Work from Home or Homework - Which do you prefer?

Every time I saw someone in the office, with a laptop or a blackberry, I used to feel jealous. They looked so damn cool. They did not have to raise PC requests. Their CD drives were functional. They could access their emails from anywhere etc. As cliched as it may sound, the fact is that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence !! So as you must have guessed, these misconceptions vanished a week or two after I got my laptop a couple of years back. I was now permanently available to work, to respond to emails etc. The only time I could escape, was when I was driving to and from work.

Then I started envying people who worked from home. They did not have to travel all the way to work. They could wake up when they wanted to, take bath when they wanted (and if they wanted to), they did not have to wear formals everyday, no shoes (in US) and so on (may sound silly to you, but they meant a lot to me). And now I know how wrong I was in wanting that !! I seem to have the knack to always want the wrong things in life or atleast, only when I wish for wrong things is my wish granted !!

Now I have been working from home for more than a month. So what is wrong? I am a positive person (or so I would like to think) and I don't mean only my bloodgroup. So let me start with the good points :

• I can wear a salwar kurta when I work
• I don't have to comb my hair every day
• I can eat food out of a plate instead of from a tiffin-box
• I don't have to meet with people
• I don't have to spend money or time on commuting to work.
• No shoes required
• I remain silent most of the time.
  

So what's wrong with it?

• I am cooking 3 times a day
• I don't see people
• I am turning to something like a UFO (heard of but never seen)
• I never 'go home' after work. An hour, a day, a week - are all like the next
• I feel guilty when I go for grocery shopping, since I am 'missing work'
• All days are workdays. A workday is 18 hours long.
• My phone's receiver is losing weight instead of me. I swear that once when I took the receiver from my ear, I found my dislodged ear attached to the phone. I then had to use some 'Made in China' glue to stick it back in position. You will believe when you see me and find one ear slightly differently positioned compared to the other.
• I am forgetting how my voice sounds, except when I chat with people at home
• I have no place to run to, when I receive my daily call from my manager telling me how disappointed he is in me. I would like to have a team-member to shout at too.
  

My habit of wishing to be like people older or more experienced than me or different from me, has more often than not, led to all my disappointments in life. As a child, I remember always wanting to grow up and get out of school, so that I would not have daily homework, or to write any assignments or tests or examinations or wear uniforms. I thought taking a book or a single notebook and wearing clothes of your choice was cool and longed for college. In college, I wished to become financially independent and longed to start working. Now I would give anything for the life of a student, a life with a lot of certainty (again, you see I am wishing for something out of my reach !!)

Give me home-work any day. I would prefer that infinitely to working from home !!

Kalki's works

At the age of about 5 or 6, I remember being fascinated by my father, who could read a book, only with his eyes ! He did not have to read it out aloud to understand and I remember thinking it was one of the coolest things I had seen in my life (till then !!). I guess my initial reading was restricted to devouring anything and everything by Enid Blyton. So there I was, living in a small hill station in Tamilnadu, dreaming about ginger-beer, ham sandwiches and bacon (not knowing it was meat of course !!) without a clue on how they would look like.

I had studied tamizh for exactly 2 years in school. The first was in class I, when I learnt the alphabets and then in class III when I learnt words and sentences. The difficulty in finding a good library was probably the first reason for me to turn to reading Tamizh magazines and books. That and the concept of a circulation library where a person would come and deliver weekly and monthly magazines right to our doorstep. Now tamizh magazines and books were usually censored by my mother then. There were authors that were considered acceptable by my mother and I could read anything by such authors and then there were those that were absolutely banned for fear of getting my mind corrupted. In case of authors like Sujatha, the book had to first be read my mother before the verdict was passed.

Kalki is probably the first writer, that my mother encouraged me to read. ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ - supposedly Kalki’s most popular work was serialized in the tamil weekly magazine called Kalki, was my first attempt at a historical and it was my first exposure to Kalki’s works too. And the rest, as they say, is history (I mean, my history !!).

R.Krishnamurthy, more popularly known as Kalki was a freedom fighter, magazine editor, novelist, short story writer and an art critic. He was the man who made the popular weekly ‘Ananda Vikatan’ a household name in lakhs of Tamizh homes. He gained a lot of popularity for his epic trilogy - Sivagamiyin Sabatham, Parthiban Kanavu and Ponniyin Selvan. His other famous works include Alai Osai, Tyaga Bhoomi, Poimaan Karadu, Kalvanin Kathali etc.

I will not elaborate on Kalki as a person as I will not be able to give more information than Wikipedia or the internet, nor is my information drastically different. I will instead, attempt to describe his greatness as a novelist, especially in his works based on Tamizh history, or atleast their impact on me and my literary tastes.

So what makes these three novels great? Why, the characters, for one ! Every character is well-etched and Kalki’s writings made you actually visualize a lot of incidents. His works are a wonderful mixture of history, fiction and humour. They are historicals, but no less thrilling than any best-selling mystery novel. For once, his female characters are extremely strong and not mere supporting characters.

For instance, take the case of Sivagamiyin Sabadam :

Facts :

-King Mahendra Varman converted from Jainism to Hinduism after Appar (aka Thirunavukarasar) cured him of some disease.

-The Chalukya king attacked Kanchi.

-Narasimhavarman (popularly known as Mamallan) avenged the seige of Kanchi by attacking Vatapi and burning it down.

-Paranjothi was the commander of Narasimhavarman’s army and lead the attack on Vatapi (Trivia : He supposedly brought back a pillar with the idol of Ganapati on it as a proof of his victory and installed it in the temple in Tiruchengatangudi in the Tanjore district. This idol was the inspiration for the Vatapi Ganapati idol installed in Tiruvarur temple and hence the song ‘Vatapi Ganapathim Bhajeham’ by Dikshitar).

-Paranjoti later gave up worldly life and changed his name to Siruthonda Nayanar and was one of the 63 Shaivaite Nayanars.

-During Mahendravarman’s rule and his son Narasimha Pallavan’s rule, arts and crafts flourished in the region and the shore temples and numerous other sculptures were created in Mamallapuram (now known as Mahabalipuram).

Now if I look at sculptures of a beautiful woman in Mamallapuram, I would probably take a few snaps (most that would include me in silly poses and posing for the camera !!). What would happen if a creator of Kalki’s stature saw them? - An epic romance set in the time of Narasimha Pallavan !!

The prince Mamallan (aka Narasimha Varman) loves the daughter Sivagami of the master sculptor Ayanar. Sivagami is a great bharatanatyam dancer and is the inspiration of many of her father’s sculptures. As in any love story, the emperor is against this romance and orders the son to stay back in Kanchi while he engages in a battle with the Chalukya king Pulikesi. After a lot of interesting twists, Sivagami and Ayanar are captured by Pulikesi. Pulikesi humiliates her and Sivagami vows that she would leave Vatapi only if Narasimha Varman burns the city down and rescues her (and hence the title). So even when Narasimha Varman visits her secretly and tries to rescue her, she refuses to go with him. Narasimha Varman later returns after almost 9 years and re-captures Vatapi, but things are not the same anymore.

On reading the novel, you will realize how beautifully the above mentioned historical facts have been woven into the novel. It is hard to separate facts from fiction. All characters are complete and well-written.

The heroine is a damsel in distress, for sure, but she is extremely strong willed and is not faultless. She has a bad temper and is extremely stubborn. This novel has one of the most chilling villains in Tamil literature. The Jain monk - Naganandhi, whose actual name is Neelakesi and is the brother of the Chalukya king Pulikesi is a connoisseur of arts, unlike his royal brother and is a master king-maker and spy.

‘Parthiban Kanavu’ is chronologically after Sivagamiyin Sabadam and describes the story of the Chozha prince Vikraman who father dies in the battlefield after expressing his dream of regaining his kingdom from the Pallava King Narasimha Varman (the hero of the previous novel), to a mysterious monk. As in a good Indian movie, our hero falls for a girl Kundavi, who is none other than the daughter of his arch-rival Narasimha Varman. This novel too has many historic references and has interesting narratives of practices during the period including the Kapalikas (worshippers of Goddess Kali) who believed in human sacrifices etc. There is a wonderful suspense in this novel too, but unfortunately I saw the B&W movie made on the novel first and knew what the suspense was in the first shot (Why did they think that makeup could completely disguise a person like Ranga Rao?

‘Ponniyin Selvan’ is the last in the trilogy and is about the Chozha dynasty. This is by far the most interesting of the 3 books and has more colourful characters than the other 2 put together. Although the title Ponniyin Selvan (son of Ponni, the river) refers to the prince Arulmozhi Varman, the actual hero of the novel is Vandiyathevan, a lovable rascal, who is a close friend of Karikalan, Arulmozhi Varman’s brother. This book has not one or two, but at least 6 very strong women characters - Arulmozhi varman’s sister Kundavai, the boat woman Poonkuzhali (what a beautiful name !), the queen of pazhuvoor Nandini (a wonderful character), the kodumbalur princess Vanathi, the mute woman Mandakini Devi, Raakammal the spy and so on. The most interesting character is that of Aazhvarkadiyaan, the vaishnaviite who roams around the country and picks up fights with Saivaiites.

