Idle Thoughts

Well,I kept away from posting for two days.
And there are more people starting their blogs.
And you think getting cars fixed was bad,wait till you get operated.

CP fading..still the not doing anything for most of the day does get to you.So,I am dismantling and taking apart things and then putting them back again.
Got a rear set of shock absorbers fitted in the Silver Princess..and took her for testing this morning.Touched 130 kph smoothly,the ride has improved considerably,feels more stable.Had to swing around at Kanjur Marg.
Somehow,got shanghaied into writing the first chapter of a joint novel.:-)

Watermelons...I am having them again at last.


Oh,and I have a new keyboard.More of that later.And a Bluetooth dongle.

Things to get-
New speakers for the PC
and a new battery for the Dell.

Uske Siva......koi aur nahin....

Pip Pip!

Blue Monday

Never knew CP could make someone 'bedridden' .Yet,this is just what Pinakin imagined my state to be.
Oh-well-what-the-hell.
Still,there are so many close friends with so many serious medical issues it's not funny.I just raise my hat (when I wear one) to their remarkable powers of endurance.Blue skies all of y'all.

Zee is making a big fuss over Kill Bill's upcoming telecast.Long promos,round the clock...and the movie will actually come on air on June 5.Here's my advice to those who want to see it-Get the DVD!!!!

Megs called;had our usual where are we and are we getting there chats.Surprisingly,we are getting there.

4 weeks since I got back from the tour of the British Isles.Tony's back in power and Lalu is facing elections again.Some things never change.

You have a meandering ,ordinary day and someone pops us to say how much you mean to them,just like that,without any provocation.You feel touched,and then helpless-that you cannot be with that someone,merely be someone offering phone support.And you yearn to be there with them to help them better;but then you rethink-if you can be with them,shouldn't you also hope to be with them when they are on a high so you can be cheerful with them?
But,its always better to share someone's sorrows rather than joys.Sharing joy is easy;sharing sadness,now that calls for courage.

Song in the background-So far away-Dire Straits

Sunday Night Electric Dreaming

Sunday Night..day at a close.
Another in bed,CP filled day,but the CP seems to be on the run now.
Had plenty of interesting conversations though,some too short and some wonderfully lazily long.
Only good thing done today-managed to get flowers sent on Shebhs' behalf.Wish I could have done the booking myself but due to my present restricted movement,got Sandy to do it.And the rabbit-out-of-a-hat magician that she is,she came up with a topping selection of flowers.Not only was the recipient guy impressed but so were his folks.And her message too was spectacular. :)

Managed one of my rhetorical aphorisms today- 'There is no great love without adventure.'
Cheesy or corny or cheesily corny?

If you did something with enough regularity so that it was as second nature as breathing for a long time;and then it stopped overnight,what would you do?
Would you classify it as a dream if the only memory of it was in your head,and cell phone records?And,more importantly,would you hope for a resumption?I do.

Still,there are things going right in the world otherwise.Arsenal won the FA cup and Manoj of the Fellowship (of the Ring;not high-falutin academia) promptly started celebrating here
http://blogontheweb.com/rantsforlife

Nice blog-after all he writes about me!


Also managed to watch Goodbye,Lenin!
Oh the way a movie with a platinum story can turn me on!

Lets talk about Text

I …….. YOU
……… IS BEAUTIFUL
STAIRWAY TO ……….

LOVE,LIFE,HEAVEN.Are these the words you fit into the blanks?Did you do so because they were there in some subconscious part of your mind or because they were the best fit?Can you read a paragraph,a page,a book,a treatise with half the words missing and fill them in?Chances are you can.How?
It is due to the built in redundancy in the English language.Redundancy in the structure wherein you know that there are certain rules,certain words,certain alphabets which have to be where they have to be.Claude Shannon,mathematician extraordinaire and originator of A Mathematical Theory of Communication ,whose work has led to the explosion in the fields of networking and communications had a go with his seminal theory on linguistics as well.And the outcome was,I must digress into terms like information entropy here,that the more structured a message ;be it technical,financial,literary;the more it could be reduced,edited,compressed even or even partially lost.And yet it would retain its core message.This is the reason why voice calls,e-mails and text messages reach recipients intact even though there will be some packet level losses.
And this is also why you can pick up a torn newspaper article anywhere and you will be able to make sense of it with just half of what’s present.Or you can borrow a book from a library,come across a page,or two pages even that are missing,continue reading and still get the story.
The bigger question is why din’t our examiners and moderators understand our half written answers then ?;-) That’s for another day..and besides they have to be smart remember.Understanding presupposes and prerequires intelligence.

