Ash -warya Rai-ses

When I say Aishwarya Rai, I hear two words most commonly: beautiful or artificial. I dont disagree with both but personally I am an Aishwarya fan. I might be considered naive to be so openly expressing my views, but well...! People give me looks when I say I am an Ash fan (anti-gender bias!). I dont get those looks when I say I am a Kajol fan or a Tabu fan. Guess Ash is femininity personified and personified imeccably!

I admire Aishwarya. I like to describe her as a person who is smart,sharp and brilliant. As a businesswoman and a student/artist. But she reflects naiveness in many ways. Giggling away over the prestigious '60 minute' show or making statements like ,'Taj is prettier than me' cant be an 'I know it all' womanly act (which her contemporary Ms Sen carries off so very irresistably). This combination is a very luscious target for media people and critics.....And that explains it all.

Such beauty,power,sense of success and naiveness can only come with a price.

I recall the way she opened the Cannes Festival last year. Felt like it was a student on stage trying hard to get her lines right and did so very well.But I dont want to forget how her wardrobe at Cannes has matured from a thoughtless cacaphony of colors to that of class and elegance.

Her performances in the first few movies were no more than a treat to the eye only. But a woman with such commercial value/mould carrying off an off-stream 'Choker Bali' .... and seeming so effortlessly! it can but only be Aishwarya Rai.

The woman surely knows herself. Rising from 'A no-actress' to someone who made the world look at 'Bollywood' couldn't have been without self-confidence and determination.

Its hard to give a prognosis of her career path. In the worst case she would probably stagnate at the height of success and stay there or get better. For every situation she failed she has come out fine and refined. People willing to learn ,to learn to be resilient,......they never fail! Not even at the trough of the tide.

That seals it! ....I am an Ash fan.

Finger tips and Keys!

I love playing the keyboard. It kind of makes me feel I can create magic with my finger tips. I recall spending endless hours with the keyboard perfecting the tunes before performing on stage <....May be trying to experience a dejavu> . Then I would miss the feel of keys and try to run my fingers in the air......like I proudly played music in the air.

Today I feel my finger tips tapping the keyboard all the time. But the keys belong to my laptop or my cell phone. I can probably survive without calling home for a day or two. I would simply suffocate without my laptop.

Isnt this is a silicon world? Almost everybody is on a network. Accessible and reachable somehow. With memory space/bandwidth problem being tackled in endless ways all the time, thoughts and products are going online. Spending a day behined four walls without seeing the light of the sun is not an impossibility.

Where is this heading? With software giants ruling the corporate world and live bits reflecting the way of life... Is this a trade off between smartness and elements of life? Everything at the click of a mouse, sweating behind the gym walls and sampling your emotions through a sample space of smileys!! I never imagined that I had to choose my emotions from a list of emot-icons.

But I must admit there is so much more time for compressing distances and desires.
The world is noisier and closer knit today.Paradoxically we are more individualistic and independent. If not any thing else, this evolution and adaptation will be something I want to be watching till I am a part of it...