An year to Heaven

Its been exactly an year since my maternal grands passed away. But the event still shakes me to the core. When a relative talks about it in passing, it still gives me goose bumps. When people talk about it in family gathering, I wither away like a flower. The energy drains out of me and I just become a mute spectator. I do not add any fuel to an engulfing and evergreen topic. There is something about the whole thing that is so tragic, that makes you shout out ‘oh no, oh no, this isn’t the way its supposed to end’ if you are watching it all happening on a movie screen. Too much sadness just shuts my mouth.

When I visited the accident spot in Dec last year, my whole being transported itself to that fateful day, in that stifling afternoon heat. The huge screeching sound that the car would have made, and the thunderous somersault with a deafening, heart-stopping thud. Ajji’s body ripped out of the car with a knife-like-steel rod pierced deep into her forehead, blood gushing out from her in buckets, glass pieces everywhere, people shouting, baby crying, my uncle dazed with bruised head, thatha collapsing on the road, aunty shouting for help with broken leg. Aaaaahhh…its too painful, much too painful even to collage the scene after an year.

A Telugu newspaper had carried a snap of the upturned car on the road. In front of the car, there was a huge idol of God with clasped hands. It was as if He approved of whatever happened in front of him, albeit the unnatural setting, and saluted them off.

I had written a post on driving. But nothing beats the just-learned driving skills of my cousin Madhwesh who had to drive 30 odd kilometers in the other car to Tirupati immediately after the accident to take thatha to a hospital possibly to save his life. With no learned driver to guide him, with mind in absolute tatters what with having seen ajji’s gory dead body, with tearful eyes and leaden heart, and with a faint hope of saving thatha’s life, 30 odd kms would have seemed like an eternity, and one cannot imagine the amount of concentration that would have gone into such a simple task as driving a car. My hats off to him…to me, it is one of the toughest drives ever. But alas, thatha had passed away even before he was laid to rest inside the car.

We stayed there on the accident spot for as long as we could, sucking in each moment of the event, to be as near to the departed as possible. But then, the fact always hit the gut that it was all indeed over. Death comes as the end. Naturally or unnaturally.

It is said that the soul takes an year to reach heaven. I hope the journey was smoother than the start…

Two Hundred And Two

Its been exactly 2 years since I started blogging and this is the 200th post. This follows the 100th blog which came on the first anniversary of Kaleidoscope

I am not sure if this is an achievement, and if it is, then, I got to thank Mithun who kept pushing me to start a blog of my own. Its still hard to believe why he never told me that he himself had a blog since almost an year when I finally started blogging but let bygones be bygones…suffice it to say that my blogging started mainly because of him.

Last year was a significant year for my blogging. I expanded my arena of blogging from just kaleidoscope to a multitude of other areas that interest me.

~My heretofore articles written since 1997 which were rotting away in my old desktop found a new lease of life in Eclipse.

~My dingy, dappled, dilapidated and almost destroyed little notebook containing the complete list of novels - with my own ratings - which I have ever read also made way to the internet in the form of Booklog, thanks to ‘Publish’ option available on Google Docs. First let me thank Preetham for telling me about this, amongst million other things which he has told me!

~The intricate and basic thoughts that kept flowing in my mind about Carnatic music and the desire to share it with the world gave birth to Shruthi. Needless to say, inspiration for starting this goes to Deepti Navaratna (who has inspired me in more ways than I can list but yet have listed here and here!) whose Carnatic blog was the first Carnatic blog which I read on the net.

~Much too important stuff was happening in the world, much better stuff was written else where, and my desire of sharing it with public gave birth to Stimulus, where, to be honest, my contribution in the posts is bare minimum if not null.

~After the Pondicherry trip last year, Achala asked why I do not write travelogues in my Kaleidoscope blog. I realized it would be better to have a separate blog for my travel trips, and since I was coming up with a separate blog, why not write about all trips I had ever been to, as far as I can remember, and thus formed Locus.

~The hugely popular Vishnupuran episodes which I had noted down - for no particular reason - while watching on TV got a new lease of life in Vishnupuran.

