Karaoke

Indian of the Year 2008

2009-02-02T21:56:00.004+05:30

I just got done watching the CNN-IBN Indian of the Year 2008 awards ceremony on TV.
In summary, the awards in the six categories were as follows:

Politics - Nitish Kumar, Chief Minister, Bihar
Sports - Abhinav Bindra, Olympic Gold Medalist
Business - Aditya Puri of HDFC
Entertainment - Aamir Khan, Actor
Public Service - Madhavan Nair and Team Chandrayaan at ISRO
Global Indian - A. R. Rahman, Musician

Apart from these, there were special achievement awards made to Sheila Dixit, Dilip Kumar as well as the officers in the Mumbai police for their valour in the attacks on 26th November.

The categorization for the various awards was understandable - excellance in any field is to be appreciated and in that respect I think all of the awardees were well qualified.

The final award of THE Indian of the year 2008, was announced at the end and persons from the eminent audience gathered for the award ceremony were asked to comment on who they felt deserved the crowning glory of the evening. The choice would have to be made from the six awardees in the various categories.

Up until this point, Yours Truly was impressed with the selections and the awards being handed out but as usual, I had to find something to rant about.

It was initially a note-worthy point when one member of the audience took a stand that in his opinion, it was those who fought for Mumbai during the terror attacks who truly deserve this award. What became silly was when a dozen (ok, i exaggerate. bear with me) other people stood up to repeat the same when asked who they would choose for the award. The officers and soldiers did a truly sterling job for the country in the time of need, and yes we all DO need to be extremely proud and thankful to them. It irks me though, when people try to draw so much drama and screen-time from something genuine like this. Rather than stand up at the slightest opportunity to proclaim our solidarity with cause (and hence state how noble we are), I think we would be much better off remembering that they did their jobs, and that we should too. In this case, I would have been a lot more interested to know the comments on who of the six should be made Indian of the Year.

Moving on, there were some other people who ventured to state their choices from the list of six. I was personally rooting for Madhavan Nair or Nitish Kumar and I'm glad to say that Madhavan Nair along with Team Chandrayaan was ultimately declared winner. All along though, I was wondering what it meant to call someone Indian of the year, especially when there were certain opinions that A.R.Rahman should be awarded.

Service to the nation and professional excellence need not be one and the same all the time. While we as a nation have the need for a global identity, we also urgently need a reconciliation of so many things within ourselves - not all what we do is for the world outside. Is the magnitude of the achievement the indicator of the most noteworthy? How do we evaluate magnitude anyway?

When professional excellence helps put India on the world map, that is something to be proud of too! But there are so many people working in so many ways for the people and to better the nation as a whole.
If we had to choose between the two, which do we pick, and how do we justify?

Self pity, maybe

2009-01-09T21:19:00.006+05:30

Never thought I would get here but here I am. And no, I do not mean my prolonged absence on this page, though the absence is a symptom of being in the aforementioned "here".

I've been doing all KINDS of writing the past few months - thesis writing, SOP writing, essay writing.. most of it not my own work. These days I actually seem to be able to write better when someone is telling what to write about. Penning my own thoughts drives me nuts. Maybe because I never really seem to know what I'm trying to say.

Like now. Notice the "actually"'s and the "really"'s and the "seems"'s.

And that is the way with most things. Indecision, hesitation and forever feeling unsure and apprehensive, and at the end of it all I am either frustrated, or worse, bored.

There are so many convictions I have recently developed about things - convictions that are more often than not termed 'unrealistic'. I have come to realize how much I have been influenced by four years of education in architecture school and so many ideals that I have developed are just not considered practical to most other people I interact with.

I find myself unable to explain the reasons for my beliefs, in rational terms but there is also the constant pressure that I have to acknowledge, of the need to sell my ideas.

This post might end up being as vague as my other attempts at putting thoughts down in words.
One line of clarity on all the angst though : It is unfathomable to some people that I talk about city level waste issues when I could be designing fabulous buildings in glass. What are architects for, anyway, if not that.
Yeah, right.

South Chennai - North Madras!

2008-08-23T17:56:00.003+05:30

I've lived in Mylapore all my life. There is a distinct character embedded in my mind, of what Chennai city is. It grew from an image of distinctive mylapore to encompass quite a lot, as the city changed and grew over the past twenty years, and I grew up with it.
I can relate to tiny bylanes of the Mylapore-Triplicane-Mandeveli area. I identify with the beaches and the residential Besant Nagar. I've seen quite a bit of the South and the West of the city including Anna Nagar, Ashok Nagar and the likes. I had even been up to Parry's corner and Fort St.George but until a few days back, I had never seen North Madras.

Over a few sudden and coincidental trips to the Harbor, the Fort, Royapuram and the area all the way up to Washermanpet was like being introduced to another persona of the same city that I have grown up in all these years. Beyond the chaos of Georgetown lies quite a chunk of the city that was alien to me and which , now that I have been given an introduction to, seems in my mind to be very differently structured from what "Namma Chennai" has come to mean to me.

Though the popular cultures of everyday living are as prevalent in North Madras as they are in the South, the history that the place carries with it tends to give it a more small town feel. Wide roads lined with buildings not greater than a few stories in height ( unlike the outbreak of glass towers on road edges in the southern parts of the city), heavy traffic on the roads but not many cars to be seen, quiet inner residential areas scattered with churches and convents of the Anglo-Indian identity, and that Something-In-The-Air that feels different from the other side that I relate to.

Perhaps it is because there are more industries and the Harbour in the north. The pollution and heavy vehicle activity that have been attributed to these sources seems to have kept away the sort of development one sees in the south of the city - real estate on a boom and malls and commercial complexes dotting every locality.

With many landmark buildings and places dotting the area, this part of the city does tend to give the feel of a City Left Behind but it is also true that there is Life in the activities of everyday living that show up in the most refreshing of ways.

The Walking Tour of North Madras conducted as part of the Madras Day celebrations was my latest venture into that part of the city. We were a small group of people led by freelance Journalist Swahilya and we enjoyed a full two hours of walking the streets and roads of North Madras as the city was waking up on this saturday morning. Many of my thoughts reflected here were spurned off from the discussions and observations on this walk, and a previous few meanderings I had taken up with a fellow explorer (you know who you are! ) in this region. It was an enjoyable trip, to be taking in all these sights of a place I had never realized the existence of. The group, primarily a bunch of Journalists and students of architecture, was small enough to go into niche areas we found interesting and locate our own Shortest Routes to get through and into places in the area. More on the Gap-In-The-Wall concept shall be up here soon hopefully. Until then, if you have not seen North Madras yet, do go and take a look by all means. If you have been there, and have something to add to my experience of the place, drop me a line!

Cheers, and Happy Madras Day!

Words

2008-05-13T17:36:00.004+05:30

Complications, to most people, seem impressive.
The more convoluted, twisted and impossibly difficult to understand that a thing is, the more its value seems to appreciate.
I say this in the context of two recent events. One - the discussion about a particular course - Anthropology - and the kind of language that is demanded off the students to be able to attempt the exam. Two - looking up lyrics of certain english songs online (because I liked the music) only to find that the words meant absolutely nothing to me at all!

And so, in the spirit of something that I have been referred to as often (read: Peter) I have attempted to write the following :

Hypothetical Question-Answer pair in an Anthropology Exam

Q : In what way does building belong to dwelling?
A: Building that creates a sense of Place, imbibing the existential nature of the people is a building that can sublimely associate with the naturalistic principles of human thought processes. Conceptualizing the dwelling as the shelter for humans and therefore human thought comes closer to understanding the interconnections associated with building and builder, thus transforming pure lifeless form into a vibrant portrayal of the Act of Living.

( Dont ask me what I was trying to say. I was not trying to say anything. Just use fancy words. And many many adjectives. )

And now for the Song

Amorphia

I look into the darkness as the minutes pass
See no inkling of the light to come
There will be passion, there will be pain
But right now, my mind is numb

I can feel the look in your eyes
I can sense the shadows
I can un-der-stand the emotion
even as the darkness narrows!

The streets were filled with flowers
Iron bars kept us apart
And even as I counted the hours
they faded (yeah they faded!)
they faded even before the start

They took you down that scented path
Chaos dissolved my world
I walked those lonely nights with the ghosts of the past
and the silences that unfurled

I can feel the look in your eyes
I can sense the shadows
I can un-der-stand the emotion
even as the darkness narrows!

I can feel the look in your eyes
I can sense the shadows
I can un-der-stand the emotion
even as the darkness narrows!
As the darkness narrows...
the darkness narrows

(phew! )
Anyone's a lyricist!

I personally feel that being simple is a lot harder, and it takes more effort.This kind of thing takes no effort at all! Ever since that realization, I try to keep things simple.

Point to note though - this is not a mockery of lyrical attempts of the recent past. There are some songs which I think have the most beautiful verses I've ever heard. These are only my observations on the more frivolous (or so I feel) songs.

Cheers!

Orumaalai Ila Veyil Neram - Random Tag

2008-05-09T07:32:00.005+05:30

Random tag I took up, it was fun!

Rules:
1. Put your MP3 player on shuffle
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must write the name of the song no matter what. No cheating!

Declaration - All the results of this game are the ABSOLUTE TRUTH. Some of the matches are uncannily accurate - I did NOT adulterate it. Proof to this statement is Pritha Ilangovan who sat me through the whole procedure and bore with my shrieks of delight (thanks pritu)

IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY?” YOU SAY?
Deewangi, Deewangi hai - Om Shanti Om
Rather apt isnt it :D

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Crazy Frog - Axel F :|

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Treat Me Right - Backstreet Boys
(ring a bell? :) )

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Pehla Nasha
well. hmm. :)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
Kathalikkum Penin Kaigal - Kadhalan
vagueness.

