Way way back in the 70s, there was this exquisitely made movie called Friends shot in the beautiful French countryside. It hit my sleepy little town several years later and, along with all my friends, I just loved it to pieces. After all, back then there were relatively no teen movies and TV was just a figment of our dreams. I remember in particular this scene where the 14 and 15 year old leads talk about their parents and the pretty Michelle says, "My mother died giving birth to me. She was very old. She was 28." Ouch.

Time passed and I had forgotten all about it until recently when I managed to get hold of another old fav movie Picnic at Hanging Rock through the Net. I wondered if Friends might also not be available and google-ed it down. Turns out the film's rather hard to find but in a movie forum I came across this amazing gentleman from the US who offered to burn and mail a copy of the fabulous soundtrack to anyone anywhere. So I emailed him and voila, guess what finally arrived in the mail this morning? :)
It's amazing what friends will do for friends, but I think it's even more amazing that a total stranger would be willing to do something like this. Don, thank you so much! You bring back to me so many sweet memories. And your generosity restores my faith in the goodness of people.

~~~

It took a lot longer than I thought and there's still some stuff that needs to be done...paint, curtains et al but here finally are a few pics of the kitchen as promised. How's it compare with my aunt's? I wanted off-white tiles too but my sis insisted on black so ours look a bit darker overall. But it's still a huge improvement on the earlier setup so we ain't complaining :)

My sis cooking up something

Evening

Day abandons it
night disowns it

a poet picks it up
threads it
into a poem;
but sometimes
it is barren,
so impotent
it gives nothing,

not even to the poet.

- Gulzar

~~~

I'm not sure if this was written in English or translated from Urdu but I like the different approach it takes to a topic that's been sentimentalised and done to death in the most humdrum way by poets and songwriters galore.

Amen. I couldn't agree more.