A trip to Halibut point and Wingaersheek beach

Finally it is warm in Massachusetts. It was a Saturday and I and a few friends decided to make most of it. We decided to go to the above mentioned places.

The journey was different this time. I generally avoid driving such long distances (~55 miles). But this time I wanted to. We were 5 in my Blue Accord Sedan and 3 in my friend’s coupe of the same make. I thank my co-passengers for having faith in me. There were just 2 odd moments once where I got really scared as a music started with a big blasting sound and I imagined it as a honk. The other one was I got carried away in conversation and had to merge to the interstate very close. My lane changes were discrete and not analog, but apart from that it was fine. And most importantly I liked it. For the first time I really liked speed.

Let’s move on. So we reached this place called Halibut Point State park. Primarily it was a quarry way back in the past and now there is a small pond. On one side of the pond wall there is the sea and a World War 2 watch tower on the other side. The other car was late (thanks to my awesome driving) and we started playing Frisbee and soccer in a picnic area. Soon the others joined us. We played a unique combo of playing soccer and Frisbee together which slowly changed to a game called donkey. After around an hour we realized that there is too much non-zero mean noise in the rule and we set out for the trail.

The trail around the quarry was small and non extensive but when we reached the other side, we just went towards the sea. It was a rocky beach with the water just hitting the rocks. The water was ice cold but it was still fun to wet our feet. I monitored a 0.5 cm fish stuck in a crevice for a long time until another string wave took it away. Wonder how it would survive in the ocean.

There were curious stone structures on the way back which reminded me of a game I used to play: Pittuk. But some people thought it looks like Stonehenge. We set out to make one. We did make it but then destroyed it as well. It was fun acting like 5 year olds amongst an age group with average age of 26 :-o.

Next on our way to the beach, we stopped by at Rockport downtown for lunch. The place called “Rockport House of Pizza” though had good food but an absolute rude waitress who flustered a lot and was seemed to be angry on the fact that she has to make so many checks. Though yelp.com rates it good, I think it’s bad.

Anyway, next we went for Wingaersheek beach. There was a huge crowd. My last few visits to the beaches have always been to the ones either too small or too less occupied. This was full of people. We did our bit of people watching, sitting on rocks, playing in water and burying the feet in sand. There were a set of little girls who had long hairs. They played a game of dipping their hair in waiter and then splashing it all around. It was fun. The beach had rocks in one end which reminded me of the rocks in NITK beach and the zillions of associated memories. On te other end, there was Ipswich river bay and this entire place was in Gloucester. Sounds as if we are in the middle of England.

Amongst the songs played in the car, my favorite was Flight IC 408. Youtube Link

7th on BigB blog

Hi,

Not that I am a big fan of Big B, but yes, I do like his blog. And today I gotto be the 7th one to comment and the first time I really tried. The comment makes no sense but see for yourself.

Indienglish is phunny

A small post here. I realized that there are some funny usages in tamil, marathi and bengali. These are when someone tries to communicate in these above languages but using English alphabets. Here are soem of them:

In tamil, an extra h is used for everything. Though I have started using 'th' for the first sound in 'Taj' (Thaj Mahal sounds so funny) but I cannot just get used to 'dh' for the first sound in 'the'. Funniest is the usage in the name 'Darshan/Darshana'. In tamil, it becomes 'Dharshan/Dhaarshana' which has a very derogatory meaning in hindi/sanskrit.

Next is Marathi. For some reason marathis think z is 'jh'. And hence jhootha becomes zuta. Jharna becomes zarna which may not be that hhilarious, but somehow irritates me in the same way as the sound of metal against metal.

Equally, if not more in the usage of 'v' by bengalis. Bengalis think 'v' is 'bh'. So the very common word for good i.e. bhalo is spelled as 'valo'.

As an end note, this fondness of non bengali speaking people with the word bhalo can be quite misleading as it has such close relatives with very different meanings. Here is a list:

Bhalo Aachi are 2 words meaning I am good.
Bhalobashi as 1 word means I love.
Bhalo Bhashi 2 words actually mean " I float well" but some people think that it is same as bhalobashi which is I love again.

