Yes, it doesn’t do HD movies – even the entry level EOS 500D does that these days; but I am not in it for moving pictures. And then, I can make up for my camera’s inability to shoot video with html and javascript. Here are a couple of studies in waltz time – performed by anonymous cast in front of the camera shop where the camera’s burst mode performance was being tested (very grainy ISO 3200):

1. Intro to waltz
2. Promenade Waltz

The links will open in a new window. Give the page some time to load and once the pictures start moving, hover over the them to see tooltips (and to slow the action down a bit). And please use a respectable browser (i.e. not IE).

As you’d expect, the dates of the fresh variety don’t taste at all like the dates of the shriveled, dried variety. But what was surprising was that they tasted like something familiar and yet something I couldn’t quite place. I’ve settled on a cross between India Jujube (ber, बेर, Ziziphus mauritiana) and Sugarcane for now.

And if you are in Delhi, well, I feel for you:

This year is different though. I’ve warmed up to the tournament, mostly because cricket is a large part of what I do now but partly because I seem to have arrived at a complex set of “loyalty” equations that help me chose which team I put my money on during a match. Without going into too many details, this is how it works:

Bangalore Royal Challengers (I live in Bangalore! And I admire Kumble and Dravid. And Kevin Pietersen is no longer in the team.) >
Chennai Super Kings (I admire Dhoni. Muralitharan and I share birth dates) >
Deccan Chargers (I am partial to everything south of Vindhyas) >
Rajasthan Royals (Love the fact that Warne gives a lot of chances to inexperienced youngsters) >
Delhi Daredevils (ah well, I was born in Delhi and that ought to count for *something*) >
Mumbai Indians (Mostly because they’ve got Tendulkar and Jayasuriya) >
Punjab Kings XI (someone’s gotta give company to Kolkata) = Kolkata Knight Riders (well someone’s got to be last).

The equations are devoid of even traces of cricketing knowledge (oh come on, it is 20-20) and chances are that the points table at the end of the tournament (with the exception of Kolkata) looks totally the opposite.

We took a flight from Bangalore to Cochin and then took a cab to Munnar. Though just a little over 150 km from the airport, it takes close to 4 hours to negotiate the serpentine, hilly roads. The roads were in good shape throughout but the numerous sharp turns left me reeling.

Cochin was hot and humid and I had no idea how things were supposed to get any better just under a couple of hundred kilometers up the road. But things changed remarkably fast and once we were in the hills the air turned cool and refreshing.

We stayed at the Tea Valley Resort. Our room offered beautiful views of the hills and tea plantations in the valley below. We had reached late in the afternoon and after a quick lunch, found ourselves longing for a siesta. The weather too was conspiring to put us to sleep. Shortly it started raining. The thunder and the sound of the rain formed a perfect backdrop for our slumber.

The next morning was sunny but pleasantly cool. We went for a long walk all the way to the main town – a walk that took us through tea estates and cardamom plantations.

This scale for measuring the tea plants’ height reminded me of of the an Complan ad (”But I’m growing Mummy. I’m a Complan tea plant”).

With Lok Sabha elections around the corner, the town was abuzz with political activity. Posters of candidates vied for the attention of both men and cows.

The rest of the stay is a blur in my mind. The next two days are clumped together and all I remember is more long walks in the hills, through the tea estates and short drives to a river and a waterfall nearby. The camera agrees:

But what this visit stands out in our minds for is coffee blossoms. Given how unpredictable the rains have been in Coorg, a lot of coffee estate owners have taken to irrigating their plantations themselves. Since everyone follows their own schedule, there is no one day you on which you’ll see all the estates blossom. Apparently this year, it had rained just a week before our arrival and practically every single coffee plant was bedecked with beautiful white blossoms. It was our noses that pointed this out first to us – the breeze in Coorg was fragrant with the scent of coffee flowers. Our eyes took notice of the unending sea of white much later.

Now if you are thinking ‘coffee smell’ here (you know the sort you get when you brew filter coffee, or step into a Café Coffee Day/Barista/Starbucks outlet), you are mistaken! Coffee flowers don’t smell even remotely like coffee. In fact, if you were classifying the coffee plant based on the smell of its flowers alone, you’ll place it somewhere next to Jasmine. This I think makes discovery of coffee an even more remarkable feat!

