There is a sweet spot in every instrument. It makes the sweetest sound when struck there.There is that sweet spot in everyone. It is an interesting thought to explore those sweet spots in all we meet. It might add some sweet music to our li...
Wednesday, 30 January 2013
Parth's essence is best explained this way. He is the only person in the world that I know who remembers every one's birthday and anniversary, every one's children's and grand children's anniversaries, and makes it a point to wish them without fail, year after year, irrespective of the fact whether they remember it or not. Now he is a gregarious guy and his list runs to a pretty large number and what amazes me is this - I suspect he has no...
Tuesday, 29 January 2013
The saga of murder and revenge in Wasseypur continues. After the murder of Sardar Khan in the first edition of GOW, we have his two sons Danish and Faizal left to handle the fishy business (they actually become fish pond owners in a move towards becoming respectable). Danish takes over (he is impressive the boy who acted the part) and does well for the short while he is allowed to before Sultan (who else) kills him off. Faizal, the drug addicted...
Monday, 28 January 2013
Try this. Just slow down everything to a pace that you enjoy. It's a delicious feeling.There is much fun in life when you slow it down to your frequency. Your beat. The way you walk, eat, talk, breathe becomes so much more enjoyable when you slow it down. Savour it as you would a delectable gift. Slowly.Ever so slowly. Knowingly. I have found a rare joy seeping in when I slow things down to that pace, my pace - and take it really slow and easy....
Saturday, 26 January 2013
Mohan was my first friend in Hyderabad. We came to Hyderabad in 1977, to a new house in Sundar Nagar, in the wilderness outside the city almost, which has became my home ever since. Mohan was living in Model Colony, a twin colony.View from the jeep There were few houses in our colony those days and fewer boys my age so we hit it off together. We'd play cricket, read books, walk the many dogs that Mohan had, cycle around and when we grew older,...
Friday, 25 January 2013
It is in appreciating the little things that we get, that we show our gratefulness to the world. The food we have the water, the air, the love, the security, the beauty, the talents, the health, the family - we take all these for granted. And then we are unhappy that we don't have more.I love the way some people get on with their lives. The unhurried manner in which they speak, walk, talk, it all indicates the pleasure they are experiencing out of...
What we see inside our internal theatre is what we project outside into our world.If our reel inside is good, we project a fine movie into our real world. But if the reel inside is bad, the movie we see in our world appears unfair. Whichever way it turns out, the movie is ours. The projector is ours. We are choosing the frame, the colour, the music or the lack of it, everything.Since we have the power to shoot what we want, to pick and choose what...
Thursday, 24 January 2013
A 1-day workshop on 'The Champion's Mindset' for the newcomers at Gap Miners a couple of days ago. I ran them through the course material of what a champion is, what a champion needs to work on, what a champion works for, how he goes about planning it, how he prepares and how he sustains it. It was heavy duty stuff as it requires one to take a close look at one's own pluses and gaps, and one that needs a certain amount of concentration. Some coped...
This is a book I hugely hugely recommend. It made me laugh so much that I felt I would die - there are parts where I had to take long breaks before I could get started again. It's just so stupidly funny. The entire book continues in much the same vein as the title - pompous, irreverent and full of useless information. But then you need to like the Dave Barry kind of humour which is something like 'France's National Underwear Changing Day is March...
Finally saw the much-acclaimed Anurag Kashyap movie 'Gangs of Wasseypur'. It is entertaining and interesting and left me feeling something I cannot say what. It's not a feeling of awe, nor of newness, nor of being completely entertained - its actually a feeling of having seen or known of this before. Maybe my short stint in Dhanbad in the early 90s, a period when Suryadeo Singh, the coal mafia don actually died (I was in Dhanbad that same day), got...
Wednesday, 23 January 2013
Anjali came home today from school and after her usual banter about her friends and their antics, turned her attention to the 'lots of homework' she had today. The mood turned despondent for a second, but she strode into her room to get her bag.As she returned with her bag she announced loudly, 'I don't like Maths'. That is a new one, I thought. 'There's too much work in Maths - I have to write, 81, 82, 83. 84 and 85 three times each,' she...
Sunday, 20 January 2013
The 3rd edition of Hyderabad Literary Festival kicked off at the Maulana Azad Urdu University, Gachibowli, on the 18th of January 2013. The event got off to a high profile start with the Governor of Andhra Pradesh Shri E.S.L.Narasimhan inaugurating it. Several writers of national and international repute gathered on the new University campus, right next to the ring road, where the trees are all between three and five foot high. I was to be in conversation with popular novelist and writer Anita Nair, in the post lunch sleepy session on the first...
Saturday, 19 January 2013
I do not have the patience to see the Lance Armstrong interview on the Oprah Winfrey show. Simply because I don't know if after a couple of months someone comes out with a few more spectacular findings that it was all a big setup and that everyone made millions out of his confessions. TV shows, books, lectures - gimme a break.By the end of it all one thing is clear - whatever Lance Armstrong did, he was not alone. There is obviously a much bigger set up behind that. More people involved in the entire creation of the myth and the destruction of...
Friday, 18 January 2013
Anjali's wish to see the Birla Planetarium (and mine too) has been finally fulfilled. Shobhs, Anjali and I finally made it there, with Manasi in tow. The last time Anjali and Anu and I had gone to the planetarium the guard told us that anyone under 5 years was not allowed in the planetarium. The moment Anjali turned five, she reminded me of this new status she has achieved - she was now eligible to see the planetarium. And so we headed off.Happy...
Tuesday, 15 January 2013
'The Vague Woman's Handbook' by Devapriya Roy is about two vague women, one twenty something newly married woman and one fifty year old widow, who meet and help one another deal with their lives. Their issues are day to day issues of family, bills, fat, food, directions, and so on.Devapriya writes well but in this novel she is let down by a plot that is pretty thin. I can't help feeling that she could have just gone over the top and over-dramatized certain things (the credit card goons were an interesting possibility, the mother-in-law was another,...
I started watching 'Offisde' last year and completed it this year, primarily due to a technical glitch. Directed by Jafar Panahi,'Offside' is a story told in the length of a soccer match between Iran and Bahrain, an important qualifying match for the World Cup finals in Germany.A girl wants to watch the game despite the law against women watching football matches in stadiums. She travels to the game by herself slimly disguising herself with a cap,...
Sunday, 13 January 2013
Saturday, 12 January 2013
The Annual Day at Daksha School built up momentum pretty early. For the last month or so Anjali would come home and show off some new stuff she learnt - her dance moves or skit lines - and give a blow by blow account of what she and her friends had practiced that day. 'Teacher said this' or 'the others did that' she'd go on gaily and the mirth with which she shares shows how much she enjoys herself. What got me hooked this time was when Anjali...
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