The year also saw me re-structuring and re-designing the layout of Kaleidoscope blog to be more in sync with the tone and the content of the blog. I removed the links pertaining to my favorite blogs much to the chagrin of many. Chagrin, because some were using that to access those blogs and some just lost the free marketing! But thanks to Preetham again, I was introduced to Google Reader which makes blog-reading so simple as it uses RSS feeds and highlights only those blogs which has new posts instead of patrons manually and painfully checking each blog to see if its updated or not.

It will be interesting to see how the 3rd year will be and what changes, if any, will follow. Only time will tell, till then (so many “ll”s!!), three cheers for this second birthday!!

Hubli

Suddenly, I am hearing Hubli everywhere.

..Car coming from Hubli to Bangalore makes headlines as all 6 passengers die in a freak accident. May their soul rest in peace.

..A new guy joined our team in office. His last name is Hubli.

..Friend of mine is going to Hubli to attend her best friend’s wedding.

..Buses and flights to Hubli easily spotted and heard (boarding calls) respectively during my brief stay in Mumbai.

..I read an article about Sudha Murthy and learnt that she hails from Hubli as well. [Am I the next NRN in the making? ;-)]

Dreams and Movies

Our eyes are closed but…

We laugh;
We cry;

We shriek in fright;
We smile;

Sometimes senseless;
Sometimes with intricately astonishing details!

Sometimes we are mere audience;
But suddenly, at times, we are the characters too!

Going to sleep is like going to a theatre!
For, the dreams that we see, are better than any multi-dimensional movie!

Me and MBA

Reproduced below is an extract of one of the most interesting chat discussions I ever had. About a month ago, a person who likes my blogs pinged me on Google Talk. We hardly know one another and it was the first time I was chatting with him, but his few words made me feel nice about myself and I was very much honored. I kept thinking about what he said over the next couple of days so much so that I thought it deserved an entry in my blog:

vijay: your blogs are awesome than anything
how do u think man!!!!!!!!!
its really superb
many dont have it
think it should come by birth
are you doing your MBA

me: Thats an honor!
thanks a lot!
no no...i am just a BE grad

vijay: but dont miss to take MBA
you be an excellent manager
thats what i fell

me: hahaha..i am an excellent manager without mba ;)

vijay: wow great

me: hahaha...just kidding
i am good with my jnrs..and they enjoy being with me...so i felt i am good :)

vijay: ok

me: but how come you thot abt my Management skills while reading blogs?

vijay: i usually say what i fell in my senses, ur way of thinking and putting up right at right situations and your expressions
and more can be felt by your blogs
i really thgt u r an MBA

Now that really is an honor. But on a lighter note, if I am adjudged to be an MBA grad because of my blogs, well, it just saved me from a lot of studying ;-)

False Accusation

I was heading back home from office in the bus. I was sitting on the front seat and had almost the same view through the windshield as did the driver. If you have read this, you would know who I recommend as a Good Driver, and this bus driver was a Good Driver. He did not honk unnecessarily, he respected people on the road, was in complete control of the situation and never gave any fright to any passenger.

We were cruising through this real narrow road that has a median, making sure that only a bus and perhaps a two-wheeler (with difficulty) can travel in the same lane. As we were moving along, a very old man with a walking stick started crossing the road about 100 yards ahead. Perhaps the old man didn’t see the bus or if he did see, he thought he could cross the road by the time the bus reached him. As it happened, by the time the bus reached the man, he was still in the middle of the road.

The bus driver slowed and got it to a stop and waited for the old man to cross the road. He did not honk which was a good thing because the old man might have fainted! Once the old man crossed the road, he started again.

