Red A-Dare

They told me I should look out of the window for Mars
Now was it North-East or South-West, and near which of the stars?
I shivered, and I shuddered, into the late hours
Might this go the way of the Leonid showers?

Beckoned by the wafting aromas of the soup bowl
I decided to call off the nightly prowl.
Dodging Red-gazers, their 'scopes cheek-by-jowl
I happily left Astronomy to the owl.

Though she hasn't been receiving any special coverage, Asian Games medallist Anju Bobby George (who's training with World Record holder Mike Powell) has been doing well in the women's long jump circuit, and is considered to be among the top 10 athletes in this sport today. She has her attempts at the World Championship later tonight, I think, and here's to hoping that her performance is more than just noteworthy.

A newly installed carrom board at work sees some of us taking time off to strike a few coins now and then. I've played a few games when I was a kid, and can associate lots of angry moments with it: all the people I played with then were much better than me (blame it on them having the advantage of age) and the frustrations of not being able to pocket the easy coin is a memory that continues to simmer.

However, those tough lessons have made their mark, because my co-participants then were always kind to me and taught me the rebound, the shots-at-crazy-angles, and didn't have the easy routes of thumbing etc. I didn't become a great player, but I found that I can play a decent supporting role. My record so far in the two full games on the new board has been honourable. The first game we played, we lost 28-29 but not before we came back from something like 11-28 down. The second full game saw my team win 31-24. Not too bad.

The usual arguments over the rules led to a search for them on the Web, but the different sites (hosted by international federations) are hopelessly contradictory. But the people I'm play carrom with are not really obsessed about the technicalities, and their skills don't dwarf mine, so I can get away with my honour and temper intact.

UP, UP and A Way

One of the recurring (and unfailingly funny) joke concepts in The Simpsons comedy series involves the blessed-only-with-short-term-memory Homer doing something that causes him physical pain, and then doing it again, and again, and again and so on, while muttering Oowwwww all the time. The politicians in Uttar Pradesh remind me of this a lot.

Whether it's the BJP coming back again with Mayawati after she famously plunged her Bahujana Hitaya dagger into their backs in Parliament, or their notorious but innovative power-by-rotation agreement or Mulayam and his tango with the Congress at the Centre and State, UP politics is as spirited as ever, with almost every possible aspirant to the kursi having got a chance to warm it with his/her gluteus maximus over the last few years. The photos of the last decade look like the shifting colour combinations of a kaleidoscope: all perms. and combs. are possible. Of late, there has been an argument over statements like "Mumbai always bounces back" with some saying that "Mumbaikars have no choice: their stomachs demand they go back to work, bomb or no bomb". I feel the real phoenixes are the members of the UP Vidhan Sabha, not even one of those crazy toy balls rebound and richochet as much as these chaps.

But I must confess to be a little surprised at Mayawati (here's one lady who should've been born (or is it behen born?) to a Gujju sorority) giving up the chair so soon. I don't see the master plan kicking in yet. Why would she renounce so easily, especially with the BJP not really forcing her hand (as far as I can see)? Did she think the BJP-appointed Governor would not let the SP in? If this is a gaffe, then she is in good company with her old friend Mulayam's move during the break in the UP Lok Sabha elections. Anyway, it has given rise to another unlikely and apparently indigestible recipe featuring Kalyan Singh, Tiwari-Pal and an alphabet soup of parties that takes the whole concept of the abbreviated names so far that I saw a Hon. Member from the ABCD party.

And if this had been a sketch from Monty Python, someone would have walked in saying: "Stop it now, this is getting too silly even for us".

