Taxes n Bollywood

I hope all of you paid your taxes on time. Well I was among those who waited until the last minute (well almost). My tidak apa attitude is getting worse.

On Friday morning, I photostated all the necessary documents and drove down to the LHDN (The Inland Revenue Malaysia)office at Kelana Jaya. My mother-in-law told me that it was somewhere near the MAS academy. I had no idea where it was but when I saw a traffic jam near the academy, I knew I was going in the right direction. I found the place to be in utter chaos. There were hundreds of people moving around and queuing up for god knows what. I asked around a bit and learnt that as I had already filled up my forms, all I had to do was just drop them off with the ladies sitting at a table outside.

When my turn came up, the lady went through the completed forms. She was a bit annoyed with the fact that I had used pencil to fill up the forms and asked me to redo it using a pen. I apologized and redid it using my pen. I then found that I had to have copies of the forms. Fortunately I had already made the copies but they were in my car. So off I went – took the lift again to the 3rd floor, walk to the stairs, go down to the parking lot on the first floor, get the copies and then back again. I finally got my documents chopped and it took me altogether 45 minutes.

In the evening, I picked up my sisters Di and Jules and Jules’ boyfriend, Fred. I am not much of a theatre person but my sister Di had bought us tickets for the musical ‘My Bollywood Summer’ and we agreed to accompany her. Starring singer Nurul in the lead, the musical was staged at Panggung Bandaraya, Sultan Abdul Samad Building, Jalan Raja, Kuala Lumpur.

Written and directed by stage personality Sabera Shaik, the storyline is fairly simple. Aishah (singer Nurul) a young Malay girl dreams of making it big in Bollywood and actually goes all the way to Mumbai to make her dreams a reality.

We were a bit late (waiting for my sisters to get ready) and the play had already started by the time we got there. It was quite embarrassing and I made a note to myself – never be fashionably late at such events.

Nurul’s a good singer and she performed the songs quite well. However, I can’t say the same for her dancing. She went about her dance routines quite mechanically. Maybe it was due to the fact that there were many other professional dancers in the cast who out classed her.

A few characters in the drama stole the limelight away from the lead actors. Chedd Yusoff who played Nadesh, the goonda and Pavan as Deepak the gay director. I have known Pavan since his Help Institute days and he was really hilarious in his role. Sham Sunder also did a great job as Sunil, the ‘dirty’ director with a casting couch.

Overall, it was an enjoyable show. It was quite fun but got a bit draggy near the end. Maybe because it was too late and we were too tired (the show ended around 11 pm). I had fun annoying my wife with a thick Indian accented english until the novelty wore off.