I saw this movie today....it is called "Drowning Mona".

First thing....great name!!!

And then of course the movie was the kind of dark humour that I had expected. And I was wondering why we could not make more of these kind of movies....the type that you can relate to somehow..where the people are real people....where the situations are not necessarily realistic, but probable....and the people react like real people. I think we all could do with a lesser amount of melodrama or the hysterics..or the special effects....or the computer generated effects...or the amazing fight scenes.....

And for all the hype about acting skills and this and that...I don't get to see too much of good acting in the mainstream movies...hindi or english these days. The Hollywood movies seem to be churning out the same trash day in and day out....and the hindi movies are copying them badly....throwing in a few more songs....baring as much as the censors will allow...and add to that another half an inch of flesh...

Bad storyline, Bad acting, Bad editing....Great advertising. Good Heavens.

For those who maybe a bit interested...if possible, watch these movies if you get a chance. I am not saying these are the greatest movies ever made, but these are somehow real movies.

Zubeida(Hindi)
The Unknown Cyclist
Drowning Mona.
Familia(Spanish)
Midaq Alley(mexican)
Aguntuk(Bengali)


Will add to this list as and when I can.

...she woke me up in the middle of the night, and said, "...even when you're sleeping, your smile's askew..."

i didn't know what to say....and then i realized that she had been watching me sleeping. i suddenly felt overwhelmed.....i wanted to hold her close, but she said,"lets go up to the terrace and watch the stars."

i said,"lets".

It’s raining here today…its afternoon and I just got out of my room to throw out some garbage and I realize it is raining. The smell of the wet earth slowly cascades from my nose and mesmerizes every sense...it has always been like this. I live in an obscure port town named Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu. It is situated pretty close to Kanyakumari and far far away from everywhere else. I work in a chemical industry as a chemical process engineer. The job’s boring, but the pay’s good. Today’s my weekly off, so I am watching some movie on my computer and then I realize my room is in the unholiest mess. Well…I don’t really want to work today, but then you got to do what you got to do. So I clean up my room, and pack up the garbage in a plastic bag and go out to throw it away. And then I notice that it’s not the usual burning hot outside…there are shadows of huge clouds sifting through the landscape…there is no dust in the cool wind blowing…and its raining. It’s just a drizzle, I tell myself and yet I can’t help smiling. I breathe deep and soak in the smell of the wet earth. I look around and see the trees tossing their great mass of foliage about like tipsy dancers. I close my eyes and am transported back in time. I am in standard IV, and its raining cats and dogs in Silchar. I am on my way back from school and can hardly restrain my glee. I jump on the puddles and splash water all around. And then suddenly I slip and loose my balance…I’m about to fall down when my elder brother grabs my hand and prevents my fall. Dada has been standing my antics for a long while now and enough is enough he says. He is indignant and doesn’t take much effort to hide it. He is exactly three years older to me (we share our birthday); but as all elder brothers go, he thinks I am his responsibility and he always was the responsible big guy. But then I am the younger brother…so I grin my way to glory and jump at the next puddle. He gives up and walks along while I follow him…hopping and splashing. And then I am in the Xth standard, walking to my tutor’s place with my best pal. It’s about to rain and there are black clouds looming in the sky; the sun sending shafts of evening light through the clouds. And then I see this tree lit by the sunlight…dazzling bright against a twilit silhouette. I cannot move my gaze. After a few moments I turn to look at my pal, and I see he’s looking at the same tree….almost as if in a trance. Then suddenly he looks at me and smiles. We are both smitten by the sight and stay a little while longer to feast our souls on that bright green against the hazy background. But we are already late for our classes and so we leave. Two days later as we walk the same path again, we are stunned as we see our tree felled on the ground, cows and goats chewing at the drooping leaves. Some ancient rage rises through me, but I choke it down my throat. I smile at my pal and we walk away. But we talk of our tree for many a day to come. Now, I am in Hyderabad. I have just joined an engineering institute; well… three months ago, to be precise. The brutal ragging sessions finally got over two weeks back. It’s a weekend and I’ve come down to see a friend. We spend the whole day walking around this place where you can find a lot of second hand books. Now its evening and we are back at her place, sitting on the edge of her terrace dangling our legs, looking at the Necklace Road and talking about Wuthering Heights and David Copperfield and of everything else on this universe. We don’t realize it’s late and suddenly it begins to rain heavily. She looks at me and breaks out into a laugh. And then she tugs at my arm and says let’s dance. “But I don’t know how to”, I say. “I’ll teach you”, she says. “But we don’t have any music”, I say again. She smiles impishly and says “hear close…we do have music.” I concentrate and realize that the rain has cut off all sounds of the traffic; and all around the only sound is that of the raindrops falling. I want to dance. She takes my hand and places it between her shoulder blades and then she takes my other hand and proceeds to teach me waltz. We are completely drenched and cannot stop laughing at our stupidity. We dance a slow waltz in the rain till it’s not raining anymore, and the bright stars are smiling from heaven on two foolish kids. I dry off at her place and take her leave. I am happy. I’m in the final year of engineering. Its Durga puja holidays and I am in Konark now. It’s night and a storm is brewing. I sit on the Chandrabhaga beach and gaze at the sea frothing in some arcane fury. In some strange way, I can feel its pain in my heart. I am alone and there is no one else on the beach. It’s only the sea, the clouds, the moon and the occasional light beam from the lighthouse…and me. I gaze around me and lose the sense of time. But for my modern clothes, I could have been a solitary nomad on one of his sojourns. The jarring sound of my cellular shocks me back into reality. It’s a colleague calling to clarify a doubt. I finish the call, and throw away the garbage bag. I have got lots to do…finish the movie, clean up my room, water my plant, reply my mails and search for better career options. But before any of those, I’ll just step out for a moment and get wet in the rain.