Anyone (and these days, anything) whose name deviates from normally observed spellings is automatically suspected of having met the numerologist: take Jayalalithaa, Suniel Shetty and Kkusum as members of the exampli gratia set. We can give Preity Zinta the benefit of the doubt as she seemed to be a deviant even before she came into the spotlight. But I've always wondered what the "righteous" Shobha (now augmented with the "Extra-a Innings") Dé had to say in her defence. A few days ago (don't remember where I read this, must be The Times of India, for the TOI has been quite into these things: Pune TOI features one of their town-favourites Anupam Kapil each week who gives us the requisite gyan on these things) I read that "she found Shobhaa more visually appealing". She didn't really acknowledge any other reasons for the nomenclatural change. Yeah right, Ms. Dé. Wish you (or the adviser in the background) had found Shhhoba or Day more aesthetic, would have made it fun to Ssshush you each Day.

Wild card horse

I haven't seen a single film with Abhishek Bachchan, but I cannot stop thinking that he will eventually make it big. I don't know if he has the talent, or something extra special to make this happen, but I always feel favourably for him and hope that one day he will enjoy an amount of success that some of his peers already have. There's no explaining my sympathy towards the (on second thoughts, it just struck me that I have watched him in Om Jai Jagdish: nothing special) ChhoTa B, for I'm not a huge fan of the Big B (like this fellow). But to borrow a phrase from one of Daddy's films, I think he may be a lambi race ka ghoDa. For starters, I wish they'll stop giving him dance steps that make him look gauche, especially in comparison to his co-stars.

He made his debut when his father wasn't having the greatest time of his life, but was slowly inching his way back, so Abhishek hasn't had the full force of the Bachchan heritage behind him. Also, he really hasn't been bankrolled by the Family unlike the Roshans. I saw an interesting short from an MTV interview with the Junior B who responds to a numerologist who apparently says that he should drop his last name by saying: "That's all I got now! I've been hanging on just because of my last name!" and then more seriously that his last name was given by his grandfather and his father had worked hard to add worth to this name, and no, there's no way he would lose it.

Coming soon:

* Malayala cinema-um nyaanum

* Thoughts on Iruvar

* Where the lines between reality and dreams blur

On the other hand, another Leeds test match and England v South Africa is very keenly poised once again.

And for once, there is something grabbing the tennis news more than the fact that Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes almost played together: hopefully Paes will get better soon. Very few sportsmen in India are as universally loved and admired.

Where there is complaint, there must be praise. India came back to thrash Pakistan in the Champion's Trophy, and they pumped 5 goals back in 20 mins. Highly surprising, but this is one sport where we have consistently dominated our neighbours, and I think the team believes it can always win. Shades of the 1982 showing at the Trophy where present coach Rajinder Singh was involved in another memorable defeat of the rivals, en route to the 3rd spot. We have a chance to match that, for an Aussie gift means that India play Pakistan for the 3rd place tomorrow.

If they don't win, then India would've had another typical tournament, the template for which reads:

* India achieves excellent pre-tournament showing, raising hopes of the Great Hockey Resurgence that the country has been awaiting for 25 years now.

* India then contrives to lose its first match.

* It has to play catch-up, scraping through some of its matches.

* If we have to play Pakistan, we win the encounter.

* We have to await the results of other matches on the last day, huddled with calculator in hand, for a playoff for a decent place: mostly the results do go in our favour.

* We don't win the playoffs, the final blow, leading to recriminations to re-surface that were temporarily suppressed after the Pakistan victory.

* There is a lot of bad blood, usually conducted through the media, spilling over to the airport. Eventually, the coach loses his job. Some senior players may be temporarily sacked too.

Let's see if the old script is called into action this time also.

This time's BCL finds
A long pending visit to the local British Library yielded:

* Freedom Song by Amit Chaudhuri, which I've always wanted to try

* An illustrated biography of John Cleese. I have heard of John Cleese's huge reputation, but haven't really seen much of his output, except for a few episodes of Fawlty Towers. Of his film roles, I haven't seen any of the famous ones like A Fish Called Wanda, only a few appearances that seemed rooted in Basil Fawlty. Of course, like many British comics of his generation, he made his reputation with Monty Python, something on my longterm TODO list. I have read a few sketches, but I'm sure they're even better on screen. Interesting tidbit: his father was actually named Cheese, then changed it to escape from being at the receiving end of many a joke. The book will hopefully shed some light on another aspect to Cleese's life: his interest in psychology (I've seen him appear on a few psychology related productions of the BBC shown on the Discovery channel).

