./.

bright shiny day

yellow green leaves

man walks dog

tree winks; a private joke

a puddle a river

a doorbell sings

somewhere.

/*/


another hour to laze in bed from today...yeah, right, with her around :-)

reasons

A friend sent me this...slightly long but very well-written and analytical in a not-so-bookish way...makes sense.

http://www.reason.com/0603/fe.th.why.shtml

sigh sigh sigh

there's something about old b&w movies, pictures....something so romantic and poignant...making even the ugliest mug look ethereal...it just pushes the 'sigh!' button inside somehow...

last night, saw a beautiful old movie c1945 by david lean...a lovely heart-tugging romance...'Brief Encounter'....two married strangers meet at a station and fall in love and how they keep meeting despite being comfortably settled in life...and how it ends tragically.
Both of them are pretty ordinary looking and yet the illicit affair transforms them silently. Stolen happy moments, lies, excuses, walking with the other till the platform, the train chugging away, the smoke billowing through the screen, the shadows, the corners...it was beautiful, all the more because there was something so decent and restrained in the whole treatment of the story...
its all narrated in flashback by the heroine to her sweet hubby...the dilemma she finds horrible will be laughable in today's flicks. today, she would just dump her spouse, get a hefty alimony and shack up with her lover who would have left his family too or not and if they were serious about the till-death-do-us-part bit they would sign a pre-nup. cynical but true!

Sadly I feel romance is dead in the cinema today, be it in the West or in India. everything is so in-your-face and blatant, there is no subtlety, no chemistry in the movies anymore. the black and white era didnt just not have the loudness of colour, it also was all about, at least in the beginning, an understatement in the depiction of emotions...and thus mirroring the intensity within.

casablanca was another b&w classic....the works.

but then the early colour age had its high points too...an epic spectacle like mughal-e-azam had its immensely tender moments which are immortal now....that was beauty...that was romance. the lamp-lighting scene in sholay was romance. so many others...

still, black and white. sigh!

you have to go.

yes, its that time of the time again.

I can't stand it. I curse it, ignore it, plead with it in turns. I find myself looking closely at specific hairdos on the telly or on the road. I see myself getting the job done in a salon in a dream. It must be chopped off to the required minimum. As one lady somewhere said, you have high-maintenance hair, her polite PC way of saying your hair's a mess and why did you bring it here of all the salon joints in the world.

its only a matter of when.

come to think of it, the last time I had a haircut which didn't leave me with a not-so-happy feeling was 4 years ago. Every do since then has been naah-can-be-better.

so I wait and let my discontent grow while my mane breathes its last few.

It really must go. No shape, no form, no manners, no nothing. It must be done.

thought as much!...
it was house no. 25 where she lived for some months not 24 but for some reason I found 24 more attractive and took random shots of it...remember pausing in front of 25 since the guide had enunciated it pretty clearly and deciding it wasnt aesthetically exciting enough, moved to 25.
anyway, just the front of a house and an address...did the touristy thing but of the wrong one :-))

doesn't matter.

a rainy Bath

so, we visited Bath, or Bath Spa.

a beautiful old city that just oozes history from every crack...to think the Romans lazed around their baths here and the Victorians wandered down its cobbled streets...
the great pulteney street made that much long and that much wide for horse carriages to go through with ease in their day...the Roman baths themselves....squatting there, feeling the warm water...which was green in the pool but funnily enough, orange when it rushed through the channels...the relics...the stone coffins...Minerva's bust...ancient brooches....and the rain just adding to that otherworldly ambience.

the gorgeous old Abbey which dominates the skyline....the ancient architecture...

