Some people i tell you. Impossible to please!

It struck me (again) when i was watching the Aman ki aasha ad on some TV channel, how easy it is to manipulate our feelings. Get the right words, good music, and you can make people feel anything! Granted, getting these two right is not easy, but its possible is my point.

Take the Delhi 6 ending for example. Remember the cringe worthy heaven scene at the end? What should have happened is that it should have left a bitter taste that should have spoilt the ending, if not the entire experience. But no, all they had to do is play Arziyan (Maula Maula) after that scene and i walked out of the hall inexplicably happy and content.

Or take the Aman ki aasha thing. With lyrics like

Nazar mein rehtey ho jab tum nazar nahin aatey
Yeh sur bulaatey hain jab tum idhar nahin aatey

you dont stand a chance! I felt like calling out to the people across the border! Dont get me wrong, i have nothing against them, but i know them not from Adam. I've heard the whole"we are the same people" argument, but that has never made me feel nostalgic, yes nostalgic about the good old times, which is what the song manages to do.

It irritates me. I dont like feeling like a puppet - play the right strings, get the right emotions. Oh but i do love the words! What i will have to do is to take the words, look at them from far far away, nod my head and say - hmm, they do fit beautifully into the context, all the time being very careful not to let them touch me. So much fun.

I wonder

(This is what a gtalk status message grew into.
Gtalk status - my twitter cum FB cum "shouting from rooftops")

What is it with songs that make you want to dance?
Even though you cant
Not with a gun to your head
Not even when no one's watching

What is it with books that make you want to lose yourself in them?
Become a ghost
Live between the words
Trapped and yet free

What is it about characters that brings them to life?
Touch, see, feel what they feel
The imaginary becomes real
As the world fades to black

How is it some people never really go away?
A hi five is all it takes
Time, space
and distance turn fake

After a trip to Landmark...

Existential crisis, existential angst, the unbearable unfairness of being or even plain old boredom, there is very little a good book cannot block.

And sometimes, that is all the cure there is.

How i met my card

Long long ago, in a land not far away, there lived people who had accepted being chased by credit card companies as part of their lives. While I am old enough to have lived and earned in those times, i escaped the persecution mainly by having my nose up in the air and not having a mobile phone. I used to go around feeling pretty smug about not having succumbed to a credit card. Then of course, Indian railways had to open up online train bookings, life had to make me travel by air, even the damn bus companies had to go online! And so, i had to get my nose down a little and go sniffing for credit card companies.

The first time i said yes to one of those random callers who are most anxious to offer you a card without even knowing your name, she fell off her chair. But then, she got off the floor, pulled it together and offered to send an "executive" to collect the documents. He came, he made me sign in a million places, he went. And THEN they realized that since they hadn't ever heard of the company I work for, it might not be such a bright idea to offer me use of their money. Yes. I was rejected. (I think i may be building something of a reputation in being rejected by the unrejecting. My two-wheeler was rejected for the Pollution Under Control certificate. Twice.) Which i found funny. So the next time one of them called, i said - I have already been rejected by a bank as not being safe enough. Are you sure you want to offer me your card? Which led to uncomfortable silence of the most delightful kind. The fun wore off though when i had to go around begging for credit cards.

So this time, i took their call seriously. Shamelessly told them i wanted one. Fully cooperated. Gave them all the necessary documents after only 3 postponements. Cheerfully tolerated their extensive verification process which basically involved contacting me via 300 different ways and asking me the same questions. Probably in the hope that one out of those 300 times i might slip up and give them the wrong date of birth or marital status. While it isnt over yet, they do seem to have exhausted ways of getting to me. Do you see the horizon there? One of these days when the sun comes up on that horizon, it'll bring my card along.

