O bloggers where art thou?

A Looong, looong time ago in a Galaxy far, far away ......... cut cut cut. I know these are emotional times but there’s no need to get all melodramatic right about now. The point I was trying to make was make that a while back I had started blogging taking me on this emotional rollercoaster where thoughts flew thick and fast as I put myself along with various my contrived ideas for public consumption. Some people joined me in this journey as we exchanged our thoughts across our set of blogs resulting in there always being something to look forward to at boring hours at work, or times when we got tired of pointless surfing across the net or watching too much TV. It was a fun time where all those people on my blog roll posted actively and I opened up their blogs in expectation of reading something new. But of late I have noticed that a lot of blogs that I used to visit and even actively comment on, have been going dead from lack of activity. I don’t know whether it’s a plain exhaustion of ideas, or lack of time, or just loss of interest in blogging. Whatever it is this affliction is quite bad because it’s taken epidemic proportion and stricken almost every blog on my blog roll. I have been a victim too but I a not ready to give up anytime soon. Even though I might be creatively broke of late blogging still continues to give me as much joy as it used to. So for the sake of the joy that runs across all the readers including mine when I visit blogs I like and see a new post, we should all pledge to continue to write whenever we can. As I have said before blogging is not about penning masterpieces, if it was people would just simply switch to reading books from fancy authors. Blogging has always been about people who like you managing to get a piece of you and I don’t think it’s fair to deny them their share, so write on bloggers :)

Life's palette

Life is but a gamut of emotions
Despair is but sadness in slow motion
Contempt is but an egotistical devotion
Anger is but aggressive frustration
Jealousy is but spiteful serration
Hope is but an optimistic notion
Ecstasy is but manifested elation
Love is but the sweetest potion

Happy Valentines Day to all you all :)

LMTWGR

It had taken him 28 years but Aryan Malhotra had finally managed to realize all his dreams. He had finally moved into a dream condo in Manhattan, had a dream job and was living the life most people dreamt of living by the time they were 40. His peers said he was living the American dream but he refused to be drawn into any such conversation because he always believed that the American dream was only for the outsiders. Even though his parents were Indian he had been born and brought up in America. While his parents had struggled financially with his upbringing, his hard work and determination to succeed had pulled him through the most prestigious of colleges and the most sought after degrees to the life he was currently living. He had grown up in this country which he had always thought of as his own and inspite taunts and slurs at his early school days he had always regarded himself as an American. He often heard people praising him or bringing him down on how well he had adopted the culture but in his mind there had been no choice. He was the way he was, having no real attachment to his parent's homeland often feeling very out of place on the two occasions that he was ever down there. He was lost in this chain of thoughts till he braked sharply bringing the red light ahead of him into focus. He smiled to himself as to how easily he let himself float in these train of thoughts.

It was then that his attention was drawn to the light on the dial of his new beamer indicating time for a refill on the gas. He decided to pull into the new gas station that just opened the day before and whose low prices had caught his attention immediately. As he pulled into the station he noticed that it was owned by a bunch of Indians and he got that funny feeling again. The feeling he always used to get being around people from his own country, a feeling that they somehow wanted to connect with him being from his country, and him feeling as if he had nothing to give back in return because he was someone else. He wished they would stop greeting him with eyes that seemed warmer than they would be for others and that lit up when seeing someone from their own country in a foreign land. His hand immediately reached out to turn his I Pod from the Bollywood songs he was playing to some heavy metal music. Bollywood songs were something that he considered were passed down in his genes and even as he grew up he somehow found it very hard to give up on his fondness for all Bollywood songs just like his mom. It made up for more than half his music collection on his brand new I Pod and he took it along with him wherever he went in his car. However he felt kinda odd when driving up his car to this station for some reason and for reasons unknown to him he changed the music from Indian music to some English songs he didn’t enjoy as much too. He even surprised himself when he found himself behaving in a detached and indifferent manner to the old man attending to him and left without so much as responding to his greeting as he drove off from the station. He found this feeling overcoming him every time he drove through that the station in the months thereafter. He got all uncomfortable everytime making sure he changed his preferred Bollywood play list on his I Pod to the not so preferred rock and metal play lists everytime he got there and avoided making too much eye contact with the old man who greeted him very warmly everytime he attended to him. He would have actually stopped going there altogether if the station wasn’t right next to his home and if it wasn’t so much cheaper than the other ones.

