Quotable quotes

A long time ago, I had written a note to myself -

'Move on. move on, wherever you are.'

Of course, I am not an original when it comes to quotes. I had made a mashup from Lestat's dialogue from The Queen of the Damned.


Lifestyle Journalist: Do you have anything you want to say to the other vampires listening out there?
Lestat: As a matter of fact, I do. Come out, come out, wherever you are.

Looks like I gota relearn the art of moving on from the groove that I have carved for myself.

And yeah, saw yet another accident at OMR today.

The solution for India's population problem

Building more roads like Old Mahabalipuram Road is the solution to India's population problem.

Saw yet another accident on the way back from office. This time a car which mistimed its brakes and rammed itself up a truck's ass.

A different experience

I had gone with James and JK to check out 'We own the night', at Sathyam Cinemas, Chennai.

They had a pleasant surprise in store for me. They played the National Anthem prior to the movie.

Almost got choked up with nostalgic memories from Mumbai. I remember every theater I've been to, in that city, always kick starts things with the anthem. Everyone would stand up and be sombre as the National Anthem played on. It would be a moment of comradeship for the people who had gathered there from different nooks of the country. It gave me hope, gave me the feeling that I wasn't a stranger in this land.

I hope that Sathyam doesn't discontinue this practice. The anthem has the power to sweep away differences, regional or religious, and unite all under the common banner of our country.

Lady in the Water

This is one movie that the critics have butchered. What you see below are the comments from some top critics at RottenTomatoes.

Victoria Alexander:
Its official now. The Sixth Sense was a fluke. Shyamalan pompously gives himself the role of 'The Intellectual Future Christ.'

Angela Baldassarre:
The saddest thing about "Lady in the Water" is that it's more than just a bad movie. It's a career-destroying act of vanity by its director

Boo Allen:
Embarrassing. Stupid. Incomprehensible. A mess. Absurd. Fake.

Ethan Alter:
It's finally happened--M. Night Shyamalan has lost his damn fool mind.

I haven't liked Shyamalan's movies very much. I watched Sixth Sense with anticipation and was disappointed. Unbreakable was bearable. The Village was not even bearable.

With such a track record between us, I didn't have the inclination to check out the lady at all. Today, I was so jobless that I did dare to give it a try.

It is a decent fantasy movie. It has its faults. But it is an eminently watchable movie, which does not deserve the trouncing it has received from the critics. Poor guy. Good movie. I have lost my faith in the critics. Buggers.

Clock's running

In olden days, we(guys of my generation) used to go for movies without looking them up on the IMDB or searching for their reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. These days, we hardly do venture out for a movie before finding out what its all about. JK thinks it's a sign that we have moved past our youth. It took a minute to digest. But it kinda does make sense.

There is no longer that whiff of adventure, as one ventures out to new pastures. It's more like panting and grunting to get to the next place or happening, before our breath runs out. Though I don't realize it too often, there is this deeply set notion that every hour counts, since that implies that I have one less hour to live. Ought to make some use of it.

Yet, it seems to be perfectly alright to laze away time. It doesn't feel good to have a ticker counting backwards within your chest, as you take each breath of fresh air or nicotine.

Walking on heaven's edge

I know that I shouldn't be doing this. This would only accelerate my degradation. Still I am at it. Why do I have this gift of finding drinking partners out of vaccuum?

Wonder how long I have left. How long till the next liver related hospital stint. Unbelievable.

The somersault to apathy

20th February 2008, around 2200 hours -

We were on our way back from office in the designated cab for the day, cruising along the recently buffed up Old Mahabalipuram Road when a two wheeler crossed the road, cutting across our vehicle.

He managed to cross the cab alright, but another biker on an Enfield Bullet, who was on the left lane, hit him head on. I watched them somersault like ballet dancers in slow motion from the insulated environment of the cab. One of them didn't have his helmet strapped on. It flew across the road and landed in front of our cab. The cab dragged the helmet along with it for a while.

I was frozen in time. I could hear my colleagues urge the driver to move on, as it was already late. Also there was the risk that the bystanders would come to the wrong conclusion that the cab was the culprit.

As the cab moved on, the picture I had in mind, was that of me in either of the stricken bikers' positions. Not a single soul to care for whether they were dead or alive. The main aim was to escape from the site of the accident so that we could reach home fast. Shit. And I didn't do a thing.

The regional language & the honcho

Working in a place where people from different corners of the world converge, becomes a pain when certain individuals just don't get the fact that their mother tongue can be offensive when applied at the wrong moments.

There was this Algerian honcho who had flown down for a visit today, and everyone was cracking jokes and passing comments in the dominant regional language, righty there in front of him. Well meaning comments, of course. It's an office after all.

If I were in a land where the people spoke a language I didn't understand, and they started talking in their language, I would think that they are speaking about something which I am not supposed to understand. And they are doing it in front of me, kinda to make me feel right at 'home'. The honcho, however, appeared to take it in its stride and he made everyone feel well and comfy! I guess that's why he is the honcho, and the others are the...others!

