Glob!

Come October and its Diwali time again. Festivity, fireworks and vibrant color all around, the best part being Diwali shopping. This year, as usual, we (read family.more specifically, women) set apart a good three days to shop till we drop. Pitying the kids, the women decided to leave them at home with an elder. Shopping, according to me ,is a 3 way process:

          1.Locate a boutique/brand outlet/mall of your choice

          2. Go with an idea of what you want to buy

          3. Browse through the shop comparing trend, quality and worth.

This, for any sane human being, will take an hour maximum. Exasperated family men (In India, at least) and most women would give a different answer. For these people, Shopping is ­­­a penance. I have seen shopaholics forgo food to stand in queues to pay their bills and get their goodies. More often, there is a hassle for attire somebody else has chosen. There have been cases of children reported missing;bargaining rows; robbed purses.

There is also the excitement of buying accessories dirt cheap on the road side, trial room “trails”, eating out post shopping and the like.

  One fine Sunday morning (Do not visualize a sunny day with birds chirping in the background. The setting is a jam packed street bang in the heart of Madras).There is not enough breathing space and inside every mall, for every floor, there are at least five men who run behind their kids and ten men who sleep in peace. How the day went is a different story altogether, but when we got back home, it was night. The kids were watching television and after a while we noticed that they were smiling secretly at each other. Further investigation led to the discovery of what was termed “Charcoal Frying” by the kids. The entire script is a figment of a ten year old’s imagination. Read on.

 

                                                   CHARCOAL FRYING

TARGETS:

Appropriate names had been listed.

 

PROCEDURE:

P.S : The procedure is from the child’s perspective and so, ‘we’ refers to the kids and ‘they’,to the shopaholic adults. Also, to maintain authenticity, I have retained the exact words used without any spell checks.

 

We should fry them(after mixing with charcoal) and eat them and before eating, we should give to crow and cow. The animals will taste it so that we can know that it tastes good or bad(This was struck out and replaced with ‘bad only’).Even if animals eat, they will spit out.

Please give us freedom to go out. Gandhiji gave freedom to do things freely. But what did the peacocks(we) do to get this order from the karuvaadus(They).Please free us from jail.

 

 

                   For those who didn’t know, karuvaadu means dead fish. The title is an ode to the way a kid pronounced it when I announced I’m going to put this on my blog.This left the ladies dumbfounded and the rest of us rolling in laughter.

Gayness!!!

Statutory Warning: Do not misinterpret the Title.Pun Unintented.

If every act could become Legal; I’d ask for rights to murder Paedophiles

If there is a  justification for every single deed; I’d become Robin Hood

If it is indeed a democracy;  I’d question dirty politics

If  objectivism existed;I could have  secured John Galt’s autograph by now

If  equality had prevailed; I could have publicly lashed out at Hollywood’s  obsession of adopting African kids

If  incompetence happened to be banned; I would have sued stupid and evil bosses

If  sin had been defined; I would have had every mink coat,musk product and tusk antique burnt to ashes

If love had been ranked above lust; I would have had a chance to look deeper into souls

If  it had been a free world, I would have made paper rockets out of cash!

Endless possibilities sadly remain Far Fetched dreams.

I just rediscovered Truth.It is wrong to be right.

I guess I’ll have to move with the tide and be gay(read Happy ) !!!

Les Misérables

IITM,very recently, organized a theaterics workshop and Kamal Haasan was among the celebrities invited. He happened to speak about movies, in the international forum, which had inspired him and he named films of his which had been created around those movies. Mahanadhi had been inspired from the theme of Les Misérables. This movie was in turn an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel of the same name. Mahanadhi is one of my all time favourites. It plays with raw emotions and shows how one crucial decision can affect an entire family. Powerful dialogue, true to life scenes, the movie had it all.I wanted to check out how much Kamal had plagiarized from LM.

I was proved wrong. Kamal had put together a very beautiful story taking only millilitres of the essence of LM. The two movies are poles apart, each unique in its own way.

LM is set in France and is the story of Jean Valjean, an ex-convict. Hungry and on the streets, he steals bread from an eat out. ”only the glass separated me and the bread”. He is tried for the offense and is given a sentence of 20 years in a place called Toulon. In jail, he is abused by the other prisoners and learns to defend himself. In the process he loses compassion and lives like an animal with only the instinct of survival.