Fashion

Looks like it is becoming the most used word nowadays. We have been bombarded with fashion weeks. And they appear to occur almost every month. This year, the best actor (female) awards and best supporting actor (female) awards both went to the actors in the movie fashion. After this sudden bursts of Delhi and Mumbai fashion weeks back to back, many of the bloggers have started writing about fashion shows and they are more or less in the negative tone. I really like the fashion shows and unlike a single working professional who will be out having fun on Saturday evening, I am simply sitting at home, I thought I will pen my thoughts on this.

I will begin with hat I like in the fashion shows and later delve into what fashion means to me.

For whatever reasons, we all have either secretly or openly watched fashion TV. People like Sushma Swaraj planned to ban it, but could not stop the curiosity of the people watching it whatever may the reason. Knowingly or unknowingly, we became familiar with the terms like “fall-winter”, “spring summer”. We came to know that Milan is the fashion capital of the world. Though we always think LA will be more fashionable considering Hollywood factor, actually New York is the place of fashion. In general we started getting used to the famished looking people walking on the screen. And thus we all learnt the basics of fashion.

Needless to say, India caught up with it and the small fashion industry got more and more limelight. Few fashion icons joined the movies and then fashion shows became more important. Add to it, the burst of 24X7 news channel and the advent of color in newspapers. There had to be more flashy things to show to attract more viewers and the result is the overdose in true Indian fashion. Whenever we like something, we overdo it to an extent that we ourselves start hating it: Candle marches, social networkings are just to name a few.

But I enjoyed this overdose of Fashion weeks a lot. Every morning amongst the gloomy economic news, the mud slinging of politics and the daily terrorist attack stories, I really look forward to these skinny models walking on the ramps wearing clothes which nobody would ever wear in public. Some people object to this very fact that why show something which nobody will ever wear in public. Well take it as a form of entertainment just like IPL or EPL.

Anyway, fashion shows always remind me of the fashion show in my undergrad college. There used to be only 1 or 2 nice looking girl in every batch. The fashion shows became all about choosing which girl from the 1st year will be chosen for this coveted job and the show always happened to be 4 women (1 for each year) surrounded by 20-30 men. It was hilarious.

To me fashion can come in any form. For example, election fashion. Sarah Palin had her own fashion. Queen and her pearls are another fashion statement. Sonia Gandhi, Vasundhara Raje are the fashionable amongst Indian women politicians. Amongst the men it is Murali Manohar Joshi, P Chidambaram, Arun Jaitley and even Varun Gandhi.

The biggest fashion in India always comes from movies. I still remember the number of friendship bands we wore after kuch kuch hota hai, and how all of us in undergrad tried hard to keep small triangular stubble on our chin. Aamir khan has been the person who always starts new trends. Surprisingly, amongst women, I think it is not Aishwarya Rai as much as it is Kareena Kapoor. Whether it is her avatars with Tushaar Kapoor, or as Poo in K3G or in Jab we met, her fashion has always percolated the deepest.

As I write this big an article on fashion, I realize that I myself dress in the poorest form imaginable. This blog attests the same. More for carrying the guilt and less for people to see, here are two more How not to’s:




1) How not to dress for a wedding
2) How not to dress in a beach
3) How not to stand next to objects which make you conscious of your height.


Adios

Short Note on India Elections 09

Election 09 for me was only two people. Varun Gandhi and his mom Maneka Gandhi. In 80's Rekha had shown us Biwi ho to aisi and in 2009, Maneka shows Maa ho to aisi. BJP had almost disowned him, Congress was against him but one person who was always wit him was his mom, she visited him every day when he was wrongly put in the jail. She tried so hard for him that she had almost lost in her own constituency. But all's well that ends well. Both mother and son duo has won. I do not care if they are with BJP or any other party of their choice but the sweetness of their victory can not be ignored. Imagine Varun and Maneka sitting together at one end and Rahul and Sonia on the other. Both the mothers beaming at their son as they speak and as soon as they finish, hurry up to give them a warm glass of milk, that too malai marke.

BTW, I had pulled off the post below but now re-posting it. Originally posted even before Varun was caught under NSA.

