Fairytale Endings

We hurried, after all it was not everyday that we could listen to a Lord. We didn't make it early enough because there was already quite a crowd in attendance, most of whom were not pleased to see latecomers trying to squeeze their way in between. The lord came on time, and had his audience spellbound with his anecdotes and immense sense of humour. He promised to autograph every book that his audience had brought, but there was a twist in the tale. The peasants at Landmark wouldn't let us near unless we'd made a purchase then and there. So we left, with the satisfaction that we at least got to see him.

But that wasn't the only reason we left early, we had one more audience left, a Prince, no less - Prince Caspian. There's a reason why i was eagerly waiting for this film. Unlike the modern day children's tales of magic, this one is absolutely fairytale. Good and evil are clearly defined and there are no greys in between. It takes you back to a time when you would believe in talking animals, magic, witches, wise kings and all the folk who appear in fairytales in all their innocence. Its a completely different world, and as i read somewhere, some things have to be believed to be seen.

until next time, back to reality

Name Calling

He was still wondering about a proper name. He would have a loved a name that had some synergy with any one of his various holdings, but he was not sure that would be possible. After all, that name would also have to symbolise what his outfit stood for.

So, keeping in mind the fact that most of the players he had on his side were aged around the total number of overs that would be bowled per contest, and the fact that, for this team winning the tournament woule be a huge challenge, he named his team. Surprisingly it also matched the name of one of his brands. What more could one ask for?

And that, ladies and gentlemen was how the naming ceremony of Bangalore's IPL team was done. Starring Rahul Dravid, AnilKumble, Sunil Joshi, Jacque Kallis etc- Royal Challengers.

until next time, whats in a name? :)

PS. I should have used better words, in case i have to eat them ;)

The Source

Each one of you felt an urge to write, and thats why you have a blog. You would have seen bloggers older than you, no not in age, like me, but those who have been around longer than you have. In turn they would also know bloggers older than them, but how did it all begin? I came across a picture recently on an egroup, that throws light on this. So, without further ado here it is.

Now, like all answers, it poses a few questions of its own. Are we to understand that bloggers basically evolved from missionary positions? Does that also mean that perhaps female bloggers originated from nuns? most importantly, has there been any evolution since this image?

until next time, seek and ye shall find

Broadening Horizons

There was something different about this post. It wasn’t visible to the naked eye, but it was there. Even if you hadn’t noticed it before, you’d have started thinking about it now. Don’t fret, actually there is nothing phenomenally different, except this is the first post from the home laptop and the new broadband connection.

until next time, going surfing :)

Depression

There’s a sticker that adorns the vehicle of those working in the fourth estate. It helps open gates that’d otherwise be stubbornly closed, and instills a sense of wariness among those who cross its path. But its quite bemusing when another vehicle crashes into it and the driver says, ‘Oops, did I press too hard?’

until next time, pressing matters :)

Colorful

The argument was about how the brand was aptly named, because the tee now sported an amalgamation of the red and blue, which, before the wash, had refused to socialize with each other, and the white that surrounded them. But the store sales guys were nice and exchanged the tee. So there went the argument.

until next time, maybe next time

Love story

Unknown to each other, they were..

A smile and a word between them

And thus began a friendship rare

Best of friends, they became

A smile and a word between them

And lo, their love was for all to see,

Dearest of lovers, they were

A smile and a word

One love story became two

until next time, transience..

PS: D gave me a dirty look after this, so perhaps its best to have a disclaimer - Its not subjective :)

No Entry

He tried opening it, but with exactly the same result as before. He was almost in a state of panic now. The day was almost over, and he absolutely had to get in. He wondered if the others were as anxious as he was. After all, how long could you keep Facebook closed for maintenance?

until next time, social disaster

And that leaves only

Kolkata. Which is phenomenal by my standards, as though of you who've read the previous post might have realised. As for the others, all it takes is one sentence to bring you upto speed- i hate travelling.

But this year has seen me visiting 3 of the (erstwhile only) 4 metros in the country.

Mumbai - February - last visited 2006 April, and that was only because i had to get inducted, professionally, that is. Judging by my tenure, fat lot of good it did. I was a frequent Mumbai visitor in the 80'sthough - before the bhai stuff became popular. No, there's no connection. Shivaji Park was the usual venue, with a bit of Peddar Road and Malabar Hill thrown in. And then i stopped going to school, and that ended the summer vacations.Sigh

Chennai - August - last visited 1999 or was it 95? Damn, i'm really getting old. 95 is easier to remember because of the 12th Std results and the giant B&W poster of Aishwarya Rai to celebrate it. Yup, its 99 coz i boarded the Corromandel Exp from there for my first Kolkata trip.

