VERSUS

Nothing can equal the joy of reading a good book- not even its visual adaptation as a movie. With the exception of "Gone With the Wind" (which lasted about 5 hrs), no movie that I have seen could bring me the pleasure that its paper and print version brought.
"Angels and Demons" was one such disappointment. But looking at things from a broader perspective, I realized that I must simply convince myself with what was shown. The makers of the film would have met with several restrictions. After all, in today's world where a single word which may not necessarily have been meant to be offensive can easily affect the religious sentiments and result in violent reactions, handling such a tender subject as the pope's liking for the biological science and his not sticking to chastity on the screen would be a serious issue. Theatres might have even refused to screen the film. Also, the palaces in Vatican City could not have been shot easily without several permits and papers involved. There was also the time restriction the makers felt that they must stick to. No longer do people want to watch long movies like "Gone With the Wind".
The reason for the pope's murder will be a puzzle to the viewers who have not read the book. There have been many unnecessary omissions in the storyline like CERN Director's character, Langdon's visit to CERN, the drag theory (that reduces the impact of fall) that I was very much interested in while reading the book and Langdon's use of the theory to save his life shortly before the climax.
Still, I would not consider this film as a waste of two hours. Whatever was shown, was shot and shown well.
Bottomline: Pen is mightier than not only the sword, but also the screen.

Some more of the woRld seen by the dwarf...

A lick of the cream-
The not so tasty cream-
She has had.
Lick, perhaps, a misnomer;
Look, would be ideal.

The cream, not a dessert,
Is the meal-
A meal made of sweat and slog,
Seasoned with feuds cold,
Bound with practised tact.

Hunger and thirst she saw
In the diners' faces.
The cream they ate
Sated their hungry wallets.
Skinny men sported obese pockets.

The bland cream will be eaten,
In place of the spicy meal
Of zealous work using talent,
As long as there exists the
Malicious craving for mere paper.

Road Speak

A nigger of sorts,
Made of tar,
I lie everywhere,
Witness to the life that
Bustles on me- and
Occasionally ends on me.

A million wheels converse
With me any day;
The contraptions they propel-
Are they dragons, I wonder-
Exhaling, not fire, but air-
Air that kills!

Fluids spring on me-
Those of beetel and of phlegm.
My counterparts abroad
Are exempted from this,
But I don't envy them,for
They are not as entertained as me.

Variety in life, I can talk about.
For I see the millionaire in his car
As well as the pavement-resident pauper.
Neither is entirely happy.
The former fears his business rivals
And relishes his six-digit profits.
The latter fears his kid starving another night
And relishes his two-digit daily wage.

Tall buildings grow on both my sides,
Stacked upto the sky, they appear!
Congested homes and work places
In these stacks exist.
I do hate these stacks, for,
They have taken away my companions-
My friendly and ever protective trees.

An onlooker of Life and Death-
I will live on, unfazed,until
The next group of men and machines
Dig me up for multifarious needs
And restitch my torn being.
A bump-filled life will then resume.

The woRld as seen by the dwarf

She is tiny. A kid- many call her. She feels so, too. Her tiny feet take their first step in the vast campus filled with giant-size buildings and busy people. She is guided well, taught the etiquette to be followed in office. Still she is not sure if she can fit in.
Her self-built confidence guides her on. She is taken through various glass doors and turnstiles that won't budge unless a valid ID is shown. She is asked what project she wants to do. She mumbles that she is still a student and wants to learn instead of work. She waits for an hour outside a cabin. She feels ignored. Restlessness, anger and impatience seep through her. She regrets having come to the big place alone. She draws a clumsy cartoon. She forces herself to keep calm and at last, her patience is awarded.
She is taken to a learning center and allotted courses to learn. In all eagerness, the little dwarf signs up even for a course that she has no idea about. But the path is made smooth for her from now. She realizes that she can make friends with strangers in a matter of minutes! She is introduced to friendly and helpful instructors.
Her classes begin. She is late by half an hour for the very first class! Her once-upon-a-time-class rep- mind cooks up a tangible excuse before entering the room. But luckily for her the class has not yet started. There is an introductory session. Then the teaching begins. She is amazed that she isn't sleepy at all during a class ( only on the first day though! ). She is eager to learn the course, which, the instructor feels, might be above her level of understanding. She makes an effort to relate the stuff with her little knowledge.
While our little dwarf works on her notes with her very basic knowledge of flip flops and registers, the rest use terms like BST BSC MSC etc. to discuss over-the-dwarf's-head-transmitted-topics!!! Well, she manages to relate to them in as clumsy a way as possible. But her instructor and co-learners are friendly and helpful to the core. At least, the dwarf is happy to see an instructor who can speak about modulation, transmission, reception etc. without having to read them out directly from a book. :p
Even as she types now, she is laden with guilt for not trying to go through the incomprehensible topics. But she is lazy. Nothing can change that. She concludes by asking the patient readers to hope that she is able to cope up and successfully finish her tiny tenure in this colossal campus (where she tends to get lost daily)!!
Some more of the dwarf's view's will be posted soon... :)

