My word, a noteworthy letter

A couple of Sundays back, I read a cover story done on graphic novels done by Brunch - the Sunday magazine of Hindustan Times, a national Indian daily. I am no expert on graphic novels and have only read a couple of such novels but a couple of friends of mine are quite knowledgable about them. So, I have heard their conversations at times and framed my own view of sorts regarding them. Anyhow, I read this story with interest and felt that there were a couple of things amiss in it. So I thrashed out a feedback note of sorts on my cell phone, saved it as a draft and sent it across to them in the next few days. Here's how it read:

"Your cover story on graphic novels was an interesting read. While it was informative as to how graphic novels have developed in India, I was no closer to understanding the nuances of this branch of novels. The comparison of graphic novels with comic books was brief to say the least and unsatisfactory in my view. Examples of the works of world acclaimed graphic novelists such as Neil Gaimon and Alan Moore could have possibly helped the reader to understand how graphic novels came to be and if at all a blend of text and graphics communicates differently. What are graphic novels really? That question remains unanswered. "The case of the graphic novel in India" would probably have been a more suitable title for this cover story."

This wasn't the first time that I was sending a piece of writing to a newspaper. I had written a piece on how work in a software company compares with engineering college and sent it across to the Hindu, an excellent newspaper whose readership is primarily in South India. Nothing came of it and when I look back at it, I'm not surprised. While I think there is a good flow in the writing, it's more of a personal rant with no perspectives gleaned from other people. I did discuss the issue with some of my batchmates but then I didn't incorporate their thoughts as quotes. I remember having thought then that I can't go about talking to people and putting quotes and stuff in writing. It's only I've started work here that I've realised the importance of doing so and also how to go about it. For the first week or so after I'd sent in the note, every morning I would religiously check the newspaper to see if my article had been published. It wasn't, ever. I don't mind them not having published the piece but would some feedback have hurt them? I had actually met the supplement's editor and sent the piece in as a demonstration of my interest to work with them.  

The past is well, past. 

Last Sunday I skipped down the hostel stairs and returned to my room with a bundle of newspapers. Flipped open the Sunday Brunch, half expecting my letter to be there. And, it WAS! :D It was an amazing amazing kick :) Went around the hostel showing the published note to some friends. 

Maybe I'll look back at this too and think that it wasn't really such a big deal. Sure, a lot of people must be writing in to the paper but heck, isn't it just a feedback note? Maybe. And, no one saw the note and then got in touch with me to congratulate me. (I'm sure my uncommon surname ensures that I have no namesakes.) 

This is how it was printed. A phrase removed and an italicised word straightened. But I'll take it happily. 

"Your cover story on graphic novels was an interesting read. While it was informative as to how graphic novels have developed in India, I was no closer to understanding the nuances of this branch of novels. The comparison of graphic novels with comic books was brief to say the least. Examples of the works of world acclaimed graphic novelists such as Neil Gaimon and Alan Moore could have possibly helped the reader to understand how graphic novels came to be and if at all a blend of text and graphics communicates differently. What are graphic novels really? That question remains unanswered. "The case of the graphic novel in India" would probably have been a more suitable title for this cover story."

It's an outright critical letter that got published in the supplement of a national daily. At 22, I quite like it :)   

  

Blogging versus writing for self

I ran a 5 km marathon last Sunday. One real experience it was. Came back to the hostel and made sure that I blogged about it. Was quite happy too with what I wrote. Was putting off posting it over here and just re-read it. I still like it as a piece of writing but wouldn't want to put it out publicly. Hell, I wrote it because I really wanted to blog about it. Exhibitionist? Maybe. Anyhow, I shall write a proper piece on blogging and what it means. Not now. Age matters.

(I hope to get hold of a better phone when I'm in cal (read: whack my sister's phone. Actually, she wants to give it to me.) and then hopefully I shall have an internet connection at hand in the ruddy hostel. Then I shall blog, a lot more. And I will make it a point to write blog posts only on this interface on blogger.com. Don't know whether it's just me but where I write affects what I write.)

!exclamation mark

I really should write more and so I will. There’s simply loads of stuff to pen down but for now I’ll go with what’s on top of my mind.

In the first half of 2008 I interned at a software company called EMC Corp. I won’t go into the details of what I was doing there, suffice it to say that the work was coding related. A little bit of information though is required to make sense of what I’m going to be talking about. I was assigned the task of coding something called a ‘debugger extension’. In a nutshell, this piece of software involved running a set of commands and viewing the results thrown up by the extension. Now comes the interesting bit – suppose you had to run a command called ‘print’. What you would enter in the command window is - !print. And, this was read as being ‘bang print’. In essence, an exclamation mark was called as ‘bang’! Now I don’t know whether it’s because of this or something else but for a while now I’ve been monitoring people’s punctuation and particularly their usage of the exclamation mark.

Firstly, I don’t know whether I’m a bit unusual but I do attach some amount of value to correct punctuation and grammar. And this extends to the way in which I type my SMSes and GTalk chats. (I have put together a piece of writing about punctuation on this blog) A comma here and not there, some ellipses (three dots - …) at a place instead of a full stop, an emoticon for blank space and you get the drift can completely alter communication. Or maybe, people simply don’t read that carefully.

Coming to the exclamation mark now. I’m not a person who really favours it. Don’t really use it unless I really want to get a point across. The reason for that is simple. A sentence ending with an exclamation mark just seems to have all the emphasis at the end. It almost strikes one as if the writer is really being loud! (Now, I really had to use it there isn’t it.) Italicising words in a sentence strikes me as being a much better way of going about matters. The emphasis gets through neatly and no one’s left with ear ache. Sweet. However, there’s a slight problem. At least for the writing that I do on the job because for some reason that I don’t know, newspaper articles rarely use italics. And by newspaper articles I don’t exclude opinion articles or columns. Regular articles are supposed to be/supposedly neutral pieces of writing but opinionated articles should have italics wherever required, methinks. Would probably add a lot more emotion and emphasis in the places the author chooses rather than a one-size-fits-all exclamation mark. In fact, I just read a couple of column articles which did use italics so maybe it’s not as bad as it seems to me.

As far as people’s usage is concerned, here goes. I’ve noticed that a lot of people really favour the exclamation mark in their SMSes. (I’ve noticed that a lot of people really favour the exclamation mark in their SMSes! Naaaah, right? Glad you get it.) Maybe that’s got to do with the limited space and time that people have when they type out an SMS but I think it runs deeper than that. Maybe I’m being a touch judgemental here but it’s possible that they don’t really have what it takes to write what they actually want to and therefore opt for the ‘safe’ exclamation mark as the entire sentence gets emphasized or ‘banged’. I have another theory which goes somewhat like this. The chatting over the internet concept got really very popular when I was about 15. I have memories of a gang of us playing cricket in the courtyard of a house off Lansdowne and people scurrying off in a rush at around 8 PM. Reason? Because it was time to chat over the internet with folks from the girls’ school. Girls with whom they could have very well spoken over the telephone! I would imagine that the abstraction of the internet sure allowed for some solid conversation in the chat windows. Anyways, so maybe the exclamation habit kicked in from there and then. Of course emoticons weren’t really in at that time. And, the smiley’s been around for over 25 years now.

Maybe I’m reading a bit too much into how people type out their SMSes and chat messages. Maybe they simply don’t care. Maybe. One thing that I do know is that you hardly see exclamation marks in Hindi. At least I rarely did in the Hindi that I did in school. In Hindi, what you always do see is a good ol’ straight line with no gaps in it to allow for any shouting. What I also know is that however cold and lifeless code always seemed to me, someone sure as hell coded something correctly – the code for an exclamation mark. Bang, bang. Beautiful. Or was it just someone who really really liked ‘Kill Bill’. Really do beg your pardon, I simply couldn’t resist that.

