Simon & Garfunkel Test

I had realized it the first time I tried it. The feeling was reinforced when I did it the second time last week. I am talking about listening to Simon & Garfunkel (S&G) while driving on city roads. It just doesn't work.

The best place and time to listen to the soothing melodies of S&G are sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon'. Not amidst the hustle and bustle of the city traffic where people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening, go about in their mindless chaotic paths. There are frequent meeting of bodies, of vehicles that is, and more than a new niceties are exchanged. Do they ever feel that all my words come back to me, in shades of mediocrity. Probably not.

The noise of the engine within the car also does'nt help - even with the windows rolled up.
I hereby propose a new test for automobiles - to see how 'silent' their interiors can be.

1. Roll up the windows
2. Start the car up and move up to 60 kmph speed
3. Start playing Scarborough Fair and note down the complete lyrics
4. If you get all of the song, the automobile passes the test.

Crazy, you might say. Crazy it is driving through all this madness. So I thought S&G might help but I was proved wrong twice.

Honk !! Honk !! Honk !!

Disturb the sounds of silence

Possibly one of the biggest ironies of life.

Mr. 'Gracious' Smith

I got this parcel today from the office courier person. The picture on the left shows who sent it . I was on cloud nine. It had finally arrived !!









So what was in the parcel, you may be a wondering. A book !
The front cover is shown on the picture on the right.
Well it was not just "a book" - it was actually a gift from Mr. Smith himself. Yahoooooooooooo !!

Does it get any better, you may be wondering , again.









Yes it does !! The book is actually signed by Mr. Smith himself. Don't belive me ? Here's a picture of the first page of the book with the signature on it.


Cool icing on a delicious cake ? You can say that again. So how did I get this wonderful gift, you may be wondering, again. Let me explain.

Tue 08/21/2007 7:31 PM: I send a "thank you" email to Mr. Alexander Mccall Smith. I had visited his website sometime back. Today I chanced to the visit the site again and found that the url has changed along with the site layout. Watched his interview video and saw some of his pictures. Also noticed an email id bearing his name. I had been wanting to getting in touch with some of the authors, whose books I have read and liked and this seemed to be a nice opportunity. So I send this message basically thanking him for all the wonderful books he has written and conveying my liking for his works.

Tue 08/21/2007 7:32 PM: I get a reply ! Wow, that was fast, I thought. Turned out to be an automated reply that said that Mr. Smith will try to reply "as soon as possible". Hmmm...

Tue 08/21/2007 11:42 PM: I get another reply !! Of course, I saw it the next day. But I was really elated to see a reply from Mr. Smith himself. My joy doubled on reading the complete mail. Mr. Smith actually asked me to send my mail address so that he can send a signed copy of his latest book !! How great is that ?

So immediately I send a reply thanking him along with my adress. After that I got one email from his secretary mentioning that the dispatch process has been initated. And today I finally held the book in my hands. It is difficult to express, in words, how I feel exactly but I will try one last time

YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!

Let it 'Snow'

'Snow' is an amazing novel. Orhan Pamuk has managed to create an intriguing milieu of art, philosophy, religion, politics and human emotions (love,fear,jealousy, guilt to name a few).
I bought this book on an impulse from Strand while on book buying spree. I started reading and was immediately hooked on to it. Ended up reading the complete book making full use of the extended vacation I had taken to be with Meera and Vidush.

The thing I liked the most in the book was Ka's struggle to uncover the pattern of his poetry. He spent more than four years in exile and could not write even a single poem. Back in Kars he suddenly finds himself in the grip of strange force and ends up writing 19 poems in about 4 days time ! And then he goes back to Frankfurt and spends another four years in trying the decipher the pattern of those poems. His final solution of arranging his poems along the axes of a snowflake was so beautiful (a nice picture at the end of Chapter 39 depicts this quite vividly) . The underlying symmetry of a snowflake that he was always fascinated by also helps him understand himself and his poems. Philosophis of life like the one below also emerge.

Every life is like a snowflake

While I was enjoying the book, I kept wondering if reading the work in Turkish would have had any different effect. Would there be some kind of loss during the translation process - would the ideas and thoughts that the author was trying to covey represented as accurately in the English version. Of course, someone who has read the book in both Turkish and English only can shed more light on this.

I will end with another littel gem from the book

Life is a meaningless string of random incidents.

The slower 'un

Some childhood memories are simply unforgettable. Sports were a reasonably big part of my childhood. Cricket and football (soccer for some) were the primary obsessions. Occassional dabbles in table tennis (ping pong for some) on the the narrow benches in school with hands or notebooks doubling up as 'bats' and bricks, pencil boxes etc forming the 'net', were a seasonal rage. Volleyball, and badminton also made guest appearences. But being in India, cricket got the most 'air time'.