Jane Austen's temporary residence at 24, Gay Street (not sure if it had any connotations)
she penned her Persuasion and Northanger Abbey here....my buried english lit. signals tingling all over...missed the tour of her centre, we reached late after all the wanderings...and the tea and scones with it.

the beautiful old trees just towering over us...leaves all overthe place...fall in all her beauty....and the rain...our rather wet open-top bus tour and the wind stinging us when the rain paused briefly.

its a pity that tho our desh has zillion times more of a historical heritage and treasures to be showcased in every corner, we do not have the same respect that the europeans have for their past...
go to any old ruin in Delhi, and the city has quite a few of them hidden in its bowels, and find graffitti, paan stains, violent etchings and public lavatory smells.....tragic and frustrating...
these guys not only preserve, document and showcase their past with excruciating love and pride, they also earn huge bucks off it...so its not only sentiments...

so, anyway, we had a fleeting brush with the past that we had only read about or seen NatGeo specials on...wondrous and poignant.

And the rain softly fell on the old houses and streets and the hazaar tourists like us happy but not completely satiated...

'Once there were green fields kissed by the sun,
....
....
...
where are the green fields that we used to roam?'

:-)

A time to dress up, celebrate, make some serious noise, add to the bad bad emissions and get stuffed with endless rounds of mithai...wishing everyone a brilliant Diwali and a fabulous new year!

Wish I could do all of the above, can't...will be dull not being back home. anyway...can always try and burn down the place and get a sugary high :-D

da great dabbler

All my life I've dabbled merrily in stuff...music, dance, acting, learning languages, acquiring hobbies, even my friendships...never followed anything through to the next stage.

Lacking a killer instinct/a drive to excel/an intensity which has exasperated many of my good teachers/lecturers/parents/well-wishers. I realize that I have it in me to be be an ace at the stuff I had taken up at various points of my short life. And I am most definitely not talking about my abysmal Maths or Physics experiences here.

But I mulishly inherently almost always just skim the surface. Testing the waters or rather sampling a bit from all the pools...

Except for maybe writing, reading and hmm, photography. When I say photography, I do not in the least want to sound like I presume to any aspirations of an Henri Cartier Bresson or Eisenstaedt or Diane Arbus...but I do take pictures and have done so for some time....mediocre mostly with flashes of Aha-ness....

and Flickr has me hook, line and sinker...the great leveller...where wannabes like moi, pros and hungry amateurs are all offered a platform to display our wares and see some of the most amazing stuff the world has to offer, from all crannies of this planet. I think its one of the best things to have happened to me (circa Jan 2006) and the Net, circa I dont have the faintest.

Its almost like a little world unto itself...the familiar people 'contacts', their handles and the buddy icons, the zillion groups and their silly or not games...a parallel world...even if I have not a single frame to post in a day, I can just get sucked in jumping into strange lives and seeing the beauty they see...

like with the blogosphere, more than the happening places where the whole world and its granny seem to congregate (becos they have some great stuff and becos some are just da gurus), I prefer stealth-bombing into strange not so frequented spaces which have even more unusual takes on life...ordinary people who might not advertise themselves in group pools like me and everyone else....

I could go on and on till the cows get itchy....but to cut to the chase, I'm proud that I do have something I have been vaguely consistent about finally...and yes, my erratic blogging is another.

I think I'm done for today...

ein Buch

sat up late on sat night and finished it, at last.

a beautiful book. very disturbing, thought-provoking and SO opulent in its wordplay. I found myself returning mesmerized to some of its passages, words..

Beloved by Toni Morrisson is one of the some books I found precious and am glad I read it. It totally deserved the big one it got.

it stays with me. the incredible overarching 'thick' love of a mother which defies and disdains morality, sanity and other social labels, the querulous tender primeval love of a lost child that has returned, and the other that lives and grows up through a tempest of a life. The sadness, the poignancy and lives ripped open that run through the pages.

Black slavery and what it really meant... for a layperson like me who has just glimpsed it through pages, screens and trivia - the book educated. The horror, the inhumaneness, the jungle within.
Humans treated worse than dumb beasts.....a race, persecuted.

Amazing.

____


My poor Anna, hope she sees the light. God bless, either way. :-)

in my head...

This used to be my playground (used to be)
This used to be my childhood dream
This used to be the place I ran to
Whenever I was in need
Of a friend

Why did it have to end
And why do they always say

Don't look back
Keep your head held high

Don't ask them why
Because life is short
And before you know
You're feeling old
And your heart is breaking
Don't hold on to the past
Well that's too much to ask
...

