Meaningful Psychobabble

Wesley

2009-10-14T11:24:00.000+05:30

View all Bangalore events on Eventful

then and now

2009-02-06T16:58:00.003+05:30

artists had to do concerts to make money back when it all started

then came the record companies

who made it easy to spread the word around, popularise the music and make a lotta money

artists got a fraction of what the companies made

figured they werent getting their due..

went on record asking people to steal music..

then napster happened..

now anything you need is online..

and the artists are back to doing concerts to make money..

least things are heading that way

nature has a way of correcting itself i guess

any interesting alternative revenue models for these people who write and make songs ?

No more classroom concerts please

2009-01-27T15:38:00.008+05:30

What a "classroom" experience the opeth concert turned out to be.
The jumpy start, mindless interruptions, not to mention the phone the band had to endorse an hour into the concert was totally uncalled for. The other band, Demonic Resurrection was blech.!

Opeth did their best nevertheless to make the evening worthwhile and I wish they'd come back to India and this time perhaps perform in Bangalore. Speaking of which, Iron Maiden is back!

BIFFES - 2009

2009-01-27T15:23:00.003+05:30

Held from January 15-22nd in Vision Cinemas complex with screening in other venues, the Bangalore International Film Festival was a treat to film-goers. Catering to official participants and numerous other professionals who attended as guests, the program featured distinctive artistic styles from countries such as Poland, Germany, Turkey, SriLanka, Korea, Sweden, Italy, US etc to showcase the diversity of independent cinema. I Absolutely loved the movies. It made for an interesting experience to observe elements of script, performance and production into a satisfying totality.
A most welcome film synopsis manual, about the small budget films that use minimal sets or special effects and few professional actors, distributed by BIFFES served as superb background material.

Among the films I saw, Goodbye Lenin, The Match Factory Girl and The Man Who Quit Smoking were ranked high. Both concept and execution of the films were superb. The Man Who Quit Smoking is such an Incredibly funny movie. (Grynet Molvig is soo hot!!!). Then there was the amazing Joyeux Noel(English title - Merry Christmas ). The film, based on a true story, is at its poignant best when the male tenor and his girlfriend spending Christmas on the front sing from the German trenches as they are joined in by the Scottish bagpipes and lit- up Christmas trees emerge and circle the trenches. The soldiers begin to poke their heads up slowly, tentatively, and eventually lay down their arms and join in to listen to the singing and the bagpipes of the Scots and then to celebrate mass. And in the following morning which is Christmas Day, they play soccer, exchange precious bits of chocolate, bottles of wine, whisky, etc and photographs of wives and girlfriends. The dead are given a decent burial. As the day draws to a close and hostilities begin they momentarily shelter each other in their trenches.

Even "Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio, L" was fabulous. A story of immigrant musicians from Rome who are brought together for an orchestral performance. The band apparently is still making music. Check them out here .

Some of the films such as Sophie Scholl , Spring Summer Fall Winter and Coast Guard (both by Ki-Duk Kim) played really well for Indian audiences going by its reception. Among films from India were first class productions such as Gulabi Talkies by Girish Kasaravalli on par with the best I saw from other countries.
All in all, a week spent well.

Opeth

2008-11-27T18:08:00.005+05:30

is coming to India!
Cant wait to experience damnation live!
We can all die and go to heaven now.

RIP Richard

2008-09-16T21:28:00.004+05:30

RIP Richard, we're going to miss you!

There is much to be said for contentment and painlessness,

2008-07-13T21:20:00.004+05:30

for these bearable and submissive days, on which neither pain nor pleasure is audible, but pass by whispering and on tip-toe. But the worst of it is that it is just this contentment which I cannot endure. After a short time it fills me with irrepressible hatred and nausea. In desperation I have to escape and throw myself on the road to pleasure, or, if that cannot be, on the road to pain. When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so-called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my moldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than the warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols, to provide a few rebellious schoolboys with the longed-for ticket to Hamburg, or to stand one or two representatives of the established order on their heads. For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.
Herman Hesse (Steppenwolf)

Perfect Holiday!

