forged, steeled
The eternal nights of promise,
The sunlight shimmers of hope,
The moments spent day dreaming,
The expectations of a better tomorrow.
Dont forget to smile,
As you live through the beauty,
That surrounds you today,
The sharpest swords, the towers of steel
Were all forged through fire.
The eternal flame of desire.
forged, steeled
The eternal nights of promise,
The sunlight shimmers of hope,
The moments spent day dreaming,
The expectations of a better tomorrow.
Dont forget to smile,
As you live through the beauty,
That surrounds you today,
The sharpest swords, the towers of steel
Were all forged through fire.
The eternal flame of desire.
Building up and knocking down
I am sitting right now at the offices of a client organization who prefer to locate themselves in the middle of a cacophony. Voices are drowned out, migraines are spawned and general irritability is encouraged among the loud noises emanating from construction activity ( as in the case of Bombay) or a scrap yard ( Delhi).
It is also ironic, while the Bombay office is surrounded by construction, renewal and regeneration. All that the denizens of the Delhi office see and hear are large hulks of metal being broken down by repetitive grinding and pounding.
I am re-united with the infamous duo (my friends would know who I am talking about) and both of them now sport counterfeit handbags. You can read an interesting articles on the people who sport such fake commodities here and here .
Other than moral issues, there is also the problem of low self-esteem that drives people to such blatant counterfeiting. Sigh
Have fun people. Be good!
Tweet Tweet
This is what you look like on twitter.
Yes, I am on twitter but I will admit that I have no love for the micro blogging service.
p.s : Happy New Year to everyone 
Risky Business
When we ride buses, we are pretty much the biggest animals in the jungle. We want to drive wild, knock into cars and other buses, play bumper cars. Why? Because we can, We are the brontosaurs who T-Rex cant mess with. We paid 10 bucks for the tickets to watch all this fun.
On the other hand, folks driving cars are nervous wrecks, I bought a spanking new set of wheels some months back and driving it around Delhi roads is feel like taking a lamb on a walk,in the Serengeti, surrounded by hungry lions. They’ll will eat it and rip you up ,for bonus points, before you know it. I should know, I have a scar on my car (that rhymed!) Who left it, I don’t know? What am I going to do about it, other than wallow in self pity? I don’t know. You see someone had a coming together with my beauty while I was away, there is little to do but wait till my first service when I get her all fixed up and looking like new. Then I will get back to being a nervous wreck, trying to avoid trucks, buses, other mad car drivers, auto rickshaws and pedestrians with one arm stretched ahead of them.
He is crossing the road, stop!
Yes, every guy on two feet in Delhi is armed with the force, the force to make cars stop with their bare hands. Its talk to the hand with a twist, all you see in your car is this guy talking on the phone who has decided it’s time for him to cross the road, the coming wave of cars be damned. He has found adequate room to step on the road so this is going to be it. Since multi-tasking is our forte, he uses one hand to talk on the phone, you, miserable car driver, are not worthy of his attention hence he keeps his gaze fixed upon the other side of the road, where he wants to be. It could also be the chick trying to get an auto wallah dude to stop but all said and done you speeding towards him get zilch, nothing, nada! However his other free hand is stretched towards you, talk to the hand if you want to. This free bird is going to cross the road. Sudden braking will cause a pile up behind you? Aww, suck it up, it’s your problem!
The dude at Tienanmen square was Indian
I am on the phone, I cant see anything because of my hat. I think I should cross the road. Talk to the hand!
What do you mean, "like"?
“When your car hits a pedestrian, speed kills. At 40 mph, the person almost always dies. At 25, they might live” Moral of the story? : Never drive below 40.
I am losing this game, thankfully
Pedestrians in Delhi are like Pavlov’s dogs, you spot them standing by the side of the road, having second thoughts about their impending suicide mission to the other side, and your first impulse is to warn them to not commit hara-kiri, at least to let you pass by before they do. You accomplish this by honking, as madly as you can, but to their conditioned ears this is the call to go. I know now from personal experience that as soon as you honk to demand your right of passage, somewhere inside the brain of the conditioned pedestrian a voice says “Run, motherfucker, run” and he runs.
Indians would conquer all athletic events if only the starting gun was replaced by an automobile’s loud horn. Usain Bolt, kiss our brown asses!
Some one honked. Idiot
The other challenges facing us on the daily drive to work are the auto rickshaws. If there was ever an award for steely resolve it would be awarded to the auto-rick driver. These things are driven by puny 100 odd cc engines and can carry 3 passengers excluding the driver; these aren’t exactly the fastest things on the road. Yet, the auto driver drives his three wheel “air conditioned” contraption at a constant speed of 35 kmph , bang in the middle of the frikking road! What’s worse? Auto drivers are deaf and have no peripheral vision, honking will not help, you will never get safe passage and the auto driver will test your reflexes by swerving into your lane at regular intervals.
