Lazy Lump

Tring Tring!!!

Ok people, pour in your choices of a mobile phone which fulfills the following criteria:

- High on Graphics and Colours (I've had enough of a drab phone for over 2 years now)
- Polyphonic Ringtones
- Long Battery Life
- Price below 10k
- MP3 Player (tough to expect in the range I have but well miracles do happen :)

Ideally I'd want a phone WITHOUT a camera coz I feel a cameraphone is as good as futile when you have a digicam... Anyways such phones give you hazy low-res pictures... But I guess all these phones with the features above have a camera for taken...

So anyways, go ahead gimme your suggestions...

Maggi goes green!

So, Maggi goes the "healthy" way... It dons the whole-wheat avtaar, replete with real vegetable pieces... For someone like me, bitten by the whole-wheat bug, I now get the reason to hog on this yummy thing as much as I want, without the guilt of eating junk food :))

There we are again!!!

Just when I thought, I was where I wanted to be, the games begin & a cloud of uncertainty prevails...

It amazes me how the past few years of my life have changed me... And now it can't seem to be undone...

Contradictions galore... The mind just can't seem to decide where it wants to go & what it's willing to shell out in the bargain... Everything comes at a cost, I know... But why???

Things do get lonely at times...

I've hardly believed in love... For me it is too ephemeral a feeling to go beyond a crush or a clumsy infatuation... Call me over-the-top pragmatic or whatever but I've realized that it takes a lot to see yourself in love... Maybe love is over-hyped or maybe it isn't meant for me... I do not know but I cannot ignore the value of companionship... I guess it is this yearn to be not alone that drives people to seek love... Often I've read that love is not about finding the perfect one, but in finding perfection in the one you love... too idealistic if you ask me... And yet I wonder at times when I'm alone if love would have filled this void... I remember when I wanted to know the difference between love & friendship, people quickly pointed out - it was s e x... So, if a person isn't interested in that or is getting enough of it; can friendship suffice for love? I'll never understand...

I'm seriously out of my senses, is all I can say...

I hate to push things... I believe they should take their natural course... This laid-back attitude has me cost me many times before but I can't seem to be otherwise... It takes a lot from me to move out of my equilibrium, to try & change... Yet somehow to fill in the gap between desires & reality, change is a must...

Images of Hyderabad

It isn't supposed to be a tourist brochure, just Hyderabad through my eyes... Random pictures clicked during my last week, pictures of what Hyderabad was to me...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/59503533@N00/sets/112223/

It's been the usual winter after long...

Waking up to a warm warm quilt & knowing you can stay a few more minutes nestled inside is the most pleasurable of feelings... But alas, a Saturday is any other day for maa... Thankfully, she isn't as unrelenting as before in pulling me out of the quilt the way she was for over 2 decades... Being back after having stayed away from home & being 24 years old does give you concessions :)

It's back to the pre-lunch peanut-munching sessions... Cracking open & popping up the biggest groundnuts in your mouth as you bask in the sun is the perfect act on a wintery afternoon...

It amazes me how my grandmother, past her seventies, is still the fastest with the knitting needles... In rythmic motion, her fingers, hands & needles knit the most intricate of woollens...

P.S. I've tried writing on more than a couple of occasions... Sometimes REDIFF doesn't let me post... Sometimes I end up deleting what I write... Sometimes I can't get beyond 2 sentences, so this time as soon as I crossed that limit, I thought I should post...

P.P.S. I'm in Chandigarh...

How life changes...

A while ago,
just a while... I was with you
& now here I am
a thousand miles away,
away from what was life to me...
and yet I live...

Dear Hyderabad,
You've been my city for the past two years... You adopted me, kept me in your folds... I lived a full life while I was there... Savoured your flavours old & new... Your feel, those meandering roads up & down the hills, will stay with me... And so will many other things which for now won't find a space here...

Memories are strange... Took you for granted when I was part of you... But when I am no longer with you, you form part of so many fond memories... Like all other things, I realize the value of the good times I had when they are past...

Today I am closer to things that I wanted to be with... But you win some, you loose some... And so I sit here typing, the dense fog invites me outside...

Can I say, I am back to where I belong... I do not know this... But all I can say is that this step is in a direction closer to my dreams... Wish me luck...

:)

P.S. I have lots to say but for now the cafe owner wants me to leave the system or else I get a kick out... I am fine, really doing good :)

Over the coffee tables...

T'was after a long time that I was to meet the blogger gang at Hyderabad... And since it was an "official" HBM, we had done our bit to spread the word... But as we had less than a week before we decided on the date, we weren't expecting too many people to turn up... Infact, Neil�& I had braced ourselves for a measly figure of 5, though we were sure to touch the double digit {thanks to Non-Sensei's PR skills}... People started trickling in as per the Indian Standard Time & in another half an hour or so, we knew we'd have to circulate a sheet of paper asking people to give their names & blog URLs so we could keep track of who came...

Yippie! HBM managed to pull in large numbers {if you can call a score that} & it was great fun having so many bloggers rock Barista... Where at one end, there were these bright gals chirping away to glory, at the other corner were these college-going bachas {as they liked to address them as} who after lot of apprehensions {& eagle-eyeing over the proceedings from a distance for a while} made their way into the meet...

As expected there were plenty of digicams clicking away, so much so that one of the bloggers told us they almost felt like celebrities being dogged by paparazzi... The pics should be up soon... Neil you better do it fast, coz I ain't lazy for nothing :D

It was a warm & amiable evening... enough to put me back on track... I felt that I was still part of this world we call blogs...

HBM it is again!!!