The plot of the novel is very intricate and maintains a superb suspense till the end. One part of the novel, that seems particularly etched in my memory is where Kalki describes and compares the beauty of Kundavai and Nandini. Both of them are extremely beautiful women, but while one’s beauty is pleasing and has a calming effect, the other’s is mesmerizing and is capable of driving men crazy. He compares Nandini’s beauty to that of a serpent and for some reason I seem to remember this particular description very well.

For each run of these novels in the Kalki weekly magazine, a different artist was responsible for the illustrations. I remember Maniyam Selvam’s illustrations and later Vishnuvarman (I think that’s his name). However, the best illustrator would be our own minds. As I have said often before, my worst fear about Ponniyin Selvan is that someone would decide to make a movie out of it and ruin the whole magic. One of my favourite pastime is wondering who, in the current crop of actors, could play of each of these roles and sadly I can’t think of any suitable ones, especially if they have to speak in chaste tamizh.

I have read all the other works of Kalki too, including Alai Osai and Tyaga bhoomi, but to me none of them can match this trilogy in terms of pace or characterization. I have also had a chance to read some of his other non-fiction works including some music reviews that he wrote under the pen-name Karnatakam, some of his old editorials and a collection of essays etc and the genius of Kalki shines through every single piece of work.

Sorry about the long post, but the comment from a fellow blogger on one of my previous posts, brought a flood of memories of Kalki and ‘Ponniyin Selvan’. For those who cannot get the book, the entire book is available online here. The English translation is available here although if you can read Tamizh, I would strongly recommend the original.

Good Morning.. hmm.. err… Phoenix !!

So there I was, grinning stupidly at anything and everything, whiling away my time in the customer’s office with nothing to do, but day-dream about my return - functions that I will attend (Perippa’s sadabhishekam !!) and of course the music festival in December (must attend at least 2 concerts of Sanjay and TMK!!), visits to the dentist (need to get these teeth set right !!) and drive a relatively new car (only 3 years old instead of 11 years old) for a change in that chaos that is Chennai traffic !! I had developed a thick skin in the past few days, ever since I got my itinerary from the travel desk (woohoo.. it is Air Emirates), nothing the customer or anybody said affected me whatsoever !! I had done my purchases, and planned for more in the Dubai airport (perfumes are dead cheap !!), had picked superb seats in the flight online ! Three more days to go !! My mom had made plans for me (need to visit A,B,C relatives and friends !!) and I was happily chatting away with her and my dad, getting updates on family gossip, when the phone rang !! And life changed… again !!

I have now developed a sense of respect for people we call gypsies ! After all, the important difference between us and them is the financial status and the extent of our travel. They travel locally and we travel internationally and we get paid for our travel !! It is a new life everytime - a new place, the same boring ritual of hunting for apartments and buying a cheap but good car (sounds oxymoronic, doesn’t it?).

I am suffering from a serious identity crisis, every morning !! I wake up and find my surroundings strange ! Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? Is this whole thing a big nightmare? Why should I always reconcile myself to the maxim - Whatever happens, happens for good! Why can’t I get exactly what I want, instead of what is good for me - just once? (I know, I know, I am cribbing ! I know I have no right to, when thousands are losing their jobs and many people complain about lack of visibility at work !! But when logic and my cribbing come face to face, sometimes cribbing wins !!

For some reason, only spouse and children are considered ‘family’. So most of my conversations go like this :

‘Do you have a family in India?’

‘Yes, my parents and my brother and his wife are in India’

‘Oh, ok. But what about your family ?’

…

‘So you are single, then you should have no issues with traveling?’ (What has that got to do with wanting to travel? I mean single and married people can want/not want to travel equally, right?)

Sulking apart, I think the most painful part of traveling is the initial expenses and hassle of setting up the house. Every visit, I have to shell out a couple of hundred dollars on basic stuff like a rice cooker, a blender, a vacuum cleaner, a mattress, a used car, apartment advance etc. Add to it the fact that I always have to give it away for free, because no one will buy it and usually there isn’t any time left to try to sell, at the end of the visit. This becomes all the more irksome, when I dispose all my temporary possessions here assuming I am going back to India, only to realize in the last minute that the return trip is canceled and that I have to spend all over again !! (Remember, at this point, my mind has already started converting dollars to rupees, so every single dollar is Rs 48 (or something close) to me !

If organizations must ask people to travel, how about some innovative ways of reducing the stress on employees. For example :

a. A travel kit - including basic appliances and things like a sleeping bag etc. This can be provided during the first time the person travels on-site. When the person returns, some storage space where the kit can be stored can be arranged. The next time the person visits, the company can ship it to the person to his new location.

b. Short-term car leases - Some arrangement with car-leasing companies, to provide car leases on a month-to-month basis. Usual car hires from Hertz or Enterprise runs to about a thousand dollars a month.

c. A ready-reckoner for the location that includes information on location of good hotels to stay (with/without kitchenettes), Indian restaurants, Indian grocers, DMV office, SSN office, availability of public transportation, apartment communities, local attractions, cab services etc. This can be sent along with the deployment letter.

d. Make the policies a little more employee friendly and the staff a little more considerate. For instance, this time I was asked to travel from Dublin to Phoenix in the next 2 days. Now to raise a travel request, I was supposed to raise a transfer memo request for my visa and provide the request number to the travel team. Tedweb/MyWipro had an issue with the site, where I was able to select the project name, but could not submit it because there was no ‘Submit’ button. I put in a ServiceConnect request and waited for more than 2 days with nothing happening. There was only one more day to go and I requested the travel co-ordinator (non-Wipro) to book my travel, and that I would raise the request once the issue was resolved. She asked me to get the approval of the OOC person here and this person asked me to raise a ServiceConnect issue reporting the issue. It was a deadlock situation and finally my manager and his manager had to make desperate calls to the OOC person to get the issue resolved. The technical issue was later resolved about a week after I lodged the complaint. This kind of beauracracy added to the already existing stress that I was going through !

I am told time and again that this is a higher responsibility and once again I am supposedly the ‘Chosen One’ !! The job description is kept deliberately vague with words like ‘opportunities’, ‘business’, ‘techno-functional role’ etc. It is a double edged sword, doing well will extend my stay and going wrong may jeopardize my career !

Meanwhile I am trying to get adjusted to the time difference and remind myself daily that I am Rathi, that this is a hotel room in Phoenix and yes this is not a dream !!

Cloud Atlas - A story within a story within a story within..

I am one of those people that believes that every one has enough material in us for one great piece of work - A book, a movie, a tune, a story - whatever. If pushed hard enough, I can probably write a fairly interesting story or lyrics for a tune or compose a simple tune. After that, I don’t know. And that is probably the difference between great artists and ordinary people like us.

I am amazed at writers who can write interesting prose, good enough to hold the attention of a reader. Apart from the knot of the story itself, he/she needs to ensure that the style of prose is consistent, all characters are etched well, conversations sound real and relatable (even if it is a fantasy), maintain the flow in the narrative and so on. Over a period of time, reading many books, we start associating the author with a narrative style - The subtle humour and ridiculous situations in works of P.G.Wodehouse and Devan (Tamil writer), great level of attention to historical details with a dash of humour in the works of Kalki (Tamil), high degree of imagination in works of Asimov, Sujatha (tamil), J.K.Rowling, sarcasm of Saki and so on.

These are probably reasons why the latest book that I read - Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell left me spellbound ! Here I am, struggling to find my own voice while writing a few paragraphs of a blog post, while this author has achieved the amazing feat of writing a novel which is more like a collection of six novellas that are loosely linked and woven one within the other. What is interesting about these six stories is that each one is written in a completely different style and is set in a different period of time.

The novel is structured like a Matryoshka doll or a chinese puzzle box, according to a reviewer (although I have no clue what a chinese puzzle box looks like!!) and in the first half of the novel, the stories move forward in time and in the second half, the stories move backward in time.

It starts with the journal of Adam Ewing - an American notary, on a voyage in the Pacific ocean. This story is set in mid-1850s. The narrative stops mid-sentence at a certain point of the novel. In the next story, we get to know why.

Next comes the story of Robert Frobisher, an English musician who travels to Belgium and works for a composer there. The story takes place in 1930s and the narrative is in the form of letters from Frobisher to his friend - Rufus Sixsmith.

The third story is set in 1970s and is the story of a young journalist called Luisa Rey, who at the beginning of this story meets with Rufus Sixsmith. She investigates the corruption and murders associated with a nuclear plant in California.

The fourth story is that of Timothy Cavendish - an aging book publisher in the UK, who, in the course of fleeing from his gangster client is imprisoned in a old-age home.

The fifth story is set in the near future where human clones are ‘manufactured’ to perform mundane chores. This piece is set in Korea and is the story of the ‘fabricant’ Sonmi-451 who rebels against the system and is subsequently executed. The narrative is in the form of a record of Sonmi’s interview before her execution.

The sixth and the central story of the novel is set in the distant future in Hawaii, when human beings go back to the primitive way of life. The tribesman Zachry and his family are visited by Meronym, one of the few remnants of the technologically advanced civilizations. Zachry narrates his story, when he is an old man, to a group of young people.

