Wednesday Watching Post 1 Day Late: What Are You Reading and Watching and Thinking and Listening to on Dimple’s Birthday?

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Happy Thursday! I skipped yesterday because it was my birthday (woot!) and instead I was driving around getting my free birthday things and opening presents and fun stuff like that. But today, I’m back! A year older! Ugh, I’m 37 now and I don’t like the number “37”. I really liked the number “36”, but “37” feels spikey and awkward.

I’ll start!

Reading: I started Gift of Wings! The LM Montgomery biography. And already I feel like I am learning soooooooooooooo much. Oh, and House of Dreams of course, dreading the introduction of Perfect In Every Way Leslie.

Watching: I made my friends watch RRR with me last night for my birthday! They quite enjoyed the central romance, although there was some concern that the poor forest animals were being hurt. And they wanted more songs and more Alia, we all want that though, always.

Thinking: I am very torn. I promised myself that this weekend would be a vacation weekend for me, because I’ve been working so hard I’m wearing myself out. But on the other hand, I finished my curtains and they are ready to be hung, and I have some new pictures to hang, and it would be really fun to buy a bunch of root vegetable plants and plant them. UGH! Too many good things in the world!!!

Listening: Every time I watch RRR, the friendship song “da da dum da da dum da da dum DUM” starts going through my head.

Now, question for you!!! As birthday treat for ME, give me fanfic requests! I love writing fanfics.

36 thoughts on “Wednesday Watching Post 1 Day Late: What Are You Reading and Watching and Thinking and Listening to on Dimple’s Birthday?”

  2. Watching: I watched part of Sharmaji Namkeen but honestly could not get past the character changing back and forth. It just made me miss Rishi and his very lovely end-of-career jovial roles.

    I also watched that 2015 mini series Bang Baaja Baraat. It was a fine time pass, not a lot of there there. I like Ali Fazal but I thought the parent characters had more to them. I enjoy everything Gajraj Rao does, but have you ever thought about how Ayesha Raza is the current day Farida Jalal? Pained ‘ay rabba’ reaction to everything.

    Reading: lots of notes from my Hindi class. I’m on 6 of 10 for my intro class which was supposed to be a group class and then the other folks changed days so now I have Reena all to myself. It’s very very fun and also challenging. Subject, Object, Verb. Postpositions…wait, where do adverbs and adjectives go?

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  3. Oh wow!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Did you take leave from work yesterday? I hope it was a lovely day and as they say, may it even then be the worst of the days ahead 😀

    I like the sound of 37. I know I will not like 39. I did not like 29. It was so close to 30 that whenever I said my age then I felt like I was grasping pathetically at the last vestiges of my twenties.

    Fanfic! I feel like you’re giving us a present 💝 Given my head is filled with LMM now,… what would be your story for Little Elizabeth and Paul ending up together? Or what if Emily’s Quest had a less hurried and more explored love story between Emily and Teddy? Not sure if these are ones you like!!

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  4. Happy Birthday! Hope you will have the most blessful day and life!

    Watching: I’ve not watched anything new. I watched pride and prejudice + the secret garden (1994) version. I already discussed pride and prejudice on another post. However secret garden was definitely better than I thought . Removed a lot of the old racism and made it more dramatic. The Uncle character was more sympathetic and hotter (totally book inaccurate however we forgive some inaccuracies) plus a really good actor. The kids were as good as average child actors can be and the house was super pretty. Couldn’t understand why any kid would hate it as I was always a kid who fantasised about living in a mansion.

    Reading: I’m trying to start the miniaturist but I’ve been swamped with work this week. So it’s been a volatile experience. Hopefully I can start it and slowly finish it and then move onto better books. I have been reading a lot of Manhwa’s which are definitely mostly trash and not that great. There are only a few which have decent female leads, the rest are idiots or ‘badass’ (nothing wrong with someone being badass however most of these characters are basically just the cocky male lead in a women’s costume there’s nothing unique about them and neither do they face struggles that women do, it also implies that every problem a women faces can be fixed with a sword as if it’s just women being weak that was a fault). So it’s mostly trash lit that’s been making me super moody as I’ve been waisting time reading crap.

    Listening: I’ve been listening to a lot of Indie Music and 70/60’s Rock. On the Indian music spectrum:

    These two have been back to back on my playlist.

    Thinking: I should watch Pride and Prejudice for the second time in one week. I should also watch RRR again as I truly loved it but what if I get underwhelmed when it’s not in theatres.

    For the fanfic you should do one with SRK as a teacher for a young nawabs daughter. He falls in love with her as he realises she’s protected and has not got any freedom in her life. He saves her and then her father goes out chasing for her and then through the power of love destroy them. You can fix the main conflict as maybe as he’s taking revenge for something the nawab did when he was young like kill his parents or fire them. So he wants to ruin the nawab and he firsts believes that she won’t understand but she does and they use the money they’ve got from ruining the greedy nawab to building orphanages.