2008-07-03T21:22:00.006+05:30

first day = shoulder acid driven + hallucinations(?) + looongish beach

second day = weed all day + bump on the head + lots of bleeding

third day = hash + looong trek + drenched + some lame pics
Courtesy - Gokarna, Om beach, Namaste Cafe, VRL Sleeper

H.I.M

2008-06-15T15:53:00.005+05:30

Love Metal is what you get when you combine vocal melodies, dissarray of metal and perhaps plenty of eye shadow!
Very unlike the songs of emotional heartache, love and loss dished out by spandex donning glam rock artists, this band of Scandinavian influence has plenty of substance! Hard alternative metal, eclectic lyrics and some neat covers as well.

In other news, Chuck Palahniuk wants to do a Fight Club adaptation with Trent Reznor on the music? Woah!

Discipline

2008-04-25T17:22:00.005+05:30

Nine Inch Nails chose to discipline the music industry unlike Metallica which sued Napster for not being able to afford a second swimming pool! It could take another 30 years before they rock India, nevertheless...

Pub rant !

2007-09-09T23:31:00.000+05:30

Its simple, start with mellow, pump up the volume when its past eight..make it thoroughly boisterous by 9 and bring the roof down by 10. And of course when its nearing that 11 p.m deadline we all dread ,mellow the place down with the usual dose of eagles and doors.
A bunch of guys ( code jocks ) sitting at a table beside ours were getting a little restless. While they were booing pink-floyd's "wish you were here", the DJ was hijacked by a bunch of metal heads with a penchant for ozzy and maiden. The booing jocks then resorted to dancing. Oh boy..! My friend calmed me down saying this is sort of entertaining, in a twisted, Nelly meets Hetfield, obnoxious sort of a way..
Post 11, after the music stopped and the lights came on and when we were just about to leave, things started to get ugly. Real ugly..!
The owner said he didn't believe in filtering because its impossible to differentiate. He went on to say that he's proud of the fact that his pub is the only one in the city which has never felt the need to hire bouncers and all that jazz! Sounds nice and poppish to shoot one's mouth off to claim all that, but when you foresee things taking an ugly turn, its best to bring in some muscle to get things under control. Purple haze learnt it the hard way!
The fact remains, if you have a massive mob making loud obscene gestures at unsuspecting women, misusing camera phones, hijacking the DJ, or most importantly booing floyd, then it needs some serious amending!! Besides, trouble is not impossible to foresee.
Why do i care? Because its Legends of Rock, Kormangala.

Jazz maybe, but Rock? NO

2007-02-13T22:35:00.000+05:30

As a part of its big music fest, Mumbai was host to the "One Tree Music Festival" featuring some of my all time favorite bands—from Alan Parsons (whom I've grown up listening to) to Walter Trout, Guitar Shorty, Bernard Allison, and the most famous of them all, Buddy Guy. (who was the mentor of many artists such as Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, The Rolling Stones etc..)

The disappointing thing however, was that good old fun young Bangalore city was left out. For the first time probably it was on a much more modest scale here, featuring just Jean Luc Ponty and not any of the aforementioned artists.

But it looks like Bangalore had the last laugh anyways.. :D
Iron Maiden's gonna be here this March.!

Here's what Bruce Dickenson had to say “To say we’re all really looking forward to going to Bangalore is something of an understatement. It’s very special to us to be able play to new fans in countries we’ve never been to before, and we hear the Indian fans are very loud and into their metal. The whole trip will be an exciting time for us and we intend to enjoy every moment there. The fans should know that we are bringing the whole stage show we used in Europe and America and that Eddie will definitely be joining us! We are crafting a special set to include both songs from A Matter of Life and Death and a load of other favorites. It promises to be an absolutely amazing atmosphere playing outdoors in front of the palace.”