My Views on Varun Gandhi

There are 2 ways you can really have strong views about a person. When you have done all your research and when you haven’t done any. For me, the analysis below is mainly because I did not read much about it and I think I just read the facts. I do not want to read what each and every person is saying to form an opinion. But yes, this is not a hard and fast opinion (With more proofs, things may change, and come on, he’s just 29)

I feel Varun Gandhi is just a puppet in a big game that is being played by BJP or even the sinister BJP-Congress alliance which I have a feeling is always cooking under the hood. Ok, not to sound too absurd with my argument made above, but even if it is anybody’s plan, it is certainly not Varun’s own. Hate speeches like these are being made every day by RSS workers and have been made in the past by all the BJP stalwarts except perhaps Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Sikander Bakht. To make this a political issue is a part of a bigger conspiracy which I am really eager to find out. It might even be political ambitions of the likes of Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt etc.

Second startling fact is the comparative low tone of condemnation by Priyanka and Rahul. As star people of opposite parties I had expected harsher criticisms but their statements are more like “We are ashamed of our little brother but after all he is still a kid, he will learn”. Whether these things point to the BJP-Congress under the hood pact that I speculated earlier or a case where blood is more important than political rivalry, both are good for the country as a whole. We need sensible next gen leaders who are not like present Advaniji’s BJP which had decided to oppose each and every word that Congress says in the parliament and vice versa. By showing their solidarity, Priyanka and Rahul prove that even if the become political opponents, they won’t be as insensitive as the 80+ lots.

Third reason I would like to defend Varun is his mom. She is an outcast of the great Gandhi family but she still managed to stay in picture. There are numerous people who are now nameless because of their non allegiance to Gandhi Family. But she still survives. Also, for a politician, she looks really cool( much better than Mayawati, Mamata, Jayalalitha and even Jaya Bachchan. She is in the league of Sushma Swaraj, Vasundhara Raje who themselves are collectively below the league of Jayaprada, Smriti Irani, Hema Malini). Thirdly she does this really hep and cool green and animal care thing. I do feel with most of her issues like keeping birds in cages and killing stray dogs and all such animal right things. I even try very hard to get out of Non Veg, but I promise Ms Gandhi, that the day the taste ratio of Non veg to veg based on availability even falls below 200%, I will turn a vegetarian (right now, from what I cook and what I get in restaurants, the ratio is far more than even 500%). So, I think the son of such a great mother does deserve a bit more respect and probably forgiveness because I would like to believe that he at least didn’t mean the words that we think he said.

Kuch bhi

It has been a long time. I am not sure what to write, now that I have tried so many different things. I tried to be emotional, I tried to be gossipy, I tried to be personal and I tried writing about current affairs. Today I am bored, but I still feel like writing. I am not sure if it is a good idea to clutter the blog with such posts. But then, I have seen not blogging gets into a habit and I would not want to do that. Let there be no issue based blog, but at least keep the blog alive with some written text rather than random links and pictures.

Readership has been low. Or has it increased? I do not know. But definitely, it is not the current posts that are being looked at. I think the most read ones are the Bollywood awards that I dish out and the one about “Bengali in me”, thanks to the dhono dhanye song I have put in there.

Ok let this be an update blog. I will update all of you who do read this blog and may be more for me to read later what updates I can comfortably share on this date.

I have got this craving for some good “Rani/Priety” movies now. By Rani priety I mean recent movies with a dominant heroine role. Rani has not been doing much good stuff. I saw Priety in Last Lear and Heaven on earth. I liked Last Lear.

I have also been watching this series called “The big bang theory”. It’s about 4 geeks and a dashing girl in next apartments. It’s extremely funny and I highly recommend it.

On the bad sides, I am not at all excited about the Indian general elections 2009. I do not like NDA/BJP’s prime ministerial candidate and Congress was never glamorous. The rising clout of the regional parties will just add noise to the government and no real breakthrough can ever happen. How I wish Samajwadi party was a national party. It has got glamour, it has got the backing of industrial big shots and it seems that it always means business and no nonsense party. It may be corrupt etc, but then it’s end goal is get into the government and it makes it very direct to a common man like us. On the other hand, BJP’s election issues are so baseless: attacking congress for the global recession, Afzal Guru hanging etc. How can these be election issues. Unrealistic 2 RS rice and free color TV campaigns also make more sense than this. Congress on the other hand can do such a constructive campaign, but it is so busy with it’s Rahul baba that it cannot see anything beyond. Sonia madam was an efficient backdoor puppeteer, but the problem with Rahul is that he is the puppet.

