The Candles

The candles burnt slowly, painstakingly slowly, as if they were trying to slow time down, trying to tell her something.

The illumination in the darkness seemed eerie, almost. She never really feared the dark, but she didn’t like it either.

The wax bubbled down. She touched it lightly, burnt herself mildly, felt strangely comforted.

She looked up and said, ‘The séance is over.’

Animosity

They say that animosity breeds animosity.

He didn’t think so, obviously.

Stalking her every step.

Even though she’d made it clear

That she hated him.

8 years later, the stalking was less

The animosity more.

Finally he got tired of it – he grew

Up.

As he looked at her window one last time

She blew a kiss

Down.

London or New York: or London AND New York?

I just got back from a whirlwind trip to London (I was visiting for the first time after I graduated there 5 years ago), and apart from the obvious nostalgia attack, was struck by the differences - and similarities - between London and New York. Here are a few of my thoughts:

- London is way more expensive than New York. Consider public transport. A one-way ride on the tube within Zone 1 only is GBP 4.00 (roughly US$8). One way. Compare that with New York's one-way fare of $2.00 (less than GBP 1.00) for travel as far as you like on the subway. I mean you can get on at the first stop and off an hour and a half later on the last stop of any subway train, and your fare is just $2.00. Whereas in London, your fare goes up exponentially as you travel further away from Zone 1, if your point of origin is Zone 1. If you live outside Zone 1 and travel from, say, Zone 3 to Zone 1, your fare will be more than travel from Zone 3 to Zone 4, for example. Plus, London charges you when you get out of a tube station as well, whereas in New York you just walk out - payment is only when you enter. I was trying to figure out the logic of this and the husband said it may be because people jump the barrier on their way in, so the authorities want to make sure they pay on their way out. That makes no sense to me because someone who jumps on the way in can do the same on the way out and be none the wiser for it, if you know what I mean. Of course, there are bobbies (British policemen) at every station and chances are no one will really be able to get away with something like that!!!

- London pubs close at 12 midnight and New York bars are open till the wee hours, which gives you way more options to go out in New York than London. Pretty much. Apparently London bars are allowed to stay open but they don't serve drinks after 12 and after my experience in one of those where we were shooed out and the doors shut soon after 12, I wondered why they were allowed to stay open if they didn't want to anyway. Of course, one has the option to go to other, more expensive (of course) bars, like the one in the Hilton. Which we did. But we were shooed out of there at 2 AM as well. That bar was dead at 1 AM and closed at 2...but apparently it is better on weekends when there is a crowd that stays till 4 AM....or so we were told. Of course I'm not even going to go into the price of drinks in London compared to New York. My advice to heavy-duty drinkers is to either get rich if you aren't already, if you want to go out in London, and if you're not, just buy some bottles and get friends to come home. Your eyes won't pop out of their sockets when you wake up the next morning and look at last night's bill, at the very least!!!!!

- London pisses down rain almost every day of the year. Of course anyone who's lived in London for even 2 days should know this by now. When I say 'piss', I mean piss. It's not heavy, and neither is it a typical drizzle which stops soon enough. It just - well - pisses down continuously. Like some lurking stalker who refuses to stop - ermmm - stalking. No anger, tantrums, nothing. Just complacent pissing down from the skies. It's not even heavy enough to warrant carrying an umbrella, in my opinion, which is all the more irritating!!

- People have less manners in London than New York. It was not uncommon to see people pushing and shoving to get in the tube, EVEN BEFORE PASSENGERS WERE ALLOWED TO DISEMBARK at the station.

- One advantage that the London tube stations have compared to New York's subway stations is that with the exception of the L train in New York, no other station shows the wait time for your next train. In London, as soon as you get there you can look up and see when your next train is and what stop it is going till. This allows you to plan your journey and makes you less inclined to keep peeping out into the tunnel to see when that shining light will come rolling along, as the husband does at New York subway stations every - oh - 30 seconds or so!!!!

- New York's subway system is 24 hours. London's tube stops at 1 AM, and then you have no choice but to be at the mercy of cab drivers who, obviously again, are not completely inexpensive. Enough said. All the more reason why my advice to get friends home should make even more sense now!!!

- One of my friends from London who has visited New York, called London's Piccadilly Circus a poor man's version of New York's Times Square. I am inclined to agree, but in clear conscience the first time I saw Piccadilly Circus I was as flabbergasted as I was when I saw Times Square for the first time. I realise now that the scales of the 2 cities are completely different, so saying that Piccadilly Circus is smaller than Times Square is obvious but not necessarily a criticism.

