Garfield

Garfield has such strong fundaes on food and sleeping that Im planning to learn something from him :-D check this out .
There was once a comics strip where G says " you don't take naps. the naps take you" so true!! :-D Thats a cat with an attitude!

I completed 1 year of blogging this September. Why do I blog ? - for the same reason people write diaries. But why do people write diaries? Its just a catalogue of thoughts, impressions, etc etc.. Lets see how long I continue blogging. :-)

Iran, the mess and the good old days

I was disappointed by India's decision to vote against Iran. I used to say that Im pretty anti-US and won't ever live there. I used to be proud that India was not a puppet to US and was quite independent. But if India actually starts following their diktats, where does one run to now! I hope India rectifies this blunder. I dont even see the need to collaborate on the civil nuclear energy front. I thought we were quite self-reliant in that sector !
badde log baddi baddi baatein.. apne palle nahin padhti ye sab :-(
Whats unbelievable is that nations still haven't learnt any lessons from the Iraq fiasco ! Maybe every nation is busy safeguarding their own interests. But come on! what can a country which can't cope with a natural disaster in its own homeland do to others. Oh maybe it will use its WMD on the "errants"!!

All said and done I hope we get back to the NAM policies of which we were an integral part. Infact even as a kid, I was proud of India being a part of NAM.

Very hungry now. Hope there is something good in the mess. Rather than the food in our "Mega Mess", what sucks more is the attitude of the servers. They seem to think we peck on food which can get very irritating when we return back after a day of hard work. So every mealtime, we have to ask for more. Reminds me of Oliver Twist asking for more. One would think they were giving us food in charity. He he that place is unexpectedly turning out to be a good training ground for us to fight for our "rights". Whats pathetic is that its supposed to be the last place for such a thing to happen.

I suddenly recalled the old classic song "ye zindagi usi ki hai" from the vintage movie "Anarkali". Was listening to that now. Beena Roy was oh-so-gorgeous and I actually don't remember the male actor in the movie. Was it Pradeep Kumar? He he my grandpa looked like PK in his younger days :-D These were the movies which we lapped up so eagerly in our childhood days. I don't recall my childhood days much, for which my friends usually make fun of me :-D. But I do remember these movies, and the days I spent in my hometown in those days very clearly. I think I was more self-centered even as a child, in the sense that I had my own private world and was always busy in that :-) So I dont recall anything that happened to others :-D After all, we pisceans are famous for being dreamy :-D

Movies and themes

I saw Salaam Namaste a couple of days back. A friend said its not my type of movie and that set me thinking whether we should really look for ideologies or themes in movies.
According to me SN was a very confused kind of movie. It was a fun movie in the beginning but very loud in the 2nd half and reminded me of Chalte Chalte (watching it was a painful experience) . Lousy ending too. What did they want to show? 1st half says live-in's can be a paradise. True. We can chuck the guy whenever we wish unlike marriage where one has to suffer with the wrong person for the whole life for the same reason that live-ins are taboo here - divorce is as much frowned upon in the conservative societies as live-ins. 2nd half of the movie says "but marriage is the best bet".
Kuch kuch hota hai says love grows out of friendship. Dil to pagal hai says friendship need not mean love. Paheli was a big-time googlee. I'm still confused about what it wanted to show.
I think the best option is not to search for morals in the movie. Its just a story which is supposed to keep you entertained for 3 hours.
The situations shown in the movies are/need not be a part of every person's life. Everyone lives a different life and there can be as many circumstances as there are people. So, I feel society should also let the person live as they wish. True that we get only one life to live and we live that life according to how society wants us to live like. But then whats the whole point of this cycle of birth, survival and death? If drifting is what we are supposed to do, then why create this cycle at all. Surely, there must have been some greater purpose behind all this!
I also saw Madagascar last night. ( Last few days, watching movies has been the only productive thing I have been doing :-D ) The movie was hilarious and I want to watch it again. This was screened in the hostel under the open sky and was a late night affair. Looking forward to many more such get-togethers. :-)

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Saw a cute movie called Socha Na tha A low key movie and very endearing :-)

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I repeat

Hazaaron khwahishen aisi ki har khwahish pe dam nekle
Bahut nikle mere armaan magar phir bhi kam nikle

:-(

Nothing ever happens here !!

My crib these days has been that nothing ever happens here! Like somebody has said
Subah hoti hai shaam hoti hai
Zindagi yun hi tamaam hoti hai

Life becomes monotonous after a point. My activities in the past few days have been restricted to shuttling between my room and lab. So I have been doing little somethings to please myself like solving crosswords, listening to music whenever i can (liked a bhupinder collection. will get it soon) , watching an occasional movie, treating myself to chocolates occasionally and the latest is by putting in jhankar beats in my day to day life :-D
So I have become a major crossword buff. I still can't solve it completely without the previous day's paper but I'm improving :-D
I saw My Fair lady (again) and To Kill a Mocking Bird this week. MFL is awesome and can be seen n number of times. Audrey Hepburn is very adorable in the movie. And Rex Harrison as Prof. Higgins is hilarious. No wonder these movies are called classics. I intend to read GB Shaw's Pygmalion now :-)
TKaMB had Gregory Peck and two very cute kids. Its a very faithful adaptation of a book by the same name. The movie leaves behind an impression on the viewer.
We had seen Roman Holiday starring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn a couple of years back in an American Film Festival screening in Chennai. As usual, this trip was not preplanned and was more memorable for the same reason. We don't go out on such outings anymore :-( Anyways, AH was a princess in the movie who escapes her boring life. She happens to meet GP who is a reporter. He gives her shelter with the intention of getting a scoop on her story. They eventually fall in love but then the princess decides not to shirk her responsibilty and gets back to her royal duties.
AH was so convincing as a princess in this movie and she was equally exceptional as a flower girl in MFL. GP was very handsome in both RH and TKaMB. I guess God has stopped making such handsomes anymore :-D I noticed that Dev Anand's mannerisms resemble GP's a lot :-D
Yesterday's movie here was Catwoman. It was unintentionally hilarious. I saw only the 1st half. Couldn't sit beyond that. I think Halle Berry has more attitude than what was shown here. Anyways I wasted an hour there.

I read this US congressman's comments on our Foreign minister and was so shocked and amused. Our Indian ministers show more taste than that. They might prefer to call their Indian colleagues colourful names but they are most respectful towards the foreigners :-D ( I don't know if its age old habit but I have noticed this among the students here too. They might be carelessly rude towards the other fellow students but they are oh-so-polite and sweet to the foreigners :-D Its fun to watch them.)
The whole world has been mocking/berating/despising/condemning US for "liberating and democratising" Iraq and Afghanistan. And they are back on track with the same policies for Iran and Syria. And they think that anybody who does not agree with their policy is dense!!!!! How dense can that be !
I read an article which said that as far as americans are concerned, the other nations don't exist. Well it seems now that as far as Ams are concerned, parts of their own nation don't exist as was shown in the New Orleans tragedy. Mails have been circulating these days comparing NO and Mumbai floods and how efficient it was here.
We Indians might be loud and expressive but that helps in every way. We stick together and help each other out in calamities. Within a year we have had Tsunami, Gujarat floods, Mumbai floods etc but we are back on track :-D and we provided relief materials to US!! What defines a developed nation ??
Sania Mirza gets a loud support everywhere she plays as we Indians are everywhere !!! :-D Ok we have had out share of riots but they are more politically motivated rather than being the pulse of the nation.
As much I see around me, I think right now, India is the best place for Indians to stay :-D