The dreaded time has finally come. I need to fly out from the new Bengaluru International Airport on Sunday and I am dreadfully nervous about it. The website claims to have taken care of everything like a benevolent God. I have my own doubts.
Staying near the Banaswadi Railway Station has already proved to be a nightmare with the auto drivers (I promise I shall post more on this tomorrow). My flight to Bombay from Bengaluru is scheduled to depart at 0900 on Sunday. Which means probably I will have to start from my place at around 0600(I am not sure as I am yet to figure out how far is it exactly. Even Google Maps has failed me this time).
Transport Option 1: Take the BMTC Shuttle to the Airport
Catch: They seem to have forgotten Banaswadi completely. I think the closest point would be Ulsoor Lake though my abysmal knowledge of the local geography hasn’t been of much help here either. So either I hold an auto driver who has managed to show his face around at that time at knife-point and get dropped at Ulsoor or shall have to ask my room mate for a saintly favor (considering it is a Sunday, I can only imagine the choicest, delectable and most foul of the English lexicon that me shall be subjected to).
Transport Option 2: Airlift Cabs
Catch: Despite all their mean claims of “Bangalore New Airport To Any where in Bangalore @ Rs.300” they suck because that is just a mean claim. Read about their air-conditioned Innovas with Bucket Seats and Wi-Fi and you would have been salivating like Pavlov’s minion too until I called them up to book. The executive told me in what apparently was her most polite tone that currently they operate pretty much like the BMTC buses and that the nearest point for me would be – INDIRANAGAR! Need I say more?
Transport Option 3: City Taxis
Catch: The fare was not as much a deterrent for me as was the safety factor. My return flight from Bombay has been scheduled to arrive at 2210 in Bengaluru. For once, even I was in no mood to try coming home past midnight.
Transport Option 4: Helidrop to BIAL
Catch: Ambani has yet declined to even look at me. If he does, then probably I would not need BIAL in the first place.
Until then, I guess lesser mortals like me will have to continue to chew on their hair trying to figure out "issoos"!
Friday, May 30, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Booklists for the junkie soul
It was while searching for Lessing on the internet that I was directed to a list of 1001 books that you were to have read before you died or so it claimed. Though the list seems to have a proportionate share of well known and obscure (for me) books, I found it interesting mostly for its omissions than inclusions. For example, there are hardly any works by “those dreadfully depressing Russian author types” (as my sweetheart likes to call them). Now the Russian author types as such, I agree, do not make or break any greats but the very prominent exclusion left me a little annoyed.
So I went ahead and dug out a few more lists and a little out of every thing practically covers all of my favorites. Now, there is no dearth of people telling you what to read and trying to make you feel like ignoramuses if you haven’t and personally, I am not the oh I have to read this as it is on the list kinds but for the interested, here are a few lists in no particular order:
ManBooker Prize for Fiction
Pulitzer Prize for fiction
BBC - The Big Read - Top 100 Books
The Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction
Hugo Award for Best Novel
Costa Book Awards
Nebula Award for Best Novel
Nobel Laureates in Literature
The New York Times Best Sellers
Still obsessive about such kinds? Check this out.
Though many do find reading according to a particular list useful as that way, you can ensure that you have not missed out on the popular works, there is nothing like the joy of discovering a book on your own.
I on the other hand tend to pick authors first and read them in chronological author. It doses take me a lot of time to move on from one to the next but I prefer it that way as it gives me a way to know the authors along with their books and by the time I am done with one, I feel like I have known the person all my life.
One way or the other, nothing beats a good book and the warm feeling that you get after you are done with one. So, happy reading then!
So I went ahead and dug out a few more lists and a little out of every thing practically covers all of my favorites. Now, there is no dearth of people telling you what to read and trying to make you feel like ignoramuses if you haven’t and personally, I am not the oh I have to read this as it is on the list kinds but for the interested, here are a few lists in no particular order:
ManBooker Prize for Fiction
Pulitzer Prize for fiction
BBC - The Big Read - Top 100 Books
The Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction
Hugo Award for Best Novel
Costa Book Awards
Nebula Award for Best Novel
Nobel Laureates in Literature
The New York Times Best Sellers
Still obsessive about such kinds? Check this out.
Though many do find reading according to a particular list useful as that way, you can ensure that you have not missed out on the popular works, there is nothing like the joy of discovering a book on your own.
I on the other hand tend to pick authors first and read them in chronological author. It doses take me a lot of time to move on from one to the next but I prefer it that way as it gives me a way to know the authors along with their books and by the time I am done with one, I feel like I have known the person all my life.
One way or the other, nothing beats a good book and the warm feeling that you get after you are done with one. So, happy reading then!