- London is more old-world than New York, silly as it sounds. London has less skyscrapers, more old buildings and therefore....perhaps more charm? I'm still deciding though.

- The British accent is way more appealing than the American. Period.

At the end of the day, London and New York are two of the most multicultural metropolises in the world. There were points where if I looked around, I could have been in either city, because Brits, Americans, Chinese, Indians - they are all pretty much in both cities. And any city is what you make of it with your friends and family, after all.

Movie dialogues that make me smile

Jerry Maguire: ........I live in a cynical world. Cynical world. I work in a business full of tough competitors .......I love you. You complete me. And I just....

Dorothy: Shut up. Just shut up. You had me at hello. You. had. me. at. hello.

Tom Cruise as Jerry Maguire and Renee Zellweger as Dorothy Boyd, in Jerry Maguire (1996).

There are days and then there are days

When it comes to deciding which of these is better.....

.....the gorgeously grey days with their miniscule-test-tube-size transparent drops of splattering rain and the wonderfully nostalgic aura they bring

.....or the dazzling days with azure skies, merrily-skidding cotton-ball clouds, green spikes of crisp grass and the God's-in-his-heaven-all's-right-with-the-world feeling THEY bring

......I am at a loss.

Freedom

What use is physical freedom if the mind is fettered?

Mahindra IAAC Film Festival 2007

So, I'm working on this film festival at the moment. Anyone in New York, or anyone who knows anyone in New York - check out the fantastic line-up of films!

Dark was the night

She stood upright, shocked at the sight of her hands. She couldn’t reconcile herself to the crimson shade that painted it that sinister hue. She never thought she’d see blood on her hands (pun intended). And she always thought blood was red, not this wicked shade of crimson. Wicked. Because that’s what it was. That’s what SHE was. She was wicked.

After all, what had that man done? She wasn’t even sure whether she’d have any supporters in a court of law. The man had simply taken her along a different route because there was too much traffic on the main road and her flight to Glasgow was in less than ninety minutes. Sure, it was a dark road and sure, there weren’t too many other people – or cars – on the road, though it was only seven in the evening. But he didn’t LOOK evil – and she usually had a feeling about people just by looking at their faces. No, really, she did. And most of the time, she was right. She was used to trusting her instincts, and her instincts didn’t wave a red flag when this mild-mannered old taxi driver came along. But then again, she hadn’t intended to let him take a side road either. It was just that she was desperate to make the flight on time, and he seemed a decent enough bloke….

She’d hailed the taxi to the airport after a long day at work. Work had been worse than usual that day – four meetings and two reports to hand in on a day when she could have used the extra time. Why, just yesterday she hardly had anything to do and left an hour ahead of her usual five o’clock clockout. Trust life to have its way of telling us that it is the master – and not the other way around. Anyway, her boss insisted that she complete all those tasks, so complete them she did, all the while her mind thinking of that flight she just had to make. She hated making these decisions – work or love. Love or work. Why couldn’t she just BE? Why didn’t she just let herself be, was more like it, she reminded herself. She’d chosen this life. She wanted to have her cake and eat it too. She wanted both work and love.

There was a crazy traffic jam on the way to the airport. Her mind was exhausted with the day’s work as it is, so when the driver said he could take her to the airport on time if he took another route, she just nodded tiredly. The road there was so crowded that she never expected this ‘alternate’ route to be so devoid of inhabitants of any sort. She closed her eyes as he took the next available turn off the main road, her mind already in Glasgow.

It was fine for the first ten minutes. They certainly were speeding along now, compared to the inching that they were doing just a few minutes earlier on the main road. She opened her eyes and realised that the road, surprisingly, was dark. It was the middle of the city, not far from the main highway, and it was dark. She didn’t understand it. She didn’t know, of course, that it was a new route the authorities had only recently commissioned to ease the traffic on the main road, and they were just about putting the finishing touches on it. It hadn’t been announced in the newspapers yet, but the road was open. Or at any rate, the driver knew it could be used. The one thing that remained to be done was to make sure the road-lamps were working.

As the car putt-putt-putted to a stop all of a sudden, her heart started beating loudly. She knew something was wrong. The driver gave a sigh and turned to her apologetically. Something was wrong with the car, he said. She responded irritatedly, already worried for herself – she knew ‘something was wrong’. Could it be fixed in five minutes? Because that’s all the spare time she had if she was going to make the flight. He said he’d have to see what the matter was. He switched the ignition off and on a couple of times, but nothing happened. By now, she was freaking out inwardly. She was alone, and the road was dark, and this had to happen. She almost laughed at herself. How could she have been such a fool? Was her life more important or getting to Glasgow? She swore that she would never ever let this happen again – as it is, she wasn’t the sort that let her guard down. Just this one time. But, as she told herself again, once is all it takes. Didn’t her mother tell her that all the time? Her parents. What would they do if anything happened to her?