Unfortunately, the blossom is short-lived. Within a day, the flowers begin to wilt and turn brown. As we drove back to Bangalore, it was hard not to feel sad at their decay. But we had the smug satisfaction of knowing that hundreds of tourists who’d throng Coorg a week later (a long weekend) would have no idea what they had missed.

Now you are probably thinking that this looks suspiciously close to the album cover of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Shahrukh Khan starrer:

A closer inspection of the two covers will reveal, that indeed, the Kamal Haasan variant is just a shoddy photoshop job on top of the Bhansali version. Someone not only planted Kamal Haasan’s head on to Shahrukh’s torso – they added insult to injury by repeating the process for Sridevi and Sripriya (with Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit being the respective victms).

The movie turned out to be a badly dubbed version of an old Tamizh movie. The soundtrack seemed to have been (badly) redone for the Hindi version – so ridiculous dialogues weren’t the only coat of fresh paint that had been applied over the original. That said, we managed to extract a few laughs from a movie that has been been roughly modeled on one of the greatest romantic tragedy of all times. Here is a synopsis in 8 easy chunks:

	Raja (Kamal) is a brat with prediliction for ridiculous pink t-shirts and chain smoking.
Enter Devi (Sri Devi) his love interest – who is an Air Hostess for Indian Airlines – no less! She is seen here clearing her ear, while her friend pretends the she and the movie camera do not exist.
	Through a series of contrived and rather forgettable events they fall in love and decide to get married. The families are happy with the match and the two go on a wedding card distribution spree.
But alas, the wedding is not to be – Raja, thanks to years of smoking like a chimney has – yes – cancer – very visible cancer.
	Devi’s brother comes to know of it and wants to save his sister from her fate.
He contacts the friendly family priest/astrologer and urges him to postpone their wedding by 6 months – knowing well that his chain-smoking-cancer-inflicted brother-in-law to be wouldn’t last that long. Note the clever assumption that his sister will show sound judgement and will not marry a dead man. The priest obliges.
	Raja in the meanwhile realizes the gravity of his condition and starts supplementing his copious intake of nicotine with healthy quantities of liquor. The jeopardy of his betrothal also opens door to a brothel. Enter Radha – played by a certain Sripriya. She is seen here indulging in an elaborate song and dance routine with the soon-to-be-dead man.
Devi – with a little nudging by big bro and a little prodding by Raja himself – ends up marrying an old friend of hers. He is visibly pleased. After the wedding they all come together at Radha’s place for a grand, tearjerking finale.

Just a few years ago, doomsday was something that happened a few hundred years down the road. But of late, Hollywood has been pushing the date a little too close to the present. I just saw the trailer for the movie 2012 and found it sufficiently spooky. Watch and judge it for yourself!

The biggest problem to have plagued my enterprise has been the non-availability of quality mops. Many things can go wrong with a mop. Its head can wear out and start leaving long cotton strands all over the floor or worse, the head can come off the handle because either the head or the handle rusts, causing the connection between them to sever. Over the years I’ve tried practically every brand, model and make available at the shops here, and all of them have met more or less the same fate. Another problem is accessories – almost all the mops sold are supposed to have replacement heads available – but best of luck actually finding one.

This Saturday while looking for a new mop, I came across a whole section dedicated to them at Spar. Apparently 3M have figured that this space needs a shakeup and have decided to take a plunge. There they were – Scotch Brite Mops – all nicely packed and neatly stacked. I procured one for a princely sum of Rs. 225 and took it for a spin today. So far, I am impressed. The cotton strands are looped for longevity, the head is neatly screwed onto a sturdy handle and there are strips of some synthetic material with dots of a plasticy polymer on them amidst the thick cotton loops, that are supposed to allow me to scrub stubborn dirt with ease. Today, it all worked as advertised. We’ll see how it holds in the coming days. Considering this is 3M we are dealing with, at least a replacement head should be easy to procure.

Will 3M be successful? I have my doubts. Firstly, I know (at least anecdotally) that I am part of tiny minorty that buys mops for their own use. Mopping in most household is delegated to maids – and while we might demand the fastest, newest laptops from our employers at work in the name of productivity and efficiency, a maid at our house isn’t going to get the latest, greatest tool that the money can buy; especially if the tool (as is the case here), happens to be on the expensive side. The product might work if commerical establishments start procuring branded mops en masse, but as long as their are cheaper alternatives available, I don’t see that happening either. But who knows – 3M might just be able to muscle shelf space and bulk contracts and put others out of business. As far as mops go, I don’t think that will be such a bad thing.