Hobbies revisited...

In the routine corporate life that I have gotten into, I barely find time to keep my eyes wide open once i reach home, let alone pursuing my hobbies. Blogging,cooking and painting are some of the activities that I have seriously considered for devoting my time now.It is just since the past 3 months, I have taken a call to maintain a serious work life balance and not sacrifice my "real" self to a bunch of idiots. And this is a painting that i recently managed to complete which i had started around 6 months back. Its basically a painting along with some sequins stuck in a definte pattern and it definitely is not as simple as it looks. I was supposed to gift this to a friend on her wedding after neatly framing it. But now I plan to gift this on her first anniversary (yeah thats the time lag)!! And now that she has just bought a new house, I am sure that this would be the right choice..

P.S. Kindly ignore the quality of the pic

A TV's eye of Rural India...is it a case of losing focus?

There's a little Anandi being told to burn her books when she wants to study further, there's a village don called Ammaji trying to kill her daughter-in-law because she is pregnant with a girl child,there's a maid's daughter Ichcha who has sacrificed her love for the landlord's daughter, there's the age-old village-boy-coming-to metro-to-become-rich sagas which keep coming on television in the form of various daily serials and not to forget the repeated 3-4 hrs mega repeat telecast of the same on weekends in case any of us have missed to watch some episodes. In the TV industry, the TRPs which are the barometer for a serial's sucess, the above mentioned scenarios are the characters/serials with the highest ratings. The projection of rural India through these serials is ultimately to evoke sympathy, empathy,fury and a myriad of other emotions, thus trying to somewhere strike a chord with the sentiments that we Indians are known to have in abundance.
And when these characters become larger than life and when some mouth-gaping, avid serial watchers have been garnered for the same is when the big time moolahs are raked in by the producers through repetitive, incessant but succesful hammering on the human chord which makes it a rampant hit across all, irrespective of caste, creed, gender and religion. What are these people exactly trying to convey? How rosy or not-so-rosy is rural India? Are these the exact problems faced by them?
When we talk of a progressive India, we talk about rural electifrication, afforestation, literacy campaigns and the entire gamut of jargons of a bright future present in front of them. How much is exactly happening? Rural penetration in the real sense has happened only in the telecommunication and satellite TV medium and that too in a small manner. So many villages of India are still dark. So many out there still stuck in the landlord villianism. The eternal fight of classes, of good v/s evil, of women empowerment, of unavailability of basic necessities continues. And all anyone does sitting at home is be an amazing couch potato warming up their seats, feeling for the characters and going off to sleep. At the end of the day, it is not "their" reality and they have nothing to do with it. But there are real daily survival battles being fought out there and that is "their" reality.
I am after all a confused metro soul dissected between the print and visual medium representations of rural India trying to say just do not sit and clap, be the change in some small manner to someone...

A to Z Tag...

The easiest thing to write when one is in the warm up stage to start writing is a tag. I happened to stumble upon this tag, so just decided to go ahead and tag myself...
A. Attached or Single?
Single but Attached to friends and family.
B. Best Friend?
Two hands full, so that obviously becomes like 7-8 names to name which is a long list to be typed :)
C: Cake or pie?
Cake, cake and cake.....
D. Drink of choice?
Fresh fruit juices, lemon tea, cranberry breezer.
E. Essential item you use every day?
Basic necessities like food and clothing but along with that my cellphone :p
F. Favorite color?
Black and blue (please do not beat me up;) )
G. Gummy bears or worms?
Gee, Next question please....
H. Hometown?
For tracing back roots it would be Chennai but otherwise the place which i consider my home is undoubtedly Mumbai.
I. Favorite indulgence?
Shopping and movies.
J. January or July?
January cos that's the start of a new year.
K. Kids & their names?
Not given it a thought at all. If and when I do, this is the first place where I would be updating the same :D
L. Life isn’t complete without?
Experiences..
M. Marriage date?
Updation would be done when I decipher the same..
N. Number of Siblings?
N for None...
O. Oranges or Apples?
Is this a game we used to play in school holding hands?? Anyways, apples.
P. Phobias?
Watching horror movies
Q. Quotes?
"You can be bound in a nutshell and consider yourself to be the king of infinite space."
R. Reasons to smile?
Life, happiness, love.
S. Season?
The onset of rains,the smell of mud thereafter and a garam masala chai along the waves.
T. Tag people:
Be nice and tag yourself just like i did :p
U. Unknown fact about me?
I am shy.
V. Vegetable?
Bhindi
W. Worst habit?
Biting nails.
X. X-ray you've had?
Shoulders.
Y. Your favorite food?
Punjabi food, the choles, rajmas and the dal makhanis.
Z. Zodiac sign?
The ultimate balance...Libra!!
Thanks for your patience in reading this if you managed to reach 'Z'. :)