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Bol na Halke Halke - Jhoom barabar Jhoo

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Duur - Strings.
Go figure :)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
En veetu Thotathil
Again a little vague but.... :)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Netru Illatha Maatram Ennadhu - Pudhiya Mugam
Ahem :)

WHAT IS 2+2?
I Never loved you anyway - The Corrs
Whatever

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Friends theme song!!!!!! - i'll be there for you!!!!!
its an omen :)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Wonderwall - Oasis
' I dont believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now" :)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Udhayananu Tharam
Dance track from a malayali movie of the same name.. need to figure that one :)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Lemon Tree
Err.. :D

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Roobarooooooo - Rang De Basanti
!! :)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Superstar!!!! - Jamilia
;)

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Dhoom Thana - Om Shanti Om
(70's style :) )

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Follow Me - Uncle Kracker
:D

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Manam Virumbudhe Unnai
Weirdness!

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Nibrutha - Govindam
Classical track.. Hamir Kalyani. dunno what I am to infer from this.. hmm

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Endhan Nenjil Neengadha thendral nee dhaana - Kalangyan
I love you guys :)

WHAT SHOULD YOU POST THIS AS?
Oru Maalai Ila veyil neram - Ghajini
(but i did this in the morning and it is FRIKKIN COLD here)

I had fun doing this and I pass the tag on to everyone reading this :)
try it, its fun!

cheers.

Fall-ing

2008-05-09T06:37:00.006+05:30

Fall colours are so beautiful!
This is my first official Fall - this season just omits itself in Chennai. Just the way every other season does, except the Summer. In Chennai, its either Summer, or its Not Summer.

Fall is almost over in Adelaide - winter should be setting in properly anytime now.

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Cyclic seasonal change happens without abating, bringing in year after year of new experiences and promise.
This time last year I had written about wanting to live the Fantasy. A year has passed, and I seemed to have come closer to learning to see that beautiful world of imaginary civilizations :)
A big Thank you to those who made that possible for me... You know who you are (A little Daniel Day Lewis but deal with it :) )

Season's Greetings :)

Oz

2008-04-15T16:00:00.013+05:30

I have obviously been away.

I'm back now, but I am writing this to you from Down Under. I have moved (temporarily) to Adelaide in South Australia. The world outside has become a lot quieter!

On the other hand, this music that plays eternally in my head has never been clearer. The birdsong in the mornings, refreshing as never before and the rhythms through the day are the liveliest yet.

Australia is full of contrasts. The landscape is stark. The colors are beautiful. The people can only be described as a variety and the food - bland.

It is ordered, not chaos. I liked life in chaos and this takes getting used to. Its a lot easier than doing it the other way round I find. Sometimes one wishes one could magically merge the best of both worlds. Unlikely. And yet I have not stopped wondering if it could be done.

I like the kangaroos and the koalas. I even like the metro tickets and fiddly push buttons at intersections for pedestrians to cross roads. What I dont quite like is a repeated feeling of leaving things half-done. Like subway sandwiches for lunch which have naught but leaves in them. Or sticking ply on steel and calling it my house.

Insightful, really. For those of you out there reading this - there is no better way to understand a city than living and working there for any length of time. Forget the touristy deal.

I might write again from Oz if I find something of consequence, which I feel the urge to comment upon. That is likely to happen. I'm tired of philosophy.

Cheers!

Of villages, mansions and panneer soda

2008-02-03T14:19:00.000+05:30

My class of fourth year students have been roped in on a collaborative project with a French team from Ecole d'Chaillot and Unesco, to work on a Conservation and Heritage management project in the Chettinad region. To be more specific, we were targeting the village of Kanadukathaan, to study the settlement of Naatukkotai chettiars there, and give proposals for the conservation of their built heritage.

Now, village though it might be, the houses of the chettiars living there are literally mansions. Huge beautifully constructed houses in wood and brick that have stood the test of time. At present, more than half the village is owned by four predominant families, who do not even live there anymore. Instead, there are caretakers who live there, taking care of these large, empty houses. Right from the start, we were confused as to what exactly was expected of us out of this project.

To begin with, we had already worked on proposals for the constructive development of a settlement, at the scale of a village, in our second year. That exercise dealt directly with the issue of sustaining a settlement and its people, but here we were talking about conservation of the built heritage, and we were unsure where the actual settlement fit it. Some were of the opinion that bringing in tourism as an activity will not only help create and sustain interest in the architecture of the chettinad and keep the buildings from deterioration, but will also provide for good employment opportunities for the people living at present in the village. To some of us, though, this seemed to be neither here nor there - neither are we really looking at the real issues faced by the people of the village, nor are we making any holistic attempt to preserve the chettinad tradition and culture itself - just attempting to make a museum of these mansion-houses, that can be wondered at from afar, and forgotten there. A static end to a very dynamic tradition.

Ever since, I have been having my own doubts on what Heritage Conservation really aims to do. Considering the chettinad example itself - what is really fantastic about this culture is the way their style of living and family set up generated these kinds of mansions on a village-scale settlement pattern. The craft of building, the use and the scales of spaces in the interior, the orientation on the outside and the street character that this created - all of these, in my opinion, cannot be "Conserved" as mere exhibits for an academic interest. Conservation should aim higher - at an attempt to sustain this tradition, or at least learn from the dynamics of it. But there again, we have a problem - the Chettiars themselves don't live that way anymore - at least not for the most part. So who is to live in that fashion anymore? With urbanism and progress driving people out of villages, modern ways of living have largely replaced these traditions. If we want to just preserve the skill and craft of building for their innate beauty and sensibility - again - who will it be for? Manual labor tends to be expensive in comparison with mechanization and mass production. Is exclusivism and imparting an "ethnic" or "designer" status to the craft the only way of sustaining it? Packaging it to suit the times?

I came across an article, while I was pondering over such things - I still have not found a satisfying solution to it by the way.
But this article was interesting in that, it tries to explain how the indian perception of culture and history has always been different. Take a look -

Concept of Historic time in India

The two legs on which conventional, that is, the European historiography (science of recording history) stands, are, the digging up of the past, that is archaeology and the embalming of the past, that is museology. Both these concepts were alien to the Indian mind, until the arrival of the British in the 18th century in the Indian consciousness, history has always been inextricably interwoven with what (according to the western concept) can only be termed as 'mythology'. At the same time, the western concept of mythology does not make sense to the Indian people. One is tempted to mention an interesting fact here : the two epics, the ramayana and the Mahabharata, which the western historians have dubbed as mythologies are called 'itihasas' (literally histories) in India.

Myth in India is perceived differently, certainly not as a fragment of the imagination or a fairytale. Precisely for this reason, a distinction has been made between the Mahabharata and the Panchatantra. The latter could never be called an itihasa. It is important to note that the historical format of the two epics is deliberately employed to make people use it as a point of reference to continuously evolve and influence the living patterns and attitudes of human societies of the past, the present and the future.

So it turns out that history in the form of itihasa is a creative use of past events for the present and future. The immediate concern of the people had never been the veracity of the actual events; nor whether they can be substantiated with the help of the modern historians in 'accurate' tools such as chronology and archaeology. The real concern, therefore, is the way the past, representing every age of human endeavour, can influence the contemporary lives and thoughts and the quality of human relationships and the way this knowledge can help us pass against this static backdrop of time. This has given birth to an interesting philosophical thought that, in historic time, the next phenomenon does not entirely replace the previous one. Nothing totally disappears in the 'black hole' of the past. There is always a continuum of existence and hence hardly any past. The second and more important stream of consciousness which the itihasa- along with some puranas from which they take root- induce in the minds of the people is the way the chronicles of the past should be used pragmatically and creatively (even at the cost of so-called historical accuracy) to help each individual and group to know and practice Life Order (dharma).

- Design, the Indian context ( H Kumar Vyas)

If we are to accept or at least give room for such thoughts, where are we headed, trying to document and preserve (in the most static sense of the term) a culture and tradition that need to be learned from, in a much more holistic way?
Confusing, or what :)

P.S The Panneer soda at the village "potti kadai" was highly exclaimed over by all. Did not quite suit my taste though :) Everything else about chettinad cuisine is droolworthy. Very Very Good Food!

Indian Idle

2008-01-01T09:48:00.000+05:30

A round of questions, food for thought if you like, to start my year off . These have been triggered through various events over the past year which had nothing in common whatsoever, except that i ruminate, and ruminate, and always seem to end up at the basic questions which have been asked so often now, they are stale. Yet, I persist.

What is Indian? Who is Indian? Are you or me proud to be Indians? Really? What are we proud of then?

India is a politically identity, and we belong. And yet we all have a cultural something in us that tells us we are something else too - Tamil, Hindu, what have you. IF we had to define our identity in one word, would it be Indian? If so, what does it mean for us as a collective, where do the differences stand?
And continuing from there - what pride do we take in ourselves, as Indians if thats what we claim to be.. It seems to me, that we are a people who take more pride in the India of the past - the land of the Taj Mahal and the Mahabharata. And that too is only in partial, for how many of us have read that text in entirety or understood its values? We seem to take pride in the leaps and bounds we have made post-independence, as a nation to reckon with, but we still see people preferring to leave the country in search of more fertile pastures elsewhere - who are you then? who am i? Not that it is wrong to seek your own futures elsewhere - but what of the country we claim to identify with? If every individual is Indian in name but saves just a cultural overlay for "display", what happens to the collective?

