In high school there used to be this silly joke floating around. The person telling the joke would be shaking hands with the listner and asking them questions about the planet earth. The joker if I may say so was claimed to be from Mars.
Jokers asks " So how do you have babies on Earth?"
The real Joker (who is buying all this) repeats some terminolgy learnt in a recently taught bio lesson about reproduction in mammals (very embarrased at this point!) and then feeling smart about it asks " How about in Mars?"
Joker then says " Oh, we do it by shaking hands..!"
Immediately hand retreats from clasp.. and the amount of laughter embarrasment brings is amazing.
Of course the smart Alec (or is it alex?) response is " Oh I was expecting that..that isn't even funny.."
Anyway, I was thinking if people had babies on Earth by shaking hands..very soon shaking hands in public would be termed obscene.....and all sorts of things can happen..censor board refrains me from writing any further :)
On a different note coming back to our dear Earth, I would like to call friday, September the 15th the All Rude Day. I got up feeling exteremely cranky, and unhappy. For some reason everyone else felt the same way too I think. Any store I entered, I would be met by unfriendly faces...no smiles..not for me anyway! One smile would have made a hell of a difference that moment..but then again I think..is everything around us mostly a reflection of our own self?
Some strange doings of Earthlings like me..
So I try save paper, use recycling..use the wasted papers from the printer for scrap paper (I do math you see..that takes a lot of paper..sometimes anyway!). And then I happily use kitchen tissue to clean my kitchen floor..who will bother to use a cloth and then wash it haan?
Storing organic food..(err..groceries..) in plastic containers only comes second to that...
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Eventually..
At the end of the day
Its just you and me
No matter how long we are apart
How long I keep away from you
At the end of the day
Its you I have to face
Its you I have to answer to
No matter how often I turn away
At the end of the day
I have no where to go
Weary and tired all I do is
close my eyes and try to sleep
At the end of the day
I can no longer avoid
no longer control my mind.
from thinking...of life and death
of unkept promises
of beginnings and the end
Disclaimer : Sometimes its hard to say what we want and at the same time keep the other person interested in listening to us. As far as poetry goes, this one is crappy..but these thoughts would look just as bad in prose form..perhaps the costume sometimes makes an expression a little more interesting?
Its just you and me
No matter how long we are apart
How long I keep away from you
At the end of the day
Its you I have to face
Its you I have to answer to
No matter how often I turn away
At the end of the day
I have no where to go
Weary and tired all I do is
close my eyes and try to sleep
At the end of the day
I can no longer avoid
no longer control my mind.
from thinking...of life and death
of unkept promises
of beginnings and the end
Disclaimer : Sometimes its hard to say what we want and at the same time keep the other person interested in listening to us. As far as poetry goes, this one is crappy..but these thoughts would look just as bad in prose form..perhaps the costume sometimes makes an expression a little more interesting?
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Kabhi alvida na Kehna (trying to give a new meaning to love?)
So having heard much about this movie...namely bad, worse and much worse, me nd a couple of friends braved other warring units (read friends threatening to eat samosas by themselves...) to go watch this film!
And after watching the 3 and half hour movie..which with all due respect to Amitabh bacchan ought to have been an hour shorter, I have much to say about the movie. *so if you dont want to hear about the story..well stop reading now!*
First of all Amitabh's character was shocking by any standards...to see a sixty year old man prancing with 20 year somethings in and out of bedrooms is quite dispecable.
But lets brush his character aside.
The movie's premise seems to be that two very different people married to each other will find it difficult to make it work. Lets let that go too..
But I have to take offence to the main characters of the movie, Rani and Sharukh Khan.
Rani Mukherjee gets married to her childhood friend, knowing fully well (supposedly taking three years to make this decision) that she is not in love with him whereas he is passionately in love with him. So you have a couple of Rani and Abhishek where the issue seems to be that Rani is obsessed with cleaning and Abishek with night life.