Life update, Bombay ramblings and a weekend getaway to Lonavla

Yeah, yeah. I know I haven’t blogged in a while and I should’ve but then I couldn’t and so well, I didn’t. But I would check this space every once in a while, I swear! Anyhow, what’s done is done or rather what’s not done is not done.

Not so long ago, a planned (not chance, mind you) conversation with friends over coffee in Bangalore had me saying that my ultimate dream would be to be a newspaper columnist, a travel writer and a visiting prof. Romantic all right and I myself didn’t know till then that these were my goals. Well, at pagalguy.com I wouldn’t say that I’m a newspaper columnist but I sure got my name going with my articles. And one of the reasons for me getting back to this space is because I might be traveling a touch as part of the job. Oh and I'd be blogging too. 

After I read ‘The seven day weekend’, I really wanted to work for exactly that sort of a company. One thing’s for sure, PG is as close as I can get to that kind of a setup. And after starting this space, I so wanted to get paid to blog. Ooops :-) 

I had just reached office on Saturday morning when Apurv (my Editor) turned around and asked whether anyone in the office would be interested in a trip over the weekend. I was immediately interested and said,”I’m in!” We left office early and I rushed to the hostel because I had to change rooms (oh, that often happens here at Seva Niketan. I know that Bombay’s a ‘fast’ place but judging at the pace at which I’ve changed rooms in this hostel, I would be forgiven if I thought that I was staying in a vacuum of sorts!) and pack my stuff for the trip to Lonavla. Pack my stuff for a one day trip?! Err, yes. I tend to overpack on trips. Don’t look at me, I’ve got that from my mom.

So anyhow, the room changing happened peacefully enough and I was off to catch a ‘fast’ train to Kurla station. Reached Byculla station and as usual found some helpful souls to tell me from where I could catch the train. That’s one thing that I’ve got used to now – The nice and helpful people in this big, bad city. Well, how nice could it be? I had a thousand rupee note returned to me in the hostel. Not because it was a fake but because I had paid extra. Don’t roll off your chair yet. It was returned to me a full day after I had overpaid. And apart from that, the people around here are so bloody helpful that it’s not funny. Ask one person on the road and a couple more who’ll overhear will come to your aid. And all this at the manic pace at which people walk in Bombay, mind you.

This was supposed to be a nice, simple piece of writing about me going to Lonavla with some nice office folks, clicking some nice pictures, breathing some nice air and basically feeling nice. And here I’ve rambled more and travel written less. Forgive me, it’s been a while. And my subconscious self really does seem to have a mind of it’s own, what’s there. (I really should watch less of ‘Heroes’. Getting influenced by it, I say.) 

Well, I caught the fast train to Kurla. Even though it was the fourth Saturday of the month which is an off day for offices, the train was as jam packed as it could possibly be. I found myself like all others, occupying the minimum amount of space in which a human being could possibly stand. I also noticed that one gutsy (or maybe deluded is the correct word) co-passenger had got along the day’s paper to read in the train. No harm in dreaming, is there.

I met Apurv at a Barista in Chembur. He was with Kunal, a guy who had earlier worked at PG HQ and who’d be coming along with us to Lonavla. The techies also arrived soon and six of us were off to Lonavla in a gypsy that we shared with three others and a driver. The road to Lonavla was good and there wasn’t much traffic too. We passed the new DY Patil cricket stadium, saw Vashi station from far and began to doze off, one by one.

We reached Lonavla in around an hour and three quarters and made our way to a dhaba to tuck into some dinner and sip some drinks but of course. You know, there’re all these eateries in the city which call themselves dhabas but a dhaba ain’t a dhaba till it’s nice and open, not too well lit and next to a road but no honks coming from there. This one fit the bill on those counts plus it wasn’t too crowded and had some nice music playing. Quite the ambience for a late night dinner with some drinks, I must say. 

‘Coffees and conversations’. ‘Coffee and cigarettes’. Mocha’s slogan and a movie. Would ‘cigarettes and conversations’ follow by logic? And where does alcohol fit in? Maybe it’s not out there in print but there sure as hell is some link between the three I just mentioned. As the night rolled on, we talked of stories we’d heard or experienced and random things related to books, movies, whatever. Dinner over, the search for the hotel began. We must’ve roamed around for about half an hour when we came across it. Not that we were complaining, the air was fresh and the sky was clear. The original booking didn’t seem to make sense any longer and we trotted off to look for some other place. Found another easily enough, fixed the arrangement and grabbed some shuteye for a couple of hours.

It was 4:30 AM when we all were woken up. Did the usual morning rituals, changed our nightwear and set out to explore the day. I had just put on a thin t-shirt and as the auto raced up the hill, the chilly morning wind snapped at my body. We reached a place called Lion’s point in about twenty minutes. It wasn’t light yet and yet the place wasn’t empty as such. There were some tea stalls set up there and a couple of groups of tourists. We called for some tea and waited patiently for the day to wake up. The tea was hot and just a touch too sweet – exactly the way it should be.
As the time approached for the sun to rise, the sky lightened and the place become more active. Kunal and Apurv had come armed with their pro cameras and set about clicking. I had a camera too but it was more of a casual observer rather than a professional shutterbug. As they clicked, I waited patiently for some more light.

Light was here and we could see the world we had come to. Lion’s point looked out onto a vast expanse of mountains delicately shrouded by a veil of morning mist. There was also a hill with grassy slopes which we walked up for some time trying to find a trail of sorts but unsuccessful. And the air; oh so fresh and clean! We split up into groups.
Kunal and Apurv went off in search of photography. The techies just roamed around absorbing the surroundings. And me? I was here and there, clicking sometimes the camera duo, sometimes the techies and other folks that seemed interesting to me. Oh and there was also this group which was playing some mindless music not too far away from us, jumping up and down mindlessly and doing some mindless drugs. I clicked. One of them even came up to me and asked gruffly, “You sure that you’re not taking a video”. Mindless, I tell you.

It was a great morning. We roamed around together and enjoyed it in our own ways. We stopped to chat at another point. Apurv regaled us with stories about the trekking experiences that he’s had. We also enjoyed the silence, sitting there. The sun was out by now. We moved back to Lion’s point where we had left the autos waiting for us. There we had some more tea and a couple of plates of delicious corn pakodas. 

Rather than wasting our time by sleeping in the hostel, we decided to keep moving and went to the dam that was there. It was a bit of a walk from our hotel but we didn’t really mind it. There wasn’t much traffic or lots of people on the road. I also got chatting with Deepu, one of the techies. It was quite interesting chatting with him. He told me about his engineering college – Dhirubhai Ambani Insti of I & C T, Ahmedabad. Quite an interesting setup they have there. Students can avail of various kinds of courses in Socio, Psycho, the works! Hope this deals spreads across the country. We reached the dam and it was totally worth it. A great view, cool breeze from the water and lots of nuggets regarding animals and wild life courtesy our camera toting friends, self excluded.

We spent an hour or so there and then decided to head back to the hotel. As always, the walk back seemed to pass in a jiffy. We reached, took a shower and then headed out for lunch. Lunch was at another dhaba, this time on the highway. We had some choice non-vegetarian cuisine.

And soon we were on our way back, this time in a public bus. The bus was hot, rickety and choc-a-bloc with people. We settled accounts in the bus after which I simply dozed off. When I came to, we were in Bombay proper. I didn’t need to be told that, what with the heat and stickiness in the air. I got off at the last stop – near Dadar station and had something at the station to quench my  thirst.

It was a long wait for a fast train to Byculla but then I had a friendly stranger to keep me company.     

Dreaming without an alarm in Bombay

I've been wanting to blog for quite a while now. Much has happened in my life and there has been a dramatic turnaround of sorts. Wasn't getting time of sorts to get around to doing it and was also a feeling a touch awkward about blogging about stuff that I hadn't told people as such. Anyways, here goes some long overdue blogging.

Life update in short - I have bid good bye to software engineering, EMC Corp (where I interned for six months) and Bangalore. Presently I'm in Bombay and working as a content writer at www.pagalguy.com which is one of India's top MBA preparation sites and is host to the largest online community of MBA related folks.