Exhibit A :All auto drivers are douchebags
What could be worse? These three wheeled pests drive in formation, blocking all traffic behind them and forming a rolling speed barrier of sorts. Since they are all deaf and semi blind, no amount of honking, yelling or pleading would do.
You just have to be a bus. You wish you were in one.
Take that, bitch!
Some of them however, just wont die
Avatar : The review
Titanic (Tit-anic ) (1997) : I maintain to this date that the best actress oscar should have been awarded to Kate Winslet’s rack , not to Kate Winslet, as they made the movie worth watching for all men, who contributed an equal portion of the films grossing and had to bear with that awful Celine Dion song which later took a life of its own. Sigh.
Titanic had a simple story, broken down into bullet points for the benefit of our fortunate readers who do not remember watching the movie :
- Boy gets lucky – Lands tickets to an ill fated ship ( Lucky? yeah right)
- Boy meets girl
- Boy and Girl fornicate
- Shit happens
- Everyone dies
I imagine James Cameron wanted to return to making another movie to pay for a new island nation he wants to establish , south of Tahiti, he picked up his old manual for movie making. The script for Titanic.
Here is the story of Avatar for those who might be interested in that sort of thing,
- Boy gets lucky – gets to take part in a dangerous mission after his brother dies ( Lucky? Yeah right!)
- Boy meets girl
- Boy and girl fornicate
- Shit happens
- Everyone dies
My rating for Avatar, *****
Yeah, five stars. Didnt I just diss the movie? Not quite. The plot is overused and clichéd but that does not deter me from loving this movie one bit. Cameron has used a formula, alright. But there are vicious undercurrents, the plot is not deep but the analogies are profound, thought-provoking, challenging.
I can go on about the technical achievements of the film, I could rave on about how I was transported into this mystical world, about how this movie is this generation’s “Star wars” but its pointless. You have seen nothing if you have not seen the movie with your own eyes, be good to yourself and see the movie in 3D, the way it was meant to be seen. The Na’vi are very real, Pandora so very beautiful and Michelle Rodriguez is playing another tough female character. Wait, there is nothing new or wonderful about the last part.
And while you watch the movie, appreciate the simple story of conflict between cultures, conflict between man and nature. Our hunger for war and our ignorance of peace, James Cameron keeps it simple and sometimes simple says a lot.
Best review of 2012-the movie
“THAT’S what you call a happy ending?…You just DESTROYED THE PLANET and you want me to care that John Cusack is stuck in a water-filled compartment? Check, please. But at the end they had these few survivors prancing out of the ark onto new land and we’re supposed to be happy about this?”
In my opinion, the biggest disaster was the movie itself.
The laughs at the expense of the movie are worth the price of admission, though.
Cheers!
The Anatomy of a hit song
All hit songs (not all great songs, mind you) can be broken down into a certain formula. a bit of this, some of that and a bucket load of those, churn them together and voila! You have a radio hit ready to mint money for your record label
Yes, it is that simple.
To illustrate this point, I bring you the smash hit Free bird by the band known by most people for that one song sweet home Alabama, Lynrd Skynrd. I highly recommend you have the song ready to play , as you read this post.
I would post the youtube link for easy reference but we are breaking new ground here, this post is being typed and published via mobile and hyper-linking, unfortunately, is not supported.
So then, lets begin.
Pay attention to the first verse, the song begins with a gentle melody and the lead singer waxes on about how he cannot be chained, with the tempo, and possibly his temper, rising as the verse progresses. By the end of the first verse you realise that the song is already peaking. The songsmiths working with the band realised this as well and sent them back to add some more material.
Verse 2, the band works hard and essentially repeats the whole of verse one with slightly modified lyrics, its the same wine and the same bottle, but you are made to drink it via your nose.
By the end of the second verse, the writing is clear on the wall. This song is going to be just two verses of male angst and desperate proclamations of being a free bird.
Pause for a moment, as I assume the band and the producers did as well. A 3 something minute song with the same verse repeated twice! No body would ever buy this Shit!
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and boy were these times bad. The band looked to the guitarists, I presume, and said something to the effect of “fuck this creativity thing, we have no idea how to do this. Lets just fucking rock out”
And they did, and how! What you have at the end is an 8 minute song with 3 minutes used by one verse, sung twice, and 5 minutes of insane guitars.
That my friend is a radio hit. So why don’t you too go ahead and make your own radio smash hits using the formula that we learnt today.
Till then,
Cheers!
Lost in imagination
In the middle of a strawberry field. Perched on a swing.Drums and violins waft in the air. As I lose my sense of space and time, lost in a dream. Come, wont you give me a little nudge? O sweet friend of mine.
Cheshire cat
Little Angel, from a town called Geelong
Wears a grin, on her lips, she got from the devil
Miss red shoes, hazel brown eyes
A name, so easy to love
Scribblers