Game Change (2012)

“We live in the age of Youtube and the 24-hour news cycle. How else do you think a man who has absolutely no major life accomplishments is beating an American war hero by double digits? He’s simply sailing on his charisma and star power. We need to create a dynamic moment in this campaign or we’re dead.”

—Steve Schmidt, Senior Advisor, 2008 Republican Presidential Campaign, trying to convince John McCain to appoint Sarah Palin as his running mate

On 24th July 2008, then Democratic US presidential candidate Barack Obama made a historic speech — only one of the several he would go on to make over the next few months across the world — in Berlin, Germany. A crowd of about 200,000 people had gathered at the Victory Column war monument to hear him speak. The purpose of his appearance had been widely debated in the German media over the previous few weeks. He was not a leader of the German people, yet they cheered him on as they would an international rock star. Obama, in his distinctively erudite, yet humble manner spoke to the audience as a "proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world", as an advocate of better Trans-Atlantic relations, and as an American statesman concerned about the war on terrorism and Europe’s potential role in it. As he inched closer to the end of his speech, his words grew more pronounced and louder, eliciting even louder and more intense cheers from the crowds. The rest of the world, too, watched a man, whose face they had only seen on the cover of every major international magazine till then, come alive. A celebrity had been born; an international political celebrity of unparalleled charisma (at least in recent history) and boundless potential.

Back in the United States, Obama’s contender, then Republican presidential nominee John McCain watched the live broadcast of the speech at his campaign headquarters with his team of advisors and campaign managers, namely, Rick Davis (Campaign Manager), Mark Salter (Senior Advisor and Speechwriter), Fred Davis (Chief Media Strategist) and Steve Schmidt (Senior Campaign Strategist and Advisor). Obama’s popularity was presumably a major cause for worry for the group and rightly so. They knew fighting this man would not be simple. In the following weeks, McCain’s decision to have former Democrat Joe Leiberman as his vice presidential running mate fell through and his pre-poll numbers were weakening, specifically with women. His advisors who, at one point, had suggested attacking Obama’s “celebrity” status were desperate to bring in star power of their own — a charismatic female vice-presidential nominee who could draw in conservative as well as women’s votes — a game changer. A brief — and this is not an exaggeration — Google search later, Rick Davis zeroed in on Sarah Palin.

Game Change is a tale of caution, a lesson in haste. It traces the trajectory of a doomed US presidential election campaign and the rise, fall and rise again of a political superstar-in-making, who perhaps didn’t have as much to lose from the Republican Party’s defeat as McCain, but clearly gained a lot more. Till late 2008, Palin was not a very well known politician. Sure, one could contend she was the governor of Alaska, but then, she was the governor of Alaska. In the scene with Rick Davis’s Google search, he is shown to have trouble trying to recall her name. But a few phone calls later and following a “thorough” vetting procedure that took no longer than five days to ascertain her capabilities and rule out any skeletons in her proverbial closet, she was chosen to be McCain’s running mate in the 2008 US presidential elections.

The movie is told from the point of view Steve Schmidt who has, since the elections, emerged as one of the biggest and most vocal critics of Sarah Palin and was also a primary source for the book Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, on which the movie is based. The tone of the movie, hence, is clearly not in favour of Palin, yet it is told smartly and subtly enough to not appear to be an agenda-driven tirade against Palin and her party.

Following the announcement of her nomination, problems soon started piling up for the Republican campaign managers. What had seemed like a squeaky clean political career on the surface was turning out to be more chequered than any of them could have imagined or possibly accounted for. The five-day vet had clearly not worked, but it was too late to point fingers. The team got right down to business covering up its tail on controversies surrounding Palin they had entirely missed such as Troopergate, her husband’s involvement with the Alaska Independence Party and her teenage daughter’s pregnancy. However, the biggest hurdle facing the team at this juncture was Palin’s gross ignorance about political matters of national and international relevance. Having sailed through her speech at the Republican National Convention accepting her nomination as the party’s vice presidential candidate, she was wildly sought after by the media for one-on-one air time. This worried her advisory committee intensely considering she thought that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, that ‘Fed’ is short for the federal government, that she wasn’t aware of the fundamental difference between the war in Iraq and that in Afghanistan and that she thought the Queen was the head of government in the UK.

Thanks to Youtube, we’re all aware of the infamous gaffes made by Palin in her few pre-election television interviews, particularly those with Charlie Gibson of ABC News and Katie Couric of (then) CBS News. At one point in her interview with Gibson, she said her credentials in foreign policy (specifically with reference to Russia) were reinforced by the fact that they could see Russia from land in Alaska. The interview with Couric was far more disastrous and was widely mocked across the US media. Any mention of these interviews would also be incomplete without Tina Fey’s unforgettable parody on Palin for Saturday Night Live. Fey may not directly be a part of the film, but clips from her sketches have been liberally used in the Game Change, making her, in a way, indispensable to the story.