Detailed update for the blogosphere - While I was interning at EMC in Bangalore I had trotted over to Bombay for a week's trial at PG. (I haven't heard of any other company which has this trial deal. Probably it's only possible at a start-up but after having gone through it I can say that such a system should be there at other companies especially for people in their twenties. I'm sure if software biggies had a trial period and other choices were available for lost engineers then most of them wouldn't join a software firm!) Anyhow, the trial was fun. pagalguy.com is a startup and there are all of ten full-time employees at this company. After having undergone a six month stint at a 'good' company like EMC Corp, it's truly refreshing to work at a place where people talk normally, play music occasionally, don't meet just for the bloody heck of it and ya are basically chilled out but serious about work.

When I was considering making this career switch, a lot of people simply got flabbergasted that I was considering something like a full-time content writing job after having gone through four years of I.T. engineering. Well, if I had got through IIM A and decided to take up an MBA or gone for Jamia Milia Islamia for mass communication then I don't think many people would've bothered asking me, "So Harsh, do you feel that your engineering degree has been a waste?" I mean, give me a break for Christ's sake. I would love to have a discussion about the function of education as regards work. No problems with that but with straight jacketed thinking? Oh yes! People just seem to think on different lines. Their whole deal is, the entire world bitches about work life, just works for the money at the end of the month, 'learns' to start liking jobs (a touch of arranged marriage ideology here?) and here you're thinking of a considerable pay compromise to go for this vague ass content writing job at this unheard of company (for people who don't know the web and MBA market in India) in BOMBAY! "How will you manage there? It's sooo expensive there man! Difficult to survive there.." Thanks for the advice folks. Think I know myself well enough to know what I should do and dare I say, I can manage in this "mean city" which I've kind of fallen in love with. More about Bombay, the life, work and people I see in this city in future posts.

As for the title, I generally trot over to work at around eleven. No need to set an alarm. Also manage to go for a jog in the morning. Oh, and this is a foot in the door which leads to a lot of things methinks.

Me or whatever the heck 'me' actually means?

I'm quite interested in sun signs, astrology and the intricacies that govern human interactions. Don't know much about graphology but it seems to be quite an interesting way of psyche analysis. I firmly believe that the way in which a person writes can shed a lot of light about the person's character and individuality. Well, graphology attempts to investigate a person's nature through his handwriting. Fair enough, isn't it? (Though I dunno how much time people spend writing on paper these days. Probably some day, we might have some science of analysing the way in which a person types!) I stumbled upon this. People often say ,"I'm not this. I'm not that! Blah blah blah.. I'm just me". That does sound gassy and vague to me. What I do get is every person has a certain essence or core which is difficult to put in so many words. This handwriting analysis does seem to have summed me up at a certain level. Not much in it that I disagree with. Maybe I'm biased. Maybe.. What do you say?

Harsh is moderately outgoing. His emotions are stirred by sympathy and heart rendering stories. In fact, he can be kind, friendly, affectionate and considerate of others. He has the ability to put himself into the other person's shoes.

Harsh will be somewhat moody, with highs and lows. Sometimes he will be happy, the next day he might be sad. He has the unique ability to get along equally well with what psychology calls introverts and extroverts. This is because he is in between. Psychology calls Harsh an ambivert. He understands the needs of both types. Although they get along, he will not tolerate anyone that is too "far out." He doesn't sway too far one way or the other.

When convincing him to buy a product or an idea, a heart rendering story could mean a great deal to him. He puts himself in the same situation as the person in the story, yet he will not buy anything that seems overly impractical or illogical. Harsh is an expressive person. He outwardly shows his emotions. He may even show traces of tears when hearing a sad story.

Harsh is a "middle-of-the-roader," politically as well as logically. He weighs both sides of an issue, sits on the fence, and then will decide when he finally has to. He basically doesn't relate to any far out ideas and usually won't go to the extreme on any issue.

People that write their letters in an average height and average size are moderate in their ability to interact socially. According to the data input, Harsh doesn't write too large or too small, indicating a balanced ability to be social and interact with others.

Harsh will demand respect and will expect others to treat him with honor and dignity. Harsh believes in his ideas and will expect other people to also respect them. He has a lot of pride.

Harsh will be candid and direct when expressing his opinion. He will tell them what he thinks if they ask for it, whether they like it or not. So, if they don't really want his opinion, don't ask for it!

In reference to Harsh's mental abilities, he has a very investigating and creating mind. He investigates projects rapidly because he is curious about many things. He gets involved in many projects that seem good at the beginning, but he soon must slow down and look at all the angles. He probably gets too many things going at once. When Harsh slows down, then he becomes more creative than before. Since it takes time to be creative, he must slow down to do it. He then decides what projects he has time to finish. Thus he finishes at a slower pace than when he started the project.

He has the best of two kinds of minds. One is the quick investigating mind. The other is the creative mind. His mind thinks quick and rapidly in the investigative mode. He can learn quicker, investigate more, and think faster. Harsh can then switch into his low gear. When he is in the slower mode, he can be creative, remember longer and stack facts in a logical manner. He is more logical this way and can climb mental mountains with a much better grip.

Harsh is a practical person whose goals are planned, practical, and down to earth. This is typical of people with normal healthy self-esteem. He needs to visualize the end of a project before he starts. he finds joy in anticipation and planning. Notice that I said he plans everything he is going to do, that doesn't necessarily mean things go as planned. Harsh basically feels good about himself. He has a positive self-esteem which contributes to his success. He feels he has the ability to achieve anything he sets his mind to. However, he sets his goals using practicality-- not too "out of reach". He has enough self-confidence to leave a bad situation, yet, he will not take great risks, as they relate to his goals. A good esteem is one key to a happy life. Although there is room for improvement in the confidence catagery, his self-perception is better than average.

Harsh is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny. They can also be harsh, bitter, and caustic at the same time.

Harsh has a healthy imagination and displays a fair amount of trust. He lets new people into his circle of friends. He uses his imagination to understand new ideas, things, and people.

You smiling by any chance? Thinking that this slippery bugger has finally been nailed?? Well, leave your thoughts, take the test and share with me the beautiful dirt that it polishes and presents to you :-)

Unravelling the science of cinema contd

Aaahh.. It's been a while since I blogged. It's not as if nothing much has been happening. Quite the contrary in fact! Lots of stuff happening and lots will be shared on this platform. Less time to kill these days and I'm quite liking the glimpses of the world that's awaiting for me. Cryptic? Maybe. Interesting? Oh yes! Details? All in good time :-)

I didn't share all the interesting things that were discussed at the film appreciation workshop in my last post. As I promised, I have come back to pen down more thoughts from that memorable weekend. Here goes.

In the last post I spoke about the issue of form and content. On the first day of the workshop we were shown a film which was shot somewhere in Africa. South Africa if I'm not mistaken. The film was a story involving a dog, a black boy and a white man. The scene which will stick in my head for a while happens in the first few minutes of the film. The dog is in a sack, the white man beats the sack and orders the boy (who is his slave) to open the sack. The boy protests, "The dog will think that I beat him!" His master refuses to budge and forces him to open the sack. I won't get into the details of the story but it was a touching story of the man ordering the boy and the dog being in a sense slave to the boy. However, because of that incident the dog nurses a hatred for the boy. The white man has tampered with the dog's reality. I was quite impressed with the film. Left me savouring the fact that I had just seen a very powerful film. It was through the discussion that I understood what the filmmaker had aimed to portray. It wasn't a tiff between two people over a pet. Far from it! It was a film about the colonisation of Africa. The metaphors and parallels that can be drawn by way of film is simply amazing!

