Rains...and the Casualty section...

Its been a few years since I have actually been in Bombay for the entire monsoon (last was in 2004) and I have missed it...
Rains, especially the crazy kinds that happen around here is just something that i am so habituated to that anything less than that makes me so left out...
Its been raining almost non-stop for 48 hours now...and incessantly throughout the week....And if my manager found out about the time i spent at the window, i would have to log in half the week time atleast as leave :)

I happened to be in the Casualty section of a local hospital earlier this week and it was raining just as much that day...and in the short half hour that i was there, there was a steady stream of people of which atleast half of them were there due to some accident caused by a mixture of the rains and the poor civic infrastructure in my city....
Weather like this definitely doesnt do any favours especially to the vast majority of the people in this city for whom life is generally a struggle, without the added pain caused by circumstances like this.

Listening to Kailasa's latest. Liked most of the album but special mentions for CHHAP TILAK...lovely song...and the title track..JHOOMO RE....loved it...
Reading : David Copperfield :)

Re-living my childhood, as some like to say....but i maintain that i never grew up....

Cheers,
Me

P.S: I love the queen of rain...
P.P.S: As brain gets more and more addled, mails get more and more intermittent....so till next time, Good Afternoon, Good Evening and Good Night :)

Extras....Dostoevsky and Bheja Fry

Wonder if you ever noticed some of the so-called extra’s in any scene especially in ads and in movie scenes. By extras, i dont necessarily mean the lesser known actors but just those who are in the frame of action but not in the spotlight. Most times, i have found that the expressions on the faces of these people are so hilariously funny that its worth missing the real dialogue of the scene or the catch phrase of the ad to spot the look of cluelessness stamped on the faces of these chaps...

Khaasi : remember the guy in the Anchor toothpaste commercial that you brought our attention to once :))))

Just finished reading Crime and Punishment...its a nice book, i thought. But i must say that you have to read it to understand the starkness and at times hopelessness in atmosphere that the author is capable of creating...Definitely not light reading and I used to find a regular dose of PGW was needed to help negate some of the after effects that a book like this is capable of creating. A lot of good / bad things can be said about him but no one could accuse him of being a ray of sunshine, this Dostoevsky chap :))

Saw Bheja fry. Short, Funny and if you like characters, definitely a must – see :)) The I-T officer inspired by music may sound cliched but turned out to be a genuinely HILARIOUS character well acted out by Vinay. Kudos.

Peace,

Me.

P.S: I cant wait to see Spiderman- 3 !!!

Buddha hoga tera baap ......

Thats the catch phrase plastered all over the hoardings over most of the major stations on the central railway on my daily route...and i must say...i love it !!!!! :D :D

Using a popular slang phrase which a lot of us might have heard in anger...in a pretty comic way...is something that really tickled my funny bone :))

I think that the creative team who thought of the usage of this phrase, coupled with the name of the tv series that it is advertising...”Mera Bharat Jawaan” which in itself is a rip-off from the ever so popular “Mera Bharat Mahaan” deserve to be applauded for what is, to me, a sheer stroke of genius...

i wonder who these really imaginative people are...who are capable of just coming up with these ideas.

BTW, the ads for the series itself is out on TV and that is hilarious as well....wherein there are a bunch of geriatrics, led by the perennially old aged A.K.Hangal, mouthing the above dialogue and showing off their attitude....nice!!! :)

Peace,

Me.

P.S: I think A.K. Hangal must have been born old. I do not recollect any movie / tv series of his in which the character played by him was aged less than 60 years old ..he truly deserves the tag of the “Old Man of India”

P.P.S : If any one can recollect any movie / series that features A.K. Hangal wherein he has deviated from his trademark age, do let me know. I have a morbid curiosity to see what that would look like. It is impossible for someone of my limited imagination to even imagine that.

P.P.P.S : Disclaimer : The series mentioned above is not even out yet, i think, and the ingenuity (IMHO) used in its nomenclature is in no way necessarily reflective of the same standard in its execution.

The Great Gatsby.....Trekking time....

Read this book last week....loved it...the story, the style of writing...F.Scott Fitzgerald has written a gem of a book, IMHO.
Its a thin thin novel but i was totally absorbed in it till the end.

Went for a trek last weekend, to a place called Harishchandragad, in Maharashtra. The 3 day trek was good exercise and a lot of fun.
Rode in a truck, slept under starry skies, lived in a cave, climbed a lot, relieved myself out in the open, saw a snake and a scorpion at arms length, peered off cliffs at 4700 feet above sea level..and generally had a ball of a time.

Its crazy how the clammy feeling of fear can blank out everything from your mind...even if only temporarily.

It would be great to share those scenes with with you but given my abhorrence for cameras, I will have to wait for science to be able to print memories from the recesses of my brain in order to do that. :)

Anyways, have a great friday tomm and a great weekend ahead.

Peace,
Me.

2 quotes from the Great Gatsby :

1. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.

2. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

When it rains..it pours

I travel in a local train to work and since its a good half hour everyday...i generally have something to read or listen to inorder to bide my time.... I have a small mp3 player that has some songs that i generally listen to when in the mood...I am a bit careless with my player and generally tend to drop it every so often....(No respect for hard earned money, my parents always complained)

I recently dropped my player at the platform on Dadar station and something really unique happened to it since then...Probably some component got badly shaken up but the net effect of that is that now....when i play a song, the lead singer / music takes a backseat and the backing vocals / music is pronounced for most of the songs। I am guessing that the wiring for channel which carries the input for the leads somehow has got messed up in the fall....

