Friday, October 15, 2010

I Love Animation

Its a regular Friday Evening. I finished my work and the started doing the routine... facebook, orkut, youtube, etc. One of ma friends shared link of the new Ramayan animated movie trailer. I clicked on play and started watching it. I liked the trailer very much and knowing that it is in 3d too, I was all excited.

You know, I'm crazy about movies; especially the animated movies. I started thinking about how fascinated I used to be watching Cartoons for hours; right from the Jungle book, talespin, dungeons and dragons, little wizards until the Caption Planet, Swat Cats, Fantastic 4, Tom & Jerry, etc. Slowly, the animated world grew and lots of good animated movies started pouring in. I continued watching most of the animated movies too. some of my favs. include Ratatouile, wall-E, kung-fu panda, horton hears a who, Sword of the Stranger, Alladin, El-dorado, Atlantis - the lost world, Spirited Away, Appleseed Saga..Ex Machina ..... BREAKKKKK!!!!

Something stopped my chain of thoughts. Something was bothering me. I was not feeling good about something. I rewound my thoughts ... started thinking about all the cartoons and movies again... twice and thrice.... ahah! there it is. I got what was bothering me. All those Cartoons, animated movies I watched are concepts taken from different countries. ex: kung-fu panda (China), Ratatouile (France), Sword of the Stranger (Japan), Alladin (middle east), etc. WHAT ABOUT INDIA?

Do we have any animated movies at all? I told "YES" to myself and started to think how many are there and how many did I see. I remember seeing only two 1) HANUMAN 2)HANUMAN RETURNS. I then remember hearing about Roadside Romeo (India's first 3D movie), Bal Ganesh and the latest, Ramayan. And there stops the count. That's it? I hope you agree that for an animated movie lover, this count is very less.

I started thinking "why do we have very less animated movies, while we have very rich and varied culture and heritage?"; "in-fact how many of us even know that we do have some animated movies?".......I started feeling sad and discouraged. I started thinking about many other things. I then thought that I need to contribute something to the animated movie Industry of INDIA. How can I do that? I don't know anything about animated movie Industry. So, I started googling on "How Animated movies are made?" and found some results. I got this link of PIXAR's which talks about how animated movies are made http://www.pixar.com/howwedoit/index.html Its a good link with some good information.

After all these thoughts, I decided that I want to create a short animated movie and contribute it to the INDIAN Animated movie Industry. But, the first step to do it is "throw in some ideas and select one"....... So friends, I need all your help in gathering some good ideas on what can be a good subject/concept for short animated movie. And the subject/concept should be something about/from/on INDIA. Friends, please start thinking about this and throw me some ideas....

I'm all Excited to do something new, creative, intersting after a longggggggggggg time. Help me do this.......

With Love
Chanti

Monday, February 22, 2010

Cooking

Cooking: I love cooking right from my childhood. I always get fascinated to see how the panipoori vendors and churumoori vendors cut the onions so fast :). I used to always try different stuff at home (of course when mom is not around the kitchen ;).

I was studying 6th standard then. One day I was alone in home as parents were out of station. I called all my tution friends and started making chapathi and aloo saagu. after 1 hour of effort, the first chapathi came out of pan :) Finally, after 2 hours we made lots of chapathi and every one sat for having dinner. Unfortunately no one could eat more than one chapathi. Can you guess why? .... I forgot to add salt to the wheat flour :P. And while making saagu instead of using one flour I used another one. It was a big disaster. still it was so much fun:). Choorumoori, masala egg and masala Tomato rings used to be my cooking stuff at that time.

This is a situation in my Intermediate (11th and 12th). I was studying in a boarding college and it is a general schedule that students will be provided with snacks every evening at 4:00 PM. However one fine day something happened and we did not get the snacks. All of us in the room are very hungry. There are no snacks in the room. It was 6:00 PM and it is still one and half hour for the dinner time. Luckily we found some onions, which we brought the previous weekend. We started cutting the onions and were thinking of what to do next. We then started searching for food items in the room. One of us took out Mango pickle box and we added it to the onions. One other took out bournavita and we added it to the mix of onions and Mango pickle. One of our friends from other room was passing by and he had two boiled eggs in his hand. We took one from him, smashed it and added to the mix. Finally something was ready and every one took part of it and started tasting it with so much doubt that whether we will be able to swallow or not. To our surprise it tasted very good. And every one started taking more and completed it in minutes. Once we completed it we thought for a while and then named the item as "Ulli-peach-Poch" Dont ask me what does that mean, but Ulli means shortcut name of Onion. The other part of the name is some mix and match. I hope all of my then roomies still remember this :)

During my first month of stay in US, I never cooked any food. Thanks a lot to my then roomies. I'm sure they would had hated me to the core for that :). However after the first month I shifted to another room and started to browse different cooking sites, used to call MOM and sis every now and then in between of some dish and finally I learnt professional cooking. I'm now a specialist (atleast in my circle) in Hyderabadi Chicken Biryani (Thanks to VahreVah.com for the receipe). Now sometimes I seriously think about going out and learn how to become a chef and then be a chef in some big restaurant. I also feel sometimes to open a Hyderabadi Biryani stall in the place I live :). It is so surprising to see myself as a good cook now and I always believed that my passion for cooking had brought me to this stage :)

Frnds, if you wanna try cooking and have any questions/doubts get in touch with me and I will do my best to find a good solution :)

To all the frnds who are still cooking .......
Enjoy your cooking

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Passions

Passion; one of the those words that can be used at any width and depth to qualify anyone and anything. Every one of us has passion for/towards one or other. And I'm no exception. I have lots of Passions: Lyrics, Kung-fu, Guitar, Music, etc. In this article, I'll pick up Lyrics.

Please note that whatever I'm writing below are just my thoughts and based on my observations. If there is something mentioned incorrectly, please feel free to correct by posting a comment :)

Frnds, if you are one of those individuals having the capability of placing your thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc. into words and convey it in the form of a lyric to a song; consider yourself as lucky. Believe me, its not easy to write lyrics. It requires lot of patience, thought process, experience, good hold on the literature of your language, right slection of the words and more importantly all your feelings should come together.

I used to write poems at one stage of my life. It started when I was studying 10th standard. It was the first time I went to Hostel/Boarding school and I was completely homesick missing my parents, bro, sis, home and my friends. I used to cry a lot (its true :) All who know me from my Job will have a hard time believing this :P). I used to carry lot of emotions, strong feelings, untold fears and all those have come out in the form of poems. I used to write mostly on Friendship, Love and Nature. Sometimes I manage to come up with only half of the poem. And I used to struggle to complete that. It may take hours, days or sometime months to complete it. One interesting fact is that good lyrics strike to you at very un-expected times and situation. You might be doing some other work or having a fresh shower or when you sit lonely, etc etc.

In olden days lyrics had much weightage in songs. However in the modern world lyrics are not carrying much weight in a song. It is only the music, beats, etc. that counts much. And how many lyricists we know even? But thanks to those lyricists who are still delivering some good lyrics to some songs and keeping the spirits of the lyric listeners (like me :) alive

So, frnds, if you are not one of those who give importance to lyrics, the next time you hear to some song try and listen to the lyrics (no, i'm not at all forcing you :P). The song feels much sweet and clear. And if you feel so, just say thanks to the lyric writer.

I always have this passion of writing lyrics to atleast one song or try converting one of my poems to a song. Maybe I have to wait some time more until some one taps into my feelings again and wake them up :P. Please wish me all the best :)