Identity Crisis Wonderfully packaged among printed alphabets

I did not have any expectations as I opened the cover to start reading it. But once started, I always expected to return to it after any break in between the reading process. Even after finishing the 290-something page novel, I kept thinking that I must get back to the book to read more of the story.
That was "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri. A simple tale, I'm tempted to write. But it's not as simple as it seems - a story of an NRI family bringing up their children born abroad - rather, the story captures the emotions of a boy, born in Boston to orthodox Bengali parents, who tries to identify himself among the society.
He outwardly feels American because of his peer group and the environment he grows up in. But the Indian emotions in him are brought to the fore under circumstances like his father's death.
The story is a beautiful portrayal of the dilemma faced by the so-called ABCDs ( American Born Confused Deshis ). It picturises the disastrous combination of an Indian heart and an American mind.
A must-read for all NRIs and their children!

Chug-Chug Chalte!!

"I don't want you to panic but just try to get into it as quick as you can. You have hardly 10 seconds to do it.." - My aunt who gave me a tip ( a very useful one at that) on boarding a Mumbai local train.

We cross three railway lines ( something I am perpetually scared of! ) and then take a position on the platform that is accurately calculated so that a compartment's door would conveniently halt right in front of us when the large creature comes speeding in. The long and fast creature which is made of steel, covered with dirt and grime, brimming with passengers exceeding the designated capacity, finally comes to a stop in front of us, not more than a minute late than the scheduled time of arrival, which is actually very good, to my Indian senses. We rush in and find comfortable rungs to hold onto if we don't get the uncomfortable seats to sit on( uncomfy coz a minimum of 4 sit on a seat which would be just fine for three medium sized people).

What an interesting pastime it is, to just people-watch in the train. You really get to know the meaning of "variety" there. The youth in their 20s would be busily fidgeting with their cellphones. The middle aged men read newspapers or magazines. Of the middle-aged women, some read, some comb their hair, some even carry over part of their domestic chores ( like cutting up vegetables ) to the train! The old men would be discussing politics. There are also the occasional visits of the needy who sing and try to earn whatever meagre amount that is possible.
Here, I noticed a clear portrayal of the "survival of the fittest" theory. Be it in the rushing forward to grab the quarter of the seat that is empty, or in the rush to exit the train, escaping the upstream flow of commuters, within the ten seconds' time, only the smart ones win. The ones who are too kind and polite will have to stand in the milling crowd and get down probably a couple of stops later.

In my city in Tamilnadu, where I commute by bus to and from college, there are some unwritten protocols to be followed, especially by youth of my age. Whenever an elderly person and you wait to occupy the single seat which is to be vacated, the elder gets the privilege. We, in general, do not ask two strangers who are comfortably seated on a two-seater to budge so that we can partly sit.
Of course, if I were subjected to the harrowing experience of a daily train-travel in a city like this, I would know no protocol whatsoever.
Still, it was amusing to see these people of whose kind I've not so far seen in my city's buses.
Also there is this sensation, immediately after exiting the railway station, of being completely dirty because of the sweat produced by my own glands and also because of the presence of too many other homo sapiens with absolutely perfect-functioning sweat glands in the surrounding.

