Kinky Boots

Mom and I had a movie marathon recently, and caught one of the best feel-good movies I have seen recently - Kinky Boots. A very Brit comedy, I found out today that it was actually based on a true story: Charlie Brown's family has been running a shoe factory for more than hundred years. And just as Charlie decides to defy the family tradition and move out of town, his father dies and he has to take over the reins of the factory. He very soon finds out that his father has been steadily losing business without telling anyone. After laying off several people, Charlie decides to do something to save the factory... A chance meeting with a drag queen, Lola, changes everything... And soon they come out with their very own collection of drag queen foot wear (built to support the weight of a man on stilettos). Really cool, really light, and really inspiring.

THE KABUL BEAUTY SCHOOL, By Deborah Rodrigues

Just finished reading this book and I am eager to share with everyone Debbie's incredible story. At first glance, a small-town American hairdresser volunteering in war-torn Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, would have strictly nothing to do there. But here's a typical, amazing example of being at the right place at the right time, and turning a small advantage into something much bigger than yourself.

Shyly standing amongst her co-aid workers, Debbie listens at everyone being introduced as doctor, epidemiologist, educator, and dreads what explanation would be given about her presence there. But at the moment she is introduced as a hair dresser and beautician, the whole room of foreigners living in Kabul erupts with applause, and before she knows it, she is busy, from morning to evening, cutting hair, giving highlights and pedicures to people from all different nationalities.

From here comes an idea, which, little she knows, will start a mini-revolution in the lives of many an Afghan women. Debbie realises that in the patriarchal Afghani culture, being a hairdresser or a beautician, is one of the very very few professions which give a woman the legitimate reason to leave her home and earn money. So she decides to start a beauty school, as a mean of empowerment and livelihood for Afghani women. Back in the US, she starts collecting donations from customers and even manages to involve big cosmetics companies to contribute money and supplies for the school. Ecstatic, she goes back to Kabul (leaving her mother and two teenage sons back in America) and thus starts a story worth a blockbuster - a lone American woman struggles with prejudice, threats to her security, finances, the rough conditions in the country and bureaucracy, to not only initiate social change, but also change her own life forever (getting a glimpse of life behind the veil, committing every possible cultural faux pas, and even marrying an Afghan man 10 years younger than her - knowing she is his second wife). This is a story of incredible guts, living life to the fullest, of unlikely friendships, and a simple truth I only too well understand - sometimes it is hard to change an injustice happening right in front of your eyes. It is not easy to go into a country with such harsh realities and ancient, rigid culture, and just wave a magic wand. It needs a lot of patience, understanding, treading with a velvet glove.

Another moral of the story for me, personally, is: even if you are wondering about a place and thinking 'what the hell am I doing here?', you never, absolutely never know what life has in stock for you, and sometimes the most unexpected thing can empower you and give a meaning to your existence.

Read more on http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/11/DDG5SP5EOE1.DTL

CLICK!

Recently, stuck at home with high fever and an awful cough, too tired to work online or even read, I found solace in some long-forgotten daytime TV. Sweating it out under a blanket, amongst mountains of used tissues and swigging from a bottle of nicely intoxicating cough syrup, I spent two days into a blur of movie repeats, soap operas and shows that I would normally miss while in office the whole day.

PASS THE SOAP!

THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL
Can you believe this is still going on? I mean, at this point, everyone has married and re-married everyone possible in this series; Brooke has conceived every single or married hero’s child; Stephanie has plotted and implemented an evil plan against every woman her sons cast an eye upon; all imaginable disappeared or illegitimate relatives have shown up… Many of the heroes already have gray hair. But no, the action continues, and honestly, even if you have missed a few hundred episodes, there’s no problem in catching up thanks to nagging flashbacks. And yes, Brooke is still sleeping around and crying, Ridge is still not sure about her, and Stephanie is still as evil as can be.

THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS
This is where The Bold and The Beautiful rejects live a parallel life, with their own affairs and plots. Switched channels within 5 minutes.

