Timeless Classics...

The camera soared up in the sky blue Austrian sky with the clear, sad sound of church bells. Far below, on the ground, in the courtyard of the Abbey, quiet nuns in black robes clustered quietly around their Reverend Mother to complain (in melodious tones) about Maria, who was still up in the hills, singing The Hills Are Alive With the Sound Of Music... and was, once again, late for mass.
"She climbs a tree, and scrapes her knee Her dress has got a tear..." the nuns carped musically.

Unable to retrain the overriding urge of my melodic soul, I joined in, "Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria, How do you hold a moon beam in your hand...?"

"Excuse me, " said a voice outside the movie. My passionate humming was interrupted by stark reality, in the grisly form of my younger brother. "Ah, I had forgotten, " he continued in a strangely polite tone, "how overwhelmingly entertaining you can be at times like these..."

He can be surprisingly sarcastic when the occasion demands it. "Don't be such a mordant wet blanket, " I replied smugly. "I know for a fact that you're pining to join in too..."

There we were. Wrapped up in the spirit of a film we had watched dozens of times before, singing songs with a zeal that hadn't diminished through the years. More than a film, The Sound of Music (to us) is a cherished memory, filled with laughter, tears, and of course, some of the most memorable music ever written.

The story (for the benefit of those who never got to watch the movie) revolves around Maria (Julie Andrews), a postulant in a Salzburg Abbey, who is distracted from her religious duties by the majestic Alpine landscape and her restless, passionate spirit.

The Mother Abbess, believing that Maria's buoyant personality may be incompatible with monastic life, wisely sends her away to discover her true calling. Maria is to be the governess for the von Trapp family-a brood of seven children helmed by Captain von Trapp (the charismatic Christopher Plummer), a widowed naval officer who educates his children with military discipline and whose strict household rules leave no room for music or entertainment. That is, until Maria takes the reins...

And it isn't just the Sound of Music that has captivated millions of ardent viewers for generations. There is the classic hit A Roman Holiday with unforgettable performances of Audrey Hepburn (who breezes through this comedic romp with the spirit of a saint on holiday) and Gregory Peck. The charming story of a princess when she escapes the castle while touring Italy, and a down-on-his-luck American reporter who chances to meet her and smells a good story. A joyful fairy tale, but with the realistic heartbreak of reality at the finale, and what sweet sadness there is in those final shots.

Not to be left out is the hilarious comedy My Fair Lady. The humorous tale of a misogynistic and snobbish phonetics professor who agrees to a wager that he can take a flower girl and make her presentable in high society. It is a gloriously witty adaptation of the Broadway musical about Professor Henry Higgins and how he transforms dirty Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) into a lady, and fools everyone into thinking she really is one, too!

The movie I love more than any other however is Mary Poppins, the first movie I ever watched as a kid, the movie that was exploited to feed me, the movie that was a cherished companion... The squidgy emotional babble aside, it is an all-round great film. Nominated for thirteen Academy Awards (a record for movie musicals), Mary Poppins' mixture of live action and animation, as well as its memorable songs, make it a thoroughly entertaining movie spectacle. Played by the vibrant Julie Andrews, who won an Oscar for her performance, with quotes like, " Practically perfect people never permit sentiment to muddle their thinking" and "Kindly do not attempt to cloud the issue with facts," there's only one word to describe Mary Poppins-- "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!"

Of course, the soul that subsists on action-packed thrillers and suspenseful spy movies may not, for graspable motives, be fully contented watching decade-old romantic-comedies/musicals. For that faction (and for all others) is that the entertaining, enthralling and amusing comedy/drama of the friendship and camaraderie shared between the two buddy leads - legendary, turn-of-the-century Western outlaws: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Paul Newman and Robert Redford). Instead of the ultra-violence typical of other outlaw films, this Western focuses, as one critic put it, 'on the endearing misadventures of the bandits/heroes, using impudent slapstick comedy, conventional Western action, contemporary music, and humorous dialogue to characterize the past and irreverently poke fun at typical western film clichés'.

And then there were movies like Ben-hur, an intelligent, exciting, and spectacular piece of film-making, which remains one of the most honoured, award-winning films of all time (it was nominated for twelve Academy Award and was the first film to win eleven Oscars--it lost only the Best Screenplay Award). Oddly, I always confuse the scenes of Ben-hur with that of Spartacus--the mutinous story of the rebellious Thracian Spartacus (played magnificently by Kurt Douglas), who is born and raised a slave, and sold to Gladiator trainer Batiatus. After weeks of being trained to kill for the arena, Spartacus turns on his owners and leads the other slaves in rebellion...

Some other old movies that are worth mentioning are: Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin), All Quiet on the Western Front (Famous Book by Erich Maria Remarque), Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde (Spencer Tracy), Bring Them Back Alive (Frank Buck), The Great Ziegfield (William Powell, Myrna Loy), A Tale of Two Cities (Ronald Coleman), The Good Earth (Paul Muni), From Here to Eternity (Frank Sinatra, Ernst Borgnine), Gone With the Wind (Clark Gable, Viveien Leigh), The Great Escape. The list is endless.

Some things truly never change through time...like the charm of these age-old movies, which still manage to mesmerize a generation brought up watching films like Matrix, Godfather, Lord of the Rings, MIB and such. Just goes to show that appreciation of virtuosity and talent never fades away....

The dull discourse aside, the movies of the 60's and 70's can truly be enjoyable. Especially if you want to spend a pleasant evening with your dearly loved family, nothing can beat the gaiety and glee of watching a family film like Sound of Music or Mary Poppins. So sit back and relax, and sing along with Julie Andrews, "The hills are alive with the sound of music..."

