non sequitur

Pointless Pontifications

I have realised that the only way to read through a Stream of Consciousness is by being semi-conscious. Finished reading Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer' over a weekend of illness - finally.

why didn't the horse in 'War Horse' get an Oscar nomination in the best actor category this year? why wasn't Mozart nominated in the best music category for Amadeus in 1984? these are the kind of things that keep my mind occupied on a Sunday night. coming to the horse, couldn't it do with some acting tips in understatedness from the donkey in Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar? But then, you will tell me that horses cannot be compared to donkeys.
(12-Feb-2012)

Happy 200 to Charles Dickens. I share my favorite passage in Dickens as a tribute to arguably the greatest wordsmith ever.

"Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man's a blacksmith, and one's a whitesmith, and one's a goldsmith, and one's a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there's been any fault at all to-day, it's mine. You and me is not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It ain't that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes. I'm wrong in these clothes. I'm wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th' meshes. You won't find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won't find half so much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever wish to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge window and see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt apron, sticking to the old work. I'm awful dull, but I hope I've beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so GOD bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you!"
-Great Expectations
(07-Feb-2012)

As far as i am concerned, one performance that looms large in 'The Descendants' is Marlon Brando's famous monologue in 'The Last Tango in Paris' in front of his wife's dead body. Brando will live as long as cinema exists. (02-Feb-2012)

Clairvoyant Sirish Kunder is writing a sequel to Tees Maar Kha(n) - Tees Maar Khaya. (30-Jan-2012)

‎'The Apartment' (Jack Lemmon/Billy Wilder) currently playing on MGM. I have watched it before and now it strikes to me that our 'Yes Boss' is based on 'The Apartment' at certain levels - dont you agree? Be that as it may - and Billy Wilder is one of my top five favorite movie directors of all time and I think Jack Lemmon and Jimmy Stewart are the most charming of classical movie stars - I still like 'Yes Boss' more than 'The Apartment'. Isn't the ending of 'The Apartment' the mother of all romantic comedy climaxes? 'Pretty Woman' and 'When Harry met Sally' instantly come to my mind. On another note, 'Up in the Air' makes a good parody of such endings. you can now tell me 'shut up and deal'. (30-Nov-2011)

Spaghetti is best only when it is a top or a Western.

Another Woody Allen Movie Marathon Weekend. Watched 'Midnight in Paris', 'Bananas', 'Love and Death', 'Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex' and 'Interiors'. (16-Aug-2011)

Char baj gaye lekin party abhi baaki hai! (24-July-2011)

I think we should start adding year to the dates. 7/11, 26/11, 13/7 and the others - the years and dates of which i forget now. 9/11 means 9/11 2001 since that nation was proud enough to ensure nothing happens after that. we are a shameless nation and we have to improvise on the terror strikes nomenclature to suit our pathetic context. (14-July-2011)

Friday Evening: Party Hopping till 3AM between 2 friends' houses (one friend's special anniversary and another's Birthday) and a restaurant. Sloshed. Saturday Evening: Partying at home with friends. Drunk. Sunday Morning: Breakfast at Ista (another friend's birthday party). Sunday Afternoon: Guzzling down pitchers of beer on Brigade road. Sunday Night: Dinner at Tuscano in UB City (yet another friend's birthday bash). Somewhere in the midst of all this, I managed to squeeze in Ingmar Bergman's 'The Silence' too. It was one of the days when i felt like Marcello in Fellini's 'La Dolce Vita'. La Dolce Vita, indeed. Thank God it is Monday! (20-June-2011)

Now, thats's what I call a great weekend. 4 Woody Allens (Zelig, Sleeper, Radio Days, Scoop), a couple of chapters of Charles Dickens(Oliver Twist) and a couple of Martinis, Margaritas, Beer, Johnny Walker Black Label, and a Long Island Ice Tea with wonderful friends - not to forget, some great conversations. Cheers! (30-Apr-2011 through 02-May-2011)

Hectic Weekend. 2 Cricket Matches (Sri Lanka vs Pakistan and India vs England), 3 Movies (The Kids are Alright, The Fighter, Winter's Bone) and the 83rd Academy Awards. (28-Feb-2011)

