RadiCulture - Many Opinions, One Voice

Work

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Fri, 02 May 2008 00:20:00 +0000

I begin work at my new job today. My first proper job, with respect to complete allegiance to one organisation, after a number of internships and freelance work. I'll be working at this magazine called Better Photography.

I expect that would make me a better photographer. But not someone with a better sense of humour, obviously.

Cube

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Fri, 02 May 2008 00:15:00 +0000

Biona's, a tiny eatery on Hill Road, Bandra, just got tinier. Sadly.

The shawarma is still brilliant, the open pizzas still good, and the coffee is still pathetic. All, at higher prices, of course.

And of course, the sugar cubes are very much there. A friend and I finished an entire bowl of sugar cubes, a couple of days ago.

Should I allow this sugar cube to melt?
Or destroy it, the teeth offensive.
We are diabetic now.

The Untitled

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:04:00 +0000

While it may have been a mere part of my course curriculum, we made a documentary that took up a large amount of mindspace while in-making and after. 'We' means myself and a group of a few friends and a few non-friends. A few people and a few others making a movie on we the people, and the supposed others. While our attempt was amateurish at best, the process, with its varied idiosyncrasies, was a journey that I hope I am still on, and hopefully am not done with.

The movie, titled The Untitled, was an analysis of the role of the media in the stereotyping of Muslims in India, and the subsequent discrimination they face. A dangerous, multiple edged topic with layers that just add on to its complexity. I don't know if we were able to manage even a fraction of all intended, but the moving images and multiple perspectives we projected through the documentary have just led to some more ideas. And words.

==========
The Untitled
==========

India is a story of stories,
A potful of convulated tales
First person narratives, voyeuristic perspective
Some notes of eminence and a bagful of woes.

I have come to tell you about this blessed map and its wretched lines
Languishing in the throes of the theory of inevitability,
Here you are, there we go
On the quest for definition,
I am I, so are we
You may be you, but not me.
Scattered and splattered across the dawn,
We rush to our burrows,
Breaking through the exterior.
An orchestrated stripshow to expose the core,
Digging further and further to the end of the world
Forced and enclosed, a glass shield around us and we throw stones
We the people, and they the others
The untitled.

The great Indian soap opera
Is now up on 70mm.
Let us all go to the movies
We, and you too, if you please
Case in point for an exercise in futility
A group of groups, fictionalised factions
People peeping into a peephole
Of moving images.
Punity in diversity, pointed fingers and relegated corners
They are cast away, like swatted flies
A buzzing, blood-sucking mosquito
The noise is missing, it’s a silent murder.

Subconscious lines that draw on reality
Misconstrued images in predefined mindscapes
Characterise,
Categorise,
A type of a stereotype.
Them, the others.
They are the who.
Not a part of the movie that’s scripted
Yet a part of the cast.
Extras, individuals, yet a collective
Spot boys, maybe or protagonists of the film reels left behind.
Edited out, timeline to the recycle bin.
Not the premiere in Premiere Pro
Tightly clenched sand, with the fingers slipping through
Choked, cloaked, a mask unmasked
A shared history and reversal of time,
The untitled.

Wide Angle

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:31:00 +0000

Wide angle lenses fascinate me. Are they the all-seeing? Self-conscious to the point of being reverent, the appeal lies in seeing more than your eye can cover. To look at more than you think you can see. Do you see all you look at? Do you encompass that which lies in the corner – the shy and the outcaste. And that which distort if you don’t strain hard.

Sleep

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 00:56:00 +0000

My sleep is a psychedelic journey, doomed to end in wakefulness.

You

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 00:43:00 +0000

Every time I write you something, I give you a part of my soul. A part, that inside me, would consume me. But what if I keep giving you these fractional selves? Will these pencil shavings kill me one day?

Is that what death is all about? Or disintegration, a devolution into nothingness. Or merely a change of form. A transfigured state of inevitability.

You

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 21:47:00 +0000

You.
I talk of luminous ideas
To reclaim what belongs to me.
The ones, the others, you and the world.
I talk of ideology, of complicated neurotic algorithms
That keep your logarithms in check.