Only in Japan

I got this as a forwarded message....this thing looks rather interesting i must admit....whether the idea is good or not....i am unable to judge.

thinking of you till it hurts...

'tis the air supply song again... I'm lying alone with my head on the phone Thinking of you till it hurts I know you hurt too but what else can we do Tormented and torn apart I wish I could carry your smile and my heart For times when my life feels so low It would make me believe what tomorrow could bring When today doesn't really know, doesn't really know I 'm all out of love, I'm so lost without you I know you were right believing for so long I 'm all out of love, what am I without you I can't be too late to say that I was so wrong I want you to come back and carry me home Away from this long lonely nights I'm reaching for you, are you feeling it too Does the feeling seem oh so right And what would you say if I called on you now And said that I can't hold on There's no easy way, it gets harder each day Please love me or I'll be gone, I'll be gone. I also know that you'll never read this blog....so its rather safe....is it not?

sometimes...

sometimes i can't say shit from shinola. why is everyone so damn interested in tofu suddenly? i hate the taste....and the non-existing flavour. i call up the girl i've been seeing the last couple of days...and she says...she's gotta fly to singapore tomorrow and that she hates the idea...not that i mind...but she's gotta be there for 5 hrs and thats her god damn job and still she must whine about it....but i guess its worth cruising around chennai in the dark of the night...inhaling the lingering perfume...caressing the curve of her nape...and while i am composing this...i am talking to her and telling her that i am writing obnoxious things about her on the internet....and she's laughing ith me....i can almost see her laugh in front of my eyes and know that this is good...that i am happy right now....

and to think i still can't say shit from shinola....and i still hate tofu!!!

it's a mail thing

from the past few days my mailbox is being inundated by mails from rajbir, kenny, rathi and baishali....well what can i say....it sure feels great to receive mails....mails that have been composed and not just forwarded....its kinda intimate.....

and thanks to the ever increasing inbox size of my gmail account, i need not really worry about it getting full...so yeah....i'm enjoying this thing right now....it sure feels good.

well....looks like my blog is getting more and more texty if you know what i mean....

( texty??? what's wrong with me?)

anyways....think i have to upload a few pics to make it look nice.

i also need to check up the prices of microwave ovens....and i must get my net banking account activated.....

and i need to reply to those mails....

sent mails...

today the pressure was a bit less on my plant....all the machines were working fine. so i decided to take a small break and check my mailbox in a rather detailed fashion.....this i had not been able to do for quite a while now....

fortunately or unfortunately i cannot say, but in a completely freak whim, i decided to check the sent mails folder.....and i stirred the hornets' nest of memories....

who'd have thought that the yahoo saved the sent mails right till over 5-6 years back???

at least i had not....

but they do. so i was left looking at mails i had sent to all the people i had known over these years....some who have become close friends....some who had come close and then have gone away....and some who have just gone away....

there were these mails to the sister of a good friend of mine....i had met her when i'd gone over to their place and had stayed for a couple of days....she is one of the most charming girls i've met....and real funny too...and we had talked about books....and poetry....and about her kid brother...and future and so much more....and i had known...if i had a sister, i'd have wanted someone like her....and then we had mailed one another for a while....and then stopped....and i don't even remember her name right now.....and i'm out of touch with her brother too even though i have his mobile number...sad....right???

and then there were those mails to long forgotten chat friends....of girls i'd dated once..or maybe twice....mails to some school friends...who i have absolutely no idea whatsoever of at present

and yeah...there were these mails to this guy who had sent me a mail by mistake coz he wanted to send a mail to another abhijit deb roy, we too exchanged a couple of mails.....and then it stopped.

and those " hey how are you doing? i am doing fine....see you later" mails to countless number of people....

and that one mail to a friend who broke my heart....asking him never to contact me and wishing him luck...

so many things have changed in the past six years.....

i deleted those mails though, they still retain some sort of power over me...they still make me feel good, and sad....they still have the power to hurt me....

and i have stopped using that email address.

and yeah.....the polar bear waltz......

this is for neruda....


the whole wide universe is not wide enough
to hide that single speck of pain
when it eats away your soul and mind
do you still say love is insane?