But he is always shown to care a lot for his wife, where she is dispassionate and completely uninvolved in the marraige. At least some ounce of feeling for each other out of their childhood friendship seems to be in order. She never has an answer as to why she married Abhishek in the first place, and neither does the director apparently, which makes her character slightly shallow. Especially after she starts cheating on her apparently loving husband.
Shahrukh Khan on the other hand, plays this guy who is angry with the whole world because a car-hit ends his football (soccer) career. He ends up coaching little children and takes out his frustrations on his little son. So if you like him so far you would like him more when you see his obvious antipathy with a career oriented wife, who is doing much better than him in life. Priety Zinta is clearly at fault (with regards to the marriage) for being career oriented!
So these lost souls become friends in attempt to save their respective marraiges, end up falling in love and breaking their marraiges anyway!
The last hour is the saving grace in terms of acting and better drama. The movie has a few lively moments and several good lines.
I just wish that Karan Johar decided to make a movie which was out there in terms of social acceptance had decided to make his characters a little more credible.
Its not that people cannot possibly fall in love after being married but there have to be more genuine reasons. After all, we Indians pride ourselves with strong family bondages. Its true that no marraige should end being just a bag of compromises devoid of love. But when you decide to make a movie about this, your hero, heroine shouldn't come out looking like villans!
All in all...it was disappointing...NOT Because it was too long or BEcause it was too dramatic..but because the story just wasn't spelt out right!
And after watching the 3 and half hour movie..which with all due respect to Amitabh bacchan ought to have been an hour shorter, I have much to say about the movie. *so if you dont want to hear about the story..well stop reading now!*
First of all Amitabh's character was shocking by any standards...to see a sixty year old man prancing with 20 year somethings in and out of bedrooms is quite dispecable.
But lets brush his character aside.
The movie's premise seems to be that two very different people married to each other will find it difficult to make it work. Lets let that go too..
But I have to take offence to the main characters of the movie, Rani and Sharukh Khan.
Rani Mukherjee gets married to her childhood friend, knowing fully well (supposedly taking three years to make this decision) that she is not in love with him whereas he is passionately in love with him. So you have a couple of Rani and Abhishek where the issue seems to be that Rani is obsessed with cleaning and Abishek with night life.
But he is always shown to care a lot for his wife, where she is dispassionate and completely uninvolved in the marraige. At least some ounce of feeling for each other out of their childhood friendship seems to be in order. She never has an answer as to why she married Abhishek in the first place, and neither does the director apparently, which makes her character slightly shallow. Especially after she starts cheating on her apparently loving husband.
Shahrukh Khan on the other hand, plays this guy who is angry with the whole world because a car-hit ends his football (soccer) career. He ends up coaching little children and takes out his frustrations on his little son. So if you like him so far you would like him more when you see his obvious antipathy with a career oriented wife, who is doing much better than him in life. Priety Zinta is clearly at fault (with regards to the marriage) for being career oriented!
So these lost souls become friends in attempt to save their respective marraiges, end up falling in love and breaking their marraiges anyway!
The last hour is the saving grace in terms of acting and better drama. The movie has a few lively moments and several good lines.
I just wish that Karan Johar decided to make a movie which was out there in terms of social acceptance had decided to make his characters a little more credible.
Its not that people cannot possibly fall in love after being married but there have to be more genuine reasons. After all, we Indians pride ourselves with strong family bondages. Its true that no marraige should end being just a bag of compromises devoid of love. But when you decide to make a movie about this, your hero, heroine shouldn't come out looking like villans!
All in all...it was disappointing...NOT Because it was too long or BEcause it was too dramatic..but because the story just wasn't spelt out right!
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Of Walmart and Fair Trade Coffee...
*Warning : This article is truly lacking in any facts and figures, and is only based on opinion columns!*
I read this column on the local newspaper here about
fair trade coffee (the post titled Stolen Childhoods).
And it got me thinking. The whole article is about how you need a certain number of people ( and really that means big businesses ) to be buying fair trade coffee in order for it to help the poor farmer. The point being that there are still poor farmers who are not a part of the fair trade market and by buying fair trade coffee we might be actually worsening their situation.
