Expelliarmus

I have so many things to write about. My trip to NYC, Bipasha-Ronaldo kiss or the comparison between a celebrity show like Koffee with Karan and one involving Congress patented Aam aadmi types Indian Idol. (My friends say its better to watch a show involving common people than watching the Kareenas bitching about others and the Hemas talking about good upbringing of Eshas but I beg to differ).But everything takes a backseat. And the reason is obvious. Deathly Hallows.
As I have it in another Deathly hallows post of mine, I am expecting Rowling to do something surprising which none of us would ever have guessed and from all the snapshots of the book leaking through the internet one shocked me. I can't find the link now.
Spoiler Warning (may or may not be):
That particular link had out of the many deaths, death of Fred and Hedwig. Now that seems Rowlingish. Is it not? We all are expecting it to be Harry or Hagrid, Ron or Hermione but if it is tears that Rowling wants from us, I think this is her best. Hedwig, the innocent owl is the only character who has never disagreed with Harry ever. We can say that after the death (was it?) of Sirius, the closest to Potter is Hedwig.
Next is Fred. Can we ever imagine George without Fred? It would have been one thing to let both die. But just the thought of George staying alive to suffer the agony makes me sad already.
Also we all somehow love the people of 'The Burrows'. But Ron and Ginny somehow have much more than just being the people of Burrows. One is the love and one is the best friend. Just imagine what Mrs Weasley will think when she has to scold only George instead of both.
Spoiler Warning Ends

By the way, let's play this game. Which character do you want to be in Harry Potter. Somehow i don't want to be Harry. Its Ron I like the most. Suits me. Imagine you really don't have to do anything on your own. There is constantly a Hermione who will do your homework, friends like Harry and Hermione who will tell you what to do and never really think anything innovative (except playing good chess). A nice mom cooking wonderful food. A brother who works with dragons. A Fleur as Bhabhi. All he does is being loyal to Harry which is very very important but guess I can do it :). And he gets a Hermione. If I were Ron, All I will do is say thank you to hermy all day so that she says that mesmerizing "Pleasure" in the all british accent.



Oops forgot to write why expelliarmus. I don't want the things that happen as per the spoiler i said. Hope i am hidden in a corner to say "expelliarmus" if anybody tries to attack these people. Join me if you can. Wiki says, its more powerful if multiple people do it.

Fashion Faux Pas

Well, generally those people who are generally fashionable, are always the ones targeted for fashion Faux Pas. And it's such a universal phenomenon and true also. You will comment on those people who are concerned with it. Like there is no point in telling Einstein that you look ugly or telling Ganguly-"Wow you are such a good football player".
But today I beg to differ. I will publish 3 of my photos which I think are Fashion Faux Pas, and simply put, To Whomsoever It may Concern. If John Abraham and Aishwarya Rai can, why can't I?
Why did I choose this topic? Well, it's just the name. I just realize I never use difficult words in my blogs. So then suddenly this word came to my mind. Its not difficult, but yes different.
Anyway, enough of preambles. Let's get to the point.

The first one, was in year 2003-2004 I guess, at Poonja International Restaurant in Mangalore. Well, nobody wears a TENT and goes to a "bar counter" (Phisssss, thought at least will figure out the correct word for this)The next one was a very funny incident. This was during my bro's marriage. For the first time, I thought I could do whatever I want. So though not my style, nor my league, I used style gel on my hair. And somehow I didn't realize that it was this bad. So I went around telling everybody,"Look at my hairs, I have put style gels". People either said wow, or gave genuine smiles and i thought they really liked it. Not unless I saw the photos did I realize what I had done.
And this one is the best. Well, I have got this 1 set of Suit, (Frankly I feel like a clown when I wear one, or rather am wearing a blanket ) so I thought why not get a picture with that. Dressed up I pose for the pic. The photographer, my roomie says nothing. But did u guys notice my feet?

