Doubles, Triples and Quadruples - Nobody Stays Single

This production by Evam promised to be like fine wine, a brilliant comedy and a little peek into your own life. What it was was, a crate of beer, a stab in the dark at crude humor and a peek into what would probably be best described as a collegian's view of life.

The "play" (rather, "The Show") was about the varied facets of relationships, a pair of bickering newlyweds, cheating partners, a birthday girl and her father, a gay (???) patient and his therapist, two strangers coming together while waiting for therapy (again?), a performer, a birthday boy and his father, a gangster standoff and an old couple, testing the waters of a new relationship. Some stories were good,even funny but some were frankly, quite dull.

What made it worse was the crowd. Bangalore theater crowd seems to be made up mostly of Page 3 wannabes than any real theater lovers but for this particular play, it hit a real time low. From cheeky and inappropriate comments to even hooting, it was more like a college football game than a play.

Extensive use of a particular four letter word was the highlight rather than the actors or the play itself. Though the play was well written, it could have been more refined and some of the actors could have practiced their diction a little more. Overall, it is definitely a comedy, even providing some very humorous insights into relationships occasionally but on the whole, fails to live upto it's hype.

One year vintage Pink Champagne

Today was the day when the first glass of Pink Champagne was handed out to the Masses. What started as a trickle slowly turned into a gurgle and now you almost can hear it roar by.

To lots more Pink Champagne! Cheers!

PS: Doesn't it mean Mr.Gordon Brown completes a year in office too?
PS, again : I am trying to modify the flavor a little, you know, like a special edition but sadly, need more time. Wait and thou shalt be rewarded for your patience.

Mice and men

There are beings which burn dogs and then there are people who do more than just love them and guess who is punished?

PETA says no to even zoos, haranguing all those poor souls who are only to trying to bring awareness when there are people like this walking around.

Irony or what?

PS: Got the photo off the Beeb. Why would anybody want to separate those two? Will this topsy-turvy world ever make sense to me?

Pint sized monstrosities

I met this guy last night. He seemed to have the potential to turn out nice. A friend of a friend. The dude was a doctor, studying to be a surgeon. Since he also happened to be my sister's senior from med-school, we stuck a good rapport. The party was already on and we talked about this and that, made the usual jokes, spoke all those niceties, and were helped along by the amber flow.

Anecdotes from the right side of the scalpel were floated, laughed at and more rounds ordered. After a lot of other things, the following happened:

Characters- S(the good friend), N(me) and D(the doc)
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S:blah blah blah blah blah
N: Ha ha ha ha ha!

S: Know what, D is a pyromaniac
N: Hey D, welcome to da club!
S: No, he IS a PYROMANIAC. He set a dog on fire.

N:
N:
N:Ummmmmm, a dog on fire?

D:Oh yeah! There was this dog and I set it on fire using petrol

N:
N:
.
.
.
N:A dog on fire?

D:Hey you are talking to a guy who was in a coma for 3 days. I had killed a guy in a crash. Anyway, I was in this tunnel and wanted to set something on fire and there was this dog irritating me, so I kept kicking it away and it kept coming back to lick me so I poured petrol over it and set a match to it

N: All it did was try to be friendly

D: What the hell? It was irritating me. The best thing is to set a tortoise on fire. It was this big with a huge shell and it burned so amazingly, with its fat and all. There was this guy who got an erection just out of watching it. He went crazy!I once set a clump of trees on fire. You should have seen that now.

N:Huh! Can I get the check please? Shall we leave, everybody? X says she is not feeling too well anyway and if everyone is done, then why not leave?
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After a long drive home through dark streets, the following conclusions were arrived at:

1. The next person who talks about the nobility of Doctors and all that bull is going to get shot. Can exposure to too much life make you feel blase about it that you just do not value it anymore?

2. Eating animals is not cruelty.

3. There are a lot of beings on the Earth, who exist in the guise of a "human" and yet are so far from it.

Red Letter Day today (and my fav day too)

Today is the most wonderful day. I love today as it is my birthday!

Happy Birthday to me! Yeayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. The joy of 25 years of being alive.

Pineapple cake, a knife with a pink ribbon,streamers in variegated colors, 10 roses, lotsa golden-rods, a pink teddy bear holding a red heart, a satchel from Tommy, 2 numbers salwar kameez, a pair of new shoes, and still counting...

