Doodles of a crazy man!

I often overrate my instincts. I do have huge self-destructive tendencies. On such days, I pick a really bad movie to watch. Today, it happened to be "Dus Kahaniyaan". I had no big expectations from the movie. The movie was just 2 hours long. That makes it a mere 12 minutes per story. Even if 3 stories are good and a few are not unbearable, I felt it was not a bad choice and it did not seem too risky. How wrong was I! I would not bore you by writing about all of them, but definitely a few that got on my nerves. Strangers In The Night Mahesh Manjrekar and the lady with the longest face, Neha Dhupia are a weird couple who spend their anniversary day disclosing their past infidelities. Neha discloses that she had kissed a stranger in a railway station before meeting Mahesh. Flashback, we get to see Neha kissing the stranger's palm, her chin touching his elbow! She kisses his palm, his fingers - some of the most innovative ways of kissing never seen before on celluloid....

Tring Tring. Tring Tring. Tring Tring. Tring. "You have reached the automated voice messaging system of so-and-so. Please leave a message after the tone" Can you talk to the voice messaging system the same way as you would talk to its owner? If you can, I envy you. If you cant, do you know if there is a name for this disability? :) Just like anyone else, I talk to different people in different ways - the way of addressing, the tone, the language changes with each individual. Its like a protocol set between two people. The response of the person on the other side of the conversation is very important to that protocol. If its a voice messaging system, which is nothing but a dumb recorder - I cannot talk to it like I talk to its owner. I have tried it too hard, but it does not work! I try to sound as normal as possible, but I sound too weird! My recorded-voice-o-phobia is not limited to voicemails. I also hate calling customer support centers - it makes me very uncomfortable. If...

Its a very chilly night, perhaps the coldest I have seen till now. The sleeping pads, the heater, razaai just making sure that the death count in Grand Canyon does not go up. The thermals, jacket, sweater, gloves, socks, sleeping bag - losing the battle against the invincible cold. I am slightly shivering, unable to sleep.The whooshing wind outside acts as the perfect partner for the cold. Just like the pace bowlers, they hunt in pairs. My co-occupants of the tent - Krupa and Saif are sleeping peacefully. May be they were too tired by the travel or they have had their share of struggle with cold already. After more than an hour of losing sleep, I feel a bit drowsy. I enter my home in Mysore. Its too crowded. Dont know why there are so many people, may be some function. I proceed to the backyard, where a few cousins are sitting and chatting. I join the conversation. All of a sudden, I realize that there was a cricket match the previous day. What happened to the match, I ask my brother...

I have always been fascinated by curse words or abusive words. Though I am quite familiar with abusive words in other languages, I will give more examples from Kannada, as those were part of my growing up. Let me start by analyzing how cursing works. The main intention of abuse is to insult and also hurt the other person. Thats the key. If you have a set of vocabulary that your recipient does not understand or does not consider derogatory, sorry sir, its a waste! Kids begin their cursing using simple words like "stupid" , "idiot" , "fool" etc. And it does not take too much time for them to realize that these qualities are so common and acceptable, they cease to be curse words in the long run. And as kids, our abuses were mainly restricted to the animal names. A typical kid fight when we were young would go like this: Kid 1: "Kaththe" (Donkey, not ass ;) ) Kid 2: "Kothi" (Monkey) Kid 1: "Naayi" (Dog) Kid 2: "Goobe...

It was just another tuesday evening. A bit more strenuous perhaps. Yet another conf call. Tired voices. Stressed out faces. The projector looks the brightest in the room, almost too inhuman. I am just rocking in my chair and all of a sudden I am rocking more. And suddenly less. I shiver. Tense faces show unusual signs of alertness. "Hold on guys, we may be having an earthquake", tells my manager. A less tiring day, he would have screamed it. The realization had not hit me. I could not visualize the wreckage, the pile of garbage and unrecognizable dead bodies yet. Its just a little jerky boat ride. And then a slightly bigger tremor, that gives me what cricket commentators call butterflies in the tummy. "Will call later" declares my manager as he disconnects the phone. We all head towards the door. A colleague is just standing there coolly checking the message on his phone. Another colleague gets a text message within a few seconds from his brother - "You felt it...

