"We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time.
Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late."
The other day I was talking to my sister and we happened to discuss how our social conditioning influenced our personalities and how it even now keeps trying to set direction & limits to our thought process.Growing up in a conservative society we were not allowed to have certain thought patterns.Nobody set the rules.It was part of the super-culture that still dominates the society where we grew up.And it is true for most societies, even the relatively progressive ones.I have often wondered how & why people often do not recognize these constraints.This is more surprising, because as I see it, one of most basic human traits is to rebel, to overcome- that is how the human race came till here.Yet the majority of us choose to adhere.Are we evolving into something different?
Maybe it is because the big picture is bigger than what anyone of us can see or understand. Or may be we are just not interested in all these random thoughts, after all there are better things like food,shelter and the pleasure of daily struggle, all of which offer simpler and more possible means to happiness and fulfillment, all which while being transient, are also enough for the time being.
But again the question here is not about the big picture, it is about why we set limits, knowingly or unknowingly, when all we want deep inside our hearts is to go beyond them..
Thanks to Narasimha Rao & Manmohan Singh ,I spent my childhood in two different Indias. The pre-liberalization era which was slow and protected ( & dull to my cousins who came on vacations from the Gulf) and the post liberalization period which saw a new life being pumped into everything.
Both had its charms.Though I for most part welcomed the changes that were coming ,like the addition of DD Metro and DD4 to DD1, the only channel we had till then .The come back of Coke ,the arrival of Big bubble chewing gum and more Jackie Chan movies meant the future was only going to be exciting.
However there were certains things which I thought were supposed to be there forever.Like the Ambassadors & Chetaks.The Chetak more so because I literally grew up on two Chetaks.The first Chetak,which my father brought from his friend was gold in colour and now looking back, looked very humble - but it still gave me one of the proudest & happiest days in my life when it came home.I was the smallest and had the rare privilege to stand between my father's driver seat and the handle bar whenever we used to go out on it.Our family of five used to travel with ease across the streets of Trivandrum -the scooter held us together..:) like it did many other families across India.
Saturday mornings became duty time for me as the assistant mechanic to my father who used to clean the spark plugs,wipe the engine and the tilt the scooter to reach what I called the 'Chetak Degree ', the point at which petrol flowed from the tank to the engine and pushed out whatever air was stuck inside the engine tubes.Visits to the local scooter mech was a monthly thing.
The coming home of the second Chetak was an even prouder day for us as it was a brand new scooter made in the new Bajaj plant in Nasik.It was green and bigger than our old scooter , which by then was sold to a friend of my father. This scooter took us everywhere ,to the market,library,to our friends' homes ,sometimes to school and tuitions and once even all the way from Trivandrum,Kerala to Marthandam,Tamil Nadu when my father went in search of the best (read 'the cheapest' ) construction sand in South India for our new house.
It was the end of the 90s and by then most of scooter families has started getting their first cars, the Maruti 800s.I turned 18 around that time and the fact that the Chetak was no longer the primary mode of family transport helped me make the case to my father that it was my turn...he happily obliged, probably wondering what was wrong with his son, he did n't ask for the Hero Honda.And so it was my turn..and it was my street hawk.I used to ride the green scooter , sun glasses and all on, through the busy streets of Trivandrum..to catch the lastest Mohanlal flick at Sreekumar , to buy beef from Palayam market,to the Museum grounds to gang up with friends & get a secret smoke and on bright sunny days to Kovalam or Shanghumugham ,to lie down on the beach and look up to enjoy the Trivandrum sky in all its sunny glory....
Achan sold the scooter sometime after 2000, when I got my bike & left for college and no longer had time for it.I used to look at it though whenever I went to the garage.I used to wonder why Bajaj used to sell us this clunky piece of machine and why we loved it, why we kept it..and will be soon overcome with guilt and leave the garage immediately, unable to look at the humble headlight , the faded paint work or the rusted body.I realize now that however outdated and clunky it was; it was family .And that every picture that I have in my mind about my home has a green scooter parked in front of it.
I am a big admirer of Tamil music . I think the Tamil music industry and the Tamil film industry have have created some of the best music in this world - and by world ,I mean the world and not just US ,Canada & Puerto Rico.
Being a keralite (Yes Payilukale..Iyam a mallu ) helped as there was always easy access to tamil movies and songs and we malayalees are culturally very close to tamil makkall except for one Mr TR Balu (angeru vaangikkum !) and some people on the wrong side of the Mullaperiyar dam.. This plus the fact that I am a born again Kamal Hassan fan led me to tears when I listened to "Yaar Yaar sivam " from Anbe Sivam.
