The new song in my life......

is from an album called 'Ustad & the Divas' and yep you guessed it - the song's called 'Leja Leja' . It melodius, sung beautifully and the Ustad's voice gives it just the right folksy touch . The video is really cute too .....go watch it !

The last time a song gave me butterflies in my stomach and a goof ball grin on my face was when Piya Basanti was released. Infact i find it one of the most underrated albums of all times. Thanks to the video , everyone hummed 'piya basanti' - the title track, but what most ppl didn't do was go beyond that one song, maybe some of us heard 'Surmayi Aankhen' - do that and you realize that the album has some incredibly beautiful tunes . Check out 'Koi Pyar se mujhe' and 'Shaam Dhaale' from the same album. Incredibly versatile music to suit your every mood!

Movie Review - Blood Diamond

Blood Diamond - watch it for some solid acting by not just Leo DiCaprio but the rest of the cast as well. What i personally found most engaging about this movie on war torn Sierra Leone and the conflict diamonds was the completeness of the script - it spans just about every angle of the issue , right from civil war, to the child soldiers to the refugee camp to the world community and forums , the unscrupulous diamond cartels and their control over supply , the diamond smugglers, the reporters, its all there. No piece of the puzzle is missing in this one !

Another high engagement factor is the narrative and the way the movie unfolds - it communicates a profound sense of unease and discomfort with the 'african sitiation' without overt focus or overtly emotive appeals about the plight of millions who have been uprooted from their homes and have lost lives and loved ones for something that really is ultimately just a stone . The movie never diverts from it's main focus - to tell the story of a fisherman and his family. The events are a backdrop, the children, the hunger, the blood and violence, the greed - they all serve as a rich backdrop to the quest of one man to reunite his family.

And the past few weeks

After the viral have been quite hectic..... catching up with work and all the fun that i missed out on including regular workouts in the gym........ have finally started the 'eat less and eat healthy' phase of my own arbit diet plan and supplemented it with regular workouts . we should see some results in the next coyple of months i hope ...

So what else is new - hmmmmm lets see - i read David Davidar's 'House of Blue Mangoes' . I don't read indian authors much but this was quite a good book . the best part about davidar's prose is that he manages to strike the fine balance between being too prosaic and being overtly lyrical. so, the narrative is crisp yet detailed in the right manner and actually encourages the reader to visualize each moment in the book. The book primarily deals with the lives and times of the Dorais - the principal family in themythical town of Chevathar, in the backdrop of caste issues and violence.

Now this indeed was an eye opener for me since hitherto i had always assumed that caste based politics was the exclusive domain of the north and bihar belt. then i did some digging after i read the book and figured that the south has it's own issues as well! We indians are major racists in our own way , we don't go the 'gora vs. darkie' route ...... we just discriminate among our own people based on a some societal structure created aeons ago and outdated beyond repair . And then, we are properly outraged when an indian abroad is insulted on racist lines. I mean when will we learn that we need to clean our own backyard first before we even ask the world to respect us as indians.