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
The story of my Period
The very first time, I thought I was dying.
What else can you expect from a twelve year old? I still remember the amused smile on my mother’s face when she exclaimed “Now what have you done?” followed by all the hush - hush phone calls to relatives to announce that the prodigal daughter has now become a “woman”. Then came all the relatives with smiles like split bottle gourds on their faces and all the petting and beaming with me wondering when I was going to be asked about what was it that I had done. Strangely, everybody but me seemed to know and I was desperately hoping that someone would ask so that I would know the answer too! Of course it did not help that of seven girls; it had to happen to me first.
After two days of dazed smiling for the photographs, all decked out in a saree and all that hitherto forbidden gold, followed by cruel restrictions of forbidden passage to the kitchen, bedroom, puja room (confining my life to a rattan mat), not to mention the forced ingestion of Castor oil (it gives you ache free days from the next time was the explanation) and sesame laddus, I decided I shall ensure that it shall never happen to me ever again, come what may!
So imagine my horror when I saw the blood the next month.
You see, it had occurred to nobody that this bewildered child might not know what had just happened to her. So continued the horror, month after month, until a year later, deliverance was given, unto me, ironically, in the form of Carrie. Though it did explain a lot of things, that what happened to me happened to others too and it was not my fault, it did not explain the pain every month and the misery that accompanies it.
It wasn’t until much later, while I was well onto my way into adult hood that I came to terms with what it was and why it was. Later it even became comical, the hurried recollections of all things done under the duress of alcohol whenever it was late and the relief it brought when it did finally begin but it was a long journey for my period to become a thing of shame, the knowledge of which was to be kept hidden to something that happens every month, bringing with it the assurance that everything was going on as intended and as things were to be.
What else can you expect from a twelve year old? I still remember the amused smile on my mother’s face when she exclaimed “Now what have you done?” followed by all the hush - hush phone calls to relatives to announce that the prodigal daughter has now become a “woman”. Then came all the relatives with smiles like split bottle gourds on their faces and all the petting and beaming with me wondering when I was going to be asked about what was it that I had done. Strangely, everybody but me seemed to know and I was desperately hoping that someone would ask so that I would know the answer too! Of course it did not help that of seven girls; it had to happen to me first.
After two days of dazed smiling for the photographs, all decked out in a saree and all that hitherto forbidden gold, followed by cruel restrictions of forbidden passage to the kitchen, bedroom, puja room (confining my life to a rattan mat), not to mention the forced ingestion of Castor oil (it gives you ache free days from the next time was the explanation) and sesame laddus, I decided I shall ensure that it shall never happen to me ever again, come what may!
So imagine my horror when I saw the blood the next month.
You see, it had occurred to nobody that this bewildered child might not know what had just happened to her. So continued the horror, month after month, until a year later, deliverance was given, unto me, ironically, in the form of Carrie. Though it did explain a lot of things, that what happened to me happened to others too and it was not my fault, it did not explain the pain every month and the misery that accompanies it.
It wasn’t until much later, while I was well onto my way into adult hood that I came to terms with what it was and why it was. Later it even became comical, the hurried recollections of all things done under the duress of alcohol whenever it was late and the relief it brought when it did finally begin but it was a long journey for my period to become a thing of shame, the knowledge of which was to be kept hidden to something that happens every month, bringing with it the assurance that everything was going on as intended and as things were to be.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Backpacking beckons
The normally subdued wanderlust flares like a sun-burst through me periodically and I end up scrambling to the nearest bookstore to wrap my itchy fingers around the spine of a Lonely Planet guide, or under poorer circumstances, towards the fiction section.
The world is ours to see and observe and that alone should give infinite happiness. Head to the continents, absorb the places, sink in them and revel in their existence. Expensive hotels, places serving Indian food, comforts of pre-booked transport and fixed itineraries are not for me.Give me a sturdy backpack, a passport with enough pages and a robust lock and I am well on my way.
I do not claim that I am on of those globetrotters. I want to be one. Imagine the joy of heading off to a place with a one way ticket and no fixed plans. No pressure to come back to your cubicle on the Monday, no worry about bank balances and credit card bills.
I am going to do it one day and in the next five years too! After all, putting off the departure does not help but planning it would.
PS:The picture belongs to a guy called Troy M Litten
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Happy mistakes happen. This is how I got this book. The cover made the book pretend to be some other book and after a lot of putting-off, I finished reading it for the second time on the morning of today. It blows your mind away after throwing you into the heart of Cephallonia, a lovely Greek island (about which you can read here)and the Greek way of life
The book is set in the Italian occupation of the island during WW2 and deals with the futility and brutalities of war along side leading you by the hand into the frangible shades of human life.