But even as the media and the rest of the world derided Palin for her ostensibly poor understanding of politics and foreign affairs, what we didn’t see in these interviews was how Palin had hit a personal low around this time. She had been on the move for a while and the campaign had kept her away from her family. As the media ravaged her over the Gibson interview and she faced growing pressure from her advisors, she sank into a state of mild depression. She refused to acknowledge or respond to anything her advisors said and instead grew to resent them intensely, blaming them for her failures. Following the interview with Couric, her personal advisor Nicolle Wallace asked to be removed from Palin’s team because of her obstinacy. Wallace eventually went on to publicly admit that she hadn’t voted in the elections as she doubted Palin’s capabilities.

Game Change clearly does not shy away from taking a stand against Palin’s brand of politics, but it does so without attacking her personal life at any point. One even feels immense sympathy for her and her family when she’s mocked by the media or when the news of her teenage daughter’s pregnancy becomes public. It’s at moments like these when one sees her as a regular, if simple-minded, woman for whom family comes first. That she’s also a politician with a strong conservative following is not because she blindly panders to her people’s values, but because she actually believes what they believe and is fervently vocal about it. She actually believes that it was God’s will that her Downs-inflicted son be born, that rape is not good enough a reason to have an abortion and that creationism should be taught in schools and her fans love her for that.

Though the entire cast fits their roles perfectly, especially Woody Harrelson as Steve Schmidt, Ed Harris as McCain and Sarah Paulson as Nicolle Wallace, the film, without a doubt, belongs to Julianne Moore. Not only is Moore’s physical transformation as the gun-toting, Dr. Pepper-swigging Palin uncannily accurate, she has got her mannerisms, accent and voice modulation spot on. Comparing Youtube footage of the real interviews with those in the film, one struggles to find the slightest difference in hand movement or facial expressions between the two Palins.

Great performances, a smart screenplay and razor-sharp editing make Game Change utterly watchable and even exciting. The film ends with McCain’s concession speech after the Republican party’s defeat in the election. As McCain draws to a close, he thanks Palin for her immense support and hails her as a great potential future leader, and the crowd erupts in cheers, chanting “Palin! Palin! Palin!”. Amid the applause, the camera shifts focus to Wallace and Schmidt as they worriedly look around at the people cheering Palin. It’s a moment of grim realisation and serious introspection for the two advisors as they are hit by the true extent of their mistake in bringing Palin to the national political foreground. Today, after four years, I wonder if they feel  a bit more relieved.

________________

Game Change is a TV movie that aired on HBO on 10 March 2012.

The Road To Discovery…

The thing I like about rides, besides discovering new places of course, is the discovery of new facets to ourselves that we never knew existed.

Like all rides, this one started early on a Saturday morning (6am…yawn!! Atleast that was what was planned…), with three riders, friends and co-travelers in this journey of life. Let’s call them Blake and Dy for good order’s sake. We set off from Malad hungry for adventure and discovery of ways and places unknown… Ok fine… Honestly, we ourselves had no clue what was in store for us later in the day. So we take off blissfully, early in the morning to beat the highway traffic and head towards Igatpuri, a hill station 130 kms from Mumbai.

The plan was take the JVLR to the Eastern Express Highway which would culminate into NH-3, the Mumbai-Agra road... All was smooth until we hit NH-3, where Blake’s chariot decided to play truant and stall suddenly in the middle of the highway. Several minutes and a little tinkering (more like staring at the fuel tap and hoping for some respite) later the chariot was ready to go and so we decided to head out to our destination only to be stopped several more times. According to Blake one has got to treat “her” like a princess else you won’t get the loving in return. Clearly Blake, you do treat “her” like a princess, it’s just that she treats you like her foot stool.

Our first official stop was for breakfast at a Dhaba, Hotel Midland Park, enroute to Igatpuri, where we probably must have eaten the most divine eggs (bhurji and omlette), batata vada and missal pav. Yes yes we did eat a lot... What do you expect from a trio of “uncivilized” bikers?

We reached Igatpuri at about 11am after some really awesome ghat riding through Shahpur and Kasara. We got off the highway at Igatpuri to head towards our final destination- Tringalwadi fort which we thought was a stone’s throw away from us. After enquiring with the locals, we treaded onto a narrow path which led us into the most pristine outdoors this close to Mumbai. So pristine that there were no roads most of the time. It felt like we were straight out of the new off-roader bike advertisement. There were three lakes in all on our long winding off-road way to the fort.

So we finally reach the fort and realize that it’s not bike-able but a trek of three hours. Argh… But nonetheless, for us as bikers the experience was totally worth it. After a few moments by the lake we headed back into civilization not before an honorable mention about lunch at another dhaba where we dared to try the chicken (or at least some weird mutant jumbo version of it) which turned out decently appetizing.