After a few years, he is let out into neighboring towns on parole bearing a paper stating his identity and status. Nobody gives him accommodation and he is taken in by a pastor. He steals the pastor’s silver and is caught by the police. But the pastor tells them that he had given it to him as a gift. Jean Valjean flees the place as he doesn’t want to go back to the quarries again.

A decade later, in the town of Vigau, Valjean is the Mayor and the richest man. The pastor’s words had moved him and he had started life afresh. The town gets a new Police Prefect, Inspector Javert. He recognizes Valjean as he had been on duty in the quarries. Meanwhile a woman is dismissed from her job at Valjean’s factory for having an illegitimate child. She had left the kid to grow up with a family and had been working to pay them. She doesn’t know that they ill treat the girl. Out of a job, Fantine(the woman) becomes a whore and is beaten up by a group of freaks. She is arrested by Javert when she hits back at them. Valjean comes to her rescue and tends to her in his home. Javert fumes as he’s got no evidence against Valjean.when Javert comes to arrest Valjean, Fantine dies in the commotion after telling Valjean to protect her girl, Cosette.

Valjean escapes with the silver and some savings he had kept hidden. He buys out Cosette from the family and they flee to Paris.”Can I call you Papa?”

As the gates are being watched, they climb up the city walls and enter a convent. The police are forbidden entry and Valjean and Cosette start life as a gardener and a student respectively.

Ten years pass and Cosette wants to see the world. Valjean reluctantly agrees and they move into a house in the city and do charity work for the depraved and homeless.

It is the time of revolution against the monarchy and Cosette falls in love with Marius, the leader of a group of radicals. Meanwhile, Javert has fixed a spy to trace the movements of Marius. He reports of the pair’s meetings to the inspector. Javert learns that the girl’s father is an important man in the area and goes to meet him. The maid informs Valjean of the inspector’s arrival. Valjean locks himself up in his room after instructing Cosette to  tell the inspector that her father was out of town. Javert gives Cosette a letter and tells her that it is for her father and leaves the place. Valjean reads it and comes to know of Cosette’s love affair with Marius. He scolds her but she fights back telling him that he had no right to question her as he had never told her who he was.

Valjean breaks down and tells Cosette his history and she regrets for having misunderstood him.Further investigation makes Javert conclude that the girl is Cosette and she is with Valjean.He rushes to their hiuse to arrest him.

They flee to a safer area and there when Cosette and Marius meet, two nights later, Javert arrives. He is overpowered by Marius who takes him to the radicals’camp. They decide to kill him when Valjean offers to do the job. He takes Javert to a dark alley and sets him free. The inspector tells Valjean to kill him as he would hunt him down with renewed vigour if alive. Valjean just fires a shot in the air and lets him go.

During the fight between the police and the revolutionaries, Marius is wounded and Valjean rescues him.He is caught by Javert who lets him on the condition that he’d leave the boy in a safe place and return. After leaving Marius with a nurse, he bids Cosette farewell. She begs him not to go, but he only says:”I stole Happiness with you all these years, kid and that is enough for me” and leaves.

Valjean returns to Javert. There is a river in the backdrop and this scene is nail biting with dialogues containing few well chosen words. Javert tells Valjean that he is a free man,handcuffs himself and falls into the river. The climax has a beautiful view of Paris and Valjean running towards his home, smiling, with tears in his eyes.

Solid performances by Liam Neeson (Valjean), Geoffrey Rush (Javert) and Claire Danes (Cosette).My favorite was Uma Thurman (Fantine).Javert was the perfect prefect and the hard hearted maniac. Cosette had the right looks as the star stuck damsel and Uma’s performance as the desperate whore was awesome. Time well spent!!!

The White Tiger – Chock Black!

First time Author,The Man Booker prize.Wasn’t enough to stop me from buying it off the platform in Besant Nagar.It had an impressive cover and gray pages and the prelude was quite impressive;enough to catch my attention.

The novel is in the form of a series of letters written by a car driver turned entrepreneur(complete with a web portal for himself;technology drivers,he calls it) to the Chinese Premier,who is on a visit to India.The novel portrays the life of an average guy from a god forsaken,Landlord ruled village who transforms from a whizkid in school to a waiter in a teashop to a driver cum servant.His brains and  aim to make it big desert him that he even neglects personal hygiene(lolz).