Louis de Bernières is not only an exceptionally fine author and a word-smith, but also a man who paints resplendent pictures with his prose. He infuses personality into characters that otherwise would have faded into the background of the events and brings out the most poignant of emotions with the delicacy of gossamer.
Dr.Iannis and his daughter Pelagia are lost in their mundane lives on the lovely island complete with Lemoni, Psipsina, and the goat, and various other characters, each with their own story until they are sucked into the vortex of the Italian occupation of Greece during World War II. The lovely Pelagia who was previously betrothed to another of the island finds herself falling for the beautiful Italian, Captain Corelli and his Antonia. The Greeks, though initially hostile to the invaders, cannot help accepting them and the invaders become deeply entwined into the fabric of Cephallonia to the extent that it is the Greeks who rescue the bodies of the soldiers executed by the Nazis and give them a burial.
The tale is about love, war and love in the time of war.
Highly recommended to anyone who is fan of war books, historical novels, a different point of view on the good and the bad, love stories and music (yes, the book is all of this and yet, more).
Monday, May 12, 2008
My boss cannot play peek-a-boo with my machine anymore!
Here is my first post from my workplace. The I have so much free time at work that I don't know what to do is yet to afflict me though and last I heard, was thankfully, still slinking around the fashionable IT circuit.
Life here mostly seems to revolve around arcane regulations by RBI (trivia: I am currently on ECBs. I might even post on that one next!), badly put business proposals which aught to scare the shit out of any Investment Banker, prudent or otherwise, and Gigabyte sized Excel Sheets. With the appreciating rupee and all the slash-hacking of interest rates, people seem to be running in droves towards the External Commercial Borrowings route and only time shall tell how wise/unwise the exodus.
By the way, did I let you onto the furore being created by SEZs? Looking at their numbers, one might even think every ha'penny might send his coin up and come down with an SEZ. It ain't complete bollocks either! Though the inflation figure was a bit of a fright and the IIP figures saw the dumps, everybody seems to be still wanting to jump on to the bandwagon. Hope the chappies do manage.
The stock markets are keenly continuing in their dance of the Yo-Yos and busy losing my money too. What can I say? Life has to go on.
Life here mostly seems to revolve around arcane regulations by RBI (trivia: I am currently on ECBs. I might even post on that one next!), badly put business proposals which aught to scare the shit out of any Investment Banker, prudent or otherwise, and Gigabyte sized Excel Sheets. With the appreciating rupee and all the slash-hacking of interest rates, people seem to be running in droves towards the External Commercial Borrowings route and only time shall tell how wise/unwise the exodus.
By the way, did I let you onto the furore being created by SEZs? Looking at their numbers, one might even think every ha'penny might send his coin up and come down with an SEZ. It ain't complete bollocks either! Though the inflation figure was a bit of a fright and the IIP figures saw the dumps, everybody seems to be still wanting to jump on to the bandwagon. Hope the chappies do manage.
The stock markets are keenly continuing in their dance of the Yo-Yos and busy losing my money too. What can I say? Life has to go on.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Information is power
A month's hiatus and I post again. New job, new place and new issues to deal with and now you know I was away for a reason (really, am mostly consoling myself). Did I mention the contribution of the lack of an Internet connection? The Silicon Valley of India and ask me how not to get a line onto the web.
The place has now finally settled on my nerves and am getting along quite alright with it despite all those horrible things about it. A few good things have happened too though! For one, I am back to being the bookworm I was and with dear Blossoms right behind the building where I work, I won't be surprised if all I end up doing while I am here is reading.
Of course there is the whole affair of the does-he-love-me-does-he-love-me-not too. Wedding bells on the horizon?
Information is power too. Most things look foolish in retrospect so no point haranguing about it I guess.
One good thing, Alliance Francaise might become and thanks to Dans la main de l'ange along with Parias. Along with the Bangalore School of music (a voilin rendition of Tchaikovsky maybe?)
Viva la compagnie
The place has now finally settled on my nerves and am getting along quite alright with it despite all those horrible things about it. A few good things have happened too though! For one, I am back to being the bookworm I was and with dear Blossoms right behind the building where I work, I won't be surprised if all I end up doing while I am here is reading.
Of course there is the whole affair of the does-he-love-me-does-he-love-me-not too. Wedding bells on the horizon?
Information is power too. Most things look foolish in retrospect so no point haranguing about it I guess.
One good thing, Alliance Francaise might become and thanks to Dans la main de l'ange along with Parias. Along with the Bangalore School of music (a voilin rendition of Tchaikovsky maybe?)
Viva la compagnie
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