THE BEST OF FRIENDS
Did you know that Zee Studio shows back to back episodes of Friends?! I didn’t, and it made my day. This is one show which never bores me or tires me up. Each joke is a gem, each episode is unique!

HEROES
Ok, everyone is watching it. But allow me not to be part of the herd. Already past the freshness of the first few episodes, the protagonists’ tricks and travails have become like something the dog chewed on and then left in a corner – stale and boring. I love the way Claire (Hayden Panettiere) has transformed from a high school cheer leader into a beautiful young woman, and the Brit accent of India-born Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy), but that’s about it…

NEVER WATCHED BEFORE…

HANGING UP
I was ecstatic to catch this movie with Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton and Lisa Kudrow. I had read some reviews and was looking forward to a feel-good two hours. But fell flat on my face. I didn’t quite understand why the two sisters played by Diane and Lisa never went to visit their dying father, while a Mother Theresa-ish Meg never left his bedside despite all the mean things he had said to her. And the three sisters dynamics was somehow weak. At least it helped me fall asleep…

REEL TO REAL

WIFE SWAP
The person who invented the concept must have been a genius, and the way the show has been shot and edited is just brilliant. Imagine two families, can’t be more different from each other than that (a couple with two sons and a daughter living as pirates vs a super-organised household where each and every thing is labeled; or a family where the kids have to go to the bathroom on schedule and sign against their daily chores graph vs a family where the three sons are allowed to do whatever they want, with mommy succumbing to their every wish). The two wives swap homes for two weeks. The first week, they have to live as per the existing household rules. The next, they have the right to implement their own rules. Watch the fun as clashes and fights occur, while also subtle, gentle change happens, and both families find balance in their extreme existences.

COOKING UP A STORM

I could finally get a glimpse of the much talked-about celebrity chef Nigella Watson and see for myself what all the fuss is about. Men find her very sensual – tick against that point – I agree nature has gifted her the right assets (and some more, having in mind that at the end of the program they showed her going to the fridge at night and polishing off the leftovers). However, I found her drawl very unappetizing, and her cooking too oil-heavy.

KYLIE KWONG
From the way she talks food, to the frequent “mmmm”s interspersing her demos, everything about this program is absolutely delicious! I watched her for half an hour, mesmerized and hypnotized, dishing out a Peking Duck with plum sauce and fresh condiments. And decided the first thing I’ll do after getting better is dust my cookbooks and re-arrange my pantry.

ANTHONY BOURDAIN: NO RESERVATIONS
This man’s taste for adventure and unusual flavours is just too sexy! The way he can describe a place and its food, and mingle with the locals, is extremely down-to-earth, honest and raw. Love it!

PAST PERFECT
It’s official – daytime TV gets all the old, done to death movies. Several times I got stranded flicking channels for something decent to watch, only to end up recycling ancient UFO movies and horror flicks (although I must say they are much less scary during the day – The Grudge would normally get me screaming with nightmares, but this time I survived through it like I would through an episode of Sesame Street). However, I was very happy to catch up on an old favourite of mine - Practical Magic, with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock. Brought up by two aunts who are witches, these two sisters are also witches, and so are Sandra’s character’s two daughters. It is a cute, heart-warming story about love, family, loss, fighting and making up. Plus, I can’t remember a movie where Sandra has looked more sexy, feminine and absolutely beautiful! A must-see! I balanced the very girlie aftertaste of this movie, by watching, back-to-back, The Jackal. Bruce Willis and Richard Gere… Need I say more?

Only in Bombay...

... you can see "Shantaram", or ex-Australian convict and now a bestselling author of the book with the same name Gregory David Roberts, and the princess of Sweden, riding a beautiful black motorcycle on Regal Circle. Both in leather jackets, she, sporting oversized shades. Both in their late 50s, they are nevertheless gorgeous - tall, slim, fit and both with long blond hair.

Between worlds

This is an excerpt from Anthony Bourdain's book NO RESERVATIONS, based on the TV show with the same name (airing on Discovery Travel + Living). It really "spoke" to me, althought he talks about travel to many different places.