Delhi has a very bad rapeutation. (13-Dec-2010)

Notice in the midst of all the English in the debate Barkha Dutt using the word Khabar many times over. It is clearly some serious self-branding drawing attention to the anagram her name makes. Barkha is News. News is Barkha. (01-Dec-2010)

come to think of it... doesn't Mark Zuckerberg in 'The Social Network' work as the latter-day Gordon Gekko? (24-Nov-2010)

CNN IBN has a sense of humour. Announces the news of Bachchan's 68th Birthday with the clipping of the song 'Dilbar mere kabtak mujhe aise hi tadpaoge' in the background. (12-Oct-2010)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a young lady in possession of a Jane Austen must be in want of a life. (16-Sep-2010)

How ironic! Today, one religion looks up the skies for the Eid ka Chaand and another religion forces itself away from the Chavithi Moon. Both for religious reasons. It's the same moon, though. (11-Sep-2010)

watched As Good as it Gets(re-watch), A Few Good Men, Jerry Maguire, Kick Ass, Tokyo Story over the weekend (01-Aug-2010)

A weekend of film noir. watched The Asphalt Jungle(1950), Key Largo(1948), The Lady from Shanghai(1947), Murder, My Sweet(1944), Detour(1945)... and The Thin Man(1934) (12-Apr-2010)

Watched Dirty Harry, Fistful of Dollars, Before Sunrise, Lost in Translation on the flight from SFO to Hong Kong. Managed to squeeze in about 2 hours of sleep along the way. Finally caught up with "Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?" Before Sunset is better than Before Sunrise. Thought Lost in Translation was a loser movie until the last scene. Fistful of Dollars is a nice remake of Yojimbo - Yojimbo was funnier. (07-April-2010)

ODing on Woody Allen. Watched 'Manhattan Murder Mystery' and 'Hannah and her Sisters' back2back.

extract from Quentin Tarantino's recent interview with Telegraph:

"I want to make hard-d--k movies and I want them all to come from the same place as Reservoir Dogs; from the same artist, from the same man.My point is this. If some kid in 30 years’ time is going to watch one of my movies and he doesn’t know who the hell I am, but he likes it so much he says 'I want to see something else by this dude’, I want to make sure he likes the next one he grabs, too. If you see [Billy Wilder’s classic] Some Like it Hot and then the next Wilder movie you see is [his widely derided final film] Buddy Buddy it’s going to kick you in the shins. I don’t want those embarrassments. To me, it’s all about a solid filmography."

Woody Allen's body of work fits Tarantino's aspiration. Annie Hall, Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanours, Mighty Aphrodite, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Hannah and her Sisters, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Hollywood Ending, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Bullets Over Broadway, Husbands and Wives, Broadway Danny Rose, Deconstructing Harry, Stardust Memories, Match Point, Zelig, Sleeper, Radio Days, Scoop, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, Interiors, Bananas, Love and Death, Midnight in Paris... all of them come from the same artist, from the same man. Of course, there is much more than these 25 movies that make up Woody Allen's monolithic body of work. (13-Sep-2010)

Pink Floyd's 'Coming Back to Life' - Daffodils of Rock Music. (24-Feb-2010)

Did the background score of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes(2009) remind you of the Anton Karas's classic score for Carol Reed's The Third Man(1949) or am I the only one? (08-Jan-2010)

Finished watching 250 of the imdb top 250 movies. Guess I started the mission sometime in mid 2005 or early 2006. (06-Jan-2010)

Watched Dracula (1931) featuring Bela Lugosi, Jean Epstein's The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), The Phantom of the Opera (1925) and Ace in the Hole (1951) over the weekend. (10-Aug-2009)

As of this minute, Andaz Apna Apna has reached the 249th spot on the imdb top 250 movies list. Click to view saved image. I rank this movie among the top 5 favorite comedy movies in Hindi.

