Ennui !

My wallpaper says it all !

"Someone's boring me
and i think it is me"


hope it says more than enuf , dont know what to , im at cross roads in every aspect of life really ! one of these days surely need to decide something or other , gettin bored of just drifting along
Currently everything seems uninteresting or routine or i should say trite (i guess thats the best word)...
Don't know how n when i will get out of this .
xpect something to jolt me out of this sooon ...

to V or not to V

Morning news was filled with either ppl in Red celebrating V-day or ppl in Black also 'celebrating' V-day in their own styles !

Simple point is if u have a girl u will be in Red ( literally and figuratively ;-))
otherwise u turn out in black in protest; to protest what, im not so sure !

Read and Tailor !

The otherday there was a discussion among my friends about how Hindi movies are copycats and so on. Some guys had very strong opinions about bollywood films coz they were mostly poor copies of hollywood fare. A few of us were opposing this view , our point was that there are very few original works , there are lots of clones and inspirations which cannot be classfied as copy and looked down upon. Agreed, there are lots of Bollywood movies which are pure lifts ie frame by frame re-make , which some enlightened reviewer points out to us and we look down upon it as a copied and hence 2nd rate product. But the fact is that vast majority wouldn't have seen the hollywood movie in the first place , so the story and movie would be something novel for them and they would actually thoroughly enjoy it. I can remember scores of films which were hollywood inspired , but had localised the stories and had adapted them to Indian situations so were good, some were even better than the originals(I liked Kaante better than Reservoir Dogs!). There have been lot of hollywood inspired stories , where the central idea would be from a western movie , but most of the situations will Indianesque (Tamil blockbuster Ghajini from Memento).
I dont' see harm in such movies as long as you are entertained you should not be complaining. Ofcourse plagiarising is bad , but in some cases it becomes a homage to the original. If due credits are given then we can see this 'copy'/'inspirated' cinema as a means to convey good cinema/stories to parts of the world which it wouldn't have reached because of language or culture limitations. Same is the case with regional cinema , down south there have been numerous movies which are made in Malayalam and get remade in Tamil , Tamil movies-> Telugu,Kannada and vice versa.
The fact is that all these states have their own industry , with their own stars and way of story telling. So dubbing a movie doesn't work always ,hence they go for remakes tailored aptly for each state. 'Manichitrathazhu' a classic in Malaylam went to karnataka as 'ApthaMithra' and landed up as Rajni film tailor made for Tamil audiences in from of 'Chandramukhi'
Coming back to the main issue , even Hollywood movies are mostly adapted from good novels , these days all best sellers are instantly lapped up for movies. But Indian fiction is still in a nascent stage , so we have to rely on Hollywood or other cinema for stories.
Recently saw this ,
which is really encouraging ,hopefully we will also soon be doing 'Read and Tailor' method for movie scripts !

Road to Nowhere : Part-2

'horny' / 'horn-happy' or not traffic rules are almost non existant. Im not complaining , why should all countries be the same , we are unique in our own way !Last week at office , we played host to a Canandian from our client company , who had come to impart some training for us. While we were talking , the guy ( an India lover actually ) said earlier he used to be surprised when some Indians he met at the client office told him they didn't know to drive. Well with auto gear cars around all you needed to know was how step on gas and how to brake thats all , whats to learn in this he used to think and hence was amused to see 'Drving Schools' when he first visited.But now after coming here he has been exposed to a whole new world of driving , he said. He too concurred with me that it adds to the charm of the country , but then added that if you have to put up with this sort of thing daily then it surely becomes one hell of problem.So thats the system here , no system at all; still things move on or chug along. Earlier the bus journey from my place to office used to last 40 min . Well that was a good 2 years back, but gradually over the years the time has increased and now has almost doubled. But the best part is our tolerance , we crib , we rant but in the end accept these delays as part and parcel of the game. It all happened in phases , the travel time would suddenly increase by 20 min , people started getting angry , irritated , then it it would improve a bit but would be worser than before , bit ppl will be happy, slightly better than before they say.Every now and then there used to be talks of Govt. not doing anything , then suddenly someone points it out that 'IT' guys or Bangalore is not everything for the Govt. , they have millions of mouths to feed and look after in rural hinterland , where ppl are much worser off and we city slickers ought not to be complaining as long as we have something which can pass off as a road. Think about your rural bretheren , they said and we , part ashamed of being too demanding and also for getting the best facilities and life , kept quiet.Anti-IT = Pro-Farmer ! As long as you are not spening too much on him , Im happy , even if Im also not getting anything. Wow what a logic, wonder who thought of such a simple formula , in essence you need not do anything anywhere. As yet another day dawns and fades away as i sit in the comforts of my office bus , my sympathies for ppl out there on roads on your vehicles , my heart really goes out for you. Meanwhile at office , im pressing for TV and Dvd player in our buses . We can catch an entire Hindi movie , Im sure. Anyone listening ?

