I'm back... with a bang !

More than a year has passed since I penned my everyday musings, but today it's time to break all these work-schedule-imposed-online-layoffs and post about my latest strike at my earliest passion... Well, If you did not know me for long, you wud be stumped to learn that yours truly shall be starting as an animator in a French production, based in India. On the dawn of Dec11 2006, my work title should read "Animator" at the picturesque Banjara Hills, Hyderabad. And to know what on earth got me there, here's my first-ever animation demoreel...

http://rapidshare.com/files/5175498/ani_portfolio_1_.avi

(Download it onto ur computer - about 30MB, it is - and push ur speakers up to enjoy.. Doesn't come with a "copyright" tag or an intro with my name, for now, but will do that sooner..)

More on my first days at my dream job, soon...

Doth the ‘C’ in Chennai stand for “Conservative”?

With a series of (mis)happenings in the recent few weeks in my hometown Chennai troubling me, this blog is the vent to all those misgivings. Though the brunt of these incidents was my opposite sex in Chennai, I cannot stop deriding at the fallacious reasoning, the incivility behind such actions and the incongruously adamant “flag-bearers” of such narrow-minded campaigns. That I’ve not been directly affected by such idiocies might temper down the deserved causticity, but it would be a pleasure to voice my opinions in support of womanhood.

I’m not sure if these “news” have reached beyond the TamilNadu tabloids, so here’s a small preview.

September 2005 : Anna University(Chennai) imposes a “dress-code” on female students in all colleges, affiliated to the University, thereby leaving them with no choice other than salwars & saris, with the hollow motive of curbing eve-teasing.

A few days later : Faced with allegations of gender bias, the ban spreads to their male counterparts, depriving them of t-shirts and jeans in college, though it doesn’t seem to ruffle many feathers, primarily due to the guys’ limited choices over their outfit. Earlier, if they were alternating between t-shirts and shirts, presently they’re stuck to shirts, without much dismay.

October 2005 : A Tamil tabloid publishes photographs of a private party, depicting wineglass-doting women, and decries at a couple’s public display of affection, albeit at their private party. Not stopping at adding a distasteful caption to these photographs, the tabloid theatrically agonises at the “influence of Western Culture”. The TamilNadu Police proceed one step further and try to trace the party-goers from the photographs, with the sole intent of putting such “culprits” behind bars. Fortunately, better sense prevailed at the higher echelons of policing, and the attempt was given up, not the before they had shut down the venue of the party – “The Park”. “The Park” was opened after 10 days of courtroom wrangling.

October 2005 : Actress Kushboo had inadvertently shared her views about India Today’s survey on Indian pre-marital sex, and now she’ll be facing at least 40 defamation cases in courts all over TamilNadu. The petitioners’, mostly female lawyers, backed obviously by selfish-motived politicians, ludicrous argument is that they had to undergo mental agony upon hearing Khusboo’s views that pre-marital sex is becoming prevalent in TamilNadu, as indicated by India Today’s survey. Her swift and tearful apology on television did not placate the “moral brigade”, as they preferred to be called. (This “moral brigade”, incidentally, comprised of supporters of a Tamil director, against whom actresses, led by Khusboo, besides others, had launched a tirade, a few weeks ago, for equating them to sex-workers. Tit for Tat, is it ?)

There ends the preview, and that prompted me to muse if the ‘C’ in Chennai really meant “Conservative”. “Conservative” is just a milder term in this context, as these incidents are categorically unwholesome.

Getting to the crux of the issue of “dress-code”, the motive being “to curb eve-teasing” is laughable at the least, for the law enforcers have given up their attempts to inculcate morality and civility into the pervert minds of the teasers, but have instead resorted to curbing the fashion portrayals of the modern day Indian women. The seemingly endless myriad of apparels(pun intended!) of a college-going-female has now shrunk to salwars & saris, governed by the clouded reasoning that other attires seem to provoke the teasers to their perverse heights. Sarika Shah was properly attired on that fateful day, and so were hundreds of other victims. Such a “reasoning” is parallel to a Stay-at-home-if-you-don’t-want-to-get-caught-in-accidents-on-street notion. Ludicrous and Laughable!

What if, a few years down the line, salwar- & sari-clad college-goers bear the brunt of this social endemic? Will the University, then, step up their vigilant stranglehold and ban salwars & saris too, thereby emptying out the wearable wardrobe of a girl? It wouldn’t surprise me if the University passed a ‘burqa / purdah’ law on its female students. Wake up!, Mr. Vice Chancellor, It’s 2005, and The Taliban have expressed their interest to recruit you.

I’m sure no girl would’ve trouble in following the dress-code. But, the need of the hour is to discipline the teasers, and not trample upon the freedom of expression of the victims. Call it “gene bias” or “jean bias”?

