Anecdotal Evidence

Quaint stories are indeed pretty But with them you only get so far Just for a moment stop being witty And write a story that's rated R Regular readers of this blog would know that my sentiments towards the Hindi language aren't exactly what one would call 'fond'.Gobind Ballab Pant shakes his head in disgust. And it took some explaining (to myself too) to establish that it was only socio political and nothing purely linguistic.But of late I have been trying to question these things about my 'beliefs'. I try to sift out some which were perhaps not quite true but just forceful self-reiterations (please do not try this at home). And so the pure linguistic question came up and I was sifting through memories to see what went wrong between Hindi and me. I never believed in this 'relative ease of learning' that is widely touted as Hindi's usp. For instance, you have to know the words for the numbers from 1 to 100 in order to know the words for the numbers fr...

I have this intense need to understand words in songs. As none of you knows the real reason, I can dramatize a flashback: My foray into learning singing was cut short when my teacher wouldn't accede to my demand for explaining the lyric: pilachinapalukavunalukakurA. Cut to today. I have been quite taken by Amit Trivedi's latest song : Iktara And to iron out the niggle of not being able to enjoy the song fully I googled up lyric translations done for the benefit of the Hindilliterate rest of us in We, the nation . The word manvA personifying 'mann' at the head of the song was quite interesting. Not sure if that is something Javed Akthar cooked up or it is a prevalent usage - it ties into the beckoning I am familiar with (in a not so previous jenmam I used to respond to PrabhuA). Interesting particularly because it is a personification that used to exist in poems in Tamil. In the very first poem of the thiruvAimozhi, nammAzhwAr's last line reads: துயரறு சுடரடி தொழுது ...

...is not a good thing. Anyway, to twist a Gounderquote: பிச்சைக்காரனுக்கு insecurity பிச்சைக்காரனே

Lavanya (never new you blogged) passed on a Kreative blogger award to me I would thank her being very perceptive but then I read the clauses and found I had got tagged. I duck tags and would on any given day have ducked "Seven things I love". But I decided not to flatter myself as if I was actually some bitter cynic. I didn't quite like the fact that it took some time for me to come up with this: 1) Idyll . A few weeks back, a friend of mine wakes me up from a Sunday-afternoon slumber. We head to the Loyola grounds just like that with the sun beating down on us heavily. Settle on the sidelines to watch a schoolmatch, applauding the occasional wicket and generally making wisecracks. We used to do that nearly ten years ago. A lot has changed since then but I can easily delve and enjoy the illusion that nothing has changed. No need to know or do. Just be. And denying that time moves. 2) Long walks in unfamiliar cities ...actually in familiar cities too. Just one turn to an ...

Don't despair even over the fact that you do not despair - Franz Kafka I have had my share of encounters with evangelists. Spooky uncomfortable ones, hilariously silly ones, engrossingly earnest ones. But there was one which got me thinking. It was in LA in the street where the Kodak theatre is. Christmas time shops decked, its all sale mood. There is Scientology church there and there were bunch of relatively young guys sitting with some tomes of Ron Hubbard spread on a table. They had a contraption that measured the pulse as we answered questions. As I was chronically jobless that evening I thought I'd give the guy a chance. He was asking a bunch of questions in the general direction of :"what are you missing in your life ?", what do you think you have it in you to reach out to but can't, how do you feel about living a life of non-greatness etc. While I understood the direction was to finally sell "the book would fill the hole in your life", I tried t...

Our Sumo stops at petrol bunk on the Tirunelvely-Papanasam road. The local driver mentions it as the location of the cellphone-comedy scene starring Vadivelu, from the movie Vel. I recall it : a pretty bland scene - to be polite- from an ordinary movie - to be politer. I was the youngest is the chock-full Sumo which contained, besides others, an octagenarian former civil servant, a retired professor of English literature and a literary critic. Every single one of them was able to recall the quoted scene without trouble ------------------- From the opening scene of Manhattan: Isaac Davis (voice-over): To him, it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture

Specifically themed Western classical CDs I saw in Landmark ... Making out toMozart Shacking up with Chopin Apparently there is also a Bedroom bliss with Beethoven