You.
I read what you write,
Multiplicity of consonants
With a few vowels thrown in like specials of the day
And blank spaces like dessert.
I take it all in, like a last best supper,
Your words, incantations
Just a dimension to my hallucinations
You talk and talk and never stop,
A downpour, forming the blessed oasis.
I listen, to process meandering phonetics into my dancing soul.
Poetry in motion, the scapes we explore.

You.
I try to see,
But can only watch.
My eyes, wandering wandering into familiar unknown
I try to look through, but there are too many of you.

You.
My perspective.
My perspective’s you.

Big Brother Diaries

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:28:00 +0000

Divinity, forgive me,
I plead guilty,
Guilty of my actions, guilty of your thoughts,
I took the ones you left behind
And they took a part of me
Away.

Secret diaries, illegible curves,
The lead has smudged and the ink runs all over
Here and there, life of its own
A new story, new thoughts, new words
A rebirth maybe, or co-existence
Two lives, parallel worlds,
Those worlds in words
Enclosed, but exposed to bugs
It tends to happen when your voice croons to clinks
When your face demands a thousand faces
Like overpriced tickets and ubiquitous malls
Your life is for me, your life’s for all
You may be rising, but we wait for your fall
Like the scribbles you have crossed
And those beautiful places your mind decided to stop.
Ink blot.

I write my diaries but I read yours,
Peeking, prying, seeking, spying
A lens to sense.
Why do I feel like Big Brother?
Oh bother.

Queue

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:52:00 +0000

This single file of linearity
With rhythmic evolution at time’s behest,
Individual stories in one narrative
Stacked together, and they all fall down.

Can you believe these fit into the same jigsaw?
Diverse threads, knotted at one end.
An extra piece, trying to break the line,
The other, untitled, out of turn, out of order, breaking order
Some muttered disapproval and a simmering brawl
But the big picture changes only to ease in the other.

One for all and all for none.
Kindly maintain order, the bus has come.
Split, shuffle, stacked, unshackle
Dissemble, disturb, detours astray
In the midst, disintegrate.
Enter.
Break in, now.
This is nuclear fission at the neighbourhood bus station.

Utter, My Butter

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:23:00 +0000

Buttering and mutterings,
Utterances sprinkled over
Like added twists of the temperamental chef
Added and added, garnished with juice
Bad taste, some spice, and I need some water, do I?

Barbeque chicken roasted too long
A burnt sizzler and over brewn tea
Vindictive teachers, non-practising preachers
A mother and a father, a grandmother and two grandfathers
Uncles and aunts, none of the latter being sexed up Robinsons
Lousy old farts and grouchy twitting know-it-alls
Saccharine lollipops that tint your visuals all blue
Spoil my evening supper, like a Big Brother in the chef’s new clothes.

Yes right yes, I do as you say and say as you do
Feed me for I’m hungry or feed me for I need to be fed
If you say so, as you like it
Cookbook recipes with two teaspoons of olive oil
Slices of butter and individuality denied.

Pungent words, sweet voices, saucy goss and bitter remarks
The beer isn’t cold enough and the wine’s too new.
The salt’s not enough, Shake it baby
Oh not like that, why don’t I tell you how … what, why, who, huh.
You ought not cook, why create when the meal’s ready
No thoughts of your own, you take it all in with some good old brandy.
Ready-made menus and a kitchen hidden away
You get what you want but there’s the Special of the Day

Bitter beans and bottoms up espressos,
A resentment against a barrage of all
Shove in the apron, clam up the wall
Abstinence, you xerophag, xerophag, zero of a fag
Throw away the spoons and fuck the forks
You, robot, fatter than Asimov could ever be
Taking it all in and throwing it all out
Bulimic pride that never tells me who you can be
But only the garb that’s grub you’ve been served to eat.

Time Travel

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 18:45:00 +0000

I just came back from a time travel,
But I wonder who came
Did I go back and forth, forward backward
Or was I stuck in the middle of it all
Sandwiched between extremities, the elevator yearns to shut and go down
But for those legs that deny, and the automation revs up over
And over and over again
No hey, we’re just beginning.

