“How will she notice me?“

“You need some conversation starter.“

He wore torn jeans. Nothing.

He donned a multicoloured shirt. Nothing.

He sported a funky hairstyle. Nothing.

He combined the three. Nothing.

He even tried a dhoti. Nothing.

He stopped, and went back to his normal getup.

She, “Not trying to impress me today, eh?“

I was a tad hesitant. What would people say? That cute girl over there, what would she think? That guy sitting on the bench, didn’t he work on the same floor as me?

I took a tentative step, and the first few drops washed away my hesitation. I stepped out, got drenched, and felt freed.

–

Waiting for the rains to make an appearance at Hyderabad. Even though I am not a rain lover – I hate being outside when it is raining – I’ve had enough of the summer.

The pen moved over the paper but no words appeared, the ink had dried up. Looking around to refill, I nudged the inkbottle down the table. Shattering glass halted my attempts to scribble, the quill had been screeching for some time instead of gliding over the pages.

I picked up my painting brush and easel…

Is there slight light?

P.S.: After multiple aborted attempts to writing I am back to posting photographs Hopefully the inkbottle’s order gets delievered soon.

Hyderabad was a conglomeration of brown patches with few blues and interspersed with green dots, two hours later I was landing in midst of a green earth with a blue river snaking through and as far as the eye could see no brown patches of dry land – Kerala welcomed us.

Alosh’s wedding – the avid photographer looked ill at ease when in front of the camera

The infamous strikes of Kerala hit us, and our plan of going to Munnar went down the drain.

Spent two days at a very small place (I would not even term it as off-the-beaten-track, for that it had to be on a track!), no network unless I went outside for a few meters, backwaters just behind the house, a black sand beach a boat ride away, and to reach the house you had to cross a 2 feet wide strip of land with water on both sides. It helps when your friends live in place that you can only term as paradise!

Wave breaking at a beach covered with black sand

Warning: If you can see the rains approaching on backwaters at a distance that seems at least 4-5 kms, never get on the small fishing boat even for a 10 minute ride. We made that mistake and luckily lived to tell the tale. Within 1-2 minutes the rain that was kilometers away was upon us, and the visibility was reduced to 8-10 feet, I could hardly make out the front of the boat. Strong winds threatened to overturn the boat, and the rising tide threatened to gobble up any thing/person that went overboard; luckily for us we were not in the middle of the backwater but hardly 20-30 meters away from the coast and were able to reach the coast drenched to the bone, but alive.

A fisherman selling oysters by the bucket. We were in a similar boat when we had the Near Death Experience of being thrown overboard into the backwaters of Kerala.

I have trekked through mountains and trekked through jungles too, but one thing has been common – there has been ample daylight, and all the treks were timed perfectly to make use of all available sunlight. So when I got a chance to undertake a trek at night through a jungle that boasts of tigers and elephants, I would have been a fool to refuse this once in a lifetime chance Trekked for around 6 kms for three hours in dense darkness in the Periyar Tiger Reserve Forest equipped with nothing but a tiny torch that threw light till about 10 feet ahead. Walking in plains was easy as the moonlight helped a lot. The second you left plains and headed under trees it was impossible to see an inch in front of you without the artificial aid. Unluckily we were not able to spot any animal, would have loved to spot an elephant in that darkness.

Some Random Waterfall on way to Thekkady

I hate traveling in a cab, and by air. Give me a train any day, or let me drive. Traveling for long hours sitting is very tiring, the stunning scenery helps a bit, but not for long.

Need to give at least 3-4 weeks more to cover all places of Kerala. It is a breathtakingly beautiful place, and I’ve covered hardly anything. I will be back

It definitely was much easier to write a post in the form of unrelated points Will stick to this when the words are not flowing…

Now that all the league matches are over, it is time to check whether the Indian Team that has been selected for the T20 World Cup is performance based, or rather purely based on the past laurels.

Last time I chose my team based on the total number of runs scored, and wickets taken as my criteria. This time I am changing the criteria and using the Cricinfo’s Fantasy Cricket Stats (sorting it based on total points). And this time I am choosing a team of 15 that comprises of 5 batsmen, 3 all-rounders, 1 wicket keeper, and 6 bowlers (like the Indian Team already chosen for the T20 World Cup).