My wifey is fed up with me as usual because that seems to be the only thing that comes out of my Mouth…
W : Cooked food? M : Yaar yaar Sivam… W : Washed dishes ? M : Anbe Sivam…. W: $%$^%^
Pathetic jokes aside, I really enjoyed listening to the song and it led my memories back to Thenpandi Cheemayille and a couple of others melodies rendered by Kamal. And then..Wow !! What a guy ! I am not seeing or listening to Kamal for the first time, but every now and then , I can't but stop and appreciate this man.I know that people have their own diverse share of opinions, but the stupendous effort that Kamal puts into his works alone is enough to inspire people.While our home grown " superstars" are still cashing in on past glory ,here is one guy who really reinvents himself with each movie he does.Thanks Kamal for not taking us for granted. ********************************************************************************************* Results of the Musical chair competition conducted by Sonia Gandhi last week :-
RL Bhatiya, Governor of Kerala became Governor Of Bihar and RS Gavai, Governor Of Bihar became Governor of Kerala The orgainizers of this event reserve the right to change the results anytime - The decision from 10 Janpath will be final ,binding & beyond comprehension .
********************************************************************************************** So Jesse Jackson Sr wants to cut off Obama's nuts and Jesse Jackson Jr says he vehemently opposes it. Whoa ..what a family !! **********************************************************************************************
So finally the dust has set down on a lot of things, the primaries in US, santosh madhavan in Kerala,indiana jones in hollywood,the olymbic torch relay in China,Euro 2008 in Spain and the Phoenix in Mars.
And life seems to have achieved a new super low in terms of excitement , that I have started deriving my daily dose of moitvation by focussing my skills on keeping track of the count of cockroaches I kill ,the missed farts, the # of flush downs I do every morning to get a clean Kakkoose and even the mileage of my car.
Saw WALL E last Friday, as usual Pixar delivers what it promised and more.Its time for a dud from them,its high time they stopped making great movies ...be human,be hollywood.
Recently I have started having dreams with logical conclusions. Every one of them seem to have a well defined plot,characters with personalities, climaxes and sometimes even anticlimaxes. Overall my dreams seem to have very good production values , and sometimes bizarre too..I had this scene in one of my dreams in which I was romancing with the female lead while relaxing on top of a huge sleeping croc and suddenly the croc awakes.. Too much of movies may be…people say that when you get obsessed with something ,things like this happen.If that’s case then I would forever be obsessed with cinema and film making.After all its free entertainment with lot of ideas with scoop value - only if I ever make that one movie which has been always playing there in the imax in my head…
Have been reading "Rebel without a Crew" by Robert Rodriguez… ************************************************************************************** Last saw : Paradise Now - Palestinian movie by HanyAbu- Assad and as the director said is an artistic view of the Palestinian political issue.Winner of the 63rd Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Film *************************************************************************************** I need help - Can some one tell me why Hillary is still there in the race for nomination??
The "improvement in the diets of people in India and China", which is forcing the governments there to keep food "inside" is a cause for the current global supply shortage, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said.
This and what Dubya said (pretty much the same ) a couple of days later shows how hypocrisy & self indulgence have dwarfed the thoughts of the developed world.Blaming the development of the third world and the desire of its people for a better standard of living for the global food crisis as they call it, is nothing but disgusting & preposterous.
PS : US is the nation which consumes the most calories per person along with the most gas per person.
The past few months have been very exciting and I am sure like me a lot of you people might have become addicted to tracking & following the Democratic Primaries and Caucuses.
I really wonder how Hillary feels now, the transformation from being the Queen waiting coronation to her present state must have been quite an experience for her.Who would have ever thought that the primaries would become such a tough race for her and America would get a new and inspiring leader in Obama….
By the way…I don’t have anything to do with US politics..I am not even a US citizen…but yes..Oobaamaa Oobaamaa does sound good :)
Finally got Sean Penn's "Into the Wild " off my wish list.Have been wanting to watch it for a while , I missed it when it hit the theatres.Got the CD from netflix and as I had thought the movie was more poetic than I read in the media.The life and death of Chris (read here) gets a new life through this movie and kudos to Sean Penn for making it.
Emile Hirsch has done a fantastic job as Chris.Infact every one of them in the cast seemed alive to me, especially Hal Holbrook( he deserved 'the' nomination).