A lot had been happening in Aryan Malhotra’s private life since moving to Manhattan about six months back. His wife was expecting their first child and reading up all those baby care self-help books took up whatever time his busy work left him in the day. He was really looking forward to the baby personally and everything seemed to be progressing smoothly. So he was surprised when he was woken up 2 days before the expected date of delivery by his wife as she was complaining of labor pains. He immediately rushed out of the bed and was ready with his SUV pulled out in front of the house in minutes. He got his wife into the vehicle and soon enough he was driving as fast as he could to the nearby hospital. On the way he noticed that he was out of gas and decided that it was better to load up rather than be stranded on the road. He pulled into the gas station he had frequented so often grudgingly in the past six months. Sure enough he was greeted by the old man again but he was the last thing on his mind as he wanted to drive away towards the hospital as soon as possible. As soon as the man finished pumping he dug into his pockets to pay for the gas. It was then that he discovered that in his hurry to get out of the house he had forgotten to carry his wallet. He looked around desperately for some cash in his car but was not able to find none. He was a good 10 miles away from his house and there was no ways he could go back home in this situation. Also he had to get to the hospital as soon as possible with his wife writhing in pain in the backseat. His mind went absolutely blank as he sized up his options. Right then the old man who probably had been observing all this commotion from inside came out and walked up to his window. He said he understood the situation and it was ok if he came back later to pay for the gas. Also he insisted that he should rush to the hospital as soon as possible. Tears welled up in Aran’s eyes as he couldn’t thank the old man enough. The old man just smiled and said "Aaakhir ek hindustani hi to hindustani ke kaam aata hai" (In times of need an Indian comes to the aid of another) . Almost as if on cue strains of shehnai from 'Ye jo des hai tera' wafted through his I Pod in his vehicle. He smirked and muttered under his breath "Damn you Steve Jobs, almost spot on with your timing aren’t you?”.

WC 2007 ... I weigh in

Why we can't go the distance? (the part where I exhibit my ignorance for the game)

Recent lack of one day form mostly stemming from an lack of any top or middle order batsman exhibiting any rich and consistent run of form.
Early run in with Sri Lanka who wont prove easy pushovers considering their recent run of very good form during which they have won bowl matches with the bat and ball, coupled with the fact that they have one of the most suited bowling attacks for West Indian pitches.
Aussie aussie aussie ... one of the most dominating and overpowering influences in any sport ever who are constantly evolving in a better and smarter species threatening to kill audience interest in the game due to their dominance.

Why we might just pull it off? (the part where I prove cricket is ingrained in my blood)

We have shown that we often perform better when players are unshackled in their minds and not having the burden of expectations weighing on their minds.
The pitches should suit our batting having seen similar surfaces at home. Also in last few editions senior batsmen have shown a tendency to put their hand up and carry the team through in big tournaments.
Senior cricketers including Sachin, Dravid, Ganguly and Kumble hopefully playing like men possessed with the knowledge that it might be their last shot at the biggest prize in the game.

Very obviously I am praying for the latter and hoping we do pull off a miracle victory which will provide the greatest joy to India since probably the Kargil victory. I shall be down there in the Caribbean egging on our team ....... hope to catch you there in person or in spirit too :)

My Space

Pushed
As we flail around
Seeking our very own
Sometimes we all
Fall through
Those very spaces