Phoebe called me in the afternoon....she asked me to guess what she had done....so i said without any hesitation....nothing. she was furious. then she said its something she did pretty often...take a second guess....so i said you went out to some major breakfast event??? she was raging by now....so i gave up....you can go honest only to a certain extent...right???

she's dislocated her knee bone again.....she seems to have a rare talent to get her bones fractured or dislocated....this is the third time she's got her knee bones screwed up....and how???

she jumped over her gate. the land lord was sleeping and she did not wanted to wake him up....so she jumped. well that was the last thing she knew before getting to hospital.....
i could not help excaiming..."what the **** were you thinking???"

she was slightly amused....she said "do not swear to me."

i retorted "if you hold any illusions that I am supposed to treat you like a lady...please take a reality check; and for pete's sake...ladies do not jump gates at 5:30 in the morning so they can rush to the gym..."

and well....that was not all...her land lady said she knew a lady doctor and so phoebe decided to get there....it turned out to be a gynaecologist....i wonder what that lady was thinking...but when she told me that i could not help bursting out laughing.....

"wow...what a great impression of you your landlady has..."

"very funny" she said. but she definitely did not sound amused....what the heck.

so she'll possibly get back to her place take a break from all her studies for a couple of days and chill out. good for her.

and all the while i was chattering away laughing out with her; it completely slipped my mind to wish her a speedy recovery....

so here it goes...

"Get well soon girl....at least for the sake of the bed!!!"

from your monkey bone.

today was my weekly off.....so what did i do?

well...i woke up late....made myself a neat cup of horlicks (i still like it)...and then checked out on sandeep...he was sleeping as usual...he had had his first night shift of the week....and since there was no one else i wanted to meet....i came to town...sat in front of the pc in a very stuffy cafe....and here i am writing my blog after a long long time....

of course coming to the "town" has its own advantages.....i can be all by myself....i dont really have to adhere to any rules....and then the sound of the sea....all around...slowly drowning your senses like a stone drowning in a thick syrup....and the salty smell of the spray....no i did not see the sea today...nor do i intend to...the sea here is tied up by fishing nets....tamed by the endless ships and trawlers...the beach dirty with people and houses....but when i do not see it all....and only hear the roar harkening in the background....it stirs something inside of me...something so ancient...it is not possible to name it....

funny...language is supposed to give us the freedom of expression....but all it ever does is to restrain us with tame trained words and ties us down with correct grammar.....proper usage and a million other excuses

so what did i do today?

when i felt hungry....i went out and had my lunch....and then i could see a storm gathering....its a rare sight in here...it rarely rains in here as a matter of fact....i could not pass the temptation...i just wandered away on the streets...getting drenched...smelling the drops falling from my hair onto my face.... i have always had a fetish for water....and now since there was no one around to censure....... i could give away to my self....

and then when the rain stopped, i was in front of the cathedral in here....so why not go in? ....i had been yearning to go somewhere solitary....why i do not know; nor do i care to know. only i wanted some place silent....peaceful

i was disappointed...whatever i was seeking was not to be found in here in this cathedral...it was empty enough.....but no..... it was as though hollow....no soul in it....or maybe it is just me....

so here i am back again to the same cyber cafe....pouring myself out in my blog for everybody who cares to read....

its all in the game!!!

my durga puja

it has been a long while....and i realized it only after dubari asked me if i have stopped blogging....funny...that also made me realize that she must have been checking my blog after all...

durga puja went by without i even realizing it did so....i am as far away from home as i possibly could be while still in india....puja....no getting up at 5:00 in the morning for mahalaya this time...no shopping for new clothes...or choosing sarees for my mother....no smell of the coral jasmine flooding the morning mists....and no meeting up with old friends and planning out for the day...all thats passe....

durga puja this time went away while i was working like a bull in my plant....trying to match the daily stock...shouting after erring labourers....trying to solve the problems my project is facing...and then coming back to the hostel and dropping dead on the bed....

durga puja just went away this time...

rajbir smsed me a "shubho bijoya" and of course i called almost everyone i should and wished them the same...

only this time for the first time perhaps i realized how much it meant to me...for this time the only durga i saw was on the news paper...

shubho bijoya

Phoebe left yesterday.