The most striking feature of the book is, as I already mentioned, the distinctive styles of writing of each narrative. Every story stops midway, except the sixth one. After the sixth story, the concluding parts of the fifth, fourth, third, second and finally the first stories are presented, and hence the comparison with the Matryoshka dolls (refer Wikipedia for what they are. I did !!).

All the stories are weakly linked and a common feature in all the stories is the presence of a comet-shaped birthmark on the protagonists of all stories and David Mitchell supposedly said that they were reincarnations of the same soul. This was one of the books short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2004. Just goes to show that not all award-winning books are necessarily profound (=boring)!!

Of the six stories, I found the story of Sonmi the most interesting. The story of Timothy Cavendish is the funniest. The first story of Adam Ewing is the least interesting, probably because of the old-fashioned English and circuitous sentences (after discussing with my cousin who recommended the book and reading reviews on Amazon, I found that this was a common feeling among most readers. So I am happy to know that I am normal !!).

Although at some places, the book drags and the narration seems a little pretentious, Cloud Atlas is definitely a very ambitious piece of writing. Those who want to take a break from murder mysteries, espionages and regular romances, can take a shot at this one. Definitely worth a read !

(P.S. - For those who like offbeat fiction, the Wind-up bird chronicle by Haruki Murakami is an option. The book is extremely engaging and intriguing. But, and this is a big BUT, be warned, the book has no end. Anyone with superhuman intelligence, who managed to figure about what it is about, please contact me and enlighten me too ! This is a P.S. here because I did not want to write a post on a novel that I both loved and hated !!)

To Smile or Not to smile !

There’s another guy. He is walking towards me.

God, please let him not make eye-contact, please !!

Our eyes have met. I smile immediately.

Damn, that guy is looking through me and has moved his eyes away from me ! That is so insulting !!

Here comes the next one. Should I or shouldnt I? This one is Indian too !! What if he refuses to smile too? Research has shown that people with names starting with R, are physically incapable of enduring more than one insult a day. Coincidentally, my name starts with R too. Forget about it, I can’t help it if my lips are wired to my eyes. The minute I make eye-contact, my lips automatically expand and I end up smiling.

Before any of you notice a statement made before that may sound a tad judgemental or biased, let me hasten to correct it or rather expand it. I don’t mean to say that all Indians are averse to smiling. It is definitely a cultural thing. While we treat guests like God, we don’t treat other people as human, unless they are our guests, friends or family. To us Indians, bestowing a smile is a mark of acceptance, show of love or gratitude, a sign of cognizance of your existence, a symbol of familiarity etc. What it is definitely not, is something you would waste over some random passer-by, who, just because he/she has made eye-contact with you, expects you to smile (the nerve of the person !)!!

In the US, it is a part of the culture, to smile and wish people if eye-contact is made. It is irrelevant that the smile lasts exactly for a millionth of a second and more often than not, rarely reaches the eye. I am not sure about other countries. I was in London a few months back and people there seemed normal. They don’t look at you and smile ! They don’t wish you good morning or inquire about you !! They are just…. normal !! (Of course I am being sarcastic, do I have to say that??)

Learning to smile at the right person is an art. No, not the smiling part. The key is ‘the right person’. Will this person smile back or do you have to pretend afterwards that you suffer from facial paralysis and what seemed like a smile to a bystander was actually a temporary spasm?

Is this do with the nationality of the person? Probably not ! Americans are becoming normal too. In this place, I have encountered at least a dozen Americans, who contort their faces like they have seen something distasteful, the minute they spot you and hurry in the opposite direction maintaining a certain distance. There are those who pretend they are lost in thought just when you cross them (again, nationality does not matter). All this for what ? To avoid smiling !!

I know of a family that does not smile as a rule. They will wish you, invite you home, greet you when you enter the house, inquire about your well-being etc, all without a single smile. I think that’s an incredible feat !! Don’t you? I mean greeting someone without a hint of a smile, to me, sounds as impossible as sneezing while keeping your eyes open !

Fortunately or unfortunately, we in India, seem to be changing too. Or should I say, that we are becoming abnormal too? On some of my visits to the Bangalore office, I remember smiling at a lot of people I didn’t know (I often forget where I am !) and, hold your breath, have received smiles back (Of course I am not quoting about Chennai office, because I actually know many people by face there. So don’t gloat, you Chennai-haters !!).

What is it that makes some of us so reluctant to smile? After all, a smile does increase a person’s face value. Laugh lines make a person look more beautiful. A smile does not cost anything, except working a few facial muscles (and research shows that it is good to exercise facial muscles through means other than chewing on food and gossiping !!).

Meanwhile, I request all of you, to respond with tips on how to change a smile to something else (like may be a thoughtful expression), that will help me out in my daily dose of humiliations (which sadly always exceed 2) of not being smiled back at !! I tried sneezing, but the transition is not easy !

Blindness..

What does eyesight have to do with the actual nature of the person?

Do we behave the way we do, because we know there are people watching us?

If nobody was watching, would we indulge in despicable activities too?

Are human beings basically base and bestial creatures?

José Saramago’s ‘Blindness’ explores the above questions and more. Saramago, a Portuguese writer is the winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 1998. ‘Blindness’ is one of his most popular works and was written in 1995 and later translated to English in 1997.

Always searching for interesting works, I saw that this book was highly recommended on Amazon.com, by people with whom I shared a liking for similar kind of novels. The idea of the novel seemed interesting and I borrowed it from the local library a month or so ago. I could not finish it before the due date then and had to borrow it again recently. This time, I finally managed to finish the remainder of the book in one day.

The premise is very interesting. A sudden epidemic of ‘white blindness’ hits a city. Initially only some of the citizens are affected. The government decides to quarantine them in a mental asylum till the cause and the cure for the sickness are determined. The first few victims of the disease include a doctor and a few of his patients. The doctor’s wife, who miraculously escapes the disease fakes it to stay with her husband.

The quarantined lot are treated like untouchables and armed soldiers are posted outside the hospital to prevent them from escaping. Food is dropped near the gates by the government and some of the inmates are allowed to pick it up. The conditions within the hospital slowly start degenerating. The soldiers refuse to deliver basic medicines to the inmates and things slowly turn into a nightmare as one-by-one, the soldiers too succumb to the disease.

Hygiene and moral conditions steadily deteriorate, as the asylum becomes over-crowded and a group of blind hoodlums take control of the asylum. This group takes control of the food deliveries and insists on ‘payments’ from the other inmates. The amount of food given to the inmate by the hoodlums is directly proportional to the payments made! With power in dangerous hands, things turn from bad to worse, as the group sexually abuses the women inmates in exchange for food. Husbands stoop to begging the wives to accept the offering, unable to withstand the hunger. All the atrocities are seen by a single pair of eyes - that of the doctor’s wife.

The victims decide to take charge and rebel. There is much bloodshed and later arson. The inmates suddenly realize that the soldiers who were guarding the hospital, are no more present. Apparently they have become victims to the disease too. The epidemic has spread to all the citizens and there is chaos. The small group of people, with the doctor’s wife leading them, leave the asylum, hoping to return to their homes.

The entire government has buckled down and everyday things like food, water etc have become luxuries. There is no electricity as the electricians have gone blind. People move in groups searching for food. The concept of homes has vanished. Most houses have been taken over by roaming groups of people. The small group sticks together and stay with the doctor’s wife, since they feel a little less blind, having a person who can see among them. They go in search of food in store rooms of grocery stores and try hard to hold on to some semblance of sanity.

The novel ends with the epidemic ending as suddenly as it started. People slowly start getting their eyesights back. Things will never be the same again for any of them, though.

None of the characters in the novel have names. They are referred to as ‘the doctor’, the doctor’s wife, the girl with dark glasses, the boy with a squint etc. Saramago’s style of writing is characterized by long sentences, little or no punctuation. Dialogues do not have quotation marks, so it is difficult to say who is speaking, although once you get into the flow of the book, it is not all that tough. I found the style strange in the beginning, but later got used to it (I later learnt that this style is characteristic of Saramago). I would call this novel one of the most chilling horror stories I have ever read (and I don’t read many of them).

Every time I read or watch something on the Holocaust or the Indian independence movement, it seems to me that human beings are capable of more cruelty than we think is possible. My faith in the goodness of people always becomes a little shaken when I read a good novel such as ‘Blindness’ or films like ‘The Pianist’ or ‘The Schindler’s list’, shocked at the inherent baseness of human nature. There were many instances when I was choked with emotion or was extremely disturbed by the horror of it all, while reading ‘Freedom at midnight’ and the reason was not mere patriotism.

Unsupervised and equipped with undeserving power, people are probably worse than the animals. Animals kill only for food, and we are probably the only beings that can kill and hurt for pleasure.Many modern novelists seem to think so too. ‘Lord of the flies’ by William Golding springs to mind. Civilization and culture exists because of others, not because we want it. Our constant need for approval from people around us is probably the main reason why we ‘behave’ in public or otherwise.

In conclusion, ‘Blindness’ is a superbly written novel. It is definitely not for light reading and if you are easily influenced like me, you may feel a little shaken at the end of the novel. Definitely recommended for people who like offbeat fiction.

Revenge !

The popular saying goes ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold.’ - Is it really true?