Deathly Hallows (What I want)

Its just a few days away. I have already put a counter on my blog. I will pre-order my copy at the local bookstore which promises to have a pre-release party on 20th July. I had even started reading the fake book that came out a few weeks ago. It was so UnRowlingish..
But now I suddenly feel that am I expecting too much. Somehow I am not afraid of any of the deaths. Let Harry die and so be it Hermione or Hagrid, at this stage, I don't think I will be heartbroken. All I am concerned about is Dumbledore should not be wrong. He has to be the right one. And that means Snape is good. I have never liked Snape myself. It will be really great if JKR can prove that Snape is good but still fail to raise any sympathies in our hearts for him. Yeah that's what she is best at. She can totally play with our feelings. In HBP, the death of Dumbledore didn't upset me. It was the feelings that Harry went through that made me feel sad. Also the beautiful description of the last rites of his death. I always thought that this is one wasteful thing to do. Call so many people for a death. But the way she wrote about it and through the eyes of Harry, it was really fabulous. Its her style that I am looking out for in DH and not the plot.
And why is that? Well, I have been reading a lot of magic books. Bartimaeus trilogy, Inheritance Trilogy (eragon fame) . Well, and guess what, they are all good. The plots are excellent, the dialogues are excellent and witty and you do get your quota of learning good things as well. The win of good over evil, the soft corner that even bad people have etc. etc. And all the unexpected things that happen at the unexpected times.
Therefore I think the plot won't amaze me even a bibt. Whether harry dies or not, hermione breaks up with ron and dates malfoy, Hagrid turns out to be a death eater.
What I look forward to is how far will Aunt Petunia go to save Harry and most importantly the last chapter. JKR has said that the last chapter will contain details of what happens to each surviving character. this becomes very important as this can really make the book and the entire series just another series or a Masterpiece. I feel its very difficult to write anything like that. Most people don't venture into this at all. And even if they do, it is always very very tame. Either happily ever after or mostly, the routine life continues.
But I am very confident of JKR, she is not going to do something that routine in the last chapter of the series. What she does is what I am looking forward the most...

Tulsi's death in KSBKBT

Well, June 6 2007 marks the death of Tulsi Virani, the lead character of the most popular soap in Indian history.
How does it matter to me? Well, I have never followed the serial in the 7 years of its running. Then why am I blogging about it? Well for a simple reason because this serial dates back to a time when I was poised for the most crucial jump of my career. Somehow as ibnlive flashed the news, all the old memories came back. It was summer of 2000. Most of my exams were over. Don't remember exactly as my last exam was June 15, so whether it started before or after that.
Whatever, it was summer in Nagpur and i need not mention that the temperatures were close to 48 degree celcius in the afternoons. Needless to say going out was out of question. It was the time after the exams and the end of 2 years hardwork, so there was no questions of studies also. The mornings were spent at friends' places and the evenings and nights roaming around. But afternoon was a strict no-no.
Dad came home for lunch at 1:30 and went back around 2:15pm. Then it was some time chatting with mom before she headed off for the afternoon siesta. The time 3 o'clock. Soon things will start form 3:30 which kept me hooked till 6 pm when I went out to play. 3:30 was time for MTV Loveline by malaika arora. Well, all there was to see were her dresses which never went below her thighs. The love suggestions she gave were absolutely crappy. The only thing that made me see that serial was herself and the songs they played. They were really cool.
4:oo to 5:00 was MTV select wit Nikhil Chinappa. It was where people called up and he played their requests. It was funny the way he talked and also nice songs.
5:00 to 6:00 was my favourite serial. MTV Most wanted. I had a constant fight with many as to who was a better VJ. This show was earlier done by Rahul Khanna and was replaced by Shenaz Treasurywala when I started watching. The oldies claimed that nobody can beat Rahul Khanna but I really liked Shenaz's way. Just a footnote to prove how much I liked this show is that when I left home for college, and mom was in the house all alone, she started watching it coz it reminded of me :)

