Sunday, April 27, 2008

Parva

Have been reading Bhyrappa's Parva n it's amazing...
I had never known the story of Mahabharatha so well as i do now 'coz of this book.
It's the magic of Bhyrappa again.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Chaos in Birla Temple


Me and S visited the famous Birla temple yestarday.
Though he had visited it lot many times, for me it was the first time.
I had just read the name of the temple in one of the A.P Tourist guide but didn't know that the whole temple was built in white marble!!!
The temple resembles more or less like the ISKON temple in B'lore but only that its marble built.
It's a marvellous structure with very explicit carvings and spread around a vast area.
But there were certain things which irked us both whlie entering the temple.
Firstly, it was the security- which required us to surrender our mobile phones in the counter.
I had seen temples where they asked people to switch off their mobiles but never had i seen this kind of security anywhere.
And the result of such security was obviously people "loosing" their mobile phones.
As we walked up to the main temple what we got to see was the endless Q of people, and ofcourse it took us more than 45 mins to atlast see the GOD.
Now comes the most interesting part- before we could God's darshan we received 'thirtha' and next stands a 'priest' literally streching his hands and snatching the money from my hands which i was supposed to put in the Hundi.
Me, on the other hand, thinking that there is no hundi royally gave all the money to the pujari.
Only after all this drama were we allowed to have the darshan.
And there was the 'HUNDI' for which i didn't have any money left:)
So the meaning here is simple and needs no explanation.
The preist did not have just one or two notes, there was bundle of it.
S being completely enraged with it, decided to lodge a complaint againt the pujari at the office.
We went to the office and they wanted everything in writing, so we did.
While this was happening, i saw a man enter the office, stand near one of the security personnel, sneake a Rs.50 note, speak to him in Telugu and vanish.
And what was that all about nobody knows.
After we gave the complaint in writing, the priest was called for and enquired for which he tried giving lot many excuses.
Later, even after so many arguments,we felt that it didn't lead us anywhere.
It's just for that time being he would be enquired and left unpunished.
So we decided to leave the matter then and there and were out of the blessed temple.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Sikkim



It' been one month since me and S are back from our Sikkim trip, still i haven't been to able to start writing anything about the place and now i have lost the interest too though it's great and SACRED place as they say it....

So above is a picture of Mt. Kangchenjunga as seen from Pelling...and next is the beautiful Changu lake near Nathula pass... ...

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

"DOR"

Two women from different parts of India...
One from Rajasthan...
Another from Kashmir...
Both married to the man they love...
Both know what they want from life...
Both have integrity and zest for life...
But the way they express these things is the only difference...
One abides by the society's norms and enjoys what she wants...
Another fights with the world to get what she wants...
And still they are happy in their world....
But that's short lived...
Both of their husbands travel abroad to earn more money...
And eventually one of them gets killed in the hands of the other accidentally...
The killer goes behind the bars to get a death sentence...
The news reaches his wife...
Her husband can escape the death sentence only if the widow of the killed signs a letter stating the incident as an accident...
The wife of the accused travels to Rajasthan in search of the widow...
But she finds her so innocent that she decides to wait for the right moment to tell the truth and get the signature...
In the course of time they become very close friends...
The widow (who had lost all her freedom) starts to enjoy her life again because of her friendship...
Truth unfolds at the end and the widow resents her friend thinking that she deceived her...
But she realises at the same time that her friend's entry was like a second life for her...
And finally as usual with all the movies, its a happy ending where the widow abandons her husband's house and goes with her friend...

As always with Nagesh Kukunoor, DOR is a very touching movie....
The widow played by Ayesha Takia looks as innocent as a child...
Gul Panag as the wife of the accused is equally good...
With very strong music, dialogues and acting from all the actors, this movie proves to be one of the best of Kukunoor's films.