Prof. Hari Haran also waltzed us through the opening scene of Ray's classic, Charulata. It's an eight minute long scene and even though I don't know much about cinema, I wouldn't be surprised if it's considered to be one of the best examples of Indian film making. It's a scene with very little dialogue. Charulata is the story of a rich housewife who is lonely but is extremely curious about the world. The opening scene ends with an amazingly powerful shot in which Charulata looks at her husband who's standing a foot away from her. She looks at him through binoculars! And when Hari Haran dissected the scene, it was just so clear what kind of a superlative film maker Satyajit Ray was. To give you an example to illustrate this, Charulata is based on Tagore's novel called Nastanirh. Charulata means "The lonely wife" and Nastanirh means "The broken nest". In brief, the book and film are quite different. In this scene, Charulta goes up to her bookshelf and stands there cooing "Bankim, Bankim" while picking out a book by Bankim Chatterjee. This is Ray signaling that he's not going with Tagore. Exquisite, isn't it?

There were a few short films that were screened at this workshop. A wonderful wonderful short film shown was 'Maestro'. I don't know how easily available it is but my word, it's an absolute must watch! It's an animated film and has this character having every move of his being programmed by an unknown gadget. He comes through as being a powerful person who has each and every need of his attended to. There is a subtle circular motion that is present during the film. And this character is going through a routine which seems as if he's been doing for a long long time. The film ends with this character emerging out of a grandfather clock as the cuckoo! A cuckoo is a 'Maestro'?! ("Each one of us is a king!",Akshay Kumar at the AAIFA awards promoting his film "Sinngh is Kinng")

How does one know that the villain in a movie is the bad guy? Is it the way he looks? The way he talks? His family or his upbringing? Is there a science behind it? Yes, by all means. He is the person whose actions cannot be explained by a motive. Think about it. If you were to know that the 'villain' is killing everything in sight of him because of things that he saw when he was a harmless two year old, would you brand him as villain/bad guy?

Why is it that Hollywood produces so much better scripts that Indian movies? More than 90% of Hollywood's films are based on novels. And in India, it simply doesn't pay to write. Simple. Another point of difference is the fact that Hollywood movies are either out and out musicals or have no song and dance routines. Why?! According to Hari Haran it's purely because of commercial reasons. Hollywood forged ahead with the music video industry while India didn't. Quite an objective analysis, isn't it?

I think that's about it from this wonderful weekend! Hope you enjoyed my ramblings and if you made it through both the posts from beginning to end then I'd like to bump into you someday. We just might become friends, if we aren't already ;-)

Unravelling the science of cinema

The fundamental purpose of language is to communicate. Every language has a structure associated with it. And every language has semantics. So far so good? I already knew this before the film appreciation workshop which I attended a couple of weeks back. On the first evening, I got to know a new word, semiotics. Language has semiotics too. The semiotics of a language appeal to a person's senses. Why is it that when I saw "Neal and Nikki" (a Hindi movie) I left kicking myself and not believing that I actually subjected myself to such crap while others left humming "I'm Nikki Bakshi. Sweet and sexy, hot and happening"?! Semiotics. In simple words, the way that we are 'affected' by a film and how its message seeps into our consciousness and arouses feelings within us.

Film as a language has no rigid structure and depends a lot on semiotics. The semiotics of a film are invariably affected by society and opinions. How we watch and appreciate a film is influenced by what information we carry about the message of the film, the people involved with the film and what we have already heard about the quality of the film. I was quite surprised when I heard at the workshop that renowned Indian filmmakers like Guru Dutt and Ritwik Ghatak were hailed as wonderful filmmakers only after they died! Reason being that the film society of that time had decided that films which had song sequences were trash. Simple. Sad isn't it?

Another interesting thing that I got to know was that cinema is a very mechanical art form. Everything about it has mechanics associated with it! From the equipment that is used to capture scenes to the film which stores the images to the screen on which the film is eventually showcased. "Do films reflect society" is a common essay topic in schools. Let's not get into that but film certainly reflect technology. As advances are made in technology, the face of cinema changes. Cinema really has come a long way from black and white silent films to digital films like "300".

"Cinema stands at the crossroads of real time and elapsed time". One of the many gems that Prof Hari Haran scattered for us fledglings to peck on. Time is probably the most important element of cinema. As he so beautifully put it, "A shot is born only when it ends". "A film becomes a film only when it ends". He asked us to come up with an example of a constant stream of visuals. Constant because it never ends. Answer; close circuit TV! Close circuit TV constantly records the happenings that it focuses on. It may move and thus the point of view that is depicted may shift but it never changes or ends. Not surprisingly, you don't generally find people standing and watching that kind of footage with drooling tongues and sparkling eyes. That is simply not cinema.

Coming down now to 'real time' and 'elapsed time'. A film is a piece of work that is supposed to be watched at a single stretch. (I do know people who watch a film intermittently but have never really understood that.) When a filmmaker makes a film, he makes it keeping in mind that his audience is not going to ditch him midway through it. There is in a sense an unsaid commitment between the filmmaker and his audience. It is clear that time constrains a film. It's not like a photograph or a painting which can be savoured all the time. Time is harnessed by the filmmaker. He uses it as a tool. A long shot communicates that a lot of real time is passing. Many short shots indicate more elapsed time. Elapsed time is the time that a movie depicts which real time is the actual time that is shown on screen. Simply put, a typical movie has about two hours of real time and may represent any amount of elapsed time.

From time immemorial, man has invented tools that replicate his body parts. The simplest example being that of the wheel which was inspired by his knees which he would use for locomotion. Man invented the lens to replicate the function of the eye. It is truly interesting to note that lens in French is objectif. In other words, the lens is objective and does not lie. "Seeing is believing" is no longer true in this day and age. These days we need a photograph in order to believe! (Of course, with the advent of image manipulation even this doesn't really hold water. We should probably get back to good old instincts!)

There were quite a few films shown at this workshop. I found myself noting that the discussion that follows a film screening interests me far more than the actual viewing of a film. At the workshop, there was a discussion on form and content and it is then that I realised that the reason for the above observation was probably that I didn't really know how to view a film. You may be scratching your head and wondering, how difficult is to "know how to view a film"?! Well, tell me something, if I were to put before you a plastic bottle of water, what would you say to be the form and content of what you see before yourself? Is bottle the form and water the content? What if you put beer or milk in the bottle? Same form and different content? What if you use another container to store the water? Different form and same content? WHAT'S the deal? All this leads to an idea that form and content can be separated. That doesn't make much sense, does it? The critical question is, are we deliberating over the form and content of the bottle or of the water? The form and content of the bottle is plastic and the form and content of the the liquid inside the bottle is the liquid. Now, you may be wondering why I'm such a fuss about this. The reason is simple. Each and every film is made for a purpose. The filmmaker has a story to tell to people. This is the content of his film. The way in which he presents his movie, whether it be through a huge budget, hand held cameras, animation or stick figures is up to him and his constraints of purse strings and imagination. This is the form of the film. Too often it happens that we watch a film, appreciate it's story and go home. But what about what the movie is trying to tell us? A simple analogy to illustrate my point. Who are you? Answer without thinking. Fast! If your answer is engineer, student, doctor, alocoholic, drug addict or anything on those lines then that's not who you really are. That's not you at all. That's the function you serve. You could be a person who likes to walk on the road, think about what life really is, throw some stones to the side, smoke a cigarette and get back to working in a factory. Or you could be a person who likes to be involved in multiple relationships at a time, go partying whenever you possibly can, read Mills and Boons on the sly, secretly love C programming and adore cutting work. That's more on the lines of who you are. Similarly, the story of a film is the function that it serves. There's much more to a two and half hour stay in a cinema hall. Films are a medium of communication first and entertainment later. Let's keep this in our pockets, please.

This is turning out to be quite a long post and there's still some stuff which I would like to put down. I may do so, sometime later when I feel like it. There were quite a few short films which were screened at the workshop. There were innumerable names which were scattered around in the various discussions that took place. Prof. Hari Haran was a brilliant teacher! His lectures were captivating, interesting and illuminating. He was talkative even during the breaks between sessions where he regaled whoever cared to hang around him with hilarious anecdotes and beautiful nuggets of information. There was another prof at the workshop, Prof. Manu Chakravorty. He didn't speak nearly as much and wasn't really a captivating speaker when he did speak. But he did come through as an immensely knowledgeable individual and raised some highly pertinent points on occasions.

