Category Archives: Personal

Someone with a smiling face approached me at a grocery store when I was busily hunting for a three way lamp. It was a desi. That was unusual. For a desi to smile at you in US, it should comply with these rules, either he knows you or he needs something done by you. I don’t know him. My 7 to the power 12th sense alerted me.

“Hey howyodo?”, says he.
“Doing good, You ?”, reading seriously the carton of GE’s three-way lamp.
“So you work here ?”
“You mean this grocery store, No !!”. I thought he believed me to a cart push-boy there.
“That was funny…. I meant in Seattle”, says he with an instant laugh.
“Yeah”, answering and reading the same lamp carton again. Get lost, dude.
“Want to work on free time ?. I’ve got couple-a guys workin on part-time for me “.
I took three bulbs and said,”My hands are already full, like this”. Was curious on what area where those couple-a guys were working.
He continues without listening, “Its an e-commerce business that they are working on. Good Money”.
I googled my brain and sensed what he was upto. Asked,”And whats it called ?”
He said,”It’s called q……………”

I know. I know I know. Vudu Joot. BTW, goto pickup those three-way lamps tomorrow.

P:S – It’s only after this post, I realized I am so bad at writing direct speech. Punctuation sucks big time. Dialogue writing is a great art and not my cup of tea, atleast now. But don’t worry Mani Ratnam, I can improve 😉

Am on a Saarang high, over the weekend. As usual they don’t allow photograhic equipment inside the Open Air Theatre. So the digital camera that I carry along would be frisked. Hence, will post some pictures taken outside. Picture postcards of current fashion.

My mom celebrated the silver jubliee year of Sumeet mixie in our house. It was bought somewhere in the early 1980 when I was still a crying mama in the kindergarten. It stills rotates faster(!) to make yummy Thenga Chutney and Pudhina Thugayal. May sound trivial. But I am just thinking, as engineering gets better, do the contemporary products have better life. To think back, our B/W Solidaire lived longer than our recent color Videocon television. I understand the usage has increased but still. I am not sure how long my philips ‘digital’ television will continue to show images un-distorted ? I hope it happens sooner than two years. A plasma television might just come barge into my drawing room, only then.

Had been to My Best Friend’s Wedding at Hotel Palmgrove. Not the movie, a true wedding. While the Palmgrove at Nungambakkam is the toughest place to reach given the traffic that surrounds the place, it is a place for a good decent wedding. The only crib I have is that you may get lost among the many weddings that happen in the many wedding halls of Palmgrove.

During the wedding reception, three guys on the stage who called themselves a band, pulled up a great carnatic fusion instrumental show. While it was surprising to see a three member band, their quality of music was completely devastating. One was with a violin, one on a electronical pad that gave out drum sounds and the other with the synthesizer. Though its been couple of years since I started getting bored over the synthesized music, this one was a true experience. And the quaint manner they played Kurai ondrum illai was mind blowing. As a breath of fresh breeze, I think one should also listen to such nice fusion music to understand the spectrum of carnatic music, that is. I know understand why people outside India celebrate artists like Violinist L. Subramaniam and Guitarist Prasanna[Am a great fan of Prasanna]. The foreigners probably understand their musical notes and when carnatic gets transformed to western style, they appreciate the amazing notes of carnatic. In Indian carnatic circles, fusion is a sin. I vouch it isn’t. Any takers ?

On the way back, we had pull up a cab to return home and the cab driver seemed to be full of josh today. The reason, Super Star had travelled in the same cab today. He said that Rajinikanth’s Chandramukhi shooting is on at the MGM resort and for the shooting 50 of his company’s cab were hired. Luckily, the car he drove was the one Rajini was travelling in the movie. And you know why he was full kush. He may probably not sleep today and tomorrow. It was the last place someone would look for such a gossipy news. So here you go journos, Rajini shoots Chandramukhi at MGM resorts with 50 cars. A saleable headline for tomorrow.