The only upshot of insomnia? Gives you time to update your long neglected blog.
Insomnia is a parallel consciousness, like being on drugs. You toss and turn all night and wake up exhausted. You're worried about falling asleep at the wheel while driving. You eat too much or too little. You try to exercise way more than is necessary or advisable, but end up feeling sore and cannot sleep anyway. You're irritable in the mornings and dread the nights. One moment you are full of energy and the next moment you feel like digging a hole in the ground and burying yourself.
What is probably worse is all the extra hours in the day that you have to fill up. There is only so much you can read and only so many long drives you can go on. After a while you are left alone with your thoughts, which is not a good place to be.
Now where was I on the sheep count.......
Friday, October 16, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Monday, April 06, 2009
Sport update
--Can anyone make sure the insufferable Man Utd NOT win the league and the European Cup? Anyone, anyone other than them. EVEN LIVERPOOL. Yes, there I said it.
--For heaven's sake, Barca, don't bail on me now. Not another season of the Madridistas winning all.
--Yay for a series win in NZ. All the years of enduring painful overseas tours might just be coming to an end. Maybe.
--John Buchanan comes up with a nutty multiple captain theory ( whats new?) . Sunil Gavaskar goes mental. Shahrukh Khan responds. Too much fun. Made my weekend.
--LA Lakers to win it all this time. How much more suffering will you give me, Knicks? However Kobe vs. Lebron will be good to watch.
--Dhoni, dear boy, you are one heck of a captain. But you make my eyes bleed when you bat. Can you please learn some new shots?
--How crazy is Sehwag? Probably not anywhere near as much as Harbhajan.
--IPL starts soon enough. However apalling the format, however obnoxious the principal characters (Modi, Mallya), however crazy the decision to play in SA (just for the TV money), lets hope Bangalore make a match of it this time.
--Sachin is in his 20th year in international cricket. Wow.
--For heaven's sake, Barca, don't bail on me now. Not another season of the Madridistas winning all.
--Yay for a series win in NZ. All the years of enduring painful overseas tours might just be coming to an end. Maybe.
--John Buchanan comes up with a nutty multiple captain theory ( whats new?) . Sunil Gavaskar goes mental. Shahrukh Khan responds. Too much fun. Made my weekend.
--LA Lakers to win it all this time. How much more suffering will you give me, Knicks? However Kobe vs. Lebron will be good to watch.
--Dhoni, dear boy, you are one heck of a captain. But you make my eyes bleed when you bat. Can you please learn some new shots?
--How crazy is Sehwag? Probably not anywhere near as much as Harbhajan.
--IPL starts soon enough. However apalling the format, however obnoxious the principal characters (Modi, Mallya), however crazy the decision to play in SA (just for the TV money), lets hope Bangalore make a match of it this time.
--Sachin is in his 20th year in international cricket. Wow.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Its a brand new ( blogging ) day
Its been a while since I blogged. So, as I sit here watching this T20 India - NZ game, I am going to type out some random, unorganized and incoherent thoughts.
Firstly, T20. Why the @#$$% is this damn format popular? Its even more boring than baseball. At least there is some minimal decision making in baseball (not that I understand it, but I've been told.Nowadays its probably which steroid to inject.) If this is the future of cricket, then count me out of your revenue stream, Mr Lalit Modi.
There goes Sehwag. Three sixes in the first three balls. I remember the first time I watched him. It was in Bangalore in'01 in the middle of my board exams against Australia. He hit 59, India made 316 and he was Man-of-match.My sister went for that game and I did not. Shastri interviewed him at the presentation and Sehwag asked for the questions to be addressed in hindi. Shastri is commentating on this game too. Bastard. Repeats the same cliches over and over again. "The teams are evenly matched so its going to be a cracking contest". Get a new line, will you? I want to watch the game with the mute button on. At least there is no Sunil "I am the last righteous man on the planet" Gavaskar on. Small mercies. What would we do without them?
Why can I remember random shit from 8 years ago and forget to file my taxes every day for the last month?
Taxes, which reminds me that I have started to earn a living since the last blog post. Yes, been employed for the last few months. And oh yes, graduated before that as well. And spent a month in NYC after graduation. You would think that I'd be happy with all that activity. Somehow I feel indifferent. Nothing moves me very much anymore. That's one of those arbitrary scary thoughts that keep popping into my head from time to time.
Back to the game though, India have lost 6 wickets in quick time. Yousuf Pathan is hitting sixes off Nathan McCullum. I have never watched either of them before. McCullum baits him by bowling the ball wider and wider and gets him caught on the boundary line. This is what passes for compelling cricket these days?
