YE DELHI HAI MERE YAAR

Ankit and I went on a Trip to North India. We boarded the GaribRath Express and were off. We lost track of time completely and realized that we had reached Mathura as soon as we heard the vendors “pedha pedha mashoor pedha”. Getting out of the station we were surrounded by rickys… as all tourist are and after some effort we were able to bargain the worst price and were on our way to ‘Draupadi Nivas’, a guest house for our short stay in Vrindavan.

Vrindavan, a land where cows, monkeys, squirrels, and sages are amidst blaring remix bhajans! The whole place is an ideal pilgrimage spot where every lane is overloaded with temples and florists. (Enough I’ll not go into further details)
Let me cut to Agra. We were in Agra to attend our friend Esha’s grandparents’ Golden Wedding Anniversary. And yes!, we did visit the terrific Taj Mahal. It’s a treat to the eye. Seeing it in the pictures is one thing, seeing it physically will leave you speechless! Its architecture and craftsmanship truly makes it deserve its top spot in the list of Wonders of the World. We went crazy taking pictures there.

Our next stop was Amritsar and after another round of bargaining we hired this really smart sardarji, Sonu. This chap was a semi guide and told us about all the best places to visit in Amritsar. (his marketing strategy.) After getting us a cozy hotel, just a stones throw away from the Golden Temple, and a commission from the hotel he left.
we freshened up and off we were to the temple. We visited the glittering Golden Temple thrice as we suddenly felt very religious. ;) Next destination was the wagah border. Reached there like ‘rajas’ only two of us in our chariot called Rickshaw. On reaching there the feeling of patriotism engulfed every Indian present there.
Chants of ‘HINDUSTAN ZINDABAD!’ ‘BHARAT MATA KI JAI!’ and
‘VANDE MATARAM!’ drowned Pakistan’s ‘JEEYE JEEYE, PAKISTAN’ and ‘PAKISTAN ZINDABAD’. The quick parade and exchange of glares on either side of the border was electrifying. Music from bollywood movies blasted songs which passes currents through the body.
To be continued….

Slumdog Holi

Holi of 2009 is 1st Holi of our bahu, Muskan. Naturally our main target was she only. But to our pleasant surprise, not only she enjoyed every bit of action but also fought back as fearless shikhni.

We started in a decent way, as all holis should be played. Colour, and more colour. The one more surprise was in form of Manju also participating! Normaly she puts tika and her holi is done. Today she was not screaming yuck as and when colour was sprayed on her.

After applying the routine colors, our movie crazy family decided to pay tribute to Slimdog Millionair, by playing holi with Muck - Mud - Mix. Lets start, Sharat and Akshay were already in process.

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Muskan, who, naturally is very concerned about her skin and looks, was also the game. The opening was good and slowly all made a beeline and applied the mud-pack, with muskan being the most in demand victim.

Yucks!

In all this everyone smiled, but muskan smiled the most!

For More Photographs....
http://picasaweb.google.com/pgdodeja/Holi09
by P G Dodeja

Diwanapan - Craze about movies

It is not necessary for you to be tied up with Film world to be crazy about it. Take example of our family. Four Generations of Dodeja are movie crazy, for this I present following.

My grand father, used to watch at least 4-5 movies in a week. Not that he had plenty of free time. No sir. He used to handle Mumbai - Pune - Ahemdabad - Hydrabad offices, was very much into writing, travels and business. Where ever he was, he would watch 2 new Hindi releases, one of his old favorite and one English movie, minimum, in a week.

My father's routine consumption was one Hindi and one English movie a week. Plus he was very big fan of Film Festivals. Not only festivals but he would join film societies, and religiously see maximum shows possible. He will get into one genre, watch maximum movies and soon shift toother genre.

I have this odd fetish of not repeating the movie. As I was growing up, I would accompany grand father and father on there cinema hall visits. Thus I develop this habit of enjoying different kind movies. Then I am lucky enough to get exposure to all kind of movies, TV serials and what not. Grandfather would prefer action, suspense, whereas my father would like to see the drama based, story based movies. Then my children forced me and made me fan of cartoon, Jim Carey, Jackie Chan kind of movies.

Then my son has gone one step further. I have seen him, enjoying continuous run of 18 hours, movie marathon. He is so much addicted, that he must see a movie a day, atleast.

Can anyone guess a name two movies, which are favorite of all four generations, have repeat value even today?

(Clue: My grandfather died in 1988, so the movie belongs to the period before that.)

The movies are.

Black and White classic: Chalti Ka Naam Gadi. (Ashok Kumar - Kishore Kumar - Madhubala)

And the evergreen wounder, Sholay.

by P G Dodeja