That brings up the question that is most pertinent: what are my 5 favorite comedies in Hindi? They are Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Andaz Apna Apna, Angoor, Golmaal(the Ramprasad Sharma/Lucky one), and Chupke Chupke(the one featuring Professor Parimal Tripathi - I think the word Wodehousian describes this movie best) not necessarily in that order but on its day, the order does fall in that way too. I presume there is nothing new or unique about this list. Most people should be having most of the 5 movies in their list too. (05-Aug-2009)

Last night I died in my dream. It has never happened before ever in my life. I always thought that one never dies in one's dreams. A very phantastic experience. (03-Aug-2009)

Watched Ijaazat, The Red Shoes, Bringing up Baby, Changeling over the weekend. (27-Jul-2009)

When Harry Met Sally - A Woody Allen movie with a happy ending. (06-July-09)

Anand - India's bona fide gay movie. (22-May-2009)

I see no reason why the whole country should go gaga about the zoozoos. I say, fuck zoozoos. If vodafone cares spend a fraction of the money it spends on those commercials towards improving its myvodafone website, it would make the customer's life less frustrating. It is only a testament of what shallow times we live in. (21-May-2009)

Sin City - A comic book with a pulse. (20-May-2009)

Lotus Notes is worse than Kolkata Knight Riders. To paraphrase a great writer, the next season, KKR might do well, but Lotus Notes will always remain the worst email application. (19-May-2009)

'Rosebud' is cinema's greatest MacGuffin.

My favorite line in the movie is '...You know what the headline was the day before the election, "Candidate Kane found in love nest with quote, singer, unquote." He was gonna take the quotes off the singer.'

Do your children a favour. Give them a godless world. If there is a god, he will be pleased with both you and them.

I think that The Godfather: Part II is a better and superior movie than The Godfather.

Watched The Ox-Bow Incident, Sweet Smell of Success, The Wild Bunch, Mr. Smith goes to Washington, Les Diaboliques, Arsenic And Old Lace over the weekend. (30-Mar-2009)

Same old story. This time at the Australian Open. Only, it don't make the headlines no more.(21-Jan-2009)

Did you notice? The background music of the new Surf Excel ad is a direct lift of Anton Karas's 'The Theme of Third Man'. Dirty fellows. Pirates. and all the other Captain Haddock abuses. (circa Nov 2008)

Watched The Seventh Seal, Bonnie and Clyde, 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrals', Grapes of Wrath over the weekend. (07-Aug-2007)

Watched Casino, Finding Neverland, His Girl Friday, The Manchurian Candidate(1962) over the weekend. (31-July-2007)

Watched Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix, Unforgiven, V for Vendetta, Leon, Sherlock Jr., Heat, Blade Runner over the weekend. (16-July-2007)

Notice in the midst of all the English in the debate Barkha Dutt using the word Khabar many times over. It is clearly some serious self-branding drawing attention to the anagram her name makes. Barkha is News. News is Barkha.

The pie-eyed piper of Hamelin

with (L to R) Abhi, Aarush, Appu, Vishnu and Vishal.

On Patiala Pants...

"Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. We are amused at beholding the costume of Henry VIII, or Queen Elizabeth, as much as if it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal Islands...The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the particular figure which this generation requires today. The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a particular color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of a season the latter becomes the most fashionable."
- Henry David Thoreau: Walden

With one pair of Patiala Pants a girl can get 2 decent looking dresses stitched. In an era where every girl and her aunty are happy to struggle to get into some sort of tight jeans, one wonders how there still is currency for them blooming Patiala Pants. The world is full of contradictions. If there is a sight worse than a South Indian girl in ill-fitting Salwar Kameezes it is the sight of a girl in Patiala Pants. I spotted a girl in the pillion seat of a motorbike in Patiala Pants (the girl was in the said attire, not the motorbike) and it looked like two hot-air balloons scraping the roads of Bangalore.

The Patiala Pants for girls in reality are spiritual sisters and direct descendents of what were called baggy pants in the 90s. For the better or for worse - mostly for worse, movies have always shaped the fashion trends of a generation. In the late 80s during the ripe years of my adolescence, the sight of boys in 'Friend' caps was commonplace and then came fellas walking around in streets with only one half of their shirts tucked in – giving an impression that they are running to attend some enterprises of great pith and moment. As recently as a week back I spotted a fellow still living in the mid to late 90s. During the same period came a movie named ‘Kadalan’ featuring the dancing sensation Prabhu Deva which as far as I am concerned exploded the cult of Baggy Pants. Today look at a picture of yours with your male friends from college and you will see the unpleasant sight of all of you lined up in Baggy Pants. In those forgettable times, if you were to see a girl on the street in those then famous Baggy Pants, you would have thought she was empty in her top rack. Today, the same Baggy Pants after rightly losing favour among guys have morphed themselves into the abomination called Patiala Pants - thanks mostly to Kareena Kapoor in 'Jab We Met'.