Oh no, my cup of tea is finished. Rats. Its 2.30 am. I want some more. I consume way too much caffiene.
I am staring at some work stuff, trying to get something done. i've been carrying the laptop home for the last few days to finish up on work. I haven't done a single thing. Probably wont't get anything done tonight. Shastri uses another one of his well worn lines about the Indian batsmen (irritatingly, he calls them batters) . According to him they are "going through the motions". *Sigh*. For once he is right. I have been doing that for a while now. I feel like I am stuck in a reality show, trying to play someone else, and then like those helpless contestants I am forced to watch myself. At least those shows end.....
But then some people can always cheer you up. Like Harbhajan. He turns his wrists in the manner of Laxman, if not the results and always finds the most comical way of scoring a run. He hits a ridiculous fine sweep for four off a seamer and then proceeds to lose his middle stump trying to repeat the shot off the last ball of the innings. 162 for India. That is very low apparently.
Zaheer and Ishant start well. Srinath called them the best opening attack in the world. What a good job Venkatesh Prasad has done. But NZ are slowly taking control now. Its a predictable game, chasing down a score and NZ are probably the best in cricket at executing prior plans. I have lost interest at this point and I am chatting with friends. Maybe I am the short attention span generation the marketing people are all talking about. So, if T20 does not hold my attention, whats next? Ten-ten? Five-five? One-one?
Anyhow NZ wins. Time to sleep. Tomorrow is a brand new day.
Firstly, T20. Why the @#$$% is this damn format popular? Its even more boring than baseball. At least there is some minimal decision making in baseball (not that I understand it, but I've been told.Nowadays its probably which steroid to inject.) If this is the future of cricket, then count me out of your revenue stream, Mr Lalit Modi.
There goes Sehwag. Three sixes in the first three balls. I remember the first time I watched him. It was in Bangalore in'01 in the middle of my board exams against Australia. He hit 59, India made 316 and he was Man-of-match.My sister went for that game and I did not. Shastri interviewed him at the presentation and Sehwag asked for the questions to be addressed in hindi. Shastri is commentating on this game too. Bastard. Repeats the same cliches over and over again. "The teams are evenly matched so its going to be a cracking contest". Get a new line, will you? I want to watch the game with the mute button on. At least there is no Sunil "I am the last righteous man on the planet" Gavaskar on. Small mercies. What would we do without them?
Why can I remember random shit from 8 years ago and forget to file my taxes every day for the last month?
Taxes, which reminds me that I have started to earn a living since the last blog post. Yes, been employed for the last few months. And oh yes, graduated before that as well. And spent a month in NYC after graduation. You would think that I'd be happy with all that activity. Somehow I feel indifferent. Nothing moves me very much anymore. That's one of those arbitrary scary thoughts that keep popping into my head from time to time.
Back to the game though, India have lost 6 wickets in quick time. Yousuf Pathan is hitting sixes off Nathan McCullum. I have never watched either of them before. McCullum baits him by bowling the ball wider and wider and gets him caught on the boundary line. This is what passes for compelling cricket these days?
Oh no, my cup of tea is finished. Rats. Its 2.30 am. I want some more. I consume way too much caffiene.
I am staring at some work stuff, trying to get something done. i've been carrying the laptop home for the last few days to finish up on work. I haven't done a single thing. Probably wont't get anything done tonight. Shastri uses another one of his well worn lines about the Indian batsmen (irritatingly, he calls them batters) . According to him they are "going through the motions". *Sigh*. For once he is right. I have been doing that for a while now. I feel like I am stuck in a reality show, trying to play someone else, and then like those helpless contestants I am forced to watch myself. At least those shows end.....
But then some people can always cheer you up. Like Harbhajan. He turns his wrists in the manner of Laxman, if not the results and always finds the most comical way of scoring a run. He hits a ridiculous fine sweep for four off a seamer and then proceeds to lose his middle stump trying to repeat the shot off the last ball of the innings. 162 for India. That is very low apparently.
Zaheer and Ishant start well. Srinath called them the best opening attack in the world. What a good job Venkatesh Prasad has done. But NZ are slowly taking control now. Its a predictable game, chasing down a score and NZ are probably the best in cricket at executing prior plans. I have lost interest at this point and I am chatting with friends. Maybe I am the short attention span generation the marketing people are all talking about. So, if T20 does not hold my attention, whats next? Ten-ten? Five-five? One-one?
