Ripples on the brain

I remember in the 1990’s when bilateral series were not as common as they are today. During working days our school library had a TV that we used to watch in between classes and during breaks. If time was very short, we would just ask anybody coming from the general direction of library for the score assuming he/she is coming from the library. He would probably give a third person’s account of the score (he wouldn’t have actually seen it himself).
While going back home in the evening, there would generally be buzz in the bus as everybody would want to know the score. Mostly, there would be a guy with a transistor and the whole crowd in the bus would be around him. On a couple of occasions, a request would be loudly made in the bus for a guy who understands Hindi so that he could listen and do the translation for the anxious folks around. I have myself answered the request on those occasions and would be summoned to listen to the commentary and do the translation. I recall those moments so fondly. Cricket was one of things that united us so much. Suddenly all inhibitions would go away and we would discuss the nitty-gritty’s with the stranger about what the captain should do next and so on. It would be as if that was the only objective in life for all the 20-odd people in the bus. I remember the same events repeating when I was in hostel. We would crowd around a transistor (which was, by the way, banned inside the hostels) and listen to the score and inform the rest.
Other than cricket, one of things that unite us, I think, is film music. I’m a fan of Anthakshari and have always enjoyed participating in formal and informal Anthaksharis in any sort of get together. In an intense session of Anthakshari, you invariably find that after a while the most enthusiastic bunch just sings irrespective of whether it is their turn or not. There are some songs, especially for my generation, some select Illayarajaa numbers that are very difficult to hear and not hum. There is some sort of camaraderie I feel when I’m in such a gathering.
Something similar happened when I was at a close friend’s wedding recently. This guy was marrying some big shot’s daughter and the wedding was a grand affair. But what attracted us most to the reception was the band. There were a couple of guys that were mediocre, but one of the guys had an amazing voice and my office colleagues and I were glued to him whenever he was singing. But before the dinner, the troupe was singing current chart busters which didn’t impress us so much. When we returned after dinner, there wasn’t that much of a crowd and the troupe had also warmed up. Then the guy with a good voice started dishing out some Illayarajaa favourites. Most of us were forced to stay back and listen. I think he sang some 3 numbers and the last one was “Mandram vantha thendralukku” from Mouna Raagam. There was a buzz in the hall (though there were only a handful of people) even as he started the initial humming. As he started singing the main piece, I could see at least 3 or 4 people singing their own versions of the song parallel and enjoying. There was instantaneous applause as the guy finished with the song. Surprised at such a vociferous applause especially as the hall was almost empty, that guy thanked us. Though no words were spoken, so much had been communicated. We were so happy he sung THAT song at THAT time. And he got the message and responded.

I guess I needed some sort of a change as things were getting a bit mundane. What a better way to do that than a new project, change of location and opportunity for direct interaction. After about half a dozen flip flops that threatened to throw plans out of gear, I finally landed in the US last night.

I think I was in one of my longest flights between Dubai and JFK, NY (something between 13 and 16 hours). I watched three movies on the flight (and actually one movie thrice - didn’t realize that I had slept as the movie made one full run) each of average length 2 hours and still had so much time to kill. Towards the end, it became too difficult to endure. I don’t know how people manage direct flights from Mumbai to JFK. I landed pretty late at the hotel. Emirates has a good in-flight entertainment system. I got to watch 2 Hrishida’s movies - Chupke Chupke and Golmaal. I also watched Billu, Santosh Subramaniam and Mugavari. I wish they had some more new Tamil movies. Clubbing Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu along with Hindi movies in the Bolllywood category was not a good idea.

I liked Billu (remake of Kuselan or Kathaparayumbol) except for those forced songs, all of which sounded the same. The climax was not very realistic - they could have tweaked that a little bit. Irrfan, as usual, made us get into his character, Lara Dutta wasn’t so convincing with her starched and colourful sarees and designer blouses in the midst of poverty. Overall, I was surprised the movie ran so badly in Hindi. In Tamil, I can understand why - P Vasu killed the nice storyline.