All in all, the workshop was a wonderful experience. I left it knowing that from now onwards any movie that I watched would hold something interesting for me. After those two days of the workshop I felt as if I had been educated. Not much, just a touch.

Faces from the college at the end of the universe - Memento

The last drag

For the past week I was in Manipal. Had gone over there to submit my final semester's project work. I don't really know what I expected when I boarded the bus in Bangalore. Was just relieved and happy that I'd be getting away from work for a while and meet people with whom I have had some special times. There is a stark difference between my school and college friends. If I had to bring it down to one point, it would be that with college people the conversations mainly happen in Hindi whereas with school friends it's usually English which holds sway. The funny thing is that it just feels better that ways. Anyhow, I find it particularly interesting that even though I have even lived with college people and never really done so with school friends, there is just a different connection I have with the people I meet from school. Guess this is where childhood, innocence, age and maturity come into the picture.

I reached Manipal early in the morning on Saturday. The room I entered was packed with people. People who had come from various parts of India. Come to submit their final semester's project work. But actually they were in Manipal for one last drag from this oh so exciting place.

This week in Manipal was supposed to be special. Special because it was going to be the last time when so many people from my batch were going to be together. It may happen again much later this year when the convocation will be held. But somehow I don't really see that happening. Simple reason being that we won't be required to come down that time. People that I meet unabashedly proclaim their love for Manipal, how unforgettable an experience college has been here and how much they'll miss the friends and times that this place has given them but I'd like to see how many of them come down to Manipal for their convocation when they won't be required by college to do so and would be coming purely for sentimental reasons. Would be interesting to see who all turn up then.

Anyhow, all that is for later. (I really should stop digressing no. But then writing wouldn't be nearly as interesting.) There were lots of people who had come down to Manipal this week. Obviously there was no chance of different groups staying together, whether in the college blocks or in a lodge. So there were groups scattered all over Manipal in different accommodations. They did meet at the various watering holes that Manipal is replete with! Over drinks and cigarettes, many hugs were exchanged, conversations struck, notes compared and promises made of staying in touch even after Manipal. Nice, fake and beautiful. The way Manipal is.

The first few days that I was there, I had to do a lot of scrambling around in order to get my project report in the prescribed format. I just don't get it. You do a project somewhere outside college. When you come for your submission, the one thing which is obsessed about the most is the format of your report. Whether the lines have been indented properly or not, whether undeserving people have been thanked, whether font sizes have been followed or not. Such crap!! Anyways, I gritted my teeth and came through it. That and the project submission. I enjoy preparing presentations. Like to make the slides crisp and relevant. I found myself quite unashamedly procrastinating when it came my project's presentation. It was the last drag. I think I can be excused. Don't you?

I had gone over to Manipal a couple of months back. I hadn't really roamed around the campus then. Was busy catching up with friends then. And there wasn't that feeling of inevitable departure then. This time, I decided to walk around the campus. Trudge along the straight and long road which has no trees lining it. Alone. With my old and worn bag slung across one shoulder. Walk all the way from college to tenth block. Pass the blocks which lie by the side of the road, the small eatery and the basketball court (which is actually used for basketball), the messes where I have had so many meals, the tennis courts (gosh, I wish I had played more!) and reach the block where one gets solitude in a single room. Tenth block felt different this time. It seemed as if I had left it eons back! The corridors seemed weirdly wide and the rooms inhospitable. Guess staying there was an experience of which I had had my fill and more.

Walking around campus felt weirdly good. My mind is infested with memories of this bare campus. Bare campus with its turns, retreats with thatched roofs strewn by the wayside, stores which sell items of daily use and dark alleys. When I looked around at the boys and girls who were walking beside me I felt that right now they were living in a safe and secluded world. Away from the rigours, idiosyncrasies and tensions of the real world. I too have enjoyed my fill of this life. Enjoyed and wasted it too! Can it be enjoyed without being wasted? Rhetorical questions do have a weird kind of empty truth oozing from them, is it not?

Manipal has a long road which pierces it into two. There is a steep slope to it which levels out. It's about three km long and its ends mark the beginning and end of this town. I enjoy walking along this road, when the weather's nice that is. There's hardly ever a semblance of traffic on this road. No swanky cars here. Far from it! Old fashioned Indian cars, various kinds of two wheelers and pedestrians parade this road. And the thing which struck me this time was the lack of sound which emanates from this road! There is strange kind of buzz which one hears. Apart from that? Nothing really. The atmosphere is peaceful and serene all right. Dull and listless too. Ideal for aimless wanderings during college years. More of it? No, thanks.

Coming to the people now. As I said, various groups were staying in Manipal this week. At different places. There was an occasion when a friend of mine called a lot of people for a dinner. People from various groups came. They still sat in pockets though. And it wasn't much fun. I did have fun when I bumped into a couple of people. One of whom I know well and the other was an acquaintance. We chatted for a couple of hours by the side of the road, under a tree. I think I made a new friend then. Manipal does have a certain charm to it. A charm that I feel intermittently when I'm over there. When I sit in front of a roadside watering hole on ground which has ants running all over it, take a swig of some beer, make some simple conversation, wonder what a career really is, enjoy the cool evening weather and gaze at the peaceful road going down the hill.

There were a couple of unforgettable conversations which I had this time in Manipal. Two with school friends who did college in Manipal and another with a person whom I had got to know quite well while in Manipal. As I have said earlier, relationships fascinate me! (And not just 'relationships'. When a 'relationship' ends, does a relationship end?) Anyhow, relationships do change a lot over time. And some of them don't need to be sustained as such. They just need a connection.

There are some college friends with whom I have spent a lot of time while in Manipal. Stayed with them in the same room or adjoining ones, gone on trips to places around Manipal, had some exquisite conversations while inebriated and generally spent a lot of time as we grew younger together. A group of us would always get up, form a huddle and sing "Wish you were here" whenever it played at a particular joint that we'd frequent a lot. On the last night, we didn't. A guy was missing but I don't think that was a reason as such. We just didn't feel like it. You know why? Because college had come to an end. Because it felt like first year again with everyone unattached and staying as we used to in 101 (my hostel room in first year where at any point in time there were in excess of five people in a room meant for two, with at least three people sleeping there at night!)

Because we wanted to enjoy this last drag of Manipal. Savour it. Roll it in our mouths, run it over our tongues and smack our lips. Doesn't quite sound like a last drag does it?

Language and the new online lingo

Each and every language has semantics and semiotics associated with it. These can be considered to represent the structure of a language. Technology can cause immense changes in the dynamics of a language. This can be demonstrated best if we consider filmmaking or photography to be a language. The ‘visual’ languages are most affected by technology. As advancements in technology have been made, films and photographs have completely changed! From the black and white silent films of Charlie Chaplin we have come to the purely digital realm of a film like “300”. I talk about all this before getting down to the issue of online communication simply because I want to illustrate that technology has completely altered the experience that gazing at a photograph or viewing a film has been. Altered the way in which our emotions are affected by these experiences.

Online communication clearly deals with the languages that we use in every day life in order to communicate with one another through the medium of words. We communicate online through the internet and the short messaging service provided by the cellular providers. In the past few years it has become clear that the English language has been greatly affected because of online communication! Youngsters these days have no qualms in quite literally murdering traditional English usage and communicating in what appears to be a different language altogether! Vowels are often skipped, sentences are broken, punctuation is ignored in most cases and to top it all, the ‘text’ is interspersed with strange looking emoticons.

So has much the English language been ruined because of online communication? It has been ruined to an extent keeping semantics in mind. The rigid structure that has been followed for all these years has undoubtedly been ravaged. Apart from this, phrases such as “lol”, “asap”, “brb” have become part and parcel of everyday usage. Purists obviously look down upon these new developments and in most cases cannot even decipher what a youngster may be attempting to communicate through the medium of online communication!