The Boondock Saints

2006-12-26T11:59:00.000+05:30

This action flick is essentially about two brothers who swear by their principles to fight the scum who have come to populate their city. It isn't like most mindless predictable car-crashing, Do-nut munching, crack trading american gangster movies. (the art-factor lacking in most..) .
The story isn't the big draw either- its the usual good vs evil preacher ideology. The style and panache with which most action sequences are shot combined excellent dialogue delivery is what makes it different.

In fact every killing scene has an amazing musical score making it thoroughly exhilarating....mostly celtic and irish music playing in the background. (A very recent example of this combination would be - "The departed" which has the Stones’s “Gimme Shelter” as its theme song and a love scene with pink floyd's "comfortably numb" playing in the background.. Boy what a combination that is !)
The gay cop who has an intuitive talent of running through the event of massacre and who does so listening to an opera waving his hands in the air adds a dash of ecstasy to the gory manner in which the killings are carried out.. Its not bad on the dialogue front either.. with the essential supplies of mindless crassiemathafakisms...
This one truly is a gem and is in my opinion on the lines of pulp fiction and reservoir dogs..
An ideal substitute for those who've been missing the Tarantino movies lately....

The fall

2006-11-20T22:19:00.000+05:30

doesn't hurt half as much as what I'm having to endure sitting here at home....
Old grandmas suggesting everything from strange rituals to voo-doo.... im having half a mind to shoot a 'Blair Witch Project" sequel as a friend suggested

Thick skinned proud cousin: in a bragging tone: ...Ah ur knee eh? .. I had a fall too, much more gory.. was in a car with a buddy of mine.. we fumbled through a divider and flew past it to land in some bush.. my back side has been numb ever since....
me: erm, wait till my knee heals and I shall drill %$#@ it and wake it up...
Aunt #1 : Your uncle fell of the ladder too.. he was trying to check the water-level in the tank..
me: Yes aunty.. he should have realised that he was overweight and ordered for a crane with a hook to have him air lifted...
Aunt # 2 : Drink lots of apple juice... lots and lots of it..
me: how bout beer?
The uncle who fell off the ladder : You should keep wiggling your toes.. dont keep it still for long..
me: yes uncle i can do that ... in fact i can even lift the middle toe resting the others.... see...
Aunt # 3: when did he fall? huuhhh what?? amavasya is not good at all...
me : next time i shall judicially plan my fall aunty
Aunt # 4: you should rotate an egg thrice around him and throw it in the street corner... it will drive away the bad omens he might have brought home...
me: how about going to the kitchen and boiling it for me?
grandma with the voo-doo fixation : all sons fall at this age... they will invariably break a bone or two...
me: hmm... profound
Uncle married to the egg-loving god fearing aunt and who works for NDTV : Where did you fall? which bike? when did this happen? how? who was with you? how many were there? were u drinking? is there a reasonable explanation to all this?
me: far from home....a big one....about a month ago...some friends...not many...dont think.....dont think
Somebody send me a bottle of vodka home.... please

Pooperia

2006-10-06T17:52:00.000+05:30

RHCP -> Funky Poop
Collective Soul -> Soulful poop
Shakira -> Poopins
Alizee -> La' poop
Karunesh -> Poopistan
Blue Oyster Cult -> Divine Poop
Rainbow -> holy poop batman
Wallflowers -> Poop cafe..
Stone Temple Pilots -> Interstellar Poop
Lenny Kravitz -> Electric Poop
Nelly Furtado -> Party Poop
INXS -> Deja Poop

T-shirt haven..

2006-08-07T12:26:00.000+05:30

Those of you looking for some good ol Lep Zepp, Jim Morrison, Floyd t-shirts etc in Bangalore, check out 2nd Floor, Fifth Avenue at Brigade Road. I can't recall the name of the shop but you get the trademark superman tees as well.

