Between yesterday morning and this evening, I was very productive, which makes me quite happy. Most of my weekends just I finally made a pilgrimage to the Indian store. Not sure if its the nearest one, but the Malabar Indian Mart is about an hour from where I stay. A long drive that includes inner city routes with signals, traffic and all those things. But I finally did get there and bought a whole lot of groceries that will serve me for some time to come. While I was there I also picked up two DVDs – Vallavan and Kakha Kakha (I’m renting this movie for the 3 or 4th time.) The store owner very generously allowed me to keep the DVDs until my next visit to the store, which may not be for a few weeks. I was hoping Pudupettai would be out by now. But he didn’t have it. Came home and started watching/listening to some great classic prog. rock stuff on YouTube – Kansas (who I found out last night are touring at the moment), Yes, actually Rick Wakeman (who with David Paton) does a very nice rendition of Eleanor Rigby (Beatles) . Also some classics such as Bob Seger (Turn the Page), Rainbow (Temple of the King), DT doing Metallica covers (Master of Puppets and Damage Inc.). After the videos, it was time for some keyboard practice for me. I recently bought an electronic keyboard – the Yamaha PSR E403. It has this really nice tutor program that teaches you how to play songs. It indicates which note has to be played and it’ll disable all the other ones. It teaches you to play the tune at the right tempo as well. And in the end, it’ll grade your performance. I started with Fur Elise. Been enjoying it immensely. I was able to get an “Excellent” grade in a few tries. Still keep making mistakes though. But then hey, I just started yesterday! But thats where I’m planning to spend a lot of my spare time. Thats for sure. Riff asked me to select a song the two of us can collaborate on. I’ll do the keyboard parts while he does the guitars. Knowing how good he is, its going to take some real effort on my part. But I think I’m up for it! Its probably going to be a progressive piece with a slow keyboard piece! . Searching for a good track.

By the time I finished watching all the music videos on YouTube and practicing Fur Elise, it was already 12.00 am. I finally got down to watching Vallavan. If I’m allowed to use only one word to describe the movie, then the word I choose is “long”. Or may be its just that I no longer have the patience to watch three plus hours movies. But then Vallavan is so long that in the end it says “to be continued…”! In fact each half of the movie deals with a separate plot that could have been turned into a full length movie by itself. So while the first half is about a college student falling in love with a lecturer and its complications, the second half deals with obsession and each part almost has its own leading lady. Nayantara plays the college lecturer. The “Little Super Star” Simbhu plays the college student. The second half revolves around Reema playing his obsessive girlfriend in high school. While both parts were interesting by itself, combining the two into one seemed to dilute the whole thing… And none of the two plots are given sufficient time to develop. And it was long… Surely more than 3 hours I think! The story drags towards the ending. The music is by Yuvan Shankar Raja, whose music I’ve become a big fan of. The title track is nice. His music for Pudupettai is magnificent, especially the main theme track! Its haunting… And surely inspired. Heard hints of Claude Debussy. Also a bit of the theme of Enemy at the Gates. And I felt it ended too abruptly! Probably because its a theme track! Many thanks to Suhas for introducing me to South Indian music and movies (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada)! Autograph, 12/G Vrindavan Colony, Kaaka Kaaka, Manmadhan, all nice movies… Watch them if you get a chance.