In my opinion, I think we all discover that life is rough sometimes but only to the eye of the beholder. We have a choice of roughing it out only to be disappointed at the end. But like I said, as the beholder, why not enjoy a rough ride once in a while…

It Wasn't Delhi This Time

No part of this is going to be remotely close to anything I love and hence qualified for space on this blog. But I remembered in time that Apoorva has booked some space for angry rants in her profile, so I thought I'd just infringe on her precious angry-rant space.

I want an apology from the organisers of the Metallica (non) concert in Gurgaon.

I want another one from retards who jumped on the stage after the concert was announced to be "postponed" and trashed the equipment like nobody's business.

I also want more people to be able to understand causality. To break it down into words of fewer syllables, that breathtaking relationship between cause and effect.

Because I haven't heard anyone from the organising team apologizing for the mismanaged mess that they were trying to pass off as the venue for an international metal concert capable of accommodating some 25,000 fans, I haven't heard of anyone being booked for vandalism after the show, and I've heard quite a few people still labouring under the first few confused media stories about the concert turning into a no-show because of "typical Delhi hooliganism".

For starters, the story, as it happened.

Crowd starts trickling into and around the venue of the concert much before the gates-opening time of 3 PM; looks around for space to park their cars; is pointed to a vast dusty desert in the vicinity of a bright Apollo Circus tent. Lovely. Hopefully the circus guys got some brisk business after 7:00 PM once the said crowd started trickling out dejected and deflated.

Some time after 3 PM, crowd is waiting around for entry into the venue; gets conflicting views on when things would actually start; gets no information whatsoever. Crowd waits patiently; thinks of grabbing some snacks in the meantime; eventually leaves the snacks table alone seeing the crappy fare on offer. Waits some more for Metallica, or the opening bands, or some music, or an announcement about the show – something of any sort. Just to make sure we're on the same page so far – the crowd is waiting patiently so far, no pushing, no shoving, no groping, no pressing. Awesome, almost like we aren't in dreaded Delhi. I kid you not, I saw an extremely genial looking elderly couple in their late 60s sitting cross legged on the ground, patiently waiting to see what all the Metallica fuss was about. Or maybe they were genuinely into heavy metal. Not getting into their motivations for being there, just pointing out that there were all sorts of people there, most of them harmless, every single one of them civil. Not a jungle of "thrash metal brutes" invoking hell and baying for blood, as is probably the stereotypical image in the minds of all those people whose comments I saw earlier today on news websites offering gems like, "This is why we shouldn't have western culture concerts in India!!" and "Stick to Indian cultural programmes and not this filth!!" Not even "ganwar jats" waiting to break into bhangra at the first guitar strum, well, at least not most of the crowd. Alright then.

Getting back to the day when nothing happened, the wait is punctuated with the only announcements we heard till then – instructions to people in front of the stage to take a few steps back. Not surprising, considering that the distance between the crowd and the stage did seem dangerously little, and the height of the stage not being exceptional, it did seem to compromise the security of the band, their equipment, and the people up front. The deal is, how was this not apparent to the security guys before thousands of people started gathering there? One flimsy barricade between the crowd and the stage? Come to think of it, such scant security arrangement in general for a crowd of this size? How could the organising and security teams not have a fucking clue on how to properly secure a crowd of this size, for an event of this magnitude, in a city like Delhi? Right now, there are more than a thousand policemen/security officials stationed at the Bangalore venue. The dimwits obviously picked up some sense because as per reports, the Delhi venue had 300 private security guards and only 50 Haryana policemen. Yes, for a crowd of nearly 30,000.

After that time blurs and the next thing the crowd hears (after a few false starts earlier with people going "yeahhh!" at someone merely adjusting the mic or shifting some equipment) is an announcement to the tune of: “I've a very important announcement to make. Metallica is at the hotel right now holding a press conference with television channels. Due to technical issues, the concert has been postponed till tomorrow." After which the crowd predictably starts booing, and the mic is promptly handed over to an Indian guy who tries to bring more clarity to the situation by loudly repeating, "Kal hoga concert, abhi nahi hoga, kal 4 baje aa jana, abhi jao." By this time, it's clear to most people that "postponed" is just a euphemism for "cancelled", to break it gently to fans.

The saner people trickle out immediately, sensing there may be trouble. The sane but slower ones, or the buzzed and stoned ones, or just generally confused ones hang around for a while but then start beating retreat. The mostly sane but looking-for-a-lost-friend people, such as Big Mughal Emperor and I, head towards an exit slightly later. We didn't miss much, apparently, because when we joined the crowd heading out, the crowd was still confused about which way to turn, because after almost reaching the exit, they were told to "take a U-turn" and walk back because the exit was still barricaded. Why? Because the police had no clue the crowds would be heading out so soon. Bhai, gaane ki toh awaaz hi nahi aayi andar se. And why again? Because the Awesome Organisers With Tremendous Foresight and Amazing Event Management Skills had apparently failed to take the police into the loop that the show was now cancelled. So everyone was heading out only to find the exit gates barricaded, because the police themselves had no idea that the event was cut short and was now over.

