My facebook profile pic is a huge me, eating a 'huger' piece of cake - and that pretty much sums up 'Bala'. So, this is exactly where this blog and everything I had to say about running should have ended. Of course not. right? My wife Priya is discussing her post-partum weight gain and I am doing the requisite nods at right intervals, and boom out of the blue...
"Bala, looks like you have not lost your pregnancy weight yet".
I go to the 'pretend & pray' mode (pretend - I did not hear; Pray - No one else did) till
" Oh, he's got time, his baby is not out of the tummy yet!"
That pierced the layers of blubber and hurt my ego. I immediately went to what I am best at - sitting on a couch and searching the web - and found " 100 ways to lose weight in 30 days".
After filtering out any idea that contains diet, gym or moderation, I was left with Psychotherapy, tummy tuck or running a marathon. Priya said no tummy tuck; I don't know what all I will tell the shrink; so, marathon it was...
By no stretch of imagination
For all ye uninitiated, running does not just mean running - you got to warm, stretch, run, stretch again, cool, and then run again after two days to recover from the previous run . There is also lactic acid, water, sugar, salt, ice and kneading involved. If you take out just the run part, it sounds more like a baked good recipe.
It all starts simple,
"Touch your toes"
"Sure!"
"With your fingers, dummy!"
"ok... there you go!"
"No! stand up!..."
"whatever!"
"knees STRAIGHT!"
"what the eff!..."
"AND don't arch your back!"
"alright, I give up!"
AND THIS is only the start, next came the quad stretch where you stand in one leg and the other leg is supposed to hurt and then the trainer went down on the floor; tied himself into a knot a navy seal would be proud of. And, looked at me tauntingly to match that. All I could think was, 'It will be really funny if I tickled you now'.
Dressed to kill
After two sessions, I find out I totally suck - and that is not my fault!All I needed was the right gear.
Of course one needs good shoes (the guy at the sports shoe shop made me run before he gave me the shoe - how sadistic!) running shirts and running shorts, a jacket and a track suit , a hat for the sun and gloves for the cold, sun screen and running goggles, reflective strips in case I ever run in the dark (why would I?), a fuel belt (this I like, if filled properly this is kind of your very own mobile vending machine), a smart phone to listen music to, when running, an arm band to carry the phone and vaseline (No! Not making up that one. that is to prevent chaffing).
That's the hardware part. In the software section, download a handful of apps to measure your speed, elevation, acceleration, azimuth coordinate, and gyroscopic momentum (yeah. made that up) and you are all set - just that you have added considerable overhead to the already unconsiderable weight.
Somewhere at this point thanks to the world cup, I saw Joachim Lowe wearing lucky blue V neck and decided I need a lucky unwashed shirt too. I will just say, the subtitle for this section came from that idea.
Calling a spade a spade
After a couple of months into this you are wiser and more technical.. in jargons. You give a nice name for everything you do. If you are breathing, your resting heart rate is up/low/does not exist; just chilling becomes 'resting the leg', and drinking water becomes 'hydrating'. Hurting somewhere is a double whammy - you get to use words like 'IT Band tear' and have a valid excuse for a massage. It might get too complicated at times though. I think the only reason I have not complained of foot pain yet is, I can't pronounce 'plantar fasciitis'.
Fund raising
I should have mentioned marathon training make me do two things that I hate doing. Running, and asking people to do things for me. The deal is I get trained for marathon and raise funds that goes towards education in India. A very noble cause - just that a wrong person signed up to do it. My side of the story is, I tremble, my palms get sweaty and I start stuttering when I go to the bank to draw MY OWN money.
I have done/considered doing all of the below.
- Start walking with a limp and if people ask, go "Oh I got injured training for a marathon, would you like to donate btw?"
- Car wash
- Intersection, card board & marker (you get the idea)
and the net result is I have $21 and a half eaten cookie on my marathon fund. $20 was mine; I stole a dollar from Priya's wallet and my 16 month old dropped the cookie in the collection jar seeing my very forlorn look.
This again pierced the layers of blubber and hurt my ego. So, I decided to do the next best thing I am good at, sitting on a couch, opening my laptop and writing up my experience...
So, if you laughed, go donate. It is not as hard as running or asking for money.
Bala (0.22568 pounds lighter now)
PS1: Team Asha is a very committed group. I have worked with a lot of folks at Team Asha, Silicon Valley and the money you donate goes towards improving education in India. Asha is a zero overhead organization, run by folks like us volunteering (more like you, than me) and they are very passionate about the cause of education. The $2K I will raise will take care of the education and living expenses of about 8 children for an year. Yup... basic education does not cost much in India and yet there are millions of kids who could not afford it. More details here.
PS2: Jokes apart, my running is coming along well. I completed San Francisco Half Marathon and am training for the Oct 31st Silicon Valley full marathon. I have logged close to 250miles this season and finished a 17 miler over the weekend. I have seen a good change in my health and life style. Reach out to Team Asha from where ever you are. If they can make me run, you will be a much easier job.
