personal evolution

I think people in their twenties are the best behaved... teenagers want to impress others... preteens are super smart though...people in their twenties seem to have time for some soul searching as well as the mind set for an objective appraisal of the world. They are conscious that they are adults and underplay their teen tendencies. But people in their thirties are often obnoxious, and more so when they become secure in their careers.I too was a sickeningly right about everything busy body in my thirties. People in this age group seem more prone to make mischief. Even movie villains, particularly vicious ones, are often people in their thirties. The forties and the mellowing.. never felt so comfortable with myself. Not that I am a better person, just a better behaved one, though....

Self- discovery

8This is a continuous process and as the wise would warn can comprise fascinating finds as well as horrifying heartbreaks. In my case I found these things about myself over the years.
1. When school re-opened in seventh standard, I saw that all my friends had grown taller, all except me...and realized that I would not be tall like Hema Miss when I grew up, but short like Usha Miss.
2. Poetry gives me a high..this I found out in std eight.
3. In class nine I made several discoveries...I could make people laugh, I'd be very happy if I studied English, I could make friends easily...public speaking is not difficult....I loved writing...being vindictive and hurtful to others makes us feel worse, never helps
4. Dirty jokes were supposed to be cool in class ten. I was repelled by them and was an alien among teenagers that year.
5. I discovered Yoga, breathing exercises and the importance of exercise in general in class 10
6. I found out that making people laugh was somehow not as interesting as it initially was in class 11.
7. I also found out that I hated it when others were ragged. I learnt to fight for the underdog in class 11.
8. I was a rebel and knew it in class 12.
9. I discovered that there were thousands of beautiful, creative and talented girls, when I joined  college and that I had the power to do anything i wanted.
10. I understood the meaning of the proverb, "Fools rush in, where angels fear to tread" when I got married.

Let me take a break. Other important things that i discovered could be summarized with the following words: love, love, lots of love, my growing skills of persuasion, awareness of  my poor financial status and that I had been a fantastic counsellor to myself as much as I had been to others and that proper disciplined writing can be more motivating than random writing in blogs. hehehe

Dried tomatoes

Most of the things that i write about in this blog are things I thought of  a long time back. They don't reflect my life or what i do...they don't give the smallest clue to my current reality. It is very difficult for me to treat my blog as a journal. They can be compared to sun dried tomatoes and are tasty titbits...
One of the reasons I dislike writing about the present is the aversion I feel for some blogs that i read, that show the writer to be sane, creative, observant, smart, loving, intuitive, puzzled by the oh so weird others and daring, while he or she would have exposed their crummiest, worm-like and craziest sides to us in real life.
Another reason is my habit of not sharing my private thoughts with anyone. I am not talking about  my numerous opinions that I flaunt around freely for all to hear and see.

But of late I have come across some blogs where men and women document some parts of their lives, not just the picture perfect ones, but their ordinariness and the validity of their being important to themselves, in spite of being ordinary, in such simple and touching ways that I realized that there is a freshness to this approach, which is worth emulating. For instance, I saw a blog where a lady is talking about how she baked a cake after she lost her job. She had posted pictures of the process of cake making and explained how the cake turned out as well as it did.Another lady had put up pictures of some rashes that she was getting on her face and how all kinds of treatments had failed to help her.It was so sad. And of course, there is a student of mine, whose writing appears to be such an instant response to things around him that it prompted me to write this blog.

Our national anthem

Our national anthem is in Bengali. No one remembers this, because in multi lingual India, people are free to speak in their own languages and while they tolerate other languages, most of them have no curiosity whatsoever about the other languages.
The point is, every Indian sings this song in the style of his or her state, but is not aware that he is doing so. For instance, in some schools in Tamilnadu, the music teacher picks up the harmonium. and sings it with gamakams (shaking the notes) and pauses that are typical of carnatic music. The pronunciation of the words is 'oh so tamilian', by which I mean that every syllable is pronounced sharply, as an orator of tamil would, in a tamil speech. It's comical for someone used to listening to some other version of the song. There is ofcourse the standard version of the band, which is anglicized and is sung in 54 seconds.Many have heard this, as it is a recorded version, like all things western.
It is a however, a treat to watch Bengalis sing this song. With emotional fervour,  a slow rhythm and the unique pronunciation of the language which does not have the vowel sound /a/ , it sounds different, but endearing and goes like this....jono gono mono athi noyoko joyo he... tamilians have to listen to it to believe it!