On the other hand, the ban of t-shirt and jeans on guys, is a respite for folks who alternate between a shirt and a t-shirt. Now, they’ve an extra reason to stay stuck to the same old shirt, and / or pant, for that matter, for months together. Guys !!

“The Park” hotel was host to a private party, but it turned out to be a not-so-private party, with photographs of the party crowd appearing in a Tamil newspaper the next morning, with distasteful captions. The newspaper lambasted at the women, for they had tasted alcohol, in moderation, with their spouses, and one of them had even gone to the extent of kissing her husband. How atrocious? How can accept a husband kissing his wife? It’s definitely atrocious and unacceptable to a bunch of immature journalists, stubbornly stuck in the quagmire of orthodoxy.

After stalling their attempts to book the party crowd, the Police brought the shutters down on “The Park”, albeit temporarily, under the pretext of hosting an unlicensed party. What was brought to the fore was the fight for supremacy between the newspaper and the Police as to who was the kid amongst them. Grow up, people!

TamilNadu, which had revered actress Kushboo as its demi-god, is now volleying her across almost all judicial courts of the state. She had echoed a survey from India Today, a nationwide magazine, on pre-marital sex. Her views seemed to be on the lines that a literate groom wouldn’t expect a virgin bride, with such high rates of pre-marital sex, as shown by the survey. Sensitive, sure it is, but it’s an individual’s opinion, and India, being a free nation, outlines, in its Constitution, one’s Right to Expression as “..can express freely his/her opinion, but shall not impose them on others”. And, that is exactly what she did. The women wings of a few political parties raised a big hue-and-cry over this, filed a slew of defamation cases against her and demanded her immediate deportation (!), having caused irreparable damage to the clause “Tamil women”. Though it never deserved an apology, as an individual is free to convey his/her opinions, if the Indian Constitution still holds upon these uncivilized protesters, she graciously appeared on television, and tendered a tearful apology. Starting tomorrow, she is required to appear before at least 40 judicial magistrates, across the state. Though it’s evident that the judiciary will squash the defamation cases, given the Constitutional Rights of an individual, I am aggrieved at the retroactive mental process of these ludicrous political parties.

On a different note, I found most buses, plying across the city, with rotund males shamelessly ensconced in seats allotted specifically for females, while the women, some carrying their babies, struggled with the other standees. Despite their requests and the conductor’s appeals, these creatures turn stone-deaf. I had to intervene in few such cases, and render a brief, but harsh, revelation that it’s been specifically mentioned as a seat for the women / elder / physically challenged, as the case may be. But, what difference can a singleton make, when there are thousand such shameless schmucks. Hope it dawns on every guy.

If ‘C’ in Chennai really stood for Conservative, I would be happy to retract to “Madras”.

Sometimes, I wonder if this is where I grew up, if this is the state that spawned the poet Bharathi and if this is the same state with a woman on the Chief Minister’s chair, and if the claims to 33% reservation for women is just electionspeak.

‘C’, as in Concerned,
Arun

Global = La Blog

Here I am penning this last blog from the “hallowed” US of A. This is typically a virtual blog, for it’s being keyed in on Microsoft Word, as the hotel I’m temporarily sheltered doesn’t provide an ubiquitous Internet access. For people wondering what I’m up to in an hotel, when I’m supposed to be trans-Atlantic, here’s a not-so-small preview of this eventful day’s events.

All starts with a heavy, both on plate and at heart, farewell breakfast with a couple of my best friends at Buffalo. One of them, currently ranked atop my “MOST CHEERFULLEST” list, and I don’t think her spot on the podium is under threat for quite a long time, was a total stranger a couple of weeks ago. It’s a privilege to’ve been around such an awesome Piscean, Mimi. In fact, “awesome Piscean” is just a redundant phrase, for all Pisceans are awesome (I'm one :). I could only ponder at this dilemma: Am I gonna treasure the ensemble of the jigsaw pieces of the Natural Bridges National Monument or should I regret knowing the wonderful geologist for so less a time. I, unmistakably, pick the former, for three “Potter-crazy kids” at work is magical enough to vie with Ms. Rowling’s on-the-back-burner seventh mesmerism. Just placing the other of the two secondarily on this blog, doesn’t miniaturize the monstrosity of her companionship. She is probably the only one to’ve minisculed my pride of always being the one to present the best gifts. Your gift smiles at me as 2:25:02 am. You are gifted, Archana, and so am I – gifted with such a wonderful friend.