Like all languages, the English language also has semantics and semiotics associated with it. We have already seen the impact that online communication has had on the semantics of the English language. What about the semiotic aspect? In my opinion, online communication may have had an immensely negative impact on the semantics but it undoubtedly has had an even bigger impact on the semiotics of the English language. Messages sent in the apparent gibberish of online chats or SMSes are extremely personalised so to speak. Each person has his own way with the new lingo that we see around us. Apart from that, we need to question the reason for this lingo actually coming in to being. One reason obviously is that it is much faster to use. Another and more interesting reason is that society has changed and the way in which we express has changed.

The grammar of language may have been ruined because of online communication but language is definitely richer because of it.

Hmmm... 30 minutes... 500 words... Not bad I'd say. Posting it as I wrote it under those constraints. Not very good work by any means. Under the circumstances? Nice.

Why I will send my daughter to a B-school but not my son

It is interesting to study the changes that have taken place in human culture. In ancient times, the hunter-gatherer culture prevailed in society. Men and women actually shared the activity of procuring food whether it was through the task of hunting or gathering. There was no explicit subdivision of tasks on the basis of gender. Whatever subdivision existed was due to the differences in physical ability. It was only later when agrarian culture was adopted and the focus was on extending the family that gender subdivision of tasks came to be.

The ancient culture is so back, isn’t it? Women have made their presence felt in all spheres of work, from microbiology to literature to engineering to sport. Modern culture (which just sounds so ancient now, doesn’t it) expects and indeed requires that women don’t just bake the bread, they earn it too! The men and women in the family go out to hunt. They have to. So where lies the difference and what’s in a B-school anyways? Let’s investigate.

The vast majority which participates in the B-school show does so because of various issues associated with a management course. Some of these issues being; it ensures a hefty pay packet at the end of it, many useful contacts may be made in the Machiavellian environs of a B-school and a foothold is obtained in the cut throat corporate world. What about the learning, one may be tempted to ask. That's not even a factor that a wannabe B school grad considers!

Harsh but true.

I would send my daughter to a B-school because I would want her to experience a B-school and everything that comes with it. It would in a sense be a social learning which is impossible elsewhere. What about my son? He’ll hunt. Hunt in the only place where one should; the real world. Why shouldn’t my daughter do the same? Simply because she’d be a woman and in an anthropological perspective, ‘new’ to hunting. Her hunting would need some fine tuning right? The toilet training that a B-school provides should just about do.

"Beautiful beautiful involvement, remember?" Here we are talking about which of my children I'd be sending to a B-School! Sigh... The pitfalls of loving to write ;-) I stumbled upon this essay topic on the net. Laughed for a couple of minutes. Then realised that it's quite a bitch to come up with something coherent and true! I had to sound just a touch sexist to do justice to this topic but I like what I came up with :D

My newest friend

Recently, I have got to know someone a bit better. Someone with whom I have flirted for a while now; flirted for the first time when I was a boy fresh in college, flirted on occasions when I was out of Manipal, flirted when I was at some of the places which we would frequent in order to just get away from everything. Nothing more than harmless flirting please. That was my attitude then. As with all flirtatious exchanges, one doesn't really get to know know the other person. Perhaps that's the beauty of flirting. Perhaps that's why flirting is so enjoyable. Perhaps.

One fine morning, we decided to take the next step. No commitments please. I have had ENOUGH of them. Beautiful beautiful involvement please. Please? (You do know the egg-bacon breakfast joke don't you? You dont?! Aaah, I have something wonderful to narrate to you when we meet next. It'll be a pity if we don't get to meet. A real pity.) This is my attitude now.

The company cab was a bit late. I was getting bored. A little voice had been urging me for a while now. For quite a while. It hadn't been loud. That's not me at all. Never have liked to be loud. Nice and subtle is the way to be. Nice and subtle. So anyways, I decided to take the plunge. Finally. And I saw the light. The mind seemed clearer, the head lighter and the surroundings seemed to have, now how do I put THIS, a rare 'cleanliness' about them. Not much, just a touch. Nice and subtle, remember?

And so, it began. A new relationship. Different from the ones that I have experienced so far. (Seems to be quite the season for it, isn't it? More about this in another post. Maybe. I'll have to consult my friend.) The initial novelty and headiness that one gets from a new relationship has worn off. These are good signs aren't they? Probably not. These are probably badly good signs. Whatever sense that makes. I don't care. Anyhow, as with all 'relationships', the nature of it will depend on the parties involved. How we get along as I get older. How we get along as I become more of an individual. Do remember that I'm back. Back from the wilderness. Back with a friend. But not out of jail, yet.

All of us have friends. Kind of difficult to survive without them, isn't it? Just the way we look at our friends is different. Very different! So anyways, with this friend of mine it's a bit different. I hate being dependent on things, whether they be people or activities. (Unless of course I have to do something which I detest; doing things out of character.) Maybe that's why I would like to flirt with this friend of mine. I'm older now, remember. As I was saying, it's a touch different with this friend of mine. We get along fine obviously. Not much conversation actually, which is not really a negative if you think hard. It's just the feeling that I get when I'm with my friend. A feeling of not being alone. A feeling of being shown the light. The way it should be shown. Slowly.

I like spending quality time with my friend. I don't like my friend to be around all the time either. (Most 'bad' things are 'good' if enjoyed in measure, isn't it?) I'm fine alone too. I was all these years. Or was I? Anyhow, I like my life better with my friend around.

Beautiful beautiful involvement, remember?

Looking out for fun in a new playground :)

My father eyes

Dad. In Goa, It was quite an experience playing TT and pool with him :) When I was a kid, I remember that the family had once gone to the maidan in Calcutta to play cricket. There are still pictures of that morning :) While playing TT I noticed that like me, even Dad prefers the backhand to the forehand. He picked up pool pretty fast too. Began to quite enjoy the games also I think ;)

Like Dids, he also has verrry expressive eyes. They flit from one emotion to another by the second.

Quite a character my father is. Quite a character. A curious character, if I might add. He would be, wouldn't he?

Don't forget. He is a theatre person.

Ms Mascarenhas

My sister. I was just going through the pictures that I'd taken in Goa. Trying to zero in on a good picture of her. It wasn't very difficult. A bit, yes. She's got a very 'camera friendly' face. A natural smile and isn't camera shy at all (Saggi after all! ;P) Most of her pictures come out well. The difficulty lay in picking out the most natural picture? Well, they were all pretty natural! The difficulty lay in picking out the natural picture in which 'she' had been captured.

I like this picture too. Haven't played around with it that much on Picassa. Didn't even try to see it in black and white! Even if it did look good in that, the picture wouldn't have been true to the bubbly person that she is. I don't think I even need to mention the details of the resemblance in this case!

As for the title, it's a private joke that probably even my sister has forgotten! Haven't you Dids?!

Hope you like it Dids! I do :D

Mother

Mom. She and I go a long way back. Not surprising, is it? ;P If you have ever seen me then you can immediately detect the striking resemblance! The same round face and a tremendously mischievous twinkle in the eyes whenever a smile is FLASHED. Like me, Mom tends to get a bit conscious when she is photographed. Of course, we both love to see the photographs that eventually come out ;P

I really like this picture of her. It's natural :) They way photographs of people should ALWAYS be.

Ever thought about punctuation?

Hi...

Hi!!

I've been waiting to see ya..

I've been waiting to see ya :P

How have you been?

How have YOU been ;)

Life's good but just a touch busy!!

Life's good but just a touch busy...

You look quite different from when I saw you last!

YOU look quite different from when I saw you last :P

Yeah, I guess it shows here and there :(

Yeah! I guess it shows here AND there!!

How does it matter anyways?

How does it matter anyways??!!

Does anything really matter?

Does ANYTHING really matter?!