Update: Add a box of chocolates and a promise of a bike-helmet to that

On watching 'Hair'

Saturday saw me watching the play 'Hair' directed by Ajay Krishnan at Ranga Shankara. Hair is the third directorial venture by Ajay who had made his debut with the much acclaimed 'Butter and Mashed Banana' in 2005 (which I shall be watching on Wednesday or Thursday at the same venue) and produced by Evam Youth Forum. It was an attempt by the 24 year old (so claims a news article I came across through Google News) director to reinterpret the classical fairy tale of Rapunzel.

Almost all of the Google searches for various references to the play returned only pre-staging reviews but none of the post-staging kinds. I was looking very hard for them hoping that they will help me make better sense of the entire thing.

It started off with a sort of prelude in the form of a dialogue between a man (I love my hair) and a woman (I hate my hair) about hair which leads to the story of Rapunzel and questions as to why Rapunzel, The Witch and The Prince did what they did and said what they said. The scene then moves onto Rapunzel in a tower along with The Witch and explores the complex relationship between them until the arrival of The Prince onto the scene ("She loves me a lot too", says Rapunzel at one point).

White rope (hemp?) is constantly manipulated through out the play, alluding to hair and how it binds us, entangles us and entwines us. The play ended with a projection of clips from (the Turkish staging of the play by tiyatro 0.2 Istanbul?) a different performance of the same play with Rapunzel watching her life go by.

My reaction was mixed, as I could not claim to have completely unraveled the play and I had to leave with a faint feeling that the tiny key to completely understanding it had somehow eluded my grasp. The odd thing about this performance was that the actors did not introduce themselves.

On the whole, in spite of a lot of talent among many of the actors (notice I do not say all), the play refuses to bring out their full potential. The performances by Rapunzel and The Witch were par excellence. The script is ambiguous, even if so deliberately, which though adds to the mysticism, also helps the audience interpret the play in their own way. On a scale of 1 to 5, I would give it a moderate 3.

Crib.com

I don't know what I was more upset about - this article or the comments which followed. It was sad enough that a life was snuffed out because of appalling commuting conditions. Those people, instead of offering condolences in her memory, were busy taking shots at the blame game.

Think about it, bad roads, crib about the politicians, traffic jams, bash those city officials, the Indian Cricket Team gets trashed, heckle those same guys who a while ago were national heroes and if somebody dies, crib about the infrastructure?

What is it that prevents people from doing something themselves? "Democracy honey", says B, "people have a voice, so they comment. It is a free country". Apathy, I say. Of course, it is always easier to pass the buck along. I once read (me thinks it was in some old edition of some publication by the LSB)about a kid who was so fed up with the state of the buses in London that he decided to intern there for the summers and had even managed to set a few things right! To think there is no dearth of things in our Country to be fed up with and yet no body volunteers.

Claiming that you can do your bit but it won't matter in the vast cesspool is inexcusable too. At least make the effort and things will get better by themselves. I agree you will not see Bengaluru traffic jams clearing up if you get out of the car and start directing traffic around. Instead, you could take public transport to work or even better bike to work, and if you make an effort to spread the awareness around, maybe the roads will clear up.

It is the effort that is more important. High time that we turned action-oriented doers from arm-chair critics.

PS: There was a dead pigeon in my 'balcony' yesterday. I don't know what killed it. It was just lying there, dead.

Cyclist Ahoy!

I shall get rid of these obnoxious loser type auto-guys from my life. Though I had bought a bike a month ago for 3400 bucks from one of those cycle shops in Bengaluru ( I wish I could say which one, but my obscure knowledge of local geography prevents me again. Darn!), I have ridden it for a very round figure of 10 times probably till date.

I did venture out a few times when I managed to wake up, brush teeth and get into Reebok Red Riding outfit before the clock struck six and wandered about till seven, braving hooting auto-weennies at Bangalore East Station too!

My bike is one of those old fashioned gear-less types so the rolling roads at Wheelers Road area were not too alluring either. However, after watching the poor baby lie around unused for long enough, I am now going to try out cycling to work.

Wish me luck in this venture amigos!

Have wealth, will spend; Have wealth, will waste?

In a capitalistic world, unequal wealth distribution is acceptable. I am not a Communist. I like wealth. Wealth in the form of the Louis Vuitton luggage, that YSL pantsuit. Those Jimmy Choo shoes. That perfume by Chanel.That kind of wealth that Scrooge McDuck dives into.