Finally

Recently I have been behaving as if I am 6 feet under. I guess the reason was that I didn't really know what to do with life. I just wanted to survive. Of late, it has become rather a bore, so I have set sights on reuniting with my friend of twenty years - Greenhorn aka Kickassso, at some academic campus, and hopefully this should drive us on towards something. At least a couple of years of awesomeness reborn!

Becoming civilized!

The days were looking rather bleak as 2008 rumbled on. I was tired of all the bad luck that I seem to be magnetically stuck with. Hence came the decision to check out something different every week. Couple of weeks back, it started with a play 'The Art' by Evam, which aroused my curiosity, if I may say, like Rochester, from 'The Libertine'. Felt that real people can be more profound that mere images.

Yesterday, I and Divya had a chance to check out 'The EarthSync Festival', in which Incognito was one of the main vocalists. It was a melange of unbelievably diverse musical styles. It was beautiful! Classical Indian from Incognito, Sufi music from three great old men, two Buddhist monks chanting mystic lines, a jugalbandhi with the flautist pitted against the violinist, Makudam players who operated in a trance. Not to mention two beautiful dancers whose motion was poetry. And awesome tunes too. The Laya project seems to be getting better and better!

Unaware of life

I have found a defect which seems to be inherent in my mental make up. I live through life on auto pilot! I never give any conscious thought to most activities that I perform.

The downside is that I never remember if I did something...or not! There is no surety in my memories.

Two days back when I had reached office, I suddenly had this thought that I hadn't turned the power off for the iron box. I borrowed my friend's car and hurried back home to find that nothing was amiss.

His take is that one should be aware of what one is doing so that one at least knows what he is doing when trying to recollect something at a later point in time. Well. I agree. I should try to live consciously.

A lifetime of underachievements

I have always been termed as an underachiever. Or rather, have always been one. I never found any reason to achieve any more than the bare minimum which I perceived as needed for my acceptable survival. Why do I get the feeling that something is lacking.. Where do people find drives..

Unrest

There is this guy at the office,a manager who has absolutely no clue what he is doing, let alone what others are doing. His job is to keep cracking worn out jokes and laugh at them himself. His job also includes telling anyone who is willing to make a show of listening to him - old war stories from his previous projects. All of these stories are strung out of keywords which are in relevance in the industry which I currently am pitted in. Maybe this is why Dilbert's boss is who he is.

The Ox Cart

These days, there has been a recurring motif in all my dreams. A rickety cart drawn by a black and white mottled cow, making its way through black, muddy ruts, threatening to tip over every second. I would be observing the cart's unbalanced journey from a point very close to the ground. I would see the bobbing silhouette coming from the distance, shiver as it moved towards me, and finally be left puzzled on seeing the two sets of udders that the cow had, when it had passed me.

There is a certain modus operandi which can be observed when I search for pictures to illustrate my prose. I search for the picture I have in my mind (it could be say, yeti or crazy), in the Images section of Google. The first three pages of results would often suffice to satisfy my spartan needs. Today I searched for ox cart, and I happened to chance upon an ancient Van Gogh painting of the same name. It was almost a perfect match of my dream cow. The same dark settings, the same cart, the same colour of leather on the cow. I guess I might have seen the photograph of this picture sometime earlier in my life, and somehow it has been brought back to life, in my dreams, due to some wild reason. Unbelievable.

Lost

I have lost the ability to craft meaning from words. There no longer exists any magic while connecting words together to make sensible statements. Language has deserted me. And why shouldn't it? Rusting unburnish'd had seemed to be a sin to Ullyses. Here I am unburnish'd and rusted, tipping the scales closer to the 'Rot' mark. Things have changed a lot in so short a span. I once remember the Fox telling me about a movie (or was that a story?) where a man lives his life in reverse chronology. He would unlearn all that he had learnt, and become a day younger every day he woke up to see the sun shining on his face. I am growing old. And at a pace which I didn't foresee. And as the days roll on, my body is becoming weaker, and my mind is becoming duller. Four years ago, I was a better man. I feel ravaged by the elements today. Hardly can I contend 'me' from the past in any field of contest. Those closest to me still linger on, like the dried up petals of the rose, or rather the faithful bumble bees who wait to see if the curling flower somehow revives and relives its halcyon days, although the rot has visibly set in. Surrounded by faces which find it difficult to reconcile with the changes happening to their familiar one, I feel kindred to Kafka's Samsa when his transformation was complete. I no longer live all the time. I relive it most of the time. Every second, some action or vague symbol would spark in the recesses of my memories nostalgic thoughts. I live in the present past. Its heart rending always, to know that everything you do, has already been done, by you. There is no force better, to amplify the sense of rot that is seated deep in the core of your being.

I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherthrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make and end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!


From Tennyson's Ullyses..