Do you like me, feel disturbed reading ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ - the brilliant novel by Alexander Dumas? If Dantès, wasting away his life in solitary confinement in a faraway prison wrenched your hearts, his subsequent retribution did send chills down your spines! Somehow, everytime I read the novel (couple of times in different versions), I always felt restless afterwards. Revenge, I suppose, is never sweet. It does not leave anyone satisfied. Even if the crime is huge and life-shattering, somehow revenge does not seem to bring the desired solace.

If you think about it, most movies and novels and TV soaps have revenge as the main subject. Turn to any channel, and you will find some heavily made-up middle-aged woman, announcing to anyone that cares to hear, that she will not rest till she destroys her enemy’s family. Since this is always a winning subject and the makers cannot afford the audience to have any symapthies towards the antagonist, they try to paint them as dark as possible to show why the revenge is justified.

Not so in true life, isn’t it? People are just people ! Not heroes or villains. Nobody is completely white or black. All of us are grey characters. What seems right to us, may not seem so to others. Who are we to avenge ourselves for what we consider ‘injustice’? I am not talking about clear-cut wrong-doings like murder etc, just day-to-day things that happen to us.

I still get extremely angry when I think about the sports teacher in school, who had treated me terribly (I had written about him in one of my previous posts). Every time I think if there is someone in the world, I really hate, I cannot think of anyone else, so deep-rooted seems to be my hatred, probably because the bad experiences happened at an impressionable age. I am not able to make peace with these memories and I still imagine situations where he will be at my mercy and I deny him the same !!

But come to think of it, for all I know, if I see this guy today, revenge will probably be the last thought in my mind. He must definitely be old and will probably seem so pathetic that the only that would seem more pathetic would be my grudge against such a loser. It is also possible that all the hatred in me, needs some channel, and I am using this guy for it !!

The whole idea of this post was to actually talk about a novel that I read recently, but as always, my musings about the book took up as much or more space than the review of the book itself. The name of the book is ‘Revenge’ and the author is Stephen Fry - a comic genius from the land of comic geniuses - Britain! However the book is anything but funny !!

There is a reason why I mentioned the ‘Count of Monte Cristo’ in the beginning, apart from the fact that it was also about revenge and retribution, and the fact that I love to write ! As Stephen Fry himself confessed, after a couple of days of writing of the book, he realized that his story was the same as the original classic. Call, ‘Revenge’ the modern day re-telling of Dumas’s classic.

Set in England in 1980, ‘Revenge’ is about Ned Maddstone, the popular boy in school. He is 17, happy in life to have everything, to be loved by all- well almost all; in love with a beautiful girl and studying to go to Oxford. There are others - Portia, his beautiful lover, Gordon - Portia’s cousin, Ashley - a boy from a poor background, a wannabe blueblood who detests Ned for being everything that he (Ashley) is not and Rufus, a spineless junkie, who again hates Ned for no reason.

If you have read Count of Monte Cristo, you will see parallels every where. Like I said this is a modern day retelling. So the setting is different, the context is different, but the story is essentially the same. Where you had exiled king Napoleon as the backdrop, here we have the IRA and its supporters causing Ned’s arrest. Instead of a prison in a remote island, here it is a lunatic asylum where some political prisoners are put away. The heart burn is the same, as Ned turns from a good-natured seventeen year old boy, with his eyes full of dreams, to a cold, calculating and vengeful business man.

When he returns to avenge himself, it is 1999 and sure there is a duel between him and Portia’s son, but it has an interesting and modern twist to it. The warfare is psychological and destruction is total as in the original. True to the original, Ned does not find peace after his plan is executed and feels more restless than before.

I had not expected a thriller from Fry, but he has done a good job of it. I would not call it great literature, but it definitely is an interesting piece of work. Definitely recommended.

The New Age God !!

There is an interesting theory, that a person revered by everyone today, is tomorrow’s God. Lords Rama, Krishna, Jesus - all of them were probably considered regular people in their times, but centuries later are worshipped as Gods today.

Who would be the modern age God in that respect? I cannot think of any ruler or leader perfect enough to be worshipped. But I can think of an ‘all-powerful’ force, something that cannot be seen (except in movies), but only experienced; something we cannot live without, something that has become as important as the air we breathe - you catch the drift (I can go on and on about ’something that..’ etc., but am too bored to do that !!).

Before you think I have gone completely nuts or that I have become a very spiritual person, let me clarify what brought about this sudden enlightenment. Heard of Hurricane Ike ? (These weird people name hurricanes too !!). Well, it (he/she) decided to pay my little town a visit on the way to the ocean. It was a short visit and lasted a day. But it showed me the true path. I am now a convert, for I have realized God !!

Sorry, I am talking in circles again (isnt that what I always do ??). On Sunday, thanks to the hurricane and the damages it caused, the whole town lost power supply and thats when I realized that ‘Electricity’ is ‘God’, nothing less !! I was happily watching a movie (what else !) and about 3:30 pm, the TV screen went blank, the laptop switched to battery mode and I was done for !!

I called up my colleague to check if I was ‘the chosen one’, or were there fellow sufferers around. Well, looks like there were only 2000 other houses in the state suffering like me !! I am from Chennai and I know what power cuts mean. I mean, we kids (when we were kids I mean), were made of sterner stuff, than to panic over silly power-cuts. I remember getting extremely irritated when the media and the people made a big fuss about a power cut that lasted a couple of days in NYC, a few years back.

No power supply - big deal !! Of course I have my books to give me company - till about 7:45 pm. Of all days, I had chosen that day, to cook my lunch/dinner a little late. So nothing to eat and no way to cook, because the stove is electric. I had some leftovers from God knows when. (I should start labeling them, like they label specimens in labs). No internet and hence no telephone (since it is a VOIP phone)!! I had a prepaid mobile (incoming is charged too !!), for which I did not know the telephone number myself and had never shared it with anyone else.

I had no clue what had hit us, since I did not have cable connection either. What seemed to me a heavy wind from the apartment, was apparently the Hurricane and it had left 3 people dead in Southwest Ohio !! Where I lived though, the only signs were the strong winds, which made some of the trees fall and supposedly sent some roofs flying (as I came to learn the next morning !).

Even for an early sleeper like me, retiring to the bed by 8 pm, was too much to bear. Having nothing to do, sleeping seemed to be the only option, to ‘occupy’ myself ! The next day, I went to work and found that the office was closed due to lack of power supply. People in the IT teams were provided some emergency supply though, which I promptly misused to look up the internet about the hurricane and the power outage and to chat with my parents to let them know that there was trouble, but I was not in trouble !!

I learnt to live on cornflakes and milk (not yet spoilt !!) and bread and something with it. Horrible horrible horrible and cold food. No lights in the bathroom (Was that the shampoo or the body wash, that I just used? .. I hope this is the toothpaste and not the ointment, it sure does smell like toothpaste !!..If this is the bathtub, this must be the pot. etc..), and yes, in most houses in this country, you need lights to move around, even if it is broad daylight outside !!

No work, is usually fun, but not without God (power) with us !! I managed to read a complete book, utilizing all the daylight available (sadly, had just 2 pages to finish, when I simply could not see anything and had to force myself away from the book and .. what else, ‘retire’ to bed!!).

Power supply is back now and as is the American custom, the office walls are resounding with people’s power outage stories. For many, it is a story they can repeat to their grand-children (in 2008, there was a hurricane, but thats not what this story is about, it is about the POWER OUTAGE we had then !!). Many people moved to motels or hotels in the Columbus area. Some with kids, drove to the homes of friends/relatives to live their till the ‘crisis’ passed. Some people spread rumours they had heard on rising gas prices and food prices and urged their friends to stock up asap. Thousands of stores across the city stopped functioning.

Now I know what all this fuss is about. The more developed a country, the less independent they are. Power outage still causes panic here. Life runs on electricity. Every single thing a person does, needs electricity in this country (and in a few others). We have lived for days together in Chennai, without power supply. It seemed like a nuisance, especially when at nights, our friendly neighbourhood mosquitoes conducted weddings in our house and feasted on our blood ! It was irritating when we could not use the ceiling fan (and later the AC), but we survived. Not so, here !

Man is becoming a slave of something he created. What were once luxuries and conveniences have now become necessities. We are not addicted by them, we are controlled by them. So I go back to what I started off saying : In today’s age, I would think Electricity is God, the all-powerful Almighty !!

Wooster and Laurie (or How I fell in and out of love in 2 sec)

I dread watching movie/televised versions of my favourite books. More often than not, my fears are justified. Books seem to give a lot more room to let my imagination run free. The face of the characters are always very vague in my thoughts and yet I kind of know how they look and behave. There are very few exceptions though - Godfather would probably come to mind for most of us !

My love affair with PG Wodehouse started in college. I had heard about his books from my cousins, but could never find any in the local library. I finally found a tattered version with one of my friends, who had inherited it from some relative and had not even touched it and the rest as the cliche goes, is history. That was also the time I got introduced to the amazing world of British modern literature (PGW can be still be termed modern a thousand years from now !). I was lost in the amazing and funny world of Jeeves, Bertie, Blandings Castle, Empress - the prize winning sow, Baxter, Aunt Dahlia, Aunt Agatha and so on. I knew that if I, who lived in a country far from the author’s and in a world that in no way resembled that described in his books, could fall hopelessly in love, there were very high chances that he had similar fanatics in his own country ! Yet, I hoped and wished that no one would attempt and botch up the novel and leave memories of some horrible actor completely destroying my favourite characters.