The movie leaves you with a feeling of loss and admiration,loss of a friend,son,bother..and admirationfor someone who tried to defy all odds to get what he wanted,however stupid it may seem to the rest of the world. Genre: Drama Starring: Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Jena Malone, Catherine Keener Director: Sean PennScreenwriter: Sean PennProducer: Sean Penn ,Art Linson, Bill Pohlad Composer: Michael Brook, Kaki King, Eddie Vedder
Rediffhas always been 'the site' , atleast for me..right from the baby days of internet in India to the present day of WIFI and cell phone browsing. Not because of its content or lightening fast Email, but because it symbolizes India for me in many ways…right from the zillions of pop-ups which blast out ,irritate you and refuse to go away like the vendors in a baazar to the crappy user comments centered around topics like Sachin -Sourav , Rajni-amithab,Mohanlal -Mammotty,North India- south India, Hindi- Tamil and what not. You can also find the occasional champion for national integration putting up his concerns and geting booed by the others ,who, my best guess, could be jobless software engineers like me trying to kill their time by practicing creative sadism( ya..'v been there..done that )
It is the ideal virtual microcosm of India where cricket gets a lot of space along with Mallika Sheravat,Astrology,outsourcing,how to file your income tax ,tips to succeed in the stock market and yes, more cricket.Not even a bit of space is vacant.Links to thousands of resources cover the whole page along with advertisements coaxing you to get your horoscope report ,get employed,get married ,invest for your future..buy stuff..phew..It has everything ..doesn't it....
Click any article on anything, scroll down to the user comments and you can invariably see an often moderated "healthy discussion" which borders on the verge of exploding into a full grade war had it not been for the fact that everything is virtual in the virtual world. It could be a topic as distant as life on Mars, but somehow every topic translates into something Indian and often to virtual fights. Sometimes I wonder why ? Is this how it should be.Is it something human or is it something Indian.? Not that being Indian is not being human or vice versa..Well I guess having done the rhetoric ,I should leave it to the social scientists to do the research…
But maybe this is how it must be, and this is what makes rediff ,rediff ;a place where you can shout, sing,learn and ofcourse check your email at the speed of lightening and feel at India (that’s home) I can go on and on..after having created my first email Id with rediff which I still keep.. its been a long journey for the past 8 years.. And I am sure it will go on..
If there is one thing on which the 'evolutionaries' and supporters of Intelligent design would concur, it would be on the impossibility of Idiocracy.Evolution is the survival of fittest supported by intelligence and can go only forward.And as far as Intelligent Designers are concerned ,its all been already planned and thought of .
Well Mike Judge and Etan Cohen doesn't seem to think so and so does the hilarious movie they made an year back.Idiocracy is all about the reversal of evolution or biological devolution and how stupid the world can end up being if things go the way the movie says its going.
But as in all American movies the world in this one also means America & Americans(all of whom look like immigrant labourers from Mexico,whether a pun was intended is still unknown at this point of time).May be Mike and Etan had second thoughts on portraying their idea on a planet earth scale due to obvious reasons which need not be made explicit(Did you not see the word 'Obvious'??).
Well those who want to know more about the movie can read on here.
I doubt if anyone knows this guy. It was in a small article in last week's TIME that I came to read about this guy.Sean Penn is making a movie on him,after the best selling book on him by Jon Krakauer 'Into the Wild'.Curious to know what this guy was all about I did some research and well ,not a day has passed since without looking up and finding something about him.He was no scholar,actor,statesman or biz leader,just a 24 year old guy who got fed up with the world and went into the wild to bring sense to life.
Chris McCandless(Feb 12, 1968 – Aug 1992) came from a well to do family,graduated from the Emory(FYI..Salman Rushdie teaches there now..)and at the age of 22 severed ties with the whole world,burned all the money he had,hitch hiked around North America under the name Alexander Supertramp and disappeared into the Alaskan wilderness only to return dead.
Was he an anarchist? He was no Abbie Hoffman.But what he did was anarchism of a different order to the world. To him, it was the only way , the true way.
To me he embodies the thirst for realization and courage to go to any extreme for that.He once remarked to his friend (who employed him as a help for a short while) ,
“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t met you though. Tramping is too Easy with all this money. My days were more exciting when I was penniless and had to Forage Around for my next meal… I’ve decided that I’m going to live this Life for some time to come. The Freedom and Simple Beauty of it is just too good to pass up.”
Chris died of starvation.His body was found by moose hunters in an old abandoned bus in the woods.Whether he found what he set out for is something nobody knows.And what he would have told the world had he come back alive is also something we dont know.
In the past few months, the thought of again being an active blogger must have crossed my mind atleast a zillion times.But everytime it just whooshed away through my stray thoughts and nothing happened.