Now meanwhile, when the bus was stopped in the middle of the road, vehicles at the back of the bus, which couldn’t overtake because of the median, nor could see why the bus was stopped mysteriously, started honking continuously. By the time the bus started moving again, a two-wheeler whizzed past from the left, glared at the driver, showed an accusing hand at him as if the driver had committed a great sin and even mouthed some obscenities, and hurried off. I noticed the driver to see his reaction to the motorcyclist’s gestures. There was a resigned look and a hurt ego. I really felt sorry for him…

Such an irony it is that a good deed goes unnoticed and instead receives such flak. False accusations really hurt…

Thought for the day

What if you spend your whole life being devoted to God, like a priest or a sister, and then, when you finally die and go to wherever you go after you die, you find out that there is nothing really called "God" and it is just a figment of imagination created by fellow human beings?! You will surely end up being the laughing stock in the new world that you just entered and the same fellow human beings who created the figment of imagination who are already there will laugh their hearts out!!

A satirical thought, huh?

The Divine Approval

So, there I was, at home, waiting for the time to pass. Couple more hours to go. It was a big day for me. A day which could perhaps change my life drastically.

Mom came to the room then and started rambling without any preamble. I was too involved in what I was doing that I was hardly concentrating, as is always the case with sons when moms tend to ramble away to glory.

“On the day that I first met your father, we received prasadam directly from Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams. My father had sent some money to TTD couple of days previously by way of expressing gratitude for a business which had turned profitable and officials at TTD were courteous enough to send the prasadam to our house address. The prasadam which came on such a day as that when I first met your father seemed like a divine approval.

“On the day when your father and I first met your sister-in-law to ask for your brother’s proposal, we received TTD prasadam from someone in Mutt who had just been to Tirumala. There again was the divine approval.

“And today, our neighbor gave TTD prasadam. They came back from Tirumala this morning.”

I was so stunned that I asked my mom to repeat the whole thing; my concentration had perked up half-way through in her first narration. I was still dazed when she completed her second narration.

Well, well, well. Some things, as they say, are made in Heaven….

Rangeela

For some strange reason, the Bollywood flick of the mid-Nineties Rangeela had a very deep impact on me. As wiki rightly describes this movie, "Rangeela is considered a landmark in Indian commercial cinema; it features breakthrough performances, a superlative music score and streetwise direction, despite a predictable and weak plot."

I loved the film very much, complete from Aamir Khan's role to Urmila's acting, from A R Rehman's music score to Ram Gopal Verma's direction. And by impact, I mean, there were some scenes in the movie which were dealt with such clear-cut precision and aplomb and gut-hitting scenes that even after a decade, I just cannot forget them although I havent seen it that many a time as one would to go to the extent of remembering dialogues.

Like that scene in which Aamir Khan tries to talk to Urmila about 'settling' down in that 'a/c' hotel; the one in which he shares a drink with Urmila's father when the father talks about his 'bus-mate'; the one in which Urmila looks dazedly at her brother, mother and father when she gets the call for audition; her first audition itself; Aamir's conversation with Jackie Shroff in Goa hotel room about him being a black-ticket seller; Aamir wanting to present her a humble gift but awed and silenced by Urmila's new-found celeb friends and gala party with expensive gifts; the director appreciating his own creation when the applause breaks out at the end of the premier screening; Urmila's acting when she reads Aamir's letter of parting; Aamir's friend's tear-jerking narrative about how much Aamir loved her and how she had neglected him.

And the befitting cheering scene of Aamir, true to his tapori style, sleeping stylishly on a truck and traveling on the highway, away from Mumbai; the way Urmila runs to the cliff edge, full of anger, for him running away; and then, Aamir, with his face registering shock and daze, unable to really fathom that she really loved him, unable to fathom that he really got what he always wanted, places his palm on Jackie's left chest, as if a grateful and thankful gesture for letting her be his, walks to her and fights her for not letting him know about the whole enterprise, and then, like a magic, with Rehman's tipping score, the movie ends with the hero and hero-ine hugging....

Thought for the day

The beginning of the end.
The end of the beginning.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Exactly 9 years ago, I was standing in my college courtyard which was filled to the brim with students. It was fresher's day. A day in which officially the unofficial ragging of juniors by seniors would stop and all became friends. And just to clear the air, I, for one, enjoyed all the ragging that I got. I just adored my seniors!

All first semester sections had their own stalls with games and competitions and eateries to attract as many people as possible. Popularity of the stall won points, as did On-Stage performances by respective sections. And the section with maximum number of points would be declared the "Best Section of the year 1998-1999". I was the Class Representative of my section.

