bits on Shobha De- Frank Capra...(no relation there:P)

I feel like being indulgent today..
Indulging myself in writing incessantly-unbothered and just khamakha. (Okay..i like the feel of the post after having published it, otherwise it looks like succha tedious task penning down thoughts these days,lol):P)
All thanks to this new book I started reading by Shobha De-her autobiography- Selective Memory. This is the first book am reading written by her and strange enough I have a feeling that she is going to be one of my favourite authors in the times to come. Bought this book to gift my senior date( I gotta girl as my date :-/) Its just a tradition in our college to allot a junior a senior date who has to be gifted something he/she loves. Fortunately or unfortunately she wanted to read another book and I ended up reading this one:D
Just the other day I was discussing with a friend how I cant seem to be able to write anymore .How much ever I try writing on serious and more imp topics –end up scribbling about random thoughts and thts what can do with sincere dedication.
Coming back to her autobiography- its disturbing, its all nostalgia..and bitterly sweet(am only on the 32nd page)

Brought up in a typical Bengali family ambience. Surrounded by people who are affectionate, restricted, and of so-called conservative mindset, she fondly recalls many moments from her humble modest beginnings. From the long summer and acrid aftertaste of ripe ,juicy ,glossy jamuns-to her memories of stretching her body over her mother who was relaxing and simultaneously looking for (as the author recalls -)“obstinate remnants of grime that hadn’t been scrubbed away during bathtime” from the little girl’s nostrils and ears, to the day of her glory when she won accolades as an athlete in her school days. I could sense a deep bonding with her baba whose dos n donts shaped her life in different shades and marked turning points in her life.

Her simple narrative n descriptive style of jotting down fragments of her childhood is just so honest, sincere and straight from the heart.
Bits from the book- (while writing this I tried to recreate those heady years when I’d hear one section of the stadium chanting Sho-bha, Sho-bha, as I laced my spikes, crouched at the starting blocks and waited to take off at the sharp sound of the starters pistol shot.I can visualize it all with complete detachment like an old movie starring someone familiar.Its hard to think of that person as a young me. I am unable to get under her skin or identify with her glory. Ironically enough, my entire collection (an impressive one) of silver cups was stolen sometimes in the seventies. Nobody knows what happned to the steel trunk in which they had been stored…”) well.seems would make for a godo reading overallJ



Okay…There also is a screwball comedy movie I watched recently. “It Happened One Night”(1934)
The orginal version of bolly Dil Hai ki manta nahi.(I have’t watched the latter yet)

Elements of romance, adolescent rebelliousness, adventure, comedy… in one word the movie was absolutely charming.
Made in the black and white movie making era, it starred the pretty “Claudette Colbert” and some Jameson Thomas (man with the soothing onscreen presence). Must mention that the movie directed by Frank Capra won the top five Academy Awards.

The girl who was the daughter of the millionaire trying to break away from the shackles of a royal pampered upbringing.. elopes to meet her husband from Miami( marriage just for the heck of I as we understand) to New York and eventually on her way falls in love with this reporter whom she meets in a bus journey, who followed her to write a story on the interesting aspect of her life at the moment.
She unknowlingly..reluctantly falls in love with this charming, slightly bossy, caring young man (a script repeated so often these days) The romance unfolds as they spend days together, the girl cherishing her new found freedom , staying alone under a roof for the first time with a man- “stranger but trustworthy”, the boy taking care of her like she was a child to him, reprimanding her for her spoilt –bratish attitude, covering her with his jacket as she went off to sleep under the open night sky on a bed of straws , giving her his clothes, preparing breakfast for her…small little things that urged the simple girl in her to be with him for a lifetime, be with him on the imaginative dream Island he had built..

The story ends after a series of misunderstandings and realizations that eventually bring the two of them together, teasing me wanting to see them together on screen after they both realize their love for the other one- instead the movie ends by showing a curtain
falling on ground (that had all this while marked a separation between the two in one single hotel room where they had to put up) with sound of the trumpet in the background hailing the triumph of the crazy mad love!