Doodles of a crazy man!

I am amazed by the display of naivete by people, their naivete so deeply conditioned that it ceases to be artificial. These people are very well aware of the reality, but when you show them some proof to confirm that, they are aghast and shocked. What the hell am I ranting about? I am talking about "The curious case of N D Tiwari"! To be honest, when I heard about it, I laughed out loud. Not because there was something funny in his achievements, but the way people reacted to it. So I am trying to understand what exactly bothered them? A Governor was doing 'it' ? ('It' upsets more people than lets say, if he was taking a bribe of crores of rupees from those 3 women) A Governor was doing 'it'? (Come on seriously, are we not taught in schools that politicians work for people and poverty is dropping like Walmart prices?) A Governor was caught doing it? (What is revealed is always only the tip of the iceberg. Just imagine the uncaught! Is it the "env...

Goa is perhaps my most favorite vacation spot in India. Many think that Goa is only for people who booze or love sea food or party animals. But you can enjoy Goa equally if you love flea markets, the churches, museums, the sea, the sand, the sunsets, the pancakes at the beach shacks...! This was our first trip post marriage where we decided not to approach a travel agent. One, obviously the financial constraint and two, we wanted a sense of adventure and unexpected. So I started doing what only eminent scientists and nobel aspirants did a few decades back. R&D! I was at my maniacal best of clicking through links, gathering info and preparing an itinerary. After searching over a hundred options, we decided to stay at Candolim. But no amount of R&D will stop you from getting surprised by gems like these. "Original Fakes" - actually saw the same name in two shops! Tuk Tuk Cab Rickshaw Stand Transport When buses are very infrequent, autos unavailable in most pl...

Believe me when I say this, I had not gone to this movie to nitpick. No! I was expecting a nice little film, if not anything path breaking. I remember reading R.Balki's interview, where he had mentioned this. He had been to Amitabh's office one day and there he saw Abhishek getting all wise and parent-ish while Amitabh was very child like. This made him think how would it be if Abhishek plays Amitabh's dad. This is where my friends, like it happens not too rarely, an interesting one line idea fails to shape into a full length feature film. If role reversal was the only thing, a decade back Balki could have casted Dimple as Twinkle's daughter or Esha Deol as Hemamalini's mom. *** SPOILERS ALERT *** Any film that has Jaya Bachchan acting all Guddi-ish, reading credits with fake sweetness is a huge turn off. But I told myself not to get too influenced by this little gimmick. The next scene where the MP Amol (Abhishek) arrives at a school to judge the Vision of India co...

One of Raja Sen's twitposts reminded me of this gem from a Woody Allen's standup: Years ago, my mother gave me a bullet...a bullet, and I put it in my breast pocket. Two years after that, I was walking down the street, when a berserk evangelist heaved a Gideon bible out a hotel room window, hitting me in the chest. Bible would have gone through my heart if it wasn't for the bullet.

There are two reasons why this movie might run away with the worst movie of the year - one, obviously its horrendous and two, its terribly long. During all the Hurman - Priyanka interactions, I was initially shocked by the amount of screen time Hurman's face was getting. Soon I realized that its because the camera was always behind Priyanka's almost bare back. I was half expecting Joe Pesci to pop up from somewhere and yell - "Wanna know my raashee? I dont know, you should #&*$ing know. Tell me smart guy, whats your raashee? Whats your #&*$ing raashee? What the #&*$ is your #&*$ing raashee?" or something on those lines. The greatest achievement is this movie proved that Bollywood can come up with 12 different names for a girl - yes, who was that idiot who said there are no names other than Pooja, Sanjana, Tina, Simran and Anjali. 2-5-1-6-3-4 <-- Tarantino         1-11-3-7-4-5-8-6-12-2-9-10 <-- Gowarikar You must be thinkin...

Everyone in the world wants a Google Wave invite. 9 out of 10 have no clue why they want Wave in the first place (I am the eighth one in that ;) ) Its just the hype of limited invites that did the trick I guess - kind of online Macguffin. Half an hour into using Wave, I feel that its like enhanced Google Docs with chat, having iGoogle interface. Not at all sure how its gonna be useful to me. The reason why I actually wrote this is not to "review" Wave, but to share something interesting. Like all beta products from Google, here is a nice error page. I could not find this image anywhere on the net, so I can proclaim like the 24/7 news channels - you saw this first here! :)