Or do we not want to be Indian?

postscript - for clarity
various things that have inspired these thoughts -
A spell by myself in another part of the country - so different and yet so familiar
Hours spent thinking about what I want to do with my life - and where do i go from here (both literally and figuratively)
An agonizing process of passport renewal , and the various conversations in those long hours in the queue
A project that requires me to bring out an "Indian-ness" in the design of a corporate IT park (!)
Another self-imposed task (for a competition project) of looking at the way planning of cities has worked/not worked ( chennai in specific)
Many other smaller yet significant incidents contributed to this, but these were the primary things worthy of mention.

Happy New Year!

untitled

2007-12-12T10:33:00.000+05:30

To be able to write, I always needed thoughts to be all clear and sorted out in my head. Despite the clarity, even to myself sometimes, my writing would tend to sound vague. More than the writing itself, its what I am trying to say that is always important to me.. Not flowery literary achievements, but getting those thoughts across as best as I can.There has been many a time when I would write out an entire post only to re-read and erase the entire thing, and it has been happening more frequently in the recent past.

This blog was intended to be a potpourri. Did not have any literary ambitions, just a hotch potch of everyday things. Why? Search me. And maybe precisely due to the lack of that mindset - to Write for the sake of Writing also - I am now suffering a setback. Things I "just wanted to say" are not all that easy to put into words anymore.

Strange as it may seem, I am a loner, by definition. You would not realise that all too soon about me, but then again, no one's ever tried to define me either. I love my solitude, I treasure it. There used to be a time when those hours I spent with my thoughts did me oodles of good. It made me more confident about who I was. Made me happy. And I would write about those things that used to strike me.. random thoughts that were precious because it was my way of looking at the world around me.

But now, (for reasons I cannot fathom) solitude is not doing me much good. On the contrary, sometimes, I distinctly feel, that maybe I spend too much time inside this head of mine, and it is muddling me. Making me indecisive and confused about what I am thinking.
I am unable to write anymore.

universities.. and what lies beyond

2007-09-28T14:33:00.001+05:30

".. Universities were not meant entirely, or even chiefly, as stepping stones to an examination but that there is something else that universities can teach and ought to teach - nay, which I feel quite sure they were originally meant to teach - something that may not have a marketable value before a Board of Examiners, but which has a permanent value, the whole of our life - and that is a real interest in our work, and, more than that, a love of our work, and , more than
that, a true joy and happiness in our work.

If a univeristy can teach that, if it can engraft that one small living germ in the midst of the young men who come here to study and to prepare themselves for the battle of life, then , i feel convinced, a univeristy has done more and conferred a more lasting benefit on its pupils than by helping them to pass the most difficult examinations and to take the highest place among Senior Wranglers or First Class Men.

Unfortunately, that kind of work which is now required for passing one examination after another, that process of cramming and crowding which has of late been brought to the highest pitch of perfect has very often, the opposite effect, and instead of exciting an apetite for work,it is apt to produce an indifference, if not a kind of intellectual nausea, that may last for life."

"... I feel very bound to say that the amount of knowledge produced readymade at these examinations is to my mind, perfectly astounding. But while the answers are there on the paper, strings of dates, lists of royal names and battles, irregular verbs, statistical figures, whatever else you like, how seldom do we find that the heart of the candidates is in the work which they do. The results producded are certainly ample and voluminous, but they rarely contain a spark of original thought or even a clever mistake.

It is work done from necessity, or, let us be just, from a sense of duty, but it is seldom, or hardly ever, a labor of love."

- Freidrich Max Mueller
India - what can it teach us?

What is disheartening is, this text, written decades ago, still seems relevant enough to me today.

Instances

2007-08-31T07:35:00.000+05:30

Sometimes, you have a dayful of insights. today was one of those.

Sometimes, you realise, you need not be polite, gentle, kind, considerate, if it means nothing to the people around you. And when you do realise that, sometimes, more than anger, you feel hurt.

Sometimes (though it seems like a lot more often) you need a clean break from everything. the past, your thoughts, that heady rush of a feeling which makes you want to both laugh and cry. Maybe sometimes, you should just listen to that thing in your head, telling you to try giving it all up for once.

And sometimes you should just break down and cry.

Sometimes, it isnt enough that you are good. You need to push and fight and clear the way for yourself, get what you need. And sometimes, just sometimes, its worth it.

Contentment

2007-07-22T20:19:00.000+05:30

Giving out a nice contented burp, just about now, would be quite apt. I refrained from discussing the topic too much, from getting hyped with speculations and theories , from blogging / talking about it endlessly, instead i just decided to wait for the book to hit the stores and it was oh-so worth the wait.

Sure, it did seem to me like she had introduced too many new things in the book to finish it off.. there was a lot that I had to get used to pretty quickly while reading and the epilogue was chee-eezy methinks.. it could have had a little more polish.. yada yada. But on the whole I am content that she has not let down the expectations.

I loved it that she dint get too mushy with either of the couple stories, loved it that she dint seem to make a martyr out of anyone and killed just the right number of people, if not always the right ones (but thats from speaking from my personal affectations so its excusable).

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore is still my hero. And I'm happy.

gujarati lexicon

2007-06-29T22:07:00.000+05:30

my penchant for new languages and strange words spurns me on :) and i've managed to pick up random words and a few carefully constructed sentences (carefully constructed as they are very task-specific) in gujarati in my first two weeks. (yes. already.)
For example, everyone has heard of "kem cho" - how are you. now try -
"su che" - "what is it"
"ketla che" - how many are there?" and it goes on like that.
The randomness of my gujarati vocabulary includes words like "kothdi" which means a cover of any sort, "batata" which is potato :D, "dungdi" (onion), ardhu (half) etc.
Now, i have very gujarati room-mates who've been helpful in the communication quarter. All the daily essentials, i have down cold. :D if you need any convincing, here you go-

"amul ni chhash che?" means "do you have any amul buttermilk". its my standard one-liner at the dairy nearby, me having to substitute my ever favorite curd with buttermilk.
"ghar ni chaabi aapo" - give me the house keys. again, a usual with madhu kaka next door who is our official keeper of the keys :)
"ahin thi kachro valo" - sweep the garbage from here. almost my opening dialogue every morning, by virtue of an early sweeper lady and the fact that i'm usually the first to wake.

Right now, learning gujarati is only out of interest and chance (you always tend to pick up a few words when they fly around like this!) and i can manage with my hindi skills anywhere here but i feel inadequate. all the sarcasm of my loquacious former self have been cut short. cut off entirely, more like. out of restrictions of language and expression, i have apparently started to seem "sweet" and also "shy and quiet" (courtesy - my very gujarati roommates).
sigh! if only!

the nescafe and the vada pao

2007-06-17T10:27:00.000+05:30

Its not very often that i find myself at home in a new city so quickly. I always assumed that was because of my own need to familiarise, but now i'm having different thoughts. Of late, acclamitising has become easy enough. All i have to do is walk into a Cafe Coffee day or a Barrista Coffee bar or even one of the multiplexes around and i'm back in known territory. Its insane that places have become so standardised that once i'm inside, it makes no difference whether i'm on nungambakaam high road or vijay char rasta!

Same colors, similar furnishing, menu cards and prices, people all dressed the same way - honestly, one cannot expect bright, cotton tie-dyed clothes here, desi prints and all of that .Everyone around are in levi's. Ghagra's and mirrorwork seem to be for tourists only.
Globalisation and whatnot.. Its the era of MNC's, glass boxes and Panner tikka pizza. Its already happened everywhere , i guess its old news but this is me speaking from a sudden exposure to this reality. Language and conversation are still almost the only reminders that i'm not in home ground.

This though, is only one half of the story. There is apparently another side to this city - literally- the Older sections of ahmedabad where you can still find traiditonal pols (houses) and a lot of local attractions (and if you know me you would know i'm not talking tourism). Hopefully that should help make me feel like i'm actually seeing new places.

Then again, some people (read: my father) take comfort in the fact that cities have become so modernised that you get everything you need here, just as you would do, at home. I'm not complaining much about that either really :D it makes life simpler if i can depend on continuing my breakfast routines and "thair sadam" lunches. I guess i'm not the kind to rough it out for four whole months.. i need assurances of some kind, some measure of familiarity, but the romantic that i am, i must confess i expect a lot more local flavor.

As long as i still take that early morning walk to drink some chai or late night walks to get some vada pao, i'm keeping myself happy with thoughts of being in a new environment, while i can still have the familiar comforts of honey cornflakes, nescafe and radio mirchi during the day :D
Hoping for a lot more.

Post script - do most people have such conflicting thoughts or is it just me? :)

Fantasy

2007-04-30T13:20:00.000+05:30

Yesterday my brother was playing with his plastic toys and calling himself "Red Ranger". Screaming and howling and jumping from couch to table. Butting me from behind and yelling "SPD EMERGENCY". Saving the world before every meal. :)
Today he's refusing to have a bath because (he declares in a robotic monotone) "I'm not programmed to have baths". I'm just surprised he doesnt call himself Vicky and expect my dad to be a hotshot engineer dabbling with robots.. its the "Small wonder" mania.:)
It used to be spiderman last year, and tenali raman, a while after that. And there was this brief period where Dhoni lived with us too i believe :D
And all i get to be is Shruti. *sigh*
sometimes, i wish i were a kid again.

breather

2007-04-13T22:43:00.000+05:30

Design submissions are finally done and exam week is almost upon us... *bliss*
and so, right now i'm reading -

Swami and friends by R.K.Narayanan - for the nth time. Just cant seem to get enough of them
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk "i dont want to be a tree.. i want to be its meaning" :)
Ponniyin Selvan (the english translation)- what a ride!

Trying to get my hands on a copy of -
Shantaram - does anyone have a copy, without a one-year waiting list?
Next by Michael Crichton

Let me know if there's anything else interesting thats an absolute must-read. looks like i'll be doing a lot of lounging around in the coming week :D

carpeted

2007-03-31T23:52:00.000+05:30

something interesting i came across -

seven students from across the world, as part of a rural studio outreach program at auburn university have conceptualized AND BUILT this house from (drumroll) carpet tiles. No jokes.
They had been collecting old carpet samples from office complexes and other institutions all over the united states, and constructed this house for a family that had previously crowded together in two rooms.

