R.I.P Ray!!

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for. … If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.

Ray Bradbury

Just like that......

"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean" - Sir Humpty Dumpty

Documenting Memories.....

Writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things – childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves – that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers.-Salman Rusdie

Post coming up....

Where are they now!!

"Who knows for certain? Who shall here declare it? Whence
was it born, whence came creation? The gods are later than
this world's formation; Who then can know the origins of the
world? None knows whence creation arose; And whether he has
or has not made it; He who surveys it from the lofty skies.
Only he knows-or perhaps he knows not." -Rig Veda (X:129)

Discovering Murakami....

Just been reading around for more info on Murakami,when I came across these snippets about writing from him.

"I can pinpoint the exact moment when I first thought I could write a novel," Murakami recalled in a memoir. "It was around one thirty in the afternoon of April 1, 1978. I was in Jingu Stadium that day, alone in the outfield drinking beer and watching the game." It was a beautiful spring day, not a cloud in the sky, a warm breeze blowing.

"The crack of bat meeting ball right on the sweet spot echoed through the stadium. (The batter) easily rounded first and pulled up to second. And it was at that exact moment that a thought struck me. You know what? I could try writing a novel. I still can remember the wide open sky, the feel of the new grass, the satisfying crack of the bat. Something flew down from the sky at that instant, and whatever it was, I accepted it."

"As I write I think about all sorts of things. I don't necessarily write down what I'm thinking; it's just that as I write I think about things. As I write I arrange my thoughts. And rewriting and revising takes my thinking down even deeper paths. No matter how much I write though, I never reach a conclusion. And no matter how much I rewrite, I never reach the destination. Even after decades of writing, the same still holds true. All I do is present a few hypotheses or paraphrase the issue. Or find an analogy between the structure of the problem and something else."

Fading memory ...the dreams of yore!!

"Even so, my memory has grown increasingly dim, and I have already
forgotten any number of things. Writing from memory like this, I
often feel a pang of dread. What if I've forgotten the most important
thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all
the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?
Be that as it may, it's all I have to work with. Clutching these faded,
fading, imperfect memories to my breast, I go on writing this book
with all the desperate intensity of a starving man sucking on bones."
-Haruki Matukami ,Norwegian Woods


I too used to dream...of a day when i would go for work...



"............
I used to go to work…dunno what I was working on …it was not that important ..well atleast then …I would wear those full sleeve official attire…while shirts mostly….and I had a room…the big one with a thick wooden door …polished teak…with a big auto door closer…..There I had a big table …a glass sheet covering the entire length…There would be glass paper weights…abstract art on their own term.

The tables would be closed on three sides ,including the side facing the door…there is enough space for person to sneak in through the other side…yes this was a very specific requirement….

And then there would be a lady in the same building….same floor.. …don’t remember what she used to wear…guess was Indian attire…chudidars mostly ….Did she have a face….No…..Did I have a face….never needed one

We walked…..a long walk …during the evening…Never felt uncomfortable or tired…must be the evening…You never see a doctor in a dream.The visit is reserved for nightmares.I remember a swing…a bench on the park…..And there was debate and there were discussions…what was discussed I dunno….never tried to know…but was articulate….was serious and important…...Nothing personal

And then the sun sets .And we walk back .and start all  over again.......

....................."

And yes ,now I have read a Marukami !!

A few months back Marukami for me , was just a Japanese writer with a huge fan following,one among the many writing superstars I never read and thought i would never need to too.
Too self imersed was i ,that I always had a aversion to translated works in english , because I was sure I cannot connect to alien culture and of course there was the fear of things getting lost in translation.

But the experience of reading "The Legends of Khasak",has gone a long way in proving my fears wrong.I was more confident when i picked up the "A Wild Sheep chase" earlier this month.
Now that I have finished with it ,i can say confidently that my fears were totally unfounded.

The story is told in first version POV .The narrators name is never revealed.felt it helps one personalize the narrator's experiences .A name ,i normally feel detaches the reader from the protagonist and provides a slightly distanced view of what is happening.

The protagonist ,I am told ,as is often the case ,is goalless youth wandering aimlessly in life, a drifter,who ends up in a search for a elusive and mysterious sheep .A mysterious girlfriend ,a ear fetish,a mafia boss on his deathbed,and professor whose obsession lead him onto a lonely life ,a friend who withdraws to hide his weakness are just a few people who come along the way.