Well, a month or 2 back, I heard about 2 British comedians called Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. They were very popular in Britain for their comedy sketches called ‘A Bit of Fry and Laurie’ and also for the televised series ‘Bertie and Wooster’. I watched 3 seasons of ‘A Bit of Fry and Laurie’ and was completely bowled over by their comic geniuses. Humour is a very difficult thing and this seemed to come very naturally to these guys. (Those of you with access to internet at home with a decent speed, check out a short sketch from ‘A Bit of Fry and Laurie’ - search for Fry and Laurie psychiatrists. It is a hilarious sketch !!)

I also read about them and found that they had created another BBC series based on the popular characters by PG Wodehouse - Bertie Wooster and his beloved butler Jeeves. I got the DVDs from the library yesterday and have just watched one episode, but trust me, this one is good. Hugh Laurie is everything you would have imagined Wooster to be - Rich, spoilt, often ridiculous and he never once goes overboard with his expressions. Stephen Fry is the quintessential English Butler - with a clipped accent, controlled emotions (as Bertie says, when Jeeves gets really disturbed, he raises an eyebrow !!), vaguely amused at his master’s idiosyncrasies and quietly scheming to always gets his requests granted by poor Bertie.

I have been wanting to write about Hugh Laurie for quite some time now and finally got down to merely mentioning him in this post ! I sometimes think that the British have a great sense of humour for one reason - they always knew that one day or the other, their title of being the biggest empire in the world would change. People have sharp memories and might want to hit back. But these guys make themselves so endearing with their literature, that we simply tend to smile indulgently at them and let them go !!

Last week, I also picked up a novel by Hugh Laurie (his debut novel) called ‘The Gun Seller’. His friend Stephen Fry has already written more than 4 books now (and I have picked up one of them too !!) The first evening after getting the book, I could not wait and started reading it immediately. I have great respect for both these people and especially for Laurie. He is now a popular TV star in the US and stars in a very highly rated series called ‘House M.D’. Apparently he sent his video-tape for audition for the series since he was busy and the director was so impressed with him, that he told everyone around Laurie was the kind of ‘American’ actor that he was looking for (not knowing at that time that he was British!!). Watch him in ‘House’ and you would be astonished at how he has changed his looks, mannerisms, accent and has ‘become’ House M.D !!

The book turned (is turning) out to be better than I thought. It is a kind of PG Wodehouse meets James Bond. Extremely funny !! Amusingly sarcastic !! (I found a cab eventually and told the driver in fluent English that I wanted Wenceslas Square. This request, I now know, is phonetically identical to the Czech phrase for ‘I am an air-brained tourist, please take everything I have’.)

Humour pops in at unexpected places (It was snowing outside. Of course, it always snows outside !)

Towards the end of the novel, a small interview of the author is also inserted. Apparently the movie rights for the book have been sold and the movie is under production. In which case, I really wish Laurie would participate in the movie-making process, lest they botch up the movie and the book !

P.S - An hour into the book, I realized a chemical reaction inside me. I realized that I was slowly falling in love with Hugh Laurie. But I later fell out of love (in about 2 secs and hence the title !!). Reasons for in and out listed below:

In:

• Very intelligent
• Makes me laugh (not easy at all!!)
• Loves PGW like I do
• Nice eyes.

Out :

• British (we are supposed to hate them)
• Different viewpoints about the cow (I think of them as God and he probably imagines 2 slices of bread around it!)
• Only a few years younger than my mother
• And yes.. married with 2 kids !!

Thanks to the above reasons, I have decided to maintain a strictly platonic relationship with Hugh (I am sure it will hurt him too !! But then, thats life !!)
So, those of you who thought I was totally cold-hearted, please think again. I have a heart, that I tend to lose often to people only to regain in a next few secs !!

How's married life?

‘So how’s life after marriage?’

‘Nothing very different, I just happen to be living with another person instead of my parents’

Now thats where I wish things would stop. I really wish people don’t take my question seriously and describe every single detail about marital bliss. Not that I am a child at heart ! Remember - I watch ‘International Cinema’. Nothing anybody says (or types) can get more graphic than that!

It is only that I am not a M&B sort of person. I am not the kind of person that would go ‘Ooh’ ‘Aah’ over anybody’s love story. I don’t mind on-screen romances (mostly !). In fact, I can keep a straight face even when people romance in real life, right in front of me, for a maximum period of 3 minutes. I can pretend to be studying my nails very deeply- the cuticles, the blood flow, the broken nail - there are a thousand things that can be read in a nail.

But what when this sort of thing pops up when I am chatting with someone, I know very slightly, or am on the phone with a recently married friend, who I am not very close to, that's when I am doomed !! Why do people take questions on life after marriage very seriously and insist on talking about the cute spouse at the first chance? Do they realize that they are making me squirm in my seat?

Friend : ‘My husband calls me baby!!’

Me : ‘Oh.. ok’. (OMG !!)

Friend : ‘You know what I call him?’

Me (to myself) : ‘Do I really care?’

(To her) : What?

Her : ‘I call him ’sweet puppy’. Isn’t that cute?’

Me : That's cute ! (right answer , but sadly makes her want to go on !!)

Her : He is like a baby (Whattttttttttt !!). He refuses to let me oil his hair (I have to get out of this conversation !!).

I have walked out of mushy movies in the past. But what is reserved for me in this life, will be mine and there is no way of escaping ! I have to necessarily listen to more and more of this corny stuff especially on the phone. On chat, I simply refuse to type out a response and lie that I am busy. But the other one is hardly listening (or reading what I type !) and gushes on and on.

Things were worse in the past. People around me who were romantically involved always made me think I had drunk some potion that made me completely invisible and would be throwing glances at each other and talk cute stuff and expect me to find it amusing. Funny, except those involved everyone else seem to notice these things.

You know, movies lie. Only in movies, the heroine has a friend who is a complete doofus and would help in passing letters, accompany the heroine everywhere and vanish when the hero was near etc and probably give up her life in the end to help the lovers. In real life, all of are heroines of our stories. Everyone except us is, as they call it, a character artist !!

Now I know what to do. Let courtesy go to hell, let them think I am rude, impolite, whatever. I am fine with on-screen romances alone (at least I have a fast forward button for corny scenes). I simply cannot be made a reluctant participant in these romantic stories and listen to utter adolescent nonsense about sweet and child-like lovers or spouses. Let me live in peace .. please !!

Water Water Everywhere !

There is something about a big water body, that is immensely soothing to the eyes.Many of us can spend hours together, doing nothing but simply watching the ocean and the waves, and feel completely relaxed.

It is even better when it is running water. The gentle sound of a stream and the majestic cry of the waterfalls are both equally wonderful sounds ! Some of my best memories from childhood, include a tour of Hrishikesh, Haridwar, Kedarnath and Badrinath, many years ago. The one unforgettable memory that I have of this trip is the sight and sound of the Ganges accompanying us, in various forms - streams, multi-hued rivers, water-falls etc, all the way. Most of us forget our age, when we get into the river with ice-cold water.

Little wonder then, that I jumped at my first chance to visit the Niagara Falls about 6 years back. I fell in love with the place and now try to find an excuse to visit it every time I am in the US. Last weekend, I again got a chance to go there and take in the beauty of the Falls. The excuse this time was my brother, who was visiting the US for the first time and was flying down to my place. My cousin, his wife and I decided that we would pick him from the airport and drive down to Niagara as soon as we could and return the same night.

The Niagara Falls actually consists of atleast two major falls - the American Falls and the Horseshoe Falls. Niagara Falls is situated on the international border separating US and Canada. While most of the attractions are on the American Side, the view is splendid from the Canadian side. It is almost as if the American side is the stage and the Canadian side is where the audience sit! I had the chance to see the Niagara from the Canadian side during my first visit, but this time, we only went to the American side.

The onward journey was uneventful. We started at about 10:45 am and reached Niagara by 5pm. We then immediately set off for the 2 main attractions in Niagara. The first one, called Maid of the Mist, is a boat ride on the Niagara river. You are taken down the elevator to the river level. The boat takes you across the American Falls (spectacular), the smaller Bridal Veil falls and then the breathtaking Horseshoe Falls. It is impossible to see much of the Horseshoe falls. The water falls with so much force, that it is difficult to keep your eyes open. You are dying to take in all the beauty of the falls in the small stretch but find it difficult to do so. You are hoping to capture atleast half the magic that your eyes experience in your camera, but realize that it cannot come anywhere close !

The second and more interesting attraction is called Cave of the winds. Here you are taken down in an elevator to the Niagara river level. There are some wooden decks built here that take you near the base of the Bridal falls. This point is called the Hurricane Deck and what you experience here, cannot be described in words. It is impossible to keep your eyes open, the water spraying from the falls, literally beats down your face. In spite of the yellow plastic coat that everybody is provided with, each one of us came completely drenched. Unlike the Maid of the Mist ride, this one has no time restrictions. It was becoming increasingly difficult for us to move away from the place. We were like children, telling each other that this would be the last time and would go and stand on the corner of the deck to get fully soaked and slapped on our faces by the crashing water !

