low flying

commute

2009-03-07T15:09:00.000+04:00

1
Air was mildly chilly and it coupled with a feeling of death made my body ice cold. The mild perfume from the girl sitting next to me couldn't add a tiny bit of life to it. But then a swift wind germinated a tear in my left eye. It slowly collected the bits of sorrows that were scattered in my mind and grew large enough to drop down to my lap. The body shuddered as warmth returned to it.

2
I sniffed at the air, what was that smell, was it a psychoactive drug?, my eyes were hit by the red neon lights, my head rocked from side to side from the broken road, is this air drugged?, the bumps were hitting my head again, I remembered the unmatched giant breasts of a dead woman on the screen, I told her not to lift her top again, can i have some more of the hallucinogenic drug?, the green and red lights hit the eyes again, the piercing voice in my ear is changing speed, direction, techno beats, when did i start liking them, I saw the hot woman in red sari swinging her head in wild abandon, I am getting out of the trance, give me another dose.

sme ragging case verdict

2009-02-27T20:53:00.004+04:00

Visual media has given this case the importance it deserves. This was a cold blooded crime done by a bunch of criminals. Then I was surprised to see that print as well as the news ranking system in google news are not giving it much importance. You can get an outline info about the case by reading the first few paragraphs from this article.
Along with the crime the attempts to cover it up will shock anyone. The principal of the college, director of the college and the first doctor to whom the victim went(a rape victim was sent to psychiatrist first!) tried to tell the girl to hush up the matter. Out of these three two were women(the principal and the psychiatrist). I wish these elements also get convicted in the appeals court.
The victim who was 17 at the time of the crime and her family are real heroes to fight such a long drawn battle against manipulative and powerful criminals. Though anyone would find it hard to ask victims of such heinous crime to muster the courage and energy for the arduous legal battle i wish more often they do that and win at that.

Indian Marxists guilty of murder

2008-11-11T19:09:00.003+04:00

Tapasi Mallick's killers(rapists?) are convicted. Want to see how much this news will be covered by our media. I never had any hope of proper investigation or justice in this case when i learned about it before. And our great media network never reported any progress either(even though they were hyperactive in reporting about whether tata's will move out or stay in singur).

66th rank

2008-10-18T23:46:00.000+04:00

Read the news. Key findings here.

Our media has better news items to run on their front page, so you might have missed this. TOI wanted to talk about companies going cheap on diwali gifts this year. I searched IE to find a mention with no luck. Funny bit was the mention in cnn-ibn. They reported the news in the context of nano project moving to gujarat.

UN hand-washing day

2008-10-15T16:20:00.001+04:00

Millions mark UN hand-washing day and i suddenly thought it would be about rwandan genocide.

Food crisis because indians and chinese are getting food to eat

2008-04-30T08:41:00.003+04:00

According to condolezza rice the more important reasons of food crisis that should be investigated is the improvement in the diets of indians and chinese(really, or is it that more indians and chinese get to eat these days) . A less important factor would be USA and many other countries using food crops to create biofuel. More people getting food to eat is a good thing(and who would have thought we will have to defend such a statement). What needs to be stopped is the new universal policy of promoting conversion of food into biofuels and planting fuel worthy plants like jatropha in arable lands which produced food grains otherwise.

From this news article. Also read about food vs fuel on wikipedia.

2008-04-01T10:14:00.005+04:00

Seen in all its grim realities, old Tibet confirms the view I expressed in an earlier book, namely that culture is anything but neutral. Culture can operate as a legitimating cover for a host of grave injustices, benefiting a privileged portion of society at great cost to the rest. In theocratic feudal Tibet, ruling interests manipulated the traditional culture to fortify their own wealth and power. The theocracy equated rebellious thought and action with satanic influence. It propagated the general presumption of landlord superiority and peasant unworthiness. The rich were represented as deserving their good life, and the lowly poor as deserving their mean existence, all codified in teachings about the karmic residue of virtue and vice accumulated from past lives, presented as part of God’s will.
- from the essay about Tibet by Michael Parenti. Go read.

fleeting moment

2008-01-14T12:37:00.000+04:00

the cheers gang up on the dreamy ears
dreams race to the escape the eminent dawn
i race to get a hold on her
for the glint is in her eyes
and shes moving away at human pace
my feet are stuck to the earth

the glint shines like a silver dagger
which could cut my heart and let love in
bring light to the alley way ahead
which was pitch dark otherwise
the feet were moving then with no unease

i saw the look in her eyes
there was love but with no pain
there was recognition but no anger
lust with no covers, happiness
i wish i could move my feet, and walk with her

A courageous face

2007-11-29T19:58:00.000+04:00

Read the article. While this young girl was tortured in public view many adults were busy filming the scene in their cameras, instead of doing something to save her.

Dead man is always good

2007-11-20T19:01:00.000+04:00

I started by reading this interesting headline
The Judge who got union carbide pay up was respected internationally.
WTF is that, i have never heard the word justice used in any of the articles speaking about the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. And now the justice who presided over the main case against Union Carbide is called the Just Justice. Just because he is dead? Read this article by IE.
A man who holds the distinction of being the youngest person to be appointed as a judge, will also be remembered for his landmark ruling in on one of the worst ‘manmade’ disasters — the Bhopal gas tragedy. As the CJI, he headed the bench that directed the US multinational Union Carbide to enter a settlement with the Indian Government, underlining that interest and welfare of lakhs of people affected by the gas leakage was paramount.
Although Justice Pathak in February 1989 refrained from issuing any directions for launching criminal proceedings against top officials of the US firm responsible for the tragedy, he did his bit in offering relief and rehabilitation to the victims by expeditiously settling the case. It was his landmark ruling wherein the Union Carbide was asked to pay $470 million as a full and final settlement to the Indian Government for payment to the victims.
Now that is some reporting(and i read a few more obituaries all describing this judgement as a success). This settlement(the landmark judgement as per IE) was considered a treason by the victims and if i may say the general indian conscience then, as the damages agreed in the settlement was 15% for the original damage claim($750 million as to $3 billion as per this article) and it gave Union Carbide full immunity from criminal proceedings. It was an out of court settlement, it let the company pay just a fraction of the damages they caused and gave them immunity from prosecution for one of the most deadly industrial crimes that was ever committed. And there were very clear evidence that the tragedy was a result of systematic negligence from the company's side.
I heard about this judge for the first time when my history teacher, Stephen Sir mentioned this judgement in our 10th standard class. I remember him, emotionally charged, explaining how this judge has betrayed the victims of the Gas Tragedy and his country by siding up with Union Carbide. He went on to tell us that he later on applied for post in international court of justice and when he asked the support from indian government for this posting, another international agency(i forgot the name) adviced the government to not support him based on his controversial verdict on Bhopal Gas Tragedy. I don't know whether indian government supported him, but he did become a judge in International Court Of Justice.
This judge relinquished his post as a CJI(Chief Justice Of India) soon after delivering this judgement(without completing his tenure) to leave the country and take up the post at International Court Of Justice. To me all these are just indications as to what happened in that case.

drunk

2007-11-11T05:55:00.000+04:00

I am drunk on mild fever, laughing uncontrollably reading up this blog. Laughing does't always mean you are happy, mind is in a bit of pain for a friend.

giggles

2007-11-09T18:58:00.000+04:00

Receptionist to young hot couple : What were you guys doing between 2Am and 4Am today.
Couple(giggling): We were wrestling.
Receptionist : The person next door, he didn't quite like that noise you were making(giggle), can you wrestle at some other time please.
Couple : Giggles
Receptionist : That must have been quite a long wrestle(giggles).

And I felt so happy for the couple, and was surprised that I was not even a bit envious.

Doris Lessing Gets Nobel, Yeah

2007-10-11T19:42:00.000+04:00

A year back, i exclaimed to my friend, Orhan Pamuk won Nobel.
Today its more emotional, Doris Lessing won the next. I am going back home to read "The Good Terrorist" again. That one book was enough for me to become the biggest fan of hers.
Am so happy.

when life kills death preserves

2007-08-23T15:27:00.001+04:00

So i was saying i was lonely. Was alone in this place and i had to study. Enjoying it at times but not always and afraid of impending failure. There were people around me who were not alone and enjoying this more than me. I didn't envy them. I just tried to steal a bit of happiness from their moods and kept hiding when they were about to find out.

I took long walks in between. At the end of the two days i looked back and saw this dark figure always with me. It was like a zombie. It had a stony expression on its face. It always walked at a regular pace and was always looking ahead. Its been with me for so long but i never saw him so clearly.

lets not make doctors out of rich idiots

2007-08-21T19:21:00.000+04:00

I am sitting in a cafe having my evening tea with my friends, watching the pretty girls passing by the window and all of a sudden there is an alarm in the atmosphere. A bunch of people dashed across the view pushing a wheel chair with an unconscious girl lying with her head slumped in it. Next to the cafe there is this small health center to which they are obviously heading.

Isn't it miraculous work that a doctor does? This girl who is looking totally healthy, who cannot explain to him anything is brought to him and he has to diagnose the problem that's hurting her, may be immediately or after a bunch of tests. Many doctors have the skills to diagnose complex diseases or problems of their patients, which are not obvious from the symptoms.

My thoughts are going to one place. The way medical education works in my country. I find it hard to digest that a lot of opportunities to study medicine are granted to students who has money rather than the students who has any aptitude or the brains to do it. I am pretty sure that a person needs to be a bit intelligent to be a doctor and the whole possibility of many idiots becoming doctors just because they have wealthy parents creeps me out.

dark day

2007-08-17T11:36:00.000+04:00

You feel the dark emotions oozing from your heart. The urge to sin is at the breaking point. I know i have the blockers for this. But look whats happening, they are conveniently blocked. Blockers blocked, is it funny. And may be its not that bad if they were gone for ever, no, just for some time until the bloody emotions take over and you sin. After that they are back in place. I was sitting next to an angel, feeling her aura. My heart cried for the people i am sinning against in silence. The aura of the angel, i thought it will purify me. How wrong am i, and how false are those tears.
I sinned. The blood of the victims were not warm, but the sight warmed me for a short amount of time.

salaam bombay

2007-08-17T11:00:00.000+04:00

I was watching Salaam Bombay and there is this scene where Rekha, the lead female charactor, is walking down a long crowded street. Camera moves back and we see Rekha as part of the crowd, and we are also shown a guy with a transistor radio listening to a cricket match. I suddenly remembered the time when a friend of mine has told me about this scene. Rekha is in a lot of pain in that scene as she is asked by the warden of the childrens prison to let go of her child who is imprisoned there. She suggests that Rekha should let her girl be in the prison rather than around her, as she's a prostitute living in the red light area. Or she should think of giving away her to an orphanage. My friend has told me that the scene shows, a mother in deepest pain of being asked to stay away from her kid with nobody to console her while a whole nation listens eagerly to the live commentry of a cricket match. It conveyed it well i think, i dont remember sad music or tears, but it will force you to think.

happy places

2007-08-17T10:19:00.000+04:00

Boredom is lurking around. Nothing new about it. But what makes the days special is how many times mind digress into good things. How often you get those subtle triggers which takes you to beautiful places. Most of these places i have never been to, but i stole them from movies or books. Some of those stolen ones are so much accepted that mind argues about its reality for a bit before giving up. Sometimes those triggers are obvious and easy to notice and sometimes they are so tiny and mysterious that you will never see them. The cutest one is the smell trigger. The smell of sharpened pencil which takes me to my nursery days, a particular perfume which takes me to the place where I smelled it before or the smell of a rare food item which takes me to the scenario where I had it last time.