Chanda sooraj laakho.n taare.n
Hai jab tere hii yeh saare.n
kis baatpe hotii hai phir takraare.n

Khii.nchi hai lakeere.n is zamee.n pe par na khiincho dekho
beech mei.n logo.n ke deewarein

Duniya mei.n kahi.n bhi dard se koi bhi
taDpe to humko yahaa.n pe
ehsaas uske Zakhmo.n ka hoke
apnaa bhi dil bhar bhar aayei.n roye A.nkhe.n

- Gurus of Peace featuring Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and A.R.Rahman, from the album Vandé Mataram

I personally don't think that India-Pak collaborations like the above in music, films, sports etc will help make any difference to resolving the political issues (it takes one simple emotive spark to push things back to the brink), I wouldn't discourage these either. What I wouldn't do, though, is to hype these things and take Laloo-Noor diplomacies to unrealistic conclusions.

A punch at the pint

Ireland passes stiff (no pun intended) laws against drinking, Irish President Mary McAleese calling her fellow countrymen's attitude to drink "unhealthy" and "sinister" ( which means 8 out 10 Irish are sinister :-) ).

This is very interesting: it's like cutting down half their social life. When I was a wee lad in Dublin a few months ago, the eerie silences and loneliness on the streets on normal weekdays after 7.00 pm was very unsettling at first. It struck me that if I ever was in a crowd in Dublin in the evening, I had to be in a bar (which is not a very rare commodity there). Not even attempting to drink Guinness rightfully brought a scorn to the faces of my hosts. I didn't make the pilgrimage to the local Guinness factory (so no free samples to taste), but I couldn't go all the way and back without stepping into one of the holy places. I walked near Temple Bar but I went in to the nearest pub (on the last day of my visit) accompanied by European colleagues celebrating the beginning of the St. Patrick's Day weekend. I had a red lemonade there (apparently another local curiosity) which made sharp contrast to the mugs of golden and black liquid swilling around. What is it like inside? : it is noisy, musical, smoke-filled and ok, ok, spirited.

It's not (just) cricket

Prem Panicker, opinionated cricket columnist for Rediff, now has a blog of his own: here, and he talks about life, movies and a lot more apart from cricket.

Finally something I've been looking for: a Transliteration for Tamil into English. My ignorance of the fact that something like ITrans exists was removed by reading George's latest post where he pillories old punching bags: post 90s Lata Mangeshkar and Sonu Nigam.

BTW, to complete this post, here's the Tamil to English transliteration table. To take an example, I would have to say aayutha eJuthu or Ayutha ezuthu. (Actually Aayutha ezhuthu itself refers to a letter in the Tamil alphabet, which ITrans shows as q.)

All very confusing, for I also don't know how to represent the half-consonant or half-vowel that appears frequently in Tamil (for e.g, the last "u" in ezhuthu is not a full-fledged "oo" as people might think, just a polite begin-as-if-saying-oo-and-halt "u".

Ringing the bejewelled bell

Another set of thoughts revolving around dear old Mani Ratnam saar: those that can seem strictly worthwhile to triviamongers. It hasn't gone unnoticed that MR doesn't repeat actors very frequently. Where Balachander had his Kamal & Rajni, Raj Kapoor had his family, Prakash-Manmohan-Hrishikesh had the Big B, Mani Ratnam hardly repeated any main actor more than 3-4 times in his 17-odd films.

