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Showing posts from February, 2007

On The Same Page

"Hey Pinky baby, Mama told me that you did some great painting today at school" , said papa as he entered the room with his brown suitcase late that night. "Yeah papa", smiled Pinky, obviously happy for the recognition she was getting. Pinky, the 6-year old was wearing a baby pink skirt. She had two short pony tails that made her look like a mickey mouse with a normal nose. "Good, so what did your teacher say?" "Very good". She smiled, as if a smile represented the end of a sentence. "So what did you paint today?" "I painted a...a..." "I got it. I know you are not into too much abstract or symbolism. You must have done something representational. Was it a scenery?" "Yes. I painted one hill, one river, one sun...", she was interrupted by the over-enthusiastic papa. "I know sweety, it must be as wonderful as Koppelaar's 'Landscape Near Bologna'. Your last year painting of your school was very

What Would Freud Say?

"Araluthiru Jeevada Geleya ... Snehadaa Sinchanadalli ... " (Blossom O Dear Friend...In The Sprinkle Of Friendship) Shreya Goshal has been singing this song for more than a hundred times at least, in my ipod from the past few weeks. I am simply in love with this song. Easily the best song from " Mungaaru MaLe ". Perfect song for a morning travel. I don't like Shreya Goshal in general (she reminds me of Aishwarya Rai!) but the way she has sung this song is divine. Jayanth Kaaykini's lyrics is superb (when was the last time I heard a song with good lyrics?) and the orchestrization is amazing (guitars, drums and sax used very intelligently) Many of the guys whom I talked to have agreed this was the best song from " Mungaaru MaLe ". But, I was surprised to know that an overwhelmingly higher percentage of girls liked the Sonu Nigam version of the same song " Anisuthide ". I just asked myself "What would Freud say?" (the new slogan

Why Is Excessive-Pro-God always Anti-Human?

I got a forward from a friend which was something like this: "Arjuna always wondered why Rama did not build the bridge to Lanka himself and took the help of monkeys. So he met Hanuman to clarify this. Then, Arjuna had a bet with Hanuman that he would build an unbreakable bridge and if he failed he would enter the fire. Then, he skillfully built a bridge of arrows. Hanuman prayed to Rama and placed his tail on the bridge and it broke down. As per the bet, Arjuna was about to enter the fire when an old Brahmin happened to come there. He told that since a bet is not valid without a witness, they should start over again. Arjuna prayed to Krishna and constructed the bridge of arrows. Hanuman stepped on the bridge arrogantly, but nothing happened. He walked around, jumped, but no, the bridge did not move an inch. Now, the old Brahmin turned into Krishna and he said - 'The first time Arjuna thought that he was building the bridge and Hanuman took Rama's name, so the bridge fell d

Protests

The bus comes to a screeching halt. I open my eyes ever so slightly. Its somewhere near Hanakere. The road is blocked. We are the first vehicle to get stopped. Che, we should have started 2 mins early! There are very few villagers near the road blockade. Only a few teenage tapori looking guys orchestrating the road block. One guy with a gaudy t-shirt and a faded cap, looks like the leader of the group. Yaakkh thoo! He spits on the ground, emphasising the sense of ownership he feels for the road. The group starts making some jokes and laugh loudly. They hardly convey the pain and distraught you would expect from the farmers. They get a good number of old tyres, collecting which might have taken some effort. They distribute two tyres per person and start burning it on the road quite religiously. The fire brings a festival mood among that group. I could easily visualise the leaders of futute generation in them. Honestly speaking, I am not aware of the complexities and the extent of diffic

Limitations Of Human Imagination

I watched the movie "The Abyss" yesterday. Unadulterated hollywood alien-sci-fi garbage. Pseudo-emotions mixed with american-arrogance, so much crap that it would have given Karan Johar some serious inferiority complex. But, this made me think why so many alien stories are so similar. Lets come to the assumptions in the alien movies: 1) Aliens always love to make contact with the humans (If I were an alien, I would try to make contact with crocodiles - much more interesting, right?) 2) Aliens are generally much more intelligent than humans (Its hard to beat the dumbness of humans - probably aliens don't watch Big Boss! Also, since 'they' contact us by reaching 'our' planet, they must be better than us!) 3) Aliens by default understand or learn English (by intercepting the cerebral signals and interpreting with the aural waves and decoding to hexadecimal system - you will be given some such nonsense by the story writers) If you tell the aliens "howdy&q

Gifted

I am not a very gifted person. No, I am not talking about talent or the obvious lack of it. I am talking about gifts (or presents). I got one such rare gift from my cousin Krupa . "Do you read books?", asked Krupa when I had called her. "I don't read regularly, but I read. Yaake?" (The latest survey shows that 8 out of 10 questions people ask me will have the reaction 'yaake?' from me. May be I am too curious to know what made people ask me such a question!) "Nothing, I just asked" I met her that evening and she handed over me a book, with a note inside - "To a person who is almost as irritating as the author of this book!". The book was "Without Feathers" (and the second page of the book containing an Emily Dickinson quote - "Hope is the thing with feathers") Guess who the author is? Yes, its the same bespectacled genius - Woody Allen ! I was like "Wow, where did you get this?". I was as excited as a si