4 Indians, a Spanish movie, Dutch subtitles

Well, the title literally gives it away. The university has a small theater/cafe called the 'Zwarte Doos' or the black box which plays a movie three days a week. The movies played are mostly foreign and are generally not the main stream hits like in regular theaters. You have to watch out in their Dutch website to see what movie is played and in which language.

It was completely my idea and as I checked the website, it said the movie was in two languages - English/Spanish. Somehow I just assumed that the movie was in English with sprinkles of Spanish in between. So off we all went to watch Che-part 1, a biography on the Argentina born Cuban revolutionary.

The movie started and for the first 5 minutes everything was in Spanish. While my friends gave me the weird looks and mumbled a few curses under their breath, I was confident that the language would switch soon. Ah! Steven Soderbergh, the director was trying to give an authentic feeling to the film. As it turned out the movie was entirely in Spanish, sprinkled with some English.

And as one would expect the subtitles were in Dutch (The Dutch never dub foreign films, just subtitles). I did suspect something when the ticket counter guy gave us the odd looks.

While I desperately tried to figure out the subtitles, I really really wished I had payed more attention in my Dutch class. The movie was dead serious and the one or two times the audience laughed, I joined in just to blend in. hahaha!!! I seriously thought at least one of my friends was going to walk out soon. But we managed through the 2 hour movie. I must say quite an accomplishment. And to think that we were thinking of buying tickets for Che - part 2 for a back to back view!

The only good thing was that I realized my Dutch even though not any where close to being decent has vastly improved in the nine months that I have been here.

P.S - Ernesto Che Guevara! What a man, what a revolutionary! Not having learnt a whole lot while watching the movie, I came home and read quite a bit about him. Will probably try watching Che - part 2 with English subtitles.

Remembering Gandhi...

I was pleasantly surprised to see the Google homepage today -

Celebrating Mahatama Gandhi, the Father of our nation's birthday. Happy Gandhi Jayanthi!

Thank you Paula!

Public dancing is perhaps one of my biggest nightmare. It was a fear that I developed as a kid. In one of the cultural programs that our school conducted, I was chosen to dance for a traditional Tamil dance called 'Kummi'. Now, I literally laugh out loud, but back then performing the best in the team meant a whole lot. I somehow did not manage to dance well and the teacher scolded me. Thats it! It was like the biggest insult that my 12 your old ego could bear. I decided dancing was trivial and immediately plunged myself into more achievable goals then like books.

Well, that was then but as I grew up I realized how much fun dancing was. Everybody seemed to have such a blast while I stood aside looking as though someone had tied two rocks to my legs. All I could do was move vaguely like a robot. And I have to say dancing is a big deal in India. The whole bollywood culture has left us singing and dancing every where. Girls especially are expected to dance by nature! grrr, the stereotypes! It turned into a huge mind block. It felt like I was missing out.

When I moved to Canada, I decided to start over. I joined ball room classes, started dancing in parties, but my real turning point came when I started this aerobics/dance work out by Paula Abdul - 'Get up and dance'(counting solely on my own experience here). The first day, I couldn't dance even one step in order. It was just too fast for me. I decided I wouldn't give up. I practiced one move a day and slowly built it up till I could dance the entire video. I began to realize that most of dancing is in your mind. You just need to feel confident and good about yourself. More importantly let go.

No no, don't even imagine that I have turned into a super hot dancing pro. Its just that I have stopped caring about what others think about my jiggle- wiggle any more :D. Of all the places, I never even imagined I would get to dance again an Indian folk dance in Eindhoven. For the past one month I have been practicing for a big 'Dandiya Raas' event in the city. And hey, not bad at all! Thank you Paula! :)

P.S - Shubh Navrathiri Desis!