Thursday, July 14, 2005
STARDUST
I had the fortune of bumping into one Mr. Om Puri, head-first in Chennai, of all places last week. I am not really part of the Page 456 set-up so with my customary eloquence, I stood gawking and gaping for a long time before I registered at long last, that I was in the presence of stardom. A good thing too, because I was told, belatedly, that I had brushed past wispy PYTs in the Park earlier, who were in fact Bollywood tinsel queens. And I remember greeting Carlos Moya too one evening before, as most before him, magic wore off and he lost the next day.
Coming back to the original Grumpy Young Man of Indian cinema, he was a little more pallid than I had thought. The voice was nowhere near the manly pitch I had expected –I can hazard that it was the voice of one who had had one too many.
And it was only nine in the morning !
BOMBAY
Ploughed through an article written at leisure by Suketu Mehta. He fully lived to my stereotype of the modern Indian confused in the USA—he writes “ We Indians”, changes course midway and then “ We Americans” and then reverses again to “hum Hindustani “ before bemoaning the abysmal academic standards of US education in comparison to India.
Devoid of content, logic, passion or reason ! And they say he's a good read .