Its not just me.I have seen a lot of active bloggers in the same path.It was not a sudden disillusionment of sorts,but more of an uncalculated drift away from writing stuff. It starts with long gaps between posts,once the gaps become too long,it is again broken with a comeback post.Two or three more may follow to keep company,but the same story follows.Sort of a slow death for which nobody might ever write an obituary.
The count of 'dead blogs' all over the net are increasing day by day.Atleast a dozen I regularly tracked have completey withered down save the lone comment by a stray scavenger. Sometimes I wonder..where are these people? Who used to post by dozens every week? All the Comments and courtesy comments? Was blogging just a fad of the time?
"It will take time to restore chaos" -George .W. Bush
It is quite obvious that he did not have any idea regarding what he was talking about(well he rarely has !), but I guess this will go down in history as one of the most prolific philisophical quotes ever made by a dumb politician.
What Dubya intended to convey will always remain a mystery like his political intellect or administrative prowess.But taken as an independent quote, the interpretations this quote has received hints that the butterfly effect of this will be tremendous.
The Indian political scenario currently is very active thanks to the upcoming presidential poll.
Speculations on who will get to laze around(there are exceptions) as the first citizen of the world’s largest democracy have almost come to an end, though some still believe that it is still not a lost cause and is worth putting more time and effort into. It really amuses me, that people can( me included) get hooked to something in which they have the least or almost no choice and which never has been a cause of terrible nightmares.
Historically, the office of the Indian President has always been just another office in New Delhi. A sort of five star retirement home for the old political stallions who could no more win a derby,but wanted very much to be part of it.They never intended to do anything great,nor felt it was a really great office that mattered.
Seems the story is no longer so.Ever since Abdul Kalam, the accidental president, turned things around in Rashtrapathi Bhavan by making sensible use of the office as well as the paraphernalia that came along with it, the Presidency of the Union of India seemed to have gained much charm,even to the surprise of those who made him the first citizen.
But it’s a sad thing that none of the political parties of India have not learned from this example.They still want it to be part of their extended political ego rather than a symbol of Indian unity and belief in democracy.
Im not here to comment on the credentials of the others in the fray, for it serves no purpose.Any candidate can invite the wrong questions,for the age we live in is filled with events that creates the reasons for these questions.But atleast we could have found someone like Kalam,to whom the entire nation looks up to,adorn the position.
Afterall this is one position whch holds minimal powers, but a lot of respect; Can't we just think beyond the silly differences ?
I am going through a bout of laziness,which of course is an every now and then thing for me.Its again therapautic.You feel so pissed of with yourself at the end that you finally start doing things ..yeah we do!
All sorts of things happen in between.Visions of life a going to be wasted,dreams of operating the tv remote with the mere spark of a thought,the fear of de-evolving into one of those slimy slothy creatures which sleeps for a 100 years,wake up to walk a millimetre,eat a fly and go back to sleep for another 100 years..all the while the delusions seem to echo with the angry words of somebody's wife..(yeah it has always been a little vague)
And when the high is reached,well always a new one every time,you just cant believe you are there,and when its over you just feel proud , of having experienced a never before feeling ...It might seem abstract,but thats the whole philsophy of it..
Which canthree are you fam? India.. U speak guth engleas far Endians… Thanks! And you mam? I cam from the Nederlands..u kna Hollanth? Of course I ve learned in geography? U wenth to collage in Endia? Yes.
Whath didh you larn? Computers.. Ok u on business? No Im a consultant..u know..
Ya..u like America.. Just moved in… You? I don’t….too hot here…Nederland is cold…I like Cold.. So you wanth it shorth? Yes..
Size 4 or 2..? I dint get you..? Short or too short? Sides and back …too short Up and front …short..
Client demo follows.
Will that do? Yep… Roar of machines.. Is that fine?
Nothing was left..,it was the most tragic sight..the magic tuft which strategically covered my forehead was gone.. Light took turns in bouncing to and fro from the head of the guy in the front me and.. well my own….
total tragedy..
It hot in Bombay? Yes.. You like America…? No Why… ?
Ith too cold.. I wanth to go back to Endia….i like. hoth..
Its been over a month now here in the US..And for all its greatness,America seems to me as a superbly boring country..Empty roads,sleepy malls..and silence all the way ..you might as well believe this is a huge empty parking lot rather than the united states of.. All the thank yous,welcomes and the courtesy bickerings seems to be taking its toll on me..No filled up transport buses blowing up the dust,not autorickshaws to have bumpy rides ending in arguments..no paan stains on the walls..no crowded theatres..no cricket,no spicy fish curries..no cow dung on the road,no elephants blocking traffic..
