Observations, Thoughts and Musings going by ...

Ooh la la!

2012-02-07T18:00:00.000+05:30

I am under fire from Señora for lack of exercise regularly these days. All my exercise is now only confined to the jaws and to an extent, the elbows and knees (for constantly shifting between the clutch, the brake and the accelerator and the gear shift in the traffic maelstrom of Bengaluru)

Not that I hate exercise, but its regimentation is what is off-putting and the binge afterwards that moves its net effect to negative. Right from childhood (you have always got those days to blame :-)), the maximum I have been able to bend my back forward with the knees straight is between 70-90 degrees. The hands would never go below the knee, forget touching the ankles or the feet. So much for flexibility! Compare that with Señora who can touch the ground with her palm at the snap of a finger (she is into yoga classes these days, so no dearth of āsanās) or La Niña, who despite being doubly slothful as me, can make a contortionist to cower. My genes do show up in El Niño to an extent with the back-bending (better than me though; he can touch his ankles), but then El Niño can grind 2.5 hours of tennis a day for four days in a week and in addition, some local cricket and badminton before threatening to "work" me out with the stretch exercises from his tennis classes. I do play a game or two of badminton now and then, but it is all hogwash to the powers that be, as an excuse to doze the noons off.

As the year-end exams loom, Señora is busy reading up on the wars of Indian independence, flits across countries and continents, brushes up on ethenes and polymerization, solving math equations, tackles a bunch of life science material and dabbles with Hindi and Sanskrit, as if she had to pass the exams, her Highness happily watches TV, growls on being asked to answer questions or to concentrate on her book rather than on the general chit-chat at home (she's got my genes here, I've to say), draws pretty ink designs on her hands and in notebooks, goes into dreamland regularly and blames Kapil Sibal on the way for the tests. I have had to devise question papers for El Niño, but the inconsistent scores reveal that I do a pretty bad work on testing him and too lenient in getting him to learn. Result, there is one less thing for me to do (not that I can escape it entirely)

So you thought I am reviewing 'Dirty Picture' looking at the title? I am just singing my blues away! :-D :-D

A new year post

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000+05:30

As the new year dawns,
we wish to wish;
Some for joy,
and some, wealth;
Some for time,
and some, health;
Some for love,
and some, peace;
Some for action,
and some, quiet;
Some for goals,
and some, none.
May your apt wishes come true,
when the night is still blue.

I have not been active in the latter half of the year past, either to post or to reply to posts. Just a tad busy in my world, work and home, in what I might say as being in waxing and waning cycles of cheer. My Google Reader is still actively tracking posts, though the frequency of me reading and following through with comments have reduced to a trickle. I hope that this phase blows over. Not that I am glum these days, but the enthusiasm has plummeted.

Mid-life blues? Maybe, and who knows, and who cares! :-) Welcome 2012!

Chennaiyil Oru Mazhaikkaalam

2011-10-31T10:00:00.005+05:30

Deepavali day (Wed, 26-Oct-11), around 2:00 pm at the Marina beach
[Click to view at a better size]
Panorama stitch using Microsoft Image Composite Editor of 5 individual photos taken in sequence

Nice horizon contrast with the northern side being bright and blue and the southern side growling dark with grey.

But, where were the crowds?

Maybe the plethora of TV movies kept them glued, or the new film releases kept them screened, or the intermittent rains reined them in, or the festival hogging kept them in sloth!

The beach looked fine from afar, but where the waves lapped, it was definitely yuck. Junk and garbage throughout, including an animal carcass. Less of plastic though, but lots of other junk. Maybe we (the people) will learn its value only after we lose it.

Spent around 45 minutes at the beach and as we returned back home, it poured for an hour or so. Guess we were plain lucky that day!

Note: The picture resolution and hence quality is reduced as to not tax the Indian Internet. :-)

Short (not so) Takes

2011-07-01T16:44:00.005+05:30

Image Courtesy: Wikipedia

Pixar and animation generally go well. I liked their earlier animated ones (Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, WALL-E, Up) and also 'Cars' in-spite of all the panning it got from critics. The story line was simple about a racing car that loses its way to go into a 'forlorn sleepy place' off a highway, the friendships it builds with the folks there and some racing excitement. Thought it was fairly balanced on style, sentiment, action, mystery and fun. Kids liked it and the adults too, to be fair. It does grow slowly on you.

And then comes 'Cars 2', a sequel based on most of the characters in the first one and added a few more. My verdict is that they over-engineered it. Difficult storyline to follow with espionage, alternate fuel, mafia and racing intertwined. There is lots of 007esque stunts, gadgetry and action too, but there is only so much you can bear. Worth a mention in the movie are the landscapes. It jumps right out at you, whether it is Tokyo, Paris, London or the Italian Riviera. Looks lovely, especially the Riviera. Few moments of laughter, via Mater, the buck-toothed bumbling tow truck, some smiles with characterizing based on the Brits and lots of action with zipping and stunt cars and being stuck in the gears of the Big Ben.

Could have been a lot better! And to see it in 3D at the Royal Meenakshi Mall's Cinépolis along with outrageously priced pop-corn tubs and nachos, sigh! The sound system at the theatre was thumping awesome. But that cannot redeem a weak movie, can it? And now I wait, for the last of the Harry Potter movies to come to town.

Cycles of time

2011-06-26T19:00:00.000+05:30

This blog post comes out of the result of some useless "slanted-head" day-dreaming mixed with nostalgia.

Today's generation has it all easy when it comes to bicycles. The cycles come in all sizes and shapes and there is no dearth of options and learning is more or less straightforward. Pick the cycle of the right size, get on it and pedal away with someone running behind you to assist in balance.

When I learnt bicycling, the options were just one. Learn it on my father's bicycle, a big one (Raleigh) at that and usually the hard way. And there were stages in the learning. This assumes that you wanted to learn cycling when your height was just taller than that of the bicycle.

The monkey pedal phase (maybe the most difficult one) was the one you started with since it was apt for your height. The start position was by putting your right leg through the mid triangle section of the cycle to the right side's pedal, the right hand crutching over the seat and the wrist clamping the middle horizontal bar and the left hand holding the handle-bar. All these body-gymnastics may have helped this position earn the moniker of monkey pedal. The cycle was moved forward by standing on the right hand side pedal through the middle bars and pushing the cycle with the left leg and then lift the left leg while coasting and then try to put it on the left pedal to move forward. The pedaling never was mastered easily and there would be the usual falls from the cycle and its bruises, both to the rider and to the cycle and in a few cases to others' property. The balancing was acquired by trial and error. Of course, you could say, the learning might have been easier with a ladies' bicycle where there was no horizontal bar in the middle, but for boys, it was not an option to be an object of ridicule. :-) What a sight it was, of seeing a youngster pedal the big bicycle like a gymnast, steering with one hand and body moving up and down in sync with the pedal. After quite a practice, and once the cycle was in motion, you could come out of the crouch posture and use the right hand to grab the right side of the handle bar, while continuing to monkey pedal. Boy!, you needed more concentration than what sage Narada had to, when he had to carry a bowl full to the brim with oil, on his head as ordered by Lord Vishnu as a story goes.

And then it was time to graduate to the next level, the 'bar'. Though not as difficult as the monkey pedal, this one had its own issues. You had to be either tall enough to put your legs over the middle horizontal bar to reach the pedal at the other side or you have to know how to balance the cycle in motion and do the maneuver. The start was usually by keeping the left leg on the left pedal and by holding the handle bar with both the hands and pushing the cycle forward with the right leg and when sufficient speed has been reached, lift the right leg off and do another gymnastic routine of lifting it over the middle horizontal bar to the other side from the front of the cycle and sit on the bar with legs dangling on both sides to co-ordinate with the pedals. There was more risk of falling down here and in most cases the fall happened inevitably. Once mastered, you are almost an adult in cycling.

The next phase was the 'seat' in which once the 'bar' maneuver is complete, you hoist yourself slightly up to the seat. This is like top of the world to announce that you have arrived on the cycling world. More often than not, the legs wouldn't be tall enough to maintain contact with the pedals all time as they go up and down. You would do the push of the pedal and wait for it on the other side to come up and then push it again to propel. Not too difficult and once in a while the pedal may refuse to rotate up and you'll go to the bar position to set it right.

The last position is an extension of the previous one, the 'carrier'. This demonstrated that you have mastered the art of cycling 60%. Here you drop down to the carrier at the back of the cycle from the seat and continue to pedal. Or you could start with the freewheeling position before the bar and put your right leg over the carrier from the back and then sit into it. Though the handle-bars may be slightly away, you bend over the seat to reach, hold and continue to pedal.

Once you have mastered 'singles' riding, come the 'doubles' and 'triples' and even quadruples (which we used to call '4-bles'). Doubles could be with a co-passenger at the horizontal bar (useful as a romancing prop for the leads in today's movies) or could be one sitting behind you. Triples is obvious. Sometimes you would do the double shunt where both the main 'driver' and the 'co-driver' on the carrier, who will seat himself with legs on either side and assist the cycling with both of them having their legs on the pedals. Typically useful for pedaling on inclined roads.

Of course there have been mishaps by just braking on the front wheel only or skids for harsh braking on the rear wheel on muddy roads. Of course there were a few other stunts which are mastered later, like cycling with no hands on the handle bars (cycling with one hand on the handle bar had already been mastered with the monkey pedal). I never managed to learn wheeling, not that it mattered much, but could have been useful, maybe to impress some lass at that time. :-)

And the joy at mastering each stage, priceless!

What was that?

2011-06-19T21:32:00.000+05:30

In the age of children or in the aggressiveness of youth, under an argument or a fight, the following statements are typically uttered.

Saami (or Amma) saththiyama sollu nee idhai pannalai? [Promise on God (or Mother) (or colloquially, God promise), you never did it?]
Veliya vaadaa, naan gavanichchukkaraen [Come outside bugger, you'll be taken care of (as a dare)]
Dhairiyam irundhaa, irundhu sandai poduraa [If you have the guts, stand and fight]

I did a double take and ROTFL when I saw the following ad in the newspaper yesterday. Either the CM of Karnataka is naive to wage war with the wily ex-CM in the name of God or his IQ has inched negatively as he aged. Looks like this tête-à-tête is lined for June 27. Oh boy! Who said politics here is drab? With folks like these, it is hilarity at its best. India rocks. :-) :-).

Unworded - Is it a bird or a flower?

2011-05-31T22:00:00.002+05:30

'Bird of Paradise' flower

A Midsummer Morning's Dream

2011-05-28T08:00:00.027+05:30

The pictures speak for themselves for contrast. Last Wednesday (25-May-11), woke up in the morning to see a blanket fog that had engulfed the whole place.

Couldn't believe it was mid-summer and I am seeing fog with a mild drizzle with a wind-chill making you feel as if you are at some hill station in winter. :-)

Bangalore does have its Wow! surprises ...

Granted that I live at the fringes of Bengaluru to savour these for whatever time it lasts.

With due apologies to William Shakespeare for punning his title

Aasai Mugam Marandhu Pochchae - ஆசை முகம் மறந்து போச்சே

2011-05-26T20:00:00.000+05:30

And here comes another translation after a long lull from 'Kannan Paattu' from Bharathi.

The inspiration for this translation was a brilliant amalgam of fact and fiction on Bharathi by Suchi in the post "The forgotten face of the beloved" with a poignant background that Bharathi may have based this poem in despair on being not able to find a picture of his mother who had long passed on.

There is a pointer to a rendition of this poem at the aforementioned link by Sikkil Gurucharan.

கண்ணன் பாட்டு - பாரதியார்
கண்ணன்-என் காதலன்

பிரிவாற்றாமை

ஆசை முகமறந்து போச்சே-இதை
ஆரிடம் சொல்வேனடி தோழி?
நேச மறக்கவில்லை நெஞ்சம்-எனில்
நினைவு முகமறக்க லாமோ?

கண்ணில் தெரியுதொரு தோற்றம்-அதில்
கண்ண னழகுமுழு தில்லை;
நண்ணு முகவடிவு காணில்-அந்த
நல்ல மலர்ச்சிரிப்பைக் காணோம்

ஓய்வு மொழிதலுமில்லாமல்-அவன்
உறவை நினைத்திருக்கும் உள்ளம்
வாயு முரைப்பதுண்டு கண்டாய்-அந்த
மாயன் புகழினையெய் போதும்.

கண்ணன் புரிந்துவிட்ட பாவம்-உயிர்க்
கண்ண னுருமறக்க லாச்சு;
பெண்க ளினத்திலிது போல-ஒரு
பேதையை முன்புகண்ட துண்டோ?

தேனை மறந்திருக்கும் வண்டும்-ஒளிச்
சிறப்பை மறந்துவிட்ட பூவும்
வானை மறந்திருக்கும் பயிரும்-இந்த
வைய முழுதுமில்லை தோழி!

கண்ணன் முகமறந்து போனால்-இந்தக்
கண்க ளிருந்துபய னுண்டோ?
வண்ணப் படமுமில்லை கண்டாய்-இனி
வாழும் வழியென்னடி தோழி?

And with the usual disclaimer that the translation may not hold a candle to the original, but here is the translation.

Separation Angst

Thy face beloved, envisions not my mind,
Lament this, dearest, to whom should I?
The heart forgets not the love, yet
Recalls not your visage and why?

The eyes behold a form, where
The beauty of Kanna effuses not
Looking hard at the face close
To find the blossom smile naught

Without a respite, expressed
Remembers the heart, of the connect
And see the lips utter ever
Praises of the charmer, direct

Sins of yours Kanna, hath
Made me forget thy lively form
Womanhood, virtuous they are
Seen ye, with their impeccant charm?

Nectar drunk not by bees,
Blooms that know not of glorious light,
Crops that look not to the sky,
Exist not in this world, dear!

The face of Kanna having faded out,
Do they have a use of - these eyes?
Have not a portrait to behold,
To live on, dear, how do I?

Gifted, she is

2011-05-19T07:30:00.005+05:30

I watch the Airtel Super Singer 3 irregularly on Vijay TV. Yesterday and the day before, there was a guest performance by last year's Super Singer Junior winner, Alka Ajith. What a voice! Could blow the current Airtel Super Singer 3 competitors away, by a mile. She is maybe around 15 years of age and already a playback singer in Malayalam and hear her sing 'Chiragengu' from the yet to be released movie 'The Train'. Lovely and gooseflesh inducing rendition! She sang that song day before on the show and 'Thohda Thohda Malarndhadhenna' from the movie 'Indira' and a snippet of 'Udhaya Udhaya Virumbugiraen' from the movie 'Udhaya' yesterday. Mindblowingly silken voice!

God (or Nature) gifts some with extraordinary capability and Alka is one such gifted person. It is so soothing to hear her and the clarity and range in her voice are astounding.

May she be blessed always and this child is one who will definitely scale heights. Thanks Alka for those moments of divinity on hearing you sing.

What?

2011-05-19T07:04:00.002+05:30

People are dumb (Disclaimer: I don't claim to be an intellectual of any kind.). How else can you explain this? Was having blogger posting problems and was looking if it was reported by others and came across the following.

A box at the top says some status information about maintenance, which people generally don't read and which is excusable.

But how on earth can one find a cryptic answer like "bX-d7hq04" be helpful to anyone and which is actually an error code thrown by the Webpage to be shared in the forums to see if someone has a similar issue and potentially a solution. Maybe people thought it was similar to the 'Like' button of FaceBook / Google Reader and then clicked on it.

Speak about 'click conditioning'! Hmmph!

The world's costliest curd rice

2011-05-10T22:21:00.001+05:30

Rs.10000 for 5 spoons of curd rice. Yes, it is true!

The parents like their curds/buttermilk and their offspring vanish at the sight of it. The milk derivative is scorned at, if it is present at the dining table. It is not as if that the kids haven't tasted them. It was not condemned when they were younger, but one fine day they developed a dis-taste to it all of a sudden and then stopped abruptly. No amount of pleadings, inducements, coercion and threats could make their children ingest curd in any fashion.

This continued for a few years and the parents persisted in their attempts to induce the habit into their children. One day, they struck a deal with their son of giving him Rs.10000 in cold cash, if he takes a few spoonfuls of curd rice. Eyes bright at the prospect of a quick buck, the son accepted the challenge and the parents thought it was all verbal daredevilry. Their daughter was made of sterner stuff. She flatly refused in spite of promising what she considers her ultimate gift, a pet cat.

The next day, around noon, the father was called up at his office by his wife with the news that their son ate five spoonfuls of curd rice, whilst making contorted faces. And he liked it. :)

A promise is a promise and to be honorable, the parents have decided to keep their word.

Now it is up to you to decide if it was the costliest curd rice ever. Maybe! And the quest would continue with the daughter. And you know who the cast in this anecdote are. :-D

Unworded - Gubbachchi

2011-05-06T17:00:00.003+05:30

Bangalore's Paradise lost - As happy as a lark - Rare visitor at home - Wake up to chirps

Agni Nakshathram

2011-05-05T17:00:00.003+05:30

No, it is not a review on the sibling confrontation movie from Maniratnam that came more than two decades back.

Visited Madras (aka Chennai) over the last weekend and here is some unsolicited advice for those headed to Madras from Bangalore (aka Bengaluru), this month. Of course, this doesn't apply to those who live there. They are demi-gods and hence super-natural. They can tolerate even Fukushima. :-D

Never under-estimate the weather at Madras even if you have snow or hail falling at you on the way. We were greeted by blinding rain at Krishnagiri which we hoped would extend all the way to the coast. Alas!, 10 kms out of Krishnagiri and the clouds wore out to beat us blue and whack.
Madras has only 3 swings of temperature across the day/night - warmish hot, sweaty hot, 'sap the hell out of you and blow your head' gory hot. Any other weather is God's gift.
Of course, the night is hot, unless you catch a short warm draft of the sea-breeze close to the shore. You can wake up in the morning at 6:30 am to see your sweatfest begin.
God forbid if the power goes off (which seems to be the case routinely there) and you are out of inverter power (you'll be roasted to die without power in Madras). Of course, the 220V voltage dips down to 180V and so a fan at speed-5 is the same as a fan at speed-1.
This is one city where the bathrooms need to have fans (not just exhaust, but inlet and ceiling ones) and the minute you are out of the bath, you would have taken a bath of sweat unless the room you go into is air-conditioned.
Venture into T-Nagar, only to go into the air-conditioned showrooms that do not have the swarming crowds (find out if there are really any!)
Of course, there are good things that you can do over the week/weekends to escape the heat. Loiter around in huge centrally air-conditioned newbie malls like Express Avenue. Going by the crowd that seems to be there on weekends, you can scramble into a theater near you. The tickets are less than half the price that of the ones that the Bangalorean multiplexes rip you of. Of course, we got ripped off at the 'Polar Express' at Express Avenue mall like a doofus to go to what was nothing but shredded ice sprayed as snow in an enclosure with a few ice sculptures. Boy!, there was a crowd there too to try to beat the heat, no wonder.
Marina is potentially a no-no. In the evenings, there is a tsunami of floating population out there waiting for the poor-man's cooler, the sea.
There are confusing fly-overs and watch out for the spoils of war of your vehicle (dents and scratches) with the Chennai roads.
Traffic is sparsely better than in Bangalore in most parts. Madras is building a metro and its effects can be seen in the Anna Nagar area in the evenings where the Bangalorean crawl seemed like a jackrabbit sprint. But nothing to beat us in this department.
In the hum of a spinning fan, dream that a foggy mist awaits you in the morning, and dream only (It is really true that in Bangalore, especially the fringes, have fog and mist in the mornings this time of the year too :-D) Ask your host to get an Almonard industrial strength fan which could propel one standing before it to fly. :-)

Or, look at the benefits; foodie places like Sangeetha's, Saravana Bhavan, Murugan Idly Shop, Adyar Grand Sweets etc for an eat-out binge (which are typically more expensive than a movie ticket), no dearth of shopping haunts and bazaars, hear a new dialect of Tamizh - the Madras Baashai, be in a natural sauna to get rid of your fat via sweat. Move to Madras, condition yourself for a month or two and then declare to one and all proudly that you can survive Al'Aziziyah!

Eatopia - Maiya's

2011-05-04T22:00:00.001+05:30

Pedigree does show, especially with Maiya's. This is a vegetarian restaurant in 4th block of Jayanagar, Bengaluru, opposite to the police station and has a nice foodie aspect to it. This restaurant is from the MTR family and I have been here a few times for lunch/dinner and their Bisi-Bélé Bhath and Rava Idlis are stand-outs. They come with a very small cup of ghee (The metal cup is only as large as a small cap on your thumb, so chūntaani, to say). Spread over 4 floors, with the ground floor being a sweets and savouries section, the first for South Indian meals/tiffin and the floors above for special cuisine (Gujarati / North Indian)

South Indian meals are heavy there, and I am already tired of it. Starts with an appetizer (usually a juice or some digestive) in a silver tumbler (Señora disagrees that they are indeed silver), then comes a soup, vegetable curries, poori-saagu, bisi-bélé bhath, vadaam/sandigé, appalam, rice, dhal, sambar, kozhambu, rasam and curd, payasam/sweet and fruit-salad with ice-cream that reminds me of Crocin syrup with its taste and smell. The meal is Rs 110. The plates remind me of the cafeteria of my previous company. :) :)

Have not gone to the North Indian or Gujarati restaurants as of now; probably may not.

The restaurant is clean and large, the ambience decent. The only hiccup is that it is always crowded. You have to wait outside (cramped seating area) before being seated. The entrance to the dining floors is like a shanty fair and the passage is narrow.

Whenever you are in the Jayanagar 4th block area and feel like having a decent meal/evening snacks, drop by at Maiya's. It is worth an eat there. I was surprised that on my last visit, the person who took my order took it on an iPod Touch. Aha!

Unworded - Flower Beautiful

2011-04-25T13:10:00.000+05:30

Hanging Flowers - Clicked at Munnar

Versatile, they thought and so be it!!!

2011-04-18T12:34:00.005+05:30

Ambulisamma has honored this blog with an award (gasp!) for its versatile content (okay, okay, I am flattered!) and so, here go the thanks and the customaries.

RULES

1. Thank the person who awarded you & link back to them in your post

2. Tell 7 random facts about yourself

3. Pass the award

Thanks Ambulisamma (AA, in short) for the award and hope I am indeed versatile. When you sign AA in your comments, I recollect only Alcoholics Anonymous and not American Airlines, hic!, :-) :-).