So charge it up, let’s get some power into this
Energy, and there sure is heat.
Like a badly written sex scene
Not digital, film, the fuck not fake
With an end that ended what the beginning had begun
Where foreplay was about the fore legs, play between hind ones,
Okayed, packed up.
Cut, finally, edit, lock, stock and barrel, no smoking, please.

Unfasten the seat belts.
It’s time for the release.
Move, and if you go whee, you can just call it a movie
It’s edited now. Movie rendered.
One, two, three, four, play.
The end. Exit to the right.
But don’t leave, it ain’t over till it’s over
And often, it ain’t over even when it is
This is the end, but are we just beginning
At the end?
Like a tape that’s rewound
Satanic connotations to the reverse
Let’s turn over, yeah do it,
Just.

But then the reel got stuck
Memento, now do you remember?
Images fly by.
24 frames per second,
Persistence of vision.
Do you see what I saw?
Up and down, see-saw?
Ah, the ones shot at 1/8 seem to race past
And there’s that stagnant one by a thousandth.
Somewhere in the middle
Of the end and beginning
And beginning of the end.

So if I’ve just walked past the hands of my Rolex
With the seconds hand following me around
A hound to which I’m bound
And I run,
Round and round
Stalked by a history
That repeats itself unless the battery’s dead.

But recharge it baby, you don’t want to not come
Back.
To front, so that I come back from a time travel
I still wonder who came
I went all the way, travelled through time
Or was I here all along, and time that did all the travelling?

iPlay

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 01:26:00 +0000

So let’s play a game here
A sport I'll be and a sport I'll play
Play for the game and not for my own name
No sucker, just soccer, or cricket or do you want to play ball
Ping pong, or table tennis, or tennis it may be.

I’ll love all if you say so
And to be all your moral book says,
I will cease to be I.
No love lost, no hero worship
Fallen grace, like hell and back.
No Godly aspirations, no supremacy delusions
Hunched back, and shoulders slacked.
One of a hundred, thousand, million and one
One, just one, not the one;
No Neo, entering the matrix,
No hero for betterment of mankind
Kind, man, just kind.

No wait this is all a bind.
In polishing the I;
It’s like toeing the line
And I’m not that last line
Align?
The self to be cleansed? The self got cleansed
Away ...
No way.

Let me be I,
I for no one else, but I for I
With the rest of the world blind
Eyed.

A new Horizon

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 14:16:00 +0000

A college project required us to redesign the first page of a newspaper/supplement and instead of QuarkExpress or any page-designing software, I ended up doing the assignment on PhotoShop.

Here's what came out of it.

Dekho Dekho

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 23:40:00 +0000

I walked to the ticket counter of Cinemax, Versova.
"How much for No Smoking?"
- "150 rupees, sir."
"Erm, and how much if I smoke?"

Go and watch two brilliant movies that have released this Friday. While both No Smoking & Jab We Meet deserve longer, individual posts which I would write in days to come, let me sum things up by telling you to stop reading this, although you are one of the four people who care to read this blog (four including me, actually). Go catch both movies, now.

Actually, on second thoughts, hang on, you can read the rest of the blog before you rush off. I don't get visitors that often. Ab aise zamaane mein main bechaara blogger kya karoonga? Now that you are here, why don't I make the most of this. I am indeed like a Sindhi who sees opportunity in everything there is, from writing posts to eating papads.

P.S. Parent alert, parent alert! If you are my Dad or my Mom or happen to know them, I do not smoke. Even if you are not remotely connected to my parents and all elderly who look at smoking the way Boman Irani did in Darna Mana Hai and Paresh Rawal does in No Smoking, I still do not smoke.

That's the problem when you're unbelievable. People don't believe you.

Late

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 01:31:00 +0000

Late

=====

And
Yes, you are late
But I enjoy the wait
When time is my domain, not your WWW.

No silent stares and open glares,
No random talk and nods, shakes, shrugs;
Merging worlds, not mutually exclusive.
Make talk, make up, make out,
I’d make it on my own.