Worse is the recession. Just when we think it cannot get worse, there is more shocks. We cannot predict. But I think we are at a stage where we have already expected the worst. Nowadays lay offs, shut down does not even alarm us any more unless it is us at the receiving end. Is the slowdown also slowing down?

But for me, the biggest concern is “Woh ladki hai kahan”. It is a combined effect of so many factors. Suddenly I realize that the often used line “pehle khud ko establish kar loon” has began to blur. There had been times when I could have really gone ahead but this line pulled me back and now when the line goes blur, the picture gets blurrer. Add to it the fact that almost all my friends are already ahead of me in this race. Not only lonely, I feel angry too.

And hence we should do yoga. I have started Ramdev baba yogas. The thing that I enjoy most in that is my daily choice of accompanying music. I need a clock with second update so that I can rate my kapalbhatis. Hence I play songs on you tube. I had started wit meditation music, bhajan, devotional songs, rabindra sangeet etc. But today I tried Aishwarya Rai songs, and I enjoyed it. Probably tomorrow will be jaadu hai nasha hai. Let’s see. I should probably follow the Shilpa Shetty yogas. It will be glam yoga .

Book Review: Sea of Poppies

After a long time, I am writing a book review. And I have read a few available about the book. One thing I noticed that the reviews are actual reviews, not the typical hindi movie reviews which just go on to praise the film if they like one and find every possible flaw if the do not. The reviews always give an idea off what the writer is trying to achieve and as he successful in doing that. It is difficult for me to write a review of that kind, and hence I will stick to the Indian kinds. So people, here comes the new Kazmi, Sen and Masand.

Bottom line first, I liked the book. So it will be only good things about the book. I am not new to Indie English novels but I am very new to historic novels which give you a balance of history along with a strong storyline. This book pleased me thoroughly but did not come as a surprise as I has already read “Hungry Tide”. While reading it I never realized that I know so much about Sunderban. This book just takes this feel further and this time it is not confined with a small region like Sunderban but instead covers a vast region of the world. It talks about China, Cape Town, England, Kolkata, Bhojpuri belt and of course about the life in sea which can be considered a whole new country of it’s own.

Another of the thing that I liked immensely was the language. It’s just so varied. I never enjoyed the language so much in any other novel before. There is English by the sea men, there is the African American English, there is the English English (English spoken in England), the French English, English that the English people spoke in 1830’s India and then the English that Bengalis spoke in 1830. Each is so different and the way Amitav has blended all of them leaves me mesmerized. To add to it, so many foreign words are borrowed all throughout the book: Bhojpuri, Bengali and especially the language of the seamen who are called Lascars. I know Bangla and can understand bhojpuri, but as I had no idea about the lascar tongue, it was a pleasure decoding that. Towards the end of the book, Amitav is blending cultures. I got so excited and kept thinking of all these people who then went to Mauritius and how is the present culture of Mauritius affected by it.

And of course the part that had me dumbstruck was the sex. The very fact that I am shamelessly writing about it shows its impact on me. I have always read sex with either curiosity or disgust and I think that was its purpose when it is written about or shown. But here it was a part of the story and blended so well. And it was in all forms. There is the straightforward straight and then both forms of non straight, there is sexual harassment of children, there are different types of punishments and there is even with animal. But it comes so naturally in the book in a way that I am not used to. You are never excited or disgusted about it. In most of the other reads, you either read a rape with contempt and hatred for the rapist or in normal descriptions it is something which bonds love more strongly. But in this book, it does neither. It comes in and goes wit the same flow as say a day goes and the night comes.

Unlike Rajiv, I will not go and tell you about the best moment in the story. I also won’t criticize the book like Raja Sen who thinks that a critic has to criticize. Unlike Nikhat, I would still rate the book with five star though it does not have shahrukh or amitabh or directed by K Jo.