Why are we so 'Horny' ?

Last month on a nondescript weekday , I was in the bus back to my home from office. Was stuck as usual in the traffic jam in the same area as usual but for a change had a female colleague i knew sitting next to me. Traffic was crawling slowly , conversation was also at bare minimum as we were all frustrated n tired and air was filled with sighs from tired travellers n the never ending honks from sea of vehicles all around us. Then suddenly out of blue she suddenly asked "Why are we Indians so horny? " !!! Got the shock of my life and I almost dropped the book i had in my hand ... i din't know how to react ! we guys gen classify gals into varous categories n sub categories and ppl u can talk to x things till y level and not and all. This gal was in my goody good or 'sati savithri' kinda class , so I was clueless as to what to say to such kind of observation. Then suddenly i was wondering why now , why to me and what not . My Mind started exploring countless possiblities and their different permutaions and combinations and also thoughts like what is happening to me, Im i alright , did i hear it right or am I flipping and for a moment the world that i lived seemed to have been turned upside down, suddenly i wondered did i judge only her wrong or everyone wrong or have i judged everything wrong !But then the next statement brought all such thoughts crashing down and cleared everything . She followed the first one with another gem: "That guy in the Santro car behind us just doesn't take his hands from the horn" ! Then it struck me , suddenly things were very clear , things seemed to flip back and everything seemed to return to noemal and world seemed fine a much better place to be as i became more sure of everything ! 'Horn + Horn + Horn ... = Horny' ; I repeated to myself and put on a smile of realisation ( in truth relaxation ) . I concured with her , ya we are horn-happy i told her but from the looks on her face i knew she dint exactly get my analogy to the common english usage , but then judging from the earlier statement , I knew i was expecting too much.That is Indian usuage of English ! But having said that i started thinking about the relevance of her point ya we are hornhappy , vehicle before u stops for a sec; "HONK" , u try to balst him out of orbit and try to zoom ahead on non-existant roads ... sitting in the comforts of the bus we were having an elaborate discussion of this 'Indian habit of honking too much' , as the conversation progressed i was told that during a team dinner with a guy from her client company , the 'white man' had remarked that 'the traffic in this country is a mess and ppl keep honking too much' , which was what had made her realise the peril the country was in and hence the concerns. "what will he think" she continued , "what will happen to our image as a growing superpower, these motorists observe traffic rules at all" she thundered and shook her head with resignation , I also joined the fray and nodded half ashamed of image of my country and also for the part i too play in it when im on the road . Then as her stop was approachin she got up and stood near the door and much before the stop the traffic halted , the lady jumped out quickly so into middle of the road from the bus and dodged her way past 'bad mannred' motorists who again resorted to honking on seeing someone blocking their path and as i looked out of the window , she running through the road cursing those 'shameless' motorists who were disturbing her walk through the road to the otherside. She may not have heard of Zebras other than ones in discovery channel or zoos we used to visit as kids , So i deleted the mental note i was about to make to talk to her about zebra crossings next time. No wonder the 'white man' was saying what a chaotic country !

so here i go ...

well the construction is still going on ...
always wanted to start my blog , made a few futile attempts , have deleted them and here i begin afresh once again.
Once the question on whether I should blog or not was answered , immediately the next one popped up what should i write or rather blog about ...
I was still unsure on what i should be writting about , having followed various blogs for more than 3years now , i was at loss on which style to follow.
Do i tell everyone what i do daily or report 'events' or happenings in my life etc..
Then i finally decided that I won't stick to any particular structure and just write whenever i feel like and write on whatever i want to ...
So here goes my new + a few old unpublished thoughts ...