Doodles of a crazy man!

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?

Its been almost an year and a half since I started this blog. I always felt that writing as such is a difficult job. I was wrong. Getting the right template for the blog is THE toughest job! Many of my friends had told me that they did not like the black template I had on my blog. Nobody had explicitly told me that they liked it. So, I would assume that a majority did not like it. Well, first of all, I had failed to get THE template for my blog. Most of them were too dull or too pinkish or too jazzy for my comfort. And some fonts and some layouts just did not appeal to me. The black had seemed the most acceptable at that time. One, not many people used black, so it gave a sense of uniqueness to my blog ;) Two, since I browse late at nights with lights off, a page with a dark background was less strenuous to the eyes (I used to do a Ctrl-A to highlight any word document before reading!) I have been thinking of changing the template from quite some time. Yesterday, I succeeded in fightin...

Quite recently, I was having this discussion with a cousin of mine. The question that popped out of that discussion was - Why are there no female mimicry artists? I thought about it for sometime and realized that there are very very few "mimickable" women. This is not just restricted to India but its almost an international phenomenon (I have not yet seen a female mimicry artist, so my assumption is that the number is very small if not zero, but please correct me if I am wrong) And "mimickable" people should exist in order to mimic them. Now, let me give a few examples of "mimickable". George Bush is very mimickable. So are Robert De Niro, Amitabh Bachchan, Sharukh Khan, Laloo Prasad Yadav, Vajpayee. Now, Sunil Dutt is not very mimickable. Neither are Bobby Deol, Rahul Bose or George Fernandes. And some people can be "mimickable" by their natural style (like Laloo or Robert De Niro) or may be in a specific performance in a movie (like Samuel L Ja...

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",...

Cricket is a huge obsession in India. Movies are an equal craze in this country. India has played 646 ODI matches in 23 years. That would make around 30 ODIs per year. Indian cinema makes about 1200 movies a year, Bollywood alone accounting for 200. Cricketers and cricket establishment make tons of money, with zero professionalism. Movie stars and producers earn billions making pseudo-emotional NRI Indianism garbage. Half of the major brand ambassadors are cricketers. The rest are film stars. Our cricket is rarely world-class. Our movies in general are nothing to write home about. For all you time conscious people, a person watching all the India ODIs in one year spends 30*7=210 hours on cricket. An average man in India watches at least one movie a week (either in cinema halls or television), which comes to 52*3=156 hours a year. India had won the 1983 World Cup. There were a few other achievements like reaching finals of 2003 World Cup, beating Australia in a test series in Australia...

I am not too much of a sports person, but I have had my decent share of association with sports. I am quite a talent when it comes to domestic cricket (playing in front of homes) I used to play shuttle badminton and carrom as a child. I am crazy about playing table tennis. And hey, I did not count watching the girls of my class play throw ball during my high school days ;) So, why are people basically interested in sports and games? The easiest explanation I can think of is that games pose tremendous physical and mental challenges, overcoming which gives people a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. Now, some of the games are played between two people - like carrom, table tennis or boxing. And some are between two groups of people - like soccer, basketball, cricket. In some games, both the parties play simultaneously and try to outsmart or outpower each other, while some are asynchronous. You can even count computer games, as these ones are played against virtual opponents. ...

"Its raining", shouted a colleague as he entered the floor. "No!", I wince as I am getting ready to catch the cab. I remember that I dont even have my raincoat. With due respect to the Yash Chopra brigade, I somehow dont like going out in the rain. I love watching the rains, but I dont like getting drenched in the rains. I always prefer drizzles. By the time I go down, the rain has stopped. Thank God! The smell of the soil hits me, I love it. The weather has never been this cool from a very long time. I get a window seat in my cab. I open the window, the cool breeze hits my face. The breeze is so powerful, that I can barely think. I listen to the albums "Sky Kisses Earth" and "Water Down The Ganges". Nothing suits a rainy day better than sitar. May be Santoor, only in some cases. The day that comprised of working on traceability matrix, hot weather in the afternoon, having lousy lunch while FM played "Shakalaka lakalaka boom boom" (forg...

I was browsing through the TV channels inside the living room of a resort in Kerala. A foreigner walks into the room. "Whats the score?", he asks. He is a tall man, with green eyes and a nose so sharp that would give Hrithik Roshan some serious complex! He is wearing an orange T-shirt with some sanskrit letters and strange sybolisms, and a rudrakshi maala that perfectly compliments his shirt. "80 odd for 3", I remember the score I had seen before switching on some other channels. I switch back to the cricket channel. "You like cricket?", he asks me. "Yes, I love it. Like any other person in this country" "India were out so early, must be disappointing" "Not exactly, they did not play well this time, they did not deserve to go to the next level". Rahul Dravid would have been proud of my diplomatic answer! "Where are you from?" "I am working in Bangalore. I am basically from Mysore" "Oh yeah? I had been ...