But food fights? I am not a party-pooper. I am no saint either. I don't claim to have finished every morsel that had ever found it's way to my plate. I have chucked food into the bin as there was too much of it or even because I simply did not like it. Was I sinning? Probably not. After all, it is not like the food on my plate, which I might have thrown away, would have otherwise made its way to Sudan.

Truckloads of tomatoes, oranges and even a few custard pies being squashed, flung about, smeared, jumped upon, swum in and even dived into. Probably too expensive to ship around. It is not an everyday occurrence either. Some fun ain't ever hurt anyone. Look at the bright side of things. Get my point?

Great!

Now try explaining that to them.

Sniffle , sniffle, aaaaaacchhooooooooooooo

I assure you I do not ramble on like a particularly extravagant victim of Alzheimer's. I had started off with a definite idea of what I was going to write about today but the clichéd 'one thing led to the next' happened and TWO entire posts bit the bullet and got relegated to draftdom. It also involved one number phone call from Bombay (a lecture on the importance of food, instructions on the periodicity of medicine-imbibement and declarations of affection to various degrees), cackling on about mundane stuff by my MALE colleagues (duh, as if I have any other), visits to other people's blogs and staring into nothing for short passages of time.

A Powerpoint presentation on The Indian Power Sector due on Saturday and various assorted information pertaining to the former also had their way.

So many things happening in the life of a sick baby is unfair. Somebody give me a hug :-(

BIAL: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

I can now add BIAL to the ‘been-there-done-that’ and can claim to have survived to tell the tale.

After much deliberation, I had decided to spend Saturday night at a friend’s who stayed pretty close to one of the Airport bus-stops and take the 0600 bus from Koramangala. So Sunday found me rushing to the Koramangala stop by 0600 and was pleasantly surprised to see the bus already occupied by some 6-7 people. Soon, I dumped my bag and laptop on the luggage rack and seated myself in one of the available seats. The bus finally started on its way at 6:15 after the driver handed around flyers and cards giving bus schedules and phone number of Taxi service to drop you off to the bus stop (Cel Cabs, the card claims. On call 24 hours taxi. 60609090 You can now book CelCabs in: Bangalore 080) and the conductor came around duly to collect the fare. After handing over 150 bucks I enquired more to satisfy my curiosity than anything else about the travel time to BIAL. One hour 30 minutes. That saw me smirking in his face and him smirking right back with a just you wait and see face.

After making past traffic jams (yes at 6:20 in the morning too) at Madiwala market the bus settled into a smooth pace and I almost dozed off but sadly, that is one thing the BMTC buses do not facilitate. If those school-boy benches did not allow 154 cms of me to doze, then I am sure no body can achieve that mean feat comfortably. The bus has got plenty of stops and the driver even stopped whenever people stuck their hands out to flag it down! After staying awake to watch Yellahanka go by, I finally plopped into la la land even if it did involve rather painful bumps at the contact point between the window pane and skull and was woken up by a particularly steep curve by which time; the bus had almost made it to BIAL. I did manage to catch a fast disappearing glimpse of rolling greens and all that (for those to whom such things really matter) and finally set foot at the BIAL. One look at my watch and I was gloating. The conductor was wrong after all! It did not take me 90 minutes but only 60! (Does it really matter? I won in the end)

Now that the traveling bit had been taken care of by nicely air conditioned though a wee bit noisy and on the whole rather comfortable BMTC bus Route No.7, I was in a much better mood with the whole new airport thingie. There is even a BIG BIG Louis Vuitton case in the lobby (darn, I did forget to take my camera along) and that itself notched BIAL a bit higher in my cool list. The rest of the story was a breeze. Sufficient signage around and wide counters and even shopping places etc (Crossword, Shoppers Stop, French Connection, Calvin Klein, Hidesign, some sweets store, Cookie Man and Barista) in the post Security Check hold all added to the charm. The toilet facilities, I did not check out though I did see suspended signs for them.

My flight did take off surprisingly on schedule too. The return journey though saw me waiting for a full sad 30 minutes from landing of my plane to getting out of airport and into bus and that was the sore bit. Waiting for baggage is still irksome and my guess is that all the aero-bridges do not function. Bus ride back to Koramangala took another hour and was back home eventually by 00:30. So 90 minutes plane ride from Bombay to BIAL and 90 minutes getting home from BIAL!

The only other International Airport I have been to is O’Hare International and though BIAL has its own merits, I have to concede it is no where near that scale. On the whole, BIAL has been managed quite well and for a week old airport, I say cheers to it.

PS: Thank You Thulasi for the pic! Dude, with friends like you around, who needs cameras I say!