Monday, February 18, 2008

Ok. I admit it. I’m the only person I know who’d walk a kilometer for Okra.
Okra, as in the vegetable? Now paying ten bucks for a quarter of Okra from the vendors lining the road; nice green, slender and dainty ladies fingers, is wrong, is way too much. Not in the winter, when prices are supposed to hold better. How on earth is someone with a decent income or someone with a single salary supposed to manage, I debate as I walk home having spent much more. Strange enough, it costs the same at the shiny supermarket as it does at the vendors where you’re supposed to haggle, cajole and bully your way.

Tare Zameen Par

Amazing direction. Awesome colors. Beautiful. Great pace. No, its not a documentary-ish treatment for a difficult subject. There is no preaching. No dumbing-down.

How the director has managed to enter a nine-year old’s brain is something I’ll never know.

I was/am an dyslexic at math, I tell Papa, reminding him of the times I couldn’t leave the breakfast table without reaching twelve nines are. But numbers now are trends, lines that move up and down when they’re supposed to, and its when they don’t quite, that’s when you zoom in and push them some and turn them over.

But what a movie. Defining. Even if this man doesn’t make anything else, it would be fine. Amazing ease with the medium. I can’t think of any Indian film director who’d have the guts to show an opening so realistic and funny, a kid mesmerized by tadpoles and fishes in an open gutter, watching this strange world upside down.

5 comments:

CRUSTY MOM-E said...

It sounds fasinating and I too have issues with math. I still count on my fingers and for me it was from being teased in 2nd grade from my timed mathmatical tests,..from then on the insecurity stayed..shame on me.

I want to see this film! Sounds great!

I haven't had okra but have always wanted to try. How would you explain the taste?

Always,
Elizabeth

Portia said...

Sounds moving. Those I have known with dyslexia were not diagnosed until they were adults, which made school absolutely miserable for them. It would be a good thing to educate people about.
I love okra, but I buy it pickled in a jar at the store. I don't even know if I could get it fresh at the market. There is only one farmer there in the winter.
I tagged you, if you choose to play:)

austere said...

Crusty- have been wary of this since the "count the number of fish and write it in box" stage...thank GOD I stayed away from Engineering, can you imagine the mess I'd have gone into?
okra's bland- sweetish. You add the salt after the cooking is done so it doesn't become a gooey mess.

portia- possibly there are shades of this, math's mine. Pickled? wouldn't it become squeamish gooey? Need to check how they manage to hold the pod together.

quin browne said...

i love okra. fresh, fried, in gumbo.

math...ah, i can't do it, but, i always find the answer if i simply clear my head..it pops in.

go figure.

austere said...

Quin.. okra in gumbo? eh?
googledevta to oblige, no doubt...
the math must be a past birth thing, what?