on the way to the asylum

2007-08-17T08:57:00.000+04:00

Strange noises, I like to make them. I used to without any stimuli in the past, but nowadays its the morning bath. The cold water touching your skull, and what's inside, a slightly crazy mind. The wayward nerves go beserk, I used to dance before, these days, I shudder. The amount of different thoughts coming in is too much to handle. I imagine what might have gone through the minds of the crazy people who were tied in a sack and submerged in cold water in mental asylums of medieval times, a way of giving shock.

jat men and mallu women

2007-07-26T09:27:00.000+04:00

"In Kerala you will not find a single woman who has not passed high school. Now more and more Jats are scouting for a partner here because they feel Kerala women can make the future of their kids safe," This is about the an interesting South - North connection. Apparently guys from Haryana are trying to get brides from kerala. And this is what one guy told as the reason for this long distance alliance. Wow. What a smart plan.
My plea to men of Haryana. Stop killing your women and start educating them. And even if you are not planning to do that stop importing women to normalize the skewed sex ratio in your state.

eugenics in america

2007-05-25T10:08:00.000+04:00

Elaine Riddick's form refers to "community reports that she was 'running around' late at night" and her "promisicuity" and her "inability to control herself" constituted grounds for sterilisation.
So she was sterilized when she delivered a baby at the age of 13 without her knowledge.
"I didn't know anything about it until I was 19. I got married and tried to have a child. The doctor told me I had been butchered."
Policies were drawn up in over 30 states in the US to sterilise women, men and children who were considered to be physically, mentally or morally 'defective'.
And they have a nice name for this, eugenics.
State records conservatively estimate that between 1943 and 1963, over 63,000 people were sterilised under the eugenics laws in America.
and
Whilst five states, including North Carolina, have issued apologies for the sterilisations carried out under eugenics laws, the federal government has never acknowledged that any sterilisation abuses have ever taken place.
Remembering a readers digest article about physically and mentally challenged kids being taken away from their homes to live in a facillity, the whole idea being driven by eugenics policy in USA.
All text in green from this bbc article.

a new bed place

2007-05-10T14:13:00.000+04:00

The small bed lies on the floor alongside a lot of rubbish and another bed. I have a small night lamp beside it which was made from pieces of a toy bullock cart. Then there is the bunch of doris lessing books, a pen stand which doubles as mobile phone stand. Its quite away from the world as tv is in next room, but quite close due to those books. My other companions are a bunch of mosquitoes.

I think the new bed place is giving me back some good dreams, though finding it hard to remember them clearly.

haze and the gaze

2007-04-27T13:51:00.000+04:00

Lying back on the second row of kairali theatre, gazing at the immaculately beautiful shots of "The Gaze" feeling the giddiness, the haze of alcohol and the full bladder, it was definitely a nice evening at the film fest last December.

I wanted to say "I love you " to two people. I wanted to say "Sorry, i am not as bad as you think" to somebody else. "I am just neutral, don't despise me for that". I was not too drunk but lazing in a very mellow mood.

They say the movie was a fusion of iranian and french styles of movie making. I loved the low light in which most of the scenes were taken, it was neat and a little strange. The characters were nice. But i failed to grasp all the nuances of the story.

I don't want to sleep alone

2007-04-23T18:41:00.000+04:00

The first few sequences of the movie and the two pegs i downed was gone. Tsai Ming-liang was testing us to the max with his real time shots. One shot reminded me of the horrors of the climax of Wayward cloud, when Chua made Chyi give the comatose Lee an oiled hand job. Chyi and Chua work and live together and take care of comatose Lee. Its Kuala Lampur(KL) and the movie takes us through the poorest quarters there, but holy, the imagery in some of the scenes are too good. There is an other Lee who was beaten up by thugs and who will be saved by a bunch of Indians working in KL. If you watch carefully there is an abandoned mattress. The abandoned mattress as well as beaten up Lee gets new life thanks to the assiduous care of one of those Indian guys. The scene where all the guys carry the mattress from the street to the home is nice.

Chyi has the sweetest bedplace, its a tiny attic like thing, made of wood and she we can see all the other things happening in the house through the gaps in the wood. Absolutely loved it.
Another wonderful thing was the smoke that covered up the city at one time, Chyi and non comatose Lee making out with ridiculous gas masks made from plastic cups. In wayward cloud also there was one thing affecting the whole city, water scarcity.

I don't want to sleep alone, ya thats the name and the theme.

By the way DO NOT SEE THE MOVIE :), unless you are a Tsai fan. My poor ex-manager who came to the movie just on my insistence was nice enough not to beat me up after the movie.

sari

2007-04-16T17:17:00.000+04:00

Shashi tharoor's article about saving sari got him a lot of critical retorts from blogoshpere. I found some parts of the article confusing but liked the part which says that todays younger generation is less willing to drape themselves in a sari as they associate it with an older era. I think while many women find it easy to criticize tharoor saying that he ignore the need for men to wear traditional garbs and find the reason for not wearing sari in the inconvenience factor alone, none will be ready to accept that part of the reason could be exactly what tharoor says. Its not just women, i and most of my friends have no experience in wearing a mundu outdoors. Its not just due to the convenience factor of a pant but also in part due to our eagerness to adopt fashion of the times, to not look out of place.
Lots of women say sari is inconvenient. Similar with us about mundu. One interesting point is how much does one want to see the opposite sex in these (controversial :)) traditional garments. How does a woman rate a man in pants versus the one in his mundu(for southies) and how much does a man rate a woman in sari versus one in churidar. I would like to make my side clear, sari is hot, body parts which are exposed by it doesn't make a woman look indiscreet. If many men are with me, i am sure sari wont die. If many women prefer men in traditional clothes then those wont die too. Or rather mustn't die, for i trust we will and we should try a bit to attract the opposite sex :).

british sailors released

2007-04-05T08:22:00.000+04:00

I felt that it was awfully sweet of iran to release the sailors as a gift to british people. Don't know whether diplomacy is behind it, but i would like to think that iran used it as an image building opportunity. Read the news of bbc. Whatever is behind this all, when i read about the incidents(from british press), i feel the warmth shown by the iranian president is heartening but the fact that british prime minister was not even ready to thank the Iranians once, looks like a stupid extension of his idiotic comments which blew this issue out of proportion.

I have heard that the women in Iran are very pretty. That definitely makes me love Iran :). Other than that i remember the movie Offside, which really showed the spirit of people there, specially women in the highly oppressive society. There are lots of things to hate about Iran, but looks like there will be always some things to love it.

loony

2007-01-05T11:15:00.000+04:00

Please let me be sad
I cried, with real tears,
But the mind is so heart less

He waved it down, with a single motion
You ain't gonna die today, why cry
Laugh you lonely fellow,
you ain't gonna die today

I took out my case, with all the args and angsts
i spread them out, i reasoned
i pleaded, how do you know, how can you be so cruel
they don't even laugh at me now
they ignore me or call me trivial

Laugh you loony, look at yourself
and laugh your guts out
You ain't gonna die today

I feel a steel flask in the back of my neck
I feel that what fills it is happiness
Its been leaking these days and vacuum is pushing it in
I cant take the pain you asshole, let me be sad
What if it breaks and kills my brain, what about that

I smiled at first, then i laughed
I was roaring in minutes, my body was shivering
I knew i was not gonna die today, why cry

sideways

2007-01-03T11:58:00.000+04:00

Maya: You know, can I ask you a personal question, Miles?
Miles Raymond: Sure.
Maya: Why are you so in to Pinot?
Miles Raymond: [laughs softly]
Maya: I mean, it's like a thing with you.
Miles Raymond: [continues laughing softly]
Miles Raymond: Uh, I don't know, I don't know. Um, it's a hard grape to grow, as you know. Right? It's uh, it's thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It's, you know, it's not a survivor like Cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and uh, thrive even when it's neglected. No, Pinot needs constant care and attention. You know? And in fact it can only grow in these really specific, little, tucked away corners of the world. And, and only the most patient and nurturing of growers can do it, really. Only somebody who really takes the time to understand Pinot's potential can then coax it into its fullest expression. Then, I mean, oh its flavors, they're just the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and... ancient on the planet.
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Its such a nice movie. And this one above is my favorite dialogue in that. When Miles explains to Maya why he loves Pinot, the beauty is that we see Miles as Pinot. Someone who is really special but who could use a companion who would care for him, as Maya :), and who could help bring out the best in him. Thats the most elaborate but unintentional pickup dialogue ever. And see why Maya loves wine.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maya: How it's a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing; how the sun was shining; if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes. And if it's an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I like how wine continues to evolve, like if I opened a bottle of wine today it would taste different than if I'd opened it on any other day, because a bottle of wine is actually alive. And it's constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks, like your '61. And then it begins its steady, inevitable decline.
Miles Raymond: Hmm.
Maya: And it tastes so fucking good.
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Bloody romantics :).

Tapasi

2006-12-20T13:05:00.002+04:00

Read a left blog version of the gruesome murder of a young girl, in Singur, West Bengal which suggests that the girl was raped and burnt to destroy the evidence of rape in a small pit, by police and CPM Goons. Read the police version from telegraph. The police thinks that the murder could be because of personal reason and not connected to the Singur agitation. But they don't seem to have any ideas on how a young girl can have attracted such enemies who would be ready to burn her alive(if police thought rape was involved then that could be a motive, but off course that possibility has been ruled out). The fact that the body was found just beside the area, fenced and heavily guarded by police and night guards from industrial development board(CPM Goons as per some news versions), pretty much tells the truth about the horrible crime.

Its alarming that the criminals are becoming good at destroying evidence. How much evidence can be found from a charred body. In case of the Khairlanji incident the doctor who did the postmortem failed to collect evidence which could have helped in proving rape and finding the culprits. His version was that police didn't suggest that rape was involved. Offcourse, what else can be expected when the victims are marginalized and the whole mechanism to protect people joins hands with the murderers and rapists.

abortion

2006-11-27T13:59:00.000+04:00

The first time i was sensitized to the problems involved in abortion was while watching an old Malayalam movie. The abortion was an illegal one which lead to complications. The whole scene of abortion was scary. This movie was post 1971, when abortion was legal in India, so i will have to think it was still not widely available then. India has one of the most liberal abortion laws, which was adopted in 1971. One of the clause which makes it liberal allows the termination of pregnancy which results from failure of contraceptive irrespective of the method used (natural methods/ barrier methods/ hormonal methods). Its a great thing but some studies (read this manushi report and there is a part where a volunteer tries to access the free abortion service in a delhi government hospital) say that despite the legal acceptance, benefits of free and legal abortion has not permeated very well to all levels of the society in India due to lack of awareness, social stigma about unwed pregnancies, and some political reasons of the 70's where abortion was packaged with irreversible contraceptive methods.

Recently i was reminded of the abortion issues when i was watching the movie Dirty Dancing. More than the hot dancing and romance showcased, what i took back with me was the plight of a girl with unwanted pregnancy showed in the movie. Set in 1963, when abortion was illegal in USA, the girl had no choice other than to go to a quack who charged exorbitant rates and did a messy job of abortion leading to complications. The girl in the movie was saved by the heroine's father, a doctor but what it shows is that in such a situation she or her friends wouldn't have approached a regular doctor to save her life, fearing the legal consequences. More reason that i was shocked was the thought that such things used to happen in the US of A. So what will be situation in lots of other countries where knowledge about contraceptives are much less and abortion is still banned under law.