A question

2006-08-06T16:51:00.000+05:30

on the pesticide-soft drink debate to the soft drink companies..
If you are an automobile industry, you don't go around blaming the engine manufacturer if the car blows up right?
If the damn fruit is forbidden, quit making fruit juice! Or least don't cry foul on the fruit!
I am against mindless jingoistic activism and all but given the fact that our bureaucratic officials are almost as corrupt as the incumbent delinquent government officials it would be nice to see a few Ralph Naders emerge here in India....

The Good, the Bad and the Shakira !

2006-08-04T23:07:00.000+05:30

Anybody seen or heard her latest insipid brain hemorrhage inducing offering...? This woman is on a rampage! Hips don't lie (??!!??) her latest carnival collection album..!
Awesome bod and she shakes those hips so well, she could put our Govinda to shame.. but whats that got to do with Lies? There's a snake crawling up my ass.. somebody do something...! Look at the way im shaking.. trust me when I say my "hips don't lie!"
So you have Wyclef rapping at one end... something about "Be kind to columbian refugees" and " let me see you shake it like you're from columbia" and there's our scary voiced Shakira grunting in a horny tone "oh baby when you talk like that , you make the women go mad "...laba laba ! I was forced to watch their live performance with half the world's population during the world cup finals !

She looks hot though.. really hot! South american women rock i tell you,so long as they decide not to pen down their feelings in English !
She could've been used in the RHCP (or was it pearljam) evolution video... You have the Ape evolving to Wyclef, then Shakira and finally a homo sapien!

There's this other creature, Himesh who has been pissing me off lately...The guy with the baseball cap and the nasal sinus as my friend once referred to..His voice is so incredibly bad, it gets the frogs in heat, at the peak of their mating season, to go hide in a well and start hibernating ! I know I don't have to listen to the looser if I don't like him, but he seems to be everywhere..Restaurants, TV, Movie theatres and Radio !!
Apparently he's been booked for the next three years!
Somebody cut his nose off..please

Karunesh

2006-08-01T23:02:00.000+05:30

I was listening to the "enigma" radio station (I had named it thus to seek songs of a similar genre) on Pandora's Music Gnome project and this song titled "Solitude" by Karunesh turned up. Divine !! If there is one "Indian" Band/Artist/Music I respect, its this one...If you thought Punjab was fabulous.. you have to listen to Solitude by the same artist! It belongs to a unique ambient chant genre of music with mesmerising lyrics....Simply WOW !

Fire Alarm..spelt.. F.A.R.T Alarm!

2006-04-29T21:36:00.000+05:30

Recently the fire alarm in our floor building went up. I was surfing as usual and this incredibly recurrent violent screeches of sound basically shook the otherwise dormant ambience of the floor. One of our oversized employees grabbed his bag and started running across our polished corridors slipping and sliding through the corners. I was surprised, i mean was i supposed to act concerned..ok where's the damn fire exit?
Five days later.. the alarm goes up again. i stop writing...........................................call up the security office.................................................ask him to switch the damn thing off.........................................and get back to writing again with lingering pyromaniacal tendencies in my head!

Brain dead presentation!

2006-04-17T22:17:00.000+05:30

Squeezing in months of work and putting it forth in a simplistic manner is more harder than redoing the entire work! Basically the guy before me had put the audience to sleep and I went out there to rock the cradle and make things a tad more comfortable. I even offered a blanket for them to cuddle into feeling more like an air-hostess waiting to make an announcement in the business class of an airplane.
How can you possibly make "A unified approach to a unit-selection framework for ultra low bit rate speech coders " sound poetic? I frankly don't know. I tried and discovered about a dozen ways one can fumble in crunch situations like these.
Novelty ? Err novelty of my system hmmm how do i put this.. Its this seemeless way of arriving at low-bit rates using a constrained one pass DP algorithm in a unit-selection framework that favours run length coding! Thats it.. as simple as that. You can now vow to never visit this blog again.
Here's a bunch of stuff i think one might find useful before a presentation
-> No peanuts! I'm reiterating!
-> No pseudo-confidence.. the kind you get after watching "Fight Club"
-> Try avoiding eye contact with the guy sleeping. As discouraging as it may sound you can probably console yourself with the fact that he finds your talk so intellectually amusing that he wishes to dream about it too! Even before it's over.
-> If you spot one person shaking his head in agreement with what you just mentioned do not punish him for the rest of the presentation by speaking fiercely only to him ignoring the rest.
-> Do not put that thought evoking face to dodge questions, promptly admit you don't know when you don't!
-> Wear comfortable pants. Not that old piece of a sole formal pant you just found in the attic that now fits your nephew.
Presentation can be quiet a .... I learnt it the hard way.