I must give a great big KUDOS to the Mumbaikars who brave this experience twice daily!!
They do have the never-say-die attitude! CHEERS to all these guys n gals n uncles n aunts!!

I'M BACK!!

Here I am, a half-engineer now, to restart my blabbering.. :)
Looking back into the past month, I find there have been several bloggable(well the spell-check feels that this word coined by me is important enough to highlight it in red! :) ) events going on..
Let me devote this post to the election-fever as it won't last for long from now.. :)
With shoe-hurlers, hit-backers, gudiyas, budiyas, iron men, weak ones and several great HISTORIANS (coz they know nothing other than raking up the past atrocities of their opponents in charge) in the fray, the campaign for the election to the Lok Sabha has been a rare combination of a drama that is simultaneously funny and sad.
Funny because I recognise the semblance between the political-ally changes and a game we used to play in our school days- it was called sea/shore wherein we jumped on to a towel when the moderator called out "sea" and onto the ground when she called out "shore" - here too the moderators aka the party heads call out "sea" or "shore" and the party leaders and workers jump accordingly- probably the only difference between that harmless game and this political game is that the moderator there was not paid crores to call out sea/shore.
Sad because, these days, the meaning of democracy can be found only in the civics textbooks and the dictionaries. I was given to understand that democracy means "a govt. of the people, by the people and for the people". I guess I must get back to my civics textbook and add the adjective "rich and powerful" to all those three "people"s in the definition.I hate comparing my India with any other country but I just cannot avoid looking at USA where the two candidates for the top post had a debate on the progressive measures they would take up in their country if voted to power. Here, we see two of our many hopeful PMs having a war of words over past issues dating back to more than 20 yrs ago. I do sympathise with all victims of riots however long ago they may have occurred but why bring up the issues during each election?? The people are sick of the prolonged trials and blame-games.
One classic example to prove that the so-called leaders don't actually care for the people as much as they seem to-- last week a friend and I were waiting to board a bus after the forenoon session's exam. The bus stop has neither a tree nor any man-made shelter for us to take shelter beneath. Three political parties' convoys passed us by, campaigning for their candidates. Not even one stopped to think that instead of just giving us pamphlets promising LPG pipelines or water services or sanitation or flyover construction, we, with our almost melting heads, at that point would have very much appreciated an on-the-spot promise of shelters in all such important bus stops frequented by students at almost every hour of the day. They were just mechanically speaking what they had rehearsed. There was no ability to sense what the people were actually feeling. Of course, they were frequently provided with cooling and rejuvenating drinks and snacks. So the problem of the commoner would not occur to them.

Ah! Now coming to the entertainment part of the elections'09.. This year the shining stars of this hot season are not the celebrities (who contest just for the sake of a party win and never turn towards the Lok Sabha again) .. The stars or rather the people who seem to be enjoying a lion's share of the media's attention are, of course, the great shoe-hurlers of India!
It all started on December 14th 2008- an Iraqi journalist hurled both his shoes ( which is very sensible, as it is difficult to walk with just one shoe, that too while being dragged away by the police :-p)... Then at Cambridge University the Chinese president faced a shoe from a student. While we Indians were distant viewers of these "exciting incidents", our own Jarnail Singh entertained us with his hurling of a shoe at the current HM Mr.Chiambaram. He was let out in a few hours after a simple apology. This encouraged our hot-blooded countrymen to vent out their feelings through footwear. A school principal threw his slipper at Mr. Advani. Then an attention-seeking youth aimed his shoes at Dr.Manmohan Singh. Then Mr. Advani faced another footwear(I don't remember if it was a shoe or a slipper :) there have been too much for my tiny brain to store).
The string of shoe-hurling events denote nothing other than the people's impatience with the leaders. They know that whoever comes to power, the evils that surround us are not going to be gotten rid of. This is their way of expressing their frustration. And blogging such mokkais is my way of expressing my frustration, for, I do value my shoes :)