A Feast For The Senses!

As part of my new job I helped run the first day of the Hindi/Bengali Film Festival 2004 co-sponsored by the Centre, on Saturday. So I met some interesting new people, and got personally acquainted to some of the faculty. I found out that Intro to Bengali is being taught by a Bangladeshi GUY this year! Good riddance to Rina Chakravarti I say! For those of you in Toronto, do come out for the festival next Saturday - it's a really great opportunity to see screenings of some fantastic films in a theatre, and yes they have subtitles! I was surprised and a little bit sad at the considerable lack of students/people my age at the event - come on people - where's your patriotic/brown spirit?! We should be out there in droves! Is it possible that we are ready to dish out $13.75 for something as idiotic as The Day After Tomorrow and are unwilling to pay $5 to watch classics by timeless, incredibly talented directors of films made in our mother tongues? I'm certain it is because of a lack of proper marketting/publicity so I spoke to Amar Mukherjee (organiser) and he was extremely happy and kind of surprised at how put off I was by it all, and has promised to involve me as publicist/youth liason for next year's event.

I fasted for the first time in four years on Sunday. Momi and I cooked up a big desi-chinese dinner which we had with Rooh-Afza and fruit-chat (don't ask). Siy, Hamza and Jamshed were over for the iftar and after stuffing ourselves until we could barely move and catching an episode of Desperate Housewives :P, we went to Gerrard and got some scaldingly hot Kashmiri Chai which was simply excellent! You must try it and to tempt you I will add that it is pink and milky and, most importantly, includes lots and lots of ground pistachio!