The driver got out now and went to the boot. This was like some dumb horror flick she’d seen recently. What if there was someone in the boot? How would she have known? Aaaaaaaghhhh. She couldn’t believe what was happening to her. She had her phone in her hands. She started calling her best friend, knowing that was probably a smart thing to do at the moment. She also quickly looked around for something that could be used as a weapon. Nothing seemed to present itself, except her bag, and she wasn’t carrying anything that could be used for self-protection anyway. She’d read enough stories to know that the next step would help her situation, if she could do it on time. She reached over to the front and pressed the auto-lock button for the doors and windows.

The driver heard the click of course. He came round, and peered into her window. God, NOW he looked evil. She should have been more alert. He started shouting, but she couldn’t hear and didn’t want to hear what he was saying. She was beyond listening. Then he started getting angry, and tried punching the windows to get through. She heard a slight crack. He wasn’t tiny, even if she thought he’d had a mild-mannered face. Mild indeed. He succeeded on his second attempt. His fist went right through the window, tinged with that crimson shade she knew so well by now. She dropped the phone, her friend’s screams audible from the floor.

Before he could reach in and grab her or open the door, she picked up a broken shard of glass and brandished it in front of her. Then, in the blink of an eye, she thrust it into his face as he looked inside and began to speak. As he leaned back out, she picked up and threw another pointed sliver at him like a dagger, with the force that she’d gained from her year of kickboxing. Kickboxing wouldn’t help her now, as she was firmly ensconced in the car, but the practice could. And she made full use of whatever strength she had.

He fell, and then lay motionless. She got out of the car, looked at him, and then her hands.

Wicked…..

Suddenly, she saw a bright light coming towards her. She recognized it as coming from a pair of headlights. As the car approached, she waved it down. It stopped, naturally, because it was such a narrow road that the taxi and the body that eerily lay by it took up the entire width of it. A young man got out, a concerned look on his face. When he saw the body, with the glass weapon protruding like Excalibur from its stone, he looked at her, then bent down, took the taxi driver’s wrist in his hand, then put his ear to the taxi driver’s chest and listened for a heartbeat.

Pulling out a handkerchief from his pocket, he slowly removed the glass pieces, and then quickly stemmed the gush of blood with his handkerchief. The man still lay motionless. She couldn’t see and she didn’t know yet, but ever so slightly, he was breathing. Her ‘saviour’, as she mentally began referring to him, then asked her to help him lift the man into his car’s back seat. She wordlessly did this and then got in beside him in front.

In two minutes they reached the main road again, and they pulled in to a hospital. Her mysterious angel got the man into the emergency ward, where she was informed that he was still alive. Her thrust, powerful as it was, had not been right into his heart, and the glass dagger, as she now called it, was not as big as she thought it was. Her fear had just magnified it in her head. Her saviour walked towards her. She explained the whole thing to him, and he quite seriously said that she could have killed him, but her lack of experience (‘lack of experience’. She smiled to herself. For the first time in her life, she was glad she did not have the ‘experience’ needed of something. She remembered the numerous jobs that she’s been rejected for because of this same ‘lack of experience’) – her lack of experience had uncannily saved her from becoming a murderer. And luckily for her, he was a doctor himself – if it was just anyone who’d come to help her, they might have thought the driver was dead as well.

She sat down gingerly, letting it all seep into her head. She could have been a murderer. A murderer. She could have been put into jail for life. She looked up at her saviour gratefully, her eyes misting over.

Then she went to a nearby phone and calmly dialed Glasgow. She’d had enough of this long-distance relationship.

Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind....

Fog abounds this Fall morning. Surprisingly, it's not cold. I just went to get some milk and bread from the grocery store nearby and a groggy sun was trying to lift its head above the blanket. The water along the front twinkled even as the weak rays filtered through and tried to hit them with some inkling of force. Mornings, I always like to listen to mellow stuff. Makes me feel lazy but also very in-my-right-place.

The Rise of the Music Surfer

What makes the latest Radiohead album In Rainbows stand out from the crowd - though I haven't even listened to it - is their record label and the price. Namely Zilch and Zero. Seriously. The album is available exclusively through their website, and what they are saying is this: pay what you want. Not very common for music albums, though I have heard of restaurants in India and elsewhere doing this sort of altruistic thing. Music label executives and producers are no doubt concerned, and didn't really expect Radiohead to pull this kind of a trump card out. What it says for the future of music can be read in this Time article.