RK of RwB has tagged me to write on the kinds of people I judge and things I admire. People I judge: Myself (I am too self obsessed to ignore myself!) Who dont maintain eye contact while talking Who talk extremely loud Poor listeners Who give advice even if unasked Who cannot accept a different opinion or view Who are extremely polite or overtly nice Who watch soap operas Couples who sit side by side (and not opposite to each other) at a table in a restaurant Who dont have a passion about anything in life Who tell that they dont have time for anything Who use Internet Explorer (No, not exactly, well, yeah, may be!) Things I admire: Honesty Movies Music Cartoons Humor Exploring different things Inquisitive mind People who manage time very well People who accept their faults gracefully ...

No matter how strongly you love something, there are some aspects about it that will irritate you. I happen to love cricket very much. I think Manindar Singh - Yashpal Sharma - Arun Lal brigade's hindi commentary easily takes the first position among things I hate about cricket. The second place deservedly goes to Charu Sharma, "I-will-give-cute-smile-by-stretching-my-mouth-to-fit-wide-screen-tv" Mandira Bedi and the entire Sony channel who turn the game into soap opera. The next place definitely goes to the losing captain's cliched speech in the post match presentation ceremonies. Here are a few samples: "We had a bad day at the office" ( I hate the guy who invented this statement. Why not work from home for a change? ) ----- "We are playing non-stop cricket for the last few months. Its taken a toll on the players. I know we are professionals, we are proud of playing for the country, but, well, I mean, you know...(and the show me sympathy look)...

When was the last time I had met U? (No, I am not a messaging freak. So, U does not mean "you", U means "U") U looked majestic as she walked, her Irish skin glowing in that evening sun. And there was I accompanying her. (For the uninitiated blog readers, I does not mean "me", I means "I") Both U and I offer me handshakes and we sit on a bench nearby. All of a sudden, U asks me "Can I get some pepsi for us?" I looked surprised. It surprises me too. U was the laziest person we had ever seen and completely surprised by this question. "What happened Madame Lazee?", me teases her. "Hey dumbo, I loves searching vending machine, he will get the pepsi for us. Me aint goin' nowhere no more" My guess was that she has been listening to lot of R&B nowadays. I gets up and goes searching for the vending machine. "Know what, I have never told this to anyone. But, I was in love with U since the college days", I ...

"Impossible!" I have now learnt to use that phrase very judiciously. I would have used it two years back, if you had told me that I would open a blog. And here I am writing my 100th post! Yaaayy! Thank you, thank you (in advance, for all the congratulating comments :) ) There are a few posts that gave me great joy while writing and I happen to like them even now as I read them. So, here are my favorites - for those who came late to my blog, for people on bench with great taste, for people whose managers are on a long vacation and those who have to read a post for the second time to get motivated to leave a comment :) American GaadegaLu - This post got published in Vijaya Karnataka (with no reference to me) as a forward from some reader (this post still amuses me, apart from teaching a lesson on copyright protection) A few funny incidents, without such, life would be so dull - Howz it goin'? A What? Reducing Prices A trip down the memory lane posts like Pens a...

I have been tagged by Of This And That . There are 3 rules. Rule 1. The rules must be mentioned in the beginning of the tag. Rule 2 You must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had. Rule 3. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Well, I dont have a middle name. So, I would choose "NIHIL" (I like the sound of it. "Nihil" means "Nothing". So it kind of makes sense to have it when you dont have a middle name :D) N umbers I am obsessed with numbers. I dont like even numbers in general, more so if it is divisible by 2 and not divisible by 4. If I see a 4 digit number, I will try to see if the digits in that number has any relation or not. Prime numbers hold special fascination for me. (If you see a guy staring long at your vehicle number plate, that mus...

I love airports. I always remember the opening scene of "Love Actually" . There is so much positive energy in there. It is so unlike the air travel itself, which is pretty boring and congested. The lady standing next to me in the check-in queue had a quiet confidence about her, her hair carelessly tied up that made her casual look so lovable. "Shall I help you?" she asked me while I was trying to lift my heavy baggage. I guessed I was probably unconsciously mimicking someone, thereby exaggerating the difficulty in lifting my bags. "Girl, you look thinner than me. And I don't want to disrupt your carelessly tied hair" No, I did not say the exact words. "No thanks, I can manage". I am not against taking help, its just that I could easily manage myself. While standing in the queue for getting boarding passes, I was given a form to fill and filling forms is one thing that I hate so much! I am generally very conscious while filling forms, as I am ...

