Doodles of a crazy man!

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...

Woody Allen writes in one of his books "Side Effects": Q: How long should a man's legs be? A: Long enough to reach the ground! I had not laughed that hard while reading something in a while. Had planned to write a post on "Annie Hall". Did not have any time off late. Will do soon. Hopefully!

At the lunch table last friday, a colleague's mobile beeped. Twee Twee SMS. He picked up his mobile and read out the message: "Hey buddy, I am planning to throw a party to all my friends tonight. Please attend it without fail. Venue Taj Hotel". A few of them laugh. I feel sick.

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...

Terrorist (to his wife): Honey, I am going out for lunch with a few friends. Wife: Okay fine. So you dont need your "tiffin box" today? ****** Terrorist in Delhi (TiD) calls his friend Terrorist in Chennai (TiC) TiD: Hows you dude? How was the weekend? TiC: Pretty boring machcha. Did nothing. Stayed home all day. How was your weekend? TiD: Awesome. We had a blast!

One of my blog posts has been featured in today's edition of Bangalore Mirror. http://www.bangaloremirror.com/index.aspx?page=article&sectid=21&contentid=20080918200809181857294071e48f63f&sectxslt=

The biggest change in the transition from your mid-twenties to the wrong side of twenties is the exponential increase in the invitations to kids' birthday parties. If you were born during the seventies-eighties like me, I can bet most of you would not have celebrated your birthdays as a kid. Celebration, as it is known today. When I was a kid, mom would make bisi bele bath, curd rice, some sweet and invite a few relatives over to breakfast or dinner. " Mane maTTige " was the mantra then. The old people would bless me with vidya, buddhi, ayassu, arogya, aishwarya - all combined together did not make much difference to my happiness as lets say a Lacto King candy did then. The not-so-old ones would gift a pen set - an ink and a dot pen - with a clearer instruction - "You should study well and get good marks". Go to school, the class teacher would announce that you were the birthday kid. Yes, we could wear "color dress" when mere mortals suffered in their...

The traffic signals are abuzz with hawkers selling cheap plastic flags. No one sells the yellow cleaning clothes this week. Metal badges of the tricolor are the flavor. I am sure Pat Pat Pataaki Pallavi, Huchch Huchch Harsha and their ilk will have some stupid quiz on the radio as usual. Sample - when did India get independence? Option A: 3167 BC, B: 712 BC, C: 1947 AD. Send an SMS to *** and win goody bags. That imbecile orkut acquaintance of yours will send that old forward, which you would have read at least a hundred times - dont we all know now that 36% of the NASA scientists are Indians and 38% of Microsoft employees are Indians? Dont be too surprised if you find Abhinav Bindra added towards the end of the mail - with a mismatched font. The whole nation feels a sudden surge in patriotism this week thanks to Bindra. Majority of them (including me) who had no clue what a 10m Air Rifle means vigorously google it out to know what the hell that is ...

Remember the baddies in movies of yesteryear who would tie up the old rich man and threaten him of dire consequences if he did not offer that "one signature" so that they can get the possession of his bungalow, car, factories, properties, his undergarments etc? How simple were those times! Nowadays even for a simple home loan, the bank guys insist you to sign in at least fifty places. No wonder the recent movies have no baddies who ask for that "one signature". I am sometimes happy that such naivety in Indian movies is gone. But, I sometimes miss the stupid charm of such scenes! *** Another major improvement in Indian cinema is the disappearance of the "poor hero". I dont think there is any other country which glorified and celebrated poverty as much as we did. In the old movies, the poor guy is a honest ' paapa ' person. And rich guy is evil. Almost always. The reality is, a poor guy need not always be the one who was cheated by the evil guy. He c...

Ravi Shastri is a great commentator, or so he thinks. Its not too surprising when someone is in the company of Sanjay Manjrekar, Arun Lal and the likes. And lets not forget, he was the inventor of that historic phrase - " The last thing the team needs at this stage is a run out ". As if there would be some stage when "run out" will move up in the "necessary" list. Well, anyways! Thank heavens, his statements are not as ridiculous as Arun Lal who would say - " Rameez, I reckon when the required run rate keeps shooting up like this, the batsmen have to get the boundaries ". But, Shastri provided ample entertainment last night at the IPL finals presentation ceremony. " Ladies and gentlemen, on stage we have Sharad Pawar, president of Board of Control for Cricket in India, Lalit Modi - Chairman and Commissioner of IPL,......., Sharad Pawar - president of Board of Control for Cricket in India " With so much (repeated)attention sh...

I am too just-married to get tired of writing stuff related to the wedding. Gone are those days when people were anxious to know what gifts they got. Nowadays its all about hoping that the unwanted gifts dont exceed the storage space at your home. There are 3 broad categories when it comes to gifting 'items': Innovative types Only 2% belong to this category. They know your tastes, they know how usable it is to you, they know that the chances of someone else gifting the same item are slim. Ganesha types If I were Lord Shiva or Vishnu, I would have cursed the entire humanity for how I am ignored when it comes to gift items. A typical conversation of a couple goes about like this: Husband: We have to go to that wedding in the evening. Wife: What gift shall we buy? Husband: Some Ganesha gift item of course. Wife: (smiling) Of course! (What else?) 54% of the people fall under this category. Ganesha has got great range, he comes in all forms - from the most ar...

I think only a misandric person could have formulated the customs in a South Indian marriage. How else can you explain the dhaare ceremony where the bride will be in a beautiful saree and the groom in a ridiculously translucent white kachche ? The bride gets her hair beautifully styled and the groom gets a mysore peta to cover his receding hairline. Utmost attention is given to the bride's face for her to look divine, while all that the groom gets is two drishti bottu (to ward off the evil eye) placed with such precision that guarantees maximum possible pathetic looks! Trust me, every man finds his woman absolutely stunning in the wedding saree. But, I am yet to meet a woman who thought her husband looked mind blowing in that white kachche . Not just that, I spent the last week before marriage running from store to store searching for that elusive white underwear (you guessed it right, to go along with the translucent white kachche ) while the...

Pauline Thomason once said "Love is blind, but marriage is an eye-opener". But, even the pre-marriage phase also can open your eyes to so many things. And if you are as general-knowledge-deficient as me, every moment is a new discovery. If you have a sense of humor, each discovery can be complete fun. *** Just before the saree shopping, mom asked about my fiancee - " AvLu work sarees wear maadthaLa? " I understood it as "work 'ge' sarees" and told - "No mom, she generally wears jeans or salwars to work" Mom was least surprised by the all too familiar stupidity of her son and said - "Work sarees do not mean the sarees which you wear to work. It means sarees that involve lot of handiwork like embroidery, mirror work etc." *** Shopping for sarees will introduce you to so many new things - crape silk, tusser silk, raw silk, butta, mango border, peacock border, temple border...

It was late night. Surprisingly, the first auto I stopped agreed to come from Rajajinagar to BTM. The driver looked like Vijay of the movie "Duniya". He had long hair, wore a gaudy shirt and sported a 92.7 FM logo on his faded cap. I dont initiate conversations with auto drivers in general. But, when they start an interesting conversation, I know how to keep it going. He was silent for almost 15 minutes. " Saar, I will get the gas filled for the auto. Jusht 2 minutes ", he said as he took the deviation off the main road. I remembered my dad warning me just an hour back that Bangalore is no longer safe and to be careful while going home. " It wont take long, right? ", I tried not to sound too worried and suspicious. " Jusht 2 minutes saar. We can join the main road directly from there itself. See, here is my driver identity. I did not get time to stick it on to my seat ", he seemed to sense my uneasiness. " No thats fine, I just meant to ask ...