Anyone who knows anything about planning events bigger than kiddie birthday parties would know that getting a No Objection Certificate and the tens of requisite clearances & permits that made our great license permit raj the holy terror that it is, is close to impossible at less than a day's notice. More importantly, how do you expect organisers who couldn't organise things well enough with a few months of preparation time, to not only replicate all the event management efforts but also miraculously make it all go right in less than a day, for the concert to be held the next day? The event was cancelled from the time they took the mic and started sugarcoating the news with words like "tomorrow" and "postponed". How do they not add an apologetic note to that?

By the time most people had left the venue, I assume, the retards took over and smashed the stage. Not Metallica's kit equipment, to set the story straight, but equipment no less valuable and definitely equipment they had NO business, rhyme or reason to even touch, let alone ruin and damage. This, once again, is why we sorely need (a) CCTVs installed in public places with big crowds, (b) working CCTVs, mind it, and (c) the procedure of going through CCTV data to single out vandalizing rats and book them for it, dammit.

The lesson about causality comes in here. For all those crying about how "the rowdy Delhi crowd" got the Metallica show cancelled – take note. Some people were rowdy and they behaved like absolute jackasses, but the show was not cancelled because of them. The show got cancelled BEFORE that, because of the grossly inadequate security, poor organisation and hideous event management. The show got cancelled ("postponed", if you still believe in Santa Claus) and then some jackasses got rowdy. There is no excuse and no justification for it, but that is the fucking order in which things happened. They're both equally shitty things to happen but the first was the cause and the second was the effect, and not the other way round, and for anyone I hear telling me that it was the "Delhi crowd" that made Metallica cancel and not the losers calling themselves 'organisers' – may the next concert you're looking forward to get postponed till never, for no fault of yours.

Confessions (2010)

"I'm going to give you one final, very important lesson. Life."

An enthralling and spine-chilling screenplay, stunning cinematography and a delightfully eclectic soundtrack are just a few of the several things that make Confessions (Japanese title: Kokuhaku) the masterpiece that it is. But before I proceed, I must add, this film is neither for the weak-hearted, nor for the weak-minded. The latter, because the screenplay, as sumptuous as it may be, is heavily intertwined and incredibly fast-paced, to the extent that even the subtitles fail to keep up with it in places. The former, because there is something particularly soul-crushing about seeing children commit heinous acts of hatred and pure evil without the remotest trace of remorse. When it is depicted as convincingly as in this movie, it becomes an almost nightmarish experience.

Based on the eponymous book by Kanae Minato, Confessions is a story of revenge, to put it simply. Like in the book, it is told from the perspectives of five different characters — some at the centre, and others at the periphery of the same plot.

The movie opens in a school. Small cartons of milk are being distributed to a classroom full of unruly 13 year-olds excited about the term coming to an end. Their teacher, Ms. Yuko Moriguchi, unaffected by the children’s utter disregard for order, talks with indifference about the benefits of milk and the state’s new milk distribution programme for middle schools. Continuing in her monotone, she goes on to tell the children that this is going to be her last day at the school. The classroom erupts in delight, but she finally has her students’ attention. Ms. Moriguchi tells the class how, over the years, she has failed to sincerely live up to the teaching ideals taught to her by her deceased mentor Masayoshi Sakuranomiya. But she does not seem to regret it one bit. Children, as she goes on to imply, don’t always deserve compassion. She tells the class instances of gratuitous viciousness exhibited by her students or students she had known. There was the girl who got her teacher fired on accusations of sexual harassment just for kicks. Then, of course, there was the Lunacy Girl, a 13 year-old who mixed a deadly concoction of drugs in her family’s dinner and recorded details of what happened. She called it a “holy rite” on her blog. The family perished. Under the juvenile law, which protects children under 14 years of age from being punished, she wasn’t indicted with murder charges, but merely committed to a juvenile detention centre for “rehabilitation”. Lunacy became a cult figure among children her age.

The idea of death, Ms. Moriguchi says, is taken very lightly by some children. It fascinates them, while life itself holds little meaning. She reminds the class of Manami, her 4 year-old daughter, who was found dead in the school’s swimming pool a few months ago. It was inferred that the girl had slipped and drowned in the pool. But as she discovered over the following weeks, it wasn’t an accident. She reveals to the children that her daughter was killed by two of her own students in this class. She calls them student ‘A’ and student ‘B’. But even without naming them, she ensures that everyone in the class is aware of the identities of the two killers. The children’s cellphones are soon buzzing uncontrollably with the new found gossip. Ms. Moriguchi, however, is still not done. She says she is aware that going to the authorities will serve no purpose as the killers are underage. Instead, she confesses to the class, her revenge is already underway, put into motion only moments before she  made this revelation. This is Ms. Moriguchi’s confession. 