    Another story is that SRK is a gangster who falls in love with a dancer. This one I’m not so sure about the story. But he’s like a Robin Hood character so he’s evil but still good. While she’s super good almost nun-like goodly.

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    • It’s funny you talk about the Secret Garden, I read that as a little kid and loved it as a little kid, and then never gardened. and now you are watching it just as I am starting to play around with dirt and stuff in my yard!

      No reading is trash! the only thing that makes it trash is when it makes you feel like trash. So yeah, stop reading that! Start reading the Anne books with us 🙂

      I was worried about RRR being underwhelming too! But it definitely isn’t. Still a blast.

      Your Robin Hood character is what I wanted Happy New Year to be! When Farah first started talking about her idea for the movie, she started with a dancing girl heroine, and then we ended up not getting nearly enough of Dips.

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      • That is a funny coincidence. I still need to get my hands on some earth.

        Happy New year was more of a saviour trope so I disappointing it didn’t turn out the way you thought. Still super fun though:). I would want the dancer though to be like a classical Indian dancer/professional dancer to really show the good and bad difference. Also SRK is so good in anti-hero roles.

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  6. Happy Birthdayyyy! 7s are always weird…apparently when asked to pick a random number, a lot more people pick numbers ending in 7 than would if it was actually, erm, random.

    Fanfic suggestion: Harry before Sejal! Did some beautiful (tattooist?) lady break his heart and force him to become a smouldering womaniser?

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    • Now I’m trying to remember my other 7s. And yes! They were all hard and changes and all kinds of stuff like that. But maybe it will be good changes? Like, 17 was really hard, but then college was good once I got through all the prep. Yes, I will think of it like that.

      And I love the idea of SRK falling for a tattoo artist! That is the perfect cool profession for a girlfriend, and an explanation for his big tattoo.

      On Thu, Jun 9, 2022 at 2:46 PM dontcallitbollywood < comment-reply@wordpress.com> wrote:

      >

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  9. Happy Happy Birthday, Margaret! I hope you have the best year ahead of you. Thank you for all that you do for us. You have created such a wonderful community here.

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  11. Happy Birthday Margaret! June 8 – what a nice date to be born.
    I had the same reaction when I turned 37, it’s such a strange age, don’t know why.

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  12. I watched Jana Gana Mana, Prithviraj’s newest movie. Being honest I started watching it only because it appeared on Netflix. Italian N. never adds malayalam movies, and those rare Indian films that we have are always added one month after the rest of the world. But this one was available the same day, and I felt like I should at least try to watch it. It’s not perfect, and it’s a little slow in the beginning (usuall malayalam structure, it starts, and you think: who are those people?, what they are talking about? etc) But there is a huge change of the perspective in the second half and I loved it. One of the things I love the most in Indian films are good twist, and this one has it.

    I also just finished Blinded by the light and loved it also.

    Other news: Ranveer’s Jayeshbhai Jordaar is now on Prime.

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  14. Happy belated birthday! I’m north of 40 and so far 37 is the birthday that hit me the hardest. I don’t know why, felt officially on the other side of something. But like Lily said, better things to come.

    Fanfic: I feel like Ranveer is in need of a good story, this moment doesn’t suit him. He needs that complex, heartfelt role that will endear him to the audience and make a space for him in their hearts. His DDLJ or JWM. Something with scale and romance and plot and songs, with a real character arc, where he doesn’t play a musician or soldier or policeman or athlete. Let’s make him middle class. I’m thinking there’s a trip of some kind, maybe even outside of India to give us more story options, but not west, somewhere else with a big Indian diaspora community. Guayana? Get some Guayanese representation onscreen? We need emotional depth, so let’s say there’s some kind of family revelation that sends him in search of a missing family member, an older brother or sister or an uncle maybe. He gets to Guayana, you have fish out of water but also loads of charming his way through, search for someone he doesn’t know in a place he doesn’t know how to navigate, meet cute and growing romance. Finding the family member uncovers some truth that causes him to question his own identity. Happy ending but his life is different now. How’s that for a start? 🙂

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  15. Reading: I read The Song of Achilles, a more explicitly queer retelling of the Illiad, and it was good. To me, not as great as everyone says it is, but I realized that military strategy and Greek mythology really aren’t my things. But it was written really well. And apparently the male equivalent of the word “sapphic” is “achillean” so there’s that. Now I’m reading Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, which is also queer, YA fantasy that’s a dissection of the Chosen One trope. So far it reads like Harry Potter but with more foul language.

