I hummed in the rain!

28th of june was a beautiful day … infact, all the days this week except friday were amazing weather wise. Frequent downpours, smell of damp earth, and cold nights 😀

That was the day Hazel and I actually had the idea of grabbing a cuppa and sitting on the benches in the assembly area. Ideally any assembly area for a tech park would be surrounded by fake plants and the like [which I TOTALLY despise fyi] but this one had real patches of grass and flowers and was sooooo beautiful at that point.

So we just sat on the benches for an hour, setting aside all other responsibilities, and shirking all other worries. Sometimes a l’ll blank time with your brain would do you loadsa good. Trust me 😀

As always all of North India is being blessed with abundant rainfall, and I hope Chennaipattinam goes back to the days of the Monsoon 05 this winter … man that was one heckuva season of rains B-)

But no season ever stays permanent. Post summer is autumn, but post autumn is spring. [Ok Ok I am not set to take a geography lesson, this was a metaphor lol !!! 😛 ] After the charming weather in the past week, this place is crawling towards it’s crowning glory of being the hottest metropolitan .. hmm ….

Sivaji , the “Baas”

Yuppy .. been a loooooong time since I wrote a review and much much longer since I watched a Rajni movie in theatres. After much unnessecary hype and hoopla created by most of TN’s junta , including standing for hours together to get tickets – spending 200 odd for watching the movie . .. and that too THIS ONE!

What was Shankar thinking????

When MGR was 60 odd and acted with much much younger heroines he had the sense to take long shots! Rajni’s age shows clearly through the utterly ghastly close-ups and his inability to dance [no, i dont mean the way he has danced since his entry into tinsel town]

As is the case with most Shankar movies, there is unnessecary extravangance in almost every turn of the movie. ‘Ballelaka’ – features some of Tamil Nadu’s pot bellied junta who bear various motifs on their tummies – from lions to pongal pots, to Rajni’s face. What is utterly disgusting is watching them wobble in close up as poor shankar made them jump and jive [Eeek, i tend to get very specific at times]. Shankar has tried the ‘guest’ appearance funda for [I think] the first time in front of the camera . . .

Thotta Tharani’s art work is amazing … all the sets are wonderful and very very ethereal , especially the setting for ‘Sahana saaral’ – the glasshouse and the water below the flooring. Manish Malhotra’s design is very gaudy and I would advice ppl to wear coolers while ‘Oru koodai sunlight’ comes on screen , biker blonde rajni is a hoot to watch!

As is the case with most Rajni movies , expect a lottt of punch dialogues. And after the grand realisation that he had glorified smoking all these years , the super star switches to chewing gum.

Watching Bald Rajni being styled Morpheus style and fighting matrix style stunts [or was it trying to spoof them, can anyone tell the difference?] was one of the many things tht irked me to the CORE. And what does he mean by demolishing all the guitars???? Stunt sequences copied from all successful action movies – POC, Kill Bill , The Matrix Trilogy. That Peter Hayne guy must be jailed for plagiarism!

Shreya has duely taken Ash’s place to prove she can scare as much [or is it even more] with her plastic smiles and her wanderfool acting skills , but dances amazingly well through out the movie. Vivek’s comedy remains subdued in the grand screen presence of the ‘Baas’.

The music of the movie is plain disappointing. A.R Rehman has rendered incoherent noise [listen up for the sound of scratching nails and heavy metal objects moving in ‘Oru koodai sunlight’] The other numbers are too ordinary for the standards that he has set. Nothing hummable or worth retaining.

Alltogether an utterly pointless flick. Shankar again takes the anti politician approach and makes utterly ridiculous things seem possible. Leave your brain in cold storage, take in loads of patriotism with you into the theatre. You will come out entertained. I guarantee it.

For all the Rajni Verians who might be reading this  – “Coooooooool………“

Winds of change

And so it happens ..  I see a bleak ray of light shining across my dark realms as I wander bravely into the unknown.  After posting a sooofer negative post in my prev attempt I have decided to be fiercely optimistic.

