the shape of my heart

I went shopping today; the driver, Aziz, apparently loves the Backstreet Boys, since he played one of their cassettes while we drove around town. He also claimed to know the words, although he refused to sing for us, and so I had to content myself with imagining Aziz singing 'The Call' and 'Everybody (Backstreet's Back)'.

It's a really strange feeling when you hear a song that is so strongly associated with another time of your life in a completely separate place. It must have been my junior year of college when I listened to Backstreet Boys' 'Shape of My Heart' on constant repeat; I remember sitting in the 24-hour study room working on papers and listening to an endless loop of that song until four or five in the morning. 'Shape of My Heart' is forever associated with a time that will never come again, and the person I was then apparently no longer exists. So, it was quite surreal to be driving through the packed streets of Hyderabad, watching the autorickshaws, the cars, the pedestrians, the water trucks, the stray dogs, the endless stream of humanity in a whirling maelstrom of rich, poor, ecstatic, miserable...watching everything that is so alien to me while being tied by the music to a point in my life that is irretrievable and that I am now alienated from.

On a lighter note, today was quite a success. I had Sunday brunch at the Taj Krishna, which is a weekly occurrence and so shouldn't be special, but I had the barbecued chicken pizza again, and again it was outstanding. Then, Shadie and I spent the afternoon on a mission to find a DVD player for my room. We stopped first at Hyderabad Central, a surprisingly nice mall that sells everything from traditional Indian garb to electronics to Lacoste polo shirts (at approximately half the price that they are in the States). They were out of DVD players, however, so we headed over to Shoppers Stop. We made a brief detour through FabIndia, which sells bedding, but the selection did not rival what I bought yesterday and so I wasn't tempted to make another purchase. Shoppers Stop also did not have DVD players, although I picked up a copy of 'Blink' by Malcolm Gladwell; I've wanted to read it for awhile, since I made great use of 'The Tipping Point' while working on my honors thesis. The next stop was Lifestyles, which is a department store cum Target-wannabe (Indian English ascribes the old British meaning to that word, which means 'together with' or 'plus', making for some entertaining billboards). They'd apparently liquidated their electronics section, although they do sell entertaining, somewhat-Engrish tshirts...one of my coworkers has a shirt w/a picture of two pears, and it says 'Brittney's Pears' in a strange attempt at humor...so I may have to go back. Finally, we met with success at an actual electronics store, so I'm now the proud owner of a Sony DVD player.

With the advent of the DVD player has come a desire to watch an endless stream of movies; I kicked things off with 'The Saint', which I had picked up in the States during my DVD buying spree. The movie entertained me, although the beginning dragged a bit and I wasn't as thoroughly entranced as I was the first time I saw it; then again, I'm about five years more removed from Ukraine than I was when the movie came out, and so all things Russian resonate with me just a little bit less than they did before. Val Kilmer is still hot, though, and I'm always attracted to characters who are wildly efficient at getting out of deadly situations, saving the world, and eluding the authorities at the same time. Plus, I've listened to the 'Saint' theme by Orbital more times than I can count, so the techno backdrop to the movie was much appreciated.

Indian TV is pretty hysterical. I'm watching VH1 right now, but it's VH1 the way that VH1 was meant to be; it has the same logo and some of the same commercials as current American VH1, but as far as I can tell, it only plays music videos. Since my English-lanugage channel options are limited to Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Nickelodeon, some local news channels, and a knock-off of the Food Network, music videos are as good as it gets. Oh, and there was some channel that was playing a very detailed, in-depth series of interviews with the cast and director of...'Reindeer Games'. That was so strange to me, because 'Reindeer Games' came out several years ago, back before Charlize Theron was famous (or hot...she looked v. different in the interviews) or before Ben Affleck became part of the Bennifer debacle. The show about it was like a detailed promo-piece for a new release, and it's not like 'Reindeer Games' met with such commericial and critical acclaim that it deserves retrospectives and continued attention. I watched fifteen minutes of the damn thing so that I could find out at the end why they were playing it, but it still didn't make sense; they just switched subjects completely, without even referencing 'Reindeer Games' again. If anyone knows why 'Reindeer Games' is so important to the culture of modern India, please send me a message.