As the hunt begins the books moves slightly onto the detective genre (if there is one) which makes it a fast paced read.

Of all the passages,somehow ,the one that caught my fancy the most was his exchange with his recently divorced ex wife ,quite early in the novel.There was something in those lines between the 2 characters,seeing through their relationship quite cordially .Quite comfortable in each others presence all the same.


In the end it would be wrong to say I completely get what Marukami what saying in this books?What does the sheep symbolize.Who was his girlfriend? and many more.
Maybe another day when I am more educated I may be able to comprehend all this.And if that day never comes ,maybe i will never.But one thing is for sure,this wont be the last Murakami book I would have read.

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And then I tried to read Catch 22 !!

Ok I giving up now.

To Helen Keller I did like to say "Its not you ,its me" ...

300 more pages of absurdities is not something I am likely to take on right now.100 pages of Catch 22 over 1 month might make me a bad reader.But I enjoyed Yossarian's predictment.Liked the ridiculous conversations.Through all the absurdities the author did manage to bring out frustrations and the futility of war.
But the repatative nature is getting into my head.IMHO a satire should be short especially when you promote theme repetition.Alas its Catch 22 has not managed to do that.

I certainly hope to revisit Catch 22 on a later day,but certainily not in the near future.

Now to move on to a a more breezier read.

NB:
For any one who would still be tempted to read the bookhere a few gems from the first 100 pages...

"Like Olympic medals and Tennis trophies,all they signified was that the owner had done something ,that was of no benefit to anyone , more capably them everyone else"

"The case against Clevinger was open and shut.The only thing missing was something to charge him with"

"He know everything about literature except how to enjoy it."

As the race is on ....!!!

"I took a speed reading course and read ‘War and Peace’ in twenty minutes. It involves Russia" -Woody Allen

And I found the needle !!

Google Helps you do it ...that is helps u find the needle...from the haystack of information out there....but you need to know what u are looking for...Some times you may know exactly what you are looking for and you may not find it...And then there are days when out of the blue the needle presents itself even when you dont have much of an idea about what it looks like....

Today out the blue I had two such experiences that has just made my day!!!

First of which was this haunting number "" the epic Franz Schubert's Avie Marie (Well I didnt know that till i found this video) .
Last night I was watching U.S sitcom "The Modern Family" (just realized my view of the Western world is completely based on th few American sitcoms I watch here in India...but thats going off tangent...hopefully another post some day),where in Cameron sings this haunting piece at a funeral..the entire sequence was interspersed with scenes of his partner struggling with a intruding bird at home....all in slow motion.

Well I may not be a connosier of music ,but I do get it when I hear a extraordinarie piece.And this is one...Apart from the fact that this is a haunting piece ,was the sense of dejavu I was feeling when I heard it.Also I could almost envision myself using this in any movie I was directing preferably in a gangsta shootout or mob assassination scene shot in slow motion.Every thing fit perfectly except for the simple fact that I had no idea what the song was.

Once the scene was done the only thing I remembered from the song was the intial two words "Ave Mariya" and I started trying my luck with various combination of these two to finally end up with the link above.Didnt have to struggle much as this seems to be famous composition.

And soon enough I realized the reason for "Deja vu" I was feeling.The song was used in the background score in the recently released movie "Hitman".So much for using the theme music in my movie now .


The second in the series was this one .
I heard this song being used in one of the programs in the indian music channel [V].
I had one round of hunt for this song previously and when I couldn't make much headway, as i didnt know what language the song was in, I had almost concluded that the song was a in house composition of channel [V] and left it at that.

Of late there has been a spurt in the number of dubbed South Indian movies in Hindi  based movie channels.Though not a fan,I do often make a pit stop at these channels when these movies are running ,as translation often make dialogues really hilarious and corny in Hindi.
This afternoon as i was laughing at one of these dubbed translations ,as is the case with most masala movies now,an item no started with strikingly similar tune.Though the song had lost all its charm once converted to hindi,I know knew exactly where to check for this song.

This time I fed "youtube Arya 2 ringa ringa" to lord google and the got the link above in return.
i spend the next hour first enjoying the song and the enjoying the new model. I bet she will soon be seen as rival to "Munni" and "Sheild" in the days to come  ...:) .And btw damn ..Allu Arjun can dance ??

