Rewind - Chapter 2

Wrote this two years back. World was so different those days it feels like it happened eons ago and I have aged terribly since then. Least that's how I've been feeling these days. Of course, it's more likely to be one of those quarter age crisis that seems to be all the trend these day with everyone :-) But what surprised me, very pleasantly I may add, was that I had already written this. I mean, that some ideas and thought have remained the same in me. Gives me a wee bit of hope that possibily, just that tiniest bit of possibility still exists, that I'm not entirely cynical :-)

----------------------------

Courtesy:  http://3.bp.blogspot.com 

Finished 'ballet shoes'. It's actually a children's classic. Uncle G had got a book where they give the beggining of a whole sets of books and they stop right when the suspense peaks. But a lot of those books are, I think, british and it's hard to find those books. so I had read the initial chapters a long time back.. 


Even after I saw this book I dint read it for the longest time coz I figured I would have outgrown  the book and I dint want the magic to fade. It had happened before, where i re-read a book I had read when I was young except now I cant relate to it and all the magic I remember being associated with that book disappeared which was one of the saddest thing to have happened. That's a little bit of your childhood being killed then when that aura of magic melts away. So I dint read it till yesterday... and it's still a wonderful book. It dint disappoint one bit. It had the happy ending we expected but also a very different twist to it. I dont know how I would have felt about it if I was younger coz it would have been too bitter sweet... but now i realise that's how life is and i'm glad for that twist.

The story is about three lil orphans who gets adopted, or rather 'collected', by a eccentric old traveller.  The grls, pauline, petrova and posy, call themselves fossils since that's what the rest of the stuff collected by the old man is called and are given to the care of his grand neice and her maid. It's a lovely story how the grls find themselves, with pauline(eldest) an actress and posy(youngest) who pretty much breathes thru dance and petrova(middle and a russian by birth, the one I most identified with) with a knack for neither but loves cars and airplanes. I know you must be wondering why I would identify with petrova. With all three in a dance and drama academy, it's easy to imagine who would be a fish out of water. And right now it's just all too easy to identify with fishes out of water.

Anyways, it was lovely. With all the dance and drama and the grls in general. It's written in the most childlike way possible without sounding precocious. All of which is, honestly, rather surprising coming from a guy( Noel Streatfeild)

I swear, something it's seems almost surreal when a guy has such insight about being a grl. I still cant believe that John Mayer wrote that song all by himself, called 'Daughters'. He won the grammy for best lyrics and I could not have agreed more with a grammy award before.  It's just amazing how he could know without being a grl or even having a daughter. If he wasnt such a talented lyricist and songwriter I would have probably not liked him by now. Miss the John Mayer when he was new to the business... he was still cocky but it was not coz he thought himself as a great musician but more i felt coz an innate nature. Now that cockyness seems to come off more as arrogance than anything else, which is so sad coz i still love almost all his songs and wish i could look up to him! 


Listening to daughters now. I dont know for sure, but i do feel it;s true for almost all [women] out there. least both me and elu agreed with him cent percent. The first time i heard him sing I was in shock. more like, 'how could he know?'.  Well, still feel the same way. Doesnt seem to have the same effect on guys... dont know why?!


--------------------------------------------------------


In the mean time, you ever had a song a book which never loses it's magic no matter how many times you've gone back?

Viral Creativity... is it real?

The old saying was that the secret to creativity was hiding you sources, but when you flaunt openly where you have taken the inspiration from ( or the case that I'm going to discuss, the picture, the video, the song from!) what does it mean?

Is it merely another rip-off or can you truely credit yourself as a creative person with something, though not exactly original, but still new? Where exactly do we draw the line when it comes to intellectual copy right?

This was something that I had briefly wondered about when the Indian Pop scene was overwhelmed with 'remix'es. But since the original creators/music directors/lyricists were all dead no one was around to question it. But it had set forth the thought, 'If the remix is more popular than the original song, then who gets the credit?' The original music director or the remix Dj?