Carpet bricks made of five tiles each were piled together and held in compression by a massive wooden box beam. Most other material used in the structure was also donated or second hand, making it an extremely cost and energy efficient construction.

Take a look –

Conceptual drawing
students at work
The Lucy House

The interiors of the house looked nice and cheerful too.. Just goes to show how much we can truly experiment with what we have.

What would YOU do with old carpets? : )

inspired

2007-03-24T08:46:00.000+05:30

inspiration can get you on a high -
you wake up the next day with a bad hangover.
- Shruti

corny, i know.. but sadly true. you can see here, to what levels i've been driven.

Feet

2007-02-15T21:36:00.000+05:30

Of late, my world seems to revolve around feet.
My two Left Feet.
Two big ugly Left Feet, one Left-Foot-in-the-mouth.

oh yeah, thats me.

the green trend

2007-01-30T11:35:00.000+05:30

Current design project in college is to do with Energy-efficient architecture and green buildings ( sounds corny? its something to think about, really ) and all i'm reading up on these days is how to conserve energy in the building industry, and about how much energy we waste all the time in doing things that have become routine to us.
We DO produce a lot of wastage, precious natural fuel that powers the world around us is getting depleted fast. Very fast. And the only channel through which we realize this is that the price of fuel goes up everyday. As long as we can still afford it, we hardly give the matter a second thought. Its economics, people say. How many realize that sky-high fuel prices are going to be the norm of tomorrow, because there just wont be enough fuel anymore?

Many many solutions are springing up, to combat this. People have, to a great extent, awakened to the problem we're facing, and "renewable sources of power " has become quite the trend today.
Solar Power, power from wind, water, the list continues.

It is commendable that we have woken up to these realizations atleast now, I'm not a pessimist.

But just some food for thought - I was reading up on energy efficiency in particular to the building industry and i came across interesting solutions to cool the indoor air to achieve thermal comfort ( an alternative to air-conditioning, which, at present usurps 70% of the energy used for any building's operation), one of which happens to be wind towers that can induce cooling in air moving thorough them. Interesting, and effective, it was all fine , till i found this, which talks about wind towers or cool towers being in use for centuries now, in the traditional architecture of those countries with hot, arid climates. And if you really look at the situation, its not only wind towers, there are so many aspects of building in tune with the environment that have been practiced over the ages through traditional techniques of construction.
But changing lifestyles demanded new typologies of buildings, better "standards of living" and "modern" technology was able to provide for these things. The only downside being that we were so enamored with these rapid leaps in technological innovation that we forgot those old-timers who had been living simple, and yet living in a way that did not attempt to claim superiority over their environment.

So this is where we are now, used to a particular way of life, something that cannot be changed. Technology came as a way of making life simpler, but it did not take into account the foresight required for such growth, and so, now, we find the same technology complicating our lives.

We brought in brilliant theories of air conditioning to achieve indoor comfort in glass boxes, and now that we dont have the power to run these throughout, we look to developing more technology of earth air tunnel systems, wind tower, solar chimneys, whatnot, in the name of energy efficiency - principles that were already well in place in traditional systems, but were ignored.

Technology was brought in to simplify things, instead, it has unquestionably and irrevocably complicated our lives.

We cannot step back now, and I am not one against technological progress. But I find myself beginning to believe in what Michael Crichton said in his novel "State of Fear" that no matter what action we, as human beings, take, it will always have repercussions elsewhere that were never forseen. Let us then atleast acknowledge this and look towards more thought and more precaution before we take any technology for granted.

Let us think, then, and not just till we perfect the working of a new system but also after that, as to how that system will work in the environment it is inserted in. I dont mean to be a wet dishcloth, but we've made too many mistakes already.

spell

2007-01-23T16:37:00.000+05:30

To all those of the blogging fraternity.. and not non-bloggers too, if they have any occasion to use my name ever, please note -
My name has ALWAYS been spelled the way you see it below.

S H R U T I

Thats shruti with ONE 'h'. After the S and before the R.
Simple enough i should think, would'nt you?
And i would like for it to be spelled that way please, it has been mutilated quite often enough.
Forgive the touchy-ness .. I'm one for getting names right and positively detest any other versions of my own name that people come up with.
Thanks for remembering!
Do spell yours for me sometime :) I'll keep it in mind
cheers.

The Style, The Tag

2007-01-19T18:49:00.000+05:30

I saw GURU yesterday. Another movie that clearly has the Mani Ratnam tag. You really cant make good movies with just a good cast/story/music alone, it is the combination of all of these that renders it.. well.. good. And thats what Mani Ratnam excels at, in my opinion. Every single frame is so dense.. so many things go into it, each, perfection in itself, and co-ordinated with everything else beautifully. There is a difference in the scenes in this particular movie.. many of them take off from the "realistic".. the images are quite obviously heightened through artificial means, but i still liked it.
There is a quote about architecture, one of my favourites. Its from a book called A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. It says -

It is possible to make buildings by stringing together patterns in such a way that many many patterns overlap in the same physical space: the building is very dense, it has many meanings captured in a small space, and through this density it becomes profound.

The same would apply to movies i think. Each scene, each frame can be made profound. And Mani Ratnam, seems to be one of the people who has come closest to achieving it.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Krithika tagged me a while back to list Ten things that define my style ... thanks krithika :)

This took quite some thought.. Ten is a big number after all and so here goes
1. I am silent around new faces, in known company it is difficult to shut me up
2. I strongly believe that Food was one of God's greatest gifts to man. Second only to Music. And hence, you will always find me with music in the background and something to munch in my hands :)
3. Shoes, not feminine strappy sandals.. Tees, not chamki-clad salwars and coffee, not tang or tropicana.
4. Order in Chaos is my mantra.. i live in a perennial pigsty :D
5. I love to cook. Cooking is an art.. thats one art i'm gonna master :)
6.If I had to choose between Counter Strike and Packman, i'd choose the latter :)
7.I love rain , I hate mud. Blame it on the mud. all it does is smell good AFTER the rains get done. Bah!
8. I'm left handed.. now THATS style :)
9.I can be vague upto the point that these points could fit to answer ANY tag :D
10. I forget what i wanted to say as the last trait. i'm sure i had thought up some punch thing.. but,ah well.. forgetting things is my style too :)

And in the true spirit of a game of tag, i hereby tag Sandy and Suchi

untagged

2007-01-17T21:55:00.000+05:30

....tagged by sandy to tell the world five things it didnt know about me..

You wouldnt have to be a great philosopher to read minds,
you need not be a great friend to know me inside out
If only you realised, i am as unpredictable as the clouds above, and that most people read me wrong,
you would not try to second-guess me
If i told you now, five things you did not know about me
in five days, they would be
outdated.
deemed irrelevant.
Change is the only thing constant
and today's five new things are tomorrow's old news.

It is enough for you, to learn this much
enough to keep the curiosity coming
but just a bit less, lest you take me for granted.

so who am i then?

post - NASA

2007-01-15T20:21:00.000+05:30

I'm back!!

And now, there are no hassles for time :)
N.A.S.A just got done, and i have a whole week ahead of me to waste as i will! what luxury, what richness :D :D

To those who dont know about NASA, its alright now. its over.

To those who know of it as my excuse to always be busy, copy from above :D

I've been literally starving to write about something for the past three months, but due to rigors of secrecy that i had to adhere to , I couldnt breathe a word. NASA tends to do that, warp decent people and all of that. Anyway, now that its all done, I can write to my hearts content about a certain subject we'd been researching on, the past three months, to present at NASA.. we were studying the Regional theatre of kerala - the koothambalams, and its been one hell of an experience learning all about it!
We actually made two trips to kerala, drove around loads of kerala countryside, met so so many people, saw so many new and beautiful things, the experience was exhilarating. I need to put it all down in words before I forget anything so look out for the Koothambalam post coming up :)

Apart from that, i've also been tagged.. by both Sandy and Krithika so i'll have to get down to penning those too, and then of course, there's a lot to write about the whole convention itself, four days of madness in manipal :D :D

I'm going to start patiently. There is one week, time enough to do all of this and more methinks :) Keep checking back!

And Everything Nice

2007-01-01T22:39:00.000+05:30

Its January again, and chennai is actually COLD at night.. (or is it just me? :) )
There are more mosquitoes than ever before, even "all out" doesnt keep them away.
I need to get used to writing "07" at the end of the date line. Though 06 was one of the lowest years ever, i got used to it :)
i dont believe in numerology but maybe the 2+7 equation really will work out for me.. *fingers crossed*

The above were some of my reflections on "so whats new , now that its New Years Day Again" :D

May the year ahead be filled with Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice..
For all you people reading this out there, here's wishing you a very very happy new year. Be healthy, Be safe :)

cheers :)

Identity

2006-12-19T23:16:00.000+05:30

It was a nice old house, until a while back. They called it the S.S.Vasan house.
Adjectives such as nice and old qualified it as a shooting location for movies etc. and i have seen or heard of many a tamil movie (especially vijaykanth flicks, if the rumors be true) being shot there. They tore the house down a while back. I've not taken the trouble to inform myself why, though maybe I'll get round to it sometime. Or you could tell me if you know.
What i DO know, is that, there's a commercial building thats come up there now. Not only is it all glass facade it gets more.. er.. corny.I recently saw an advertisement announcing the leasing of the building and calling for offers.
It reads -

The Acropolis... on Radhakrishnan salai

Its like an address on Wall street.