Team
Batsmen
Suresh Raina
Rohit Sharma
Sachin Tendulkar
Yuvraj Singh
TS Suman

All-rounders
Yusuf Pathan
Irfan Pathan
RA Jadeja

Wicket keeper
Dinesh Karthik !!!

Bowlers
Anil Kumble
Ashish Nehra
RP Singh
Harbhajan Singh
Pragyan Ojha
P Sangwan

There are two names here that anyway would not have been in the team – SRT & Kumble. Replacing them would be:
SRT – Virat Kohli
Anil Kumble – Praveen Kumar

There are some major surprises here, none bigger than: No MS Dhoni! The captain of the team is out. Karthik has been keeping better, and scoring at par with Dhoni at least in this format. Also no Gautam Gambhir, no Virender Sehwag, no Zaheer, no Ishant Sharma. Well at least for Sehwag and Zaheer, I can at least say that they did not play many matches, but Gambhir?

Anyway I do not have any problem with the team chosen for T20 World Cup, although I seriously wish that Nehra was going rather than Munaf Patel – this guy never seems to be giving his 100% (to use an oft-used cliche).

Wishing that this T20 brouhaha finishes soon, so that we can get back to the serious business of the Ashes, and the French Open, and the Wimbledon!

There was no doubt, it was Adah. I could have recognized her anywhere, anytime even after all those years, having spent all three years of my B.Com pining for her. Rather than putting on weight as most of our batchmates had done, she had lost few kgs and was actually looking sexier. I had always thought that if I ever met her again, I would be too embarrassed, and would not be able to even open my mouth. Surprising myself, I called out, “Adah!”, and was chatting away as if we were the best of friends when we had last met rather than I was trying to hide from her having said a bit too much at our farewell.

Seeing no ring on her finger, I had to get the most important question out of the way right away, “Are you single?”

A forlorn smile played on her lips, “Single, never married, heart-broken twice.”

“I never thought beautiful girls like you ever got heart-broken, it was always us the guys that would be left heart-broken”, I said going in flashback mode.

“You could just say I’ve been unlucky in love”, she replied.

I remembered the college days, “Till the time I knew of you, I can say you have been unlucky. Being proposed by me almost every year, how many times did I propose to you, thrice?”

“Actually it was four times, I think you would not remember our farewell night. You were completely sloshed, and opened up your heart to me. I don’t think anybody has ever talked to me that way since then.”, she replied.

“Hmmm, I have faint recollections of that night, although I have no memory of being rejected the fourth time by you. The other three rejections were etched deep in my heart and it took some time for me to pry them off.”, I tried hard to remember that night.

She hesitated, “Maybe.. Nah, let it go”

I insisted, “Come on, you can say whatever is on your mind. It has been ages since that episode!”

“Maybe… Maybe, the reason you do not remember the rejection was that I never rejected you the fourth time, I sat silent and did not say anything. I did not know what to say.”, she confessed.

I was stunned, “Why did you not say anything that time?”

“I just did not know what to say.”, she said.

I fired an arrow in the dark, “I know why you did not say anything, you were too ashamed to be seen with me. I was not the cool guy like the studs of our batch, I was but a geek who used to spend his spare time in the library. You had a reputation to maintain, and you maintained it. Ain’t I right?”.

Silent yet again, she nodded. After all those years, finally I had a confirmation of why I was rejected throughout my college life.

Now she shocked me, “I think the fifth time, I would say Yes”. There was pleading sound in what she said.

I answered, “Thanks for rejecting me in college, else I would have never realized that beauty is indeed skin deep and people who truly love each other always look beyond that. I now value my wife even more than I used to. You see I’ve been happily married for 4 years now.”

Ingredients: Insomnia, half-cooked idea.
Result: Yet another 55, although had to struggle a lot to get this down to 55. Maybe it would have been better off as a Short Story

—-

She was riding pillion with her boyfriend, it didn’t matter. Her beautiful face, and the simple act of brushing hair off her face – I was captivated, and went miles out of way trying to inhale her beauty.

I started believing – in love at first sight!