"Pop! That's the sound of something important to you disappearing."

Words can’t possibly do justice to the sheer  brilliance with which this classroom sequence unfolds over the first 30 minutes of the movie. A scene that began as an innocuous and cheerful montage of children chugging down milk, texting, wreaking havoc in the classroom and generally being kids, ends on a note of grim intensity, throbbing with ubiquitous tension. This is testament, obviously, to the exquisitely crafted screenplay and masterful direction by Tetsuya Nakashima. Cinematic adaptations come with certain limitations, especially so in case of a source with a complex and multi-layered narrative as in Minato’s novel. A lesser director could have easily botched up the adaptation, but the precision and fluidity with which Nakashima’s script shifts focus from one character’s narrative to the next, while constantly maintaining an atmosphere of heart-stopping dread, is commendable to say the least.

Ms. Moriguchi’s confession is followed (after the spring break) by Mizuki’s, a quiet and shy girl in the same class as A and B. The third, by B’s mother, the fourth by B himself and the fifth by A — each subsequent confession more shocking than the last. The unwavering focus of the plot, however, remains the teacher’s single-minded objective of avenging her daughter’s death. The other characters form only a part of a conspiracy much bigger and more macabre than any of their stories individually.

There is a clear theme of juvenile delinquency running through the film. It is difficult to accept children as anything more than children, especially when that extra something is so dark and frightening. Sure, kids can be nasty — bullying is a universal problem — but it is a completely different thing to see them as ruthless, cold-blooded killers. Throughout the movie, children are depicted as hateful, almost dehumanised, little beings constantly engaging in acts of violence, be it bullying or even killing. In fact, Ms. Moriguchi’s plan relies, to a great extent, on her belief that children are inherently cruel. This is a clear reflection of Japan’s growing concerns about major crimes among their youth. Almost as a corollary, another theme integral to the story is that of a mother’s relationship with her child. The three mothers in the movie — Ms. Moriguchi, B’s mother and A’s mother — together encompass a whole spectrum of emotions from disapproval and disdain to selfless, uncompromising love. The movie has no qualms admitting its belief that the two themes are inextricably tied to each other. 

As must be clear by now, Confessions is not an easy watch. It is brutal, shocking, deeply unnerving and raises inconvenient questions about juvenile crimes, revenge and morality. What mitigates the unrelenting bleakness of the plot, however, is its surreal and visually enchanting cinematography. Almost every single frame in Confessions is a work of art, a celluloid mural, and if not for anything else, this film needs to be seen for its camera work alone.

Confessions is, perhaps, the best in its genre that I have seen since The Silence of the Lambs. It is deeply engrossing and is bound to keep you on the edge of your seat throughout its 103-minute run. As far as psychological thrillers go, it doesn’t get any better than this. A thoroughly rewarding experience.

Back and beyond - Nagarhole

One fine day, my office decided it was time for some more people-oriented policies so we were all whisked off to some small, out-of-the-way, 5-hour drive to reach place called Nagarhole. Also known as Rajiv Gandhi National Park, it's a wildlife reserve where we expected to see tigers in chase of their prey and other such sexy things.

Now, being an office trip, I had already imagined it to be not so fun, and was all set to behave all proper and not-excited-unlike-my-usual trip self. Already some of my friends at office had ditched the 'party' imagining it to be super boring and I was beginning to dread the day. And initially, my grim predictions were bang on. The journey to Nagarhole was long and painful, the seats hard, we stopped to eat at some South Indian vegetarian joint and the scenery was not pretty at all.

Sigh.

Once we finally reached our resort, I actually contemplated just staying back and sleeping the rest of the day away, while everyone got on another bus to go into the jungle. And even though I dragged myself and went, the safari was not even remotely thrilling. Given there are only 82 tigers in the whole damn reserve and some 90 odd leopards, chances of actually spotting one was less than 1% despite the guide’s frantic suggestions to the contrary. And of course the deer and the bison populations were exploding in our faces, but that’s a different and irrelevant story. A few takeaways from the safari, as I zoned out and mentally started writing this post:

• The greens & the browns are forever etched in my memory, coz that’s literally the only thing that we saw

• I am as ready as can be to recognize and properly catalogue all kinds of deer species from a mile away
• I have discovered that elephant spotting is a thing for everyone in my office, and anyone who able to do so was looked upon with shining adoring eyes of the junta. And this is insane coz we see anyway them ambling around on the roads of Bangalore – the elephants, not the elephant- spotters.
• And lastly... errr, no just 3 points.

But then the most amazing thing happened - it began to rain. Right there, in the middle of that god-forsaken forest with hardly any animal / bird sounds and just a small tin contraption of a bus separating us from the "wild", it started to rain.