Anyhow NZ wins. Time to sleep. Tomorrow is a brand new day.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Bangalore Imagined
Sometime back, there was a publication which caused a small flutter. Conveniently, the author had titled her short story collection "Red Carpet" and the media laid it out for her. Briefly Lavanya Sankaran ( the author) was hailed as the next R.K Narayan, whose response to this silly claim might have been to make Swaminathan run away from home rather than read "Red Carpet". It clearly is high praise, the appellation "the next R.K Narayan" which is why many writers aspire to it. Jhumpa Lahiri, for one, tries to replicate the same simplicity of prose and while her work is outstanding, it never comes close to R.K Narayan.
At the time I read a short excerpt from the book and decided it was a load of tripe. The fullness of time however coupled with a longing for all things associated with home, has a way of changing tastes. Once I got hold of this book I devoured it. The collection, of course is not anything to write home about. It reinforces the same caricatures about Bangalore and India in general. Billionaires and beggars, BMWs and buffaloes. The rest of us don't appear to register in Sankaran's mind. And irritatingly, all her characters seem to have the same names, Murthy and Swamy.
This terrible book notwithstanding, I have always wondered why there is little celebration of Bangalore in the arts. Calcutta has Satyajit Ray. Mumbai is the setting for many (mainly silly) movies. It has of course been eulogized in the works of Salman Rushdie and lately Rohinton Mistry (much superior to Rushdie, in my view). And Hyderabad, (formerly) quaint little Hyderabad, a city I have grown to like has been the setting for two of the best movies of the last 10 years, Hyderabad Blues and the brilliant inner city comedy, The Angrez.
It is doubtlessly true that Bangalore has gone downhill in the last few years. Bad planning, poor governance and a complete lack of interest from civic society (the voter turnout amongst the educated was dismal in the last assembly elections) have all contributed heartily to this malaise. Its easy to type out some banalities on how to effect change, but I feel stupid professing advice sitting in a foreign land, and anyhow I have nothing original to offer.
These problems, however should be more fodder for the discerning artist. Historically failure, squalor and despair have always provided better material for fiction. In any case, Bangalore's decline has been matched by other cities as well. Mumbai, a city I know well is stuck with huge infrastructural difficulties and has recently seen a surge in nativism. Calcutta is only now waking up from a 40 year slumber. Among major cities, only Delhi (small matter of 2 governments serving it) and Hyderabad (visionary chief minister) have made strides in the positive direction.
Internationally this is true as well, New York is no longer the paradise described in Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's". London, apart from being one of the most expensive cities to live in, is the hub and in many ways the origin of British football hooliganism.
And yet, all monsters attack New York in the movies. Some of the best novels of this decade have been set in New York. Marine Drive is still the most recognizable locale in Hindi commercial cinema. One of the better Indian novels of the last few years, despite reading like a Bollywood script at times is"Sacred Games" by Vikram Chandra,which is again set in Mumbai. This is all the more disappointing because Bangalore has long been held as the face of New India. While this may not be true, its hard to deny that no city has seen as much upheaval as Bangalore has over the last decade. Documenting this change in literature or cinema, could act as a mirror for understanding India's massive urbanization.
It is, of course true that a state with the maximum number of Jnanipath award winners might have already produced the definitive Bangalore novel in Kannada. However, those of us who fortunately or unfortunately think in English, this is small consolation. The translations , if available for vernacular literature are generally poor which kills the readers' interest. I have long wondered why we don't read more Tagore and Premchand in high school English curriculum.
So we wait. One of these days somebody will write about young boys taking off to Nandi hills in the middle of the night. An author might depict bored engineering students buying weed in B.K Nagar. Another could write about (mostly) vegetarian and adventurous lads sneaking out at night to search for beef in Shivajinagar. A filmmaker might even show what an IT job really means, something along the lines of Office Space.
Until then however, Bangloreans will be known for writing code and drinking beer, which, come to think of it, might not be such a bad thing after all.
At the time I read a short excerpt from the book and decided it was a load of tripe. The fullness of time however coupled with a longing for all things associated with home, has a way of changing tastes. Once I got hold of this book I devoured it. The collection, of course is not anything to write home about. It reinforces the same caricatures about Bangalore and India in general. Billionaires and beggars, BMWs and buffaloes. The rest of us don't appear to register in Sankaran's mind. And irritatingly, all her characters seem to have the same names, Murthy and Swamy.