Turning, I resumed my original drive to meet my girlfriend.

If we choose India’s World Cup T20 team based on performance [List of top scorers and top wicket takers] till now in IPL 2009, it throws up some major surprises. I am choosing 5 batsman, 1 all-rounder, 1 wk, 4 bowlers. I think this balance should be fine. So the team that comes up is:

SR Tendulkar
R Dravid
YK Pathan
RG Sharma
SK Raina

IK Pathan

MS Dhoni

RP Singh
PP Ojha
MM Patel
L Balaji

Just missed out bowlers: Kamran Khan, A Kumble
No other batsman has scored even 100 runs to be in contention.

If I compare this team with the team that played our last T20, only 4 names are common – Dhoni, Raina, and Pathan brothers. Rest all are different.

Time to change our international T20 team?

Yes, it is a strange title. It is neither the first time, nor would it be the last time that a different/whacky title has caught my eyes and I pick out the book with the most obscure title from the heap of books. As is the norm for me I bought this book – “The Simians of South Block and the Yum Yum Piglets“, authored by Ranjit Lal – on a whim.

The premise is: there is a vacancy for the top spot in jungle since the Tiger has retired after he was photographed in an embarrassing position by the tourists and had become the laughing stock on the net. A fight is on among the remaining powerful animals for the top-spot when monkeys come in to add masala to an already hot curry, and these are no ordinary monkeys. These are the monkeys that have terrorized Delhi, politicians of the South Block, and tourists around the India Gate being their favourite targets. These “civilized” monkeys find it difficult to adjust in the jungle, take hostages, and ask other animals to provide them a safe route to South Block, Delhi. The elected-by-default leader and his minions turn their back on this hostage situation and it is left up to other jungle denizens to handle the problem.

Even though it seems that it is a children’s book, but I feel there are serious political undercurrents in the book. Just change few minor details, and it seems to me the story of any problem that crops up in India specifically it seemed to me the story of 26/11. Monkeys (Terrorists) come to Jungle (Mumbai), take hostages, the so-called leaders, Jackal and Hyenas, disappear (MNS); others take charge to kill these pests. In spite of these political undercurrents, this book is a very light read. Yesterday night I completed it in one sitting in around 2 hours, and thoroughly enjoyed the book. Only when I woke up, did I realize that there were things to be read between the lines too.

If you lay your hands on it, read it

Four movies, four mini-reviews, and one common grouse for all: Where the hell is tighter editing?

8×10 Tasveer
Nagesh Kukunoor’s direction, Akshay Kumar as the hero, a very interesting premise – pointers to an awesome movie, right? Wrong! Yeah even I was misled by the big names associated with the movie. This was by far one of the worst movies I’ve seen in recent times. I think even Kidanp was better then this *shudders*
Rating: *x0

Aa Dekhen Zara
Had I seen this movie any other time, I would have been really disappointed, but I already had seen 8×10, and had no expectations of this and I think that is the reason I enjoyed the movie. Again an interesting premise, and an interesting cast, but this time the movie was lot better then 8×10. Overall could have been much much better, but yeah at least this one was a popcorn-muncher.
Rating: * * 1/2

Aloo Chaat
A feel-good movie. I remember the e-mail forward on which the movie is based, yeah you read it right: a movie based on an e-mail forward. Most of you would have read that e-mail so no use writing about that. This would be one movie that would become the staple diet for some movie channel (ala Hungama, Golmaal, Koyla(!!) etc), whenever you turn on the idiot-box, this movie would invariably be playing. This movie could have been at least half hour shorter without taking away anything at all from the movie.
Rating: * *

Straight
For the nth time, Vinay Pathak essays the role of the common man – this time someone who is confused about his sexuality. It is a nice movie, and can be seen once. Since there is a severe death of Hindi movies around (I read somewhere on net that this Friday [or was it the last Friday] is the first Friday in 12 years when no Hindi movie was released!), this is the only decent movie around. And one question to the producers/directors: How can you make someone as beautiful as Gul Panag look so bad?
Rating: * * * [Only because there is nothing better around to watch]

Planning to catch Barah Aana and Little Zizou, any reviews on those?