RANDOM FACTS

I remember most of my classmates' names from my 10th standard than my 12th or my grad classes, given that it is eons since passing out of SSLC. Some nostalgia, that! I have never ever done full nighters before exams at any time. The only instance I remember studying past midnight was till 1:00 pm for a Chemistry exam in my undergrad class. I have been known to take it easy and played street cricket on the days of my SSLC final exams (even before heading for the exams) that my father was asked later if I passed. It is another matter that I passed with a very decent score that even I didn't expect. :-)
I loved to read newspapers end to end including classifieds at one point in time while my ears shut off from the rest of the world. It has reduced to just quick eye scans these days, but I usually need something to look at during my morn coffee or during meal times, even if it is a flyer for something useless (As Vivek, the comedian, quips in some movie about folks in a tea-shop reading about the Indira Gandhi assassination in the newspaper kept there). In fact, my cousins and aunt used to tease me stating that my future wife would insert ads in the newspapers to make me to get groceries et al or do chores. :-) Of course, Señora doesn't do that, I get an eyeful and an earful (unmuteable, unpre-emptible and unblockable) these days if I don't do the requested things. :-) :-)
I have always been intrigued at all the Page 3 folks in the newspapers (my paper is Times of India, ToI) as to what they do in real life other than cling on to each other and grin ear to ear all year long, have parties or pose with wine glasses and having interesting names with numerological twists. I even remember a few regulars on those pages. Those who know ToI know what a 'masala' paper it is. Señora now knows more about the Hollywoodies/Bollywoodies than me though she scarcely skims those pages. I used to nag her with questions on 'general knowledge' as to who is the current husband of whom, the past wife of whom, who is this/that, yada yada and these days she can identify almost all those 'icons' with their past and present and ex-es. :-D :-D
I used to lie (of course, not on serious topics) straight-faced as a practical joke on parents/Señora (examples being I am transferred to Delhi or I have to leave abroad over the weekend, I am going to quit my job etc). In earlier times, it was believed to the fullest and I would keep up the act for a long time. How long can one keep up with 'huli banththu, huli banththu' (puli varudhu, puli varudhu)? These days, one look at me and Señora sniffs it out as bluff though very rarely she errs. Fun, it is (was)!
Would like tiffin/snacks rather than a meal. I used to hate veggies, but now I eat almost everything (used to hate ladies-finger (okra) the worst, but now it is okay) with the singular exception of capsicum which I can only ingest as 'bajji'. Similar case with North Indian foods/masala. I only tolerate aloo-parota with pickles/curd. :-) You now know how to make me run a mile away!
I love the smell of rains and the weather just after it has rained. However standing in the rain or getting drenched is a strict no-no. I seem to have an skin reaction with respect to cold weather and dampness. So, no Holi for me folks!
Habits die hard, laziness rules and it does, really! I do not believe why one would need to go to the railway station and stand in the platform a full hour or two before the train ambles in. I believe in being kept on the toes. :) I have missed a train once to Bengaluru from Chennai and saw the last coach vanish slowly to a dot as I ran into the platform. Have been warned by Señora to leave home early especially if we are dropping her parents at the railway station. I ran out of petrol in the car once while doing the drop to the station and blood pressure shot through the roof for all folks in the car. Even now, I drive the car with the 'Fuel-low' lights on for a fair distance before I go to re-fuel. You should see the reaction of those in the car these days when I state that I see the fuel light has come on in the console. Ha Ha Ha :-) :-) Don't I need folks to push the car?

THIS AWARD IS SHARED WITH

Zeno, the philosopher, who was my inspiration to blog :-D
RS, mysterious and dignified. :-)
chennaigirl, P's mother and an interesting blogger :-)

Well, I have rambled on and on and on to make it 'random stories' and so here it stops. :-) :-)

Unworded - Color contrasts

2011-04-14T09:45:00.003+05:30

Tamizh New Year Greetings & Wishes!

Lavender amongst shades of green - Jacaranda blooms

Powers of Persuasion

2011-04-12T09:45:00.002+05:30

A few days back, on a Friday, I had to work out of home because of back-to-back early morning teleconferences and as driving into Bengaluru is a nightmare after 8:30 am. El Niño was having a holiday and the first thing he said after waking up was 'Thum aaj office nahin jaayaengaey'. We wonder as to how he manages to 'think' and talk in Hindi fluently when no Hindi is used at home except for watching what the characters mouth in Doraemon, Perman, Ninja Hattori, Shin-chan, Beyblade, Oggy and the cockroaches etc etc. :)

After fueling up and realizing that I was still at home and on my laptop, El Niño persuaded me to come and play at 9:00 am in the morning. Barked back saying that I had work to do and hence no play. For around half-an-hour there was no sign of him and then whoosh!, there was a paper rocket flying over my head. I ignored it and continued. A few minutes later, another paper missile landed with a dire missive. "Do not speak to me. Until you say sorry I wont talk to you".

And then I go, to find him behind a fortified barricade of pillows, sheets and blankets, drawn from all the rooms. A few sorrys and cajoling did not get him out of his frown. And then the magic words, "Shall we go and play TT and squash?", did the trick. And off we went out for an hour or so, burning a few calories with sweat, tears (me being accused of cheating in TT) and toil, while the work waited.

A similar scene two days back on Sunday. We had played tennis for around an hour in the baking morning sun on a concrete basketball court and came home to cool down when there was trouble again in the form of the swimming pool. Looked out toward the pool and not a soul in sight with only the shimmer of heat waves floating. Tried to wriggle out saying it is hot and I do not have swim trunks. And he went in, dug into my 'junk collection' and pulled out two big rubber-bands, strapped them to my knee length shorts and said, 'your swim shorts are ready. lets go'. Not to disappoint, drove down with him for around 6 kms to a sports shop, bought swim trunks and headed back home for lunch.

The negotiation started as to when we enter the pool.
"4:30 pm, when the sun is lower", I said.
"No, 2:30 pm", he refrained, "I'll finish food by 1:30 pm and then one hour to digest".
"It will be too hot even then. Look at you, all tanned. Okay, We'll go at 4:00 pm", I persist.

After a few minutes of back and forth of watching puppy-faced at the clock and at me, I had to melt (is there a choice?) and move the time up to 3:00 pm as the pool rendezvous. Slipped into an afternoon siesta after lunch with the drone of some toon TV channel in the background when a loud noise startled me. The TV was still on and the time was 3 minutes to 3:00 pm and there he was, before me, ready with his swim-wear accessories, towel et al and asking me to get mine to go to the pool.

And off we trudged to the pool, after dabbing some sunblock, with the sun beating down, for my 2 hours of flotation and attempted breath control in the water. I know only one water manoeuvre, the back float. (Need to learn swimming, but the thought of water going inside my nose freaks me out to panic)

Don't know where El Niño gets his energy from; his usual day now has an hour of swimming classes, an hour and a half of tennis thrice a week, then the local cricket and swimming sessions and at times, playing badminton and TT, hide-and-seek games with the kids around, Wii gaming as a side-kick to La Niña and then watching the toon channels. And for La Niña, except for the swim classes, and thrice a week music, the days are spent at immense leisure, watching TV/toon episodes on youtube.com, playing Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii and arranging and re-arranging her junk collection (like father, like daughter :-)) and maybe an hour or so of playing with her motley group of friends.

And for Señora, I have to thank her for all the mercies! Her day remains almost the same. She did mumble, 'Hmmm I should have the persuasive powers of El Niño. You seem to obey what he asks and he can twist you on his little finger.'

Ah! the joys of the school summer vacation, Still 50+ days to go for us to cope. Looks like El Niño asked Señora yesterday as to why I do not have a summer/Dussehra vacation like what he has. I am so overwhelmed with that gesture. Hope I had that luxury. :-) :-)

Unworded - Self Portrait

2011-03-03T12:00:00.003+05:30

Clicking Self
(with due credits to Ilaiyaraaja's 'Singing Self' from 'Nothing but Wind')

Universality

2011-03-01T08:30:00.004+05:30

It was a very busy week with everyone in my team struggling to cope. Was in a team meeting where some action items were being discussed and disbursed. There was one line item which had no takers. Our manager called out to one who was logged in on the conference bridge. "Rob, looks like it is in your area. Do you want to take it?" Rob, after a few moments of silence, replied. "Ok, I'll take it. Does it really matter that with my work and the other actions, I am already under water. It doesn't matter if it is an inch or a foot. Pile it on.". And we burst out laughing.

Reminded me of a Tamizh saying (or movie song) தலைக்கு மேலே வெள்ளம் போனால் சான் என்ன முழம் என்ன (When the flood flows above your head; matters not the measure, a cubit or a wrist!)

Some adages (sayings) are indeed universal!!! :-)

Voids not filled

2011-02-27T11:10:00.001+05:30

I knew Vaidhyanathan Sir (Sir, as we called him or Vaitthaa maama for the kids) from the time of my marriage. Señora knew him maybe from her school/college times. He was an LIC agent, down to earth, going around with a bag of folders/documents on his TVS-50 in Thanjavur and minding his business. I do not know his age, maybe around 50+, looked a bit older than his age, with some broken teeth and a quirky laugh. He was a bachelor, lived in a simple tenement in some bylane of Thanjavur, and didn't have much of an extended family from his side. He was a pillar to Señora's parents and considered a member of the family. Any occasion/emergency in the home, he was there, either helping out on something or just there with his presence lending moral support and in case we wanted any helping hands or some quick errands to run, He never expected anything in return. Whenever Señora's parents visited us in Bangalore for long visits, he would be requested to take charge of the house, which he did.

At Thanjavur, we would meet at Señora's place, discuss state, local, colony and LIC office politics or some trivia, with him seated in a foldable metal chair in the hall near to the entrance. We would force him to have tiffin/coffee or lunch at our home in spite of his protestations and he used to drop in regularly at our home with a caveat that we don't force him to eat/drink. We used to pull him in on any of our visits to places around Thanjavur, if he was available, so that he gets a break out of his day-to-day routine. He was always a busy man, being in Thanjavur one day, the evening in Tiruchi, the next day in Bangalore and maybe the next day in Madras or Mayavaram or sometimes Bombay. He had a rickety old Nokia cell phone and refused to buy a new one saying that was more than enough for him. He knew maybe half the people of Thanjavur, maybe an exaggeration, but he knew lots of people.

He used to visit us and my parents at Bangalore. He would call up and tell that he would visit us, or drop by just like that, waiting for us to return if we were out. He would at times book a hotel and we would protest that he could always come in to any of our homes at Bangalore and of late he did stay with us on his known visits to Bangalore. In any of the functions that we hosted, he was usually there, though he didn't need to be. He was a man of very simple needs and we were always in doubt as to what to gift him other than shirts or pants, even of which his tastes were very down to earth.

Two weeks back, he was in an accident when a two-wheeler hit him and suffered serious injuries on his head. Some good samaritans who knew him rushed him to hospital. He had surgery on his skull/brain and was in coma for around a week and on a respirator and passed away without any sign of recovery middle of last week.

Señora is distraught and her parents are in shock. It is painful for one who was close and known to you to be no more, all of a sudden. We do not know what his plans were for the future (or if he really planned something), any encumberances that he was addressing, things he promised for others or for that matter if he thought of anything beyond the present. He probably did not even get a chance to even think of his day ahead, leave alone a future plan or a post life plan or for that matter anything to convey to anyone as his life was cut short. For us, we do not have one who was trusted and was someone to lean on. We hoped that he might come out of coma, but he was sinking slowly and it was distressing that he was alone as he passed away in the ICU with no one nearby.

I hope time is a healer. Sometimes, voids never can be filled or forgotten. Everytime now if we see the iron foldable chair at our house where he used to sit, everytime we hear a TVS-50 rumbling down the road, everytime we see a rectangular black bag of documents, we'd be remembering him.

May Vaidhyanathan Sir's soul, wherever it is, rest in peace.

[I am using this post as a personal vent to what I feel and hence disabled comments]

Une potion de légumes

2011-02-21T10:15:00.001+05:30

Ever tried doing a sambar with the following medley of veggies; broccoli, baby corn, onions, peas, bamboo shoots, carrots, red peppers etc? Hee Hee Hee, I did one and I liked it, courtesy the MTR sambar mix which sambarizes the veggies from their tasteless individual avatars into an encompassing aroma and nose-watering pungency of the sambar.

It is said that certain types of wines enhance the flavor of certain types of food and vice versa. Wonder what would be the right pairing for southie meals. Water!!! Being starved of certain food makes you crave more for it maybe.

Anyway, hail MTR and its cousins...

Short Takes

2011-02-15T11:00:00.001+05:30

Trying not to hibernate on the blog. :-) Here are a few movies watched over the past few weeks at random intervals. I think the next post may also be of movies. :-]

Memento
The original 'Ghajini' movie from Christopher Nolan. A man with a short term memory loss caused by an assault on him and his wife, avenges his wife's death, and how! The screenplay is imaginative with a forward narrative of the present and a flash back narrative in a reverse timeline that alternate and merge. You must have seen the first scene amongst the initial credit sequences to tie up the narratives. Murugadoss must be congratulated for adding masala to Ghajini and adapting it to Indian sensibilities with Asin (the original has no definition of this character other than that she gets killed) and Nayantara (there is a decent characterization of her role in the original) along with the protagonist Surya. The back and forth narration would have definitely not cut ice with the Indian audience as it confuses the flow. A memorable movie for the 'whoa!' narrative.

2001 - A Space Odyssey
One of the earliest 'interpret it as you want to' type of movies and made before my generation. Directed by Stanley Kubrick on a Arthur C Clarke science fiction novel. No dialogues at all for the first 20 and the last 20 minutes. It kind of gets to you, sometimes nothing but silence and darkness fills the screen and you wonder if the projector has failed. Most of the special effects (no computer graphics at that time and the effects were done with real scale models and very clever camera sequences) are spell-binding. Blue Danube of Strauss is used for the space station docking sequences, and is just soaring and induces goose-bumps. The highlight is the HAL 9000 computer which turns against the astronauts. It is very slow moving with minimal dialogues and supposedly a cult movie as per the current generation sci-fi stalwarts (Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, ...). Watch it, but be warned that you may lose patience and get edgy and fidgety at what Kubrick is conveying.

Shawshank Redemption
I don't know how many times I have seen this movie and how many times I will. Story (adapted from a Stephen King short story) of a person's saga at the Shawshank prison into which he is jailed for life for murdering his wife and her lover, a crime which he has not committed. Tim Robbins (as the new convict) and Morgan Freeman (who has been in jail for 20 years before Tim) are stellar, as prisoners who develop a bond. The story builds up slowly to a crescendo where Tim outwits the jail warden for his freedom and for the innovative use of Raquel Welch, Marilyn Monroe and Rita Hayworth as a facade. Worth a watch, anytime!

Bliss

2011-01-21T17:00:00.006+05:30

If this isn't bliss, what else is?

Have a peaceful weekend

Zzzz....

[Picture courtesy: An image on newcapriusbeanbag.com, modified with Gimp]

Stumped

2011-01-19T14:00:00.003+05:30

Some times, kids have you stumped, literally and figuratively. Their observation is immaculately tuned.

Here is a short dialogue between self and El Niño last Sunday.

El Niño was busy with TV on the eve of his Monday morning test at school. He was inattentive to us, generally and sunk in cartoon world. It was a frustrating exercise for Señora in prodding La Niña to finish her lessons (La Niña seems to have my genes in day-dreaming with books! :-)), but for El Niño, he is cocky on his capability, kind of a go-getter. His money-math is awesome. No way can he be ~~cheated~~ hoodwinked by us when it comes to money and asks never-ending questions on it. :)

Me: I will give five lakhs to you if you get a state rank and to your Amma if 'La Niña' gets it.
El Niño (all attentive now): Five lakhs! What is state rank?
Me: When you get within the top 10 or top 50 ranks in the entire state? They'll put your name in the newspapers.
El Niño: How will you give me?
Me: In 1000 and 500 rupee notes, cash, from the bank.
El Niño: Okay. Will you give me 5 lakhs if I get first in Monday tests?
Me: No, that is for your 10th standard. Not now.
El Niño: Okay! But you have to give me the money then, but not by taking a loan. (and back to watching TV)
Me/Señora: @#$%^&*

Similar question to La Niña.

Me: Will you be a topper in your tenth? I'll give you 5 lakhs.
La Niña: Mmmm, Grrr, Hee Hee Hee, Whaaaat?, Go away!

Travelogue - A car, a waterfall and a beach

2011-01-11T21:08:00.000+05:30

This is a backlog post of another of my trips and a long one at that. It is more than 2 months since the visit, and I referred to it in my last travelogue at the end. This trip was worth remembering for all the trauma it caused us. :-) Back to the topic, this time, the quickfire target of a trip was to head to Jog Falls (a.k.a. Gersoppa Falls) and then maybe drive on to Karwar. In a space of around 2 weeks or so, we were getting to see two of India's tallest straight drop waterfalls, the earlier one being at Kodaikanal. And so, it was. I had fixed a tyre puncture earlier in the day by myself. (Señora gets into a fit whenever I do anything with the car, the tyres especially. I have a tubeless tyre puncture kit and portable compressor and so I can pretty much fix a flat tyre (tubeless, that is) after taking the wheel out. You see, I am a hands-on person. :) :) :)) Headed out from Bengaluru on a Saturday afternoon along with parents, and planned to halt at Shimoga for the night and then head further north to Jog in the morning. Boy!, I underestimated the amount of circus that needed to be done inside Bengaluru to get to the outskirts. I had been complaining of digging for the Metro on the road that I take to home and this was far worse. Chock-a-block traffic, dug out roads, unopened fly-overs waiting for some politico to open, bad drivers and by the time we hit the outskirts of Bengaluru, it was 4:00 PM and we were sapped.

As we approached Arsikéré at dusk, we were pushed off the road into the gravel by a mad oncoming driver and while getting back on to the road at a fair speed, one of the tyres scraped a jagged road edge. Didn't notice the damage till we reached Arsikéré for dinner, a few minutes later. Post dinner, saw that one tyre was flat. My stepney was already a weak tyre with a tube fitted in it and I thought I'll get the current one fixed before I move on. Inflated the tyre and then headed to a roadside puncture shop which had no lights and got two tyres patched (including the one which I had fixed in the morning) using light from a halogen street light. By the time we reached Shimoga, it was well past midnight and all hotels were full. Found a nothing-to-write-about accommodation for the night and then headed to Jog in the morning.

Though I do not have a base in Shimoga to write about it, I can associate to it for the 'vadu maangaa' (tender mango, Maavina Midii in Kannada) pickles that my cousin gets from one of her relatives at Mathoor, the Sanskrit speaking village, which is on the route from Shimoga to Thirthahalli. The mangoes are so crunchy and tasty that I smack my lips just thinking of it. :-D We usually get 2 or 3 jars every year which is apportioned amongst near and dear (with a larger portion for us. :)) This year was a dry one since my cousin couldn't make it to there. We got only one small jar in 2010 (no sharing this time and I flicked the entire jar) and right now, there maybe just one or two mangoes floating in the brine. We were actually discussing if we should call my cousin and ask for her relatives' address and pickup some jars of the same, but decided against it. :-) The other place where we usually look out for 'helluva tasting pickles' is at the Biligiri Rangana Bettaa (B R hills) near Kollegal, in a small eatery on the way to the Ranganathaswamy temple.The pickles from the forest produce like gooseberry, mango, mango-ginger,carrots etc taste just as divine as the beautiful Ranga there.

The Jog in October-November

The Roarer sliding to join the Raja midway

It was uneventful, till we reached Jog. Jog was not at its prettiest (or for that matter, scariest). The flow was less and it wasn't an 'awe' spectacle, neither was it awful. Water from the Linganamakki reservoir feeds the falls (the four branches named Raja, Roarer, Rocket and Rani from left to right) and it is throttled down upstream at the dam. We were there in the off-season. :( We were thinking of going down to the bottom of the falls, but dropped it on figuring that it was a 3-4 hour odyssey. After the customary clicks, headed to the other bank of Sharavathi where you can stand at the head of the falls and look down the gorge. This is the place made famous by the Kannada movie, Mungaaru Malé (meaning (Pre)Monsoon Rains) which showed Jog in angles never before seen in movies.

Jog - Another view. The steps leading to
the base of the falls snake far away

It is an experience lying on a flat bed of rock that abuts the falls and then peep down to see water tumble on a straight drop of almost a thousand feet, especially the Raja falls. I did this with vertigo and butterflies in my stomach and there were people who were standing just a feet or two from where the drop begins. After the vertigo inducing view, headed back to lunch and yo!, one of the fixed tyres at Arsikéré was going flat. Pumped it again, but the leak seemed severe and so started the tyre replacement at the Jog Falls

The Raja falling. The rock (top left
corner) is where the vertigo view is.

parking lot with a motley crowd of taxi drivers watching me professionally take the wheel apart (looks like the running air compressor caught their fancy and they were asking me where I got it, how much etc :-)) Señora was red with rage with this tyre change tamasha (she says she warned me ahead of time to get the tyres fixed and I must have been day-dreaming when she said that ;-)). Headed to Honnavara (50 kms away from Jog) which is close to the coast, after climbing down the ghats (3/4ths of this segment had bad roads) and from where Karwar was another 50 kms north. We reached Karwar just in time for the sunset.

Sunset at the Tagore Beach at Karwar with the sunset mode enabled on the camera

We were at the Rabindranath Tagore beach and went and stood in the water. I am impelled to break into verse just recollecting it.
So calm a beach, so white the sands,
So less a crowd, and the feet washed grand;
So lovely the skies, so green the hills,
So fine a place, the heart has had its fill.

Entering Karwar (from Goa side)
The Kali river bridge beckons

Tagore had been here when he was 22 and he wrote his first play there. After a very nice couple or so hours at the beach, building sand castles, watching crabs, eating nuts and watching an anchored ship glowing in its night lights, headed towards our hotel, meantime stopping at an Udipi restaurant for dinner. While getting down, noticed that the other tyre was half flat. Here we were, in the middle of nowhere (ok, close to Karwar, but still) with 2 flat tyres. Pumped up the leaky tyre and headed quickly to a hotel (Kamat) which was just across from where the wide-wide river Kali meets the Arabian Sea.

River Kali's sangama(m) with the Arabian Sea

The next morning saw me do a double tyre change procedure and fixing a flat one with the puncture kit. It was a gorgeous view out of the Kamat hotel that overlooks the sangama(m) of the Kali river and the sea. A sand bar marks where the merge is.

Naval Warship Museum

Since it was Kannada Rajyotsava day, we weren't sure of any of the shops being open to get the tyres fixed. The plan was to go to Om beach near Gokarna and then head back to Bengaluru. We meanwhile visited the Naval warship museum, which was a real warship, beached and converted into a museum. Went into and around it and got a feel of the claustrophobic lives the sailors endure. We then headed into Karwar for the tyre fix. Found a shop open, bought a tube for the tubeless tyre (!), got it fixed (and unfortunately I put it in as a stepney) and then headed to Om beach.

The Sharavathi backwaters from the Linganamakki

Till Gokarna, it was fine. Stopped there to have lunch and to our dismay, found that the flat tyre that had been fixed at the hotel in the morning had conked. Did another tyre replacement with the reinforced tyre (fitted with a tube at Karwar) in the hot sun, with a river of sweat flowing. It was quick! 10 minutes and a wheel swapped. That was fast! Experience does matter :-)

Sandelicious - Devbagh beach

Dropped plans for Om beach (just around 8 kms away from there) and then headed back towards Bengaluru for a 400 km journey, with no stepney to fall-back on. Señora gave a respite for me at the wheel by taking over while the sweat vaporated. We were in two minds as to whether to go to Udipi and then take the Charmadi Ghats or take the same route via Jog back. Took the Jog route since we didn't want to get stranded on the ghats in case misfortune befell the tyres and also that the coastal highway was bad from Honnavara towards Udipi. :) As we climbed towards Jog, stopped by briefly to look at the Sharavathi backwaters. We saw a large natural waterfall on the way (no name) before we passed Jog. By the time we crossed Shimoga, it had become dark with almost 270 more kms to Bengaluru. Parents were worried and suggested stopping over for the night at Bhadravati or maybe Arsikéré.