Waving goodbyes made me realize the long list of friends I’d made at Buffalo. As I felt the breeze in my hair, while being driven to the airport by a fast-paced female cab driver, the emotions were as intense as the wind. The moment I was clear of the formalities at the check-in, all I could find was hundreds of minds all in their own individual microcosms. Some, like me, were seemingly gazing into the horizons of nothingness, but at least I was veiling a tumult of emotions, resultant of the eager heart to get back home after two years, as well as crumbling under the active distance from a home of two years, under a relatively calmer visage, and so must the others would’ve been. Two hours would’ve been an era, if not for bright smiles on a few kids’ faces. I was curbing my itch to pen about this on paper, for a confirmed ticket to the city of the Gateway of India was primordial on my mind. So, now that I would be boarding the twelve-hour-delayed flight, attributed to the Mumbai monsoons, in about six hours from now, I can peacefully carve these flowing stagnant freezes of the day.

The flight to Newark was short, with me, most of the time, ogling, not at the stewardess but, at the mountainous clouds and the microscopic, albeit hazy, landscape beneath. Arrival was fifteen minutes ahead of the schedule, and I took time to collect my baggage and traverse the “millions” of stairs of the airport escalators to nowhere, because after scaling half-a-million of them, I realized I was in the wrong terminal. The expedition against another half million continued, and there wasn’t an inkling of doubt upon scaling the summit, for I was greeted with scores of Indian faces. Joining the ever-growing queue, I waited, yearning to get on AI144, which, I didn’t know, was delayed by a dozen massive hours. Being surrounded by so many Indians and the lousy pace of the queue were enough reasons to make a few friends. Dilip is a software professional from TCS, and was on the same flight, and the same boat. He was through with the check-in, while I was stranded, for a few minutes though, because I had booked my tickets online and the people at the check-in counter were not able to confirm mine, owing to the AirIndia Website being inoperable. Thanks to a friendly official, I was able to feel the boarding pass between my fingers. The delayed flight sent three scores of Indians to the Holiday Inn, while there was space for just fifty. The other fortunate ten, with Dilip and I amongst them, after a to-and-fro fatiguing shuttling, have been sheltered at Robert Treat Hotel – their plaque read “Hotel of the American Presidents” and four of the elite hundred had been in it. Well, 4% seems to be a major proportion to such publicity-mongers.

I should be on AI144 in less than 6 hours, happily ensconced with The Half Blood Prince. So, it’s curtains now..

Day2

With the trans-Atlantic flight in sight, we were happy to finally board the plane to “Mumbai-or-Delhi” – the crew was to decide upon the destination midway at Paris, for such was the fury of monsoonal rains in Mumbai. I having penned the previous day’s events hadn’t slept a bit and so was first to hit the sack even as the “drinks” trolley went teetering by. I woke up with the hope that we were near the Louvre, and was craning my neck to spot the illuminated Eiffel Tower beneath, only to be informed that we’d just entered the Europe mainland and that Paris was a few hours away. Boredom crept in, but the dinner trolley pepped up everyone’s spirits. A decent meal and it’s the Charles de Gaulle Airport. The plane was cleaned during the stopover, with every passenger glued to their seats and boredom. New crew aboard had a few ogles while the rest were destined to a forced, albeit uncomfortably poised, sleep. The take-off from Paris had one positive though – a late night meal. I got into half-a-slumber and was hovering over dreamland till about 4am, after which Pottermania awoke me, not rudely though. With the sunlight from the half-open curtains good enough to keep the one next to me asleep and good enough for me to read the Half Blood Prince with renewed curiosity, I patiently hurdled across a few chapters till it was time for a breakfast, after which the sense of curiosity metamorphosed into one of yearning to reach my country. I could see plentiful rivers cutting across innumerous mountain ranges, and felt we were flying over India, but we weren’t, given how long it took us to reach Mumbai from there. Finally, at about noon, we were destined to encircle the Mumbai air space, for the rain gods did not seem very happy. After a couple of hours of monotonous hovering, to both the passengers and the pilot, of course, land was in sight, though Mumbai, deluged under the floods, resembled a shallow stretch of the sea.

The feeling that home was within two hours of flight was more than encouraging to drag our tired torsos across the never-ending stretch of security checks and red tapes. The dreaded rumor that our flight to Chennai will be delayed by a day proved wrong, unfortunately. “Unfortunately” is the word, because, it was eventually delayed by 28 hours. The phrase “So near, yet, so far” seemed nearer to us than ever. After a grudging day’s wait at the Mumbai Airport – should have been rechristened as the “Mumbai Port”, with swirling pools of water within – Air India found a respite out of their bureaucratic mess, the real reason behind the uncut, extended version of the delay, and put us on an Indian Airlines’ flight to Chennai. Physically afresh, but mentally exhausted, all I could recollect of the flight was the pair of sandwiches, and was in dreamland in a jiffy. Consequent of all this confusion and the uncertainty bordering my arrival time – and date, if you get sarcasm – I’d asked my anxious parents to stay put at home, instead of waiting endlessly at the Chennai Airport. A cab – or a taxi, if you prefer – took me home at 8:00am on the second of August, 2005 – 29 hours adrift Air India’s “itinerary”. I had just realized what the phrase “Being at Home” really meant.