In the same vain, somebody complained about how they thought Walmart was bad because they sold goods made by poor labourers who were underpaid. And that Walmart was making money in bargain. But here is my thought, when I buy Made in India goods, they are priced closer to what they would be priced in India (which means that the labourers aren't gettingshortchanged directly by Walmart). And to me its better than a 2 dollar duppatta sold in the name of scarf for 40 dollars in Gap..now that is looting in broad daylight!
Leave that apart. My impression of Walmart is that, they are big, so they buy good in wholesale and thus sell everything for a lower price. Which usually means putting small businesses out of work.
But even that theory gets thrashed by this article I read in the NY times. They were talking about how lot of small businesses had been benefiting by Sam's club, which provides these businesses with all sorts of support at a much lower price.
In short, it hard to be right or wrong in this new world. Every tale has two sides to it. Perhaps that was always the case, maybe now people do a better job of putting it across.
All I know is that I can no longer can I say I am being good by drinking fair trade coffee!
I read this column on the local newspaper here about
fair trade coffee (the post titled Stolen Childhoods).
And it got me thinking. The whole article is about how you need a certain number of people ( and really that means big businesses ) to be buying fair trade coffee in order for it to help the poor farmer. The point being that there are still poor farmers who are not a part of the fair trade market and by buying fair trade coffee we might be actually worsening their situation.
In the same vain, somebody complained about how they thought Walmart was bad because they sold goods made by poor labourers who were underpaid. And that Walmart was making money in bargain. But here is my thought, when I buy Made in India goods, they are priced closer to what they would be priced in India (which means that the labourers aren't gettingshortchanged directly by Walmart). And to me its better than a 2 dollar duppatta sold in the name of scarf for 40 dollars in Gap..now that is looting in broad daylight!
Leave that apart. My impression of Walmart is that, they are big, so they buy good in wholesale and thus sell everything for a lower price. Which usually means putting small businesses out of work.
But even that theory gets thrashed by this article I read in the NY times. They were talking about how lot of small businesses had been benefiting by Sam's club, which provides these businesses with all sorts of support at a much lower price.
In short, it hard to be right or wrong in this new world. Every tale has two sides to it. Perhaps that was always the case, maybe now people do a better job of putting it across.
All I know is that I can no longer can I say I am being good by drinking fair trade coffee!
Monday, September 04, 2006
Freaked out...
Just attempted watching the theatrical trailer of Shiva (a new Ram Gopal Verma flick!).
After 4 seconds...unable to watch whats happening I closed the window. A goonda walking towards a man who is held by 4 goons..with a hammer..with obvious intentions to bang the poor chaps head.
The cop turning a blind eye to a laymans plea.. I couldnt watch more.
Same thing happened when me and my roomie tried watching this movie called Matrubhoomi..in the first few scenes they drown a new born girl child in boiling milk....WHy?
Why so grotesque?
Whats more scary is the fact..some of these things probably actually do happen! Which makes me wonder. What happens if I actually saw something like this happen in real life? Do I freak out? Do I turn a blind eye? And will it make things go away?
Will not watching such films keep me safe from nightmares? Possibly. But its freaking me out that
these things dohappen. I can do nothing about it. OR can I?
After 4 seconds...unable to watch whats happening I closed the window. A goonda walking towards a man who is held by 4 goons..with a hammer..with obvious intentions to bang the poor chaps head.
The cop turning a blind eye to a laymans plea.. I couldnt watch more.
Same thing happened when me and my roomie tried watching this movie called Matrubhoomi..in the first few scenes they drown a new born girl child in boiling milk....WHy?
Why so grotesque?
Whats more scary is the fact..some of these things probably actually do happen! Which makes me wonder. What happens if I actually saw something like this happen in real life? Do I freak out? Do I turn a blind eye? And will it make things go away?
Will not watching such films keep me safe from nightmares? Possibly. But its freaking me out that
these things dohappen. I can do nothing about it. OR can I?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