The unequilibrium of our punctuality.
Chain of thoughts,
Random attacks,
Ideate,
Intellectual masturbation,
Mirror to self,
Crinkled forehead, bitten lower lip,
Mind ticking, tick tick tick ...
- The alarm’s rung,
Damn you’re here.

Absolut-ly Vodka

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 00:50:00 +0000

When a trite spell of randomness forced me to write verse (erm, not worse), I decided to thrown in a little bit of vodka in a piece on multiplicity of perspectives and being all-consuming. Little did I know that the drink will find itself in the Indian media, after being picked up from the wires. Apparently, vodka was used as a medicinal alcohol to save the life of an Italian national in Australia. The patient was given a vodka drip (!) in order to keep him alive.

That vodka is life was never under doubt, but this rather freak affirmation of the same can spark off a lot of parallel trends and vodka manufacturers can go into a marketing overdrive. Get ready for medicine and chemistry students tasting a wee bit of the alcohol to get some relief during a stressful time, and doctors asking teenage patients whether they have crossed the age of 21 or not, so that they can decide whether to use the vodka injection or not. Karan Johar will finally make a sequel to K3G and call it Kabhie Vodka Kabhi Rum. Shah Rukh Khan can latch on to Smirnoff in Devdas (or Shiney Ahuja can do the same in Sudhir Mishra's forthcoming version. or Abhay Deol in Anurag Kashyap's bevdi version called Dev D). Anurag will probably make a film called No Vodka and Orange which became Hutch which became Vodafone will, in true Ekta Kapoor style, add a 'k' to become Vodkafone.

The editorial discusses the effects of vodka on different individuals, a topic that merits an entire book, probably. The discussions of food, sex (erm, yeah, discussions) and pseudo-intellectual ideating and theorising, for example, are one of the effects on me and a friend - a lot of cynical sips of the drink get all of us, in true Jim Morrisonesque moods, higher.

Vodka deserves a much longer post, but for the moment, here is a picture made by me.

Copyright 2007 Raj Lalwani.

And for those still interested, here's worse.

Er, verse.

Absolut?

A little flounder here,
And some flounder there.
Indecision, embrace me
Best of both worlds
And a third front.

Convoluted,
Confused.
Confident?
Intersection of extremities,
Flexible quicksand, not a rigid pole,
Vibrator, oscillate, here, there, everywhere …
Where?
Fuck, do you care?

Spongy pores.
This. And that. Liberal. Take it all in.
Let the only absolute be your daily dose.
Vodka, absolut-ly.
And open up on the rest.
End, but open end.
Suicide, not homicide,
Do it yourself kit, no money back if it fails.

I'm Gay Dumbledore's Gay

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 02:16:00 +0000

So there she said it. Dumbledore was gay. Yes, you heard it right. The greatest wizard of all-time, who was a constant guiding light to Potter through seven (six and a half, maybe?) books was homosexual, which is what the creator J K Rowling revealed to ‘gasps’.

Like really, what’s the big deal?

I am a self-confessed Pottermaniac but even I can’t help tittering at our dear old Hindi news channels who have taken this pronouncement with relish and are going asking people how they feel about it.

“Aapko kaisa lag raha hai?”

And if you are happy about it, you can say that you feel gay.

The madness that's media has lapped this news up to hurl sensationalistic headlines and make the shock-and-awe judgements seem more earth-shattering than they may be. So there are discussions on Aaj Tak and India TV alike (‘Khul gaya Albus ka raaz’, ‘Dumbledore ka sachcha pyar’, ‘Albus ki premika kyun nahin thi’ at last viewing) and the Rediff message boards have not failed to provide their usual dose of entertainment. Over two and a half crore web page out of a total of 15 crore page on Dumbledore discuss his homosexuality. The reactions are of shock, incredulity and at times, even outrage. It isn’t really surprising to find the media lapping up the announcement, as they do with every Potter revelation. It’s obvious that Brand Potter will continue to sell in spite of the fact that the series may have come to an end. The open mouths are all expected, but quite predictably, the revelation has been frowned upon, as well. The latter is a reflection of how homosexuality is still perceived in India. The presence of something that is still considered deviant and even illegal (thanks to our beloved penal code. And no pun intended - I said penal, not penile) in fiction that is primarily targeted at children, hasn’t been taken too kindly. At one level, there are people who are rigid in their views and always have something to say against homosexuality. On the other hand, there is a faction that is open-minded and believes in the ‘live and let live’, but is still concerned about whether children as young as 6 or 7 must be exposed to it, not knowing whether to explain the meaning of ‘gay’ to their young kid who is excited on seeing a headline that talks about a Potter character.