Every time I see the Niagara falls, I think it is milk and not water falling! It is terrible when you feel so poetic but can simply not put down your thoughts in words!! Niagara Falls surprises me every time, because for a water-falls of this size and force, it is very quiet from the outside. You would think that you would hear the place before you saw it, but no ! You can hardly hear the sound of water falling till you enter the state park and go very near the water falls !! So typical of everything American !!

We finally left the place by about 8 pm. Rain God who had been extremely co-operative throughout our time in the Niagara, decided that enough was enough. It started pouring and my cousin had a tough time driving. We could hardly see anything ahead, nor could we see the lines separating the lanes. All our plans to eat a hot meal somewhere were quashed, as we had to pull over in a deserted rest area to eat the left-over idlis and curd-rice from morning.

Trust me - Rain-God is one mischievous person! He has a terrible sense of humour !! All the time we were in the parking lot of the rest area, there was not a drop of rain ! My cousin started reversing the car to pull it out of the lot and it started pouring !! Anyway, he drove a little more and we pulled over in a gas station again to get some gas. I had promised to take over from there and I went to get my gas - a large cup of coffee. It was 11:40pm when I took over and we had about 350 miles or so to cover.

Coffee went in and sleep went out and I started driving. My cousin’s wife was in the passenger seat and the two men were sleeping in the back seat. We decided that if we could not sleep, they should not either. So we started singing at the top of our voices - complete with orchestra. Nothing could deter my brother, who apart from fatigue, was also suffering from jet lag, but my poor cousin gave up his attempts to fall asleep and joined in for some time.

The last 2 hours were like a scene from an old ghost movie. There was heavy fog and I could not see more than 5 ft ahead of me. Sleep Deprivation+Night driving+ Heavy Fog on the road = Deadly combination !! In fact I think every time I drive at night, I would prefer if it would rain or would be foggy !! I would be so scared out of my wits, that I wouldn’t dare fall asleep !!

Anyway, it was 3 am when we finally reached home sweet home. Another memorable weekend and another memorable visit to the Niagara.

Below are some pics from the trip. They were taken using my Fujifilm finepix camera. Dont ask me about the model name or the specs because I dont remember.

First Look
Another First Look

The Niagara River
View from the Maid of the Mist

Maid of the mist
Cave of the Winds


Cave of the WindsObservation Tower

Freedom of Expression

I am a fairly tolerant person.

I don’t mind people around me having some fun or enjoying what they do.

I am not one to question the source of pleasure for other people.

And yet, every afternoon a little before I start my lunch in my cubicle, with my friend - the PC, when I hear the heavy thunder, or what sounds like it, I wonder whether people in this country (or any other) take the term ‘Freedom of Expression’ too seriously.

Now before you start wondering about the source of the thunder (or what sounds like it) and what freedom of expression has anything to do with it, let me clarify. This noise was nothing but my next cubicle neighbour having her daily pack of chips or something like it. It is a wonder how some small thing getting ground within a small grinder(the mouth) can create so much noise !

I was born with extra-sensitive sense organs (I wish I could say extra-sensory perception instead - that would sound so much cooler !!) . Consequently if I have to chew something crunchy, that causes a lot of noise, I would rather do it in an open space or within a room without anyone around, so that I dont have to subject others to the torture that I go through ! Not everyone is as considerate as me though.

In our country, being loud is considered indecent and people who indulge in it are ridiculed - not that people stop being loud because of it. During my first trip to the US, I was shocked at how normal it was for people to blow their noses loudly in public. In the client place, where I was the only Indian, I used to shudder in my cubicle, when someone in the office suffered from common cold and made no secret of it. They would blow hard and seemed to be taking a perverse pleasure in inflicting pain on my poor ears ! If one person sneezed, the entire office would loudly utter ‘Bless You’ - the idea being to drown the sound of the sneeze with their voices.

People here are loud in their normal talk, mistaking decibel levels for enthusiasm. The louder you are, the more enthusiastic you are perceived to be. So I now know that my colleague in the next cubicle went to watch an opera last week, has a baby, plays on the playstation and other well-known secrets of her life. I sometimes think I know more about her, than she would probably know about herself and that too without even bothering to know. Not just my next-cubicle neighbour, I know a little about all the colleagues sitting around me (within a 1/2 mile radius), without even knowing how they look like!!

If assaulting the ears is the Americans style, assaulting the eyes is ours (not that we are bad at assaulting the ears - just drive in India and you will know what I mean). It is a pain to watch people partaking their meal with pleasure. They are under the mistaken impression that food can be ingested through the skin too. Some seem to be of a kinder nature and prefer to reduce the effort of swallowing food by directly placing the food in their tummies instead (just watch them putting their hands well inside their throats !!). Their idea of enjoying food is to make a lot of weird noises while eating (and I am not even talking about the loud belching after food !!). I have also seen people eat food - fruits like mangoes usually and let it drip all over their hands and lick them - it made me stay away from mangoes for some time !!

I now realize that the trouble is with me. I am too finicky and too fussy. I wish I can do something to reduce my sense of hearing for such things and don’t get offended by the sight of others having their meal with relish. Or I wish I could become one of them !!

Don't Rewind !

The other day, I was introspecting (I am sure you are wondering if this is what I am getting paid for !!) and asked myself some questions. I have been asking myself the same questions time and again and I know my responses. You can take a shot at them too:

Can you name 5 people from your past -

1. Who have done something very good for you and that you remember often?
2. Whom you have helped and who you think will remember you for it?
3. Who have wronged you and you are still trying to come to terms with those bitter memories?
4. Whom you have wronged and probably regretted it later?

Did the names for each of the above questions come at the same pace? Did you have to think really hard to find the answer to atleast question number 4?

Why is it that I am still not able to make peace with memories of friends who betrayed me and my friendship in the name of love? Do I not have any good memories of such friends at all? I must have, for why else were they friends in the first place?

Why can’t I respect relatives , who in my memory, treated me and my family like dirt because we lacked money? Have they never been good to me?

How many people have I hurt? How many friends did I lose, thanks to my reckless attitude?

Time is a strange healer. It lets you forget the good things done to you and the bad things done by you. In retrospect, almost every bitter memory, seems to find you as the victim and memories of your good deeds seem bigger than what it actually was. Ever wondered why?

We often hear some old people going on and on about the past. Most stories that they narrate would make you think they were God’s idea of perfection!! They were always the best in everything. Everyone around them simply loved them. They were the noblest people you could find on earth, yet people around them took advantage of them. They helped everyone with a pure mind, but people were ungrateful. Their memories have blunted their wrong-doings and sharpened their good deeds.

If everyone is a victim, according to his/her memories, who is the perpetrator? If there is a cause and effect for every action, why is it that people always behave meanly with you even though you are goodness incarnate?

Sometimes, I think all of us are basically masochists. We love to hurt ourselves. If there is no one else who will hurt us, we take up the responsibility ourselves. We sit down to feel miserable; think about the past, about people we trusted but who betrayed us and so on. Not for a second do we think that if we helped someone, there was a reason to it. We probably were repaying some kindness the person had done or we just did it in a moment of generosity. Similarly, if someone did something bad to us, there are chances that we had done something in the past to hurt them and they are exacting their revenge on us.

I remember reading a very beautiful anecdote by Swami Sukhabodananda :

A disciple went and told him that his friend had cheated him of some money and although many years had passed, he was unable to forget his betrayal. Swami asked him to list down 5 movies that he detested. The disciple was surprised, but he obliged. Swami then told him that he would be locked in a room with a TV and a VCR and these 5 movies. Would he like to watch them back to back over and over again? The disciple was shocked and told the Swami that when he hated watching them even once, why would he watch them again and again. The Swami said that was exactly what he had been doing. If a memory pained him, why play it over and over again in his head? Why seek sorrow ?

Simple but really profound example, don’t you think?. I try to shake away my bad memories, thinking of the above anecdote, but trust me, it is not simple!

Love relies on the future, but hate seems to thrive on the past ! (My, my!! I am beginning to sound like a philosopher these days !!). Reminiscing is fine, as long as it is about some good memories, that will make me happy, since bad memories serve nothing except to make me unhappy and sad.

Following Swami’s example, I try to imagine watching KANK, Devdas, KKKG, Baba and some such movies back to back and that is enough for me to get out of my brooding !!

Wordsmith - A word a day

One of my friends, who knows about my passion for words and the English language, sent me a gift subscription for the Wordsmith - A word a day newsletter about 5 years ago. It is one of the best gifts I have ever received and one that makes me think of my friend often !

The newsletter delivers what it promises. You are introduced to a new word every day for 5 days a week. There is a theme for every week and words related to the theme are sent in the newsletter. The meaning of the word, the etymology (or history of the word) and an example of its usage - from a current newspaper or magazine, form the body of the newsletter.

At the end of the newsletter, there is an interesting saying by some famous personality. And since it is only one word a day, you get to know a lot of new words. You may not necessarily remember all of them, but if you can remember at least 1 out of 100, you are still making good progress. The words are also available online on the website - http://wordsmith.org/

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The 'I' in me..

The few seconds in front of the deity in the temple, when I feel great peace, before pride for being such a devoted person sets in..
The time I spend with my little niece, watching with awe, the miracle of life, without worrying about work..