There are the author’s takes on the Ganga,India shining and India in the Dark and Indian Politics which are true.He also shows the typical NRI,in style.A well bred guy who is too innocent,has married against his dad’s wishes,has a bully for a brother and who is unable to digest the way India works(Rajini shivaji Style).A bollywood style car accident and the events following it  and how Balram tackles it when it happens again is also thrown in.

The Indian Police Force is yet again belittled of being a fumbling group of corrupt,lazy men.The sentence that shook me most was when the protagonist(the villian?!!?) calls us,the southerners,Negros.Amounted to the kind of humiliation Jews were subjected to.The servant class is shown as being loyal to the teeth and Balram Halwai justifies the means to the end.After all,he has a family out there to suck his blood.The Water Buffalo IS a cute laughable character and the magazine the drivers read provide the sleaze content.

Balram’s talk of finding nirvaana looking at chandeliers is a cranky way of showing the streak of insanity in him.His thoughts when his cousin’s son blackmails him and the way he displaces the head driver in his master’s household are superb.

There are two sides to a coin and the author chose to tell us the dark side.IMHO,It is an overstatement of the obvious.Ironically,It will be the White and Brown men who will rule the world in twenty years.

The Awakening

At long last,a narrative.

It is dusk and I’m sitting on my favorite armchair. It rocks back and forth and the creaking of the wood floor below is music to my ears. This is the way that I have spent every evening of my life, on the porch, taking in the evening. This is the place where I’ve played hide and seek, where I first talked to my girl and where I first saw my son walk. My home has changed much, stretching out into the vacant lot behind as my family grew. This verandah is now the residue of what has been the past.

Age has not changed my ways and there is a flurry of emotions inside me. I rock the chair a bit faster. I see firefly sparks in the bushes and there is the occasional footfall of passing dogs. I know that you will leave me soon and I realize that trying to hold you back is meaningless. For, in reality, you are long gone and I have sorely failed.

I have lived many a day in sheer oblivion, pushing you into the farthest reaches of my mind. These thoughts shred my heart, but this time there are no tears. It is time to let go. I laugh at myself and the fallacy that human life is. Behind me, those whom I have lived with and love, weep.

I walk into the unknown. I have moved on.

I wrote this keeping in mind an old man,who is on the verge of death.Take it as you will,and do comment on ,what according to you,the write-up describes.

Wisecracks on the Recession

1. The US has made a new weapon that destroys people but

keeps the building standing.Its called the stock market.

2. Do you have any idea how cheap stocks are ?? Wall Street

is now being called Wal Mart Street!

3. The difference between a pigeon and a London investment

banker. The pigeon can still make a deposit on a BMW.

4. What’s the difference between a guy who lost

everything in Las Vegas and an investment banker?A tie!

5. The problem with investment bank balance sheets is that

on the left side nothing’s right and on the right side

nothing’s left.

6. I want to warn people from Nigeria who might be reading this,if

you get any emails from Washington asking for money, it’s a

scam. Don’t fall for it.

7. Obama was asked about the credit crunch. He said it was

his favourite candy bar.

8. The rescue bill was about 450 pages. President

Bush’s copy is even thicker. They had to include pictures.

9. When he was in charge,President Bush’s response was to meet

some small business owners in San Antonio last week. The small

business owners are General Motors, General Electric and

Century21.

10. What worries me most about the credit crunch, is that

if one of my cheques is returned stamped ‘insufficient

funds’.  I  won’t know whether that refers to mine

or the bank’s!

Source : The Tonight Show With Jay Leno(NBC).

The roar of the Sandstone Lion

Balls of Fire,Orange flames

Cities under siege,scandals and blame games.

Wilting fresh,green currencies herald

The coming of the meltdown season.

Yonder,The wheel of time trundles by

In search of the Ahimsamatic Indian.

In the republican spirit,

Anu.

