DEVIL WEARS PRADA

YES!...THE DEVIL DOES WEAR PRADA!

Non officially six month old and officially four month old tiny little part of the million dollar industry called ‘fashion’, I already have hundred and one reasons to like ,hate ,adore, admire and loath and obviously ask for more of it. They say it right when they say ‘that place is full of bitches!’.

I am reminded of that moment from the movie ‘ Devil wears Prada’ when Nigel tells Andy ‘Yes, because that's really what this whole multibillion-dollar industry is all about, isn't it? Inner beauty.

 Most of us looked upon the movie as one that shows the fashion business at its snoopiest best, but believe me, that is just a glimpse!. Andy has the privilege of getting appreciated and accepted for her good work at least towards the end of the movie, which I doubt seldom, happens in ‘real world’!

"As the world of glitz glamour and much more unfolds before me, I epitomize that flame that used to burn in my eyes and the desire to ‘create marvels’ that I used to carry in my heart as a proud student of design. I feel like a fool for having creased my eyebrows as the seniors working in industry said ‘there are these awesome designers sitting in Europe who will explore and break theirs heads to make awesome and mind blowing new designs, all you are expected to do is copy them religiously!’.Duh!

For the ‘muggles’ of the fashion land of witch craft and wizardry, the place may look nothing less than a wonderland smeared in glamour and luxury. On the contrary, some have such absurd notions about the whole industry that it may make it look like a dungeon!.Though,this may not be anybody’s comfort zone , but it is not a place you need to dread. as I entered the ‘work’ with utmost dedication and the zest to prove myself to the world, I did not expect fairies to greet me, neither did I expect the people to accept me as what I was for I have spent my college life amongst wannabes’ who dwelled on nothing but showoff, and reached a level of insanity where they forgot their real identities.

So, in short, this is how it works. The ground rule is to have a double face all the time, always carry the expressions of a fairy angel but be brimming with schemes, negativity, lust for power and position, insecurities  and all other possible form of complexes and be ever ready to bitch, ditch or even betray even somebody who seemed to be nothing less than a soul mate till a second ago if needed. Oh wait!, some may claim that that is how it is in every ‘corporate’, I bet to differ because we in fashion industry do all this with an air of sophistication and unmatched class. We have pretty faces covering all the dirt, and cheesy taglines and expensive price tags to our merits.

Nothing explains it better than this : That's what happens when you start doing well at work. Let me know when your entire life goes up in smoke, then it's time for a promotion.

THROUGH THE KEYHOLE

The harshest of the reality is well received and accepted when delivered with a pinch of humor and glamour.

‘Confession of a shopaholic’ is  a beautifully crafted and packed bunch of realities about what a lust for fashion can do to you, carefully delivered  with a pinch of irony and humor. It is about a young, working girl, who lives in the fashion capital - New York and gets mislead to become a shopaholic owing to her high buying power bestowed upon her by the bunch of credit cards she owns! She gets caught in a heap of debt and finally comes out of it by giving all the ‘branded’ stuff she has shopped over the years. How I wish the same worked in real life too!.

Belonging to the century when fashion is just a matter of time, every other person is a designer and their own stylist. The brand conscious and fashionably alert population in India has left no stone unturned in exploring the possibilities. Thanks to FDI and the ever posh malls that credit themselves with almost every ‘major’ brand under the sun, the chances of you spotting a Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Prada or Gucci on the streets of Indian metros has increased manifold. Gone are the days when fashion was just an accessory, not a way of life, a side dish, not a main course. Most of us Indians live in a different world. A world where it is more important to stuff your wardrobe up with the same sacred shades of reds and greens in all shades, hues, sequins and stones. Here, quantity matters more than quality, appeal matters more than brand value and sensibility travels in an entirely opposite direction. Is this owing to lack of exposure or buying power? The answer is no! It is all about the psychology. I was talking to my friend from a south Indian Brahmin family ,and she was cribbing about how her parents did not allow her to spend a lot of money on a pretty lehnga she spotted in Delhi for her brother’s wedding. The statement that she made was a benchmark! She said 'they let us spend insane amount of money on silk saris, but not on lehngas’. The same applies to all other product categories.

