I see you - A three hour tickle...

For someone who hasnt been on a date, leave alone the blind one.. the 'Blind Date' show at sathyam showed me what to expect from it. I have heard people say that its a risky business going to this show, u could end up watching movies like saw 3... but if it was to be your day, u could be watching the premiere show of say.. a movie like casino royale. Me and my friends werent expecting any such blockbuster, but were hoping to see a movie worth the price of the ticket. I am undecided whether the yet-to-be-released movie 'I see you' is worth the 90 bucks... but hey, i am here to comment on it.

Have you ever tried any weed? I havent, but i have heard about the ecstasy it gives. A friend once told me that it was the most blissful moment he had.. 'Machan... i was laughing like anything (for absolutely no reason), i laughed so much that that my stomach ached and i started crying... the image of me crying was so funny, that i started laughing again...', the movie was something like this.. it was so devoid of logic (or was it a deliberate attempt to make the movie funny?) that me and my buddies were laughing at every scene. Now, this doesnt rule out the possibility that the movie was good or that the movie was a usual bollywood style movie, for i do not watch hindi movies so much.. but a scene where a brit cop speaks hindi on BBC is bound to tickle not just your funny bone but every bone, muscle and nerve on your body.

Anyway, the movie is about a TV host, who can apparently see the spirit of a girl in coma. He starts hanging out with her, loses his grip on life and ends up falling in love with her. The villian is the doc at the hospital who tries to kill the girl, for she knew too much about his organ trade. The hindi speaking cop investigating the accident that led the girl to coma tricks the doc and gets him arrested.(Hmm.. now who is the hero? the cop or the TV host) And there is this hero's sidekick who has done the role that would have made 'circuit' proud.

It would be unfair on my part if i were to finish this here without mentioning about the audience that watched the movie.. especially the five guys sitting next to me and my pals. They made some of the best wisecracks with perfect timing, that left me wondering at the end of the movie.. How did i sit for two hours watching this?

Been there.. done that..!!

The best thing about life is that it can surprise you just when you are not expecting one. It is full of mysteries which surfaces with perfect timing and leaves one pondering for as long as appropriate.

Life for me has been monotonous for the past month or so until a couple of days back... when i was struck by two deja vu's in two days. Now.. two in two days is something that has never happened before.. for me these things happen once in anywhere between 6 to 12 months.

I was particularly interested with the second deja vu. I was diff-ing two versions of a file in gvim(an editor which i have known only for the last month or so), when it hit me.. hey.. i have been here and done this before. It was in a dream i had had 3 to 4 months back, when i was still in infy. That was the time when i was desperately hoping for a career change into s/w development and dreams such as this were quite common. But the most uncommon thing here is that in the dream i was diffing using an editor of which i had absolutely zero knowledge, sitting at exactly the same desk in an office which i never knew.

Anyways, the point here is that these things often raise many questions.. for starters.. can we look into the future? is the future already decided and we just pass through it? or is it just me alone who passes through it and everything around just variables that model my predetermined existence? or is this just a trick of the mind which associates these real life patterns with a mental projection of our deepest wishes? or is this a mere coincidence?

I have been thinking about these ever since the second deja vu and all i could come up with is this blog. :-(

Varalaaru-History of godfather- 2 minute review

If u are going to this movie expecting it to be like the all-time classic Godfather, then you are forewarned - this is no way close to it. This movie will not make it to the league of extraorniary tamil movies either, but is better than most of the movies released this diwali.
After watching the movie, the first thing that came to my mind was Shivaji's classic 'Deiva magan'. I could find a lot of similarities between the two movies- the dad characters in both the movies had some personality issues (shivaji-scarred face, ajith-feminine charecteristics) the happy-go-lucky sons, the separated twins etc...
Ajith, for a change has concentrated on acting(rather than on punch dialogues-though some of the punches were delivered now and then), his role as the classical dancer with feminine charecteristics couldnt have been performed better, but somehow the movie lacked the depth in the story. Going by the name of the movie, i was expecting ajith to be a don and that's how his intro too was. But then i was disappointed to know he wasnt(or was he..??).. coming to think of it i do not know what he was, except tha he has 40 estates and 4 offices and wealth enuf for ten generations(pathu talamuraikku sothu).
The movie is about a son trying to kill his father who betrayed his mother only to find that all this was a terrible misunderstanding. The movie is free flowing after the initial 30 minutes or so, during which ajith and his so called friends spoil it with cheap comedy. It was thoughful of the director to include some scenes after the end of the movie in an attempt to explain the loose threads, it was a different approach rather than having the usual hero-villian dialogue wherein the villian explains (with the muahahhahahhah) how he screwed the hero.
Anyway, the movie is worth the 80 bucks i paid for it but isnt good enough to find a place in my DVD collections.

