discography of me- part 1, (albeit a little too hyphonated).

although, the comments don't reflect it, certain sections have subtly (and not so subtly) hinted that its getting too diatribe-ish, vendetta-esque, ranting looney- like (oooh i'm liking this hyphonated odyssey).
so to cater to the palettes of those subtle (and not so subtle) epicurean connoisseurs, i shall present the decent aspect of my personality, my taste in music. when i started writing this blog i thought i'd include music reviews of artists forgotten by the world at large , to serve the double purpose of appearing like an indie- arty-bohemian-chutzpah type and ofcourse attracting more traffic. to be honest i've had notions of people flocking to my site and the stat counter swelling and me getting a fabulous book deal because of my astounding talent and writing the fabled book in an exotic place, say marrakesh,and abetted, by a fabulous bronzed muscle-ey muse. sigh......
anyway, before i start reviewing music by little known artists i thought it prudent to put my own musical history upfront. like everything else, this too is a story.
it didn't begin in 1983. ofcourse not. but much before that. when my mom was pregnant with me and dad decided to play the saturday night fever soundtrack till the tape frayed. then he switched to boney-m , and before they could ra ra rasputin for the billionth time, mercifullly i came out into the world. but relief was shortlived in a house that swayed to "shes crazy like a fool, but what about daddy cool?". it was only a matter of time before dad switched over to cat stevens. i admit i like cat stevens. that song about morning breaking and what not is an eternal favourite. but not too much boney-m or the bee gees, (too girly)
then dad got tranferred to mumbai for nine years and these years i refer to as halcyon days because dad brought some eclectic music from mumbai, marathi bhajjans to samantha fox i listened them all. between dads marathi cuss words and the bhajjans, i can say i even learnt spoken marathi. i developed a huge crush on morten harkett, the lead singer of A-HA who looked like a perfectly chisled norse god.

i had a terrible time in school, during the nascent years, because nothing made sense. everything was confusing and i was always falling sick. i used to fall sick for months on end, and be alone at home with my grandmom. she had this wonderful habit of keeping her pet transistor near my ear and this mellifluous voice, would break out in karnatic rhythms and restructure the haze in my mind. karnatic music is one of those wonderfull genres of music, that bring order among chaos. i loved M.S, gangu bhai hangal and bala murali Krishna , the latter especially, singing, “bhagyada lakshmi baramma”

when the 90's broke and MTV came into our house, i got my first lesson in culture. women abroad dont wear six metres of cloth. it took 3rd standard intelligence to fully comprehend that shock. I was finicky eater (still am ), and would steafastedly refuse to eat lunch, so dad decided to literally hand feed me in the morning with the treat that I could watch MTV most wanted. This is my favourite memory in life. The first video that made an impression on me was chris de burgh’s lady in red. My mornings rocked. I saw the video of November rain and was utterly bowled over. It was so popular that it was requested every morning, I could even guess the timing of the video. Then there was this cool song by john secada, that my father absolutely loved and the food plate would start to sway. But my favourite video was one by Madonna oddly (and we are talking strictly of videos here). It was for this song called “my playground”, and the video was in the form of a photo album and very gimmicky. It was oddly stimulating.

Because of my poor eating habits, my parents put me in another school. I loved it. It had a swimming pool right in the middle. It was so calming, and all the other girls had this snooty habit of calling you a nondescript “girly”. I loved it there. sadly the early morning hand feeding from dad came to an end. The upper class girlies predictably welcomed the backstreet boys with open arms and made them richer by buying their posters by the droves. The snooty clique, whom every would copy, used to coo and purr when BB went “ quit playing games with my heart”, and that whole wet clothes in an basket ball court routine, had the entire school drooling.(retrospectively, Egad!). In an 8th standard hottest men pole. The backstreet boys occupied the first 5 slots and boyzone the other five. In 9th standard, there was a huge upset, boyzone occupied the first 4 slots (Stephen gately declared he was gay, and thus broke hazaar hearts, incidently that announcement saw a massive drop in boyzone merchandise), peter andre came in 5th, while the backstreet boys evidently on the wane, occupied the last 5 positions. Since I was not in the snooty clique, I was not privy to such polling, then some of them got married, many girls shed a lot of tears, BB posters were burnt, the tapes were abandoned , or passed down to hapless 8thies, if you were especially sadistic and everybody parted company in the 10th in relatively good spirits, owing partly to numbers like the Macarena, the spice girls etc.