Home "Sweat" Home

Being back in the midst of the dear ones was truly energizing. I was abound with vigor and wanted to scale the length and breadth of Chennai, unmindful of the exhaustion I’d been through. Chennai’s heat was a definite dampener, and as I write this, it dampens my shirt with an endless assault on my sweat pores. It would’ve been “Home Sweat Home” if not for the wonderful club of family and friends and the remnant chapters of Half Blood Prince. Home Sweet Home…

Sick and tired

I’m sick and tired, not of the Chennai-ish myriad, but am literally sick. Two years of a sterile environment’s incubation has made my immunity hit its nadir. While buckets of my ever favorite ice cream never bothered me in the US of A, a sliver of ice cream has brought me down with a viral fever. I’m sick and really tired.

La Blog,
Global Blogger…
( A year ago this time of the year, this blog would’ve been titled “Travel BLog”, for all the GISA-related fervor )

Revering the Persevering...

Today's my turn, in the evergrowing list of simple-minded reverers, to marvel at Lance Armstrong's cancer-battling 7th-in-a-row Tour de France victory. It's not uncommon to find flashbacks of failure, when individuals ride to the ultimate stardom. The world would never have spoken about a Reed College dropout, had he not grown into the CEO of Apple & Pixar Animation Studios. An Harvard truant, now the Microsoft CEO, would've blended into the specks of dust, had he not pursued his passion. It's true that the former once said "Life's dots get connected over time, and when you look back, each dot, unclear then, will clear up and convey that your life's path would've been incomplete without going through that simpleton-of-a-dot". This kind of a philosophy is hard to realise when you feel as if the world of failures is nailing you to the ground. I believe, the prominent reasons for the invincibles to share their share of pre-success miseries, is that they were meant to be invisible gospels, spurring and inspiring the failures on earth into future successes. When the yoke of failures seem to push you into the oblivion, realise that they are your pre-success stories, that you can relive to commoners, when you get on the top and let the thirst for success drive you to the summit.

This article in SFGate has Lance's coach recollecting his ward's expedition to conquer the hills and rains of the Alps & Pyrenees. Read this

Had he given up in 1998, the world would've lost such a great inspiration for plenty of generations to come. His perseverance made him a legend, and his life a legend to the doubting simpletons.

Keep walking, for the door is around the corner,
Inspired..

In News.. not for a wrong reason

BuffaloNews has attained the privilege of enframing my photograph in one of the tabloid's sections. Titled "India beckons TechGrads home", it's about India becoming a superpower in IT, that is crucial enough to stem the exodus from India to the "Hallowed Lands". Being one of the very few students to return to India, after graduation, I was asked to share my thoughts on this. While the publicity irks me, as always, the pleasure of unravelling the real tech-India, to people who don't think twice when you put India and elephants & snakes together, was embalming. Back to home in a few days...

http://buffalonews.com/editorial/20050724/1047375.asp

Home is Sine qua non,
Bye-Bye Bravo

The HalfBlood Curiosity

Besides ice cream, one of the best companions for summer, is Ms.Rowling's bespectacled boy wizard and the magical, literally and figuratively, world we are drawn into. This summer, it's time for the HalfBlood Prince to team up with Harry, assuring us of a teeming summer magic. While the bookshelves around the world have been stacked up with the green hardcover, I guess I'll reach unto one of them at the end of this week. The hype encompassing the book has done well enough to drive us, Muggles, nuts about who the HalfBlood Prince is, and what the Prophecy is gonna be like, and what plots You-Know-Who is conspiring on. My friend just fuelled it by mentioning about a pivotal character being killed off towards the end, but let's just hope the curiosity doesn't kill this cat.

Here's a snippet of a reader-mom's and her daughter's Pottermania,
http://www.thenewstribune.com/soundlife/story/5032606p-4590721c.html

Four more days to getting to the hallowed book,
A Fan

Paradoxically yours

I was musing about a few paradoxes, at this paradoxically weird, for most of you, time of the day. In my honest opinion, life's paradoxes and ironies metamorphose an otherwise dull day into a bright sprightly dawn where you keep musing "Why, God, Why?". An alternate exposition of "Why, God, Why?" could mean "Why, God, Why? Why am I destined to reading this?", but I hope it would be the former. A few of such gems here...

• Greenland is icy, while Iceland is green ( 80% of Iceland is green, according to National Geographic ). So, why did whomever named these islands do so ? Call it paradox-love or sheer stupidity ?
• Proceeding on the geographic string, "Netherlands" is, needless to mention, the heaven on earth to most men, with its notoriously famous components. Etymologically, "Nether Lands" is an English-equivalent of Hell. Maybe the English are so upright when it comes to Amsterdam's dames or was it a statutory warning in disguise ?
  