All for a cup of tea...!!!

When i set out to have a cup of tea this evening... i never thought that i would be sitting here writing this blog(i was actally thinking of writing about diwali.. that is going to be my next blog).

I started from my office at about 5.45... the climate was cool, with plenty of hints that it was going to rain. the climate was so great that the occasion was perfect for a cup of tea at the stall a couple of minutes away from my office. So, instead of heading to the parking lot i went to the tea stall. Just as i ordered my cup of tea.. it started drizzling. The drizzle dint bother me and i continued slurping my tea. Within a couple of minutes the drizzle was no more so... but i assured myself that it is just one of those 10-minute-downpour. My attention now turned to the hot bajjis and i started stuffing them slowly.. enjoying every bit of it and waiting for the rain to stop. Instead the rain grew stronger and stronger. I waited... and waited... and waited... and checked my watch only to find that the time was 7.30. (In the meantime i had finished 4 bajjis and 1 mysore vada.)

This is where i first thought about leaving my bike and taking a bus to home. Naah.. its already a couple of hours since the rain had started, i started computing the probability that the rain would stop in another 10 minutes. With every ten minutes that passed, the rain continued relentlessly and somehow the probability factor grew along with this. Finally when it was about 9.30, i decided to ditch the probability factor and pursued what my commonsense had advised a couple of hours back.

By the time i reached the bus depot, i was totally wet. There was a lone D70 waiting with all seats taken. Fearing that this could be the last bus, i got into it. Velachery is notorious for flooding during the rains and this was the first time i saw evidence for this. Roads were competely inundated and on above all this, the bus came to a halt that lasted for 30 minutes neat the guindy signal. At about 1030, the driver yelled for the conductor and announced that the gears in the bus were getting locked. He proposed two things, a-bring the bus to a halt and b- move at snails pace till the final destination. After a few minutes of deliberation, they chose the second option. What should have been a 15 minute journey from there till vadapalani took 45 minutes and it was agonising to watch two D70's pass by.

I got down at vadapalani at 11.15 and waited for an auto. During all this time, it was raining and i appreciated myself for deciding to take a bus home. Maybe it was a bit too early for this, i waited for the auto that never came. And finally at 11.30 i streched my arm and started asking for a lift. Well, the world is not such a bad place yet, i got a lift from a guy who dropped me at my home... and here i am... hearing eminem's 'til i collapse' and writing this tale... :)

Beauty and the blind

Today was just like any other day at the outset, i got up late as usual... despite being late watched seinfeld.. cursed people around for delaying me and took the usual share autos upto guindy where i was waiting for the third. Until this point it was just another day.
Just as i was waiting at the bus stop, a heavily crowded bus came to a halt before me. Lotsa people got down and lotsa people got in. As usual, there was a fully loaded share auto between the bus and the stop, blowing the horn menacingly, as if wanting to run over people who dint get into it.
It took me a couple of seconds to realise that the honking was aimed at the shabbily dressed man(who had got down from the bus a few seconds back) standing before the auto. My first thought was that this guy was in some deep thought that he dint realise the auto behind. Then it struck me, this guy was blind.
Out of sympathy and basic human courtesy i pulled him to my side. This is a part of the conversation that happened between us.
Me: enga sir neenga poganum?
Mr X: actually, I want to go to saidapet. can you please help me get into a bus that goes there..??
Me: (a bit shocked, i wasnt expecting english from this guy) seri ok, bus vanda yeti vidaren.
Mr X: thank you. pause... you must be wondering why i was standing at the same place as soon as i got down from the bus.
Me: (wanted to say 'no, i understand, u dint kno where to go')hmm...
Mr X: I usually rest for a couple of minutes as soon i get down from the bus. Bus journeys are very tiring, it makes me weak.... pause... rest my nerves... pause... u know wht...
Me: enna?
Mr X: doing small things like this keeps me young.
Me:(why are you telling all this to me!!!) hmmm...
Mr X: how old do you think i will be..?? i am just 35, people will hardly believe me when i say this..
u should see my photos taken when i was young... even now, except for my hair, i look young and handsome..
you should see the digital pictures... u kno digital pictures..?? these things are catching up in india now.. (i think he meant digi-cams).. i look beautiful and handsome even at this age...
It was at this point i felt... hey, wait a minute...how does this guy kno whether he is handsome or not... even if someone tells a blind person that he is goodlooking... how many such people will tell this to a complete stranger? (One way of looking at this would be.. this guy is a jerk... talking incoherent things to strangers... but that is not what i felt then.. and even now)
I was dumbstruck for a few moments... first this just another guy turns out to be blind, then
he surprises me by talking in... lets say... good english... then he makes me rethink about wht beauty is..
This may not seem different to ppl who are reading this... but at that momemt, it was different to hear about beauty seen by the eyes of a blind...

