Chanson nocturne d’aujourd’hui

A still from Up Close and Personal goes,

[MF] “When I asked you how long you could
stay and you said, “Long enough”…how long is that? [Long pause]

[MF] – When we’re not together…
[RR] …everything shuts down.”
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MF – Michelle Pfeiffer
RR – Robert Redford

And then I happened to hear ‘Everywhere’ from Fleetwood Mac! What a combination 😀
Everywhere

Organ Disconnect

From the unending thought realm in the words of my bard….

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken”

It shall persist though the bodies move out in different directions. The connect cannot vanish; the mood never diminish, the space not replaced.

What say shall we? The brain has moved on, heart won’t budge.

Coorg

I recently took a trip to Coorg in the South of India with a bunch of friends. It falls in the Siddapur region. Its about a 6 hour drive from B’lore and surely is one hell of a plantation rich region. There are coffee, cardamom, pepper, cinnamon, chilly, and bamboo clusters in majority.

One of the good decisions we took was to lodge at one of the best available destinations there – Orange County. It is a plantation cum resort spanning over 3 acres of land. Cottages are set up within the plantation and we needed buggies to transport ourselves using a resort map. There were a couple of tracks too – jogging, cycling, running, etc. which ran across the entire plantation.

An evening with 6 year olds

At the strike of 9 comes thunder ringing the doorbell, scribbling the walls, dancing around the house, kicking baseball and creating havoc in the neighborhood. These miniature pieces who’ve not even seen a dozen years are sheer superstars in their own strengths! What do they not know?
– Tallest mountain range
– Latest hollywood single
– Latest bollywood single
– India’s Prez
– The loudest aunty in the neighbourhood
– The longest word in the English dictionary
– Where does a baby come from

Of jaded minds and nishkama karma

Beautiful mornings. Serene sounds. Mum’s goodbye kiss. An early bus. Smiles at work. A pleasing email. The right coffee. A new concept. A chance to hum one of my favorite numbers. A chance to talk aloud to myself…..very very few days are perfectly blended with all these ingredients. In fact, hardly was there a day in the past couple of months when I did not think of Daniel Powter’s popular single.

Not just me 🙂 As I look around, I see everyone running their daily slaloms, on ice as slippery as time, with a zillion obstacles to manouevre about. Some win, and enjoy their perfect days, some fall and sing to themselves, “You Had a Bad Day!”….for how long will they sing? how many times will they fall? will they win the race? what do they want from the race?

As Shakespeare Likes It!

Yet another from an old archive. This piece was jointly written, rather written by a friend and edited by me while I was in college. It featured in ‘Sans Frontiers’, the official Umang magazine. Umang is one of the popular cultural festivals – the fun and frolic of Indian colleges. I take the freedom to post this here since there is no online archive for the same and of course, I bear the editorial rights to this piece 🙂

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Shakespeare has gained great adulation for his fabulous work in the stream of literature. His praise is beyond words, maybe even if we gave him this task (praising himself), he would have been unsuccessful. However here is an interesting review of his famous contributions.

We owe the core story of the scripts of our popular desi movies to Monsieur Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’. The story of lovers caught between the belligerent families, lives from Qayamat se Qayamat tak  to Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. Even Hollywood’s Leonardo Di ‘Romeo’ Caprio is indebted for his popularity to Mr.Shakespeare much before the sinking of the legendary Titanic, through ‘The Tempest’.

Attendance at Marriages

Sure, this one is from a really old archive – dating back to 1997. A couple of things have changed for me but check out how I wrote back then 🙂

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Come November and the postman, courier fellows, liveried chauffeurs, sometimes the parents of the to-be couples come swooping to your household for wedding invitations. As far as stacking these expensive cards is concerned it does not matter much but when it comes to attending these marriages, there comes the world falling on your head.
Trust me, from personal experience, I have been badgered into attending weddings as a necessity to be known in society. It is worse than being badgered for attending college.

Pecuniary Interests

I easily spin back to school days when free periods were turned to debating sessions. A very common topic and a hot favorite among a close group of friends was “A World without money – Good or bad?” I was never able to make up my mind but was always inclined towards a world sans money. Fifteen years back somehow not many things qualified to be worth monetizing in the wake of poverty, family separations, killings, scandals and scams. More than often, it all stemmed from the seemingly ugly five letter word – money. Fast-forward to today and I have come to hold a balanced view. A couple of things that reflect my antipodal preferences…

Innocence in the Eye

It is not very often that I visit temples. Years of reading and logical reasoning abstain me from anything to do with idol worship. But one fine morning comes a humble request from my 72 year old friend to accompany her to her place of solace. I gave in.

I was expecting the usual visit – urchins and flower-sellers at the gate, a big mess of colorful footwear, soft chants, mesmerizing sandalwood scents and the like till I saw something exceptional.

They were like two large diamonds beckoning me – the timid eyes of a calf tied to the temple gate. In an uncharacteristic move I stepped ahead to embrace her. Folding my arms around her feeble neck, I felt the soft young skin touch my palms. Both of us stood still for about a minute and what followed kept me smiling the rest of the day. She had gently rubbed her face to my cheek and batted the scanty lashes in perfect synchronization to mine.

Not everyday does one want to go hug a week old calf and nor does one get vibes to do so very often. The innocence of those innocuous diamonds still lingers clear in my mind. Ironically, a friend commented I had an alter ego of a vet but I’d call this the divine bovine experience!

Mulling over CNBC Specials

Come Sunday and its time to glue myself in front of the TV screen with mum’s scrumptious brunch. I religiously stick to one channel all morning. A recent Sunday led me to writing this 🙂

I hope to be an entrepreneur one day and was rejoiced to see my regular show, Young Turks (CNBC TV18) covering only women entrepreneurs, all of August, ’06.

Interesting profiles. Someone organizes kid parties on a large scale and does corporate picnics and entertainment nights, someone does Bombay Heritage Walks, of course loads of successful interior designers, Mktg. & Sales VPs at budding organizations and much more. But I would like to mention some outstanding profiles –