• The English Language is a rich feasting ground for paradox-hunters. The word "Big" is small, while "miniscule" is way too long for its meaning. Throw these words to a non-English speaking adult, and the specimen is bound to be muddled at why "Big" is thrice as small as "miniscule", while it means otherwise.
• If a joker jokes, does a poker poke ? I've played poker, but no card has been lucky enough to poke me.
• The English should've been facing a dearth of words, and decided to deploy the same set of words to imply different meanings. "Train" & "Coach" at a football game is way different from "train" & "coach" at a metro rail station. Dear Puritans, learn from Tolkien and Rowling.
  
• If "f l o o d" is pronounced "flud", shouldn't "f l o o r" be "flur" ?
  
• Other languages are not immune, either. Read this piece from a quiz trivia, so correct me if I'm wrong. "Urs", supposedly, represents "a wedding anniversary" in Hindi, while a similar sounding word in Persian - "Uroos" - means "death". Is that why men are scared of entering into wedlock ? Or was the word "wedlock" cunningly coined to imply that if you are wed, you are locked, god knows where, forever ? Muse, my single masculine mates !...
• The Hundred Years War, between England and France, was actually 116 years long ( 1337 - 1453 ). Losing count, are we?
• French Fries did not originate in France.
• Termites dwell in an "ant hill".
• Guinea pigs are neither from Guinea, nor are they pigs. They are rodents.
• Saltwater Taffy is made from freshwater.
  
• This one's, ironically, mine and if you've stayed with me this long, then you're truly privileged. If the first two months were christened "January" and "February", shouldn't the third month be "Marchuary"?. Maybe, it pronounced death to the christening process, for it sounded "mortuary".

A day has a day and a night, 12 hours each. Why is each of the 365 units of a year not called a night? ( Prejudist Diurnals.. ),
A Nocturnal.

Draws me out of my blogging-hiatus..

Came across this piece on Kevin Carter, a Pulitzer Prize winner, for his heart-rending photograph of a famine-stricken Sudanese girl. If the girl's destiny is horrifying, Kevin's was even more. He had reportedly committed suicide, three weeks after winning the Pulitzer Prize, due to depression. More on this here...
http://flatrock.org.nz/topics/odds_and_oddities/ultimate_in_unfair.htm

The article speaks about Kevin driving away after taking the photograph. Why ? If he was really touched by the scene, he should've picked her up in his truck, and should've driven her to the kilometer-away relief camp, to which she was crawling away to. That makes me doubt his intentions - "to show what the world was overlooking" - and makes me believe that he was just after mortal accolades. Or could be that he was so weak-hearted to tend to a fellow being in agony. The article also mentions about him smoking away and crying to get over the horrors of this scene. Maybe the horror was too much to digest and put the daylight out of him. Beyond sentiments about his prize-winning picture and immediate death, what pains me most is his inability to relieve someone of their pain. While the picture made a great deal of shortlived difference to the dog-eat-dog corporate world, a moment of care would've made a world of difference to the shortlived destiny of the dying child, which in my opinion, counts more than a universal plaudit.

Speaking of a dog-eat-dog world, here's one from Gujarat, which puts me out of sleep everytime I think about it.
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=73907
The photograph is iconic of the Indian administration, where the superiors ride over their subordinates' shoulders, literally and figuratively. The country that had seen selfless individuals aplenty, is now a dumb witness to such inhuman treatment. Mr. Kumaraswamy is seen flaunting his shades and his too-precious-to-be-wet uniforms, while a helpless subordinate carries him on his shoulders, across the flooding waters. Maybe he was clueless about what "fellow being" actually stood for. He - I would prefer adressing this moron with the pronoun "it" - misconstrued it to be '"fell low being", I guess. Whatever strata one might be in, can't they understand that all earthlings are created equal. Human rights activists talk at length about atrocities in illiterate pockets of the country, but a Joint Commissioner of Police riding on a constable as if the latter were a "two-legged beast-of-burden" derives little condemnation. Whatever comes out of the ensuing inquiry on this controversy, it pains me to think that a human could be so heartless as to treat a fellow being with such insenstivity and total oblivion to one's human rights.

The world's not just about such scattered fragments of negativity, and there's still hope for humans to do justice to their elevated altar on the evolution chart. I've never been a witness to a beast ordering another to carry it, but, from the above incident, been an unfortunate, indirect witness to a human equivalent of a beast. That piece should've been titled "Pity and the Beast", needless to mention what "Pity" and "Beast" stand for.