The best part of this is that I am now seeing my old songs in a completely different light...the same song can sound so distinctly familiar yet distant when the voice that you are hearing is that of the backing vocalists...and the lead is but a shadow in the background। Ditto for the instruments.

I am also hearing notes that I never heard in the song ever (There is only so much clarity you can get on a cheap portable player :)).

The feeling of seeing what was once centrestage and the cynosure of all eyes being relegated to the wings and those seemingly unimportant non-entities taking pride of place by an abrupt and sudden twist of fate is a unnerving and a humbling feeling...

Till I bug your lives again, Good Bye and Good Luck (A really really good movie. Thanks, Nikhil, for the recommendation)

P.S: Two mails in quick succession, you must be saying, if u managed to reach this far :) Congrats.
P.P.S : Leave you all with a poem. A wonderful one albeit sad. So ditch reading further if you are in a good mood :P

When we two parted - Lord Byron

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted,
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sank chill on my brow
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:
Long, long shall I rue thee
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met
In silence I grieve
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.

A Moral Dilemma or am i just too touchy ?

On the flight back from Seattle to Amsterdam..2 weeks ago…I was lucky enough to get a aisle seat (thanks to 24 hrs internet check-in) which is always a great relief. Though I am no Gregory Peck, squeezing my legs into the cramped economy class leg room is a huge pain and with a 10-hour flight ahead, I definitely don’t want to get stuck in a middle seat…

So, as I was sitting blissfully happy in my aisle seat trying to decide which movies were worth my attention, I noticed that there was a BIG Indian fellow in the adjoining aisle. This chap must have been definitely taller than 6 feet in height and a good 3 feet in width…and he didn’t seem thrilled by the prospect of the long flight ahead but was probably buoying himself with the consolation of being a little more comfortable with his feet stretched out in the aisle….

I have no idea if u have seen dreams being shattered in front of your eyes but this was the closest I have got…A middle aged Indian lady who had the seat next to our big fellow came and stood in front of him in the aisle and REQUESTED him to let her sit in the aisle seat…citing her AGE as the reason for wanting to sit in the aisle seat….Our chap, brave lad that he was, started to explain that he had specifically picked this seat as it has more legroom and that it was extremely difficult for him to fit into a MIDDLE seat..At this, our dear lady actually cited her age and her health as reasons and made a blatant and poor attempt to try and act old and frail.. In the face of this emotional assault coupled with our sometimes silly emotionality, our poor Indian hero succumbed and actually made way for that lady and sat himself in the middle seat….

I still vividly remember the crestfallen look on his face as he squirmed uncomfortably in the middle seat. I couldn’t help steal glances during the rest of the flight to check on our Indian hero and I think his face reflected his pain so clearly along with the expression of “If only I hadn’t…”
The scary fact is that I kept wondering what I would have done in his position and it is a toss-up as to whether I would have acted any different.

I wonder if it is all the so called values instilled in us during our formative years that prevent us from having the courage to stand up for our rights resulting in us ending up as suckers for a sob story.

Moral Dilemma : Respect / Concern for the aged and infirm V/S Being taken for a ride by pretenders

Cheers,
Me

P.S: Some great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan songs : (Been listening to them for some time now)
Daata ke ghulamon ko.. Haqq Ali Maula .. Hae Kahan ka Iraada sanam.. Gham hain ya Khushi hain too… Dulhe Ka Sehra…

P.P.S: I haven’t heard a singer yet whose voice reflects pure passion the way Nusrat does. Brilliant!!!!

P.P.P.S : This P.S’ing habit is a relict of the Infy KEC-General days J Don’t remember the name of the guy who was most famous for it back in the day. Chandrashekhar Garre, was it?

Logic...

Logic...helps us reason.....decide....think....

logic is common sense...logic is the explantion....logic is the key..

But there will always be things that throw logic out of the window.....there are just so many variables..and i guess thats what makes us human or else we would all be Vulcans a la Mr Spock (Star Trek)..

Hey ...even Spock took an illogical step when in dire circumstances (or like he said.... a logical decision to do something completely illogical :))

Hope you had a great weekend...Have a good week ahead.. and while on the topic...here's a song to keep you company.. Listen to it..if you can...its a mindblowin song.....

Peace.

Supertramp - The Logical Song
When I was young It seemed that life was so wonderful,

A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical

And all the birds in the trees

Well they'd be singing so happily

Oh joyfully, oh playfully watching me

But then they sent me away

To teach me how to be sensible,

Logical, oh responsible, practical

And they showed me a world

Where I could be so dependable,

Oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical

There are times when all the world's asleep

The questions run too deep

For such a simple man

Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned

I know it sounds absurd

But please tell me who I am

Now watch what you say

Or they'll be calling you a radical, A liberal, oh fanatical, criminal
Oh won't you sign up your name

We'd like to feel you're Acceptable, Oh respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable

At night when all the world's asleep

The questions run soo deep

For such a simple man

Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned

I know it sounds absurd

But please tell me who I am, who I am, who I am, who I am