Its ok to name your pet dog Julius Ceasar or Hercules or any number of things.
I cant quite digest this though.
(its like an address on wall street!?!)
Its like adding insult to injury
when will we learn!

This and That...

2006-11-29T00:14:00.000+05:30

Blog title inspired from here. Thanks abhishek :)

All of a sudden, I find myself looking back on the year that has been, and I realize that this has been a year like no other before. I guess this post is a month early in the making but i might not get the time or the inclination to do this later, so here goes.
Up until the time that I joined college really, I lived in a world that was complete within Mylapore. Home, School and Sanskrit College were the limits.. and the 29C that ran this stretch as part of its long run everyday, was as much exposure as i got to being able to travel on my own. I'm talking about the world as a place in which you feel, you are someone of significance so you can actually be a part of the workings of that world.. you can make things happen. A a world of which you would definitely feel a part. Everything outside this sphere of mine was too large and unlimited for me to be of any significance, and so Mylapore was my nest egg.

Joining college was a revelation - i realized how much more there was to Chennai, and how little i knew. I expanded horizons, located Anna Nagar on the map for the first time, ventured out on unknown buses, only to realise that I can always make my way home. Madras became familiar.
All of this never required me to make decisions, think too much for myself, I never had big decisions to make, nothing that affected anyone else, or even me for more than a day in the future.

And now, after almost three years of "growing up", i find myself traveling a lot more, being on my own more often than ever before, and these are but the visible tangible things that show all the change that has been going on.
There has been so much more happening that I can only attempt to explain all of it in words.
Ever read books , or heard stories about weaknesses in people, and wondered at that time, how ridiculous and funny it all sounds? And then have you ever found yourself in a situation where you find yourself struggling with that same weakness?
Or have you ever heard acclaim of particular traits in other people which you thought were "no big deal" only to discover later that you yourself, lacked them, and they are worthy things, traits to be proud of, after all?
When asked to rise to the occasion and face responsibilities, this happens repeatedly. I know my strengths now, so too my weaknesses. What I dont know, still, is how to play to them, how to keep myself from taking on things that are not my cup of tea.

I generally do not ramble like this, but this one got the better of me :)
Hoping to learn from my mistakes.
Hoping, on the other hand, to never grow up.

starry-eyed

2006-11-12T08:02:00.000+05:30

Study Holidays.
Its become almost thematic even.. everyone posts about study holidays and its all about how we're definitely NOT studying :) i think i'll just continue the trend. Not that i really get holidays to study but then "they" generously give us a day off between two exams which gives me time to squander meaninglessly. :) and this sem, just like every other, i've been squandering time pretty much the same way during exam week - watching movies like theres no tomorrow. But then, i did find something of specific interest this time, and you'll see my selection of genre would speak volumes of what i was looking for. Let me show you what i've been oggling at

i had actually intended this to be a nice long descriptive post.. talking about everything thats fascinated me from the examples above.. but i think i'm going to leave this open to discussion for a while here :) What do u think i've been drooling over?? comments? criticisms maybe??

btw the last image takes the cake :)
bounce back :D

Cramming, Cramping, Creasing, Cribbing

2006-10-21T09:15:00.000+05:30

Weekends are like suitcases. And festivals weekends are like really big suitcases that come free when you're about to travel... you have all that space and just cant wait to fill it up. All that time thats just thrust into your hands and you feel this sudden sense of exhilaration.. you CAN get everything in after all!

There are people who pack light.They are the ones who come back with a lot more in their bags than what they started out with.. smart characters, those! Taking things in their stride and putting things into the list as and when they come up. No hassles there!

Unfortunately, i happen to belong to the second class. This is the kind who rub their hands in glee at the thought of more space .. not because they can get back with more, but because they've already got enought items on the list, to put in.. and the extra space will only help.

It'll all start innocently enough.. with a hint somewhere from the administration that you might just get a longer weekend than usual.. thats your first inkling of free suitcases. And then "They" will confirm it soon enough.. and you'll get your hands on all that extra room to fit in things out of the ordinary. Initial reaction would be to sigh with relief, as the pressure eases a bit. No more cramming, cramping, creasing or cribbing. Not for a while atleast!

Now that you have all that space to look forward to, you'll tend to start shoving things in there..

"Evaluation on tuesday? Sure,.. we have the whole weekend after all.. there'll be time"

"um.. can we postpone this test to next week? We have all the time in the weekend to prepare.. might as well write it properly.. whats the use mucking it up today without any prep??"

"Alright we'll meet up on sunday.. work for evaluation monday night..er.. test? ok finish studying on saturday.. and then.. hmm.."

Wat started out as a liberal apportioning of space for different things, will end up getting more and more frugal. No longer can you afford to fit in that extra novel, or those swimsuits. And pretty soon, the carefree romp thro the available space, would end up getting tighter, denser and more and more compact.

Until the time comes, when you realise, all of a sudden, that maybe ,you've taken on too much!

Werent you better off, with the smaller bag, when you KNEW for a fact that you dint have any room.. and tended to be careful in listing your needs.. rather than getting laid-back because you got some breathing space after so long.

Consequence : you start cramping again. Once you've gotten all those things on your list and in your head, gettting them back out might either be a matter of inconvenience (to you, or to someone else) or a matter of disappointment :) In the end, you ARE forced to remove a couple of layers.. miss a few appointments.. leave the extra cd's behind .. what have you. And you might still have to sit on the case.. struggle with the latch and hurt your finger in the process (read: not complete work even after a three day weekend and get screwed :D )

This happens to ME every weekend.. festival weekends seem to make it worse! lol.. but this diwali day, i'm definitely keeping an entire portion just to Not-Do-Anything and kick back and get my feet up for a change :) Atleast I KNOW that i'm gonna be in trouble ;)

Here's to a great weekend and a happy and safe diwali!!

cheers!

tagged

2006-10-13T12:23:00.000+05:30

i've been tagged by krithika to put down here SIX weird things about myself :) you chose the right person krithika.. lol

ohkay then, here goes

weirdity #1 : Despite being called kucchi (stick) or broom or any other thing thats tall and long and extremely thin, i happen to be one of the girls who always eats the maximum.. total foodie.

Everyone always wonders where all the chow goes, coz while i have friends who frantically diet after just one bar of chocolate, i hog almost everyday and still fail to reach normal proportions.. lol

weirdity #2: i manage to remember useless, totally unnecessary things but forget almost everything thats essential even in any remote way

weirdity #3: i eat ketchup with almost ANYTHING. (except rice maybe :D )

weirdity #4: i can get into wild fits of laugter that culminate in me spitting any food that i have in my mouth, if some stupid soul happens to manage to crack me up while i'm eating.. lol.. believe me, its a sight to see me trying to swallow while painfully keeping from laughing :D :D

and this manages to happen almost every meal.. almost :)

weirdity #5: if you havent noticed by now even, i almost always talk about food :D

weirdity #6: i actually sat and wrote down five random weird points about myself... and i happen to be the kind that HATES the "talk about yourself" columns.. now THATS weird :)

forgive me if you've been put through the trauma of reading this.. i owe krithika one after all :) and also after along time, i actually had time to kill doing things like this :D so.

cheers.

oh and for my part, i tag Divs, Suchi and Satwi

njoy!

words

2006-10-10T06:44:00.000+05:30

Tired.
Irritated.
Frustrated.
Muddled.
Trying to Outrun the clock (and failing miserably)
Wanting to Do Many Things (and falling asleep)
Hoping to Get A Life (and soon)

Praying for a little more TIME.

signed
(not so) aspiring architect.

a salty tinge to the air

2006-09-24T20:07:00.000+05:30

I live in a beautiful city.

It is a city thats got a history going back hundreds of years. It has got a culture thats very distinctive.. a salty tinge to the air thats distinctly chennai ( and if you know what i mean, you'll realise its got nothing to do with the coast attribute :) )

It is a city thats living, growing, frolicking even.. remembering everything thats made it such a great place, looking forward to everything thats been promised. Awake and alive, here and now.

I could list out everthing thats made chennai THE place to be, in my opinion. I could. But then again, this is not a chronicle :)

It is just an expression, of how great this city of mine makes me feel, every time I come to the time of the year where I go a-visiting for "kolu" , or have people home for pongal, or drive to the beach to restore "vinayaka" to the sea, get my hands messy while making footsteps for "krishna".

When I have another reason to just celebrate and i find within me, memories of having done this before, in this place, in another time. And I just know it wouldnt be the same, not if I were in another city.

Home, family, religion, they can all be replicated elsewhere. But this mix soaked in an elixir- the one called time, has made this city of mine a heady sponge... one in which i revel every oppotunity I get.

Festival time every year gets me hyper about the Chennai-feel :) i think its to do with the fact that there's been too much tradition here for me to not-miss it.. I couldnt think of october without "kolu" or december without the music season. Or even smaller things of lesser significance like the Landmark Quiz of August 15th :) And things are ever getting added to that list.

I would have written an Ode to Chennai, if i could. I did try too, but I wisely gave up the attempt, because, i realised, thats all it would ever be. An attempt.

Sudden spurts of affection happen. You might find me complaining about the heat or the noise or even the repetitive quality of chennai, the very next day ( or the lack of difference in the city scape :D refer the post below. lol). But should the question ever arise, as to whether I would take the option to leave all this and go away, I guess I shall now have in words, some things that might keep me here, to stay.

another week going past...

2006-09-20T17:39:00.000+05:30

HABITAT MONTREAL
Moshe Safdie.
Imagine living in an apartment block like this! (yes, i DID mean apartment.. no typos there! )

Cant even imagine something this different in chennai, after being used to cuboidal masses all over the place.