It was in 11th and 12th that a huge musical tide swept me. This one was of the world music variety. Alyesha and I had become best friends and I avidly drank up her arab music collection. I’ll unashamedly admit to being partial to Amr Diab. No one can quite muster “habibie” like he did. I listened to a lot of arab tribal music, good bit of Arab pop, learnt some fine points about belly dancing and interesting stuff like that. Alyesha also had the entire collection of the Eagles. Since “hotel California” was done to death and literally put out to pasture, piqued, I sampled “hell freezes over” and fell in love. “tequila sunrise” is a song that gives you a taste of what it feels like to be in love. It was a bet between ‘lysh and me that got me listening to simon and garfunkel. Reading the poetry of T.S eliot and listening to S & G, are the memories that stick with me of 11th and 12th. What a charming prelude to the raging inferno that music experience in college turned out to be.

Dan Brown and associated farts

as i stated in a previous post, i finished 148 pages of "Angels & Demons", at the airport book shop before i was shooed off. Since i hate leaving books unfinished, i asked a ardent fan of DB to pass me an E-text of that book. nobody should ever buy any book by DB , infact he ought to pay us for reading his tosh. and what a tosh. Angels ..... had the lamest ever ending of all the books i've encountered, Five findouters included. dear god!!! and what makes me really really angry is that his books get accused of being Literature ( blasphemy) and that he has revived the art of reading among masses. this is to all the "masses", go obese, become fat, drink lot of beer , see t.v develop a high cholestrol but don't for heavens sakes read DB or read DB and say what a effing good author he is because he so is not!!!!!.
DB is essentially a Sidney Sheldon spawn which is what makes him a fart in the first place. he apparently read a Sidney Sheldon book while holidaying in Tahiti. thats what makes him a bigger fart. who reads while sitting on a beach in Tahiti?? what a loser!!!!. and who gets inspired by Sidney sheldon???. Sidney sheldon is another fart, who has an avid fan base in Khalsa college if you please. so DB , all inspired decides to pen an international racy thriller called "Da vinci code". and now i shall gleefully proceed to trash this magnum opus. this book is shitty to say the least. get this, a dead man with arms and legs spread out in the da vinci gallery of the louvre museum, and our hero, robert langdon goes on a pentacle rant. and 80 pages later realises that the "clue" is prolly the vetruvian man. and no sex!!!!. what kind of racy thriller has no sex?? and she was french for heavens sakes!!. bobby is prolly the only protagonist to have made it to the bestseller list without demonstations of virility. sad.
im not angry with DB for laughing all the way to the bank, bill gates, another fart, who makes far lousier products is the bloody bank. no it ain't that. what makes me angry is that this clever manipulator is hailed as the messiah of reading!!!. hes a terrible author with a penchant for ultra lame endings and people who think im wrong can go obese, become fat, drink beer, see T.V and develop a high cholestrol!!!
oh before i forget woe betide any quizzer who uses DB "fundaes", IM Pei indeed, stop being a fart !!!.

as Jack Sparrow says, "Savvy?"

its been an eventful week. not necessarily a happy one, but definitely a happening one. it started off great. we won the KQA metaquizzicks anniversary quiz, last sunday, for the second consecutive year, and i had this nice post i wanted to write then, about how we, Tonic, were the quizzing equivalent of weapon of mass destruction, the australia of college quizzing and barring the moon landing generation, superior to all( yes, including a certain moody liar), but couldn't quite write it because i developed a sore throat and writing isn't fun when you feel like arthropods are scurrying down the hatchet. that sore throat developed into a full fledged fever by monday and by tuesday i was wheezing like steam engine . savvy?
wednesday our guide at IISC decided, that we were a bunch of squeaky clean no goods and ordered us to fill sacks of charcoal, so i was drenched in charcoal dirt and wheezing like an engine, some heat and i would have made stephenson proud. thursday i lost my sex drive. i don't use it much, but i really like the feeling of knowing its alive and kicking. i also saw this newsbyte on NDTV. seems they are about bulldoze Delhi's oldest and beloved dog shelter. and the clearly agitated lady dolittle went " don't they realize that if they bulldoze this place, it will go literally to the dogs!!!!". sigh. she had my sympathy, till she uttered the last sentence. some people are stupid and dogs arn't despicable creatures, they are the visage of heaven.
friday was my brother's birthday. mum decided at midnight, (india time), that we should call him and " all of you yell, loudly, happy birthday!", so thats what we did, it was 5 A.M, where he was and the poor guy could only muster, " couldn't you all have waited", i must say that i thoroughly did my bit. friday i realized that i needed to finalize my seminar topic. on a whim i decided it to be "ergonomics". its not going to be fun.
saturday, i come home to no cable. but it could have been worse. a friend's friend died under a moving train in the same week. it certainly could have been worse.