It’s all good, I’d say. The presence of a homosexual character in what is probably the most popular fiction series is a step in the right direction. This obviously augurs well for gay rights movements around the world – a character who was followed by millions around the world and boasts of positive characteristics of kindness and compassion is a homosexual. A kudos to Rowling for having attributed her character with such a characteristic. It is just a continuation of her conspicuous liberal outlook – there is no mention of religion in the series, there are Asian characters studying in a school in UK and there is a consistent negative portrayal of those who believe in factions based on racial lineage.

There is a large section that has come out and said that such a revelation is not right because it will ‘encourage homosexuality’ by manipulating the perceptions of young minds. That is the kind of loopy, incredulous statements factionalists always make while criticising the faction they oppose. Heterosexuality and homosexuality are not soft-drink brands that references in popular culture would make a child aspire to lean either way. Factionalists and radicals can live their own lives in their own, tightly shut spaces if they so desire and the rigidity shown in their outlook to something like this is unfortunately predictable, yet condemnable.

What’s brilliant is that the fact that the homosexual is merely incidental and is not all that defines the character. Often, we, in a country that still hasn’t learnt to look at homosexuals the same way it looks at heterosexuals, tend to hype up the sexuality factor. There are many aren’t against homosexuality but when they define a gay person, that’s almost the primary characteristic of that person in their eyes. This, of course, is a result of lazy stereotypes and is often replicated by the media to cater to the peoples’ perceptions – an anti-ideology syndrome, rather similar to how religion is used as a factor to define a person’s other characteristics and attributes.

So right, I am indeed gay about the fact that Dumbledore is gay (erm, not that way). It adds layers aplenty to his character and the way in which one can interpret various parts of the book has been redefined. While the media starts obsessing over nuggets from the books that support this revelation, we can all wait for the next Rowling revelation and subsequent media hooplas.

Finite

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:58:00 +0000

Finite

Another addition to the graveyard of dreams,
Individualistic but representative,
Another statistic,
One two three four five
Decimal places for many play the half life
Real, irrational
Cowards and wimps, they dare not imagine
For them it’s all zero,
Unacquainted with my life’s ditty
Further and further, infinity.

Not another number, whole, rounded, fat-headed big boulder.
Another one that’s bitten dust for he dares not bite lust
Anticipation
Discovery
Explore
All out, not a stratosphere with ozone protection,
Lonosphere, alone yet free.
Burn, get burnt by the sun, the journey is to see.

Can you study how to work?

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:40:00 +0000

By Raj Lalwani
--------------------

In today’s age of cut-throat competition, there is an increasing demand for courses that are more specialised than an ordinary B.A. or B.Com. There has been a surge of semi-professional courses at an undergraduate level, such as BMM (Bachelors of Mass Media), BMS (Bachelors of Management Studies) and B.Sc in Hospitality & Hotel Management. A question that often comes up though is, how much do these courses actually help? How easy is it to train a student at an undergraduate level for the professional world?

Debakshi Dey Sarkar, a resident of Bandra Reclamation who is a third year BMM student at KC College, feels that there is a world of difference between what she learns at class and the world outside. She says, “BMM has helped me a lot when it comes to skills like teamwork and dealing with deadlines, owing to the number of group projects we do. But that apart, my internship is a new ball game, altogether.” Debakshi is working as a trainee copywriter at Percept. “In the first two years, we did have a subject that introduced us to advertising but it just skimmed over all aspects of advertising. While interning, I have actually had hands-on experience of assisting my seniors who are working on a campaign, formulating ideas, writing copy and so on.”