2006 Year in review

As another year goes past it’s that time of the year when you sit back and try and make sense of how fast time whizzed by and take a little break and recap. To say that it’s been one of the most momentous years in my life both professionally and personally would just be stating the obvious. It just seems like yesterday when I stood watching fireworks at college at the stroke of midnight muttering a silent prayer to essentially anyone who cared to hear to land a job of my choice. A pity that I don’t remember what I muttered because it must have been one heck of a prayer. By the end of January I had a shot at working at a place that let me use all of my acquired education and let me be a real engineer. Along with it came a move away from my home away from home at Penn State to a state which is often looked down upon for its crime, diversity, pollution and traffic. Also I made the single biggest purchase ever of my life and bought my car which was to be the sole apple of my eye till later in the year someone comprehensively acquired sole rights to that title. Being my first professional outing I was kind of cautious at how I would be received at work but I was glad to meet these warm and diverse set of people over there. Most of them were very welcoming and it helped me ease into my professional position. The traffic of course brought along with it its own set of problems and the car bore the brunt of it. But it helped me emerge as a more cautious and more empathetic driver at the end of the year. As the months rolled by I slowly got out of my lonely existence in NJ, I discovered Edison (its India away from India for the uninitiated), located a lot of friends from India who I hadn’t even heard from for over 8 years and life was looking really good. But nothing quite prepared me for the sequence of events that unfolded past July and someone with the cutest and unassuming of smiles leapt up from the comments section of my blog straight into my life. It was stuff fairy tales are made out of and it’s a joy to be living it every single day since then. The ending of the year was marked by a meeting with one of my best friend from Delhi and a trip to India thereafter. The trip of course deserves may other posts but it would suffice to say that it felt good to be 'home' home on this discovery.

My blogging frequency might have gone down during the past year due to a variety of reasons like lack of time, lack of creativity or simply lack of inspiration but I am just glad that I still pen down every word on every post with the same sincerity as I did on my first post and I still blog for the same reasons that I had at any time before. So here's to a many other posts and hope I can do a rundown again next year thanks in no small part to this blog.

Wishing you all a very happy new year :)

LiFe

Life's a neat combination of simplified complications and complicated simplifications

Little Superstar

Youtube rocks :)

Mahaaaaaaabharata

I was reading this piece the other day about the renewed interest of many Bollywood film maker's in reconstructing a piece of mythology by making Mahabharata come alive on the big screen. The chance of exploring these age old epics in their own fashion offers tremendous opportunities to these film makers and it would surely be exciting to see how they tell this mother of stories on the silver screen. I have always had this secret wish of directing a movie someday too and coupled with my love for fantasy drafts I decided to jump into making a wish list of actors I would want if I wanted to make Mahabharata for the 70 mm screens too. Now my knowledge of this epic is limited to viewings (and repeat viewings) of its TV adaptation by B.R. Chopra so my choice of characters might be biased by the way they were projected on TV and also might have led me to come up with this wish list of only the characters that stayed with me even after the TV series was over.

The good guys
Yudhishthira: Ajay Devagan has done this bit before playing the guy who has truth on his side, the righteous one who treads the path of truth in the face of all adversities.
Bhima: The role requires an imposing physical presence, a gentle giant who often lets his anger get the better of him making Sanjay Dutt perfect for the part.
Arjuna: Who better than the best actors in the industry to play one of the important and my favorite character from Mahabharata. Aaamir Khan would be perfect perfectionist for this part that requires a certain degree of integrity to reflect in the person to play the character convincingly.
Nakula and Sahadev : I don't remember much about these twins but the record says that Nakula was extremely attractive so I went with Salman Khan for his sheer star power and also so that he doesn't have to act too much to dent this monster of a movie.
Draupadi: This is one of the toughest calls to make choosing probably the only important female part in a male dominated flick. To play a woman who is the object of affection of five important parts in the movie and to effectively play a woman who is so scorned that she is the underlying reason for the biggest baddest battle ever fought, Kajol heads my list followed closely by Rani Mukherjee and Aishwarya Rai with Vidya Balan being the wild card.
Krishna: Who better than Krrishh to play the second most important parts in Mahabharata. The person chosen has to project an aura and charisma very critical for this part while being a very good actor to be able to mouth those heavy lines without sounding cheesy hence the choice of Hrithik Roshan for the part.
Abhimanyu: One of my favorite characters again he shall win all the audience sympathies after his tragic death. I decided to go with either Shiney Ahuja or Abhishek Bachchan with their youthful looks and ability to play to the galleries with their eventual and tragic deaths.