Now to the hope part, three Kashmiri women are on track for the Nobel Peace Prize, for their humanitarian service to the terrorism-plagued regions' women. People like these make me wipe off haunting memories of the earlier "Kumaraswamy" incident.
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=50414
These women are on the other end of where Carter is in my opinion. That is, Carter, in my opinion, did something to draw accolades while he did nothing for the dying child, whereas, these women have brought about hope into the lives of scores of Kashmiris, and that deserves a worldwide standing ovation. Hats off, ladies , because you make me proud to be an Indian, and also a human.

As I'm penning this, the world might be growing on insentivity and humanity, equally, but let me hope to make at least one reader ( yes, that's you ) think outside the selfish box, and open their eyes, limbs and heart to fellow beings in need. It starts with me and you are next in line. Love your fellow beings as thyself.

Deeply concerned,
Arun

Harry Potter Magic

Ever since I picked up "Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets" at a pirated-book pile in good ol' Chennai, it's been Hogwarts-ly for the past 4+ years.. What started as a puerile curiosity about the buzz surrounding Ms. Rowling's creation and her, literally, rags-to-riches story, transformed into a near craving for her subsequently spun episodes, filled with wizardry & the magic of being riveted to the few hundred pages of endless imagination.

The tinsel world, which is usually the first fan of such success stories & successful stories, churned out three magical episodes of Harry, till date, adding its own magic to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. "The Goblet of Fire" being my favorite as yet, I just can't wait for the fourth Harry Potter production to hit the screens. More than who plays Cho Chang or what she looks like, it's the Quidditch World Cup, the Yule Ball, the TriWizard Tournament and the eventual Duel with Voldemort ( don't cringe.. only wizards can't call him Voldemort.. we, Muggles, can.. ) that heightens my expectations. And to all those "grown-ups", Harry Potter ISN'T a kids' series.

Every character has been well-detailed and when you probe into the names & phrases & jinxes, you'll feel the extent of Rowling's creativity. Erised, the mirror of desire, for instance, is the word "Desire" spelled backwards. Tom Marvolo Riddle anagramises to I'm Lord Voldemort. Avada Kedavra is Abracadabra. Chocolate Frogs, Patronus, Demetors, Hippogriffs, Phoenix, Dragons, Goblins.. It's endless magic..

If I rant for a few more minutes, I'll be going like "A for Animagus, B for Beauxbatons, C for Charms, D for Dumbledore...".. So, let me subject myself to the "Finite Incantatem" spell..

-- H, as in HarryPotter's fan..

Google Whack again !

An "arachnophobic coelacanth" earned me another hit on the WhackStack.. Did the African species become extinct because of arachnophobia ? Maybe the spiders then, were not potamophobic.. Anyways, another hit on the GoogleStack makes it 4 in as many weeks..

Does that make me an arachnophobio-phile..

23 down.. more to go..

The world was made lucky 23 years ago on March 6... Mere thanks wouldn't sum up the gratitude I felt with every wish.. but still, Thanks ... Thanks to everyone who remembered the day amidst the tumult of time, and to every others who caught up with the wishing spree a day later ( it wasn't belated, folks ! it was 364 days in advance.. with the hope that you would say that when I miss your b'days :) ) and to the few others whose wishes did not reach me, but still were earnest greets..

Belated blog,
23-years-and-3-days-of-creativity

What do u want to muse today ?

Been a while since I felt the urge to blog fruitfully.. With the Oscars' night just off, it's time I, blasphemously for few, criticised the AMPAS - Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - in doling out the "most prestigious" awards to movies deliberately made lavish & extravagantly publicised as magnum opus.. It's hightime the AMPAS looked beyond aesthetical splendour & the unkempt desire to satiate a few million average-joe-movie-goers.. AMPAS was deemed to be the altar of modern cinema, where creativity was valued more than the most-expensive-movie-in-history, & where the adjective "Oscar-winner", or nominee, for that matter, was a metric to embellish the best, while the rest tried keeping up with the incredibles.. Now, in my honest opinion, it's a mere publicity tool, to get the lavishly-made movies to the public.. So, instead of putting their heart & soul & what not into the project, all the crew needs to do, now, is to spend millions, pull in the big names, release under a great banner, perform a-close-to-ordinary artwork & most importantly, release it a few weeks before the Oscars, so that the hype stays alive and keeps the hopes alive, while leaving passionate-movie-goers bone-dead. We, the few creative remnants in the big-is-better-society, never peer into screenings for just the hollow hype. All we, again, the few, if you are still with me, look for is life-size flicks with which one can relate themselves to. Having nothing against terminator-like-flicks, I'm just concerned that the Oscars, at this rate, will fall prey to the hype, thereby losing the hype aound itself. It's only a few more years, in my pedestrian estimate, when action & sci-fi & disenchanting-crap crawl their way unceremoniously into The Ceremony, with the audience applauding the loss of classics, while adulating the arrival of awesomely-catered-yet-awfully-average-plots.