Agrees Yvette Ferrao, a Khar resident and a third year BMS student from St. Xavier’s, “I am working in the HR department of Intech Designs. All the techniques and strategies that are planned are new to me and I am still getting used to it. My friends who have graduated tell me that these subjects are covered in the third year and somehow I feel that all important subjects tend to be covered in the final year, while in the first two years, the course deals with subjects that would never be of any practical use.”

Rahul Sethi, studying hotel management from IHM, Dadar feels that professional courses help a lot in giving students opportunities. This Pali Hill resident who is currently undergoing training at the Oberoi says, “We develop all our contacts and manage to secure internships because we are studying this course. But eventually, there is a vast difference between classroom teaching and working. Hotel management is entirely practical and you can only learn and experience the high pressure atmosphere while training at a hotel.”

Says Manjula Srinivas, the BMM co-ordinator of KC College and also the Chairperson of the BMM course at Mumbai university, “BMM does not guarantee that you would become a great journalist or copywriter, but it ensures that you have a theoretical base which supplements what you learn when you do an internship.” She says that the course is planned in a way that students are exposed to as many different disciplines as possible, and they can pursue the interest of their choice when they go for their internship or pursue a post-graduation course. “It’s not just about journalism and advertising. There’s photography, filmmaking, PR, radio and a number of other industries that we expose the students to.”

Srinivas admits that the course does not always replicate the real world. “But then, the media is a dynamic force that keeps changing. For that very reason, we plan to update the BMM course at regular intervals. In fact, the first set of updates will take place in June, when the new academic year begins.” Srinivas acknowledges that no course can actually teach you what you learn while you are on the job. “The pressures of reporting obviously cannot be taught entirely in the classroom. But a majority of our teachers have real time experience and are successful journalists, admen, film researchers, photographers and so on. Also, the course makes an internship compulsory at the end of the second year. And at my college, I encourage the students to do as many internships as possible, even while they are in the first year of their course. Most of them have already interned at 3-4 organisations and now have gained a lot of experience which supplements what they learn in class.”

Pooja Nair, strategy planning manager, Percept, believes that BMM students do not have any significant advantage over other students. “BMM students are aware of the hierarchy that exists in ad agencies and how each department functions but that apart, they are very much on the same level as a student who is studying some other course. Both have to be equally trained on the job.” She says that BMM students tend to take the theoretical knowledge they have gained in the classroom a little too rigidly. “In reality, ad agencies are very flexible. You cannot come to an agency with rigid views. That said, the course does give them a lot of exposure. It becomes a lot easier for students to secure an internship in the first place if they are studying BMM.” When asked about how the gap between professional courses and the professional world can be bridged, Pooja says, “They need to have live examples and make the students work on mock campaigns with professionals. Show rather than tell.”

Kavita Sawant, an HR Executive at Intech Designs, agrees with Nair, “Knowledge is gained mostly through internships. The degree does not matter much. Even if you don’t have a degree in HR, if you intern in an HR department of any company, the knowledge you will gain will put you on a higher standing.” When asked to comment on the BMS course, she lamented the fact that unlike BMM, an internship is not compulsory in the BMS course, “All students don’t make an effort to intern, and without the practical experience of an internship, all they have done in their course amounts to nothing.”

Kanchan Chitnis, the HR Manager at the Oberoi feels that any hotel management course makes the training process easier and faster. “But without the training period, the course does not mean much. You cannot throw someone into the deep end, they have to undergo rigourous training before they can be ready to work.” He says that the top institutes do try to replicate the scenario that actually exists in a hotel, but there is always a difference between the real world and a simulated one.

David De Souza, a photographer who also teaches the BMM students of KC, Wilson and St. Xavier’s college, gives both sides of the picture, on behalf of the professional world and the academic institutions, "BMM is not doing badly at all – it can be a lot better of course; the practical aspect should be emphasized a lot more. Internships are what supplement what you do while you are in college, but what's most important is to be open to new ways of understanding and not be rigid about whatever you learn, whether it is in the classroom or on the job. That is the secret to becoming a better human being and then a better professional."
=======================================================

This feature first appeared in Mid-Day Metro (Bandra).