Luckily we had some open areas back then where we could free our arms. These were the public parks in the locality that were always busy with at least 5-6 games going on in parallel. Sundays were devoted for little more competitive versions of the game. Enterprising players from neighbouring localities challenged each other with matches. There was a 'prize' which was negotiated before hand - either a lumpsum in cash or the cricket ball with which the match was played. Each player contributes a fixed amount towards the 'prize' and the winning team gets to take the spoils. The matches themselves were usually 10-15 overs (per team) long with 5-7 members per team.

A delivery from one such match always brings a smile to my face. Some other details have mostly been completely forgotten. Like who batted first, how many runs were scored, who finally won- my 'little grey cells' fail me there. But this one ball is etched firmly in my memories.

Being the eldest member of the team (about 13 years old then), I always got elected as the captain. Raghu, Deepak, Shammi, Vicky and Pammi were the other team members (I am not sure if I got the team lineup entirely right). Danny and Co. were our opponents. Danny was batting rather well that day and seemed to be running away with the match. I started a new over. Gentle medium would be best description of my style of bowling.

The first two balls were pitched on short of a length, around off stump and moved away - he simply opened the face of his bat and ran the ball down between the wicket keeper and short third man for couple of runs. This off stump line did not seem to be working. But I could not afford to stray on the leg side either.

I walked upto to my bowling mark for the third ball of the over. Just as I turned around to bowl the next ball, a thought struck me. I paused for a second, rubbed my hands against my trousers, gripped the ball again and ran into bowl. The line was again good length, on off stump, only this time I deliberately bowled it a little slower than the previous 2 deliveries. Danny played his pre-meditated open-the-face-of-the-bat shot again. This time though the ball came after he had lifted his bat and ever so slowly,as though in a slow motion replay, it clipped the top of off stump.

Got him !

I can still recall the Danny's expression - he stared open-mouthed first at the stumps, then at his bat and finally at me. He just could'nt believed that he had been bowled ! I, of course, was smiling ear to ear and my team mates were jubilant.

As I said before, I have no recollection of the final outcome of that match, but this particular dismissal stands out in my mind.

Spinners have a rich set of variations in their armoury - googly, 'doosra' or the wrong 'un, flipper, slider etc. For the fast (or gentle medium) bowlers, there is nothing like a good slower 'un.

Come September

First time I came across this phrase was when the movie 'Raja' was released and the songs of that movie were doing their rounds on the countdown charts.

The 'Nazarein milin dil dhadka' song in this movie was supposed to have been inspired (read lifted) from the title song of the movie 'Come September'. Wikipedia has some interesting material on Bobby Darin (including an unconfirmed entry stating that the name Darin was picked from a faulty restaurant sign reading [Man]Darin Duck) , the composer of the original as well an actor in the movie. 'Raja' was also the debut movie for Sanjay Kapoor who, thankfully, did not get to display his 'raw talent' for long.

September, of course, kicks off a whole slew of Indian festivals. Janamashtami, Ganesha, Dussehera and , arguably the biggest of them all , Deepavali. Sometimes Onam falls in September as well but because all these festivals are actually based on the lunar calendar, their exact occurence on the Gregorian calendars changes from year to year.

जो बोया सो डुबाया

एक कहावत ही लगती है "जो बोया सो पाया"
क्योंकि हमने तो है जो बोया सो डुबाया ||

दो वक़्त की रोटी, तन पर कपड़ा और सर पर एक साया
पकवानों और महलों पर ना कभी ये जीं ललचाया ||

कर्जे कि ज़मीन को अपने पसीने से सींचा और जान लगाकर हल है चलाया
कभी नकली बीजों ने, कभी असली बारिश ने तो कभी सेठों और दलालों ने है कहर ढाया ||

अपने बाप और भाइयों को बारी बारी है गँवाया
अपनी इज़्ज़त कि अर्थी को भी इन्हीं कन्धों पे है उठाया ||

ऐसी ज़िन्दगी ने ही मौत कि सूली पर है चढाया
मौत ने भी सिर्फ कुछ आंकड़ों को ही बढाया ||

दर-ए-जन्नत से आवाज़ आई - "बन्दे, तूने जो बोया सो पाया"
मालिक लेकिन हमने तो जो बोया सो डुबाया ||

और एक सवाल दिल में उभर कर है आया
इस जन्नत को ज़मीन पर लाने का है कोई उपाया ?

MetaPost Four lanes of misery

Where did this come from ? Not much to guess here. A frustrated driver feeling miserable - watching people shamelessly filling up the wrong sides of roads.

"India lives in its villages" said Gandhi.

I think in the 21st century "India will on its roads". People would have migrated from villages settle along the road sides while the rest of us will be stuck in traffic on the roads !
I am sometimes amazed that many of us still manage to be sane after all the crazy driving on the roads !!