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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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.