Navarasas

Why am I writing about this?

Well, one of my friends would answer that… “Coz I can”.
LOL :-D

But no, that’s not the only reason. I read about the navarasas in Amrita Nair’s book “Mistress”. The story is presented in chapters that talk about the different rasas in Kathakali (or even Bharatnatyam, for that matter). For the layman, what “rasa” means is an emotion that we experience and express facially and through gestures in these dance forms.

So, I got a little curious about the 9 rasas (just like I did in the 7 cardinal sins, 10 commandments, 7 wedding oaths, etc). And then, as usual, Wikipedia and some other websites satiated my hunger for information. Happy reading !!

Rasa is about human state of mind. It’s about what the mind feels and the expression of the feeling thereafter. In the Bharata’s Natyashastra, Rasa is an emotion experienced by the audience created by the facial expression or the Bhava of the actor. In Indian classical dance it is referred to as Rasa-abhinaya. Thus, every Rasa (mood) corresponds to a particular Bhava (expression).

Bharata Muni enunciated the eight Rasas (yes 8, not 9) in the Nātyasāstra, an ancient work of dramatic theory. Each rasa, according to Nātyasāstra, has a presiding deity and a specific colour. Let’s take a look!

Structure: Rasa – Bhava – Meaning – Colour - Presiding deity

Shringar – Rati – Delight, Love, Attractiveness - Light Green - Vishnu

Hasya – Hasa – Humor, Laughter – White - Pramata

Karuna – Shoka – Sorrow, Compassion, Mercy – Grey - Yama

Raudra – Krodh – Anger, Terrible – Red - Rudra

Veera – Utsaha – Heroism – Pale Orange/Yellowish - Indra

Bhayanaka – Bhaya – Fear, Horror – Black - Kala

Bibhatsa – Jugupsa – Disgust, Aversion – Blue - Shiva

Adbhuta – Vismaya – Wonder – Yellow – Brahma

The ninth rasa was added later:

Shanta – Calm – Peace – Blue - Vishnu

In addition to the above nine, two more appeared, especially in literature: Vatsalya (Parental Love) and Bhakti (Spiritual Devotion). However, the presiding deities, the colours and other details have not been specified.

Cool, eh?

I’ve not watched any Indian classical dance performance in a long time now. So, I don’t completely recall my experience. I must have been bored, though, coz I probably dint understand anything, and anyway, back then, it was cool to detest everything serious.

Now, I would like to go for some such show. Watch the unfolding of the plot, the revelation of the characters, their dedication, grace and expertise. Am I getting old? Well, technically yes. But its more about being mature than just age.

Count me in if you fit the bill…

Adieu!

Hasta La Vista.
Princess

Blessed... To Have U

This poem was chosen by Blogadda as a Tangy Tuesday pick !!!
Click here to go to their page - mine's post num 2 from the top :-)

Happy Valentine's Day, you'all...

I thought I was perfect,
Though my world was a jumble;
When I see the way you adore me,
Your love makes me feel humble.

Your eyes, they speak a million words,
The warmth they bestow upon me is divine;
Your gaze transports me to heaven,
You’re my guardian angel so fine.

Stand by me, your arms say,
As you clutch me in your embrace;
My fears and worries take flight,
I could stay that way for days.

Could I be so fortunate?
To have you to love and call my own;
You make me feel like a queen,
Your heart is my treasure, my throne.

It’s unbelievable, they way you’re there for me,
So incredible is your passion, fore-sightedness and care;
And then you say you’re fortunate to have me,
That your world without me is bare.

You’ve made me lose my inhibitions,
With you I feel so brave;
Within moments I have in my palm,
Anything that I recollect or crave.

It drives me insane, your need for me,
It places me on cloud nine;
I want to scream to the world,
You’re mine, all mine, all mine!

You seem to know me better than myself,
Your trust scares me, is it misplaced, I wonder?
Will you be happy and proud of us,
In times of hail, sunshine and thunder?

My thousand words fail, when you utter “I love you”,
All I want is to make you mine;
If I let you go away,
All my life I’ll regret and pine.

Knowing what I do, and believing what I see,
How can I ever deny?
That you’re my one and only,
Every hurdle and rule, for me, you’d defy.

To have someone that’s devoted,
Is a feat knotty and rare;
And yet, when I behold you,
My heart wishes to dream and dare.

They tell me this won't last,
They say love is a mirage, a deception;
I laugh at them all, and their blindness,
Coz what we have, you and I, is surely no illusion.

