Class photo

This is the photo I mentioned in my earlier post “A surprise encounter with my past“.

Let’s see how many of them I remember. From top left – D Durga Prasad (my benchmate for sometime), Chakravarthy (we used to fight with and chase each other a lot during the interval breaks), Shanker (?), *, Praveen, T Durga Prasad (a little cunning fellow – you don’t want to mess with him; , Jagadish (?), Prithvi Raj, Naresh (naughty), Durga Prasad (?), Sai Kiran (very mischievous), Vijay Kumar (topper), Daniel, Madhav, Vinay, Chandrasekhar, Vicky, Chandrika, Amar Jyothi (one of my closest friends), Jhansi, Gowri, Supriya, Sirisha, Sheela, Sandhya (?), Sasirekha, Arunjyothi, Sravanthi (bold and the beautiful), Pratibha.

Not bad. Could recall all the names except one. It’s a different matter that I’m not sure about quite a few of them. But where is Santosh whom I met on that day? Was he absent in the photo or did I mistakenly took him to be as Madhav? How many did I recollect correctly and how apt are my associations? Guys, please let me know!

Businessman

Puri and Mahesh did it again. Businessman may not raise as high an uproar as Pokiri, but is good and special in its own way. I found it quite a serious movie providing enough adrenaline rush to the audience as the hero climbs up the success ladder in the business of crime. It’s a kind of universal law that a hero always does right and conversely, anything that a hero does can be justified to be right. Keeping aside the debate about the effects and role of mafia on the society, films made about the underworld aren’t very uncommon, both nationally and internationally. We all loved the empire of The God Father and also the invincibility of our own Don, without any reservations whatsoever. Businessman falls into the similar line but as one expects, the story, treatment, and dialogues are new and refreshing.

As in all kinds of stories/movies, there is a love track in this movie. The hero originally traps the heroine  to serve as an ace up his sleeve in case he gets cornered by her commissioner father, but realizes at a crucial moment that he has really fallen for her and that she means a lot to him. On her part, the heroine, though initially got deeply distressed on knowing the truth about the hero, can’t really be able to get over him and succumbs to his charms. I would have found this track truly “filmy” (read “highly impractical”) and it would have affected my reaction to the movie on the whole. But, as it happened, I read a book called “Mafia Queens of Mumbai” a few months back, which is a collection of real-life stories of the notable gangsters and underworld giants. In that book, I found lot many love stories and affairs, which are not dissimilar to the one mentioned above.

Earlier, in my naivety and ignorance, I used to think that people are either white or black and the so called “bad people” or “villains” are by design unable to do anything remotely sensitive. The thought of them being in love with a woman in a true sense is something I had trouble even imagining. It is easy to guess the reason for my stereotype thoughts – the underlying messages that have been drilled into our minds ever since the childhood through moral stories, epics, movies etc, establish the same thing -that there are good people and there are bad people and that they have almost nothing in common. Being a simple unsuspecting soul by nature, I continued believing it even until recently, which I admit is not actually a thing to be proud of but on the contrary, should be (or rather, is) a source of my chagrin.

The music is not too good. Liked only a couple of songs. It’s neither the first instance that the tunes have been copied nor will it be the last but to discover the act even before one got to listen to the songs for the first time kind of dilutes one’s possible enjoyment of the music. Despite that, I loved the “Pilla Chao” song. Picking the Lion King’s song for copying, is something I feel is stupid. Borrowing from such a well-known track – I think that’s too audacious of Thaman. The song isn’t very melodic and when made into a Telugu song, except the chorus bit everything else kind of made no impact on me. (I love all songs from Lion King though.) I loved the background score. Kajal looked very glamorous in this movie. The songs were picturesque and I absolutely loved the costumes of Mahesh in “Pilla Chao”.

A surprise encounter with my past

Until as recent as last week, I had no inkling that I would meet people from my past, in fact childhood, whom I haven’t even thought about in  say at least 15 years except when occasionally encountering the single photograph of them from an old album. I’m talking about my classmates during the 5th & 6th standards.

And it all began with a group email-invitation for one of the guys’ marriage I received early last week. Initially, I dismissed it as a junk mail, unable to associate the sender with my past instantly. As the conversation continued among others in the group and I kept receiving that mail again and again, I made an effort to really look into what it is all about. This time though, I quickly recognized some of the names (uncommon ones to be precise) and it all struck me with a force of pleasant surprise and excitement at the realization that they are planning to get-together on the occasion of a friend’s marriage and I can be part of it too if I wish to.