A waterfall en route, nameless

We reached Arsikéré for dinner when rain started pouring. We were almost 160+ kms away from destination and we (me and Señora, acting against her policy of no driving (nor allowing me to) on the highways at night) decided to hit the road in spite of the rain. And the drive in the rain started, with an Ilaiyaraaja hits CD keeping company, the AC on with the heater (to defog), a lone dark road ahead except for a few vehicles that we passed or those that came in the opposite direction. It is such a trance inducing feeling (for me) with a sheet of rain battering the windshield, a near empty road and the headlamps shining bright showing the slivers of rain and the drone of the car at a constant speed.

The rain followed us (or rather we were in the middle of it) for almost 120 kms all the way through Tumkur and till the outskirts of Bengaluru. Reached home at around 1:00 AM, safe and with no more tyre incidents. Señora's scorching glares thereafter, whenever I went near the car made me scoot to a tyre dealer and change all 5 tyres on the car, spending a fortune. Do not go near the tyres again, failing which the consequences shall be dire!, the lady spaketh thus, and the man humbly followeth. :-) After all this tyre flipping, I think I can add a new skill into my work profile, that of a qualified 4 wheeler tyre changer/fitter. :-)

The vertigo video. Lowered the quality of the video, but nevertheless

And thus ended a longgg trip. Have to do a specific "Karwar and surroundings" trip, for that place is beautifully beautiful. Makes me wish Bengaluru should have had a beach close by to make it complete! Sigh! I close by quoting Tagore on Karwar. "The sea beach of Karwar is certainly a fit place in which to realize the beauty of nature is not a mirage of imagination, but reflects the joy of the infinite and thus draws us to lose ourselves into it."

Nothing but wind

2011-01-03T22:06:00.000+05:30

The perpetually nippy weather these days at Bengaluru has floored me down with its manifestations. The first day of work this year has been tagged as a sick leave. I am like what Revathi tells Kamalhassan in 'Thevar Magan', "வெறும் காத்துதாங்க வருது" (only air is coming out) when he asks her to sing a song. Coupled with a nagging bad cold, a severe throat infection has ensured that I can only hiss (gosh! why am I reminded of Mallika Sherawat when I use this word?) or whisper what I want to convey. Any attempt to raise my voice leads to a spurt of coughing and broken words making it unintelligible as the sound of a coconut being rolled in a closed drum.

Avoiding a visit to the doc to resist antibiotics, Let's see how long I survive this self imposed hibernation.

And the title was just an inspiration from Ilaiyaraaja's old musical album with flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia performing the lovely symphony of wind and the bamboo in the midst of some beautiful orchestration.

Whatever it might be, it is not a nice experience losing your voice, albeit for a short time. :-)

I wish I wish ...

2011-01-01T11:47:00.000+05:30

More than anything, everyone to be in their pink of health and a permeating happiness of contentedness.

Wishing all a wonderful year ahead.

Unworded-A Sun-rise and a Moon-set

2010-12-24T10:10:00.003+05:30


And 'Hi' said the Sun to the Moon Montage using Gimp. Photos taken within minutes of each other at opposite horizons Camera: Nokia N73 (alas!, the quality does suffer here)

Aural nourishment

2010-12-20T12:34:00.001+05:30

How many FM radio stations are there in your city? Chances are that you'll know the 'non-stop prattle' entertainment channels. Namma Bengaluru hosts Radio City, Radio One, Radio Mirchi, Radio Indigo, Big FM, Red FM, Fever, of course Vividh Bharati (it doesn't seem to have changed from eons. You can hear the distinct 'coooo' tone when an ad segment begins or ends :-D), AIR FM Rainbow and the lesser known Amritavarshini (AIR classical music). There is one hidden gem, Gyan Vani (or Gyaan Vaani to be phonetically right) which is usually skipped over by the majority or never tuned into. (Disclaimer: depends on how you look at it. It is a gem to me, at least)

Gyan Vani is an educational FM radio station transmitting at 106.4 MHz (the frequencies have changed multiple times in the past few years, but looks like the transmit frequency is being rationalized throughout the country) under the aegis of the IGNOU (Indira Gandhi National Open University) and programmes developed by its Electronic Media Production Centre. Almost all the Indian metros have this station active. The broadcast programs are an eclectic potpourri !!!. Collegiate lessons across different majors, PUC lessons and preps for exams, history, current events, spiritual talks, classical and semi-classical music, scientific talks, health awareness programs, sociology, radio programs from other countries (at times) and vernacular programming.

These days, I am jogging my memory lane on my morning/evening commutes on the war of Indian Independence like Cripps mission, Quit India movement et al and also brushing up on DNA/RNA, nucleotides, Watson-Crick model etc. Some programs are brilliant and some so-so, but the aim is to educate and most of it is definitely worth a hear.

Tune in, if you haven't and have a good time if it interests you. :-D

(the title is taken off a Tamizh saying, 'செவிக்குணவில்லாத போழ்து சிறிது வயிற்றுக்கும் ஈயப்படும்', which translates to 'Nourishment for the tum is when you aren't aurally nourished for your soul')

Chinnanchiru Kiliyae - சின்னஞ் சிறு கிளியே

2010-12-11T00:00:00.049+05:30

Today, Dec 11, being the birth anniversary of Bharathi (born Dec 11, 1882), here is a translation of another of his well known poems.

Kannamma is seen in multiple forms by Bharathi, as a diety, as a lover and as a child. This poem's premise is that of Bharathi seeing Goddess Parāshakthi as a small child. He goes into a rapturous vent at the child with an outpour of emotions; happiness, longing, respect, love, joy, pride, pain, restraint, submission!

Bharathiar and Chellamma- Image courtesy - The Web
Montage courtesy - self, using Gimp :-)

கண்ணம்மா-என் குழந்தை

பராசக்தியைக் குழந்தையாகக் கண்டு சொல்லிய பாட்டு

சின்னஞ் சிறு கிளியே-கண்ணம்மா!
செல்வக் களஞ்சியமே!
என்னைக் கலிதீர்த்தே-உலகில்
ஏற்றம் புரிய வந்தாய்!

பிள்ளைக் கனியமுதே-கண்ணம்மா!
பேசும்பொற் சித்திரமே!
அள்ளி யணைத்திடவே-என் முன்னே
ஆடி வருந் தேனே!

ஓடி வருகையிலே-கண்ணம்மா!
உள்ளங் குளிரு தடீ!
ஆடித்திரிதல் கண்டால்-உன்னைப்போய்
ஆவி தழுவு தடீ!

உச்சி தனை முகந்தால்-கருவம்
ஓங்கி வளரு தடீ!
மெச்சி யுனையூரார்-புகழ்ந்தால்
மேனி சிலிர்க்கு தடீ!

கன்னத்தில் முத்தமிட்டால்-உள்ளந்தான்
கள்வெறி கொள்ளு தடீ!
உன்னைத் தழுவிடிலோ,-கண்ணம்மா!
உன்மத்த மாகு தடீ!

சற்றுன் முகஞ் சிவந்தால்-மனது
சஞ்சல மாகு தடீ!
நெற்றி சுருங்கக் கண்டால்-எனக்கு
நெஞ்சம் பதைக்கு தடீ!

உன்கண்ணில் நீர்வழிந்தால்-என்னெஞ்சில்
உதிரங் கொட்டு தடீ!
என்கண்ணிற் பாவையன்றோ?-கண்ணம்மா!
என்னுயிர் நின்ன தன்றோ?

சொல்லு மழலையிலே-கண்ணம்மா!
துன்பங்கள் தீர்ந்திடு வாய்;
முல்லைச் சிரிப்பாலே-எனது
மூர்க்கந் தவிர்த்திடு வாய்.

இன்பக் கதைக ளெல்லாம்-உன்னைப்போல்
ஏடுகள் சொல்வ துண்டோ?
அன்பு தருவதிலே -உனைநேர்
ஆகுமோர் தெய்வ முண்டோ?

மார்பில் அணிவதற்கே-உன்னைப்போல்
வைர மணிக ளுண்டோ?
சீர்பெற்று வாழ்வதற்கே-உன்னைப்போல்
செல்வம் பிறிது முண்டோ?

and the translation ... Any translation will struggle to match this original and may never will, and this one too is no exception.

Kannamma - My child

An ode to Parāshakthi seen as a child

My little parakeet, dear Kannamma,
My store of immense wealth you are!
To rid me of vice, you descend,
And elevate the world you care!

Ambrosial darling, you are, Kannamma,
An expressive painting of gilt!
For me to sweep you up and hug;
Honey, You dance before me and flit!

As you rush to me, Kannamma,
The heart of mine tingles!
Looking at you, play and drift,
Embraces you my soul and mingles!

As I take a breath off you, up and close,
Swells high my pride!
Extol the folks on you, when they;
Shudders my body inside!

A kiss planted on the cheek;
Intoxicated, is my heart!
An embrace of you, Kannamma;
Rips me delirious, apart!

Your face turning crimson, I behold;
Grieves my heart, dear!
A frown, I notice on your brow;
Stirs my soul, with fear!

Pearls of tears in your eyes, shed,
Bleeds red my heart!
You are the apple of my eye, Kannamma;
Isn't my life yours, to part?

Child-speak, of yours, Kannamma,
Away drains my pain;
Pearly laughter of yours, I hear,
From rage I abstain!

Your tales of joy, recounted,
Would the books ever near?
Your flow of love, shared,
Would the Divine ever peer?

In my bosom to wear, like you,
Are there diamonds to strand?
To live a life, straight,
Is there wealth beyond you, as grand?

Here is a pointer to a rendition by Sudha Raghunathan. [You may need to click twice] I have not heard any rendition that includes the last 3 stanzas, which are beautiful too.

Another lovely mellifluent rendition by Unnikrishnan in his "Mellifluous Melodies" album

Why is it so hard to let go?

2010-12-07T09:00:00.006+05:30

Years of gradual accumulation of things makes it so hard to let go; they range from small to large, toys and games that are long worn-out or discoloured, old books, papers and electronics junk, boxes and bags, clothes and furniture. Making it miserable is the fact that memories cling on to a few of them.

Learning it the hard, difficult way, as we are in the middle of a home shift. A filtering of what we feel are not really useful further and needs to be dumped, is in progress. Makes me realize painfully (it is not sorrow, however), how things are squirreled away slowly, unbeknownst of the fact they need to be discarded one day as they are past utilizability.

Just letting the unrest pass before it settles down to an equilibrium of acceptance ... :-)

Takes

2010-12-06T10:20:00.002+05:30

A short review (or is it?) of a movie after a long lapse. Was sitting in my Drafts folder for close to two weeks and any later posting of it may not make any sense. :-D

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part I

Image courtesy: Wikipedia

First time in my life, I have gone to a movie on the second day of its release. :-D This is strictly a movie for the fans, and not for the generalist who doesn't have an intro into Harry Potter (HP). Still if you insist on going, it is like seeing a portion of a narration, which seems out of context and with no clue of what is happening or what happened or why and the plethora of characters that come and go and the gobbledegook that permeates it.

There is always a 'coolness' about waving wands for tricks and special effects which radiate light from the wands as they are used and charms/spells that spell doom or otherwise, being uttered with all fury on the opponent. I love the HP movies for some of their special effects, wit and charm of the leads and most of the time for having you lose yourself in their world. My reading of the books stopped after book 2, but Señora has run through all of them at least twice.

Voldemort is stronger than ever and with more screen presence this time, takes over Hogwarts and installs his cronies, and in the meanwhile continuing his quest to finish off Harry Potter. This is a dark movie, with no smiles from any of the lead faces except for maybe a short 2 minute duration in a 2.5 hour movie. There is humour in a few scenes, few in-between, some subtle and the rest are all simmering with ominous dread. There is no familiar environment of Hogwarts and the story takes place fully outside its precincts. Harry, Hermione and Ron, pull the movie forward with sufficient chemistry between them. Reminds to an extent of the Eclipse movie saga. Some of the scenery where the characters apparate to, is mindblowingly gorgeous (England/Scotland?) and seems like a painting right out of a Wordsworth poem.

One more horcrux of Voldemort is destroyed and Voldemort vandalizes the tomb of Dumbledore to steal his wand which is one of the three deathly hallows (the meaning and story of which is flashed back as puppet type imagery), and the movie ends for its sequel, I couldn't help wondering, how much knots still need to be uncovered, how many wands would clash, how the revenges would be taken in the good vs. evil fight and how many deaths including the most awaited one of Voldemort, can be crammed into 2.5 to 3 hours when the final movie races out in July next year. Till that time, I need to read the books again.

If you are a Harry Potter fan, this one leaves you somewhat unsatiated and looking forward for the finale as sufficient tension has been built up and it is freeze-frame for another 8 months. If you are not, nothing to miss, I mean, you miss nothing.

The cattle class

2010-12-02T11:11:00.002+05:30

Was standing yesterday at a zebra crossing with three cute calves close by. Crossed over to the median in the middle of the road once the traffic thinned on my side and was waiting there to get to the other as the traffic was persistent. I was suddenly nudged at my back and I turned back startled to see that it was one of the calves. All the three were lined up behind me (though there was enough space beside), also doing the road crossing maneuver. One of the calves mooed and it sounded to me as if it was asking me to 'move'. Hopped aside and they crossed the road without a fuss (blocking the oncoming traffic, ha!), with me piggybacking along to the other side.

Couldn't help a chuckle with a disbelieving shake of the head. :-D Street smart, they are, I've to acknowledge!

Vaendum - வேண்டும்

2010-11-26T12:34:00.027+05:30

An interesting poem from Bharathi, from the collection ஞானப் பாடல்கள் (Poems of Wisdom), titled வேண்டும் [Vaendum, Need (or) Want, loosely translated]. The word வேண்டும் can be interpreted to be either a need, in a mellow sense (as in 'You need these') or as a pre-requisite requirement, in a stricter sense (as in 'You should have these').

வேண்டும்

மனதி லுறுதி வேண்டும்,
வாக்கினி லேயினிமை வேண்டும்;
நினைவு நல்லது வேண்டும்,
நெருங்கின பொருள் கைப்பட வேண்டும்;
கனவு மெய்ப்பட வேண்டும்,
கைவசமாவது விரைவில் வேண்டும்;
தனமும் இன்பமும் வேண்டும்,
தரணியிலே பெருமை வேண்டும்.
கண் திறந்திட வேண்டும்,
காரியத்தி லுறுதி வேண்டும்;
பெண் விடுதலை வேண்டும்,
பெரிய கடவுள் காக்க வேண்டும்,
மண் பயனுற வேண்டும்,
வானகமிங்கு தென்பட வேண்டும்;
உண்மை நின்றிட வேண்டும்.
ஓம் ஓம் ஓம் ஓம்.

The translation of mine is as follows. I blurred the distinction between connecting and separating clauses in the original sentences and hopefully kept the meaning intact. I have played with the dichotomy of the word Vaendum (வேண்டும்) to translate it, as some lines could be looked at in both ways.

Thou shalt

Thou shalt require
strength of mind,
Thou shalt require
pleasantness in words,
Thou shalt require
fairness of thoughts;
Thou shalt achieve
what you set out to,
Thou shalt achieve
what you dreamt of,
Thou shalt achieve
ownership by agility;
Thou shalt possess
riches and joy,
Thou shalt possess
pride for this Earth,
Thou shalt possess
an openness of mind;
Thou shalt value
the belief in your work,
Thou shalt value
the freedom of womanhood,
Thou shalt value
the auspices of the Supreme;
Thou shalt have
an impact [a use] on this Earth,
Thou shalt have
a view here of the heavens,
Thou shalt have
the truth to stand;
Om Om Om Om

The following is a rendition of this poem from the movie "Sindhu Bhairavi" by K J Yesudas in his own inimitable way. [You may need to click twice]

Intrusion

2010-11-24T11:11:00.006+05:30

The door was securely locked and the house fairly clean. I state 'fairly' as I agree with what Sneha (or was it Srikanth?) tells in the movie 'Parthiban Kanavu' about a house needing to be a home and not a museum to be absolutely spick and span. :-D [Now I am sure to be taken care of with the ammikkal I had referred to in the travelogue :-) as already the dining table is never used for dining.]

We return back in the night after around 6 hours. Door was still securely locked. Things looked the same, that is, almost.

RamMmm: Who left these banana peels here, in the middle of the room?
La Niña: Don't know, not me.
RamMmm shrugs, moves the peels to a safe place and climbs upstairs.
RamMmm (with a slightly raised voice): Who ate bananas? Who dropped the peels on the stairs? Someone could slip
La Niña, Señora (surprised): What? No one ate any bananas.
Señora (from the kitchen): Why is the packet of salt on the floor and broken?
(Bulbs flash that it could have been an intruder...)
Señora (panic): Go, go, go see if all the doors are still locked.
RamMmm (scrambling): Yes, they are. But wait, one window is open!
Señora: All bananas are missing.
(Ha Haa, more bulbs again)

It must have been a simian (Sherlock Holmes, ahem! me, deduces that there must have been only one because two would have caused mayhem inside the house, Two is company, isn't it?) that has sauntered in through an open window on 1st floor, pass 2 rooms, climb down the stairs to the ground floor, get into the kitchen and finish off around 10 yelakki bananas, throw the peels here and there, push a few things down and make an escape long before we were back.

Our laugh amongst all this was that El Niño's keychain that has a small rubbery banana toy attached, was targeted by the monkey as a real banana. It was ripped into two pieces and discarded. Maybe should have been there to see the face of the monkey when it bit into the rubbery banana. :-D

And now, the security threat level in the house has been raised to Orange (high risk) from Blue (guarded), [Ha Ha Ha, blame the US Dept of Homeland Security for these coloring schemes] where most of the windows and doors will be locked down before any trip out of the house, however short the duration. The next day, it was noticed that lots of Alpenliebe wrappers were strewn on the sunshades with the candy gone. Smart monkeys, there are, and they become smarter by the day, living alongside us. God save!

[There had been a burglary a few months back in our layout where the burglar(s) cleaned up almost all valuables in the house, opened the fridge, ate whatever was in there and then made good their escape while the inmates continued to sleep. :-( Another one happened in just a gap of around 2 hours in the evening when the people were out for a function. They returned to find the house vandalized and some valuables along with cash gone. This house was in the direct line of sight of the layout's security gate. And hence all the paranoia]

Travelogue - A 1900 km drive (Part deux)

2010-11-21T12:34:00.001+05:30

The earlier portion of the travelogue can be found [here]. Be forewarned that this post is longggg. :-) All the images can be clicked to see a larger view.

The trouble with the car being over, we headed towards Kanyakumari from Madurai with a short detour at Tirumangalam for lunch. Food was okay and I noticed that the hotels there and beyond kept 'kothavarangai vaththal' (dried and salted cluster beans, roasted in oil) which I liked immensely, and snacked on it exclusively rather than as an accompaniment to food (usually with curd rice). NH-7 (or NH-44, according to the new national highway numbering plan, of numbering East-West highways with odd numbers and North-South highways with even numbers, similar to the North American way, but with numbering swapped) is a joy to drive on. 99% of the road from Bengaluru to Kanyakumari is 4-laned. I could only recollect 4 bridges where work is still in progress. All the 650 kms of it can be traversed in around 10 hours with 2 or 3 short breaks and no need to get into any town.

Windmills of the Gods!

The landscape is literally nothing to talk about beyond Madurai until you come close to Tirunelveli. Dry and harsh, with nothing but vast empty land and short shrubs, tall thorny shrubs on river and lake beds and the glaring sun came along with us as we passed Virudhunagar, Sattur, Kovilpatti and Kayathar. The landscape slowly changed near Tirunelveli (the place famed for its halwa and its traders) with some hills and lots of greenery coming up. As we drove past Tirunelveli, we saw one of the examples of a formidable alternate green energy source, wind. Well, do I call this place the Netherlands of India? Maybe! Hundreds of windmills, of all sizes and shapes, dot both sides of the highway, spinning with a whooshy sound to the breeze from the sea which was probably around 30-40 kms from there towards the east, and connected to the power grid. Now I understand where all the huge 100 feet blades which are transported in 18 wheeler trucks near Bengaluru on NH-7 are headed to. For some time, I had thought they were the wings of aircraft, but was suspicious about it since there were no ailerons or wing flaps, on those huge turbine blades.

Sunset at Kanyakumari

It was evening when we drove into Kanyakumari. Went to the Vivekananda Kendra at Vivekanandapuram, where we found a decent with no-frills accomodation, freshened up and headed for our rendezvous with the sunset at Cape Comorin. There is a sunset beach (the beach is not like the Chennai Marina, but does have a few metres of sand with rocky outcrops), around 2-3 kms west from the Gandhi Mandapam, where we watched the sun go down blazing and mellow into the Arabian Sea, standing in the water even as La Niña and El Niño were busy picking up shells of different shapes and sizes. It is always soothing being washed in the feet incessantly by the waves and the mild feeling of sinking in the sand as the the sand is washed over.


Gandhi Mandapam with the ocean and the moon as a backdrop

Sunrise at Kanyakumari
La Niña, El Niño picking shells

The evening was spent at the Gandhi Mandapam, the Kanyakumari temple and just walking around the shops close to the shore and watching probably what may be the lights of distant ships circumnavigating Cape Comorin. Came back to Vivekananda Kendra, where the canteen has awesome tiffin (minimal choice, but great taste). Woke up early the next morning and walked to the private beach there for the sunrise watch. Waited and waited for the sun to be up and it was already day break and we were told that the sunrise would not be at the horizon because of clouds, but fairly above it. Slightly disappointed, but then we waited there till the sun was up between the clouds. The sand at this beach is different in texture and colour than the one we were in, the previous evening. Went to the Vivekananda Rock memorial on a short trip by boat and we were enveloped in the sun's blazing glory by the time we were back ashore. The contrasting colours of the seas were nice to see from the rock memorial.

From the Vivekananda Rock Memorial

Padmanabhapuram Palace - One view

We had decided to go to the famed Padmanabhapuram palace, then to Thirparappu Falls, maybe the Pechipaarai dam, the Mathur aqueduct, the famous Sucheendram temple and then head towards Madurai to be there by 8:00 PM. But what we had not reckoned with is the typical Keralaesque narrow roads all the way out of Kanyakumari towards these places. I was joking while driving towards Nagercoil about the absence of the famed Kerala Road Transport Corporation killer buses, but other forms of slow transport had their laugh at us. Had lunch at Nagercoil and was tired by the time we reached the Padmanabhapuram palace. The palace (fully constructed with wood) was very good to stroll around. I could only sigh at the Rajas who ruled the place. Opulence and vanity were their keystones probably. Wrongly took a country road (nothing, but huge potholes as a road) to go to Thirparappu Falls (most of the folks speak Malayalam only and what we understood was probably not what it was) and by the time we reached there, it sapped us of all energy. This waterfall is called an alternate Courtallam.