Music

2006-04-09T19:21:00.000+05:30

Music I recommend or don't recommend (Not in any particular order):

Tom Petty: When you are feeling happy for no particular reason
Coldplay: For all moods.! Yep trust me
Audioslave: To cool off after the miserable hour you just spent being forced to watch FRIENDS by your little sister
Yanni: The fastest way to loose your libido! For those of you who think his music is soothing..the man BEATS his wife!
Greenday: Its a lyrical splendor! Give me novocain...!
Bryan Adams: Give me poison!
U2: Good driving music.
Elton John: Must avoid while driving. (He's probably the cause of many road accidents and there should be a law against his music on radios just as there is against drunk driving!
The Who: Wattaa name!
Rammstein: Your mum didn't warn you?
Steve Wonder: Girlfriend hasn't left you yet?
Simon and Garfunkle aka Simon Uncle and Garfukar
Alan Parsons Project: Good music, band named after the inventors of the world-destroying laser beam, noted cambridge physicist Dr.Parson and Mr.Alan as referred to by Austin Powers in "The Spy who Shioked Charlie's angels"
Duran Duran: Yettanotherrreason why BRIT ROCK rocks!
Papa Roach: Paranormal Tendencies breeder.
Kate Bush : A recent music interest, a friend recommended. For those of you who like janis joplin, sheryl crow, Alanis morisette .. give her a shot.
Pearl Jam: Most of their songs are hard to forget (they're about one to two words) and they're outstanding.
KISS: Their live acts are staggering. A must watch for the stage show afficionados!

Freedom Of Preach?

2006-02-01T23:52:00.000+05:30

Freedom of Speech is highly over-rated!
Freedom of speech is for dead-ducks! A subtle shade of success.! Its for those who wish to sit around voicing their opinions expecting to gravitate the world's attention!Its for the pseudo moralist who wishes to have something but is too lazy/senile/impotent/incapable of getting it. The mortal altruist who craves attention for the strangest of the honky-tonk reasons. There is nothing more sweeter than tasting the success of one's own "action". Its bolder than the boring homogeneity of anticipation! Probably reckless, but efficient. An objective class of endurance. Shooting oneself in the mouth is probably a more conducive modus-operandi. A lesser pessimist would agree. FOS is the originator of chaos not an anodyne. FOS is the root and seed of action.? Action is what is preached vehemently through FOS. FOS is probably the methodical approach but if left at just that can shoot the cause on the face. Maybe, I'd want to turn away and not look, blowing my nose in disgust and walk away as far as I can to avoid all contact and not hear a thing. But this one sense of freedom of speech wouldn't stop yapping! Apparently it's a fundamental right..! Yep all five senses which probably have their own fundamental rights wish to disagree! On the bright side, what has ever been achieved by silence.Independence? Oh yes! So why FOS? Did somebody just say that's precisely what this post is doing?

LIVE8

2005-12-26T17:40:00.000+05:30

I have wanted to write about this for quiet sometime now, but a recent email reminded me of spreading the message around.....
Music can communicate, it can bridge Cultural divides , heck it can even unify several great nations for a common purpose. LIVE 8 has done just that.
LIVE 8 had three reasonable demands for the people in Africa--->
More and Better Aid
Relieve the poor country of all its debt
Justice in trade ! (Precisely why India was also protesting at the WTO summit as the current system of tariffs and subsidies favour only the rich nations.)