Things are still the same aren't they...

Things ARE still the same aren't they!!

Shouldn't we try to move on in life??

Shouldn't we try to move on in life...

It can't be SO difficult can it?!

It can't be SO difficult can it...

Do you ALWAYS have to act difficult?!

Do YOU always have to act difficult?!

HOW DID WE GET TOGETHER?!

How did WE get together?!

Who are you and who am I?

WHO ARE YOU and WHO AM I?!

'Journalistic' article or veiled essay?

A piece of writing that I put together a month or so back. My first attempt at writing an article for a newspaper. Like most first attempts, nothing really came of it. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the exercise :)

School is widely regarded as the first social experience. College marks the end of the beginning. School (and home in most cases) is left behind. Students are forced to see dreams in a real life perspective and they take the first few steps towards independence. The journey to college marks a watershed in their lives as for the first time they briefly get to savour freedom of choice.

Choice titillates eighteen year olds who are young adults. Adulthood beckons them. Confusion, social pressure and job security lure many into taking up engineering. Engineering allows an individual to choose between diverse avenues of employment after graduation. Choice is thus enjoyed and deferred.

Most of the students at engineering college are away from home for the first time. Freedom, the routine classroom environment and rigorous curriculum drive students differently. A select few immerse themselves in self study and project work. Some students involve themselves with extracurricular activities (most of which cannot be mentioned in print!) and computer games. The vast majority distance themselves from academics and do not identify with the coursework that they are subjected to.

The end result is that a large number of youngsters find themselves to be caught in a web of interminable hours in the classroom, innumerable examinations and little or no official leisure time. It is in such a situation that relationships are forged, the classroom becomes a place to recoup energy that is spent elsewhere, last minute preparation is accepted by teachers and students alike as the norm and procuring notes for photocopying is made a fine art. Students love college for the freedom that it provides to find or lose one’s self. They feel that engineering is less an exercise in learning and more an experiment with education.

Recruitment in engineering colleges begins in the third year of college. Not surprisingly, students also pull up their socks at that time! Discussions about pre-placement talks, pay packages and companies dominate their hitherto carefree lives. Some students say that college helped them to gain a clearer perspective on life. The abundance of choices available post engineering notwithstanding, a high percentage of students commences professional life in a software company.

Most software companies operate behind a veil of informality. Casual e-mails are framed carefully and orders come gift-wrapped with smiles. At work every action comes under the scanner and friendship does not come with the click of a mouse. This may not as yet be an Orwellian scenario but nonetheless freshers say that they have to learn to cease living by instincts and fend for themselves. Fast! Once in the workplace engineers adapt well and most feel that this has little connection with their college education.

The majority of engineers feel that their ‘chosen’ course of study did not enrich them academically. However, they do concede that the rigorous curriculum which most of them underwent in a disinterested mode has left its traces on their mind and helped them gain financial independence. The minority that participated in the rigmarole of engineering college believes that the hectic college years provided a flavour of the pressures of professional life and equipped them to feel at home in an organisation. The consensus is that actual learning takes place only at work and that the first job is a stepping stone for post graduate studies.

It is quite an eye opening and soul wrenching experience for engineers to accept technical activities as part and parcel of their lives. For some, every day dawns as a new project with tickets attached to it! They understandably look back at their college years wistfully, yearn for a few more years of a life without worries in which they could follow their hearts, only to realize that life must go on and grudgingly appreciate work and its inevitable consequences – monotony and money.

A beautiful afternoon spent sipping writing

May Day has never felt so good!! It's probably the only world holiday that's there. I'm not sure. Whatever, it felt good to get a day off from WORK :) Wednesday night was spent in having some beer, chilling out and relaxing. I had gone over to some friends' place and they unfortunately didn't have a holiday. Weirdly enough, their company had some strange arrangement which required them to 'choose' their holidays. Stupid corpo culture. Anyways, I got up in the morning and was feeling unusually fresh and nice. Probably there should be more of these sweet arrangements of mid week respites :D I had kinda made up my mind that I'd spend some time reading "Human Zoo" by Desmond Morris at Crossword. I find anthropology quite fascinating :) I got caught up a bit talking to a friend and watching some interesting programs on Travel and Living. It must be quite a job travelling across the world, meeting all these interesting people in the most obscure places, seeing the customs and traditions unique to these places. I must admit, it does seem quite attractive from the point of a viewer. Obviously there would be some big time negatives associated with it too. A job's a JOB. Isn't it?

Anyways, while I was engaged in talking to my friend and watching those programs, I saw a couple of Filmfares lying around. Now, I'm not the Bollywood masala movie fan from ANY angle. But lately I have started reading a bit about Bollywood gas from here and there. So I thought that I'd just flip through it. The first article that I read was that of the editor. HOLY FUCK! It was a KICK ASS article. He spoke about how the idea of a relationship has changed dramatically. About how it's nowhere near as sublime and pure as it once was. About how it is akin to a commodity that has a 'shelf life' associated with it. He was obviously referring to Bollywood relationships but it was beautiful beautiful writing nonetheless. Definitely NOT the kind of stuff that I expected in Filmfare of all the magazines! Whats there :) I read some of his other articles too. I read some articles aloud also. The exercise felt nice and touched the recesses of mind that were once devoted to elocution and debating.

I finally made it to Crossword and got my hands on the anthro book. Good writing. Heavy writing. The kind of writing that one should read at leisure and not while in a bookstore. Some interesting thoughts there. About how the human tribe slowly formed sub tribes within itself. How language has both united as well as divided society. Very good stuff. I moved on to some travel writing. Pico Iyer. I'd heard that he writes well and also injects a dash of humour in his works. Discovered it to be quite true! I picked up a book of his which dealt with 'lonely places'. Gosh, he sure writes amazingly in the brief intro wherein he talks about what loneliness actually IS. Thought provoking stuff.

I needed a break after reading. Went for a stroll outside ;) and then when I came back, I was in the mood for some light reading. Fresh from the Filmfare experience, I picked up a copy of "Cine Blitz". Good crappy Bollywood masala. Crap interspersed with my kinda stuff :) A Rahul Bose interview made for interesting reading. Some other stuff which I can't recall now. Must not have been as good. Aah yes, there was an interview of Nagesh Kukoonoor too.

And then I struck gold! Came across this book titled "How to read film". Enticing title isn't it? So I started going through it. I immediately knew that I'd got my hands on a bible kind of thing! A bible on art, film, the works. Read a chapter. Knew that THIS was a book that I wish to possess. Reserved it. And I shall collect it this weekend :D

Whew. Quite a cocktail of writing wasn't it? I enjoyed it THOROUGHLY :)

Of wanderings and a conversation

I always enjoy walking around the MG Road - Brigade Road area here in Bangalore. It gives me a slight flavour of Calcutta. A good and improved flavour of Calcutta. It reminds me particularly of the Chowringhee area near Grand Hotel. Where you have the hawkers sitting around selling all kinds of garments. There are no hawkers as such over here. MG Road is what brings back these memories. It's wide and there's a kind of bustle about the crowd. Calcutta is of course more crowded and there is much more of a bustle there. The bustle and the crowd here is enough to make me smile to myself and enjoy the experience of walking around there :) What I really like about the experience of walking around here is the people that I see around me. It's completely different from Calcutta! The crowd is 'richer' and it's very diverse. PYTs clutching on to the arms of their partners, foreigners walking around carrying their backpacks, up and with it thirty year olds and the local crowd which makes up a minority.

Brigade Road is what I would call a more compact version of what I would imagine Park Street to be in earlier times. These days the Left government seems hellbent on destroying whatever remains of it! I think it's more 'compact' because of the narrow road, the numerous shops which are quite literally stuck to each other, the slow moving traffic and the slim footpaths which are teeming with people. Diverse crowd again. The road's got a definite pulse and buzz to it.

