My Little Sister..

Today, she will be appearing for her 1st board exam.. All of 15 years, she is 6 inches taller to me, and quite naturally few pounds heavier too.. But I seldom see this gauche lanky teenager when I think of my sister. Probably because its been almost 5 years since I left home when she was a too much of a kid, partly 'coz I don't get to see her often now, and mostly coz' I don't make an effort to. I relate better to that tiny imp I used to tease to tears than this rather grown up girl. This post is meant to be a quick trip down the memory lane..

I saw her the day after she got born, and wasn't actually impressed. I was in the 6th standard and some of my classmates had little sisters who were in the kindergarten of our school. They were all pretty dainty things in pink and blue pinafores. My sister was too tiny for me to even hold properly, let alone having fun with her. I had not seen any newborns till then and was hugely disappointed with her.
But she did grow up fast, and in around 6 months she had us all wrapped around her little finger. I had little to do apart from attending school which would get over around 2 pm. Post school all my time, attention and energies were devoted to dear sis. Now, when I look at my daughter, I fervently wish I could spend even half of that time with her.

Vatu, as we call her was an extremely active baby, and me and my brother share the credit jointly for it. We always kept her overly busy with our pranks. One particularly favourite one was that which we played when she had just learnt walking, less than an yr old... we would lie on the bed, and dangle some part of the body in the air, and then call out for her.. 'My arm has fallen off, can you please pick it up'.. she would come running to our aid and by the time she would put the arm back on the bed, we would dangle a leg and repeat the trick. This might not make much sense now, but we enjoyed it immensely as kids. And our pranks did graduate to a higher level. Sample this one, we opened a bank called 'Didi-Bhaiya bank' and led Vatu into depositing whatever money she had got in our bank. We maintained an account book and also provided her with a check book for withdrawal! Offcourse, we never returned any of her money. And then, we made her work for us as was her duty towards revered older siblings. If we dropped a pencil under our desk, we would not get up to retrieve it. Rather, we would summon Vatu who would be in the other room or the next floor, we couldn't care less, to pick the pencil for us. Or we would lie on the bed, and call Vatu to put off the lights and the television. Sounds kinda outrageous now, but believe me, it was so much fun!

There is so much more that I can put down, like the time when she wore a brown silk frock with a creamish underskirt on her birthday and we told her that she looked like a 'gulabjamun' or preparing her for her first day of school by teaching her how to become a 'murga' and to do sit-ups holding her ears.. the list is just endless.. Lemme sign off for now, may be some later day I shall share more about my adventures with my little sis..

Jodhaa Akbar..

A disclaimer before I begin- This is not a movie review.

Frankly, I don't think highly enough of myself to play a critic to somebody's creativity, more so when the person in question is a master of his craft. I loved 'Swades' and was simply bowled over by 'Lagaan'. But for some reason, I couldn't quite connect with A.Gowarikar's latest offering, 'Jodhaa Akbar'. It can be hugely attributed to my attachment to Mughal-e-Azam, having already watched it for God-knows-how-many times, I can watch it twice daily for the rest of my life without having enough of it..(I intend to keep the 3rd show slot for Sholay, and given the length of both the films, there is no chance for a 4th show :D). Even my POTC loving husband has been made to watch it so many times.. it is one of the important things he does to express solidarity with me.

I can talk endlessly about Mughal-e-Azam but it shall be wrong to do so in a post titled Jodhaa Akbar. Returning to the movie, it would have been easier to relate to it had it been named ambigously or probably after some lesser known blue-bloodeds. Even Roopmati-Baaj Bahadur would have done the trick. Akbar is too prominent a figure to be wrapped in total fiction, and all of us have preconceived notions about his larger than life persona. In an effort to keep with times, the plot gets too contemporary to be relevant.. Before long, the movie loses credibility and the viewers lose interest. Also, the lead actors being the best looking people we have ever had, look truly amazing but sadly, they do not look their part.
Still, I must admit that I had a nice time watching the movie. Firstly, it was after a long time that I sat 'just-like-that' with my otherwise busy-as-hell husband for so long at a stretch, full three-and-a-half hours, and the movie not being so interesting, we got to spend some quality time together. Also, I must thank fellow bloggers for putting some salient points in the movie in an altogether different light, making it enjoyable. There was no trace of humor in the film but we still got to laugh heartily whenever some of it came up. Thanks GB for that gem of a review..