And these are the days when religious fundamentalism is making a comeback in a lot of countries. And we get to see news like this, of Nicaragua banning abortions of all types including cases when mothers life is considered to be in danger. The "pro-life" guys there i guess are only interested in the life of the fetus and not that of the mother. Off course i can see their thoughts(from a distance of a thousands of miles, with no knowledge about them), how they were seething with anger when they saw some poor woman carrying a pregnancy which could put her life into danger got an abortion after certification by three doctors and lived a happy life. And how they can be happy now putting any other woman in such situation either to 8 years in jail if she went for abortion or to painful death(a death row situation to an innocent woman). Illegal abortions are rampant in these countries and they are a big threat to the life of women(read this news article, which reports illegal abortions are at the rate of one per woman in Latin America) and since the "pro life" guys find it hard to do anything against them, they are trying to put the life of mothers with medical complications who can only be saved by doctors, in clear danger and get some mental peace from that. Holy, but why am i surprised.

The only thing that we can do is to increase the awareness about abortion in our own country, talk about it and help out. Its quite important, last day i was talking to my friend about legality of abortion in India and he was surprised, so was he when i told adults can have consensual sex without marriage in India:).

grameen bank

2006-11-17T15:48:00.000+04:00

When i heard about Professor Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank winning the Nobel prize for peace, the first thing i did was obviously reading up about the grameen bank. The part which was interesting to me was that most of the loan goes to women and the bank found women to be better at repayments than men:). I thought , ok, women are better at repayment, ya, they can be better at following the rules of society. I searched for women bloggers who took pride in this whole women better thing. My searches resulted in nothing :), looked like no woman blogger was interested in this huge statement about women. Then i came accross some other blogs, which gave another view point explaining women being better at repayments. The loan mechanism in grameen bank works on a peer mechanism where the loan is provided to a group and if one member defaults there will be immense peer pressure(some accuses that peers could humiliate the defaulter and even cases of locking the defaulter up in the panchayat hall were heard of) on the defaulter to pay up since otherwise the whole group loses the access to the next loan. The new view point said that women are more susceptible to such pressure tactics than men and this would explain the phenomenon of women being better at repay. Holy, such unromantic people, they chucked the whole concept of women being better social players :). The grameen bank website gives this explanation -"Women are the best poverty fighters. Experience and studies have shown that they use the profits from their businesses to send their children to school, improve their families’ living conditions and nutrition, and expand their businesses. They also are more likely to fully repay their loans on time."

Then i read up these article of scathing criticism against grameen bank written by an austrian school of economics advocate Jeffrey Tucker in 1995 and 2006. Some of his points suggest that the collectivism in the grameen bank loan groups and their strict practices like joining up for weekly physical-training exercises and parades where they chant the the "Sixteen Decisions," a narrative summing up the bank's worldview and education provided in the banks style in its 18000 schools make the bank more of a cult than a financial institution. I understand his concerns about such a rigid collectivist society. But when he is worried that the collectivism advocates against dowry(and according to Jeffrey this will lead to the members not geting married or get their children married in the dowry based society), and that the collective is forcing the members to make and use pit latrines i am more than a bit amused. This fellow Jeffrey Tucker, from his words, i think is a big romantic. He sitting in a nice dowry less society sees this thing called dowry as a pretty substance and more prettier is open latrines. And i would like to imagine that if such a large group of people thinks against dowry what big change can it make.

If you read the articles you can see one thing which these people see as the more important concern, "the dominant issue right now is how best to build institutions that are genuinely market viable as verses subsidy dependent", and not the welfare of these people. And at many points he wonders if micro finance is such a profitable industry why dont the private players get into this market. And he tries to prove that micro finance stays up because of huge subsidies and grants from in and out the country. Who cares as long as it goes into improving the life of a huge number of people. And if this statement from Grameen Bank is true,
"No Donor Money, No Loans

In 1995, GB decided not to receive any more donor funds. Since then, it has not requested any fresh funds from donors. Last installment of donor fund, which was in the pipeline, was received in 1998. GB does not see any need to take any donor money or even take loans from local or external sources in future. GB's growing amount of deposits will be more than enough to run and expand its credit programme and repay its existing loans.
" those allegations are also false.

The only negative part of micro-credit seems to be the sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle peer pressure to repay the loan. That is the same thing which makes it a success also. And compared to very not subtle threats of legal action or physical violence by money lenders(as normal banks never reach any of these people) this seems to be much better. I have heard about Self Help Groups in India which are similar to GB's peer groups and have always heard only good about them. And i think a similar bank in India with as much reach could change a whole lot of rural peoples life for the good and protect them from lack of the so called capitalist banks and presence of money lenders who would rather prefer that the debtors remain debtors for ever.

Gorky

2006-11-06T08:58:00.000+04:00

I never knew about the political life of my favourite author, Maxim Gorky, until today, when i was reading up about Animal Farm. Read this if you are interested. Shocked to see that such a great writer was used as a propaganda weapon by Stalin, and was probably murdered by the same poisoned communist regime. Also a little sad that he allowed such things to happen.

Sharmila Chanu

2006-09-20T12:46:00.000+04:00

Does it take 6 years of hunger strike for a manipuri girl to be noticed by media. Does it have to be foreign media that notices her for the first time. Read the article on BBC. I did a google news search on the same, and from that i have to say none of the national Indian papers have commented on this. Does the media guys think that getting fed through the nose for 6 years in a hospital bed is an enjoyable pastime for this woman and this terrifyingly courageous protest isn't coverage worthy. Or as it started 6 years ago, is it old news?

Update(09_10_06)
Read news about the official panel reviewing the issue, recommending the repeal of the act. Also read this article. It says that Sharmila Chanu is in Delhi now to protest against the act despite warnings from doctors against her travelling.

One more.

2006-09-19T13:26:00.000+04:00

The poor have haunting eyes, especially the children who follow with their eyes the movement of the ice cream cart, and the slow movement of the jaws where a privileged person sits eating at a hotel table behind plate glass windows. The poor have grimy skin and hair reddened with the dust of the roads they walk on. They have emaciated limbs. When they speak, their voices lack modulation. The poor have no truck with government officials, members of the cabinet or even God. They keep their woes to themselves, wisely and with immeasurable dignity.
Madhavikutty(kamal das) from her column. Read the whole article.

There she goes.

2006-09-18T17:20:00.000+04:00

All the religions now prevalent in the world have crossed their expiry date. They cannot exert any beneficial effect on human beings. They prejudice and poison the minds of their followers. Intolerance grows to vast proportions. Rioting can occur, and violence.
Madhavikutty(kamal das) from her column.

I simply love her.

a nice guy protests against the rape law reforms in pak

2006-09-12T16:47:00.000+04:00

Siraju-ul-Haq, a senior member of the six-party MMA religious alliance, told the BBC last month that the government's efforts to change rape laws showed that they were "following a Western agenda to secularise Pakistan".

"The government must focus on more important issues like education, poverty alleviation, price rises and the interference of the military in government affairs", while me and my fellow males in this country can rape all the women of this country and later stone them to death because we will be fucking them with less than 4 male witnesses.

The original news article on bbc.
For more details read this article.

In the mood for love

2006-09-11T10:18:00.000+04:00

He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct. The ending lines from the movie. Will affect you more if you watch it. Simple stuff right, but something he could see not touch, its painful.

A nice sunday evening, i sat down to see the second half of the movie. I had made some tea for the occasion, and it was made to match the movie style, less amount of distractions like sugar and milk, more tea. The director sometimes was using shots through translucent glasses, i made my own by fogging my spectacles with vapors from my tea. And then comes that haunting music where they start moving in a strange slow motion, going through motions repeated in the movie, she climbing up those nice stairs from the local noodle shop, he with his cigarette with that sweet and sad expression on his face. There was love and there was pain.

The first half made me happy with the intimate shots of the characters, you see some of them, you hear some, you feel the rest, and you are in there, not somewhere far away. You feel the warmth that these nice families extend to strange people living with them. You love it. Later you hate it.

2006-08-13T09:12:00.000+04:00

In F1 races some times we get to see a car losing its tyre and the tyre rolling on for a long distance having some fun on its own. So what happens when the same thing happens to a bus, cruising nicely on a beautiful Indian highway. I don't know, because I was sleeping :). By the time I woke up the driver and conductor had succeded in finding the tyre using the tiny torches mounted on made for Indian nokia phones. Quite commendable, but the search lights were not strong enough to find the lost bolts. It helps that buses have 4 tyres in the rear than 2 as in f1 :), and nothing bad happened.
The connection with F1 didn't stop there. I realised it when I woke up after another nap in the next bus. The driver was exceptionally skilled for the great circuit. The road was bumpy, there were deadly chicanes mounted on slopes. The curbs were fitted on sides which overlooked scary depths. It was raining constantly. It was one surprise treat, for the passengers along with the great scenery they were enjoying. The precision with which the bus was cruising was amazing, though the way he overused the tricky looking curbs kept me excited as well as worried :). And the most funny thing is how he was getting irritated with back markers who were not quick enough to give him the race line.
Its a great route, despite the bad condition of roads. Once in a while there were boards announcing coffee estates. There were pretty little tiled houses. I remember seeing a little tree house.

compulsary sterilization

2006-08-04T08:51:00.000+04:00

We have sure heard of compulsary sterilization program in india during emergency, but this report may have some other countries topping the list on this crime. But still it looks like india should come second after germany if you read the details.

petty bullshit :)

2006-06-26T10:38:00.000+04:00

so much light around,
i was searching for darkness
i knew at the bottom, who didnt
but i couldnt find it, the light is dazzling me

my friends told me, they cant see a thing
they saw omens, they heard voices
i smiled and couldnt believe it
my heart wept when i smiled

do i deserve this light of ignorance
i know i wont pay for it
but i feel guilty to enjoy this happiness
my head droop in shame, indulgent in petty bullshit

da new day

2006-06-26T10:33:00.000+04:00

da declaration
(friday : in the bus, me rambling incessantly without any support from roomie)
me: monday is a new day, from monday onwards, i am going to be more orderly, me will reach office every day before 9. Will work properly.
roomie: hmmm.
me: no buddy, its going to be new, brand new.
roomie: hmmm.

da oracle
(sunday : evening in the bus, mama calls)
mama: did you lose your mobile, i rang up a while before and someone else picked up.
me: no, i had it all the time.
mama: may be i dialed the wrong number.

da preparation
(sunday: night, preparations for monday, i set alarm in mobile for 7, and two reminders at 7:05 and 7:30)
me: foolproof.

da new day
(monday: morning 7:30)
me: what happened to my alarms. roomie, did you switch it off, roomie, give me my cell.
roomie: brrr.
me: roomie, where did you hide my purse.
roomie: brrr.
me: roomie, roomie, roomie.
roomie(the tank with 6 pegs inside, not a morning person): brrr.
me: where's your mobile, let me ping mine.
roomie(jumps up): i don't see it.
( roomie runs around the room searching for something).
roomie: good yaar, they got my purse but they didn't steal my cigarettes.
roomie: hey even my matches are safe.
me: i know, even if they took it, i know you have hidden reserves :). hey good thing that you didn't lock the door yesterday.
roomie: shit.
me: new day indeed :).

ps: thanks to robbers for not stealing my pc and my movie dvds(in which case i would have hunted you down and crushed your balls), thanks to the kind neighbor's who lend us money to get to the office.

down by law

2006-05-16T13:17:00.000+04:00

Venue : Collective Chaos
Movie : Down by law (Jim Jarmusch)
The theatre was really funny, a small hall with foldable(but good) chairs kept at different levels. Dark, and a little scary :). The movies are projected by a dvd projecter on a small screen, pretty neat setup. Later my friend told me about the first time he came there, when they without realizing got in through the wrong entrance and were met with a big crowd. Guys and girls who couldnt find seats were lying down on the front part, the gap between the gallery and the screen and enjoying the movie, and they joined them. Exactly matching a dream of mine. That dream was much more cooler, with all the people lying down and watching the movies.
The movie started off with dark scenes (and it was b&w), and i was kinda getting an impression that its going to be a serious movie. Two of the protogonists(Jack and zack) were having bad luck, as in they had nasty friends. Both lands in jail. From here onwards, there were some lighter moments and lots of people were laughing behind me. I was thinking all the time, hey this is a serious movie, what will the director say if they found you laughing at such small things. It all changed when roberto benigni came into the same cell shared by our heroes. Both the guys kept staring at benigni, and benigni was fidgeting uncomfortable under the stare attack, and nowhere else to go. At one point, he dramatically takes out his notebook and with his italian accent says " If looks could kill i would be dead". The whole bunch of us lost our control, and from that point i realized, we are watching a nice comedy and not a serious movie :). Dim wit that i am.
The movie was very funny and nice, particularly after that. They wander around in a swampy area, which looked great in b&w. Also worth remembering was the woman who worked with Jack(incidentaly a pimp) in b&w, pretty and pretty much nude :).

zombies talking

2006-04-26T16:00:00.000+04:00

Deados connected by the dead lines
Or Nerves made of copper wire, or even of nothing,
Talk about zombies, or see them here

Grievous tales pour out in silence,
Tales of loss, loss of words,
I can see his face, drawn and pale, and

I feel the death, for we are connected.

