a cup and some coffee..

I’ve been sitting at home for some time now doing nothing much better than watching tv and surfing the internet. Talk shows and interviews seem to be the flavor of the season, what with so much happening. Some of these conversations have been hilarious and some too stunning to digest. I’ll give you a few examples.

Karan Thapar vs Colonel Bhainsala(the Gujjar leader) on the devil’s advocate:

( some background - Gujjars have been making it loud and clear with violent protests that their community should be given the Scheduled Tribe status, just like the Meenas community, so they can reap the benefits of reservation… sigh!!)

Karan - So Colonel, what if the enquiry commission decides that your community does not qualify?

Colonel - Then I warn everyone that there will dire consequences.

Karan - Do you mean even loss of lives?

Colonel - Yes why not, it is afterall ‘ a part of the game’.

………………..

This one’s a bit older.

Larry Ellison when asked to speak on Microsoft:

Well Microsoft picks up new software from around the world. They copy and paste it into their flagship Windows. Now thats no innovation in technology but there is innovation, ‘Yes in business practices’.

…………………

And finally Ellen Degeneres show with Tiger Woods:

Ellen - So Tiger you like yoga?

Tiger - No way, I find that to be way too slow.

Ellen - Oh.. ‘funny you play Golf’!!

Tiger Woods bites his tounge…lol

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backdrop well set

the evening twilight hiding behind the clouds

tempest storm bringing with it an unseen tranquility

the radio playing a tune for the words

‘Let us die young or let us live forever’

and silent recognition of lost evenings that bring out such poetry

alas the charm and beats seem amiss still

in anticipation probably of a twinkle

Popularity: 86% [?]

Ever since college I’ve had a strange problem with books. Dont know if you’ve come across anything like this before but I’d like to call it the reader’s block, something like the more famous writer’s block :D

I dont know how this came about. Not that I’ve ever been a glutton for books and guess the bad habit of not reading at all in REC must have surely had its effect. I felt alien to reading.  A friend of mine had a similar problem.. she would finish but very slowly at that. Anyway in this agonizing period of time.. I tried my hand at Midnight’s Children, Freakonomics, Choker Bali, even Interpretation of Dreams, some horny book about an Indian writer’s fetish for a young lady fan(freak!!), Small is Beautiful and a lot more. Some of these books are top class really.. you will fall in love with the writing style. And yet I fell short of completing any of them… with Freakonomics i think i came close.

But relief at last!! My reading skill seems to have survived the test. I’ve been ABLE to read out the whole of The kite runner, In spite of the gods and Snapshots from hell. And now i’m onto something quite interesting. This one’s called The Indian Epics Retold and its written by R.K Narayan - of the Malgudi fame. He’s written the Ramayana, Mahabharata and some other ancient stories in a very simple and interesting manner. It feels nice to go back to those epics after such a long time. I remember watching those episodes on DD ages back. A good read if you feel like reliving these ancient classics!!

Popularity: 87% [?]

Carl Sagan, a noted astronomer, once talked about the pale blue dot. (inspired by an image taken by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. As the spacecraft left our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, engineers turned it around for one last look at its home planet)

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

– Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

…………………………….

And you pick up the paper today to read headlines such as:

A national shame, cries SC

Mush offer to withdraw troops from LoC

Amitabh to face criminal charges

Iran tells UN not to play with lion’s tail…

Its funny really.. we do take ourselves too seriously dont we

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yes why is our country so dirty? and i mean this literally.. go to any village, any town, any metro.. even some of the most developed/rich localities are dirty. Dustbins are non-existent. Public toilets are never found hence every place around it becomes public.

Population and poverty could be a reason. When there are too many people and scant living facilities.. it is only natural that the locality gets over-used posing far too many difficulties for the civic administration.

I was in Tanjore a couple of days back and the locals led us to the bazaar. Having lived in the somewhat posher locales of Hyderabad and Kochi for some time now, I had almost forgotten this side of India. The bazaar bizarrely reminded me of the poorly managed refugee camps from Blood Diamond and Hotel Rwanda, two movies I saw recently.

I like to believe Kerala is a lot cleaner than other parts of India I’ve seen. Specially the country side which is green and clean as well. It could be to do with the better monsoons received here and hence less dust left to gather. But in recent times, you only need to venture out in Kochi to see what a mess, the civic authorities can make of a good city. One of the major roads here has been dug up since the past 3-4 months for laying some underground pipes. Work has got delayed and the traffic situation in and around has become chaotic. The whole place looks like a garbage dump and with the impending monsoons only God knows what it will become.

I dont think as a race or as a culture, Indians lack cleanliness. Most of our homes are well-kept and atleast among the people I know, the first thing most of them do in the morning is take a shower. We could take this a step further and make sure that we keep places around us clean. If we do not litter our sorroundings and try and find a dustbin when we need to, I’m sure we can make atleast a small difference.

But above all I believe the administrators need to wake up. Lots of people will disagree and say citizens need to do their bit and then bitch about the civic body. Its true but when somebody is paid for the town’s betterment they need to do their job. Health and hygiene is not something we as a people, should compromise on. This topic has been previously raised I’m sure in many forums, but from my personal experience of the last couple of days I just felt a bit kicked on the wrong side

Popularity: 100% [?]