Thirparappu Falls - Mini Courtallam?

Skipped Pechipaarai dam and headed towards the Mathur aqueduct, which connects two hills to move water between them which was once, one of the tallest aqueducts in Asia. Spent around half an hour there amongst the greenery and headed back towards Sucheendram and the traffic on the National Highway (Trivandram to Kanyakumari) was flooded with college buses reminded me of Bengaluru. It was bad, real bad. Went to Sucheendram for a quick darshan and by the time we were on the road to Kanyakumari, it was already dark. The plan was to halt for the night at Madurai, visit the Meenakshi temple and then head to Thanjavur.

Mathur Aqueduct - The bridge goes
on and on ...

After finishing dinner again at the Vivekananda Kendra canteen, started for Madurai. We were delayed by almost 3 hours and we were still in two minds whether to stop-over at Tirunelveli for the night or head towards Madurai. Took the latter option, as it was a dual lane highway and hence night driving would be easier and it was close to midnight by the time we were in a hotel at Madurai. The next morning, had a darshan of Meenakshi Amman and Sundareswarar, and since it was Navarathri, a lot of the sannidhis were decorated pretty well. By a quirk of fate, had to make a full circumambulation of the temple in the hot sun on the Chithirai streets looking for a promised 'crystal' at Kodaikanal to El Niño, in vain. Maybe some 'punyam' at least should have accumulated. :-)

West Gopuram

Headed back post lunch to Thanjavur. Drove by for a visit of the place where I stayed with parents and siblings till I finished college. Driving before the house slowly in the college's staff quarters where we lived, elicited some curious glances from some kids going back to their homes, post school. The place was almost the same, save for the fact that a lot of families living there currently own cars which were parked in makeshift sheds or under trees where we used to play street cricket. The place abounds with trees, especially neem, and is very close to a towering wall of granite, around 100-150m high, which is a section of a hillock shaped like a elephant and at least 4 kms long. I used to tell Señora/kids that they could see peacocks as common as crows around there and yes, there they were, crowing around.

Spot the Peacock

A lot of things had changed on the main road, however. There was now a 4-lane tollway to Trichy, where there was once 2 lanes. Took a different route to Thanjavur after squabbling about the best route and reached there in the evening, possibly late by an hour, at least, due to a wrong decision. :-)

There was one tubeless tyre causing trouble from the time we were driving to Kanyakumari as there was a leaky puncture. Got that fixed at Thanjavur. There is a cascading story of this tyre causing severe trouble on a succeeding trip later (subject of another travelogue :-)). After unwinding for a day and a half (eat-sleep-watch TV-snack-do nothing routine, no questions asked, isn't that great? :-D) at Thanjavur, headed back to Bengaluru with a short detour to Srirangam, on the way, to buy a 'portable ammikkal' (அம்மிக்கல்/flat grinding stone) from shops inside the temple premises. These shops (கண்டா முண்டா சாமான் கடை :-)) sell these and a variety of kitchenry like knives, choppers and similar weapons :-), spatulas of all kinds, shapes and sizes, tawas in iron, cast iron etc, leaden vessels (rasam tastes heavenly when made in this. ஈயச்சொம்பு ரசம்) and 'once upon a time, traditional game-boards and accessories' like பல்லாங்குழி, சோழி, தாயக்கட்டை etc (pallaankuzhi-14 hole board game with shells [ಅಳಿಗುಳಿ ಮಣೆ in Kannada], sozhi-cowrie shells [ಕಾವಡೆ in Kannada], dhaayakattai for playing dhaayam-Four faced dice, usually metal, for rolling (ಪಗಡೆ ಆಡ in Kannada, ಚೌಕಾಬಾರ is a variant)). I love the sound of the shells being dropped one by one into the pallankuzhi cups and the grab of the shell collections at the end of a turn. Hmmm...La Niña and El Niño play it at times, with their own rules and end up with a fight, taunts and a huge racket.

Perumal Saevai (salutation) at Srirangam had to be from the outside as it was a Saturday and getting into the temple meant crowds and delays. Off went the chance to have scrumptious authentic Iyengar puliyogare or vadai or any prasadam from Srirangam. (Slurp! Vada Poché) Will have a go at it next time, after a proper darshanam, maybe. :-) Headed back to Bengaluru from there, uneventful, after a break at Adyar Ananda Bhavan at Salem for lunch. Home, sweet home, it was!

The car's trip odometer read 1900 km at the end. It was time well spent. And until I find time to write my next travelogue, a road trip to Jog Falls and Karwar, which was as adventurous as it can be, ciao.

Food Mélange - Data (Mis)Interpretation

2010-11-17T15:33:00.011+05:30

Guess the day's food menu based on the following data! :-) If anyone can derive an 'acceptable for all' menu (if it does exist with this set!), they shall be awarded an MBA by this blogger.

All characters anonymized below are real and existing with the listed characteristics and under an identity protection plan. :-D

[C] likes idli, but [D] doesn't, [A] and [B] don't care.
[D] likes dosai and so do [B] and [C].
Crisp dosai only for [D] and need not be so for [C].
Toasted Bread is preferred by [D] and raw it is, for [B] and no bread for [C].
[B], [A] and [D] like sandwiches and [C] does not.
Cheese is loved by [B] and [D] and not [A] and to an extent [C].
Mint chutney favoured by [C] and [B], [D] doesn't care.
Non-hot chutney-pudi for [B] and hot molagai podi for [C] and [D] to go with idli/dosa.
Breakfast cereals okay for [D], [A] and [B], but not for [C].
No fruits for [D] except orange, fruits okay for [A],[C] and none for [B].
Fruit juice is okay for [B] and [C] and to a far lower extent [D] and [A].
Masala Dosai preferred for [B], but not for [D].
Coconut Chutney okay for [C] and [D] and not for [B] and [A].
[D] likes Dosa with Vaththa kuzhambu, but [B] hates Vaththa Kuzhambu.
Snake gourd curry for all but not for [C].
Direct roasted potato for [B] and [D] and cooked and roasted for [A].
Ladies' finger (Okra) fine for [C] and not for [A] and [B].
Ketchup with chapathi for [B], but never for [D] and [A].
Upma with onions hated by [C] and okay for [D], [B] and [A].
Rice for [A] and need not for [C] and [B].
Avalakki (அவல்) bhath for [C], but not for [D].
[B], [C] and [D] love noodles, but [A] does not.
[A] can live with just curd rice, but [B] runs at the sight of it.
[C] hates capsicum, but okay for [D] and [A].
Pav-Bhaji anytime for [D] and [B], but not regularly for [A].
Curds and rice, go well for [A] and not for [B].
[C] and [A] do not hate Pizza, but [B] loves them.
[B] and [D] love pasta, but [A] does not.
Chapathis anytime for [B] and [A], but not for [C].

Hmm... No wonder Señora is 'very happy' in the mornings as she plans for the day. ;-)

Note - MBA is Maestro of Breakfast/Lunch Administration

Travelogue - A 1900 km drive (Part une)

2010-11-14T19:30:00.002+05:30

Certain highlights define any visit to a place to be archived into memory. An eventless visit usually is like a fog; it lifts off after sometime and doesn't have a recall factor.

October is a time of a break in Karnataka because of the Dussehra celebrations and schools are closed for the mid-term. Decided to take off on a visit to Kodaikanal and then decide thereon, on the fly, if Kanyakumari was apt to go to, as a typical tropical depression had set in on the east coast. And so it was, and we (self, Señora, La Niña and El Niño) left over a Thursday morning, to stay there long enough to idle around without an agenda and the haste of a typical tourist.

The Thalaiyar falls (Rat tail falls) are visible in the top and centre of the montage
The water from the falls flows into the Manjalar dam visible at the bottom
Collage defined using Picasa

The drive into Kodai was uneventful with the weather playing a perfect host. The uphill climb provided a wonderful view of the Rat Tail falls (a.k.a. Thalaiyar falls, the third highest waterfall in India from a straight drop perspective, but this waterfall is practically unreachable and is a day's trek to and fro, from what I heard). This is visible at around 8 kms from the start of the ghat section. The Silver Cascade Falls, just before Kodai, was in a perfect flow. Never thought that we would get tired of seeing waterfalls, but the thrill of shouting "waterfall" ebbed in a day as almost with every other bend in Kodai, we ended up sighting one of them (some of them gushing streams and some, real waterfalls) and the unseasonal rains at that time had increased the water flow.

Clockwise from top left - Silver Cascade Falls, Bear Shola Falls, Fairy Falls,
Anju Veedu Falls (2 angles), A stream cascading off Pillar Rocks
Collage defined using Picasa.

Our hotel was around 6 kms away from Kodai overlooking a valley and the pain of the distance came to the fore only when the stomach grumbled. The restaurant was decent, but I wanted something South Indian. And then began the first of the many trips into the heart of Kodai from the hotel, and at the end of which I could drive almost blindfolded on that route (well, that happened one night, when a thick layer of fog engulfed the entire route :-)). There is a very good vegetarian restaurant, the Astoria Veg, close to the lake and on the main road in Kodai (Anna Saalai, as I recollect). South Bengalureans may have heard of Woody's vegetarian restaurant in J P Nagar on the Ring Road (adjacent to the new Bangalore Central Mall), which has branches at Kolar and Kodai. Searched in Kodai for it and drove into there at around 7:00 PM. This place is off the main road and the place was so eerily deserted (no one in the restaurant, but it was open!) and a stone façade that added the character of a haunted house, that we scooted our way back to some semblance of civilization and La Niña christened it Bhooth Bungalow. That was the end of the visit to Woody's at Kodai and further attempts to pay a visit there were shot down because of the Bhooth factor. :-)

Noticed that the town starts to sleep after around 6:00 pm when darkness sets in. This was very similar to what Bengaluru was when it was a real "pensioner's paradise". Streets go empty, the noise ebbs, the street lights glow a foggy yellow or white, you hear the crickets loud and clear, the rush of a nearby stream, maybe, and the town starts to ghost and by 9:00 PM, soundly asleep. :)

As my opening para of this post states, one highlight of the visit to Kodaikanal was the trek to the head of an almost unknown waterfall, 'Anju Veedu falls' (Five House falls), which is probably the name of a village close by. This waterfall is in Elephant Valley (Vilpatti Valley) and reached via a detour on the Kodai-Palani road towards Ganeshpuram. This falls was almost a kilometre inside the jungle, and we had to cross a stream (fed by the water from Silver Cascade, upstream) and is a place frequented by elephants. Elephants had been there a week or so back, and we were told that there weren't any explosive booby traps planted, which are used when an 'elephant watch' is on. It was hot and humid as we walked our way towards the waterfall moving through the dense foliage, wondering how the elephants manage to walk through inhospitable territory.

Anju Veedu Falls - Up, close and personal
Used Avidemux, Audacity and Free AVI MPEG FLV Video Joiner to edit the video.

The waterfall by itself, is not a huge torrent, but is of a substantial flow. The drop must be probably around 40-50 metres and falls in two different branches. It was surprising that the falls have not been prominent as they were discovered during the time of the British who built a small check-dam upstream to control the water flow towards the falls in lean season. We waded through the rushing water to a dry patch in the middle of the rock face, with water flowing on both sides and stood 2-3 feet from the roaring, vertigo inducing vertical drop, looking down at the gorge (the video above). There was absolute silence except for the roar of the falls and gurgle of the stream. Spent some time there and returned back, on the way plucking some wild oranges and limes as memoirs. Just before we crossed the stream bringing us back from the jungle, Señora and El Niño noticed that their legs had been targeted by leeches. :-) One was still active and was plucked out and salted to die a bloody death. We then returned back to Kodai.

Earlier, while in a quest to get the forest department's permission (in the middle of town) to visit a lake (Berijam Lake) in the middle of protected shola forests, our car plonked into a ditch while I was reversing blind. Had to get help from a few passers-by to "lift the car" out of the rut. It was another matter that the officials played hide-and-seek with us asking us to come hither and thither, now and later and giving wishy-washy answers and we eventually had to back out of the plan to visit the lake.

While driving around later near the lake, the car conked off and refused to start. Some minor troubleshooting. including random scraping of deposits around the battery terminal, refused to get the car started. We still had a few more places to go to, but this vehicle failure deterred us a bit. The nearest authorized service station was at Madurai and we hadn't planned to go down towards Madurai for at least a day and a half more. Hail God for small mercies that we were on undulating roads and the time-tested method of rolling the car in neutral gear and then shunting the gear to kick-start the engine worked fine. But we (rather, me :-)), being "adventourists", refused to be cowed down and visited places which would have scared an ordinary mortal with a possible vehicle starter failure (Guna caves, Dolphin's nose for example), while always looking for a place with a downhill gradient to park and then doing the rolling maneuver to start.

The downhill drive to the plains seemingly took a longer time than the uphill climb, though we started off in the morning. Maybe our enthusiasm had waned or we were sapped of energy. Breezed our way to Madurai to check what caused the vehicle startup failure. It wasn't a starter failure, after all, but a corroded battery terminal, which led to improper circuit closure, and was replaced in a jiffy with a drain of around 500 bucks (we had anticipated 10 times more). Due to incomplete directions, we had gotten into Madurai city, when we could have bypassed as the service centre was right on the highway just beyond Madurai on NH-7, costing us around 1.5 hours with potholed roads and crawling traffic. Going into Madurai allowed me to show the kids, where my parents resided and the college where I studied. The city almost looks the same, save for the changes induced by growth (and maybe M K Azhagiri), but most of the landmarks I was used to, remain. As for the weather; I don't know how I managed there for around 8 years. Scorching!!!

Bins of interest

La Niña and El Niño had a whale of a time in Kodai and Madurai counting and photo-snapping, of all things, large garbage bins. There seemed to be lots of those everywhere. I haven't seen even one in Bengaluru, and the garbage is strewn all over, in many places. :-( Maybe something for BBMP to learn from there. :-)

And we then started off towards Kanyakumari, as the weather-gods graciously permitted, by having the depression weaken and cross the coast, well ahead of our rendezvous with Cape Comorin. :-)

(Rest in a sequel post...)

Hail Haile

2010-11-09T12:00:00.005+05:30

The word marathon conjures up, for me, endurance runners from Ethiopia or Kenya, slim and athletic, running alone or in a pack of 3 or 4 with their arms close to their chest, their teeth grit, faces grim with concentration and determination, looking for glory in what was one of the earliest Olympiad athletic games. For whatever little I tracked of marathons or long distance running, Haile Gebrselassie, from Ethiopia, remained the most in the limelight. I don't recollect how and where my introduction to him was, maybe at some TV telecast of Olympics, in all probability. I liked the name the first time I heard it, and it sounded rhythmic and with a nice trail and tongue rolls, and so I liked the man himself. :-D

Image courtesy: Wikipedia page on
Haile Gebrselassie

In any of the marathons that I watched on TV, I used to look out for Gebrselassie and track him. It is a sport by itself, watching marathons, as the crowd at the start slowly sieves itself into multiple groups, as the lead pack slowly splits, the short sprints towards the finish, the looks over the shoulders, the pain of cramps visible on their faces. They even seem to have team strategies in marathons, like cycling, having pacers for the lead runners and study the routes to make the best out of it. Whatever it was, Gebrselassie broke record after record and that is what stands (or should it be 'runs') behind him.

Now that he has announced his retirement from active running, 'Hail Haile Gebrselassie', who has been an inspiration to thousands in the world, and to a small extent, to me as well, when I used to jog, some time (or was it a long time!) back. Hmmm. Now I have become lazy to even walk in the mornings, these days.

Unworded - As fresh as dew

2010-11-06T21:34:00.001+05:30


ரோஜாக்களில் பன்னீர்த்துளி; வழிகின்றதேன் அது என்ன தேன் One is obvious, Guess the other (the stalk is a giveaway)? Imaged with a Nokia N73 in macro mode and composited using Gimp

The train lover's diary - 1

2010-10-29T17:30:00.045+05:30

A few random scribbles on my love of trains. It has always been a childhood fantasy (well, even now I would love to) to be a train driver (a.k.a. a train engineer or loco pilot), sit in its cabin and at least pull the horn. :-)

How many of you are intrigued by numbers on the locomotives like WDM-5, WAP-2, WAG-4, WDS-2 etc and their associated sheds like Erode, Golden Rock, Itarsi, Guntakal, Krishnarajapuram, Gooty, Kazipet, Ratlam etc, or love the 'Thomas the tank engine' episodes that used to come on one of the kiddo channels? Well, I do.

Trains forever!

Train journeys always fascinate me for the reason that it becomes an experience when on one. Well I have to say, punning the original Keats' quote, "A thing of joy is a 'train' forever". A train is a symphony with the engine being the conductor and the coaches, the musicians. Travelling in Indian trains does need a significant level of patience because of their slower speeds, crowds, lower degree of cleanliness and the 'adjust maadi' (please adjust) culture of its travellers. That doesn't take away anything off the experience though.

The sound of an engine horn, loud and true, is my most thrilling sound, and one that can shake the ghosts off you. Different sounds for different types of engines, the diesels, the electrics and the steam ones (now sadly deceased, but I have a few recollections of those) and the long and short whistles! Two weeks back, returning from Kanniyakumari on road and late into the night and near Virudhunagar, I was jolted from the monotonous hum of the car at a constant speed by a loud horn at my back to see a train speeding at around 90 kmph on a stretch where the tracks are parallel to the highway. We raced each other for a couple of kilometres before parting. Met the same train after crossing Virudhunagar for a couple of kilometres before we headed our ways.

I love the steamies/diesels for their grumble which is the engine's heartbeat. The electrics sound a tad muted because of the distributed nature of its powerful motors. The rumble and cranking of the engine (the "krug krug krug krug" sound on a Diesel) as it slowly unleashes its 4000+ horses on the tracks as it pulls its coaches, is an engineer's delight. There is a characteristic smell in the smoke of the diesels that can be nosed only in the first few coaches depending on wind draft. Most don't like that acrid smell though. There is the rhythmic ballad of wheels and track joints and the distinct sound when the train moves to another track via a switch. The quick whizzzz of an electric as it glides in and out of a station at an impressive pace, Ethereal!!!

Trains in passing!

Watching a train go by, is wonderful, just like watching the clouds float. How many times when going somewhere, when stopped at a railway level crossing, you get down and watch the "beast of a beauty" roar past you with its signature horn blaring, shaking the ground underneath? It is with a child-like delight that I see an engine appear around a bend or at a distance and then swoosh past with the last coach receding slowly into the two parallel lines of tracks until you see the train as a speck. A similar feeling, when an engine saunters into a station slowly with the squeal of its brakes as it brings the symphony to a halt.

It is a shock moment, when you are in a train, with the windows open and on an adjacent track, out of the blue, another train whizzes past with its horn at full blast. The effect is higher when you have your train moving fast as well. No better example than this to illustrate the Doppler Effect in Physics. And the eerie feeling in a night train, you get up, find the train stopped at some unknown place, peep out of the coach to see where you are, in the dull faded light of the platforms or in the middle of nowhere. The sound of the "Tea, Kaapi, Chaayè" sound of the vendors at platforms, the places with odd names that you pass by, and the scenery outside makes the trip fun. In my younger days, I was fascinated by the telegraph poles that run parallel to the track, where the wires sag in the middle between the poles and it gives a feeling of the wire travelling along with you.

And for the adventurous, how thrilling it is, to keep the compartment door open, peep out "safely" by holding the support rails, and having a blast of air on your face and to see a snaking train do its maneuvere on curvy tracks.

(To be continued at leisure ...)

Nalladhor Veenai Seidhae - நல்லதோர் வீணைசெய்தே

2010-10-26T13:30:00.002+05:30

This is an attempt at translating another of Bharathiyar's evocative poems, Nalladhor Veenai Seidhae. It has been sitting under translation for a long time and I managed to close it today. Bharathi is pained at his weakness (a projection of the country at that time) and begs God (Shiva-Shakthi) for strength of body and soul, character, belief, enlightenment.

The original ...
நல்லதோர் வீணைசெய்தே-அதை
நலங்கெடப் புழுதியில் எறிவதுண்டோ?
சொல்லடி,சிவசக்தி!-என்னை
சுடர்மிகும் அறிவுடன் படைத்துவிட்டாய்,
வல்லமை தாராயோ,இந்த
மாநிலம் பயனுற வாழ்வதற்கே?
சொல்லடி சிவசக்தி!-நிலச்
சுமையென வாழ்ந்திடப் புரிகுவையோ?
விசையுறு பந்தினைப்போல்-உள்ளம்
வேண்டிய படிசெலும் உடல்கேட்டேன்
நசையறு மனங்கேட்டேன்-நித்தம்
நவமெனச் சுடர்தரும் உயிர்கேட்டேன்
தசையினைத் தீ சுடினும்-சிவ
சக்தியை பாடும்நல் அகங்கேட்டேன்,
அசைவறு மதிகேட்டேன் இவை
அருள்வதில் உனக்கெதுந் தடையுலதோ?.

And the translation ...
Crafted a Veena, exquisite
Cast away to rot, would I?
Tell me, ye ShivaShakthi,
Having molded me, radiant and wise;
Endow strength, wouldn't you?
For this hallowed earth to prosper;
Ye ShivaShakthi, Realize, do you?
Being encumbered, living off the land;
Like a ball propelled - I beseech,
A body, to follow the heart's quest;
A mind shorn of desire, I ask;
Anew each day, for a soul shining, I pray;
On flames that singe, regardless
A spirit to extol ShivaShakthi, I implore;
Unwavering intellect, I bid;
Hampered to bless these, Are you?

Here is a link to a rendering by Rajkumar Bharathi, the grandson of Bharathi, in a different raaga than the other renditions.

Another moving rendition of the same poem from the movie Bharathi by Mano and Ilaiyaraaja. It plays in the background during his funeral.

Unworded - The ruler of Madurai

2010-10-22T12:30:00.002+05:30

A view of the West Gopuram in the distance, Amman Sannidhi is closer
and the Potraamaraikkulam (The Golden Lotus pond) in the foreground

Visited during the Navarathri festival of 2010

The Lucia dalliance

2010-08-05T22:45:00.003+05:30

I met Lucia for the first time two weeks or so back.

She is a pretty girl, maybe a teen or older, with a few pimples, dove eyed, sporting a double braid, not too verbose, very nimble and sharp, gauges the people who interact with her accurately, knows how to whistle and is ready for a challenge anytime. She is impossible to outwit. She is a southpaw and that is why I think she is creative in foxing me with her cunning twists in our conversations. I meet her on the weekends and sometimes on weekdays in the evenings. She gnaws at my head regularly by being an epitome of concentration and skill. I am starting to love and simultaneously hate her for psyching me and putting me out of rhythm and thereby egging me implicitly to try harder.

Who is this Lucia? She is the "virtual" champion, a character in the table-tennis sport on the Wii Sports Resort game for the Nintendo Wii. I encountered her for the first time after a series of games and boy!, what a roadblock she is, for stopping our march to a dead stop. I have been repeatedly mauled at a zero score umpteen times and neither me nor El Niño has been able to break past her save a couple of points.