The few minutes when I can listen to music without analyzing what goes in and how the artist is performing …

The few seconds when I sing and become one with the music, before starting to think how good my voice sounds ..

The time spent with friends in silence, knowing words aren’t necessary and they will not mind, before I feel the urge to fill in the silence with some ‘intelligent’ crap ..

A couple of hours I spend with books, getting lost in someone else’s life without wondering how I would have written the story..

Guess there are very few times when I can simply be me without being self-conscious. Everytime I do a good deed, I am aware I am doing one and seem to be full of pride about it. I supposedly help someone selflessly all the while thinking how kind-hearted I am.

I rehearse mentally every statement before I utter it, with the sole aim of impressing people around or getting a word of appreciation. I try hard to seem casual and cool and all the while know I am pretending !

I comment caustically on others’ words, as though I am perfect and realize how shallow I myself am, for considering myself above everyone else !

I seem to have atleast 3 different people in me - the I who does things, the I who is aware of what I am doing and tells me how to do it and the I who watches these two losers trying hard to obtain the approval of the others outside !

(P.S. Its 11:45 p.m, I have a severe headache and its way past my bedtime !! No wonder I am writing a lot of pseudo-philosophical trash !!)

I said 'LOOK AT ME' !

We are waiting outside the conference room for the previous group to vacate. The Program manager from the customer's side walks towards us. He smiles, he waves at everyone. I say 'Hello', but he is not looking at me ! Must have missed me, I think to myself.

We are in the meeting room and status of different projects is discussed. I sit right opposite this man. As is normal, when he talks I am looking at him. He looks around, at each person in the room. He looks to the person on my left, to the one on my right, even at the person behind me ! But I wonder why I am being ignored !

What is happening ? Couple of justifications spring to my mind:

a. I have lost weight completely ! I have become so unimaginably thin, that people cannot see me easily !! As Wodehouse says I have become all length and no breadth. This reason seems too implausible even to me ! (Alas, there are mirrors in the restroom and not all of them lie !!)

b. I am having some sort of psychic experience, where it is my soul lurking in the conference room and my physical body is still in my seat browsing and refreshing the blog site ! Although this seems more likely, others in the room talk to me as if my physical body were there too ! So, wrong guess again !!

c. This guy probably has a secret crush on me and is afraid that he will start stuttering if he meets my eyes !! All Indian romantic movies that we have seen, tell us that the hero stammers when he meets the eye of the heroine. But something in me tells me not to flatter myself too much !! I mean, ok I am good looking (there goes my humility again !!), but not so much that it can leave people speechless !!

Come on, who am I kidding. This is not the first time this is happening and this guy is just a jerk with a super-bloated ego, who thinks he is too far above me to speak to me.

Wow, that felt so nice and liberating!! I am feeling better already !!

I remember an instance in school, where we were staging a mock-parliament for a competition. All through the rehearsals, there was one senior guy who would refuse to look at me in the eye while talking to me. I was annoyed and decided to hit back by staring at him non-stop when he was playing his part. Poor chap would stutter and stammer on feeling a pair of eyes boring into him.

Sadly, the guy here is the customer and I am in his territory! There is nothing I can do except pretend to take such things in my stride and get on with my work - probably crib about it in a blog post or try and refuse to meet his eye in the next meeting (thing is, such people will not even notice that, because they are anyway not looking at you !), but nothing else.

I wish we can switch places, and I become a king/queen i.e., a customer, so that he can try really hard to catch my eye and I can refuse to look at him. Till then, let me imagine some sequences where he is at my mercy and I avenge myself and treat him like the scum he is !!

Don't you just hate people who don't make eye-contact when they talk ?

Cautionary Tale - Do NOT watch this one !!

Serves me right for going with star ratings a movie gets !

Serves me right to experiment with world cinema !

I definitely deserved what I got, to watch a movie, because Quentin Tarantino apparently raved about it !!

Some very disturbing imagery, some very troubling memories, an upset mind and consequently a slightly affected purse - What do I owe all these to ? A Korean movie called 'Oldboy' !! Our own 'desi Tarantino' aka Sanjay Gupta remade the movie as Zinda in Hindi.

I was hoping for a better original, since the premise seemed interesting to me. A man gets kidnapped by some unknown person on the eve of his daughter's birthday and is locked up inside a hotel room. He does not know the name or face or voice of the captor ! He is fed on a staple diet of fried dumplings through a small opening in the door. (SG did not want to waste his creativity on this trivial point and proceeded to change it to Samosas ! How creative is that !!)

The room has a toilet, a bed and a TV. Once in a while, the hero hears a certain tune, when some sort of gas is released into his room and he faints. This goes on for about, hold your breath, 15 years !! Meanwhile, the hero tries hard to remember the names of all the people that he has harmed in the past. He also tries to tunnel his way out of the building with a fork. While in captivity, his wife gets murdered and he is blamed for the murder.

At the end of 15 years, he is suddenly released and left on the terrace of the building. The hero decides to find the person who ruined his life for so many years and to avenge himself. He meets a young female chef, who tries to help him in his quest for revenge.

The man who was responsible for this and his reason for the punishment are too hard for a normal person to digest. It is scary and troubling to think about the dark depths of the human psyche and the extent to which a person can go to wreak havoc in the life of the person he hates !

The end of the movie shook me completely and not in a good way. I was feeling nauseated and disgusted ! To think that a person was able to conceive such a plot itself seems revolting !

Funny how I always thought of myself as a strong person ! I realized I was not ! Most reviews that you read on the net about this movie would talk about the intelligent screenplay, amazing cinematography etc and almost all of them will mention some sequences that totally gross you out, like the one where the hero eats a live octopus and another where in a tight close-up the teeth of a guy are pulled out with a hammer.

Well, if you ask me, I think those are the slightly more decent scenes in the movie, if you compare them with the psychological torture the movie portrays !! Some of the movie directors intend to shock and to achieve that, are willing to go to any lengths ! There seems to be no relationship that holds any sanctity to these people and their idea of a good movie is a movie that will disturb.

My cousin read out a review of the movie by the noted film critic Roger Ebert. These lines in particular were the highlight of the review :

'I am not an expert on the Korean cinema, which is considered in critical circles as one of the most creative in the world ("Oldboy" won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes 2004). I can say that of the Korean films I've seen, only one ("The YMCA Baseball Club") did not contain extraordinary sadomasochism. "Oldboy" contains a tooth-pulling scene that makes Laurence Olivier's Nazi dentist in "Marathon Man," look like a healer. And there is a scene during which an octopus is definitely harmed during the making of the movie.'
Sadomasochism !! Thats the term I was looking for !! That is definitely not my cup of tea !! I dont take perverse thrill in watching suffering or gory and gross sequences on screen !! I cannot take, relationships that I have been taught to treat as sacred, being slaughtered in the name of shock value and in the name of art !!

Thanks to this extremely bizarre and depressing movie, I/we had to get out of the house to get some air, see some normal people (all the while wondering what kind of people they actually were !!) and spending some money on stuff that we definitely did not need to get the stupid movie out of our minds !!

Road Rage, Spielberg and an Indian remake !

There is a popular saying in Tamil, which goes - 'Vilayum Payir, mulaiyile theriyum', literally meaning 'How the plant will turn out, will be displayed in the seed itself'. What it really means is how an adult will turn out, can be guessed by how he behaves as a child. Forget it, I am not here to talk about children or how they should shape up to become responsible adults etc. All I am here to talk about is a movie on road rage directed by none other than beloved Spielberg ! This was his debut movie and it was a made-for-TV movie. The name of the movie is 'Duel'.

I heard about the movie from a friend about 2-3 years ago. He remembered the movie, the story, the director but not the name and told me the name of the movie was 'Road rage'. I searched the whole world for it and could not find any movie by that name. Then I hit upon a brilliant idea (Ok.. brilliant by my standards !!) and searched Wikipedia for Spielberg's movies and found out about this one finally. (My mom would have said that if I had put in so much effort while at school or college, I would have turned out differently !!). Anyway, I finally watched the movie a few weeks back with my cousin.

Wow, what an experience !!

Imagine this. You are driving your decent sized car on a deserted highway and you see a huge monstrous looking truck ahead. What would you do? I will tell you what I would do - 9 times out of 10, I would try and overtake the truck from the adjacent lane, just because I know my car can drive faster and also because I will have better visibility of the road ahead.

What if this truck-driver is a complete psycho? (I can hear you saying, aren't all of them psychos anyway ?!)

Dear Stevie, took this as the premise for his debut movie ! 5 minutes into the movie, you know what it is about ! What you dont expect is how engaging a 90 min (originally 74 min) movie on only road-rage can be !

Brilliance of the director shows in every frame. You never get to see the face of the truck-driver. All you see of him is in one instance, his hand, when he waves to the protagonist - David Mann to overtake him, and later his boots as Mann comes out of a restaurant looking for the driver.

High on adrenalin, this movie has a good sound track and the director makes good use of silences to accentuate the dread that the hero feels in the movie. The shot, where the truck driver waves to Mann to overtake him and Mann almosts collides with another car coming from the opposite side, sends chills down your spine !