Why dont we see more dynamic projects like these coming up? Or are we satisfied with what we have, and not ready to experiment? Or does everyone think that all of this is just unnecessary value-addition, that it doesnt really make much of a difference to us?

As someone who is expected to design a feasible, workable apartment complex in chennai, and also someone who is fascinated by the kind of spaces and the kind of architectural solutions created by projects like the one above, i'm stuck. Thats just it... stuck.

I could sit and brainstorm and get all my creative juices going, and come up with brilliant proposals , but i'm sure there are far more creative and inspired souls already practicing out there.. This project is, after all, more than three decades old! So why arent we seeing any attempt at something different actually being built in our city??

***********************

Apart from all the agonising over design studio, i've also been upto :

LAGE RAHO MUNNA BHAI - If you've seen the first part and u liked it, you definitely dont want to miss this one! Arshad Warsi is hilarious!!

New York Nagaram - Rahman's done it again.. this track is addictive!

Other random things include The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsythe ( for the nth time!!) , rush updates of the tri-series cricket match, and general lounging around.

I also discovered today that i owe a lot to them mosquito repellants.. its kept chikengunya at bay.. for the time being ** knock on wood** lol.. All hail "All Out" !!

cluttered

2006-09-06T21:32:00.000+05:30

There are quite a few things i've been wanting to write about, but....

The disadvantage of sitting down in front of the system after an entire day of running around, mixed-up timings, messed up schedules and trauma over who's-free-when for discussions, is that after all this, my mind resembles something of a cluttered tabletop. For those who know me, i could just say MY tabletop, the clutter would be implied.

However much of a pigsty i live in, I pride myself usually on being able to organise my thoughts most of the time. Forgetting vague unimportant things is a characteristic, but that doesnt hinder the process of getting all my thoughts in order. Of late though, the amount of clutter in my head has reached phenomenal proportions.

Post-it notes, whiteboards scribbled many times over, random slips of paper torn out of notebooks, holding bits n pieces that i'm sure are just going to fly away off the surface because they have nothing holding them down.

Its a mess alright! Physical clutter is difficult enough to file away, and when its all in the head, its a hundred times worse to get it all in order and actually make some sense of everything. The fact that i have a defective (read : extrememly leaky) memory, only goes to make things more complicated. I need things to be in order so that i dont forget any of it.

ForgetfulNess adapts. Its a survivor, that can immunise.

I got my first " Planner" a few years back. I wrote in it, faithfully. Back then, the most interesting thing would be Math Homework. And some entries would read "birthday", if i was lucky enough to remember to write it.

ForgetfulNess overcame that particular hurdle very very quickly. After a few days of writing in it, the novelty wore off and I forgot to look into my Planner often enough.

Strategy Two was the "remind me to.." dialogue. I used to assign people to remind me of various things, throughout the day, the week, in life. That might have worked, had it not been for the fact that people get busy in life too, and no one can have the patience to remind you everyday to "Take money to school" or "call paatu class maami and fix up timings". Not even mom. Honest. They tire of it. ForgetfulNess won over again.

There have been many feeble attempts after that. Right now, its mobile phone alerts. They've managed to ban those (the mobiles i mean) in college too, so THAT option is rendered ineffective most of the time.

Stuck with more clutter in my head, half of which i've forgotten ( which i'm sure, will end up being the more significant half!!)

Postscript :

If u did not recieve a birthday wish from me, its probably because you've not included your birthdate on your orkut profile. Or you dont use orkut.

If u called me, and i told you i would return that call, and i havent yet, u had better probably call again. Or not :) You should have hopefully differentiated between intent and a case of amnesia.

If we've made plans to meet up anytime in the near future, call a day before and make sure i havent made other plans. I did not do it on purpose :)

If i've forgotten to include any other offense i might've committed in a fit for ForgetfulNess, well, include that to this list, and let me know what it is. lol..

cheers.

tech-nically speaking,

2006-08-28T08:36:00.000+05:30

changes i've seen in me, in the life i live...

sleepovers used to mean packing a nightbag with pj's, toothbrush, clothes, glasses-and-lens-case, and maybe some music cd's and a pack of cards.

now, i find myself going for work to friends places all night .. and i pack the laptop, check to see if the pen drive is in , put together all the rewritables i can find, grab all the stationery on my desk, pop in my digicam ( to take pictures of sheets and upload!), pocket my mobile (AND take along a charger, just in case!!) and the glasses-and-lens-case is the only thing that stays from the previous list.

no thought of clothes or music or anything associated to play.

how overrated does that sound?

kinda goes to show how much technology has changed so many things in our life.. starting with the simplest of things. its a much talked-about topic, and no one denies the significance of the hi-tech in our lives.. but when i'm just sitting around with my random thoughts, and something like this strikes all of a sudden, the impact is still there.

and what do i do, when all of a sudden, such thoughts strike??

i go ONLINE and BLOG about it.. sheesh!

everyone's a techno-brat these days!!

boulevard of broken beams

2006-08-26T12:39:00.000+05:30

Hardest thing to do - change your design (which you're obssessive about) because its structurally not possible.

Practicality has its downsides, when you try to be creative and design buildings that actually look different from the boxes everywhere. Not that it cannot be done. It can , and very nicely too.. just that i tend to get carried away at times.. and then brought sharply back to reality with simple words such as "contextuality" "sustainability" and "efficiency". Oh and structural stability, the latest add-on to those list of reins.

But up until now, i never realised i would actually like analysing building structures. ME ( the anti-numbers person!) i still cant bear to think about actually working out loads numerically but on a conceptual, analytical level, structures make one hell of an interesting study!

Hooked to steel frames as of now :) hopefully the interest will sustain.

efficient - NOT

2006-08-23T00:01:00.000+05:30

we had a seminar-lecture today in college.. one of those long boring sessions. older people talking onstage, students doodling or drooling away in the seats in the gallery.. the whole bit.

this particular lecture was on energy efficieny conducted by the NTPC (national thermal something.. see! levels of attention were phenomenal). There were very few people awake, and out of those, a lesser number who paid attention. in my opinion it was all very nice and formal and sequenced and mc-ed very well, all done the way they should be. emminent speakers from a big agency lecturing eager young minds of one of the so-called premier institutes in the city.
in reality, it was the usual smokescreen exercise.

fact is, this lecture would have been extremely meaningful, had it been done in a different way. the whole concept of "lecture" itself seemed to put everyone off and on top of that, this particular presentation consisted of uninteresting powerpoint slides filled with statistics and text on power consumption data in the country, numbers relating to power generation capacity and so on.. highly technical stuff that just bores your average student mind ( i apologise for being extremely cliche in this observation.. no longer are students to be considered a motley, lazy bunch of "muggus" but then, lectures like this bring out the worst in us i guess!)

the point that i am trying to make is, i was one of the people who made a feeble attempt at listening to what the speakers were saying. and though i lost patience quickly too, i heard enough to realise that if this had been presented in a more generalised form, with the overall perspective in mind rather than specific facts and details , it wud have actually appealed to the senses of most of the students there.
they spoke to us about the expense involved in power generation and how conservation could help the economy of the nation to a great extent ( for once, a deviation from the environmental perspective.) that in itself required some basic facts, agreed. but , the speakers happened to be addressng various student groups for this particular campaign and ended up presenting technical details involved with other engineering fields in front of a crowd which, frankly, was only too happy to get rid of the technical engineering subjects .
the stress on energy conservation in our own professional field , is already being dealt with, to some extent, as part of our academic education. but even otherwise, going over the importance of ensuring energy efficiency in building systems wud have been an interesting enough subject.
this particular campaign address wud have been more effective , had the speakers concentrated on the overall perspective and not thrust upon us facts that we could not and did not want to analyse and derive meaning from.

bottom line was, they were emphasizing the need to conserve. starting from the little things like switching appliances like chargers off after we use them. and going upto larger level like power consumption audits for entire buildings to cut down the amout of power used. might have been heard before but made sense at any rate.

i reckon we need these periodic reminders to keep us going on track, coz all this energy crisis really might blow up out of proportion anytime.. we need to face reality. but then, forcing an academic, boring sermon on people is just not going to work. what is it that WILL work then.. to make people realise the challenge and actively enforce some kind of conservation programme, each person at his or her own level?

suggestions, anyone?

de stijl....

2006-08-10T20:55:00.000+05:30

isnt it beautiful...!

look up de stijl here

once upon a time...

2006-08-01T07:39:00.000+05:30

reality, they say, is stranger than fiction.

which is probably why fiction appeals to me so much more.

hey i LIKE weirdness, oddities, your average strange things but things tend to get too unpredictable sometimes, if you know what i mean.

when i'm reading, and the book gets unbearably suspenseful, and i just cant bear to wait to find out where the next twist is gonna land, i cheat :) in other words, i turn to the last page. some people may express shock, disgust, disain even, at the thought that i could commit such a cowardly act.. "turn to the last page???! what a spoilsport!" but thats me, sadly. it doesnt happen all the time (i'm not making excuses here!) but there ARE certain books which are too intriguing to wait for the last page.. especially when its already all there in black and white :)

it gives me insane pleasure to realise the plot midway through the book, and a very painful experience to have to wait for the end. truly, in some cases, i enjoy it more AFTER i've read the last page.. now that i know where its all leading up to, i can actually appreciate all the little things that went into the pages, rather than just trying to crane my neck to look at the face of the villain :)

reality doesnt comply though. there aint no last pages all neatly printed out.

and i'm glad for that, coz if its MY story written out there, the last few pages would probably be too compelling for me to pay much attention to much of the previous chapters ( my dislike for horoscopes and predicting the future? )

but then again, its all exciting and lively, when one seems to be having fun.,.. not knowing when the next surprise is gonna jump out at you from around the corner.

when in one of my frequent mood swings though, i sometimes really really wish that i could atleast be assured that the last line, just before "the end" wud be "and they lived happily ever after"

ar-cane

2006-07-14T19:48:00.000+05:30

i have an excuse for the absence.. college has reopened! and, like i had mentioned in one of my earlier posts, when semester starts, there just isnt any time to do things like blogging. ( though it might just all be in my head and i COULD make time to do this if i wanted to.. :) .. ah well. its my way of seing things )

one of the maajor advantages to getting back to college is being able to use our amazing library. we've got one hell of a collection of books on architecture ( which i happen to find extremely interesting , so no jibes about "nerd" pls! ) and as i was randomly browsing the stacks the other day, i found an something of interest for academic reasons ( which i wont bore u with right now) but the introduction to the book was very apt. what i read just brought out all those situations i've been thro in two years of architectural education.. i couldnt have said it better myself.

here's an extract from the intro.. its worth a read..

