imagine...

V-inu got Jispa a Rubik’s snake from his recent overseas trip. Quite a cute thing. I remember it being the rage while I was a kid. And obviously the first thing I ended up making with it was – you guessed right – the ball (or the truncated octahedron if you want to be scientific). It is impossible, not to make it once you lay your hands on it. And then onto hours and hours of pure pleasure. Making all sorts of funny stuff.
Should be fun for Jispa as well. Yesterday morning while she was it she made this.

Now you have to tell me what this is. You are obviously disqualified if you have read the little prince. Jispa hasn’t read it yet. Which makes me think that it is time for me to dig it out of somewhere from my pile. I clearly remember buying it and reading it around five years ago. It was truly quite a lovely story. It’s worth buying it as a spare copy even if I can’t find it within my pile. I was only introduced to the first chapter as a kid when I read it in my school English text book. I remember being completely fascinated with his drawing and his meeting of with the Prince.
This image will forever stick in my mind.

I can still feel the excitement that I felt when I first read that there something much more to the image. I think it made me think that all adults are stupid and they really can’t see what’s completely obvious. And that it need not be obvious for it to be pretty. Now that I think about, somewhere from the deep recess of my memory, a speck is standing out. I think I remember a time when I had gone to Ahmedabad to visit a cousin’s place. Somehow I remember raiding the bookshelf and reading the little prince there. I think I might have been in fourth or fifth standard or possibly younger. It’s all fuzzy now. But it’s funny how I remember the pleasure in reading it. Come to think of it, it’s made quite an impact on me.
So coming back to the answer to the drawing from little prince…

Now you will get the answer to Jispa’s creation. Only just.
It is a snake who has swallowed a tree stump.

The next one is my creation as an answer to Jispa’s creation.

As Jispa says, it is a snake that has a stone dropped on it. Here the inspiration as she says is Tom and Jerry. Well, from my little prince to her tom and jerry, life follows pop... pop??… pop… art?

cartoon hai

Yesterday before we went to see the zakir and shiv kumar sharma in a concert, we stopped by my mom’s house. That’s the big source of TV entertainment for my daughter. She gets in, gets comfy in front of the TV and can watch practically anything. But the big favourite with her is Tom and Jerry. She watch that anywhere for any length of time. That goes for me too. I too can watch that stuff forever.
The cartoons from my time as a kid are still being played and they are as relevant as ever. Probably the only thing looking dated is the rotary dial telephone. Rest all is so relevant. With some many things happening in such a short while it’s never a bore.
Yesterday she saw the title and straightaway told that this is a really funny one. She knows them by rote I guess. Once the cartoon started I realised that I knew the dam thing by rote as well. Now Tom is going to be hammered into the ground by the pole, now the ball will drop ahead of him, etc etc.
Schadenfreude is a universal ageless trait. But watching these cartoons with Jispa is even more fun. She goes on laughing and giggling while supplying her two bits. Its like watching it with a laughter track. Its gets really funny. The entire family ended up watching the dam thing and laughing like silly goofs.
Good thing before a classical music concert. In the second part of the concert, Shiv Kumar plays the light classical raga which left my wife and me thinking about the romance in the Yash Chopra films. A lot of those tunes reminded us of the songs that we have heard in those movies. Wonder why they went out of fashion? Listening to the santor made me picture the heroine in chiffon dancing in the cold and green valleys of Switzerland. Wah wah.. what romance.
Just for the heck of it, forgive me while I place these versus the song in the recent hit Wanted – your papa says you love me, your mama says you love me!
Whatever the music, I love the associations that they make in my head. An indian classical concert might trigger hindi movie emotions while the Zubin Mehta concert I went for triggered tom and jerry cartoons. Well that was the only place I hears them!

Zubin and Jerry's

I got tickets to the Zubin Mehta show featuring the Israeli philharmonic orchestra. Along with it were two supposedly famous vocalists as well. I took Jasmine along to witness something I used to always dream about. Wow the beautiful orchestra, some amazing singing with a tenor and a soprano and some outstaying music.

While entering I really felt weird. Since I had really decent tickets I was in the really decent que. All the others were dressed in their party bests and you had some in suits and blazers. Its amazing how for an Indian classical the people wear Indian traditional and for western classical they wear western formals. I find incredulous, the fact that people dress up for concerts, plays or even movies. I mean is that a social gathering or an entertainment event. Just wear your everyday clothes and run. I happened to be wearing a kurta on my denims. That too because I was wearing one the whole day. I must have been the only wise guy in Indian clothing. I was wearing them on my torn denims but changed on Jasmine’s request. The only thing that stopped me from wearing my shorts was the fact that I knew that all the parsi bawa bawi’s would be all well dressed. So I wore denims in deference to them. Well what the hell. On to the show.

I did not understand anything of it. I hardly even appreciated it. Now I know why I should never buy the tickets. Sure it was great music but all I could think about was tom and jerry. Well that’s all I associate classical western with. I could only visualize tom throwing stuff at jerry and jerry avoiding it. Until I heard Zubin Mehta I did not realize that Tom and Jerry has some good classical music. I now see Hanna and Barbera (creators of T&J you nitwit) in new light. Actually the person to thank for the music is Scott Bradley. Thank you dear Tom and Mr. Jerry for introducing me to culture.