And the world around me changed. Suddenly everything became beautiful, the air cooled down to the point of freezing, the dull, dead green turned fresh & pulsating, I could hear bird song and as I stuck my head out of the window (risking my neck from possible imagined-tiger attack) I felt the wind in my hair and the rain drops on my face and everything was all right. The trees were so dense that it became dark at just 5 pm and it felt like we were ancient explorers trudging through a dangerous and unknown forest to ultimately reach the famed and mysterious El Dorado. We spotted a few gorgeous lakes (ponds?) and the rain water dancing on their surface was the stuff that poetry is all about. The dirt path we were driving on became a mini river, the animals reacted gracefully to the water, I could smell the sandalwood, I abandoned my camera and gave into nature, the feeling of it, the connection with it and it finally became a trip worth coming all the way for.

We got back to our resort for a true party in the wild, a jungle mein mangal if you may and that, in addition to the awesome new girl gang I formed ended the day on a happy high. We drank, danced around a bonfire, sang along with the DJ, bitched about everyone, picked up office gossip and the kicker, actually didn’t want the weekend to end…

Through India's Wine Country - Nashik

This was the big one, the trip that would define all future trips, that would test all limits and decide once and for all, whether I’m a true traveler or not. Or so we had built up in our heads. Well, simply because, we planned to bike this one out, and see if I can handle bike trips without my ass dying and refusing to come back to life in a span of four hours.
So we were excited, with full biking gear and minimal packing.

Of course what we didn’t account for was Kaybee’s T-Bird actually getting more scared than me, and popping out a thingamajig the night before. Or some nut. Or some bolt. Or something like that. Of course at this moment Kaybee is giving me dirty looks for not knowing what I’m talking about. Oh well.

So five hours before our historic journey, we realized it’s going to be a comfortable luxury trip after all. So hiding the disappointment, and more importantly my ass’s relief, we headed out in the morning in our beloved A Star, towards the industrial town of Nashik.

The pretty and empty NH3

Oh, by the way did you know that the town gets its name from the fact that Lord Laxman cut off the nose of Surpanakha here, hence Nashik, from the Sanskrit word, Nasika meaning nose. I think.

Anyway, we had laid out a simple 3-point Trip Objective:

1. Bike Trip
2. Wine tasting at Sula Vineyard
3. Eating, sleeping, eating, relaxing and did I mention eating?

Well, 2-point now.

Kaybee was a little skeptical about NH3 as we’d never tried it before, but boy was it pretty! It was empty, it was a good drive, and it was just plain scenic. Green valleys and plains, and hills and trees, and just a lot of nature not yet destroyed. Rare around Mumbai, I tell you.

On our way we stopped just before Igatpuri at a dhaba called ‘Maruti’ for some yummy breakfast. Ok, so ‘yummy’ had been the objective, and I was suddenly craving for some buttery alloo parathas. What I got instead was some slightly dubious sambar dosa. My half screwed up face turned into a forced smile after a nice lil comment about spoilt South Delhi girls from Kaybee. Hmph.

We reached the outskirts of Nashik really soon, thanks to the empty road, and then spent another hour trudging through the bad roads and traffic within Nashik. Thanks to Google maps we finally did make it to our hotel, Ginger.

At this point, I would like to take up some time to write about Ginger, without actually getting paid for it. I am a die-hard Taj fan, really am. Of course doesn’t change the fact that I can’t actually afford to stay in Taj, yet. So we had to go for something more budget-friendly. And I hate it when you spend a decent amount of money and end up in a room with peeling walls and a cot. And now I must say, I am in love with Ginger. The rooms were cute, air conditioned, clean bathroom, a mini fridge and, the best part, a flat screen tv. Oh wait no, the best part was the breakfast buffet, something we hadn’t been expecting, and hence took us by complete surprise. Decent spread, and accommodating staff. All at around 4500 for 2 nights. I repeat, I LOVE Ginger.

What we did on Day 1:

• Watched TV
• Ordered room service
• Slept
• Ordered room service
• Watched TV
• Ordered room service
• Slept
• Ordered room service

As useless as it sounds, it had to be the most amazing Day 1. We needed it, even more than we realized.

So the next day we woke up nice and on time, in our full touristy mood and headed out. We checked out the Infant Jesus Shrine, we wow-ed at a huge-ass mall, and after a lot of driving finally reached Sula Vineyard.

Branding a vineyard

We got a tour of the entire wine making process, by a tour guide who actually knew his wines really well. Be warned, it takes a few minutes to adjust to the strong scent of grapes and wines inside the vinery. I was warned that I might get high on the scent, and should be careful. Of course the warning came from Kaybee. So I laughed it off. But I did breathe a little carefully after that.