Anyway ofcourse after 6, I was not at home. As u might have noticed, the time 3:00 to 3:30 remains unaccounted for. I used to get terribly bored. Even the sports channels showed golf at that time. (Am I justifying myself?). So it was this time that KSBKBT started and of course the first episodes of all soaps are always good. The result: It provided me teh timepass for the empty 30 minute slot. Mushkil dino ka saathi. Thats what it was.
So when I heard about the news of her death, I felt sad. And got reminded of those days. The days of tension, the days of depression, the days of rejection, and finally the days of celebrations. In that sort duration of 3 months form June to August, I went through a lot of emotions and learned a lot about life. And this serial helped in shedding the tension off for sometime.
Should I or should I not say "THANK YOU TULSI"

Jee ka Janjaal

Anshu recently uploaded this picture in her album.
Of course, most of u have guessed right. I am at bottom left. With the face made like that,
many feel I haven't changed over the years. Even i don't feel so. The only ting that changes in me is sometimes my cheeks are semi-chubby and sometimes they are fallen. I guess my worst look was 2004-2005, and thankfully not many pictures were clicked that year. Hehhehe, this is fun, narcissism as nobody ever reads this stuff.

Anyway more about the picture in question. Its taken in 1985, annual function of Shishu Niketan, my KG school. I was in KG 1, around 3 years old. It still surprises me that I remember so many things about it. The song was "Jee ka Janjaal mora bajra layo re". I can actually go on singing quite a bit but i don't remember a word or 2 in every line.
Envy was something i had developed form that time only. I still remember, the dance was like each pair of boy and girl are standing in a 'C' shape in the stage and one pair was in the center. That was the girl in red and white and Kunal (top right). I think i envied them.
Also I was very proud of the headgear. It was a flower made of stick and paper. Of course, I did have an eye on the girls headset also, a bunch of bangles, done like a buddha type knot. Wonder how our teachers got such wierd ideas.
I used to dance well till I was 5-6. Dad n mom tell me, I was so impressed in the Tanjavur or Madurai temple complex that I had actually started dancing much to the embarrassment of my bro, who was 8 then and I was 3.
It also makes me sad now as to what I have made of me. I had been a good dancer, I sang for a winning group song team (Nanha Munna Rahi hoon), I have done numerous plays, won many prizes in poem recitations. I even did well in athletics till 3rd 4th standard. There has been a steady decrease in my interests in pursuing them, much like an RC circuit discharging graph, or is it just y=1-x. God, what remains in my life is justa bunch of mathematics :(




Ooops, i thought i would end the blog on a sad note, but then I really don't like to end things badly. So here we go, I promise i will do some creative stuff in future. (Not writing more blogs and reading more books) because this is what is left in the hobbies field for me .

UP Elections

Haah. Finally I may be one of the first ones to voice my opinion about the UP elections. Well not exactly the first, because I guess the best one is Sagarika Ghosh's. I hope my other favourite, Bachi Karkaria also comes up with something equally witty.
But here is what I think. I observed this in National elctions 2004 as well and now here. Isn't exit polls really messing up with the mindset of people? Showing early leads in the first rounds of eletions surely affects the minds of the voters. Who will want to vote for a loser. So the end may be either they vote whoever is gaining, or they just don't vote, both way hampering the performance of the losing party.
Well does not mean that I am an SP or BJP supporter. Absolutely not, on the other hand, a party who's second in command get himself busy over a wedding, don't deserve to win. Worse was the way elections were won, religion and castes. I mean even elections in Northeast, orissa and West bengal (well ofcourse the 3 geographies have their own meaning, North east or their virtual disconnectivity form the rest of India(sadly though), Orissa for their backward west region and west bengal for teh reason that they dont need to fight there, it is a one party state) are fought fo developement. In Karnataka, AP, they fought it for agriculture and all. In gujrat, they fought for developement, didnt even try to appease the minority. Even Bihar fought for developement. But the UP one, really disgusting.
Anyway, better spend more time on teh Sagarika blog than this :)

This and that

Something terrible is happening. It has been 4 times since I attempted writing a blog but all 4 times I stopped halfway. I thought of writing about some incidents during my brother’s marriage, thought it was personal. I thought of writing about the Abhi-Ash wedding, but then everybody was writing about it. I thought of writing about koffee with karan, but the rakhi sawant episode really put me off. Finally I thought about just writing some random things coming to my mind, but really nothing came to my mind.

