Category: Life Ordinary

  • Three’s Company?

    As part of the ‘made in india’ series on star movies, ‘split wide open’ was aired yesterday… a good movie, though constantly teetering on the fine line between raw portrayal and vulgarism, primarily because a lot of the movie’s content was sex, and not the kind thats publicly common in india – gay/lesbianism to start off, bigamy, couple sharing the male servant in bed, father in law stepping in coz the son is impotent, pedophily, to name a few……
    raised some questions in my mind – the lil girl involved in the pedophily episode, aged around 10, had been picked up by a guy from the street, and was treated quite well, to the extent that she didnt want to leave when her ‘brother’ tries to rescue her…. now, does she have the freedom to choose her way of life, does the brother have the right to choose right and wrong for her?…. not that the issues are similar, but is it kinda like a kid saying it doesnt want to go to school??
    the other food for thought is if three people feel they are perfectly happy together (would amount to bigamy), is the law justified in proclaiming it illegal?? so if someone finds three to be company, should he/she be given the freedom to live life that way?? all this would boil down to a simple question “should convenience of the majority be the only parameter while setting laws??”
    since we are on the topic, harvard is cool on the sexual explicitness front, so says this article. this article is about 2 guys getting caught for sending porn to a girl in mumbai.
    Two more totally unrelated links, this one describes your character based on alphabet……
    This article throws some light on my favourite actor of all time, mohanlal…guys north of the vindhyas wouldnt know him, except for a cameo in “company”, but for sheer talent, he remains the best i have seen….
    another best i have seen is my oldest and only chat friend, ‘doc’ amrutha, who, on valentine’s day elicited a whole gamut of emotions from me, ranging from absolute surprise to absolute happiness, by sending me flowers. totally totally unexpected, the only thing that could beat that was her dropping in, doc u hear that??
    which brings me to
    manuscrypts trivia
    have still not exhausted my quotes quota, so here goes
    “Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
    And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.” ~ Robert Frost
    “I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” ~ Isaac Newton
    “Life is not lost by dying. Life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.” ~ Stephen Vincent Benet

  • Special Post

    this one’s to wish you all a very happy valentine’s day, not exactly a great believer myself, but for those who do, have a blast. and this one’s for my one and only lovely wifey, who’s gonna read this blog after a long time (coz the poor thing has got conditional (!!) net access at work), i looooooooooooooove you!!
    and in
    manuscrypts trivia
    a link, for those against the day
    & a good joke
    A couple was celebrating their golden wedding anniversary. Their domestic tranquillity had long been the talk of the town.”What a peaceful & loving couple”. A local newspaper reporter was inquiring as to the secret of their long and happy marriage.”Well, it dates back to our honeymoon,”explained the man. “We visited the Grand Canyon and took a trip down to the bottom of the canyon by horse. We hadn’t gone too far when my wife’s horse stumbled. My wife quietly said, ‘That’s once.’ We proceeded a little further and the horse stumbled again. Once more my wife quietly said,’That’s twice.’”We hadn’t gone a half-mile when the horse stumbled the third time. My wife quietly removed a revolver from her purse and shot the horse dead.
    “I started an angry protest over her treatment of the horse, when she lookedat me, and quietly said,’That’s once’.

    “And we lived happily ever after”.

  • We don’t need no India Shining

    thats probably what the IIMs want to be singing after the govt slashed their fee structure….. i am actually confused, and have very ambivalent thoughts on the issue…on one hand, i dont like the govt sticking its hands into something thats an established brand, and has shown thats its perfectly capable of handling its business, it looks like they wanna have a share of a good thing, maybe even use that in the ‘india shining’ campaign…. on the other hand, i also feel that a govt influence might make the IIMs more accessible….
    btw, the election commission has warned the govt not to spend the revenue from taxes for the campaign, so we might get a breather.. 🙂
    speaking of IIMs, i just had a thought, humankind protests against all kinds of disparities – race, sex, age etc..but arent institutions like IIMs promoting discrimination based on intellectual aptitude…. at every level of academic life, we strive to take tests and pass, arent we therefore subjecting ourselves to a screening for checking our levels of intellect….they are just standards that suit the majority… i get admission in a good college coz i performed well in school, i get a good job coz i did well in college, the list goes on….but what gives us the right to discriminate against those who arent as bright?? … is it right to condemn them to a life of misery, self doubt and frustration just because they cant utilise their brains to the extent we can?? but we do, coz if we dont, a lot of existing systems would crash!!
    saw “plan” during the weekend, expectations were close to nil coz of the reviews, but surprise, surprise, it wasnt that bad, which goes to show that you cant trust reviews all the time….sanjay dutt seems to be perfecting the ‘comic don’ character…. the movie has some corny shayari, courtesy, dutt and mahesh manjrekar, who has also done a good job..think this one takes the cake “sher ke saamne sher bolne se chooha sher nahi banta; bache paida karne hote hain, god lene se koi baap nahi banta”……. 🙂
    been reading a whole cartload of articles on ‘outsourcing’, am actually wondering whether He has outsourced sustenance to someone, that would answer a lot of questions regarding the way humankind is evolving, the ‘quality’ issues….btw, have a look at this link, a good read.which brings me to
    manuscrypts triviadont remember where i got it from, but its good
    In The Adventures of Griswald Gnome: A Fairy Tale for Children of all Ages, the magician gnome starts by saying, “I am a Peristaltic Basaltic Cabalist.””A reformed deformer, searcher for research, a regrind grinder, one who once faltered, but reflated and did rejoin as a joiner. If I might presume, I’m going to lecture you. This statement is my testament: my supreme objective is to preserve the perverse,”and the usual quotes
    “To a large degree reality is whatever the people who are around at the time agree to.”~ Milton Miller
    Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. ~ Einstein

