The Ego Surfer

Two Peppy Numbers It has been a tough week, fellas. Escalations, failed promises, missed milestones, "con"-calls, colorful reports with incorrect data, attrition, interviews...the usual. So, naturally, I was unusually thankful that Friday had arrived. I poured myself a glass of Grover's Cabarnet Shiraz from the vineyards of Nashik -- the ostensible birthplace of my ancestors; about my only connection with them. It was really not a wine glass, you know, but a stainless steel tumbler with dabara, in order to camoflauge it from the prying eyes and sniffing noses of my mom and daughter, placed unobtrusively on the chest of drawers next to a globe, and me sipping the blood of Christ casually as if I was drinking neer more. The pressures of a brahmin household...! I switched on my iPod, turned on "shuffle" mode and immersed myself into the treasure trove of my favorite Ilayaraja songs from 1976 to 92. I tell you, folks. I have listened to a lot of Raja. But N

Two exquisite songs - Jul 29, 2009 (re-posted here) Just the other day, when I was driving down for the umpteenth time between BLR and CHN, Balu's rendition of two songs just enthralled me...so much so that I nearly ran into a vagabond motorist (drunk, I am sure; me with Balu's songs and him with 200 milli of naatu sarakku or sevutthu mutti). One was "Mandram vandha ...thendral" from Mauna Ragam; the movie that made Karthik and Revathi and umpteen repeat sequences of lovers playing practical jokes with each other's parents..."Mr. Chandramouli"... Anyway, back to the song...the pain, the senstivity, the "feelings" (as they say in Tamil!) expressed by Koman (Kokila Mohan...or Mike Mokan!) - the only movie he acted well - and all of that rendered brilliantly by the plump genius hit me like an errant lorry on NH46 with a tonne of bricks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v​=bKy6lO-TJvw BTW, there is a recent adaptation in Chenni Kum sung by one of my f

Why do we write blogs? Is it to kill time? Is it to express ourselves? Is it to extricate the negative energy and the stress that builds up in us? Or as Freud would have propounded, is it due to an innate need for mankind to be "famous"; to feel important, albeit in a territory completely controlled and some times read only by us? I had lived by these explanations till I heard that Amitabh Bachchan had started writing blogs. I had initially thought it was to discuss his art (whatever is left of it) undistilled from the press that he seems to loathe so much. But even a cursory reading of his blogs will tell you that the reason is simply not that. Amitabh, between busy schedules, globe trotting, dancing and prancing, attending "meet & greet" sessions, and at times face laden with "kilos of beard and make-up", finds time to bicker about the press, about diminishing values in society, about what his dad taught him (there is an awful lot of that); he

Thayir Sadham, Thachi Mammam, Thasuru Anna, Bagala Bath, Curd Rice...Call it What you will...But the thing is divine. I am a vegetarian and a flexible one at that. You know what I mean? I am not one of those veggie bigots who will keep reminding you of their narrow choices of foods and restaurants when you eat out; and make you feel guilty by ordering home delivery (and reminding you about it the next day) after returning from a "fine diner" where there weren't enough choices to suit their narrow dietary habits. I am also not one of the annoying fretters that would liberally lecture hapless non-vegetarians on the virtues of vegetarianism; how it is an elevated state of existence; and how they are God's "chosen people", a step closer to Moksha, in the vicious cycle of births and rebirths, due to an accidentally picked up food habit. On the other hand, I can be pretty good company for dinner, casually conversing or even cracking a joke as you eat a large-heade

God...give us bijli, sadak, and paani... While we were busy meticulously carving out inch-by-inch of what we call "National Highways" (and the accompanying architectural wonders called speed breakers), as if they were heritage structures for posterity; and showering panegyric on Laloo and his cronies for the ingenuity of introducing chai in train stations and public address system on Shatabdhi trains, China was quietly building, for the last two years, what is now being touted as the world’s fastest conventional train service. The inaugural service, expected to be flagged off on August 1, 2008 will link Beijing and the port city of Tianjin and ferry passengers, in "aircraft-like cabins with spacious interiors" (which aircraft has spacious interiors?), at speeds touching 350 kilometers per hour. Trains will run on the Tianjin line – which was built at a cost of USD 2.93 billion – every 3 minutes, with each train expected to carry close to 600 passengers. China, in sp

The surroundings were alien. The pretentious exterior of the school building seemed more intellectual than the unimaginative white-washed buildings of St. Mark’s where Ravi had been his previous academic year. Scores of aspirants pored in through the two gates of the school and seemed suave and from the well-bred nobility of northern Bangalore. Ravi felt an overpowering sense of nervousness as he tagged on to his elder sister, waiting for their appointment with the Principal. The Principal’s office was right next to the entrance and Mr. Radhakrishnan was conversing with a deferential parent inside his cabin. A score of desperate parents unabashedly starred through the window trying to catch a glimpse of the celebrity principal. “I heard he is very strict even with the parents!” a parent told her spouse in Tamil. Ravi’s sister, Kala, glanced at him and parted with a nervous smile. Ravi reciprocated. The security guard, in a ragamuffin uniform and a Hawaii slipper, rushed towards the cro

I have a bunch of articles posted at http://bragsegosurfer.rediffblogs.com/