I took this conjecture a little further ahead by attempting to list down the total appearances of notable actors and actresses who had appeared to the accompaniments of mumbled dialogues, great soundtracks, slow-motion dance sequences and brilliantly shot scenes (to the best of my knowledge):

Four: Revathi (Pagal Nilavu, Mouna Raagam, Anjali, Iruvar), Arvind Swamy (Dalapathi, Roja,Bombay,Alaipayuthey)

Three: Nasser (Nayakan, Bombay, Iruvar), Janakaraj (Nayakan, Agni Nakshatram, Roja),, V.K.Ramaswamy (Mouna Raagam, Agni Nakshatram, Anjali)

Two: Prabhu (Agni Nakshatram, Anjali),Madhubala (Roja, Iruvar), Manisha Koirala (Bombay, Dil Se), Prakash Raj (Iruvar, Kannathil Muthamittal), Madhavan (Alaipayuthey, Kannathil Mutthamittal), Mohanlal (Unuru, Iruvar), Mohan (Idaya Kovil, Mouna Raagam), Karthik (Mouna Raagam, Agni Nakshatram), Tinnu Anand (Nayakan, Bombay), Delhi Ganesh (Nayakan, Iruvar)

Notable Singles: Anil Kapoor (Pallavi Anu Pallavi), Kamalhassan (Nayakan), Nagarjuna & Girija (Geetanjali), Raghuvaran (Geetanjali) Anjali (always meant this: thanks Harish for pointing out), Rajnikanth (Dalapathi), Mamootty (Dalapathi), Pankaj Kapur (Roja), Prashant, Anu Agarwal (Thiruda Thiruda), Gautami, Aishwarya Rai, Tabu (Iruvar), Shah Rukh Khan,Raghuvir Yadav & Preity Zinta(Dil Se), Shalini, Khushboo, Vivek, Sukumari (Alaipayuthey), Chakravarthi, Nandita Das & Simran (Kannathil Muthamittal), Amrish Puri, Shobhana & Bhanupriya (Dalapathi), Satyaraj (Pagal Nilavu)

So Revathy and Arvind Swamy top the list. If one were to consider Arvind Swamy's offscreen contributions to Iruvar, he might go up the list. For that matter, Revathi might've done the same too (she has voiced a few characters on screen).

I learnt a few things and remembered a few forgotten cameos along the way, ultimately using the IMDB entry to fill in a few holes. If I've left out someone or some appearance, let me know.

Aayudha Ezhuthu (untitled as yet in Hindi) will add a few more first-timers (Ajay Devgan, Vivek Oberoi in addition to the others in Hindi & Tamil) to the list, while Simran makes her second Ratnam film in a row. More significantly, Madhavan will have completed a hat-trick, no other person has done this AFAIK. I haven't mentioned some of the other character artistes, or the Mani Ratnam pioneered guest song appearances.

What about the most notable absentees from this list? Sivaji Ganesan for sure (will never happen now, sadly). Amitabh? Aamir? And how about Suhasini! And one wished Kamalhassan and he could get down to making a movie again, something that almost happened last year.

Enough trivia timepass for now.

Chhod do yeh kadhai!

All around the world, there are people clamouring to be left alone, in various shapes, sizes, in various degrees of politeness, people want you to leave them alone. People like:

* the child in first standard who is asked by idiotic guest-pests who she likes better: her mother or her father

* the bigger kid in twelfth standard who has no damn clue which stream to opt for, especially because he has the yen for one and the marks for another

* the modern-day worker who doesn't have future plans to mention in a self-appraisal sheet

* the newbie politician who didn't know what he was signing that day in North Block

* the talented teenage midfielder who's pestered to take up computer classes instead because it will improve his career prospects

* the young girl who's finished college and now gets ogled a lot at... by matchmaking women

* the software engineer on when he's going to the US of Aaiye

* the star whose wife may not be everyone's idea of a pinup

* the man-who-made-a-mistake-once and would like to get over it, only if you would let him

* the men and women love reading their books, are not making a fashion statement by reading them in public and don't want to show the title of the book they're reading to every curious passerby who doesn't share the habit

I'm sure there a few more: can't think of them right now.