Late December 2007, one saturday evening. Post-kanyaaveekshane talking round. "I heard that you blog", was the very first thing she told me. "Yes, how did you know?" (Have I become so big in blogosphere? - I had wondered) "Uncle told me." "Oh, is it?" (Half blushing and half expecting to hear that I have a great sense of humor :D) Nothing so filmy happened. But then we started talking about blogs, we figured out that half of the blogs that I follow are her offline friends. So much for the global village and the spherical world. After that I asked, "What are your hobbies?" "Reading and writing" (What! Writing??? Not blogging, but writing! That sounded like an actual writer, and not like someone who woke up one day in 2005 and started blogging - aka me) "Hmm, you have a blog?" "No" (Another analogy I can think of is - photographers vs Digicam-owners :) ) If my memory serves me right, I had suggested to her th...

How many singers/musicians who are 1 album and 1 movie old can you think of who not only deserve an evening in Dasara, but also can make the audience go crazy with their music? Now that I am struggling to come out with a second name, I am telling you the first name - Raghu Dixit! I love Raghu Dixit's music. I have listened to his music before his "Psycho" became such a smash hit. Much before he was spotted by Vishal-Shekhar. Much much before he was on Orkut, Facebook or Twitter. More than 3 years back, Setty had send me the link of a song. I was simply mesmerized by the music. The musician was Raghu Dixit and the song was "Gudugudiya". I had played it a few hundred times in the next few days. I remembered all these things as I was getting ready to go to the Yuva Dasara concert. I was just hoping the rain Gods would skip being spoilsport, to which they eventually obliged. Even at 5.30 PM, there was a sizable crowd, indicating that by the time the concert starts, ...

Ever thought of making some smartass comment and then you realized that there is no one near you at the moment to share? Ever wondered if sending a (what you thought was) great SMS would really be welcomed by the people in your recipient list? This, my friends, I think is the biggest thing that drives humans in this generation. The necessity to be heard, recognized, their presence acknowledged has driven us to many online inventions of the last decade. You may call it cultural interaction, knowledge sharing, creative collaboration or whatever fancy names the IIM types can come up with. But, deep down, its just this human instinct. I know I know, twitter has been there from a long time. I have decided to become a better-late-than-never adopter. You can follow my tweets here: http://twitter.com/vasukir Those of you who decide not to use twitter, the widget on the right column below "About Me" would ensure that you wont miss the fun.

I dont know when I developed this fascination, but it has stayed with me from quite a few months. I keep reading online about Indian mythology. I am seeing the old stories I had heard from my grandmom in new perspectives. To me, the mythology is not a collection of moral stories. My sense of morality is based entirely on my thinking, so to read it just from moralistic perspective would be boring. The good thing about Indian mythological stories is that they dont picture even divine beings as perfect or without weaknesses. Even Gods have anger, jealousy, lust, insecurity - which somehow appeals to me very much. In a strange way, it makes these stories all the more human and relatable. The trick to enjoy is not to fall into the trap of categorizing everything into two big boxes of "good" and "bad". Between black and white, there exists a wide sea of blissful gray. My imagination runs wild when I think of so many possible stories we can make up. Here is one imaginary s...

There has been silence on this blog for too long. So I am posting a favorite song of mine. I personally love songs that narrate a short story, may be that is the reason why country songs and bhaavageethe appeal to me. Joshua Kadison's singing perfectly complements the lovely lyrics. Priceless!

Uncle Duty ge Aunty Matinee ge This is perhaps the first slogan I remember reading on the backside of an auto when I was young. I dont know why a married woman going to a movie in the afternoon, when her husband was at work seemed funny to my young mind, but it did. Now that I think of it, may be it was the unusual combination of "duty" and "matinee". From then on, auto drivers have been a huge source of intrigue for me. The way they decorate their autos, their mannerisms, their failed love stories and the subsequent loss of faith in love, growing respect for parents after the failed love, the devotion towards their movie idols etc. To me, they are much more than people who often ask "10 rupees extra". So, what was just a healthy curiosity has now turned into quite an ugly obsession. Clicking the photo of any nice slogan I come across on the road. If you see any guy in Bangalore weirdly driving his car, at the same time precariously balancing the mobile on...

One of the items I terribly enjoy on radio is "Life In Bengalooru With Rajni Sir" on Radio One. I "simbly" love it, as Rajni says. My guess is that its RJ Prithvi, but I am not too sure. I have been meaning to do my take on it from a long time but it took this long for the idea to become a post. I am personally not too happy with the outcome, but then I had a whale of a time recording and re-recording this stuff. Here it is...wachchaww!!! Please drop a comment if you liked it.