"... When you're a tourist on vacation, coming home means coming back to real life: familiar places, relationships, work, love, the rent... But when you travel for a living - when "work" is drinking ayahuasca with a jungle shaman or standing on a glacier, when you're as likely, on any given day, to be trudging down a riverbed in Borneo as standing in line at Starbucks - you start to ask yourself: Which of these is my "real" life? And if the answer is that the road is the real thing, how do you go back? How do you pick up your old life, your normal life, after you've seen all this? Returning to grilled cheese and bacon, or even a good piece of fish - sauteed Western style with a drizzle of butter sauce and microgreen garnish - seems flat and lifeless after experiencing the colours and condiments of Asia. The expectations of a meal become distorted... The clothes you see and wear back home seem shapeless and washed out... The bar at the W hotel in Westwood starts to seem alien, airless and sterile. And you fear that one day you will look at your friends and loved ones and think: "I was sitting under a bouquet of human skulls, drinking rice whiskey and eating wild pig with my new headhunter buddies last week. How do I feign the appropriate level of interest in everyday things?" It has been said that we find out more about ourselves when we travel than about the places we visit. And it's true that I always look for a universality - some common ground, a unified theory of human behaviour. A comfortable takeaway that would describe the world and the behaviour of everyone in it."

Where is home?

It's one of these days, when there's a woman inside my head, screaming and demanding answers. Looking for a meaning. Looking for a straw of logic to hold on to. Trying to reconcile "loving India" with "making sense of India". Struggling to remember the person I once was, before moving stock and barrel thousands of kilometers from everything I knew and everyone who knew me upside down. And almost burning all bridges behind me.

There are sometimes days, when I realise that I have gone through months of total haze and robot-like motions. Then I look around and it hits me: I live here now... Yes, after 8 years I still have "moments of truth". I don't know if people around me realise it: the monumental nature of this move. Although I did it totally in love, not caring of any consequences. With a heart wide open. Till recently, I did not realise it myself. I wonder if then I had this knowledge, I would have still made the move. I look at my husband, and I know - I would have done it in a heart beat.

But nevertheless, here I am today, ridden with questions and so few answers. The most important one being - who am I? Trying to put together the pieces I have left behind, and the new traits of Me in India. Struggling to remember the idealistic beliefs in humanity I had, many of which I have had to put to rest here. The dreams and visions of myself which will probably never come true. The belief that love conquers all, no matter what circumstances life throws at you. The conviction that people change, and tradition, religion and pre-conceptions of how life should be, stop to matter when you are consumed with so much passion...

With the adrenalin rush going down, it all starts to sink in. This is not an adventure, it's life. This is not a wild ride, it is a marriage, which I have accepted to live in a totally foreign, sometimes incomprehensible culture. And this is not a country on my list of 1000 Places To Visit Before I Die, this is home... This is the time when the hundreds of small rivers of life come togeher, and one big stream starts flowing full strenght to the unknown.

This is the time for some important decisions and reconciliations.

- I may never be able to raise my children the way I was raised, the way my parents are raised
- they will have very different memories from mine
- they will live customs and everyday things completely foreign to me
- I may have a son with long hair - who may be a complete misfit in Bulgaria
- I will speak with my children a language their father does not understand, and they will speak to their paternal grandparents a language I do not understand
- I may have to accept that most of my Bulgarian relatives will go through the most important moments of their lives without me around
- and I will go through some of the most important moments of my life without them around
- I may have to burry a very large part of my rebelious self and start being "more accepting"
- there are certain things about myself that my husband will never understand
- there are things I loathe about India that will NEVER change - I am the one who will become harder
- I will NEVER wear a floating white dress and will never be kissed in public
- I may have to accept cremation as a last rite, although I fear fire more than anything else
- I may have to accept that one day, after everyone around me is gone and my kids are away studying in whetever country they choose, I will be here alone

I miss home today SO MUCH! But I am afraid that if I say it to my mother, she will say "I told you so" and if I say it to my husband, he will feel guilty for no fault of his.