Saturday, March 24, 2007

Two thoughts and a sight to behold

Imagine India, the person(not Mr India for God's sake!) living in a small shack somewhere in the country. Everyday India is rudely woken up by the shrill ring of his/her (India may not be Mother India after all) telephone and when he (ok! lets assume he means he/she from now on) picks up, someone says "Jaago India Jaago" in that jingly tone. India slams the phone down but he can't go back to sleep now. He looks outside his window and sees a whole crowd camped out there. This lousy bunch has the idiotic habit of chanting "Indiiiia India" although sometimes India has heard them chant "Sachiiiin Sachin" too. India has no clue who Sachin is and is immensly irritated by the crowd's chanting his (India's ) name. All through the day, some or the other chap knocks at India's door and when India opens it, the other guy shouts "Come on INDIIIA DIKHADO". India slams the door on his face. He turns on the TV and lo someone's singin "East or West India is the best" (remember the song from Judwa? ). This brings a smile on India's face. India takes a walk every evening through the streets of the town nearby and occasionally he hears someone say "India ka kuch nahi hone wala. Yaha ka system hi kharab hai". India doesnt know the guy who said this butdoesnt care, having listened to this kind of crap all his life. But what bugs him is the crowd outside his shack. Last I heard India was planning a vacation with Ms Bahama. Enjoy madi India!

****
On the way to office yesterday I read this
"Delhi Chalo"
"Haq maango"
"Musalmano ke liye alag quota maango"
on a poster.
This set me thinking about reservation in the education sector and how it sucks. Then I had an idea. What if we could have an engg and a medical college (and a mgmt school) for every two or three districts that cater only to students with reservation? We could get the best teaching talent and provide the best infrastructure possible in these colleges. We may leave the politicians to fight over how much % of quota each sub group should get in these colleges. All the other colleges will admit students only on the basis of merit.
But will such a solution be acceptable to the lobby that's 'For' reservation? One reservation the lobby may have with this solution is that having a seperate college for reserved candidates will be a neo-discrimation against them, but wouldnt the best teaching talent and the best infrastructure make up for that?
What do you think?
****
On the way to office I stopped at this signal today. The signal after the left at Nandidurga road to be precise. At this signal I noticed a group of eagles scooping down to pick up some piece of meat that lay strewn on the road. There were vehicles plying on this road!! The eagles would time their dive perfectly (Avoiding the traffic of course!) .I managed to witness two or three succesfully executed scoops! It was an amazing sight.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Aisa bhi hota hai? Part 3 Or I dont need a shrink! Period.

What makes us dream the dreams we dream? Is it the thoughts we take to bed? Or is it something else? I just cant understand why I had this dream the night before last. I'll not use the past tense but will try to take you through the dream as if you were there.

I am Salman Khan.Or you could say my spirit is in Salman's body. Tabu is my wife and we have a kid. The kind of kid who is adorably sweet and naughty but has a uncanny ability to escape harm,like the Baby's Day Out kid. I knew the dream was all about how our kid lands in trouble, Tabu and I go hysterical and then everything falls in place, a happy ending.
We live on the topmost floor of an apartment, but there's some construction going on in the roof. Some small room or something. The person who is building the room or whatever is Ajay Devgan. He is a bad-good extremist. You know there are two kinds of extremists in movies (and in my wierd dreams). One of them is the bad-bad extremist. He is evil all the way and his part in the movie is usually inversally proportional to how evil he his. He is usually played by some side actor. The good-bad extremist is however played by some prominent actor and has a major part to play. There's usually a scene where he loses his family, his property or something to a bomb blast or a riot and then the screen fades and in the next screen we see him moving with feline grace (donning sunglasses) walking away from a building (preferably an evil govt building) and as he walks away there's an explosion. Now that's the kind of extremist Ajay Devgan is. Good but misunderstood.Ajay is a good friend of ours. Infact we are the only friends he has in all of the city.
Inexplicably Tabu and I start singing a family song. Tabu, the kid and I start singing the song and eventually we go to the roof and Ajay joins in. In between our happy song, Ajay sings some sad lines remembering his lost young brother (Arbaaz Khan. He fades in and fades out) . The song stops as quickly as it started and then we (Tabu and I) walk down the stairs into the apartment forgetting all about the baby.
We see the baby is on some make-shift roof and as we are watching the baby falls through the thatch roof. We see the baby falling but don't quite see it hit the floor or anything.
Next thing we see is a frantic search for the baby.Tabu, Ajay , a police inspector (don't ask me why he didnt apprehend Ajay), my twin brother (yes I have a twin brother) and I look for the baby everywhere but are unable to find it. All of us ,except Tabu gather infront of our apartment, tense and tired.The inspector looks at the floor and notices the remains of an egg. Tabu runs out of the apartment and screams "Mera baccha!! Ab tak hatch nahi hua tha!!!". (Don't ask me why in the whole world she's so mad!!). Everybody starts picking up the remains of the egg (the remains of the egg, I remember, are not liquidy but solid and crumbly).
Everything fades into darkness and the next thing we see is Tabu and Paris Hilton (or Anna Kournikova. not sure) sitting in a jeep. I am my twin brother now (you got that? I am not Tabu's husband now, I am Paris/Anna's boyfriend!! ;-) ). I walk upto them and tell them that Tabu's husband has already left (to where ? don't ask me! ) and we'll need to leave shortly. And then Paris/Anna kisses me!! Its a nice enjoyable kiss. After the kiss she explains that the kid's safe and the egg crumbles were not of the kid (I know it doesnt make any sense but hang on!). We ride into the sunset or something (this wasnt very clear :-P).

And then that's it. That's when I woke up. As I woke up from the dream all that hogwash about the extemist and the baby, and the baby turns into the egg funda did not seem to matter. What seemed to matter was the kiss! :D

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Not the usual crap

A hectic week! No time for the usual music-blog hopping-occasional orkutting (is that a word or did I just invent it?) - stumbling routine and I would not have it any other way!! :-) Hopefully the next few weeks will be as busy as the last week was. And yeah, we've been promised some developement at last; something to look forward to!

Now amidst all of the work, I read "The God of Small Things" (TGOST) thanks to the long commute I take to work.

TGOST is easily one of the best books I've read. What makes it special is the way it speaks so much by saying so little.

The book is about Ammu and her twin children Estha and Rahel. One of the most moving stories I've heard. It speaks of the immense, selfless love a mother has. Of the indescribably beautiful love kids have for their mother. Of the inexplicable twain that binds twins. Of the hypocrisy of human behaviour. The small things that matter so much (but are not given the attention that's due to them) and the supposedly big things that shouldn't matter. Of how inspite of how badly you want to press that reset button ,go back and undo something, you just can't do that!! At the end of the book you feel just that! You want to go and stop Ammu, or stop Estha and Rahel from walking down the paths they are. But you just can't.

Its a beautifully woven story that touches base on so many things. Read it if you can.