If you missed the concert, there are a few clips you can catch here . It was one of the greatest concerts ever in the history of charity concerts,
not because it involved musicians performing at nine different countries at the same time
not because it had an audience running in billions
not because it had Roger Waters and Dave Gilmour putting their differences aside to perform live sharing the stage for the first time in over 20 years
but because it actually works!!..why?
Well one might think the agenda might get lost considering the scale of things but the last time around a concert (live-aid) of this magnitude was held , it showed a clipping of a young poverty stricken african child lying in hunger with half open eyes finding it hard to even breathe. And this concert had the same kid who now was a fully grown african lady sharing the stage with Madonna to perform "like a prayer". Signup to express solidarity to this movement.

Bangalored !!!

2005-11-13T23:59:00.000+05:30

The city is choke-o-bloc with traffic. There are so many pot-holes around the stretch that connects Indiranagar ( where I stay ) to say legends of rock (where I hang out) that I've actually started naming them.
The hosur road at rush hour traffic can be a nightmare for four wheelers.. If you were to travel in a bus, the journey can get reeeeaallyyy long..(And yes you'd be better of in a boat) A window seat might do good.. But then again you'd end up counting number plates with a morbid expression on your face as you stick your head out of the window!!!

But there are so many aspects to the circumstances the city is under.. And to attribute blame to one entity ( government being the obvious one that comes to one's mind ) is not entirely justified. The government and businesses are essentially the two key players in this whole mega maniacal mess.

Indeed, the city's infrastructure was poor back in the late 90s or early 2000. The incremental increase in employment in industries such as the IT , BT, BPO, ITES whose prosperity is solely based on the headcount, and this coupled with a slow progress in infrastructure development is a recipe for disaster. The growth rate has been so high that apparently the increase in the number of jobs this year alone has been almost equivalent to the strength of the industry 3 years ago!!!

There seems to be an announcement of a company adding headcount on the pretext of value creation almost on a weekly basis. Any city's infrastructure (let alone Bangalore) would crumble in this scenario.
To start with, there wasn't a planned growth and this obviously has had a cumulative impact over the years. The hikers have graduated to cyclists, cyclists to bikers, bikers to "small car" drivers and "small car" drivers to owners of large establishments who in turn have hired buses to transport their employees! I mean if you were the only one traveling in your car maybe along with your (supremely frustrated) driver and there were 22,000 such cars on a daily basis making two trips across the same road, its going to be catastrophic. (Car-pooling could be a solution. )

Most businesses (ITES and BPOs) are primarily labor driven and they believe in the phrase "customer is god" especially if he's on a phone at the other end enquiring about how to minimize and maximise his windows or change wall papers! If these companies were to move out tomorrow citing more low cost destinations as their reasons, how would the huge loans that have been acquired centrally and internationally for funding expressways and flyovers around them be justified?!??

Bangalore has established itself as a global destination for services conjunctive with the rest of the world. To my knowledge, not many governments in the country were supportive enough at least in the initial years of IT with liberal land rates and tax holidays that the then Karnataka government provided. Ok, these companies may last for years to come.. But what is the life of any government ..? Five years if nobody throws in a towel or a dhoti?

Bangalore needs to consolidate its position and put its foot down by letting in innovative startups and tech companies which have the potential of creating large businesses or high capital per head! As for the infrastructure , our philanthropic IT dons and rustic incumbents of government need to work on a public-private framework so the city is not hated by the very citizens who came here looking for better prospects!

Catch 2wo 2housand 2wo hundred and 2wenty 2wo- Part Deux

2005-11-13T10:43:00.000+05:30

There was no sight of any life around me.. It took a while to digest the gravity of the situation.
I had a solution..As unconstitutional and unhealthy as it may seem, maybe I could climb up the terrace and jump off and distract the attention from the car and save myself the embarassment..cause i'd be dead before anybody could take note of the car.
But as they say, death is not the solution its just the easy way out to utopia..

