Catching up

I was just frothing at the mouth over this so-called journalist who had interviewed an adult entertainment star now acting in Hindi movies. The offensive, antiquated, totally Indian male mindset questions he asked, no interrogated her with, were so incredible you knew instantly he could only do it in this country. Anywhere else he would have been fired on the spot. I would love to know what his search history consisted of after he reached puberty. Oh, wait, I don't think he ever did. I shall now wait with bated breath for his viewers to grow by leaps and bounds. Why not when we have news anchors who are national jokes with such high ratings that they make more money than a dozen talented, hardworking individuals could dream of in a single lifetime. Of course we can froth but nothing will change. So I caught up on my reading instead. My blood pressure is back to normal and I am neck-deep in Vuitton, Gucci and celebritydom. Good times, thank God.

Leo for the win

The Golden Globes were so wonky this year that I was wondering if life held any meaning at all anymore. From Ricky Gervais' tired lines and his and Mel Gibson's embarrassing shenanigans, I simply wanted to cringe back into my duvet with the cold I had been suffering all week. Looked like my suffering was by no means over.
Couldn't someone have given Denzel a script to accept his Cecil B. DeMille thingy? Hanks was more enjoyable (as always) giving out the damn thing. Couldn't someone have told the usually magnificent JLo that wrapping yourself extra-tight in a curtain still wouldn't have saved what she was wearing? No one would have dared with the diva, I suppose.
The highlights for me were Helen Mirren's perfect appearance from her hair to her jewellery to her dress; Lady Gaga's win, I think she has talent we don't even really understand, and Leonardo DiCaprio, not for winning awards which he should know are meaningless (Gervais got that right, at least), but because just seeing and hearing him, an actor and activist that has no parallel in my book, saved this exhausting evening from falling into the abyss where it belonged, never to have seen the light of day. Thank you, Leo, now please don't disappoint me by ever getting married. That, like awards, .......

Paris 2015

New Year's Eve at the Champs Elysees was a bit of alright. But I have to say it was Midnight Mass at Notre Dame that really got me all atwitter. The choir, the building, even the security forces outside signalling the real new world order, was an experience. I believe in no God but it was a sense of community where we were all thinking of those who had gone before that felt extraordinary. On NYE, I thought I was being brave going where the threat of terrorism was so real that Belgium had cancelled its celebrations - until I saw parents with babies at the Arc de Triomphe. Paris, in between, was magic. I get my kicks just walking down its cobblestoned paths.

Shakespeare&Co

Cafe République

Champs Elysees

Parisienne Walkways

Listening to Gary Moore is always a painfully sweet experience. There's something about his tender guitar that wrings the remaining whimper from the coldest heart. I always think of him as that quintessential American guy, (although he was Irish but such is our perception of anything Western because the Russians don't speak the same marketing and advertising language, do they), whose love for his music and unwariness when it comes to women makes him instantly idol-worthy. That essential loneliness which most musicians and writers possess shines through in a lot of his album covers. 'Shines' because the most gorgeous work comes from solitude, other people are usually messes you don't need although they are great fodder for the work. No, I couldn't be more cynical but age does that to you. Still, who doesn't have a soft spot for men who are vulnerable to life?
After the Paris horror, my playlist which already included Parisienne Walkways, was on replay.
Gary died in a hotel room but I hope he knows, somewhere, that people still listen to his heartbreaking riffs and feel uplifted for no discernible reason. In other words, we've Still Got the Blues for you, babe.

All things righteous. Not.

When the lunatic fringe raises its head, the rest of us want to pull ours in, like turtles. Can anything really explain Bangalore locals attacking a foreign tourist who had Hindu goddesses tattooed on his body? I can't. The Australian boy who was harangued and detained and then made to write a letter of apology for (and this covers just about everything) "hurting religious sentiments" fled the city the next day, and who can blame him. I would, too, if I could. In fact, I would have about 15 years ago exactly when I visualised which way my life would blow if I continued to live in India but that's another story. With the Australian you can imagine him now wanting to laser the whole thing off while telling anyone who will listen for the rest of his life what a bunch of nutjobs Indians are.
If you think it was low-level fanatics who took umbrage, just run through Facebook and you will find the so-called educated masses also raising a call to arms. For what, though? When you tattoo something on your body it's because you LIKE what it symbolises. You want to live your life on what the image or words mean. Um, how do you not get that.
The lesson I've learned from this is not be be righteous which my father always warned me about and which I, like any self-respecting offspring, cordially ignored. No longer. It's a dangerous path, to think you have standards that somehow trumps everybody else's.
I shall now get back to watching porn which I started doing after the Indian government tried to ban it recently. Great fun, and the plot lines are to die for. Who knew.