Where wine is fermented for months and months

Where wines are stored till ordered

This was followed by wine tasting (Rs. 150 for 4 wines, 250 for 6 wines), where Kaybee was in his full classy strength following the full see-swirl-smell-sip routine with style, while I was pinching my nose and managing to somehow swallow. I never did get used to drinking wine, after all.

The pretty pretty tasting room

Some cute merchandize

Overall, the place was really pretty, with a nice view of the vineyard and the lake beyond. The wines were offered at a slight discount, but more importantly, the ambience made you want to have wine. We walked around, we clicked pics, we wondered how pretty it would be in season (Jan-March) and then thought of the crowds and felt rather happy about roaming around in the empty place in the heat.

Sigh...

Lunch at Little Italy at Sula…I never will understand how the place can be vegetarian.

And then back to hotel by evening. Where we slept, watched tv, ordered hell loads of room service, watched more tv, and slept some more.

The next day, we were rejuvenated, relaxed and ready for life. Because sometimes, a trip which doesn’t involve a lot of sightseeing, a lot of travelling, and a lot of curiosity, is just what you need. The drive back was even prettier than the way to Nashik, if that was possible. This time we actually drove through almost-virgin mountains and hills and valleys. The route made us feel even better.

Let it roll baby roll....

And then we took a final turn, off the highway, and right into Mumbai’s traffic. Where we stayed for the next two hours. In the heat. And the muck. And the horns. And the dirty driving.

And by the time we reached home, all we needed was a vacation, yet again.

Rabbit Hole (2010)

What is it like to lose a child? It's a tough question to ask yourself, especially if you're a parent. But what really does one do when a significant, if not the sole, purpose of their being no longer exists? Do they lose the will to live too? Does the grief ever subside? Would they not hate themselves if it did? Is the grief shared between the parents? Or does it spawn a blame game that eventually entirely dissolves any remnants of a normal married life they might have still had? Director John Cameron Mitchell tries exploring these questions, and more, through Rabbit Hole, an admirable adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name.

Rabbit Hole is the story of Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart), an average suburban couple trying to deal with the loss of their 4 year-old son Danny, eight months after a car accident took his life. Becca has taken to gardening. She tends to her plants with as much care as she would a baby. She seems to have moved on from the tragedy. She donates all of Danny's clothes and toys to charity and tries to convince her husband to sell the house and leave all the bad memories behind. But deep inside, she suffers from intense resentment. She resents her neighbours for taking pity on her. She resents her dog for Danny ran into the street chasing after him when he got killed. She resents her old friend for not having the courage to speak to her since the incident (even though, deep down, she's only grateful for that). She resents her sister Izzy for telling her that she's pregnant. She also resents Izzy for being pregnant believing her to be too immature and ill-equipped to be a mother. She resents her mother for comparing her grief over losing her 30 year-old son (Becca and Izzy's brother) from a drug overdose to Becca's own grief. But most of all, she resents her husband, for failing to protect their son. Ironically, the only person she does not resent is Jason, the teenage driver of the car that killed Danny.

Howie tries to deal with his grief in a more conventional manner. He desperately clings to the memories of his dead son. He watches videos of Danny on his phone late at night when he thinks Becca's asleep. He pushes her to attend a support group for bereaved parents and finds comfort in sharing his pain with others like him. He wants to have another baby with Becca, who is dead against the idea and chides him for trying to "replace" Danny with a second child.

The already strained relationship between the couple becomes even worse when Howie finds out that Becca has been meeting Jason behind his back. For Becca, her meetings with the reticent teen are a cathartic process, the only moments when she's not pained to be in the company of another person, in this case, a person who suffers from as much guilt as her, if not more. For Howie, it's plain betrayal. He, in turn, finds comfort with Gabby (Sandra Oh), a member of his support group whose husband, failing to cope with the loss of their child years earlier, walked out on her.

But despite all their problems and differences, Howie and Becca love each other. They find it increasingly difficult to do so, but they are stronger than either of them realise and they most definitely aren't without hope.

Perhaps, the biggest strength of Rabbit Hole lies in the fact that it is as witty as it is sad. It finds in itself the audacity to laugh at the helplessness of its characters. This, of course, could be made possible only by near-perfect performances by the entire cast. Aaron Eckhart is just one of those rare performers who can be blindly trusted with any role from the intensely grey character of Harvey Dent in 'The Dark Knight' to the smooth-talking, smart-acting PR executive in 'Thank You for Smoking'. Here, he delivers a touchingly poignant and layered performance as Howie. Dianne Wiest as Becca's well-intentioned, but misunderstood mother too reminds us why we loved her so much in films like 'Edward Scissorhands', 'Hannah and her Sisters', 'The Birdcage' and even 'The Associate'. Sandra Oh, who has so far mostly portrayed strong and driven female characters, brings a disarming vulnerability to her brief role as an aggrieved mother and a jilted wife who finds solace in a similarly damaged man (Howie) and pot. Miles Teller, as Jason, packs in his performance just the right amounts of guilt and teenage awkwardness and I certainly look forward to seeing more of him in the future. But the one performance that clearly outshines the rest is by Nicole Kidman. As Becca, she is sad, funny, obnoxiously stubborn and deeply vulnerable all at the same time.