Now with the overwhelming popularity of 'Kolaveri D' song and the million spin offs based on it, the thought has resurfaced. And it's not just wtk*, but thanks to youtube and similar video sharing sites, you have covers being done of almost all the songs by tremendously talented people. As much as I love Adele singing 'Rolling in the deep', I'm almost equally addicted to this little girl's version of it.

The voice is clearly the girl's, but the song is Adele's. If they decide to market this video, what would it mean... who's song would it be? In this case it's simpler because there are not many modifications in the song itself, so the song is still Adele's. But had Vazquez added another riff , a few more beats, changed the tempo entirely then added a rap stanza as well, would it still be Adele's?

Another question which has been bugging me - can the spin offs be taken as creative outputs themselves? They are clearly creative outlets but does that mean they can stand on their own as creative pieces, independent of the inspiration? Hmmm... I think I just got an answer for my own question. I dont think they can ever stand independently.

Had Picasso made his version of 'Mona Lisa', it would still be only a version of Da Vinci's work. Without that reference it would be hard to connect to the painting. We might appreciate the new perspective, but only because we know what the original is like. But if someone who did not know Da Vinci or his works, then would it matter to him as much? Or will he be able to appreciate it more without being burdened by all the implications of what it means to be 'Mona Lisa'?

Looks like I din't answer it after all! :-/ Anyways, Do you have a take on this?
Let me know!


*Why This Kolaveri

Be Kind, Rewind... Chapter 1

This is something I had written in 2008. Just revisiting some of old stuff I had written to family and friends. I could not help post something about 2012 I had written :-/

You are likely to see more on these line, hence the chapter 1!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyways, yesterday when I came back home I found Farah( my then room mate!) checking out a history channel program about bible codes. I dint follow it very well, but it seems when you take the original version of the bible( ie in hebrew) and arrange the words in a particular manner , it seems to predict history. Blah blah blah and more stuff I dont really buy,but what did catch my attention though is according to that it seems our end is coming around year 2012! so just four more years to go. Not that I believe it the way they mean it, but I cant help wondering if the life as we know it is going to exist in maybe ,say 10 years time?

Have you come across Future Shock, by Alvin Toffler? He talks about how we are not able to keep up with technological evolution happening around us. And not just the evolution but it's consequences. Every time I see a report about how we are inching our way to our graves( and there are more than plenty around) I cant help wonder why is that we still dont care. It is so hard to get even my friends to remember not to litter or not to waste. Frankly speaking at the rate we are moving I think only 20 more years, at the max.  That's about all the time, I believe, would be worth living on this planet. Already we are paying for water. At what point do we start paying for air? I think sometime soon a convention is going to happened, sponsored I think by the U.N, just to discuss what we are going to do with the billions of cellphones discarded each year. 10 years ago this was not even a reality, leave alone a serious issue. And in another 2 years, we'll be facing newer and worse problems.


Have I told you about drake's equation? I had read about it quite a few months ago. Anyways drake suggested that a large number of extraterrestrial civilizations would form, but that the lack of evidence of such civilizations suggests that technological civilizations tend to destroy themselves rather quickly. Sounds like where we are going or what? Quality of life on the planet has never been shorter for any generation like for the present one( in terms of fresh air, water, food). Sorry for just rambling on like this but I'm just getting more and more paranoid as each day passes. And in a funny way, I'm almost looking forward for the comet on dec 31st 2012( that's how we are gonna die! :-P) so that the rest of the planet might have a fresh start.  Face it, there was never as obnoxious a species like us before in the history of this planet. And think in such a lot of ways we have always left it a bit worse than how we found it. Like Athi always say, cant wait for it to go to the dogs!! :-)


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 In the mean time I had seen 'Home' on Youtube a couple of days back, a documentary on our planet. The visuals are beyond stunning, esp the first 15 mins. Just some food for thought that we could all take a stab at! :-)

Good bye 2011! Hello 2012 :-)

It's the last day of the year. Did some major cleaning so that the new year is swanky clean..well, least the house! :-) Starting on a clean new slate.


