The title was inspired by J.R.R.Tolkien. I thought that it would be almost apt to put into words my trip to India and back under the title Bilbo Baggins chose for his Odyssey.
I was very apprehensive about my trip to India akin to Bilbo. I chewed at my hand kerchief..Lamented that I did not want to leave Lexington. Beautiful city that it is. It was a fear of what I would find when I returned home : partly. For amma and appa had been speaking in muted tones about their deteriorating health and my impending wedding. I was totally taken in by their alloyed tones : to the extent of purchasing the return ticket without even getting my onward confirmed till 2 hours before the flight!!!!
The trip home by itself proved to be a superb experience...
I had not a confirmed onward ticket till I got to Chicago. I had to take the AI flight which by itself was overbooked for that day!!! My ticket was an open ticket: I could fly on any date I chose provided the service could find me a seat. The AI Airport manager was mom's friend and I hoped to cajole him into giving me a passage.
My itienery by itself was really funny.
Lexington - Louisville - Chicago --Frankfurt--Bombay--Madras
I travelled the first leg of the journey with a friend from Lex. It was a hot hot summer afternoon with "monsoon" clouds breaking over the top..Lightening and thunder flashed; only to create an impression of delivering succour. We drove to the airport and the trip was quietly pleasant and uneventful..
It was raining gently in Louisville when we stepped into the airport. The weather had taken a pleasanter turn. I took leave of the last familiar soul and stepped into the terminal with high expectations of Chicago.
There was a 24 hour halt at Chicago due to my "last minute planning"..This was definitely something I could have done without. But I euphemised my transit as a pretext to visit UIC to meet "Professors".
Chicago...a bachelor's experience..
Wait for it...
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Saturday, July 15, 2006
QT..PF
Recently caught up in a much needed break from work..Dull...boring..(Badri : If you think u dont want to be an alarm clock :pity me. For thats exactly what I am now.. a time study specialist).
I finally decided that I had better go crazy for the weekend before I start timing myself. Actually was a good idea though!! Could have told me how much I wasted my time..
My friend was going really gaga about mobster movies and after hearing my brother download an eulogical discourse on pulp fiction, we decided at the most oppurtune moment(night 12:05 am) to borrow Pulp fiction from Block..
We threw in snatch as a bargain and started to watch the movie at 12:35 am. The next three hours..Man!! Was it a dream I lived on? Or was it some kind of an cult that I wanted to belong to. Smoking hashish, discussing murders, Killing a man in the back seat of the car. "I just shot marvin the face".."why the f*** did u do that? what do we do to the car now?"
I did not know whether to be horrified or grossly amused. Uma Thurman scintillated as Mia Wallace. Samuel Jackson's delivery of Ezekiel 25:17..Amazing. Amazing..
The problem solver's entry. "I am Mr.Wolf. I solve problems". "Just becos you r a character does not mean You have character".
The almost effortless death/ murder of Travolta. The painful reality about dying. One moment you are there. The next no more.
The adrenaline pumping scene when O.Ding Mrs.Wallace is brought into the building..With the drug pusher watching three musketeers and eating cherios with milk.
The effortless delivery, the realistic action and Amazing script and screen play. I fell in love with QT almost unconsiously. It was like waking up and falling into a day of gangsters and walking away at night..Hop on and I will tell you all about it.
Pulp fiction amazed and stunned me to silence. I thought a lot. The world we wake upto is the same that is plastered all over "pulp..". We share the world with rapist, sodomists, sadists, gangsters, mafia, drug dealers and not so bad mobsters who still believe in Christ.
To realize there is a way out of that shit and getting back: I thought it jarred. Did not really enjoy the concept of SJ morphasized(if that spells right :) ).
Yolanda kept screaming too much and The Butch- Fabienne Sequences could have been still deleted and the movie would not have missed much.
An ultimate entertainer with a star studded cast whose cameos are all superb. Despite the script that had too many 'o' scandalous expressions..
A movie not to be missed. Though I dont deserve to critique QT. IMHO...
I finally decided that I had better go crazy for the weekend before I start timing myself. Actually was a good idea though!! Could have told me how much I wasted my time..
