Phil Shots – II

A walk down the just-washed-by-rain roads with the music from your earphones drowning the activity around you, to think of nothing but the music and feel the freshness of the breeze rushing onto your face, to turn all around and smile at the trees dripping with rain drops and also at the maddening traffic that zooms past  oblivious to these little things,  and to think, for atleast those few minutes, that there is not a worry in your world – EXQUISITE !

PS: It is truly an exhilarating feeling to conveniently ignore those heaps of work piled at your desk to spend a few moments to ponder about such ideal moments in a day !

Random thought of the moment : There are some things money cant buy. For everything else, there’s mastercard !

Beginnings – II

And so the whole of last week was spent trying to bundle up a whole lot of memories, some as old as 16 years, into an assorted collection of boxes to be taken away from the place that had lovingly cherished them for so long. It is still yet to sink in that we actually decided, after innumerable rounds of contemplation to move in to a different house. But shift we did finally, and just over one weekend, what had been “home” for as long as my memory holds became a “house” – to just leave behind a monster collection of stuff that we no longer require, that had accumulated over the years, nevertheless each a trove of memories -

* a forgotten pack of WWF cards that bro badgered dad into buying, after earnestly convincing him that he definitely would not try the stuff  Stone Cold Steve Austin(I stunned myself recalling that name ! ) and Undertaker did on screen. For a couple of months or so after we bought those cards, bro and me would religiously settle down every single evening in the world of Yokozunas and Giant Gonzales and scream out ” Height 7′11” ; chest 56″ much to mom’s consternation.

* a whole load of Tinkles, Chandamamas , Gokulams and Champaks that I had saved from mom’s numerous bouts of for-heavens-sake-you-are-no-longer-10-all-this-stuff-is-going-to-the-raddi-wala-RIGHT-NOW . Stuff that despite all that, I love reading – to date. R K Narayan collections that make for THE perfect tea time read, to date. Other odds and ends books.

*I seem to have had this curious, rather sad habit of collecting all exam papers that had anything remotely like “good” scrawled across them.  And report cards. Most with ridiculous comments. Class VI report card : “Shows good scientific intent. Slightly slackening in mathematical abilities. Good student overall”. Hmph ! Gladly added them to the wealth of the raddi wala.

Well, and so many more other things that I had wished to put down in this space for the sake of posterity (Yes, it is of utmost importance to posterity what treasures I unearthed in this shifting process), but in the past week, carroms at work have been giving stiff competition to blogging time and hence I have been led to abandoning the noble deed I flagged off for the sake of posterity

***Ahoy Mylai ! ***

Ramblifixion Shots – III

Dog, cat, ant, bat, or any-living-species-apart-from-human-beings lovers, do not read ahead. What follows is a vehement expression of fear and hate (more of the former inevitably leading to the latter) targeted specifically at dogs, but generally applicable to yes, any species apart from human beings. I am justified. What business do these fellows have to come sniffing at an unassuming girl’s ankles at 6 in the morning when she s executing THE “walk” that’s been in planning stage for at least six months now and has finally translated to action prodded by numerous guilt trips/taunts/nightmares of blowing up to a level of not being able to walk thro the doorway (Ma! Stop exaggerating!) Don’t they have the common sense to realize that I am not too likely to parade at 6 in the morning with cat flesh/bones hidden under my slippers! Gah! Guys! Stop giving me nervous breakdowns – the world hasn’t had enough of me yet!

All ye Fords and Nissans! Listen up. What follows is an idea that could change your life. Well, not that I care about that, so more importantly, mine. Please make cars that I can drive around EXACTLY like the Scooty. I have absolutely no complaints against the Scooty. Except that I want a roof over me. And some funky doors on the sides. And I want to be able to drive more than just one person around. Well, that aint asking for much is it? I honestly have no use for four gears. Second 15-day stint at driving and I have started resigning myself to the fact that 4 gears+ clutch + accelerator + brakes + rear view mirror + steering = more than what my reflexes + grey cells can handle. Did you HAVE to complicate it so much!

My near-perfect playlist for the fortnight more than makes up for the monotony at work. Runs to a grand total of 3 albums – Dev D, Wake Up Sid, and Blue, with the preference quotient running in that order. Blue behind Wake Up Sid for the sole reason that Fiqraana sounds out of Yuva album, Rehnuma could pass off as a Hindi version of any Evanescence number and the starting of Aaj Dil Gustakh hai sounds like the starting of a local Vijay Antony number (no offence to VA, and I love the album all the same for the ARR factor ). Dev D undoubtedly bags the “Pavithra Album of the Year” award (You can stop reading right away if you haven’t heard of that. :@). Thanks Girish for re-introducing me to Dev D, after I’d dismissed it off right away after listening to just Emosanal Athyachaar. I haven’t heard better Hindi music in a long time, and am sure Dev D will continue to be on the playlist for a LONG time to come! For the record, I’ve now started to like Emosanal Athyachaar as well.