A Wednesday-Mumbai, Politics & life

In the aftermath of the terror strikes at the commercial capital, a few thoughts of mine:

1. The Opposition using the entire issue as an electoral propaganda. The latest advertisement read:’ Fight Terror. Vote BJP’. U.S. thinker Martha Nussbaum, in a superb analysis, has described the current Indian situation as not a clash of “civilizations” but another consequence of the “clash within.”
2. The media blowing things out of proportion, in an attempt to increase their TRP’s.
3. Poor coastal security and even poorer security at prime locations (especially the targeted hotels) despite early bird warnings of future attacks.
4. People taking it out on the Police,NSG and the commandos for cumbersome operation, while it was on.
5. Lalit Modi wanting the England Cricket team to finish the series (initially), completely ignoring the fact that this attack mainly targeted foreigners.
6. The Government remaining relatively placid even after Pak’s U turn on sending its ISI chief and the lack of a coercive diplomacy forcing Pakistan to go after elements there which it believes are responsible for violence in India.
7. The repeated promise of creation of a task force to handle terrorism.It still remains at the blueprint level.
8. Where has the MNS gone now?
9. The bravery of the commandos. The six S.A commandos deserve special mention.

Normalcy has been restored to Mumbai now, but it is not the time to sit back and heave a sigh yet.We, as a nation have miles to go and borders to secure.

I deeply mourn lost lives.

Waiting for the other shoe to Drop.

What with the Sub prime crisis about,we keep hearing of layoffs and downsizing often.If you’ve read Chetan Bhagat,you would probably have a grim view of what rightsizing is all about.The newspapers and the Net are full of it.Cost cutting measures have been adopted by CFO’s having fiscal nightmares.With the United States heading the group,many nations are now looking down the barrel only to find a hole at the other end,as the Autos run out of steam,the bull becomes a bear and the bailouts,a public joke.
According to statistics collated by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the top five sectors for layoffs in the nine months through September this year are: financial, with 111,200 job cuts; automotive, 94,900 layoffs; government/non-profit, 66,800 layoffs; transportation, 62,000 layoffs; and retail, with 51,300 jobs lost in the US.Axes have fallen with equal vigour in various other parts of the globe too.

The fear of where this might all lead to wasn’t big at college(TCE,Madurai) though.We had all secured jobs,in dream companies(supposedly),and final year was living upto its expectations.There were hints from seniors who were yet to receive their DOJ letters and there were professors urging us to appear in competitive examinations.But the recession was still something which wasn’t yet up close and it certainly hadn’t made me say ‘Hey,you scared the living hell out of me’ yet.
And that’s when we got to know that about 15 offer letters from a German firm were cancelled.There were friends amongst those who were now left in the lurch and I wallowed in empathy once I got to know about it.These people are now outside their comfort zones and in the rat race again.Another pal’s Internship abroad got cancelled.Talk of more sordid news is in the offing.Those aspiring for a Masters abroad are reconsidering plans too.
Perfect timing to enter the industry.Cudn’t have asked for Worser!!

Hues of the Heart

This is a poem I wrote for a friend.She has the original,written on a sheet torn from a diary and another one from a record notebook.This one also featured on another friend’s blog.

The wind blew on my face;stung my eyes

No tears came out despite the pain

Speeding at seventy kmph,zipping through hairpin bends

Ain’t nothing like the thunders of pain ones’mind sends

He was at his racers’best,the smooth serpent of tar

Burning up beneath the tyres

Yet there I was,seated

Battling with emotions,defeated.

At last we reached the peak

I got off the bike,trying,pleading to myself,

To imbibe the ambience’s harmony

All this while,he hasn’t spoken a word.

One single word.

I bristle at his cool profile

Finally,I break out,lashing away in fury

Charging,accusing him of deeds;both done and imagined.

Every dart of mine is buffered by those eyes of his

Those puppy eyes I am so mad of.

There are few and measured answers

All of it seems so true and open to the skies

Alas! I’m chained to the past;my heart is closed to reason.

He stands there like the calm before a storm.

The fury has now flowed out of me,my rage abated.

He still stands,hands crossed,undaunted

Slowly he turns,facing the setting sun.

A slight chill creeps into me as I lean back against a boulder

There is no movement except for the slight shrug of his shoulder

I am rooted to the spot by remorse

Is everything merely a farce?

I brace myself for the backlash

I put my hand on his shoulder

Frightened,hesitating

All Is still.And at that very moment

I glimpse,the tear that rolls down his face

Ripping my heart.

I see,at that very instant,the love

I see the child within

I see pure,unbridled passion

I slip my hand in his

As the sun goes down,peace reigns.