My friend was going really gaga about mobster movies and after hearing my brother download an eulogical discourse on pulp fiction, we decided at the most oppurtune moment(night 12:05 am) to borrow Pulp fiction from Block..
We threw in snatch as a bargain and started to watch the movie at 12:35 am. The next three hours..Man!! Was it a dream I lived on? Or was it some kind of an cult that I wanted to belong to. Smoking hashish, discussing murders, Killing a man in the back seat of the car. "I just shot marvin the face".."why the f*** did u do that? what do we do to the car now?"
I did not know whether to be horrified or grossly amused. Uma Thurman scintillated as Mia Wallace. Samuel Jackson's delivery of Ezekiel 25:17..Amazing. Amazing..
The problem solver's entry. "I am Mr.Wolf. I solve problems". "Just becos you r a character does not mean You have character".
The almost effortless death/ murder of Travolta. The painful reality about dying. One moment you are there. The next no more.
The adrenaline pumping scene when O.Ding Mrs.Wallace is brought into the building..With the drug pusher watching three musketeers and eating cherios with milk.
The effortless delivery, the realistic action and Amazing script and screen play. I fell in love with QT almost unconsiously. It was like waking up and falling into a day of gangsters and walking away at night..Hop on and I will tell you all about it.
Pulp fiction amazed and stunned me to silence. I thought a lot. The world we wake upto is the same that is plastered all over "pulp..". We share the world with rapist, sodomists, sadists, gangsters, mafia, drug dealers and not so bad mobsters who still believe in Christ.
To realize there is a way out of that shit and getting back: I thought it jarred. Did not really enjoy the concept of SJ morphasized(if that spells right :) ).
Yolanda kept screaming too much and The Butch- Fabienne Sequences could have been still deleted and the movie would not have missed much.
An ultimate entertainer with a star studded cast whose cameos are all superb. Despite the script that had too many 'o' scandalous expressions..
A movie not to be missed. Though I dont deserve to critique QT. IMHO...
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
When you see it all from a larger angle!!!!
There are times when I have been absolutely angry. So angry that I needed to get the steam off me. I used to go and plunge my head in the wash basin and cool off. Dripping wet, I used to emerge half an hour later, cooled off and finally ready to face an absolutely confused adversary.
Then came the moment when I stomped yelling, threw my hands in disarray(open to a thousand different interpretations ranging from a stong apology to a demeaning insult). Yelling out and then apologising were just common happenings. Just like we look up at the sky or shake our heads in frustation. Except that these 'common happenings' never happened to me!!!!
I was advised, counselled, suggested a hundred different books on controlling my temper. Everything from deep breathing to laughter therapy, why even pranic yoga was not spared. I tried everything. TO NO AVAIL!!!
How can I ever control my anger was my only contemplation. I used to get mad if anyone disturbed this reverie. To get back to what I was thinking was a very difficult job!!! Then I hit upon a very simple solution. I was ravelling in the local metro one day and saw a man pulling at his hat and jumping up and down on a poor bag. Red and choleric in the face, He made a superb caricature.
I burst out laughing seeing this funny image. A grow up man : Tall and neatly dressed. Obviously an executive of some high degree. Throwing his bag down and jumping on it!!! How funny it turned out to be. His anger was indeed an amusement to me.
This got me thinking on a different perspective. I got to thinking how it was when I get angry. I decided to do some different thought process the next time I got angry.
The situation was not too long in the offing. My friend got me worked up. I started to rile at him. When I suddenly removed my soul from the scene, leaving my body and voice there. I saw myself completely engrossed in a fight with him. My body language. And the growing vexation on his face. That was not all. I saw myself being laughed at by everybody in the cubicles around us.
That got me on my right mind. I returned in spirit to my body and smiled. Laughed. And made up. Since then, Whenever something happens, I remove myself physically from the scene and look down upon the scene.
Most often then not, I end up laughing or deciding a better way to deal with the problem.
I feel that this 'Macroscopic approach' can always save your skin. Most of the petty problems that we face everyday or even probelms in corporate or national level can be saved by this approach.