2006-04-19T10:45:00.000+04:00

Let go, planning to say that to myself very often from now.

day dreaming

2006-03-29T17:01:00.000+04:00

Every time i am going for a change, i have this whole bunch of dreams. That's what's so cool about changes. This time, i have this visions of having a better social life, meeting a lot of old friends, and concentrating more on my work :). And the change is new job in new city. Today i was reading Harry potter and suddenly i found one more dream that can be useful, get back to the classroom. I never had a great time in college or schools, but i absolutely enjoy sitting in class rooms. Its so peaceful. So i was thinking i will find like minded friends and pay a teacher to treat us like students :). When the initial enthusiasm wore off, i settled on joining some classes which are already available. Literature class comes to mind, but i am not sure whether they are open for anybody. More practical one is learning a new language, then we are absolutely ignorant students, at the mercy of the teacher.

good stings

2006-03-29T16:57:00.000+04:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4855682.stm

ariyallur

2006-03-22T08:58:00.000+04:00

Will tell how and why I reached tanjore later, and how I had a nice time there. This is about my exit from tanjore, to chennai, where I was to meet bala. The travel plan was all figured out, the last night, and I just had to remember the place name, from which I could get a fast train to chennai, the title of the blog. I got into the right bus, early morning, enjoyed the nice ride watching dilapidated but nice temples, pretty paddy fields, and cute school kids. Some water bodies with water lilies were giving me added kick. After getting down from the bus, I had to cover a distance like 500 m on foot to reach the station. I was deftly navigating that route, which is a single road, to the station, asking directional queries in highly poor tamil, to every nice person on the road. The road is narrow, with shops and few houses at the sides, some of these houses were pretty similar to the shops with a short veranda, and at one moment quite unexpectedly as I was passing one of those houses, a pretty lady, dressed traditionally, darted out partially of the door. Partially in the sense , her feet were still inside, and she was spreading the fumes of incense sticks to the air outside. She saw me and with a little disgusted face got back inside and closed the door. Not the best thing for her to see in the morning :). But seeing her made me quite happy.

The station was a nice place and I just fell in love with it. The long platform, mostly open surrounded by pleasant landscape. I enjoyed waiting there. The train journey was also nice, even though there were no seats available and I was sitting on the floor:). I was scribbling little posts on a paper with sketch pens:) and mentally thanking the people of the reserved compartment for not kicking me out.

ways to eat a water melon

2006-03-13T18:56:00.000+04:00

- make thin slices, and eat them carefully, making sure that the flesh does not touch your face, but just goes inside your mouth, very unromantic.
- make big slices, with wide bottom, bite in, let the flesh touch your cheek, let it caress your upper lips, very sensual.
- take one hemisphere of the water melon as such, and hug it, keep it close to your heart. use a knife which is not very sharp to cut out pieces from it, and slowly eat them, very intimate.
really, to learn such things you should have time with you, like me :)

the shutdown, interviews, memory loss and rain

2006-03-04T16:41:00.000+04:00

the little firm in which i was working closed down, one fine morning. we were given a few hours to leave the office. our personal cds were confiscated and scanned for company data, we were frisked when we left the office. i was not sad about any of this. i was a little sad that, all the work we did was going nowhere, and later another day, i was really angry when i found that i lost some of my personal data that the company was supposed to restore to me, some body deleted all the data that were kept as zip files. my friend used to share tit bits from her life with me, like photos, writings and all over the messenger, and i used to store them. the loss of that collection made me sad.
interviews are fun, mostly. like the one today, in which the interviewer was a really learned fellow. he asked a technical question, which i answered wrong, and using a series of other questions proved to me that i had all the knowledge to answer the first question, but i was not thinking enough:). and there was this guy who tried to ridicule my work, just on the basis of some small questions. i don't have a great memory, which puts me in some trouble when these guys go for the specifics. but i know how good some of these work were, and felt a little irritated, that he was treating them as silly. but i kept my cool.
less memory has its good sides also, like yesterday. after a week a hot climate, it suddenly started raining. i started walking home with an umbrella, and it was a refreshing experience. all the rain and lightning. it was as if i was walking in the rain for first time.

dreams holy

2006-02-25T19:10:00.000+04:00

neo is dressed like an arabi. we decided to walk the way from airport to neo's house. its arranged like velodrome, with green shrubs in the sides, sand after that and patches of water. we walked and walked until we reached a big entrance, like a fort entrance, with a closed door. neo climbed up along the side and went to the other side through a litle window. the other side was a space between two similar walls which formed the sides of the closed door. i followed neos lead, and reached the inner space. neo scaled the other wall also and i heard the tribal cry out of seeing his land. i fainted inside the small space due to lack of oxygen. neo the tribal chief of his land, with the help of his shingidis(sidekicks) pulls me out using an assortment of ropes. my senses comes back to me.
we were given a warm welcome at neo's house. i took my toothbrush and went for brushing near the pretty pond i saw on the way. the panchayat officer came out of nowhere and dragged me to his office. he asked for my entry permits. he charged me of breaking the lands rules. he asked for bribes. a group of people barged in demanding election id cards. i was roughed up by the group, i saw my papers flying out of my hand into the thick group and then to nowhere. i woke up in despair.

spending and us

2006-01-12T16:36:00.000+04:00

I read about the effect of spending on america's economy in some reports few months ago. Has been fascinated by that ever since. The point conveyed is that, americans spend a good part of what they earn and that helps the economy to thrive well. The money keeps moving, and does not end up as savings of stingy people :). How good are we in spending. I don't know that, but they say we are a little stingy. I am more interested in the way we spend. Those decisions can be taken in three ways. One, we go for the best things we can afford. That's a good one and the most natural one, but here we should be ready to invest some thoughts to find out the real best buys. We should not be just guided by the ad money pumped in or the brand names. Two, our hearts guide us. A good example is we may buy from a shop which has served us for long, even though we know that we will get better things from a new shop. This ones got a nice charm, but could be frustrating sometimes. Good for the people who are not picky, and ardently followed by people who cant break bonds of loyalty, and who are kind hearted. Kind heart comes in situation like, we buy stuff from the shop which is losing to the competition due to poor service. The third one is interesting. Politically correct shopping. If i am a commie, i chose a shop run by co-operative rather than a monopolistic shop chain. If i am desi vadi, i go for the locally made tv, instead of a sony. Somebody boycotts some products saying that the manufacturers are not treating their employees well. The third one is fun actually :). I am mostly into second category, and am moving to the first. But i make a bad first type, since i am not good at judging products. Ideally, everyone should filter the options using his third group laws, use a little heart and be a top of the class first group follower. Also spend a lot.

buns missed

2006-01-09T15:04:00.000+04:00

Saw the prequel of "Wayward Cloud", titled "what time is it there". Liked it and will blog about it. In both the movies the hero shows his buns(while heroine is pretty decently dressed). And funny thing, today morning in hyderabad times i see that Aamir khan rejected the role offered by Tsai ming-liang in his movie after wayward cloud. So girls, you missed a possible chance to watch Aamir's buns :)
I remember the last time i told a girl about missed buns, and got a very hard stare in return :).

dowry woes

2006-01-09T10:41:00.000+04:00

My friend is getting married. I have been shopping with him for lot of stuff for the past few weeks, since he is bad with the local language(hindi), and there is a lot of shopping to be done for the new house. At one point when we were shopping for the house, i learned that money for all these things is going to come from the brides house. I think of that as weird, and insulting. But its so ingrained in his society, that if he refuses the offer, the brides family will take that as an insult. Hes also not very happy with this, not because hes finding it insulting or weird, but as he has to be a little conservative with his purchases when someone else is going to get the bill. I hope that some of these guys take strong positions and break these funny customs.

female infanticide/foeticide

2006-01-09T10:38:00.000+04:00

The bad news, and also some rays of hope. The study done by Lancet journal, is being challenged by some groups now, including IMA. They say that the report does not take into consideration, the judgment passed by SC, banning sex selective abortions. IMA(which can and is trying to make a difference by asking the doctors to stop being aids in foeticide) may say stuff like that out of the air, while Lancet, a reputed medical journal, did their homework, by analyzing the fertility figures of 6 million people, to make this report. The researchers say that the girl deficit does not vary according to religion, which is an interesting find, as i had this belief that, muslims who see children as gifts of god, can be counted out. Also it seems that the practice is more rampant among the more prosperous people(study says educated). Like this report from ndtv talks about poor female sex ratio in mandya and maddur which are very prosperous areas in Karnataka. It pains me specially, since i am emotionally attached to mandya, just from the impression that it gives when i pass that town every time i go home by bus. Nice old world buildings, girl students roaming around in cycles, more clean than other towns in the route etc... I will turn my face away the next time.

I remember seeing the movie, Mathrubhoomi- A nation without women, about the future of places where women are being selectively killed, and the incidents depicted in there like one in which, the only woman in the area is chained in the cattle shed, so that she wont escape doesn't look like the future any more. Check the news. They talk about a girl being sold as a bride and kept in chains when she tried to escape.

The rays of hope is linked to news about some religious leaders campaigning to spread awareness against female foeticide. I think it may work good in rural areas, and for the urban we have the soap opera, atmajaa. Nice efforts i should say.

La Seperation

2006-01-04T17:55:00.000+04:00

This is one movie, at the end of which i lead the applause. I knew the crowd is not going to applaud, and i thought the movie deserved one. With right timing i started clapping and voila the crowd joined in a short but loud round of clapping.

The movie starts with Pierre the guy telling us about his decision to film his few month old kids activities, like a diary and we see the kid through the guys camera eyes. I liked Pierre, middle aged but handsome, riding a motor bike in paris, cool looks, and his real good acting in the role. I couldn't imagine the actor out of the role. We move forward to see that Pierre is having problems with Anne. He know that from the fact that she has stopped quarrelling with him any more, and is rejecting his emotional advances. Later in a scene we see that Pierre has some little irritable habits like expecting silly things from Anne, and shouting at her if shes no sport for that. We see that when he asks her to manage a kite when they go for a vacation. We see that the little issues has grown into big ones when Anne announces that shes in love with some one else.

