Quote/Misquote

Yesterday I saw the movie Provoked. Found the movie pretty good. But more than the movie and the story, something else caught my attention and kept me entertained throughout.

We had the English subtitles on, and that was the best thing we did. If you have seen the movie, you'd know that its based in UK and the movie's mostly in English, that too with UK accent, which many will admit is not one of the easily understood accent. And whoever wrote the subtitles seem to prove it. During the entire length of the movie, he ended up misquoting most of the dialogs. Like in one scene Aishwarya says "I don't like bullies" and the subtitles show "I don't like police". I guess "police" and "bullies" sound similar enough for this blunder to be excused. But check this out. In one scene, Aishwarya's cell mate says "So you were raped" and the subtitles show "Can I hug you?" I mean, how in the world can these two sentences be mistaken with each other??

Those are just two of the many blunders made. Apart from misquoting the dialogs, there were other mistakes too. Throughout the movie, the word "provocation" was spelt as "provokation" with a "k". And most of the time, the subtitle-writer seem to be at loss, so when he couldn't figure out what the Brit actors were saying, he simply didn't provide any subtitles. Blank! And sometimes, he seemed too lazy to type the whole thing, so he just typed the gist of the dialog spoken, instead of typing them word to word. The only time he managed to quote the dialogs without any mistake or without missing any word were when Aishwarya or her mother-in-law spoke in broken English.

I don't understand. When a director/producer make a movie, do they consider their job done once the movie's made? Whose responsibility is it to look after the post production tasks? Such silly mistakes bring a negative impact on the movie. For someone who is depending on the subtitles to understand the movie, they'd be at loss and confused as to whats happening.

Well, what the heck! Who cares? I had a fun time and thoroughly enjoyed the movie. That's what a movie's supposed to do, isn't it? Entertain?! :)

Update

Yep, its been a while and here I am. Stuff's been happening that kept me away from blogging.

First thing first, V is on a three week trip to India to meet his family. Our parents have talked to each other. It went pretty well so we are glad that atleast things are moving.

V's last day here was a complete chaos. His flight was on 21st from Philly at 7 in the morning. The day before was his last day at his job, last day at his apartment and last day in Stamford. Though we had moved most of the stuff already, he still had to lot of packing and cleaning up to do in his apartment. He finally left Stamford at around 11.30 in the night with my Murano filled to the last niche. As luck would have it, he was stuck in the New York traffic for a good 2 hours. He finally reached at around 3am. After a hurried dinner, we packed his suitcases for his trip. It was soon time to drop him at the airport. My poor V didnt sleep a wink nor did he have even a minute of rest.

After his departure it was time for me and my friend SR to start packing since we were moving to a new apartment, a town house the next weekend. We had been packing most of the week that followed and we moved all our stuff last weekend. We started on Friday eve and finished moving everything late Sunday night. I can't believe we had so much of stuff collected. We did numerous trips on our SUVs fully loaded. On top of that we even had to hire a truck and moving help to move our big stuff. By Sunday night each and every muscle in my body was crying murder. I was just glad to lie down on my bed when the alarm rang and it was time to get ready for work.

Since Monday we've been arranging our new home. Kitchen is done - I've never seen so much of masala in one house. I am sure, if you name any dish, we'll have the masalas to make that dish, from Indian to Chinese to American to Mexican. Now the living room and the bedrooms are left. Boxes are strewn all around...every thing is a big mess. Hopefully we should get done by the end of this week.

Now that the initial excitement of moving to a new place is over, I am just waiting for V's return. 13 more days to go.

My first Vishu

Saturday, 14th April marked the new year for Nepalese (Naya Barsha - Bikram Sambat 2064), Malayalis (Vishu), Punjabis (Vaishakhi), Tamils (Puthandu), Bengalis (Naba Barsha) and Assamese (Bihu).
I don't remember us doing anything special for the Nepali New Year, but Malayalis all over the world celebrate Vishu in a very special way, regardless of what religion they belong to.

A special arrangement of offerings called the Vishu Kani is set up. This arrangement consists of raw rice, betel leaves (paan leaves), betel nut (supari), silk, fruits like banana, golden cucumber, coconuts, a metal mirror called Aranmula kannadi, yellow flowers konna (Cassia fistula), diyas and coins and gold jewelry denoting signs of prosperity. The Vishu Kani is set up the night before Vishu, usually by the mother of the house. On Vishu, before sunrise, the mother wakes up the members of the house, one by one, and takes them to the puja room with their eyes closed so that the first thing that they see in the beginning of the new year is the Vishu Kani. It is believed that the fortunes of the year depend on the objects one sees first on Vishu.

V often reminisces about the days back home when they used to celebrate Vishu and how his mom used to wake him up early in the morning, close his eyes and take him to the Vishu Kani and how beautiful the kani used to look with the golden colors from the fruits and flowers and the jewelry enhanced by the luminous light from the diyas and reflected on the mirror.

So, hoping to make this special for him, I decided to set up the kani myself and give him and my friend SR (who also celebrates Vishu) a nice surprise. Unfortunately, there was no way I could buy those stuff without SR knowing, so I had to let him know of my plan. It proved well that I told him, because he gave me guidance on how to set it up properly. So Friday evening we bought the required items before V arrival from Stamford. However, it seems this year, even though the new year fell on the 14th, Vishu was to be celebrated on 15th. So Saturday night, after V went off to sleep, me and SR set up the kani. We didn't have the traditional items like the brass vessel uruli, so we made use of a steel one. Neither did we have a metal mirror, so we replaced it with a regular mirror. Same way we replaced the special yellow konna flower with some other yellow flower we got from the farmer's market. Unfortunately, we didn't get to buy bananas, so we managed with guavas and mangoes. To make up for the lack of other things, we had lots of diyas.

The next day I set up the alarm for 5:00 am. When the alarm set off, I almost dozed back to sleep after switching it off. Luckily I just remembered why I had set the alarm in the first place, and so I got up. I then lit up the diyas. Unfortunately, one of the candle diyas we had got from the desi store made quite a flame and the newspaper under it caught fire. I hurriedly blew it off but not before the carpet got singed :(. I then woke up V, closed his eyes and took him to the kani. My, was he surprised !!! :) He was so happy!! We then woke up SR and did the same. We took a few pics and after a while headed back to sleep since we all had just about 2 hrs of sleep.

Here are some of the pics from our Vishu Kani

Our humble Vishu Kani

Wish you all a very Happy New Year!