Ok. The rant for the post is over. Giving it a nice, logical ending doesn’t tally with the rest of the post. So, I am leaving it at that.

Yippie!

Yay ! Its stopped raining in Chennai! Rains are nice and romantic and all that mushy stuff ONLY when you can curl up on your bed with a novel and music and gaze out from your window. No, it aint all that pretty when you KNOW you SO want to do all of that , but you HAVE to (Sigh!) wake up and force yourself to a workplace – with so much work to do that it s only a matter of time before – sigh! forget it! I shudder to think of whats the worst that could happen.

Double Yay ! It aint blazing in Chennai either. It is SO awesome that rightfully you should kill yourself for wasting away at your work desk when there are a zillion better things that can be done.

Triple Yay ! Just when you think you should indeed kill yourself, you suddenly get a 2 day leave approved and have a best friend’s wedding to look forward to !

Goodbye work ! Aadoo darling ! Here I come !

Flashes!

Ah! And here it is – my first brush with code tweaks to put this stuff up on this page. Till date I had no clue that it was not possible to host videos, flash widgets etc on the normal WordPress blogs. Now, given that I am the kind of person who thinks about tube light replacement without even thinking of fiddling around with the starter, I should say I kind of surprised myself when I actually took the effort to Google around a bit and find a workaround. OK, now that is not really rocket science, and definitely not worth half a day ( a working day at that, on the workstation at that ! ), but still, pat on the back, for whatever its worth ! GeekyCoder - Take a bow !

Phil Shots – I

Life seems so much more pleasant in the rewind and fast forward modes – it is only the play button that sucks !

Ramblifixion Shots – II

Felt good about not having to set an alarm before going to sleep.

Felt good to wake up at periodic intervals right from 9am, sigh contentedly about not having to race against time to make it to the cab pickup point, dream in a half sleep-half wakeful state of all things inconsequential and finally drag myself out of the bed at 11.

Felt so good to dish out a long-forgotten DVD of Mani Ratnam flicks and run thro my favorite scenes of Mouna Ragam, Alaipayuthey, Iruvar and Ayutha Ezhuthu – letting so many random memories gush in. And a couple of FRIENDS episodes (yeah, I STILL haven’t finished watching them all ). AND an age old video tape–converted VCD of an aunt’s wedding that happened a couple of decades ago (aarrgghh – the fact that I am recounting something that happened a couple of DECADES ago makes me feel REAL old ) – pausing the VCD every time I caught sight of that absolutely adorable, roly-poly kid in green pattu pavadai, with that fountain on her head strutting up oh-so-cutely(she called it Pilki ), running all over the place with her almost-as-adorable nandu sindu gang , religiously obliging every time she was asked to recite the “latest” nursery rhymes she had been taught, trying to brush off the attention her brother was starting to get, with a gentlewomanly air, yet so hopelessly unable to conceal the pout every time the center of attention shifted off her ! Ah ! Good times don’t last too long, do they ?

Felt SO good to roam around the streets, to feel the Chennai afternoon again – to look at what life is between 9am-9pm in the city. No kidding, I AM serious! Cooped up in an office cube miles away from ground level, I get to see Chennai temperatures soar and fall only on news reports and I was beginning to get so paranoid about this that being roasted for an entire afternoon in Pondy Bazaar almost came as a welcome relief!

Felt so good to wake up (in the aforementioned manner of course) on a lazy Saturday morning – wondering how the day was going to be killed, rummaging thro’ the Hindu for some activity, ANY activity – and there you go! Sikkil Gurucharan concert scheduled for the evening. Three hours of absolute bliss – unadulterated. I am not even going to try and put into words the level of peace I felt in those three hours. The level of mastery of each accompanist- it almost felt like a rehearsed conversation between the instruments- yet the spontaneity of it was startling! Mentally resolved to learn up Santhanagopalakrishnam in Kamas – the sheer beauty of the raga and the composition! Am already counting days to December – and I am going to make sure I manage to catch as many concerts of Gurucharan, Ranjani-Gayathri and TMK as I can!

Fast forward to present. Life has not changed, not one bit. Back to the same work desk with the same work staring back at me ruthlessly. But what a world of good the five-day holiday of vettiness and nothingness did!

Pavithra

is offended by the impunity of javascript. Despite her best efforts at reconciliation, it has been swearing at her for two continuous weeks.  She is almost sure that javascript is just Peeves masquerading in the Muggle world.

***

is getting increasingly annoyed at her startling frequency of  use of certain phrases (some extremely local and cliched  ones at that!). She thinks that if somebody made a dictionary of her day to day vocabulary, they would land at no more than 100-150 words, with the count of the “strictly English” words amongst them being less than half that number. Sigh!

