AWOL

I have been away, to use an acronym from the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, AWOL! Have traveled a bit and had the last two Mondays as non-working. So life has been looking up!

Mathur got married. But I cannot write about marriages without writing a long piece about Namu's wedding. So will skip that with the remark that I have a few hundred rupees notes as sabashi for the incessant dancing, which has been ascribed the unbecoming verb of body-throwing in my specific context, on Mathur's Mehendi-Ki-raat. I think it might have to do something with the adulterated Limca that I laced my inners with! But thanks to this wedding, I got to see Lodhi Garden in Delhi. Beautiful place, one has to visit this place to believe that it is in Delhi. I think Delhi has many such treats to offer but one never gets down to enjoying them when he is around!

And then I visited the hallowed city of Rajnikant and his adoring fans. Stayed three houses away from Ms. Jayalalitha. She does have a huge house for a single woman of her age. Anyway it is always good to be back in Chennai (for a short while, I must add - just in case, there is a god and has a funny sense of humour). So I was there for a visa interview. People in U.S., no need to raise the alarm. This was more of a just-in-case visa and nothing to do with a visit in the offing. But the entire experience of getting a visa is very humbling or did-I-mean humiliating, indeed! Even the guards at the consulate treat you with a lot of antagonism. The Consulate in-charge gives the most condescending of lectures on "how to handle your visa interview".

"Say Hello to you interviewer. What would you say?"

Silence

"I did not hear anything"

Some people mumble Hello.

"Did you say something?"

That does elicit a louder Hello! And he goes on to complete his set of instructions which are as helpful as the one that was just discussed. To add injury to salt (or it is the reverse), I got ripped off by an autowallah. I really hate being ripped off, especially by the autowallahs. Amma! They are still not using the fare meters.

This is the centenary year of Satyagriha. And Gandhigiri is all that our TV channels can think of. Seriously wish some channel has the sense to run a decent program. But I guess it is too much to ask for. Why burden your viewers with a program on Gandhian principles while you have the choice of inflicting them with the mangal-dosh in Aishwarya's horoscope and Shilpa's coup in Big Brother! I think an apt justification to this would be the market demand for the fatuous and a lack of appreciation for anything more purposeful. I really hope this is not the case!

Life's Cube

A cubic age is an important milestone in one’s life. Having reached one in the recent past, I would share the model that was built so assiduously on the day I turned the cube of the largest possible prime number (Atleast that’s the plan!)

1: Too young. Sound of air blowing through pursed lips makes you pee. You are the inspiration for the waterfall advert of Pampers (or was it huggies!)

8: Conscious of life. Id and Ego are in a hard setting mould. The Freudian school of psychologists has given up on you! You are yet to discover the charm of “late-night-movies” but the day is not far. All sports persons but for Koneru Hampi are of an older age. You dream of all the wonderful things that you would do when you grow up!

27: Marketers do not try to influence you anymore. Parents/ Girl Friend want to you get married to someone/ herself respectively. Dreadful thirties are dreadfully near! The set of sports people older than you are genially referred to as old-fogies. You think of all the wonderful things that you did when you were not grown up! Piece of advice, Say no to Cynicism!

64: You have en-cashed your retrials and are invested in a very-low yield government bond. You tell point-less stories about how things were when you were at the previous cubic. Young people scurry off when you start of with “Hamare jamane mein….” There are a lot of things not physically possible not matter how much you crave for it. Like climbing Mt. Everest etc (What were you thinking?). You can definitely buy that Ferrari but would you drive it?

125: You have to be a Japanese citizen on welfare.

I was about to write a pensive post on turning old. But then someone else wrote it. For the record, I saw my first white strand yesterday. I like to think of it as uparwala's camera trick. To people in similar predicament, this thought helps!

Happy New Year!

I know it is five days too late but what the heck! The gin-ke-do-char-log who read this blog know that I have a knack of defying all timelines. So I do it again! Have a wonderful 2007. Have fun and do not bother yourself with the vagaries of life. Hope you get to dance more often.

Someone somewhere sometime back told me that a blog is a responsibility. Did not realize that two months back but this sudden realization today (or was it yesterday - does not matter anyway) has left me with the guilt of a father who has not changed the diapers that were wet 5 hours back. So here's a senseless and totally inane post which is half done already.

Have watched nine movies over the last two weekends. Do watch Groundhog Day. Clean and an incredibly feel-good movie (even an incorrigible cynic like me could not avoid feeling good at the end of it, so I guess it is a heady concoction of uplifting emotions). Phil (Bill Murray) is a weatherman stuck in time. He lives the same day over and over again till he finds …. Strange parallels with the lives that we live. In one of the most ironical of conversations, Phil talks to a half-drunk guy at a pub:

Phil: Have you ever felt that you are living the same day over and over again?
Half Drunk Guy (HDG) (aghast like when you are when a complete stranger knows your secret): I feel like that all the time!

Alice McDowell adds the garnish that a mildly cute but not destructively attractive actress is supposed to add to a movie.

Two other movies that I would strongly recommend are Motorcycle Diaries and Syriana. Motorcycle Diaries is a movie on the bike ride that Ernesto Guevara de la Serna el Fuser (better known as Che Guevera) and Alberto Granados embarked on in the early 50s. In the words of Ernesto, “This isn't a tale of heroic feats. It's about two lives running parallel for a while, with common aspirations and similar dreams.” Nonetheless, what a fabulous tale!

Syriana is the movie that got George Clooney his Academy Award for his role as a supporting actor. I think most of you have already watched it but I will write about it regardless of that. I watched it without subtitles the first time. Something highly recommended for a few tamil movies but not for this one. A lot of dialogue is in Arabic/Persian and Hindi. Hindi I knew, Persian I do not. Hence, I had to watch it again. I would have watched it twice anyway. A powerful concept and a compelling execution would make you do that. A hard hitting movie on Oil imperialism.

Not that the diapers from the second paragraph have been changed. I think it would be safe to sign-off for today!