It has become an obsession to try to defeat her using all the tricks in our arsenal. The beauty of the game is that it is so real and close to a game played on a table-tennis table where all tricks you do with a real racquet and a ball are accomplished with the Wiimote and twists of your wrist. I was testing my skill 2 days back at 6:30 AM after me getting off a conference that started at 4:30 AM (Don't ask me why at that hour of the soundest sleep. :-( That was when I could catch my stake holders.)

No wonder Señora is not amused!!! [Nyet, it is not for the early morn meet, but for the early morn gaming :-)]

An ode to Varuna

2010-07-30T17:05:00.002+05:30

Rain rain go away,
Come again another day
Bangalore city choked today
Rain rain go away

Exasperated because of the incessant drizzle that threw life out of gear yesterday at Bengaluru. It is looking good so far with dull weather and just one spell so far. I love rains, but only when it is a downpour.

Eatopia - Bon Appétit at e-inn

2010-07-28T18:00:00.003+05:30

<Grumble> <Groan> Two consecutive eatopia posts!!! I am in a time warp these days. I've no clue each day on where a fair portion of my leaky bucket of 86400 seconds goes. Weekdays go in a flash with a very tiring evening commute, moderately heavy work load and weekends fly by. Maybe my spare time is all going to an unreported black-hole possibly created by the LHC experiments in CERN for the mysterious Higgs-Boson. I have a backlog of close to 200 posts to read and maybe comment on a quarter or less, at least.

Having explained my deficient blogdom visits and back to the topic, it is rare to find a star rated vegetarian restaurant anywhere. We went to one such last weekend, in Bengaluru (okay, it is near Electronics City, if you consider it as a part of Bengaluru), which is a multi-star rated hotel (I think it is 4 or 5 star) and whose restaurants are vegetarian, don't serve alcohol and are non-smoking.

Welcome to e-inn, the hotel on Hosur Road, 2 kms after Electronics City towards Hosur, in the Bommasandra Industrial Estate. It is a large multi-storeyed hotel (at least 10 floors) that comes up on the right and is visible from a distance, but because of the divided NH-7 you have to go under the overpass that comes after the hotel intersection and make a U-turn.

It has a very decent ambience at the entrance and some lovely flowering plants. The Chinese cuisine restaurant is at the basement and the main one is beyond the lobby. The main restaurant can seat around 60-80 and is usually frequented by IT folks (sometimes with their clients) on weekdays and families on weekends. A better way to dine would be to reserve seating in advance as I have seen the crowd increase steadily in each succeeding visit.

The lunch course started with a drink of the day (it was a chocolatey milk this time), some fritters to snack on and then the soup of the day, which had pasta and herbs in it. Then it was time to go and sample the world-wide buffet. It was a mix of Indian, Continental, Mediterranean, Oriental and some exotic dishes. Quite a few salads (at least 6 to 8 types) to sample, a few varieties of bread (3 or 4) to choose from, and the main course taken from an assortment of rice items like fried rice, pulao, saffron rice, curd rice etc, a few North Indian gravy dishes and associated bread(s), margherita pizza slices, noodles, lasagna, stir fried/tossed veggies, sambar, curries, mini dosas/chutney and a chaat item rounded off the main course.

The desserts took the icing on the cake (and takes it every time I go there with the variety). Around 10 varieties of desserts that include some bright coloured exotic ones which I have no name of, eggless cakes, payasam/kheer, fruit salad, two varieties of ice-cream.

For me, getting to this place from mine was like going to another city after crossing two toll roads before I reached Electronics City, but this place has become a regular haunt every quarter. Kids love it (choose what you want with no dearth of choices and no forced eating :-) like at home), Señora likes it for the variety to choose from and the desserts and I am ambivalent to what I eat, being picky and hence okay. Parents have a mixed opinion on this place as they are used to the typical South Indian grind of veg curries, kootu, kuzhambu, sambar, rasam and curd etc. The charges are pretty decent for the variety it offers, at Rs. 250/- per head for adults incl. taxes and half of that for children.

So went one more afternoon in the weekend that has been accounted for. :-) The dinner there also is a buffet with different entrées. If you have an afternoon or an evening in Bengaluru to spare, wouldn't mind a wide choice of all-vegetarian fare and can traverse the long drive to beyond Electronics City, I'd suggest e-inn for a try. You'll love it.

And till the black-hole releases me from its clutch, ciao!!!

Eatopia - Davanagéré Bénné Dosé

2010-06-24T18:00:00.002+05:30

The simple eateries provide maybe the best taste. Proved again by a random visit to a non-descript eatery tucked in the 13th Main Road (it is not really a main road though) of Jayanagar IV block, close to the bus stand, at Bengaluru. I usually see this eatery named 'Davanagéré Bénné Dosé' (no prefix or suffix names) without any bells or whistles, a one room entity and pass by after savouring the aroma. Last Friday evening, on a visit in that direction, it had gotten late and the choice was to either go home and make something for dinner or eat outside. Stepped into this eatery, which was around 15x15 feet in its entirety with a few four legged stools to sit on and a round high table for those who prefer to stand and eat.

A brief history on the name. Davanagéré (also called Davangéré) is a mid-sized city, once famous for its sarees and textiles, and is in the heartland of Karnataka. Bénné means butter and Dosé is Dosé. :-) The past few years, alongside the famed darshinis, Bénné Dosé eateries have sprouted around and the USP was the Dosé roasted crisp with dollops of butter and served with mashed potatoes (you can have multiple servings of this) and hot chutney. Typically eveningesque fare.

Downed Bénné Dosé with the masala (mashed potatoes with onions and chillies, but colored naturally as creamy white since no turmeric or masala powder is mixed. There is a khara paste smeared on the dosa, just like masala dosa, but we asked to be spared of that) and Paddu (kuzhi paniyaaram, in Tamizh) along with medium hot chutney for dinner. It was filling, fattening and good on the tongue. The eatery is run by a middle aged couple, is clean, served with a smile and I noticed that the oven used was not gas fired, but with firewood. It is decently priced, at Rs.20/- for a Bénné Dosé and the same amount for a plate of 6 paddus. The menu was lean with not many other items.

Hail the Bénné Dosé and the small eatery!!!

ASSimilated...

2010-06-23T18:30:00.006+05:30

The last of the Tamizh TV shows that I watched with some degree of regularity, at last wound down last Thursday, the Airtel Super Singer Junior 2009 on Star Vijay channel. "At last", because of the impatience with how the talent show progressed and dragged to its end. I think our TV show honchos do not know the concept of a pacy progression without melodrama or the Occam's Razor (avoiding unnecessary things and keeping it simple). The winner, 'Alka Ajith' won for her consistent performance and capping it in the final with a superb rendering of 'Singaara Velanē' from 'Konjum Salangai', and a non-impressive 'Munbē Vaa' from 'Sillendru Oru Kaadhal'.

The finals had the eternal backgrounder, Shravan giving the only challenge to Alka with the others (Nithyashree the dancer-singer, the wonder-boy Srikanth and the silent Roshan) being their normal selves. I felt that Alka was tagged to be a winner early on in the show with constant praising by the judge trio of K S Chithra, Mano and Malgudi Subha, when compared to the others. (BTW, I never knew that Alka was in the Limca book of records for the most number of recorded songs for her age, has already sung in Malayalam movies and has won a few international awards as well)

Probably the hardest challenge to Alka (even could have been an upset) in the finals would have come from either Priyanka or SriNisha, who in spite of stellar performances in the wildcard (recall) stage were dropped from the final 5 over Srikanth and Nithyashree. I wasn't amused by the inclusion of the kid Srikanth into the finals, under the guise of public sentiment humbug. Priyanka or SriNisha who were improving leaps and bounds, round after round and with a pretty wide song range deserved a place in the finals. He is definitely superb for his age, but still raw. It was a small consolation that Priyanka and SriNisha were called and awarded separately on stage. It was sad to see that Srikanth's father not showing even a trace of happiness at Srikanth winning a special prize (3 lakhs!) and sat stone faced. One more proof that parents push their children to unreal levels on reality (actually, pseudo-reality) shows.

As is the norm during the finales of such shows, there was a lot of dance and singing slots by multiple personae to prolong the winner announcement which eventually happened somewhere at 11:45 PM. The Super Singer anthem sung by participants, past and current, sounded good (I love choruses and choirs); I recall Andrea and Ajeesh's rendering of 'Idhu Varai' from 'Goa' (lovely instrumentation and contrasting vocals), dance-song acts by Divya (the Airtel Super Singer compere) and the RJ/singer, Suchi. Amala was watching the finale and she looked jaded from how she was in her hey-day. Mano had become more of a clown as the TV show progressed and his clowning glory was at the finale. :-)

One aspect of all this was the lack of transparency in how the winner was shortlisted during the pre-finals and finals. Different figures flew on the finale stage itself as regards the number of votes received (3.5L, 13L) for the final and it sounded wishy-washy. :( Doesn't augur well for the program, or its host channel or its sponsor, Airtel. Hope they make it transparent in the future.

RIP Airtel Super Singer Junior 2009 and thanks for those moments of brilliance and panache from the children which made it worthwhile !!!

Short Takes

2010-06-18T16:00:00.000+05:30

Some movies seen over the past few weeks.

Avatar - Nothing more to comment since I may be one of the last folks to see it in blogdom. I am awed at the sheer poetic imagination and technical wizardry...

The Twilight Saga:New Moon - Part-2 of the series. Slower and longer than the first one, but holds interest overall. (At times so slow, that I got an urge to take a log and whack Bella Swan, the protagonist in the movie, to speed it up :-D) And I have to point out the music score and the soundrack for a special mention. Simply soaring!!! I had goosebumps at some of the score pieces. The locations are so damn beautiful (Vancouver). Perpetually cloudy/rainy with short bursts of sunlight and the damp dense woods. Perfect for the gloomy setting of the movie.

Interestingly, an Indian company, Prime Focus, was involved with the visual effects for both the films above. 10% of Avatar's and 80% of New Moon's effects were done by them.

Mussanjē Maathu (Twilight Talk) - A 2008 Kannada movie. Was inspired to watch it for its intriguing title and lovely songs (Music by Sridhar) that I hear now and then on the FM channels at Bengaluru. Story-line slightly inspired by Lage Raho Munnabhai. A RJ falls in love with a girl he meets incidentally, but doesn't disclose it until the girl is getting married, meanwhile withdrawing into a shell when he comes to know that the girl is planning to get married to someone. Déjà vu, anyone? Decent performances though, by Sudeep and Ramya (aka Divya Spandana in Tamil) and free publicity for Radio Mirchi. Watchable once.

Gaalipata (Kite) - A 2008 Kannada movie from Yograj Bhat who gave the blockbuster Mungāru Malē (meaning Monsoon Rain, in 2007, which had scintillating music by US based Mano Murthy). Here, 3 guys are off to a hilly place to escape the city. Meet 3 contrasting girls there. Woo them. What else? Guess!!! :-) Lovely locales (Kodachadri mountains near Kollur) and the beautiful Shivanasamudram falls (Gaganachukki and Barachukki) seen gushing from a different angle. (Yograt Bhat showed the Jog falls for the first time from the top angle in Mungāru Malē and it looked angelic). Music by Harikrishna is good. Ganesh, the main hero (unconventional, he is) does quite an amount of motor-mouthing (almost like a vuvuzela drone or like Chennai FM radio jockey Suchi [Hee hee hee at the dig, but isn't she one heck of a motor mouth?] ) and gluttonous. (Señora noted aside, that he imitates Vijay (gasp!)) Others have done their parts fairly well. Despite some stereotyping, a good watch.

I am amazed that singers like Sonu Nigam or Shreya Ghoshal, who do not know to speak or understand Kannada, do significant justice to the songs while singing. All the hit songs from the above Kannada movies, award winners included, have been sung by either or both of them.

Unworded - Plane view - Crop Circles

2010-06-16T08:45:00.012+05:30

Surprised how the farmers find time to do the patterns as these

Shot using Nokia N73, Downsized/adjusted with Picasa 3

This picture was taken approximately half an hour later on the same flight path of where this picture was taken. This region is the bread basket of the US.

And Wiiii flew the Wiikend

2010-06-15T09:00:00.025+05:30

This is a long verbose ramble, but nevertheless, here it is.

I have never been too much of a fan of computer gaming and my attempts at mastering Prince of Persia or Wolfenstein 3D long back, never went beyond 2 or 3 levels. I never found it easy to get beyond those monsters guarding gates or get around traps or move through the mazes or fight. I just get killed. Never was much into gaming after that, save for a few sessions of Solitaire or Pinball. I let go the entry of the vastly improved RPGs (Role Playing Games) or MMPORGs (Massively Multi-player Online RPGs) which seemed to take gaming to a different realistic 3D level from the older gen 2D imagery. Gaming hardware!!! Nah!, at least till a couple or so years back.

The progeny (La Niña and El Niño) have made sure that there needed to be a gaming hardware at home, courtesy their cousins. Being the electronics junkie (not the rabid one though), I got the gaming hand-held, Nintendo Game Boy Advance (GBA) into the home. Never has a single piece of gaming hardware been used amicably between siblings, AFAIK. Endless quarrels over rights of use and overwritten scores followed. (Apple may even accept Flash on the iPad, but the 'rights of use' over game systems at home never will be resolved) Well, technology improved and this brought the Nintendo DS-Lite (with dual screens and touch capability), the more sophisticated brother of the GBA. Peer pressure mounted and after constant nagging and promises of good behavior (Blah!, there is nothing like that, was the late realization) I got it, not one, but two DS-Lite gaming consoles, to end the never-ending quarrels over rights to the lone GBA. And the DS-Lite supported a private form of Wi-Fi where the same game can be played with up to 4 different DS consoles. That orphaned the GBA to an almost never used status as the new DS could play the old cartridges and had a new sleek cartridge type for DS specific games. And I had to be crafty enough to get diverse cartridges that wouldn't be the bone of contention (which still was for a few games).

Thet brings us to the quicksand rip-offs in the gaming eco-system. The hardware is relatively cheap, buying the software, in the form of game cartridges is a big deal. If you buy 4 or 5 of them, they could very well exceed the price of the hardware itself. Buying cheap cartridges in the Burma Bazaar type shops is a no-no. The kids figured out that you can't save games in the cheapsters, which is important for them and without which you have to start all over from level 1 each time you start the console (geez, there are some 99 levels in some games). So much so for cheap rip offs. And by the time you get a good hang of the system, a new variant of the console is out. And thence starts the never ending cycle.

In comes the Internet and there are free emulators for the GBA and the DS-Lite out there and there are also the ROM images of the games which can be loaded and run on the PC. And add to that there is a 'game cheat' ecosystem where after entering data into the emulators, you get unlimited lives, open secret doors, jump to the final level, grab goodies etc etc. In addition to all the game cartridges possessed, the ROM images were another source of play with the home computer(s).

Picture courtesy: Wikipedia
[Downsized copy]

And then, the junkie parent decided to get the latest (ok, it is more than 3.5 years since its introduction) and greatest gizmo from Nintendo, the Wii, a black shiny one at that. It is almost an ultimate family gaming machine. No need to learn umpteen key combinations and meanings, special keys (A, B, X, Y, Start, Left/Right paddle etc) and uses natural hand movements to play. A small beautiful console that looks like a baby DVD player, the remotes similar to TV remotes, but with very few buttons to press and lovely silicone covers to grip with.

I am impressed with the hardware, its interactivity and the fun quotient. Last weekend had the whole home started on the Nintendo Wii. There are simple games like bowling, golf, baseball and tennis and as usual, the complex, multiplayer RPGs also. Of course, the kids beat us, the parents, in almost every game (the ones lost were branded as 'cheating by Wii' :-D) and then started the quarrels about which game to play between the siblings. :-( Déjà vu time!!! And I haven't yet figured out the Mario Kart races (I fall regularly into gorges, volcanoes, go the wrong way, cannot turn properly, do not use power-ups etc) while the kids around take it like a fish to water. And they seem to have special eyes for reading the game manuals for tips, but bark and balk when asked to do the same with their homework. The kid-gang, when they meet, converses only on Pokémon and its ilk or strategies (!). Probably, the most fun job would have to be a tester at a game software company.

Señora has restricted the access to the new addiction to all (the DS-Lites have already been banished for 2-3 months), to be used only on weekends, lest that all three (me, La Niña and El Niño) become zombies when we are at play. Till then, I see the beauty at eye-shot distance and salivate. I am smooth-talking the kids to allow me to use the DS-Lites later (to gain some experience in gaming), but they have rejected it saying that the scores cannot be tampered with and are asking me to play Pet Shop. :-(. [Reminds me of a hilarious Seinfeld episode where George Costanza gets a Frogger arcade machine which still has his top score, preserved for posterity]

Wii Nintendo, Wah!!!
(for now, Microsoft Xbox 360 or Sony Playstation 3 are in comparative conversations only. The home won't stand another one, even if someone gives it for free)

The barometer ...

2010-06-14T11:30:00.000+05:30

Cheee!!! Horrible, Ugly.
It looks so 'gandha'. (gandha-dirty in Hindi)
Yeow! Inji thinna korangu maadhiri irukku (like a monkey that has been zinged by biting pungent ginger)
Ennadaa idhu? Yaendaa? (What is this? Why?)

So, what are these reactions to?

These are all 'first reaction' comments from la Niña, el Niño, Señora and my parents after looking at my face, devoid of the moustache, over the weekend. :-D

And the comments repeated every now and then from la Niña and el Niño and a sheesh!!! smile and head-shake from Señora.

So, my experimental face (phase) doesn't seem to have chances of survival with such hostility as I wait for the stubble to grow. :-( Hmmm...

Unworded - Plane view - Peaks and valleys

2010-06-11T15:45:00.001+05:30

Shot using Nokia N73, Downsized/adjusted with Picasa 3, Effects with PhotoFiltre

Tag-o-rama

2010-05-26T11:17:00.003+05:30

The same tag has landed from gils and from R-ambam. Not a tagger, but I make an exception attempt to respond to the tag. And I have tagged 4 others at the end as well.

Original Rule 2 is flaunted. And I'll read my own Miranda rights. Those of you who see English movies that have cops, should know this by heart. :)
Me (reading rights): "You have the right to remain silent. blah blah... Do you understand this clearly?"
Me: Yes, I understand

RULE 1- You can only say Guilty or Innocent.
RULE 2- ~~You are not allowed to explain anything unless someone messages you and asks!~~ [Waived. You should tell the history or have a comment in either case.]

Asked someone to marry you? Guilty. vera yaaru, Señora thaan! Asked in a different way though. :)

Ever kissed someone of the same sex? Guilty. Kids... Is this a trick question? :-O

Danced on a table in a bar? Innocent. Dance? Yes. Bar? I'll be barred from home if I step into one. :)

Ever told a lie? Guilty. Lie low when you lie. :)

Had feelings for someone whom you can’t have back? Guilty. Adhu oru nilaa kaalam! 8-)

Kissed a picture? Innocent.

Slept in until 5 PM? Innocent. Depends on how you see it. Do afternoon naps count? If so, guilty.

Fallen asleep at work/school? Guilty. The eyelids droop low enough for the eyes to close, the sounds fade away, the mouth slightly open, the brain grinds to a halt, I float in a snooze and then the head snaps and jerks and a few moments of blinking and then back to redo the snooze. :-D

Held a snake? Innocent. Would love to. :-)

Been suspended from school? Innocent. From the class (by standing out), yes, for some random talking, two or three times, maybe. :D

Worked at a fast food restaurant? Innocent. I have not worked inside a fast food restaurant like Barista, CCD or Starbucks either. (office work, that is?) :)

Stolen from a store? Guilty. EppavO EppOdho! ;)

Been fired from a job? Innocent. Fired at job? yes. :)

Done something you regret? Guilty. Once in a while, the guilt trips. :-D

Laughed until something you were drinking came out your nose? Guilty. In younger days.

Caught a snowflake on your tongue? Guilty. Aama, idhula ennaa guilt? Was in a few snow blizzards and snow went into eyes, ears, nose, mouth and hence tongue as well. But, I dread those Patel photos in snow. Once, almost collapsed with frost-bite when I picked up hardened snow with bare hands and held them for a few seconds for a photo. Took more than 2 hours for the hands to begin to feel something. :) :)

Kissed in the rain? Innocent.

Sat on a roof top? Guilty. Not just rooftop sitting, I jump to my neighbouring terrace from mine, even now, to fix cable wiring pulled out by monkeys. :-)

Kissed someone you shouldn’t? Innocent. Namakkaen vambu?

Sang in the shower? Innocent. But when the water is cold, have shouted gibberish aloud in the shower to lessen the shock of the cold water splash on skin. :-) brrrr. Ninaiththaaley Nadungum. :D

Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on? Innocent. Grrr at that thought itself.

Shaved your head? Guilty, if you consider the tonsures at temples.

Had a boxing membership? Innocent. Adhellaam edhukku?

Made a girlfriend cry? Innocent. Thiruppi oru vambu question!

Been in a band? Innocent. In my earlier company, the employees were divided into bands based on experience and potential(!). If you are asking of that band, yes, I am guilty. :-)

Shot a gun? Guilty. The guns with 'ball-bearing' balls you see in fairs and the Deepavali ones with roll caps. :) Oh! I have also fired 3 shots from a real rifle (maybe as heavy as me) in a firing range as a cadet at school NCC.

Donated Blood? Guilty. There is nothing to be guilty about it. Done it a few times.

Eaten alligator meat? Innocent. I am a PETA guy. :)

Eaten cheesecake? Guilty. I don't remember the last time, but may have eaten it.

Still love someone you shouldn’t? Innocent. If I loved someone, I love them forever. Should/shouldn't doesn't matter. :-D :-D

Have/had a tattoo? Innocent.

Liked someone, but will never tell who? Guilty. Vambula maati uduradhaey sila paerukku vaelai. :)

Been too honest? Guilty. Adhu enna too honest? You are either honest or dishonest. That's all. Been there, did there on both sides. :-D

Ruined a surprise? Innocent.

Ate in a restaurant and got really bloated that you couldn’t walk afterward? Guilty. Mooku pidikka eat, then come home and sleep. :-)

Erased someone in your friends list? Innocent. Irukkaradhaey konja nanja friends. idhula erase verayaa? oru vaelai chinna vayasula pakkaththu seatla irundha payyan, ponnu slateai vaenaa erase pannaalum panniyiruppaen. :-) :-)

Dressed in a woman’s clothes (if you’re a guy) or man’s clothes (if you’re a girl)? Innocent. Female cross-dressers - Widely Accepted, Male cross-dressers - EverybodyThinksYouAreNutsOrGay. :-)

Joined a pageant? Guilty. In a dictionary, definition of pageant is wider than what you think (damn those who drilled the term "beauty pageant" into our heads). Go, read it. :-)

Been told that you’re handsome or beautiful by someone who totally meant what they said? Guilty. :D :D :D (by the only woman I know really well, hope so)

Had communication with your ex? Innocent. No ex, so no communication. Yoi, kudumbaththula kuzhappaththai unduu pannaadheengapa! :D

Got totally drunk on the night before exam? Innocent. Not even water. :) Naan thanniyum adikka maataen, thanniyum kudikka maataen. :)

Got totally angry that you cried so hard? Innocent. Mmm. Why would one cry while angry? :O

Forwarding this tag to zeno, chennaigirl, TheUncanny and Anu for further enlightenment of the blogger community.