"The past educational background seldom prepares a student for a university-type life. over the years, all too frequently, he has come to think of "school" as being a place where one "recieves" education rather as a radio set picks up a wireless transmission. But at university, education is an activity. It is life itself. No longer is he expected to sit passivley and absorb. The world of "fact" starts to disintegrate as all the information between hard-cover books, which had appeared concrete and immutable is now brought under fire. He hears "that book is out of date - throw it away","the author of that is an idiot" . He is told that despite certain books being out of date, he should nevertheless read them but not act upon them. These, he hears, represent an important step in the evolution of ideas that led to our present position. He finds lecturer "A" violently disagrees with lecturer "B" over a "matter of fact" but that both lecturers agree in telling him he must decide for himself. On what basis? What is he to make of the tumbling edifice? In despair, he may seek out a professor: " Why Rajani, that is an interesting question. I wish i had thought of that myself."

- David Oakley

T he Phenomenon of Architecture in Cultures in Change

extremely apt in architectural study, i do not know how other disciplines compare.

after five years of mental chaos , confusion, conflicting ideals, searches for "identity" and "innovation" and frequent trysts with "hybrity", "synergy" , "programmatic mixes" and "sustainability" , i shall hopefully get my degree , a B.Arch.

and yeah , i get to affix the "ar" before my name, and shall be called architect shruti shankar.

joblessness

2006-06-21T21:38:00.000+05:30

and MORE :D

Your Mood Ring is Dark Green

Friendly
Outgoing
Cheerful

Mood Ring Generator

Your Monster Profile

Undead Demon

You Feast On: Peanut Butter

You Lurk Around In: Shopping Malls

You Especially Like to Torment: Lawyers

What's Your Monster Name?

find more here. pretty good fun.

and yes. i'm still officially jobless. but the latest update is that NASA problem sheets are finally out. so that might divert me from such pursuits.

enjoy!

whats in a name

2006-06-21T21:15:00.000+05:30

so now i have the name my parents gave me, the name that i gave myself , the name all my friends gave me, what my siblings call me ( but thats classified ) AND an elvish name, a hobbit name and a superhero name to boot :D

check it out

Your Superhero Profile

Your Superhero Name is The Vector Phantom
Your Superpower is Symbiosis
Your Weakness is Ants
Your Weapon is Your Ice Lasso
Your Mode of Transportation is Motorcycle

What's your Superhero Name?

and if u want YOUR elvish and hobbit names, you'll have to go here

Oh i'm Alasse Nenharma btw, if ur into elvish. and Prisca Sandybanks for those from The Shire

cheers

PS u can still just call me shruti. that'll do. :)

Rules That Shoud'nt Be Broken

2006-06-17T20:42:00.001+05:30

it is a Strange world.

a world of Rules That Shouldnt Be Broken.

a world of Broken Rules.

a maddening place, this.

where People do Crazy Things. and Things That Make No Sense.

a maddening world of Broken People and Crazy Rules.

and Things That Make No Sense.

a world of Responsibilties. and Those Too Weak To Shoulder Them.

or so the Others say.

the ones in the Dark. the ones who Talk.

and dont do much else.

the Others.

its a world of Conflicts.
a world of Groupisms, of Friendship and Enemy-ship.

a world for the Virtuos. (but of course, you need Virtue.)

a world for the Responsible. a world of Responsibilities.

a world of the Others.

a maddening world of Responsibilites and the Others.

with no room for those who are Alone.

Pure Shores

2006-06-15T22:46:00.000+05:30

this is so apt its unbelievable.

one of my favourites by All Saints.

*****

I've crossed deserts for miles

Swam water for time

Searching places to find

A piece of something to call mine

(I'm coming, I'm coming)

A piece of something to call mine

(I'm coming, coming closer to you)

Ran along many moors

Walked through many doors

The place where I wanna be

Is the place I can call mine

(I'm coming, I'm coming)

Is the place I can call mine

(I'm coming, coming closer to you)

I'm moving, I'm coming

Can you hear what I hear?

It's calling you my dear

Out of reach

(Take me to my beach)

I can hear it calling you

I'm coming, not drowning

Swimming closer to you

Never been here before

I'm intrigued, I'm unsure

I'm searching for more

I've got something that's all mine

Take me somewhere I can breathe

I've got so much to see

This is where I wanna be

In a place I can call mine

Moving, coming,

can you hearwhat I hear?

(Hear it out of reach)

I hear it calling you

Swimming closer to you

Many faces I have seen

Many places I have been

Walked the deserts, swam the shores

(coming closer to you)

Many faces I have known

Many ways in which I've grown

Moving closer on my own

(coming closer to you)

I'm moving, I feel it

I'm coming, not drowning

I'm moving, I feel it

I'm coming, not drowning

Out of reach

(Take me to my beach)

I can hear it calling you
I'm coming, not drowning
Swimming closer to you

*******

The track beats it all.

the light at the end of the tunnel.. is the train.

2006-06-13T17:44:00.000+05:30

murphy's law : if anything can go wrong, it will

scenario was simple enough. i was invited to a treat, by a senior who i had not met for a year. an innocent enough lunch date at a nice little restaurant a little way away from where i was, in college.

location : chennai. ( its summer. get out the shades and the sunscreens. )

venue : eden. airconditioned. you'll need it in the heat.

cuisine : vegetarian. pefect for us rigid iyers who denounce non-vegetarianism.

corollary to murphy's law : it can.

me and and anjana step out of college, only to find the weather cloudy. and then it starts drizzling. but, thats nothing much to worry about in chennai. or so we thought. and walked out jauntily under anjie's red-and-orange dupatta. ( dupatta - the one piece of clothing tht's justified in all weathers - rain or shine)

murphy's law : left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

the drizzle, turns into a downpour. and there's us, on the main road with nothing except a single layer of cloth over our heads. searching for a dry patch on the ground, and an autorickshaw in the distance.

murphy's law of thermodynamics : things get worse under pressure.

there is not a SINGLE auto to be seen, anywhere in the horizon ( not that we could see to far, anjana with her cloudy glasses, and me with the water in my eyes) . so we're stranded. on the road. wet, soaked to the bone and miserable, and there aint no transport and the future looks bleak.

when suddenly, we spy an empty autorickshaw speeding toward us. and we wave. with enthusiasm fed by the thought of getting to eden with SOME part of our clothing left relatively dry.

murphy's law : anything that can go wrong, HAS Already Gone Wrong. you just havent been notified.

dude in the autorickshaw charges us seventy frikkin rupees to travel a distance that's usually worth thirty. thats right. why dint we see any other rick's on the road? why the insane hike in service charges?

today happens to be a day of autorickshaw strikes. and the guy smirking at us with seventy written all over his face, charges us extra for the risk of driving around on a strike day.

and so we desist. it seems greater insanity to pay that much for a ride to eden.

so we call ridhi.. the third member of the luncheon party and yell for a lift. and she's on her way.

Avoidance Law : If for some reason Murphy's Law fails to operate, it is building up for something big.

so she gets there, and we get in and she doesnt even complain about the wet patches on the seat cover.

we find out way to eden and walk in. and then we realise what went wrong again; its called airconditioning.

Murphy's law : If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop

the place is COLD. and we are shivering. and the food takes ages to get to the table. i order a dish with mushrooms REMOVED and thats only just the thing there in the bowl when served.

at the end of al the charade, we think back over the crazy afternoon and say " did we ACTUALLY do that?? "

shruti : murphy's laws to the life.. he must have been one hell of a frustrated soul!!!

anjana: frustrated?? ENLIGHTENED u mean :D

The Murphy Philosophy : Smile..... tomoro wil be worse.

your everyday average evil-principal

2006-06-06T21:38:00.000+05:30

notice on the Anna Unviersity A.C.Tech canteen -
___________________________________________________
Advertisement for Guindy times, the university newsletter.

Articles are invited from students for the Guindy Times..
topic : imagine if Anna University were Hogwarts!!
send in your articles to... blah blah
___________________________________________________

inspired comment scribbled right across the notice : (in blue ink)

it already is.... Umbridge's ruling!!!!!!

( i dont think that one ever got printed though. comment dint

follow regulations. and we all know how important THOSE are!)

cheers :)

boredom, random thoughts, and broadband

2006-05-31T22:20:00.000+05:30

top ten things i have been doing in my (jobless) one month of vacations

10. acquiring presentation skills (read: learning 3ds max)

9. eating out

8. hanging out ( read: wasting time on the beach with other jobless friends)

7. eating out

6. orkutting

5. trying to blog

4. eating out

3. helping seniors with thesis work

2. ___ ___

1. the pissing-off-good-friends-with-all-your-life's-problems-just-coz-u-cant-face-them routine

oh yeah

life's normal

new magic

2006-05-28T12:04:00.000+05:30

The vacations have given me time to get back to one of my passions - reading. and for once, i got hold of something different from the cliched archer-sheldon-brown-hailey crowd. Though i've taken to reading Crichton's works lately, one of my cousins recently introduced me to the world of fantasy ( and i'm not talking about the Alice in wonderland kind!) . here i was, thinking that Lord of the Rings (LOTR) was the upper limit of fantasy fiction, when in truth there are many many more such series that have been written after that. so much so that fantasy, has claimed status as a genre all by itself.

it is almost imperative that anyone starting with this series reads Tolkien first. and it is also easily understood why.. LOTR is one of the best works, also being one of the earliest. after that, many other "inspired" texts have come about.. some so inspired that they just seem like bad photocopies of Tolkien's works ( in the words of my cousin :) ). the notion of wizard-man-elf seems to gotten so fixated at a point that some authors havent even bothered to come up with an alternative to Middle Earth.