Pierre is devastated. The movie mostly follows Pierre and Anne comes in only when Pierre talks to her. The cold hearted way in which Anne announces that shes in love with someone was kinda shocking. She says that the other guy listens to her more, but we don't see why Pierre is not listening to her. Then there are these tussles with words and little actions like a Pierre pushing off Anne when Anne sends their little kid off to her mothers place and uninformed Pierre runs around mad looking for him. The tussles with words, were so craftily shown, that we see the tension mounting, with each one insinuating the other, but we are not able to find fault in anyone's side. But as i said, the movie was with Pierre, I never felt anything for Anne. Since they are not married legally Anne can keep the baby totally to herself, and this news devastates Pierre. We see this scene where Pierre walks to Annes mothers house and watches his kid through their mail door. Its touching. And I wondered whether paris is a pretty village or a big city. At the end we see Pierre deciding to leave the house, and let Anne and the kid stay there. The only condition is that Annes lover should not come to the house and take Pierres position for the kid. And interestingly Anne says that her affair is over. I don't know what she was expecting, but Pierre walks away, and we see him walking down the road as a less sane fellow, confused about the directions.

Pierre towards the end shows quite too much sanity, as he worries less about his lost love, but more about his dreams to be a nice father to his lovely kid. Like why should he cry for the woman who rejected his love.

2006-01-03T12:56:00.000+04:00

Article on what american invasion is doing to womens rights in Iraq. Dirty war shows a dirty face every day after the war.

Lone monkeys first day of the year

2006-01-01T14:51:00.000+04:00

        Driving range. Bored and irritated me waiting for my chance to try the H. A girl taking nasty long time to understand the H. And just before my chance comes, the gas cylinder runs out. And it seems there is no alternate petrol reserve also. I watch the instructor and some support person, trying to suck out petrol out of the cars rubber tubes using their mouths. They try and try until the battery runs out. The inner me trying to tell the outer me, that things are still not bad, as i could watch the nice looking tiled buildings around. As the last resort we all started pushing the vehicle to a good speed and putting it on gear to start it. We all felt the spirit of the kekexili patrol men as we raced the very heavy maruthi 800 to an explosive speed :) just to hear the thud response. Atlast someone finds out that even when the petrol tank is full, no fuel is coming out of the tank outlet.
        I started thinking how good the year is going to be if it started like this. Walking away i see this huge collection of plants on sale. For better luck i bought a nice little plant with big white flower.
        Me wandering around like a lone monkey, looking for a polythene cover to hold the plant properly. I found a chinese restaurant instead. The waiter was a tall fellow, with a tight stomach, and very prominent ass, and he had a very sharp nose, the image fitting waiters picturized in old mallu literary magazines. I took the clue, and searched for the total image. The restaurant was a display of my future. Me with a chubby girlfriend on one table. Me with wife and two kids in two other tables(options are pretty wife and two very sweet looking girls with pony tails and ugly wife with a nasty boy and a sweet girl). Me and my wife with my son and his wife at another table(that was a nice picture). Very old me and my very old wife with a sweet grandson in another table(not a very happy picture). I felt my happiness reserves going down in moments, offcourse, when your whole life is flashing in front of you. I wished i had a gadget with which i can take some happiness from a friend. And surprisingly found the exact gadget in my pocket. 5 minutes and happiness back to full. Fried noodles and wanton chicken came in very big bowls. The noodles scalded my hungry tongue. In between i saw the bunch of hot girls(notice the one with big breasts wearing the red top) moving into the picture, but since all the tables were occupied, the bloody waiter ruthlessly expelled them. I couldnt handle it anymore, i stopped eating, packed the leftovers, got an extra cover to pack my flower pot, paid the bill and ran out like the lone monkey.

brave examples

2005-12-31T09:46:00.000+04:00

You must have read about this incident, the bodo girl students assaulted by a bunch of nasty haryana police men in a train, leading to a clash between the bodo students association and them. The incident was tragic, as three young guys lost their lives, but i could see it only in heroic lights. Guys gave their lives to protect their girls' honor. One of the killed guy was a friend to the group of girls. Right time to ask yourself, whether you will give your life to protect the honor of a woman. Apart from that think of the magnitude of response. The girls getting attacked, the students association and local people also reacting in such a short time period to stop the train and attack the nasty policemen. One of the reasons helping such strong reaction against the police men would be the human rights violations perpetrated by the security forces in the state, especially the bodo parts for long period of time.
I felt that the incident should have got more media coverage since the attackers were armed police men and according to whatever news i could get, they are still not arrested.The bodoland activists are not that interested in staying in india, they want their independence. But the question is do we want them. I sure do, and i think we do, though we tease them by calling them chinkis. And we can only prove it by showing interest in their issues
When i was doing my graduation, we had these guys from nagaland, manipur and arunachal pradesh in the hostel. I(and most of the guys) used to like those guys, and also had my closest friend lestor, sharing a room with the cool nagaland guy, bishal. So it was like my second room. Occassionally, i used to get negative vibes from these guys, since they like keeping to their group, but i never could think of hating them, since they were basically sweet. The guy called Agoom had this catapult and could hit a moving bird, also he would cook the bird and eat it :). I didn't get a chance to taste it but lestor told me it was good. Also i still keep the dream of going to nagaland or assam once, it must be something good, great mountains, climate and the pretty girls offcourse.

dead dreams and the comatose ones

2005-12-29T08:42:00.000+04:00

That was my thought yesterday. Even composed a hideous poem on that. It would have been a sad thought, but i no longer feel that way about such things. I thought of the simple dreams that gives me joy all the time, and i see them dying in my mind, systematically, instead of getting full filled. I know there are a huge number of them, but the worst part is that the dead are easily forgotten. The movie wayward cloud, kinda touched me in the inside, since it brought back the memories of a dead dream and another one which is on the way to death, in a comma. Dead cannnot be revived but the ones in comma like the second one gets alive in such situations. I came out of the theatre so happy because of that, while the other people were kinda disturbed by the climax scenes.

wayward cloud

2005-12-28T17:11:00.000+04:00

Atmosphere
Acute water shortage. No water to bath or clean yourself. Mineral water costlier than watermelons and so water melons form the mood of the city. The scene showing a bunch of water melons floating down the drainage canal.

The Girl
The quintessential and so lovely oriental girl. Always wearing simple or skimpy clothes. Steals bottles of water from every where and stacks them up in her apartment.
Walks with the watermelon inside her dress like a pregnant woman and later gives birth to the water melon. The scene is a treasure.

The Guy
Makes a living by acting in porno movies. Has a mid movie crisis when his member stops rising to the occasions. Helps the girl in getting her key back, which was lost and found inside a newly tarred road. Falls in love with the girl. Shows us his talents in fishing out the lost mineral water top from a coactorsÃ’ body.

Interactions between the guy and girl.
The girl sitting in a chair, the guy lying down on the floor, a puff of smoke from the boys mouth caresses the girls feet.
The camera showing the leg level of the kitchen. The girl standing on a inverted bucket trying to get the live crabs which are spilled on the floor back to the boiling water. Hilarious. And the guy helps her in the mission.
Keeps staring at each other. Silent interactions.Girl giggling. Uninhibited happiness in each others company.

Tense moments
When the theatre is filled with hundreds of men, and we are seeing the shooting of a hardcore porn movie on the big screen, obviously there is a lot of tension in the air. Hundreds of erections.

Water on the erections
When they continues the shooting with the unconscious woman actor(may be because of thirst) in different poses, with the guy showing his stamina, and with the girl as the witness. The scene leads to the climax which is unexplainable and I am not spoiling it.

Maddest climax and an original movie :)

Kekexili – The moutain patrol

2005-12-27T17:08:00.000+04:00

The movie is about a group of volunteers protecting the endangered tibetan antelopes on the western high deserts of china. The volunteers are not paid, are ill-equiped and are losing to the poachers when the movie starts. We witness the killing of a lone volunteer by the group of poachers. This news brings a reporter from beijing to the place and the rest of the story is told from his perspective. The group has a strong leader, Retai, who commands the respect of the rest of the group. The other members of the group are mostly village guys who have their simple life someone to love them back in the village. The force that’s binding is the love for the tibetan antelopes and the hatred for the poachers. The most moving moment was the scene where they see the carcasses of the antelopes which were killed by the poachers. We feel the emotions in their mind, as they react to it. Its as if a part of their body is dead and that too because they failed in their duty. Another moving scene shows the exhilaration of the group when they manage to push their truck out of the mud in the river, a task which looked impossible.
They tracks down the group of local people who helped the poachers, and carries on to find the poachers. We slowly witness the grant and peaceful high desert turning into a dangerous third group trying to defeat the volunteers, one part is stranded with a broken jeep with no provisions in the snow, another guy takes a wounded volunteer to the hospital and while coming back with supplies, is sucked in by quicksand. The great Ritai marches on with the reporter fellow and is killed by the poachers.
The movie is based on true incidents and they say that one year after the defeat of the volunteer group the government started steps to protect the antelopes. Also some of the remaining volunteers were charged for selling the confiscated skins which they were doing as a last resort when out of money for patrolling.

nice encounters

2005-12-26T10:47:00.000+04:00

she tugged at the side of my tshirt. I got a little irritated and told her not to with my eyes. then she sweetly pinched my cheeks, more than once, and pulled my hair. partly out of resignation and partly out of affection I gave her what she asked for. she touched my head and blessed me, I felt good, as the good bhava in the blessing seeping in me.
have to say the bunch of hijras that I met in the train, both ways on my vacation trip were sweet, though the pinching was not that sweet as she bruised my face a little in the process.

the driving instructor

2005-11-24T09:40:00.000+04:00

I was having my driving lessons in the morning, and today I was alone with the instructor, who by the way is a very nice fellow. He doesn’t believe in just getting the fellow pass the driving test, but puts his patience and energy in making him a responsible and ethical driver. He tells the drivers to drive slowly when there is water on the road to avoid splashing, to not horn at old people and instead wait and all sort of good road behaviour. And suddenly he started talking about how difficult its to run a driving school. It was like he didn’t have anybody else to let out his feelings about this. And luckily I managed to say some supporting words, instead of messing it up. I supported him, talking about issues that he is facing. Just few lines. But generally I felt proud about this fellow who is doing the things in a good way, taking on the extra responsibilities and issues that comes along, and all this with perfect modesty. A rare breed.

my fav tv stars

2005-10-30T15:02:00.000+04:00

The guy is chandler, and girl is elaine marie benes :). Chandler is the coolest guy, while elaine, i started seeing her only weeks before, is the coolest girl. The faces she make, her simple dressing, mannerisms, just fell in love. The runners up are joey, phoebe, will, grace, ross and kate from drew carry show.

2005-10-29T13:03:00.000+04:00

Lt. Col. Frank Slade: Ooh, but I still smell her.
[inhales deeply through nose]
Lt. Col. Frank Slade: Women! What can you say? Who made 'em? God must have been a fuckin' genius. The hair... They say the hair is everything, you know. Have you ever buried your nose in a mountain of curls... just wanted to go to sleep forever? Or lips... and when they touched, yours were like... that first swallow of wine... after you just crossed the desert. Tits. Hoo-ah! Big ones, little ones, nipples staring right out at ya, like secret searchlights. Mmm. Legs. I don't care if they're Greek columns... or secondhand Steinways. What's between 'em... passport to heaven. I need a drink. Yes, Mr Sims, there's only two syllables in this whole wide world worth hearing: pussy. Hah! Are you listenin' to me, son? I'm givin' ya pearls here.