I hate to walk slow...be it for my date who cannot keep up...or because of my new shoes that are cutting into my ankles...

floating down...

I saw a goose down floating in the air today....it has been so long I had seen one; or more probably noticed one. I was thinking how this ignorance had crept into me...but i could not hold my patience...i realized i was smiling wide at its sight.

How long has it been that you've smiled at a goose down?

Happy birthday to me!!!

so its my birthday again...after one whole year. now that was a pretty long wait. and guess what...its my elder brother's birthday too...so happy birthday dada!!!

the first to call were the fabulous four juniors of my college...well that was expected. what was not was that they sang "happy birthday to you" for me...i do not know how should i say thanks without trivializing the meaning it holds for me.

vishy forgot it again...but its ok. he called up soon enough!!

kukil and ambarish too...only they were disappointed at not being able to wake me up from sleep...i was wide awake...so it didn't work out for them...but anyways..i guess thats not the point.

and yes i am working late tonight...so the people back in hostel got all fidgety and eventually binu called me up and asked me to get there...and get back to work after that. and i did. it was amazing....thankfully no egg pelting...amazing cake and yes...the gift..they gave me a set of poster colours....now that took my breath away. it genuinely did.

phoebe was there...all awake to meet and wish me...and everyone else...nikhil, nokul, tara, rekha, loku, saravanan....everybody!!!

and sandeep... thank you dude...i guess i should not say thanks...but then you'll probably never check my blog out so its my secret well kept. thanks for calling me the

birthday baby...and thanks for everything else...most of all --- for standing me.

happy birthday to me

happy birthday to me

happy birthday to dear old me

and happy birthday to me!!!

just raving...

i was standing outside my plant tonight at about 3:00 am....and suddenly i realised that all around me there were just concrete constructions...there was not a single tree. i was scared.

i bolted. had a cup of coffee....calmed my nerves and got back to work.

as i think now...i understand. somehow we always kill our fears, our dreams and nightmares. and its all so easy. just justify things in terms of stark logic...and they lose that soul which makes you feel them.

the easiest way of forgetting someone you want to is to use her gifts like any other regular usable....as they lose their magic, we lose our memory and interest. let there be no ceremony...no funeral, just plain deliberate logic. it works wonders.

memory...now thats something i've never been good at. i still cannot recall if it was i or dada, my elder brother who started the fight that eventually broke my teeth. or why, for that matter i and priya broke up...did we? or the names of the regular females i had dated while i was seeing her.

you wake up one morning and find everyone you know has gone mad. what would you do? would you be scared?

talking about mornings...now that i am working night shifts, its been after quite a while that i see the sun rise. its not a very pretty sight from my plant considering all the SO2 fumes and the dust haze...but it still is the sun...and somehow it fortifies my faith. at times its nice to know that certain things are never going to change.

i was playing scrabbles with phoebe the other night till 2:00 am...and since i had some amount of wine left, we were sipping it while we were playing in the corridor ( i have been avoiding her room since that dumb looking female became her room mate). the looks we got from the passers by were stimulating.

i still disconcert people with my sudden outbursts of laughter. i laugh at everything...almost.

there is this female i do not know the name of, who has recently come to the hostel. she came with her mother. when they were cleaning their room, they found a sqiurrel's nest in their bathroom ventillator. it had three babies, about a week old. they threw the nest out along with the nestlings. during dinner that night, i found out they are vegeterians. it did not make me want to cry; it just made me want to strangulate them.

if i ever see these two dying on the road, i'll not stop or look back. it may kill my soul, but we already are an overpopulated species to be burdened with these degenerate mutants.

i am infuriated. but i'll get over it. i always get over things.

here's something i read in someone's blog tonight.

" Feelings, i never cared much for them anyways."

how true. its good to know there are some people like me out there.

Twinkle twinkle little bat

How i wonder what you're at

Up against the sky so blue

Stuck up there as though with glue.

have a great week start while i have my week end...finally.

lost in time

madurai...

getting down from the bus slightly apprehensive...what if things have changed? or what if things are different than i had perceived?

stupid me.

even as the day passed by...chocolat going on unnoticed on the television...lunch and dinner all half forgotten...what is it that we did?

to borrow a line, "we did not visit the minakshi temple."

how apt.

why this image?

i think you'll understand.

and i hope no one else will... they never had. right?

limecat...and some nostalgia

Vishy, Rajbir and Kenny I think shall be able to recognise this picture...Vishy had hated it, and Rajbir..well i do not really remember, which is odd since this was not too many moons back.

But then, certain things have changed...like our location, and of course our occupation.

Maybe we did not.

I know you hated this as the desktop of your computer Rajbir... I just never understood why.