The dark lady was sitting on a chair in the opposite row. Next to her was an innocent kid in weird red pants. Must have been her son I guess. He had a story book in his hand. The book did not have many pages and each page had a colorful picture with a sentence describing the story. The lady was translating the story into Kannada, which the kid listened to with astonished look on his face. The story was something like this: Peter (looked like a small bear or rabbit or some animal - could not figure out properly from a distance) was strolling around near the forest. Peter stopped for a moment as he saw a car parked there. He thought for a while and approached the car. He noticed that the car was unlocked. He got into the car and turned it on. He pressed the accelerator as the car sped away. As he was going down the road, he tried to apply the brakes. The brakes did not work and he panicked. He shouted "Help, help" out of desperation. Finally, he jumped out of the car and fe...

I had been to "Chak De India" on Sunday. The movie was into its third week, yet the crowd was substantial considering a rainy afternoon. A group of "commenting" spectators were sitting a few rows behind us. As soon as Shahrukh took the hockey stick in the opening scene, the "commentators" yelled " Goal missed, guru "! Yes, they were right! During the players registration scene, when Nethra tells " Nethra Reddy from Andhra Pradesh ", one of them yelled again " Yaake Karnataka avru yaaroo ilwa? " (Why nobody from Karnataka?) This smart comment was received well by his friends, who cheered him with loud laughter, that would have put the movie villains of the seventies to shame. Even in the noisiest of scenes (when spectators in the stadium were cheering for the players) the group never missed an opportunity to comment. And loud enough to be heard across the hall. After the movie ended, we saw that this group had no more than 5 pe...

We often hear people talking very lightly of Indian cinema. I am myself guilty of this crime many a times. Agreed, we have never made a great biography (we needed a Richard Attenborough to make Gandhi ) We have not made a decent "road movie". The nearest we have gone to make an animation movie was the irritating parrot in "Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon" (other than Esha Deol making weird faces at the camera, of course!). Our war movies are always jingoistic, highly cliched boring sagas (Somebody try a " Thin Red Line " or an " Apocalypse Now " please!) Apart from the shameless Hollywood rip-offs and NRI romances, we have not actually fared that bad. We were the pioneers in a great many things (for which we rarely get credit) and some of them are so original that nobody has dared to copy. Here is an attempt to honor them. Lost n found King of all plot devices. Parents never learn to hold their children's arms firmly, children...

I smiled. Nothing even remotely close to funny had happened that day. For a change, it was not even one of those quotations from Groucho Marx or Oscar Wilde or Woody Allen that made me smile. No, it was not even the cool evening breeze. I wondered if it was that cynical smile I wear quite often. No, it was not - there was something so pure about this smile. The sheer meaninglessness of everything seemed so trivial. And nothing mattered. There was no joy, no pain, no sarcasm, no irony. I felt nothing. It was just pure bliss. I realized what Nirvana really means. I wished somebody took my snap at that moment. [I feel so very uncomfortable smiling for the camera, that I appear awful in all those smiling pics of mine. This could have been my ideal profile pic. Well, anyways!] Could anybody be in that state for eternity? I wish I could, I would have given anything in the world then, to be in that state forever. But, I knew it would fade away soon and I had to relish it as long as it lasts....

If you ask me why I respect my parents, this one would definitely figure in top five. The name they have given me. :) Now, there are lots of trivia behind my name. The tradition in our family is that the eldest son should have the name of Subrahmanya or of the Snake God. Fortunately, my parents did not settle for a Nagesha or a Nagaraja (No disrespect to anyone with those names, its just that they dont define me!) I would have preferred even obscure names like " Sakala Kalaa Vallabha " or " Bhaktha Jana Samrakshaka " to those Naga-prefixed names! ;) While discussing the alternatives, they bumped into the name ' Karthik ', but it was dropped (probably feared being called 'Kar-thika' by people - as it does not sound too good in Kannada!) I dont know who suggested this, but they opted for the name 'Vasuki'. If Vasuki was not unusual enough, my parents decided to name me 'Vasuki Raghavan'. There is an interesting story behind this too. ...

Janani Janmabhoomischa Swargaadapi Gareeyasi I read this adage in some blog yesterday, I remembered hearing this during my school days. What I did not know was that Rama told this to his brother Lakshmana, when they saw Lanka full of gold. This quote had definitely seemed very "inspirational" when I was a kid, but now that I question a lot of things, this sentence no longer holds the same impact for me. The good thing about "Janani" is that its not abstract :) But what was Rama referring to when he said "Janmabhoomi"? Was he referring to the city of Ayodhya? Or the entire Kosala kingdom? Does his "Janmabhoomi" change with conquering and relinquishing certain portions of the land? Tough to answer! I somehow cannot admit that the very earlier freedom fighters were actually the "freedom fighters of India". No, I am not questioning their commitment - but its just that most of them fought for "their kingdom". I am not sure how many...