Though not always. There are some cases wherein a minute attention is to be paid to the case at hand.
Otherwise, Have a good time. Think of Archimedes, who thought so much ahead that he said,
" Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth"
Now that is thinking big way..
Then came the moment when I stomped yelling, threw my hands in disarray(open to a thousand different interpretations ranging from a stong apology to a demeaning insult). Yelling out and then apologising were just common happenings. Just like we look up at the sky or shake our heads in frustation. Except that these 'common happenings' never happened to me!!!!
I was advised, counselled, suggested a hundred different books on controlling my temper. Everything from deep breathing to laughter therapy, why even pranic yoga was not spared. I tried everything. TO NO AVAIL!!!
How can I ever control my anger was my only contemplation. I used to get mad if anyone disturbed this reverie. To get back to what I was thinking was a very difficult job!!! Then I hit upon a very simple solution. I was ravelling in the local metro one day and saw a man pulling at his hat and jumping up and down on a poor bag. Red and choleric in the face, He made a superb caricature.
I burst out laughing seeing this funny image. A grow up man : Tall and neatly dressed. Obviously an executive of some high degree. Throwing his bag down and jumping on it!!! How funny it turned out to be. His anger was indeed an amusement to me.
This got me thinking on a different perspective. I got to thinking how it was when I get angry. I decided to do some different thought process the next time I got angry.
The situation was not too long in the offing. My friend got me worked up. I started to rile at him. When I suddenly removed my soul from the scene, leaving my body and voice there. I saw myself completely engrossed in a fight with him. My body language. And the growing vexation on his face. That was not all. I saw myself being laughed at by everybody in the cubicles around us.
That got me on my right mind. I returned in spirit to my body and smiled. Laughed. And made up. Since then, Whenever something happens, I remove myself physically from the scene and look down upon the scene.
Most often then not, I end up laughing or deciding a better way to deal with the problem.
I feel that this 'Macroscopic approach' can always save your skin. Most of the petty problems that we face everyday or even probelms in corporate or national level can be saved by this approach.
Though not always. There are some cases wherein a minute attention is to be paid to the case at hand.
Otherwise, Have a good time. Think of Archimedes, who thought so much ahead that he said,
" Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth"
Now that is thinking big way..
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Kamal as the karma yogi
The more I talk of Kamal Hassan, the veteran star from Tamilnadu, the more enamoured I am of his multivarious talents. I think of the brod shoulders of this squat hero and see the hours that he puts behind the exerise mill to maintain sculpted muscles even at a relatively geriatric status.
I see his local "madaras" tamil and realise his devotion in playing to perfection the role of a street pick pocket or a stunt master he has chosen fit to dub.
I feel his nasal twang in the voice of his rendering of "Anbe Sivam" and come face to face with his energy that flows behind the voice. His rendering of the sanyasa mantra in "Hey Ram" made me feel I was in the temple.
His raptures as a man at tete a tete with the Goddess of his dreams in "Guna" : it transported me to the haven he supposed himself to have been at. The perfect heart rending cry of the father who realises his daughter has been exploited in "Mahanadhi", the perfect maniac in "Allavanthan..the heart stricken father denounced by his daughter in "Nayagan" .. all bear testimony to his acting prowess. Not that I ever need to mention it.
His perfect love scenes, much to the chagrin of most puritans of Tamil cine goers, evoke much spirit in the youg lovers of today. They amuse me to no end and I really must confess that I enjoyed them in Virumandi and also in all other movies he's had the stomach to carry it off.
His sense of direction, his strength in subtle shots, increasing the pique of the viewer if they have enough cinema sense to discern it. The piano in "Hey Ram" in "nee partha.." . the perspective of two people and the truth that lies buried in "Virumandi". All this merely stand to point that he is an unparalleled undefinable thing that zoomed, rocked and raises to world par the otherwise "condemned to doom" mediocrity of tamil cine sense.
Born a Brahmin to a paramakudi family, pious and orthodox, no doubt he is an eyesore, a thorn on the side. With him parading all his romantic conquests to the entire world, I think I understand Vani seeing him as constantin demeris to Melina in the other side of midnight.