This morning I’m excited about the new assignment. I have lot of things to complete, both on the job and personally, this week. Hopefully, jet lag will not linger long and come in the way. Looking forward to a busy next 3 weeks. I also hope to keep my blog updated with a lot of personal stuff. Who reads it anyway!

I never thought I’d back to the same place that I came to for the last time, to the same project, to work with the same folks. I went back in May and came back in July to complete some unfinished business.

The best part of the journey was the movie “Kalloori” I watched on the flight from Chennai. I enjoyed every bit of the movie. The initial story kept reminding one of April Madhathil and 5star in parts, but obviously this movie is at a different level (it is a reminder of a real incident that happened a few years ago in Tamil Nadu). The story and screenplay are very simple, but the settings and the actors infuse realism into the movie. Except for the leading girl (who looks gorgeous, but still suits her role), the movie makers have shunned glamour and opted for actors who will suit their parts. Excellent selection of actors I must say! The country-side settings, which are crucial to the story, have been captured very well. The acting is above par for most of the time, considering most of the actors are novices. Except for the heroine, it is difficult to even find the names of the other actors who played crucial roles in the movie. The music is also excellent without being pompous and suits the overall story very well. I liked the first song that takes place in the bus very much.

The movie kept reminding me of my own experiences in my engineering college. It was for the first time I had the company of students from the rural background. Many of my classmates came from Tamil medium schools and hence, some lecturers taught the initial classes in Tamil.

I just realized that Shankar produced the movie. What a guy? I mean Shankar as a director and Shankar as a producer cannot be more contrasting. Look at the list of movies Shankar has produced - Kaadhal, Imsai Arasan 23 am Pulikesi, Veyyil and now Kalloori. (Ofcourse, Shankar also seems to have produced Mudhalvan and Arai Enn … Kadavul which are outliers in the list). It is very difficult to choose these small budget movies that involve first time directors and, more often than not, novice actors. But Shankar seems to hitting the jackpot every single time.

I could see 4 people in my vicinity in the place who were also watching the same movie. Actually, the other Indian movie that was among the options was Race (Hindi). I couldn’t help thinking Kalloori’s budget should have been less than the salary of each of the leading actors of Race and still Race couldn’t have been crappier. A good study in contrast, again!

Revathi tags me and wants to know my quirks. My first reaction was I’m too lazy to take up to tags. Sathish had tagged me once and I attempted to take it up, but never actually did it. Then I thought I’ll take it up and see where it goes.

1. I get too embarrassed whenever I recall some embarrassing situations I have been in, so much so that I need to do something rash to get over it, like banging my fists on the floor or suddenly accelarating insanely if I happen to recall something when I’m driving.

2. That brings me to my second quirk. I generally get lost in thought whenever I’m driving all alone. I start thinking about some random things that I normally forget something important I would have been doing just before I started and wanted to continue after I reach my destination. Sometimes, even when the drive is just 20 minutes or so, it feels like I had been driving all day when I reach my destination because I would have been imagining too many things.

3. Even at this age it is very easy for me to migrate into a world of fantasy. I imagine myself to be the PM, to be a player in the Wimbledon finals, so on and so forth.

4. I don’t like taking photographs when we visit places because I feel that it once I take the camera out, it becomes the sole point of interest. One more reason I dislike taking photographs is probably because I dislike seeing myself in one.

5. Even after so many years of experience, I get uneasy before getting into any conference call irrespective of the duration of the call and the number of participants.

6. I can never watch any of those thrilling matches especially when the team / person I support is losing. I just switch off the television or turn to a different channel.

Okay, compiling this list was quite tough.

To somebody I know…I wish I could tell him directly…

This should have happened sometime last August. I was at my niece’s day care centre along with my mom. We had gone there to pick my niece up. My mom goes there daily, so the manager (an old man) knew her pretty well. I was actually there for the first time.

As we picked her up, the old man asked my niece pointing at me, “Ithu yaaru ma? unnoda mamava, chiththappava, athimbera? (Who’s this? Your maternal uncle or dad’s brother or dad’s sister’s husband?)”.