If someone has the potential to be great, sometimes not just great, but capitalized, italicized, mouth-wide-open GREAT! and chooses not to do anything about it, or does nothing out of it from being content with being recognised as talented, is it really a crime? It does mean loss of fame and publicity, but the recognition of having what it took, even briefly: isn't that good too? For every Shane Warne, there was a Laxman Sivaramakrishnan.

Warriors of Heaven and Earth is a Chinese film that has a couple of significances: one, the soundtrack is by A.R.Rahman and two, the guys making the movie had a Blog to record their experiences. (Link: courtesy of Gopal)

Resumé of a few days

Over the last few days I have been:

* Sneezing and coughing like nobody's business

* Making decisions when to bunk work, when finally to go to the doktore and mostly what to eat next

* Steaming idlis with varied results of hydration

* Boiling potatoes like a teetotalling Russian

* Watching the world go by lying on my back

* Checking my ears when the television stopped speaking to me

* Poking and tapping the television

* Re-discovering old audio cassettes

* Led astray by my Imagination that pumps into delirious overdrive when I'm a little feverish

* Trying to catch up on my waiting correspondence

* Giving many thanks to my friends at work for covering for me

* Watching Fargo and a repeat of the well-written Notting Hill

* Wistfully watching myself shell out more money for books in Book Exhibitions: this time to buy O Jerusalem! and Is Paris Burning by Collins & Lapierre (Thanks Sammy, I thought I'll buy a copy for myself)

* Finished reading Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and feeling a little exhausted after reading chapters the size of watermelons

* Catching up again on the nuances of Predictive and Shift-Reduce parsers from my well-worn copy of the Dragon book

* Meeting variegated relatives

* Spreading cheese on bread, boiling water for a few things

* Unable to put down the story of Israel's struggle for the City of Peace

* Reasoning what I can salvage from the soundtrack of Boys

* Celebrating Independence Day Sun-TV-style watching unending programmes on film people

* Learning that Prakash Raj's Special Jury Award wasn't for a single film, but for his work in 8 films in 3 languages

* Watching India make a traditional opening to a major tournament squandering a 3 goal lead, and then gheraoing the umpire

* Watching India win at last

* Watching the pitch produce a result in England's favour, but not before inspiring two tons and two six-fers

* Joining the Yanks in learning that power cuts can hurt

* Wondering, wondering

Given the usual media habit of slotting people, they usually have names for generations. The American Baby Boomers, the Generation Xers, Generation Y, Generation Next and so on. The kids of these days are the Internet Generation. Not wanting to be left out, I think my generation would be the TV generation, atleast if I was representative of it.

While reading someone's life sketch, I came across a quote by that person. When he was asked what he was like as a kid, one of the ways he described himself was that if his house caught fire, the first thing he would have made a dive would have been the TV. I know exactly what he is talking about. My TV obsession has become a little better these days, but a long time ago, it was a major source of annoyance for people around me, for it wasn't every day one could leave me alone at home to watch He-Man or Hercule Poirot. Result: sulking kid being dragged around shopping centre. My parents being a little old-fashioned in their child-rearing wouldn't offer any bribes, so I had to bite the bullet.

All this nostalgia because I have recently found that some popular Tamil serial has moved from its daily 7.30 pm slot to 9.00 pm. My parents watch only two soaps at night (when I overlap), the other at 9.30 pm. But this change will mean loss of independence from 9.00 pm to 10.00 pm. It's not as if I have something to watch each night at 9.00 pm, but it does mean I don't even have the option of a channel surf in that period. It makes it difficult for me to watch Harsha Unplugged. Since my folks don't demand the remote otherwise, it would be very unfair for me to quarrel over this. I know of some others who spend time from 7 to 11 in front of the TV. I will consider myself lucky in light of that evidence and find one more book to cover the slot.