But till date, no cases have been filed against him for exploitation. He only takes what that comes to him and naturally too. He has been taken too. Thats all. There ends the issue.
But as impious as he claims himself to be, as a proponent of atheism, as the only distinguished member of the DK in India..He only reiterates Krishna's words in his life.
He is the perfect karma yogi. He believes in excellence in everything that he does. The devotion to his karma oozes out of every movement of the muscle he constrains, of every flicker of the eyelid that he shutters to control the light to change the emotion reflected in them.
Excellence in work in Yoga : "Yoga karmasu Kousalam"-Shri Krishna . What more can I say?
I see his local "madaras" tamil and realise his devotion in playing to perfection the role of a street pick pocket or a stunt master he has chosen fit to dub.
I feel his nasal twang in the voice of his rendering of "Anbe Sivam" and come face to face with his energy that flows behind the voice. His rendering of the sanyasa mantra in "Hey Ram" made me feel I was in the temple.
His raptures as a man at tete a tete with the Goddess of his dreams in "Guna" : it transported me to the haven he supposed himself to have been at. The perfect heart rending cry of the father who realises his daughter has been exploited in "Mahanadhi", the perfect maniac in "Allavanthan..the heart stricken father denounced by his daughter in "Nayagan" .. all bear testimony to his acting prowess. Not that I ever need to mention it.
His perfect love scenes, much to the chagrin of most puritans of Tamil cine goers, evoke much spirit in the youg lovers of today. They amuse me to no end and I really must confess that I enjoyed them in Virumandi and also in all other movies he's had the stomach to carry it off.
His sense of direction, his strength in subtle shots, increasing the pique of the viewer if they have enough cinema sense to discern it. The piano in "Hey Ram" in "nee partha.." . the perspective of two people and the truth that lies buried in "Virumandi". All this merely stand to point that he is an unparalleled undefinable thing that zoomed, rocked and raises to world par the otherwise "condemned to doom" mediocrity of tamil cine sense.
Born a Brahmin to a paramakudi family, pious and orthodox, no doubt he is an eyesore, a thorn on the side. With him parading all his romantic conquests to the entire world, I think I understand Vani seeing him as constantin demeris to Melina in the other side of midnight.
But till date, no cases have been filed against him for exploitation. He only takes what that comes to him and naturally too. He has been taken too. Thats all. There ends the issue.
But as impious as he claims himself to be, as a proponent of atheism, as the only distinguished member of the DK in India..He only reiterates Krishna's words in his life.
He is the perfect karma yogi. He believes in excellence in everything that he does. The devotion to his karma oozes out of every movement of the muscle he constrains, of every flicker of the eyelid that he shutters to control the light to change the emotion reflected in them.
Excellence in work in Yoga : "Yoga karmasu Kousalam"-Shri Krishna . What more can I say?
My first post
Hi all..,
In all probability none of the world's all knowing, english reading population will even come across this blog. I thought it would be fun to start a spot where nobody knows who you are, what you are..nothing..Just a blogger id and you are set to embark on a writing career.
I also wanted to read at leisure my writings which flow out in a minute. I hardly think when I write and so thought it would be a great idea to understand myself in retrospect.
And again, I am a notorious lier, almost a maniacal obsession tinges my existence!!! So nothing I write might actually be true for I have attuned my senses to lie when you can speak truth. So judge for yourselves.
My ideas merits no mention, nor are my writings worth tuppence..But they might give you a minutes worth of laughs and again serious contemplation too.
Here goes...
In all probability none of the world's all knowing, english reading population will even come across this blog. I thought it would be fun to start a spot where nobody knows who you are, what you are..nothing..Just a blogger id and you are set to embark on a writing career.
I also wanted to read at leisure my writings which flow out in a minute. I hardly think when I write and so thought it would be a great idea to understand myself in retrospect.
And again, I am a notorious lier, almost a maniacal obsession tinges my existence!!! So nothing I write might actually be true for I have attuned my senses to lie when you can speak truth. So judge for yourselves.
My ideas merits no mention, nor are my writings worth tuppence..But they might give you a minutes worth of laughs and again serious contemplation too.
Here goes...
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