Quote from Scent of a woman.

The dreamers

2005-10-18T12:57:00.000+04:00

I will just count the things i liked about the movie.
-> Like all french movies, its beautiful.
-> The characters, especially the twin, brother sister pair, has done so well. I just loved Isabelle.
-> The characters trying to enact the scenes in the movies they have seen.
-> The naked intertwine of Isabelle and Theo.
-> Isabelles very pretty pussy lips.
-> Isabelle as venus.
-> Everything else.

collage

2005-10-07T09:02:00.000+04:00

I am in very good mood these days, despite my work going pretty sour. But the reasons are simple, I am trying to do my best, not wasting much time, at my work. So no prick of conscience there. Then I read sidhartha. A good book, calms one down, makes one think above the mundane life. I have a good friend to talk with. I am doing light jogging every morning, and running down the way to my office, with a smile on my face, and lots of energy in my legs as if I am a 5 year old. I am doing bowling practice inside the house, and doing a good job at protecting my balls from my roomies leg cutters, after getting injured once. The sparrow who usually visits my kitchen today came into the hall to say hi. I am sleeping like a pig, and seeing good dreams. I had the bengali buffet lunch, which I missed in the nearby restaurant in my dreams. I went to trivandrum and met my friends in my dreams. I am treating the projects I am working on as my children, and laughing away when I see them behaving naughty, admonishing them(this is a morning speciality, in the evenings I will be mouthing expletives, until they behave properly), announcing them to the group, like a mother would tell others about the naughtyness of her children. That’s all I remember, but I am sure there are more.

clock work

2005-09-27T14:30:00.000+04:00

I forgot the name of the movie, but it was a harsh portrayal of the very orthodox and backward muslim society in kerala. It was very painful, the story of the teenaged girl, who is free spirited and good at studies, being married off to a guy who is already married. The girl fights her husband off from his sexual advances with her tooth and nail, literally, and at last he takes the help of his first wife to drug her to sleep, and fucks her. Shes crushed, he later abandons her, to go to dubai, with the money he got as dowry. She get back with her single mother. She tries to continue her studies, but on the day of her final exam, she collapses, and the doctor declares her pregnant. At the end we see her joining the long list of teenaged mothers in the village all deranged, and shunned by the society. The reason why the society is angry with her is also funny. According to their rules the girl should remain inside her house for some 15 days after her husband abandons her. This is to make sure of the father in case she becomes pregnant. And in this case since she has went to school, the child will be considered father less. These fellows had written a lot of rules.
I remembered this movie when I was seeing another movie recently, in which the heroine’s(there is no hero in the movie) neighbours and good friends, are a big family of well off muslims. And I was like getting irritated with the orthodox images. I couldn’t stand it somehow, like the hero in clock work orange, who was given the special medicine, couldn’t stand anything remote to violence anymore.

the brothel with a wooden balcony

2005-08-13T14:34:00.000+04:00

Men were sitting with their legs stretched on the wooden balcony, and a woman was entertaining them with her talk. We were all waiting for our chance to cuddle with the woman, and by cuddle I mean cuddle. I was sitting on the side railings, with my legs stretched, and comfortable with the whole situation. Beside me sat two little girls, daughters of our host. I tried to talk with one of the girls, but she was not interested. She ran away. I thought of the whole cuddling thing, the soft white bed on the floor, all fluffy, and the fluffy woman. I felt a little naked in my shorts and the short towel that I wore over it. The wind was getting chilly. But my mind was calm. I don’t know whether I got my chance or I just got what I wanted , but I started to leave. I walked down the nicely crafted, wooden stair case and entered the corridor which leads outside. While I was walking along the corridor, I got a glimpse of what is going in the next house connected to the same corridor. A woman was teaching another woman the right demeanor for her honeymoon time. She was acting shy, dressed nicely in a white dress , practicing different expressions. I walked on silently.

--Just a dream I had like the damp dormitory.

the damp dormitary

2005-08-12T09:00:00.000+04:00

The class room was fully packed with students, and the air was damp. I was sitting at the edge of my bench and relatively happy, since everybody was listening to the teacher, and i was alone in the crowded room. Thats when hell broke loose. A group of miscreants barged into the room to break the silence, to disturb the harmony and let the terror out. I ran for my life. I ran through the well lit corridor, i ran down the familiar stair case, down several floors, and found myself in a semi lit dormitarry. The floor was glistening with water, and the smell of phenol, and i saw long rows of wooden cots arranged in one half of the hall. And sitting in the last one was jerry. Jerry is my friend from hostel, my junior. I felt relieved, ran to his cot, hopped on to it, and started chatting about movies. I felt relieved.

reborn

2005-08-04T15:27:00.000+04:00

This has a dejavu feel for me. After weeks and months of boring life, suddenly you are dropped into a nice world for a limited amount of time. And then you see a lot of nice thing, nice unknown people, nice unseen places, and then you are taken to a calm cozy place to sleep and a moment to think whats happening. And you feel, that you were born today morning, though you feel like having the wisdom of atleast a 10 year old, and you remember that you have family and friends whom you care about. But there are just no memories before the start of this adventure. You try to retain the dementia and savour it as long as possible. And to your surprise it lingers.

from a little time before

2005-07-26T19:13:00.000+04:00

In here i work pretty much like a machine, far from home, far from my friends, with very few distractions. So i will be too numb, and when i go home wont be prepared for the realities which are always waiting for me. Most of them are not surprising, but some things come up some times which are not expected, and this one tells me how shallow i think. My mama is having a bad time, professionally, and the reason would be what she has achieved by working all these years. Shes nearing her retirement and has been working for so long in the same designation, even though i am sure she is one of the best employees in her office. Its a government office and promotions are strictly on the basis of your seniority, and not your worth.
That much was the bad part about her career. I know the good parts. She always have good friends there and i am pretty worried about how much she would miss them after retirement. She is a very friendly and helpful person and she works in the town administration office, and since its a small town, there will always be people around there who had been helped by her, and who respects her for those helps. This is a town which respects goodness in people, not one of those metros where goodness is sneered upon.

the good sunday

2005-07-25T13:25:00.000+04:00

The difference between a bad sunday and a good one is three watchable movies, a better astrological prediction and a good cooking experiment. I found that yesterday. I would have said good movies if i could remember the second one that i saw yesterday. The first one was bulletproof, and the third, everybody says i am fine. The latter had nice moments, like comparing the sound of silence with the sound when your ear is filled with water, and the climax, while the dialogues some time had this issue of english dialogue in indian movies. I kinda remembered our own little movie which had totally nasty dialogues. Bullet proof was enjoyable to me, the comedy, will smith and the action.

I am easily intoxicated some time when i finish a difficult job, even when i know that i overstretched the schedule. Add to it my happy american boss. The feeling has left me only two days later. And it was replaced by another one, ya, i finally made a good chicken curry, after like 5 tries. Only the ouput was spoiled by high salt content. But i was expert enough to see that this gravy is the one i was trying all the while. Afterwards i drank a lot of water as they say.

Add to all these i read a good book. Demian by herman hesse, picked at 10 bucks from the second hand market. It was surely a gem. The idea i think explains existentialism, and is not far from the vedanta ideas.

2005-06-23T18:28:00.000+04:00

The last few days are quite comfortable ones, with work going good and all. But my mind is spitting out expletives of the worst kind to even the smallest things that irritate me. The reason is the book that i am reading. The God Of Small Things. Every one of the nights, that i slept with the book, i was cursing the inconsiderate characters in the book, at the same time loving the most endearing charactors of Ammu, Rahel, Estha, Velutha and Sophie mol. I know the society and i can feel it. The little magical world of the children, the mismatched character of ammu who refused to be bound by the silly hypocritical society, paying for that with her life. Her stifled dreams of getting back with her children, the heartache about not being able to support them. I am thinking of that as the greatest pain a single mother can have. Inconsiderateness is dirty. Some times its the religion and its convoluted explanations which gives these villains the strenght to hurt their own people, while other cases its just plain dirty mind. Fuck them.

2005-06-13T09:56:00.000+04:00

I was thinking of the nice moments i spend with my little cousin sister, around a year ago . she was just 8 months old or something then. so there is no much communication. i have to say that those were the most soothing moments in my life. just watching her lying down or lying down next to her on the floor. i was thinking of the reasons for being so happy beyond the obvious one that how cute she looked. Few weeks before, i went to meet her again. And she has grown up. First few hours, she didnt come to me. But then it was ok. She has grown up into a little girl already. Like she wouldnt scream when some body blocked her way. She would keep on repeating, move away with increasing levels of insistence without losing her dignity. It was a wonder ful scene. I could spend only one day as before but it was good time, to remember.

2005-06-09T10:18:00.000+04:00

Its a pretty difficult life without dreams. Thats one problem right now.
Another interesting stuff is fantasy. Just skip into the other world when you are pretty much bored of the real one. And my fantasies during my teens were more related to utopian worlds. Fantasy without much fun. But these days i am going back to a child's mentality. Reading harry porter and getting into fantasy stuff like that. Just a try, didnt touch me much, though i would say i dreamt of a flying horse. Books are good things. The books i like has a world in it which welcomes me to join it as a spectator. I enjoy the drama, the gentle emotions and the beautiful surroundings in those places. But thats not it, isnt it. Books must be there which talk more than about the society and human relations. Either i havent tried them yet, or i have avoided the parts which goes deeper than the normal stuff.
I have this friend, who has been smitten with thougths of life. He keeps thinking, reading philosophy, arguing with himself. He hasnt got a fellow friend who thinks in the same level. So sometimes he turns to me, and he will use me just as a listener. I dont have much sync with his thoughts either, or as i said before, just ignores most of them. The last time i went home, and met him, we talked, and i saw that he is coming back to us from the idea that he was talking to me at levels that i can understand. He seems to moderate himself, or restrict his thoughts. Anyway i dont know whether thats a good thing or bad. I wont be going deep into any of the stuff as long as i have some thing like a job to engage me.