Optimism gives us the hope and the imagination for thinking of wonderous possibilites of what we can do with our lives and where we could go, while pessimism can take to rock bottom, may be fifty feet of crap deeper than rock bottom and that’s it. Life’s decisions are tough to take, no one ever denies that.

But does everyone have the exact ESP of the outcome of their decisions, like Baz Luhrman says “what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.”  Even some people I know who look all set to take a journey in a planned path are just as jittery as june bugs but let us face it.

It is the journey that enlightens us.

Not the destination.

On a totally different note,

Hell’s Angel has relocated to Mumbai. 😦

Vivekanand turned 23 a couple of days back [OLDIE 😛 ]

Gokul made it to IIM – K!  Congrats Kiddo 😀 Always knew you would make it!

We can never stay stoic in life, as the winds of change blows us into the world and the life that lies ahead 🙂

Of hopes and high hopes

Sometimes in life we always think a 1000 times before making a sound decision,wondering how and when it will affect our day to day lives why we even end up wasting time thinking so much for something that is as visible and obvious as green pastures to a hungry herd of cows !

And yet somehow, somewhere down the line your gut instincts screw you up in the middle of a thoughtful and steadfast process of decision making and you just think to yourself WTF? [Yeah, going by most junta around me, I am sounding a lot like Scorcese’s dialogue writer lately.]

But there is one amazing thing that we all possess in our systems that we never seem to find an expalanation for.

Hope.

Sometimes I wonder if Hope is just a mechanism that people end up using to explain and justify all their feuk ups on a day to day basis? Or a long term decision?

“I am hoping for a change of work”

“I am hoping for him to come back”

“I am hoping for promotion”

So more often than ever, do our hopes end up becoming vain hopes or just high hopes too lofty to ground themselves in the plane of reality?

” Beyond the horizon of the place we lived when we were young
In a world of magnets and miracles
Our thoughts strayed constantly and without boundary
The ringing of the division bell had begun

Along the Long Road and on down the Causeway
Do they still meet there by the Cut

There was a ragged band that followed in our footsteps
Running before times took our dreams away
Leaving the myriad small creatures trying to tie us to the ground
To a life consumed by slow decay

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
When friends surrounded
The nights of wonder

Looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us
To a glimpse of how green it was on the other side
Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again
Dragged by the force of some inner tide
At a higher altitude with flag unfurled
We reached the dizzy heights of that dreamed of world

Encumbered forever by desire and ambition
There’s a hunger still unsatisfied
Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon
Though down this road we’ve been so many times

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
The taste was sweeter”

Yeah, overdose of High hopes by floyd. Big time overdose.

And so it happens . . .

Yo folks,

Decided  to move to wordpress at the end of the day . . . although i still love my blogspot blog as much, who knows, I might as well end up reverting to that … but i feel for now that I need this change and since TEALSPACE regulars happen to be counted by the handful, I am sure u all would definitely understand.  😀

Of receptions and repulsions!