There are technically only 2 characters in the movie - David Mann (Dennis Weaver) and the Truck !! After a point the truck seems to take on a live of its own and I bet you will never look at a truck the same way again ! As is to be expected, the dialogues are few in number and silences speak louder than words in most places !!

Being a person, who suffers from a modest amount of road-rage, when driving in India, this movie scared me to the core. I am always a little wary of huge trucks, whether in India or in the US. After watching this movie, I have learnt to control my road-rage a little and to try really hard to stay as far away from a truck as my limited patience will permit me !!

P.S : After posting this, I suddenly got thinking (you guessed it right- in the rest room !! Wonder why all great thoughts are born in the rest-room, but thats a topic for a separate post!!) - Can this movie be made in India ?

Not impossible, but I think we need to keep in mind the following: (There I go, bullets again !!)

First thing - where do we go looking for a deserted highway ??
There is no question of overtaking if the vehicles are anyway moving at 10kmph
Silences are impossible. The hero Mani (instead of Mann), would start honking as soon as he spots the truck a km away!!
Where do we fit in an item number? Maybe make Mani go into a roadside dhaba and Bipasha/Urmila/Isha Koppikar or one of the other aging divas would dance to a raunchy song. So that requirement is taken care of !!
What about the heroine who wears an inch of clothing more than the one doing the item number? Where will she fit in? Ok, Mani thinks the psycho driver is going to kill him and imagines his first duet with his girlfriend/wife! Everytime the situation becomes too hot to handle, Mani thinks of subsequent duets. So thats out of the way too!
What about the comedy track? The truck driver can have a cleaner who will get beaten up everytime the driver is angry at something other than the hero. The cleaner will do a lot of foolish things to make people laugh.
And most important, what about the story? I mean, you cant show only the road-rage thing right? Why not throw in a background story for the enmity between the truck driver and Mani? That will give us an opportunity to have a happy family that was destroyed. The family could be Mani's or the truck driver's. Depends on who you think should be the hero !
Entrusting such a responsibility to the more popular directors would not be advisable :

a. Karan Johar - Driver has an affair with Mani's girlfriend and Mani has an affair with Driver's wife. But on seeing each other, Mani and driver realize they are gay and live happily ever after. Road rage cannot be fit in well enough ! Too much glycerine required for shooting. Too much of importance to matters of the heart.

b. Yash Chopra/Aditya chopra - Necessity to introduce chiffon saris and a wet sari song in case of the former and shirtless Mani and skimpily dressed female driver and cleaner in case of latter. Female chorus singers turn emotional at every turning point and start screeching the same theme song (for Yash)! Very expensive but very little clothes (for Adi)! Road rage will appear in a single scene, to introduce the actors.

c. SLB : Truck is in gold. Mani is poor but drives a Ferrari. Road is purple and sky is green. Theme of the movie is Purple and Green. Loud Background score hurts ears. Mani and driver confront each other with loud music playing in the background and both have tears in their eyes. And the truck driver gives away the female cleaner (formerly Mani's love) to Mani, but the cleaner who was constantly crying decides driver looks better than Mani and goes back to him. Where is the road rage?

So the best person that I can think of is Sanjay Gupta. He is very faithful at remaking (!!??!!) English/World movies and does not change the scenes or the story one bit. The dialogues are directly translated to Hindi and Sanjay Dutt acts for free in his movies. Pritam can be the music director, for all he needs to compose music is the internet. The movie will work out to be very cost effective, since all scenes involving the truck and the truck driver can be used as-is. In fact the whole movie can be used as-is, except when Mann is shown. Those scenes can easily be replaced with some close-up shots of Sanjay Dutt mouthing profanities and cool dialogues. Spielberg has not heard of Sanjay Gupta yet, so plagiarism is not an issue (Tarantino did not question our man, why would Spielberg??).

What say folks?

Rocking in the Smokies !

I am not an exercise-person. Nor am I a trek/hike person. Then what am I ? I am just a very lazy person, who loves to hang around at home reading or watching movies or just chatting.
But the July 4th weekend seemed, even to me, too long a time to spend in above mentioned cerebral activities. After several unsuccessful attempts with various friends and relatives to get an invitation to visit them, my cousin - Niranjan, his wife - Anu and I decided to go on a trek to the Smoky mountains, which was about 7 hours drive from where I live.
I have often mentioned my keen interest in food, so even before we could plan out other details for the trip, Anu and I were excited about what we would eat on the way ! Idli-molagai podi was a good idea, and so were puliyodarai and curd rice. Preparations for food started on Thursday afternoon. The whole workplace was empty post lunch on July 3rd - Thursday, especially after the client manager sent an email asking us to feel free to leave by 3 pm.
I went home stopping midway at the grocery store and picked up some bread and my mouth started watering at the thought of the amazing hummus that I was planning to make. Anyway, with all the preparation done, I set the alarm for 5:30 in the morning, since Anu and Niranjan were supposed to pick me up from home by 6. I knew I had to sleep, but an idea for a blog post was gnawing my mind and I simply could not sleep till I posted it. So I spent some time on typing out the post, reviewing it and publishing it.
I woke up as planned, packed everything and waited. I had a cup of coffee and waited. I then checked for comments to be moderated for my post, approved all of them and waited. Still no sign of cousin dearies. Went through some other blogs and waited. Finally the call came. It was Niranjan and he was going to start in 15 min !! Grrrrr… I should have known and should have slept for a longer period.
In any case, expecting a nice mid-size car, I went out to see a small Ford Focus waiting for me. Our usual trick of requesting a compact car, only to get a free upgrade to a mid-size car, backfired miserably and we actually got a compact car!! Bloody Enterprise !! The guys were so unpredictable !!
Anyway, it was almost 7:30 when we started. We started the trip with a good samaritan act, by helping a veterinarian jumpstart her car, with ours, since there was no one else around to help her start the car. With the mandatory Carnatic Music CD playing in the start, we commenced our journey to the Smokies. We had not even crossed the state when we were pulled over by a cop for speeding. So much for a good start !! Niranjan got a ticket and we continued on our journey, cursing the cop all the way.
We stopped at a rest area for breakfast at about 10:30 am. While Anu and I were waiting for Niranjan, we were approached by a guy who claimed to represent a local channel and wanted to ask us some questions for a feature he was making on rising gas prices. I was the more talkative one, so I chose to answer the questions. I gave the American audience some gyan on renewable sources of energy like Solar energy, wind energy etc, that I had studied about in 8th standard. Presumably, the syllabus is different for the Americans, for the guy seemed stunned at my ideas!
Anyway, we reached Smokies without any further incident (excluding the last 8 miles, which we covered in 3 hours, thanks to the snail-paced traffic).
It was already 5:30 pm and we decided to take a small trail that day to warm us up for the next day. What was I thinking !! Why did I ever stop exercising !! I was out of breath very soon. The road was extremely steep and we were heading towards the highest point on the Smokies, called the Clingman’s Dome. The view from this point, on a clear day was supposedly spectacular. However the day was not clear, but the view was still beautiful.
On the way back, we took a trail instead of the road and it was way better than the road (probably because we were climbing down). That night we checked into a cheap motel. I had unknowingly chosen a smoking room and the stench was unbearable. Anyway, we got used to the smell after some time and crashed. Thanks to the very late lunch of puliyodarai and curd rice and the subsequent hike, I was sick to the core and had a splitting headache and went to bed without dinner.
The next day was the big day and in spite of our best laid plans, we managed to start the trek only by 11:30 am. The complete hike was about 8.8 miles to a point called Charlie’s Bunion. The Appalachian trail is known for the Bears that prowl around the place. There was a mild rain and I was expecting snakes to be around too. I was terrified of the very thought, but we had decided to hike and I decided to play along.
The first 1.5 miles were terrible. The trail was rocky and extremely steep. I was usually last in the line and had absolutely no breath remaining in me to utter a single word. Thanks to the experience from the previous day, we carried a couple of trail mix bars, a bottle of Gatorade and a can of tomato juice (for the sodium). I threatened a couple of times to turn back, but some stubbornness kept me going. We kept our target simple and always aimed for the next nearest point. In the end, we managed the complete 4.4 miles trek and Whew !! What a relief !!
The difficult part of the trek is that it can get monotonous after a point. Green trees, green bushes, green grass- beautiful, great, wonderful, but after 2 miles, enough !! Still Nature tried her best to offer variety in terms of lighting. While it was raining mildly in the beginning, after some time, it became extremely sunny, and sunlight seemed like poetry when it fell in between the leaves of the trees around us. At some places, the trees were so dark that it seemed like it was night.
Overall, at the end of the trek, we were physically exhausted, but experienced a mental high like never before. A feeling of achievement and as a consequence satisfaction, helped in forgetting about physical fatigue and muscle pains and the worse thought of going back to normal life the next day !
I am no photographer and my camera has the uncanny ability to die out before any momentous occasion and works only when I look like a beggar at home. Here are some pics taken on my cousin’s camera. Obviously, the good ones either have me in them or were taken by me (Humility has never been one of my virtues. Also, my cousin does not care for credits!! )

Day 1- Return by the Trail. ">
The rocky trail and the play of light ! The Trail !! The Cool Canopy ! Light Green, Dark Green, Its all Green !!
From Darkness to Light !!
We met this lady on our way !
Tree Trunk or Elephant’s head ? Smokies !!!