Seriously this time also, I really have nothing to write, and am not a person who keeps on writing just for the sake of it, but still I felt better write some crap than be totally out of touch.

Anyway let’s see what things have kept me engaged at least a tiny part of it, which are not academic or professional. Past few months my mind is full of academic and professional worries which I of course don’t want to discuss here.

The world cup was a disaster and me no connoisseur of quality cricket, India being out was the end of the cup. I liked all that happened thereafter. The god-like perfect Sachin finally made a mistake. ( I won’t call it a wrong doing, because talking against Chappell can’t be wrong) But this was not expected out of the man who has mastered the art of PR more than the art of cricket over the years. This just showed that even gods commit mistakes.

Other thing was of course THE WEDDING, but then channels overdid and the people found pleasure in saying “I don’t care about the wedding”, but secretly seeing all the yellow dress pictures of the wedding.

Also started following the European football a bit, thanks to my roommates. Its fun watching the game, mostly because of the time it takes (just 90 minutes) and the fact that Man U is in good form, though sadly lost in Champions league. Don’t know why I support this team but it feels so authentic English.

But the thing that really shook me was Nandigram. I am speechless. I still don’t understand who is right and who is wrong. Rather now I don’t care. But the quality of people I saw in a video gave me such a grim picture. All the dead were covered in cloths saying which party killed them, and the other party made an issue out of it. I had always thought death is something beyond all worldly things, but this just shattered me. This even the uneducated nomadic tribes won’t do. Unless they have been brainwashed over generations. And that can’t be a single party.

Anyway on this slightly sad note, I stop writing.

Bachi Karkaria

This is a tribute to the woman whose writing style I like the most. The best is her line of thinking on which her articles are based.

Well before writing about her, I was so confused about so many things. Firstly it was contradictions to the sole idea of my blog. It was supposed to be a musing. But here it’s hardly one. It’s just keeping on blabbering about a person about who already so much is written. And second was the fact that I have to be so much correct in my grammar and word usage because I am writing about someone who is excellent in this department. I even checked whether we can call it a “tribute” if the person is still living.

The person I am talking about is of course “Bachi Karkaria”.

Long time in my 9^th -10^th standards, I thought that she is the Bunny Jug Suraiya always mentions about as his wife, because bunny is also a humorous character. And I think I am not alone in thinking this. I have found 2-3 more people who also thought the same.

It so turns out that its quite the different. She is a totally different person on her own and more importantly she is not just a writer, which I think is still the best thing about her. What I like about her writing is the simplicity of the topics and which are so relevant and almost 80% of the times exactly what I want to think about. Like her latest article in Erratica about what she thinks is actually happening but which people may think is a part of the April fool day.

Just googling about her, I came across another wonderful article of her in BBC about the neo-Hinduism. For a moment I thought is she turning anti-Hindu etc only to revert back my views. It was again as always exactly what I thought of it. The Neo-Hinduism is same as it was 30 years back, accepting Hinduism from the west.

She is I guess the mother of what we now call – Blogging. Her articles are so so natural that it always falls in the musing category, which half the bloggers always claim to do and mostly giving away their strong views about a person or event. But throughout her articles which I have always made a point to read since standard 10^th, never did she take any sides.

Anyway here are a few links.

1) Her Page “Erratica” on ToI website.

2) Her biography on ASHA page.

A few notable things from her bio which appealed to me.

· Graduating with Honours in English Literature from Loreto College, Calcutta, Bachi then received a diploma in journalism from Calcutta University, ranking first and being awarded a gold medal.

· Prior to her present assignment at The Times of India, Bachi was Resident Editor of the paper’s largest and prestigious New Delhi edition.

· In 2003, she was invited to join the high-profile Board of the India AIDS Initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

· Earlier, as Senior Editor of The Times of India, Bachi edited the Sunday Times of India, turned around the Bangalore edition, making it rise from No.4 to No. 1 within the year, and, before that, conceptualised and edited the path-breaking Bombay Times.