The End

The Emmys this year, well, I just drew a line in the sand. Adam Sandberg was not funny, spin it any way you like. And he was nervous, the kiss of death for any host. Even Ellen hosting the Oscars has been Awkwardsville. Jimmy Fallon's sidekick Steve Higgins on The Tonight Show? Cringeworthy. For a country like America which is best at marketing, there are some blind spots when it comes to dealing with celebrities who they take for granted must be good because why else are they famous? Sometimes, their time has come and gone, that's why. Even the marvellous Ricky Gervais fell flat in his few minutes onstage which only means that it happens to the best of us. Even if some individuals point this out, the tidal wave of voices raised against them would make anyone subside into the wallpaper. (To be strong in a sea of crazies takes some doing, believe me.) When I found myself switching channels every time an acceptance speech was about to begin, I knew it was the end of watching award shows. When I heard about Viola Davis the next day, I knew I was right.
Stop. Stop making it about colour, I beg you. Fight for getting your roles but don't make your win a triumph for the colour of your skin. When you do that, it takes away from your talent which is what you were fighting for in the first place, right?
It's come to a point where you find Indians everywhere on TV and you're wondering if they're pandering to their subcontinent viewers and the prominent Indian community in the West. It's become about numbers. When once they were doing this by putting one gay character in with the cast, it's now Black/Asian/gay. Wrong on so many levels it just makes me depressed.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, by the way, but you can fight for equality till the world ends, but you will never get it. There will always be bias based on colour, creed and gender. Clues: "I can't breathe", 'Muslim' promotion code for a $25 discount on guns, Shoshana Roberts. It will never go away. It might ease here and there but it will never go away. The gay community has grown stronger over the years in every sector if not every country but YouTube still features teenagers weeping trying to tell their parents who they want to sleep with.
Why will it never go away? The answer isn't far to seek; people are dumb.

The next time I saw Paris....

The last time I saw Paris I was 18 years old. Life was a mystery I looked forward to with stars in my eyes – no wonder I couldn’t see shit. This time, Paris was just as beautiful and still represented the kind of ideal that I was never destined to have: the likelihood of seeing beauty just while walking the streets, whether it was people or architecture; the chance to see a Venetian-inspired art installation at Tokio Palais; having drinks by the Seine, on a boat; watching a rock concert with bands I had only read about. Yes, some metros spelled like pee, homeless huddled in Gap doorways in the still of the night, and you felt like a deer in headlights because of the colour of your skin, although not as often as people warned, but it is the real world. My country is like a figment of Kafka’s imagination. How grateful I am to fate’s tender mercies that I can experience something else every so often.

Just a street sign

Graffiti or as I like to call it Art

Just a street, with the Sacre-Coeur

Just an apartment block

Just a cafe

True Heart

There are some TV shows which make you sit at the edge of your armchair until every episode ends, and then want to leap from it and go running to get all the feels (a word I have grown to love almost as much as ‘on point’) out of your system. I love it almost as much as I loved Breaking Bad. What do I get high on with True Detective 2? It’s the theme song, the characters, the broken lives, the hard loving, the few words in the still of the night that have the weight of a wrecking ball. Vince Vaughn is the face of the series, (who knew he had this in him?), although Colin Farrell is the overriding talent.

I can feel my heart slowing down just thinking of the finale tomorrow night. Omigod. You know what this means, right? Here we go, embracing the void again.

Billie the Kid blows away the competition

The finale of MasterChef Australia Season 7 was unique. You had a contestant in 23-yr-old Billie McKay who was extraordinary in the way she could read a recipe, compartmentalize it in her head in such a way that she knew she would have to save one hour of the unprecedented five-hour time allowed for a Heston Blumenthal recipe, and showed she had enough of a heart in that machine-like execution of a dish to turn around and try to calm Georgia Barnes at the same time.

This, by the way, is also the difference between MasterChef Australia and MasterChef US. The Australians in the show have always distinguished themselves as friendly, ambitious without being competitive, and supremely talented. No one quite knows how talented the Americans are because it’s buried under an avalanche of malice, temper and self-obsession. It could be marketing but it doesn’t do the country’s national reputation any good whatsoever.

But what was unforgettable in the Australian winner was the way she kept an iron control throughout the months of competition - until the moment when she tried to blow that damn sugar bubble for 45 minutes (of the one hour she had allotted herself). Still, she brought herself back from the brink and nailed that b*&%h. It was such a tour de force, something we had never seen before. And that was what led to another first in MC history – the on-the-spot offer of a job from the great Heston himself, at The Fat Duck no less.

While I have never envied anyone’s happiness, I am almost mired in envy thinking how lucky you have to be to own your passion and have the rest of your life like an open road in front of you. All you have to do is walk down it, stopping to smell the bloody roses on the way. Anyone who says it’s only talent and hard work and not luck is seven kinds of idiot.

I am now off to grapple with that other b*&#h: Karma.

Under the Sea....

From Pinterest, my daily dose of Style

And then some

R&R

You'd think people who travel would wax and wane about the historic monuments, the food, the shopping and the hotels they stayed in. Coming from the Third World, I am always speechless with awe when I take public transport on roads without potholes, see cobblestoned streets that are clean, with dustbins everywhere, and can sit on a pavement cafe and drink my coffee exactly the way I like it. I enjoy everything from the politeness of boutique staff who do not pounce on me the minute I enter and then hover, to enjoying a McDonald's that actually has beef burgers. And yes, I'm not ashamed to say I think Big Macs hit the spot where love resides. I have fun at the supermarkets where you get produce that look like they didn't die yesterday and are part of the Walking Dead cast today, including all the candy that's so good it's bad for you. I am grateful to even temporarily be part of a crowd that the government works to make comfortable, for the most part, hell any part at all.
So here are some things that made me smile recently, and it wasn't my usual rictus.
As you can see, I don't ask for much.

A weakness

Fira, Santorini

Warming radiators, ultimate luxury

Greek honey that tasted like toffee, to swirl with yoghurt 

Fira square

A rainy day, Athens-style

Cute packaging

Seriously? An Angry Birds table at a burger place in Athens

Streets, Athens