Delhi - September and October - last visited 1993. And a much forgettable trip.
I dont think I'll do Kolkata, at least that leaves my tarnished record some chances of redemption ;)

until next time, traveller's outlook

Ok Tata Bye Bye

And its time to say bye. Its been a long time and I’d been planning this for sometime now, never actually got around to doing it. But it’d be sheer injustice to postpone this any longer. Most readers would agree that this is way too melodramatic for a week’s vacation. But hey, its a 55.

until next time, see you next monday

One degree of separation

"...like two shores separated by an ocean,

and the ocean is our ego...."

until next time, love beaches :D

Reality 55

The birthday boy gave us a piece of his cake. He really wanted to give it to Aishu only, but we were with her, so... As we wished him, Aishu shyly ran away to her mother who was sitting at the next table, the birthday boy walked back to his friends. We ate the cake.

until next time, cake khane ke liye......

To be Shore..

And "Alan Shore fans" makes it to my orkut communities because of this...
Alan Shore: Well you need to hear it! ......... to abuse a talented, selfless employee only because his social skills lack the polish! To allow him to work tirelessly under the delusion that he could make partner! A delusion you carefully nurtured so as to make piles of money off of him in the short term. That’s a betrayal, Shirley. Not just of Jerry, but of you! And your character! Which up till now I haveconsidered undeniably decent.

Shirley Schmidt: Are you finished?

Alan Shore: No. Jerry Espenson, no doubt, will go off quietly into the night as the meek often do. But somebody around here has to get angry about it. Otherwise you’ll just go off and blithely do it again.

Shirley Schmidt: We have not yet made a decision concerning Jerry Espenson, when we do I will call you first to tell you, “It is none of your concern!”

Alan Shore: There’s a saying Shirley, perhaps you’ve heard it. ‘All it takes for evil to succeed is for good people to say, “It’s a business.”

While that might have been boring to the non-followers, what interested me was that it addresses an issue that i have found constantly encountered in professional life - social skills, or the lack of it. I've been ambivalent about this myself, but it irks me when people with lesser skills tend to be able to push their case only because they are aggressive, especially in situations where the hard skills are more important than the soft ones..

And sometimes i see this aggression being used in a social context when the people who prefer to exist in the background are subject to the sort of bullying that usually is associated with school life... And each time i see it happen, i thank god for a reasonably sharp humour sense and a dichotomy of personality :)

until next time, the meek shall inherit the earth...

To each his own...

The way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Just tell him its flat :D

Speaking of ways into men's hearts, saw an interesting comment here. When the interviewer asked SRK about the cold war between him and the bachchans, SRK said shabby (or should it be shaB? abhishek with that awful beard and dressing style should be called that) was with him till 4 am.. Now, is it that abhi finds ash cold or SRK hot or both? hmmm...

until next time, was that flat? ;)

Rooms with a view

The vacuum left behind by Heroes has been partally filled by the series that occupies the same time slot- Boston Legal. Also, it helps that i can bug D when they show the city shots with 'Do you know this place?', since she spent some time there recently..

And i love the night shots of the city, to be precise, the ones which show the high-rise apartments, not just in this particular show, but any city.. No, come to think of it, its only the American cities, not say, the London ones or even the local mumbai ones... strange, but thats okay...I've wondered about this fascination for high rise apartment night shots, and i am yet to get a complete answer from myself... but i have been able to get some insights...

in the shots, each of those tiny lights is a window into the life of a person/ family... each of those has a story to tell - some exciting, some mundane, some funny,some tragic.. but each a story nevertheless... and more importantly, it perfectly symbolifies a lot of lives - in a crowd, yet alone...

until next time, story of our lives.....

So, whats the brouhaha all about?

A half dinner at 7 on a saturday night is bound to leave one in a confused state of mind. Fortunately, a few centuries back, man discovered a way to handle most of the confusions in life - caffeine. Unfortunately though, many know this secret and so we have a chain of cafes mushrooming all over the place, which leads to more confusion - where do we go now?

But since we were near the locality where Bangalore's next blogger's meet is scheduled, i thought i would drop in there. I mean, what if by a quirk of fate, i miss it and the rendezvous with Brew haha in my destiny got postponed indefinitely? Anyways, the place is pleasant enough and those games are a nice touch, though i managed not to get adventurous and stuck to an old favourite, Uno, which D immediately liked.

In between the coffee and the sandwiches and figuring out what was on the cards, i saw a duo at the corner working on a laptop. I have a theory on people working on laptops in cafes, and another one about people doing it on Saturday nights, but we'll talk about that another time. So, D and i were discussing what they could possibly be doing, and i suggested that it could be a start up and maybe we can read about them a few years later in Forbes or something (oh, okay, Business World) where they discuss how they initially used to work out of Brewhaha (and then maybe i can write a coffee table book on how i noticed them and finally make some money).. flimsy premise, but i have read worse..hehe

Meanwhile there was another younger couple on the next table who were also busy working, not on a laptop, but PDA. They were well on their way to a start up, the kind whose gestation time is about nine months. :)

until next time, whats brewing?