T-Sho(i)rt messages...

Read an interesting T-shirt message couple of days back...

Everybody wants to go to heaven... but nobody wants to die.. :)

Thought provoking... aint it...?

Share autos and women

Share autos have become part and parcel of the life of chennaiites... They are handy not only for travelling short distances, but even for longer distances... These days i travel to office which is close to 15 kms away (close to away???) completely by share autos.

One thing i do not like about share autos (other than the uncomfortable seating and rash driving)is the mentality of women travelling in it. (Now, this blog is not meant to project women in any negative sense.. damn, i should have included the disclaimer).

Every now when a women gets into the auto first, she expects no male traveller to sit by her. And every now when I dont care about this and sit beside her, i get the worst possible glare ever from her. And every now when another woman gets into the auto, i am asked to shift to the wooden plank across so that this woman can sit beside her. (And worse are the men who give this nod of approval and at times go a step further and justify this behaviour... lets spare them till the next blog)

Now... based on this and similar incidents at different places, i am forced to conclude that despite their claims of being equal to men, women (atleast in India) like to project themselves as the weaker sex. I wouldnt say that they are below men... but they are oppurtunistic and are ready to accept that they are second best to men if they smell trivial benefits out of normal daily life situations and circumstances...urrrgh.. makes me sick...

Wavelength

“Dude… he isn’t my wavelength…” - Like so many other phrases I use, this too falls under the ‘not-so-well-defined’ category. Only sometime back, I decided to give it some serious thought and define what it could possible mean.

The first thing that people in the same wavelength share is the similarity in likes dislikes and prejudices. Liking the same rock star, hating the same prof, blaming the system for things that go wrong – these minor eccentricities make people sense a common connection. For a long time, I believed that similar interests and intellectual capacity keep people in the same ‘wavelength’, but taking personal experiences into consideration, I realized that nothing of this sort is really necessary – in fact, the thing that is essential is the (glaring) difference in levels of knowledge (Interestingly, MSWord suggested information as an alternative to knowledge… that makes me wonder… is knowledge just a memory capsule of information…?) in divergent areas among the so called pals. One guy’s knowledge of snakes compensated by another guy’s knowledge about sex at which the formers sophistication is as good as a 7 year old. One guy’s knowledge about computers is a great alternative topic to discuss when the other’s philosophical rhetoric reaches heights of boredom. This way people remain interested in each other, thereby forming a channel for knowledge exchange (simultaneously narrowing down differences).

The point I am trying to make is that people remain in the same wavelength as long as the abovementioned differences among them continue to exist. The moment this ceases to happen, people who once seemed to have the same wavelength turn into ‘pain-in-the-ass’ ones, engaging only in occasional small talk. Ultimately such associations end up in favor of new ones that look great on that day… and we once again foster them unaware of its fallibility.

Carved Dreams

Man sleeps for 8 hours a day, it doesn’t need an Einstein to figure that this sleep constitutes a third of one’s life. Some feel this is a necessity; a few consider this as an annoying, yet avoidable indulgence but most hardly give it a thought. For me, sleep holds the key to my next adventure, the gateway to this fantastic dimension – Dreams. I have been the gallant gladiator fighting for survival, traveled thro space and time… but hey, let me save them for a better occasion. Instead, let me tell you about the different types of dreams I have had. The first is one where you don’t know it is a dream; you wake up and exclaim ‘damn… that was just a dream’. The second one is just like the first up to the point where you find things too good/far-fetched/absurd that you conclude rightly that it must be a dream. But you still allow things to happen unconscious of the fact that you are making them happen, you are actually watching a movie without knowing that you are the director. The third types is where you know it is a dream and also realize that you have the power to make things happen… if the first type is Alice in Wonderland, this is where Alice rules Wonderland. This is the dream where you dodge bullets like Neo, develop spectacular psychic powers… in short defy the laws of physics and fast-forward biological evolution (hey… is this fun?). The last kind of dream (that I know of, and dream about having) is where you know it is a dream, you also know that you can shape it the way you want to but still include logic, commonsense and other real world parameters into it. It is not a dream anymore, it is pseudo-reality. This dream is the most difficult one to sustain, for throughout human history, having power and resisting the urge to use it is unheard of. This is like playing a game of chess… a game where you play on both sides, a game that you lose once you start favoring either side.

So… have you played one yet?