Advice from my ATM

I had an unusual dream a couple of nights ago that I will now dwell on for my own amusement – I dreamed I was colourizing an episode of I Love Lucy. I know that you aren’t supposed to remember dreams because of REM sleep and all that jazz, but I do recall them sometimes, as I’m sure most people do. Every time I manage to recollect a dream, it is vivid enough for me to break down into parts that I can relate to occurrences in the previous day, at least on some level. This rationalizing allows me to scoff at all those dream readers.
This time though, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what brought Lucille Ball into my sleeping consciousness. I don’t remember any other faces or sounds from that dream, not even Ricky; just her. And her red dress and her red hair.
I don’t like loose ends. This is going to trouble me for a while now.

On a less unusual note, change is in the air. Not just the weather, but me too. I’ll be 26 shortly and before I do that, I’m shedding some skin. Less cursing through the traffic is a start; instead I’d rather enjoy the ride and musical accompaniment. More outdoor activity is another chapter of this new edition. I’m getting used to a gym locker room and hopefully, I’ll soon be emulating a namesake with a racquet in my hand. The best part of all this is that I get to roam around in shorts. It doesn’t matter that the little girls sitting in a row along the garden fence giggle whenever I pass them, this is the calmest I’ve been in a very long time.
There will always be empty spaces that need filling, but I think there are some that need to be filled first so that you can move on to the rest. Maybe I’ve started right.


“Every time I lay you down in that damn crib, I'm gonna think, ‘Damn baby. Damn Crib.’”

Amber – This Is Your Night
Ludacris – Get Back

The Report

That’s it! I, am hereby, herein, hereforth AND herewith done with aging... From now on, I’m getting younger by the minute!

Fort Minor - Remember The Name
Bobby Vinton - Blue Moon

Unnecessary acks

Some stuff I found. Not sure how long ago I wrote this.

For giving me an excuse to sing out loud: Queen
For giving me an anthem: John Lennon
For always listening to whisperings: Pepe, the paranoid parakeet
For holding open the door to life before and after me: The Beatles, The Jetsons
For keeping alive a spark of religiosity, no matter how shamelessly small or elusive: Mother
For the sound of romance in spite of today: Norah
For being an ideal, not a stereotype: Dad
For giving me something I can rock out to when there’s nothing left: Metallica
For letting me be a kid: Superman, Hanson
For letting me grow up: Bon Jovi, The Spice Girls (yes, it’s true)
For the hotness: Jennifer Connelly
For existing: Zooey Deschanel
For tears: Forrest Gump
For a life bound in music: Millions of unknowingly generous users on the World Wide Web
For proving to me that life’s a female dog: You know who you are
For grounding: Friends four
For being a dork: Richie Cunningham
For not kicking my ass: Nan, when I walked in on her in the bathroom; Uncle Norbert, when I walked in on him in the bathroom
For keeping me out of showers for a *very* long time: Jaws (no thanks for that)
For cool: The Rock, No Doubt, Fonzie
For my first read: Oliver Twist
For one free drink: Steve the bartender
For just happening: The 80s, The 90s
For the funk: Prodigy
For being way more awesome than “Friends”: Seinfeld
For pampering: My first 9 schoolteachers
For looking up to me: Rucha

Floyd: Nice choice of pictures. The last one may have been questionable; this one makes the entire page completely gay!


“If I had to choose her or the sun, I’d be one nocturnal son of a gun”

Kelly Clarkson – My Life Would Suck Without You
Jason Mraz – I Melt With You

Seriously.

Dammit February, you’ve screwed me over with your 28-day fashion. By the time I’d realized the month was out, I didn’t have anything ready to post. So I may try to make it up this month; or I may not. Whatever.

I’ve done it so many times now, that the “airport post” has become quite predictable. I can’t help it though, because I generally have an unreasonably long wait at every major airport I visit, so I see stuff and save my thoughts for a more composed expression that is NOT a Tweet.
Airports are quite predictable too. And by airports, I don’t mean just the airports themselves, but the people inside them as well. There are the families who try to enjoy the whole experience and count the airport wait as part of their vacation fun, and the families who can’t keep the kids in control and end up cursing the vacation before it even starts. Then you have your casual travelers who generally have their MP3 players out with some light reading and a snack, distancing themselves from the rest of the world till their boarding gate opens, followed by the newly-baptised/try-too-hard IT professionals who, in an attempt to blend in, will always appear with their Grishams and Coelhos in hand and a notebook case in tow, not to forget the mandatory cup of gourmet coffee and the overdone outfit. And finally, the seasoned travelers, who, whether they’re out for business or pleasure, always know how to best utilise their time without having to turn to music and/or fiction.