Eyesore

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:42:00 +0000

Eyesore

======

Eyesore.
Like sickly pink
A splurge of candy
Floss and gloss
Purring cats
Diabetic smiles
Thirty-two flash, but ‘twas all yellow,
Like Coldplay sung in a nasal twang.

Or a rom com that’s on slo-mo.
Acute cuteness,
Niceties,
Now Nice is a soggy biscuit,
Eat
Chew
Don’t leave the crumbs for me.

Second Innings

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:08:00 +0000

"'Cos I'm counting on a new beginning.
A reason for living.
A deeper meaning."
- Savage Garden.

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."
- Nelson Mandela.

I do not wish to be called Vinod Kambli and so, will refrain from calling myself the Comeback King. But well, I'm back. And no, that's not my new name.

Sleeping With Mithun Da, Quite Literally

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 22:33:00 +0000

Maybe this is why the term came about ...?

Researchers are struggling to understand a rare medical condition where sufferers unknowingly demand, or actually have, sex while asleep, New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday.

It's a rather curious disorder, if that's the right word. One can quite imagine it being fully exploited by filmmakers who would cast the likes of Rakhi Sawant or Mona Chopra in such roles. The doctor who is entrusted with the job of curing the, ahem, patient, can be played by Mithun Chakraborty. Much fun can be anticipated, with the movie being screened at Capitol Cinema, VT. The posters, of course, will be all over Bombay, especially on the Eastern side of Grant Road. That's exactly where I'd seen the poster of 'Agli Tumhari Baari' which had this bulging buxom belle with bulging biceps, if you excuse the alliteration, pointing her finger at me, er, straight ahead, actually. The rather ominous apocalyptic baseline read 'You are next'. I ran for my life, just like Forrest Gump had ...

It's probably that menacing warning that is still so stuck in my head that causes me to digress. Coming back to the report, a sleep specialist offers:

"Sometimes they hate it," added Pressman of the reactions of sexsomniacs' partners. "Sometimes they tolerate it. On rare occasions you have stories of people liking it better than waking sex."

The latter would probably be dream sex. All puns intended.

The Darkness Of Light

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 21:49:00 +0000

:.: The Darkness Of Light :.:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Light, this tiny flicker, trembling away
Like the sole guardian amongst demons galore
This one ray of light, like comforting balm
Yet it gives rise to what shake me to the core

Shadows, they seem familiar, like breaths of my own
Like the blood which flows when my heart goes a-pound
Attached to my past, present and future realms of life
Like unbreakable bonds, like a dedicated hound.

And yet, they feign ignorance when I talk to them
Aren't these shadows me, yet why are they outsiders?
Sore thumbs, these dark patches, in the light in my life
Why, oh does light bring out the dark side of me?

Et Tu, Himesh?

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:35:00 +0000

Beijing has banned television commercials that depict the treatment of anal and intestinal ailments because the crass and hyperbolic depiction of what goes on inside our stomachs is not a palatable sight, says a Reuters report.

The report goes on to say that the commercials were actually in public interest, but they have been taken off for, well, public interest - so that people can have their breakfast without having to watch some rather gross images on their TV screens.

Sometimes, this Chinese obsession with 'no-this and no-that' is rather good, compared to India. Our government does not care about our appetites. We still have to suffer Himesh Reshammiya 24X7, with microphone, jacket, nasal twang, forlorn expression and all that.

The Trials & Travails Of Studying Public Relations

noreply@blogger.com (Raj Lalwani) — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 12:15:00 +0000

Examinations can be a pain in the donkey, especially when you have weird subjects like Public Relations. You see, a wise man once said that there are many difficulties on the path to love. Pyar ka raasta, er, PR ka raasta bahut mushkil hota hai. Until yesterday, I was facing PR ke side effects and wondering ki PR humein kis mod pe le aaya.

Of course, the examination was today. And after writing a rather surprisingly good paper, I feel like singing "Yehi sach hai ... aakhir ... maine PR kiya."