...as seen by...

Don't expect. Anything. The apparent danger of expecting something without any rhyme or reason is shown hilariously in that beautiful Zemeckis-Tom Hanks feel-good movie, Forrest Gump. Forrest is on a mission, he's running across the country, well u can say continent, since the U S of A is as wide as you can get in the American continent, both of them. *** In Gump's own words *** Some people say I am running for world peace, some say for women's liberation, but I just ran. *** *** And he gathers some flotsam along the way, people get inspired and follow him. One more month at it and he could have given birth to his own religion, and found his place among the likes of Jesus Christ, Buddha and Robert Atkins. But it would have been a troubling ritual for the followers of Forresteism, like Dec 25, they'd have their day.. "This is when Lord Forrest Gump started his run blah blah... " and the most pious of his followers would probab...

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing about a movie for the past 3-4 days. But it scared the hell out of me. Ok, so what’s the big deal? Both the People’s Council of China and the junta in Cambodia have expressed through written communication that they’re okay with the idea of me writing about another movie. Then? It’s the name of the movie which is setting me back, because the name is, so unnervingly for any connoisseur of the silverscreen art, “Starwars”. Now you get the magnanimity of the problem at hand. There are two extremes of people who’ve seen the movie. The guy who sat in the next row to me; a forty something chap wearing a lungi and carrying a three-fold popy umbrella, desperately hoping to catch some sleaze in the Engleeeshu-padam. The poor chap had his moment of Nirvana when at the end of the second half, Natalie Portman appeared wearing what looked like a super-mini. That’s one end. And on the other extreme, we have people who know every single character in the movie ...

It was, five years ago that I saw her for the first time. Her pictures adorned the walls of my room. She was just a prototype then, just another head-turner in the inermot show. Seeing her picture, me and my fellow bunch of nut-cases had let out a huge “WWWAAAOOOUUWWW” in unison, and had bellowed with rage, squirmed with irreverence towards our own luck, writhed with ecstasy, and finally given in to the futility of all such intense desires, the nirvana of an un-attainable kind. It’s the Yam MT-01 I am talking about. Five years since, the sight of its factory version has turned out to be even more perilous to my extremely fatuous mind. I can afford to take a look at the picture only at my own risk, for it leaves me in another fit of depression. More at: http://www.totalmotorcycle.com/photos/2005models/2005models-Yamaha-MT01.htm

Men are such clueless desperate dimwits. Why else would we imagine every other thing we use in our lives as being feminine, like bikes, cars, our working tools… the list goes endless. Just a word for all my readers from Venus who, I’m sure must have got all charged up now, and are ready to pounce on me. Please! :) See, that’s how desperate it can get. And that latest in the long line of things that I consider with a hint of tenderness, akin to the one felt towards the opposite sex, is a house. Wait a minute, a house??? Well if you consider the biological (read endocrinal) reasons that would make a bike being referred to as female, a house would seem like a rather phantasmagoric, perverted choice. But that’s not how it works. Here’s the boring background. All of a sudden, last month, we realized that the number of people living in the house and the size of the house (read house-rent) isn’t really much of a match together. The place which witnessed enormous amounts of crazy, noisy, dirty...

"Puttum Kadalayum" doesn't really sound like something big enough to hinge one's career decisions upon. But it is. It was meant to be nothing more than a casual remark when Ch asked me yesterday, "Bangalore-ilo Pune -ilo poyal pinne puttum kadalem evidunnu kazhikkum??" But I know it, and he knows it too, that the Qn was a fatal setback to my plans to switch the current job for a better(?) one. I was crouching low down, ready to lift myself off, but this very innocuous sounding Qn made me sit back, and rethink. So what is it about Puttum Kadalayum? Apart from being my favourite breakfast...(I am no glutton, but this combo, with pappadam as the kinky sidekick, brings me to my knees, literally.) it represents everything good about working in TVM. There is a certain noisy chord inside me which is still chanting I should run to a metro. The fatter paychecks, the late-night discos, the cosmopolitan crowd, the rock concerts... hmm. Have you ever stuck yourself into...