Ici Chacal.....

Saw the Day of the Jackal last night.Have read the book dozens of times.Had never seen the film before.Was pleasantly surprised.Forsyth’s plot is followed with a taut deftness.There is some divergence true,but its on the whole a very satisfying watch than the recent Bruce Willis disaster called The Jackal.
The Day of the Jackal was made years ago and it is a pleasure just to watch Paris as it looked then,the British Museum library,the Arc de Troimphe et al.The greatest auteurs are also the greatest travel guides ;for they make you travel.

Also,something I must find out from Indiana Jones/Star Trek junkies.
Just noticed that the Shanghai club shown at the start of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is called Club Obi Wan.
Now what came first?Indiana Jones or Star Trek?Is this some game between Messrs Lucas and Spielberg?

The Mind's Eye

Coming back to tools,what about the greatest tool of them all;th eone which you carry around with you always;which does not dull but sharpens with each use you put it to;your mind.
Is your mind like a Swiss Army Knife?Capable of dismantling anything it comes across;and then more importantly assembling it back again?Can it react faster than lightning and yet listen with infinite patience?Does it have the million-terabyte memory of remembering each and every god gesture which your closest and dearest have done to you and yet funnily enough not remember the multitudes of hurt which those same people have caused you?Does it have the in-built Wi-Fi networking to pick up a friend’s signal of need when it is being transmitted without even the transmitter knowing?Can it gather,assimilate,understand and do justice and be seen to do so?
I wish everyone such a mind….the greatest tool of them all….

CP Cycles

Day 4 of the CP…..can’t get any better yet..so it gets progressively worse.I did like the enforced rest initially,but now I wonder.Thinking of getting back into running from tomorrow.
Long,lonely,pre-dawn runs;like they used to be once.

Tools for the Digital Age

So,what are you carrying?

Not in a Mini Uzi and Walther PPK way,but in a digital way?I checked my bag today-Turns out I carry an IPod,a Nokia cell phone,a canon digital camera and a laptop now and then.Will add up the storage capacities of them later....

Desi Dork Media Chronicles-1

Can't help but think about the infant from West Bengal,the one with a juvenile condition which has caused him to look and weigh much older.He was taken to Writer's building yesterday and 'shown' to the Transport Minister.They showed hordes of people rushing around and towards the poor child,hooting and calling out to him,like one would do to an exotic rare animal.Then the Minister babu came in and treated him like he would a mongrel stray;stood a suitable distance away from him and proferred a tray of confectionaries to him.Significantly,he was not too far to be out of the frame of the photographers.Everyone looked mighty pleased with themselves and I was half expecting the V for victory signs which the Calcuttans were flashing at the cameras as Mother Teresa's hearse was being drawn down.This is where a vigilante media can come in so useful.Where is the felicity of the thought process which should have prompted those 'covering' the obscene event to say,'Right,Hold it there Minister Babu,what are you doing to improve the health of this boy?'Reporters have literally become reporters now and the journalists...our Desi Dork Media is really tops.Still,I suppose there were a lot of serious hand wringing,chin-rubbing discussions on TV panels yeterday concerning the next coach for the Indian cricket team and India at Cannes.

Twenty Five and Three-Fourths

May 20...I am 25 years and 9 months today.Don't feel so good about it.But,had a couple made out on my birthday last year without protection,they would be parents today.And what if they named him Kapil?Morbid....considering I was the only Kapil during my entire time in school.3 months to turning 26.I'll lose my Eurail discount on doing so.As if that mattered anyways.What does matter is I have 3 months to accomplish the goals I had set out to accomplish by the time I turned 26.Being an accomplished Katana-Samurai swordfighter was one of them;due to watching Kill Bill on my birthday I think.A month ago,me ,mom and Sonal were at Sribabu's and Vani's for dinner.N had called up then,had a wonderful chat with her.And then discussed some of life's more pertinent issues with Sribabu such as the ideal configuration for an ideal gaming rig with an AMD processor and why it makes sense to get a PPL while you are still single.Dollies never understand.Also,Sribabu has kept the pics of the K Su and MKI su which I had given him back in 2002 on his desk in front of his monitor.So,as I was saying..3 months to turning 26....full blown quarter-life crisis underway.