What a wonderful world.......

......without Air Deccan. personally, methinks, it should be renamed Snare Deccan. If ever there is a death trap in the air, this is it.
when i was informed that i had to fly to hyderabad on Air Deccan, i wasn't too freaked about it, because i'm not too affectionate about AD. everytime i've noticed, the flights are always delayed and how can anybody forget the inaugural flight, when the plane had to make an emergency landing because of engine trouble?. but (as few people know),my byline being " will try anything ....once". i was ready for the experience. atleast i thought i did.
so, unsurprisingly, my flight was delayed by three hours. to pass that time. i went to the airport bookshop and started reading dan brown's "angels & demons". the fun part of reading books for fulooze (free), is that the folks at the book shop are angry but are always too polite to snatch it away from your hand, and heck, i'd never want to own a legit book of dan brown, the man idolizes Sidney Sheldon for heaven's sakes!!!!!. i had finished 78 pages when i got the call for security check. i finally made it to the plane, strapped my seat belts firmly, and insouciantly looked out of the window to see 3 mechanics fiddling with the engine. not a pretty sight considering in a few minutes its going to be air borne. then mechanic 4 runs up with a multimeter and shakes his head in the negative. that was it folks. my flight was cancelled for that day.
since i HAD to go to hyderabad, i was back again the next day to catch the flight, when, surprise, surprise, it was delayed again. this time round i progressed to page 146, when the proprieter of the bookshop gave me the nastiest look ever. i finally found myself on the plane, and it took off, mercifully, when suddenly , insect repellant started emerging from the ventilator system. why? because the the plane was swarming with mosquitoes!!!. people say that the journey is more important than the destination, but with AD, its the other way round.
i learnt how important competition is to the consumer. AD treats its passengers with disdain because it has no competition. its the only ailine offering low fares and ergo it thinks it can behave like a flying cattle van. competition is the only way the consumer can punish the errant airline. i'd never thought i'd say this, but hugs to those chubby mamas of Indian Airlines who dish out soggy sanwiches, atleast they care!.

war of pastry chefs

i dunno if most people see star one. i do. actually it sits pretty between star movies and HBO so i generally end up giving it a dekko. During one such dekko my heart almost stopped. there was Upen patel, a confirmed hottie (*hawt*) making ham quiche on a cooking show called "cook na kaho".now upen has been replaced by another hottie and much better anchor, shyan munshi. so this week, cherie shyan decided to make chocolate brownies. i have no problem with men cooking. it adds a nice dimensiion to their protector & defender image i have of men. the sight of men cooking, those arms doing the sautey or teasing the barbeque is arresting to say the least, but when they go scrambling for oven mittens, its mildly disconcerting. ovens are strictly female territory. truth be told, i've never made brownies, and cherie shyan gave me quite the complex. and to add insult to injury, K popped up a couple of days later , with "what, im making brownies hoy!". k amazes me no end. here was a man making brownies at midnight, because he felt like eating one!!!. between his scrambles to the oven to check on the brownies, i decided, heck i was making brownies too. im not going to tolerate brownie making men anymore. i was going to show them. but first a little history...

he Iddya clan has always taken to baking like fishes to the sea. the mittens are our shields and we swear by our egg beaters. apart from mom, who ofcourse has the magic touch, my brother used to make biscuits and improvise to make interesting condiments. i too have an interesting baking reportoire. apple pies, cinnamon rolls, cakes, souffle , i've done it all. actually the souffle triumph needs clarification. the souffle came out great but the sauce had a little too much cointreux in it. so we all got tipsy and i called a friend of mine aneesha coellho, fat, which ofcourse trigerred a huge altercation and the souffle was pronounced an "unmitigated disaster". but really, since aneesha was responsible for making the sauce, and construed 20 ml equivalent to half the cointreux bottle. i can hardly be blamed can i?. so it was with this illustrious lineage and rich past , that approached my tryst with brownies.
ill save the suspense. they came out great ( no surprise there, haw haw).nice and gooey. dad ate it and gave me a hug. aww thank you daddy.

