Category: Yesterday

  • Of old wines and new bottles

    Its not exactly breaking news that wines get better as they grow older, i think it also applies to some whines, but thats just another silly pun..While there’s nothing to beat the old wine in the old bottle, new bottles are easily tolerable.. and before i whine any further, let me get the context across – friends.. no,not the orkut kind, but the ones developed when you were too young to know better..:)
    The couple of friends i have managed to have (inspite of myself) might be ROTFL right now, reading me write about something about which i am so ill versed about, but thats okay..Like Ash said recently, i have reached an age when i know that it will be extremely difficult to make new friends, given my distinct laziness to keep in touch etc.. and therefore old friends popping out are indeed a welcome relief..
    unlike wines, we cant be sure we become better with age, in fact i think, over a period of time, we manage to change ourselves to unrecognisable entities.. and thats why its good to have old friends saying hi, because like an enid blyton book, or an 80’s movie, or the college photograph or an old song, it takes us back in time, it makes us nostalgic, and more often than not, happy… it reminds us of times that used to be and more importantly, what we once used to be…
    until next time, hi 🙂

  • Striking….

    There is a university that i was once a part of, no, make that twice. Once, when i spent years 3 to 13 living there –  discovering a world on a tricycle, climbing buildings under construction, playing cricket for hours on end, walking among rows and rows of acacia trees, listening to grown ups talking science and mathematics and politics, going to kindergarten, feeling all grown up when going to school, discovering a world on a bicycle, seeing people walk by with red or black flags and wondering how cool it must be to carry a flag and shout on the road.

    The second time, a much briefer timeframe – 6 months, coming back to a wave of nostalgia, to a world I had spent time discovering, to walking up the stairs of buildings that were constructed almost two decades ago, to getting tired after a few overs’ spell, walking among rows of buildings that once used to be the ground on which acacias stood, listening to grown ups talking management, to feeling grown up when doing post graduation, seeing people walk by with red or black flags, and realising how childish I was when I thought it was cool, because by then I had been there and done that…

    A few months back, I saw a newspaper headline that the university had been shut indefinitely – it seemed most of everyone were on strike, against each other – students, administrative staff and the university registrar, who had been manhandled by a set of students. The students were on strike for something that should be as far away from academics as possible – politics. The exams had been cancelled, and if this goes on for even a couple of months, perhaps this year, there wont be a convocation at all in the university.

    Now the university has silent rows of buildings, and kids waiting for their exams to get over so they can play cricket, cycle around, discover a world, listen to grown ups and think how cool itwould be to carry red and black flags and shout on the street.

    The university has always had people with flags, it still has them. Can’t blame them, it takes time to understand that flags ain’t so cool. Like most things in life, it is a lesson that can’t be taught, it has to be learnt. That takes time, and a part of life itself.


    until next time, dumbstruck….

  • Go Ah!!!

    Yup, thats exactly what you do when you are in Goa… after 4 long years, i finally made the trip.. to the place where i spent the 2 best years of my life… and i can safely say, discovered severals facets of myself… and so it was a trip i was looking forward to… not just for the sun and the sand and the way of life, but also a trip to my alma mater…… and discovered that things had changed, in Goa as well as at the insti.. the people, mercifully hadnt changed, still lazy as can humanly be, oh i love them for it… :).
    i saw an excellent campaign by a liquor brand -Arlem, i think the name was, which hit the nail on thehead. it said ‘Its Goa…chilled’ but some of the places had changed… Panjim, for example, had 2 Coffee Day outlets and an Inox… the time i left Goa, a Barista had opened in Panjim, but there is no trace of it now…
    and there had been 2 theatres in Panjim which were reasonable, Samrat & Ashok, i bet they must be having a tough time now…
    the ‘kingfisher’ neon that was a landmark is now joined by Airtel and RIM… there is a bridge to Arambol instead of the ferry, so yeah, things have indeed changed…
    All the students at the insti now have laptops and cellphones.. in the three batches that i have seen there (1 senior, ours and 1 junior) only one person had a laptop and a mobile phone (the first in our senior batch and the second in our batch).. so the students dont speak much to the faculty, they call them or mail them… and there are no messages on paper, they have (i guess)e-chits…the beaches are there, so are the firangs, and the view from Chapora, and Titos, and the Mandovi still flows silently..but like everything else everywhere, the winds of change keep blowing…and like all the other pieces in my memory, the one about Goa is also frozen at the time i loved it best..
    until next time, keep the change…

  • Bombay Dying??

    No, it isnt a doomsday prophecy… its just a manifestation of the ‘what fun without pun’ phenomenon :)…
    its about the brand many of us have heard of, and worn too, as part of our school life… a few days back i saw an ad of theirs, which said there was a discount of upto 60% off on bath towels (yes, occasionally i do that too), but conveniently not mentioning where their outlets were…but as luck would have it, we managed to find one (purely by chance).. i think my last visit to a Bombay Dyeing showroom would have been around 6 years back, for trouser material!! and that was in good old God’s own Country, where the premium on education might also have inadvertently lent some of its sheen to the outlet from where school uniforms were bought… and therefore, it had a touch of class to it…
    but this visit told a different story… most of us can judge the way a shop is doing just by looking at it… a faulty signage, casual staff, the decor, the way stuff is arranged, all of them can tell the story… and from this shop, i could sense a gradual decline from the good old days.. yes, the towels werent bad, they still have good bedsheets according to D, and the Vivaldi shirts were also quite okay, but these are perhaps the last wall of defense…
    and so, while some brands have smoothly made a transition – surf, rin, lux, colgate, parle…….for some brands- dalda, gold spot, binaca, solidaire, anikspray…. this generation’s memories might be the last wall of defense…
    until next time, sometimes clothes make a man’s memories too

  • Memories

    …of the relatively ignorant bliss of childhood… of the roller coaster ride of adolescence, the exhilrating times of youth… so far.. and perhaps as we grow older, the realisation of middle age, and the inevitability of old age… by the time we reach the twilight of ourlives, perhaps these memories become one of the pillars of our lives…
    something that we never work towards, and assume that our minds would automatically record and catalog it – by person, by time, by taste, smell and hordes of other things that cant be described..
    I saw a malayalam movie recently, a movie i was looking forward to seeing, featuring my fave actor and directed by a one movie old director, who had set an extremely high benchmark with his debut movie.. and thankfully, it delivered, and how!! it reinstored my faith in actor whose performance screamed out that all he needed were good scripts and he would do the rest.
    that was a necessary digression, because even the trigger for a post has to be acknowledged, specially one as deserving as this movie…the story of a man who, while having never accomplished his dream, retains his faith in his intellectual abilities, and hopes that he can live his dream through his son. a man who has to balance his duty towards his father with that towards his son.. and while he focuses all his energies on all these happenings in his life, gets struck with alzheimers…. i cant remember a malayalam movie in years which can come remotely close to this one .. and no, thats not because of any ailment, its because there hasnt been a movie like this in years…:)
    its a movie that made me think.. day after day after day, we go around focusing ourselves on the short term and long term things we aspire to do.. some get a joy out of a night with friends, some get it with the knowledge that their investments are safe and sound, some get a joy out of having achieved something..but all of us get a joy out of remembering the good times we have had in our lives… what if we cant remember those.. in His infinite wisdom, perhaps he has answered this too, for if we dont know that we cant remember, theres no pain… we will live small lives, with joys and sorrows we would never remember later…
    until next time, remember to drop in again 🙂