non sequitur

Valentine's Day Special

I first thought I will write a long-winded post describing the picture and all that and then I saw Voltaire invisibly tapping by shoulder and reminding me that the secret of being a bore is to tell everything. Leaving it this way would also amount to respecting the intelligence of my audience - which I always think is the mark of a good creator.

Photograph: Mine
Interpretation - A friend's. If she were a guy, I would have said 'You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!'. I would gladly give an arm and leg to have made the observation myself.

Note: I don't believe in Valentine's Day.

Prophetic Einstein

Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.
-Albert Einstein on Mohandas Gandhi

According to a survey carried out in Britain, many believe that Mahatma Gandhi and Churchill are just mythical figures.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/feb/04brit.htm

It is unbelievable that the saying comes true this fast. Every time I pondered on this line, I always thought of a far-off time some 150 to 200 years ahead of our time.

While I was Away

So. I am back after a long break. Break from work, break from active browsing and as those of you who follow this blog like hawks know, break from writing here. What did I do all these weeks outside of ushering in the new year in a not-so-spectacular fashion, thanks to the new kid (check the right pane to know who he is) on the blog? Most of those who patronise this website already know it all - still, what follows will mostly act as notes-to-self which I can look back as time goes by; which is largely the reason why I maintain this website at all.

Since I was unemployed/between jobs for around a month, I first piled on kind friends to provide me food, shelter and gifts, baby-sitting their kids in return; I am an expensive baby-sitter, don't you know?

I celebrated Diwiali and joblessness by gifting myself a spectacular 32-inch Samsung LCD TV, which has made TV watching my current fixation - eating into my reading and movie-watching time. It is disturbing to see myself sitting in front of the TV pressing the remote control and going back to the same stale breaking news in the news channels. My deteriorated writing skills are a testimony for this fact, I reckon. On the other hand, I am glad that I discovered Seinfeld in the process. In the past, I had ignored repeated recommendations from friends but as the saying goes, better 'Seinfeld' than 'Friends'.

It's actually not that bad. I actually did manage to watch around 45 to 50 movies since November - again on my outstanding 32-inch Samsung LCD TV - and that is one of the most memorable things I did for myself during the last two-and-a-half months. I shall let you now into a little secret of mine. Circa 2006, I looked up the imdb list of top 250 movies and took stock of the movies I had watched in the list. It was quite disheartening to see the count stand at around 40 movies. What started as a mild interest to beef up the number turned into an obsession and there were times when I used to spend a weekend watching around 7 to 10 movies on the trot - the side effect of which got me a friend in the video store clerk round the corner. Another list that I closely watch is the great movies as recommended by Roger Ebert and in the process, a good number of movies in that list started falling on the wayside too. I guess I have kept my readers' curiosity on where I presently stand piqued for too long and it is only fair to reveal the number right away. When I took stock yesterday, I see that I have watched 201 of the imdb's list of the top 250 movies. I am, as you can clearly see, quite proud of myself at this achievement and it has been a great education in movies for me. I have now my own list of observations, favorite movies, movie connections, unforgettable movie moments and scenes - all nicely written down with great fondness. Since I have considerably satiated my appitite for movies, I hope to actively get back to my reading ways this year.

I stand at the beginning of this paragraph with a blank mind. So involved was I in composing the above paragraph that at the end of it I suddenly feel empty. Oh, yes!! I also watched this genuinely great Hindi film called 'Chak De India'. A friend of mine who doesn't really care about old movies says that I wound not care for a movie unless it is atleast 20 years old to gloat about it. The truth is that I am a reasonable man and we Pathikis give credit where credit is due. I found 'Chak De India' to be a cliche-defying triumph in commercial Indian cinema and I hope to someday write my observations on the movie.

I recently joined a new company - I mean, the company is old, I am new to it - and the work involves... err... when has this website ever been about my work, by the way.

so long and thanks for sticking around.

Life - In Arun it throbs

"If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch"
-If by Rudyard Kipling

This is a picture that holds mirror to one of the most famous poems of all time. This is the 'Man' Kipling had in mind when he wrote his most recognised work.

It is a priceless gem for it definitively has Arun caught with his pants down. Show this to all those female friends of his who consider him the epitome of decency, the person in whom gallantry takes its last bow and the last ever of the knights of a civilization gone with the wind. The truth is out in vivid colours.

If they say a picture is worth a thousand words, a thousand words become of this picture. Observe the picture closely. The formal clothing with a parker pen in the front pocket to boot, the crease on his immaculately pressed Blackberrys trouser, the leather strapped watch - then to such supreme class see the local touch; folded sleeves that are the mark of the proletariat and feeling completely at home on the cold hard floor - what a heady cocktail it makes. A reckless and naughty smile on Arun’s lips and a mad gleam in his eye, raising the empty glass to toast. The empty beer bottle beside him finishes the fine artistic touch to the picture. Arun, throbbing with life from every inebriated pore. Don’t miss the tame glass of water lying at a distance with fear writ all over it - fear that Arun could abuse it belligerently at any moment for holding merely water in it.