If any soul still hangs around on this blog, please spread the word...

Hyderabad Bloggers Meet

Date: Saturday, December 04, 2004

Time: 5:00 PM (don't keep us waiting like last time :p)

Venue: The Good Ol' BARISTA, Road No. 1, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad (where else ;)

See you there then!!! :)

Down but not out...

As is evident, the interest has waned & I've been away too long... Yet somehow, the blog refuses to die down... I have never really been able to alienate myself from blogging ever since I started it... This is perhaps one spell when I am not even reading other blogs... The reasons are countless & hardly important... But the point is, I am here yet yet again looking forward to hit the keys & form words out these... Just a signal that the blog isn't closing down...

This morning after a long time, I decided to blog down the neighbourhood... Very few of the links I have in my list are still active, and there are many I read but haven't updated them in my blog... Well, it was a nostalgic feeling... Funny, because I've hardly been away but felt as if it's an alien world... Visiting fellow bloggers felt like those re-unions with long lost friends... A scroll down some of these & I know I am not going away anywhere... Maybe my presence will not be as evident as it was but surely blogging continues...

Also, not posting hasn't stopped me from blonking (blog-thinking for the uninitiated)... I've seen three movies & have thought of them as blog posts even while watching them... An idea suppressed is an idea lost... which is what happened to them... However, a common chain which ran across the three was "What should be the language of a movie?"...

Morning Raga, a linguistically diverse movie, had English, Telugu & Hindi being mouthed by the characters; Veer-Zaara was a mix of Punjabi, tit bits of a Pakistani dialect of Punjabi & Hindi; Mughal-e-Azam had liberal doses of Urdu along with Hindi... Somewhere I felt, that language tends to act as a barrier in movies... I see it from two angles...

One that of a person, who would want to see the movie as an actual enactment of the events depicted, which would mean dialogues being in the original language... It felt weird hearing Shabana Azmi (in Morning Raga) mouthing her lines in English in her role as Carnatic vocalist who has lived in an Andhra village all her life... The same feeling surfaced when Divya Dutta, Preity Zinta's sidekick in Veer-Zara, delivered her dialogues brilliantly in Punjabi only to see the other characters around her talking in chaste Hindi... It did dilute the effect if you ask me... I understand these movies are meant for a target audience, which are mainly Hindi-English speaking, so the movie-makers tend to play safe by sticking to these... This is what brings to me the second perspective...

How essential is it for us as a viewer to watch a movie only in the language we know??? Would you be willing to watch a movie, if it happens to be in a language you don't understand??? I'm sure it is difficult to appreciate those nuances a director pieces in his movie if the communication itself is an issue... A lot of my friends told me they didn't like Veer-Zaara & I see their problem... Not only was the movie too Punjabi in its general flavour but it also had loads of Punjabi dialogue & song snippets... I, on the other hand, savoured every moment of those scenes & would have done with even more...

Subtitles go well with me, Morning Raga managed to keep me in loop when the guy with the buffalo elicited laughter out of the Telugu audience around me; I atleast managed to read his lines as subtitles & make sense of the scene... May be adding subtitles to the coloured version of Mughal-e-Azam would have helped the multiplex audience fathom the sublime love between Salim & Anarkali better...

Movies no doubt are a director's dream in action, but their wide-spread reach is also desired... It is finally a question of maintaining the right flavour & making your audiences appreciate it... A balance is obviously required or you miss out on one of the two... What are you thoughts???

Of Traditions & Relations

I keep moving away & yet somehow come back... Right now, as I write, the feeling is that of fulfilling a duty... It's been so long that I wrote anything, the last few posts were at the most mechanical... As I've told few people, yes my interest has waned... And guess it has something to do with my thoughts, which appear cluttered and surely can't (& shouldn't) find a voice of their own...

This weekend I happened to see Bride & Prejudice... The movie has generated lots of hype & I did follow up some reviews... All in all, I could fathom that movie was just about average... But yet I had to watch it & so I went with minimal expectations... This one isn't a movie review (TF's review is quite like what I thought of the movie), so I'll just sum up the movie as inane but entertaining... There were some threads which were left loose & the characterisations were not etched out as they could have been... I particularly found the songs in English quite a sore, but guess Ms. Chadha was out to showcase the Indian song-n-dance bit of filmmaking to the world... Yet the movie was pacy & managed to throw light on some facets of Indian diaspora & relationships... A one-time watch would do no harm to anyone...

A few thoughts crossed my mind as I saw the scenes roll by...

What does culture & tradition mean to me??? Is it just about bhangra, elaborate weddings, cows on the roads as they tried to tag the image of our country to???

Does moving to a different country really erode your values & take you away from the "roots"???

To be honest, I feel being away from family, whether or not outside India, is bound to affect your sensibilities... Staying away from my family & relatives, I've noticed changes in me, which are neither too apparent nor make me seem a different person, but nonetheless I'm aware that me is not the same person I was when I stayed with my family... I cannot say whether the change was part of growing up or distance, since both happened to me at around the same time...

I'd partly identify with the character of Kohli Sa'ab in Bride & Prejudice... He is the stereotypical NRI who, having made a fortune for himself in Amreeka, is all out to impress everyone back home... Different people perceive him differently; some in awe of the money he has made for himself, others loathe him for becoming an outsider & having forgotten his roots... But even while ill-mouthing India & Indians, he does a pairi-pena (touching the feet of elders to seek blessings)... Though, I still am very much a part of my country, I do feel had I been back home I'd be not be the same guy I am right now...

...

P.S. ewwwww! Which is why I don't post these days:( I never end up with what I start with in mind...