As in any college day functions, the music was blaring. One could feel one's hearts flaps moving with the beats. Such was the volume. Theme of the music was predominantly Samba. I remember it as a fitting tempo for the fashion show as each of the oomph-factor girls walked down the ramp.

If there was no music, we had performances like Skit, Mad-Ads; games like Best Dressed Female, Guys with Best Specs; medley and cultural dance competitions, solo and group; singing competitions; auctioning for the Valentine Rose; Rose King and Rose Queen, and so on and so forth. The organisers were one helluva gang and ensured that the stage was never empty, the music between the intervals never stopped and no one ever got bored throughout the duration of the event.

The day just got better and better. Our stall attracted more and more people thanks to our innovative games and delicious cuisine. Some of our class-mates won prizes in competitions and made the section proud. We kept earning more and more points. Sure enough, it was announced later that our section had won the 'Best Section' award for the event! It gave me extreme joy to run over to the dias along with a bunch of my classmates and proudly lift the trophy. After the unceremonious scolding by some people just a few weeks ago for not having taken enough action being the CR of the class, winning the trophy was an ultimate turn-around and a sweet success! Of course, it could not have been possible without the participation of each of the class members...

Meanwhile, the skits and mad-ads ripped us with laughter. The announcement every few minutes indicated that the amount of the highest bid rose from hundreds to a few thousands! Desperate guys were trying to woo girls of their choice; while some gals politely, blushingly refused, some others gladly accepted the roses. The festive atmosphere continued and none ever wanted it to end nor did anyone make an attempt to leave, despite the fact that we did not have any mode of transportation after 10 pm from the college which was the then situated in a godforsaken place so far away from the city. (It is even now situated in the same place except that the city has grown so much now that I can hardly call the place as godforsaken!)

It was almost at the end of such a wonderful day, when I was just standing in my stall, with hands folded across my chest, filled with the day's exuberance and enjoyment, waiting for the organisers to just wind up, that a person walked up to me. I looked at the person. I knew the person since quite some time and had high regards. I have even now. The person looked at me straight in the face and said "I love you." The person then gave me a rose. It wasnt the highest bid rose, but a rose nevertheless.

I looked at the person to detect any hint of joke or mockery, and my lips parted with a knowing smile. But the person's eyes said nothing. The person was very serious and I guess the person meant it. I never came to know whether the person meant it or not. Not till this day.

I made my smile vanish, as I put on a bit of seriousness on myself too as reciprocation. I took the rose, looked back at the person and said "I love you too."

To this day, I cannot forget that scene nor I think I will ever forget. It made me feel very special and honored. It is the only time that somebody has ever done such an act to me.

And as the day came to an end, that simple gesture was just like an icing on top of the cake....

Thought for the day

Its funny how the mind gets moulded by constant hammering...

"All for good"

Really?

Insomnia

Is it a sign of getting old....(read: becoming more responsible)?

Or

Is it just a sign of the situation getting better of me....?

Question of the day

(A tough life but maximum contentment)

Vs

(An easy life with partial contentment) ?

Afghanistan

It is very rare that one learns a lot about a never-seen-country at approximately the same time in two forms of communication media: a novel and a film. I happened to read The Kite Runner and see The Road to Guantanamo just about the same time. They both spoke a lot about Afghanistan.

While the latter, like Bollywood Kabul Express, concentrated mainly post 9/11/2001, the novel on the other hand explicitly narrated the riches that Afghanistan once held. And then, slowly, agonisingly, painfully, it spurns the story about how the country became what it is today. And the author, Khaled Hosseini, hailing from Afghanistan but now staying in US, laments about the dear country that Afghanistan once was...

For some reason, its always truly fascinating to know one's rise and fall.....be it a man, or a country.

Note:

1. While the novel does touch upon the country, it isnt really all about the country by itself. The story is about sinning, of repenting, of redemption, of a lost brotherly love, of being a failure, of staying as Afghans in US, of beautiful characterization, and in essence, an excellent read.

