last week sometime i wrote a huge post for this blog - a post which i am sure i have put up in lights and decided was a lot better than it actually was - and when i went to publish it, it disappeared. it took me ages to write - and i think that was the problem. the wandering around, the grazing. then you hit 'publish' and blogger goes 'publish what?!', and it's all over. so here we go, once more with probably less enthusiasm than the first time - to rephrase what blogger asked me, excatly what was there to publish the last time?
last week was the most 'indian' of times for me for a long time. i had three different indian things going on late in the week. on wednesday afternoon, i shot a tiny segment for rocKwiz on sbs. they got several people of different effnick backgrounds to do short pieces-to-camera about a song that the rocKwiz band had just 'played'. i say 'played', because when i taped my bit, there was no rocKwiz band - just the set. they'll splie them in during the edit if they decide to use them. so if you're a rocKwiz viewer, look out for someone called 'bunty kapadia', who is the president of the 'booker t and the mg's fanclub', jaipur branch - and who also looks remarkably like me. anyhoo, it was shot at the espy (in the gershwin room , where rocKwiz is generally shot on selected tuesday evenings), and as i was making my way out of there around four-ish, i bumped into a couple of mates and had a beer or three with them, cause who in their right mind would say no to a balcony seat at the espy on a pleasant afternoon? what i wilfully pushed to the back of my brain was, however, that i later that evening, i would be going to the melbourne premiere of the merchants of bollywood. and that i would need to dress in a sari.
so, after gas-bagging and swilling till way past when i should have, we managed to get me home, freshened up and sufficiently wrapped in a sari in time to get to the premiere just before the show started. and what a show it was. the emotional journey it took me on went a little like this - oh, happy! look at the dancers. they are so energetic. they are so coordinated... i hope there's more dialogue. ooh, cringe, i hate these new songs. oooh that boy loves taking his shirt off a lot, doesn't he? and why not, his abs are be-glittered. old songs, i like old songs. i like the way the girl's costumes have gone from multi-coloured to balck and silver, it really works. but why are the girls dressed in body stockings under their costumes? it looks like sausage-casing, and its a little freaky cause it seems they have no belly buttons. oh! intermission.
neck champers.
dhol! wow! they really can play that thing, and it's got flashing lights inside it! cute, audience participation - thank goodness i'm not sitting at the end of a row. audience is clapping along. back to the 'story' - and what do you know. more dancing. they should have had subtitles for the song lyrics so the audience can get the links. or maybe they should have had more of a narrative... i wonder what it would feel like if i were sitting through an hour of someone singing and dancing in a language i didn't understand... no one's clapping now. the whooping and woo-hooing is coming from the dancers. they dance to 'just chill', and end the production with a mega-remix version of 'it's the time to disco'. after the show we went to have a drink with the cast, and i got used to male dancers running away every time i tried to have a conversation with them. it was an odd evening.
then saturday i mc'd at a diwali function at the hungarian hall in boronia (that's right - the venue where the infamous 'dinner dance' scene in my book was set). it was an interesting experience - i made the decision not to speak in hindi (cause i'm kinda crap at it), and it was the first time many people there saw me dressed in a sari. the diwali function was pretty much what i was expecting it to be - not too organised, they over sold tickets, it ran over time. but it's all this and more we've come to expect from a diwali function, right? or what else would there be to talk about till the next semi-organised 'do'?
last week was the most 'indian' of times for me for a long time. i had three different indian things going on late in the week. on wednesday afternoon, i shot a tiny segment for rocKwiz on sbs. they got several people of different effnick backgrounds to do short pieces-to-camera about a song that the rocKwiz band had just 'played'. i say 'played', because when i taped my bit, there was no rocKwiz band - just the set. they'll splie them in during the edit if they decide to use them. so if you're a rocKwiz viewer, look out for someone called 'bunty kapadia', who is the president of the 'booker t and the mg's fanclub', jaipur branch - and who also looks remarkably like me. anyhoo, it was shot at the espy (in the gershwin room , where rocKwiz is generally shot on selected tuesday evenings), and as i was making my way out of there around four-ish, i bumped into a couple of mates and had a beer or three with them, cause who in their right mind would say no to a balcony seat at the espy on a pleasant afternoon? what i wilfully pushed to the back of my brain was, however, that i later that evening, i would be going to the melbourne premiere of the merchants of bollywood. and that i would need to dress in a sari.
so, after gas-bagging and swilling till way past when i should have, we managed to get me home, freshened up and sufficiently wrapped in a sari in time to get to the premiere just before the show started. and what a show it was. the emotional journey it took me on went a little like this - oh, happy! look at the dancers. they are so energetic. they are so coordinated... i hope there's more dialogue. ooh, cringe, i hate these new songs. oooh that boy loves taking his shirt off a lot, doesn't he? and why not, his abs are be-glittered. old songs, i like old songs. i like the way the girl's costumes have gone from multi-coloured to balck and silver, it really works. but why are the girls dressed in body stockings under their costumes? it looks like sausage-casing, and its a little freaky cause it seems they have no belly buttons. oh! intermission.
neck champers.
dhol! wow! they really can play that thing, and it's got flashing lights inside it! cute, audience participation - thank goodness i'm not sitting at the end of a row. audience is clapping along. back to the 'story' - and what do you know. more dancing. they should have had subtitles for the song lyrics so the audience can get the links. or maybe they should have had more of a narrative... i wonder what it would feel like if i were sitting through an hour of someone singing and dancing in a language i didn't understand... no one's clapping now. the whooping and woo-hooing is coming from the dancers. they dance to 'just chill', and end the production with a mega-remix version of 'it's the time to disco'. after the show we went to have a drink with the cast, and i got used to male dancers running away every time i tried to have a conversation with them. it was an odd evening.
then saturday i mc'd at a diwali function at the hungarian hall in boronia (that's right - the venue where the infamous 'dinner dance' scene in my book was set). it was an interesting experience - i made the decision not to speak in hindi (cause i'm kinda crap at it), and it was the first time many people there saw me dressed in a sari. the diwali function was pretty much what i was expecting it to be - not too organised, they over sold tickets, it ran over time. but it's all this and more we've come to expect from a diwali function, right? or what else would there be to talk about till the next semi-organised 'do'?
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posted by shalini akhil at
7:06 AM
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