The baddies
Karna: Probably the third most important character in the movie I decided to go with Shah Rukh Khan to play this guy with the heart of gold who sides with the baddies because his word is more important to him. Also casting SRK brings to the screen the dream pitting of Khan vs Khan which is a guaranteed crowd puller.
Duryodhana: For this part I decided to go with Akshay Kumar, an actor who has improved by leaps and bounds and has displayed a mean evil streak in previous movies. Saif Ali Khan could be good too as he displayed with his mean streak in Omkara.
Shakuni: For this small but very important part I went with Boman Irani, for those who think he is only good at comedy revisit Khosla Ka Ghosla and Being Cyrus.

The character actors
Bhishma: The easiest choice of all choosing the Big B to play the Big B of Mahabharata. He will easily do justice to this character who bound by oath undergoes a lot of torture but still sticks by his word Amitabh Bachchan.
Kunti: I just had to cast Raakhee as the mother of the Pandavas and who undergoes a lot of grief fully knowing that the battle will not end without at least one of her sons dying in it.

I had a rocking time coming up with this list which went through a few revisions the more I thought about it. You guys help yourself and engage in some fantasy fun too while I think about coming up with an all time list from all decades from Bollywood.

Just a thought

I heard creating perfectly happy existences was a thankless job, I won't be one to break tradition but I am just glad they picked the right man for the job.

The apple tree

A trip back to India is always a learning in more ways than one. You look back at times you have spent in your motherland, you reflect at what has been and what has shaped your life to the point at where you stand on that day. You look around at places and people who have also had a formative influence on your life and you try and put them against the mental pictures you had of them before. You find out a lot of people have actually changed, but maybe its just you who has. Maybe you have matured and gained a different perspective of them or maybe its just them. A lot of questions remain and a lot of questions remain unanswered. One of these people you get to observe quite closely is your parents, one of the most important things in your life, people battle hardened in life's war, people to whom you speak to almost everyday but who still are separated from you by the physical distances. However you notice how these holders of your genetic pool are really splitting images of yourself split only by spaces of time and a generation. You slowly notice uncanny similarities at they way they handle situations, the way they react, the way they handle people. Its scary at first to finally notice these things which you might have missed when you were less mature. But at the end of the day I realized it was a learning curve. Its a time to pat yourself on the back for the good things you have imbibed and admire in your parents and on the other hand its a time to consciously bring about changes if you think need be, on things which make you incompatible with people while you still can because you are still in a position to do so. Which way you look at it I think if you look hard enough it will be there for you to see that the apple never falls too far from the tree.

DELHI .... from the back of an auto rickshaw

India on my mind

SAD at what I leave behind
UPSET at what could have been a longer stay
APPREHENSIVE of changes beyond my control
BUMMED at my cover of my surprise landing being blown away
CONTENT that I leave behind my nascent footprints on my career
SURPRISED at how it still hasnt sunk in
HAPPY I have India on my mind now
ELATED I shall have India running through my lungs in a few days

Yours truly anonymously

Blogging for many people has for long been a release from their routine life. A space where they hang loose venting out their creative energies or as an overflowing pot for their emotions. For a lot of people it has been the diary they have never kept or have been too conscious to keep one. For many others it has been a shout out to life in general, from a budding storyteller, a wannabe poet, a seeker of truth, or even from a frustrated individual trying to give meaning to these series of unfortunate co incidences in his/her life. Many people have raised their voices anonymously while many others have chosen a more open route attaching faces to their voices. Personally for me it was never a big deal, it was as simple as filling out my name on any for I would fill out. I have a picture up on my blog simply because there was a tab on the blogger form that asked for it, nothing more nothing less to it. A lot of people have asked me whether my family knows about this blog of mine and the answer to that is not really because I don't go hoarse advertising my blog from the rooftops. Its one of those things that they would so easily find out about if they googled my name but till the time they don't I guess I do enjoy a certain degree of freedom about my blogging subjects. Somewhere down the line this made me appreciate to a small degree, the overenthusiastic zeal with which some bloggers protect their identities. Whether they do it to add enigma and mystery to their real life persona's ........ not really, but whether it helps them stay in their comfort zone as they blog about a variety of subjects ....... quite possibly and understandably yes.