When you are a 20 something old person who is single and having friends who are too busy globe trotting [or in my case both globe trotting and country trotting] you have the otherwise very glamourous passtime of driving your parents around to all the weddings and wedding receptions of all the people who you couldnt care less about [save the venue and the food , details further down the line in the same post].
“Hi kanna , remember me?”
Aargh.
Me [grinning and scannin my absent minded thinking faculty to remember this cheek-puncturing aunty … searching ….. searching …. match not found!!!!!] “No, aunty , nyaabagam illai 😛 “
“Me and you parents worked together in 197x …. back in those days …..”
Me: 😐
Now is the time ma’s Mom-o-meter starting beeping alarmingly and she comes to my rescue.
Then comes the agony of waiting in queue to watch the 2 tortured, sweaty souls standing on the podium for like 5 hours in a stretch, smiling in a fashion that mannequins can come and learn from them. [Kinda makes me wonder how ppl can ever subject themselves to such torture]
This time around, I had to rush elsewhere so I couldnt wish the ravishing bride and the relatively smart groom on their gr8 accomplishment.
Saw a distant view, waved to bride.
Now the point that is to be noted with atmost precision is the fact that Mothers dont make you drive them because they have no other go , but receptions have become a major networking avenue for anxious middle aged parents for potential bride/groomspotting routines . . .
“My aunt’s 2nd cousin’s son’s daughter just finished studying at BITS Pilani , romba intelligent, azhaga paaduva , moonjila avalo kalla … her parents have been looking for her for the past 1 year .. paavam so far no match has clicked.”
After hearing such “sob” stories, these folks act as Cupid’s apprentices and come to the “rescue” of the anxious parent. “Send her hororscope across , we’ll see what needs to be done.”
Hmmmm.
In between such constructive activity come the sight-adichifying. This is when the single fellows [or in some cases even married fellows] will subtly check out all the single gals and and the girls who are waiting in line to get the guillotine.
There is a simple way in which you can diffrentiate between the two categories mentioned above.
Category A [single gals who are NOT ready to mingle] ~

• Can be spotted around juice stalls drinking juice and cold water and paraag paathufying [i.e staring pointless admiring the complex architechture and artwork on the dull and boring , not to mention plain wedding halls.]
• Are often sighted fiddling with mobile phones and repeatedly seeing the watch, and after sometime even patting it to see if time has indeed coagulated or it is the watches fault?
• Are also seen wearing extremly simple salwar kameez’s/.

Category B [potential lambs for the guillotine]~

• Can be spotted wearing silk sarees or designer sarees.
• Wear danglings that look like they might tear their ear lobe apart.
• Often seen adjusting facial powder quantity.
• Spend hours putting goop on their faces.
• Are often seen with a smile that would scare a mime away [!!!]

tick-tock tick tock.
Finally dinner beckons! I refused to attend the muhurtham functions because they are all the more boring and formal. So boring that you can actually find kids dozing off in the middle of the function.
After gorging on the wonderful buffet , I made the great escape before getting caught in a web of nostalgia or being stared at by lazy bored creeps.

The little things …..

Monotony alert ….. Monotony alert ……
As a kid, I’d always wanted to grow up and do the things that “grown-ups” did …. and now I very quickly realised I am better off stayin in childhood … pity the ship has sailed!
I guess this is the case with most 20 somethings who end up serving those stuck-up @$$#oles in the S/W Industry. [yeah, i have started to swear royally … call it an occupationa hazard or “watever”].
Working in the O&M aspect of software is far from appealing. Take it from a person who has been doing that for about 9 months now …. Working shifts is again another very tempting facet of working these kinda projects. But the dying optimist in me [who refuses to give up even when all seems grey and gloomy] has tried to see the bright side of things.
If one must ever want to love Chennai City , you must travel the city’s busiest stretches between the duration of 4-6 am. On a 2 wheeler.
This is the only time during the day that the weather is AWESOME. Nothing like driving 50 on Sardar Patel Road, rushing past Raj Bhavan in the blink of an eye , the cold wind brushing past your cheeks, the breeze made cool by the morning dew drops on the branches of trees.
Tune to any of the new radio stations and you will hear the golden voice of the goddess of Carnatic Music , M.S Subbalakshmi, calling upon Lord Venkateshwara from his sleep with an amazing [words falter when i try to describe it] rendition of the Suprabhaatham.
Once that is done, it always pays to have that seemingly over priced mp3 phone playin your list of fav retro rock numbers. One must try ‘Stairway to heaven’ on the early morning drives …. superb is the word.
The only thing i look forward is the ride back home.
Coming back to the mp3 phone funda, I got myself this beauty~

It is the Sony Ericsson k750i – mother of the w800i phone.
A must have for audiophiles =D