kirukkal.com

Last night, when I was at the Shakes & Creams, Adayar, noticied a poster called Footprints 2004. It said a day-long seminar named Creativity and Redundancy: The Two Sides of a Coin, would be held on October 30[tomorrow] at the GRT Grand Days Hotel. Conducted by Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communication (SIMC) Pune, it is a series of lectures on creative trends in films/TV and advertising.

Interestingly, the guest speakers were media personalities. Most of them my favorites including, Gautam Menon [Kakkha Kakkha], Writer Sivasankari, Madan, Janaki Vishwanath [award winning movie Kutty] and our own K Balachander. Adding up the list was Krishnan Menon from Ogilvy & Mather and Anuradha Ananth. This article on Chennai Online adds more details.

I planning to check-in tomorrow and listen to these guys. BTW, here’s the number you should get in touch with for more details – 9841657841.

Always sunday mornings are either spent with a Hindu and filter coffee or they are shared along with sunday morning television. Today was a little different. A friend’s marriage in the early hours at Porur and a meet with Prabhu later at Barista. Prabhu had come down from Bangalore and suggested we would meet. For the first time. All along we have been talking through gmails and blog comments and now we did meet.

While we initally planned to meet in my fav joint of Woodlands Drive in, we feared the rain/traffic and thought we could make it to G.N.Chetty road Cafe Coffee day. At GN Chetty Road, I was surprised to see Barista replacing Cafe Coffee day, at the same place. So we barged in and I suspected that we would be the bonee [first business of the day] there. Already there was a kadalai kutchery there and we placed ourselves at a corner, ordering smoothies(don’t go by the name. it was a cold drink. hee hee).

We had a lively chat on tamil film music, cinema, blogs, doordarshan and finally about the paani-ka-panga at chennai. Prabhu has tons of neat ideas for blogs and will start a blog soon. A music/sports/mobile phone freak, he did amaze me saying that he visits my site from his ultra-pompus handheld Nokia darling. Was amazed by what that tiny little thing can do. It can take videos, pics(those pics above are from his Nokia), GPRS and what not. I am thinking hard of changing my stone aged mobile to this one and start clicking with that mobile camera.

After a while, Prabhu suggested we would checkout the bookshop located at the corner of Barista. A corner means a real corner. The store was as named as The Corner Book Store. With just 4 feet on the diagonals, this book store has an attitude. It had some of the best books of all time including Ayn Rand, Betrand Russell and Dilbert Omnibus to Alchemist, Da Vinci fiction which were best sellers.

Interestingly, the guy who was taking care of the shop did show us a book which was looking like a Anti-Da Vinci Code. He told that the book was released well before Da Vinci Code and was it was now making hay out of the Da Vinci popularity. Not just that but also he did started telling us about other books and it’s authors. I was completely taken back by his knowledge on books and authors. Asked him if he has any more book in shop that was left without being read by him. He said so politely that there are many and he is unable to keep in pace with them. Probably the first time, I did see a book store guy being such a passionate book-lover. We did take a pic of that guy as a respect for the fellow book lover. He is the one in the pic above. Later, I learnt even Prabhu shared a similar thought like me about the guy.

The Corner Book Store seems to be promising especially if they can hook on to such book worms. A true haunt for a book lover. Not forgetting the full mug of south indian flavored Cafe Latte at Barista. Not the usual coffee-bar music that plays noisy this thing that thing music. They only play the children channel POGO on the television with a mute. And on a sunday it was Barney and the kids on POGO. What a peace, it was !!

On the roads of Chennai, if you get to travel on this Aayudha Pooja festival weekend, here’s wishing you happy skidding. Many of us who commute using a two wheelers and even three wheeling auto rickshaws get a chance to slew/skid because of those pulpy pumpkins broken on the middle of the roads.

Breaking pumpkins, is believed to rush out bad omen from shops, vehicles and whatever stuff you believe to be affected by that omen. On this auspicious weekend, most of the shops break pumpkins alongwith the burning camphor in the middle of the road just opposite to their shop. Hence dudes, if you drive around Chennai and don’t notice the large white pumpkins on the road, boom. Drive safe and no skidding.

Even after repeated advice of the metropolitan management and the traffic police of Chennai, this superstition continues. And it will go on until pumpkins and bad omen co-exist. Probably every Chennaite is aware of the pitious story of a couple who died because of this pumpkin skid, some years back. Vijay, had been on Radio Mirchi and adviced in chennai slang about avoiding such incidents. Who cares.

P.S : Thanks to Praveen for these links.
This is why Mani Ratnam is a professional’s professional. Hats off !!
Sharukh Khan talks tamil, again [after Hey Ram], for the dubbing of Swades in tamil as Desam.