Short Takes

2010-05-17T09:00:00.001+05:30

And here is my take on the movies watched over the past 3 weeks.

Wall Street (1987)
I saw this 1987 movie for the first time and what a compelling movie it was! 'Greed is good', is the motto of a high flying stock broker, Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas). A young stock-broker Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) gets acquainted with him by trading some inside info and grows up as he gets sucked into the a world of insiders, greed, women and double crosses et al until Gekko shorts Bud by trying to break up the airline company, Bud's father works for. Bud retaliates on Gekko double crossing him with consequences and eventually trapping Gekko. An out-and-out Michael Douglas film, no wonder he got an Oscar for it. There is a sequel to it, "Wall Street Money Never Sleeps" which is being premiered at the Cannes feastival currently going on.

Pudhiya Vaarpugal (1979)
This 1979 movie launched Bhagyaraj as hero and Rati Agnihotri as heroine. Simple story, typically Bharathirajaesque. Teacher (Bhagyaraj, with his eye glasses as tall and wide like the windshield of a bus, as was the norm those days) comes to a rural school, falls in love with a belle (Rati), a lecherous village head-man and his side-kick (Goundamani excels here), teacher's false implication in a murder of a social worker and banished out of the village, Rati's marriage to Goundamani on a crooked plan by the headman and the headman's murder on the night of the marriage by Rati as he eyes her and Goundamani removing the thaali and asking Rati to run away with Bhagyaraj. There was no exaggeration in the village life portrayed and Ilaiyaraaja lilts with rousing songs. Never felt bored as I watched this movie and its incidents unfold at leisure.

Angaadi Theru (2010)
A unique view of the not-so-lovely life of the people behind the facade of the glamourous multi-storeyed shops in T Nagar, Chennai. No doubt that it was a dig at Saravana Stores, the behemoth there. What struck me from the movie's portrayal of gloom, squalor, the harsh working conditions of the sales people and their helplessness at being run over rough shod, were the strains of optimism that run throughout the movie. Down to earth acting by the actors and a completely different view from the director shod of beautification or sugar coating makes this movie a worth watch.

Iruvar (1997)
First time, I am seeing this movie in its entirety. Wow, Maniratnam had guts to take his view in a mildly camouflaged fashion, of the holy cows of Tamil politics, to celluloid. Anna, MGR, Karunanidhi, Jayalalitha and the subtle power plays between them. Those who do not have a view of the political background in Tamil Nadu cannot appreciate what this saga is all about and the inherent subtlety in the dialogues and casting. It was a movie for those who understand the currents of Tamil politics of yore. Though the standard disclaimer comes up as the first few moments in the movie, it is his take on the folks that ruled Tamilnadu (or have been ruling Tamilnadu). Mohanlal as MGR, Prakash Rai as Karunanidhi, Nasser as Anna, Aishwarya Rai as the first wife of MGR and as Jayalalitha, Gouthami as the second wife of MGR, Revathi and Tabu as the wives of Karunanidhi do justice to their roles, the protagonists more so. I spent my time mapping the screen actors to their real life equivalents. Aish looks the same now as what she was in her first film.

Point, set and game

2010-05-04T23:00:00.001+05:30

Read an article, a week or so back, in the Times of India on Martina Navratilova's breast cancer and Leander Paes' 9 PM call (Copy of the TOI article on http://citizensbi.blogspot.com/2010/04/im-martinas-9-pm-call.html) and its Tamizh translation that was posted on IdlyVadai (a popular satirical blogger). She was one of my favourites when I used to watch tennis on good old Doordarshan. I just liked her for no rhyme or reason.

Here is an one liner each about some of the tennis greats on what I recollect on them. You may not have heard a lot of these names or even be born during the era when these folks were at their peak. :) Ramesh Krishnan and Vijay Amritraj are there here as they were India's warriors in the Davis Cup matches time and again. I am not including the recent crop of players into the list.

Andre Agassi - Colorful shirts and knee length shorts, the tonsured head and cool game
Arantxa Sánchez Vicario - The girlish wide smile, duels with Steffi
Björn Borg - The bandana, Wimbledon games with John McEnroe
Boris Becker - Cat on a court, stalking corners in a flash, his hair
Chris Evert - All I recollect is that she kept losing to Martina
Gabriela Sabatini - Double fisted backhands, pretty face
Hana Mandlikova - The head-band, graceful backhands
Ivan Lendl - Tall, lanky, the never ending French Open rallies
Jennifer Capriati - She came young, she won a few and slowly disappeared
Jim Courier - His cap, wizard in clay and hard courts, persistence
Jimmy Connors - Southpaw whose nemesis was John McEnroe before retirement
John McEnroe - The scowling southpaw, his serve and volleys, the tantrums
Martina Navratilova - The southpaw, her glasses, calm confidence
Mats Wilander - Epic, epic clay court battles, curly red hair
Michael Chang - Another sly cat on the court, boyish charm
Monica Seles - The grunts, the powerful hits
Pat Cash - Bandana, Australia, his Wimbledon win over Ivan Lendl
Pete Sampras - Never say die attitude, and his loser posture when the going went really tough
Petr Korda - Hairs standing on end as if he kept his hand on a van de Graff generator
Ramesh Krishnan - Davis Cup, He played as if the ball could get hurt and his deft placements
Richard Krajicek - Probably the fastest serves and aces I have ever seen
Stefan Edberg - Grace, grace and nothing but grace personified gentleman
Steffi Graf - Serves, energy and the awesome forehand
Vijay Amritraj - Davis Cup, Could leverage a partisan crowd to cheer him to victory

There are a few whom I may have left out, but that is okay. This is a random recollection.

And yours???

Travelogue - The Switchback Mountain

2010-05-02T00:15:00.005+05:30

Now that my vacation plans are toast, I thought I'll pull a travelogue that has been sitting as a draft for a significantly long time (almost 6 months), and publish.

Blessed are the people with a home in the mountains or close to it. It is an experience to be on the hills or close to one. The air, the silence, the sounds, the vistas, the clouds, the mist!!! I could go on and on.

The hills in the distance beckon

How many times while going on journeys, you come across a fork in the road or a board with directions to a place of which you have little or no idea of, but somehow urges you to visit it? Our visit to Kolli Hills (Kolli Malai in Tamizh) in Namakkal district of Tamil Nadu was one such. Used to see markers to it on the Salem-Namakkal highway near Rasipuram on my drives to Thanjavur, and before one such trip, decided to take the fork to Kolli Hills and then continue the journey. This was a rare 'whole family' occasion with my parents and siblings/family joining the trip.

Lonely road to the hills

Trolled about the place on the Web and one of the high points of the place was the approach to the top. I am not sure, but the road from the foothills to the top of the mountain must figure at least in the Limca book of records.

National Highway 7, as smooth as it gets

Bengaluru (mind it, from the outskirts) to Salem, starting in the morning, was an effortless cruise due to the NHAI paving an international grade road for the entire stretch. Detoured into Salem, packed lunch at Adyar Ananda Bhavan (A2B) at Salem and started towards Namakkal. The drive till the Rasipuram diversion was good (the national highway NH7 is being 4 laned all the way to Kanyakumari as a part of the North-South corridor) and then an abrupt slow-down to a crawl as we entered Rasipuram. After enquiries and around half an hour of further driving, we were at the foothills of the mountain range.

Kolli Hills is a part of the Eastern Ghats and is around 1300 metres above mean sea level (MSL). The climb up is heady. 70 hair-pin bends (or switchback turns) till you reach the first village on the top (approx. 20 kms) and from there to other places (villages) around on the hills, there are further more hair-pin bends to negotiate. Either you can enjoy those 180° turns or sit tight with your head reeling and stomach churning (and inhaling a citrus fruit or eat sour candy).

You can see the road starting at the top left corner and snaking its way to the center

Negotiating a curvy hair-pin bend

Green carpet

The beauty with any mountain/hill road is that as you slowly go up the gradient, the forest cover increases and by the time you realize it, there is a valley on one side and you have climbed the hills and a carpet of green soothes you. The hair-pin bends here were not difficult to negotiate with the sparse traffic, having negotiated the steep ghats from Bandipur to Ooty via Masinagudi (36 high gradient hair-pin bends, boy! what a route it is) a few weeks prior to that. It took around an hour to get to the top of the hills from the base, and the journey was worth it.

Approaching the summit

Stopped near a wayside temple with a mountain stream beside it, with a nice flow of water. The water was cold to the touch and refreshing. After standing relaxed in the flowing water for a few minutes in rapt silence with nothing but the sounds of the gurgling water on the rocks and the mini waterfall, unpacked the A2B lunch and gobbled it up, sharing it with two doggies that were roaming around. Surprisingly no monkeys at that point. Especially when you are really hungry, food tastes like 'devaamritha' and A2B's curd rice slips through your tongue to the stomach.

The vista view

There was a vista point at the summit from a government guest house where the valley down below and the plains beyond can be seen. The wind was very strong at this point pushing everything around. There were a few other vista points as well, but we decided to go to a few places and then head down before darkness falls.

Arappaleeswarar Temple

Some places of interest around

This place is famous for its Paari link to Tamil Sangam literature. The anecdote is that king Paari, who on seeing a jasmine (mullai) climber on the roadside without support to climb upon, left his chariot for the creeper to use as a prop. (Mullaikku thaer koduththaan Paari) Nothing much exists of a palace or its associated trappings. There is an ancient Shiva temple (Arappaleeswarar) and a gorgeous waterfall (Aakaasa Gangai) for which you have to go down a 1000 steps. We didn't do it as the skies were darkening, tiredness was setting in, and we had to go another 160+ kms from base of the hills to reach Thanjavur and driving in the dark is treacherous because of the curvy roads till Tiruchi and demonic drivers with their headlights blazing on hi-beam. On the way down, picked up some hill produce (pineapples, oranges etc) and the oranges proved useful to overcome nausea while negotiating those 70 bends down.

The roads were lovely, especially for a road less travelled. The hills are still unspoilt and hopefully remains that way. There is an annual festival on Paari that happens which seems to get crowds there. But it is relatively peaceful and hidden, otherwise. For those who have heard of this place somewhere on TV, yes!, it was featured in a diversionary story in the Tamizh soap of a life-time, the one and only "Kolangal" (gee, I forgot the serial's name suddenly and had to look it up and whoa, I miss that stupid serial in hindsight :-))

Short Takes

2010-04-25T11:00:00.003+05:30

Movies since my last movie post in the order of watching.

Tamizh Padam - One can make short parody of movies, but this full length movie parody stretched it slightly far to end up tiresome. Have to agree with chennaigirl's review sometime back. It was fun for the first hour, the second hour dragged on and on. And I loved the "meaningless words" song 'Oh! Mahaziya", which had a attractive tune. Seems to have had a good run!

Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya - A slow movie, but I liked it for its crawl. I think I liked the uncomfortable undecidedness of Trisha's character. Silambarasan has tried hard not to use his usual irritating mannerisms, expressions, jingo and sexist dialogues and he has succeeded pretty well. Except for a very few instances where a few of his mannerisms peek out slightly, he is subdued and has done a good job. I am forgetting, what else... The classy Rahman peeks out at times. High time, Gautam Menon stops those rap-dancer sequences. The movie is fading away from my memory, but well, that happens to almost all the movies I see. :-)

The Hurt Locker - What a movie! Deserved its Oscar accolades. "...war is a drug", the movie starts with this statement. A gripping movie on an US army bomb defusal squad involved in Iraq. Death stares from all directions, no guessing from where and how, which comes near and goes away and sometimes snatching people away, nobody being a friend and the scorching weather making wrecks out of them. Gruesome in sections, but that builds the movie's character. The film's name is interesting. It is a war slang for a place where you don't want to be, where pain (hurt) is aplenty and suffering inevitable. The movie makes you feel as if you are a part of that squad and thereby lies its success. A high-five to Kathryn Bigelow!

One movie which I have been trying to see completely from start to end is the late 70s Tamil movie "Udhiri Pookkal". I am seeing it in portions on the TV channels whenever the movie is being aired, unfortunately I landup seeing the same portions. This movie is considered a landmark movie in Tamil moviedom for its realism of village life in those times and the unassuming villain. The movie's off-beat climax and a beautifully haunting song, "Azhagiya Kannē, Uravugal Neeyē", sung by S Janaki are etched in my memory.

Adsworth-Tata DoCoMo My Song

2010-04-23T10:00:00.003+05:30

The new Tata-DoCoMo ad rocks. Hats off to their creative agency (DraftFCB Ulka).

The ad is for their My Song "Hear your tune when you call" service. It is different, simple, humorous, contemporary and non-jingoistic.

A hesitant young girl stands before her mother who is cutting veggies and says "Amma, I want to show you something". The mother looks at her in anticipation and the girl turns around, pulls her shirt up showing a tattoo on her lower back. The mom after two seconds of trepidation, gives a brief smile and says "Very nice". The girl gives a surprised smile and the tag line comes up for My Song (to hear what you want to hear) The two actors have done a wonderful job with their body language and expressions defining the unsaid.

Lovely ad! Made me really smile. Tata-DoCoMo seems to be carving a niche for different services and their different ads too. (The Hutch Zoozoos didn't impress me much this time, though there were a couple of good storyboards, probably because of over-exposure)

And here is the ad

Yada yada yada ...

2010-04-16T17:15:00.004+05:30

Running a tad tight (weekdays on work and work on weekends) and hence no activity over the past 3 weeks. Have at last caught up reading my blog tracking list. Shunting a ramble post off, before I hibernate again.

Hail-Hail
The random summer evening showers are making our scorching days at Bengaluru a tad cooler. Two days back, it poured for around 45 minutes with hail. Señora was driving out, got stuck in the rain and she said she had never seen so much of a pounding rain and the hail/rain drops on the sheets of water on the road looked like a sea of pearl drops splashing on water. And interestingly, these cloudbursts were local and confined. In a place just 10 minutes away, there was only a mild rain and 2-3 kms away, no rain. Hope we get some more rain like this to keep the summer tolerable in Bengaluru and recharge our ground water. God save the Chennaiites, if it is so in Bengaluru. :-) The 'washed look' streets with puddles here and there after the rain is a coolant to the eyes.

Two violations in two weeks and counting ...
Got fined for traffic code violation, twice, one for entering a one-way in the wrong direction and the other for taking a wrong turn at a signal. The Bengaluru police are all BlackBerry savvy now and with an attached dock which has a micro-printer, bang went Rs.100 for each violation.

I think of myself being a relatively safe driver (not so, according to Señora), but these violations are making me re-think. At least I felt that both were traps for people who drive in areas alien to them. Whoever can think of a one-way in the reverse direction on a service road, of all things, on a 2+2 lane road? Well, I was foxed in one. I missed the No-Entry sign hidden amongst ten small ad boards at the same eye level. :-( The second one was at a right turn at a signaled intersection even when oncoming traffic is blocked by a signal. I do not remember seeing a sign prohibiting a right turn and argued with the policeman who gave me a lecture on the signal having no arrow marks for me to turn right and said that the 'No Right Turn' wording is on a bin in the road and not on a sign post. :-(

I was reminded of the 'Saar, As I am suffering from ...' episode from Vivek in the movie 'Parthiban Kanavu' where he is caught by a traffic cop. One policeman flagged me down and another (the inspector), standing near his vaahanam (a bike with cheetah spots) and a BlackBerry in hand charged me. :-)

BS (a)N(d) (yel)L
I am on an unlimited data plan on my home Internet connection from our national provider BSNL. I don't what quirk is there in their subscriber management system, but I get a redirected web page whenever I cross a total of 1GB of total download/uploads in a month. I've to confirm to a 'I Agree' button to accept charging beyond this free limit which then asks me to restart the browser session. This message is like a காலை சுத்தின பாம்பு (snake encircled on your legs). Once the message comes, there is no redemption until you agree.

I get into conference calls from home (using Skype) and landed this message one morning. There was no response on clicking the 'I Agree' button. Called up BSNL broadband customer service. I have no clue what their working times are (supposedly 8 AM to 8 PM) and nobody picked up the phone at the end of navigating the interactive voice response system. Went to the landline customer service and a lady asked me to click the 'I agree' button and then restart the PC. Tried reasoning with her that clicking the 'I agree' button itself was not working, but the she persisted on 'restart'ing the PC after clicking the button. Hung up (no way that she'll understand that the servlet at the BSNL server needs to be restarted) and another half an hour of trying to get the broadband helpline, called up the landline helpline again to be told the same 'restart PC' mantra and I had to yell prompting them to take a complaint. Another half and hour wasted in clicking the 'I agree' button at regular intervals to see if the page responds and then at last it worked. I got a call from their Customer Care after 5 hours(!) asking if my Internet is working fine. Thank goodness, for small mercies.

I don't know why there should be any bandwidth accounting in my case and next, why there couldn't there be a proper troubleshooting from their end. No wonder, people exposed to a better service, run away from BSNL to other private providers. (not to mention they also have their own problems. See zeno's travails)

Pull up your socks BSNL, before it gets too late!

(P.S. I have no issues with the phone/Net service that BSNL provides, they are more nimble now than from a decade ago, but they still have miles to go)

Foodsteps - from Devagiri to SLV Coffee Bar

2010-03-26T18:30:00.001+05:30

I know that this post is going to get Ramesh mad again, but then here it goes ...

Sometimes, you go for something and get something else in return. Last Saturday, hustled up a quick visit to Devagiri, a Venkateswara temple on a small hillock immersed in the surrounding cityscape in Banashankari after el Niño's tennis class. One treat about going to a Perumal Kovil is the prasadam. 'el Niño' loves the theertham given at temples. It is always multiple helpings for him and showing his cupped hand and gulping the water down with a slurp. Loves the fragrance and taste that the theertham has, with the Tulasi leaves, camphor et al. Seeing Perumaal or Pillayaar is secondary. Theertham is divinity, for him and the running around in the prakaaram. :-)

The prasadam at the counter there is laddoo and vadé. The vadé is 'milagu vadai' (pepper vadai) which is hard (almost teeth breaking) and disc shaped, but tremendously tasty once it starts to melt in the mouth. The heat of the pepper hits your senses. And add to it, the puliyogaré (puliyodharai) there. One thing I have seen in Karnataka temples, almost without exception, is the amount of free prasadam that they give there. No shooing of people or giving small helpings. It _is_ generous and the temples are usually very clean. Both Niño and Niña got their helpings, took some of ours, all of which were in our hands, stood outside the temple, with Niño eating off our cupped hands and finishing it _fast_ (if only eating at home could be as quick!). Perumal Kovil puliyogaré tastes ethereal wherever you go. [Govindaa Govinda]

As we walked down, remembered that there is another 'Brahmins Coffee Bar' [BCB] type place nearby. Trundled down there, which is across the park there (close to the BDA shopping complex), to see a milling crowd outside a small eatery. And we had arrived at the Sri Lakshmi Venkateshwara Coffee Bar. Idly and Vadé again after wading through humanity. The chutney was a tad hot, but the idly and vadé were yum-o-yum, very similar to the ones at BCB. No sambar here as well, but chutney is limitless. This place is different than the BCB in that you get a larger variety to eat, like dosé and rava idly. el Niño, fickle to eat at joints like this, asked Señora to get him the dosé with aloo and vegetables inside (masala dosai), that he had tasted for first time at a friend's birthday party sometime back. Sat on the platform for a tree on the footpath, finished it off in no time.

What started off as a short and quick temple visit ended up with a trip to SLV coffee bar. Thanks to all the little eateries that make up the little joys of life !!!

The milagu vadé pack-of-5 from the temple survived only for a day more before its extinction. If you visit Devagiri on a Saturday, you can treat yourself to the mouth-watering temple prasadam, gorge at SLV Coffee Bar nearby and wind it up with a glass of fresh and hygienically pressed sugarcane juice at "cane-o-la" in the Banashankari BDA complex, all within 3 minutes of each other by walk.

Have a great weekend.

Suttum Vizhi Chudar Thaan - சுட்டும் விழிச் சுடர்தான்

2010-03-23T18:30:00.004+05:30

After a long time ...

One more translation of a 'soaring poem' from Subramanya Bharathi.

If emotions had arms and legs of its own, they would be dancing a perpetual ballet to the way Bharathi plays with them and his use of words of imagery.

Kannamma is his muse and there are quite a few poems addressed to her.

Here is a rendering of this poem by Hariharan in Kandukondaen Kandukondaen, with the background score by A R Rahman. It is an external link to Raaga, which may or may not work.

சுட்டும் விழிச் சுடர் தான் கண்ணம்மா சூரிய சந்திரரோ
வட்டக் கரிய விழி கண்ணம்மா வானக்கருமை கொலோ
பட்டுக் கருநீலப் புடவை பதித்த நல்வயிரம்
நட்ட நடுநிசியில் தெரியும் நட்சத்திரங்களடீ

சோலை மலரொளியோ நினது சுந்தரப் புன்னகை தான்
நீலக் கடலலையே நினது நெஞ்சின் அலைகளடீ
கோலக் குயிலோசை உனது குரலின் இனிமையடீ
வாலைக் குமரியடீ கண்ணம்மா மருவக்காதல் கொண்டேன்

சாத்திரம் பேசுகிறாய் கண்ணம்மா சாத்திரம் ஏதுக்கடீ
ஆத்திரம் கொண்டவர்க்கே கண்ணம்மா சாத்திரமுண்டோடீ
மூத்தவர் சம்மதியில் வதுவை முறைகள் பின்பு செய்வோம்
காத்திருப்பேனோடீ இது பார் கன்னத்து முத்தமொன்று

And a translation below, that evokes maybe no more than a quarter of what the original does.

The blazing radiance of your eyes, Kannamma
    Do the Sun and the Moon derive thence?
The round black pupils of your eyes, Kannamma
    Do the dark skies imbibe whence?
The silken saree, hued a midnight blue,
With glittering stones embedded bright;
Are the twinkling stars seen,
    In the darkest hour of the night;

A bright floral garden,
    Reflects in your lovely smile.
The blue waves of the sea,
    Resonates like your heart.
The gay koel's notes
    Likens to the sweetness of your voice.
On you, the young maiden, Kannamma
    Envelops my encompassing love.

Ideology, that you talk, Kannamma,
    You need it not!
For those in a tearing haste, Kannamma,
    Credo is sought not!
With the elders assent,
    The wedding rites, we shall follow yonder.
How can I wait till then?
Look here!, a kiss on your cheek, I wonder.

The Class

2010-03-16T20:50:00.001+05:30

First, wishing all a good Ugadi, that is passing by today.