By Preetha

Money,Life's Honey

As ABBA put it as clearly as possible, it's a rich man's world. Here I am, a girl, and nothing near rich. Say, if Rich was someone standing up on the Everest, I'm somewhere at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Not really scuba-diving either. More like drowning.

Staring at the contents of my red Mickey Mouse wallet (a childhood artifact that I cannot discard no matter how embarrassing it might be, for purely sentimental values), for a split second, I imagined wads of bills. I was just about to break into the evil grin of triumph, when reality settled in. Three tattered two taka notes, an ancient Moven Pick receipt (memories of days when I had the cash, sigh), and a tiny pocket album with pictures of my best friends, family and a little boy whom I adore. Nothing to deposit in Standard Chartered really.

Sigh. I was never really the big spender. That's because I never had the big money to spend. My income consists of the modest amount of money I receive from my grandmother every month, and whatever I can save from lunch money. The allowance from my grandmother started long time back, almost five years back. She just wants me to take the money, but since we both need an excuse for the transaction, this is what she came up with: she took a small sum of money from me long time back, and all these monthly payments are the 'interests' I have been earning. It really makes no sense since by now the total amount of my interests exceeds my deposit by a very big per centage.

However, as I like to believe, all's fair in love, war and grandma's allowance. The delights of learning full-scale banking even before knowing the meanings of credit and debit.

The lunch money gets saved, not because I collect all my willpower to refrain from having lunch at school, but because, how can I put it, the lunch we get served is…not always what I'd prefer. On the days when the lunch is good, usually one of my friends insist on treating. Nevertheless, some of my lunch money revenue gets spent on my pathological Coke drinking habit_ even then, somehow I always have some of it left.

However, never in my life have I been impecunious to this extent. Not when I need the dole so badly. What with all the occasions coming up, I am hoping to win the lottery or compete for Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Of course, the fact that I'd end up leaving the latter contest with any money at all is doubtful. It's a possibility, but not too much of a possibility.

So I sit down with pen, paper and calculator and make my monthly budget. It's one of the skills I have learned from operating money transactions from such early an age; to plan my expenditure like a mature adult would do. The digits appearing on the calculator screen weren't in their friendliest mood. They looked big, menacing and prepared to leave me as a pauper on the streets.

At least when you count in your head, there's a possibility of making an error. Electronics are superhuman, non-error making things. How can I deny their verdict?

Drawing up all my sources of income was another thing. The sources were scarce and the flow of money from them even scarcer. I ransacked my brain (whatever left of it, at least) for people who may owe me cash; then realised that either it was far too many people for me to remember or so few people with such little amounts that it made barely any difference. Then a brilliant idea struck my head. Picture a light bulb popping up beside my head and a smile of genius spreading like sunshine over my face. I ran to my parents' bedroom.

"Mum?"
She looked up from her palmtop and gave me an inquiring look.
"If you let me teach D, I'll let you give me money. One hour everyday for the next one month. Think about it, only fifteen hundred bucks," I glowed radiantly with my brilliance. How smart am I?
"Five hundred bucks," she offered, hardly interested.
"What? (appalled) That's slavery! Fine, how about a thousand bucks?" I begged, hope filtering out.
She didn't look impressed.
"B-but. If it's a thousand bucks, then it's only thirty three bucks a class. That's nothing at all."

"It's okay, you don't have to teach D. My son can remain an illiterate," she gave me a smile that said, "deal with it".

In my head, I saw red. What? I am only the best home tutor you'd ever find. Who else would teach a ten year old the difference between present continuous and past continuous tense? Who else would read "The Cratchit's Christmas" from Radiant Reading and set up questions? Or give a boy ideas about what to write in an essay as inane as "Lost in Space"? Who would, I ask you. Isn't the whole point of studying and giving exams and passing fourth grade that you don't have to repeat it all over again? Who wants to be in tenth grade and studying the syllabus for the fourth grade as well? And here I was, volunteering to sacrifice so much… for so little an amount of money…
"Besides, your O-levels are coming up," she said.

I guess, I can't argue on that. That's the problem, you see. If the most important public exam that I would sit for in my life wasn't coming up in three months, things would be different. Very different, indeed. To start with, I would have a proper job, one behind a desk, where they would be willing to pay me proper wages in return for my labour services. I wouldn't be so desperate that I would be begging for a job to teach a ten year old kid, clinically obsessed with WWE.

"Why don't you borrow some money from me?" My best friend offered, as we were lunching outside one afternoon.

"You know I wouldn't do that. I have an issue about taking money from other people," I said, forlornly.

Which is, to my great annoyance, very true. I can't accept money from people, I just feel so… so… you know what I mean. I can't even go and ask for money from my parents unless what I want is an absolute emergency, a necessity without which I wouldn't be able to function. Things like toothbrushes and geometry boxes. They are always paying for everything I do anyway.

Which is another thing I learnt from the modest amount of money I get every month. The value of money and how it must be spent wisely. In fact, that's what I have done all throughout the last five years. It's just this one month when my savings were low and there were too many occasions to fit in with my small budget.

"Let me buy something from you," my best friend offered, trying to be smart. "That way, you wouldn't feel like you're taking money from me. How about your lip glosses?"
"Look, I'm not THAT poor." I said, giving her an exasperated smile. "Not yet, that is."
"Some jewelry, maybe?" she offered with a sly smile.So it went on.

So here I am, writing, as it seems to befit my position. After all, aren't so many writers penniless, living in dark rooms, wearing rags and clicking on rusty, old typewriters? Poverty bites, I have come to realise. Money may not be able to buy you love, but it can still buy. Optimistically looking at the situation, I am thinking, 'Oh well, at least it taught me the importance of saving and spending wisely'. Pessimistically looking at things, the only words going around my head are, "I am DOOMED!" Till money actually starts growing on trees, I'll be watering our money plants daily…

By Maliha Bassam