Its a small barber shop in one of the oldest localities in Mysore. And my regular haircut saloon for the last two decades. As I went there for a hair cut, the main barber salutes with his usual exclamation "Saar". He has 3 other co-barbers who are employed there from a long time (no attrition here sir!). "Your father and brother are not seen nowadays?", he asks me concerned about the reducing business from my family. "Oh is it?" I mumble, not sure what to say. "What?" the co-barber asks him. "Vallu thammudu...", he translates my incoherent answer into a weird combination of telugu mixed with kannada. I just say "Medium, comb-able (not too short)" Too easy, he has done that for years! I just wondered how this place looked in the 80s. Quite unsurprisingly, its exactly the same. Two huge mirrors placed on either walls, parallel to each other. It was almost like magic for me when I had first visited that shop as a kid. Reflect...

There are two theories about how to win an argument with a woman. Neither one works. Now, what was your first reaction when you read that quote? You found it funny and a smile crossed your lips? Or did you frown, started screaming that its a stereotypical statement that is offensive to women? If you belong to the first group, cool! If you belong to the second group, cool down, here is a statement that might please you. What is the difference between men and pigs? Pigs dont turn into men when they are drunk! No no, this post was not to trigger a venus-mars supremacy fight. I was just thinking how difficult it is to be humorous without offending anyone. And the second quote might upset not just the oversensitive men, but also the oversensitive drinkers! Just to give a few more examples. A conversation that happened at the lunch table. "Did you meet the new manager, he is sick" "He is sikh (sounding as sick)? I thought he was hindu" (we all laugh) Do you ...

I still remember that saturday afternoon last summer, when I watched the movie Wild Strawberries . The only thing I knew about the movie was that it was in IMDB top 250 and it was a Swedish film. It was the story of the aging professor Isak Borg - his coldness, his reflections on life, his insecurities, fears and nightmares. It was unlike any movie I had seen till then. If you ask me if I loved the film, I am not yet sure. But, it was something so very different, that it made me think and I could not get it off my head. Then, I got to know about the man behind the movie called Ingmar Bergman . The next movie I happened to see was his most revered The Seventh Seal . It was a weird movie about a knight who, on his journey through the lands affected by Plague, is confronted by Death who forces him to play chess with him. It did not impress me much and I felt it was a highly over rated movie. It was when I saw Persona that I was completely bowled over by Bergman. It would be an understat...

Venu has tagged me to write 8 random facts about myself. If you are self-obsessed and running out of ideas to write a post, is there any better option than getting tagged? ;) Okay, here it goes! 1) I love black n white photos very much. Its a great pastime in our home to browse through very old albums. Even now, I take at least a few black n white photos with my camera. Sepia is my second favorite. Color photos are a distant third. 2) I had diphtheroid at the age of 8. I was easily prone to cough, cold and fever at that age and I could not go out without a monkey cap. From then on, I've been taking Homoeopathy medicines and my resistance has increased dramatically. Now I constantly eat at hotels and roadside chats and I rarely fall ill (apart from the occasional visit from that dear old friend called 'common cold'). The cap has gone, the monkey stays! 3) I learnt cycling when I was 10. After a very minor accident, I had not tried cycling for 3 years, till I got myself a re...

Today was a cool breezy morning. The cloudy skies had the perfect script for sun's late arrival. The drizzle was very optimal to my comforts. Chamundi Betta looked as fresh as a girl just out of her shower. Everything was so perfect, it was almost like heaven. It would have been pure bliss on any other day. Though there were a good amount of people, it was not suffocatingly crowded. You can easily categorize the people there. I saw a bunch of college kids just out of their teens, talking non stop about latest mobiles, orkut and campus recruitment. They were blissfully ignorant of unhappiness. I cringed at their loudness. Or was it that I envied their exuberance and optimism? The next type you can always encounter are those on the wrong side of their twenties, primarily the unfortunately-extant boring species called software engineers. I can easily bet my index finger that they talk nothing other than real estate prices, torturing managers and the dark unknown future that lay ah...