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Friday, June 25, 2010
Musing on Raavanan
If you keep thinking about the movie a week after you are out of the movie hall, it is worth writing about it. Lets just call this the extended process of enjoying the movie. Yes, I did say I enjoyed the movie. It is an enjoyable movie ... not your normal 'enjoyable' movies but a rare work of art in Indian cinema.
Lets start with the well known story... or is it really that well-known? Is the story really Ramayanam or is it just a facade or an allegory? The story has much more parallels to Veerapan vs Devaram, LTTE vs IPKF, Kashmiris vs Indian army or Al-Queda vs US. It is almost the fourth edition of the Roja, Bombay, Dil Se sequence, only that this time the director gets more into the head of the villain and asks the question is he really the villain or more aptly, is he the real villain?
This movie is all about exploring the thin gray line between virtues and vices and how in YOUR eyes, a virtue in one person is a vice in another... again in YOUR eyes - the characters themselves do not seem to have any moral qualms.
Is Rahini falling for Veera a vice or a virtue? Is it a virtue because we know Veera is a "good person"? Can a hero lust another person's wife? Is it ok to gamble away your wife to kill a terrorist? If that is not wrong, why is abducting the half-sister wrong? Is it ok to denude a person and humiliate him? what if it is the adorable half-sister?? If a man hunt and a shoot-out at your home is wrong why does ransacking the tent in the forest feel right?
It is not just the big three characters that have these contradictions built in. A lot of characters Step outside the good vs evil stereotype. Kattapanchayathu brother, police deputy with below the belt tactics, An aanjaneyar with the worst record in the department. Speaking of characters and characterization a special kudos for having a transvestite character with not a single reference to his/her sexuality.
In the Tamil version I saw, the casting is perfect. Aishwarya is the perfect mettu kudi girl and the story actually pivots around her. She has handled it really well - with equal proportions of pride and rage. Vikram seems to be a natural and Prithviraj sufficiently underplays to let only the dark side of his character come to the forefront.
Going back to Ramayanam as the facade - it is not as blatant a reproduction of Ramayanam nor or there mindless parallels in the movie. If you really think about it, you can count the no. of paralles in your hand. (14 days, 10 heads, Soorpanakai, Anjaneyar, Anumaar meeting Seetha, and a cleverly concealed Jadayu) - but they are so strategically placed that the creator fools you into thinking it is Ramayanam and that gives him the liberty to tell his story without compromising for karunanidhis (Iruvar) or Bal Thakreys (Bombay).
" Un pondattikkaghavae unna kollalaaam... aana athae pondatikkaghavae unna uyirodavum vidalaam' , "kadavulae, enakku kovatha kudu, ivanghala en kitta anbha irukkka vaikkathae", "Aval kannula bayamae illainnae, aprom eppadinnae avalai kolrathu" - I bet if I said these were by Vairamuthu, you would have said those are the greatest words written. The one place where the dialogs are plastic is in the train sequence. But, if your intention is to make your wife leave you, that's exactly how you would talk.. and yes you will talk about polygraph too.
The director challenges you to sit up and pay attention to every frame of the movie. A single reference to Dev being an encounter specialist or Veera being the menace of the society, Indirect references to Veera being well-read, The subtle difference btwn love at first sight and love by sight.
By the way, Veera's falling in love with Aishwarya is one of the most beautiful sequences pictured in Indian cinema. Veera does not fall for her when Aishwarya jumps off the cliff or when he jumps after her trying to rescue her. But he falls for her the instance he sees Aishwarya falling from the branch of the tree and surface from the water choked up. The vulnerability of the character in that moment affects him in a deep way. His desperation to protect her manifests itself as love and he does not like that. This immediate moral struggle is captured well by Vairamuthu in "Aghini Pazhamendru therinthirinthum, adikkadi naaku thudikkarathae".
This is not a screen play strong movie and the strongest manifestation of this is that the final duel seems to erupt out of nowhere. Many Manirathnam movies off late have this issue (Iruvar, Guru) where the gravity of the climax feel out of proportion to the scenes that build up to it. It may be because all these movies are more character-centric that the director eats up too much time in establishing the characters and there is no more room for a solid screen play string. Also, unlike a lot of other international movies, the director does not get the benefit of the flow of a good story handed to him. Indian creators mostly operate in a silo, ignoring the good works from the literary field and end up carrying the extra burden of creating the story too. May be that is something our production houses should consider - Get the stories from literary field and just build a screen version of that story.
Another aspect that is distracting to me is the movie is trying hard to dazzle you - with cinematography, locations or art direction. In a more authentic work, the bridge or the huge stone idol would have been introduced earlier and you will be familiar with the props when they eventually take the center stage, allowing you to focus on the proceedings. By trying hard to impress, the director has distracted us enough to locus focus on the script.