Still got some time on my hands after all the cleaning. Not going for a party. Want a quiet evening at home with a couple of friends.. except the couple of friends are all out.. partying :-/


So I guess it's time to sit and ponder. Get philosophical over a glass of wine. Look at all the things that was 2011. To say the least - a roller coaster ride. 

I don't know if I would call it a good year, but it was definitely a memorable one. One that I will not forget for so many reasons. When I take it apart I can't believe that it all happened in just one year. 

This was 2011!
Courtsey: www.sodahead.com

Some highlights: 

• Last trimester of MBA 'M'
• Bryan Adams Concert
• Valentine's day
• Exams
• Getting a job
• Mad Birthday!
• Graduation
• Missing friends after they have left
• New room mate
• Starting work
• Losing some friends :-(
• Girls' Night outs
• Trips to Hampi and other random places
• Finding some lost friends :-D
• Painting the house
• Quitting work
• The usual dose of family drama over marriage
• Starting something new on your own
• Mom and sis home for Chirstmas
• Some more drama and now here I am!

I don't know if 2012 is the end of the world, but end of 2011 was/is the end of my world as I have known it.

Possibilities and challenges that are so new it's terrifying; yet in parts exhilarating.

So here's my wish for 2012 - For both of us:  

That all the pain and hurt turn itself into some beautiful and creative. 

That you draw inspiration from the possibilities instead of being bogged down by the challenges. 

This should be the year we stop worrying about petty differences and plunge wholeheartedly into making dreams come true. 

This should be the year that we make as many people smile as possible. 

That it should be a year we'll never forget. 

Happy New Year's and God Bless All!

Some Tangy Moments!

Sometimes it’s not the most elaborate affairs that steal your senses, but the simplest. And sometimes all you need is the memory of a taste or a smell to take you away to a time, place, era. For me, it’s the tamarind.

Everyday, on the way to my office I pass this huge tamarind tree laden with  bunches of dusky dusty brown fruit just beyond my reach. Everyday I promise myself one of these days I’m going to bury my dignity and clamber away to the top and satisfy my cravings for the sticky ripe sour-sweet pulp inside. Just like a child. But adult dignity is hard to give up and yet another day passes with nothing more than faint aroma of nostalgia and disappointment.

I had no idea that it was preying on my mind so much till I came across Anita Nair’s Goodnight and God Bless. This is one lady who share so much in common with me that I sometimes wonder if she’s one of my siblings lost at the mela. Apart from a love of Blossoms, the books store in Church street and Chennai this lady has fond memories of the tamarind which is so close to my feelings that I could not help but wonder if she had dipped her pen into my brain before putting these lines on to paper:

Excerpt from Goodnight and God Bless – Seventeen:

“Ever since I was a little girl, I have had a great fondness for tamarind. I like the tree. The teardrop leaves and almost black branches. I like the notion that ghosts and ghouls liked to  inhabit it’s branches… I like the adage that likened a good prospective groom or bride to a well laden tamarind branch. Perhaps what I liked was the physical and metaphysical merged to create a universe and a sersatile one at that. But mostly what I love about the tamarind was the fruit itself.

A moment of heaven and happiness

I liked them green when the tartness made your teeth ache…I liked them semi ripe when each mouthful was a conundrum of: Was that sweet or was that sour? I liked them ripe when the flesh sticks to your fingers as your peel the dry shin off in bits and each mouthful is a taste of heaven…

When my cousins raided the store cupboard in my grandmother’s home for busicuits or jackfruit chips, I was content to dip my hand into the deep earthenware jar in which tamarind was strored. The glistening black, sundried tamarind speckled with rock salt crystals to this day evokes memories of still summer afternoons when the heat paused even the crows’ caw. Of childhood days when you though the world stood on it’s axis and would never move.And you ached to be a grown up…”

The clincher when I read this the first time was the raiding of the tamarind jar. In my gran’s house it was not an earthen ware, but a short, squat little glass jar with a red plastic cover. I could not help but grin from ear to ear thinking of the “raids” that was planned late in the afternoons by me, my sister and my cousin to get a ball of black ‘heaven’;  away under the very noses of the servants while my gran blissfully caught up with her beauty sleep ( which meant one less hawk eyed obstacle to cross!)