This post is not a recap of the novel of the same name as the title from Erich Segal (which incidentally I liked), but just a remniscence triggered from a mini reunion of six of us from our class last weekend (from a class of 40) over lunch. Two of my colleagues came in from Canada to Chennai, and took time to come down to Bengaluru, meet the motley crowd here (six of us are here, out of which four made it to the meet). I had written sometime back when I started to blog, on the topic of "The home that wasn't" on my observances on college hostel life.

I saw 4 of them again only now after leaving college an eon back (நாமளும் ஒரு காலத்துல படிச்சோமான்னு ஆயிடுத்து!) Lots of changes in physical appearances, but once we started to talk, the college days were back. There was constant and non-stop prattling, the flashbacks, our teachers, growing up topics and poking fun around generally. I had met three others and talked to a few more when I was in the US a few weeks back. After our meeting, I was trying to recollect all the 40 in my class, but couldn't move beyond 37. :-( I have asked for help from one of my colleagues to fill in the gaps. Each one of them kindles a tagged memory, which is something academic or something funny or some incidents at college or their nick-names :) and it is nostalgic walking through the disjointed and hazy memories of almost 3 years together before we went our paths. And while browsing our class' Yahoo! Groups archives, dug out a scan of three photos uploaded by a colleague back in 2004 of the undated old photos which were taken at the end of our academic lives before we dispersed to do our final year projects. Those were the times!

The class is now spread between the USA where the majority is, Canada, Bengaluru, Chennai, Malaysia/Singapore and Australia. A few of them are randomly in touch with the others, few more regular, a few incognito with almost no trace in the past few years. Some are entrepreneurs running their own companies, some are in regular jobs (like me) and some have chucked their jobs for the most difficult and demanding job of all, parenting.

We are still a long way from our silver jubilee re-union (the premise of "The Class") if it happens, but we have crossed around two-thirds of the way.

Memories, memories and memories! The more you stoke it, the more its embers glow! The four hours that we spent together over memories, priceless!!!

Short Takes

2010-03-13T12:00:00.049+05:30

Short takes over movies seen in the past 3 weeks.

The Devil wears Prada - I was besotted watching Anne Hathaway repeatedly over a weekend, brought down by Señora, who paraphrased her name to 'annaathéy' to irk me. Three ladies, Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt anchor the movie. It is around MS, who runs a powerful fashion mag in a dictatoresque fashion, and her two assistants [EB, AH] and the dynamics surrounding them. Loved some of the dresses AH wears, especially when she first walks into her office dressed stylishly in a Calvin Klein, Chanel and Jimmy Choo and also her million watt smile. Loved the flow of the movie and its characters. The Devil wears an Attitude with a capital A!

Love Happens - Watched it thinking Jennifer Aniston will redeem the movie, if not anything. Pfft!, no vibes between JA and Aaron Eckhart, weak story and flat performance. The movie never had life anywhere except for a flash or two. Love (never) happens!

An Education - I thought the movie starred Emma Watson (Hermione of Harry Potter fame) and was awaiting her throughout the movie. And she didn't, till the end. Because I misread Emma Thompson as Emma Watson. :-( Movie is a "coming of age" story of a British schooling teenager (Carey Mulligan) who falls for a married man unknowingly and then recovers when she finds out. Good in spurts. An education, it was, for me to read the cast names properly!

(h)ear (h)ear

2010-03-11T17:11:00.003+05:30

How does it feel when an insect decides to have a rendezvous with your ear canal and decides to end its life there? I was in splits at the misery of a fellow blogger who logged such an experience a few months back. I never imagined that I'd be aurally deficient for 2 days from my own doing which ended only after a visit to an ENT specialist.

My ear seems to be a gunk magnet and needs to be taken care of every now and then. In the process of one such twiddling operation with ear buds two days back, I messed up, causing some gunk to half-block one of my ears. From hearing in 2 channel stereo, I was reduced to a 1.5 channel stereo with one ear struggling to hear. My ear was reacting to it in a funny fashion. I take a finger close to my faulty ear and I could hear odd whoosh sounds inside. I take the finger away and the sound reduced and faded. The tuning fork experiments in the Physics labs of yore flashed back.

Me, being the eternal experimenter, for relief, tried pouring warm water (not hot water, mind it) into the ear, shook and slanted the head in an effort to cajole the gunk to come out, but it refused. After a few minutes, it almost became a single channel stereo, disorienting me with a perpetual whoosh sound and a 'goiiiiiinnn' sound (:-) there is a medical term for the ringing, buzzing, crackling and hissing sound, 'tinnitus'). In spite of careful prodding with Johnson's ear buds, it worsened and I was a verbal wreck, bugging Señora every now and then (நச்சரிப்பு) to see with a flashlight if she could see something inside. Fed up on my antics from the morning, she quipped "இப்போவே இப்படி, இன்னும் வயசானா என்னெல்லாம் படுத்துவியோ". (It is like this now itself, I dread it when you age older)

Drove with the mono-aural capability to an ENT specialist in the evening who 'irrigated' my ear with warm water and washed the gunk out restoring my stereo hearing to all glory, all in just around 3-5 minutes, the driving took 25 minutes each way and the waiting at the empty clinic, another 30 minutes.

Today morning 'el Niño' was in a bad mood and left a piece of dosai in his breakfast plate, and I told him not to waste food as half the world goes hungry every day and that he was wasting food and hence money. Came a quick-fire retort, "You wasted money yesterday at the doctor by not knowing how to clean your ears properly. I don't do that. Ok!!!". I was speechless.

Lessons learnt - Avoid using ear buds to clean your ear, they could push the wax further into the ear canal, causing you extreme discomfort. Do not advise kids when they are in a foul mood. You will get it right back where you expected it least. :-) :-)

Shame!

2010-03-09T12:00:00.005+05:30

Whom are we sending to our Parliament?
Rogues, thugs, uncivilians, indecent scoundrels and what not!

Looking at the ruckus caused in the Parliament by our gender-threatened politicians on the women's reservation bill, I can only feel sad at their antics. Isn't there a scope for decency in disagreement? I am no fan of reservation, having studied in Tamil Nadu where it has been carried to an extreme as a state sponsored casteism and discrimination. Definitely there needs to be a quota based on economic status, one for the repressed classes (time bound, say 20-30 years, for all the stomping that has been done on them in the name of caste by the so called upper castes). What is all that layering of casteism everywhere (scheduled caste, scheduled tribe, backward caste, other backward caste (as if it was more backward) and more castes wanting to go backward rather than forward, and all this in the name of flattening the society of layers? We have made politicking an art of self-proclaimed morality out of caste and should never even talk about a discriminatory society in any other country.

There is definitely a merit in getting a better representation for women in Parliament, but make that clause time bound (again, 20 years or 5 terms of elections). In the space of 4-5 full terms of a government, we can anyway see if the women's reservation is making any sense and if it yields any benefit.

There is an 'oath of secrecy' administered when our MPs enter Parliament. I have no clue what it is or what secrets the MPs uphold to keep, but I would also want those appointees to take an oath of decency. We stick to an already half-obsolete and murky constitution and there can always be an amendment to it to recall MPs with indecent behavior and ban their candidature again. That could drill some sense into their bull-headed filthy behavior. It is time that some of the bigger parties work together for some decorum and bi-partisanship rather than bickering over protocol and on issues of non-importance.

Hmmm. Look at me ranting at noon. (As they say in Tamizh, uchchi veyyil mandaikku aerina maadhiri, the overhead hot sun playing with your brains)

Monday Morning C&H + Dilbert

2010-03-08T10:30:00.001+05:30

Eatologue - Brahmins Coffee Bar

2010-03-07T15:15:00.000+05:30

Dropped by, last Friday at the Brahmins Coffee Bar, an almost non-descript, small place in the old-timer eatopia zone of Bengaluru, Basavanagudi, after dropping off "la Niña", at her dance class. The place is tucked away in a primarily residential area and is surrounded by homes (not houses). The menu (if you call it so) is only idli, vadē, khara-bhath (upma/uppittuu), kesari-bhath, and coffee/tea/badam-milk. This place was voted sometime back as the best place for idli-coffee by Times of India. Never judge a building by its facade. This place can be missed easily if you aren't attentive, but the crowd around makes you pause. It isn't a sit-and-eat at leisure type of restaurant, however.

And me, being the idli lover, jumped right in, with a couple of idlis with vadē. There is no sambar and it is only chutney, poured over the idli and which tasted different and good. The idlis just melted in the mouth, aided by the chutney and were gone after one more deliberate helping of chutney. [Slurrrp, it was]. The vadē was wonderful. Roasted to crisp perfection and no trace of oil. Went for a small helping of kesari-bhath, stolen from Señora (I am no connoisseur of sweets. I'd rather stick with the khara items.) Snuck inside once again for a khara-bhath, again aided by the reverential chutney. Had to miss the coffee as it would have been the fourth in the day and hence vetoed out by Señora. :-( This itself was so heady.

The idlis cost around Rs.16 for a pair, the vadē Rs. 12 and the kesari/khara bhath Rs.12 for a single helping, higher than a typical darshini, but well worth it. You can take out a parcel as well. They are open for around 4 hours in the morning and then similarly in the evening. If you are in Bengaluru and if you are somewhere near Gandhi Bazaar in Basavanagudi or going close to Shankar Mutt, drop by at the Brahmins Coffee Bar. You'll never be disappointed!

And this post is dedicated to some of the foodies in blogdom like "Bangalore Blues", whose experiences I have enjoyed reading as much as I try to walk their foodsteps.

Unworded - Contrasts

2010-03-04T17:00:00.007+05:30

A distant moonset from a morning walk, a raging sunset from Richmond Road, Bengaluru
Montage-Picasa 3.0, Image downsize-Irfanview, Original images-Nokia N73

A generation cloud and a lightning strike

2010-03-03T13:45:00.002+05:30

Sometimes, you chug along on your life, unaware (or deliberately non-conscious) of the fact that you age every day, along with the world, and to the rest of it, until there is a moment of reckoning.

Was herding mine and brother's kids in a park near my parents' house weekend before last, as they were making a huge racket at home. The kids were roaming around and playing. This park (a vast one with hundreds of trees) is close to a few colleges around and frequented by those who need a timeout from their classes or a rendezvous point for young pairs to nestle in the relative obscurity of the boulders and trees. I was watching the kids, sitting on a bench and opposite me were a group of college girls (maybe doing their PUC) cackling away loudly and having a good time.

As I got up and started to walk back home past the chattering girls, one of them called out, "Uncle, can you please take a photo of us?". Uncle? Me? Ouch!!! I did the honours for them, smiling. It is not that I was not called an uncle before, or I felt anything wrong with that or offended, but it was probably never by a college student and that felt a bit strange. Kids (relatives / neighbors) call me by the various flavours of uncle (chiththappa (chikkappa), periyappa (doddappa), Ram mama, uncle etc), but they are 'kids' and I happily oblige them. Today's youth are so 'in your face'. :-) Reported to Señora on this and she had fun, taunting me. This was Newton's third law at work because of my mirth on a similar 'Aunty' episode earlier. :-)

I was just wondering how I may have requested someone in such a situation, in my past or even now. Maybe, I'd have started the conversation with an "Excuse me" and then requested for taking a photo without referring to any name, gender or a relationship, irrespective of their age. Or, could have used the words, "Sir" or "Ma'am" to start the conversation. In all probability, I think it would have been the first one and that is what I recollect of my trysts with strangers of all ages. A gender agnostic, non relation-referring, straight request for some activity to be performed.

An interesting behavior is reflected by 'la Niña', to an extreme, who refuses to call her aunt (my sister-in-law) as 'periyamma' in spite of cajoling by all, with goodies or even large monetary inducement (1000 rupees!), multiple times. No clue why she does that. If she wants (or has) to talk to her, it is a 'relation indifferent' conversation with no mention whatsoever of the term 'periyamma' and references to my sister-in-law to others would be as '[her cousins' name] Amma' (like "D's Amma"). This generation kids are stubborn, damn stubborn. :-) My nephew/niece calls us chiththappa/chiththi, a dozen times in a minute. :-)

Hmmm... Kids are kids to us (parents), even if they grow up tall.

Unworded - The new generation schooler's principle

2010-02-26T15:49:00.000+05:30


I rebel and therefore I am (Snapped from my brother's kid's Tee-shirt)

The Didi Express

2010-02-24T16:33:00.001+05:30

Here is what I observe(d), watching Mamata-di, our honourable railway minister, present her railway budget.

Most of the time, as Mamata is talking loudly, looking at her stack of papers, our other parliamentarians try to stand and out-shout her. But Didi, being Didi, steamrolls them with some of her counter-shouting.
Poor Meira Kumar! All that she was doing was to tell our unruly representatives, "Please don't shout, Please sit down", as if they were school kids and ready to obey.

Didi is flipping the budget pages left, right and center, pausing long at times and then starting to rattle off some train names and places, which with almost non existent intonation, sounds like a drone of a monologue.
Didi smirks and makes pointed gestures and even snapped at the other netas. ("See what I am offering", "Can't you understand what I am talking", "It'll take another 4 hours")
Lalu "the great", is shown at times, with his characteristic smile and shaking his head at times.
I can only imagine the cacaphonic "kaapi tea chaayae, kaapi kaapi" of railway platforms, as I see (saw) the budget being presented. I couldn't understand a lot of what Didi was talking, whether it was in English or in Hindi or a smattering of Bengali. She was like a chattering toy with faulty electronics which started and stopped on its own will.
It was a 'koththu parota' experience to see place names in Tamil Nadu being butchered by Didi.

Aside, why don't our parliamentarians embrace technology for this? Use PowerPoint presentations and talk only on the key points. Makes it easier. (There was a fake mail that floated around as excerpts from Nilekani's blog poking fun at the bureaucracy when Nandan Nilekani took over as the chair for the Unique Identification Authority of India project and when he supposedly wanted to present status to the parliament. That was fun)

Hopefully the budget is good for the train travellers out here.

Insurance is the subject matter of solicitation

2010-02-22T16:52:00.000+05:30

Now that the financial year end approaches, the frequency of the insurance ads on radios and TVs seem to have ratcheted up. At least these days, the voice-overs are slow and clear in stating the unfanthomably complex and unclear blurb, "Insurance is the subject matter of solicitation. Please read the offer document carefully before subscribing (or accepting)". This voice-over part of the above statement used to be on steroids and would be fast forwarded at 5x the speed of the main ad, as if something that should not be heard is being said. Maybe ASCI/IRDA ruled on that and put an end to the 'garble' that it was. It used to be fun hearing those messages at various speeds from various providers including one who went on a 0.75x normal speed, maybe to poke fun at the speedsters.

And why is it that they need to use complex jargon? The meaning of ""Insurance is the subject matter of solicitation" as I understand is that insurance is not to be solicited by the provider, but initiated (solicited) by the customer from them after reading through the insurance offering. (Anyway, that is only in spirit and not followed anywhere AFAIK) Why can't the providers use a simple statement that conveys the meaning clearly?

Mmm...

The memory rewind

2010-02-18T16:45:00.000+05:30

There is a wonderful article from John Jordan in Forbes, titled "Do you remember your first e-mail address or Internet purchase?".

Reading the article pulled me back in time to old days and I could relate with almost everything that he talks of, having walked through them. The fall of the Berlin wall, the bombing of Iraq, the first cell phones a.k.a. the bricks, your first e-mail address(es), the first Web, the instant messaging, the first e-purchase, Windows 95, the first text message, search before Google, the tech stock empire, the first flat screen, the first online video, the last photo film, Facebook, going retro etc. Whew, what a list!

We just pass by events without realizing we are passing by history being made!

http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/16/google-amazon-nokia-technology-cio-network-internet.html

Thanks John for that amazing trip down the memory lane and recharging my nostalgian batteries.

The coffee cat

2010-02-17T06:00:00.001+05:30

Nothing beats a South Indian 'degree filter coffee' early in the morning for salvation.

The aroma of the coffee powder, usually the peaberry variety, roasted and ground with a dash of powdered chicory root for increasing the brew strength kicks off the ritual of coffee drinking. [My fave brand is Cothas Coffee, with 85% coffee and 15% chicory. I love that taste of coffee powder in my mouth :-)] A slow drip gives the best potent brew for which the coffee powder needs to pressed to the filter to be packed dense and hot water poured in slowly and the filter capped. The decoction should look dark and viscous to knock you off. :-)

Image courtesy: Wikipedia

I love my coffee slightly dark, a tad bitter and not very hot. Señora drinks it piping hot and I get the stick, if her coffee isn't so. I sit with my coffee tumbler and dabarah after the mixing for froth and sipping it slowly for the taste to linger. I even like the taste of it when it goes cold. No black coffee for me, however.

I have nothing against tea drinkers, but I have been conditioned to drink tea in the evenings, if I do, rather than the mornings.

Cappuccino, Caffè Latte, Caffè Espresso, Caffè Macchiato, Mocha or any other coffee drink may be there, but the South Indian degree coffee rules!

My toast to all the coffee drinkers out there...

Monday Morning C&H + Dilbert

2010-02-15T09:00:00.003+05:30

Unworded - A sundown over the Pacific

2010-02-13T18:30:00.000+05:30

Sunset over the Pacific at the San Gregorio State Beach, California

Russian fiction

2010-02-12T12:00:00.082+05:30

I am not a littérateur or a very avid book reader, but somehow for me, the following authors wait to be read from Russian literature. I do not know whether I'll do it at all or how much I'll do it, but they are on my list. Hopefully some time, I buy and read at least a few of the unabridged ones, once I clear the ones that are "head of line blocking". (Ha Ha Ha, managed to sneak in a geek term into an absolutely unrelated post :-))

Leo Tolstoy	War and Peace, Anna Karenina
Fyodor Dostoyevsky	Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamazov
Vladimir Nabokov	Lolita
Anton Chekov	His collection of short stories
Ivan Turgenev	Fathers and Sons

Maybe some articles in "The Hindu", a long time back, prodded me to cling on to, and remember some of these names and works, with an intent to read them somewhere, sometime. Slaved to random memories, with nuggets of information, useful or useless, lodged deep and they don't seem to fade away and peek out once in a while. This list is one.

Short Takes

2010-02-11T12:11:00.001+05:30

A few short takes on movies that I saw in the recent past.

Inglourious Basterds
A war period movie from Quentin Tarantino. Expletives galore, gore (ripping the scalp of the killed soldiers, yuck) in a fictional story of a plot to execute Hitler and the top brass of the Nazi SS. Brad Pitt is the leader of the small American guerilla group that roams Nazi France and terrorizes the Nazi soldiers with their cold-blooded scalping. Brad's acting is good, but he is overshadowed by Christoph Waltz, who is terribly brilliant in his portrayal of Hans Landa, a SS colonel and to a fair extent by Mélanie Laurent, who portrays Shosanna, a Jew who escapes from Hans as her family is wiped out, and runs a cinema theater in Paris after changing her identity. The second half of the film is engrossing as two divergent plots to take down the Nazi top folks narrow down to the same destination for a climax. A good film, but not Tarantino's best. Inglorious, it wasn't.

Up
Heartwarming tale of a retiree widower escaping his boring lonely life by tying his house with helium balloons and flying to South America to see Paradise Falls which he had wanted to visit with his wife long back. A inquisitive young boy joins as a stowaway in the floating house. Their adventure on landing some distance away from their destination and finding a long lost bird which is stalked for by a wayward scientist provide the comic and serious moments. Nice animation by Pixar adding a feather to its cap. For whatever it was, I loved the movie Cars, the most, of all the Pixar movies. Worth all the adventure, Up in the sky!

From Paris with love
Uh Oh! John Travolta has copy adichified Rajini's "Mottai Boss" get up in Sivaji. If you love the sound of bullets leaving their revolvers and automatics, this movie has lots of it including a few in slo-mo. Story is a worn out one, but carried off pretty well by John Travolta who is a CIA special agent operative, sent into Paris to put down a Pakistani drug cartel. In fact, he pulls the movie through with his wit and style. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is subdued and is double-crossed by his French girl-f(r)iend (Kasia Smutniak). There is a BP raising car chase through the streets of Paris for about 15 minutes. The lady who acts as the friend of Jon's girl-friend and comes maybe for less than 5 minutes looked pretty pretty (Amber Rose Revah). Other than the car chase and Travolta's antics, this movie doesn't have much redemption on it and there is no love lost in Paris!

Parent trap
The plot has been seen in many movies and in Indian movies as well (குழந்தையும் தெய்வமும் in தமிழ்). Twins are separated when young by their parents because of a divorce and they are raised far apart. During an international summer camp, the two serendipitously meet and switch places to meet their other parent whom they have never seen. How they get their parents together back as they find out that their father is about to re-marry one who is interested in his wealth forms the rest of the story. Lindsay Lohan is endearing as the twin kids and is charming with her antics. Parent trap, it isn't, but a kiddie trap for parents!

And in the pipeline, waiting for my eyes and ears over them are (some of them repeat views)
Shawshank Redemption, Godfather I-III, Star Wars I-VI, a few Akira Kurosawa classics, Bicycle Thief, Fight Club, Gladiator, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill I and II, Se7en, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, The Departed, Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy and a few more. Hopefully I find time to see them.

mAd Nauseam

2010-02-11T10:55:00.001+05:30

This is a lazy random rant.

Watching ads has become a pastime for me, the past 2.5 weeks. Sometimes I just blank out watching them. The ad passes through my eyes and ears, bypassing the brain and goes right out.

Unlike in India where the ads do not reference their competition by name, it is a cut-throat world here. Competitors are named explicitly and their products (also named) taken to task. In India, ASCI (Advertising Standards Council of India), the watchguard body of Indian advertising, does not seem to allow calling names. You can guess the product in question. E.g. the Complan and Horlicks health drink ads. I think for a very short time, one of them named the other, but withdrew the ad after complaints. You can see a list of decisions taken on questionable ads at http://www.ascionline.org/feedback/cccdecisions.htm. Interesting read.

A recall of a few of the ads that I have been badgered with.