Come, my beloved, hold my hand,
And we’ll walk away from the world and its pain galore;
With you lies my future and destiny,
I could never ask for more...

Honoured to be,
Your truly

Lighten Up!!

For times when you’re feeling low…

When you don’t know what you’re doing in your job, and why the hell life isn’t working out for you…

Enjoy reading what’s below :-)

And keep the faith, hold on to your dream…

They will work out.

Superstar Rajnikanth did many jobs including that of a manual labourer before becoming a bus conductor, and later a succesfull actor.

Akshay Kumar used to worked as a chef and waiter at a restaurant in Bangkok before embarking on a Bollywood adventure.

Before he got the license to kill, Sean Connery worked as a milkman, bricklayer, lifeguard and coffin polisher. Now, can u believe it?

Gorden Sumner aka Sting worked as a bus conductor, construction labourer, tax officer and teacher before becoming a successful musician.

Marlon Brando was a high school drop out. He even worked as a ditch digger among many other jobs in his youth.

The once handsome Mickey Rourke had a face too good for a movie theater usher. Luckily, he got noticed.

Stallone's life was harder than Rocky Balboa's. He used to work as a lion cage cleaner at Central Park Zoo. After finding himself homeless, Stallone had to no other way but to act in a porn flick for a mere $ 200.

Pamela Anderson used to be a fitness instructor before. Her figure says it all!

Harrison Ford still enjoys carpentry. He was a self-taught carpenter whomade cabinets for George Lucas. It was his cabinet-making job that landed him a tiny role in Lucas' 'American Graffiti.' Rest is history.

Sandra Bullock used to worked as a bartender while in college.

Bon Jovi used to make Christmas decorations for a living.

In her teens, Megan Fox worked for a smoothie shop.

Queen Latifah used to work for Burger King, before getting expelled after losing her temper at work.

Nicolas Cage used to sell popcorn at the Fairfax Theater.

Brad Pitt used to work for El Pollo Loco restaurant on Sunset Boulevard often dressing up in a chicken costume.

Lady Gaga used to work as a waitress at a restaurant in NY.

Tom Cruise wanted to become a catholic priest and he even joined a Franciscan seminary! He would have become a hunky priest, but God had different plans!

Captain Jack Sparrow used to sell ballpoint pens in his early life.

Jennifer Aniston used to work as a bike messenger in New York City and Telemarketer before making it big in Hollywood.

Feeling better yet?!!

Muaaahh and god bless!
- Princess

Touche!

“If you intend to keep your word, don’t talk about it, just do it.”

“She thought suddenly that she was wrong about his lack of emotion: the hidden undertone of his manner was enjoyment. She realized that she had always felt a sense of light-hearted relaxation in his presence and known that he shared it. He was the only man she knew to whom she could speak without strain or effort. This, she thought, was a mind she respected, an adversary worth matching. Yet there had always been an odd sense of distance between them, the sense of a closed door; there was an impersonal quality in his manner, something within him that could not be reached.”

“She felt an arrogant pleasure in seeing the skill of his movements, coz this was the thing she would beat.”

“It is not advisable to venture unsolicited opinions. Spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener.”

“Are you responding to my curiosity or articulating your own feelings to yourself?”

“They observed that I make it my honour to know. They knew nothing. They didn’t think it necessary to learn. They thought they could trust my honour. They thought it was safe to ride on my brain. They assumed my goal…”

“When a problem came u, his first concern was to discover what error he had made. He didn’t search for anyone’s fault but his own. It was of himself that he demanded perfection.”

“To recognize one’s guilt yet feel nothing but the coldest, most profound indifference. The impossible conflict of feeling reluctance to do what was right – isn’t that the basic formula of moral corruption?”

"For the moment, there was no future. They had earned the present."

“Every movement was underscored by a feeling – is he seeing it?”

“I’ve hired you to do a job, not to do your best – whatever that is”

Reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand… Awesome book, though quite bulky.

Loved the Fountainhead when Iast (and first) read it sometime in college. Must say, I’m not let down this time either.

Happy Weekend :-)

Cheerio!
Anuja

The Wednesday Soul - Book Review

Here I am, this is me, and there’s truly nowhere else I’d rather be…

To quote Bryan Adams… (more or less)

(Hats off to the magnificent singers and lyricists who come up with a song that fits every circumstance. Come any incident in life, and I have a pertinent and melodic song on my lips. Glorious and heartening, innit?!!)