In the end, it is not often that you get to think about an Indian movie in these aspects and I think that is the proof that this is great piece of work. It is completely ok if you do not like Raavanan, But please do not claim you are a connoisseur of quality cinema or pretend you understand cinema and tear up the movie in your 'reviews'.
Lets start with the well known story... or is it really that well-known? Is the story really Ramayanam or is it just a facade or an allegory? The story has much more parallels to Veerapan vs Devaram, LTTE vs IPKF, Kashmiris vs Indian army or Al-Queda vs US. It is almost the fourth edition of the Roja, Bombay, Dil Se sequence, only that this time the director gets more into the head of the villain and asks the question is he really the villain or more aptly, is he the real villain?
This movie is all about exploring the thin gray line between virtues and vices and how in YOUR eyes, a virtue in one person is a vice in another... again in YOUR eyes - the characters themselves do not seem to have any moral qualms.
Is Rahini falling for Veera a vice or a virtue? Is it a virtue because we know Veera is a "good person"? Can a hero lust another person's wife? Is it ok to gamble away your wife to kill a terrorist? If that is not wrong, why is abducting the half-sister wrong? Is it ok to denude a person and humiliate him? what if it is the adorable half-sister?? If a man hunt and a shoot-out at your home is wrong why does ransacking the tent in the forest feel right?
It is not just the big three characters that have these contradictions built in. A lot of characters Step outside the good vs evil stereotype. Kattapanchayathu brother, police deputy with below the belt tactics, An aanjaneyar with the worst record in the department. Speaking of characters and characterization a special kudos for having a transvestite character with not a single reference to his/her sexuality.
In the Tamil version I saw, the casting is perfect. Aishwarya is the perfect mettu kudi girl and the story actually pivots around her. She has handled it really well - with equal proportions of pride and rage. Vikram seems to be a natural and Prithviraj sufficiently underplays to let only the dark side of his character come to the forefront.
Going back to Ramayanam as the facade - it is not as blatant a reproduction of Ramayanam nor or there mindless parallels in the movie. If you really think about it, you can count the no. of paralles in your hand. (14 days, 10 heads, Soorpanakai, Anjaneyar, Anumaar meeting Seetha, and a cleverly concealed Jadayu) - but they are so strategically placed that the creator fools you into thinking it is Ramayanam and that gives him the liberty to tell his story without compromising for karunanidhis (Iruvar) or Bal Thakreys (Bombay).
" Un pondattikkaghavae unna kollalaaam... aana athae pondatikkaghavae unna uyirodavum vidalaam' , "kadavulae, enakku kovatha kudu, ivanghala en kitta anbha irukkka vaikkathae", "Aval kannula bayamae illainnae, aprom eppadinnae avalai kolrathu" - I bet if I said these were by Vairamuthu, you would have said those are the greatest words written. The one place where the dialogs are plastic is in the train sequence. But, if your intention is to make your wife leave you, that's exactly how you would talk.. and yes you will talk about polygraph too.
The director challenges you to sit up and pay attention to every frame of the movie. A single reference to Dev being an encounter specialist or Veera being the menace of the society, Indirect references to Veera being well-read, The subtle difference btwn love at first sight and love by sight.
By the way, Veera's falling in love with Aishwarya is one of the most beautiful sequences pictured in Indian cinema. Veera does not fall for her when Aishwarya jumps off the cliff or when he jumps after her trying to rescue her. But he falls for her the instance he sees Aishwarya falling from the branch of the tree and surface from the water choked up. The vulnerability of the character in that moment affects him in a deep way. His desperation to protect her manifests itself as love and he does not like that. This immediate moral struggle is captured well by Vairamuthu in "Aghini Pazhamendru therinthirinthum, adikkadi naaku thudikkarathae".
This is not a screen play strong movie and the strongest manifestation of this is that the final duel seems to erupt out of nowhere. Many Manirathnam movies off late have this issue (Iruvar, Guru) where the gravity of the climax feel out of proportion to the scenes that build up to it. It may be because all these movies are more character-centric that the director eats up too much time in establishing the characters and there is no more room for a solid screen play string. Also, unlike a lot of other international movies, the director does not get the benefit of the flow of a good story handed to him. Indian creators mostly operate in a silo, ignoring the good works from the literary field and end up carrying the extra burden of creating the story too. May be that is something our production houses should consider - Get the stories from literary field and just build a screen version of that story.
Another aspect that is distracting to me is the movie is trying hard to dazzle you - with cinematography, locations or art direction. In a more authentic work, the bridge or the huge stone idol would have been introduced earlier and you will be familiar with the props when they eventually take the center stage, allowing you to focus on the proceedings. By trying hard to impress, the director has distracted us enough to locus focus on the script.
In the end, it is not often that you get to think about an Indian movie in these aspects and I think that is the proof that this is great piece of work. It is completely ok if you do not like Raavanan, But please do not claim you are a connoisseur of quality cinema or pretend you understand cinema and tear up the movie in your 'reviews'.
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