Being part of a society with well defined and fixed notion about ‘what amount of money should go where’ limits one's reach and possibilities to explore their options. Though last decade has seen huge leap of improvement in Indian fashion scenario, with more and more customized clothing stores, boutiques and brand outlets sprouting up in every nook and corner, the ‘aam aadmi’ or middle class Indian approach towards fashion has changed little. And accordingly, the industries tunes themselves to make ‘what sells’. Indians look at fashion through a key hole, shaped  for the key that their mind visualizes.

Mumbai Muse

                                                               

The glitz ,glamour ,antique British architecture ,steaming hot vada pavs and pav bhajis ,chats and the super cool Bollywood. You guessed it right! I am talking about Mumbai, the city of unlimited possibilities and dreams. A friend of mine told me, “it is a city with different faces, keep your eyes wide open, for you never know when this city might change your life”. Yes! I did keep my eyes wide open and it did change the way I looked at life.

On a rainy, sulky Monday morning, I set out with my huge baggage and heap of luggage toward the lokmanya tilak terminus to catch the netravati express back home. The cold wave of relief that crossed my heart as I saw the train stationed on the first platform was inexplicably relieving. I reflected back to that crazy evening of 17^th June 2013 when I ran the length of platform and managed to make my way into the almost moving train. The dreams that I carried in my eyes then were so heavy that my luggage seemed lighter. Now that I was leaving Mumbai , I do not regret that my dreams did not come true. Though I did not gain what everybody said I will once I set foot in Mumbai,I feel rich and content as I had learnt lessons for life, I had seen life of struggles and only struggles, I had seen people laughing through their tearful eyes, I made some friends for life, got mesmerized but the humility of a city that housed the richest of the rich people, at the uncertainty of the next second of your life, how life changed for many in the wink of an eye.

I looked at Mumbai in awe like a kid peeps into an ice cream factory through a keyhole, but only to realize that it stinks when you make ice cream!

They call it the ‘city of dreams’. Yes it indeed was! For many lived only to chase their dreams, while others went through years of toil just to live the life they dreamed of. While I saw live examples of contrasting lives playing their parts in front of my eyes, I struggled to relate to any of those lives. They were so distant and strange.

 There were the ‘small people with big dreams’, whose life clinged on to the local trains. It was like their blood stream. They eat, sleep, dream, live and make friends here. They trust its service to no extends(sometimes more than their wives! as a dabbawala puts it). Though they were always in hurry, they never pushed past anyone, made sure they never hurt anyone on their way, never hesitated in smiling back at you. Though they claim to be working for a better life tomorrow, the truth is, they are so comfortably settled and content in the small life that they live that they have stopped aspiring for more. They started finding happiness and victory in the small challenges that life faced them with. On the other hand, there was this whole society of ultra rich people, who are so fortunate that they never had to see the face of a local train, forget boarding one!(don’t get me wrong..i am not talking about Amitabh Bachan or Ambani..i know they had to struggle and pave their own path to success,I am referring to the born rich people like star kids ,people who inherited family business and the wives of rich people..you can make your own guesses now).They never had to worry about the vegetable prices shooting up like crazy during ramzan season,they never had to worry about roofs that leaked in monsoons,they did not have to deal with any sort of insecurities that comes as a part of being a ‘mumbaikar’ in truest sense. I took it as a mission to find at least one family that lived the kind of life I lived with my family back home. We were neither rich nor poor, we never struggled for survival but we did not live flamboyant lives. We were the typical middle class family with hell lot of ethics, values and pinch of narrow mindedness. And duh! Who was I kidding!..Like somebody had rightly put it, here, the rich got richer and poor got poorer. There existed nothing called a middle class!