I see huge hoardings advertising a particular brand alcohol (of course, as soda or golf accessories or something else to that effect) shouting out "Alexander: something something. In you he lives" and "Napoleon Bonaparte: something something something. In you he lives". This picture, my friends, stands head and shoulders above those adverts.

Arun appeared once on this website here.

Headlines Today

Disgusting. The way how what people say is taken out of context and quoted or as a matter of fact, misquoted. The latest example illustrates the point.

Rediff.com, never shy of putting up insipid news and headlines to increases hit count comes up with this gem.

http://www.rediff.com/cricket/2007/sep/17borde.htm

The headline says 'Dravid was neither demonstrative nor flamboyant'. I personally think this headline puts Dravid in a negative light. My curiosity piqued, I go ahead to read the article where the fellow actually says this.

Do you think he led from the front?

Yes, of course. In fact, he was very inspirational also. Unlike many other captains, he was neither demonstrative nor flamboyant, but that isn't what captaincy is all about. He went about his job with a quiet dignity and enjoyed full support of each member of the Indian team.

This is the kind of news you see everywhere. Yet another tragedy of our time and age. Yellow Journalism at it's (yel)lowest.

People's Front of Judea

At the outset, I confess that I am not one who is any interested in politics. Of course, that does not imply that over a drink, as Dave Barry writes somewhere, I would be any less eloquent or vociferous in my opinions on the subject. I am one who generally restricts himself to the sports, additional and the cartoon strip sections of a newspaper until something really big is going on in the world around me, if you know what I mean. In spite of nothing of such magnitude having happened recently, my eyes did fall on the front page which was covering the nominations for the next President of India and I observed a headline saying that 'The United National Progressive Alliance' is backing so-and-so candidate or something to that effect. Now, my knowledge certainly is to the extent of knowing what the ruling party in the country is - which calls itself the 'United Progressive Alliance'. This immediately made me burst out heartily with laughter. Ask me why. It reminded me of a sequence in Monty Python's 'Life of Brian' a movie made in 1979 which satirises the existence of multiple parties wanting to rid themselves of the Romans during the turn of the first millennium (isn’t it what the time around 1AD is called) each sounding like the next one.

Here’s how the scene runs:

Brian: Are you the Judean People's Front?
Reg: Fuck off!
Brian: What?
Reg: Judean People's Front. We're the People's Front of Judea! Judean People's Front. Cawk.
Francis: Wankers.
Brian: Can I... join your group?
Reg: No. Piss off.
Brian: I didn't want to sell this stuff. It's only a job. I hate the Romans as much as anybody.
PEOPLE'S FRONT OF JUDEA: Shhhh. Shhhh. Shhh. Shh. Shhhh.
Reg: Schtum.
Judith: Are you sure?
Brian: Oh, dead sure. I hate the Romans already.
Reg: Listen. If you really wanted to join the P.F.J., you'd have to really hate the Romans.
Brian: I do!
Reg: Oh, yeah? How much?
Brian: A lot!
Reg: Right. You're in. Listen. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People's Front.
P.F.J.: Yeah...
Judith: Splitters.
P.F.J.: Splitters...
Francis: And the Judean Popular People's Front.
P.F.J.: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
Loretta: And the People's Front of Judea.P.F.J.: Yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
Reg: What?
Loretta: The People's Front of Judea. Splitters.Reg: We're the People's Front of Judea!Loretta: Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.
Reg: People's Front! C-huh.
Francis: Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?
Reg: He's over there.

When I mentioned this to a learned Tamil friend - now the 'learned Tamil friend' bit definitely is a tautology for I have yet to come across a Tamil friend who is not learned; one I know is a cross between Woody Allen and Lord Henry of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' fame, another a highly cerebral cross between Sigmund Freud and Richard Dawkins, yet another a small-time Deepak Chopra, yet another a big-time Don Quixote de la Mancha and still yet another a self-declared political heir to a largely unsuccessful political party chief - he told me that Tamil Nadu for decades has been teeming with factions that sound so close to one another that they could win elections by virtue of the confusion the names created in the voters' minds. Sample these names: Dravidar Kazhagam, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Dravida Vizhipunarchi Kazhagam, Dhiravida Thelugar Munnetra Kalagam, Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. The mind boggles.

Here we are, in the 21st century with all the modern marvels around us and the statement ‘the more things change; the more they remain the same’ rings so true.

Political Chess

Spotted in Frankfurt. It's called Political Chess. As the tag line of the film 'American Beauty' recommends, Look Closer.

For convenience of identification, I have taken the picture from both the sides. This is how the other side of the chessboard looks like.

How many pieces could you identify? Feel free to leave the names in the comments section.

Just in case you are curious to know the price of this chessboard, it costs you only a cool 490 euros.

Notes-to-self: I just discovered that there is no euro symbol on the keyboard.

I fart in the general direction...

Aping Hollywood has been something our Indian film industry has been doing since as long as I can remember. Rediff.com has now come up with a very inventive phrase to describe the Abhishek Bhachan - Aishwarya Rai relationship. This is what they have got to say...