I didn’t think I’d be seeing Heathrow so soon again, but that’s how it happened. Out of boredom, I tried to look at a different dimension this time around… Oh the boots! I love ‘em in all shapes and sizes. I worked out that a good pair of boots could move a girl up from plain average to attractive. But, the wait was long and owing to the fairly large difference in time zones from when I got onto the airplane and when I stepped off it, it wasn’t long before my eyes began to roll back in their sockets and mysterious but hot women came floating by to ask me hot but mysterious questions like Haven’t you been chewing that gum far too long? and Try on my underwear?

Switching topics, so many movies (read: Romantic Comedies) show the guy who dates this rebound chick after he loses the main lady in his life, who is in fact so hot AND so well rounded that losing her is probably the greatest sin on earth that should actually leave him depressed for life. But the world keeps turning and so he decides to get back into the dating scene and looks for the shallow women who can keep him amused so that he doesn’t need to think of what he recently lost. Inevitably, he runs into his ex-lady love at just the place they shouldn’t have met, after which one or both of them remembers that they were so good together and they were fools to ever let each other go. Here’s where our boy unceremoniously dumps the new girl with a condescending hug and smile as if to say you’re a helluva lay, but you don’t stimulate me intellectually. But don’t worry, it’s not your fault you’re a boob.
Did it ever occur to him, or anyone else for that matter, that the reason this chick seemed so shallow could have been because that was exactly how every guy she’d been with treated her, without allowing her a chance to exhibit anything more than her physical talents (if at all)?

Freaky moment of the year: I was downloading David Bowie’s Major Tom (or Space Oddity, if you want to call it that) when Winamp pulled up Peter Schilling’s Major Tom at the exact moment the download began. And the preceding song? Tom’s Diner (DNA/Suzanne Vega).

“I’ve got two tickets to Iron Maiden, baby
Come with me Friday, don’t say maybe…”


Crowded House – Don’t Dream It’s Over
The Subways – Rock ‘N Roll Queen

Moonlight over Rome

From recent events, I’d say it’s fair to assume that people WANT to think they are victims of racism, because it’s an easy way to reject criticism of themselves. People WANT to think they are being projected badly to the rest of the world, people WANT to think they are being looked down upon. In fact, I’d say that is close to being an Indian trait. It is an effort to gain a sympathy vote and to give ourselves an excuse to think that we are better than we really are.
I’ve been reading positive as well as negative reactions on this movie, by Indian as well as non-Indian viewers. While some people rightly compare it to Cidade de Deus, others find the comparison horrifying and still others find the movie cheesey and just don’t see what all the fuss is about. One thing is for certain though: very few are ambivalent in their opinion on this film.

Slumdog Millionaire has got itself 10 Academy Award nominations, which I find quite surprising ‘cos I’ve watched it and while it was good, I didn't think it was SO good that people start bestowing superlative praise and golden statuettes upon it.
As an Indian, I would think one is torn between two opinions: you want to say it was a good movie because it was engrossing and well made and thus brought acclaim to the Indians involved in its creation. You also want to say it was horrible, because although it was about India, it was a movie by an Englishman that showed the worst side of the country. Abject poverty, violent and perverse slum life and children who are never children at all; City of God did that too.

Plenty of folks passing judgment on this movie seem to label India a “third world country” in which the events depicted were bound to happen because of the living standard. The fact is, while we sit in our ivory towers, that is exactly what most Indians think of the slums too… a “third world country” within the country. I know because I am one of those most Indians.
I don’t agree with these foreign labelers, but I don’t blame them either because if you watched this movie with no presumptions about India, you’d probably feel the same way too. I found the observation of a celebrity columnist in a local newspaper to be quite apt when she opined that the world would want to see what life was like in this Indian city that was only recently targeted by terror attacks, which would be one of the reasons driving them to watch this movie. Unfortunately, for many, this will be how they discover India. This is what they get for their curiosity. A nice little (all of 120 minutes) film that depicts life in a country they probably know exists somewhere out there, at its worst but interwoven with real drama, undying love and culminating in an expected fairytale ending, complete with a gratuitous song and dance sequence.
It’s just a shame that it took a firang to put it on display for the world, when the story was already written in our own backyard.


If You Seek Amy... lingua magnifica!

“You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds... stand still laddie!”

Prodigy – Breathe
Jimmy Ray – Are You Jimmy Ray?