2005-05-07T08:53:00.000+04:00

I was reading my friends blog about the rape of the school girl in mumbai and i remembered the conversations i had with my office guys about the same thing. My friends anger towards the male friends who ran away at the sight of a police man, leaving the girl alone with a him is quite understandable. Calling that bunch of friends nincompoops is quite correct, but lets not generalize that to calling men nincompoops. Those bunch of kids(not men) are city bred and the worst of their kind obviously.
My colleague was saying that day, in a little accusing tone about the girl, that there is mistake on her side also. At first i sprang to the defence of the girl, but then i understood the tone of my friend was more that of a parent than of a guy saying that girls should stay neat and descent. The tone of a parent who finds that their kid has been careless and caused herself harm in the way. I remember the words of another parent, a poet of my place, when asked what will she tell her daughter, if she came back home raped by some one, and her words were, i would hand her a bottle of dettol and a towel, and would ask her to take a shower and forget about it. The trauma of rape is very heavy in itself and the victims should not be subjected to more trauma from the worries of their parents and dirty eyes of the society. But she should be strong enough to drag herself through the court procedures so as to reduce others chance of being in her state. That should come natural to a human being. Its time to grow up for our society. Lets save all our dirtyness for the rapist than for the victim.

company for lunch

2005-04-21T20:00:00.000+04:00

I was quietly having my lunch in my regular vegetarian hotel on a very hot day.
I dont know what caught my attention first, the little girl child negotiating her way in the thick lunch crowd or the cleaning guys trying to block her way. I knew where she was heading to, which was obvious from the 1.5 litre empty sprite bottle that she was holding. A little descriptionof the little girl might be helpful here. She was slightly taller than twice the height of that bottle. I know her, she is a squatter in the nearby building, a cute, semi demolished building on the road side, which i have already noted down for the squatting options that it provide. She is cute, has her hair done in to two pony tails, held by little rubber bands and wears a constant expression on her face of confusion. Denying water to such a little girl in such a hot summer day would be like the biggest crime that the cleaning fellow(who is also a child, some 15 years old) can do. I was not going to just watch that this time. But thankfully , the cleaning lad(s) were not that heart less, and the little girl was tenacious about getting her bottle filled. They helped her fill the bottle. And none of the people in the crowd had any aversion in having a street child near their food and water. Thinking of that i will love this place more, than any other hotel where people sit in their chairs, and look down at a hint of dirt spoiling their appetite or mood. I gave her silent company back to her home, since i was not sure whether she can carry that bottle on her own. But she seemed cool about it, doing it slowly, and without much effort.

withdrawal symptoms

2005-04-12T18:18:00.000+04:00

I think this is it. My body is reacting terribly. I am squirming in my seat. Taking deep chesty breath. Moving around on my seat itself. Jumping off the chair some times, pacing up and down the cubicle. Am feeling terrible.
Reason: For the last two weeks i have been doing mechanical work, with a huge amount of repetitive procedures. And its over now. Now again, the work on my table is repetitive, but i need to get some green flags, before i can peacefully do it. Mental barriers. And this is how i respond.

Dinner time

2005-04-03T18:59:00.000+04:00

Rice cooked by my roomie, nice mango pickle (cook: my mother), nice fish pickle (cook: my roomies mother), bad dhal (cook: me), curd (courtesy amul), omlette (cook: roomie). That was one nice dinner i had in a while and the center of attraction was surely the fish pickle. I think its dried fish(neymeen) fried in little oil, with lots of pepper and a curry leave(kariveppila). WOW.

sunday dreams

2005-04-03T18:50:00.000+04:00

Had very nice dreams today. They involved my friends, my family and an unexpected member, one of my engineering teachers. I could explain why my friends and family where there. I was planning to go home next week, but i postponed that. That could have triggered my longing to meet my family and friends, i have had such dreams before. But the last part where my teacher came in was interesting. She was not my favourite teacher or anything. And she had two little kids with her. One was a very cute tiny tot. She was all haggard and i was asking her how and when she feeds the kid, since the kid looked too small. She told me she feeds the kid twice and i wanted to tell her to feed the kid thrice a day.
The second dream was cinematic, with a very fancy good evil chase, with multiple members in the bad team and the good girl running. Both the good and the evil were using different spells and using the magical space around them to hide occassionally. One of the sequences has the good girl jumping flat on a image of herself and becoming thin, slipping inside the dark space and getting away, it was really good.

requiem for a dream

2005-03-26T14:26:00.000+04:00

The first time i tried to see the movie, i knew it has some thing in it, but i couldnt continue beyond the first 30 mins, i left it there. The reason could be losing patience, may be i am getting addicted to simple and go easy movies. Then bala reccommended that movie to me. And i saw the rest in two shifts. And i am writing this one just after finishing the last shift. And my hands are still trembling. My blood is still recovering from the chill that the movie caused in me. If i hear its back ground music again, i may get that chill again.
The movie started off with a little feud between the mother, Sara and the son, Harry, over her excessive indulgence in tv game shows, the son trying to take the tv away from her. Harry leaves after all that. Then we see the harry going to meet his friend and girl friend, marion, doping together, which is shown with quite impressive sequence of shots, which repeats throughout the movie. Marion'(jennifer connelly) screen presence in the movie is too good, the frames that she adorns, a little eye lasher doing her eyes, lipstick touching her lips, everything about her in the movie is enticing. And the shots that involve these doping people, are a step above the other ones that take off from the normal level of cinematic beauty to a level of artistic perfection. Harry and marion, along with harries friend are also making some money out of retailing dope.
Sara in the mean while, is excastic about an offer to be on tv and about the attention that she gets in her neighbourhood after that. When harry comes back after a while, he see a new Sara in place of his mother, some body who is happy and addicted to the pills given by a quack, to reduce her weight. The scene also have sara crying to harry about the meaningless lonely life that she was leading and what meaning she has got from the offer to be on tv.
We see after wards the chain of incidents in the path of these people from a state of deperateness to lowest levels of human existence. This chain is so powerfully presented, that it has the power to melt any body to the core. I dont know about drug addicts, but i think this movie would be like the treatment given to the hero of clock work orange, which made him shun violence, if given to an addict(this point has been blankly contradicted by fellows who have doped in imdbs movie discussion board, but lots of guys like me who havent doped swore never to dope after seeing the movie) .
I also think about the young fellows in the movie, they care less. They dont care. I have seen that in some actions of a lot of my friends. But when it come to human relations, mostly they care. Carelessness in the young ones, i think is natural, and so we may as well identify with them. They care about themselves. Its good isnt it. I admire fellows who care about their priorities, who have their priorities set. Dope makes them happy, i dont know what dope gives you(but i would say, i got close to understanding it seeing some of the scenes), but it gives them some thing, and that seems to be their priority. Harry doesnt mind sticking the needle into his hand so roughly, and even ignores when it all wounded with the punctures, that it has to be amputated, as long as he get his dope. And marion crawls back happyly into foetal position after being humiliatingly used in an orgy, arranged by a dope supplier, since she got her weeks supply of dope I cant identify with them easily, but i am sure that a lot of youngsters can. So they can understand these people. May be we all should understand them. For what, i dont know. But i feel that it will be good for you and them.

late night biryani

2005-03-22T12:19:00.000+04:00

yesterday night, i was a little late at leaving the office, and it was 11:30, a time when i knew no hotels around will be open. i was resigned to the fate of making omlettes at home, when my colleague who was also working late, offered to roam around the city in search for an open eatary. it was a good ride on his bike, zooming along the wide, and free city roads. and we found an open restaurant, where they had biryani. i am not quite a fan of hyderabadi biryani, but the chicken in these huge biraynies were huge and superbly done. i was tucking it in with wild abandon, and that is when i saw the smile on my colleagues face. he was a little amused i think. at that moment it struck me that i am in the company of a mature person. i truly think that i should have company of more mature and more evolved people. you should never be entirely in the company of immature people, unless you are helping them get rid of their immaturity , there by getting more mature.

2005-03-17T14:48:00.000+04:00

how easily we get dependent. we dont even notice that. just now i was feeling stressed and felt like having a headache. and what do i do. go to the cafeteria and make a tea. does it help. most often not. but we just do the easiest thing that can be done. we dont look for the obvious cure also. take a little break. i remember the moov ads that come on tv. the lady of the house has a bad back pain and is unable to service the family members. so what does the loving grandma do. give her moov, a fucking pain killer, so that she can forget about the pain and go back to work.i used to think how thought less that ad was. and i am doing the same to myself. ha.

lunch break

2005-03-17T12:08:00.000+04:00

it used to be the time i talked the most in my previous company, it used to be a good time. here i dont feel like that. i dont have friends here, who listen to me. and i hate some of the guys here. it doesnt take much for me to hate some body. and its momentary. and occassionally i try to start talking, only to know later that nobody is listening. its ok. that is the part where i start enjoying my self. just me talking to me. as it has been most of the times. any way there is another good side of not having the people around, listening to me, since i have this tendency to entertain them by demeaning myself in that case. i feel that i have written the same lines long before, may be i deleted it later. or is it a dé·jà vu.

nice encounters-1

2005-02-28T14:14:00.000+04:00

It was the last lap of a beautiful, dream like journey from bangalore to my place, futher south, in kerala. I was thoroughly enjoying the cold climate which kept my company, and relishing the fact that i have reached my state. At the bus stop called iritty, a girl hopped in to our bus. She sat in the seat in front of me. She was wearing a white dress, and was a lot polished than the other characters in the bus. I couldnt see her face, but i was kinda disturbed by her presence. And in some time, it started raining. The next half hour, i could feel the sexual tension in the air, it was so heavy. The so called thing is funny. Its formed in the air between the two people, and can be sensed only from the strange and tiny words, spoken by their bodies. What if i was imagining it. It would be very sad then, really sad.

i lost some thing

2005-02-28T13:27:00.000+04:00

Its not exactly sleep. But the sleepy feeling when you are bored. I almost lost it. I remember in college, i used to feel sleepy. The two years of predegree, had some heavy tests for us, like the 5 hour daily chemistry tuitions. I was a little interested in chemistry those days, otherwise, i would have joined my friends in dozing off in the class room. The greatest test for me was the physics classes in engineering collge days, by which time i have lost interest in science. It was hard battle, where i failed a lot of times. I also had this sleepiness when i was working in trivandrum. But come hyderabad, and i have lost it. My colleague is sleeping in his chair sitting in the next cubicle, most of the guys are yawning and i feel fully up. Last day, our CTO was giving a lecture on future plans and i see every body, yawning away, i was rock steady, all ears. It a feel good loss, though, i also lost 3 kgs and quarter of my sleeping capacity as part of the package.

Beach retreat

2005-02-09T16:22:00.000+04:00

Its around 6 years back, i was doing my predegree, and i had this friend who lived close to my house.
We were very close, even though, he was the exact opposite of me in most of the senses. He was a smart
guy, fair, handsome, well built and casual. I have lost touch with him since then. He used to rush to
my house on his grand yezdi road king, whenever he felt bored, and we would elope to the beach which is
one km away from my house or another beach which is 5 km from our place. This one day we were having
a good time at the beach, talking about some stuff or other, there was no lack of subjects those days, and
he was a good talker. I miss such friends these days. It was then a good rain hit us, and we ran into
the pine grove near the beach. The fishermen around those areas keep unused boats with the side down
on the ground, and we took shelter in one of those. If it was not raining we would those fisher men folks
would fire us if we even touch their boats, but i think the rain was keeping those guys off the beach for
the while. I think we sat inside the boat for more than half hour, and it was so cozy, so wonder ful time,
and i think the most intimate moments one can have with a friend, watchin the rain drops dripping from the side
of the boat and the disturbed water surface in the small water logs in the pine grove. The whole thought is pleasant to say the least.

food blog

2004-12-31T13:05:00.000+04:00

You might have eaten in the best restaurants, may be the ones, with the finest ambience, even the ones with the finest menus, but i value the food that i have at small hotels, cozy ones, with a nice manager, nice people serving food and so on. Its been a while i have been to one of them. Its a small mess near our flat here, a small two room setup on the first floor of an old building, having a narrow stair case, and around 6 tables. The street that leads to the place is dirty and the mess itself cant be called the cleanest place. Buts i like the space there, most of the tables will be free , there is no rush, no noise. There is no menu, you just go in, eat what they have for you and go back. I like the combination of dhal, rice and ghee they give, and the curd, these AP fellows make the best curd. And the vegetables curry, carrots for the day, and i call it uncivilized carrots. Salt level is a tad high(nothing that u cant mask with curd), the colour of carrots is black and red, the onions even show green colour, but they are damn tasty. And also i felt this bond with my own place since there are similarities in the cusine hidden deep inside.

late night bloggin

2004-12-16T22:38:00.000+04:00

Kinda feeling good about that, normally i would see fellow bloggers bloggin away at midnight and would think when i will get such a chance. I have to stay late tonight, typing away redundant html codes, thinking about interesting design constraints(just thoughts though) and cursing myself at being inefficient at that. But its been a while since i wanted to write a free open blog. And atleast i am drunk enough by the silence of the night that i dont care about writing the wrong stuff. I am just going to write.

