Saturday's meeting went well; I think we've now formed a S. Asians in the arts Chicago community. Website coming soon. :-) It was a three hour meeting and I was killer exhausted afterwards; not even sure why. I slumped on the couch for a while, then dragged myself out of the house (after a mild argument with Kev about whether he was coming with me or not) to see Second Generation.
I found the film frustrating in a lot of ways. I enjoyed the first half quite a bit, especially once I figured out that for the family part of the drama, they were essentially retelling King Lear. That worked really well. But the romance sections they tacked onto that story felt forced, and especially the ending, which was something of a conservative utopian idyll. Hard to talk about it more without spoilers, so I'll just say that it felt like they sacrificed the story to make a political point (one I don't particularly agree with, either), and in the process, ruined any sympathy I'd had for the two main characters. I do have to give them points for giving Parminder Nagra (of Bend It Like Beckham and ER) some hot and revealing sex scenes. Someone told me that on ER, they deliberately avoid that for her (presumably to avoid offending conservatives, since clearly she's fine with it?), which irritates me.
After the film, had dinner with a whole horde of folks; Devi and Shilpa and Rekha, Reehan and Sophia, plus four new people. Slightly strange entree, pumpkin ravioli in a balsamic cream sauce, which tasted more like dessert than a main course, but was not bad. Stayed out late, 'til midnight, and then came home and had a somewhat stressed out conversation with Kev about S. Asian vs. American value systems, which we eventually resolved, but which kept me up past 1.
So I was tired Sunday morning when I got up early to cook for the DesiLit meeting. No more scheduling two meetings on the same weekend! I chopped and prepped here, then took it all over to Sujata's (a block away) to cook in her kindly-loaned kitchen. I've discovered that if I do the chopping in advance, I can make five curries and a pilaf in two hours. Good to know. And with only one mistake -- the onions for the salmon curry got slightly scorched, but just barely, and I couldn't taste it in the finished dish. It was good to cook again; I've been missing it, and missing having curries in the fridge.
The meeting went well, though a bit rushed because Shilpa had to leave early, and Sophia thought she had to as well, but then didn't. We're close to nailing down a date for a rapid-fire reading of local authors, and plans are progressing well on the Indu Sundaresan event in mid-March. With any luck we really will have the Kriti questionnaires ready to go soon, and I've at least downloaded the film clips of the festival, though there's lots of logging and editing left to do. Still, progress is being made.
Now I'm going to go and try to catch up on DesiLit Magazine stuff, then prep for today's class. I'm teaching online magazine production from 1 - 3ish, then try to be back here by 4 for a phone consultation with someone from Artwallah. This evening, annual condo board meeting. Oh, my life, it is full of the joy of meetings.
There was a pretty hot scene between Parminder’s character, Neela, and her boyfriend, Michael, I think after she had almost given in and had sex with someone else and then he suddenly came home from Iraq…. We’ve also seen a few nicely intimate scenes between the very hot Maura Tierney and Goran Visnjic. But it’s pretty tepid overall. So, I think with “ER” the greatest limitation is simply being on a public network, as opposed to cable….