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......

work life balance

It is  so hard  for most peopleto find work that there is no question of work life balance, not in my country. You have to work so hard to get work that you become weary when realize that you have got yourself in to a dead end job just in order to find something to do. Of course there are lots of escape routes but most of us don't even have time to remember them.Sometimes we get lucky and have some genuine fun , but as Frost put it
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Nothing gold can stay. So gold slips out of our hands and we try to work things out so that we have a 'work-life balance'. What is work? Something we do regularly, is quantifiable and is often repetitive. What is life? It is primarily eating resting and sleeping.Eating is also called dieting these days. Resting can also be through exercising or watching TV or a DVD.Sleeping is God's gift to the lucky few.
What about me? I take up too much work with good intention. I relax far too much for the amount of work I have taken up. (am severely handicapped by a poor economic sense) and don't sleep much. Guess should work on these thoughts though it was a relief just to type them here.
Hello don't think I don't know about life being about loving, giving, growing and sharing. These things should happen, shouldn't they? 

About some kho-kho players.

When Dinesh, a student of business administration, started a project to introduce kho-kho to rural boys as part of his post graduate project, he had no idea what a remarkable change it would bring about in the life of the children involved. The team he formed began to participate in tournaments and he took up the task of  not only training them for free , but feeding them and giving uniforms,shoes and transport charges to them. They won some of the matches and some of the players went on to make it to the state team and later on to win a kho-kho match at the national level.
He then started an academy, which conducts state level tournaments and identifies talent and gives free training to rural students. In the last three and a half years he has trained a thousand students, 40 of whom have got free seats in sports quota. 3 have joined the military, 25 have passed the umpiring exam and of course, all of them are different people who have had glimpses of the leader within them.

Dinesh is in his early twenties and is now working in Chennai and runs his academy from there. Good story of leadership!

Tearless and fearless!

Looks like am not going to be able to blog at all. Simply because am into content writing now. And also more text book writing too, I believe. And this is when work is supposed to be less.
And one more thing about interesting old me! I can't cry. I really can't. I remember my mom hitting me quite a bit and saying "Look at her! Not a drop from her eyes!". Not that my tear glands don't function. When I ride the two wheeler at seventy, my eyes water automatically. You can't call that crying, especially coz it's actually exhilarating riding at that speed.
I remember crying on two occasions though. The first one was when my dad told me on landing in Chennai one morning, that my friend Padma's dad had died. It was a shock to me for this person was a unique individual. Mr.Chandrashekar never scolded his daughter, (infact, I realize now that he had spoilt her a bit) was terribly proud of her and always had something simple and insightful to say. Going back to what happened when I heard the news, I started to cry. Rather it was a body wracking snort, exactly four snorts and I imagine that's how a rhino would snort. And not many drops of tears came from my eyes

Then the next time I burst into spontaneous tears on the return journey from Pilani, where I had deposited my daughter at her hostel. This time there were some tears but it was a single outburst that lasted a minute or so. This happened seven years ago. Even now when am sad, I try to cry. I contort my face and and try to sob but no tears come and then I end up laughing. I sometimes wish I could and get relieved from pain and then tell myself it's better not to cry. What if I end up as a crybaby, addicted to self pity.

And then when my daughter got married, and got into the car with her  brand new husband, my husband burst into tears and my daughter's eyes filled up and my son- in- law's eyes turned sympathetic and moist; a typical scene, that has inspired many a film maker and ad maker, and there I was, dry eyed and throwing furtive looks all around! And why did I throw fearless into the title? Not just because it rhymes, coz am basically fearless too and more about that in another blog. tata

what i have been doing

I was writing textbooks and was unable to blog! So goes the story! I was also helping my family in celebrating my daughter's wedding. But the real reason I did not blog may never be printed. Since I have very few secrets, I don't know how to keep myself from talking about something that I should not open my mouth about. Let me summarize by saying that I had a good time doing something else too. 

Guess with all the big happenings I will have a lot to blog about now that I am done with the textbooks and the wedding went off well.hehehehe. full stop.