Its late evening. I am inside a bus, half asleep. When did I get into it? Where am I traveling to? Are these questions so very important? No, I will search for those answers when I wake up fully. The bus stopped. The electronic display sign on the bus reads "Stop Requested". A fat old man wearing a green t-shirt carries his bag and gets down. I hate these fat people, they take so much time to even get down from the bus, I crib. I cannot sleep if the bus is not moving. I curse the old man for spoiling my sleep and wake up fully. I look outside. All I can see is a broad, long road (may be 12 lanes) and no other traffic, I love it. Feels so peaceful. Why did the old man get down here? I dont see any bus stops here. The sky seems to have that bluish gray effect on the whole place. Is it the effect of the sky? Or the blue cooling paper on the window? The land on either side of the road looks barren and I dont see any other persons there. The light is very dim inside the bus, I can...

I woke up at 9.00 AM on the saturday morning. Not yet done with the full quota of my sleep, I said to myself and went into the extraaa sleep. Then, I had this weird dream. I am inside a very long house. Must have been constructed in a 20 x 2000 site! I suppose I am talking to a group of people I did not see very clearly. I feel very hungry and the people tell me that there is no food left in the house and I need to go to a nearby hotel. It takes me quite a long to reach the entrance of the house (the house was so long that the back door of the house cannot be seen from the entrance) I try to wear my slippers and I see somebody has put anna-sambar inside my slippers. I sit down near the door and I try to clean up my slippers and realize that the amount of food in my slippers can feed at least three people. There are three kids sitting in a queue near the entrance of the door, the eldest one first and the youngest one last. Only the first two kids are having food and I realize that the ...

It was almost 3.00 AM. A series of lousy ads like Fit-kit biscuits, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy's soul-mind garbage, Anda Khao-Haath thodo were being shown back to back. We, the devoted cricket lovers, were waiting to see the presentation ceremony of India-Srilanka match. We knew, we would be listening to the usual "We did not do what we were capable of", "things did not go our way" or "we were outplayed and outclassed in every department" crap! Its not the losing that hurt, but the way we lost - there was no pride, no commitment, no character. I remembered that old joke from Annie Hall . That two women were sitting in a restaurant. One says "the food here is pathetic". And the other says, "yeah, and in such small quantities". Thats how I felt about India's World Cup campaign - full of misery, suffering, unhappiness and its all over much too quickly. All the channels were full of cricket analysis the next morning. One channel was runnin...

Just a day before Ugadi, I remembered the conversation I had with my brother a few years ago. As you might know, we prepare Bevu-Bella on Ugadi day ( Bevu means neem and Bella means jaggery) and its significance is that life is a mixture of joys and sorrows and we should accept both in the right spirit. We had heard this explanation from childhood, so we thought of giving some new dimensions to this. Here are a few we came up with. 1) If you have eaten Bevu-Bella , you would know that jaggery gets dissolved instantly while the taste of neem lasts on your tongue for a long time. This denotes that joy is short lived and the bitterness or sorrow stays on with us for a long time. 2) Before eating Bevu-Bella , we get mentally prepared for the bitterness of the neem (and totally forget that there is also jaggery with it) This is how we look at life, don't we? Always scared of the bad things, apprehensive about the future, fear of losing - that we don't even realize that there were ...

Its yet another lousy friday evening. I am standing near the Corporation bus stop. So many people in there, which would make a claustrophobic person die twice in a minute. Lots of BTS buses pass by. Each one is hopelessly overcrowded. No auto driver is ready to come to Majestic. Friday and majestic, no way mate! I wish I could fly like those crouching tigers and hidden dragons. Should I somehow get onto the foot boards of one of those overcrowded buses? Somehow. What if my grip loosens and I fall down and die? Is it really a nice way to die? No! But, is dying due to suffocation and smoke worth it? Could not quite decide. Hell, this does not make any sense. Suddenly, I see the bright red volvo with orange colored number lights on the other side of the road. I somehow manage my way in the sea of honking vehicles. "Majestic?" I ask the conductor and rush inside the red giant, not even bothering to wait for his affirmation. I look at the small TV next to the driver (an alternativ...

I read this topic on some blog and I have auto-tagged myself :) 1. Slow drinking I can eat pretty fast, but I cannot drink anything fast. Be it hot coffee, a milkshake or even plain water, I drink very slow. I drink in very small sips, as if I don't want to let those moments go. I take more stoppages in drinking a glass of water than Hugh Grant would take in talking a simple English sentence. One of my friends used to say, "You drink water with so much love"! 2. Repetitive Musical Disorder If I get obsessed with a song, I will listen to that song (in repeat mode), till I get over that obsession. " Careless Whisper " played for a week, " Preethiya Kare Keli " was around a fortnight and Prem Joshua took more than a month for me to come out of that obsession. I know, among all my weird qualities, this has been the most annoying to my friends. 3. Fear of dogs You know why I missed the award for the bravest man on the planet? Because of the existence of ...

"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...