Every other day Mumbai shouted out to me ‘you do not belong here’. I had no answer to the ‘why’ I kept asking myself time and again. All I knew is that I had not found my muse in the city of dreams yet!.Hence, exploring the city for its various possibilities was taken up as the next mission. And I started pondering the numerous gullies to realize that they lacked uniqueness. All of those gullies look identical to each other. It was so damn easy to lose your way! Next destination happened the slightly upside market area called lokhandwala, a shopping hub, where the ‘rich kids’ chill out!This place also failed to amuse me because it lacked character. Moving on to Hill road and linking road in Bandra ,they called it hub for ladies fashion(cheap fashion I mean!).Now my hopes rest solely on marine drive(I have heard people talking very high of the ‘Queen’s necklace’..let’s see!) and colaba(my aunt told she once happened to spot some movie stars there! sounds exciting..doesn’t it?).So I hit marine drive and though the sight of thousand lights lined up in a semicircle to make it look like a queen’s necklace did mesmerize me, it failed to give me what I so badly wanted and what I expected from a beach or seaside, which is ‘peace’. The same hassle and clatters of a city continued there. No wonder why ‘marine drive’ is recognized as ‘distinctively Mumbai’. And there comes my love ’collaba causeway’the 10 minute drive in a taxi like a ‘memsahib’ from Victoria terminus to the street shopping paradise ‘colaba causeway’ was one thing that came even remotely close the Mumbai of my imagination. The beautiful British architectural buildings lining the road, and horse chariots taking people on a ride around marine drive and nariman point made my day!.The feminine instincts in me could not resist the awesomely fabulous array of fancy items that lay ahead of me.I grabbed as many as I could and in the process I realized that when somebody calls Mumbai ‘the city of dreams, he rightly meant it that you dream of something and you will get it on half the price you will ever guess in colaba!.And yeah! ,my aunt was not bluffing when she said she figured movie stars. There was this restaurant called leopold café around the corner inside which, all you find is beautiful people. They are all so tamed ,maintained and pretty that you fall in love with each of them instantly and obviously couple of them were the ‘rich kids’ who  already made it big in movie and yet another set of ‘rich kids’ who will be seen on the silver screen anytime now. My eyes and heart could not contain the curiosity of having found a place about which I could go on for hours to my friends. There was something about this place that amused me. In short, I found my muse in Mumbai(or so I can boast) around colaba , but Like any other middleclass south Indian girl, I lacked the guts to live in the bubble and pretend to be what I can never be. I told myself that my journey to Mumbai was not just to find my muse, but to make me realize what makes life! I took home with me the greatest lessons for life that Mumbai whispered into my ears with love. The lesson being that no matter what, LIFE MUST GO ON and no matter how independent you try to be and fly high, at the end of the day, humans are mutual beings, there is always a string attached to our tailbones that drag us back to our roots. Somebody rightly told me that nobody goes empty handed from this city. Hats off to the city that welcomes with open hands a million people who land here every day, with dreams to make it big in life and I cheers to those smiling random faces, ready with hands extended to pull you up the ladder. I will come back to you, Mumbai! for nobody can get enough of you!..

sssSSSSHHHhhh...

On a lousy low sulky day at work, when most of  my colleagues left work early because of a forecasted storm like situation, I sat alone and sulked more about how everything around me was so imperfect and nothing was falling into place as I wanted things to be, I caught up a conversation with my boss, who is a very nice experienced yet young at heart sweet person, who saw it as a dangerous sign that I had changed from a happy go lucky, positive ,energetic young girl to a soul brimming with negativity and depression. He got me talking about things that give me happiness. One thing that bought a little glint in my eyes was ‘Serendipity’, my new obsession. I got all excited while explaining to him how I am trying to bring back positivity into my life by writing about small things in life that give hope.

While he found my whole understanding and admiration for ‘Serendipity’ cute, he induced me with a new concept called ‘THE SECRET’ .He gave me live examples of people who have benefited from the practice of this concept.