Though am in no position to diagnose yesterday's awardees, for the only reason that I was audience to merely one-and-a-half movie of the entire lot. Ironically, the "half-a-movie" garnered five of the statuettes. I term it "half-a", because of my honest opinion that it wasn't a complete movie at the very least. When I felt that only few Indian directors, with due respect to the scores of Indian greats & thespians, can churn out such incompleteness, Martin Scorsese swoops in, flying right, and well under the thin line separating the best and the rest... The other movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, was, artistically, even better, but wasn't even nominated in more than two categories. But, I can't be arguing reasoning with blokes who found Denzel, of "Training Day", a greater piece than his masterpieces. All I could do is thank that he wasn't given the "most-prestigious-statuette" for his "Manchurian Candidate". Who knows, if only "Manchurian Candidate" were made a few years earlier, in place of "Training Day", the gold would've been in Denzel's drawing room, just because the Oscars in 2001 were flavored Afro-American-friendly. That day, World was saved from the most massive self-mockery. Maybe, I'll have to get my eyes & brain replaced with the cast-nickel-alloyed-equivalents at AMPAS, the ones who cast "CAST AWAY" away.

( DISCLAIMER : All opinions stated are mine. If you tend to disagree or find it scathing, it's merely fictitious and coincidental. Oscar Winners ! Revel, Rejoice & Reaffirm your faith in rich monstrousness & Renegade Reality to the Rear. Nominees ( not Losers ) ! be Relieved to Relive Tom Hanks' heart-wrenching moment.)

A movie-goer.

The Ski Resort

Kissin' Bridge

thtz me.. and am skiing'

THE Ski Trip

was lucky to be part of the wonderful Ski Trip with my friends... Set in an awesomely romantic spot, romantically titled as "Kissing Bridge", it was the trip of a lifetime... Being my first date with ski blades that were as tall as me, my (poor) feet were struggling to adapt to the rude ski boots on a bright, but a too early, Saturday morning.. Weathering the initial bouts of nervous interactions, my feet synched perfectly with it's crude date, and were on a roll.. It was typical paradox at its height, with kids fearlessly churning out a-perfect-10, while the adults fearlessly crashed & rolled & were slathered with snow... and am losing count of the umpteen times I landed with my ski blades flailing in the air... Was my perfect day in recent past...

The day was not yet over, but I'll keep the rest for future blogs..

(Photos comin' up..)

Friends = Finders = dFiners

Friends... am not talking about the wonderfully-televised decade-long enchantment, but about more earthly beings who make a great effect on whom you grow into as.. But, is it possible to stick around with them, with each one's life pointing to a different direction on the life's compass, though pivoted about a central knot .. I've been nurturing a thought for quite sometime & it's evolving into a Tantalus' cup. The more I get closer to it, the further it gets.. That thought is to replenish contacts with my best friends, in fact easier, because of the sparse count ... but with every phase in my life, they get replaced, though jus' temporarily, by new people & the superlative "best" seems to be losing it's superlativity, because you call someone your best friend, now, and then ten years down the line, in a different place, in a different phase, someone else becomes your best friend. So, seems like "best" really means "best as yet"..

Now, onto the anagram "Finders", I guess, the word "Friends" was clearly coined with the anagram hidden in it & with the expectation that someone would be able to crack this life-size maxim at 3:16AM. Finders... Friends are finders because they find your perpetual positives, negligible negatives and still find you interesting, besides helping you find where your heart points to.. Disney's guiding principle was to Reach the heart, before you get to the brain. Friends reach your heart before really getting into your brain. Hordes of readers would've loved being with someone, even before they get to know the other's firstname, leave alone lastname. People who find the resonant wavelength gel in no time.. Finders... Making a more crude attempt at anagrams, "Friends" are "d-finers".. Definers... "Tell me who your friends are, I'll tell who you are".. Weirdly Similar.. Find Friends & let them define you...

Anagrams transform dangers to gardens & ganders,
Anagramiser...

DoubleWhacked !!!

Hitchcock's "Arachnophobiac" might've been a hit / spine-chiller ... But, my "arachnophobic" is definitely churning out hit after hits on the GoogleWhack Stack... For the second day in a row, I came up with a whack - "arachnophobic flibbertigibbet" - which whacked the senses outta Google.. Combos that came close to the whack of fame are - "flummoxing flibbertigibbet", "bellicose bulimic", "centrifugal coelacanths", except that coelacanths wasn't even existent in the Google Dictionary... Must've gone out fishin'.. something's fishy..

Now, to the enlightening section of what we could perceive from this innocuous whack.. On yesterday's lines, it would mean an oaf terrified about the Web.. "Dont be scared of webDesigners, You BlockHead !"