summer time (but the livin ain't easy)

my blog is all colour and i got rid of that painful noir hue. why didn't anyone tell me it was so depressing!. anyhow, i love summer and more so the advent of summer, or to use a classy term, the harbinger of spring. summers were always about exams and their aftermaths(hols! hols!), then college changed all that and it became aftermaths and exams!(sitting in a class at three o'clock in the afternoon, at the peak of summer, definitely qualifies as a mental aftermath!)
anyhow i came across this super funny site. k sent it to me. laughed my ass off.

Till you've had that mood indigo...

Finally, i peacefully blog.
I thought these hols would be complete R& R, lots of T.V,movies and sleep but oh no, here are some of the thorns in the flesh of these holidays.
computer: my computer, Oswald jr (Sr. was my rageddy teddy bear. err long story), got this mysterious worm, and basically i had to bear he trauma of the 1 minute shutdown timer every time i acessed the net. so i ran it through McCaffe security,ironically the damn thing happily, cheerily (as only softwares can do) informed me that my computer had, ABSOLUTELY HAD no virus, even as the timer was counting down. i used avg, panda software, norton, sigh and finally even used Nag (not really, considering, i DLed acid PRO for him), we got rid of one worm, when another worm reared its ugly head, a trojan downloader. so i formatted my computer, but the damned thing its sill there, though norton keeps it in check by deleting it whenever it shows up.
project : my project team consists of the toppers in my class. they are perfect nerds and workoholics, so i began my project at IISC and we have to go there everyday. bloody boring.
construction : those guys ripped my cable wire, so basically no cable for two whole days. i really am a child of the networks, i swear i felt orphaned those two days.
on the bright side though, i did manange to see a couple of interesting movies, Magnolia being the weirdest of them all, i definitely ODied on juliane moore movies, oddly, saw The Hours, Magnolia & Laws of attraction and oooooh, I bought a banana flavoured lip balm, i never in my wildest imagination thought somebody would make a banana flavoured lip balm. i guess some clouds have a chrome lining

piri piri

had a fantastic time today. Abhishek Nag, one-third member of that "not easily impressed", quizzing team, Tonic, took the other two thirds, namely Aditya Jalan and moi, to this cute little italian restuarant called Piri Piri for lunch. the food was great and the desserts even better, although i can't quite pronounce the name of the dessert i had.lol. had a great time. thank u nag. happy 22nd birthday.

Hamazing!

It was day unlike anyother. today i attended the IIMB A-V quiz. Due to the ambiguity of the quiz timing, (whether forenoon or er well fore fore noon), i ended up reaching one hour late. In the endevour of finding the institute which is, i realised today,in the back of the boondocks, i skipped 2 red lights, made a forbidden u-turn right beneath a cops nose, made marcus go over 80kmph, made marcus go over bumps and potholes with minimum breaking, lost my way and nearly ran over pious benny hinn methodists( actually that was fun..!) all for THE QUIZ.
question 1 : connect laloo yadav, hema malini and om puri
ans: roads of Bihar. (fundae :instead of hema malini's cheeks they turned out like om puri's under laloo)
HAMAZING!!!!
question 2: connect douglas adams, kasparov and sleeping deve gowda
answer: deep thought (fundae: deve gowda's infamous repartee that he wasn't sleeping but was,
u guessed it, "in deep thought")
HAMAZING!!!
i wasnt a serious quizzer till i joined RVCE. my first quiz was the freshers quiz conducted by that hallowed ilk of 2003. i loved it. the quiz was simple, workoutable, fun and most importantly was certainly not an egocentric trip of the quiz master's intellect or knack for puerile trivia. quizzing has changed since then, its no longer a knowledge sharing excercise. it has become a demonstration of intellectual worth. its about the 30 secs when nobody knows the answer and the quizmaster can bask in the ignorance of others and extoll his "fundae", its about insecure people who have to show-off inorder to convince themselves of their standing.
however THE QUIZ wasnt all that bad, had a few good questions too, but i've realized that quizzing isnt fun any more. its not about questions that can be worked out or where the answers are as tantalizingly close as waves that barely touch the toes. its about significant minutiae. i guess im not skipping any reds for any quiz any more