The phenomenon has captured front-page imagination across the country, dominating news channel and keeping tongues wagging, and the buildup is too enormous to be ignored. Therefore, in the tradition of Brangelina and TomKat, we at rediff.com decided to christen these two superstars Abhiwariya.

I said goddamn, goddamn!! Abhiwarya, it seems. I tell you, how down-market. The word sounds like something out of a medieval drama. I would rather call it "Asshake". Sounds cool and contemporary, you know.

Next...

Saturday morning i woke up to catch up with the Ashes series on TV and this is what I see being reported in CNN-IBN. I am not much of a TV watcher and what I saw definitely indicated that I was not missing much.

England follow on after they are all out for 157 in 1st Innings.

No, i am not lying. I took a picture promptly for proof, you know.

I change the channel to ESPN and is see that Australia is all set to pile on misery on the English bowlers in it's second innings.

In their hurry to report news first, they forget that the Australian captain might choose to bat or they might have thought that the only possible thing is forcing a follow on.

Last heard of, this particular channel was handed out "The best English News channel in India" award. The best English News channel, forsooth!!!

Next...

If Levi's says 'Since 1853' it is understandable or if Raymond's says 'Since 1925' it is meaningful or say, I tell 'Arvind - Since 1976', it is okay. I can give more examples but that would amount to beating around the bush. There is a restaurant in Bangalore named Biryani Merchant which says 'Since 2004'. Come on, be reasonable. The fellow serves some good Biryanis and all that, alright. But, isn't 'Since 2004' going a bit too far? I ask you. Isn't it going a bit too far? If this is not confidence, then what is?

Oh!! by the way, was I using the present tense in my previous paragraph? Sorry. I stand corrected. There was a restaurant in Bangalore named Biryani Merchant which says 'Since 2004'. The fellow served some good Biryanis and all that...

On his website the fellow says that he hopes to be back sometime in the future. A small piece of advice; unsolicited, of course. He will do better in his next innings if her takes note of the old adage that says something about counting chickens before they are hatched.

RIP.

Mahatma vis-a-vis Gandhi

    This was a point I always used to debate with a friend of mine. Who conferred  the title or whatever it is technically called, Mahatma to Mohandas Gandhi? He strongly held to the view that it is Tagore; I suspected it very much. After some research on my part, I found the truth out and thought I would also check the popular opinion. So I conducted a short survey at my workplace. Thankfully, because of the incessant appeals - for responses from my usually reticent audience - accompanying the question I sent out, response was indeed overwhelming. The results are presented in the chart below.

'Others' in the chart represents frivolous replies.

As expected, thanks to the popular culture and the more recent reference in Lage Raho Munnabhai, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore is the person most people know to have conferred the title, or whatever it is technically called, Mahatma to Mohandas Gandhi.

The truth is, it was Nautamlal Bhagavanji Mehta who bestowed the title (now you guys will menacingly brandish the mouse in your hand to hurl it at me if I repeat the or-whatever-it-is-technically-called motif) Mahatma to Gandhi. Only two respondents gave the correct answer. I request you too to give them a big hand.

<<as the applause dies down>>

The purpose of the exercise was to draw everyone’s attention to a small point. This Nautamlal Mehta, a co-worker of Gandhi - a mere foot soldier, is not as prolific a personality as Tagore and hence not mentioned.  Some of important biographies of Gandhi and some school texts attribute Tagore to have first called him Mahatma. Some scholars, those having a strong sense of the dramatic, stretch it a bit farther and say that in the form of returning the compliment, Gandhi conferred the title Gurudev on Tagore. Let me not labour the point.

This link acts as evidence to the point under discussion.

I did prove a point to my friend, what?

When Hunger Strikes...

15th August 2006, CMH Road, Bangalore.

Let me start this post with an apology... for those few of you who visit my website. Sorry for not being as frequent a poster as you wish me to be, if you wish me to write at all. I was meaning to post this post on 15th August but what with my rampant laziness and all that sort of thing, I am doing it now.

Look at the picture closely. There is an elaborate set up for Hunger Strike but there is not a single soul participating in it. What more, it is not a Hunger Strike. It is a Relay Hunger Strike.

A Relay Hunger Strike is one where a group of people go hungry in turns. You have a hearty breakfast and come and sit for a while, then at around midday as your stomach starts rumbling you go for your lunch and your friend who has just finished a sumptuous lunch - mind you, he hasn't skipped his breakfast - takes over for a couple of hours and he stares at the clock as the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and he will enter the long dark teatime of the soul after which he moves on in life to satisfy his long standing urge to have tea while a second friend of yours comes in to fill the void and hangs on till it is time to have his drink and dinner.

Think of all the honest hunger strikes our freedom fighters commited themselves to and see what the whole idea is reduced to. What a farce. Look at the picture. One thing is that it is a Relay Hunger Strike and another thing is that it is from 11AM to 5PM. Great!! It seems to have been specially organised by gluttons of the first water and the whole joke is sponsored by that food joint Frankie. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.