Reasons to get over your one-day fear of Websters ( thtz a cool name ),
Webster, a webDesigner.

Whacked !!

I'm on the GoogleWhacking stack( www.googlewhacking.com ), FINALLY. After weeks of whacking Google real hard, it caved in with the weight of my two-word combo - onomatopoeic arachnophobic. Makes no sense to the layman, but an arachnophobiac could be onomatopoeic, if you know what I mean. Give him the eight-legged innocuous spinner, and he's bound to be onomatopoeic. Was on top of the stack for about 7 minutes, until pushed down by the ever-active whackers. You can see it on http://www.googlewhack.com/tally.pl ( Look for diparun )

Meaning made out by diparun -> a self-expressing sound-word gurgled by the state of being cornered by an eight-legged innocuous webDesigner ( fyi, am a web designer too, two-legged, though :)

I can relate this to the dotcom boom, at least in Chennai (India), during when everyone wanted to get on the WWW, and webDesigning was a profitable endeavour. Startup & Upstart web designers would travel far & wide to fleece such web cravings, and maybe, "onomatopoeic arachnophobic" describes the way these cravers felt.

Given you reasons to be scared of WebDesigners,
A Web Designer.

Thin Air

How many times have I wanted to vanish into thin air & blend into the serene breeze? Apparently, par Aplenty ( I've got to stop this anagramising.. Or, he does not stop but opts to spot the top post in my anagram history )... But, every time that happens I keep telling myself that this is the worst it can get and so, I should look into what more can life hit one with.. Cmon, Life ! Hit me with all your might... There will be a few days when you feel like a deflated balloon, lifeless & dejected... But, dudes, the deflated balloon, though with very little materialistic value, has a lesser risk of exploding & vanishing into thin air ( vanishing, again !!) than one that is jaunty & bouncy.. Cmon, it cant get too philosophical than this.. So, stay level-headed & believe that Acme and Abyss are next door neighbors... That should keep you aware of the fact that failures shouldn't reach your heart, while success never gets to the mind of a complete man.. Stay cool & be a complete man..

but, what provoked me into penning this ? My puerile anagramisation, of pedestrian mumblings, unfortunately destined to evoke unprecedented life-size maxims, worked on the phrase "Thin air" for an inconsequential, yet eventually consequential, frame of time... What could "Thin Air" anagramise to and make this bloke pen a blog early this day ? "Hit? Rain..", which dawns upon me as "Hit hard by the thunderous Life ? Brave it & Keep raining until you reach the sea of your dreams..".. Maybe this will be lost in the tumult or might be etched into your memories, but if there wasn't an inkling of truth in this motivational, albeit innocuous, statement, Abraham Thomas Lincoln, incidentally born around this day a couple of centuries ago, would've faded into the oblivion as yet-another commoner.

Just a wild thought that what if people could vanish into thin air... If that had been an option, the world would've lost zillions of inspirational icons, millions of rags-to-riches stories, thousands of mavericks, hundreds of philosophers, scores of phoenixes & a few utterly-disbelieving pessimists, who see the world of success stories & cringe at being at the bottom rung and without whom the world's success rate would've hit a dull saturation.. So, even if u r a pessimistic pessimist, stay on, take on the ladder one patient step at a time & make the world a better place for the others.. I do not want to be overtly dramatic or excessively inspirational, but I'm happy to see that at least one optimistic soul, (yup, you), is prepared to take on life's vagaries head-on..

from a Lincolnesque Homo Sapien,
Arun

(PS: I warned you... a complex Piscean mind under the microscope...)

Bloggin starts now..tick tick

Haven't really been an active blogger, but with the blog being hotlinked to my website at www.buffalo.edu/~as86/, I think it's time for the blogger in me to wake up from the cozy siesta, and give the world a wee bit more view of my already open mind. Maybe this is the resolution for the year.. Or is it the resolution OF the year ? It won't be much long a wait.. Having known me for quite a long time, I guess this blogspot will be full of random musings of this HomoSapien, as the blog's html-title-tag reads... More so, it's a Piscean mind that you'll be peering into.. So, watch out for the most complex of thoughts as well as the irony of being bowled over by the simplest of unworldly subjects, while braving the most enervating infernos..

Blogging out & leavin the world in peace, for sometime,
Arun

GoogleWhacking

anonymous ambidextrity.. thtz the closest I've ever come to googlewhacking.. returned two search results & for the uninitiated, GoogleWhacking is a term coined for the two-word combination tht returns a single Google Search result..

My first try at Blogging.. Don't flog me for this act of puerile procrastination...

Welcome to my wonderful miniworld called the "Universe in the Making & Awakening".. Ppl call me Diparun, and I believe it's an abbreviation of "Dynamism In a Packet of Altruism, Rarely UNsettled"...