Another marvellous memory is going to my native place and clambering up the tree away from the prying eyes of adults and stuffing yourself till you are holding your stomach in agony. But that never stops you from returning the very next day to do the same because the temptation for biting into the soft brown skin is just too much.

But it’s not just the love of the fruit in it’s raw form. I love cooking with it as well. I love mixing it water to make the pulp for making rasam or better still, my new favorite, vatha kozhambu. I love how the tamarind melts to the soft brown almost muddy liquid which goes into making the best compliments for a plate of soft fluffy rice with a dollop of ghee on top.

Like I was saying, tamarind- the taste, texture,feel- is a chapter in nostagia and childhood memories.

So do you have a similar chapter in your life, triggered by a bite or smell of something disarmingly simple? If you do, do share your ‘imli’ stories!

The secret hand book of Moms

Have you ever had a discussion with your friends where you are talking about the impossibilities your mom used to threaten you with as a child and have the entire gang go,’ I KNOW!!!!’? Or gone to a friend’s place and found that her mom nags her exactly the way your grandmom does, though her mom is saying it in hindi while your gran used to harangue you in Malayalam? I always used to wonder how is that moms’ across the country have the same idea. I kinda dismissed it as a common cultural thing ( though to be very honest there is little else similarity between my gran and Parvinder Aunty).

But as the world started to get smaller and my views broader (thanks to cable tv and books.. later internet), I could not help noticing that putting aside language, moms’ across the world nag/threaten/cajole/pet saying pretty much the same thing. Growing up( in my household), the ultimate prophesy of doom was that you’d end up a sweeper if you don’t study. And as a child I never really understood why it was so bad because it seemed a blithe enough an existence to do nothing but sweep. I thought you’d be getting off easy rather than studying another 4-5 years to be an engineer or doctor.

Years later, after 4 years of engineering, part of a new batch of trainees for an I.T company I found myself surrounded by people from all 4 geographies of India. That was one of the best times of my life, to be part of that training, especially the batch I was put in. For a whole lot of girls that was the first time they were away from home, but no one was home sick. Boys and girls would sit late into the night playing off key anthaskari, ‘truth or dare’ at 4 in the morning on unsuspecting and extremely sleepy people leading to hilarious consequences. And of course, marathon conversations which covered everything under the sun, including moms. And it was there that I found replace ‘sweeper’ with ‘chaprasi’ or ‘cooking lady’ in another language and you have more or less got someone else, or rather everyone’s mom! :-/

And reading Amy Tan’s books, you really wonder if she actually talking about Chinese moms or Indian moms coz you really can’t see the difference.

It can’t be sheer coincidence, right? Moms across the world? Only one thing sounded plausible to me. Like the bible, there’s yet another book which has practically been translated into every language known : the secret handbook of moms. I believe as soon as  someone is known to be a mom, some guardian of the code comes and gives her a book under oath that it not to be shared with anyone who is not a mother. It’s a mass conspiracy I tell you. Mothers around the world, united in their cause to shape up someone worth leaving behind. Not that it’s not a worthy cause, but does the ends justify the means? Was so convinced, that I did a mini raid in my house for the book because if any mom is likely to forget where it is and misplace it( or think that she did), it’s my mom!! But the fact that I could not find din’t detract me, in fact it only convinced me the deviousness and ruthlessness with which the organisation works. It fact I think that there is only one copy of the book in every language and that the new mom has to memorise the whole thing before passing it on. You can ask me how is that possible in the day and age of population explosion, but I ask you, is it really that difficult in the day and age of internet??