Secret says : ‘If u see it in your mind, you hold it in your hands’…interesting isn’t it?..

The universe is governed by a natural law called the law of attraction which is said to work by attracting into a person's life the experiences, situations, events, and people that "match the frequency" of the person's thoughts and feelings. Therefore, positive thinking and feeling positive are claimed to create life-changing results such as increased wealth, health, and happiness.

This idea has been propagated in the best-selling 2006 self-help book written by Rhonda Byrne, based on the earlier film of the same name. The book is very much influenced by Wallace Wattles' 1910 book ‘The Science of Getting Rich’, which Byrne received from her daughter during a time of personal trauma in 2004.

 The Secret highlights gratitude and visualization as the two most powerful processes to help manifest one's desires. It asserts that being grateful both lifts your frequency higher and affirms that you believe you will receive your desire. Visualization is said to help focus the mind to send out the clearest message to the universe. Several techniques are given for the visualization process, as well as examples of people claimed to have used it successfully to manifest their dreams.

Being a person who takes pleasure and the pain of experimenting such interesting concepts,I have started observing the practices of  ‘the secret’. Who does not look forward to change, prosperity and well being!..same is the case is with me…all I ask secret  to give me is the pleasure of being as enthusiastic as I am at this point of time even when I am done working on it and keep the flames of my hope alive and burning!...meanwhile, do watch the movie and get inspired to be positive in the toughest of situation in life and get benefited from it…do not forget to post here your experiences and curiosity!…because nobody has their life delivered to then on silver platter! …chio!

SWEET TOOTH...SWEET SERENDIPITY!

'Sweet serendipity',the bible of any desert lover,that houses the sacred recipe of the famous Frrrozen Hot Chocolate,that Marylin Monroe , Andy Warhol and even first lady Jacky O used to drool over! This book is sold only inside the 'Serendipity' restaurant located at 225 East 60th Street (between Second Avenue and Third Avenue ) on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in New York City, founded by Stephen Bruce in 1954.

It prevails to be one of my greatest fantasies to visit this awesome little place and sip the drops of heaven in the cup!..so anyone who has been there,done that can share their experience here!..:)

In 2004, Serendipity celebrated its fiftieth anniversary by introducing the record-breaking Golden Opulence Sundae, listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive dessert, at $1000. It is made with 5 scoops of the Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream, Madagascar vanilla covered in 23K edible gold leaf, drizzled with the world's most expensive chocolate, Amedei Porcelana, and covered with chunks of Chuao chocolate, which is from cocoa beans harvested by the Caribbean Sea on Venezuela's coast. It is suffused with exotic candied fruits from Paris, gold dragets, truffles and Marzipan Cherries and topped with a tiny glass bowl of Grand Passion Caviar, an exclusive dessert caviar, made of salt-free American Golden caviar, known for its sparkling golden color. It's sweetened and infused with passion fruit, orange, and Armagnac. The sundae is served in a baccarat Harcourt crystal goblet with an 18K gold spoon, a petite mother of pearl spoon, and topped with a gilded sugar flower by Ron Ben-Israel.

Talking of sweet serendipity,i came across this lovely song about the same...Enjoy folks!..:D

When you know...

This may look like a movie blog to many...but on the contrary,this is nothing but a testimony to the tiny small things,events and huge people in the satire called life that give it the essential punctuation and exclamations to make it meaningful!

APPRECIATING THE ART CALLED LIFE AND THE VARIOUS TONES AND SHADES THAT BRING THE DEPTH TO THE PAINTING!

It was way back in 2010 that I happened to see this lovely movie 'Serendipity' and i fell in love with the sound of the word and the concept.It amazed me how i could just find peace in any tough situation by looking forward to a 'serendipity'.Many call it escapism,but to me,it is a concept that gives me the scope for hope for a better tomorrow or even a fairy tale!...;)