And that makes me ask. What will it mean to me? How will it change my life? I've always maintained that i'd make a terrible customer to them companies. I dont buy impulsively, the only things i do buy and are books and occasionally clothes, shiny things on the Internet dont tempt me. But there might be a hole in my defenses i'm beginning to glimpse on the same horizon. The next time Jimmy Wales personally asks me for money for Wikipedia, how can i refuse? Or Dave Freer for that matter. He is an SFF writer based in Africa who has decided to emigrate with family and pets to Australia. While moving the humans is no problem, it seems the pets will need to be quarantined and the cost for that comes to a ridiculous 25000 dollars! They dont have the money and so he has decided to put up chapters of his book "Save The Dragons" as and when people pay for them. I finished reading all the paid-for chapters that have been put up, and i think that is where i'm going to Shree Ganesh my card. Not because i'm that fond of pets, but because i'm ridiculously fond of SFF. And Save The Dragons is awesome. At least the 22 chapters i read are.

P.S. Got the Dave Freer story from Whatever, which apart form general entertainment, is an awesome place to discover new SFF. Especially the Big Idea posts, where he gets new authors to come and talk about the idea behind their books. They make me itch, most of them, they are that interestingly written. If there was a big flashing button there that said "Buy and this shalt be delivered at your doorstep", i cant think of too many things that would stop me from clicking on it.

Attack of the withdrawal symptoms

Like Sunday evenings arent bad enough by themselves, i am having to battle severe withdrawal symptoms. These stem from three causes and in decreasing order of potency are:

1. The end of Sports Night
Another Sorkin series discovered on youtube. The man can write and how! Someday i'm going to meet him and hit him on the head head for ruining conversations for me. Nothing will ever match up. The series, its not perfect, its preachy in parts, people are too nice, but they are in my head and. Will. Not. Get. Out. I dont know how authors do it, i just dont. Live, sleep, breathe their characters for years and then move on. I finished the show in a week and yet i sit here feeling like someone has died. Like lots of people have died.

2. The end of Hyperion series
He makes you work hard for the first hundred pages or so, but man, is it worth it! Its about a group of "pilgrims" on their visit to the Shrike, a killing monster or avenging angel depending on which religion you come from. Each pilgrim shares his/her story of why they are going to see the Shrike. One (well, okay, two) book with so many stories, each so powerfully written. The book has more than its share of unexplained scientific jargon and a million things you are expected to accept and move on, but the end ties up the loose ends better than i've come to expect from a science fiction novel.

3. The end of my almost two week long vacation
That i had to take otherwise my leaves would have expired. And i took because i havent learnt to ask - so what. I've rediscovered that i handle change quite okay. I dont miss office on my first day of holidays. From day one, its like i've always lived the holiday life. And tomorrow when i show up at work, it'll be like i never left at all. Its only the transitions that bum me out. A lesson that should give me courage to face bigger changes in life that i'm running away from because of the fear of transition. But doesnt.

Its nine o clock on a Sunday, too early to sleep, too late to start something new. I feel empty inside.

And now for some unseasonal corniness

''Can you really have friends in office", my cousin asked me as he was leaving. He will be out of college in 6 months. While i was thinking, awww, another kid all growed up, he added, "I mean, they can only be colleagues right?"

I had a sitcom style flashback in which i went over all the "moments" with people from both my first jobs. Well okay, it was only a couple of moments then, but now that i have all the time in the world to write and you, apparently, have nothing better to do, i shall elaborate.

Or not. There is corny and then there is corny. Enough to say that work people, and this is going to be a really long sentence, in spite of my best attempts at ignoring them with silence, jokes and frosty nosed stares, barge or politely knock their way into my life and demand to know what the hell am i doing with it, thus providing much needed moments of introspection and shame, which i hope will someday add up to me getting off my backside and doing something. They bring good ideas beyond work to life, i cannot tell you how satisfying and empowering that is. They read my books and on behalf of my books i am very grateful. What a waste it would be if all of a book's life was about being read by me. Just me. Imagine the size of that existential crisis! If i cannot give them quality, i can at least do quantity!

Its been over 5 years since i worked in the same workplace with the folks at my first first job and so i can safely say its not a same-place-same-time kind of relation. So i told him, "YES, you can have friends in office. I dont know about your second/third job, i suppose it will get difficult as you move higher, but at your first job, you will find friends."