This terrible book notwithstanding, I have always wondered why there is little celebration of Bangalore in the arts. Calcutta has Satyajit Ray. Mumbai is the setting for many (mainly silly) movies. It has of course been eulogized in the works of Salman Rushdie and lately Rohinton Mistry (much superior to Rushdie, in my view). And Hyderabad, (formerly) quaint little Hyderabad, a city I have grown to like has been the setting for two of the best movies of the last 10 years, Hyderabad Blues and the brilliant inner city comedy, The Angrez.
It is doubtlessly true that Bangalore has gone downhill in the last few years. Bad planning, poor governance and a complete lack of interest from civic society (the voter turnout amongst the educated was dismal in the last assembly elections) have all contributed heartily to this malaise. Its easy to type out some banalities on how to effect change, but I feel stupid professing advice sitting in a foreign land, and anyhow I have nothing original to offer.
These problems, however should be more fodder for the discerning artist. Historically failure, squalor and despair have always provided better material for fiction. In any case, Bangalore's decline has been matched by other cities as well. Mumbai, a city I know well is stuck with huge infrastructural difficulties and has recently seen a surge in nativism. Calcutta is only now waking up from a 40 year slumber. Among major cities, only Delhi (small matter of 2 governments serving it) and Hyderabad (visionary chief minister) have made strides in the positive direction.
Internationally this is true as well, New York is no longer the paradise described in Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's". London, apart from being one of the most expensive cities to live in, is the hub and in many ways the origin of British football hooliganism.
And yet, all monsters attack New York in the movies. Some of the best novels of this decade have been set in New York. Marine Drive is still the most recognizable locale in Hindi commercial cinema. One of the better Indian novels of the last few years, despite reading like a Bollywood script at times is"Sacred Games" by Vikram Chandra,which is again set in Mumbai. This is all the more disappointing because Bangalore has long been held as the face of New India. While this may not be true, its hard to deny that no city has seen as much upheaval as Bangalore has over the last decade. Documenting this change in literature or cinema, could act as a mirror for understanding India's massive urbanization.
It is, of course true that a state with the maximum number of Jnanipath award winners might have already produced the definitive Bangalore novel in Kannada. However, those of us who fortunately or unfortunately think in English, this is small consolation. The translations , if available for vernacular literature are generally poor which kills the readers' interest. I have long wondered why we don't read more Tagore and Premchand in high school English curriculum.
So we wait. One of these days somebody will write about young boys taking off to Nandi hills in the middle of the night. An author might depict bored engineering students buying weed in B.K Nagar. Another could write about (mostly) vegetarian and adventurous lads sneaking out at night to search for beef in Shivajinagar. A filmmaker might even show what an IT job really means, something along the lines of Office Space.
Until then however, Bangloreans will be known for writing code and drinking beer, which, come to think of it, might not be such a bad thing after all.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
You know you are a slob when......
10. You take out the trash when the apartment manager reminds you that the law prescribes jail time for starting an epidemic.
9. You do the dishes when you catch people wrinkling their noses as they walk past your window.
8. You open the freezer to find a dead cockroach.
7. You have a vacuum cleaner at home for 6 months and don't know how to operate the damn thing.
6. You don't find the movie "Joe's Apartment" bizarre, funny or disgusting.
5. You wake up in the middle of the afternoon so that you can avoid making breakfast.
4. You get up every day and thank Momofuku Ando, inventor of instant noodles.
3. You do a jig when you read research like this.
2. You passionately believe potato chips should be a cuisine.
And the clincher.....
1.This morning(late afternoon, rather) you woke up with chewing gum in your mouth.
MUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!
HELP!
9. You do the dishes when you catch people wrinkling their noses as they walk past your window.
8. You open the freezer to find a dead cockroach.
7. You have a vacuum cleaner at home for 6 months and don't know how to operate the damn thing.
6. You don't find the movie "Joe's Apartment" bizarre, funny or disgusting.
5. You wake up in the middle of the afternoon so that you can avoid making breakfast.
4. You get up every day and thank Momofuku Ando, inventor of instant noodles.
3. You do a jig when you read research like this.
2. You passionately believe potato chips should be a cuisine.
And the clincher.....
1.This morning(late afternoon, rather) you woke up with chewing gum in your mouth.
MUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!
HELP!
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Current mission statement
"The General, speaking one felt with authority, always insisted that, if you bring off adequate preservation of your personal myth, nothing much else in life matters. It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them."
-Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish a Room
Its better in fantasy land, isn't it?
-Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish a Room
Its better in fantasy land, isn't it?
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