Mobile telephone service ads-Everybody wants a pie of the game. Verizon and AT&T are on an all-out war naming each others' network as bad either in terms of functionality, coverage etc showing US maps showing how bad the other's coverage is or giving away phones for free for long term contracts with them. Buy one phone-get three free, kind of.
Car insurance ads-Geico and AllState are always at loggerheads with Progressive throwing in more fuel into the fire. 15% or not, we don't ever worry much about motor insurance and liability. And funny that Geico uses a British accent in their radio ads.
Car ads-Mostly I see the GM car ads comparing with Toyota or Honda on how better they are with fuel efficiency, crash safety etc. The Toyota recall is having some of these folks active with ads. Make hay while the sun shines.
Lawyers and attorney agents-Have you heard of Mesothelioma? I learnt that it is a form of cancer caused by asbestos exposure from attorney houses and lawyers ad-ing on the TV. There are tons of ads these days stating, if you took this medicine or that medicine and if you suffer xyz ailment, that you may be eligible for settlement et al. There is one class 'helping' you to get around IRS (Internal Revenue Service, their Income Tax department) threats using legal restraints. Another states they will help you pay off your credit card loan with funds from Obama's stimulus program. For one, I think most of the attorneys here are like leeches, gnawing at you for their pound of flesh, no matter how much John Grisham glorifies them.
Vanity creams et al-Oh Man, Cindy Crawford comes around showing her serum collection used by the creme de la fashion. There are acne removal creams, blackspot reducers, sunscreens, anti-aging, anti-wrinkle, botox and lots of other chemical treatment on your face and body. And what is it with these folks' constant reference to Europe when they strut their stuff? Does it imply a European hangover with respect to fashion? Maybe!
Food ads-McDonalds, Burger King, Applebees and whatever. My burger is bigger and better than yours, 150 calorie meals, blah blah. Nation of junk foodies. :-) Not to mention pet food, pet medicine and vitamin supplements for the pets, leave alone the owners.
Health and Fitness-Drink this, drink that and tons of probably useless gym equipment bandied about on the Home Shopping Network to get you up to shape. Slimming pills, weight loss devices, fitness programs, you name it, they got it. And discounts, bazaar style. Call in the next 20 minutes and you'll get one absolutely free.
Others-Damn, there is even a gems and jewellery channel peddling 14k gold with all kinds of colored stones like the ones which we get from our gypsy folks (kuravan, kuraththi)

I am yet to see the famous Super Bowl (World Cup 'American football') ads. Almost 3 million dollars for a 30 second spot for each of the ads. Aside, I have no clue why these folks call it a World Cup. I don't think even Canada is included in the group.

Hmmm... The rantosaurus rests here.

A documentary on a documentary

2010-02-09T11:48:00.000+05:30

I love watching documentaries. They keep me occupied no end. Especially, I love travelogues and historical ones. Was watching an episode of a documentary "Story of India" on PBS, a educational TV channel in the US. It was maybe on the lines of 'Discovery of India', the book by Jawaharlal Nehru, which was televised and telecast on DD sometime back as 'Discovery of India/Bharat, Ek Khoj', which I used to watch with awe and interest and the chants that started and concluded the episodes were so wonderful on the ears. (Starting chants of Bharat, Ek Khoj and Ending chants of Bharat, Ek Khoj)

The documentary started off with the silk route from China, the Kushanas and Kanishka, their ruler, probably the greatest ruler of northern India. It then moved to the spice route from the west (Greeks, Romans, Spain, Portugal) to lots of places on the west coast, which was famed for the spices, especially pepper, in exchange for our everlasting obsession from time immemorial, gold. Kerala is one of the key trading spots and they show how a big bowed ship is built with just wood and nails, in the backwaters, just the way it was done eons back. The topic moved to Buddhism in time of Kanishka which was a dominant religion at one time. It then goes searching for lost Stupas, of which one in Peshawar has been documented by the western travellers as having one of the largest ever known, but it doesn't exist now, with only a mound marking the place where it might have stood once. A brief vista into Samarkhand, in Uzbekistan which was the confluence of the east and west on the silk road. That scenery there is breathtaking.

Continuing on the spice route, the documentary moves to Madurai, famed for its temple and the trade in textiles that happened during that period, then to Thanjavur, for the big temple and the golden time of the Cholas with Raja Raja Chozhan (gee, they showed some clippings from the movie, 'Raja Raja Chozhan' enacted by Sivaji Ganesan). There is a dialogue with the Mahratta prince of Thanjavur. There is a short sequence about bronzes and how they are cast. Absolutely lovely and intricate moulds and into them are poured glowing hot melted bronze. The artisans use methods followed by their ancestors and do not use a metric scale for measurement even now. The landscape moves to Tiruvannamalai, where they show the Utsavar and the lighting of the Annamalai Deepam.

It was a nice weaving of historical facts with a good narrative.

That program was followed by another on an American moving around in Iran. There was a good discussion of the Shiite vs. Sunni conflict, the hatred towards America, the overthrowing of the Shah, the oil economy, key cities there, the universities in Iran, student culture and social morals there. They have some beautiful mosques there.

Oh! history and the documentaries. I can watch them forever, the travelogues, religious ones, doomsday conspiracies, nature and wildlife, art, sci-fiction and what not!!! It is a time that I feel as never wasted.

Monday Morning C&H + Dilbert

2010-02-08T10:00:00.000+05:30

Monday Morning C&H + Dilbert

2010-02-01T09:00:00.024+05:30

Idle thoughts

2010-01-31T12:19:00.000+05:30

Idling around with nothing much to do at an alien place (ok, it is not really alien to me) and being alone leads to some slow mind-munching.

Thinking of Idli (idlee, idly, iddili, so many ways for a proper noun) with chutney and molagaai podi/chutney podi. That is my favorite, anyday, over anything. I can have idli for breakfast, lunch and dinner (with caveats though :-)). Doing some random cooking (thanks to MTR for saving me the nitty gritties with its ready to eat/mix and eat collection). I can get idli (what idli, everything Indian that you can think of) at restaurants here, but the chutneys are yuck (maybe the coconut's taste) but nothing comes close to the home made idlis by señora.

Skype rocks, and its video conference, whew!. The voice quality exceeds that of the landline and not to mention, it is free. Helps to stay grounded and connected.

Watching TV at random, with reruns of Seinfeld, Friends, Home Improvement, House M.D., some movies, news and weather channels, and not to mention ads and more ads than the mainline serials. Love [Home Improvement]. Reminds a lot of my home improvement and the wisecracks, hilarious.

Thinking of watching a sundown, tomorrow, on the Pacific, weather permitting.

Obama - I am mighty impressed

2010-01-28T13:15:00.000+05:30

I was watching Obama give his "State of the Union" address to the Congress in the US today. Wow, he talked glib, loud and lots of right words. Lots of jingoism, implicit and in-the-face digs at the Republicans, jobs, tax breaks, college education sops, taxing the Wall Street cash cows, health insurance and reforms, tightening the belt by freezing Govt spending, deficit and debt, national security, immigration, gays, national values etc.

He talked really well, cracked jokes at times, smiled a lot, acknowledged mistakes, challenged detractors and threatened to use his veto powers. Boy, he was persuasive in his vocal theatrics in spite of the long talk!!!

If only Obama and his folks walk the talk, but that is another thing. :-)

Meanwhile thinking why we do not have anything like that in India. All the Republic Day/Independence Day speeches by our politicians are so drab and monotonous with no crackle or energy. The Governor's address to the Chief Minister of his state should not contain any negative comment about the Government even if it was mired in controversy. So much so for democracy.

Demographic targeting

2010-01-28T09:00:00.004+05:30

One of the things that I noticed about the uninor outdoor ads is their positioning at youth rather than an all-inclusive demography. The ads are targeted at college goers and those in their first jobs and at an urban audience. Most of the faces that grace the print/outdoor ads look serious, but show confidence or contentment. Probably only two models actually smile/laugh in the ads. Interestingly, not much of jingoism which the others like Tata DoCoMo or Reliance seem to be drumming up. I have not seen any of the TV ads though. Not sure how uninor fares with a rural audience. More females than the males in the ads.

In India with ARPU being low, it is always a tough fight to get a loyal mindshare. With mobile number portability coming in, it will become even more messy. Seems like they have got a decent start in their first month of operations and I hope these folks succeed as I have been associated indirectly with both the companies that form uninor. (Unitech was assisted in setting up all the operations and billing infrastructure and software by my earlier company and Telenor is a customer of my current company (though not here, but in Europe)). Their web-site could be a tad better.

And I like their logo in blue!

Long due, but nevertheless

2010-01-26T07:32:00.017+05:30

Hooray! that Ilaiyaraaja has been awarded, at last, with a Padma Bhushan by the Government of India on this Republic day. I hope that the tribe of musical geniuses increase and so does Ilaiyaraaja's contribution to Indian film music.

My sincere thanks to him, who, by being a large part of what I hear in film music, is a part of my life and for the memories that I associate to his wonderful music.

And congrats to all those who richly deserved an appreciation for the work done by them in their respective spheres.

Monday Morning C&H + Dilbert

2010-01-25T09:00:00.021+05:30

All copyrights for the comic strip acknowledged.

Unworded - Sunrise today

2010-01-23T19:53:00.000+05:30

And quiet breaks the dawn

Achingly haunting

2010-01-21T12:18:00.003+05:30

My N73's shuffle mode mis-behaved (!) today repeating the same sequence from whatever song I jumped to. One song that came up in that sequence was "Aap ki nazrón né samjha" from the 1962 Hindi movie Anpadh with music by Madan Mohan.

Three or four years back, while driving, I was fiddling with the car radio in the AM channel mode when I first heard this song. It was made poignant by the weak AM signal on the radio (and what an effect it was! the song lines fading off and then coming back giving the impression of hearing the song as being sung far away, which is wafting over a breeze [I seem to be getting better at defining a simile]). I had heard the remix version of the song sung by Gunjan Singh (who was the lead singer in Bally Sagoo's (pioneer of Indian fusion remix songs) recording company). Gunjan was very impressive in spite of the hip-hop beats in the remix. She also sang the hauntingly beautiful "Noorie" song (again a fusion remix), the background song for the wedding scenes in "Bend it like Beckham". What a voice she has!

And then, I heard the original rendition by Lata Mangeshkar. Literally zombied by her rendering and the music, which tugs and scythes through the heart every time I hear it. What a modulation Lata brings in, that pulls you along!

Stirringly beautiful ghazal, achingly haunting voice and music!!! What shall I say about those composers and singers of yore who have given us such gems? Words fail me.

My imagination runs riot

2010-01-19T16:30:00.001+05:30

[Long post alert]

I have always been intrigued and to an extent foxed by headlines which say something like this.

Manmohan Singh [MS] discusses with Nicolas Sarkozy [NS] on climate change
TN CM Karunanidhi [MK] meets Simon Beresford-Wylie [SW], CEO of Nokia Siemens Networks

What do the biggies discuss in those meetings? Obviously MS won't discuss technicalities of ozone holes, glacial melting, Kyoto protocol, carbon credits, weather satellites etc with NS. Maybe they talk in generality in those meetings with courtesies and small talk, the bigger issues as memoranda etc being covered by their secretaries and the technocrats behind them and then go just to sign on the papers. I don't doubt that some are savvy in certain domains, but I feel that it is usually the "behind the scenes" bureaucrats who move the system.

For example SW, won't talk 4G, 5G, software defined radio, EV-DO, WiMAX, LTE, packet backbones or network evolution with [MK] or his aides like his deputy CM [MS], the union ministers [AR] (who obviously would be there for meetings like this) and the other cabinet minister [MA]. BTW, [SW] is no more the CEO of Nokia-Siemens, it is Rajeev Suri now.

Last week, on TV, I was watching a verbal duel between Jairam Ramesh and a group of scientists in a meeting over genetically engineered brinjal (And what is it with TimesNow channel! Showing it all over and over again as if India has walked out of the Copenhagen Summit). Never thought that the scientists could shout and heckle him off the stage. One minister whom I have seen talk some sense in a techie meeting (though not in depth) is Kapil Sibal, when he was in the Ministry of Communications at some IEEE conference in New Delhi. He talked on the social aspect of technology and ramifications and gave some interesting stats.

Here is my unofficial "imagination run riot" take on how the MS-NS or the MK-SW meeting may have progressed. The general folks have no clue on what transpires in those meetings as everyone involved is bound by the "official code/oath of secrecy", whatever it is. And all the disclaimers apply.

For example, this could be the hidden transcript of the meeting between MS and NS.

[MS]: Welcome, Mr. NS
[NS]: Thank you, Mr. MS [shakes hands]
[MS]: Please take a seat [motions NS to his seat]
[NS]: Thank you.
[NS]: [Clears throat] M, Why is it that you always wear a purple head thing?
[MS]: [smiles] No special reason Mr.S. I just like the colour. The head thing's name is turban.
[NS]: Turban, now I know. The one Osama wears. Do you know, we have a new rule in France that bans purdah for women in public? I am not sure if the rule covers turbans. If so, you may have to pay a fine of 500 euros next time when you visit France. [guffaws]
[MS]: [sheepish grin and mumbles] But turban is different from purdah and this is different from Osama's.
[NS]: Did you say something Man?
[MS]: No No. Please have some water. The water is bottled naturally at the glacial springs in the Himalayas.
[NS]: Merci. The water is not from Evian!!! [Turns to his aide and says, Pouvez-vous me faire l'eau d'Evian?] You see, I get my own water, "La France est grande".
[MS]: How is Ms.Carla Bruni?
[NS]: Ah! Asking about my suprême dame. Je t'aime Carla. She is busy and into musique these days. She is also thinking of modeling. Model, you see. Karl Lagerfeld, Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci, Roberto Cavalli, Miuccia Prada, Donna Karen you see.
[MS]: [Gulps]
[NS]: How about your life, M?
[MS]: [Peers through his glasses]. No personal life Mr.S. My madame is doing good. Daughter is in the US, making Obama's life difficult. My political life is in the hands of Soniaji. [clasps his hands]
[NS]: Ha Ha. Obama, he is inexperienced, ill-prepared by his advisors and not up to standards, vous voyez. And Merkel, she is a copy-cat and Zapatero, the Spanish guy, not very clever. [smiles and then grins] Sonia, Ahhh, Let me talk to Silvio. Nous sommes de proches amis.
[MS]: [Startled that NS may comment something more controversial] Shall we quickly run through our releases, before we meet the press?
[NS]: Okay. Commençons.

[The teams run through the text of the press releases while the heads acknowledge and sip water]

[MS]: [to his aide] Can we please have the official photographer come in and take a photo of our meeting?

[The photo of all the key folks sitting on a table with some papers on it and sitting on the comfy wide sofas facing each other is taken]

[MS]: Let us go to the press conference, Mr. S? The press would be waiting.

[They walk to a room where cameras and microphones are setup like a garbage dump one on top of each other and news folks overflowing in the room]

[MS]: Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the briefing. Myself and Mr. NS have had wide ranging discussions a few minutes back on terrorism, environment, culture and international relations. We have pledged to work together on issues of mutual and national importance and [blah blah blah]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This could be the transcript between MK-SW meeting.

The meeting room has MK, AR, MS and MA and their secretaries. SW is ushered in with a colleague or two.

[SW]: [looking at all] va-na-kkaa-m.
[All]: வணக்கம். [and nod their heads]
[SW]: Thank you Sir, for meeting us.
[MK]: Thank you. This is MS, my deputy, this is MA, minister of textiles, this is AR, the telecom emperor.

[SW is confused, who is who, since all of them are wearing the 'karai' white veshti and has no clue why the others, especially the minister of textiles, are in this meeting]

[SW]: Nice to meet you, Sirs.
[MK]: உங்க companyல என்னவெல்லாம் பண்ணுறீங்க? (What all do you do in your company?)
[SW]: In addition to phones and their software, we work in latest wireless technology like 4G, 5G, WiMAX, Wide band frequency hopping spread spectrum receivers.

[AR is now fully alert on hearing the terms 4G, 5G and spectrum in the reply.]

[MK]: [shakes head to ack] and then looks at AR and MA. என்ன தம்பிங்களா, நமக்கு 2.5Gலயே நல்ல ஆதாயம். இவரு என்னமோ இன்னும் நிறைய சொல்லுறார். பாத்துக்கோ. (Dear folks, We had a windfall in 2.5G. This person is talking of more things. Look out)
[SW]: Sir, that additional land requested for expansion ...
[MK]: [looks at his secretary] எல்லா விஷயமும் சொல்லிறுப்பா. (tell him all the info) [looks at SW] My secretary will help you with all that and I'll approve. Don't worry
[SW]: Thank You, Sir.

[Secretary looks at SW like a lamb being taken for slaughter]

[MK]: ஒன்னு தோணுது. ஒரு புது திட்டம். தமிழ்நாட்டுல எல்லா குடும்பத்துக்கும் இலவசமா 2 cell phone குடுக்கலாம்னு, இலவச TV மாதிரி. இவங்க phone பண்ணுறாங்க இல்ல. என்ன பண்ண முடியும்னு கேக்கலாம். நாம இலவச cycle குடுத்தோம், இலவச கல்யாண பணம் குடுத்தோம், இலவச TV குடுத்தோம், Rs.2 அரிசி குடுத்தோம். இப்போ இலவச mobile குடுத்தா நம்மளை சரித்திரம் மறக்கவே மறக்காது. தம்பி MS, நீ இதை பாத்துக்கோ. [to secretary] இதையும் discuss பண்ணிருப்பா. (Something strikes me. A scheme. We shall give 2 cell phones free for every family in TN. These folks make phones. We can ask what can be done from these folks. We gave free cycles, free money for newly-weds, free TV and rice for Rs.2 and now free phones. We will never be forgotten in history. Dear MS, please take care of this [to secretary] Please discuss this as well)
[AR, MA, MS]: தலைவரே. உங்கள மாதிரி யாரும் யோசிக்க முடியாது. (Nobody can think like you, our leader)

[SW blinks, not understanding what is being talked about]

[MK]: We will issue a press release. My secretary will get in touch with you further.
[SW]: Thanks for the meeting, Sir.
[MK]: We shall have a photo for the press release. Please wait.

[Photographer comes in and SW poses with a bouquet to be given to MK]

[SW]: Thank You, Sir.
[All]: Thank You.

[Next day press release - TN CM's meeting with Nokia-Siemens CEO. New people-friendly CM's scheme for the people of TN to be announced on April 1.]

Monday morning C&H + Dilbert

2010-01-18T08:30:00.017+05:30

All copyrights for the comic strip acknowledged.

Of a good drive, a filling lunch and a nice siesta

2010-01-17T22:16:00.008+05:30

Sometimes, there is nothing that beats a long drive (especially when you don't drive :-)), a good lunch and a fine siesta.

On Saturday, I was chaffeured by the señora, accompanied by la niña and el niño, to the Kamat Lokaruchi, which is on the Bengaluru-Mysore highway between Ramanagara (of rock climbing and Sholay fame) and Channapatna (of the wooden toys fame). It is a themed restaurant offering typical Karnataka dishes like joladha roti (roti made from jowar (or sorghum)) and its accompaniments, akki (rice) roti and a completely different set of accompaniments and a few other dishes for which I do not have a name. The ambience is different and the staff, courteous.

It is interesting the way señora reacts when I drive and what I do when she drives. Señora has an imaginary brake under her legs at the front passenger seat and a hand on the dashboard as I do my maneuvers on the road and complains that I am a bad driver. She uses her imaginary brakes to full effect. I just cannot relax when she is on the wheel though she is better on the road and I complain that she doesn't honk enough. The idle chatter, long pauses at times between sentences, some rants, the drone of the car engine and watching the road go quickly by (that is so calming on long drives) that characterize most of my drives. Señora blazed on the highway, weaving around safely, and keeping a consistent 80-90 kmph and we were at the restaurant in around 35 minutes or so from home.

The lunch was as heavy as a python gobbling a deer, to last it a week, with a sumptuous spread on plantain leaves. I, being a very picky eater, loved the meal. I have never tried the full meal earlier though I have dropped into this restaurant a few times before. I don't know how people manage to work (or try to) after having such a meal. Came back home whizzing again on the highway and dozed off for a late-day siesta. Sleep just takes you over just like that after such a lunch and drive and the bad posture on my siesta sprained my back, it seems. And at the shop outside the restaurant, picked up an interesting tool, one to scratch your back. For that "scratch-scratch" satisfaction when it itches at the absolutely unreachable point in your back even with your hands in all contortions. :-) :-)

And now the last few hours before work beckons after a long break of 4 days, one of which was an excuse on Friday for the eclipse. I've to figure out a reason for the bunk. All that I saw of the eclipse was using probably the simplest working demonstration of a pin-hole camera, i.e. just 2 sheets of paper and a pin hole on one. :-) And idled all day long, save completing a recommendation for one of my ex-colleagues applying for his international MBA.

Mmm... What I hate about these short vacations is that they end just like that and a long week with lots of work stares at you. :-(

Short Takes

2010-01-15T18:45:00.001+05:30

A few takes on movies that I watched over the past few days, on TV, DVD or the PC. The movies are not recent releases and I am no big connoisseur or follower of movies. I see it at my own pace and time. Sometimes, I enjoy, sometimes I switch off, sometimes I see it again. :-)

Alai Paayuthey
One of my evergreen favorites. What a screenplay on a simple story! Wonderful narration! Nothing was unnecessary except for a song (September Maadham). The song Evano Oruvan, by Swarnalatha is my fave. The climax was weak to accept, but rest of the movie, stellar. Maddy and Shalini crackle like the winter static with their sparks. A perpetual favourite of mine!!!

Wake up Sid
Decent "coming of age" movie and Ranbir seems to have a knack for comedy (intended or not). Konkona looked a tad older to him, not jarring however. Kept me awake to see to the end.

Paa
Nice movie with not much of sermonizing. At places, Amitabh's make up and acting looked overboard, but the movie moved forward pretty well. Vidya Balan looked eye-catching as a mom and was a revelation (my first movie of hers, seen to its end. Saw Lage Raho Munnabhai, Guru in parts :-)). Abhishek was good, but not extraordinary. Worth watching.

Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani
What shall I say about this movie, a comedy? The less said, the better. Ranbir gets you smiling and beyond in a very few places, Katrina looks beautiful and does nothing. Story, none. The only thing I'll remember is that I stayed in Ooty late last year in the same hotel where Ranbir and Katrina were put up when they shot the movie. :-) (there was a photo of them in the lounge). Psst.

Twilight (1st movie)
The first line of the movie (the voice over which starts as "I'd never given much thought to how I would die") had me hooked. The story meanders on the vampire thread, no vampire gore though and not much of special effects. Straight and simple. And, Robert Pattinson (Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter series) looks a tad more pale, maybe to reinforce his vampirishness, but Kristen Stewart is just so ravishing, just so radiant. Can watch the movie again for her. :)

On Pongal, Makara Sankranthi and Lohri

2010-01-13T14:30:00.007+05:30

A paean to the faceless farmer

Rice, wheat and cereals, we take for granted;
Is from the blood, sweat, love and tears of someone wanted.

Yet, do we remember you proper and right?
The unknown, unsung farmer, without whom our life is a blight.

Hours and hours of work in the fields, you vest;
Day in and day out, with no break or rest

Whether it is sun, rain or drought, you sow and reap;
The crops nurtured with care as we sleep.

To you, the men and women true;
We owe you a thanks, from our heart anew.

As you celebrate your harvest festival,
We respect your effort and wish you well.

As you thank the sun, the rain and your stock,
By boiling rice, milk and jaggery in a pot.

For all the work that you have done for us,
May the future for you be prosperous

Images courtesy: Wikipedia

Monday Morning C&H + Dilbert

2010-01-11T08:30:00.008+05:30

All copyrights for the comic strip acknowledged.

This Dilbert is for you, zeno (for asking sometime back) and to gils (for being another example as derived from one of your recent posts) I am no saint. I blank out on names at the right moment when talking to others about someone whom I may have worked closely with. I recollect everything about them except the name and try to bridge the name by circuitous means. So embarrassing at times!!! :-) :-)

All copyrights for the comic strip acknowledged.

Unworded - Fiery and yet mellow, Stirring and yet calm

2010-01-09T18:00:00.016+05:30

Sunset over the backwaters of the Pichavaram mangroves (near Chidambaram)