my poems

Actually a couple of my poems have been published. A reporter tore a sheet from my diary and had it published in a newspaper in Bangalore; the Times of India, I think. I don't have a copy of those poems, nor a copy of the newspaper. Another friend of mine, (I think I mailed her the poem) told me that a pop singer had set it to music in Brazil. I vaguely remember that poem, though not the first two.I have a few more in my old diaries, though i have no idea where those diaries are.
I started this blog to record my poems, but somehow never feel like doing it.
My friend Bhooma is the only person who has read most of my poems.She even has a few of them. In fact, I used to write short ones about emotions and they used to turn out well. Bhooma has a few of these poems, coz I would throw them away after writing them. I think she inspired me to write and I miss her.
Actually my poems are nice, I just feel they are private. It's similar to an unwillingness to be photographed, a habit of the mind that i trained myself to change. I pose a lot for photographs these days. When I write more, as I am bound to, I think I will get over this unwillingness to share my poems too.

A modern affair - movie review

This was a romantic comedy that was free on you tube. The 'story' ( we all know that the story of a romcom is: boy meets girl, misunderstanding , then understanding, then love, then confession of undying love)  is about a woman who despairs on her lack of relationships, (she is overqualified, earns well, drives a great car, is a senior manager of some sort, very fit, orderly, serious and is close to middle age, and ofcourse as pretty as a romcom heroine should be) and decides to have a baby through In vitro fertilization. She goes through several profiles and selects a guy, who is anonymous and whose picture she cannot see.
After she becomes pregnant, she becomes curious to meet the male donor. See, this longing for relationships is the back bone of all romcoms. She meets him by hacking a computer and finding his address, and of course they hit it off. and then at a nice juncture when they are kissing and all, she tells him about her pregnancy and he asks her to get out. Then change of heart. ok?
Good choice of actors, suitably good looking not so young people; that's the best part of the movie....some realistic scenes and dialogues.... the heroine and her friend have a first look of the guy and go to an adjacent room and mouth the words, 'bald'  'he's a baldie' and laugh silently. The screen play is also interesting and not boring.Very few characters, non intrusive music. Good location
One thing I must say....the main characters, especially about the female; never, not even once, does she appear in sexy clothes. She never acts or speaks suggestively, even in romantic situations. I was shocked by the length and thickness of her clothes; It occurred to me that a woman from the west, in the exalted state of a film heroine has never been spared the burden of looking sexy, as this female seems to have been. Personally,
I thought the hero looked attractive.
Then there is a best friend, who is like a catalyst, suggesting ways and means for the heroine to take the steps required for the story to progress... Her character is not intrusive. But the unbelievable part of the story is that the hero, a person who makes a side income by donating his sperm decides to stop doing that at the end.

The dialogues were good. The heroine delivered them particularly well. Ok you can watch it. It's like a serial that's not boring.

the elections.

The results of the state assembly elections have left all of us speechless.There are several reasons that had contributed to the image of  DMK as being indestructible!!!!
Looks like they are not reasons but rumours, after all.
 Let's look again at these reasons why people thought DMK would win.


a. They paid enormous sums to procure votes
b. Villagers never vote against the party as they are grateful to be paid so much for votes.
C. The freebies of DMK had made tamils dependent on them
d. Teachers manned the polling booths and as the government staff always support DMK, they would just press the voting machine in their favor as many times as possible.( a teacher told me this)
e. The machines were rigged
f. The machines were replaced by fakes.
j. The vans carrying ballot boxes were interruped and tampered with.
k. The winning candidate was paid hundreds of millions in order to give up his win and let the loser be declared the winner.
l. ADMK had become too weak.

Now everyone of these have been proved to be rumours, and baseless ones at that; as not only did the ADMK win, but was able to get the required majority.If any of the above mentioned rumours had an iota of truth in them, then the DMK would have atleast got the opportunity to play the role of the opposition. Instead, Vijayakanth got to be the opposition party leader. This clearly shows that the election commission has not permitted any of the above mentioned to happen. The people have voted clearly and decisively and we can see more than ever how negative vibes are spread and strengthened even when they have no basis in reality.

It's not that either of the two leaders JJ or MK have lived up to their potential. The former, a high achiever in school behaves like a rowdy and the latter, a self professed son of the soil is totally bereft of any concern for the back ward classes. But this election shows that a shadow of democracy exists in my country. hmmmm. wish i could say something more inspiring than this about our system Sigh......