***

has been reading three men in a boat on her way to work and thinks it is an absolutely delightful book – oh the humor ! She only feels ashamed that she is able to do no more than 2 pages a day of a book that should have rightfully taken just about a couple of hours if read at one go. But she knows ill days have fallen upon this world, so she is not going to try and convince unbelieving people that her work has been SO hectic that save her cab ride to office, she has just not been able to spare time for reading.

Oh! that reminds her -  she meant to ask Vikas Swarup something after she finished reading his second book. She has a strong suspicion that VS has turned script writer after the runaway success of SDM. Also, she is almost convinced that Six Suspects has been written for David Dhawan’s next flick – starring namma Vijayakanth and Bollywood head-turner Tushhar Kapoor.(Pssstt .. overheard : Ekta Kapoor has been roped in to oversee proceedings so that the mega serial quotient of the book remains intact!)Well well, this one sure is touted to be next in line for the Aascaars! Mr. VS, are you available for comments?

***

perfectly knows that she has piles of issues and bugs with fiery red eyes and sharp tentacles awaiting her, to make their breakfast, lunch and dinner out of her – yet she finds the complete inactivity on her blog extremely heart wrenching to say the least and has decided to right royally stage civil disobedience against her work.

******

PS : If you are wondering why she had to irrelevantly drag Mr. VS into this, let her assure you – it was certainly not to settle any personal score – she carries no vengeance against him. It’s just that her work is apathy personified – all her cynicism and sarcasm are completely lost on it – she needed something more tangible to take it out on. Period.

Haunted!

Nightmares are so reassuring …
There is hope to wake up,
to find that they were all
but mere dreams…

The truly ugly ghosts haunt
when the mind is wide awake,
desperate to step into the realm of dreams
or even nightmares,
because then,
there is always that hope
to wake up, to find
that they were all but  mere dreams
…

Ramblifixion Shots – I

Different day, different morning, same cab ride to the same office. I was looking out idly, half listening to the “kappi idea” on FM , taking in the lovely sights and spirit that scream “NAMMA CHENNAI” loud and clear – the pullayar kovil, kaiyendhi bhavans that wash out the differences between the top notch corporate and the rickshaw walas, exasperated van drivers honking away to glory at apartment gates waiting for the harried moms to rush out – Tiffin box in one hand and dragging along the sleepy kid who looks like it has no idea why it has to be put thro’ this ordeal of school…

And suddenly a poster caught my eye. What the hell! No it was not of Thatha or Amma. Staring back at me from all roads in West Mambalam was the face of Prasanna- yes, Prassy of Airtel Super Singer. “Ungal Vote Prasanna -vukke!!!” God! Please give me a break! This was supposed to be a “talent” hunt for heaven’s sake. And I thought the talent was restricted to the musical aspect of the word alone. Ten months, countless rounds – grueling ones judged by the who’s who of the music industry- and it all boils down to THIS. This guy just walks up and earns brownie points, err ‘votes’ for “showmanship’ and mass appeal. He is the most “popular” singer on the show. And yes, “popular” does not translate to “best” in terms of quality. What kind of a sham is this in the name of reality shows? Finally is it all only about gathering the maximum votes to get the coveted title – about the number of friends a contestant has plus the number of people each of them can coax into voting for his friend ,multiplied by the number of votes each of them is willing to cast for that contestant. Where does the talent factor figure in this equation? I am probably stretching it a little too far, but I absolutely LOATHE the idea of choosing the winner based on public votes. In some strange way, I feel foolish to have unfailingly watched every episode of this show, when actually it is just a glorified publicity gimmick by the sponsors.

Hmm … the last thing I would have expected 4 days back was DC winning the IPL. Sigh. I was dreaming of a CSK final and that kid from RCB brought it crashing. But I still wish it had been RCB instead of DC. For Kumble. For Dravid. And that kid, Manish Pandey

What a cric-weekend this has been! Three matches and a know-it all brother to watch them with – he makes it a point to flaunt MY ignorance at an amazing frequency of 3 spits an over. Yes, I HAVE to yap thro’ out the match and flaunt my own ignorance of the cric-technicalities. Not my fault ok! I tried desperately for some 10 years to understand vague things like mid-off, long -on, deep-gully and blah blah. Finally decided it was just not worth it. I can still root for my team with my heart and soul, scream for a six, howl for an out and enjoy every bit of the game!

Caught Lagaan this Sunday on Set Max (yeah, my cable operator thiruttuthanamaa relays set max during the IPL season. He better do the same for ESPN from June 5th! ). Man! What a movie! Clearly remember watching it a week after it released- in a non descript theatre called SSR Pankajam in Saligramam(wonder if it still exists! ). That was 8 years back I think. Though every song is on my favorite regular playlist, I have not managed to watch the movie again after that. What casting, what acting! Actually shed tears, despite perfectly knowing that Kachra’s ball would be a no-ball and Aamir would give a grand finish!

PS: Managed to finish Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup(His second book apparently). If ever any of you manage to lay your hands on that one, please tear it up for me. You would be doing the world a good deed. Period.