What ho..here we go...

So here I am,finally logged in and having a blog up and running.The challenge as ever remains;that of commitment,sincerity and regularity.Not to mention promptness.There,now I sound like a Service Quality Manager in a 6 Sigma/ISO types organisation.And like a pompous fathead too.

Poonah-So 'Neah' and yet so 'faah'

Remembering the drive to Pune,the sudden scramble,the rush of acceleration to the head,revs touching 5000,borne on the wings of angels.Probably only Adolf Galland had a better feeling when he flew the Messerschmitt 262.Being pushed by angels is what he described it as.Well a downrated 1.2 Fiat Palio is not a Me262 but she can certainly transcend her identity for a few hours.And she did too.Brakes off to Pune station in 2 hours.Meet the one you have to meet and then catch up with Shebhs at Barista.Then leave back for Mumbai again with feelings more mixed than a Chinese Bhel.I should have and could have been earlier.There is a void and try as you may it will just not be filled.You just let someone go,someone who could have been The One or rather WAS The One and do not work up the courage to tell her so.There is a lingering feeling of what could have been,you are at your most emotional and vulnerable.So what do you do…you merely hope that there is something,just that little something,beyond that glittering mountain,which is far beyond the treacherous,deep and wide glimmering sea….some Kontaktpunkt where your two parallel universes can meet up again and revolve around each other again.Meanwhile your mind forages off the memories it has of Her;of places,people,events,night skies,fine food ,brilliant turn-on conversations which enhance your existence and make you revel in every millisecond of your day.Will it ever be the same again?Worse?And dare you hope so,Better?And then you do a dispassionate balanced scorecard review and you find the odds are not that bad,they are merely stacked against you.But haven’t they always been so?Nothing in your life is going the way you would like it to,as you had envisioned it to.You are caught up in the vapid,humdrum and the mundane.You could have chosen to make money or to make a difference;you chose the latter and now that you don’t seem to be making either,you are not supposed to give up.Not like this.Not this way.

O joy of suffering!
To struggle against great odds!to meet enemies undaunted!
To be entirely alone with them!to find how much one can stand!
To look strife,torture,prison,popular odium,death,face to face!
To mount the scaffold!to advance the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance!
To be indeed a God!

And yet…..just that wee little yet…you wonder…
But,if you cannot change a situation,you learn to enjoy it.

And Antonio from the Merchant of Venice makes it so bearable when he says

I hold the world but as the world Gratiano,
A stage, where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.

Kylie at Earl's Court 

Kylie Minogue-Evolution

My CP is not a patch on what the Diva from Oz is undergoing.She has been diagnosed with Breast Cancer,poor Kylie.I go back a long way with her as I am probably the only one in my circle of friends who has heard her earlier works when they were released and not reissued.She is a brave one,for coming out and one feels confident of her emerging triumphant from this ordeal.It was just a month back that I encountered her likeness at Madame Tussauds; and passed by an imminent venue for her Showgirl UK tour at Earl’s Court;felt terrible about missing it.Took a pic of the venue too.
But this is it;her greatest performance commences now.She can uplift the spirits of the thousands of women who get similarly afflicted with her condition.Traipse along Kylie,as you did in the opening sequence of Moulin Rouge and we will follow…..

Chicken Pox or how your past catches up with you.Always.

Well,its confirmed now-I do have the chicken pox.Mild so far.Should reach its zenith in 3-4 days and then begin to subside.Sounds just like an eclipse.No wonder mothers consider it as some divine manifestation.Att imes like this I wonder;is it any surprise that there is so much devastation and ruin on in this world when the Gods are busy giving guys like me chicken pox divine.
What I am even more silently furious about is that there was an immunization shot available to prevent it.But I was not informed about it,and had I remembered I had never got CP so far and not told dear Meghna otherwise;she would have told me about the shot and made sure I took it.Moral of the story-Tell Megs everything J
Though in a mood alleviating aside,Priyanka told me that basically I still am a kid and so I get kiddy ailments. !!!!!!!
So its back to finger crossing and some intense blogging!

We need shops like these here in India.And everywhere too.