PS: Ramana, Deez, Arunima, Layon and so on, any of you planning to attend the meet?

..Earth...home....

And I have finished the last book of the Foundation series.. dragged it on for as long as possible, but had to end it.. dragged it because it wasn't an experience that can be replicated anytime soon, because its truly one of a kind, and i haven't come across anything in the genre that comes close to it...

Anyways, the book also gave me a glimpse of the fact that inspite of the passage of time, there might be some things that would never change.. the main protagonist has to make a choice that will decide the future of humanity, and he feels that somehow the answer to his dilemma lies on the planet of the humanity's origin - Earth. By then, Earth isa forgotten entity, and no one knows where it is... and so the search begins....

i guess, its the same with us too, as we grow older, and as we face the ups and downs of life, we all long for the place where we hope to get the answers, the place where everything'll be set alright, the place we like to call home..speaking of which, as Daughtry sings

Well I'm going home, Back to the place where I belong....

Until next, they call it God's Own Country :)

Space, the final frontier

All the Star Trek fans would know that bit, the one that starts this way and ends with '..to boldly go where no man has gone before'... Well, Sunita Williams did, and now she's back... like i read somewhere, she must be stinking, but thats beside the point... i think it must've been one awesome experience, though i wish we would learn to celebrate with dignity, and not create a popcorn tamasha of everything...

I am reading Asimov's Foundation and Earth, and that'll finish the series for me.. rather, re-finish it, and i don't think this will be the last time... i still remember the first time i saw it, that was way back - when i was in school,i didn't understand most of it, and left it... i made contact for the second time when i was in my first year of grad -and it took many library visits and many long months for me to finish off all 7 books of the series, and that was an awesome experience. Years later, i have managed to buy all the 7 books, and that took around 2 years, mostly thanks to the one i am reading...

I read an article last week in TOI, about a new design of spaceships that they were going to start using in 2010 and which might be the first step towards interstellar travel.. For once, i wish i were born in the future, just to experience space travel, to watch the stars and to feel first hand the awe-inspiring vastness of the galaxy... what an awesome experience that would be... But thats something that can't happen and so, centuries later, when men, and women, would be freely roaming around the galaxy, we would be, perhaps, a remote statistic that existed in the initial days of humanity...

until next time, live long and prosper :)

Pati, Patni aur Woh

Exactly the current president's cup of tea - that what this presidential election has become - rocket science. But unfortunately, that doesnt do him much help, coz he has already backed out. But that's only after doing a rose petal stunt of 'will he, wont he', and then saying he would stand for a second term only if he were assured of a victory. By those standards, i wonder how he was so active sending up rockets, considering that most of them came back faster than they went up. And forget achieving their objective, the only thing they succeeded in doing was to destroy some poor fishes' homes in the arabian sea/ bay of bengal or create a theme park/ picnic spot for the fishes' children. No wonder they always said there was always something fishy in India's space research..sorry, i digress.. All said and done, doesnt look like the man who made the chikunguniya look fashionable, and the one who inspired salmaan for the 'tere naam' look is going to have a second term as Rashtrapati.

Which brings us to the prime contestant - the one who has been accused of shielding a killer, of defaulting onpayments for a factory. I say it is wrong that such a person should contest for the notional post of President, Indian politics has lost a true flag-bearer. She has awesome qualifications to be PM, but the nation is into non-controversial PMs these days, sigh. Chalo, at least this way, we get to see our first Rashtrapatni.

The current VP, was once upon a time, regarded as an almost definite P, but unfortunately for him, all his ex-supporters now only say, oh, woh?

Why am i writing about it? Because it was so damn inconsequential, but true to his name, Dr.Kalam, has converted the entire exrecise into a PJ !!

until next time, shall we tell the president?

There goes our culture....

Heres one for the moral police...

I read this a few days back on the 'age no bar, sex baar baar' scenario- More youngsters are experimenting with casual sex than they did five years ago, according to a survey commissioned by the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO).The Behavioural Surveillance Survey (BSS) 2006, conducted on 40,000 people between the ages of 15 and 24, found that 8.4 per cent, or 1.5 crore youngsters in the country, are snuggling up for pre- and post-marital sex.

A few days back, i heard a contest on our only 24-hr english music station- it was something to do with a new store that has opened here. The question was what the store - 'apple of my eye' into - apples, 'mom and child' shopping or apple pies. Sarika, who called in, answered correctly - a 'mom and child' shop and she got a gift voucher from the store...

only, sarika is a 2nd PUC student.. now, purely out of humanitarian concern, i'm worried about sarika, will she gift it to someone else, or will the voucher encourage her to get herself a kid to redeem the voucher herself?

until next time, not just kidding ;)