Obligatory whiney year end post

Heroes season 1 comic
Superman For Tomorrow - Vol 1 and 2
My Laptop
A hard disk full of entertainment
The Fall of Hyperion

It takes all that to make me feel safe enough to go spend a day with my granny. Didnt need to go beyond the first two, but thats not the point. Common sense says there has to be a life beyond books and movies. After all, so many people around survive, if not flourish, without either. Whoever is hiding that world from me (of course i have to find someone to blame!) is doing a damn good job of it too. Showing me all the unattractive or impractical alternatives - malls, pubs, friends, work, family, travel - any of which can fill, but none of which fulfill.

Day 3 of my "take it or leave it" vacation. Existential crisis looms large. Some big gesture is in order to see me through the other side of this one.

Breaking news

I might have been on TV!

Okay, okay, i'll rewind.

After staring in a film (which finally released a few weeks ago, but not me nor any of the 5 folks who were with me in it managed to get it together to go see it. Are we in it? I guess we'd rather not know), it looks i'm now broadening my horizons with television. The economic Times news channel did a short piece on my office that was telecast at 1 today, but we dont get that channel at home. Is that my curse? Not being able to see my "work"? And how did i get to probably star in it? You get to decide!

A. I am an indispensable part of my office. I am its spirit. I am it.
B. When i work, i embody the image of a software engineer with the source code to change the world.
C. They were shooting at lunchtime and i was back early from lunch.

So, for reasons A,B or C, the camera was pointed at me.

Oh damn, he's on to me. Act natural, remember, act natural and smile. Wait, smile while looking at the screen? Thats not natural. Okay, no smile. What am i looking at? Did i write this code? Look silly to me. Dont just stare blankly, use your fingers! Let them fly over the keyboard, let the screen fill up with the fruits of your labour. Aaha, compile the code! Brilliant. Yes, now raise your eyebrow at that non-existent compile error. Very good. Now go tail -f some logs. Frown at the messages filling up your screen. I dont care if they are saying all is well. Frown at them as some minor character in a movie would frown at some innocent looking aberration that will ultimately herald the end of the world. Dont smile, dammit. Dont twitch either. Aah, finally he is off my face! And on to my fingers now? Really?? Our office ought to have better to offer than my fingers. See all these wires on my desk? And under my desk. Why dont you take a shot of me in the middle of all this mess? Oh your viewers will not get the irony of a company into wireless being filled with wires? Okay my fingers have run out of polite things to do. Can we move on now? Thank you!

There is a repeat telecast sometime tomorrow, but i'm not likely to catch that either. So i guess we'll never know. Moving on to the bigger picture though, the universe seems to have compressed my burst upon the film scene - rise to be the reigning queen - grow old but refuse to go out - move on to television career graph to the span of a year. Looks like the next step of moving on to reality shows will come pretty soon! Inspired by this tweet, i think i'll sign up for KKK! The supreme commander of the armed forces versus the unknown underdog. Aah, what a story that will be! With a nail-biter finish where the underdog wins because of her natural tree-climbing skills. And then refuses to come down and lives happily on it ever after.

Rambling. About work for once

That bug, it is a silly mistake but it cuts deeper than it should. I spend hours wondering how I could be dumb enough to have missed something so obvious. For that day, i'd like nothing more than to go into the past and not make it. Or baring that, go back into the past and hit the me there on the head.

Or the day I roam around in wide eyed amazement, having watched the master at his very best. No traces of the wistful sigh that comes from knowing you are not made for those heights but wanting to get there anyway.

Or the day spent chasing a tricky little issue, preferably someone elses. The thrill of the chase, the fun in pitting our collective brains against the code, the frustration at being almost but not quite there and the pleasure in finally nailing it.

Such days make me wonder - do i after all love what i do? Not the kind of love that announces itself with a bang. But the kind that creeps up on you and envelopes you without your realizing it.