    Watching: I started “I Hate Luv Storys” and I kind of really don’t like it? I get what it’s trying to do, and that stuff is fun for the most part, but some of the story telling mechanisms, like the voiceovers that lasted any longer than the first five minutes of the movie are really jarring, repetitive, and annoying. Imran and Sonam do what they have to do, but it’s a slog to get through.

    Thinking: We’re now officially in end of the school year mode. One of my students put henna on my hands. Another group of girls showed me so many South videos in a row and said I had great taste in Indian men because I said Ram Charan was cute in Naatu Naatu. Which he is. But now they’re calling him “my man” which feels weird considering I haven’t actually seen RRR, or any of his movies, and they’re still under the impression that that was the first time I’d even seen that video. Oh well. Five more school days.

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    • Oh oh! You are the one who should watch the Queer reimaging of pride and prejudice and report back to us!

      I Hate Luv Storys gets better! The beginning is the worst part.

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      • Wait, there’s a queer Pride and Prejudice reimagining? What’s it called? Where can I get it? And where can I get the 2005 movie because I still haven’t seen it and they took it off Netflix?

        It does feel weird though that I am still known as the person who’s into all the queer stuff when I’m not actually queer, so if there are other blog readers who are queer (Eva-e, I think, but I’m not sure about anyone else) who wanna take this one, be my guest!

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    • To be honest, I could never really get into Imran Khan. I didn’t hate I Hate Luv Storys, but I did find myself avoiding his romcoms, whereas I didn’t feel that way about Sonam.

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  16. After a long time, I have re-entered the world of Turkish shows this week because they just started airing three summer romcoms. The plots are all interesting like –
    1. Heroine is a dermatologist whose estranged mother coerces her to manage her plastic surgery clinic for a few months while she has an operation. She clashes with the hero who is a plastic surgeon there and thinks he should be the one in charge of the clinic.
    2.The heroine, recently graduated from the police academy, has to go undercover with reluctant cop hero as a couple and rent a house next door to crime boss they’re trying to catch.
    3. Hero is an arrogant tv actor going through a career low and is forced to star in a romcom but no actress will act with him. Heroine gets accidentally cast, she has to take the job due to family debt, but they can’t stand each other.

    The thing I love about these Turkish shows is that they unabashedly play into tried-and-tested tropes and have fun with it. They might not be able to sustain that sense of fun throughout, but they always start well. Oh and I wonder if any of these interest you as fanfic prompts!

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    • Oooo! These all sound AMAZING. My only concern is that they sound more like movies than a tv show, little worried about how they will last a bunch of episodes

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    • Number 3 sounds great.
      I watched few episodes of Zalim Istanbul recently, and was fascinated by the plot because it’s like a mix of Indian movie and a telenovela. It’s about a rich men who has his family and also takes care of his disabled and depressed nephew. He decides that the nephew needs a nice wife to feel better and brings a poor girl for him. The girl, at first thinks she will marry the rich, healthy son, but is married to the sad guy and she’s not very happy. Later her sister, a nurse, comes there and starts healing her brother-in-law. Of course they fall in love. But can’t be together, so she marries the rich son who also felt in love with her. There is a lot of other stuff in the series (intrigues, attempted murder, poisoning) but the only thing I cared were the long yearning gazes.
      It would be a perfect hindi movie. How many times we heard “We thought he will heal/get normal if he married” in Indian films.

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      • Margaret, yes and the episodes are movie length! It leads to the problem of shows having to put in fillers like comedy or side-tracks or bring in unnecessary drama. I’ve had to abandon quite a few for those reasons.

        Angie, agree. If you’re interested, the names are Senden Daha Güzel, Gizli Saklı and Seversin. What I like is that while the heros are kind of jerks to the heroines, the women see through them and give back exactly what they deserve. When I first discovered Turkish shows, I discussed here how similar they are to Hindi movies. What fascinated me was how, compared to Indian culture, certain aspects are more conservative and others far more liberal and both are treated as normal, even in the same show. The romances are sweet and sexy, and slow-burn by design. If you want to explore more, I like the romantic dramas Cesur ve Güzel, Dolunay, and the romcom Bay Yanlış.

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      • Actually when I went to visit my grandmother I watched a movie which had that trope of someone who was Neurodiverse gets married and becomes fine. It’s called Jai Dakshineshwari Maa Kali, its about a young girl who is tortured by everyone she knows but is a devotee of Maa Kali. She somehow gets forcibly married to a neurodiverse man and prays to Maa Kali to make him better. Somehow he gets ‘fixed’ and then she’s tortured by the in laws and then Maa Kali (Hema Malini) saves her. It’s absolute rubbish and truly one of the worst movies I watched but the Turkish drama sounds nice. I also have a theory (not an original one) that they put unnecessary drama to make the romance even better. As if it was just romance then they’d have to think of an actual plot.

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