Quick Updates: I bought the Indian pirated version of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life by Kaavya Viswanathan! It's quite enjoyable, am about 100 pages in!

I also finished the trashiest, worst novel I have ever read in a long time: Wild Land, Wild Love by Connie Mason. Hai hai, not even shiver/giggle-inducing!

Today I went for my first Art of Living follow up session.

You're supposed to go for one a week for 6 months just to get you in the zone and develop your breathing - a brush up and keeping in touch with the community basically. And today I found out that this evening at 5:30 at University Building, B Road Churchgate on the 4th floor there is a Korigutti or something folk dance show from Orissa that has been put together by someone called Gangadhar Pradhan, who founded the Konark Festival, with the performers being impoverished people from the streets and the musicians the people who sing in trains. It's supposed to be phenomenal so I'm definitely going to go check it out.

It was a longer session than usual...

lasting maybe 45 minutes...

of just the Sudarshan Kriya with maybe 8-9 cycles. It was exhausting and I practically stumbled home and lay down. The effects on the body as you let go are quite fascinating - the tingling in the mouth and jaw, the sensation in the limbs, the expansion of the lungs, the releasing of emotion.

.. then it struck me that the tingling sensation is pretty much similar to that felt when one snorts cocaine.

.. and that got me thinking that maybe it's about time that Whitney Houston tried Art of Living to simulate the high felt from her addiction, and finally move on to a healthier, happier and more peaceful plane.

Look at what drugs have reduced the exquisite songstress to:

Before

After

I was so horrified when I saw the pictures. I know she's been on a downward spiral for a few years now, because of her philandering husband and drugs and everything..

. but I thought she'd decided to quit when she came up with the "step by step" anthem, and the huskier, angrier songs than the poppy/soul ones she used to sing, to once again emerge an icon of strength for women all over the world the way she has been for the past decade. But I guess it has not been.

And thats why I wish Sri Sri Ravi Shankar or someone would teach her the kriya because I think she really really needs help though she wont ask for it. If not for herself, then for us.

If I were to write her a fan letter, what would I write?

So yesterday was a day of sequels (besides other dramatic personal episodes). What a day yaar!

First of all I woke up at 8am, an hour earlier than intended, delighted that I would have time to oil and wash it, and be ready in time for the 10:30 Inox show of Ice Age 2. I got out of the shower around 9:30, ready to do my breathing and everything before eating junk food for breakfast at the theatre. Alas, this was not to be.

I found out then that the show was at 10:05 am, and by the time we had got there, the movie had started a few minutes ago and we had no time to buy anything.

The movie was cute! I find animated films these days SO much more intelligent, with far more sparkling dialogues than the bullshit romantic comedies these days that focus far more on fashion and other aspects of style!

Animated movies, especially those featuring animals, dont have to have characters that are particularly good looking, so you can concentrate on the actual plot for once, simplistic though it may be. And they have such adorable caricatured characters, crafted with the precision and control that impossible to do so with humans - unless one is a superlative actor - so that they're never inconsistent and hence a delight to watch! They stick to a particular thematic characterisation throughout.

And, whats more, they can spoof actual actors!!!

Wheee!!!

Hehehe.

So the story of this one continues from the first (which people say was better but which I dont remember very well), as the weasel, Sid, the sabre-toothed tiger, Diego and Manny the mammoth are continuing on their journey to escape the ice. Mammoth is scared he is the last one on the planet, till he finds a female one, Ellie, voiced to perfection by Queen Latifah which that singular black inflection that defines 'attitude', who thinks she is a possum!

He tries to convince her and she annoys him. What follows are scenes with really cute banter between them, and my favourite is the possum brothers, Crash and Eddie, doing the "Im watching you" thing that Robert de Niro does in Meet the Parents! Of course they stumble along doing their thing, mired in misunderstandings and friendship and crises and revelations and psychobabble by Sid the matchmaker, till of course, like any cartoon, all's well that ends well.

Scrat, too, shines, in his hapless quest to salvage his last acorn as he chases it over lakes and mountains and nests. Superb in the end..

. I love his sound effects and definitely empathise with his frustration!!

!!!

I had a chutney sandwich in the interval and my friend had tortilla chipswith salsa. It was too big for breakfast. I also had nutties which werent as yummy as I remember them from school.

I missed teekha chatpata potato chips and softy so badly, and their softy machinese werent working!!!

But I was in luck when i returned in the evening for Cheaper by the Dozen 2. I git a softy yay yay yay I needed it after the sevpuri which was unsettling in my stomach. I think this Art of Living has cleansed my body and now doesn't let it enjoy junk.

(Well it lets my tongue, not my digestive system. Sigh. More's the pity.

They will have to get used to taking turns to suffer.)

I liked the sequel better than the first one!!

! The entire family, with a pregnant Nora, college grad Jake and an internship headed whatever the character played by Hilary Duff is, who seems stricken by anorexia and trying - TOO HARD - to look like Carrie Fisher (Sarah Jessica Parker from Sex and the City - terrible terrible. Just see the difference between a few years ago and now - she must be how old?

20 now?