I went around scanning the car weighing my options. Breaking the window, forcing the door out or screaming out in agony did occur to me , but jumping off the terrace was easier.
Cursing yourself at a situation like this doesn't help.. Neither does kicking your car's tire in frantic impulsive motions repeatedly.
Some bachelor dudes across the street who were partying late night happened to notice the circus and pitched in to help, only of course after having laughed for about 15 mins straight. They offered me their phone and a number which apparently was of a 24 hours emergency car-breakdown service. I was able to get in touch with this guy who hooked me up with another mechanic. And the rest is HISTORY....

Catch 2wo 2housand 2wo hundred and 2wenty 2wo

2005-10-18T20:55:00.000+05:30

So what does one do at a time like this.., I actually went through this misery last weekend.

This was one of those weekends when my parents weren't in station and all I did was sleep, sleep and sleep a little more. But when its 12:00 in the night and your stomach starts making weird rumbling noises, you are either hungry or you need pay a little visit to what little boys call the little boys room.
I had watched too much T.V...so much so as to skip dinner . So I scrambled through the room for cash, ran a mental scan of all possible food stores that I could find something to eat at and zeroed down on this place close to the airport. I picked up the house key, wallet, phone, and a jacket and put them all in the front seat of my car.... Drove it outside my portico and walked up to lock the gate whistling a tune..
When I returned to my car, all hell had broken loose. I stood there looking at the locked car door as my keys, phone, wallet and the last piece of my dignity lay inside. Turned out that the door had miraculously swung over and the autocop had miraculously shut my car up.. If that isn't bad enough, the car was running on neutral with the AC on and music playing.
I stood there watching the running car with music inside playing loud enough to wake my neighbours up.
I mean frankly what do you do at a situation like this with not one ruppee lying in your pocket. The public phone booths were closed as well..

Dussera Unplugged

2005-10-14T23:59:00.001+05:30

When it comes to festivals, you are treated like cattle. You are forced to wake up in the wee hours of the morning, which is particularly painstaking if you are still hooked up with a hangover after a late night that you've just had..

But ma, I just bathed yesterday... why again?
Oh cmon, im sure god wouldn't mind me in shorts, why should I look so decked up?

After the repeated agonising squeals of mercy are rejected,I muster up the energy to drag my ass out of bed, put on a gaudy shirt and a strange colored pant just to please my parents and convince myself that the day will be over soon.

My duties are simple, or atleast thats how they seem.

Lighting a match->
Now this may seem like a very simple task, lemme explain...
dad breaks coconut into two halves, picks a plate of fruits, flowers and assorted festival paraphernelia and rotates once. At this stage im supposed to break out of my trance and light the camphor that is laid out in the plate. May seem very simple, and I have experience of lighting wax matches @ two per day.
But the damn thing refuses to light on the all important occasion. Plate gets heavier until dad can;t hold it any longer, while im still having no luck at strike 4!
He regrets having not broken the coconut on my head.
This happens perpetually on every dussera, its a curse.

Red and Yellow Powder ->
Im supposed to mix the yellow powder (kesar i think) in some water and apply it on god's hands , head and limbs. Then mark a red dot right at the centre.
This might not seem arduous.But turns out our gods have so many hands and feet that I almost invariable miss a limb. And im again unceremoniously accused of being irresponsible and apathetic towards the divine anatomy.

The lemon trick ->
This ones really tricky. You ought to place one lemon beneath every tyre of every vehicle you possess, start the vehicle and run em over so every single one of them are squished. Turns out, the roads in and around my house are mostly pot-holed. So these lemons roll off and land up in the nearest gutter before I can even start the vehicle. What a waste os lemonade...!