My best Friends’ Wedding

Haha, an oxymoron in the title itself: ‘Best Friends’, but that’s right. This time my biggest realization during my trip to India has been married people. And I met several stages of them. Married for a couple of years, married for couple of months, just returned from HM, got married while I was there and even will marry in near future.

What happens when friends marry? You make the third person, the concerned person and even you believe that this is the best thing that can ever happen to them and which might be true, but it does feel so animated most of the time.

When your friends insist, you talk to theirs’. “Hi, how are you?”, “How is new life”. “ How do you find my friend ….?”, “ Is he/she bothering you”, “Ae, mere friend ko kuch at bolna”, ‘Pata hai, once what happened ………”. And at this point it’s like the person is saying “Why do I have to bear this guy” and you are saying “Why did my friend make me talk to this person”.

Even worse are your conversations with your friend. You have to ask about the spouse. Oh how is…. And, if they start off even once, you are again into the animation mode. If they do not, it’s even worse. The person thinks, “Isko bhi abhi phone karna tha”.

Things does not stay you and me, they become ‘both of you’ and me. The individuality is lost. May be at work life, they still have the individuality, but in the limited hours when they are not working, they rather stay as “we”. What plans for weekends?” Oh, we plan to but curtains, or we will go to buy a lamp” or some of those trivial stuff which you never thought can bother your friend. All you can say, Thank god, atleast you are not shopping for ‘Pink Chaddis’.

Worst is when you meet them in person. Ofcourse you have to meet theirs’. And then sometime in the middle of the conversation you are totally not part of it and you start feeling kabab mein haddi.

All in all, you just understand that it is time to change and focus on yourself. Do not expect them to “daak shune aasha” but instead “aekla cholo re”

Disclaimer: It’s not a generic behavior. Everybody as one or 2 of the above qualities.

Police Excesses in India

I cannot stop myself from writing about this. Here are 3 incidents:

1) 3 guys throw acid on 2 girls who died but police shot the three people down. Here is a link of the story in ToI.

2) A guy wrongly speed races on his bike at 1 am n Bangalore, police stops him. He runs away towards a house which turns out to be a brigadiers, makes a call from the roof top, in Urdu, and police shoots him down. Link.

3) The fracas began at 2.30pm in Kolkata, when 37-year-old Yadav was about to park his vehicle on the wrong side of Kiron Shankar Roy Road. Policeman Banerjee, who was on duty in front of the high court, spotted the taxi and signalled to the driver to stop. When he didn’t, the constable sprinted towards the taxi, witnesses said. “He was holding an iron clamp, which he tried to attach to one of the wheels to prevent the driver from fleeing. The driver alighted and asked Banerjee why he was using the clamp instead of filing a case of parking violation,” a bystander said. Banerjee allegedly replied with a slap. Link.

The three incidents are of varying intensity and if decided to judge individually, probably you may differ on the sides to choose on each. However, one thing is clear, on all the three incidents; the people who suffered from police violence were not clean. They all had committed some offense. But is this the way a responsible police should react?

However, I am surprised at people’s reaction. Yes there are people who think these are bad acts by the police but I thought that would be a unanimous decision. However, surprisingly people differed. One of the people I asked felt that Police did the right thing. That is why terrorism is on the rise. Nobody is afraid of the police anymore.

Here is what I beg to differ. The job of the police is to maintain law and order. It is not their job to convict people and make people afraid of them. If you see a police on the road, you should feel positive that aah, here is a man maintaining law and order. But the truth is different. We see police with either disgust or fear.

However slow the process of law may be, somebody else cannot take over it. Ideally in all these cases, police should have caught the convict and produced him in the court, but instead they chose to be the judges. When discussing with someone about the first case, I said, police should have shot him on the leg or put tear gas. The other person said may be the police wanted to do that but the shot got misplaced. Come on, why do you pay the police for if they do not even know how to shoot.

And this is precisely why I hate when people talk highly of the so called “encounters”. Yes, those people may be convicts, or may be we can even kill the dreaded terrorists in encounters, but that’s not the way things should happen. It should be for the law to decide these things. If the law process needs to be revived, let’s do it. But police taking over law is definitely not the way to go.