THIS IS IT....

It would be an understatement to say this but its a fact, watching a movie had such an impact on me that I thought I had to write a post on it after what almost seems like ages. The movie was "This Is It", a documentary on the rehearsals of the last Michael Jackson concert in London, a concert that sadly never happened. During childhood days, I never followed English songs that much until MJ arrived on the scene. His dance caught my attention first and then slowly his singing style and later the lyrics. It was a natural progression of sorts. And it was the music video era and the influence of his music videos during those times was phenomenal.
While watching this documentary, right from the word go I could sense what was called the MJ hangover. The principal dancers who got selected through rigorous auditions for the show, the guitarist, costumes and every department knew they were going to be part of something special, very special. The ecstasy was there, the heart beats palpable and the euphoria was mindblowing. The visual effects department had left no stone unturned to make it look world-class. And then it was upto the performer par excellence to set the stage on fire.
The Man in the Mirror says Jus Beat The Smooth Criminal,irrespective if he's Black or White and thus Heal the World...THIS IS IT..MJ ur fans Will Always Be There For You and they Just Can't Stop Loving You..
As each of these songs in the above sentence was rehearsed, I was only mesmerised. Two statements in the documentary which he says that made me emotional were " I wanna go higher and I trust you" and "I want you to shine here now" . Just goes on to show the respect he had for other artistes of the band and the crew members. A movie not to be missed, please go and watch if you wanna know what's liking what you do feels and looks like...
God Bless You MJ...and thanks for giving me the urge to write back...

Amusement....

I called out to you....
Used verses and crushed sentences...
Turned an infant....
And made hungering conversations...
I was trying to amuse you...

Tried to make sense of spontaneous outbursts...
Played the game of hurling back vices at each other...
For all your sins, I excused you...
My sins, I knew, would amuse you...

Sometimes I played the game of yes and no...
and no and yes and yes and no...
Sometime I said you were right...
And accepted I was wrong....
I lost but I could not lose you....
Victory, I thought, would amuse you....
I thought, I could, at least amuse you...

Colon Family...

The matriarchal or the patriarchal system has been followed in our country since ages. But with the PC becoming an eternal part of our lives nowadays, I have observed the folder hierarchy of late which prevails in the colon family.

Here the head of the family is obviously the well known C:, I'm almost sure that the person who devised it was weak in grasping alphabets as it doesnt begin from A:, which is given to floppy drive, which is almost obsolete now. The head of the family contains all the installations, programs, games and actually every garbage that's possible...so obviously it started getting burdened with all the responsibilities and whenever the PC used to get into coma, there was no chance of reviving it back. Then entered the concept of formatting in which each son was passed on exclusive businesses of C: as in D: became for songs, E: for games and so on..so that at least some type of plastic surgery could be performed and with certain operations , either of the colons could be revived.

Then came the eternal problem of naming the baby which took the form of folders, which not only has surname but 100 middle names and then its own name!!
D:\My Songs\Bunty Aur Babli\Chup Chupke.mp3
D:\My Songs\Kya Love Story Hai\Its Rocking.mp3
D:\My Pictures\Aby Baby\bluffmaster.jpg

When you actually look at the hierarchy, sometimes you come across hilarious combinations like the above. So if one child goes missing, its almost an endless search because even if one uses the "search" feature, there are kids with same name under different colon heads!!