As I've implied numerous times before, the only way to go from now is digital. Technology, yet again, shows its power.

Gone nuts

...has blogrolling. Backwards spelt sentence.

No seriously, when such dormant bloggers as Sharad and Skepsi show a blinking 'Struck anew' next to their name, I know something's not quite right with the universe. For that matter, EVERYone on my blogroll suddenly shows hectic activity, so I know its some trick conjured up by the Masters of the Blogrolling Universe. That, or I've suddenly stepped into the Twilight Zone.

Tcheh!

India @ 60

India is going all out to woo foreign tourists to India and improve the country's image abroad. Possibly the biggest range of events to bolster the 'India Shining' image, Incredible India@60, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry in collaboration with a host of other bodies, is currently in progress in New York. I was part of the inaugural ceremony on Sunday, and it was certainly a bang as far as the Americans were concerned. New Yorkers gathered around in curiosity as the nadaswaram and mridangam played loud and clear. A red carpet welcomed guests, with women in Indian garb on either side, as they moved into Avery Fisher Hall at the Lincoln Center to witness truly spectacular performances of traditional Indian dance forms - Odissi, Kathakali, Kathak, Mohiniattam, Bharatanatyam and Manipuri. The final performance included a fantastic jugalbandi of sorts, with all dance forms represented on stage at the same time. Madhavi Mudgal's Odissi dancers and the Kathak performers from Kathak Kendra in Delhi were genuinely remarkable. The Kathak dancers, especially, held the audience in sway as the bells on their feet chimed in perfect melody even as their minute and complicated foot movements were faultless, and their skirts twirled gracefully. The era of Umrao Jaan truly came back to life.

It is rather tragic that I had to witness something that is so quintessentially Indian after coming to New York. I've seen some of these dance forms in India of course, but not all together like this, and it was certainly worth watching.

Unfortunately, I can't praise the organisers. Tickets exceeded the auditorium's capacity, some people who received invitations were not allowed inside, and tickets meant for certain people were handed out to others. The Indian VIPs were there in full force though, from the Indian Ambassador in New York Ronen Sen, to Pranab Mukherjee, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Vayalar Ravi, Nandan Nilekani (whose foreign invitees, by the way, were not allowed inside as they didn't have their tickets on them), Rajat Gupta of McKinsey fame, Sunil Mittal, Sam Pitroda and film stars Shabana Azmi and Anil Kapoor. The press in India covered the event extensively but since they took all the trouble to organise this huge event, the CII would have done well to get a few international press representatives to cover it as well.

Still, as more than one American came up to me as an Indian, and said that day, 'Congratulations on your 60th birthday!', here's hoping that in the next 60 years India will truly become the country we all want it to be.

Tah-da!!!

Annndddd.... welcome to the Brand New Wanderings and Wonderings!!! A HUGE big Thank You to Graphic Designer Nerd for the new look, and for putting up with my zillion emails asking for minute changes to this and that. By the way Grafx, if 'nerd' means being this talented then I'd like to be a nerd too :-D

India: Outsourcing outsourcing?

The NYT has an article on developments in India's outsourcing capabilities. Interesting reading. US students are apparently rejecting Google for Infosys!

Perfection

If life were perfect, would it be worth living?

Happy Birthday Penny Lane!

It's very difficult when comments are switched off and you want to say something to a blogger. Anyway, in the search for a novel way to wish Penny Lane a happy birthday, I came upon this, and couldn't help but smile. Maybe Penny will smile too - Happy Birthday!

Do You Realize?

In 2002, the Flaming Lips came out with a song called 'Do You Realize'. Singer-songwriter Gretchen Lieberum has come out with her own version of it, featuring a plastic crown and a group of diverse Los Angelans, and shot with a used camera on a budget of $3000. Take a look.

The Artist

‘Unnuda ponnu romba sowbhagyavathi ma’, the astrologer predicted, looking at her little daughter’s hand. Varalakshmi was thrilled. Aha. Oho. She’d given birth to a girl who would be the recipient of good luck. Who knew, maybe some of it would rub off on her, the mother, as well. Maybe she’d get an excellent job when she became an adult, earn lots of money and give her poor old mother some jewellery and pattu sarees every now and then. After all, she was the one who brought her into the world, illiya. Of course her daughter would be grateful, in addition to being lucky and intelligent and pretty and smart.