And this is what I think is the difference between first world and third world country. Till now, whenever people used to tell me that India is a third world country, I used to feel sad. But now I know why it is so. Police takes law in its hand because lawmakers take infinite amount of time. Digging deeper, somewhere it boils down to the fact that we do not have the money and resources to have a police which should have the decency to talk like a gentleman even to the most dreaded terrorist in the world. Wasn’t even Saddam tried in the court before being hanged?

Sandipan Bollywood Awards 2008

After the very successful blogs of Sandipan Bollywood Awards from 2006, and 2007, here we go for 2008. I say popular, because if you search Sandipan Mitra on google, the first result is the 07 awards.

This year has been tough. Not lot of good films rather mostly dismal. A few decent ones though. But I have to continue with the tradition. Here we go:

Best Story: Neeraj Pandey for ‘A Wednesday’ and Shyam Benegal for ‘Welcome to Sajjanpur’.

Best Song: ‘Jashn-e-bahara’. Melodious as well as fresh

Best Music Director: A.R. Rahman , “Jodha- Akbar”. (and borrowing from previous year’s blog ---- who else?

Best Singer(Male) : Javed Ali for ‘Jashn-e-bahara’

Best Singer (Female): I guess this award goes empty this year. Not a single memorable solo. What’s wrong with Shreya, Sunidhi or even alka and kavita madam?

Best television interview: Of course Arundhati Roy in ‘Devil’s Advocate’. I know that may be she is not at all right and her logic fails at time but she is so convincing with her words. By the way, this time I found one person so irritating that she better not give any interviews and that’s Deepika Padukone. Why does she have to speak in English when her accent is like a Gaon Khede wali of Maharashtra?
Best Item Song: Krazzy4 Hrithik Roshan

And now the main awards:

Best Comedian: Abhishek Bachchan in Dostana
Best Supporting Actor: John Abraham in Dostana. He was so hilarious and did what he can do the best. Reminds me that once during the wedding of my friend I asked him that when is his wife going to do the chawal fenko rasam like John?

Best Supporting Actress: Hands down Kangana Ranaut. She was the core of Fashion. The way she changed expressions for drug addict to supermodel in no time was top of the world.

Best Villain: Bipasha Basu in Race. In Race, everybody is a villain and not many villainy movies in 08 except Ghajini. And Bipasha has to get some prize.

Best Newcomer (male): Farhan Akhtar for Rock On. He was really impressive and a fresh and unconventional face.

Best Newcomer (Female) : Asin. Though I did not like her ‘Jab We Met’ish acting much bt she is definitely the best looking amongst the new faces.

Best Director: Shyam Benegal and Neeraj Pandey for Welcome to Sajjanpur and A Wednesday resp.

Best Film: Combining the fact that it should have story (Jodhaa Akbar, Ghajini, Singh is Kiing and Rab ne ruled out), Good looking and famous star cast ( A Wednesday, Welcome to Sajjanpur, Rock On, Jaane tu are gone), decent songs (A Wednesday, Ghajini, Rab ne, Fashion all out) and ofcourse a decent budget, the award points to only one movie which may not be best amongst any of the above factors individually but has a good combo of above all, and the movie is RACE…

Best Actress: Like last year, I again want to give it to Soha Ali Khan or Mumbai Meri Jaan but I guess that would be too much bias. A Kareenaish Asin does not impress me, Genelia is too kiddish and Fashion is all about Kangana, mugdha and Kitu and not about Priyanka. Aishwarya as Jodhaa looks more south Indian and can never look rajputani. However, I think the best actress award should still go to her but for Sarkar Raj. She really stole the show and she DID some acting apart form looking good and/or crying.

Best Actor: Shahrukh Khan for Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. The lesser the mentioned of Ghajini is better, and Singh is Kiing is really not worth that much. Hrithik as Akbar was good but with nonsense scenes like Sword fights and dismissing court listening to Man Mohana, he has lost it. The reason it is Shahrukh Khan is not only because people really liked Surinder Sahni but because Shahrukh made people hate Raj. It is probably easy for a Superstar to make you love him but it is really difficult to hate ur favorite star and he was successfully able to achieve it.