The Proverbial Haircut

It was every Desi’s nightmare I was told, when I landed here. But somehow I seemed to have sidestepped it. Rather, I had been amply warned to be able to avoid it. So my decent Indian haircut, albeit ancient prevailed for a few months/haircuts.

But last Monday was a day of mood swings. Monday morning, I decided I was sick and hence decided to stay at home. Was a wonderful day. Got up late. Read a book for a while. Watched some TV. Cooked. Slept. And then, it happened.

At around 4 I decided to go out for a walk. The idea was to go the the City Library. There was some talk on some obscure topic that seemed interesting at that point in time. Anyways, the fact is I never got to the library that day.

On my way there it started drizzling. And all of a sudden, I felt I had a little too much hair on my head. I guess that was when I decided it was time to visit the Barber.

I should have realized the minute I got there that things weren’t going the way they were supposed to. The sweet chick in the shop, had been replaced by some guy. I am pretty much certain that that was when I lost interest in the haircut altogether. Or may be it was the temptation to go for a haircut I wouldn’t want to have back home.

My usually lengthy explanation of the type of haircut I wanted was replaced by a just a number. I was given a choice of 1 to 4. 1 being the shortest and 4 being the longest.

I chose 4. Whats left on my head now is the remnants of my battle with number 4. :)

19th June --> Madagascar to Anniyan...

After another Saturday at work, Madagascar seemed to be just about the right way to relax. A nice light hearted animation flick.
But Madagascar does not come anywhere close to Shrek or Ice Age or some of the other animation flicks. But with a walk down Chapel Street on a Saturday night, the trip to Jam Factory was well worth it for more than one reason. The Director has got himself a few animals from a New York zoo and has no clue what to do with them. It was funny and witty in bits and pieces.

Sunday, was the day for ‘Anniyan’.

Much awaited by many, Anniyan was released in Australia just a day after its release in India (Or probably on the same day). Many cinemas in Melbourne ran special shows over the weekend.

The Chinatown Cinema on Bourke had a show at 4pm on Sunday, which we caught up with. Arriving there at around 3:30, we were absolutely amazed at seeing a mini Madras on Bourke Street. Mama’s, Mami’s, Thatha’s and paati’s seemed to have sprouted out of thin air. The air was buzzing with Tamil and all of a sudden we felt at home. Yet it was different.

The movie was expected to be a ‘superhit’ with Vikram in the lead role and Vivek being himself as usual and Harris Jayaraj providing the music.

The show began to a packed audience amidst whistles and howls. We were transported straight back to India.

To say it did not live up to the hype created around it, would be an apt way to sum it up. The music by Harris Jeyaraj, whilst being enjoyable, did not leave any lasting impression. In short, I don’t think I remember a single song in the movie. It just left you with a faint suspicion that Rehman would have done a better job any day.

Like any other B/Kollywood flick, it seems to have been targeted at the masses. But this one strives to convey a message or rather inspire them. The Director seems unsure of whether to stick to the message in the movie or to give the masses what they want. On the one hand he attempts at conveying a message and on the other he provides you with the usual masala and songs at unwanted places. Well, I would advise you to leave your brains behind if you intend to go watch this flick.
This movie has its share of laughs though, with Vivek not missing a single opportunity to entertain. The scene with Vikram singing ‘Manasa Sancharare’ in the train to woo his girl was just too good. It almost had me rolling on the floor laughing…

That brings another weekend to an end. Well almost, there’s still Aus vs Eng and the F1 to catch up with before hitting the office tomorrow.
Aussies are in for a thrashing from England. Tottering at 63/4, after a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Bangladeshis, its looking like a double whammy for them.

Queen's Birthday - 13th June

At last we had another long weekend. It’s a great concept to shift a holiday to the end of the week so that you get that well needed long break rather than a holiday right in the middle of the week. This time it was the Queen’s Birthay. I’m not sure if it was a co-incidence that the Birthday was conterminous with the weekend or whether it was conveniently shifted. Will need to look that one up. But all that mattered in the end was that it was a long weekend.

So we decided to drive. And it decided to rain.

The rain god had apparently decided to keep us company. And we couldn’t get rid of him the whole day. And when we eventually did, we did manage to find a worthy replacement.

Of course, we had no intention of reaching any place in particular. But I guess someone at somepoint decided we’d be going to bucham caves, cos that’s where we ended up.

The Bucham caves are essentially underground caves (actually they are inside a mountain and not exactly underground) formed by a river that used to flow through it. The water level in the river over the years has gone down several meters leaving the caves as they are now. The special part of the caves were the stalactites and stalagmites that were gradually filling them up. An hour of crouching, crawling, climbing, ‘clicking’( not forgetting to smile) and plenty of dry and wet stalactites and stalagmites and a little bit of geography peppered with some history got us to the exit of the caves.

The rain god was absolutely faithful.

It was then that the GPS system in the car came on its own. The next destination was to be Lakes Entrance, a 40 minute drive from Bucham Caves. But apparently it didn’t find any favour with the car’s GPS System. One and a half hours of driving , and the GPS System maintained that we needed to go another 130 kms in the same direction. And we persisted, proving once again that common sense isn’t so common after all.

Eventually we did end up asking and were advised to travel around 150kms back in the exact opposite direction. It was 6:15 PM and dark as hell.

And that was when the rain god decided to call it a day. But he soon had a replacement – Mr.Fog, who was happy to keep us company all the way back to Melbourne.

An hour’s peering and praying and also driving, got us to Lakes Entrance. And another 4 hours got us back to Melbourne.

It was 2:30 am and we had driven 949.3 Kms. And had managed to see a double rainbow. It was beautiful.