Mysore trip

My cousin's are down from Bombay and we went to Mysore, during the weekend. It was a good trip, Some of the inner circle joined in too.... Here are some images.

Home they brought her warrior dead...

I first read this poem in school, and even at that time it had an effect on me, this is a good one

Home they brought her warrior dead:
She nor swooned, nor uttered cry:
All her maidens, watching, said,
‘She must weep or she will die.’

-Alfred Lord Tennyson

More....

Memorable lines...

Footfalls echo in the memory,

down the passage

which we did not take,

towards the door

we never opened

- T. S. Eliot

Reading now…

I have three books lined up:

The Anderson Tapes - Lawrence Sanders: Some real crime narrated by means of taped conversations, interesting concept, but, not too great.

The Hunchback of Notre-dam – Victor Hugo: We all know what this one is about, looking forward to read this unabridged edition.

The Dead of Jericho - Colin Dexter: Another inspector Morse mystery I cannot wait to get my hands on :)

All in all will make for pretty interesting reading I suppose.

Magic of Movies

You have got to admit it. Movies are magical. Here are a few magical moments that I remember best from movies

- When I saw the first ‘Real’ dinosaurs in Jurassic Park

- The magic that Johnny Depp weaved in and as “Edward Scissorhands”

- When Rajesh Khanna sang “Kahin door jab din dhal jaye…” in “Anand”

- Nicole Kidman’s sheer brilliance in “The Others”

- Tim Robbins’ character in “The Shawshank Redemption”

- Tom Hanks’ performance in “Forrest Gump”

- The Scene from “City lights” where the girl realizes that Charlie Chaplin is the man who helped her regain eyesight

- Or Charlie Chaplin as Hitler, playing with an Earth like ball in “The Great Dictator”.

- On Watching “Animals are beautiful people” in the Theater at a time when Animal Planet and Discovery channel were unheard of.

- The scene from Swades where SRK buys water to drink from a small boy on the train
station.

Well, these were just a few of them and I am sure to have missed out on quite a few. How about your magical moments??

Festival Season

I feel it in my fingers; I feel it in my toes, that Diwali is all around me and that’s how the feeling goes!!
There is something about festivals. Especially the festival of lights, It’s a wonderful feeling, be it the delicious Diwali food that mom makes, the smell of crackers in the air, the festive spirit all around, the fun of get-togethers, the greeting cards that we send and receive…just about everything is special.
Three Cheers for Diwali and for all festivals in general.

Holidays...

I had around 9 days off!! Couple of days taken off and the rest a mixture of Optional and Public holidays :) and I was not complaining.Well the holiday started extremely badly, as I seemed to have symptoms of Gastro Enteritis, was violently ill for the first 16 odd hrs of my vacation. Fortunately it was a false alarm, being just mild food poisoning. Well anyway I enjoyed my holidays, and so all’s well that end’s well.

Check-Mate

Well I confess i am not good at Chess, but then I was beaten twice back to back by my 14 year old cousin !!

I was impressed by the moves and taken aback at how easy it really is to beat me. So people if you have a dream of winning at Chess then I would be the one to play against. (Word Games are a different ball game all together though)

A message board !!

I have added a message board onto my Blog, please feel free to start threads on any subject(Keeping sensitivity issues in mind). Its open to all, just put in your concerns, ideas, issues, thoughts, arguments and whatever else you can think of :)

Thanks to Camphor's Blog for the inspiration.

PlayBack Theatre at Ravindra Kalakshetra

Had been to watch a play called “Utsav” performed by “Yours Truly Theatre”. It is a very innovative concept, basically the play is impromptu, The audience is involved, and the actors on stage perform the stories narrated by the audience, thus you tell out an incident or a story in your life and the performance happens on stage based on your narration. Was wonderful to watch. Planning to attend a workshop on this style of spontaneous theatre.

A Mad Saturday

Well you can take me out of mad-ads but you cannot take mad-ads out of me :)
Rajiv Mathew and I were the judges at BioSken a biotech fest in RV College of Engineering. The crowd was good and the teams on stage were excellent. Brilliant quality of Mad-ads makes judging them a joy.Enjoyed myself thoroughly. Awesome.

“Brando, The King and I and The Catcher in the Rye”

Yeah, I read “The Catcher in the Rye”, I must say I liked it. At some parts, it had me laughing uncontrollably, it was good to read a book that genuinely makes one laugh, (unlike the crappy stuff that “Douglas Adams” writes), anyway, Salinger’s style of writing reminds me so much of Joseph Heller’s masterpiece “Catch-22”. Both these guys were one hit wonders. I mean, writing a book like “The Catcher in the Rye” or “Catch-22” is like digging a hole for yourself, people will begin to expect a lot from you and obviously you fail to deliver.

Other similarities are, both the titles have the word “Catch” in them; the leading characters Yossarian and Holden Caulfield are rebels, who contradict themselves a lot.

Anyone who has read both the books care to point out any more similarities??

What Classic Movie am I?

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Thanks to Amit for the Link

Name Like an Egyptian !!

My name using Egyptian Hieroglyphs!




Get yours !!

Sar utha ke piyo....The new Coke Ad

Well, we thought we had seen it all, people using humor, subtle use of brand colors, associating a brand with a feeling-like victory, Joy and what not- but coke has come up with a new ad that plays on the "pride" Factor. Associates the manner in which a person would drink coke (with their heads up), with pride. Its a wonderful and innovative ad, creativity to move away from cliches.

Book I "read"

Attempted to read "Franny and Zooey" by J.D Salinger, one would have expected an author of Salinger's capability to do better, I ended up, throwing the book away in disgust.

regarding the book I would only like to quote W.S Gilbert from The Mikado

"Merely corroborative detail, to add artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative"

My Favorite Fictional characters

Well the Colin dexter post got me thinking of who my fav. fictional characters were and I have come up with a top of the mind list.

-Sherlock Holmes
-Hercule Poirot
-Father Brown
-Characters from the DiscWorld series of novels eg. Death, Cut-me own throat Dibbler etc.
-Inspector Morse
-Roark, Fountain Head

I have limited myself to books, movies may follow later. Do let me know your favs.


Note: A friend pointed out that the word "fictional" does not exist and "fictitious" is the word I was looking for in the title, Dear friend I point out to you, that "fictional" is a word in the English Language, Please refer to FICTIONAL.
Also the word "fictitious" is used in the context of fabricating a name. Like in "he took up a ficticious name and conned the old lady"

Just Brilliant

________________________

Thoughts Of Phena

- Thomas Hardy

________________________

Not a line of her writing have I

Not a thread of her hair,

No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby

I may picture her there;

And in vain do I urge my unsight

To conceive my lost prize At her close,

whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light

More....

Books by Colin Dexter

Colin Dexter is the creator of 'Inspector Morse' and his sidekick 'Sarge Lewis', Morse is a beer guzzling middle aged detective, who loves solving crossword puzzles in the Times'.

The brilliance of Colin Dexter is, that reading his novel makes one feel like actually solving a crossword puzzle, I am a big fan of his style of writing and recently purchased a 'Inspector morse Omnibus', reading which i spent a wonderful weekend.

Nothing better than reading Colin Dexter and sipping unlimited cups of coffee :)

Do read if you get the opportunity.

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