But to be honest I don’t think it’s a online copy. I think it’s hard copy, a physical thing infused with the power of moms over the ages. It’s probably more like an infectious magical entity. I’m not entirely sure how to imagine an object encapsulating all the wisdom of all the moms. It has to be awe inspiring to the point of being just a wee little frightening while still remaining a thing of great beauty. Kinda like Aslan the lion from Narnia.Something which would disintegrate if touched by anyone who doesn't hold the awesome kind of love and heart that only a mother would have. ( Try breaking that code, Hackers!!)

But then again, with kids like me, I think they would need all the help in the world :-) And only the collective wisdom would rein in and reign over my kind!End of the day, we love our moms ( in fact, if I go home and they don't nag I feel out of place!)

and hope we are half as good as the ones we've had and there's actually a hand book to help us out!

What do you think?!

What curves do to me!

Research has finally found why they have sexy women in casinos- men have the same brain area allocated to sex and money. :-/ Which is why they have all these sexy hostesses in casinos because something about humping them and spending more is linked in a twisted primitive way. 

I've not gambled yet, nor (unfortunately)* am I attracted to women. But there are a particular set of curves, when I see them makes me want to hump as well. This is a confession, and but not the kind you think. Ok, well..I'm not sure what you are thinking, but it's not something perverted (Yeah, I know you are secretly disappointed!).. well.. not entirely.( Feeling better? ;-D)

I'm talking about cars. But not just any car, it has to be one of those sleek feline shaped machines. They usually come under the auspices of BMW, Audi for me. There's something about the lines on them that I just want to run my hand over sensually knowing that there would nothing on them which would jar my senses. Funny thing is, it's not just a physical thing. The engineer in me is just thrilled at the seamless coming together of design and function. The visual is just so perfect and then the purring of the engine... that's practically dirty talk!...How in the world are you not supposed to feel turned on?

Back in my home town, I din't care about cars one bit. I'm the kind of dunce who can't make out the difference between an Indica and Wagon R or even a Santro. I just can't. They all are boxes you use to get from one place to another. I still cant. I know Maruti 800 and Maruti Zen. If someone asked me what car we had I I'm most likely to tell you it's a big car or a small car [ depending on when you asked me]. And what color it is. That is it! I've covered the entire expanse of my knowledge concerning the make of cars.

Courtsey: carplanet.tk

But I remember the first time I feel in love with a car. My ex's place. Had got him a subscription to Auto Mag.  When I went over to his place I wanted to see what was that I was presenting, so took up the  mag and was flipping though it when my eyes feel on , well, according to me, Art! A black shiny drop of a car against a satin ribbon of a road set amidst the hills..A  panoramic long shot which came me GooseBumps!  

I read, rather gobbled up all the information I could about the car- Honda Civic, Not yet launched in India etc etc. That's the first car post 2000 that I could recognised on the road without seeing the bumper!

Courtsey: carplanet.tk

But it was when I moved to Bangalore in 2009 that I realllly started seeing CARS!! Chic BMWs, Sexed-out Audis, flipping over the occasional Lamborghini (I nearly tripped and fell watching this one go by.. so the flipping bit was quite literal!) Not Mercs though. They look a little too bulky for my tastes...and GAWD-I-cant-stop-drooling Jaguar!!!  Remember reading in a literotic story (oh please.. dont look so shocked.. like you never read one! :-P ) this guy talking about a girl with a Jag of an ass. It was an odd enough simile for it to stick in my head, but I think the moment when I fully appreciated the weight of the complement is when I finally saw the bloody car. It's Big, It's Mighty and have I mentioned GAWD-I-cant-stop-drooling Sexy!!

The crazy thing is that I don't think I'm the only one out there. I've asked others just to reassure myself that this is practically normal, and surprisingly... it seems it is! :-/ ( or so my friend reassure me)

So were they being nice.. or is it true for you too?

* Face it.. they just smell nicer.. all the time! You have to feel the loss if you are not attracted to them!