Hello Moto

2005-09-19T08:27:00.000+05:30

I've been bonkers over this phone since the time Ive laid my eyes on the AD quiet some time back. Its beeeeoooooottiphullllll. The first phone I ever had was a sony cmdj70. It was slim with a jog-dial but the ring tones were so horrendous that it could take on a boisterous baby head on! I had no choice but to keep this object-of-my-friends'-unwanted-attention for a whole two years. To replace the ring tone with something cooler, I recorded GNR's "sweet child of mine"..and set it up only to make axl rose sound like he had a frog shoved down his throat while singing.

After these two years of agony came Nokia 6310.. Not a bad phone .. well least in the early 60s i guess. Now this one was fully loaded with all the features from bluetooth to green screens.. but it had the look and feel of a nataraj geometry box! One rainy day when i was returning home, it fell off my pocket summersaulting (yes i bet you dont know the right spelling too )into the air. Since then the vibrator conked, and my friends would amuse themselves for hours by shaking it.

Say hello to my Moto_razr V3
Slimmer than Amrita Rao's waistline...Its what I'd like to call a MAN'S phone.
Amazing ringtones, 4x zoom camera, and looks to die for! Memory's poor, but who's complaining?! They have drastically reduced the prices, but this is still a niche in the market. People still prefer the broad nokias , good for them.
More moto later...

Auroville

2005-08-18T23:46:00.000+05:30

There is a place in the living world, somewhere…. A world, which does not shy away from exposing itself to a chaos. A world that chooses to separate itself from the current impromptu of a discordant product. Shining like a beautiful diamond. so priceless and better left undiscovered. It represents a microcosm that people overlook…even when it passes you by. Maybe it’s a dread, apprehension of experimenting to a mute observer because it may seem too perfect an existence...that’s far less mechanical. So feeble that it might fade off like an impossible dream even before one can appreciate its worth.

Its not utopia, its right there. where one can reach. It does not refuse anyone on the basis of caste, race or sex. Man forms just another of nature’s marvel residing in its sacred splendor coexisting in an environment that is inhabited by other species as well.

It does not ask you to go back in time to lead a life that may be any different from the one you are leading now. It’s for a progressive human society to co-exist in social harmony.

There may have been a past resemblance or close to resembling a subset of the above scenario and in present terms may seem an impossible task. But the future certainly belongs to a society that’s going to be one where one redefines ego objectively in its opposite sense. As a quality that a human uses to connect with himself in all its positive sense to connect with himself. Listen to what may be a voice of himself which speaks to him and by weighing out the pros and cons of the issue acts as a enabler in determining the appropriateness of the action he has to take for a situation he is facing.

How does one define appropriateness? Would it not be an appropriate thing to let a hungry boy to get away with stealing a piece of bread from your shop? Would it be appropriate to be apathetic towards a forlorn mother trying to support a starving baby with her long thin slender hands?

The beauty of such a world is to not to face such a situation. With every human understanding the value of one’s life and not getting lost along the way. Realizing one’s worth and leading his/her life making oneself useful to the society.

Where there does not exist a concept of money. And apart from nurturing and honing one’s skill, one also finds time to help and serve others. And others refer to the society in general…and any service meted out to an individual by another is considered as service to the society as a whole.

One can have time for learning, working and leisure.

Where everything is referenced as an art and education is treated more as an art form. And like the art of science, or the art of industry. And this art is a mode of learning that’s tried and tested with the best method used to appropriate the cause. The definition of “best” is circumstantial since the society is progressive. Education is more like an interaction with maximum inputs from a higher intellectual. And a higher intellectual could be one who just happens to know more about the art either through experience or experimentation. And this does not give a special ground for the higher intellectual to exhibit his/her superiority but is merely a method to spread what is not known to the class. Also, an open mind is kept to incorporate changes if may be required. It may
be a class room or a one to one correspondence. And a quality is not given special importance may it be of a physical kind or may it be knowledge.

This is utopia aka Auroville about 10 kms north of Pondicherry.

Evolution vs Creationism- An interesting read

2005-08-15T08:36:00.000+05:30

Follow the link.. Its amazing how loop holed conversations can get

Source:- http://www.daltonator.net/durandal/creationism/fallacies.shtml