Even though I couldn’t recollect everyone or everything about those days (it was really so long ago), given the fact that I spent only two years of my life with them with no contact whatsoever thereafter, I decided to attend the wedding, meet those childhood buddies and rattle the beehive of past memories.

I went and had a great time. Met about 7 guys (no girls turned up, unfortunately). More than anything, I was so embarrassed not to recognize some people; I couldn’t even place some of the names.  Of course, it is rather difficult to relate grown up men to their childhood faces, but I definitely ought to have done better, considering that most of them could recollect me.

As I learnt that there had been big get togethers twice in the past 3-4 years where almost everyone appeared and observed the bonding they all shared, considering that they were all together for most of their schooling, I felt slightly envious of them. I did my schooling in 6 different schools altogether with the implication that I had never been at any place for more than 2-3 years, which robbed me off such a bonding. At the end, I felt so happy to meet them all and to realize that the feeling was mutual.

It has been a while since I’ve taken a look at the photograph, which has been my sole anchor to that part of my past till now. I so wished I had it with me that evening so that I could have fared better in recollecting.  Sadly, I couldn’t find it in my initial search attempts to include it here. I’ll intensify my efforts in future and hope to find it soon.

Greedy mom

The other day I was reading a story titled “Greedy Forester” to my son and he wanted to know what “greedy” means. Fair enough.

Me: See, you are greedy about toys; despite having many toys, you want more and more of them. This is greediness. Do you understand?

Son: Yes.

Me: So, can you tell me what is mom greedy about?

I held my breath eager to hear what he would say. I was curious both to know whether he got the meaning right and also to listen to his perception about me.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he said “Books”.

He hit the bull’s eye at one shot. Needless to say, I was delighted. Not only for the obvious reason but also because he didn’t notice or is unaware of my other, less noble, objects of greediness (And surely “money” is not one of them).

A little prayer to God

My Son: Devdaa naaku baaga chaduvu raavaali. Nuvvu okasaari Magadheera cinema choodali. (God, I must get good education. You have to watch Magadheera movie once.)

Background: That morning, he watched the movie from the start to finish at one go and apparently got very impressed by it.

 

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,700 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

My remarks: Not a great year of blogging for me. Did poorer than last year. I definitely could have written more often. Also, I wince every time I notice “2 States” as the most popular post or “Chetan Bhagat”, “Anusha Bhagat” as the most popular search terms that lead to my blog, year after year. A big sigh!

Ring out the old, ring in the new

The past year had been smooth. Uneventful except for my modest career/academic pursuits. Reflecting on my resolutions for 2011, I realize that I haven’t set any challenging goals for me in the first place. And then, at least one is included without much conviction that I would at least try to accomplish it. I can say that I’ve been a moderate success in certain cases and moderate failure at others. On retrospection, it wouldn’t have mattered either way for me. The list was quite short for 2011:

• Register for PhD – Done
• Publish papers (at least 1) – too eager and ambitious: synonymous with too naïve and ignorant. Just took some baby steps. Got a paper accepted for a national conference and nothing more.
• Maintain weight – Done with minor ups and downs
• One book from “Top 100″ list for every book I read – Failed miserably at this. Actually, this was something I came up with out of impulse. I should never have set such a target in the first place. There is no chance that I can possibly do something like this. I pick up my books based on my mood at that point of time and I enjoy my impulses when it comes to reading. Expecting myself to stick to such an impulse for a whole year is something close to impossible.

I should really aspire for greater things and achieve instead of being laid back and content with the status quo. On second thoughts, the latter isn’t actually too bad especially when one can afford it and gets used to it. I guess most people would like to be content and enjoy life leisurely, but surely not at 30. So, I would like to wake up from my long slumber and do something gratifying in 2012.

Of course, having been committed myself to PhD, there is ample scope for me to work and achieve something concrete in the near future.  I look forward to a more satisfying year ahead. While there are so many aspects of myself that I want to work on, I can wait until I’m ready without stressing myself too much and just concentrate on being at peace in the meanwhile. And I try not to think too much about things I cannot do anything about – like, “end of the world”.

I wish everyone a better year ahead.