2. The movie is a true-story about a UK settled Pakistani groom Asif (and his friends) being tortured in Guantanamo bay by Americans for being erroneously suspected as Taliban-ites. The film ends saying, post 9/11, in Guantanamo, 750 suspects were imprisoned, 500 still there, 10 charged but none have ever been found guilty of any crime. Asif finally could get married on 7/2/2005.

A common question

Of late, parents, friends, relatives and even some chat friends whom I have never met are asking me one single simple question. Well, in fact, they are making a statement.

"How come you don't have a girlfriend when you are working in a company like Infosys for so long."

What does this sentence really imply?

If you work in a company like Infosys for many years as a bachelor, you are bound to find a life partner there?

A company like Infosys fosters relationships amongst opposite gender friends to end up in a wed-lock such that its mutually beneficial for the company and its employees?

The Infosys campus is set in such a romantic mood that its practically impossible not to find the girl of your dreams, or rather, practically impossible for any gal to say no if you woo hard enough because the landscape is adding its share too to the holy union?

That girls in Infosys will say 'Yes' a shade easily compared to non Infoscion girls?

That there is a matrimony-like-intranet mechanism within Infosys which lists down the girls with their photos, caste, religion, interests, marital status and even online horoscope which makes 'traditional-yet-modern and well-cultured' Infoscion grooms easier to zero down on the nominations?

:) Just musing....

But to be fair, I have asked the same question to myself too. And I have come up with my own version of the answers...of course, Infosys has got nothing to do with it.

The best of the week that was

The movie.
..Road to Guantanamo

The novel.
… The Kite Runner

The food.
…Bisibelebath

The work.
…Consistently 9 to 6

The play.
…Half-hour early morning Saturday shuttle

The Greenery.
…Tree planting behind IIMB

The violin class.
…Mohana Raaga Varnam

The Carnatic Vocal concert.
…O S Thyagarajan’s Shyama Shastri krithis

The Tyagaraja Anniversary celebrations.
…Rendition of Pancharatnas

The labour.
…Manually rejuvenating domestic chores

The chant.
…Vishnu Sahasranama

The sleep.
…Fitful and peaceful serenity

The health.
…Good enough to donate blood

The blog.
…A notification of having led a supreme life.

Phrase of the day

"Take it with a pinch of salt"

Wiki definition: to accept a thing less than fully

My definition: a way of putting things across with subtle opposite implied meanings :)
[Smiley included in the definition!]

Ma

I recently saw Taare Zameen Par. It’s a very nice movie, kid has acted tremendously, Aamir Khan adds another feather to his cap, and all that. But the purpose of this post is not to write a review on the movie but to highlight a point that I thought about when I saw a song in the movie.

It was a song where the mom wakes up early morning and prepares breakfast for hubby, lays the dress to him and then when hubby leaves to office, again prepares breakfast for first son, lays the uniform for him and when first son leaves to school, the chores start all over again for the second son.

It made me think as to what would make a woman do this as against being like the hubby who just wakes up, has breakfast and leaves to office? Isnt it infinitely simple and rewarding to earn money to the family than undergo this constant 24*7 routine of ‘being the good house-wife’ which actually has no value in present-day outlook of life?

But then I realized, I mean its a big sacrifice to her career and all, yes, but doing all that for your loved ones is an even greater joy, and one that can even be considered as a project of a different dimension; of bringing up your kid in a way that makes your family and society proud; especially that scene in tennis match when they want to see the child win is like seeing the output of your program! And the scene when she cries because she left her son in boarding school is synonymous to project going bad and she as a prime member being responsible for it. But all these would be at a more a personal level than a project which is executed in office for which there is really no personal or emotional attachment and value.

But then, an important point was raised by my dear friend Harini when she said that a real career oriented woman would want to achieve the best of both to the best possible extent. Not necessarily being a high achiever in office but sufficient enough for her to be recognized as an individual outside the confines of the house and her family. Any given time the personal project will have more priority but definitely a career oriented person wouldn’t just want to stay at home.

Well, suffice it to say that I am proud of my mom...