shooey shooey catchy monkey

well, its been a long time since i last posted, but then i dont think it created world crisis, so im quite hum about it. things have been quite hectic. Alyesha my best friend and the coolest chica to grace the earth was here, after 3 long years and i had a great time chilling with her. The asghars are the coolest people i know and respect. saam, the matriach is my idea of a perfect woman, shes absolutely sharp and brilliant,also funny and is the epitome of altruism. Pervez, is the chief. a sailor by profession, but responds more like an amateur international policy expert and explodes when "george" is mentioned in the vicinity. lol, and ofcourse Alyesha, who is brilliantly funny, the best sense of humour, ever and the only reliable shoulder to cry on. the asghars have influenced me soo much that its hard to fathom. saam got me out when i was in the throes of social gauche. the chief has always been a guiding light on morals, (especially, the house + roof drawing, lol) and alyesha has been the loyal friend. i love the asghars, they are my second family.

where do i start, where do i begin

i never did like tom cruise, till i saw vanilla sky. yeah the one movie that stared cruise, cruz, cameron & directed by cameron(crowe) . are u getting the phonetic joke on this one?
er, i thought so, well, although critics across panned the movie, i loved it. since it came highly recommended, i overcame my cruise revulsion and saw it. and i absolutely loved it. i thought it a brilliant visual masterpiece. the script was awesome too, it seemed like a DALI painting come alive, always on the verge of incomprehension, but never quite, and the theme of dreams, through out the movie, a very catalonian essence.
so i checked up and did some digging. the movie is a remake of a spanish movie called " open your eyes", this one ofcourse starred the other cruz ( i couldn't quite overcome my repulsion of this one tho,), and curiously, vanilla sky begins with a voice recorded alarm going "open your eyes, david", to a sleeping cruise, in the voice of the other cruz. hmmmm. quite a conundrum this, but its a treat to watch. cameron crowe's excellent treatment and ofcourse superb soundtrack,makes it heaven for the senses
i can't remember another movie, which had, R.E.M, chemical brothers, Sigur ros, paul Mc cartney ( brilliant song that - vanilla sky), peter gabriel and bob dylan, all in one OST. although, the theme to which cruise sprints to on an empty time square, (brilliantly shot!!!), isn't on the OST album, its by a band called mint royale, and its by far my favourite . listening to the soundtrack, the movie comes haunting back. nancy wilsons, elevator beat, when cruise is riding the elevator, at the end of the movie, or peter gabriel's salisbury hill, when cruise is drawing the potrait of cruz. ( ill stop if its getting to you :)) or can we be friends by jeff buckley, all make it tangible in a sense.
oh, and in this cruise(or cruz) control, i've completely missed mentioning, cameron diaz's brilliant performance as the jealous, but oh so understandably so, juliana gianni. her best performance yet by far. anyhow, the ending is so brilliant, that when the credits are rolling, u realise curiously , that u know what a vanilla sky looks like. hmm.

Mech Ado About Nothing- 09.06.03

editor:AI
written during the class of RSK( fluid dynamics)

With the war on , at full swing, its been reported that certain nations (especially the “crayonable” ones), raelians, and rival arctic Eskimo gangs are rather envious and a trifle disappointed that they weren’t included in the exclusive, elite and hoi-polloi-ish “axis of evil”.
With iraq, (for once) experiencing a heady night life,Iran catching some stray missiles, and kim, (the dear ol chap), definitely giving that white house dinner a miss, certain sections (especially the “crayonable” ones) are going green at the attention being bestowed on the three.
As the propaganda minister of Eritrea put it “we want the United States, to realize that the world map also contains Eritrea. So what if we don’t have oil? every one knows we have a vast , inexhaustible resource in single horned wild pigs.We also want our thatched huts to be bombed, what’s so special about Iraq?, its blatant discrimination, they’ll never bomb anyone who is black!”. The minister, after that venomous outburst, added in a rather conciliatory tone, that Eritrea would name their official single horned wild pig, after Donald Rumsfeld , if only the U.S would oblige. The pentagon has noted down that offer.