26th Annual Book Fair

I’ve not been too excited about visiting the  Annual Book Fair of Hyderabad this time as I’ve been buying books all through the year. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help the adrenaline rush at the sight of  so many books at one place. I hoped to find some good bargains from the used collection and of course wanted to grab a few Telugu books to which I don’t have easy access from where I live. I also wanted to limit my purchase to maximum of 6 items. And so I bought the following:

1. Rachayitri by Ranganayakamma: I’ve already read this, but wanted to have a personal copy.
2. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver: Heard about it first around one-and-a-half year ago and it instantly piqued my interest. It’s a mother’s narrative about her son, who commits mass murder. It won the Orange Prize for fiction in 2005.
3. Ampasayya by Naveen: This author had been recommended to me by a literature friend. This particular work brought the author so much reputation that “Ampasayya” has become a prefix to his name ever since. I felt that it’s only proper to start reading this author with this great work.
4. Paradise and Other Stories by Khushwant Singh: Recently got the taste of his candid, honest, and fearless writing and was quite impressed by his personality.  I’m sure I won’t be disappointed by this collection of  short stories.
5. Pekamedalu and Chaduvukunna Kamala by Ranganayakamma: This is a collection of two novels. I’ve become kind of addicted to Ranganayakamma’s fiction and it seems I can’t wait long before I read everything by her. The best thing I like about her books, other than the content, is the colorful hardbound, with high-quality paper and a surprisingly low price.
6. Mana Smasyalu – Krishnaji Samadhanalu of Jiddu Krishnamurthy foundation by Abburi Chayadevi: My experience with Krishnamurthy literature is intermittent at the best. I’ve read a couple of books about his philosophy in the past but can’t really say I digested even little of it. I felt that his philosophy is complex to understand and practice. I hope this short introductory book will reignite my interest and would lead me to explore  more of the great personality.
7. Oka Hijra Katha -Suprasiddha Urdu, Hindi Anuvada Kathalu, translated by Paravastu Lokeswar: Picked this up as I wanted to explore the Urdu and Hindi literature. Read a couple of translated stories recently from “The Inner Courtyard – Stories by Indian Women” and liked them.

Yes, the count is one more than the target but being a lenient person, I excuse myself for this violation. In fact, I bought the last book with the scraped change left as I didn’t like the feel of unexpended money in my purse.

While I was going through the used collections, I found, much to my chagrin, that some of the books I’ve bought recently for their marked retail prices are there for 30 bucks and 50 bucks and in good condition too.

Yet again I realized that how inadequate are  the three hours I can usually spend per day in that vast arena of books. Surely, would require at least another day to cover the stalls to a decent extent. I’m extremely happy to add the new books to my collection but I’m faced with a new challenge of accommodating them. My bookshelves have already been overflowing for quite some time now and I should really give it a serious thought and  come up with a solution soon.

Forgot to attach?

Forgetting to attach a file before hitting the send button in the email composer is a typical scenario faced by one and all.

I just encountered a wonderful new feature of Hotmail, which prompts you to add the attachment before sending the message, if you try to send the email without any attachment, provided you mention about the attachment in the body or subject fields of the email.

The following are some interesting observations:

• It works when “attached” word is present as in “attached report”  but not when ‘attachment” word is used in either the body or the subject fields
• It doesn’t work for “attached to mom” in the body of the email, but it works when the same is used as a subject
• When only ‘attached” word is used as a subject, the prompt comes up but the same is not true when the  single word is used as the message.

Couldn’t experiment more…

But, does the above make some sense? Or does the feature need more robust programming?

Nonetheless, I’m glad that efforts to address this grave issue have been taken up (finally).

PS: Looks like my enlightenment came a little too late. Thanks Sree for updating me. I’ve blissfully been unaware of this wonderful feature so far. 

 

A trip to London

A cute conversation between my 4-year old son and myself:

Son: Mom, we’ll go to London!

Me: Well, you’ll have to ask your dad about that.

Son: No, we’ll go by ourselves (in the sense that why bother dad about this).

Me: OK, how shall we go?

Son: By your bike.

Me: Lol!

The other day he suddenly declared, “we’ll go to IMAX ourselves”. When I replied that I don’t have the right amount of money with me at the moment, he said after a brief pause,  ”finish your PhD quickly, get a job and then we’ll go for the movie”. Ha ha!

Looks like mommy is my little darling’s hero. Can’t ask for more.