  • Guest appearances on my own blog

    Thats what it has come to, as the time between each post gets longer…once upon a time, it was a daily ritual…. but i cant bring myself to write something everyday just for the heck of writing it, i dont think i can be the ‘daily writing’ kinda guy anymore…the interim budget is likely to add more gloss to the ‘shining india’… inspite of everything, i still believe that the shine should happen in my mind, and not stare back at me each time a i pick a newspaper or watch television…..by the way, read this and this if you are interested in the topic
    i watched “LoC” and “Khakee”.. for the guys who said ‘whats that”, they are just two movies, extra special because the former has more than a dozen stars, and the latter has four…. judging by the number of “behen****” and “ma*******” in LoC , it is fair to say that the censor board has become more lenient, not a very ‘must see’ movie , if you discount the stars..but it did convey to me the kind of life a soldier leads, just so that me and my countrymen sleep in peace…..”
    khakee’ was good, trashed a whole lot of bollywood cliches, showed the characters as raw human beings, not even the ‘shades of grey’ that bollywood usually says it has now, but normal human beings….
    i am not a follower of Superbowl but this image certainly caught my attention :-)….intentional or not is still being debated, but what the hell, theres nothing called bad publicity!!Some kind soul needs to give me tips on my blog’s aesthetics, no cash here, only good publicity and loads of appreciation..hehe
    now, i know it isnt a burning question, but this is a good article on whether you have a journal or blog….will leave you with
    manuscrypts trivia
    will continue with three good quotes , first two by Einstein and the last by Gandhi
    “The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives. “
    “Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for insects as well as for the stars. Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance. “
    “There is more to life than increasing its speed.”

  • So, how’s India Shining?

    hey, hey, hey, my first post for the new year, hope all of you guys had a blast….and have gotten rid of the hangovers!! i snored my way into new year, which is a ritual..cant be changed…. 🙂
    now, where cricket is concerned, india was certainly shining yesterday, felt very happy for the debutant rohan gavaskar…must be so difficult for the guy, to make a niche for himself in the game, with the shadow of sunil gavaskar looming over him perpetually. it takes solid guts to get into the field where his dad earned the title ‘little master’. there have been many instances where i thought the guy would make it into the playing eleven, only to be rejected in the end. sometimes, i felt the selectors shied away from him, coz they didnt want charges of bias leveled against them…nyways hope he does well…..and yes, i honestly feel like starting a forum to stop steve bucknor from refereeing India’s matches!!!!
    but the recent ads that are being aired on tv and splattered on print, look too much like a well orchestrated PR campaign, to ignite the patriotism in me… add to it the discussion forums, and the cartoons about the ‘shining’ and the ‘feel good factor’, and i see a lot of reasons why just some infrastructural and sector specific (read BPO, ITES, IT) booms dont actually make me feel that good… one simple example would be my state,no, not my personal state, hehe, but that of “god’s own country”- Kerala…. a hartal every 3 days, extortion mafias mushrooming, no self respecting IT company (yes, there is an infy, but thats an exception to the rule) willing to invest, and that, in the state that has the second highest literacy, and indeces and statistics, that could give the west a run for their money.. the rest of the country still has its share of foreigners getting raped, dowry deaths (i recently saw a very gruesome report on, i think ndtv, where an iron rod was pushed into a 4 year old girl’s genitals, while her mother was being tortured for more dowry), corrupt politicians who make the policy decisions for the country..so while i agree that india is gaining, i am not so sure of the shining bit!!
    this article is worth a read, on this topic.a couple of links that you guys should have a look at, one is the delhi bloggers meet photographs, for which i should be thanking simon and w-bug, hell, i havent yet asked them if it is ok to post it, guys, if theres a problem just post a message. the other link, is a total whacko, have a look at it, its totally out of the box, trust me.which brings me to
    manuscrypts trivia
    i have come across a few einstein quotes, so am gonna post them in small doses
    “The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books; a mysterious order it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. BUThe also says
    “Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. ” 🙂