PS:For those who are wondering the dancer in the second video is Erina and she is not of Indian origin.

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The books are mocking me..... !!!

Remember this scene from Two and half man where Alan has a breakdown in a bookstore.This is exactly the feeling i undergo every time I visit a book store.The result:Impulsive Buys ending up in One big pending list.
It was in such a set up that I came upon “Bauer, Susan Wise - The Well-Educated Mind, A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had ”  and also The Guardian's '1000 books to read before you die'.

I realized I would never be able to complete the new list without first completing the list I have accumulated on my own discretion just to avoid leaving behind as Alan says "a shelf of unread books" 

And so I set up a online shelf  (and inadvertently ended up spamming everyone I ever sent mail to.Thanks Shelfari !!), and started through the list one after the other.

First book I picked up was Malcolm Gladwell's The Outliers. And it turned out to be good decision. A fast and interesting read ,it set up to 2 more books to be completed within a span of 1 month (The Legends of Khasak and Piccadilly Jim).

One month down I feel the its still going strong and I plan to clear of the rest within the next one year.

Documenting the pending list :

A Potrait of Young Man as an Artist
Dubliners
The so called "ultimate classic" Ulysses
Short story collection -O Henry
Greatest works of Oscar Wilde (of which I plan to read at least Dorian Gray and Importance
of being Earnest)
Code of Woosters
A few books on current affairs from Amratya Sen /Chidambaram/Gurcharan das and Arun Shourie
Helen Keller's Catch 22
George Orwell's 1984
Complete works of Kafka and Shakespeare
+
A an uncountable number of ebooks i have in my computer.

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And then i read =>The legends of Khasak.

The book is the translation of one of the foremost classics of Malayalam language.

A different experience in reading as it was a story of a fictional Keralite village of the 1960s.

Didn’t find the English obstructing  narrative much even though there are many cultural references which would have been much easier in Malayalam.

I didn’t see a plot per se in this novel ,think it has got more to do with the serialised form the novel had initially come out.

There are some real interesting characters like Appu kili ,Sivaraman Nair,Kuppu Acchan.

There is an undertone of satire that comes up from time to time. And some interesting sub plots.

It is said that the book has magical realism like in Gabrial Gracia Mrarques books.But since I don’t understand the term ,I haven’t found any.

update:

The experience of reading this translation has led me to order for couple of more transaltions of Malayalam legends.

I have already purchased "The Writings of M.T.Vasudevan Nair from Orient Black Swan and O.V.Vijayan's Selected Fiction from Penguin publication.

In the wishlist is 2 out of stock books from penquin publiction MTV's Demon Seed and other stories and Mukundan's Gods mischeif.

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Where do the ducks go in the winter??

Mark Chapman was all for Holden Caulfield and anti-phoniness campaign.So much so that the madman went all the way to stop John Lennon in his tracks .

This piece of news (from wikipedia )floating in the information superhighway was one of the main thing which led me to start reading “The catcher in the Rye”.

I had heard about the book from many a friends earlier but it finally took this incident for me to start reading it

Quite a interesting book about Holden Caulfield ,as he gives a first person narrative of his life,his views on transitioning to adulthood and about phony human interactions.The main protagonist is depressing for most of the book.

A more detailed analysis of the book would follow once i finish reading the same.

You’re not as fat as you imagine!!!

Update : Following words are not mine.I know not of the guy who wrote it.But what i do know is Baz Luhrmann made a video out it and it was damn interesting !!

 

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ’99

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by
scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience……

I will dispense this advice now…..

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh never mind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.
But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked….You’re not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing
bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that
never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing everyday that scares you

Sing

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with
people who are reckless with yours.

Floss

Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how. Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your
life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children,maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don’t
congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

 Enjoy your body, use it every way you can…don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own..

Dance…even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go,but for the precious few you should hold on.

Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you
knew when you were young. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will
philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize
that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders. Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund,maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who
supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of
fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the
ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen…

Akad bakad bambay bo,Here is how our votings go!!!!!

Tripti Elena George...that was the name if my memory serves me right.My first vote.
It was Standard Six,K.V.Pattom .And post she was vying for School People Leader.
Well she had short hair.Much like Gaby Sabatini.I liked Sabatini.So I voted for Tripti.It was as simple as that.

