Friday, January 23, 2009

Slumdog Millionaire

So it was by pure chance that I stumbled across a Youtube video of local Harrow lad, Dev Patel on the Ellen DeGeneres show. I have a soft spot for Ellen DeGeneres by the way. I think she's the cat's pyjamas and pretty damn funny to boot. He wasn't exactly very good looking. A tad too thin and not to mention extremely boyish (hello....18!), but he had the most fabulous British accent AND I came to realise that he was the star of the much talked about Slumdog Millionaire which had scooped up a bunch of awards at the Golden Globes.

The storyline sounded pretty interesting so I decided to d/l it to have a watch. While waiting for it to finish, Zhin and I discussed bits of the movie and other things on MSN, but the one thing I remembered distinctly was being completely aghast when my file finished downloading and I opened it up only to realise one glaring point I had forgotten. It was a Bollywood film. Well, not exactly Bollywod per se but it was based in Mumbai and obviously it had to be as authentic as possible, so for the first part of the film, the language spoken was their native one, and for the second part, they spoke in accented English. I remember complaining to Zhin about Dev's own real life accent being masked and how horrendous that was, and I went to bed rather disappointed.

I brought myself to watch it again today, however, despite my phobia for Bollywood films, and to my surprise, I was rooted for the entire movie. I have the shortest attention span for movies - couldn't even take an hour of 'Burn After Reading'. But the authenticity of the film being shot in Mumbai.....the conditions of the slums....the children running around, the vast number of people there actually were in India.....the harsh reality of a Hindu-Muslim riot that killed a mother and left 2 boys orphaned, were all that tantalising for me. My heart wept when I saw the people who had to resort to picking up trash from the dumpsites as a source of income, or the women who had to do their washing in a river that was murky with pollution. I cringed on the edge of my seat in horror when I realised the true ulterior motive of the man asking a bunch of children to rehearse their singing, choosing the best songbird amongst them only to burn their eyes out so that they could beg on the streets as blind singers.

The love story that constructed the core of the movie was mediocre at the best, but the reality that was India opened my eyes to a whole new level, and made me aware of how, whether we liked it or not, some things were not fair in life and they never would be. We would always be stratified into different classes of society, whether we liked it or not, and there wasn't much we could do to change that. It made me so sad, however, that I had everything under the sun within my grasp while some individuals just miles away had to fight so hard everyday just to put food into their mouths.

I say this too much already....but c'es la vie, ain't it.

On a happier note, Happy CNY to all.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Another Year

Another year has passed. Again, I am pretty damn amazed at how fast it seems to zoom by. When I was in High School, all I could think about was how SLOWLLYYYY time seemed to crawl by and how I wish I could change that. And now.....oh well. A part of me sometimes wishes that I could build a clock whose hands could turn back in time.....just like in Benjamin Button, but then there is a huge part of me that embraces each year passing by. There is something fulfilling about growing up, getting older, looking at yourself mature slowly but surely over the years and realising this is what life is all about.

Of course there is still a part of me that harbours some points of Childish Girliness.....be it swooning at a TV Drama male lead or not being able to stop smiling when your crush talks to you, or even the selfish demands for more designerware when credit crunch is occurring all around you.....but nobody ever said that any of us were built to be perfect in any possible way.

We are humans, after all. And this year.....although I didn't have any hotshot party, didn't get pissed drunk on alcohol, didn't go out partying till the wee hours of the morning, didn't get any fabulous presents....I am happy. Mainly for the people who remembered and who cared, my God-sent friends.....with myself for finally being able to sort out priorities and see the silver lining beneath clouds despite my being ill with the flu this year and for everything that I have at the moment. I vaguely remember being incredibly upset last year about something so small and ranting to my beloved besties (what would I do w/out you guys ;)) and all that seems so vaguely far away in the distance, and oh so childish now.

PS: Manda, Niff: I'll email you guys soon. And yes I will stop procrastinating! Hahah

Much Love,
XOXO