And thinking of drinking, last few weeks i am being the regular non drinker at the regular drinkers club. What else to do, i dont have a decent non drinking company here. I used to enjoy it when i was in Trivandrum. I had my manager, who is a very great guy, as my company along with two great friends. My manager used to get smooth philospy out when he drinks and he will talk in english. Those were good guys, they would never ask me to join them. And i used to enjoy the ambience and the great cooking of the bars in trivandrum(precisely two, out of which one was too good). But i dont feel like that here. After being with their mature company, these fellows just bore me to death. They used to enjoy alchohol while these fellows , dont seem to do that. I dont know why they are drinking at all.

Ok then what, kinda feeling down about suppressing my own voice. I had to politely refuse when my friend offered to forward me the mms video of a delhi school having sex with her boy friend. And one comment from a woman, a teacher shook me a little, "Voice comes only when two hands meet", couldnt swallow the implicit tone, obviously she is proud of her own chastity. But its a little girl and shes a teacher. I think we should stop making big noise about these things.

Things i miss in hyderabad

2004-12-02T14:09:00.000+04:00

When i had my job in trivandrum, the first 8 months i used to travel 15 kms a day by two buses. I used to have the company of a bus full of little school going children, all cheerful and noisy. They would be with me for half the distance. I would listen to the little boys playing silly games and little girls chatting. Then i used to walk a little every day on the same path, which runs through a residential area. The whole travel thing gives you a lot of space even if the buses are crowded and even when you are travelling the same path every day. Looking back from here they all look interesting, though i might have been a lot bored with them some times. The worst would be the wait for buses. Most of the days i used to wait for around 1 hour in the night at a bus stop which did not have even a bench to sit. I used to think of making concrete benches there. 1 hour is a lot of time to stand alone and you get the craziest thoughts in your head.

Later i moved in with my grandpa at a house closer to my office. Living with grandpa was kinda difficult and the lack of freedom hit me really hard. And then again my escape was the quite and calmful 3 km stretch from my house to the office. Many days i used to walk both ways and i had about 6 combinations of paths to take. One of these paths passed through a residential area housing most of the the state ministers. Huge, old and beautiful buildings with lot of grand trees around. And a i used to touch two schools in the way, so again the company of little children. Then there was the 7th way by getting on a bus and then i have to walk only half a km. Mostly i took that way in the night when i give company to my friends for dinner. That way had a church like thing with people doing mass prayers most of the time. And a girls hostel in a beautiful old fashioned house guarded by two ferocious dogs. Just accross you see a huge unmaintained pond which looked very inviting. A great place to commit suicide. The pentecost prayer hall also used to entice me a lot. I used to call somebody(mostly nihas) when i had a chance to walk this way.

So on a whole i miss mobility, space and those charming paths. Another thing would be people with whom i communicate via telepathy. And the children.

And the little things, like the small tea shops, fish curry meals, occassional film festivals, sea food ...

on a girl who was wronged

2004-11-19T10:45:00.000+04:00

Shari- 18 years old, beatiful young girl, wont grow older.
Victim to sexual torture, was lured by chances to act, by many men all mother fuckers.
Pimp- a woman- way to go women.
Death came after a mysterious post pregnancy internal fungal infection. Weeks in ICU with little or no conciousness.
Young people are not to be punished for their mistakes. They are weak and unprotected. Society has to support them in case they fall down. And here one was punished that too to huge extremes.
Remainings- a broken family and her 4 month old child, a sensational case with politicians and press trying to get mileage out of it.

Sauve-moi(Save me)

2004-11-05T17:21:00.000+04:00

I saw the movie at one international film festival in trivandrum some months back. I was attracted by the young faces in the poster and in fact took half a day leave from company to see it. And it was surely worth it.

The commentry given by imdb:
SAUVE MOI (Save Me) is a simple-but-excellent `slice-of-life' story about French-Algerians living near the Belgian border. Mehdi(Roschdy Zem), who has lived in Roubaix all his life, meets Agatha(Rona Hartner), a seemingly-carefree drifter from Romania who has wandered throughout Europe. He introduces her to his group of friends, including Cécile, his current lover, who befriends Agatha. The Algerians, living in a localized area, find difficulty finding even menial jobs. There is cooperation and moral support among Mehdi and his friends. It seems that this worthy film about an unpublicized ethnic minority in France has been ignored by the art film critics.

I read the commentry just before writing this blog. After reading that only i knew they were talking about French-Algerians. I was thinking that its the story of the simple people in a french city which was not that prosperous. Any way the movie was good. The actors were good.
The movie starts with the view from the moving cab , mehdi being the driver, a nice sequence with the cab moving close to the different groups and they staring at us with a strange looks on their face which lies between interest and disgust. And the view every time swings away from them. Then we see a building from a long view which gives the impression of a railway station or aerodrome. Intro our beautiful heroine, Agatha draped in a long frock dress and may be some funny coat. The buildings that we see around are neat and old. Mehdi picks her up in his cab and drops her off at a hospital where she wanted to go. There was a conversation and we get the idea that she has come here to visit a doctor whom she has worked with as a nurse, hoping for a job or something. And mehdi leaves her there only to pick her up later on the road when the doctor fails to remember even her name. In fact mehdi comes back to pick her up, searching the near by roads, until he finds her.
I liked the opening sequence very well, the understanding between open minds, being too touching. Agatha got accomodation at mehdi's friends attic, in a house with no electricity, and there are funny scenes with them trying to steal electricity from neighbouring old couple, then policemen gently reprimanding them. They had this small community, with one middle aged fellow looking like our raj kumar with tvs 50 like bike as a elder brotherly figure, a few young men and women and an old couple. And they were building a house for one of the fellows. Mehdi is having an affair with cecile who is mehdis brothers ex girl friend and now married to another fellow friend. Ceciles huband is really distressed because his boss is stealing half his salary(and his wife), and this leads to our rajkumars intervention resulting in the death of the boss, but that comes near the end of the movie. Agatha with her sprity nature easily gets into the group and we can see a lot of characters getting attached to her. There is this scene with her singing a local song, and that was good.
Agatha has plans for going to romania, and for that she needs money. Mehdi in the mean time tries out his hand in a new job, which involves helping a fellow, who was some kind of money collector. Soon mehdi gets angry with his way of extracting money from the hapless and ignorant people and quits that job. He was trying to get enough money so that Agatha (and himself) can get out of city. And near the climax we see Agatha getting money from an elderly fellow in the group and leaving for romania without Mehdi.
The youthful spirit of Agatha, is surely going to get any one who watches the movie. It inspires you. The same spirit helps her overcome the bonds of love. At one side we see her independence while on the other side we have this caring community of simple people. Perfect contrast except in the matter of love in their heart.

2004-10-18T09:21:00.000+04:00

Its the ramzan season and yesterday i went to charminar with a muslim friend, just to give him company for breaking fast. The place was crowded and noisy. And i was waiting in front of a good restaurant there while my friend took off to get money from an atm. I was waiting there in middle of chaos, admiring the young energetic and well dressed muslim brothers and watching the women clad in burqa begging for zaqat and i saw this little girl with wild eyes. She was also asking for alms along with her little sister. She was cute and had a charming way of reordering her head scarf once in a while. During all these wealthy muslim men were walking in and out of the restaurant and they were either ignoring these women or giving them some small change like 50 paise. Comon yaar they are supposed to give 2.5 percent of their annual income as zakat. I made a mental calculation. Surely these fellows will be having an annual income above 3 lakh per annum. And taking into account 30 days of ramzan and if they give alms to 25 people a day they can give 10Rs to each of them. Every other word in the scriptures are followed, but not this one.
After some more time the girls duo came to me. I gave both of them little 5 rupee coins. I considered them as friends and wanted to lighten up their faces, at least for an instance. And they ran away with the coins, may be happily. And one minute later they came back. And the smallest of the girl started telling me that her sister is ill and she was asking for more alms. I know this habit very well but was not expecting it from such small children. I know that at heart they are pure. I saw a tinge of shame in the elder ones eyes. I asked her name and she told me its reshma. My first dialogue with a real eponine. But then they continued pestering me and i have to take refuge in the restaurant. At that point i treated them like beggars, instead of talking to them as friends. And i feel bad. I pray for their happiness.

2004-10-08T10:31:00.000+04:00

It happens that i have a friend who is a war monger. He advocates for war and says that war is needed for the advancement of human civilization. And he quotes bloody examples. If there is any body who suffers the same delusions i would suggest Anne Franks diary. It doesnt have any description of war as such but i am sure it will cure those fellows.

new place

2004-09-24T15:17:00.000+04:00

so its a new job and a new city for me. so much different from the small job and the small city i left behind. feeling a lot like an uprooted plant. formal dressing, formal people. there is not much intimacy. and its difficult to be intimate when we use alien languages.

Malena

2004-09-03T11:12:00.000+04:00

One scene of this movie just made my blood cold. I was like shivering
even though the climate was pretty hot. The scene has a bunch of
women beating up this young widow malena (monica bellucci) who is
almost naked, dragging her down a set of step with her breasts to the
floor, kicking her, slapping her, and finally cutting her hair to
shreds. The reason for the outrage is 1) malena is georgious 2)she is
a widow on lookout for married men 3) she slept with the invading
germans (the place is italy).
The movie cannot be termed realistic and the theme is a young boy
falling madly in love with malena. The whole of the town shows their
unshameful admiration to malena who is waiting for the return of her
husband from war front. Every one in town gossips about malena and our
hero is the only fellow who knows that malena is a faithful wife
waiting for her husband. The movie starts with mussolinis call for war
and the whole of town seems to be lot supportive about it. After the
death of her husband malena looses her resolve and has some suitors
who left her with more disgrace and later she is even shown sleeping
around for food. The beautiful malena who lives in a large house
having random suitors to meet her basic needs looks unreal but we dont
have much idea what all war can bring on to a society.
After the liberation of the town from the nazis by americans the first
mentioned scene enacts and after that malena leaves the town. Out
little hero is a mute witness to all these events. All the while
except when she is beaten up malena has a cold face, we never see her
smile, cry, just one single emotion of blankness. Dont know what it
signifies. And after that malenas husband comes back from death and
what meets him in his home town is people who wont talk to him. The
film has kinda a happy ending with a strong note made by our young
hero who gives a clear perspective of the events to malenas' husband
through a letter and with their reunion in the city. I really loved
seeing malena and husband walking hand in hand in the same town(though
her expression is cold as before).
Finally we have malena being welcomed by the town women when she goes
to the market and she reciprocating in the same way. Like once she has
regained her social validity she is forgiven. Looked really sick to
me.

Irresistible

2004-08-31T14:52:00.000+04:00

I was reading this blog on Life at tj's place and there was on article where the fellow fall in love with his barber. I remember a similar scene in Friends where chandler in in love with joey's girl friend and that girl was too good looking. And there is a point where she gives him a hair cut. God a pretty woman touching your hair. That is irresistible.

towards main stream.

2004-08-23T17:35:00.000+04:00

What do one do when he sees something wrong.
The option that i use normally is to think. To think whether i would do that mistake myself. If the answer is yes i wont do anything. First be correct then correct. I would think.
The most generally used option is to correct it.
I used to hate a friend of mine who practices the latter method but lately i am thinking of going for the second option.
Reasons:
1) i am never going to change anything.
2) somebody who doesnt change anything (be it for the good or for the bad) is never considered significant.
3)its better to make some good changes.