But well, that’s not what this post is about – a song for every situation. This writeup comes to tell you about my recent read “The Wednesday Soul” by Sorabh Pant (and how can I forget the very important tagline, an obligation now for every title) – “the afterlife with sunglasses”. Sent to me by Blogadda (3^rd book so far), thanks a lot BA team! It sure is a pleasure, this time, every time…

Why The Wednesday Soul (TWS) is named thus, I honestly have no idea.

To spill the already-spilt beans, I can tell you that the book is about afterlife and one of the important characters is a Wednesday Soul (assuming all souls up there are named after days of the week, based on their way of death and varied responsibilities). The sunglasses that command a dominating position in the tagline (a significant place, in my opinion, not bestowed upon other lesser phrases) figure in not more than 2-3 lines somewhere in the book. However, I shall pardon Mr. Pant for that. I completely believe in a free world phenomenon and freedom of thought of choice.

On that note… (Belated) Happy Republic Day!

(Sheesh, how could I forget?!! Blame it on the fortunate fact that I no longer need to wake up at the crack of dawn in the brain-numbing cold to go to school for the flag hoisting. And drag along my poor dad as well to pick and drop me. In the reverse order.)

Back to the review, pardon my nostalgic tirade.
A foreword though, before I proclaim my verdict.

Writing a book (or directing/producing a movie, for that matter) is no piece of cake. Anyone can become a critic, ain’t no big deal to censure what someone else does or says. Actually creating something, now that takes effort and dedication. So, to inventors and designers across the globe, RESPECT… Good job, ladies and gentlemen.

You, too, Sorabh Pant. For coming up with an idea that is rare and innovative. I’m tired of those silly chic-flicks and love stories. Though yours has one as well, it thankfully does not dominate the entire story or become a predictable melodramatic sequence of events, oh so Bollywoodesque.

“Hankypanty” (as a friend informed me) is quite a rage on Twitter.

(No, I am not on Twitter, just in case you were wondering. I have got better things to do than keep updating my status every nanosecond.)

The story (finally coming to it) is about a re-belle who meets an untimely death, and goes up in the sky (amidst extremely complicated procedures and tiresome, technical imagery). Characters from hither-thither make her after-life difficult and easy, and various revelations occur as the pages turn. Drab and stretched at times, absorbing and amusing at other times, this 209 page paperback is good for a quick read as you travel someplace or light, hobby-like reading for folks who are renewing their reading habits. For the more seasoned reader, well, it’s a maybe. It’s got fiction, mythology, general knowledge and science all rolled into one – and it may work for some and fall flat for the rest.

They say “never judge a book by its cover” but the glossy coat does make the book appear very sophisticated. While the summary on the back cover seems intriguing and creative, the recommendations by Mayank Shekhar and Vir Das can be taken with tablespoonfuls of salt. I did not “die laughing” (as you can see, I’m well and alive, a little under the weather if you may, but nothing time cannot cure, thank you for the concern), nor did I “laugh my ass off” (no comments on that one. This is a family blog.)

Purab Kohli, now him I’ll agree with. TWS is interesting, it has loads of imagination and vivid visualization (ekdum Avatar style). Jokes abound in the novel, some that shamed even me (which is saying a lot going by the “PJ Queen” tag that I command at my workplace) and some that bounced right off my pea-size brain.

The suspense could have been better and the war could have been shorter. Monotony takes over as the powerful characters lose their lustre. Better editing to grip the reader’s mind and shocks that actually stun the reader – now those are things I missed. The typos and flawed formatting leave much to desire if you consider at this book as a potential bestseller, but then I’m sure not too many other readers would notice – I tend to be more critical and systematic in my presentation and expectations. Call me superficial, if you wish. I could go back to my free world philosophy and harangue you…

All in all, not a bad read at all. But certainly needs to give way to something better.

Well well, then I gotta get going… Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead is still waiting on my shelf to be read and completed. Though, leme confess, I’m stealing sly glances at the thinner and expectedly more comical “Karl, Aaj aur Kal” by Cyrus Broacha that I bought today on a random visit to Crossword…

Hasta la Vista, mi chicos!! Son las doce y media. Pues, Buenas Noches :-)

Abrazos y Besos,
Princess

This review is a part of the http://blog.blogadda.com/2011/05/04/indian-bloggers-book-reviews" target="_blank">Book Reviews Program at http://www.blogadda.com">BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!