That was me a 11 year old deciding who needs to be the leader.Sometimes this though often goes through my mind,whether grownups are any better while exercising their franchise.

Most recently the thoughts came to me as i watching the much publicized goof up by US Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin ,in her interview with Katie Couric.
Boy,at times it looked like she had no idea what she was talking about.
I would infact rate this interview as the second most pathethic interview given by a public figure.(The first being the controversial interview of India HRD Minsiter Arjun Singh by Karan Thapar on CNN-IBN's Devils Advocate).

I also was fortunate enough to see the vice presidential debates where only only browny points she earned in the debate was through her smile,the out of the bluw "gotcha" "darn you ar right" and repeated references to "hockey moms" or a  "Joe Six pack".Other than that for most part it sounded pure rhetoric to me.

Yes .She is a charismatic leader who knows how to work up crowd .But is that enough qualification for you to stake claim to the the most powerful person in the world.(That could well happen as she is just a heartbeat away from taking control of the nuclear weapons in case Maccain wins this election.)

 Boy,Do we live in dangerous times !!!

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The Last Lecture -Inspiring people !!

"But remember, the brick walls arethere for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give usa chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop thepeople who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people."

This was Randy Paush delivering his one of his last speeches on the topic Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams from Carnegie Mellon University on 18 Sep 2007 ,just 10 months before his eventual demise on July 2008.

Check out the entire lecture here
The lecture at no point looks like words from a dying man.I was just amazed by the energy shown by Mr Paush  through out the lecture.

Real Inspiring stuff...................

Rest in Peace Professor...........................

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Whats in your plate???

If you have to eat a plate full of frogs,eat the ugliest one first.....
But if instead,what you have ,is a plate of ugly frogs,roaches and lizards,better look for a change in your diet plan.....

Tips - Behind Bars!!!

Just ran into an interesting site about top-10-prison-survival-tips

Am much wiser now having read it.You never now where life would take you.It does no harm,in having a few survival tips up your sleeve ,other than having watched the “Shawshank redemption “ for the umpteenth time .....

Run!!! the Butterfly just flapped her wings!!!

Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas? -A paper presented by December 1972 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C by Edward Lorenz was the first scientific research on the subject of "Butterfly Effect".
The effect essentially is an extension of the idea known as sensitive dependence of a system on initial conditions. The small changes in initial conditions (often immeasurable by human standards )may end up having widely different behaviour than expected.

The 2004 Aston Kutcher starrer of the same name tries to look at the scientific scenario from a cinematic point of view.The main protagonist of the movie is somehow gifted with the power to travel back through time ,just by recreating the time in his memory,(usually by reading his childhood manuals).Reaching back in time he tries to make slight changes to his past ,which unfortunately leads to quite unintentional changes to his future.This results in him revisiting his past over and over again just to rectify the changes he has made in his previous visits.

The film though an interesting concept, it scientifically is not exactly the Butterfly effect as only his immediate family and friends are affected by his tampering of past.As per the Butterfly effect ,his changes would have had a world wide impact resulting in more wide reaching changes to himself and the world.

Other films which had tried their hands at this concept are
1998 Gwyneth Paltrow starrer Sliding Doors and the 2001 Tamil movie 12 B ,starring Shayam. Both are interesting takes on how a particular event(boarding/missing a train(or bus) which has a 50% probability of occurring impacts the protagonist future based on one particular action of boarding/missing a train(or bus as in the Tamil movie).

Another movie with a similar endeavor is The 1998 movie Run Lola run.The movie showcases 3 distinct possibilities in a 20 minute window in a person life based on small sub conscious decisions she takes.
About the movie,the trusted,Lord Wikipedia says :
“The movie itself begins by posing questions pertaining to the unpredictability of the world and the unknowable nature of its meaning. It suggests that drastically disparate consequences can alter the fates of different people from a one second change in the time of one person's running.”

Talking of time travel there is another interesting concept “Time paradox”,first thought of (or rather first publicly discussed )by science fiction writer René Barjavel,in his 1943 book Le Voyageur Imprudent.The poaradox here is, “What happens to the a time traveler’s “Present “ ,if he travels back in time and kill his grandfather before his father is concieved?” .Buts that’s for a entirely new blog……

Life's Unfair!!!

A Russian socialite has announced a reward of 2 "chicks"
to every goal the team scores in the semis.
How unfair....nothing for the goalie.....:)