Despite its premise, Rabbit Hole is not depressing. It is a story about a future when there wasn't any possibility of a future. It is about grief and love and what happens when one overpowers the other. In 91 minutes, it proves that watching a movie can be as fulfilling an experience as reading a great book.

Pondi!!! - (Part 2)

And now *drum roll* the most important and dearest section of our Pondicherry trip… the one reason for which Kaybee and I really exist...

Where to Eat:

We had one simple thing on our minds: French food. And so it started.

Le Club - Perhaps the best of the lot. It’s a quaint little place, done up casually with a good-but-not-extensive menu. The iced tea was good, the beer chilled. The salad interesting, and the chicken in wine sauce rather heavenly. The ambience was relaxing after the cruel sun outside, and even though we had those two random men discussing their womanly exploits on the next table, we found it rather easy to ignore them. Average Meal for two: Rs 750

:)

Aaah...that amazing chicken in wine sauce!!!

Satsang - The name doesn’t suggest French, the cuisine does. The décor was breathtaking, and just made us feel happy. The menu got us excited, and we ordered a cheese platter, a steak and a lemon chicken. This is when happiness came to a standstill. The cheese platter was this ugly plate with slices of cheese just cut and laid out. The bread with it, was well, sandwich bread. And a cockroach ran out from under the bread basket. The food was just o-k…and given the prices, was really not up to the mark. The iced tea still had bits of iced tea powder floating around. So much for fresh. Average Meal for two: Rs. 900

Pretty...Pretty...Pretty!!!

The not-so-pretty food

Le Café - Breakfast at Le Café was something we were looking forward to. Kaybee was keen on returning to Le Club, but heat+location made us visit Café instead. Well, next to the beach on the promenade, that was pretty much all it had going for it. We ordered an English breakfast. Omelette which wasn’t really customized the way we wanted, juice which was thankfully fresh, but fruit which looked like it had been cut a week ago. Overall just so-so. Coffee was good though. Average breakfast for two: Rs. 500

The English breakfast, with some mush on the side

Madame Shanthe’s - Shady as it sounded, we climbed up a lot of stairs to try this place out. Rendezvous had been our original dinner choice, but as it was shut for renovation, our tiny bit of energy turned to Madame Shanthe’s. Terrace restaurant, interesting ceiling, 2 couples cozying, no waiter. The latter is the only thing that was of our interest. There was NO waiter. Or maybe he was the same as the cook. And the owner. Or something like that. So when a man did appear after 15 minutes of our waiting, we quickly finished all our queries and order in one go, not knowing when he would magically appear again. The food took time, but eventually was by far the best value for money meal in Pondicherry. They didn’t have much, but what they did have was tasty. And cheap.

It took forever, it looked just o-k, tasted yum!

The Promenade, Sarovar - For dessert we decided to head to the one classy hotel we had come across, The Promenade, Sarovar. And boy, was it classy. A nice roof top restaurant, away from all the crowd and the noise, with quaint lil desserts that might have been just a mouthful, but were plain heavenly. If only we had tried it earlier. Oh well.

The roof top romance...

The tiny portions from heaven

And well, after all the sight seeing, and all the hogging and more hogging, our trip finally came to an end.

How to get out of there:

Now somehow everyone tells you there are buses every 1 hour from Pondicherry to Goa. What they don’t seem to tell you is that these buses are crowded, and that you have to wrestle with the localites to manage to get a seat on them. I am not exaggerating. We:

1.       Ran after a bus

2.       Dodged bags being thrown through windows

3.       Skipped over a man lying down to block 3 seats

4.   And well, initially shifted to make room for one more lady, as usual. Of course said lady proceeded to fall asleep on Kaybee’s strong shoulders and deposited enough oil there to warrant a US siege on it. She also drooled a bit. But just a bit.

Eventually after what seemed like a really long ride in the summer sun, we reached a point outside Chennai from where we hitched an auto rickshaw (Rs 210) to the Airport. He of course tried to fleece us further and after a long argument we walked into the not-so-welcoming Chennai airport, tired, hungry and really sweaty.

Trip Summary

Duration: 2.5 days, 2 nights

Weather: hot

Skin Tone: 3 times darker

Quiet Quotient: 3/5

Food: 4/5

Tourist attractions: 3/5

Final Words of Wisdom: Pondicherry is a little South Indian town, in a French mask. While it’s away from the world, it isn’t as quiet as it is made out to be, nor as peaceful and calm. Don’t expect too much, and it won’t disappoint you. A good weekend getaway, but only if you live in Chennai. Or if you’re travelling with the love of your life.