I love this song...one of the few precious by the lady...I dont have much time for the past, but this brings back happy moments..

yesterday, saw a lil black fly insect thing fighting for its life after being accosted by a lil spider...it fought till the last..and the spider kept biting it...it was a one-sided contest all the way...

the scene took place right on the thick outer window glass of the living room...she and I watched...up close...in morbid fascination...

faced with the eternal dilemma that I'm sure on a much higher level confronts the wildlife photographers/researchers/filmmakers...should they intervene and save...but that would tilt the balance Nature works on....the food chain...it would be sacrilege for me to have played saviour...

so the insect died...a struggling, feisty wannabe survivor a few seconds ago and then just a lifeless tiny black form encased in white web...hanging there, preserved and safe for the spider's next meal...and sure enough it was gobbled up in another couple of moments...

the image stayed with me, and inside I felt a discontent as I had my rice noodles...that the life and death of a humble innocuous bug could have been decided by my passivity...it could have lived for another moment before it either lived on for another day or became food for the next predator in the area...the spider could have starved a lil longer and thus hunted with renewed vigor...

I do realize I'm being melodramatic as I'm wont to...but seeing it writhe and struggle to be free, stayed with me.

the spider still has its home under the casing of the glass outside.

Life.

youngest female writer to get the Man Booker...her mom was nominated quite some times...great job! the third Indian after rushdie and roy...

orhan pamuk gets the Noble prize for lit...

almost through this one...

time was when I used to have books for lunch and dinner...on the way to work, in between chores, a comfortable moment etc...now its more erratic, they just hang on for my attention when I can oblige...life changes, doesnt it? But I can never not have a book to return to. They've been part of me for as long as I can remember...and it runs in the genes too.

my memory isnt as sharp as it could be...I know I love the books I do, I can retrieve some snatches but not as much as bonafide book-lovers do...they can recite whole pages even. I can't.

But I love books in my own kooky way. I still have the dog-eared ones from my school days...4th, 5th grade on...love the smell of them...they form part of some good memories!

I'm already building a collection for her...a legacy of some good books...if not much by the way of assets, atleast she will never want for books :-D

a glance

"female"

"male"

"brown"

"white"

"nice"

"cute"

walk on past...

all about an auto ride

we're all heroes...or can be...

I've always felt each one of us populating this planet comes with an inbuilt survival package. We just get different scripts and get thrown into varied scenarios. each one of us specks is heroic in its own extraordinarily ordinary way.

we all have it in us to be heroes and make the best of what life throws at us. some are luckier enough in that they get to tap that hidden fount in their lifetime, some too busy scraping a living and battling prejudices, don't. And yes, there are some that spend the precious moments whingeing and cribbing about what could have been, not knowing that its upto them to shape the future with their hands.

I remember expostulating my belief to quite some people at different points in life, when they felt that they couldnt have survived a certain set of circumstances like somebody else had. You can be that somebody, when push comes to shove, when its time to make your dreams come true and be true to yourself.

even a roving glance at the animal world is telling enough. each day in the Masai Mara is a twirling circle of birth and death...and survival. the impala that gives the pack of wild dogs the slip lives, for another day.the carnivores, the herbivores, the omnivores...fighting tooth and nail to live.

And aren't we humans possessed of that ultimate weapon of consummate creation and destruction, that elixir of ideas, the brain. How then can anyone claim to be helpless, weak or awestruck with the ones who have made it upstream.

each one of us has stories of courage, strength and overcoming the odds in our lives...in different shapes and forms.

somebody I worked with whos around my age juggling two kids and a job, hasnt had a vacation since she was a kid, who hasnt travelled anywhere in particular, who's saving to retire to travel and enjoy life. is she any less a person for not doing all the amazing crazy things me or other women of her age have done and laughed at? Is her practicality and old-fashioned mindset to be laughed at or condescended to? I don't think so. Different strokes for different folks.

that's what is remarkable about the human spirit...the freedom of choice...to be what you want to be and not what the world's hype machine tells you to be.