Alvida

Main hun woh musafir
Rehguzar kinara hai jiska humraahi
Bas ek hai duvidha
Kya kah paaunga main
Is humrahi ko alvida
Kyunki meri manzil hai us paar

Where were you when ..........?

Lakdi ki kaathi, Kaathi pe ghoda (Masoom): Trying to sing along as a toddler only getting the 'takbak takbak' part right and trying to get a free horse ride from almost anyone to everyone.

Aaja shaam hone aayi (Maine Pyar Kiya): Trying hard to convince my mom to buy me a 'Friend' cap, cmon cut me some slack I was 7 or 8 years old and thank you Mom for not submitting to all my silly demands

Ek do teen (Tezaab): Hoping and praying my neighbors across the road would play the song on their cool new stereo system so that the kids could groove to the song again

Oye Oye, Tirchi Topiwaale (Tridev): Just trying to find places all over my street which were playing the song so that I could just go and dance over there

Jumma Chumma De De (Hum): Humming that song very very consciously under my breath all day for the fear of my Mom catching me singing it (damn that song was catchy)

Choli ke peeche (Khalnayak) / Tu cheez badi hai mast mast (Mohra) : Trying to find safe corners to sing the songs before a tap on the shoulder and a pair reproaching eyes told me it wasn't such a good idea

Chaiyya Chaiyya (Dil Se): Discovering cargo pants were indeed cool and Arbaaz Khan's only redeemable quality (for the uninitiated he married the angel grooving in the video of the song)

Aashiq Banaya Aapne (Aashiq Banaya Aapne): Blasting the number all over the streets of New Jersey on my IPod

Kajra Re (Bunty aur Bubli): Doing the Kajra re step and falling in love with Aishwarya Rai all over again :)

They say songs define a generation but for me songs can easily define my life till now, each of these numbers clearly demarcating the point of time I have stood at, with them in my life, acting as one of the most sweet sounding and very cherished time scale. So where were you when these numbers were burning up the charts?

To the one

To the one who knew so much about nothing
To the one who knew so much about the one who knew so much about nothing
To the one who knew so much about the female mind
To the one who thought he knew so much about the female mind
To the one who wrote a nothing about nothing

Remakes .......... Naaaaaaaaah

As media persons and dailies waited with their bated breath for Ram Gopal Verma to reveal Gabbar's new look for his version of Sholay, or for the 20th Oct release to see what Farhan Akhtar's done with Don or what J.P.Dutta ha s done with Umrao Jaan, I was once again left exasperated at the futility of the whole situation. Ever since Devdas was redone and redux'ed by Sanjay Leela Bansali to rake in the big bucks lot of the filmmakers have been looking at remakes as an easier option to rake in the big bucks. Film making has for long been an art form meant to be an extension of your creative juices flowing on a 70mm screen. And that is exactly why remakes don't exactly do the trick for me. Remakes are almost like music remixes, in which a certain nobody piggybacks on a geniuses' back onto the road to fame and glory even though they don't or might not have a single creative bone in their body. I mean sure enough you will get people curious and talking when you announce a remake of a past flick but that is not curiosity being generated because of your talent. The real reason is because people identify and connect with the past flick and you shouldn't be getting any free buzz just because of that or any credit for that. And sure enough people will watch your movie because they know your story, scenes, dialogues and scenes from your movie making it a big success, but is that why you picked up a camera in the first place? Whatever happened to that little voice in you which asked you to make movies just because you loved to make em so that you could translate your little ideas and make them unfold of the big screen to make people root for your characters, laugh and cry with them, and take back with them a little piece of movie magic firmly stamped across their minds with them?

Although

Elation is elation, painted
Sarcasm is sarcasm, serrated
Reputations are reputations, tainted
Co-incidences are co-incidences, slated
Strangers are strangers, aquainted
Chances are chances, fated
Passion is passion, jaded
Goodwill is goodwill, belated
Memories are memories, dated

Memorable quotes from a not so memorable movie

'Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.' From the movie Coach Carter