Somehow, I dont think so. For one, such days are too infrequent. And there is very little that is free flowing, its more hard work/discipline and less inspiration/creativity. For another, the idea of spending the rest of my life in this profession still scares the hell out of me. To be fair though, the idea of anything for the rest of my life is scary. (Its a little bit like looking through Adams Total Perspective Vortex. Only, instead of you being dwarfed by the rest of the Universe, you are dwarfed by the rest of your life and the idea of managing it.). One day at a time, i can live with. But then, that is not saying very much. As life has shown with exceptional clarity, there is very little i cant live with, one day at a time.

Talking about the weather

Since i havent classified anything in a while. I've often tried to slot the people in my life into two groups which i shall name fair weather friends and, rather imaginatively, foul weather friends. Not in any way related to the usual sense if any, in which these terms are used.

Fair weather friends are those with whom you like to "hang" in fair weather. When the going is good, they make it better. You enjoy the same things, you laugh at each other's jokes. They are the ones you miss during the good times.

And then there are foul weather friends. People you want when the going gets tough. Who encourage you, advise you, motivate you or just listen. The world feels a lot less worse when they are by your side.

And then of course are the people who defy classification. The people who carry your weather with them. They can make the sun come out on a rainy day. Or cause thunder showers in summer. The ones who evoke such strong reactions from you, you wish you knew why.

My goodbye present

Thats it. My last "girlfriend" is getting ready to leave the country. To whatever/whoever is responsible for this exodus, i'm telling you, i wont let it be. Do you hear me? My people in England, France and god knows what all places in you yes yay, beware. Someday i'll come to each one of these countries and get you all back to mine.
Where i shall as usual continue to not keep in touch, but thats neither here nor there. I want my people in my country!

A hard night's day

The office van spat him out. He dragged himself up the two floors of his building. Opened the door and sleepwalked straight to the kitchen. Where she had left him breakfast with a Note. That woke him up. Like everyday.

Good morning da!

Heat it before you eat it. Add you clothes to the machine and switch it ON. Or else, we shall be wearing our wedding clothes to work tomorrow. Latest Heroes (yuck) streamed on the PC.

He settled down to Heroes. Reheated breakfast in hand, hum of the washing machine in the background. He felt loved.

I'm feeling postitve

I missed a step and tore a ligament. Yeah the same one again. One basketball coach used to yell out butter fingers whenever someone let slip a pass they shouldnt have. I now have my own contribution to add to the colourful description of human body parts. Crepe paper ligaments. That tear even on a change in wind direction. Or the flapping of a butterfly's wings. It isnt anywhere as torn as the last time though, so i get away with crepe bandage and no running/jumping/skipping.

So i decided not to be a hero, not to go to work with a limp as if my putting a semi colon was going to save the world. I decided to work from home. I got off to an early start too, before the state electricity board decided to step in. They cut off power for the whole damn day and when asked why, said it was Thursday, like that explained everything and how dumb could one be for asking. So i couldnt work from home, i couldnt entertain myself from home, i certainly couldnt not be at home. The day could have been awful but i had the Big Bang by Simon Singh (who is now my new rock star) for company and of course afternoon sleep. I realized something during the course of the day. Here i am, on an unscheduled leave, and it doesnt bother me, it doesnt affect my work, it doesnt affect anyone else at work or probably anyone else in the world! While it should have made me feel about this big and made question my role in the scheme of things and left me generally depressed, it didnt. People, or at least I, dream of having a life they can take a break from whenever they feel like one and come back to it and for it be like they never left. Or, because i've been reading about spacetime and would like to show off, primarily to the future me, i dream of being light enough to cause minimal distortion in the spacetime around me. So i can walk off to another part of the universe and not have planets plummet into each other or fly off into space. Today, at a very micro level, was about that.

Onto books now

The first time i came across Neil Gaiman was at the science fiction section at Landmark. He was sold to me by a 6 footer who wouldn't touch books with a 7 foot pole. Big name in the comic world, he wrote Sandman, don't you know? Huh? I bought it anyway. Anansi Boys. It came with a lot of praise and a Hugo nomination that the author declined, say. I could barely finish it. It was one of those rare books i had to skip the middle to get to the end of.

