TV 5 Monde

 My current favourite chanel - err, channel- on television is TV 5 Monde, Asie. I have been now a watcher for about 2 years. I discovered it during the pandemic, thanks to my wife who used to watch a serial each Friday. I got hooked too.

each evening, they have a serial or a film, usually French, with English subtitles. The reason I like it is because the movies explore themes that are typically not touched on by either Bollywood or Hollywood. Teen issues, children's issues, immigrant problems, are all woven into the storylines. 

The detective type serials are also more down-to-earth, without the swashbuckling style of some American serials. More understated, Hercule Poirot type, if you know what I mean. Plan to keep watching these, usually 3-4 evenings a week.

Cafes

 Of late, it's raining cafes.. I mean, I have been visiting unusual eateries, for me unusual. I am a simple biryani and Irani chai wala aadmi- not aam admi, but almost one.

So it has meant that I ate Italian, or French, without going to either country. Some examples of what I ate at Pune and Bangalore.. if the company is good, I don't mind hi-fi food (for an aam admi)

Not Paris, but Bangalore.

Exotica, with Anusha Soni at Pune (above, and below)..on Prabhat Road.

A visitor, Suyasha from Pune, in a Bangalore Metro.. and above, with her aunt and Uncle.

Interesting Turns of Phrase

" Going where the Czar goes on foot" - apparently means going to the toilet, in Russia. Because the Czar used to be carried everywhere else but..

" From the sublime to the ridiculous" - nice phrase that expresses a wide range of something. His blog posts/fb posts went from the sublime to the ridiculous..well, that may be cutting it too close..

"Go Doolally" (To go mad) apparently comes from the British garrison town (in India) of Deolali, where British officers waited, after finishing their duty, to be taken back to Britain-sometimes for months.

Shot "point blank" . Point blank refers to the white (blanc in French) circle at the centre of a target for archery practice. It just means from a very short distance, from which it is easy to hit the target dead centre.

(sources-various, on the net and in print)

Can You or Can't You?

The French have invented a can with a suffix. It's known as Cannes. Not a plural, or mis-spelt. It's just 'can' with a suffix. So if you go there and win a Lion, you can. If you don't, you can't. Simple.

'Can' also has a pejorative meaning, like the cooler (jail). If you end up doing illegal things, you can end up in the cooler, sometimes also called the can. So whether you 'can' in this case depends on your ability to go outside the bounds of legality. Can is also a 'slanging' term for the toilet.

I believe there is also a dance form known as the can-can- apparently, French in origin. This dance form was apparently looked down upon by respectable society, when it first appeared, for taking liberties with decency (as defined then-it varies with time, and is almost extinct now).

A cantilever is a paradox. Not sure if it can or can't- give you leverage.

Test your French- Joke

A thief in Paris planned to steal some paintings from the Louvre. After careful planning, he got past security, stole the paintings and made it safely to his van. However, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas.

When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and make such an obvious error, he replied, "Monsieur, that is the reason I stole the paintings. I had no Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh"

(Sorry about this !!! You may have thought that I didn't have De Gaulle to tell you this one. Well, I figured I really have nothing Toulouse)

Delicatessen- French Film

Happened to watch a French film by this name. It is a difficult film to make, I think. The reason being that it moves around in just one boarding house with many tenants and the owner, who runs a butcher shop on the ground floor. What does he butcher? Among other things, his servants. One manages to run away by hiding in a garbage can.

But this is not a horror story. Actually, it is a comedy- a different type, to be sure. Some of the scenes are really creative, like various sounds from different homes in the building starting out slowly, and rising to a crescendo- including you-know-what. Brilliantly conceived, it plays out like a musical performance.

A bit of imaginative characterisation is that of the Troglodytes, who live underground (literally!) and dream of getting enough to eat! Grains are in short supply (even in the world above), and people use grain as currency for buying stuff!

The butcher's daughter falls in love with the new man (an ex-Magician)employed by her dad, and they try to save him from being butchered! Lovely sets enhance the mood, and if you like this sort of stuff, it's a treat! I believe it was made in 1991.