Doodles of a crazy man!

We often hear people talking very lightly of Indian cinema. I am myself guilty of this crime many a times. Agreed, we have never made a great biography (we needed a Richard Attenborough to make Gandhi ) We have not made a decent "road movie". The nearest we have gone to make an animation movie was the irritating parrot in "Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon" (other than Esha Deol making weird faces at the camera, of course!). Our war movies are always jingoistic, highly cliched boring sagas (Somebody try a " Thin Red Line " or an " Apocalypse Now " please!) Apart from the shameless Hollywood rip-offs and NRI romances, we have not actually fared that bad. We were the pioneers in a great many things (for which we rarely get credit) and some of them are so original that nobody has dared to copy. Here is an attempt to honor them. Lost n found King of all plot devices. Parents never learn to hold their children's arms firmly, children...

I smiled. Nothing even remotely close to funny had happened that day. For a change, it was not even one of those quotations from Groucho Marx or Oscar Wilde or Woody Allen that made me smile. No, it was not even the cool evening breeze. I wondered if it was that cynical smile I wear quite often. No, it was not - there was something so pure about this smile. The sheer meaninglessness of everything seemed so trivial. And nothing mattered. There was no joy, no pain, no sarcasm, no irony. I felt nothing. It was just pure bliss. I realized what Nirvana really means. I wished somebody took my snap at that moment. [I feel so very uncomfortable smiling for the camera, that I appear awful in all those smiling pics of mine. This could have been my ideal profile pic. Well, anyways!] Could anybody be in that state for eternity? I wish I could, I would have given anything in the world then, to be in that state forever. But, I knew it would fade away soon and I had to relish it as long as it lasts....

If you ask me why I respect my parents, this one would definitely figure in top five. The name they have given me. :) Now, there are lots of trivia behind my name. The tradition in our family is that the eldest son should have the name of Subrahmanya or of the Snake God. Fortunately, my parents did not settle for a Nagesha or a Nagaraja (No disrespect to anyone with those names, its just that they dont define me!) I would have preferred even obscure names like " Sakala Kalaa Vallabha " or " Bhaktha Jana Samrakshaka " to those Naga-prefixed names! ;) While discussing the alternatives, they bumped into the name ' Karthik ', but it was dropped (probably feared being called 'Kar-thika' by people - as it does not sound too good in Kannada!) I dont know who suggested this, but they opted for the name 'Vasuki'. If Vasuki was not unusual enough, my parents decided to name me 'Vasuki Raghavan'. There is an interesting story behind this too. ...

Janani Janmabhoomischa Swargaadapi Gareeyasi I read this adage in some blog yesterday, I remembered hearing this during my school days. What I did not know was that Rama told this to his brother Lakshmana, when they saw Lanka full of gold. This quote had definitely seemed very "inspirational" when I was a kid, but now that I question a lot of things, this sentence no longer holds the same impact for me. The good thing about "Janani" is that its not abstract :) But what was Rama referring to when he said "Janmabhoomi"? Was he referring to the city of Ayodhya? Or the entire Kosala kingdom? Does his "Janmabhoomi" change with conquering and relinquishing certain portions of the land? Tough to answer! I somehow cannot admit that the very earlier freedom fighters were actually the "freedom fighters of India". No, I am not questioning their commitment - but its just that most of them fought for "their kingdom". I am not sure how many...

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...

There are two theories about how to win an argument with a woman. Neither one works. Now, what was your first reaction when you read that quote? You found it funny and a smile crossed your lips? Or did you frown, started screaming that its a stereotypical statement that is offensive to women? If you belong to the first group, cool! If you belong to the second group, cool down, here is a statement that might please you. What is the difference between men and pigs? Pigs dont turn into men when they are drunk! No no, this post was not to trigger a venus-mars supremacy fight. I was just thinking how difficult it is to be humorous without offending anyone. And the second quote might upset not just the oversensitive men, but also the oversensitive drinkers! Just to give a few more examples. A conversation that happened at the lunch table. "Did you meet the new manager, he is sick" "He is sikh (sounding as sick)? I thought he was hindu" (we all laugh) Do you ...

I still remember that saturday afternoon last summer, when I watched the movie Wild Strawberries . The only thing I knew about the movie was that it was in IMDB top 250 and it was a Swedish film. It was the story of the aging professor Isak Borg - his coldness, his reflections on life, his insecurities, fears and nightmares. It was unlike any movie I had seen till then. If you ask me if I loved the film, I am not yet sure. But, it was something so very different, that it made me think and I could not get it off my head. Then, I got to know about the man behind the movie called Ingmar Bergman . The next movie I happened to see was his most revered The Seventh Seal . It was a weird movie about a knight who, on his journey through the lands affected by Plague, is confronted by Death who forces him to play chess with him. It did not impress me much and I felt it was a highly over rated movie. It was when I saw Persona that I was completely bowled over by Bergman. It would be an understat...

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...

Today was a cool breezy morning. The cloudy skies had the perfect script for sun's late arrival. The drizzle was very optimal to my comforts. Chamundi Betta looked as fresh as a girl just out of her shower. Everything was so perfect, it was almost like heaven. It would have been pure bliss on any other day. Though there were a good amount of people, it was not suffocatingly crowded. You can easily categorize the people there. I saw a bunch of college kids just out of their teens, talking non stop about latest mobiles, orkut and campus recruitment. They were blissfully ignorant of unhappiness. I cringed at their loudness. Or was it that I envied their exuberance and optimism? The next type you can always encounter are those on the wrong side of their twenties, primarily the unfortunately-extant boring species called software engineers. I can easily bet my index finger that they talk nothing other than real estate prices, torturing managers and the dark unknown future that lay ah...

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. ...