My next one was American Gods (which Wikipedia now tells me might have been a prequel to Anansi Boys!). Hugo and Nebula award winner. I couldn't read past one fourth of that one. I went around feeling ashamed of myself. I couldn't finish his books. What was wrong with me??

The third one was The Graveyard Book. Hugo again. Lot of praise again. I justified the purchase saying it was a children's book, there is no way i couldnt finish a children's book. I promised the 6 footer that if i didnt make it through this one, i'd mentally classify Gaiman as an author of umm... literary fiction or... magic realism or... yes, good housekeeping, stuff i wouldnt touch with a 7 foot pole. But this one had me at hello.

Its about a little boy called Nobody (Bod) Owens who is bough up in a graveyard. By ghosts. There is a scene early on when Bod is just a baby, living with real, living parents. He has managed to topple off his crib by climbing on his teddy and has waded his way to the head of the stairs.

Stairs that went up were tricky things, and he had not yet entirely mastered them. Stairs that went down however, he had discovered, were fairly simple. He did them sitting down, bumping from step to step on his well-padded bottom.

I read those lines and then i couldnt make myself get back to the book for the rest of the day, i was so excited! How does anyone come up with stuff like that? You'd have to go inside a little one's head to find it, thats the only place where stairs that go up and stairs that go down exist as two different things! Although, I'm not sure children (or young adults as they seem to be called these days) who are the audience for this book will "get it". It might work on them as a joke though. I went back to the book at night and it didnt disappoint. I got so caught up in Bod's wanderings around the graveyard, i forgot he was the only living kid in a colony full of ghosts. His adventures reminded me how little it takes to keep you entertained as a kid. I loved how it is okay to invent a concept like "Freedom of the graveyard" without defining it exactly, because kids are used to things they dont entirely understand. I loved that Bod had Silas, an adult who is his filter to the world, who helps things make sense, who keeps out the bad stuff, while preparing him for the day he will have to walk out into it. And like a reviewer says on the book, i cant wait to see what happens next. I hope there is more!

This is me trying to be back

Why has this become so difficult? Small things that i could easily pull into respectable (at least in my eyes) posts now just refuse to grow up. Some of them flirt with moving out to twitter but finally just give it up and settle down in their pyjamas on the overstuffed sofa that is my head. Which is the perfect place to just be, really. No one there is going to tell you to stand on your own two feet, go out in the world and make a place for yourself. Me being a firm believer in not telling others to do what i dont myself do.

And with that post, content over having won a small victory over lethargy and indifference and apathy, she will forget that there is a war.

About TV, mostly

(She gets back to blogging after months and all she has to write about is Television. Talk about living vicariously.)

I havent seen any Star Trek other than the latest movie (and that too for apna Spok), but this had me nodding along. Science fiction is supposed to be about how a different plant, different technology, different species makes for different societies with different rules. Having a story and making technology fill in the blanks is just doing it backwards. And i went around being shocked at this obvious-once-pointed-out deception and how people stood for being thus strung along until bhai made me see that is is exactly what all the medical series that i so love to watch do! Tech the tech. House, Grey's Anatomy, all of them. House at least its excusable. There House is the hero and the medicine, however clever it may be, is just the background. Its about how twisted House is and how it affects everything and everyone around him. And they dont wing that, they dont tech House just to neatly tie up an episode. However, now that he is becoming less twisted, i wonder if there is any justification to keep watching. Grey's Anatomy is supposed to be about how medicine and working is a hospital shapes people, makes them who they will turn out to be. And they set out all the drama and totally wing the medicine part.

Does all that analysis and resulting realization mean that i'm going to stop watching? Heh. I'll just be a little more ashamed doing so, but shame i've made my peace with a while ago.