“Mama (Maternal uncle)”, I replied.

“Correcta sonnen pathiya! (See, I was spot on)”, he replied back, with a triumphant smile. I was dumbfounded!

This morning, as I was getting ready for office, my niece, who is a year and a half old, wished me on the phone. She’s just started speaking and nobody has even heard her speak these words. “Mama, Happy Birthday”, she said once. “Happy Birthday to you”, she said again. That made my day!

I also realized that having your wife’s birthday the next day after yours is not so good after all (I know I didn’t have a control over it). You can never spring a surprise or act as if you’ve forgotten hers.

Yet another one comes… This is the second time I’m in the US on my birthday…

I don’t know why i have not been affected by the news of the shutdown of Woodlands Drive-in. I had been a regular to its premises during my earlier employment. My office was bang opposite to the restaurant and my colleagues and I visited it a few times in the evening when we had just enough time to hop across the median before that evening call with a client or an onsite co-ordinator.

I think one can never be loyalist of Drive-in’s food. I remember it was always pretty mediocre. Even the famed Chola Batura wasn’t very good. Though the restaurant was close by, it was never a place for family or team get-togethers. We usually had chat items when we went as a group in the evening. Mostly, there was too much pori in the Bhel puri and dosais sometimes had that raw smell. One of my friends who was sometimes teased for being very particular about food never liked the sambhar vadais they served in the evenings. It was always the case of getting a recently made vadai into the sambhar.

There were many other options for an evening bite in Cathedral Road. There was one shop that made very good sandwiches. That was a better hang out place for us. Bread Omlette was my favourite there. (I liked the mint paste he applied on the bread). There was also a roadside kaiyendhi chat corner where we used to get Bhel and pani puris. Then there was Gangotree, though all the stuff was pretty spicy there. I remember there was a north Indian restaurant, just beside Stella Maris that sold Aloo paranthas. I don’t know if that exists even now, but that was actually a reason we went to work on Saturdays. One of those paranthas served with curd and pickle would fill you for the rest of the evening.

The ambience of Drive-in, however, was amazing. Lots of green space in the heart of the city for parking or for just taking a stroll. Many a times, a stressful meeting was always followed by a coffee in the Drive-in to cool the tempers. I think it was a usual pit stop for all those people who had an appointment in the US Consulate across the road. I have seen singer P.B.Srinivas a lot of times there. I was told he came in the same auto and was served by the same person for a long time.

Hopefully, the Government uses it for the purpose it has promised.

I clearly have my doubts.

Around 2004-05, I too caught this craze for orkut and social networking in general. I joined communities of “like-minded” people, chatted with them for hours together, met them over a coffee and so on. While I did make some new friends and establish contact with some long-lost friends, mostly, it was just another user id and password for me to remember and while away my time if I had nothing else to do.

I guess things started turning for the worse after Google took over orkut. Google then mandated having a unified id and password for gmail and orkut. Social neworking was suddenly over-hyped and all these orkut clones started appearing. People unsuspectingly gave their email ids and passwords to these phony sites and they then had a field day flooding inboxes. Around this time, some bloggers started criticizing these sites and users of orkut who send these funny “franship” requests.

Over the last 6 months or so, I had restricted my orkut usage for birthday reminders and greetings. All these bulk scrap messages started increasingly appearing in my scrapbook. Some contained greetings from friends but there were others that had some magic scripts to increase friends, send bulk messages, identify others who had crush on you and so on. If this was not discomforting enough, today I discovered that I had automatically become member of more than a couple of communities. I checked these communities and found that all these had started only on the last week of February 2008 or so and many had more than 5000 members. One community, started after Feb 15th. had 68000 members and aptly, promised its members that it will teach them orkut tricks!

Clearly, Google’s attempt at increasing security (through locking features built recently for profiles, scrapbooks, photos and so on) hasn’t helped. It is increasingly becoming more and more vulnerable with the increased usage. Over the next week, I will seriously consider deleting my orkut account. The friends list has swelled so much that I don’t think I can use orkut for any meaningful networking any longer (oh, not that I did so much earlier )