But this particular trilogy, which i had been reading over the past week was interesting in the sense that all predefined ideas about such a fantasy world and the notion of "magic" seem to have been rethought.

The Black Magician trilogy by Trudy Canavan is about a magicians guild, where a school of magic for those having magical potential is set up.

the guild is a formidable group in the city of Imardin, in Kyralia. complete with a High lord, a group of allied countries and an enemy state, the setting leaves little to the imagination.

seems like a mix of harry potter and LOTR??

it does seem like a jumble of concepts from other books.. carrying a fantasy atmosphere like LOTR with names like Kyralia and Sachaka and having a pretty racy plot like that of the potter series. but the interest in the book is carried by the detail done about the actual practice of magic itself.

this isnt another bunch of bearded and cloaked magicians carrying wands and pulling objects out of the air. the very descrition of magic here, seems to give it the attributes of a kind of energy, a magical potential that eveyone carries, but the potential is higher in some.

and it is this energy that makes some magicians.. and the others not. the magicians dont turn animals to wineglasses. they dont chant incantations or strange words in mysterious languages that open secret doors. rather, they can channelise the energy within them to do tasks like mental communication, healing the wounded and such things.

What you have heard before

* magicians wearing robes

* a school of magic

* warring states - the enemy uses "black" magic

* blood rings - link the wearer to the maker

* a chief protagonist - misunderstood among classmates

* the High Lord - the head of the guild

What is new

* magical potential and magical strength

* magicians, the people , and the Thieves. all are human.. no room here for fairytale elf creatures

* guild - not just school, not just ministry

overall it is a mix.. a series with a strong story line.. not too descriptive, and not too slow.

u might end up with the feeling that u might have read parts of it somewhere before, it might even be cliched in some aspects. but its another look into the world of fantasy fiction, and the "magic" was a different experience for me.

rue-rals

2006-05-17T22:50:00.000+05:30

its funny that during college time, there's so much work to do that there aint any time left to do fun things like blog or chat online.
and when i'm on vacation, there's so much time on hand that there aint any inclination left to do banal things like blog or chat online :). Goes with being a student of architecture. all part of the territory.
This post , therefore, is an update on the phenomenon called Rurals that happened in my life , in my fourth semester of study. (its not all that big, but i just like to exaggerate things, according to my "friends" at college)
rurals is one of those rare occasions in a students life, where he/she gets to work a solid three months ( two, in my case. blame the tamil nadu government and its election procedure) in the company of nine other classmates, on the same design project.

unlike engineering, a design project is generally given with the objective of designing a building or structure, and separate designs are expected from each student. Rurals, though, isnt one of the normal design projects. it involves study of a human settlement and the relationship of the built environment to human society.. in simple words, we would study how people in the villages live, how they build, and all that lark.
not to goo into too many details, i'll stop with the fact that rurals was a group project, where we worked in groups of ten and did studies on a particular village. rurals is included as part of the ten semesters' work, because it aims to teach us many things about human settlements and how they work. how people live together in a community.

let me just say that whatever else rurals taught me about community and community living, it definitely gave me a lot of inisght on group relationships. Living one week, within the confines of a two-roomed space with ten other overworked students aspiring to become architects, can only tell you too clearly how futile it is to dream.
we started with great intentions.. expectations.. all powered by vanity and pride at the thought that we had learnt to manage TIME. actually, all that we had done was to do simple arithmetic and plot out how many sheets we needed to finish in one day, but of course, we dint know that until much later.
realisation that things dont always go as planned struck after we'd been thro a coule of bickerings, quite a few full blown fights, some running around to get basic essentials like food and markers :) , and a couple of wasted hours on such things as bathing and sleeping.
we'd been all over.
day one saw us sitting around, happy in our dream world of perfect rurals sheets and mind-blowing analysis. our taget that day was, if i remember right, 6 sheets on village description. i think we got somewhere near there, on day 3 ( if not later).

not all went wrong though. like one of my seniors pointed out to me, personal hygiene during rurals is a great achievement, and i distinctly remember having cleaned my nails once or twice an hour during all those ego-fed silences that we had had between all those fights :)
dont get me wrong, i'm not complaining. not really. rurals was just a totally new experience. it came with all the ups and downs and was good fun at the end of it all, especially since we were happy with the work that we turned in. i can go back and run through fond memories with my peers.. i dont get to talk about the negative bit everyday though :)

we sure as hell learn a lot more than just the acads at college! of that much, i'm sure.. and glad for it too!

Condensed Water Vapour

2006-04-12T20:43:00.000+05:30

Most internet profiles of mine carry the same description of location : it says cloud nine.
and i have been asked only too often " where is this city cloud nine? " or " can i find it on a map?" or even better ( worse) "do you live in the clouds? are u an angel?"
wouldnt any normal soul get irritated? ( i'm hardly what you'd call normal, wierd fits the bill better ,.. but i get irritated nevertheless ) and if i were ever inclined to give an explanation, it probably would be lost on the ones who ask. anywayz..
cloud nine could be anything, i tell them. i never try to restrict something as wonderful as cloud nine to "city" or "state" or "native place" ( yes, i've got that once too.. :s ) and what makes this place even better, is that everyone can have their own special cloud #9 .

Most people dont know its there.. they stumble upon it by accident. and even then, they dont know what exactly it is that suddenly makes things seem so perfect.
once they come across cloud #9 though, never want to leave. the only problem is, they dont know WHAT to keep a hold on.. they dont know the secret of staying.

hang on!! dont ask ME how you can stay put in your cloud #9!! I cant tell u that! i wouldn know, for starters. no one would.. this is something you'll have to figure out yourself, sorry!
hmm.. but i COULD give u some hints ( i'm being really nice, i hope you appreciate this! )
For one, dont try too hard to stay ( confusing?? thats the way it is! ) the more you force things to happen, the more they screw up. let them be. ever heard of "things happen for the best"? respect it. and trust it. its wisdom. the more you believe in it, the more true it gets.
oh and also, try and let more people know about the secret of cloud #9.. the more people realise their clouds because of you, the more reasons you'll have to stay on YOUR cloud :) nice isnt it? pretty simple too ( or so it seems)
Luck with your cloud then, and in case you ever get on, let me know :) that will give ME more reasons to smile. but ssh. let me stop here.. i wouldn want to go around letting out all my condensed water vapour would i?
cheers.

Disclimer : blogger shall not be held responsible for unpredictable mood swings [; )]

the TO-DO list

2006-04-09T21:40:00.000+05:30

it wasnt just to prove the point of my earlier post, did i not blog the past one month. i really HAVE had quite a bit to do in life.. what with rurals ( will update readers on that asap.. wud make a realy interesting story ) .. exams and a self-absorbed life in general, THIS particular blogger hasnt been too consistent..
hopefully i should be scrounging more time in the future.
until then, some food for thought - all that i've been hearing of late is how much i complain about too much work in life and no time for "fun". and i recieved so many complaints about MY increased rate of complaining that i decided to do something about it. "something", though dint work too well.. and that got me thinking..
would i be having fun if i blew off all my work just in an attempt to "enjoy what time i have"? Making time for other things - everyone told me that if i wanted to, i could do it... that it was all to do with my mindset. but of course , "something" proved that wrong. and now, shru is stuck again. CAN we do EVERYTHING that we want to, if only we time ourselves? is that all there is to it?? or is it reality that try as you might, you're never gonna be able strike down all those things on that to-do list, unless of course , u are striking them OUT for lack of opportunities.. ?
as usual , confused.

2006-03-08T20:35:00.000+05:30

a ridiculous proposition - to try and maintian a blog when i dont have the time in life to sleep... :) .. but .. ah well.. we all need our indulgences, and MY weakness is my need to keep yakking.. whether there's anyone listening or not. lol.. what better a way to pour out all my crap than this...
my perspective... its the same old tunes that people dance to.. but here d karaoke includes MY own words :) adds SOME spice to life.

Karaoke

Indian of the Year 2008

Self pity, maybe

South Chennai - North Madras!

Words

Orumaalai Ila Veyil Neram - Random Tag

Fall-ing

Oz

Of villages, mansions and panneer soda

Indian Idle

untitled

universities.. and what lies beyond

Instances

Contentment

gujarati lexicon

the nescafe and the vada pao

Fantasy

breather

carpeted

inspired

Feet

the green trend

spell

The Style, The Tag

untagged

post - NASA

And Everything Nice

Identity

This and That...

**starry-eyed**

Cramming, Cramping, Creasing, Cribbing

tagged

words

a salty tinge to the air

another week going past...

cluttered

tech-nically speaking,

boulevard of broken beams

efficient - NOT

de stijl....

once upon a time...

ar-cane

joblessness

whats in a name

Rules That Shoud'nt Be Broken

Pure Shores

the light at the end of the tunnel.. is the train.

your everyday average evil-principal

boredom, random thoughts, and broadband

new magic

rue-rals

Condensed Water Vapour

the TO-DO list

starry-eyed