Although its hard to sound cool like the “axis of evil”, nations are scrambling hard to form axes that are as cool, as cool as it will take to get the attention of the U.S airforce. France, Luxemburg, and Switzerland have decided to form the “ axis de la crème flaumage” roughly translates to, “ axis of cream cheese for breakfast”. And if that wasn’t a mouthful, Guatemala, Argentina & Belize have come together as the “ axis of havens for former Nazi dictators”, cheekily, trying to miff the U.S via Israel. Pakistan, Libya, & Chechenya are calling themselves the “axis of d-evil”. Not too original but the pentagon thinks its “ wicked cool”. Australia, France & Italy are the “ axis of incomprehensible accents”, although they had thought about putting in “grape mafia” somewhere, but Italy objected, saying “ it wouldn’t peeve America enough”.

France , as the world notes, is going out of its way to ,er cheese America. The real reason for this, as one inside source put it, “ anything to remove that metal monstrosity, the Eiffel tower from the sky lines. A century of pretense is more than a nation can bear”. Consequently, france is also a part of the “ axis of we-support- a- gay-America”, “ axis of Michael-Jordan- is- actually French”, not to mention the daring affront, “ axis of tiger-woods-is- wholly -overated”.
The American reaction to this French tactic has been largely muted. According to a senior pentagon official, “ we’d love to bomb the crap outa them, smoke chirac out, but the effect is super cool on thatched roofs and half-naked villagers. However if they desperately want the poo to hit the fan, they could supply us the bombs and the fighters, we’ll ask our test pilots to do the job”

Thus, the world waits with bated breadth, to know which country will get the honour of hosting the biggest tourist block, the U.S army. Whichever it will be, is sure to be the envy of several nations, raelians and of course, rival arctic Eskimo gangs.

put it in the pantry with your cupcakes

mrs. robinson always reminds me of the wooden rafters in the classrooms of bishop cottons. more on that later.
now that i'm done with internals, even the nasty TQM went rather well, all thanks to CKN's condensed version of shoji shiba, and poor Brams,who didnt have 'em was struggling ( evil laughter...), well the semester ended rather well. very very happy that shetty and harsha cleared both their subjects in the challenge re-eval, although shetty nearly man handled MRS in wanting to see the results.im going to mess 7 a mech, hell im going to miss the mech department. im going to miss being the queen bee.

anyhow, while in class i used to have this curious habit of writing political satire news. wallowing in the boredom of Mp2 class, i started this newletter called "mech ado about nothing", myself being the editor. sadly it had just two " issues". see kirit, who sat next to me in class, thoroughly disapproved of political activism.now u dont want to peeve somebody who makes illicit guns, semi-automatics at that, do you?. anyhow, i've decided to put up one of the "issues".this was written when the iraqui invasion had begun. when u can laugh at your own jokes, whats to prevent you from putting it on your blog?. wakarimasuka neh?

all that glitters....

happy anniversary mamia and daddy. 26 years, a maniacally eccentric daughter not withstanding, not to mention, the epic altercations with anna, ( strangely, i really do miss those, anna. they were fun!) they've held it together.
dad actually shocked the wits off mamia, by presenting her a shockingly expensive jewellery set. it shocked me too. what with all the construction going on in the house, the farm and anna's education, i thought economy was the order of the day. dad's largesse threw me off a lil, but for my sweet mamia such a gift was a long time due. i was in for another shock. heard that anna was buying a second hand toyota. not a nice thing to hear when all you have is hundred bucks in the pocket! im so broke, but way to go anna!. one of my fondest memory of college is the scrounging that "brokeness" bring about in you. infact i once filled gas for 10 bucks. was very miffed when the attendant filled it for rs. 9.8 only.
sometimes, after a westside splurge, having no lunch money, i used to survive on raw carrots ( straight from the fridge!) for weeks on end. the guys, my classmates all, exceedingly healthy " MEAL" regulars,( people frequenting the RVCE cafeteria should know the type) were nauseated at the site. more so, when i said it was for " a glowing skin".
anyhow, morrow is more or less the last day of college. i'd be really nostalgic if it wasn't for a nasty TQM internals, i have to give morrow.