On Saturday I had stopped by at a juice shop on Brigade. Was looking around for something with which to quench my thirst. It was nice sitting there. Peaceful, sitting on a long stool, looking out on Brigade Road. Just a touch away from the crowded street. In came a foreigner. It struck me that he asked for an anaar juice. Anyways, he sat down and I started a conversation with him. It was quite an interesting chat we had. We discussed how America and India are diverse in their own ways. Some of the stuff that he told me was quite new for me. I didn't know that in nearly every American city, people of many nationalities interact with each other. I did have a vague idea that local conflicts are not uncommon in America. We also concluded that the means of communication that we have around us are completely changing how society operates.

I feel that eyes reveal a lot about a person. The American's eyeballs were light blue, bright and constantly twitching. An alert person I thought. Half an hour passed in a flash! I have met foreigners before. But never really had a conversation as such with one. Good shit :)

Goa : Faintly familiar and flippantly familial

Mom came up with the idea that the entire family should get together in Bangalore and go for a family holiday to Goa. When I was a kid(d) then the Maskara family would invariably go for a summer vacation to the hills. It's not like I remember those trips vividly or anything. There are remnants of those times in the recesses of my mind. Of looking at sheets of snow for the first time at Rohtang Pass in Manali, of doing wall rappelling at a camp organised by Aurobindo Ashram, of ploughing through snow at Changu Lake in Sikkim and of walking along Kodaikanal's famed Coker's Walk and admiring the smoke that one's breath forms in the mountains. These are the sights I can pull out now from the top of my head.

So anyways, the trip was planned and they arrived here last Friday. Memories are strange friends aren't they? The minute I saw Mom, I instinctively had a broad smile and it just felt so good to see her! No reason, just feeling. While Dids was collecting her luggage, Dad gave me company. Are father-son relationships always a touch subtle? I immediately asked him something which I had been mulling over for quite a bit; the reason for him having been a smoker for over thirty years when he always came through as a health freak. The answer was surprising and when i thought over it, it made perfect sense. So anyways, that issue dealt with, we had a nice, healthy pause. Something which characterised our exchanges over the next week or so.

Dids and I are like two differently alike peas in a pod. From the airport we came to the PG and had one of the few but precious conversations that made the past week so flippantly familial. Not surprisingly, the first one started with a cigarette :)

The guest house that we got to stay in courtesy of my sister's company (Dentsu : A Japanese advertising agency) was beautiful to say the least. A wonderful duplex setup. Comfortable rooms with high ceilings, nice sofas, well designed interiors that gave us a passing flavour of Japanese culture and a small swimming pool with a nice porch to go with it! Probably the most comfortable home setup that I have ever seen.

Just the first dip in the pool and the initial headiness that Goa gives was enough to convince matre and patre that one requires more than two days to experience Goa! We decided to extend our trip by a couple of days. Off to Kalangute beach in search of a travel agent who could bail us out. As we approached Kalangute I began to get a whiff of old times. The guest house where I had stayed on my first trip to Goa three years back, the Kalangute circle where we had sat on the morning of 31st December kicking ourselves for not having made prior arrangements for spending the two most awaited days of a year in Goa and the stalls where I had gone shopping for a Goan sarong for an elusive person. We got our trip extended all right. (It would have been hell for me if we hadn't done so considering that the train ticket which I had got for our return was for May and not April!)

I remember the Saturday Night Bazaar at Ingo's which had so captivated me. It had seemed like a different world to me then! Foreigners selling exotic wares, exquisitely worded alcoholic beverages, wonderful music and ambience! Unfortunately, Ingo's was done for the season and we made it to Mackie's which disappointingly turned out to be a poorer version. It wasn't a patch on Ingo's. It was still nice, what with the family sitting together, having some pints of beer and enjoying some live performances.

We settled into a kind of a routine at Goa. Waking up by around nine or so. (That's for me of course. Mom and Dad are earlier risers. Comes with age I guess :) ) A dip in the pool, kind of home cooked lunch, a bit of rest in the afternoon and then off to the beach by four or so. Fortunately, we chose to go Arumbol on Sunday. If ever you decide to go to Goa, don't forget to visit this beautiful beach. Arumbol is close to being the perfect beach. The air has a certain freshness about it, the sea isn't too rough or calm and the beach hasn't been commercialised as such and neither has it lost its virginity.

I will never ever forget the afternoon that I'd spent at this beach on 31st December 2005. We had heard that one can get Multani Mitti at this beach. (For the uninitiated, Multani Mitti is mud that is supposed to be good for the skin and gas. It's probably originally from Multan or something like that) And we had also heard that one can get naked foreigners applying the Multani Mitti at this beach! So that's what had drawn us to this beach. We admired the beach and the locale on reaching there but had no luck with the Multani Mitti bit. And then the hand of God led us along in a guessing game where we walked along mountain trails in Enid Blytonesque style. As we followed our instincts and just went with the flow of things. As we skipped over the pebbles and stones that lined the brook in which flowed the mitti, ignoring the absence of the sight that we had been lusting for and simply following what appeared to be a slightly well worn trail. We passed settlements of foreigners which consisted purely of hammocks. We met a foreigner who was sitting peacefully on a small boulder who languidly responded to our query of what lies ahead by saying, "Oh, up ahead is the Banyan tree." At that point we didn't pay attention to the article that he'd used. We continued ahead. And then it came upon us. An old old Banyan tree which had a platform of mud alongside it. Bookshelves lined with books on religion and mythology. Some foreigners who were 'resting' over there. A child with glazed eyes who was walking around aimlessly clutching an orange in his tiny hand. An Italian and a man from Puri who were equally at ease there. Unfortunately, the remaining memories of this beautiful day cannot be unraveled on a public platform like this. Sad but that's the price we have to pay for this wonderful mode of expression called blogging ;)

Flashback over! At Arumbol we reached that idyllic lake which is unique to this beach. The family obviously wasn't in a position to engage in Enid Blytonesque skipping, so we asked a shackwallah to get it for us. Last time we had seen the brook but not applied any of the mud. It was a real experience! Covering our bodies with the paste, laughing at ourselves as we saw ourselves practically as ghosts with bodies! (The mud forms a creamy layer on the body as it dries) And then washing it off in the peaceful lake. Taking pictures, laughing, having fun, pulling each other's legs! It was a family :)

Bathing and cleansing over, we settled at a shack for a bit to rest. As Mom commented, the beach had a certain serenity and peace about it. Came with the waves, the locale, the air. Everything! It was a wonderful Sunday afternoon.

Doing the water sports was an experience too! Water scooter, para sailing, the funky banana boat ride. The best part was that we were all in it together. I like to think. I like to think about thinking too. And when I was doing those water sports, it seemed to me that there are moments in life which are meant to be simply savoured. One doesn't know what to do. Or what to think. One simply smiles. That's what happened to Mom, Dad, Dids and I. Same family remember :) As we each felt the fresh sea air and the rocking waves, took off while para sailing, dangled our legs in nothingness, felt like birds, admired the blue expanse and the palm trees that suddenly seemed different. To be honest, I expected the para sailing to be much more exciting. Once in the air everything just seems slower. Nonetheless, it was a good experience!

"Staying OK" is a wonderful wonderful book. As Dids and I discussed, it's not really supposed to be read on a family holiday ;) But it just makes a lot of things very clear and it got me through this flippantly emotional trip. It was good exchanging A-A conversations with my sister and I guess I'll just have to live with (at least for the next few years) the largely crossed transactions that parents and children have when the two parties don't really shake hands on how old they actually are. ("Staying OK" deals with transactional analysis. It's a wonderful concept.)

Fond bye byes were said at the airport. They were an interesting six days all right. At the end of it all, I would call it a beautiful time. Not beautiful because it was amazingly memorable or anything. It was beautiful because it stoked the fire of memories. That's why.

Aaaah... long post isn't it... I had promised to not indulge myself with them, hadn't I? Well, I have and what's more, I like it too :D And, I don't think this comes under "what happened in my day and crap like that" does it :)