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Ok, I don’t know why the angle is weird, but a kind birdie sent me this and a few other pics from the Endhiran set. These are probably everywhere by now, but I got them just a few minutes ago. Enjamaaai!

A half-decent book that is introduced as a collection of wizarding fables (with notes by a Harry Potter character), it soon loses its charm. When JKR buries the voices of the fables’ protagonists under the accompanying notes, the reader starts questioning the book’s length and wonders who the target audience is (definitely not *THIS* Muggle).

Well, sort of. It’s been more than three months and life’s still not conducive to blogging. But I don’t want to keep this place silent.  To be honest, while I have been gone from here, I have done a few posts over at my other hangout, Überdesi. But I have missed out on a lot of blogging here.

While I have been gone, lot of things happened. India did quite well in Test cricket. Rahman did quite well with his entry into mainstream Hollywood (and I made a fool of myself with some orgasmic blabbering) and touched a lot of hearts, both white and brown with that nice acceptance speech at the Golden Globes. 2008 closed with unemployment in the US at an all time high of 7.2 % (as the world went into recession), rogue elements (aka the government) in Pakistan decided to piss off India and the Indian IT industry went into denial over corporate governance (or the lack thereof).

And in between all this, I (re)discovered Twitter. And I tweeted about all these events.

I was introduced to Twitter in April ‘07, before Twitter became what it has now become. After acting like a curmudgeon about it for the most part of 2007 and 2008, I was forced by an ultimatum from certain friends (you know who you are :P) to ditch my clever G-Talk status updates [random sample: Dodge Ram: The official truck of the Sangh Parivar (post Tata takeover of Chrysler)] and switch to Twitter instead.

Since then, it’s been Twitter and thankfully my mother (I had to explain every single clever GTalk status, killing the joke in the process) is not on it and so it has been good. I have totally warmed up to Twitter and don’t seem to have any time to blog. Actually I do have *lots* of time to blog, but I totally lack the enthu and for a change it is not laziness that is the reason. All I can say here and now is that, while the reasons are rather private, I will be back for good, soon. Hopefully.

But in the meantime, i don’t want this space to be idle. My closest friends have, in the past year, heard me lament about how I don’t read *books* any more. The past year or so, blogs (and other online media) have slowly started dominating my reading time and I want to change this status quo. Besides, my (virtual) book case is overflowing with books that I have picked up and have not read at all.

So when a friend pointed me to a 20 Books in 2009 challenge, I decided to take it up. For a lot of you, it is probably not a challenge at all, but for someone like me who wants to kickstart a reading habit again, it is a worthy challenge, I think. So to start the challenge, I cheated. Yup! Conveniently I picked up the shortest book available closeby to start out the challenge.

One of the rules of this 20in2009 challenge is that I have to track the books I read with a blog post/separate page. That offers me an avenue to update this blog. I am making it interesting planning to add my own challenge too. Since I am tweeting mostly these days, I want to limit these reviews fit the Twitter character limit, i.e. to 140 characters and post them on my Twitter stream too. One second thoughts, I don’t think a 140 character tweet can do justice to a book review. So, what say, I do 55-worders instead?

Look out for the review later tonight. Needless to say, the reviews will be irreverant (which means I’ll sound dumb, actually), so don’t bother using my reviews to feed your (non-existent) reading habit.

Apparently,

Article 152 of the International Sporting Code states that drive-through penalties are “not susceptible to appeal”.

But why the fuck would the F.I.A wait for two weeks, schedule a hearing for an appeal, go ahead with it and THEN rule that the appeal is inadmissible because the original penalty was ineligible for an appeal?

Oh wait. Don’t we all know that the F in FIA stands for a certain competitor’s of McLaren (who shall remain un-named) and A stands for ass-lickers? Now it all makes sense!

Jokes apart, wouldn’t this rule mean that any drive-through penalty that the race stewards hand out cannot be overturned later to adjust final standings? Considering how it affected the final race standings, is this motor racing’s version of the NFL’s inadvertent whistle rule that killed the Chargers against the Broncos last week?

I met her just once but I owe at least a small part of the good times of the past year and a half to her touch. When she told me about her illness a few months ago, may be it was the insulating nature of the chat window that stopped me from comprehending the enormity of the news. But then a few days later, someone nudged me and I understood. And I froze.

Then for a couple of months after that, I could not pick up the phone to call her, wondering if a mere hello from her would make me choke. Instead every time I saw her online, we chatted for a little bit about music, her blog posts and the state of the blogosphere.  And I never did ask her the “How are you” question, fearing that I might set her thoughts to where they shouldn’t be.

Then in June, I picked up the nerve to call her. I spoke to her and the first thing she told me was how bad she felt that the Woodlands, where we had met in January last year, had closed down. We spoke for a few minute and my prepared script and the PJs that I had rehearsed all evaporated. I think speaking to her that day changed me. I’d like to think that some of her demeanor rubbed off on me and that has helped me through some personal issues that I have had to face since then.

Since that day in June, it has been Kalyan’s emails that kept us all in the loop. So on Sunday night, I was pleasantly surprised to get a couple of text messages from her. I called Kalyan to confirm that it was indeed her and he filled me in. And this morning, I heard from her sister Triveni that she was no more.

Even though it has only been a couple of years since I have known her, it feels like I have lost a lot with her passing. She touched everyone in her own inimitable ways and none of us will ever forget her for that.

