that I could gift the ebonite and the acrylic ones to friends/relatives, but not the celluloid one, as it is very rare…and for some information on Guider Pens (taken from their website…)

“The company was started by Mr. G. Subbarao in 1946, which is now being looked after by his son Mr. Lakshamana Rao. Pens are still being manufactured with the machines which were imported from Germany 60 years back.In the olden days they used to manufacture pens manually due to insufficient power supply. The raw material was also imported from Japan. Still the company is having the raw material and pens which made by the professionals above 50 years back. You can choose gold nibbed pens, silver body engraved art pens, celluloid, ebonite, acrylic pens, ball pens & marble stone pens. Guider Pens have received appraisals from Babu Rajendra Prasad, Giani Zail Singh, Sri Jaya Prakash Narayan, Mrs Indira Gandhi and former chief minister of AP, late Sri N. T. Rama Rao and others.”

I was delighted when I received the 3 pens and i fell in love with the acrylic one...I liked the green mottled ebonite and the rare celluloid FP...I have started using the acrylic and the ebonite pens...and I pleased with my purchases...in the photo above, the blue FP is the acrylic one, the red pen is made of celluloid and the green one is the ebonite...dont they all look wonderful...they also write well...

When I started collecting fountain pens seriously, I did not know that AP had these many FP manufacturers…and Hari supplied with more information saying that ‘Hyderabad is the Mecca of Ebonite pens’… I also purchased 2 Brahmam ebonite pens...these ebonite pens are manufactured in Vijayawada in AP...that is for another post...till then...