A Tag After Long....

Till I get into the groove of writing posts, I thought let me tag myself for a change:p

ONE OF YOUR SCARS, HOW DID YOU GET IT???
Stitches on the forehead from banging against the wall in childhood. Subsequently I banged against a tree and got hurt at the same place and so went for restitching...its almost like two times lucky kinds;)

WHAT DO YOU WANT MORE THAN ANYTHING RIGHT NOW???
The rains to begin and the sveltering heat to subside.

WHAT DO YOU MISS???
My school days and the walks back home...drinking Gold Spot and eating Solo icecreams.

WHAT IS YOUR MOST PRIZED POSSESSION???
The bonds which I share with people who are close to me.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SMELL???
Smell of the first rains, nailpolish and shampooed hair.

DO YOU GET CLAUSTROPHOBIC???
Nope.

DO YOU GET SCARED IN THE DARK???
Not when I am at home. If I am outside and I am returning late then deserted streets or if I am passing through a graveyard, then I get an eerie feeling as if someone is following me.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE COLOGNE / PERFUME???
Si Bleu, Davidoff, Bvlgari, Poison.

COFFEE OR ENERGY DRINKS???
Energy drinks, basically fruit juices(dunno if they can be called energy drinks:p)

IF YOU COULD EAT ANYTHING RIGHT NOW, WHAT WOULD IT BE???
Chocolate brownie with vanilla icecream.

WHO IS THE LAST PERSON WHO MADE YOU MAD???
Cannot remember.

DO YOU SPEAK A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE???
Yes I do...have some words in English language itself which only some really close people can understand:p And ya I also speak my mother tongue, national tongue etc:p

WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO TELL SOMEONE HOW MUCH THEY MEAN TO YOU???
By being expressive.

SAY A NUMBER FROM ONE TO A HUNDRED:
19

BLONDES OR BRUNETTES???
Hehe...no comments!!

WHAT IS THE ONE NUMBER YOU CALL OFTEN???
4205

HAVE YOU BEEN OUT OF INDIA???
Nope.

WHERE WERE YOU BORN???
Aamchi Mumbai :)

FIRST JOB???
Was not what I was inclined towards.

WHAT DO YOU GET COMPLIMENTED ABOUT MOST???
Sense/no sense of humour, smile and expressive eyes.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF ALCOHOL BECAME ILLEGAL???
It wouldn't really matter to me.

WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY???
Cool pair of sunglasses...but I think I'll be getting them before that as I recently won a bet:p So it'll have to be a new cellphone.

HOW MANY KIDS DO YOU WANT???
Two.

WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE???
The festival of lights.

DO YOU WISH ON STARS???
Sometimes.

WHICH FINGER[S] IS YOUR FAVORITE???
The ring finger cos its said that it directly connects to the heart:p

DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING???
Yes, always used to win handwriting competitions:p

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT???
Im veggie.

ANY BAD HABITS???
Impatience and being blunt.

WHAT IS YOUR MOST EMBARRASSING CD ON THE SHELF???
None..i think.

IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU???
Most definitely.

WHERE IS YOUR SECOND HOME???
Pune.

DO YOU TRUST OTHERS EASILY???
Nope.

WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE TOY AS A CHILD???
Barbie doll:p

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN A MOSH PIT???
Nope...dont want to either!!

DO YOU UN-TIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF???
Nope...believe in saving some time the next day;)

THING YOU ATE???
Pani puri.

SIBLINGS???
Nope.

YOU LIKE SUSHI???
Yup.

ARE YOU TOO SHY TO ASK SOMEONE OUT???
Nope.

And now I know why I always found writing posts easier:p I think devising questions for tags isa lucrative profession nowadays....would love to know who exactly prepares the questions. Anyways I am not tagging anyone :)