Free will to Be or Become.

break a leg! :-)

the sun hasnt shown its face since yesterday....still raining....grey is what I see with some splashes of a dull green which might be trees.

__

Channel 4 aired a special on credit card data theft last night...undercover expose on touts in Delhi, Calcutta and Hyderabad....how easy it is to get a customer's security code on the card, bank account details etc...
it isnt painting a very bright picture for the already suspicious and paranoid customers in UK and other Western countries...it seems Kiran Karnik was rather rattled by this report...hope this was the last of such glitches and not the ubiquitous tip of the iceberg...

Interestingly, the same channel seemed to have screened 'Lamhe' at 10.30 in the night...per my programme guide...with English subtitles of course...

two of the great Indian claims to fame...BPOs and the Hindi film industry...

was it them saying we hate your guts as far as call centres are concerned but your movies are almost good enuff for our mainstream viewers...

funny.

__

its a special day today, wish the weather had obliged too. God bless her with a fabulous life and hope she lives it to the last drop. :-D

its a really cold grey day today...'the' English weather notorious for being as unpredictable as the female of the species...so the sun is apt to punch a few clouds out and be crowned champ again later today...which is good since I have some work outside..

__

you're sitting there and suddenly a huge grey cloud descends on the inside. no friggin reason why it should, considering you have almost everything you wanted, been that and done there...still some dreams to be fulfilled, yes?...but its just an inexplicable greyness...weighing you down, enervating you, so much so that you want to just sit there and grow roots..existence seems pointless...and then suddenly, it all clears up, you let out a huge guffaw at something and its all blue sky and white clouds again...funny human beings...

___

FYI - If you flip a shark upside down, the shark gets unconscious, has a blackoutwhich can help you make your getaway...but how do you get the cojones to flip it in the first place...hmm, worth a thot...!

saw 'gangster' last night...liked it...gritty, taut, A+ music with the usual pinch of melodrama thrown in...shiney shines :-)
the female's good too in an edgy sort of way, except for her voice and diction which really grate on the old ears...especially, in the screechy bits...hashmi's okay...
the bhatts keep experimenting...thank God for filmwalas like them...

the other half usually falls asleep even during the most testosterone-driven flicks...but was wide awake and actually looked interested in the proceedings which was a good sign..

+++

another one that i love and refuses to vacate...love it!

Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
It's not warm when she's away
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
and she's always gone too long
Anytime she goes away

Wonder this time where she's gone
Wonder if she's gonna stay
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
and this house just ain't no home
anytime she goes away

And I know, I know...

Hey, I ought to leave the young thing alone,
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
Only darkness everyday
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
and this house just ain't no home
anytime she goes away

hahahaha! the joys of motherhood - be afraid, be very afraid! :-D

just remembered steve mcqueen for some funny reason...he was SO dishy...memorable movies - papillon, the great escape and 'the towering inferno'...usually, the last man standing...and what a man!
___

one of the songs that just keeps coming back...
...
I wonder how
I wonder why
Yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky
And all that I can see is just a yellow lemon-tree
I'm turning my head up and down
I'm turning turning turning turning turning around
And all that I can see is just another lemon-tree
...

Oct 2 - the birth of a man who helped a country free itself from being a colony with some really unique set of tools, a shrewd king-maker, a spiritual figure for the masses and the classes, an icon if ever there was one...he captured the collective unconscious of people of varied hues within the same nation and of the world too...became an example for other greats fighting injustice in other forms, martin luther king, mandela et al. His words are quoted by nerds in every corner of the world till today. The man who thought it would be a good idea, when asked what he thought about Western civilization...the one they called Mahatma or Bapu...

Is he now just a face on a rupee note, a reason for a holiday or the protagonist of an amazing movie made by a gora?

I remember him if only for a minute today. It must have been something to be living in those times...

___

Today Ravan shall burn and Durga shall vanquish Mahishasura. In the South, its also time for Vidyarambham...Dussehra, Vijaydashmi, Dashmi Puja...celebrating Life.