Hoo Haaa

And now, I can see many gtalk status messages of similar nature as the title above, I realized the fact that I have nicely kept out of this whole world cup syndrome. I wanted to act different from the regular bloggers about how india is featuring, the usual sad for pak etc etc. And I did it.
I know its not a big achievement or something but I like to derive small pleasures form least expected quaters. The one below is just one more like that.
If any of u disheartened, see this wonderful cartoon (courtesy:London times) and copyrighted by them. (Hell, how do u get thru these legalities?).

Of restrooms

Warning: The post below may not be upto your taste. So please refrain from readinig further if you are uncomfortable with these kind of discussions.

Somebody recently said I observe things too apart from just observing human behavior, and hence the post. I know it’s a very disgusting topic but then off late I have been reading many famous bloggies and if people like amit verma and greatbong can write, why can’t I?

Let’s start this with a nice kiddo joke. Somehow I always felt why are kids so obsessed with restroom kind of jokes, but its good to see the genuine laughter they have after the joke. So here it goes, it’s a marathi joke. “Pata hai Japanese eat ‘Soo Shee’”. Hahhahhahah. I don’t know, people may raise eyebrows saying “was that a joke?”, but I too laughed a lot when I first heard this.

Earlier I thought I will do a detailed analysis of restrooms in India and US , pros and cons and analyze about how in India you really don’t have to bother about a restroom in the middle of a jungle but here in US you have to, but then, I am not doing a PhD on restrooms. So here are a few restrooms worth mentioning.

Firstly the ones in the NITK hostels. It was stinking would be an understatement. You can imagine what happens to the stink if people are fed gobhi 10 times in 14 meals a week. But as we had no other option, chalo woh bhi chalta hai. I did have a picture with me with a toilet broom in one hand mixed with the picture of a dirty pot. That was a good picture to make people run away from my room. But sadly that picture is lost.

Continuing further, I would mention the Sultan Battery toilet in Mangalore. When I had gone, it was full to the brim. I ran out immediately. Wonder how did the cleaner go about it later. And more so, how could it be so full until multiple people went to the same dirty one. Eeeiks.

Next is not a toilet in particular but an action which me n my friends did. We had a handicam and were making a movie (good old college days kind of) and we went to a posh rooftop restaurant called Kadal in Mangalore. There we shot the toilet which was empty(thankfully, and yes, dont get any wierd ideas about what we shot, it was plain tiles and gadgets and no human) and then we were showing it to other friends in the dining table. All shrieked. I don’t know I get a great pleasure in talking this kind of dirty in dining table and like the way people literally shriek and run away.

Mangalore won’t be complete without mentioning this special restroom in Surathkal College ka shiva temple restroom. It’s behind the temple which is on a rock, there is this cemented Indian style pot which is entirely open on all sides. Nobody uses it and don’t think anybody used it ever. Makes me wonder, was it made for Gods? Kudos to the person who made it and especially the location he chose for that.

Now moving to Bangalore, the weirdest restroom is in the heart of the city, MG-Residency road crossing. Near the bus stand, opposite Bangalore Central. Well this was courtesy Sudha Murthy and her foundation desperate in making Bangalore a cleaner place. Thanks Mrs Murthy for such a thrilling experience. As can be expected, its half Americanized and half Indian. Anybody would think it’s the best of both worlds. But no, it’s the worst of both. Generally in India, people would prefer peeing with wall on 3 sides. But this one is ulta. It faces the road and the heavy traffic of Residency road and has wall end at shoulder height, so people on the road can actually see who is inside. To add to the nightmare, instead of having it dry, they have a constant flow of water. It feels like u r on a river. Readers are left to imagine what you would feel like there.

Lastly I would like to mention about the portable restrooms of US. Should I say I had the privilege of bumping into one during my South padre trip last weekend. Anyway, that is a unique way of having absolutely no smell in a waterless restroom. They have some chemicals below which constantly degrades anything that falls in there and there is strong disinfectant smell. So you really don’t feel smelly there ever.

Well that ends my analysis sufficient for ME final project. If you do want an MS thesis or a PhD, do let me know. :)