ill timed

i used to love falling sick as a kid. i considered illness as a sorta windfall.for it meant no school and ofcourse most importantly, thorough indulgence by ajju, my grammy. Ajju was god's own anointed angel who believed that invalids must be pampered for them to get better (makes sense no?). she'd make her special elixir ofcourse, with ginger and utterly sensuous cinnamon, and if the weather was salubrious, seat me in the garden, under the canopy of a coconut tree, where i'd read (insouciantly, very becoming of the pampered) and doze of in a sea of green fecundity.
i loved her. she was the bestest, but sadly she's no more. and so falling ill has absolutely lost its charm for me. have to make do with popping pills and vegging infront of the tellie these days.
although, between hazaar sneezes, and more than a 1000 winks, i did manage to read a book called "love in the time of cholera" by gabriel garcia marquiz. ok not a cheery choice, but i thought i needed to be soothed by G.M.M's "Magical Realism". I loved one hundred years of solitude. twas absolutely brilliant. but sadly love in..... just didn't have it, or the pathos of "love and other demons", my other favourite. when petulance kicked in, towards the end of the book, i began to wonder if it was the book or my illness that was the cause of me bad temper. suspect its the latter. mom being in mangalore and dad being very busy meant that i had to snifle around taking care of the house and pewer ol me. hmmm. what i really need right now, is LOVE in the time of choler.

ode to the beeb!

my first cable t.v experience when it beamed to our place, i think in june 1992, was of a BBC weather report. by Bill Giles, the official patriach of all weather reports. the juissance with which he extlolled the weather for the day, convinced me that these BBC guys must be something, considering, they treated something as mundane as the weather so passionately.
i always think of myself as a child of the networks and the beeb, as the father. when i think of it, the source of all my knowledge, originates from it.forget that, my decision to shift my major from compsc to mechanical engineering came after seeing jeremy clarkson spinning hedonistically in a porsche 911.
the plethora of documentaries on roman history, the crusades, rock music,simon schama's critically acclaimed the history of britain, dreamspaces, and ofcourse jeremy's top gear, are masterpieces of television, and now theres this amazing prog. called imagination that comes every saturday and they're chronicling the history of pop music....
well, the point of all this gushing is that last week, when our UC programme aired on the one channel i'd always ached to be part of,it symbolized a special turning of the wheel. things had come full circle and the child had grown.

a simple life

i had a wonderful day today. went to the farm. very idyllic and very peaceful. there was so much noise and chaos in my head, that today i finally heard my own voice. and ofcourse its as quiet as a church up there. thank god. really needed that.

have a tequila

i just found my old cache of running tapes. tapes i listened to while running my heart out to lose weight, just because one pompous guy told me i was not pretty. it seems pathetic but my idea at that time was to become thin and pretty and make him fall hopelessly in love with me and then i with an inward malicious grin, would break his heart to pieces, and i would have my revenge. then i realised that i was sounding like that grotesque old hag Ms. Havisham from great expectations, so now, call it wisdom brought about by david gray tapes or maturity, i just want to shoot the guy who called me fat. hoist with own petard, the works and blow him to the moon. anyway, i must say that i enjoyed running a lot, and got two lovely mid riff lines to boot. so now i can shoot him and look good in spandex, a thorough win-win.
im still a tapes person, dont like CDs much, no charm. i once repaired a torn tape because it had my favourite song of that time. "drive" by a band incidentally called "cars". anyhow i stopped running because a knee accident, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me. running was liberating. a sublime experience of me versus the cosmos. a race comprising of a sole body alone in the universe,against its own best time.

but i'll go on forever...

the dicerning will point out that i've inappropriately filched a Tennyson line, but then if u are the discerning kind quit reading this.
i finally got to use most of the tissues i stole from that tastefully decorated hotel in delhi. infact, im a vociferous advocate of stealing tissues.so if u see a whole box of them lying around insouciantly, by jove! steal 'em.there really is no such thing as plently of tissues.them,poor things, sadly have such ephemeral lives.and today i wish to pay tribute to these unsung heroes of a teary tragedy.not only do they prevent your face from getting, "splotchy", but, also wipe away memories of "that idiot guy".

oh before i forget. i need to carry a corrigendum with respect to my previous blog entry. americans are not dim. no idea what they are, but im staying away from sweeping statements from now on. but i still believe that the dummy thats come to power is a satan's spawn

desert foxy

I saw the most beautiful sight today, which brought back to me why i love this city so much. a beautiful grey day and i drove through this streets that was strewn with fallen lilac jacarandas,very idyllic and something about that grey and lilac combination reminded me of that beautiful old building in cottons. which they tore down.mercilessly, to make way for a swimming pool. why do only people with a destructive sense seem to make it to places of power. stella-the bitch,(principal,cottons) georgy podgy,etc and me, by the cruel scheme of things as mute and impotent as a fallen lilac flower