Then he added, in Tamil, ‘She is going to be an artist.’ Varalakshmi’s forehead filled with furrows as she wondered what art her daughter was going to be proficient at. She’d get the best bharatanatyam, classical singing and painting teachers for her immediately. The younger you teach them, the better, is what most people said. OK, so it wasn’t going to be a job that her daughter would excel at. Who wanted a job anyway? That Padmavathi Amma’s daughter went to her fancy office every day and look what happened? She married a Punjabi. They all had those big turbans on their heads all the time., and someone told her the men all had long hair! And some of them ate non-veg also. Ayyo! Good thing her daughter was going to be an artist. She would be a world-renowned bharatanatyam exponent maybe. Tour the world and be written about in the papers. And in her press conferences she would acknowledge the hard work her mother had put into making her the star she was. She would win awards and cash prizes. And she would get lots of pattu sarees and jewellery as gifts from her admirers which she would pass on to her mother because she wouldn’t need so many. Varalakshmi smiled proudly.

Yes, that’s what she would do. She had to find the best dance, music and painting teachers for her daughter immediately. There was no time to be lost.

Fifteen years later, Varalakshmi picked up the newspaper that the paper boy had thrown on their doorstep, as he had been doing for years now. She adjusted the glasses on her nose and read slowly.

'Con Artist makes away with jewellery worth Rs. 50 lakhs:
A female con artist succeeded in robbing a jewellery shop today in broad daylight. The woman had been alienated from her parents for the last two years and was living in a hostel in Mandaveli. Her mother, Varalakshmi, is a housewife….'

Varalakshmi fainted.

Umbrella Love

The door banged shut, forced to by a powerful gale that acted with invisible hands. She could almost picturise him – him as in Mr.Gale – a tall, brooding type with a cape and large-rimmed hat. She wasn’t quite sure why the gale should be a man, but with that kind of brute force let’s say she didn’t feel all that off the mark that blusterous morning.

Koshy’s was almost empty. There was just one couple sitting at the far end, it being the beginning of the week and a terrible morning at that. She was not as wet as she expected – her trustworthy raincoat had yet again lived up to its name. She extricated herself from the dripping coat and slunk into the closest table, because she wanted to be near the windows. Bad though the weather may have been, she still liked the romance of the rain. Call her a soppy fool – she didn’t care.

As she put her backpack down on the floor next to her, she suddenly noticed a funny little enamel face grinning at her. It was the handle of a colourful umbrella, shaped in a most unique way. Two things attracted her to it at once – first, the myriad of colours on it. She liked most umbrellas that were any shade of anything but black. She hated the boring old black umbrellas. They made her want to scream – everyone and their brother had one, and it was boring, boring, boring. Just not her. She didn’t even own an umbrella, preferring the convenience of a raincoat, but if she did then it would most certainly not be black. That much she knew. So the colorful umbrella endeared itself to her on sight. Then of course there was that handle – that weird little grin. Colourful umbrellas were not that uncommon, but one with a face? Now that she hadn’t seen too many of.

She placed an order for a cup of hot chocolate, and began to examine the umbrella. Whose could it be? And had he or she just left after breakfast or was it a remnant of a boisterous get-together at the restaurant the previous night? And where, oh where had they got the umbrella from? She decided she’d go and buy one exactly like that if she ever found out.

The rain continued to pour across the window-pane, tiny little rivulets blurring the scene outside. She counted them slowly, but soon tired of the exercise. There were too many of them. She turned her attention back to the umbrella and decided to ask the waiter about it. He’d know. Her hot chocolate made its appearance a few minutes later, and she immediately asked the waiter whether he knew whom it belonged to. The waiter looked at it, smiled, and said that it belonged to a regular customer, who’d probably forgotten it when he left after his coffee less than an hour ago. He said he’d make sure it would be returned to its owner, and asked for it so he could keep it safely till the owner came by again.

She was just about to hand it over when she looked at the funny face once more and asked whether she could look at it a bit longer since she thought it was so attractive. The waiter smiled again. He knew her also well, after all. He agreed, and left her to finish her hot chocolate in peace.

Just then, the door banged again. She looked up, and noticed a rather intelligent-looking young fellow in a Che Guevara T-shirt and soaking jeans enter the restaurant. Her mind raced. Could it be him? She saw him walk to the waiter. Should she do what she was thinking? She didn’t know. Her drink stood there untouched.

She decided to go for it. She rummaged in her purse quickly, withdrew some money, put it on the table, grabbed her things and ran out.

In her hand, a funny little face gleamed.

Good news for New York Times loyalists

The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its site, (the Times Select articles), effective today.

Apparently they underestimated the number of visitors to their site that were being driven through Yahoo!, Google and other search engines. These users are less likely to pay to view articles than regular NYT loyalists, and the paper didn't want to lose out on the opportunity to generate more online revenue and page views.

Another one bites the dust. Long live online advertising - ha ha.