A friend of mine shared a bit of trivia that the Patiala Pants were also called Harem Pants. The name sprang the picture of Alif-Laila/Arabian Nights in my minds eye. A girl sitting on a floor in Patiala Pants could be confused with her actually sitting on an upturned umbrella. A trip to India could inspire Rihanna to come out with her next hit single ‘Over the Umbrella’ or if Wodehouse was around, he would have written his companion piece to 'Young Men in Spats', 'Young Women in Pats'. To sum it all up, I would refuse to be found dead in a ditch with a girl in Patiala Pants.

Amen.

United Nations Climate Change Conference: Copenhagen 2009

George Carlin forever... kind of appropriate to the situation.

George Carlin: Saving the Planet

Eats, Shoots and Leaves

for a second i thought, "whoa! where am I? Chennai or Amsterdam."

Desert Sand of Dead Habit

Picture 1

The psyche of the nation is still steeped in antediluvian values of saving up for the girl child's wedding and saving up for the boy child's big dreams. The advertisement (Picture 1) under advertisement here is so casual in driving home the point that your daughter's wedding is a very special occasion for which you have to slog your blood and sweat for your life while the boy's side is automatically expected to be the free-loaders to the party throwing tantrums on subjects of paramount importance - like for instance, the temperature at which the cup of coffee is served.

Picture 2

Consider the next advertisement(picture 2) which encourages you to let your child's dream soar. Notice the child being a male-child in most cases where such schemes are presented.

The few TV commercials I remember revolving around the education of the girl child are always trying to wring out tears of emotion and pride on the fact that the girl child is being educated and getting selected for a great job. And if my memory serves me right even these are commercials of some cream that will make the girl fairer in 14 days or some other snake-oil-salesmen attempts to similar effect- implying that it takes beauty for a girl to get somewhere in life - another revolting abomination of the society.

All these are shouting out at us from hoarding on the roads when we step out of the house or from the television sets where we are eagerly awaiting the telecast of the next frivolous game of twenty-twenty. In the backdrop of such regressive ethos are dreams of India as a super-power and a vision 2020 of a developed nation. what a dump!

...Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the
 dreary desert sand of dead habit...
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
-Rabindranath Tagore

Zed's Dead, Baby

It was in the 80s when my cousins were little toddlers and were belting out nursery rhymes that I remember them singing the popular rhyme that teaches kids the letters in the English alphabet in a sing-sing manner thus:

ABCDEFG
HIJKMNOP
LMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ
XYZ, butter and bread
if you don’t like it better go to bed.

Today, after the turn of the millennium, I see the children of my friends singing the same nursery rhyme in the aforementioned way only till the third act and from here on, the script is given an entirely different spin.

ABCDEFG
HIJKLMNOP
QRS TUV
WX Y and Z
now I know my ABC
next time won’t you sing with me?

If you still need a more elaborate explanation, bread and bed rhyme with Zed while C and me rhyme with Zee.

Quentin Tarantino rem acu tetigisti-ed it best when his Butch in Pulp Fiction said 'Zed's dead baby, Zed's dead'.

Ironically, the dead Z has entered other areas where S was previously holding court. I being the luddite and anglophile that I am insist on spelling the words the way my English teacher taught me - Microsoft Word's spellchecker notwithstanding - viz. Organisation, Realisation, Cocacolanisation.

When two Andhrites meet...

Andhrites: meaning - people belonging to the State of Andhra Pradesh, India.

Back in my college days, coteries were formed based on the State from which students hailed from and the formed groups moved like packs of hyenas for the rest of the years of education – not always necessarily the prescribed four years. The matter of interest is that the power structures within the group were established very early during the course of joining the college, the parameter for which was the size of the city from which one came. Hyderabad, being the capital city was the automatic winner and fellows from the city were presiding over the rest of the group like the rightful hairs of the erstwhile Nizam and own the Salar Jung Museum and all its artifacts. Their arrogance bordered on hilarity.