Well, as they say, movie is a religion in India (by the way, who the hell are "they"? ;)) I think its very hard to find a person who is completely uninterested or ignorant about movies. I was just thinking about how my movie journey has been. As a kid, it was just the occasional movie we were taken to during some sundays. I dont remember feeling any movie as "bad" at that time. Typically a movie would have a hero and a heroine. All we needed was a "hero" who could fight. And we used to come back home and replay that fight with my granny's soft pillow, visualizing a villain in that. Then came television, and the sunday movie got added to our basket. During our pre-teens, our movie watching was pretty much restricted to Sterling and Skyline. These theatres used to screen only English movies then. Apart from an occasional Ten Commandments or a Mackenna's Gold, our syllabus consisted mainly of action movies. Our movie world was full of Arnold Schwarzen...

Whats an year? - The time taken by the earth to complete its orbit around the sun. Whats a month? - The time sun spends in one constellation. Whats a day? - Time taken for earth to revolve once on its own axis. Whats a fortnight? - Time taken for the moon to go from new moon state to full moon (and vice versa) Well, whats a week? I dont know! I have no clue as to how this time slice is arrived at. I have asked this question to lot of people and all I have got is sheepish smiles (and sometimes "dont-bother-me" stares) Some are creative enough to answer that 2 weeks make a fortnight. But I am not convinced. If you want to split up a fortnight, why 2 weeks and why not 7 "2-dayers"? You have any idea as to whats the rationale for defining the time slice called "week"? Even if you dont know the exact answer, any thoughts on this are absolutely welcome. And wrong answers carry no negative marks!

I got down from the bus at Majestic. The cool breeze made the overcrowded platform much tolerable. I was thinking about something else, when I heard somebody yell at me - "Surpass"! What? What did he just say? Was he really talking to me? What does 'surpass' actually mean? May be I am dreaming, I said to myself. No, I heard 4 more people tell the same thing to me within 20 seconds. 5 more persons and 30 more seconds later, I realized what they were asking, when a man in faded jeans and a fake Nike cap asked me again. Now, it was clear. It meant "Sir, pass?". Within a minute, 10 people had asked me if I had a daily bus pass, so that they can get it from me and save some cost! I think it was not too long ago BTS came up with daily passes. It was very useful for people who would take 3-4 buses in a day. And just a couple of weeks back, I had seen a slogan inside a BTS bus that said something like this "Dont share your passes with others. Its a crime. It am...

I had stumbled into a blog yesterday afternoon. There was a post on happiness index and suicide rate country-wise. It had lot of interesting statistics (like China is the only country where women outnumber men in committing suicide etc. etc.). Yesterday past midnight, I randomly picked up a scene to watch, from one of my favorite movies Annie Hall before going to bed. It was a stand up comedy scene where Woody Allen says " I was depressed at that time. I was in analysis. I was suicidal as a matter of fact and would have killed myself, but I was in analysis with a strict Freudian, and, if you kill yourself, they make you pay for the sessions you miss. "! Traveling by cab today morning, I was reading Godfather. It was the chapter where Sonny gets killed. And Lucy Mancini tries to commit suicide by taking an overdose of pills. Its a strange coincidence that the topic "suicide" appeared from 3 different sources in less than 24 hours. I had a quick breakfast in the morn...

"Oh, he/she is so innocent" Have you heard this statement quite often? At least I have. And "so" becomes "soooo" or "choo" depending on the gender of the statement maker. If you know me, you would have very rarely, if ever, heard me making such a statement. I have always had this confusion as to what innocence means. I seriously did not know the exact difference between innocence and ignorance. You always call a child as innocent, and not ignorant. If somebody has not committed a crime or has no knowledge of the crime, he is called innocent. But, if a person does not know about lets say anthropology, he is said to be ignorant about the subject. Definitely not innocent! So, I started this little research on the word "innocence". People mostly use the word "innocence" to define people who are trustworthy, dependable, not cheating and a whole lot of "good" qualities (including, not being aware of bad qualities). Innocen...

Why is it that most people don't keep their mobiles in silent mode, in general and particularly in meetings, movie halls, theaters and concerts? Why is it that people who hate silent mode, don't ever use "Increasing ring" feature? Why do such people use very loud ring tones? Why is it that most people use a very common ring tone and it takes them eternity to pick calls? (Yes, they don't even realize that its their mobile that is ringing!) Why is it that people with the most irritating ring tones are the ones who get calls very regularly? Why is it that most of the ring tones are monotonic? (Don't you think polyphonic ring tones are so less irritating on the ears?) Why is it that people so frequently use the default Nokia monotonic ring tone or a badly played version of Malgudi Days? Why have I never heard a nice polyphonic ring tone of Hotel California or Pulp Fiction theme or something? Why?