You know the most breaking news and the first headline item in every news channel on the counting day? The "exclusive" predictions from the exit polls of their channel turned out to be true. Every goddamn channel had this news, errr story. Now, are people really interested in other news items? ****** Whats the difference between CPI-CPM before the elections and after the elections? Before they were "Left", now they are left way behind! ****** Even when the trends were coming up, every party was putting up a brave face and telling that these were just trends and things will definitely change when the actual results are out. So confident are all these parties that if some party which had contested in less than 100 seats across the country made a statement that they are sure to form a government on their own, I would have been least surprised. ****** During the half way of counting, Rajdeep Sardesai asked a BJP spokesperson if they are willing to concede defeat at the ...

I am just wondering if the buildings where the terrorist organizations are located have the checkpoints, metal detectors/bomb detectors and such stuff at the exit gate of the building...

The music of "Gulaal" is one of the best that has come out of Bollywood off late. I dont remember an album in the recent history in which I had loved all the songs so intensely. Each and every song is a gem! If only the movie was as good as the music... The sad thing is, I will be least surprised if I dont hear the names Piyush Mishra, Rekha Bharadwaj or Rahul Ram in this year's award functions in music or lyrics category. That is how Bollywood is supposed to be, right? You can listen to the songs here: http://mp3hungama.com/music/index.php?action=album&id=4209 I am so bowled over by this album, I can go on and make a statement that if downloading mp3s were illegal in India, I would have run to the nearest music store and bought this album. Now, I will get back to listening the songs that are running in repeat mode. Ranaji mhaare...

Read this hilarious news in, where else, but TOI today: "Naomi Campbell looked stunning in Vikram Phadnis' saree" Vikram Phadnis' saree? I am grinning ear to ear whenever I think of that line! ***** Q: "How does a south Indian bomb insult a north Indian bomb?" A: By calling it a "bum" :)

Now, let me tell you a story. During 1929, people were affected by "Depression". Or "The Great Depression" as it was called. Thousands died because of it. People across sections were affected. No one knew what the "Depression" was then. There were no CNBC, no economic blogs. Depression from the markets had entered into people's lives. One fine day, there was a cool dude walking on the roads wearing a black T-shirt with the words "DEPRESSION". All the people caught hold of him and started beating the hell out of him. They cursed him, that because of him the world economy was in danger. With just an ounce of life left, the cool dude started explaining people what "Depression" is. Depression is not a slogan on a T-shirt. There was so much depression in their lives, that they had stopped shopping, which was the only known catharsis for the modern man. This had created a huge imbalance in demand supply chain which in turn had caused depr...

Black Men. Big History. What a comparison! Next what? Compare Karunanidhi with Stevie Wonder? :) P.S: In a blog as old, surprisingly this is the first photo!

Notes on a couple of movies I happened to watch recently: Ghajini The first thoughts that came to my mind was - What an effort? And what a waste? No, I was not expecting 'Memento', but something saner at least. My biggest grouse is that there was absolutely no effort to show the emotional turmoil of the hero, after losing his memory. The only thing was that the hero shouting, huffing and puffing whenever he sees his muscules and tattoos. Who made the movie Ghajini? Director ne audience ko kya banaya? The same answer - "Murga Banaya"! What do Aamir Khan and Minnisha Lamba have in common? So much effort to sculpt the body for such an abysmal movie! I am surprised that nobody made this observation. Aamir has a short term memory loss (courtesy Memento) to make the proceedings interesting. But, but he also has a retrograde amnesia (a la old hindi movies - "woh apni puraani yaad dash kho chuka hai") So basically he has no memory - not the immediate past, not the p...

I have no clue when exactly I got introduced to cricket. I try hard to recall my first memory of cricket. It must be having a light cream colored plastic bat and a red plastic ball. I still have a photo of mine holding that plastic bat, head still in deep concentration, stance as balanced as you could get. I wonder how I had learnt about the stance - considering that there was no television those days. How did I know that I had to place the bat just behind my toes? How was it that when you hit a straight drive, the elbow stayed parallel to the bat? Television ensured that an interest turned into obsession. My earliest cricket memories are not pleasant. I remember the way Graham Gooch used to sweep the Indian spinners as though he was cleaning the pitch off the minutest dirt; of Javed Miandad hitting a last ball six; a joke of a batsman otherwise known as Mr. Maninder Singh getting out in the last ball against Australia when India needed just a run for a tie. I presume those were the ma...