Let me now tell you about an ant and a grasshopper. It takes its time but winds its way back to TV, i promise. So, I am the ant. Not so much the hardworking bit but the hoarding stuff for cold winter days bit. And Bhai, he is the grasshopper. All about instant consumption, living as if the future will never come. And you know what? It never does! Never does he go around starved of TV stuff to watch. Never have i been able to gloat about my hoard of serials to be watched while he is getting bored out of his wits. Have they gone and gotten rid of winter and not told me about it so i keep hoarding like an ass? Does the entertainment sun really shine all the time?

This weekend I

1. Said no to a trip. Again.

2. Trawled the Science Fiction and Fantasy sites on the net for stuff i can/want/should be reading. Now the proud owner of a 3 page list of potentials.

3. Went to the Landmark sale. 3 pages - 4 lines to go.

4. Took photograph of a rat that decided to help itself to food off my mom's plate while she was on the phone. Then took photos of its heroic capture and undignified disposal involving a rubbish pan, the cover of a CD stand and two very brave men.

5. Felt warm due to faraway people. And my 3 page list.

Really? You can see the clothes??

I didnt "get" Kaminey. Not the brilliance. Not the cleverness. Not even when they were pointed out to me. The small things did not add up to something majestic, they just remained small. I'm still not sure why he made the movie.
I shouldnt care but it sort of pisses me off that i seem to be the only one.

The one thing i did get is the song.

Aah. now that i've said that, you can begin to shoot me.

I might have been in love before, but this time its real

Of course its a TV show. Studio 60 on the sunset strip. Has only one season, all of it on youtube. The gigantic idiots at the network that produced show took it off air after the first season because, well, because they are gigantic idiots. (I need to learn stronger words to express my disapproval, i do.) Its so awesome, i cant tell you but let me try anyway. Its got Mathew Perry, and much as i love friends, Matt, the character he plays on this show, is what i will think of him as from now on. Okay, maybe half Matt half Chandler, its that good. But, he is not the best thing about the show (Danny Tripp is). The best part is the writing. Its clever, its funny, it... sparkles. I can see how terrible i am at doing justice to it, just help me out and watch the pilot, will you?

I looked up the guy creating the show, Aaron Sorkin. And what do you know, it looks like i've been a fan of his writing without even knowing it was his. A few good men and The American President, both movies with dialogs i've loved. Looks like i will have to watch The West Wing after all!

Warning: Based on what I've seen and read, it looks like he likes to create incredibly nice characters who think nothing of staking their careers on their principles in the most perverse of situations. If they did it in real life, they wouldn't have much of an ass left after life was done kicking it. If such (seeming and probably) naive behaviour bothers you, try to forget that it does while you watch the show.

To give you a sample of how much i love it, here is a scene from episode 14. Danny and this one person (in the most cliched of romantic comedy tricks) are locked up on the roof. They've been trying to get out but cant until the episode is over. They wonder (being big shots) how come no one has missed them. Towards the end, this guy Cal comes up on the roof to switch something on and finds them here.

Cal: J, Danny you guys are here!
J: Yeah
Cal: We've been looking for you
Danny: Yeah?
Cal: (a tad defensively): Yeah!
Danny: Where?

Totally unfunny on paper right? I've seen that clip 300 times and each time I've laughed at Danny's belligerent Where.

So if you ask me, what did Bhai get you from Germany, I will not show you the pink miniature skateboard with wheels key chain that he mooched off someone who got it for free with something and then i mooched off him, i will not show you the 300 black shirts he got for himself and then tried to push on me insisting that they were my size, i will say he got me Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

Be kind. Do not rewind.

You think you are over it. Its all locked safely in the past,. No, not locked. It used to be locked when the past was too close to the present to be left unguarded. But now, with time and the distance that comes with time, the lock has become redundant. You rarely venture there and even if you do, the layers of dust make the memories sufficiently hazy to not mean much. It surprises you sometimes, you understand what people mean when they say life goes on.

All it takes is one silly photograph on someone's Orkut album for the floodgates to open. You are not even in the damn photo, but you are there.

And the funny part is, i knew this would happen. I'd be walking the hostel corridors, on my way to my room and i'd grin about the fact that someday i will look back at this totally unremarkable moment with more longing than it deserves. Turns out i am as wise as i think i am.