Doodles of a crazy man!

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, ...

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...

Huh, it was a really really long time, wasn't it? Well, it was the longest stretch of time where I did not get any idea to write. It finally took the Bangalore-Mysore highway to get me to write. And of course, I was getting "lot" of request to resume blogging too. "Lot" does not mean lot of people. It was lot of request from a single person - my wife! Disclaimer: This is not a travelogue in the true sense of word. As always, its highly unstructured, deeply personal and hardly useful. Driving on the Bangalore - Mysore highway is always a very intimate experience for me. It holds a thousand memories, its a meditative sort of journey which had helped me clear up my muddled thought process many a times in the past. It is here where I used to get the ideas for many of my earlier posts. I will just write about some random things that come up to my mind when I travel here. Bangalore "How long does it take to drive from Bangalore to Mysore?". You can never ans...

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...

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...

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...

Lately I am remembering lot of things about my childhood. Am I getting too old? Is it a premature midlife crisis? Or is it just the outcome of subconscious self psychosis? I dont know! We were supposed to write using pencil till 4th standard. In the summer holidays that year, we had gone to Bangalore and my dad had got me a couple of reynolds pens. Yes, the same Reynolds 045 Fine Carbure! Getting an opportunity to use pens was a great feeling - it was one way of declaring that we were no longer kids (though this feeling was not as satisfying as wearing pants in high school!) And most of the kids in 5th standard were using Reynolds pen. It was a very simple looking pen, mostly white with a blue cap. The pen was very good, but the cap was so badly designed that keeping the pen in the pocket was so difficult. And we had a group of highly creative minds who would play around with the words on the pen to give new meanings. One of them was like this. In "REYNOLDS 045 FINE CARBURE",...

Conversation 1: (Having dinner at a restaurant in Basaveshwaranagar on thursday night) "Do you remember there used to be a hero in Kannada films?" "Who? How did he look like?" "He was not very famous. He had curly hair" "Oh okay, Sunil?" "No, but he acted around the same time. I think he has acted movies with Sudharani." "Who else? Shashikumar? Ramkumar?" "No, he was not a Kumar. I know him, but I cannot remember the name" "He has acted with Shruthi? Abhijit?" "No, he was not very famous I guess" "Raghuveer? Gulzar Khan?" "Namskaar pa. He was not that bad. He was generally a poor guy, a tailor in some movies. He always has lot of problems." "There were lot of bad movies and bad actors around that time. There was a movie called 'Mangalya' around that time. Malashree and Sunil are lovers and Sunil's brother Sridhar marries her so that..." "Yeah, its S...

"They now have boards all around this place" "Look at this Mantapa-like structure...it was not there when we were here right?" "They now have the reception in the entrance lobby" "Sad. Guys can no longer sit and chat on the katte " "I still remember my first day here. I had come to pay the fees" "I had met you at the same place. I had asked you where 'B' section was" "Oh is it? I dont remember that" "Computer labs have not changed." "Hey, this was my cobol lab. Uff, how I used to get tense before those lab exams" "'V' madam is still here. She is a senior lecturer now" "Yeah, she was beautiful" "Is that BCJ?" "I think so, he used to take physics, right?" "They have mesh all around the PS block" "Even the place where we used to sit is blocked" "Remember this cycle stand?" "Of course, here is where we had taken...