It was easily distinguishable when one came from Hyderabad and another from Anantapur or when one belonged to Vijayawada and the other, Tirupathi. Trouble started when there was one guy coming from Podili and the other from Kanigiri, both villages so obscure that you will live your whole life without knowing of their existence if you didn’t meet these two guys or read this post. These two guys turned out to be the most enthusiastic to settle the power battle and the rest would be mute spectators in the arguments of which village is bigger – for, no one knew any data related to either village save the two sluggers.

Maybe the village with the longer name ought to be bigger. Kanigiri with four syllables could win over Podili which has only three syllables. Only on this basis, you could see many unintentionally funny Hyderabadis shouting out from the proverbial rooftops that Hyderabad is bigger than Paris. Definitely the length of the name is not a correct barometer of measure for the saner individuals of the society and hence the argument comes to a head when Podili-Seenu stumps Kanigiri-Mohan and the rest of the pack by delivering the coup de grâce 'How many cinema halls does your Kanigiri have?' Everyone is thrown away from their canteen-stools and the bloke from Kanigiri is more than ready to tackle this situation. He says '6' and counter-questions Podili as to his standing in the situation. Podili smugly retorts '6'. Here the plot thickens. Even the Hyderabadi, who until now maintained his usual supercilious attitude in such matters, is now sitting with rapt attention at the edge of his stool to see how this conundrum is resolved. Always the first to offer a way to resolve the issue - confident that his town would in the end prevail - Podili now delivers a new blow to Kanigiri, 'How many cinema halls boast of Air-Conditioning?' Kanigiri here gets a bit defensive and is reluctant to continue the debate. Encouraged vociferously by the onlookers he is forced to confess that there are no movie halls with AC in his town. The triumphant Podili bangs the table and declares that there is one movie hall that boasts of Air-Conditioning equipment. Kanigiri's fate is sealed for the remaining four years in college.

We movie-mad Andhrites - I read somewhere that Andhra Pradesh has the maximum number of cinema halls in the Country - are always ready to apply movies to resolve any problem we come across in our daily life.

Happy Ugadi.

PS: If you are wondering what would have ensued if Kanigiri indeed boasted of say, one cinema hall with AC, the possibilities are infinite. I offer the 70mm screen and the price of the lowest and the highest class of tickets as only a couple of parameters, leaving the rest to the imagination of the reader.

Bangalore Traffuck

You fucking assholes. It's not that New York also has traffic jams. It is that Bangalore has traffic jams where there shouldn't be any jams. There is something called lane discipline - one of the facets of modern times. But I don't blame you for not knowing that. You are still to come out of the anarchy of middle ages and labourously take a glimpse of modern times. New York has traffic jams!!! Forsooth!! Driving the best cars is not a measure of progress. Assholes!!! Tell me. What are the construction lorrys doing in the morning hours when people are going to work? What the fuck is the matter with these dumbfucks who take driving lessons on the weekdays at 8am? I don't want to fucking see any 'Motor Driving School' cars in the  morning hours. Or in the evening time. And why the hell are there trucks plying on the streets with specific purpose of mobile advertising reading stuff like 'my shop is now in Marthahalli' where there is already enough and more traffic? Ban Mobile Advertising in this city. Scumbags. I am afraid that I might go insane with frustration, helplessness and rage.

Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
- Tyler Durden, Fight Club.

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.
[shouting] You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, [shouting] 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:
[screaming at the top of his lungs] "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
-Howard Beale, Network

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

...Since 1993.

from left to right: Shiva, Seenu, Ajay, Praveen, Satti and Me. (Read Keechaka, Mareecha, Subahu, Jarasandha, Dushasan and Pran)

We took the world as given. Cigarettes
Were twenty-several cents a pack, and gas
as much per gallon. Sex came wrapped in rubber
And veiled in supernatural scruples-call
Them chivalry....

Psychology was in the mind; abstract
Things grabbed us where we lived; the only life
Worth living was the private life, and-last,
Worst scandal in this characterization-
We did not know we were a generation.
-John Updike