In June, when Triveni told me that she was looking for some older movies for Lali to watch, I sent a few older movies from my collection, movies that I knew that she would enjoy.  I hope she got a chance to watch them, because that means that I gave back to her at least a little bit of the joy that her friendship has induced in all our lives.

Rest in peace, Lali. May your larking continue in heaven…

… someone in the UK currently, who is either

a. flying to the US in the next few weeks…

(or)

b. flying to India (preferably to Chennai) in the next few weeks…

(and)

… would be willing to carry a 26 inch long plastic/cardboard tube (click here or see below for contents) with them.

Yes, yes, yes! I know it’s trivial, but just indulge me!

Driving on the New Jersey Turnpike is a game of strategy, anticipation and the odd pitfall. Add to it, the (not so) random speed traps and it becomes one long 2.5 hour long game of chess.

Yes yes yes! Orey Clancy-esque only! Naan engeyyo poyiitten!

Kuselan for the most part is the telling of a simple story of two friends. This is a story that had potential for understated and yet effective performances, considering the caliber of the leading actors in the mix. Having watched the Malayalam original, one went into this Tamil remake with just a few expectations. While all of them were satisfied, I haven’t been able to digest some of the additional parts that have been added to the Tamil version ,perhaps to satisfy the front benchers.

Case at point - the “comedy” track featuing Vadivelu’s character and his wife. And why the fixation with skin, be it Nayanthara’s or the other actress who played Vadivelu’s wife? Not something I’d want to see in Thalaivar padam, but this has been an alarming recurring scenario starting with Chandramukhi. Thalaivaa, can you step in and put a full stop to this nonsense?

While I am still the quintessential die-hard Rajini fan, I try to take the movie’s story at face value and mold my expectations accordingly. But that is just me. I can’t speak the same of the other members of the fan fraternity. From what I saw around me in the screening in the premiere last night here in Jersey, if this movie tanks in the box office, it will be because of misplaced expectations. And one can only blame the promos of the movie and the creators of these promos for creating false notions of this being a standard Thalaivar padam. In reality though, this story was (at least originally) not about the Superstar. It was/is all about his friend, Balu.

But the promos (including the official website) have so far featured only Rajinikant with rest of the cast relegated to mere footnotes. Even the music CDs that were handed out yesterday for everyone at the premiere, have only Rajinikant’s image on the cover. That, IMO, is a great disservice to the other cast members, especially Pasupathy and Meena. Their’s might not be award winning performances, but they played the characters that the movie was about. And those are the characters that I will recommend that you watch this movie for.

For a longer extensive review, check out my post in UberDesi.

Arun says here that learning Carnatic music is a life long experience, should one be so inclined. I think learning music, regardless of the type, is certainly a journey that lasts an entire lifetime.

My musical journey began when I was about 6 years old, when amma dragged me by the ear to Iyengar maama¹ and requested him to give me violin lessons. I think it all began when I once came home bleeding after taking a stone to my forehead. So amma was forced to do something to keep me off the streets while she was at work.  And that was how I started going to Iyengar maama’s house every evening (or was it every other evening) while the other kids continued their stupid game of “catch the stone before it becomes part of your face”. My violin lessons continued till when I was 16, when amma decided that I should study for my boards². If only she knew.

But even after a decade of learning classical music, I still cannot remember the names of ragas, let alone misidentify them. I used to think that I wasted 10 years of my life on violin lessons when I could have better spent the time perfecting my straight drive or my doosra³.

And then a couple of weeks ago, I had my own epiphany. I was talking to someone who said she had learnt the Bharatanatyam for over 8 years and had gone through the arangetram phase, but *hates* dancing and had gone through the whole rigmarole only because her parents wanted her to. I could sympathize with her, but I realized something.

I don’t hate music by any measure. I am always humming or singing something, much to the irritation of people around me. And I am able to catch subtle similarities sometimes between musical pieces that I quite proudly point out to people (my latest catch is this ad, which sounds so much like this song). I realize now that while I hated the time I spent learning the violin, I now regret that I did not pay attention. For quite sometime I was extremely bitter at amma for forcing me into something that I did not have any interest in, but now I know better. The poor thing was only try to do what she could to keep me out of trouble.

Makes me wonder what if. But then, I think it all evens out when I realize I have had 6 teachers in the 10 years I spent learning. And I have had breaks ranging from a few months to a year whenever there was a transition from one master to the other. And on top of all that, I have had to pretty much start from scratch every time I changed teachers. Every teacher I had (barring the first one and the last one) was of the opinion that his predecessor was crap. Little did they know that the pupil was the culprit.

However, I have to look at the positves. My basics are obviously strong, thanks to the umpteen number of times that the basic lessons were repeated. So, while the sarali and janta varisai pages in the Ganamrutha Bodhini are dog-eared and almost disintegrating, certain other pages are in mint condition.

1. Iyengar maama, my first guru was our neighbor. He was also the father/guru of this man, known to many as Ilayaraja’s lead violinist and a fine composer in his own right. ↩
   
   
2. I haven’t played the violin since then, apart from a Absolut fuelled session in ‘05, and my cousin has since inherited my old western violin that amma bought used from her colleague ↩
   
   
3. Honestly, I can really claim neither to be part of my repertoire ↩
   
   

For the first time since I moved to Jersey, I spent Memorial Day at home. I haven’t had the chance to spend too much time at home in the past couple of months because of work, and so was not really inclined to play road warrior again.

But it was fun all the same, with the Jones Beach Air Show and the Brooklyn Bridge featuring predominantly in the adventures from the weekend.