Listen, My Children...

Pictures of beautiful women!

Aishwarya Rai (on the right here) is on Letterman tonight.  Of course, I'd take either of the other two over her, but, apparently, she's to be considered one of the most beautiful women in the world.  So being a few years older, being married to a California heart surgeon (and therefore mostly out of the film scene), and not having hazel eyes is apparently a drawback.  (And, I understand that Shahrukh Khan looks somewhat goofy.  But man, he grows on you.)

Compare: Madhuri  here, here, here (you may have to cut and paste that link), and also in blonde.

Aishwarya here (cut and paste again), here, here, and here.

Or, to see them both together, here.

(Then again, if I were picking most beautiful film star, it would be her or her.  And, if I take out the limitation to living stars, it's one of these.)

So, what do you think?  Who wins?

Parveen Babi

Parveen Babi has died.  Beautiful, talented, and (like nearly all Bollywood film stars) through her roles did much to aid stereotyping of certain groups.  She looked plausibly Anglo-Indian and so was often cast as a Christian; in the 1970s and 1980s filmi Christians were frequently drunken swindlers, and in Khud-daar, for example, her character smuggles alcohol in a fake pregnant belly. 

But Indian film has largely moved from that variety of stereotyping, and, in any case, she was not to be held responsible.  She starred in one of my favorite movies, Amar Akbar Anthony (itself full of stereotypes -- the Christian lead and his friends, although they're Portuguese-produced Catholics, speak English, run liquor stores, fight, and smoke, and the Muslims are womanizing playboys and tailors, while the Hindu lead and friends are morally-straight upstanding citizens -- but it's a great movie anyhow!), and she will be missed.

(Sepia Mutiny has more on her unhappy off-screen life.)
 

Atlantis

I hope my teacher doesn't see this.

There's only so much Lemuria-is-real-and-here's-the-proof lectures I can stand.

Earthquake

Chaos in Madras following a massive earthquake which spawned tidal waves.

Happy Birthday!

As long-promised, a picture of me from India. This is my birthday, but it's just a midly fancier version of what I wore every day. I'm in the house of my friend Iswari; this is a typical dwelling for a middle-income family in Madurai.

Photos

This being the other reason (besides temporary-yet-recurrent technological difficulties) why I haven't put up any India photos. They don't look that good.

Then again, he doesn't have any good pictures of me.

Bride and Prejudice

Sepia Mutiny has a post about the latest Bollywood remake, this one a Hindified Pride and Prejudice. Looks like fun; at least with other remake movies in any language (and ethnic food far from its home), it works better for me to take it entirely on its own and not as something to be compared to the original in the least, so I expect to see and enjoy this.

One point, though: Aishwarya looks remarkably dark in that picture. Perhaps she's gotten a tan and taken the highlights out of her hair (not likely)? Perhaps the powers that be think a browner Rai would be better for whatever the target audience may be? Most likely it's just the lighting. But still, it took me quite some time to recognize her -- and this is someone whose pictures fill up a good third of my screensaver.

The End of the Forest Brigand

This is very good news:

The forest brigand Veerappan and three of his key associates, who were killed in an encounter on Monday night, were lured out of their hideout by Special Task Force personnel who had finally managed to infiltrate the gang. An STF man, who had gained their confidence, drove Veerappan and his gang straight into the trap set up at Paparapatti village in Tamil Nadu's Dharmapuri district.

And yes, he was invariably referred to as a forest brigand, somewhat like the Harvard Lampoon is a semi-secret Sorrento Square organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine. And yes, his mustache was very large.

Airing the Dirty Laundry?

Now this is a political protest I like!

Madras, Part III

The next morning we had nice South Indian Kaapi (coffee, but you get black sludge, hot milk, and sugar, and you mix to your liking), then after a while, breakfast. I couldn't stomach any more Indian food, so I had cornflakes and bananas and boiling hot milk. Cold milk just isn't done here. If I put only a few scattered teaspoons of milk on the cornflakes, and a lot of sugar, and wait a while before eating, and put a bit of banana in each bite, it's quite palatable.

It's nice walking with Periyamma or a guy; tourist-catchers will talk to them first, and not to me, because, as a young female, I'm pretty near the bottom of the pecking order. We went to Spencer's again; a lot of white people, where there had been none two days before. Wonder why the rush? European schools must have just gotten out, or something. Some looked like school groups; some were wearing semi-Indian clothing. One couple, white-girl-brown-boy, made me so lonely and homesick (or Bob-sick). Holding hands, too.

There are a lot of new things. More boy-girl couples holding hands (we saw a very cute such couple in Goa, slipping off for a canoodle in the woods from time to time, and another such on the plane from Bangalore), more girls wearing modern Indian clothing (sleeveless, tighter, shorter tunic tops, etc.), and a lot more girls wearing jeans and western or Indian short tops like ones I bought at Globus store in Bombay. Don't see that as much down in Madurai; it's more small-town still. Some cute guys, too; Tamil girls are generally not much to look at, compared with Telugu or Malayalee ones (or Punjabis like Simran, who's considered too fat for Hindi film and a little thin for Tamil film, but haunts the dreams of most people here in Tamilnadu) but the guys can be quite attractive, especially if they buck the trend by not wearing a moustache.

The shops are also different; many are the same from four years ago, but there are new pharmacies with Revlon and Sally Hansen and other western and Indian pharmaceutical products (they tried to sell me skin-lightening cream!); and gyms and fitness-wear shops and equipment shops. It started with Hrithik Roshan five years ago, and there was even an article in the Hindu the morning I wrote this entry about the new trend in health foods, health-awareness, exercise, etc., things that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Over the past three months, I've seen countless articles on the newfound health craze. Realization that tying a turmeric-dyed cord around your wrist won't do as much to help your diabetes as watching your diet will; realization that the typical Indian style of weight gain, the one that leads to pregnant men (carry all your excess weight right in front on your stomach, and none anywhere else), is the least healthy way to gain weight; learning that taking exercise won't make you low-caste (in the brahmin-only Veda schools we've visited, the teenage boys are all flabby as anything, because it's considered low-caste to have to do manual labour); and so forth. In addition to the smoothie shop, they also have a brand-new Subway, complete with Jared and weight-loss ads out front. All full of Indians in various stages of westernisation. I'm in favor of it; take what's good from each culture and resist the bad. There are people who have gone so far overboard in both directions with medicine: a lot of western doctors (or westernized ones) who reject ayurvedic medicine purely because it's ayurvedic; also Indians (and Indianized westerners) who have complete faith in them, even if they're laced with lead and will kill you. Better are the scientists who look into ayurvedic medicine and do western research on it to see if it's worth using or not! (Remember, hemlock is all-natural!)

That's all for today; soon: Introduction to my program; Visit to a village; the mountain temple of Palani, and Ooty!